Abhay: Inquisition - The Names #1

This is a series of reviews, answering (too many!) questions about recent comics. Previous installments have been about The Valiant #1, Bitch Planet #1, and Rumble #1.  This week is about The Names #1, from DC Vertigo.

Spoiler Opportunity: Have I ever spoiled a comic for you?  Now's your chance to get me back because I have only read the first issue of this comic so far, but a bunch have come out since.  If you've read this comic (and statistically-speaking, you haven't), now is your time for revenge.  "Now is our time for revenge" -- I think that was a line from the Phantom Menace.  Oh wait, did I just spoil the Phantom Menace for you??  If so, revenge can be yours for, like... well, a lot of money; comics aren't cheap; nobody said life would be easy.  "Nobody said life's going to be all easy, bro" -- the Theme Song to that show Friends.  Ha, spoiled you again!!!  <lights sparklers; drives off into sunset>

10 Questions about THE NAMES #1 by Peter Milligan, Leandro Fernandez, Cris Peter, Carlos M. Mangual, Celia Calle, Greg Lockard, and Will Dennis.

A basic description of this comic, so that everyone's on the same page.

The powerful global 1% types who "control the world"? They murder a rich guy, and his trophy wife swears revenge. Whoops.  A standard-format Vertigo miniseries ensues.  Double whoops.

Co-author Peter Milligan, talking to Comics Alliance:

"But the more I read and talked to people about the reality of the high-finance world, the more it became apparent that it’s a pretty dull place to witness: long gone are the days of Alpha Males with erections reading ticker tape. Now it’s all cyber space and flash buys. Fascinating, scary, possibly insane, possibly destined to be our downfall, but less dramatic.  So I’ve used some of the settings, and some of the reality of how I see the financial world to be, to create a system that’s powerful, creating uncontrollable Frankenstein’s monsters, full of internecine trouble, and dominated by psychopaths.  In other worlds, probably not unlike the financial system that rules our world."

QUESTION 1.

Is this comic about anything besides its plot?

The first issue primarily sets up the book as an exploitation revenge piece, just one where the heroine battles financial villains rather than gangsters or drug dealers or horny vice-principals. It feels like it's in a genre of television show I don't watch:  I don't watch Revenge or Scandal, but this is what I imagine those shows feel like.

In the book's brief glimpse of the baddies, the super-rich cabal "really in charge", there's some timely bits: a splash page of riot police charging towards protestors; references to currency implosions and high-frequency trading software (which the book seems to present in a science-fictional mode, i.e. what if finance software became self-aware instead of Skynet?).

It doesn't take a lot to make a book feels of the times, I guess: just draw cops in riot gear.

But nothing in the first issue rises to the level of "thoughtful" or "critique." Nothing in the first issue is any deeper than the enormously silly splash pages of superheros frowning at banks or religious people from the terrible mainstream crossovers published earlier in this decade. But it's a comic from a corporate publisher aimed at an audience of television executives -- so, how much can one reasonably expect?  The Names has at least some recognizable observation of the world intersecting with the story, and even that can be sometimes a rare thing.  But in the first issue, the world's seemingly-increasing quantity of chaos is only background music, comic book muzak.

(An Aside: There is the question whether stories about "the evil 1%" are a helpful fiction in understanding how money or power works.  I'm not sure whether that's true, especially as this comic's descriptions of the 1%'s decadence all feel so tired.  Example dialogue: "I must rush.  I'm supposed to be screwing the Mayor of London tonight."  Oooooooh saucy.

Tales of the oh so sexually decadent rich were sold by the dime by Vanity Fair magazine to middle-aged house-fraus since before I was born, and the income inequality gap has only gone in one direction that entire time.  The Great Gatsby was published in '25, but get-rich-quick huckster websites on the internet still overflow with admiration for Bill Gates or Whoever Invented Some Dumb App.  It just seems like a go-nowhere fiction, especially if the mythology that's being sold constantly is that income inequality is bad because the rich are "undeserving" on account of their sexual decadence.  That just becomes less believable now with the internet, now that we can see, you know, everybody everywhere is pretty darn sexually decadent, if they can be, given half a chance. (Shout-out to my bonobo monkeys, out there!  What up, bonobos?)  I'm not saying "let rich people off the hook cause Hannity says they're job-creators AMERICA!" or anything.  Just: if rich people were really worried about these kinds of stories, they probably wouldn't let us tell them...)

QUESTION 2.

Did the creative team make any interesting choices in the visual presentation of the story?

It's been a while since I've seen Leo Fernandez's art, as he's spent a while drawing comics not really aimed at me as a reader. But he seems to be pushing his figure drawings to a more stylized place on this book than at least his recent work...? (See, for comparison). The characters seem more elemental, more shape-driven and angular.

Also: Fernandez often lets extremes in the lighting render out details, rather than risk unnecessary linework.  While that may just be a hallmark of his style / school generally, it seems like he's pushing further in that direction here than in his mainstream work.

One notable weak-point: the two villains are extremely similar in dress and shape. It's difficult to tell them apart.  But they're only in the comic for two pages, so it's not a big deal.

An abundance of the color brown in the second half, but it's a Vertigo comic-- what did you expect? Expect brown!

A quick note to Vertigo colorists: If you are working for Vertigo, there is a belief that both Vertigo and you get a gross, throbbing weiner-boner everytime you get to make a page all brown. People believe that because it's 100% true, and the only possible explanation for why all Vertigo comics ever published have been so drenched in the color brown. Nothing else makes sense; no other solution to that equation. Please consider defying your brown-obsessed masters. Look into your hearts. You know what you see? If you see the color brown, something has gone horribly wrong. I'm not a doctor, but that probably means someone has shit into your heart and you have feces pumping through your arteries. At the very least, it just sounds unhealthy from a cardiac-perspective.

QUESTION 3.

How is the comic structured?

Comic begins in media res.  First scene is a two page inciting event, namely the murder that the main character will want revenge for.

Three pages then introduce the main character.

Three pages then introduce the villains.

Three pages then introduce the duteragonist -- the dead man's son. Some hint at Oedipal themes here which may be of interest considering that Milligan's recent Vertigo work was about processing an obsession with Greek dramas.

Three pages then setup the book's central mystery.

Three pages then set-up a mini-mission that the main character has to go on.

Three page action sequence.

Then two one-pagers conclude the comic-- (1) one page of the heroine after the action sequence declaring the mission that will presumably motivate her for the remainder of the series (sort of a classic bit of comic book business-- I think that's how the first X-Men or Doom Patrol ended, too, no?); and (2) a one-page tag for the issue overall that just reiterates the mystery of the book overall for the reader.

Does Milligan do the Three-page thing in all of his books? Never really noticed before if that's the case.

There's math why you might want to write a comic that way, though, at least if you're looking for a roadmap for structure: Three-page sequences give you at least 7 scenes and a one-page splash on a 22 page comic, say. Plus, it gives you a little helpful hint for how those sequences should be organized if you want to maximize the value of your page-turn moments. (Milligan's not entirely consistent with the Three-page units, but on the other hand, he's got the Vertigo house-ads to work around, so maybe that's on purpose).

So here, it's nine scenes: 2-3-3-3-3-3-3-1-1. (Some people, argumentative people, they might argue that it actually ends 4-1, but that second-to-last page sure seems like a different beat to me).

• The only other Peter Milligan comic I have handy is 1993's The Enigma. The first issue of that goes 13 scenes: 2-2-1-1-1-2-2-1-1-6-1-3-1. So maybe this Three-page thing was just all a fun little coincidence -- it's hard to say without a bigger sample size, which includes more recent work from Milligan.

QUESTION 4.

Is there anything noteworthy about the cover, logo, lettering, or design?

It's taken me four weeks to figure out to show the cover for this question.  FOUR WEEKS!

The cover features the African-American heroine taking off her dress, and stock information flooding out from her ass-crack. Presumably, earlier that day, she had farted into a skin-tight dress, after eating some stock ticker tape, and this is that fart's chance to finally be free.

The dead husband Walker, who plunges to his death from a skyscraper, is referenced on the cover both by his name being featured in red letters next to a securities industry down-arrow and a little Mad Men doodle. Here, Don Draper's falling to death next to a Big Ass. Jealous, Matthew Weiner?  The last season hasn't started yet -- not too late to make some changes.

The logo -- I think the idea is that the bottom half of the logo is being interfered with by a mechanical process. Which is a decent idea.  But putting the names of the creative team (and the publishing imprint) in a redacted stock-exchange symbolic code...?  I don't know if that really works. Just seems busy. The cover overall-- just seems very busy.

Which may be intentional, to be fair: if the idea was to convey signal being drowned in noise, well, they pulled that off, at least. But... seeing as "signal drowned in noise" is how a comic shop rack operates on a good day, I just don't know if that's really the most advisable design goal for a comic cover.

QUESTION 5.

Is anything about this comic interesting politically, socially, or from some other frame of reference?

The lead character being a black lady may be of some interest to readers, I guess. Another "tough no-nonsense" type character, which is a cliche, but there's at least some hint at her having an inner life in the comic, which is the essential thing. She's not presented as Just One Thing.

Except the comic has her topless by the end of the issue.

They saved the labia majora for issue two.

Whuh...?

Does my gut tell me that's what the target audience of an ABC Drama is really looking for...? It does not.

And I don't want to be a prude because there might be all sorts of ladies who might want her to be topless by the end of the issue: girls who like girls; heterosexual girls who are just into titty; Girl Scouts trying to collect some secret merit badge they don't tell square society about; I don't even know who; I don't know all the different kinds of girls out there.

But my gut would say it's undermining the power of that character to reduce her in that way at the moment of her victory over the man attacking her:  the heroine might be able to defeat the power of an Evil Man, but can never defeat the Male Gaze!  Put it another way: maybe it's a "have your cake and eat it too" problem to make the heroine a sexual object for the reader even while standing over the dying body of the bad guy who tried to treat her like a sexual object.

Also: because the scene follows her trying to seduce information out of the man attacking her, the nudity underlines that the heroine's power comes exclusively from her sexuality, and not from, like, competence or, uh, knowing things...?

And race being some tricky shit, my gut says that complicates it, too, in all kinds of messy ways that I don't even think I'm the right dude to try to articulate.

Your gut might say otherwise. But my gut says there's something pretty skeezy about that choice. That'd be my gut feeling. It's certainly a choice, anyways.

QUESTION 6.

Riddle me this: What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening?

The solution could be "an adorable puppy that is being physically abused" -- riddles aren't so fun anymore, now, are they?  Read the papers, though: a psychopath who tortures puppies would be pretty much unbeatable at solving riddles in creative and unexpected ways. "Riddles were all a breeze after I tortured a puppy and ignored its howls of pain.  It's called thinking outside the box, specifically the box I shove a puppy into after I'm tired of it trying to lick my face.  AMERICA."  -- Dick Cheney, actual quotation.

QUESTION 7.

What was the best bit of dialogue in the comic?

Cop A (Guzman): "Your husband fell fifty-one floors. The bones around the impact area will be shattered. His organs will have hemorrhaged and leaked from every cavity. If he fell on his head, he'll likely be unrecognizable."

Cop B: "Why don't you just tell it like it is, Guzman?"

QUESTION 8.

What is the most interesting page in the comic and how does it work?

The Names, Issue 1, Page 14.

This page takes place immediately after the Mystery has been presented to the main character, who is as the scene opens, now struggling to understand the clues she has been given.

I think it's a notable page just because of how the comic shifts to a subjective mode, more than the execution of the drawings themselves.

Top Half.

Panel 1 presents the main character in a down-shot, small and isolated in a panel filled with murky shadows, as she is overwhelmed by the mystery she's been presented.

But being the heroine of the piece, by Panel 2, she is beginning to focus on the mystery -- focus so much that the background has now dropped away completely.  Blank space of the "no panel borders" variety, that can mean a lot of different things in comics -- I think Will Eisner in one of his books talks explicitly about how he liked to use that kind of blank space to convey that scenes are taking place outside, for example. Here, a far more common application of that bit of language: nothing else in the world matters to her as much as her reaction to the clues, as much as what she's thinking about.

Indeed, her head is breaking apart even from panel borders themselves as some understanding is beginning to dawn upon her.

Bottom half.  You into the bottom half, bro?  Yeah, you are.

However, the backgrounds return as her spell is broken in Panels 3 and 4:  she is sucked back to reality by some (crappy) sound-effects, someone at the door named Marco.  Note: she received a cryptic warning about Marco earlier in the comic.

In Panel 5, upon hearing Marco's name, emotions flood the main character, such that her face now fills the panel, such that she can now only barely be contained within the boundaries of the panel.  Put another way, the panel borders struggle to contain her, just as she struggles to control her emotions.

In Panel 6, we see a flashback to the warning the heroine had been given earlier.  This flashback panel slightly overlaps panel 5 -- it's on top of her face, on top of her concerns, this flashback, suggesting that it is being seen not only by the reader but in the mind's eye of the heroine herself.

Just basic storytelling, this page, of the "you can remove the dialogue and still understand what's going on" variety.

Sure, not a particularly interesting page on a technical level, and certainly one with room for improvement (the body language in panels 3 and 4 isn't so hot; panel 1 doesn't really lay out the geography as much as it could; panel 3's not fun to look at; a brown blanket on a couch sitting next to brown walls???).

But it's one of the few pages that really achieve a unity between the character's emotions and the visual storytelling.

Some people get off on rigid panel grids (the 9 panel grid of Watchmen, the 8 panel grid of Stray Bullets, the 6 panel grid of Louis Riel).  Grids tend to be catnip to younger comic writers, especially, flailing around for rules.  But I tend to like a page where the size and shapes of panels derive in some way from the emotions of their contents, authors who see that as another way of relaying information to the reader and a really direct way of connecting with them, at that.  Grids aren't uninteresting -- if you're fascinated with the subject matter of time, Watchmen and Stray Bullets both suggest a grid might be handy in exploring that theme, in particular. But the way that the size and shape of a panel can reflect the emotional heft of the panel is just a more interesting thing to see in action to me...

There's an old Paul Pope quote that I always go back to, about manga (where I think what we're talking about is most often true).  From Pulp magazine:

"When I was working for Kodansha, the joke was always, "A bad comic is where you have a panel where Superman jumps through a window, and the caption says "Superman jumps through a window," and he's saying, "I'm jumping through the window," and there's a sound effect that says, "JUMP." Or you can imagine three panels: 1.) he's jumping through the window, 2.) he's landing on the ground, 3.) he says, "I've done it"--or something like that. I really have a sense from what I learned from manga, is that, rather than try to tell and directly tell the story where Superman is jumping through the window, that the best manga will try to give you the experience of jumping through the window--the tactile sensations, the speed of it, the rush of it--catch all the different moments in-between the three panels that an American comic might use to tell the story."

Of possible interest is that the only other page in the comic with a subjective quality, page 11, is the page featuring the deuteragonist. One could perhaps argue that this is grammatically significant, I suppose, a way of linking the two characters, but for me, that would be pretty, pretty high-falooting talk for this comic.

QUESTION 9.

Did you experience any noteworthy emotion reading the comic?

Once the main character and the dead character's son emerge more as characters, there's a certain pulpiness to the first issue that's enjoyable. It's mediocre, but at least not unpleasant.

But I started the comic thinking more about the how's and why's that Vertigo keeps backing Peter Milligan, after a pretty good number of duds-- Greek Street? The Minx? (Not Vertigo, but:) The Programme? I wouldn't fuck with any of those comics with your mom's dick.  This is a miniseries though so the more apt comparison is, what, Girl?  Pop: London?  Who could forget Pop: London?  Answer: nobody because probably nobody besides me read that one, to begin with.

Milligan's a pretty erratic creator-- some great work obvously for many years, but also lots of misses.  I made a decent effort to try nearly all of those books at some point, I think he's usually an interesting writer, so I'm glad they keep putting them out.  And I had an okay time with some of this first issue.  Still, it just seemed interesting to me that there's still space for him at Vertigo, given their announced focus on "big hits."  Dan Didio (who really should be fired and we should all mention that more) talking to the New York Times about Vertigo:

"Mr. DiDio said it would be “myopic” to believe 'that servicing a very small slice of our audience is the way to go ahead. [..] That’s not what we’re in the business for . 'We have to shoot for the stars with whatever we’re doing. Because what we’re trying to do is reach the biggest audience and be as successful as possible.'."

So, a Peter Milligan comic about a topless black woman stabbing finance executives in the throat, while they talk about HFT software...?  Keep reaching for those stars!

It's like the color brown though -- some things about Vertigo are just part of the culture now, no matter how much business-speak bullshit cliches you toss at it, I guess.

There's also the fact this comic is plainly designed to pitch a television show.  I think I've written about the "comic as movie or television show pitch" and the many negative feelings that those engender before many, many times, as that has been the case with so many, many comics. It's nothing I want to type out again, and bore everybody with, especially if some people are somehow able to ignore that kind of thing.  This comic? It wouldn't be a TV show I'd watch, or that I'd even guess would last a full season.  But Fernandez's work is at least stylized enough and occasionally subjective enough where there's some cause to not be entirely dismissive.

QUESTION 10.

What do we hope that younger cartoonists learn to do and not to do from this comic?

Jesus, I don't know.  There's probably all kinds of lessons to learn from Milligan about career longevity but I'm not really sure what those lessons are, let alone how to receive them.  Guy's danced around a pretty bureaucratic company for many years now -- kept a presence with the audience for a long time, in a way many of his contemporaries haven't.  This comic?  No way this comic was ever going to be a hit, but he sure fucking talked them into it anyways, somehow

How did that happen?  Beats me.  That's probably the thing to learn here, but I'm no help to anyone there.  Your sexy guess is as good as mine, beautiful.

Sometimes you see comic creators, when they get asked questions by young folks, they play a "We're all Princes of fucking New England" card, and spin some shit that's like... "I don't even experience your frail human feelings of competition or envy anymore.  I'm only encouraged by the success of others, no matter how undeserving that success is because encouragement is the only emotion I allow myself.  I've grown beyond all negative emotions -- get on my level!!"

And it's ... this is probably a good-enough kind of thing to say to young folks, in that it's mostly harmless, plus a nice way of avoiding the whole "you probably don't have shit to say that's worth hearing anyways -- to a grown adult, you're pretty much an adorable talking fetus" conversation.  (That conversation probably won't get as many Likes on social media.)

But a comic like this ... I know when I read this comic, there was a moment I stepped outside myself, and imagined a young snot-nosed kid in their 20's assessing the situation, saying to themselves... "It's a comic that they could afford someone as good as Leo Fernandez to draw it; it got a big publisher behind it for sales and reviews, who paid for a decent print run in full color; all the creators involved will have a presence on comic shelves and in front of comic audiences for the next eight months; the publisher has historically not cared especially about losing money on comics publishing; everyone got a page rate;  and all of those opportunities are being used on a writer / concept / whatever that, best case scenario, is just commercially going to be More Mixed Results, and you're telling me I'm not supposed to feel any kind of fucking envy about any of that??"  I don't know.  I think some things in comics actually are a competition, and, uh, Peter Milligan just kinda won that shit.  So.  Keep your head up...?

I think the good news, though, and maybe the bigger take away is ... If you're a younger person, however inexplicable you might find Vertigo putting these books out, year after year, forgotten comic after forgotten comic (did you even notice I forgot to mention that comic Egypt?), it's something you should actually be encouraged by.  You want comics to be a place you can age with, and have a whole career with.  And if you stick around a even a little while, not even long, you see plenty of evidence the opposite way -- a lot of names that are on a dozen books one year, and on pretty much no book of any significance a year later.  Comics has a rough turnover, so you want there to be guys who are just sticking in there.  Otherwise what the hell are you even signing up for?  The Carrousel ritual from Logan's Run???

The characters in Logan's Run all seemed psyched about Carrousel, sure, but I think the message of that movie was don't be psyched about the Carrousel.  And that's really the note I want to end this one on:  just say no to Carrousel, kids, even if that means you'll be labeled a Runner.  (This is a metaphor.)(A metaphor for me not knowing what to put here this week, and just vamping). (Vamps was also the name of a Vertigo comic that lots of people remember probably!  A lot of American Virgins, though, am I right?  Sandman).

NEXT WEEK: DETECTIVE COMICS #35-36 from DC Comics.

Arriving 1/21/15

This is a, not surprisingly, small shipping week as we are now safely in the year 2015. But there is still new TOOTH AND CLAW, WICKED + DIVINE and WINTER SOLDIER.  

Check under the cut for the rest of the books this week!

13 COINS #4 (OF 6) ALL NEW X-FACTOR #20 ALL NEW X-MEN #35 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #13 SV AMAZING WORLD OF GUMBALL #7 AUTUMNLANDS TOOTH & CLAW #3 BATMAN AND ROBIN #38 BATMAN ETERNAL #42 BATMAN SUPERMAN #18 BATWOMAN #38 BIGGER BANG #3 (OF 4) BLACK WIDOW #14 BPRD HELL ON EARTH #127 BTVS SEASON 10 #11 BUCKY BARNES WINTER SOLDIER #4 BURNING FIELDS #1 CAPTAIN AMERICA AND MIGHTY AVENGERS #4 CAPTAIN STONE #2 (OF 6) CROSSED BADLANDS #70 CROSSED PLUS 100 #2 DARK HORSE PRESENTS 2014 #6 DEAD LETTERS #7 DEADPOOLS ART OF WAR #4 (OF 4) DOCTOR WHO 11TH #7 DOCTOR WHO 12TH #4 DRIFTER #3 DUNGEONS & DRAGONS LEGENDS OF BALDURS GATE #4 EARTH 2 WORLDS END #16 ELEKTRA #10 FABLES #148 FANTASTIC FOUR #642 GI JOE SNAKE EYES AGENT OF COBRA #1 (OF 5) GOD IS DEAD #27 GONERS #4 GREEN LANTERN NEW GUARDIANS #38 GROO FRIENDS AND FOES #1 GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #23 HELLRAISER BESTIARY #6 HENCHMEN I HENCHBOT #1 (OF 6) INDESTRUCTIBLE #10 INFINITE CRISIS FIGHT FOR THE MULTIVERSE #7 INTERSECT #3 INVINCIBLE #116 IVAR TIMEWALKER #1 JUDGE DREDD CLASSICS DARK JUDGES #1 (OF 5) JUSTICE LEAGUE #38 KITCHEN #3 (OF 8) KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #216 LEGENDARY STAR LORD #8 LADY DEATH (ONGOING) #26 LOKI AGENT OF ASGARD #10 LUMBERJANES #10 MAGNETO #14 MILLENNIUM #1 (OF 5) MONO #2 (OF 4) MOON KNIGHT #11 NEW 52 FUTURES END #38 (WEEKLY) OCTOBER FACTION #4 PENNY DORA & THE WISHING BOX #3 (OF 5) POWERS #1 RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS #38 RED SONJA #14 FRISON CVR RED SONJA BLACK TOWER #4 (OF 4) REYN #1 ROCKET RACCOON #7 ROCKET SALVAGE #2 RUMBLE #2 SAMURAI JACK #16 SCARLET SPIDERS #3 (OF 3) SV SENSATION COMICS FEATURING WONDER WOMAN #6 SIMPSONS COMICS #217 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #268 SONS OF ANARCHY #17 SPIDER-VERSE TEAM UP #3 (OF 3) SPIDER-WOMAN #3 SV SPREAD #5 STAR TREK PLANET OF THE APES #2 (OF 5) SUPERGIRL #38 SUPERIOR IRON MAN #4 TEEN TITANS #6 THE VALIANT #2 (OF 4) TMNT ONGOING #42 TRANSFORMERS #37 DAYS OF DECEPTION TRANSFORMERS PUNISHMENT (ONE SHOT) TRINITY OF SIN #4 TWILIGHT ZONE S&S #1 UBER #21 WICKED & DIVINE #7 WILD BLUE YONDER #6 (OF 6) WINTERWORLD #6 WOLVERINES #3 WONDER WOMAN #38 ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS #1

Books/Mags/Things ABE SAPIEN TP VOL 05 SACRED PLACES BATMAN SILVER AGE NEWSPAPER COMICS HC VOL 02 1968-1969 BATMAN STORY OF DARK KNIGHT YR HC NEW PTG BEWARE THE BATMAN TP VOL 01 BLACK DYNAMITE TP BLACK WIDOW TP VOL 02 TIGHTLY TANGLED WEB BLEEDING COOL MAGAZINE #14 BPRD PLAGUE OF FROGS TP VOL 02 CARTOON NETWORK SUPER SECRET CRISIS WAR TP VOL 01 DUNGEONS & DRAGONS LEGEND OF DRIZZT TP VOL 01 HOMELAND EX MACHINA TP BOOK 04 GENIUS COLLECTED ALEX TOTH SLIPCASE SET HC HACK SLASH SON OF SAMHAIN TP VOL 01 IMAGINARY DRUGS TP IN SEARCH OF LOST DRAGONS HC IRON MAN EPIC COLLECTION TP STARK WARS JUDAS THE LAST DAYS TP KING CONAN TP VOL 04 CONQUEROR LEGENDARY STAR-LORD TP VOL 01 FACE IT I RULE MAGNETO TP VOL 02 REVERSALS MONSTER TP VOL 03 PERFECT ED URASAWA NORTH 40 TP NEW EDITION ROBERT E HOWARDS SAVAGE SWORD TP VOL 02 SHADOW MASTER SERIES TP VOL 03 SIMPSONS COMICS CLUBHOUSE GN SONS OF ANARCHY TP VOL 02 THE SHADOW SPECIAL 2014 WILL EISNER SPIRIT ARTIST ED HC VOL 02 X-FORCE TP VOL 02 HIDE FEAR

As always, what do YOU think?

“You Who Are Reading Me Now Are A Different Breed - I Hope A Better One.” COMICS! Sometimes You Stop And Find Forty Years Have Slipped Down The Back of The Sofa!

Yes! This is a thing which is happening! It’s the second patience sapping instalment of the world’s slowest and most digressive crawl through Marvel UK’s Planet of the Apes Weekly (1974 - 1977). O ye of little faith! Run, you fools! Planet of the Apes by George Tuska, Mike Esposito & Doug Moench

Anyway, this… PLANET OF THE APES WEEKLY #1 (Week Ending October 26th 1974) Planet of The Apes Part 1 Art by George Tuska & Mike Esposito Written by Doug Moench Based on the 20th Century Fox Motion Picture Planet of The Apes (1968) Based on the novel by Pierre Boulle Marvel UK, £0.08 (1974)

Blame it on The Roy. For Rascally Roy Thomas was the one. The one who personally bagged Marvel the rights to produce original material based on the 20th Century Fox motion picture presentation Planet of The Apes. That movie was released in 1968 so why a push for a comic in 1974? Why, Roy? Why? Good question; Roy’s glad you asked. Because Television. You know how important Television is to comic creators today? Well, Television was that central to everyblummingbody back in 1974. Albeit less for monetary reasons, and more for distractions-from-the-hideous-reality-of-the-1970s reasons. There was comparatively very little Television programming at this point in time (the 1970s, keep up!) which tended to lend it all an importance out of all proportion to its quality. It was still early days so there was only a limited array of TV programmes – ones where a pair of caucasian, heterosexual males (one blond, one brunette) had adventures in a variety of settings, ones where a mishap prone heterosexual couple inhabited a house filled with invisible laughing maniacs, ones where someone, usually a caucasian heterosexual male (blond or brunette), was pursued from town to town for eternally unresolved reasons, ones with news on them and then documentaries about corned beef manufacture in Argentina. When the Planet of the Apes TV (PotA-TV) series was broadcast in 1974 it was a daring evolutionary step forward for Televisual entertainment - it was about a pair of caucasian, heterosexual males (one blond, one brunette) having adventures on the Planet of the Apes WHILE ALSO being pursued from town to town for eternally unresolved reasons. As artistically modest as it may appear to audiences raised on The Wire and Mr. Bean it remains a fact that PotA-TV was a smash-hit with the simple, clueless, happy-go-lucky folk of 1970s Britain.

Planet of the Apes by George Tuska, Mike Esposito & Doug Moench

Luckily for all their lovely share-holders Marvel UK were Johnny-on-the–Spot with Planet of the Apes Weekly (PotA-W) which basically acted like a papery pocket money attractor. So successful was the comic that it ended in 1977 not, as is traditional, for want of sales, but rather because APJAC international Productions raised their licensing fees and Marvel balked. Marvel UK was a bit different from Marvel proper in that it was formed in 1972 (said Wikipedia, yesterday) to publish comics in the UK but with editorial direction via Noo Yawk. While it’s true that Neil Tennant, long before becoming a pop colossus, did work for Marvel UK in an editorial capacity, he denies anything to do with PotA-W. This is a shame because I’d have liked to have mentioned Neil Tennant, being a big fan of The Pet Shop Boys as I am. As it is any mention of Neil Tennant would just unnecessarily cloud the issue. And I think we all know I just cannot be doing with unnecessary digressions. In 1976 Marvel UK would produce its first original material in the form of Captain Britain Weekly, which I liked (Herb Trimpe, oh yeah!) Since PotA-W was produced prior to 1976 all its content (bar the letters page) was produced in the Land of The Free and the Home of The Brave. America, I’m talking about America there. And the face of American comics in 1974 was a Smilin’ one. So, opening the painted cover, the first thing you saw in 1974 was Smilin’ Stan Lee. Caught there for posterity in a comic book store somewhere, in a picture bearing mute but unarguable testament to the sublimity of craft imbuing his hairpiece, Stan Lee welcomes us to this, the first issue of PotA-W. Thanks, Stan! Don’t mind if I do.

The comic strip bits of the first issue of PotA-W consist entirely of the first part of Marvel’s “6 part adaptation” of the movie (PotA-M). Before the children’s entertainment Star Wars (1977) happened science fiction in movies was, mostly, telling us that the future was going to be even worse if we didn’t get our act together. PotA-M is very much in that grand, finger wagging tradition and it stars Charlton Heston, who I will always adore for a number of reasons. I shall now bore you with them. Obviously, and most pertinently, he would eventually star in three of my favourite Pull Your Socks Up, Humanity! movies – Soylent Green (1973), The Omega Man (1971) and Planet of the Apes (1968). Those were all movies I saw slightly later in life because they were on later in the evening, but I was still primed for Charlton Heston. For, when younger, I had spent many a happy Sunday afternoon drinking Cresta in front of the Television watching The Hest’s parched delivery save such historical and long movies as El Cid (1961), The Warlord (1965) and Khartoum (1966) from my childish disinterest. Best of all the many Sunday Afternoon Hest Fests was The Naked Jungle (1954) which was about Charlton Heston and Eleanor Parker learning to love among the marabunta ants. Unstoppable killer ants aside, the scene where the widowed Eleanor Parker character tells Hest that the best piano is one that's been played remains kind of awesome to me even now. Then, later, I found out about Charlton Heston insisting Orson Welles be allowed to direct Touch of Evil (1958), Charlton Heston marching for Civil Rights and, naturally, Wayne’s World 2 (1993). Probably other things in there as well. Yes, for a very long time there was no question about Charlton Heston. But then I made the mistake of watching some Michael Moore thing which had Charlton Heston brandishing a firearm and yelling about his cold dead hands. Unbeknownst to me, apparently in the 1980s (that heinous decade), Charlton Heston threw liberalism over for conservatism. If he’d just called I might have been able to talk him out of it, but he was a proud man and, perhaps unconsciously sensing his error, never sought my advice. Yes, there were sure some mixed feelings in my head that day. But those feelings, that head and that day itself were in 2002; which, in line with Haslein’s theory, hadn’t happened in 1974 when PotA-W started.

Mind you, reading George Tuska and Doug Moench’s comic book adaptation of PotA-M you’d be hard pressed to guess Heston was the star. In the old days, with their old ways, licenced comics had to get some kind of likeness agreement from the people in the movie concerned; otherwise there’d be some legal unpleasantness. Apparently Marvel didn’t bother with that, because Tuska was, so it’s still claimed in smoky back rooms and seedy dance halls, explicitly told not to make anyone “look like Charlton Heston”. A bit of a drawback really when adapting a movie starring Charlton Heston. And so Tuska’s art compliantly contains no one who could even charitably be said to “look like Charlton Heston”. I’ve had food that looked more like Charlton Heston. If anything Tuska overplays his underplaying as all the human faces resemble cereal boxes bearing variations on the same generic visage. This pretty much sums up Tuska’s performance here – he does as he’s asked, but little more. There’s a lot of chops involved in just doing that well, I’m not unaware of that, but Time lacks mercy and while in 1974 this was probably pretty good stuff, by 2015 I (and this is just me, never mind someone actively involved with comic art) have seen Sienkiewicz & Macchio’s Dune, Bissette & Veitch’s 1941 and Simonson & Goodwin’s Alien: The Illustrated Story. Tuska’s stuff here is never not going to look rough in that company. Audrey Hepburn would struggle in that company, and George Tuska is no Audrey Hepburn. Gamine or no, what George Tuska is though, is competent.

Planet of the Apes by George Tuska, Mike Esposito & Doug Moench

He’s certainly as competent as Franklin J. Schaffner’s unspectacular direction of the source movie. But Schaffner had advantages denied to Tuska. Schaffner had Jerry Goldmith’s appropriate pandemonium of parping brass and screeching strings to load even the stillest moments with foreboding, and he had a cast comprising Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter and Charlton Heston. Poor old George Tuska has none of these things; Hell, he’s even denied anyone who even “looks like Charlton Heston”. He does a decent job; even though I kind of tense at the meagreness of his line and the inertia soaking everything so that even the rough and tumble in the reeds which ends the issue struggles to excite. But it’s doubtful if excitement was even on their agenda. What Tuska and Moench have done here isn’t so much an adaptation as a documentation of PotA-M. Moench & Tuska are obviously attempting to replicate the movie as rigorously as possible on the printed page. Of all the comic options this is the most literal and least interesting approach. But, again, I wrote that in 2015 and this comic was made circa 1974 when the idea that the mass of the UK population might own and view movies in their own home was the stuff of unhinged fantasy. (The exception was a minority of film buffs and onanistically inclined gentlemen for whom select movies were available for home projection; but it was hardly a widespread practice. The projection of movies in private domiciles that is; onanism is ever at hand.) The ephemerality of the movie viewing experience at the time meant that a comic such as this would act as a substitute to a repeat viewing. Once a movie’s theatrical run ended usually the next time you’d see it would be five years later on Television. So there are certainly reasons for Tuska and Moench’s, to modern eyes at least, tiresomely literal script. Yet, what was once a boon has become a burden thanks to that unstoppable bastard, Time.

Planet of the Apes by George Tuska, Mike Esposito & Doug Moench

Basically, in 2015, I’d rather watch the movie but in 1974 I didn’t have that option, and neither did anyone else. Because I do like the movie, don’t get me wrong. While I may have found Pierre Boulle’s original 1964 novel torpidly unengaging someone liked it enough to get Rod “Twilight Zone” Serling (and Michael Wilson) to punch it up with sensationalised action and on-the-nose allegory to the point where someone as uncouth as I is still quite happy to watch it. Sure, there’s more than the one odd thing about PotA-M, not least Taylor himself. When we first meet Taylor, and Taylor is the first person we meet, he is not only hubristically huffing a cigar in a high pressure oxygen environment but also helpfully setting up the themes and basic gist of the movie about to unfold. He does this via a Hestonically delivered misanthropic soliloquy. Taylor’s basic distaste with the Human Race persists throughout the movie until it is knocked off its perch by his distaste for the simian usurpers. He’s just not a people person, Colonel Taylor, and I don’t think putting him in charge of a space mission speaks highly of NASA’s (or is it ANSA's?) screening processes. And that NASA mission’s a bit odd as well. It looks like someone’s had the bright idea of throwing three men and a woman into space with the intention of setting up a new franchise of Humanity. “She was to be the new Eve”, yeah? Now, when it comes to biology my interest is purely amateurish and recreational, but it strikes me that three men and a lady is a breeding fast-track to kids with more thumbs than fingers. I could be wrong; I’m no science-tist. Or maybe two of the blokes were a couple or something. As it happens the, biologically speaking, weird science doesn’t matter much because quicker than you’d Adam and Eve it Stewart (the female crew member) is both old and dead which, even in the swinging ‘60s, is enough to dampen the crew’s ardour. Gerontophilia, perhaps. Necrophilia maybe. But both together’s a bit rich, or am I just being old-fashioned? Then there’s a long mostly quiet bit full of rocks, wandering about and Taylor winding up his crew before we get to the big shock reveal, which is that they are on a (SPOILER!) planet of apes! Boy, it’s a good job it isn’t called Planet of the Apes or something, he said sarcastically. Mind you, at least they left The Big Twist (they’re all dead!) until the end back then, nowadays even that one’s spoilt by the box cover. All of which spoilery matters a lot less than you’d think because back in 1968 they made movies that were so well made that they could survive as satisfactory viewing experiences even with all the surprises sucked out. Alas I can’t say the same for the comic adaptation which is just OKAY!

Planet of the Apes by George Tuska, Mike Esposito & Doug Moench

NEXT TIME: The back-ups are coming! The back-ups are coming! Gil Kane! Jack Kirby! Can poor printing mute talents so large? Sabre-toothed tigers and horse riding lobster men! It’s even better than an offer to groom you for nits - it’s Part 3 of Planet of the COMICS!!!

"The Friend Of Man...A FIVE POUND NOTE!" COMICS! Sometimes You Better Mind Your Langridge!

A world of Abhay magic awaits you below this post. So scroll on down! Me, I'm trying this writing thing again. So... Roger Langridge. The Fez.

THE FEZ by Roger Langridge Anyway, this...

THE FEZ #1-2 By Roger Langridge Hotel Fred Press (2013) The Fez created by Roger Langridge Issue 1, $0.99 (12 pages) Issue 2 $1.99 (24 pages) Both issues were purchased at these prices from Comixology in Digital form.

As far as I can tell (which is quite far because he practically says as much in the letters column) The Fez is something Roger Langridge does when he isn’t doing anything else. Snatch some free time and, me, I stare into space and low like a cow, but not Roger Langridge. No, Roger Langridge (the big show-off) produces top-notch comics like The Fez. (Other than that we’re practically identical. Spooky it is.) See, since Roger Langridge is sickening in his versatility he can actually also produce top-notch comics that don’t feature fezzes (Fezzesses? Fezzi? Fezzae?) Consequently, during 2014 Roger Langridge was so busy producing those, other, Fez-less comics (Rocky and Bullwinkle, Crossed, Abigail and the Snowman) he didn’t produce any new Fez. Which is fair enough as it’s a concept in progress rather than an established breadwinning moneyspinner. Eventually (hopefully) it will be that other thing I ended that sentence with (a spinning winning bread spider? Whatever.) but right now it’s just a nice idea and these two issues show him mucking about with it. In the unshowy back matter Langridge open-handedly makes no pretense of regularity with regard to his Fezzery. But don’t let that give you the impression it’s some dashed off mess of a thing, some half-arsed compôte of confusion; it isn’t.

THE FEZ by Roger "Mind Your" Langridge

As dapper as its main character, The Fez is sleekly attired in clarity of line and as playful in its presentation as Langridge’s work ever is (i.e. very). The lack of expectation here lets Langridge do what he wants and, testament to the surety of his instincts, in The Fez he winds up doing what he usually does anyway - an array of rubbery characters (all rich in goofery and yet also weirdly melancholy) lithely frolicking from one mirth-rich mode of storytelling to another. Across the two issues you’re subjected to a pot pourri of, well, uh, comic book storytelling styles; you know, rather than withered yet enticingly scented plant matter. (You do have a tendency to err on the literal, so thought I’d make that crystal.) All the tales feature the titular Fez which (or who) is either an invisible man in a fez or a sentient fez pretending to be an invisible man. Roger Langridge is a consummate cartoonist but the excellence of his performance in The Fez is so unshowy it takes a bit for the achievement here to sink in. I mean, do you have any idea how hard it must be to succesfully draw a comic in which the character lacks a face and for this to have no impact on the potency of the pictorial wizardry on show? You realise how skilled you'd have to be to pull that off? No, me neither, because Langridge makes it look easy. (I bet my Mum’s pot dogs it is pretty tricky though.) For Image comic readers I’ll put it like this: The Fez is like a Steve Ditko character, if Steve Ditko read less Ayn Rand and more Leo Baxendale. And guess what? That's VERY GOOD!

It's one thing not having a face but Saints preserve us from a lack of - COMICS!!!

Abhay: Inquisition - Rumble #1

Here is the 3rd attempt at answering a series of questions about a comic, this attempt concerning the recent Image debut of Rumble. Part 1 was about The Valiant #1, and Part 2 was about Bitch Planet #1.

10 Questions about RUMBLE #1 by John Arcudi, James Harren, Dave Stewart, Chris and Eliopoulos.

A basic description of this comic, so that everyone's on the same page.

Rumble is a comic by a creative team that had gotten some notice years back, at least in action comics circles, for their work together on Mike Mignola's BPRD series.  Their BPRD issues had noticably visceral fight scenes, which had garnered a very enthusiastic reaction upon their publication (at least online). This is the Image debut of their new series.

It is about ... some guy ... with a sword, I guess... or something...?

That's as good a description as I can do.

Co-author John Arcudi, talking to Multiversity:

"Rumble is a concept I’ve been working with for years. It’s gone through a few different iterations, but it wasn’t until James and I talked about it that it felt like it would really work as this larger, more complex storyline that had “legs.” Part of that, of course, was having lots of time to think about it, getting older, getting better, but having the right artist — well, you can’t do it without that."

QUESTION 1.

Is this comic about anything besides its plot?

Noooooooooooooooo.

It's barely even about it's plot.

QUESTION 2.

Did the creative team make any interesting choices in the visual presentation of the story?

Even though the authors had built a reputation for fight scenes, there's only about two-to-three pages of fighting featured in this comic. The visual focus of this issue lies instead more in the world-building, in setting up the book's City setting.

"Three-legged Dog" is my favorite cut on the new Tim Allen album.  He's really got us Men pegged.

The streets are littered.  Characters stand at pay phones next to rats and trash. Everything is run-down.  Three-legged dogs run wild, urinating on a parking meter. Televisions buzz late-show monster movies in the distant background. One of the best panels in the book features a hulking, shirtless figure with a "Does this tattoo make me look tough" tattoo across his chest, sleeping with a bag of "Bunyans" potato chips at his side; behind him, a stuffed moose head; nuncucks, hanging on his wall. The more impressionistic backgrounds are often hazy, abstract, not just conveying a city but a specific city, a polluted one, a dirty one, neon-drenched and filthy.

The authors at least seems intent on constantly finding ways to invest his world with a sort of humorous detail or life, though unfortunately an instinct that they abandoned when it came time to the create the actual story. The book's sense of visual humor is exceeding common for comics, a "look at how grody all this is!" type humor, but without it, this comic would have been completely grueling.

I like that bucket over on the left, but that booth does not look so comfortable.

Another smaller technique perhaps worth noting is how the artists sometimes use negative space. An early panel uses negative space to establish the industrial texture of a bar ceiling. Another early panel uses negative space to suggest sparks coming off a sword being drug along a road.

Really glad there are word balloons of unintelligible gibberish needlessly covering up that pesky comic art.  Capital choice.  A+.  (I'm referring here to every word balloon in this comic).

The authors are also fond of adding a sort of minuscule amount of textural detail digitally, though to what effect is unclear. As an example, the smoke rising from the streets in third panel of page 3 has a texture on it that you really have to press your face against the page to grok the detail of. There’s something similar going on with the detailing of brick walls throughout the comic, a sort of ink splatter effect, but rendered ultra-finely.

QUESTION 3.

How is the comic structured?

The first issue has no discernible structure whatsoever.

The first page is a page of someone walking towards a mountain. The word balloon "humph" is spoken by an indiscernible figure who is never identified in this comic. All of the panels are "widescreen" because of course they are.  No other scene in this comic takes place on a mountain.

Where this is happening or what this means is never identified in this comic.

This is followed by a page of a Paul Bunyan statue lying broken on the ground in a decrepit amusement park (symbolism!). This page has narration in caption boxes, spoken from an unidentified source.  This is unlike every single other page of this comic, none of which feature narration.  No other scene in this comic takes place at this amusement park.

Where this is happening or what this means is never identified in this comic.

This is followed by a three page sequence set at a bar, that establishes that the main character of this comic is a weakboy that girls don't like.

The two characters from that bar sequence are then embroigled in a four-page action sequence, upon being attacked out-of-nowhere by a "mysterious" figure.

Why the four-page action sequence is happening is never explained in this comic.

There are then two pages about an old woman and a cat. Something sure seems funky about that cat. (Confusing storytelling here involving a window).

Where this is happening or what this means is never identified in this comic.

There are then three pages of the weakboy character and two police characters reflecting on the action scene we'd seen previously.

The plot does not advance significantly and almost no new information is presented to the reader.

There are then two pages about something or another happening to two random hicks in a swamp, one of those generic "oh no, bad things are happening to men while they fish" scenes that you see in movies, provided you primarily watch terrible, badly-written movies.

Where this is happening or what this means is never identified in this comic.

A six page scene of the weakboy main character being threatened by two monsters then follows. (It begins with a generic scene of the main character calling someone from a payphone, but leaving an answering machine message since the person they're calling is sleeping through the message. This technology was outdated sometime around when Seinfeld stopped being broadcast, so I guess the comic is a period piece...?)

Want to guess what the last page is?

If you guessed that the last page is a splash page cliffhanger of a superhero character muttering some bland sentence, and that this is somehow meant to entice readers to come back for more next month... Well, don't get that impressed with yourself.  That's how all bad comics end their first issues now. It's really not that impressive you'd be able to guess that.  You learned how to rip off lukewarm Mark Millar comics the same as everybody else.

8 "scenes": 1-1-3-4-2-3-2-6.

First issues are monsters.  There are so many challenges. How do you sell readers on what your comic's about?  Have you given readers a way of selling their friends on the comic, some easy hook that won't just hook readers for one issue but that they can tell their friends and hook them, too?  Have you set up both an immediate story but also enough material for a long-running series?  With Rumble #1, we see a creative team deciding to ignore addressing any of the challenges of a first issue, and instead do nothing more than try to establish a "mood".

Perhaps this team's audience is used to consuming their work on a trade-paperback basis, and that negates the importance of any single issue.  But as a single issue experience... Well, it's only ever going to be a single issue experience for me, as this comic wasted my time, completely, and I won't allow that to happen again.

QUESTION 4.

Is there anything noteworthy about the cover, logo, lettering, or design?

The copy I purchased has a James Harren cover, but according to the inside cover, there is a variant cover available from Jamie McKelvie.  Which... really? Jamie McKelvie draws fine, some of his comics look entirely decent to me, no offense to the guy, but this seems like a very, very odd comic for a reader to crave having a Jamie McKelvie cover.

"It's a fight comic about a giant monster-man with a massive sword, and some swamp hicks."

"I know just the man for that job...  Jamie McKelvie."

...?  That's an interesting choice.

There's a bit where Chris Eliopoulos takes a character yelling for help, and rather than put the word in a word balloon, he sets out HELP in block letters, and has a word balloons coil out from the H block.  If I've seen that move done before, it's nothing I've ever stopped and made specific note of.

Eight pages of house ads for Image comics.  Comic ads, I don't really get how anyone expects those to work.  It's always a splash image and some dopey tagline, like a bad movie poster.  But who goes to see movies based on a poster?  Reyn: "Myth, Sorcery and an Unlikely Pair on a Quest to Discover their Destinies."  Oh good I love unlikely pairs e.g. my balls.  Graveyard Shift: "Crime-solving sucks."  I'm sure this is unfair to say, I'm sure it's a fun comic, but I don't know if I'd recommend putting the word "sucks" on the ad for your comic...? That's something I should be putting on the ads for your comic, using MS Paint, not you.  The Dying and the Dead: "This January, Image Comics proudly presents the last story of the Greatest Generation."  Oh good they're proud about this one, they just didn't pull this one out of a toilet like those other comics.  I don't know.  Why don't these ads ever say what the comic is about...?  I can't really guess how much bang anybody really got out of these eight pages.  But I just don't understand advertising or selling things, either.

QUESTION 5.

Is anything about this comic interesting politically, socially, or from some other frame of reference?

Well, it's another comic about a weakboy who learns that his world blah blah blah.

I really hate weakboys in comics.

What percentage of comics do you figure are about weakboys? 105? 108?  I'd put the percentage at somewhere between 105 and 119% of comics are about weakboys.

Movies?  Last year, there were movies about a single dad under a mountain of debt whose struggles to raise his rambunctious daughter are complicated by finding Optimus Prime, a monkey king who wants peace but has to fend off his more hawkish monkey-advisors, a single dad forced to give up raising his kids in order to fly to other planets and listen to Anne Hathaway babble about love incoherently, a widowed Keanu Reeves shooting people in the fucking face, two guys disappointed by adulthood who pretend to be cops, etc., etc., etc.  Even without thinking of serious dramas, there was a range of character types, character motivations.

Comics, though? I know I'm exaggerating, but some days it just really feels like a nonstop parade of weakboys.  "I don't understand why girls don't like me even though my only personality trait is complaining that girls don't like me.  Oh look now I have superpowers / a big sword / a friend who's an alien robot / blah blah blah.  Now I'm totally on the road to Getting Crazy Laid.  AMERICA!"  I just wrote ALL OF THE COMICS-- weeee!

I'm just so fucking exhausted of that character-type.  Shonen manga, adolescent American comics, it's all just weakboy after weakboy.  It just seems unhealthy, for people to consume that kind of mythology over and over.

There's less male self-pity on fucking Reddit.

QUESTION 6.

Riddle Me This: A man goes into a restaurant and orders the albatross. He takes a single bite, pulls out a gun, and shoots himself. Why does he do this?

He's Pagliacci, the famous clown.  This is part of his act.  After he shoots himself, the other people in the restaurant laugh for days.  Except the waiter, who has to clean up Pagliacci's brains.  Days later, Pagliacci's doctor would fire his nurse-- it was her job to find out the names of new patients, take down their health information, look at a copy of their driver's license, get a blood pressure reading.  She had really fallen down on the job.  The doctor didn't know that she had once eaten her husband on a deserted island, though, having mistaken him for a delicious albatross.  Of course, after she returned home, she ordered another albatross at the restaurant, and realized her mistake.  She became severely depressed.  Everyone told her to go see Pagliacci.  She did, but that night, Pagliacci phoned it in.  So, who's laughing now, clown?  Answer: The restaurant owner.  He's laughing all the way to the bank.  You can't buy advertising like this riddle.

QUESTION 7.

What was the best bit of dialogue in the comic?

Weakboy: "See, now if my life was a movie, THAT's what would happen?"

Some guy?: "If your life were a movie it would be over in an hour and a half."

QUESTION 8.

What is the most interesting page in the comic and how does it work?

Rumble, Issue One, Page 8.

I bought this comic for fight scenes, so might as well talk about one of those, even though as referenced above, there are only about two-maybe-three pages of fights in this comic. So if you're just into it for the fights, this is spoiling 33% of the comic for you. Whoops.

Fur is murder.

Panel 1, Harren goes with a full-bleed panel, at least to the top of the page. He doesn't do full-bleed that often. Except for that last page cliffhanger, he usually uses it for establishing shots where he's trying to imply height. Harren mostly sticks to pages with proper white gutters otherwise. This is the only place in the comic where he really uses a bleed as punctuation. I think it helps to imply the height of the Action Scarecrow character (we never learn his name) as compared to the other characters on the page, as a way of conveying how much he towers over the others.

The most noteworthy thing here is the character design. While Harren's fond of speed-lines, he doesn't rely on those. The main character's design is a figure nestled in a set of furs, such that in action scenes, the furs flouncing around create a sort of secondary set of linework conveying motion. Well, not just motion. It conveys the enormous bulk of Action Scarecrow, while still drawing that character as a mass of speed. Action Scarecrow has both heft and velocity. It makes for an intimidating presence in a fight scene.

Wearing flip-flops to a bar, tho?  Kind of asking for it, that guy.

Note also how Action Scarecrow's legs and arms create a helpful frame for the more abstract shape of Weakboy in the distance. I like the lack of detail on Weakboy: he's surprised by this action scene erupting, so he's not all there mentally; he's an abstract detail in his own life. Been there!

The gesture of the sword superimposing over the WHOOSH sound effect is also a nice touch, I suppose. The sound effect suggests the sound of the sword, while the sword cleaving the sound effect implies the sharpness of the sword, sharp enough to cut sound.

One detail easy to miss: look how Harren draws the character being attacked, Trucker Hat, his sandal. Trucker Hat's sandal is twisting a way no sandal should. The distortion of the figures in motion extends down to the smallest of details.

I once got stuck on a ride at Epcot for a while.  It felt a lot like looking at this fucking panel over and over.  I still remember hearing the animatronic robots repeat themselves to us:  "Mommy!  Mommy!  Look-- Timmy's flying!"  I must've heard that 20 times. I never thought I would hate a robot dog, but Epcot had so much to teach me that day.

It is a drastic understatement to say that I'm not great with understanding perspective, but Trucker Hat seems to be falling away from what I think is kind of the vanishing point, which maybe contributes to the overall feeling of speed to this panel...? (There's some curving going on, making it trickier, but).  In action scenes, my impression is that a good action page is usually using vanishing points to boost the action, to imply speed. But that kind of talk is a little beyond me since perspective-talk always makes my nose bleed.

• Perspective for Dummies by a Perspective Dummy:  perspective's a way of fooling the eye so that the viewer thinks they're seeing a 3-d scene, a drawing with depth rather than just a flat 2-d drawing like in some kind of Egyptian heiroglyphic.  Or some kind of nonsense like that.  It involves lines converging at vanishing points, which are on horizon lines or ... stuff like that, basically.  There can be more than one vanishing point (though I remember reading that some comic artists are really into trying to stick to one vanishing point; fetishize that).  I couldn't even begin to tell you the Why of any of it-- it's just some stupid shit that some Renaissance guys figured out, inbetween feces-baths and dying of the plague.  If you look at the old How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way book, most of the examples they use to convey the importance perspective are drawings of cities. Or this one weird downshot of a bunch of couches...? John Buscema really strongly felt like drawing comics the Marvel way involved couches.  Or if you look at old Andy Loomis books, there are all these messy diagrams about how to draw two characters on a set of different level stairs, so that the heights of the characters are consistent.     Understanding some perspective apparently can help with comic storytelling, too, but I don't really know what you'd read if you're interesting in hearing more about that; most comic art books just focus on the city and/or couch drawings.  Perspective is just this gross headache, but it's stuff people who draw know about, so if you want to draw yourself, what else can you do but, you know, get out a ruler and draw some couches?   Couch it up!  My favorite John Buscema couches were the couches in Madripoor.  Those couches had eyepatches.

Trucker Hat is being framed for the eye by the blacks on the page, the black ink-mass of Action Scarecrow to his right and the inks of the table above him to his upper-left. (Plus, he's got the excited word balloon from the midst of the sword swing pointing at him, which probably doesn't hurt to draw the reader's attention to him).

I like this panel because action is transpiring in the foreground (Trucker Hat yelling), midground (Action Scarecrow swingin' away), and background (Weakboy, gawping). I always think that's a pretty neat thing for a comic to shoot for.

And of course, for eyeflow purposes, the bar area and sword puts in sharp diagonal lines drawing us to where the Action Scarecrow rests in the next panel.

I really think if I pushed myself, my next caption for that first panel would've been the best one.  I wish I were looking at that first panel again.  I miss it.

Well, "rests" is not the best word. Again, note how Harren's character design pluses the speed lines. And again, talking out of my ass, it would appear we have Trucker Hat falling away from where I would guesstimate the vanishining point sits, and framed by the black of the table to his right, and his crotch to his left.

For eyeflow purposes, the table and chair both point to the third panel.

The main character robbed Rick Ross's closet on the way to this scene.  EVERY DAY HE'S HUSTLING EVERY EVERY DAY HE'S HUSTLING HE WANTED TO GO ON VACATION WITH HIS KIDS TO LEGOLAND BUT HE COULDN'T CANCEL HIS PRE-EXISTING COMMITMENTS TO HUSTLING.

Weakboy is now framed by the bar, while the hilt of a baseball bat in the foreground points the way to panel four. Though with panel configurations like this, I always feel like panels four and five are kind of happening simultaneously (though panel four does lead the eye down using the background drawings of the bar, while panel five pushes to the next page using that smudged lightning bolt Z that Stewart paints into the background).

Panels four through six emphasize something Dave Stewart did in panels one and two, namely the more excited the action panels, the brighter the background colors. The action heated up the world around the action; the intensity of the action didn't just take place within an environment, but are reflected by that environment. When things calm down, they go back to red. (Or maybe I have that backwards from a color temperature perspective...? Put "color temperature" down as another thing I don't really have any kind of grasp on. It works, however you want to phrase it; plus, more functionally, let's the red of the bleeding Trucker Hat's severed arm stand out more).

Small thing, but worth noting: I like that Harren hand-draws his panel borders (if that's what's happening here). The way the nubs of lines protrude out. I find leaving that kind of discordant detail very comforting, even if I know these pages have been worked over digitally thereafter, even if it's just an affectation.

QUESTION 9.

Did you experience any noteworthy emotion reading the comic?

I started texting halfway through the comic.  That is not a joke.

I experienced no emotion other than an utter disregard for the hard work this creative team had done preparing this comic.

Nothing about this comic engaged in me in any respect.

It is a shambles.

QUESTION 10.

What do we hope that younger cartoonists learn to do and not to do from this comic?

To do / Not To Do:

Well.  This would be a very easy one to dance on top of, in that it's a comic that I thought was pretty terrible, a nice drawing here or there aside.  It's the kind of terrible it'd be fun to rip up because this comic is bad in a way that suggests a kind of laziness in thinking.  Comic creators soft enough to waste pages on the Mystery of Why a Fucking Cat has Glowing Eyes at an Undetermined Location for Unknown Reasons, in their very first issue, rather than create a single character worth listening to, or a story of any substance?  Creators who'd make that kind of choice, a guy like me, with my kind of dysfunctions, would have plenty of cause to think them soft and flabby, and to think the kind of self-satisfied and smug culture that allowed that kind of flabbiness needs to be decapitated. Ripping apart that kind of work is a matter of no small satisfaction.  It would be fun and it'd feel good, at least if you're my kind of sinister.

But I find myself a little philosophical tonight, here at the end of this (too long!) set of questions, that... I find myself thinking about something instead of mean-guy talk, which is...

If you're the kind of person who needs to put stuff out into the world, it's very likely that the reaction you get from that experience, that it's never going to be good enough.  People might like what you put out, but unless you have a very particular kind of talent and your talent luckily gets expressed in particularly lucrative and sex-generating endeavors (guitarist for a band that actually makes money, A-list actor, etc.), it's not likely that the reaction to what you put out will be "enough", however it is you may define "enough".

People liking what you do is not going to heal you. All that broken stuff that makes your work interesting, that shit's not getting fixed cause someone clicked the like icon on your creative output.  Heck, if you're a certain kind of person, you're not even going to believe the nice bits people say; you're going to go looking for the bad bits, the really nasty bits.  You'll trust those more because they sound closer to what you hear inside your own head everyday.

This is a comic made by seasoned professionals with a track record of praise behind them.  And for me at least, it's a mess, a fucking pointless mess of a first issue.  They just did not create anything even remotely interesting to experience, just white noise.  A complete waste of my time.  But when they were making it, when they were making it, there must have been a moment where none of that matters:  "Oh we've really got something here.  A scarecrow!  That's big!  With a sword!  We are fucking geniuses with rock hard boners!"

So, I think the "thing to learn"  from this kind of failure is this:  learn to appreciate the moments where you feel excited about what you're doing, that early rush where the potential of what you're about to do is buzzing all around, where you can't wait to get started.  There's no telling what happens after that.  You try your best and sometimes you just miss.  Or you try your best and you get stuck with a co-creator who's not bringing the fire, or a collaboration that's not firing on all cylinders, or a million other things.  Or even if you hit, even if you hit, even then, it still probably will not be enough.  So, at least, try to stop and appreciate that one moment.

How does that Kurt Vonnegut quote go?

"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

NEXT WEEK: THE NAMES #1 from DC-Vertigo.

Arriving 1/14/2015

Some of our favorites come in this week, with SUPREME BLUE ROSE, SILVER SURFER, ASTRO CITY and JUPITER'S LEGACY. Plus Marvel's STAR WARS debuts this week, which may be reason enough to celebrate. Click the link to see what else is coming this week!

A VOICE IN THE DARK GET YOUR GUN #2 (OF 5) ABE SAPIEN #19 ADVENTURE TIME MARCELINE GONE ADRIFT #1 ALIEN VS PREDATOR FIRE AND STONE #4 (OF 4) ALL NEW CAPTAIN AMERICA #3 ALL NEW GHOST RIDER #10 ALL NEW ULTIMATES #12 AMAZING X-MEN #15 ASTRO CITY #19 AVENGERS #34.2 AVENGERS #40 TRO BATGIRL #38 BATMAN ETERNAL #41 BOOM BOX 2014 MIX TAPE #1 BRAVEST WARRIORS #28 CAPTAIN MARVEL #11 CONAN RED SONJA #1 CONSTANTINE #21 COPPERHEAD #5 CYCLOPS #9 DAREDEVIL #12 DEADPOOL #40 DEATH DEFYING DR MIRAGE #5 (OF 5) DEATHLOK #4 DEEP STATE #3 DOCTOR WHO 10TH #6 EARTH 2 WORLDS END #15 EVIL ERNIE #3 EX CON #5 (OF 5) FABLES THE WOLF AMONG US #1 FBP FEDERAL BUREAU OF PHYSICS #17 FRAGGLE ROCK JOURNEY EVERSPRING #4 (OF 4) FUSE #9 GEORGE ROMEROS EMPIRE OF DEAD ACT TWO #5 (OF 5) GHOSTED #16 GRAYSON #6 GREEN LANTERN CORPS #38 GUARDIANS 3000 #4 HEXED #6 JUPITERS LEGACY #5 JUSTICE LEAGUE UNITED #8 KLARION #4 LAZARUS #14 MARVEL UNIVERSE AVENGERS ASSEMBLE SEASON TWO #3 MILES MORALES ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #9 NEW 52 FUTURES END #37 (WEEKLY) NEW SUICIDE SQUAD #6 NIGHTCRAWLER #10 Q2 RTN QUANTUM & WOODY #4 (OF 5) RAI #6 CVR A CRAIN RAT QUEENS SPECIAL BRAGA #1 REGULAR SHOW #19 SAN HANNIBAL #5 (OF 5) SAVAGE DRAGON #201 SCOOBY DOO WHERE ARE YOU #53 SHIELD #2 SHUTTER #8 SILVER SURFER #8 SMALLVILLE SEASON 11 CONTINUITY #2 (OF 4) SPIDER-VERSE #2 (OF 2) SPONGEBOB COMICS #40 STAR TREK ONGOING #40 STAR WARS #1 STEVEN UNIVERSE #6 STUMPTOWN V3 #5 SUICIDE RISK #21 SUPERANNUATED MAN #5 (OF 6) SUPERMAN WONDER WOMAN #15 SUPREME BLUE ROSE #6 TEEN DOG #5 TEN GRAND #12 TERRIBLE LIZARD #3 (OF 5) THANOS VS HULK #2 (OF 4) THOMAS ALSOP #8 (OF 8) TWILIGHT ZONE #11 VAMPIRELLA #100 VEROTIK WORLD #4 WEIRD VOODOO WALKING DEAD #136 WILDS END #5 WOLVERINES #2 WORLDS FINEST #30 X #21 X-FORCE #14

Books/Mags/Things 2000 AD #1911 2000 AD PROG 2015 AMERICAN VAMPIRE HC VOL 07 BATMAN BLACK AND WHITE TP VOL 04 BRAVEST WARRIORS TP VOL 04 BTVS SEASON 9 LIBRARY HC VOL 01 CROSSED TP VOL 11 DEATHLOK TP SOULS OF CYBER-FOLK FLASH TP VOL 04 REVERSE (N52) FUNGUS THE UNBEARABLE ROT OF BEING GN HENSHIN OGN HI FRUCTOSE MAGAZINE QUARTERLY #34 JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #355 MANIFEST DESTINY TP VOL 02 MICHAEL JORDAN HC BULL ON PARADE PLANTS VS ZOMBIES HC TIMEPOCALYPSE POKEMON ADVENTURES GN VOL 26 EMERALD RACHEL RISING TP VOL 05 NIGHT COMETH S. CLAY WILSON AUDACIOUS ILLUS ALPHABET SC SAM ZABEL AND THE MAGIC PEN HC SIZZLE #64 STAR WARS MARVEL YRS OMNIBUS HC VOL 01 CHAYKIN CVR STRAY BULLETS TP VOL 06 KILLERS (MR) SUPERGIRL TP VOL 05 RED DAUGHTER OF KRYPTON (N52) UNCANNY X-MEN TP VOL 03 GOOD BAD INHUMAN VEIL HC

As always, what do YOU think?

“I Am The Storm...Returned From The Grave.” COMICS! Sometimes I See How Writing A Bit More Off The Cuff Works Out For Us All!

Ugh, January. Anway, I had a quiet hour or two so here's a couple of comics I liked in 2014 that I thought didn't get enough play. I'll just rectify that then... Starslammers by Simonson, Workman & Ory

Anyway, this... USAGI YOJIMBO: SENSO Illustrated by Stan Sakai Written by Stan Sakai Cover Colours by Tom Luth Dark Horse Comics, $3.99 each (2014) Usagi Yojimbo created by Stan Sakai

According to the yellow circle on the cover of each issue 2014 marked 30 years of Stan Sakai's comics featuring his titular samurai (sigh, okay; ronin) character. I would dearly love to bluff my way through this piece by pretending I was there at the start and remained a constant reader through the decades separating the character's first appearance in Albedo Anthropomorphics in 1984 and this 2014 limited series. Alas, for most of its publishing history I thought Usagi Yojimbo was one of those crappy B&W “funny” animal comics that boomed and busted back then. Burnt once by a purchase of Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters I remained shy upon every later encounter with Usagi Yojimbo. Mysteriously, about three years back, I started buying Usagi Yojimbo. I can't remember why so this anecdote isn't terribly thrilling (let's pretend the fate of the free world hung in the balance) but the fact is I did, and I haven't stopped buying it since.

Usagi Yojimbo: Senso by Stan Sakai

Well, except for that brief period when Stan Sakai stopped making it to work on 47 Ronin (still samurai, but humans this time). With Usagi Yojimbo:Senso Usagi bounds back in a series set 20 years ahead of the regular series and with an atypically S-F slant. It's an odd move to be sure but it's working. In issue 4 Geoff “Shaolin Cowboy” Darrow writes in to compliment them on their paper stock. That's how well crafted this comic is – Geoff Darrow(!) is so excited about the paper its printed on he is moved to set pen to paper. It isn't just the paper Usagi Yojimbo: Senso is printed on though. Basically, Usagi Yojimbo: Senso works because Usagi Yojimbo always works. For me, anyway, and, chances are high, it works for everybody if they give it a go. The great thing about Usgai Yojimbo is it is at once for all ages (this does not just mean children) and is so beautifully crafted that every fresh episode seems as timeless as a legend. VERY GOOD!

STARSLAMMERS #1-8 Illustrated by Walter Simonson Written by Walter Simonson Colours by Len O'Grady (Colours in issues 1-3 based on original colouring by Walter & Louise Simonson) Lettered by John Workman Cover colours by Romulo Fajardo and Richard Ory IDW, $3.99 each (2014) Starslammers created by Walter Simonson

RAGNAROK #1 – 3 Illustrated by Walter Simonson Written by Walter Simonson Coloured by Laura Martin Lettered by John Workman IDW, $3.99 each (2014) Ragnarok created by Walter Simonson

In June of 2014, after giving his handlers the slip, Howard Victor Chaykin appeared at Special Edition: NYC where he said many things which were true and beautiful. The truest and most beautiful thing his louche larynx exclaimed was, “The only man of my generation that's still producing work that's not a parody of itself is Walter Simonson. Simonson's doing amazing work.” In 2014 Ragnarok proved this to be as true as a very true thing indeed. Also earlier in that same year Starslammers reminded us that Simonson had been doing amazing work for so long that that very longevity was kind of amazing in and of itself. It shouldn't have been a surprise since he never went away but, well, welcome to Comics - where Brian Bendis is taken seriously and Walter Simonson is taken for granted. (Comics – it's a visual medium. Write it down somewhere. Jesus.) For its first three issues Starslammers reformatted and reprinted the Starslammers 1984 Marvel Graphic Novel. The level of skill already present in this “old” work proved to be ridiculously ostentatious. Even back then Simonson had such a sure grip on pacing and truly cinematic presentation he ran the risk of leaving bruises behind. Also present, even back then, was John Workman's lettering; lettering so awesomely complementary that it became an inseparable and essential element of the stunning visuals on display. The remaining issues of the 2014 series re-presented the 1995 Malibu/Bravura Starslammers series.

Ragnarok by Simonson, Workman & Martin

This was the first time the full series had seen print and so the rejoicing in my tiny head was loud indeed. This later material proved Simonson hadn't lost any of his magic but had learned a few new spells as well. Simonson's work now flirted so hard with abstraction his ability to refrain from tumbling into incoherence was stunning. With Starslammers it might be an exaggeration to say that there was a lesson in comic art on every page but by the time Ragnarok rolled around such a statement was probably, if anything, selling Simonson and Workman short. Sure, Simonson's stories are fun, solid and entertaining genre stuff, but, in truth, I read his comics for the storytelling. There may well come a time when the old Gods die but, ironically, Ragnarok proved that time isn't here yet. VERY GOOD!

Basically I liked 'em because if either of those series were anything they were very definitely – COMICS!!!

“...His Wisdom Must Walk Hand In Hand With His Idiocy." INSANE RAMBLING! COMICS! Sometimes It’s Context Of The Planet Of The Apes!

Laydeez enn gennelmen! Please be seated for tonight’s presentation. Refreshments are available from the kiosk. Smoking is permitted in the auditorium because this is the 1970s and we are all going to live forever. Yes, your eyes do not deceive you, this is the 1970s. This is the Bronze Age. And this? This is the Preamble to The Planet of the Apes. (Again.) Cher on The Planet of the Apes. Yes, Really.

Anyway, this… 1. Being A Very Special And Very Personal Note From I, The Author, To You, the Reader (or Sorry, But There’s Nothing for You Here.)

Hello. The bulk of what follows was written in an attempt to write something. 2014 was a difficult year writing-wise, personally speaking, hence the large gaps between posts, the often stilted content, the unconvincing feints at seriousness and the occasional veer into fully fledged nonsense. No change there then! Oh, my! Looking back I don’t remember much of it but I remember having trouble doing it. Very much how I imagine I will feel about life when on my death-bed. Anyway, at one point things got so bad I wrote the following. I just started writing it to see what fell out. At worst, I figured, I’d use it as an entry in The Savage Critics annual Christmas tradition of my putting up a post about Planet of the Apes Weekly and then failing to follow through. (This failure to follow through would have been a lot handier in my drinking days, but there you go. That’s right, a joke about self-soiling – Happy New Year!) When I read it back I was not only surprised at its awfulness (I’ve edited it extensively since then; still awful, but hopefully less so) but also by the weird attempt I was apparently making to contextualise a certain time. I realise now why I was doing that but that reason was hidden from me back then. But, um, I don’t know, as I say, I’ve messed about with it and thrown it up. Largely because I think I need to lighten up about this whole writing about comics thing and I think putting up something this inane will help. I don’t know. I do know that “thrown it up” is pretty apt. So this one’s for me and, no, it doesn’t work; I’m particularly fond of the bit where I excoriate comedians for lazy stereotyping of the 1970s and then do the exact same thing in very short order. But in return for this I will write about Planet of the Apes Weekly. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but soon and for what will feel like the rest of my life.

2.What Went Before (or Previously on Middle Aged Public Nervous Breakdown Theatre):

In 2012 a bloke at work lent me his collection of Planet of the Apes Weeklies. I promised to get right on that and write about them for The Savage Critics. I patently failed to do so. The year is now 2015…

Now read on...

3. The 1970s (or “And I Only Am Escaped Alone To Tell Thee…”)

The 1970s! Space hoppers, Spangles and white dog shit! As only the most hatefully predictable stand-up comedian will tell you. Also, perhaps, other things. I don’t know about this bit, I don’t know if I need to tell you about the 1970s, or more specifically 1974, the year in which Planet of the Apes Weekly was launched. I did think maybe a few words of explication might be necessary because of a conversation I recently had with “Gil”, my under-10 spawn. Now, I realise most of you might have more of a grasp on the 1970s than a small child, so if you are au fait with the 1970s or could, frankly, not give a shit please do feel free to entertain yourselves in some other fashion. After all there is a rumour going around that this is a comics blog rather than my personal forum for tearful elderly reminiscences. On reflection then I’m not going to go on about the 1970s, nor 1974 in particular. You have The Internet as well, so you don’t need me to tell you that in 1974 the crew of Skylab returned to mother Earth, a WW2 Japanese soldier surrendered having missed the news about the war ending in 1945, Stephen King published Carrie and the Irish began their UK mainland bombing campaign. In 2015 space is full of junk, nobody surrenders anymore because the wars don’t end, Stephen King is a much wealthier writer and the Irish and the English are both mostly behaving in an adult fashion (at the time this went to press at least). So, a bit of a mixed bag progress wise. On balance Stephen King seems to have come out best from the last 40 or so years. So, well done there, Stephen King.

4. Intermittent Television (or The Beast That Shouted “Crackerjack!” At The Heart of the Living Room!)

Anyway, back at the bit where I try and strike up some cheap emotional connection with you like it’s the back matter of an Image book: me and the kid are talking and I’m trying to explain to him how in the past not only would I not have been able to ‘freeze’ the ‘streaming’ SpongeBob episode while I went and did my ‘business’ , but if it had ended before I had returned (having flushed and then washed my hands; I place particular stress on that part to him) I would have been unable to watch the episode by selecting it from a ‘cache’ of ‘stored’ programmes via the use of a ‘handset’. I would have had to wait for the programme to be repeated at some uncertain point in the future, probably at teatime because children’s programming was on only at specific points in the schedule, rather than running 24/7 on an array of dedicated channels. As for that handset, well, since there were only three channels most of the buttons wouldn’t have been there, and, anyway, the handset itself in all likelihood wasn’t there; thus sadistically requiring people to actually get out of the chair, travel across the length of the room to the television itself and thereupon physically turn a dial or press a button set into the fascia of the crate sized behemoth; the bulk of which was not screen and the screen of which displayed only fuzzy pictures, allegedly in colour but certainly fond of lurching up and off the side of the screen like an aunt startled by a flasher. In the 1970s, I stress, all this was state of the art. However, I note that such picture quality is now used in movies as shorthand for the presence of a malefic supernatural force. Which is how I also like to think of the ‘70s. This Television then, the notional one I’m using as an example, would squat in a front room, a room heated by a real gas fire with real flames; the danger of which would also be real, and so it would likely have a kind of portable metal mesh screen set in front of it to avoid real children getting too close and receiving real burns. The room’s walls would be adorned with wallpaper the thickness of today’s carpets while the carpet would be thicker than a bear’s pelt . It would have been on just such an apparatus as that Television in just such a room as that just described that the Planet of the Apes TV show would have been aired by the commercial UK TV channel ITV on Sunday 13th October 1974. (I looked it up.)

5. Second-Hand Treasures (or The Unfeasibly Long Half-Life of Comic Books)

It would be this very show it has taken me so very, very long to mention and its audience of thrilled children that the comic (can you remember back that far?) was aimed at. One such thrilled child would have been me, age 4. Now, as important as it is to me that you think I’m bloody super I am not going to pretend to have read Planet of the Apes Weekly when it came out. I doubt my reading skills at age 4 were all that, brah. I would have read it later and I would have read it from the second hand book shop in the market in the centre of town. This is where your Mum would get most of your comics because even back then your Mum was just doing the best with what she had, just trying to give her magical little boy the best she could despite paltry wages earned at exhaustive cost. And this magical little boy would grow up and repay her in the coin of resentment and ingratitude because, kids! (Did you enjoy the distancing language I unconsciously employed there?) Certainly when I was a child I thought like a child but when I became a man I kept all my childish things inside my head for later, because being a grown-up isn’t, surprisingly, all it is cracked up to be. And one of those things retained in my head is an abiding enjoyment of Planet of the Apes…and at that point I noticed…I was alone. At some point “Gil” had wandered off and was playing virtual murder on his X-Box360. Thinking back, the point of his prudent departure was probably where I seemed to start addressing an invisible audience of two bored people on The Internet. It may well be a bad thing to lose your audience but it is a worse thing not to know at which point it happened. Hello? Oh, I’ll go on.

6. Thunder Underground (or “It was The Boogeyman.”)

What I’m saying is there wasn’t much television back then and what there was you made a date to catch because it wouldn’t wait for you and you’d never know if it it’d be back again. Also, brace yourselves, there was no Internet. In truth I think the lack of the latter was hardly felt as people were quite openly racist, misogynistic and homophobic right to each other’s faces; arguing about meaningless shit until violence erupted was no problem either since everyone drank booze like someone was going to snatch it away; pornography was everywhere anyway in the form of savaged jazz mags badly hidden in bushes and your uncle’s airing cupboard, so men of all ages were still able to achieve physical satisfaction while avoiding interacting with real women; in the 1970s life itself was the Internet. On the upside kids spent a lot more time outdoors but life loves balance so they also spent a lot more time never being seen again and dying in quarries. So much so that Donald “Death has come to your little town, Sheriff.” Pleasance was hired to scare them out of such activities. Of course there were worse things than those happening to kids out there in the 1970s but people didn’t like to talk about it much. Surprisingly, ignoring it and hoping it went away turned out to be a terrible idea of truly titanic proportions. Witness the last couple of years of our news sheepishly revealing the fact that both the light entertainment industry and the ruling elite have been treating the children of Britain as a big old Paedo pick’n’mix for the last four decades at least. Imagine a world where the very people entrusted with the entertainment and, yes, the very care of the most vulnerable in society just get stuck in like pigs; it’s easy if you try. Imagine a world in which David Peace’s Nineteen Seventy Four undersold the situation; don’t bother, you’re sat in it. Shit, that got dark quick. Look, I'm not angry; just disappointed (I am angry; I'm fucking livid).In 1974 had I written myself into a hole like that I'd have then had to exercise some serious literary muscles to get you all back on-side but it's 2015, and so with a wave of The Internet I instantly salve all wounds:

7. News From The Future (or Invasion of the Format Snatchers)

In summation then: there weren’t many distractions for kids in the ‘70s but amongst their limited number we can count comics (!!!) and Television. One thing which combined both was Planet of the Apes Weekly. It’s unfortunate that while in the past there was no shortage of children there was a very definite shortage of distractions, and so the need for cheap entertainment for the sedation of offspring was at a premium. This is where comics came in. Cheap and plentiful they were back there, back then, in the 1970s. There were two kinds of comics: home-grown and imported. I lie; there were three kinds of comics: home-grown, imported and mongrels. Home-grown adventure comics were effectively black and white, gender segregated and sedately content to pimp the increasingly archaic values of the previous generation. (i.e. before Pat Mills et al. happened) Imported genre comics came from The Americas and were suffused with the glamour of bubble gum, nylons, gun crime, Howdy Doody and Television. Yes, that list is supposed to be a bit anachronistic. Like their star spangled land of origin the yank mags were more colourful and vibrant because America was where The Future was happening, and the comics which landed on our shores felt very much like vulgar intrusions from The Future. Yes, in the 1970s everyone in Britain knew America was where The Future was happening. Here in the science fictional year of 2015 of course those very comics look as fresh and progressive as a white man in a suit drunkenly pinching his secretary’s bum. And then there were the mongrels, of which Planet of the Apes Weekly was one. These curs of the comic book world took their content from American sources, reprinted it in black & white to avoid over stimulating the easily excited British audience and chopped it up so several “episodes” of different series could be bodged into one comic . This made a lot more sense than you might think. In Britain, see, comics were weekly, (mostly) B&W anthologies and someone in Marvel’s Mighty Marketing Department had obviously read their Jack Finney, so when they set out to infiltrate the British market they did it via imitation. (Also, it was flattering, I guess.)

8. Nearly There (or The Secret Origin (Not Really) of the Direct Market.)

The American source in this case was the magazine format Planet of the Apes which was already B&W, so that worked out okay, but in America books were monthly which meant an inescapable content deficiency loomed over the project. Never more innovative than when cutting corners, Marvel hacked the yank stuff up into chunks, with only that chunk rather than the whole strip appearing in a single weekly issue. British kids then had their comics beefed up with behind the scenes articles (also from the American magazine) and backup strips. Once we get past the novelty of reading about the adaptations and the Mike Ploog brains-in-jars stuff these back-ups will be the most interesting thing about Planet of the Apes Weekly. Should you ever chance upon a physical copy of Planet of the Apes weekly, or indeed any 1970s British weekly comic, the chances are high that on the cover (front or back) in a top corner will be a surname in biro. This is where the newsagent would put your name were you to answer the call printed in every issue of your top weekly funny paper to place an order with your newsagent (“Never Miss An Issue!”). This was a kind of Palaeolithic version of having a pull list with a comics shop. True or not, I like to think that the 21st Century’s sexy rebels of Comics Retailing, like Brian “Two Shops” Hibbs, evolved directly from small men with brilliantined comb-overs and braised faces who could spin on a penny when the bell above their door tinkled announcing the entry of an all too likely larcenous child. And so, there in 1974 in a cramped den of cigarette packets and serried sweet jars somewhere in there, usually at ground level and braced between puzzle magazines and the sexy lure of Look-In, lurked Planet of the Apes Weekly. Let’s reach down now and take a look at issue 1…

NEXT TIME: Cold dead hands, marabunta ants, and somewhere in there I'll probably say, “To be fair, George Tuska had his moments. But few of them are on these pages.” It’s all in the first real instalment of Planet of the COMICS!!! Yes, it is coming and I shit you not, kids!

Tilting #239 is live!

The newest column is up at Comic Book Resources; I very much like to hear YOUR comments!  

-B

Abhay: Inquisition - Bitch Planet #1

This is part of a series of write-em-ups answering a series of questions about recent comics.  As an initial matter, please be advised that this will likely discuss details of the plot in the comic being discussed, and so here is a spoiler warning. Also, sponge warning: be careful of sponges that you use to wash your dishes.  According to no less scientific a news source than the Daily Mail, a "kitchen sponge is 200,000 times dirtier than a toilet seat - and could even lead to PARALYSIS."

10 Questions about BITCH PLANET #1 by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Valentine De Landro, Cris Peter, Clayton Cowles, Rian Hughes, Laurenn McCubbin, and Lauren Sankovitch.

A basic description of this comic, so that everyone's on the same page.

The first issue of a new series  about women trapped in a science-fiction prison run by an oppressive male-dominated society.

The first issue focuses on the arrival of a small group of women to a prison located on what we're told is another planet, and the immediate violence that ensues upon their arrival, some of which is caused by a bit of intrigue involving an older woman sent to this prison and her ex-husband back on Earth.

Co-author Kelly Sue DeConnick, talking to the LA Times:

"This is born of a deep and abiding love for exploitation and women in prison movies of the ’60s and ’70s.  I like this stuff so much, and it’s so terrible, it’s so deeply awful and delicious, like those candies that are bad for you. So I wanted to see if there was a way that I could play with the things about it that I love and also the things about it that make me wildly uncomfortable."

QUESTION 1.

Is this comic about anything besides its plot?

This is a first issue but the book's themes seem baked-in from the get-go. Women are put in prison for the crime of being "non-compliant" with a male society that, in brief background glimpses, we can see is fascistically obsessed with controlling women's bodies.  The prison and society are run by a violent patriarchy termed the "Council of Fathers".

This is all kind of a big, chunky metaphor that feels really ideal for a comic book: easy to grasp, angsty in a sort of adolescent way that serial comics seem to benefit by (I mean that in a complimentary way), a little goofy, lots of possible visual hooks.

But beyond establishing the premise, the first issue also works in a small plot about a husband discarding his first wife into this Prison of Misogyny because he found a "more compliant" younger woman. What makes this such an effective first issue, I think, isn't that it just presents this big chunky metaphor, but that it then immediately has a little example that fits entirely within the first issue, a little exemplar of hetero-lady anxiety / anger that's more bite-sized. It's not just relying on the big metaphor to win the day.

First issues are monsters.  So many choices to make, so many obligations to service, so many ways things can go wrong for a creative team trying to sell readers on whatever the appeal of their comic is supposed to be.  In the first issue of Bitch Planet, you can see comic authors trying to address those challenges by minimally setting up the series premise, but instead focusing moreso on providing a complete, discreet unit of thematic and emotional content for readers.

QUESTION 2.

Did the creative team make any interesting choices in the visual presentation of the story?

The way the color green is used jumps out.

The authors color-code the first issue. Red/pink is established quickly as the color of women in the early pages: the introduction to the women is bathed in pink light, the prison jumpers are red, etc. Green is the color of men: green-lit wardens, the patriarchy's representatives  back on planet Earth working in a green office, etc.

48-1230 is the combination I have on my luggage.

Once they're in prison, the women have to put on clothes in front of green stalls.  As soon as one of these women insects with the color green, however, there are disastrous consequences, and a riot ensues.

Krakk is whack.

In that riot, two panels feature women being struck from behind.  In both panels where we see women being harmed, the background colors of those panels go green. Violence in this comic is depicted as the women characters being engulfed by the green color of men.

It's a small bit of narrative-through-color, but one that at least reflects a creative team engaged with the visual primacy of comics.

• (Wild Guess Dept.: The color-coding may also be a spoiler to the mystery set-up by the cliffhanger, if you check the color-coding on the characters in play (?), but we'll see on that point in future issues).

QUESTION 3.

How is the comic structured?

A high-tempo opening page (discussed further below in detail) sets-up a dueling dialogue scene in the next two pages, where (a) information presented visually comments on dialogue taking place at a different time/location, while (b) other characters are presented simultaneously, themselves commenting upon the visual information, i.e. three layers of information are conveyed to the reader and those layers all meaningfully comment upon at least one of the other layers. (This is easier to understand when seen, than it is to describe in prose, which I again mean as a compliment).

The first issue does this a couple times-- intercutting between moments in different places (and times?), leaving it to a reader to follow color-cues and page layouts to fully process the space-time "geography" of various moments.

Anyways: first scene's about five pages, including a two-page title credit splash.

The double-page splash is a bit of a weak point here. The comic presumably takes place on another planet (?) but nothing about the planet depicted in the splash seems particularly alien (presuming the "it's all another planet" bit isn't just a fake-out).  If anything, the double-page splash seems to depict a space station in the foreground, which at least for a moment, lead me to believe the prison was on a space station. (I guess the tip-off for me should've been the comic being called Bitch PLANET but I'm not so smart sometimes...?). The creative team seemed interested in the wallop of a big double-page splash with their logo, but I don't know if that splash really carries its water narratively.

Next scene is four pages set in the prison. This is followed by two pages set back on Earth, setting up the issue's mini-story, and then again, a four page scene at the prison.

In the next two pages, the comic intercuts between the prison and Earth.  The intercutting is on almost a panel-by-panel basis for the first page, but on a more interesting "space to the left, Earth to the right" configuration on the second page which relies on color and page-geography for clarity.

There then ensues two more pages on the prison, one page wrapping up the Earth storyline, and then four pages in space-- three of which rap up the issue's mini-storyline in space, one of which is a cliffhanger page. (Thankfully, not a splash page cliffhanger! I do not dig those much at all-- way too played out, especially with first issues).

Eight scenes total: 5, 4, 2, 4, 2, 2, 1, 4.

Put another way, the comic goes Earth, Prison, Earth, prison, Earth and prison simultaneously, Prison, Earth, Prison.   If you squint at that, I think you vaguely see a symmetry to the issue.  But maybe that's just me squinting.

QUESTION 4.

Is there anything noteworthy about the cover, logo, lettering, or design?

Rian Hughes logo. He makes the letter C in the word BITCH into the planet Saturn, using a little bit of shading.  The logo looks better in the comic than on the cover-- on the cover, he uses a undefined blocky drop-shadow-y thing, like on the old X-Men logo. (I don't know what the terminology is-- I don't know logo lingo). It just looks a little more cornball on the cover.

On the cover, it seems in service of an overall aesthetic that I don't quite know that I understand.

The cover and the book itself seem intent on asserting to the reader that it's a pop culture artifact, via "this sure is a comic!"-type moves that I'm not sure I dig. Besides the blocky drop-shadow-y thing, the book's colors often have a Photoshop texture, a faux Benday-dot effect, i.e. "lots of little dots". The cover aims more for an exploitation movie poster, with exploitation-trailer style text blurbs on the cover, an insincere "Rated M Mature" logo in the corner that's almost smaller than Rian Hughes's signature.

I don't know. I think those moves are supposed to be fun, but I think there's a little insecurity to them which doesn't really make much sense to me, given the strengths of the content otherwise. It seems a little weirdly defensive, for a book that doesn't need to be defensive -- trying to preempt arguments that aren't worth entertaining to begin with (e.g., "you can't dismiss this in any way as not being a comic!  Look how much of a comic I'm being with these benday-dots"...?).

Or even setting that aside, aesthetically, it's just not very fully-formed. The faux Benday dots in particular don't really add a lot. I'm just not really into those dots, generally, so maybe that's just me. Photoshop-created dot-textures just never look right to me. (See, for comparison, Hip Hop Famly Tree pages from Ed Piskor, who actually took the time to scan in old comic pages, to a noticeably different and, I think, superior effect). I have "Annoying Music Fan Talking about Vinyl" type opinions that there's a warmth to actual old coloring and the mechanical processes and mishaps that created old coloring that you just can't recreate by slapping a computerized dot texture on top of some colors. Photoshop-dots, it just looks like a schtick to me: it's not recreating a thing, it's signifying a thing, which is just less interesting; it makes the colors intrude into the experience; for me at least, it's just too schtick-y.

I thought that word had three U's.

The single worst part about the comic overall is the sound-effect lettering. The THWUUCKK font should be erased from human existence. But not many people will care about that, and that's a little kink they can smooth out as the book proceeds.

QUESTION 5.

Is anything about this comic interesting politically, socially, or from some other frame of reference?

Ha-- well, this one is an easy yes.

Let's be more honest than is probably advisable, and let me cop to something I noticed about myself reading this issue:

For starters, let's establish that I'm a big old piece-of-shit guy, with a lot of dumb-ass-guy opinions.  (I think it's a little unavoidable. You know, you live in a weird crappy society, some weird crappy stuff can't help but rub off on you. The question becomes whether you admit it or or you lie and pretend like you're some special-y special exception. Me, I got nothing telling me I'm any kind of exception in life, and a whole lot going on telling me the opposite, so.)

And so... And so, the issues raised by the issue's mini-story, in particular, is really designed around pushing emotional buttons that while I imagine I might have if I were a woman, and while I can understand them intellectually (I think), I just don't have those buttons. I can appreciate on an intellectual level, at least, that the mini-story about the discarded first wife would be appealing, for example, to a woman angry about her value being defined exclusively by a short window of male sexual attention, and being discarded after that window closes.

But I'm a Shitty Guy so my immediate gut-level reaction was more, you know, "I sure wouldn't want to be trapped in a loveless (and definitely sexless) marriage, and don't blame anybody who gets out of one of those #notallmen.  P.S. some science stuff about bonobo monkeys I heard once third-hand."

Then I caught myself and realized the more Horrible and Pressing Truth:  I live in my head with the piece of crap who starts creating excuses for fictional men...! Haha, oh nooooooo.

So, I think I had an interesting experience with this issue just in that... I imagine if I was a lady, I'd have to constantly identify with male protagonists because they'd be given to me so ridiculously often.  And so it turned out to be a little bummer (though an interesting one) knowing that as a Shitty Guy, the comparative muscles for me are so atrophied from non-use.  Little bit of a bummer!

In my limited defense, they haven't assigned me a reddit account yet (they assign you a reddit account and it's just all over for you; all over).  I don't know.  In my limited defense, I can at least spot the issue with my Default Settings.  I don't know how much control we have over our Default Settings, but probably no control at all if we're not even aware of them...?

(Also: bonobo monkeys really are actually pretty interesting creatures, if you look into them!!  Blame me; don't blame the bonobos!)

Besides gender, there's also race. Race is just some tricky shit. It's more fun than not to see black female lead characters, and the book seems to promise those will be more prominent in future issues. On the other hand, the tricky bit is that those characters not all be tough fight-y fighters (which is all the first issue seems to promise), as that would kinda make them into the Other or be in a way capitalizing on cultural baggage that's uncool...? It'd make race into, like, a signifier, which is ... kinda not so great.  I've known pretty tough black ladies, sure. But I've also known black ladies who are made pretty much out of expensive cupcakes. You know?

The cast hasn't really been fleshed out yet so too early to say whether that should be a concern. Still, the first issue has black ladies beating folks up, but the characters with emotion-driven back stories, whose inner lives are of interest, those are all white-- the black characters are just engines of cool violence in issue one.

(But look, it's pretty unlikely to think that's going to be what this comic is like by the end of issue 4...? It just doesn't seem very likely that the creative team's going to have a blind spot that glaring past the jump-off.)

QUESTION 6.

Take away my first letter; take away my second letter; take away all my letters, and I would remain the same. What am I?

You're a fucking weakling.  Why don't you learn how to fight, you spineless bag of cotton candy?  A couple weeks of Krav Maga and no one's taking anything from you.  Someone takes your first letter, you just yell "Krav Maga!" at the top of your lungs and then kick them in their fun-parts as hard as you can.  Nobody's going to take a second letter after that.  Unless they have a gun.  Okay, actually, be careful, in case they have a gun. Nowadays, the way this country's going, they're probably packing some heat, the letter bandits.  Damn.  Well, I mean, if you don't need all those letters, and you're the same without them, then you should just give that shit away before some jabroni with a gun shows up and it even becomes an issue! What are you keeping the letters for anyways?  What, you want to end up on that Hoarders show?

Gun, no gun, just get your life together!

QUESTION 7.

What was the best bit of dialogue in the comic?

One of the Bitch-Planeteers (yelling): "Where'm I s'posed to put my tits?!"

The first prison fight featured in the comic is caused by men's failure to manufacture adequate bras or to appreciate the variety in the shapes of women's bodies...?  Sponge warning: it's not a very subtle comic.  Not so subtle with its themes.  No one's going to criticize the comic called BITCH PLANET for being TOO subtle, as it turns out-- surprise!

QUESTION 8.

What is the most interesting page in the comic and how does it work?

Bitch Planet, page one.

The first page was the one that struck me as most noteworthy.

As you can see, Page one is a 12-panel grid, 4x3, with three interstitial panels cutting into the right-most two panels of each tier.

Tier 1 of Bitch Planet #1, Page 1. "Eat less poop more."

The top tier is a Woman advancing geographically across three panels. The panel borders establish an urgent staccato "musical beat" from the get-go, with the three interstitial panels acting as grace notes.

The Woman is racing towards panel 4-- a drawing of a Man sitting in a chair, complaining about her.

Tier 2 of Bitch Planet #1, Page 1.  Really wish that sign said "No more posers."  So that the posers would finally know how we felt about them.

Tier two, the Woman is again depicted as racing to her right, but now only in two panels. Where the Man once took up a single panel, he now takes up two panels.

While the first tier featured a generic science-fiction city-scape in the background, with John Carpenter They Live headlines like "OBEY" blaring in the distant background on various neon signs, the second tier becomes more whimsical.  The Woman has to squeeze through a crowd of three men surrounding an ape holding an "Evolve" sign.  We can see that her progression through her world is becoming more surreal and the propaganda only more oppressive, closer, unavoidable to notice.  The space she has to move in more cramped.  Meanwhile, the Man's world is expanding and stable-- he has plenty of space to work.

In his two panels, the Man begins a countdown, like the kind that would be sung out before a song starts properly.  This further adds to the high-tempo musical quality of this first page.

Tier 3 of Bitch Planet #1, Page 1.  Into that "Whoop!" but couldn't tell you why.  People who talk about comics being like music usually sound like self-satisfied windbags but I guess they wouldn't be wrong saying there's a musicality to this page, to that "Whoop!"

Tier three, final tier, the Woman is now stumbling to the right, with only one panel dedicated to her-- any confidence in her body language is now gone. The cityscape now seems violent and threatening, with some kind of police robots hovering above her, and her journey now pushing her past what we would presume are violent men breaking the law.

The remaining three panels are now dominated by the Man, who is prominent in the foreground while the Woman enters, small and diminished into his background.

What's interesting about this page is that as early as page 1 of issue one, there is a narrative visually presented to the reader: a competent woman has to struggle through a ever-more-hostile world, but her story, that progression?  It is increasingly diminished and subjugated to the story of a comparatively more dull male character.  It is his background, separated from him by a plane of safety glass.  And that male character is dismissive of her struggles despite having none of his own.

I think you're too lazy to scroll up and look at the page again.  I think that about you, and I'm not sorry.

Without resorting to dialogue, within a page, the comic is making a thematic statement, establishing everything we need to know about the world without exposition, with minimal clunkiness, and within a grid structure that immediately starts the comic at a brisk and exciting tempo.

Further bit of possible interest: in the first panel of page 2, we have a close-up of the Woman finally, as she begins her job for the Man character. The creative team presents her purely in silhouette. She had been drawn with some minimal detail before working for the Man. But now, working for the Man, her very identity has been visually obliterated.

QUESTION 9.

Did you experience any noteworthy emotion reading the comic?

I'm not a big fan of women in prison movies particularly.  As exploitation genres go, that one never really did anything for me; those movies are pretty sleazy, and not really the kinds of reprehensible gross sleaze I'm super-super-into, boner-style.  So, my reactions to the comic were more analytic than emotional or gut-level.  As mentioned above, I was just more struck by what I think I was supposed to have an emotional reaction to, but didn't. For me, that was the most noteworthy experience with the comic, beyond an appreciation of craft.

QUESTION 10.

What do we hope that younger cartoonists learn to do and not to do from this comic?

Not to do:

Maaaan, be careful of that Ben-Day schtick. Not a lot of comics I can think of where a Photoshop filter has really plus-ed a comic. It's the kind of choice that once you make, it's a tough one to back away from.

The iconography of comics is fun but may not fit every project.

To do:

Layout is storytelling. Color is storytelling.  Everything within a comic's four corners can be storytelling, if you want it to be.  A comic doesn't just have to be a vehicle for telling a story.  A comic can be the manifestation of the story.

Comics.  Try to think comics.

NEXT WEEK: RUMBLE #1 from Image Comics.

Arriving 1/7/2015

Welcome to the New Year! Comics are kicking down the door of 2015 with some excellent work. New DEADLY CLASS, FADE OUT, ODYC and TREES!  

Plus so much more, just under the cut!

ACTION COMICS #38 ALL NEW X-FACTOR #19 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #12 SV ANGEL AND FAITH SEASON 10 #10 ANGELA ASGARDS ASSASSIN #2 ANGRY BIRDS #7 ANT-MAN #1 AQUAMAN AND THE OTHERS #9 ARCHIE #663 REG CVR ARCHIE COMICS DIGEST #257 AVENGERS NO MORE BULLYING #1 BATMAN ETERNAL #40 BETTY & VERONICA #274 BIRTHRIGHT #4 BUCKY BARNES WINTER SOLDIER #3 CAPT VICTORY & GALACTIC RANGERS #4 (OF 6) CROSSED BADLANDS #69 DEADLY CLASS #10 DEATH OF WOLVERINE WEAPON X PROGRAM #5 (OF 5) DETECTIVE COMICS #38 EARTH 2 #30 EARTH 2 WORLDS END #14 EDWARD SCISSORHANDS #3 (OF 5) ELEPHANTMEN #61 ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK #2 FADE OUT #4 FAIREST #33 FEATHERS #1 FICTION SQUAD #4 (OF 6) GARFIELD #33 GHOST #11 GHOST FLEET #3 GOD HATES ASTRONAUTS #5 GOD IS DEAD #26 GREEN ARROW #38 GREEN LANTERN #38 HAWKEYE VS DEADPOOL #4 (OF 4) HELLBOY AND THE BPRD #2 (OF 5) 1952 HINTERKIND #14 HULK #10 HUMANS #3 IRON FIST LIVING WEAPON #8 JUSTICE LEAGUE 3000 #13 LADY KILLER #1 LEGENDARY STAR LORD #7 LEGENDS DARK KNIGHT 100 PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR #5 LOBO #4 MARVELS AVENGERS #2 (OF 2) MAXX MAXXIMIZED #15 MEN OF WRATH BY AARON AND GARNEY #4 (OF 5) MIRACLEMAN #14 MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDS FOREVER #13 NAILBITER #9 NAMES #5 (OF 9) NEW 52 FUTURES END #36 (WEEKLY) NEW VAMPIRELLA #8 ODYC #2 OPERATION SIN #1 (OF 5) PUNISHER #14 RED SONJA VULTURES CIRCLE #1 ROBOCOP 2014 #7 ROCHE LIMIT #4 SCOOBY DOO TEAM UP #8 SHADOW SHOW #3 (OF 5) SHAFT #2 SINERGY #3 SIP (STRANGERS IN PARADISE) KIDS #2 SIXTH GUN DAYS OF THE DEAD #4 (OF 5) SKYLANDERS #4 SONIC BOOM #3 SPIDER-MAN 2099 #7 SV STORM #7 SWAMP THING #38 TECH JACKET #7 TERMINAL HERO #5 TREES #8 UNBEATABLE SQUIRREL GIRL #1 UNCLE GRANDPA #4 USAGI YOJIMBO SENSO #6 (OF 6) V-WARS #9 WAR STORIES #4 WEIRD LOVE #5 WOLF MOON #2 (OF 6) WOLVERINES #1 WOODS #9 X-MEN #23

Books/Mags/Things ABSOLUTE BATMAN INCORPORATED HC ALTER EGO #130 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN TP VOL 02 SPIDER-VERSE PRELUDE ARCHIE 1000 PG COMICS MEGA DIGEST TP CASANOVA COMPLETE ED HC VOL 02 GULA DEATH OF WOLVERINE HC EC WALLY WOOD SPAWN OF MARS HC FOOLBERT FUNNIES GN HISTORIES & FICTIONS HEAVY METAL #272 INJUSTICE GODS AMONG US TP VOL 02 JACO GALACTIC PATROLMAN GN JUDGE DREDD (IDW) TP VOL 06 LEGENDERRY A STEAMPUNK ADV TP LONE WOLF & CUB OMNIBUS TP VOL 07 MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC TP VOL 06 SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER TP VOL 02 STORYVILLE THE PROSTITUTE MURDERS GN SUNGLASSES AFTER DARK FULL BLOODED COLLECTION HC TOM SUTTON CREEPY THINGS CHILLING ARCHIVES OF HORROR HC TREASURY OF MINI COMICS HC VOL 02 WORLD TRIGGER GN VOL 02

as always, what do YOU think?

Abhay: Inquisition-- The Valiant #1

For the last couple of years, I've been trying to write a certain kind of essay-- one that always kind of remained a little out of my reach but was fun to chase after. But lately, maybe for longer than I actually knew myself, it's been time to pivot, and try something a little different. I want to pivot to something a little closer to what one of the bad guys in that movie Dead Poets Society would write. Start running more of a J. Evans Pritchard fan-club.

So, this is what I'm going to be doing for a little while (at least for the next five whole weeks since I've written five of these, but I quit real easy so who knows). My apologies if it's of no interest-- hopefully, we reconnect later down the road.

The Romans had Janus...

10 Questions about THE VALIANT #1 by Jeff Lemire, Matt Kindt, Paolo Rivera, Joe Rivera, Dave Lanphear, Kyle Andrukiewicz, and Warren Simons.

A basic description of this comic, so that everyone's on the same page.

This was heavily promoted as being a self-contained "event miniseries" by Valiant Comics (which has come back to life yet again for the umpeenth time, like the Hammer Films version of Dracula).

The series looks like it's about a bunch of heroes uniting to face down a personality-less threat. The villain is a smaller-scale version of the bad guys as from the Mass Effect video-games, if you know those, the Reapers; a recurring civilization-killer that attacks throughout time, but has no real character or points of interest beyond that barebones "it kills people" function in order to keep the viewer's attention focused exclusively on the heroic characters.

Co-author Jeff Lemire, talking to Comic Book Resources:

"The Valiant really is a story that puts a stake into the ground and really changes the flow of the Valiant Universe moving forward and really shakes up the status quo of a number of character, and sets the stage for the next couple years' worth of stories. It's something I'm really honored to be a part of, coming on fresh and working with guys like Matt who have been working in the universe for a while."

QUESTION 1.

Is this comic about anything besides its plot?

No.

QUESTION 2.

Did the creative team make any interesting choices in the visual presentation of the story?

There are two panels where Bloodshot uses his superpowers to mind-control a machine.

Do you think this is what Bloodshot sees when he masturbates? I'm going to say yes. Also, I'm going to say that he says "That's it" before he does it, out loud.

Rivera presents those by drawing the machine's console with an orange line on top of an otherwise all-black panel, detailing the console with a grid-pattern that resembles the "wireframe" effect one sees in CGI modelling. I would assume that look has science-fiction "cyber" connotations for readers, but I'm not sure why, where it originated. (From Tron? From early computer games?)

Rivera notes in the back matter that it's a similar technique to the "Radar" vision seen in his Daredevil work "but both scripts were asking for basically the same thing. Either that, or I'm a one-trick pony."  Thin color lines on top of all-black panels-- I like those; I like how they jump out, have a sort of sinister, neon-y city--at-night energy. And panels from a subjective viewpoint-- those can be pretty fun. Oh, it'd be nice to see it being put to some other use than just illustrating superpowers, constantly, but.

Nothing else really jumps out as to the presentation.

QUESTION 3.

How is the comic structured?

The comic opens with a page of widescreen panels, a camera untethered to any point of view, wandering an environment while nothing much happens. At some point in recent history, that kind of page took over as how all of these kinds of comics seem to start, the numbingly-slow crawl into a comic rather than a classic old-fashioned splash pages getting you excited about what was to come. Why? Splash pages are better.

The widescreen thankfully gets dropped for the remainder of the comic. Rivera mostly sticks to either two or three tier pages.

The comic is structured in four scenes:

1) The comic spends 9 pages setting up the Threat to the Eternal Warrior character (including a double-page splash). This first scene is repetitive-- three nearly-identical sub-scenes making the same exact narrative point, over and over. The authors couldn't find a graphic solution to convey to the readers that the Threat is as eternal as the Eternal Warrior, other than to just repeat the same exact scene three times in three different time-periods.

The problem is the authors burn nine pages of this comic in the process for repetitive scenework. And burn a lot of goodwill-- the comic builds no momentum. Reading this stretch is drudgery.

2) A three page scene follows-- thin characterization of a lady who is apparently the latest "Geomancer" on Earth. She's in conversation with the Eternal Warrior's brother Armstrong, from the Archer & Armstrong comics.

Despite them talking for three pages about what life is like as a Geomancer, the term Geomancer is never really explained to the reader.

"Listen. I couldn't keep a houseplant alive. For real. And now I'm supposed to be the guardian of the earth somehow?" Luckily, they bold-face the words houseplant and guardian-- otherwise, this might've been boring to read!

3) That's followed by six pages of Bloodshot beating up a robot in some nondescript jungle region, for some unclear reason. (Two of those pages are a double-page splash of a robot shooting at Bloodshot, with an inset panel).

4) The comic then concludes with a five-page scene that set-ups the cliffhanger: the Threat from the beginning of the comic is going to attack the Geomancer lady.

(This scene is mildly disrupted by a random one-panel conversation between Eternal Warrior and X-O Manowar -- who apparently is also in this comic, out of nowhere. The one-panel conversation features Eternal Warrior stating some information, specifically the exact same information we had already been told three times in the first scene. Holy shit! How stupid does the creative team think that people who read these comics are, that they need to be told a simple concept FOUR fucking times in one issue? X-O Manowar's response is literally "Why are you telling me this now?" So. Once again, as is true in life, as is true in love, I agree 100% with X-O Manowar.)

Four scenes total: 9-3-6-5.

None of the scenes motivate one another, particularly. The comic is mostly just stuff happening, without any compelling through-line to hold the reader's attention, more a series of events, than a story, all set-up for future issues.

Nothing presented is pleasurable in and of itself.

QUESTION 4.

Is there anything noteworthy about the cover, logo, lettering, or design?

The comic opens with an all-black inside cover, and then an all black first page with "Book One" written on it (despite there being a #1 on the cover), then another all-black page before commencing the comic on page three. The last two pages of the comics? Also, all black pages.

I didn't really understand all the black paper in this comic. Am I supposed to be impressed? "Oooooh, the paper's all black-- that's the same color as the shirts Steve Jobs used to wear. Maybe these people are visionaries, too. RIP Steve Jobs." Design seems pompous.

Rivera hand-draws the sound-effects, I think. Rivera's inconsistent with the sound effects though-- gunfire makes "Bam Bam" sound effects, but Bloodshot punching his hand through a Robot's windshield? No sound. Robots taking off into the air on rockets? No sound. What do you think about that? I let stuff like that slide, and I imagine 99% of readers do too, but is it weird we all are like ... so uncommitted to the sound effect conceit...? Maybe that's weird.

QUESTION 5.

Is anything about this comic interesting politically, socially, or from some other frame of reference?

The comic begins with a black character (an Incan) being violently murdered in order to inspire the white male protagonist.

I'd totally try to get that guy's face if it were offered to me. Just to keep the bad guy from crapping or ejaculating into my buddy's severed face. I'm a good friend that way.

So, black-rifice: check.

The next two pages feature a woman being violently murdered in order to inspire the white male protagonist.  Note that she is wearing a blouse but her breasts are hanging out of that blouse, all exposed to nature-- and yet her breasts are still hidden from the reader by a conveniently placed hand.  The bizarrely-common sexless titillation of comics-- drawings of murdered women presented as senseless sex objects, but for an audience of men disinterested in any of the actual specifics of sex.

Anita Sarkeesian did a video about how cheap imagery like this trivializes violence against women-- she calls it the Damsel in Distress trope. Leigh Alexander wrote about a variation on the topic last year, with respect to video games-- here's the key bit: "It seems that when you want to make a woman into a hero, you hurt her first. When you want to make a man into a hero, you hurt... also a woman first."

So, woman in a refrigerator: check.

The third scene features a little kid being murdered to inspire the white male protagonist. If only the little kid had been a gay character, it'd have been a kill-the-minorities-to-inspire-a-white-guy hat-trick.

The first four pages of this comic evidence a creative team oblivious to the kinds of imagery they are slopping around, and one making boring / stupid assumptions about who the audience for their work is.

Also: it's a little strange, people who will only believe in "heros" that need a bodycount to want to do the right thing. "All this bloodshed makes me want to make the world a decent place, as opposed to, you know, ethics." That's just odd.

QUESTION 6.

You are in a dark room with a candle, a wood stove and a gas lamp.  You only have one match. What do you light first?

Oh damn, I'm bad at riddles.  I would first light that ass on fire...?  Heeeey-o.

The internet says the right answer is "The match" but man-- if that's my only match, that's too valuable to light on fire, just from a supply and demand perspective. I would just leave that room-- it sounds like that room sucks; get the fuck out of colonial Williamsburg!  I'd rent a room at the Four Seasons Hotel.  The rooms at the Four Seasons come with electric lamps-- you don't need a stupid match.

Put that match on eBay-- sell it some riddle-solver-- use the eBay money to pay for the hotel room.

QUESTION 7.

What was the best bit of dialogue in the comic?

Geomancer: "Apparently, I'm the great-granddaughter of Buck McHenry."

I don't really like this line for sincere reasons. Something about it just made me giggle when I read it, just in that I don't feel like any human being has ever said that combination of words before this was typed out, and no human being ever will or would. Does that make it "good dialogue"? I don't know, but it at least makes it at least amusing the way I don't mind comics being amusing.

Anyways, that's as good as the dialogue ever got-- the rest is just lifeless.

QUESTION 8.

What is the most interesting page in the comic and how does it work?

Page 19. Bloodshot versus the robots.

Very classical eye-flow, this page.

First panel uses the outstretched arm to push the eyes to the right. Second panel pushes the eye in a sweeping move down to the console.

Drawing arrows with a mouse in MS Paint was hard.

The console uses the grid-line to redirect the reader's eyes to the climactic robot battle. And the climactic robot-battle point the way to the next page.

I don't know why Bloodshot needed "nanites" to figure out how to use a trigger-- but at that point, I didn't care.

Nothing too sophisticated but simple, classical flow.

Note also how the Bloodshot chest-tattoo shows up in the last panel as a dot. Nice touch.

QUESTION 9.

Did you experience any noteworthy emotion reading the comic?

Disdain for the bit with the topless woman.

I didn't notice the blackrifice until I was typing this out (which probably means some stuff about me, but). I didn't experience that disdain in real-time, though, so I don't know if that counts.

Besides all that, no. Absolutely nothing happens in this comic to provoke any kind of emotional or intellectual reaction. It's a completely inert product. Mentally and emotionally dead. Nothing a person could hate because it's so unmistakably a comic that will be forgotten in a week's time, if even that long. It will be like it never happened, before you even knew it. Just a comic with no point in even existing. It's just nothing.

QUESTION 10.

What do we hope that younger cartoonists learn to do and not to do from this comic?

To do:

Good artists care how a reader's eyes flow during action scenes, and I'd like to think that readers will appreciate a page with good flow even if they can't articulate that it's happening.

Not to do:

Don't repeat the same exact information three times in a span of pages that take up a significant chunk of real estate in your book. Maybe try to find a graphic solution to storytelling challenges, rather than waste pages conveying simple pulp ideas. Try anything because the beginning of a comic isn't really the ideal place to be boring and super-redundant.

Also: maybe have "write at least one line of dialogue that's interesting or lively" on a to-do list, so you remember to do that. Tie a string around your finger so you don't forget.

The essence of comics is that they are built out of images.  Images mean things.  Understand what different kinds of images mean to different kinds of people.  You would have to be pretty goddamn oblivious not to realize that comics are constantly featuring images of violence against women, in particular, and if you are a decent human being, I would imagine you would not want to add another example to that very long list without a better reason than you can see on display here.  Chances are you can make whatever point you're trying to make without adding to the world's storehouse of dumb, offensive, tiresome images. There's no rewards for being a good person, not in this world and certainly not in comics-- nobody fucking cares.  But maybe try to be one anyways just because it's the right thing to do.

NEXT WEEK: BITCH PLANET #1 from Image Comics.

Comix Experience Best Sellers 2014: Comics

The second half of my look at what's going on at Comix Experience's stores in 2014, below the cut.  This one has the major major differences!

Really, go back and read the previous post for some "big picture" figures for the two Comix Experience stores-- the "Mothership", and Outpost.

The Mothership is primarily a book store, but it's top-selling comic sold just over 2x what the best-selling book at Outpost sold.  The #100 best-seller sold like 120% of Outpost's.  Here's what the main store's best-selling comics looked like:

1	SANDMAN OVERTURE #2 (OF 6)
2	SANDMAN OVERTURE #3 (OF 6)
3	SAGA #19
4	LOW #1
5	SAGA #20
6	SAGA #23
7	SAGA #22
8	DEADLY CLASS #1
9	SAGA #21
10	WICKED & DIVINE #1
11	SAGA #24
12	SAGA #18
13	OUTCAST BY KIRKMAN & AZACETA #1
14	WICKED & DIVINE #2
15	SOUTHERN BASTARDS #1
16	LOW #2
17	SANDMAN OVERTURE #1 (OF 6)
18	FADE OUT #1
19	MS MARVEL #1 ANMN
20	TREES #1
21	DEADLY CLASS #2
22	SANDMAN OVERTURE #4 (OF 6)
23	LOW #3
24	STRAY BULLETS THE KILLERS #1
	WYTCHES #1
26	WICKED & DIVINE #3
27	BLACK SCIENCE #3
28	MULTIVERSITY #1
29	BATMAN #29
30	FADE OUT #2
	SEX CRIMINALS #7
32	DEADLY CLASS #3
33	MOON KNIGHT #1
34	DEADLY CLASS #4
	LOW #4
36	BATGIRL #35
	SEX CRIMINALS #4
	WALKING DEAD #127
39	SEX CRIMINALS #6
	BATMAN #27
	DEADLY CLASS #6
42	SOUTHERN BASTARDS #2
43	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1
	SEX CRIMINALS #8
	THOR #1
	TREES #2
47	BITCH PLANET #1
	BLACK SCIENCE #5
	DEADLY CLASS #5
	MS MARVEL #2
51	BATMAN #28
	BATMAN ETERNAL #1
	SEX CRIMINALS #5
54	DEATH OF WOLVERINE #1 (OF 4)
	WALKING DEAD #120
	WALKING DEAD #121
57	TREES #3
58	OUTCAST BY KIRKMAN & AZACETA #2
	WALKING DEAD #129
60	TOOTH & CLAW #1
61	BATMAN #30
	BATMAN #31
	BATMAN #32
	BATMAN ETERNAL #3
	BLACK SCIENCE #4
	DEADLY CLASS #7
	MOON KNIGHT #2
	WALKING DEAD #123
	WALKING DEAD #124
	WICKED & DIVINE #5
71	BLACK SCIENCE #6
	WALKING DEAD #125
	WALKING DEAD #128
74	ORIGINAL SIN #1 (OF 8)
	ROCKET RACCOON #1 ANMN
	SUPREME BLUE ROSE #1
77	BATMAN ETERNAL #2
	FADE OUT #3
	JUPITERS LEGACY #4
	SOUTHERN BASTARDS #3
	TREES #4
	WALKING DEAD #119
	WALKING DEAD #122
	WALKING DEAD #126
85	BATMAN #33
	DEATH OF WOLVERINE #3 (OF 4)
	ILLEGITIMATES #2 (OF 6)
	MS MARVEL #4
	OUTCAST BY KIRKMAN & AZACETA #3
	WALKING DEAD #132
91	EAST OF WEST #10
	EAST OF WEST #9
	MOON KNIGHT #3
	MS MARVEL #3
	WALKING DEAD #130
96	MULTIVERSITY THE SOCIETY OF SUPER-HEROES #1
	ORIGINAL SIN #2 (OF 8)
	SEX CRIMINALS #9
	VELVET #3
100	EAST OF WEST #11
	EAST OF WEST #14
	VELVET #4

As you can see, I remembered to adjust SANDMAN: OVERTURE's multiple covers into a single line item(s) this year, and, whoosh, they score the top two spots pretty handily.  But you also know why?  BECAUSE I CAN REORDER THEM.  I'm reordering copies every other month or so... which I would have done for some of those Image comics as well but Image is Inventory Adverse on comics and so we sold less copies of their periodicals, I would say, across the board, than I would have if they had generous overprint policies. It's a drag because (despite Image being the #1 publisher at the Mothership), they're absolutely below where they COULD be if I could reorder comics any time after week #1 on sale (if then)

My big Flops of the year: AXIS, which, fuck, didn't even CHART over here, and MULTIVERSITY, which I'll be trying to flog single copies of until the end of the decade, most likely.

Meanwhile, Outpost is the big big comic store, and, even more so, the big big big Marvel store, so their Top 100 looks pretty radically different:

1	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1
2	BATMAN ETERNAL #1
3	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #4
	BATMAN #31
5	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #2 ANMN
6	BATMAN #27
	THOR #1
8	BATMAN #28
	BATMAN #29
	BATMAN #30
11	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #3 ANMN
	SUPERMAN UNCHAINED #5
13	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #5
	BATMAN ETERNAL #2
	GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #11.NOW ANMN
16	ALL NEW X-MEN #23 ANMN
17	SUPERMAN UNCHAINED #6
18	GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #14
19	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #6
	BATMAN #33
	BATMAN #34
	GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #13 ANMN
	LOW #1
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #30 ANMN
25	ALL NEW X-MEN #22.NOW ANMN
	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #7 EOSV
	BATMAN #32
	BATMAN #35
	BATMAN #36
	ROCKET RACCOON #1 ANMN
31	DEATH OF WOLVERINE #1 (OF 4)
	GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #12 ANMN
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #31 ANMN
34	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #9 SV
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #29 ANMN
36	ALL NEW X-MEN #24 ANMN
	BATMAN ETERNAL #4
	GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #10 INF
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #27.NOW ANMN
40	BATMAN ETERNAL #3
41	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #8 EOSV
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #25
43	ALL NEW X-MEN #21
	DEATH OF WOLVERINE #4 (OF 4)
	FOREVER EVIL #5 (OF 7)
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #32
47	ALL NEW X-MEN #25
	THOR #2
49	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #10 SV
	BATMAN ETERNAL #5
	MS MARVEL #1
	ORIGINAL SIN #1 (OF 8)
	ORIGINAL SIN #3 (OF 8)
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #26
	UNCANNY X-MEN #17
	UNCANNY X-MEN #23 SIN
57	ORIGINAL SIN #2 (OF 8)
	UNCANNY X-MEN #18
59	BATMAN ETERNAL #6
	FOREVER EVIL #6 (OF 7)
	HARLEY QUINN #2
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #28 ANMN
	UNCANNY X-MEN #16
64	BATMAN SUPERMAN #7
	DAREDEVIL #1 ANMN
	DEATH OF WOLVERINE #3 (OF 4)
	FOREVER EVIL #7 (OF 7)
	SUPERMAN UNCHAINED #7
	UNCANNY X-MEN #19.NOW ANMN
70	ALL NEW X-MEN #26
	LUMBERJANES #1 (OF 8)
	UNCANNY X-MEN #20 ANMN
73	ALL NEW X-MEN #28
	BATMAN ETERNAL #7
	GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #15
	MS MARVEL #2
	UNCANNY X-MEN #22
78	ALL NEW X-MEN #29
	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #11 SV
	BATMAN ETERNAL #8
	UNCANNY X-MEN #24 SIN
	UNCANNY X-MEN #26
	X-MEN #9 XFV
84	ALL NEW X-MEN #27
	BATMAN SUPERMAN ANNUAL #1
	DAREDEVIL #2 ANMN
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #33
	WYTCHES #1
89	FADE OUT #1
	MULTIVERSITY #1
	ORIGINAL SIN #0
	SAGA #18
	UNCANNY X-MEN #21
94	BATGIRL #35
	NIGHT OF LIVING DEADPOOL #1 (OF 4)
	OUTCAST BY KIRKMAN & AZACETA #1
	ROBIN RISES OMEGA #1
	SAGA #19
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #2
	UNCANNY X-MEN #25 SIN

Yeah, way way more super-heroes, right?  Totally not even close to similar sales charts!

But remember: The mothership sells about 180% the sales of Outpost.

If you were to combine the two stores, it would look something like this company-wide (though I did this by hand, so admit there could be some mistakes line by line) -- the balanced view:

1	SANDMAN OVERTURE #2 (OF 6)
2	SAGA #19
3	SANDMAN OVERTURE #3 (OF 6)
4	LOW #1
5	SAGA #20
6	SAGA #22
7	SAGA #23
8	DEADLY CLASS #1
	SAGA #18
10	SAGA #21
11	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1
	SAGA #24
	WICKED & DIVINE #1
14	OUTCAST BY KIRKMAN & AZACETA #1
15	MS MARVEL #1
16	BATMAN #29
17	WICKED & DIVINE #2
18	FADE OUT #1
19	BATMAN #27
20	BATMAN ETERNAL #1
21	THOR #1
22	BATMAN #28
23	BATMAN #31
24	BATMAN #30
25	LOW #2
	SOUTHERN BASTARDS #1
27	WYTCHES #1
28	DEATH OF WOLVERINE #1 (OF 4)
29	BATMAN ETERNAL #2
30	BATMAN #32
	MULTIVERSITY #1
32	DEADLY CLASS #2
	TREES #1
34	ROCKET RACCOON #1 ANMN
35	BATMAN #33
36	SANDMAN OVERTURE #1 (OF 6)
37	BATMAN ETERNAL #3
38	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #2 ANMN
39	BATGIRL #35
	MOON KNIGHT #1
	MS MARVEL #2
42	ALL NEW X-MEN #23 ANMN
	ORIGINAL SIN #1 (OF 8)
44	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #4
45	BATMAN #35
	WALKING DEAD #127
	WICKED & DIVINE #3
48	BATMAN #34
	FADE OUT #2
	LOW #3
51	ALL NEW X-MEN #22.NOW ANMN
52	BATMAN ETERNAL #4
	DEATH OF WOLVERINE #3 (OF 4)
54	BLACK SCIENCE #3
55	BATMAN #36
56	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #3 ANMN
	DEADLY CLASS #3
	ORIGINAL SIN #2 (OF 8)
	THOR #2
60	GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #11.NOW ANMN
	LUMBERJANES #1 (OF 8)
	ORIGINAL SIN #3 (OF 8)
	SUPERMAN UNCHAINED #5
64	AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #5
	GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #13 ANMN
	MS MARVEL #1 ANMN
67	BATMAN ETERNAL #5
	DEATH OF WOLVERINE #4 (OF 4)
	MOON KNIGHT #2
	SANDMAN OVERTURE #4 (OF 6)
71	ALL NEW X-MEN #29
	DAREDEVIL #1 ANMN
	DEADLY CLASS #4
	GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #14
75	BITCH PLANET #1
	GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #12 ANMN
	UNCANNY X-MEN #16
78	ALL NEW X-MEN #24 ANMN
	BATMAN ETERNAL #6
80	ALL NEW X-MEN #21
	ALL NEW X-MEN #25
82	BATMAN #37
	BATMAN ETERNAL #7
	LOW #4
	SUPERMAN UNCHAINED #6
86	SEX CRIMINALS #5
	TOOTH & CLAW #1
	TREES #2
	UNCANNY X-MEN #17
	UNCANNY X-MEN #23 SIN
	WALKING DEAD #120
	WALKING DEAD #121
	WALKING DEAD #129
94	BATMAN ETERNAL #8
	DETECTIVE COMICS #27
	SEX CRIMINALS #6
	UNCANNY X-MEN #18
98	MS MARVEL #4
99	SEX CRIMINALS #4
100	WALKING DEAD #123
	WALKING DEAD #125
	WALKING DEAD #126

So, yeah, that's 2014 for me, what do you have to say?

-B

Comix Experience Best Sellers 2014: Books

I love the end of the year, always a good time to reflect back and see what worked, what didn't, what's selling, what's not.  Well, I like that stuff; I'm weird! Below the cut, for weirdos like me: charts and figures and some analysis of why 2014 is the Best Year of Comics Ever.

So, stellar freakin' year for Comix Experience -- not only does Dec' 14 mark the end of the first full year of operating Outpost, but the main store shattered Personal Best record-after-record.  Best single day, best year ever, bam, CE is up by 18% year-over-year which I never ever would have guessed to be possible for a 25 year old store.

Much of the credit for this I give to my staff, who are really exceptional.

Insofar as the big picture stats, the Mothership was 58% books, and 39% comics which looks to be a small climb.  However, I think a lot of that climb (since it is based on dollars not pieces) comes from the SAGA HC and the BKV signing in November.

Publisher break-down-wise, the SAGA HC also lead the way for the giant upset of 2014: Image Comics is now our #1 publisher at the mothership, entirely trading places with DC who is now down at #3.  Here is what our Top 20 publishers look like looks like:

IMAGE COMICS	20.70%
MARVEL COMICS	20.00%
DC COMICS	19.96%
DARK HORSE COMICS	7.29%
IDW PUBLISHING	4.52%
BOOM! STUDIOS	2.93%
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS	2.03%
AVATAR PRESS INC	1.38%
ONI PRESS INC.	1.21%
HUMANOIDS INC	1.16%
D. E.	1.14%
:01 FIRST SECOND	1.07%
DRAWN & QUARTERLY	1.00%
REBELLION / 2000AD	0.91%
VIZ MEDIA LLC	0.86%
ARCHIE COMIC PUBLICATIONS	0.78%
KODANSHA COMICS	0.64%
TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS	0.56%
PANTHEON BOOKS	0.52%
GRAPHIX	0.42%

I'm not sure if this is a fluke (the SAGA HCs are absolutely what put Image of the edge), or something that can now be duplicated, but it's a big big change for the store, and, in many ways, a long-overdue validation of how I've tried to run my store for the last three decades: focused more on creator than character or brand. That it happened in our biggest year ever is even more personally satisfying for what I think comics has the potential to be.

So, let's take a look at CE's best-selling books for 2014. The first few are not likely to be a surprise.

1	SAGA TP VOL 01
2	SAGA DLX ED HC VOL 01
3	SAGA TP VOL 03
4	SAGA TP VOL 02
5	SEX CRIMINALS TP VOL 01
6	EAST OF WEST TP VOL 01 THE PROMISE
7	NOWHERE MEN TP VOL 01 FATES WORSE THAN DEATH
8	BRYAN LEE O MALLEY SECONDS GN
9	SAGA TP VOL 04
10	HAWKEYE TP VOL 01 MY LIFE AS A WEAPON
11	ZERO TP VOL 01 AN EMERGENCY
12	BATTLING BOY SC GN VOL 01
	EAST OF WEST TP VOL 02 WE ARE ALL ONE
14	BLACK SCIENCE TP VOL 01 HOW TO FALL FOREVER
	DEADLY CLASS TP VOL 01 REAGAN YOUTH
16	MANHATTAN PROJECTS TP VOL 01 SCIENCE BAD
17	SANDMAN TP VOL 01 PRELUDES & NOCTURNES
18	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 20 ALL OUT WAR PT 1
19	PROPHET TP VOL 01 REMISSION
20	PROPHET TP VOL 03 EMPIRE
21	AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE TP VOL 01 ESCAPE FROM RIVERDALE
22	PRETTY DEADLY TP VOL 01
23	BONE COLOR ED SC VOL 01 OUT FROM BONEVILLE
	PROPHET TP VOL 02 BROTHERS
25	HAWKEYE TP VOL 02 LITTLE HITS NOW
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 01 DAYS GONE BYE
27	EAST OF WEST TP VOL 03 THERE IS NO US
	THROUGH THE WOODS GN
	Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 01 UNMANNED
30	NEMO ROSES OF BERLIN HC
	V FOR VENDETTA NEW EDITION TP (MR)
	VELVET TP VOL 01 BEFORE THE LIVING END
33	LOCKE & KEY TP VOL 01 WELCOME TO LOVECRAFT
	RAT QUEENS TP VOL 01 SASS & SORCERY
35	BATMAN TP VOL 01 THE COURT OF OWLS
	LOCKE & KEY HC VOL 06 ALPHA & OMEGA
	MANHATTAN PROJECTS TP VOL 04 FOUR DISCIPLINES
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 21 ALL OUT WAR PT 2
39	FATALE TP VOL 01 DEATH CHASES ME
	MANHATTAN PROJECTS TP VOL 02
	OGLAF BOOK ONE
	SANDMAN TP VOL 02 THE DOLLS HOUSE NEW ED
	SISTERS GN
	VADERS LITTLE PRINCESS HC
	Y THE LAST MAN DELUXE EDITION HC VOL 01
46	ADVENTURE TIME TP VOL 01
	BLACK HOLE COLLECTED SC NEW PTG
	MANHATTAN PROJECTS TP VOL 03
	MANIFEST DESTINY TP VOL 01
	MS MARVEL TP VOL 01 NO NORMAL
	THIS ONE SUMMER GN
	TRANSMETROPOLITAN TP VOL 01 BACK ON THE STREET
53	AMULET SC VOL 01 STONEKEEPER
	BARTKIRA
	BATMAN DARK KNIGHT RETURNS TP
	BATTLING BOY RISE OF AURORA WEST GN VOL 01 (OF 2)
	CHI SWEET HOME GN VOL 01
	COMPLETE MULTIPLE WARHEADS TP
	HYPERBOLE AND A HALF SC
60	FATALE TP VOL 04 PRAY FOR RAIN
	HAWKEYE TP VOL 03 LA WOMAN
	MEANWHILE IN SAN FRANCISCO THE CITY IN ITS OWN WORDS
	SOUTHERN BASTARDS TP VOL 01 HERE WAS A MAN
	WATCHMEN TP NEW ED
65	BATMAN TP VOL 02 THE CITY OF OWLS
	DAYTRIPPER TP
	DEATH NOTE BLACK ED TP VOL 01 (OF 6)
	GOODNIGHT DARTH VADER HC
	GUARDIANS OF GALAXY TP VOL 01 COSMIC AVENGERS
	OATMEAL HOW TO TELL IF YOUR CAT IS PLOTTING TO KILL YOU
	WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME IF I WET THE BED GN
72	FROM HELL TP
	HABIBI GN
	NINJAGO GN VOL 09
	PREACHER TP BOOK 01
	VERY CASUAL
	WALKING DEAD COMPENDIUM TP VOL 01
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 19 MARCH TO WAR
	WICKED & DIVINE TP VOL 01 THE FAUST ACT
80	ATTACK ON TITAN GN VOL 01
	BATMAN THE KILLING JOKE SPECIAL ED HC
	BATMAN YEAR ONE DELUXE SC
	CAT PERSON
	FABLES TP VOL 01 LEGENDS IN EXILE
	FABLES TP VOL 20 CAMELOT
	IN REAL LIFE GN
	PRIDE OF BAGHDAD SC
	Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 02 CYCLES
89	ADVENTURE TIME ORIGINAL GN VOL 03 SEEING RED
	AVATAR LAST AIRBENDER TP VOL 07 RIFT PART 1
	CHEW TP VOL 08 FAMILY RECIPES
	EX MACHINA TP BOOK 01
	FABLES TP VOL 19 SNOW WHITE
	JEFFREY BROWN KIDS ARE WEIRD OBSERVATIONS FROM PARENTHOOD HC
	MY FRIEND DAHMER SC
	NINJAGO GN VOL 01 CHALLENGE OF SAMUKAI
	SANDMAN TP VOL 04 SEASON OF MISTS
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 22 A NEW BEGINNING
99	ALL STAR SUPERMAN TP
	BATMAN TP VOL 03 DEATH OF THE FAMILY
	HELLBOY IN HELL TP VOL 01 DESCENT
	HELLBOY TP VOL 01 SEED OF DESTRUCTION
	INCAL HC NEW PTG
	LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN OMNIBUS TP
	NEIL GAIMAN AMERICAN GODS MMPB
	RUNAWAYS COMPLETE COLLECTION TP VOL 01
	STITCHES GN
	STRAY BULLETS UBER ALLES ED TP
	WOLVERINE OLD MAN LOGAN TP
	Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 03 ONE SMALL STEP

SAGA continues to sell a lot of copies.  A LOT. This is not a fluke any longer, it's a machine, which is beautiful to behold. And, note, that while there are Marvel and DC superhero volumes on this list, they're almost all works that are STRONGLY associated with a specific creator and not "well, I like Spider-Man, so I'll buy any old Spider-Man comic", y'know?

Anyway, I continue to be in love with our diversity of sales.

On the other side of The City at Comix Experience Outpost, it is a very different kind of store -- much more comic book periodical oriented and it actually sells a pretty significant number of back issues for a San Francisco store -- Outpost breaks out as only 23% books and a whopping 61% comics (which doesn't count the 9% from "Back issues", so 70% if you consider it that way!)

A year ago as I convinced my family to lend me the money to buy Outpost, I wrote some number down on (pretty much) the back of an envelope with what costs were likely to be, and so where I needed sales to be in order to at least break even on this hasty purchase.  Actual real sales ended up just a scootch up from that number, but then so did expenses, but at least we're breaking even, which is just where I wanted to be at the end of year one.  Lots of potential.

Being overwhelmingly comics-focused, their Top 20 Publishers looks pretty different:

MARVEL COMICS	41.41%
DC COMICS	26.67%
IMAGE COMICS	12.08%
DARK HORSE COMICS	3.58%
IDW PUBLISHING	3.12%
BOOM! STUDIOS	2.64%
D. E.	1.18%
GRAPHITTI DESIGNS	0.96%
ARCHIE COMIC PUBLICATIONS	0.58%
KODANSHA COMICS	0.57%
ONI PRESS INC.	0.42%
AKA COMICS	0.36%
VIZ MEDIA LLC	0.32%
TITAN COMICS	0.31%
AVATAR PRESS INC	0.30%
VALIANT ENTERTAINMENT LLC	0.29%
BONGO COMICS	0.27%
:01 FIRST SECOND	0.25%
GRAPHIX	0.21%
BROADSWORD COMICS	0.20%

That's a lot more like you think a "traditional comics store" is going to look like, right?

But, the odd thing is, when you actually look at the books that are selling, the charts look kind of similar in many many ways.  Here is Outpost's Top 100.

1	SAGA TP VOL 01
2	SAGA TP VOL 03
3	SAGA TP VOL 02
4	NOWHERE MEN TP VOL 01 FATES WORSE THAN DEATH
5	SEX CRIMINALS TP VOL 01
6	BLACK SCIENCE TP VOL 01 HOW TO FALL FOREVER
7	BONE COLOR ED SC VOL 01 OUT FROM BONEVILLE
8	DEADLY CLASS TP VOL 01 REAGAN YOUTH
	SAGA DLX ED HC VOL 01
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 01 DAYS GONE BYE
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 20 ALL OUT WAR PT 1
12	BRYAN LEE O MALLEY SECONDS GN
	EAST OF WEST TP VOL 01 THE PROMISE
14	ADVENTURE TIME TP VOL 01
	AVATAR LAST AIRBENDER TP VOL 07 RIFT PART 1
	BATMAN THE KILLING JOKE SPECIAL ED HC
	BATMAN TP VOL 01 THE COURT OF OWLS
	DOCTOR WHO 11TH DOCTOR SONIC SCREWDRIVER BOOK KIT
	SANDMAN TP VOL 01 PRELUDES & NOCTURNES
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 19 MARCH TO WAR
	WICKED & DIVINE TP VOL 01 THE FAUST ACT
	AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE TP VOL 01 ESCAPE FROM RIVERDALE
	RAT QUEENS TP VOL 01 SASS & SORCERY
24	SAGA TP VOL 04
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN TP VOL 01 MY OWN WORST ENEMY NOW
26	CIVIL WAR TP
	DARTH VADER AND SON HC
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN TP VOL 02 TROUBLED MIND NOW
	VADERS LITTLE PRINCESS HC
30	AKIRA KODANSHA ED GN VOL 01
	BATMAN TP VOL 02 THE CITY OF OWLS
	INFINITY GAUNTLET TP
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 21 ALL OUT WAR PT 2
	WATCHMEN TP
35	GUARDIANS OF GALAXY TP VOL 01 COSMIC AVENGERS
	MOON KNIGHT TP VOL 01 FROM DEAD
	MS MARVEL TP VOL 01 NO NORMAL
	PRETTY DEADLY TP VOL 01
37	AVENGERS VS X-MEN TP
	BATMAN DARK KNIGHT RETURNS TP
	CHEW TP VOL 01
	DEADPOOL KILLS MARVEL UNIVERSE TP
	EAST OF WEST TP VOL 02 WE ARE ALL ONE
	HAWKEYE TP VOL 01 MY LIFE AS A WEAPON
	MANHATTAN PROJECTS TP VOL 02
	SAILOR MOON TP KODANSHA ED VOL 01
	TANK GIRL REMASTERED ED TP VOL 01
	X-MEN DARK PHOENIX SAGA TP
	X-MEN DAYS OF FUTURE PAST TP
	X-MEN NO MORE HUMANS OGN HC
51	ADVENTURE TIME TP VOL 04
	COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS TP
	DAREDEVIL BY MARK WAID TP VOL 01
	DEADPOOL BY DANIEL WAY COMPLETE COLL TP VOL 01
	FATALE TP VOL 01 DEATH CHASES ME
	MANHATTAN PROJECTS TP VOL 01 SCIENCE BAD
	MANHATTAN PROJECTS TP VOL 03
	SIEGE TP
	SUPERGIRL COSMIC ADVENTURES IN THE EIGHTH GRADE TP
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN TP VOL 03 NO ESCAPE
	THOR GOD OF THUNDER TP VOL 01 GOD BUTCHER
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 18 WHAT COMES AFTER
	WONDER WOMAN TP VOL 01 BLOOD
64	AGE OF ULTRON TP
	AMULET SC VOL 01 STONEKEEPER
	AVATAR LAST AIRBENDER TP VOL 06 SEARCH PART 3
	AVATAR LAST AIRBENDER TP VOL 08 RIFT PART 2
	BATMAN & ROBIN TP VOL 02 PEARL
	BATMAN HUSH COMPLETE TP
	BATMAN THE LONG HALLOWEEN TP
	BATMAN TP VOL 03 DEATH OF THE FAMILY
	BATTLING BOY SC GN VOL 01
	DEADPOOL TP VOL 01 DEAD PRESIDENTS NOW
	DOCTOR WHO K-9 LIGHT & SOUND FIGURINE & BOOK KIT
	FATALE TP VOL 02 DEVILS BUSINESS
	GOTG BY ABNETT AND LANNING COMPLETE COLL TP VOL 01
	HELLBLAZER TP VOL 01 ORIGINAL SINS
	HOBBIT TP
	HULK WWH TP
	JUSTICE LEAGUE TP VOL 02 THE VILLAINS JOURNEY
	MMW X-MEN TP VOL 01
	NEIL GAIMAN AMERICAN GODS MMPB
	NEIL GAIMANS GOOD OMENS ($7.99 VERSION)
	ODYSSEY GN CANDLEWICK ED
	PROPHET TP VOL 01 REMISSION
	R CRUMBS HEROES OF BLUES JAZZ & COUNTRY WITH CD HC
	SAILOR MOON TP KODANSHA ED VOL 02
	SIMPSONS FUTURAMA CROSSOVER CRISIS SLIPCASE HC
	THANOS INFINITY REVELATION OGN HC
	TINY TITANS TP VOL 02 ADVENTURES IN AWESOMENESS
	V FOR VENDETTA BOOK AND MASK SET
	V FOR VENDETTA NEW EDITION TP
	WALKING DEAD COMPENDIUM TP VOL 01
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 02 MILES BEHIND US
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 06 SORROWFUL LIFE
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 17 SOMETHING TO FEAR
	WOLVERINE OLD MAN LOGAN TP
	YOUNG AVENGERS TP VOL 01 STYLE SUBSTANCE NOW
99	AKIRA KODANSHA ED GN VOL 02
	BATMAN THE BLACK MIRROR TP
	BATMAN YEAR ONE DELUXE SC
	CENTURY WEST OGN
	DEADPOOL VS CARNAGE TP
	DIARY OF A WIMPY KID HC VOL 08 HARD LUCK
	DRAGON BALL FULL COLOR TP VOL 01 SAIYAN ARC
	ECONOMIX HOW & WHY OUR ECONOMY WORKS & DOESNT WORK GN
	FABLES TP VOL 01 LEGENDS IN EXILE
	FATALE TP VOL 03 WEST OF HELL
	FILTH TP
	JOKER A CELEBRATION OF 75 YEARS HC
	JOKER DEATH OF THE FAMILY HC
	JOKER DEATH OF THE FAMILY TP
	JUSTICE LEAGUE TP VOL 03 THRONE OF ATLANTIS
	MANHATTAN PROJECTS TP VOL 04 FOUR DISCIPLINES
	MAUS SURVIVORS TALE COMPLETE HC
	METAL GEAR SOLID OMNIBUS TP
	MY FRIEND DAHMER SC
	NEIL GAIMANS NEVERWHERE TP
	NEW X-MEN BY MORRISON ULTIMATE COLL TP BOOK 01
	POLARITY TP VOL 01
	PRINCELESS TP VOL 01 NEW PTG
	RUNAWAYS COMPLETE COLLECTION TP VOL 01
	SANDMAN TP VOL 04 SEASON OF MISTS NEW ED
	SISTERS GN
	SMILE SC NEW PTG
	SOUTHERN BASTARDS TP VOL 01 HERE WAS A MAN
	SUICIDE SQUAD TP VOL 01 KICKED IN THE TEETH
	SUPER FRIENDS HEAD OF THE CLASS TP
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN TP VOL 04 NECESSARY EVIL
	SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN TP VOL 06 GOBLIN NATION
	THE ARRIVAL GN
	TINY TITANS TP VOL 01 WELCOME TO THE TREEHOUSE
	TINY TITANS TP VOL 08 AW YEAH TITANS
	TRANSMETROPOLITAN TP VOL 01 BACK ON THE STREET
	TRANSMETROPOLITAN TP VOL 02
	VELVET TP VOL 01 BEFORE THE LIVING END
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 04 HEARTS DESIRE
	WALKING DEAD TP VOL 05 BEST DEFENSE
	X-FORCE BY KYLE AND YOST COMPLETE COLLECTION TP VOL 01

It is different, but it does have a ton of commonalities -- especially where it counts at the top.  SAGA v1 sold twice as many copies as book #5, even if it was only 1/5 of the number of copies the Mothership sold.  There's a real lot of Superhero comics that make it on to this list, but only the top thirteen best-sellers at Outpost would even make it on to the Top 100 at Experience.

If anything, this most closely looks like a CE list from, say, 4 to 5 years ago.

Check the next post for the real crazy differences between stores.

Obviously, I'm always curious to hear your musings on these lists

-B

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM THE SAVAGE CRITICS!

Image by Russ Heath & Robert Kanigher. Taken from Our Army At War #259 (DC Comics, 1973)

Um, that's it really. Thanks to Brian Hibbs for his patience and just, you know, giving me a place to talk about comics for another year. I appreciate it even though I never say so. That's just because I'm an ungrateful ****. It's been a tough year for The Savage Critics what with us losing Graeme & Jeff, who have lit out for the territories and are, even as we speak, reaping the rewards they so richly deserve. God, how the envy consumes me. J Smitty went AWOL, due, I believe, to the demands of building a business and generally providing for his family like a responsible dude. Since this means I now will never find out what happens in ARMAGEDDON 2001 I can't help but doubt his priorities, but I'm sure we all wish him well. Brian Hibbs got another comics shop because he feeds on stress, and he will return to reviewing soon(ish) I'm sure. And Abhay. Always Abhay. Always and forever Abhay. Animator. Lawyer. Lover. Artist. Author. Gamer. God in mortal form. Abhay. Always Abhay.The wind cries Abhay. But above all there is you. Well, you and COMICS!!!

Happy new year! I hope 2015 is kind to you all.

Cheers.

John.

"Unorthodox Practices." COMICS! Sometimes I Hope You Notice I Resisted The Temptation To Make A Terrible Play On Words Involving Her Surname!

Ted McKeever. Lydia Lunch. Fluids. Image by McKeever, Lunch & Robins

Anyway, this… TOXIC GUMBO Art by Ted McKeever Written by Lydia Lunch Lettered by Clem Robins Coloured by Ted McKeever Special thanks to Maria-Elena D'Agostino DC Comics/Vertigo, $5.95 (1998)

In 1998 DC Comics published a comic written by Lydia Lunch and illustrated by Ted McKeever. In 1998 DC Comics published a comic written by Lydia Lunch and illustrated by Ted McKeever. I repeated that because it bears repeating. It’s strange enough to think that DC Comics once had a place for an artist so atypical as McKeever, but they did. Indeed they did. In 1998 he was well within a run of work for DC which would last until the noughties were exhausted. He even had a regular gig in Doom Patrol, although it was after everyone had stopped reading. Mostly though he oozed a bunch of miniseries roiling with his idiosyncratic aesthetic and some Elseworlds with Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman shunted into a German Expressionism. We’ll get to those too, maybe. (No promises; promises are just time travelling lies). In 2014 DC Comics is a very different (trans: more banal) place so McKeever currently resides at Image, where his work provides a necessarily brusque corrective to all those underwritten begging letters to Hollywood propped up by fantastic artists. So, despite it looking odd that DC once had a place for someone who draws like everything is made of melting wax, it wasn’t really. Lydia Lunch is another matter. Admittedly, this wasn’t the first time Comics had felt the subtle touch of Lydia Lunch; in 1990 her work appeared in something called AS-FIX-E-8 and in 1992 there was Bloodsucker with Bob “Minimum Wage” Fingerman. Having seen neither I can’t comment, but it’s a safe bet they would have made Paul Levitz plotz. They were probably very Lydia Lunch what with Lydia Lunch having a quite distinctive artistic voice and all.

Image by McKeever, Lunch & Robins

Lydia motherflossing Lunch! I’m just going to barrel right on in with an explanatory paragraph or two about Lydia Lunch because I don’t know how many people are familiar with the lady and her work. Chances are I’m underestimating some of you; you might still be having therapy to recover from that 8 Eyed Spy gig back in ’80, or still tearfully fondle your crumbling poster for The Immaculate Consumptive inbetween school runs and on-line food shops. Mostly though it’s a sea of blank faces out there, I’m guessing. Well, a sea of two, if the hit-count’s reliable. Lydia Lunch (real name: Mind your own ****king business, sunbeam.) was a mainstay of the New York post-punk No Wave scene and has stood defiantly on the neck of the intervening decades to remain an active creative force. Lydia Lunch is many things to very few people, but back when I was still actively engaged with the world her work was mainly in the realm of auditory assault. In the music papers of the time it was commonly described as aural terrorism; a winning blend of atonal dirges and vituperative shrieking which left the listener feeling like they’d just been hurled down some stairs by a scatological force of nature in female form. It’s not for everyone, the work of Lydia Lunch, is what I’m getting at there. If pressed I’d guess her stuff has its roots in the Beat tradition, but mostly it’s about rancorous anger and provocative hostility; it would probably beat tradition into a bloody mush with a nail studded baseball bat. Think neon lipstick and rat turds. Think lo-fi ‘80s NYC grot chic. Think Driller Killer. Then think about something more pleasant. When I was a Badly Dressed Boy I liked Lydia Lunch, but part of what I liked most about her was she was several thousand miles away.

Image by McKeever, Lunch & Robins

Like many independently minded modern ladies Lydia Lunch likes to keep busy, she’s dipped a tiny toe into music, poetry, film, the spoken word and, according to the Internet, even a cook book. Apparently this has “sexy asides from the racy author” which just brings to mind an incensed Nigella with shit under her nails throwing knives at a cucumber while spitting sexual expletives. But that’s because I’m stuck in the past; I’m sure Lydia Lunch has mellowed and whips up a nice crumble these days. La Lunch’s work has always been marked by collaboration, so it’s neat she has great taste in confrères. Over the years she’s hitched her exquisitely bitter eccentricity to people like J G Thirwell, Sonic Youth,  The Birthday Party, Rowland S. Howard, Die Haut and Gallon Drunk. It’s 2014 now and people don't hurl piss at Coldplay on sight so I realise some of you might actually struggle to place even the divine Birthday Party; if so then you’ve got no chance with the others. That’s okay; it’s not a contest. What I’m getting at is, in common with super heroes and wanton sack-artistes, Lydia Lunch does like a good team up. And comics is always up for a good collaboration, and Lydia Lunch and Ted McKeever is a good collaboration.

Image by McKeever, Lunch & Robins

Toxic Gumbo, as the name suggests, is set in the Louisiana Bayou. Not the real one though. Visually this Louisiana Bayou belongs to Ted McKeever, because visually this Louisiana Bayou is all putrefaction and shadows, all tumble down shacks and tyre piles. This Bayou is populated by people who morph from panel to panel like they are made of warm tallow. If the real Louisiana Bayou is like the pestilential mess in this book then Heaven help the Tourist Board. In Toxic Gumbo McKeever certainly seems to be enjoying himself. Sometimes his pages are reminiscent of illustrated books with his queasy images silently swarming around a block of text, other times it’s more traditional comic pages but all with that unsettlingly feverish McKeever effect. In addition to his art there are also photos of some quite intricate dolls by D'Agostino which simply by contrasting with the drawn images punch up the unreality of everything around them. Most of the book is coloured flatly but on occasion the colours become deeper and more detailed before slipping back into a flat uniformity. It’s a nice touch. Basically, everything Ted McKeever draws looks like it’s just stepped out of Hell. Which is appropriate because Lunch’s script paints the Bayou as a Hell her heroine must navigate with only the briefest of lulls.

Image by McKeever, Lunch & Robins

Typically for Lydia these respites seemingly exist only so that the pain burns our heroine all the fiercer on its resumption. The heroine here is Onesia who is spat from the womb when her mother goes into toxic shock after being stung by a caterpillar. Wasting no time in indulging her abhorrence of authority Lunch has Onesia raised by nuns. One of them is nice; which is one more than you expected. Like a malefic MacGyver Onesia uses a child’s chemistry set and some putrefied vermin to develop a concoction of rot which she uses to poison her overseers. Free to wander about Onesia quickly develops an interest and aptitude for swamp magic (i.e. poisons). What follows is a perversion of the picaresque as Onesia makes her way through a world of threat and filth killing people. Okay, mostly killing men. But, you know, for reasons, so it’s okay. Unlike in most male revenge fantasy narratives nothing is solved by these murders and Onesia doesn’t feel bad about them. Oh, wait, she does feel a bit bad about the guy who melts crotch first when he tries to cheer her up with his penis. She bounces back quite quickly though - resourceful. Oh, I forgot to mention that all Onesia’s bodily fluids are toxic. (Hmmm.) Which is why she finds it hard to make friends. Well, that and her friends tend to die violently. Luckily that isn’t such a big problem as most of the folk in the book are deranged shits. Of the two exceptions one gets shotgunned in the face and the other is a kind of deranged swamp Tom Bombadil singing about Jesus. The narrative’s explicit and insistent inability to see anything in any terms other than those of  Heaven or Hell might be key. Maybe Toxic Gumbo is about how hard life can be if you insist on viewing it in extremes. I doubt it.

Image by McKeever, Lunch & Robins

I’m going to stick with saying Toxic Gumbo acts as a satire of the lazy boner narrative, even though that’ll probably lead you to erroneously expect jokes and that isn’t really how satire has to work. I don’t know, Toxic Gumbo was definitely kind of darkly nuts and keen to stress that even when life is just endurance it’s still life. Which is very Lydia Lunch. Add in Ted McKeever and not only is it very Lydia Lunch it’s GOOD!

This one's for Teenage John And The - COMICS!!!

Arriving 12/31/14

This is it, the final week of 2014. Always the smallest week, but still we have EAST OF WEST returning, the first new MIRACLEMAN material in decades and the launch of Marvel's SHIELD from Mark Waid.  

To see what else is coming, check the cut!

ALL NEW MIRACLEMAN ANNUAL #1 BATMAN ETERNAL #39 EARTH 2 WORLDS END #13 EAST OF WEST #16 MASSIVE TP VOL 04 SAHARA NEW 52 FUTURES END #35 (WEEKLY) SHIELD #1 X-O MANOWAR #31

As always, what do YOU think?

"And He Hasn't Yet Learned HOW to Lose!" COMICS! Sometimes You shouldn't Oughta Honk God Off!

Gil Kane. John Buscema. Superman. Mortality.

Image by Kane, Nowlan, Grant, Lopez, Giddings & Cone

Anyway, this… SUPERMAN: BLOOD OF MY ANCESTORS Pencils by Gil Kane, John Buscema Inks by Kevin Nowlan Plot by Gil Kane & Steven Grant Dialogue by Steven Grant Lettered by Ken Lopez Coloured by Noelle Giddings Separations by Sno Cone DC Comics, $6.95 (2003) Superman created by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster

Gil Kane! John Buscema! Big John! Garrulous Gil! Together at last! On Superman! No! It isn’t as good as Gil Kane and John Buscema delineating Superman should be! Which is a shame! But then it isn’t totally terrible either! So it’s not too much of a shame! I mean, c’mon, it’s still – Kane! Buscema! Superman! If you can’t wring any pleasure out of that then I hope your high standards are a comfort to you. And while Superman: Blood of My Ancestors may not exactly have been anyone’s finest hour it was, alas, both Kane and Buscema’s final hour. Kane died on 31st January 2000 before the book was completed and Buscema finished it off before he too succumbed to the inevitable on January 10th 2002. Since they were both in their seventies when they died we’ll leave any eyewash about cursed books where it belongs – in the Middle Ages. Now I’m in my own Middle Age I’ve quite warmed to the book but when I first read it I was a demanding little shit and it just didn’t come up to scratch. Mostly that was because it doesn’t really work, but there’s still magic to be mined from it.

Image by Buscema, Nowlan, Grant, Lopez, Giddings & Cone

Dollars to doughnuts the concept for this book came from the brain of Gil Kane; rejigging a Biblically evocative tale with post-apocalyptic trappings is so Gil Kane it might as well have swirl of ice creamy hair and address everyone as “M’boy!” I refer the honourable reader to such prior exercises in friable buildings and flapping loincloths as Blackmark, Talos of the Wilderness Sea and Sword of The Atom. In order to sell his concept (I groundlessly conjecture) Kane had to stick Superman in it. Regrettably this apparent sop to commercialism makes everything a little less sense-making than might be desirable.

Image by Kane, Nowlan, Grant, Lopez, Giddings & Cone

It starts off alright with “my” Superman (everybody has their own Superman but this one is mine; how can I tell? Easy, he says, "Superman doesn’t kill." Word!) swooping in to save lives against a big eye on tentacles (very Gil Kane) which is resorbing people. It’s even quite clever that bit, because the tentacle-eye is devouring their memories and when it starts tucking into Superman it finds his racial memories stored in his DNA and…cue the main story in flashback! By all known laws of North American genre comics this flashback should involve an ancestor of Superman facing just such a beast and defeating it, thus revealing its weakness to his descendent in the present. Kane (or Grant; but I’m guessing Kane) instead sidesteps into the true reason for the book's existence – a sort-of sci-fi scuffle with the Old Testament Samson story. Which is kind of really clever because if memory (Wikipedia) serves Samson is considered by academia as a derivation of the “Sun Hero” type a la Hercules; as is Superman (whom academia is probably slower to recognise). Unfortunately all the bits required to shoehorn the story into Superman’s mythos are the bits where it fails worst. Superman has his own mythology and part of that mythology isn’t that there was kryptonite on Krypton or that Superman’s strength and heroic nature are divinely inspired by Rao and also hereditary. Everyone (he said about to tempt fate) knows Kryptonite is leftovers of Krypton and that Superman is powerful because of the sun and that he is lovely because he was brought up properly by decent elderly white Middle American child stealers.

Image by Buscema, Nowlan, Grant, Lopez, Giddings & Cone

But them’s the breaks; Kane clearly just wanted to do the Space Samson stuff which fortunately is pretty sweet even though he only got to draw it for a few pages before the world was denied his presence. As exits go it might not be inspired but it’s still pretty great. In the slight space fate allotted him Kane crams in all a Gil Kane Fan’s favourites – Power Amoebas©®, Back Flip Impact©®, Angst Akimbo©®,Body Cradling©®, Floating Head of Melodrama©®, Nasal Upshot©®, Turnover Boots©®, Crumbly Buildings©® and more. All of which might as wll be ©® Gil Kane. Yes, those are all things Gil Kane does all the time, but they are also the things Gil Kane Fans turn up for because he was so darn awesome at them. They were his moves. No one ever listened to Elvis sing Moody Blue and thought, well; I have now heard that song I need not ever listen to it again. No, everyone who listens to Elvis sing Moody Blue is forever after waiting to be blessed by that aural glory again. No need for thanks; poorly thought out and decidedly jejune appreciations of comic book artists is what I do. It’s important to note that the success of the art throughout the book is indebted to the sympathetic and fluid inks of Kevin Nowlan. Not only does he professionally finish Kane’s pencils but he’s also called upon to polish Buscema up and in the process provide a discreet visual continuity between the two. Which he does, because Kevin Nowlan is awesome.

Image by Kane, Nowlan, Grant, Lopez, Giddings & Cone Truly, it’s no mean feat Nowlan performs here either, as Buscema and Kane are hardly interchangeable. I can say that with some authority since this book shows both their essential styles side by side and even their unique interpretations of some of the same characters. Buscema’s a great fit with the book having spent a soul wilting span of years illustrating the savage shenanigans of Conan and such ill-bred sorts. Here amongst the rubble, the rabble, the swords, the sandals, the temples and the tempers Big John walks his last walk and he walks it tall. I didn’t mind the story but most of the fun was looking at Buscema and Kane’s art and then stating the obvious for you. Because looking at Superman: Blood of My Ancestors it’s clear that Kane was all fluid athleticism and Buscema was all burly sturdiness. Kane’s figures flare in their denial of gravity while Buscema’s bodies bow and bend under its burden. Weight is Buscema’s greatness while Kane’s is grace. Buscema’s work thunders with meaty drama while Kane’s shimmers with strident melodrama. Neither men are at the height of their powers here and they probably only look as good as they do because of Nowlan but, still, Christ, these guys. These goddamn guys...uh...shitshitshitdontloseitdontloseit..aw man, my mascara is running now…

Image by Buscema, Nowlan, Grant, Lopez, Giddings & Cone

..Humph. Anyhoo, like Nowlan, Steve Grant pulls his weight and then some in a thankless role. I imagine he was called upon to ‘facilitate’ Kane’s vison hence his twin credits for script and dialogue. It’s probably due to his efforts the book reads as smoothly as it does. It’s still a bit of a bodge; the Krypton stuff never really convincingly meshes with the Earth stuff. But while he can’t quite make it work as a piece he does make enough pieces work well enough. Grant crams in plenty of characterisation too, so that while the villain, Utor(!), is still a villain he is at least a droll one and El (Samson) remains sympathetic even as his arrogance swells to God taunting proportions, but Grant’s best work is with Laras Lilit (AKA Delilah). She’s no one note femme fatale but a complicated and conflicted woman who shares in the redemption El’s ordeal offers. She even gets the best for while, in that endearingly Biblical way, El learns his lesson by dying (that’ll teach him!) she gets to live a life at peace with herself. Which is better than she gets in the original; God alone knows what happens to her in the Bible. Literally.

Superman: Blood of My Ancestors is a bit of a muddle; less satisfying as a comic than it is as a final chance to see two giants of the form in action. It isn’t a great comic but it is by some of comics’ greats so that makes it GOOD!

Image by Kane, Nowlan, Grant, Lopez, Giddings & Cone

Out of the eater came something to eat. And out of the strong came forth – COMICS!!!

Arriving 12/24/14

The penultimate new comics week of the year two thousand and fourteen of the common era is not one to blink at. With new OUTCAST, BLACK SCIENCE, DAREDEVIL, the latest volume of MANHATTAN PROJECTS, the first volume in the complete English translation of CORTO MALTESE and the debut Eric Stephenson's THEY'RE NOT LIKE US there will be plenty of comics to keep you warm this cold holiday eve, at least until the next week.  

Check out the rest of the holiday weeks comics after the cut!

ADVENTURE TIME #35 ALIENS FIRE AND STONE #4 ALL NEW INVADERS #13 ALL NEW X-FACTOR #18 ALL NEW X-MEN ANNUAL #1 AMAZING WORLD OF GUMBALL #6 AQUAMAN #37 ARKHAM MANOR #3 AVENGERS AND X-MEN AXIS #9 (OF 9) BATMAN 66 #18 BATMAN ANNUAL #3 BATMAN ETERNAL #38 BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA #7 BLACK SCIENCE #11 BODIES #6 (OF 8) BTVS SEASON 10 #10 BUTTERFLY #4 CAPTAIN AMERICA AND MIGHTY AVENGERS #3 AXIS CAPTURE CREATURES #2 CATWOMAN ANNUAL #2 CLIVE BARKERS NIGHTBREED #8 COLDER BAD SEED #3 CONAN THE AVENGER #9 COWL #7 CYCLOPS #8 DAREDEVIL #11 DARK TOWER DRAWING OF THREE PRISONER #5 (OF 5) DAWN OF PLANET OF APES #2 DEAD BOY DETECTIVES #12 DEADPOOL #39 AXIS DEATH OF WOLVERINE LOGAN LEGACY #7 (OF 7) DEATHSTROKE #3 DOCTOR WHO 11TH #6 DOCTOR WHO 12TH #3 EARTH 2 WORLDS END #12 EVIL EMPIRE #9 FIGHT LIKE A GIRL #2 (OF 4) FLASH #37 GARBAGE PAIL KIDS COMIC BOOK PUKETACULAR #1 GOTHAM BY MIDNIGHT #2 GRAVEYARD SHIFT #1 (OF 4) GRAYSON ANNUAL #1 GREAT PACIFIC #18 GREEN LANTERN ANNUAL #3 (GODHEAD) GRINDHOUSE DRIVE IN BLEED OUT #2 (OF 8) HARLEY QUINN #13 HAWKEYE VS DEADPOOL #3 (OF 4) HE MAN THE ETERNITY WAR #1 INFINITY MAN AND THE FOREVER PEOPLE #6 (GODHEAD) JUDGE DREDD #26 JUDGE DREDD ANDERSON PSI DIVISION #4 JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #37 LAST BORN #4 (MR) LETTER 44 #13 LOKI AGENT OF ASGARD #9 AXIS MAGNETO #13 MARVEL UNIVERSE ULT SPIDER-MAN WEB WARRIORS #2 MARVELS AVENGERS #1 (OF 2) MASSIVE #30 MCBAIN #1 MEMETIC #3 (OF 3) MERCENARY SEA #8 MIND MGMT #29 MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC #26 NEW 52 FUTURES END #34 (WEEKLY) NEW AVENGERS #28 TRO NOVA #25 AXIS OUTCAST BY KIRKMAN & AZACETA #6 RASPUTIN #3 RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS ANNUAL #2 RED LANTERNS #37 (GODHEAD) REVIVAL #26 ROBIN RISES ALPHA #1 SECRET AVENGERS #11 SECRET ORIGINS #8 SENSATION COMICS FEATURING WONDER WOMAN #5 SHE-HULK #11 SINESTRO #8 (GODHEAD) SLEEPY HOLLOW #3 (OF 4) SONIC UNIVERSE #71 STAR SPANGLED WAR STORIES GI ZOMBIE #5 SUNDOWNERS #5 SUPER DINOSAUR #23 SUPERIOR IRON MAN #3 AXIS SUPERMAN #37 SUPERMAN WONDER WOMAN #14 TERMINATOR SALVATION FINAL BATTLE #12 (OF 12) THE AVENGER SPECIAL ONE SHOT THE DEVILERS #5 (OF 7) THE SHADOW 2014 ONE SHOT THEYRE NOT LIKE US #1 TMNT GHOSTBUSTERS #3 (OF 4) TOE TAG RIOT #2 TOMB RAIDER #11 UNCANNY X-MEN #29 UNITY #13 WASTELAND #59 WHAT IF (ONE SHOT) X FILES X-MAS SPECIAL

Books/Mags/Things 2000 AD #1910 2000 AD PACK NOV 2014 AMAZING X-MEN TP VOL 02 WORLD WAR WENDIGO ANATOMY OF ZUR EN ARRH UNDERSTANDING MORRISON BATMAN CAPTAIN AMERICA PREM HC VOL 05 TOMORROW SOLDIER CORTO MALTESE GN UNDER THE SIGN OF CAPRICORN CREEPING DEATH FROM NEPTUNE BASIL WOLVERTON HC VOL 01 GREEN LANTERN LIGHTS OUT TP (N52) GRUBBY LITTLE SMUDGES OF FILTH GN JOE KUBERT ENEMY ACE ARTIST ED HC LARFLEEZE TP VOL 02 THE FACE OF GREED (N52) LUCIFER TP VOL 05 (MR) MANHATTAN PROJECTS TP VOL 05 THE COLD WAR MASTER KEATON GN VOL 01 URASAWA MMW WARLOCK TP VOL 01 MONSTROSITY GN VOL 02 NOVA TP VOL 04 ORIGINAL SIN PREVIEWS #316 JANUARY 2015 SUNSTONE TP VOL 01 (MR) SUPERMAN ACTION COMICS TP VOL 04 HYBRID (N52) SWORD ART ONLINE FAIRY DANCE GN VOL 02 TALES OF THE BATMAN LEN WEIN HC TRANSFORMERS VS GI JOE TP VOL 01 TWILIGHT TP X-MEN EPIC COLLECTION TP CHILDREN OF ATOM

As always, what do YOU think?

Abhay: 2014– Another Year that I Mindlessly Consumed Entertainment

Best-Of lists!  Do those deserve an exclamation mark?  Probably not!

BEST COMICS

10. "Casual fridays arent allowed in the office after last weeks ‘incident’"

I sought out comics the least this year than any year I can remember. There were definitely times when I'd put down a book I hadn't connected with and just think, "Am I done? Maybe I'm done. Maybe it's been a good run but now's the time to just be finished with all this."

I'm getting old, and historically, comics are aimed at mediocre folks in their early-to-mid 20's. Any illusions I had about what comics could be like if it "got its act together", those got themselves pretty dead-- there's a Dorothy Parker quote I love more than anything: "Nobody on earth writes down. Garbage though they turn out, Hollwood writers aren't writing down. That is their best. If you're going to write , don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you." Comics: this is just the best they can do, the poor things. That narrative that powered me there for a couple years of "I'm watching a great medium rise up from shackles that were wrongly put on it historically" I don't think I believe anymore-- it wasn't "shackles" making faces at Marv Wolfman while he was on the witness stand at his trial to try to reclaim his ownership of Blade, trying to distract him from giving potentially life-altering testimony; it was John Byrne. Most folks want to believe he's some exception to the rule, but you know... Why?  Why believe that?

Plus: I got insulted some this year by folks-- most of that I brought on myself for forgetting how the game works for a moment; some of that was pretty deserved and reasonable; I'm pretty good at letting shit roll-off. But there were a couple moments that gave me pause, a couple times where just the low quality of the people I irritated just made me tired.  Batman's the most popular superhero because he's got the best rogue's gallery; you don't get stronger lifting the lightest weights; there were a couple times this year where I felt like I could have spent my time irritating a much better class of person.

All that shit's starting to wear off though these last couple months; fuck it, comics are rad and having stone-cold dummies dislike you is brilliant; but even at the low-point, here's the thing-- I was still coming across great comics routinely. There's no avoiding them now with social media, with the internet, with everyone being interconnnected. Comics are everywhere; comics are unavoidable; it's incredible what we've all built with each other. This comic-- I don't know how I found it, and I don't know anything about who made it or why or for what, but I just think it's great.

I like how it constantly heightens the emotional deadness of airline safety cards to increasingly bizarre new levels, the speed of it, how quickly everything goes fucking haywire in it. It's not enough that nudity immediately descends to casual fucking-- it's that in the next panel, they're making vases like Patrick Swaye in Ghost. The comic's also a fun example of the audience plusing a joke, adding a perfect punchline the creators hadn't gotten to. For that to have happened, this comic had to have found its perfect audience, and so knowing that happened was a great encouragement, in many different respects.

• You might also want to check out: Godendeemster, by Theo van den Boogaard and Wim T. Schippers.

9. Prophet #42 by Ron Wimberly / Brandon Graham / Giannis Milonogiannis / Joseph Bergin III.

Aaah, shallow pleasures. This comic just looked fucking dope. Which maybe doesn't sound like a lot to you, but (a) it's comics, stupid-- that's pretty, pretty important, and (b) 12 months later, it's still in my memory of this year, which is the biggest shock. How difficult is that? I forget everything I look at anymore-- comics, people, places; this stuck; it's got to mean something, right?

• You might also want to check out: I thought that issue of Sex Criminals where the guy was depressed was a pretty solid comic, if you're shopping at that end of the store. I still run pretty hot-cold with that comic overall. I went into that issue (#6?? around there) thinking that guy character was a pile of hot garbage (was that just me? I never see people talk about that, but man-- that dude gave me a pile of hot garbage vibe from the get-go)-- it didn't get me to like him anymore, but it at least made him interesting.

8. Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley, Jason Fischer, Dustin Harbin, and Nathan Fairbairn

This was a weird experience, how people wrote about this book when it was about to come out as compared to actually reading it. I felt like everyone who wrote about it focused on Seconds as a hijinx-y Scott Pilgrim follow-up, or a book about coping with life after your Hollywood movie comes out.

But then the book itself? I only read it the one time, but it felt like that book was a real raw nerve. Characters trying desparately to fix everything to make a relationship perfect and constantly failing-- wanting a thing and fucking it all up by wanting it so much. Characters feeling lost in their homes, alienated by their own homes that they'd spent years building. Infidelity and regret, and all the hopes pinned to dream homes slowly crumbling in the distance. That book felt like a heartbreak album, but all the writing I saw about the book beforehand were about mushrooms and zippy happy super-fun times; it just seemed fucking crazy. Comic people like to be polite and "why not just be positive" all the time, but with this book, that attitude really just seemed indiscernible from being functionally illiterate.

Besides thematically, while the narration occasionally felt a little unnecessary, I really liked the character designs, especially the main character who's like a cross between Sonic the Hedgehog and Lina Inverse from Slayers but I still feel like I've met people who have looked like her; neat trick.

• You might also want to check out: Written in Bones, by Christopher M. Jones & Carey Pietsch.

7. Weapons of Mass Diplomacy by Abel Lanzac, Christophe Blain, & Edward Gauvin 

Wrote about Weapons of Mass Diplomacy here; still haven't seen the movie version but it's on Netflix.

• You might also want to check out: Jules Feiffer's Kill Your Mother. Not a political book, but another hefty graphic novel-- the first one? not really, but we're all pretending-- focused primarily on the foibles and neuroses of its characters, this one by an artist who manages to be both a widely-celebrated legend and still somehow underrated. Unwieldy sometimes-confusing execution-- Feiffer could have used more of a helping editorial hand on some of his page layouts, but enough of Feiffer's strengths shine through to have made for an entirely pleasant time.

6. The Short Con by Aleks Sennwald and Pete Toms

It's difficult to imagine the kind of person who'd read this and not find some charm to it, or some value in the jokes. One of those rare all-ages comics that actually live up to that description-- and genuinely pretty funny, which is the rarest thing of all. I would like this as much as a little kid as I do now-- not oodles of things that can be said of. One of the few comics where I want to see it adapted into other media-- I want to see the Pixar version; I want to buy a DNA Profiling Kit for my nephews.

• You might also want to check out: The Creepy Casefiles of Margo Maloo, by Drew Weing. More of a pure kid's comic, but mysteries; handsome drawings; fun sense of color.

5. Eleanor Davis-- Cartoonist Diary

Smarter people than me are all focusing on Davis's book How to Be Happy. Happy's a collection of short evocative pieces concerning characters for whom some numinous moment is slightly just out of reach, comics more concerned with capturing a feeling of yearning than any particularly narrative. It's a strong showcase for Davis's different styles.

But look, I only got that book because Eleanor Davis's Cartoonist Diary over at the Comics Journal was so great. Is any comic artist as perfect for a long scroll webcomic as Davis? Most webcomics, year after year, are just not readable because the people who've made them are so tied to the conventions of print comics, so what a pleasure Davis's work by comparison. While her diary comics don't feature any of her facility with color-- obviously a big selling point for Happy-- I love the immediacy of her figures. They have a little more volume to them than other cartoonists give their characters. Combined with the mostly thick line Davis uses for these, there's a confidence to those figure-drawings, such that it's hard not to feel like I'm in safe hands as a reader immediately upon looking at them. All of the details feel essential, rather than decorative-- there's so little waste to these, but still such lively drawings. And then the contents themselves, despite the limitations of the project, sill manage moments that are striking or portentous, especially in Day Four which I would think is the highlight of those diaries. I think they're pretty fucking rad.

• You might also want to check out:  Leslie Stein's diary comics.  I just think they're so fun to look at. I don't know that any one installment towers over the others, but following these comics has been a highlight of the year.

4. Copra by Michel Fiffe.

This has been on my year end lists for a couple years now, probably, but I've never really written about it. I've been wanting to do that, but I don't want to just slop something out here. Uhm: I will say that it shifted to a higher gear this year with the single-issue stories, though. The pleasures of Copra have always been the single-issue experience of it, more than some overall narrative, and so this year, it felt like Copra really honed in on its biggest strength.

There were some o-kay serialized comics this year-- the resumption of Stray Bullets and Astro City; I thought the Fade Out's started promisingly; that first issue of Bitch Planet's pretty well-executed if you want something pretty recent.  But Copra's still the only thing I really get excited about when it shows up, the one I'm not on autopilot for.

• You might also want to check out:  If you're in the mood for action comics, I think Wes Craig's art on Deadly Class are worth a look. That comic is pretty-whatever overall-- there are interesting bits but then, like, also other stuff. Mainstream comic book self-pity weak-boy stuff you've probably seen enough of before.  (The "it's a 1980's period piece" bit hasn't paid off much at all). But Craig's action pages are usually worth a look.

3. Wrenchies by Farel Dalrymple

There was a book last year that I really was not into called Hair Shirts by Patrick Mceown. This book had a similarity but just succeeded where Hair Shirts didn't connect for me. It's a book about abuse, the imprecision of memory, and pop culture as a hiding place and defense mechanism-- but one spoken purely in a vernacular somewhere between a Liefeld-era New Mutants comic, Marc Laidlaw's forgotten cyberpunk short story "400 Boys", the "Explore an environment" fantasy experiments of mid-00's art comics, and obviously, Jonathan Lethem's Brooklyn novels (with whom author Farel Dalrymple had notably worked with before on Omega the Unknown). Sometimes a slippery comic to connect with emotionally-- I'd commend to your attention the lengthy discussion of the book by the Wait What guys, as they really dug into it-- but not a book that skimps on the surface pleasures of comics, even if suspicious or perhaps disenchanted with them.

Anyone who has insight into one of the book's final mysteries is invited to speak up because that's still bugging me.

• You might also want to check out: I'd suggest looking into Roman Muradov's work; if you can track down his zine The Yellow Zine-- there's not a lot of similarity with Wrenchies content-wise, but there's an intensity to the art that I would wildly guess you'd be sympatico with if you were into Wrenchies.

2. SEXCASTLE by Kyle Starks

Sexcastle is the only comic on this list that I immediately do-not-pass-go drew (lousy) fan-art for after I finished reading it. #1 on a list of Top 10 Comics that Are Awesome, written by me, age 13, Sexcastle is a daydream of the greatest 1980's action movie ever made ... that somehow doesn't suck; my god, there are so many ways this could've sucked. Kyle Starks may not be in the running for that Russ Manning Award, but this was the most purely-fun comic I've read in a long, long time. I got it off Kickstarter, following a random recommendation on an impulse-- I'm not sure where else it's sold, but a new edition is coming from Image next year. If The Tick or Giffen-era Lobo or (I'm too old for Deadpool but whatever the good Deadpool is?) all happened at the same time, were all published in the same year, this comic would just piss all over those. Fall in love.

• You might also want to check out: Ryan Cecil Smith's S.F., another handmade love-letter, this one to an era of manga/anime most often associated with Leiji Matsumoto. While much more oriented towards younger audiences than Stark's book, this might be a good fit for you if you over-idealize one-man bands trying to put on a big show. I do.

1. Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann, Kerascoët, and Helge Dascher.

I wrote about it here. Never in question; always obviously the very best book of the year.

• You might also want to check out: Kerascoët had another book out this year, through NBM's Comic Lit imprint, written and colored by Hubert, entitled Beauty. It's not quite the triumph that Beautiful Darkness is-- pleasant visually, like all of their work, but a little too on-the-nose with how it's using the medium; doesn't have the same subtlety. But it's still a fun time, a sort of kissing cousin to one of those fantastic Fractured Fairy Tales cartoons that they used to have on the old Bullwinkle cartoons, though little more than that. Doesn't really stick the landing.

WORST COMIC

"Bottle of Wine" by Russ Heath.

Let me start by noting that Russ Heath is by any formulation a comics legend. A Russ Heath comic worth tracking down? I really think the work he did with Dave Sim on Creepy, Shadow of the Axe, is as beautiful a comic as that magazine ever featured. The internet calls it a "forgotten masterpiece" and I have no great disagreement with that.  Even this comic, made by Heath at the age of 84, still shows a facility with the craft of comics that is admirable..

And so when I say I hated the discussion around this comic, the way people received it and discussed it, let me be 100% clear that my problem lies not with Russ Heath or his work or the specifics of the comic itself.

But goddamn.  Hearing dumbasses talk about this comic was like having all my nose hairs plucked out one after another. Comic book people and their multi-decade war with Roy Lichtenstein's art is the dopiest, most exhausting bullshit that... It's never going to stop! Lichtenstein's become a Dick Tracy grotesque villain to comic book dopes, whose intellectual incuriosity and constant unfounded sense of victimization both intersect in a perfect marriage where Lichtenstein is concerned. There's Fredric Wertham, then there's Lichtenstein, then there's some high school gym teacher that wasn't nice enough to you weaklings. It is never going to stop. It's exhausting. You're exhausting.

Here's what Larry Marder had to say in a two-page letter to the Comics Buyer Guide in 1989, when comic people were bitching and moaning about Lichtenstein -- a letter Marder reprinted in 2011 because people were still bitching and moaning about Lichtenstein twenty-two years later: "Over the years, I've met and had conversations with many famous gallery artists (but not Lichtenstein). Quite a few knew and appreciated the art of comic books. But I've never yet had a conversation with a comic book artist who had anything less than a sneer for almost all modern artists. It's a pity."

There are people for whom the only "true" writing is fiction, who are quick to sneer about any kind of criticism as being somehow inherently less-than. But with criticism, an author can express themselves, can craft interesting phrases or sentences, can effect an audience emotionally or intellectually. It's all writing. Criticism is just writing about writing. That's it.  That's all it is. Pop Art? It's still paintings-- it's just paintings of images, instead of a bowl of fruit or Jesus's creepy virgin-momma. Not only is there not anything inherently less than about that, in the context of the time Pop Art was a major movement, that was arguably an interesting thing to question-- what did art mean once images had become mechanized, industrialized, corporatized, constant and anonymous?

It's not Roy Lichtenstein's fault that comic art was anonymous industrial product; comics itself wouldn't print the fucking names of the people who made them in the books for decades.

Is Roy Lichtenstein a "thief"?  Well, to believe that you have to ignore that DC Comics had stolen all the rights to Russ Heath's life work for themselves before Lichtenstein had ever shown up. DC Comics were the only people who could've made a legal issue of Lichtenstein's appropriations because DC Comics is the true and exclusive "author" of those comics in any Court in this country-- not Russ Heath. Is that right? No, it's not-- it sucks; it sucks; but that's not Roy Lichtenstein's fault either.  P.S. when there was litigation to question whether that's how we want society to work, how many comic creators did you see side with the creators of Superman?  Long list...?  Shya'right.

And hey, incidentally, how much did DC Comics share what it made off Russ Heath's art with him? How much does it do that now? DC, through its sponsorship of the Hero Initiative, I guess helped chip in to buy a bottle of $2 Buck Chuck for the guy, and I'm supposed to be grossed out by Lichtentsein and think about what heroes DC are...?

And incidentally, the painting that Heath is complaining of, Whaam!...? Per Wikipedia at least, it's based on an Irv Novick panel, with elements taken not only from Heath but also from a Jerry Grandenetti panel potentially...? Which is just weird. It's "weird" that the people who should be educating the audience as to that point so that the audience can contextualize what Heath is saying failed to even so much as look at the Wikipedia for Whaam!  But that weirdness isn't Lichtenstein's fault either-- none of Lichtenstein's paintings are called "hey, comics journalists, don't bother to do any more than the bare minimum every single time" (though, if any were, he'd probably have stolen the art from Nick Cardy, so... the whole vicious cycle would've just started back up again).

There is a difference between looking at a panel of a comic in a comic book, and standing before paintings the size of a Lichtenstein. There is a difference between getting a flood of noise and someone stopping and saying "No, stop and have a visual experience with just this one moment, with just this one image, divorced of any commercial context." There is a difference between preferring one experience to another, which is entirely valid, and claiming that the latter experience is fraudulent, which is the nonsense of fanboys.

Would it have been a more moral world if Lichstenstein had shared generously with Heath and Novick and others he took from during the extremely-brief period of time where Lichtenstein was doing comic-based paintings (which p.s. not even remotely his whole career... if only someone had invented a google where you could google basic information necessary to reach an informed opinion)? Yes. Absolutely.  That would have been the more moral choice and I wish he had made it. Could Lichtenstein have questioned the manufactured image without appropriating specific instances of comic art?  Maybe; maybe not; I think that something essential would have been lost if he had used his own images, but I can understand the argument.  Is Russ Heath's expression of his frustrations a legitimate way for him to feel? Absolutely. Again, Russ Heath is a great artist who deserved better, and certainly has everybody's respect and admiration; that he ended up in a rough spot is fucking terrible and far too common. Could and should Lichtenstein have done a better job promoting the artists he took from?  Okay.  I don't think that's really his job, actually, but that'd have been nice of him, too, if we're making up our Dream Boyfriend.  Is Lichtenstein a plagiarist? Sure, yeah-- I also heard Quentin Tarantino ripped off a Hong Kong movie one time, and that the Beastie Boys didn't make all the noises on Paul's Boutique themselves, if you want to go get angry about that too, heroes. But sure, is this the best of all possible worlds? It is not. Do Lichtenstein's recreations suffer in comparison to the original work? I think so-- I think there are things about the comics source drawing that Lichtenstein's work loses in their recreations, to their detriment, though I do think I feel why he made those choices when I've look at his paintings.  I'm not saying that there aren't valid criticisms of the guy to be made, with a reasonable temperament-- though I don't think any of those criticisms remotely rise to the level of "interesting".

But if we're going to have hear about this asshole for the next 22 years, can you just at least try to have a better conversation about it than this last round? Pop Art artists weren't just pirates with a xerox machine. Art museums aren't in a conspiracy against comics.  And the Hero Initiative is a band-aid on a gushing wound that wasn't the fault of Roy Lichtenstein.

BEST MOVIES

10. Calvary

For most interesting bit of acting to watch this year, there's a strong argument to be made for Jake Gylenhaal in Nightcrawler. But me, I'd go with Brendan Gleeson in this little-seen Martin McDonagh movie about the state of the scandal-ridden Catholic Church in Ireland. Nightcrawler's very much my kind of movie, a sinister LA crime thing, and Gylenhaal's pretty fun to watch in it. But Calvary? Calvary's not at all my kind of movie. It's a movie about Gleeson playing a priest in a small surfing town under attack by members of his community who have run amuck in no small part because of the Church's moral decline. I could give a shit about the Catholic Church or Ireland or faith or morality or any of that, but I still didn't want to stop watching Brendan Gleeson for a second.

Just the warmth, disappointment, sadness, and intelligence he has-- I don't know how acting works, how a person does that, but whatever that thing is, this is the movie where I was like the most impressed by it.

• (Tangent: Top 10 lists from movie critics this year more often have the Polish nun movie Ida, but I just really don't think that was as interesting. That one felt like a much safer movie than Calvary, a movie with easier villains to condemn (hint: it's set after World War 2), a much easier conception of "evil" or human frailty to draw a smaller circle around. Nothing in Ida was as blistering or charged as the scene with the little girl in Calvary, at least to me. Ida was just in black and white).

9. Coherence

There's better movies that could and should take this spot-- Nightcrawler, We are the Best, Force Majeure; I think this was a pretty great year for movies, actually. But I'm going with this movie because when I saw it, unlike those other movies, it had been largely unheralded so it caught me much more by surprise, and was a more exciting experience, as such. I think I'm going to remember the experience of this movie surprising me after the memory of those movies fade away. (I'm only going to remember one shot in Force Majeure, though dang, it's a really, really good one).

It wasn't a movie a lot of people were into, very understandably-- it's a largely improvised puzzle-movie about alternate realities whose biggest star is Nicholas Brendan (Xander from the old Buffy the Vampire Slayer show), made for no money. It's a gimmick movie. Force Majeure had the best premise of a year; We are the Best had one of the best endings; Nightcrawler will probably be far most obsessed over by film geeks in future years. I imagine most folks will find Coherence annoying. But I just felt like I watched this movie more actively than almost anything else I saw this year-- it's the movie I most often tried to guess what was going to happen, and most often guessed wrong. I enjoyed playing along at home.

Also, I just like that this year was a pretty cool little year for science fiction movies. Coherence, The One I Love, Interstellar and The Edge of Tomorrow were all imperfect, but taken together, it felt like an unusually interesting year for what's usually a severely disappointing genre. I want there to be more independent science fiction movies like this-- that genre being left in the hands of big Hollywood studios would be the worst of all possible worlds.

8. Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson-- plus Nazis! Go figure.

7. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

My first draft of this bit was an apology for featuring a dumb comedy on a list like this. Since writing that, though, dumb comedies are under attack, again, with plenty of people all too eager to say "Well, but I don't care this time because dumb comedies are worthless".

And I just emphatically don't agree with those people.

This was co-written by Armando Iannucci who also made In the Loop, the Thick of It, and Veep. Steve Coogan made it around the same time he made Philomena, a movie nominated for Best Picture at last year's Academy Awards. Some pretty clever people got together and made a movie about a character who is sublimely dumb -- clever people sat at a table, thinking up completely ridiculous ways for a character to stupidly bumble and fail his way through a situation, like a complete idiot.

And I think that is true because there is something of value to the dumb comedy. I think that people are basically ridiculous and stupid and absurd. I think people who don't believe that or forget that are draining and miserable and sometimes-dangerous. I think dumb comedies are valuable and worth defending for reminding people that life is a dumb, stupid mess, and that they're taking themselves too seriously. And I think what the kind of person who says something like "oh who cares if there's one less dumb comedy in the world" fundamentally doesn't understand is that I will always want to see a dumb comedy if the alternative is listening to them, know-it-all chucklefucks and their dumbass sub-Blart-ian opinions.

6. The Rover

I think about society falling apart a bunch, and I think when that happens, it's basically going to look a lot like this movie. It's an Australian post-apocalypse movie but nobody dresses up in football cosplay or spikey Ayatollah-of-rock-n-rolla costumes because the movie keys in on the key bit about the whole apocalypse thing: nobody's going to give a shit about anything anymore. Folks not caring is enough to make it all feel like the apocalypse, to begin with. Just look around!

5. Inherent Vice

Here's what an angry review of the movie sounds like: "How long will you remain engaged with a work that seems to purposely challenge the viewer to understand what the filmmaker’s getting at?"

Where things lie, at the end of 2014:  people who write about movies now openly get angry at a movie for "challenging" them.

4. The Raid 2

The best audience experience.

3. Top Five

Another very imperfect movie. And boy, Chris Rock doing a "one-crazy day" movie on paper should not have been a fun thing-- this time, last year, that would have been something to avoid. But I love how it just felt like everything on his mind made it into the movie somewhere, how it felt like it was overflowing with topics he wanted to talk about. There's a romantic comedy story in there, and there's a Sullivan's Travel story in there (the equivalent of the Mickey Mouse scene in Top Five was definitely the biggest movie laugh I had this year), but there were parts of the movie where it was neither of those things, flashbacks in neither of those worlds especially. Even if that made for a mess sometimes, I just appreciated how it just had so much life to it.

2. Housebound

Most movies diminish when I remember them, but my affection for this one has really just grown and grown since seeing it. It's just such a well-crafted piece of entertainment, just the zip of it, how it constantly changes shape, outraces the audience, but still ultimately fits together. There's an old saw about endings, that what makes endings so difficult to write is that a great ending have to be both completely surprising as you're watching but at the same time, after they've happened, completely inevitable. This movie, to me, was one of those rare movies that lived up to that. Hollywood summer movies now all have an identical ending-- "then, they prevent the end of the world". Hollywood summer movies have found an audience so undiscerning, that so doesn't give a shit, that they'll watch a movie that ends with Captain America pushing a candy-red "turn off the evil machine so end of world doesn't happen" button as long as there are enough special effects there. A good movie makes it all look so effortless, in comparison.

Plus, it's hard to think of characters I had as much affection for this year as the characters in this movie-- one character I think I held my breath everytime he was on screen past a certain point, I was so worried for him.

It's rare not to see younger filmmakers try to process their influences-- part of the fun of Attack the Block, say, was watching the filmmakers process a John Carpenter influence. Housebound felt very inspired by early Zemeckis, early Raimi, and the early Peter Jackson that hadn't discovered computers graphics yet and whose work was still possible to enjoy and respect. (The point of those books was not to succumb to the lure of technology, you CGI doofus!) Usually the folks who take from those guys? They take the wrong stuff. They miss what made those filmmakers' early work feel special.

Housebound, it just felt like it got it right.

1. Gone Girl

David Fincher's version of the First Wives Club or Kill Bill. The most fun movie to see people react to, both in a theater and definitely out of a theater.

In the theater itself, for me, the joy of that movie was in how much it got me to root for the so-called "villain" of the piece to rampage through that movie. There is a part of this movie where the villain is about to do something horrible to another human being, and I don't know... I don't know the last time I rooted to see something so horrible happen as much as I did then and there, before that moment ensued. Getting to watch other people experience that, to feel an audience around me having those same emotions, that was a distinct pleasure.

Out of the theater, in terms of living with a movie afterwards, and hearing people have really vigorous opinions about a movie, nothing came close to this movie. And usually the movies that do that are, like, shitty Star Wars movies or whatever because we have to listen to nerds complain that Michael Bay raped their childhood when Spock didn't shoot first, or somesuch stupid bullshit. "What did you think the end of The Dark Knight Rises meant?" "It meant that you wasted a lot of money on college-- might as well have burnt it in a bonfire." Hearing people talking about this movie, though-- it was always something interesting to me, however much it may have revealed how polarized and/or maybe-cartoonish some folks' gender politics can be, or how complicated those questions get for even the most well-meaning people after they see a half-second of Ben Afflecks cock.

I don't know the answers to those questions myself. Does art reinforce people's toxic worldviews? If so, does art have a responsibility to avoid certain topics-- even if those topics are things that actually do happen in reality? Or does the topic get rendered radioactive if the "things that happen in reality" are statistically more rare than toxic people's prejudices would predict? Are people confusing statistics with science, and how much weight should we give to statistics-- which are inherently endlessly debatable-- when thinking about what kinds of stories should be told? Doesn't even thinking about that confuse art with vitamins? Is any kind of high-minded discussion of "art" just the luxury of those not under assault to discuss, or is that kind of argument just a debate-ender that makes the person making it feel good at the expense of actually persuading anyone of anything? Is this kind of discussion all a circus to distract people from "real issues" or are creating circuses like this actually an important function for popular entertainment? There are people for whom these questions are easy-- they have pretty rad tumblr blogs-- but I have days where I'm not all that sure.

My favorite reactions were the people who talked about the movie like it was a grocery-store paperback thriller that stumbled into the questions, stumbled into themes it didn't even know it had-- that A-List filmmakers spent years working on a project and never spent any time thinking about what they were working on actually meant-- sure, sure, left that to some no-name schmoes on twitter to explain Life to the rest of us. Sometimes I think that does happen-- you look at what happened with that Batgirl comic the other day; sometimes, people guess and miss. But I took Gone Girl differently-- I took it to be a deliberate provocation, and so I took seeing people provoked and talking out the issues raised by that story as a sign of the movie's success, as a part of the design of the piece and not some corrective, not as the Internet filling in some cracks in that sidewalk.

Believing that something good comes out of people talking about their experiences-- well, that wasn't an easy thing to believe in 2014; 2014 wasn't exactly The Year the Internet had Worthwhile Conversations. But everybody needs some comforting fairy tales to make it through the day, and as comforting fairy tales go, I guess that's the one I'm going with.

Honorary Mention: Detention

Not a 2014 movie, but it came to Netflix in 2014. This was the movie I felt compelled to see 3 times in a week, just to try to get my head around it. This was the movie I had to read every interview with the director to find out what he was thinking. The movie that's the hardest to talk about coherently, without question.

I haven't read Pax Americana yet, but I saw a page of Grant Morrison arguing that deconstruction somehow murders the pleasure of a thing under examination. Maybe Pax Americana makes the point more persuasively as a whole, though those sorts of reductive readings of Watchmen have never found much purchase with me and seem especially uninteresting to me all the way in 2014; I just think that's a load of malarky, personally. Detention rips to sheds every youth-oriented movie in sight, but from those parts assembles something strange and invigorating and endlessly surprising, a more persuasive and joyous love-letter to the scuzzy weirdo pleasures of teen exploitation sub-genres than any umpteenth John Hughes-ripoff could ever hope to be. It's a pixie-stick of a movie, all rush, all teen hormones-- even after three times, it made my head spin.  Rip everything to shreds; find out how things work; don't listen to company stooges who tell you not to think-- I'm on Detention's side.

Also: the most accurate villain.

WORST MOVIE

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: I just had the worst reaction to this movie. I can't remember a movie I was as physically unhappy sitting in a theater watching this year. I just don't like watching special effects act. I don't give a shit about Andy Serkis under almost any circumstances. It constantly felt sloppy-- especially in the zero-dimensional human characters who flitted in and out of the movie meaninglessly-- nice job playing "Some Useless Random-ass Woman," Keri Russell! And I just couldn't guess what I was supposed to find entertaining about its story of unsympathetic aboriginal savages facing the violent consequences of not being sufficiently nice to occasionally-misguided-but-fundamentally-well-meaning white invaders; p.s., yikes. Basically, I was on Koba's side, at least before the movie devolved into watching special effects punch other special effects while the guy from Zero Dark Thirty stood around and contributed nothing meaningful to the story whatsoever. A physically unpleasant movie to watch for me-- I basically wanted to run for it.

Most Overrated: Birdman

Interesting to look at, interesting performances, some spectacular bits here and there-- fun while watching it, but a movie that's soured in my memory of it, for just being too phony at its core. Phony about art, phony about the theater, phony about Broadway, phony about critics, phony about "authenticity", phony.

Did the movie have anything interesting to say about anything? I'm not sure that it did, or that if it did, it was anything I care about much, let alone agree with. Yeah-- "there are too many superhero movies"; I'm 100% sympathetic with that, though the movie barely made even that point in an especially interesting way; but if the only alternative the movie can posit is a completely dopey idea of high art (name-dropping Raymond Carver), then who cares about the entire enterprise at all? Just stay home and read books.

Nothing in that movie felt like it really stuck a point-- oh okay, maybe Emma Stone's speech if you're generous enough to believe that speech wasn't carefully crafted to tweak the middle-aged upper-middle-class audience the movie's designed to appease with its Vanity-Fair-magazine-middlebrow bromides about New York Theater. Maybe that. At least for the 10 seconds where Emma Stone got to be an interesting character before becoming Ed Norton's boner-muse. At least for the 10 seconds where he got to be an interesting character before inexplicably disappearing from the movie altogether.

Not a bad movie-- Michael Keaton rushing through Times Square in his underwear's too memorable to call it a bad movie. But a movie that seems exactingly designed to end up winning Most Overrated for 2014.

BEST TELEVISION

I had as many great episodes of television that got left off this list as made it on-- Mad Men, Broad City, etc.  Plus, supposedly great television still in the hopper for me (Happy Valley, Fargo, etc.).  I've been really exhausted from work all year; watching television has been good to me in 2014; this list was a tough one.

10. The League- "When Rafi Met Randy"

9- A Trip to Italy- "Da Giovanni, San Fruttuoso" - Episode Two

The ridiculous immaturity, temporary pleasures and lasting sadness of middle-age. Matt Singer wrote that he was more invested in Steve Coogan & Rob Brydon taking melancholic Trips places as a franchise than Star Wars or Harry Potter. He's not wrong.

8- Person of Interest - "Prophets" 

The best comic book TV show or movie going, though a distillation of the frantic pleasures of serial comics rather than a cheap knock-off of any one property. This episode went the furthest the show has ever gotten in what can only be described as superhero angst and superhero spectacle, all within the narrow confines of a CBS Dad Show! Like reading the X-Men as a 13-year old boy.

7- Friday Night Dinner - S03E03

Friday Night Dinner is so goddamn beautifully made. It's a family show, and because it's a family show, every episode is exactly the same. The jokes are even mostly the same, in a way I haven't seen since Married with Children. Most of the stories don't even leave the one setting, of the house. There's rarely any guest actors. There's something about that consistency, and the characters stuck in that consistency, that make for something extremely special.

The dad who refuses to wear his shirt at home isn't funny because he's got his shirt off and he looks kind of gross; he's hilarious because every goddamn episode, he has his shirt off and it's driving everybody crazy but he's going to have his shirt off this episode, next episode and the episode after that. And ultimately you love that character doesn't have his shirt on because, look, that's who he is and what, you want him to change-- well, he's not going to change so what choice do you have, let him have his shirt off?

There's something about how that show is buit that seems more deeply and honestly funny about the annoyances and weirdness of families that I just don't know what I would even compare it to. I just think that show's remarkable and weirdly beautiful over the long term, despite being somehow completely and resolutely ordinary episode by episode...?

There is one very big exception to the no guest actor rule, and that is horrible Mr. Morris, who might be one of my favorite sitcom characters of all time. Goddamn, that character makes me laugh.

6. You're the Worst- "What Normal People Do"

The best new comedy show in a long time. A Los Angeles show. A dirty-minded romantic comedy. Misanthropic and weird and sexy and funny. This episode was the one where you see Aya Cash's apartment-- it just always seem so specific that show. They're not trying to tell a story about generic people who live anywhere and work in non-descript offices, under some mistaken belief that making a show more generic will make it more relatable to a greater number of people. They're telling a story about these two particular characters who live in these particular places having their own particular romance-- it's just really fun thanks to cable, getting to watch shows that understand why that is so much better.

5. Rick & Morty- "Something Ricked This Way Comes"

The last scene.  Perfect.

4. Hannibal - "Mizumono"

Weird and uneven season, but an apeshit finale. Too apeshit not to admire deeply.

3. Inside Amy Schumer- "A Chick Who Can Hang"

Hello, M'Lady. The Aaron Sorkin Foodroom parody. I haven't been this excited to see a sketch show since Dave Chappelle.

Youtube comment to the Hello, M'Lady sketch: "There are enough tears in this comment section to fill a whole fedora."

2. Review - "Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes"

1. John Oliver - The Net Neutrality Episode

Honorary Mentions

Conan O'Brien-- The Scrapisode: a deep dive into comedy nerdery, but one I wish they'd do every year; and...

Black Mirror-- White Christmas. A TV movie by the Black Mirror team, starring Jon Hamm, Rafe Spall, and Oona Chaplin-- who was in Inside No. 9's best episode (though maybe a little transphobic, that episode? I'm no expert on that kind of thing)-- A Quiet Night In.  Black Mirror's regular episodes are now on Netflix where I understand it's finally gone viral-- it's worth a look, especially if you like the Twilight Zone or being really sad about people.

LEAST FAVORITE TELEVISION

True Detective - "Form and Void"

Man, do you really want to hear anybody say one more thing about that show? I sure don't! Shut the fuck up! The best thing I can say is that when people started telling me about Serial, I could at least say, "I remember you fuckers from True Detective. Fuuuuuuuuuccckkkk thhaaaaaaat." Thanks, Nic Pizzolatto!

BEST ONLINE VIDEOS

5. "Interesting Ball (12 min) - dir. DANIELS"

4. "Let’s All Watch Mika Brzezinski Learn What a Furry Is"

3. ‘SNL' - Blue River Dog Food

The best comedic performances of the year.  (EDITED: I just realized that items 3 and 4 aren't actually online videos!  They're just TV on youtube!  I'm a moron.  Anyways, imagine I said ... uh, You Are Not a Storyteller and  Skateboard Cop Episode 7 instead.  Also: imagine that I'm wearing a ski mask, and no pants.  I think that's a pretty hot look.  So.  Yeah.  I blew it.)

2. "Unedited Footage of a Bear"

Too Many Cooks was more popular and probably more entertaining, but as discombobulating horror movies go, this one jangled my nerves a little more.  (EDITED AGAIN: Wait, was this... does this count as tv or... AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! Okay, imagine I titled this section "Best Short Little Videos You Can Watch on Youtube or Vimeo or a Site Like That, but Whose Origins may or May not Come from Television..."?  Saved it!)

1. "Our Robocop Remake - Scene 27 on Vimeo" by Fatal Farm

NEWS OR NON-FICTION ARTICLES I PARTICULARLY ENJOYED

5. "8 Questions About This News Story About Cormac McCarthy’s Ex-Wife Pulling a Gun Out of Her Vagina During a Fight About Aliens"

4. "The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats"

I don't know that I agreed with everything this guy had to say but I thought it was a fun polemic.

3. "Ghost ship full of cannibal rats could be about to crash into Devon coast"

2. "Girls Fight Out"

1. "Grandmaster Clash: One of the most amazing feats in chess history just happened, and no one noticed"

And that was 2014.