SHAZHMMM...

IT'S THE NEW THING!

2011-01-31T11:50:00.002-05:00

HEY PEOPLE! We do a new comic review column for Paste Magazine. Go read it!

Crogan's March

2010-08-03T18:08:00.004-04:00

Crogan's March
by Chris Schweizer
Oni Press 2010

Hillary Brown: So we reviewed Chris Schweizer's first entry in this ongoing series, Crogan's Vengeance, some time ago, and I have to say that either Crogan's March is a significant improvement or I'm getting more slack in my assessments or (and this most likely of all) knowing what to expect from these things tempers both hopes and criticisms. This time we're in the French Foreign Legion in the early 20th century, with another member of the Crogan family, and the narrative has been simplified and framed. I don't seem to remember a frame tale in the previous book, but then I didn't go look at it again, so it could very well be there. At any rate, it's a good decision, as it provides some context for why, exactly, we're getting this story and supplies set-up for the inevitable books to come. It's also nice to see visual elements from the frame narrative pop up in the main story, as with the appearance of one of the kids as a character. (Sidebar: I'm not sure that's what's going on here, but it seems to me that, rather than the youngest soldier being unfathomably young, Schweizer's using one of his two kiddie leads in the frame narrative to portray that character, yes?) I think this second effort is more focused than the first, and while elements of its story are a bit too derivative of Futurama (Captain Roitelet is pretty much Zapp Brannigan, only a few feet shorter), the balance of information and action is pretty well done.

Garrett Martin: I love your thought about the young soldier being one of the kids in the framing device. It feels right, and would fit the book perfectly. I don't think it's true, though. The kids definitely look similar, but the soldier has light hair and tiny ears, whereas the boys in the intro are like half-elephant, or something. That could've been a nice bit of visual continuity in a series built upon family ties, but also maybe a little hackneyed. That's a pretty common device, right? Not that either Crogan is fantastically original, but high adventuring will never go out of style. Neither will pirates or foreign legionnaires.

I agree that Crogan's March is a better book. It helps that the subject matter isn't as played out as pirates, but it's also just structured better. The pacing issues of the first book are gone thanks to a relatively clear-cut timeline. The setting is more fleshed out and thus more fascinating. The comedy and action mix smoothly without the slightly jarring tonal shifts of the first book. The art remains delightfully cartoonish and no longer feels incongruous with the more violent or stressful momes. Schweizer's more confident all around.

Also of note: apparently former Atlanta Braves outfielder Gerald Williams (or perhaps a like-named ancestor) is one of Crogan's fellow legionnaires.

HB: Oh, left fielder/utility man Gerald Williams, I have not thought of you in literally years. That's the kind of detail that makes me wonder how much research Schweizer does on these things and whether there really was a Gerald Williams somewhere that far back (it's not exactly an old-timey name) or whether, being an Atlantan, he merely remembers the speedy, low-paid, not-really-all-that-good baseball player with affection. I appreciate your doing the visual comparison I failed to, and I think you're right, but I'd also contend that the child soldier is still there to promote identification on the part of the kids within the story and on the part of ostensible readers, which is a smart move on Schweizer's part. Like it or not (and I'm not suggesting you don't like it), kids identify with other kids. I can't, for the life of me, think of another reason that character exists, unless the Legion historically looked the other way on age limits (according to Wikipedia you have to be at least 17 1/2 to join these days) or the visual depiction of his age is some sort of a metaphor for his relative greenness compared to the other soldiers in the unit. Do you feel a little bit like we're being condescending to Schweizer for having improved in this second volume? Should we worry about that?

GM: How is it condescending for a critic (or two) to note that an artist has improved? I think that's part of the job, if by job you mean a thing we lose money on. In fact (I'm about to aggrandize ourselves) but when I talked to Schweizer at the New York Comic-Con last year (in a brief interview that will never exist outside of a [not actually] broken microcassette) he mentioned how certain reviews of Vengeance impacted his plans for the rest of the series. He said our review was really helpful, and I wonder if the scene in March where Crogan very specifically points out how much time has passed is a direct result of reviews like ours. But no, I don't think it's condescending to share an opinion, especially ones arrived at after literally minutes of consideration.

But let's talk about the book again. Maybe it's just because everybody's wearing those legionnaire hats, but several moments in March give off a strong Sergio Aragones vibe. One secondary character, the guy who goes off with Williams, looks so much like an Aragones drawing that I assume it's intentional. There's another character that reminded me of a Don Martin drawing, and for a few minutes I excitedly thought Schweizer was working in references to various MAD artists. He's not, but I gotta believe that Aragones reference is a real thing that exists for real.

I hope that kid soldier isn't there to promote identification from other kids, since (SPOILER!) he gets kinda dead after a point.

HB: Okay, you're making me feel very good about the role of Internet jackasses like ourselves, so let me move on to your two other points. First, I totally agree that there's an Aragones-esque feel to the drawings this time around, and maybe it's just because a) they're kind of loose and b) there are a lot of mustaches, but I doubt it's that coincidental. I'm sure Schweizer is a fan. Heck, who isn't? As far as why that influence might be present, I have fewer ideas beyond "because it's cool" and "mustaches," but I might suggest that the adventures of the French Foreign Legion are often painted in the same kind of madcap spirit that Aragones's drawings impart, so there's an appropriateness felt in the choice of style. Also, along those lines, I know Schweizer's talked about wanting to include a real sense of death and peril in these books, despite their being aimed to some extent at young readers and (I'm not sure he mentioned this) their cartoony style, so I'm not sure the eventual fate of the young soldier is necessarily a point against his inclusion for identificative purposes. Does he succeed at that, do you think? I'd say he comes closer than in volume 1, but I'm still not sure he's quite there (although the end was kind of surprising).

GM: Between the expanded framing device and the kid, I assume it would be easier to identify with Crogan's March. Honestly, though, I'm not the best judge of that. I usually hated the child characters in books and movies when I was young. That might have more to do with bad execution than any inherent hatred for my fellow children, and Schweizer avoids much of what would've annoyed young me by not making this kid that focal of a character. He's there, he's useful as an excuse for Crogan to explain the Foreign Legion, and then his death makes a perfect (if a little too obvious) emotional stinger. So I guess I'm saying kids might identify the hell with him, but the character serves a few other purposes, too.

What did you think of the ending?

HB: It's a little abrupt. I don't mind (Spoiler alert again) killing off major characters or even the main character, but I think it can be done slightly more effectively. Again, this book is better than the previous one, but I still wouldn't call myself emotionally involved in any real way. While the cartoony quality of the drawing isn't a distraction this time, it probably still takes away from major heft to some extent. That is, I'm trying to think of an example of something that's both emotionally weighty but as cute and cartoony as this book, and I can't. On the other hand, I am notoriously hard-hearted and hard to reach, so it's quite possible it's my problem!

GM: Go read some manga. Japan's cornered the market on emotional hefty comics that as cute as a button. Also they're not comics obviously but that's kinda Pixar's thing.

Should we embarrass ourselves and talk about colonialism or the Middle East or anything genuinely worthwhile like that? I could maybe dredge up some academic horseshit I read ten years ago.

HB: Okay, you're totally right that there are good examples. So it may just be a small failing, still, rather than a hazard of the approach. I tried to think about colonialism etc. as I was reading, actually, and that's an area where I feel like Schweizer does a good job skirting a lot of very sensitive issues. Neither the Legionnaires nor the folks who live in the area are painted as saints, and, on the whole, if I had to sum up the text's stance, it would be "it's complicated," which is fair. It may be a touch on whitey's side, but that's also hard to avoid, especially when your main character is, you know, whitey. And I don't think Schweizer falls into the Edward Zwick/Dances with Wolves trap either, if only because his protagonist doesn't achieve all that much.

GM: Right, he doesn't romanticize or beautify the locals too much, but he doesn't ignore that both they and the whiteys hate, fear, and totally disrespect the hell out of each other, until they're put in a situation where they have to just be people and help each other out. It's easy to be pandering or offensive when dealing with colonial issues but Schweizer deftly avoids that without completely ignoring the issue. So Crogan's March isn't just fun and cute but also kinda smart, too. Yes sir.

elsewhere: a review of Daniel Clowes' Wilson

2010-05-04T13:57:00.002-04:00

I reviewed Wilson for the Boston Herald, and also wrote a brief piece on Free Comic Book Day.

We're working on a Shazhmmm. This is still a thing that exists. Trust us.

High Soft Lisp and Other Lives

2010-04-26T13:59:00.002-04:00

Hey you there, just a quick link: my reviews of Gilbert Hernandez's High Soft Lisp and Peter Bagge's Other Lives ran in the Boston Herald last week. Those are comic books, which is what we write about here (and elsewhere.)

A standard Shazhmm coming at some point in the future. Pretty sure of that.

King of the Flies Volume 1: Hallorave

2010-04-09T10:01:00.003-04:00

King of the Flies Volume 1: Hallorave
by Mezzo and Pirus
Fantagraphics 2010

Hillary Brown: Reading this slim but seriously illustrated volume was a pleasurable experience in disorientation. I'd never heard of Mezzo (Pascal Mesemberg) or Pirus (Michel Pirus) before, and even if you try to find out more about them, it helps to read a little French to get to their various Wikipedia pages. I didn't know jack about this book or the project or whether it was even American. In fact, I totally assumed it was, and in many ways it reads as an American comic, which makes the occasional reference to Euros all the more startling. The Fantagraphics website says it's "set in a suburb that is both nowhere and everywhere," which I guess is as accurate as anything else, and when I think about some of the darker European films set in the suburbs that I've seen, I suppose the tone translates between countries (and continents), but it's still... strange. The touchstone is, of course, Charles Burns, down to the art, which makes use of a similar coloring palette (garish, but not too much so) and woodcut-type style of shading, but also because of the content, which is heavy on weird sex and mind-altering experiences. Really, I'm not even sure if I liked the book or not as a whole. It's as though the things I liked and the things I didn't like can't come together and agree on a compromise, but it gets inside your head regardless. There are plenty of easy criticisms to make here--it relies on shock value, too many panels have the same visual set-up, who cares about these jerkwads anyway?--but it seems to me to end up being a bit more than that. I'm really curious to see what you think.

Garrett Martin: Our thoughts might align on this one. Hallorave is beautiful, but tries too hard to be hard. The sex and drugs are a little overblown, too often coming off as cheap and obvious "shock" value. But it's not as simple as that, as sex is also vital to the vignettes that do work, like the piece where the girl loses her virginity and afterward feels just about every single human emotion possible at the same time. There are a few believable and genuinely touching character moments within Hallorave; they're not subtle, but I know I was never particularly subtle in my teens. I am perhaps a little troubled by how the two male authors basically define every single female character by her sexuality, but then that's true for the male characters, as well, so I'm probably just being a dumb uptight prude again, and a very American one, at that. I'd probably like it more if all the sex was replaced with machine guns and soaring eagles. And then you also have the clear David Lynch inspiration, which normally is the kiss of death for me (even with a lot of Lynch's stuff); the fact that Pirus and Mezzo are able to evoke that obvious comparison without immediately alienating or angering me is a sign of how talented they are, even if I'm not completely in love with this book.

HB: Right. There's an ability they have to poke you in the eye or make you uneasy that's genuine, even while it's obviously out to do just that. Another comparison I was thinking of that didn't come up when I first wrote you about this because I hadn't seen his most recent film yet is Lars von Trier, who spends a lot of his time trying to piss off his audience and say things about America, but he succeeds a little better than these guys because he has a wider range of things to say. I don't think you're being a prude. I think that you could probably justify Mezzo and Pirus's repetitive focus on sexuality by talking about the other things that repeat in these pages, which seem at first to be made up of unconnected stories before they're revealed as part of a web that we just haven't pulled back far enough from to grasp in its entirety, but they're not exactly feminist either. The thing is, every female character drawn from the boobs down, recumbent, in a frame we see over and over, looks exactly the same, and that may signal a problematic outlook, one that has more in common with superhero comics than the book would seem to otherwise.

GM: The women pretty much are interchangeable, aren't they? And it doesn't help that every male character can basically have sex with any of the females whenever he chooses. Apparently Hallorave takes place in a Europe where every man is R. Kelly. And yes, Von Trier might be a better comparison than Lynch. The light surrealism and blue collar Americana of the bowling alley definitely owe more to Lynch, but that European tone and the final moment of graphic yet banal violence feel more like Von Trier. And speaking of film, how Sundancily shitty was that Rolling Stones-worshiping story?

HB: Yeah, if I had to pick out the weakest one, it's definitely that story, which just feels jammed in, like it was part of an assignment ("Draw a comic about your favorite band"). Speaking of which, were these published previously and separately? They're pretty graphic to show up in most things, but it might lend to the slow-building realization that the narratives are interrelated. And it might account for the vague feeling I have that, while all the stories overlap, there may be some missing pieces or some parts may be told twice but contain slightly different events. I haven't gone back to the book because I'm not sure that there's an answer, especially when everyone involved is out of his or her mind on some substance. But this is sounding like I don't like the book. I like aspects of it, but I'm also cognizant of its weaknesses, and I suspect that pickier people than I might like it less.

GM: Right, I also liked it more than this makes it sound. Like I said, I love the art, with great layouts, nice thick lines, and coloring that's somehow both rich and muted. Even when I don't like the characters or find their actions believable I still love the way everything looks. And the elliptical structure was a smart choice because it adds at least a little bit of mystery; instead of just reading to see what happens next you keep going to better understand what's already happened. I don't know if the stories were published individually anywhere, but Hallorave is basically the first book of King of the Flies, with two more on the way. I'm interested to see how closely they intersect with each other.

HB: Yeah, I'll read the next one, too. It's successful at very least in that!

other stuff in other places once more

2010-03-16T11:32:00.008-04:00

I have reviews of Mome Volume 17, Hotwire Comics #3, and Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s in today's Boston Herald. Newave's kinda fascinating, but Hotwire's one of the most enjoyable books I've read lately.

More stuff coming soon, COUNT ON IT!

Afrodisiac

2010-03-09T15:59:00.002-05:00

Afrodisiac
by Brian Maruca and Jim Rugg
AdHouse Books 2010

Garrett Martin: Hey, Afrodisiac, I am not too troubled by you. I am instead entertained by this send-up of the utterly ridiculous level of racial discourse in the genre comics of the ‘60’s, ‘70’s, and ’80’s (and beyond.) This is not a “graphic novel” in any sense of the horrible term, but a collection of scenes from a hypothetical comic book that apparently dallied with every possible mass market popular comic genre of the last fifty or so years. The title character pops up in each excerpt as the most stereotypical blaxpoitation character possible. It wouldn’t be too hard to accuse Maruca and Rugg of some kinda racism, be it intentional or unintentional, but I don’t think that’s the case. Afrodisiac is obviously commentary mixed with a little bit of nostalgia, albeit one tempered by realizing how wrong-headed and offensive the past could be. It’s basically just a single punch-line with a couple dozen different set-ups, but Maruca and Rugg pretty much nail the tone and look of each different genre so well that that doesn’t even bother me. Perhaps they should’ve been more pointed in their satire, or take a stance other than “man, shit was goofy back when”, but Afrodisiac’s a clever piece of low-stakes pop culture tweaking. I don’t know, is this problematic? Can we really say?

Hillary Brown: Well, of course we can't. You're a white dude, and I'm a white lady, and we come from relatively privileged backgrounds, so anything we might conclude, whether it's that this book is or isn't racist or problematic or whatever is inherently going to be wrong. And that's okay. People can take this with plenty of salt. All of which is to say that, basically, I am as untroubled by this book as you are and probably equally entertained by it, despite my lesser knowledge of the history of comics conventions. It makes an interesting comparison to something like the two Fletcher Hanks compilations we took a look at or, perhaps even more so, the Zak Sally comp Like a Dog, in that it's a mish-mash of full stories with isolated art pieces, and it shows a lot of development over the course of a career. Of course, this one's entirely a joke, and it's more enjoyable for it. I think your use of the phrase "low-stakes" is especially warranted. Yes, people still get upset when a bunch of fratty idiots throw a "pimps and ho's" party and some of them decide to show up in blackface, and they should get upset about that, but this is a very specific target and it's a fairly loving parody at that. Plus it's really pretty. The coloring and the linework throughout are just about as clean as they can be. The covers are particularly nicely done, but even the panel layout is clear and a pleasure to read. And it's short! If this book were 200 pages, it might be a lot easier to get tired of it, but Maruca and Rugg have a pretty good idea of when to cut off a joke.

GM: For real, being quick and breezy is key. I hit the last page just as I was getting tired of the joke.

I feel like there's not a whole lot else to say, which is ridiculous, as we've barely said anything. How about this: this kind of high-concept nonsense could easily be a disaster without the proper follow-through. As much as I love comics with robots, Draculas, and Richard Nixons, the Internet is this close to permanently killing whatever joy I used to find such winking Silver Age homages. Afrodisiac's hijinks stick though thanks to hilarious art and comically awkward captions and dialogue. Afrodisiac wouldn't work at all If it was just a bunch of goofball ideas being ticked off a list.

Man, whaddya got? Say something brilliant. That's your job.

HB: I suppose I could make a Tarantino analogy here, in that this book is smart enough to be sort of educational at the same time as it's a genre parody, which means you don't have to know a ton about the genre to get a lot of the jokes, and it's entertaining enough and smoothly done enough to pull the less knowledgeable along for the ride without making us feel like idiots. That's really no small achievement, and I feel like I've seen this kind of thing done badly far more often than well. Okay, here's another point: is a parody like this often better than the real thing because it's more self-aware and because it's more committed to entertainment and is more flexible in what its goals and methods are? How do you like them aesthetically philosophical apples?

GM: I'd say it's better than something like Marvel's original Luke Cage / Powerman / Hero For Hire comics from the '70's. Unlike Cage Afrodisiac is neither boring nor blissfully unaware of its own racist under- (and occasionally over-) tones. One reason those comics are ridiculous is because they try to be poignant and work in social commentary while also serving up the mindless violence and reductive stereotyping that make superhero comics so awesome. Instead of Luke Cage's frightening mix of offensive "Pay It Forward" pathos and unwittingly semi-racist boomer patronizing Afrodisiac is a pure piss-take on the entire damn concept. That might keep Afrodisiac from being genuinely great, but it also keeps it from turning into a drag.

HB: Right. In other words, there's something to be said against sincerity. The best art is often sincere, and a fear of being so often keeps much art (and, indeed, human interaction) from achieving greatness, but the worst art is also deadly sincere. Do those "Christian Side-Hug" kids mean what they're on about? You bet they do, and it's horrifying! So let's say Afrodisiac stands as a fine example of both the benefits and the drawbacks of parodic art and leave it at that.

Nomad: Girl Without a World

2010-02-09T15:34:00.000-05:00

Nomad: Girl Without a World, issues 1-4
by Sean McKeever and David Baldeon
Marvel 2009

Hillary Brown:Oh my god, Sean McKeever, I have missed you so much. If I had to pick the one comic book I continually buy for people more than any other, it would probably be Spider-man Loves Mary Jane, which we've discussed in passing on numerous occasions, and his Teen Titans stuff was delightful as well, so it made me really happy to see him continuing not to fall on his face with the miniseries Nomad: Girl Without a World, which consisted of four issues and now is going to run in the back of something else (Captain American?). I may have only gotten through the issues in bursts, but that's due to my crazy schedule of late, not due to a hint of boringness or lack of skill on McKeever's part. Even the recaps that appear inside each issue are cute, snappy, and an admirable combination of information and entertainment. The story's pretty smart, the action not bad, and the art, by David Baldeon, is well-tailored to all of the above. Gush gush gush. I'm sure I could pick out some flaws--you're welcome to take this in that direction--but mostly this stuff just makes me happy. My daughter will read McKeever's writing if I have to force her to.

Garrett Martin: I’m shocked they actually used that Liefeld drawing of Cap in the first issue’s recap page. If you’re gonna bring back a character from one of the most reviled comics ever you might as well go all in. I have no idea how Rikki Barnes was written in the old Loeb/Liefeld comics, if she was some kind of bright spot in what’s otherwise considered a massive failure, but McKeever wastes no time making her likable and relatable. No other guy at Marvel or DC is better at writing teenagers that feel genuine and not like barely disguised rip-offs of Gossip Girl or 90210 characters. I like how, as in Gravity, the stakes in Nomad start relatively low and locally oriented, but with grave larger ramifications. Whereas Gravity has to rescue Washington Square Park and NYU’s campus, Nomad needs to free her high school from the Secret Empire’s mind control. Sure, it’s not at all rare for superheroics to serve as an extension of a character’s personal situation (see Runaways or the first 600 or so issues of Amazing Spider-Man), but McKeever is a burgeoning master of that balance. The two threads come together seamlessly.

HB: That's true! I didn't even notice the Liefeld drawing, but even I, still a relative comics newbie, know the horrors of Liefeld. Still, as you say, it makes the achievement all the more impressive, especially as I'm sure Rikki Barnes was mostly a brokeback pose excuse more than a well-rounded character back in those days. Also, I managed to miss Gravity entirely, which is clearly a big oversight on my part and one that will be remedied shortly, but your point is still relevant. You wouldn't think loneliness would make such a compelling theme, but, just as Joss Whedon makes the whole "high school is hell" thing a compelling metaphor, McKeever's choice of a girl who's literally in the wrong universe manages to be completely clear as an analogy for how every teenager feels isolated (it's a symptom of growing self-consciousness) without ever stepping over the line into heavy-handedness. The literal plot, too, has intelligent things to say about responsibility, conformity, and herd behavior versus individual action. It's close to being a straight up statement about the current state of political discourse, but it's slipperier than that, which makes it much better. I've been trying to pin down some of the things that make McKeever's writing so good, and it's hard to come up with much because he makes it all look incredibly easy. Anyway, here goes: 1. Commitment to the story. It's easy to have your superheroes spend all their time moping and chatting, but McKeever's often think and do at the same time, and the plot chugs along at a good pace. 2. A lack of overwhelming pop culture references. While his stories are always set in the present, he clearly knows enough teenagers to know that throwing in, say, a sexting reference isn't going to do anything but annoy his audience and date his writing. 3. He tends to work with artists who aren't distracting, whose drawings are clear and simple or whose coloring skills aren't overly digitized. Add to my list.

GM: 4. Archetypal Marvel themes. Okay, "superhero with personal problems" (this time of the teen variety) has basically been that side of the industry's default setting for decades now, but it'll always be connected with Marvel. Like we've said, Nomad has that early Spider-Man feel, and no matter how prevalent or cliched that set-up has become it'll always work when done well. It'll also always feel like an intentional tribute to Marvel's past, which as a pathetic nostalgist will always appeal to me.

This gets me wondering: have you read the most recent Blue Beetle series? It's not by McKeever, it's not about a teen lady, but it's another pretty good comic about a relatively believable teenager coming to grips with his new-found superlativeness.

HB: I haven't, and I've been meaning to forever, largely because of Eddie Argos's repeatedly professed love for the book. And hasn't Baldeon done some drawing for it, too? I need a good compilation to hook me, and I've been lazy about looking for one. So here's the big big question: If it's so easy to do this (and our list of components isn't long or complicated), why can't or don't more people do it? Are these books unpopular because they need more boobs and punching?

GM: Yeah, pretty much, except replace "punching" with "disemboweling". It seems like anything that has a young protagonist or a light-hearted tone will be written off as baby stuff by most superhero comic fans. Even by the low standards of the day stuff like Nomad, Blue Beetle, and even Runaways doesn't sell that well. Even Amazing Spider-Man's sales are down despite running some of the best and most archetypal Spider-Man stories in decades (granted there are a ton of other issues involved with that one, from the weird semi-reboot to the three-times-a-month schedule.) You can say books like this don't sell well because kids don't read superhero comics, but kids don't read superhero comics because they've been written primarily for teenagers or adults for at least two decades now. I don't know where the tail ends and the mouth begins.

At least Marvel might give Nomad an actual shot. They're releasing the collection as a full-sized trade paperback and not just a digest, and a piece of Coover art from the upcoming Girl Comics title includes the character alongside Spider-Woman and Storm. Speaking of which: is Girl Comics exciting, depressing, or both?

HB: Totally both. Actually, the only part that's depressing and discouraging is the name, and only that because it might turn a lot of young boys off from reading what are sure to be some pretty smart and well-rounded comics that just happen to be by some very talented ladies. Sigh...

GM: Right. I don't know what's worse, that female creators are still so uncommon in superhero comics that Marvel feels the need to bring special attention to them, or that it'll probably be a massive commercial bomb in the direct market because of the name and marketing. All I know is there'll probably be a Shazhmmm about it four to six weeks after release.

space filler

2010-01-27T09:43:00.002-05:00

We're busy Shazhmmming a thing, but until that's ready you can take a look at this other stuff I've done. My reviews of Then Unwritten Volume 1 and Jason Starr's Vertigo Crime book The Chill are in today's edition of the Boston Herald. One's really good, the other's kinda good, but only one has a lady freezing dudes with her business. That is an observation, not an endorsement.

MOME vol. 17

2010-01-19T16:34:00.000-05:00

MOME #17
Various artists/authors
Fantagraphics 2010

Garrett Martin: How have we never done a MOME before? Better question: how have I never read a MOME before? If tony pedigrees were moral posturing, Fantagraphics’s quarterly anthology would be David Stern. I guess it doesn’t help that reviews for previous volumes tend to diverge wildly, or that my budget for escapism is greater than what I am willing to spend on comics that don’t insult my intelligence. Blogger snark’s made me wary of MOME, and I kind of regret that. Not that Volume 17 is fantastic, but my biggest problem is starting in the middle or at the end of the most interesting stories, and obviously that wouldn’t be an issue if I was a regular reader. The value’s reduced with a solitary MOME. Have you read one of these things before?

Hillary Brown: I haven't, but I, like you, find myself impelled toward escapist tripe more than comics that will improve my brain. Which is dumb! There's much to like here. I sort of assumed MOME would be more like Raw, in terms of pushing the envelope and extreme artiness and so on, but it's much more readable than that. Nuts to me for assuming, I suppose. I could have been enjoying these things for years. Not that it's all fantastic, as you point out. It would be nice if the continuing series took a page from the non-art comics world and provided a brief summary of what happened previously in the story, for example. Paul Hornschemeier's piece is great, but it's clearly part of something much bigger, which I guess means I should go back and find earlier issues (all of them, apparently). Anthologies are always uneven, but this contains fewer stinkers than most, clearly a testament to Fantagraphics's editorial eye. I have to say I wasn't a big fan of Derek van Gieson's story, which was either over my head or just too messily drawn, and while I loved T. Edward Bak's drawings and thought his documentary subject matter was interesting, he seems to have a tendency toward confusing panel layout. What did you see as highlights?

GM: Pretty sure Hornschemeier's total thing will soon be available in its self-contained totalness thanks to a kindly book publishing concern or another. It makes sense to lead off with that guy, even if it's the last of a whatever-part series; visually and thematically it's the most accessible thing here, easily sidling alongside Tomine and Clowes in the young-ish white person ennui rotunda. Although for some reason I get less of a fusty privileged New Yorker vibe from ol' Horny, which is a dumb thing to say, as I am a privileged New Yorker subscriber and long-time fan of fust. Still, I want to know who the guy with the beard is, meaning I want to read the first umpteenth parts, meaning Hornschemeier and MOME did its jobs.

I also want to read the first part of Ted Stearn's Fuzz and Pluck story, which visually has that skewed classicism commonly found in early underground comics, like EC Segar characters gone to seed. Thankfully Stearn doesn't try to be transgressive just for the hell of it. I might be disappointed with part one, though, as I mostly want to learn more about this put-upon fishermen couple.

I also love how Olivier Schrauwen's "Congo Chromo" looks like a 19th-century editorial cartoon, even if the wordless story is a little too opaque.

Van Gieson made absolutely no impression upon me. I don't even remember reading it. I'm pretty certain I've never seen this page before, even though I've read through the book twice now.

The biggest disappointment comes from Tom Kaczynski and your buddy Dash Shaw. "Resolution", their slice of '80's cyberpunk / computer paranoia nostalgia, is an ugly, unoriginal bore. Did you like it?

HB: Welll... not really. I think he's done some very strong things lately, and this still has some interesting ideas, and I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, but everyone has to fail sometimes, even Dash Shaw. It's just a mess, right? It's hard to understand, and the art's not so great, and, yeah, it's not my least favorite piece in the book, but it's definitely the biggest gap between expectations and reality.

I, too, liked the Ted Stearn piece, which is cute and weird, and Schrauwen's thing grew on me. There's something about the visually simplified stuff, with no words, that ended up making me see it positively. Maybe it's the color?

Is Van Gieson's the underwater dragon fish thing?

GM: Van Gieson's strip is that one-pager between Bak and Kurt Wolfgang's "Nothing Eve." The dragon fish is called "Zzzzz" and is by Sara Edward-Corbett. It reminds me of the beginning of Ganges #2 by Kevin Huizenga, that long extended bit about an evolution-based computer game that had to be a reference to Spore even though that hadn't been released yet. Like Huizenga's thing, I love the intricate design of "Zzzzz" but the story is far too abstract. Speaking of which - how have we not Shazhmmed a Huizenga yet?

Do you think MOME might be too much of a random grab-bag? Rick Froberg's various page-length doodles did nothing for me; I could see them making sense as buffers between longer pieces, but I don't think that's the point, based on their distribution throughout the book. It's like listening to a comp where every fourth track is a twenty-second song by the same band.

HB: Oh, yeah, I just looked back at Van Gieson's and I can see why we missed it. Edward-Corbett's dragon thing is pretty but, yeah, I don't really understand what's going on in it. Pick a Huizenga, and we'll do one. I don't think I've read anything by him. And let me add, almost parenthetically, that I also liked Kurt Wolfgang's piece. With regard to your last question, I dunno... I mean, I do think it's a grab-bag, and it might be a bit all over the place, and I didn't love Froberg's one-pagers, but I like that MOME makes room for pieces that are neither narrative nor multi-page. Maybe that's because it makes it a little more like an art magazine. I'm not really sure that explains it for me adequately, but I'm going to stick up in favor of twenty-second pieces interspersed with a mix CD.

GM: I'm sure it wouldn't bother me if I liked Froberg's stuff. At least they're brief and easily skipped over.

So, overall, did MOME #17 satisfy you?

HB: They are indeed, and yeah, I'd say I was pretty satisfied with this as a compilation. Maybe not quite as happy as I would have been with another book of comparable length that retailed for $15 (it's a pretty good deal), but much more so than with many another collection of stuff by random people. I'd keep checking it out.

2009: The Year in Review

2009-12-27T09:16:00.001-05:00

Hillary Brown: Now that I look back on our posts from the past year, we missed a heck of a lot of stuff, and we really should have posted more often than we did. But we both have demanding jobs! What do you want from us, anyway? It's not like there are that many of you out there. You'll take what we have to give and like it. Preemptive hostility dispensed with. I was trying to make a list of my favorite comics of the year, and it turns out that it's really, really short, which suggests to me either that I'm missing some stuff (likely) or that I read fewer comics this year (equally so). That said, there are five I consider tops, and I wouldn't mind doing a quick rundown, in reverse order. My #5 is House of Mystery: Room and Boredoom, although I'm not positive it came out in 2009. Let's pretend it did. I'm a bit behind on the series, but it's been compelling enough to make me keep checking in, especially the art. It's all dark and sexy and weird and violent without getting too Dragoncon or, uh, too Neil Gaiman, from my minor knowledge of his work. And my #4 is Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe, which I really should pick up again to refresh my memory on but I know I enjoyed tremendously and got all geekily hyped about the movie and so on and so forth. It was a darn good entry in the series. Chuck out a couple yourself, yo.

Garrett Martin: Damn, lemme think. Five? That shouldn't feel like as many as it does. Also I still haven't read Asterios Polyp, which might invalidate this list before I even start. My comic reading took a serious hit this year, y'see. I think you liked the new Scott Pilgrim more than I did, but it still sticks out in my head enough a year later to deserve some kinda slot, so #5 it is. It got kind of dark by the end, right? He and his friends all fractious and what-not? #4 might as well go to Greg Rucka and JH Williams III's Batwoman run on Detective Comics, which is as amazingly designed as you'd expect from Williams, and features one of Rucka's better superhero stories. Without Williams though this wouldn't make the cut. Okay, what's next?

HB: Okay. Note to self: check out Batwoman. It sounds interesting. I haven't read Asterios Polyp either, and it seems to be this year's Bottomless Bellybutton on lists around the interwebs, so that's a point in favor of "we suck." My next two are George Sprott (#3) and Tales Designed to Thrizzle (#2), which could easily swap places with one another, despite their completely different tone. It's like the year's saddest, most depressing comic and the year's funniest, lightest one, but they're both great and they're both extremely well designed. I bitched some about Seth when we talked about Sprott, but I think it holds up, and it's stayed with me pretty strongly, to the extent that I have a vivid memory of the actual reading experience (hanging out in the waiting room of a Tires Plus store, getting new tires for the car). Michael Kupperman's probably going to make this list any year he has a book come out.

GM: I wasn't even considering Thrizzle. Dammit. You're off the list, Pilgrim! Bump Batwoman down to #5 and, well, shit, just to make it easy put Thrizzle at #4, all you obsessed stat-collecting spreadsheet-keeping Shazhmmmm fans. Speaking of funny and light, here's Incredible Hercules at #3, which okay objectively is not better than Kupperman, but when has free online comic criticim ever been objective? Herc is better than all other superhero comics that came out in 2009, and frankly is about the only thing that gets me into the shop these days. It's not just hilarious, but a smart integration of myth, archetypal heroic storytelling, and awesomely retarded superhero bullshit. All the epic godly grandeur, improbable science, and fantastic sound effects are grounded by one of the more believable relationships in comics, the friendship of Hercules and Amadeus Cho. The book's heavy when it needs to be without ever being heavy-handed. It's everything great about superhero comics without any of the pandering "mature" crap that makes superhero comics more embarrassing than ever. It's already a classic, and would be even moreso if the art was more consistent, like Darwyn Cooke's work in Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter (my #2, if you couldn't guess). It's hard to find fault with The Hunter; one of the best illustrators and storytellers in the biz working from a true classic of crime fiction. The monochrome coloring give Cooke's inherently mid-century style a noir-ish edge that works perfectly with the subject matter. Cooke makes a couple of potentially questionable changes to the story, but nothing that greatly damages the overall picture. It's an almost flawlessly executed piece of work, but it doesn't top my list because its appeal doesn't go beyond the craft on display. It doesn't have the emotional heft or impact of the last book on my list. Speaking of which - what's your number one? Red Hulk? Badass Avengers: Secret Crisis: The Dark Siege: Cry for Justice?

HB: Well, my guess is that yours is George Sprott. You should be able to guess mine!

GM: You are wise. Are you counting BodyWorld? Isn't that like some weird 2007/2010 release?

HB: Shut it! It still counts. Yeah. That's my number one with ease, and I wouldn't be surprised if anything else Dash Shaw puts out snags that spot year after year. I've only watched the first episode of his IFC web series "The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century," but he also has a great webcomic that goes along with it and an interesting five-pager on Vice's website. There's no question his work has flaws, but it also breathes with life and fire the way little else does. It's always fun as hell to read, and while a lot of its logic breaks down if you start trying to take it apart, you should really just go with it because it's interested in surprising, challenging, and entertaining you. Enthusiasm! I bet our readers could have guessed these picks too.

GM: Okay, these rules are busted. Nah, Sprott's from 2007 too, when it ran in the Times, or wherever, and it is indeed my favorite. Although at least the collection did come out in 2009. We covered it thoroughly elsewhere, and all that embarrassing weepy nonsense I oozed out still holds true. We are predictable and inflexible to the ravages of time, I guess.

HB: Eh, time is flexible. It's not like this list is going to stand forever on the Internet as a testament to our ignorance in 2009. Oh wait... damn it.

See y'all next year!

Like a Dog

2009-12-18T07:57:00.001-05:00

Like a Dog
by Zak Sally
Fantagraphics 2009

Garrett Martin: I hope this isn't a good place to start with Zak Sally. I've heard great things about his comics for years, but Like a Dog is the first I've read. It collects various stories and pieces that first appeared elsewhere over the last decade, starting with Sally's self-published late '90's series Recidivist. He's a fine artist, but the stories he tells are rarely all that interesting. The Recidivist material is probably the worst in the book, overly wordy and self-conscious short stories that alternate between aimlessness and unsuccessful stabs at moral or psychological insight. There's a story where a character dreams about a greatly powerful movie about sin, hell, and the devil; it's drawn really well, with great hell-ish imagery and fluid transitions between both panels and perspectives, but even within the framework of a dream the importance of the movie feels completely unbelievable and overwrought. And then it ends on a facile, predictable point. Like a Dog isn't commonly that annoying, but it's also not much better. What do you think?

Hillary Brown: I think the eight pages or so of commentary in the back by Sally serve as an excellent judo move to deflect any criticism one might level at the book. Unfortunately. He knows this stuff is self-indulgent and that his artistic troubles aren't necessarily interesting to anyone else and so on and so forth, and he tells you so at length. Reading all that really made me sympathize with him and like him, and in some ways it's better to have it at the end of the book, so you're left with a warm feeling rather than a wad of annoyance in your stomach, but not everyone's going to make it to the end or through all the text that resides there. And besides, if I wanted to be harsh, I'd point out that just because you know the work's flaws and acknowledge them and acknowledge that you know acknowledging them doesn't solve them or make up for them, well... it's true. The stories are still frequently boring and overly zine-y (new word!), relying too much on art and not enough on narrative while also, often, having far too much text. And we still wonder a little bit why any of it was worth publishing, not to mention having an inkling that it has more to do with his musical career than with his skills as a comics dude. Ouch. Um, that said, the art is mostly nice, and if I didn't sort of look back on my early-to-mid-90s zine reading and artistic interests at the time (dark stuff!) as embarrassing and better forgotten, the book would fill me with a better sort of nostalgia. I totally respect Sally's willingness to put himself out there, and I think anyone who's ever had artistic ambitions can certainly identify with his story at the end, but how much did I like this book? Not a whole lot.

GM: I'm pissed I didn't think of that zine comparison. That's exactly what the worst work in here feels like. It apologizes for itself while assuming its mere existence merits attention. If Sally isn't 100% behind the material, why would anyone else be? That sounds harsh, especially considering all the half-formed crap the France has pumped out on our site, but then that's not wrapped up in a twenty-dollar hardcover. And it's not like there's nothing worth reading in here. There's a "I can't believe how naive I was" vibe to "The Man Who Killed Wally Wood" that anyone can relate to, bolstered by a few clever stylistic nods Wood's work with EC. The Dostoevsky short is a fine little biographical sketch with a message that obviously reflects Sally's punk-influenced outlook on life. And yeah, everything's well-drawn. But even Sally's better comics don't connect with me. It's like the more personal they get the less I'm able to relate. That doesn't happen with other creators, but it does here. Why is that?

HB: Maybe neither of us has all that much in common with Sally. Or maybe we've just decided not to romanticize our own days in depressing poverty. You're right to point out "The Man Who Killed Wally Wood" as probably the highlight of the book. It has a strong narrative, it's well drawn without being too showy, and it keeps things nice and brief. I also like the Dostoevsky thing, but man... it's kind of long. Some people might say Feodor himself is the same way, but it ain't so. And speaking of Dostoevsky, here's another thing I want to bring up, that Sally doesn't really get into very much even in all the revelation at the end: does this book feel, like, weirdly Christian to you? Not only is there the Dostoevsky story, which is nothing if not an intervention of God and the kind of thing that converts people as an individual experience, but the Hell film thing you mentioned earlier, and I think there are more, too. I'm sure there are good comics that are also Christian, but this feels like a subliminal message or something that at least should have been talked about, no?

GM: There's nothing weird or off-putting about the occasional moral undertone or two. I don't see either strip putting forth much of a religious message, either openly or subliminally. I don't have a problem with religious works, though, as long as the message isn't out of a Chick tract. I'm sure Sally grew up in an environment shaped somewhat by Judeo-Christian morality, as it's pretty damn hard to grow up in America without that background, so it's no surprise that that could appear in his work. But nothing about Like a Dog feels even remotely like a sermon. This really bothers you?

HB: Eh, it kept nagging at the back of my mind, especially during the hell thing, which is admittedly influenced by Chick's stuff. I mean, I could totally be being oversensitive here, but I really kept wondering where that story in particular was going. Was it going to tell me I was going to hell? It could have been. It turns that, no, it mostly wasn't, but there's just an undertone of religiosity here that skeeved me out a little, the more so as it's unacknowledged. We haven't really talked about Chester Brown on here, but it's a similar thing going on in a lot of his work--I just find him more interesting. I'll be especially curious to see if any of our readers pick up on this tone in Sally's stuff though, or if my brain is totally off. That said, will/should most of them buy it? Eh...

GM: If you're a Sally completist, yeah, pick it up. Otherwise tread lightly.

My problem with that story was less the possible religious connotations (although if I recall it ends with a bit of "we're already in Hell" claptrap, right?) than the notion that a dream or a movie or especially a dream about a movie could somehow feel so important and vivid and meaningful. Movies can be powerful, sure, but that movie? With a literal goat-footed, Euro-psychiatrist bearded cartoon devil smiling like Evil Otto? I can disbelieve strongly enough for that to make any sense. The grade-school Sartre ending is just the carpet that ties that room of head-shaking together.

I'm a little proud that we somehow avoided mentioning Low. Oh shit...

HB: Because we want his comics work to stand on its own! Which, um, it doesn't really.

more reviews elsewhere: Garrett on Daytripper #1 and Amazing Spider-Man: Redheaded Stranger

2009-12-17T13:53:00.002-05:00

from today's Boston Herald

a solitary Shazhmm: Garrett reviews Batman / Doc Savage Special and Incognito TPB

2009-12-07T16:37:00.008-05:00

This was written for the Boston Herald, but got lost in the holiday shuffle and swapped out for reviews of more recent comics. It's been slightly edited but it's still more formal than we usually get around here. Meanwhile HB and I will be back later this week with another review.

Batman / Doc Savage Special
by Brian Azzarello and Phil Noto
DC Comics

Incognito
by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
Marvel Comics

Just as comic books grew out of pulp fiction, superheroes wouldn’t exist without pulp heroes. Doc Savage was saving the world from fascists and mad scientists before Superman ever illegally crossed America’s broken borders. And unlike Batman, Savage didn’t dress like a fool to fight crime.

Doc Savage presaged both those iconic figures. Like Bruce Wayne he was impossibly talented despite not having any superpowers. Like Superman he was a paragon of virtue. Savage was successful in film, radio, and print before either of those cape-wearing guys were created. He was basically a superhero before that word existed.

Doc Savage’s popularity waned greatly after the 1940’s. DC hopes to change that with their upcoming miniseries First Wave. First Wave presents a universe in which pulp heroes like Doc Savage and the Avenger coexist alongside early comic crimefighters like Batman and the Spirit. It launches in March, but the recent Batman / Doc Savage Special introduces the concept. It doesn’t instill much hope.

For five dollars the Batman / Doc Savage Special gives you 56 pages but very little story. It starts with a murder, a misunderstanding, and Doc Savage’s arrival in Gotham to investigate the newly debuted Batman. By the end the mystery is solved off-page by the police while the heroes are busy talking out their disagreements. It’s a surprisingly muddled and inert work coming from Brian Azzarello, who showed an affinity for crime and pulp stories with 100 Bullets and his Batman serial for Wednesday Comics.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, creators of the comic noir Criminal, also know how to craft an excellent crime story. Their recent series Incognito isn’t as tense or powerful as Criminal, but it’s a better synthesis of the pulp and superhero traditions than the Batman / Doc Savage Special. Focusing on a former supervillain hiding out from a worldwide criminal organization in a witness protection plan, Incognito combines the superpowered action of comic books with the more realistic, hard-boiled edge of the pulps. Brubaker’s dialogue remains as taut as his plotting, and Phillips is still one of the best visual storytellers in the medium. The trade paperback lacks Jess Nevins’ excellent essays on pulp heroes that appeared in the individual issues, and the new introduction from Saturday Night Live castmember Bill Hader doesn't quite make up for that loss. That doesn't make the actual story any less worthwhile, though.

You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation

2009-11-23T09:04:00.003-05:00

You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation
by Fletcher Hanks (edited by Paul Karasik)
Fantagraphics, 2009

Hillary Brown: Oookay. So, having read and reviewed the first volume of Fletcher Hanks's reproduced work (I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets), why would we want to do another one? I'm not sure, but it wasn't just a need to finish that kept me reading. This volume feels like more of a slog than the first, and it certainly presents very little that's new (mostly more Stardust, "Big Red" McLane, and Fantomah, with a good bit of "Space" Smith this time and a few others). It's the same weird-ass vision that the first book contained, which testifies to the comics formula just as much as to the auteur theory. I guess there are more aliens this go-round and fewer mobsters, but other than that it's the same mayhem and mass destruction, with a lot of rays and gases. Do you see any differences you'd like to point out? Paul Karasik continues to argue, in his introduction, that Hanks isn't an outsider artist, and I still think he is, but we pretty much covered that ground last time too. In short, what's to talk about?

Garrett Martin: We can talk about how this second volume makes what once seemed crazy feel mundane. Hanks is so lazy, with basically one plot for each character repeated over and over, that it really is hard to find something to talk about. We should translate our first post into Korean via Babelfish, translate that back into English, and post that in response to volume 2. We could talk about the difficulty of following up a book whose greatest selling point was that most folks would find it comically awful. Those people suck, but they made the first one a hit. Can they still find the time to mock Hanks? Or are they too busy ironically appreciating romance comics, or Akee Wise and Essence, or whatever else?

HB: Good point. It's easy to get jaded in a hurry about Hanks's casual violence, facile equation of ugliness with evil, and simplistic plotting. He is lazy, but that laziness is also kind of fascinating. For a while, at least... I haven't seen a ton of press on volume 2, and the positive reviews I have seen read like they're by people who didn't get around to volume 1. Karasik is clearly still enthusiastic about the material (will there be more, or did this clean out the Hanks archives? Ending with his death certificate certainly gives it an air of finality), and I see why Fantagraphics wants to publish it (it's important in an archival sense, as the documentation of a unique vision), but does it have mass appeal? Not so much. Will this be our shortest review ever?

GM: I believe the Hanks train has pulled into the station. Or more like it's plummeted into a lake after the Fifth Column destroyed every bridge in America with their anti-bridge rays. Every comic the man created is in these two volumes, at least everything that's been found. I'm glad to say I have the complete Hanks bibliography sitting on a shelf in my dining room, but I am a stupid completionist collector dude since elementary days. I think you've hit on something: if you come to this volume first, you will love it, at least until you pick up the first one. If you're just rounding off your Hanks collection, then you won't mind that this books is less powerful. It makes sense that the first book would be loaded with the best stuff, of course, even if they were planning from day one to release two volumes. The biggest problem here is that the most frequent strips simply aren't as entertaining as Stardust or Fantomah. The standard Space Smith strip isn't nearly as shocking or perverse as Hanks' more infamous characters, and that makes up like half the book.

Will this be our shortest review? That's entirely in your hands now. What say you?

HB: I say that you could make a great condensed Fletcher Hanks out of the best strips from both books and leave the complete version for the completists. It would be half the size of either volume 1 or volume 2 and pack a maximum of loony, id-driven entertainment between its covers before blissfully departing and leaving you wanting more, which you'd then be free to pursue or happily forget about and use your time for better things. How 'bout it, Fantagraphics?

comic reviews elsewhere

2009-11-06T14:06:00.002-05:00

Yesterday's Boston Herald contained my reviews of Hans Rickheit's The Squirrel Machine, Gilbert Hernandez's The Troublemakers, and Hellblazer: Scab from Peter Milligan, Giuseppe Cammuncoli, and others. I think this'll be a regular thing for at least a little while. Alright.

Sloth

2009-11-06T06:57:00.003-05:00

Sloth
by Gilbert Hernandez
Vertigo, 2006

Hey hey. It's another guest post thing. You may remember Casey Westerman from our review of Box Brown's Love Is a Peculiar Type of Thing.

Casey Westerman: So - it's hard to start writing about Gilbert Hernandez's Sloth, I find. And hard to explain why it's hard to start writing about. Shall I contextualize my confusion? I've read most of the Palomar stuff -- at least, the three big digests and the three shorter New Tales of Palomar books -- plus Birdland and the two latest big Love and Rockets issues. I trust him, and I like him, and I want to follow him where he's going, but sometimes his stuff loses me, you know?

Sloth, I guess, is from 2006, and it's something Beto did for Vertigo instead of for Fantagraphics; it's stand-alone, with no connection to the Palomar cast. So it should be a good entry point for readers new to his stuff, but... it's beautiful, it's frustrating, and I don't feel like it really sticks the landing. It's more than pleasant reading but it doesn't seem whole; when the narrative shift happens, it's like Hernandez just wanted to start the book over, re-casting the roles, and it doesn't seem tremendously different or illuminating. (Not to mention that he did something similar in Birdland, fifteen years ago, now...)

What do you think? Did you follow it? Do you understand the ending? Did it remind you of certain films by David Lynch?

Hillary Brown: Yeah, do you mean is it basically the plot of Lost Highway or, I suppose, Mulholland Drive, in that we get the same story told twice, with the same basic group of characters but with each of them taking on a different role in the second version? That's the very first thing that came to my mind. I hadn't really thought about Lynch and Beto as being similar before, but now that it's on my brain, I almost can't think of anything but. I wouldn't say either is among my very favorite artists in his field, but they're also both fascinating. The other thing it made me think of--and this may be a much closer analogy--is Hal Hartley's Flirt, which, for our readers who may not be familiar, plays out the same script (basically) three times in a row, with different characters each time. It's not entirely successful either and for very similar reasons (i.e., it doesn't add up to much), but neither is without interest. There's something to be said for atmosphere, and that's perhaps what I take away from Gilbert's work most of all, even the Palomar stuff, which is far more narrative- and character-driven. What sticks with you and gets all up in your head is the feeling that you're left with, a grasp of late adolescent restlessness and pliability that takes place mostly in the dark. So, did I follow it? I'm not sure I did or that I understand anything about it, let alone the ending, but I did like reading it. It's an abstract experience, and while that tends not to be top of my list when I think about what I want in art, there's something good about being confused from time to time.

CW: Right. That brain-switching/world-switching/oh-no, now-everything's-the-same-except-different thing. It's creepy when Lynch does it; here it's actually a little comforting, since the second version of the story is a little less crazy than the first one. But it's not the kind of thing that can blow your mind more than once. And I like your comparison to Flirt, which was more interesting as an experiment than satisfying as a work of entertainment -- even when compared to other Hartley films, which were always pretty cerebral.

What makes the Palomar stuff more character-driven than this? I think the self-contained nature of Sloth works against it -- for whatever reason, I don't expect these characters to have a life outside of the covers of this book. And the lives they have inside the book are subject to revision, so why get attached to one version?

There are some creators who are able to flourish in long-form works -- Los Bros are two, to which I'd add Alex Robinson, Dash Shaw, Dave Sim... these guys all tap into what a mainstream superhero creator takes for granted: a history and future, a larger context that these stories can fit into and resonate with. Romeo X probably will never meet Luba; he's going to be in that coma forever.

Have you had a look at the latest L&R? Beto's gone heavily into abstraction this time around; it's like if you took Sloth and subtracted everything but the lemons.

HB: I think it's maybe just that the long-form stuff resembles a TV series and the short-form stuff is more like a movie or a novel. There's a lot more room for character growth in the more spread-out medium because there's a lot more room for everything. Sometimes this just ends up being repetition, but with the gifted (those you name, although I'm not really familiar with Sim and I've only read short things by Robinson) it allows for growth and change and variety, as well as perhaps greater realism. Not that realism is a great concern of mine, but I do like unpredictableness, and bigger spaces let it flourish. I have not, sadly, opened the newest L&R yet, despite your being so kind as to lend it to me (too much time spent on laundry, television, and the New Yorker lately), but I'll be interested to see how it goes. I've still only read these dudes in anthologies of their work. I don't know how it is just to read a small work that's part of a larger picture. All of the above sounds a bit like I'd always rather read their longer stuff, and I don't know if that's true. There are times when I would prefer a short, strange book like this. Or maybe it's just the end of October, and it has a vaguely horror movie feel.

CW: So maybe: long-form comics (300 pages or more) are like novels are like seasons of TV shows, stand-alone graphic novels are like short stories are like films, single issues are like poems are like YouTube video clips?

Sloth is elliptical, it doesn't take too long to read, it's a pleasant experience with an obscure-by-design conclusion; the abstraction in the book seems to paper over the gaps in the plot(s). I would have liked it better if it hadn't ended!

HB: And yet I don't know where there is for it go, either. It's compact to some extent necessity. I find myself wondering what Gilbert would do with the other six deadly sins, though.

CW: Maybe he's been working his way through them. Birdland is certainly a meditation on lust; Speak of the Devil might be about wrath. And I think he's dealt with gluttony and envy in some of the L&R material that hasn't been as frequently reprinted as the Palomar stories.

Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror #15

2009-11-05T09:47:00.005-05:00

Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horrors #15
by many slumming artistes
Bongo Comics 2009

Hillary Brown: Horror indeed. We meant to get this up before Halloween, but in the tradition of "Treehouse of Horror" (the TV version), we're running a bit behind, although not due to the World Series. So here's my big question, prompted by the fact that this is the first Simpsons comic I've ever read: Are they all this crappy? I was kind of looking forward to this thing. I don't buy single issues very often, but the presence of some biggish names (Sammy Harkham, Jeffrey Brown, Ben Jones) piqued my interest, and it seemed seasonal and like it might be entertaining. But it really sucks. Really really really. Anyone who has complaints about the TV show should pick up the comic and see how good the writing for the former still is (and not just by comparison). Some narratives fail slightly less than others, but they all fail. Most of it isn't even vaguely coherent, and the art doesn't make up for much. I want my five dollars back. Am I being a whiny little bitch about this?

Garrett Martin: Not at all. It's about as bad as you say it is. I vaguely remember reading a Simpsons comic years ago, and even more vaguely remember not completely hating it. Even if the comics are normally bad you'd think the Kramers Ergot crowd at least would be able to make something interesting. But yeah, nothing here is all that funny, and most of the art looks kinda half-assed. I have no idea if Kevin Huizenga, for instance, is intentionally going for an uglier, scratchier version of his normally clean Segar-like style, but even if he is it still looks tossed off. That strip, which is written by Matthew Thurber, has a solid premise, with the Simpsons kids as radical teenagers in a post-American dystopia, but somehow it winds up being neither funny or all that memorable. The only story that isn't an almost total miss is Jones' "Boo-tleg". It captures the spirit of the show, and although the art could stand to be a bit more unique, at least it's not rushed or ugly.

HB: Well, yeah. That's where I was going next. I mean, Jared's point, which I think is valid, is that the rest of the book is so half-assed and (possibly) unintentionally surreal that it mutes the impact of Jones's story. And not that that story is so great, but I don't know if you're familiar with Paper Rad's aesthetic at all. It's very much about the deliberately sloppy and ugly, whatever will hurt both your eyes and your brain the most simultaneously. I started out really hating that story too, but by the end (and it is long), it kind of won me over with its extreme horribleness and nonsense. I mean, part of the point of the Treehouse episodes is that they can break completely with what's normally the case on the show--things can change and go off the rails--but a lot of these stories maybe take that too far. What's the point of Milhouse accidentally killing a bunch of people and living in the walls of his home, which then becomes the Simpsons' home? And where does this take place in continuity? It's clearly after his mom and dad split up, but the house appears identical to the Simpsons' Evergreen Terrace dwelling. Is this my fanboy moment? I'm off to look up other reviews of this thing to see how it was received.

GM: People seem to really like this comic. I don't know if that makes us dumb or if people just slap a minimum four stars on anything Ergot-related.

I had the same "wait, what?" continuity moment when Ralph Wiggum mistook the Moleman CHUD for his departed mom. Is Mrs. Wiggum dead on the show?

What's most surprising is how this line-up of idiosyncratic art comic dudes mostly failed to create anything that resembles The Simpsons or their own styles. Proof enough right there that they took less pride and care in creating this comic than the comics blogosphere did in praising it.

HB: Uh, no she's not dead! There are numerous examples of this kind of ridiculous sloppiness in the comic, and I guess people have Harkham stars in their eyes. I have to say: this makes me way, way less likely to buy a copy of Kramer's Ergot without reading the whole thing in advance. Which presumably is not what they were going for (dissuading me from buying the nice, expensive thing that has a great reputation). People are being a bunch of dumbasses. In some ways, I want to encourage our five readers to go out and buy this book, so they can see how right we are, but really what they should do is try to steal it on the Internet, so they only have to waste time and not money or muscle energy. This is among the very worst things we have ever written about.

GM: Man, you really hate this comic! I don't like it, but I assume it's not particularly indicative of any of these artists' normal work. I hope Kevin Huizenga's strip doesn't keep you from reading Curses or Ganges, which are both fantastic. And I probably like Jeffrey Brown's thing here more than I did Little Things, although that's like picking between migraines. We should do an Ergot next, actually, just to see how different the quality level is. It has to be sizable.

HB: Well, the more I think about it, the more it pisses me off. Maybe I'll borrow a copy of Ergot instead of buying it. That'll show 'em!

Incredible Hercules: Dark Reign

2009-11-04T14:26:00.006-05:00

Incredible Hercules: Dark Reign
by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, Rodney Buchemi, Ryan Stegman, and Dietrich Smith
Marvel 2009

Hillary takes a break this time as Paul DeBenedetto and I live down to almost every fanboy stereotype. You can check out the first of our guest appearances here.

Garrett Martin: My interest in monthly superhero comics has flagged tremendously the last few months. Homeownership hates hobbies. My pull list is down to ten comics, and I’m at least one issue behind on all of them, except Incredible Hercules. It doesn’t get me into the shop on a Wednesday anymore, but it is the first thing I read whenever I do empty out that folder with my name on it. This is Marvel’s best monthly book, and that’s been true almost since it began. It’ll probably only get truer now that Agents of Atlas is being added as a back-up. Hercules is pretty much everything I look for in a superhero comic: it’s funny but epic, acknowledges the past while creating something new, and weaves mandatory references to characters and stories from other comics into its own story without disrupting or unsettling anything. Most important though is the relationship between Hercules and Amadeus Cho. I called it “oddly poignant” in my best of 2008 post, adding that it’s “one of the most believable depictions of male camaraderie” from a mainstream superhero comic. 2009’s made my brilliant observations even more spot-on. Herc and Amadeus have a classic Marvel friendship in the vein of generic kung fu guy and charmingly racist stereotype, or obvious gender-reversed copyright squatter and random X-Man shoehorned onto another team in order to keep his profile high enough for that guy from Frasier to one day play him in a shitty movie. In twenty years unhygienic old fans with big beards and bad breath will bore younger readers with stories of how great this friendship was. Or at least they would if anybody younger than 50 were still reading superhero comics in 2029.

Anyway, Incredible Hercules is awesome, and I’m glad you’ve started to read it. The particular issues in question today tie in to a story I have no interest in, the big Dark Reign crossover, wherein a character that died before I was born has somehow returned as a three-for-one rip-off of Nick Fury, Tony Stark, and Jafar. But like I astutely noted above, instead of being thrown off-balance by the interruption, Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente seamlessly connect Osborn and his dull Avengers to the overriding story they’ve been building for months. It helps to have Ares on Osborn’s team, of course, and to have a millennia-old heavy in Hera to go nose-to-widow’s-peak with Osborn. It just works.

This is your first time reading Hercules, right? What did you think? And what took you so long?

Paul DeBenedetto: To answer your last question: ignorance? Stupidity? I have no idea. I remember hating World War Hulk, and Incredible Herc seemed like such a dumb, temporary move that I dismissed it altogether. Then one Wednesday, during a slow week, I randomly decided to pick it up because I needed new material to review. After finishing it I was floored; I mean, you're right, how could I have slept on this series for so long?

On another note, I share your feelings on Dark Reign. It's thus far been a poor idea executed poorly, and the company-wide banner makes it so that even Matt Fraction can't write a book I give a shit about these days. But Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak apparently can, and as much as I loathe the fact that they were forced to play into this "OH NO THE BAD GUYS WON NOW WHAT" nonsense, they've done it with such grace, humor, and emotional subtlety that it's almost unfair to put it on the shelf next to other, "lesser" creative teams.

To start let me just say I love Amadeus Cho. I honestly think he's the best new character to come out of either of the Big Two since DC added VIBE to the Justice League (just kidding kids, but look that one up.) The two writers have such a grasp on what makes him tick, what makes him work for the general public, that I'm sure someone else will take over and ruin him eventually but for now I could read stories about him and him alone. Come on-- the little guy who overcomes corrupt authority by using nothing but his own ingenuity? That story's worked since before the beginning of time, and Pak knew it when he invented the character. Of course it doesn't hurt that they pair him brilliantly with Hercules in a buddy comedy. They're complete opposites, as all the best "buddies" are in the movies and on TV, and there's the right amount of sentimentality there that makes you pull for them every step of the way. I mean, this is definitely a book with a lot of heart.

It takes two issues before actually getting into "Dark Reign": the first issue is a tale of Herc's past and the other, Cho's quest for his missing pet. The former establishes the Greek hero's personality as an impulsive, somewhat foolish, though ultimately brave warrior; the latter paints a picture of Cho as a genius and loyal friend, though ultimately alone. Some might consider these filler but for someone relatively unfamiliar with the characters and the story it helps as an introduction. I'm curious though: as a somewhat regular reader did it feel like throwaway material?

GM: Not at all, especially the Cho backup. The fate of Kirby, his coyote pup, had been teased for months, since it was revealed he'd been replaced by a Skrull. That story is vital and remains one of the book's emotional high-points, at least for dog-loving suckers like me. It's not exactly subtle or original to have the loss of a pet mark a character's maturation, but like you say about David and Goliath stories, it's worked forever. That backup also foreshadows an important development at the end of this storyline, when Amadeus seems to make peace with the fate of his family. Of course that gets chucked out the window by a surprising development we won't spoil her, but that leads directly into the current storyline, which you hopefully are reading. Also I'm always glad to see Tak Miyazawa's art. They should just reboot Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane now that McKeever's no longer DC-exclusive. Or maybe it's time for Spidey and the Black Cat: Just Fuckin' Around?

There was also nothing throwaway about the Hercules story in that issue. That combination of mythology and superheroics is one of the many things this book does well. This particular story doesn't just reveal a bit of Herc's backstory or establish some of his more obvious traits, it also emphasizes his liminality between Godhood and humanity while reinforcing the family dynamic that plays a large part in the following Dark Reign storyline. He also punches a lotta dudes really damn hard.

What was your impression of Hercules before reading his book? Had you ever cared about the character before? Ever read The Avengers back when he was a regular? Also, have any other Marvel creators written Osborn half as entertainingly as Pak and Van Lente?

PB: I had absolutely no impression of Hercules. He was a character I didn't care to learn more about, and never had any desire to read about. I didn't even care much for any of the main Avengers: Cap, Iron Man, Thor; they were all terribly boring to me when I was younger. Why would I want to read about the third string? I think that was another thing that bothered me about the move from Hulk to Herc; why do it? The Hulk book itself appeared to be doing well, and then seemingly out of nowhere they replace it with Hercules and a book written by Jeph Loeb? Bah! Of course, I later learned that Hulk was going to be cancelled anyway, and that Pak and Van Lente actually pitched this unorthodox idea with that in mind, but at the time it was a head scratcher, and I don't make enough money to go buying every book on the shelf. But I'll be honest, after reading Incredible Hercules I've become much, much more open-minded in my comics choices. It really speaks volumes for Marvel's current crop of writers that now each of those books featuring the characters I mentioned above has become as compelling as any other on the rack, and none more so than Herc.

As for one of this story's main antagonists: the only person who has come close to making Norman Osborn this enjoyable was Joe Casey in Dark Reign: Zodiac, and even that was only because he was made to look like a dick, who loses at the end. Brilliant! Seriously, there are a lot of reasons why it's a horrible decision to make Norman Osborn the big bad, not the least of which was brought up by Tom Spurgeon over at the Comics Reporter, but when you work in a shared universe sometimes you have to toe the line. Nonetheless, Pak and Van Lente do a great job, and I think it has everything to do with their complete disregard of Osborn's position. He may be in charge of the largest military espionage force on the planet but that's small potatoes to a god-- as Hera says, he stands atop "the tallest dung heap." Admittedly, even when he is being written with some bravado they find a way to make it work. That line as he busts into the fight between Herc and Hera (he refers to it as "Greek organized crime) is priceless. Regardless the gods seem, at most, merely annoyed by the Avengers' involvement in the matter: Pluto's comment when Daken stabs him-- "You really don't know who I am, do you?"-- was a laugh out loud moment for me, and a hilarious sound effect let us know that Hercules simply tosses the Sentry "n-tu-DA SUNNN!"

Ah, yes! Those sound effects! Such a clever way to revitalize a silly concept: rather than always using random nonsense words the creators have decided to use the "sounds" as part of the narrative. I think "nu-KRAK" as Herc gives the Sentry a shot in the marbles is my favorite, but I watched a lot of America's Funniest Home Videos growing up. I wonder, is that a technique that's been done before? It seems fresh but it must have come from somewhere.

I don't want to jump ahead since I know we've only discussed the Avengers stuff, but how do you think Dietrich Smith's art matches up with Ryan Stegman in the next part of the story? I think it's the one complaint I might have about issues 127 through 129; sometimes it looks a little awkward to me. Do you agree? Am I just looking for something negative in an otherwise great read?

GM: There’s been some great art on Hercules (I’m digging both ends of the currently alternating team of Reilly Brown and Rodney Buchemi), but it is the easiest area to criticize. Smith and Stegman are both capable of the occasional glaring panel, with jarring transitions or action that’s hard to parse. Smith’s pretty good at facial expressions, though, and that’s vital to a book like Hercules.

And yes, the sound effects are fantastic. I’m sure this gag has been done before, probably in a hundred different comics, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Pak and Van Lente are officially the best creators of sound effects since Walt Simonson. I know there was a recent book where the sound effects spelled out editors’ names, but that might’ve been written by Pak, too. Maybe Jeff Parker? Anyway, they’re great, I love ‘em, and it’s a much better revival of a beloved and deeply missed comic convention than Bendis’s half-assed thought-bubbles.

I can understand not having interest in Hercules. I’ve always loved him, but if you didn’t read the Avengers back in the day you probably wouldn’t realize how enjoyable the character is. But man, are you really saying that Cap, Iron Man, and Thor seemed third string to you when you were a kid? I read X-Men for a time, and loved Spider-Man, but the Avengers titles were always my favorite. Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, the family of Avengers titles, and more peripheral stuff like Dr. Strange and Daredevil composed the true, central Marvel Universe to me, that entire NYC-centric territory in which heroes and villains regularly popped up in different series, not necessarily crossing over in an official manner but still acknowledging each other’s existence. The X-titles always felt a little distant, removed, like their own perplexing and overly grim little pocket universe. I read Uncanny for a few years, but it never hooked me like Mark Gruenwald’s Captain America or Roger Stern’s West Coast Avengers. But then I was also a big fan of history and learning, read the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe semi-religiously, and had an innate respect for old-ass shit. I guess I developed a bias towards classic ‘60’s Lee/Kirby/Ditko characters almost as soon as I got into comics. That’s probably why I liked the original X-Factor more than Uncanny X-Men when I was ten.

PB: I wasn't being clear enough: what I meant was, I was never even interested in Cap, Iron Man, and Thor, so why would I care about Hercules, who to me seemed like third string Avenger.

GM: Okay, makes more sense! I'd be more charitable and say he's second-string, about the same level as other Avengers lifers like Vision, the Scarlet Witch, Black Panther, etc.

I'm pretty sure I've turned this into the most fanboyish Shazhmm post yet.

So are you reading Hercules regularly now?

PB: We don't have Hilary's grounding influence! Our conversation is eventually going to devolve into "who would win in a fight?" arguments.

I am definitely reading Hercules regularly, and now that I bought this collection I'm even trying to catch up on some of the stuff I missed. Like you touched on earlier, there's a lot of stuff toward the end about Amadeus Cho's family that I wish resonated more with me. In fact that might be my only complaint besides some of the art: even for a Marvel comic some of this is way too referential. I thought the idea of a casino "limbo" was a funny idea but without knowing who some of those characters were would that scene work? I know that was just a small scene, maybe a little wink to longtime readers-- but what about the climax of the story? Hercules' battle in Hades didn't really mean much to me beyond a smartly written fight scene, and frankly that's all I need, but for a lot of other readers this might prove alienating: why do I care? I don't know that Pak and Van Lente sufficiently answered that question.

That turned out more damning than I intended. Let me just reiterate that I love this book, and I think the kind of people who need everything to be pointed out to them about characters that are over sixty years old are so-- I mean come on, guy, you're never going to catch up! Read a fucking Wikipedia entry! It's 2009! But, you know, that's part of your audience, and they need the Geoff Johns approach. They need every story to start with a caption that says "MY NAME IS HERCULES" and then have him explain his backstory every issue. And if you are going to get obscure you better damn sure fool me into believing it's the most important thing to ever happen to comics, ever.

That's why it's surprising that Amadeus Cho, and this book in general, sells. All the creative team is doing is putting out fun, well written comics, and history has shown that this formula is counter-intuitive to what works: hero porn like Flash: Rebirth and overcomplicated event comics like Blackest Night seem to rule the charts. But here's Herc, chuggin right along for like thirty issues with no signs of stopping. It's somewhat inspiring.

GM: I agree that superhero comics can be too damn self-referential (and reverential) these days, but that's not really happening with Hercules. All you need to know in the limbo scene is that those characters are almost totally dead. It's not like the plot itself hinges upon recognition or intimate knowledge of any of these characters, which is often a problem with Johns' work. It's not even important to realize that it's also a clever explanation of the laughably impermanent condition of death in superhero comics. Your enjoyment might be enhanced by picking up on these points, but your comprehension's unaffected either way. Also it's nice to see pointlessly discarded characters like Puck and the Wasp again. Not to go off on another fanboy tangent, but what the hell do the guys in charge there have against the Wasp?

Also, I have a problem with the common argument that superhero comics are too confusing for new readers. I do think that's true a lot of the time, but less because writers reference old storylines too often than because the industry has largely jettisoned the tools traditionally used to educate newer readers. Footnotes, recap pages, and letter columns helped new readers catch up for decades. I'm sure the first superhero comic you ever read confused you as much as it did me, but that only increased the excitement of discovering this weird new world full of fantastical bullshit. Hercules uses footnoes, though, and has one of the best recap pages in the business. It's not a confounding chunk of continuity porn. But then I'm a long-time comic fan who spent most of elementary and middle school memorizing the Marvel Handbook, so maybe my outlook is skewed.

Anyway! Yeah, Incredible Hercules, you're pretty damn great. Thanks! And thank you, too, Paul, for making time for our silly site.

PB: And thanks to you and Hilary for allowing me to sully up an otherwise legitimately enjoyable blog!

Paul DeBenedetto writes about comics at Wednesday's Child and about music at AVERSE.

Hank Hill stars in new Marvel comic

2009-10-23T12:49:00.003-04:00

from S.W.O.R.D. #1 by Kieron Gillen and Steven Sanders.

Love Is a Peculiar Type of Thing

2009-10-15T08:14:00.002-04:00

Love Is a Peculiar Type of Thing
by Box Brown
self-published, 2008

This is the first installation in a series of guest spots to liven things up around here. Garrett and I (Hillary) are also planning on doing some interviews and suchlike.

Hillary Brown: I probably tend to restrict my comics reading to stuff I can buy on Amazon even more so than the average fan. I tend to get easily frustrated with comics shops, and I'm often unwilling to pay for shipping, plus I can rarely stand the awkwardness of the convention, in which I'm expected to (gulp) interact with the artists and writers who make this stuff. All of which means the fact that I went out of my way to find Box Brown's Love Is a Peculiar Type of Thing kind of a statement. I mean, I didn't work that hard. I got lucky in that someone had ordered it at our local comics shop and decided he didn't want it after all, and I happened to see it lying on the counter. I still had to wait for an answer, though, and return to the store to purchase it later. And I think we can call that commitment. Also, I meant to order it on the Internet. I just forgot. So I read Brown's webcomic, "Bellen," on his livejournal, and I guess it's just slowly grown on me to where it's one of my very favorite things. The jokes are pretty simple, and there's nothing high-concept here--just a couple of nice, lazy people going through life in a nice, lazy way and dealing with occasional frustrations but, luckily, having one another. That makes it sound absolutely vomitous, but it's not. The book a) sets up the strip in that it's a bit more obviously autobiographical and b) shows a good bit of growth from beginning to end, despite being short enough to read on a bus ride. So I like it too, quite a lot, although not as much as the webcomic. But this is just gushing. Give it to me straight. What's to hate?

Casey Westerman: This book gives me the idea that maybe there's a phylogeny of autobiographical comics that's being recapitulated in Box Brown's ontogeny. The problem is that, reading this, I can't help but compare him unfavorably to a bunch of guys that I'm not too crazy about. He used to be Joe Matt (thanks for the history of your masturbation, dude), now he's in a James Kochalka phase, and maybe if he works this alter-ego thing for a while he might evolve into Seth.

We're mostly talking about the book, right? I've checked in on Bellen once or twice in the last couple of years, but I'm not a regular reader. Maybe Love Is a Peculiar Type of Thing is his juvenilia, but it came out this year (thanks to the Xeric Foundation, I see), so the author's clearly willing to stand behind it.

The book is kind of maddening in its lack of ambition and imagination. The narratives of the book fall into a few categories:

1. Cute conversations between Ben and Ellen.
2. Ben remembers his awkward youth with chagrin.
3. Ben addresses the reader directly to express anxieties.
4. Ben's happy fantasy of himself as an old man.

I think #4 is significant there; in this fantasy, apparently nothing has happened in Ben's life since he met Ellen and got happy. He's acting as though he won the game of life and can now retire.

The autobiographical confusion here is probably the most interesting thing about the book--for me, at least. Brown goes out of his way to explain that he created Ben, but also that Ben's just like Box Brown. So what's the point, and the effect, of underlining the difference between author and "I"? Most of what happens is too mundane to invent, even when it's funny. Should we read this as fiction?

Maybe everything here is really written for an audience of one. Ellen here is relentlessly kind, sweet, cute; the whole book reads like Brown's love letter to a girlfriend. I get it, she's lovely, he adores her, but what do we know about her? She feeds him a lot of straight lines and she listens when he talks. I picture Brown finishing a page, handing it to "Ellen," and smiling shyly as she pats him on the head and says "ooh, this one's good, too!"

Brown's got a lot in common with Kochalka, but Kochalka's less mopey and more dangerous as a main character; Jeffrey Brown's got more bite; Chester Brown (lots of Browns!), when he digs into his own past, really draws blood. Box Brown (the author, not his character) is so shy and mild in his narcissism that it's like reading Charlie Brown's journal comics. He'd like to be loved for his sincerity and his earnestness, but if you want to pity him, that's OK too.

So what point am I missing, here? I don't hate this book, but Brown seems like an embryonic form of something that I really wouldn't seek out. Is the online comic a different experience? Do I need to like this guy before reading about his life story, his deepest fears, and his secret wishes?

And we haven't talked about the art yet, either.

HB: And also, you know, you kind of hate autobiographical comics, so I'm not sure I should have pushed this on you. Okay, but here's why I gave it to you. The reason Box Brown created Ben, as I think he explains (in the foreword?) is because he was miserable, so he made himself a little avatar and gave him a girlfriend and made him happy and then, somehow, his real-life self found a girlfriend and got happy. Now that, to me, is a bit like the theme of Infinite jest (which we had a slow re-read of earlier this year and last). If you follow the rules that are laid out, they work. Is that magical thinking? Yeah, kind of, and I'm sure its track record is nowhere close to 100%, but, again, the themes of Love Is a Peculiar Type of Thing as it interacts with its author's life somewhat mirror that philosophy, which I think is interesting.

I'm also a big fan of the quiet worldview. Imagining being a happy old person, despite your current anxieties, is really nice to me. So I might just be appreciating this book because of its movement from misery to coziness, a story arc I kind of like, and one that the art (check) plays into. Brown renders Ben and Ellen in a soft, fluffy style, all big round heads and fat arms, with watercolor washes that, yes, bring to mind Seth, only the story isn't about the continuation of loneliness and depression (unlike Seth or Joe Matt) but about victory over it. The online comic is, if anything, even less big-arc-driven, especially as Brown has taken to doing three-panel strips of late, as opposed to the longer ones he used to, but I suppose there's a different experience in reading three panels once a day, in a moment you grab, than in sitting down with a book of the stuff.

CW: I don't hate autobiography! Just looking over at my shelf, I see stuff by Alison Bechdel, Julie Doucet, Eddie Campbell, Chester Brown, David B. In every case except the last one, I prefer those artists' nonfiction stuff to their fiction (haven't read enough of B.'s fiction to say whether it's better than Epileptic. But can we draw a distinction between memoir comics and journal comics? Memoir gets to draw on the artist's whole life; journal comics are usually "here's what happened to me today." Drew Weing and Kate Beaton both do good journal stuff, but they do better work in fiction. I don't want to reduce this discussion to a matter of taste, but this kind of low-dose, low-stakes comic only works for me when it's lagniappe, a diversion from a creator's more ambitious project.

Box Brown gives us "Ben's" life in ten pages, 114 panels. It's all prologue, and he's rushing through it to get to the good stuff, which for him is the cute thing his girlfriend said after he grabbed her boob. If he spent ten years as a functioning alcoholic and druggie, and in that time also held down a corporate job or two, he's probably got some entertainingly sordid stories to tell, but that's not what interests him.

I don't have too much to say about the art--the stuff on his website now is a little bit slicker than what's here--but the only time it really varies here is in his ten-page autobio, in which all the characters are even more basically drawn, with stick-figure arms. John Campbell, Matt Feazell, and Don Hertzfeldt all do great stuff with stick figures. Why's Brown doing it here? Is he trying to save time, or is he acknowledging that he doesn't care about the past in more than a superficial way?

It's in this book's second story that he sort of explains the "Ben" character: "Ben was in love and sober and slightly happier. A fantasy. And slowly I became him." OK, but we don't see that happen. The first story: Ben's in love and has just moved to Philadelphia. Brown, according to the author's note, is "in love and living in Philadelphia, PA." Either the comics in this book post-date Brown's happy recovery, or else his specific fantasy came very specifically true. But there's nothing outside of those three sentences to suggest that there's any distance between the author and the character. I don't think that qualifies as a "theme" of the book. And I don't get the comparison to Infinite Jest you're making. Don Gately recovered through slavish adherence to a set of rules that he didn't understand or enjoy. Box Brown recovered by imagining himself happier, not that we get to see this process in any detail. What rules did he follow?

This book reminds me of Liz Prince's Will You Still Love Me if I Wet the Bed and Delayed Replays (another two books that I borrowed from you!). In 2005 she put out a book of cute incidents between her and her boyfriend, and in 2007 another one--from which the boyfriend's ominously absent. What happens if Ellen's real-world counterpart breaks up with Brian "Box" Brown--do things continue for Ellen and Ben just like before, or does she vanish without explanation, or does Ben fall off the wagon? Would we have a "Garfield Without Garfield" situation? Would Ben angrily correct the official record and tell us all the things about Ellen that he actually couldn't stand?

It's easier to see this book as wishful thinking than as the result of victory over depression. I think he's come to a truce with his depression--he'd rather be dull and unemployed than drunk and miserable. He fantasizes about survival and sufficiency. If Brown was writing fan-fiction about himself, why didn't he take it farther? Instead of just writing himself sober and coupled, why didn't also he write himself as a glamorous spy or a secret vampire or, I dunno, a forensic icthyologist?

HB: Fair enough. Memoir is more shaped than journal. I like both. Much as I appreciate a well-constructed story (and I do), I'm kind of into the meandering mundanity of everyday existence. All your points are good ones. This book has flaws, but I forgive them. And here's the IJ connection: fake it till you make it. Behavior becomes (or can become) reality. The use of something is what it is used for. The surface will eventually osmose into the core. Is that a bit too The Secret? Ugh. I suppose it is. But it also kind of works, as long as your goal isn't being a glamorous spy or whatnot; that is, as long as it's realistic. I mean, what's so bad about coming to a truce with your depression? It's better than being depressed.

CW: OK, but again... the surface-osmosis thing takes place on one page of the book, in a few lines, and I really don't think that's the subject of the comic. Most of what happens here is that Ben acts cute for Ellen, and she validates him.

Making a truce with your depression is obviously a better life-plan than succumbing to it, but who'd expect that plan to lead to interesting art?

We've both read Lewis Trondheim's Little Nothings. Do you like this in the same way you like that? Trondheim's got a wicked sense of humor, interesting friends, a busy professional life, and a family with better things to do than prop him up. If Bellen is Brown's wish-fulfillment comic, why hasn't he even written a version of himself with a job or some non-girlfriend friends?

Should we wrap this conversation up? I'm an academic kind of critic, you know; I can write to any length. And I really don't hate this book, but I could go on for days about not loving it. Thanks for letting me borrow it!

HB: Heh. Yes, it seems like we're getting to the point of wrapping up, and I do appreciate your thoughtful points, even if, as these kinds of things frequently do, it's ended in a draw. You're completely right that Trondheim's better, but Trondheim's better than most people. If I only stuck to the most awesomest art, I'd be missing out on a lot of stuff.

Casey Westerman read Marvel comics from 1987 to 1991, Vertigo comics from 1994 until the end of Sandman, and Love & Rockets since 2007. He lives in Athens, Georgia.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume 1

2009-10-05T12:20:00.005-04:00

Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume 1
by Michael Kupperman
Fantagraphics 2009

Hillary Brown: It's going to be difficult to talk about this book because whenever you start analyzing humor, someone always pops up to say, "Why can't you just leave it alone and let be funny? Explaining it ruins the joke!" At least it would count as a comment, though, so I'm going to proceed to try to unpack Michael Kupperman's awesomeness. This larger version of Tales Designed to Thrizzle doesn't have a huge variety of jokes, despite its size. In other words, if you don't think he's funny, I'm not sure this book is going to convince you, unless your convictions are worn down by repetition. I know that I happen to find minor variations on the same joke almost endlessly hilarious if I like the joke at all to begin with, but that premise is important. So what do we have here? 1. Unexpected vulgarity, which I love. It's hard to do well, but Kupperman's "nut bra" strip in particular milks the device extremely well. 2. Surrealism. Some strips don't really go anywhere. Some (many) result from throwing together two or more unexpected things, almost at random. 3. Obsessions. We all think some things are inherently funny. Kupperman likes the word "grandpa," historical characters, shout-outs to the silliness of the past in general (there's going to be another whole category about this in just a second), and so on. 4. Both nostalgia and the mocking of nostalgia. There is a great affection for the past in these pages, as well as a grasp of its weirdness and also, to some extent, a grasp of how weird it is to be nostalgic about this stuff. 5. Verbal humor. These strips are beautifully drawn, all full of patterns and a commercial art look, but Kupperman's humor would come across almost as well without visuals at all (as witnessed by his Twitter feed, which you convinced me to subscribe to and which features at least three or four good jokes a day). I'm sure there are more categories. Let me turn this over to you and let you ramble on for a bit.

Garrett Martin: You just ruined every single joke Kupperman's ever told. Or written down and illustrated. Or whatever. Maybe not. You're actually right, as usual, and probably too damn right. Kinda like Monty Python, Kupperman's comics are smart and absurd and fascinated with the past, but have yet to be destroyed by decades of recitation by unsavory high schoolers. It is hard to do nonsense well, to make it genuinely funny and not just some desperate ploy to seem weird or quirky, but Kupperman is nonsensical in the best possible way. You can often suss out some form of logic if you need to, but even at their most abstract Kupperman's ideas and language somehow tend to be inherently hilarious. Not every gag succeeds, but the failure rate's surprisingly low. He's maybe a little too obsessed with a few things; I feel bad saying anything even remotely negative about the mostly brilliant Twain and Einstein strips, but Kupperman maybe relies on them a bit too much. And even though it's his most famous bit, Snake 'n' Bacon's far from the best thing here. Speaking of which, did you see the Adult Swim pilot?

HB: I did, and I kind of understand why it didn't get picked up. I mean, it was late, and I was drunk, but it wasn't really clicking in the same way as the strip, and I don't know exactly why. Maybe it's that the specific absurdity of Snake 'n' Bacon works much better when they don't have real voices. There's something about the static nature of their conversations, which consist of repeating the same thing over and over again, no matter what they've been asked, a la the popular definition of insanity (but also, of course, a realistic interpretation of crazy detective pairs; logically, a snake and a piece of bacon can't be detectives or travel through time or have thoughts, so you can see this recurring strip as a bit of the real world interacting with Kupperman's silly concepts), that translates much better in the flat medium of the comic strip than to TV. On TV, it all seems very Robert Smigel, whereas in comics it seems very much his own thing.

GM: Not that being like Robert Smigel is a bad thing. And obviously there's a kinship there; Kupperman did shorts for TV Funhouse back in the day. Which I really regret not watching when it was on.

Now that I think about it the word "obsession" doesn't quite fit. Okay, yeah, it's easy to assume that's the case, but I'm thinking it's maybe more procedural, like he's running through all the different variations he can think of on a legitimately funny concept. Whereas other creators edit more and keep some ideas on the drawing board or sketch book while searching for the best possible expression, Kupperman's unafraid of overdoing it, or appearing obsessive. Of course most people struggle to make up one good joke, much less dozens about the same subject, like Kupperman.

I'm struggling to think of anything to say other than "hey, it's funny!". Okay, it's smart, too. What else?

HB: What I want to know is if there's anyone out there who doesn't think this stuff is funny. I've done a quick Google, and I can't find anyone who's expressed articulate objections, so maybe it's only the cranky and stupid who don't like it. Everyone else seems to react with glee whenever he has something new. Um, we could talk about black and white versus color too, maybe?

GM: People who wouldn't find it funny would never pick it up in the first place. I'd like to think the audiences for Kupperman and, say, Batman & the Outsiders are mutually exclusive.

I wouldn't say the black & white is absolutely vital, but it does strengthen the nostalgia factor. It wouldn't feel as much like old commercial art if it was in color.

Oh wait, he colorized the stuff for the book? I've got the single issues. Well, shit, tell me, was the color a good choice?

HB: Ha! Yes. It's in color. I don't think it adds a ton (except that it maybe makes some of the background patterns more noticeable), but it certainly doesn't detract. The thing is, there's very little to talk about there either. Michael Kupperman: squelching debate.

GM: Oh wait, we can talk about his structural gimmicks, like the issue where you're supposed to read one page every hour. Uh, I didn't do that. Did you?

HB: Pssh. No. I like them, but I also completely ignore their instructions. Isn't that what you're supposed to do? i.e., be amused at the device and proceed in your own fashion?

GM: No, I think it's absolutely pivotal that everybody follow his directions with complete fidelity. Maybe we should go back and reread that issue one page an hour just to see what difference it makes.

HB: It would make the book last longer. Which wouldn't be bad. The only real problem with Kupperman is that I read this book in no time at all.

GM: Thankfully it's all highly rereadable.

Is there a funny comic renaissance going on right now? Kupperman, Onstad, and Gurewitch are all funnier than anything I remember reading in the '90's.

HB: It's like it's okay to chill out again. I just got R. Sikoryak's Masterpiece Comics in the mail yesterday (due to the awesome Drawn + Quarterly sale that's been going on), and I assume that's another example--it looks like it's going to be awesome. I do feel like more and more different kinds of comics are getting published, as sales continue to do pretty well, and that leads to funny books as well as to whatever else.

GM: Okay, Bagge was pretty funny, and some of Dorkin's stuff, but on a totally different level than the three dudes I mentioned. Maybe it's not that there's more comedy happening, but smarter and artier comedy? And yeah, maybe the medium's hit a point where sales and respect are big enough to let some humor through.

HB: Or that more comedy includes smarter and artier comedy. Maybe you can now make enough money off being a comics dude or dudette (although still, you know, basically nothing) not to have to be angry all the time?

GM: You still get angry when you're rich, just about different stuff. Some day Kupperman will make some totally hilarious strips bitching about taxes, welfare, and illegal aliens.

HB: I have no doubt that someday, when I'm a cranky old person listening to talk radio and hating on some Mexicans, I'd love those strips as much as I love these.

Strange Tales #1

2009-09-23T08:12:00.002-04:00

Strange Tales #1
by a kabillion writers and artists
Marvel 2009

Garrett Martin: Comparing Strange Tales to DC's Wednesday Comics is as tempting as KFC's new Double Down sandwich. That's to say it's incredibly tempting. Both comics see a gaggle of acclaimed artists semi-unexpectedly working on some of the hoariest corporate properties around. Both are liberally doused with tasty portions of Paul Pope. Each one features great work alongside some pretty drastic misfires. Neither of them will sell anywhere close to whatever new piece of mentally deficient psuedo-political horseshit and/or zombified torture-porn tops the direct market sales charts this month. When you get down to it though they are two pretty different propositions. There's an almost straight-up inverse nostalgia-to-mockery ratio between the two. Neither are 100% to either extreme, but Wednesday Comics skews closer to loving tribute while Strange Tales mostly takes the piss (as Captain Britain would say). That makes Strange Tales a quicker, more enjoyable read, but also makes it feel less substantial, both physically and artistically. Is it wrong to immediately compare the two like this?

Hillary Brown: No, it's kind of what you have to do. That said, I found Strange Tales much more complete and, therefore, more satisfying. The fact
that only Peter Bagge's Hulk story ends on any kind of a cliffhanger makes this book more of a thing unto itself. Yes, it's uneven, and some pieces are too short, but Michael Kupperman doing Namor? Jason doing Spider-man? James Kochalka doing the Hulk? And, be still my beating heart, Dash Shaw? This book pushes my nerd buttons (which, as our readers may have gathered, are not unfriendly to superhero whatnot but light up far more readily for the indie stuff, despite your best efforts) way harder. This has nostalgia, but it is, as you point out, a very different kind. There's plenty of love here, but, yes, it's much more smirky, which I like. One of my formative comics experiences was reading a Peter Porker: The Amazing Spider-Ham comic (maybe in the back of one of the Spidey-MJ wedding specials, about which I remember far less), and this is totally on that level... mostly. There are indeed weaknesses, including Nick Bertozzi's MODOK piece. How you gonna make MODOK unfunny?

GM: Whoa, I loved the MODOK piece. It is funny, up until the end, which is surprisingly sad and touching. I don't think it's my favorite piece, but it's stuck with me longer than anything else. Before rereading it over the weekend the only stories I could remember were Pope's, Shaw's, and Bertozzi's. But yeah, Strange Tales is more immediately enjoyable, and Wednesday Comics (which I'm behind on but have been buying every week) provokes far more groaning and consternation, but overall the latter is more memorable. I love Kupperman and Nicholas Gurewitch, their strips in Strange Tales are better than almost everything in Wednesday Comics, but in my mind their Strange Tales stuff has already been subsumed by their overall body of work. It's just another hilariously absurd Kupperman strip, but with Namor, a dog, and a barrel instead of Twain and Einstein. Jason's Spider-Man is really funny, but less than a footnote to the guy's career, you know? Some Wednesday features are too reverent or serious (that Superman nonsense is the worst stuff I've read this year), but when you look at the two you can definitely tell which one's had more attention and care put into it. That wouldn't matter without quality work, but thankfully there's enough of that in both to make 'em each worth our whiles. But damn, you've got to admit those Victorian She-Hulk and anime Spider-Man strips stink Strange Tales up a bit.

HB: I so do not have to admit that. I think anime Spider-man is cute and Victorian She-Hulk is... well, it's kind of uneven. I guess I'm not crazy about that one. You're right that this is not a fabulous addition to anyone involved's career, but does it have to be? Isn't Strange Tales just a chance for a goof, for an artist/writer to play around with a brief and humorous idea? Whereas Wednesday Comics feels a little cramped by its space. It's as though those contributors wanted to do even bigger, more expansive ideas, and being limited to a page means the focus is way more on art than on story. Of course, I gave up after two issues, so what do I know? Attention and care are all very well and good, but there's something to be said for slapdash and funny, at least to me. As far as MODOK goes, I just think the layout is a damn mess, and I've read better MODOK stuff.

GM: The Wednesday comics that feel cramped are the bad ones, y'know? And the size is vital to the good ones. Compare Pope's Strange Adventure strip to his Inhumans piece in Strange Tales; both look amazing, but it's a lot easier to notice and admire all the tiny details when they're blown up to ungodly proportions. The newsprint even helps his muted color palette, too.

Anyway, yeah, enough with the faulty and unjustified comparisons. I'm sounding more negative about Strange Tales than I am. It's pretty damn great, but let's talk about those two strips I dissed. Yeah, the Spider-Man one looks adorable, especially the kindly old spider-man who offers Spider-Man a tasty treat at the end, but the bland "be yourself, don't try too hard to fit in" message makes it feel like a bad afternoon special, or something. And the premise isn't clever or funny, but just silly. I appreciate what Molly Crabapple was trying to do with the Victorian parody in her She-Hulk strip, but, again, the execution is less clever than the idea, and the art just left me cold.

Thankfully everything else here is far better. I'm glad to read some Johnny Ryan comics that don't make me feel like an asshole for laughing. His Punisher thing made me laugh harder than Gurewitch or Kupperman, which is a bit of a shock.

HB: Oh, I know what you mean with the Wednesday stuff. It's more that they're still only getting a page at a time, and there's only so much you can cover in a page. The tiny details are lovely, but do they advance the plot?

I think your points on anime Spidey and Victorian She-Hulk are both totally justified. The former has cute art, and the latter has a good premise, but neither capitalizes fully on the potential that's there. You're also right about Johnny Ryan. I think the Punisher strip takes a tiny bit long to get going (if I had to complain about anything), but it's funny and well-realized, and it ends well, which is the most important thing. I'll take a great ending over a great beginning that peters out pretty much any day. Are you looking forward to the next one of these? I certainly am.

GM: Definitely getting the next two. I wish more Dash Shaw Dr. Strange was coming, but then I kinda wish every good artist did more Dr. Strange. Who would you like to see in this book?

HB: Lucy Knisley, Laura Park (I'd like to see more Laura Park period!), Josh Cotter, Chris Ware (I'd like to see him get to be more humorous), Patrick Dean (wouldn't he do an awesome job?), the Hernandez Brothers.... who wouldn't I like to see in it?

GM: Yeah, Patrick Dean would be excellent. That guy should be far better known than he is. Brian Chippendale would be great, too. I'd love to see some daily newspaper strip guys like Richard Thompson of Cul de Sac, Mark Tutulli of Lio, and Pearls Before Swine's Stephen Pastis. Or even some of the classic MAD guys, like Jaffee and Aragones. They might be wholly owned subsidiaries of Time Warner, though.

Oh, this is probably mandatory: how does this compare to Bizarro Comics? Still haven't read that.

HB: Well... it's been a while since I have, and I suppose I should go pull it off the shelf. I think this maybe has a higher percentage of stuff that really clicks, but that's prettier. What mostly sticks with me from that is Evan Dorkin, of whom I'm not a huge fan. And I think (again, don't hold me to this) that the pieces are longer, and they should be short. So, I like this better because I just read it.

Stay tuned for guest appearances, perhaps some kind of an interview, and more. We're trying to rev this puppy up again. Also, if you're checking us out in Google Reader, click on over and take a peek at the new Colleen Coover-drawn logo up above.

BodyWorld

2009-09-20T20:26:00.006-04:00

BodyWorld
by Dash Shaw

Hillary Brown: So, even though I bought Bottomless Bellybutton fairly recently, my first experience with Dash Shaw was actually chapter 1 of Bodyworld, his webcomic that's due to be published as a book in the nearish future and was posted in serialized fashion. Let me say that it kind of blew my head off, which is not an experience I'm that used to having. Not since the Matrix pizza twirling performance in Pizza! The Movie has my brain been so thoroughly confused and delighted at the same time (which is not to denigrate Shaw's work by comparing it to a bunch of douchebags twirling pizza dough but rather to provide a comparable for the experience of addlement and amazement). So then I went and read Bottomless Bellybutton (which we should cover soon), and then I went back to Bodyworld, and I was still totally impressed. I'm not sure Shaw maintains that mind-reeling pace throughout the whole twelve chapters--this is a sizable thing--but he certainly does for quite a bit of it, which is notable enough. It's kind of like the Internet got put into a comic and then directly injected into your brain, and I guess what I mean by that is that he's got this way of jumping extremely quickly between different things (scenes, thoughts, characters) that is disorienting and, perhaps more accurate, reorienting. It's like clicking on link after link to see where they go and discovering the connections between this and that all over the place. (This is hard to describe.) Anyway, I find it exhilarating, and I think it really captures something webcomic-y, as opposed to book comic-y, especially in the last chapter, which has a massive scrolldown panel. It's also important for the themes of the book, which I guess you could summarize as loneliness versus sublimation of identity. So, am I hyping it too much?

Garrett Martin: No, not really. It is like a controlled Wikipedia trawl, popping off on what feels like tangents without losing sight of its goals. And yeah, when people talk about the internet's infinite canvas, BodyWorld should be exhibit A (or maybe B, after this amazing Drew Weing strip.) Thing is, I don't know "reoriented" BodyWorld leaves me. I remain thoroughly disoriented after three (partial) readings. That's the point, though, right, that it's impossible to really know other people, and even if something made it possible to completely share their thoughts and experiences, it'd still be impossible to make any sense of it?

HB: Yeah, that might be the point, and yet, it's also so easy for us to overlap. We have so much in common, with our fears and desires, our self-hatred and desire of obliteration, our need to rub our parts together and take whatever will get us out of our own skulls for a little while. I think you're right when you bring up Wikipedia, as well as that Weing strip (which I'd never seen before, despite being a big fan of his stuff), and there's something that's extremely pleasurable about that disorientation. I guess, although I've never been brave enough to take anything hallucinogenic, that it's probably analogous to what that experience can be like at the best of times--or extreme religious experience, for that matter. Both involve this sense of scale, of not being quite able to grasp the full hugeness and connectedness of everything while at the same time being able to put your finger on just enough of it to get a sense of it. It's not like thinking about infinity, for the most part. That's too big. It's more like being up on top of a really tall building. But it's also funny. Did you think it was funny?

GM: Yes. I chuckled. The humor's never forced or obvious, though. It's like David Lynch's humor, less overt than a natural part of the unusual atmosphere.

And both psychedelics and "extreme religious experience" involve not just that increased awareness, but the willful sacrifice of your own God-damned mind. I felt like I had to do that a bit to even begin to understand the drug trips in BodyWorld. I don't know if there's any better way to visualize what happens in those scenes, though. They required great attention to follow, but the more I focused on them the less visual sense they made. Is that intentional, or simply a result of attempting something that can't be done in static two-dimensional illustration?

HB: I think it's intentional. This "book" (and, obviously, to call it a book is kind of a stretch, although it's going to be one in April) is very into empathy not only in terms of the obvious content, but also in terms of the way it works on the reader, which is an unusual experience. The only thing I can think of, off-hand, to compare it to is Paradise Lost, at least the way Stanley Fish looks at it, in which it creates the same narrative in the reader's relationship with Satan that it does on the page with Adam and Eve's. Clever shit, yo.

GM: Too clever for me to write about. It's intimidating. Where's the punching? Where are the steroid guys complaining about how the punching isn't as simple as it used to be back in the good old days of punching? I'm way outside my comfort zone. Speaking of which, are you ready to go on Tyrese Gibson's Mayhem?

HB: Okay, there's not very much punching. But there is a little. And there's kind of a lot of sex. Shouldn't that keep the layman interested? I think it's the most original thing I've read in years, and it might be kind of important as far as, like, the future of comics..

GM: It's definitely important, no doubt. Could it be so idiosyncratic that any attempt to follow in its footsteps will feel too much like a rip-off? Maybe it could inspire major artists to do more web work, but then I think that's already happening and Shaw wasn't exactly the most famous of men when he started this. But yeah, there should be more comics like Body World, comics that hurt your mind through thinking.

hello there!

2009-07-29T22:24:00.003-04:00

This space would've been occupied by a post on Dash Shaw's BodyWorld, if I wasn't an idiot who didn't realize some chapters took up more than one webpage. We should have a conversation about that up in the next week. In the meantime you can go take a look at my review of Darwyn Cooke's The Hunter in today's Boston Herald.

Wednesday Comics #1

2009-07-14T10:53:00.005-04:00

Wednesday Comics #1
by too many people
DC Comics 2009

Garrett Martin: Great, more opinions about this thing. These opinions are the best, though, because they're ours.

Maybe I need to get more serious about discrimination. The format and concept of Wednesday Comics are so appealing that the stories would have to be the most unfortunate things ever (like yogurt commercial bad) to turn me off. I actively enjoy the feel of newsprint, I love the massive size of the Ignatz line and classic comic reprints, and the line-up of features contains some of my favorite characters and concepts. So, again, it'd have to be Tony La Russa awful to let me down.

Wednesday Comics #1 is far from the best thing ever, but it's still pretty damn good. There's at least one bummer (sorry to join the dogpile, Teen Titans), but every other strip is at least acceptable. Even the Wonder Woman comic, which is just horrible from a storytelling perspective, is salvaged by nice art that fully exploits the massive amount of space. The natural limitations of serializing a story like this make it impossible to authoritatively say if something is awesome or not, but most of the fifteen features start off nicely in this first issue. Maybe it gets a bit repetitive to read set-up after set-up, but that shouldn't be a problem as the series progresses.

But before we get into specific strips, what were your immediate impressions?

Hillary Brown: Well, I like reading it in public, which is what I ended up doing, as I picked it up downtown then ran some errands on the bus. It made me think about how it's a smart piece with multiple positives for DC. The format is nostalgic, of course, which is why nerds will buy it, but it also serves as a PR piece for the company. People will go, "Hey, what's that dude reading that's so big and colorful and looks like the funny pages?" and then they too might go out and buy it. So I appreciate it as well as kind of like it. I'm not that big on newsprint, though. I'm a philistine who would prefer to read the paper online, but I do like print books over electronic versions. I just don't like the way newsprint rubs off and makes my fingertips feel dry.

But enough about that weirdness. I think I really like about half the strips/am curious where they're going, which is probably good enough, and there's a lot of good art, especially Joe Quinones's work on Green Lantern, which is just lovely. I'm more into the strips that I'm already more familiar with, which isn't shocking. I'm not sure anything completely wowed me, but I want to know where Superman, Batman, The Flash, Wonder Woman (although I think the layout of that one is a mess; credit for innovation, but minuses for just, like, too much stuff on the page), and Teen Titans (yes, the art is terrible, but it's one of the few doing something different with its narrative, even if it is a bit contemporary for the format) are going. I appreciate some of the others, although they're more of a goof than a continuous story of any kind, and I've read a little bit of the stuff they're imitating, but they're not why I'm coming back, you know? Also: hand-lettering on some of them! Yay. So, what are people saying? I haven't read a thing about it yet.

GM: See, I'm sitting here trying to pick out the one I'm most interested in after the first week, and I realize that there are about eleven I'm equally excited about. I loved the blatant Prince Valiantness of the Kamandi strip, even though there's almost nothing to that story just yet. I agree on Quinones' art, and Busiek is one of the very few writers I trust to capture the spirit and style of Cooke's New Frontier without ruining everything. Paul Pope's art looks intrinsically alien when compared to standard superhero stuff, and makes perfect sense in a Flash Gordon-style Adam Strange strip. Mike Allred's mid-century style is probably as good a replacement for Ramona Fradon as you can find, and hopefully Gaiman can do a fine Bob Haney on Metamorpho. I could go on like this, but I don't want to put our readers to sleep, even though it would boost the average visit length on our sitemeter stats. Let me say real fast, though, that splitting The Flash page into two strips was a fantastic idea, and I hope they make the Iris West romance-style comic a weekly feature.

One strip that didn't grab me: Superman. Lee Bermejo's art is impressively realistic, especially at this size, but I don't think it's a good match for Superman. If any feature here called out for traditional superhero art, it's this one. Wayne Boring and Curt Swan are both gone, of course, and I imagine age makes it hard for many old-timers to work (although damn Joe Kubert's Sgt. Rock still looks fantastic), but I'm sure they could've found an artist that better united comic's most venerable character with this intentionally antiquated format. It doesn't feel like a comic strip as much as a single page of a comic book blown up really large.

Anyway, the response has been largely positive among those who've actually read it. I know the price is a big issue for many, but I don't regret shelling out four bucks for something this fun. That price is the biggest, most common complaint. Overlall I think response is splitting down standard lines; those who like comics for fun or appreciation of the artform are receptive, those who buy them 'cuz they've been following Wish Fulfillment Man for thirty years and care about what happens next over quality don't care. And then you've got fanboy toads who will automatically hate anything DC or Dan Didio does.

HB: Yeah, I guess that's a fair complaint about the Superman strip. It does feel more contemporary in its artwork, probably because of the amount of shading and depth and all that, which makes it feel more computery and photo-referenced. I can see that. But it's also got a nice cliffhanger set up right away, which is a good way to keep some people (me) reading, and (and this is weird) I like the facial expressions. Maybe I just have a boner for Superman.

I totally concur on splitting up the Flash strip, and it's one I'll remember for that reason, whereas the Sgt. Rock piece is really just notable for its pretty punching art. I guess, overall, it really feels like the old Sunday papers, where there was plenty of stuff I'd skim or skip to get to the things I actually wanted to read. Is $4 a little much for that? I guess, but it doesn't feel crazy. I wonder what Eddie Argos thinks. Have you heard the newish Art Brut song "DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshakes"?

GM: Never heard it. It's good? I've read a few of his comic reviews. Seems like he has solid taste.

A lot of folks think DC missed a good opportunity here by not getting this series into book stores and newsstands. Do you think a complete comic novice would be able to get into Wednesday Comics? I think it'd be great at getting lapsed fans back into the habit, like the guy who bought 100 or so comics from me at our yard sale this past weekend. I should've given that guy my copy of this, now that I think about it.

Also, did you like #1 enough to pick up the second issue tomorrow?

HB: He does have good taste, and it's a very entertaining song (he's in favor of both things).

I'd like to think Wednesday Comics serves as a good way in for novices, but my guess is that it's not. Even to me, a great deal of the enjoyment comes from the nostalgic aspects and what we already know about the characters, but, yes, I think it could hook the lapsed. Ideally, they would have given away the first issue and started charging $4 after that, but that might not have been economically feasible. I do think I'll go get issue #2, but a) it may have to wait until Thursday, as my local shop doesn't really start unboxing until Wednesday afternoon, and b) I have another errand to run over there anyway. I'm not sure what I'll do after that.

GM: They did run the Superman strip in USA Today last week, and will be putting the rest of that series up on the USA Today website. Character aside, I don't think that's the series most likely to pull people in, though. Not traditional enough. It seems like two-thirds of this issue was already on-line as official previews well before its release, but, y'know, on comic fansites, where the only people who'd see it have known about the series for months now.

Anyway! Hopefully the quality remains high, with sales to match. I'd like to see this done every year with different creators. Maybe one day Chris Thorn could write that Blue Beetle / Booster Gold epic he's been sitting on for years.

Incognegro

2009-07-09T13:13:00.003-04:00

Incognegro
by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece
Vertigo 2008

Hillary Brown: Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece's Incognegro actually came out in 2008, but it's still worth covering, especially considering that "timely" isn't exactly the middle name of this blog. It seems like something more graphic novel-y and less comic book-y--much as I hate to make that distinction--especially for Vertigo, and if I were going to compare it to anything, I guess it'd be something like Howard Cruse's Stuck Rubber Baby in its examination of prejudice and historical change that nonetheless is driven by a strong narrative. Incognegro is definitely a good read that way, and I've seen people say it might end up as a movie, which seems like a good fit. It doesn't have to be a comic by its very nature in some ways (for example, the pacing of the plot twists is more classically novelistic or cinematic), but in others, it's hard to imagine it being done realistically as a movie. I mean, it can be done and it has been done. It's just... more difficult. And this is where it gets very difficult to talk about the book without ruining it for anyone, so maybe I should steer away from the whole "how do you adapt it into a movie" thing.

I think it's a pretty well-crafted book, and because it is, and because it's a compelling subject, I feel doubly guilty that it didn't grab me as much as it could have. Sometimes it feels a little stagy, you know? What did you think?

Garrett Martin: Oh yeah, it’s definitely stagy, and kind of predictable. Okay, there are a few major plot twists I did not see coming, but by the end of the first act I could pretty much tell which major characters wouldn’t make it to the end.

So. I don’t want to sound like a mouthbreathing superhero guy. There should be more comics set in the ‘30’s. There should be more comics about normal people. There should definitely be more comics that deal with serious real-life issues without being overly sentimental or narcissistic, and that don’t involve aliens and/or unsightly mutants crying. So I applaud Incognegro’s intent and existence. And it’s not bad, really. But it’s also not what it could have been, what it maybe should have been. Which is a movie. Or a TV show. Or something where the imagery of lynching would be more resonant, more impactful. Lynching photos are the most shocking, bracing, depressing artifacts of American history. They are exceptionally powerful. Somehow that power doesn’t carry over to present-day drawings of fictional lynchings. As disturbing as those scenes are in Incognegro, they aren’t as disturbing as they should be. There’s an immediate visceral reaction to one of those photos, from both the gore and the usually gleeful participants. It’s heightened by realizing that, as a Southerner, those participants could very easily have included some of my ancestors. I’m shocked at how little I felt during those scenes in Incognegro compared to photos of real events. I’m often surprised at how emotional I get over certain comics (see our George Sprott review, or talk to me about Nick Abadzis’s Laike), but Incognegro left me unmoved. Why is that? Who should I blame? Myself? The form? Johnson or Pleece?

HB: I'm really glad you brought up this point because I felt similarly. There's an emotional impact that's missing from this book, and I'm not sure why that is or even if it's a bad thing. Some of it is, as you point out, a hazard of the form, but it may also be Johnson's reticence when it comes to melodrama. His characters aren't the type to freak out over much, or maybe we don't get to know them well enough to get teary. It's not a book that grabs for your heart, though. Its concerns are more historico-political, I'd say. Maybe we're a couple of cracker assholes, but I don't quite think so. It's much, much harder to wring emotion out of something that's already got a lot there, at least when you're hardened by mucho media consumption, as I know I am. It's almost easier to make some pathetic lonely person's simple, miserable life sad than to get the same kind of response to a Holocaust story, and that's not to fault the creators, even, so much as to point to a fact of human nature, which is that we compartmentalize and desensitize ourselves to survive. Photographs of lynchings manage to breach that wall of nonresponse (or do for now; Susan Sontag argues, in On Photography, that one of the problems with photography as a medium is that it exposes us to a much wider range of images, to which we then become desensitized), but I think it's much harder for drawings to do so.

GM: Maybe it's the distance or abstraction inherent in a drawing, and maybe it's Johnson's avoidance of melodrama, but I'm pretty sure Johnson wants to rend our guts and consciences with those scenes. There are at least two two-page lynching spreads with all the details of a photograph, the cheerful white people and their children taking photographs and selling momentos, etc. So even without the melodrama Johnson and Pleece are still aiming for an emotional weight that I just personally don't feel. I'm glad I'm not the only one!

I guess the personal miseries of the George Sprotts and Jimmy Corrigans are more powerful because we can see more of ourselves in them? Or at least their situations? I'm not naive or optimistic enough to say that something akin to lynchings or the Holocaust could never happen again, at least not in the part of the world we were both amazingly lucky enough to be born in, but the possibility feels so outrageously remote that their interest and importance is solely historical. And very little art of any kind can beat actual historical documents when it comes to making us feel like all kinds of shit.

That's kind of why I don't necessarily agree with Sontag. Photographs of lynching might have inured me to Incognegro, but that doesn't mean I don't consistently recoil from those photographs on sight. If she's saying photography desensitizes us to non-photographic images, then yeah, she's maybe got a point.

HB: Well, right. That's where Sontag's argument breaks down or is maybe more of an academic exercise than a broad description of reality. Theory only goes so far, and it deals in generalities. My guess is that I could become desensitized even to photographs of lynchings, but I'm not about to try to get to that place. In the meantime, either I'm desensitized, because of photography, to cartoony drawings of same, or Pleece just can't capture the horror, or something. It's very difficult to be able to get the desired emotional reaction without crossing the line, PETA-style, into just grossness, isn't it?

GM: Johnson could've gotten us there if he made us care more about the characters. Maybe if the book was longer, or a part of a series, with more time to establish and develop characters beyond symbols, Incognegro would've been more successful. I guess it's obvious that the emotional component should begin with the writing, at least in a book like this where you can clearly delineate the writing from the art.

HB: Yeah, I think you're right, but people still might want to read this. Just because we're being picky doesn't mean it's not a worthy topic or a pretty good and speedy telling of the tale, right?

GM: Oh, right! Incognegro is well-scripted, well-plotted, and finely drawn, but the lack of subtlety and character development in either the script or art dulls its impact. It's a good concept undercut by a lack of depth.

we3

2009-06-20T16:00:00.002-04:00

we3
by Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely
Vertigo 2004

Hillary Brown: Maybe I really just like Grant Morrison books about animals. I didn't even think I liked animals that much, but the week I read this book also happened to be the week I ended up with a kitty cat, and maybe I'm just getting sappier in my advanced age, but it really kind of poked me in my heart. I have some issues with the book, but it's quite effective in a way I can't really put my finger on. It might just be Morrison's attachment to cats and dogs and bunnies, but it doesn't come off weird or preachy. Instead, it's more like Watership Down, only a lot bloodier. I wouldn't say it's encouraging me to become a strict vegetarian or go into animal rescue or even do anything beyond what I'm already doing (trying to be nice to my cat while also training her not to jump on the counter or bite me), but there's an intensity to the way Morrison tells his story that makes it, like, The Incredible Journey meets The Terminator. And the storytelling is interesting too, mostly visual rather than verbal, and the words there are are minimal. I'm not nuts about Frank Quitely's squishy, dark, gory art, but it gets the job done. Mostly, I think this still has flaws, but I liked it better than almost anything else I've read by Morrison except maybe Animal Man.

Garrett Martin: First off, congratulations on the cat!

Secondly, I love We3. You probably expected that. I promise I don't love everything Morrison's done. Just most of it. But We3 is special in that it's probably the best thing he's done outside the realm of superheroes. Still, it highlights how adept he is at elevating genre fiction into something both personal and universal. We3's maybe just another "science run amuck" story, but the animal rights focus sets it apart from Jurassic Park, or whatever else. It'd be easy for a story like this to come off mawkish, considering most reasonable human beings probably don't like to see bad things done to innocent critters, especially domesticated ones. Despite wringing genuine emotion out of me, though, We3 somehow avoids the overly sentimental. The ocean's worth of blood and viscera probably help with that, I guess.

Do you normally like Quitely's art? I was a bit taken aback with the panel structure when I first read We3 (those pages with the dozens of thumbnail-sized panels confused me on a flight three years ago), but on subsequent reads I realized how vital that layout is to the pacing and story-telling. Those rows of tiny panels somehow lend a cinematic flair while underlining the comic form's particular control of time and space. Or something.

HB: I think I normally like Quitely a lot more, but that's because his stuff is open and bright and expansive, not small and fuzzy and dark. I like the panel layout, though, and the complexity of the thought process you have to go through to put it together. That is, it at least teeters on the edge of annoying v worth the work and probably ends up on the latter. Not quite Chris Ware, but in the ballpark. But I'm not really such a fan of all that blood and viscera, and I'm not sure that that's what helps it avoid excessive sentimentality. I mean, maybe it does, but it's the intelligent writing that really does that work, such as the way each creature has its own strange voice. Um, here's a question: do you think the creators of Up have read this book?

GM: I don't know, I haven't seen Up yet. I need to! Maybe this weekend?

As much as I enjoy Quitely's art, and as solid as the overall concept is, I don't think We3 would work all that well without the animals' "strange" voices and personalities. Maybe it's easy or cliched to make the dog friendly and loyal, and the cat all prickly, but anybody who's spent time with a variety of dogs and cats probably knows that, by and large, those cliches are pretty damn true. That struggle between what they are and what they've been turned into is at the core of We3. It fuels a handful of heartbreaking moments that are hard to watch. It's also, again, a fairly unique take on the "man's perversion of nature" schtick. Or at least was, until Up ripped it off, I guess. Where do housepet assassins fit into a movie about a crusty old guy's flying house?

HB: You'll see. They fit in. Or they seem like they do.

Anyway, yeah, the cat and the dog do kind of have standard cat and dog voices (and it's fun to talk in the voice of the cat for your own cat, I can confirm), but the bunny is utterly new. I never really thought about bunnies before and how they perceive things, how their little brains might work. I'm not sure I know any better, but I like that third animal thrown in there. It's something new.

GM: Did the bunny really have a voice? I had a bunch of pet rabbits when I was a kid, and they never really had much personality. They just sat there and ate whatever was in front of them. The closest thing to an emotion I ever noticed from them was fear, especially when one of the cats would stake out their hutch. The bunny in We3 is pretty similar; other than self-preservation, what characteristics does it exhibit?

HB: One-word thoughts. It has the smallest brain of any of them, and yeah, it does seem to be scared all the time. Not much higher-level thought. Desires for food and safety. It kind of tilts you back toward remembering that they're not human, and they're not even close to as smart as humans, without seeing that as a bad thing. There's a real consciousness of our responsibility to these creatures because they need us. Maybe.

GM: Not maybe, that's definitely a major point of the book. Yes!

So, anyway. Thank God this book came around and made me realize how awful it would be to turn housepets into killing machines.

HB: And otherwise I would've outfitted my little kitty cat with a mini-bazooka! Okay, let's talk about something else.

George Sprott

2009-05-29T07:25:00.002-04:00

George Sprott
by Seth
Drawn & Quarterly 2009

Garrett Martin: Dudes like Seth and Chris Ware are more brutal than even the bloodiest Garth Ennis war comic. They make a grown man cry, this grown man here. A grown man named me. Seth draws those tears understatedly, though, unlike Ware, who basically hurls onions, lemon juice, and thumbtacks at your eyes ‘til something flows. Whereas Ware offers up non-stop disdain and condescension, Seth treats his characters with respect, no matter how flawed or unlikable they are. Part of the greatness of George Sprott 1894-1975 is Seth’s well-rounded depiction of the title character. He’s certainly flawed, but can’t be summed up as either likable or unlikable. He’s a beast to some and angel to others. So he’s like a real person, then, and not a thinly veiled personification of some mental or emotional malady.

Sprott hit me hard in my weakest spot: my brains. Particularly those brains that deal with time. History and the passage of time fascinate me, but the more I experience the latter the more frightened and confused I become. Nostalgia cripples me, to the point where a mundane song by Asia still occasionally stops me dead for hours. That constant eternal loss is always Seth’s topic of choice, but with Sprott he doesn’t play it for laughs or self-pity. Seth’s developed the patience and discipline to deal with weighty emotional issues without resorting to stereotypes or navel-gazing, thus producing a genuinely great work of literature. And art. Literart. Fuck it, comic book.

Despair over lost time and old lives can’t just be a dude thing, can it?

Hillary Brown: Gosh, that's awfully harsh on Ware. You know, I'm not sure where everyone gets the idea that he hates his own characters. I'm not sure I've ever seen that tendency in him. He is, however, more depressing than Seth. I really liked this book too. It didn't make me cry, but it is my favorite of the three we've covered. I don't think crippling nostalgia is just a dude thing, but I also don't know of any ladies who have it going on, self included. My guess is that it goes hand in hand with the kind of obsessive personality that seems to be far more common in dudes, the kind of need for completeness in things and, perhaps, a legacy. Is it something to do with not being able to have children? Anyway, I'm not saying I'm not ever a sap, but I don't get teary-eyed too often. I do think this book is rather effective in its evocation of emotion, though, of a whole person in just the way you point out, and it's pretty genuinely touching, even if Sprott might not be the most pleasant person to be around. It's calm and beautiful, too, and all the unreliable narrator stuff is interesting. Did you read any of this when it ran in the NYT?

GM: Never saw any of it in the Times. I'm sure it's less powerful when doled out in chunks. Wouldn't give you a well-rounded view of the man, y'know?

And I don't think I'm being harsh to Ware. I doubt he hates Jimmy Corrigan, but he's such a depressing, pathetic character, and little has changed for him at the end. And there's no question that Ware holds the Rusty Brown characters in complete contempt. Those are the only two things I've read by him, other than occasional strips here and there, and there's not even the possibility of hope or redemption in either of them.

But okay, George Sprott. And Seth. I hate I'm out of town next week; Seth's doing a reading or whatever at Harvard on the 2nd. Is nostalgia related to obsessiveness? I am definitely obsessive about a number of things, and most of them are interests I've had since childhood. Indeed, interests a man should maybe be embarrassed about, and would be just a few decades ago. I habitually dwell on crap from my youth without even realizing it; if that happens because I can't have a kid, does that mean women have children in part to relive their own youth?

I don't really know why this book touched me so much. I don't know why comics hit me so much harder than novels or film. They do, though, when they're done well. That line about how one day you're thirty and you notice a new group of young people, realize you're not part of them, and then everything speeds up 'til the end: that hit me hard. Especially with today being my birthday.

HB: Poor old Garrett. It's not that I don't ever hear time's winged chariot hurrying near, but I guess I don't think about it all that much. Sure, death gets closer all the time, but there's a lot of good stuff in store before that. It's a good line though, and I think it does get at the heart of what's touching about this book. Maybe it's the mix of nostalgia that's already there in the form combined with the specifically backward looking tone of Seth's stuff and then the subject matter on top of it all that makes this a killer? Also, yeah, I do think women have children to have a do-ever. What do you think child beauty pageants are about?

GM: I thought, like conservative talk radio, child beauty pageants were created specifically to disgust rational people.

And your analysis is spot-on. George Sprott is like a perfect storm of things-that-make-me-rue-the-passage-of-time. If it had one of those musical greeting card microchips playing "Heat of the Moment", it'd probably make my heart immediately explode.

Are we really doing We3 next? Can't we just do something about punching?

HB: Nope. Mushy lovey teary stuff. Woo!

Wimbledon Green

2009-05-22T10:16:00.003-04:00

Wimbledon Green
by Seth
Drawn & Quarterly 2005

Hillary Brown: Why Wimbledon Green, and why now? Um, it's in the library? That really is part of the reason, but I think I've also been wanting to read more by Seth since It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken, and I know you just read his brand-new one, which I haven't yet. Sometimes one really craves minimalistic Canadian melancholy, and it makes a nice contrast with the glorious Georgia spring, meaning you don't get weighed down too much. Also: this is Seth's goof-off book, which he establishes at the beginning in an introduction that talks about how it's more sketchbooks than anything else, something his brain kept working on while he was otherwise occupied. I totally get that, and it's not without its charms, but even with the warning the lack of resolution is a little disappointing. It's almost as though you're just starting to get really into the book, to enjoy it on a level beyond its affectionate tweaking of comic book collectors/nostalgists (and that one evil character is basically Seth, right? or at least the main character from IAGLIYDW?) and to want to know what happens when, poof, it's over and you're left without any answers to the mysteries evoked. You know that J.J. Abrams article in Wired that I linked to on my blog? This is the downside of mystery, and the worry of this kind of evaporation with no pay-off is why I stopped watching Lost. Am I some kind of philistine for wanting answers? I like things with endings!

Garrett Martin: I wouldn't call you a philistine, but maybe a little too literal-minded? What did you think of the ending of, say, The Wrestler (the first recent film with an ambigulous ending to come to mind)?

I like ambiguous endings, but I don't think ambiguity fits Wimbledon Green so well. It's hard to say what does fit a work like this, though, one that's so clearly a goof without a singular, focused style. Green's definitely minor compared to IAGLIYDW and George Sprott (that arrive yet?), but almost anything would feel slight compared to those two. I pretty much love Green for what it is, an entertainingly half-baked lark. And it didn't depress the hell out of me like those other two, which is always nice (seriously--Sprott almost had me in tears on the train the first time I read it). I find endless joy in Seth's art, even when it's rough and unfinished; the character designs alone make me love Wimbledon Green. The extended Barks/Scrooge McDuck homage vacuum seals the deal. And I appreciate that Seth's mockery of collectors is mostly breezy, avoiding the bleak tone of Chris Ware's tiresomely brutal Rusty Brown while still dealing with petty, unsavory men. The self-pity with the Jonah character (yeah, obviously meant to be Seth) is a little heavy-handed, but if that's a straight-up self-critique of IAGLIYDW's navel-gazing, then it's pretty knowing and funny.

HB: Um, I thought the ending of The Wrestler was annoying, a pussing out kind of move, a way of not having to choose. Choose, damn it! Anyway, you're making me remember all the things I liked about the book, especially his washes. I did get George Sprott and we can cover that next if you'd like. I'm weirdly looking forward to it, even though you say it's depressing. I think what frustrates me about Wimbledon Green is that it's so close to what I really want, which is romp and resolution. Carl Barks could do it. Why can't Seth? It's like he's resisting going all the way over into entertainment.

GM: Avoiding entertainment? That's all this book is! I think the lack of a clear ending is more a result of the book's overall lack of planning. Sure, Seth could've come up with something more solid, but he lets you know right from the start that Wimbledon Green is pretty tossed-off. I'm really curious to see your thoughts on Sprott; Seth uses the same scattered, episodic framework, but to a more well-rounded and definitive end.

What do you make of the Jonah character? Extension or parody of the self-disgust found in IAGLIYDW?

HB: Truly satisfying entertainment has a good ending. That's all I'm saying. I feel cheated when I'm really enjoying something and then the ending leaves me feeling unconvinced. And I agree, you're right, that in this case it's because of the lack of planning, but also: who says he had to stop where he did? I think Seth could've kept going and resolved all of the issues he raises. He just wanted to end it. That's a wuss move. I know I was warned but damn it.

Re the Jonah character: I think it's more a parody, and it's nice to see that sense of humor.

GM: Maybe Seth should've taken his time and finished this off appropriately. Maybe it shouldn't have been published at all, since even the creator effectively sees it as being inessential and unimportant. Doing that would've deprived us of some genuinely fun comics, though, and that would've sucked. Sure, a resolution would've been nice, but the absence of one doesn't make me enjoy the Barks homage of "The Green Ghost #1" any less. I do wonder if Seth felt pressure, either from his publisher or his own bank account, to get some product out that year, no matter how unfinished it may have been.

HB: Yeah. "Seth, you big moneymaker you, if we don't have this arty, unfinished book that only old-timey comics nerds will really appreciate in our fall catalogue, we're totally going under as a company!" That's how I imagine the conversation going.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vols. 1 and 2

2009-05-12T07:29:00.003-04:00

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vols. 1 and 2
By Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
Wildstorm, a while ago

[Ed note: Lord, we are sorry for the delay on this. More stuff coming up soon, including Seth and, hopefully, Lucy Knisley]

Hillary Brown: Ooookay. Sometimes I think I'm going about Alan Moore in a backwards way, being that I feel he really should be approached systematically and yet I've done nothing but skip around here and there in his oeuvre, probably leaving me with a scrambled view of it all. Point being, I just now, within the past week or so, got around to volumes 1 and 2 of his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The good thing about this is that it means I've entirely forgotten the movie version, except for a vague taste of garbage in the back of my mouth. The bad thing is that I'm an idiot for not reading it sooner, despite hefting volume 1 in my hand year after year in the store and, eventually, deciding against it. This is not to say it doesn't have flaws, for it has many of the same that Moore's works tend to. He has a problem shutting up, and the backs of both books are overstuffed with extra content, including a lengthy Quatermain story that I'm sure plays in somehow but made me lose my patience. Sometimes I think he'd really rather write the regular kind of novels than the kind that also has pictures, but he's so good at the latter. The other flaw is a strength in some or even most lights: his determination to push the envelope. Most of the time, it results in thrills. Occasionally, it makes you roll your eyes and go, "Oh, Unca Alan. There you go again with your buggery and BDSM tendencies." But only occasionally. I'm sad, in the end, that there's not much more of it for me to read right now. Has any other writer produced so many promising starts to great series that didn't end up panning out? Time for me to put a cork in it and let you go.

Garrett Martin: There's always The Black Dossier, if you need more LXG action. And isn't the next full volume out on Top Shelf soon? It's not like this is gonna wind up unfinished, like Big Numbers or something.

So yes, Alan Moore wheels out his little tropes maybe a bit too often. You can say the same about Morrison, Gaiman, Ellis, Ennis, pretty much any of that class of big-name "better-than-comics" comic writers. Maybe I'm just more in sync with their standard themes, but Morrison and Moore are the only two who consistently write interesting stories even when they're falling back on their normal whatever. But I don't think League is just Moore's normal whatever; it's a little deeper and more thoughtful than the gimmick. It's not straight-up pastiche like 1963 or Tom Strong. And even if you are only looking to spot the reference, Moore will keep you busy.

HB: Right, and I'm sure I'm going to keep seeking out more of this stuff and more of Moore's writing in general. He's too interesting for me not to. I don't see why you're so confident it won't wind up unfinished though. If anything's become clear to me over the past year (not due to this blog but due to other events), it's that anything ever getting finished is kind of a miracle. There are so many opportunities for a work to be left incomplete, whether through fault of the author or not. I'm sure Moore's dangling series owe plenty to his somewhat irasicble personality, but he also seems to have a huge brain and tons of interests, which means he has a lot of projects, even if a bunch of them aren't as expansive as they could be.

So you want to talk about why I like Moore better than Morrison? Because I don't really know. No sodomy jokes!

GM: Maybe it'll go unfinished. It seems weird to say that about this book, though, since the next volume comes out in like two weeks. And even if the series didn't continue Volume II offers enough resolution for me. Ends on kind of a bummer, sure, but the most popular book ever ends in the destruction of all creation, and nobody complains about that.

I am confused by your stance on sodomy. Neither dude is averse to buggery, or at least depictions of and/or jokes about. Granted you don't see that too much in Morrison's superhero epics, but The Invisibles and (remember?) Kill Your Boyfriend should scratch whatever such itch you may have. But man, if that's what you're looking for, then Garth Ennis will probably keep you set for life, right? Anyway, I doubt we could possibly say anything new or insightful about the old Moore vs. Morrison debate.

HB: Downer, dude. I have faith in our ability to say new and insightful things, and I'm not familiar with the debate anyway. How about you summarize it for me?

GM: Okay. Barbelith has a solid thread about this here. Discussions about the two tend to run in circles and eventually almost always boil down to straight-up fanboyism. Basically they are two quite similar fellas with similar interests and skills who, perhaps because of those similarities, apparently don't much care for each other. Morrison's definitely praised and criticized Moore publically, both in interviews and potentially in his own work, whereas Moore (as far as I know) has never really acknowledged Morrison. Anti-Morrisonites might say he's a lesser artist trying to get attention by tackling the master, anti-Moore-isons maybe think he's a crazy old pretentious coot who's entirely too full of himself. Moore's the better writer in a technical or literary sense, but Morrison's comic book ideas are bigger, better, and more comic book-y. Is there a great Moore superhero comic that isn't either total pastiche or cynical deconstruction? Morrison routinely updates traditional comic book ridiculousness for an educated contemporary audience without either ridiculing or eulogizing the past. He's also more optimistic and hopeful, and that's why Morrison barely gets the nod in my book. If Morrison wrote Extraordinary Gentlemen it would probably be unrecognizable and not quite as good; the same is true if Moore wrote Doom Patrol, Invisibles, or X-Men.

Anyway! League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It's about as good as a Victorian-era Justice League comic could ever be. Hopefully Moore and O'Neill finish it before Disney somehow figures out how to copyright all these characters.

HB: How about "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow"? I wouldn't call that either pastiche or deconstruction. Anyway, your larger point is probably right, and maybe it's the way that Morrison's ideas tend to require a little more obsessive knowledge of comics than I have that gets under my skin a bit. I should chill out.

And yes, the book is really kind of great. It's a little long-winded, but the plots are sharp and the characters interesting, and it's just generally a good way for the snake god worshiper to work out his obsessions.

Sub-Mariner: The Depths

2009-04-21T14:12:00.005-04:00

Sub-Mariner: The Depths
by Peter Milligan and Esad Ribic

Garrett Martin: We talked about this one before, at least the first issue. We both kinda liked it. Maybe I liked it more? But back in October I typed this thing, as found in that post linked above: “I do hope the series retains that sense of history and otherworldliness”. ‘Cuz, yeah, this book is set in a historical time period of some sort, and is all about some uneasy mysteriousness. To recap: it’s the past, and a famed scientist and skeptic sets out in a submarine to disprove the existence of Atlantis and the Sub-Mariner. Shit gets spooky and said skeptic maybe reconsiders some things a bit. Namor pops up very briefly, but exists mostly as this ominous force that incites fear and much questioning of the self. In using Marvel’s oldest superhero, and the far older legends he is related to, Milligan examines the contentious relationship between science and faith. Or some such shit. I’m just glad that punching and wing-anklets and Imperius Rex-ing were kept at a distance. What do you think of the final product?

Hillary Brown: I think it's pretty good, although it gets a little confusing at the end, and sometimes the muted look of the art makes you strain your eyes too hard (especially when combined with handwriting-style lettering on some pages). I'm not sure that it really has anything to say in the end, though. Don't fuck with the ocean? The Sub-Mariner is cooler than you think? Science shouldn't overstep its bounds? Maybe it's just that I either agree or disagree with each of those potential points fairly easily, meaning there's not much that provokes a lot of thought. My complaints from the first round (art is too soft, too photo-referenced) still stand, but there are some genuinely lovely pages under the sea that really capture something about the limits of vision in a dark place underwater, the way glimpses can frighten. In other words, what seems like a weakness (lack of sharpness) may actually be a strength. But what do I think of the narrative? It's pretty smart, and yet it fails to make me love it. Why?

GM: Maybe 'cuz it's not even trying to say anything? Or maybe because, despite basically being a creepy horror movie about a thoroughly silly superhero, it never becomes especially shocking or outlandish? I'm glad they were able to keep that tone and atmosphere throughout all five issues, but it doesn't provide much in the way of memorable setpieces or dramatic high-points. It's just a smart little piece of genre work, but not in the genre you'd expect from a Sub-Mariner comic. Superhero fans usually reject or inordinately hype superhero comics that aren't really superhero comics (see Unstable Molecules for an example of either reaction), but The Depths is so muted and low-key that either extreme would be hard to justify.

I'm still surprised that I'm not bothered more by the art. It fits this story greatly, but would be completely out of place if Namor was flying around Germany busting up Nazis. So photo-referencing doesn't bother me when a story's not action-based, I guess.

Do you think the comic would be hurt that much if it had been published by another company, without the Sub-Mariner character? Do you think Namor's specific Marvel history adds anything to the story, or could any ominous, unknown presence have fit the bill, narratively?

HB: Well, I'm not super-familiar with Namor, even though I've read some of the early Marvel comics in which he shows up. I'm not sure that it benefits the book as much as it benefits and renews the character, adding some real menace back into someone who's kind of easily pigeonholed as a sea jerk. And, indeed, compared to some stories from, e.g., Creepy, about explorers who encounter the undersea realm and are punished for it/have to keep it secret, this is certainly subtler and better. So, was it overhyped? Or hyped at all? I admit that I recently removed even Tom Spurgeon from my Google Reader (too much noise relative to important signal for me), so I've been even worse, recently, at keeping up with what people are peeing themselves over. Is Sub-Mariner still around as a comic apart from this miniseries? And, going in another direction, do you think Milligan can or will do another miniseries like this with the same scientist but focusing on a different character? Or is the wad shot?

GM: There's no on-going Sub-Mariner series, but he pops up pretty regularly. And no, this wasn't hyped at all. The mini just sort of came and went, with only Milligan and Namor fans taking note. Unfortunately I don't think there's too many of the former around anymore. And unless the trade sells well, I seriously doubt there'll be any kind of a sequel. Pretty sure it was averaging less than 10,000 an issue by the end, which is well past Marvel's fuck-off threshold. Also, I don't think it would work with any other Marvel character, expect maybe Thor. You'd need somebody of mythic stature whose history predates the superhero explosion of the early '40's, and Namor and Thor are about the only two Marvel characters who fit that bill.

Good point about Creepy, and thinking of comparisons makes me realize that Depths is even more restrained (and, well, better) than most Vertigo titles. Vertigo's kind of the closest contemporary analogue, stylistically, and I'm pissed I didn't think of that earlier. Now that I think about it Depths kind of reminds me of Sandman Mystery Theater, at least the first twenty or so issues of that book. I might be totally off-base here, as I haven't read Mystery Theater in a good fifteen years, but both use Golden Age superheroes to tell stories in a different, but similarly pulp-derived, genre. If you haven't, you should check out the first few trades in that series. I think you'd dig 'em. It was about the only non-preexisting Vertigo launch title that didn't try too hard to be weird or alternative.

And man, yeah, I barely pay any attention to comic news anymore. Too busy with work and video game nonsense. If something doesn't get mentioned at Comics Should Be Good or elliptically referred to in a Tucker Stone review then I probably don't hear about it.

Essex County (Vol. 1): Tales From the Farm

2009-03-31T15:01:00.004-04:00

Essex County (Vol. 1): Tales From the Farm
by Jeff Lemire
Top Shelf 2007

Hillary Brown: I've been seeing the covers of Jeff Lemire's Essex County Trilogy for a while now, and their intense colors on uncoated cover stock really catch the eye. They've also been getting good reviews all over the place, including from Eddie Argos. So it's not like I was hanging back out of principle or wariness or anything like that. I just sort of hadn't gotten around to them yet. And I have to say... I was a little disappointed with Tales from the Farm, the first in the series. Maybe I'm a jerk about wanting my comics generally to be more adult (see, for example, my Vertigo love), but I tend to get picky about things that are more young adult than adult proper. I know that developing minds need a gentler approach, and Tales from the Farm is probably oriented even younger than that, but I like stuff that pushes my buttons, and that tends to be either pretty deep emotionally or full of sex adn violence, which, you know, this is neither. I am being an ass. It's beautifully drawn. Lemire's line is incredibly distinctive, and he could probably do quite well writing a book sans words, as his characters convey considerable emotion in their faces and body language. And the writing bit isn't bad, either. It's just not as solid as the art. Your thoughts?

Garrett Martin: Well, I disagree! Especially about the sex and violence, but also about this book in particular. It skews young, sure, but I expected that, and thought it was pretty successful on those terms. It's not as broad or cloying as many YA comics, and although it may not be all that "emotionally deep", its handling of certain matters could be a lot less elegant. There was restraint in the flashbacks that explained how the boy came to live with his uncle. Apparently it's hard to be restrained about stuff like that, considering how other, lesser works deal with similar issues. I'm not referring to comics specifically right there, but movies, books, TV shows, etc. Lemire doesn't embarrass himself.

He also doesn't distinguish himself as a writer, though. No particular problems jumped out at me as I read the book, but everything felt just a bit too nondescript. I do appreciate the leisurely pace and lack of hysterics, but the story itself is familiar territory. He kept things simple and straight-forward, which is nice, and knows when to end a scene, but if it wasn't for the book's brevity and Lemire's craggy, expressive art, I probably would've dozed off a time or two.

HB: I think we're coming from the same place here, or at least arriving at the same conclusion, which, to put it bluntly, is that this book is no Skyscrapers of the Midwest, right? I don't mean it to sound like I'm some sort of desensitized fiend who'd be roaming the streets looking for people to assault in a Frank Miller comic, and Josh Cotter's work manages to push those buttons I referred to without resorting to either sex or violence. It just goes deeper, somehow. You're totally right to credit Lemire for his restraint, and it's appreciated on my end too--it's very midwestern in its own way, in its lack of over-emoting. It's not a movie of the week approach at all. But at the same time, being hypercritical here, this book isn't up to Cotter's level, and while that may be (and probably is) because it's attempting to reach a younger audience, that sort of bugs me. I can definitely praise it for its own merits, but I was expecting a little more.

GM: Right, good comparison. That restraint I mentioned is also why Tales From the Farm isn't Skyscrapers. And I don't mean emotional or dramatic restraint, but how Lemire focuses more directly on the story, generally avoiding the surrealism and fantasy found throughout Skyscrapers. I'd call that a good thing if Cotter hadn't somehow brilliantly walked that thin line between poignancy and pretension. It's weird, I thought of Skyscrapers when I read Farm, but didn't consider it again until you mentioned it in this conversation. Maybe because, even though they do bear many similarities, they're also vastly different?

HB: Right. You could group them, curatorially, with Chris Ware's work (midwesternish, restrained, kind of depressing) as well, and it's tough competition for Lemire to put him up against those two. I could also rephrase this as: Even months later, I'm still realizing just how good Cotter's book is, and it's not fair for me to compare everything I read that's at all similar to it as they're almost guaranteed to look bad in that sort of light. Vastly different might be an overstatement, though. Convince me.

GM: Wait - is Canada Midwestern? Doesn't this take place up there? Is Canada just the setting, and not where Lemire actually hails from? Is it dumb to ask this, when the internet could easily divulge this info to me in less time than it's taken to write this sentence?

I'd say they're vastly different in terms of structure and technique, if not theme. Tales From the Farm is a straight-forward story, with an easily diagrammed plot. The fantasy elements are less integral, not narratively, but visually. In Farm there's only, what, one scene that's not clearly set in the real world? Skyscrapers is more surreal, a bit stream-of-consciousness, and those're the most memorable and important parts about that book. Maybe I should've written "these two are vastly different despite having remarkably similar subject matter", much like I'll hopefully be able to say about that Seth Rogen / Jody Hill movie that looks far too much like Paul Blart?

HB: I wouldn't say Canada is technically midwestern--clearly, parts of it exist much farther east and west than that--but doesn't it come off that way? Everyone is so unassuming and polite.

Anyway, fair enough on that last point. They're similar and they're different and people should maybe read both of them, although we agree that Lemire's work skews younger and less complex.

GM: I remembered that guy was a hockey player and realized this had to be Canadian. And it is. Yep!

The Adventures of Blanche

2009-03-24T20:16:00.004-04:00

The Adventures of Blanche
by Rick Geary
Dark Horse, 2009

Garrett Martin: Rick Geary's obviously big on history, but Adventures of Blanche promised to be a slightly different project for him. Instead of focusing on infamous events or important people, Blanche is supposedly based on letters Geary's grandmother wrote to her family when she was a young woman. It seemed like a more personal work than the J. Edgar Hoover book or the Victorian murder series. I took that set-up at face value, and looked forward to seeing if Geary could turn what I assumed would be a relatively normal life into a comic interesting to anyone other than his fans and early 20th century history geeks. Well, either Geary's grandmother told some tales in her letters, or else Geary fictionalized some or all of her life, as this is pretty obviously not the most factual story in the world. How much of this do you think actually happened?

Hillary Brown: That's a good question to start off with, and one that I'm really not sure of the answer to. Despite Geary's general trend toward focusing on scholarship and research (and not to say that this book doesn't have some of those--he's clearly interested in historical accuracy and in teasing out sociological trends), he's an odd bird. I also recently read his Gumby comic, which is strange and fairly druggy and terrifying for a book that's, um, supposed to be for kids, and it kind of illuminated or prepared the way for this book. I came to it with the same impression as you, an impression Geary takes some trouble to give, and I'm still not sure if we've got a Fargo situation here or something that's much more based in reality to begin with and only later departs into unheard of realms (seems like it's something in between, according to this interview). All that established, I think it's kind of nice for Geary's imagination to have a chance to stretch its wings, and he comes up with some interesting stuff, complete with a weirdly reiterated theme of perilous dangling from elevated objects. My favorite of the three stories is probably the first one, due to the particular turn it takes into occult creature worship and the beautiful panel layout of the space between the walls, but I certainly enjoyed all three, not a little bit because I had no idea where they were going.

GM: Right, it definitely kept me on my toes, rarely going in any of the directions I was expecting it to. I really enjoyed this book, even if it's a little slight and Forrest Gump-ish (or at least would be if Blanche was an obnoxious simpleton). And as far as the "grandma did some crazy shit" school of fiction goes, I'm pretty sure this is the only one to feature DW Griffith in a hot-air balloon. Yeah, Blanche regularly bumps into real-life historical figures, but thankfully Geary mostly avoids some of the more obvious ones from these various eras. Blanche doesn't go on a blind date with a young Adolf Hitler or talk smack about minorities with Woodrow Wilson, or anything like that. It's more thoughtful than that. Also, I don't know if Geary did any touch-ups or editing jobs, outside of the new intro, but this book's surprisingly consistent, considering the three chapters were published individually over the last 18 or so years. You've read far more Geary than me. How does this compare to his other works?

HB: I think it's not quite as good as my favorites in the Treasury of Victorian Murder series (and the one entry in the Twentieth-Century Murder series so far), but it might be on par with the weaker entries. This isn't to say, though, that it's weak Geary. I'm not really sure that exists yet. I'm just complaining that there are fewer maps. And fewer murders. Basically, as you're picking up on, the dude is remarkably consistent, quality-wise. No soaring highs matched with sad little lows here (although I haven't yet read the book about ants that he illustrated and I picked up for a dollar last year at Heroescon), but instead a nice, even keel that's rarely boring. I really like this blind date with Hitler idea, though... Maybe you should email him?

GM: How much of that consistency comes down to him rarely writing new material? No slight on him as an artist whatsoever, and he obviously has a good head for research and picking fascinating events to craft a book around, but it's got to be harder to fail when you're not trying to tell original stories, right?

HB: No, that's a fair point to make, and I guess that trend in his work may come out of his illustration background, but it doesn't bother me. I think he does an excellent job shaping reality to the stories he wants to tell, to some extent, although it may just be that I'm kind of a history nerd. I think his first book, Housebound, is original material, but it's one of the few I don't have. Anyway, yes, he's slightly ghettoized himself, but I don't know if anyone's better at what he does.

GM: I agree.

Dark Horse Presents #20

2009-03-16T16:37:00.006-04:00

Dark Horse Presents #20
by Kate Beaton, Kristian Donaldson, David Malki, and Chris Onstad
Dark Horse / Myspace 2009

Hillary Brown: Is this the only thing MySpace is even good for anymore besides streaming music? Even if so, it's a good enough reason for it to continue to exist. I really need to mark my calendar to go check this stuff out every time Dark Horse posts it. This issue (is that the right word?) is solid top to bottom, corner to corner. It's like an awesome mini anthology that doesn't have any restrictions on page count due to maximization of printing efficiency, and so people can either go long or go short, and there's no reason for weak-ass shit to sneak in. I saved the Onstad piece ("Achewood: The Garage Sale") for last, to do that whole delayed pleasure thing, but the other three were almost as good and comparably amusing. "Ann Romano, Gossip Whore in Gone Dishin'," illustrated by Kristian Donaldson is breezy and sharp; "Wondermark: The Catch," by David Malki, is quirky and funny and surprising; and Kate Beaton's "The Origin of Man" is a great two-page goofball gag. I'm not really sure if I even like Onstad's contribution the most, which is really saying something for the rest of them. Okay, maybe I do, but the other three are all new to me (although Beaton's stuff looks familiar). Do you read these MDHP (MySpace Dark Horse Presents) things regularly? Are they always this good from start to finish?

Garrett Martin: Issue? Installment? Prog? I don't know. I've never checked this out before. I don't remember if I even knew they existed before last week. I'm glad I do now, though, because yes, this particular collection of strips is very good. Especially Beaton's piece, which might be only two pages, but has a great set-up and an even better punchline. This is the first thing I've ever actually read by her, which is pretty dumb on my part, because I've been hearing great things for months now. Guess I've been too busy reading Booster Gold or something. But I love her drawings, how they're maybe a little sloppy and both relaxed but reasonably detailed. And, y'know, like we said, she's damn funny, too. The Onstad was good, no doubt, but maybe rambled on a bit. I kept thinking every page was the last, and the true finale was no more or less final than any of the other possible endings. Maybe it's in the presentation, the expectations you bring to something defined as a single specific strip, but this probably would've worked better as a week's worth of Achewoods. Now, Malki and Donaldson I'd never even heard of. Had you?

HB: Well, there was a previous Onstad that involved Taco Bell and food criticism and was just, you know, brilliant. I'm pretty sure that was a DHPMS number. This garage sale one isn't quite up to that level, and the way that it relates to garage sale stuff that was going on in the strip is a little confusing, I suppose, but, having been raised to stop at the mere hint of someone's worldly possessions laid out for perusal, it all rang quite true. You're right about it not having a lot of structure, but I'm not sure Onstad's stuff ever really does. You make a good case for the Beaton piece being the best of the bunch, and I have to at least consider that it might be. I've also been thinking over the past few days, and I know I've come across her work before, probably just linked all over the internet. The other two, though, no. Not even an inkling that I might know who they are. How do you think Dark Horse picks people for this feature?

GM: Two dudes you know plus two dudes you don't. The former's the draw, the latter hopefully the draws of the future. But then maybe Malki and Donaldson are hot-shit young squires of the underground comic world, and we're just total ignoramuses. Ignorami. Looking at their wikipedias, they've probably got higher profiles than Beaton. I also now realize that I'm familiar with Donaldson, thanks to his issue of DMZ and the book he did with Brian Wood, Supermarket. Haven't read that, but I see the cover every time I'm in the shop, and it looks intriguging. And Malki's strip is kinda familiar, though nothing I know by name. Anyway, if Dark Horse was like, "hey here's free stuff by Malki and Donaldson", who knows how many would click that link. Onstad and Beaton plus two (or, honestly, just Onstad + whatever) has a better ring, marketing wise. Plus that Goon cameo has a touch of bet-hedging about it; that's like the Dark Horse equivalent of a Wolverine appearance. (Ever read The Goon? I don't like that book as much as I should.)

I don't want to short-change Malki or Donaldson, of course. Wondermark is pretty damn hilarious, and I thank Dark Horse for bringing it fully to my attention. And I'm loving Donaldson's art; it slightly reminds me of both Cliff Chiang and Paul Pope without looking too much like either. Great stuff!

Bride of Bordoom

2009-03-05T13:32:00.003-05:00

Bride of Bordoom
by David Yoder
2009

Hillary Brown: In some ways, I feel like you should be the one to kick off this discussion of David Yoder's seven-page mini, "Bride of Bordoom" because it draws so heavily on the kind of golden-age comics stuff you're always reading, but then again, I'm the one who's always boosterizing for Yoder, so maybe it should fall to me. Anyway, I'm really happy he got into the Center for Cartoon Studies because it means he's always Live Journaling up his homework assignments, i.e., new work, and that's what this is, rather than an extracurricular project. I don't really know what kind of context that puts it in, but I guess it's worth supplying, and I happen to think the results are pretty hilarious. Yes, it's far too short, and I'm sure you can point out all kinds of shortcomings with it as far as its apery goes, but I like the herky-jerky quality of the story, which is all: THIS bit of dramatic narration. AND THEN.... THIS bit of dramatic narration. It's a style I happen to find particularly amusing, and Yoder's lumpy, cartoony figures also make me laugh. I almost feel it's crazy to be discussing this, but it's important for us to cover a wide variety of stuff, and it takes so little time to read that people really should bother, right?

Garrett Martin: Yes, people should bother, because "Bride of Bordoom" is one thoroughly pleasant comic. It's definitely more entertaining than any homework I ever had to do. And it'd be silly to point out "shortcomings" in its "apery"; it's so simple and straight-forward that any such complaints would look completely ridiculous. It's got everything you'd expect from an old monster comic (an awesome Kirbyan name, science as both the cause of and solution to the problem, a president, etc.), depicted about as economically as possible. And yeah, Yoder's art is charming, and, y'know, whimsical. Obviously qualities we like around here. I like extremely minimalist encapsulations of entire genres, and this here is one of those, for real.

I'm dumb. We've talked about this guy before, haven't we?

HB: I've mentioned him (in this post) because I'm a big fan, but he's still really young and not much published. He usually shows up at Fluke, Athens's indie-oriented comics thing/convention, but I haven't, like, gushed in person. Nor shall I, most likely. At any rate, it's a very cute comic, and while it's not really adding anything new to commentary on Golden Age comics, it's nicely done, down to the paper in the background, which is a touch I'm particularly fond of. Mostly, people should add his LiveJournal to their readers. There's a children's book up now too.

GM: Cool. He is an artist worth talking about, for sure. I gotta make it down to one of those Fluke things, too. When is it this year?

HB: April 9th, at Tasty World in Athens.

GM: Maybe I can do that. Probably not. If only there was some way to have a Fluke on Twilight Saturday. Or maybe some way for me take an entire month off work and stay down there for all of April.

Northlanders Vol. 1: Sven the Returned

2009-02-25T13:05:00.003-05:00

Northlanders Vol. 1: Sven the Returned
by Brian Wood and Davide Gianfelice
Vertigo Comics 2007-2008

Hillary Brown: Oh, Vertigo. You may well be my favorite big-market imprint. Thanks for picking this out for us to read, Garrett, as I'm not sure I would have grabbed it otherwise. I know Brian Wood's rather well known for DMZ, but I haven't read any of that or, uh, any of his other stuff, nor do I know Davide Gianfelice, so I'm coming to this as I often do, stumbling around in the dark. I'd say Northlanders definitely has both strengths and flaws that are pretty obvious even to a novice like myself, though. Wood's writing (and he's known slightly more as an artist, right?) is decent at moving the plot along, and, like the TV series Rome, the story ends up examining power dynamics to some extent and taking some surprisingly pacifist (or, I dunno, utilitarian?) turns. The dialogue comes off a little contemporary in its phrasing at times, which is very difficult to avoid but should be, unless you're going to go all A Knight's Tale, and there's a little much in the way of buoyant, rosy-tipped boobies, but it's a pretty good, straightforward series. So what do you think of the book? And what do you think of my recently discovered Vertigo love? Do I just like sex and violence too much?

Garrett Martin: I like your Vertigo love. It's cute.

Northlanders is a weird one for me. I have the first ten or eleven issues, basically the first two arcs, and I like 'em well enough, but it's never been on my pull list, and I've never bought an issue the day of release. It's at the top of my list of shit to buy when NEC runs their seasonal half-off sale. That's true of a lot of Vertigo stuff, or at least of most of the Vertigo stuff that I do buy. I would've given Young Liars more than one issue to impress me if it was only $1.50. I probably even would've bought the Un-Men, whatever the hell that was. Unfortunately they order so few rack copies of Vertigo stuff that they almost always sell out before the sales. Anyway, I'll at least flip through the first issue of every book Vertigo puts out, and they're the only company or imprint I do that with.

But yes, Northlanders, and vikings, courtesy of Brian Wood and his significant internet presence. I haven't read much by him, just this and the first DMZ trade, but he's really good at establishing environments. In both books the settings are as vivid and important as any character, and isn't his comic Local fundamentally about the character's relationship to various towns? Northlanders has convinced me that the Orkneys must've been a pretty shitty archipelago back in extreme pre-9/11 days. So that's good, and so's the plot, with the intrigue and the morality and the boobs. Well, yeah, probably too many boobs, like you said. Definitely not a book you read on the train. So dude's definitely doing some things right, yeah?

Northlanders is still kind of off-putting, though, and that anachronistic
dialogue is a big part of it. I understand why Wood made the decision to have the characters speak like this, and it could've been just as distracting (and potentially Mighty Thor-like) if he tried to approximate ancient foreign speech patterns, but that knowledge doesn't make the dialogue any less vexing. Am I being petty? Should one aspect of an otherwise high-quality (and oh yes beautifully illustrated) book substantially impact my opinion?

HB: You know, there are a lot of comics out there, and I don't think it's necessarily petty to want your experience to be as good as it can be. Sometimes I forget how much I enjoy the best stuff, but whenever I read any of it, it comes flooding back and I think how much I want everything to feel the same way. So, yes, I think it's okay to be annoyed with flaws. It doesn't mean throwing the whole book out the window. It just means that something that might otherwise be five stars can be docked to four. It's like Andie MacDowell's presence in Robert Altman's Short Cuts. She doesn't ruin the whole movie, but she's kind of like a fairly noticeable pimple on its face. I know we might seem like we're too picky on here sometimes, but it's important to evaluate aesthetic things thoroughly.

Enough. Off the soapbox. I think you're right to point out Wood's ability to establish an environment. I've honestly never thought about the Vikings colonizing the northern British isles before. Even in my medieval lit class forever ago, when we talked about them raiding the monasteries in the area for gold and such, I didn't think about them staying, and they're not generally thought of in pop culture as an empire-driven people. So not only is it interesting to set a story in that place and time, but it's also educational in a really good and smart way. I could, in fact, have used even more background detail about the history stuff, especially as Wood doesn't call that much attention to it. It's just sort of presnt, and if you're interested in stuff like that, you look out for it.

So, I'm trying to think of another book set in a historical era that does dialogue well. How's Age of Bronze?

GM: Right, the history is there, but it's never thrust into your face. You'll frequently see Vertigo compared to HBO's original dramas in terms of quality (y'know, at least the good ones, from both companies), and Northlanders reminds me of Deadwood in how it uses history. Both series are complete fiction, but with a strong underpinning in legit facts. I'm pretty sure none of the characters in Northlanders were ever real people, unlike Al Swearengen, but Wood strives to be accurate on a more macro level. I know very little about this subject, but the presentation here feels believable. Only that pesky dialogue sticks out.

Have you read Age of Bronze? Great book. Greek literature and culture is such a foundational element of our own that it has to be easier to write a book like that in a way that feels conversational and natural for the time period without losing or overwhelming a contemporary reader. The dialogue there has never felt inappropriate to me.

What do you think of how Wood's structuring Northlanders? This first arc was followed up by a two-parter that took place in an entirely different year and location, which was then followed by another completely unrelated arc. Would you prefer a book that focused on one group of characters for its entire length, or a set-up like this?

HB: I haven't read Age of Bronze, but I do have it, and I think Deadwood is kind of a great thing to bring up in terms of its handling of dialogue. I don't know if Milch's take is historically accurate or not (there's a lot of controversy over this), but by god does it feel authentic. The answer to how to handle the issue is: be David Milch. Not so easy to achieve.

I'm glad you brought up the structure because it's something I really like and am intrigued by. I don't think Wood could have kept the story going were he just to focus on the one character, and the way one's interest is piqued by all the historical stuff would indeed lead a creator to continue in that direction. It's possible that it's just because I wasn't attached to any characters, but I'd be totally happy to move on and learn about something new but related. Eight issues is mostly enough for any one character/storyline, don't you think?

GM: I wouldn't say any amount of issues is necessarily enough for a character or a storyline. Ed Brubaker's first storyline on Captain America basically lasted for forty or so issues, and other than some wheel-spinning during crossovers it never felt bloated or stretched out. In this particular isntance eight issues are definitely enough, though. Maybe even too much?

Wood succeeeds more with Lindisfarne, the two-parter that followed Sven the Returned. It makes many of the same points, but more directly and concisely. Dean Ormston's art is also nice, although kinda no match for Gianfelice, another artist we've sorta short-changed on this here blog. I had some issues with Wood's writing, sure, but Gianfelice's art easily made up for whatever other problems I had. It fits the subject beautifully, very detailed and European in a way you don't usually find in mainstream American comics, even from Vertigo.

HB: Yeah. It probably could have been cut by an issue or two. Gianfelice does good hair, especially, which is kind of important with these dudes with all their braids and beards and such. I like his style mostly, and it's both detailed and (this is important) well-colored, without any of those gross-looking digital backgrounds or gradients, but I wouldn't put him in my absolute top tier of artists. Maybe it's that his people tend to be a little bit too attractive and not varied enough in body type? Or that he has little in the way of weirdness? It's rarely confusing, though, or poorly laid out, or any of the other problems that plague a lot of books. So props there.

more on the New York Comic Con

2009-02-20T09:10:00.002-05:00

My recap of the NYCC is now up at Creative Loafing. Go take a look, if you'd like. Hopefully I'll transcribe an interview or two this weekend and post 'em over here. That'd be nice.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe

2009-02-16T16:04:00.002-05:00

Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe
by Bryan Lee O'Malley
Oni Press 2009

Garrett Martin: Hey, here's the fifth Scott Pilgrim volume, and the first we've talked about. On the surface you'd probably think I love these books, as a comic about video games and indie-rock isn't just up, but basically is my alley. And yes, I do love them, almost unreservedly, but not because of their general concern with things I am obsessed with. Any one who tells a story that deals with dedicated subcultures has to be careful, as the vast majority of media depictions of them, whether its video games, comics, or obscure music, are off-key and horribly embarrassing to those who pursue them in real life. O'Malley, of course, gets it right, and has consistently gotten it right since the very first book. But these trappings are only valuable to the extent that they help the reader understand and relate to the characters, and if O'Malley wasn't so adept at subtle, believable, and genuinely poignant character development, then the Scott Pilgrim series would just be the shallow hipster fluff its critics accuse it of being. Or something. Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe takes the series down a more serious road, focusing less on the fights and game references and more on the doubt and confusion that creeps in when you're in your mid-twenties and realize you don't know what the hell you're doing. But so, what did you think?

Hillary Brown: I was really nervous, but I also tried not to look at anything else before picking it up. I wanted to know as little as possible going in, and this is kind of a rare approach for me, one I only go about with something I truly appreciate and love. I remember that when Hal Hartley's movie Amateur was about to come out in theaters, I avoided all reviews and press coverage, to have a fresh experience. Ditto for Kill Bill, as much as possible. Sometimes you just want to communicate straight-up with the artist's brain, and I wanted the Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe experience to be as close to that as possible. So, yeah, I was really happy to discover that it rewarded my self-denial, and while I had heard "it's darker," it's not so much darker as to be depressing or unbelievable (you know, as realistic as a series about a guy who has to fight and defeat his girlfriend's seven evil ex-boyfriends, often through the use of combat styles that mirror those in video games, can be). It's true to the tone established so far, and while I suppose there's some more growth and sadness in this installment, it's to be expected, penultimate book as it is. Scott's always been kind of a dope, without O'Malley painting him unsympathetically--that is, sometimes there are things he should pick up on that he doesn't, and sometimes there are things that are just mysteries, things that are incredibly difficult to grasp and figure out what path to take with, and O'Malley knows just how to balance those, in much the same way that he knows how to incorporate pop-culture subcultures, as you point out. It's surprisingly delicate work, is what I usually end up thinking, even though it's also fun, fast, and goofy. I've had problems in some of the previous books figuring out what was going on, sometimes, or who a particular character was, but I didn't have any of that this time, and I don't know if I'm dumb and got smarter or O'Malley's smart and dumbed it down or if SP5 is just a little more straightforward.

GM: He definitely didn't dumb anything down, but it's true that this latest volume deemphasizes the action. Most of the fights occur off-page, or in the background, while O'Malley focuses on the supporting characters. I'd think that maybe makes the plot easier to understand, right? Do you sometimes have a problem comprehending action sequences in black-and-white? I guess most b&w comics don't really have action sequences. I know I had to get acclimated when I started reading Marvel Essentials and DC Showcases a few years ago. Of course O'Malley's art is less hampered by the lack of color, as its cleaner and less cluttered than Kirby, Ditko, or Infantino panels, which were laid out and drawn with the addition of color in mind. Um, okay.

What do you think is less realistic, a comic like Scott Pilgrim, in which people behave believably in a largely unrealistic world, or something like Speak of the Devil (or Kill Your Boyfriend), where characters in intentionally mundane and believable environments take extremely unlikely and unexpected turns?

HB: I don't think it's so much the fighting in the previous volume that I had trouble following--more like plot development. But maybe, as you point out, I had trouble with it because of the interfering fights. One of my favorite sections of SP5 is the fight scene at the party that takes place almost entirely in the background, while Kim and Ramona chat on the balcony and get drunk, which kind of exemplifies that the focus of this volume isn't on that kind of action. I don't think I generally have a problem with b/w action or b/w in general, except when it comes to getting characters mixed up because they look kind of similar and I don't have the handy shortcut of remembering, oh yeah, so-and-so's hair is red while this other person's is blond. But that's, you know, my prosopagnosia, and not a fault of the comic, I think. I'm also impatient and lazy, and I like to know who people are right away and am also not inclined to look it up if I don't. All my problems, not this book's. But #5 compensates better for my idiocy and laziness and impatience than some of the other volumes did, if that's a reasonable thing to say.

Okay, so, realism. You know, I consider it so rarely when assessing works and, honestly, if I'm thinking about how realistic something is or isn't, that usually means it's failing as a work of art in some way because it's failing to distract me from that concern. So I haven't thought about it much wrt SP, but I guess I do consider it more realistic in some ways than the two other examples you mention, mostly because the way Scott and his friends laze around, play video games, and kind of act like fuck-ups (but in a nice way) reminds me of people I know, whereas I don't know any psycho killers. I hope. I think part of the reason O'Malley's series has caught on is generational identification, or is that overreaching?

GM: No, that's true. O'Malley does a great job of writing characters that remind me of people I know without making it too Optic Nervy. Meaning it's still fun and breezy even when it's taking care of its dramatic business; it doesn't slip into navel-gazing. Not that the more serious elements in previous volumes felt dashed out or perfunctory, but O'Malley's never dwelled unreasonably on that side of things. It'd be very easy to reduce these characters to a grab-bag of hipster cliches, either as a parody or as a result of a creator trying too hard to make them seem "cool", but it's obvious that O'Malley knows people like this. Dude's well-versed in indie-rock, video games, and pre-responsibility early twentysomething livin'.

The flipside to that is not every reader realizes that Scott Pilgrim is kind of an asshole, I think. Sure, a totally unwitting asshole, and a guy full of good intentions, but a big theme of the series thus far has been Scott fucking people over without realizing it, which, y'know, is kind of assholish. I see people online (I know, I should never listen to people online) talk about how Pilgrim's the coolest guy ever, or whatever, and I'm pretty sure those people just don't get it. I don't want to boil it down to a standard boy-learns-responsibility, becomes-a-man deal, but that's sorta fundamentally what this series is about, right? And until Pilgrim reaches that endpoint, until he stops unintentionally dicking other people around, it'll be shortsighted to consider him a genuinely good or admirable person.

HB: Yes, that's exactly what the series is about, which is part of why it's good. It's an old theme, but learning not to be an asshole is a pretty important part of life, and O'Malley's presented it beautifully so far, without, indeed, preachiness or implying that you have to leave your sense of humor behind when you become an adult. I do get the impression both that there are people who don't think Scott is an asshole and that there are people who think he is, but that it's not intentional on O'Malley's part, and they're both wrong. And also, yeah, you're right that he's an asshole in not such a bad way. He needs to learn to treat other people with more respect, but his assholishness is totally identifiable with. Aren't we all self-absorbed? And I know I've met people a lot of times, sometimes, without remembering who they are, and I know it's not nice and so I vow to do better. It's a process that lasts a lifetime, this Golden Rule thing, and O'Malley's grasp of that--the way he creates these incredibly round and believable characters while not even making you realize what he's doing, half the time--is what makes the series better even than if it were just fun and breezy and accomplished at that. It's why people love it.

Aragones!

2009-02-16T15:54:00.003-05:00

So one of the coolest things about UGA is the Jack Davis lecture, which has brought Ralph Steadman, Mike Luckovich, Peter deSeve, and Gary Baseman (among others) to campus to lecture. This year's guest was Sergio Aragones, who gave an entertaining but not hugely informative talk about his life and how he became a cartoonist (always wanted to be one, worked hard, got lucky, yadda yadda) and what some of those years at Mad were like (lots of trips to foreign countries--Sergio organized the one to Mexico), complete with stories about Bill Gaines. And all of that would have been great without the drawing, but the moment he got the overhead projector going and started taking ideas from the audience it turned super-awesome. I managed to get a little video, although it could be larger or better quality. You can see how assured his line is, and you should marvel, as well, at his construction of each drawing for an audience, waiting to draw the crucial part of the gag until the end so as to get the biggest laugh.

He also took Q&A, and that, to me, was about as inspiring as the demonstration. He said he draws every day and described his creative process: collecting ideas on a subject until he feels he has enough, then gathering his drawing materials, putting on a movie in the background that he's seen before, and drawing until he's in physical pain. He also took a question on the demise of paper comics, about which he doesn't seem particularly concerned. For an old guy, he's pretty with it when it comes to technology or at least open to being with it, and he seemed confident that comics would thrive in some form. He also expressed that although we may romanticize paper and ink, the generations to come won't, and this doesn't mean anything, really, when you come down to it. I thought it was a pretty refreshing point of view, and if I hadn't been starving and had somewhere to be, I would've hung out in the long line of people waiting to shake his hand and get something signed.

NYCC nonsense

2009-02-09T09:23:00.003-05:00

I learned at least two things at the New York Comic Con this weekend:
1. make sure you actually take photos of people you interview;
2. make sure when you take photos, you're actually taking a photo, and not making a video.

I totally forgot to grab pictures of Fred Van Lente, Colleen Coover, or Chris Schweizer, all of whom graciously allowed me to waste their time with a few inane questions. The one creator I did try to photograph was a guy I didn't even interview, and instead of a photo it's a four second video with maybe half a second of Jeff Parker posing and then a three second tracking shot of my feet walking across a blue carpet. So a big win for professionalism this weekend, obviously. I'm just waiting on that call, New Yorker!

Anyway, yes, it was a great weekend, despite the tremendous foot-pain and my occasional incompetence. Everyone I met was awesome and almost unnecessarily polite, and thanks to the four folks named above for their time. We've got a new logo on the way, courtesy of Ms. Coover, and it looks amazing. Jeff Parker also did a sketch of Captain Marvel that'll pop up here later this week.

Best of all, though, I got to briefly meet Joe Simon before his spotlight panel. That was completely amazing, and more than made up for my fruitless search for copies of Prez. Before Mr. Simon entered the panel room he passed a completely oblivious twentysomething in the Torchwood panel line wearing a Captain America shirt that Simon almost definitely got paid nothing for. If I was making a documentary that shot would've made the cut.

House of Mystery, vol. 1: Room and Boredom

2009-02-04T14:16:00.003-05:00

House of Mystery, vol. 1: Room and Boredom
by Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham; main art by Luca Rossi with guest spots by Ross Campbell, Jill Thompson, Zachary Baldus, Steve Rolston, and Sean Murphy
Vertigo 2009

Hillary Brown: So we took a look at the first issue of House of Mystery back in May, and had fairly positive things to say, me a little more than you, because I'm some kind of Bill Willingham junkie, even what with all the hoo-ha that arose over his superhero books comments (to paraphrase: superheroes should be fine, upstanding men who defend the American way; which then people seemed to be massively annoyed at, even though, um, isn't that kind of how Grant Morrison writes Superman? anyhoo...), and I've continued to follow the book issue by issue. The first trade collection, which contains issues 1 through 5, provides a good opportunity to revisit things and see if the promise that was there panned out or not. I don't think there's any question that the art remains at an extremely high level through these five issues, a much higher level than almost any other book I can think of, including Willingham/Sturges's other productions, Fables and Jack of Fables. I've never heard of a single artist who's done work for House of Mystery prior to their appearing in its pages (and admittedly I'm not all that well versed), but by gosh they've selected some wonderful and diverse ones, from Jill Thompson's stunning watercolor work in issue #2 to Steve Rolston's candy-colored cartoony gore in issue #4. And Luca Rossi's pages in every issue are still beautiful, as are Sam Weber's darkly intense covers, which kind of combine gross and sexy on a regular basis. But enough gushing about the art. How's the story?

Garrett Martin: Disjointed, almost comically Vertigo-ish, and yet really not that bad. Right? The story-teller schtick is a fine way to bring in various top-notch artists, while also lightening Rossi's load; it's also, in these five issues at least, a big narrative diversion. Perhaps if they more closely echoed themes from the main story they wouldn't feel as out-of-place? The vignette you mention from #2, with the excellent Thompson art, is a good example; looks great, not necessarily awful on its own, but still a big old speed-bump in the on-going, overriding tale Sturges is trying to tell. Do you agree these asides could be more smoothly implemented?

HB: Yeah. I think that's a fair point. Basically, I'm still not sure where the main narrative is going, and I tend to think it's more forgettable than the interludes, which are my favorite parts of each book, but I'm glad it exists. It's kind of like the way really great TV shows, like Buffy managed to combine continuous narrative with stand-alone episodes, only it's more like you get a little stand-alone in the middle of everything else. It's possible I prefer them because they're so short (four to six pages) that they don't have time to run out of steam or exhaust their concepts, while the main narrative is a little more meandering and has to spend time on exposition. Or maybe it's that that main narrative is more philosophical. You're kind of right that they could be better integrated, but at the same time, I don't care all that much that they aren't. They're the parts I remember much more than the rest of it, even though they contain far less mystery.

I also like your business-related point about the presence of guests making Rossi able to get more books out. One of the most impressive things about HOM so far is that it's really maintained a pretty regular publishing schedule, and I think it's the kind of thing that could help get people into the book. I feel like it was yesterday that issue #1 came out, and now they're up to #10 already, as of tomorrow, which is enough for another trade. Good move, Vertigo/everyone involved.

So this is your first at-length experience with the Sturges-Willingham team and, indeed, with Willingham (not to minimize Matt Sturges; I think he's a really good writer on his own, but he doesn't segue as nicely into what I want to talk about), right? How does it color his statements on superhero books? Does it?

GM: I read the first three, maybe four trade of Fables, a couple years back. I eventually started to like it a lot; I meant to keep reading 'em, but just forgot to, or something. I also read the first year or so of Shadowpact, which Willingham wrote, and Sturges' recent issues of Blue Beetle. Never Jack of Fables, though; is that the only other thing they've cooperated on? Setting Fables aside, I definitely enjoy Sturges' superhero stuff more than Willingham's; Shadowpact was a drag, something I never would've read if the issues hadn't been super cheap. Shadowpact's setting, a bar for magic-users that exists between dimensional folds (or whatever the hell), reminds me of the House of Mystery a little bit, but only on the surface. Sturges' Blue Beetle has been really good, though, and a fine successor to John Rogers' great run. It's a shame the book's been cancelled. Like with a lot of folks who flit between Vertigo and DC or Marvel, though, it can be hard to compare the work. There are basically no similarities between House of Mystery and something like Blue Beetle, outside of both being comic books.

The whole hub-bub over Willingham's column is just goofy. On a fundamental level I basically agree with him, and don't see why there's any controversy; yes, superheroes should be good people! They should do the right thing! They can be flawed, have tragic pasts, whatever, but when you get down to it they are supposed to represent traditional notions of what's right and just. That doesn't mean Captain America or Superman should always be stooges for whoever happens to be in office. That's where I hop off of Willingham's boat, I guess.

Anyway, I don't see much of a connection between House of Mystery and what Willingham espouses in that column. As he states at the very beginning of that thing, not all comics are about superheroes, and obviously House of Mystery is one of those that doesn't. And I didn't notice anything particularly conservative or Limbaughian here, did you?

Despite complaining about the short stories breaking up the flow of the main narrative, I agree that the latter isn't too engrossing. The whole thing feels a little empty, like they're devoting too much time to what's basically a framing device, not leaving enough space for the stories they're framing to develop into anything all that interesting. Initially I thought those short stories were taking away from the book's main thrust; maybe it is the other way around?

HB: It's not conservative at all! That's why I find the hoo-ha weird. I mean, it's possible Willingham is some kind of secret NRA-nut, God-hates-fags, crazy, fascist effer, but it doesn't seem super likely, and it felt like a lot of the people getting bent out of shape about his comments hadn't actually read any of his stuff. Anyway... HOM is totally apolitical so far (other than its feminism, which seems present and smart).

As far as the main narrative versus the stories goes, I'm not sure what the balance should be. Part of me wants it just the way it is, with the main narrative given space to unfold slowly (but not too slowly) and the stories kept brief to maximize liveliness. Basically, I'm not annoyed enough yet with the former to abandon the book, and, in fact, I really need to pick up #6-10 to see how it develops. Maybe this was just a slightly clunky introduction to get all the characters established (sort of) and explain what's going on, and further issues will pick up a new and better story with the same folks and setting. I certainly have a lot of faith that it will. But even if I didn't, I'd probably keep reading it just for the interludes.

GM: Yeah, I'm interested in where the book is going. Maybe not enough to spend money on it, but I'd definitely borrow it or check it out from the library, or something.

So I know Willingham is only on the book for a short period, to help launch it; will Sturges be writing the entire thing at that point, both the main and back-up stories? If so, maybe the latter will be more consistently complementary to the former?

HB: Sturges took over exclusive writing duties with issue #8, so I presume it'll continue on that way. I guess he's able to handle writing at least three books simultaneously, so sales may be the only thing to interfere, unless he has a nervous breakdown. But I've been impressed with his multitasking abilities so far. As far as whether the stories will intertwine or grow closer in quality, I can't really venture a guess, but I do know he's done a great job with Jack of Fables, so it's not like I don't have confidence in him.

Mysterius the Unfathomable #1

2009-01-28T09:50:00.006-05:00

Mysterius the Unfathomable #1
by Jeff Parker and Tom Fowler
Wildstorm Comics 2009

Hillary Brown: There is something so refreshing to me about a new book, a book I can read without having to worry about years of context and history and controversy, and my bet is that a lot of comics newbies feel similarly. I'm pretty sure Mysterius the Unfathomable, a miniseries being written by Jeff Parker and drawn by Tom Fowler for Wildstorm, is one of these, although I haven't exactly done extensive research on the matter. I only have to flex my regular, context-free reading muscles to get what's going on. So it may be that sense of weight being lifted that made me enjoy the book so much. Maybe I'm rating it too highly. But it fills me with hope and cheeriness, despite its (minor) flaws so far. It does strike me that Fowler's art may lend a tone that's too comedic to the book, but it's pretty well compensated for by a darkness in the writing and in what's depicted. Plus: this is a pretty effective intro issue, with a little bit of origin story for the sidekick but plenty of plot and establishment of mystery to keep the reader interested. I've got no experience with either Parker or Fowler. Do you? And, if so, what kind of project is this for them?

Garrett Martin: Jeff Parker's one of my favorites. He writes comics that read like comics, and not like some hamfisted Mamet rip. He's kinda like Dan Slott in that his Marvel stuff is relatively classic in tone, like old '70's or '80's superhero comics slightly updated for a modern audience. Parker's even funnier than Slott, though, and very comforting for a guy like me, who came of age when Jim Shooter was in charge and who still loves Mark Gruenwald. Parker's written a lot for Marvel's all-ages line, including a fantastic run on Marvel Adventures: Avengers. He's also been writing the great X-Men First Class for the last few years, which semi-regularly sports some amazing backup strips drawn by Colleen Coover. You would totally love those, of course. His highest-profile in-continuity Marvel stuff is a great miniseries called Agents of Atlas that's relaunching as a monthly in February. He's also currently co-writing, with Paul Tobin, a miniseries called Age of Sentry that's basically "What If Stan Lee Wrote Silver Age Superman", but with some encroaching metafictional stuff that hopefully won't undermine the whole enterprise. Parker's also from North Carolina, and has an obvious Southern accent, and I think that makes me like him more.

Damn, that was long-winded.

So yes, I'm familiar with Parker, and I generally love his stuff. That's why I thought we should talk about Mysterius, the first non-superhero comic I've ever read by him. Despite the genre switch, this reads like pretty typical Parker, generally light, genuinely funny, and thoroughly amiable. That still shines through despite the creepy, otherworldly business the book dips into near the end. It's very likable, y'know? I've been interested in magic since I was a kid, though, even took lessons for a while at the Y, so maybe I'm a little too predisposed to enjoy this comic.

I don't know anything about Tom Fowler. I was going to say that his art looks kind of like an even more cartoony Mort Drucker, and I just now noticed on his wikipedia entry that, sure enough, he's been a Mad contributor. I think the art works fine with the story thus far. Mysterius isn't as finely focused on humor as a lot of Parker's comics, but it's still aiming for laughs, and Fowler's exaggerated characters help out with that. They also give the book a design sense as unique as the subject matter.

HB: Yeah. It definitely doesn't look like anything else out there, except for Mad, which I grew up on. It's an odd book to look at, with its pot-bellied, sway-backed, big-nosed people, but it's got charm in its commitment to distinctiveness. It's like a pleasurable kind of ugly to look at. I suppose you could see it as slightly distracting, in the way that Mad's pages frequently overflow with visuals, but there's not much action otherwise, so why not lend a little excitement to pages that would otherwise be dry exposition?

Another thing that's particularly nice about the book is its inclusiveness. Despite the fact that most comics readers are still white dudes, this one has a main character who's an African American woman, and yet it doesn't ever feel like tokenism or some kind of multicultural lesson. She just is, and she's a great addition.

Also: Where do you think this book is going? I feel happy about not having much of an idea in that area.

GM: I also liked how no big deal was made over that character's race. I didn't even realize she was supposed to be black until that was specifically stated. Of course I am a thoroughly enlightened and colorblind resident of a post-racial America. Also though the coloring looked slightly off (which makes me think: there's an on-going low-grade controversy over black characters frequently being colored white, especially Vixen and Mr. Miracle in some recent DC titles; that could make a good discussion point, if our goal with Shazhmmm was to bore the life out of everybody with pointless and uninformed conjecture.)

And no, I have no idea where Parker and Fowler are headed with this. I can barely even remember how this first issue ends. I need to quit reading comics on the train, and especially when I've been drinking. Honestly it'd be better to review a series like this after it's completed, but as I've said I really dig Parker's work and wanted to get out the good word about this book as soon as possible.

Oh yeah, have you seen Parker's blog post about why they went with Wildstorm for this series?

HB: I have indeed seen it, which must mean it's some kind of a big deal. On the other hand, I don't really pay tons of attention to who puts out what book, so I'm not sure that I knew Wildstorm has pretty much been exclusively superhero. I mean, really, is this some kind of controversy?

I don't think it's your drinking or public transportation use that's quite at fault here. The issue leaves a marvelous impression but not an indelible one. I read it carefully, in bed and stone-cold sober, and I can hardly tell you the plot details. So that must mean that it's not, despite appearances, a plot-/suspense-based comic. That stuff is there because it has to be, but as Parker's expressed all over the place, it's really more of a character piece, a chance for him to explore something new. Or am I being too generous? I don't think I am. I'd definitely keep picking it up, even if more for the ride than the destination.

GM: I don't think you're being too charitable at all. Parker's greatest strengths as a writer are his sense of humor and his character work. This isn't a knock against him, but I've read most of the stuff he's written the last few years and the only plot I remember clearly is that issue of Marvel Adventures Avengers where they all become MODOKs. Parker's comics feel leisurely and conversational even when the plot is comically convoluted. I almost want to compare him to Richard Linklater, or something. Take a look at Agents of Atlas; it's full of twists and hyperactive plot machinations, but it's highly regarded because of how enjoyably Parker took these forgotten characters from fifty years ago and made them interesting and charismatic. It's not the story he built around them but the way he wrote them and redefined them for today. So it's no surprise that Mysterius is a character piece, and a pretty damn enjoyable one at that.

Hellblazer #250

2009-01-24T09:40:00.002-05:00

Hellblazer #250
by Various Artists
Vertigo 2008

Garrett Martin: It's kinda mind-boggling how long Hellblazer's been around. It's older than every current DC series except the four major Batman and Superman books. That's completely nuts. It's outlived all the other pre-Vertigo Mature Readers books, including the book it basically spun out of, Swamp Thing. It also inspired a really horrible movie. I've probably got twenty issues or so in a box in my parent's attic, back from when I would read anything DC slapped a Mature Readers label on, but this is the first issue I've picked up since '93 or '94. It's pretty much exactly what I remembered it being, a wry British asshole drinking, smoking, and fucking around with archfiends, and shit. Is that consistency or stagnation?

Hillary Brown: I guess I didn't really think about what a big number 250 is, not being such a regular consumer of these things except in bound form, but when I consider it seriously, yeah, that's a ton of comics, and this is the first one I've ever read. I do like the idea of a Christmas anthology issue, probably because I'm kind of a sucker for seasonal themes, to the point where I've seen basically every Halloween episode of Home Improvement multiple times. I don't know if it's so much a heart-warming feeling associated with tradition as a curiosity to see what people will do with familiar tropes, but it's firmly there, and anthologies strike me as a good way to jump into a book, at least in theory. If you don't like something, just wait a few pages and it'll be over. From the opposing view, it may not be the best method for getting a real taste of a book's general feel, and indeed, I'm not sure how it generally reads. Kind of funny but a little Guy Ritchie? Perhaps we should discuss the stories individually before we really address whether the whole thing is worth your dime?

We've got Dave Gibbons/Sean Phillips on the first one, which seems to be more straightforward and probably rather like the usual tone: cranky, tipsy, pissed about having to save the day but committed to doing it anyway, and obviously with a strong grasp on the supernatural. Then: Jamie Delano/David Lloyd on a poker-playing heartwarmer; Brian Azzarello/Rafael Grampa on a truly weird poem about the Cubs and the exorcism of the curse that lies upon them (WTF?); Pete Milligan/Eddie Campbell on a story of political intrigue and the occult; and China Mieville/Giuseppe Camuncoli on a foreign tale about multinational evil corporations and religious vengeance. Does that about sum it up, plotwise? Unfortunately, because I think I kind of like the dude, Azzarello's writing is the weak link here to me. It's a creative idea, but the story is a total mess, and the poetry doggerel. I'd really prefer people not attempt the latter unless they have a rudimentary grasp of meter, and if you try to pay attention to the rhythms of the thing, you're sure to get twisted up and lost. The art is interesting but never serves to clarify, and, basically, if you're not already familiar with the curse of the billygoat, the whole thing'll whoosh right over your head. Points granted only for ambition, and they're more than compensated for by the negatives of the execution.

GM: Totally agree about the Cubs thing. Azzarello's poem is awful, and even though I'm a huge baseball fan the entire concept is just stupid. It'd be a waste of a few pages if Grampa's art wasn't so tremendous. I've never even heard of the guy, but I loved his super intricate scratches, the little clusters of lines that make up these ridiculous looking people and their squalid bar. His Constantine is pretty much unrecognizable, and probably Grampa's least interesting design, but overall I think his art is fantastic. This book is pretty beautiful overall (obviously, with both Phillips and Campbell on board), but Grampa kinda steals that show.

You're right about the Gibbons and Phillips story; it both looks and reads the most like my vague memories of 17-year-old Hellblazers. It's very Vertigo-y in tone, appearance, and execution, and perfectly suits what is basically Vertigo's flagship on-going title.

Quickly ploughing through the rest: Lloyd's washed out pencils felt surprisingly alien coming right after Phillips, an artist whose work I've seen much of over the last few years. Kinda looks like the cover of that first King Crimson record. Delano's story was a little too pat and inert for me, and his prose was just awkward at times. Maybe it was the British slang, I don't know. I'm glad he didn't go with the expected bummer of an ending, but there's still not much of note here.

I've liked Eddie Campbell's art since randomly buying an issue of Bacchus in 1993, but I've never really read much of his stuff. Never touched From Hell or any of the Alec stuff. They're both on the overly long list of comics I hope to one day read, but not quite near the top. Still, I dig his flat, scratchy characters, who look like they're from an "alternative" Steve Canyon, or something. I also love the hell out of Milligan, despite some recent missteps; this short was the primary reason I wanted to review this comic. This story's slight, true, but it's the only one that deals with Christmas on a personal or familial level. Even though I'm sick of Christmas fiction that focuses on dysfunction, I appreciate that this short has more of a personal touch than the others. Milligan's the regular series writer as of #251, which came out this week, and was pretty good; it looks like I'll be reading Hellblazer regularly again.

That final story is some rank cornballery salvaged somewhat by Camuncoli's art. He's the new regulart artist as of #251, and although he's not the best in this issue, he does have that classic Vertigo vibe that'll work well on Hellblazer. Y'know, that slightly European look that's simultaneously more realistic yet also more abstract than typical American superhero stuff. #251, from Milligan and Camuncoli, could've been published twenty years ago, it's so firmly, classically Hellblazerish.

So yeah, like most anthologies, this is pretty hit-or-miss.

HB: But maybe a little more on the hit side than some others we've looked at. I think you're right that the art is generally of a higher caliber than most anthologies, even if it's a little dark and scratchy for my taste, and I pretty much agree with your assessment of the stories, too. The only place I'd differ is on the Milligan one, which had a lot of potential but I'm not sure lived up to it all that well. It's rare that I complain anything is too short, but I felt like this story could really have used a few more pages, which is a good sign for the future of the book, if he's going to be writing it and having those pages regularly, but a problem with the story itself. It ends up a bit choppy and with a climax that's telegraphed as huge but doesn't earn any real impact, as it hasn't really been led up to very well. Is it a twist? Or is it just an "oh, fuck. I've used up my page count. Here's an ending!!" thing?

Um, are priests supposed to condone vengeance, even if it's sort of committed by angels?

GM: That's one of the many problems with that last story, the first being the assumption that all corporations are bad whereas all impoverished slum-dwelling orphans are good.

And true, Milligan's story wraps up a bit too suddenly. He's maybe phoning it in a bit, but really no more so than most of the other writers here. Half-assed or hurried Milligan can still be pretty good, though, even if his recent superhero stuff has been less than mediocre. More space would've helped, no doubt. Have we done a Milligan comic here yet? Ever read anything by him? Shade the Changing Man was my favorite comic for a while when I was in high school.

HB: No, we haven't done any Milligan, I don't think, and I'm pretty sure this is the first thing I've read by him, despite his impressive resume. I definitely don't mean to denigrate his story much, either. It's among the better things in the book, and its Brittiness is welcome. I see, after poking around a little bit online to get who wrote/drew what straight, that a lot of people had hoped Warren Ellis would contribute a story, and I do think he'd be very well suited to doing so--or is that a cliche?

GM: I'm surprised they didn't run with the reunion idea, getting Ellis, Ennis, Paul Jenkins and whoever else to return along with Delano, the book's original writer. It's actually kind of unbelievable that Milligan had never written a Constantine story before, considering how long both have been kicking around DC.

HB: Is it generally his style? I mean, I can see Ellis and Ennis easily, but I don't know much about Milligan.

GM: Milligan's comics are usually character-driven and psychologically rich, but also pretty damn weird, so he shouldn't have any problems with a book like Hellblazer. You should track down #251, if you're interested.

HB: My interest is definitely piqued enough. So, Hellblazer #250: thumbs mildly up?

GM: More up than down, sure.

worth reading

2009-01-16T13:08:00.002-05:00

We're reading stuff, comics stuff even, and will have a post or two (or less) for you next week. In the meantime go check out Wednesdays Child, Paul DeBenedetto's very fine comics blog. His piece on Bill Willingham's controversial Big Hollywood column makes some of the same points I would if Hillary and I ever finally discussed that (which we've considered). Good stuff.

Amazing Spider-man Family #3

2009-01-14T19:58:00.005-05:00

Amazing Spider-man Family #3
by a bunch of people, including J.M Dematteis, Tom DeFalco, Stuart Moore, Abby Denson, and Val Semeiks
Marvel 2008

Garrett Martin: Seems like Marvel's always publishing one of these all-purpose Spidey compendium books, full of random Spider-man shorts with no clear ties to any continuity. Every few years they'll cancel one and then immediately launch another. It's a fine concept, in theory, letting various creators dabble with such an undeniably great character whose own main titles usually aren't worth reading. Somehow though they seem to rarely ever be any good. We picked this issue because of the short from Abby Denson and Colleen Coover (who, y'know, we kinda like), with hopes that old pros like DeMatteis and DeFalco could still dig deep and pull out a worthwhile Spidey tale when they had to. Maybe they can, but they definitely didn't do so here. So do the eight pages of Coover make up for the other 92 or so?

Hillary Brown: Um, no. Unfortunately. The thing is, it might be okay if the other contributors had risen to the level of mediocrity, but I'm pretty sure they failed even by that extremely low standard. This book is a steaming pile of bad, bad art, with a brief respite due to Coover. The writing isn't terrible, but my god. The art hurts my eyes. It made me wince, numerous times, while reading. Am I overstating things? I don't think I am. I try not to be hyperbolic about suckiness, mostly because it's not necessary, but I can't help feeling a little pissed off about Marvel putting this thing out.

Check out page 5 in the preview on Marvel's site, for example, from a serviceable story by J.M. DeMatteis called "The Punch." The art wavers between acceptable but not great and pages like this, mostly from the "villain's" story. I mean, check out his mom in the upper left. She looks like the Cryptkeeper. And while she's supposed to be an unattractive character, with her outside mirroring her morally problematic interior, I really think this is over the top. I even googled "Val Semeiks sucks" with no luck. Basically what I'm saying is that I might actively avoid any book drawn by that guy.

The story about Peter and MJ encountering the Rhino at the hospital, where they've taken their baby and he's taken his mom [?], and they have a conversation about healthcare and agree to disagree temporarily is fine but far too uneventful, especially for a book like this. And the reprint, which covers the breakdown of Harry Osborn, paints all comics from the early 1990s in a bad light, with a creepily overboobed MJ, staggering hair, awful costume design, and so on and so forth. Holy god. The only reason to buy this issue is for the Coover/Denson piece, which is cute but hardly a) their best work or b) really worth the money. It seems like it would fit a lot better in a more kid-oriented (or younger-kid-oriented?) book, like the Franklin Richards stuff. Okay. I'm going to stop venting for a little bit because it makes me feel too particular and like I've spent the morning listening to talk radio or something. Convince me to like more of it.

GM: I can't! I will say that Val Semeiks has done good stuff in the past, and his work on The Demon with Alan Grant back in the early '90's was pretty great. His demons always looked better than his people, though, so maybe he should avoid scripts with humans in 'em. His stuff here is pretty damn ugly, and DeMatteis's story a little too pat. The young thug feels like a generic background punk from a later Death Wish, whichever one Alex Winter was in, and his relationship with his mom is histrionic in a way that probably wouldn't pass editorial muster in a contemporary book.

Similarly, I've liked what I've seen by Todd Nauck in the past. His art is generally fun and slightly cartoonish and sort of reminds me of Mike Wieringo a bit. It's well-suited to the sort of acrobatic action you expect from a Spider-Man story, so it makes perfect sense to get him to draw a story whose only action is Peter Parker and the Rhino walking to a vending machine. It doesn't play to his strengths at all. DeFalco's story is expectedly cheesy, but I have a soft spot not just for him but also for the Rhino and stories in which Spider-Man shows concern for his enemies. Still, it's no more than mediocre, and maybe only exists as a bone tossed to those who've lost faith in love since the dissolution of the Spider-marriage.

And then, yes, finally, we get to The Amazing Spider-Ma'am, Denson and Coover's cute short story about Aunt May using Peter's work tools to foil some crooks. If only real-life home invaders were Home Alone-level bunglers. I agree this is more straight-forwardly directed at kids than some of Coover's other all-ages Marvel work. Unlike her Marvel work with Paul Tobin or Jeff Parker, it isn't quirky or humorous enough to work equally well for kids and adults. It's still adorable, though, and if they put out an entire book of just Denson/Coover Spider-Ma'am stories I'd probably pay full-price for it.

HB: God, I totally would. Reading/looking at Coover's stuff is like eating a delicious orange push-up popsicle. It's cute and refreshing and easy and just, like, completely fun and great. Will somebody just give her a book of her own already? At very least, you'd like Semeiks et al. could take up a collection so she'd stop making them all look bad in these compilations. I don't know how she draws people who are so cartoony yet so believable in their poses. They're flexible and slouchy in all the right ways, and the coloring is nice and flat and simple. So for me to say this book isn't worth buying just for her contribution really says a lot about how displeasurable the rest of it is.

But talk to me about the last story, the reprint. Is it as bad as I think it is? You had mentioned to me about having an original copy stashed somewhere. And is this why Grant Morrison and Alan Moore were greeted as such complete saviors? I'm assuming yes.

GM: About Morrison and Moore: yeah, pretty much. There were some prominent mainstream superhero writers of the '80's whose work still holds up well, of course, but even then most of it is clearly dated stylistically, far more so than DC's pre-Vertigo stuff.

But I don't think the reprint (Spectacular Spider-Man #200, the death of Harry Osborn, by DeMatteis and Sal Buscema) is that awful. Sure, it's kind of embarrassing, in a number of ways, but it's not nearly as guilty of any of the charges you hold against it as a typical Image comic from the same time period. And I can't hold the horrible fashion too much against Sal Buscema, 'cuz the guy was like sixty at the time.

Okay, actually, yeah, it's pretty bad, full of what made comics suck in the '90's. But the story itself is a fitting endgame for Harry Osborn, and a fine escape route from the almost incomprehensible mess his character had become. Plus it was a genuinely affecting death when I was 15, and one that surprisingly held up for another 15 years. Still, it's probably best not to revisit most comics from that era.

HB: I can see your points about the function of the story, and there are aspects that have been incorporated into, for example, the most recent Spider-man movie, but there's a lot of stuff in it that really pushes some gross buttons, like the way the Green Goblin picks up MJ off the street. It's all very... rapey. And while I think there are writers/artists who could incorporate the kind of violence against women that's implied in a creative and thoughtful way, it's hard for me to see the sexual menace against MJ in this book as all that intentional. Plus, her relationship with Peter isn't that much healthier, full of overheated fights and then making up for no reason and making out to follow that up. I've looked back at Sal Buscema's earlier work, and it all looks pretty good, so why this ickiness, with the monster boobs going in all directions. It's like he had a stroke in the mimetic part of his brain.

GM: He was trying hard to draw like what was popular at the time. Trust me, comic book breasts got far more monstrous in the '90's.

Anyway, yes, kind of a bad comic, overall, despite some tasty refreshment from Coover. You really need to check out her X-Men First Class stuff with Jeff Parker - it's all great.

HB: We better watch it or this could just turn into a Colleen Coover fan site. Maybe it already is. At any rate, we'd be remiss not to link her blog, which has been frequently updated lately and contains this great depiction of her first experience at Fantagraphics, an experience that I feel like I have almost every time I've gone in search of one of her comics. Colleen! We love you!

go read this thing

2009-01-13T09:10:00.003-05:00

Okay, maybe we're not the biggest proponents of webcomics, but we're not totally ignorant of them. Our friends Chris and Gardner have just started up a fun webcomic called Registered Weapon, and we thoroughly recommend it.

Groo: Hell on Earth

2009-01-08T13:11:00.003-05:00

Groo: Hell on Earth
written by Mark Evanier/drawn by Sergio Aragones
Dark Horse 2009

Garrett Martin: It's been so long since I've read a Groo comic (easily twenty years) that I have no idea how Hell on Earth compares. It definitely has a lot of what I expected: deceptively detailed cartooning, goofy running gags, a blatant moral, and the world's ugliest cartoon dog. Aragones's art is kind of amazing in that it's so immediately familiar and the action so clearly defined that you can unwittingly glide through it very quickly, despite being thoroughly packed with tiny details and background sight gags that take genuine concentration to fully discover. The humor's mostly groan-worthy, but intentionally, and it's all very amiable. I don't remember old Groo being quite this moralistic, though. Have you read Groo before? Do you recall if it was usually this forthright in its message?

Hillary Brown: I haven't ever read any of Aragones's Groo stuff, so I can't weigh in on that, unfortunately, although it does seem that this particular topic (global warming) attracted more attention and controversy than any previous Groo story. Maybe it was just well timed, what with An Inconvenient Truth and Katrina and so on kind of waking people up and simultaneously bringing the real crazies out of the woodwork. I have pretty much always been an Aragones fan, though, as far back as I can remember, not only obsessively poring over his tiny marginalia in MAD, but also keeping an eye out for compilations of his work. He's definitely one of the treasures of comics and is rightfully recognized as such, despite his silliness. I definitely had to strike a balance with this book between trying to see every detail in every panel and wanting to keep going with the story, and it's by far the longest narrative work I've read that he's had a part in, so I was impressed to see that it holds up over pages and pages. Not that he's the writer, but still. As far as whether it's too moralistic, that's a hard question, especially when one agrees with the moral being preached (I certainly do), and I think it's very well put, in terms rather like Pascal's wager: that is, what does it hurt? What, really, do we have to lose relative to what we have to gain from not polluting everything around us? It was definitely a surprise that the book contained anything of the sort, as it certainly looks like pure comedy from the cover (and, obviously, it does contain a running explosive cow fart joke), but I'm not sure that it bothered me. It reminded me, if anything, of Larry Gonick's educational work, which manages both to be funny and to communicate something of importance at the same time.

GM: The environmental message didn't bother me at all; I was just surprised at how thoroughly the book focused on it. And yeah, I too agree with the moral. I was gonna say that I don't remember Groo being political like this, but then I remembered how ridiculous it is that this has become such a politically charged issue. It's sad, but some of the angry letters Evanier refers to in his afterword resemble comments I heard from family members over Christmas. It's ironic that the Sage's big lightbulb about solving the issue involved taking the message to children, since I doubt too many kids these days would ever be in a position where they could read this comic.

HB: Well, yes, and while the children are our future, I'm not sure the argument that they're who you should be arguing to holds up logically. I mean, the best time to start planning for your retirement (i.e., future) is basically right after birth, but you don't see too many six-year-olds starting Roth IRAs with their lemonade stand money, right? I agree that it's depressing the way science has become politicized, but I don't know if we'll be moving away from that state of affairs any time soon. So what else is there to say about this book? I liked it a lot, but I didn't, like, love it, and that might be because it's a little juvenile and a little simplistic, but I also assume it's kind of for kids.

GM: I agree about the logic, or lack thereof, of the Sage's plan. If conditions are already as dire as presented in Hell on Earth, do they really have time for those kids to grow up before the problems need to be seriously addressed? But I can forgive Aragones and Evanier for ignoring the internal logic of their own comic. After all, it's Groo, where logic has never been a priority. And yes, it's always been fairly simplistic and juvenile. Like I said, my memories are foggy, but I'd occasionally buy issues of Groo for years when I was younger. I was excited to read Hell on Earth, and definitely enjoyed it, but it's not quite as funny or charming as I expected. The art, as we've mentioned, is amazing, and there are some great gags in here, but it's a lot like picking up a current issue of Archie or Mad; I love it for the nostalgia, and for the consistency of vision, but I don't love it on its own terms. I would recommend it to fans of Groo, and if my nieces or nephews were 11 or 12 instead of 6 and younger I'd give my copy to one of them, but I don't think a typical adult who doesn't have a preexisting love for Aragones or Groo would think much of it.

a brief review elsewhere

2009-01-07T09:19:00.003-05:00

I wrote 150 words on the third volume of Fantagraphics' Popeye collection for the Weekly Dig, and here they are.

We'll have a true post up soon, I think.

UPDATE: Damn. My editor added that line about Altman's film. That thing is a hell of a lot better than its reputation, and surprisingly faithful to Segar.

Best of 08: Garrett

2009-01-06T18:33:00.002-05:00

I left off archival works and compilations, so no Herbie Archives or Great Outdoor Fight. If I included those I'd have to include all of DC's Jack Kirby Omnibi, or Popeye Vol. 3, or the latest Peanuts books, and then my top ten of 2008 list would contain nothing originally published in 2008. I fudge that a bit with the top two, since both appeared elsewhere before being collected, but I feel both were underpublicized enough before collection and both stand strong enough as unified wholes to justify ignoring that self-imposed rule. Or something. Anyway!

1. Skyscrapers of the Midwest, by Josh Cotter

Probably not a surprise. We both raved over this one back in July, and everything we said then still stands. Beautiful, moving, ambitious yet relatively restrained, etc. You should probably read this book, if you like things that are great.

2. Ganges #2, by Kevin Huizenga

My first experience with both Huizenga and the Ignatz line. I love the size and two-tone printing, which pretty much perfectly complement Huizenga's early 20th century newspaper strip style. Ganges is thoughtful and reflective without becoming boring or pretentious. "Pulverize", about a group of coworkers addictively playing a multiplayer first-person-shooter during the dwindling days of the first internet boom, elegantly examines the delicate interplay between professional and personal relationships, and how tenuous the latter can be. I've seen this book, and "Pulverize" specifically, on a number of best-of lists, and for good reason.

3. Little Nothings, by Lewis Trondheim

We talked about this, too. It's still awesome.

4. All-Star Superman, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

Not just a perfect distillation of seven decades of Superman, more than just a tender and heartfelt appreciation of the most important superhero ever, All-Star Superman is the rare book that strikes to the very heart of why most of us started reading comics in the first place without devolving into schmaltz or shameless nostalgia. The hope and optimism of All-Star Superman is the perfect antidote to the cynicism and self-satisfied "edginess" that's all too common in modern genre comics.

5. Criminal, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Brubaker and Phillips have the talent to take genre elements that are completely clichéd and easily mishandled and somehow turn them into art as good as their influences. The three oversized issues that make up the third trade, The Dead and the Dying, feature their best and most heartbreaking storytelling, and the four-issue arc that ended the year had a great noir twist ending. And the great essays and reviews in the back make this one comic you should definitely buy every month.

6. Casanova, by Matt Fraction and Fabio Moon

The second "album" of Fraction's mind-bending spy-fi farce ended on an emotional high without crapping out on its typical culture-mad sprightliness. Moon's beautiful art is just as fluid and detailed as his twin brother Gabriel Ba's, without really resembling it much at all. And Fraction's back-matter essays are also pretty great, even if he pulls the curtain back a little too far on his creative process. It feels like a Warren Ellis comic written by somebody who isn't a miserable grouse.

7. Tales Designed to Thrizzle, by Michael Kupperman

I always assume Kupperman can't keep it up, that each new issue of Thrizzle will be the one where I can finally see the effort behind Kupperman's hilarious absurdity and thus lose interest. #4 is just as amazing as the first three issues, though.

8. Final Crisis, by Grant Morrison, JG Jones, and Carlos Pacheco

The most elliptical major crossover ever might confound readers who think The Death of Captain Marvel is great literature, but I'm fascinated, both by how consistently Morrison lets major events unfold off-page, and by how slowly and steadily the apocalyptic dread escalates as Darkseid crushes all hope and individuality. I've heard good things about Simonson's Orion series, but Final Crisis is the best use of the Fourth World mythology since Kirby.

9. Incredible Hercules, by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, and various artists

The hilarious and action-packed Incredible Hercules is the best straight-forward superhero comic of 2008. Second- or third-tier books like Hercules benefit from low expectations, sure, but also from the freedom creators have to make a genuine impact upon the character and establish new status quos. You can't get too crazy with the Batman, but with decades-old, yet relatively untapped, properties like Hercules, an enterprising writer (or two) can stretch out and tell some unexpectedly great stories. We saw it last year with Iron Fist and Nova, and maybe right now with Ghost Rider. But so, unifying modern-day Herc with his mythological past expanded the emotional range of a previously one-and-a-half-note dude, and the oddly poignant relationship between him and his teenage sidekick Amadeus Cho is one of the most believable depictions of male camaraderie you'll find from either Marvel or DC.

10. Umbrella Academy, by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

Whoa, another one we talked about. Imagine that. Like Hercules, Umbrella Academy is just an awesomely fun superhero comic, but with fantastic artwork from Gabriel Ba and a broken family / frustrated potential angle that always makes me think of both The Royal Tenenbaums and Asia's "Heat of the Moment." Good stuff.

Best of 08: Hillary

2009-01-06T18:30:00.005-05:00

1. Skyscrapers of the Midwest, by Josh Cotter
I think it holds up like crazy. Months after reading this, I still can't get it out of my head, which probably means it's really, really good.

2. Little Nothings 1: The Curse of the Umbrella, by Lewis Trondheim
It seems so unfair to demote this to second place because Josh Cotter is more dramatic and Trondheim is more fun-loving, and it's not the kind of thing I often do. Basically, you could consider this list as having two #1s. Trondheim translates amazingly well. Volume 2 should be out soon. Hooray!

3. Achewood: The Great Outdoor Fight, by Chris Onstad
Yes, previously published, but nicely packaged and collected, and I suppose it's somewhat accessible if you don't read the strip. It's not flawless, but it is unlike anything else around.

4. The Umbrella Academy, vol. 1, Apocalypse Suite, by Gerard Way
Because I have to get something superheroey in somewhere here, right? I can't think of any really great collections or GNs of superhero work that came out this year. I mean, I liked Aztek: The Ultimate Man, but I didn't love it, so this is about the closest thing. A nice surprise and a welcome new voice.

5. Criminal, vol. 3, The Dead and the Dying, by Ed Brubaker
I'd actually almost forgotten about this, and that would have been a shame, as it's got a beautifully crafted narrative and showed me why Brubaker is important (really compelling plots and characters despite [or because of?] a straightforward approach).

6. Speak of the Devil, by Gilbert Hernandez
Perhaps too high on my list right now, due to its freshness in my mind, but I think it's kind of an amazing little book, with a short, contained story that still manages to have a lot of impact.

7. Chiggers, by Hope Larson
Larson continues to grow, and her work is deceptively simple. If you look at it closely, she has a better grasp of female-to-female relationships than anyone I can think of except maybe the Hernandezes, and she's young yet. It's a quiet book but a beautifully crafted one.

8. The Education of Hopey Glass, by Jaime Hernandez
I know. Two Hernandezes on one list. But I can't resist this stuff.

9. Herbie Archives, vol. 1
It's pretty good only to include one vintage repackaging of comics here, but this was my favorite of any of them, mostly due to its sheer originality and weirdness. It gets a bit repetitive, but it's still great stuff.

10. Stinky, by Eleanor Davis
Last but not least, a contribution by a local (to me) and a very talented lady. It's a kid's book, yes, but it's the kind that has a lot of care put into every page, and while the story isn't the most original thing ever, the way it's done is really wonderful.

Speak of the Devil

2008-12-18T12:53:00.003-05:00

Speak of the Devil
by Gilbert Hernandez
Dark Horse Comics, 2008

Hillary Brown: Merry Christmas, everyone. What could be better and more heartwarming to read at this time of year than Gilbert Hernandez's Speak of the Devil, a jolly romp featuring a whole lot of knifed eyeballs? So, um, this was my first book by Gilbert. I've read a good bit of Jaime's stuff (Locas and some of the smaller compilations), and I'm a big fan, but I still didn't know exactly what to expect. Nor do I yet. Have you read any of Gilbert's books? Is the darkness typical? I'm not saying I minded it--in fact, this book ended up being a really nice pairing with Kill Your Boyfriend--but even though the back warns you that it's going to get dark, it's still hard to anticipate just how dark. It's often said that Jaime is the better artist and Gilbert is the better writer, but I don't know if you can tell the latter from this example. Maybe? Why don't I shut up about Los Bros. Hernandez until you fill me in on your preexisting knowledge and expectations.

Garrett Martin: Very little knowledge of either preexists. This is the first comic I've read by either. Yep! And maybe it wasn't the best one to start with? It does get really dark, but in such a shocking and ridiculous way that I honestly have no idea what Hernandez is trying to say. I mean, I laughed some, but mostly out of discomfort, I think, and not knowing how to react. It gets so over-the-top so quickly that I have to assume we're supposed to find it ridiculous, right?

HB: I don't think we are, and it's possible you have to be familiar with their stuff to realize that. It definitely is over the top, but it has a kind of melancholy (especially female melancholy) that's very familiar to me from Jaime's work. Of course, Jaime's characters aren't so much with the crazy murdering sprees--they exist in a more down-to-earth, realistic world, at least after he gets past the initial rocketship stuff--but Maggie, who's one of his most important and well-rounded characters, suffers from some pretty severe depression sometimes, and she's not the only one. There is something here that rings weirdly truer to me than Kill Your Boyfriend did. It may be that the black-and-white art really suits the strangeness and sneakiness of the story. Or that I have all this background. I mean, I don't already know any of these characters, but I'm steeped in the kind of neo-noir that Jaime does really well, so seeing Gilbert go that route isn't entirely surprising. Except when it is. Basically, there's a kind of outrageousness that manages to pack an emotional punch that they're both very, very good at, but it's possible you have to read a bunch of it to get to that point.

GM: It's definitely outrageous. Does Speak of the Devil pack that emotional punch for you? It doesn't for me, and I don't even see how Hernandez could be angling for that. There's a visceral reaction to the violence, sure, but I didn't feel anything for any of these characters. He does a good job of building things up over the first few issues, establishing a relatively mundane but believable cast of characters, and then suddenly veers off on that absurd twist. Nothing in those first few issues lead us to expect these characters to do some of the things they later do so cavalierly. It's almost like Hernandez is mocking readers for potentially caring about the earlier part of the story. But yeah, maybe it'd make more sense if I was familiar with his work.

HB: I don't know. I'm still working out how I feel about the book, but, yeah, I definitely liked it, and I do think it's deeper than it seemed, although I'm not sure there's a logical way to explain that. There's a deep sadness to the characters that I see, but, again, I don't know if that results from reading similar work (minus eye stabbing) by Jaime. It could result from the minimalism of both story and art. There's a very flat affect to everything that happens, which makes the sudden swerve into extraordinary violence more shocking and more interesting, but, yes, possibly less believable. I definitely don't think Gilbert's either mocking the reader for caring or trying not to make the reader care abut the characters. I mean, character development is probably the major thing these guys have contributed to comics, and one of the ways it happens is through absence rather than presence. That is: the characters are often frustrating in their seeming lack of motivation for their actions, and the author/artist deliberately keeps the reader in the dark, refusing to represent crucial events but only alluding to them sidelong, but none of this makes the characters less realistic or round. I can see Speak of the Devil as being in this tradition, but it's also a much shorter work than the series the Hernandezes have been spinning out for years, so it may not be as effective.

GM: I need to read some Love & Rockets.Never done so, and I'm not holding my relatively disappointment in Speak of the Devil against either that or Hernandez. I really do like his art, and even if I think this plot is a bit disjointed he has a good sense for pacing. Your point about absence is really intriguing, and that's a great tactic to use in a medium that's both visual and literary, one where the creators can show and not just tell, and yet where the audience still has control over the rate and flow of information. That's sound comics theory, sure. Maybe it's deployed a bit too liberally in Speak of the Devil, though? There's really no motivation given for why these three people do what they do. Okay, little motivation. The guy has an unhappy homelife, the girl is mad about her dad's job and second marriage, the step-mother is an exhibitionist, etc. But there's no clear through line from any of that to the actions these characters eventually carry out, especially pertaining to certain family members. I just simply can't take any of this seriously, and would like somebody smarter than me (read: you) to explain why I should.

HB: Have you ever seen They Call Her One-Eye? There's something about Speak of the Devil that reminds me of that movie, which is a "rape and revenge" picture that is both extreme to the point of ridiculousness (it's not only violent but also includes hard-core pornography) and kind of bleak and touching and affecting at the same time. I wouldn't be surprised if it's kind of an influence on this book. I might also point out that the motivations are somewhat similar to those in Kill Your Boyfriend, in that the characters live in a stifling environment that causes them to rebel. The results are just represented in a darker way, stripped of joy to show them in a different, perhaps more realistic light. It's a more traditional take, I guess, and while it is depressing, there's just something about it that gets under my skin in a good way.

GM: Yeah, it's definitely not joyful, and if Hernandez's goal is to point out the ridiculousness of that whole teen-killers-on-the-run subgenre by not glamorizing or sugarcoating anything (okay I think we've officially blasted apart our tacit no-spoilers rule, sorry folks) then he did a great job. I really don't know how I feel about this book, overall, which is a sign that, if anything, at least Hernandez has made a really striking, distinctive piece of work. And perhaps if I knew about the book's eventual direction I would be more accepting of it. I still feel that it's too random, too unexpected, and not nearly foreshadowed or developed enough.

HB: Fair enough. Maybe you should check back in after spending Christmas with your family and see how you feel about seemingly unmotivated murders then?

GM: Oh, c'mon. Family is what the booze is for. Maybe these kids should've just gotten drunk instead.

HB: Happy holidays, everyone!

Kill Your Boyfriend

2008-12-11T12:21:00.004-05:00

Kill Your Boyfriend
by Grant Morrison, Phillip Bond, and D'Israeli
DC Comics, 1995

Garrett Martin: See, Grant Morrison doesn't just write superheroes. I missed Kill Your Boyfriend when it came out in '95 (by then my comic money was redirected towards the daunting task of tracking down all of the Fall's albums), and that's for the best, as I probably would've hated it. Despite what Matt Fraction says in this review, it's good I first read this as a 30-year-old, as my actual 17-year-old self would've been offended, even if only as a kneejerk reaction.

I didn't enjoy being hectored about being a highly uptight suburbanite back then, and probably wouldn't have been able to look past the drugs and sex and violence to realize how fun the comic actually is. I would've associated more with the dead boyfriend than the guy that killed him, even though I never read fantasy or sci-fi and was obsessed with generally pro-drug rock 'n' roll. I mean, I lived in East Cobb, of course I was Republican. I voted for Newt Gingrich, dammit. I was a scared, uptight idiot, and still am about many things. Despite already strongly loving Morrison in '95, I would not have allowed myself to enjoy a comic that seemed to glorify drug-use, teen sex, and murder. Yeah, I was dumb. And now I am old, or older, and regularly feel highly nostalgic for youthful experiences that I personally avoided when I was young. Kill Your Boyfriend reminds us how awesome youth is, even if you don't take anywhere near full advantage of that youth. And no, I don't think murdering sprees and general mayhem constitute that full advantage, but that's also not what Morrison is saying. Would you have liked this when you were a girl? Do you like it now? Did meeting Mr. Brown turn you into a modern-day Bacchante?

Hillary Brown: Well, gosh, getting married and going to college at age 18 isn't really all that decadent. I think I'm pretty much a square too, despite my love of violent, profane art, so I don't know if that means I am or ain't the target market for this book. I do wish I'd read it when it came out, but not for the reasons Fraction mentions as much as because of what followed, something Morrison acknowledges in the afterword (sidebar: Is Badlands called Heartland in the UK? Or is that just some sort of massive error?). Once, there was Badlands and not much else in terms of gleeful murdering couples on the lam, and then all of a sudden they were everywhere, shortly after Morrison completed his comic, which tends in retrospect to mute the impact of his entry in the genre. That's not his fault, of course, but it's still a factor. You see that sort of set up and you kind of automatically sigh and think, "Oh, mid-to-late 1990s, what the heck what were you on about?"

I think I wavered, in the reading, between real enjoyment and annoyance, and my guess is that that's fair. There is a kind of joy in the lack of a moral, such as when our heroine loses her virginity and complains that that moment is always disappointing in books and movies but to her it's brilliant, but there's also a hiccupy kind of pacing that comes off as immature. Maybe that's intentional, but it doesn't read that way. It reads as though Morrison didn't feel like writing the in-between material, the "how we got here from there" stuff, and wanted to keep the pace frenetic the whole time. I appreciate hyperactive art, but this is maybe a little ADHD at times. On the other hand, as you point out, at least it's different from the superhero stuff. Do I like it? Yeah, I guess I like it, but I still feel bad for the dead boyfriend too...

GM: The lack of dot-connecting is a common complaint about Morrison. I don't even really notice that with his superhero comics, but Kill Your Boyfriend does feel a little rushed. Considering the subject matter, though, that rush works to the book's advantage. Should the comic deliberate over ridiculously impulsive acts? Were you bothered by the jump cuts in Breathless? I think if the book was less breezy it would lose much of its impact, while also letting the horribleness of their actions seap in more. It'd make the book less fun, and, along with its unsmug and surprisingly charming cynicism, that fun is its greatest strength.

HB: Well, that's true, and you may be right, but you can be quick and breezy and light without making the reader feel s/he's missed something, can't you? For example, when you get around to Joann Sfar's The Professor's Daughter, you'll see that that has almost perfect pacing, with a maximum of speed and a minimum of jump cut. And, yes, the jump cuts do bug me a little in Breathless, even as I recognize that they're an important innovation. They can make me feel jittery and as though I'm in the control of a person lacking both marbles and direction, which is a useful artistic experience but not one I want to have all that often. It's not necessarily that the book needs to be more deliberative. I think it's just that it doesn't really make me identify all that much with the characters because it feels as though the book espouses their philosophy of carefree violence, and there's something that really bugs me about that--more so in this case than in a lot of others. It may be going too far--it is, in fact--to say that Kill Your Boyfriend reminds me of Garth Ennis's less successful efforts, but it's very hard to do this kind of thing super well. Malick did, but maybe he set up better the bleakness against which rebellion is necessary.

GM: See, I'm normally very bothered by violence like this, but it doesn't bug me in Kill Your Boyfriend. The book is so light and joyful that it's hard to take the violence seriously. This is just about the frothiest piece of spree-murdering teen fiction around, and I disagree that it espouses a philosophy of violence. The violence is just a metaphor for that exciting moment on the edge of adulthood when you realize you're capable of living your life however you choose. They're not saying it's fun or cool to kill people, but that you don't need to be constricted by all the preconceptions that family and society have prepared for you. It's like all seven volumes of The Invisibles rolled into one slim graphic novel. Kill Your Boyfriend makes that point in a giddier and less cynical manner than something like Natural Born Killers. It's closer in spirit to Bonnie & Clyde, which does a great job of making you almost forgive them for their horrible crimes. Also, though, comics are a less visceral and immediate artform than film, so maybe that's why I can easier distance myself from the violence of KYB than similar movies.

I enjoy Kill Your Boyfriend less for the message and more for the execution. I like how the plot jumps from scene to scene, how Morrison doesn't waste time meticulously setting up every moment. And I've always loved Phillip Bond's art, which is wonderfully cartoonish without becoming too abstract or unrealistic. He doesn't have the often startling detail of Frank Quitely, but Bond might be my favorite frequent Morrison collaborator.

HB: Or, you know, it could just be that you love Grant Morrison. I think you've definitely got some good points, and, again, I can agree with an anarchic philosophy to some extent, but challenging authority doesn't have to go quite so far, does it? Ugh. I'm draining all the fun out of the book. I completely agree that it far surpasses Natural Born Killers in just about every way possible--it's
like The Buzzcocks to Natural Born Killers's Insane Clown Posse--and you're right about the art being a kind of candy-coated pleasure to look at. Sometimes I just Morrison weren't so explicitly concerned with bucking the status quo, and I do think it's something he's grown out of. You can continue to be revolutionary without always defining yourself against something. But this is grouchy and dumb. People should read the book.

GM: I'd say other high-profile writers are more guilty of pointless status quo bucking and hipster contrarianism. That's what I think about a lot of Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis comics. Whereas those two often coast about in hypercynical mode, Morrison's comics are usually pretty positive and hopeful. And maybe the end of Kill Your Boyfriend is supposed to be a downer, with the girl living the sort of life she had hoped to avoid, but I see it more as both acknowledgement that that "normal" life isn't quite so bad but also reinforcement of the idea that you need to embrace your youth while you can.

How do you feel about people calling this a "pop" comic?

HB: I totally agree that those guys are more guilty, but neither are they as canonized. I forgot about the end of the book though! I don't think it ends up a downer, although I'm not quite sure how to interpret it, other than thinking it's funny. Maybe it's an insight into your parents' lives? A hint that they, too, were once like you, and that a quiet suburban life doesn't preclude excitement in your earlier days?

What do people mean when they call it a pop comic? That it's not grim?

GM: Maybe not Ellis, but Ennis and Preacher get more love in non-superhero circles than Morrison or any of his comics.

The pop comic thing, which Fraction mentions in that review above, refers to how it's fast, short, and, y'know, teenagery, like it's the comics equivalent of that fucking Supergrass song about being young and having fun. Maybe Brit-pop comic would be a better tag?

HB: Because it implies cheekiness? Yeah, I think that's an accurate tag and not a dismissive one in my opinion. But I like things that are fast, short, and teenagery.

GM: Yeah, it's not supposed to dismissive at all. It's sad anybody feels the need to specifically point out a "pop" comic, though, since superhero comics pretty much always should be inherently short, fast, and youthful, but whatever.

more stuff here soon and elsewhere now

2008-12-04T10:59:00.002-05:00

HELLO. We'll have posts soon about Kill Your Boyfriend, Speak of the Devil, and more. In the meantime, go read this review I wrote of Guy Delisle's Burma Chronicles for the Weekly Dig.

The Walking Dead, Book One

2008-11-26T09:03:00.002-05:00

The Walking Dead, Book One (issues #1-12)
by Robert Kirkman/Tony Moore/Charlie Adlard
Image Comics, 2006

Hillary Brown: So I'm not one of these people who's crazy about everything zombie. I mean, I end up watching most of the zombie movies anyway, for some reason (I like seeing brains eaten?), but they tend to be dour and repetitive. All of which may mean I'm not the ideal audience for The Walking Dead, which Robert Kirkman has admitted, nay boasted of, creating because he wanted a zombie movie that would never end. Still, I kind of liked it anyway, even though I was conscious of its flaws in the reading. Maybe zombie media just provokes a state of mild-mannered acceptance in me. I guess we're going to discuss issues 1 through 6, which are collected in Days Gone Bye, even though I've actually read through issue 12, collected in a fancy hardback. I didn't really think about there being a nice line dividing the two parts, but there is, and Kirkman does seem to have planned his story arcs well for pacing. Issues end at good points. The art is pretty good, although fairly conventional. A few very smart and surprising things happen, although they're concentrated in 7 through 12 rather than 1 through 6. There are some decent characters who don't behave like idiots or jerks all the time. And I suppose it's a relatively realistic picture of the way this kind of thing would go down. But dude. It does not snow in Atlanta. Not more than once a year. And when it does, it rarely sticks. If you're going to pick a distinctive place to set your story--and, believe me, I appreciate the choice, as a native Atlantan--you should perhaps do your research. And maybe you shouldn't have one of your first important characters wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap, right?

Garrett Martin: First off, yeah, zombies, fuck 'em. I'm sick of the zombie thing. Maybe because I've been playing a ton of Left 4 Dead lately (um, really good!), or maybe because I eventually grew horribly bored with Walking Dead, or maybe just because crazy nutty zombie obsessions are no more interesting, unique, or humorous today than they were ten or fifteen years ago. Either way, it's hard to get me interested in almost anything zombie-related.

Okay. Now let's talk specifics. We can easily discuss up to issue 12, if you like; I've read the first six trades, which takes me up to issue 36 or so. Walking Dead is another comic I expected to dislike, but wound up getting kind of addicted to for a while. Kirkman's zombie apocalypse isn't all that unique, but like you said he does a good job of making events follow a somewhat natural and realistic sequence. His characters often act like real people and not just horror movie cliches. I wouldn't say I cared for them, but I did become interested in their fate. I rooted for them, sure. And for a while Kirkman did a good job of gradually expanding the environment, introducing new characters and situations that felt like common-sensical extensions of the story. Still, the addiction had more to do with the comparatively cheap cost and the quickness with which each trade reads (I could polish one off in a single forty-minute trainride to work) than actual quality, I think. It's definitely a solid book, for the first couple of years at least, but it's mostly unexceptional, and so unlike what I normally look for that I really think I read it just because it was easy to do so. And, y'know, Kirkman's good with a cliffhanger and some cheap scares.

And I agree about the Atlanta weirdness. Kirkman and Tony Moore need to bone up on their climatology.

HB: I think this is a really good way of looking at it. It's very very readable, and if I had the first six trades or all of it or whatever, I'd definitely read it. In fact, I read it on the kitchen counter while waiting for pasta to finish cooking. I read it as much as I could read it. And yet I felt a little empty for doing so. I like how you point out that not hating the characters is not the same thing as caring for them. I mean, they could all die, and I wouldn't really care. I'd just be like, "Hmm. Interesting. What happens next?" It's the mechanics that keep you reading: Where will they get their next meal? What's with the barn full of zombies? Who's plotting what? And dang that military base does look like a good option for a more permanent home. Still, it's a little talky, isn't it? I mean, action gets boring after a while too, but a lot of these characters just unfurl their thoughts like a big-ass banner, for panel after panel, while the other person involved in the conversation nods and says thoughtful things, and eventually they all start to sound the same, which means I'd prefer that their brains get eaten. It's when Kirkman's ruthless (or more so) that the book improves. The two things I appreciated most in the first 12 issues were 1. Carl getting shot (it's unexpected and mean, which I like), and 2. The idea that maybe you shouldn't just start killing zombies without thinking about the fact that they might get better because it could just be a disease or something (even if it's eventually discounted). And both of these things are not aspects of every zombie movie ever made, which is what makes them better story elements.

GM: True about both points there, and Walking Dead is nothing if not consistently unpredictable. Characters generally don't last long, and it's usually not pretty when they go. And I agree that the dialogue and interaction doesn't always feel right, but maybe people become more thoughtful and better listeners in the midst of unrelenting zombie hell. If you don't become a zombie, you become Charlie Rose.

Those mechanics you point out never go away. It's a constant series of fighting off a zombie invasion, finding a new safehouse, settling in for a few issues, realizing the survivors can be as dangerous for each other as the zombies, fighting off a zombie invasion, repeat. It's also weird how Kirkman can make the characters memorable (I can still see and name all the main survivors, despite not having read an issue in over a year), without really making me care about any of them. Maybe he hedges against this lack of reader investment by making the deaths increasingly more graphic and disgusting? The last time I flipped through an issue on the stands there was a two-page blow-by-blow decapitation that was just unnecessarily gruesome. There's pretty much a lack of subtlety all around. But then can you have a subtle zombie story without being boring or misguided?

HB: Subtlety isn't really what zombie stuff is about, and examples of it are few. When you're pretty much obliged to show intestine ripping/eating, it's hard to shoot for the sophisticated and oblique. I do think Walking Dead could use a bit more comedy. It's not as serious as the most serious entries in the genre, but my favorites all tend to look at this horrible situation with a lighter heart. I guess it's hard to do both realism and comedy when the dead are walking the earth and eating the living.

GM: I don't know, Shaun of the Dead balanced that perfectly. Well, it skewed closer to comedy, but if it hadn't I wouldn't have liked it that much. Shaun of the Dead, Walking Dead, and Left 4 Dead are the only examples of recent zombie media I've experienced. Before them I hadn't cared for anything zombie-related since Night of the Comet. Like I said, I don't care about the undead.

Anyway. Is there any comedy in Walking Dead? Kirkman can be funny (go read the Irredeemable Ant-Man digests for proof), but I don't remember laughing at anything here.

HB: There's not really anything that could technically qualify as comedy, but it's not relentlessly depressing the way some Romero is, for example. So maybe I should have said it could use "some" rather than "more." And maybe some of our readers who are really into zombie media will pipe up and say "this is a great example" or "this is a terrible example." My guess is that people like it or it wouldn't have run to as many issues as it has. On the other hand, Two and a Half Men sure has been on the air a long time...

GM: Whether or not it's a good example of the genre, it's definitely a good example of how to make a compulsively readable serialized story. We both attest to that. That readability seems to be the only thing that really stands out about Walking Dead, going by this discussion. Is there something about it we're not realizing? Or is it simply that it's well-paced and inoffensive entertainment?

HB: Shrug.

The Umbrella Academy Vol. 1: Apocalypse Suite; The Umbrella Academy: Dallas #1 (of 6)

2008-11-24T09:16:00.006-05:00

The Umbrella Academy Volume One: Apocalypse Suite
Umbrella Academy: Dallas #1 (of 6)
by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba
Dark Horse Comics, 2007-2008

Garrett Martin: I don't think I could've been any more skeptical about The Umbrella Academy. Not just because it's written by a celebrity, but because that celebrity is the singer and primary songwriter for a band I don't like. My Chemical Romance's theatricality makes me dislike them even more than their overwrought music. I didn't even think the blinding awesomeness of Gabriel Ba (as integral to the success of the fantastic first album of Casanova as Matt Fraction) could make up for the guaranteed awfulness of Gerard Way's story. I never would've given this series a shot if it hadn't debuted on Free Comic Book Day. I'm glad I did, though, because it's so damned good it easily overcame my total lack of faith. I'm still shocked at how much I like these comics. The obvious Grant Morrison influence no doubt helps, but for the most part Way eschews both the grandiose and lachrymose tendencies of My Chemical Romance, making for a comic that's initially far less "emo" than I expected. Is it silly to think a musician would write comics like his songs? And what were your expectations?

Hillary Brown: I think you may not be giving the arch creation that is My Chemical Romance quite enough credit. I'm not necessarily the biggest fan (they get a little shouty for me), but I've enjoyed a song here and there, and I can recognize the way their fans interpret their songs as differing from the way they might be meant. That is: there are people who think the Smiths don't have a sense of humor or that Bauhaus is similarly dour. I wouldn't say MCR is in their league, but they're not entirely serious about their emotions. Aaaanyway. This is not to say I was less skeptical than you, despite hearing good things all around. I was quite skeptical and, therefore, quite happy with the results, which are fresh, funny, interesting, and well-paced. I also thought the art would be too angular for me, but I ended up really liking Ba's stuff and fairly quickly too. The tone throughout is pleasingly dry and rather British without skimping on action, and while there's a bit of initial frustration at one's own failure to grasp who's who immediately, it fades after an issue or two. This is not to say it doesn't have flaws. Much like Morrison, whom I hadn't thought of an an influence but clearly see as one now, Way could work a little harder on his exposition. It's a fine balance to strike, though, and you want to leave just enough mystery to keep things intriguing. On the other hand, if you start to look at the plot too closely, it begins to collapse, to demonstrate that, while its way fun as you speed along, you really shouldn't get out your magnifying glass unless you want to be disappointed.

GM: I like the headlong hurtle through the plot in the earlier issues, the piling on of ideas that aren't always thoroughly explained. But then I love Morrison, Kirby, and Silver Age non-sense, so it's expected I'd dig that. Apocalypse Suite, the first six issue mini-series and collection, is at its best in the early goings, when Way and Ba are setting things up, establishing this world, and spooling out all these great little ideas. They're not all particularly original (if the dude who created the first comic book talking monkey got royalties, he could buy and sell Dubai a thousand times over), but they're presented with such obvious excitement and love for the form that I can't help but get swept up in the rush. In fact, my interested started to dim slightly when the pace slowed down and the story became more focused. That also coincides with a tilt towards the sort of overemotional melodrama I expected, though, and so I can't tell which is more responsible for the book eventually running out of steam. Or maybe it was the graphic death of a character that never, ever should've died, ever.

HB: Ah, but the smartness of the series is its flexibility in time, meaning a) there are a lot of untold potential stories, b) the time spanned is wide, from childhood to adulthood, and c) this means, especially when you incorporate a time-traveling character, that no one ever really dies, which means you can get the impact of a great character's death without having all the drawbacks. There's still so much that remains to be unpacked, like what exactly happened to number five, and this is what makes me want to keep reading, the faith that they'll get to that stuff and do so in an interesting way. You really think it's melodramatic?

GM: Maybe not melodramatic, but when the plot kicks in it sways perilously close to the sort of morose and angsty self-pity you find in bad emo music. Granted the character that most embodies these traits winds up being the bad guy, more or less, and is defeated, so Way's not necessarily endorsing that non-sense. The primary source of the book's drama is built on that whole teenagery "I'm so different, nobody understands me" schtick, and it's a testament to Way's gift for pacing, dialogue, and inspired concepts that I still like Apocalypse Suite as much as I do. And that's a good point about the flexible narrative. The character whose death bummed me out so much makes an appearance in the first issue of the second series, Dallas.

Normally I ask if you're interested in reading future installments; well, we already have, thanks to a preview copy of the first issue of the next series. What did you think of that?

HB: I thought it was a little obscure but promising, which is probably the same way I would have felt upon reading only the first issue of this first story arc. It's definitely a series I could see myself following, if not month to month then at least in trades. I just kind of still think you're overstating the emo quality of Apocalypse Suite. I mean, is it more so than Young Avengers was? Okay. Maybe it is a little. Especially since the whole "music can help me express myself but also destroy the world" theme is in there. But it didn't annoy me, perhaps because of that recent Smiths/Cure dance party Mr. Brown and I played the part of the Smiths at. Mopey adolescent music must be in my blood or something. Would you keep reading, despite being more irritated?

GM: Don't get me wrong: I really like Apocalypse Suite. I'm just noting that it initially won me over in part because it lacked a quality I expected, but that gradually creapt in to an extent. It didn't creep in enough to derail my enthusiasm for the book, but it did temper it very slightly. It's still a really fun comic with a number of good ideas, an interesting team and family dynamic, and fantastic artwork.

I was worried that Way could be the type of writer who exhausts all his good ideas in one swoop, but the first issue of Dallas allayed some of those fears. It's not as immediately striking as the first issue of Apocalypse Suite, and the villains introduced at the end are maybe too much like something you'd find in Morrison's Doom Patrol, but it definitely left me looking forward to the next issue. The final note didn't particularly resonate with me; number 5's final line, and the situation that surrounds it, are just a little too common and generic, I think.

HB: Fair enough. I wasn't giddy with excitement over the cliffhanger ending of the new storyline's first issue, but it's still so much better than most stuff like this, and I may like it as much as I like the first trade of Doom Patrol, which is all I've gotten around to so far.

GM: Yeah, the cliffhanger isn't particularly compelling, if only because the whole "bad-ass character puts over the unseen but upcoming threat that we know absolutely nothing about by totally freaking out about it " thing has been done many times in the past (and damn, hopefully a better writer somewhere can come up with a far less clunky term for that).

What other stuff would you say is like this? Just wondering. And you should read more Doom Patrol. The first trade is great, but it gets even better. Morrison's last eight issues might be my favorite comics ever.

HB: Well, it has stuff in common with what little I know of The Prisoner and Harry Potter and Heroes and, I guess, most teams of younger superheroes. There's a lot of time devoted to digging into their particular talents and backgrounds. It's like you get to tell a bunch of origin stories, and who doesn't like origin stories? The question is whether they can maintain momentum after exhausting that stuff, and I'm not sure that they can, but I also don't necessarily feel like they can't. (Also: okay. I will read more Doom Patrol. Arm twisting not necessary.)

GM: True about origin stories. Notice my interest in Apocalypse Suite slightly abated once they hit the meat of the plot. Dallas will be the test of whether Way can make us care about these characters outside their initial concept and archetypes.

I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets

2008-11-14T15:42:00.003-05:00

I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets
by Fletcher Hanks, ed. by Paul Karasik
Fantagraphics 2007

Hillary Brown: Usually, when people go on and on about how weird something is, it's not really that weird--it's just unfamiliar to them. I've certainly done this myself with large chunks of Japanese culture. But calling Fletcher Hanks weird doesn't quite do justice to the comics artist/writer's, um, unique vision. I've been wanting to pick up I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets for at least a year, so pairing it with Herbie was a good excuse. The thing is, Herbie is a thoroughly competent creation--it's just kind of goofy. ISDATCP, on the other hand, would be a real testament to the artistry of the strange outsider, a kind of portrait of Fletcher Hanks as Henry Darger, if it weren't so incredibly lazy. That's the thing: is obsessive repetition the hallmark of an interesting brain or is it really more of a sign flashing "don't get into a conversation with this guy"? I'm still not even sure what I think of this compilation or of Hanks. Every issue of his creations represented here (Stardust the Super Wizard, Fantomah, and Big Red McLane) follows exactly the same path: trouble is detected by superman/woman; hero/heroine takes surprisingly long to arrive, despite having known what was going to happen for some time, during which thousands of people die; "poetic justice" is enacted, often involving levitation of the bad guys. It's utterly itself, but is that self good?

Garrett Martin: Fuck yeah that self is good. Not good like Peanuts or Acme Novelty Library, and not "so good it's bad", but inherently fascinating and entertaining it its own way. Sure, a way that's often disturbing and depressing, but still, completely valid. These strips are striking not just because of the repetition and the flights of ridiculousness (the latter of which I shall admit is the main appeal), but because they're so blunt and savage, and completely unconcerned with (or unaware of) the fact that their target audience is ostensibly a bunch of kids. Yeah, Batman killed some dudes his first year or so, and folks died all the time in Dick Tracy, but Hanks' stuff is particularly violent and vengeance-crazed for the time period.

A lot of folks call what Hanks did "outsider" comics, which is kinda dumb on a few levels. I'm only comfortable with that tag when it's applied to somebody that means well but isn't quite competent, like the Shaggs, or BJ Snowden. Hanks wasn't an outsider, he was just a lazy alcoholic, like you said, and as the editor, Paul Karasik, points out in his comic strip post-script. Yeah, Stardust and Fantomah strips are a bit incompetent, but that's not from a lack of talent so much as Hanks' total disregard of comics as a medium.

HB: You mean Hanks isn't an outsider because he actually did publish these stories? Did they appear in reputable (or as reputable as comics got) publications? Or was it the kind of nonsense most city magazines publish today in order to have something to sell ads alongside? It's hard for me to contextualize them. Basically, I'm trying to figure out in what way he's "competent"? They're lettered in comprehensible English? I mean, each comic tells a story, but it's the same story every time, with minor details changed. The art may differ even less. Is that competent or in-?

GM: Stardust appeared in comics from the Fox company, who published Blue Beetle and early work from well-known, long-time pros like Lou Fine, George Tuska, and a certain li'l fella named Kirby (thanks, Wikipedia!) It was definitely low-rent stuff, but not quite the same as a dude calling himself a video game critic 'cuz he writes 150-word reviews for an unpopular free newspaper. And I'm basing the competency claim on Karasik's strip; it's been a while since I've read it, but doesn't he find a more serious Hanks drawing that doesn't look hastily tossed-off? That kind of impresses Karasick? Okay, maybe it's incompetent, but it's a thoroughly distinct and unique style, both artistically and philosophically. But since we're hung up on that word, let me ask you, do you think Darger or Finster are "competent"?

HB: Well... That's a good question. I guess I do, but then they're not trying for a narrative, or at least Finster's not and Darger's story is mostly in his crazy-ass novel and not so much in the pictures. I'd like for there to be a more direct point of comparison between them. You can probably argue that Hanks's art is competent, if weird and repetitive, but I don't know if you can say the same for his storytelling. This is terrible, though. I'm coming off as though I don't like or appreciate Hanks's stuff, which isn't true. I might be confused by it when I try to think about it deeply, but I did enjoy the unique voice at work. Maybe I should stop trying to analyze potential reactions to it so much.

GM: "Outsider" is such an open-ended term, anyway, it might as well be meaningless. So let's screw that discussion and talk about something better; namely, why this book is so damn awesome. 'Cuz, hell, it is awesome, right? I don't need to know Hanks' backstory to know he must've been one seriously angry dude, all I gotta do is read this book and get beat over the head by the totally cavalier attitude both he and his omnipotent characters hold towards both society and humanity in general. Sure, maybe Hanks held comics and their readers in contempt, or at least didn't care about the quality of his own work, but you can't deny the guy had an amazingly vivid and sordid imagination.

HB: Yeah, it's pretty awesome, even if it's a little Leni Riefenstahl at times, which is fairly awkward, considering that these books were produced between 1939 and 1941. I mean, maybe there's a reason they fell by the wayside, with their blond heroes and heroine stomping on the ugly of the world. Hanks's desire to see death and destruction, too, would soon become reality, with both fire- and atom bombing of civilian populations. Maybe that time felt as weirdly apocalyptic as our own, or maybe he was just a pissed off, violent drunk.

GM: Well, the economy was still pretty god-damned depressed when Hanks was making comics, so there's one sorta parallel to our current situation. And yeah, this stuff is fairly fascist. I generally tune out when somebody attacks superhero comics for being fascist, but it might be irrefutable in the case of Stardust. But, really, there are no politics in this book. Sure, many stories revolve around intrigue and sabotage from the Fifth Column, but, like almost every facet of Hanks' work, there's so little similarity to anything even remotely possible in the real world that it's completely incorrect to call it political. Hanks' conspiracies are "political" in the same way as Major League Baseball using satellites to spy on the American people in that Simpsons episode. His comics are like the Golden Age equivalent of Ed Anger.

HB: It's more political in the way that the letters of raving loonies to
the newspaper are political... Is that what you're saying?

GM: In terms of content, sure, although I have no idea if Hanks shared the paranoia evident in his comics.

HB: True. We don't have any evidence for that. He's still a mystery, and while it's possible that makes his comics better (through not providing more reasons to hate him as a man, which could extend to disliking his artistic creations), they really do have a strange power. The advantage of experiencing a work of art by someone who is probably crazy is that it's continually surprising, which these comics, despite their repetitiveness, are.

Herbie Archive, vol. 1

2008-11-07T12:19:00.003-05:00

Herbie Archive, vol. 1
by Shane O'Shea and Ogden Whitney
Dark Horse 2008

Garrett Martin: There is a serious dearth of abject ridiculousness in today's comics. Yeah, there's plenty of winking Silver Age homages and (increasingly sterile) blog-friendly shenanigans of the "nazi gorilla zombie" type (or, y'know, comics made specifically for Chris Sims), but little of the genuinely inspired lunacy that litters the medium's past. Herbie Archives Volume 1, the first of three planned hardcovers collecting a particularly surreal midcentury classic, is a perfect example of the spirit that's far too lacking today. Unlike inexplicably weird comics from guys like Fletcher Hanks or Robert Kanigher, where the oddness stems primarily from alcohol (in Hanks' case), a backbreaking schedule (for Kanigher), and a fundamental lack of respect for the intelligence of the audience (um, both of them?), Herbie mostly realizes its own ridiculousness. It's not really a straight-up satire of anything, but in its Mad-style irreverence Herbie does take some clear shots at both comic book conventions (uh, not the hotel ballrooms full of dudes in Beast Master costumes, but, y'know, customs or rules, or whatever) and contemporary society in general. The obvious stabs at humor sometimes fall flat, being too broad or corny, but the storytelling is truly surprising and hallucinatory in a highly satisfying way. In that way it particularly reminded me of Fletcher Hanks, and last year's excellent I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets collection, but with far less obvious rage and violence. Did you like this book? Was it too goofy for you?

Hillary Brown: Oh heck no. I don't really know if there is much that's too goofy for me. I'd never heard of Herbie before, and I enjoyed the heck out of it, especially the cameos by famous figures in history and pop culture, which kind of seem to meld, from Fidel Castro to Kennedy (and Jackie), LBJ (and Ladybird), and the Beatles. It's interestingly international in outlook, and the art is pretty great (all colorful and amusing), but mostly it's a wonderful kind of empowerment tale for fat loser kids. I mean, Herbie's dad is really damn mean to him, isn't he? Almost to the point of emotional abuse? And yet, the little fat nothing lets it all bounce off him. Sure, he has magical powers, powers that don't seem to be limited in any way other than through the imagination of the creator, but isn't the real joy of the comic in this hero who's really more of an a-hero than an antihero?

GM: Yeah, Mr. Popnecker is so shockingly, over-the-top mean to Herbie that it just becomes another part of the book's amazing ridiculousness, along with all the historical personages and, um, Frankensteins (yeah, multiple Frankensteins, here, or at least one Frankenstein making many appearances). And that international outlook (U Thant plays a big role in one issue) feels decidedly '60's, reflecting an era when politics and foreign policy were, if not sexy (or endlessly pants-shittingly frightening), then at least more of an active concern for average citizens than we've seen the last decade or so. Maybe now that socioeconomic events have directly impacted Americans' eagerness to buy HD-TVs and $5-a-box breakfast cereals, leading to the results of this historic election, we'll start seeing Evo Morales randomly pop up in Incredible Hercules. But, yes, fraternizing with these celebrities and world leaders is another aspect of Herbie's empowerment, elevating the hopelessly marginal and impressionless to a state of ultimate, if quiet, authority. And that's also, y'know, pretty damn ridiculous.

This doesn't really feel like a comic for kids, does it? But who else would've read this in 1961? Did typical comics-reading kids know who U Thant was back then?

HB: I doubt it, but it's kind of like the two-or-more-level jokes on The Simpsons, which I know kids watch. Some people just think the bopping with a lollipop is hilarious, and others are all like oh ha ha U Thant. It's also potentially educational that way. I mean, if I didn't get a reference on Gilmore Girls, I'd go look it up. And not that these kids would have had the internet, but it's possible they'd ask their parents who some of these people were. Plus, you know, it's fairly clearly marketed to nerds, who might actually know some of this information. I'm sure you, like me, had your store of political knowledge while yet a young lad. So I guess I'm saying that it doesn't seem all that crazy to me when I think about it in more depth.

Frankenstein having magical powers, though? That's nuts.

GM: True. Even if I didn't understand Mad's political jokes when I was a kid, I certainly acted like I did.

As great as Herbie is, the concept is a bit limited, right? Will you be looking for the next two archives, or has this thoroughly scratched whatever itch might exist?

HB: Well, you're right that there's not a lot of development. I suppose I'd at least thumb through another archive volume or two, but I don't know if I'd go hugely out of my way. On the other hand, I react that way to a lot of stuff that doesn't have a compelling continuous narrative. It's a problem with anything before, like, the 1980s, though, and Herbie is certainly more interesting than most other things I'd let fall by the wayside. Noncommital? Yeah, but that's a step up from negative.

GM: I agree a lack of a serialized narrative generally inhibits my interest in something. Many of the big DC Showcase books are a total slog due to the intense repetition and lack of an overarcing storyline. But, like Metamorpho and Silver Age Superman, Herbie is so brilliantly ridiculous that I can't wait to read more.

Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane Season 2 #2

2008-10-29T15:15:00.005-04:00

Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane Season 2 #2
by Terry Moore and Craig Rousseau
Marvel Comics 2008

Hillary Brown: Oh boy, Terry Moore... Well, the first issue of season 2 of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane was uneven, and it had a new tone, but the memories of Sean McKeever's wonderfulness with the story let hope bloom a little, in spite of itself. Well, the bloom is off the damn rose with issue #2. It's not as though the story has ever been interested in Spider-Man or action, but things did happen, whereas the summary of issue #2 is: Mary Jane wakes up late; she goes to acting class; she chats with some people in the hall and with Liz Allen at cheerleading practice, but all kind of aimlessly; Harry Osborn's been saying something about her, but we don't find out what it is; she goes to her new job at the hair salon and screws up but doesn't get fired; then she walks home with Spider- Man. Honestly, it's hard to find a regular-length comic like this that could put you to sleep any faster. The dialogue sags. The art is boring. Nothing frigging happens. And Spider-Man is pretty much the only dude who makes an appearance. I'm not opposed to female-centric comics. Colleen Coover did a great job in the Spider-Man Annual. But I am opposed to Moore turning SMLMJ into Strangers in Paradise minus the sex.

Garrett Martin: You're not quite negative enough; this thing is hellaciously bad. Absolutely nothing happens. And I don't mean "nobody got chest-punched, ergo nothing happened"; I mean despite the perfunctory appearance of various recognizable characters and a distinct sequence of events, absolutely nothing of note occurs at any point. What impact does any of this have on any of these characters? Basically Mary-Jane stumbles about all confused and emotionally disoriented barely reacting to events of no consequence. This wouldn't be so frustrating if the dialogue wasn't some of the worst stuff I've seen in any comic of late. Yes, worse than anything in DCU Decisions! What the hell. Nothing is more annoying than when a writer presents a supposedly humorous situation that would never conceivably be found funny by any person anywhere at any point in the history of the world, and then call-back and reference it repeatedly. That's exactly what Moore does with the pathetic non-joke that is the limo rumor. What the hell, again. This comic is a totally inert, stillborn embarrassment.

HB: Yeah, I guess I was trying to be generous and not live in an entirely plot-driven world, but, um, as you point out, there's not even any emotional development here. It makes me nervous as heck for the future of Runaways, which I may avoid entirely even after catching up on the Joss Whedon-penned issues. Also: why does every lady have a lesbian haircut? Discuss.

GM: I'm just shocked at how far worse this issue is than Moore's first. I didn't think that was great, but it was more in keeping with McKeever's great book than I expected. #2 is about the worst case scenario, though. The only thing that isn't distressing about this issue is Craig Rousseau's art. It's solid stuff, better than David Hahn, the guy that finished up the last series, but it still won't make anybody forget Takeshi Miyazawa. Miyazawa's manga style definitely fits the series better than Rousseau's more Western cartoonish-ness.

But man, I've got no plans on picking up Moore's Runaways. Well, maybe to talk about it here, but I don't want it to feel like we're piling on the dude.

HB: Yeah, I guess I can say that the cover is good, but it's the only thing that's even cute in the whole issue. I mean, if nothing's going to happen, you could at least have some cute girls, whereas Moore and Rousseau can't even put poor Mary Jane in a decent outfit. This book is worse than Spider-Man 3.

GM: Were MJ and her friends generally well-dressed in the earlier series? If so, I wonder how much of that credit goes to Miyazawa and Hahn, and how much goes to the former colorist, Christina Strain. Do you think a woman's perspective is necessary or especially helpful when it comes to successful women's fashion in comics? I never even think about that, since women's fashion in superhero comics basically consists of whatever unrealistically tight and revealing piece of nothing the artist barely draws over his light-boxed SI Swimsuit Edition tracings.

HB: Well, they had more interesting and colorful things on than the boring jacket MJ wears throughout this issue. Think Betty and Veronica. Actually, just think Veronica. What she's wearing now is probably more realistic, but it's a little old and a little blah. I'm not sure that it's a female perspective that's important so much as a more youthful one, and that may not even be fair. I don't know how old Craig Rousseau is, but Miyazawa's only 29.

GM: See, when I think of Veronica, I think of the most stereotypical '80's (or '50's, depending on if I'm thinking of a regular issue or one of them grocery store digests) clothes possible. But maybe that's 'cuz I read roughly a billion Archie stories a day when I was 9, and hardly any since.

Should we work on a post about fashion in comics?

HB: I guess I just mean bright colors and occasionally interesting cuts--a youthful look, basically. It's not the MJ doesn't wear jeans, but she layers and she accessorizes.

Unfortunately, other than superhero costumes, there's not a whole lot of fashion in comics, but I have been looking for excuse to read Beauty Pop...

GM: I don't know, then we'd probably also have to read Glamourpuss, and I don't know if I'm up for that.

HB: Wait! I might be!

other stuff in other places

2008-10-29T12:00:00.002-04:00

If you're so inclined, you can take a look at two comics-related pieces I have in this week's Weekly Dig. The first is a joint Q&A with Bernie Wrightson and Peter Laird, the two guests of honor at this Sunday's Boston Comic Con. The other is a review of The Great Outdoor Fight, a hardcover collection of Achewood strips published by Dark Horse.

Crogan's Vengeance

2008-10-22T20:04:00.002-04:00

Crogan's Vengeance
by Chris Schweitzer
Oni Press, 2008

Hillary Brown: I'm not familiar at all with Chris Schweizer's work, except for his series on "Smokers of the Marvel Universe," but when I went to Heroescon his new book, Crogan's Vengeance, was getting some serious hype. Like the rest of Oni Press's stuff, it's fairly small format and black and white, but rather than the trials and travails of skinny indie rockers (<-- unfair stereotype), it's a swashbuckling tale of derring-do and piratical adventure, with more planned in the series. Yes, Schweizer has ambition, with plans to tell other stories from the Crogan line and build some sort of a multi-generational epic, full of man's man stories and epic sweep. The question is: Does it work? Big goals can fail big. I'd say, on the whole, that Schweizer doesn't fail big, but he might fail a little. It's hard to combine a story as straightforward and narrative-based as this with artwork that is often goofy. It's not that I don't like either aspect on its own, but they're a little strange combined, or perhaps it's that they're rather Disney's Peter Pan, which is the formative experience most of us have with pirates (unless our family is, like, really into Veggie Tales). The goonieness of the drawings detracts from the menace, and it's really hard to tell if that's the goal or not. Mostly, what it does is seemingly drop the target age range down, which may be exactly what Schweizer is going for. Perhaps he's inspired just as much by Landmark Books, a series of adventure/historical tales aimed at the pre- and adolescent boy market in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. My dad grew up on these, which meant there was a big stash of them at my grandparents' house, and when I stayed there in the summers for two weeks, I'd attempt to get through all of them. The best ones, of course, were the ones about pirates: The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans, The Barbary Pirates, Famous Pirates of the New World, and more, I believe. Crogan's Vengeance reminds me of these more than anything else, meaning it's a little bit educational and not entirely satisfying, but, you know, pirates! Is it just that I'm a girl and it's pushing boy buttons?

Garrett Martin: I don't know; if so, then perhaps my buttons aren't quite gender-appropriate. Now, there's a lot that's good about Crogan's Vengeance, but I too had a problem with the weird disconnect between art and subject matter. I like Schweizer's classic cartoonish art, but like you point out it doesn't quite gel with the serious, straight-forward story he's telling. It's not dour or self-important, but there's not a lot of humor in Crogan's Vengeance, which you would expect from a book whose lead looks kinda like a human Goofy. That odd combination of art and subject matter does make me think that preadolescent boys might be the target audience. It also reminds me of Osamu Tezuka's Buddha, but far tamer, without the sexuality and graphic violence perpetrated on adorable Disney-looking animals. Schweizer also could've been a bit clearer with the pacing; doesn't it feel like everything takes place over two, maybe three days? Pivotal events transition directly into one another, with no attention paid to passage of time. Does Crogan really go from unknown sailor to captain of his own licensed privateer ship in one weekend? It's just slightly confusing.

Those are my only problems, really. I really like his art, divorced from this story, which is a story that I also really like. It's pretty bare-bones, sure, but Schweizer seems to have done his homework with the history and speech patterns and everything, and doesn't offer up any glaring anachronisms. Those often kinda piss me off, y'know. I had no idea about Schweizer's grand plans until you mentioned them; that actually sounds really intriguing, and I can't wait to read more, provided he treats future subject matter with the relative degree of respect on display in Crogan's Vengeance.

HB: Yeah, a whole series of awesome graphic adventure novels for boys sounds like a brilliant idea, not least because it might stop them from reading terrible superhero comics at an impressionable age. You're right, too, about the pacing. That's usually something that's nice and clear in comics, due to the possibility of sticking it in a box at the top of a panel (e.g., "some days later") rather than working into exposition in limited text, but I honestly have no idea how long the voyage, takeover, and revenge take. Or, heck, why Crogan's on the ship. I suppose it's one of those formative experiences, rather like Prince Harry's joining the UK military, that toffs are required to go through to prove their noblesse oblige-ness. Perhaps we should talk a bit about the title and the relatively sophisticated philosophy of justice and mercy that Schweizer sets up?

GM: Whoa, hold on, what this world needs is more boys reading terrible superhero comics at an impressionable age! Well, not "terrible" (I'm not talking like X-Force, or anything), but the only people who should be reading mediocre and/or bog-standard superhero comics are boys. Yes, that should be supplemented with higher quality fare like Crogan's Vengeance or Rocketo, but you shouldn't discount the importance 22 pages of hackneyed Batman crap can have upon a young man's mind. Of course the uninspired superhero junk of today is mostly inappropriate for kids, so maybe it's all a moot point, anyway.

The book's pretty idealistic, isn't it? Crogan tries hard to remain honorable throughout, and at the end is awarded in a way that lets him keep the fundamentally dishonorable profession forced upon him but in a fully legal and respectable way. His vengeance is doing the right thing and living well as a result, unlike the more hardened and villainous pirates he reluctantly consorted with. I appreciate the optimism, and feel bad that I assume it's just another sign of the book targetting a younger audience.

HB: Yeah, it's idealistic, and I think that's nice, but it doesn't read as falsely so. That is, it's not quite the same situation when Superman steps in to protect the rights of someone who's a jerk but being harmed as when this little bitty guy from the elite does so. So it's sort of inspiring. But I think the title is more in reference to the ship by that name, which becomes his, than to the actions of Crogan. His "vengeance" isn't really vengeance. It's just the right thing to do in the situation. So I don't think we can say the book is in favor of vengeance. That, in itself, is kind of nice.

GM: It's definitely a pun, though, right? The obvious reference is to the ship, but also the character's indirect / unintentional revenge upon the bad people and situations that had plagued him, by, y'know, living well.

HB: I do think it has a dual meaning, or, rather, it seems like it'll have a dual meaning, but in the end, not so much.

GM: Yeah, maybe I'm too hung up on platitudes and George Herbert quotes.

Sub-Mariner Depths #1

2008-10-15T13:43:00.004-04:00

Sub-Mariner Depths #1
by Peter Milligan and Esad Ribic
Marvel Comics 2008

Garrett Martin: You're probably wondering why we're writing about a month-old issue of some random Sub-Mariner mini-series, a #1 that's already been followed by a #2, and, I assume any day now, a #3. It's true that a little bit of business and a whole lot of laziness has brought us here, but it's also true that I'm making a point to review this issue because of its surprising and fundamental goodness. Sub-Mariner Depths #1 is a far better comic than I expected. And it pains me to say that, 'cuz I used to expect a lot from Peter Milligan. I assume this book was only commissioned because of Milligan's good reputation, a rep that's been severely tarnished of late by a long run of sub-par superhero works. Yeah, The Programme was utterly unembarrassing, but otherwise Milligan hasn't put out a good comic since some point during the second year of X-Statix. Infinity Inc and Kid Amazo were (to varying degrees) wayward messes with a few nice ideas sprinkled here and there, and his recent-ish Batman and X-Men work has been mind-achingly uninspired. Even in the world of mainstream superhero comics, rarely has work for hire so obviously been work. So, yes, I had no expectations for this book whatsoever, and almost didn't buy it, which would've made it the first Milligan series I didn't try since I first read Shade the Changing Man back in 1992. It was a light week, though, so I dropped those four bucks, and was pleasantly surprised by what I read. It's not quite a return to form for Milligan, but, like The Programme, it shows that he's at least still capable of writing interesting and distinctive comics. Also like The Programme (and other, far better Milligan works like Shade and Enigma), it probably helps that Sub-Mariner Depths is only nominally about a superhero. But before we jump into the book itself, I want to hear some preliminary thoughts from Hillary. What did you think? And had you read anything by Milligan before?

Hillary Brown: Well, I guess compared to the last waterlogged comic we read and wrote about Sub-Mariner Depths is an improvement, but I wouldn't say I was nuts about it. I haven't read anything by Milligan, despite the fact that he seems to have written for about a hundred different books, so I don't know anything about his style. For one thing, maybe I'm just being pissy about fonts, but I think the handwriting stuff is hard to read, in a way that leads to irritation. And the art is a little... watery. I know I like Alex Ross and all that, and I'm not opposed to watercolor work in comics in the slightest, but doesn't this stuff look kind of washed out to you? And excessively photo-referenced? Okay. None of that is Milligan's fault, and the writing is pretty good, not to mention that it's an interesting take on the character. The Sub-Mariner's always been kind of a jerk, and the idea of treating him as even more vengeful and also kind of legendy is good; otherwise, he's just a cranky fucker in a bathing suit. I like where the story is going, in other words, and once they're underwater, the paleness of the surface scenes is replaced by an inky prettiness that's nice and creepy. I'm genuinely curious, as well, to see what happens, although I don't know if I prefer stories about skepticism that's proved to be correct or stories about skepticism that's challenged and found wanting. Theoretically, I like the first, but in practice the second often ends up as a better story.

GM: It's basically impossible to do the former in a modern superhero book. That's one reason nobody could think of a way to use Dr. Thirteen for decades; how do you have an extreme skeptic not look like an idiot in a shared universe full of magical aliens and dudes who can run backwards through time? I don't even know if it was a consideration, but by setting this story in the solidly pre-superheroic '30's Milligan eliminated that as a concern.

As you know I often have a problem with painted and obviously photo-referenced art in superhero comics. Esad Ribic's work here doesn't bug me, though, if only because the story doesn't really call for much action. I don't like when the art is flat and static when it should be dynamic and action-packed, but, again, that's not a concern with this first issue. Ribic's stiff, formal style also complements the time period, although it would fit even better if this took place in the 1890's. So in this context, I think Ribic's art is fine.

What makes this a good book, though, is Milligan's choice to focus not on Sub-Mariner as a character but as this frightening, mostly off-panel force that the sailors are afraid to even acknowledge, and that the professional skeptic takes as seriously as the Loch Ness Monster and compassionate conservatism. It's impressive how Milligan takes a 70-year-old character that's basically a one-note caricature, wraps it up in a narrative device that's not entirely novel (hey, let's look at this superhero as a supernatural deity and/or force-of-nature, and see how he impacts the lives of them normal folk!), and winds up with one of the better debut issues of late. Chalk it up to a sound concept and a sufficiently creepy and isolated atmosphere. I can't point to any single aspect of Depths that's great, but it's a good start to what could be a memorable series.

HB: If only they'd had submarines in the 1890s. Actually, wait! They did. I suppose the exact time at which it's set could be an artistic decision, but the story really would kind of fit better with that first great surge toward technology and the rule of science in the late nineteenth century.

Another thing that's probably been done before but is nonetheless clever is the idea of submariners and the Sub-Mariner. Different pronunciation, obvs, but it really points up his alien nature, in that he's free not to be encased in a metal cigar. That choice and the emphasis in general on human characters gives the book a kind of depth or at least hints at a more multi-layered story that might address dehumanization and the upcoming World War.

GM: Right, bad pun aside, this comic does have a bit more depth than what you come to expect from a superhero book, even in the age of weak political allegory like Civil War. Milligan's primary strength has always been characterization, and I like how he subtly alludes to Namor's typical self-righeous indignation solely through the impressions of sailors who've never even encountered him. This is the most assured work Milligan's done in years, since before he turned almost exclusively to mainstream superheros and felt the need to project every character's motives and desires on the side of a warehouse.

I do hope the series retains that sense of history and otherworldliness you point out. I need to pick up the second issue already and find out. Any interest in reading further?

HB: I do and I think I will. It's very "Jules Verne if I already knew the truth behind the mystery presented."

Abe Sapien: The Drowning

2008-10-06T16:50:00.003-04:00

Abe Sapien: The Drowning
by Mike Mignola and Jason Shawn Alexander
Dark Horse Comics 2008

Hillary Brown: I'm still not quite sure what the huge deal is about Mike Mignola as a writer, but I haven't read all that much (just B.P.R.D. 1946). I have, of course, seen the movies, which have good bits and bad bits. I like the central premise of them quite a bit--any time there's paranormal research going on, I'm pretty much there--but, you know, it's hardly all that innovative. Abe Sapien features that character, who is less smashy than Hellboy and smarter, getting his own book, and this one is backdated to early in his career with the B.P.R.D., quite an advantage to have. Mignola gets to draw on at least 60 years of history, and he's not likely to turn down the opportunity to fill in all those gaps eventually. It's a bit like Buffy and Angel as TV series--when you have vampires who are 200 years old, and you're having trouble filling an episode, throw in a flashback. Not that this book features a lot to identify it as taking place in the 1980s. Just the date at the top of a panel or two. I guess the central questions are: Can Sapien carry a book on his own? And is this particular story worth telling? I'm going to let you weigh in before I answer them.

Garrett Martin: I think I gotta say "no" to both your questions. Okay, it's not a hard and fast no in regard to whether the character can carry a solo story or not; any character can do that, if the writing is good enough. Still, as written in this comic (the only thing I've ever read in the Hellboy line), Sapien is far too passive and reactive to make for an exciting lead. Obviously that's part of the point, but that awareness doesn't make the story any more entertaining. I mean, it really wasn't all that good, right? The nature of the villain and his weird homunculi is fairly interesting, but overall this is one plodding, uneventful comic. It could easily be a two-parter. The art's the best thing about it.

As I said, I'm utterly unfamiliar with Hellboy, outside of the first movie. I don't know if Mignola is held in especially high regard as a writer; his art is fantastic, though, and the supernatural conspiracy aspect to Hellboy, the novelty of which has been exhausted by the likes of Dan Brown, had to be fresh and fascinating back when it debuted.

HB: See, I'm not sure I'd say an outright no, but it's definitely not a resounding yes. I really like the character, even his passivity. He's sort of like a young Wesley Wyndham-Price: highly intelligent but not yet wise to the ways of the world and, thus, apt to get others hurt. He's soft and unformed and still learning how to make difficult decisions. I think all that is interesting stuff to examine, plus the story obviously is geared to his particular undersea abilities, BUT how well done is it really? I did end up liking the art a good bit (by Jason Shawn Alexander), even though it's both dark and blocky, two problems I had with the art in B.P.R.D. and that I believe are characteristic of the artists Mignola works with in general. Maybe it's that all the water kind of softens things. I did feel absolutely soaked by the end of the reading experience, as though I'd been dunked in the ocean over and over, then forced to wander through sewers in a cold, foggy environment. On the other hand, that's not exactly pleasant. There's definitely something compelling and creepy about the story, but I'm not sure it's told well enough. The art obscures more than it communicates, there's tons of mysterious voice-over delivered by at-first-unknown sources, the timeline is a little messed up, and everything's just kind of murky and unclear. I'm sure that's the point, to go along with Sapien's learning that situations are often more complicated than they seem and that, while being a paranormal G-man seems awesome, it in fact means you end up getting your friends killed and making the wrong choices, but there are times you want to shake Mignola and Alexander by the shoulders and yell "What the heck is happening?" Is this laziness on the part of the reader, or is it bad storytelling? I do love me some supernatural conspiracies though.

GM: I wouldn't call it laziness, at least not on Alexander's part. Maybe Mignola is overstretched, what with the incessant stream of Hellboy spin-offs and miniseries, and then all the non-comics stuff that he must be at least a consultant on. It could also just be bad storytelling. It's not pervasive throughout the book, but there are moments that aren't especially easy to understand. And it's not the story that's obtuse, but the way it's constructed; the art and words occasionally fail to mesh together in a coherent way. Y'know, like you mentioned above.

I like how you talk about feeling soaked by the end. I too felt weighed down by the sluggish pacing and bleak tone. It's a total slog. I gotta assume that isn't standard with most Hellboy comics, unless the thrillpower of the first movie came more from del Toro than Mignola.

HB: I think there's definitely a good chance it did, and from what I understand Del Toro pretty much wrote the second one himself, so maybe Mignola just isn't all that great. Perhaps some of our absent commenters (understandable, given our own laxness lately, for which we apologize) can fill us in on why we should read more of his stuff.

GM: I'll reserve judgement on both Mignola and Hellboy until I read more of both. I have to assume this series is something of an anomaly, 'cuz far too many respectable folks have praised Hellboy over the years.

Man, this book's boringness has infected my comments, I'm afraid.

Creepy Archives vol. 1

2008-09-26T10:10:00.003-04:00

Creepy Archives, vol. 1
Dark Horse Comics 2008

Garrett Martin: Remember when we talked about David Hajdu's book The Ten-Cent Plague (um, not you, Hillary, but our "readers")? How it was about EC and their horror comics from the '50's and how the comics industry basically drove 'em out of business with the Comics Code? No? Then go read that post again, buddy, and head back here when you're done.

Alright. So in the '60's a company called Warren Publishing decided to fill the hole left in the market by the death of EC's crime and horror comics. The Code prevented them from putting out anything in standard comic form, so they turned to oversized black-and-white magazines, like EC did with Mad. Warren round up a gaggle of former EC artists, handed the writing and editorial reins off to a young Archie Goodwin, and named the final product Creepy. Dark Horse recently collected the first five issues of Creepy in one highly impressive hardcover, allowing relative young'uns like us to see just how well the magazine stacked up to its hallowed inspiration. I'm tempted to say "not very", but, honestly, what little EC I've read isn't that especially great, either. Like EC's somewhat overrated line, Creepy's strength lies in the art, more than the writing, and that's a bit of a problem when you're trying to scare anybody over the age of 10. How many stories about vampires, werewolves, and Frankensteins can one magazine run, anyway?

Hillary Brown: So many! I guess I definitely have a fondness for this stuff, but you're right that it rarely transcends its silly origins. Even Tales from the Crypt in its TV form rarely did, although it certainly incorporated a lot more blood and guts. Creepy strikes me as a strange project, built on a kind of overpowering nostalgia for EC's horror books. You'd think, for example, that the form would have evolved some in the approximately ten years that passed between the dissolution of EC and the formation of Warren Publishing, especially considering the speed at which pop culture directed at teenagers tends to cannibalize itself in interesting ways, but the only big difference I can see between EC's stuff and Creepy is that Creepy seems to have fewer social messages built in (although still some). It is big on the twist endings, to the extent that nearly every story has one and to the point that even the twist is sometimes visible in the first panel of a six-page story. Okay, so it's goofy-ass shit, but the art really is a pleasure to look at. I wish Jack Davis had a bit more to do in these first five issues (the cover of #1 and, I believe, Uncle Creepy a fair amount), and it would be nice if Frank Frazetta had done more than one story (he also does four covers), but, even with the occasional sloppy panel, this is the kind of stuff that makes me really happy, and the devotion to black and white on the interior, while doubtfully an artistic decision, does indeed heighten the things one can do with shading and hatching. It's a pretty nicely produced anthology, too, with some of the original ads appearing throughout (Boris Karloff records, collections of monster books, hilarious iron-ons, plastic giant flies, etc.--just picture anything vaguely horror-related that you ever saw advertised in a comic and wanted) and the letters page from each issue, but the decision to incorporate some of this stuff makes one really want all of it. Would it just have been filler? Or did you, too, notice that each issue was a hair under 50 pages?

GM: Yeah, I do wish they ran more of the ads and other assorted material. That stuff provided a surprisingly significant portion of my enjoyment of the book. It doesn't make or break the collection, but miscellaneous bits of business like that definitely give a book extra value. So yeah, more of that, plus greater variety of what they did run, would've been good. Plus, did you notice Bernie Wrightson's name in one of the letter columns? I don't know why, but I love seeing future professionals' names in old lettercols.

I don't want to sound too down on Creepy; the art is pretty uniformly great, and the stories are almost never less than competent. Y'know, it's Perfectly Acceptable Comic-bookery, which is fine but kind of disappointing. Still, they're quick, easy to read, and always a pleasure to look at. It's slightly frustrating that they hardly deviate from the EC playbook, though, and maybe even more so that they dumb that formula down a bit; sure, EC's jokes were corny and the twist endings often telegraphed or nonsensical, but they were usually wittier, more subversive, and even more playful despite being more savage and nihilistic. A lot of it's got to do with Creepy's fixation on supernatural monsters over the more human sort and their crimes.

HB: It's true. Creepy really has no interest in horrible humanity, only in the aforementioned vampires, werewolves, etc., which is pretty funny, but ultimately limiting. They could at least delve into some weirder monsters (wendigos, banshees, the Loch Ness Monster; the cat people story was one of my favorites, partially for its sheer weirdness and partially because it was something a little different), and perhaps they did later, or maybe it's just that making it obvious that none of this stuff was real was a way around the vigilant anti-horror comics folks. After all, wasn't it the supposed realism of the crime stories that started to attract attention in the first place?

GM: Right, I didn't consider that. And shit, there's nothing inherently wrong with just doing monsters; it's good to have a clear-cut purpose. It just makes the magazine really damn goofy. Not as goofy as Herbie's frequent use of Dracula and Frankenstein (I am seriously gonna mail that to you, btw), but still pretty damn silly. That silliness does keep Creepy away from EC's more gruesome and realistic extremes.

Do kids today still give a shit about Frankenstein?

HB: That's a good question. My friend Lauren would probably say yes, as she was telling me about a children's book she read called Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich (which really is about what its title suggests). So I guess Frankenstein is still pretty cool. I don't know about werewolves though. There certainly seems to be plenty of silly-ass supernatural shit in our culture, but it's less directed at the age group Creepy was marketed to. The last thing I remember being for that demographic was Are You Afraid of the Dark? on Nickelodeon, which was probably twelve or so years ago. The Twilight series seems more serious. Harry Potter is operating in a different realm entirely. But the great desire pre-teens and early teens feel to be scared (and I'm sure there are great theories out there about why that age group seems especially attracted to Christopher Pike books--something to do with approaching adulthood, perhaps) is probably fairly continual, from at least I Was a Teenage Werewolf onward. Do you think Creepy has any pretense at being actually scary? Or is it just a goof?

GM: Oh yeah, and Goosebumps. Does that still exist?

There is a lot of youth interest in the supernatural, true. Most of it seems to be about how cool it is to have supernatural powers, though. And I guess that's always been a large part of the appeal; yeah, Dracula was scary when I was a kid, but I still thought it would be awesome to turn into a bat and live in a castle and keep a harem of sexy undead chicks.

I think the creators of Creepy had a pretty low opinion of their audience's intelligence and maturity level if they actually thought any of these stories would scare anybody.

HB: So I figured. It's more "vampires are awesome" than "vampires are really scary." Maybe the required presence of a "twist" precludes scariness, although you'd think that surprise and fear are pretty connected. Anyway, I should stop trying to create a nice theory that wraps it all up. Creepy: flawed but still kinda fun?

GM: Yeah, it's fun stuff, despite how many times it made me sigh and wearily mutter "oh, Archie." I might flip through the next volume to see if things progressed any.