Same as the last list, except this time we're talking comics.

Like the previous, this is actually from August on, and missing the last 4 hours of sales for the the year...

People like Joss Whedon!!!


Rank Title Issue #
1 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 6
2 Dollar Book
3 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 7
4 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 8
5 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 9
6 ASTONISHING X-MEN 22
7 ALL STAR SUPERMAN 9
8 ASTONISHING X-MEN 23
9 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 5
10 Quarter Book - Single
11 Quarter Book - 10 for a Buck
12 WORLD WAR HULK 4
WORLD WAR HULK 3
14 JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 12
15 ANGEL AFTER THE FALL 1
16 DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER BORN 7
17 NEW AVENGERS 35
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA 8
BRAVE AND THE BOLD 6
20 NEW AVENGERS 34
NEW AVENGERS 33
BATMAN 667
23 JLA WEDDING SPECIAL #1 1
ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER 7
25 X-MEN MESSIAH COMPLEX ONE SHOT
THOR 2
HELLBOY DARKNESS CALLS 5
28 JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 14
29 WORLD WAR HULK 5
BATMAN 668
31 NEW AVENGERS 36
BATMAN 669
33 NEW AVENGERS ILLUMINATI 5
BOYS 9
35 ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER 8
36 BATMAN 670
37 THOR 3
38 JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA 10
HELLBOY DARKNESS CALLS 6
40 ULTIMATES 3 GATEFOLD HEROES VAR 1
NEW AVENGERS ILLUMINATI 4
DAREDEVIL WRAPAROUND 100
BRAVE AND THE BOLD 7
44 BOYS 10
45 NEW AVENGERS 37
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA 9
GREEN LANTERN 22
CAPTAIN AMERICA 29
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 544
50 COUNTDOWN 37
51 UNCANNY X-MEN 492
THOR 4
RUNAWAYS 28
ALL NEW BOOSTER GOLD 2
55 X-FACTOR 25
UNCANNY X-MEN 490
UNCANNY X-MEN 489
MIGHTY AVENGERS 5
LOBSTER JOHNSON THE IRON PROMETHEUS 2
LOBSTER JOHNSON THE IRON PROMETHEUS 1
INCREDIBLE HULK 109
GREEN LANTERN 24
DAREDEVIL 99
COUNTDOWN 38
ANGEL AFTER THE FALL 2
ALL NEW BOOSTER GOLD 1
67 GREEN LANTERN 23
CAPTAIN AMERICA 30
BLACK SUMMER 3
70 X-MEN 202
INCREDIBLE HULK 110
COUNTDOWN 39
BOYS 11
74 THUNDERBOLTS 116
FABLES 65
DAREDEVIL 101
CAPTAIN AMERICA 31
BPRD KILLING GROUND 1
79 X-MEN 205
ULTIMATE POWER 8
FLASH 231
FABLES 64
CAPTAIN AMERICA 32
BOYS 12
85 Y THE LAST MAN 58
X-MEN 203
ULTIMATE POWER 7
88 UNCANNY X-MEN 491
SPIRIT 9
IMMORTAL IRON FIST 9
FABLES 66
CRIMINAL 8
COUNTDOWN 36
BATMAN 671
ASTRO CITY THE DARK AGE BOOK TWO #4 8
96 Y THE LAST MAN 59
UNCANNY X-MEN 493
LOBSTER JOHNSON THE IRON PROMETHEUS 3
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA 11
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 15
IMMORTAL IRON FIST 10
DAREDEVIL 102
CASANOVA 8
BLACK SUMMER WRAP CVR 2


What did YOU buy of this list?


-B

Labels: Brian, Sales Charts

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Hurray for the POS system, I can "effortlessly" extract this information (well, it took 10 minutes to reformat it, and add the ranking numbers)!

And, well, it isn't all of 2007 -- it is only from when we installed the POS... therefore from August onwards.

And, I'm cheating a little -- there's still four hours left in our shopping year, so some of these COULD adjust upwards a tiny smidge...

Still, this is what it looks like (lets hope that blogger doesn't gut the formatting....):


Rank Title
1 LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN THE BLACK DOSSIER HC
2 WALKING DEAD VOL 07 THE CALM BEFORE TP
3 SCOTT PILGRIM VOL 04 SCOTT PILGRIM GETS IT TOGETHER GN
4 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER LONG WAY HOME TP
5 100 BULLETS VOL 11 ONCE UPON A CRIME TP
6 WATCHMEN TP
7 FAFHRD AND THE GRAY MOUSER TP
SERENITY TP
9 DMZ VOL 3 PUBLIC WORKS TP
10 EX MACHINA VOL 6 POWER DOWN TP
11 POWERS VOL 10 COSMIC TP
Y THE LAST MAN VOL 1 UNMANNED TP
13 WALKING DEAD VOL 1 DAYS GONE BYE TP
14 FELL VOL 1 FERAL CITY TP
WARREN ELLIS CRECY GN
16 HELLBOY VOL 07 THE TROLL WITCH & OTHERS TP
Y THE LAST MAN VOL 9 MOTHERLAND TP
18 BATMAN YEAR ONE DELUXE SC
FABLES VOL 1 LEGENDS IN EXILE TP
FABLES VOL 8 WOLVES TP
FABLES VOL 9 SONS OF EMPIRE TP
22 AMERICAN BORN CHINESE SC
CONFESSIONS OF A BLABBERMOUTH
LOEG VOL TWO TP
SANDMAN VOL 1 PRELUDES & NOCTURNES TP
V FOR VENDETTA TP
27 ABSOLUTE SANDMAN VOL 2 HC
DMZ VOL 1 ON THE GROUND TP
DMZ VOL 2 BODY OF A JOURNALIST TP
FABLES VOL 2 ANIMAL FARM TP
GOOD AS LILY
LOEG VOL ONE TP
SANDMAN VOL 2 THE DOLLS HOUSE TP
34 30 DAYS OF NIGHT TP MOVIE PTG
ALAN MOORE THE COMPLETE WILDCATS TP
ALL STAR SUPERMAN VOL 1 HC
BATMAN DARK KNIGHT RETURNS TP
CHANCE IN HELL HC
CRIMINAL VOL 1 COWARD TP
DR THIRTEEN ARCHITECTURE AND MORALITY TP
JACK OF FABLES VOL 2 JACK OF HEARTS TP
R CRUMBS HEROES OF BLUES JAZZ & COUNTRY WITH CD HC
SHORTCOMINGS HC
WALKING DEAD VOL 6 SORROWFUL LIFE TP
WARREN ELLIS CROOKED LITTLE VEIN HC
ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE TP
47 ASTONISHING X-MEN VOL 3 TORN TP
BOYS TP VOL 01
EMPOWERED VOL 02 TP
JOSS WHEDONS FRAY FUTURE SLAYER TP
PREACHER VOL 1 GONE TO TEXAS TP NEW EDITION
52 CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD LAST ENEMY GN
DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER BORN PREM HC
DC UNIVERSE THE STORIES OF ALAN MOORE
FUN HOME TP
GHOST IN THE SHELL 1.5 TP
GOON CHINATOWN HC
HELLBLAZER THE GIFT TP
HEROES HC ALEX ROSS COVER
I KILLED ADOLF HITLER GN
JLA ULTRAMARINE CORPS TP
JUSTICE VOL 3 HC
LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE MCDUCK TP VOL 01 2ND PTG
PULPHOPE ART OF PAUL POPE SC
ULTIMATES 2 VOL 2 GRAND THEFT AMERICA TP
WE 3 TP
WORLD WAR Z ORAL HISTORY OF ZOMBIE WAR SC
Y THE LAST MAN VOL 2 CYCLES TP
69 ARMY @ LOVE VOL 1 THE HOT ZONE CLUB TP
ASTONISHING X-MEN VOL 1 GIFTED TP
BATMAN SUPERMAN SAGA OF THE SUPER SONS TP
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER OMNIBUS TP VOL 01
CRIMINAL TP VOL 02 LAWLESS
EXIT WOUNDS HC
GIRL GENIUS VOL 06 SC
GOODBYE CHUNKY RICE PANTHEON ED
HARD BOILED TP (NEW PRTG)
I AM GOING TO BE SMALL GN
NEXTWAVE AGENTS OF HATE VOL 1 THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT TP
PREACHER VOL 2 UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD TP NEW EDITION
PREACHER VOL 3 PROUD AMERICANS TP NEW EDITION
PREACHER VOL 4 ANCIENT HISTORY TP NEW EDITION
SUMMER BLONDE TP
TALES OF THE VAMPIRES TP
TEZUKAS BUDDHA VOL 01 SC
TRANSMETROPOLITAN VOL 1 BACK ON THE STREET TP
WALKING DEAD VOL 2 TP MILES BEHIND US TP NEW PTG
WALKING DEAD VOL 3 SAFETY BEHIND BARS TP NEW PTG
WALKING DEAD VOL 4 HEARTS DESIRE TP
Y THE LAST MAN VOL 3 ONE SMALL STEP TP
Y THE LAST MAN VOL 8 KIMONO DRAGONS TP
92 30 DAYS OF NIGHT DARK DAYS TP NEW PTG
52 VOL 1 TP
52 VOL 2 TP
52 VOL 3 TP
52 VOL 4 TP
BLANKETS GN (NEW PTG)
BTVS TALES OF THE SLAYERS TP
CIVIL WAR TP
DC THE NEW FRONTIER VOL 2 TP
EX MACHINA VOL 2 TAG TP
EX MACHINA VOL 5 SMOKE SMOKE TP
FABLES VOL 7 ARABIAN NIGHTS AND DAYS TP
FILTH TP
FLIGHT VOL 01 GN
FLIGHT VOL 04 GN
HELLBOY VOL 01 SEED OF DESTRUCTION TP
HELLBOY VOL 06 STRANGE PLACES TP
HEROES OF THE NEGRO LEAGUES HC
IMMORTAL IRON FIST VOL 1 TP
INCREDIBLE CHANGE BOTS GN
JACK KIRBYS FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS VOL 03 HC
JACK KIRBYS FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS VOL 2 HC
MARVEL ZOMBIES HC
PATH OF THE ASSASSIN VOL 07 TP
QUESTION ZEN AND VIOLENCE VOL 1 TP
READING COMICS AND WHAT THEY MEAN HC
RUNAWAYS VOL 6 PARENTAL GUIDANCE DIGEST TP
RUNAWAYS VOL 7 LIVE FAST DIGEST TP
SANDMAN VOL 3 DREAM COUNTRY TP
SUPERMAN THE BOTTLE CITY OF KANDOR TP
SUPERMARKET TP
TOP 10 THE FORTY NINERS SC
USAGI YOJIMBO VOL 21 MOTHER OF MOUTAINS TP
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS GN
Y THE LAST MAN VOL 4 SAFEWORD TP


How many of these have YOU read?

-B

Labels: Brian, Sales Charts

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Again, comics arrive on FRIDAY this week.

Man, we went from last week's Biggest-Shipment-Of-The-Year, to this week's Smallest, *sigh*


ALL NEW ATOM #19
ANITA BLAKE VH GUILTY PLEASURES #7 (OF 12)
ANNIHILATION CONQUEST #3 (OF 6)
BIG PLANS #3
BLACK DIAMOND #6 (OF 6)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #10
COUNTDOWN LORD HAVOK AND THE EXTREMISTS #3 (OF 6)
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 17
COUNTDOWN TO MYSTERY #4 (OF 8)
DETECTIVE COMICS #840
DOCTOR WHO CLASSICS #2
DOKTOR SLEEPLESS #4
DYNAMO 5 #10
END LEAGUE #1
EXILES DAYS OF THEN & NOW
GRAVEL #0
HACK SLASH SERIES SEELEY CVR A #7
HEDGE KNIGHT 2 SWORN SWORD #4 (OF 6)
HOWARD THE DUCK #4 (OF 4)
JONAH HEX #27
JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #41
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #134
LOBSTER JOHNSON IRON PROMETHEUS #5 (OF 5)
LOONEY TUNES #158
LUCHA LIBRE #3
METAL MEN #5 (OF 8)
MIDNIGHTER #15
MOON KNIGHT #14
MS MARVEL #23
NORTHLANDERS #2
OMEGA UNKNOWN #4 (OF 10)
OVERMAN #2 (OF 5)
SHARK-MAN #1
SILVER SURFER IN THY NAME #3 (OF 4)
SIMPSONS SUPER SPECTACULAR #6
SORROW #3 (OF 4)
STAR WARS LEGACY #18
STRANGE EMBRACE #7 (OF 8) (NOTE PRICE)
SUPERGIRL #25
TEEN TITANS YEAR ONE #1 (OF 6)
THUNDERBOLTS #118
ULTIMATE HUMAN #1 (OF 4)
UNCANNY X-MEN #494 MC
VERONICA #186
VINYL UNDERGROUND #4
WILDSTORM REVELATIONS #1 (OF 6)
WITCHBLADE TAKERU MANGA #11

Books / Mags / Stuff
30 DAYS OF NIGHT TP VOL 08 RED SNOW
APPLICANT SC
AVENGERS WEST COST TP DARKER THAN SCARLET
ESSENTIAL POWER MAN AND IRON FIST TP VOL 01
INDESTRUCTIBLE SC
JLA KID AMAZO TP
MARVEL ADV SPIDER-MAN TP VOL 08 FORCES OF NATURE DIGEST
MARVEL MINIMATES ZOMBIES IRON MAN & BLACK PANTHER PX 2-PK
MISS DD GN VOL 05 (A)
MOON KNIGHT VOL 2 MIDNIGHT SUN PREM HC
MS MARVEL VOL 3 TP
MY BRAIN HURTS TP VOL 01
OKKO CYCLE OF WATER HC
PATH OF THE ASSASSIN VOL 8 TP
POWERS VOL 11 SECRET IDENTITY TP
PRIDE OF BAGHDAD SC
SGT FROG GN VOL 14 (OF 14)
SHADOWPACT TP VOL 02 CURSED
STORM TP
SUPERMAN REDEMPTION TP
X-MEN TP PHOENIX WARSONG


What looks good to YOU?

-B Click Here to Read More...

For the record, my experiment in reading only Grant Morrison's bits of the recent The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul Bat-crossover wound up reconfirming that Morrison can write some decent, undemanding Big Superhero action - something I probably didn't need reconfirmed, but it wasn't unpleasant or anything. It seemed a bit like a constrained JLA.

Batman #672: As for post-crossover accessibility, this issue pretty much picks the story up from where it left off pre-Ra's (and pre-J.H. Williams III, for that matter), although there's always the chance that Morrison might string everything together later on. Or he's already subtly playing off of events in comics I haven't read. Certainly for me this run is already past the point where looking through prior issues feels like you're reading entirely new comics, due to the writer's foreshadowing and thematic play suddenly becoming clearer.

It's a technique Morrison generally pulls off with panache, although I suspect it might be working a bit stronger here since the actual stories he's been telling have been so thin. This issue is no more supple: a bombastic, quintessentially Morrisonian opening leads into some bland character work and a flurry of action and dramatic pronouncements that serve to both poke at things we already know and string out mysteries a little longer, the issue ending in a small jump forward. It might have stood out better with more distinctive art, but Tony Daniel and a squad of inkers is what we've got.



And don't forget the allusions - as Geoff Klock points out, the issue is also chock-full of nods toward prior Batman stories, especially Frank Miller's. It's all really starting to remind me of New X-Men in its notion of the hero(es) struggling to move beyond set ways yet being confronted with the same old issues (cleaning up the colorful baddies only to find more dirty cops, more political corruption), with the prospect of an awful future acting as the ultimate result of present-day discouragement. But while Batman #666 was much more fun (and a lot shorter) than Here Comes Tomorrow, the 'awful future' was a cleaner fit in the earlier work, since it doubles as a familiar X-Men trope itself.

Here, Morrison also sets up Batman's conflict as a doppelgänger of the challenges facing another major DC hero in the concurrently-running All Star Superman, with lots of troubled alternate versions of Our Hero running around. But most of these are demonic, dark Batmen, threatening to drag the real deal down into the muck and establish a most extreme '90s-style future; is it any wonder that Batman must set aside his street-level instincts and call on the likes of Bat-Mite for help? Is it all a critique of the grimmer side of the character? Might changes in the present be used to counteract the awful future? Will Jean once again give the cosmic wink so Scott can kiss Emma with his tongue, guilt-free, thus saving us all?



We'll only know in time. But unlike a lot of Morrison's longform superhero works, this run doesn't function very well as the series of stories it's nominally constructed as. Instead, it frustratingly seems to start and stops its long plot with breaks for things like an illustrated prose issue, a tepid (if visually rich) mystery and a line-wide crossover. Some of these detours do have thematic links to the main plot, and they may tie in more directly later, but none of them have been strong enough individually to alleviate the feelings of distraction and mild haste that have come to permeate the run; for once, the superhero serial form seems to be working against the writer. Makes for some EH chapters while waiting for the big picture to become clearer, although promise remains.

Labels: Jog

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In connection with this week's featured webcomic, Dan Miller's KID RADD, I want to talk about cross-genre appeal. It seems to me that this particular creative strategy never works out well for the mainstream companies: I'm sure we all recall such catastrophic experiments as I HEART MARVEL and DC's line of ill-fated horror film adaptations. The failure was two-fold there - not only did the core readership stay away, but fans of those other genres such as romance and horror weren't interested either.

That raises an interesting question: can comics accurately capture the cross-genre effect at all? Does MARVEL ZOMBIES scare you? Does it have the same effect as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD? Or, to make the comparison fairer, did MARVEL ZOMBIES/ARMY OF DARKNESS appeal to EVIL DEAD fans, or fans of horror films in general? I don't think so.

It might be an issue of compatibility: horror, after all, relies on scaring the audience, on audio cues (the soundtrack), on boogeymen leaping out of the shadows. That's not really something a comic can replicate. Then again, romance actually gains something when you have imagery to go along with the words (well, unless you're a fan of the whole overwrought "he thrust his purple-headed warrior into her quivering mound of love pudding" style), and yet: Mark Millar's TROUBLE. Go figure.

The reason this is relevant to KID RADD is because, aside from telling a great adventure story, Dan Miller designs a fictional world that appeals to me as a fan of video games, especially games from the late '80s and early '90s. A lot of KID RADD's humor is derived from conventions you'd probably be familiar with if you ever played a SUPER MARIO BROS. game, and it's precisely that mix of mediums and genres that makes a good webcomic even better.

Radd, our titular hero, is the protagonist of a platform video game where he blasts mindless drones in a quest to save his girlfriend Sheena. The comic begins with an introduction to Radd, his world, the game, and his relationship with the unseen player that controls him. Together, Radd and his player eventually beat the game, repeating the cycle over and over until they master it completely. And then one day, Radd's player doesn't come back.

That's where the story really starts.

Don't let the quasi-simplistic pixel art fool you - Miller actually raises some pretty complicated issues in KID RADD, particularly when it comes to philosophies like nihilism, fatalism and determinism. These concepts aren't explored to any great length, but they add some depth to what could've been a straightforward boomfest. Miller also makes good use of the telescoping plot structure: as the series progresses, the stakes get higher and higher, the tale becomes more and more epic, and Radd evolves and grows.

KID RADD is also noteworthy for the ways it uses its "canvas": combining pixel art, animation and MIDI music, Miller creates a true multimedia experience. Additionally, the entire webcomic is available for download via a self-extracting EXE file: it's about 30MB, over 3,000 files, and like the magic sword in Jeph Loeb's WOLVERINE, I don't know how it works - only that it clearly does. As I understand it, the panels aren't single images but bits and pieces combined with background, foreground and so on to create the complete panel.

For story, art and characterization, I give this webcomic a VERY GOOD, but its technical construction is so impressive that I'm bumping it up to EXCELLENT.

Technical notes: this pixel-based comic ran from February 2002 to September 2004, for a total of 601 comics split into 29 chapters. It's in color and uses a HTML/GIF-based viewer. Though the main page warns against viewing it through Internet Explorer 6, I've been using that for a while now and never noticed any problems (though some MIDI files lag when you stream them online). There's a selection of amusing "extras" available both at the site and in the EXE file - worth checking out after you've finished the story.

Labels: Diana

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Hulk vs. Fin Fang Foom -- I'm surprised no one's thought of pitting the two green laconic purple pants-wearers against each other before. I was looking forward to a fun slugfest, but I was even more surprised that Peter David's put in a story. In a situation reminiscent of The Thing, a group of Antarctic scientists discover Fin Fang Foom under the ice.

The art team of Jorge Lucas and Robert Campanella do a terrific job of capturing the original beetle-browed Hulk look. I'm ordinarily not a fan of Kirby lookalikes, but it's the perfect style for this kind of no-holds-barred adventure.

David's Hulk is simple but poignant in his desire to simply be left alone. Instead of some long drawn-out miniseries, we get a quick bout that leaves us wanting more. There's also a reprint of Foom's first appearance, complete with the gaudiest four-shade coloring I've seen in a long while: yellow Asians, orange dragon, blue walls... it's like Lucky Charms spilled over the page. Good

She-Hulk #24 -- After not enjoying the previous two issues, I promised writer Peter David I'd give it one more try, since this is the issue where the fighting's over and we get lots of characterization.

And, well, to me it starts like an episode of Law & Order: SVU. She-Hulk spats with booking cop who persists in using diminutive nickname. Partner Skrull Jen similarly has attitude with perp she's bringing in. Then the two swap clever dialogue with each other before a gang of kids from the RV park where they live wander in. There's also a troubled teen with father issues.

I'm thrilled to see women with distinctive personalities lead a superhero comic, since it's rare we see more than one female talk to each other in the genre, let alone about meaningful issues, but it's just not clicking for me. I like that there are so many different characters, but so far, they're flat, one-line descriptions intead of three-dimensional people. I don't feel anything to grab onto, any need to learn more about them. Sure, they've got to hold back to have somewhere to go in future... but I'm just not interested in the ride. I wish I was. I'd like to feel the curiosity of meeting new friends instead of the tedium of attending someone else's class reunion. Okay

The Order #6 -- This comic makes me feel the way I did when I first encountered The Legion of Super-Heroes during the 1990s run. There's a whole bunch of different characters with strong personalities, unusual powers, and codenames. Interpersonal relationships matter more than superhero battles. Every issue makes me want to reread the previous to make sure I'm caught up with what's going on. It's almost too much to keep track of, but the more attention you pay, the more you're rewarded.

That's a really cool feeling. I've missed something with that depth to hang onto. I also enjoy Matt Fraction's plot structure of having one particular character be interviewed every issue, running their narration parallel with the other events. I feel like I'm learning important, in-depth things about the cast, one at a time, and it allows him to do more subtle things than many books are able to. Barry Kitson's art is attractive but can be stiff, so the face-on interview panels turn that into a strength.

Pepper Potts is running this government-sponsored corporate superhero team on behalf of Tony Stark, which makes this the best thing to come out of Civil War. This issue focuses on Milo Fields, a paralyzed veteran whose robot fighting suit makes him Supernaut. Overall, he contributes to a very rich world with plenty to involve the reader -- plus action, suspense, conflict, humor, and plenty of cool people to fantasize about. Very Good

In order to justify adding an additional eight pages to their comics to support an increased ad count over the holidays, Marvel has been running interview and behind-the-scenes text pages. In this issue, one of them is called "What do you do with your comic books?" I found it amusing that out of the nine writers and artists who answer it, five give them away to friends, kids, or charity. The remaining four box them up and promise themselves someday they'll organize them. (The word "stockpile" is also used.) That's what happens when you get too many comics, kids -- they quit being entertainment and start being a task you'll never get to.

Labels: Johanna

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Labels: Jog

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First off, as you may have read a few other places, Paul "Zeus" Grant died a few weeks ago. That probably means very little to most of you, but for those of us early adopters of comics-talk on the internet its kind of a big thing. Zeus was a key part of Doug Pratt's Comics forum on the old CompuServe, back in the days of dial-up, and no-picture intarwubs. That's where "The Savage Critic" original came from, that old CompuServe forum, and Zeus was one of the biggest boosters of me writing on the net about our beloved funny books.

Zeus was a big man, and a happy man, and he burned with passion for funny books, in a really "old school" kind of way -- he read nearly everything, and he was really passionate and enthusiastic about it all, and that's a really rare thing.

Zeus (and his son Phillip) came to San Francisco on a couple of occasions, and each time I was struck by what a kind and wonderful man he was -- he was the kind of a man who really didn't have a bad word for anyone, and who really embraced his passions deeply, but never took anything too far. In a lot of ways he was a real model of how one should communicate on the internet, and he was genuinely passionate about what he loved. Not in a "things should try to suit me" kind of way so many modern fans are, but in a genuine love for the medium, for the form, and for the people who made them.

When I think about "the old days", Zeus is up on the top of that list (along with Carl Pietrantonio, Lou Perez, Cheryl Harris, well and so many others really), and it was a real punch in the gut to me when I read that he died.

Rest in Piece, Zeus, and my deepest condolences to Phillip Grant who was loved by his pop like no other.



How about a review?

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #545: The final part of "One More Day". The thing that gets me here is that it really isn't a "Marvel" comic. Marvel's remit, or so they've claimed over the decades, is that they're "realistic", that they (and I think this is a direct quote from Quesada [or maybe Jemas]) "don't DO 'Crisis'es" -- things flow from story and from character rather than from outside events.

So, yeah, from any kind of a "classical Marvel style" POV this is probably the worst comic idea they've had since, dunno, "teen Iron Man" really? I mean, seriously: the Devil offers to change time and rewrite history so that Aunt May is never shot, but MJ and Peter lose their love because of it? Jinkies.

I know there has been a certain amount of "retcon creep" over the years, of course -- the Marvel characters never were involved in the Cold War, now it is Desert Storm or something -- but, GENERALLY those were about things that probably didn't matter *that* much. Maybe it doesn't matter WHICH war was involved, or if it was "the reds" versus "terrorist extremists" or whatever, but I think this is the first time that Marvel has flat out said "yeah, well that stuff never ever happened, deal"

It's... well it's such a DC move, y'know?

I mean, this means that pretty much every Spider-Man story since 1987 (or, possibly, before) didn't actually happen, or at least not in the way you remember. This issue makes it very clear that, at the least, the "unmasking" never occurred, which seems to me knocks CIVIL WAR off its pins a bit (I mean, then why is Spidey even in The Avengers, in the way he is these days?), and that's just the tip of the iceberg, isn't it?

That's cheap, and it is lousy, and it is, I think, a betrayal of what Marvel is and what Marvel does, and the fact that it happened from editorial fiat (AND has been telegraphed in much of Q's public statements over the last 2-3 years, rendering the potential "suspense" of the story as basically nil) makes it that much worse.

This was a CRAP idea, and was handled in a bludgeoney awkward way from a plot perspective. Big big thumbs down from this reader on the meta level.

Buuuuttt....

...and maybe this is just the tiredness of the holidays mixed with the mad rush for the truncated new comics day speaking (plus I'm getting a cold), but I pretty much didn't hate this individual issue of the comic book, as an individual reading experience.

...in fact, I kind of liked it.

Throwing out all of the meta stuff, all of thinking this was a good or bad idea, all of the plot-hammering, and this, as a single individual entertainment unit was actually pretty decent. There felt like honest emotions on display, genuine moments of pathos. An impossible situation and they make an impossible decision, and they still love each other, maybe more than ever before, and there's a really clear "way out" dangled in front of them, when 20 years from now under a different editorial regime, they decide to reinstitute the wedding, and they'll be able to do so. The writing was strong, and I even thought that Q's art worked in this chapter where it didn't in the first three), and yeah, I was touched a little bit by some of the moments inside.

So, yeah, TERRIBLE fucking idea, clumsy and anti-Marvel staging for the bludgeon of it, but this single individual issue of it? A (low) GOOD read, in and of itself.

Yes, I'm surprised with my thoughts too.

What did YOU think?


-B

Labels: Brian

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I figure if movie reviews are fair game here, so's a review of a book with "lots of little words and no pictures," as Fred Hembeck once put it--especially when it's a book as relevant to criticism and savagery as the Excellent book I just read, Carl Wilson's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, and especially at the let's-recap-our-judgement moment of the end of the year. Wilson's book never mentions comics, but it has everything to do with why people (including me) get so vehement about loving one cartoonist, or kind of comics, and hating another.

It's the most recent volume in the 33 1/3 series of short books about albums (full disclosure: I wrote one in the same series a few years ago, about James Brown's Live at the Apollo). This one is about Céline Dion's 1999 album Let's Talk About Love--the one with that Titanic song on it. What's unusual about Wilson's book is that he can't stand Dion's music. But this isn't a book about why her music sucks: it's a book in which he tries to understand why he thinks so, and why the tens of millions of people around the world who adore it think it's wonderful.

And that takes him straight into the problem of taste. (The book's subtitle is a little joke--a reference to another famous Céline.) Dion, in Quebecois slang, is kétaine: tacky, naff, Liefeld-esque. The first few chapters of the book ("Let's Talk About Hate," "Let's Talk About World Conquest," "Let's Talk About Schmaltz") talk about how she got that way: they run through the curious particulars of her biography, her commercial domination of the globe, and the history of the particular pop-music aesthetic she embodies. Then we get to the core of the discussion, a pair of chapters called "Let's Talk About Taste" and "Let's Talk About Who's Got Bad Taste."

Wilson runs through the old but still vexing question of criticism's relationship to populism (e.g.: which is a more important or meaningful seal of approval: critics raving about Exit Wounds or Thor selling 100,000+ copies?); he talks about Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid's brilliant Most Wanted/Unwanted Paintings project, and the related Most Wanted/Unwanted Song project. (What would be the Most Wanted Comic, using the same principles?... I'm tempted to say Countdown: Arena or something.) He quotes David Hume's description of a person with good taste (which is essentially someone who likes things that will stand the test of time), and points out that that standard tends to favor tradition over innovation.

And then he gets into Pierre Bourdieu, whose name is commonplace in cultural-studies circles and not terribly well known otherwise. To quote Wilson's summary: "What we have agreed to call tastes, he said, is an array of symbolic associations we use to set ourseles apart from those whose social ranking is beneath us, and to take aim at the status we think we deserve. Taste is a means of distinguishing ourselves from others, the pursuit of distinction... In early twenty-first-century terms, for most people under fifty, distinction boils down to cool. Cool confers status--symbolic power. It incorporates both cultural capital and social capital, and it's a clear potential route to economic capital." Wilson has plenty of points of disagreement with Bourdieu (and so do I), but he notes that "even if Bourdieu was only fifty percent right--if taste is only half a sub-conscious mechanism by which we fight for power and status, mainly by condemning people we consider 'beneath' us--that would be twice as complicit in class discrimination as most of us would like to think our aesthetics are."

The rest of the book is Wilson playing around with taste in general and taste for Céline in particular. He interviews a handful of big fans (of one of them, he writes: "His taste world is coherent and an enormous pleasure to him. Not only does it seem as valid as my own, utterly incompatible tastes, I like him so much that for a long moment his taste seems superior. What was the point again of all that nasty, life-negating crap I like?"); he goes to see "Brand New Day," excuse me, "A New Day" in Vegas (and has a miserable time that leads him to meditate on why sentimentality in art gets such a bad rap, and how aesthetes tend to sentimentalize ambiguity); he forces himself, at last, to listen closely to Let's Talk About Love and write about it. And then, in the final chapter, he tries to imagine a new and more "democratic" kind of criticism: "What would criticism be like if it were not foremost trying to persuade people to find the same things great? If it weren't about making cases for or against things?... It might be more frank about the two-sidedness of aesthetic encounter, and offer something more like a tour of an aesthetic experience, a travelogue, a memoir."

Which leads me to the question I'd like to open up, as this calendar year ends, to the questionable democracy of the comments section. I've been asked, various times and in various contexts this year, where I think arts criticism is heading and where it should go. But Wilson's book suggests that people like me aren't the only ones who should be answering that question. So I'd like to know: what kinds of comics criticism are most meaningful or interesting to you, and why? Click Here to Read More...

A COLLECTION OF FIVE THOUGHTS REGARDING THE FINE BOOK IN THE TITLE OF MY COLUMN TODAY:

1. Books, Unsurprisingly, Tell Stories

One interesting side effect to the sheer variety of vintage reprint compilations on today's shelves is that it's become easier to discern the distinct character of each. Today's compilations often come equipped with all sorts of historical supplements and bonuses, and often a particular design aesthetic - this is especially evident in collections of aged newspaper comics, where packaging and context can go a long way toward defining a 'tone' for the old material to ring with, if only through association.



Those Ware-designed Frank King books exude wistfulness and delicacy, bolstered by those dozens of silvery b&w photographs of family and landscape, while its essays emphasize King's sensitivity and devotion in matters both artistic and personal.



Fantagraphics' Peanuts books rely on muted cover colors, sporting reflective introductions by well-known personalities, the totality of which casts Charles Schulz's work in a nostalgic, gently melancholic light.



In contrast, Fantagraphics' Popeye hardcovers are tall, loud things with blazing dot colors and die-cut covers, as if each individual copy had been broken over the head of a small animal in preparation for the two-fisted comics fun rustling within. Eat your goddamned spinach.

But these are comprehensive projects, aiming to compile, in as perfect an order as possible, a large, particular span of a work. Sunday Press does not release that type of collection; their books excerpt from larger runs, and thus the very arrangement of the comics inside becomes a variable element of each book's character.

So what is the character of this Sammy Sneeze book? Simulation!

You see, this book doesn't just present a bunch of Little Sammy Sneeze strips. It also features the complete run of another, even more obscure McCay strip of 1905, The Story of Hungry Henrietta, along with selections from three additional, non-McCay strips: John Prentiss Benson's 1904-05 The Woozlebeasts, Gustave Verbeek's 1903-05 The Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo, and Verbeek's 1905-11 The Terrors of the Tiny Tads. Note the matching years - that's the key.



Not content to simply make its sturdy archival pages look like old newspaper clippings and match the appropriate period size (11" x 16" being about how one of these features would be read on half a broadsheet of 1905 funnies), Sunday Press is now trying to replicate some part of the action of reading old funnies from the New York Herald. One side of each of this book's pages contains a full-color Sammy strip, while the other side features a monochrome strip from among the four others, all of which might have actually been found on the other side of Sammy in 1904 or 1905, with all lack of color typical for a time period in which only half of the paper's Sunday strips got full benefits.

It's a novel approach, and also a handy way to fill out the book, given the restrictions of its feature presentation. Little Sammy Sneeze initially ran weekly from July 24, 1904 to December 9, 1906, with intermittent daily appearances occurring in the next decade, but the careful reader will have already noticed that this book only collects the complete color Sundays, which ran for the years of the title. Other Sammy installments, including the famous panel-breaking number seen in altered form up top (and dutifully pasted in Sunday form into the book's Introduction), are not included. Among the supplementary materials by the likes of editor Peter Maresca, McCay biographer John Canemaker, historian & McCay biographical fiction writer Thierry Smolderen, comics scholar Jeet Heer, ComicsResearch.org director Gene Kannenberg, Jr. and miscellaneous compilation regular Dan Nadel, it would have been nice if a concise history of the strip's publication vis-à-vis the book's contents had emerged.

But I'm willing to let some things slide in light of intuitive construction. The word Complete isn't the focus of the book; it's the effort made to bring the reader into the seat of the work's original primary audience, and there are some revelations that eventually rise through that.

2. Adults Are Merely Human; Children Are Monsters From Hell

Here is how your typical Little Sammy Sneeze Sunday page goes.



These old b&w images are typical for some McCay collections, as well as great websites like Barnacle Press, but be aware that the book is in lovely full color.



Sammy's strip is a one-joke affair.



In most episodes, the first four panels depict people or creatures or devices milling around a scene, often fixed in perspective, while the titular foppish lad's sinuses grows more and more irritated. His mouth stretches enormously.







Every fifth panel is the same.















And each sixth and final panel contains some (usually rueful) denouement in which the pieces are put back together, often with Sammy getting a sharp kick in the ass for his troubles. Sometimes Sammy's sneezes are helpful -- foiling burglars or the machnications of that notorious, perhaps not entirely monolithic early 20th century villainy organization the Black Hand -- but usually his nose is nothing but ruin. They vary wildly in power, sometimes acting only to upset a little girl's tea party, but sometimes rocking a train with enough force that passengers demand to know if a bomb's gone off somewhere. Folks are perpetually stymied.

Therefore, as Kannenberg perceptively indicates in his supplemental piece, Sammy is one of an extremely popular character type among newspaper strip children of the time: the Horrible Demon (my title). It's a long and proud tradition, going all the way back to R.F. Outcault's Mickey Dugan -- the famous Yellow Kid -- and extending into the likes of Rudolph Dirks' Hans und Fritz antics, which started up in 1897, and still runs somewhere today as The Katzenjammer Kids. But the king shit miniature Satan of the time was another Outcault creation, the eponymous tot of 1902's Buster Brown.



There's a lot of particularly common ground between Buster and Sammy. Both characters are American-born children of well-to-do parents, indicating a break from the earliest child characters of US funnies, which tended to be poor, and not entirely assimilated away from their obvious immigrant heritage.



Their antics were supposed to be earthy, I guess, although they can carry some charge of laughter toward the impolite ways of the Other. Outcault, at least, couched his characterizations in terms of the rambunctious soul of Our United States, the Melting Pot, while some artists, like Dirks, actually were immigrants of the ethnic groups they focused on. But characters like Buster Brown brought that same spirit into the finer homes of America, mercifully lacking the labored dialect humor of preceding ragamuffins, and contextualizing their wicked behavior as not just a specific quality of an American class, but of childhood.



I like Buster Brown a lot. It's direct and funny, often beautifully drawn, and sometimes wonderfully ironic, a quality rarely associated with comics over a century old. It's not just that Buster misbehaves in a violent (if nominally good-natured) way, it's that each strip features a special moral, delivered in a large caption, in which the tyke resolves to take the week's lesson to heart, if often in a way contrary to typical moralizing.



But Sammy Sneeze is not Buster Brown.



McCay's literary and aesthetic values are plainly different from Outcault's. Sammy not only doesn't have control over his sneezes, he doesn't really have any personality at all. Actually, he doesn't even talk - all of the words out of his mouth are simple preludes to the gale-force means of expression indicated by his familial name (and yeah, his dad is Mr. Sneeze, his mom Mrs. Sneeze, etc.). This doesn't prove to be as much of a problem as you might think - not only does the nature of the strip's one and only joke require no verbiage on Sammy's part, but the character's lack of meaningful interaction with the world around him aids McCay's perspective on the character.

Canemaker makes note of McCay's use of fixed backgrounds as presaging his pioneering work in animated film (starting in 1911); I'd agree to an extent, but I think the technique works best in the context of the strip itself as drawing out the tittering nature of adulthood, or older children acting in measurably 'adult' ways. It's fitting that Sammy doesn't talk; he doesn't even seem to comprehend, which strikes me as far more reasonable a depiction than the mannered devilry of other naughty kid characters. His naughtiness isn't purposeful, or even 'realistic.' Instead, McCay draws our attention to the chit-chat of maturity by the activities of the non-Sammy characters, wandering around unchanging scenes. Taking a detail from the full strip seen above:



Some commentators have called McCay a weak writer, in contrast to his superb draftsmanship. I disagree - McCay's writing is stylized and idiosyncratic, and all those Oh!s and Ah!s do tend to grate after a while, but I think his work on this strip is appealing in its dilly-dallying rhythms, with word balloons often ending in incomplete sentences, and thoughts dropped across the span of dialog. It doesn't sound real, but it feels authentic.



More importantly, McCay establishes an environment that seems natural for every character except Sammy, who constantly plays the role of dull onlooker, until his inevitable sneeze upsets everything. It's tempting to read a political motive into this approach: Sammy as the lil' anarchist, deflating pomposity, smashing conformity, and frustrating bourgeois pleasure through absurd destruction. Maybe he went Dada once he grew up and the Great War hit?

But I don't think McCay's work quite plays that interpretation out. Rather, Sammy's surreal, constant reaction to McCay's 'realistic,' constant displays of activity seems more a sign of childhood lashing out comedically at adulthood.

Unlike Buster Brown and others, Sammy doesn't want to cause funny trouble, he absolutely needs to, and his compulsion is always presented in terms of knocking down maturities, no matter how small. It could be a train coming to run him over, or a villain arriving to do him harm, or a show he's watching, or a parade, or other children having a formal party, or a classmate reciting a lesson, or lovers floating down a river, or someone showing him how to milk a cow - any way you slice it, for good or (more often) ill, Sammy sneezes to upset a world he cannot obviously understand.

Because how could he understand it? He's a little child.

And he's only a hellion in that he comes from a place the grown-ups (or wannabes) fail to grasp.

I'll be upfront: Little Sammy Sneeze isn't as funny a comic strip as Buster Brown. Most of the humor hits as soon as you see what kind of situation Sammy has wandered into this week - after that, it's all inevitable. McCay's lovely visuals are present too, of course; nobody of his period could quite draw large places in and out of motion like he could. But the repetition of the strip is beguiling, and it's a fascinating counterpoint to seemingly like-minded comics of its time.

3. Big Helps Out

Speaking of other strips of the time, the book presents alternative views on childlike action through its backup strips. My main reaction: thank heaven for large printing.



The Woozlebeasts, I'm sorry to say, is stone-dead boring. I suspect it'd be the same way at any size, but at least those authentic period proportions help Benson's draftsmanship shine a little better (and note again that the strips included in the book look nicer than what you see here). But it's a simultaneously dour and uninteresting thing, being a series of limericks about unfortunate or allegedly whimsical creatures, which are dutifully illustrated for your pleasure.

This doggerel wasn't particularly new to comics or children's literature, even in 1904 -- just one year prior, McCay himself had illustrated the deeply brow-furrowing Tales of the Jungle Imps to George Randolph Chester's poems -- but we're told (by Nadel, I think - the book's essay layout is kind of confusing) that Benson apparently managed to inspire a number of subsequent features conjoining verse and odd beasts, though I don't think any of them lasted all that long. The Woozlebeasts itself manages to end its run right in the middle of the book's selected time period, so we at least get to enjoy an olde tyme farewell strip.



We're also told that strips of this sort were commissioned as a salve to growing complaints of the ruckus predominant in the naughty kid strips mentioned above. Knowing this makes McCay's enlightened, admittedly gentler take on the tropes seem all the more skillful.

Verbeek's work comes off a good deal better; even his similarly-situated The Terrors of the Tiny Tads, only one episode of which is provided, seems more visceral and spooky and fun. And I'll say with total honesty that this large printing size has facilitated the first-ever time The Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo has ever worked for me. You see, it's sort of a trick strip - you first read its six panels as you normally would a comic, and then you turn the newspaper upside-down to read the strip again. All of Verbeek's art is designed to provide different, comprehensible visuals in both directions, for a total of 12 panels.

So, while in one direction you might see Lovekins and Muffaroo (a pair of storybook fantasy-type adventurers who appear to be living in sin, or in some mistress - sugar daddy arrangement) baking apples over a roasting clam...



...the other direction sees Our Heroes using pikes to rip the eyes out of a giant serpent that's risen from the abyss.



The effect is sometimes pretty dazzling, even at a reduced size, although Lovekins has always been a sticking point for me. That's not a hat, miss - that's a guy's legs. The trick is to focus right on her face, and try to forget a lot of her surroundings; Verbeek is pretty good with facial expressions, which goes a long way toward curing the awkwardness of his (highly ambitious!) concept. But that's not the sort of thing that registers unless you can see things really clearly, and you can only do that when the printing's very large. Which is to say, the size it was drawn to be read in.

How many other critical perspectives on older comics have been shaped by constrained perspectives? Isn't it a good artistic value to direct your work toward its mode of presentation? How many comics artists lost something across history due to changing standards? Under the assumption that 'bigger' only means 'more impact'? Books like this challenge such preconceptions.

4. Hungry Henrietta is Different From Just About Everything Else Winsor McCay Did, and Valuably So

And then, there's The Story of Hungry Henrietta, the book's only sop toward the completest impulse. It's another McCay kid strip, this time an honest-to-god serial, presented (almost) weekly for 27 chapters, all of which are presented. The monochrome strip ran on the literal backside of the color Little Sammy Sneeze in 1905, and the two do act as companion pieces, in that the back work is also a one-joke strip about a kid with an odd ability: Henrietta, the protagonist, can eat. A lot.

But there are many differences, astonishing ones. Henrietta's strip is no less than the chronicle of her life; she's three months old in Chapter One, and ages three months with every subsequent installment (as McCay is wont to point out in-strip over and over again). Henrietta doesn't seem to have any strange abilities at first - the early chapters are pure domestic satire, with McCay presenting the continuing antics of a clueless clan of upper-class folks who don't know how to calm their infant child. Often, their capering causes Baby Henrietta to cry, compounding their confusion.



So they feed her.



If Little Sammy Sneeze's humor is front-loaded in merely seeing what situation Sammy is up for ruining, The Story of Hungry Henrietta's is practically latent. If you've seen one strip, you've seriously gotten the 'joke' in full. Every episode trudges not merely toward an inevitable conclusion, but through an equally inevitable setup, with Henrietta's parents acting in exactly the same hopeless manner, toward the same end.



But then, a funny thing happens. As Henrietta grows, it gradually becomes apparent that her hunger has reached superhuman proportions. McCay begins isolating the child not only in a final panel of her eating, but in an opening panel of her seeking food. She eats a whole bowl of brandy sauce and gets silly. She devours fruit off a fancy hat. She rips into a beekeeper's equipment looking for honey, and gets stung. She even makes a color appearance in Sammy's strip, in which the boy sneezed a bowl of fudge into her face, and she picks it off and eats it right up. Her parents grow worried and disenchanted. Yet they can't cope. They're not prepared. She eats more.



By the time McCay is whipping up ominous panels of the angelic girl sitting shadowed in a cherry tree she's just been picking barren, the strip has wandered more into what's now called 'magical realism' than the knockabout comedy of Sammy. McCay does render the stories with his expected light touch, but there's a palpable undercurrent of sadness -- even horror -- to what's going on. And don't go expecting a resolution - Henrietta's story merely stops at age six and three quarters, despite the feeling that it's building toward something awful. Gosh, you think people didn't like it?



But even in 'incomplete complete' form, The Story of Hungry Henrietta draws attention to strengths that McCay is usually not known for. His human figure drawing, truth be told, is often rudimentary and lumpen, but the large size of this book reveals a keen command of Henrietta's body language, which communicates fear, cunning, shame, and the serenity of fullness, in lieu of many spoken words. McCay is also overtly satirical, as he would again be in his 1905-10 A Pilgrim's Progress, damningly criticizing the rearing mores of a class he belonged to. But he does it not only through gags, but cumulative build across many chapters, an eye-opening accomplishment for a man not well known for week-by-week pacing.



Maybe it goes even deeper. Despite her extravagant gorging, Henrietta never seems overly plump - McCay generally can't draw an attractive woman to save his life, but his Henrietta is always angelic in laying waste to foodstuffs. I suspect that's because the child is based on McCay's own daughter, much in the way a certain Nemo was based on his son. But then, what does that say about McCay, a well-off, famous success known for spending just as extravagantly as he earned? It could be that this story acts as self-critique as much as anything, giving form to lingering fears about raising a young child in the lap of luxury. And just as McCay's fantasies so often took terrifyingly large form, he could well have blown his personal concerns into a building Armageddon, with a gag-friendly touch.

I sure as hell don't know for sure. But the comic stands as perhaps McCay's darkest work, and a fitting compliment to his more famous strip in every way.

5. A Child's Life is Out of Control

Such is the greatest, if accidental benefit of this book - its simulation of 1905's reading style inadvertently throws a spotlight onto McCay's approach to his child protagonists. It's not the same approach every time - just as Sammy's body rages against the incomprehensible overload of the adult world in dazzlingly, surreal color, Henrietta grows into an unstoppable product of that same world's shortcomings in placid, slate tones. Let's not put too much emphasis on the colors -- after all, the Sammy strips not presented in this book saw an origin/return in monochrome too -- but we should remain appreciative of how they can flag McCay's portrayals of different aspects of a child's life.

I'd like to believe Sammy wouldn't hurt a fly, given his druthers, although McCay suggests that he's too young to have an internal life of note anyway. He instead reacts involuntarily in great, surreal, comedic waves, although we're left with the feeling that nobody is dreadfully harmed, and he'll maybe grow into a comprehending adult; whether that's triumph or tragedy is up to you. The scenes from his life are fit for the episodic format, as if bits of childhood fondly recalled, with each blast a different velocity to match the beloved situation.

But Henrietta is a child of serialization, and we therefore must accept the cumulative force of her ominous growth. She's as helpless as Sammy, but we can see the marks left on her by the adult world; her uncanny ability develops toward an endpoint we are not privy too. There is no indication that's she'll grow out of anything. Really, she'll grow in, her hunger growing larger and larger, with every unseen chapter. The indication is that we'll all see it soon enough.

What's even clearer, though, is the commonalities. Neither child is capable of taking their life entirely into their own hands... being children and all. McCay understands this helplessness, and recasts the fantastical humor of his young protagonists as reactions to adulthood, rather than actions toward adults. This portrayal of the world is also evident in the looming, shifting, unknowable spires and hues of another, far more famous serialized McCay work with a child hero, or even the temporary adult chaos of Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend, where all control is lost, all across the globe, for one night only.



Other, earlier strips were right in suggesting the mischievous potential of young children. But as authentic as literary characters as Buster Brown and the like might have been, they were still fashioned to the adult's perspective. McCay's nattering dialog suggests an understanding of adult ways, but his fantasy is primed as authentically childlike: helpless, curious, cradled, vulnerable.









The juxtapositions of this book, set down in natural size and authentic color, reveal these workings of McCay's. I wonder if those actual readers of 1905 made any subliminal note of these contrasts in their semi-similar morning papers. Well, this isn't a newspaper anyway. It's another worthy nugget from the Golden Age of today, an an especially edifying one through its construct. What relief! Like a bad sneeze fading into a lingering, cozy yawn.

Labels: Jog

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Not what I would've expected Dave Sim's new comic to be. Or, as one of the promo posters puts it:


But it also makes sense--all the photorealist stuff in Latter Days, and the stuff he's been writing recently about his fascination with Alex Raymond, Stan Drake, et al., suggests that this is exactly the kind of comic he's going to enjoy drawing. (Why he uses "photorealism" instead of "photorealist" as an adjective I have no idea, but I'm sure he's thought it out. Actually, of all the potential Dave Sim manifestos I could read, Why Photorealism Is The Best Kind of Cartooning is easily #1.) And those pages behind him in the author-promo photos look fantastic. I'm totally there. Click Here to Read More...

Just to remind everyone, comics ship on FRIDAY this week and next!

Merry Christmas to you one and all!

52 AFTERMATH THE FOUR HORSEMEN #5 (OF 6)
A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #72 (A)
ACTION COMICS #860
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #545 OMD
ARCHIE & FRIENDS #115
AUTHORITY PRIME #3 (OF 6)
AVENGERS INITIATIVE #8
BADGER SAVES THE WORLD #1 (OF 5)
BART SIMPSON COMICS #39
BATMAN #672
BERLIN #14
BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #157
BLACK PANTHER #33
BLUE BEETLE #22
BOMB QUEEN IV #4 (OF 4)
BRAVE AND THE BOLD #9
BRAWL #3 (OF 3)
CAPTAIN AMERICA #33
CAPTAIN MARVEL #2 (OF 5)
CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #40
CONAN #47
COUNTDOWN ARENA #4 (OF 4)
COUNTDOWN TO ADVENTURE #5 (OF 8)
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 18
CRIME BIBLE THE FIVE LESSONS OF BLOOD #3 (OF 5)
CROSSING MIDNIGHT #14
DAN DARE #2 (OF 7)
DAREDEVIL #103
DEATH OF THE NEW GODS #4 (OF 8)
DEVI #16
DRAFTED #4
DRAWING FROM LIFE #2
FANTASTIC FOUR ISLA DE LA MUERTE ONE SHOT
FLASH #235
GENE SIMMONS DOMINATRIX #5
GIANT SIZE AVENGERS SPECIAL #1
GOTHAM UNDERGROUND #3 (OF 9)
GREEN LANTERN #26
GREEN LANTERN SINESTRO CORPS SECRET FILES #1
HELLBLAZER #239
HOUSE OF M AVENGERS #3 (OF 5)
HULK VS FIN FANG FOOM ONE SHOT
INVINCIBLE PRESENTS ATOM EVE #1 (OF 2)
IRON MAN #24
JACK OF FABLES #18
JLA CLASSIFIED #49
JSA CLASSIFIED #33
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES CVR A #37
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES CVR B #37
MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN #8
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED PICTURE DORIAN GRAY #1 (OF 6)
MARVEL SPOTLIGHT ONE MORE DAY BRAND NEW DAY
MARVEL SPOTLIGHT X-MEN MESSIAH COMPLEX MC
MARVEL ZOMBIES 2 #3 (OF 5)
MY INNER BIMBO #3 (OF 5) (RES)
NECESSARY EVIL #3
NEGATIVE BURN #16
NEW WARRIORS #7
PAX ROMANA #1 (OF 4)
PROOF #3
PUNISHER #53
PUNKS THE COMIC CHRISTACULAR SP
REPO #5 (OF 5)
SHIRTLIFTER #2 (A)
STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC #24
TEEN TITANS #54
TEEN TITANS GO #50
THOR #5
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #49
ULTIMATE POWER #9 (OF 9)
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #117
UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS #4 (OF 8)
USAGI YOJIMBO #108
WILDCATS ARMAGEDDON #1
WITCHBLADE #112
X-MEN #206 MC
X-MEN EMPEROR VULCAN #4 (OF 5)
X-MEN FIRST CLASS VOL 2 #7
X-MEN MESSIAH COMPLEX MUTANT FILES MC
ZOMBIE SIMON GARTH #2 (OF 4)

Books / Mags / Stuff
AL WILLIAMSON READER VOL 1 TP
BUCKAROO BANZAI VOL 1 RETURN OF THE SCREW TP
COMICS JOURNAL #287
DAREDEVIL BY FRANK MILLER OMNIBUS COMPANION HC
DEVI TP VOL 03
DRAGON HEAD GN VOL 09 (OF 10)
DRAGONLANCE THE LEGEND OF HUMA TP VOL 01 (RES)
FLASH FASTEST MAN ALIVE FULL THROTTLE TP
GEEK MONTHLY VOL 2 #1
GIANT MONSTER TP
GIANT ROBOT #51
HAWAIIAN DICK TP VOL 01 BYRD OF PARADISE (NEW PTG)
IRON WOK JAN GN #27
MIDNIGHT SUN TP
MILK TEETH GN
MMW GOLDEN AGE HUMAN TORCH HC VOL 02
MUSEUM VAULTS EXCERPTS FROM JOURNAL OF AN EXPERT SC
POWER GIRL 13 INCH DELUXE FIGURE
PREVIEWS VOL XVIII #1
QUEEN & COUNTRY DEFINITIVE ED VOL 1 TP
SHOWCASE PRESENTS BRAVE BOLD BATMAN TEAM UPS TP VOL 02
SPAWN NEW FLESH TP
STEVE RUDE ARTIST IN MOTION HC
TALES OF THE BATMAN TIM SALE HC
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #161
UNCANNY X-MEN TP EXTREMISTS
WASTELAND TP BOOK 02 SHADES OF GOD
WIZARD MAGAZINE #196 IRON MAN MOVIE CVR


What looks good to YOU?

-B Click Here to Read More...

Wow. Thank goodness things picked up there at the end.

MARVEL HOLIDAY SPECIAL: This year's story by Andrew Farrago and Shaenon K. Garrity had some really cute moments, like the jingle noises on Santa's Sentinel, but seemed forced in a way last year's story by them (the AIM holiday party) did not; the Loners story by C.B. Cebulski and Alina Urusov made me interested in characters I've never read about previously (and had really lovely art to boot); and the Mike Carey and Nelson story about a reporter asking Marvel characters about the meaning of Christmas was, like the Hembeck reprint and the Irving pin-up, well-intentioned filler. It's high EH, particularly at that price point, but it doesn't make you feel like a total chump for indulging in nostalgia and buying it.

MIGHTY AVENGERS #6: It's amusing to pick up a title you dropped six months earlier and notice you've only missed two issues, although probably not as amusing for Brian Bendis, Tom Brevoort and retailers: crafted to be a quick-read of an oversized adventure, the ending wouldn't have felt as lame, I think, if it'd come out on time. And it'll probably be pretty decent as a trade. But disconnected from the momentum of the story, watching a hairy guy play Fantastic Voyage, then the shock-ending from six months ago makes this extraordinarly EH. If I hadn't quit on the title first, I'd probably drop that even lower as these are the kind of hijinks that actually punish readers for buying periodicals and not waiting for the trade.

SHADOWPACT #20: First issue I've read since issue #2 (which I didn't much care for) and thought it was highly OK. Kieron Dwyer's art looks crude (deliberately so, I think) but always has a lot of vigor and the storytelling is clear. It's particularly well-suited here, as the Shadowpact are trapped in a grimy, devastated landscape. I also liked Matthew Sturges' economical script which set up situations (Jim's lack of faith in himself, Blue Devil's cliffhanger) and then resolved them neatly. The characters are straightforwardly drawn--maybe a little too much so--but if the book always has this much forward momentum, I could see its appeal. Like I said, highly OK, particularly for a new reader.

SUPERMAN #671: Had me at that first Superman scene, which I thought was a fine updating of the Silver Age "Superman does cool show-offy shit for charity" trope, and the rest of the issue had a similar "how can we take classic bits and update them?" vibe to it. I'm fussy, so I can't give it more than a high Good, but I thought it was quite fun.

SUPERMAN BATMAN #44: Not perfect, but I thought this issue did a nice job of setting up an interesting story in a dramatic way, and it even involves an event that previously happened in the title. I'm more than a little leery--I'm not 100% onboard with the characterization, and there's a lot of stuff you have to take on say-so because the DCU's history is now about as stable as Lindsay Lohan's electrolyte levels--but considering I picked up this issue with genuine dread and I'm now curious as to where the story may go next, I think it's deserving of a high OK.

THE ORDER #6: First issue of this I've read (although I picked up the first five issues the other week and haven't read them) and Kitson's art and Fraction's dialogue make for an appealing book. I'm kinda shocked nobody thought the black band running behind the interview panels wouldn't screw up the way people would read those first two pages (ditto for the panels at the bottom of that tidal wave spread, now that I look at it), but, y'know, it happens. It may be paced a bit too quickly--I'm not sure if I really like anybody, except the character interviewed in the first few pages--but that's far from a sin these days, and I assume the back issues will flesh the characters out. I'd call this pretty GOOD.

UMBRELLA ACADEMY APOCALYPSE SUITE #4: Not particularly big on action, but this issue was well-packed with great visuals, a brisk wit, and a ton of charm. As a bonus, the editorial page lists Rocketship owner Alex Cox and Cade Skywalker as heroes (I think Cox is a far bigger hero than Skywalker, even if Skywalker wasn't packing a hair-metal mullet). I may be falling under the sway of the book's brio, but I'm gonna go with VERY GOOD and hope the miniseries lives up to its potential.

WOLVERINE ORIGINS #20: Having not kept up with this title, I read the text page intro and, wow, what a weird metastatement Wolverine's origin has become: "The mutant Wolverine has spent a century fighting those who would manipulate him for his unique powers..." If you think of "those who would manipulate him for his unique powers" as the creators who are always retconning more convoluted backstory bullshit into his history, you could maybe make the case that Wolverine is an utterly post-modern superhero, a figure whose struggle outside the comic--to retain his iconic power and relevancy (his identity) no matter what is foisted on him--is more or less the same one he faces inside the comic. For that matter, that struggle taking place outside the frame is the same one faced by every superhero with more than twenty or so years under his belt.

Hmmm.

Anyway, in this issue, Captain America clenches his teeth and beats the shit out of Wolverine just like he did the last time I read this lousy fuckin' book. AWFUL stuff, and apparently how Steve Dillon wants to make a living which I find horribly depressing.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT #2: It makes sense. World of Warcraft has something like an estimated nine million subscribers: if you can get 1% of that base reading your book, you've got a very healthy 90,000 readers. But I can't imagine these people want to read about Walt Simonson's characters any more than I wanted to hear about somebody's fourth level Halfling thief back when I was playing D&D. I would think an illustrated "World of Warcraft for Dummies" where the "story" like a fancy, tip-filled walkthrough for noobs and munchkins, would probably have a better chance at gaining that audience. As a fantasy book illustrated in the Rodney Ramos manner, it's highly EH. As a tie-in to one of the great gaming successes of our times, I think it probably ranks far lower.

X-MEN FIRST CLASS VOL 2 #6: If the proportions of this were reversed, and it was a sixteen page story with Marvel Girl and Scarlet Witch illustrated by Colleen Coover and a six page "to be continued" story with depowered X-Men and attacking Sentinels, I would've given this sucker a high Good: Coover's work has so much charm, and Parker really seems to enjoy working to her strengths. Sadly, I gotta go with OK because I find Roger Cruz's art very dull and it's the larger part of the book.

****

And since this week has (nearly) all of my favorite manga:

DRIFTING CLASSROOM VOL 9: Just when I thought this book was getting a little off-track with its creepy mutants, it brings back the Lord Of The Flies backbeat and gives us some underage knife-fights and senseless life-taking territory wars. And, just because it loves us, there's also an appendectomy performed without anesthesia and giant carnivorous starfish. I read this at a breathless clip and think its VERY GOOD material in its startling, go-for-broke way.

GOLGO 13 VOL 12: Probably my favorite volume so far, as it's got Golgo versus his Russian counterpart in the first story, and a nifty piece of Southern exploitation trash ("Shit, they make you a Colonel for fryin' chicken down there.") in the back-up. GOOD stuff, although it looks like we won't be getting any of the truly batshit crazy stuff in this collection.

NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER VOL 12: Like the previous volume of Beck, the only drawback for me is that the length of time between volumes means a longer time for my involvement with the material to ramp back up. While I appreciate the recaps and character flowcharts Viz uses here, it's just not the same: I can't imagine how engrossing it would've been for this stuff to unfold on a weekly basis. VERY GOOD material, though.

OTHER SIDE O/T MIRROR VOL 1: Jo Chen's artwork is so lovely, I had to pick this up. And while there are dozens of effortlessly sensual illustrations, both the narrative flow and the story itself are pretty amateurish stuff. It's not so much the lack of drama--on the contrary, for a few pages, it almost seemed like we were going to get Barfly as drawn by Ai Yazawa and I was downright giddy--as much as Chen doesn't have the chops to bring any depth to her lead characters and so give their struggles any resonance. I hope her talents continue to develop, but this deeply EH volume suggests she's still got a way to go.

PICK OF THE WEEK: IMMORTAL IRON FIST #11 and/or UMBRELLA ACADEMY #4. Good work by new(ish) talent. That's encouraging, isn't it?

PICK OF THE WEAK: I only brought down the CRAP hammer on FOOLKILLER #3, but that may be because I'm building up a slight immunity to Countdown related events.

So. Since next week's books come in on the 28th, and I work both the 29th and 31st, I think this will be my last "what the hell is he thinking" mega-roundup for the month. I'd like to figure out a proper way to work this kind of thing into my schedule, but posting may be a little spotty for the next month or two as other parts of my life get busy. Again, lemme thank everyone for taking the time to read these and throw in their two cents, and sorry I didn't get a chance to respond to everyone who commented in the detail they deserve (particularly in that thread where there were many fine comments from old-schoolers like gvalley and Heinz Hochkoepper). Hope everyone has a fine ol' set of holidays and, should I not get back to here before 12/31, a most excellent New Year!

Labels: Jeff, old school

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The good thing about Tim Burton's SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET is that it really works remarkably as a film -- I went in with a fair deal of trepidation over the changes I knew were coming, but virtually all of them worked pretty darn well.

The cuts to the libretto that were made, were overall, pretty good -- I didn't really know if it could survive removing the (various) "Ballad(s) of Sweeney Todd", but, for the most part one didn't miss them. And while a couple of pieces were missed (I was sort of looking forward to the four-part disharmony of "Kiss Me/Ladies in Their Sensitivities"), it kicked the momentum of the story dramatically forward. I'm glad, of course, that Judge Turpin's "Johanna" ("Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa") was cut, because that's pretty much the one song even in the full version that I can live without. Other than that, most of the cuts were in Act II, with the "Wigmaker Sequence" and "The Letter" and "Parlor Songs" all excised completely.

Several other songs were pretty dramatically truncated -- "Green Finch and Linnet Bird" was maybe half of its normal length, "Pirelli's Miracle Elixir" seemed chopped down, and "The Contest" was as short as it could be (the original original version goes on and on and on, featuring BOTH a shaving contest, AND a tooth-pulling one, too!). "God That's Good" cut out all of the general public embracing the pies, as well as all of the business of bringing in the chair and "...I have another friend!" (Sweeney builds his own in this version, in songless montage), but again, they mostly got their points across fairly well. But the cut in length that probably bothered me the most was to "A Little Priest" which seemed like about 2/3rds its normal length, and THAT just seems wrong to me to cut by even a single bar.

But one things that the cuts do is basically remove all of the humor from the play entirely. To me, one of the greatest things about SWEENEY is that, yes, it is a astonishingly dark Shakespearean-level tragedy, steeped in blood and horror and madness, but it is also laugh-out-loud, slap-your-knee hysterical in places. Which, I think, is eminently necessary because murder and meat pies needs some levity to not have it be desperately bleak. But in this version, a lot of the jokes are either cut, or delivered so seriously as to dull them and render them dark, not funny.

The singing itself is pretty Eh -- everyone can carry a tune alright, but most of the actors (being actors and not singers) don't have enough depth or range in their voices to carry it off. When Depp first started singing, I went "Oh god, this is going to be a rough ride", but by the second time I started to throw away my preconception of the deep strong voice needed for the role because Depp's *acting* is so strong and nuanced.

Bonham-Carter, on the other hand, wow, she can't sing at all, sounding far too weak and whispery and "little girly" to really carry it off at all. And while Depp did hid best portrayal of Todd, Bonham-Carter seemed to me as if she was playing... well, Bonham-Carter for the most part, and I didn't get any real sense of Mrs. Lovett, as opposed to girl-who-looks-physically-right-playing-against-Depp-as-Romantic-Leads. I thought Bonham-Carter's line-readings were mostly wrong, and that she just rushed through too many of the proper shadings in "Worst Pies in London" or "A Little Priest". SHe's also (well, everyone is, really, with the sole exception of Toby) something like 10 years too young for the role. Interestingly, I thought on the few occasions when she went down an octave or two, it fit the songs and character much better, and she sounded as if she had a fuller, rounder voice. Her acting was fine though.

The orchestration was really excellent, with a much much larger orchestra than usually performs SWEENEY, though there's certainly times it swells way up to compensate for the less-than-professional singing. There's a couple of places where I swore I could also hear cuts between different takes as they tried to match Depp and Bonham-Carter up (I've read that they were in different studios to record and different times, and, I think there are 1-2 places where it seems a little obvious. There's a pretty glaring cut where Sascha Baron Cohen's Pirelli does that high note, and it didn't sound at all like his own voice (sounded like a woman's voice, honestly)

Cohen was really great as Pirelli (as I think we all expected him to be), and his singing was probably stronger than Depp's, but I think it was Alan Rickman's singing voice that surprised me the most for being stronger than I would expect for an actor-not-singer. His duet with Depp on "Pretty Women" is really very nice.

All of the kids were adequate, I guess -- the girl playing Johanna didn't seem to have any of the gothic haunted madness that I want to see in the character ("Green Finch and Linnet Bird" seemed more like "I like birds" than "Oh god, I'm trapped in this cage and I NEED TO GET OUT!", the latter being the way I like), and the boy playing Anthony seemed less than a sailor who has "sailed the seas, and seen its wonders", then someone who still had to finish their senior year in high school, but both sung well enough, and, anyway, their parts were basically shortened enough so that it didn't matter much either way. The one bit I did like was the physical staging of Johanna's near-miss at the end worked a lot better than it has in any staged version I've seen, but Anthony sort of just disappears about 10 minutes before the end of the movie and we never see him again.

Having an actual child play Toby is, I suppose, logical, but I still prefer the slightly-retarded-young-man model ala Broadway, because I think his youth really works against "Not While I'm Around" in a pretty big fashion, and it completely blows the humor of "Gentlemen, you're about to see something that rose from the dead. (woman's gasp of impropriety) On the top of my head!" when it's a 10-year old delivering the line. I also had a much harder time with Toby's finale (with 90% of it, probably wisely, being excised, really) with him being a kid, and there was a brand new bit of business involving Gin that I thought just didn't work at all either.

But even with all of my griping about the weak singing, and the casting, this still worked very very well as a movie -- without the humor, it's just a pretty terrifying thrill ride, probably darker than anything Burton has ever done before, and it zips along well as a film. Even Tzipora, who usually rolls her eyes at my love of Sweeney, and who hasn't seen it all the way through except for once 15-ish years ago on a lousy quality video cassette, was well entertained walking out of the theater, saying she enjoyed it. But she, like I, sort of has a hard time picture it doing well at the box office -- Depp fans who know him from commercial-ish stuff like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN probably won't respond well to the gore and darkness of this; it's big-time NOT a movie that you walk-out of thinking "Merry Christmas!!"; and the studio has been, I think, both under-promoting it, as well as trying to cut trailers that underplay the fact it is a musical.

Overall, I liked it to at least call it GOOD, and maybe even VERY GOOD, but I also think the worst cut was losing its sense of humor. Having the cast all rise from the dead at the end to sing the "Ballad(s)" helped I think relieve some of the unrelenting darkness of the play that ending the movie on an image of the most blood-drenched version of The Pieta that you've ever seen just doesn't do. No, that was an arresting, disturbing image to end a powerfully made movie, but I want to see all of the corpses get up at that point and remind me that "To seek revenge may lead to hell/ but everyone does it and seldom as well"; somehow that makes it easier to bear.

Parenthetically, the single weirdest thing about the film was that before it started (but after the trailers, and the "Silence is Golden", and the THX logo) there was this 5-ish minute long thing that sort of just showed clip after clip of previous Burton/Depp collaborations. It didn't have a voice over, or a narrative and it went back and forth from film to film with no real rhyme or reason that I could see, and it felt like someone somewhere was trying to say "you liked these other films, please please don't walk out of this one". Strangest god-damn thing I've ever seen before a film in my life, and I honestly don't get it.

Either way, it's good, go see it -- then rent the DVD of the stage play (or, better still, go see the touring stage company) to compare.


What did YOU think?

-B

Labels: Brian, Sweeney

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I mean this in the least Chicken Little-ish way possible, but Good Lord, this marketplace is glutted. I'm not sure how big or small a week retailers would consider this to be, but there are 80+ items that came into CE this week under the classification of "comic book" (and an additional 35+ items under books, mags & stuff). No wonder Hibbs talks in his latest Tilting about his newfound "I see dead trades" superpowers and how to best use them for the good of his store. The big two have their furnaces open wide and are shoveling terrifying levels of product onto the market, which may be fine for them--in the non-returnable market, they're at least making their money back--but I would think it would get harder and harder for retailers to make what could be considered profit. I mean, I'm not a retailer (and I'm not at all good with money, in fact) but how is a retailer supposed to take home any cash when each invoice grows bigger than the last? It's tough because the titles I like from the big two are frequently considered marginal titles (like Blue Beetle) to say nothing of all those lovely reprints they're putting out, but I find the situation as a whole is troubling.

Or maybe I hide my grumbling about how many comics I have to review in the guise of worrying about the direct marekt. I dunno.

ARMY @ LOVE #10: Veitch's pacing is top-notch; he's moving his characters along on their personal arcs at a decent clip; really, the only complaint is that now that he's put forward his themes of how warfare and entertainment are dovetailing, and how the corrupt boomers and the self-absorbed Gen X and Y'ers are each responsible for it, I'm not sure if he knows where to go with it. For a work of satire, it doesn't seem angry or outraged or, despite the every issue's naked boob, particularly titillated. It's GOOD work but I feel it's missing the potential to become something greater, to take the sort of risks a more impassioned--and less mature--artist might make.

BATMAN & THE OUTSIDERS #3: I can kinda/sorta see the rationale for the issue--two of the more prominent members of the old Outsiders team are now in the Justice League so have them show up here for some insta-conflict--but the results are the standard "we're going to talk/now we're going to fight/well, we're back to talking, we're all on the same side, aren't we?" set of scenes that make me think all superhero comic book writers grew up with alcoholic parents. Julian Lopez's art is pretty (and keeps the cheesecake out of the fight scenes, which is a plus) although the characters' acting is a bit broad. I guess if you can swallow the conceit of the issue--which I couldn't, frankly--you could go with a low OK. Me, I'll take the EH road.

BIRDS OF PREY #113: Apart from the last three pages where Superman acts like a judgmental dick for no good reason, I liked this: I can't really tell if Nicola Scott can do action scenes yet, but her characters look great and "act" well, and McKeever has all the main characters' voices down. The ending was overwrought, and a re-read shows that maybe the page-turns were a little forced, but I'd go highly OK for this, despite the ending. I'd like to see next ish.

CAPTAIN AMERICA CHOSEN #5: I feel sorry for David Morrell here--whatever reason he had for this mini, it seems utterly moot in light of the current Cap storyline. The whole thing looks and feels like something that was supposed to come out in the John Ney Rieber/Cassaday "relevant" era (if you can eight months an era). Although, honestly, I wouldn't have liked it then, either. I'll go sub-EH out of pity (and respect for a guy who's written some bitchin' action novels) but it's not good at all.

CATWOMAN #74: That cover hurts my neck just to look at it. Seriously, Adam Hughes, if you're going to put Audrey Hepburn's head on Pamela Anderson's body, at least pretend there's a spine connecting them. Inside, the action scenes alternated between dynamic and a bit confusing, the plot has a few bits I can't buy, and Calculator's whole "if I'm not back at my computers in an hour, the city will lose power!" scheme for protecting himself is pretty lame (and plot-convenient). I wasn't crazy about the ending either, so I think I'm going with a high EH on this one. It had its moments, though.

COUNTDOWN ARENA #3: That bit where bald Superman grabs the heat vision of Dark Knight Superman and Red Son Superman and uses it to clonk their heads together (because the heat vision is still coming out of their eyes) is such a dramatic misunderstanding of how a particular power works--it's like if you read a Fantastic Four book and The Thing pulled rocks off his body and threw them at people--I was rendered giddy at the dopiness of it all. Most of this train wreck isn't nearly as entertaining (although there is one panel where one Wonder Woman appears to put her foot through another Wonder Woman's uterus), just mindless and messy in an AWFUL early 90s Image book kind of way. However, I hold out hope that next issue someone will grab the speed lines coming off the Flash and garrote somebody else with them.

COUNTDOWN RAY PALMER SUPERWOMAN BATWOMAN #1: A story so intricately constructed it needed two writers, four pencilers, and six inkers: The Challengers go to a planet where everyone's gender is reversed and Wonder Man and his army of amazons get their asses kicked for twenty pages. That's it. And while refreshingly free of cheesecake, isn't that the only thing that would've made this interesting? There's something dishonest about making a planet where all the DC Heroes are Heroines and not then fucking with a fanboy's complex internal relationship with his or her favorite superhero (I'll admit I thought female Aquaman was really hot, for what it's worth). I mean, what's the point otherwise? To point out how ragingly sexist the power line-up of the DCU actually is?

To be fair, there was something almost Silver Age about this issue's execution--it finds each new iteration of reversed gender fascinating for its own sake, the way a Mort Weisinger book would--and that's kinda charming. But because this book exists for absolutely no other reason than to bilk money from the Countdown completist, it's really just a cynical cash grab which is an AWFUL thing to be.

COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 19: I gotta give it up for colorist Pete Pantazis--he assigns a pallette to each set of characters which makes it easy for the reader to follow the scene changes quickly. Also, I think the reason I initially thought the art was the best in this issue I'd seen was the extra little touches in the scenes with Piper and Trickster (Piper's glowing eyes, the light reflected in the water). Apart from that, the only thing that str