The Great Outdoor Fight

The Great Outdoor Fight

by Chris Onstad

Dark Horse Comics, 2008

Hillary Brown: So, while it's a smart move to publish some of Chris Onstad's webcomic Achewood in physical, printed format as far as broadening audiences and providing an archive for future generations and so on (not to mention that it's more likely to get results if you just hand your buddy a book and say "read this" than if you send him or her a link, even in this day and age), finding the right thing with which to do that is difficult. Achewood isn't like The Perry Bible Fellowship, which is a series of unconnected, one-page strips, sometimes only a single panel long. But it isn't exactly a serial either, like Dick Tracy (weird example). If I had to compare it to anything, it's like a briefer and yet larger Love and Rockets, in that Onstad creates an entire world, and sometimes there's a long, long story, that goes on for days, and sometimes (this being less Hernandez-y) there's a one-off, like a silly flowchart. The thing is, even the one-offs rely on an elaborate structure of jokes, many built over years, and while there's plenty to amuse without getting it all, it mostly works like The Simpsons, in that the equation is: the more you know, the funnier it gets. Did I mention that many of the characters also have blogs? They do. Anyway, Dark Horse or Onstad or someone figured out a particular storyline that would work well published on its lonesome, with no introduction about what the strip is. Instead, The Great Outdoor Fight begins with a few pages about the history of the fight itself, and it's a beautiful illustration (as is the back matter, with recipes, history of contestants, glossary, etc.) of one of Onstad's strengths as a writer, which is a faux-historical, faux-serious tone. This then contrasts nicely with the extremely dude-slangy way in which his characters talk, and he's absolutely excellent at mixing the two, sometimes within a single strip. And make no mistake, the dude is a writer. The art is fine, but never more than that. It's simple and it serves its purpose and it's a step up from David Rees, but this thing is about the writing. Okay, enough introduction. How often do you read the online strip, and for how long? How does this compare? Did you read any of this when it appeared online? And what, in the end, do you think?

Garrett Martin: I hardly ever read Achewood on-line. Which sucks, 'cuz it's great. I just don't ever think about it. Also I try to avoid the internet when I'm not at work, and it's hard to hide that you're reading comics at work. If I want to read Tucker Stone or Iroquois Pliskin at work I can just paste the text into a new email and nobody'll know the difference; that thing can not be done with a comic strip. And man, much managerial buzzing of late. It's hard to fit my daily internet routine into the standard eight hours these days. So this book is very handy; I read it straight through on a bus ride the other day, and were it not for this collection I'd probably never actually read the entire storyline.

I might've read a random GOF-related strip on-line at some point; I first read Achewood in the summer of '06, and isn't that when this story ran? I don't remember, though. I remember thinking it wasn't very funny, until I went back and read a lot of the earlier strips. That's a common observation with Achewood because it is so true; as you say, the humor relies in large part on knowledge of the characters and familiarity with Onstad's style. I know a guy who is not possessed of much free time, a schoolteacher with a two-year-old who spends most weekends out of town playing rock music, who still spent seven or so hours reading the entirety of Achewood on the Sunday he first learned of it. It is addictive, it rewards regular long-term reading, and thanks to all the ancillary business there's enough new material going on-line to justify repeated daily visits. Onstad's good at stoking the obsession.

Anyway, yes, Achewood is fantastic. I love how thoroughly yet affectionately Onstad mocks lunkheaded concepts of masculinity and "dude culture", or whatever. The Great Outdoor Fight, itself, is such a perfect idea, ridiculous enough to act as parody of bad-ass / tough guy convention, but still completely plausible and believable (up to a point.) And yes, it's something I'd totally be into were it real. Of course it feels so possible due to the detailed history Onstad provides for the fight, its cultural impact, and the lives of former champions. As you point out, this highlights one of his greatest strengths, his writing ability, and especially his talent for writing in a variety of styles and voices. It's just kinda weird, and a big indictment of the traditional newspaper side of the medium, that a frequently vulgar on-line comic starring a cat in a thong is one of the more layered and nuanced comic strips of the last several decades.

HB: Yet another reason books are pretty superior technology... I've been having my own internet difficulties of late, what with me having to mooch off some neighbor's weak, unsecured wireless network because AT&T hasn't delivered my DSL modem yet, but the Google Reader is really ideal for something like Achewood, which doesn't quite post every day and is better read in chunks, where the jokes become clearer and the narrative hangs together. (And parenthetically here, what's our house style on online comics? Italics? No italics? This is an issue the Chicago Manual of Style has yet to address.)

I think you're right in zeroing in on the "dude culture" aspect of the strip. Really, I'm not sure who's writing better about the contemporary definition of being a man than Onstad. Sure, Esquire tries, and Details sort of tries, and occasionally ESPN: The Magazine ventures into similar territory, but they're all very concerned with making you buy things, and not that consumerism isn't part of contemporary masculinity, but Onstad isn't trying to sell you anything other than his strip. I don't think The Great Outdoor Fight is perfect (the ending is too abrupt, for one thing), but it's a very smart meditation on violence, adulthood, family, relationships, strategy, friendship, and what rules one has to or can't break. I hadn't really thought, prior to this discussion, about the strange layer of seriousness that's behind almost everything Onstad writes, but it's certainly there, and yet without toning down the funny.

GM: I don't know how the ending couldn't be abrupt, though, being an on-going strip. Maybe if Onstad drew up a new page or two, I guess. Apparently there are some scenes in the book that never appeared on-line, but I have no idea what those would be.

Maybe Onstad's not trying to sell us anything other than Achewood merch, but the strip couldn't exist without those magazines you mention. They try to define modern manhood in strictly consumerist terms, and Onstad mocks that in ridiculous fashion. Still, though, he doesn't mock camaraderie or friendship, and though the strip can be amazingly cynical and bitter at times, the mood never becomes too oppresive or arrogant. Maybe Onstad picks out the agreeable underpinning to the mountains of bullshit that make up manliness? Yeah, Ray and Roast Beef are absurd caricatures, but Onstad writes them as fundamentally decent people, and utterly likeable despite some pretty unsavory qualities. And of course is completely hilarious about it in the process.

Anyway, my biggest complaint is that the fight itself is way too short. Roast Beef's fists don't crush enough dudes.

HB: It does seem awfully brief after the lengthy set-up, what with the introduction and all that, but the fighting itself is the least interesting part of the piece. And the turkey dinner is the saddest.

GM: Yeah, I don't need to see more fisticuffs, but I wish we were introduced to more fighters. That's always the best part of the illicit fight tournament genre (see Enter the Dragon, The Quick and the Dead, The Immortal Iron Fist, Mortal Kombat 2, etc.)

"The Man With Blood on His Hands" is such a great nickname for a violence-prone American folk hero, isn't it? Better than "the Nature Boy".

HB: The only other thing that I can point out as a potential pitfall with Onstad's stuff is that it can occasionally be hard to differentiate his characters, which may be why he doesn't have more. During the whole wedding story that's consumed the last few months, for example, I was lost on a regular basis (as much my fault as his). So maybe we get fewer introductions and fewer fighters in motion because they are hard to draw? Am I being too down on his visual element? I don't mean to be. I think his art is better than serviceable. It's just, again, not the reason to read.

GM: You are being more charitable than I would when discussing the art. I've pointedly avoid mentioning it because I don't want to say anything bad about such an outstanding piece of work.

Okay, the art's not that bad, and there's one particular scene (can't remember if it's in this book or a strip on-line) where Roast Beef (I think?) is comically excited over something that has one of the greatest facial expressions of any comic I've ever seen. For the most part, though, Achewood looks like clip-art.

And shit, I just realized I meant to say "Ray's fists" above, and not Roast Beef's; I can't even tell 'em apart.

HB: And you don't have face blindness. Point made. Still, people should read this. Props to Dark Horse, although I would have preferred an uncoated to a coated sheet, being a paper snob.

GM: Well, I can only tell them apart based on accessories. One wears googles, the other glasses and a thong.

Oh, we didn't even mention the alt-text. That's often the punchline for the on-line strips. They're not reproduced in The Great Outdoor Fight, so I have to assume we missed a number of good lines, if not anything crucial to the plot or character development. Although shit, I think the alt-text is even vital for that sometimes, too.

HB: Right, it should definitely be mentioned. You really should read Achewood online _unless_ you have people hovering around your desk at work.

Webcomics--We know they exist!

Bear Creek Apartments, by Hope Larson and Bryan Lee O'Malley
and
The Walk, by Ryan Pequin

Garrett Martin: Okay, yes, there are tons of benefits to putting your comics up on the web, what with the promotion and the infinite canvas and the quick turnaround time, etc. And whatever problems I had with the physical aspect of reading comics on a computer mostly evaporated years ago. Still, though, nothing beats the utility and portability of a damn book (one reason I'm glad that Great Outdoor Fight hardcover now exists, alt-text be damned). I'm more likely to spend time on a page if I'm holding it in my hands, more likely to soak up the details and appreciate the effort put forth by the creators. I just want to rush through webcomics, and in fact hardly ever make it past the first page of one that's split up among multiple webpages. Hell, Bear Creek Apartments and The Walk are the first multi-page webcomics I've ever actually finished. And although neither are bad, per se, I'm pretty glad I didn't pay to read 'em. Are you a big reader of webcomics?

Hillary Brown: I'm not, partially because, as readers may have noticed, I'm a bit of a print nerd, and comics are essentially art books for me, so I probably do prefer the physical product, but it's more because of a bias in its favor than a bias against webcomics. I read a few on a regular basis (Achewood, Cat and Girl, Bellen), but that's because those are short and I can add them to my Google Reader, making it very easy. I'm not opposed to the idea of reading more comics onscreen, though, especially as paper costs continue to rise. If, for example, it increases the output of otherwise much less productive artists and writers whom I like, I'm totally for webcomics, which is kind of how I felt about Bear Creek Apartments. Sure, it's not as absolutely awesome as one would like from the duo of Bryan Lee O'Malley and Hope Larson, but it's at least as strong as their mini-comics, and it's definitely got both their voices. I'm also not as crazy about The Walk as I have been about Ryan Pequin's diary comics and blog (dude can flat out draw), but at least it exists and means more might in the future. To make yet another analogy to another art form, these webcomics are kind of like the equivalent of Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: not the pinnacle of what the creators can achieve but better than just better than nothing. They kind of make you want the real and bigger thing, but they also have their own charms.

GM: True, these comics are better than nothing. But Bear Creek wouldn't make me want to seek more out by Larson and O'Malley if I weren't already familiar with them. I've never read any of their mini-comics, but if the level of quality is similar to this then I may not want to. Now, O'Malley's art is nice, the color (both water and crayon) gives it a warmth lacking in Pilgrim, and (although this is totally irrelevent from a critical standpoint) he remains skilled at drawing girls that are incredibly cute despite cartoonish abstraction. And man, his pack of goats might even be more charming than Spiegelman's ducklings. So Bear Creek looks good. The problem is there's really nothing to Larson's story. Flipping the "manic pixie dream girl" schtick on its head isn't inherently a worthwhile idea for a story, and that's kinda all there is to Bear Creek Apartments, right?

HB: Aww... That's a little harsh. I mean, maybe I was only reading it with half a brain (Google is making us stupid, after all), but I didn't really see it coming. The inclusion of the supernatural--in an earthy way, without too many sparkles--is definitely a hallmark of both their comics, but I guess I wasn't paying attention or thinking about it as a possibility. I just sort of figured there was enough going on what with the break-up and the new apartment without "evil manic pixie dream girl" entering the picture, so it caught me by surprise and, therefore, amused me. And doesn't that silly schtick need to be flipped on its head? Both O'Malley and Larson write female characters who are real, which means they can be evil or weird or dorky or whatever, but maybe I'm moving too quickly into our next topic of discussion. Let it suffice that I think this comic is more interesting than it could have been. Plus, yeah, I love the color. And I wonder if it's going to be a series that centers around the apartments, as the title seems to have no relevance otherwise. I mean, this story isn't about the apartment, so that should mean that Larson and O'Malley have created the apartment complex as the setting for a series of stories, which would be ideal.

GM: Oh, is this going to be a regular series? I didn't know. Is this just a glimpse from a longer book, or the first of an on-going web thing?

I actually had to read BCA twice. After that conclusion I figured I misread that first page, that Paul must've been the one doing the dumping. But nope, he was the one on the wrong end of that transaction. It wouldn't made the comic any better, really, but it would've made more sense if his unfortunate transformation was some kind of punishment. Other than that bit of relationship info at the beginning, though, we know nothing about this character, and so the wood-nymph's actions are just mean-spirited. I guess I fail to see the point?

The Walk can't match up artistically, but at least the story was more coherent, and maybe also kinda slightly poignant. What did you think of it?

HB: No, you goof, the fact that it's not punishment makes it better! Punishment would be expected. The fact that he's some poor slob who just got dumped makes it much more interesting. Also, she's not mean-spirited. She's, you know, witchy. Witches do stuff like that. It's a fairy tale. I don't know if it really is part of something bigger or not, but I'd like it to be.

I like The Walk, even its slowness, and I agree that it is kind of touching. I also wish I remembered Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse a little better, but I'm not sure it's actually relevant. What makes the story both good and frustrating to me is its focus on the difficulty of communication. It's so obvious what he's trying to say, and, even though his caretaker is good and loving, the fact that one can't understand the other kind of stresses me out. Of course, conflict is the basis of narrative...

GM: All I know about To the Lighthouse is that the lighthouse is actually a penis.

I appreciate how The Walk deals with a potentially maudlin topic like... some form of mental instability without any schmaltz or histrionics. That difficulty in communication, and the non-linearity of memory, are both frustrating, and Pequin easily could've turned The Walk into a big ball of melodrama. Fortunately he avoided that trap, and made a comic that is stressful, like you note, but not really sentimental. And also more enjoyable than Bear Creek Apartments, which is just goofy.

HB: I don't know if I'd say it's more enjoyable, but it's definitely less goofy. Unfortunately, that's not a negative in my book! One more thing that needs mentioning: although these are indeed both webcomics, they seem to be so merely as a method of distribution, and their composition has nothing computery about it. Both are definitely created by hand with old, non-digital methods, which is part of what makes them a pleasure to look at.

GM: Hey, I love goofy more than most, but BCA just isn't my kind of goofy, I guess.

Toon-Book's Fall Releases

Jack and the Box by Art Spiegelman
Stinky by Eleanor Davis
Mo and Jo by Jay Lynch and Dean Haspiel
Toon-Books 2008

Hillary Brown: So, seeing as we did this for Top Shelf's line of kid-oriented comics, we thought we might as well do the same for Raw Junior/Toon Books, the line run by Francoise Mouly with input from her hubby Art Spiegelman (not that that input is necessary! Mouly knows eminently well what she's doing all by herself, and she doesn't get nearly enough appreciation for her sharp editorial eye). One of the things that attracted me to Toon Books is the fact that Eleanor Davis, current Athenian and ridiculously talented young lady, wrote and drew one of them, Stinky, the tale of a smelly, cranky monster who learns about friendship. Their other two fall releases are Jack and the Box, by Spiegelman, and Mo and Jo: Fighting Together Forever, written by Jay Lynch and drawn by Dean Haspiel. People should know that, if they thought Top Shelf's kiddie books were a little young for adults, they'll definitely think so with these. They're just a bit more "I can read" than driven by narrative, and none is as weird as Yam or Johnny Boo or Corgi, which seem geared more to entertainment than to education. Not that educationally oriented books are bad, and if you're trying to get kids into comics, doing so through school seems like a smart way to hook 'em, but, um, these were a little boring, right?

Garrett Martin: I wouldn't call them boring, especially not Stinky, which charmed the stuffing out of me. Well, okay, I would call Mo and Jo: Fighting Together Forever boring, if only because we can compare that directly to other kid-targeted superhero books like the Marvel Adventures and Johnny DC lines, and note that it simply isn't as fun or exciting as most of those comics. I wasn't overly impressed with Jack and the Box either, but I wouldn't call it boring, since it aims for a younger audience than the other two, is specifically labeled as a "first comic for beginning readers" (or something), and thus probably should have little to offer adults like us other than overwhelming cuteness. Which it does, what with all the baby ducks and what-not. It's a book for two or three-year-olds, and they'll probably love it.

Stinky, though, was really good, trumping the other two in most aspects. The art was cuter and more detailed than both of the other books, the story slightly deeper and less blatant in its moral than Mo and Jo, and the humor both sweeter and quirkier than the either two. I wouldn't recommend Stinky to teenagers or immature adults, but I think audiences of all ages can find something to appreciate here. Maybe we're biased towards Athenians, or maybe it's because Davis has far more to prove than Spiegelman, Lynch, or Haspiel, but Stinky totally outclasses the other two books.

HB: No, I totally agree. Davis is a rare talent, as is clear from everything else I've read by her. She has a real gift for depicting relationships, especially ones that have ugly aspects, in a way that's realistic and forgiving at the same time, and while Stinky undoubtedly simplifies this approach, it also still has some of its characteristics. The body language of her characters is usually the most revealing thing about them, especially when it comes to emotions like anxiety, and the panel in which Stinky realizes the hat he's chucked into the supposedly bottomless pit is, in fact, the boy's lucky hat is a great example of wordless communication. The book's also got all kinds of subsidiary messages that reinforce the main one of not jumping to conclusions, such as Stinky's discovery that apples, against which he's been prejudiced, are actually delicious. How can you not like a book that suggests kids should try more foods?

On the whole, I'd agree with your ranking. The Spiegelman is totally cute but extremely simple, and the Lynch/Haspiel is the weakest of the three. The art even has aspects that wig me out, like the pouty lips on the little girl, and the writing is annoyingly straightforward. Even if you know where Stinky is going from the beginning, it's less sing-songy and obvious in the way it gets there, while Mo and Jo, despite the entertaining villain, just seems, I dunno, preachy?

GM: Preachy isn't the first word Mo and Jo made me think of, but it does fit. Lynch and Haspiel kind of beat you over the head with the teamwork bit. I expected them to start singing the Wonder Pets song near the end. But it's also too straight-forward, a little too simple, in too much of a rush to get to its obvious conclusion, and just generally not particularly interesting. And I'm normally interested in superhero stuff to an embarrassing degree. I love the design on the villain, Saw-Jaw, but I wish his dialogue and speech pattern were as memorable and unique as his appearance. I don't know, it just seems like there isn't as much effort on display with Mo and Jo as with the other two.

And yes, you're spot-on about Davis's knack for body language and facial expressions. Stinky is such an expressive little guy, and through him and her art Davis wrung some genuine emotion out of me. And she packs the book full of the kind of background details that can make a children's book entertaining for everybody (or at least me), like squirrels reading books and chipmunks wearing top hats and spectacles. Stinky is the only one of the three that makes me want to run out and buy more of the artist's books.

I feel compelled to bring up Jack and the Box again, if only to point out that I don't want to give it short shrift, but there's really not a lot to say about it. It's basically Spiegelman's perfectly cute yet slight take on Dr. Seuss. I appreciate it's timeless appeal, as it easily could have existed twenty to sixty years ago, and little kids should love it. It's not quite distinct enough to become any sort of enduring classic, but it's an entirely solid, acceptable, and minor aside by a true great.

HB: I think that's a very fair assessment of Jack and the Box. I haven't read his previous children's effort, Open Me, I'm a Dog, but I imagine it's similar. The rhyming isn't as over the top as Seuss's, nor is the chaos created, but it's like a good introduction to Seuss, for kids who don't need as much stimulation (with words or action or color), kind of like the way you're not supposed to put salt in your homemade baby food because babies can't even deal with that yet. It seems a little bland, but, in fact, it's correctly calculated for the audience.

We should also mention that these are lovely little books, with a cute endpaper design that's the same in all of them, some nice spot-gloss varnishes on the covers, good solid binding that should hold up to abuse, etc. Some children's books are disposable in their production, but these are not. Like everything else Mouly has produced, they are carefully crafted and they don't skimp on quality. I may be a tiny bit underwhelmed with the first round of three books (considered as a whole), but I'll certainly be curious to see what Toon Books comes out with in the next quarter.

GM: Oh yeah, the books look amazing. I don't know anything about book design or manufacturing, but they've done an esxcellent job with this line, and I can't wait to see what they have in store for the future. Now I just have to decide which group of nieces and nephews will get to keep which books.

King-Size Spider-Man Summer Special #1

King-Size Spider-Man Summer Special #1
Various authors/artists
Marvel 2008

Garrett Martin: I want more comics like this. Or at least like the first of the three stories in this weird anthology. No slight to Keith Giffen or Chris Giarrusso (one of my favorite comic-making dudes and a creator of fine kids comics, respectively), but Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover's lead story in King Size Spider-Man Summer Special is exactly the sort of all-ages-appropriate comic the big superhero companies should be putting more focus on. I'm not saying they need to scrap their entire mainstream line and only put out Marvel Adventures books (and shit, the direct market has already proven that sweet and innocent comics don't sell well to all seriously growed up hardcore audience), but the Marvel U would be a nicer and more fun world if this story's tone wasn't such an outlier.

But damn, I got carried away, and didn't provide any specifics. Tobin (who writes) and Coover (who draws and also writes) are a married couple, legally wed, whose names you should probably recognize from (both solo and cooperative) books like Banana Sunday, Small Favors, and issues of various Marvel Adventures comics. Coover's probably best known to Marvel fans as the artist of those generally amazing back-up strips in Jeff Parker's X-Men First Class. Her style's something like Harvey Comics by way of mid-century New Yorker, and is undeniably cute without ever being mawkish or cutesy. Her stuff is really quite ridiculously awesome, for real, and a perfect fit for the story she and her husband done cooked up for this book, a story documenting a team-up between model friends Mary Jane Watson, Millie the Model, Patsy "Hellcat" Walker, and a dean's list of the top Marvel superheroines (no Wasp though - she gets no respect). It's got the same reverent yet lightly ironic tone found in the X-Men First Class back-ups, where you can tell Coover is having fun playing around with the goofiness of '60's Marvel, and it completely makes this guy happy in pretty much every possible way (for I am nothing if not a fan of reverently semi-ironic takes on '60's Marvel goofiness).

Ah shit, I'm rambling. Little help?

Hillary Brown: See, I mostly know Colleen Coover from coveting but not yet buying Small Favors, which, it should be pointed out, is a book of dirty dirty lady pictures that also happen to be extremely cute. And look at her! She seems so very mild mannered. I figured there probably wouldn't be anything filthy going on in this book, despite the potentially double-entendred title, and there's not, really, although all those gal superheroes are a little bit flirty with each other. There's some potential, in other words, especially when they're all showering (!), although it's also quite right not to have it fulfilled.

The most amusing thing, to me, about their story is that Spider-man appears for all of a page before being shunted off to the side so the girls can goof off and gossip and shampoo their hair. And I love the art. It's so perky and flatly colored, and it makes me tremendously happy. Basically, yay, Colleen Coover. I hope she does more work like this. I hope she does more work in general. It's girly without being stupid and it's also girly without being too much "yay! Girls are better than boys! Woo, girl power!" It's like it's not concerned at all with showing how smart it is, which is refreshing.

GM: Wait, don't girls just shower in front of each other all the time? In-between those grueling all-night pillow-fights?

It's weird, I don't even think about issues of gender or anything when I read comics like this or Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. I just see comics that look cool and make me chuckle and remind me why I'm reading these things in the first place. Obviously you can't fail to see this story's inherent girliness, but it isn't something I thought twice about while reading. I wonder if the lack of interest your average superhero comic reader has in books like this is due to that girliness or the sweet-natured whimsy and playfulness. Or maybe the two unite in a perfect storm of "awesome shit Comic Book Guys refuse to read". Marvel Adventures books aren't "girly", but are fun and don't sell very well. But I don't buy those books that often, either, so I'm a part of the problem. Fuck!

What did you think of the other two stories?

HB: Hmm, well, I really wasn't nuts about the middle one, the Giffen-written, Burchett/Quintana-drawn Falcon-Spider-man team-up. It's possible that it's because I'm not familiar with the Falcon, or because it's between two much better and more cartoony stories, but I think it's really due to the mish-mash that is the writing and the excessive posiness of the art. That is, the story hops around from here to there, and while Spidey gets some zingy lines, what exactly is going on is a little hard to figure out. Also, while I do enjoy dudes punching other dudes, I get bored with it after a while, and after both the Falcon and Spidey are in costume, there seem to be rather a lot of panels dedicated to improbable contortions and also, even when they're just talking, to posing in interesting ways. I know this is what you get to do with Spider-man, but once you notice it, it makes the whole story unintentionally silly.

The Chris Giarusso "Mini-Marvels" story, however, is intentionally silly and, therefore, very entertaining, at least to me. I think I know just enough about the history of the characters to find it amusing when they're shrunk into goofy, cartoony kids and then made to squabble over a paper route. And we haven't even discussed Toibin and Coover's two-page MODOK story!

GM: Oh geez, how did I forget MODOK? Or Tobin/Coover's awesome one-panel Spidey origin that somehow beats the first page of All-Star Superman as the greatest origin recap ever? Granted I read this thing a few weeks ago, and didn't have time to flip through it again last night, but still, no excuse for overlooking such amazement.

Giffen's story isn't bad, and more enjoyable than a majority of Marvel's current output. It's also pretty unexceptional, and its greatest strength is maybe anti-artistic. Well, if you believe that nostalgia is an enemy to art (what the hell am I talking about?) It's a straight-up nostalgia-thon, written for folks who want to relive early '70's Marvel. Oddly enough I've been reading Essential Captain America Volume 4 the last few weeks, which should be called Essential Captain America and The Falcon, since that was the actual name of the comic during the time period collected, and so I'm a bit gorged on the Falcon. And yeah, like Luke Cage's book, it's a bit long on the bad blaxpoitation urban slang, but the Falcon, as written by Steve Engelhart, is a pretty underrated character, so it's good to see a story focus on him. It's got a few good lines (Giffen's a funny guy, y'know), acceptable art, is well-paced, etc., but there's nothing all that great about it. Perfectly acceptable comic-bookery, but I've already forgotten almost everything about it.

And I don't want you to think I was dismissing the Mini-Marvels story, either, by pumping up the lead story so much. Giarrusso's recurring shorts are reliably good, and this story, the longest I've seen by him, is no exception. Yeah, it's cute and silly, and thus slightly similar to Tobin/Coover's tale, but it's intentionally less smart and long on knee-slappers and all around more single-faceted. Great for kids, though, and I have been considering buying the recent digest collection Marvel's put out. Did you know Mini-Marvels is kind of a regular thing?

HB: Yeah, I guess I've at least heard of Mini-Marvels before, and this sort of makes me want to read more of them. Still: Tobin/Coover with the gold, solidly; Giarrusso with the silver; and Giffen with the bronze, even though his story is the only one that really includes Spider-man. What does that say?

GM: That Marvel will slap Spider-Man's name on anything, just to make a buck?

Criminal Vol. 3: The Dead and The Dying

Criminal Vol. 3: The Dead and The Dying
by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Val Staples
Marvel Comics 2008

Hillary Brown: Wow is this ever better than that X-Men relocation special. In other words, I'm starting to see what the big hoo-ha about Brubaker is, and what it boils down to is that he's an excellent writer. It's easy to do a weak job with pulp material, to fill it with spraying blood and cursing and asses, which is kind of what my experience reading 100 Bullets has been like so far. Not that I hate that book. I'm still willing to give it a chance for one or two more volumes. But I don't care about any of the characters or even remember who they are. I'm not sure what the magic is that Brubaker has to create that kind of connection with the reader, but he definitely has it, and it's on full display in this most recent collection of Criminal. I've only read one issue in isolation, and it was almost as compelling, but the way he weaves three stories together here, telling basically one big story from three different perspectives but without doing a straight-up revisiting of the same scene from different angles, well, it can't help but remind me of Pulp Fiction or, perhaps, the sources on which that film drew and all of Tarantino's films draw. Grindhouse film can be overpraised, but the really good stuff has a deep grasp of human motivations and desires, which is what drives this book. My only real problem with it lies in Sean Phillips's art. It's the first time I've encountered good panel composition (really good) and good coloring, but not liked the line work. And it's not that the latter is terrible; there's just something about it that bugs me, like a reaching for a gritty kind of look or something.

Garrett Martin: Yes, Brubaker is an excellent writer, and for further proof go track down Gotham Central, Sleeper, Captain America, Daredevil, and Catwoman. He's not flashy like Fraction or full of brilliantly insane comic book ideas like Morrison, but nobody writing for the big two can match Brubaker for plotting and detail. Criminal's his best work, an obvious labor of love for both creators that perfectly hits exactly what it sets out to do. And I think the lack of blood and swearing is a deliberate part of the book's influences and intentions; the old noir films Criminal pays tribute to couldn't pour out buckets of blood and cuss words, and even though pulp fiction could be more lurid than cinema, the written word reinforces that not seeing a sordid scene sometimes drives the image home more forcefully. So yeah, I think that explains the restraint, to a degree.

This trade includes the first three issues of Criminal's second volume, and it's probably the book's high point thus far. The first volume was made up of two five-issue storylines that had a few minor crossovers but were mostly self-contained. It wasn't really until these three issues that the expansiveness of Brubaker's vision came into view. Brubaker's not just mapped out the backstories of seemingly background characters like the bartender Gnarley, but apparently has planned out the history of crime in this city for at least a few generations. The spotlight may shift from one ostensible lead character to another, but the real focus of Criminal remains the modern city, and the atmosphere of crime that permeates both it and the families of the men who operate in that world. The first-person narration and tight focus on singular individuals grounds each separate storyline in clear-cut noir / pulp turf, but the wide-view provided by the on-going periodical format gives both Brubaker and the reader an opportunity to explore and experience more than just your stereotypical tough guy crime fiction schtick. He hits the genre notes perfectly, but it doesn't feel cliched, and that's a sign of a great writer.

And wow, I'm surprised you have problems with Phillips' artwork. It fits the tone perfectly, linework included. Like Michael Lark on Gotham Central, Phillips' art is cinematic in a good way, and a great fit for Brubaker's stories. Occasionally his character designs can look a bit recycled or similar (Teeg Lawless really does look exactly line Sleeper's Genocide Jones), but that's not a big deal. I don't think he's trying too hard for a gritty feel; it doesn't look forced, and his art is the same here as it is in his other comics. And the grittiness fits the material, anyway.

HB: I think it's that I really do prefer a clean line in my comics art, and while I agree that Phillips's work does fit with the tone, the scratchiness of the lines, which look like they've been done with charcoal, just kind of isn't my thing. Faces also tend to blur together a little more with this kind of thick, sketchy line, and you lose some detail and some character. You could say the same thing about the tendency of a lot of 1970s pulp filmmakers to shoot scenes without enough light. So, again, it may well be fitting.

One thing that Brubaker seems particularly good at is making the reader see that big picture without overwhelming him/her. It's not clear from the beginning of the book--if you don't know anything about it to begin with--that the three stories it contains are related at all, and it's something you notice slowly at first and then in a rush, and it's just really beautifully done. Even if you go to great trouble creating and populating an entire comics world, it's all for naught if you just dump your reader into it and expect him/her to understand everything that's going on. Brubaker may rely a little much on narration, but that's not something I necessarily have a problem with, especially when he manages to keep the characters' voices fairly distinct. So do all the other issues take place in the same city?

GM: These three issues were specifically promoted as stand-alone issues, in order to be more accessible for new readers, so I think I was especially slow to notice they were all related, and maybe thus even more impressed. And yes, the entire series thus far has took place in the same city, which I'm pretty certain has never been named. The three story arcs thus far all cross-over tangentially, with one's lead character or his relatives being referenced or popping up in the background of the other. The stories remain self-contained, though, and these little bits of business just add value to the regular and observant reader. We're not discussing Criminal #4, but I know you've read it, and just as an example, the Franz Kafka PI comic strip has appeared several times throughout the series, and the strip's creator, who's the lead in the story arc that starts with #4, appeared briefly in the very first storyline. I don't know if they mentioned he was the guy who made the comic, though. It's satisfying when these tiny details align and you have that moment of realization, but they alone don't make Criminal a great comic. Or shit, a great story, regardless of medium. They do speak to the breadth and depth of Brubaker's planning, though, and how seriously he takes this writing biz. He's not just tossing out warmed-up, generic fluff; he's got a vision and knows exactly where he's going.

And yeah, Phillips' scratchiness does sacrifice a bit of detail, which might be why his muscle-bound dudes with short blond hair look identical. Still, I think his art is pretty damn great, and Criminal wouldn't be the same book without it.

So is this only the second thing you've read by Brubaker? This and Uncanny X-Men #500?

HB: Yep. He's one of the big names that I haven't really tackled yet, although not for lack of interest. The closest I've come is reading some of Bendis's Daredevil before Brubaker took over. If anything, it's probably because he's written a lot of books with long histories, meaning that it's harder for the novice to dive into his work. Maybe this grasp of multiple existing storylines (which I'm assuming he has; who knows? Maybe he sucks at it) that's led him to write things like Captain America (his best-known work?) and Batman is a strength that's just as visible in his more independent work? Or maybe I'm extrapolating from too little evidence. My guess is that Criminal is actually the perfect way in to Brubaker, unless Sleeper is even better. Is it? I hear they're making a movie out of that one.

GM: I haven't read all of Sleeper, but I feel comfortable calling Criminal a better comic. Sleeper is not a conventional book, but does trade on superhero conventions, and thus isn't quite as accessible and focused as Criminal. Another one of Brubaker's hallmarks is recasting superhero books into subgenres that fit his strengths as a writer; Captain America as an espionage thriller, Immortal Iron Fist as a pulp adventure serial, a Batman book that's actually a street-level plainclothes detective story, etc. Similarly, Sleeper was an undercover cop mystery book with a superhero gimmick, and although it's a great book, you still get the feel that the superhero element was only included because of the market Wildstorm targets. Brubaker doesn't have to compromise with Criminal, or jump through any stylistic hoops to recalibrate the material.

HB: Yeah, as I was reading it, I found myself thinking more about movies and books than about comics. It's not exactly Raymond Chandler--Brubaker's voice isn't as loopy as that--despite the frequent blackouts in the middle story (one of my favorite devices in the book), but it's Dashiell Hammett-ish. That is, while Brubaker's stuff isn't un-comic book-like at all (it uses plenty of smart visual elements), it's definitely more literary than almost anything else I can think of that's published by the big houses.

Top Shelf Kids Komix Kavalcade

Johnny Boo: The Best Little Ghost in the World, by James Kochalka

Korgi, Book 2: The Cosmic Collector, by Christian Slade

Yam, by Corey Barba

All Top Shelf, 2008

Garrett Martin:

So we got this stack of kids comics from Top Shelf, a thoroughly respectable publisher located in my hometown of Marietta, Georgia. They've got a diverse catalogue, publishing both the improbably cute kids comic Owly and Alan Moore's high-class metafictional art-porn Lost Girls, among many other fine books. Owly's kind of blown up of late, it seems, and so Top Shelf, hoping to ride the edge of that lightning bolt, has prepared a passel of similar kid-focused books, including Yam, Korgi, and Johnny Boo: The Best Little Ghost in the World. The books aren't too similar artistically or tonally, but they're all well-illustrated and well-intentioned, and at least two of them should appeal to audiences of all ages.

Oddly enough, Korgi, which I'd think is for slightly older children than the other two, was the least enjoyable for the totally grown-up adult guy I theoretically am. An odd fantasy/sci-fi tale about fairy-gnomes and their sorcerous pet Welsh corgies, Korgi is a bit too precious, with too thin of a plot. There're also a couple moments of surprising violence in the action scenes that don't quite fit the tone of child-like fairy-magic wonder. That violence, plus the less overtly whimsical art style, make me assume Korgi is for older kids, like late elementary school, but the plot is thin and characterization non-existent and so there's not much of substance to grab hold of. Not too much of a problem for younger kids' books, but when all these elements are combined it becomes hard to tell who the book is for. My six-year-old niece would probably be scared off by the evil alien, especially when he shoots the fairy's wing off, but then I'd think a ten-year-old wouldn't be stimulated enough. What do you think?

Hillary Brown: I thought it might be a little confusing for kids, no matter what age, if they decide to dive into volume 2 the way we did, rather than starting with volume 1, and that, mostly, it's an excuse to draw cute doggies. I'm fairly mystified by the whole idea behind the thing (Why are they magic? Why corgis? What does their magic consist of?), but, you know, I assume Christian Slade has some corgis that he loves, which led his to writing/drawing a book about them. The art is, as you mention, a bit precious--the kind of thing you'd find in a crystal store--but if you're shooting for the 10-to-12-year-old girl market, which is my guess as far as the marketing strategy, it's pretty much right on. To continue in the vein we've both mined as far as our respective dorky childhoods, I was super into faeries (yes, spelled like that) at about that age, and I regularly visited a store that sold not only crystals, but figurines, windchimes, geodes, incense, and the like. In other words, this book might have been right up my alley. Still, I'd agree that I liked it the least of the three they sent us, partially because, um, doesn't it have a secret message about people who collect things being selfish jerks who don't care about hurting others? That's me, the comic book reader, and I'm not sure I appreciate being lectured.

My favorite of the three, despite its almost nonexistent plot and frequent lack of sense, was James Kochalka's Johnny Boo. I'm curious what you thought of that one and if you think I'm crazy.

GM: Johnny Boo was great. It's the most obviously youth-oriented of the three, so the near-lack of a story didn't bug me too much. Kochalka's art is adorable, and this was no exception. Despite having words, it reminded me a lot of Owly, particularly the relationship between Johnny Boo and Squiggle; they interact just like Owly and Wormy. Between the hardcover binding, the uncluttered art, the clear-cut moral, and the easy-to-follow story, this feels the most like a children's book, and I could totally see this doing well at places like Target and Wal-Mart if Top Shelf could somehow get in those markets. I probably wouldn't buy subsequent Johnny Boo books for myself (ten dollars is a lot for a seven minute read), but would definitely give 'em to my nieces and nephews. I wouldn't call it my favorite of the three (that'd be Yam), but it is really good, and I'm interested in hearing why it is your favorite.

HB: I think I'm just a big fan of Kochalka's weirdness. The non-sequiturs he puts in the mouths of the characters remind me tons of real kids, who are almost always saying shit that is practically from outer space. And the pacing, which is jumpy and odd, kind of cracks me up too. I don't know if you read his ongoing series of Monster Attack comics done with his son Eli, but they're one of my favorite things on the internet. American Elf itself is quite concerned with his family life, and he seems to pay attention to kids and how they think and perceive the world. So I think all that plays into it, plus, as you point out, it's really cute. It's all cuddly and huggy and yay for ice cream, but without being too sweet, due to that undercutting weirdness as well as all the yelling. And I love the art, the coloring, and the printing. I'm a sucker for an aqueous varnish on a book cover. I agree with you that I'd totally buy it for kids, but I don't know if I'd buy it myself. Seven minutes might even be a generous estimate as far as reading time goes.

Yam, on the other hand, while equally weird, just kind of doesn't click for me, at least not regularly, so tell me why it's your favorite.

GM: I give Yam the edge over Johnny Boo partially because it's a longer read, but also because I think it's more engaging to a truly all ages audience. I can appreciate Johnny Boo, but I don't think I can love it as much as, say, my five-year-old nephew could. Yam, although designed for and thus totally appropriate for kids, has greater artistic depth than either of the other two books. And I mean visually, when I say "artistic". Corey Barba's characters are just as cute as Kolchaka's, but the panels are more detailed without being weighed down by those details. As adorable as Johnny Boo, Squiggle, and the Ice Cream Monster are, they're still slightly outclassed by Marzipan Gato and Yam's anthropomorphic television. Yam also is more sophisticated in terms of both story and storytelling, which doesn't necessarily make it better than Boo, but does make more enjoyable for a thirty-something dude like me. And the weirdness in Yam is even more inexplicable than Johnny Boo's, operating on some semblance of dream (and/or video game) logic. Yam could pretty easily be marketed as a comic for teenagers or adults without changing a thing.

HB: Or stoners! That's the thing. I'm stuck in this place where I don't know, often, if I should be getting it or if it's just weird and nonsensical. Not that the latter isn't fine. Yam tends to remind me of a lot of Japanese pop culture in that way. I guess I'd just like to have a little icon at the top of each strip that indicates: yes, this one makes sense if you think about it; or no, it's just an idea pursued to a conclusion, but it's not logical, and, in fact, if you try to think it through you'll just get annoyed. Of course, art doesn't do that, pretty much ever, so it's not a fair complaint at all. I agree that the storytelling is far more sophisticated and takes much more of your brain to understand, and its wordlessness is impressive--not as impressive as Owly, which is also cuter than both Yam and Johnny Boo, but that's some tough competition.

GM: Yam's frequent inscrutability is intentional, I'm sure. And I don't always need logic from my kids' lit, or always from my comics, as long as they look amazing and are illogical in novel or unique ways. Yam meets both requirements. Plus Yam starts a band with a family of flowers, which is kind of incredibly awesome.

HB: It is kind of awesome, and I don't always need logic either. Maybe it's that it's printed in black-and-white, while Johnny Boo has all these candy colors that make my eyes happy. I'm not opposed to black and white, but some of the panels seem squished up to me. Is it printed on less nice paper? That could be unconsciously biasing me too.

GM: Yeah, the presentation of Johnny Boo is of a higher quality. Kochalka's a bigger name, he deserves it. And the Yam strips in color look better than the black and white ones. Plus the reproduction of some of those Yam strips look blown-up, like the strips were drawn to a smaller scale than they appear in the book. The lines kind of break up a bit when that happens, things look spotty and washed out. There's a note in the beginning of Yam that one or two of the strips were originally published Aragones marginalia-style in NickToons magazine, so maybe that explains the ones that look worse. But yes, Johnny Boo is a more aesthetically pleasing book, but Yam has more thoroughly satisfying content.

HB: Says you! I think it depends on your maturity level. If you prefer yelling about ice cream to a more pure surrealism, you should probably pick up Johnny Boo instead, but both books are amusing and smart.

this ain't our only home

I've got a short review of the first trade paperback collection of The Umbrella Academy in this week's Weekly Dig. It's a pretty good comic, there, it is.

Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane Season 2 #1

Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, season 2, issue #1

by Terry Moore/Craig Rousseau

Marvel 2008

Hillary Brown: I was definitely a little nervous about anyone taking over this book, even someone with a great reputation like Terry Moore (whom I've read nothing else by, but is also taking over Runaways, so I guess I'm going to get familiar with him), but, at the same time, I was just so happy it was coming back at all that I would have been willing to accept some slightly sub-par work. Better something than nothing, right? Well, it's a step up from that. It's hard for me to say what a single issue reads like, as I went through the trades as fast as possible, wanting more every time I finished. Moore's pacing is a little slower than that, but it's one issue and it's a relaunch of sorts, an explanation of what's happened to everyone since the last issue. Is this necessary? Well, maybe, even though this is only supposed to be a five-issue miniseries. You could argue that taking up that time with exposition is wasted space, but I didn't find any of it clumsy or un-enjoyable. The difference in art is noticeable, too, but equally not bad. Do I just want more Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane that much? Is it sucky and slow and boring and I'm just turning a blind eye to its flaws?

Garrett Martin: No, it's not sucky or slow, or whatever. It's actually pretty good. Which is a relief, as I was more than nervous about this book proceeding without Sean McKeever. His Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane was such a surprise, so sweet and clever and unlike anything else on the superhero stands, that continuing it with another writer seemed so unnecessary. Maybe even unfair. I'm not going to compare SM Loves MJ to Howard the Duck, but I figured non-McKeever issues of this book would fare like the post-Gerber issues of Howard, and be immediately dismissed and/or quickly forgotten. Moore's first issue isn't quite as slick as McKeever, as you mention, belaboring the character intros a bit, and dipping a bit too far into high school fiction cliche, what with the comically named, "why I never" vice-principal. But his humor isn't feeble, he nails MJ's voice, and he realizes that these characters aren't quite the stereotypes they could easily turn out to be. Honestly, that's more than I expected. And it's hard to fault the pacing; yeah, it's weird to blow one-fifth of the story on reintrodutions, but it's been so long since the (fairly low-selling) first season ended that reintrodutions are pretty much a necessity. Craig Rousseau's art is a step down from the heavily manga-influenced Takeshi Miyazawa, the book's original artist, but is more vibrant and fluid than David Hahn's inert work near the end of McKeever's run. It's not exciting, or especially notable, but perfectly acceptable. Miyazawa was just as important to the first series as McKeever, though, so it's unfortunate they still haven't found somebody who's work is as whimsical and distinctive as his.

Speaking of digests and single issues, do you see yourself following this on a monthly basis, or waiting on the eventual collection?

HB: Yeah, I mean, I love Miyazawa, and I merely like Rousseau. I think it's all the swirls and patterns that end up in Miyazawa's work, so it's not as manga as it could be but almost (maybe) a little art nouveau. Still, Rousseau's work is more than competent and often interesting. It might take me a minute to recognize some characters (Liz Allen), but I got everyone straight eventually, and it's certainly not distracting.

I still think I'll probably wait for digest, but I guess it depends on whether the book continues beyond those five issues. This and House of Mystery would be about as close as I've come to wanting to buy something on a weekly basis, and, if anything, it's not even so much based on wanting to follow the story from week to week as it is on just wanting to show my support. To keep the book publishing, perhaps.

So, have you read any other Terry Moore? He's clearly excellent at writing contemporary teenagers (compare the awkward shoehorning of twittering into that Fraction/Brubaker X-Men #500 to the seamless incorporation of texting here), but why? Is he a young 'un trapped in an old 'un's body? My guess is that the book will continue to be less zippy than McKeever's work, but McKeever's clearly so good that tons of male comic book nerds ended up reading, enthusiastically, a book about a teenage girl with a crush on Spider-Man.

GM: Never read anything by Terry Moore before. And frankly, Strangers In Paradise, his big creator-owned book, doesn't sound too good, what with the lipstick lesbian secret agent ex-prossies and what-not. But it ran forever and a lot of folks like it so maybe it's better than the plot description. He's got a rep as a dude who can write women, and he backs that up with this here first issue of SMLMJ. And yeah, he also seems capable of writing believable teenagers, so maybe his upcoming Runaways series will be okay, too.

It's weird about McKeever; Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane was fantastic, and Gravity was pretty great, but nothing else I've read by him has impressed me. I can't single him out for Countdown's misery, but even the two or three issues of Teen Titans that I've read were a let-down. I don't know if he has much of a fanbase, as a creator; he was kind of a name on the rise when DC signed him to an exclusive, and none of the books he's written over there have sold particularly well. But it's not like there were "tons" of people buying SMLMJ, either; I think it was usually selling under 10K copies through the direct market. It's a shame he's at DC, not because I dislike that company or its characters, but because for whatever reason he seems far better at writing Spider-Man (or Spidey-type characters like Gravity) than anything else. I've got no idea why he's not the regular writer on Blue Beetle. Anyway, I should probably check Teen Titans out again, to see if he's gotten any better at it. I hope it's not a situation where Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane was such a perfect combination of creator and book that each will always feel slightly underwhelming without the other.

HB: Yeah, but maybe only underwhelming according to the pizza rule: even if it's underwhelming, it's still pizza.

It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken

It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken
by Seth
Fantagraphics 1996

Garrett Martin: Okay, It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken seems like a deeply personal and open work, the sort of navel-gazing autobio stuff that dim-witted superhero fans use to stereotype any comic featuring realistically proportioned humans. It's a fairly unflinching look at the unhappiness of a guy named Seth, who is more or less the same Seth as the author, and who hates contemporary culture and screws up every relationship and just generally feels out of place in society. Old cartoons are about the only thing he's really passionate about, and the plot revolves around his search for a forgotten old artist from Canada who had a few comics published back in the mid-20th century. Honestly, if I just read that description without ever looking at the book, I'd probably assume it was a miserable piece of wankery, and be pretty damn reluctant to read it. But thankfully Seth is a fantastic artist, indeed, a fantastic cartoonist, overall, and through his art, design, story-telling, and (just as importantly) self-awareness avoids the (potentially fatal) self-indulgence that could've easily sunk this comic. And it doesn't even matter one way or the other than a big component of the story, the artist he obsesses over, is entirely fictional. At least it doesn't to me. How about you?

Hillary Brown: Well, I guess I didn't really think about how true the story was. That is, I assumed it was all true, and that the main character, named Seth, is actually Seth and that the cartoonist was real and so on and so forth. Sheesh. That's a dumb move for a student of literature to make. Maybe I'm just out of practice and my skeptic hat doesn't fit anymore. Anyway, I suppose it's irrelevant whether it's true or not--the point is the story. I think I might hate the main character version of Seth if I met him, but I didn't really mind reading about him, despite complete disagreement on the value of modernity. I mean, I love disposable pop music and Ikea and Segways and recent innovations like zippers. I think it's close-minded to the point of idiocy to be so in love with the past that you don't live in the present. And yet, he comes off as fairly sympathetic, probably because of that self-awareness you mention. I also couldn't help but think of a number of conversations Jared and I have had recently about memories and nostalgia, which, even to an unsentimental jackass like myself, are important. Seth's musings on why and how we hold onto the past and shape it in our minds are darn good.

The other factors that I think helped me enjoy the book are: 1. The art. I love two-color printing, and, while the tiny, tiny hands he draws are occasionally distracting, the general simplicity of the look is very peaceful to read. There's something about the quiet pacing and the snow that reminds me a little of Skyscrapers of the Midwest. 2. The idea of doing loads of research on an obscure artist. I love doing that. In fact, I get to do it for work sometimes, and it's great. I am a big research nerd and also kind of an obsessive. 3. Printing quality, a factor that is sadly slightly marred by the glaring typo (write-o?) on the front flap. Sigh. Still, that happens with hand lettering, and I guess I shouldn't complain too much about it, as I love hand lettering. 4. The family dynamic is really interesting and good, although not explored enough. I like his brother as a character quite a lot.

GM: I assumed it was all true, too, until I did a wikipedia search on Kalo. What is it about comics that makes us want to take them at face value? Even now I still imagine that most of the character details in It's A Good Life are true, that Seth and his family and Chester Brown are, in real life, more or less like how they're portrayed in the book. But even when a creator doesn't blatantly model the protagonist on his or herself, like with Too Cool To Be Forgotten, I tend to lose track of the fact that the book isn't necessarily autobiographical. Are we just conditioned to expect non-genre comics to be autobiographical because they so often are, or because, unlike movies, tv, and superhero comics, they're usually by a single person, with, y'know, a single artistic vision, and everything? Shit man, I don't know.

I'm far too often paralyzed by nostalgia, but the character Seth (and I assume the man hisself as well) take it a bit too far. Of course he realizes this, and in It's A Good Life laments how it hampers social interaction. That's one of the lessons Seth learns from Kalo's lifestory, right? That you can't just live in the past?

And oh, if you dig two-tone printing, you should check out Fantagraphics' Ignatz line. Totally lousy with the stuff. Lousy with greatness, too.

HB: I don't know if it's anything about comics other than the fact that cartoonists tend to name their characters after themselves. They're thinly disguised even when they're disguised. And they're often written in the first person as far as the narration goes, which doesn't really help the problem.

So, does he learn that lesson? I mean, it's sort of presented in the book, very subtly, through the fact that Kalo didn't just hold on to cartooning but, you know, got into real estate and got married and so on, but, if anything, you could argue that the ephemerality of his life, the extent to which all its details have pretty much drifted away, is even more of a reason to try to preserve the past. That is, doesn't that kind of nostalgia result, to some extent, from a feeling of fragility about the self, a worry that you'll be forgotten once you're gone? It's almost as though you preserve the past of others in the hope that someone will feel your past worth preserving too. I'm also not really sure the issue's resolved. Not that it needs to be tied up in a neat little package, but I found the ending slightly unsatisfying.

(Also, damn. That's Chester Brown? I didn't even think about it.)

GM: Nostalgia is definitely self-serving, and although the character Seth doesn't necessarily learn any lessons or come to a conclusion on the matter, I think that one of the book's points is that this obsession with the past is often fruitless. Seth doesn't really get any answers as to why Kalo quit cartooning, and if it was a decision Kalo was glad to make or had to. And Kalo's post-cartooning suburban life doesn't seem like something Seth would ever want to experience, so in the end his obsessive quest earned him nothing. Even if the character doesn't have that moment of realization, I feel like the book still says, "hey, this Kalo thing wasn't the best use of time or resources", right? I mean, it's not depressing like Paul Karasik finding out what Fletcher Hanks was really like at the end of I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets, but it's also not the ending character Seth was probably hoping for.

Maybe my own personal feelings on nostalgia are shading this too greatly, though. Like I said, I'm kind of paralyzed by it. My wife can't handle it. I spend most of my time thinking about shit that happened long ago. I got mad this morning because some kid reviewing a Love Boat dvd in the Weekly Dig apparently didn't know who Jim Backus or Adrienne Barbeau were. If I devoted even half the time I spend thinking about old shit to doing something productive my productivity would jump like 1000%. I hate nostalgia, even though I love it. And although I agree that we preserve the past of others in hopes that our past will be preserved, I think for Seth, and myself, and far too many people, nostalgia is still mostly about recalling the past because you're unhappy or uncomfortable with the present. Both are self-serving, but only one is self-pitying, and that's why nostalgia is so damn depressing.

HB: Yeah, but what is the best use of time/resources? I mean, you can't spend all your time thinking about that either, and at least Seth's quest for Kalo let him spend another night with his family, which they might appreciate. Plus, you know, human connection and all that. Maybe I don't necessarily think it's wasted because I do plenty of fruitless research myself, or maybe I'm just more the Chester Brown type: interested in the past and obscurity and all that, but less invested in it. A certain amount of nostalgia, too, is just respect for a well-produced object, which, as mentioned, is just what this book is. It's not letterpress, but the choice of paper, the quality of binding, etc. all add up to what we might call a productive nostalgia that results in the creation of a beautiful thing.

GM: Ah, I'm probably just full of shit on this one.

Anyway, true about this thing being beautiful. The real-life Seth has clearly used his nostalgia to make some pretty incredible comics. We can probably assume the Seth in IAGLIYDW will, too, but since that's not in the book I haven't considered it.

I'm probably being an idiot about this "character-Seth" / "real-life Seth" stuff, too, but I do feel the need to distinguish between the two.

And yes, nostalgia can be a great influence, but the danger is dwelling on the past without using it as inspiration for anything useful in the present. Which is kinda what I do, and I think kinda what Seth worries about in the book.

Tom Strong: Book One

Tom Strong: Book One
by Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse
America's Best Comics / Wildstorm / DC, 2001 (originally published 1999-2000)

Hillary Brown: Let me start off by saying that, while I'm intrigued by the project of Tom Strong (and the America's Best Comics line in general), I'm not sure how much I can tell from seven issues, or maybe that's not a particularly great sign with regard to the particular comic. After all, Top Ten didn't mystify me. It made me want to read more, immediately. Tom Strong just feels like either I need to know more about its background (although it's not unclear what it's drawing on, at least in a general sense) on, at least in a general sense) or I need to forgive its flaws as resulting from the genre. That is, if you're going to do a sort of retro jungle-man/scientist superhero thing that comes straight out of old book while correcting their problems (e.g., racism, random violence on the part of the good), you might end up with a lot of really brief, weird story arcs. And that all leads to a kind of disjointed feel. The origin story is really well done, but some of the other ones feel like they're missing set-up, like we've been dropped into the middle of a story that predates us. And, if I remember my early Spider-Man etc. well at all, there is almost always set-up. Maybe Moore just wants it to seem like the story existed before he got to it, and I suppose that's valid, but it doesn't quite work. That said, I'm definitely going through a phase where I'm very big on Mr. Moore. All four volumes of Top Ten were marvelous stuff, and it's possible that Tom Strong, with its relatively innocent storytelling style and comparative lack of jokes, just suffers in comparison.

Garrett Martin: I think you hit it when you said that "Moore just wants it to seem like the story existed before he got to it". Almost nobody reading comics today got in on any of the classic characters on the ground floor. Superman, Batman, the Fantastic Four, whoever, had years and years of backstory, but that didn't prevent countless kids from randomly jumping on over the years. When you're young you just accept that shit has already happened, and that it was probably awesome, and that it will be referenced and discussed but also explained enough within the current narrative to make sense. That explanation makes those older comics stilted and dull to newer readers, but it doesn't lead to the current problems with readers often failing to understand what's happening in any given 22-pager. Anyway, Tom Strong is another Moore pastiche, another revisitation of classic genre archetypes barely updated for a modern audience, and I think that sense of years and years of past adventures is a part of the tribute to the medium's past.

Tom Strong's not as singularly focused as other Moore pastiches, like the obvious early Marvel homage 1963. Moore cast a wide net with this one, combining elements from pulp novels, early science-fiction, adventure serials, and both Golden Age and Silver Age comics into one giant mess of no-signifyin' fun. I don't know if Moore is trying to really say anything about any of the afore-mentioned genres, angling more for pure enjoyment, for both reader and creator alike. Tom Strong is swift, breezy fun, to cleanse the palate between the meatier Top Ten and Promethea, which were both published concurrently with Strong. I maybe wouldn't hold it to the same artistic or intellectual standards as those two, or most of Moore's most famous work, but I enjoyed reading Tom Strong as much as anything Moore's ever done. That's also probably because Chris Sprouse's artwork is so damn pretty to look at.

HB: See, I think it's a little odd to describe Top Ten as "meatier," unless you mean that jokes are the meat. It's not that Top Ten doesn't have any weight to it, but... okay, maybe "meatier" is just right. I keep having this feeling that Tom Strong does have some meat. I'm just missing it. Maybe it's just Moore doing his own thing for himself, without thinking about audience too much, and sometimes that leads to great results and sometimes it doesn't.

I do very much like the way multiple artists are incorporated into each book, with the use of flashback, which also means you're getting two stories for the price of one. And I mostly like all the artists included, but none of them strikes the real chords of love in my heart. It's all above average, but perhaps the time when it was done (late 1990s, early 2000s) dates it a little? There's just something off to me, in writing, in look, in storyline, etc., although I do want to praise its continual gentleness, which I think is part of its mission. If Moore's setting out with any kind of project, it's a principled one, based on the need for superheroes to use brains as well as brawn, to rediscover a form of justice that results in as few people getting hurt as possible.

GM: Honestly, I haven't read Top Ten, but just from the concept I'd think it'd be a bit more complex than Tom Strong. And I think Moore's got the audience in mind, and that gentleness is there for the readers' benefit. Moore's retro pastiches are, in part, a counter to the pervasive bleakness of modern-day comics, a bleakness he might (justifiably or not) feel some responsibility for. Tom Strong is a relatively kid-friendly alternative to contemporary superhero comics and their fixation with rape and graphic violence. Yeah, you can recognize and respect the craft with which Moore combines archetypes and elements from various forms of junk culture (no disrespect!) to create something that's both fresh and classic, but at its heart Tom Strong is about escapism and doesn't feel the pressure to act all grown-up. It doesn't confuse vulgarity with maturity. It's fun!

Also, I forget; does Tom Strong use computer coloring and lettering? If so, that might explain the datedness. '90's computer coloring is really glaring nowadays, like when you rewatch Jurassic Park and realize how chintzy that once-impressive CGI t-rex now looks. I don't think Sprouse's pencils are dated at all, so I'm assuming it's got to be the coloring.

HB: Yes, I'm assuming it's computer coloring, which is totally jarring with the emphasis otherwise on retro style. I get that Moore didn't just want to do collage of the past, but, um, some of those fashions are not attractive.

Anyway, I guess we're both kind of saying "Yay, Tom Strong--just slightly less yay than some other things," right? I'm all for escapism and immaturity. I'm just not positive this book is the best example of it. That said, it certainly has plenty going for it. I just wish Strong himself were a slightly more compelling
character. He should be with his combination of intellect and brawn, his long history, and his deep desire to do right while thinking issues through, but he comes off a little bland, which may be the real flaw of the book.

GM: I wonder if that blandness is intentional, though. The Phantom, Superman, Captain Marvel - characters like that often are bland, right? They're too busy being perfect to be all that interesting. The color falls to the sidekicks and villains. They're like Pete Van Wieren, solid, dependable, charismatic in their own way, but not as fascinating as their friends.

Anyway, yes, Tom Strong isn't the greatest comic, but I did greatly enjoy it. It's sort of what the standard default comic book is like in my head.