Madman Atomic Comics Volume 1

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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

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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?

Madman is Not My Friend

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.