All-Fights Thursday!

Ocean #5 (of 6)

***SPOILERS***

That sound: the soft expelling of air. It’s not the tires going flat on this Warren Ellis sci-fi cruiser, but it’s certainly me exhaling a puff or two of letdown; just a little too familiar here near the end.

It turns out that the folks buried deep beneath the ice are none other than a slew of warlike ancient humans who ruined their own civilization and seeded the Earth for life in their own image, in hopes that one day they could return to a hospitable world. I couldn’t give you an exact title of a work in which this twist has popped up before, but I think we can all recognize it from multiple points in our shared sci-fi past. And just as these factory-fresh revelations are issued, the book suddenly plunges into saucer-flying robot-smashing action, with deadly forces threatening the Earth and baddies with big honking guns bursting into the station, and good old Inspector Kane takes up arms and prepares to dive into action to save an ally trapped behind enemy lines, so to speak. It’s like someone from off-page blew the ‘dumbass’ whistle and the whole book fell into line. Well, Chris Sprouse and Karl Story on art. The widescreen panels sure look pretty, although there’s a weird lack of tension to the robot-crushing.

And what kind of gets me is that these older plot twists Ellis is pulling in do sort of fit into what’s gone before. We’ve seen that mean Manager fellow and his minions laboring under the weight of literal corporate mind control; now the theme is expanded to include all of humankind struggling against their own barbaric genes. Humankind is thus the inheritors of an ingrained culture of violence and victory, reflected in the sprawling corporate structures Ellis dots his future Earth world with, fascinated with old weapons for new victories. Violence in the boardroom as national conquest (hey, they said that Doors controls a couple countries, right?). So it’s not that Ellis is just plopping out the old sci-fi standards all willy-nilly; there is a thematic point to it all. Which makes it all the more disappointing that this expansion on earlier thoughts rings such a cozily familiar chime, as we trip our ways toward the guns for two-fisted science action. Hey, it’s in our genes.

Astonishing X-Men #9

***SPOILERS AGAIN***

One moment in this issue stands out as particularly forced: Colossus is desperately trying to bust through the walls of the suddenly grumpy Danger Room to save his beloved Kitty and a slew of mutant students from certain doom. Cyclops suggests that maybe the brains of the system ought to be attacked. Grimacing, Colossus rumbles “I’ll look” and leaps right through the roof, tearing through an attic of wires like a metal man possessed. Wolverine, incomparable badass, is astounded, muttering “He’s back.”

DRAMATIC CLOSE-UP!

“Peter’s really back.”

That’s the last panel on the page. If only there was one more, perhaps Wolvie could have turned directly to the reader and grinned “Good thing we brought him back, eh fanboys?” with a wink of one eye and a twinkle in another. Maybe a thumbs-up.

Call me cynical or over-analytical, but this issue looks to me like a victim of ‘the creative team decided to stick around for another year and we don’t have to wrap all these subplots up in four issues anymore so let’s drop them for now and stretch out this current story idea for a few issues and see what happens’. There’s just too much haste, too little thought. A lot of time is spent trying to find the Danger Room’s electronic brain in that maze of wires I mentioned, which is apparently guarded by lasers designed by Professor X. My reaction? WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU INSTALLING KILLER LASERS IN A ROOM CHOCK FULL OF GODDAMNED WIRES?! I mean, do the wires do anything? I assume. Are they Smart Lasers? Will they know not to cut the heat to the upper-level men's room or kill the lights in the game room? I don’t know.

Also: apparently the Danger Room can take control of “anybody got a microchip in ’em,” as Wolverine muses. How? Especially with stuff like a Sentinal, half-broken, laying in a field for lord knows how long, exposed to months of rain and weather? The answer, of course, is Shi’ar technology. No further questions needed. Seriously, don’t even consider asking questions, especially at the end of this issue when Wolverine chops the Danger Room brain into deli slices only to have it magically transform into some cross between the female robot from “Metropolis” and a Predator. Is this a new character? Am I supposed to be shocked at a stunning returnof a ghost from the past? Because it sure looks to me like some damned generic tin can beamed in from nowhere for a big non-cliffhanger.

Anyway, the rest of the issue sees Kitty chatting with the Danger Room, which is apparently a beast built to kill but shackled with an external program which shuts it down if anyone is in danger of dying. But now that ex-mutant kid has killed himself inside the environment back in issue #7 which overrode the program somehow and now the Danger Room can kill and transform into shiny robots and all of its dreams will come true. It’s nonsense, but a fair excuse for John Cassaday to go apeshit with two or three big splashes of creative hellscapes, Laura Martin ably washing it out in red and gold. It’s very pretty, but in service of pretty ill-considered scripting. And I mean even by mutant superhero punch-time standards.

*Out of time. I’ll review “Meatcake” (which is way cool) tomorrow, along with some other stuff. Count down the hours!

Wait! I'm here!

*This is very close to 8:00 PM eastern. Very very close.

Concrete: The Human Dilemma #4 (of 6)

I know this project has been in development for half a decade, but I’m curious about the actual production schedule. This and last issue have covers dating from 2002. Issue #1’s cover was finished in 2001. I wonder how long the interior art took, or if the covers were created before anything else with beats from the unrefined story already in mind. Certain images from this series have haunted their creator since nearly the beginning: the cover to issue #2 hails from 1989. Perhaps writer/artist Paul Chadwick felt that he’d finally found the proper venue for placing the image in a story? Or did glimpsing that old piece, the air of longing about it, spark something in the creator’s brain?

This is a nice issue. This is the sort of thing the crew over at “Ex Machina” should be taking notes on; it’s not only a political story but a heavily debate-based political story, yet it largely comes off as natural and organic. Last issue also seemed natural enough in execution, though it was nearly overwhelmed by non-stop edutainment infobursts of stuff and stuff and stuff. This time around it surely helps that Chadwick is just as interested in the procedures behind big media debate as he is in the substantive issues under discussion. It’s not a perfect issue (which becomes particularly apparent when Chadwick turns his gaze away from the politics), but it’s a fun one.

Concrete is still bringing the message of paid sterilization to The People, but things are starting to go wrong. Many parties obstinately on his ‘side’ of the debate see the execution of the plan he’s selling as silly or counterproductive. Well-meaning (or purely mercenary) entertainers can’t help but constantly poke fun at the large, obvious, loud, constant target that old Conc has become, a big rocky Michael Moore of overpopulation. And such characteristics naturally make the former Ron Lithgow a perfect focusing nemesis for a content-craving conservative media; Concrete makes the outstanding miscalculation of allowing a stonewalling talk show host to drag out the fact that he’s pro-choice (first two trimesters only, as if that’s worth anything in a debate) and verily the grandstanding and bandwagon-hopping begins in earnest, climaxing with Ann Coulter calling for no less than Our Hero’s death, her televised face reflected in the glasses of that obsessive fellow we’ve been occasionally peeking in on throughout the miniseries. “Hmm,” he murmurs, probably putting too much exclamation onto Chadwick’s observations of news-as-entertainment. But when Conc pontificates on the superiority of Michael Medved over Rush Limbaugh as a hostile audience, or when Maureen delivers a flawless reaction to David Letterman’s special brand of humor (“That’s funny. Kind of.”), one is prone to forgive an overuse of boldface. At least in that area.

The rest of the issue doesn’t fare quite as well, as Larry’s personal life (and the book’s script) dives into some extra soapy waters, complete with such Daytime Emmy dialogue as “I want to be all of them for you. Your muse, your confidant, your Madonna, your whore,” or the Cinemax-after-11:00 PM-worthy “I can’t wait for that. I need you in me,” or even the beloved “Don’t thank me. Take me.” And that’s all before the big ‘coitus interruptus via answering-machine bombshell’ finale. Given the care Chadwick lavishes on the nitty-gritty of argumentative distortion, perhaps the melodrama as presented in these intimate character moments is more pungent than it otherwise could be in a less grounded story (this all despite the towering man of stone in the lead role).

But fizzy or canny or otherwise, it all looks gorgeous. Chadwick knows exactly how to use the page, covering sudden scene-shifts with grace and the utmost in clarity, attractively conveying feeling through total page design (witness the teeny panel of Concrete laying in the back of his truck pasted in the center of a wide overhead map of the city), and even busting out some fancy visual tricks with genuine utility: we occasionally get X-Ray glimpses literally beneath characters’ skin, visually contrasting the familiar creepiness of the human skeleton with the fantastical innards of Concrete, handily highlighting his separation from his friends and audience, until a last-panel reveal demonstrates that all the technical flair has a more immediate storytelling application as well. And this command of the medium carries Chadwick far, even over the potholes and sudden curves in his narrative.

Not just a couple things, but a couple posts:

*First things first - I really ought to get to

LAST WEEK'S REVIEWS (AND THEN SOME)

since I forgot them once again:

Jimbo #1-2 (not Gary Panter's most instantaneously appealing work, yet accessible and fun comics nonetheless)

Seven Soldiers - Guardian #1 (of 4)

Garth Ennis’ 303 #4 (of 6)

Ed the Happy Clown #1 (of 9) (just as good in 2005 as it was in 1984, just don't touch the pages too firmly, the delicate dears)

Mercy (generally unsuccessful J.M. DeMatteis/Paul Johnson Vertigo one-shot from 1993 that still managed to be valuable reading for me through what it evoked and reflected)

Well, that takes care of the backlog...

*I'll be updating again later today (around 7:00 or 8:00 PM eastern) with some reviewing, but in the meantime I really have to commend to you the recent issue of "Indy Magazine", which can be found in its entirety right here. In particular, there's a great two-part history of "Raw". The first part is simply co-founder Francoise Mouly relating her experiences in moving to the US, getting into the comics scene, and establishing the 'Raw' brand. The second part presents a valuable chronological survey of every issue of the hallowed publication, plus every spin-off, listings of all contributers, more history from Mouly and Art Spiegelman, and comments from several choice personalities like Kim Deitch, Chris Ware, Gary Panter, Charles Burns, and many more. And absolutely do not miss Phoebe Gloeckner's new fumetti, covering her trip to Angouleme as only she can. And hey! "Neil the Horse"! Heaps of good reads.

A New Week to Shine

*So it looks like Dark Horse is releasing a sleek-looking new “Concrete” trade this July titled “Depths”. Cheap too, at only thirteen bucks for over 200 pages. Dark Horse is being a bit coy regarding what’s exactly in the book, although the cover art depicts scenes from the 1999 “Dark Horse Presents” annual and issue #150 of the anthology proper, both of them never-collected stories. The solicitation also promises ‘early’ stories; the print status of the other trades and the size of the volume in question (coupled with some old-fashioned gut instinct) tells me that this book is essentially going to be a reprint of the long-unavailable “Short Stories 1990-1995” only updated to the present day and spiced with a few non-“Concrete” tidbits, like Chadwick’s short from the TwoMorrows anthology “Streetwise”. This would also explain why Dark Horse isn’t even listing the “Short Stories 1990-1995” book among their “Concrete” library in the back of issues of “The Human Dilemma” anymore: it‘s on the fast track to obsolescence.

*But, to tackle some more immediate concerns:

THIS WEEK IN COMICS

Zoot Suite: Oh boy! Is this a reprint of the Fantagraphics volume of the same name, collecting stories by Roger Langridge of “Fred the Clown” fame, with his brother Andrew on board as well? If so, you need to look into this, as it’s funny stuff, beautiful looking, and yet - strangely moving, as two men embark on a futile quest to find someone’s parked car. Great stuff (and go check out “Fred the Clown” too)!

Meat Cake #14: Double oh boy! New Dame Darcy! Her fragile, delicate lines might be an acquired taste, but it’s one I’m glad I acquired; and I know the humorous neo-Victorian folktale snigger of her stories will leave me a satisfied child. If there’s any one comic you check out on a whim this week, make it this one (and if there's any one collection you check out, make it "Zoot Suite").

Popbot Reader #1: I’ll confess to enjoying Ashley Wood’s “Popbot”, its six oversized issues thus far overloaded with creepy spoiled cheesecake art and bizarre plotting (aided at different times by Sam Kieth of “The Maxx” and T.P. Louise of Wood’s “Lore”). There’s a new short story in this volume, scripted by Adam Warren of the current “Livewires”, plus guest-star pin-ups and a feature on the making of the upcoming Popbot statue. Not so sure if it’s worth six bucks, but worth flipping though on the stands, if only to admire the design.

Concrete: The Human Dilemma #4 (of 6): Woah! Big plot twist at the end of this one! Please, please don’t tell the stunning truth!

The Goon #11: Hey, look what’s back. And starting a multi-part story too, a new innovation for this title (not that there isn’t a certain continuity anyway). The Goon and his pals travel to a parallel universe in which they participate in an extended Wally Wood homage, which sounds pretty nice. Good to have this one around again.

BPRD: The Dead #5 (of 5): And kind of good to see this one go. I think this may be it for me and “BPRD”; as lovely and perfect a Mignola replacement as Guy Davis is, John Arcudi just isn’t doing the trick with the scripts (even as only a co-writer), and barring some serious last-minute movement the whole 'Abe’s origin' tease smells like an awfully tricky means of stringing a hopeful audience through another mini without really providing the goods on that front. No thanks, guys.

Astonishing X-Men #9: While it’s never, ever, not even once lived up to the titanic volleys of praise that heralded its arrival on the scene, this book was at least decent when it began and has been slowly getting better; last issue, for instance, was a wholly pleasant no-frills superhero book, with bits of fun action and amusingly cheesy plotting and a merciful lack of bounding to the rest of the X-Universe. Will the House of M change all this, considering that the cast of this book will clearly be necessary for plot participation? Oh, probably; the real question should be ‘how bitter will the medicine taste going down?’ Or (if we were all sane) ‘when should we stop reading this book?’

Ocean #5 (of 6): One of Ellis’ better current books. Not much of a magnet for discussion (no Iron Man or Galactus, you understand) but a good little miniseries, some interesting ideas. This’ll be one of the first ones I read tomorrow.

Ultimate Secret #1 (of 4): The middle chapter in the “Ultimate Galactus” saga, the first of which was not one of Ellis’ better current books. But from some of the reactions I’ve seen, just perking up and blubbering “Gah Lak Tus” is more than enough to excuse issue after issue after issue of absurd padding, murky art, and the ultimate (hah get it?) feeling that you’ve just spent your $12 on a ruthlessly overextended issue #0, bearing little more content than something that would have been tossed into the polybag with an issue of “Hero Illustrated” for free back in the day, all to essentially advertise something else entirely (good thing I only paid $1 for most of it - thanks, Clearance Sales!). But shit, Gah Lak Tus! It’s like saying your two to three Hail Marys once you’re out of the confessional! Ellis has gone through with the Act of Contrition now, it's ok! Time to lap it up again! LAP IT UP FOLKS! LAP IT UP!!!

DC Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1: You know what? That was way too negative. I ought to fill my body with love. Pure affection for all of creation! I should take a stand right now! How will I start? How to start... I know! I’m gonna buy THIS. I’m going to make myself into part of the problem by slapping down my hard-earned $1 for 80 pages of scowling and grimacing and non-stop assurances that I’m most certainly reading mature and serious literature about everyone being mean to the Blue Beetle. I cannot wait to become one of the 200,000+ who will dive into this fine project and win DC a crowing month of bliss atop the Diamond charts. I’m quivering, gentle readers! Beads of perspiration streaming down my brow! Droplets of sweat tinged with love for comics! Love for comics! Love! LOOOOOOOOOVE!!!

Have

(yes, I'm gonna go there)

Mercy

***SPOILERS***

Who knows what you can find lurking around in the nooks and crannies of recent comics past with an eye turned toward current events? Books I’d ordinarily brush over in the bargain bin suddenly become fascinating given my current mental state, nudged and prodded by action in the outside world, or at least the action that’s been classified as ‘important’ by the greater media. Thus, for half price, bringing the toll to $3, did I obtain a copy of the 1993 Vertigo Prestige Format one-shot “Mercy”, written by J.M. DeMatteis and painted by Paul Johnson, with letters by Todd Klein. And while bits and pieces of the story, flawed as they are, resemble contemporary and unavoidable happenings out in the big old world, the reader’s consciousness can’t help but drift to a (possibly imagined) earlier day of experimentation in Big Two comics, not necessarily an age of success or quality but one in which falling on your face out of misplaced ambition was a viable possibility.

Our narrator, Joshua Rose, doesn’t seem likely to ever wake from his coma, seeing as he’s been under for years now, maybe for more than a decade. Much of his time is spent as a free-floating spirit, peeking in on the human world while simultaneously being privy to visions of secret supernatural visitations, the very Forces of the Universe, made into relative flesh. I must say at the outset that Johnson’s art is a good match for this sort of set-up, seeing as how the visual style is ultimately one of straightforward representation as knowingly blurred; from across the room or on a rapid flip-through the inattentive reader might mistake this material for abstraction, but everything is at its core fairly solid and straightforwardly descriptive. There’s plenty of fleckles of paint and scratchy lines and grotesque monster designs (more on that later), but there’s far less substantive visual information presented than, say, David B. would provide in far more exacting detail; what we’re really given is some decidedly typical comic art through a glaze of painted mood, with a yen for filmic multi-exposure type splashes, all easily relatable to the non-stop narration of our bitter hero, grasping the eternal in basic human terms, with only a whiff of the intangible or abstract about it.

Josh is pretty pissed that his wife is keeping him alive, preventing him from just curling up into darkness, escaping the hatred and lies and hypocrisy and disgust and vice and flotsam that truly is the human race. But he’s become distracted in his psychic voyages; he’s become obsessed with a figure he knows as Mercy, originating in a far away zone but incarnated as a lovely young woman (who, it must be said, bears a downright familial resemblance to the title heroine of Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III’s much later “Promethea”). She flits around aiding various people, and Josh both adores and loathes her, deciding that her capricious attentions must be evidence of arrogance, or even cruelty; why not just cure the world, if your intentions are truly pure?! So he follows her around, determined to tear off her kindly mask and expose her as a far more devilish entity than the elements of pain she battles. Quite a bit like Lars von Trier, our Josh is.

We’re treated to three continuing vignettes as the story goes on, as Mercy battles an ooky, Giger-like monster who’s creating strife in a middle-class family, guides a terrified boy through a tribal rite-of-passage in a rainforest, and consoles a lonely old woman in the city. And plainly all of this is intended by DeMatteis as a parable for human concerns, although the execution is quite poor, often lapsing into mawkishness when not tripping over its complicated array of supernatural symbols. For example, take the scary monster that’s tormenting the middle-class family. Let’s say it’s a stand-in for all sorts of typical family concerns (probably an accumulation of assorted concerns), even though the creature is characterized as having one mind, and really hates Mercy. This doesn’t seem to relate to reality in any effective way, even on a symbolic level, unless you take the creature as representing everything Bad, although Mercy takes him out pretty easily, and certainly doesn’t seem to be standing for everything Good herself. And then, after the beast is beaten (by Mercy’s taking its own pain into her body), it’s revealed that the creature is actually the lost, tormented soul of a suicide victim, who is now free to ascend to whatever nondenominational afterlife DeMatteis has in mind. But wait; is he trying to say that bad feelings in the human world are orchestrated by the souls of the dead? I don’t think so, but he’s using the creature as both a symbol and a physical entity in its own right, with the two usages being frankly incompatible without mixing metaphors like vinegar and baking soda. I understand the intent here, but the telling of the tale is deeply confused. The other two stories approach Mercy’s adventures in different ways, with the title heroine allowing the young rainforest denizen to go through his painful and terrifying trial (it‘s for yer own good, kid!) with the promise of comfort later, and sort of standing around and allowing the old woman to help herself; a less proactive semi-deity she is in these stories. I think the point of it all is that Mercy takes many different forms and actions, because she is so vast and tough to understand, which doesn’t stop narrator Josh from trying, with DeMatteis deploying a ton of exclamation points and elaborative/stylish/pretentious use of irregular dialogue punctuation (not to mention tons of parentheses) in the narrator’s speech, making it sound like Josh is performing one of my blog entries as he voyages through eternity.

Ah, but clarification arrives at the end, as Josh realizes that Mercy has been waiting at his bedside the whole time, and that Mercy is actually embodied in his loving wife who’s been mercifully keeping him running for years and years, and thus Josh understands that Mercy is really an aspect of all of humanity (handily explaining her capriciousness though not the tricky bits with the monsters), embodied in acts of compassion. Then he either miraculously wakes up or flatlines; I honestly have no idea, it’s kind of obscured.

But as disappointing as the book is, it put me in a nostalgic mood. And I understand that nostalgia carries a certain danger, a possibility of imagining situations or even a status quo that was never fully present. But damn it, I’m looking around the current Big Two scene and I’m not seeing much room anymore for big, sloppy, metaphorical extravaganzas. Inexpensive deluxe blasts of scattershot metaphysical comment, painted up and ready to roll onto stands. “Mercy” doesn’t succeed, but it tries; it’s utterly earnest, even to a fault, and nakedly genuine in its desire to deliver a complex, positive message through the comics form with the might of a Big Company behind it. And after it drifts down, it sleeps in its Prestige bedclothes to be woken by some curious blogger as the outside world beacons for comment from days just passed.

*Memo From the Synchronicity Department: just as I wrapped up work on this review, I discovered that Rick Gebhardt at Behind the Times had reviewed this very book only two days ago; I guess the zeitgeist has not moved only one blogger in the story’s direction. Check out his review too!

A Sin on Easter Sunday.

*Yes! The Easter Bunny left me a new coffee grinder! Oh, legal addictions are truly the reason for the season!

*In the interests of spreading Easter Cheer as far and wide as possible, I have decided to offer everyone a very special Easter treat:

The First Resoundingly Negative “Sin City” Review I’ve Found!

Folks who recall the days when Christopher Allen and Abhay Khosla were doing comics columns at Movie Poop Shoot will surely remember the film-related writings of Mr. Jeffrey Wells at that same site. He’s got his own personal Internet home now, which I check out every week or so, and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t have a short “Sin City” reaction for us all to savor. No links, sadly; scroll down to the ‘Wired’ section, then check out the first 3/20/2005 entry.

Here’s a quick sample of what you’ll find:

“But take no notice of anyone (Rodriguez included) calling this a film noir flick. There is real film noir -- crime movies made with a downbeat fatalistic attitude, and grounded in a reasonable facsimile of human truth -- and there is simplified noir lite for chumps.”

I suspect that when the film enters wide release there might be some interesting conversation as to how exactly the work fits into the film noir tradition. Maybe Wells himself will elaborate in a full column if the film happens to hit big. Devoted readers will recall Wells’ dislike of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, which prompted a whole series of interesting writings, and plenty of angry letters itching for responses. And speaking of prompting responses:

“This is noir as re-imagined by Frank Miller and digested by comic-book geeks in their 30s who live in their lonely heads and haven't gotten laid very much or gotten to know women at all.”

Note to Abhay: I thought he was gonna go for the gold there, but he stopped just short of the ‘V’ word. And no mention of our parents’ basements, from whence all of our Internet comments issue? Disgraceful!

But even Mr. Wells must concede a bit, just a bit:

“That said, Sin City has some of the most beautiful black-and-white compositions I've ever seen... two hours of silvery shimmering bliss. That is, except for the tedious stuff, which is relentless.”

And there’s more (well, not too much more actually) at the above semi-link. Check it out, enjoy your holiday if you happen to celebrate it, and I’ll be back again tomorrow with more candied verbosity.

Well folks all you need is a good heavy hammer.

*Scene from a comics shop. Two kids, about eight years old, are leafing though some new books. One of them has mistaken the bags and board that the owner puts the new books in for a polybag of yore, which he’s perhaps learned about from his parents.

“Ooh. You wanna get this one. It’ll be worth more money some day.”

I rolled my eyes as I continued on with my important task of cataloging all of the “Comics Greatest World” books in the quarter bin for no reason other than my personal curiosity, but I kept listening.

“What do you mean?” asked the second kid.

“You see the price on this one?”

“Two fifty.”

“Yeah, well in a bunch of years, it’ll be worth more!”

“Like what?”

“Like in a while, when you’re fifty, it’ll be worth SIX BUCKS!!”

I involuntarily chuckled over my issue of “King Tiger”. I take it all back. The kid was much smarter than he looked.

Ed the Happy Clown #1 (of 9)

That is a gorgeous cover. One look is not enough. Here’s a black and white version, inked in a slightly different manner than the published piece. Here’s the penciled form. That black and sepia cityscape cut in the center by a dull green phallic growth with the warm pink and brown and blonde and blue of the title character’s tiny form, hanging on near the top; it’s a fantastic image. It makes you desperately want to possess this book.

It’s a good thing that such a fine first impression is made, since immediately subsequent surface impressions won’t be as positive. I’m probably just spoiled by modern comic book paper stock, but the newsprint used for the guts of this book seem tissue-thin; I guess this is the same grade as the stuff used for “Cerebus”, but it seems even more fragile. The book is slightly smaller than the average comic. It’s only 24 pages, although since there’s no ads things do even out. Three dollars. Fortunately, upon thouroughly looking inside, there is sufficient value for your money.

I was right when I described the plan for this series the other day, but writer/artist Chester Brown’s introduction gives even more detail. Brown, you see, is working on a revised version of this story (which, as you might know, was his first longform work), to be released in a while as an original hardcover book. Or maybe not; Brown claims that “I’m not sure what I think of it at this point in time.” In order to get the ‘original’ work back in print in the meantime, this miniseries will reprint the entire contents of the 1992 edition of the “Ed the Happy Clown” collection (which is not to be confused with the smaller 1989 edition), with brand-new annotations by Brown himself in every issue, covering the entirety of the work. And that’s what’s going to provide the big draw for this new series, in my opinion.

The comics themselves this issue basically act as an appendix to Brown’s short story collection “The Little Man”, since all of them are self-contained and a few of them don’t even feature the title character. There’s six shorts, ranging in size from one to seven pages, all of them culled from the earliest minicomic version of Brown’s “Yummy Fur” in 1983-84; that seminal series eventually saw the serialization of many of Brown’s major works. But this early on, there’s a notable sense of improvisation, duly confirmed in Brown’s commentary which discusses his early attraction to surrealism. Thus, characters’ legs shatter for no reason, pygmies are dropped from airplanes to battle a rat infestation, masturbation-crazed squids squeeze scientists until their brains squirt out, an elderly janitor’s hand goes missing only to later show up under someone’s pillow, and Frankenstein’s Monster bursts in for no reason. Seriously: Brown claims he had no idea what to draw next at one point, so upon examination of his comics collection he settled on Frankenstein.

And through most of it wanders Ed, only desiring to make people happy, but usually reduced to tears by the cold, strange world. But these stories are fast and funny, and Brown’s off-the-cuff style is largely successful at providing amusing twists and queasy laffs (in one story, Ed is introduced screaming “AAAA! The void!” at off-panel horrors). And of course the art is lovely, though a bit looser than Brown’s later work (I’m not sure if much visual revision went into the 1992 book from whence this material was culled, but the look is still a lot more fluid and broadly caricature-prone than Brown circa 2005).

The annotations provide plenty of insight into Brown’s beginnings, and his feelings on an evolving approach to craft, pure ink drawings in early shorts giving way to preliminary penciled roughs in preparation for the final product. A tiny dedication at the end of one short prompts a lengthy anecdote about a fellow cartoonist friend of Brown’s who originally began the story, and how Brown (partially out of secret jealousy) convinced him to give up comics art, then began dating his girlfriend, who eventually convinced Brown to get into minicomics, which eventually brought about the fall of their own relationship as the artist’s career began to blossom. The story is funny and revealing, and it takes up enough space that Brown’s notes spill out onto the back cover until he literally runs out of room without covering the book’s last three stories. He promises to get to them next issue, and with material this strong, both vintage comics and explanatory prose, I’ll be there to see him pick things up.

I need to review my documentation...

*New column today. In commemoration of the oncoming arrival of “DC Infinite Countdown to New Year’s Rocking Crisis”, I decided to talk about minicomics. Please take this column home with you and feed it fresh water and sunshine.

*I lied a bit yesterday. I actually got three books, but I only had to pay for two of them. My shop gave me a copy of the comic-sized “The Matrix Online: The Official Magazine” #1, which was released directly by Warner Brothers (not DC, although there's an ad for the recent "Hellblazer" book "All His Engines"). Why did such a thing catch my eye, non-online gamer that I am? Interview with Paul Chadwick, of course. It’s great when the market decides to serve my current interests.

In case you didn’t know, “The Matrix Online” is the latest in a long line of time-devouring narcotic alternatives that will ruin you through your computer screen. In this one, you get to design yourself a Matrix-like character and wander around in latex fighting and talking to people and visiting places. Chadwick is the lead writer for the ongoing plot of the game, which will apparently include a whole bunch of scripted events occurring through the first year of the game’s life. Chadwick (whose interview is a very short two pages) notes that the first year will even have an overarching theme running through all events: the things people do to break peace down. There will be large mysteries to solve, and certain players will even find themselves inserted into later game-wide cut-scenes should they accomplish the correct goal at the correct time. Chadwick promises a dense overall plot, with all sorts of threads and side-stories and the like.

Really, it’s fascinating hearing him hype this game in this way, with only the slightest mention of his comics work in the introduction to the interview. The magazine as a whole is packed with profiles of beta testers, all of them identified only by their online names and game avatars. All of these people will come to know Chadwick through this game, as a controller of this fantasy community, and I suspect the vast majority will have never heard of “Concrete” or anything. But here his creations will be instantly mixed into the workings of the fans, instantly responded to, a world growing away from his control, he the god only providing sparks of presence and guiding everyone as per his Plan. Very different from comics, with such high creator control, or movies, with such constant flux and uncertainty, at least for the storyboard artist or production manager. Here, the story is fixed (well, I‘m certain the Wachowskis are working with him too), unwavering, but the meat must be provided by others from a thousand perspectives. To think like a writer in such a position, especially a writer you know from a different art form…

I imagine the money is a bit better than comics too.

*Out of time. Much driving ahead.

Time to purchase!

*IMPORTANT NOTICE: A new issue of Kevin Huizenga’s “Or Else” is out! Issue #2 of this Drawn and Quarterly production is basically a reprinting of “Gloriana”, Huizenga’s long-gone final issue (#14) of his minicomic series “Supermonster”: all 100 pages of it. It will feature new covers and a new center gatefold, although I don‘t believe any art has been redrawn, as Huizenga did for the “Supermonster“-culled material in “Or Else“ #1. Squarebound format. Only six bucks. It’s not in stores yet, but you can get it from the Catastrophe right now. I’ve not seen any of this material, so I’m very excited about this; 100 pages of Kevin H. does that to me.

*LESS IMPORTANT NOTICE: My brother informed me the other day that screenwriter Charlie Kaufman appeared to him in a dream and revealed that his next project will focus on a 19th century sword-swallower. I’m not using ‘appeared to him in a dream’ to indicate the presence of any authentic inside scoop or whatnot; I mean, he literally dreamt it, and felt the need to report this revelation to me. So I’ll just make it property of the Internet now.

Garth Ennis’ 303 #4 (of 6)

Well, this one leaves me in an interesting position. With the end of this issue I sort of know where writer Ennis is going with this story in a vague, big-picture fashion; I just don’t know what he plans to do once he’s there.

This issue begins the second half of the story, which is conveniently labeled “Part 2: Black Arrow”, a Tolkien reference. The scene has shifted to the US, though we’re still out in a desert, not the first bit of doubling to come. Here, it’s a dusty little industrial zone, where illegal immigrants work crushing hours for slave wages at a slaughterhouse called McHell (named for the popular restaurant it supplies), hopped up on drugs dealt by their boss, and prone to catastrophic injury in the jaws of killing blades. Our Russian Hero (also an illegal immigrant, you'll note) is staying quiet in a nearby Spanish-language shantytown, with a recent injury being treated by a noble doctor. The doctor's own right arm had been crippled in McHell, where his wife still works providing sexual favors to the manager in exchange for her relatives’ continued employment. Also on the scene is a major new character: Vietnam vet Sam Wallace, now a local lawman. He’s the Russian’s double, a fighter, a military man, and the Last Great American, as we’re told by the coroner, who’s apparently a certified Doctor of Exposition. Wallace keeps hauling in illegals, killed by the dangerous conditions of the slaughterhouse while in their management-provided, speed-fueled work state. But Wallace just can’t get the charges to stick. He’s also been depressed since his wife died in awful pain because they didn’t have access to affordable health care.

No, that last sentence isn’t a joke.

So let’s just say that if tomorrow the Eisners decide to debut a new category for Best Use of Subtlety, “Garth Ennis' 303” wouldn’t be an early front-runner. And yet, aside from that bit with the coroner, Ennis allows most of this stuff to be revealed without a lot of fuss or firework, even when the helpful omniscient narrator butts in to provide whatever the characters are thinking. The use of this tool distances, and makes the plot seem less shrill, more considered. The slimiest characters aren’t moustache-twirling; the plant manager comes off as kind of a tactless David Brent type, but it’s only through dispassionate revelation that his true cruelty is revealed. There’s nothing quite like last issue’s parade of vengeful Afghani women, still coated in the blood of their slaughtered children, smashing a US soldier’s head open with rocks. Here, the criticism is delivered in a more palatable fashion, by characters generally free of saintliness or venomous sneers (well, except for the crippled doctor). And future conflict is clearly set up: two military men without a proper war, hungry to fight for something true, on a collision course. How exactly this will play off the first half of the story remains to be seen; will the Spirit of America be saved? If bloody action by unkillable super-soldiers is the result, than this book might resemble Ennis’ “The Punisher: The End” most of all, acting as a gunpowder-burnt political fable, although this book will lack a canny utilization of a well-known Big Two icon’s character traits.

Jacen Burrows’ art remains quite nice, with far more distinctive character designs than he’d displayed in earlier issues (which leads me to believe that the sameness of the soldiers’ faces in Part One was intentionally used to establish a familial vibe), and some clean perspectives. I’ve heard complaints regarding the color work of Greg Waller (for Nimbus Studios), and I’ll readily concede that it’s quite texture-mad, filling in everything from wood-grain to blades of grass to strands of hair to the consistency of blood. The thing is, I don’t really notice this stuff until I look very closely, and even then it doesn’t bother me much; Waller knows how to manipulate the eye (well, my eye) so the page never looks cheap or amateurish. And it probably helps that when textures are used they’re used consistently; not too difficult a task considering the large amounts of accommodating white space Burrows uses in his black and white art. Waller’s also got a good sense for what pops on the page, and his palette is quite rich, especially considering all of the brown and gold demanded by the setting. But if you find such use of textures distracting, your mileage may vary, I admit.

And that old cliche about mileage goes for the book as a whole. I suspect some readers will find its critique of American injustice too broad, the deck stacked, the politics as exaggerated as the action of earlier issues, with guns blown right out of snipers’ hands with flawless aim. But Ennis’ drama still has me reading, if only to see where that old US spirit stands once we’ve reached the end, and which is the dragon to be slain, and who fires the Black Arrow.

Hay guyz, am I early?

*Sorry gang, I got no sleep last night and I had several long hours of non-comics writing all this morning, and then I had to drive around in cutting rain. Directly thereafter, I fell fast asleep, and while I desperately needed the rest I felt enormously guilty as I’d not even accomplished every last thing I’d set out to do in my non-comics day, let alone my blogging duties. I think I need to learn to budget my time a little better. So to sum up, I’m just getting to the computer right now just after midnight on the east coast after reading all two of my new comics for the week (no “Ed the Happy Clown”, which isn’t entirely surprising). At least it’s still yesterday for all of you out in California, so the time zones can forgive my tardiness a little (then again, if you‘re in England, it‘s getting into daybreak already).

*Noted ante-upper Tom Spurgeon presents no less than 1000 Things to Like About Comics. Frankly, I knew it would be an awesome list as soon as I saw Al Columbia's "I Was Killing When Killing Wasn't Cool" in the #16 slot (they're not ranked in order of quality); that's the Fleischer Bros. homage he did in issue #4 of "Zero Zero", which I mentioned last week. You should get that issue, you really should. Hmmm... I'm seeing a couple "Zero Zero" classics on that list, like Jeff Johnson's "No Erect Penises"...

Seven Soldiers - Guardian #1 (of 4)

And again, the ‘full’ title as presented on the cover seems to be “The Manhattan Guardian”, but the legal notes prefer simply “Guardian”, and we like to keep it legal here on this site. I liked how all of the headlines on the newspaper cover that the title character is bursting out of really do refer to stuff going on in this issue. And I’ll say no more on the old ‘modular’ structure for now, since I truly cannot imagine how this issue doesn’t sink the ‘every issue a self-contained story’ interpretation entirely. My own alternate ‘every miniseries a self-contained story’ and Matt Brady’s ‘every issue capable of being read without reading anything before’ are still at work, although I recognize that such structural concerns have become a distraction for me, hence my calling the analysis off until later.

This is pretty straightforward superhero work, with pretty straightforward superhero plotting, far more so than the last two entries in the project. The “Seven Soldiers” #0 bookend dolloped plenty of (effective) self-analysis atop the costumed action, and “Shining Knight” performed largely within the context of fantasy trappings for its introductory issue, but this one is a superhero origin book plain and simple, with the haunted protagonist getting his costume and becoming Better through the grace of powerful forces, in this case being hired by Mr. Stargard, a boy superhero-turned computerized media mogul with a hot paper to run and a happy tendency to speak in slightly knowingly melodramatic superhero comic terms like “Jettison your inner demons, Jake. There’s a nightmare on the ‘N’ line.” Jake will take the name of the paper itself, the Manhattan Guardian, and become its proactive superheroic avatar, the media striking back against Bad News. Really, the details of the Guardian’s job are the most interesting thing about the book, like the fact that a lot of New York readers, even DCU New York readers, don’t seem to take the paper seriously (devoted as it is entirely to fantastical local DCU events). Organization doesn’t seem to be Stargard’s strong suit, as some of the awesome technology he bestows on his Guardian doesn’t work yet, and his Newsboy Army doesn’t have all that much to offer (they’re certainly not “Global Frequency” here). For all the high technology, there’s a sense that the organization is still learning as it goes along, which is fun.

And that’s the most fun to be had; not to say that this issue isn’t an entertaining comic, but it’s not as strong as either prior “Seven Soldiers” book, nor any of Morrison’s recent Vertigo work. Maybe it’s the dialogue, which seems to be stretching a bit too hard for giddy ebullience (a Subway Pirate literally tears the skin off a man’s back while bellowing “Sure, all them years of gunpowder wine has me neurons knackered!”), although I‘m a bastard about forgiving silly lines in the context of, well, something like Subway Pirates. No, I think it’s the relatively pedestrian quality of the plot, which even resorts to the Guardian’s caring father-in-law being brutalized by villains and his beloved wife kidnapped by the cliffhanging end, as we all race off on the trail of underground treasure. And also, while this isn’t much of a complaint, I noticed that I could sense when Morrison was referencing older DC books; there’s one big bubble of text between the Guardian and his wife that couldn’t possibly serve any other purpose, and while I can’t say I was confused by the information, it did provide a strange jostle in the reading experience, if only for me to think to myself “Ah, so here’s where Grant throws candy to the historians in the audience.”

But if the background setting of the book’s story is more interesting than the story itself, at least such an environment is brought to our eyes by Cameron Stewart, who (with the assistance of awesomely-named colorist Moose Bauman) crafts a slightly dreary, weathered NYC, constantly overcast or raining, with even the high science halls of the Guardian building an ominous marble. Good action scenes too, and amusing designs for the Subway Pirates (the guy wearing light bulbs as earrings was particularly boss). Hey, it’s good, standard superheroics, and that’s not a bad thing, if that‘s what you‘re after.

Cash money hustle right now.

*Well, this should be easy on the wallet.

THIS WE

you know, just to more effectively convey the excitement of this upcoming Wednesday’s books, I think I’ll make this feature a little more specific this week; I don‘t usually buy everything I highlight in this feature, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, and often I just chat about books I feel like chatting about. While we’re at it, I also don‘t consider the comments in this section ‘reviews’, largely because they‘re too short and often I haven‘t read (nor do I ever plan to read) a quarter of the books I talk about. But just this once, I think a step away from the norm will prove useful.

THIS WEEK IN COMICS THAT I’M PLANNING TO BUY:

Ed the Happy Clown #1 (of 9): You may have heard of this one, the first major serial to come out of Chester Brown’s classic “Yummy Fur”; the collected edition has been out of print for a while. Now it’s back, but not in an updated trade form. From what I understand, Brown is simply re-serializing the unedited version of the story in this miniseries, while simultaneously working on an updated, reworked version to go direct-to-collection. Thus, this is your last (?) shot to pick up the original version (well, aside from just buying the old trade used), although since bits and pieces from the original “Yummy Fur” serialization were dropped for the first trade version, I don’t even know which ‘original’ version we’re talking about here. Someone please correct me if I’ve gotten any of this wrong; I think this first issue will also feature an explanation by Brown, and hopefully some nice extras will be spread out across this series. This is far wilder material than what Brown’s later works might lead you to expect, so it’ll be fascinating to see how the older Brown plans to tinker with the story later on.

Seven Soldiers - Guardian #1 (of 4): Yes! The “Seaguy” team is back at it! Everyone loved “Seaguy”, right? DC really must have loved it, since despite the fact that the “Seaguy” trade was just recently released (and could presumably use some tasty cross-promotion), and despite this being the first subsequent re-teaming of writer Grant Morrison and artist Cameron Stewart, DC’s own website declines to mention poor “Seaguy” anywhere in the “Guardian” hype, opting instead to mention Stewart‘s work on “Catwoman”, which does make some sense given that people actually bought that one. Maybe DC is concerned that none of their DCU readers have heard of those weird things going on at Vertigo, too… anyway, here’s an idea. Let’s all take the wonderful fantasy of additional issues of “Seaguy” and put them in the drawer now, next to the “Marvel Boy” file, so my heart won’t break anymore. Ok?

Garth Ennis’ 303 #4 (of 6): Ennis seems to have split the book in half, with the first three issues having taken place in the past, and the remainder presumably taking place in the future, as our ultra-collected Russian super-soldier (far closer to recent Russian tourist Frank Castle than many of the protagonists of Ennis’ “War Story” work, though this book at least faintly resembles both of those venerable Ennis projects) journeys off to strike a major blow, presumably against the US. The book has gotten quite good at teasing the reader with all manner of gruesome political possibilities, playing up the natural serialization down-time with questions as to how far the story is willing to go. I really don’t know where this story is planning to end up, and that’s a nice place for this type of book to be in.

And that’s all. Hmm, “Ed the Happy Clown” is only $3 too, which is kinda cheap for a D&Q book at this point. The $4 price point on Avatar’s color work is holding strong though. So yeah, $10 of comics this week. Three comics, $10.

Before tax.

Did I say this would be easy on the wallet?

Well, comparatively…

The review I kept alluding to when my other computer wasn't working.

*Come! Stroll through my museum of recent history! My archives of critical potstickers, fresh from being fresh from the skillet! Get me an icebox, Madame, and a militia of wax cylinders - I have ideas to transmute!!!

LAST WEEK’S REVIEWS:

Street Angel #5

Shining Knight #1 (of 4) (with a special bonus classic of surrealist film)

Mauretania (from 1990, an odd, moody comic of environment by Chris Reynolds, a unique and still little-known talent)

Bigfoot #1-2 (of 4), Wild Girl #5 (of 6)

Shaolin Cowboy Vol. 54 Issue #2 (shaping up to be a very nice little book if I do say so myself)

These are NOT wax cylinders they’re plain over-the-counter candlesticks WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO PULL, MY LEG?!

Jimbo #1-2

Ah, the imprint! Nothing in comics is more pleasurable. Marvel’s Epic. DC’s Vertigo. Dark Horse’s Legend. DC’s Helix. Marvel’s Tsunami. Malibu’s Bravura. Caliber’s Tapestry. Fantagraphics’ Monster. Each and every one of them cherished throughout the generations, their hallowed titles resounding in comics history. Today, we speak of such an imprint, one of the most curious of them all, yet among the most understandable.

Zongo.

An imprint of Bongo.

Bongo, as I trust most of you are aware, is the company that puts out all of those books related to “The Simpsons”. They’re still going strong today, having weathered a decade’s worth of market turbulence. “The Simpsons” as a television program is nothing if not a long-term survivor, and such a jolly attribute seems to be shared by the comics company which bears its license.

But Matt Groening was working long before the show first aired. I’m sure you know that. “Life in Hell”, his magazine/newspaper strip, had been rolling since 1978. He’d known some people in the scene at the time, the independent comics scene, which he still felt a kinship with. And now suddenly, it was 1995, and that TV show was a smash, and now he had a whole line of comics to work with. Why not provide a forum for some prime independent creators? Thus came Zongo in 1995, and among the primary creators recruited to provide material was “Raw” legend Gary Panter (for the record, the other major name was Mary Fleener, who produced two issues of her eponymous book, “Fleener”).

Panter, of course, you’ll recognize as the author of the recent, critically divisive, shoot-for-the-moon oversized hardcover medieval literature cum trash culture mash-up “Jimbo in Purgatory”. But my heart remains with his 1988 collection “Jimbo: Adventures in Paradise”, a dizzying display of shifting styles, ranging from hi-sci-fi Kirby exactitude to “Sin City”-style heavy shadow to scribbly doodling to The Greatest Drug Use Sequence In Comics History I’m Not Kidding to frankly astonishing use of flecks of orange paint (if you’ve read this book, you know exactly what I’m talking about). And all of it in service to Jimbo, Panter’s everypunk hero, wandering a future mutant world in search of whatever. Hear me gush some more right here (and damn if that post title isn‘t one of the best I‘ve ever written).

So hey, new Panter! But “Jimbo”, the pamphlet series released by Zongo, only lasted seven issues. Indeed, according to Panter himself (scroll down a bit), the book was “completely, terribly unpopular,” and by the end, only about 1000 copies of each issue were being printed. And hey, I’ll concede that Panter’s work isn’t the most immediately accessible; it takes time to absorb his mutating aesthetic, to appreciate his sense of story.

But the two issues of “Jimbo” that I managed to score, the earliest and presumably easiest to find issues, probably don’t do Panter any favors in the first impressions department. Everything in these books is rendered in Panter’s loosest, simplest, sketchiest format, although the careful eye can detect the visual style quietly growing more complex on progression through these issues. And one has to imagine that a few new readers were at least somewhat tempted to peep into this new book by this new imprint of this popular company putting out popular books, and what do they find? I can only speculate as to their reactions, but I suspect that a little “THREE BUCKS MY KID CAN DO THIS THE HELL?!” wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. None of these new readers would have had any exposure to Paner’s wide range of styles. But perhaps even if they had, Panter’s particular feel would still prove to be unpalatable to a wider audience. Perhaps this first impression only hastened the inevitable.

Regardless, we got seven issues of new Gary Panter, and these two are pretty interesting. They’re both set up as a collection of one-page strips, each with their own titles or cast listings atop, and indeed the first few pages of issue #1 do provide some seemingly unconnected gags. But gradually, characters recur. Soon, scenes are continuing from page to page, despite the presence of those individual titles. Subplots form, and cross-cutting begins, with adventures carried over from issue to issue, and it‘s possible that some of them aren‘t being presented to us in proper chronological order. A city boy, Henry Webb, goes to visit his country cousins Songy and Yoyo; this leads to a barnyard chicken genocide, a severed limb, and the eventual rising of a mighty supernatural Rooster. A young boy named Bob War falls in with Fluke, a street-toughened punk, and they try to survive in an abandoned half of a bus with a little help from Senor Groty, a friendly zombie. Meanwhile, Jimbo is captured by a roving Friend Catcher (basically an armored police vehicle) and is sent away to the Time Motel, a prison made up to resemble a suburban bourgeois comfort zone. By the end of issue #2, a genuinely complex series of stories with a large cast has been assembled, and their world has become more and more defined. Notions of security v. individualism have been raised, with social class as a backing theme. It’s involving stuff, but it requires attention, and a certain affinity for rough, squiggly lines, and a determined lack of polish.

I liked these books. I want to see where Panter goes with this material. There’s so much unanswered, so much room for expectation. Do the visuals become more refined or complex, as the strip-by-strip progression suggests? Where will Panter go with his themes? With his characters? I liked the characters a lot; apart from structural concerns, I wanted to know what the axe-wielding Rooster planned to do after finishing his beer, or how Jimbo intended to confront his next-door neighbors. Apart from the simplistic reaction I’ve described above, the reaction of that hypothetical Panter newbie flipping through these pages for the first time, perhaps there’s a different, equally damaging first impression to be given by these books. Perhaps one might stare at these doodles, and instantly deem them impenetrable Art, with that ugly, damned capital ‘A’. A neo-primitive visual exercise, or some ironic statement, or a wank of the form. This is just as wrong a path, as it obscures your view of Panter the storyteller, spinning his yarn. As short-lived as this series was, it has already succeeded in pulling me in with only two issues, and it did it through words and pictures combining to tell me a tale, and this is no unique feat among even the most ephemeral of comics imprints, but a worthy feat nonetheless.

Go hunt for these comics.

This one is good.

*Well, there’s not too much to say today about comics - at least, not 'comics' as in those pamphlets you can read and roll up into your back pocket while hopping onto your bike to head on down to the corner store and buy some peach rings with those spare nickels you got from Mr. Sherman for clearing the branches and dog flop out of his back yard while whistling “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman which has been trapped in my head with hostages for the last three days and it’s not coming out until it gets a helicopter and a helicopter’s never gonna land on my head because it’s not flat enough. No, not those 'comics'.

But we’ll cover some comics-related stuff, oh yes. Because comics are everywhere! Comics have infiltrated each and every intimate nook and privatized cranny of our Internet republic. So it’s little surprise that a whiff of comics can be smelled even here:

At the greatest place ever found.

BEHOLD.

This site is an archive of videos relating to time trials. Specifically, video game time trials. Gamers competing against one another via emulation to see who can complete a game within the fastest time possible. It’s not all amazing live skill; carefully edited save-states and slow-motion maneuvers (sped up after completion) along with carefully programmed button inputs (sometimes with two onscreen players moved at once, like a conductor heading a symphony), allow for some truly supernatural moments, but everyone here is a master at their chosen game nonetheless, believe me. All runs are recorded, with the very cream of the crop posted for everyone’s edification. There’s Genesis, Super Nintendo, and greatest of them all: dozens and dozens and dozens of vintage 8-bit NES games, played all the way through, sometimes in less than five minutes. And you’ll believe that it’s all possible, that a demigod gamer might one day descend from 8-bit heaven to perform these moves on your precious top-loading home NES counsel, the one you scored down at the firemen’s picnic that summer for $30 at the pawn shop tent.

The creators call this stuff ‘art’. They’re damn right.

Now much of this material will require you to be Torrent-capable to view, but several prime selections are available for direct download in AVI format via links to archive.org (actually, if you have another lifetime to spare you should download the entirety of the Prelinger Archives over there, but that‘s the subject of another post). I’ll just point out a few of these few fine direct downloads by name, since all of us will be able to enjoy them. The “Excitebike” video, for example, is fucking sick. All six levels in under six minutes. Amazing leaps and speed. NES speed suddenly like real speed. “A Boy and His Blob” - I was so unspeakably happy to have finally beaten this carefully designed (and highly underrated) game all by myself when I was a kid. Now, see it done in just over five and one half minutes. The more complex games take longer. “The Adventures of Bayou Billy” was a ridiculously tough game, with (badly mounted) hand-to-hand fighting, zapper interludes, and “Rad Racer”-type driving segments. This one takes close to twenty minutes. Why, there’s even glimpses of foreign material! Like the original Japanese version of the excellent “Bionic Commando”, there called “Resurrection of Hitler - Top Secret”. All Nazi references had to be cut from the US version, but they left in a stunningly gory exploding head sequence, and even tossed in the word (hide the kids’ eyes!) ‘damn’ near the ending, unheard of in the squeaky-clean Nintendo Nation. Fourteen minutes. And note that each and every entry comes with vital stats and informative notes (did the player take damage, or use warps, or exploit glitches?), and some even sport player commentary in text format.

And then, there’s Batman.

Really, I should say “Batman”, the Tim Burton movie tie-in cart from Sunsoft. A pretty well-regarded game. Ten and one third minutes. You really want this video.

Looking at the game, one’s suspicions can’t help but be aroused to the possibility that Sunsoft had a totally unrelated platform action game well into development when they scored the cherry Bat-License, and a few sprites were swapped, some cinema scenes whipped up, and viola! “Batman”! Could there be any other reason as to why Batman is largely fighting machines, and traversing through electric mazes? Why the bosses feature flying robots and glowing computer cores? Why there’s no characters from the movie or comics, save for the Joker at the very end, who by the way can now summon lightning from the heavens (that would probably spice up the comics, though)?

But actually, I like it that way. Especially in the video they’ve got posted. I like to think of it as “Grant Morrison’s Batman”. The Caped Crusader running through a wild sci-fi world, utterly in control. He doesn’t even hit his enemies if he doesn’t have to. He’s hurt once, I think, but only to lure a foe into position. Sometimes, he even fires a weapon into the darkness, knowing an enemy is coming right up at the edge of the screen. It’s because he’s prepared for every eventuality, like in the books. I bet Morrison would be ok with the Joker shooting lightning. Why should the Joker shoot lightning? No. Why shouldn’t the Joker shoot lightning? Try that on.

And then the ending. Oh boy. I forgot to mention that half the fun of these videos is finally seeing the conclusions of all those classics that were too much for you back in the day (hey there, “Milon’s Secret Castle”). Well at the end of “Batman” (eek! SPOILERS I guess!) the Grant Morrison Bats suddenly goes all Bob Kane, picking up the Joker, messily misquoting a famous line from the movie in vintage NES translation style, and then HE CHUCKS THE JOKER RIGHT OFF THE GODDAMNED ROOF! No Arkham, no tricky little tying his foot to a stone gargoyle, Batman just heaves the Joker off a fucking building to his fucking death like it’s nothing. Man, Video Game Batman is so proactive compared to Comics Batman. Just look at all the time and strain saved by Video Game Batman! And the hundreds of innocent lives too. Jason Todd would still be ripping off hubcaps with a smile on his face if only Video Game Batman had been on the scene a few years earlier.

And even then - the rest of the ending! There’s no more dialogue (mercifully). Just a long series of still shots of the Joker’s broken corpse, cutting closer and closer, until we’re staring right into his dead eyes and his soft grin. That’s all. The music cuts out. Fade to black. Credits. Perhaps Sunsoft is urging us to consider who the true madman was in this lucrative tie-in passion play.

Maybe it was us.

Us and our emulation.

More beautiful killings.

Er, anyway, it’s a really awesome site, and you need to spend forever and a day there, unless you’ve already known about it for months because I’m way behind the Internet curve. Who knows?

Darrow! There you are!

*Recipe for magic: I stumbled home at about two or three in the morning and for some unfathomable reason I couldn’t get to sleep so I started to rustle through my stacks and stacks of bargain comics that I’d bought in bulk from months back. No better time to read those fuckers than in such a state at that particular time of the evening.

You know what suddenly hit me, around the time I finally got to sleeping at 6:00AM or so? The old Fantagraphics anthology “Zero Zero”, which began in 1995 and ran for 27 pamphlet-form issues, was an amazing goddamned series. I managed to get eighteen issues of that thing for one dollar each, and there’s so much good stuff in there that never got collected into a trade or whatever that it's baffling. I guess the ‘big’ serial the book did was Richard Sala’s “The Chuckling Whatsit”, which ran for eighteen chapters, although that one did get compiled into a now out-of-print collected form (which I think Fanta is reviving this year). But far greater were such lost gems as Mack White’s “Homunculus”, an excellent blend of ancient myth and Christian iconography with bizarre sexual images and subtexts, and a quest worthy of a Cinemascope epic, with the title character searching for the lost half of his body, which provides the key to his powers as a ¼ god (you see, he used to be a full-sized man with a miniature twin growing out of his belly, but then the Evil Romans had him crucified and his mini self escaped, but now he needs to locate his big body to regain his powers, of course). It's fascinating work, and White's meaty, realist artwork makes some of the wilder creatures all the more potent, like a goddess' winged steed formed largely of living phalluses. Great work.

Then there’s Kim Deitch, who had both “The Strange Secret of Molly O’Dare” in issues #6-8 and “The Search for Smilin’ Ed” in issues #21-27 (excluding #23 and 26), providing some of the tall-tale fact-flinging action as currently seen in Deitch’s superb “The Stuff of Dreams” (which every last one of you needs to check out, two issues available, go go go). Plus, the earlier serial ties into some of Deitch’s prior work on his 1989 “Shadowland” series, although it also provides a truly satisfying stand-alone story by itself. Neither of these “Zero Zero” works (nor “Shadowland”, actually) have been collected into trade form, as far as I can tell.

And while it’s not a serialized story or anything, some of these issues have some impressive short work by the infamous and non-prolific Al Columbia, including an incredible two-color Fleischer Brothers homage in issue #4. This stuff is leaps and bounds above anything he’d done before, such as in his scratchy, shock-laden 1994-1995 two-issue series “The Biologic Show”, capturing a keen design sense and some brilliantly smooth character art. Which only makes one more anxious to see new work, which apart from his scripting work on “The Pogostick” (and from my experience, pure scripting isn’t where Columbia’s primary strengths reside), has been sadly absent.

And there’s tons more. Tons more. Gotta raise up those hopes for “Mome”…

Oh, and I didn't wake up until about 4:00 this afternoon.

Shaolin Cowboy Vol. 54 Issue #2

Yep, found it yesterday. Yep, they’re still playing that game with the title. Oddly, all they had in stock was Mike Mignola’s variant cover, so that‘s now what I own.

I’m really starting to understand the ‘Vol. 54’ in the legal print, since writer/artist Geof Darrow is plainly in no hurry to reveal any background about his title hero, leaving us to imagine a no-doubt complicated backstory with scores of prior adventures. All you need to know is that the Shaolin Cowboy rides through the world on his faithful talking donkey, Lord Evelyn Dunkirk Winnieford Esq. the Third, and confronts many many enemies that he’s made along the way. This second issue brings our opening arc to a close, and you may to surprised to realize that any sort of ‘arc’ had formed. Maybe I should say that the story here resolves itself. Yeah, that’s better.

If you’ll recall from countless reviews, issue #1 of this title featured an utterly ridiculous ten-page spread of assorted villains, which actually inspired a bit of admiration on my part at the sheer conspicuous consumption cheek of it all. This issue is not like that; in fact, it’s quite plot-heavy. The ‘plot’ is 100% nonsense, admittedly, but it’s entertaining nonsense, if maybe a little more forced than the easy-going absurdity of last issue.

As we last left Our Heroes, a whole lot of villains were dead, and a whole lot more were still alive, and a talking crab burst in to stop the issue. Here, we learn this tragic archvillain’s story. He once lived an idyllic life with his family and betrothed in a run-down restaurant’s tank, until the dark day when the Shaolin Cowboy burst in and ordered the all-you-can-eat special. The only thing on this human plane that can match the Cowboy’s martial arts skill is his appetite for discount seafood, and the Hungry Man Meal Deal soon became a crab family holocaust, with only one survivor. Thusly, this bitter crab, King Crab in fact, vowed revenge and embarked on three solid weeks of martial arts training with the Cowboy’s own former temple, who seem to really hate him. All through this narration, the long line of villains (well, the ones who aren’t dead) plead to tell their own origin stories, King Crab trips over more than a handful of factual errors in the telling of his tale (all dutifully logged by the Cowboy’s steed), many a wildly juvenile joke is told (“My lips don’t concern your ass,” declared the King - lol he’s talking about a DONKEY folks, no sweat!), several somewhat weak industry references are put forth (an “Avengers Disassembled” joke?), there’s awful puns galore, and a grown man/average-sized crab martial arts showdown brings us to the end.

This is pretty handily the best new book I got this week, and really a lot of fun, even though you can start to sense Darrow straining to be Wacky! at certain points. But even when overextended, the writing style matches Darrow’s gorgeous art perfectly, and his excellence at fight scenes is undimmed by the passage of time. Let's not forget the fine colors and letters by Peter Doherty, or the generally amusing prologue written by the Wachowski brothers (also the book's publishers). And unlike that other book Burlyman’s putting out, I didn’t feel like my intelligence was being insulted and there’s no pretension toward any freshman-year dorm room political message. No, the message of “Shaolin Cowboy” is a mature and insightful one, truly words for the sophisticated reader to savor, as articulated by the dear Lord Winnieford:

“This is why I stick to processed foods… the processing plant serves as a barrier between the consumer and a potentially vengeful relative of the eaten party.”

Now that’s one to grow on.

Geof Darrow! WHERE ARE YOU?!?!

*Piping hot new column up. This time, I learn that comics creators are real people just like you and me. There’s also roman numerals, so you know it’s a classy piece of literature that will resonate throughout time. Get in on the ground floor.

*Hey! I’d not linked to the blog of Comics Journal, Comic Book Galaxy, and Movie Poop Shoot veteran Christopher Allen, a fine comics critic and writer! BUT NOW I HAVE! Go an' read.

Bigfoot #1-2 (of 4)

Nothing like slapping down a solid $8 (before tax!) for two issues worth of good mucky exploitation fun. And let’s give credit where credit’s due: IDW is clearly trying to deliver a superior product for their premium price (actually, as a bit of an aside, it’s amusing to me how much attention Marvel is currently getting regarding the twenty-five cent increase on only books squatting at the bottom tier of the pricing scale, when independent publishers like IDW and Avatar seem to be settling down on a uniform $4 price point for their color 32-page works, which perhaps signals an industry ‘standard’ alteration among even the more action/horror-minded areas of color independent publishing, to say nothing of artcomics or self-publishing - ah, but I forget, they’re not Marvel or DC). To paraphrase old (?) saying, the only comic that’s too expensive is the one that isn’t good, and IDW’s work succeeds in providing a good presentation: all of the ads are relegated to the back, the books design radiates professionalism and gloss, and there’s even bonus back-up prose fiction in every issue of this particular title. Yep, honest-to-god short stories, albeit sometimes cleverly based on other IDW series, giving it a dandy cross-pollination back-up effect. For the record, IDW Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall’s “30 Days of Night” piece in issue #2 is much better than Dan Taylor’s ultra-generic vampire-hunting short in issue #1, though neither are particularly mind-thrashing. Still, these little stories add bits of reading time to the book and provide a fair diversion, and take the edge off the premium fee.

I’m just not entirely convinced that the main story itself is quite worth the cash, though it’s far from awful. It’s co-written by IDW stalwart Steve Niles and noted horror/exploitation film enthusiast Rob Zombie, and while both men seem to share an affinity for ye olde horror tropes mixed in with bits of humor, I’d say the slightly grittier, measurably sleazier atmosphere in this book reflects a bit more Zombie than Niles, at least in vintage grindhouse influence.

The saga begins in 1973 on a camping ground within the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Little Billy has his head filled with comics and seems perturbed at his parents’ frisky ways (“Mom! Don‘t call Dad your little baby. That‘s queer! What‘s going on here?”). But this magical and idyllic outdoors excursion comes to an appalling end when no less than the infamous Bigfoot bursts through the walls of the cabin as Billy’s folks prepare for lovemaking (amusingly, the monster brutally punishes a couple for their amorous ways, as per genre convention, except that the couple here is long-married and within a monogamous relationship - no matter to Bigfoot!). Right in front of poor Billy’s eyes, his poppa is killed in a viciously gory fashion and his mother is dragged away in her nudity to the monster’s lair for heaven knows what. Well… actually Billy does seem to know ‘what’, as he dreams of the monster having replaced his father in his tender life. As years pass, the monster continues his reign of terror, mashing teenage quad riders to hamburger and crushing local motorists under catapulted grizzly bear corpses. Only the now-grown and none-too-adjusted Billy, himself married and a father, can possibly confront the beast. Did I mention that the local sheriff seems to be covering up the monster’s activities throughout the years? And that he doesn’t seem to age over the course of three decades? And that he face sort of resembles Bigfoot’s? And that after Bigfoot’s right eye is injured the corresponding eye on the sheriff’s face is always kept in shadow except for one panel where it seems a bit more squinty than his other eye? Is the book drawing connections between two monsters, or tipping its hand a wee bit early? U, gentle readers, decide.

And that’s half of the series done with.

But it’s fun, provided that one is simpatico with the slime-ball cult horror vibe of the piece. I for one can practically hear the chintzy English dubbing over Italian lip movements while making my way through these books, and the gore/chase scenes are well-mounted and crisp. And so very much of that credit can only go to artist Richard Corben, possibly the most perfect visual choice for this material imaginable. His round, oh-so-slightly caricatured humans flee with grace and vigor from the marvelously mangy title beastie. The action is fast, with panel borders breaking down as the cast becomes more panicked, and he knows when to employ tiny touches like a barking dog’s hollow glowing dot-eyes, or neighbors peeping out the window at an unclothed housewife running from her shower. Nicely complementary hues by no less than three colorists (Martin Breccia and Nestor Pereyra across the board, and with Tom B. Long joining the squad with issue #2).

So it’s a fun, mean little monster-mash, pleasantly disreputable horror. But it’s gonna remain up to you if this sort of thing is worth the cash that IDW is asking for, not an insubstantial sum. It’s good that the book is relatively lavish, and fun, and utterly without weight, since its appearance and execution is geared toward such a scale. But the costs of fun are going up, and one should be aware of exactly what sort of fun one is expecting for their four dollars, until such a price becomes such a standard that such things are only unconsciously considered. As it is now, I liked it, hit to the pocket as it may be.

Wild Girl #5 (of 6)

The structure is maintained in this issue. I’ll grant this to “Wild Girl”: it’s intent on not stretching its plot to six issue of trade-ready material by engaging in gratuitous set-up or interminable conversation. Much of this book, especially the last three issues, involves our title heroine chatting with some animal pals, then going on some sort of mild quest (climb a structure, investigate a greenhouse, survive the sewers), always interrupted by a ravishing J.H. Williams III-illustrated interlude, then we have a tiny bit of falling action regarding the incremental progression of the larger plot. Not bad choices, but the problem is that even with such quests and journeys scattered throughout, the book still feels like it’s only biding time, though in a less explicit and arguably more attractive way than average for today’s comics.

This issue, the newly uniformed heroine is on her way to rescue her baby brother from the clutches of the assuredly wicked though barely defined Dog Man. The quickest route into action is through the sewers, so she drops in and encounters a big crocodile (alligator?), which prompts some Williams-helmed history of godly alligators (crocodiles?) in Ancient Egypt. Williams is trying out new styles every issue; this time, he seems to be channeling Moebius, with plenty of clean, precise lines, and Tony Avina’s colors lightening accordingly. Primary artist Shawn McManus has brought on an inker, Andrew Pepoy (who shares equal cover billing - nice), and there’s little change in his attractive cartoony stylings. Always a fine-looking book we’ve got.

And it’s not that writers Leah Moore and John Reppion don’t know how to craft some fun dialogue (although there’s considerably less joking around in this issue than average) or render the mythological sidebars interesting. It’s just that the overall feel of the work is one of repetition, of wheel spinning, of gaining little ground. Perhaps next issue, which presumably will have to explain the purpose/intent/methods of the lead villain while providing the big climactic conflict at the same time, shall offer a deviation from the familiar movement of half of this miniseries. Indeed, I expect it will have to, merely to provide a satisfactory conclusion to this spread-out tale.

And now, comics from a ways back.

*None of my local shops (I checked three in my crazed rush… well, one of them is only five minutes away from the other but still) had a single copy of “Shaolin Cowboy” #2. Indeed, one of them indicated that none had arrived at all in the weekly shipment. Anyone else denied their Darrow this week?

Mauretania

All the credit for my checking this book out goes to Seth of “Clyde Fans” fame, who caught my attention with his essay on the works of writer/artist Chris Reynolds in “The Comics Journal” #265 (the William Steig issue), in which he dubbed Reynolds “the most underrated cartoonist of the last 20 years.” It’s a safe bet that unless you read that piece in the Journal too (or saw Marc Sobel‘s review of the recent UK-published Reynolds collection “The Dial and Other Stories” over at the Galaxy), you’ve not heard of this creator. That’s understandable, since I don’t believe much of his work has been published in the US at all, save for some shorts in the third and fourth Comics Journal Specials. But this project, his longest comics story, a 1990 original graphic novel, is pretty easy to track down online for well under ten US dollars; it was released by Penguin Books in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in a prose-sized trade paperback format, smaller than average for a comics trade.

Reynolds was already a comics veteran by the time this book was released; he’d been involved with the much-admired “Escape” magazine, and had self-published his own ongoing series, “Mauretania Comics”, since 1986. The series was comprised of short stories, some of them focusing on a mysterious, sci-fi type character named Monitor, clad in a space helmet and visor and wandering around a curiously unstuck-in-time landscape. Sometimes, he’d cross over into one of the book’s other recurring features, like the Cinema Detectives, who also seem to inhabit this strange world. From what few examples of these stories I’ve managed to read, I’ve seen a lot of ‘mood’ pieces, with an emphasis on environment and place, coupled with lengthy captions, which occasionally take up over half of whichever panel they’re in. Sixteen issues of “Mauretania Comics” were produced, even after the publication of the “Mauretania” graphic novel, with the final installment appearing in 1991. Some of this stuff is reprinted in the aforementioned “The Dial and Other Stories”, which you can find out more about at the site of the publisher, Kingly Books. There’s mention on their front page of the book possibly being released in the US soon, which would be quite nice.

But I’m here to discuss the “Mauretania” graphic novel, which holds its own special place in comics history, as the first graphic novel to be commissioned in the UK by a major book publisher. It’s not a collection or a reprint of anything (although two bonus reprints of related shorts are included in the back). According to Seth, this large story (around 120 pages) actually fits into the “Mauretania Comics” ‘continuity’, but it’s very much a stand-alone work; no prior knowledge will be needed to read it. I’ve used this term before, and I’m sure I’ll use it again, but I can only say that it’s a most curious comic book. The back cover compares Reynolds to (among others) filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, and I’d say that it’s an apt comment, in more ways than one.

The plot of the book, as it is, follows a young woman named Susan, recently unemployed as the firm she was working at, Fern Ltd., has gone out of business. She’s also been trying to avoid her now ex-boss, who’s been confiding a bit too much personal info with her, more than she feels comfortable with; she’s recently seen the end of a long-term relationship, and is living with her mother. On her final day of work, she decides on a whim, instead of going home, to explore along a stream that she’s often observed from her office window. In her travels, she spots a weird figure, clad in a space helmet and visor (sound familiar?), observing a nearby factory. And soon thereafter, out of the blue, she’s accepted for a position at the new agency in town, Reynal Import/Export, the most lethally boring workplace in human history. But, in an odd coincidence, her old boss has also been accepted for work there. And everyone seems to be unusually interested in what they were doing at Fern prior to its close. And why is that guy in the helmet lurking around in the building across the street, joined to Reynal by a single electrical wire?

I’m going to have to toss up a ***SPOILER*** warning now, not because I’m going to ruin the ending or anything, but because any discussion of what the book seems to be getting at requires disclosure of some plot surprises. Please skip down to where I say it‘s safe if you don‘t want to know any more, although I‘ll certainly be revealing less than what Seth did in his Journal piece.

It soon becomes evident through Susan’s poking around that Reynal is not a real business at all, but a front for the “trendy new police force” called Rational Control. Rational Control has the man in the helmet, his name not Monitor but Jimmy, under surveillance. They believe that he’s been masterminding recent business collapses, including Fern’s. Since Susan is such a master sleuth, she’s asked to contact Jimmy across the street, and gather some inside scoop on is methods. And Jimmy is awfully forthcoming with his story, revealing to Susan that he’s exploring the power of ‘nodal points’, certain places in time and space where a certain action will trigger a far greater reaction, usually somewhere away from the original action, via a chain of events. Jimmy receives information on how to exploit these nodal points from an unknown, intuitive, possibly supernatural source. For example, all he had to do was release an envelope into the wind to ensure the collapse of Fern, as the sight of the envelope had a powerful semi-conscious effect on Susan’s ex-boss, leading to the downfall of his business venture. He doesn’t quite know why he’s even been doing this; he‘s entirely a creature of intuition, his gut leading the way. He also has an obsessive-compulsive sort of habit of retracing his steps wherever he goes, which will also come into play. He’s certainly different than the agents of Rational Control, who spend so much time analyzing and investigating alternatives and dryly observing evidence that they rarely succeed in the irregular moments when they take action toward anything.

That’s the dynamic that Seth identifies as the book’s main concern: the rational v. irrational. Having now read the book myself, it’s hard to argue with such a reading. And it’s also hard to argue with Seth’s comment that Reynolds kind of stacks the deck in favor of the irrational, characterizing all of the ‘rational’ forces as barely competent starched-shirts, with the major limitation on the irrational characters being their connections to rationality, the ‘wire’ connecting Jimmy’s building to Rational Control’s. Although there’s surely room for multiple interpretations of what’s going on. Given that Jimmy is answering to unexplainable forces that ask him to do odd things in favor of change in the world, in opposition to overtly thinking things out, one can read the story as an affirmation of the power of spirituality in everyday life, and indeed as the key to rendering the world changed. Trust in chosen figures with access to higher powers, rather than in flawed human thought. As Jimmy remarks near the conclusion of the book, “The new world was made while we were there,” placing the power necessary to truly alter the would out of human grasp, or at least human understanding. Reynolds doesn’t name any particular religion or spiritual regimen, though. Indeed, most of what can be dubbed ‘supernatural’ in the story occurs with no instructions to humankind on how to access it, or anything resembling a message or dogma, or even a reassurance. It’s the unknown choosing to remain as unknown as possible. Or maybe Reynolds simply advocates a human turn away from rationality, and perhaps a trust in the world itself, or even an innate power within humankind itself, apart from the intellect and thus disconnecting the possibility of understanding it. 'Trusting in the world' seems to fit best, as Reynolds’ art emphasizes the environment his characters exist in, nature and structures, almost to the detriment of the human characters trudging atop that soil, a criticism that‘s also occasionally levied upon Tarkovsky, another artist preoccupied with spiritual concerns (not to mention the fact that Jimmy’s habit of going through curious retracings of movement at the beck and call of inexplicable forces ties him directly to the protagonist of Tarkovsky’s “Stalker“). Which isn’t to say that every character is hazily defined; Susan comes of as a likable, rounded, interesting character at least. But she’s so often a shadow or a dot or a smudge among the scenery, itself almost a person.

***OK… SPOILERS OVER NOW***

Check out the gallery from the site above, plus this Mauretania site, for plenty of examples of Reynolds’ visual style (and why not read an interview too?). He employs extremely thick black outlines and character features; it’s a small miracle that character expressions come off as well as they do, seeing how they’re crafted from solid blots of ink. Environmental details are filled in with thinner lines, dots and scratches. The page layouts are almost exclusively strict four-panel grids, with the occasional rectangular panel replacing the top or bottom tier. As I’ve said before, Reynolds’ work is quite verbose, with lengthy captions employing an omniscient narrator to relate the story. Sometimes, he narrates events we can plainly see. Near the beginning of the book, a caption informs us that Fern has gone out of business, followed by character remarking no more than two panel later: “Well, that looks like the end of the line for Fern Ltd.” But more often, Reynolds lets us know what his characters are thinking in a general, broad sense. He also uses thought balloons for more direct ponderings, something no longer seen very often in comics, especially ‘serious’ comics. It’s through both character information as well as Reynolds’ visual renderings that our portrait of this world is created, and it’s a full, interesting portrait. Even as the plot grows ever so slightly forced by the end, one is willing to accept more than average, because the stage has been so carefully set. And there’s moments of levity amid the wandering and pondering: a paint magnate remarks to a lunch date upon receiving a telephone call “You’ll have to excuse me. My staff say they’ve just come up with a million new colours.” And again, such things are acceptable in this world.

It’s a quiet book (yet with some many words!), and not prone to action or danger, though there’s certainly some suspense, if only in wondering how this conflict will resolve itself, with all of the players in place. I mentioned some bonus stories being offered: one of them, “Whisper in the Shadows”, which was also covered in the Seth essay, reveals the secret connection between Jimmy (who was originally a character in the Cinema Detectives wing of “Mauretania Comics”) and Monitor (who never appears in the main storyline of this book), while providing some haunting ruminations on childhood loss, with film noir touches. And an additional story, “We See Each Other” sees another meeting between Monitor and the Detectives, with a similar concern with ominous businesses and weird mental abilities. It all relates to the story proper in interesting ways, and makes one want to seek out more of Reynolds’ work, which will hopefully become more visible in the US in the near future.

This was enough time.

*In case you didn’t see it, I updated twice yesterday, so scroll way on down to two reviews of recent comics, which I managed to write just in time for this week’s new comics to come out. Yay me.

THIS WEEK IN COMICS:

Mighty light on the wallet this week. That’s good, though. I could use the break. And maybe if you’re buying as few new pamphlets this week as me, you might want to put some of that extra cash toward…

100%: Sure it’s twenty-five bucks, but it’s over 250 pages of awesome Paul Pope art, building an unusually convincing future urban world with gritty, steaming detail. There’s murder on the streets. People pile into clubs to enjoy the latest pleasure: Gastro - the art of an exotic dancer cavorting around on stage with the sloshing mass of her inner organs captured and beamed onto viewscreens surrounding the stage. Nudity is no longer enough; the latest fetish is peering literally under the skin. But the workers of one of these clubs (and the people they know, or used to know) are still looking for friendship and love. Really, this is a romance comic, with several pairs of characters hooking up for the first time or reconnecting after a long period. And still the City surrounds them, maybe defining them, the progression of the world defying the tenderness of their hearts. Even if you missed Pope’s excellent recent issue of “Solo” (that’s issue #3), this is a fine introduction to his long-form storytelling, and possibly his single finest complete work. And the more seasoned fans will doubtlessly enjoy the way in which Pope carefully reconfigures previously unrealized ideas, bits and pieces of his abandoned Japanese-market “Smoke Navigator” story (itself collected in the long out-of-print but painfully pretty “Buzz Buzz Comics Magazine”) here, notions from a long-promised but never-produced “Escapo”-related story titled “The Fighter” there. And yet, it all fits together in this city, these old and new stories, these old and young people. This collected edition will feature a whole bunch of design sketches and other bonuses, and hopefully all of Pope’s background-setting prose material from the various individual issues of the original serialization. You really want to try this book out; I highly recommend it.

Tony Millionaire’s Sock Monkey: That Darn Yarn: Although, for far less money you can score the latest “Sock Monkey” epic from the incomparable Tony Millionaire. I see that “Sock Monkey” has more or less abandoned the pamphlet form to focus entirely on original hardcovers. The last outing, “Uncle Gabby”, was basically an extended color issue in hardcover book format. This is also a hardcover, weighing in at 40 pages, but each side of the book features a different storyline, the left side regarding the title character’s creation, and the right side focusing on his unraveling after snagging himself on a tack. Both plots eventually meet, as creation and destruction shake hands. At eight bucks for what I suspect will be a storybook sort of production, well, it’s actually still a damn sight cheaper than other “Sock Monkey” hardcovers, and fans will surely want to press it to their bosoms. It’s guaranteed that it’ll look amazing, given Millionaire’s ever-impressive attention to detail.

Shaolin Cowboy #2: I wonder what details will be revealed in this new issue of the better half of Burlyman’s output? Will there be a plot? Or will the action become even more frantic and consumptive? I’m kind of hoping for a little more downtime, not because I think Geof Darrow’s action sequences won’t be delightful and goopy, but because he actually did a pretty nice job with the playful, wandering dialogue in the premiere issue. Here’s a double-page splash from issue #2; the dialogue is a bit more arch, but it made me smile (it‘s extra funny when you follow the balloon tails to the characters who‘re speaking the lines). “We ain’t here to such on out teeth and scratch each other’s asses… agreeable as that sounds.” It fits Darrow’s art very nicely, just as well as Frank Miller’s (unless I’m mistaken, most of “Hard Boiled” involved the protagonist delivering dialogue along the lines of “Jiminy Crickets! I gotta find th’ wife and kids!” while smashing his car into a massive on-stage orgy or something). Here’s hoping, eh?

Wild Girl #5 (of 6): And speaking of books where not much happens… ah, I’ll be nice. This is a perfectly good-hearted book, with some truly excellent art, that just happens to have been spinning its wheels for the last two issues. Silly old six-issue trade-minded structure. Writers Leah Moore and John Reppion (a recently minted wife/husband team, as I learned in the most recent issue of “Comic Book Artist”) will also be scripting the upcoming Wildstorm British superhero revival project “Albion”, with a plot by Alan Moore, father of the bride. Cautiously looking forward to it…

Today's Post Vol. 2 (of 2)

“Anyone who is eager to see good films will rarely be satisfied by the big expensive productions or by those that have won critical praise or wide open popular acceptance. The personal story, the private individual drama, cannot, in my opinion, interest anyone who is truly alive to the contemporary world.”

- Luis Bunuel, 1953

*Oh that card. I ran into this lovely quote in the liner notes for the new R1 dvd release of Luis Bunuel’s infamous directorial debut, “Un Chien Andalou”; fortunately, I didn’t pay the full $20 retail price, which is pretty steep for a 17-minute short film and less than forty minutes of supplements. Transflux Films handled the release, apparently their only R1 dvd thus far. Watching the film again, I was struck by how it always manages to be a bit more subdued, a little more quiet than I ever manage to recall it being. Simply reading about this much-discussed film, conceived with Salvador Dali and released in 1929 with the director handling the soundtrack manually via phonograph (his pockets, according to legend, filled with rocks to repel the audience in case of a riot) might give you the impression that the short is a relentless barrage of bizarre and confrontational images, a feverish meltdown of rational perception. This is an inaccurate, though understandable impression; quite a lot of the film takes place in and around a woman’s apartment, with a male actor playing different characters (aspects of the same character?) who wander in and out of the action. It’s a surprisingly grounded setting, allowing for a far dreamier atmosphere than the expected (or remembered) bubbling of mayhem, largely because there’s a certain anchor in reality (after all, how can one fully defy reason without establishing reason’s default tyranny?).

Naturally, there are still the famously unhinged bits, like the world-famous opening sequence of Bunuel himself taking a razor across the lead actress’ eye, or the image of a man with ants streaming out of the stigmata upon his hand, or scene where an amorous version of our male lead finds himself suddenly unable to approach the object of his desire as his hands are dragging ropes attached to a pair of priests, a set of grand pianos, and a decomposing duo of donkey carcasses. Not to mention the sequence where he lustfully caresses the actress’ breasts through her dress, which then magically fades away to expose both the view of his mind’s eye and much of his beloved’s body (this technique was not innovated by Bunuel; I’ve seen it used in at least one pornographic film of the day, possibly where Don Luis picked up the idea). And yet, I find myself returning to the more serene, quiet moments, like that of a man blissfully sauntering through the woods as a gaggle of fellows bear away a corpse, which is lying in the grass, all figures suddenly dwarfed by the trees as Wagner’s music soars (the soundtrack for this version of the film was assembled by Bunuel in 1960 to match the manual phonographic cues of the film’s original presentations). It is said to be a grave mistake to attempt to attribute meaning to this film, so intent it is on frustrating interpretation, but individual scenes can always be enjoyed for their own peculiar mood, and Bunuel’s overarching notion of aching desire would not flee from him through the rest of his career.

Did I mention it’s funny? One thing that I appreciate about Bunuel is that he’s always willing to throw some laughs into the stew, something which cannot be said about every canonized grand master of world cinema. For example, right in the middle of the aforementioned groping sequence, we get an excellent reaction shot of the young man, his eyes rolled way up into the back of his head, lines of drool pouring from his chin, a shot anticipating the works of Tex Avery, or Lloyd Kaufman perhaps.

Just to keep things here square on the comics, Dave McKean shows up in the extras, with a two-picture image gallery, a one-page biography, and a one page statement on why this movie rocks the house. Far more interesting is a pair of interviews with Bunuel’s son, Juan-Luis, one covering general Bunuel info, and the other focusing explicitly on the deterioration of the relationship between Bunuel and Dali. Judging by who’s talking, I think you can safely assume who’s side of the story is going to get maximum exposure; Dali is generally characterized as a fame-starved exploiter (albeit an occasionally brilliantly talented one) who betrayed his friends for public acceptance and callously destroyed Bunuel’s early career in Europe to buff his own rising star. Not that Juan-Luis leaves his father smelling like a rose; he also shares a bizarre story about Bunuel being invited to a Christmas part at Charlie Chaplin’s home, where every guest would be expected to bring a gift to exchange blindly. Bunuel didn’t like this set-up, seeing it as insufferably bourgeois, so upon the completion of dinner he and an associate rose from the table, tore down Chaplin’s Christmas tree, and trampled all of the gifts to pieces beneath their feet before being ejected from the premises. Such is the life of the Legends of Cinema!

*What the hell?! It’s 1:33 AM already? Well, it’s still ‘today’ for my west coast readers - right, crew? West coast Comics Internet representing!

Shining Knight #1 (of 4)

***SPOILERS***

I’m getting the feeling that Morrison might be having a laugh with us regarding all of this ‘modular’ business in plot construction. I’m not trying to be snarky or anything here, I’m genuinely curious: how exactly is this issue a stand-alone story? I only ask because quite a few very intelligent and well-spoken people have dubbed the comic in just that way, and I don’t understand it. This is a classic set-up issue for a miniseries. We get the background of the title hero, a little origin tale, maybe, the continuing plot is set forth, and we’re left hanging to see what comes next. Villains are brought in, chief among them the Medusa-like Gloriana Tenebrae, of the wicked Sheeda, who first popped up as mind-controlling pixies in Morison’s “JLA Classified” arc (I really hope DC is planning to include those three issues as some sort of prologue in the inevitable “Seven Soldiers” collected edition), then expanded into a more timestream-threatening force in the recent “Seven Soldiers” #0. Archvillain Neh-Buh-Loh also makes a special guest cameo; I kind of like how every artist involved with this character gives him a slightly altered style; Simone Bianchi draws him with big, curved, almost floppy ears, with only two eyes. He’s also lost that smart suit of armor J.H. Williams III had him styling in “Seven Soldiers” #0. Plus (Easter Egg!) he appears to be riding into battle atop a smaller version of the spider-thing that the heroes of “Seven Soldiers” #0 strived so mightily to vanquish. And hell, why stop there? This book also sees the termination of six heroes, the seventh away on some personal business, just like in the prior entry in this project. And for a fan of DC history, apparently the book is awash in little references and nudges in DCU lore. Not to mention the superficial resemblances to Morrison’s own “Seaguy”.

So there’s a lot of stuff in here. Except for a resolution, a finale, even a cursory ending. Sure, if you squint and turn your head you might be able to see the book’s final pages, with the titular hero plunging into the modern world and being led away by the cops, his talking steed apparently dead, as some sort of cursory twist ending (hey, another connection to “Seven Soldiers” #0), if you insist on reading the issue as a stand-alone unit. But this view of events seems awfully unintuitive, what with the big ‘To Be Continued’ sitting there and the villain probably still running around and the fates of the heroes left largely uncertain. And I concede it’s a minor point, an utter quibble. As an introductory issue, this moves much smoother and with greater entertainment value than most of today’s intro outings, in the Mighty Marvel Meandering Manner for instance. There’s a ton of information released, backstory tossed out as quickly as the action will allow. It’s almost reminiscent of the chaotic early scenes of “JLA Classified”, except Mr. Bianchi is more than up to the task of breaking down Morrison’s reams of info into something resembling an intuitive, entertaining state. A veteran of the Italian comics scene, Bianchi sports an attractive style, heavy on the shade and rounded realist features in close-up, but lightening into softer, flowing lines in the back (check out his rendering of Vanguard’s tail; it’s like water). He’s ably assisted by colorist Nathan Eyring’s rich tones, creating a painted feel when combined with Bianchi’s weighty foreground art. There’s rarely a lack of storytelling clarity, which occasionally confounded “JLA Classified”, though this story might me operating on a similar level of idea overload.

As I’ve said before (and as several reviewers have said before me), the rapport between our young knight and his talking steed seem initially similar to a similar dynamic in “Seaguy”. But this work is less immediately arresting, with little in the way of the satire and less room for rounded characters, so thick is the introductory presentation. It’s only the first issue of a miniseries though, and this is a very nice start, but once again, only a start. And if the work isn’t entirely fulfilling the ambition that its writer attributes to it in interviews, it’s at least comfortable in its position as a pleasing if hustling work of comics adventure.

Today's Post Vol. 1 (of 2)

*Hi all! I lost my entire “Street Angel” #5 review when my computer ate it. Awesome to have my old machine back, eh? Well, let's start out with LAST WEEK'S REVIEWS

Cromartie High School Vol. 1 (of 9?) (really, you want to read this book; there are laughs)

Terra Obscura Vol. 2 #6 (of 6), Adam Strange #6 (of 8), The Punisher MAX #18

Concrete: The Human Dilemma #3 (of 6)

Good times with good friends.

*As you know, I'm an asshole and I said I'd update yesterday afternoon and I didn't, even though I have more than enough to write about. So, I'll just update again later today to keep myself somewhere on top. Sorry.

Street Angel #5

Well, the best I can say is that with all of those double-page spreads and low-panel pages, this was one quick-reading 24 page book, and it probably can’t escape comparison to Geof Darrow’s “Shaolin Cowboy”, especially with that shot of all the villains lined up across the bottom third of a two-page spread. It’s not nearly as audacious in its conspicuous consumption of storytelling space as Darrow’s book, but it’s a decadent fight comic all the same, although I thought the humor bits in “Street Angel” were more successful. You see, the title heroine teams up with blaxploitation-style ex-superhero Afrodisiac, who’s in a spot of trouble, and he relates his tragic story as Street Angel kicks all sorts of ass. There was apparently a nuclear strike on US soil a few years back; Street Angel has never heard of it, though, as she’s skipped too much school. There’s a nice routine at the end, demonstrating the limits of our hard-bitten heroine’s knowledge of the ways of the world.

But the stuff you’re going to remember here is the action, simply because it takes up so much space. There’s a particularly striking two-page blast of action, sound effects and dialogue tossed around as if Street Angel‘s rage is enough to upset the very essence of the comics page, panels appearing at random and the title heroine leaping out of them, all over the page, several images of her everywhere, meting out gory justice. It’s slightly reminiscent of some of Frank Quitely’s work in “We3”, only stripped of elegance or ease of reading; this is practically a gore collage, demanding that the reader start examining it anywhere, since it exists as a stand-alone display of confused fighting, that perhaps only the heroine can navigate with confidence. As focused on laughs and blood as the book is, surely Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca are interested in meeting the cutting-edge in oozing violence as far as action comics go.

Of course, it’s mighty quick reading for $3. This’ll work well in the upcoming trade, apparently the only “Street Angel” material coming anytime soon (it’s due in June); this issue seems almost like a planned response to the mixed reactions to the quieter issue #4, and the wackiness of the first three issues, leading into the more somber bits of issue #4, capping off with the lightning-action fighting of this issue will probably work quite smoothly in collected form, even though “Street Angel” isn’t written for the trade in the way we understand such things today. As for this single-issue epic, it’s fun and rough-edged and amusing and gone in a heartbeat. I didn’t regret buying it, as I didn’t regret buying any of this series.

ONE MORE DAY...

*Back to full power tomorrow, my darlings and dearests. Since absolutely nobody is going to read this until 'tomorrow' anyway, I'll be updating again at some point on Sunday afternoon, eastern standard time. Fare thee well, stand-in computer...

Concrete: The Human Dilemma #3 (of 6)

With my options in researching “Concrete” history slowly decreasing, I turned to a slightly less immediately relevant (though no less valuable) source: my dear friend “Boris the Bear”. Cheap route to take, with four assorted issues for one dollar total. Boris beat Concrete to the comics page by a few months, with the former’s solo book appearing just before the latter’s debut in “Dark Horse Presents” issue #1, although the two are close enough in initial prominence for a certain measure of inter-company cross-pollination to be expected. Plus, some of Boris’ adventures are fairly funny; there’s a nice short in issue #11 where Boris needs to mind the local comics shop when the clerk is dragged away on obscenity charges, and he sets about reconfiguring the stock to reflect his personal tastes in ‘good’ comics. It turns out that he really doesn’t like anything but his own book. So anyhow, please excuse my madness for a little while as I dawdle about advertising instead of getting to the review itself or anything else of merit beyond the boundaries of my own softening skull.

There were a number of full-page ads for the initial ten-issue solo “Concrete” book in later issues of Boris’ book (an ad for “Concrete” #2 in “Boris the Bear” #9, and an ad for “Concrete” #3 in “Boris the Bear” #11, to be exact), which stopped publishing under the Dark Horse banner with issue #13. If nothing else, these ads provide a glimpse of a decidedly loose attitude toward spoilers, perhaps on the part of writer/artist Paul Chadwick himself, though I’m unsure of whether or not he crafted this material himself. These ads are set up as mock newspaper or magazine articles, always in black and white, even on the color-capable back cover of the book. Each ad has a large ‘photo’, actually a panel from the book, plus an image of the cover, and a large text piece, essentially providing a full synopsis of the comic in question. This isn’t a cursory Previews-type piece either; I’m talking six to eight paragraphs of prose, not explicitly narrating the story but providing an overview of nearly every scene, and concluding with something of a mock critical analysis, always glowingly positive. For issue #2 we’re told that “This second outing with the ‘Concrete’ crew is as rich with irony as the first, only this time in a setting of rousing adventure and natural splendor.” Even a touch of uncertainty is allowed for issue #3: “It’s an atypical ‘Concrete’ tale, a shade darker than most.” Fortunately, “...a trim, carefully constructed plot moves us along handily.” It’s a cute, slightly cheeseball type of ad, utterly enthusiastic about writing a thorough (if synopsis-heavy) faux-review of the book yet to be sold, and the language is rather lovely, certainly more eloquent than the average bit of hype text you see around. It could have very easily have gotten very mawkish or irritating, but it’s so affectionate toward the product that it’s shilling that it doesn’t even mind that if it tells you all about the high points of the story, since you’ll obviously be so excited about the execution that you’ll have to experience it for yourself.

Maybe that’s what more recent solicitation texts have been aiming for. Landing short of these vintage ads, though.

Right. So this particular issue is an ‘explaining’ issue, which is to say that a whole lot of things are explained by one character to another, all of them speaking for the benefit of the reader. Concrete explains the details of the controversial population-control program he’s been nudged into, first on a bizarrely confrontational early morning chat show (unless all of those diverse people our vantage keeps cutting to enjoy waking up with cable news), then onto various roundtable discussions and academic forums, in which we are also given the high points of the alternative ‘cornucopian’ viewpoint, for our edification. Then an eccentric ‘population radical’ pops in to explain to us his proposal for a custom-made sterilization STD, a speech he first makes at the panel, then again to an assembled crowd outside (he’s standing on no less than the steps of some university building as he orates to the masses). And luckily, the casual nature of this second assembly gives Concrete’s pal Dr. Vonnegut ample time to enlighten us all as to the history of an ultra-deadly artificially engineered strain of Mousepox. I came for the overpopulation debate; I stayed for the discussion of cell-mediated response. And hey, if that’s not enough for you, much of the above is reiterated in even greater detail in a mock magazine article (hey...) included as a supplement to this issue.

But I shouldn’t make too much fun; for one thing, Chadwick nails the tone of that magazine article. I also found most of the chit-chat to be at least sort of interesting in the context of the plot, and Chadwick intercuts everything with the continuing adventures of Cold Feet Larry, as he engages in a bit of exploitation of his Concrete-related fame. I’m unsure if the bit at the very end is meant to be a joke or some intensely clumsy foreshadowing or maybe a certain wink at a certain something that some of us have managed to find out already. Gah! This “Concrete” search has gotten me all paranoid now, much like the recurring crackpot character who’s proving to be this miniseries’ most interesting character, drawing connections between the events of this miniseries and miscellaneous happenings in prior adventures, to some mystery end. At least he’s not poring through back-issues of “Boris the Bear”.

*Special Bonus Editorial Comment from “Boris the Bear”:

“The days when a comic could be slapped together and hurried onto the market with no intended audience other than the speculator... are over.”

- Randy Stradley, editor, from “Boris the Bear” #7, February 1987.

Brow: Beaten.

*I'm all spent for today, and it's almost tomorrow again. All I can give you is my latest column, in which I break out the Dave Sim-style tricks with parentheses to uncertain effect and grumble about my technical issues of the week. Also, manga stuff. I hope you all like it.

New Comics Reviews Just Minutes Before the Day's Close.

*Can we get any later folks? NO WAY.

Terra Obscura Vol. 2 #6 (of 6)

In which we uncover a few attractive gems in an old cavern, mined a thousand times over, it seems. The point of this particular arc, co-plotted by Alan Moore and Peter Hogan and scripted by the latter, is that a strange disturbance in space has caused time to become unstuck back on Our Heroes’ homeworld, and Silver and Golden Age-style heroes are running amok temporarily before fading back into the past, but the damage they cause is quite permanent. Historical events are starting to repeat as well, such as the bombing of Hiroshima, which causes considerable concern in our modern times. By the time we reach this closing installment of the series, agents of the US government have had their fill of such Greatest Hits, and have launched a powerful weapon into space to take care of the problem, the focal point of the time twisting, the starship of long-missing space hero Andrew Bryant. But there’s superheroes aboard that ship: Superman (and Tom Strong) analogue Tom Strange, and Batman stand-in The Terror. Except, The Terror died long ago, and it’s actually a darker, more violent computer simulation of his personality, which has seized the body of The Terror’s boy sidekick, and wants to control time to benefit its own troubled personality. World’s Finest, ladies and gents!

There quite a lot of gore in this book, but it’s pretty necessary to demonstrate how far the revamped Terror has gone, and what he’s willing to do to maintain control over both his own life and the very course of the superheroic world of Terra Obscura. And if you’re thinking that this sounds quite a lot like something that Moore has done before, even if you can’t quite place exactly where, then you’re with me on this one. There’s plenty of finagling with characters that closely resemble DC Icons romping about through events that closely resemble DC History in Moore’s career, and this particular spin across the floor doesn’t even benefit from a full Moore script; Hogan doesn’t really do anything wrong, and his grasp of the characters is actually quite good, but there’s still a certain spark absent from the proceedings that otherwise could push the book a little farther up the satisfaction scale. Or maybe we’ve seen this enough that more needs to be done for this sort of plot to really impress; as it stands it’s a cool, fun little superhero work with cozy commentary, slipped on like a favorite pair of jeans.

But it’s far from a bad book, although I don’t believe sales are very impressive (not that any of the ABC books have been pulling in blockbuster numbers recently). Yanick Paquette’s pencils (aided by three inkers who don’t even get their first names listed in the credits, although one of them is regular collaborator Karl Story) provide some nice modern superhero art, though a bit more slanted toward huge muscles and big breasts than is average for an ABC title. The storytelling ability is there. The fights are good, drawing some impact from the disquieting image of a contemporary superhero blasting off half the skull of a Silver-Age teen version of one of the protagonists. And the conflict’s resolution, which not entirely unexpected if you’ve been paying attention, does carry a certain gravitas, albeit a familiar one, matching the running feel of the series thus far.

The first “Terra Obscura” series was divisive enough; it was essentially a massive Event crossover experience involving characters that we know almost nothing about, at times seemingly referencing established relationships and character development in the imaginary solo books that these characters inhabit beyond the physicality of the miniseries presented (although it must be said that many of these characters do have origins in our authentic Golden Age). It was somewhat successful; at times pleasantly dizzy and hustled, at times simply obtuse, and occasionally sort of boring. This volume pursued a more typical Moore theme, and a certain consideration of comics past as translated into comics future that joins he and his contemporary, Grant Morrison, as contentious as the two may be toward one another personally. This is a more hands-off Moore anyway, of course, though scripter Hogan has a certain charm, as does the series as a whole.

Adam Strange #6 (of 8)

More fighting! The fights here are better than the fights last issue, and the art even seems a bit brighter. For all the glossy pulp excitement, however, I think the book has developed something of a problem with its characters: many of them are failing to register. I know I’m not the first to note that the Omega Men really aren’t very compelling as a supporting cast here; thus, a certain turn of events this issue does little more than signal the beginning of more action, when I think it could offer just a little bit extra. In addition, the big villain is a snore, perhaps because this is only his second appearance in the series thus far and he’s still just sitting around looking cool and threatening while devouring lifeforce. Unless he’s not actually the big villain (or worse, he is the series’ big villain but he’s just being built up for his future role as big villain in another upcoming miniseries). Where would a good slab of throwback pulp sci-fi be without a big villain? Who knows.

There’s no new guest stars this issue, although we get a little more Vril Dox, who musses up the climax of Adam’s mission, the moment he’s been waiting for for so long. Don’t sweat it, though: next issue we get the Darkstars. Not quite sure who they are, but if their appearance is keeping with the pattern that the series has established so far, I’m sure they’re space-faring characters from DC past that are getting another chance to strut across the stage. And this isn’t the only current DC series that features plenty of revivals of old characters from deep in the corporate vault, as I’m sure you’re aware. The trick is, a Grant Morrison could probably make most of these half-forgotten heroes seem interesting and fresh, even without the top-down revisions of a “Seven Soldiers”. Here, writer Andy Diggle has everyone wander out and say their lines, and maybe a bunch of readers go “Ah. I think I recall them,” and I don’t think a much stronger reaction could be expected, since everyone seems a bit too bland, which isn’t good when you’re trying to create excitement about all of these characters, as I expect DC is trying to do.

But it still looks great (and to keep with my above comparison, I can’t wait for artist Pascal Ferry’s upcoming work with Morrison on the “Mister Miracle” wing of “Seven Soldiers”). Adam remains the most rounded, and most interesting character in the book, and his personality can stave off the lurking banality of the special guests. The final page was cute. How will we wrap it up?

The Punisher MAX #18

***SPOILERS***

Oh dear, this was a nice arc. This was the sort of arc we should be expecting from Garth Ennis every time. I mean, the image of The Punisher parachuting out of a live flying nuclear missile is the sort of thing that a young Frank Castle fan imagines. Plus: hard-boiled life or death choices on the tundra! A rousing gun safety speech! There’s only one shooting this issue, and it’s not by Frank! And the sheer bad-ass mystique of the title character wins the respect and nervous admiration of both Russia’s military elite and Our Nation’s Armed Forces, who deliver a clear pro-Punisher mandate at the close of this storyline. Nick Fury has a dirty mouth. That is all.

Tom Spurgeon got me to buy this, so now I’m passing the baton.

Cromartie High School Vol. 1 (of 9?)

I second Spurgeon’s opinion on this. In fact, I raise the stakes.

This is a very funny comic book.

Written and drawn by Eiji Nonaka, translated by Brendan Frayne, and released by ADV Manga, the comics wing of the prolific anime distributer, “Cromartie High School” is far more in line with the work of Michael Kupperman than most of the manga comedy I’ve seen, leaning in large part on the dissonance between a stolid, stiffly serious visual style and absurd storytelling action for much of the humor, and that’s quite a relief. I recognize that laffs are subjective things, so I must simply tell you that this book had me giggling aloud at several points, a difficult thing to get out of me when reading comics. There's nine volumes of this stuff out in Japan, from what I understand, and while I don't know exactly how much of it ADV has the rights to, I hope it's a lot.

There’s twenty-three chapters of story included here, plus some bonus material; each chapter runs exactly six pages, and generally stands on its own (save for a lone two-parter), although you’ll notice a bit of general plot movement if you read it all at once (and you very well might end up doing that, as I devoured the entire book in one sitting). Takashi Kamiyama, our protagonist (as he’s often identified via subtitles), is a quiet, serious, studious sort, who’s also entirely free of the shackles of common sense. As such, he enrolls in the infamous Cromartie High School, the very worst school in all of Japan, just to prove some nonsensical point. He fits right into the student body, which is curious considering that they’re all punks and badasses with the occasional gorilla or robot or burly-chested fellow who bears a suspicious resemblance to a deceased rock singer from back in the day, only with bigger muscles and more chest hair. Takashi and his friends must then learn to navigate the stormy seas of high school, although nobody ever studies or does much of anything school-related for 90% of the time. Instead, characters argue about who had the baddest nickname in grade school, supporting cast members experience angst about being in the background for much of the time, a few villains show up to little effect, and Takashi often tries to institute a sense of normalcy into the proceedings (teaching students to have normal, boring coversations, for example), always failing in his quest because he fits in far better than he’d expected.

But this doesn’t adequately convey how funny this stuff is. Nonaka’s art is very serious, with almost nothing in the way of exaggerated cartoon effects or typical manga iconography (save for plenty of speed lines). The same character expressions and postures are repeated over and over again, almost giving the book a cut-and-paste feel. But such repetition is used cleverly, so when Nonaka introduces a random element into the art (say, a character wearing a pointy birthday hat, which are inherently funny to begin with), it's doubly amusing. Even the gorilla or the robot are given real weight on the page, stolid visual purpose, which makes their very presence more humorous. And the interaction between such a seething, muscular visual style and the plots of some of these stories is the core of the book’s appeal. Take the two-part story, in which a group of characters race through the streets via taxi en route to a confrontation with a rival gang. There’s plenty of sweating and gritted teeth and whooshing scenery, despite the fact that story mostly revolves around how carsick the gang’s leader is getting, and how the taxi driver keeps getting more and more lost, extending the length of the trip to the point of agony. The ‘jokes’, so to speak, are largely dialogue-driven (as they are through most of the book - it’s quite wordy at points), but their impact is heightened by the inappropriate visual aplomb that Nonaka applies. And it was a marvelously effective structure for me, although I’ll admit that the style of humor here is not for everyone; even when it’s loud, it still manages to be oddly subtle, which I can’t quite explain. I haven’t even gotten to the excellent running gags, like the fact that virtually every character is identified as being 16 years old, in total disregard for how old they’re drawn as. And these characters... you get to know them. Despite all the silliness, there’s genuine personalities developed for every member of the large cast, which is a nice trick. I really want to see more of Hirai the Flunker, an older (*gasp* 17-year old) student who had to repeat his grade, and now wanders the halls friendless and unshaven, desperate to find a younger student to impart ‘wisdom’ onto, although he’s clearly just looking to distract himself from his own loneliness.

Plus, there’s a funny bonus story about pro wrestling, some translation notes, a comic the author claims to have drawn in five minutes, and a free (well... ‘free’ considering that the book costs a dollar more than the average manga digest) mini-dvd that contains the first two episodes of the “Cromartie High School” anime (in a zany coincidence, also released in the US by ADV!), although it should be noted that the episodes are an Adult Swim-sized 12 minutes each, which I know isn’t entirely fair to say considering that the 12-minute tv format was in use in Japan well before Adult Swim hit the airwaves in the US, but whatever. Each episode adapts a handful of chapters of the comic into animated form, occasionally grouping chapters by theme (like putting all of the shocking character introductions or robot humor bits right after one another). The animators (among them, the much-loved Production IG) try hard to translate Nonaka’s style to the screen, using computer effects and bits of background business to decent effect, but the tone is sometimes a little too self-referential (at multiple points urging the audience to just read the comics) and lacks the pleasing chafe of Nonaka’s art. Not to mention that the English dub (no subtitles or Japanese language included on this preview) isn’t very good, with the voice of Takashi in particular often lapsing into exaggerated wackiness with a full-on dry-as-dust style would be best (he may just be emulating an effect from the Japanese language performance of the same character, though). Maybe it’ll be better in the proper dvd release, with the Japanese dialogue and a whole bunch of episodes in a row. Regardless, you also get a very good comic, 160 pages of it, for eleven dollars, and that’s pretty great right there.

WARNING: This post contains SPOILERS for a recent Oscar-winning Best Picture!

*From my log of computer troubles: I decided to turn this machine on to polish off my hotly anticipated evaluation of triple-digit selling comics from 1995; that was at about 3:05. It's now 3:33, and I've just gotten Blogger open and now the computer won't allow me into my saved documents. And it's still gonna be four long days until my other computer can be reached. Awesome.

*No spell-check either! Typing directly into Blogger. Let me know of the more awful errors.

*The other day I saw "Million Dollar Baby"; I have no clue why there were three straight horror movie trailers preceding it. Horror movie have really gone downhill... or maybe their trailers are no longer trying to impress anyone figuring that the usual teenage crowd will show up no matter what. "Dark Water", for example, looks like a goddamned laff riot; I thought the first trailer was kind of silly, but this one really pushes hard selling the 'oooooh spooooooky water boy and girls' premise. And they kept the bit where the little kid is paining in watercolors and she just can't stop and, and... I just know somebody didn't think this was hilarious during the production of the film, and I can only wish I could climb inside this person's brain and see the world through their eyes.

The feature presentation was pretty decent. Eastwood, as a director, is plainly concerned with getting the themes of the film across to as much of the audience as possible, so he's got a nasty tendancy to spell things out. It's not enough for Hilary Swank to be spirited home from her big fight on the road, in ironic consideration of her earlier voiced desire to drive back home, she has to verbally point this out in the scene itself, to set the moment in boldface and underline it for good measure. I'm unsure if anyone in the crowd I was with could possibly miss the fact that Swank's character was acting as a 'daughter' for Clint Eastwood, as opposed to his biological daughter who wants nothing to do with him, but director Eastwood makes damn sure that this is carefully explained in those final moments, as the definition of those mystery words are revealed. Still, the bits with Eastwood as a talented healer of wounds in the ring who can't mend personal injuries (and later becomes faced with a physical malady that he must summon all of his conviction to 'heal'; he's always a physical success) has the potential to be particularly cheesy, but it came off fairly well.

The film has an interesting running focus on people building families out of the people they're with, as opposed to their natural families, which are always viewed in this film with justified distrust. At least Eastwood's relationship with his daughter was kept nicely shadowed; far and away the most ham-fisted bits of the film were with Swank's over-the-top cartoon white trash clan; mercifully, they were only on screen for two sequences, though I half-expected them to tear her out of the hospital bed and tie her to a nearby railroad track for Clint to ride to the rescue. It's bits like this that make me wonder if Eastwood's work here is so understated becasue he doesn't quite trust his abilities in louder, more eruptive drama. That's not a complaint; from what I've seen here, he simply knows his faults.

Walking out of the film, my brother said that there was a real potential for a franchise; the next film in the series needs to be a delightful slapstick comedy starring the goofy boxer in the gym on his road to the title bout. I agreed, but I told him that someone ought to be euthanized at the end, just to maintain consistency.

It was decent work, though. Didn't raise me to the skies, but I didn't feel like I'd wasted my time. Ha ha. Quite a rousing testimony for a Best Picture, eh?

Night has fallen.

*Sigh. Computers...

LAST WEEK’S REVIEWS weren't much:

Alan Moore’s Twisted Times (shine on, Abelard Snazz, early Moore hero, your adventures collected here, shine on)

The Long Haul (out this Wednesday, new Antony Johnston/Eduardo Barreto Western comics, fun without breaking ground)

Groan. Machines.

*Well, my thing for today needs to be carried over to tomorrow, so here’s

THIS WEEK IN COMICS

seeing as how late it is. Lots of stuff.

Project: Superior: Ah, I’ve been waiting for this one. Big fat 288-page anthology of superhero-type stories by assorted non-superhero creators, dealing with original concepts rather than tossing established icons through the indy comics tumbler as seen in another recent anthology, although I bet said anthology would actually be able to use the term ‘superhero’ in the title if it wanted to, without fear of the comics police arriving to take them to the funnybook pokey. I think this will be a very cool book, although I guess there’s an outside chance that it’ll be 200+ pages of ‘lol superheroes are childish’ which won’t be much fun. Anyway, check out the contributors here to bolster your confidence; a very cool list, including Paul Pope, “Scott Pilgrim” creator Bryan Lee O’Malley, “Wolverine” enthusiast Jeff Brown, and the “Street Angel” team of Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca. And speaking of which...

Street Angel #5: Back to the funny? Oh, I think. I suspect. I liked the book a lot last issue too, though. I guess I understand the tonal shift criticisms last issue attracted (as opposed to the tonal shift criticisms issue #3 attracted, which I didn’t understand at all), but I thought the story worked well. I thought it expanded nicely on bits of the character (pride, her uncertain social situation) that were present in earlier issues, just not fully explored. I believe this issue is going to be the last one for a while, with a trade following soon after as the focus of the creative team’s “Street Angel” attention. So please, savor this book while there’s still new stuff coming.

Concrete: The Human Dilemma #3 (of 6): Still sifting through older “Concrete” work, as this new miniseries inches forward. If nothing else, I can attest to its power in getting new fans hooked.

Seven Soldiers - Shining Knight #1 (of 4): Ok, according to Morrison, not only is every miniseries in this project supposed to stand alone (yet fit together), but every issue, as in every individual comic? “So there are seven characters and each character gets four books which tell a very distinct story and reintroduce that character to the audience. Each of the four issues are also self-contained reads because I wanted to try a completely modular story,” says the writer. Does that extend to the book that came out the other week? Because the prior “Seven Soldiers” #0 didn’t work very well as a self-contained story at all, though it made a fairly excellent introduction to the premise; not very modular, as Morrison puts it, but enough intriguing material was evoked and suggested. I presume the self-contained structure will become more evident (or easier to handle) within the confines of individual character series; and, it's not to say that the project needs to succeed on every one of its writer's announced levels to be a success in my eyes.

Vimanarama #2 (of 3): And, as the same interview linked above suggests, this and “We3" and “Seaguy” were apparently intended as original graphic novels, but got themselves split up by DC. I do think that “Seaguy” wouldn’t have had to put up with the (in my opinion puzzling) reputation for incomprehensibility that it’s since been stuck with had it been released as a single piece at the outset. But DC’s gonna do what the Direct Market wants. Heh. Again, not that any of that helped poor “Seaguy”. Anyway, this is a really cool series, set in Belgium or Iceland or somewhere, and there’s lots of good humor. Fun week for Morrison fans.

Terra Obscura Vol. 2 #6 (of 6): Hey, look what’s ending! This sort of late ABC miniseries, riffing off of the old World’s Finest thing one more time. There’s not much in this series that co-plotter Alan Moore hasn’t done in a thousand alternate flavors of genre reflection already, but it’s ok superhero smash punch fun.

Adam Strange #6 (of 8): Ditto on the smash punch, although last issue was kind of weak (and rather dim, artwise). Fingers crossed for satisfying resolution!

Stoker’s Dracula #4 (of 4): Low low selling but ravishing Roy Thomas/Dick Giordano adaptation of the tale; good use of the comics form in translating Stoker’s correspondence structure! This conclusion has been decades in the making, and I’ll be there for it.

The Punisher MAX #18: BOOM!

Sunday Drive

*Very large sale over at Top Shelf. There's a $30 minimum order to activate the discounts, but there's an awful lot of great stuff to choose from; you can really stock up on those "Sketchbook Diaries" and "SPX" volumes that you've been missing, and of course you need Eddie Campbell's "Egomania". One dollar books, three dollar books, and discounts on other fine volumes. Go look.

*Technical issues have limited my time yet again; I'm not at my usual computer, and this one's giving me a lot of problems. I think I'll be able to pick up the pace pretty soon though. I've got some nice stuff lined up for tomorrow at least.

*I did finally get around to buying new comics for the week, although all I picked up was "The Intimates" (I think the new Journal special got pushed back to next week, and nobody stocked the new "Angry Youth Comix". It was pretty decent, actually one of the stronger issues of the series. Giuseppe Camuncoli manages some nice work with the new undead character, with some cool Mignola-type silhouette work. Jim Lee shows up to draw one panel, which I guess is better than his co-artist work on the cover to justify his second-billing in the cover credits. The 'story' still isn't much (not that it really needs to be), but the environment is beginning to cohere a lot better, and (as expected) some of the characters are becoming more invested in how they treat others, etc. etc. The ultra-shrill abstinence (er, sex-ed) teacher got a little too shticky for my tastes, but I'm kinda growing to like the speedster guidance counselor. And hey - bonus: writer Joe Casey is finally getting the hang of the 'beat' of shitty Internet communication (and the unwavering zero in that poor HiveJournalist's comments section was an excellent touch. A pretty decent issue overall.

Hup!

*OH MY GOSH I know you’ve all been glued to your seats with each of my spellbinding updates to The Case of the Spoiler-Filled “Concrete: The Human Dilemma” Solicitation, but some white-hot new evidence has surfaced, and I would be remiss to deny the Internet such provocative information. First of all, Lizzybeth confirmed on her site that the same spoiler-filled text (for those coming in late, the solicitation info as seen on Dark Horse’s site as to the sixth and final issue of the most recent “Concrete” miniseries blows a whole stack of plot twists) is present in Previews, so watch out for the “Concrete” listing in there.

But it may all be an academic concern for some: just this very morning, I ran across issue #221 of “The Comics Journal” from March of 2000, with a Paul Chadwick interview, and I even got it at a discounted price. Very cool. So I open it up, flip through it, liking what I see, and I get to the ‘future projects’ section, and Chadwick’s talking about “The Human Dilemma” (which had been all planned out but wouldn’t see release for half a decade), and guess what happens? Chadwick blows the big plot twist himself! Right in the interview! So now I’m thinking, “Man, I guess if you’re a really crazy devout Chadwick fan, you already know about some of this upcoming stuff since the creator himself is blabbing all of this to interviewers, so maybe nobody thought that much secrecy mattered in soliciting upcoming issues. Unless the fans forgot in the ensuing 5 years.”

So yeah, “Concrete” fans, if you were reading “The Comics Journal” in 2000, I guess you know some of the stuff that Previews and Dark Horse is giving away already. Funny how these things work out. If you can, you should search out that issue of the Journal; lots of neat tidbits, like the fact that Peter Jackson did a draft of the screenplay for the never-produced “Concrete” movie right before “Lord of the Rings”...

*Hey! How about a meme? I can do those right proper!

TEN THINGS I’VE DONE THAT MAYBE YOU HAVEN’T, PERHAPS (special anecdotal edition)

1. Upon receiving Weird Al Yankovic’s autograph, I told him “Now I can die at peace.” His response? “You better get on that, then.”

Yeah, Weird Al told me to die.

And he said it so sunnily too! He’s a cool guy.

2. I was once involved in an honest-to-god high-speed chase, through the industrial sector of town, delivering pizza, pursued by a bunch of kids (well, I was a kid at the time too) that I had unknowingly run off the road earlier. We were passing one another on a two-lane, two-way road, they were screaming out the window at me, and I managed to escape by suddenly swerving my car into a turn at the last second, which they then whizzed right by, just like in the movies and cartoons. I then quickly turned into the parking lot of a factory, where I was sure they wouldn’t find me (they didn’t). I was literally shaking with adrenaline afterwards. I could have punched through a wall.

3. Since we’re on the topic of things that actually don’t merely happen in movies, I’ve also had a gun pointed at my face by the boyfriend of the mother of a girl I fancied in high school. He actually rather liked me; it was all a silly mix-up, albeit a silly mix-up involving firearms.

4. When I was little, I appeared in a local television commercial for a toy invented by my neighbors from across the street. I have no idea how well the toy did, but I think my family still has one hidden somewhere.

5. On that note, I was the star of my high school play, having worked in some form of the theater throughout most of my educational life up until then. Afterwards, I never acted again.

6. I worked at a local newspaper for a while, mostly covering politics, and whatever else came up. At one point, I covered a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a park. You can get a lot of material out of scissors slicing through fabric.

7. Once, I was at a Paul Simon concert. A friend asked me what I thought. I informed him that Mr. Simon looked like he’d spent the prior evening sleeping on a park bench. My friend was also a writer. My quote was then put into a story and transmitted to a readership of 10,000.

8. I spent most of college doing Policy Debate, won a small award or two; a very curious sport indeed.

9. Due to the travel schedules involved therein, I was in Washington DC during the anthrax concern, AND I was in the area of the Beltway Sniper killings during those particular days. Debate Club - World of Danger.

10. I was sitting on the floor of the State Senate (well, not literally on the floor of the floor, in a seat on the ‘floor’). My boss at the time was up ahead of me. Another Senator turned to me and grinned.

“Straighten your tie, son. You look like a damned poet.”

And I did.

And now... another book that's coming soon.

*EDIT 3/5 10:07 PM: Ok, there were some minor technical difficulties, but my brand-new column is ready and raring to go. This one is a bit more contemplative then usual...

*Very very weird dream last night. I found myself playing an 8-bit NES game based on “The Dark Knight Returns”, except it wasn’t based on the story at all; I simply recognized it as “The Dark Knight Returns” for some reason that only dream logic can explain. I was guiding Batman through some sort of parking garage and fighting enemies. Catwoman was the boss of the stage I was on, except she was in good shape (unlike in the book). There was some subplot about Barbara Gordon taking over the police force and training a covert law-sponsored vigilante group to supplement Batman. It was really nothing like “The Dark Knight Returns” at all, except the visual style (as much as 8-bit dream graphics could supply) and the fact that in the dream I was utterly convinced of what the game was.

Upon completing a stage, Batman would jump up and down with joy. I don’t think he did that in Frank Miller’s work either.

*Anyway.

The Long Haul

This one’s an original b&w graphic novel from Oni, written by Antony Johnston and drawn by Eduardo Barreto. It’ll be available in your local comics store this upcoming Wednesday, March 9th, retailing for $14.95.

Even with my extraordinarily limited exposure to Westerns of any style or caliber, I found the plot here to immensely familiar, and I expect you will too. That’s not a fatal flaw by any means, and it’s an entertaining story, mostly well-told, with quickly-sketched members of a large cast brought together for The Big Heist, the details of which are lovingly explored, essentially replacing gunfights or saloon brawls as the set-pieces of the tale.

Roguish Cody Plummer is working out of 1871 Chicago as a small-timer at Shaw Savings and Loan, but it’s a position that affords him far more respect in the community (if a bit less money in his personal coffers) than his past life, knocking off banks from Kansas to Oregon, resulting in a little cooling off at a Utah state prison. But his time in the can wasn’t wasted, as he hooked up with some fine new friends, and when they’re joined with a few associates from his criminal past, they just might be able to confound Plummer’s arch-nemesis, Pinkerton agent Bob Harding, and rob the train he’s guarding, an ultra-secure steam-engine fortress spiriting a cubic shitload of government bonds, the last payment for the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, riding way out to California, a very long haul. This’ll buy everyone a little personal liberty, and maybe a better place in the world.

Aside from gentleman bandit Mr. Plummer, we’ve got professional escort Betsy O’Reilly, an old flame of Mr. Plummer’s (but of course). We’ve got embittered banker David Horowitz funding the heist, looking to score some cash and humiliate his old railroad foes. There’s master lock-breaker Luis Cavanos, nebbish technical genius George Wendell, now-settled Native Chief Long Foot, and Virgil, the driver. The first half of this 177-page book is spent gathering the team, with some fun mini-adventures along the way (including a nice little poker match) though there’s not all that much more to the characters beyond the titles that I’ve provided (or even the chapter titles that Johnston provides in the book itself, introducing each new rogue one by one as we progress). Or at least, not much more than you’d expect there to be, given genre convention. Naturally, the reluctant ones who want to put the past behind them will come through in the end to save the day, the scalawags all sport hearts of gold, the lawmen are either starched bastards or easily bamboozled, and freedom and cleverness win the day.

Still, there’s nothing particularly wrong with the characters; they’re fun and their dialogue is crisply written, under Johnston‘s watch, he of all those Alan Moore sequential adaptations, including the current “Hypothetical Lizard”, plus the slow-releasing but entertaining “Nightjar”, both at Avatar, and a whole slew of genre-crossing books at Oni, like “Julius” and “Closer”. Superhero vet Barreto (also of Oni’s past period graphic novel “Union Station”) does some very nice work with the art, his thick-and-thin lines and inky shadows and crosshatching lending the affair a fine, old-fashioned feel, with expressive character art and convincing, detailed period designs. This sort of attractive, clean storytelling can only improve the well-worn plot, making the story seem like more of a friendly old tale than a predictable genre exercise, although it can‘t lend an awful lot of surprise to the activities therein. Still, Johnston holds up his end of the bargain; probably the key to this sort of story is the execution of the heist itself, and it’s a pretty involving one here, filled with sleeping drugs and disguises and seduction and threatening gasses and telegraph tomfoolery. No blood or killings, dear readers - this here’s a clean robbery, with likable robbers! And besides, the element of subterfuge, of slipping away under everyone’s noses, is all part of the fun.

There’s also a healthy dose of race relations, which is maybe the most interesting part of the book. After all, much of the Transcontinental Railroad itself was built through the back-breaking labor of immigrants, exposed to volatile explosives and freezing conditions. The whole works blasted through Native grounds, inciting much bloodshed. There’s little details scattered throughout the book on the racial strife of the period; Long Foot’s narrative as to the troubles facing his tribe is the most explicit mention of this in the first half of the book, but there’s more. Mr. Cavanos is a Spaniard, not a Mexican, but they all look to same to most folk, as we discover. Not that any of Our Heroes are prone to such insensitivities. Indeed, the heist that takes up the latter half of the book depends on quite a bit of prejudice to carry it through, from the inevitable uproar caused by a brown fellow entering a certain dining car, to a general ignorance of what is authentic Native American ritual, and what is just buying time. Through their enlightened states, the crew manage to work their way toward that big prize stashed away within the train’s belly.

So yes, it’s a pretty nice slice of extremely straightforward genre fiction, attractive looking and in possession of an eye for certain details. Those hungry for innovation in their Westerns will have to sit this one out, but it’s an appealing execution of an old story, never boring and pleasant to the end, even if you’re bound to be certain of what that end will entail.

World Without New Comics - Day 2: The Noose Tightens

*I have no idea what today's post has to do with a hanging, but 'The Noose Tightens' seems like a good all-purpose title. If they'd used titles like that in educational children's programming, I'd have learned to count properly and I'd know how to manage my finances today. "Maya the Bee" - The Noose Tightens. Now that's some good viewing. Did they even teach counting on that show? Did they teach anything? I don't think so. That was among the decadent ones.

*Yeah, total honesty: I've been up since well before dawn, and I still have stuff to do in about a half hour, so we're gonna have to keep it quick here. Luckily, I don't have any new books to review, since I've also had no time to go out and see if the delivery folk ever got around to stocking up my main shop. Judging from Mike's heroic efforts in reviewing every single new comic that shipped to his store yesterday, it looks like I could have encountered far worse weeks for the new books to go missing.

*I will, however, have a nice advance review of an upcoming book ready to go tomorrow. Aside from that, I'm reading through "The Complete Concrete" which, contrary to the 'Complete' in the title, is but one of seven "Concrete" collections, three of which appear to be out-of-print (that's "Fragile Creature", which I already have, "Strange Armor", the revised origin, and "Concrete: Complete Short Stories 1990-1995", which some sites don't even bother to list, even to mention that it's unavailable), just in time for new readers intrigued by the current "Concrete: The Human Dilemma" to taste some fresh frustration. Anyway, big thanks to this site, which helped me sort out exactly what is collected or reprinted where in the "Concrete" canon, given the many and varied short stories and one-shots and reprints and whatnot.

Yuk Yuk.

*You know what’s ironic? I go through the trouble of crafting an indelible and thoughtful jest on the topic of “Ultimate Iron Man” yesterday, mirthfully suggesting that the book does not truly exist (and at that, paying homage to the good Mr. Ian Brill’s own earlier commentary on a similar subject matter), and what do I encounter today? I enter the comics store, all pip and vim with New Comics Energy, and it turns out that the delivery agents in charge of the comics shipment had drastically ‘shorted’ (to quote industry parlance) the week’s stock. Only five or six titles were present for perusal and potential purchase, and Jiminy Crickets would you guess which title was among the lucky few, and indeed showcasing the highest volume of individual copies?

Bloody foil covers grinning at me, rainbows of Hell as tricks of light, dashed across Tony Stark’s yowling face, there and gone. What a Card.

*Now, if you want happy times, you’ll be packing your bags for Toronto. May 27-29. Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Just look at the guests: Jeff Smith, Chester Brown, Seth, Gary Panter, Marc Bell, Darwyn Cooke, Jeff Brown, Sammy Harkham, Paul Hornschemeier, David Heatley, Rick Altergott (“Doofus”!!!) Carla Speed McNeil, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Cameron Stewart, Maurice Vellekoop, and many many more. That’s an amazing bunch of people. There’ll be sales, workshops, readings, art presentations, and all kinds of great things. If you’re capable, give this event some long, hard consideration; I bet it’ll be worth your attention.

*And now, a sort of review of

Alan Moore’s Twisted Times

There’s been so much said about Alan Moore. Seemingly every corner of his career examined, every nook and cubbyhole of his bibliography exposed to the flares of critical study, debate raging over his many books and characters. And yet, he continues to surprise, if from far back into the past.

This review (really a review of only half a book) is dedicated to the Unknown Soldier of Alan Moore’s comics campaign:

Abelard Snazz.

Not merely a little-examined figure from the far-away marshes of Moore’s UK career, Mr. Snazz holds a special place in Moore history: he was, to the extent of my study, the first recurring headline character to be written and created by Moore-the-writer, rather than Moore-the-writer/artist, and indeed, the first recurring Moore character to be written by ‘Alan Moore’ (in the interests of full disclosure, I‘m not counting Moore’s unpaid work in various late-70’s alternative papers, or his work on back-up strips in Marvel UK's "Dr. Who Weekly" which may slightly pre-date this). Illustrating his own work, Moore had either just finished or was just about to finish his saga of private eye Roscoe Moscow in “Sounds” working under the pseudonym of Curt Vile, and Moore’s Jill de Ray alter-ego was well into the adventures of “Maxwell the Magic Cat” (Trivia: Moore would continue to draw weekly “Maxwell” strips for the Northampton Post until October of 1986, after the release of early issues of “Watchmen” - the mind boggles at the thought of Dave Gibbons calling Moore on the phone to discuss the latest developments in their soon-to-be landmark work only to be brushed away with a stern “Not now, Dave, I’m drawing my cat strip“). But it was Script Robot: Alan Moore that brought Abelard to life.

Debuting in the pages of “2000 A.D.” in 1980, in Moore’s second-ever strip for that venerable publication, Snazz was the focus of a two-part installment of “Ro-Jaws’ Robo-Tales” (one of the many series headings employed by the publication throughout its history to group miscellaneous stories of a similar bent under a single brand), and quickly spun off into his own series, running for five additional adventures, one of them a two-parter itself. Granted, in “2000 A.D.” terms this only added up to about 40 pages of story total, but there was a fairly tight continuity, with earlier adventures referenced later on, and even an ending of sorts. What probably sets this material apart from the Big Three of Moore‘s “2000 A.D.” output (the somewhat similarly-titled but utterly different “Skizz”, “D.R. & Quinch”, and “The Ballad of Halo Jones”) is its brevity coupled with the intermittent appearance of each new installment, as well as frequent artist changes. There were some gaps between each new “Halo Jones” arc, but at least the arcs were a good 10-15 consecutive issues long, as opposed to 1 or 2 issues and then a gap, as Snazz‘s adventures spanned 1980-1983 (liberally interspersed with Moore‘s regular work on “Tharg‘s Future Shocks“ and “Tharg‘s Time Twisters“ during that span of years). And while the other three works could count on Jim Baikie, Alan Davis, and Ian Gibson to stick around for the duration, Snazz saw no less than four different artists handle his six adventures, although “Preacher” co-conspirator Steve Dillon and frequent Bryan Hitch collaborator Paul Neary are among them. But there’s clear continuity in this rather short comedy epic, and it’s a coherent, if episodic story.

Abelard Snazz, you see, has two brains in his head, and two sets of eyes, one above the other on his enlarged face. Snazz is also convinced that he’s a genius, and he is, in a way, although his innovations and creations inevitably lead to destruction and doom for everyone around him. And to seasoned Moore fans, this may already be sounding awfully familiar: the later “Jack B. Quick” shorts in Moore’s ABC anthology “Tomorrow Stories” are very much in the same vein, although the fantasy science isn’t nearly as refined in these earlier stories, although there’s a certain logic that Snazz follows. Upon inventing ultra-sophisticated police robots to rid crime, Snazz winds up reducing a planet to a police state, so he invents complimentary robot criminals, but then innocent citizens are getting caught in the crossfire, so he invents robot civilians to be harmlessly wasted, and eventually the robots crowd the humans off the planet. In another scenario, he creates a Virtue-Converter to transmute the unlimited selflessness of the beatific Farbian Crottle-Worms into a lucrative source of energy, at least until his callous attitude toward his beaming work-force engenders Pride within them, counteracting their virtue and spoiling the plan. And if maybe these little worms remind you just a bit of the famous Schmoo of “Li’l Abner”, well, the younger Moore was a bit more apt to wear his influences on his sleeve, even when he didn’t mean to; one of the Snazz adventures (the second) is in fact not present in this collected volume, as Moore feels that his deep-seated appreciation of the works of R.A. Lafferty led to an instance of “unintentional plagiarism”, as he puts it in his introduction (although you just might be able to locate this little tale and many other wonderful things if you know where to look).

But as short and in some ways familiar as these stories are, they’re also genuinely funny (I adored Snazz‘s robot sidekick Edwin, 75% of his dialogue being some variation of “You‘re a genius, Master!”), and the art is quite excellent across the board. Snazz also has a bit more of an edge to him than his arrogant but immature ABC counterpart; he’s very much a genius, but very much an exploiter, a grifter. He looks to profit from a bevy of ancient gods by restoring them to power, even as their old ways of vengeance return with them to smite civilizations. And at one point, he becomes a god himself, or at least appears to be one to an ancient alien race, leaving him all day to wander around all day ordering folks around in his khaki shorts and tennis shoes, a fine intergalactic colonial power all on his own. And it’s here where we glimpse the potential for deeper things, a potential that young Moore will realize a bit later in his storied career.

The Abelard Snazz stories (barring the one mentioned above) are collected into the first half of the 1987 Titan Books volume “Alan Moore’s Twisted Times”, with the other half devoted to a selection of Moore’s “Time Twisters” and “Future Shocks” work of the same period, some of it with the aforementioned Mr. Gibbons. I got my copy sitting in a shop (puzzlingly, on the ‘New Arrivals’ rack) for the $9 US cover price. A companion volume, “Alan Moore’s Shocking Futures”, reprints even more assorted early material, along with a few random one-offs. Lovely covers by Kevin O’Neill on the both of them.

A better, more comics-related post.

*It may look like a pretty weak Wednesday at the old comics shop, initially. I see Marvel is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Age of Apocalypse, a worthy feast by anyone's standard. But there’s quite a mint of fine books coming out as seen in the plain old ‘Comics’ section of the Diamond list, where they put the pornography and other stuff.

THIS WEEK IN COMICS

Comics Journal 2005 Special: The final one too, from what’s been said around town, which is pretty sad. This was a handsome series, all five volumes of it mixing criticism and original comics by great creators, and while the Journal’s regular issues have now incorporated color and comics and other deluxe elements, it’s too bad to see these deluxe oversized volumes leave us. The comics section’s theme this time is ‘Seduction’, and the promise of new Gerald Jablonski material alone is making me quiver. Up in the front sections, we’ve got a whole lot of manga, including an interview with artist/filmmaker/genial crackpot Hideshi Hino, and profiles of Yoshiharu Tsuge (whose work previously appeared in the Journal’s 250th issue gala) and the great Osamu Tezuka, and more. Plus, a ton of stuff on Vaughn Bode! Check out a detailed list of contents, contributors, and cartoonists here. This will be a good one.

Angry Youth Comix #8: You know what never fails to get attention on the Comics Journal board? Posts of Johnny Ryan’s work. He’s been doing a series of parodies of independent comics legends for a while now, perhaps to eventually collect into another limited-edition book, along the lines of his superhero and newspaper strip parody compilations (uh oh, the latter is all sold out). These things drift over to the Journal board and… well, the most recent one is up to six pages of responses now. This book up there in the bold print, however, is the latest issue of Ryan’s ongoing series from Fantagraphics, and the art is sure to be a lot tighter than what you see in the linked thread above; Ryan’s developed a really attractive style for this book, although the always shock-heavy, iconoclastic humor tends to be hit and miss with me, despite Ryan‘s genuinely keen sense of satire (boiling "Blankets" down to a daily newspaper strip-sized comic last issue was particularly excellent, as was an earlier bit where the cast encounters a pair of aliens whose language employs extremely racist and offensive terms to describe benign things like ice cream… good stuff). I’m always willing to give this book a shot.

Teenagers from Mars: I have seen the later loose issues of this much-admired miniseries sitting around in a number of diverse places, including shops that are, shall we say, not always inclined to stock independent comics, evidence of this title’s status as a genuine ‘mainstream’ breakthrough item as far as comics go. I recall enjoying the short story creators Rick Spears and Rob G. (the latter also of “The Couriers” fame with Brian Wood) had in “Metal Hurlant” #12, and I‘m aware of some work they did in “Detective Comics”. They’ve also got a new crime book called “Filler” out in March from AIT/Planet Lar. This one, however, is their self-published baby, having begun serialization way back in 2001, and now finally being collected into trade form under the auspices of Gigantic Graphic Novels, headed by Spears to release this and future publications, like the new “Dead West”, due out in the middle of the year. Plenty of extras are promised, like production art and character info. The plot is something of a fantasy spin on the infamous case of Mike Diana, with bits of 1950’s anti-comics rhetoric tossed in, as a young rebel teen on futuristic Mars puts out a radical comic book that sparks a literal war of culture. And to be honest, I can think of quite a few ways in which this sort of plot can go very very wrong in short order, but quite a few folks liked it a lot in serialization, and it’s a genuine 21st century self-publishing success story, a rare bird to spot indeed.

La Perdida #5 (of 5): Huge gap in my comics education #56,721 - Jessica Abel. Having worked in anthologies and minicomics since the late 1980‘s, Abel scored a Xeric Grant in 1996 to produce the fifth issue of her “Artbabe“ minicomic, catching the eye of Fantagraphics and leading to four subsequent Fanta-published issues “Artbabe”, and two book collections, “Soundtrack”, collecting the best of the minicomics and other early works, and “Mirror, Window”, collecting the Fanta issues. These books were filled with short stories following the lives and loves of hip urban twentysomethings (or at least that’s how Fanta chose to advertise them). Abel then began work on a serialized graphic novel, “La Perdida” in 2001, inspired by a stint living in Mexico City. It eventually ballooned in size from four issues to five, and here at last is the final issue, weighing in at a larger-than-average 64 pages. You can find out plenty more about Abel at her site. I think I’m going to work on getting hold of Abel’s earlier material, then wait for the collected edition of this, whenever it arrives (hey, just like I did with “Black Hole”). Still, if you’ve been following this story, here’s your cue to jump for joy.

The Intimates #5: HEY! How did you kids from the front of the list sneak in here?

Ultimate Iron Man #1: Oh man, this is that one book written by that guy! You know… the one guy who said that stuff. And he’s writing Iron Man! OUR Iron Man (or some Ultimate iteration thereof)! I’m so angry. Don’t you remember the controversy?! It was really heated, but then we started talking about “New Avengers” or “Wolverine” or something, and it all went away. But now it’s back and that guy’s gonna maybe say some stuff, unless he doesn’t! Er, what’s this book about again? Iron Man? Wasn’t he just in some Warren Ellis thing that vanished? Anyway, I’m sure this book will be quite a peach in the Mighty Marvel Manner depending on whatever happens. Or doesn‘t. Is this book even real? Ian?