A review for Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together should be forthcoming sometime soon but I keep coming up with new ways to put it off (if you download Sid Meier's Pirates from Gametap, expect at least five hours of your life to disappear in flash).

Like today, for example. There's no reason I couldn't sit down and organize my thoughts on the book, but instead I'm gonna review a few movies I saw rather than, y'know, being true to the purpose of this blog. I apologize. (On the other hand, it's probably foolhardy to try another comics-related post on the same 24 hour period as Jog's awe-inspiring Jademan essay, so maybe this will work out best for all involved.)

COMEDIAN: Accomplishes the more-or-less impossible task of making me like Jerry Seinfeld again. During the height of publicity for the "may be the Gone With The Wind of talking animal CG movies and I'll never know because I'd rather die than watch it" Bee Movie, I found myself wishing the guy would just...go away. Go far, far away. And that's part of what makes this documentary kinda interesting--despite Seinfeld's name and mug plastered all over nearly every inch of the DVD and case, the man's barely in it.

Oh sure, he's in it--the majority of the film focuses on Seinfeld building a new routine after retiring his old set and talking comedy with fellow comedians (with the remaining third or so of the film covering the counterpoint of young up-n-comer Orny Adams on the cusp of his career moving to the next level)--but it's not the smirking, bemused, low-key Jerry Seinfeld we're used to seeing (and, in my case, pretty damn sick of). No, the Jerry Seinfeld of Comedian is a glassy-eyed, queasy looking junkie, chasing the comedy dragon from nightclub to nightclub, working his material up from six minutes to fifteen to thirty, comparing notes after hours with other comedians who similarly look gassy and uncomfortable. At one point, after a less-than-stellar set, someone tries to reassure Seinfeld by saying, "Well, you looked like you were having fun up there," to which he tersely replies, "Yeah, that's the job." And although Seinfeld flies from gig to gig in private chartered jets, and spends time at his house on the Hamptons, it's clear his material possessions don't mean half as much as the strange, ephemeral high of making people laugh.

Although it doesn't go as far as one would want in showing how spectacularly fucked up and insanely neurotic stand-up comedians can be, Comedian nevertheless shows a world few of us are exposed to, and a flip-side to celebrity, without condescension or bias. It's highly OK, and certainly worth a rental.

DYNAMITE WARRIOR: The action setpieces and Tony Jaa's athleticism in Ong-Bak and Tom Yum Goong (released here as The Protector) impressed the hell out of me, but it was the out-of-control insanity of 2004's Born To Fight that made me vow to check out anything done by Thai production company Baa-Ram-Ewe. That movie--an astonishing mix of propaganda flick and Die Hard featuring athletes and poor villagers kicking the shit out of mercenaries and soldiers--stars Dan Chupong, a guy who makes the charisma-light performances of Tony Jaa seem positively Brandoesque in comparison. (On the other hand, Chupong spends so much time in mid-air you're convinced he lives there.)

Chupong is also the lead of Dynamite Warrior, but whereas Born To Fight is like a Thai John Woo flick (and Ong-Bak and Tom Yum Goong are like Thai Jackie Chan flicks), Dynamite Warrior is a Thai version of that other Hong Kong film staple, the batshit-crazy historical wire-fu flick.

Set at the turn of the 20th Century, Chupong plays a mysterious rocket-riding hero who appears out of nowhere and kicks the shit out of corrupt water buffalo rustlers and herders, looking for the man who killed his parents. He finds him, but of course the man is gifted with immense magical powers, as well as the ability to turn two of his henchmen into monkey and tiger-possessed strongmen. In order to defeat him, Chupong needs the menstrual blood of an evil wizard's virginal daughter (well, sure, who doesn't?) as well as the assistance of an untrustworthy hare-lipped tractor salesman.

I was willing to forgive Dynamite Warrior an endless number of sins (Chupong is an utterly binary actor, capable of only expressing determination or befuddlement, making his love scenes pretty hilarious; the plot makes even less sense than my summary conveys; and there's tons of not-particularly-funny broad, vulgar comedy) but for this: the action scenes aren't a tenth of what you'll find in Ong-Bak, Tom Yum Goong, or Born To Fight. There's a lot of the cheats you get from a wire-fu flick, with people flying halfway across a meadow at each other while dynamically pumping their arms, but additionally shots of blows being thrown are cut away at the moment of impact to show someone reeling backward.

I mean, it's not terrible if you like this kind of thing: even if they might be wire-rigged, Chupong does some truly spectacular flips and leaps, and the scenes where things go truly nuts (like when the tiger guy and the monkey guy start chasing a rocket-powered wagon) are enjoyable in a "Hey, you've got to come see this!" kind of way. But by the standard of previous Baa-Ram-Ewe flicks, Dynamite Warrior is pretty Eh--unlikely to be the sort of thing you and your friends will gleefully pass around.

DAN IN REAL LIFE: Oh, god. This is the sort of thing you go see with your wife on "Date Night," and afterward spend almost as long bitching about it as you did watching it. Steve Carell is Dan, a widower advice columnist with three feisty daughters. They go to the annual family reunion where, on his own in the nearby town, Dan meets cute and falls in love with Marie (Juliette Binoche), who he later learns is the new girlfriend of Carell's younger brother (Dane Cook).

The funniest thing about Dan In Real Life is the title, as the filmmakers--apparently test-tube specimens raised in a lab with only nutrient tubes and a copy of Final Draft to sustain them--have no actual experience with real life whatsoever. Dan's interactions with his daughters, the scene where Dan and Marie meet, and particularly every scene with Dan's family lacks any ear for dialogue or eye for verisimilitude one would expect from someone given money by investors to make an indie film romantic comedy. Dan's family, in particular, seem less like recognizable human beings and more like labrador retrievers wearing human skin, jumping up and down whenever anyone suggests an activity and running about the kitchen yelping indiscreetly.

Also, the tone is really, really off in the film, with topics like grief and death and familial betrayal being treated like the perfect jumping-off points for cheap one-liners and awful acoustic songs warbled by some indy folk dude who's clearly spent more of his professional career worrying about hair conditioner than chord progressions. It's as if the filmmakers were told that the film was going to be marketed overseas as Little Miss Sunshine 2 and to film accordingly.

I don't know what other romantic comedies are out there for people to go to on date night, but avoid the Crap that is Dan In Real Life and go see them instead. Honestly, even watching a calf get hit by a heavy mallet for forty-five minutes is a more enjoyable cinematic experience.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: As a fan of both the Coen Brothers and of Cormac McCarthy, I couldn't be more pleased with this flick which adapts McCarthy's recent novel to the screen (I haven't read it). Not only is it a gorgeous, taut film packed with sharp dialogue, it feels to me like a culmination and canny distillation of many of the Coen Brothers' thematic obsessions--particularly in its portrayal of dead-eyed assassin Anton Chigurh (brilliantly played by Javier Bardem). If you've followed enough of their films, you know they usually include a terse, violent sociopath who enjoys inflicting pain (and they usually have a connotation of being foreigners as well--I'm thinking of The Dane from Miller's Crossing, Peter Stormare's Swede in Fargo, even the German anarchists from The Big Liebowski, as well as Goodman in Barton Fink, Tex Cobb in Raising Arizona, and M. Emmett Walsh in Blood Simple) but Chigurh overwhelms all of them with his awful haircut, his creaky voice, and his air-compressor M.O. Although efficient in everything he does, he's terrifyingly and hilariously incapable of understanding humanity, and humanity is similarly unable to understand him. (Also, he steals the coin-flipping gimmick from Two-Face, so you gotta love the guy.)

Like I said, I haven't read McCarthy's book but I assume Chigurh's horrific larger-than-life attributes come directly from there, as one of McCarthy's ongoing themes are the powerful forces capable of indiscriminately crushing all men, good and bad, strong and weak. Similarly, the very strange turn the movie takes in its final quarter strikes me as straight from McCarthy--not only does he refuse to treat people's mortality with any sort of sentimental escapism, but he's just as likely to end his stories with characters ruminating on visions and dreams that run the terminator between hope and despair.

And yet, again, what's great about No Country For Old Men is that it's very much a Coen Brothers movie, with the ending not unlike that of Fargo, where Frances McDormand's character, like Tommy Lee Jones', can do little more than ponder imcomprehensible evil while taking comfort in the ability to love and be loved by others.

Whether or not the end of the movie succeeds in opening the frame up on its genre conventions and pointing to their larger implications on life and civilization (it didn't entirely work for me), the first three quarters of No Country For Old Men is a remarkable crime-thriller, a violent game of hide-and-seek taking place across small towns and great plains, and absolutely unmissable. I still haven't seen Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, which a lot of people have recommended to me, but No Country For Old Men is Excellent stuff, and currently my pick for movie of the year.

Labels: Jeff, movies

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So this is how I found out who the bad guy was in "One More Day". I picked up a copy of THE SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN #41 and started flipping through the back of the book, wondering what pointless background material they were putting in this issue to justify the increased price, and there was a reprint of an old Silver Surfer comic which had nothing to do with Spider-Man whatsoever. Now, don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against the chance to read old Stan Lee and John Buscema stories, but it was so out of place that I'd wondered if Marvel had just given up and started putting anything in the OMD books, just to make sure that they hit the revised revised shipping dates. Instead, there's a caption below the cover of the Surfer issue, announcing that it's the first appearance of the bad guy behind the whole Spider-reboot shebang.

Yes, this is the issue where we finally get to the whole meat of the One More Day story, and in terms of meat, it's stringy, tasteless and drowning in cheese, just like my mother used to make.

It's not enough that the whole concept of One More Day doesn't really make sense as a Spider-Man story - "If you could magically heal your Aunt, would you?" is just a wee bit too removed from the whole despite-your-powers-you're-only-human-so-try-your-best aspect of "With great power comes great responsibility" for me - but now that we finally get to the whole magical reboot offer, even that doesn't make any sense on it's own. We literally get (spoiler) Mephisto showing up out of nowhere and actually literally says "I want your love... I want your marriage." It's a good thing Spider-Man interrupts him there, because I believe the next line was going to be "I have no reason to want your love, or to even get involved in your life, but, you know, Joe Quesada really, really doesn't want you guys to be married and he's the editor-in-chief, so..." It's a crazy, nonsensical scene - Mephisto has no motivation to be there or make that offer, other than a generic "Well, he's the devil" one; even his stated reasoning - "I want that which gives you joy, that which sustains you in your moments of greatest despair" - doesn't make sense because, dude, why does he care about Spider-Man in the first place? Doesn't Mephisto normally go up against Thor or Ghost Rider or someone? And more importantly, if what he wants is to undermine Spider-Man's moral center and security, then he'd let Aunt May die, not offer this cut-rate Faustian bargain.

(Yes, I know; this way, Spider-Man and Mary Jane have to choose between their marriage and letting Aunt May die and huzzah for more guilt for Peter, but Mephisto still has no reason to be in this story making that offer in the first place. It's the Chewbacca Defense as applied to getting Spidey out of his marriage.)

And another, smaller but still annoying, thing: Since when did Marvel solve all their perceived problems with dumb magic reboots? Just as DC completely undercut the dramatic tension in their superhero books with all of the continuity reboots, Marvel's doing the same with these smaller individual magic fixes. Editorial doesn't like the direction of the X-Books? That's fine; have Wanda magic them all away! Joe Quesada doesn't like Spider-Man being married? That's fine! Mephisto can show up and magic that away as well! It eats away at what little reality these books have left, if that makes sense; I'm now waiting for someone to magic the Skrulls away at the end of Secret Invasion, or bring Captain America back to life (That could even be the big finish of Secret Invasion - "I will take the life-force of all these Skrulls and use them to return America's greatest hero to life!" "Are you sure you can do that, Dr. Strange?" "Yes, Iron Man - - Because you have learned humility").

Maybe I'm just cranky, or maybe thinking about this book too much because it's not coming out weekly as planned - it's pretty much a means to an end, anyway, with everyone really just waiting for the Brand New Day relaunch - but this was lazily put-together Crap. There is one good thing about it, though; Joe Quesada's artwork has really pulled itself together in this issue, and there are some nice-looking scenes throughout the whole thing. Maybe all those delays had some purpose after all...

Labels: Graeme

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This is the story of how I met Jademan Wong.



I.

In the beginning, there were the images. I couldn't tell you how I found them, but I did. They were volcanic eruptions of cartoon violence, the marching, oozing cover brand of old comic books. I didn't know a thing about them, but I never forgot them. That was how Jademan Wong -- writer, artist, funnybook publisher, studio head, newspaper magnate, national success, menace to youth, jailbird, fact, fiction, the king of Hong Kong comics -- got inside of me.



I doubt he's around anymore. Oh, he's alive. And working. Thriving, even. But that's not quite what I mean.

II.

When I think of Jademan Wong, I realize I'm contemplating an illusion, a personal image sold unsuccessfully to Americans in now-obscure comic books. But it sold to me. It didn't sell anything but itself, but it sold, long past its sell date. I wonder what he'd think of that.

The facts of Wong's life vary from account to account, and I regret having not read Wendy Siuyi Wong's 2002 book Hong Kong Comics: A History of Manhua, which is supposed to be the crucial book on the wider topic. Instead, I'll be taking much of my information from the publicity materials included with one of the comic books Jademan published in North America. Not everyone remembers, but Jademan Comics published over one hundred issues of Hong Kong manhua in English, for US consumption, from 1988 to 1993. When I tracked some down, they didn't look at all like the goopy, vivid things I'd seen before, so I didn't make the connection at first. But Jademan Wong was there.



In 1950, one Wong Yuk Long was born in China. His family moved to Hong Kong when he was seven, and there he began reading comics. Before long, he was writing and drawing the damned things - his first published work appeared when he was eleven. At the ripe old age of seventeen, he began publishing comics himself. His most successful company, Jademan, launched in 1971. Asian comics art expert Dr. John A. Lent notes that Wong "almost single-handedly fashioned contemporary Hong Kong comics," estimating that Jademan eventually gained 70-90% of the nation's comics trade.

Wong would eventually become known simply as Tony Wong. For his readers, he took the name "Jademan" Wong, literally becoming one with his publisher. It's how you give it a human face, you see.

Or maybe he just made that part up for his US history, and nobody in Hong Kong knew him as Jademan Wong at all - I am going off of promotion here.

But that's also how you can give it a human face, and it's Jademan Wong that I know.

III.

Jademan the company came to handle Wong's comics from top to bottom: production, printing, the works. The impact of Japanese manga on Hong Kong had already been huge, and Wong adopted many foreign attributes, including visual style and story content. And more.

In an interview with Giant Robot from a few years back, Wong cited Golgo 13 creator Takao Saito as an influence (albeit for his earlier James Bond adaptations), and I find that especially fitting - just as Saito established a vast studio of specialist employees to ultimately maintain a 44-page-per-week pace, Wong set himself up as the head of his own team, sketching out pages in pencil for a multitude of aides to complete, piece by piece, though in bleeding color and at American dimensions, weekly.

The kung fu comics fans out there among you have surely heard of the man's works, and are no doubt annoyed with my calling him "Jademan" so much. But I suspect most readers of this site have come across at least one comic that sports his art. By which I mean, his team's art. And one comic specifically.



Yep, same guy in charge.



As it turned out, the gory images that had so floored me were from the beginning of Wong's long-running series Oriental Heroes (or: Dragon Tiger Gate), then titled Little Rascals. Those really good covers only made up about the first fifty or so issues before things calmed down a little. Not that it kept Wong from running afoul of 1975 legislation prohibiting extreme violence in comics, although it was no big deal - Wong simply began his own newspaper to serialize his comics away from the law's grasp. That's just how he rolled. Ted May of It Lives and Injury Comics has more from that period at his site.

The series is still running today, although it looks slightly different.



I suspect Wong is not the type to let changes in popular taste pass him by. From my observation, his comics often look 'of their time,' regardless of exactly what time it is, certainly due to a constant influx of young employees to work the pens. I couldn't tell you how much Wong actually draws anymore, or how his comics even read, since I haven't gotten my hands on a very big sample, but I'm not really telling you about comics today anyway. I'm telling you about the vision comics can project of their creators.

Two comic books shaped my vision of Jademan Wong.

IV.

In 1988, Jademan Comics released its first offering in the US.



It previewed the company's four big upcoming series:

(the aforementioned)



(and)



(plus)



(with)



Mike Baron of Nexus and The Badger was recruited to provide English adaptations of the scripts, and apparently worked on all the comics in that initial special, although you can see that Roger Salick had also been brought in by the time The Force of Buddha's Palm was actually released.

But, maybe it wouldn't be too wise to trust those covers - after all, the creator and artist behind The Blood Sword (Chinese Hero), the ultra-popular Ma Wing Shing, isn't even mentioned. Instead, everything everywhere is written and drawn by Tony Wong.

Really, the lead character of the book is Wong himself. The very first page, a glossy color foldout, bears Wong's smiling, mustachioed face, flanked by a photo of Jademan's huge Jademan Center headquarters, and a list of Jademan's Hong Kong holdings (advertising! television listings! printing! graphic art! magazines!). The rest of the piece, hopefully not written by Mike Baron, reveals how comics are made the Jademan way: Tony "Jademan" Wong in his crisp white shirt and red tie sitting behind papers ("Tony Wong, The master archited of each story, produces pencial sketches"), followed by a long line of frowning men without ties doing other things.

A second glossy foldout begins with a delicate wash rendering of Our Hero in formal wear, looking ready to kiss his way into your checking account. The tale inside, modestly titled "TONY WONG Hong Kong's Legendary Success Story" delivers the breathless history of a superdeformed cartoon Tony Wong, who grows from weeping babe to a powerful man in a tuxedo, literally standing atop the Earth, a large pen thrust down into a nation. He grins madly.

"This is just the beginning. I am nowhere close to the legendary Walt Disney. I shall continue my struggle to reach even higher standards and greater heights until the whole worlds [sic] comes to know the comics with the oriental touch."

The reverse side then launches the comic into the high camp stratosphere, being a glorious photographic centerfold image of Wong in casual gear, waving to the reader while leaning against a shiny red sports car, perched above the bustling world he no doubt rules. You can bet your ass that shit would be hanging in my locker, had I one today. The rest of the book's Wong content, seeing the kingpin back in his shirt & tie and gesturing toward hot free merchandise like Vanna White, can't nearly compare.

Now, if you actually stop to read the comics in this comic book, a set of introductions to the four upcoming series apparently cut 'n pasted from various issues, you'll run into some trouble. Baron appears to be attempting a sort of exclamatory high action style with his adaptation (which might simply be an effect of working with the material's original language), but the result is stilted when matched up with the reams of caption-based information he's forced to contend with. Errors pop up - in one panel, caption material shows up in a thought bubble, making things inadvertently avant-garde (in later issues of other series, the dialogue of one bubble would pick up the nasty habit of switching spaces with another bubble's, adding to the surrealism). The overall effect, however unfair, is 'please buy our confusing and information-dense kung fu comics so we can afford to learn how to print them.'

But that's not the message of Jademan Wong. He's the legendary hero of capitalism, and his overall effect is 'I am an amazing man, and you should buy my comics to get in on my self-made empire of triumph.' It's deeply goofy, but there's a real appeal to his go-for-broke press into new territory, and his enthusiasm is palpable. Even looking at it right now, I think "Who is this guy?"

And then:



The images recur, ricocheting off the smiling man with the mustache and the red tie. "That's kinda how he bought that car," I think.

V.

Jademan Comics published mostly kung fu stuff during their half-decade in the US market, but they did make the obligatory effort toward showing that Hong Kong comics were about more than just historical fictions kicking one another in novel ways. Hence:



Er, that's Jademan Collection, a three-issue run of short story collections released in 1989 and 1990.

Issue #1 of that is the second comic book that shaped my vision of Jademan Wong.

Featuring English adaptations by Len Wein (yes, Wolverine, Swamp Thing; Len Wein), the book actually has a pretty diverse lineup of stuff. Its kickoff story is a horror short by Lee Chi Ching, now the winner of Japan's first-ever International Manga Award. There's a slightly deadpan comedy short by one Taipo Tsui, whose work is influenced enough by Ryoichi Ikegami that the whole thing winds up looking remarkably like Cromartie High School. There's a romantic melodrama, a sex comedy, a Snow White parody starring Jademan Wong...

Oh yes, Jademan Wong (and that's the name he's called by) is a character in some of the odder of these stories. I suspect they ran as serial backup shorts in other titles, since they're clearly stitched together from bits and pieces, and feature what I presume are Jademan staffers clowning in comics form, with Wong playing head buffoon. The Snow White parody is ok.

But the first of those stories, and indeed the first glimpse any American reader was likely to get of Wong's comics persona, was a little ditty by Wong Kwok Hing titled The Musty Bride. I don't have any scans from the story ready, so please bear with me as I present a few more Tony Wong classics to break up the paragraphs - heaven knows they were floating through my head as I read the story.



The tale begins with a pen-wielding man wearing a pighat, presumably Wong Kwok Hing himself, making reference to a cover page which we cannot see but probably did exist in the Hong Kong original. He announces an erotic mud-wrestling match, the very mention of which zips him off to a wrestling ring filled with a gigantic, curly lump of manga-style poo. "Oh, it's just mud!" remarks our host, after dipping a finger in and tasting it.

The competitors are then introduced: a brawny, busty woman, and "Miss Lady Wong," obviously Jademan Wong, mustache and all, in a pink leotard and hair bow. The announcer then goes about searching the titans for foreign objects, leaving handprints all over the woman, but stopping in a panic once he dips down below with Publisher Tony "Jademan" Wong.

"Hey, what are you hiding down there?"

"Honest - it's nothing! Take a second look!"

He then reaches back in, and pulls out... a thick stack of bills! "Hey - no problem!" winks the announcer. It's really a bit like if Bullpen Bulletins was chock-full of jokes about Dashin' Don Heck mistakenly grabbing Smilin' Stan's junk, but both of them being cool with it. Or maybe I haven't gotted to the good months?

Anyway, Wong and the woman wrestle around until a mighty belly flop leaves a crater in the shape of Wong's outline, including his gigantic penis, which somehow escaped and is bigger than either of his legs. As you might guess, this ends the match, although I don't know if a DQ means the title switches hands.



The scene then shifts to a skyscraper, where a muscleman is impressing some ladies (one of whom may be a man) with his feats of strength. But the party ends when Jademan Wong bursts in, wearing shades, tight jeans, and an open pink shirt tied off to accentuate his bust. "I'm just too tempting to resist -!" he declares, before unleashing the aroma of his armpits, which drives the ladies wild with lust.

Meanwhile, a private detective is consulting with Wong's father, who's shamed by his son's insatiable, pansexual ways, which will surely lead to madness. The only answer is to hire a woman to marry him, preferably a "musty" sort of old-fashioned girl who won't lead a man astray. Soon the perfect lass is selected, complete with musty mother, but our Jademan balks at the idea, declaring the girl a three naught: "Not beautiful! Not a nice bust! Not a nice tush!" This classic comedy ends with Wong's dad threatening to defoliate the comics legend's nipples, then ripping his clothes off because it's a bad habit to sleep while dressed.



So Wong goes to meet up with his betrothed.

"So - where should we go?"

"How about straight to hell?"

They settle on the beach, and while Wong is initially annoyed by the girl's slow rate of speed with her sporty red car (the sporty red car?!), lo and behold - he soon gets good and worked up as she demonstrates her skill with the stick shift. And he wets his pants, in case things were getting too highbrow, what with the visual metaphor.

Things get even better when they decide to hit the waves ("A swim? Aren't you afraid of being mistaken for a surfboard?" - like, really, did Tezuka publish strips like this?), and it turns out that the girl is really a wild and crazy modern woman whose mother had subjected her to full-torso binding so the rest of the world wouldn't covet her curves. The couple then happily beats the shit out of some local thugs, then it turns out that their parents (who were following along) had been robbed and stripped naked, which means they have to get married too, ha ha? The end!

What thrills me first about this story, is that somebody thought it would be fit to publish in the very first issue of a comic by an unknown-in-the-US company, looking to serve an audience that couldn't have known much about Tony Wong, Man of Legend, save that he was all over these books.

But what thrills me second, is how the story's odd contours do indeed zing and spark off of Wong's fresh image. Surely he's got a sense of humor, but even the jokes resonate with the playboyish boy publisher and his kingdom of fighters. He's modern. Annoys the elderly. Socially curious; witty; in charge. He's publishing the comic you're holding in your hand. I remember that he used to draw comics about little boy and girl fighters having street wars with their guts falling out.

Before you, says the image, waits a kingdom of untethered entertainment. Comics with a maniac in charge, and he's got a message for YOU. One that promises the glory of another nation's pop, to infest the one that's here. I suppose that's the message of all pop comics from outside cultures - but Jademan Wong made it all seem to me like the product of a man's sick, wonderful personality, the eccentric alive and validated and the fore of a mass culture just some water away.

Lies, yeah. To an extent. But I appreciate good illusion.

VI(OLENCE).

Of course, reality had to go on for the real Tony Wong. Even as Jademan Comics published away in the US, the company at home fell apart. Wong was jailed for a short time in the early '90s, on charges of forgery. But then he got out, formed a new company called Jade Dynasty, which is still in comics. Some of his works were picked up by Image (which had a short-lived line of Jade Dynasty books in the late '90s) and Dark Horse, as well as manga publishers Comics One and DrMaster. He drew Batman, or at least directed someone to draw Batman. Life went on.

I'm sure he doesn't use the name Jademan Wong anymore, considering that Jademan itself is no more. Hook your persona to the publisher, and one goes down with the other. Still, the spice and implications of the construct make me smile. I guess I've excerpted a notion of what Jademan was. It can swim toward ideal, so long as I know too what the truth was, so much as it can be known through the mechanisms of language and commerce.

The reality of today is readily in my grasp.



But my memory returns to that first shock of knowing.



May you live forever, Jademan Wong.

Labels: Jog

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Another day, another later-than-intended entry. This is what happens when work is insanely busy and family members are sick, making everything slightly more distracted than you'd really want...

THE FLASH #234: Mark Waid's transformation of this book into family-friendly adventure continues, but there's something off, somehow; the pacing seems strange, and while individual scenes play out well, it fails to gel into a satisfying whole for some reason. Much more successful are the back-up strips of derring-do from former Flashes on an alien planet, which manage to squeeze as much fun as possible out of their short length. After such a strong start only a couple of months ago, it's sad to see this being "only" Okay; I hope it'll find its footing again soon.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK #111: Or, really, a trial run for the renamed Incredible Hercules book, considering the lack of Hulk and focus on the Herc/Cho/Angel/Namora team that's been leading this book over the last few months. It's a good sign, too, that the new/old book will be worth checking out, as everything here is pretty Good; Cho's pretty much been the breakout star of the World War Hulk event for me, and his interplay with the dumb but well-meaning Hercules is entertaining enough for me to want to see more. Shame that it's not the creative partners on this particular issue (Jeff Parker co-writes with Greg Pak, and Leonard Kirk draws) that'll be sticking around, but I've dug Fred Van Lente elsewhere...

IRON MAN, DIRECTOR OF SHIELD ANNUAL #1: There's probably a good book hidden somewhere in here; the cover seems to be hinting at one, at least. But I just couldn't get past the art to get to it - Harvey Talibao's work has this weird over-anatomizing of everyone (especially the women, who get objectified here even in defiance of what the dialogue for a particular panel might say) that distracts, and it's matched with hyperactive pastel coloring that manages to draw too much attention to itself while flattening out the page as to be almost unreadable. I'm sure that there was more to Christos Gage's script than what I remember from reading the book - essentially, "Tony Stark goes undercover, meets lots of women with big breasts, then becomes Iron Man and blows something up" - but I have absolutely no desire to put my eyes through that kind of pain again to find out. Awful.

WHAT IF ANNIHILATION REACHED EARTH?: First off, I love that that's actually the title of the book. Second off, this is one of those What Ifs where you wish that this had happened instead of the "real" continuity, if only because characters in this book act more in character - and more heroically - than they do in their own books. It feels like the most classically "Marvel" thing I've read for awhile, even with the suicidal ending, and the scope and execution are satisfying in a way that the end of Civil War just... wasn't. On it's own, it's a Good book, but as a missed opportunity, it's frustratingly wonderful.

Oh, and Jeff? A. Definitely A.

Labels: Graeme

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While I won't go so far as to claim that I'm the biggest Matt Wagner fan of all time (that would probably go to someone who has inked their body, is my guess), I strongly suspect I am in the top 2% -- I've got something like 20 Wagner originals hanging in the store, our bathroom door is a Grendel Mask, writ large... hell, the store's "Back in 5 minutes" sign is a Matt Wagner original.

So I'm quite sad to say that I was horribly disappointed with GRENDEL: BEHOLD THE DEVIL #1.

The worst of it, really, is it isn't really the work itself -- Matt remains, as always, a consummate storyteller, creative visionary, and experimenter with the form of comics -- but rather with the packaging and presentation and pricing, and the sense that maybe I *am* on the wrong side of history these days and this whole "periodical comic" thing is just a lousy idea.

(Well, no, I'll repudiate that immediately, just by thinking, with a smile on my face of BRAVE&BOLD, my last review, but it looks good in print as a point, so there you are...)

Let me back up about a half-step and remind you that I own a comic book store. This means I pay WHOLESALE for my comics. Hell, I suspect (though I've never tried it) that I could probably even write THAT off my taxes, if I wanted to. So for me, of all people, to be frustrated by cost/content ratios means they've got to be pretty bad.

G:BtD is 20 pages long. For $3.50. That, in and of itself, maybe wouldn't be so bad, except that 2 of those pages are "Journal" pages, with just spot illos, the next six of them are double-page spreads (with 4 of those pretty much just being blood spatters), and there's a page of character-looking-through-newspaper-archives where all of the newspaper clippings are simply Lorem Ipsums. Add in that final pin-up page, and half of the book isn't exactly "comics", really. Plus, it is B&W, with some minor single spot-color red thrown in.

And then, sort of insult-to-injury, the letters page, such that it is (I remember when "Grendel's Lair" used to be one of the densest letters pages in the business) mentions that the "MySpace" preview of the issue has two pages that don't appear in the printed version -- you can't win for losing, can ya'?

(And, aside to Di: next time use TinyURL, instead of that three lines of typing, sheesh!)

Look, I dig Matt, and I dig Grendel, and I love Matt's storytelling and panache and design, but there's absolutely no way I'm going to purchase this serialization. I can't even consider it. Eight issues @ $3.50 a throw (plus the 50 cent "#0") is $28.50. Even when this comes in HC, I can't see it being priced at over $24.95. Even if it was $29.95, hell the extra buck and a half will be worth it for what will likely be a new cover, and title page and some nice designy stuff. And the permanent format.

Craft-wise, G:BtD is, at the very least, GOOD work; it's probably even VERY GOOD -- but as a commercial package, as a unit of entertainment, whoo boy, is this AWFUL.



What did YOU think?

-B

Labels: Brian

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I carry a little Moleskine notebook with me everywhere. The obi they come with advertises that they're the notebook used by Bruce Chatwin, Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso, although that isn't strictly true. To that list, we can now add Renée Montoya.

Despite Countdown, I do like it when artifacts that ought to belong to one world end up in another. Yesterday, Greg Rucka dropped off a document that had come into his possession while he was working on the Crime Bible miniseries (of which the second issue comes out Thursday): Montoya's Moleskine, a bulging notebook that reminded me a bit of several Dennis Wheatley and J.G. Links volumes. The pocket-sized notebook, besides copious handwritten notes on Montoya's investigation of the Dark Faith, includes a bunch of inserts:

*A 1938 translation of a bit of the Crime Bible, with Montoya's handwritten note about a numerical cipher or code. (Which, I'm guessing, has something to do with the numbers in the border of the first page of Crime Bible #1! I haven't had time to figure out how the cipher works, but I'm guessing that's what the Internet is for.)

*A photo of the cult's Barcelona convent
*A security photograph of the Question
*A gig poster for a Dark Cult-connected band called Darkseid's Bitch, who it turns out also have their own MySpace page

*A handwritten lyric sheet for "Ashes All Fall Down" by the band's singer/guitarist Serration, with annotations by Montoya, on a piece of letterhead from the Hotel Monarch in Star City
*A ticket for their show at the Dirrrty Club
*A set list for that show, with more Montoya annotations
*The Coast City coroner's report on Serration's death, and his toe-tag from the morgue, along with several bullet casings and a couple of pills
*Montoya's boarding pass for her flight to Barcelona (on Ferris Global Airways!)

*A clipping from the international edition of the Gotham Gazette, also annotated by Montoya

*A printed-out screenshot of an IM conversation between Montoya and Tot Rodor
*A telegram from Rodor to Montoya


I don't have time to scan the whole notebook, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if bits of it turned up elsewhere too, or even if there were a couple of additional copies of the entire thing--it's one of those little Moleskines that come in multi-packs, and Montoya's old mentor was rather fond of a book in which a character makes a duplicate copy of his entire journal to make sure its content survives.

Labels: Douglas, viral marketing schemes in which I'm only too happy to participate because they're really clever and come from the creator himself

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Howdy.

I've been thinking: my December is looking pretty open at the moment, and I thought it might be fun to sort of dig my heels in and post a little more frequently to the site, since I've been posting so infrequently here for the last few months. But I'm really torn on what to write, and thought you could help.

Even before some commentators mentioned it in threads, I'd been thinking the site hasn't had as much old-school "here's reviews of the 20 to 30 books I read this week" entries as we once had. I thought it might be fun to do that for December, despite my reservations that: (a) I don't work at CE any more, which means I'd have to set aside a chunk of time during my week to read all them damn funnybooks; and (b) I'm so behind on my reading of singles (even on books I follow!), the results could come off as pathetically out-of-touch.

Alternately, I could write longer reviews, one or two a week, of the stuff I have been reading lately--mostly manga, but a few other things as well. This is the stuff I should really be doing anyway, but haven't in many cases because I've been too lazy to shape my thoughts beyond the "Ugh, Jeff like!" stages.

Or I could try my hand at writing something more like a personal essay, something not unlike my response to Abhay's review of Dr. 13. I'm a little worried about this option, because the call-and-response nature of the earlier essay made it much easier to structure. Also, looking back at that essay, I realize I may have used up every unique theory about comics and their readers I ever developed. Because I'm really not sure how to tackle this angle, there might be only two (or three?) of them during the course of the month.

Finally, I could do nothing. After all, the revamped site seems to be picking up its second wind with some strong (and strongly challenged) reviews, and more comment threads turning into actual discussions. And December frequently looks low-key going into it, before it catches your sleeve in its gears--giving you just a split-second to realize how goddam fast everything's going--and spits out what's left of you on January 1st.

So, to recycle that terrible phrase, U-Decide! Should I:

(a) do weekly capsule reviews of the books on the stands;
(b) do reviews of stuff I'm reading currently, once or twice a week;
(c) do a longer comics-related essay or two; or
(d) do nothing, as the site is producing plenty of content anyway?

Please lemme know yr. thoughts on the matter, either in the comments below or by dropping me a line at pig[DOOT]latin[ATT]gmail[DOOT]com.

Thanks!

Labels: Jeff, u-decide, xmas

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Graeme, if it's any consolation, I started writing about The Brave and the Bold #8 two days ago, and am only getting around to finishing this now. But that's partly because of a Very Cool Thing that will be showing up tomorrow.

One thing I always enjoy about this series is how densely packed it is, and this issue in particular is incredibly tightly structured. In 22 pages, we get an old-school Silver Age splash page (an action shot that lays out the basic concerns of the story and happens somewhere in the middle of the plot--and, in fact, it's one of the sturdiest Silver Age concepts, the heroes fighting because of a misunderstanding before they team up!), a two-page frame for this issue's story that contexualizes it in the ongoing "Book of Destiny" storyline, and then the main story itself, which involves plenty of character comedy and is effectively resolved within the issue. Mark Waid even gets across the premises of the new Flash series, the Doom Patrol and, more or less, the Challengers of the Unknown--"we're livin' on borrowed time and all." All the story's Young Frankenstein-isms are there to underscore the same principle that Grant Morrison and Rachel Pollack played with in their respective versions of Doom Patrol: the Doom Patrol are all "superheroes" because they've got something drastically wrong with their bodies, and arguably Jai and Iris fit into that category too. (As Brian noted, Rita as Stepford Superheroine is a very funny idea.)

Also, it's easy to take George Pérez for granted because he hit his groove 25 years ago and has stayed there, but he really is incredibly good at this stuff--he draws, like, 38 panels on every page while keeping the action totally clear. Check out this sequence from early in the story:



That's six panels, 2/3 of a nine-panel page, and Pérez manages to establish the nature of Jai and Iris's respective powers, throw in some POV shots to get into the kids' heads (showing only the lower part of Wally and Linda's bodies, and later Wally's shoe, gives us a sense of Iris's point of view without directly representing what she's looking at, which would be less interesting; the next-to-last panel is in fact what Jai's looking at, which reinforces how put-upon he's feeling there), and pull off some physical comedy (the peculiar initial images of Iris and Jai fall into place with the establishing shot of the kitchen). Maybe all this was in Waid's script, maybe it was Pérez's idea, but it works. I'll overlook the fact that the page's first panel establishes Wally and Linda's discussion as happening on the ground floor, but that there's a sunlit kitchen a floor below them: it is a nicely drawn kitchen.

So what's missing? The depth of Waid's best writing: this is a romp in the fields of the DCU, but its meaning is almost entirely bounded by the DCU's borders. Wally's decision at the end of the story is supposed to have terrible emotional weight (hence the title's allusion to a William Styron novel); in practice, it has no consequences at all outside his head, and I'd be surprised if we ever saw it mentioned again.

That's actually a symptom of the broader difficulty that The Brave and the Bold is up against, just like its original incarnation; it seems like it has to put all its characters back exactly where they were, unchanged, even when (like the Flash cast) they're characters Waid's more or less in charge of. There has to be some kind of middle ground between total-status-quo stories and possession by the Countdown duppy, and I hope this series finds it. But the movement toward putting everything back the way it used to be in superhero comics is hard to get away from. The Doom Patrol has nominally had all its past continuity re-integrated, post-Byrne, but the upshot of all the transformations the team has gone through--Haney/Drake to Kupperberg to Morrison to Pollack (and I really need to go back and re-read the Pollack run one of these days, since even more than the other writers' versions its premise was that drastic transformation is necessary) to Arcudi to Byrne to the Geoff Johns/Tony Daniel sleight-of-hand in Teen Titans last year--is that they're now stuck almost precisely where they were in 1963.

If you don't mind my talking about what's happening inside the story for a minute, it's amusing to see all these characters scratching their heads about what exactly "Megistus" could mean--that word (or fragment) plus "ancient texts" plus an Element Man plus those other elemental characters, the Metal Men, who seem to be showing up next issue (along with the old-times'-sake Atom and Hawkman team), pretty obviously yields Hermes Trismegistus, the godfather of alchemy. H.T. was mixed up with Felix Faust here and here, so this may be Waid trying to straighten out the mess of how Felix Faust could be trapped in the tower in 52 and then show up again in Brad Meltzer's JLA. Or it might be something else; I wouldn't be surprised to see Dr. Alchemy and/or Mr. Element showing up here. (Oh, how I love that cover. I never fully appreciated Don Heck as a kid. Actually, I never fully appreciated him until Colleen Coover pointed me at his "head-shot" covers for this series.)

So: A Very Good issue of a series that I still keep wishing for more from.

Labels: Douglas

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To give you an idea of how today has gone, I wrote this at 6am this morning, and am only now getting around to posting it, 16 hours later. If this continues, expect the second half of this week's releases sometime around Christmas.

ACTION COMICS #859: I have to admit, I don't know quite how Geoff Johns got his groove back, but I'm really enjoying this current run of Action Comics. Managing, somehow, to make all the Legion nostalgia work even if you have no idea who the team are - with the overextended flashback last issue paying off here, giving extra weight to the opening and capture of the original three members of the team now that everyone knows who they are - and using a political allegory that's so large is is both ridiculous and apt, this is pretty much the best Legion story I've read in a long while, even though it's clearly a Superman story guest-starring the characters; a darkening of the team that doesn't destroy the characters as much as pull them into another world. Gary Frank's art continues to impress, as well, although he definitely likes to make characters do the "Oh!" face with lots of teeth, doesn't he? Nonetheless, this is Very Good stuff.

ANGEL: AFTER THE FALL #1: Capturing the wonky dystopia feel of the TV show better than the Buffy comic does, I think - although maybe the Buffy comic is a better comic overall? - this was another happy surprise. It's in no way perfect; there are things that I think need to be clearer, both in terms of writing and art, and jumping into the middle of the story with the intention of clearing things up afterwards makes for a slightly dizzier ride for those of us who don't remember exactly how the show ended, but it's Good enough to make me want to try the next issue out.

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #8: I'm not sure how many ways that I can continue to say that this is an Excellent book without boring people and sounding repetitive but, well, it's an excellent book. Mark Waid manages to introduce both the current Flash family set-up and rebooted Doom Patrol to new readers fast enough that there's also space for a one issue adventure with threads that stretch backwards and forwards throughout the series, while George Perez's art just pulls the reader through the story beautifully. This is really how all superhero comics should be.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #32: ...Apart, of course, from superhero comics like this. Ignoring the pouting Black Widow cover and you're left with a book that's becoming more and more like Ed Brubaker's Sleeper every month. That's not a bad thing, though; this is probably the best superhero ensemble book around right now, even if it's less superhero and more spy with every issue. Steve Epting's artwork, too, is a wonderful blend of grit and dynamism, giving you a Very Good book that kind of makes you hope that Steve Rogers is never coming back. Also, hypnotized Sharon? Kind of scary.

COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #23: When even Newsarama is comparing this book to a snuff movie - seriously, check out Matt's interview with Dan Didio from last Friday - then you know that something's gone wrong. This issue, it's giving over almost the entire issue to two characters who have barely been seen in the series before and trying to make us believe that they've been very important to the more-than-half-the-series that they've not been in. It's so out-of-left-field, and so poorly executed, that it just doesn't work, and makes you wonder whether we're going to see even more pointless cameos and new characters show up if reception to the book continues to be bad. Awful, despite Tom Derenick's better-than-usual art.

Tomorrow: Who is? What is? What If?!?

Labels: Graeme

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Been busy busy busy lately - order form week, and general retailing-shenanigans (its that time of the year, yeah), but I need to kill a few minutes while I wait for the DVR to record enough of HEROES so that I can watch it without commercials, so let me jump in here and write what I was planning on doing tomorrow (since there aren't new comics to process then... this MAY mean you get two sets of reviews from me this week, whoa)



THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #8: There's something about both the fantastic world of superhero comics, and a shared universe that can make a grown man's heart go a-flutter. Now, yes, as we've discussed around here a ton of that fluttering lately has felt more like the incipient signs of a heart attack, but a good superhero yarn can make you feel young inside again.

B&B may not be the "best" superhero/shared universe comic book (I'd probably lean towards something like Brubaker's CAPTAIN AMERICA for that), but it is pretty much the purest state of wide-open wonder of the range and possibilities that SH/SU books can bring. Every issue is completely different than the one before, each is building a larger story, and each is extremely thoughtful about its characters. But, this is the most important bit -- that thoughtfulness is expressed naturally through the characters, and not through writerly self-importance

Mark Waid has groused that people calling this comic "fun" is causing it to sell less than it might otherwise, so I won't use that word, but it is definitely the mainline vein of SH/SU books, and every issue makes me cackle with glee.

The Doom Patrol was always a weird one for me -- even as a kid I never really got what Rita Farr was doing with them. Sure, The Chief, Cliff Steele and Larry Trainor were freaky as hell, but Rita? A beautiful movie starlet who can grow and stretch? What's HER problem? You want freaky, try Reed Richards, with his body in one room, and his head in another; or, hell, go the Elongated Man route -- Ralph's nose STILL disturbs me, even to this day -- but Rita always seemed to grow proportionately, and seemed to me to be like Marilyn in THE MUNSTERS, y'know? "We better have some non-scary pretty girl trim in here so people tune in"

(I read each and every DC comic that comes out, but even I'm really not all that clear on which Doom Patrol this is meant to be -- is this a Superb*y-Wall-punch thing? Does this mean Grant Morrison's visionary run "never happened"? What, as the children say, Dafug?)

So, color me giddy and green that Waid and Perez make Rita the freakiest one of the freaks with the simplest, easiest, nearly most subtle character change ever: she never stops smiling, ever. WIDE. It's really quite disturbing. And effective. She's suddenly weirder than the mummy with a black ghost who'll die if it takes longer than 60 seconds, or the passionate earthy man with his living brain trapped in an unfeeling body, or the no-really-isn't-he-a-James-Bond-Foe? of The Chief.

If there's a problem here at all, it's probably that one gets the sense that this should have been out 4 weeks before, in time for Halloween; and this seems tonally wrong for Thanksgiving time (which, now that I think of it, makes it EVEN BETTER -- just like how CE's block is draped in X-Mas lights, and we've still got our Marvel Zombies window display up, mu-ha-ha)

No, actually, if there's a problem, it is that the production is nearly too high-tone -- the glossy cardstock-ish cover this series bares is Just Too Much for the little ticking Bombs of Imagination that Waid and Perez keep throwing at us. These should be printed on toilet paper, and have go-go checks on them, damn it.

This shit is VERY GOOD, and should be on EVERY superhero reader's reading list, even if you don't like DC comics. Because you'll LEARN to like them... even if this is the only place you'll ever see these characters in this exact fashion these days!

What do YOU think?


-B Click Here to Read More...

REMEMBER: Because of Thanksgiving, comics arrive (in America) on THURSDAY this week. Don't go into your Local Comic Shop on Wednesday this week expecting new comics -- your store's staff will be laughing at you behind your back!!

2000 AD #1561
2000 AD #1562
52 AFTERMATH THE FOUR HORSEMEN #4 (OF 6)
A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #70 (A)
ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #8
AMERICAN VIRGIN #21
ARCHIBALD SAVES CHRISTMAS #1
ARCHIE #580
ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #184
ARMY OF DARKNESS FROM ASHES #4
AUTHORITY PRIME #2 (OF 6)
BAD PLANET #4 (OF 6)
BATMAN #671 (GHUL)
BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS #2
BJ BETTY #2 (A)
BLACK PANTHER #32
BLOWJOB #22 (A)
BLUE BEETLE #21
BOMB QUEEN IV #3 (OF 4)
CABLE DEADPOOL #47
CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #39
CASANOVA #11
COUNTDOWN LORD HAVOK AND THE EXTREMISTS #2 (OF 6)
COUNTDOWN TO ADVENTURE #4 (OF 8)
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 22
CRIME BIBLE THE FIVE LESSONS OF BLOOD #2 (OF 5)
CRIMINAL MACABRE MY DEMON BABY #3 (OF 4)
CROSSING MIDNIGHT #13
DAN DARE #1 (OF 7)
DAREDEVIL #102
DEATH OF THE NEW GODS #3 (OF 8)
DEATHBLOW #8
DOC FRANKENSTEIN CVR B #6
DOCK WALLOPER #1 (OF 5)
FAKER #5 (OF 6)
FEAR AGENT HATCHET JOB #1 (OF 4)
FIRST BORN CVR A #3 (OF 3)
FOOLKILLER #2 (OF 5)
FRANK FRAZETTAS DEATH DEALER #5 (OF 6)
FUTURAMA COMICS #34
GEN13 ARMAGEDDON #1
GENE SIMMONS DOMINATRIX #4
GOTHAM UNDERGROUND #2 (OF 9)
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #18
HACK SLASH SERIES SEELEY CVR A #6
HOPE FALLS #1 (OF 5)
JACK OF FABLES #17
JLA CLASSIFIED #47
JSA CLASSIFIED #32
JUNGLE GIRL PX ED #3
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #133
KONG KING OF SKULL ISLAND CVR A #1 (OF 5)
LOVE AND CAPES #6
MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #5
MAGICIAN APPRENTICE #11 (OF 12)
MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN #7
MARVEL ATLAS #1 (OF 2)
MARVEL ZOMBIES 2 #2 (OF 5)
MASKED MAGICIAN ONE SHOT
MERCENARIES #1
MOON KNIGHT ANNUAL #1
NEGATIVE BURN #14
PHANTOM #20
PROOF #2
SAVAGE DRAGON #134
SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN #41 OMD
SIMPSONS WINTER WINGDING #2
SPEAK O/T DEVIL #3 (OF 6)
STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC #23
SUB-MARINER #6 (OF 6) CWI
SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #36
SUPERMAN ANNUAL #13
SUPERMAN BATMAN #43
TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE #47
TEEN TITANS #53
TEEN TITANS GO #49
TERMINATOR 2 INFINITY #5
TRIALS OF SHAZAM #10 (OF 12)
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #116
UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS #3 (OF 8)
USAGI YOJIMBO #107
WITCHBLADE TAKERU MANGA #10
WORLD WAR HULK FRONT LINE #6 (OF 6) WWH
X-MEN #205 MC
X-MEN FIRST CLASS VOL 2 #6
ZOMBIE SIMON GARTH #1 (OF 4)

Books / Mags / Stuff
AGE OF BRONZE VOL 3 BETRAYAL HC
AGE OF BRONZE VOL 3 BETRAYAL TP
AVENGERS INITIATIVE BASIC TRAINING VOL 1 PREM HC
BACK ISSUE #25
BATMAN RULES OF ENGAGEMENT HC
CAPTAIN AMERICA BY ED BRUBAKER OMNIBUS HC VOL 01 DM ED
CIVIL WAR SCRIPT BOOK TP
COMICS BUYERS GUIDE JAN 2008 #1637
COMPLETE DICK TRACY HC VOL 03
CUT
DOCTOR WHO VOL 1 VOYAGER TP
ESSENTIAL X-MEN VOL 8 TP
HAWKGIRL HAWKMAN RETURNS TP
HEAT GN (A)
HIGHLANDER THE COLDEST WAR TP
ICE WANDERER GN (RES)
IT ATE BILLY ON CHRISTMAS HC
KODT BUNDLE OF TROUBLE VOL 23 TP
LITTLE SAMMY SNEEZE COMP COLOR SUNDAYS 1904 - 1905 HC
MIDNIGHTER VOL 1 KILLING MACHINE TP
MPD PSYCHO VOL 3 TP
POPGUN VOL 1 GN
PREVIEWS VOL XVII #12
RALPH SNART ADVENTURES COMIC COLLECTION #2
SFX #163
SHAZAM SER 1 BALANCED HALF CASE ASST
SHOWCASE PRESENTS TP SUPERGIRL VOL 01
SPIDER-MAN FAIRY TALES TP
SUICIDEGIRLS MAGAZINE #2 (A)
TESTAMENT VOL 3 BABEL TP
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #160
TREASURY VICTORIAN MURDER VOL 9 THE BLOODY BENDERS SC
UNIQUE TP
WORLD WAR 3 ILLUSTRATED #38 FACTS ON THE GROUND



What looks good to YOU?


-B

Labels: Shipping Lists

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People send me PDFs for review. Here's my thoughts on a couple. Bear in mind that I use a laptop, so my screen space is minimal, and by the time I blow up the pages to be able to read the dialogue, I'm looking at individual panels, not full pages. It's not the most ideal format, but it's effectively free for both of us.

Northlanders #1, DC/Vertigo

If I say "Brian Wood's Viking comic", you've likely already made your decision on whether it sounds like something you'd like. But there's more to it than you might suspect.

The preview copy I saw was uncolored, which put me at a disadvantage. Artist Davide Gianfelice has a very European look to his linework, and I think the density will be easier to parse in color. That's a compliment, actually, that he has very full pages with plenty happening. Reminds me of Walt Simonson's work. Plenty of violence, too, as suits the material.

Our hero Sven has just found out his uncle has claimed his inheritance upon his father's death. (Very Shakespearean.) Uncle Gorm represents the old way, ruling through fear and old magic sacrifices. Sven's more cosmopolitan, better traveled, but now a stranger to these people.

Prediction: the people will learn to engage with the larger world without fear, and Sven will learn not to despise his homeland and to value more than money as he claims his birthright. It's a Very Good match between theme and setting that makes this comic about much more than bearded men swinging swords at each other.

More information at the book's website. Due December 5 at $2.99.

Afterburn #1, Red 5 Comics

A solar flare changes all life on earth, creating a post-apocalyptic world. An oil-rig worker becomes a mercenary, capturing objets d'art from depopulated zones for the rich. It's a postmodern take on Indiana Jones, only the artifacts sought after are those we'll recognize, like the Mona Lisa, and the dangerous environments are former world capitals populated by mutated zombie-like humans and animals.

It's a clever concept, immediately intriguing, and professionally done, impressively so for a small publisher. (Caveat: I don't know about print or paper quality, since I viewed this on-screen. I don't expect them to cheap out at those points, given the impression I've gotten about the company so far, but I've seen people make stupider decisions.) Some of the staging could be a little clearer. For example, if the hero's going to jump neither right nor left when confronted, but 90 degrees to the middle, the corridor that exists in that direction should be established beforehand, so his escape doesn't seem like deus ex machina.

There's a lot of fighting, too much for me to really get into the series, but it makes for fun action if that's your thing. I'm concerned that four issues, bimonthly, asks too much of the reader, though. That's a long time between hits for an adrenaline adventure, and by the time the next issue's out, you've forgotten the previous. I give it a Good.

Due in January at $2.95, can be ordered with code NOV07 3786. Read a preview at the publisher's website.

Labels: Johanna

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I don't even play Portal and I'm addicted to that damn song...

Anyway, during the Savage Critics' short-lived re-enactment of Marvel's Civil War (whose side were YOU on?), Peter Adriaenssens made what I thought was a rather insightful comment:

"I find it interesting that the reviews are considered 'joyless' and 'dreary', as that seems to be one of the prevailing opinions on superhero comics in general these days."

Now, personally, I think Peter's made the Call of Duty 4 equivalent of a head-shot here: enthusiasm, that genuine joy one gets out of reading comics, is hard for me to come by these days. I get terribly jealous of someone like Chris Sims, who seems to pull it off so effortlessly week after week, even when reviewing soul-destroying artifacts of Satanic origin like TAROT: WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE. I just can't work myself up to that level, mostly because the endless chain of mediocre events and crossovers and "oh hell no" moments on both sides of the fence have taken me to a pretty apathetic place, generally speaking. I get a lot more fun and satisfaction out of webcomics (which, Hibbs willing, I may actually talk about here someday!).

I'm going to be fair here, and note that the Big Two are business enterprises and they have every right to prioritize the cash-grab (COUNTDOWN) over quality (CRIMINAL). And I'm not saying that financial motivation can't produce a good story, though I'm hard-pressed to think of a recent sales stunt that I actually enjoyed as a reader: the return of Captain Marvel? World War Hulk? Skrulls? Meh.

So, yes, there are times when my outlook on comics gets a bit dreary and lacking in the fun department, because I'm not having fun and I'm not happy about it.

Then Ed Brubaker puts another comic on the shelves, and I get my groove back.

When I think about comics that have truly impressed me over the last few years, Ed Brubaker's CAPTAIN AMERICA is pretty high up on the list. Since issue 25, Brubaker has taken what could have been an empty sales stunt - I'm looking at you, "The Death of Superman" - and turned it into a true character-driven story full of action and intrigue. With the most recent CAPTAIN AMERICA #32, we're now eight issues into the "Death of the Dream" storyline, there's no sign of the protagonist, and this series isn't the least bit poorer for it.

Part of it has to do with the way Brubaker's almost writing around the Captain's demise now, in that the story's still moving: Falcon and Bucky and the Black Widow are picking up the slack, and Sharon Carter's in a dangerous place, and the Red Skull's endgame - whatever it may be - continues to unfold. I'm still invested in the story and in these secondary characters, precisely because Brubaker's fleshed them out to the extent that they can maintain themselves as credible protagonists even without Cap to provide the context. And that's no small feat: could Superman's supporting characters have held the line together if he'd never come back? Probably not, ADVENTURES OF PERRY WHITE doesn't have the same ring to it (though I suppose that, in the Silver Age, it might've actually made for some hysterically funny reading).

I'm also very appreciative of the way Brubaker's done away with decompression without sacrificing the story's integrity: a lot happens this issue, and a lot happened last issue, and it's gratifying to feel like the story's going places rather than tread water for 22 pages at a time.

For all these reasons, I'm giving CAPTAIN AMERICA #32 a well-deserved EXCELLENT. Bravo, Ed!

Labels: Diana

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I may be some some east coast blue blood cracking my knuckles over doorbuster savings as I type, but out west at Savage Critic(s) headquarters it's still Thanksgiving, a beautiful all-American time for eating things and planning shopping trips for the next day.

Personally, I'm thankful for overconsumption every day of my life, so I'm never 100% sure as to why it needs its own holiday, but at least I'm sitting at my parents' house instead of my desk, and tapping out another installment of this lil' column. It takes a special column for this special day, so in the interests of keeping things 'in the spirit,' allow me to provide a short list of things I'm thankful for. Take my hand.

EIGHT THINGS I, JOSEPH S. "JOG" McCULLOCH, AM THANKFUL FOR ON THIS PROUD DAY OF DAYS (ACCORDING TO CERTAIN TIME ZONES OTHER THAN MY OWN):

1. Doctors

The threat of stomach pumping always looms on this bright American vacation day, so I figured it'd be good to talk about doctors. Who else will heal me from from my many imagined ailments? Licensed professionals, friends. When the chips are down, doctors can embody the very spirit of America.



But oh, that cranberry sauce has brought out my contrarian side, so my thoughts have drifted to the doctors of Japan. Two of them - one real, one fictional.

2. Osamu Tezuka

I trust most of you have heard of Dr. Tezuka. Truly one of the giants of world comics, Tezuka was a man of immense popular instinct, and creative prolificacy comparable to Winsor McCay. A brainy child of art-loving parents in the Japan of the early 20th century, Tezuka survived the onrushing militaristic thrust of his nation and the WWII bombings of Osaka to become a teenage comics superstar in the rubble of the late 1940s.

Obviously, there were popular manga artists before him, but Tezuka exerted an immense transformative influence on the form, blending irresistible narrative propulsion with a visual style inspired by the newspaper comics and animated films of the United States. His 1947 breakthrough in longform comics, New Treasure Island, all but jumped off the page via rigorous integration of cinematographic principles into the comics form.



He'd quickly calm down with the Ub Iwerks-style zooming, but I suspect it was valuable that manga became so immersed in cinema so quickly, in such a broad manner; these techniques quickly became internalized, acting as a core component of a growing comics idiom.

And Tezuka's achievement continued - his 1950-54 project Jungle Emperor Leo (aka, in anime form: Kimba the White Lion), a 600+ page cradle-to-grave account of an anthropomorphic hero in a world of animals and humans -- and not a female void in sight! -- brought popular renown to the longform magazine serial. In 1952, Tezuka introduced Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy), perhaps his most enduringly beloved work, a series of mostly standalone stories concerning a boy robot fighting for peace in a gleaming daydream of Japan's beautiful future, but not one incapable of cruelty. The very next year, Tezuka adopted a sprightly sparkle style for Princess Knight, a landmark work aimed at young girls. By 1963, Tezuka and his Mushi Productions had the Tetsuwan Atom television adaptation on the air, the first weekly anime series.

Sure, animators like Yoshinori Kanada were probably more responsible for the look and feel of 'anime' as we know it today, and manga has since gone through countless stylistic shifts, but Dr. Tezuka's powerful influence cannot be denied.

Oh yeah, he was licensed as a medical practitioner in 1952. It's been written that he rather liked the idea of becoming a doctor, a highly respectable social position, only to actually devote his life to the immeasurably less prestigious vocation of drawing comics.

3. Black Jack

In 1973, Tezuka began to draw an episodic manga series about a doctor. It was called Black Jack, and it became another monster hit. The comic ran, in various forms, until 1984. A slew of adaptations, remakes and extensions followed, easily outliving Tezuka, who died in 1989.



In the autumn of 2008, Tezuka specialists Vertical Inc. will bring Tezuka's original manga to the English language. They won't be the first.

4. Ye Olde Books o' Manga

The story of manga publication in the United States is a rip-snorting one, the action-stacked details of which may kill the soft, but in the interests of post-feast digestion I'll only say that many false starts were made and format experiments pursued on the road to glory. One of the most prominent manga publishers today is VIZ Media, and its long history is littered with unfinished series and lost, unpopular items, going back to its late '80s biweekly pamphlet-format releases in association with Eclipse.

Prior to striking gold with its current monthly US edition of the mighty weekly anthology Shōnen Jump, VIZ made several other attempts at selling the primary serialization form of Japanese comics to North American readers. One of them was Manga Vizion, a mix of old and new(ish) series which ran from 1995-98. And from 1997 through the end of the magazine's life, Black Jack adventures were featured.

You can't say VIZ didn't try. Following the anthology's end, VIZ released two volumes of collected stories, one in 1998 and another in 1999. Compiling all of the Manga Vizion material with (I presume) a bunch of previously untranslated material, these books currently make up all US readers, at least, can read of the series in English.



I love hunting the phantoms of manga of in the US. The old, forgotten snatches of series. The bright efforts of days gone away. This will be the one. This one'll break us through. Manga is not beholden to the collector's market. The old books exist as used items, library castoffs and dusty bookstore lifers. They're often cheap; you need only find them, and study the many ways one comics "solitude," to steal Bart Beaty's term, tried to relate to another through days of bounty and famine.

I have Vol. 1 of the VIZ collected edition, and my perspective is duly warped by that exception.

5. Funnybook Fusion

To understand Black Jack is to understand a certain impulse of Tezuka's. In many of his works, he takes to tone like an inebriated teenager does a rented go-kart. That's not a complaint. Careful, building tragedy will inevitably deflate with a sudden pinprick of slapstick. Odd comedy will veer toward melodrama at the drop of a hat. Philosophy will mix with bullets pouring from Astro Boy's automaton ass. History is the stage for cold facts and pageantry in the Takarazuka Revue tradition.

This is the tenor of the man's most popular works. Some find it distractingly eccentric, but I see it as a vital component of Tezuka's charm - so many influences were embraced in his revolutionary style that he developed a supremely idiosyncratic method of communication, one that spoke to many thousands yet silently marked his work as forever his, even while many others adopted the mechanics of his style.

Black Jack is much the same, but with some added personal touches. The title character is a rogue, unlicensed surgeon, probably the greatest in the world. When he was young, he and his mother were caught in an awful explosion, and a doctor essentially sewed him back together, inspiring him to become the best in the world at healing others; a similar, albeit much less dramatic incident had inspired Tezuka's own interest in the medical profession. Much like the famed manga assassin character Golgo 13, Black Jack demands high sums for his efforts, and lives outside of polite society, but he fixes people to incredible degrees, often well past the boundaries of fantasy.

So, it's a little like an adventure, and a little like a superhero comic, but always boiling down to "Oh Black Jack, how will you medicine your way out of this one?"



A fine illustration can be had with the origin story of Black Jack's sidekick, Pinoco, as included in the first VIZ book. Black Jack is woken in the dead of night to treat a masked female patient, a woman so prominent that none may know her identity for fear of scandal. Things look bleak - she's got a massive growth on her side, a most abnormal teratogenous cystoma. Her skeevy treating physician is a definite buzzkill:

"No hospital in the world is capable of performing this surgery!"

Still, none can match the unwavering skill of Black Jack. Even if the cystoma happens to be an undeveloped birth twin of the patient, lodged inside a rubbery membrane with a full compliment of vital organs. And psychic powers.

Yes, as any medical school in the industrial world will tell you, psychic powers can prove tricky on the operating table. Any surgeon that's so much as approached the cystoma has been taken with the urge to fling scalpels at nurses or smash bottles over their head in high slapstick form, until the OR is more a battlefield. Our Hero initially fares no better, wrapping a hose around his neck and holding his own scalpel to his throat, until he promises the sentient mass of parts to pull off a miracle procedure, and keep it alive.

Graphic, photorealist medical art ensues, slicing the story free from Tezuka's cartoon approach, then sewing it back on. Soon, Black Jack's got a heap of body stuff floating in a jar, and the patient's snooty entourage can't wait to be rid of it. Alone in his lab, Black Jack stares at the jar, pours himself a stiff one, and sews the organs together inside a doll's plastic body, resulting in a small humanoid being that walks and talks and declares itself his wife.



One year later, the patient returns for a follow-up, and Black Jack introduces wee Pinoco (a doll brought to life, ya see), who immediately sets about kicking the shit out of her masked sister until Black Jack drags her off. "That brat couldn't possibly be my sister!!" declares the prominent woman, and her understandably agog aides drive her away, as Pinoco weeps against the doctor's leg.

If this sounds like a peculiar comic, rest assured - it is. But Tezuka's melange of style creates a bizarrely logical universe, as much through sheer force of will as advanced craft. In one panel, silhouettes of broad cartoon men emerge from a realistic ambulance, approaching the wavering, seemingly freehand-drawn Stately Black Jack Manor, a hazy sky behind them. In one page, Black Jack's eyes gleam like dinner plates from underneath his curvy surgical gear, as he brushes one of Pinoco's eyeballs with his glove. Two panels pass by, her realistic spew of organs ensconced in the stylized, anime-ready body seen above, the realistic vanishing into the fantastic.

That is the essence of Black Jack.

6. Lists Within Lists

Many other stories are included in that first VIZ book, each with a similarly berserk entertainment aesthetic.

- A rich man's wicked son rips himself to bits in an automobile accident. Black Jack is called in to save the lad, but he'll need a full-blown human body for replacement parts. Papa then musters a stirring command of citywide corruption, railroading a poor, innocent boy through the legal system as the responsible party for the wreck, getting him sentenced to death and spirited away to Black Jack's operating table. In possible violation of the Hippocratic Oath, Black Jack lets the shitty rich kid die and performs plastic surgery on the innocent boy so he looks just like the dead kid, then loads him and his mom up with cash so they can flee Japan. MORAL: Kill all decadent bourgeoisie, rise oppressed workers.

- Black Jack calls on a wealthy businessman whose life he saved to collect his fee. Since Black Jack operates outside the legal system, the monied man cackles and refuses to pay up. Were this a Golgo 13 story that'd be grounds for immediate neck-snapping, but Black Jack is a nice fellow who agrees to accompany the rich man and his buddies on a tour of his new impregnable airtight vault. A freak earthquake causes the door to lock with everyone inside, and Japan's lords of finance soil their slacks. Black Jack then makes everyone promise to pay him a hillion jillion yen to break them out, and his formidable skills allow him to find just the right part of the wall to cut through to get at crucial wires. Then everyone refuses to pay, but Black Jack still wins because he walks away proudly to let them stew in their moral shortcomings, just like that one story Steve Ditko did with The Question. MORAL: Fucking capitalist scumfuck shits.

- A young man is planning to leap to his death after bombing his high school entrance exams, but a passing day laborer gives him a good talking to. Then a gas pipe explodes and most of the laborer's limbs are blown off. Meanwhile, the fuzz have finally hauled Black Jack in for his wild outlaw healing ways, but he coerces them into letting him go in exchange for not letting people die (what a guy!). He then puts the laborer's arms and leg back on after remarking "Heh... usually I'd charge an arm and a leg for this kind of surgery..." Amazingly, further suicide attempts do not follow. Oh, and the boy learns the value of life, I guess. MORAL: Arms are really important.



- Black Jack is sent a scalpel in a mystery sheath by the doctor that saved his life lo those many years ago. After a journey, Black Jack arrives at the old man's bedside; he's dying, but he still needs to reveal the truth about the operation that saved Our Hero's life. Turns out he left a scalpel inside young Black Jack, and kept it a dark secret until he could operate again seven years later, at which point he found that the scalpel had been coated with calcium secretions, thus protecting Black Jack, and providing for a great mailbox surprise. All the medical skill in the world can't account for the mysteries of nature! Then the guy collapses and Black Jack totally fails to save him, because we are but mortals. MORAL: Death is inevitable, True Believers!

And that's just some of it.

7. Pumpkin Pie

I like pumpkin pie. It often tastes very good.



8. The Expansion of Vizion

I mean "some of it" not just in terms of other stories being in VIZ's book, or VIZ's other book, but in the Black Jack catalog as a whole.

So often, in dealing with foreign language comics, we act from a limited perspective. Blinders around our eyes.

For example, years ago, Tezuka could barely be known without consulting the Japanese originals or small excerpts in reference books. Later, bits and pieces of his works trickled into English. At that point, you could firmly believe that the mode of style I described above -- the comedy meeting melodrama meeting violence meeting philosophy -- was his sole signature, his whole way of being.

But Tezuka was so large. He created over 400 volumes of comics in his time. More and more came in, as manga became strong. More could be seen of Tezuka. The Dark Horse release of Astro Boy (their choice of title), showing both his range on children's comics and, yes, his reliance on formula. The Dark Horse release of early works like Lost World and Metropolis, clumsy, vigorous things redolent with still-congealing agony of influence. And Vertical's books. Apollo's Song, matching his love for education with a very '70s moral resignation. Ode to Kirihito and MW, seeing the master strip away elements of himself, to face the dramatic gekiga style that rose in response... well, to him. To what he represented.

Tezuka mutates. So does all manga. Perhaps as the current English-language audience grows, the predominant boy-and-girl comics of today's shelves will dissolve into the older-skewing manga that Japan has long ago grown for itself. A history in miniature. We won't need to hunt down the old editions for anything but history - no more constrained glimpses, like our Black Jack is.

He'll be back. Redone. Stronger, more whole. I'm thankful for that.

So mark down that late 2008 date, eh? Maybe next Thanksgiving I'll go over this stuff in a new way. I'll be equipped, and you can be too.



You wouldn't want him to be upset, would you?

Labels: Jog

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I was at Kevin O'Neill's signing at CE Sunday night...with my camera...and asked the gracious and stylish Mr. O'Neill if I could take some photos...to which he graciously and stylishly agreed....and I barely took any photos at all. Because I am absurdly meek, and a FUGGIN' IDJIT.

Nonetheless:


Here's a shot of the man himself. (Obviously, I shoulda run it through some light adjustments on Picasa before uploading it.) We were shop number seven in four days on his tour, and the guy would do a sketch in anyone's Black Dossier if they wanted. Really cool.

I knew he wouldn't be anything like his drawings, more than likely, but I was still somehow unconsciously surprised he wasn't one of his terrifying lantern-jawed crazy men chortling "Hur, hur, hur!" while demeaning all of us.


I thought I could catch from this angle (behind and above him) the sort of casual charisma he radiated--it was like everyone in the store, even nearly all the people hanging out at the front all had their body turned toward him the whole time he was signing. Instead, all I really caught was that awesome infinity-loop bald spot he has--it's insanely better than the goose egg I'm sporting.


Another wuss shot by me--I thought it would be cool to catch him in mid-sketch as he draws Mina Harker in Sue Riddle's sketchbook (that's her work on the left page, I'm pretty sure). But, uh, nope.


We had a steady line the whole time I was there, as you can see. But I'm mainly putting this photo up so those who've never visited the shop can admire the lovely original Matt Wagner JSA portraits on the left, and the Mike Driggenberg original Endless portraits on the right. (Oh, and also because I didn't take enough pix of Kevin O'Neill, right?)


The first--but hopefully not the last--collaboration between Ian Brill and Kevin O'Neill: a commissioned sketch of Scott Pilgrim. Maybe we'll get lucky and Oni will release it as the "Oni Zombie" alternate cover to SP4 early next year...


Wow. See? That--that--is a perfectly shaped ear, right there.


Meanwhile, up at the front of the store...


No, but seriously. Go buy Black Dossier--it's even more filling than a 40 of MGD.


So, in conclusion: I promise to be better at taking photos in the future. Also, go to Comic Oasis and/or the wonder that is Ralph Mathieu's Alternate Reality in Vegas tomorrow night and experience the wonder that is Kevin O'Neill yourself. You won't regret it.

Labels: Jeff, not good ones, photos

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