Fob Comics

Jake Parker / Noah Van Sciver

2011-03-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

Reviews of the new Missile Mouse and the new Blammo up today on A Motley Vision.

Red Rocket 7 by Mike Allred

2011-03-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

Red Rocket 7 by Mike Allred

Red Rocket 7 manages to be both more and less ambitious than Allred's better known Madman books. More ambitious because it involved starting a band and recording an album, filming a movie (which I own but have never watched) (of course, that's also true of The Godfather).

Here's what the band sounds like (more), if you don't mind looking at a pretty girl at the same time:

RR7 is also more ambitious in that it tries to marry Allred's popart sensibilities with his love for pop music. Essentially, our title character takes us on tour of rock history.

But it's less ambitious in idea. It takes the depth of Madman's games with religion and faith and reason and hope and despair and just sums them up.

read the rest

Wonderland

2011-02-28T19:33:00.000-08:00

029) Wonderland by Tommy Kovac and Sonny Liew, finished February 21

When attempting a Wonderland story of any type, the greatest challenge is making it sufficiently nonsensical without alienating the audience. Carroll did this by having a nonnative to Wonderland tell the story. Burton avoided the question by changing the name of the place to Underland and making everyone down to the Mad Hatter sensible. Kovac and Liew, to their credit, don't avoid the question like last year's blanken film did, but neither do they introduce a character from the Real World. This is a tricky line to walk, but . . . . (read the full post)

Is Jeff Lemire a Genius?

2011-01-30T21:59:00.000-08:00

First, let me the 45thousandth person to proclaim Essex County a masterwork. I just sat down and reread volume one then followed it immediately with volumes two and three. And I don't know if it's possible for me to overstate how excellent this work is. It's on par with the very best comics I know --- Jimmy Corrigan, Maus, Blankets --- it's high literature as Lemire's fellow Canadians have recognized.

What I don't know is whether or not Lemire is a bonafide genius. It's just too soon to say. Chris "Jimmy Corrigan" Ware is. Craig "Blankets" Thompson? Let's wait for the next book before we decide.

(Incidentally, speaking of Thompson, as his drawings in Blankets are what I wish I could draw, the style I wish I had, Essex's drawings are what I would actually draw. If, you know, I had a decent sense of perspective and the human figure.)

But whether he is a genius who can consistently hit the heights represented by Essex County or not doesn't affect at all the inherent worth of Essex County itself.

I admit I have a couple biases that help my opinion of him, viz:

1. Half my childhood was spent in the Idaho version or southern Ontario and I feel the honesty in his portrayal. It's clear he respects his past.

2. The drawing thing. But seriously. That ink....

See that crow? I have a thing for crows (add bias #3), but in the end, that crow is not just a crow. It is a symbol that helps tie all three books together into a single novel. I don't know whether Lemire planned it that way or not, but I've seen enough crappy pulltogether symboljobs to recognize the difference between a hack bit of lookatme and a genuine, brilliant metaphor.

For those waiting for some plot summary, Essex County is three stories about a pair of Essex County families. That good enough for you?

After my last post I want to mention briefly that all three stories contain or grow out of a single, pivotal, life-shaping sexual encounter. Nothing base or sexy here, just a simple fact: the power to create life does just that --- and not only directly, through conception.

I could wax rhapsodic about all three volumes, but I have another couple Lemire books to get to, and so just one more thing, about the first volume, Tales from the Farm. As I said in my introductory essay here, serious comics are in a transitional state --- they often require a bit of meta --- and Farm is no exception. The main character, a boy named Lester, wears a cape and mask, draws his own superhero comics. This is all done to terrific effect, but once again, it's a serious artist acknowledging comics' hackneyed past. (Not that I have anything against superheros, but they're just one small corner of all possible stories.)

I don't suppose it's possible to arrive at adulthood making comics without a relationship with superheros though. Love them, hate them, love/hate them, you know them.

And so, although I was surprised to learn that Lemire is writing Superboy and Atom, I wasn't shocked.

I found out by looking for more information on Sweet Tooth, the comic he's writing and drawing for Vertigo, DC's grownup house.

It's one of a zillion postapocalyptic stories out now, but a good one. I've read the first two collections and I'm hoping to read more. It's too soon to know whether or not it is evidence of Lemire's possible genius, but not to soon to know that it's good. It gets compared to Y: The Last Man and The Walking Dead and those comparisons seem apt. In this case we have a disease that's killed nearly everyone, weird mutated children, evidence of genetic science being the cause, a big man with guns who kills people, desperation, prostitutes, children in peril --- all that stuff. But its well written and drawn in a gussied up version of his Essex tales and certainly has the potential to be something special. I hope so. I'm expecting great things from this Lemire guy. Time to pick up some more books.

Bayou by Jeremy Love

2011-01-18T20:49:00.000-08:00

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I had not even heard of DC's Zuda experiment until it was already over and dead. Katya sent me a reading suggestion (today's book) and that's how I learned about what sounds like it must have been cool before they shuttered it and took everything down. But I'll never know how closely it approximated its attempted cool and all I can judge it by now is the comics it left behind.

Bayou takes place in the South, 1933, and, as you might expect, the story grows out of the era's plainfaced and violent racism.

Scene one: A little black girl is required by the white sheriff to dive into the bayou to help recover the body of a lynched black boy. While down there, she sees not just the body, but also a living version of the dead boy, with butterfly wings.

Having established the supernatural element, Love slowly builds the tension. Most of the horror comes from the realistic portrayals of bigotry, so when a supernatural character suddenly acts badly, it's utterly shocking --- a fascinating variation on typical horror tropes.

This volume ends just as the story gets going which is hella obnoxious, but I suspect that is because this was as far as the story had progressed before Zuda went under and now, to gauge interest in more story, they have published a book to see how it does.

I got mine from the library and with no promise of more, I'm not likely to buy my own copy. I hope it does well though as, according to Love, The story comes to a definite end at around page 500. and I hope he gets to take it all the way.

Judge Dredd & Batman (maybe they can save the world if they can just stop fighting blah blah blah))

2011-01-04T22:25:00.000-08:00

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All I've ever really known about Judge Dredd is that it was made into a Sylvester Stallone movie and that was always enough. Even though I was given this Dredd/Batman volume and even though it was skinny, I wasn't sure I was going to bother reading it. How good, after all, could it possibly be?

As it ends up, although the story is only so-so, the art by Simon Bisley is so enrapturing that the entire book is well worth your while. I wouldn't mind being given further Bats/Dredd volumes in the future.

Picture one, in which the bad guy kills in his distinctive and striking and visceral fashion:

Picture two, in which you get a sense of the mythological way the Batman is presented in this volume. He has a truly history stature, standing a good eighteen inches taller than normal people.

Picture three in which you see this book's striking rendition of the Batmobile. But even the copcars and taxis are hella cool.

Vivat Grendal (vivat is latin for crappy)

2010-12-31T15:26:00.000-08:00

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In 1993, Grendel: War Child won the Eisner for best limited series. My mother-in-law picked up the collection from Freecycle and gave it to me for Christmas and I'm sorry to say that it's utterly unworthy of the award. I'm guessing in 1993 there wasn't much competition? Or --- I don't really follow the Eisners that closely --- maybe they always pick crap?

Here's the thing: The story has lots of violence and sex and other Impressive Stuff, but it never really builds into anything. Interesting ideas like having a main character never speak are screwed up by ending them at the wrong time. Attempts at Seriousness (like killing innocents to help more innocents live) are executed in such a away that it was clearly just an idea; no real attempt in grounding the idea in a reality was attempted. I'm depressed over how lousy this book was.

Sigh.

The Art of Vampirella

2010-12-22T10:52:00.000-08:00

I find it funny that Dynamite Entertainment is celebrating 40 years of Vampirella by selling a collection of The Art of Vampirella. Really, it took them that long to figure out that no one buys her comics for the words?

Fish Stick Knife Gun

2010-11-18T22:07:00.000-08:00

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Fish Stick Knife Gun is a pretty well known memoir by Geoffrey Canada, who these days is making an impressive dent in the lack of child safety in Harlem. The book is about his growing-up years in the South Bronx and I've never read it. Just heard of it.

I have, however, read the new graphic adaptation. (Disclaimer: Beacon Press sent me a free copy.)

Like most comics adaptations of prose books, it's hard not to see the holes left behind and wondering what once filled them, but unlike most such books, this one still feels like a complete object. I believe I could give this book to someone and they would be satisfied.

One reason I wanted to read this book was in hopes that it would be a book I could pass on to my young black male students. So I suppose the best question to ask is whether it meets this goal. Not having handed it out yet, I don't know. But I suspect the answer is yes. Here's why:

It doesn't preach. It's straightforward. Yeah, at the end it argues for Change, but it does so from a voice of experience, with a voice that has proved it's got cred.

For those who got through childhood with ten or fewer fights, this book is a highly palatable means to understanding what it means to grow up poor in the inner city. Do this and Our America and we're hitting a couple generations of mess.

Now for the art.

I was not familiar with Jamar Nicholas prior to this, but I'm impressed. His touch is light. He never overstates the violence. Keeping it quiet makes it impossible to look away. And, unable to look away, we are forced to confront Canada's story in both its ugliness and its basic human beauty.

In other words, Nicholas, like Canada, doesn't let readers pretend these kids are The Other. They are knowable and human and true.

Now, puffery aside, this is just a good book. I don't see it winning any major awards (unless they're more content-based rather than execution-based), but it has serious potential to be the Right Book. Let's get this into libraries and classrooms. This is a book to spread around.

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Bonus: Read a bit about the book and the first few pages.

Noah Van Sciver's Blammo (#6)

2010-07-06T22:30:00.000-07:00

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First, a disclaimer for my disclaimer. I paid full price for this. (You can too!)

Now my disclaimer. Noah contributed a comic to an anthology I'm working on now and so I've been in contact with him for a few months now. I've decided he's a very cool guy and next time we're both at Comic Con at the same time or APE at the same time or something, I will say loud things near his table about how good he is to try and generate him some traffic.

= = = = =

I'm the Official Indie Snob on this site and yet I'm not a huge fan of what most people think of when the think of indie comics. For instance, I think R. Crumb has only started getting any good in the last five years. In fact, I don't much like most autobiographical comics, with only a few exceptions (most notably Jeffrey Brown, but there are others) (and getting to be more everyday as I get over myself) (but I don't think I'll ever care for Harvey Pekar). And even the ones I like I can get tired of rather easily.

Which is a weird introduction to this comic, because only a small fraction of it is autobiographical (and some of that was written by Noah's brother Ethan). But aesthetically, he comes straight out of that tradition. He's got the wiggly lines etc etc. But I suspect I'll like him more than most. In fact, based on my small sampling, I'm hard pressed to think of any other indie self-ziner of his type that I like more. And not just because his subject matter is more broad than simple navel-gazing.

His primary strength, I think, is that he is both of his tradition and grown out of his tradition. He clearly loves the comics he is related too, but he also has enough distance to examine them with a critical-slash-ironical-slash-postmoderninagoodway eye.

Which is not to say this book is perfect. The punks-v-lizards thing (you heard me) went on too long for instance and even when serving a story, one can only take so much ICP running in the background.

But these are minor quibbles. Check out more of his art here then don't let his future child starve to death.

Me, I need to find another reason to work with him.

Was the best innovation of 2009 a throwback to our lost past? -or- Why DC's Wednesday Comics were so darn great

2010-06-25T17:09:00.000-07:00

Note: This was originally written for Fantasy Magazine many months ago, but then they changed all their plans for writing about comics and so they no longer need it. So I'm throwing it up here and on Thutopia instead. We'll call this apropos rather than horribly too late because the comics under discussion were just collected in hardcover and released on the first of this month.

Was the best innovation of 2009 a throwback to our lost past?

-or-

Why DC's Wednesday Comics were so darn great

I recall reading the daily comics as Bill Watterson's Calvin lamented the state of the modern comic strip. Watterson himself used all his power to fight for a full half page on Sundays at the end of his run and those strips still seem revolutionary. But really, he was just hearkening back to the era of Grand Art in the newspapers' funny pages.

Our modern Sunday sheet doesn't have any great panoramic views such as Nemo in Slumberland nor do we have much left in the way of grand adventure ala Hal Foster or Chester Gould. Most papers are crammed full of joke stgrips. And, sure, Pearls Before Swine is brilliant, but a hilarious eight-panel (crammed into so small a space only the simplest line drawings read) is only one sliver of Sundaycomics' heritage. But we haven't room anymore for the grand or the beautiful.

Enter Wednesday Comics.

For twelve weeks in mid 2009, DC released not-full-sized-but-still-good-sized broadsheets and handed full pages over to writer/artist teams to tell a story over twelve episodes and the results were generally pretty good. Good enough that my only regret is that each story was only and exactly twelve episodes long, and at the end of those twelve weeks, Wednesday Comics was over.

While one advantage of newspaper comics is their endless nature, my own nature as a reader prefers beginnings and endings. But if a few of Wednesday Comics' stories had ended at nine weeks and others at fifteen and as one dropped out another took its place and WC had become an institution --- how cool would that have been?

But they didn't and so it goes. Here's to hoping that, at the very least, WC was successful enough to justify a second twelve-week run next year. Because the grand scope of a single story splayed over one large piece of paper is a thing of beauty and something worth experiencing again, for the first time.

Now for brief reviews of all the stories.

Batman - story by Brian Azzarello with art by Eduardo Risso

No fantasy here. This is a straight Batman story, with the knight of the night in pure detective mode. It's a fine story, but reading on, one is left to wonder, with all the DC characters to choose from, why would anyone pick Batman? (Or Superman for that matter.) With DC's universe of underdeveloped and deliriously fun tertiary characters to choose from, why pick a character everyone knows, and tell a workaday story about him? It doesn't make much sense. Even if it is a good story.

Kamandi - story by Dave Gibbons with art by Ryan Sook

From my own reading, I am only really familiar with Jack Kirby's work from the end of his life --- when he was merely a shell of the Jack Kirby who created the modern superhero.

Kamandi however is a character of Kirby's from the early '70s, and the energy and strength of Sook's art and the wild adventure of Gibbons's story helps me understand what the big deal with Kirby has always been about. This is the best Kirby story I've ever read, even if Kirby did not directly touch it.

Kamandi lives in a distant future where humans are all but destroyed (he is, after all, "The Last Boy on Earth") and sentient anthropomorphic animals battle across the demolished American landscape. The villains here (as in two more WC stories to come) are a band of apes who intend to rule the entire landscape. They have kidnapped the king of the tigers, a friend of Kamandi's, and are planning to execute him. Naturally, the heroic human rides to the rescue, uniting tigers and dogs and lions on his way.

While in many respects a straightforward postapocalyptic adventure, Kamandi uses quiet moments between the violence and explosions to explore concepts like loneliness and loyalty and family and morality. A couple surprising turns and genuine rapport between the characters makes this tale a real winner. I wouldn't be surprised to see Kamandi resurrected again as this story inspires other artists.

Superman - story by John Arcudi with art by Lee Bermejo

For a moment, Superman almost becomes exactly who Lex Luthor has always said he is: an alien with no real ties to Earth.

During an attack from other, more monstrous aliens, a comment from one fills him with insecurity regarding his status as an adopted Earthling, So Supes heads home to Ma and Pa Kent in hope of regaining his bearing.

Though merely a simple and classic Superman tale (told in an overwrought visual style not well matched to newsprint), this story does reveal what Wednesday Comics' form can do best: Art done large.

Deadman - story by Dave Bullock and Vinton Heuck with art by Dave Bullock

Deadman's afterlife heroics done large. Even suddenly alive again, Deadman looks like a corpse (which is fine, I suppose, since, much as you know a dead Superman will someday return to life, a living Deadman will necessarily return to death), but alive or dead, he abandons himself to doing the right thing, no matter what it may be. And entangeld in a web of demon-evil hijinks, he is level-headed enough to see that even attractive evils are evil.

The ugly demons --- the ones that distract the reader from the pretty ones --- are truly hideous. And the monstrous hell Bullock creates is one of the greatest creations in all of WednesdayComics. And, curious among this set of deliberately ended comics, Deadman leaves us with something of a cliffhanger.

Green Lantern - story by Kurt Busiek with art by Joe Quiñones

A mashup of Cartoon Network and Mad Men, the thrust is not on the alien invasion, but on the bromance between Green Lantern Hal Jordan and an old astronaut friend. The story is highly professional and manipulative, but it's too effective (and thus charming and lovable and even moving) to really hold its machinations against it. It makes you smile? It makes you tear up? Well, even if it was manipulative, we all want that experience from time to time.

Metamorpho - story by Neil Gaiman with art by Michael Allred

Gaiman has long claimed that he writes his scripts to match the strengths of the artist he is working with, but never has that been more clear than here. Mike Allred's pop sensibilities rule every square millimeter of all twelve pages, with his wife Laura Allred's colors blinding us with that rapid cheerfulness the Allreds are masters of. It's not till near the end of the run, when Metamorpho works his way through the Periodic Table of the Elements (looking like a board game --- another Allredian conceit for sure), that the brilliant wordplay finally reveals that Gaiman had a hand in this at all. His genius for goofing off finally shines though Allred's genius for goofing off, and this pastiche of '60s silliness hits its highest point. What this world needs more of, it is clear, are more more more Gaiman/Allred collaborations.

Teen Titans - story by Eddie Berganza with art by Sean Galloway

One of the weaker stories and one of the harder to access without a decent background in DCology. It's a typical comic-book monstrosity with switchbacks and hidden identities and amnesia and time travel and sudden reveals and, yawn, so on. And, like Superman before it, a little too gray and brown for newsprint.

Strange Adventures - story and art by Paul Pope and José Villarrubia

Adam Strange is one of the strangest characters DC has produced, and Paul Pope, coming off a string of successes in the strange, is well suited to tackle Adam as he cavorts with his metalbikini-clad love against an army of bad-tempered blue monkeys. Curiously, the story is not weakened --- or even destrangified --- by the sudden return of Adam to Earth where he is --- gasp! --- old and boring.

Pope's wiggly lines bring Strange's world to life in a way a more traditional, cleaner line never could have. He moves Strange from the realm of the strange curiosity, to the realm of the strangely real.

Supergirl - story by Jimmy Palmiotti with art by Amanda Conner

This is the silly one. Others may have aimed for silly, but this one is silly. But, even though the original 1959 Supergirl was silly, she was treated by her creators with contempt. It's clear Palmiotti and Conner love their Supergirl, even if she is stuck chasing a silly superdog and a silly supercat as they engage in silly misadventures.

But though this silly Supergirl is lovingly presented, she's not apt to make feminists proud. She asks for help solving her problem from a young man, then her problem is explained to her by an old man, and her problem is finally solved by a dog and a cat.

In the end, although Supergirl saves a plane filled with people, she never really acts --- she is only acted upon. And that makes her a dull hero.

Also, she is very silly.

Metal Men - story by Dan DiDio with art by José Luis García-López and Kevin Nowlan

The Metal Men are and have always been goofy. And DiDio plays that goofiness to the hilt with punny titles and campy dialogue, and the artists do their part to make the characters and their world as haha as possible. And that devotion to humor pays off when a genuine menace threatens to destroy them all. Having laughed with the Metal Men, we can't bear to see them die! A simple story well played.

Wonder Woman - story and art by Ben Caldwell

While Wonder Woman seems as prone to the ordinary as Batman and Superman, Caldwell instead brings us an origin story of a young Diana, navigating her physical dreams of our world, that is structured like a classic folk tale. He lays it out in a more complicated and daring style, then draws it in a style so European I kept checking to see if maybe, I don't know, Nicolas de Crécy was doing the art.

The melding colors and complex painterly style don't always read well on newsprint (definitely don't try reading this in bed with only a small bedside lamp as your companion), but the artistic ambition of this Wonder Woman is to be lauded.

Sgt. Rock - story by Adam Kubert with art by Joe Kubert

Another story without any fantastic elements, the classic Nazi fighter gets roughed up but holds his ground. This looks and tastes much like the original, which seems compliment enough.

The Flash - story by Karl Kerschl and Brenden Fletcher with art by Karl Kerschl.

The first few weeks, this page was split in half, between a Flash story and an Iris story. Two views of the same relationship, one from his perspective, one from hers. His told in a classic superhero look, hers approximating classic mid-century newspaper stories of strong women.

The Iris half of the tale was abandoned however. My suspicion is that the writers found it too difficult to maintain her half of the story while Flash is multiplying himself and fighting gorillas. He's just way cooler, right?

But I think that decision was a tragedy. The counterpoint of a normal human's p-o-v offered a sense of reality to an otherwise far over-the-top story. Too bad they stopped thinking the human experience merited half their time.

The Demon and Catwoman - story by Walter Simonson with art by Brian Stelfreeze

Unfortunately disjointed, this ambitious-seeming but ultimately overly simple story may be the best proof that Wednesday Comics should have been made ongoing. Simonson simply bit off too much with this story and wrapping it up in twelve weeks resulted in something much less that what might have been. The iambic pentameter-spewing demon fighting his centuries-dead nemesis while Catwoman struggles not to be a pawn --- the story had potential. Would it had been given the weeks necessary to fully unfold. Twenty weeks maybe. By then it would have been surrounded by all new stories, and, upon ending, replaced itself by some new and marvelous and perhaps even forgotten character.

Hawkman - story and art by Kyle Baker

The sepia-toned heightened reality of Baker's Hawkman is the perfect final page. Pure superhero and purely ridiculous. Let's start with aliens! Then let's have dinosaurs! And then sea monsters! But, amazingly, it all pulls together. Village Voice got it right when, choosing this story as one of the best comics of 2009, they wrote "slashing and comically arrogant Hawkman . . . proved it's often secondary heroes who are ripest for artistic extravagance."

Exactly.

Bring us another twelve weeks next year, DC.

Or, even better, bring us fifty-two.

Suburban Folklore

2010-05-05T13:25:00.000-07:00

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This is Steven Walters's first book, so a lot of the stuff I'm going to gripe about are things I hope he has gotten better at. The bigpicture stuff, stuff I consider more likely to be indicative of future work, that stuff's much healthier.

But may I complain first?

First, dude, what's with the copyediting? There were so many spelling errors and so much wrong punctuation and other related errors --- many quite embarrassing --- that I have to wonder if he ever read over what he wrote before going to press.

Second, dude, anatomy! perspective! Again, I trust he's gotten better at these minor details, but it could be distracting. Also, I wonder if two characters chatting about how they look alike came about because readers were complaining that they looked alike. Because, let's face it, they look alike.

Third, and most likely to be corrected in later works, sometimes the pages were cut off in the printing process or, one time, the words were outside the bubble. Little things. But this was a first-time project, he was learning as he went, I'm not judging. Making something is awesome and commendable and I'm suspecting that he's gotten better at these things as time's gone on.

Now let's talk about what's good.

This entire book was worth reading for the final sequence --- almost an epilogue, really. It wouldn't work without the rest of the story but the rest of the story's rather pointless without it.

Here's the idea: In a short period of time (in this case, eighteen months), friends can turn into strangers. And that can be the end of it. You'll never have what you had; it will be over. That's the ephemeral nature of friendship. Perhaps that's sad, but there you have it.

If you run across this book, it's worth a quick read just to taste Walters's execution of this bittersweet --- melancholy and strangely beautiful --- idea.

Friendship is fragile. So before you let it go, ask yourself, how will you feel if it never comes back?

Young, Just Us

2010-04-21T18:49:00.001-07:00

Today's official announcement of the long-rumored Young Justice animated series coming to Cartoon Network makes me happy for a number of reasons:

There's a good chance the show will be awesome. Yes, it looks different from the Young Justice I know and love. But so did Teen Titans and The Batman, and both proved to be great shows in their own rights. And yes, it's weird that they've turned Arrowette into a scary-looking militaristic chick named Artemis, and that there's a new Aqualad who is apparently black for PC reasons, but people also complained when it was announced that Justice League would have Hawkgirl but not Hawkman, and John Stewart instead of Hal Jordan or Kyle Rayner as the team's Green Lantern, and both turned out to be perfect fits for the show.
I'm hoping that the show will encourage DC to finally get around to collecting Young Justice in trade paperback. I own all the issues, of course (it's one of the few series for which I've kept the floppies), but I hate digging comics out of a box to reread.
I assume that the show will result in a tie-in comic for kids and/or the resurrection of the title in the main DCU line. Either would make me happy. It would make me even happier if they managed to get Peter David and Todd Nauck back on the series. I think there's a good chance of the latter, as Nauck went on to illustrate the Teen Titans tie-in series after YJ ended, but I don't know about the former; I believe David left DC on negative terms after Fallen Angel a few years back, and I don't know how likely he is to come back, even to write Young Justice. But I can hope, can't I?

Best American Comics 2009

2010-04-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

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I know I know I know. This is way overdue. It was way overdue when I got it for Christmas, it was way overdue when I finished reading it on March 22, and it's way overdue now. But at least here it is.

This volume was edited by Charles Burns (but, although it looks like Burns, the cover was actually drawn by Michael Kupperman who also did the Twain and Einstein comic on the inside which I found disappointing.

Today I posted a review of a short-story anthology and I realized that expecting --- or even hoping --- that an anthology only give you works you like is to largely miss the point of anthologies. So I'm going to stop whining about that in my BAC reviews (though I reserve the right to complain for other reasons).

Probably the biggest revelation for me was Kevin Huizenga's "Glenn Ganges in Pulverize." I have heard of Huizenga often enough, but his style and storytelling prowess are very attractive. The way he blends and meshes very different visual ideas into stylistic unity is impressive.

Since this review is so late, I'm not going to go into great depth or detail, but I will list my faves and why and then just leave it at that:

"Artist vs. Artisan" by Peter Bagge: A look at Paul Revere and John-Singleton Copley proves that Kate Beaton ain't the only historical-haha-comics genius on the scene.

The Crumbs entry about a tape dispenser (like I used to use!) is further evidence that they don't suck. I'm happy this is true, since they are so beloved.

Probably my single favorite entry was Dan Zettwoch's creation of old Church bulletins through the decades. I loved this. I just wish they were real. And that I want that to be so proves to me how fully I believed in the world these old bulletins seemed evidence of. Brilliant work.

"Over Easy" by Mimi Pond was a nice bit of fictionalized autobiography-of-an-artist in a sweet and savory cafe.

Dash Shaw's biography of an artist was, in turn, bittersweet and faux savory and rather moving in an underground-man kind of way.

Chris Ware. Brilliant as always. Time to read another Ware book, I think.

Laura Park brings us a snapshot of the intersection between sibling love and sibling loyalty and being really really annoying to each other.

Korem Shadmi's wasn't really all that great, not really, but the concept (hooking up with the decapitated girl) is brilliant.

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

2010-03-08T20:09:00.000-08:00

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We have owned these books for years now, but only finally took them out of the plastic late last year when I was jonesing for a new Complete Peanuts collection. I had waited so long for two reasons. 1) the books were still beautiful and shiny; 2) they are huge (note: these reasons explain why The Complete Far Side, purchased at the same time, remains in plastic).

#2 is why it took me three months to read it. I used to read a Calvin and Hobbes collection in one or two sittings all the time. This 7+pound book is not nearly as so wieldy as my old paperback collections were.

But the joy is no less.

It a weird experience to read a strip you still know by heart more than a decade after still reading it and yet laugh yourself silly.

And while it's not as true for me as it is for professionals of my generation (eg Jake Parker), I too can look at a picture I would stare at for long minutes (they got funnier as each minute passed) and realize yeah, hey, that influenced the way I draw.

God bless you, Bill Watterson.

Stone Rabbit #1: BC Mambo by Erik Craddock (2009)

2010-03-03T11:20:00.000-08:00

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Unlike Missile Mouse, this medley of cliches is not good instruction for children. While MM introduces kids to a world of old ideas in a way that makes them feel new for those for whom they are new (you followin' me here?), SR is a frenetic mess. This is from Random House:

It's fastpaced nonstop nonsense. In the pejorative sense. I've little doubt it will find an audience, but there ain't much here. Don't waste your kids' time.

Missile Mouse

2010-02-05T23:37:00.000-08:00

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It's hard to believe the world had room for one more anthropomorphic cartoon mouse, but Jake Parker's Missile Mouse proved we did.

This rascally rapscallion's got punch and bravado and comes packaged with everything budding fans need to build a lifelong obsession. If Scholastic markets this puppy right, they could turn this property into something that lasts and lasts and becomes a basic building block of childhood during the twentyteens.

Buy one now so you can say you knew it before it was cool.

Note: I received an advance review copy from Scholastic. So I'm probably totally biased by that. Also, I've played mafia with the artist, so there's that too. Also, I'm not French. All these things are working against me here. Except not being French. I don't see how that could impact my impartiality.

Axe Cop

2010-02-03T11:37:00.001-08:00

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I find it difficult just how awesome Axe Cop is.

Would that every clever child had an artist on retainer.

Here are the first three panels. Click to read more.

Rapunzel's Revenge by a heapa Hales

2010-01-16T01:30:00.000-08:00

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Popular YA writer Shannon Hale decided to turn her attention to sequential art by penning a script with her husband, Dean Hale, which was later drawn by Nathan Hale (no relation). The book did well enough to warrant a sequel (Calamity Jack, out this month).

I didn't have any clear expectations coming into this, but I was impressed immediately. For a lady with no known comics-writing experience, she's adept. She knew how to use the panels, everything was paced well, etc. (She talks about switching forms here, but I got bored and just barely finished the first paragraph.) So that's a good start. I don't know how much of this success can be attributed to Dean or Nathan, but Shannon's the famous one here and no doubt it was on the strength of her name that this project happened at all, so good job, Shannon.

And I love the concept. I love recreations of old tales, and Rapunzel as a fantasy western works well.

It's a superheroish power fantasy for girls with a bit of romance thrown in. Only --- since the girl's the hero, this time, she also gets to be the one dumb in love. Role reversals all around.

Now, they end gets a bit dicey with a handful of unearned outs, but overall, this is a great book and one I recommend checking out. It could be a good gateway work for younger kids --- especially girls? --- who haven't ever really tried comics on for size.

It's fun and harmless and nice to have around.

Review done.

Best book of 2009: Shaun Tan 's The Arrival

2010-01-14T13:47:00.000-08:00

(note: books are eligible for this designation the year i the indie snob first read them; publication is irrelevant)

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Man.

This was the first comic I read last year and I knew then it had a good chance at being the best of the year. And so it was.

I know, I know, I know. The book came out a few years ago so everyone and their parakeet has already sung its praises, but this book really can't be praised too much.

One observation I do want to make in passing is something I learned at Comic Con:

Comics without words have an easier time getting accepted as Respectable. And as The Arrival meets that category I feel I should comment.

(First, let me insist I have nothing against worded comics --- although last year's winner of this prize was also wordless. And so while I might seem to be knocking worded comics, I assure you I am not.)

Wordless comics more purely explore the strengths of the comics medium. Words --- they're not baggage, but --- they are not inherent to What Comics Is. Comics Are Pictures Ordered.

And so, I think, when outsiders view a wordless comic, they can finally see just What Comics Is.

That explains them.

But I also rejoice in the purity of a perfectly crafted comic that can stand without words.

But The Arrival is more than that. It's story makes the lack of words thematically significant. If we understood the characters' words, that would eat into our empathy. Which is remarkable, when you think about it. Yet here, in this book, it is absolutely true.

Well done, Mr Tan.

Best Comic of the Year
2008: The Blot by Tom Neely
2009: The Arrival by Shaun Tan

War Is Boring

2010-01-08T21:02:00.000-08:00

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The images are tough to read, but David Axe's War Is Boring is worth the effort.

A Drug War Carol

2009-12-10T12:16:00.001-08:00

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If you're looking for some holiday reefer madness, may I recommend the inadvertently hilarious Drug War Carol. It gets bogged down in history when that darn Ghost of Christmas Past shows up, but otherwise it's good for laffs.

Green Monk by Brandon Dayton (2009)

2009-11-08T13:40:00.000-08:00

(Note: I know Brandon Dayton peronally. We first met on Twitter then in person at APE. But I spent real money on this book so darnit it's getting a real review.)

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The most immediately and prepetually striking thing about Green Monk is its format. The book is small, like a 4x6 card, with but one panel to a page --- two in view at any one time, as demonstrated in this photo from the artist's website:

I'm struck by how different a reading experience it was, as opposed to having those same panels on a larger page, say, eight in view at one time. That format would read much speedier. As is, Green Monk forces a deliberate page: panel, move eyes, panel, turn page, panel, move eyes, panel, turn page and so on for a hundred and twenty or so pages. It's slow. Which makes the physical experience of reading is justaposed with the metaphysical speed of the story, which collision plays out in interesting ways. The battle scenes feel slowmo. The contemplative scenes seem genuinely contemplative. The overall effect is thoughtful.

(I think Dayton could have made the violent and horrific elemetns much more visceral and, because of the slow, deliberate pacing, the effect would not be to the amygdalae but to the frontal lobes --- more thoughtful meditation on violence than Saturday matinee.)

So the question begged is this: Does Green Monk provide enough to meditate upon to justify its meditativeness?

Green Monk does take some stabs at depth. Parts reminded me of old Eastern European tales or perhaps a Bible story from Judges or Chronicles. The main character is, after all, a monk, and he does discuss religion. But while the words push us towards depth, its when we step aside and the story enters its long wordless sequences that the book is most successful both as story and in depth.

And so while the pictures could be more visceral, the words could be more restrained.

But I make this observation from a place of impression. This is Brandon Dayton's first book and it's a keeper. To kvetch about minor points like "I didn't like the sudden Disnefication of the villager" or "I didn't like the surprise lines in that one panel" miss the point, viz. how little there is to complain about for a first book.

The real comment we're most apt to make upon finishing Green Monk is this:

That was pretty good. I can't wait to see what Dayton does next.

Vertigo's Halloween Special

2009-11-01T00:37:00.000-07:00

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I should have known better.

This is the first traditionally shaped comic book I've purchased in years, and it's a compendium of advertizey shorts strung together by an advertizey frame. So in the end I've been pitched a bunch of stories to what might be great series, but the individual stories are underdeveloped and, frankly, not capable of selling me anything.

Which shouldn't surprise me at all.

But it looked cool and seemed cool and I'm trying to get Mike Allred and Amy Reeder Hadley to work with me on a project so I gave it a shot.

Whoops.

Shoulda just bought a copy of Madame Xanadu and I, Zombie. Lesson Learned.

Galendara's "Lest They Should See"

2009-10-27T13:03:00.001-07:00

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Comics artist Galendara participated in an 18-hour-comics event over the weekend and while I wouldn't normally post about comics made under this stress as it's just not fair to treat them like a carefully crafted work for publication, I've decided that since it was inspired in part by a story I wrote and because it turned out pretty dang cool that I would through it up here. (Note: I will, in spirit, be following my book-reading MS POLICY.)

Lest They Should See

The comic is an elegiac look at fertility and barrenness and, in my opinion, the most striking visual element is what Galen does with wombs. For instance, how they are connected to the earth:

These images are not pressed together like this in her work (click on any of them to read the whole thing), but this is their order and I love the progression from potential to growth to widespread barrenness which reminds me of Isaiah's prophesies.

Anyway. MS POLICY. It's up and you are welcome to read it for yourself.

And let's have more of these events, shall we?

Icon: A Hero's Welcome

2009-10-24T08:06:00.000-07:00

I recently read Static Shock: Rebirth of the Cool and enjoyed it. Yesterday I read Icon: A Hero's Welcome and was blown away. This is truly revolutionary stuff, entirely deserving of the name the imprint chose for itself. On the cover of this new edition of the trade, Alan Moore is quoted as saying, "ICON is that rarest of creatures--a well-told adventure story that achieves genuine political depth." I have to agree. In the early nineties while other writers were following in Frank Miller's footsteps, making superhero comics more "mature" by adding more violence and crudity, Dwayne McDuffie was creating a superhero comic that actually approached adult themes with maturity beyond that of a hormone-charged adolescent--and managed to do so in the context of a genuinely fun story.

Icon's story starts in 1839, when an alien escape pod crashes in the deep South. The pod genetically alters its inhabitant to appear like an African-American baby, in order to fit into his surroundings. He's found by a slave and raised on a plantation, and then he proceeds to help the Underground Railroad; fight in the Civil War, World War I, and World War II; earn a law degree; and participate in the Harlem Renaissance. As his sidekick, Rocket, says of his history, "His life spans the breadth of the African-American experience." When Rocket meets him in 1993, he's an upper-middle class lawyer living in the suburbs of the fictional city Dakota. (She says upon learning his origins, "I think I just figured out how a Black man could be a conservative Republican--you're from outer space!") By setting up this centuries-spanning backstory for his title character, McDuffie takes the Superman myth, a classic tale of the American immigrant, and transforms it into something uniquely and intrinsically African-American.

My favorite chapter in this volume is from Icon #7, wherein Rocket, a fifteen-year-old girl who has recently discovered that she's pregnant, must decide whether or not to keep the baby. McDuffie sets up the story such that Rocket's ultimate choice is entirely believable for her character and he presents this choice in such a way that the reader wants to cheer for her, but he does so while demonstrating an understanding of and compassion for those women in her situation who choose otherwise. I've seen several superhero comics attempt to address such difficult themes as abortion, but none have done so as gracefully and honestly as this one.

I wish now that I had checked out the Milestone line while it was being published in the nineties. I was certainly aware of it, and somewhat intrigued, but never enough to spend a couple bucks to read an issue. I hope that DC continues to publish these collections, so I can catch up on what I missed.

The Button Every Spaceship Should Be Equipped With

2009-10-24T08:02:00.000-07:00

(Screen capture from Batman: The Brave and the Bold, "When OMAC Attacks!")

My 30 minutes at APE

2009-10-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

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I barely made it to APE. I ran in en route to somewhere else just long enough to meet and chat with Brandon Dayton, whom I had to meet (had to). I knew Tom Neely was there and I wanted to buy something from him (I dreamed that night that I had), I wanted to shake Keith Knight's hand, and I just learned, just now, that Kate Beaton was there. Kate Beaton, people. And I missed the opportunity to slobber all over her hand.

I'm definitely going to avoid learning who else I missed.

I will say though that even in my brief view, APE was awesome and I want to go back. All this great indie stuff.

At least I left with a copy of Brandon's Green Monk. I'm waiting for a moment when I can savor it, and then I will report.

Two by Robert Kirkman

2009-10-05T13:32:00.000-07:00

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Okay. Robert Kirkman. How awesome is he?

I was already a bit familiar with Invincible before reading Invincible: The Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1, having read the first, shorter collection, and so I was already primed to be impressed by more nonrejectional reinvention of the superhero genre. And impressed I was. Lex Luthor seems even more rational and reasonable now than he did in February.

Anyway, brilliant, but I want to talk more about another first volume in a Kirkman book, The Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone Bye. Once again he's matched himself up with the perfect artist[s] and reinvented a genre while sticking completely within its understood rules. Some lines from the intro:

He's succeeding.

Both these books are about characters and if there's one bias I have in this life, it's toward character-based fiction.

I recommend starting both these series at the beginning. Give them a chance. You're apt to be pleased.

(Although be wary of guts and gore if that ain't you're thing. No one draws splatter like Ryan Ottley, and Tony Moore's job is to draw zombies. You get what you pay for.)

Tales from the Bog (1997)

2009-09-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

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How have I never heard of this? I feel like a fool.

So we have the same whatever species that populates Kelly and Sim and Bone, only this time they live in the Deep Deep South.

And is it good?

It is very good. I'm sad that it's so new to me. And that it was in its heyday during the early years of the www. Because its website is defunct and there's no Wikipedia article and anyone wanted good information about the books will have to try harder than they are likely to. And that is a true shame.

But so it goes.

Marcus Lusk's only plain online presence is an underused MySpace page and it claims Bog is coming back. Sounds good. We'll see.

Mo Willems Understands

2009-09-15T20:35:00.001-07:00

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His introduction to The Complete Peanuts 1969-1970 may be the best yet. It certainly beats all the idiotic ones. Note to Fantagraphics: I would be happy to provide a replacement intro for 1965-1966.

Full Color by Mark Haven Britt

2009-08-31T22:45:00.000-07:00

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The book breaks all the normed rules of word balloons (hattip to Jason Thibault for the link) which took me a while to learn to navigate, but once I did, that element of the book's design fit in with the rest quite nicely. Proof that if you know what you're doing it will work. Major caveat: if your readers stick with the book long enough. (And they may not have. I picked up this new signed copy for a buck.)

As for story, this is the story of a bunch of New York youngish adults and their drug-fueled, sex-oriented, violence-prone lives. These lives are being lived in such a way that disaster becomes a necessity. Disaster is the only choice for redemption.

The protag is Boom, an exMarine. She's just broken up with her girlfriend and quit her job and she's giving herself a day to find meaning in life or it's suicide. On that path for meaning she meets crooks and spoiled richboy addicts --- some friend, some foe, none that trustworthy.

This book offers a taste of everything that can go wrong and is pretty plain about where the blame lies. I didn't expect much coming in, but this book's poetry of wasted life drew me in and pulled me along.

Recommended. Especially at a buck.

Glacial Period

2009-08-20T01:10:00.000-07:00

by Nicolas de Crécy

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Horrible, isn't it? When a delightful ride ends in cliche and moralizing? And that's what we have here.

In the far future, scientists on a blizzardy expedition withe their dog/pig-hybrid companions discover the Louvre buried under ice. Good.

They try to arrange the paintings into a comic to tell the history of this lost people. Good concept, fair execution.

Omigosh! The artwork's alive! Sigh.

A bit on Nazis and pollution and global warming and obesity. What are you, French?

Jesus paintings have a chat. Funny.

A dog/pig gets all the art to make a giant--- Hold on. That would definitely be a spoiler.

I'm disappointed because most of the way through I really thought this was going to be great (and I really want to learn more about European comics) and then it went bluh on me.

Darn.

House of Mystery

2009-08-20T00:53:00.001-07:00

from Vertigo

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It's a Decameron sort of setup with the individual stories varying greatly in quality and ingenuity (which is a problem since inginuity is what's promised). It has a two-page prologue set in the Dreaming that is never returned to and seems pointless (particularly so if you're not familiar with the original HofM). It ends to easily, turning the entire book into a pointless prologue. It was a stupid place to end a first collection.

And yet ---

I liked it. When it worked, it worked. A bit of blood-and-guts horror and a might-well-get-interesting-someday framing story. (Not that I'm counting on the latter.)

But the talent the project is attracting is compelling on its own. Worth watching. The second collection's already out.

The Portable Frank by Jim Woodring (2008)

2009-08-19T20:20:00.000-07:00

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While this black and white collection includes stories mostly (if not entirely) the same as those collected in the previous (color) Frank volume I read, Frank is always worth a second look.

Frank's world seems wholly organic, as if every structure grew as naturally as every tree. Which may help explain the weirdly sexual aspect of almost every object in Frank's world. Woodring's brand of weird here is closely related to Gary Panter's Jimbo and Brad Teare's Cypher, but is probably the greatest of its type.

One thing that makes Frank the best is its near wordlessness. No character talks and there are few words of any wort anywhere --- with the exception of "House of the Dead" (where there are content-bearing notes), this world appears to be utterly without language. And without words to tell us what to think, what we think becomes a close reflection of who I am. So when I dexcribe this book to you, be aware that your interpretation may vary, and greatly. And the distance between our interpretations may well tell us a great deal about ourselves.

The Unifactor (the name of Frank's world, though you can't find it in the comics themselves, of course) is a truly Hobbesian realm, a place where characters act on their instincts, occasionally noble, sometimes neutral, often base. It is a world of casual cruelty, where the line between human and animal is uncertain and in constant flux. A surreal world where the interior life and the exterior life have no certain boundary. This is a world utterly bizarre and all the more familiar because of it. Horrible and beautiful in equal measures.

This is Frank.

Essex County Volume 1: Tales from the Farm, by Jeff Lemire

2009-08-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

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Since reading the laudatory review in Entertainment Weekly (sure not this), I've been wanting to read this book. I immediately added it to my Amazon wishlist (buy me something!) where it sat until I picked it up on the cheap recently to fill out a Powell's order and get free shipping.

Sadly, I hadn't gotten around to reading it before the Con because Jeff Lemire was there with the new collected Essex County, signing and sketching in them and they were at a discount and I really really wanted to get one, but I hadn't read volume one yet and what if I hate it and then I'll be stuck?

Plus I was running on a budget of $0 (though I made an exception getting one book for the wife and one for the kids). But if I knew I liked Essex County I would have broken the rule and bought one book for the self as well.

And I do like Essex County. I like it a lot.

I've added the collected version to my wishlist.

The story is of a young orphaned boy in rural Ontario living with his uncle.

The art is marvelously melting ink.

The sense of melancholy and the toocloseness of a small community --- both are perfectly captured.

Run don't walk.

And if you see Jeff Lemire, have him draw in it for you.

The Talisman (Stephen King and Peter Straub) as adapted by Robin Furth, Tony Shasteen and Nei Ruffino)

2009-08-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

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I picked up Issue #0 for free my last few minutes of Comic Con and read it while homeless. I like it a little less than the one issue of the Dark Tower comics I read, but really, one issue isn't much to judge it by.

So instead let me make a general observation.

Hitchcock said he would never adapt The Brothers Karamazov to film because it was already perfect in the form it was. Instead he adapts a nothing book into Vertigo. In film form, it becomes the greatest of all time.

It's for this reason that I don't understand the recent explosion of book-into-comics adaptations. If you love the book, why not just read the book? When I read something like The Talisman, all I can think is, "Is this good enough to read the original?" If not, it's not good enough to read the adaptation either.

The Webcomics Section

2009-07-31T21:21:00.000-07:00

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A group of webcomics got together and published their strips on paper, Sunday Funnies-style. And I'm happy to say, most of them worked great in that format. It may be my favorite freebie of the Con.

I'm going to briefly mention all the strips that were included and give you links.

Shortpacked! by David Willis

that

Girls with Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto

catsnracks

Diesel Sweeties

by Remy "Eisu" Mokhtar and Bobby Crosby

This is the page

Eric Monster by Eric Mulligan

Templar, Arizona by Spike

Ellie Connelly by Indigo Kelleigh

Least I Could Do by Ryan Sohmer and Lar deZouza

Just a Bit Off by Jeff Zugale

Minimum Security by Stephanie McMillan --- "20% funnier than other leading brands of anti-capitalist propaganda"

Wondermark by David Malki!y

Schlock Mercenary by Howard Taylor

Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

a scan of the first page of this paper edition

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham

Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North

Goats by Jon Rosenberg

very

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weiner

The Book of Biff by Chris Hallbeck

Do it again next year, webcomickers!

Barnaby update from Comic Con

2009-07-30T18:32:00.000-07:00

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In case you didn't know, I love Crockett Johnson's Barnaby and I am anxious to read the entire run. I picked up a used volume one at a library sale for a quarter and that was merely enough to prime my appetite for the strip which is brilliant and funny and delightful and something I would like to share with my kids.

So I went to Kim at the Fantagraphics booth and asked him about it. And he said he would love to print them, but the Johnson family thinks they're
"sitting on a cash cow" and won't let Fantagraphics have them without $50,000 up front. Which is insane. How many people are like me and will be buying these as quickly as I'm buying Fantagraphics Complete Peanuts. Much better to just get the books published.

Dan Clowes is lined up to do the design which is a surprising but utterly satisfactory choice.

Please. If you are a close personal friend with the Johnson estate. Please tell them to let Fantagraphics bring these books out. And post their contact info here as well so I can start a letter writing campaign.

In Kindle Comics News...

2009-07-29T11:56:00.000-07:00

Props to Archaia for putting out a Kindle graphic novel.

Not really a Comic Con post

2009-07-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

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Before I could get in to Comic Con I hung out at the San Diego Public Library and read these books with funny pictures:

The Juggler of Our Lady by R.O. Blechman

Waterwise by Joel Orff

The Saga of the Bloody Benders by Rick Geary2

As I suspected

The Bloody Benders

that I have yet read

the most recent Best American Comics

The Left Bank Gang by Jason

The Ambiguity of Excellence: Kazu Kibuishi's Daisy Kutter

2009-07-14T16:13:00.000-07:00

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The first Daisy Kutter book, The Last Train, was pressed into my wife's hands by a good friend and I finally read it yesterday. I knew very little about the book before reading it other than the gushing praise it inspires (example).

So I liked it. Yes. How could I not? I love his art, I love Daisy --- she's beautiful and spunky and wry. I love steampunk and these are some nice robots. Timewise, it's more Cowboy Bebop than Wild Wild West, but tone wise is much more purely classic western. The first page:

She's a gunfighter, one of the great train robbers, she is retired.

The Last Train is the story of how she gets back into the game. It's got poker and gunfights and giant mechs --- what's not to love?

But wherefore all this gushing? Don't get me wrong: I liked this book and I would be happy to read the others, but what are people finding here that makes them rank it among the greatest comics ever written? I don't see it, can't find it, don't know.

Is excellence ultimately a matter of personal taste? Or is it something more than that? Is there an objective standard to excellence? I feel there must be, but from where I stand, the sands seem purely subjective.

Questions I Was Happily Surprised to See Answered in Red Robin #1

2009-06-10T22:12:00.000-07:00

Why is Tim Drake no longer Robin?
Why is Damian now Robin?
Why is Tim Drake wearing the Red Robin costume most recently worn by Jason Todd, the homicidal villain of "Battle for the Cowl"?

(Because Dick views him as an equal, not a protege; because Dick thinks he's too dangerous to let out of his sight; and because Tim knows he might have to do some line-crossing things and would rather those things be connected to Jason than to Bruce or Dick.)

All in all, I was much happier with this comic than I expected to be. I'm happy to see Tim growing up, and Christopher Yost does a fine job of writing this next stage in Tim's character development. And the art's not too shabby, either. I'm anxious to see where this goes.

Read my interview with Mike and Laura Allred on AMV

2009-05-25T08:56:00.001-07:00

The Art of Anticlimax

2009-05-20T17:04:00.001-07:00

Dear DC Comics,

If you advertise a storyline called "Batman R.I.P." as revealing the final fate of Batman, at the end there should be a body. If you advertise a storyline called "Battle for the Cowl" as revealing who the new Batman will be, at the end you should show a face.

Sincerely,

Mr. Fob

Cypher (1997)

2009-05-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

by Brad Teare
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This is currently in second place for best book I've read in 2009 and since I'll get to read it again (I own it but not The Arrival), it may be able to win this race. (Although, I must remember, the year's not yet half over.

Cypher is in the same family as plenty of alternative comics with their weird crap such as the work of Gary Panter. The major difference is that Cypher is a pleasure to read and for all its surrealist weirdness, it never gets boring or dull or irritating or painful or ugly or hateful or pointless or sucksucksucky. Which most do. Nearly all do. Maybe every other booklength comic of this type ever made.

So I love it and I recommend it and if you are a comics publisher I insist you contact Mr Teare and bring the ten unpublished followup volumes to light.

Do it!

(Although when you republish #1, please give it a new cover. The current one is so 1997-CG and does not do justice to Teare's scratchboards [woodcuts?].)

My Faith in Frankie (2004)

2009-05-06T20:08:00.000-07:00

by Mike Carey, Sonny Liew, Marc Hempel
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This is from the same creative team that gave us Re-Gifters and I'm happy to say that this earlier effort is a much finer book. Not a great book, but a book that makes me glad they stuck together and hope they still are.

My Faith in Frankie is the tale of a girl and her god. She's his only worshipper and he's a doting deity. Like Re-Gifters, the art varies from more standard graphic-novel fare to a style more like the Sunday funnypages. I like both styles.

The audience for this Vertigo-not-Minx comic is, at least officially, older. Although I imagine fifteen-year-old girls will be perfectly okay with the added sex in this volume.

Clever bits (like the demons who intercept phone calls) are delightful and tired bits (like the polyandrous final solution) don't get in the way of enjoying the book.

In brief: god leaves home, finds a baby to worship him, makes baby's life great, she goes to college, blast from the past, god nearly killed, exciting conclusion. I wonder if the (otherwise welcome) comic tone keeps it from reaching the emotional zeniths that could have made it a Great Book. Hard to say.

Tick

2009-05-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

by Kenan Rubenstein
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Tick offers a brilliant concept: a comic told over the course of a year, over a calendar, in a book that feels just like opening a calendar:

The story's a fairly typical tictoc man type of thing that can't decide whether it wants to be mute or not. The artist's website says it's his first comic, so we can excuse the sins as the errors of a neophyte and look forward to better work in the future.

But seriously --- what happened to June and October?

Janes in Love

2009-05-05T19:20:00.000-07:00

by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg
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So the first book about the Janes was brilliant, IMHO. This one was good enough that I wish Minx had survived solely to publish a third, but decidedly less great than #1.

The problems:

a) Pheromones = lame. Total breaking of the rules of realism which I have cherished herein.

b) Waaay too much mopey internal dialogue.

c) Much of the book feels like a stall.

But having made those complaints, I still liked this book and I'm happy to own it. Most of the driving force which brought the first to life is diluted or missing from this book. Perhaps a longer breath between books would have worked well. But it hardly matters now....

I will say that the samples from other Minx books kill me. I'm horribly depressed DC axed this line so quickly. They poured a lot of effort and money into launching it then gave up on it when it didn't turn profitable quickly enough. I find that horribly depressing. They should have stuck it out. They had so many great or near-great or at-least-look-to-be-great books.

1000 Steps to World Domination

2009-05-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

by Rob Osborne
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Rob wants to take over the world. Using comics:

Go, Rob!

The book's pretty okay. Some funny moments. Good characters (Rob, his wife, the monkey, hot chicks [love world dominators, generally don't love cartoonists], a general, anal-probing aliens, God, et cetera). Good enough I would definitely read more, but not so good that I am compelled to.

110 Per¢

2009-05-04T19:54:00.001-07:00

by Tony Consiglio
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Three women, not teenyboppers, in love with boy band 110 Per¢. One seems to have it fairly together (even though the opening page shows her grabbing the band's fastfood trash from a can), but in the end, she's the one without a meaningful relationship. Which was a clever swap that I didn't realize happened for several hours.

The book is shot like a documentary --- so much so that I feel obliged to say it was "shot", apparently.

A good book and worth reading if you have the chance, but not worth running down unless this is really your subject matter.

Me and Ric Estrada on Motley Vision

2009-04-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

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I interviewed Ric Estrada the Silver Age artist for A Motley Vision. Part one of my six-part series is now live.

Madman Atomic Comics Volume 2

2009-04-14T21:21:00.001-07:00

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Madman Atomic Comics Volume 2 by Mike Allred (with Laura Allred nailing the colors) might be the best Madman yet. I'll be writing an indepth review for Sunstone magazine so I'm saving up my thoughts at present. However, I must commend Allred for making a daring decision: one full issue of Madman collected here was a single panel. No kidding.

According to the collection, it's supposed to be up on aaapop.com, but dernit, I can't find it. I think they forgot to upload it.

If I ever find it, we'll discuss it in more depth.

Curses.........

Blue Beetle: Too early to survive into the future?

2009-03-23T22:46:00.001-07:00

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With newspapers swiftly giving up the ghost and book publishers heading down the same road, ereaders can't really get here soon enough. Really, they ought to be giving them away because, while few people are willing to plunk down the money, those who have them seem to love them.

I believe that within a decade ereaders will be in most serious readers' hands. And I also believe that this will, over all, be good for content. And I also believe that, while good for print, it will be even better for comics.

Piggybacking on what Ben said last month, comics may in fact save comics. I'm thinking specifically of Blue Beetle.

Ben's been lending me his BB trades and really, even ignoring the fact that the writing and art and story are all good (really good), this book should be a homerun.

Check it out: The hero's a teenage boy. It's mostly about him and his friends. And occasionally Batman. He's got cool powers but normal kid problems too.

Blue Beetle is the modern equivalent to Spider-Man. Teenage kid falls into superpowers and must adapt.

Traditional superhero comics' main target audience is still adolescents, right? Blue Beetle is one of their own and hella cool. He's got a strong girl friend (note the space) so girl comics readers should be into it too.

In other words, this book is the perfect comic book. Commercially, it's covered in kevlar.

But it's been canceled.

Why?

I assume it's because the cost of comics is just too dang high.

And moving comics into an ereader? You can cut the price as low as you want, really, and still make a profit. You can, as Ben said, increase the total amount of comics sold severalfold.

And this is just a DC project I'm talking about.

I'm the indie guy here so let's pause for a minute and think what widely available ecomics can do for traditional print (ie, nonweb) guys. With e-ink and the nearpaper experience offered by new ereaders, the huge expenses involved in getting work in print will dramatically fall and more indie artists will have a shot at making a living. Or something close to a living.

This is a boon. And as popularity increases, we'll see color arrive and the future will be here.

I just hope Jaime makes it that long....

Who Watches The Sex Scene? If You Did, I Bet You Feel Ashamed of Yourself

2009-03-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, I broke down and saw it. And... and...

Let's do the flaws in bullet points:

• Excessive violence was silly. Sawing through the guy's arms?
• Silk Spectre sucked. Suuuuuuucked. So damn awful. She may have been window dressing in the comic, but at least she was interesting window dressing.
• Her mom suuuuuucked too.
• There was a lot of dialogue tacked onto the straight comic dialogue that was truly awful. More examples as I think of them.

Strengths:

• Rorschach. Truly a transformation. Not coincidentally, he is about as much in love with violence as Zac Snyder, and he is the character who gets completely nailed.
• The opening credits and a lot of other moments where the alternate history plus superheroes made a really cool transition to screen.
• There were a few additions that actually worked. "Where's my FACE?" and the little addition to Rorschach's death.

But mostly...

When you strip away the metacommentary, the intertwining stories of the Black Freighter and the people on the street as a counter to the heroes, and even the depth of Silk Spectre's story as a repressed memory instead of a magic remembery... it's just not Watchmen.

The Wolverine Secret

2009-03-08T10:42:00.000-07:00

Wolverine is in the X-Men. Their new headquarters is San Francisco.

Wolverine is also in the Avengers. Their headquarters is in New York.

Many fans have wondered about the logic of this.

Wolverine, in both books, is typically seen wandering around, grumpy, with a cigar, looking in the fridge for a beer. Every once in while he gets really grumpy because they are out of beer. So, clearly, when they run out of beer in San Francisco, he hops in a handy Quinjet or Blackbird or Fantasticar and heads over to New York for their beer.

This way, though he spends a lot on gas, he never has to pay for beer.

No-Prize awarded!

Yes, I have seen the Watchmen movie, thank you very much

2009-03-07T17:11:00.000-08:00

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And it was good. I thought the opening sequence was excellent. I thought it was a shame that all the nonsuperhero stories got axed, but that was expected. Except for the Mars dialogue, I thought the acting was pretty good. The casting was generally excellent. The hyperviolence was awful but served a point and the sex was, ah, pretty realistic. Allelujah.

And I know it's heretical to say it, but I think the ending of the movie may well have been better than the original.

You may now commence the hating.

News From the Imaginary Blogger

2009-03-03T20:55:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah, I post here, don't I?

I've been a bit swamped by what I refer to lovingly as "Thesis-Ma-Geddon" and also trying to get a story ready for this quarter's Writers of the Future contest. Though I do have a new article in a spanking new issue of the Intergalactic Medicine Show. There are pictures in it so you should read it.

And, much like my bowels, things will be looking more regular without the stress of school come June.

In the meantime, though, here's some thoughts on a couple of X-Men stories.

‘Twas a time when nothing could topple the stranglehold the X-Men had on the comics world. Through the 80s and most of the 90s, the work of Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Jim Lee and a multitude of others married traditional superhero sensibility with a prejudice, hatred and fear of the heroes. X-Men, looking back, was the great predictor for some of the best work ever done in comics, later in the 80s, when Alan Moore and Frank Miller, among others, explored the madness that superheroes would inevitably bring to the world. X-Men was the book every writer mined for ideas.

The big one is the classic “Days of Future Past” by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Published in Uncanny X-Men #141 and 142, (for a little context, the book has now passed 500 issues) this story was the first story I know of where someone travels back from a dark dystopian future to warn the people in the past that they have to somehow prevent that future from happening. In this case, it was a future overrun with Sentinel robots, who sought to eradicate mutants or keep them in prison camps, a future that had come about because an evil mutant, through a senator’s assassination, set off a wave of hysteria. The X-Men of the present’s storyline was pretty standard—fight the evil mutants, stop the assassination, and get out before anyone throws things at them. In the future, though, things were a different story as a group of mutants attempted to destroy the Sentinel Master Mold and were slaughtered. The classic Byrne-penned image of a Sentinel burning all of Wolverine’s flesh off, leaving only an unmoving metal skeleton, is burned (pun intended) into anyone’s mind who read the story. (Of course, it’s silly now to think Sentinel beam could kill the unstoppable Wolverine who has, in Marvel canon since 1981, survived reentry, been nuked, and regenerated from one drop of blood.)

The dialogue hasn’t aged as gracefully as I’d like it to have for my sentimental reasons, Writer Chris Claremont had a bad habit of having each character review their powers every few pages. “Razor-sharp adamantium claws emerge from Wolverine’s hands, slashing through even the strongest steel.” “Without this ruby quartz visor, beams of force from my eyes would burst out and destroy everything in my path.” But the plot still holds up, not only for the sheer visceral power, but the way in which it predicted so very many stories over the years.

On a totally more obscure note, Exiles: Down the Rabbit Hole is a ton of fun, even for those who haven’t read all the various spinoffs and crossovers and well… every X-Men comic, ever that they tie into. Basically, the Exiles are various characters from different universe incarnations of X-Men who have become “unstuck” in time. They must travel around writing wrongs in different timelines, often variations on our own Marvel Universe, which can be a ton of fun for the longtime fan. But the stories are still accessible to new fans. Some characters, Blink and and Morph are familiar from the “Age of Apocalypse” crossover, an alternate-universe dystopian crossover that channeled “Days of Future Past.” Others are plucked from other various timelines and stories. Thunderbird, a member of the X-Men long dead, is here a bionic horseman of the villain Apocalypse, Nocturne, Nightcrawler’s daughter, hails from a future of the modern X-Men comic.

The writing by Judd Winick (oddly enough, a former star of MTV’s the Real World) is funny and heartbreaking, as they must often face old teammates and deal with their isolation apart from everything they know. The art by Mike McKone is beautifully alive and animated without being cartoony, especially with the treat of seeing Morph turn into something different on nearly every panel. Plus, every few missions they lose a teammate, only to have them replaced by another from a random universe. It's sad!

This is one of the things about spinoffs in a big superhero universe like Marvel. With characters like Cyclops, Wolverine and Storm, who have become iconic figures, there is little that can be done to truly change the characters. But when a good writer gets ahold of some minor characters and actually invests them with depth and power, the story is more memorable than the main titles.

Thoughts on Reading Watchmen for the Second Time

2009-03-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

I remembered almost nothing from the first time I read it, about six or seven years ago. I remembered Rorschach's secret identity and who the main "villain" was, but not what his big plan was or who Laurie's father was or how the book ended, at all. That vague recollection was ideal, I think, as I remembered enough to pay attention to little details that I probably missed the last time through, but I still enjoyed all the twists and turns in the plot as if experiencing them for the first time.
I remember the first time feeling like I should like it more than I did. Perhaps it's a sign of my maturity as a reader--or perhaps just changing taste, without the value judgment implied by "maturity"--that this time I really enjoyed and appreciated the book for the masterpiece it is.
I remember being annoyed by the Black Freighter story-within-the-story last time. This time I still found myself anxious to get back to the main story, but I at least followed what was happening with the marooned sailor and could see how it all fit in thematically.
I only learned a few weeks ago that Alan Moore had originally intended to use DC's then-recently-acquired Charlton Comics characters, but ended up creating his own analogues instead. It was really interesting to read the story imagining what it would have been like with Blue Beetle and the Question investigating Peacemaker's death, Captain Atom exiling himself from Earth, and Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, as the man with the plan to save all humanity from the brink of nuclear destruction.
I feel adequately prepared now to have a profound, life-changing experience this Friday night when I see the movie. I'm sure I won't be disappointed.

The indie snob's secret

2009-02-28T22:17:00.000-08:00

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Since my role on Fobcomics is that of indie snob, I generally don't review more mainstream work here. But I've been borrowing some DC from Ben and since I don't have anything else to say at the moment, you may want to read my take on (Batman, Lex Luthor, Blue Beetle, Joker) or (Watchmen, Red Son, JSA). If not, fine. That's why I didn't post it here in the first place.

Jerk.

I was just sayin'.....

We're Not Dead Yet!

2009-02-26T19:51:00.000-08:00

The day after I received a surprise Kindle 2 in the mail, Newsarama.com asks "Could Kindle Kill Comics?" They're trying to make me feel guilty. The answer to their question?

No.

If you ask me, Kindle-like technology (except in full color, of course, and likely made by Apple, as the Newsarama article suggests) will be what saves comics. Just about every other day someone is lamenting the poor state of the comics industry in light of the recession, and meanwhile Marvel is raising the price of its monthlies to $3.99, which means it won't be long before DC follows. More and more people are waiting for the trade because it's simply not economically feasible to buy the floppies at four bucks a pop, but with the current publishing model monthly series hardly last long enough to make it into trade form.

So tell me again how technology that potentially makes monthly comics cheaper to produce and therefore to sell is a bad thing? I can't say I'd consider switching to electronic comics if they were only available online where I have to sit in front of a computer and rot my eyes away, but the Kindle is slick--it really is just like reading a book (or a comic book). Just imagine: you sell the monthlies at $0.99 each, maybe give a discount for annual subscribers, and suddenly people can buy more comics. People who could maybe afford ten bucks a month but didn't want to throw that away on two and a half comics can now get ten comics for their money. By all means, keep producing the paper copies as long as there's demand, but that's no reason not to offer alternatives. Kindle will not kill comics any more than VHS killed movies.

Personally, I would love to have my comics delivered weekly via WhisperNet to my Kindle (again, assuming full color). I'd have my entire comics collection at my fingertips for perusing whenever I want, without the hassle of lugging around long boxes everywhere I move. I wouldn't feel obligated to resell my monthlies to replace them with sturdier trades or, because that's economically stupid, to skip the monthlies and wait for the trades.

C'mon, people! Get with it already. I'm giving you two years to offer electronic delivery of my favorite comics and if not, well, then I might just find another addictive habit to waste my money on.

The Best American Comics (2008)

2009-02-18T09:09:00.000-08:00

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All hail Lynda Barry! I've never been a huge fan of her work, but I have to say that her editing is impeccable. With any collection of this size there will be pieces I can't agree with, but over all this is a marvelous collection. Best one so far from the BAC series.

A few books I liked from the qualifying period appeared in the top-100 but didn't make the final cut. Some I think were mistakes (eg, The Blot) some I liked but won't fight over whether they were "better" (eg, Robot Dreams and Bookhunter which you must click on and go read RIGHT NOW), but none of which change the worth of the collection now sitting on the bed beside me.

Some highlights:

Burden

The Thing About Madeline

Seven Sacks

The Saga of the Bloody Benders

two here

know

Will and Abe

Turtle, Keep it Steady!

Berlin

wonder

Graveyard

George Sprott

American Born Chinese

Great collection. I'm sold on the new lead editors and am hoping for the best for Charles Burns's selection about ten months from now.

Comic of the Year 2008: The Blot by Tom Neely

2009-02-06T22:46:00.000-08:00

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This post may be way overdue and this book technically came out in 2007 but, but the beautiful nightmare that is The Blot is by far the best comic I read in 2008. I just sat down to reread it and it is truly astonishing, technically and artistically.

The Blot is a master's course in the art of comics. Someone who had never seen any other work of comics could, after studying this book sufficiently long, be expert enough to create great art. Neely's brilliant use of layout and the way he manipulates appearance and his mastery of human form make the book a technical marvel.

But the story, opaque as it is, is the true treasure here.

Bringing an antiquated cartoon style into a horrific tale of men and gods only heightens the unsettling sense of uncertainty and confusion. As disaster builds upon disaster and pleasure leads to rejection and pain leads to redemption, this starkly unreal tale digs deeper and deeper into my soul.

This book's accomplishments are difficult to quantify because I simply don't know what to compare it to.

When I've written about this book before (here), and I am no closer now to arriving at conclusions.

But this read --- I read so slowly, examining each image closely. Chris Ware (in a recent introduction) (he sure does write a lot of introductions, doesn't he?) said the comics creator probably, on average, spends 1000 times on a comic compared to the time a reader spends.

If the time I spend on The Blot grows longer at this pace every time I read it, and if I keep returning to it as I anticipate, I may well end up spending more time on it than Neely has himself. Who can say.

Certainly this work deserves that kind of attention.

This book is a masterpiece.

If only I had more time...

2009-02-04T22:17:00.001-08:00

...I would tell you why Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #3 is one of the most enjoyable comics I've read in a long time. I will say this: Geoff Johns has done pretty much exactly what I (and everyone else) expected him to. And as much as can be said for letting dead characters stay dead, bringing favorite characters back to life sure makes for a happier story than killing them off.

Also, Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade #3 was another of the most enjoyable comics I've read in a long time. And both on a single Wednesday!

The Final Final Crisis

2009-01-28T19:46:00.001-08:00

The last issue came out today and this is what Grant Morrison says on Newsarama about the series as a whole:

It’s one of the most highly-structured and demanding pieces of work I’ve done and brings to fruition a lot of long-time obsessions, I suppose. It’s my Monitor-vision, high-altitude view of the DCU as an entity; before I take a long-awaited break to do some other work. It’s my sci-fi/horror version of everything I love about DC, everything I ever thought or felt about DC, in one book. It’s about the confusion and excitement of getting into this wild, colourful fictional continuum as a kid, and it’s an attempt to define what makes DC unique and vibrant in relation to other superhero universes. It also offers a full cosmology of higher dimensions, including our own, and an insight into the creative impulse of God, so it’s well worth the cover price, I like to think. It’s filled with interesting and life-changing occult and philosophical secrets too and the more you read it, the more you’ll pick up on them.

It’s also a deliberate attempt to show how so-called ‘rules’ can be broken to create different kinds of effects in our comics. It’s a way of using superhero comics to talk about the ‘real’ world that doesn’t rely on news headlines, mock-‘relevance’ or ‘adult’ language and imagery.

I found myself wondering what it would be like if comics’ storytelling stopped aping film or TV and tried a few tricks from opera, for instance. How about dense, allusive, hermetic comics that read more like poetry than prose? How about comics loaded with multiple, prismatic meanings and possibilities? Comics composed like music? In a marketplace dominated by ‘left brain’ books, I thought it might be refreshing to offer an unashamedly ‘right brain’ alternative.

Just as Marvel Boy in 1999 foreshadowed the storytelling trends of this last decade, Final Crisis is an attempt to predict how ‘channel-zapping’ techniques might develop as the Fifth World of the Information Age of Obama gets underway and begins to define itself in opposition to the previous generation’s ‘rules’.

It’s all of the above. I was trying to distil everything I love about superhero comics into this loaded, condensed...artefact, which meant using all the lessons I’ve learned in a lifetime’s writing for a living.

That about sums up how I feel about the book: full of really awesome, mind-boggling potential, but confusing as hell. Though there are hints and glimmers of crazy coolness throughout, I don't think he quite achieved what he was aiming for. I'll withhold final judgment, though, until the collection comes out and I give it another read.

What Were They Thinking?!

2009-01-27T09:33:00.000-08:00

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Go now. Or if that's not convincing enough, read these samples:

Poor Sailor by Sammy Harkham

2009-01-20T08:49:00.000-08:00

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Gangrene. Pirates. Storms.

Shoulda just stayed home, sailor.

Harkham's art for this book looks like a cross between Jason and Tony Millionaire (and I don't just say Tony Millionaire because of their common nautical theme).

Harkham of course is best known for editing Kramers Ergot, the anthology that been impressing everybody, it seems like. It certainly owned the 2007 BAC. This is his first book and, if I'm not mistaken, still his only book (it was released in 2005). If not an incredibly exciting work, it still bodes well. I'll be interested to read what else he produces in the future.

Go get 'em, Sammy!

Stagger Lee by Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix

2009-01-14T23:01:00.000-08:00

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This year is off to a great start, comicswise. A great start. First The Arrival and now Stagger Lee.

In case you were as poorly educated as myself, Stagger Lee is a legendary American figure who killed a man over a hat. McCulloch did a heap of research into the origins of the legend and the thousand songs it spawned and put together this compelling fictionalized account that's part cultural history, part journey to old-timey St. Louis, part novel. It feels so true that the notes at the end that list the corrects and incorrects and whoknows are less believable --- it's hard to accept that this account is not a perfect reflection of life actual.

Meanwhile, the brown and brown illustrations of Shepherd Hendrix are great. I do have complaints (in extreme closeup, everyone looks the same, for instance), but generally, his work is great. And since the title character and the man he kills change race and bodytype with some regularity, it's impressive that it's so easy for me the reader to keep them straight.

Stag Lee is always in scribbles and Billy wears crosshatch. Very nice.

In addition to the Stack-o-Lee story itself, the narrative weaves in a couple other songs that have their genesis in the era as well as some other interesting tales like that of Joseph Folk and Colonel Ed Butler.

Great read.

Goddam Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder

2009-01-11T15:49:00.000-08:00

Good things about All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder Volume 1:

Jim Lee's art is pretty (even if not particularly suited to the story).
The first time Batman said "I'm the goddam Batman," it was funny (even if less so each of the 47 times it was repeated thereafter).
It was amusing to see Batman and Robin exploit Green Lantern's weakness by painting themselves and the room they were in completely yellow (even if Frank Miller's obvious contempt for Green Lantern and anyone else who isn't Batman got really tiring after a while).
Miller's take on Robin--that Batman had been eyeing Dick Grayson as a future recruit for quite some time and the murder of the boys' parents simply moved his timetable forward by several years--makes more sense than the traditional take because honestly, Batman can't make every orphan he comes across his partner (even if Miller's take on the Batman/Robin relationship is otherwise disturbing and creepy).

And, yeah, I think that's about it.

Miller's The Dark Knight Returns in 1986 was revolutionary because it did something that hadn't been done before with Batman or with comics. His Batman: Year One in 1987 was great because it made Batman real in a way that previous stories had not. With those two stories Miller established who Batman would be for the next two decades, in comics and elsewhere.

With Miller's 2001 sequel The Dark Knight Strikes Again and now this Dark Knight prequel/Year One sequel, he's simply gone off the deep end. Batman is no longer a grim and gritty, somewhat obsessed crimefighter. He's a psychopath and a sadist. Yes, perhaps in the real world any person who dresses up like a bat to fight crime would have to be like this, but if I'm willing to beleive that a man drives around in a car that transforms first into a plane and then into a submarine, I'm willing to believe that that man just might have some shred of human decency.

If not for the almost universally poor reception, I'd fear that this is what Batman will look like for the next twenty years. DC will continue to publish All-Star Batman and Robin so long as Miller and Lee's names continue to make it their top-selling title (and I suspect a good portion of those sales are from people like me who are just curious to see the train wreck everyone's talking about), but hopefully they recognize it's not the quality of the story or the likeability of the characters that's bringing in all that money.

Trainstop by Barbara Lehman

2009-01-08T22:22:00.000-08:00

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Speaking of wordless comics and speaking of picture books in comic form, may I recommend this fun little book?

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

2009-01-08T22:07:00.000-08:00

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Never have I so clearly understood the feelings of strangeness and desperate loneliness inherent in immigration as when reading this beautiful book. Tan's sepia-toned faux photographs et in, idk, 1890s Shangri-La?, bring it home as no other story of immigration in any other medium has ever managed before -- at least for me personally. Because no matter how well I understand the character of Tony Tonio or Stanly Scywkzk, they're always immigrated to the US or at strangest Australia -- that
is, somewhere mostly similar to my own homeland, with words and clothing and traditions I understand. It's not the destination that is ultimately strange, but the comers.

So Tan does some amalgamation and just when I was expection New York, Ellis Islandm Lady Liberty, I'm dropped in a strange and weird and bewilderingly foreign land (check it out). I understand even less than the protag, as he struggles to make his way and earn enough money to bring his wife and child to this New World.

This book is lovely, praiseworthy, of good report.

This book pushed me to the edge of tears.

This book made me laugh out loud.

Highly recommended.

Best American Comics (a multifaceted rant)

2008-12-29T19:24:00.001-08:00

The Best American Comics 2007 edited by Chris Ware and Anne Elizabeth Moore

McSweeney's #13

worked

that

Best

this years issue

Comic Relief

this

(Speaking of, Mr Fob, do you have Batman Year 100 so I can read it? Which reminds me, I want to read the new Joker novel as well, if you got it.)

Schulz's Youth

2008-12-26T15:34:00.000-08:00

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This volume collects every single-panel gag and illustration Charles Schulz did for Church of God publications: their youth magazine, a youth-activity program; a book on preschoolers and the church, and another magazine. Like Li'l Folks and It's Only a Game, one thing this collection serves to prove is that Schulz was merely adequate when it came to single panels --- not the genius he was with Peanuts. But it also shows that unlike, say, Hank Ketchum or others of his generation, he wasn't willing to push an idea longer than he had the juice to run it.

As a Schulz completist, I'm loving this book. And it's fun and delightful and all good blah blah blah. My main complaint is with the craftsmanship behind the book itself. Unlike the beautiful books Fantagraphics is making for The Complete Peanuts, the pages in this book are so thin that the images from the previous page are plain and, in one case, disrupt understanding. This is bad.

Most of the gags are church based, but not all. I've picked one of each for your pleasure.

Ultimate Poop-In-The-Face

2008-12-24T10:50:00.001-08:00

I haven't been reading Ultimatum, but this pretty much sums up the situation around it.

The invasion of comics into picture books, a test case: Frankenstein Takes the Cake by Adam Rex

2008-12-23T23:25:00.000-08:00

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As I'm sure you've noticed, kids books --- traditionally shaped picture books --- are incorporating more traditional comics stylings lately. I checked this one out of the library and it was good for a laugh. Parts of the book are comics, parts are faux blogs, some Poe parody of varying goodness, all sorts of fun stuff. Here's an example of the comics (although they vary) snatched from Amazon because I'm too lazy to make a scan:

Adam Rex --- don't know a lot about him, but with this book and an image like that below (from his website) I know enough to know I want to know more. Best I can tell, he hasn't published any straight comics, but The True Meaning of Smekday sounds awfully good for the meantime.

Highlights from This Week's Episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold

2008-12-13T17:06:00.001-08:00

I was feeling all bad for myself because I don't have Cartoon Network and so I couldn't see the cool new Batman team-up show, but then I found out I can buy the new episodes on Amazon.com for $1.89 each--more than the cost of buying the whole season on DVD a year from now, but less than the cost of upgrading to a bigger cable package.

Anyway, the highlights of this week's episode, "Attack of the Secret Santas":

Red Tornado, an android attempting to get into the Christmas spirit, buys Batman a mug that says "World's Greatest Detective." Ahhhhhhh.
At the end of the episode Red Tornado finally experiences that tingling sensation he hears is associated with feeling the Christmas spirit... and then he blows up.
The look of utter horror on the children's faces when Batman saves them by punching off the evil robot Santa's head. I would have enjoyed this even more if that same look of horror had not been on my own children's faces.

Witchblade Volume I (out last January 2008)

2008-12-11T16:24:00.000-08:00

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One of the perks of being the faculty adviser for the Comic Book Club is getting read the donated comics as they come in in preparation for our upcoming sale / fundraiser. So I've gotten to read a couple interesting SLG titles (love SLG --- did you know they'll give you free stuff?), some crappy scifi and superhero stuff, an issue of the very silly (and gross) (and oversexed) Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, the second issue of the original Tick run (need to find a collection because I loved it) and, the sole "novel", last January's Witchblade collection.

I've been vaguely aware of Witchblade, but I knew nothing of it and, according to the writer's intro, this book is as "ground-floor [a] read as possible, wrapped around an end-of-the-world storyline." This is so.

But you know what? I'm looongsince tired of "end-of-the-world storyline"s --- I would much rather see a display of the title's alleged noir elements and police procedural stuff and the other things that are supposed to make Witchblade different.

Well, that and, of course, the fetishistic flowing metal armor. The appeal of which is obvious.

(Seriously, is anyone kidding themselves here?)

A Christmas Carol, comixized

2008-12-08T22:09:00.000-08:00

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Classical Comics is creating a collection of classic novels turned into graphic novels. This idea isn't new of course and has generally been done rather lousily. It was with a mix of trepidation and anticipation that I read this book and overall I was quite happy with it, starting with the cover: shiny black lines on a matte black background: very cool.

Christmas Carol comes in two formats, both with identical pictures, Original Text and Quick Text. The version I read was Original Text (it's the one with the cool cover and the one they sent me). The Big O (if you don't know me already from Thmusings, he's my five-year-old son) and I are rereading the original novel in a copiously illustrated version; I had considered reading this instead, but it hadn't arrived by the time I told him we'd start reading.

Anyway, reading both simultaneously means I am hyperaware of the alterations in the text. Even though this is "Original Text", it obviously won't be identical. All the tags are gone, for instance. In fact, it wasn't until Marley's ghost appeared that I remembered something from the opening paragraphs that had been cut.

What I'm getting at is that the excisions are made so smoothly that if you weren't reading the original simultaneously, you would likely never know the difference.

(I can't say the same for the Quick Text, but based on the sample panels in the back of the book, I think it's been simplified into awkwardness.)

My main beef with the book is the art. The art is of high quality, make no mistake, but (and here comes the snob in me) it's just so typical. It looks like anything you might see from a major superhero publisher. It's "dynamic" but boring. The colors and inking look straight off the shelf. And I think the book deserves more.

Given the (single ) sample panels from other Classical Comics books shown in the backpages, I think Jane Eyre and Frankenstein fared much better in the art department while Henry V and Macbeth got the shaft. And one last word on the art: sometimes is been totally pixelated and looks like crap. Not often, but sometimes. What's up with that?

(Incidentally, Shakespeare, in addition to Original Text and Quick Text, comes in Plain Text --- as long as Original, but modernized. The two panels I have to judge on suggest above average competence in the modernization, but, naturally, less poetic than the original. It also reminded me how bleeding much I hate Henry V.)

So! The adaptation is borderline excellent --- one of the finest novel adaptations into comic form I've ever read. Not nearly as good as the (as yet) untouchable City of Glass, but far above every other example I can think of at the moment.

Speaking as a teacher, I would love to have some class sets of a title or two from Classical Comics. It would be an interesting experiment to teach, say, Great Expectation as a comic. Most of the brainy stuff can be done with the Original Text version and the chance to look at the artistic nuts-N-bolts of the comic form would be mahvelous.

Knowing I might think that, Classical Comics offers teachers' guides for five of their titles. When I list all their currently available titles, I'll star those ones.

Speaking of teaching, these books have some handy essays and other miscellany tucked away in the back to supplement a teaching of the novel. A Christmas Carol comes with the following: a brief Dickens bio, a brief Dickens geneology, a Dickens-themed timeline, a primer on the Vicotrian era, an essay on Christmas in the Victorian era and a making-of for the comic (as well as ads for the books I've been mentioning).

All in all, a good read and, potentially, a nice tool. I'ld love to taste others and see if the quality remains high.

Available:

Brilliance or Madness?

2008-12-04T22:23:00.000-08:00

My latest comics review column is up at IGMS.

I've been down on Marvel lately. Can you blame me? There's the mediocrity of X-Men (except for the Joss Whedon run) and the absolute abortion of Spider-Man and the rapidly overexposureness of the Avengers in Secret Invasion after more of the same in Civil War and World War Hulk. And the idiocy Runaways has turned into. And. But there are bright lights. Well, two. Thor is one.

The other is Avengers: The Initiative, which is the best junior team comic since Marv Wolfman and George Perez made short pants kind of cool. (Ben, why was it that when Wolfman finally replaced the short pants, he did it with a high collar and a plunging neckline? Huh? That's what I thought.)

The Special, or Annual or whatever, that just came out finally resolving the Hardball storyline was a nice old school thing. Though the Secret Invasion tie-ins with Initiative are better than the others, I was getting tired of Skrulls Skrulls Skrulls. The Special finally resolved the Hardball/Hydra/Komodo thing in a rather unexpected way... though I'm not sure that I really bought that Hardball could really turn bad at the end. What real reason was there, other than being pissed off at Komodo for betraying him?

So The Initiative rules. More on Thor later.

Horror at the Comic Shop

2008-12-04T21:03:00.000-08:00

Dun

Dun

DUN

I was under the impression that this would be an ongoing, not a miniseries. I am very upset.

The Plain Janes (2007)

2008-12-02T23:50:00.000-08:00

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Everything that I complained about the last Minx book I read is remedied in this beautiful book.

First of all, every cliché in this book is shattered almost before it hits your eyes. Even the evil popular girl is a fully realized human character. And her humanity reflects well upon her father who is the book's closest thing to cardboard.

Then the story, although at times it almost tastes like a typical teen empowerment tale, never succumbs to the temptations of lameness. From the first page, we are somewhere new and real and striking.

Page one: a bomb goes off.
Page fifteen: a girl rejects popularity for the weird crowd.
Page twenty-three: boy in coma.
Page seventeen: math.

And meanwhile, the art is dropping hints so subtly you don't realize you've caught them until they matter.

So kudos to Jim Rugg whose art this is (and forgive me, but the protagonist's face is the loveliest bit of ink I've seen in some time), and kudos to Cecil Castellucci whose words are the genesis of this terrific terrific book. This gives me great hope for the Minx imprint. Also: want to read the sequel.

(DC: contact me here)

Re-Gifters (2007)

2008-12-02T21:59:00.000-08:00

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Re-Gifted is published by Minx, DC's "graphic novel imprint designed exclusively for teenage girls." When a (male) student saw me reading it today, he told me how great it was. He's a strikingly literate 15-year-old and so I was surprised. Because the first three quarters of this book pile on cliché after cliché --- this is the work of multiple-Eisner-nominee garnerers? (Then add to that the weirdly off Koreanisms [just off enough that they are wrong, but few so wrong so's to make them obviously not mere editing errors] and you've got something I can barely stomach.) Also, I have a problem with the book's manga-derived drawing mannerisms that prevent me from determining if the protagonist is 12 or 17 --- rather an important distinction. If the words solved this riddle, fine, but they don't. And that's not all! The class the above-mentioned kid is in is currently reading the Scottish play and we talk about the purpose of every single scene. But what purpose the breakfast scene in this book? Answer: none.

But, redemption!, this book pulls itself out of the morass in the final pages. How? With the unclever application of a couple more clichés. But these clichés replace the expected clichés and somehow the final result is quite charming. So bully for the creators. Way to go, guys. [Note: they are, in fact, guys. As are most of the creators of extant Minx titles.]

I have another Minx book in my queue just now, so we'll see where that one takes us.

-----thnob-

George Perez is My Friend

2008-11-30T11:34:00.000-08:00

I've always enjoyed comics illustrated by George Perez, but I've never gone out of my way to seek them out until recently. After purchasing the Crisis on Infinite Earths trade paperback recently (and reading this 1985 classic in English for the first time), I decided it was time to beef up my Perez collection, so I bought the New Teen Titans Archives (which I'll be reviewing in the near future) and the four-volume collection of Perez's Wonder Woman. (Watch out, JLA/Avengers, I'm coming for you next.)

So anyway, this is my first time reading George Perez's Wonder Woman--the first twenty-four issues collected here in Gods and Mortals, Challenge of the Gods, Beauty and the Beasts, and Destiny Calling--and I'm impressed. Besides the fact that the art is beautifully detailed, as anyone familiar with Perez would expect, the stories do some amazing things. After the universe-reshaping Crisis on Infinite Earths, Perez was charged with reinventing Wonder Woman from the ground up, as if this were her first appearance in comics, and the fact that this version of Princess Diana of Themyscira is more or less the version still being used twenty years later attests to his success. Here are some reasons why I think he succeeded:

Wonder Woman is not just a book about a strong woman, but rather a book about strong women. The opening chapter of the second volume, narrated by four female members of the supporting cast, highlights this strength. Perez and his scripter, Len Wein, bring us into the minds of such varied characters as army lieutenant Etta Candy (notable for being the only overweight woman in comics, ever), history professor Julia Kapatellis, and teenager Vanessa Kapatellis. And then, of course, there's the title character herself, her mother Queen Hippolyta, and an entire island of Amazon warriors.
Every great fantasy story needs a well-developed world, and much of these volumes is dedicated to creating exactly that. Not only do we see the history and culture of the Amazons developed in more depth than they had been in the previous forty-five years of publication, but the gods of Greek myth become a central part of this world, moving the stories in directions both new and completely natural to what had previously been part of Wonder Woman's mythos.
Speaking of those Greek gods, the mythic scale of these stories really hit in volume 2, Challenge of the Gods, wherein Wonder Woman is charged with completing a series of tasks in order to protect her people from the wrath of Zeus, who is pissed because she didn't want to be his consort. Everything about this story is something that could easily have been written by Homer, right up to the final task Diana completes, which is itself the completion of a well-established myth about another hero given impossible tasks by the gods.
Perez takes one of the least logical of superhero costumes and makes it make sense. Wonder Woman's battle armor has a history behind it and a purpose for its existence. And when she's not fighting she wears other clothes--not secret identity clothes, because she has no secret identity, but just the kind of clothes you'd expect an Amazon princess to wear for whatever the occasion, whether she's delivering a diplomatic address or hanging around the house.
Wonder Woman not only rejects Steve Trevor--the man previous versions of her had pined over for decades--as a romantic interest, but after a brief crush and a kiss from Superman, decides she's too good for him. Well, actually, he decides she's too good for him and she's too modest to phrase it that way, but it's pretty clear that's what's going on. She makes me want to stand up with Destiny's Child and sing "Independent Woman."

(Note the above page is written and illustrated by John Byrne in a crossover with Action Comics, but it's still George Perez's Wonder Woman.)

Nice Omega Level Powers, Sorry About Your Penis

2008-11-28T09:43:00.000-08:00

I've always been the hardcore Spider-Man guy (well, until recently--that was a baaaad breakup) but I can't say the same about X-Men. When I read X-Men comics, I read Grant Morrison's run, Joss Whedon's run, Warren Ellis's new run, and the occasional "event" like Deadly Genesis or Messiah CompleX. I won't buy anything with an X on it unless it's popular. I'm like the kid who only listened to Green Day on the radio and pissed off all the other kids who really liked Green Day because he gave them a bad name--and then I went and cut off the bottom hem of my pants to look like a skater and told everyone that I was "totally sad for Kurt." And I tried to pretend I didn't still have my collection of pogs and slammers and I got the Official Marvel Swimsuit Edition for... ehm... dark purposes. (Your tour of the early 90s is now complete.)

Anyparts. I read Messiah CompleX and was impressed, but, man, meh, mewooooo... the only part of it that hadn't been done before was the reduction in mutant numbers, and that started in House of M. Well, Cable being an actually interesting character--that was new.

If you haven't read it, I'll save you 25$. SPOOOOYEEEOYYYYYEEELORRRRR

At the end Bishop betrays them and kills Professor X. When I was about eleven, there was some big question story thread about one of the X-Men betraying them shortly in the future Bishop came from. Jim Lee knew where that one was going, supposedly, before he jumped ship to make Dan Quayle an alien in WildCats. I think it became such a big deal that Marvel ended up making Professor X the traitor through Onslaught because everyone kept asking. Which made no sense. But this kind of did. Bishop actually went back in time to kill this kid. Thanks for resolving a plotline from 1991.

So then I got Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire. Yeah, so Billy Tan draws him a good space opera, and this had all the makings of one, and was using an X-Force character, Warpath, and I'm all about the X-Force love for some reason even though the early issues of that comic were so self-parodical you couldn't parody them. (The Fabian Nicieza/Greg Capullo run had potential until they had to bring Cable back, and then the John Francis Moore/Adam Pollina "road trip" story was great.) Plus they had Nightcrawler, who is totally underused lately in the trendy books. (Why did Morrison, Ellis and Whedon use Wolvy, Cyke, Colossus, Kitty and now Storm but not Nightcrawler? He's the best one!)

But...

Okay, I like that Brubaker is giving the love to the fans who have been reading for a while and tying this into the earlier runs on the books. Except I didn't feel like I knew anything about Havok, Polaris, Rachel Grey or James Proudstar until I read the summaries at the end--and then all I knew was how they were before. The only character who changed a little bit in the course of this story was Vulcan, who Brubaker invented just a few issues ago in Deadly Genesis. Everyone else just kind of talks about stuff and does stuff and chases Vulcan around. Rachel Grey makes out with a Shi'ar. But it's all so very flat and had so much potential.

I actually fell asleep reading Uncanny #500.

X no longer marks the spot. Neither does Spider-Man. I'm feeling rather depressed about marvel.

Batman Ripped

2008-11-26T20:54:00.001-08:00

(a mildly spoilerish review of Batman 681)

At first the end of Batman 681, the much-anticipated end of the six-part "Batman R.I.P.," felt too much like a cop out to me. Ever since the title of this story was revealed a year or two ago, the unanswered question has been whether Batman really will die. This issue leaves that question frustratingly unanswered.

The more I've thought about it, though, I've realized it was probably the best way to end the story, by process of elimination. Here are the other ways it could have ended:

Batman is either physically or mentally incapacitated by Dr. Hurt and his Club of Villains, to be replaced by another man in the cowl, which would be lame because it was already done in 1992's "Knightfall."
Batman decides he needs to take a break after all this craziness and asks someone (probably Nightwing) to take over for him for a while, which would be lame because it was already done in 1995's "Prodigal."
Batman is killed in such a way that we see the body only to be inevitably brought back from the dead in some nonsensical sort of way because really, DC can't permanently kill Bruce Wayne, which would be super lame because it's already been done with Jason Todd in 1988's "Death in the Family" and 2004's "Under the Hood" (and with every other comics character that has ever "died").

So I guess I'm okay with the ambiguity. Let the other characters believe he's gone for a while--from some "R.I.P." tie-ins that apparently take place after this issue, I don't get the impression that any of them really believe he's dead either--and then we won't need Superboy Prime punching the walls of reality to explain his inevitable return.

What "Batman R.I.P." comes down to is Grant Morrison's version of "Knightfall." In "Knightfall" a previously unknown villain put together a master plan to break Batman and succeeded. Grant Morrison's Batman, though, never loses. Grant Morrison's Batman thinks of everything. You may think your master plan has broken him, but that's only because he wanted you to think so. Grant Morrison's Batman may not be so blatantly cocky as Frank Miller's Batman, who walks around proclaiming "I'm the goddam Batman" to anyone who'll listen, but you know he's at least thinking it.

You think you can break me? I'm the goddam Batman.

Thyear in Review, part iii

2008-11-24T21:09:00.000-08:00

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Click now to check out Annie Poon's Me Good Me Bad. Although the first book doesn't arrive anywhere (it's only the first book after all), it's well worth the five bucks and hey --- how many comics do you read that were written and drawn by someone with a film in the New York MoMA's permanent collection? Feel that indie snob pride.

Two books from Marjane Satrapi passed my eyeballs this year, Embroideries (which made me fear what women may speak of when left unsupervised) and Chicken with Plums (of which I'm still not sure of my opinion). If you know Persepolis then you know she's worth reading and these two are excellent.

Thomas Ott is someone I've been interested in for a long time, but not until this year did I actually read something of his. The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 is a twisty timetravelly metaphysical loopdyloopy somethingerother and whatever I made of it, this much is certain: More Ott please.

Fox Bunny Funny by Andy Hartzell is a wordless tale that tastes like a morality tale but never really lets you know what its agenda is, so it can be appreciated as belonging to any agenda you like, or none at all. It that a merit or detractant? Sounds like a personality test to me.....

Robot Dreams by Sara Varon is another wordless wonder, but this one is more charming and more immediately friendly than any other that's been discussed in this series. It's a good safe choice if you're looking for a graphic novel for a doubter who doesn't want to be pandered to but isn't ready to accept greatness yet. Which sounds like damning with faint praise..... Not meant that way, I assure you, Ms Varon. You've a lovely book here.

Anyway, now I'm caught up sufficiently and no more of these balf-haked posts. Buy one of these books for a lonely friend and send me the residual.

Or something.

Madman Atomic Comics Volume 1

2008-11-22T22:37:00.000-08:00

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The cover of this book, in big letters, screams "EXISTENTIAL EXISTS!" I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I think it's accurate.

This is one weird book.

For instance, my favorite part (artwise) is the section where Madman and his guide travel through dozens of artistic styles in the search for truth. One minute their in a Peanuts strip, then they look drawn by Herriman. Or Kirby! Or Tex Avery! Look, they're straight out of Popeye! No, Tintin! Lil Abner/Lulu/Nemo! Archie! Dr Seuss! Sendak! That one New Yorker guy! Prince Valiant! Groening! Crumb! And so on. It's a tour de force of comic history, but (on first read at least) distracting from the story at hand. Perhaps when I read this again it will mean more. Hard to say.

If you've been following my relationship with Madman since I first wrote about him, you may well know that I've been anxiously awaiting his LDS-templesque marriage for some time. It arrived on the final page of this volume but in such a perplexing manner, I don't know how I feel about it. As Allred says himself in some afterwordy notes, I just don't know if it "is a happy ending, or a numbing tragedy". Curse you, Allred. I've a long ways to go before volume two arrives and I have a strict not-paying-for-single-issues policy. (Which, I might add, may well be vital to the health of my marriage.)

One problem I met in this volume is the sudden appearance of the Atomics superhero team. Their backstories were not part of the Gargantuan and so their appearance here didn't fly. In part because they didn't behave like developed characters and I didn't know them from before (ie, they are not my friends). In fact, some of their lines are ludicrous, as if the author merely needed to give them all a speaking role as per union regulations, or he just had more characters on stage than he could handle at once. Perhaps this is part of the Atomics' manner of interaction, but I don't know them so I can't say.

I will say this: I appreciate ambition (of which plenty is on display here) and I trust Allred enough to keep reading. I trust that he will arrive somewhere after a full book with little but upheaval. I'm still willing to be impressed, my mind blown, but that experience is on pause until the next volume of Madman Atomic Comics comes out.

I will strive to be patient.

Thyear in Review, part ii

2008-11-21T14:09:00.000-08:00

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One of my great shames is how little Eisner I've read. I'm working on remedying that (at the shameful rate of about one book every three years) and this year I read his autobiographical The Dreamer. It's a nearly autobiographical account of his early years in the comics business. It's short, sweet, a nice introduction if you need one.

My experience with the Allred's Madman Gargantua was quite different from Ben's. I don't have longstanding friends in comicdom and so I am always open to new ones and, now, Madman is one of my best friends. It took me some hundreds of pages to really figure him out, but once I did, it was delightful to hang out with him. Expect more Madman reviews from me in the months to come.

Who doesn't love Tony Millionaire? Sock Monkey: The Inches Incident is like a cross between the most vulgar Sock Monkey stuff and the kids' book. You get a sense of its madness but don't get inebriated just by turning the pages. It's been too long for me to compare it fairly to older Sock Monkey, but the insanity of Mr Millionaire is on glorious display in this cozy volume.

Halo and Sprocket Volume 1: Welcome to Humanity by Kerry Cullen is the funniest book I've read this year. Hilarious. Brilliantly so. I want to drive to San Jose just to kiss SLG's toes for publishing this book (and to buy volume two). It's that good.

I'm making regular and honest attempts to read manga and learn to like it. I hate hate hate the difficulty in reading each in a zillion volumes to get one story, but the volume one I read this year that most made me want to give over my life to volume-searching was The Drifting Classroom's by Kazuo Umezu. I won't actually do that of course, but Umezu is now on my list and I'm anxious to find single volume stories of his. His diversity and weirdness both appeal to me and I want more more more. Something with a walking eyeball, perhaps.

Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall made me glad I gave Bill Willingham's baby another chance. It wasn't great but it wasn't unworthy of the Fabels hype either. It makes me hope that there is true excellence in here somewhere, if only I keep looking. Any suggestions on which Fables volume to read next?

Best. Cliffhanger. Ever.

2008-11-19T19:50:00.000-08:00

From Justice Society of America Kingdom Come Special: Magog #1, backup story by Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins

Thyear in Review, part i

2008-11-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

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I haven't done much since joining this blog because I haven't finished reading much (in my approved area of expertise) since joining. Mostly, comicswise, I've been reading DC stuff I borrowed from Ben. But as I do finish things, I will be reporting on them.

In the meantime, I will present you with a three-part report on the best indie stuff I've read this year (although there is one Vertigo title included). Not all of it was new this year (if you expect me to only report on what's cutting edge, you'll need to get Fantagraphics and SLG and so forth to start sending me stuff for free. I'll be happy to pick it up at Comic Relief if that's more convenient for you guys.)

This issue we'll start with a look at a kids' collection edited by that legendary comix pair Spiegelman and Mouly:

Strange Stories for Strange Kids edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly

this

a book will soon be published

Barnaby by Crockett Johnson

Strange Stories

Barnaby

Krazy Kat

Dick Tracy

Dennis the Menace

Barnaby

Complete Peanuts by Charles M. Schultz

Peanuts

The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories by Nicholas Gurewitch

Before we go this time, let's look at some comics best known for winning some serious award in the field of lit for the under-18 crowd.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

This book reads more like watching a movie, and it's alternations between single-spread images and prose is unlike anything else I've read. It's bound to be an important part of the discourse on what comics is and where it's headed, so read it now and don't be left out.

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

This is a new addition to my basic recommendations for all people trying comics on for the first time. This book is astonishing and pulls stunts only comics can pull. Read.

I know these are just bitesized blurbs, but if you're looking for good reads, these will meet your needs. Expect more year-in-review from me soon.

I've Got a Horse in My Pants, and I'm Not Afraid to Use It.

2008-11-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

I thought Sir Apropos of Nothing would be a good bet. Peter David, adapting one of his own books into a comic, yes? Peter David, the funny guy who writes X-Factor, wrote Hulk and an eearlier X-Factor and the only sadly forgotten 2099 comic, Spider-Man 2099? But it ended up being kind of boring. Except for the joke at the end about Stephen King's Dark Tower. Pete, you're slipping.

So I just re-read Grant Morrison's X-Men run. I like how when you read a Grant Morrison run on a superhero, you go from "that's so cool" to "that's... uh..." to "WTF is happening in this damn comic?" to "The alien brain rays have made me a man now, and I must father three-armed progeny."

This video probably explains it all.

Ultimate Iron Man

2008-11-15T20:07:00.001-08:00

I wrote this a while ago for my comics column and didn't post it because it looked too much like nepotism. It's a review of Ultimate Iron Man by Orson Scott Card. Before I post it, though, I want to clarify for all the people who have asked that just because I work for the Orson, I don't agree with him on everything. For starters, Iraq, gay marriage, taste in music, and the true purpose of the goatee. (I say it's a sign of secret allegiance to Satan.)

Ultimate Iron Man

Besides the bladder-bursting special scene, Iron Man turned out to be a surprisingly good superhero movie. I put it up with the Spider-Man and X-Men movies, just below the holiness that is Batman Begins. Our good Chris Bellamy has covered the film in glorious style, so check out his review and let me give the nerd history. (There will be an exam later.)
Iron Man the 60s comic began with Tony Stark the weapons designer, trapped by the Viet Cong and forced to build a bomb. Instead, he built a suit of armor that would keep his shrapnel-laced heart alive. A wizened scientist helped him; someone who had gotten on the wrong side of Charlie. In the end, the old scientist did a kamikaze style attack to buy Tony some time before the armor came online, giving him the motivation he needed to continue fighting evil when his buddy died. If you saw the movie, you know it follows this tactic almost exclusively, replacing the Viet Cong with an Al-Qaeda/Taliban type group.
From then on, Tony’s heart is his Kryptonite and his billionaire playboy lifestyle a way to finance the many suits of armor. In the comics, his alcoholism has also dogged him, and recently, his tendency to run the superhero community like a President with unlimited vetoes.
Ultimate Iron Man is a very, very different take on the hero. It’s so different it’s amazing that it ends up in a similar place, but at the same time, it’s more than worth the read for a fan of the movie. In Ultimate Iron Man, Tony is born an Iron Man as the result of an experimental illness that infected his mother, and tries to survive life as a childhood genius on the run from the law. From the beginning, he is trying to take back the company that has been stolen from his father.
The childhood genius angle should come as no surprise, as the comic is written by a certain Orson Scott Card. You may have heard of him. (Yes, this is the hand that feeds me, and it tastes like chocolate.)
Since Scott prefers that his peons refer to him as Mighty Card, I’ll accede to his royal wishes. His Cardness begins the story with Howard Stark, Tony’s father. Howard has invited a rather attractive young geneticist to help with his latest project: liquid armor. Together they watch as the blue liquid is poured all over a test subject, who then gets smacked so hard with a baseball bat that it breaks. The subject is unharmed. Liquid armor, Howard explains later, is obviously useful stuff, but it eats into people’s skin after the first few minutes. The geneticist has come to help build better bodies to wear the armor—bodies that will regrow the skin that has been eaten away.
At the same time, Howard Stark’s ex-wife is scheming with his arch-rival, Zebediah Stane (father of Obidiah, Jeff Bridges the Dude in the film) to take over the company. While they plan their takeover, the now pregnant geneticist, having become Howard’s new wife, gets bitten by a test subject and infected by the virus she designed to regenerate body cells eaten by the armor.
The virus causes her body to regenerate to the point of killing her. All at once, she dies, the child is born, and the company is bought out.
Tony, the child, is freakishly smart due to the effects of the virus on his growing brain, and in constant pain as well. The only way to save the baby from the pain is by covering him in the blue stuff.
Howard, the father, takes his son and his technology and runs, constantly moving away from his company, which has now been turned against him. Eventually he seems to get the upper hand back when Stane is convicted, but a few more twists remain, especially since this series serves only as a prologue. Most twisty of all, Tony decides that his skin is not enough, and begins building himself an iron suit.
Although this is a comic with some convoluted twists and turns, the Card keeps the dialogue minimal, contributing only to the story and barely giving us time to breathe. I was surprised. From someone who makes a living telling stories only with words, the dialogue in Ultimate Iron Man is sparse. Sometimes it’s too sparse, as in the paragraphs where the black characters seem to be carrying on an entirely different conversation with Tony about race from the one they were having moments before. In those moments, I wish I had some of His Orsonness’ exposition about what the characters are thinking. But most of the time it’s a refreshingly quick read in a medium where writers rely heavily on dialogue.
There are some poignant moments that follow Card’s tradition of self-deprecating humor, like when Howard’s wife, just before dying, weeps at his assertation that he will never find another woman like her. “Idiots who get infected with a virus they designed themselves are a dime a dozen.”
The art is also a mixture of bad and good points. Most of the book is drawn by Andy Kubert, who brings a hulking dynamism to the characters, both good and bad, and whose perspectives are always brilliant, like in the scene where the blue-coated man flies toward the camera headfirst, baseball bat shattering in the background. Some of his details are a bit too sketchy or exaggerated, especially with the extreme close-ups he favors. But almost every shot is a risky, forced-perspective lurch, from claustrophobic facial shots to twisting around an expansive fight scene, giving one the feeling that the series is constantly switching between epic to personal.
The art takes a downturn with the change to Mark Bagley, who is traditionally a good artist for light, cartoony books, and good when inked by someone who gets his clean, bright style. Unfortunately, this is not a light cartoony book, and inker Danny Miki makes Bagley’s work look much too dirty. However, they do manage a brilliant moment where Tony takes his first drink and realizes the inborn pain of his physical life can be washed away… with alcohol. And thus begins life as a billionaire playboy boozehound.
His Royal Orsonness has a sequel series running now, with the very talented Pasqual Ferry, and I intend to pick it up.

Madman is Not My Friend

2008-11-09T11:41:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago, Theric graciously lent me his Madman Gargantua, collecting all of Mike Allred's pre-Image Madman comics. I'd heard many good things about Allred and Madman over the years, so I was curious to check it out. I've read a little over half of the 850-page collection now and I must say, it's very good stuff. The charactes are zany, the stories are wacky, and the art is delightfully retro. And I won't comment on Allred's propensity for drawing the title character with a rather largish bulge.

So why is Madman not my friend? Here's the deal: Between Amazon.com gift certificates and a recent birthday, in the past couple weeks I've acquired a dozen or so trade paperback collections of DC superhero comics, which are now sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read. Madman Gargantua is gargantuan. 850 pages. And these are not pages with a panel or two of pretty superhero poses and a couple lines of dialogue. Allred's stories are packed with action, dialogue, and inner monologues pondering the nature of the universe. It's taking me a very long time to read this collection.

Meanwhile, those trades, collecting recent unread adventures of my superhero friends as well as not-so-recent adventures that I missed the first time around and will fill in the gaps in my encyclopedic knowledge of the DC Universe, and other adventures I've read before but am anxious to revisit just for the fun of it, call to me from the shelf. And I find myself resenting Madman for keeping me away from them. Which has led me to a realization: I don't read comics because I appreciate the literary qualities of the artform; I read comics because the stories in them are about familiar people and places that have been part of my life for sixteen years now. Heck, probably half of what I read is crap, as far as literary qualities go, but I read and enjoy it anway.

So I've decided to break my rarely-broken rule of finishing one book before moving on to the next, so as not to ruin my Madman experience with the anticipation of other things I'd rather be reading right now. I'll catch up on Batman and Superman and the Justice League, then get back to Madman when I can appreciate him for what he is: a fascinating piece of comics art and storytelling, but not my friend.

The snob treads on DC toes

2008-11-04T21:29:00.000-08:00

Manhunter Vol. 1: Street Justice by Marc Andreyko et al

the storytelling tends to suffer

dis

Thinking of Astonishing X-Men today

2008-11-04T10:06:00.000-08:00

Could Wolverine really survive reentry? I mean, seriously.

In Days of Future Past, he was killed by a simple shot from a Sentinel. Reentry must have burned all his flesh off.

How could his bone marrow get through the adamantium? Is there any organic material left? Space germs?

Help me out here.

Twice Struck

2008-10-31T21:43:00.001-07:00

I went into my comics shop this week and the owner handed me the comics he'd pulled for me and I bought them. Then I got home and realized he'd sold me a comic that he'd already sold me last week. My wife thought it was funny that the comic I now own two copies of happened to be this one:

(And by the way, I do read comics besides The Flash. I'll blog about something non-Flash next time.)

Yes Folks

2008-10-31T20:44:00.000-07:00

I'm doing my Sunstone presentation tomorrow. So This I Believe: Spider-Man needs to be married. Forever.

I'm actually feeling like I need to go back to trade paperbacks. Every handful of comics I come home from the store with is a story I haven't read for a month. Except Secret Invasion, in which case I am like, "oh, big fight scenes again."

Runaways. Can you say "lowered expectations?" Chase has become a big dumb jock and the story actually revolves around a homicidal radio jockey. What. The. Crap. This used to be Marvel's best book.

Thor continues to rule, in all its incarnations. I forget the name of the Alan Davis one-shot from this month, but it was great fun.

Spider-Man still needs to be married.

Smallville: Live Coverage!

2008-10-23T20:18:00.000-07:00

-Wow. Of all the comics characters who I've imagined looking sexy in a live action shower scene, I never imagined that Doomsday would be one of them.

-I was skeptical when I read about the new characters this season--Tess Mercer as a cross between Miss Tessmacher and Mercy Graves, and Davis Blume as a human version of Doomsday--but I have to admit I'm really liking both of them. And not just because Davis looks good naked. They're interesting characters played by decent actors, and they just might be what saves this series when just about everyone proclaimed it dead.

-Hm. I don't know how I feel about a Jimmy/Chloe/Davis triangle. It might work better if I liked Jimmy, like, at all. As it is, I just want Chloe to call off the wedding and go make little Doomsday babies.

-Ooh, Clark is totally the Patriot Act and Chloe is the privacy-defending librarian. Go librarians!

-Commercial breaks go by faster when I'm blogging.

-Is Feist the oficial spokesperson (sangsperson?) of iPod now or is that someone else? It sounds like Feist to me and I'm too lazy to look it up. I bet all the other artists are jealous.

-I don't think Lori Loughlin should ever be anyone besides Aunt Becky. Believing her as anyone else is about as ridiculous as believing Greg from Dharma and Greg as some FBI dude.

-Okay, this commercial break is lasting forever.

-If I'm lucky, maybe Doomsday will kill Jimmy tonight. Naked. Doomsday, that is, not Jimmy. Definitely not Jimmy.

-Nope, I'm not that lucky.

-"Do you believe we still call these phones?" Yes I do and I find your commercial incredibly annoying.

-Ohhhh, the Patriot Act and the American Library Association make up.

-Foreshadowing has never been subtle on this show. But then, foreshadowing is kind of the whole premise of the show.

-I predict that at some point during this season, Clark will start wearing a mask to protect his identity, then realize the mask makes people distrust him, then decide to find another way to protect his identity.

-I used to stress about how this show will ever make sense as the backstory to the Superman story we all know and love, but I've decided I'm okay with it being a thing of its own. Maybe in this version he never becomes Superman--he's just Clark in a red jacket for the rest of his life. Maybe he becomes Superman and Lex and Lois and everyone immediately figure out who he is. Maybe they all have amnesia. I don't care. I'm enjoying it for what it is.

Green Lantern and Flash:

2008-10-22T21:28:00.000-07:00

Working together, hand in hand, to protect gay marriage.

Because if both of their deaths couldn't keep them apart, what makes you think a line added to California's constitution will?

What You're Missing...

2008-10-22T21:25:00.000-07:00

...if you're not reading Tiny Titans.