The Recreation Annex

Back in business

2009-06-20T23:26:00.000-07:00

We're back in the comics commentary business! Check out our new blog:

Always leave 'em laughing

2008-08-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

Way back at the end of June, I had an opportunity to satisfy my somewhat obsessive-compulsive nature and end this blog on a Significant Number (144 posts, to be precise). I chose to linger rather than leave, feeling I had more left to say. Perhaps I should have seized that moment when I could, because now, a little more than month and only two posts later, The Recreation Annex is indeed drawing its curtains closed.

I have started a new blog on WordPress called WalakaNet that combines a few of my outlets into one source; comics will no longer be the sole focus of the site, but will have its own section. You might say I am moving the dial a little bit away from the Fortress of Fortitude end and toward the Estoreal end. (As long as I don't move into Capespotting territory; where the heck are ya, Cap?)

I want to thank everyone who has come by or offered support. Realizing that over the past two and half years people have paid something like 40,000 visits here to see what I was up to makes me feel like I was a small but real part of the comicsweblogosphere. I hope some of you come by the new place for my occasional observations.

And now, two short videos, both (coincidentally) with political themes, that made me laugh.

An example of hard-hitting investigative reporting from San Diego, with surprising results:

I don't know how to categorize this, but that doesn't mean it's not cool:

Well, so long, and as Stan The Man used to say, Excelsior!

Comics, comics, everywhere...

2008-07-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

with esteem and respect to Bruce Eric Kaplan

I have cited this cartoon before, because I think it sums up the mainstreaming of comics that we seem to have been experiencing over the past few years. We can parse out the details, but there's no denying that folks are talking about comics out in the open, without apology, with more frequency than ever before. This situation was driven home to me over the past few days.

First off, I got a phone message from a pal telling me that a local AM talkradio host was going to be interviewing Neal Adams. I tuned in and for a solid hour Adams talked about the reinvention of Batman in the sixties after the television show and other topics that wouldn't have been out of place on any comics blog. Check it out: July 15, 2:00pm.

I grant that that interview might have been sold because of the Dark Knight movie, and that the situation in general has been helped by so many comic book adaptations or comics-inspired films being released this summer, but c'mon: who would have imagined that a regular essayist on NPR would contribute a piece examining in detail the DC fan/Marvel fan divide, under any circumstances? Yet this is what I heard the very next day on Morning Edition, in a piece by John Ridley.

The next day, Steve Scher, the host of Weekday, a local program on the Seattle NPR affiliate, devoted a whole hour of his show to comic books, speaking with Mike Mignola and Douglas Wolk, among others. I guess this shouldn't have surprised me so much, since Scher spent a whole hour interviewing David Hajdu a few months ago, when Ten-Cent Plague came out, and constantly surprised the author with his depth of understanding of the subject.

Out of curiosity, I did a search on the NPR site tonight, and found that this afternoon I missed an All Things Considered report on international comics and that a few days ago Day to Day used the Batman movie opening as a springboard to do a fairly thorough examination of the evolution of The Joker over the years. That's all in addition to pieces on Dark Knight itself.

To top it off, I stopped by the library this week to talk to another pal, and she gave me a copy of the SPL annual report: they got Ellen Forney to produce it in "graphic novel" format, which is to say it uses some specific elements and the general aesthetic of comics to present the material. Here's the cover and a sample page:

So, while I don't think that we'll be seeing folks on the beach reading comics a regularly as paperbacks, or that graphic novels will replace newspapers as the commuter's reading material of choice, it seems pretty clear that the door to the general culture is opening wider and a little bit of light is being shed onto the shadowy world of comics geekdom.

Zip! Bang! Zot! It's The Librarians!

2008-07-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

One of the old TPBs in the Last Shortbox is Zot! Book One (Eclipse Books:1990), which collects the first half of the original ten-issue color run of Zot!, Scott McCloud's whimsical-yet-thoughtful take on the Flash Gordon style of adventure story. I have always liked this series, mostly for its mischievous tone, as it apparently alternates between parody and hommage of its source material. McCloud's talent is clearly in its developmental stage here: the illustrations are as masterfully expressive as any of his art, but he doesn't seem to display the same easy command of line and form as in his later work, and the plot can be pretty pedestrian. It's well worth a read, however, and not just for its historical value.

I recently acquired another Zot! collection:

Zot!
The Complete Black and White Collection: 1987-1991
By Scott McCloud (HarperCollins: 2008)

This is a heckuva book: 576 pages of the second, black-and-white run of the title, much of which I have never seen before. It includes some commentary, some never-published art, and extras like that. I think there's some manga influence going on, in that it has been published in a sort-of digest-size (6" x 9") rather than tradition comic book/TPB size. (Am I just demonstrating my calcification when I prefer my graphic books in the "proper" size? I suppose I am.) I haven't had a chance to read all the way through yet, but I am looking forward to further exploring the early work of someone we may forget is an important comics creator as well as theorist.

The reason I mention the book now, rather than waiting to provide a full review later, is to highlight my source: Leslie, one of the librarians up at the University of Washington - Bothell / Cascadia Community College library, on the campus where I teach. This is not the first time a librarian has turned me on to a good graphic book: you may remember when Venta drew my attention to The Invention of Hugo Cabret. But this time, not only did Leslie draw my attention to the book, she gave me a copy - a signed copy she had picked up at the ALA convention. Truly, our school is blessed with the coolest librarians on the planet.

Yesterday, I took a ride up to my campus (even though I have taken the summer off) to return a library book (Fun Home, actually). As usual, I stopped in to chat with my librarian pals, and in the space of a few minutes of corridor-convo, we had discussed the movies Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and The Fall; Julie's cartoonist cousin, who may have found a publisher for his work; a possible conference paper to write on comics in the classroom, the lack of attendance at ALA by both DC and Marvel, and the perils of dogsitting. And I had a brand-new graphic book to add to my summer reading stack.

You can't beat that.

Follow-up department:

Speaking of libraries, here's the review of the book Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow from the library-based and library-themed webcomic Unshelved. (Click the pic to go to the site for a readable version.)

In light of a prior conversation about descriptions of this book as a "graphic novel without the pictures," I found it amusing that a review done in comics format, on a webcomics site that often reviews graphic novels, refers to the volume as "a book of poetry" and "a novel in verse," and doesn't mention graphic novels at all. I would figure that if anyone was going to see that metaphor, the guys would.

Another excursion into definition

2008-06-29T22:47:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this little prose piece:

The proud Kuleeah was furious because Tarzan had made sport of her. Now she dashed toward him, determined to redeem her pride with his blood. She aimed a murderous blow at the head of unarmed ape-man. Again, Tarzan dodged, whirled, seized her, and lifted her high above his head. There he held her, kicking and squirming, while her comrades hurled gleeful taunts.

Though they laughed at Kuleeah's plight, they were impressed by the mighty Tarzan. “He can be my husband, though he conquer me and rule my hut,” cried one. This was heresy among the Amazons, who prided themselves on their dominance over men.

“I'll take him,” shouted another.

“No, he's mine,” insisted a third.

Soon, the tribe was in turmoil. As the warrior women fought amongst themselves, Tarzan set Kuleeah down. She ran away to get her bow and arrows. If she could not have him, no other would.

Then, suddenly, into this wild confusion burst a pack of hungry lions.

Although it does start in media res, this passage appears to be a pretty complete section of a narrative. Even from this excerpt, we can discern a lot about the characters and setting, and we can certainly follow the action. Is this a bit of a Burroughs book, or some fanfic, or what? Well, take a look at it in its original:

Click to embiggify

I ran across this Sunday strip at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, which also has a wealth of comics and cartooning stuff.

I forget why I stumbled over it, but looking at this page immediately got me to thinking: there is no one, I think, who would exclude this page from a collection of comics, or comic strips, or sequential art, or graphic literature, or whatever phrase we want to use for all that funnybook stuff we like so much.

And yet, if we really look at the strip, there's no real fusion of word and image to make meaning or create communication. The text, as demonstrated above, can easily stand on its own and carry the entire narrative weight of the piece. The art, as exquisite as it is, really doesn't help to tell the story; it contains nothing new, no information that isn't already expressed by the text. The drawings certainly couldn't stand on their own and give us anywhere near the narrative detail that the text does. (For example, is there anything in panel four to indicate that the Amazons are "hurling gleeful taunts"?) To paraphrase Steve Lieber, the pictures may illustrate the story, but they aren't the story.

This seems to contradict what we expect from comics, that magical conjunction of words and pictures that creates something new, something that is neither merely prose nor art, but, well, comics.

We mist be missing something, but damned if I know what it is.

Maybe definition isn't that important after all.

This makes a dozen dozen posts on this blog: 144 entries in 915 days, about one a week. I know, that's pretty gross. I was looking for a significant milestone to quit on, and I thought this might be the one. But I don't think so now; there may be a few more things I want to say before that.

Mail Call

2008-06-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

Well, in an interesting development, this little internet web-log has received some comments on some old posts!

Someone liked the art from Lady Cop that I included in one of my earliest substantive posts, The Saga of Liza Warner, from January 4, 2006, and wanted to know the artists. This post came before I settled on the style of enlarging and bolding the titles and creator names of comics I review; I guess that was a good idea, because the information is included in the original post, but even I had a hard time finding it. (It's in small italics beneath the cover image.) For the record, the penciler was John Rosenberger and the inker was Vince Colletta.

Two people responded to my September 2, 2007 post ENO TAERG BPT! about the Silver Age JLA: Zatanna trade collection. That post included illustrations of the leggy magician by Murphy Anderson, Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, and Mike Sekowsky; my correspondents are requesting, nay, demanding, a version by none other than -- Vince Colletta!

Well, I aim to please, so I did some research, but I have yet to find a Zatanna story penciled by Colletta, although he did ink a few, including the Romeo Tanghal preview in the same Zatanna trade. (Apparently, Colletta penciled a lot early in his career, but from the sixties on he almost exclusively focused on inking.)

I did find this great image of Zatanna pencilled by Don Heck and inked by Vince Colletta:

If you check the source post here on Gorilla Daze, you can read about Colletta's specific contribution to the illustration.

I read a comic book

2008-06-07T20:22:00.000-07:00

Giant-Size Incredible Hulk #1
Marvel: July, 2008
Roger Stern, Writer;
Zach Howard & Cory Hamscher, Artists

I was killing a little time in the LCS the other day when I saw this book on the rack; the cover was compelling. I hadn't read any Hulk books in at least a decade, but here he was, on the front of a comic, beautifully drawn (by cover artist Gary Frank), and in classic form. I had seen covers and illustrations of Hulk over the past few years in a t-shirt, a tuxedo, a gladiator outfit, and who knows what-all. To see him in the traditional ripped purple pants, thooming his way through what could easily be Monument Valley, brought back fond memories, and the book didn't seem to be part of any bigger saga (it even said "one-shot" on the cover). I flipped through it: the art didn't suck and there was a reprint in the back. I bought it, even at $3.99

It was totally cool.

I don't know if this is some kind of under-the-radar tie-in to the new movie or what, but the story is an episodic overview of Greenskin's career and would completely fill a new reader in on the character; for me, it was more of a refresher course and a current-continuity-check. I don't know how much they're left out, but it sure reads like 1978 wasn't thirty years ago.

Stern, who was a Hulk writer back in the day, gives us a framing sequence courtesy of Fred Sloan, an ex-hippie writer who was apparently a temporary part-time Hulk sidekick at some point when I wasn't reading the series. While researching his second book on the Hulk, Sloan encounters minor characters from Hulk's past adventures, each one providing a different perspective on both the myth and reality of the Green-skinned Goliath. Meanwhile, Bruce Banner is having his own current adventure, hulking out during a restaurant robbery and encountering plenty more action afterwards. Stern ties the two threads together very satisfactorily and gives us a final scene that captures the essence of what the Hulk TV series did best: portray the haunted journey of Bruce Banner. The narration from the three final panels is as touching and apt a description of that Jekyll-Hyde relationship as any I have ever read.

But as textured as the writing is, Stern doesn't leave out that all important Hulk Smash! action. In the present day, we get to see Hulk make quick work of armed robbers, scare a bear, smack a Winnebago, destroy a logging operation, punch a van, and leapfrog from the mountains to the California coast; in flashbacks, he smashes a statue, smashes a jeep, fights a bunch of soldiers, saves a school bus, and beats up some rednecks.

Through it all, Hulk displays the personality I remember best: not too bright, generally good-willed, but proud, easily annoyed, and quick to anger.

The art by Howard and Hamscher can be a little dicey at times, with some odd proportions and perspectives, but they have a great design sense: the flashback scenes are not only colored differently (kudos to Lovern Kindzierski) but also rendered differently, with thicker outlines and some Kirbyesque touches that evoke the Silver Age source material perfectly.

All that would have been enough to make me happy for my four bucks, but I also got to read a Stern & Byrne Champions-era Hulk story, guest-starring two members of that team, Iceman and Angel. However competent a story this is (and it is), it was really nothing but a nostalgia-wallow for me, getting to see Warren Worthington with his gold chain and suave moves, Bobby Drake feeling and acting awkward, Doc Samson with Hulk on the couch, Hulk pounding Samson into the ground like a tent peg, Jim Wilson calming Hulk down, and all the heroes taking on a Sentinel (after the ol' get-Hulk-involved-by-pissing-him-off ploy).

As much as the back-up was a trip down memory lane for me, I really do think I enjoyed the main story on its own merits and not just for its evocation of the "the way things were when I liked them," although I am willing to admit to a strong bias in that direction. Nonetheless, I can state categorically that this is one of the few mainstream comics that I have looked at lately that I wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen reading: there's no gratuitously graphic violence, no objectification or T&A, no hard-ass grittiness to prove how "adult" the material is. And most of the people in the stories are regular folks - this isn't a cape-fest. It was just good funnybook material.

Incredible, indeed.

Comics blog comics

2008-06-01T10:49:00.001-07:00

I was eagerly anticipating Fred van Lente's and Ryan Dunlavey's Comic Book Comics from Evil Twin. I thoroughly enjoyed Action Philosophers, and even used it in a composition class that I taught. I missed the new book when it first came out, and had to wait for my LCS to get their re-order before I could read it.

Man, was I disappointed.

I read Men of Tomorrow not too long ago, and just used Comic Book Nation in a class, and am in the middle of Hajdu's The Ten-cent Plague right now, so comics historiography is on my mind. Van Lente and Dunlavey do a pretty good job of chronicling the rise of comic books, but unlike AP, which seemed to clarify and popularize, this history seems too often to over-simplify and generalize. The authors have a strong analytical position - their treatment of animation as a necessary element to understanding comics is a fresh perspective, for example - but it seems that they were not terribly critical in assessing some of their sources. They seem to take the stories of Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's exploits prior to his publishing career at face value, for example, rather than including any additional information.

But scholarship quibbles aside, the major disappointment with book was just that it wasn't very good as comics. I couldn't see how presenting this in comics format added anything to to the telling: the creators don't really seem to be exploiting the form. On the contrary, most of the panels are merely non-sequential illustrations that "act out" the text without adding anything new to the communication. Take this page, which also includes the good major:

With the exception of the first panel, with its symbolic representation of Nicholson as a leader and where the word balloon dialog "Who's with me" is answered in the subsequent caption box, none of the illustrations adds anything to the text in any integral or creative way. Does the inclusion of a deliberately bad drawing in panel two really add to the description of the crude art found in early comics? Does a sketch of three swashbuckler types in panel three (two with Siegel and Shuster's faces) help us understand the description of strips like Henri Duval better? It would appear not.

There just seemed to be too much of this throughout the book. If I was just a little more OCD, I would type out all the caption boxes as straight text to see just how little editing it would take to turn the comic into prose. I'm betting very little.

So, as much as I enjoy reading about the history of comics, I'm not sure I'll be scooping up the floppies on this one. The trade may have to be part of my library just for the sake of completeness, but I'm afraid my enthusiasm for the project has dimmed.

And now, a little comicsy mystery:

As I wander around the net, I often save images of people reading comic books and newsstands selling comic books, just for fun and personal use, like for computer wallpaper. Here's one that I found somewhere:

It seems to show a newsstand in early 1938, as you can see several copies of Action Comics #1 on the lower rack in the front right. Pretty cool piece of comics history, eh?

Well, it took a student of mine, who was looking on the net for a copy of this image after I showed it to the class as part of an exercise, to point me to this from the Museum of the City of New York:

Notice that the comics are gone, and with good reason: the photo was taken by Berenice Abbot in late 1935 - over two and a half years before Action was published.

Why would someone photoshop this picture?

Unfortunately, I haven't found a source for the doctored image yet. I'll let you know if and when I do, unless someone tells me first.

Until then, remember: document your sources!

An appropriate occassion for a return

2008-05-26T07:54:00.000-07:00

I have been away for this blog for too long because [insert usual description of RL interference with blogging responsibilities here], but some synchronicity compels a few remarks.

It had been a while since I have even bought a comic; I finally caught up with Comic Book Comics from Evil Twin and was very disappointed, but more on that later. But the other day I was in one of my LCS, and this cover caught my eye:

Arrowsmith: So Smart in their Fine Uniforms
Wildstorm: 2004
by Kurt Busiek, Carlos Pacheco, Jesus Merino, and Alex Sinclair

What caught my eye first was the sort of art nouveau design sensibility; as I leafed through the book, I could see that it was some sort of alternate history WW1 story, and something about it just hooked me. I took it home and read it over the next few days.

It turned out to be a well-done (if fairly typical) story of an idealistic young man who goes off to war for noble reasons and discovers that it is difficult to keep his moral stance in the middle of the horror of battle. The difference is that alongside traditional armaments, both sides use magic - sometimes nasty magic.

The book is beautifully drawn, the alternate world fully realized, and the characters engaging; the plot, however, could have been lifted from any of a number of war movies, and without much alteration would work just fine without any of the magical or other alternate history elements. Yet I feel the book is a worthwhile addition to the genre and well worth a read, for two reasons.

The first is that is is extremely well-done. Although the plot mechanics may be a little trite, Busiek's actualization of the trope is sophisticated and compelling. He makes us care about the characters and lets us feel their pain, their growth, their joys, and their losses. Within the fantasy realm, he paints as strong a picture of the realities of war as I think anyone could, and Pacheco's art more than meets the challenge of carrying the weight of the story. It is truly a tour de force for both creators.

Perhaps more importantly, the book called me to read it and to be open to its message. As jaded as I can be at times, I might not have read just another anti-war war book; I mean, there was All Quiet on the Western Front and Paths of Glory and Johnny Got His Gun and yeah, I've been there. But the alt-history pulled me in, and then the book slapped me in the face with a heaping dose of reality and made me think clearly again about about something incredibly significant, and made me feel again how I feel about it. And that is a good thing to have happen, and a nice achievement for any Art, whether fine, pop, or junk.

That this book made this statement to me on this particular weekend just made it all the more meaningful.

I guess Arrowsmith may be old news to some, but it was a new discovery to me; I suggest you check it out if you ever have the chance.

Just a mention or two

2008-04-20T07:38:00.000-07:00

I'm on a road trip this weekend, so no real post, but...

I caught a glimpse of the rough Spirit trailer. I have been not terribly interested (and even less optimistic) about this movie from the get-go, and this hasn't changed my mind. I have a feeling the film will fall into the great bin that holds Billy Zane's Phantom and Alex Baldwin's Shadow movies.

This poster doesn't seem to be creating too much of a kerfuffle, certainly compared to the dread MJ statuette and some covers; there's a graduate paper in image analysis for someone there.

A beautiful Saturday!

2008-04-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

Today was the best day of the year here in Seattle, sunny all day with temperatures that must have hit seventy. The lakes were filled with boaters, parks were crowded with ballplayers and runners, the Dalai Lama was making an appearance this afternoon at a program at the football stadium, and there was a green technology fair at the convention center.

So, of course, I spent the shank of the afternoon in a dark room at class on writing comics.

Class Act

Shary Flenniken, whom you may remember from her strip "Trots and Bonnie" in the old National Lampoon, was teaching a class called Scripting the Graphic Novel for Writers and Artists at the Richard Hugo House, a local center for the literary arts. The class was scheduled to coincide with Marjane Satrapi's appearance in town on Monday.

I had been expecting a class focusing on the details of full-script versus "Marvel" methods and similar technical issues. I guess this betrays my formalist bent; Shary's presentation, well-received by the eleven attendees, ranged from creativity exercises and brainstorming methods to scriptwriting practices and publishing concerns.

Most of the students were writers first and foremost; some of them had had little or no exposure to comics. More than one was looking for the appropriate vehicle for her story, or another way of telling it, after having tried prose and screenplay. There was a strong creative energy in the class and a great deal of respect for the promise of the "graphic novel" form.

Shary provided guidance in visual- and action-based writing that was on-target for the audience and the context. And she told funny stories, too!

check out Shary's website

A is A
There's a huge announcement bouncing around the internets right now:

It looks like at long last Steve Ditko is going to have a new book coming out. I'm sure I'm going to get it, and I'm sure I will be thrilled to see new art from one of the greats, but I'm not as sure that I'm going to enjoy reading it. We'll see. Check out the details on Ditko Looked Up.

Interim linkage

2008-04-07T07:34:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pieces from my recent bookmarks file:

The First Second feature Mentor's Corner has had some great essays on the structure and function of comics: Steven Seagle on Beginning-Middle-End and Calistra Brill on Time caught my attention in particular. These approaches provide a contrast to Neil Cohn's psycholinguistic investigations, which drive me crazy (but which I always read).

And speaking of alternate perspectives, it was interesting to find a fairly comprehensive overview of comics history on a marketing job search website.

A new journal, Graphoscope, should soon be joining the ongoing conversation, although I am always made a bit chary by the overuse of the word "criticism."

Just for fun, The Daily Batman is self-explanatory. I wonder how long it can go before it gets dull.

This weekend, I am passing up the Dalai Lama for Shary Flenniken - I'll tell you all about it.

So, what of this, if anything?

2008-03-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

I was listening to NPR this morning and they had a short feature on Toby Barlow's new book, Sharp Teeth, a contemporary werewolf story written in free verse. I was only half-listening, and heard some references to Homer and whatnot, but then caught Barlow describing his book as a "graphic novel without pictures."

Hunh?

The NPR website lists the full quotation: "a ripping yarn with the extra words ripped away ... a graphic novel without the pictures, or a hard boiled novel that's been boiled down to a reduction sauce."

As Jude Law said in I Heart Huckabee's: wait, what does that even mean?

Isn't the essence of comics (and hence, graphic novels) something about the words and pictures working together to carry the narrative? Or just pictures, when there are no words? The excerpt I read looked more like an epic poem than anything anything else. Isn't poetry already distilled language, concentrated imagery, that conveys more with less? Does this metaphor really add any depth to the description that calling it poetry doesn't?

I don't think so. And I think there might be another reason behind its use. Googling the phrase only garners two hits: in a review of Richard Morgan's first novel, the science fiction story Altered Carbon and in a review of comics writer Warren Ellis's first prose book, the gonzo detective novel Crooked Little Vein. In addition, Barlow's book itself sports this blurb from Scott Smith: "If Ovid had been raised on a steady diet of Marvel Comics, Roger Corman, and MTV, he might have written something like Toby Barlow's Sharp Teeth." All this seems to indicate to me that something else is going on.

I think this metaphor is the highbrow marker for confusing form with genre when thinking or talking about comics. I don't think any of the three uses of this metaphor - even by the author himself - really indicates anything about the narrative structure or energy of the text; I think they're shorthand (or code) for saying something about the book's content and its relative value or merit, the same way an action film might be accused of having a "comic book plot."

I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I think it is what's happening.

Update - full disclosure:

Re-reading this post today, I realized I had only searched for "graphic novel without pictures." However, a search for "graphic novel without the pictures" (that ignores Sharp Teeth references) only nets a few more results:

In a parent's guide to children's books discussing Quantum Prophecy, described in brief as "Comic-book style superhero action; moral dilemmas, some driven by visions of the future."

In a review of An Alchemist with One Eye on Fire, a collection of poetry described as having "cartoon-like imagery."

In a customer review on Amazon of The Doomsday Brunette, a book about "genetically engineered superwomen."

In a customer review on B&N of The Traveler, in which the book's action sequences are compared to Kill Bill and V for Vendetta.

In a personal remembrance of having read Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny over thirty years before.

All of these seem to support my initial response.

There was one different take. In a blog review of The Plot to Save Socrates, the reviewer notes the author's spare writing and lack of descriptions, and uses the graphic novel metaphor as negative criticism.

So, is this a mostly useless little phrase, then?

Sad sack

2008-03-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

So, I was sitting around in a local corporate coffeeshop, thinking about my missed post from last weekend and wondering if I wanted to have a strack, squared-away blog like The Fortress of Fortitude, with regular features and timely posts (and excellent writing), or a casual, whenever-the-spirit-moves-me blog, like Estoreal (with its excellent writing).

The spirit hasn't moved me much this week, that's for sure: Arthur C. Clarke died; he was a particular hero of mine, and his passing genuinely saddened me.

There were other, minor, more transitory sadnesses. I missed Comic Book Comics #1 when it came out, and my LCS still hasn't received their re-order.

I signed up to take a comics scripting class taught by Shary Flenniken at the Richard Hugo House, but there's only two of us registered (I think the other person is David Lasky) so it may not go.

And I went on the internets today to read my regular blogfeeds and found two bloggers, both of whom I enjoy reading, engaged in yet another comicsweblogosphere pissing match, the likes of which I think we have too much of already.

So, even though I am posting late, and even though I have not even made up my mind what this blog will be, all it is today is this:

80pg. Giant

2008-03-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

Twelve-step review:

Samurai: Heaven and Earth - Volume 2
by Ron Marz, Luke Ross, Rob Schwager, Dan Jackson, and Dave Lanphear
Dark Horse: 2007

1. Our story continues the adventures of Shiro, a misplaced samurai fighting his way across early eighteenth century Europe in search of his lost love, Yoshi. In this arc, Shiro makes his way though Spain, across the Mediterranean, and then across North Africa from Tripoli to Egypt.

2. Shiro picks up an ally of sorts on his journey: the Arab slaver who initially brought Yoshi from her captivity in China to Europe. They even get a "meet cute" moment:

3. Shiro's partnership with Al-Din and his need of the trader's local knowledge and contacts serve to somewhat mitigate the sometimes omnipotent nature of the character. There seems to be no army that Shiro cannot defeat singlehandedly; I wanted to see him succeed more by guile or determination or experience and less by just being better than everyone else.

4. Marz's script now include flashbacks to Japan at the start of every chapter. I think that this device works even more effectively in the collection as it would have in individual issues; the two "stories" merge nicely at the end of the book. Notwithstanding Shiro's unstoppability, Marz paces the quest and cliffhangers that appear throughout the plot well.

5. Don Miguel, the duplicitous Spanish ambassador from the first book, is developed further as a villain of major standing, and Yoshi is given more time of her own to shine.

6. The language issue that I mentioned in my review of the first book is given minor attention, but is still never really addressed. That's still okay.

7. The issue of Yoshi's sexual experiences while in captivity, on the other hand, is addressed directly, forthrightly, and in a sophisticated adult manner. Kudos.

8. Luke Ross's art is still totally gorgeous. The shift in setting to North Africa allows him to indulge himself in a whole different collection of set pieces and determining shots. Somebody referred to this part of the series as Shiro of Arabia, and it has the same epic sweep as the David Lean film. The people are still beautiful to look at as well.

9. In addition to the flashbacks mentioned above there is another device that I think works better - or only - in the collection. Page six of chapter one (a full-page spread) is perfectively and effectively echoed on page eight of chapter five. I'm not sure this would have been as compelling if I had seen the images four months apart rather than less than an hour. (It is precisely this kind of effect that the form of the physical text has on narrative that I might use as my research focus for my doctorate.)

10. The book contains another great slew of bonus features: design sketches, unused cover concepts and a gallery of the characters by different artists.

11. The most interesting feature in the extras will be incorporated into my class on comics nd sequential art next quarter: Ross penciled one fight scene as a two-page spread, and then had to re-arrange the panels when he realized the scene would actually fall on the recto and verso of the same page. It is a great example of the interplay of narrative, art, panel design, and page layout in comics.

12. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to let you know that the lovers are re-united - at least for a time: there are clearly more struggles ahead and another five-issue arc is promised. I'll sure be waiting for the trade.

Not a review

I picked up a copy of Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure #1. This book, billed as a Stan Lee/Jack Kirby production, takes an unpublished story by Stan and Jack and presents it three ways: as reproductions of the original pencils, complete with marginal notes; within a different published story that used some of the panels and pages - out of context - as a flashback sequence; and as the complete story as it was originally intended to be seen back in 1970, with post facto production assistance from contemporary professionals. I find this a wonderful piece of work, if only for its glimpse into the creative and productive processes that go into a comic book. This will be another text for the class to consider.

Five-star review:

Justice League: The new Frontier Special #1
by Darwyn Cooke, J. Bone, and David Bullock

1. This is not so much a review as a love letter. Darwyn Cooke just gets superheroes better than anyone else at DC and has a design sensibility and visual elan than I just can't get enough of.

2. Cooke's fight between Superman and Batman in the main story makes you realize just how silly and self-indulgent Frank Miller can be, and was even back in The Dark Knight Returns. Cooke, on the other hand, provides a slam-bang action story without sacrificing any character consistency. Cool beans, indeed.

3. I grow more and more in love with Cooke's Wonder Woman. Man-o-man, wotta woman!

4. The Robin and Kid Flash team-up tale was everything that I had hoped The Teen Titans Lost Annual was going to be, and wasn't. Haney's magic didn't survive him, and that post-mortem concoction just fell flat. This story, however, is an hommage, not a reproduction, and it positively zings; can you dig it, daddy-o?

5. The rest of the issue was full of more fun: a pitch-perfect Rip Hunter intro; a frothy, funny Wonder Woman-Black Canary-Gloria Steinem (!) team-up; some behind the scenes art from the New Frontier DVD; and the hidden jewel of the piece: a National Comics in-house ad from an Elseworld where John Henry and Martian Manhunter had their own ten-cent comics alongside Green Lantern.

Compare and contrast

I went to see the Persepolis movie today.

Y'know, I have to say that I was never a big fan of the book. It was the Seattle Public Library's "Everybody Reads" pick a few years back, and I even gave a talk on "How to Read a Graphic Novel" in conjunction with that event that used the memoir as its centerpiece, but I never really thought it was that good. Marjane Satrapi clearly has a compelling story to tell; I just don't think that she is that accomplished as a storyteller. The book doesn't really exploit the potential of the form, the art doesn't captivate me, and the story seems to just chug along without much momentum. Maybe I'm missing something, but I never quite got what all the fuss was about.

The film, on the other hand, has some magical moments, is beautifully visualized, and has condensed the story into a tighter narrative arc that moves briskly. It was not a great film, but surely a good one. When I came home, I took another look at the books, and realized that the parts that seemed to work the best for me on the screen were those parts that deviated the most from Satrapi's original vision on the page. I don't know if she just had wonderful collaborators or if film is her true medium, but the movie is so much better than the comic that it is hard to figure out. I'll have to give this a lot more thought (and maybe ask my students!).

Meta

It seems this little corner of the blogoverse must have passed some sort of threshold, because I am starting to get some solicitations for reviews, which has never happened before. This really isn't primarily a "new stuff" blog, so I don't think I'll be going that way, but I wanted to share a piece of the latest request I got, verbatim:

I was wondering if you would be interested in reading it and perhaps giving it a review on your "internet web-log."

So, is that the subtlest irony ever or genuine?

Twelve-step review (with bonus video): Justice League: The New Frontier

2008-03-01T13:32:00.001-08:00

So, true to their word, the fine folks at M80 sent me a preview copy of the new Justice League: The New Frontier DVD to review. (It didn't look anything like the image to the left; the package was different and there was only one disk. I think I might have the Brazilian version, since the alternate language is Portuguese. )

I decided to try something a little different and invite five friends over to watch the movie and offer their comments. We have a wide range of perspectives represented, from an old-school comics fan who has read the New Frontier comics to someone who is not a comics fan and hasn't ever laid eyes on the original story; their relative exposure to the genre and the story are reflected in their "scores" on the video. Check it out and see for yourself. (Oh, yeah, and I guess there's a spoiler alert for this whole thing._

As for my take on it:

1. For the record, I loved the original. It spoke to my personal experiences and coming-of-age and had a design sensibility that I enjoyed, as well as presenting what I thought was pretty good story even without all the insider stuff.

2. The video does a pretty good job of telescoping the plot down to a manageable level; some history and some characters are sacrificed, but it would have been unwieldy otherwise.

3. The condensation of the plot reduces minor roles to cameo appearances: Mlle. Marie makes a few brief appearances and has one line; the Challengers of the Unknown are never named and appear solely as purple jumpsuits walking on a dead pterodactyl; the Blackhawks glower and shout "Hawk-aaa," but that's about it; and Green Arrow doesn't even get any lines.

4. The upshot of this characterization shorthand is that the viewer only gets it if they already got it; some of the best throwaway bits are wasted on the non-fan. It seems this would limit the movie's potential audience.

5. The movie also reveals that superhero dialog that works great on the page is often not as impressive when acted out. Batman's "penny for a book of matches" line and Farady's "real men wear pants" are two good examples.

6. Darwyn Cooke's retro design sense clearly informed the art, but there was still a little too much of a Diniverse vibe to it for me. In addition, there was too much Burns-effect panning across still images.

7. In particular, the backgrounds felt awfully skimpy sometimes. The Las Vegas sequence is a great example of this; it started out strong visually, but then got a bit sketchy as it went on.

8. Other visual bits suffered the same shorthand-itis as the characterization. Details like changes to Batman's costume are lost on non-fans without any explanation.

9. The Martian Manhunter arc was very sturdily constructed and made perhaps the best sense of J'onn's origin ever; it clearly establishes the character as, if not the first hero of the Silver Age, the critical bridge between the ages. (With just a wee bit of script doctoring, this could be a Martian Manhunter movie.)

10. The Hal Jordan arc seemed less integrated and not as tightly written; Barry Allen and Iris West are delightful. The Trinity all represent well, with Diana a bit feistier than she is often portrayed - and taller than Superman!

11. The devil is in the details, and some worked better than others: the cameo by Kennedy was a bit lame, but seeing Lex in a fifties-era "Lexco" office was brilliant.

12. Overall, I wish the movie had had twice the budget and been half-again as long. With a little boost in production values and a bit more time to spin the story, The New Frontier could have been as mainstream as a superhero movie could get; as it is, it's a nice diversion for fans.

Promotional interlude

2008-02-23T10:44:00.000-08:00

Well, I still haven't had much time for reading or any real writing - I just yesterday managed to pick up Diana Prince: Wonder Woman Volume One, but aside from flipping through it and briefly grooving on the psychedelic Sekowsky artwork and ultra-mod O'Neil scripts, I haven't been able to really dive into it. Nonetheless, there are a few news items to share!

Sort-of comics

The New Frontier DVD is coming out soon and I was contacted by M80, the outfit that is promoting this for Warner, and asked to spread the word. Not much of a stretch, since the comic itself is one of my favorites, especially since it features a lot of cool J'onn Jo'nzz action. Here's the official line on the film:

Justice League / The New Frontier
Inspired by the best-selling graphic novel by Darwyn Cooke and produced by the multiple Emmy® award winning animation legend, Bruce Timm, The New Frontier is the epic tale of the founding of the Justice League. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are all here of course, and so are Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and Flash - whose incredible origins will be told for the very first time. Strangers at first, these very different heroes must overcome fear and suspicion to forge an alliance against a monster so formidable, even the mighty Superman can not stop it. If they fail, our entire planet will be “cleansed” of humanity.

I find it interesting that the movie is being touted as a "Justice League" movie, although I expect that this is both an attempt to connect to the general public and a bit of a lead-in to the upcoming(?) live-action movie. It also might just be an attempt to counter the pretty heavy nostalgia factor of the book and connect to a wider comics audience as well. A fellow comics fan, a generation younger than me, liked New Frontier, but didn't appreciate it as much as I did; he was a bit puzzled by what he called "all the Green Lantern love" that it contained. In any case, I'm looking forward to the DVD, if for nothing else besides the animated version of one of the best characterizations of Wonder Woman ever:

If I get a preview DVD, I'll have a little premiere party and let you know what a cross-section of folks say. And if you want more info now, check out the official New Frontier website.

Not comics at all, really

A pal of mine, Yojimbo 5, has launched a new movie review blog, Let's Not Talk About Movies. Yojimbo is a good friend of this site and no comics slouch himself, so if you're in the mood for some thoughtful commentary on movies old or new, head over there. Hey, I'll bet I can get him to review The New Frontier...

Comics scholarship

It has been a pretty busy year in the classroom: in addition to a new tenure-track position at a local community college, I have been working out a prior contract as associate faculty at a local university, so I essentially have been teaching an overload all the time. As a present to myself, Spring will be my All-Comics Quarter.

At the university, I am teaching Comics and Graphic Novels: Literary Technique in Sequential Art, a class that I have been developing for about a year. Here's the course description:

Comics in America represent a long history of artistic experimentation and expression in their development from escapist newspaper comic strips to contemporary graphic novels addressing complex themes. As it evolved, the form has developed a rich repertoire of conventions and techniques for story-telling. In this course, students will become familiar with the formal literary qualities present in comics as well as the semiotic principles immanent in pictorial narratives. Students will be able to identify and understand the structure and application of elements such as panel arrangement and design for pacing and mood; “camera angles” as expressions of time, space, and emotion; word balloon and caption types and their particular uses; sound effects and other out-of-balloon texts; narrative arcs/traditional themes; and common script preparation processes. The course is not an art class in the traditional sense of learning drawing techniques, anatomy, or perspective; rather, it explores the requirements, expectations, and particular strengths and weaknesses of the form.

We'll be reading Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics; The Language of Comics, a collection of academic essays; Paul Chadwick's Concrete (Volume 1: Depths); Jar of Fools by Jason Lutes; Kazu Kibuishi's Daisy Kutter; and the great Alison Bechtel's great Fun Home.

At the community college, I have two sections of Writing from Research (English 102); our general theme will be twentieth century popular culture and our model text will be Bradford Wright's Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. I also have a section of College Composition (English 101), so I decided to shoot the moon and use graphic books as the texts for that class, too: Maus, Palestine, Contract with God, and Persepolis.

I have used comics to a greater or lesser degree in my English classes several times before, but haven't yet had the chance to teach comics-as-literature, so this will be fun. If you're in the Seattle area and interested in details, let me know and I'll fill you in.

Next week: maybe I'll actually read a comic book!

Pirate vs. Ninja!

2008-02-18T14:05:00.000-08:00

That's right - I said

Pirate!

versus

Ninja!

One of the most proliferant memes on the internets, Pirate versus Ninja is high concept at its highest, a pop culture mash-up cum personality test that is more exciting than anything since the Captain Midnight-Spy Smasher crossover of 1943 and a heckuva lot more fun than a Myers-Briggs assessment.

And now, thanks to ~~assiduous research~~ a lucky Google hit, I believe I have uncovered the ur-document, the prime source, the unmoved mover of the whole megillah.

Unknown Soldier #254 - 256, August - Oct0ber 1981; DC Comics
Captain Fear by Dave Micheline, Walter Simonson, John Workman, and Carl Gafford.

Captain Fear was an 18th-century Pirate of the Caribbean with a twist. Beginning his career in Adventure Comics in 1973, he was a Carib Indian and leader of the indigenous people in the region who becomes a pirate and taunts and twits the Spanish hegemon much like Zorro in California (except that as an actual member of the oppressed people, instead of merely their champion, he gets to keep the booty for himself).

The good captain sailed around the periphery of the DC universe on a course so eccentric he was revived (with a distinctly Ricky Martin vibe) in Architecture & Morality along with other D-list characters representing The Obscure. Back in the summer of 1981, he had found a temporary home in the war title Unknown Soldier, competing for his six or seven pages with Dateline: Frontline (tales of a war correspondent) and miscellaneous non-serial fillers. His stories didn't even get titles, but this three-parter is significant for its ground-breaking theme.

A splash-page prelude establishes some sort of connection between the Battle of Sekigahara in Japan in 1600, the European War of Austrian Succession begun in 1741, and a 1748 confrontation between a Spanish warship and strangely unresponsive Dutch freighter. Fear and his crew of buccaneers interrupt the standoff, seizing the Spanish ship and taking the Dutch ship as their own prize.

Upon boarding the East India trading ship, they find the entire crew slain, by mysterious star-shaped weapons. Fear finds what he believes to be something of value - a scroll, apparently being guarded by a "yellow man." Fear takes the scroll and other booty and leaves a skeleton crew to guard the ship: sailors who are doomed, because the unseen assassin cuts them all down before revealing himself to the reader in this dramatic shot:

In the next installment, Fear takes the scroll, in the middle of the night, to the governor of the island of San Bastienne and, at swordpoint, forces the Spaniard to read it to him. (Why he didn't just find someone friendly is not explained - literacy must have been rare in those parts). The governor soon realizes the document is a "communique between dissident factions in Japan and the King of England" about a possible alliance. Realizing the value of the document in Europe, he offers to buy it from Fear, but their negotiations are interrupted by the ninja, who has tracked the scroll across the world for the Shogun and is sworn to retrieve it. What follows, is, of course, pirate versus ninja, presented here in all its muddy, mando-paper glory:

Ah, if only they had continued to fight until a clear winner was determined - the internets might have been spared so many ~~pointless~~ interesting arguments! But, alas, the governor's guards burst in at that moment, scattering the opponents.

The final chapter begins with two vessels, one piratical and one gubernatorial, moored together so Captain Fear and Governor Luis Castelone (who now has a name) can swap scroll for gold. Of course, the unscrupulous Spaniard attempts a double-cross, but Fear's life is saved - for the moment - by the ninja! Oh, how ironic!

It all goes south from there, as the governor's reinforcements arrive, Fear sets fire to the two ships with a pre-arranged booby-trap, and a melee breaks out in which the captain-san and the neen-ja find themselves on the same side. Oh, irony redux!

You can probably write the rest of this yourself: ninja is killed, Fear avenges his death by killing the governor, Fear gets his gold and leaves the scroll with the ninja on the burning ship, so the ninja can die having completed his mission for his master. Ah, the Bronze Age.

So, there you have it, perhaps the original Pirate vs. Ninja: pre-YouTube, pre-internet, pre-COIE even.

And the world would never be the same.

Notes:

1. The (clear) covers were skimmed from GCD, as usual. The (crappy) interior scans are from the actual comics, now in the LSB.
2. That whole story took eighteen pages - and that includes the beginning-of-chapter recaps!
3. The best sound effect in the story is not that "SLLLATCH" of a ninja sword slicing a Spanish sailor, but actually the "SHRATCHAFOOM" of a pitch-and-kerosene soaked frigate exploding into flame.
4. Now that I think of it, we see the ninja shot by a volley gun and left on a burning ship, but never actually get his death confirmed. Perhaps we underestimate... a ninja! Maybe there's an even more obscure character waiting to be revived, eh?

Reading an English translation of a French semiotic analysis of the medium of comics can be fun

2008-02-10T22:20:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted this weekend because serious affairs of RL have intervened.

Here is a quotation from my latest bedside book, The System of Comics by Thierry Groensteen, translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen (University Press of Mississippi: 2007).

At the end of the day, what makes comics a language that cannot be confused with any other is, on the one hand, the simultaneous mobilization of the entirety of codes (visual and discursive) that constitute it, and, at the same time, the fact that none of these codes probably belongs purely to it, consequently specifying themselves when they apply to particular "subjects of expression," which is the drawing.

And that's just in the introduction! Sheesh!

Regular posting will hopefully resume soon.

Twelve-step review: The Phantom: Giovanna

2008-02-02T19:48:00.000-08:00

After the Comixtravaganza last week, I met my sweetie for dinner and a stop at the nearby Value Village thrift store. As she was checking out, I found this comic in a box that otherwise held a few miscellaneous Archies. I bought it for thirty-two cents, including sales tax.

The Phantom #1358 (2003)
Writer, Ingebjorg Berg Holm; Illustrator, Dick Giordano
Frew Publications: Sydney Australia

1. While we have been moving though our superheroic ages here in the U.S. of A, from silver age silliness to grim 'n' gritty, with our variant covers and reboots and serial first issues, this publisher in Australia has been quietly publishing a Phantom comic book without interruption since September 9, 1948.

2. Who knew Dick Giordano, one of the grand masters of American comic book art, was still cranking out the comics? His work here, while nothing flashy, shows his consummate craftsmanship and a deep understanding of the form.

3. From the ancillary material in the comic and sources on the web, it is clear that Frew Publications is the keeper of the flame for the extensive mythology surrounding Lee Falk's character: references to the canon and attempts to reconcile the character's 400-year in-story continuity and sixty-year publishing history demonstrate a real respect for the source material.

4. This particular story is an adventure of the fourth Phantom in the early 17th century, read by the current Phantom to his twin children, Kit and Heloise (whom I think I have seen in the newspaper strip). I believe this is a common framing device in Phantom stories.

5. The main story, set in Rome, actually concerns intrigues within the Catholic Church. Plots, politics, betrayals, torture, and poisonings are all portrayed unapologetically as business-as-usual in The Vatican.

6. The Phantom gets involved in the story as he passes through Rome on a quest for his missing ring - the story of which appeared in the comic five years earlier, according to the editorial footnote.

Kit Walker rockin' the shades as his plainclothes disguise, seventeenth-century style.

7. The Phantom not only finds himself drawn into the intrigues that killed his associate Pedro, but he finds himself strangely attracted to Cardinal Giovanni, with whom he suspects Pedro was having an affair. Here's The Ghost Who Walks confronting his own sexual confusion:

Don't fight the feeling...

8. Well, the cardinal is actually a woman after all! Giovanna and Pedro, young lovers, joined a monastery together to avoid being separated, managing to keep her sex a secret. They remained in the church and canoodled their way through the holy orders. Rather, Giovanni rose; Pedro was a bit of a late-renaissance slacker, and remained a monk (although he still got to snuggle a cardinal) until he was accidentally killed in a murder attempt on Giovanni.

9. The Phantom gets dragged deeper into the machinations within the church, and eventually he and Giovanna have an affair. While it's made clear to the reader what's going on with them, the current Phantom describes their first sexual tryst to the children as "Hmm... They... ehh... they embraced each other... for a long time." You'd think that a couple of kids being raised in the jungle to take over the mantle of a legend could handle a little sex.

10. While The Phantom is off following a lead on his ring, Giovanna plots and murders her way into the papacy to prove to her lover that she is strong and capable enough to be his bride without hiding in Bengali. Her Machiavellian methods prove too much for The Phantom, and of course, it all comes to a bad end, but not before we get this totally surreal confrontation scene:

Wait, what?

11. The plot fulcrum for this story was based on the legend of Pope Joan, the apocryphal female pope of the ninth century, whose existence has been all but categorically disproved by historians, but who still holds a fascination for people: viz., this recent book and an upcoming movie with my own screen-crush Franka Potente.

12. In addition to the curiosity value of finding an Australian comic in a thrift store in Seattle and the serendipity of finding Giordano art inside, I was surprised at the relative maturity of the book. The sexual attraction between the characters, the cross-dressing and gender confusion, and the opportunistic and casual brutality of renaissance politics, not to mention the concern of the Church of Rome for matters of material wealth and power - all of these are portrayed frankly and openly, without any winks or nudges or hedging. I don't know who this Ingebjorg Holm is (and the internets didn't help any in finding out) but he she writes a better comics story than a lot of the high-profile prose writers they tout so strongly in the spandex circle. Update: see comments.

Bonus: I just have to say that Fun Home might be the best graphic novel that I have ever read. I just got a copy this week, and I don't know what took me so long. Sometimes I am an idiot. As soon as I read this, I added it the syllabus for my class next quarter, Comics and Graphic Novels: Literary Technique in Sequential Art.

Don't be an idiot, too. If you haven't read this yet, do it now.

SPL Comixtravaganza

2008-01-26T21:23:00.000-08:00

Okay, so the good news is that I made it to the Comixtravaganza today (see below). The bad news is that I forgot my camera, so I have no pics to share. Here's a rundown anyway.

From 2pm to 3pm, David Lasky, creator of comics such as Urban Hipster, ran a workshop on creating minicomics. It was a great crowd - much bigger than the library had expected. Lasky gave a short presentation, showed us how to physically make a comic pamphlet from one sheet of paper, and then walked through his own storytelling process on a whiteboard while all the attendees made their own comics.

There were people of all ages and all attitudes in the audience - I was sitting with a tweener and mom who came with a six- or seven-year-old daughter, but I was far from the only greybeard in the house. And I think that was the most appealing thing about the session: it wasn't about breaking into the business, or professional techniques, or any of that; it was all about the joy of making comics for their own sake. Lasky obviously loves the form, and his affection comes through.

Here's my comic. I may post interior scans when I can.

And here's Lasky's website - but be warned: it has mystery meat navigation and doesn't seem to work too well.

From 3:30 to 4:15 pm, I attended a panel discussion on "the comics business." The panel comprised

Bill Barnes & Gene Ambaum, creators of Unshelved, the library-based webcomic. Artist Barnes is a lot like the character Dewey (snarky); Ambaum was the warm writer-type.
Greg Hatcher of Comic Book Resources. He played the crotchety old man for the panel (citing Adam West as his inspiration for getting into comics) and obviously loves the kids he teaches comic art to.
Nicole from NDP Comics, a how-to-draw-manga outfit. I didn't get a chance to ask her how she defined manga, especially in the context of this article.
Eric Reynolds, editor and PR guy from Fantagraphics Books (and a cartoonist in his own right). The embodiment of Seattle hipness, yet also very gracious.
Rosie Heffernan & Madeline Heffernan, creators of the webcomic Serves You Right. I gotta tell ya, their strip makes my head hurt, but these were two of the brightest and most poised high school students I have ever met.

The format of the panel was all Q&A; unfortunately, although the panelists tried their best with the As, the Qs didn't give them much to work with. It could have been so much more.

The finale of the event was a presentation by Seattle comics superstar Ellen Forney, she of Sherman Alexie collaboration fame. Forney is da bomb. She gave an overview of her creative process through examples of her work, all of which were beautiful to see. Besides having natural charisma, she is very comfortable working a crowd and knows how to organize and impart information (as well as being a rockstar cartoonist, she also teaches at a local art college). She closed with something that is close to a performance art piece; here's an early cut at it, but we got the big-screen version.

Forney's website is well worth a visit.

Overall, while not exactly an extravaganza, this was a solid comics event. The spearhead for legitimatizing comics in libraries has come in large part from the Young Adult librarians, and this was the case here. While this is laudable, it does skew the crowd young, changing the tenor of the event a bit. Still and all, a worthwhile way to spend a cold and rainy afternoon.

Oddly enough, on the bus to the library,
I was listening to the podcast of the "Comics are Not Literature" panel from the last Comic-con.

Obvious filler

2008-01-26T09:53:00.001-08:00

Man, this quarter has just taken off and gotten all kids of busy all of a sudden! There have been no posts for a while because I haven't had a chance to read or reflect on anything comics-related. (That on the right is a drawing of me that one of my students did on the board.)

I am taking a break from other responsibilties to attend this event today: The Comixtravaganza wrap-up at the Seattle Public Library. They have been celebrating comics all month, mostly with how-to sessions in the neighborhood branches aimed at younger audiences. This afternoon's spectacular at the Central Branch includes another how -to session with David Lasky; a panel discussion with some local comixerati; and a presentation from Ellen Forney. I will have a full report and see if I can get some pictures, maybe even by tonight.

A whale of a disappointment

2008-01-11T20:12:00.000-08:00

Some time ago when I was relatively new to the comixweblogosphere, I encountered Orca, probably at the Absorbascon. This whale-woman enemy of Batman had some great visuals and seemed like an intriguing and appealing character, so I immediately added her three-issue story arc to my back-issue buy list. Last week, I finally got around to buying and reading the issues.

Batman 579-581, July - September 2000
Written by Larry Hama & Scott McDaniel
Pencils by Scott McDaniel
Inks by Karl Story et al

Man, was I disappointed. Even going into this with low expectations, I didn't get near the level of fun I expected with Batman going up against a lady jewel thief with a more than passing resemblance to Shamu.

Some elements were pretty cool: Playboy-Bruce makes an appearance, and is given a nice combination of social responsibility and elitist smarm; Batman goes in disguise again, apparently as the "crazy vet" from Year One; Alfred gets to shine as the perfect factotum; and Orca is singularly impressive: a big hunk of a swimming, leaping, and ass-kicking woman.

Yeah, a lot of the pieces were there, but somehow the magic that pulls them all together never appears.

Part of the blame lies in the art. McDamiel's layouts are serviceable, and I like his penchant for horizontal panels, but his figure-drawing - anatomy, proportion, movement - looks more like sketches of supermarionation puppets than real people. Heads are too big, limbs bend at odd angles, people pose oddly. The deficiency shows up mostly in the civilians, but even Batman looks oddly deformed from time to time, and I found it a real distraction.

Without giving too much of a spoiler away (not that anyone who has read, oh, two or three comics before won't see it anyway), I was also sorry to see that Orca's real identity was not a plus-sized woman, but a typical, generically-body-typed woman. I really wanted to see a large lady presented as a strong, capable, powerful character - and I was imagining Orca as a bit of an anti-Selina Kyle in appearance and affect. But, no such luck.

But the biggest fun-killer was the writers' choice of the central theme of the story. Y'see, Orca is a jewel thief with a heart of gold: she steals the "Flame of Persia" diamond from ~~Leona Helmsley~~ Camille Baden-Smythe - right in front of Bruce Wayne - so that she can raise money for a soup kitchen-rehab facility-daycare center. Batman cannot countenance this felonious behavior, even for a good cause, and tracks Orca down relentlessly. In each of their encounters, Orca and Batman exchange philosophical sallies over the nature of moral relativity:

Hama & McDaniel really stack the deck. Baden-Smythe is a right rotter: disdaining "the hoi polloi" -and anyone else - to the extent of endangering lives to protect her jewel, bribing officials, throwing people out of their homes, terrorizing innocent people - all the usual behaviors of a robber baroness. The jewel that is stolen is of uncertain provenance and probably doesn't even belong to her. And yet Batman, even while being pilloried in the press as the puppet of the rich and losing the respect of Gotham's lower class, won't give a girl a break, and tracks Orca like she was the Joker or something.

It just didn't wash for me. I don't consider myself a strong proponent of situational ethics, but you can't convince me there isn't a difference, at least in degree if not in kind, between property theft and exploitation of humans. And you can't convince me Batman doesn't see that difference. Its not the theft of his mother's pearls he's been working himself up over all these years.

I can take Batman versus property criminals when it's a ripping yarn, a puzzle piece, and the real-world themes are left out. Or I can handle Batman going after thieves when they actually endanger the innocent; it's their violence he's responding to, not their redistribution of wealth. But if you try to make a socially-conscious jewel thief a major villain while bringing in real class and economic struggles - well, you've lost me.

What's worse is that the script tries to have its cake and eat it, too. In addition to hunting his killer-whale criminal, Batman also manages to take down ~~Martha Stewart~~ Baden-Smythe. Unfortunately, the writers have to use such implausible plot developments to do so (excuse me, but people like that do not actually handle the molotov cocktails they give to street urchins to toss at buildings) that it actually reinforces the feeling that the elite can literally get away with murder while lesser-ranked criminals get slammed.

Actually, the story is much more believable if we take Batman as an unreliable narrator: he really doesn't care morally about the theft of the jewel, he's just pissed that the crime happened right in front of him. With that motivation, his doggedness, if even less laudable, at least makes a lot more sense.

Oh well, at least with the return of the multiverse, I can imagine that somewhere there is a happy Orca, swimming her way through Gotham Harbor, stealing marine-themed baubles from waterfront museums - and occasionally a kiss from Batman.

I'm so excited and I just can't hide it

2008-01-03T19:06:00.000-08:00

Click on any pic to learn the reason...

ps: I didn't have to search for any of these images - I already had them all.

Ending the year on a high note: Manhunter

2007-12-30T12:05:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, my sweetie wanted to stop at a place with the unexciting but clear name of Half-Price Books to sell some CDs (which she no longer needs since some nice fellow gave her an iPod for her birthday), I tagged along, and while she went about her business, I dug through the comics. The store has a pretty good collection of graphic books and a not-inconsiderable back issue collection, and it was there that I browsed, shuffling through all of the bins looking for something that would capture my attention. I passed up a NM Dell Turok, Son of Stone for $10; that'll probably turn out to be a mistake, since the price will likely double when the movie comes out. But I did find this wonderful book:

Manhunter: The Special Edition
Archie Goodwin, Walt Simonson, Klaus Janson
DC Comics: 1999

That less-than-wonderful image above is the gold-foil cover, so here's a better shot: a pin-up from the interior:

This was actually the second collection of this 1973-1974 back-up strip from Detective Comics; the first was published in 1979, and this special edition shortly after the death of writer/editor extraordinaire Archie Goodwin, who created the character.

And what a back-up this was! Like the recent Dr. 13 strip that seemed to overshadow anything else about Tales of the Unexpected, this strip commands my memory of 'Tec from back in the day: it was quite simply one of the most imaginative and wonderful strips ever.

Goodwin took a minor character from the forties - Paul Kirk, The Manhunter - and used his backstory as a springboard for a contemporary adventure that blended the spy genre and the ninja motif into a quest saga, and even managed to work The Batman into its climax without losing its own narrative integrity. The story was visualized by Walt Simonson, whose stylistic drawings managed to accommodate more plot and action in eight-page episodes than many artists could fit in a full book. He was particularly adept at filling each page with ten or twelve panels without sacrificing any necessary detail or falling into a grid pattern.

Here's an example of an extended action sequence compressed into one page, as Kirk (in red) takes on some evil clones (in blue) after he discovers the intrigue that surrounds his resurrection almost thirty years after WW2:

Simonson's beautiful artwork is matched by Goodwin's prose, which slides through the registers from hard-boiled to lyrical without missing a beat. This sequence, which describes Kirk's foray against the "legendary blind zen archers of Pendrang," the guardians of a hidden monastery, is perhaps my all-time favorite comics page, and is inarguably an example of comics storytelling at its best:

The Manhunter's search took him though six back-up strips and then found its conclusion in a full-length story that featured the magazine's star, Batman. This version of the Darknight Detective is so much more appealing than the perfect strategist/living encyclopedia that we currently know. Here's Batman checking out an assassin's rifle, found at a crime scene:

That's the kind of scene that speaks to pulpy roots of The Batman. He doesn't need to know everything; he knows people who knows lots of things. He is a detective - asking questions and finding information. Cool.

Manhunter's quest plays out to its formally necessary conclusion; I don't think anyone will be surprised to learn why this character has not appeared in any new adventures in thirty years. Perhaps that closure is one of the reasons the character is remembered so fondly; like celebrities who die young, he wasn't around long enough to be in anything crappy. Or maybe it's something bigger than that: maybe when Goodwin and Simonson created a story with an ending in mind, the storytelling became deeper and more meaningful that that done for a franchise or a open-ended serial. Whatever the case, the seventies Manhunter series is a masterpiece, and discovering this gem allowed me relive the thrills I had when I first encountered it.

You can check out the original comics if you have the spare change, or find the 1979 "Complete Saga" version, but this edition has some nice bonus features, the best of which might be a sort of coda: a follow-up strip completed by Simonson after Goodwin's death, from a story they co-plotted but never had a chance to produce.

Bonus note: I am the proud owner of a DC Direct cold-cast porcelain hand-painted statue of The Manhunter, number 456 in a limited series of 900 made in 2ooo, a gift from a great and good friend who has graced these pages before. It's pretty sweet:

Two years down

2007-12-22T21:40:00.000-08:00

Today is the last day of the second year that I have been blogging about comics.

I don't know where the time has gone: there has been so much from The Last Shortbox® that I haven't gotten to yet.

The first twelve issues of the wildly exuberant American Flagg.
The only twelve issues of the nearly incomprehensible Thriller.
The thirteen issues of the spectacularly bitter Haywire.

Keif Llama, Dalgoda, Evangeline.
Somerset Holmes.
The Desert Peach.
Gilgamesh II.

And yet, I have pretty much kept to my once-a-week publishing schedule.

I hit my hit-high over last summer, and viewership has been declining since. In the last few weeks, however, when posting has been especially spotty, the numbers are going back up. I can only conclude people like the blog better when I don't write new things. That sure makes it easy.

Along the way, I have been distracted by a dalliance with buying new comics, a commitment to waiting for the trades, and a habit of spending way too much time reading other people's blogs. (I have no idea how y'all make enough time for the (usually) entertaining posts I keep reading.)

I am seriously considering a PhD program with a focus on comics, if I ever get my teaching situation completely sorted out. If that plan pans out, who knows what will become of this place?

I am also seriously considering re-structuring all of my blogs into a different sort of web presence, so even without any life changes, this site might have (another) new name and a new address.

I guess this blog is of excruciatingly minor importance in the grand scheme of things, but it's worth continuing if it's still fun.

And it's still fun.

And as Captain Fear would say,

'Appy 'Olleedaize and a 'Appy Noo Jear!

Bangs, not Bams

2007-12-10T20:12:00.000-08:00

I have been seeing stuff talking about Evan Dorkin's new book, Biff Bam Pow. The title rang a bell but the comic didn't look at all familiar (although it does look promising). It only took a second to remember what I was thinking of, and it was the work of moments to find it in the Last Shortbox:

BIFF BANG POW! #1 and #2
1991 & 1992: Paisano Publishing Company
Edited by Ivan Brunetti, with various contributions

I'm sure I picked these up new at Zanadu Comics in Seattle, In the nineties, I wasn't buying much regularly; the grim 'n' gritty, Liefield/Image era held no interest for me at all. This kind of oddball publication would have been the kind of thing that I sought out.

And it was oddball: an anthology title with a few continuing stories, it has an aggressively hip, art school, anti-establishment vibe to it that seems (from the perspective of fifteen years or so) a little contrived and pretentious.

The Fine Art Force, by Brunetti and Thad Doria, was a JLA-esque group of superheroes-based-on-art-styles (Impressionist Girl, Ms. Minimalist, Dr, realistic, Captain Cubist, and so on). It combined traditional spandex antics with art-based puns and in-jokes; it could have been insufferable, but it had a breezy charm that was hard to resist. They had adventures in both issues: "Hello, Dali!" and "Lend Me Your Ear" (and I'll bet you can guess who that one featured).

Brunetti contributed to a lot of the features. Here's his illustration of a slice-of-life story by Joe Schmitt:

And here's some early work by the great Jessica Abel:

Besides arty superheroes and the dread b&w autobiographicals, the series had all kinds of weird stuff. Ben Spide, Arachnid Investigator cast a big round spider in a hardboiled detective role; the Hanson Family Circus modified Keane panels in gruesome ways; Hitler's Sunday Comics gave Calvin's dad, Dagwood, Hi Flagstone, Dennis the Menace and others the dictator's hair, mustache, and evil personality; and It's the Precocious Little Shit was about -- well, you probably get the picture by now.

There were other, less crass features. Thad Doria tried some formalist tricks in a totally graphic story that had not word-balloons, but rather glyph-balloons: Agent C.:

My personal favorite was Lone Wolf and Bob, by Ken Hite, Doria, and Schmitt. Starting from sound-play with the title of the seminal series, the strip gave us the premise (without explanation) of a 16th Century ronin traveling in the cab of a contemporary semi driven by a tough trucker. In their brief career, they meet ninjas, a rival samurai clan, and an alien, coming out on top by a combination a eastern and western ass-kicking tactics. It was full of rollicking action and some surprisingly dry humor. Here's a sample joke, after Bob shotguns some evil samurai to help Lone Wolf out:

Overall, the books haven't aged extremely well: while the writing is sometimes inspired, it is often merely shocking for its own sake and generally undisciplined. The art demonstrated promise and potential, but occasionally careers into crappiness, and little details (like the lettering!) are often amateurish. In point of fact, there probably weren't a whole lot of resources available to Paisano Publishing (which I suspect was just Brunetti) and in that context, the books represent pretty good product. Check them out if you happen to run across any copies.

Note: Issue # 2 contains a house ad for issue #3, but I'm not sure it ever came out. The Great Comics Database Project has no listing at all.

Twelve-step review: Samurai: Heaven and Earth

2007-11-26T19:33:00.000-08:00

Samurai: Heaven and Earth
by Ron Marz, Luke Ross, Jason Keith, and Dave Lanphear
Dark Horse: 2006

1. Shiro, a samurai in 1704 Japan, loses his beloved Yoshi during the final battle between his master and Chinese warlord. Finding she has been abducted, he follows her trail first to China, and then westward along the Silk Road, eventually finding her in France, at Versailles, in the Court of Louis XIV. Adventures, of course, ensue as he attempts to reunite with her.

2. Yojimbo Meets the Three Musketeers is such an inherently cool high concept that I can forgive the historical inaccuracy of placing the story eighty years after the heyday of Dumas's heroes, one Louis later, and yet still featuring the famous quartet.

3. While the French swordsmen are not named, in dialog and affect they are clearly Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan. It is actually my third-favorite realization of the characters, after Dumas's own and the 1973 Richard Lester film.

4. Ron Marz's script is engaging, merging classic tropes and fresh ideas seamlessly. His dialog varies between old-movie formality (not a bad thing) and real-sounding naturalism a little less smoothly, however.

5. One small sticking point in the story is Shiro's preternatural ability to learn languages, which is never adequately addressed or given background. We just have to accept it, and since the story won't work unless the protagonist can speak French, we sort of just do.

6. A bigger flaw in the plot is the apparent maintenance of Yoshi's virtue throughout her abduction. We know she is not a virgin even at the beginning of the story, so the "keeping her unsullied to maintain her high value" trope is out; without it, it would be hard to imagine her not being sexually abused, given her circumstances, no matter how "disagreeable" she is to her captors. And since the love between Yoshi and Shiro is what drives him to cross Heaven and Earth for her, it's hard to imagine this aspect would not come up, but the book basically asks us to ignore it. And, once again, in the moment, we sort of just do.

7. Luke Ross's art is just gorgeous: his set pieces, landscapes, and establishing shots are are like museum-quality oil paintings, but he's not afraid to get "comicky" and use technique to advance the story. His attention to detail might be responsible for sucking some of the dynamism out of his action sequences at times. Jason Keith's colors are wonderfully rich and textured and complement the graphics nicely.

8. One technique that Ross used involved a two-page sequence combining one large, borderless image that establishes the action with a couple dozen small panels that shows its progress. Oddly, he uses this format twice: once to depict Shiro and Yoshi making love, and once for a bloody battle. I found the juxtaposition jarring, but I don't know if it was deliberate or if I would even have noticed had I read monthly magazines rather than a collection. (Another unintended consequence in the shift away from serial narrative.)

9. Ross also occasionally uses that photshoppy blurring business I have been seeing in comics lately. Maybe I'm just a geezer, but I don't like it much.

10. The collection features several pin-ups, in styles from cartoony to faux-Japanese print. I liked them, but wanted to see more other characters besides Shiro.

11. The other special feature was a sketchbook, which includes some unused cover designs. I found this section particularly instructive.

12. Volume Two of Samurai: Heaven and Earth follows Shiro to North Africa to confront the slave trader who abducted Yoshi (and some other no-goods, I am sure). I'm certainly going to pick it up.

By definition

2007-11-18T18:56:00.000-08:00

One of the trickier intellectual challenges surrounding the study of comics is coming up with a definition of what "comics" is. On the one hand, creating a definition may be an empty enterprise; it could be said that poetry and prose get their share of analysis without anyone needing to pin down a universally accepted definition of either. On the other hand, as more scholarly study of comics is conducted and colleges and universities have to decide which programs will focus on the research and offer the classes and degree programs &c., a definition - particularly one that addresses the literary/artistic divide - might be useful.

Several candidates vie for our attention, Scott McCloud's "sequential art" proposition (after Eisner) and Robert Harvey's "juncture of word and image" articulation among the foremost. An argument is leveled against the first as being too broad (is the Bayeaux Tapestry really comics?) and the second as being too narrow (is there really no such thing as a wordless comic?). In the blogosphere, Eddie Campell has jumped in, and Patrick Lewandowski, each offering definitions that to my mind are less rigorous and useful than idiosyncratic and interesting.

On the academic front, Greg Hayman and Henry John Pratt offered a comprehensive definition ("x is a comic iff x is a sequence of discrete, juxtaposed pictures that comprise a narrative, either in their own right or when combined with text") in their article "What Are Comics?" (which I haven't read); this definition was deconstructed by Aaron Meskin in his forthcoming article "Defining Comics?", in which he decides that the effort of definition is not worth the trouble.

And of course, there's Neil Cohn's Visual Language Theory, which, since it rises from a psycholinguistic frame rather than an aesthetic, will need a great deal more clinical research to establish its usefulness.

There are others I am not naming; my intent is not a full inventory but just a sketch of the terrain. I also offer no Unified Field Theory of my own; I confess that I am here to muddy the waters further. My impetus comes from perhaps an unusual source: children's literature.

I am not going to revisit the problematic "are children's picture books comics?" question; my question is, I think, deeper and applicable to more creators and creations in the comics world. The question has its origin in a mention to me last Friday by one of our campus librarians of this new acquisition:

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
Scholastic Press: 2007

The librarian knows my interest in comics, and thought that I would be intrigued by the book. It tells the story of a resourceful orphan boy, living in a Paris train station, who gets involved in a series of adventures while he reconstructs a clockwork man that is somehow related to the pioneering filmmaker Georges Melies. She told me that the story was part prose, part illustration, and that the illustrations actually advance the story and are essential, not extra, to the overall narrative. She mentioned a dilemma inside Library-land: that everyone loves the book, but no one is sure whether it should be nominated for a Newberry Medal (for literature for children) or for a Caldecott Medal (for picture books). Of course, I was intrigued, checked the book out, and read it this weekend.

First of all, it's a great book; the story is compelling and real and the characters are engaging and complex, no matter how old you are.

It's also a hefty book: over 500 pages. I think it's aimed at the same crowd that reads about that Potter fellow.

But here's the rub: about 300 of those 500 pages are (imho) comics. There are no panels or word balloons in sight; these are wordless comics, to be sure, and each two-page spread is one image. There is, however, the definite control of the narrative through sequenced images, and the actualization of McCloud's "choices" - of moment, frame, and image - is very much in evidence.

The other pages? Straight prose.

How do these work together? Let me illustrate by example:

Page 205 ends this way:

Hugo stopped short and stared at her.
"I don't know anything about you," she said. "You know where I live, you know about my parents. If we're going to be friends, then I think I should know about you. Why won't you tell me?"
Suddenly, Hugo started to run.
"Hugo!" she yelled. "Stop! Wait for me!"

The next text appears on page 222, and begins:

Hugo helped Isabelle to her feet, but he couldn't stop staring at the key. Isabelle noticed and tucked it back in her dress.

Doesn't make much sense. does it? It does if you insert these panels in between:

1: Train station lobby, full of people; Hugo is to the left of the panel, running away from Isabelle, who is right center.
2: Closer image of Isabelle crashing into a hatted man; they both lose their balance.
3. Isabelle, looking scared, falls backwards; a small key on a chain around her neck swings out.
4. A close-up of Hugo's face, looking toward the right, shocked.
5. Near repeat of panel 1; this time, Hugo is running toward Isabelle, who is on the floor.
6. Close-up of Hugo's hand as he offers it to Isabelle.
7. Isabelle reaching up to take Hugo's hand; the key hangs around her neck.
8. Close-up of the key on its chain; it has a distinctive heart shape, and a clever reader may have seen the keyhole already!

Wow! What do we do with this? The whole book is like this: some sequences are presented as wordless comics and some as straight prose. If you just took the text bits, you would have an incoherent story; if you just took the illustrations, the result would be the same. It's not a comic book; it's a book-comic! I have to wonder why Selznick took this path, and what his creative processes were like: how did he choose which instances to illustrate and which to write?

The author is not much help in figuring out the work. On the official website, he says that the book is "not exactly a novel, and it’s not quite a picture book, and it’s not really a graphic novel, or a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these things." Maybe it really is a new, hybrid form, but the illustrated sections are definitely comics in even a narrow sense of the term, employing the techniques that we commonly associate with the form.

So, the question: do we shelve it in the literature section or the art section or the graphic book section? Or does it matter?

Non-web resources:

McCloud, Scott. Making Comics (Harper Collins: 2006)
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics (Harper Collins: 1993)
Varnum, Robert and Christina T. Gibbons, eds. The Language of Comics (University Press of Mississippi: 2001)

Book report

2007-11-10T23:08:00.000-08:00

Soon I Will Be Invincible
by Austin Grossman
Pantheon Books: 2007

I have been trying to carve out time to read more "proper books" lately. As a teacher of rhetoric, what I mostly read are student papers, and I have been feeling a need for more finished prose. In between academic articles, I have been reading some popular fiction and literature, and in the middle of that lot was Austin Grossman's superhero novel.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand, Grossman is a clearly capable writer: he balances plot and character development nicely, and the book moves along briskly. He has a deft hand with description, even detailing the costumes various heroes and villains wear without sounding silly, and he handles shifting points of view well - the book is narrated in alternate chapters by the villain Dr. Impossible and the hero Fatale - giving the book a strong voice in either case. He even narrates in the present tense without getting tiresome.

On the other hand, I'm not sure what this book is. Is it a serious literary novel using the conventions and tropes of superhero fiction? Well, sometimes it seems so, with Dr. Impossible musing at length on the ebb and flow of power and control and the nature of identity, but then it winks at the reader and gets a bit campy and too self-aware. Is it an attempt to write a realistic superhero story? Maybe, but the plot doesn't require all that much less suspension of disbelief than your typical Haneygram, however much naturalistic dialogue is grafted on. Is it just disguised fanfic, better-written and promoted? I don't think so, but sometimes it is tempting to think oh, that's Batman and Wonder Woman making out and if those are the Avengers, then those guys must be the Justice League and so on.

Overall, I got the impression that if the book were read by someone not already steeped in the superhero tradition, it would be too outre to make much of an impression, and if were read by someone familiar with the spandex set, it wouldn't contain enough new insights or treatments to be exceptional or even unusual.

I guess I enjoyed it, but I'm still not sure why.

Bonus review preview, How the heck did I miss this? Department:

I picked up a copy of Samurai: Heaven and Earth Volume 1 today.

A ronin versus the Three Musketeers? All four of them!?

How did this slip by me for over a year?

I've only given it a quick read so far, but I like what I've seen. More soon.

I read stuff

2007-10-27T20:31:00.000-07:00

Wow, this might explain why I am behind on reading student papers: I've picked up a bit of stuff over the past week or so and have actually been reading stuff!

First of all, I finally got my hands on a copy of the Fletcher Hanks collection I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! This thing is even more of a mind-blower than I thought it was going to be. None of the work in it (with the exception of the expository strip by editor Paul Karasik) can be called good in any sense of the word: the plots of these Golden Age stories (from the sci-fi, jungle girl, and tough-guy adventure genres) are fantastic and implausible, the characters are mere stereotypes and collections of cliches, and the art demonstrates an imaginative grasp of human anatomy.

And yet - and yet there is something grand about these stories; something sets them apart from the mediocre and the mundane. It might be the energy of Hanks's art, compelling in its gusto and harshness and in the grandeur and ugliness of the figures; it might be the sheer bravado and scope of his melodrama, defying you to suspend disbelief for the frankly unbelievable and the unaccountably bizarre. Whatever they are, these comics are not ordinary, and do not fail for lack of brio.

I can't honestly say I expect anyone to enjoy reading these, but I am glad I had the chance to.

In a bit more traditional vein (and only a dada convention could be less traditional than Hanks) comes this offering from Steve Rude:

The Moth
Gary Martin & Steve Rude
Dark Horse/Rocket Comics, 2005

This collection presents five issues’ (and some additional material’s) worth of adventures of the Rude-created bounty hunter/sort-of super-hero, The Moth. By all rights, I should love this comic; it’s got so many great elements: a pulp-style mystery man who is actually a circus manager/performer, a sexy bearded lady, a bald strongman in a leopard-skin loincloth, African were-lions, Chinese acrobat jewel thieves, and a pistol-packing, star-spangled aviator named Amercian Liberty who is both a commercial spokesmodel and an FBI operative. Wow.

Unfortunately, Gary Martin’s scripts, while presenting competent plots and conflicts, seem to stop dead for exposition every now and again, totally throwing off the rhythm of the stories so we can hear Who He Is and How He Came To Be. The comic relief seems equally disruptive - the stories either take a break so the hero can get shit on him (literally) or detour to spend some time with the least funny collection of circus clowns that have ever seen print. I know this collection covers the very beginnings of the series and there s a lot of information to get across; I just wish the backstory and character bits had been incorporated a little more smoothly.

Luckily, Steve Rude’s art makes up for any shortcomings of the script. He seems to be channeling the raw power of Kirby, adding some Ditko bounce, and drawing it all like the master draughtsman that he is. His character designs are exquisite, and his action scenes practically jump off the page.

While I can t recommend it unreservedly, this book was a solid read; if you liked Dave Stevens’s Rocketeeer stories, there are probably enough chills and spills in The Moth to make you happy.

There's a phenomenon I have noticed: TV shows that aren't quite the same thing as their more famous inspirations, but rather a more lightweight treatment of same same themes in the same genre. The success of Star Wars begat Battlestar Galactica; Raiders of the Lost Ark gave us Tales of the Gold Monkey, and long ago, The Three Musketeers with Oliver Reed spawned Panache with Rene Auberjunois. Even when the heritage is more direct, the TV show seems a pale imitation: Stargate SG-1 is no Stargate.

In some ways, that also-ran vibe attaches to this comic, yet I like it a lot:

The Perhapanauts: First Blood
Todd Dezago & Craig Rousseau
Dark Horse Comics, 2006

This trade collects the first four adventures of the Bureau of ExtraDimensional Liabilties and Management's Blue Team: the leader Arisa, a telepath/telekinetic; Molly, a ghost; MG, an interdimensional traveler; Bigfoot (yeah, the Bigfoot); and Choopie, a chupacabra. The agents are dispatched to scenes of paranormal trouble (sort like in an X-files MotW episode) and try to protect the fabric of our reality from rips and the creatures who find their way through them.

You might be forgiven if you are reminded of Hellboy and the BPRD. Although haven’t been devoted follower of Earth-Mignola, I sure get the sense that if Hellboy was the big-screen blockbuster, Perhapanauts is the TV series that airs on the sci-fi network on Saturdays at midnight. This is not just a case of post hoc, propter hoc, either; the world of BEDLAM seems derivative, in theme and mood, of the Hellboy universe, and the characters are similar, but a bit sketchy and formulaic, and a little too contrived.

This feeling is made harder to shake by Craig Rousseau's art, which seems very evocative of Mignola in character design and some compositions, but without the use of heavy blacks. And although this similarity is there, there is none of the idiosyncratic style in architecture and artifacts that marks Mignola's work; Rouseau's world has a more generic comic book look. Nonetheless, he does a good job with both fight scenes and the quieter moments, and I can't really fault the art.

Todd Dezago provides some exciting action, dropping us "In Media Res" (the title of the first story) and filling us in on the cast with integrated (if still obvious) exposition that barely slows the plot at all. The menaces that the team faces are clever, and the relationships among the agents are falling nicely into place.

While nothing in the book struck me as genius, or groundbreaking, or breathtaking, I had a great time anyway. The adventures are fun, the good guys are good, and there's no gratuitous violence or T&A. It's solid genre entertainment. If this were a series, I would even stay up late to watch it.

Trailer Reel/PSA/Clip Show

2007-10-20T16:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I can quibble all I want about how late is late, and whether this post counts as last week’s or this week’s or next week’s, but the unavoidable fact is I missed a week. I think consistency is an important characteristic of a blog, and even though I set the bar for myself pretty darn low, it is irksome when I don't meet it. (On the other hand, RAB posts only sporadically on Estoreal, and I think he has one of the finest blogs going, so go figure.)

I think part of the problem is an identity issue (not to be confused with an Identity Crisis). I still haven’t decided what I really want to do here. I do know for sure what’s not on the list: I don’t want snark or irony or smug hipness (hip smugness?) to be what this blog is about. I think from the beginning , I wanted to stake out the territory articulated by our dear pal Squirrel Girl here:

At its best, this approach is fun; at its worst, it turns into wallowing in nostalgia and yelling at those kids to get off your lawn. (For some of the best, check out the Keeper in the Fortress of Fortitude.) There’s charm in looking back at old school features like Cap’s Hobby Shop…

…and wondering what it says about how the audience for comics and their place in our broader popular culture have changed. (It's also just fun to wonder why they were called “Turkish Towels” and if anyone still calls them that and whether this cunning plan merely delays the dripping until the towels become saturated, but that’s a horse of a different color.)

Sometimes I worry about merely living in the past, however, and I want to talk about new and exciting comics, especially the ones that aren't trying to be The Sopranos in spandex. Things like the American launch of The Ninety-nine…

… the Islamic-themed superhero adventure series (which has potential) from Teshkeel Comics. That would be fun to do, but I am so slow on the draw that most people will have already read the comic and several reviews before I get around to posting about it. And my new and evolving policy of waiting for the trades (notice that The 99 preview was free) gets in the way of this plan as well.

I am also interested, particularly in light of my the recent additions to my prose library (and you can add Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman to that list), in exploring the connections between traditional literature and comics. For example, this excerpt from Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid…

…led me right to these images from the Grand Comic Book Database…

..and to the knowledge that first title actually pre-dates Bryson’s comic reading heyday, making me wonder if he actually remembers it from reading back issues or if he inserted it into the narrative after some research.

I guess what it comes down to, in the end, is time. We all only have so much of it, and we have to choose carefully what we spend it on. With my new full-time faculty position, I am still sorting out just how much time I have available to me; on top of that, I would be wise to devote some, if not most, of my comics-related writing energy to scholarly articles, the kind of stuff I might present somewhere like this conference, and I doubt that stuff would make compelling blog reading, at least not in this context. But in another – maybe. And that possibility is there.

So, this has turned into a kind of apology for erratic posting, a self-exploration of motives, a plug for some other blogs, and fair warning that there might be some major changes coming down the pike.

Thank you. We now return you to your regular programming.

Early or late?

2007-10-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

Thursday may seen like an early next-weekend entry, but really it's a late last-weekend entry. Social life and work life have combined to keep me pretty well occupied since last time I was here, but I'm not dead.

I finally got a copy of Architecture and Mortality and I must say I enjoyed it immensely. Cliff Chiang's artwork was nothing short of wonderful - he has a dynamism that borders on the cartoony (for want of a better word) yet can handle nuance of expression and dramatic composition as well (and the beautiful people - like Traci 13 and Captain Fear - looked beautiful).

Brain Azzarello's story used cleverness and brio to overcome the tendency of meta-narrative toward turgidity - in other words, it was fun! I loved seeing all these obscure characters - some quite dear to my heart - running through their paces, I got most of the in-jokes (I think), and I enjoyed the slapstick (I almost felt sorry for Dr. 13, but then I remembered that he really was a prick a lot of the time).

A pal suggested that the story might have worked better as initially presented: short back-up features, where the bits of humor could be discovered like jewels, each one a surprise. At first, I agreed with him, but on second and third readings, I felt that with a few small flaws, A&M works very well as unified piece. Of course, the sheer amount of intertextuality in the piece and the immense background knowledge of conventions, tropes, and facts necessary to understand it render all but inaccessible to anyone who isn't a long time comics reader, sort of like some of the short fiction the Baker Street Irregulars put out from time to time or a collection of Dickensian puns.

Anyway, I liked it, and of course I would get the next Team 13 book, if ever there is one.

The same aforementioned pal has lent me his DVD collection of the George Reeves Superman television series, and my Delightful Companion has been encountering them for the first time (as opposed to my nostalgia-wallow every time she puts one on). She really digs them for their period charm, corniness, and comforting predictability. Upon rediscovering them, I realized two things:

George Reeves was a heck of an actor and did a great job in this series. His death was tragic in many ways, and if there is any justice in the multiverse, the Earth-2 George had a long and productive career.

and

Phyllis Coates was hot! Tough and no-nonsense, she would have made a great Hildy Johnson or Sarah Connor.

As hokey as these episodes can be, catch them if you get a chance; they are worth another look. Get a pal to lend them to you.

Happy returns

2007-10-01T20:12:00.000-07:00

There is no insightful commentary or deep analysis or pungent wit this week (not that those are normal anyway, but this time I have a reason) because my Delightful Companion threw me a surprise birthday party (and man, was she sneaky about it). Since this celebrated my attaining the half-century mark, she decided to do it up with dignity and decorum, and the whole thing had a superhero theme!

All the guests came in costume; DC led the way as Force of Nature, inspired by the Layla character in Sky High.

Other guests included Celtic Power Girl, Spawn of Hellboy, Crowella, Social Justice Man, Mighty Pretzel Woman, and the super-team of Electro & Cute (get it?). My friends aren't terribly comics-savvy.

In addition to six huge bottles of Russian lager (and that'll lose a weekend PDQ) my thoughtful guests also gifted me with the following books:

The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios (Gotham Books)

A "scintillating survey of superpowers" that attempts to explain how (and if) super-feats could actually work. Here's a feature and interview from Newsarama.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson (Broadway Books)

Bryson is the best and funniest non-fiction writer I know, and while this memoir of growing up in the fifties is only incidentally about comics, I am sure this book is hilarious and engaging. Here's a review from Powell's City of Books.

The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden (Harper Collins)

This book is only tangentially related to superheroics, but it's got codes and ciphers, plans to build a treehouse, instructions for making a battery out of coins, the seven wonders of the world, a Navajo code-talkers dictionary, and "Extraordinary Stories" about arctic explorers and such. I'll bet Grant Morrison has a copy. Here's a little HC-sponsored piece on Neatorama.

But the wildest of all gifts was this:

That's right: it's a vegetable peeler designed like a monkey. A shiny orange monkey.

I have no idea what this means. But he reminds me of Cryll or Zook or someone like that, so we'll let it slide.

Thwarted

2007-09-23T18:24:00.000-07:00

I didn't get a chance to get to a comic shop until Saturday this week, and as a result I missed the Dr. Thirteen trade, Architecture and Morality. I went to five different stores - no luck! Drat! I wish I had a Muttley I could blame this on. I guess I'll have to wait for the re-orders.

One of the reasons I didn't get to the shop was attending a reading by Douglas Wolk, the author of Reading Comics, who was appearing at a bookstore here in Seattle. The actual reading part of the evening wasn't so much fun, since I had already read the sections of the book from which he selected excerpts. On the other hand, his Q&A time was quite engaging. There were only a dozen or so people in attendance, but they were all interested and informed. Wolk's approach differs from that of Scott McCloud's in that he appears to be less interested in pure formalism and more about the social constructs around comics; his analysis is clearly that of a critic rather than a scholar, but it is still comprehensive and well-considered.

It was also a fun event for the folks I met there, one of whom was Leonard Rifas. Mr. Rifas was known to me by reputation; he teaches at a local community college and developed one of the first classes in comics (scroll down to HUM 270) in the region. We had never met, so it was good to make contact. I found out that Mr. Rifas was also the editor and publisher (at Educomics) of I Saw It, Barefoot Gen, and Gen of Hiroshima, which comprise Keiji Nkazawa's memoir of the atomic bombing of Japan. These books appeared about the same time as Maus but are overlooked. Gen of Hiroshima was one of the first graphic novels I bought for the library way back when, and Leonard was nice enough to give me a copy of I Saw It. Good stuff, the book and the evening both.

Tom Spurgeon started it as an audience response post, but Steve Flanagan turned it into a meme, so I'm chiming in with my "five good superheroes created since 1950 and not published by DC, Marvel or Image" in no particular order.

1. Captain Confederacy (Shetterly/SteelDragon) Pick any version you want, or even one of the other international heroes that inhabit Will Shetterly's alternate reality: they are all strong concepts and interesting characters. I raved about them some time ago.

2. NoMan (Wood/Tower) Again, just about any of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. agents cold qualify, but the inherent loneliness and alienation of the character, buried deep in the sci-fi-spy trappings that surrounded him, is still fascinating. Wally Wood was doing better even work that he thought he was, I think.

3. Mr. A (Ditko/Witzend) As a pure, unrefined actualization of a creator's vision, it would be hard to top Steve Ditko's Objectivist Avenger. Although far from Ditko's best work artistically or narratively, the small ouvre is both challenging and compelling.

4. S'amm S'mmith, the Martian Manhandler (Friedrich/Charlton) A member of the Bestest League of America appearing in the Blooperman spoof strip, I have to give this guy props just for the best parody name ever and for being an antidote to the current Angry Broccoli Man characterization of the original. (Anybody have a scan of this strip?)

5. Jack Staff (Grist/Dancing Elephant) I think this is my only repeat from anyone else's list (Steve's was one) but that's okay: he only represents everything that should be good about superheroes and superhero comics today. But I've gone on about that before, twice.

Blatant filler

2007-09-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

Turn your volume down just a bit - I think there was a little too much gain.

Ragnell's original post.

Reading Comics on Amazon.

Cape Spotting.

Where Stan Lee lived. (Apparently, the NYT has something called Key Magazine now. Who knew?)

Earth D-lightful

2007-09-09T14:44:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that I am a big fan of alternate histories, whether in prose or in comics. The what-might-have-beens - of history and fiction - are as compelling to me as the facts or the canon; I guess I like how they illuminate the essential or important elements of the original by showing them in a different light, or maybe I just enjoy seeing a twist on an established concept.

In any case, it was the appeal of alternaty that made me partial to DC's parallel Earths construct and sorry to see it go in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths over twenty years ago. The latest mega-event but one, 52, seems to have brought the multiverse back; I wonder if the imaginative fun of numbered and lettered Earths will also return, or if we will just see a host of different backdrops for the same overwrought and convoluted storytelling.

I had the good fortune the other day to pick up a comic which met my alternate-world jones in a direct and old-school way:

Legends of the DCU:
Crisis on Infinite Earths #1
DC Comics: 1999
Writer: Marv Wolfman;
Penciller: Paul Ryan; Inker: Bob McLeod

Legends was one of those showcase titles that DC puts out from time to time to highlight established characters or house miniseries. In this issue under the nameplate, Wolfman revisited CoIE fourteen years later to reveal an "untold story" of the crisis. It details the destruction of Earth-D, one of the "infinite earths" to fall to the Anti-Monitor (man, that even sounds overwrought in summary, doesn't it?).

Rather than explicate the nearly-non-existent plot (suffice to say heroes from two worlds join together to act heroic and the world ends), I'd like to just focus on the Earth-D versions of the JLA. While this world hasn't been seen yet in any schematic of the "52 worlds" I have encountered, I can always hope, eh? It's apparent that diversity was a deliberate theme of Wolfman's in building this world; the heroes of earth-D are a veritable rainbow coalition, and quite frankly, I think it works as device for inclusion. And while ethnicity is certainly not all it takes to build a character, it's as good a place to start as any other single characteristic, and it would be great if this group was revived, just for the variety and visual verve of the characters.

So here's a list of these forgotten heroes, the Justice Alliance of America. With the scant facts about them we can glean from this story, this is more in the nature of an exploratory essay than a thesis.

Superman and Supergirl

Real name(s): Kal-El (also referred to as Clark) and Kara

Diversity factor: Black

Exclamation: Great Krypton!

Superman and Supergirl are Kryptonians and their position as heroes seems to be the same as on other Earths: the leaders of the pack. Kal and Kara both act as leaders of the JAA and display the same powers and fill the same role of "Big Blue" as elsewhere in the multiverse.
The "real" Superman seems to connect with them deeply.

It is stated explicitly several times in the dialogue that they are a married couple and not cousins. This exposition is almost unnecessary, since they are given to public displays of affection throughout the book.

Superman has a Fortress of Solitude (but in the Antarctic), which made me wonder is Supergirl had one of her own, too, since they are portrayed as equal partners. You might think Kara came to Earth after Kal, as on Earth-1, and he had already established the Fortress before he met her, but Kal at one point says "we came to Earth three years ago," and Kara talks about "one family" being saved when Krypton exploded and how they were married "ten years" prior, so it's clear they came to Earth together, as adults. Hmmm.

I seem to recall an old map of Krypton that showed an island where the black Kryptonians lived; the story was that Krypton had never had slavery, so the majority whites and the minority blacks had kept pretty much separate. I think this was DC's way of explaining why Krypton was all-white. The island was called Vulto or something like that; maybe that's where the House of El lived in this universe.

Batman and Robin

Real names(s): Unknown and Dick (no last name)

Diversity factor: Still white

This Batman has the old-school bat-emblem; it is curious that although the grim-'n'-grittification of Batman has brought him back to this symbol, eight (or twenty-two) years ago it was the stern and angry Batman of Earth-1 who had the yellow oval, and the happier, family-man Batman of Earth-D (he calls Robin “chum”) in the plain bat.

This Batman is indeed a family man: it is not revealed whether he is Bruce Wayne, but Dick is his son, and he has a living wife and two other children as well. No psychotic loner here.

Also no outlaw. Batman tells Lady Quark that the Alliance heroes are “officers of the law, not vigilantes.” He recalls the fifties Batman more than anything.

Robin is full of wisecracks (but no “Holy Flypaper”-type remarks, thank goodness); he’s very much a young Robin Hood.

Wonder Woman

Real name: Di

Diversity factor: Middle-Eastern (At least, she’s colored that grayish-brown that comics seem to use for anyone with origins between the Levant and the Kush.)

Exclamation: Athena’s Wisdom!

Earth-D’s Wonder Woman sports the star-spangled spandex (with a skirt), flies an invisible jet, and has a golden lasso. She exudes that same formality, almost a stiffness, that many writers give the character. At the same time, in one exchange, Atom calls her "Di" and she calls him “Hon” – there’s no other indication of a relationship between them, but that does see awfully casual.

There are no references to Amazons or Amazon Island in the story; it’s hard to tell whether there’s a Middle-East connection in her backstory or if that change was made for it’s own sake.

Aquaman

Real Name: Unknown

Diversity factor: Humanoid with pale skin, scaly ears, and gills

Exclamation: Neptune’s Trident!

Although he’s never called by name and looks very different, this Aquaman has a lot in common with Arthur Curry: he refers to himself as “King of the Sea,” controls fish (dolphins, actually), mentions Atlantis, and refers to his family.

On the other hand, he seems a little more casual and less distant than Aquaman has been presented lately (although admittedly that wasn’t always the case). Even with the gills, he doesn't have any problem breathing air.

Flash

Real name: Tanaka Rei

Diversity factor: Japanese

Exclamation: Mercury’s Wings!

We see a lot of Flash on Earth-D, since it is Barry Allen who is our hook into the story, and he connects with Tanaka in a typical comic-book coincidence. Tanaka knows Barry in the same way Barry knew Jay Garrick: he has comic books that feature the Flash of Earth-1 as a fictional character. Oh, the irony!

Tanaka is very much like Barry in that he seems to be a mainstream, middle-American, suburban family man. He even has a brush-top crew-cut like Barry used to. We meet his wife Hoshi and two children who go unnamed; a brother, Hank, is also mentioned. The Earth-D Flash operates in Central City and has a Mirror Master for a foe. His powers are exactly like Barry’s, except he’s never built a Cosmic Treadmill (maybe he missed that issue).

Atom

Real name: Unknown

Diversity factor: Black

This Atom seems like a pint-sized Adam Strange more than anything else. He can fly, and although he refers to his “atomic punch,” he carries a kirbytech rifle later in the story. He is never seen without this helmet, but it’s clear that he has a mustache (which is about as unusual in costumed heroes as is racial diversity). We never see him shrink or grow, though.

Green Lantern

Real name: Jose Hernandez

Diversity factor: White Brazilian

The Green Lantern of Sector 5134 in the Earth-D universe has a short and glorious career. He gets his ring from Tagin Sur on page 36 and never makes it to page 49. In those few pages, he projects both power and humility, and is quite engaging.

Like Hal Jordan, he is a fighter pilot, but unlike Hal, he seeks out his injured predecessor (to offer help) instead of being summoned.

Martian Manhunter

Real name: J’onn

Diversity factor: Still green

We don't get much on the Manhunter; in fact, no one calls him anything besides “J’onn,” so it's only a guess that he’s a Martian. He looks a lot like an early draft of the animated MM and less like the current “angry broccoli man” version. All he does is fly and be strong, so it's hard to say how much of an analogue he is other than visually.

Green Arrow

Real name: Unknown

Diversity factor: First Peoples

In both look and attitude, the Earth-D GA seems more like Hawkeye from the Avengers than Oliver Queen. He spouts what Bully has called the “unsettling slang of Mr. Clint Barton” and appears to be the Alliance’s blue-collar guy. His arrows have specialty heads, but we never get to see them do anything more exotic than generically explode.

Hawkman and Hawkgirl

Real names: Kator and Shay (also called Sher)

Diversity factor: Unknown. (Both are colored a pale yellow, different from any other character, so your guess is as good as mine.)

Exclamation: Daxxon’s World!

This is another relationship-switch for a pair of heroes: Katar and Shay are brother and sister, not husband and wife. Withal, they are still most reminiscent of Joe Kubert’s take on the Silver-Age Earth-1 versions, ancient weapons and all. Their costumes emphasize more of an Egyptian motif, and two panels show Hawkgirl’s wings apparently growing from her back, so perhaps there are more differences than that, but we never find out.

JAA Headquarters

The Alliance members meet in an undersea complex instead of a satellite, and I have to tell you, pneumatic tubes are almost as high a cool factor as airships when it comes to alternate worlds.

There they are – ripe for revival and ready for retconning, the Global Guardians with the “obvious” dial turned down just a hair, the Super-Friends played a little straighter -

the Justice Alliance of America.

Formalist note: If you notice something odd about the pictures, check out the word balloons. Throughout the comic, Earth-D characters speak in word balloons that are not quite as wavy as thought balloons, but definitely curvier than the standard oval dialog balloons which the Earth-1 characters use. The sustained effect is a little eerie.

Disclaimer: backgrounds of the clips may have been changed to make the panels a little more pinup-y.

ENO TAERG BPT!

2007-09-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

A book and ten reasons to love it:

JLA: Zatanna's Search
DC Comics: 2004
Written by Gardner Fox (with an additional story by Gerry Conway); art by Murphy Anderson, Bob Kane, Joe Giella, Gil Kane, Sid Greene, Carmine Infantino, Mike Sekowsky, Romeo Tanghal, and Vince Colletta

1. While the claim that this saga is the first major crossover event in comics is overstated (even without researching it, I would say that the Spy Smasher/Captain Midnight and Sub-Mariner/Human Torch meetings from the Golden Age qualify), it is clearly of historical importance. This book collects six stories from five different comic titles published over two and a half years, which taken together all form one narrative. Gardner Fox, that stalwart of the Silver Age, wrote all of the stories with his usual puzzle-solution structure; each teams Zatanna, the backwards-talking magician, with various heroes. While each story works as a done-in-one for the individual heroes, each is but one chapter in Zatanna's quest to find her missing father. The denouement comes, of course, in a JLA story featuring all the heroes Zatanna has previously met in her search. Such specific, tight, cross-story continuity was almost unheard of at DC in the mid-sixties. (And now that I think of it, this tale seems to foreshadow the wandering of Steve Engleheart's Mantis/Willow/Lorelei through various strips (and publishers) some years later.)

2. The introduction is by Steven Utley. He hasn't written an earth-shaking intro or anything, but it is nice to hear from a knowledgeable commentator who isn't one of the usual suspects. Besides, any collaborator of Howard Waldrop's is okay with me.

3. The TPB includes extras. Besides the six main stories, there is a cover gallery and a sort-of prequel published in 1980.

4. The stories have narration captions, thought balloons, and editorial notes. I like to see comics that are self-consciously comics; too many contemporary books seem to be movies-in-disguise, and I think creators are often overlooking the textual component of comics in an often misguided attempt to be cinematic.

5. If you are of a certain age (like me) this collection will transport you to a former time and place. You may have read all of these comics upon their original publication (I think I did, even the lame Batman/Outsider story); you may only recall two or three of them and have never known the full narrative. In either case, you will feel once again like you have scraped together a whole quarter for an eighty-page giant, and lose yourself in simple wonder again.

6. The art. Here's Zatanna and Hawkman by Murphy Anderson:

7. The art. Here's Zatanna by Gil Kane and Sid Greene:

(This team did the Green Lantern story, too.)

8. The art. Here's Zatanna by Carmine Infantino:

9. The art. Here's Zatanna and the JLA by my man Big Mike Sekowsky and the ubiquitous Sid Greene:

10. The cover has got go-go checks across the top! How can you resist?!

Lat week, I talked about picking up Superman For All Seasons at the library, and being glad that I could get to read it without having to purchase it. I also borrowed this book on that same visit, but this one I think I will eventually buy for the bookshelf. I had missed this when it was first published, and would likely not have tripped over it except for the library.

Super-stuff

2007-08-26T13:56:00.000-07:00

So, the other day I was off at the local library and decided to check out their graphic novel collection*. I haven't made a habit of regularly getting my comics from the library, but I think I will start - the collection is getting broader and the practice would be a nice corollary to my "wait for the trades" policy.

One book I borrowed from the library was Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Superman For All Seasons (DC Comics: 1998). This was a book I had seen in its original single-issue format and decided to wait for the collection; once the TPB came out, I looked at it a few times but never picked it up. Having a chance to read it at my leisure for free was all it took!

In the end, I'm glad I waited and waited, because I don't think I would have been satisfied with this purchase. I know there has been a lot of praise heaped upon this work, but I didn't think it was all that successful a piece.

I think I got what Loeb was trying to do - the whole Norman Rockwellization of Kal-El, if you will - and I can appreciate where that approach comes from - showing that Superman might have started as an alien, but has become a naturalized American, through and through. I just think the presentation was a bit heavy-handed, and inaccurate, to boot.

Clark Kent's homespun beginnings and influences - delivered mostly through Pa Kent's ruminations and amplified by the LLs' caption boxes - are just too saccharine and simplistic; I can't imagine getting the moral grounding to deal with near-infinite power from such homely truisms and conventional wisdom. "We each do what we're able to, Clark, some less, some more," Pastor Lindquist tells him. Is that empty homily supposed to help a superman make decisions?

It also bothered me that the Kents seemed so middle-of-the-road; I liked the early, left-leaning, fatcat-bashing Superman of the Golden Age, and always imagined Pa Kent as an old Wobblie with some shady anarchist connections from his early days, who moved to Kansas from West Virginia after the Matewan Massacre or something. And maybe Ma was a suffragette and a socialist. I mean, Clark had to have gotten those political leanings from somewhere. I didn't see any populist or progressive attitudes on display in Smallville.

Sale's art follows along with the story themes very closely - which is to say, a bit over-the-top. I liked the cartoony style and the bulky Clark; that was cool. The Kents teetered on the edge of gnomish, however, and the art direction was all over the map: the faux-forties in Smallville and retro-future in Metropolis I can see, but the seventies Luthor-suits, the oh-so-nineties Toxin (puh-lease), and the contemporary (ballcap-backwards) kid seemed jarringly out-of-place as a result.

Which is not to say Sale didn't do some great stuff anyway and try to develop a consistent visual vocabulary: for example, the composition in this panel, repeated several times, was a great artistic device linking the boy from Smallville to the man in Metropolis.

In any case, the book wasn't bad, I just didn't think it was great. It was certainly several orders of magnitude better then the execrable World of Metropolis, which it resembles structurally.

I'm glad the library had it.

*Way back in the dark ages of 1994 or so, I was instrumental in developing the first specific comics collection in the Seattle Public Library. My branch managing librarian got an allocation for a special collection and let me spend it on comics: I remember buying Maus and Barefoot Gen, but can't recall what the rest of that initial collection comprised.

Have a cuppa coffee with me - at the comic shop!

2007-08-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

I needed to get out of the house tonight to make room for an all-girl book club meeting; this being Seattle, of course, I headed for some coffee and wi-fi. However, you won't find me in any S***bucks -- tonight, I'm mixing caffeine and comics books:

Coffee and Comics
1408 NE 45th Street
Seattle, WA

Apparently, this place has been here for over a year, but it just hit my radar recently. With Seattle as coffee-centric as it is and comics-savvy to boot (Fantagraphics is just down the road a piece), I wonder why I didn't figure that we would have a coffee shop focused on comic books.

You could easily overlook this small, hole-in-the-wall joint -- of the kind that usually has the best coffee (they serve good Vivace here). Inside, the wooden bistro tables look to seat ten comfortably, with plenty of power outlets for laptops, and near the front two cushy chairs invite lingering and reading. The menu includes all the usual coffee drinks, tea (including chai), and a very limited selection of muffiny stuff. They also default to ceramic cups for service, and only use paper for to-go orders. Yay, green!

A bookcase of graphic novels and trade paperbacks sits in the corner near the big window, serving as a library and back-issue rack both.

One interior wall is covered with "artist wanted" notices, posters, and local art samples.

Yeah, that's one of Jeph Jacques's Questionable Content cast posters hanging there; here's the detail of a cool sketch that is under it:

(She is saying "knitty gritty.")

Up front near the service counter, a sales rack holds new releases; the shop also does weekly pulls (you might not notice the pull shelves behind the rack -- I didn't -- but the friendly barista, Lola, pointed them out to me.)

The usual phalanx of action figures and figurines stands watch over the comics:

So, I don't know if this will give the Mike Sterling any ideas to start serving espresso, but I'm having a grand time here. Now, if you'll excuse me, my coffee's getting cold.

(Yes, this was real-time blogging. I took all the photos just now and uploaded them here to my laptop. As I press publish, it's 7:55 pm.)

Legion of substitute posts

2007-08-20T22:23:00.000-07:00

I like to post once a week, over the weekend, and since it's already Monday night, it appears I am a little behind schedule. So, in lieu of a real post, here's a miscellaneous tidbit that might be of interest.

I often read a blog called The Cartoonist, which covers lots of art-stuff, usually not including comics. A recent post comprised a link to a Flickr photo set called "Retro Sexy," which featured what looked like the set-up shots from seventies soft-core porn. Here's a sample photo, with a little twist:

Now, I don't know how sexy you think the photo is, but look at what the woman on the bed is reading - is that a Donald Duck comic? It looks to me we can clearly see Huey, Dewey, and Louie in the page facing the camera. Seems a bit of an odd choice for pre-makeout reading, no?

Staff, Jack and dis-types

2007-08-11T20:59:00.000-07:00

Jack Staff, Vol. 2: Soldiers
By Paul Grist and Phil Elliot
Image Comics: 2004

I read and reviewed Paul Grist's first Jack Staff collection a few weeks ago, so it's probably not surprising that I have devoured the second volume. Soldiers is a bit of a change from Everything Used to be Black and White in a specific way: it is in color. I don't want to say the color is bad, because Phil Elliott did a great job doing whatever all the things are that colorists actually do in this digital age, and the book looks great, but after reading a collection of twelve issues in black and white, it was a bit jarring, and Grist's illustrations are so strong they don't seem to need colors anyway.

The story itself continues to backfill Jack's history, filling us in on why (at the start of the first volume) he had been absent from heroing for twenty years. It features the now-familiar cast of reporters, cops, agents, robots, and supervillains, most of whom would be as comfortable on an ITC television series as in a comic book. Grist continues to develop his mastery of the multi-layered narrative and provides us with another ripping yarn, fraught with portent and hidden depth, but it is on three of those supporting characters whom I would like to focus today.

Becky Burdock, Vampire Reporter

A modern Nellie Bly in Annie Hall's castoffs, Becky is driven, dedicated, and competent; young, but no ingenue, and a decidedly non-nosferatic vampire, she is a professional whose agenda sometimes parallels and sometimes conflicts with Jack's. There might be the slimmest hints of the beginnings of some sort of romantic entanglement in their relationship, but mostly they find themselves circumstantial allies trying to survive the same catastrophes.

I have noticed that twice so far, Jack has responded to requests for assistance from Becky by saying he was too busy to help; Becky has gotten herself out of the situation anyway: so much for the damsel in distress trope. Jack had better be careful, or she'll stop letting him tag along on her adventures.

Helen Morgan, Q Branch

Morgan is the enigmatic lead agent of Q Branch, an X-Files-like unit that kicks a bit more ass than Fox and Scully ever did. She puts me in mind of what the Phantom Stranger might be like if he joined the civil service; mysterious and powerful, but in a mundane and quotidian way, a George Smiley of the paranormal. Her quiet presence drives and directs the efforts of the splashier coppers and super-cops, but she's not at all hesitant to get down and dirty when she needs to.

How tough is she? Well, in Soldiers, Detective Inspector Maveryk, consumed by a mysterious rage effect plaguing the community, surprises her and beats her to death with his police baton in an interrogation room, and then drunkenly awaits his discovery and arrest in the squad room. Here's the upshot:

Now that's tough - not a word, not even a look. Don't mess with Helen Morgan.

Liz Stewart, Special Military Intelligence, Lethal Executive

Were Bruce Willis a woman, he might be able to play Commander Stewart, if he could reign in his soft side. This hard-as-gravel military operative is strong, single-minded, and smart. Whether facing up to an out-of-control superior officer or fighting her way through a town of enraged killers, she is in control, and puts the "no" in no-nonsense. Here she is mixing it up with The Claw, a Q agent who is invisible except for his electric hand:

Stewart was introduced only this volume, but I am looking forward to seeing more of her - as long as she's not after me.

What do these three characters have in common? Besides being cool, they are all women. I know I recently read a post somewhere that argued against praising writers for writing strong female characters because, after all, that's just what they ought to be doing, and we shouldn't praise people for merely doing the right thing. I find myself forced to disagree with this position; sometimes doing what we should do, in the face of peer pressure or tradition or temptation or even just ease and inertia, is noteworthy, at least to the degree that such attention would encourage further good work. It is in that spirit that I single out Paul Grist for this particular praise.

Becky Burdock, Helen Morgan, and Liz Stewart are all fascinating and colorful characters and could have - and likely would have - been written as typical male characters by a lesser talent; I call this progress, of a sort. Each of them is a woman, but none is The Woman: each has a purpose, role, and a nature beyond her gender alone.

Yet, we get the sense that each one is fully-fleshed-out character whose gender is part and parcel of her makeup, not just a random characteristic chosen from a character-generation program for an RPG, or a checkmark on a diversity quota list. There is no T&A in this book, but if women are your fancy, I defy you to read this without falling a little bit in love with at least one of these characters, because they are all real and wonderful.

And that, my friends, is worthy of note.

Bonus Strong Female Lead: Patti Smith

This is the cover of the "What's Happening" section of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, one of those inserts that come out on Fridays with arts and events calendars. The cover story features Patti Smith, who was having a show in town, and the story applauded her neverending battle against the commercialization of rock.

As soon as I looked at the cover, I got it, but to be test it out, I showed it to my partner, a non-comics-reading female person, and asked her what she saw. She almost immediately said "She's supposed to be Wonder Woman." I asked what made Patti Smith into Wonder Woman; she pointed at the tiara, and then noticed the wristbands as well.

Now, if that's not iconic status, I don't know what is. I don't care what anyone says, for pop culture reasons alone, Wonder Woman is, and always will be,one of the big three.

Now, if they could only get her comic right...

Two-in-One

2007-08-05T19:15:00.000-07:00

Sorry there was no post last week - I flew from Seattle to JFK on the Thursday night redeye in order to attend a wedding in Connecticut, and came back to Seattle in time to teach on Monday morning. It was a great wedding, but that's a lot of miles to cover in one weekend.

Not quite comics: Book "review"

Bradbury: An Illustrated Life (A Journey to Far Metaphor)
By Jerry Weist; William Morrow (2002)

As I was leaving school last week, a colleague handed me this book, saying his wife had picked it up at a sale and he thought I might be interested in it. I was a pretty big fan of Ray Bradbury back in the day, and a look at the graphics associated with his books seemed at least mildly interesting. And it was a big book (which is why I had to take a picture of it on my sidewalk - it was too big for the scanner), so the illustrations were high quality.

Imagine my delight when I found that in the midst of chapters such as "From pulps to slicks" and "The Theater and Ray Bradbury" that chapter four was "EC Comics and Ray Bradbury: The Untold Story..."

I haven't had a chance to read the chapter thoroughly, but it describes the association between Bradbury and Bill Gaines, EC's publisher, that grew after Bradbury discovered some plagiarized material in the comic books Haunt of Fear, Vault of Horror, and Weird Fantasy. Instead of the litigation that would probably follow today, Bradbury both got his due for the "stolen" work and pitched some future ideas in charming correspondence with the EC offices. Once a cordial relationship had been established, EC adapted several Bradbury works over the course of the following few years.

The book contains some great samples of artwork from those adaptations; the roster of creators read like a list of nominees for the Comics Hall of Fame.

This is the Wally Wood splash page for the unauthorized adaptation of "Rocket Man" and "Kaleidescope" from Weird Fantasy #13 in 1952, the story that started it all. The book contains the following samples of work from Jack Davis and Al Williamson, as well as work from Bernard Krigstein and John Severin.

I guess I was dimly aware the Bradbury stories had been adapted to comics in various forms, but I had no idea of the extent of his relationship with EC.

Not quite comics: Movie "Review"

Comic Book Pajama Party: Women Who Love Comic Books!
Latitude X - 2005

The Netflix envelope for this movie reads, in part: Meet eight beautiful, intelligent and fun young women who also happen to be huge comic book fans. Gathering together one evening to talk about the comic books they love -- and hate -- these gals lounge, eat chocolate, guzzle wine, and give you the low-down [...] Be a fly on the wall as these smart, savvy and outspoken chicks dish about more than just pop culture.

I wish that I could recommend this documentary; it would be nice to have a decent resource in the ongoing discussion of "women and comics" that seems to be part and parcel of the comicsweblogosphere these days. Unfortunately, this is a really crappy film.

It begins with a self-introduction by each of the participants, filmed in a comics store; each woman gives a quick thumbnail of her interests and (for some undisclosed reason) answers the question "Are ninjas cool?"

After all the players are introduced, the scene shifts to an apartment. All the women are there, in various sorts of jammies*, doing what passes for pajama party stuff when all the attendees are strangers to each other and there is a camera crew in the room. They show each other comics, play with action figures, have earnest discussions with polite disagreements, eat, drink, and so on. About halfway through the film, a splinter group separates and goes upstairs to a bedroom to talk about anime and manga while the main crew stays in the living room to talk about American comics (but not just the big two). And then the film closes with a game of Twister.

The production values are awful. Besides shaky and undistinguished camera work, the sound is all out of balance and the volume level changes randomly. More importantly, there is no artfulness or even coherent design to the editing; conversations are captured in all their rambling and incoherent glory, and there is no arc to the discussion or apparent intent to the film. Other than some narration at the beginning, the documentarians' efforts are seen only in the on-screen captions, which either elaborate on information given or give superfluous scene summaries; otherwise, this could have been random scraps of film from a home video found on a subway platform.

Try as I could to glean some data from this mess, I felt it was pretty much a waste. Here's what I learned:

The filmmakers think that girls didn't use to read comics, but that now they do. (This contradicts some readership figures I have seen about comics readers in the forties.)
Almost all of the women thought that huge-breasted comics women were stupid, silly, and juvenile; I don't think any of them called the images "offensive." (They spent some time discussing the topic.)
Many of the women expressed an enjoyment of the action or violence that is part of the superhero genre, but only one seemed to really like gore.
Most of the women said it was well-written stories that kept them reading comics.

Not much silver for so much dross. Unless you are a real completist on the subject, I don't think that Pajama Party is worth seeking out.

*The one thing I can categorically state about the film is that, beyond choosing the conceit of a slumber party as the backdrop for the discussion (I mean, couldn't it have been a luncheon or something?), I didn't see a lot of sexism or sexuality in the film. The women are all dressed modestly and appropriately in comfy clothes (sweatpants, what we used to call "hostess pajamas," and the like), there is no cheesecake or gratuitous camera work, and even the Twister game is more sisterly than sexy. In fact, the best thing about the film is the women - I wish I could actually get to meet them and hear what they have to say, instead of seeing them through the muddy lens of this movie, because they all seemed like "intelligent and fun young women."

Last note: While watching this, my partner (before she left the room out of boredom and annoyance) asked me if any of the women were bloggers I read. I have to say, that after seeing the names and capsule bios, I don't think so, but who knows? As the New Yorker cartoon said, on the internet, no one knows you're a dog.

Not going to Comicon makes me sad

2007-07-22T15:11:00.000-07:00

This is the year I turn fifty. It's not for a few weeks yet technically, but I already had a minor celebration with a bunch of high school buddies who are also passing the same milestone this year.

Another of the revels with which I wanted to mark the occasion was SDCC, Comic-Con International, or whatever it's officially called -- I wanted to go to San Diego. I have never been, although I attended some of Phil Seuling's early conventions and I've gone to several others cons. I thought that for a much as I have been involved in comics, I wouldn't want to pass a half-century without doing San Diego.

I had even started to make plans, when, wouldn't you know it, my sister decided that that weekend would be a perfect time to get married. Back on the east coast.

So, on Thursday, I won't be heading off to a weekend of geekish celebration in southern California, but rather a weekend of matrimonial obligation in central Connecticut. With great sister comes great responsibility, I guess.

So, I can't bring myself to talk about comics this week. I'm all choked up.

Five-minute photoshop

2007-07-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

The real discussion is over on Dance of the Puppets.

What some people without blogs are thinking

2007-07-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

This summer, I am teaching two sections of English 102, a standard college composition class for which I use graphic books as texts. We have read The Language of Comics as an introduction to scholarly analysis of the form; our texts includes Showcase: Superman, Watchmen, Why I Hate Saturn, and Maus, among others. I have introduced some of Scott McCloud's theory as a basis for formal analysis (since just about every article in TLoC cites him) and we watched and discussed a History channel documentary to get some sense of comics in a cultural perspective.

My morning section of about twenty students includes only one person who has read comics to any degree; to the rest, this might as well be a course in eighteenth century French romantic poetry, for as much as they know about the form. Nonetheless, they are digging in and working it.

The students will write two papers analyzing their choice from among the texts (in addition to other assignments). I thought it might be instructive to show you what they thought noteworthy, or at least interesting enough to write about, for the first paper. here are some tentative thesis statements from our first workshop:

Though most of Watchmen tries to be liberal, there is still a theme of homophobia.

Color

Rorschach and Eddie are both main characters in Watchmen who happen to see their terrible world for what it is. Eddie embraces it and finds pleasure in the sickness, while Rorschach is depressed and lives in misery because of it. Although their outlook is the same, their reaction is different, and therefore compelling.

Dr. Manhattan’s destruction and then regeneration into a presumed perfect, god-like being can be paralleled in the book by a society needing to regenerate itself as well.

Although Superman comics are juvenile, simplistic, and made for kids, adults can also enjoy them. They teach a lesson that everyone can relate to.

That Superman/Clark Kent is not the perfect role model that he is made out to be.

Through the characters and images, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons discusses some issues people face and can relate to.

Even though Dr. Manhattan wants to be with Laurie, Laurie wants to smash and break up with him.

While Superman is often thought of as a paradigm of the perfect being, deep inside this shell Superman reflects society’s fears, creating a parallel world where all these fears are overcome by a paradigm of the perfect being.

These stories in Showcase: Superman show that technology can help create a utopian-like society, but abuse of the planet to assist advancement could lead to our destruction.

Superman is a self-absorbed hero who puts himself first and the universe second.

Although conventionally seen as a psychopath, Rorschach is the actualization of personal reality contained within every human being.

Robert C. Harvey defined comic books as a blend between pictures and word. According to this definition, the pictures and words are vital to each other. Why I Hate Saturn by Kyle Baker is a comic book where pictures and words work against each other and this results in confusion for the reader.

As Superman’s friend, Jimmy Olsen helps Superman with some of the problems that occur, and as a character of the comic, the young readers can relate to Jimmy because of the role he plays.

Alan Moore closes each chapter of Watchmen with a famous literary quote. By using quotes as a template for his writing, Moore transforms the words of others into an underlying theme that helps develop the plot and progression of his characters.

The Superman comics use a narrative caption in nearly every panel; this word-image relationship allows the story to take place quickly and appeals to the younger audience.

Art Speigelman wants readers to be shocked by the strategically placed real photographs [in Maus]; he wants the reader to be forced into seeing the reality of the holocaust if only for a few moments in each book. Seeing these photos is more disturbing than the disjunction between animal characters and the horrifying plot.

Superman is a good role model for the children in teaching moral values.

Maybe about half of these statements are developed enough for a compelling paper, but they do include both formal and traditional literary analyses, as well as a few cultural inquiries; some of them would even get beyond the "no duh" response from jaded, long-time comics critics (well, maybe). I can't help but wonder what approaches I would get if I gave the same assignment to a bunch of fanlings.

I don't think I could have a comics blog without at least one graphic per post, so here's this:

When I was a kid, one of my favorite characters was Hank McCoy, the Beast. Not the furry blue cute-monster (I got the first appearance of the "new" Beast when it came out, and I didn't like it then) but the husky, barefoot X-man with the big vocabulary. (If only he had taken a Humanities major, he never would have gotten fuzzy...) Anyway, I had been hearing some good things about this X-Men: First Class series, so I broke down and picked up a floppy - Volume 2, #1 - hoping to see some old school action.

I was not disappointed: the series has enough youthful vigor, old-style sensibility, and humor to satisfy an old-timer like me. The X-men appear young, and interact like the less-experienced individuals they ought to have been at that point. Professor X is still professorial, but more human and real than Stan Lee or Roy Thomas ever made him. The Hank McCoy I knew and loved is there, with his specs and big words and formal style and warm byplay with Iceman. If this issue is any indication, I need to find the trade of Volume 1.

What was most surprising and worthy of note is that this is a comic book that I would unhesitatingly give to my daughter, if I had one. This particular issue focuses on Marvel Girl and some mentoring she receives from Sue Storm. Although Sue is still going by Invisible Girl, she is presented as a wise, capable professional with a lot to share. The interaction between Jean and Sue is understated, charming, and effective; it says more about nurturing our young women than any half-dozen PSAs combined, even with a couple of Nike commercials thrown in. Given the problematic treatment of women in superhero comics today, I applaud Jeff Parker for writing a story that had intelligence and sensitivity as well as chills, spills, and thrills (and include Roger Cruz for his unexploitative artwork).

Now I know Jack

2007-07-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

Before I begin to go on about Jack Staff, I want to recount this anecdote: I was in my LCS and my partner, a female-type person, met me there before we went off on a mutual errand. As she scanned the titles on the shelves, she saw this issue of Green Lantern. Her response to it was to point and say "Ah, boobies!" We talked about it later and it turned out that while she wasn't particularly offended (although she did find the female figure somewhat objectified), she presumed that the breasts were supposed to be the focal point of the picture. Let me say that again: an intelligent woman (a poet and artist), more or less unfamiliar with the conventions and tropes of superhero comics, thought that a cover containing a (to my eye) fairly typical representation of a female character indicated that the story was somehow about sexual themes, not heroism or adventure or villainy or conflict. I would say that this was food for thought, but really it's just another example of an issue that has been well-proven but which is still not accepted as a "real" issue by significant portions of comics readership (and creatorship). Le sigh.

Well, since I don't read mainstream superhero comics much anymore (because of that very kind of stuff), what I left the shop with was Jack Staff Volume 1: Everything Used to Be Black and White by Paul Grist

This was more like it. The volume collects the first twelve issues of Grist's British take on the superhero genre, which he maintains is mostly unexplored in British comics. I found this approach to be refreshingly rich; although Jack Staff is clearly a superhero figure, he inhabits a world that is both quirkier and more familiar than most comics worlds, making him not so much a unique figure as someone is just one more standard deviation off the mean than most people.

From the get-go, the book is a clear bargain that confirms my choice to "wait for the trades." For a double sawbuck, I got almost 350 pages of story; if I had spent the same money for five floppies, I would only have a had a third of that. Granted, this collection is in black and white, but since that's how the stories were originally presented, there's no content lost, and Grist is a master of the black and white idiom anyway.

In addition to the sheer number of pages, Grist just packs the book, first with characters. In addition to Jack, we have Becky Burdock, Girl Reporter (who becomes Vampire Reporter in short order); an hommage to The Invaders; a robot man; an old-fashioned copper (who could have been the inspiration for Jerry Lynch in Intermission); agents of a special branch, supernatural-type; agents of a special branch, superspy-type; in-story parodies of Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore; a Victorian escapologist; a retired super-thief; and many more.

The characters propel a narrative that is complex and layered, and Grist relates it in an overlapping, non-linear style that requires full engagement on the part of the reader but which never quite crosses the line into confusion or obscurity. There are no real sub-plots; there are multiple plots playing themselves out simultaneously. One sequence in particular, involving the intersection of the main protagonists at bank robbery, pulls off the shifting between multiple points of view exceptionally well.

Grist's layouts are as dynamic as his narrative structure; he uses lots of panels per page and some innovative sequences. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't, but they are always interesting. Check out this sequence in which Burdock finds herself an unlikely ally; see how it stacks up using Skipper Pickle's methodology for examining page composition.

There was so much to like in this collection. Many of the characters are take-offs from established television or comics characters. I knew some of them and got a sense of some others, but the references never detract from the story and anyone could have a great time without "getting" any of them. Grist re-imagines the familiar through his working-class British lens and makes everything fresh for all readers.

Another thing that every reader will come away with is the sense that Grist can write strong female characters. There is no T&A in the book, no damsel in distress, no woman-in-peril, no "the girl." The lead agent for Q, the supernatural cops, is the tough-as-nails Helen Morgan, a sort of Stephen Strange in a green trench coat. Becky Burdock is another great example: her "rescue" by the affable vampire-hunter in the sequence above presents him as the romantic naif that he is; Becky may appreciate assistance but doesn't need rescuing. She is tougher and smarter than Lois Lane, even if she is stuck at a tabloid.

I would compare this shot with what passes for images of "realistic" women in mainstream comics, but I don't have it in me to heave another sigh.

Not too long ago, I expressed frustration at trying to find "robust, intricate stories, set firmly in the [superhero] genre, that engage my imagination, intellect, and emotions." I was looking for stories in which "maturity" meant emotional complexity, not gratuitous sex; in which the action didn't necessarily have to involve dismemberment and torture to be "serious"; and in which the characters act in ways that human beings that inhabit the actual world would, no matter how fantastical their circumstances. Jack Staff gives me all that, and I can't wait for the next installment.

Your primary medium is the knowledge and expectations of your audience

2007-07-01T15:53:00.000-07:00

This weekend (Friday and Saturday) I had the pleasure of taking a class at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland: CED 312-1, Graphic Novel: Narrative and Persuasion, taught by Scott McCloud.

Essentially, this a sixteen-hour lecture and lab version of the content from Making Comics, McCloud's latest book, a primer on how narrative works in comics(1). Although I have read and re-read the book (along with Understanding Comics), and use a lot of McCloud's principles and models when discussing comics in the classroom, I found the experience of working directly with McCloud very valuable. While I can't say there were revelations and new insights to be gained from the class for someone familiar with McCloud's written works, the practical application of techniques and the peer and instructor critique added a depth to my understanding.

The student made up a mixed bag. Some were matriculated students at PNCA taking the class for credit; for some people this was the end of a week-long course in graphic novels that had included other classes (one taught by Trina Robbins); some, like me, were just taking Scott's segment. Some were already comics creators or wanted to be, but that was certainly not universal: one fellow was looking at all forms of narrative to find an idiom in which to present his memoirs and another guy was a mediator looking for new models of creative thinking. The class of thirty or so was split about evenly between men and women; the youngest student was a 17-year-old girl and there were at least two men in their sixties, with the rest of us spreading out between the extremes.

Scott started the class with a slide show that outlined the typical steps in the creation of a comics narrative - plot outline to script to layout to pencils to inks - and then explained how any or all of them could be omitted or truncated.

This led into an exercise that replicated the guy-finds-a-key story in Making Comics (page 11): Scott gave us a short story summary(2) and we had ten minutes to create a strip that told the story as we understood it. Students took from three to fourteen panels to compose the narrative; I took five (or six, depending on how you count) - how many would you use?

As we critiqued each and every strip in panel number order, we could see clearly how the tension between economy and detail worked itself out in each person's creative act and the choices they made(3).

"Choices" is, of course, Scott's overarching conceit for the creative process: he breaks down comics creation into Choice of Moment, Choice of Frame, Choice of Image, Choice of Word, and Choice of Flow. The panel count, for example, is one aspect of a creator's Choice of Moment: how many are necessary to tell the story you want to tell?

The class was not designed to go into much detail regarding Choice of Flow, which is concerned with page-level layouts and alternate web layouts(4), but we continued with more lecture on Choice of Moment (including a review of the six types of panel transition(5)) and moved into talking about Choice of Frame and the balance between clarity and intensity. We looked at stories by Moebius, Drooker and Huizenga to illustrate the concepts being discussed, and it tuned out that reading comics on a big screen worked surprisingly well.

We then moved into the studio for some extended exercises, the first of which was rendering (in twenty minutes) a six-panel script that deliberately included disjunctive elements. This narrative quirk compelled a high degree of clarity on the part of the creator, since logical extrapolation would not help get a viewer to the message. This strip by a classmate(6) is a good illustration:

The representation of the supermarket activities in the first three panels is spot on and entirely clear; the introduction of "a rhino falls from the ceiling" in panel four works less successfully, since the rhino looks a bit like a pig with a mask on, and without any contextual clues, the closure that gives a reader "rhino" was not certain. In this case, it did not seem to be a question of Choice of Moment (that was specified in the script) or Choice of Frame (it seems fitting), but just Choice of Image (and more practically, no chance for a reference image).

In the interest of full disclosure, here's my strip for the same assignment. I had a slightly more complicated script and executed it with much less skill:

We all completed different strips like these and reviewed them in small groups; each group selected one strip for a larger discussion. The relative clarity (or lack of it) as a result of creator choices was apparent.

We followed this activity up with an even longer strip: the instructions were to use a straightforward four-by-four, sixteen panel grid to create a narrative based on your own life. This became a two-level exercise for me. On the one hand, it was a more in-depth look at the same kind of choices as we were making in the short strip: since the details of our lives were personal and peculiar, clarity of presentation was extremely important so the specific details of the narrative could be understood.

The second level, however, resonated with me more as a teacher of writing: many people began by depicting their birth and ended with coming to the class we were in, and were dissatisfied with their attempt to accurately depict their entire lives in just sixteen panels. Very few students chose to move to the specific rather than the general and to tell the story of just one aspect of their lives. This approach, which I took (showing only education and employment) might give a narrative which is less comprehensive but more solid, with a clearer narrative arc. Here's the strip:

In any case, the exercise stretched people's creativity (we had only an hour and twenty minutes for the whole thing), and the critique - Scott went over every piece in detail - took the end of Friday and the first hour of Saturday, and covered Moment, Frame, and Image.

Saturday morning continued with a lecture on character design as an example of Choice of Image (with what seemed to be a slight digression into the "shape of storytelling"(7)). Then the presentation turned into more of an art class, with Scott demonstrating the look of the six emotional primaries - anger, fear, disgust, joy, sadness, and surprise - and showing how the secondary, more complex emotions were combinations of the physical elements that make up these primaries. Much of Saturday was filled with studio exercises in communicating different emotions through facial expression and body language. My attempts at illustrating these gradations were not successful enough to add anything to this account, but you can see some other versions on the wall in this photo.

Our final project was to create a fully developed narrative strip (in ninety minutes) that demonstrated our understanding of the Choices. For better or worse, this is as good(8) as my understanding got:

Overall, I have to say that I was impressed with Scott McCloud as a classroom instructor. He is clear, personable, and accessible, and presents the material in a manner that models collaboration with the student rather than preaching. For me, the class was more review than enlightenment, but it was a rich and textured review that increased my confidence with the material. Unfortunately, due to technical glitches, Scott was unable to present his lecture on Choice of Word, the segment that might have been of the most interest to me, but I still got a lot out of the entire experience, and took away some ideas for my classes.

If you ever have a chance to take one of these classes, do it.

(1) Notwithstanding Neil Cohn's recent post on nomenclature, I continue to use comics as the shorthand for sequential art, however we may wind up ultimately defining it.

(2) For the record, the summary was A man walks down a sidewalk, whistling. He meets an elephant, who gives him a cell phone. He thanks the elephant and continues walking, talking on the cell phone. He then falls off a cliff.

(3) This tension reminds me of an approach to judging the best length of a written piece: use as few words as you can and as many as you need to. (This is itself a paraphrase of advice I heard from a driver's ed instructor: drive as fast as you can and as slow as you have to.)

(4) Although that didn't stop me from responding to the latest post on the wonderful Remedial Comics.

(5) Moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, and non sequitor.

(6) For the record, I don't think anyone in the class was more fluent in the language of comics than this creator.

(7) McCloud held that you can't have a story unless someone wants something, and that the three templates are "desire achieved and then rejected" (Wizard of Oz), "desire denied and then rejected" (It's a Wonderful Life), and "desire achieved" (The Little Mermaid). I had not encountered this model before.

(8) Scott took this strip apart kindly but quite thoroughly and pointed out lots of places for improvement. He also didn't like that the "achievement of desire" came about more through the kindness of a stranger than the girl's own effort, which seems a valid criticism.

Note: The post title comes from McCloud's mantra all weekend.

Awesome anniversary edition

2007-06-17T20:48:00.000-07:00

Before there were company-wide, universe-spanning crossover-events That Would Change Everything Forever ™, some of the biggest occasions in comics were anniversary issues like the one pictured above. Showcase #100, published by DC in May 1978, was one such special issue. The story included every character every to be featured in the title, including Fireman Farrell from issue #1, before the title became a super-hero tryout book. If I recall correctly, there was some time-and-space-continuum-warping disaster that needed the response of all the heroes, but the ultimate savers-of-the-day were Lois Lane and Angel O’Day (from Angel and the Ape), with a little last-minute assist from the Phantom Stranger.

Well, I can't promise a visit from every character who has ever been featured in this blog, but this marks my 100th post, so I thought I would make it at least super-sized, if not super-special.

Movie review:
Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer

(minor spoilers)

I was one of the few people who actually enjoyed the first FF movie, as demonstrably bad as it was, so I went into the sequel both predisposed to like it and with low expectations. I was neither disappointed or surprised: I liked it, and it wasn’t very good.

It seems like the FF franchise is like the classic C-student in one of my classes. I don't dislike him: he works consistently, shows up most of the time, and turns in assignments regularly. It’s just that his work is always average: uninspired, unimaginative, and unexceptional; he tries hard enough, but just doesn't have what it takes to really shine, at least not in class. Similarly, the FF movies go through the motions, have all the right elements, and project a positive attitude; they just never get past being merely okay and enter the great (or even good) category.

Some pluses in this film: Reed Richards is portrayed as both a genius and a leader; Johnny Storm acts both annoying and admirably; The Silver Surfer is cool in both body and voice; the Fantasticar by Dodge is cute; we get to see Dr. Doom on the silver surfboard; there are decent action sequences.

Some specific minuses: Sue Storm is portrayed not as a smart scientist but as a flighty girl preoccupied with a “perfect wedding” and a “normal marriage”; Ben Grimm wears oversized clothes as the Thing, detracting from his inhuman appearance; the Galactus appearance is a cheat; the crappy technobabble is annoying; there's pedestrian acting all around and uninspired direction; and there's way too much Stan Lee (remember, a little goes a long way).

Overall, I enjoyed in the same way I would enjoy reading an old 80-page giant: mostly in spite of itself.

Graphic Book Review:
Halo and Sprocket, Volume 1: Welcome to Humanity

I mentioned this book in one of my earliest posts, but it has taken me this long to find a copy and read it all the way through. A sincere word of advice to you: don't be the dolt that I was. Run, don't walk, to your LCS, or jump online and order this book right now. It is one of the most charming trade paperbacks you’ll encounter.

Halo and Sprocket are, respectively, an angel and a robot who live with a young woman named Katie. Halo is helping Sprocket learn about people and develop as an individual, but is often distant from humanity himself and needs Katie’s perspective. No back story is given as to how this arrangement came about; it just is.

The circumstances lead to hijinx, of course: wordplay, misunderstandings, and even slapstick punctuate the lessons and inquiries. Kerry Callen builds a world that is both real and whimsical, with characters that are round and rich in situations that are totally plausible while being completely unrealistic.

The book is light-hearted and humorous, but Callen reveals from time to time that there is a real wisdom and search for truth going on in the strip. Here’s Sprocket responding to Katie’s demonstration of the hoary glass-half-full question:

And here’s Halo coming upon the ancient Egypt display at the natural history museum:

I am so going to work this text into my critical thinking lessons.

I wish I had acquired this book a year ago, because I would now be on my twelfth read instead of my second. Go get it right away.

Halo and Sprocket, Volume 1: Welcome to Humanity by Kerry Callen. Published by Amaze Ink (a division of Slave Labor Graphics) in 2002 and 2003. Collects issues #1 through #4 of Halo and Sprocket and includes additional material.

Graphic Book Review:
The Plain Janes

I had high hopes for this book. I was interested in the whole Minx line from DC and wanted it to be good: as I have said before, I think the more viable diversity there is available in comics, the better off the form will be. This particular offering, a high school drama, appealed to me the most, and I went into it wanting to like it. Unfortunately, it let me down.

Cecil Castellucci is an apparently big-name indie-punk author who was brought over from “real books” to write this graphic novel; Jim Rugg provides the art. Unfortunately, Castellucci’s story disappoints, and I don’t think it’s because of the transition from prose to comics. The book seems to work on a formal level; there’s not a lot of experimental or exciting graphic work going on, but it’s good straightforward story telling, like a Ron Howard movie as opposed to a Brian DePalma film. It's just that the story never seems to click together. The characters’ motivations seem unclear or underdeveloped, the plot developments often implausible or off-key, and the narrative arc stumbling and ultimately unsatisfying. There are a number of important themes in the book, but they never cohered for me into any unified message.

That said, I gave the book to my significant other, who is both a female person and an artist, and she loved it. And she isn't a comic reader, so maybe the book did meet its goals with others, and it's just me who doesn't get it.

In any event, I still applaud Minx and I will give another of their titles a try.

The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg. Published by DC Comics in 2007.

A meme

I usually don't respond to this kind of meme, but I was tagged by RAB at Estoreal, and my esteem for him is so high, and my pleasure at being seated at the same table with The Fortress Keeper is so great, that I have succumbed. Here it is:

I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.

Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I don't own a pair of jeans and haven't in more than ten years.

2. I have never broken a bone*, had a stitch, or spent a night in the hospital.

3. It took just shy of 27 years to go from my first day of college to my being awarded a bachelor’s degree. On the other hand, it took me just eleven months to obtain my master’s.

4. I had a hamster named Henry. When I was 42.

5. I once drove from NYC to Chicago with my girlfriend and her friend and her friend’s boyfriend in a Buick Estate Wagon. We dropped him off at the University of Chicago, had some pizza, and drove back home.

6. I was a police offer for almost six years and in all that time I managed to avoid ever having to help carry a dead body. It became sort of a game with me; I would watch the M.E. out of the corner of my eye and make sure that I was otherwise occupied when he would look around for a hand wrangling the corpse into the van.

7. When Frank Gorshin appeared in a commercial for the Batman TV show, another neighborhood kid challenged me to name the character he was playing. I bluffed and called him “Mr. Question Mark” as if I knew what I was talking about. I was wrong, of course; the kid knew it was The Riddler. I had no idea who the character was.

8. When I was in high school and we were applying to colleges, I wrote to the University of Iceland in Reykjavik asking how I could apply to their school. I think we had just been reading the Elder Edda or something. I got back a very nice letter that basically told me to get lost. It made it clear that they only infrequently accepted foreign students, and that I should attend a U.S. college for two years first, and that if eventually accepted I would take only Icelandic History and Icelandic language instruction for the first year, and that all further classes would be taught in Icelandic. I didn't apply. Thirty years later I visited Reykjavik and went to the University. Three-quarters of the books in the bookstore were in English.

*I might have broken a pinky-toe bone once, but that doesn’t really count.

Tagged: Marionette, Ami Anglewings, Irate Canadian Lass, Capt. Infinity, Bully, Katherine, Steve, Skipper Pickle.

Thanks for a great ride through the interweblogosphere. This has been a voyage of discovery for me, and the best thing I have discovered so far is a community of bloggers who care about comics and can speak about them articulately but who at the end of the day don't take all this sturm and drang too, too seriously. After all, to paraphrase a little stuffed bull, "comics blogging should be fun!"

The silver lining in the cloud

2007-06-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

After complaining about my emotional fallout from attending the comic con last week, I felt I needed to balance up the scales a bit with a bit of bright news from that day. These covers are pretty darn bright, so they should serve nicely:

Freedom Fighters #8 & 9, DC Comics, 1977: Bob Rozakis, Dick Ayers, Jack Abel
Invaders #14 & 15, Marvel Comics, 1977: Roy Thomas, Frank Robbins, Frank Springer

The first item of note about this purchase says more about me than the comics: I have had these four issues on my want list for some time, but I haven't purchased them yet because this was the first time I could get all four at one go. I have gone into comics shops and visited online stores and could have purchased two or three of the four issues, but I wouldn't do it. Something - a version of OCD? - made me want to wait until I could get all of them at once. And I did - at a good price, too!

Why would I want these four issues at all, much less all in one bundle? Neither series was particularly noted for quality or for momentous developments. Freedom Fighters was DC's showcase for the heroes acquired from the Quality stable: Uncle Sam, Doll Man, Phantom Lady, the Human Bomb, the Ray, and the Black Condor, after finally defeating the Nazis on Earth-X, became yet another group of super-powered crimefighters in the present day. Invaders was Marvel's period piece, a revival of the WW2 team: Captain American & Bucky, Human Torch & Toro, and the Sub-Mariner, with the addition of the female Spitfire, fought the Axis in the nineteen-forties. Neither series wrought any major changes to the comicscape, and most of the stories have probably been retconned away by now anyway.

But what these two two-part sagas have is a feature that is a particular favorite of mine, which was the subject of one of the first posts on this blog: the stealth crossover.

You see, the Freedom Fighters meet some new costumed heroes while on the run after being framed for a crime they did not commit. Their opponents are patriotic hero Americommando and his sidekick Rusty; flying flaming guy Fireball and his sidekick Sparky; and the fish-man tough guy Barracuda. Sound familiar?

Meanwhile, in the other publisher's universe, the Invaders come into conflict with a heretofore unknown group of costumed adventurers. Their opponents are patriotic American hero Spirit of '76; little guy DynaMite; the hard-to-see-clearly Ghost Girl; the explosive Thunderfist; the bright and crackling Tommy Lightning; and the flying guy Captain Wings. Hmmmm.

So yes, over the summer of '77, Marvel's and DC's old WW2 groups took turns whaling on each other in a cross-company cross-over mega-event! Who needs JLAvengers?

Needless to say, the comics actually weren't all that hot. The crossover characters were basically one-off gimmicks; I don't think any of them ever returned, much less received the development that Squadron Supreme or the Champions of Angor did. They were inserted into the ongoing stories and came and went without making much of a dent. And while there is some classic Frank Robbins art in these issues (and a Kirby cover), the production values are so crappy they are hardly noteworthy as artistic artifacts. No, the saving grace these comics have is their sense of fun.

Take a look at this sequence from the denouement of the Freedom Fighters story:

That's Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, and Archie Goodwin getting turned into superheroes by a villain named the Silver Ghost. Yep, comic creators actually having a good time, spoofing each other and each other's creations, and not taking all of this So Damn Seriously. How cool is that?

The comics also provide some nice examples of pre-decompression narrative. Take a look at this sequence, wherein the faux Freedom Fighters literally introduce themselves:

(Scipio would call this introposition, I believe.)

Now, an issue later, Lady Spitfire recounts it all for you, in case you missed last month:

I'm not saying I'd want a steady diet of that kind of dialogue, but it sure makes the comic accessible, doesn't it?

So, mark one purchase of the list and put it in the win column. Now to start looking for the complete Captain Fear...

Comicons make me sad

2007-06-04T19:35:00.001-07:00

Over the weekend, I went to a comic book convention. Before you get excited and think you missed something, this was the Seattle ComiCard Convention, which compares to CCI as Yakima Valley Community College compares to Columbia University. It was basically just a dealer room with a three-table artist's alley, and it only lasts seven hours, and it draws about .1% of the attendance at San Diego, but it only cost $3 and a can of food to get in, and all I really wanted to do was look for some back issues, so it was all good.

Well, maybe not all. It had been a long time since I had been around a large group of comics fans, and I hated to see the stereotyping about lack of social skills being borne out. I have been to a lot of conventions, conferences, and trade shows, and there is a certain etiquette that everyone, by and large, abides by to make moving a lot of people in a small space feasible; this social agreement involves being aware of where your body is in space, recognizing that you are not the only person in the room, and so on. This agreement was honored more in the breach than the observance at the con, but that's not what made me sad.

I was also disappointed by the apparent lack of concern on the part of most of the dealers for simple customer service. I could tell they all wanted to make sales, but few of them seemed to be reaching out to the customers in any valuable or productive way; they seemed more concerned with talking and joking with each other. I was looking for some back issues on Unknown Soldier at one booth; the dealer told me he had only brought his DC comics from A to Sh, because that's all that would fit in his truck. "By alphabet" seemed an odd way to choose stock for sale. But dealer behavior was not what made me sad.

It was great to see on display all the old silver and bronze age stuff that I remembered buying back in the day, long gone from my collection: Steranko S.H.I.E.L.D. covers, titles like Tales to Astonish featuring two different series, John Severin covers for Sgt. Fury; all the Neal Adams covers for various DC titles, anthology books like Our Army at War and Star-Spangled Battle, The Brave and the Bold books with Jim Aparo covers. I could recall the sense of wonder that I had thirty-five years ago, finding these books and encountering all these new possibilities - in art, in narrative, in characters, in whole universes. Was it Isaac Asimov who said that the golden age is twelve? Looking nostalgically at these comics, I realized that I did not really want to buy them so I could read them again; I wanted to read them for the first time, with wide eyes and an open heart. But it was not the realization that my youth has fled forever that made me sad.

What made me sad at this con was looking around at where superhero comics have gone since they filled me with that wonder. I don't want to give up on the genre; I grew up with it, it helped form me, and I actually enjoy its tropes and conventions. But the industry has not only forsaken the young, it has not developed much for the eager adult, either. Comics today seem to be Soprano-style soap operas in tights: convoluted plots, written for the cognoscenti, routinely involve rape, murder, and dismemberment, feature morally ambiguous if not repugnant protagonists, and frequently span titles in company-wide mega-events that are more flash than substance. All the blood and thunder doesn't seem to be in service of anything: Cymbeline and Titus Andronicus are gory tales, but as well as shocking and entertaining the audience, they say something bigger than "violence is cool." I don't know if that can be said of Identity Crisis. And let's not even get started on the juvenile objectification of women that is so prevalent in the genre.

I know that there are some great comics and graphic books out there, and I have written about some here. Pride of Baghdad. Jar of Fools. Castle Waiting. I love and appreciate the work creators are doing in all sorts of genres. But what has happened to the cape and cowl set? If you like the current preoccupation with sex and violence, you're all set; if not, what? Where am I to turn, not just for a superhero comic suitable for my niece or nephew, but one that is suitable for me? Where are the idealistic action tales, full of the wonder and the glory of science and adventure and exploration and justice, for the kids? Where are the more complex treatments of superheros, the noir-themed adventures, the picaresque romances, the allegories, the comedies, for the adults? Are superheros mutually exclusive to both innocence and sophistication?

I don't want warmed-over memories or ultimately vain attempts to recreate the books of my youth; I want robust, intricate stories, set firmly in the genre, that engage my imagination, intellect, and emotions. Is that too much to ask?

Because it would make me really sad if it were.

Make Mine Mumbai!

2007-05-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I mentioned that I had been graced by a colleague with some Indian comic books and promised a follow-up post. This, then, is that post, since I finally got around to looking at them at length.

These book are published by India Book House under the Amar Chitra Katha imprint, which is dedicated to depicting "the glorious heritage of India." From what I can gather from the books themselves and the company's website, they are the Indian equivalent of Classics Illustrated - and I don't mean that in a very good way.

The books tell stories from Indian legends, mythology, religion, and folklore. Genesha is the origin story of the elephant-headed god (quite literally, "who he is and how he came to be!"); Draupadi tells the complicated tale of a magical girl with five husbands who gets drawn into internecine rivalry/warfare between cousins; Prithviraj Chauhan is the martial tale of a legendary king and warrior (kind of Arthurian, but not really); and Raman of Tenali is a trickster figure from folk-lore who is based on a historical figure, a court jester.

Unfortunately, even given this exciting source material, the comics are pretty flat from both artistic and narrative perspectives.

One thing that was surprising about the art is that I could not discern a dominant house style: two of the books seem to be influenced by Hal Foster via Curt Swan, the Prithviraj tale is done in a very dark, sketchy style, and the Raman story is very cartoony and reminds me of European humor strips. Regardless of the style, none of the artwork is terribly dynamic.

It's not just the draftsmanship that is the issue: the storytelling is stilted and slow. Most of the panels are what Scott McCloud would call duo-specific; that is, the words and pictures send roughly the same message. One of the primary effects of this particular relationship between words and pictures in a comic is to add a sense of the old-fashioned to the storytelling, and that might have been the intent in these books; however, when over- or badly-used, it can lead to plain redundancy, and that seems to be more the case here.

This page from the Prithviraj story is a prime example of this. Instead of the captions and pictures working together to build a complete narrative and move it forward, there's a lot of repetition. Even this action sequence from Ganesha suffers from the same drawback:

Unfortunately, the strong instructional motivation of the books seems to overshadow the storytelling itself; it may be a case of the overwhelming respect for the material getting in the way of the narrative. Or, it may be that the the production system employed by ACK is just a little bit too constricting, as this panel from a behind-the-scenes feature on their website indicates:

(Click through for the full feature)

Or it may simply be that anything that's supposed to be good for us is never any fun, and these books are certainly supposed to be good for us, as this inside-back-cover ad tells us:

Still and all, I have to applaud the motivation behind the series; maintaining a cultural heritage and trying to make it accessible to new generations can only be considered a good thing. There were some nice moments in each of the books, and actually the Raman tale is pretty funny in parts. And while the books are very chaste (just like Bollywood movies), there are some scenes that would fit right in with the current level of violence in the spandex set:

Rolling Head of the Son of Parvarti, anyone? (with apologies to Scipio)

Friday night fights

2007-05-25T20:55:00.000-07:00

To further honor Bully and his animal theme for this week's fights, here is the Phantom putting the hurt on some sharks - in Russian!

Late ta da posse

2007-05-25T20:52:00.000-07:00

Congtraulations on your bi(son)ennial celebration!

Saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock...

2007-05-20T16:31:00.000-07:00

A dip into the Last Shortbox this week for a look at an unusual hero, Retief of the CDT:

Keith Laumer's Retief, #1 - 3: Mad Dog Graphics,
April 1987 - August 1987
Adapted by Dennis Fujitake and Jan Strnad

When I was young, I devoured the Retief books and stories by Keith Laumer. For those not familiar with this source material, they chronicle the escapades of minor foreign officer in the futuristic Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne as he attempts to keep the peace despite the best efforts of his hidebound and petty fellow diplomats. Thoroughly suffused with early-sixties impatience with with The Organization, and informed by Laumer's own diplomatic experience, the stories showed how one man in a gray flannel spacesuit has to use his own initiative and bend - heck, break - the regulations to achieve his objectives.

I ate it up.

Don't get me wrong: the stories don't have any kind of counter-culture vibe to them; Retief is a loyal career diplomat. He just doesn't have any patience with form over substance or rules before results.

The comic books capture this sensibility just perfectly. Retief struggles not merely against the usually boneheaded, often selfish, and sometimes evil machinations of the various parties with whom he interacts, but also with his CDT superiors, whose by-the-book plans are at best useless and and worst counter-productive. In order to save lives, prevent war, and maintain peaceful interspecies relations, Retief must use wit, guile, and cunning, all of which he has in abundance.

Which is not to say that Retief isn't above the shrewd application of a little personal violence from time to time. Whether it be in ritual combat

or more in action hero style,

Retief can handle himself pretty well, thank you. But more often than not, he spends his time snooping around and asking questions,

figuring stuff out, outsmarting his opponents, and hoisting them by their own petards.

And in the end, Retief wins not just by beating someone up or stopping a plot, but by actually doing what foreign officers are supposed to do:

Each of the three issues I have is a done-in-one, but there's enough plot, action, and dialogue in thirty-one pages for them to be called graphic novels (well, at least novellas). This books are just dandy, every bit as good in their way as the original paperbacks I read, with the added benefit of Fujitake's exquisite linework. His draftsmanship is magnificent, and his retro-tomorrowland art design for the series is perfect.

If you ever have a chance to pick any of these up, do so.

Notes:

According to the GCD, there were a total of six issues of the title put out by Mad Dog, plus another one-off called 'Retief of the CDT.' Amazon lists a 1990 paperback, but I haven't found exactly what is collected in it.

Doesn't that recording device Retief has up there look just like an iPod Nano?

And I so want a jacket like the one he's wearing in the two-panel clip.

(The title of this post is Will Rogers's definition of diplomacy.)

Belgian treat

2007-05-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

No, it's neither chocolate nor beer. A buddy of mine went over to Brussels for a week with his sweetie, and brought something back for me that I had never seen before:

Luhca Libre #1, Les Humanoides Associes SAS

Lucha Libre is a French-language comic set in East L.A. It stars (or at least this premiere issued starred) The Luchadores Five: El Gladiator (a self-proclaimed reincarnation of an Aztec mummy) Dr. Pantera (the short, fat one), Diablo Loco (a big, cigar-chomping guy), Red Demon (who wears a suit and chain-smokes cigarettes), and King Karateca (who appears to be a martial-arts type dude). For those not dialed in to the genre, lucha libre is Mexican freestyle wrestling, and luchadores are masked wrestlers whose personae in real life traditionally blur the lines between athletes, celebrities, actors, and superheroes. This quintet doesn't seem to command as much respect as El Santo or Mil Mascaras, however; they hang out in run-down apartments, drive beater cars, and seemed to be mocked by a lot of the background characters, such as winos. There adventures seem every bit as wacky, though.

It was hard for me to follow the details of the story, since I have little French, but the group appears to be on some trivial mission involving Dr. Pantera's car when they cross paths with a gang of motorcycle-riding werewolves. Negotiations break down and El Gladiator, who seems to be the leader, throws down with the lycanthropes:

Although the boys seem to be winning, the fight is cut off before a conclusive finish by a shotgun-wielding local in a John Deere cap, who essentially tells everyone to get off his lawn, and the combatants retire from the field of battle.

As the luchadores regroup, we join up with two aliens who are stuck in traffic on the I-5 at the Pasadena Freeway; they either release or merely observe - I couldn't tell for sure - a dinosaur, which we see walking in traffic.

The luchadores meet up with and - I think - join forces with Les Formidables, a group of French ninjas, on a mission related to the aliens, but not after the obligatory fight scene:

Meanwhile, the aliens have been abducted by tiki-warriors,

and the dinosaur is getting the worst of an encounter with some street kids:

The story seems to be continued; it ends with the reveal that the leader of the tiki-warriors is an Elvis impersonator.

Y'know, I said I had little French, but I'm not so sure how much sense this would all make if I was Charles De-fracking-Gaulle. It doesn't matter, though; the pictures are cool, the action is sweet, and there's a frenetic energy to the whole thing that is infectious and appealing.

The book rounds out with some text pieces (heh, big help) and a few shorts, including a couple with Profesor Furia (another, humorous (?) luchadore) and some meet-the-characters bits (El Gladiator and I are the same height: 1 m 68 et demi), as well as a tease for the next issues, promising Tequila, a hulking luchadore with a horned mask, and El Panda, who appears to be a Chinese Communist luchadore.

I had a devil of a time tracking down any English-language info about this series on the internets. Here's the page from the publishers site in French; and these guys apparently make figurines of the characters (in English).

My buddy's sweetie is still in Brussels for a while; maybe I can get her to bring back the next issues.

Trade winds

2007-05-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

So, I was in the LCS a few days ago (not on Free Comic Book Day, darn it - I had commitments for all of Saturday!) and I picked up a couple of trade paperbacks. Overall, I wound up pleased; here's a response to just one of my purchases.

Shadowpact: The Pentacle Plot

Pal Bully would say "This comic is fun!" I had originally picked up Shadowpact #1 as a floppy; I thought it was okay, but didn't think I wanted to buy it every month. I happened to lay eyes on this trade; it was only fifteen bucks for seven issues collected (why is #4 missing?) with a cover gallery and no ads, so I took a flyer on it. And it was worth it.

S:TPP is no graphic novel. The narrative arc doesn't have the cohesion for this to be considered more than a collection of related stories; the last episode in particular strays far from the unifying theme and there is a teaser at the end of the penultimate chapter that never gets its proper reveal. These quibbles aside, there's some rollicking good adventure in here: Bill Willingham can put a story together competently, that's for sure. There's a lot of humor, and the gore-quotient was well within my range. Even though I don't know much about the current incarnations of these characters, I felt I had a good sense of their personalities, and the team feeling certainly came across well.

The art was a bit uneven; the art team did not repeat once across the seven stories. Luckily, most of the styles were pretty complementary, so as pencillers and inkers changed, the transitions weren't too jarring. The only exception was Tom Derenick, whose pencils were too super-heroey, bordering on Liefieldish, for my tastes. (In every other issue, Jim Rook looks like a regular guy; in Derenick's, he was all buff matinée idol.)

So, if nothing else, my "wait-for-the-trade" policy was affirmed: the TPB felt substantial, and the price/enjoyment ratio was dead on.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Well, I did fall of the wagon and get a floppy: 52 # 52. I had been reading about the return of the multiverse on the blogs, and I wanted to see it for myself. So, what did I see? A big ol' mutated Mr. Mind slurps up reality, creating parallel worlds. Hokay, whatever.

Earth-17: Atomic Knights, yay! Giant dalmatians replaced by big spotted scary pointy beasts, boo!

Earth-3: Gets a Martian Manhunter! And the fast guy gets a belly-shirt! Um, yeah.

Earth-10: Old school Freedom Fighters! And Phantom Girl's breasts look human!

Earth-50: Is this Wildstorm or something?

Earth-5: Cheese! (Big and red!)

Earth-22: Ooh, grim.

Earth-2: That doesn't look like the JSA I know. Am I missing something important, or is this going to be an alternate JSA, and the JSAers are going to stay in the "main" universe as well? (And is that an alternate-reality spelling of "innocence" or does the Gotham Gazette not have proofreaders?)

Earth-4: Old school Charlton! Cool!

So, maybe there's room for some fun in there. But I'll still be waiting for the trades, I think.

PS: I did think the scene with Ted Kord was pretty touching, and deftly handled.

Friday Night Fights

2007-05-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

It's all this guy's fault.

Bits and bobs from the bargain bin

2007-04-29T21:20:00.000-07:00

So, a comic shop not too far from my part of town was advertising its going-out-of-business sale on Craig's List. I had a little bit of time to kill yesterday, their last day open ever, so I stopped by to see what I could snag. I was a bit disappointed; it was really a speculator shop, and had as much sports card stuff as it did not-much-later than nineties, variant-cover, new-number-one, mostly boring comics. I dug through some of the bins anyway, and came up with nine books that I took away for the princely sum of three bucks or so.

The prize of the pile was a still-in-the-plastic Captain Glory #1, complete with its SuperDeluxe KirbyChrome Trading Card!

Of course, I had to rip it open to take that picture of the card - Oh noes! I must have devalued it from the $.25 NM-VG sticker price!

Heh.

Anyway, there was some goodness inside, too. This Kirby-created saga, as senses-shattering as it was, was not so complex that it couldn't be described in a fairly simple flow chart on the inside front cover:

I'd like to see them do that with IC or Civil War, eh?

But the best bit of all was the surprise (to me, anyway) that all the interior art was done by Steve Ditko! Now this is clearly some of Ditko's later work, and shows his growing disenchantment with the field -- many of the backgrounds are minimal or nonexistent, and some pages have a rushed feel -- but there was no way that his enormous talent could be completely disengaged:

Among the rest of the stack was a four-issue miniseries by John Byrne, The World of Metropolis:

This mini, a companion to Byrne's Man of Steel reboot, is significant only in the sheer number of back-up characters that I am sure have since been completely retconned out of existence: Perry White's criminal friend, Ling; grad student Clark Kent's waitress girlfriend, Ruby; and Jimmy Olsen's suicidal girlfriend, Chrissie, just to name a few.

Other than that, the whole thing seems lame and ill-conceived. Byrne's writing is pedestrian; the art looks like Win Mortimer, Dick Giordano, and Sal Trapani collaborated on it while riding the LIRR into the city each morning from Suffolk County; and even the episode sequence makes no intuitive sense: Perry White - Lois Lane - Clark Kent - Jimmy Olsen.

One sequence is noteworthy: here's Lex Luthor dismissing a pre-Planet Lois, whom he had discovered spying in his headquarters:

So, what's with Byrne and the villains-watching-videos-of-the-heroine-naked-for-jollies bit? Didn't he use that in the She-Hulk GN, too? And to make it even creepier, the story makes very clear that Lois is fifteen years old at the time of this strip-search! Ewww.

My haul also included issue #2 of DC's 1988 relaunch of Flash Gordon; it was dated and mediocre, except for this bit:

Forty-one?! Is there a non-rejuvenated mainstream hero who's that old in continuity? Bravo, Dan Jurgens!

I also got the first part of the Busiek-Perez JLAvengers: the art was pretty, it was cool to see the Marvel and DC guys together with high production values, and I liked the artifacts of power shtick, but there was nothing here to convince me to buy the $75 version. Maybe if a TPB comes out. Or I can find the other parts for thirty cents each, too.

The rest of the stuff isn't worth mentioning, but I guess I got my money's worth.

So, R.I.P., Bigfoot's Comics and Cards; bon chance, Mr. Bigfoot (he seemed a nice guy).

Double feature: Who Watches the Crusaders -and- The Scarlet Avenger

2007-04-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

Since Mikester hosted a long discussion about it on Progressive Ruin, it seems that everybody knows, or should know, or won't admit to not knowing, that Alan Moore's seminal / ground-breaking / classic / post-modern /critically-acclaimed (pick any three) graphic novel, Watchmen:

was originally intended to feature DC's then-newest property, the recently-acquired Charlton heroes:

This plan was eventually vetoed by TPTB at DC, and Moore invented a whole new slew of mystery men for the story (some say to the benefit of the narrative).

What many perhaps do not know is that Moore originally played with another set of heroes in developing the notion that eventually became Watchmen: the MLJ/Archie characters:

As the comments to Mike's post will attest, I did not know this factoid, or I perhaps had known it but forgot: it was also covered in the Comics Urban Legends feature of Comics Should be Good over a year ago.

At any rate, once the idea was put into my head, I couldn't get it out. I wish I could draw so I could do a pastiche of some of Dave Gibbons's panels, substituting the Archie heroes in place of Moore's characters. The difference in intent, tone, and context between the two sets of characters couldn't be greater; their juxtaposition is crying out to be realized somehow.

In lieu of creating anything artistic, all I can do is speculate on the correspondences.

I know that injecting yourself with super-helium is not really the equivalent of becoming one with the quantum universe, but I think the Comet has to take Dr. Manhattan's role, for want of any other candidate.

I like The Fly for Nite Owl, even though he lacks the legacy aspect; unfortunately, Fly Girl is the only female character with enough stature to stand in for Silk Spectre. Perhaps we could add some estrangement to the mix to make that work.

Jaguar has the traveling-to-foreign-lands part of Ozymandias's background; we could dress up the rest.

For the doomed Comedian, perhaps The Shield or a grim 'n' gritty Captain Flag.

Finally, I think the only character that could even begin to stand the weight of filling in for Rorschach would be The Hangman (not pictured in the pin-up).

This is only a first draft; do y'all have any more insightful interpretations? I turn this over to the power of the internets.

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Here's the text of an email I received today, from a fellow who obviously checked out the interblogwebosphere for likeminded folks:

Hi, there.

I see that you're a big 'Spy Smasher' fan and thought you might be interested in checking out my short student film, 'The Scarlet Avenger', on Google Video. It's a rip-roaring adventure, based on all the 1940s matinee serials that inspired movies like 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', 'The Rocketeer', 'The Shadow', 'The Phantom' and 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow'. You can catch it here:

Movie link

Note: You can watch it in real time, but it looks way better when you download it (after downloading the free Google Video player). Doesn't take long at all.

It's my dream to turn the short into a feature-length motion picture. I will be chronicling this great adventure on my blog:

Blog link

On the site you'll find links to a high quality podcast version of the short, rare behind-the-scenes footage, outtakes, fan reviews and artwork, and much more. Hope you enjoy it and look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Scott C. Clements
Toronto, Canada

Well, I took a look at the film, and while I don't know if there's a feature film in there, it was competently made and professional enough for me to share it. I'm not sure about the hero's costume, but the movie seems to hit all the right notes. Who knows? This guy could be the next Spielberg, and we can say we were there when it all started.

More Glam than Amazon

2007-04-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

Another dip into the Last Shortbox brings forth an unabashedly pseudo-intellectual (it says so on page one) comic which might have been an inspiration of sorts for the previously discussed Metacops.

Portia Prinz of the Glamazons #1
Eclipse Comics: December 1986
By Richard Howell

As the cover indicates, this was a revival by Eclipse of a small-press indie from the late seventies; I don't know how much of a "cult classic" it actually was, but I can easily see it following in the footsteps of Kurtzman's Little Annie Fanny, O'Donahue & Springer's Phoebe Zeitgeist, and strips of that ilk.

The Glamazons are immortal(-ish) men and women who hang out on an island they inherited from the "real" Amazons. Like some idyllic planet in the original Star Trek, they seem to do a lot of lolling about; each resident is distinct and individual to the point of idiosyncrasy (a gossamer-gowned nymph, cowgirl, and cigar-chomping lady soldier mix and mingle) and making bad puns seems to be the common pastime.

Portia is the daughter of the current queen and an Atlantean scientist; she is smug, snarky, and the closest thing in the book to a superhero, since she thinks (perhaps rightly) that she is smarter and more competent than everyone else. Here is she with what passes for an uncharacteristic display of modesty:

The story in this first concerns several Glamzons being mystically abducted and dropped, respectively, into Dante's, Sartre's, and Milton's versions of hell. Portia, of course, goes on a rescue mission, travelling by astral projection:

(That kind of breaking-the-fourth-wall schtick happens all the time.)

Portia travels by turns to each literary hell, first visiting The Inferno with Beatrice and then dropping in on the trio of would-be lovers in No Exit:

In each case, Portia rescues the missing Glamazon, gets to show off her knowledge of letters, makes bad puns, and is pretty insufferable the whole time. While not as unlikeable as the new Ant-Man, she's definitely not a warm and fuzzy heroine. Besides actually being competent, her redeeming qualities include her grad school intellectualism, which in this case shows at least as much familiarity with the canon of Western Lit as the Metacops did with history. Her confrontation with Satan in Paradise Lost includes this exchange over the often-attractive-to-freshmen notion that he is the actual hero of the poem:

I'd love it if my students engaged with texts to that degree.

Anyway, Portia rescues the abductees and wraps everything up until the next adventure, the title of which is announced in the story's final pun: Seven Years before the Past.

I guess the title didn't catch my fancy enough to continue collecting it; the internets don't have much information on it but they tell me it went to at least five issues. Looking back on it now, it seems a little to cute for its own good, but still provides an entertaining read.

And quite a read it is: I don't know if it shows so much in the clips, but this comic has a lot of words in it. I mean a lot of words. Between exposition, plot, literary explication, and bad puns, this book probably contains as much text as a whole year's worth of any current mainstream monthly. If nothing else, you sure get your money's worth in reading time alone. As a capper, there's a text page "Secret Origin of the Glamazons" that seems to be printed in about six-point type!

Creator Richard Howell is currently editor of Claypool Comics and is producing a "vampire soap opera" called Deadbeats; he has done a significant amount of work for the major publishers and looks to have built a pretty nice career for himself. I don't know if there are ever going to be Glamazons for the new millennium, but I'd probably check them out if there were. In the meantime, this one stays in the Shortbox.

They can't all be gems, I guess

2007-04-08T21:11:00.000-07:00

Part of the intent for the inventory of The Last Shortbox that inspired this blog was to gain some understanding into my relationship with comics. I reckoned that looking at what from my once-extensive collection I had felt was worth keeping would give me some insight. With this title, all I got is "What was I thinking?"

Dino Island, 1 and 2 (of two), Feb-Mar 1993
by Jim Lawson; Mirage Publishing

I think I originally picked this up as part of my interest in non-superhero genre comics that were being published in the nineties with some frequency (things like Topps's Zorro series and Rascals in Paradise also come to mind).

The story begins in what I presume is some alternate 1942; our plucky heroine, Amelia (no last name given) is "attempting a trans-Atlantic speed record" in her P51-D Allison (a Mustang fighter) when she flies into the Bermuda Triangle.

In short order, she lands safely on an island, finds dinosaurs, stampedes a herd of triceratops to save them from some velociraptors, adopts one of the triceratopses as a kind of horse, and finds a community of other lost travellers based around the battleship Sturgis, which is moored on the coast. Along the way, she encounters a heart-of-gold resident (who acts as bartender), the hard-as-nails battleship captain (who runs the community), and the requisite professor-who-explains-stuff (who is, of course, short and bespectacled).

The comic does have some neat Dinotopia-style visuals of tame dinosaurs, like this scene of the community salvaging Amelia's plane:

In the second issue, Amelia and the professor investigate a massive monolith in the desert and an alien is captured near town. Amelia enters the monolith in a Heavy Metal-esque sequence illustrated by this (partially cropped) two-page sequence:

Amelia discovers another alien, who reveals that they are on an artificial planet (explained as a competing technology to terraforming) which is generated and maintained by the monolith as a kind of "model home" for prospective buyers. When Amelia returns to town with this news, she finds the alien has been accidentally killed and a flying saucer is attacking. She downs the saucer with her Mustang (although why she took a fully-armed plane on a speed-record flight is beyond me) but the community is practically destroyed. She checks out the monolith; it is sort of melting and not working anymore, and it is starting to get hot on the island.

The end.

That's it: the story doesn't conclude; it just stops. I had to check the issues themselves to see it was a mini-series and that I hadn't just stopped buying it. Maybe it was set-up for a project that never happened.

I don't know why this is in the Shortbox, actually. Unless it's here to show that the spirit of Bob Kanigher was passed on to some indy projects, there's really not a whole lot to recommend it. The art is pretty cool, with a cartoony funk to it, and some of the dinosaur scenes are engaging, but the story is ragged and desultory while the characters are unoriginal (even the aliens are uninspired).

It was probably just that the heroine is an aviator named Amelia.

No April's Fools

2007-04-01T19:17:00.000-07:00

So I was in a different LCS than usual the other day (I am lucky to have at least three comic shops within walking distance and another not too much further) and my eye fell on a graphic novel that I had never seen before:

Jar of Fools: A Picture Story
by Jason Lutes; Drawn & Quarterly, 2003

I picked it up and flipped though the pages; I liked the art and had an impulse to buy it.

Then I glanced at the prose introduction and saw the first sentence: "Okay, so five or six years ago, I impulsively picked up Jason Lutes' Jar of Fools in a local Seattle comic book store, flipped though the pages, liked the art, bought it for a few bucks, and took it home." That synchronicity was enough to persuade me; any shadows of hesitation were dispelled when I saw that the introduction had been written by Sherman Alexie.

I did buy it and take it home (for more than a few bucks, though). I occasionally like to read a book or see a movie about which I know almost nothing; I had gotten lucky with my last "blind" graphic novel, Daisy Kutter, and the serendipity came though again. Jar of Fools is an excellent book that tells a complex story in a compelling manner.

Lutes chronicles a brief period in which several lives intersect: an alcoholic stage magician, his estranged girlfriend, his rapidly-becoming-senile mentor, and a small-time con-man and his daughter; in addition, there are "appearances" by the magician's dead, escape-artist brother. All of the characters have to come to grips with the gap that exists between what they want and what they can get and learn to do the best with what they have.

A story such as this one, concerned with desperation, depression, and struggle, could easily descend into bathos, but Lutes fills his characters with so much humanity and his plot with so much wit, humor, and detail that we are engaged, captivated, and, in the end, just a little bit hopeful.

What impressed me the most was Lutes's command of graphic storytelling. Working in a ligne claire style (or close enough to it to make no nevermind), Lutes masterfully uses all the techniques and elements particular to comics to bring his story to life: the page layouts and panel transitions build the narrative as effectively as the expressions and body language, and Lutes is not afraid to use emanata and graphic balloons. In short, Lutes knows that he's creating a comic, not an illustrated story or a static movie, and that's the understanding that moves a creator into Eisner territory. That he has fashioned what would be a wonderful tale in any medium makes it so much better.

Jar of Fools is simply a great book. I've read it twice now already, and I'm sure there are plenty more reads left in it.

Comix in paradise

2007-03-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

In between relaxing on the beach and, well, doing even less than that, I decided to stop in at a comic book store here on Maui, just for curiosity's sake. The only place I could find was Compleat Comics in Kahului, the area near the main airport in the center of the island (right where the two big masses meet). The website seemed to indicate it was a pretty elaborate shop, so one day, after coming back from watching the windsurfers near Pa'ia, we stopped by.

I was surprised to find that the store is no more than a kiosk, the kind you can find in a mall selling cell phone covers or sunglasses or Hummel figurines; of course, since this is Maui, the kiosk is at a mostly-outdoor shopping center.

I found that most of the stock did not seem to be comics: there were lots of card sets, like Magic, and a lot of manga (which I guess makes sense), and a few action figures, and not many comics on display at all. In fact, one of the most prominent display spots was given over to a DC superheroes sticker book, and all of the new comics are sold from four short boxes:

I talked to the fellow a little bit, and he said that he had had a much larger space for over twenty years, but lost his lease and had to move. This place was temporary, and had been for about two years now. (That must be island time perspective.) He didn't seem too concerned about finding more room and even joked about being the world's smallest comic book store. I guess a lot of his trade is by mail; it would have to be for any back issues - there was none in the store.

So, if you're ever in Maui, check it out; it's right next door to a great organic foods grocery store and deli - stop in and try the veat loaf!

Links:

Compleat Comics

Down to Earth

Oh, and I bought two singles just to be polite: Ant-Man #6 and Wonder Woman #5. Ant-Man made me feel like narrator-ant who opened the book: I am bored and falling asleep. This title is starting to feel like a SNL skit that has gone on too long. Wonder Woman wasn't bad, although it felt a bit like a book-length PSA. There was nothing in it to make me want to continue buying the title, however.

I was going to leave the comics in the condo rec room for another guest to read, and then I had this thought: The WW cover calls to mind the sense of wonder as well as the innocence that most people would associate with Superfriends or some such interpretation of the character. The issue, however, deals seriously and authentically with aspects of domestic violence, and ends with a scene of carnage that is not for the squeamish. In the end, I will take the issue home rather than leave it around for some unsuspecting parent to give a child.

Geez, when did superhero comics get so complicated?

Back to the Shortbox: It's about time

2007-03-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

The original conceit (and name) of this blog involved a tour through the one shortbox of comics that I had kept after more-or-less disassociating myself from ~~collecting~~ accumulating. That concept as a driving force has gone by the wayside, since I discovered all sorts of other things to talk about and because participating in the interblogwebosphere actually enticed me (for a while) to buy more singles. But I've been meaning to dip back in, and here's a great title to break the dry spell:

Metacops #1 - #3, February - July 1991
Link Yaco & John Heebink, Monster Comics

This oddball title chronicles the adventures of the Metaphysical Police (the titular Metacops) as they travel the time stream to prevent those who would manipulate time for their own ends from changing history. This is a pretty common concept in science fiction and comics (cf. Van Damme and Jughead Jones), but this series puts a particularly anarchic spin on the idea: these guys turned the weird up to eleven. Take a look:

In the first story, Captain Jayne Mansfield, and Officers Leonardo DaVinci, Albert Einstein, and Delmore Schwartz discover that some BEMs (Bug-Eyed Monsters) have made a deal with LBJ (President Lyndon Baines Johnson) to help him win the Vietnam War by reversing the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. The BEMs send female Foreign Legionnaires on Stone-Age moas into the battle to defend the city; they are countered by the Metacops and their AK-47-wielding were-centurions, who help the attacking Ottomans. After some reverses, Captain Mansfield leads her troops to victory, although the BEMs in their flying saucer escape the Metacop zeppelin.

In the backup story, Officers Jimi Henrix and Nicola Tesla accidentally broadcast Purple Haze through an experimental amplifier, destroying the asteroid Ceres and disturbing Queen Boadicea, a renegade Metacop in exile in a suburban Mars community of 3,000 A.D. Boadiciea steals a time machine and goes on a rampage, trying to kill the human ancestor of her Martian neighbor (who looks a lot like Tars Tarkus), whom she believes was responsible for the noise. Captain Mansfield, Hendrix, Tesla, and Amelia Earhart chase her through time as she sinks the Titanic and the Lusitania and destroys the Hindenburg in futile attempts to kill her hapless victim before being caught.

Issue two contains what the Silver-Age considered a "novel-length" story. Commander Makeda (The Queen of Sheba) and Delmore Schwartz are stranded in 19th century North America while returning from a triceratops hunt with Hendrix and Einstein; history seems to have been changed, however: bison-riding Chinese are in a war with forces from higher-tech New Rome. The Metacops intervene on the side of the Chinese in order to obtain kerosene from New Rome to fuel their time scooters; they discover that this version of reality is the "true" one, and that the one they (and we) knew was an illusion. They decide to change things back anyway, tinkering with Chinese fishing ships and Christopher Columbus's diet to put things back to "normal" before returning home.

Issue three shows how Ada Lovelace, Hannibal of Carthage, Tesla, and Earhart, with the aid of Agent-in-Place Queen Kristina of Sweden, pit T-Rex-riding Aztec mercenaries against World War I-era fighter planes to keep Pan-galactic Weasels from preventing the concept of zero from moving from India to the west; the forces fight to a stalemate, but the Metacops successfully mitigate the damage to history.

The final back-up story in the series starts with the recruitment of Boadicea into the Metaphysical Police by Marie Antoinette, Sigmund Freud, and Leonardo. While accompanying Captain Bourbon to visit Agent-in-Place Kleopatra, the druid queen is tempted by access to Atlantean technology to seize power, and recruits three stewardesses in a plot destroy Tesla's lab in 1936 in order to prevent the Metacops from ever coming into existence (Tesla invented the Time Engine.) The incompetence of her associates sends her back to ancient Sumeria, where (when?) she is captured after a brief struggle and exiled to the 31st century Mars, winding up exactly where we met her in issue one, right down to Hendrix playing on the neighbor's radio.

Whew!

That little bit of chaotic plot summary doesn't even begin to get across the psychedelic nature of the series. Did I mention that the elephant Mansfield and Schwartz ride on at Constantinople talks, for no particular reason? Or that Amelia Earhart, for all her presence as a supporting character, never speaks and has blank thought balloons?

Or that all the time-displaced warriors keep up a constant stream of background chatter?

Or that we get a throwaway scene of Gilgamesh and Jesus Christ having a chat?

And one of Albert Einstein on mushrooms?

Or that the interstitials make Stan Lee's hyperbole sound shy and retiring?

None of this quirkiness is ever explained; neither is most of the history. While early issues held some biographic information on the main cops, the creators seems to expect the readers to have some familiarity with major figures, events, and tends in world history; I had to look some stuff up just to do the summaries. I like stories that presume some intelligence on the part of the audience.

I also like that most of the leads are strong women who are portrayed realistically - well, as realistically as anyone in this strange universe is. But the creators generally eschew the usual "good girl art" tropes: there are no gratuitous costumes and no pin-up posing, no "women in peril" stereotypes, and the main protagonists (and apparently all the commanding cops) are women. Somehow within this sensibility of anarchic fun, there's a more balanced treatment of gender roles than in is found most current mainstream comics.

But don't let that all good sense and intelligence stop you from just joining the party and enjoying a wild time! These books are not history lessons or social tracts; they are ripping yarns, full of action, adventure, puns, slapstick, and fun!

From my favorite panel: an exasperated Captain Mansfield.

PS: There is a fourth issue, that was put out by a different publisher, but I prefer to consider it non-canonical, because it pretty much sucks. Same creators, but the story seems rushed and feeble, and they went for some cheap T&A stuff, and there was a lot of filler included - not to mention that the cover has the crappiest registration ever seen on a "real" comic. So let's just pretend it doesn't exist, okay?

PPS: Sorry this post is late (although what else is new?) - I started it Saturday night back in Seattle and am finishing it Monday morning on the beach in Maui. Yowza!

Nuff Too much said!

2007-03-10T22:14:00.000-08:00

I wanted to express just how much I care about the Startling Development in the Marvel Universe over the recent "death" of one S. Rogers, so I have enlisted the aid of the Badly-Drawn Atom of Earth-Filmation to help me.

As you can see, Earth-F Ray has shrunk down to submicroscopic size and found a tiny piece of dust mite dung, which represents both the degree and tenor of my response. But then, I haven't read any of Civil War, so maybe this event actually was a key moment and a useful dramatic device that rose naturally from a compelling story; who am I to say?

All I know is that today was the first day since... well, ever that my sister actually mentioned comics news to me.

The last floppy? (and cartoon tales)

2007-03-04T20:29:00.000-08:00

I was in my LCS the other day, buying a copy of the Huntress: Dark Knight Daughter trade paperback as a birthday present for my former wife. Way back when, more than 25 years ago, she used to love to read the Huntress back-ups that ran in Wonder Woman starting with #271, pictured below. It was really the only super-hero comic that she ever followed regularly; I don't know why she got a kick out of that particular character or series, but she did, and I hope the book brings back fond memories.

My wife got to read the Huntress stories because I was buying Wonder Woman regularly. There was a bit of a re-launch about this time, and the big costume re-design was about a year or so off, so I guess it was about as exciting as Wonder Woman ever got back in those dark days.

Coincidentally, when I picked up the trade, I also got a copy of Wonder Woman #4, the last issue of the truncated Heinberg-Dodson-Dodson Who is Wonder Woman? saga that is the latest attempt to revitalize the star-spangled franchise. I had been a believer in this comic from the get-go; the art was beautiful, the white-jumpsuited Agent Prince business was cool nostalgia, the Wonder Woman "tryouts" hooked me: I felt it was the most interesting version of the title in twenty years.

Then the delays, which have been documented minutely elsewhere, started. Then DC announced that the five-issue arc wouldn't even be completed. And then came issue 4, which was a disappointment in and of itself.

Aside from Circe's dragon-motif Wonder Woman outfit, this episode was just blah. A bunch of JSA-types stand around and give exposition, Nemesis just goes poof and drops out of the storyline, there's rehashing of the Hercules story, a little decent action, and some double-crossing, all of which lead up to two spectacularly unimpressive two-page spreads. Meh.

Maybe someday the trade will come out; I might even buy it if the lost issue manages to redeem the package. But I believe this disappointment was the final nail in the floppy coffin: it's all graphic books for me from here on in.

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Yesterday I varied my morning schedule a bit: I skipped listening to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! on NPR so I could watch the Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon on the local CW station. A lot of people had been talking about, so I figured I should give it a look. Other than wondering why everyone had such funky eyes, I thought it was okay; not great, not terribly ground-breaking, but okay. The episode I saw had Bouncing Boy, Triplicate Girl, Colossal Boy (in his Cockrum uniform instead of his cool space cowboy outfit), and Ferro Lad in addition to the Big Three and Super~~boy~~man, so that part was pretty sweet. But what's up with Brainiac 5? He's like a little robot Garth Logan.

In an ironic twist of fate, I also watched a DVD that night that contained, among other cartoons, two Fleischer Studio Superman stories from the forties: Underground World and Electric Earthquake. I just have to say that no finer superhero cartoons have ever been made, before or since.

Not a comic book movie

2007-02-25T00:19:00.000-08:00

That mail-order company with the little red envelopes sent me the Comic Book Villains DVD recently, and I watched it tonight; the experience was surprising, if not totally satisfying.

I must have ordered the film, which was written and directed by the same fellow who went on to write the execrable League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, during my comics-related-stuff search when I first established my queue. I didn't read any reviews of it until after I saw it, and the ones I have checked out have been almost unanimously negative.

The film starts out looking like it will be an examination of fandom: the plot revolves around the efforts of rival comic shop owners, a fanboy and husband-and-wife team of speculators, to secure the dream of all obsessed collectors: a previously unknown, totally complete, Golden Age-to-present collection held by someone who doesn't know its true worth. As the rivalry heats up, we are led to believe the movie will become a caper flick, with increasing complicated methods being employed to curry favor and obtain the collection. The film then takes a dark turn; the caper is not lighthearted, but mean-spirited, and Bad Things Happen.

This is the aspect that seemed to turn most reviewers off: that the film was unnecessarily dark and violent for a movie about comic book geeks. This is also where I think that most reviewers got it wrong.

You see, this is not a comic book movie. It is rather a wannabe thriller or noir moderne in the mold of the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple; the comic book stuff is just extra. The director wrote comics in the nineties and clearly called upon a world that he knew, but the fought-over collection could have just as easily been stamps or coins or baseball cards; comics qua comics don't have as much significance in this story as vinyl albums did in High Fidelity, for example. Notwithstanding some lessons learned about living a real life rather than obsessing over imaginary characters, this isn't really a movie about collectors and collecting: it is about greed, desperation, and morality.

Considered in this light, the film still falls short -- the director just doesn't have a deft enough touch to carry off the descent into madness without stumbling -- but it is less of a complete misfire. The cast of well-known (if not A-list) actors acquit themselves well, although Cary Elwes seems to be channeling Bruce Campbell for some reason, and the soundtrack is pretty cool, if not always appropriately scored. Maybe I was just feeling generous, but I would recommend checking this movie out, with graded expectations, and not just for comics fans.

Comic Book Villains (2002) Written and Directed by James Robinson; Capital Arts Entertainment.

In my LCS

2007-02-21T06:51:00.000-08:00

I was in the LCS the other day, and I noticed a woman come in who just appeared too normal to be a regular comics buyer. I chastised myself for unsupported generalization, and then had my guess confirmed when she asked the clerk if the store carried Little Lulu comics. The clerk (who also happened to be a woman) took her over to the all-ages rack and started to show her the stock. I overheard her explaining to the customer clearly and without condescension which books were reprints and how reprint collections worked. She mentioned a Dennis the Menace collection, which the customer thought was very cool, and then started to turn her on to some newer stuff. The transaction seemed to be going successfully from all sides.

I offer this vignette as a bit of a counterpoint to the comic shop horror stories I have read, those anecdotes about rude, obnoxious, or sexist clerks who can't see the forest for the spandex. Comics is a lot of things, and the more the merrier, I say.

At the same time this heartwarming exchange was taking place, I was scanning the shelves, looking for my weekly supply of , um, spandex, and you know what? I came up with nothin'. Wonder Woman, the only remaining monthly (heh) that I am really interested in (since Ant-Man's rough charm is fading fast ) has apparently taken a detour into the Twilight Zone. The recently ballyhooed Countdown holds no interest for me; I dropped off the 52 bandwagon around thirty or so because the quality just wasn't there, and I have no reason to expect this "event" to be any different.

So, I think is is finally the end of my buying pamphlets: the kick just isn't worth the effort anymore. I hadn't bought anything new for years when I started this blog; all the interactions with blogger colleagues and my feeling more connected to current events tempted me back to buying new funnybooks, but the dalliance has left me unsatisfied. So, it's back to the trades for me; I have a list as long as my arm, and I'm going to start working my way through it seriously for a while.

And maybe I'll pick up some Little Lulu along the way.

Through the cracks

2007-02-12T22:13:00.000-08:00

Somehow, Dance of the Puppets fell off my RSS feed and I have missed Marionette's blog for a longish while. Since I consider her my oldest blog-buddy, and since she was involved in a bit of a kerfuffle during that time, I feel a bit bad for having not been there. I don't want to go over all the gory details here, I just want to shout out to Mari with some old school Mike Sekowsky - Bernie Sachs goodness:

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I mentioned a few weeks ago that I am using graphic books as the reading texts in the composition class I am teaching this quarter. After plowing through The Language of Comics, which gave the students a grounding in academic analysis of the form, we have read Showcase Presents: Superman Vol. 1; Watchmen; Why I Hate Saturn; and True Story, Swear to God: Chances Are*. We are currently reading Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District*, and have Contract with God up next.

This group of students are actually pretty good writers for this level, and, surprisingly to me, many seem to be drawn to formalist analyses as opposed to more traditional literary analyses of the books. There seems to be a good number of them who want to try to work out and evaluate the artistic and storytelling choices such as page layout, balloon use and placement, art styles, and so on; I even had one student ask me why we weren't reading McCloud (who is referenced in just about every article in LoC.) Now that we are working on a synthesis paper, more students are proposing examinations of themes and elements like setting (one student is doing an interesting look at point of view in Watchmen), but that formalist bent is still here.

Other than that, here are a few observations, for what they're worth:

1. Readers aged 16 - 25 who are unfamiliar with comics (most of the class) don't think that silver age stories are whimsical or charming; they think the stories are stupid and childish. (One student did a good paper on the "lying narrator" in the Superman stories.)

2. Watchmen is not a crossover title, but Rorschach is fascinating to readers.

3. A student pointed out that the book that Anne has completed at the end of Why I Hate Saturn is Why I Hate Saturn. I had never thought of that; another reason I love teaching.

4. Chances Are was by far the most accessible of the works we have read. (Perhaps it's just the least dated?) The consensus of the class was that if they hadn't known it to be a true story, it would have been trite and predictable, but knowing that it was true made them enjoy it a lot. One student called it "girly," but in a positive way.

All in all, it's turning out even better than I expected.

*What is it with these really long names for graphic books?

July 16, 1969

2007-02-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

I am a little ashamed that the Fortress Keeper posts more when he is down with the flu than I do when I am healthy (and just busy), so I thought I would share this little feature I found in Captain Action #3, (Feb-Mar 1969). In the midst of stunning Gil Kane artwork (although I swear I see some Wally Wood in there), came this:

If you can wade you way through the faux-Stan-Lee patter (complete with Don Adams shtick), you'll see it's the self-illustrated story of a young would-be artist (Sam Viviano, who now illustrates for Mad magazine, among other things) who paid a visit to the DC offices in September of 1968. He got to meet Carmine Infantino and others in what was apparently a real "gee whiz" experience for him.

The sequence spans two pages, and I can't imagine that it was very interesting even then, but this closing panel caught my attention:

What the heck happened on July 16, 1969?

Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the moon, launched that day. Rain Pryor was born on that day.

I thought it might have been the first official Comic Art Convention in New York, but Wikipedia says that was held on Independence day.

This was a little before I was involved in fandom, so although at that time (this would have been the summer after 7th grade, I guess) I still lived in Brooklyn, I have no idea what this is referring to.

Anyone?

National Gorilla Suit Day

2007-01-31T11:50:00.000-08:00

In honor of the day, I offer this photo of myself:

Seven and a half years ago, I was a gorilla for a weekend. I went to a party, I scared people in a haunted house, and I won half of a "best couple" award at a dance in this outfit.

I have to admit, though, that I'm not actually wearing one today.

I hope that doesn't really mean the terrorists win.

Just following the pack

2007-01-27T20:43:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm probably the last person to comment on this "teaser" image that came out, apparently from the DC publicity people. The Fortress of Fortitude and The Comics Reporter have had great posts about it, so I'll just add my $.02 or so:

1. Am I the only one who wants to cry out in my most-anguished Charlton Heston voice, "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"
2. The Sopranos photo was the next thing I thought of, after that, and I have never even seen that show.
3. I might believe that Ion and ~~Wonder Chick~~ Donna Troy are floating, but the overall effect of the character placement is really amateurish and reminiscent of Colorforms.
4. Pirate-Batman is just goofy, but I like the look of Red Robin (reminds me of the old redesign of the Earth-2 Robin's costume.
5. Yeah, the weepy Superman is officially overdone now.

Oh yeah - in re the Keeper's concern about Black Canary's, um, package: I dunno, maybe this is a transvestite BC from a different Earth; it's about time, innit? I think so, anyway.

The ridiculous and the sublime

2007-01-21T19:38:00.000-08:00

In reverse order:

Sublime:

Agents of Atlas

The top ten reasons why Agents of Atlas was the best miniseries - no, the best comic - of 2006:

10. It has a spy, a spaceman, a goddess, a mermaid, a robot, and a gorilla - all on the same team.
9. Dum Dum Dugan played by Sam Elliot.

8. There's no mention of Civil War.
7. The heroes drive an Edsel and a flying saucer.
6. Text pages!
5. The Yellow Claw stopped being a Fu Manchu ripoff and became a compelling character.
4. The whole series shows how you can do retconning while keeping the spirit of the characters and avoiding grim 'n' gritty for its own sake.
3. Kirk and Justice are wonderful storytellers as well as excellent draftsmen .
2. Jeff Parker has written the tightest and tidiest plot I have encountered since Body Heat.
1. It has a spy, a spaceman, a goddess, a mermaid, a robot, and a gorilla! No, I mean it, really - all on the same team!

Ridiculous:

Here's clip of the cover of Charlton Bullseye #1, the ill-considered 1981 attempt at a revival of Blue Beetle and The Question, and perhaps the worst comic of all time.

Yep, that's Vic Sage, fighting a robot shark.* Holy inappropriate adventures, Batman!

Anyway, I had to fly this weekend, and I saw this in the in-flight catalog, the one with travel alarms and automatic garden hose winders and wine racks shaped like French waiters:

Life imitates art! You could get a JLU action figure and recreate this stunning scene in all its, um, glory. (Heck, it'll probably be on YouTube next week.)

*Update: Chris Sims used to feature an interior clip from this comic on his front page.
I was going to provide a link as part of the post, but he no longer uses the picture.
Here's a link to Chris's Invincible Super-Blog anyway.

A great TPB that hasn't come out yet

2007-01-14T20:25:00.000-08:00

The Escapists #6 from Dark Horse just came out, completing the saga of Max Roth, Case Weaver, and Denny Jones and their attempts to revitalize and reinvent Kavalier & Clay's character, The Escapist, in a self-published indie comic book.

I mention the characters first because for me, they were they key to my enjoyment of this limited series. The highest praise that I can give a story - a book, a movie, a play, a comic - is to say that I care about the people in it and want to know more about them. It doesn't happen often enough, but when I get that feeling, I know I have found a successful work of art.

The Escapists gave me that feeling. Without actually identifying with the characters - I'm a bit long in the tooth to relate to eager twentysomethings - I cared about their struggles, their triumphs, and wanted to know all about the parts of their lives that didn't appear in the book. The point isn't to hope for another story - although that would be swell - but to recognize that the characters had become important and as close to real as they could be. And that's no small feat.

Of course, Brian K. Vaughan already demonstrated his character writing chops to me in Pride of Baghdad, so I shouldn't be so surprised. What might be surprising, however, is how many other wonderful flourishes Vaughan and company incorporate into the series without its getting overwrought. The story uses contrasting art styles to distinguish between the comics pages the characters create and "real" life in the story, as well as several other states of reality. The style change is not only the formalist device that aids the story telling; Vaughan uses disjunctive captions in a far more productive way than media darling Chris Ware ever dreamed, actually using them to advance his story and reveal character development. With all this technique abounding, breaking the fourth wall almost goes unnoticed, yet the reader never gets lost in the telling but remains captivated by the story all this flair works in support of.

There are several other levels on which to appreciate The Escapists: its handling of Kavalier and Clay as real historical figures is engaging and consistent, overflowing into wonderful text pieces. The story also serves as a travelogue to Cleveland, using local history and landmarks to - once again! - advance the story. The commentary on the comics indstry is just gravy.

There are a few quibbles: the villain of the piece is a bit melodramatic, and there were some false notes in the indictment of "corporate creativity," but these are really minor.

With compelling characters, authentic dialog, a realistic plot and daring pacing, as well as beautiful art from a host of illustrators, The Escapists is an excellent mini-series that has earned a place on my bookshelf, not just in the Shortbox.

I'll even buy the trade, too.

The heroes of The Escapists

Got you covered

2007-01-10T20:25:00.000-08:00

So, DC Comics asked what was the best cover that they have ever published. A bit of a daunting question, that; a buddy of mine (who usually doesn't blog about comics) gave it a shot and could only cut it down to four.

To cut through this Gordian Knot with Occam's Razor (heh) comes Brandon of Random Panels, who simply asks for our favorite comic book cover. Ever.

That's easy. The Keeper gave us his, inspiring me to give you mine:

It's got:

Gil Kane artwork!
Second-string heroes!
Short heroes!
Earths 1 and 2!
Breaking the fourth wall!
Bad punning in the title!
A visual pun in the art!
A roundhouse punch!
Gil Kane artwork!

What more could you want (except maybe dinosaurs, monkeys, and the color purple)?

Pride and Perdida

2007-01-07T19:06:00.000-08:00

I had a chance to read two graphic books over the break, both of them gifts: Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughn and Niko Henrichon (DC Comics/Vertigo) and La Perdida by Jessica Abel. I was not disappointed by either.

Pride of Baghdad relates the fact-based story of four lions who escaped from the Baghdad zoo in the aftermath of the the bombing that began the Iraq war. Beautifully illustrated and colored in tones that make the reader feel the desert heat, the story follows the small pride - an old male, two females, and a cub - as they wend their way through a world previously unknown to them, encountering wonders and threats, both human and animal, natural and artificial.

As we follow the group, our interest in engaged and held not by the plot - which is rather picaresque - but by the characterization. Vaughn's dialogue and Henrichon's art instill each lion with a distinct and credible personality. Each cat becomes a real personality, but never a person - their animal natures, sensibilities, and perspectives are never lost. Whether negotiating with gazelles or examining the rubble left behind by battle, these are wild predators following their instincts. While we can relate to these feline protagonists, there is never the sense that they have been anthropomorphized: it is we who are transformed, seeing the world through their cats' eyes:

There are very few humans in the book, yet it is a story of personal drama as well as adventure. And it has the most breathtaking and moving conclusion of any book - graphic or traditional - that I have read in a long time.

La Perdida is the story of a callow and naive American woman who moves to Mexico in an attempt to connect with her roots and find some greater, more "authentic" meaning to her life.

Having completed the book, I am impressed (from my usual formalist position) by Abel's command of storytelling: the narrative is intricate and the cast is large, but Abel maintains control of scene and character and builds plot upon subplot with foreshadowing, subtle clues, and the neat tying of threads. It is a quite a consummate work, helped my her masterful handling of the bilingual nature of the dialogue.

During the reading itself, I was less... engaged? Excited? Committed? This was mostly because I didn't like the protagonist, Carla, very much; I sometimes wished that she would just shut up and go away for a while so the story could follow someone else more interesting. Here she is (in white), pissing off a potential ally to a mutual friend in big trouble.

As the novel came to its conclusion, however, what I thought was going to be just a melodramatic climax turned into a revelation that Carla had been a pretty unreliable narrator for most of the book, and that her growth and struggle as a character were really just beginning. The wrap-up of the story was riveting, since Carla was finally doing things that made me care about her. I'll credit Abel with a lot of courage for not taking the easy way out and giving us a warm and cuddly heroine with whom we could identify; sticking with Carla was work, but it was well worth it.

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Winter quarter started on the second; this is the term that I am using graphic books as the readings in my composition class. I was going to begin with some essays from Give My Regards to the Atomsmashers, a collection of essays by popular writers on the effect comics had on their lives. That book was out of print, however, so i had to make a last minute substitution with The Language of Comics, a collection of more scholarly articles such as "The Voices of Silence: Willette, Steinlen and the Introduction of the Silent Strip in the Chat Noir, with a German Coda," by David Kunzle. It's pretty heady stuff, grad school reading really, but the class is giving it a fair go. They're handing in their first paper tomorrow- an annotation of one of the articles - and we'll see if my optimism is founded. We'll be looking at and writing about extant criticism for a couple of weeks, and then they'll be trying their hand at analyses of graphic works.

An approximate milestone

2006-12-31T14:57:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been 370 days and 71 posts since The Recreation Annex, formerly known as Troll Dwarfs with Tommy Guns, nee The Last Shortbox, opened its doors for business (or pleasure). While that's not exactly a precise milestone, I'll take it, seeing as it's New Year's Eve and all.

Although - or perhaps because - I have had a ball participating in the comicsweblogosphere (as Mike Sterling would have it), the mission of this site has drifted a bit in a year. I have become less concerned with reviewing just the contents of that actually-exists shortbox full of memories, and have gotten more involved with newer comics and graphic books than I have been in a while. I don't expect to be giving that up, but I'll try to dip into the old gems a bit more frequently.

Mostly I am enjoying being part of a community of people who have impressed me with their generosity of spirit and their material generosity, as well as their enthusiasm and talent. I enjoy reading, sharing, remembering, and reflecting with all of you. While this community has had its share of conflict and snark, overall I have found it a very pleasant place to linger. Thanks to all of you out there for helping me keep the fun in a lifelong hobby.

Happy New Year!

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The Fortress Keeper has (once again) delivered a fine essay that sums up how if feel about certain issues in comics. The Keeper uses The Ray as clear example of how modern comics differ from the gold and silver days in the treatment of superhero characters. The retconning of Happy Terrill's "ballooning accident" into part of a government conspiracy is typical of the grim-n-grittifying of superhero comics. And I'm sorry, but I just don't see it working. Superheroes are inherently a least little silly and require a lot of suspension of disbelief to work at all. When they do work, they can deliver gripping adventure, human interest, and even morality tales; but mix them with "real world" drama, and the result often seems to me like what I imagine watching Wiley Coyote kill and eat the Roadrunner in a naturalistic manner would be like. It's cognitive dissonance.

Birds of Prey appears to have this flaw. I jumped on at issue 100, because I heard a Spy Smasher was coming back. The story in #100 and #101 concerns Lady Blackhawk, Big Barda, Judomaster, Huntress, and Manhunter infiltrating a Mexican prison to free a mobster's daughter in return for his testimony. With very little rewriting, the story could have been a straight action-adventure script, no superheroes required: there's the attorney getting inside, the fake fight for a distraction, the taking over the guard tower, the explosions in the parking lot for further distraction, and so on. All the fireworks are set in a world of corrupt officials, ruthless government agents, and cynical deal-making.

And in the middle of all of it, we get this:

Is it just me, or does the whole changing-into-costume bit seem a bit out-of-place? Do we really need superheroes to take on crooked corrections officers? This seems more like a Mission: Impossible episode than anything else. I could practically hear the crash as the two idioms smashed into each other.

I dunno. It was great fun watching the Birds go through their paces. Zinda is a hoot, and it was cool to see Barda take on a fighter jet. But the juxtaposition of that kind of action with the nasty agent stuff just doesn't gel.

Oh, and this set me off, too:

Spy is not equal to terrorist.

In the real world, spies are professionals for the most part, usually regular combatants, and there exists international law regarding their treatment. In fiction as well as fact, spies are the focus of some ripping yarns. Nathan Hale was a spy. Mata Hari was a spy. Moe Berg was a spy. George Smiley was a spy. Spies and spying can serve as useful devices in adventure stories.

Terrorists are not spies. Terror is an awful and problematic feature of contemporary geopolitics, and does not lend itself well to simple action tales, particularly those featuring superheroics.

So why don't they call Katarina Terrorist-Smasher?

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So as not to leave this milestone post on a complaining note, I want to spin off this quote from the Fortress of Fortitude post I mentioned at the start:

Back in the day, “Happy” Terrill was simply a good-hearted guy who attained crazy powers in a ballooning accident.
(’Cuz that happened a lot back then … )

I had forgotten this aspect of The Ray's origin, and I was so tickled by the idea of a ballooning accident (BA) as a plot device, that I ~~did extensive research on~~ Googled the phrase, and here's what I came up with:

Commissioner Gordon's son Tony used a BA as a way to fake his death so he could spy on/in Red China. (I am Batgirl's Brother; scroll down about halfway).

A BA is the fulcrum on which the plot of Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love (and the Daniel Craig movie that was based on it) swings.

A Harvard alum chose a BA as his fake death, this time to avoid solicitation of donations, when the university mistakenly thought him deceased. (Death by Junk Mail; scoll down to July 11, 2003).

Apparently, one of the characters on the television show Lost is on the island because of a BA (Re: Will the 'Others' get angry now?, scroll down to 02-16-2006, 07:20 PM).

The hero of this mystery novel is almost killed in a BA.

Coe College offers a science class that investigates the mystery of an alchemist's BA. (FS-110-18 STEALTH SCIENCE , about halfway down).

And finally, an Air Force pilot injured in a BA may be the source of the first "live alien" sighting. (Injured Air Force Pilot, the very last entry).

Huh, maybe it's time for another name-change to the blog...

Happy holidays

2006-12-24T10:07:00.000-08:00

It ended yesterday, but Menorah Man (along with the rest of the Jewish Hero Corps) hopes you had a Happy Hannukkah!

And here is the best Superhero Holiday Special story I have ever read, bar none. Although it came from a LiveJournal community as part of a spoof of such comics, if DC editorial doesn't commission it for next year, they have neither heart nor brains.

The Big S Christmas Story.

Hit and miss

2006-12-22T08:02:00.000-08:00

So, I did go to the LCS to look for Birds of Prey. They were out of #100, which I am presuming is a good jumping-on point; I did look through #101, in which the new Spy Smasher presents herself as a unlikable bully. I dunno. Keeper says he has hopes for the character; I guess I will find that #100 and make another run at it.

I did take Loren's advice and get Darwyn Cooke's Spirit #1. It was a great romp, one that I enjoyed even more than the crossover teaser issue. I still felt a bit unstasified at the end, though: $2.99 for 22 pages still seems like too much to me, even if the paper and production values are so much better. (Based on inflation alone, an 80-page Giant from 1967 should only cost $1.42 today.) Somehow the TPBs just seem like a better buy.

I also picked up the DC Infinite Holiday Special, because as I was flipping though it, it looked kind of funny. My overall rating: meh. It brought the funny and some sweetness, but the book would have been more successful in both aspects if the individual stories had been a little shorter and tighter.

Not really so grumpy as all that

2006-12-20T21:41:00.000-08:00

This isn't exactly in the Last Shortbox, but it's at probably as old as the oldest comic in there:

This is a lobby card for the 1944 Republic serial Spy Smasher. It may well be an original, since I got it in about 1973 or so, when I was in high school.

I was nutsy for Spy Smasher. I think first read about him in a book called The Great Movie Serials by Jim Harmon and Donald F. Glut, under a section subtitled The Subversives' Dread and with a pretty good photo. I read all about the comics version in The Steranko History of the Comics (Volume 2), which chronicled Spy Smasher's career and his cross-over with Captain Midnight, whose popularity eventually exceeded his. One of the best pieces of my juvenile art was a swipe of that sketch in the lower left corner of the photo. I wrote what would now be called fanfic about Spy Smasher. I learned to translate "Death to Spies in America!" in French class. I even - and I'm not kidding - had "Spy Smasher Lives!" engraved on my high school graduation ring instead of my name. (The guy taking the orders in the auditorium thought I was crazy.)

Spy Smasher never got the comeback I thought he deserved. I understand he made some appearances that I missed, and I guess he even actually appeared in the JLU aimated series once, but it looked like he was more-or-less consigned to the dustbin of comics history.

Which was why I got excited when I heard about this:

A new Spy Smasher! She has the same last name as the original, which bodes well for some sort of flashback, at least. I'm not sure I like that she's a government agent (I usually prefer my mystery men and women to be independent vigilantes) but I like the goofy way she's presenting her I.D. She has a great outfit and she looks pretty tough, too.

So, although I couldn't make it today, I guess I will be off to the LCS tomorrow to pick up Birds of Prey #100. Because sometimes I still wish I could find that ring.

Meme time

2006-12-19T22:35:00.000-08:00

From Sleestak via Bully.