“I Think Guys Don't Know These Things.” COMICS! Sometimes I May Be Slow To Praise But When I Praise It Comes Like The Rains!

Sometimes people stop me in the street and ask me to stop following them what the best monthly periodical genre comic currently on the stands is. And I tell them, all these people who I’m pretending constantly stop me in the street and ask that question, that the best monthly periodical genre comic currently on the stands is STRAY BULLETS. I haven’t said that before on here because, honestly, I didn’t think it needed saying. It seems I thought wrong. So no blame, no shame and let’s don our knuckle dusters, knuckle down and rectify this shabby state of affairs right damn now. Also, I tell you how to get CHEAP COMICS!!! Yeah, thought you’d like that.

Anyway, this...

What is STRAY BULLETS? I’m glad you asked. STRAY BULLETS is in all likelihood all the things you say you want in a comic and a few more things chucked in for good luck. It’s a long form story told in done-in-one chunks; the dialogue’s to die for, being smoothly natural and never, not ever, no, not once, nope, degenerating into tic driven idiocy; the pacing is aces and while it’s got sex, violence, profanity and perversion by the pound it’s also got characters, intelligence, humour and heart to spare. STRAY BULLETS might hide behind Crime but it’s neither desiccated homage nor a canter through the clichés reliant on violence for impact. Superficially STRAY BULLETS is a crime book but like all the best crime fiction it’s really all about life. I never said I was above stating the obvious. STRAY BULLETS is set in a world where everyone pretends they live in a civilised society but they are all just a moment’s inattention or single surrender to temptation away from finding out just how many teeth the world still has. Sometimes teh chracters find out they have the sharpest teeth of all. STRAY BULLETS is about many things but mostly it's about surviving. Or not surviving.

Now you may say that away from STRAY BULLETS Lapham’s a mixed bag. Me, I thought YOUNG LIARS was a modern classic, his strange take on Batman (City of Crime) was pretty frosty large plant seeds and SPARTA U.S.A. was messed up in the right way but sunk by the art (who can ever forget High Blood Pressure Colin Farrell?). There’s others but it’s variable stuff. Which is fine; which is how that stuff goes. But when Lapham’s on STRAY BULLETS he’s up there with los Bros Hernandez, with Clowes, with Speed McNeil. When David Lapham's on STRAY BULLETS he is on. Bang a gong.

STRAY BULLETS is in all likelihood all the things you say you want in a comic and a few more things chucked in for good luck. But you aren’t buying it. What’s all that about?

Right, my sleeves are rolled up so let’s get stuck straight in. Firstly, roll your jellied orbs of sight over this ridiculous nonsense:

March 2014: STRAY BULLETS #41 – 8,297 March 2014: STRAY BULLETS: THE KILLERS #1 – 14,208 April 2014: STRAY BULLETS: THE KILLERS #2 – 9,147 May 2014: STRAY BULLETS: THE KILLERS #3 – 7,935 June 2014: STRAY BULLETS: THE KILLERS #4– 7,092

Those figures are taken from Chris Rice’s Indie Month-to-Month Sales June 2014 column which lurks on Heidi McDonald’s The Beat. With admirable brevity and mordant understatement Chris “Numbers Are My Wonders” Rice comments only, “Should be selling better.”

He’s not wrong.

Okay, sure, STRAY BULLETS #41 was the final issue of a storyline left dangling since the cessation in 2005 of the regular publication of STRAY BULLETS; mass turnouts weren’t ever really on the cards. Staggeringly, in 2005 the world of comics was so preposterous that David Lapham couldn’t actually afford to publish his Eisner winning (not that that matters, but still) and thoroughly EXCELLENT! comic. Beyond staggeringly this nonsensical state of affairs persisted for nine years until Image Comics rescued David Lapham’s EXCELLENT! series. An understandable state of affairs then that such a long delayed comic should shift so few ‘units’ (ack!). Turning that frown upside down though; that’s a remarkable number of units for a nine years delayed comic to move. Always a silver lining, that’s me. Anyway this is collected in STRAY BULLETS UBER ALLES EDITION which we’ll get to shortly but STRAY BULLETS: THE KILLERS is the new stuff and y'all ain't picking it up.

I like to try before I buy and purchases cost money and money is not something I am fat with, you might say. Hush, for this is a strange new world where procurement does not always require payment in full. All the sexy souls riding The Future bareback like the Pope intended can just get right on the STRAY BULLETS bandwagon right here and right now at the slightest possible cost. See, the first issue of the original 1995 series is available for just $.99 and just $1.99 for each issue thereafter at just the touching of a screen or two. Being all old and not really into the whole riding my jetpack to the mall thing I won’t risk embarrassment by going into any further detail but, yes, Digital users curious about STRAY BULLETS can have a virtual bunch of them in two shakes of a Vic20. Okay, there’s the hidden cost of actually being able to afford one of those tablets or pads or gadgets; which might explain why you haven’t any money left to purchase comics on the shinily enticing thing. But I just showed you a way round it that doesn’t involve piracy (not a fan, sorry). No worries, my pleasure. While I do want you to read STRAY BULLETS I do draw the line at discretely placing it on your devices without your consent like some shower of tax dodging rock star ****s in servitude to some dark Corporate Beast. Politeness is the first casualty of synergy it seems.

STRAY BULLETS UBER ALLES EDITION Written & Drawn by David Lapham El Capitan/Image Comics $59.99 STRAY BULLETS created by David Lapham

If I can just prise the offended fingers of noted paper based merchant and mini brew swigger Brian “Two Shops Are Better Than One!” Hibbs from around my throat I’ll swiftly make amends by shilling the physical things. Because what of those resistant to the tug of the Future? What of those medieval souls who through habit or penury remain chained to the physical world? Oh, shred not thy garments and untear thy hair for those wayward dregs also have the ability to start at the beginning; thanks to STRAY BULLETS UBER ALLES EDITION. This is not a low cost entry point; it is in fact $59.99. But for that money you do get 41 issues of consistently EXCELLENT! comics. Yes, that is a lot of greenbacks, a lot of hours at the coal face, a lot of time staring at a screen while your arteries quietly harden, but it is worth every ass busting cent in terms of comics. Also, you’ll get STRAY BULLETS #21. You don’t know this yet but STRAY BULLETS #21 is one of the finest single issues ever made. If I was stranded on a desert island I’d die within three days of exposure. But if before that happened I was allowed to take two comics one would be OMAC #1 by Jack Kirby and the other would be STRAY BULLETS #21. That’s because they are my idea of perfect single issue genre comics and together the two of them would provide enough entertainment for the three days I had left to live.

STRAY BULLETS #21 is just great comics as Lapham smoothly fillets the heterosexual male psyche with the scalpel of satire without once faltering in his deadpan delivery. All those lazy boner scenarios which flit across the inside of the bored suburban male’s skull are drily depicted in all their banal hilarity. In the character of Benny David Lapham wrought a comic creation the equal of Jack Kirby’s OMAC. For just as OMAC was the ultimate man for the world which was coming!!! Benny is the ultimate man for the world that’s already here. (Fucking Benny. You fucking shambles, Benny.) And then there’s a whole bunch of comics around that little sweetie during the course of which David Lapham shows us many things, all of which come under the umbrella heading of Comics: How They Should Be Done. Reading STRAY BULLETS UBER ALLES EDITION it becomes apparent that it is possible to create a series with a strong sense of time and place without wallowing in received clichés; it is possible to create characters at once grotesquely monstrous but also unsettlingly human and relatable; it is possible for the ridiculous to sit beside the realistic without duelling elbows; it is possible to take for granted art displaying the influences of Mazzucchelli, Munoz and Meskin; it is possible to get things right right from the start and to keep right on getting them right. STRAY BULLETS UBER ALLES EDITION might look pricey but it’s a steal for what it is, because it is EXCELLENT! multiplied by 41!

Of course it’s cheaper just to hop on board the new series so let’s see how that’s shaping up! (SPOILER: It’s EXCELLENT! You didn’t know I could be this positive for so long did you? Ack! I think something just popped inside my head.)

STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS #1 Written & Drawn by David Lapham El Capitan/Image Comics, $3.50 (2014) STRAY BULLETS created by David Lapham

But c’mon! Where were you all with this one? STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS #1 was a real Double Deckers (“Get on board! Get on board!”) moment but it seems most of you forgot to set your alarm and missed the bus. Because, according to those figures at The Beat in June 2014 STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS was the 234th best-selling comic book to North American retailers. 234th. Two hundred and thirty fourth. True, nestled just beneath it in 235th place was Parker & Shaner’s bubbly respray of FLASH GORDON, so it’s in good company down there. But it remains a fact that STRAY BULLETS: THE KILLERS is being outsold by 233 other comics, many of which, horrifically, have Mark Millar involved. While you don’t need any prior knowledge of STRAY BULLETS if you do have prior knowledge of the series then it’s a richer experience but then that’s what knowledge does; it makes experiences richer. All you need to enjoy this comic is to read it. But to do that you have to buy it. If you do you'll find that this one’s about Dads and how men who become Dads don’t stop being men. When people say it’s a full time job being a Dad they mean it’s a full time job not backsliding into being an asshole. Thematically this issue is akin to that episode of East Bound And Down where Kenny took everyone to the water park. It’s EXCELLENT!

STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS #2 Written & Drawn by David Lapham El Capitan/Image Comics, $3.50 (2014) STRAY BULLETS created by David Lapham

Well, that was upsetting. But not in a cheap way. It's EXCELLENT!

STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS #3 Written & Drawn by David Lapham El Capitan/Image Comics, $3.50 (2014) STRAY BULLETS created by David Lapham

This one’s like David Lynch trying to do one of those John Hughes movie things people who aren't me like. One of those full of loveable scamps and risky japes. If you worked in Television and needed everything reducing to a formula you could kind of boil this one down to: Hi-jinks ensue when Laura Palmer babysits for Bobby Peru! It’s all kind of light and frothy except for all the darkness and psychological pain which keep bursting into the dollhouse setting like a mental elephant at full pelt. It’s EXCELLENT!

STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS #4 by David Lapham El Capitan/Image $3.50 (2014) STRAY BULLETS created by David Lapham

Wherein David Lapham focuses in on the burgeoning romance of his young leads without once making me do a bit of sick in my mouth. Maybe that’s because Lapham’s such a good storyteller that he can communicate that early adult feeling of being so trapped between the life you have, the life you want and the life everyone else wants for you that you can feel your brain physically flex. And then you go and do a load of dumb shit and get to live with it. Forever. Jellybeans for everyone! Or maybe it’s just that David Lapham knows just when to throw in a panel of monkey cuddlies dangling from a beach hut roof. Either way in this issue I watched a couple of kids behave as foolishly and as purely as any real hormonal basket cases and I liked them even more by the end. It's EXCELLENT!

STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS #5 by David Lapham El Capitan/Image $3.50 (2014) STRAY BULLETS created by David Lapham

This is one of the regular breather issues which have peppered the series since it started. One of the ones some folk don’t cotton to overmuch. One of the issues where Lapham interrupts the regular narrative to catch up with the ridiculously violent, bombastically nonsensical and wholly imaginary adventures of Amy Racecar. It’ s possible these issues act as the very dreamlife of the series itself with all the key themes and motifs allowed to frolic across the pages without the constraints of logic the preceding issues worked within. I’m probably the wrong man to ask about that kind of stuff as I’m busy laughing my ruby red ass off at it all. Can a mass murdering and quite fetchingly befreckled fugitive from justice who has sworn off killing find love with a suicidal and blind quadruple amputee; yea, though all the guns of the world be turned against them? Buckle up and find out. Makes Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers look like Downton Abbey, and I like Natural Born Killers. STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS #5; the louder you scream the faster it goes! It’s EXCELLENT!

STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS #6 by David Lapham El Capitan/Image $3.50 (2014) STRAY BULLETS created by David Lapham

It’s a bit late in the day but I should probably say that STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS is for mature readers. Sure, it’s for mature readers in the commonly accepted sense that it’s frequently rudey-roo and would make your vicar’s cheeks shine like a freshly slapped arse. However, it’s also for mature readers in that it can tease and hint at the contents of a locked room and let your mind fill in all the unspeakable details only to wrongfoot you at the end with an ending which admits that sometimes reality is horrible enough. Basically (and it’s unusual for genre comics this) STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS is for mature readers in the sense that it treats you like a fucking grown-up. It’s EXCELLENT!

So, there you go, I’ve told you all about STRAY BULLETS (and STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS) while leaving you no wiser. Some might argue that that’s pretty thoroughly bloody useless but, what; you want me to spoil everything for you? That isn’t going to happen. All you need to take away from this is that I think STRAY BULLETS (and STRAY BULLETS: KILLERS) is EXCELLENT!

Or to put it to you a little more pithily:

David Lapham’s STRAY BULLETS is – COMICS!!!

Getting Hibbsy with 10/31

Ugh, I’ve missed too many weeks of reviews here, let’s get this back on track! A PLUS X #1 NOW: Finally another ”Marvel NOW!” title ships… and it is the low-to-no plot title. “AvX: VS” was a cute side project for the main AvX comic (and could be, I think, argued that it was often much better than the comic with the actual plot), but I have a hard time seeing this concept sustainable as an ongoing monthly.  As always, things that work out as a joke idea generally can’t survive being stretched out to ongoing status, and I think the low-to-no-plot content is going to not help that one tiny bit. The execution of this issue? Totally competent, but I suspect people are looking for a bit more than “competent” for a $3.99 monthly series. I thought it was EH.

ACTION COMICS ANNUAL #1: Sholly Fisch (Whose name, have I said out loud?, sounds like a golden Age DC Comics writer) takes the big chair here, and the result is perfectly respectable.  Actually, what I found interesting was just how much this comic resembled the basic plot of SUPERMAN EARTH ONE v2 – sudden powers given to someone that Superman must stop, but can’t touch physically lest his own powers be removed; end of comic, villain goes to work for military, which is trying to figure out a way how to kill Superman – also out this week. I think this annual did the story much much better, and it was highly OK.

ANGEL & FAITH #15: I mostly bring this issue up because the back half of it is illustrated by David Lapham, a general rarity these days, much to my sorrow. Isn’t it just nuts that STRAY BULLETS is not in print? Crazy crazy making. Anyway, yeah, ANGEL & FAITH is generally more readable than BUFFY and this issue is no exception, even if it reads a smidge like a fill-in with its two-story structure. Still? GOOD.

AQUAMAN #13: Fourteen issues later, and it’s still all about TELLING us that Aquaman is good, without really SHOWING it. Scowly-Anger-Man is, I guess, a form of characterization, but I’m still not really certain just WHY he’s so pissed off about everything. The only one calling Aquaman lame is the writer of this comic (and they do it again, here, fourteen issues in). Were I paying cash for comical books, this issue would mark me as “Done”, but I work in a comics store, so I quite imagine I’ll read the next issue as well, and not really enjoy it very much either. EH.

BATGIRL ANNUAL #1: I found the painted art (mostly by Admira Wijaya) to be a little too, dunno, paperback cover-like, maybe? Too stiff, too posed, and largely unable to properly render anything too “fantastic” (like Catwoman’s mask, or the perfectly proportioned bandages on SheTalon’s face, and I’m pretty sick of Court of Owls-related stuff at this point, but otherwise, this annual was perfectly OK.

BEDLAM #1: It’s kind of an Arkham Asylum / Joker pitch with the serial numbers filed off in which, at least if I’m following this correctly, the Joker becomes a “good” guy at the end – it carried me right along in its world, which is what a comic is supposed to do, so let’s add this to the rapidly growing pile of intriguing Image comics – I’ll go with VERY GOOD, I think, and, hey, you can buy it on our digital store!

CAPTAIN MARVEL #6: Among the many reasons I am not an editor of comic books is not really understanding why you would launch a book with as distinct of an artist as Dexter Soy, then drop him out before the end of the first arc for someone like Emma Rios (who is a swell artist, but nothing whatsoever like Soy in style or tone). Nor, for that matter, why you would jam out those 6 issues in three and a half months. Especially if your artist can’t keep that schedule, apparently? Also: I’d never ever have made the first arc a time travel story, especially with a (sorry) B-level character like Cap who needs to be “reintroduced” to the Marvel U – you don’t make that work by taking the character OUT of the (modern) Universe. Add it all up, and it’s not any kind of surprise we’re already down to single digit sales on this title from just under 30 sold of issue #1. But the worst part of it all, the very worst part? I really thought this wrap up chapter was quite good, and, I think, ended up making Carol’s “secret origin” a much stronger one. I thought this issue was VERY GOOD, too bad I’ll end up being subs only by issue #12 at the rate things are going.

EC KURTZMAN CORPSE O/T IMJIN AND OTHER STORIES HC EC WALLY WOOD CAME THE DAWN AND OTHER STORIES HC : Sadly, deeply, amazingly disappointed in these – purely because they’re in black & white. I was strongly hoping for something like the Carl Barks reprints, with that nice flat coloring, and I was absolutely committed to replacing out my EC library (which consists of all of the Gemstone reprints, the ones that are literally four issues of the comics, covers, ads and all, glued together into an outercover) for handsome FBI reprints… but, ugh, I don’t want them in black and white. The solicitation copy, the press releases, really bury the fact that these aren’t in color, which I kind of find borderline dishonest. This is now the second attempt at upscale packaging for the ECs in a row that gets it wrong (the last HC set had new, shiny, color, ew!), which just hurts. I think I’m going to have to cut my orders on the next set of books by like 80% -- even “Nostalgia Guy” (my name for him) turned up his nose at them when he spied them on the rack. It’s too bad, because these ARE handsome hardcovers, and those spines are going look AWESOME together on the shelf, and it is really smart to collect the ECs by artist and genre – but they’re simply not how I want these stories archived in my library. I love the EC comics, and they really do deserve to be there for a wider audience, but I’d encourage you to have your LCS to try ordering the Gemstone “Annuals” – about ¾ of them are still in print, but Diamond never really advertises the fact. I stumbled across them doing a trawl of Diamond’s inventory, in fact. But those are flat color on newsprint, which is kind of how those books SHOULD be presented. I also don’t like how this edition doesn’t note which specific comics which specific story comes from. I would have preferred a Table of Contents more like a DC Archives edition, which even gives you month/year. *sigh* For the outer packaging, and the underlying work, I wanted to give a VERY GOOD, or an EXCELLENT, but this B&W edition makes me say EH, instead.

GHOSTS #1: Here’s a happy surprise – I kind of flat-out loved this anthology, as virtually every story was stellar. The other thing I really liked is that with the exception of the Phil Jimenez story, I feel like I could hand this comic over to Ben to read at 9 years old, just like its 70s predecessor. That’s the most awesome thing of all, and I think that they should continue that into the future with Vertigo Anthologies. Get that “Suggested for mature readers” off the cover, says I! The only story I really didn’t like? The “Neil Gaiman’s Dead Boy Detectives” which they decided to bill on the cover instead of Geoff John’s first Vertigo work (which I kind of found odd) – the problem is that it isn’t a full story, at all, and “too be continued, somewhere, eventually” is a big fail in an anthology book. I’m also growing more and more convinced that Al Ewing is The Real Deal, and I really loved his kick off story. And presenting the pencils-only from the Joe Kubert story was kind of touching and cool. Yeah, so: VERY GOOD.

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE THE ORIGIN OF SKELETOR #1: You also want to know from surprising? LOVED this. I don’t care for/about MotU at all, and their backstories never seemed any deeper than, dunno, a marketing interns stab at creating a fantasy world (Though, really, what else can you do when you have characters named things like “Stinkor”), so when Joshua Hale Fialkov actually manages to build a backstory that is reasonably compelling, then said story is drawn by Frazier Irving (!), then, hokey smokes, you’ve got a horse race. I was loving this right up to the last page when it says something like “And, so, your name is….SKELETOR!” and then I remembered it was a MotU comic. Aw! Still, this really was surprisingly VERY GOOD.

POPE HATS #3: Ooh, and this was even better. Ethan Rilly is going from strength to strength with this comic, and, damn it, I wish I could still sell issue #1 because we should be picking up readers for this great slice of life story about two room mates with very different career paths. Straight up terrific cartooning, and I would call it “Excellent” except for that pesky $6.95 cover price. Ow. So, knocking a grade off for that: VERY GOOD.

Looks like I’m out of time for the week – time to go pay bills! (yay?)

As always, what did YOU think?

-B