Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Sixteen

Continuing on the "creator racks", we'll move on to Warren Ellis.

This one is kinda hard, actually, because it would be really easy to default to TRANSMETROPOLITAN. Which is great and awesome, no doubt, but it seems too easy.

One of Warren's greatest strengths as a comics storyteller is his love of telling a complete story in a single unit. You can see this on display in FELL or GLOBAL FREQUENCY (both which also could easily make the cut), which are collections of single-issue stories bound up as part of a larger narrative, but I think that for this pick, I'm going to edge myself over to PLANETARY v1: ALL OVER THE WORLD AND OTHER STORIES (which is, actually, a pointlessly long subtitle, isn't it?), which is as much about stories and storytellers as anything else.

It opens with a war between the Pulp Heroes and the Super Heroes, moves to Gojira and Monster island, ghost detectives in Hong Kong, and has the best rethinking of the Fantastic Four and Hulk that modern comics have done. All wondrously self-contained, yet each moving the overall story a bit forward.

You can sum the book up with this line from issue #1: "It's a strange world; let's keep it that way"

Yes.

There's also lovely lovely art by John Cassaday.

If there's one single complaint I could make it's that there's STILL one more issue to go (and we're getting on 2 years now... my computer says the originally solicited shipdate of the last issue was freakin' 2006) -- Although the story proper is done, and the last one is just an "epilogue" -- which means the final collection of the series can't come out until that happens. Hope they get that done soon!

Anyway, great great stuff, and well worth being in your collection.

-B

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Fifteen

The next few days we'll focus on the "creator" racks, since those are easy to bat out (and I need easy since our bathroom is being remodeled, so I'm living at my parent's house and have maybe 20 minutes of not-between-customer's-computer-time each day)

We've already done the Moore and Wagner shelves, so let's move on to another one of my favorite writers: Garth Ennis.

This one is super-double easy, actually. If I had to pick one SINGLE Garth book to hand you, there's really only one choice: PREACHER.

You've got a disillusioned Preacher from Texas, his hit-woman ex girlfriend, and an alcoholic Irish vampire who go on a quest to find God, and to make him answer for the state of the world. Pure fuckin' gold.

And that's just the START of it.

Here's the thing: PREACHER is vile, profane, offensive, sacrilegious, foul-mouthed, and perverted. Yet is is also one of the most moral stories you're every going to read. It's about love, and about faith, and about friendship, and about standing up for one's own. It is an amazing masterpiece, made all the more poignant for it's potty-mouthed flipping off.

The series (nine books) wobbles a bit around v6 or 7 (but don't they all?), but it has a great end worthy of its start, and if you want to have a proper comics collection, this here is a book that belongs in it, pardner.

-B

Abhay Asks "Will Secret Invasion invade my Secret Vagina?" Abhay Certainly Hopes So!

Not a well-kept secret, I know...

I am honestly, no-joke, no-irony, without hesitation, over-the-top excited to read SECRET INVASION #1, the kick-off of the big summer mega-uber-crossover from Marvel Comics which is sitting on the couch next to me.

This whole megacrossover mania is bad. They're typically unfriendly to new readers, wear down the existing audience, hurt smaller books, tend to be shallow short-term cynical cash-grabs, etc. Awful, horrendous things that no one should look forward to. But I've been looking forward to this one, anyway. Looking forward to it!

I really wanted to run into the comic shop and throw confetti from a bucket, like Rip Taylor. Run around with sparklers, barbecue hot dogs, have a sing-a-long of America the Beautiful. Only not in a sad way like that time when Congress sang it after 9/11, but like in a happy Ray Charles way. But not like in a "oh, wow, he's happy even though he's blind, what am I so fucking neurotic about" way... goddamn, America the Beautiful's kind of a downer any which way you cut that son bitch.

I think a lot of people have rejected the premise on a one-word basis: "Skrulls? NO! YOU SUCK."

But this one-- look, if they're going to make crossovers, if they're going to have Creator Summits where they put all their brainpower behind one series, and spend some budget putting together this "event"-- if this is the game now, then I want to read the biggest, dumbest, loudest, stupidest, crassest, fan-angering, everybody punch everybody, punch-a-bunch crossover there ever was. If I'm a Roman, I want to live in Rome.

Skrulls? It's got a shot at the belt.

I've liked the last two Marvel crossovers because they've had a simple, great formula: inappropriate politics plus insane dumbness = Boner-town, population: me. This one? It's this incredibly loud noisy event where characters are going to die and cry and shmy, all built on the following: trust, identity and religion issues (POST-9/11!) plus little green men invading from outer space (DUMB!).

It's the dumbest they've ever DUMB!-ed and the most POST-9/11 they've ever POST-9/11'd, and if the title with the word "Invasion" doesn't promise some punching, then I don't know what does. Shot at the fucking belt, dude.

Having the bad guys be Skrulls means the focus is squarely on characters the audience cares about already, and asking questions about why those characters work for the audience. That feature is what made Civil War so much fun for me. That's why World War Hulk worked for me, too. That's why most crossovers don't-- because they focus on a bunch of "who cares" and "who gives a shits". Secret Wars 2 was about a white guy with a jeri-curl. DC hinged a massive crossover involving dozens of comics series around Maxwell Lord (!) and an ornery alternate universe version of Superboy... who the hell cares about Superboy and where do I buy them a comically large lollipop?

Or- or-- here's the nice thing I'll say about crossovers: if part of the entertainment of comics for you is watching crazy crazy c-c-c-crazy fans react to them, then what a delight this will be. Put on your crazy pants and let's dance, Mongo. Make me feel better about my Asperger's with how severe yours is, Mongo! The time is now; the sweatiness is yours!

So: I'm going to put on that one Neutral Milk Hotel album, kick back, relax, and pull the trigger on this thing. I'll check back when I'm done with #1.

*** SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP

And we're back...

I liked it! It's the Marvel Universe versus Islam. What's not to like about that? And the Marvel Universe doesn't have to go to heaven to know where to find 72 virgins! This is one crossover I'm not going to say "I divorce you" to three times! (I know, I know: it's more complicated than that...).

So, this issue is all about the New Avengers squaring off with the Badly Written Avengers, when WHAM, the little green not-reflective-of-true-Islam boo-boo-makers, or whatever the politically acceptable term is these days-- they do their whole 9/11 thing. That one scene, of everything all ape-shit? Let's just do that for the next, like, 5 or 6 years.

"What are the Cylons blowing up this week in the Marvel Universe?"

"That character Solo. Remember him? He's blowing up real pretty. He's got a pretty mouth on him. Solo gonna do some prayin' for me, boy. And he better pray real good."

It's a nice cliffhanger, though: this is how Keith Giffen was going to end his v4 Legion run originally, right? DC fired him when he tried to pull this off; it's funny what time does. More importantly, I like how they're calling Marvel Boy the "Current Master of the Cube" now. That's what I call it when a guy puts his fist into my ass, and I manage to "solve" Rubik's... well, the rest is pretty personal.

Incidentally: if a dinosaur doesn't eat one of the little green men next issue, I will want my money back but be too much of a pussy to actually ask for it back from anyone. FYI.

I like the weird red-green thing they're doing with the LEDs throughout the issue, too. If I'm right, this is all an elaborate hint that Tony Stark's airplane is a Skrull!! I'm on to you, Marvel!

That's the best part of the premise is every time a squirrel or chipmunk or kitchen blender is on panel, you get to sit there and go "Watch out, it's a Skrull, girl! Get out of the house, girl! Oh, you're dead, girl." I wish I could read this comic at the stereotypical movie theater from a bad Def Comedy Jam routine, basically. Because I'm a bigot. Who enjoys getting fisted, apparently...? This review is going well.

Anyways, the issue ends with a Stan Lee interview which... is sort of like when you see that show of Hefner and the three desperate blondes. Hefner doesn't still want to be with these sad women-- he wants to be curled up with a cup of hot milk and a rerun of Becker, like a proper old man.

But still: does this issue mean Newsarama people are going to start debating Radical Islamic Fundamentalism now? Oh mama! Bendis just bought you a pink cadillac, Mongo!!!

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Fourteen

I still feel pretty cruddy, but not so cruddy that I can't write a little.

So, let me babble about my history of comics collecting.

Like many people, I'm started and stopped collecting comics more than once. From childhood to, dunno, 12 or 13, something like that, I kept myself a comics collection; then I discovered girls and decided comics were just for kiddies, and got rid of them all.

I started collecting again a year or two later (about 15, I guess), trying to rebuy all of the comics that I had gotten rid of. Smart, eh? I also, at that stage, since I now had some kind of an allowance, started buying stuff that long pre-dated me (we'll get to that in a minute)

Somewhere around 19 I decided I needed cash (probably for weed, is my guess), so I sold a bunch of my back issues, then somewhere around 20 I bought a bunch of them back YET AGAIN (what can I say, I was stupid)

Finally, when I was 21 I opened the store, which means I took pretty much ALL of my back issues and used them as my starting stock.

What this means is there are some comics that I bought 2 or 3 times, at various points in my life, sheesh!

Where this is leading is that I have learned to completely and totally adore the super cheap huge-ass black and white collections of classic comics like the Marvel Essentials, or the DC Showcase volumes.

One of my favorite runs of all is the original LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES. At one point, I had something approaching 95% of them (just missing the first half-dozen appearances in ADVENTURE, I guess), so today's recommendation is SHOWCASE PRESENTS: LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES v1 -- I would have totally saved HUNDREDS of dollars in buying those issues again and again (and that in 80s dollars!)

What I love about the Legion is the wide-eyed optimistic vision of the future that it presents -- it is all uptopia, baby, with teenagers from dozens of worlds, with dozens of mad and fantastic powers, all coming together to protect their shiny, fin-covered future.

And there's something over 30 different stories in this book, for like $17 -- what a damn deal!

I love this stuff, and you should too!

-b

Happy Birthday, CE!

Ugh, I've come down with some sort of horrible cold (thanks, Ben!), and I'm sitting here shivering barely able to put two words together, and trying desperately to not nod off at the counter until Carissa comes in in an hour, so I'm going to push off the return of Around the Store until tomorrow (I hope?)

But I did want to note that today is the 19th anniversary of Comix Experience!

Not the state I want to be in for it, but you take what you can get....

OK, back to nodding off...

-B

In Which We Return And Start Again: Graeme picks out the last of March.

April at last. After the endless slog that was March, it’s time for a new month of optimism, happiness and… Wait, what’s that you’re saying about Jim Mooney...? Oh, crap. Comic reviews and only one April Fools reference under the jump.

ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #10: As if he’s been holding back for the last few issues, Grant Morrison gives us the perfect Superman here, one who’s so in love with humanity that he spends his dying days making sure that we’ll all be okay without him. I can’t help but compare this to “Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?” and this, I have to admit, seems better to me in almost every way - This is the “End of Superman” that I want to read, one that’s… well… more kind, really. And now all the Alan Moore lovers will come to my house and beat me up. Sorry, but this was really Excellent.

COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #5: Yeah, yeah, I get it: It’s the secret origin of Kamandi. And yet, done in such a way that it’s really, really dull. What was the point of destroying another Earth with a plot that doesn’t seem to connect to anything? Will Final Crisis answer this question? Am I a patsy for even caring at this point? Crap.

GANGES #2: This, despite appearing in the same week as both All-Star Superman and the fourth Jack Kirby Fourth World Omnibus, is easily the comic of the week. Despite my normally going on and on about his writing – and I’d happily do so again, based upon the evidence here; a wonderfully wistful, melancholic short story that feels true and familiar in the best ways – it’s the impact of the opening pages, a silent sequence all about design that introduces iconography to follow in the rest of the book, that sticks with me days after reading. Kevin Huizenga remains a creator unlike most, with an eye for the little things that don’t have any names, but are important nonetheless. Really, incredibly Excellent.

GREEN LANTERN #29: From the sublime to the… Well, not ridiculous, but, man, do we really need another chance to read Hal Jordan’s origin? It feels like this is one of the more traveled parts of Green Lantern history, and even though it’s being done well – Taken on its own merits, this is easily a Good book – it still feels tired and unnecessary. That said, I prefer “Secret Origin” than “Year One” as a brand name for this kind of thing, just because, so there’s that.

MIGHTY AVENGERS #11: Finally, this series meets its potential, with a well thought-out issue that mixes old school action and characterization with a plot that makes sense and doesn’t rush between nonsensical events as if there is a race to put everything in place before the next big crossover. Oh, wait. “April Fool.” This is not just the lesser of the two Avengers books, but just a mess of a book on any level – I just don’t get what this story was all about, because it kept switching plots without any rhyme or reason like a hyperactive child: “Okay, so the ‘vengers are fightin’ lots of Venoms! No! Wait! They’re fightin’ Doctor Doom! No! They’re going back in time! No never mind, it’s Doctor Doom again!” Here’s hoping that Secret Invasion brings this book somewhere back to coherence. Crap.

NEW AVENGERS #39: Meanwhile, over with the other Avengers, there’s an issue of filler that only would be interesting if Doug’s theory about it turned out to be true. Part of it is that Echo hasn’t really been shown to be an interesting character in this series yet, so having Wolverine and Hawkeye both flirt with her seems Mary Sue-ish, but the other part is… the Skrull thing just wasn’t that interesting here. Worth looking at for all the art “homages,” though. Eh.

POWER PACK: DAY ONE #1: See, Geoff Johns, this is the way you do origin retells. As much as I loved the Louise Simonson/June Brigman originals, this new version has a much friendlier, faster tone and makes me want to see an ongoing book from the creative team. A Good start, even if Jack is now a Skrull imposter.

This week: Is there any doubt that it’s all about the Skrulls? Secret Invasion starts, and we all get to see just how much of it has already been spoiled online. Personally, I’m holding out for those Luke Cage rumors to be 100% true...

Does the Fish Have Chips?: Douglas meets Glenn, Kal & Peter

This has been an incredibly good week for comics, I have to say. Under the cut: GANGES, ALL STAR SUPERMAN and MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN.

I have no idea why two of the biggest comics stores in NYC didn't get Kevin Huizenga's GANGES #2 (they weren't sold out, it wasn't even on their new-arrival lists)--I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and hope there was something wrong with the shipment. But this is a thoroughly Excellent issue, the kind of thing I want to hand to people who ask "what kind of comics do you like?" It starts with another of the wonderful "Fight or Run" abstract-combat stories Huizenga was doing in Or Else--they're totally idiomatic to Huizenga and totally unlike any other current comics I can think of, and this one frames the central conceit as a video game. (The combat isn't just a conceptual abstraction, it's a visual abstraction.) As it turns out, it is a video game in the context of the issue's second, longer story, "Pulverize," which is about Glenn Ganges working at a dot-com in 1999 and spending all his time after hours playing a first-person shooter with his co-workers. It's a fantastic, hilarious, perfectly observed piece of cartooning, and almost every panel has some great detail: the grayscale, black-line-less, vector-graphics Himalayas; the way we never see Wendy's face when she's awake, even on the back cover; the little explanation of the origins of abstract combat as video games; the description of "Yipper Yap World," a nonviolent game involving a "native tribe of Rasta-ostriches"; the motto of the useless dot-com, "we don't know... and that's a good thing"; the ultraminimal way Huizenga draws Fritzi, and the enormous amount of facial-expression and body-language mileage he manages to get out of, like, five lines...

Jog has already sung the praises of ALL STAR SUPERMAN #10, but I'm going to chime in and say how much I adored this issue, both despite and because of its implied punch line: if Superman did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. I love how compact Morrison's writing is here--he keeps using the late-Invisibles trick of the single panel that stands in for an entire sequence, and he gets better and better at it. (The panel with Superman mapping his own genetic code, circles with increasing magnitudes of magnification radiation from the back of his hand, would be the best panel in pretty much any superhero comic right now; here, it's just another hit-and-run.) And I'm happy seeing Morrison bring more of his personal obsessions into the story--the infant universe of Qwewq from JLA: Ultramarine Corps (not to be confused with Italo Calvino's Qfwfq, of course...), the cube-forms that signify so much in Seven Soldiers and Invisibles, "matters of scale," and metafiction. Excellent stuff.

The oddest and most welcome surprise among this week's comics, though, was MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #39, which I'd never even have picked up if a staffer at Midtown Comics hadn't seen me hovering over that Amazing Fantasy hardcover and pointed it out to me. The surprising part isn't the lead story, a fun but pretty par-for-the-course Spidey/FF team-up: it's the backup feature, a little eight-pager about Spider-Man fighting the Green Goblin, dialogued by Kevin Marlow and plotted and drawn by somebody credited as Tod Keevits. I say "credited," because one glance at the artwork makes it easy to figure out what that's an anagram for: I'm pretty sure this is the first Spider-Man story Steve Ditko has published in upwards of 40 years.

That's "published" and not "drawn," because looking at it it's not clear to me when he drew it: it's much more tightly rendered than the more minimal, gestural style I associate with the Ditko of the last decade or two. (Unfortunately I'm on the opposite side of the country from my scanner right now, and as usual, none of the usual online suspects even bother scanning the MARVEL ADVENTURES stuff.) The story ends fairly abruptly, and given the Goblin connection, I'm wondering if it was actually an abortive stab by Ditko at Amazing Spider-Man #39 that somebody found in a drawer; it's very weird to see his distinctive style with new-school modeled color, though. A Good curiosity on its own, but it's definitely worth seeking out for historical reasons, and if you're interested I'd snap it up before tomorrow.

Arriving 4/2/2008

Pretty decent week this week -- nearly caught up with my work (order form due tomorrow), so, hopefully, "Around the Store" will begin again tomorrow...

2000 AD #1575 2000 AD #1576 2000 AD #1577 2000 AD #1578 ABE SAPIEN THE DROWNING #3 (OF 5) ACTION COMICS #863 ALL NEW ATOM #22 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #555 AMERICAN SPLENDOR SEASON TWO #1 (OF 4) ANGEL AFTER THE FALL #6 ANITA BLAKE VH GUILTY PLEASURES #10 (OF 12) ANNA MERCURY #1 (OF 5) PAINTED CVR ARCHIE #583 BETTY #173 BOY WHO MADE SILENCE #1 BOYS #17 BRIT #5 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #13 CABLE #2 DWS CASANOVA #13 CLANDESTINE #3 (OF 5) COUNTDOWN SPECIAL KAMANDI 80 PAGE GIANT COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 4 DARK TOWER LONG ROAD HOME #2 (OF 5) DARKNESS BUTCHER (ONE SHOT) DC SPECIAL RAVEN #2 (OF 5) DEAD SPACE #2 (OF 6) DETECTIVE COMICS #843 DRAGONLANCE CHRONICLES VOL 3 ROBERTS CVR A #9 (OF 12) EVERYBODYS DEAD #2 FOUNDATION #3 (OF 5) (RES) FRANK FRAZETTAS DARK KINGDOM ONE-SHOT HIGHLANDER WAY O/T SWORD #4 HOPE FALLS #5 (OF 5) INFINITY INC #8 JACK STAFF #15 JONAH HEX #30 JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #269 JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #44 KICK ASS #2 LOGAN #2 (OF 3) LOONEY TUNES #161 LORDS OF AVALON SOD #3 (OF 6) MANY HAPPY RETURNS MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #38 MARVEL SPOTLIGHT IRON MAN MOVIE METAL MEN #7 (OF 8) MIDNIGHTER #18 MOON KNIGHT #17 NEW DYNAMIX #2 (OF 5) NEW EXILES #4 NEW WORLD ORDER #3 NIGHTWING #143 OMEGA UNKNOWN #7 (OF 10) OVERMAN #5 (OF 5) PALS N GALS DOUBLE DIGEST #120 PROJECT SUPERPOWERS #2 Of(6) PS238 #30 PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #18 SCALPED #16 SECRET INVASION #1 (OF 8) SPIDER-MAN FAMILY #8 STUDENTS OF THE UNUSUAL GIANT SIZE MUSIC SPECIAL SUPERGIRL #28 TRIALS OF SHAZAM #12 (OF 12) TWELVE #4 (OF 12) VINYL UNDERGROUND #7 WALKING DEAD #48 YOUNG AVENGERS PRESENTS #3 (OF 6) YOUNG X-MEN #1 DWS ZORRO #2

Books / Mags / Stuff BATMAN GRENDEL NEW PTG TP COMIC FOUNDRY MAGAZINE SPRING 2008 DRAGON HEAD GN VOL 10 (OF 10) ESSENTIAL IRON MAN TP VOL 03 G FAN #83 GREEN ARROW 13 INCH DELUXE COLLECTOR FIGURE HOLMES GN HOWIE ACTION COMICS GN HULK TP PLANET HULK ILLUSTRATION MAGAZINE #22 JEFFREY BROWN LITTLE THINGS SC MEMOIR IN SLICES JENNY FINN TP DOOM MESSIAH JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE TP VOL 10 JUDGE DREDD COMPLETE AMERICA GN LOST OFFICIAL MAGAZINE #16 PX ED MODESTY BLAISE TP VOL 01 GABRIEL SET UP NEW PTG (NOTE PRICE) NEW AVENGERS HC VOL 02 PATH OF THE ASSASSIN VOL 10 TP SECRET INVASION TP INFILTRATION SHAZAM THE GREATEST STORIES EVER TOLD TP SPARROW ASHLEY WOOD HC VOL 02 STORMWATCH PHD TP VOL 02 SUPERMAN 3 2 1 ACTION TP TAG CURSED TP TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #164 TONOHARU GN PART ONE X-MEN FIRST CLASS TP MUTANT MAYHEM ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS VS AMAZONS HC

What looks good to YOU?

-B

Papa Don't Preach: The Toughest Review Diana Ever Wrote, 3/26

During my (admittedly short) time as a comic book critic, I've reviewed comics that made me happy, or sad, or violently ill; works by writers I can't stand, or admire, or wish would try just a bit harder because they're capable of so much more (you know who you are). But there's one comic I've never talked about, and likely never will:

WATCHMEN.

To be totally honest, WATCHMEN intimidates me. It's too great a work for me to discuss, and it's such a central part of comics discourse that I doubt there's much I could say that hasn't been said before, by greater critics than myself.

And I'd be content to let sleeping dogs lie, except the comic I'm about to review can't be discussed outside the WATCHMEN context, and that puts me in a rather uncomfortable position. So I'm just going to take a deep breath and see where things go from here. More after the jump. One of the perks of being a Savage Critic, aside from the company, is that we occasionally get advance copies of comics that have either just been solicited or, on very rare occasions, haven't actually been announced yet.

So when I got a PDF from DC Comics titled MINUTEMEN, I figured it was some colonial-era historical drama, perhaps with some dinosaurs and time-travel thrown in just so we wouldn't forget it was a comic book.

I certainly wasn't expecting a 48-page WATCHMEN prequel by Leah Moore and Dave Gibbons, due for release in July.

Needless to say, I ended up having some deeply conflicted feelings about this comic. So let's start with the positive aspects first: the most obvious pro, of course, is that this one-shot constitutes a return to a world that had been previously self-contained. Granted, it's a prequel, and Alan Moore had already covered most of this the first time around, but the effect on me as a reader is like opening a favorite book for the twentieth time and finding a whole new chapter that I'd never seen before. A sense of the new and the familiar, all the more powerful because WATCHMEN changed the way I read comics.

And Leah Moore delivers a good story, for the most part. Her previous project, ALBION, had left me rather indifferent, but here she really shows a knack for small, silent, understated scenes that drive a huge emotional spike through your heart: Ozymandias handing Mothman his first glass of bourbon with a knowing grin was absolutely chilling, because there's no dialogue, no narration, and yet you just know what Moore's trying to imply.

Obviously, it's the artwork that sells these sequences, and Gibbons deserves a huge round of applause here for sticking so closely to WATCHMEN's character designs. It contributes a lot to that feeling of connection I mentioned - that this really is an organic companion to its parent text.

However, I can't help feeling like the whole project is unnecessary on some level. Part of WATCHMEN's appeal is that it doesn't spell everything out, and we don't necessarily know every detail of what happened in that world Moore and Gibbons created all those years ago. We knew Silhouette and her lover were murdered - did we really need to see it happen? Doesn't that take away from the mysteries of the original, the things left in the shadows? A lot of what Leah Moore does is basically confirm, explicitly, the things her father left to our imagination: yes, Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis were lovers, and the Comedian found out, and Dollar Bill thinking about adding a cape to his costume comes with all the ominous foreshadowing you'd expect...

And when she does add to the mythos, the contributions are questionable at best - nothing in MINUTEMEN technically contradicts anything in WATCHMEN, but there's a hint of that familiar "everything you know is wrong" vibe that annoys me on principle these days (so you can deduce my feelings towards SECRET INVASION too).

Still, in lieu of the Great Bearded Warlock making a comeback, I could settle for this. In short, I'd give it an OKAY if it weren't an early April's Fools' joke.

...

...

Gotcha!

The Super-Spoilers of 3/26: Jog has found God at last

All Star Superman #10:

As expected, this issue starts to wrap things up for the series, and it's sort of a relief. I did like writer Grant Morrison's suite of confrontations between Superman and various doppelgängers, Our Hero pressing to understand himself on the road toward the end of all things (er, keep in mind, I'm the one who thinks the second Bizarro issue is the best of the whole series), but it's high time a little payoff should develop, and that's what happens here. Given that Morrison tosses in an amusingly brief encounter with yet another Authentic Man of Tomorrow, I think even he's gotten antsy.

Over the course of one big day -- events relayed out of chronological order for maximum impact -- Superman sets about accomplishing a lot of big super-challenges. He's very godly (in more than one way... more on that later), but he realizes that he needs to collaborate with others in order to affect lasting change: curing cancer, fixing every bridge in the world, getting the people of Kandor out of that bottle. When put together, the story forms a neat little sequence of Superman helping people out, from the lil' folk in the jar to The Only Girl With Facial Piercings in Metropolis, and getting helped in return, if sometimes in very removed ways. Wholesome fun, this.

Oh, and Superman's pretty sure he's gonna die soon, so he's also trying to prep humanity up for a world without him as much as possible; bathetic as the Girl w' Piercings part is, "You're much stronger than you think you are" is surely the key line of the issue. This leads to some odd implications.

Look! Up in the sky! Morrison may rank Superman highly, but he's revealed to be an impotent deity in important ways, one that needs the input of the not yet quite so powerful to really get things done. And that's nothing compared to the issue's loopiest twist: playing with the Infant Universe of Qwewq, seeking to create a model of what a world would be like without him at all, Superman creates... us.

Yes, Morrison presents Superman quite specifically as our God, the literal creator of each and every one of our human lives, thus handily topping the Superman-as-Jesus metaphor of Superman Returns, and taking his own admiration of the character to dazzlingly ridiculous heights. Ah, but Morrison isn't one for too much worship - not only does our God never directly help us, but the peeks we're granted into 'our' world only reveal moments when humanity looks to the best in themselves. As his Superman seeks diplomacy with others, Morrison emphasizes both how Superman is a man, and how we're all men together, regardless of sexual organs or funny jumpsuits or anything.

VERY GOOD work on this one, particularly considering that the whole Qwewq-as-our-universe idea is recycled wholesale from Seven Soldiers, just as the notion of lil' folk waiting inside us seems a nod to The Filth. The All Star books have always been homages to their own writers as much as their title characters, but it's to Morrison's benefit that he mixes the stuff back in with such intuition.

I suspect it also doesn't escape him that several tens of thousands of added readers will be around for this spin, much in the way that the first issue of Final Crisis will no doubt outsell every issue of Seaguy 2: Slaves of Mickey Eye combined. Yet the end of Superman (and the Crises) may mean more and newer ideas from different sources; speaks to the pleasure of frail mortality in comics series...

Spy vs. Spy, Spy vs. Nature, Spy vs. Himself: Douglas on Kindt and Bendis/Mack

SUPER SPY and NEW AVENGERS #39. Below the cut lurk spoilers (well, a plot summary, really) for the latter. Hence, the cut. For those who care about such things.

Tom Spurgon wrote the other day in his you-must-go-read-it best-of-2007 roundup that " I have a selfish reason for wanting to bring more people to the conversation on [Matt Kindt's] Super Spy: I think the book is good, but I can't figure out how good, and I'd love to see a range of writers and thinkers muse on it in public to help me along. It's the most confusing book of 2007 to me, and for that one of the most compelling."

I read it at last yesterday, after it had been on my shelf taunting me for months, and... well, I'm confused too. I think it's Very Good, but that's kind of a split decision between the elements that work beautifully and the ones that don't work at all. It's one of the most formally grand comics I've seen in a while: 37 interrelated stories about espionage in World War II, each one written and drawn with its own distinct formal guidelines (not necessarily a specific style, but particular drawing and writing techniques, POV, etc.). They form one kind of story in the order they're printed, but that's not chronological order; they can also be read in chronological order by the "dossier numbers" printed at the beginning of each one. They're mostly black-and-white with a single tone color (which changes from time to time), except when they erupt into full-spectrum color in a few passages, generally for pastiches of old comic strips. But the whole book is actually in full color: its pages' blank space is mostly the mottled color of yellowed WWII-era newsprint, with crumpled corners and other marks of age and abuse. There are stories within stories (with the inevitable reference to the 1,001 Nights); there are hidden messages everywhere--everyone seems to be a spy, sending secret information and desperate requests to other spies while trying to act natural--and anything that looks innocuous in one story is inevitably revealed in another to be the vehicle of a hidden message. (A facial mole is actually the mark of an espionage mole: it's a dot of microfilm!)

Cool, yes? Yes, and as somebody who is inordinately fond of complicated formal structures in art in general, I do like it an awful lot. But the places where it falls down are some of the more old-fashioned, prosaic virtues, like character and figure drawing. The story is populated by a whole lot of characters, all of them spies trying to advance their personal and political agendas at any cost--but I found when I'd finished it that I only remembered the name of one of them, Sharlink, "the Shark," a classic femme-fatale type. The espionage material is standard-issue coded-transmission stuff, and characters are broad central-casting types; people discover that their lovers are spies for the other side and betray each other in a strangely facile way; an exotic dancer's desperate, unusual movements are Morse code: "my cover is blown, they're waiting for me, must escape tonight." (And he telegraphs a lot of the "secrets," too: one character explains how he's going to hide a message in every fifth word of a comic strip, and not only do we see every fifth word of the strip circled, but we subsequently see someone picking out those words.) Kindt's artwork is really lovely as cartooning-based drawing (line, tone, composition, abstraction), but it's a little bit off in the context of a story: characters are awkwardly different-looking from panel to panel, facial expressions are vague approximations. I definitely want to read his future comics, but like I said, I'm confused about what I think of this too.

NEW AVENGERS #39: Now, this is a Very Good and very interesting espionage-fakeout narrative--nowhere near as formally impressive as SUPER SPY, but a terrific piece of Bendis serial writing. The plot (SPOILERS like I said) is that Echo and Wolverine have a strange and slightly flirtatious conversation, and Echo heads to Matt Murdock's law office, where she encounters Daredevil; when she asks him a question he should know the answer to and he tries to cover up for the fact that he doesn't know what she's talking about, she realizes something's wrong--and Daredevil reveals himself as a Skrull, who attacks her. But Wolverine's followed them, and fights the Skrull, who gets away. The injured Wolverine explains that "if I was a Skrull looking to sink their claws into our little team, you'd be the one I'd go after," and Echo realizes that "they were going to kill me and replace me." Back at their HQ, Maya seduces Hawkeye; when she wakes up, she looks through her fingers at him.

There are three ways to read this story. The first is to take it at face value. The second, which I suspect is the case, is that Echo has in fact been a Skrull for a good long while--that she's already been killed and replaced, long since, and that her fight with the Daredevil/Skrull this issue is a game to clear her in Wolverine's eyes, since Wolverine is convinced that she's the most likely target. (And then what's going on with her and Hawkeye? Well, he's a Skrull suspect as an unlikely returnee-from-the-dead, but it's still a little confusing.)

And the third is that not only is Echo a Skrull, but Wolverine knows it but doesn't want to let on that he knows. (That "does he know about our past?" routine at the beginning of the issue may be the same kind of leading question as Echo's "Why did you send Captain America to me?" I know Echo and Wolverine worked together in the past, but can anybody who knows her history better than I do tell me if they were ever romantically involved?) Which means--after all the times in this series when Echo has responded to what someone's saying even though her back is to them--that when Wolverine's lying behind her and says "(She can't hear me...)," he knows she can hear him, and is saying it for her to hear and be deceived...

Or, you know, maybe everything is what it seems to be. But how much fun would that be? I have no idea how this will read once we see the whole story (Mack, certainly, is drawing much more straightforwardly and less inventively and attractively than he has with his other Echo material), but for now I'm delighted.

Arriving 3/26/2008

I'm totally swamped, post-ComicsPRO meeting, plus have to get the order form done, and we're about to have our home bathroom remodeled, and I have to write the new TILTING, and then there's the jury duty coming up, and... well, dang, everything happens at once, doesn't it? I'll return to "Around the Store" as soon as I can, I promise!

In the meantime, here's a slightly late list of what's arriving this week at Comix Experience...

A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #78 (A) ALL STAR SUPERMAN #10 AMELIA RULES #20 ANGEL AFTER THE FALL #1 4TH PTG ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #187 ARMY OF DARKNESS XENA WHY NOT #1 (OF 4) AUTHORITY PRIME #6 (OF 6) BADGER SAVES THE WORLD #4 (OF 5) BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #15 BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ORIGINS #4 BERLIN #15 BLACK PANTHER #35 BLUE BEETLE #25 BUDDHA STORY OF ENLIGHTENMENT #1 CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #43 COUNTDOWN LORD HAVOK AND THE EXTREMISTS #6 (OF 6) COUNTDOWN SPECIAL ECLIPSO 80 PAGE GIANT COUNTDOWN TO ADVENTURE #8 (OF 8) COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 5 CROSSING MIDNIGHT #17 DAN DARE #5 (OF 7) LEACH CVR DAREDEVIL #106 DARK 48 #2 DRAFTED #6 DRAIN #6 DUMMYS GUIDE TO DANGER LOST AT SEA #1 (OF 4) FALLEN ANGEL IDW #25 FUTURAMA COMICS #36 GANGES #2 GARGOYLES #8 GRAVEL #2 WRAP CVR GREEN LANTERN #29 GUTWRENCHER #2 (OF 3) HELLBLAZER #242 HOUSEWIVES AT PLAY #18 (A) HUNTERS MOON #5 (OF 5) INDIA AUTHENTIC #11 HANUMAN JACK OF FABLES #21 JSA CLASSIFIED #36 JUGHEAD #188 KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #137 KOLCHAK TALES NIGHT STALKER O/T LIVING DEAD #1 (OF 3) LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #40 LOVELESS #23 MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #34 MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN #11 MARVEL ATLAS #2 (OF 2) MARVEL ILLUSTRATED PICTURE DORIAN GRAY #4 (OF 6) MIGHTY AVENGERS #11 MS MARVEL #25 SII NEW AVENGERS #39 SII NEW WARRIORS #10 PHANTOM #22 POWER PACK DAY ONE #1 (OF 4) PROOF #6 RAMAYAN 3392 AD RELOADED #5 (OF 7) (RES) REICH #2 RETURN O/T GREMLINS #1 (OF 3) (RES) ROGUE ANGEL TELLER OF TALES #2 SAVAGE DRAGON #135 SECRET HISTORY AUTHORITY JACK HAWKSMOOR #1 (OF 6) SHE-HULK 2 #27 SONIC X #31 SORROW #4 (OF 4) SPAWN #176 SPEAK O/T DEVIL #5 (OF 6) SPIDER-MAN WITH GREAT POWER #3 (OF 5) SPIRIT #15 ST TNG INTELLIGENCE GATHERING #3 (OF 5) STAR TREK NEW FRONTIER #1 STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF OLD REPUBLIC #26 VECTOR PART 2 STRANDED #3 STRONGARM #5 (OF 5) TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE #49 TEEN TITANS #57 TEEN TITANS GO #53 TERMINATOR 2 INFINITY #7 TRANSHUMAN #1 (OF 4) TRON #5 ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #52 ULTIMATE HUMAN #3 (OF 4) ULTIMATE IRON MAN II #4 (OF 5) ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #120 ULTIMATE X-MEN #92 UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS #7 (OF 8) USAGI YOJIMBO #110 WILDSTORM REVELATIONS #6 (OF 6) WOLVERINE FIRST CLASS #1 WORLD OF WARCRAFT #5 WORLD WAR HULK AFTERSMASH DAMAGE CONTROL #3 (OF 3) X-MEN FIRST CLASS VOL 2 #10 X-MEN LEGACY #209 DWS ZOMBIE BROADWAY ONE SHOT

Books / Mags / Stuff A WISH OF MY SISTER GN (A) ADVENTURES OF LITTLE ARCHIE TP VOL 02 APOCALYPSE NERD TP CLOUDS ABOVE GN COMPLETE OMAHA THE CAT DANCER TP VOL 07 (A) DADDYS GIRL HC DARK WRAITH OF SHANNARA GN EDISON STEELHEADS LOST PORTFOLIO EDUCATION OF HOPEY GLASS HC FIRST BORN TP VOL 01 FLIGHT EXPLORER TP VOL 01 FRITZ LANGS M GN FUNERAL OF THE HEART TP GHOST RIDER TP TRAIL OF TEARS IRON MAN DOOMQUEST PREM HC JACK KIRBYS FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS HC VOL 04 JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA SER 2 BALANCED INNER CS JUXTAPOZ VOL 15 #4 APR 2008 MARVEL FANFARE STRANGE TALES TP MMW ATLAS ERA HC VOL 02 TALES ASTONISH MOUSE GUARD TP FALL 1152 MPD PSYCHO TP VOL 04 NEW UNIVERSAL TP EVERYTHING WENT WHITE NIGHTWING THE LOST YEAR TP PREVIEWS VOL XVIII #4 PUNISHER MAX TP VOL 09 LONG COLD DARK SHOWCASE PRESENTS BOOSTER GOLD TP VOL 01 SOULFIRE SC VOL 01 SPIDER-MAN PREM HC ONE MORE DAY STARDUST KID VOL 1 TP (RES) THAT SALTY AIR GN ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN TP SPANISH COLLECTION ULTIMATE X-MEN TP SPANISH COLLECTION WIZARD MAGAZINE #199 SECRET INVASION CVR

Plus: from Baker & Taylor:

Rabbi's Cat 2 HC Awkward & Definition TP

What looks good to YOU?

-B

Because I can't skip two weeks in a row...: Graeme reads some superhero books, writes some stuff about them. You know the drill.

Between sickness, work craziness and deadlines for everything under the sun, it’s surprising that I’ve had any time to read comic books. Add in the fact that Brian Hibbs got me addicted to Death Note, and it’s even more surprising that I have anything to write about under the jump apart from “Light Yagami is messed up, dude.” And yet, commentary about superhero books await you if you click that “Click here to read more”...

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #554: Now that we’re three quarters of the way through Brand New Day – it stops having that branding after all the writers have been introduced, right? – it’s worth noting that we seem to have established this quality level that could best be described as Okay And On Time. None of the BND issues have been stunning when taken on their individual merits, but there really is something comforting about the almost-weekly nature of the book and the fact that it’s not that bad, really. Bob Gale somewhat overdoes the knowingly-retro flavor in this issue (Overall, Marc Guggenheim’s been the most satisfying of the writers so far, but I’m hoping for more from Dan Slott’s second go-around, when he doesn’t have to introduce a status quo), and Phil Jiminez’s art just doesn’t really seem Spider-Man-ish enough for me, but at the same time, it swings by in a completely inoffensive manner, so it seems good enough, if that makes sense…?

CAPTAIN AMERICA #36: Call me irresponsible, but I’m really hoping that the reveal at the end of the issue lays groundwork for a return of Steve Rogers. Captain BuckyCyborg is a much more interesting character, and it’s a lot more fun seeing him try (and fail) to live up to the legacy of an icon than seeing the icon in action. Which is, in a way, my way of saying that this was a Good issue, and yet more proof that Ed Brubaker doesn’t need his characters alive to write compelling stories about them.

DEATH OF THE NEW GODS#7: There may be something wonderfully old school about the melodramatic “You didn’t expect this!” nature of this issue’s cliffhanger, but seriously, what actually happened at the end there? Starlin’s writing has a great old school crassness about it that really fits on this project, but his art just feels out of place – It doesn’t have either a modern look or the sheer graphic power of Kirby’s work – making this book even more of an oddity than it would be otherwise. It’s like a strange guilty pleasure, but the guilt comes from not really knowing why I’m enjoying it.

FLASH #238: Well, that’ll teach me to have high expectations for a book. As a big fan of Tom Peyer’s Hourman as well as his blogging, I was pretty excited about the idea of him stepping up to take over the Flash following Mark Waid’s too-soon departure. Finally, I thought, a writer who will be able to bring back the Silver Age weirdness of the book and also bring some humor with bite… and, to be fair, he’s done both of those things, but at the price of characters seeming out of character in service of plot, and jarringly so. Wally’s non-sequitur about feeling stressed because of lack of money to a reporter at a disaster site may have gotten the story moving, but was enough to stop the reader in their tracks in terms of “Doesn’t he, you know, know better?” Maybe there’ll be something later in the story to explain suddenly-grumpy Wally, but right now, this was a fun-but-flawed Okay first issue to Tom’s run.

FX #1: Hey, suddenly it’s 1986 again! Considering the incredibly generic script, the lazy John Byrne artwork (and, really, it’s very very lazy) and the pricetag, there’s really only one thing to recommend this Crap: John Workman’s lettering. Now there’s a creator who never lets you down.

TANGENT: SUPERMAN'S REIGN #1: Is it wrong of me to have really, really enjoyed this, especially Ron Marz’s back-up about the history of the Tangent world? There’s nothing particularly new about it, after all, and it’s not like DC isn’t already full of alternate Earths, but stil... Something (Perhaps Matthew Clark’s artwork, even though the series was trailed with Jamal Igle attached?) clicked for me, and I ended up wanting to read more to the point of almost buying the Tangent Comics trades. Luckily, I stopped myself before going too far, but still; who could’ve expected this to be so enjoyably Good?

This week? Man, if you’re not picking up the Fourth World Omnibus with remixed Hunger Dogs, then you hate life. It's that simple.

Abhay Hurried Out Some Reviews This Morning

I don't have anything interesting to say, but I noticed the other people who write for this site— they were all having busy weeks; I thought I'd try to chip in with some quickie reviews before work. Here’s what I’ve read lately…

Incredible Hercules #116: I was flipping through the latest issue at random-- I like Khoi Pham's art, so I was glancing at it for that when I noticed this issue has this sweet detail: the bulk of the action takes place on the Hellicarrier from the 24-issue Doug Moench Godzilla comic book Marvel published in the 1970's. Shit, man, I never even read those comics, but I just liked that detail so I read the rest of the issue.

It's a big ridiculous fight comic-- I guess the book shares the same creative team as World War Hulk, which also succeeded with me by focusing on things punching / getting punched. With this Hercules comic, I didn't really understand what people were talking about in-between punches but maybe more attentive fans found those bits pleasurable. Near the end it turns into some strange mythology thing; lessons are learned; morals are taught; Blossom learns why she's bleeding; etc. But I want to look on the bright side, and on the bright side? On the bright side, some guy grabs a missile from out of the sky and hits another guy with it. I approve.

It's a nice detail, the thing with the Godzilla Hellicarrier, though. I'll have forgotten 21 pages of this comic in a week, but that page where they mention the thing about the Hellicarrier is probably what'll stick with me. Its just a nice piece of nerd archaeology. It creates a sense of the "Marvel Universe" being its own place with its own history -- even the decommissioned hellicarriers rusting away in junkyards have a history to them!-- without being a "This will only make sense to you if you read issue #8 of DAZZLER (i.e. "Hell... Hell is for Harry") in 1981" type thing, like out of some DC comic. The rest of the issue doesn't depend on understanding the significance of the particular hellicarrier, at least that I could tell. For me, it's just marshmallows in a cup of hot chocolate.

Plus, it's a shout-out to one of the too-few series to star one of my favorite Marvel characters: Mr. Dum Dum Dugan.

He just seems violent! SHIELD is a massive international, multinational counter-espionage organization, outfitted with the most advanced technology, manned by the best and the brightest-- and one of the guys in charge is a violent Irish nonagenarian in a bowler hat...? I think that services a potent theme: all the fancy technology or well-trained people can get you so far, but you still need to have a couple guys handy who seem willing to kick some ass and wear hats while doing so. I think that’s a way better theme than the thing about responsibility or whatever—a better theme for practical living. Dum Dum Dugan – there’s just a lot of unrealized upside to that character.

Nijigahara Holograph: I re-read this scanlated manga the other day. I'm surprised I didn’t see Nijigahara Holograph end up on more best of the year lists; it was in the top 10 of that lengthy Journalista list; it was on mine and I didn't even like it that much last year. I guess a lot of people may not be cool with the whole scanlation thing though.

If you missed it, Nijigahara Holograph is a fractured comic that alternates between a group of young students and those students in their early adulthoods, both mired in a seemingly endless cycle of abuse and violence. The story unfolds like a puzzle. After my first read through, I'd mistaken a lot of the imagery for surrealism-- I don't really like surrealism so I didn't rate the comic as I highly as maybe I should have, though I was still very impressed with it for technical reasons, for the mood of it. But having read it again recently, I think my earlier reaction was wrong. There's more of an underlying logic to the series than I'd picked up on the first time through. I think I got more out of it the second time because I got to read it faster, so I was able to connect fragments that I'd missed before.

I feel like I've read essays by people who think comics can't be scary, because the static imagery of comics aren't conducive to horror-jolts, because the ability of the reader to control the flow of the comic undercuts the ability of a work to take over and frighten the reader, etc. But Nijgahara Holograph to me is ... it's at least spooky, though not because of some cinematic effect. If a comic tries only to recreate cinema or recreate horror literature-- it's leaving a lot off of what comics can do off the table, and spooky might be out of reach. What I think Nijigahara Holograph is a good example of... What's happening in the panels isn't scary-- but the choice of panels, the selection of images in the panels, and their juxtaposition, those all make me think, you know, "Who the hell is the guy that made this thing? What was going on with that guy? Why'd he draw this thing? What was going on that day that he put that image next to that image?" I think it's at least spooky when a comic gets you asking those questions. Why do I keep using the word "spooky?" It's altogether ooky.

What else... Ghost Rider and Iron Fist: I liked the latest issue of both of those. I thought both of those were fun. Art on both had good pages and bad pages, or good panels and bad panels, but … has Iron Fist ever punched Ghost Rider in the skull? I have no idea; I never really read either character’s book before on account of both characters being pretty crappy. I’m always confused when I read other people talk about Iron Fist, what they’re getting out of it since it seems like they’re getting more out of it than I am. It’s a nice kung fu comic—it’s pleasant to follow—there’s nothing wrong with it. I feel like other people are getting way more out of it than I am, though.

Oh, classic comics… I read Tintin in the Land of the Soviets a couple months ago—December? I thought I’d try reading all the Tintin books in order, but Tintin in the Land of the Soviets put the kibosh to that. That’s sort of Tintin before Herge had figured out what the hell he was doing. It’s not very good. Tintin wanders around a fake, propaganda version of Soviet Russia, and has an incessant number of dumb, improbable, and usually boring adventures. It’s a long book which overstayed its welcome-- I don't think it was intended to be read all at once. If you like seeing comics before they’re good, or artists before they figure out their style, it’s an option, I suppose, but I'm not sure what you'd get out of the experience. I also read a Carl Barks comic the other day, too. The Fantastic River Race from 1957. That was fantastic, but I don’t… you know, I just don’t have anything to say about it. This page was fun. The duck characters get in a steamboat race with the dog characters, and cause so much craziness that they lose the race but win the day…? How the hell do you review that? If you hate dogs or love steamboats, that’s the comic for you. I assume you don’t have an opinion on ducks. Who has an opinion on ducks? Well, to eat, I suppose—I don’t think duck is particularly tasty eating. I guess when I read a comic about ducks, though, I usually don’t think about what it’d be like to eat the main characters. Maybe I should. Maybe that’d make the reading experience more pleasurable. Couldn’t hurt.

Someone once told me they test jet engines by shooting ducks into them. I don't know if that's true, but I suppose you could have an opinion of that. I don't think Carl Barks ever made a comic about that, though.

So...

Oh, wait, I also read the new issue Iron Man: Is this arc still not over yet? It’s an extremely long storyline—I don’t dislike it but I’m just sort of surprised it’s still going. The latest issue is all about how Iron Man can built a fancy armor suit with repulsor rays in it, but he’s too cheap to put a camera in his helmet. So Iron Man has this fight last issue, but this issue, everyone’s like “We don’t believe that actually happened.” Iron Man doesn’t have one of those cameras (like the ones cops keeps in their cars) in his suit somewhere, or a webcam or …? Why didn’t he film that shit? He doesn’t even build a Kodak into that thing?? Most people have cameras in their cell phones; how is a cell-phone better than Iron Man armor? Maybe the camera got broke when Iron Man had the big fight with that one asshole, back whenever. I guess that would explain it. Incidentally, how is this arc not over yet? It doesn’t even feel half over! Maybe the plan is for it to never be over… This comic also featured Dum Dum Dugan, though, so again, points for that.

I like this page from Strange Tales #151—layouts by Jack Kirby, illustrations by Jim Steranko. I saw that the other day, though I didn’t read the issue. That’s early in Steranko’s career—the first issue of Strange Tales he did, the first Marvel comic he did from 1966. I guess I like the bit with the grenades. I think that makes the page for me. In real life, I don’t think that would work though. Please be careful with grenades. I didn’t read the issue though so I can’t really talk about it—sometimes, old comics are just for looking at and not for reading.

This comic also featured Mr. Dum Dum Dugan. Let’s start a fanclub.

Hell: Marvel didn't need to tell me, on 3/19

War is Hell: First Flight of the Phantom Eagle #1 (of 5):

I thought there was something odd about this book the whole time I was reading it. But it wasn't until I checked the credits box and saw Todd Klein's name that I realized what was going on: There's no sound effects in this thing.

And the reason that feels odd to me is because prolific Howard Chaykin is doing the drawing, which naturally made me wonder how Klein might handle those famous webs and strings and walls of letters that Ken Bruzenak used to do with Chaykin back in the day, the ones various parties have provided since then.

Well, no luck.

There's plenty of possible reasons. This is a realistic, ostensibly hellish war comic from Marvel's MAX line, after all, and cutting out the sound effects has long been a handy comic book shortcut to sophistication. V for Vendetta is the most obvious example of this approach, although there were several works before it that took the same route, including Chaykin's own 1978 original graphic novel Empire, written by Samuel R. Delany and most eager to distance itself from the sequential arts pack.

Actually, Empire is also the earliest comic I can think of that devoted whole pages to horizontal 'wide' panels, so as to amplify the action, a technique that didn't become popular until decades later and is now impossible to escape. Ironically, Chaykin didn't seem all that comfortable with the style; it always struck me as a bit inert, like all of those solid images were kin to the novel and album covers Chaykin was illustrating around that time.

Which does bring me to another possible, maybe even simpler reason for the state of War: Chaykin is changing, for whatever reason. But it's not a sudden thing, when you look at it.

I mean, the Howard Chaykin of today is different from the Howard Chaykin of, say, Blackhawk (just to keep it in the air). Chaykin '88 could be counted on for a lot of specific visual acts; expanding our view from those letters -- which could always be counted on to act as fitting, oft-geometric design elements as per the page as a whole -- there was a certain compression to his pages, a tight-wound cohesion that had a way of holding the eye on the page and dragging it in the appropriate direction.

It didn't hurt that Chaykin was (and is) a wordy writer, which had a more obvious way of slowing things down, but the density of his overall visual scheme gave the reader pause in more ways than one. And sometimes he'd poke at elements of the form for specific effect, or just exploit his command of the form. I don't have pictures, but surely everyone who read Blackhawk remembers the bit with the empty word balloons, or the finale that ratcheted up the tension by dividing things into tiny panels, skipping from face to face to object to face etc., only to release the tension in a splash image?

Don't look for that in here.

But Chaykin began to decompress way before now. I'd say 1993's Midnight Men was the first of his post-American Flagg! works as a writer/artist to seem appreciably 'lighter' in style, although the 1990 graphic novel Wolverine/Nick Fury: The Scorpio Connection (written by Archie Goodwin) is also notable, maybe in suggesting a deliberately stripped-down approaching to working with another person's script, something he hadn't done much since the '80s began.

If anything, the big surprise is that there was little shift in style between 1996's Batman: Dark Allegiances and 2003's Mighty Love, despite Chaykin's lack of comics output in the interim. Following that, his visual works became increasingly airy, and fascinated with symmetrical or repeating page designs, and floating sound effects - lots of those. I think there is a difference still between Chaykin's recent work as a writer/artist and his art-only projects, in that the former exhibit (naturally!) a tighter command of the page. I'm not that interested in Chaykin's writer-only work; his 'writing,' to me, has always been primarily visual, his words read at least partially as their own especially intuitive visual elements.

Meanwhile, his increasing art-only works have become delighted with computer textures, hugging his increasingly haggard, grimacing character art; I suspect he works closely with his colorists. The sound effects have been gradually disappearing, as if all the panel-exploding might of one interest is fading against an in-panel fixation on clothing detail and tactile buildup. Moving inward.

Or hell, maybe the editors or someone shouted WAR COMICS ARE SERIOUS BUSINESS and he left the BLAMs out. I don't know.

Anyhow, this is an OKAY start for a WWI-set aviation thing. Garth Ennis is the writer (in case you were wondering), and, like a good math student, he's intent on showing his work. There's a lot of talking in his account of a worn-down RFC base and the booming Yankee hotshot that fakes his way in and accidentally doesn’t get massacred in the sky (yet) - period terminology and slang flows freely across several broad character types, like the American that tries awfully hard to act and sound British, or the drunkard Captain that stumbles right into a propeller and gets chopped to bits. I guess that's gallows humor?

Ennis does manage a fairly compelling take on the start-and-stop chaos of early air warfare, which covers a bit for the lack of character, as does Chaykin's extra-disheveled character art; the protagonist in particular is no more than a grinning, strutting symbol of American romantic adventurism all but begging to get crushed by reality. This is a mostly serious war comic written by Garth Ennis, so bank on the dark, killing heart of good, bleeding men to make an appearance later on. And expect more pale, silent air from Chaykin, continuing his own flight.

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Thirteen

So, since it is the (spooky!) 13th day of this little experiment, let's go with something off the Horror rack?

I think I mentioned before that we also have a Licensed rack, and an awful lot stuff in "Horror" could fit there as well -- EVIL DEAD, Clive Barker comics, HALLOWEEN, and so on.

Ditto with today's pick -- RICHARD MATHESON'S I AM LEGEND. After all, it was originally a prose book (and, eventually, several different films as well).

IAL was originally published back in the day by Eclipse, and it was one of the first books that IDW "rescued" from Eclipse's backlist. It is adapted by Steve Niles, back in the days in which he was primarily known as an "adapter" than as someone doing original comics -- Niles also did most of the Eclipse Clive Barker comics, for example -- and while I can't say that I've read the original prose novel by Matheson, on a pure guess there's not a TON chopped out from the text. That is to say that there's a lot of words here, and there's a fair amount of caption-describing-the-art going on.

But, to a degree, that's a good thing, I think, in prose adaptations, because it seems to me that the value of the original work IS the original work itself.

The art is by Elman Brown, whom 15 minutes of internet searching isn't turning up a lot for -- he did work in other Eclipse/Niles horror comics (like FLY IN MY EYE), and, apparantly, he drew a few issues of PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL back in 1994, but the most recent credit I can find for him is an issue of TALES OF THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES in '96 -- so it's apparently been 11 years since he's drawn a comic.

That's a shame because I find his art very appealing -- there's a big Wrightson thing going on there, but he also has a really clear grasp on comics storytelling and mood, and is really terrific at capturing emotion.

All in all, I think this is a great comic, and certainly works better than any of the movie attempts (that I've seen, at least -- haven't seen the Will Smith version yet)

I'm going to go with a bonus here, because this isn't actually my favorite thing in my horror section, but the thing that IS my fave isn't a comic at all -- it is Max Brook's WORLD WAR Z: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE ZOMBIE WAR, which is straight-up prose. This is one of the best "post-apocalypse" stories I've ever read (even if, y'know, humanity survives that one in the end; which I don't think is really a spoiler, since the title pretty much gives it away).

What I adore about this book is that it is incredibly thoughtful about the global nature of apocalypse -- it is as first-person recollections of "what happened" -- as well as insanely detailed-oriented about scope and ramification and incident. Every 2-3 pages the action shifts to another situation, WHOLLY different than the one before it, and each and every one makes you think (and go "Damn! never thought of THAT!")

You want a prose book that would make an amazing comic book adaptation? Here ya' go, kids.

That's today's pick(s) -- see you tomorrow!

-B

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Twelve

OK, so I've clearly lost the daily pattern we had at the start -- my apologies, it's been a rough and busy week. I SHOULD be able to do daily through Wednesday this week, but then I have to disappear again (ComicsPRO's annual in Vegas)

Matt Wagner is one of my favorite creators in the whole wide world. (Come by the store some day and I'll tell you the story of why I'm in comics, and why Matt is really the one to blame) You can tell if you look at the store, because I've got more than 20 pieces of original Matt Wagner art (most commissions) hanging around the store -- including an on-going series of JSA portraits (in fact, I even have two that I still haven't even gotten framed yet)

In most circumstances this would probably lead to a discussion of MAGE: THE HERO DISCOVERED, except that, well, it is OP from Image at the moment, and who knows when it is coming back into print? If it does, grab it.

But, since it is OP, let me relate another story here...

(This is where I would have put the jump, if it wasn't for the small fact that more than half of you HATE the jump. We're trying to figure out what to do in the long run, but I heard ya', at least)

This was early in the store's life -- probably about '93 or '94. A gentleman came into the store, and he was pretty obviously on his last legs with AIDS. He was weak and emaciated, had palsy and could barely walk. He had a few sores on his face as well.

He asks me if I have any comics about suicide.

...

Now, I'm seriously torn here. The guy's sick, and my assumption is that the reason he's asking is because he's contemplating killing himself. This is the first time (and the only time since) that I felt like I had to make a moral decision about selling someone a comic book, y'know?

In the end, I walked over to the rack and pulled off a copy of GRENDEL: THE DEVIL INSIDE, the story of the Brian Li Sung version of Grendel by Matt and Bernie Mireault.

This story aside, the is a great comic, told in fragment, by a fragmented mind teetering on the brink of extinction. Wagner hasn't, I don't think, really gotten his due as a writer, and the experimental efforts he had through the 90s. Sure, some of them failed pretty massively, but overall he's changed the way I approach a peiece of comics writing by his playing with technique and format. And Mireault's art is astonishing here, bubbling with madness and grief.

I never saw the sick man again, so I don't know if DEVIL INSIDE helped him or hurt him. I dearly hope it is the former.

-B

Arriving 3/19/2008

100 BULLETS #89
A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #77 (A)
AFTERBURN #2
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #554
ANGEL AFTER THE FALL #5
AVENGERS CLASSIC #10
BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS #5
BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #159
BETTY & VERONICA SPECTACULAR #82
BIRDS OF PREY #116
BOHDA TE #1
BRAVE AND THE BOLD #11
CAPTAIN AMERICA #36
CAPTAIN MARVEL #4 (OF 5) SII
CATWOMAN #77
CHECKMATE #24
CIRCLE #5
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 6
DANGERS DOZEN #3
DARK IVORY #1 (OF 4)
DARKNESS VS EVA #1 (OF 4)
DEATH OF THE NEW GODS #7 (OF 8)
EVERYBODYS DEAD #1
EX MACHINA #35
FABLES #71
FEAR AGENT #19 HATCHET JOB (PT 3 OF 5)
FLASH #238
FOOLKILLER #4 (OF 5)
FRANKLIN RICHARDS SPRING BREAK
FX #1 (OF 6)
GENE SIMMONS ZIPPER #4
GHOST RIDER #21
GHOST WHISPERER #1
GRENDEL BEHOLD THE DEVIL #5 (OF 8)
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #25
GRIMM FAIRY TALES PIPER #1 (OF 4)
HACK SLASH SERIES #10 SEELEY CVR A
IMMORTAL IRON FIST #13
INCREDIBLE HERCULES #115
INVINCIBLE #49
IRON MAN #27
JUNGLE GIRL #5 PX ED
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #19
LOOKING FOR GROUP #3
MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #22
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED ILIAD #4 (OF 8)
NEW WORLD ORDER #2
ORDER #9
PROGRAMME #9 (OF 12)
PVP #39
RED SONJA #31
ROBIN #172
SCOOBY DOO #130
SHADOWPACT #23
SHOJO BEAT APR 08
SIMPSONS COMICS #140
SNAKEWOMAN CURSE OF THE 68 #1 (OF 4)
SPAWN GODSLAYER #7
SUPER FRIENDS #1
SUPERMAN BATMAN ANNUAL #2
SWORD #6
TANGENT SUPERMANS REIGN #1 (OF 12)
THOR #7
WAR IS HELL FIRST FLIGHT PHANTOM EAGLE #1 (OF 5)
WASTELAND #15
WITCHBLADE #116 SEJIC CVR A
WOLVERINE ORIGINS #23
WORLD WAR HULK AFTERSMASH WARBOUND #4 (OF 5)

Books / Mags / Stuff
AL CAPPS COMPLETE SHMOO HC THE COMIC BOOKS
ALL WE EVER DO IS TALK ABOUT WOOD GN
ALTER EGO #76
BACK ISSUE #27
BATMAN THE KILLING JOKE SPECIAL ED HC
BIRTH GN
CINEFEX #113 MAR 2008
CLASSIC COMIC BOOK CHARACTERS #8 GRENDEL
COMICS BUYERS GUIDE #1641 MAY 2008
COMICS NOW #2
DANGEROUS INK MAGAZINE #2
DUNGEON MONSTRES TP VOL 01
EARTH X TP TRILOGY COMPANION
FRUITS BASKET GN VOL 19 (OF 22)
HACK SLASH HC VOL 01 OMNIBUS
JACK THE RIPPER GN
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES IN 31ST CENTURY TP VOL 01
MAD MAGAZINE #488
MAINTENANCE TP VOL 2
MIGHTY AVENGERS PREM HC VOL 01 ULTRON INITIATIVE
MOON KNIGHT TP VOL 02 MIDNIGHT SUN
NORTH WORLD GN VOL 01
OVERSTREET COMIC BOOK PG VOL 38 MARVEL VILLAINS HC
OVERSTREET COMIC BOOK PG VOL 38 MARVEL VILLAINS SC
OVERSTREET COMIC BOOK PG VOL 38 STAR WARS SC
PAINKILLER JANE TP VOL 02 THINGS EXPLODE
PHOENIX TP VOL 12
PRINCESS AT MIDNIGHT GN
RED SONJA HC VOL 04 ANIMALS & MORE
REPO TP
SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE TP VOL 06 HOURMAN AND PYTHON
SPIDER-MAN REIGN TP
STRANGEWAYS MURDER MOON GN
TANK GIRL SC ARMADILLO & A BUSHEL OF OTHER STORIES
WITH THE LIGHT RAISING AUTISTIC CHILD GN VOL 02
X-FACTOR TP VOL 04 HEART OF ICE

What looks good to YOU?

-B

And Now, Jog: 3/12 comics were three days ago

Gutsville #3 (of 6):

Glad this one's back in action. It's an Image miniseries from writer Simon Spurrier and artist Frazer Irving; both 2000 AD veterans, the former was last seen in US comics via the recent Silver Surfer: In Thy Name miniseries, while the latter has provided distinctive visuals to projects ranging from DC's Robin to Marvel's Silent War. Issue #2 came out roughly half a year ago, the subsequent delay apparently owing to personal and familial illnesses on Irving's part. The remaining half of the series should be out in shorter order.

I like it so far, and this issue is a GOOD indicator of why. I don't think it's saying too much to note that Irving's art is the series' most immediate draw, nor does it even need be said that the book's concept -- an unstuck-in-time theocratic society planted in an enclosed world of strange magic -- allows for images that strongly recall Irving's work on maybe his most acclaimed project, the Grant Morrison-written Klarion the Witch Boy.

But Irving's work is better here. Perhaps the story's particular setting, the belly of some seafaring monster, has proven inspirational; his monochrome environments swirl and roll, backgrounds typically little more than fleshy patterns sunk with color, while his human characters bend and jut expressively, their clothing or mustaches typically carrying as much weight as their body language.

The occasional monster designs are more wrinkled & creepy, and much funnier - this issue has a long-clawed wraith in a wide-brimmed hat with a huge mouth and a long, drippy tongue plastered onto its stomach. Overall, there's a strong sense of place at work, not so much original as emphatic. Irving also has the habit of inserting a vivid glimpse of a dog's asshole into climactic splash pages of flight, which I consider worthwhile. Plus: the occasional pause for psychedelics.

All of this serves to deepen Spurrier's script, which is otherwise a simple enough piece of fantastical class/race/religious struggle, complete with forbidden affections between a noble-wed girl and the local ratcatcher/frustrated artist, and brewing revolution against the men that rule the belly of the beast. A serial(?) killer, weapons from the modern world I like it more for the details; exposition might be provided by a character, say, accidentally bumping into a book and reading several pages of background information to us, but there is wit to some of the characterizations, and a playful attitude exhibited toward the general concept. "Sodomitic puddle of cockpaste" is a good expression.

So right. Did I say GOOD? I said it again. About on the level I expect from a contemporary comic of the type. I don't think the other two issues should be hard to find, so try it out.

All will be well if if if if if: Douglas on two 3/12 Marvels.

Two '70s throwbacks, of different kinds. Short version: the new Mighty Avengers is a very nice execution of a badly flawed premise, and The Last Defenders struggles with the idea behind what it's building on. More under the cut.

MIGHTY AVENGERS #10: I'm still really enjoying Brian Michael Bendis's attempts to give every issue of this series (and of New Avengers) its own plot and tone--it helps prevent the sense a lot of other series have that they're written for the trade and broken up wherever the plot allows--and I'm glad he's still doing the info-overload tricks (the thought balloons, the constant internal chatter from Tony's armor) that make this series read differently from its sibling. This issue: Iron Man and Dr. Doom, stranded in the '70s! (Well, in the comics of the '70s--when the issue plugged on pg. 2 came out, the band plugged on a T-shirt on the same page hadn't formed yet.)

But the first premise of this issue is that Iron Man is terrified of setting off some kind of "butterfly effect" in the past that changes the present. Fair enough--but they discuss their previous experience with time travel this issue, and Tony wasn't nearly as worried about changing history then. (I suppose there's a Marvel Universe precedent for being able to change history, which is why we have e.g. "Days of Future Past," but has there been a Marvel butterfly-effect story?) For that matter, if Tony had access to a time machine--and given the opening sequence of last month's Fantastic Four, we have to assume that his pal Reed Richards still has one--wouldn't the very first thing he would do be going back a few months to save Steve Rogers?

The second premise is that since Mastermind made everyone forget that Bob had ever existed, he can openly retrieve Reed's time machine without fear of changing history. This makes no sense at all--if Mastermind makes me forget where I left my keys, that doesn't mean they aren't where I left them.

That said, the execution moves so smoothly the plot problems almost don't get in the way. This is Mark Bagley in peak form--if Trinity looks this good, I'm going to be really happy. The production tricks are really clever, too: the little bottom-of-page ads for "on sale now!" comics, the "continued after next page" squibs, and the old-fashioned dot-screen coloring (anybody want to identify what the first comic to use that technique to indicate a sequence set in the past was? I'm curious) make the very contemporary verbal cat-and-mouse games between Iron Man and Dr. Doom seem weirdly anachronistic in a really appropriate way. (Doom's dialogue is just far enough off--"Okay. Yes" doesn't sound like him--that Tony's suspicions that he's a Skrull are reasonable.) Bendis can't quite channel '70s--the "It's bedlam on the street as New York's glitziest citizens run in mortal terror!" sequence is way cornier than Marvel comics of that era actually were--but as long as you don't stop to think about logic, the style and flow of the story are Very Good.

THE LAST DEFENDERS #1: I'm not quite sure what Joe Casey and Keith Giffen are getting at here. The joy of Steve Gerber-era Defenders, which is what this is pretty much a callback to, wasn't entirely that it was a team made up of second-stringers and characters who had absolutely nothing to do with each other except that they basically drank at the same bar; it was that Defenders was deliberately unimportant in the scheme of things, and Gerber could therefore do any bizarre thing he wanted with it. (A Trout In the Milk and friends wrote a series of very long posts on the dynamics of Gerber's Defenders--all the parts are linked here.)

This story, though, is about Nighthawk, the Very Most Boring Superhero of All Time, assembling a new group of Defenders (under the auspices of the Initiative), which is sort of like assembling a new group of people to drink at a bar that closed 20 years ago. They don't have anything to do with each other (the other three are She-Hulk, Colossus and the Blazing Skull); they fight some people affiliated with the Sons of the Serpent, which I always get confused with Kobra for some inexplicable reason, plus one of the Brothers Grimm refers to Nighthawk as "bird-man" the way the Hulk used to. Then there's an apropos-of-nothing flashback to the Ancient One turning the Son of Satan away 40 years ago, some tonal fluctuations toward goofiness (a caption reading "The Sons of the Serpent are getting their mystic ceremony on," the group smashing through a window as one of them yells "Defenders defenestrate!"), and finally a page on which Head seems to have drifted over from The All-New Atom (oh, fine, it's a Rigellian recorder) and Yandroth explains to him that the Defenders are actually incredibly important if they've got a lineup that... is nothing like the one in this issue and a lot like the Dr. Strange/Namor/Hulk-era one. This could be the making of an interesting story about fruitless nostalgia, especially since the title of the miniseries (and the title page) imply that it's meant to be the end of the line for the Defenders concept. But it seems to be an exercise in fruitless nostalgia instead, and the totally generic artwork doesn't help. Eh, I'm afraid.

*****

As long as I'm here, I might as well plug two not-comics-related projects I'm working on: Mincing Up the Morning is a collection of videos of musicians whose birthday it is each day, and Circle the Globe is a linkblog--just a bunch of interesting quotes and pictures and videos I encounter. Because, you know, everybody needs more stuff on the Internet to look at.