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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
So then, one last time: we have three comic books under review, that I wanted to try to look at long enough, close enough, tuff-e-nuff.
Three comic books. What do they mean? Why do you want to hear stories about any of this stuff? What does which one we like say about what they mean to us, or what our time means to us, or what Chinese words mean, or what we mean to each other? Why are they useful? Like: what is the fundamental utility of this crap from a hunter-gatherer perspective? No matter how much society tries to counter-program our survival impulse, we're biologically programmed to strive to compete and succeed. So, from an evolutionary perspective: how do they help you survive better than competitive organisms? Or if they don’t, do we lack fitness because we're spending Competing Time so frivolously? You can say "I just want something that entertains me" but does being entertained in this particular way make you smarter, faster, cooler, more popular, more successful? Bottom-line: if you had to kill a deer, right now, with your hands-- could you snap a deer's neck with your bare hands? Or if you were walking down the street, and a fucking elk came charging at you, could you drop that elk with a kung-fu chop to the elk's forehead, and then pass your genetic information into the elk's womb, and give birth to a new species of man-elk hybrid? Do you think the Melk would be able to conquer all before them in an orgy of blood and horns? I'm all out of bubblegum. "I just want something that entertains me"-- sure, but lots of things would entertain you. You could watch that AMC show Mad Men. You could watch pornography. You could make a Works bomb using household chemicals and scare your neighbors. You could take phencyclidine aka PCP, Angel Dust, Supergrass, Gorilla Pills, Killer Weed, DOA, Embalming Fluid, Purple Rain, and break into your neighbor's house and tie them to their beds before they can do anything and scream the plot of NEW AVENGERS issue #32 into their faces while they struggle to get free. You and I, Internet, and the fun we'll have, high on Rocket Fuel, scaring neighbors, doing home invasions, eating out of garbage cans, reading NEW AVENGERS to each other on freight trains, violently sexing one another outside of an abandoned Toy Factory in Gary, Indiana, while genital-less action figures watch from the windows and judge us, while the rain falls down and washes away all of our transgressions, just like out of a Billy Joel song, a gutteral ancient Billy Joel song sung only in Hell. Three comics; three approaches: (1) SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES#31: I ran out of anything to say four weeks ago, and I only read this comic three weeks ago. The visual presentation is cleanly presented, though characters often pose in obscure, weightless ways (the Legion of Superheroes is fond of jazz-hands). It's not heavy on detail and I can't say it conveys much power or energy-- there's little flourish; it's very straightforward. But DC was never comfortable with Kirby, if you know what I mean. There's nothing that keeps DC from imitating NEW AVENGERS's success characterwise-- there's nothing that keeps the LSH from being a team of future versions of DC's most popular characters. Future Batman, Future Superman, Future Flash, etc. Nothing but a Persian army of angry fans sure to set fire to comic stores everywhere, but it's interesting how with all these garish events by DC-- all the rapings and killings and munging-- how you pick up a DC book at random: it could be 1962, 1978, 1983, 1991. Nothing indicates you're in our time but computer colors, different paper, ads for the "video games" the kids like. SLOSH #31 doesn't satisfy the current DC mission statement, no: nobody dies, nobody cries, someone's getting fired. That big boring DC DNA, one helix of yawn stranded to one helix of timid-- it survives no matter what stunts they pull. Is that comforting or discomforting? Both? (2) NEW AVENGERS #32: would-be summer movie blockbuster modern; to-the-extreme panel layouts; decent Dave McCaig colors; unnecessary sound effects-- three different fonts on one page! So you get your money's worth! Little tiny lines! Cliffhangers! Paranoia about women! War on terror metaphors! I am so, so old! Too old! I just want! A cup of tea! A nap! My! Life! Went! By! So! Fast! Meant! So! Little!!! Marvel's always been more comfortable with more youthful art, more energetic art than what SLOSH puts forward. Do I consistently understand what I'm looking at in NA #32? Not really, but I think the kids like guessing which panel to read next-- you get more for your money that way. I liked crazier stuff than this when I was a kid… The Skrulls thing ... I'm not in the mood to complain about that this week-- I'm still in recovery from having attended the Masque of the Red Death San Diego Edition 2007. Maybe next week but I don't want to do that whole "No, no, not that, wrong, Not that! " fan-mantra. That way fans can have a 'perfect high" moment that they want to be impossibly recreated—I just spent the weekend surrounded by it … Do you ever think it's not an accident a cartoonist wrote the final scene of Carnal Knowledge? (3) And COLD HEAT #1-- drawn in dark purple ink, then drenched in blue and pink colored pencil. Panels wash into one another; the drawings respond to the emotions of the characters rather than create them; dialogue is expository and opaque seemingly at the same time; unnecessary lettering floats about. There's a theory in film criticism-- I think I've heard it attributed to Jean-Luc Godard-- that if a film looks like a status quo movie, then the audience will treat it as reinforcing the status quo however much the film might try to didactically argue against the status quo. You ever heard that one? I'm not sure if that applies here or not-- I just wanted to name-drop Godard. You like Wittgenstein? Yeah: I went to college. Check me out. The first issue of COLD HEAT-- in making these artistic choices, does it jolt the audience out of their normal experience and force them to re-experience material in a fresh way? Or is that just a big bunch of rhetorical nonsense to hide an absence of craft? Maybe I’m snowed because I think the colors are super-neat, but I personally tend to the former. But it’s art-gallery-interesting to me, interesting in how it was conceived, how it invites me to think about its creation. Which—is that its own sort of pornography, you know? So: what’s the fundamental purpose of a comic book? Which of these three books satisfy that purpose? Is it to deliver beloved comic book characters? By that standard, SLOSH wins—you get the most characters. Or is the purpose to deliver you into an artist’s vision? COLD HEAT wins at that. Is it just to excite the humors? NA succeeds well enough at that. Is it that there is no purpose, and the universe is cold and empty, without significance but for whatever trivial meaning we impose upon it, p.s. God is dead, so let’s snort crank and scare the neighbors? By that standard, ACCORDING TO JIM wins. Specifically the episode “Jim’s Birthday”: “Jim tries everything in his power (including Andy) to sabotage the birthday party Cheryl threw for him.” See, the birthday party symbolizes birth, but the sabotage symbolizes death, and Cheryl, Jim’s “wife,” symbolizes the urge to procreate; thus, Jim by trying to sabotage his wife, is expressing a desire to undo his own birth, to undo his own creation. According to Jim, God is dead. p.s. Andy symbolizes hilarity. So, yeah: basically, I want art that can “win” and beat other art, while I sit on the sidelines and rate who wins. Good. Ass. Excellent. Eh. I want a FANTASTIC FOUR comic book that can hold your CHECKMATE comic book down and prison rape it. Is that normal? In prison, it is. And aren’t we all in prison? Like, because society’s a prison, dude? Let’s just be all deep and shit. NEXT WEEK: Some other comic, finally, finally, finally! Labels: Abhay Click Here to Read More... OK, system in and up, doors opened a bit, and we've done our first 2 sales. OF COURSE the first sale (w/ 4 items) scanned successfully on zero of them, but he was cool enough to let me go enter the scans back into the system (though I can easialy check someone out w/o it), so the NEXT time I sell those books it should go smooth. We'll see! Second transaction was good for 3 of the 4, and the last was my last copy of something that I won't restock anyway, so I let it go. Anyway, back to it, more later (maybe) -B Click Here to Read More...
So, if you want to read Brian's POS pains in the entirity, you can go here and get the entire POS Follies series of posts (Gimme awhile, and I'll actually label all of his retailing info posts, so those persons who come here wanting to read that kind of thing only can do so without fear of running into opinions); it seemed like something that should be easier to get to than it used to be, somehow.
Question for the audience: Should we add tags (sorry, Blogger, I mean "labels") for each poster, so you could search for Jog's, Johanna's, Abhay's, etc.'s, posts more easily, or is that just getting ridiculous? EDIT: Okay, individual posters have labels for their posts going back to the relaunch (Sorry, folks - I'm not going to go back and label the previous 700-odd posts right now. Maybe when I have a large amount of free time). Feel free to use the comments thread to suggest other changes we need to make to make this blog more excitingly user-friendly, with the exception of asking for larger fonts. Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More... Dear Teacher, please forgive Graeme for not posting for four days. I mean, sure there was that San Diego thing at the weekend (And thanks to all Kate and I met and hung around with there, by the way; it was fun), but there was also work and all manner of craziness happening at the same time that meant that my attempt to write lots of reviews ahead of time went somewhat awry. That said, San Diego was weird, in that it may be the first convention in my life that I've ever left feeling more excited about comics than I was when I got there. I think that's due to the fact that the few things I picked up while there were all very, very good (In particular, Black Metal, Pulphope and Joel Priddy's Beeswax Bound; I completely forgot to try and pick up a copy of the "5" minicomic, though, much to my annoyance) - Expect some kind of write-up of those things and more (Clubbing! Laika! Robot Dreams!) soon, once I catch up with the weekly grind. Which can only mean one thing: Time for lots of short reviews!THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #542: Is there anyone who isn't deadly bored of this storyline? The stunningly unconvincing "Dark Spidey" plot continues with Peter Parker promising to kill the Kingpin and enjoying Kyle Baker's favorite sport, shirtless fighting. If it wasn't for Ron Garney's surprisingly good artwork, this would be much less than Awful. ANNIHILATION CONQUEST: STARLORD #1: Another Good spin-off from the Annihilation line, with Keith Giffen remembering that Marvel has plenty of non-MODOK d-list characters that could be used and abused as cannon-fodder in this beautifully illustrated book - Timothy Green II really makes this more enjoyable than it has any right to be. Here's hoping he ends up a superstar who still manages to do random and fun books like this one. BLACK SUMMER #1: Which is really #2, and also Eh. If you like Warren Ellis a lot and wanted to see him do superheroes, then you'll probably like this, but there's not enough meat or originality in this issue to make me want to come back for the next issue. DOKTOR SLEEPLESS #1: Also in the disappointing Ellis vein, this new ongoing feels very much like Ellis trying to find a fictional use for the online persona that he's been trying on for the last couple of years, but not really succeeding. Lots of lines feel as if he's written them elsewhere and, again, there's not enough of a hook to bring non-Ellis fans back for a second issue. Eh. GREEN LANTERN CORPS #14: My first taste of the Green Lantern spin-off, and the momentum of the Sinestro Corps crossover is enough to make it seem like something I should be reading more often. I don't know if it's good writing or just depressing that Dave Gibbons' writing fits in so well with Geoff Johns' work, but it's solid enough space opera. Good. THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST #7: One of the books I would've spent more time on had I had the time, this fill-in/breather between main storylines was Very Good despite the oddly-split art chores; romantic, funny and smart, this really is what I want to see more of in my punchin' and kickin' books. IRON MAN #20: Pretty much filler, but well enough done to be Okay nonetheless - Ending the issue with "Find out Iron Man's fate in World War Hulk!" does make me wonder whether the next issue, which isn't a World War Hulk crossover, is just going to completely ignore whatever the end of WWH is going to be, or spoil it, considering that the crossover has another three months to run, but that's the way these particular cookies crumble, I guess. THE MIGHTY AVENGERS #4: Hey, remember this book? That's good, because this issue is pretty unmemorable in and of itself. "Nice" to see the return of gratuitous death of spouse as plot McGuffin, though. And when I say "nice," I mean Crap. Late and depressing. STAR TREK: YEAR FOUR #1: It's just like an episode of the original series, if the original series was Awful. The main fault, I think, is that it's half a story - All set-up and then rushed resolution - although the art (which can't decide whether it wants to be "realistic" or cartoony) doesn't help, either. I almost want to say that it's a missed opportunity, but I'm not sure what opportunity has been missed, exactly - Was anyone really desperate to see a comic version of what happened when the original show was cancelled when we've already had movie follow-ups and years of comics with the same characters? UNHOLY UNION #1: Ass Crap, as Abhay might say, but it really is - An ugly '90s flashback with no plot and pointless guest stars that leads into a crossover you don't want to read. There's no rhyme, reason nor explanation for the crossing over of the Marvel and Top Cow universes here, instead the characters just appear for a pointless and generic fight scene without a winner, then magically disappear once the pages are up. It's tough to say just how lazy and painful to read this is, so I'll just say that everyone should avoid it, and leave it at that. Any attempt at Picking Of The Week would end up with something that I'd read at SDCC (Although Iron Fist comes close, I have to admit), but Picking Of The Weak would easily be Unholy Union. Ron Marz, you lived through this the first time... Why're you doing it to yourself again? Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More...OK, double Ow. Left the house at 6:30 this morning, arrived back home at midnight. Whee. That whole "let's try to open" thing? Turned out to be not so great of an idea, weirdly enough -- still just enough training to do/things to go over/ fussy things to finish (or get into shouting distance of finished at least) So we didn't bother to try. Oddly enough, we still pretty much did a "normal" Monday's sales, as we let in subbers who were just there to pick up thier orders, and anyone who knew JUST what they wanted.... but still, that means we'd have had a GREAT Monday if we'd let browsers in. We will definitely be open on time tomorrow, everything is set "enough" for it -- I still have about 200-ish items that were never in MOBY's database, or needed something cleaned up, or are something special to our store, or whatever, that need to be entered.... but those can be done catch-as-catch can over the next (whatever) because they're not exactly top sellers or anything -- but the overwhelming majority (98.5% or better) of the inventory is in the computer and ready to sell. Well, 20% of it doesn't have barcodes yet (and 10% of those won't ever), but we can look up via the keyboard anything really fast. Anyway, game on tomorrow. I'll be back in somewhere between 7 & 8 AM to clear up my last bits of business, then I'll have one last 12 hour day before I can go back to "normal" (though I'll be working all day each day for the next bit, just to back up Rob and Sue a couple of days each as they work their way through getting comfortable of the logic of the system.) But, yeah, it is live and selling books tomorrow. Hurrah! -B Click Here to Read More... Sunday, July 29, 2007
Ow. So Mark Richman of MOBY arrived on Saturday night to complete our install of the MOBY point-of-sales system, and to begin our training on it. Saturday night, Rob Bennett and I did the hard physical inventory of the store, as Mark wrestled the hardware into working order, clearing up all the issues I couldn't figure out, like how to get all three of the different printers (receipt, bar code, and regular 8.5x11) working in harmony. Rob and I started around 7:30 PM. "How long can it take?" I mused out loud, "I bet we can get it done in 3 hours max". Admittedly, I thought we were going to have one more body with us. We were done SEVEN hours later, at just past 2 AM. I got to bed at 3 AM ish. I was back at the store by 9:30 AM Sunday morning to actually enter the inventory numbers into the computer. I was freaked out that my estimate of 3 hours to accomplish that was catastrophically wrong, given the inventory timing, but I actually finished it in just under 2 hours, going at a leisurely pace, and spending lots of time double checking my entries. (Originally Jeff Lester was meant to help with the data entry -- but he had an out-of-town wedding the same weekend, so it fell to me... He'd have probably finished in an hour flat) Noon, and Mark started training Sue, Rob and I. Spent perhaps too much time on stuff not directly related to selling-TO-a-customer type functionality, so it looks like training will roll on 'til tomorrow as we get our first customers. Mark had some programming related to requests we made, so, rather than hover over his shoulder while he is doing that, I decided discretion as better than, etc., and retreated home to lick my wounds. I plan on leaving the house by 6:30 am tomorrow to get a jump on the last fiddly bits of inventory management (as always, there was a fair chunk of stuff that fell through the cracks), because I'm setting my goal of being done with all of that (except, maybe, the mini-comics... and we might just skip it as being too-much-work, for too-little-return to get them in the system by about 9 am tomorrow. Which probably won't happen, but I'm going to try. Mark thinks we should stay closed in the AM, to do some last things, and while I'll probably defer to him in the end, I'm trying to work it so we CAN open at 11AM like normal, rather than 2 or 3. We already cheated a bunch of customers out of today. Rather not perpetuate that, if it is sensible to do so. Funny, I'm not in San Diego, but I'm pretty much keeping San Diego hours, and feeling that San Diego pain, too! One big fuck up on my part: I didn't have the barcode scanner set up properly to capture the "hanging" 4 digits in a code, so I have 200-ish scans which will end up being severely wrong. Nice thing is, you can "train" MOBY in codes "on the spot", so this will be a fairly minimal hassle. Ugh, my brain is total mush right now, but I think we'll be very cool at some point tomorrow -- MOBY is pretty clearly 7 flavors full of wonderful, and I'm pretty confident I made the right choice in POS systems; it is both sexy and robust! More when I have another chance to breathe... I might even be skipping on the shipping list this week 'cuz I don't know if I will have the time. -B Click Here to Read More...  Plenty of comics fuel left in my reviewing tank, gang. It was a big week. Warren Ellis' Crécy: Oh, it’s a new Apparat book. I suspect most of you recall Ellis’ and Avatar’s 2004 effort at simulating the offerings of a comics industry that developed along different lines than the present. Basically, it meant Ellis playing with a group of different long-lived genres for a while. This new book is a self-contained thing of 48 pages, b&w at $6.99. I believe that will be the official Apparat format now. So what type of comic is this? Educational! Yep, it’s the sort of comic where a character addresses the reader directly, walking them through a specific historical period or event, happily pointing out bits of trivia, and occasionally interacting with real historical personages. Helpful maps are included. The narrating character here is a cocksure, foul-mouthed trooper marching for England toward the famed 1346 Battle of Crécy, in which English longbows decimated both French noblemen and chivalry in war. Our friend both reports and editorializes, fully aware of his 21st century audience; he explains tactics and weaponry, reveals class distinctions, pauses in the middle of gory mayhem to define battlefield terms, and sometimes even expresses the concern of the soldier over combat (oddly, since he knows how it ends). Ellis often employs flights of explanation in his comics, so he’s quite comfortable crafting a fast-moving lecture, one that expectedly basks in the nastier aspects of its topic, yet deftly characterizes the merciless battle and its terroristic surroundings as an assertion of humanity from people considered by their enemies to be not so much barbarians as beasts of the field, even as those people don’t spread much charity around between themselves. Raulo Caceres provides lushly rendered (if cluttered) visuals that serve to ground the narration in period accoutrement. A pretty GOOD exercise. Speak of the Devil #1 (of 6): This new Dark Horse release from Gilbert Hernandez surprised me, in that I had absolutely no idea it was coming out (or even existed) until I saw it on Diamond’s list for this week. My surprise doubled when I discovered that it’s part of Hernandez’s plan to ‘adapt’ to comics several of the unsavory movies Love and Rockets character Fritz has acted in; apparently, this effort will now span multiple publishers and formats, since Fantagraphics will soon be releasing another of the series, Chance in Hell, as a graphic novel, and I’d sort of associated the project with that publisher. And that format, actually, given Hernandez’s recent expressions of weariness toward serialization. The title page is dated “2006-7,” so perhaps it’s already done. The plot is sex thriller cheese deluxe, with a spunky teenage gymnast taking to the streets at night in a wide-eyed devil mask to peep in on the private affairs of the neighborhood. This includes the sweaty trysts of her father and stepmom, the latter of which rather likes being watched. Meanwhile, a tired-eyed boy philosophizes in a cemetery about dark secrets. And there’s a beatnik. That’s about it for the first issue, although the relative lightness of content doesn’t suggest a larger work mechanically broken into pieces; Hernandez is a nearly unparalleled comics storyteller, and there’s tangible ebb and flow to the work that suggests a keen mind tuned to pamphlets. The real trick is that Hernandez is deliberately employing a spread-out ‘cinematic’ comics idiom for a half-jokey work that would probably benefit from having all of its grotty power on display for immediate consumption. Like, with Chance in Hell, from the looks of it. EH for now, but I expect better as it collects itself. Labels: Jog Click Here to Read More...Saturday, July 28, 2007
Come on, everyone! Up to my internet patio. It is a warm summer's day, and we have gentle comics to flip through. Let's laugh and yawn until butterflies land in our mouths, and we'll just let them stay there. Because we are peace. Tank Girl: The Gifting #2 (of 4): You know Tank Girl, right? Nasty young woman, drives a tank, kangaroo guy for a boyfriend? Now drawn by Ashley Wood? That last part leads to grand sights like this issue's inside-front cover, depicting the kangaroo guy's head (and nothing else) peering out dead-eyed from between Our Heroine's legs, as she glances at the reader and declares "I wuv him." It's the weird alchemy of Wood's distinctive art and Alan Martin's antic, gag-loaded writing that made the first issue of this thing such a compelling/creepy variant of the old Jamie Hewlett material - think the Bill Sienkiewicz of Elektra: Assassin illustrating a Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. script, and you'll be partway there. And maybe intrigued! Starting this issue, Rufus Dayglo provides layouts for Wood's finishes and colors, to little immediate effect beyond a small increase in 'traditional' cartoon exaggeration - Wood is utterly dominant, which means that, say, a panel of the kangaroo guy accidentally picking up a turd instead of a lost toy gun in the sewers is rendered with such stark drama that it’s funnier for being unsettling. A truly inappropriate Tank Girl! Unfortunately, this issue’s 15-page lead story (part one of two, at that) only reinforced my view that Martin’s Tank Girl tales are better when they’re shorter; what might seem charmingly who-gives-a-shit at eight pages can easily turn irritatingly distracted at nearly twice that length. Better all around is the four-page second story (prose short and pinup also included for your $3.99), concerning how a vintage toy ray gun prompts awful terror and declarations like “you can take your wiffy stiffies and fuck off back to crappyland.” Just part of the series’ ongoing look at nostalgia, a good enough bet for… a Tank Girl revival. OKAY. Multiple Warheads #1: Meanwhile, here is a another comic about a driven young woman cohabiting with an animal person, although this boyfriend is a werewolf, and only got that way after the girl sewed a wolf penis onto him for his birthday. At one point the idea was part of a porn comic, but this is a 48-page, $5.99 b&w debut issue from Oni, and the girl (Sexica) is an exotic organ smuggler who enjoys adventures we never see, and the wolf boy (Nikoli) is a tinkerer who dreams in fables, and the two rely on ingenuity and heart to escape their dead surroundings and visit the Impossible City. Youth! Love! Etc! I haven't read writer/artist Brandon Graham's prior release, the Tokyopop original King City, so this is the first I've gotten close to his unique blend of vintage underground flourishes (the term "hup" features prominently), whimsical technologies, loopy puns, and airy manga visions of cities. If you love Marc Bell comics and scanlations of delicate Afternoon or IKKI shorts in equal measure, buckle up for Heaven. Graham puts all of his energy toward creating fascinatingly odd, lived-in environments, speckled with detail so obscure that it can only hope to resonate off in Ideaspace or somewhere - and it kinda does! The lived-in feel also extends to some nice, intimate work done with the lead duo, the kind of we-know-each-other interactions that run the risk of appearing as shallow characterization (or worse - a nerdy male author stand-in having private time with his special Sexica), if not tackled with care. Graham doesn’t have much trouble with that, though the obligatory wistful narration veers close to preciousness; I could have gone for even more silent outdoor life to digest. But what's here is VERY GOOD. Labels: Jog Click Here to Read More...Friday, July 27, 2007
My mother used to ask me "why is it always hitting?" when she'd look at my superhero comics. This week is dedicated to mom. Black Summer #1 (of 7): Featuring chapter 2 of our serial! Chapter 1 was in issue #0, of course. Makes for laughs when digging through the bins years later. I get a fuzzy feeling over how perfect Juan Jose Ryp is for this book. All tangled hair and silent movie expressions and gore and debris - perfect for such garish superheroics, like a shuddering mix of Geof Darrow and Tim Vigil. I like how Mark Sweeney's colors make even the dark pages look bright and poppy, and how crackles of electricity wind up having the same consistency as splashing vodka. I mean, if you're going to have a comic book about a superhero killing the President and flying triumphantly through the sky with blood spattered all over his silver Sgt. Pepper uniform, with that same story featuring a crippled guy setting an assassin's head on fire before being menaced by dinosaur horns growing from the burning man's arms... this is the just the art you need. Folks hungry for political content will have to wait; this issue's nothing but fighting, bits of background, and the obligatory Warren Ellis technical explanations for various superpowers. The protagonist oscillates between ruinous vulnerability and tough-talking composure, as often happens, and the world stands ready for change, as it often does. But Ellis can write superheroes (er, body-modification experts) with a rare energy, when he's into it, and he seems very 'in' here. GOOD. The Immortal Iron Fist #7: One of the neat things about the first storyline of this series was that the two or three art team per issue setup seemed both creative and pragmatic - I could never not see the situation as a means of spreading the monthly workload, but I appreciated how the storytelling facilitated that goal in a way that nicely fit in with the general mythology-building aim. This issue, a one-off story about an Iron Fist of the past, is different. There's still three art teams, but this time the breaks seem to be set at points in the main character's development. Maybe? I confess I had to study the issue before it seemed like anything other than Marvel throwing up its hands and going "well, no other way this is getting out before deadline," which stands out worse for the approach taken before. Oh, the three teams are perfectly nice. Enough that when one character is suddenly missing all his hair after an art switch, I'm inclined to think that maybe he just shaved it off, thinking it was a fire hazard. I should know better, huh? Ed Brubaker's and Matt Fraction's story is sweet, and fitting for a breather issue like this. Wu Ao-Shi is the one and only female Iron Fist, rising to greatness yet challenged by the man she loves dearly, who can't quite cope with her life of ass-kicking. And she kicks many asses, mainly pirate asses, before the two can be together for good. It's cute. Sometimes a little too cute for my tastes, especially when mixing the fable-like narration with modern language for quick laffs. I'll give it a GOOD as well, but it's pulling me in two directions, as if I ought to be ranking it lower, while knowing it could maybe be higher. All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder #6: By this point it's clear that Frank Miller is way more interested in writing eccentric/pissy little character bits (punching also included) than moving the plot anywhere in a speedy fashion, and I like this series more the broader it gets. But the ripest scene in this issue is a hospital cheesecake bit with Vicki Vale, complete with breathless narration assuring us that 16-year old special guest star Jimmy Olsen "really gets off" when Vicki says his name. Then he peeps while she strips off her hospital gown. There's also a visual cite to The Graduate, just to show off the book's masterful command of subtlety. Much of the remaining humor space is taken up by Black Canary's atrocious Irish patois ("She makes me feel like I've got bees in my head," moans a nearby thug) - waiter, make that extra cheese. What else? Hitting, of course. The book indulges in some more of the stuff All Star Superman has also been into: sewing a world out of bits of the writer's prior uses of the title character. Hence, we have Barbara Gordon as Carrie Kelley (note the poster in her room... hooray for subtlety!), and the return of the notion of Batman inspiring youth to action. As always, Miller is all about Freedom!, this time spiked with the young Batman's reluctance to accept any help he can't directly control. I didn't do a full continuity analysis or anything, but I can see the other All Star book taking place five or so years down the road from this book, everyone a little wiser and calmer. Ah, but the Goddamn Batman stuff is starting to feel snoozy, and all the jumping timeframes and narration shifts give me a headache after a while. Pretty EH, but by now you know this comic embodies YMMV, right? Labels: Jog Click Here to Read More...Thursday, July 26, 2007
In a mad rush! In a mad rush! Flying to San Diego tomorrow to embarrass Douglas Wolk on his panel on Saturday, and that can mean only one thing: Lots and lots of stuff to deal with at work in order for me not to have a nervous breakdown over the weekend. Well, two things: It also means short reviews, so...ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #6: The following lines of dialogue appear in this issue: "I've got a whole different problem with the goddamn Batman." "What really bugs me about the goddamn Batman is what he's turned into." "The goddamn Batman has become a goddamn urban legend." "Oh, sweet Jesus! It's the goddamn Batman!" FRANK. I GET IT. Please, just move on already, will you? (Mind you, if moving on means more dialogue like the Black Canary's weird Irish-esque monologue - "Oh, you tease a poor Colleen, don't you now? These aren't my daily dainties" - then maybe you should stick with the goddamn thing for awhile longer.) What's become the most interesting thing about this book is the way that it's completely passed the point of self-parody by now. Not only is there no real plot development in this issue to speak of (Instead, we get the introduction of another new character, after #5's Justice League - well, really, Wonder Woman - and Black Canary in either #4 or #3, because I can't remember back that far; this time, it's Batgirl, who again doesn't really add that much to the story other than playing the Carrie Kelley role from Dark Knight in the same way that Black Canary plays the Catwoman role from Year One. The new characters have gotten so important to this book, it seems, that poor Robin doesn't appear at all this issue, despite his name being the biggest thing on the cover), but I didn't even expect any when I started to read it, in the same way that I expected crappy dialogue and cliched narration and Jim Lee to be Jim Lee. While I feel that, on any serious scale, this would be a crappy comic, somehow by sheer force of will, ASBARTW has transcended beyond that; all I can really say is that it's a very All-Star-Batman-And-Robin-The-Boy-Wonder-y issue of the series and that, taken on its own terms, it's actually Good. Just don't go anywhere near it if you didn't like the first five issues. BATMAN #666: There's a thread on Newsarama where fans go on about how terrible they found this issue, but I've managed to convince myself that they're reading an entirely different comic book than I was; this one-issue flash forward into a hellish Gotham (Hey, it's #666!) where both the hero and the villain have made deals with the devil was fast-moving, fun and nonsensical in the best way - like coming in on the final ten minutes of a movie that you really wish you'd caught the start of. Good if not great, but with enough style that you don't care, anyway. Tomorrow: Maybe no reviews, or maybe even shorter ones... Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More...Wednesday, July 25, 2007
 Graeme McMillan has shamed me. All this time he's been here, endangering his will to live by reading crappy comics so we don't have to, and how do I repay him? By sticking to stuff I'm likely to enjoy anyway. Well, Graeme, this one's for you! Let's talk about WOLVERINE #55 and the many, many ways Jeph Loeb makes the baby Xenu cry. In a sense, Loeb is the writer most aligned with the public perception of comics: he's loud, cliched, somewhat incoherent, pretty much the printed equivalent of a Jerry Bruckheimer popcorn flick. An okay way to spend six minutes, but there's nothing more to see here, folks. To be fair, this sort of bombastic, all-style-no-substance approach has its fans, and I can understand the appeal of the occasional non-cerebral Things Go 'Splody comic... just as long as you understand that it is a non-cerebral Things Go 'Splody comic. And that's where Loeb messes up, because he quite obviously lacks that sort of self-awareness - you never get the feeling that he's winking at his readers as he writes these horrifically cheesy scenes (that last page is a "KHAAAAAAN!" Photoshop just waiting to happen). No, Loeb - and by extension, Marvel - apparently expect us to take this issue very seriously. They're putting out press releases about how Loeb has killed off a certain long-standing rival of Wolverine (yeah, that'll last). In other words, this isn't a spoof of the overwrought '90s comic, it's a recreation, and we're being asked to critique it based on today's standards. And, unfortunately, the past few years have raised the bar for comics waaaay over Loeb's head. Just look at how repetitive, how thoroughly unimpressive this one comic can be: from Loeb's fixation on primordial goo, to Wolverine's first line of dialogue being lifted verbatim from a Loeb-penned scene in HEROES (the one where Niki meets DL's mother), to the Special Sword that saves the day - "Won't say how it works, only that it clearly does." Um, no, Jeph. If you're going to hinge your entire storyline on some Magical MacGuffin that can kill the bloody unkillable, you're damn well going to explain how it works. And, of course, the poor hideous monster has a final moment of humanity (despite Loeb being kind enough to remind us of all his past atrocities, so are we expected to sympathize with him now?) and begs for death, which is duly granted. Ugh. Even if you ignore the cliches and take an overall look at the story Loeb's telling... well, apparently the whole feral mutant war is predicated on hair color. "One blonde. One black. He knows only one can survive." Thank God for peroxide, I suppose. And then, just as you're wondering whether this is some colossal practical joke played at your expense, a shadowy figure (quite probably Axel Alonso) emerges to reassure us that "everything you've learned is true". Because nothing says "This story will stick" like a mouthpiece promising that it will, and that Wolverine is now... hell, I don't even know. The new spokesperson for Lycanthropes Anonymous? Heir to that abominable Austen storyline with the talking wolves? Even more pointlessly complicated than he was before? Really, it's that transparent writer's fiat that annoys me the most, the fact that Loeb is constantly reinforcing the events of the story with lines about how the sword "very clearly" works, and how "everything you've learned is true", etc. Rather than use the story to convince us, Loeb basically tells us we MUST be convinced. And I'm not. Mark my words, this whole CRAP story will either be directly retconned or quietly forgotten by the end of next year, emerging only in Wikipedia articles that link it to "Nightcrawler's father is Satan" and "Gwen Stacy's Teenage Mutant Ninja Goblins". Labels: Diana Click Here to Read More... SPEAK OF THE DEVIL #1 is the kind of comic that sticks with you after you read it. Not because it's a work of genius, mind you; no, this sticks with you because you're trying to work out why it's not so much better than it actually is.It definitely has the ingredients; Gilbert Hernandez doing a melodrama about suburbia and fetishism and sexuality? It should be great, right? And there are parts of it that are great - the core idea, for example, is clever enough to seem worth reading further, and the art is Hernandez's usual iconic fetishism all of his own ("What if Dan Clowes and Robert Crumb were genetically-melded and drew Archie?") - but there's something so crappy in the writing that just makes it almost uncomfortable to read. I mean, look at this dialogue between the main character and her friend: "She's just teasing you, Val; she's really so totally behind you!" "Yeah, Patty - - Behind me with a strap-on!" "Not every dyke is after your sweet tail, blue-eyes." "These days going lesbo might be preferable." "Considering the male company you keep, I'm surprised you didn't go lesbo a long time ago." It's just horrible, as if Hernandez is secretly hoping to make this into a porn film at some point - an idea that comes back when we see that the main character's step-mother (who just happens to be a cocktail waitress at some bar where she has to wear fishnets, horns and deviltail) enjoys being watched by the neighborhood peeping tom (who happens to be her step-daughter) while she has sex with her husband, rationalising it with "If he was just a neighborhood kid, he might learn something by watching us - - If he comes back." Boom chicka wow indeed. And yet, I keep thinking about the comic after finishing it, disappointed by the pedestrian nature of the execution of what could be something much better. I'm not entirely sure why - the hope that the crappy dialogue and the overly sexualized women are intentional and making some grand point later on, perhaps? The need to not have Hernandez making such a bad comic book, considering his other work? - but I'm sure that that counts for something. I just wish I knew what that something was. A confused Awful. Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More...Hello. I am here to whisk us all away, if only to sleep. I got to do one of my favorite comics-related things the other day - digging for nonsense in the bargain bins. You see, I'd just finished reading last week's The Programme #1 from Wildstorm (VERY GOOD stuff, by the way), and someone had mentioned to me that I ought to check out artist C.P. Smith's prior work on Marvel's The New Invaders series from 2004-05, a would-be ongoing that got shot down at issue #9. The timing was right for a look in the bins -- there's a window that opens after two to three years where long runs of low-selling series tend to show up, stores wanting to clean out the back issue stock and all -- and sure enough, I picked up the whole blessed thing for $4.50. You bet your ass I'll buy comics just to track a guy's visual development at those prices! But, much like the informative articles put in the spicy photo magazines I read as part of my serious academic studies, there's words in balloons floating all around the pictures, and... well, since I have to buy them I might as well read them, right? I don't recall The New Invaders being very well reviewed at the time of its serialization. Actually, our own Jeff Lester once called it "probably the dullest superhero comic Marvel’s ever published. It’s like watching paint dry, but without the fun of smelling the fumes." Luckily, my landlord actually is painting a downstairs apartment, so I set up a chair in the hall and huffed deeply whenever USAgent grimaced. It was a lot of fun, and I think I figured out what was wrong with the series - of the three storylines spread across nine issues, the first two were devoted entirely to things like background-setting, riffs on prior characterizations, and/or premature, unresolved clashes with villains. There was a lot of promise of at least quasi-resolution to come, but the third storyline just barely managed to begin with that when the series got canned. There was also a Millar-era Wolverine tie-in tucked away in there, which only served to hold the storytelling back even more. Too bad, but a common trap for Marvel/DC superhero comic serialization. And yet, reading that series really did get me thinking about serials and pamphlet-format comics. It also took me back to something I saw while wandering from bin to bin, something on the wall with all the trade paperbacks - one of the Ignatz books. You've heard of them, right? A joint venture between Fantagraphics Books and Coconino Press (of Italy)? If Image's much-discussed Slimline format for comics pamphlets represented an attempt to restore the value and sleekness of your average comic book by dropping the story pages to 16 and the price to $1.99, the Ignatz series ran off waving its arms in the other direction - the story pages are upped to 32 (remember, most "32-page" comics are actually 20-22 pages without ads), the price is increased to $7.95, and each issue is printed on fine paper, at 8 1/2" x 11" with jackets on every soft cover. Like comic books, these little productions offer series and serials, in little bites. They're numbered both in terms of series and in general order of release, in that, say, Sammy the Mouse #1 is also Ignatz #21, kind of like the Marvel Graphic Novel series or Dogme 95, thus retaining the collector's impulse. But you'll never find them in bargain bins - their content, dimensions, and gloss are like that of trades or graphic novels, and so they stay on the shelves. But, how do they operate? As series, I mean. If they're so damned unique. From my reading, it varies greatly. One of my favorite things about the Ignatz line is that the people published under it seem to be selected wholly on the basis of "oh, they'd be neat to have," so you're bound to get a lot of different approaches. Gilbert Hernandez's New Tales of Old Palomar, for example, presents issue-length short stories set in various points along his larger Palomar timeline. Gabriella Giandelli's Interiorae sets its larger story's issue breaks as time jumps, so that each issue is temporally self-contained. Richard Sala's Delphine organizes itself along more typical serial lines, with all the cliffhangers at the end that you'd expect. And David B.'s Babel, well... it behaves like the new graphic novel from David B., not yet complete, and being published 32 pages at a time. There's chapter breaks, but they only seem like necessary poles planted in an onrushing stream of narrative. My favorite operation, however, is probably Gipi's Wish You Were Here. It's only two issues so far. I don't know if any more are even planned. Certainly no more have been finished in any foreign tongue - I checked. Gipi is interesting in general, mind you. He's an Italian artist (full name: Gianni Alfonso Pacinotti), and fairly prolific, having released at least one large (80 or more page) book per year since 2003, although he's been active since the late '90s. His online bibliography is great, offering huge previews of all his books, plus seven complete stories and twenty-four one-page pieces, albeit all in Italian. His subject matters are all over the place, although he always keeps the human element at the front. He's also got a wonderfully varied visual style, ranging early on from moody smudges (slightly reminiscent today of Ben Templesmith), to whiplash variations between realism and sketchwork, to achingly light, lovely paintwork. Lately, he's been applying flatter colors to loose lines. A few months ago, First Second brought to English his 2005 Garage Band in the US. In a few weeks, they'll have his 2004 Notes for a War Story ready too. The two books represent delicate youthful color and war's sickly green. They are not related by plot. Both of them, however, focus on groups of young men, forming little societies to cage them off from the tough realities of the world, and looking for/reacting to paternal influence. It's all about boys and their dads with Gipi, from what I can read in English. The two issues of Wish You Were Here cover the same theme - the fraternity among boys, and their relationships with father figures. However, they explicitly operate as part of a series of crime comics, set in a shared world, among a shared group of characters. Indeed, Gipi treats his two issues as a unified study in contrasts, using one issue against the other to establish many dualities. I wonder if a third issue would throw off the balance? Regardless, we have what we have. Issue #1, subtitled The Innocents, takes place during the day, and is narrated via conversations between characters and the occasional sketchbook-style flashback. The plot concerns a grown man, Giulano, who's supposed to be taking his sister's kid out on a trip to an amusement park. Instead, he gets a call from a long-lost friend, Valerio, who used to run in a gang of four with him when they were kids. Valerio wants to meet, and Giulano hasn't seen him in a while; as he tells the kid on the way over, Valerio did a long stretch in prison at the climax of a prolonged struggle with shitty local anti-terrorist cops, evil father figures. They may have ruined Valerio's mind, and who knows what the now-grown fool will do. But there's a sweet, gentle touch to everything, an appreciation for white lies and letting things sit, as a means of coping with intense, sad pain. Issue #2, They Found the Car (what a name!), takes place wholly at night, and is narrated through an interaction of omniscient narration and character dialogue. In this story, the other two members of the child gang have also grown up. We are told the names of neither. But, like in the prior story, one contacts the other out of the blue, asking to meet, although this trip will be more sinister. They did a horrible thing in the past (we never find out what), and The Car was supposed to be hidden away (we never find out why), and now people will have to be silenced in an effective manner. One of the men thinks a lot about God, a good father figure, and how he has let him down. Where there was a child tagging long in issue #1, offering innocence, there is a wife who eventually shows in issue #2, offering pragmatism. Where issue #1 is light and soothing, issue #2 is ominous and jutting. Both of these issues work just fine as standalone stories. They offer full, interesting characterizations, and small human adventures that never seem too lean or overstuffed. But Gipi uses the contrasts between his two issues to provide a fascinating total work, one only possible from an artist as willing to jump from mode to mode as him. Set in the same place, at around the same time, the two halves of Wish You Were Here join to present a study of opposing experiences from a shared background. All of the main characters were rough boys, street kids. All of them seem capable of violence. One gets the feeling that a slight change in circumstance might have switched any of their roles, even though the two groups of two we glimpse never interact in the present. The time of day and the tides of fate draw two of the grown boys toward bonding, a sort of reconciliation out of violence, while the other two experience violence as a force of paranoia and separation. It is implied that a person can overcome the sins of man, the police-as-social-fathers, while they can only cope with their own sins before God, the father of all. Indeed, the narrative voice employed in each suggests the world of men, conversations mixed with human memory, and the eye of the Almighty, conversations inseparable from narration-from-beyond. There is irony in this construct too, in that the men dealing with bad fathers can find happiness, while those under the eye of the good father must struggle greatly toward an ambiguous finish. This is the type of sophisticated technique that the pamphlet formet is well-suited for. Really! There's a vivid immediacy to short bits of story, yet a comic as a story package provides a whiff of self-collectedness, what with the covers and all. Gipi uses each Ignatz comic as a small vial of exclusive moods, which can be emptied as part of a larger series to form a whole, similar, contrasting, complete world. I can't think of any system of serialization that could do it in quite so attractive and intuitive a manner! It takes skill, and care, and publishers willing to pay out for such things, no doubt, but it's successful projects like Gipi's that speak well for the pamphlet format as a whole, however fancy or trashy it's made to look. There is still life in the old format, aesthetic life. Comics like this remind me that we need not stuff the whole thing into the dusty bins. Some of them just won't fit inside. Labels: Jog Click Here to Read More... As Brian noted, it turns out the problem wasn't "event fatigue"; it's just fatigue with dull events. I hadn't been following the Hulk for, I'm guessing, 15 years or more, and I'm now thoroughly drawn in by World War Hulk. The funny thing is that it's exactly the kind of story I thought I was sick of--long-underwear types beating each other up for five issues straight, plus lots of tie-ins, while they speechify about how the enemy has never been so powerful and this calls for the greatest struggle ever and so on. But so far it's actually fun and exciting and Very Good, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens next. Here's why I'm enjoying it so much:*There's real dramatic force to WWH as an event, because both the fight and the story in general proceed entirely from the characters' personalities as they've been established. The plot has nudged them into place, of course, but everything they do feels inevitable--not, as in Civil War and Identity Crisis and so on, as if they're being frogmarched in some unwarranted direction. (The two-panel Reed-and-Sue scene this issue is a "yes, that's exactly what they'd do" moment, as opposed to their Civil War headslappers.) We've been bracing for this since Namor's line in Bendis's Illuminati special about how "he's going to come back and he's going to kill you all." *The "crossover" elements have mostly been pretty well handled--there's a very specific sequence of events that everybody's been working with, and the multiple-angle approach of the various series tying in with it reinforces the sense that something massive is happening. Some of the crossovers are still pretty lousy, mind you, but at least they mostly seem to address legitimate story points, and I've liked a couple of them a lot, especially Ant-Man. And the way Greg Pak is handling WWH and the regular Incredible Hulk series at the same time is very sharp: Incredible concentrates on the supporting cast, WWH concentrates on the Big Fight, and in each of them the other story is mostly going on in the background. *John Romita Jr. and Klaus Janson are exactly the right people to be drawing the main WWH series, because they're really good at making stuff look BIG and DRAMATIC. Even the digital-blur effects in the Hulk/Thing fight make the scene more brutal and kinetic instead of cornier. *Amadeus Cho. What a great character--even captions have more fun when he's around. ("Jen's total fave"!) Not that he's really in this issue... *As tired as I'm getting of the Sentry as the character whose powers are just about literally providing deus ex machina endings, I kind of love the idea of him helplessly sitting out the fight. *This could very easily have been a gorefest, with rolling heads and blood in the streets; even though the initial premise of the Hulk being shot into space is based on the idea that his rampages kill lots of people, Pak and company are avoiding the cheap manipulation of on-panel ichor-spraying. (I'm kind of amused that all the characters keep using "smash" to describe what the Hulk's doing.) *Even though it's obviously not going to be, it feels like a final Hulk story in some ways, with the whole supporting cast of the series returning for dramatic closure. Actually, I have no idea how there can be another Hulk story after this one, although Pak clearly knows where he's going--Dr. Strange's comment about redeeming the Hulk at the beginning of this issue points toward a potentially interesting angle. The really smart thing about World War Hulk is that Pak has appealed to the standard line on what the Hulk is about--rage being something that makes you stupid and violent--and then flipped it over. The Hulk's rage, this time, is righteous--which it's taken two years' worth of stories to set up, but now it's very clear. The stupid, violent guy indisputably has a just cause for war, and it comes from the military-industrial complex, in the person of Iron Man et al., having done horrible and treacherous things, once again claiming--reasonably--to have been acting in the interest of public safety. The premise is not just "oh, crap, the monster is coming back from outer space to smash us all," it's "the monster is coming back from outer space to smash us all, and oh, crap, he's kind of justified, isn't he? But wait: we have a right to act in our own imminent defense, don't we?" So, as much as this is a story about a massive fight scene, it's also a story about a drive for revenge that's being characterized as monstrous; about the economic engines of war and industry, and the governmental apparatus that supports them in the name of public security, and the resentment they've built up coming back to explode in their face; about more or less legitimate ideologies that are more or less legitimately at odds clashing, violently, and bringing destruction to everything around them; about karmic payback. In other words, it's a political story, about the present moment, maybe even more than Civil War was. But this one's aiming for thrills rather than "importance," and it's much better entertainment. ALSO: While I'm thinking of it, two of your Savage Critics will be appearing at Comic-Con International! I'm moderating three panels: "Drawing Style and Storytelling": 12:30-2 PM on Thursday (with Darwyn Cooke, Carla Speed McNeil, Colleen Coover, Cameron Stewart, and possibly a special guest; unfortunately, Brian Wood probably won't be able to make it) "Meet the Press: Writing About Comics": 10:30-11:30 AM on Saturday (with Graeme as well as Heidi MacDonald, Nisha Gopalan, Tom Spurgeon and Tom McLean) "Comics Are Not Literature": 11:30 AM-1 PM on Sunday (with Cecil Castellucci, Dan Nadel, Austin Grossman, Paul Tobin and Sara Ryan) And I'll be signing Reading Comics on Thursday, 2:30-3:30 PM, and Saturday, 3-4 PM, at the Comic Relief booth, 1514-1523! Come say hi. Labels: Douglas Click Here to Read More...Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Yeah, I know what you're thinking: what kind of asshole relaunches his blog, then doesn't actually post any reviews to it in the first week? That asshole would be me! My excuse is thus: Point-of-Sale goes live in six days (Monday 7/30), and I'm drowning in work to get everything ready for it. The database is "mostly" done (I still need to go and add distributors for the non-brokered stuff -- though I sorta am afraid if I put "COLD CUT" in that field, and there's not great news coming out after San Diego, that I am going to really strongly regret it), but I have to "get ahead" on other normal-business stuff. For example, the new order form is due on 7/31... but if I don't finish it by, uh, tomorrow, it isn't going to get done this month, then we'll have no comics in September! Same thing with the latest subscription list, plus we had ONOMATOPOEIA to layout and print last week. Put it this way: I've been hopping. I will (WILL!!!!) be ready come "D-Day" -- that's actually Saturday night, as we do inventory; and Sunday when we close the store to finish that, and install the database -- but every second of every day is precious right now in getting shit done. I've barely responded to emails from Kate McMillan asking about the site, for that matter -- everything is triage mode right now. If it isn't POS related, and it will take more than 15 seconds to respond, then it is being put off! One thing Kate did is to add a PayPal donation button over to the right -- if you like what you've been reading, PLEASE FEEL FREE to make a donation. At some point we'll probably be going to some form of advertising, but, for now, we're beggars on our knees, and if every one of you donated a buck or two, I could cut my fellow reviewers a nice check for their efforts. Think about it, will you? Um, what else.... oh, yeah, Matt Brady finally put up the latest Tilting at Windmills on Newsarama, with some commentary on how DC's marketing has failed COUNTDOWN. Give it a read! Mm, and like Abhay, I picture alt cartoonists on the bus, too. Except for Peter Bagge. He's on a bus, too... but he's wearing an ascot, and holding one of those Dennis the Menace pipes. Also: am I the only one already sick of San Diego? Shit hasn't even started yet, and I find the whole exercise tiresome. I'm REALLY glad we're doing POS that weekend... This week's books? OH MY GOD, it is a freakin' flood. Seriously, my largest invoice of the 21st Century. Not of ever, but in the last 7 years at least. And I bet the post-SD one will be just as huge, too. Anyway, here's what Comix Experience is getting this week: ALL NEW OFF HB MARVEL UNIVERSE A TO Z UPDATE #3 ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #6 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #542 ANGRY YOUTH COMIX #13 ANNIHILATION CONQUEST STAR LORD #1 (OF 4) ARCHIE #577 BATMAN #666 BATTLESTAR GALACTICA #12 BETTY #167 BLACK DIAMOND #3 (OF 6) BLACK PANTHER #29 CWI BLACK SUMMER #1 (OF 7) BLUE BEETLE #17 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #5 CABLE DEADPOOL #43 CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #35 CHEMIST COUNTDOWN 40 CROSSING MIDNIGHT #9 DEATHBLOW #6 DOKTOR SLEEPLESS #1 DUST #1 (OF 2) ELEPHANTMEN #10 FALLEN ANGEL IDW #18 FANTASTIC FIVE #2 (OF 5) FEAR AGENT LAST GOODBYE #2 FUTURAMA COMICS #32 GON VOL 1 GREEN ARROW YEAR ONE #2 (OF 6) GREEN LANTERN CORPS #14 GRENDEL BEHOLD THE DEVIL #0 HAWKGIRL #66 HELLBLAZER #234 HELLBOY DARKNESS CALLS #4 (OF 6) HEROES FOR HIRE #12 WWH HIDING IN TIME #1 (OF 4) IMMORTAL IRON FIST #7 INCREDIBLE HULK #108 WWH INVINCIBLE #44 IRON MAN #20 WWH JSA CLASSIFIED #28 JUGHEAD #183 LOVE & ROCKETS VOL 2 #20 (NOTE PRICE) LOVE AND CAPES #5 MAGICIAN APPRENTICE #9 (OF 12) MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN #3 MIGHTY AVENGERS #4 CWI MULTIPLE WARHEADS #1 NINJA SCROLL #11 ONSLAUGHT REBORN #4 (OF 5) QUEEN & COUNTRY #32 RAISE THE DEAD #4 (OF 4) RED SONJA #24 RIDE DIE VALKYRIE #2 (OF 3) SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN #39 SHEENA #2 (OF 5) SILVER SURFER REQUIEM #3 (OF 4) SPEAK O/T DEVIL #1 (OF 6) SPIDER-MAN FAIRY TALES #3 (OF 4) STAR TREK YEAR FOUR #1 STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC #18 SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #32 SUPERMAN #665 (CD) TANK GIRL THE GIFTING #2 TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE #45 TEEN TITANS #49 (AA) TEEN TITANS GO #45 TESTAMENT #19 TOP COW / MARVEL UNHOLY UNION TRON #4 ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #44 USAGI YOJIMBO #104 WALKING DEAD #39 WARHAMMER 40K DAMNATION CRUSADE CVR A #6 Of(6) WETWORKS #11 WITCHBLADE #109 WOLVERINE #55 WONDER WOMAN #11 (AA) X-MEN #201 X-MEN FIRST CLASS VOL 2 #2 Books / Mags / Stuff 24 SEVEN VOL 2 GN 52 VOL 2 TP ALAN MOORE HYPOTHETICAL LIZARD TP ALAN MOORE WILD WORLDS TP ALTER EGO #70 AMERICA JR VOL 1 TP AMERICAN VIRGIN VOL 2 GOING DOWN TP BACK ISSUE #23 BATTLE POPE VOL 4 TP WRATH OF GOD BOMB QUEEN VOL 2 TP QUEEN OF HEARTS CHICA GN (A) CLASSIC DC CHARACTER #3 WONDER WOMAN ESSENTIAL SPIDER-WOMAN VOL 2 TP FRIENDS OF LULU PRESENTS GIRLS GUIDE TO GUY STUFF GN GOODNIGHT IRENE GN ILLUSTRATION MAGAZINE #19 IMMORTAL IRON FIST VOL 1 LAST IRON FIST STORY PREM HC JOHNNY RYANS XXX SCUMBAG PARTY TP MARTIAN MANHUNTER THE OTHERS AMONG US TP MOON KNIGHT VOL 1 ROCK BOTTOM TP NANCY DREW VOL 10 THE DISORIENTED EXPRESS SC POSTCARDS TRUE STORIES THAT NEVER HAPPENED HC PREVIEWS VOL XVII #8 PULPHOPE ART OF PAUL POPE SC SHOWCASE PRESENTS MARTIAN MANHUNTER VOL 1 TP SOJOURN VOL 5 A SORCERERS TALE TP SOUNDS OF YOUR NAME GN SQUA TRONT #12 TIJUANA BIBLES VOL 8 TP (A) TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #156 UNCANNY X-MEN RISE & FALL OF THE SHIAR HC WARREN ELLIS CRECY GN WILL EISNER EDGE OF GENIUS VOL 1 TP WIZARD MAGAZINE ALEX ROSS JSA KINGDOM COME CVR #191 WRITE NOW #16 What looks good to YOU? -B Labels: Brian Click Here to Read More...
We now continue our review of New Avengers #32, Supergirl & Legion of Superheros #31, and Cold Heat #1, already in "progress":
This week is about plot; but before we bother... Some memories never go away, right? And you don't get to pick which ones those are...? You're always one neurochemical abra-cadabra away from some awful moment from your life, yes? You're just one synaptic misfire away from that time you vomited into a baby carriage and had to run away from angry parents and their puke-drenched horror-baby, yes? And which moment you get to relive-- that's out of your hands. The teensy tiny tip of the iceberg that makes up the conscious you is not steering the ship; you're not the boss of you. But, but: we all walk around with so much story shrapnel in our head now. You try to watch a TV show, but you fall asleep half-way in. Some movie's so bad you turn it off before it's over. Comics: maybe you pick up a "jump-on" point but don't jump. Or maybe you lose interest. Or maybe a writer gets fired halfway through a story. Or whatever. But it goes in your brain; you remember it. Fragments, slashed up chunks of nothing, and they're IN YOUR BRAIN and they NEVER FUCKING GO AWAY? Dude: that is shit-the-bed scary. What if: what if you get into a car accident that rips off your arms and legs and takes off your face and paralyzes you, but the accident leaves you alive, but you're a prisoner inside your flesh, and politicians won't let you die, but your mind still works and you're trapped with your memories, and you're trapped with some unfinished story-with-no-ending and holy crap, dude? Or what if: what if after you die, what if in the afterlife, all you have are your memories to relive for the rest of eternity, and you're trapped with these unfinished stories for the rest of time? Imagine you had to spend eternity with whatever it is you ingest or read or consume. That's as possible an afterlife as any of the others I've ever heard, so maybe you have to be careful right this second, just in case. What if a bad comic carried a risk of eternal damnation? What if there were something at stake here? Or, or what if: what if when you go to sit on a toilet, a werewolf's head leaps out of a toilet bowl, all fucking growly, and bites you on the taint, and, fucking great-- now you're a stupid werewolf, and the only way to stop hurting the innocent is to shoot a silver bullet up your own asshole? Fuck! But I'm still not getting the next issue of SLOSH because Whatever. SLOSH #31: The characters all have superpowers, but they never get around to using them. There's only one fight scene, but it only lasts two small panels and it's seen from a far off distance-- it's basically little better than stick figures fighting. There's lots of characters, but none of them like each other. There's a character called Braniac, but he gets all his ideas from someone else. Characters argue, but there's nothing at stake. People talk, but nothing is said. Stewardesses smile, but not with their eyes. Etc. My favorite part: the engine of the issue is the team has to find the missing "Cosmic Boy." Which I find delightful: a comic as square, as un-psychedelic as SLOSH #31 is about the Cosmic Boy having gone missing. It's Freudian Slip comic book plotting! When did Excitement Boy or Commercial Success Lass go missing? And no: I don't know why a werewolf would be in the toilet... Maybe one of your turds turned into a wolf in the light of the full moon. Get it? The full moon = your pasty butt. I got you! I got you so good I can taste it! (victory, not your butt) What if you end up remembering the-time-I-got-you for all eternity? NA #32 is even easier to describe: NINE PAGE PLANE CRASH!! The issue has to delay so the crossover it sets up will fit snugly between the glorious World War Hulk and whatever crossover follows it. Can't dance-- fuck it: NINE PAGE PLANE CRASH!! The scene has positive qualities. It's at least tactile, and kinetic, scalable from human experience. But: NINE PAGE PLANE CRASH...? In a comic where a plane crash won't even hurt half the characters? Where we know all the characters on the plane have their own series or movie deals? Some would argue what happens after the crash redeems the crash itself-- the crash is misdirection for the issue's later events. But that's not how it felt for me as I was reading it. I didn't get to the end and say "This ending justifies all this wasted page geography spent on empty spectacle. I enjoy codeine and prostitutes." You probably said that; hey, I didn't; viva la difference... (Though there is one moment I did like: the plane's going down-- most of the superheros are doing stoic superhero shit, trying to save the day-- except Hawkeye, who in the Bendis Avengers is usually portrayed as a big ol' pussy, I guess...? Hawkeye sissy-screams: "We're going to land on people!" I honestly thought that was terrific.) So the comic where the plot moves forward the most? COLD HEAT #1. I would expect the opposite-- I tend to expect more plot from a mainstream book than a comic that looks like COLD HEAT #1 so the inversion here is striking. SPOILER WARNING: a girl named Castle has a boyfriend who has died; drugs; she goes to a party where another young man dies-- Castle is at least partially culpable; she wakes up the next morning and learns the ways of the ninja; somewhere, bombs fall; a dream-penis is compared to a telephone(?); at the end, a cliffhanger; plus a funny bonus essay. COLD HEAT #1, strictly plotwise, is a ninja bad-girl origin story, a Brian Pulido cover band except for an audience that doesn't like Brian Pulido...? Though those looking for a companion book to Shi or Whore of the Shuriken or whatever might be, uhm, challenged by the presentation, where I think the heart of the book lies moreso than the plot. Or even beyond the distinctive presentation style, a good nonconsecutive chunk of the book finds the main character in bed, asleep-- not even dreaming, just napping through her own comic. Here's a complete digression: close your eyes and imagine an alternative cartoonist in your head, and the alternative cartoonist has to get to the supermarket in a hurry. Any alternative cartoonist you want. I'll wait... Okay, one question: Did you imagine the alternative cartoonist on a bus? I realized the other day that I never imagine alternative cartoonists driving a car, hanging out, living, loving. I just imagine them on an endless bus ride. COLD HEAT's Frank Santoro? On a bus. Kevin Huizenga? On a bus. Robert Crumb? On a French bus. Is that just me? Anyway: will we ever find out what happens to the sleeping ninja bad-girl dream-penis telephone drugs? COLD HEAT is cancelled. Presumably the creators work away somewhere on a fully-realized collected edition, but who knows? Frank Santoro could be crossing the street tomorrow and get hit by a bus. Frant Santoro could be running to catch a bus tommorow, and he could trip over a fire hydrant, and crack his head open. Frank Santoro could be on a bus when another bus falls from the sky crushing him and maybe also crushing a turd-wolf. We don't know the future. Which returns us to our original point, that we run a profound risk ingesting the incomplete, the half-finished, the "let's solicit this before it's done." Anyways. They're all linked, plotwise, in at least one way: SLOSH is all about a team mistrusting one another; NA is all about a team mistrusting one another; the characters in COLD HEAT sure have reason to mistrust one another, what with the ninjitsu and all. Always with the drama... I don't think it's helpful just to throw our hands in the air and blame the zeitgeist. Isn't there more than that to consider? Is it healthy to feed yourself that theme so constantly? Shouldn't we worry that it Labels: Abhay Click Here to Read More... Two random thoughts (and one of them concerns Harry Potter, so look away, Charlie): Firstly, that epilogue in Harry Potter - what? I mean, seriously, am I the only one who thought that it was kind of a crappy ending to the whole thing? (I know that Kate didn't; she loved it to pieces.) And secondly, after listening to Danger Doom on the way to work this morning, I realized: Stephen Colbert is Space Ghost, and The Colbert Report is Coast To Coast. Now it all makes sense.Okay, with both of those out of my system, shall we look at some comics? ANNIHILATION: CONQUEST: QUASAR #1: As much as I didn't care for this Okay issue - a lot of my dislike is down to Mike Lilly's art, which is overly rendered and feels weirdly gratuitous in terms of its core couple at times - it's still an interesting set-up for the series, and ties in nicely with the overall event. Maybe I'm just a sucker for stories where the heroes are fighting against a ticking clock, but I like the concept that Quasar only has limited (and getting smaller all the time) amounts of power to use unless she can save the day... Christos Gage's script feels very Claremontian at times, but I'm much more forgiving of that in Marvel superhero books these days... Blame it on my recent Essentials diving. BIRDS OF PREY #108: So, I was reading Douglas's "Reading Comics" book this morning, and he mentions Birds of Prey as a pleasurable experience if not necessarily a long-lasting one due to its multiple-creator and cross-book-continuity elements... and with this issue - Gail Simone's last, I believe - I can kind of see his point on the latter part of that, at least; the thing that sticks out most from this rush-ending (which is nonetheless full of nice moments once Spy Smasher has left the book; she was an interesting idea for a character, but never seemed to quite work) was that the heart of the book really belongs not to Oracle but to Black Canary, who was pulled out of it to go star in Justice League and marry Green Arrow. Once she was gone, the series lost its focus and identity, and didn't really find it again throughout the remainder of Gail's run. The second half of this issue is as good as the book's been for a long time, and that's partially because Gail gets to write all of the main characters - including Canary - in a scene together again, bringing the friendship and familiarity that made the majority of her run so good. Very Good despite the obvious attempts to tie-up loose ends before leaving the room. BLACK CANARY #2: And this was one of the reasons Dinah was taken out of BOP - Her own mini-series by name, although (excluding flashbacks) she only actually appears in eleven panels of the entire issue (Supporting cast member Green Arrow, by comparison, gets fifteen panels. Oh, and the bad guy is actually out to get him, not Canary). I shouldn't be that harsh, I guess; Tony Bedard's script is tight enough, and Paolo Siquiera's art is really rather nice, but this really isn't a book that stars Black Canary at all. Okay. THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #5: As much as I really love the Legion, and especially Mark Waid's version of the team, and as much as I loved this issue, this is still just an Okay issue because there's just too much going on in it without any of it really mattering - For people who've never read the Legion before, there are too many characters appearing here without any real introduction or even personality, so they just become generic stand-ins to react to how cool Batman is. I mean, sure I love that Invisible Kid is a massive fanboy, but if you didn't know who Invisible Kid is, there's nothing here to make you love him, I don't think, and that's a disappointment from a series (and a writer) who's managed to distill all the other characters down to their essences so far. That said, bad guys called Luck Lords is somehow an awesome idea. JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #11: You know, this is a nice enough one-off issue - and Gene Ha's artwork is probably what elevates it to that level, to be honest. There's something about the texture on that double-page spread opening the book that I adore, but I couldn't tell you why - but it feels weightless and unnecessary, filler while Brad Meltzer plays for time and waits for his run to finish next issue. What's become obvious about Meltzer's JLA run is that, while he's a massive JLA fan, he's a really bad JLA writer - his thirteen issues amounting to a confused eight-part (I'm counting the #0 issue) opener that substituted misdirections and fanboy nostalgia for plot, a JSA crossover that aspired to - and failed to meet - the level of something that Len Wein would hack out to meet a deadline so that Dick Dillin had something to draw, and a couple of fill-in issues. Yes, he's somehow a big name issue and a fan-favorite, but he didn't actually manage to do anything with the team, or even show why his particular version belonged together. He also managed to set plots in motion that he's unlikely to be able to wrap up next issue: What's going on with Geo-Force's powers going weird? What was happening with the three villains in the future seen during the JSA crossover? Red Tornado's traumatized and unstable now that he's a robot again - where is that going? Will Vixen be able to get her powers under control? and so on and so on. This issue: Eh from a pretty Awful run to date. THE LONE RANGER #7: Okay, I admit it. Somehow this week, between announcements of Matt Wagner writing their Zorro revamp, this issue and PAINKILLER JANE #2, I've somehow come around to the idea of Dynamite as a pretty good publisher. I mean, yeah, they do Xena (which is potentially good, but I never saw the TV show nor the appeal, really) and Red Sonja and all, but they also do things like this and The Boys, and even that new Alex Ross book they're talking about. There's no way of getting around it - The Lone Ranger is just a Very Good series, and this issue keeps that up, building more onto the framework from the first storyline in terms of plot and character while Sergio Cariello continues to provide high quality Joe Kubert-esque artwork. It's the best TV show they never made, in a lot of ways, and I mean that as a complement. Meanwhile, Painkiller Jane continues to sneak up on me and become my new guilty pleasure - It's borderline exploitative and gratuitous, but there's something enjoyably offkilter and unexpected about where the story's going, and Lee Moder's art is smart and cartoony in all the right ways. Weirdly Good, if that makes sense. SHAZAM: THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL #4: A big finish that actually feels like a big finish, this hit all the notes that you wanted it to and, perhaps more importantly, did so in a way that felt right. Thankfully pulling back from the "Dr. Sivana is Dick Cheney!"-isms of the previous issue to concentrate more on the rockin'-em and sockin'-em moments, Jeff Smith manages to close out his series in a way that leaves you wanting more but happy with what you've got, just in case. Very Good. THE SPIRIT #8: Darwyn, you had me at the first use of "Mr. Sexypants." Very Good and then some, this is one of the best books around these days; never mind Cooke's amazing art, his writing (balancing enough plot and closure to make each issue complete in and of itself, but consistently moving larger plots forward) may be the unsung star of this book. SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP: MODOK'S 11 #1: Can we now call time on MODOK as co-opted ironic cool icon? This issue is Okay enough, but I'm not sure the world ever really needed to see that MODOK was once a lovesick nerd before he got turned into a giant floating head, nor do I particularly want to see him in a heist movie with other forgotten villains. I mean, yeah, it's funny in a hipster way, but... Meh. I don't know. It feels like it's laughing at the source material and people who find it cool, rather than enjoying the dumb fun because it's dumb fun, you know? THUNDERBOLTS: DESPERATE MEASURES #1: Because, for today's Marvel, you don't get fill-in issues, you get special one-shots that just take the place of the regular book on the schedule for a month. Aside from Steve Lieber's artwork (which is rather good, really, and definitely better than the story deserves), there's nothing to recommend this (Well, okay, there's the Herbie reference), unless you particularly want to read Paul Jenkins do a weak impression of Warren Ellis. Awful. This week: More comics! And San Diego, so I take a couple of days off! Great! Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More...Monday, July 23, 2007
 I'm a fan of Cormac McCarthy--I have this nerd dream of somehow getting Garth Ennis to read Blood Meridian, after which he considers me a fellow of impeccable taste rather than a sweaty tool who can't handle his liquor--but when I finally got the chance to sit down down and read The Road recently, I was surprised by how nonplussed I was.I mean, yeah, The Road is a good book, and McCarthy is better than any author I've ever read at conveying what it's like to subsist on the bottom rung of the ladder where one slip means oblivion, but his book about a father and son struggling to survive in a horrific post-apocalyptic future just didn't instill in me that sort of desperate, anxious, near-religious panic and awe I got from Cornelius Suttree's hallucination, or The Judge's pursuit of The Kid, or even that kick-ass knife fight in All The Pretty Horses (now that I think about it, isn't there also a kick-ass knife fight in Cities of the Plain?). I just figured my lackadaisicality was because I read The Road far too leisurely, pacing it out over some commutes, a few lunch hours, etc., and thus missed the same harrowing experience critics raved about.But halfway through reading Volume 6 of THE DRIFTING CLASSROOM this morning, my new theory is that The Road left me more or less nonplussed because I'm getting all the post-apocalyptic hijinks I could ever need in Kazuo Umezu's brilliant ongoing nightmare. I mean, in this volume alone, you've got children setting each other on fire, stoning one another, dying by plague...and that's all by page 31! (I don't want to spoil this volume's feel-good ending but let's just say there's both a decapitation and someone's arms being ripped off in the last three pages).Adding to the good times, Umezu spends a good portion of the time in modern-day Tokyo, as Sho's mother seeks to find a way to get medicine to her son: Sho's panicky mother shoves another mother into the street, starts a riot at a baseball game, and is punched by a pharmacist(!), among other highlights (by which I mean, a pretty alarming scene with a butcher knife). There's no mouth-wateringly baroque word choices like you might find in McCarthy, but I do wonder if five volumes of Umezu's unrelentingly bleak view of civilization stole some of The Road's thunder for me. The Road is arguably far more naturalistic, but The Drifting Classroom dips right into the well of fairy tales and myth and gave me a strangely enjoyable feeling of dream-like dread.That said, I'm not sure how I feel about the scenes with Sho's mom. Although they underline Umezu's belief that civilization is a very thin mask covering the face of a terrified, dangerous beast (and so, really, the hysteria and the violence the kids in the school resort to would probably occur even if adults had ended up in their place), they're nearly as high-pitched and melodramatic as the scenes with the kids, dampening the power of the childrens' predicament. And yet I'd be loathe to cut these scenes: not only did a couple of them literally make me flinch, but the cartooning on them was top-notch. I think I mentioned in a review of an earlier volume that Umezu reminds me of Chester Gould, and I thought that again here during some of the scenes of Sho's mother running through rain-swept streets of a city at night--really stunning stuff.Although I think your average superhero reader might be put off by the anachronisms and some of the cartooning tropes (when the little kids run, they look a lot like Silver Age Flash), the ones who bitch about manga being too decompressed would feel right at home at Umezu's modified eight panel grid. If that sounds like you, and you've been looking to dip your toe into manga, this may not be a bad place to start. Even if it's unlikely to make Oprah's Book Club anytime soon, this volume of The Drifting Classroom is VERY GOOD material that already has me rubbing my hands in anticipation of the next installment. Labels: Jeff Click Here to Read More... THE PROGRAMME #1: There was a time where Peter Milligan was arguably the best writer working on a monthly book anywhere in the American comic book world. Admittedly, that was more than a decade ago, and he was doing Shade The Changing Man and Enigma for Vertigo just after it launched, but he was so good back then; smart, funny, and able to mix both those traits into incredibly readable, unique stories that spoke to the big issues in everyone's lives. He hasn't been that writer for awhile - for various reasons - but I have to admit that this is the closest he's come in a long time (I didn't rate his X-Force/X-Statix as highly as everyone else did, for whatever reason. It just didn't seem that great to me... Sorry) - Jumping between multiple timeframes, touching on political and social and sexual hangups underneath the larger superhero story, this is both the most focused his writing has seemed in some time, and also the most savage. What's interesting to me is how similar it seems to both Rick Veitch's "Army@Love" and also Brian K. Vaughan's "Ex Machina," which feels oddly fitting, as if whatever mainstream of comics that Vertigo and Wildstorm represent (The older superhero fan mainstream? The weekly direct market visitor who's wanting more mainstream?) has a lineage of writers that Milligan fits snugly into, a continuum that started with Steve Gerber doing Howard The Duck and kept going. That similarity, though, also works against the book; the superhero elements are easily the least interesting parts of the first issue, and are also reminiscent of more regular-superhero-mainstream things like The Sentry and even Brubaker's Captain America run, proof that even Wizard readers have caught up to what seemed daring and groundbreaking fifteen years ago, even if they'd find themselves turned off by winking references to Talibstan and erectile dysfunction. They probably also wouldn't be too fond of CP Smith's art, which is a shame - Either photoreferenced or just photorealistic, there's an enjoyable intensity to it both in terms of the harsh blacks and also the melodramatic poses struck by characters. That intensity is backed by garish coloring by Jonny Rench that curiously works towards the good of the visuals, adding a surreal aspect that matches Milligan's dialogue. This isn't "realistic" comics, it's played as dark farce, as Milligan's best work always has been; he's a writer who has no problem being cruel to his characters and torturing them in the name of the plot (almost as much as Grant Morrison always ultimately offers happy endings because he loves his characters so much), and it's nice to see him return to such bastardry here. Whether the series will live up to the promise offered in this first issue or, like his turn of the century series Minx (for Vertigo), burn out very soon after launching remains to be seen. But for now, it's a Very Good start. Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More...Sunday, July 22, 2007
The MoCCA festival was a few weeks ago, but the thing I kept pointing people toward there is the same thing I've been showing off to friends back home: a self-published, 28-page minicomic by Laura Park called Do Not Disturb My Waking Dream. This is apparently her first print comic, although she posts a lot of her drawings and comics on Flickr. (I've been looking at her Flickr page every so often since I got the mini--there's a lot of stuff to go through there.) Do Not Disturb is really just a collection of miscellany--a bunch of one- and two- and four-panel strips and sketches, with one story-like thing in the middle of it: six pages of a little fable called "How Does Your Garden Grow?," which cuts off in the middle with a "To Be Continued. (Sorry!)" There are some bits about Park herself, mostly about her relationship with her cat Lewis; there are a couple of illustrated recipes; there's a one-page jam with Julia Wertz; there's a great little drawing of herself as a child, captioned "I spent a lot of afternoons making eucalyptus bark masks." I've kept coming back to Do Not Disturb, because Park's artwork is such a joy to look at. She's got a Steven Weissman-like gift for big-headed caricatures (especially for her self-portraits--squat and moody, with downcast eyes, all her features taken care of with a few brisk dashes), but she's also got a really striking way with rendering tones and shapes and backgrounds, and she adjusts her technique for almost every piece. Plus she's really funny when she wants to be. I've been grinning every time I look at her piece about "the terrifying spider that lives in my bathroom." There's a certain kind of cartoonist archetype that Park sorta fits into: the kind with a fondness for old-time music (the title of Do Not Disturb comes from a Carter Family song, "The Winding Stream"), an extensive sketchbook, and a reflex of self-deprecation that sometimes crosses the line into cruelty. That last thing is the only part of Do Not Disturb that bugs me; it's a bad habit she shares with Chris Ware and Ivan Brunetti, and in all three cases they're so talented that it becomes functionally the same thing as fishing for compliments. A line like "I'm wandering through the black hole of self-loathing, embracing my worthlessness and choking on the stagnant fumes of my profound inadequacy" is the sort of thing you can really only get away with once before it starts getting old. "No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission (unless you want to review it, but that probably won't happen)," says the copyright page. So much for that--! This is very good stuff by an artist I'm looking forward to seeing more from in the future. Maybe she'll do longer pieces, maybe she won't; a couple of people I've shown it to have said they'd like to see her do some kind of extended narrative, and I would too, but I'd also be happy just to have more collections of tiny pieces like this one. I have no idea if she plans to sell copies of Do Not Disturb at any future cons, but the email address she lists on the inside front cover is pancakemahoney (at-sign) gmail.com. Labels: Douglas Click Here to Read More... And this, my friends, is a story about second chances. You see, I was distinctly unimpressed with the first few issues of Dan Way's Wolverine: Origins book back when it first appeared, and I was also distinctly unimpressed - and maybe slightly more than that - with Kaare Andrews' Spider-Man: Reign when it came out. But I saw the Andrews-illustrated and Way-written WOLVERINE: ORIGINS ANNUAL #1 on the shelves this week, and thought the following:"Hmm. Well, it's an annual, so at least it'll be done in one. And maybe having to write something that tightly will make Way rein in his excesses. And Kaare's art was the one redeeming factor of Reign. Why not?" So let's cut to the chase: It's Awful. The goodness of the book is, again, Kaare Andrews' art. He's evolved into a fun cartoonist, with influences from Frank Miller, Eduardo Risso and Kyle Baker amongst many others, but his pot pourri works really well, especially on the flashback scenes here; his femme fatale in particular seems very much of the era she should belong to. The coloring, by Shannon Blanchard, helps with the look of the book, from the subdued palette (with the exception of the femme fatale's bright red lipstick, which is a nice touch) to the artificial aging of the flashback pages, it's intelligent coloring that helps the linework without being in any danger of overpowering it. Visually, the book's a triumph. It's a shame, then, that the story is such a mess. It actually starts well, with the promise of a noir tale from Wolverine's past, and dialogue that plays with the original Chris Claremont Madripoor stories ("You look well... 'Patch.' You've even somehow gotten your eye back."), but the last half of the book just falls apart - the plot fragments to the point of incomprehensibility, with the last reveal not being a reveal at all, but a shout-out to something that isn't explained in the slightest but (I'm guessing, because as I said, it's not explained in the slightest) seems to tie in with the regular book, and characters spouting meaninglessly vague dialogue in place of explaining their motivations or actions. There are sudden jumps in time that read as if Way was initially writing a much longer book and just took whole pages out to make it fit into the allotted space (although his narration bridging these jumps is amusing), leaving the final story as this strange, unfulfilling and frustrating thing. It could've been so much better, had it kept focus and tried to offer an ending... Overall, the annual reaffirms my bad feeling about the Wolverine: Origins title (that it's unnecessarily complicating Wolverine's backstory - and really, think about that for a second - and substituting vague, sprawling, paranoid hints about a grand plan for an actual story) while reminded me that Kaare Andrews can, indeed, draw his little heart out. So much for second chances. Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More... Something you'd better learn now -- I suck at titles. My apologies for not being as creative as the others or knowing as many song lyrics. Captain America #28 -- I think this is what's meant by superhero comics for adults. Writer Ed Brubaker attempts to tackle weighty issues through expository conversation, even when those debating are wearing gaudy spandex. There's the hero left behind vowing to find out what really happened to Captain America, shot dead; telepathic erasures; and a sadistically violent robbery (welcome only because it provides some red to the comic's dark color palette). Mostly it's talk, talk, killing time until it's time for the next sales-spike gimmick event, which we all know will be the hero's return. It's one of the few superhero titles I read, because it is as well-done as it can be, but it still seems to me a bad match in attempted content and trappings, like forcing a nuanced political debate into a Harlequin. Long-time readers may find the variety intriguing, but for those looking for lighter entertainment, it's visually dull. (Art is by Steve Epting and Mike Perkins with gloomy color by Frank D'Armata.) I give it an Okay, although that would drop if we're rating for non-direct market fans. The Order #1 -- Previously "The Champions", until Marvel was forced to realize they no longer had the trademark. (Given how often they've been legal bullies, seeing them knocked down a peg tickles me more than it ought, especially since this particular battle is meaningless in the bigger scheme of things.) Matt Fraction introduces a new superhero team (because there aren't enough of those already). I gave it a try because I hoped it'd be a good starting point for someone not particularly interested in the bigger universe. (Although the Initiative banner across the top was a turn-off ... I don't know what it means other than "we want you to buy more comics you may not be interested in just because of this label".) The premise is that a group of volunteers are turned into heroes with a huge publicity budget. Others have compared it to X-Statix already, although it doesn't have that sense of parody and ironic reserve. I agree with the commenter who got a Strikeforce Morituri vibe from it. I don't think death is as certain as it was in that series (where it was part of the premise), but I do think they're aiming for that "anything can happen to these characters because they're not franchised" feeling. The marketing slant also reminds me of the Conglomerate from Justice League Quarterly because I was a DC girl. It starts with some guy who "played Tony Stark on TV" narrating, in a way very reminiscent of Max Lord. A writer can't help it, really -- everything looks like something else given the amount of history they're struggling under. Here, the pantheon idea is explicit, with the young heroes given codenames of particular Greek gods. Barry Kitson's art is less stiff than it was on The Legion of Super-Heroes and attractive (inked by Mark Morales and colored by Dean White). The book's biggest problem is that 20-something pages aren't enough to introduce a team and all the many supporting characters, pull a switch, set up the premise, and establish a cliffhanger we care about. To launch a team effectively, you need double or triple the space, but who's going to take a chance on the extra cost when there are known and familiar quantities out there? It got an Eh and two Goods from other Critics, and I'm afraid I'm leaning towards the Eh myself. With the conditions Fraction's working under, it's neat that he does as much with it as he can here, but there's no reason driving me to buy another issue, no character I'm interested enough in to want to see more of, nothing that flips that "I'm looking forward to reading more" switch (especially with so many other options out there). The Spirit #8 -- Now this is the kind of superhero comic an adult can read. No continuity needed, although if you remember previous stories the events will have more depth. Otherwise, everything's on the page, and the jokes work because of human nature, not because of shared reading lists. Action, adventure, suspense, romance, comedy -- all the biggies, all included by incredibly skilled craftsmen with an unique look (Darwyn Cooke, with finishes by J. Bone and color by Dave Stewart). Through some machinations it's not necessary to go into (because really, this kind of thing happens all the time in this world), the Spirit and the way-cool spy Silk Satin are trapped with a nuclear bomb counting down to detonation. As if that isn't enough of a nail-biter, the government wants to destroy the whole thing -- with the two inside -- and Satin's the worse for wear after a blow to the head. It's such a pleasure to see talented work tell a story that wraps up in one issue and still shows key qualities of the characters with significant emotional impact. This is a Very Good comic. Labels: Johanna Click Here to Read More...Saturday, July 21, 2007
This weekend, I am a Harry Potter widower. The book arrived via UPS this morning at 9am (in a box that warned muggles not to open it until July 21st), and Kate's been reading it silently ever since. Occasionally, she sighs or pauses to tell me that "Voldermort's a bad dude," but for the most part, I think this weekend's going to be all Potter all the time for her. Me, I have haircuts and laundry and writing to do. And reviews!AVENGERS CLASSIC #2: Man, Art Adams can do some nice covers. That's really the best part of this otherwise Eh issue; the early Avengers issues by Lee and Kirby really didn't do anything for me - I didn't start enjoying the book until Roy Thomas came on, to be honest - and the new back-up story by Dwayne McDuffie and Mike Oeming is light and nothing we haven't seen before. As much as the Avengers may be Marvel's most popular franchise right now, it's books like this that'll change that sooner rather than later... AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE #4: I get that this is the militaristic New Mutants of the Avengers line, but it's still not really created enough of an identity for itself, nor a reason for it to have been upgraded from the miniseries status it was originally given. This World War Hulk crossover illustrates that point; the story in this issue could've been told using any rookie superheroes, and isn't anything new - with the exception of a subtle "Iron Man's anti-Hulk plan would've worked if it wasn't for those pesky kids" subplot - nor really anything interesting. Eh, again. CAPTAIN AMERICA #28: He's still dead, and Brubaker's continuing to keep the book more alive than it's been for years because of it. Unlike the last few issues, though, this feels more like it's playing for time - Obviously, events are building to something big very soon, but this issue seemed more like the reaffirming what you already know calm before whatever storm's about to hit. That said, we saw Nick Fury, which surprised me; I really expected Fury to end up returning as part of a big reveal in New Avengers or something. Good, but part of that may be because of the expectation of what's to come. THE ORDER #1: Ian Brill and I were talking about this the other night; I was pretty disappointed in this Eh opener of Matt Fraction's new series, and I think a large part of that comes down to the lack of the distinctive skewed perspective that Fraction's brought to his Punisher and Iron Fist books (as well as his creator-owned stuff, obviously); this book feels much more generic than Fraction's other superhero work, and that wasn't what I expecting, so - I told Ian - I felt let down; with the exception of Henry, the narrator of the issue, everyone else seemed cookie-cutter and rather uninteresting to me (Yes, I get that each issue will probably focus on a different member of the team, but I'm just going on the first issue here...). Ian pointed out that may have been intentional, considering the theme of the book is the interchangability of the members of the team (And also, he added sarcastically, they're not completely interchangable - "One of them's in a wheelchair!"). And that's a possibility, I guess, but doesn't having your characters be interchangable go against any dramatic tension of the fear of losing any of them at the moment's notice? If you don't have empathy with someone, surely there's no reason to care about their being in the book or not? Maybe it's Barry Kitson's art, which is in some respects always good, and in others, always kind of unexciting... Either way, not the runaway success I'd been hoping for, but faith in Fraction will see me picking up the next issue anyway... And isn't it random coincidence that Diana, Jog and I all end up reviewing the same book on the same day...? Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More... THE ORDER #1 wasn't originally on my pull list for this week, mostly because time hasn't softened my opinion of CIVIL WAR and I prefer to avoid bad-crossover fallout when I can. On the other hand, there are occasions when keeping an open mind leads to unexpected surprises.This was one such occasion. Matt Fraction has delivered a first issue that is, in a way, the antithesis of Dan Slott's AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE. Slott's biggest hurdle, right at the start, was that none of his characters came off as appealing or intriguing; his interpretation of the Initiative is based on forced conscription into an organization with sinister undertones. THE ORDER, by contrast, seems to have been built around the concept of brave men and women volunteering to receive superpowers for a year (and occasionally slipping up). There's a sort of everyman idealism there that isn't too common in today's Marvel Universe, and you can see it even more clearly in the first few pages, which establish Henry Hellrung as a likeable guy who wants to do "the next right thing". This is crucial for a book with an original cast, there has to be at least one sympathetic protagonist with whom the reader can identify. More than any plot twist or gimmick, the protagonists will determine the average reader's reaction to the story. That's why the Runaways, X-23 and the Young Avengers have endured the test of time where so many of their peers (Arana, Freedom Ring, the latest Ant-Man, etc.) have vanished into obscurity. Using new characters also allows a degree of freedom, and Fraction uses that to set up a surprising twist halfway through the issue. I've always been fond of books that shake up their rosters on a regular basis, and while this tactic has a downside - Fraction basically has to introduce the Order twice in about thirty pages, so there's no room to explore any character except Henry - a fluid and dynamic cast has its advantages. As Jog noted, the use of media awareness echoes Peter Milligan's X-STATIX (or, more recently, Ellis' THUNDERBOLTS), in that the Order is clearly part superhero team and part PR stunt, and that actually has a hand in how the story plays out. I expected Fraction to use this angle as a way of juxtaposing the Order's pristine public image with their genuine personalities off-camera, but that's not what happens. In fact, it's the public image that gets tarnished, and there's no evidence that the media is either exploiting or being exploited by the Order. So I'm not sure where we're going with that, though I'm certainly interested in finding out. And now it's time for Starkwatch! Ever since CIVIL WAR ended, Tony Stark has been one of the most erratic characters at Marvel. Some writers see him as a megalomaniacal douche who keeps a heart-encircled picture of Dr. Doom on his nightstand; some insist he's just trying to do the right thing in a crazy world; and some (well, just Adam Warren, really) simply have him going about his superhero tech business. Fraction's version of Stark is a little too close to Company Mouthpiece (ie: "It's what the Fifty-State Initiative is all about - and it's why THE WAR was fought") but overall, he comes off as a relatively balanced figure, quite possibly because he's at a distance from the heart of the story so the issue isn't overwhelmed by The Moral and Ethical Dilemmas of Mister Anthony Stark (or, to put it another way, "TONY IZ IN UR SHIELD, ENSLAVING UR POWURZ"). That might be the wisest way to use Iron Man in any comic that doesn't directly concern Iron Man, as he's become a very unpleasant figure and no amount of FRONTLINE damage control can fix that in one shot. A GOOD debut, then. I had zero expectations going in, but I like what I've seen and I want to see more. Labels: Diana Click Here to Read More...Ok, did I do the music title thing right? Justice League of America #11: I can pretty easily recall when I really started enjoying the attention to concept that goes into Gene Ha's art. It was his recent(ish) The Authority #1, loaded with moist, foggy color, determined to never quite allow anyone's face to be glimpsed straight-on, dotted with gruesome blur effects right out of a 1994 issue of Spider-Man Unlimited - it did a great job of selling the sad slog of the book's 'real' world setting all on its wordless own. This comic is just as handsome, beyond even the broad setup, which sees Red Arrow and Vixen stuck in a tumbled building that seems to be crushing them, panels gradually getting narrower and narrower as the issue goes on. The real effect is in Ha's lavish character art, so rich and vivid (Art Lyon's colors are vital) it seems like a collection of bang-up superhero pulp magazine covers, all of it crunched into these teeny tiny spaces, sanded with dusty visual fuzz... he sacrifices visual characterization for broad, bombastic heroism, but it's cruel to see such superheroic images made so pained, and it really bolsters the impact of the story. Well, as much as it can. As good as the concept here is, there's isn't actually a lot done with it, save for the gradual tightening of panels, some nicely apportioned splash pages, and an inspired page where the reader is forced to literally turn the book around to simulate the characters' movement through the ruin. That kind of stuff needs carefully measured writing to compliment it, but Brad Meltzer's script doesn't offer much beyond endless variations on desperation and struggle, which makes the story seem stretched from a great sequence to a thin issue. I can't give it more than an OKAY, but you'd better believe I'll still be looking at all future Ha. Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil #4 (of 4): Short observation #1 - writer/artist Jeff Smith’s revised character design for Mr. Mind is absolutely terrific. Sly, snot-green eyes, a mouth full of sharp cartoon choppers, and oh that headset… cracked me up every time. Short Observation #2 - if you’re going to have a cutesy secret code thing going on in your comic, you should probably make sure the final message doesn’t translate to “TGE END.” Anyway, I’m happy to say that this concluding issue throws its weight behind the series’ greatest strength: Smith’s keen grasp of childish daydream logic, tweaked with primal adolescent fears (icky bugs! abandonment!) as only an adult can understand them in retrospect. More than any other current superhero comic I can think of, this feels like a youthful frolic right from its core, and there's real charm to that. Less charming is Smith's tendencies toward blunt political commentary, not so cloggy as last issue but still very present, which transform the book in a strike of lightning from an adult's youthful fancy to an adult lecturing to those fancy youths. What a drag. It's not that I'm against politics in young-skewing superhero comics like this one, but Smith's handling of Sivana's war lust slots the character firmly in the 'Malcolm McDowell stealing elephants' role for wholesome kids' entertainment, and that clashes badly with the dreamstate fancy Smith otherwise handles admirably. So long as the Captain is growing to giant size and socking monsters, it's great. So long as everyone reflects on how misplaced aggression and fear mongering is the true threat facing us today, I sort of wind up wishing Smith would at least get back to zippy gunplay-around-kids jokes. Still, it doesn't get the better of him for the finale, so VERY GOOD end to a GOOD series. The Brave and the Bold #5: I do appreciate what Mark Waid is trying to do with this storyline, kind of a rolling snowball effect where troubles build upon troubles as more and more superheroes team up, with the big crash presumably coming next issue - it can be fun at times. But it can also be very tiring, especially when the plot starts to wriggle out of Waid's grip like it does this issue. Part of the problem is giving seemingly half of the 300,000 members of the Legion of Super-Heroes a panel to tangle unsuccessfully with Batman, which will probably delight established fans, though it basically snuffs any hope of less-acclimated readers getting a handle on the characters beyond "Oooh, this one's bossy! Punch his face, Batman! This one can shrink but Batman still found a way to hit her! Hit them all forever, Batman!" But even a less character-cluttered corner like the Supergirl/Green Lantern/Adam Strange meeting resorts to a backstory summary just to keep things flowing, creating less a sense of dynamite dramatic build than the book's Wikipedia plot section getting updated right before your eyes. George Pérez is still aces with varied designs & environments, and his storytelling has enough flair that a few potentially creaky moments come off as slightly inspired (love how the reader's viewpoint dances from faces-to-book-to-faces-to-eye-to-eye-to-faces in just four panels during the Book of Destiny sequence), but the scent of EH is rising. The Order #1: I'm not the first to make this observation, but the debut issue of this new Initiative-branded series from Marvel seems remarkably similar to that famed first issue of Peter Milligan's & Mike Allred's X-Force revamp, from the cockeyed look at unheroic superhero media savvy right down to much of the field team being taken out of action right off the top. I wonder if there's some deliberate homage at work? If so, I liked how the particulars were tweaked a bit - there's much more emphasis on the gulf between media people's private and public lives, how fragile folks are made to seem hard and spotless in front of a world that needs gods of a sort (the 'gods' motif in the characters' names was a good touch). Writer Matt Fraction is generally good with larger-than-life characters interacting in a warm, funny manner (see also: Punisher War Journal #4, the supervillain funeral one, best of the run by far), so the small moments play to his strengths, and he's got a knack for fitting bits of Civil War fallout in with the work's larger themes, like Tony Stark's desire to keep the new team cleaner than he ever was. The big action bits suffer from the issue's pace, though, as characters keep getting introduced at a clip that renders too many of them nondescript when Fraction has them barking action dialogue - I get the feeling Milligan kept the introduction of the new new team for his second issue for good reason. Still, even these large fighting segments leech enough character vigor that interest is not quite lost, and Barry Kitson's/Mark Morales' line art manages a few touches of facial flair in wtth the workmanlike storytelling. GOOD, and I hope it gets better. Labels: Jog Click Here to Read More...Friday, July 20, 2007
Here's a question: would you enjoy watching "The Wrong Trousers" if it was animated in the style of "The Family Guy" instead of with Nick Park's clay animation? Or would you have enjoyed "Hot Fuzz" if the roles had been filled by the cast of "Saved By The Bell?" I bought Jason Shiga's BOOKHUNTER back at APE and have been trying to get a handle on it since. A satire of police procedural shows and over the top action films, Shiga's writing is more than top-notch: the story of a tough-as-nails library cop and his dedicated squad fighting against time to catch a rare book thief, Bookhunter is filled with techno-wonk babble so authentically sounding it puts all other techno-wonk babble to shame ("On the press itself, it looks like each plate was burned through a zincotype process. You can see the slight non-uniform deformities in the serifs here and here.") Every topic related to the theft, from how a fake book might be made to how someone would get the combination from a safe they're breaking into, is explained with what's either a virtuosic base of knowledge or an equally virtuosic ear for mimicry. On top of this, by setting the story in the far-flung world of Oakland, 1973, Shiga also provides a look at a disappearing world of library science, where the cataloguing room is a grand hall of hard-copy records. ("Why it wasn't but a year ago," one of the character notes, "that patron records occupied a room almost half this size.") Interestingly, although setting the story in 1973 causes a vast number of anachronisms to pop to the surface and a fact-thick procedural usually causes that sort of thing to knock a reader out of the narrative, the whole conceit of a top-notch library police force commanding the full fiscal support of the government is so fantastic from the get-go that the anachronisms don't stick at all. Finally, the action setpieces are absurd and entertaining as hell, with the final twelve page chase scene everything you'd want from a fight in a library. Those Hollywood dudes out there scouring convention aisles trying to score the next big film property aren't working hard enough if they haven't already offered Shiga at least some appalling pittance for his book. So what's with the rhetorical questions and the cognitive dissonance? Why haven't I broken out my poms-poms and high skirt and exhorted you to dash out and buy this book? The problem for me is the cartooning: although Shiga's storytelling is solid, maybe even dynamic, his cartooning chops are weak. I'd like to think I can appreciate a lot of different styles of art, but my eyes stung through the first half of Bookhunter. As I said, it's not a problem with the storytelling, and the representation is pretty good--there's never any confusion of what you're supposed to be looking at, and all the objects and people are all part of the same aesthetic--but the actual art itself I find unattractive and rudimentary in a way that cuts against the grain of the detail-filled story: a double-page spread of Agent Bay looking from a balcony over the vastness of the Oakland Public Library is little more than hashmarks and blobs. And while there are times this juxtaposition between the art and the writing heightens the comedic aspect, for the most part I found myself thinking, again, of kids learning to draw by watching Family Guy. I think if this causes me--a guy who never much minded Dilbert or Kathy or even Ariel Schrag's early style--trouble, then I really think there's a lot of people out there who aren't going to be able to get into this book. In fact, early Ariel Schrag is a pretty good comparison--that work is rudimentary as hell but in the context of a young girl's messy emotional life, it's perfect and prettily easily overcome. But in an over-the-top spoof of Michael Bay movies and CSI shows, the artwork continually works against the intentions of the work and it's problematic. Another problem for me? It's fifteen bucks. As you may recall, I tend to be the guy who balks at overly high prices for books: not because I'm cheap, but because price is a very real consideration on the part of any consumer, and, like it or not, it affects the appreciation of a work. I bought Bookhunter when I was at APE, when I was in the midst of spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave, and that may have been the only way this would've actually ended up in my possession; it doesn't do too well on a flip-test. It's a thick book, something like 130 pages of material, and with partial color (lots and lots and lots of brown). Although I might've bought in the store at eight bucks, and probably at five, at fifteen bucks I think it's hard sell unless you've got a lot of coin in your pocket or you really, really want a good reading experience and don't mind itchy-making art. In fact, at that price range, Bookhunter's best bet for finding the popularity it deserves may come via the main object of Bookhunter's affection-- the library. In a perfect world, every library in America should own at least a few copies of Bookhunter (librarians will *love* this book) and you could check it out and have a helluva good read, even if you occasionally have to stop and put a damp washcloth on your eyes. In that perfect world--hopefully not as far-flung as the long-lost world of Oakland, 1973--Bookhunter is a great book to check out, read, enjoy and return: a highly GOOD book by a writer with tremendous potential. In this far messier world, however, Bookhunter is conflictingly OKAY--well worth reading, but thornier on issues of appreciation and ownership. Labels: Jeff Click Here to Read More... WORLD WAR HULK #2: It was interesting to see, over at Tom Brevoort's blog, how involved what has become World War Hulk was in the initial proposal for Civil War, essentially being the final act. What's most interesting, perhaps, is the way in which World War Hulk seems to do right what Civil War did wrong - The core series works as a story in and of itself, with action scenes that deliver and characterization that fits with the way that these characters have been portrayed for years (I particularly enjoyed Sue Storm sticking with Reed Richards even as she lets him know that she's pissed at him, and the Thing doing the cliched "Clobbering Time" line. What can I say? I'm a sap) - and to such an extent that I can't really imagine Mark Millar doing anything close to the job that Greg Pak does here. (That said, would I have liked Civil War any better if it had finished with a big issues-long fight against a big monster? It would've been a more dramatic, and more sensible, finish, I guess...) It helps that John Romita, Jr. and Klaus Janson do a really rather good job on the art, offering a less santized and sterile world than Steve McNiven's overly rendered War; the more evocative and, well, kind of messier art fits the angrier and more gloriously dumb story, and Christina Strain's colors work to keep things crisp and clear. While it may be the long-planned endgame that brings all of Marvel's heroes back together in time to fight some shape-changin' aliens, it still offers pretty much all you could want in a summer blockbuster: Emotion! Explosions! And monsters from outer space! Good, then. On the other hand, WORLD WAR HULK: FRONTLINE #2 was Awful. Paul Jenkins' three stories all fail in different ways - "Embedded" is horribly over-written ("Suddenly there was another blinding light in the sky. But this light was warm, soothing... Golden. A flood of energy filled the air... to be replaced by the crunch of metal... A rending sound... A deafening crackle of static... A hero's cry... And all that remained was the sound of our own pounding hearts against the silence." Oh, Paul...), "Costume Division" just kind of undercuts that whole "aliens coming to kill everyone" idea that the whole crossover is built on ("I'm going to kill you, but first I'm going to team up with this human cop to fight crime. It's the ultimate mismatched buddy cop movie!") and the two page comedy strip at the end is just horrifically unfunny - but they're all bound together by the fact that they all suck. Which has to mean something, right? I mean, everyone like consistency in quality, except for when it comes to spin-off books and their parent titles... Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More...Thursday, July 19, 2007
I don't know if it's the comics equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome or something, but is it just me, or was COUNTDOWN #41 kind of... less sucky than usual? Don't look at me like that; I'm not saying that it was very good or high art or anything, but there definitely seemed to be an uptick in quality in this latest issue in almost every department. I mean, there was actual plot development on multiple storylines for the first time in, what, ten issues or something, as well as a sense of humor (and, because of that, potentially individual writer identity; not only was the writing in this issue funnier than usual, it also had a better sense of pacing and juggling plots - there were only a couple of scenes that acted as filler this time around, for once - than earlier issues as well. I don't know if this speaks to the idea that the book is beginning to find a voice eleven issues in, or just that Adam Beechen had a good week, mind you. Maybe it's just a fluke, even. Who knows?), and the art was actually good for maybe the first time in the entire series (Plaudits go to new-to-the-book artist Dennis Calero, who used to work on X-Factor over at Marvel; his work here is an interesting and odd mix of Ryan Sook, Stuart Immonen and, weirdly enough, old Suicide Squad artist Luke McDonnell, if you remember him, and it's easily the best this book has looked since its launch. I hope he becomes a regular on the series) - Is this the influence of new co-editor Mike Carlin, a few issues into his run, or a sign that I've been reading this for so long that even an Okay issue is beginning to look like a miracle to me? You be the judge. Something that's easier to judge is that Countdown is currently the big problem at DC. I was thinking this the other day, writing up the solicits for the latest newsletter and realizing just how many books DC is spinning out of this not-as-popular-as-they'd-like series, as if each new book that comes from it will somehow increase the core book's popularity... And not only that, but each successive spin-off seems more and more unnecessary and existing only to take up shelf space ("Lord Havok and The Extremists"? Who wants to read that?!?) - DC is trying so hard to brand itself around Countdown that it's eclipsing its other, better, books; we're at an unusual point where the Superman, Batman, Flash and Green Lantern books are all pretty good, but DC still seems to be in terrible trouble because they're forcing the public face of the superhero line to be a series that readers are practically running away from. You'd think they'd know better, but then you remember that this is comics, and nothing makes sense here. Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More...Wednesday, July 18, 2007
As I was waiting in line to buy my comics this week at Midtown Comics in Manhattan, the power went out for a moment, and a bunch of other customers pointed out the huge plume of smoke rising up from the explosion at Grand Central, three blocks away; I figured that whatever happened over the next few hours, I'd probably want something to read, so I paid for my comics and then went down to join the crowds of businesspeople running away from the explosion site. (It was just a steam pipe that had blown up, but we didn't know that at the time.) Understandably, I didn't really feel like turning immediately to a comic book about Manhattan getting smashed, or about a couple of characters trapped in rubble.So when I finally got to sit down and read, the first thing I pulled out was Giant-Size Marvel Adventures The Avengers #1, as the indicia has it, although the cover calls it Marvel Adventures Giant-Size Avengers--cue the "where are Giant-Man and Goliath?" jokes. It's actually a perfectly normal-size 22-page-story Marvel Adventures Avengers comic, padded out to $4 size with reprints of the first appearances of Namora and Venus, from Marvel Mystery Comics #82 and Venus #1. Those two stories were also just reprinted a couple of months ago in the Agents of ATLAS hardcover, in which their creators aren't credited either. For the record: the Grand Comics Database also isn't too clear on the creators' names, although the Namora story seems to have been drawn by Ken Bald and Syd Shores. But the real raison d'être of this comic doesn't turn up until a few pages into it: a two-page spread dedicated to a bunch of the Spider-Man merch that ties in with the new movie--a card table, folding chairs, some throw pillows, a poncho, and two photos of what an explanatory caption notes is CHILDREN'S BEDDING. Another caption: "Available at fine stores everywhere. Product may differ by store." I should hope so! This is followed, a few pages later, by an ad for Marvel Heroes bottled water, "The Coolest Water in the Universe!" This is as good a juncture as any to point out that bottled water is almost by definition uncool (seriously, go read that story). In another ad, Wolverine is wearing boxers with his own image on them, and saying "bub." Another ad is for the Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer game based on the movie based on the comic book, which features "truly destructible environments." The movie FF's likenesses advertise milk, overleaf. The only place where you can actually live the adventure, though, according to another ad, is Universal Orlando Resort, where the pictured Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man ride cost $100 million to build. Just to put that figure in perspective, let's say that after "One More Day," Amazing Spider-Man starts selling Civil War-ish numbers, 350,000 copies of each issue (and that its cover price is permanently three bucks). By my back-of-envelope calculation, it will still have to sell 95 consecutive issues at that level before their cumulative combined cover price is as much as it cost to build that one Spider-Man ride. Which it's reasonably safe to assume is making money anyway. This is one weird, sort-of-guilty secret of superhero comics: they're really just caretakers for the licenses that go on CHILDREN'S BEDDING. The money isn't in Batman comic books, it's in Batman video games and throw pillows and coloring books. The comics' responsibility is to keep each franchise alive, in the "they still make those?" sense, and maybe if they're very lucky give it a little bit of cultural currency. As long as Iron Man and Wonder Woman don't do anything shocking enough to get their likenesses permanently removed from theme park rides, they're golden. The Big Two's market-supremacy skirmishes don't matter in the grand monetary scheme; I don't even know if superhero comic books' profitability matters. All that matters is that people keep wanting boxer shorts with Wolverine on them, which means that Wolverine has to keep being a thing of the present rather than of the past. This is not news, but it's irritating to have the comics themselves rub it in your face. On the other hand, there's a curious kind of freedom that goes along with the way superhero comics are locked into a much bigger system of superhero commerce: as long as Marvel and DC don't rock their franchises' boat too much, they can do whatever they want with them. That's how projects like Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane and The Irredeemable Ant-Man and Paul Pope's Batman: Year 100 (and, thinking back a few decades, the Bill Sienkiewicz New Mutants period) happen. On the rare occasions when comics do give a superhero franchise more cultural (not just subcultural) currency, it comes from cutting loose within the limits of the franchise. Which is something I'd like to see a lot more of--Kirkman and Hester's Ant-Man hasn't caught on for a bunch of reasons (I'm convinced that one big one is the five-syllable word in its title), but it doesn't look or read like any other comic book right now, and that means it at least had a better shot at staying power than, oh, World War Hulk: X-Men. GSMATA also includes a fun Avengers story by Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk (involving the Agents of Atlas, Kang, time-travel, what would have happened if Captain America had been thawed out too soon, etc.). Kirk is credited as "penciler" only; there's no inker credited, but then again Marvel hasn't been crediting its inkers at all in solicitations for the past few months. I'm not gonna review the story as such, other than to say I enjoyed it, for the same reason I'm not giving it a rating (although I'll be giving other things ratings, never fear): partly because the commercial realities of superhero comics are clawing at me more than usual today, and also because I'm on a panel with Parker on August 1 (at Powell's City of Books in Portland, Oregon!), and if I started logrolling now I'd also have to point out that Jim Ottaviani and my pal Dylan Meconis's Wire Mothers: Harry Harlow and the Science of Love is out this week from G.T. Labs, and will tear your heart out if you care about monkeys, parental love or both. Finally, a bit more self-introduction and self-promotion, which you can skip if you don't like that stuff: Hi! I'm Douglas. I've got a new book out called Reading Comics, I do semi-regular graphic novel reviews at Salon, and I also write about comics for Publishers Weekly and its free email newsletter companion PW Comics Week, as well as a few other places. And I'm pretty sure I'm the last of the Legion of Savage Critics to post something; does that make me the Whilce Portacio of this crew? Labels: Douglas Click Here to Read More...Johanna may have covered it on Tuesday - Goddammit, now I have competition for who's going to get to the books first! - but I have to admit, I kind of like ALL-FLASH #1. The strange thing is, I actually have some of the same reservations to the story that Johanna did - It's certainly a choppy read, and something that's very much set in contemporary "Countdown" DC continuity (it ties in with the recent JLA/JSA crossover and the last Flash series), but what won me over ultimately is the haste - hey! - it has in moving away from the dark and gritty story that you expected. Waid was kind of handed a pretty dark plate when he was given the Flash as a book this time around: His Flash - and really, this issue shows how much that Wally West is Waid's character; Wally sounds more like himself, albeit an older version of himself, than he has done since Waid left the series years back. The key, weirdly enough, may be the optimism of Waid's take, which I'll get to later - is stolen back from contentment in some kind of mystical retirement to find that his former - and formerly pretty ineffectual - villains have murdered his successor. If that were almost any other modern superhero writer with the exception of Grant Morrison perhaps, that would be the start of a six-issue (at least) storyline about how wracked with guilt Wally was for leaving in the first place, and how much he thirsted for revenge and the ways in which it pushed him past his breaking point so that he acted way out of character because of the death of a loved one. Hell, he could be so upset that he could put his Dark Flash costume on from ten years ago, and you could call it "Back In Darker Red" or something. But that's really clearly not the way that Waid sees the character or the book, and so that entire hanging plotline of depression gets tied up in this one-shot, outside of the regular run - no pun, yadda yadda - of the book. It's as if Waid is saying "Yes, I know that this has to be dealt with, but let's get it over as soon as possible so that we can get to the fun stuff, okay?" And the way that Waid deals with it also avoids the stereotypical superhero realism schtick; Waid points out that Wally isn't the kind of character who'd kill someone, even a murderer. Instead - like Black Adam in 52, before that got undone within a month - the character responsible for the previous Flash's death is left alive, but punished in a fitting (and appropriately Flash-y) way. It's an inventive alternative that also leaves the door open for a possible return of the character down the line, something both unexpected (the punishment) and retro (the possibility of the character returning to plague our hero!) at the same time... which, in itself, feels very fitting for the Flash, which has been about mixing the two since Barry Allen gave himself the name to honor his favorite fictional hero, even as he started off the Silver Age. The end of the book is where the real point of the issue is, though; having dealt with the dangling plot, Waid teases out what's to come in his next run on the book, and it's superpowered kids and monsters and the Justice League and two things most importantly: People smiling while we're promised "it's going to be one hell of a ride." And that's what I want to read from the Flash, and that's what I've wanted to read from the Flash since Waid left, I think. Geoff Johns did good melodrama, but the Flash isn't really about that, for me. It's about family (Yeah, even the Barry Allen Flash - Look at how many recurring guest stars he had, even early in the run) and about speed and maybe more than any other superhero comic, it's about fun. Yeah, sure, throw in high action and adventure, but make it fun, you know? All-Flash #1 is Good, not because of the plot - which may be the best possible resolution to where everything had left off, admittedly, but still - nor because of the art - which has moments of wonderfulness (Karl Kerschl and Daniel Acuna's work is great) and moments that aren't so great (Hi, Ian Churchill!) - but because it cuts through all the crap that's grown around what should be a great concept and brings it back to basics pretty damn fast. And, really, it's all about the speed. Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More...Hi there. My name is Jog. I will write short reviews for this site. But I will also write this. I hope you’re enjoying your evening. Or morning. Or whatever time it is. It’s about 2:00 AM here, as I type this. That is fine by me, since I can see the stars very nicely on a clear night like this, and I’ve been thinking about outer space lately. Space travel and comic books. Humor the titanic nerd for a paragraph or two. If access to the breadth of comics is like access to the eyeball-melting scope of outer space, I dare say we’re living an archetypical 1950s martini-with-your-ray-gun steel rocket dream these days. Oh, there are problems, when you look toward the contemporary. Distribution tremors, complex anxieties over creator recompense, the rock and sway of culture... fan culture, critical culture, genre culture, all of it vibrating with the speed of instant online reaction. But aesthetically, historically… geographically! Now more than ever we can muster our individual resources to plunge between worlds, darting through star systems and glimpsing ancient sights. Few things need be obscure to those lit with burning spirit and chased with atomic rockets. The same internet that amplifies our anxieties can lead us to all sorts of works. Past, present - one hundred styles, many tongues. Today you can purchase books from all around the world with a flick of your wrist, like playing with your Wii. A library of pamphlets and bookshelf items are in orbit around the determined. Information is not always reliable, but triangulation is consummately possible. Why, I hear you can even access certain items on your computing machine, if you feel like making Liberty cry and Terrorism clap. All of us can be great space travelers today, if we so choose. And we do not have to choose. But if we want, it can be done. That was all a fancy way of saying that I own far too many comics, and that the internet has made it far too easy for me to get more more more. I have no plans of stopping this tragedy from continuing, but I thought I might as well share some thoughts on what I’ve found, and what I’ve found to be interesting. Sometimes I’ll talk about old works, sometimes new(ish) works. Popular works, unpopular works. Whatever I’ve found. This particular work, for example, can be considered both popular and unpopular, in that it’s apparently ‘sought after,’ even though it’s (to my understanding) only so elusive because nobody bought it in the first place. I found in a bargain bin for one dollar. It is a 1994 Prestige Format one-shot from Vertigo, although it’s actually a collection of a serial that initially ran in the short-lived 2000 AD spin-off magazine Revolver in 1990. It is by Brendan McCarthy and Peter Milligan, apparently produced in a ping-pong manner that demanded the visual credit come first. I commend to you this site for creator commentary and lovely art samples. Milligan & McCarthy are one of my favorite comics teams - every single one of their collaborations is worth searching out. Weird, pulsing, alive comic books, littered with literary love and goodly fucking garish. Unfortunately, you’ll indeed have to search for them, since none of them happen to be in print and some of them possibly don’t exist in even semi-complete form anymore (unless you stumble upon a cache of the News on Sunday from 1987, let’s say), but that’s the life of a space traveler, eh? I recommend sniffing out the first three issues of Vanguard Illustrated (1983-84) from Pacific, the three-issue Strange Days (1984-85) from Eclipse, and at least issue #1 of the two-issue Paradax (1987) from Vortex. None of it’ll cost you much. Easy to purchase online. Rogan Gosh, however, was one of their later collaborations. And it’s the perfect comic to illustrate a journey through space, and many types of space at that. The plot is somewhat difficult to summarize, since the book has no interest in providing a single thoroughfare of narrative. Rather, it presents a variety of little stories that occur at essentially the same time, our perspective shifting from one to another, sometimes page-by-page. The perspectives of the characters shift as well - everybody in Rogan Gosh is constantly imagining or hallucinating or dreaming of themselves as characters or items in everyone else’s story, and most characters are convinced that their reality is the real reality. There’s author Rudyard Kipling, searching for a way out of his guilt-ridden hell of a life in a curious opium den. There’s Raju Dhawan and Dean Cripps, an aloof waiter and boorish patron in an Indian restaurant who find themselves caught up in a dimension-shifting adventure. There’s the Boy, a directionless young comics reader who’s despairing over the departure of his girlfriend and eventually committing suicide while talking to whomever will listen on the telephone. And then there’s Rogan Gosh, a legendary Karmanaut who’s been tricked by the trickster Soma Swami into taking on “my embarrassingly huge backlog of terrible deeds,” including no less than the Curse of Kali. Fortunately, Rogan Gosh can die and be reborn, plus he can leap through time and reality to affect his other selves in dreaming. Like Raju Dhawan, the waiter. Although he also seems to be the Boy’s imaginary idealization of his lost girlfriend, while the Boy himself is possibly an alternate Dean Cripps, which naturally leads to Raju and Dean having uncontrollable sex in one memorable bit. Certainly the Boy’s actual girlfriend seems to be the same as Dean’s errant fiancée, even through the girlfriend’s current boyfriend has just died, and also might be narrating the comic omnisciently. Except for the fact that the narration often switches from omniscient to first-person, leaping from character to character, and later openly mocks the story itself. Rudyard Kipling, by the way, is also the Soma Swami, occasionally a statue, and sometimes a talking monkey with a mustache. At one point a pair of skulls around Kali’s neck address the comic’s authors directly. The starts and stops of the serial format are worked right into the story as a dimension-hopping stylistic tic. Everyone learns something in the end, although they’re different things, and some of them forget it immediately. The beauty of this comic, however, is that none of this dizzying narrative play is around simply for bedazzlement. At heart, Rogan Gosh is an exploration, “a parable” as Kipling puts it, of the illusions and confusions of earthly sensations that prevent people from grasping peace and enlightenment. Everybody in this comic is longing for something, but even the inner/outer space explorer of the title cannot always tell where the illusions of living begin. The Boy speaks to us about his uncertainty about whether love exists, not just for him but as a common thing, like it might just be mass hypnosis. His words are painted right on the page, as if his sadness cannot be held back by panels. Much like, say, Watchmen, Rogan Gosh could not possibly function as effectively as it does as anything other than a comic. This is not because McCarthy and Milligan have mastered the clockwork planning of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons -- actually, the loose and stringy Rogan Gosh is practically Watchmen’s tonal and stylistic opposite -- but because their storytelling rigorously interrogates the medium’s form, forcing the construct of the comics page itself to act as a metaphor of alternate realities pressed up against one another like panels and pages in a strip, superficial flourishes contextualized as elements of an individual state of being, Kipling’s dreary coloring and distanced narrations emphasizing his intellectual malaise, while the Boy’s world is sickly and slopped with paint. Trawling the pages is like voyaging through the cosmos, and you can stop and jump backward just like the title character. Ha! Didn’t I tell you we’re space travelers now? But such formal sensitivity also pokes the reader toward paying attention to the work's total package. I very much like the Prestige Format, and I suspect the work's interwoven narratives function much better as a single unit, rather than spread out over a series of magazines. But there's an odd unease to some of the supplemental material - Milligan provides a short Afterword that basically sits the reader down and explains to the them the plot(s), pointing out the various points of view in handy outline format and alluding to some problems that readers of Revolver seemed to have in making sense of the work. On one hand, it's an affable piece, good-humored and all that. But it's also a little weary, indicative of a writer who's probably been told something like 'wow, you must have done so many drugs' a few too many times. It's really a bit like Milligan pulling his pants down in front of everyone - too much revealed, though it probably gets annoying parties to go away fast. All concerns of that nature aside, I think it’s a wonderful comic, boundless in intuition and imagination, one that convinces you that ‘comics’ as a medium is capable of anything. Some have been touched by it over the years - certainly one Grant Morrison (whose Doom Patrol is paid homage) seems to have taken away more than a little influence (along with an entire telephone suicide plotline) for his and Frank Quitely’s own elusive Vertigo project, Flex Mentallo, a far tighter-in-focus thing that essentially replaces formal considerations with genre considerations, resulting in a vividly personal statement of superhero purpose. Hmm. Maybe I'll pencil that in for another time in a couple months, after I defend the honor of Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again and get in a few good pornography posts. But until then, good night or good morning. Or whatever. Labels: Jog Click Here to Read More...Tuesday, July 17, 2007
 Finally, my writing is where it belongs-- beneath the words "Ass Crap" in letters glowing white hot, Ass Crap big as day, a warning, a promise, a taunt, a seduction.Hot damn-- here we go again! Hello-- for the next two or three weeks, I'm going to be writing primarily about New Avengers #32 (Marvel Comics), Supergirl & the Legion of Superheros #31 (DC Comics), and Cold Heat #1 (PictureBox, Inc.). I haven't done this in a while so let me start slow and spend a little while on those three books, before we risk branching out. Indulge me. Hand-feed me grapes. Let me suckle from your teat. Be around until I want you to go away, but come back right away if i text you. Put me in diapers just like Senator Diaperman. We'll talk about Cold Heat more in the coming weeks, I think, than this one. Cold Heat stands at the opposite end of the spectrum from the other two books, in nearly all respects: it is less commercial in execution, intention, style, though maybe not substance. It's a comic my benefactor and patron, the good Mr. Hibbs, once called "one of the worst, least professional, and most overpriced comics I've ever seen," published by what fellow ... Savage(?) Douglas Wolk called an imprint "at the intersection of the fine arts, comics and music worlds"-- in an article that announced nothing less than the cancellation of Cold Heat following the release of Cold Heat #4! Awww, fuck, I've done my homework, son! Tell your kids you were alive to see this! But NA and ... er, SLOSH(?): twinning those books is kind of an obvious starting point, yes? They're both revamps and re-imaginings of long-running comic series by two big companies; both idiot-children of company-wide events and gimmicks and gotchas, of this place, this time, this horrible-fuck-bummer of a decade. But, but: after 30+ issues each, NA is a big hit book, a Top 10 book, while SLOSH hovers alone near the bottom half of the Top 100. Both are artifacts of the industry of their creation: both are instantiations of long-term editorial strategies; written, re-written, considered, reconsidered; drawn panel by panel, page by page, at risk of repetitive stress disorder, loss of sleep, over long hours, late hours; inked, embellished by craftsman until pages are ready to be colored and lettered by dedicated crews, all while editors review the results, checking, rechecking. Finally, months of labor culminate in these comics's ultimate destinies: a one-paragraph online review written in ten seconds what concludes with "Fart" or "Jism" or "Bunghole" in italics. Both comics primarily engage in refluxing up old, well-worn properties. Which… let’s stop and consider that: what the hell is going on in this country? Every movie's a sequel to a remake of a tv show that was originally a BBC show. What is that? Are we living in a culture out of lies to tell itself, rushing into the past to keep from thinking there’s no future, to keep from wondering if it's run out of time? Are we just picking through the ashes of a cultural heat-death, here? Or when you look out over the world, does any institution, establishment, authority-- does it all just seem to have been fucking cratered to you at some point? Do you ever stop and think "Oh, hey, maybe Issue #32 of the New Avengers comic book series is just a symptom of a dying empire having one last orgasmic death-spasm?" Do you people even read the Guardian Unlimited? It’s all going down in flames, brother. It’s coming apart at the seams-- we’re one good flood from mass cannibalism in the streets—I will eat your face! And we’re supposed to be talking about New Avengers #32 in a polite and calm fashion? Don’t buy New Avengers #32—invest in water, rations and guns! The Legion of Superheros is essentially a post-World-War-2 fantasy: "We may struggle, but our children will live in a shiny utopia future and they will be superheros." Which is fine circa 1950 or 1960, but right now, right this second: Does anyone with any sense in their head really believe any of that anymore? I've seen the children of the future-- they are morbidly obese and they are blowing each other constantly. A legion of Overweight Dumb Sluts will inherit this Earth and when you close your eyes to sleep, they will find you and hunt you as civilization comes crashing down all around in an ecological, sociological, economic and spiritual collapse. Cosmic Boy? Lightning Lad? Cut the bullshit-- somebody secure the water supply before the Children of the Future get bored and try to dose us all with their psychiatric meds! New Avengers #32 begs a conversation whether the central plotline too closely resembles the plotline of the current Battlestar Galactica TV show, which is a remake of the 70's Battlestar Galactica TV show, which was an attempt to do a TV version of the 1st Star Wars movie, by which I of course mean the 4th Star Wars movie. New Avengers #32 features an ad selling action figures of Dale Keown's PITT. What is there to say to all that but "Repent, repent, for the end is nigh?" And by "nigh," I mean move! Move! Water supply! It’s catnip before the apocalypse! I don't know: I don't want to be a downer. All these comics have positive qualities which I'm sure we'll touch on. All I'm saying is we're all going to die and soon, and the last thing we’re going to hear is a loud, crashing sound. That's all. Next Week: We’ll talk about the actual plots of New Avengers #32, SLOSH #31, and Cold Heat #1. Plots—do people like hearing about those in reviews? I sure hope so, otherwise there will be egg on my face next week! SUNNY SIDE DOWN. Rating: Ass-Crappy Barf-Tits Slapped with a Stinkpalm; Pick of the Week: My Nose. Labels: Abhay Click Here to Read More... In an interview that took place prior to the release of MARTHA WASHINGTON DIES, Dark Horse Executive Editor Diana Schutz had this to say:"I can tell you that before I first read the script, Frank had told me that I was going to cry when I read it." Yes, Ms. Schutz. I'd cry too if I had paid Frank Miller for this dreck. To prepare for this story, I reread the Martha Washington trilogy (GIVE ME LIBERTY, MARTHA WASHINGTON GOES TO WAR and MARTHA WASHINGTON SAVES THE WORLD). Boy, that was a waste of time. Not only does MARTHA WASHINGTON DIES fail to make any sense on its own merits (Grandma Martha turns into fireworks because... she met an alien once?), it doesn't even have anything to do with the previous stories, which ended on an optimistic note; suddenly barbarians have taken over the world and it's humanity's last stand (someone's been playing too much WORLD OF WARCRAFT). The switch is so bewildering - and so poorly explained - that you're left completely baffled whether you're familiar with the earlier Martha books or not. For what it's worth, I do see what Miller's trying to do here; Martha dies while stuck in the same cycle of violence that defined her entire life, and there's certainly something poignant about the fact that she never got out, but she didn't die alone either. However, as is usually the case with Miller in recent years, there's a rather large gap between what you think he might have been aiming for and what actually sees print. Any genuine emotion this one-shot is meant to evoke gets smothered under clumsy, anvilicious political overtones. I submit MARTHA WASHINGTON DIES as the final, definitive proof that something AWFUL has happened to Frank Miller; not only has he lost any semblance of talent, he's now actively undermining his own legacy by appending such horrors as this epilogue and ALL-STAR BATMAN to his past successes. A word of advice, Frank - sometimes it's better to get off the stage before you're thrown off. Labels: Diana Click Here to Read More...Day two in the Big Brother House, and we're all still settling in and trying to work out who gets the big bedroom and who has to sleep on the couch (Jeff, I'm looking at you for that last part). But while we're sorting things out, why not look at everything else that I read from last week?COUNTDOWN #42: Worth mentioning for two reasons only, as all the usual complaints about the scattered and uninvolving writing still apply: Firstly, artist Carlos Magno really needs to look at human proportions just a little bit more (The opening double-page spread could easily see the book renamed "Attack of the Tiny-Headed People", and he also clearly enjoys Holly Robinson's breasts), and secondly: Did they really color Ryan Choi with bright yellow skin? Considering how many colors are available in modern comic book printing, that is both really surprising and kind of offensive. Seriously, what were the editors thinking when they let that through? This continues to be Crap. JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #7: The best part of this otherwise Eh issue (I really don't know why superpowered neo-Nazis bore me, but they have done so far in this book's run) is seeing Hawkman wear his Hawk-helmet under his metalwelding mask: There's something dumb and fun about that that just seems wrong in the best way possible. Otherwise, I'm wondering where the momentum of the first few issues of the series went; did the JLA crossover just kill it, or am I just jaded...? THE NEW AVENGERS #32: Amazingly, more than half this book feels like filler - Did we really need eight nearly-dialogueless pages of the plane about to crash, followed by four more nearly-dialogueless pages of what happens afterwards? - which completely ruins the impressive and chatty opening of the book, which manages to ramp up the paranoia of the Invasion of The Body Snatchers-esque Skrull plot and made you think, momentarily, that perhaps they knew what they were doing. Considering how light the last issue felt, I almost wonder if there was a last minute decision to split one issue into two (perhaps in order to let Mighty Avengers catch up? Has #4 of that even shipped?)... Either way, another depressingly Eh issue of what was, for awhile, a lot better. PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #9: Wait, did Frank just kill that woman? Even the "you're bathed in Hate Rays" excuse still didn't prepare me for that, and it's something that I weirdly have a problem with for reasons that I'm not sure of... It's not as if I think that the Punisher shouldn't kill people, but... I don't know. I'm still with the book, but beginning to feel impatient with this pace of this particular storyline. Okay, I guess. SUPERMAN #664: Kurt Busiek's run on the book continues to offer unexpected challenges to the Man of Steel - After attacking his sense of doing what's right, now we're seeing his public standing being tackled. As much as this storyline, too, feels as if it's starting to drag (Maybe because it's also seeming shapeless right now? What with the introduction of a Federal task force with the mission to take care of Crazy Superman, as well the New God Kids hanging around, and the mysterious nature of Arion, it feels as if too much is happening, almost), there's still enough of interest here for this to continue to be a low Good. VOODOO CHILD #1: Mike Carey, I continue to be impressed with the breadth of subject matter in your work, but there's very little else appealing in this new book based on ideas provided by Nicholas Cage and his kid. If you're looking for something that reads like a cross between a Vertigo book and an Avatar one starring Chris Claremont's Gambit, then this is for you, but I don't know how large that target market is really likely to be, to be honest. Awful, then. WORLD WAR HULK: GAMMA CORPS #1: Wow, it's Sentinel Squad ONE, or whatever that pointless spin-off from Decimation was called - Another group of governmental nobodies put together to deal with a super-threat. And, unless something major is going to happen in the next few issues, this series will be as quickly forgotten as the Sentinel Squad's was. A cash-in carried out with the opposite of verve and style. Truly Crap. And because Hibbs asked - Yes, it was me that fixed the little icons at the start of the posts, and they're handcoded in there. It's an easy enough piece of HTML, so there y'go. Kate, meanwhile, can be smug that people want them in color, because she was arguing for that in the first place, while I was all "No, line art will be fine." You kids with your opinions, I don't know... Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More...My second post and already I'm going back on my word. I was going to start here by talking about manga, but then DC sent me a copy of ALL-FLASH #1, their attempted relaunch of the speedster's series.Why would someone want to try this one-shot issue? Well, for me, the only reason is the writer, Mark Waid. His first run on the Flash was considered one of the best superhero comics of its era, back in the mid-90s. (I'm astounded to note that it lasted for eight years! And it was the subject of lots of well-remembered online discussion. We've all learned a lot since then.) That's not the only throwback element of this comic. The title itself was first used in 1941. Wally's kids are dressed in outfits reminiscent of the Tornado Twins, Barry Allen's children introduced in a Legion of Super-Heroes story from 1968. The issue opens with Waid's trademark narration from that first run, "My name is Wally West. I'm the Flash. The Fastest Man Alive." The story is the most modern thing about this issue, picking up from the recent DCU death of Bart Allen (aka Kid Flash, another retro element, but best remembered to me as Impulse). Even that, with the Rogues gathering, committing a crime whose scope they don't understand, and then bickering among themselves, reminded me of Waid's big fifth-color event, UNDERWORLD UNLEASHED. (Fifth-color: DC's printer had just developed the technology to use five colors, instead of the standard four, meaning that the comics had a bilious neon lime green added for emphasis. Sad that the only things I remember about that story are that, Blue Devil's wonderful supporting cast being unceremoniously killed off because no one at the time understood their appeal, and the Joker selling his soul for an exploding Cuban cigar.) This is a hard sell to me. I don't like the current DCU. I don't like the emphasis on death and morbidity, on loved ones in constant danger (as though sweethearts and dependents are nothing but causes of worry), on heroing as a sad, lonely thing instead of concentrating on the wonder and fun amazing abilities would bring. I don't care to wallow in more of it or watch more heroes slurped down into its mud. Sure, the Flash is an important part of the universe, but I want comics that can be read on their own. For some reason, it took five artists and teams to draw this thing. I'm not even going to speculate on what that means about deadlines or last-minute plans. For all I know, it's a style choice, meant to evoke the different eras of the hero. The first change, from Karl Kerschl to Ian Churchill & Norm Rapmund, makes me think that's plausible, because it reminded me of last-millennium art, scratchy with speed lines. I just hate having to flip back and forth to the credit page to see who's doing what, especially since I have to keep count of what page I'm on. This many credits work much better if the staff remembers to add internal page numbers. I'm new to the rating thing (and not sure I really agree with using them), but my reaction to this comic is "eh". I'm apparently part of the target audience -- I remember Waid's first run fondly, I understand the appeal of the nostalgic hints -- but there's nothing in this issue to bring me back for more. The disposable, interchangeable villains, craven and venial as they are, have more personality than the hero. Wally is upset because his ward (too old-fashioned a word?) has been killed, so he grits his teeth and takes revenge that's more sadistic than murder. On the positive side, this doesn't seem necessary for those interested in trying the new Flash series. It gets the hero from where he was to where the writer wants him to be going forward. If you don't care how he got there, skip it and try the first issue of the relaunch. The best part of the book, the small element that gives me hope, is that Wally is inspired instead of tied down by his family. Labels: Johanna Click Here to Read More...Monday, July 16, 2007
Wildstorm confounds me.It's no secret that the Worldstorm revamp pulled a Britney and went completely off the rails. What's shocking is that it's been almost a year, and no steps have been taken to realign the imprint. For those unfamiliar with the plight of DC's redheaded stepchild, here's the Sparknotes version: WILDCATS and THE AUTHORITY were meant to be Wildstorm's flagship titles, only neither of them got past issue 2 before disappearing. The gap was unofficially filled by GEN13 and STORMWATCH: PHD, and they ended up becoming the de facto core series. All well and good, except no one's treating them that way. I'm no marketing expert, but when you have two books that set the agenda for the entire line (by virtue of being published while Morrison, Ha and Lee play Dance Dance Revolution or whatever the hell they're doing), it's probably not a great idea to have them come out on the same week every. single. month. Factor in a serious case of underpromotion, resulting in abysmal sales, and it certainly seems like Wildstorm is doing everything in its power to self-destruct. The real sticking point? Gen13 and Stormwatch are probably the best series currently under the Wildstorm banner. Let's start with STORMWATCH: PHD #9, the conclusion of a two-part "whodunit". John Doran and his team are investigating the attempted murder of Stormwatch overseer Jackson King, and this is where Christos Gage's background in procedural drama really comes into play; most of this issue strongly resembles the middle act of a typical "Law & Order" episode, where the detectives go about questioning suspects and, through these interrogations, we learn more about the various people involved. It could've gotten tedious rather quickly, but Gage also uses these scenes to reintroduce Stormwatch Prime, and the subtle comparisons between the superhero squad and the detective squad lead to some solid character beats. If there's a drawback inherent to this issue, it's that Gage is working with a heavy backload of Wildstorm continuity: not only is he running his own storylines, he's also integrated the cast and history of the pre-Authority Ellis run from the late '90s. I don't know how confusing this would be to new readers - technically, you're given all the information you need about Diva, Blademaster, Cannon and the others, but I can definitely see how it might be a little daunting. Overall, though, it's a GOOD issue: the large cast is balanced well, everyone gets a scene or two to shine, and the twist ending was foreshadowed months ago yet still manages to come off as a surprise. Moving on to GEN13 #10, which is sort of an antithesis to the cool, professional veneer of Stormwatch: this series is all about a bunch of amateur superkids running blind and wreaking havoc. In a way, it's DC's answer to RUNAWAYS: a group of distinctively characterized teenagers discover they have powers, their parents aren't who they seem to be, and they decide to stick together while being chased by evil forces. But while Brian Vaughan mostly played it straight, Gail Simone prioritizes comedy, and that makes a big difference in how the stories play out. There's actually a lot going on this month: we're at part 3 of an indirect crossover with Simone's other Wildstorm series, WELCOME TO TRANQUILITY. The Gen13 kids have stumbled onto the quaint but quirky superhero retirement community, and almost immediately run afoul of the resident teenagers, who call themselves the Liberty Snots. ("We're thinking of changing it. But we had T-shirts and everything made already.") Meanwhile, Bobby's backstory is revealed, and a third group of superteens prepare to attack. It's a VERY GOOD issue from start to finish, funny in all the right places and satisfyingly unpredictable at times - I can't think of another teen hero whose primary influence is Bob Marley, and Eddie's choice of codename is accompanied by a poignant moment that gives a degree of depth to the giant goofball. And that's it for Wildstorm. Why do I have the feeling I'll be saying that in a broader context within the next six months? Labels: Diana Click Here to Read More...Oh. My. God.You'd think that San Diego was THIS week, by the metric shedload of things out this this week. Apparently you've just got to go to the comics shop this week... (This is, for those just joining us, a list of comics arriving at Comix Experience this week -- this may or may not be what YOUR local comics store has arriving; there's generally big differences between East and West coasts, for instance. It also doesn't include stuff I'll receive from Baker & Taylor tomorrow...) 2000 AD #1543 2000 AD #1544 A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #62 (A) ACTION COMICS #852 (CD) ALL FLASH #1 AMAZONS ATTACK #4 (OF 6) ANNIHILATION CONQUEST QUASAR #1 (OF 4) AQUAMAN SWORD OF ATLANTIS #54 ARCHIE & FRIENDS #111 ARMY @ LOVE #5 AVENGERS CLASSIC #2 AVENGERS INITIATIVE #4 WWH BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #153 BIRDS OF PREY #108 BLACK CANARY #2 (OF 4) BRAVE AND THE BOLD #5 BREATHE CVR A #4 (OF 4) CAPTAIN AMERICA #28 CWI CATWOMAN #69 CHECKMATE #16 CONAN #42 COUNTDOWN 41 COVER GIRL #3 (OF 5) DARK XENA #3 DARKNESS LEVEL 5 DALE KEOWN CVR A DEVILS PANTIES #12 FALL OF CTHULHU MAVILLAIN CVR A #4 FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #22 GARGOYLES #5 GHOST RIDER #13 WWH GHOST RIDER TRAIL OF TEARS #6 (OF 6) GIANT SIZED MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #1 GODLAND #19 GOON #19 HACK SLASH SERIES SEELEY CVR A #3 HIGHWAYMEN #2 (OF 5) HUNTERS MOON #2 (OF 5) IDW FOCUS ON STAR TREK JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #260 JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #11 KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #129 LEGION OF MONSTERS MORBIUS LEGION OF SUPER HEROES IN THE 31ST CENTURY #4 LENORE #13 LONE RANGER #7 MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #26 MARVEL ADVENTURES HULK #1 MARVEL ILLUSTRATED TREASURE ISLAND #2 (OF 6) MYSTIC ARCANA BLACK KNIGHT NEW X-MEN #40 PAINKILLER JANE #2 PAUL JENKINS SUPER SUMMER SIDEKICK SPECTACULAR #1 (OF 2) PROGRAMME #1 (OF 12) REPO #2 (OF 5) ROBIN #164 SAMURAI HEAVEN & EARTH VOL 2 #5 (OF 5) SCARFACE DEVIL IN DISGUISE #1 SCOOBY DOO #122 SHAZAM THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL #4 (OF 4) SHOJO BEAT AUG 07 VOL 3 #8 SIMPSONS COMICS #132 SPIKE SHADOW PUPPETS #2 SPIRIT #8 STAR WARS DARK TIMES #4 (OF 5) STARSHIP TROOPERS ONGOING CVR A #3 STRANGE EMBRACE #2 (OF 8) SUPER VILLAIN TEAM UP MODOKS 11 #1 (OF 5) SUPERMAN BATMAN #38 TERMINATOR 2 INFINITY #1 TEXAS STRANGERS #2 THE ORDER #1 CWI THUNDERBOLTS DESPERATE MEASURES ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #111 WARHAMMER FORGE OF WAR CVR A #2 (OF 6) WARREN ELLIS BLACK GAS 2 #3 (OF 3) (RES) WITCHBLADE TAKERU MANGA MACK CVR B #6 WOLVERINE ORIGINS ANNUAL #1 WORLD WAR HULK #2 (OF 5) WWH WORLD WAR HULK FRONT LINE #2 (OF 6) WWH WORLD WAR HULK X-MEN #2 (OF 3) ZERO KILLER #1 (OF 6) Books / Mags / Stuff BATMAN HARLEY AND IVY TP BLACK CHERRY GN CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG #13 DAREDEVIL #13 CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG #14 STORM CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG #42 NIGHTCRAWLER CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG #43 MEDUSA CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG COLOSSUS SPECIAL COMICS JOURNAL #284 COMPLETE SAVAGE TP ELSEWORLDS SERIES 4 INNER CASE ASST (NET) EXILES VOL 15 TP FINAL FLIGHT GN FORTEAN TIMES #225 FULL COLOR GN GENE SIMMONS HOUSE OF HORRORS #1 GODLAND VOL 3 PROTO PLASTIC PARTY TP HARVEY COMICS CLASSICS VOL 1 CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST TP HOOD BLOOD FROM STONES PREMIERE HC HOT MEXICAN LOVE COMICS 2007 INTERNATIONAL STUDIO #4 (RES) INTERSECTIONS SC GN IRON WOK JAN GN #25 LEVITATION PHYSICS PSYCHOLOGY SERVICE OF DECEPTION LITTLE LULU VOL 16 A HANDY KID TP LONE RANGER REG ED HC MADMAN GARGANTUA HC MADMAN GARGANTUA HC LTD S&N ED MELTDOWN TP MEMORY GN (A) METADOCS ANATOMY OF A SUPERHERO PARADISE X VOL 1 TP NEW PTG RUN BONG GU RUN GN SAM & TWITCH BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS COLLECTION VOL 2 TP SCREW HEAVEN WHEN I DIE IM GOING TO MARS TP SIDEKICK VOL 1 TP SPACE PINCHY TP SPAWN COLLECTION VOL 2 HC STOP FORGETTING TO REMEMBER GN STORMWATCH PHD VOL 1 TP SUPER BAD JAMES DYNOMITE TP WALK-IN VOL 1 TP WAR OF THE UNDEAD TP WIRE MOTHERS HARRY HARLOW & THE SCIENCE OF LOVE GN What looks good to you? -B (I wish I knew how Johanna got her icon working. And, hrm, don't you think maybe they should be in color? Any enterprising souls want to color them up for us to make them easier to distinguish?) Labels: Brian Click Here to Read More...I love Harris Miller II, attorney to the comics stars.Upon seeing my "reintroduction" to the site, he sent me this email. Obviously, from the intro, this isn't the FIRST Savage Critic, but here's one Harris archived from 10/6/1993! So, it's been at least 14 years... Don't try to email me at that address below (if it survives posting) -- haven't used it since the end of the 20th century! Look how much longer the ratings list was back then!!!! I like my new format better though.... Thanks, Harris!!!! -B ************************** From: Brian Hibbs (Comix Exp.) Newsgroups: compuserve.cs2outlookexpress.forum.CIS.COMIC To: All Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 1993 10:29 PM Subject: The Savage Critic 10/6: Savage critic, featuring the best one word review column in town! We'll start this week with part 2 of the 9/29 shipment, but first, let's put thel rating system in perspective. In ascending order: Unreadable Crap Terrible Awful Sucks Thud Yawn Eh O.K. Good Very Good Excellent One special "rating" that doesn't fit on the chart: Don't care. This is reserved for subject matter that I couldn't care less about or am unqualified to judge. Additionally humor comics will be judged as "funny" or "not Funny" Other superlatives are more or less equal to excellent. Also, I reserve the right to change or add to the ratings at anytime, for any reason. You'll just have to muddle along. I will not personally spend my money on any book rated merely good or lower. Onto the final batch from last week: Dances with Demons #3: O.K. Blazing Combat: Vietnam & Korea #2: Eh Vietnam Journal: Khe Sanh #3: Eh Days of Wrath #2: Eh Death's Head II #12: Awful Incomplete Death's Head #11: Crap Genetix #2: Unreadable crap Killpower #3: Unreadable Crap Chiller #1: Good, but not worth $7.95 for an incomplete story Dinosaurs for Hire #8: Funny Ferret #5: Terrible Protectors #13: Terrible Tor #4: Good Go Die: O.K. Femforce #65: Crap Good Girl Art Quarterly #13: Crap Flare #13: Unreadable Tigress #6: Unreadable Murcielaga she-bat #3: Crap Elfquest: Blood of 10 chiefs #2: Good Hugo Tate: O, America: Very Good Jason Goes to hell #2: Unreadable crap Jurrasic Park #4: O.K. Kip #3: Awful Lost Laughter #3: Good Meteor Man #4: Terrible Post Brothers #33: Very Good Ninja High/Speed Racer #1: O.K. Speed Racer w/ Ninja High #2: O.K. Zillion #1: Crap TekWorld #15: Terrible Vixen Wars #5: Unreadable crap Xenotech #1: Yawn Mia Farrow-Woody Allen Story: Unreadable crap Raven #1: thud Wandering Star #3: good That covers *every* non-reprint, or children's comic that came into my store on 9/29. Let's move on to the first half of 10/6: Team Titans #14: Awful Darkstars #14: Awful Nightstalkers #14: Yawn Guy Gardner #14: Yawn Kamandi #6: Thud JLI #58: Sucks Eudaemon #2: O.K. Negative Burn #3: Good (if a little uneven) Children of the Voyager #4: Very good Shadowman #21: O.K. HArbinger #24: Yawn Magnus #31: Eh Hard Corps #13: Yawn X-O #23: O.K. Deadpool #4: Thud What if? #55: O.K. Action #693: good Warriors of Plasm #3: Crap FF #382: Crap Spidey 2099 #14: O.K. Freex #3: awful Hardcase #4: Good Sludge #1: Very Good (W/ Rune #A: Eh) The extra 55 cents for 3 pages of BWS, 1 page of Magnor, and more (effectively) ads *is* a supreme burn. 3 pages just don't cut it - this wasn't even a *taste*. And FIVE dollars for shipping the "free" comics you get for buying ELEVEN others is a monumental ripoff. Saint Sinner #3: Unreadable Lethal Foes of Spidey #3: Crap Night Thrasher #4: Crap Static #6: Very Good JL Task Force #6: Eh Ren & Stimpy #13: Funny Cable #5: Eh Warlock Chronicles #6: Crap Showcase #11: Good Titans #103: Unreadable Robin #1: Good Catwoman #4: O.K. X-Men Annual #2: Eh. Batman & Superman Magazine #2 (comics): Way excellent (the Rest): Don't care Law Dog #7: Very good Monster Menace #1: Cool Batman Adventures #14: Excellent ("The Goy Wonder", indeed!) Spawn #14: Very Good Hitchhiker's Guide #1: Good adaptation Wolverine: Killing: Excellent Animal Man #65: Very Good Swamp Thing #137: Stupefyingly terrible Hellblazer #71: Excellent Batman/Houdini: Devil's workshop: Excellent The Upturned Stone HC: Excellent That's it for now -- more as I get to it (todays' batch represents 6 and a half hours of my time!) That was my opinion, now what's yours? Brian Labels: Brian Click Here to Read More...So, yeah. I'm not sure if I have to do an introduction, being one of the old guard here - and yes, that's pretty depressing, given my immense personal vanity and desire to think of myself as young and beautiful all the time - but, hello to anyone who came here for the first time via the press releases; I'm the one who tends to post a lot and swear. I'm also the husband of the woman responsible for the new look of the site (although I may be responsible for the green. Kate's also the one who got everything up and running on the new URL and everything else, as mad as it drove her last night when Blogger suddenly ate the post titles for no immediately apparent reason), and would like to push another round of applause in the direction of Kate, just because. And just because this is a review site... I'll say this about pull-quotes: Sometimes, they work. The evening that I got my copy of the new AiT/PlanetLar graphic novel MONSTER ATTACK NETWORK in the mail, Kate found herself reading the testimonials on the back cover from the likes of John Rogers, Jeff Parker and Ivan Brandon and becoming more and more excited to read the book itself. Me, I was sold on the name alone, and the realization that the acronym was M.A.N. Like the recently-released first issue of their Wildstorm series, The Highwaymen, Monster Attack Network shows that Marc Bernadin and Adam Freeman have absolutely no problem writing popcorn action fiction - There are set-pieces here that are perfectly constructed in terms of mixing the spectacle of the main action with the cutaways to add scale and humor (I especially liked the massive monster slug-riding rushing past the window of a restaurant, with the shouted "Shit! Shit! Shit!" as parents talk to their son), and their High Concepts and snappy dialogue hits the spot repeatedly. Where they're lacking - and considering this was their first book, despite it coming out post-Highwaymen, it's really not that bad a flaw - is the ability to slow down; the story feels like it's always "on", and even the scenes that should be quieter and more still end up vibrating with the energy of the crazy. The art has a similar problem; Nima Sorat's work is stunning in places, Paul Pope does the Venture Bros does early Marvel monster books, but there are times when the desire to wow the viewer overwhelms the clarity of the storytelling (There are, to be fair, other times when the art just clicks and sells the story to you - I don't want to imply that this isn't good art, because it is); it's as if everyone involved is so excited about working on the book that they can't stop wanting to really, really impress the reader and maybe go slightly overboard. They needn't have worried; this is a really enjoyable book, despite the overeagerness: The central idea and plot are so strong that, even if the execution hadn't been as Good as it is, it still would've been worth a look. Like I said; I was sold on the name alone. Labels: Graeme Click Here to Read More...I'm an early bird, so I'll join the crew: Hi! I'm Johanna Draper Carlson. You may know me from Comics Worth Reading. Or before that, Usenet. Or before that, CompuServe... I remember those days, Brian, and I loved reading that history. I'm not nearly as creative as some of these other folks here, but I am quite opinionated, and I'm honored to be one of the gang. I'll be starting my contributions with a look at the Del Rey manga line, since many of the guys here already cover superheroes brilliantly. (Although feedback is welcome, dear readers, if there's anything in particular you'd like an opinion on.) Labels: Johanna Click Here to Read More...Things I know: That A on his head did not stand for France.Things you know: Darkseid is. Things I'd like to know: Exactly how much Jagermeister was needed to come up with "Skrull Invasion"? Things you'd like to know: Why was Paris Hilton snubbed for the role of Kara on "Smallville"? Things I should know (but don't): Never post ahead of the boss. (Sorry, Brian!) Things you should know (but don't): Since I'm on the other side of the Atlantic, I'm usually up and running while the Comix Experience crew's asleep (Do Comic Retailers Dream of Hologram-Foil-Covered Sheep?). Just think of me as your late-late-late-late-late night talk show host. Things we all know: Kurt Busiek wins! Labels: Diana Click Here to Read More...Right, so it's after midnight, so that makes it Monday, and, although I'm not sure all of the backstage technical stuff (and hurray for Kate McMillan, too right!)is going to let you see this the second I post this, at least I know I've written the introduction.So, this is the Savage Critic. I've been writing reviews under this name for, basically, forever. It was back on CompuServe on Doug Pratt's Comics & Animation forum in the early 90s. I want to say '94, but heck my memory for dates is terrible, so maybe it was as late as dunno, '97. Either way, it's been more than 10 years, I'm sure of that. A lot of things started there -- I seem to remember the first Newsarama posts launching from there, and Rich Johnston was doing a thing, too. Anyway, one day I idly commented that I read pretty much every comic that came out each week, and someone (Lou Perez, maybe?) said "No way, prove it", so I started writing these super-short (sometimes one word short) little reviews of pretty much every comic that came out every week. It's kinda my job -- since I own a comic book store, people ask me a lot about what I think about specific books and storylines and characters. I need to have an informed opinion. And there weren't as many titles released each week, back then, either!! I did it, mostly weekly, for at least a year or two, then starting burning out (as I'm sure you could imagine), and when I migrated to the Real internet, away from CompuServe, I stopped writing it. Flash forward a few years (2000? 2001?), and I started realizing that this internet thing was actually catching on, and I knew we had to do a basic "business card" web site for the store (Comix Experience, if you didn't know); but that it needs *some* measure of "content" to get people to pay attention to it. I thought, "oh, sure, I can do the Savage Critic again!" -- enough time had passed to make me forget how much work it actually is! Those should all be archived here somewhere, though I don't know if there's a direct link (the site is down as I write this, prepping for the launch) any longer. I did it for a while, then starting burning out again, and Jeff Lester thought we should switch to Blogger, so I didn't have to keep emailing him my weekly thing, so he could post it, and I convinced him that he should join in reviews with me -- harder to burn out when there are two of us. And then we invited in Graeme McMillan, who makes writing funny snark look so easy, I could cry. And I thought we really were rolling along. Then Jeff decided it was time for him to retire, quit the store from his one day a week gig, and just generally focus all the time he was giving me to write for his own career -- eminently the correct move, if you ask me. Well, I wasn't sure if it could survive without Jeff's solid backbone, so I spent several weeks casting about for what to do, and, as usual, it was a stray comment by Jeff that proved to be the right thing after all. "You should just invite, I don't know, Jog, or Spurgeon, or whoever, and make it like the Justice League of Reviewers." Oh. Exactly! Duh! So I did, and we are, and that's where we're at now. Conceptually, there are 7 of us now, which means "daily posts" (will Graeme continue to be insane and write daily entries? We'll all find out!), since everyone is committed to doing one review a week here. In practice, they'll probably clump up, but let's see what happens. And if someone "misses" a week, that's fine too, because the rest of us will cover. That's the plan, at least. We're going to start at 7 (well, 8 really, because I think I put together too good of a group, and basically forced Jeff out of "retirement"), and there's a chance we'll expand it from there. There's at least another dozen people on my Dream List, but I didn't want to try to start it TOO wide because that's just a mess organizationally. Anyway, I'll still be posting "retail intelligence" here, as well (I really don't want a second blog, darn it), when it comes up. Even though it kinda won't fit. But that's OK, I think. Over the next day or two expect everyone to pop in, say hi, and then we'll get set reviewing. I'll be back later today (well, tomorrow for me, because I should go to sleep now, so I can get up and start writing Tilting tomorrow!) with a review as well myself. Welcome to the New Savage Critic, hope you enjoy the ride! -B Labels: Brian Click Here to Read More...Sunday, July 15, 2007
TOLD you there was big news coming (though, just FYI, this link will still work just fine):
For immediate release! All-Star Savage Critic Launches July 16th! The Magnificent Seven! The World’s Greatest Comics Reviewers! Amazing! Spectacular! Web of! (Is there someone else’s Intellectual Property we can infringe upon?!?) The Savage Critic, America’s snarkiest comics review website, brainchild of Comix Experience’s Brian Hibbs, is expanding its roster with a relaunch on Monday, July 16th at www.savagecritic.com. Joining Hibbs, and Savage Critic regulars Jeff Lester and Graeme McMillan, is a new all-star line-up of comic’s best critics, including: Johanna Draper Carlson, of Comics Worth Reading! Diana Kingston-Gabai, of Sententia 3.0! Abhay Khosla, notorious comics commentator (without his own website)! Joe McCulloch, of Jog - The Blog! Douglas Wolk, author of Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean! “Dude, I mean, seriously – isn’t this the coolest line-up of comics critics you’ve ever seen in one place?” said Hibbs, “If I was ready to die, I could die happy now!” “Not that anyone should get any ideas,” added Hibbs quickly. “Finally, people talking about comics on the internet! Every ancient text has prophesied this day. It's all true!” said Jog. "Truly, this is the Savage Critic Age of Argumentative Assessments. Ex cathedra!," Wolk chimed in. "The Savage Critics. The blog of dreams. Men's dreams. It STINKS of men, of... oops, my bad, someone left a Jim Balent comic on the counter. Where was I... right. It STINKS of men. Of DOORWAYS and abandoned, obsolete blog links used as URINALS. Of alcohol-soaked morning sweat and stale cigarette smoke and inky diesel fumes and sickening-sweet aftershave and how the hell did I end up at San Diego Comic-Con?" added Kingston-Gabai The Savage Critic relaunches on Monday, July 16th at www.savagecritic.com Labels: Brian Click Here to Read More...
A short one today, because there's work to be done before tomorrow... (And I'm not just talking about Hibbs' big news - I also have deadlines for the newsletter and Comics International to deal with this weekend as well. I'm not quite sure how all of that happened...)
DEADPOOL/GLI SUMMER FUN SPECTACULAR: You know that criticism that often gets applied to things, that those involved in the creation clearly had a lot of fun making it, but forgot to be able to translate that to the audience? If there's ever a need to defend that in a court of law, then the majority of this book could easily act as Exhibit A. There's absolutely no doubt that Dan Slott and Fabian Nicieza are having a ball as they co-write each of the shorts in the vaguely-connected collection, but almost none of that fun comes over for the audience. The "main" stories are all pretty generic and throwaway pieces - enough to raise a half-smile, maybe, but that's about it - but, it's the Squirrel Girl interludes, where she discovers what happened to Speedball in Civil War and sets out to save him, that the true interest (and true fun) of the book lies. Those interludes are genuinely funny and have some purpose to them, as if they're the entire reason for the oneshot, and the other stories were the price paid in order to get their snarky dissatisfaction with the fate of Speedball into print. But if that's the case then, the price was worth it. And the book itself is worth it just for those scenes, and in particular, the scene where Squirrel Girl meets the current-day Speedball, Penance. The fact that the writers find Speedball's transformation into Penance ridiculous and at odds with both the character and the general tone of the Marvel Universe is very, very obvious. Not only do they poke fun at the plot of Damage Control being responsible for Nitro exploding at the start of Civil War - "No! That couldn't have happened! I know Damage Control! I've worked for them! They're funny, silly, and goofy! They'd never do anything that... dark!" "Uh... Rob, you shouldn't be dark either. You're Speedball! You bounce! With balls!" - but they also point out the holes in Civil War's "everything is different! Stamford was destroyed!" reasoning by referring to recent Marvel history: "The Avengers blew up half of Washington not long ago. Thousands died, and they did just fine... Iron Man killed a U.N. Ambassador - - while he was drunk - - on TV! And now he's running SHIELD!" Penance's response is priceless in its barely-concealed amusement/despair: "You just don't get it, do you?! This self-punishment thing? It's too deep for you! See?! I'm deep now! And that means I do deep stuff!" It's a (if you'll pardon the pun) weirdly ballsy scene, and the kind of thing that makes me hope that people in Marvel aren't taking all of the Civil War fallout stuff as seriously as they sometimes seem to. Don't get me wrong; the book is still pretty Eh overall, but you should definitely leaf through it just to read the bits in between the stories... Click Here to Read More... Saturday, July 14, 2007
It's the war of the space opera epics this week, as the first non-special-oneshot chapters of both DC and Marvel's star-crossed slam-bang-fests shipped, inviting comparisons that'll probably do no-one any good. But let's try anyway, why don't we?
ANNIHILATION: CONQUEST: WRAITH #1: Maybe it's Kyle Hotz's artwork - which, especially on the title character here, reminds me of Sam Keith's stuff - or maybe it's the choice of inverted word balloons for the eponymous hero, but I couldn't quite shake the idea that someone, somewhere, at Marvel sees this as "What if Sandman was a butt-kicking space mercenary?" It's an entirely unfair comparison, of course, because the story owes nothing to Neil Gaiman's gift to DC's intellectual property (although if you suggested that Wraith is Sandman meets Lobo, you're actually not a million miles away from the truth), but also a sign of how disinterested I found myself in the story and looking for distraction. There's nothing bad about the story, necessarily, but also nothing that makes me particularly excited about the prospect of checking out the second issue, nor about the idea that this will be a necessary piece of the whole Annihilation: Conquest larger story. Eh. NOVA #4, on the other hand, is much more successful. While the superhero snob in me wonders when we're going to see an issue of the book that isn't a crossover with some larger event (even the first issue was pretty much an epilogue to the original Annihilation), the reader in me has to admit that the sudden intrusion of A:C brings a very enjoyable intensity and sense of disaster to the series. I'm not falling for the idea that Richard Ryder is, as suggested by the last few pages, dead, but I'm very much liking the idea that the creative team are ready to throw away the title character for awhile so early in the book's run. Good, and offering enough insight into the Phalanx that I'm even more curious as to where the larger story is going next. Meanwhile, over at DC, GREEN LANTERN #21 takes the Sinestro Corps War storyline to the individual books, with surprising restraint - I have to admit that I was expecting some kind of obvious "Hal Jordan! I, Sinestro, am going to kick your ass!" moment in this issue, but instead the big guns seen at the end of the opening oneshot are purposefully kept in the background while the new Parallax essentially goes solo on a revenge mission against Hal. It's another well-done issue, giving this book an organic separation from the Green Lantern Corps book, even though the two series will be carrying the same story for the next few months, while also giving new readers all the backstory they may need both in terms of plot and psychological motivation. It's the wonderful lack of what you'd expect that made this so Good; much more subtle than something like Infinite Crisis, maybe Geoff Johns really did learn some tricks from the rest of the 52 writers after all... Click Here to Read More... Friday, July 13, 2007
Woof.
So, first off, thanks to those who gave me Excel tips in the last post -- yep that's what I'm using. Wish I had those BEFORE I started doing the eyeball sort, but c'est la guerre. 'sfunny, I've been using Excel for like a decade (maybe more?), and I haven't got the SLIGHTEST idea how like 75% of it functions. I generally only need it to sort, or move chunks of data around, or that level of depth -- most of those options in the, say, "Tools" menu? Don't even know what they do. ANYway, done with the majority of the database futzing -- yesterday and today I went and scanned in most of the barcodes that MOBY didn't already have (something like 600 of them?), but that was a pretty fast process, really. There's still TONS of stuff w/o barcodes, or stuff that HAVE barcodes, but which won't scan, no matter how much I try -- but I have to say I'm more pissed about the former than the latter. There's a couple of surprising (to me at least!) publishers, like Heavy Metal, who never bothered to put barcodes on any of their books. I really can't figure it out. I can get all of the comics that don't have them -- typically small/self-published books, or from publishers that didn't believe there was enough "critical mass" of retailers USING them for the time/expense in doing them, but my life will certainly have more of a pain in the ass from the OPTIC NERVE or LOVE & ROCKETS of the world, where we still sell 3-5 copies of each and every issue, each and every month. Having to slow down at the reg to either consult the "cheat book" (a binder with a bunch of non-barcoded items in it, with a user-generated barcode), or type-and-find into MOBY to look them up is not going to be fun. I can deal with that pain for L&R or OPTIC NERVE, but I suspect that, come, oh let's call it 2009, I will no longer stock publishers-who-don't-barcode just from a hassle-vs-profit point of view, if they're not selling L&R numbers for us. Anyway, as things stand, I think I'll be "done" with the database, latest, this time next week. Next week has several other things that need to get done (Tilting! And the SUPER SECRET THING that will make you go "whoa!" when we announce it [Very Soon!]; oh, and, just for good measure, the blackline of PREVIEWS showed up today, so ONOMATOPOEIA is presumably next week too!), so it will be "next Friday", rather than "Tuesday, latest" it would have been otherwise. Really, all I have left to do is to set the Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary distributors for the non-brokered publishers, which, I think, is less than 6 hours work. (It is probably 3, but I have to factor time to look-up-and-confirm-pricing on a number of books) My BIG PROBLEM with this, is there's a lot of items in the databse I'd want to set Cold Cut as the Primary, or Secondary-after-Direct-From-publisher, and I'm kind of dreading the possibility that Cold Cut might either close or drastically mutate in the next 3-6 months, causing me to have to edit thousands of records inside MOBY (not nearly as fast as Excel.... which could do it in about 9 keystrokes, total) -- in MOBY, you have to individually open each individual record of a product (or, I think, group -- which would make changing L&R, for instance, one action, rather than 20-something different ones) The funny thing, is my orders to Cold Cut are probably poised to triple or better, because I won't be doing that ad hoc bullshit method I'd used before, but I'll now have a "one button" process to deal with it, and the encouragement to hit that button more. I really and truly hope they find a buyer no later than San Diego, and that said buyer understands the potential they have there -- with just a couple of tweaks, Cold Cut could become a significant player, picking up the vast majority of the non-exclusive reorder business in the DM. I want to comment on this a bit, because I think something that Dan Vado really needs to be stated again, a couple of times. [So, in fact, let me give myself a clean paragraph break to make it easier to link, and take a deep breath to refocus my thought here] ANY publisher who has signed a distribution deal with Diamond, that does not have exclusions, for Cold Cut or Last Gasp, or even possibly a new startup, where that publisher is sold to retailers at an "F" (45%) discount or less has made a terrible, terrible mistake that they really NEED to rectify at their next contract negotiation. Why? Diamond assesses a 3% reorder penalty. That means your 45% discount, just dropped to 42%. Guess what? If Diamond is distributing your books, that means Baker & Taylor and Ingram has them. ANY chimpanzee, who pays on time, and places an order of 10 or more books (not of a single title, for a whole ORDER of books! Cake!), gets AT LEAST 42% off from B&T. And Free Shipping. And Returnability. THEREFORE, at a 45% or lower discount -- again, that's the "F" code, or a "H" code for 40% -- it is actually CHEAPER for retailers to buy it from the Distributor that *Diamond* is selling to, than from Diamond, on a Reorder (and, in many cases, on the initial) You want your retailers to get the BEST POSSIBLE PRICE on your wares, don't you? So they make lots of money, and buy MORE of your books, right? THEN MAKE SURE there is competitiveness in the marketplace. I kind of die inside when I ponder a company like Achaia -- they're exclusive to Diamond, no exceptions; They've been quietly building up a line of high quality titles with a fairly broad "real human" appeal... but because they are "Buy/Sell" with Diamond, DIAMOND DOESN'T HAVE THEIR BOOKS *IN STOCK* MOST OF THE TIME. To give you a good example, for the last few weeks I've been buying my copies of the MOUSE GUARD HC from B&T, rather than Diamond BECAUSE DIAMOND HAD NO COPIES, and B&T *did*. I'd kill to be able to buy, in open stock, virtually anything that Achaia produces... but because of the deal they locked themselves into, I usually can't. Tom asked why the New Boom doesn't seem to be translating for publishers or certain aspects of retail? That's because the only publishers, on reorder, that retailers can "keystone" (double their investment) are the four brokered ones -- the ones without any 3% reorder penalty. Everyone else, you're crippled at the outset because of a regressive policy that dates from a different time of distribution. Even if you're an "E" (50%) publisher -- your Onis, your DEs -- you're 47% on a reorder from Diamond, *and* dependent on Diamond's whim of whether they *stock* your comic or not. Not "will order it, if a customer asks", but *stocks*. Think about that VERY carefully the next time your contract comes up for renegotiation. Because I have to tell you that I think about those things constantly, and I'm the one buying your books. [*puff* *puff* OK, rant over] So, ah, where was I? Right, assigning dists to the database. Quick process, I'm hoping. Then... Hm, another pass through the "series" codes (I want to make sure it understands that, say, BPRD, is actually the SAME book, despite restarting at #1 every 5th issue), and maybe futz with the author and illustrator fields a bit. And after that, it's just another 2 weeks of scanning and looking for errors I missed before, but not the intensive 10-13 hours a day things I've been doing the last few weeks. I figure, since I'm working from an existing database, that, of the data I'll be using (way under 10%), I'm still going to have 1-200 books with some sort of error that I didn't catch, and won't until things are running. But, hopefully, I'll be able to deal with those on the fly, and that they won't be too disruptive as things run. But, pretty much, the overwhelming bulk of the Scary Database Project is pretty much done. There's still doing the physical inventory, and entering that data, but that will just be an ugly 8 hours that can't be done until the last second, anyway. Right. Off to have some recreation, then back at it for Saturday... Oh. And did I say to watch out for something Really Cool in the next few days? Well, do. -B Click Here to Read More...
Is it that wrong of me that I couldn't stop thinking of Smallville as I read GREEN ARROW: YEAR ONE #1? It's not just the high concept "Superheroes before they were superheroes" aspect that reminded me of the show, but the execution of same - the wooden expositionary dialogue, the repurposing of the character as an EXTREME THRILLSEEKER, DOOD, the weird villain as security guard to rich boy thing... This first issue curiously captured the feel of the Smallville show much better than the Smallville comic did, which is even more unexpected considering that it's by the Losers' creative team of Andy Diggle and Jock.
It's tempting to say that neither of their hearts are in the book, but I'm not really sure that that's the case; Diggle's script, while featuring some show-stopping moments of clunkiness (The villain's speech when confronting Ollie towards the end of the book is stunning in its laying out not only the character of Ollie as the book starts, but of the signposting of what's going to happen to him during the course of this series: "Look at yourself. You're not Robin Hood. You're Peter Pan. You're the boy who never grew up - - because you never had to. You don't value anything, because you never had to earn it. You don't think the rules apply to you, because you've always been able to buy yourself out of trouble. And you don't give a damn about anyone but yourself - - Because you're still the same spoiled selfish little brat you were when your parents died... Because there's never been anyone there to say no." You kind of have to wonder if Diggle finished writing that and thought, "You know, I'm kind of done."), still has some nice moments, and Jock's art here seems a lot less rushed than his Faker, last week (His cover is beautiful, if entirely destroyed by the barcode and credits - Look at the naked version on the DC Nation page, and see how good the art itself is). Perhaps it's that there was some kind of editorial guidance pushing them towards the Smallville gene, or perhaps presenting heroes as self-centered teenagers (or whatever age Ollie is meant to be here - early 20s, I think...?) is the way to go when trying to reach a new market. Despite all that, this isn't actually that bad an opener - Everything gets set up easily enough, even taking into account the signposted dialogue, and if everything feels somewhat tensionless, the fact that this is almost intended to be the least exciting part of the story has to be taken somewhat into account. An Okay opener, then, and here's hoping that it picks up the further we get into the story. Click Here to Read More... Thursday, July 12, 2007
Since it was announced, I've been somewhat nervous of reading STEPHEN COLBERT'S TEK JANSEN #1. Nervous for all the right reasons, mind you; I really like all of the creators involved, and also find myself fairly fond of The Colbert Report as well (Although I still prefer The Daily Show, especially since Johns Hodgeman and Oliver joined the crew), but there just seemed either an optimism or the kind of ego that Colbert normally parodies to base a spin-off series on what was essentially a one joke idea ("The self-important news anchor secretly writes shitty sci-fi - but he's completely unaware of how shitty it actually is!").
Sure enough, the first issue struggles against the limits of the pretty limited joke; the writers do their best to expand the Tek Jansen universe with new characters and situations, but the problem is that doing so sacrifices the humor that Colbert specializes in (political and social satire) for something both more broad and narrow at the same time. There are political allusions in both of the stories - and in the first strip, also some Colbert Report injokes - but stripped of the real world context, they come across as weak and toothless. The sad thing is, the writers are probably doing the best that they can with the core concept of the series, and the stories are fun enough (They're also attractively drawn; I just realized that I hadn't said anything about Scott Chandler and Robbi Rodriguez so far, even though both do a pretty good job juggling the likeness with the cartoony) - It's just that I think that the reality of a Tek Jansen comic is pretty much fated to just be Okay at best, always going to be less valuable in reality than in name-dropping theory. Click Here to Read More... Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Just jumping in real quickly to let you know the project proceeds.
Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday I spent a total of 33 hours, in those 3 days, walking the store, pulling books off the rack shelf-by-shelf and checking to see if they had records already in MOBY's database. Basically, over those three days, I've touched every single item in the store (except the back issues) at least once. (I also pulled a lot of stuff OFF the shelves for our sale box -- so, if you're a CE customer and you haven't checked the TP sale box in a while, NOW is the time to do so; there are some tremendous deals in there! [I just made Jeff Lester spend another fifty dollars, I am afraid]) This took a whole lot longer than the inventory will take (estimate: 10x longer) because I had to pull everything off the racks, shelf-by-shelf, carry it over to the counter and the computer, and type in a bit of its title in the cntrl-F Find box, then walk the books back and reshelf them. Whee, and stuff. The FUN part of it was that MOBY's database uses DIAMOND's database at its core, and Diamond does not... well, how to be kind about it? It is my understanding (perhaps out of date) that Diamond doesn't have a master file of what it stocks. Instead, the individual brand managers RETYPE THE ENTIRE CATALOG EVERY MONTH. Perhaps more importantly, Diamond doesn't have an exacting standard format that they use to present information, so it is entirely possible that you'll have a series of TPs that look something like this in Diamond's database: DWEEZLEMAN VOL 1 TP DWEEZLEMAN DWEEZLES AHOY VOL 2 TP DWEEZLEMAN VOL 3 DWEEZLES BIG ADVENTURE TP DWEEZLEMAN GN #4 DWEEZLES NIGHT OUT (this is an extreme "example", generally speaking no one series has more than 3 schema -- and even those tend to be multi-year 10+ volume series) Because of this, if you were to sort your list into alpha-numerical order, it would sort like this: DWEEZLEMAN DWEEZLES AHOY VOL 2 TP DWEEZLEMAN GN #4 DWEEZLES NIGHT OUT DWEEZLEMAN VOL 1 TP DWEEZLEMAN VOL 3 DWEEZLES BIG ADVENTURE TP Which drives me insane when trying to work with the data. So I was also editing titles as I went along to try and mitigate some of this. For myself, there's only ONE format that is appropriate and that's: [Series Title] VOL [#] [Subtitle] TP ([optional notes]) I also am a total weirdo in that I like to add a zero to sub-ten-volumes entries (that is, it is VOL 01, 02, and so on to 09) -- that's because, since the volume number is in the title field (though we have a column for "issue #" as well of course) if you don't do that, an alphabetical report sorts like this: VOL 1 VOL 11 VOL 12....19 VOL 2 VOL 20 VOL 21...29 VOL 3 VOL 30 (and so on) (and yes, you *can* stretch this out to the 40s. No, not a manga series; Fantagraphics PRINCE VALIANT reprints reached well into the 40s) With the "extra" leading zeroes, everything sorts the way its supposed to. Also, this is where I hate the ABC line books -- rather than "VOL [#]" they are listed as "BOOK [number spelled out]" so that "BOOK FIVE" sorts before "VOL 05". Once someone from DC (I don't recall who, nor the context) indicated to me that they were that way because Alan Moore insisted on it, but whoever made the decision to have it that way in DIAMOND'S DATABASE should be taken out back and shot. That's not just from a POS POV -- I'm changing the titles myself, obviously -- but from an invoicing POV. DIAMOND prints their invoices in straight-alpha, which makes checking in fun fun fun. There's also a lot of mislistings -- things categorized by Diamond as "comics" when they are actually "magazines", that kind of thing -- or bad listings. For instance, basically every book that's listed in the "book" section of PREVIEWS has in the "publisher" field the header of the category that it was listed in PREVIEWS. "How-To", "Art Books", "Fantasy/Sci-Fi" that kind of thing. Which is often annoying, but not something I'm going to fix now, because it doesn't matter *that* much, and I can always edited the important ones later. Anyway, so that was Thur-Sat, the upshot of which is that I *could* take a hard physical inventory tomorrow if I needed. (that's end of the month though) Sunday I vegged out. Monday I hit the database for ~10 hours and found "all" of the things that I "should" be stocking, but didn't have on hand. This includes a lot of out of print stuff, but that will work itself out quickly. I found about 200 items. Approx 60% of them are probably OOP. Of the ones that aren't, about a quarter were on this week's restock arrival already. I also noticed on Monday that, hm, a lot of items I have on hand don't have a barcode in the database -- this is probably because Starclipper (MOBY's "home" store) never stocked them (Diamond's database doesn't provide barcodes in advance, except for a very small handful of publishers). I hadn't realized that I was going to fill in quite that many holes, so I sorted the list of on-hand by barcode and made a sublist of the ones I'd need to scan in. About 800-ish titles. Tuesday morning I started in on it, and got about 10% of the list done in an hour (which reminds me, I'm going to need to make another list of things that will need to have barcodes generated FOR them...), but then it was time for the New Books to arrive, so clearing that up will be Thursday and maybe Friday in the store. Today I am at home and, literally, staring at columns of numbers. MOBY has separate data fields for "MSRP" and "MOBY price" -- that is, what the "price" is, and how much the program will charge you for it. But Starclipper, over the years, has put some number of objects on SALE... so I've got to go through and compare column A to column B. THAT's why I'm typing this essay, BTW -- comparing two columns of numbers on a computer screen is not easy on the eyes, so every 5 or 6 PageDWNs I flip over here and type a paragraph or so. The way I am doing this, I *know* I am making mistakes (or, at least, not catching some) -- if there's a $12.95/$12.99 discrepancy I won't be catching it in most cases (though I caught one!), and maybe not a $15.99/$19.99 one either. Thankfully, on the few occasions where it's a Starclipper-putting-it-on-sale situation (as opposed to data-entry mistake) they're generally cutting the price to half, making 5/9.99 easy to spot. Right, so that's done, thanks for listening while I distracted my eyes. Off now to start messing with reorder points! -B Click Here to Read More...
Given the, um, individual charms of Frank Miller's writing on All-Star Batman these days, I'm not sure it'll come as a massive surprise to anyone if I say that I'm not sure that MARTHA WASHINGTON DIES is worth the price of admission. But what was surprising - to me, at least - was that the story in this oneshot was clearly never meant to be anything other than the epilogue to next year's collection of all of Miller and Dave Gibbons' Martha Washington stories (Give Me Liberty from the 1980s - which I remember being disappointed by as a teenager, reading it and thinking "There's no there there. Is this really meant to be great? Am I missing something?" - and Martha Washington Goes To War from, I think, the early '90s). The strip in this issue offers no real story at all, other than fulfilling the promise/threat of the title, but also offers no context for anyone who hasn't read any of the earlier works. What it does offer is the chance to make cheap analysis into Miller's state of mind - the narration talks of an America under attack by "barbarians" who seek an "armageddon we'll never let them have" and chant, even though they've tried to destroy religion ("Back when there were churches. Back before the barbarians won their awful victory..."). Has this story now become all about Miller's 9/11 epiphany...? What else could it mean when Martha seems to become fireworks exploding in the skies above New York City, after all?
To call this "light" would be polite - It's 17 pages long, and of that, there are four double-page spreads and an additional four splash pages - and as nicely as Gibbons and colorist Angus McKie can make things, there's still a feeling of being somewhat cheated by the presentation of this as a full-priced comic as opposed to some kind of budget teaser for the complete book advertised on the inside back cover here. There may be some extra value for completists in the five page original synopsis by Miller for the opening of Give Me Liberty - although a cynic like me looks at it more as the only way they could make this book more than 20 pages long - but overall, this was a pretty disappointingly empty Awful. Click Here to Read More... Tuesday, July 10, 2007
So, Zuda Comics, huh? Why'd they go with that name, I wonder? Although I have to admit that I found Newsarama's interview with Paul Levitz about it curiously honest - Did he really admit that DC should be the last place you look to for innovation these days, or was I reading too much between the lines...?
While pondering that, let's look at the dying world of print: ACTION COMICS #851: Pretty much an issue of filler with the exception of the last few pages - and that really wasn't where I thought the Luthor subplot from the Annual was going, thankfully enough - but when filler comes with a pair of 3D glasses, I'm pretty much sold. Okay, but I do feel sorry for those who looked at this without rose-colored (well, and blue) glasses. ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #8: Surprisingly, not so great, and I'm not entirely sure why not. Normally I'm a sucker for both Morrison and Quitely and also Bizarro World stories, but this felt incredibly light and lacking on new ideas or surprises, for a change. Technically, it's still head and shoulders above almost every other superhero book released this week and still Very Good but I really expected more from this. BLACK CANARY #1: Paulo Siqueira proves rather adept at the kid-centric portions of this somewhat unnecessary miniseries (Admittedly, I say that partially because Gail Simone isn't writing it; I loved her take on Dinah in Birds of Prey, and even though Tony Bedard follows it closely here, it's still not enough, dammit), but ultimately it still feels like retcons are being used to manufacture fake drama instead of trying to make an interesting story about Dinah herself. Okay, but it could've and should've been better. COUNTDOWN #43: Hibbs told me as he rings me up for this week that he's suddenly realized how badly this is going to read in trade, considering that this week's issue is all about the death of the Flash, which happened in another series altogether and wasn't even referenced in this book before last week. And he's not wrong, but that portion of the book was still more interesting than almost all of the actual Countdown-centric scenes that we got this issue. That said, everything is starting to pick up slightly, and I wonder if that's just because we're two months in and Dini et al always intended to start slow and speed up, or if it's down to the presence of new co-editor Mike Carlin, who joined the book with this issue. Either way, still Eh. FAKER #1: I think I liked this, but to be honest, it all kind of rushed by without making too much of an impression - I feel as if I need to read the next issue (which will take me a third of the way into the series) before I could honestly say whether or not I thought it was worth my time, which leaves me somewhat ambivalent about the experience. Nonetheless, it's more proof that Mike Carey is a surprisingly versatile writer (Again, compare and contrast this to his X-Men, Re-Gifters or any other things released that he's worked on in the last month) and Jock is an engaging, if left-hand-biased, artist. Okay, I guess? NEW WARRIORS #2: You know it's a bad sign when the thing that catches your attention most about a book like this isn't that - gasp! - the New Warriors are depowered mutants with new superpowers but that the book namedrops and uses the logos of MSN, Yahoo and Google. Between that and the Old Spice logo usage in recent books, it looks like Marvel has dived straight into the world of product placement with no fear whatsoever. Ah, this brave new world, etc. etc. As for the story itself, Eh; pretty much as you'd expect. What did the rest of you think, anyway? Click Here to Read More... Monday, July 09, 2007
Busy busy on the database, so just a list of comics shipping this week....
100 BULLETS #84 (RES) 30 DAYS OF NIGHT EBEN & STELLA #3 ALIEN PIG FARM #4 (OF 4) AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #10 AMORY WARS #2 (OF 5) ANITA BLAKE VH FIRST DEATH #1 (OF 2) ANNIHILATION CONQUEST WRAITH #1 (OF 4) BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #7 BATMAN STRIKES #35 BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #176 BIG PLANS #1 BLADE #11 BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL #127 BPRD GARDEN OF SOULS #5 (OF 5) CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #15 COMICS COMICS COUNTDOWN 42 DEADPOOL GLI SUMMER FUN SPECTACULAR DEEVEE 2007 DMZ #21 EXILES #96 FABLES #63 FANTASTIC FIVE #1 (OF 5) FRESHMEN VOL 2 ERIC BASALDUA CVR A #6 (NOTE PRICE) GEN 13 #10 GREEN ARROW YEAR ONE #1 (OF 6) GREEN LANTERN #21 GRIFTER MIDNIGHTER #5 (OF 6) HEDGE KNIGHT 2 SWORN SWORD #2 (OF 6) INDIA AUTHENTIC INDRA #3 JLA CLASSIFIED #40 JUGHEADS DOUBLE DIGEST #132 JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #7 LEFT ON MISSION #3 (OF 5) MAD MAGAZINE #480 MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #3 MARTHA WASHINGTON DIES (ONE SHOT) MARVEL ILLUSTRATED MAN IN THE IRON MASK #1 (OF 6) METAL GEAR SOLID SONS OF LIBERTY #10 (RES) NEW AVENGERS #32 NEW EXCALIBUR #21 NEXUS #99 SPACE OPERA ACT 1 OF 4 NICOLAS CAGES VOODOO CHILD TEMPLESMITH COVER #1 NOVA #4 OMEGA FLIGHT #4 CWI (OF 5) PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #9 CWI SHADOWPACT #15 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #177 SPAWN #169 SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE #20 STAR TREK NEXT GENERATION THE SPACE BETWEEN #6 (OF 6) STAR WARS LEGACY #14 STAR WARS REBELLION #8 STEPHEN COLBERTS TEK JANSEN #1 (OF 5) STEPHEN COLBERTS TEK JANSEN CASSADAY VAR CVR #1 (OF 5) STORMWATCH PHD #9 SUB-MARINER #2 CWI (OF 6) SUPERMAN #664 SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #5 TAG CURSED #5 (OF 5) TICK COMIC CON EXTRAVAGANZA #1 ULTIMATE X-MEN #84 VERONICA #181 WITCHBLADE #108 WITCHBLADE SHADES OF GRAY FOIL CVR #2 (OF 4) (NET) WORLD WAR HULK GAMMA CORPS #1 (OF 4) WWH X-FACTOR #21 XOMBIE SEELEY CVR A #3 (OF 5) Books / Mags / Stuff ASHLEY WOODS 48 NUDE GIRLS SC BATTLESTAR GALACTICA VOL 1 REG ED TP CLUBBING COMICS BUYERS GUIDE SEP 2007 #1633 DEVIL DINOSAUR BY JACK KIRBY OMNIBUS HC ELRIC MAKING OF A SORCERER TP FALLEN ANGEL PREMIERE COLLECTION HC FULL FRONTAL NERDITY VOL 1 BIG BOOK OF EPIC FAIL TP GANZFELD 5 JAPANADA TP HEARTBREAK GN HELLBLAZER THE RED RIGHT HAND TP HULK VISIONARIES PETER DAVID VOL 4 TP LEES TOY REVIEW JULY 2007 #177 NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER VOL 9 TP NEXTWAVE AGENTS OF HATE VOL 2 I KICK YOUR FACE PREMIERE HC NODWICK CHRONICLES COLL NODWICK VOL 6 TP PS238 VOL 4 NOT ANOTHER LEARNING EXPERIENCE TP RAMAYAN 3392 AD VOL 1 TP SADHU VOL 1 TP SHOWCASE PRESENTS BATGIRL VOL 1 TP SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM GN (A) SQUADRON SUPREME HYPERION VS NIGHTHAWK TP TOYFARE SIMPSONS MOVIE FIGURE CVR #121 TRUE STORY SWEAR TO GOD VOL 1 TP UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS TP VIDEO WATCHDOG #132 What looks good to you? -B Click Here to Read More...
It's not exaggerating to say that all of my positive feelings about THOR #1 come from Olivier Copiel's artwork. Which, considering I finished the issue and thought to myself, "Well, I might pick up the next issue to see where they go with this after all," is saying more than you may think.
J. Michael Straczynski's resetting of the Lee/Kirby dynamic here is the kind of thing that doesn't really make that much sense if you spend too much time thinking about it - I didn't read the last issues of the last run of Thor's title, but it seems from this issue that Thor didn't die after all, but just ended up in some kind of ideological limbo that was also inhabited by Donald Blake, who was (years ago) unmade by Odin, but that unmaking was then itself undone by the death of Odin, which somehow undid all of Odin's magic except for the bits of Odin's magic that are necessary for the series to work. I have no idea if any of this will be explained in future issues, or if it's just the kind of doublespeak that readers are expected to just accept as the necessary evil in order to get Thor back and move on, but I chose to go for the latter option and look at the pretty pictures instead. And what pretty pictures...! Copiel's choice of making Thor larger - or, at least, broader - than life manages to both differentiate him from Donald Blake and also give him the physique that makes you believe that he really could stand up to Ice Gods or whatever other Asgardian monstrosities come his way; I particularly liked his out of control eyebrows and broad nose, for some strange reason. The same cartoony impulse reappears towards the end of the book, with Donald Blake's new landlady, whose happy panel wearing glasses was a wonderfully welcome moment of visual comedy in a scene that could otherwise have been bogged down in too-clever dialogue. Copiel obviously likes drawing people instead of just superpeople, if you can understand the distinction; his body language and comfort with clothing (He understands how clothes hang on people, unlike so many superhero artists) are the signs of a smart artist who's looking to do something more than just whatever happens to be popular or hot right now, and his panel layout on the second-last page of this book - almost entirely silent - is something that makes me want to see what else he could get up to when paired with a writer who wants to challenge him a little more. I've been a fan of Copiel since his Legion work, but this book really makes me want to see him on something out of the mainstream so that he can show just how good he really is. It's interesting; I know that I should give this book an Eh because, really, the story's not up to much at all and the dialogue borders on the pretentious and ridiculous. But the artwork is so good that I've kind of got to say that you owe it to yourself to at least take a look and decide for yourself whether this is as Okay as I ended thinking it was... Click Here to Read More... Sunday, July 08, 2007
NEW AVENGERS/TRANSFORMERS #1: The cross-marketing platform that Marvel have been waiting for rolls out - I'm sorry - into stores, in time to make everyone who reads it realize that, well, it's pretty Awful. There's something about this book that really makes you feel as if this is a half-assed attempt by Marvel to try and cash in on what they hoped would be a successful movie. It's a shame, really; the sheer nostalgic power of picking up a Transformers comic with that lo-fi version of the logo (Just like the old Marvel UK version of the comic when I was a kid!) managed to make me relatively hopeful that this could be something enjoyable and full of throwaway pop thrills, but it's clear that pop magic isn't what those involved were looking for - There's a self-conscious seriousness to the narration ("The engines of war. Sometimes they grind so loud in your brain - - They drown out everything else" ponders Captain America towards the end of the issue) that kind of ruins whatever dumb fun points the admittedly goofy plot (Megatron is increasing humanity's aggression so that the Avengers are fighting each other! Only the Autobots can save them from themselves!) has earned so far. More depressingly, Tyler Kirkham's artwork is so dull - it just sits on the page and does the job without any style or joy or anything, which is entirely the opposite of what was needed here. With a comic that brings superheroes and giant robots that turn into cars together, what I really want to see is some absurdist excitement about the whole thing, something that pulls me into the story and distracts me from the ridiculousness of the whole thing, and this attempt - while well-meaning (at least in the initial plot) - completely misses the mark.
Doesn't stop me wanting to see the Transformers movie itself, though. Click Here to Read More... Saturday, July 07, 2007
You know, I really thought that Jeph Loeb was building to something with the whole FALLEN SON: THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA thing. I don't really know why, to be honest; I'd been through Superman/Batman and watched as those 25 issues resolutely failed to have any real sense of resolution. I'd put that down to everything else that was happening in his life at the time, and kept this vague hope that - despite all the usual claims and complaints about Loeb's writing - he really could finish a story after all.
And it seemed as if Fallen Son was building to something, you know? The way that the characters followed through the individual issues, with Wolverine seeming to act as some kind of guide through the whole shebang... I honestly thought that there was going to be some kind of emotional payoff, at least, in the final issue. And with the rumors of spoilers and big events that should get retailers ordering extra copies, and of news coverage of this issue, I thought: Okay. We're building to something after all. Except we're not. It's not that the final issue is bad, per se. John Cassaday's art is fine enough - As much as I recognize how technically good he is, I really don't get why everyone loves his work as much as they do - and I appreciate the weird, Sinatra-esque take on Rick Jones (complete with apparently-receding hair, which amused me greatly for some reason), but there's no there there. I appreciate that Loeb (and, presumably, Marvel) felt that Captain America's funeral was enough of an event to finish the series with a bang (or dull thud of a coffin going into the ground, perhaps) but there's still no proper closure. Lots of flashbacks and lots of dramatic speechifyin', sure, but nothing else. Maybe that's to be expected - it is just a spin-off cash-in to the central plot from Captain America's own book, after all - but logically knowing that doesn't stop this from being a letdown that makes you go Eh. Click Here to Read More... Friday, July 06, 2007
In some weird, bizarro world somewhere in this fine multiverse, there is someone who knows what I’m talking about when I say that, for me, CRIMINAL #7 and THE BLACK DIAMOND #2 are distant relatives in some strange sense.
I mean, sure, when you read both back to back, you may not have any idea what I’m thinking, considering the very different executions of each book. Criminal, for those who haven’t been picking up the series to date, is pretty much the crime book out there to beat these days, and this issue – the second chapter of the second story of the series – demonstrates why perfectly. Over a plot of revenge and good people in bad situations (although, I have to admit, I have no idea if Tracy is really a good person or not; I just like the idea that he has some sense of honor as opposed to just being in this for revenge. But let’s face it, Brubaker trades in moral ambiguity in books like Captain America, so why should his crime noir book be any cleaner?), Ed Brubaker delivers a tight, tense script that doesn’t so much explain itself as hints at what’s happening and who to trust and leaves the rest to the reader. It’s writing that works through dialogue without being overly chatty, which puts it entirely at odds with Larry Young’s script for Black Diamond, also in the second chapter of its story (or third, if you could the preview released a couple of years back) and also featuring good people in bad situations. Young’s script for Black Diamond is all about the dialogue, and I mean that in the best way. More than really being plot-driven (as I’d suggest Criminal is), this issue of Black Diamond is three different conversations that rejoice in language and digressions and little bits of information that aren’t important to the core plot but tell you about the characters nonetheless. It’s an incredibly chatty book, but done in such a way that you forgive the metatextuality of characters referring to themselves as literary devices, or the bigger-picture expositionary download of the middle conversation, because… well, it’s just plain enjoyable to read language being used like that (See also: Sorkin, Tarantino, Bendis, etc. Yes, I get that people don’t really talk like that, but I don’t see why that should affect my enjoyment of fiction). It’s good that Young’s script is so strong, because Lee Proctor’s visuals are kind of… not. Actually, that’s not fair; the book is visually stunning, but that’s because of Proctor’s amazing coloring and his sense of page design – his linework itself is pretty static and infuriatingly inconsistent (Mostly in his female characters, who change hairstyles depending on which photoref he seems to be using, panel-to-panel), to such an extent that it snaps you out of the story every now and again, when you have to stop and wonder whether that’s a new character who’s just appeared, or a new look for the same character as the last panel. Criminal, meanwhile, has no such issue; Sean Phillips does work on this that should be used as masterclass fodder for artists wanting to see how to get emotion onto the page without it being melodrama, and how to tell a story effectively without the art overwhelming the story (Val Staples’ coloring is also to be pointed out as understated but entirely effective). That, in fact, may be the core difference between the two books – Criminal is a comic that works because the creators involved put the story first and submerge themselves in the work, whereas Black Diamond is enjoyable because of the creators being present throughout the book. If that makes sense to anyone that isn’t me. Nonetheless, both books are well worth your time. Black Diamond is Good fun, Larry Young showing off his chops with Jon Proctor backing him up, and Criminal is Very Good, Brubaker and Phillips both perfectly in synch with each other and focusing on getting the job done, which seems fitting for a crime book (For those who liked Sleeper and, for some reason, haven’t picked up Criminal yet – You really should. As good as that book was, this is much better). Mama Crime Genre can feel happy that her children may not look much like each other, but they’re both doing just fine, thank you very much. Click Here to Read More... Thursday, July 05, 2007
Right, so where was I?
Last Friday I lost a few hours because the firewall router I was trying to install wasn't working with the modem for some arcane reason I can't begin to understand. I had my dad come (over three tries) and get it going (he was a network guy for PacBell before he retired), but that cost me some precious computer time on Friday. Saturday, Sunday, and much of Monday were lost to me because I kinda forgot it was "that time of the month" -- order form for August, and subscription set up for July, and the general "end of the month blues" of paying bills, etc. Tuesday, the comics arrived. Can't sell them until Thursday, but we have Tuesday delivery, and since Wed was the holiday, it was either Tue-for-Thur, or Thur-for-Thur, and I chose to have the piles of boxes in the store, thanks. Wednesday.... well, despite the holiday, I HAD to get back to the database. So I did. All day. "Finished" the comics section of it. And the magazines (though, come on, how much work really needs to be done there?) Thursday was today, and it was New Comics Day. And I worked it alone, because Sue is off at a wedding. And yet I still mostly managed to deal with the Book part of the database for most of the right hand side of the store. Friday is tomorrow, and I'm hoping to finish off the right hand side of the store, and maybe (MAYBE) the center too. I'm piling up a bunch of books to put on clearance, too -- nothing like touching every book in your store to go "and these must go away!". I'm hoping those will be put into the sale boxes by Saturday, but who really knows, might not be until Tuesday. Saturday will be my normal weekly reorder pass, but if I haven't finished the center-of-the-store, then I'll have to do that as well, being wholly under Rob's feet. He'll like that. Sunday... well Sunday, I'm hoping I can rest. Monday, all day at home working with the books inventory of all of the things we DON'T have in stock, and setting up primary and secondary and tertiary distributors for them, as well as reorder points for the stuff I actively want to stock, and so on. Unlike the comics, where there is necessarily a reorder point except "huh, sold out, get more", basically every book needs to have a decision made about it about HOW MANY I want to keep in inventory at all times. That will take me 3 (?) days... so, since Tuesday is Comics-arrive, I'm planning on being done by Thursday early AM (Because, damn it, I have to have time to take Ben to the park!!!!). Then next Friday (a week from tomorrow) will go towards all of the "behind the counter" (T-shirts, toys, whatever is in the case) stuff, which, hopefully, is only 3-4 hours work, max. Then normal-weekly-reorders on Saturday, rest on Sunday, then start thinking about writing a TILTING around 7/16, to run on 7/20. There's also something else going on on Monday 7/16, but you'll hear more about that a little later. On 7/28, Mark Richman, programmer of MOBY, is coming to SF to reimport back our now edited version of the database, and to train us on the system, Unless something goes categorically wrong (and, hey, shit does, in fact, happen), we should be trained on MOBY on Monday 7/30, and POS is "live" as of that point, just before my "Dream Date" of 8/1. So, fuck yes. That also means that, between (let's say) 7/16 and 7/28, I HAVE to get the database finished, no screwing around. I think that's an easy deadline (unless I biffed something hard I really should be done with a week to spare), but it IS a deadline, and I have to remain aware of it all the way along. And somewhere in there is the new ONOMATOPOEIA (I'm guessing we'll have the "blackline" of PREVIEWS on the 17th or so, for a we-photocopy-it date of 7/20 and PREVIEWS street date of 7/25, but I never keep PREVIEWS dates straight in my head) OH, and the deadline to Turn In next month's orders is 7/31, which means that I can't possibly work the order form in the 7/28-7/30 window I would normal do.... because we're being trained in MOBY right then. Gonna have to figure out a way to do it all on Wed 7/26, because there's not a whole lot of other day options available to me right now. And, the normal end-of-the-month functions (like bill paying!) seem like they're going to become first-of-the-next-month this cycle, whooops. So, this is what July looks like to me, wheeeeee. But at the end, I'll have POS and a much better control of my inventory, so this "Lost Month" will be all worth it, I think. Anyway, just letting you know I'm alive, and why I'm leaving Graeme out to fend for himself right now (Sorry, G!) -- and why my wife hates me because she's having to shoulder like 96% of the entertaining-Ben duties (Sorry, Tzipora!) -- but it's just going to be an ugly July. More as I have time -- now to take a shower, and maybe pretend I'm a human being entertained by some recreational activity for an hour or two before I sleep... -B Click Here to Read More...
No time for blog, Dr. Jones. With an Independence Day that involved a flooded toilet, family visits and absolutely no time whatsoever to sit down and write about The Black Diamond and Criminal as originally planned, you're going to have to wait a little bit longer for new reviews from me, I'm afraid.
How did everyone else enjoy the holiday yesterday, anyway? Click Here to Read More... Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Happy Independence Day, Americans. Congratulations on getting rid of all those British bastards, other than those of us who came back years later because we, too, were sick of Britain. Do you mind if I take advantage of the day-later-new-comic-shipping to finish up with this week's books?
DAREDEVIL #98: Hey, look! She's not dead after all! Brubaker and team follow up on the advertised peril for Matt's wife Milla with a tense one-issue take on the "a hero pushed to the edge" theme that works because it is only one issue, and because it doesn't end the way you might expect. Good, but - and this is nitpicking - that cover was kind of generic and off-putting after some of the great ones we've seen lately, wasn't it? FANTASTIC FOUR #547: Dwayne McDuffie, you are to be congratulated for taking a book like the FF, bringing it back to its old school roots and making it work - Finishing this issue with the explosion of... well, something, alongside a caption from the Wizard (of all people) proclaiming "the end of the Fantastic Four!" was a wonderfully welcome piece of cheese that capped off a pretty Good issue overall. McDuffie manages to convey the idea that the FF are an extended family rather than traditional teammates without having someone come out and tell the audience as usually happens, and the mix of comedy and drama here - ably handled by the equally old-school Paul Pelletier - feels more in tune with the series (and the Marvel Universe in general) than all of the police state nonsense happening elsewhere. I'm dreading what happens after this team leaves, though. THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST #6: Really, remarkably Excellent; I can't get my head around the fact that this book has become one of my favorite titles out there right now, but this final chapter of "book one" (according to the last panel of the issue) is a perfect example of the mix of action, humor and fast-moving mysticism that keeps me coming back issue after issue. The fact that David Aja's art is really something special (and keeps getting better) doesn't hurt either. SHE-HULK #19: So, wait, this all happens after World War Hulk? Doesn't explicitly stating that a couple of times, kind of... I don't know... suck a lot of tension out of WWH, considering that the Earth seems to be pretty much the same as it did before the Hulk invaded, and Iron Man's definitely not dead and all? Not that I expected anything else, but it seems somewhat self-defeating to have one of your books come out and outright state those things before the second issue of your massive event comic has even come out. That said, I see why that swerve had to be done; it'd be hard to leave the series on the same comedic tone as you started within the current MU framework... Shame that the results are so Eh, however. SILVER SURFER: REQUIEM #2: You don't need to read this (beautifully-painted, but essentially boring) comic; I'll summarize it thusly: "So, Spider-Man: Would you like to ride my surfboard?" "No thanks, but I'm sure my wife would." "...Okay then." "Awesome!" That's pretty much all there is. It's very pretty, but Eh on every other scale, cosmic or otherwise. SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #31: New writer Tony Bedard may think that he's tying up some loose ends from Mark Waid's run, but "where is Cosmic Boy" really isn't one of them - What happened to him in Waid's last issue was one of the best things about that issue, and it's depressing to see it discarded so quickly, especially in favor of what looks to be a pretty Eh new status quo. X-MEN: FIRST CLASS #1: The problem with this book isn't the execution - Jeff Parker's script is very cute, and Roger Cruz's art has some really nice touches (Remember when he was a Jim Lee clone? He's a million miles from that now, thankfully) - but with the lethargy about the concept in the first place. Monthly retro tales from when the series wasn't popular at all? How do you sell that to the legions of readers out there who would rather read about Wolverine's mohawked son? It's a shame, because this is a fun little book that deserves a wider audience than it'll probably receive, thanks to the crowded X-franchise and the not-especially-outstanding Eric Nguyen cover. For some reason, I think that digest collections will be where this series will prosper; charming one-offs seem more weighty in anthologies, if you ask me. Good, if light. PICK OF THE WEEK is Iron Fist, and even if the whole comic hadn't been awesome, Misty's line about loving "that crazy white girl so much I could holler" would've probably gained the crown alone. PICK OF THE WEAK is Return To Wonderland, because, well, ick. TRADE OF THE WEEK for me is tough, because I've been working through Green Apple purchases, so for me it's probably been the Comics Journal Library Vol. 1: Jack Kirby collection of essays and interviews, because you can never have too much Kirby. Tomorrow: The New Comics Mainstream. Or something. Click Here to Read More... Tuesday, July 03, 2007
So, really, now that we're at #44, can we start to think about what's wrong with COUNTDOWN? Eight issues in, and there's only one plot that really working for me - Jimmy Olsen discovering his crazy superpowers and not being all angst-ridden about the whole thing. Which, considering all the other plots that are also in the book at this point (Mary Marvel gets her powers from Black Adam, the Flash villains do... um... something, Holly from Catwoman also does something, and there's lots of multiverse things going on that are somewhat unclear), isn't a really good sign. Maybe not so coincidentally, Jimmy's story is also the only one in the series that doesn't rely on you reading another comic to understand it - Even if you didn't know who Jimmy was, you could still understand the basic "someone seems to get magic powers when they least expect it" sequence of events. Everything else in the book fails to hold onto your interest because it's not about anything other than other comic books, and in order for that old trick to work, it takes more skill and humor that this book offers.
That's what's so depressing about this comic, I think; that so much of it feels as if it's the comic equivalent of a circle jerk. When more than half of the comic reads as though you have to have read other comics to understand it and read plenty more to understand what's going to happen - And with at least three spin-offs with "Countdown" in the title due to appear in the next few weeks, there's definitely the feeling that you'll be needing plenty more than the next 44 issues of this series in order to get the whole story, which seems more than slightly overwhelming at this stage of the game, considering how offputting and insider the story itself seems. The idea of keeping up with this series just in terms of what's happening, never mind being sympathetic to any characters or whatever, is exhausting in and of itself in a way that 52 never was. This was something that I seem to remember Dan DiDio using as a selling point for Countdown, pre-launch; that it would be able to interact with the rest of the DC Universe instead of staying in its own missing-year "bubble". The only problem with that is that what should be used as an occasional easter egg and/or gag seems to have become the entire purpose of the whole enterprise, replacing things like "plot" or "characterization." (Also, am I the only person who's surprised at the way that Countdown seems to be so devoid of either of those, considering the writers involved? Sure, Tony Bedard, Sean McKeever, Adam Beechen et al may not be Grant Morrison, Mark Waid or the other 52 writers, but they're still not exactly talentless - Even allowing for the group voice model, I'm surprised that we've not seen flashes of each writer's personality come through at any point yet.) I ended up buying the first issue of Countdown (much to Hibbs' amusement, given my review of it), thinking that it was something that I'd want to reread down the line in bigger batches. The second issue put paid to that notion, but at this stage, two months in, I kind of wish I'd kept up with it and could read the first eight issues all at once to see if the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. Despite everything, I want to like the book, partially because of my continued 52-related goodwill. It's just that, with every Awful issue, I feel as if that gets harder and harder. Click Here to Read More... Monday, July 02, 2007
Remember: because of 4th of July, comics will be on THURSDAY this week.
If you go into your LCS on Wednesday, they will only point at you and laugh. 2000 AD #1541 2000 AD #1542 A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #61 (A) ACTION COMICS #851 ACTION COMICS 3D VAR #851 ALL NEW ATOM #13 (CD) ALL STAR SUPERMAN #8 AMERICAN VIRGIN #16 ASTOUNDING WOLF-MAN #2 ASTOUNDING WOLF-MAN DIRECTORS CUT #1 BETTY & VERONICA #228 BLACK CANARY #1 (OF 4) BLACK DIAMOND #2 (OF 6) CAPTAIN AMERICA #25 DIRECTORS CUT CITY OF OTHERS #3 (OF 4) COUNTDOWN 43 CREATURE FROM THE DEPTHS (ONE SHOT) DANGER GIRL BODY SHOTS #4 (OF 4) DAREDEVIL BATTLIN JACK MURDOCK #2 (OF 4) DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER BORN #6 (OF 7) DETECTIVE COMICS #834 DEVI #12 DYNAMO 5 #5 EXTERMINATORS #19 FAKER #1 (OF 6) FALLEN SON DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA IRON MAN FANTASTIC FOUR AND POWER PACK #1 (OF 4) FINAL GIRL #3 (OF 5) GARTH ENNIS CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD #5 (OF 6) INTO THE DUST #1 IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #10 WWH JONAH HEX #21 JUGHEAD AND FRIENDS DIGEST #21 JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #35 LONERS #4 (OF 6) LOONEY TUNES #152 MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #29 MARVEL ZOMBIES ARMY OF DARKNESS #5 (OF 5) MIDNIGHTER #9 MS MARVEL #17 CWI NEW AVENGERS TRANSFORMERS #1 (OF 4) NEW WARRIORS #2 CWI NIGHTWING #134 OUTSIDERS #49 PALS N GALS DOUBLE DIGEST #113 PIRATES VS NINJAS II UP THE ANTE PIRATE CVR #1 (OF 8) PS238 #24 PUNISHER #49 PUNISHER PRESENTS BARRACUDA MAX #5 (OF 5) RAY HARRYHAUSEN PRESENTS 20 MILLION MILES MORE #1 RUNAWAYS #27 SCALPED #7 SIMPSONS SUPER SPECTACULAR #5 STAR TREK KLINGONS BLOOD WILL TELL #3 SUPERGIRL #19 SUPERNATURAL ORIGINS #3 SYNCOPATED COMICS VOL 3 TALES FROM THE CLIT (A) THOR #1 TRUE STORY SWEAR TO GOD IMAGE ED #7 (NOTE PRICE) ULTIMATE POWER #6 (OF 9) UNCANNY X-MEN #488 UNCLE SCROOGE #367 WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #682 WARD O/T STATE #3 (OF 3) WELCOME TO TRANQUILITY #8 WHO WANTS TO BE A SUPERHERO FEEDBACK (ONE SHOT) Y THE LAST MAN #57 Books / Mags / Stuff 10 20 & 30 VOL 1 GN (RES) AMAZING TRANSFORMATIONS OF JIMMY OLSEN TP ANITA BLAKE VH GUILTY PLEASURES VOL 1 HC DM ED BATMAN EGO AND OTHER TALES HC CAPTAIN AMERICA WAR & REMEMBRANCE TP NEW PTG CATWOMAN 13 INCH DELUXE COLLECTOR FIGURE COLLECTED NORMALMAN TP CONAN HALL O/T DEAD & OTHER STORIES VOL 4 TP DAMNED VOL 1 THREE DAYS DEAD TP DRAGON HEAD VOL 7 GN (OF 10) ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS VOL 3 TP FOLLOWING CEREBUS #10 (RES) GEN 13 BEST OF A BAD LOT TP GIRLS & GODDESSES PIN UP ART OF JOSEPH MICHAEL LINSNER HC GOLDEN AGE DR FATE ARCHIVES VOL 1 HC GOOSEBUMPS GRAPHIX VOL 2 TERROR TRIPS SC GUNSMITH CATS BURST VOL 2 TP INVADERS CLASSIC VOL 1 TP INVINCIBLE VOL 8 MY FAVORITE MARTIAN TP JUDGE DREDD COMPLETE CASE FILES VOL 8 TP KODT BUNDLE OF TROUBLE VOL 19 TP MARVEL VAULT MUSEUM IN A BOOK SPIRAL HC OUTSIDERS VOL 6 PAY AS YOU GO TP PTOLUS CITY BY THE SPIRE VOL 1 TP REX LIBRIS TP SILVERFISH HC TEZUKAS BUDDHA VOL 8 JETAVANA SC UNION JACK LONDON FALLING TP USAGI YOJIMBO VOL 21 MOTHER OF MOUNTAINS TP We also recieved (from Baker & Taylor) FLIGHT v4, Douglass Wolk's READING COMICS, and... hm, what was the other thing... oh yeah, a Fox?atomic prelude to THE HILLS HAVE EYES. That doesn't count what will come in tomorrow from B&T either... What looks good to you? -B Click Here to Read More...
WONDER WOMAN #10: Poor Jodi Picoult. I know that her run hasn't been met with anything resembling critical acclaim, but holy crap, was she given a pretty shitty set of circumstances to work in. First off, she ends up having two fill-in artists within her five issue run, and then a crossover comes in midway through her run completely derailing anything close to whatever coherent story she was attempting to write - The fact that her final issue on the book offers no sense of resolution (and, in fact, ends with a cliffhanger that I honestly have no idea in which book it'll be followed up on - Here or Amazons Attack? Or neither?) just kind of offers a perfectly scale model of why Picoult was pretty much screwed on this gig no matter how great her writing was. Way to go, DC. Your first female writer on Wonder Woman's solo book, and you made sure that she had a completely unsuccessful run that you're still putting out as an expensive hardcover collection with her name in big letters on the cover to try and convince people to buy it nonetheless.
"Sigh," as they say. This issue is pretty much Crap, for multiple reasons, almost none of which have anything to do with the talents of any of the creators involved. Because of what the editorial powers-that-be at DC want, pretty much nothing actually happens in this issue, with the one plot development managing to be undone in the issue of Amazons Attack! that also shipped this week (which, to be complete, is Eh, and equal filler. But at least it's the middle of a run), and the feeling of "who cares?" pretty much dominates the entire experience (DC definitely doesn't seem to). Poor Jodi Picoult. Gail Simone, I hope you get better treatment. Click Here to Read More... Sunday, July 01, 2007
GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES: RETURN TO WONDERLAND #1: There's something about this comic that makes me feel guilty in a way that not even the ridiculous breastage of Madame Mirage managed. I was amused to read the Newsarama review of the book and see the reviewers address, and then apologize for the gratuitousness of the book: "I just think the outfit and look of Calie on the cover screams SuicideGirls. That's what I thought when I saw it, and call me "horndog" if you must, but it caught my attention, and it appealed to me. The interior art had one questionable moment with the thong in question, but, I will say it was preceding actual sex, not a peek-a-boo as Calie was getting ready for school, or some such. I can guarantee that girls her age, in her shoes, wouldn't be wearing granny panties."
So maybe it's just me that thinks that it's kind of... offputting... to see the shot of the teenage girl half-naked, her ass on show to the audience, taking up half of the page by the second page of the story. Or, you know, the upskirt shot of the teenage girl a few pages later (which apparently isn't questionable, according to the reviewer above). Or perhaps it's all the cleavage shots of the teenage girl - including the shot from above, peering down into her cleavage - and the way that the artist continually accentuates her breasts even when it's a shot from behind the character (but when you show her from behind, then you get to show her thong peeking up from her low-riding jeans! "Bonus!"). Maybe I'm not thinking SuicideGirls enough, when I wonder what the all the T&A actually adds to the story, and all, but still. Dude. It's cheap thrills from a fictional high school girl's breasts and ass for no reason other than cheap thrills. Is it so wrong of me to feel like that's kind of... wrong? I could go on about how bad the story is, and how unoriginal the entire story is, but it's really not worth the effort - We've all read multiple "dark takes" on Wonderland before, and we've also read the stereotypical troubled teen dealing with disaffected youth and uncaring parents thing, as well. The only thing that's worth mentioning is how unconvincing the whole thing is, and how little the writing attempts to make any of the characters sympathetic or even three-dimensional. It's entirely lazy and convinced of its own genius even as it lacks any shred of same. Add that kind of writing to such generic but exploitative art, and you're left with a book that's completely self-satisfiedly Ass. Click Here to Read More... |
Smart-ass comic reviews, and comics retailing intelligence, by Brian Hibbs, owner of San Francisco's Comix Experience. And friends!
Critic Monitor Board:
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Sean T. Collins |
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Chris Eckert |
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Brian Hibbs |
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Dick Hyacinth |
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Abhay Khosla |
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Diana Kingston-Gabai |
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Jeff Lester |
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Joe McCulloch |
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Graeme McMillan |
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Tucker Stone |
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David Uzumeri |
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Douglas Wolk |
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