It's February 29th, Leap Year Day, which can only mean one thing: It's Superman's birthday!

Superman is, of course, 70 years old this year (ACTION #1 had an June, 1938 cover date, so that would have shipped in April, I think), but sometime in the 1970s it was decided that he was a Leap Year baby.

I asked Mark Waid if there was a citation in the comic books to this, and he replied: "I know it was in one of E. Nelson Bridwell's/Mort Weisinger's letter columns, a jokey answer about how Superman could have been an adult in 1938 and still look so young. Nelson 'cemented' the date in the 1976 Super DC Calendar from Warner Books."

I had a memory of reading a comic story, and Kurt Busiek says that SUPERMAN #249 deals with the birthday, but I don't have a copy of that to look up the details.

The Time Magazine article on Superman's 50th anniversary (3/14/88) also cites that as his birthday, but all of the links I found to that article 404ed.

Either way, mathematically, that kind of can't be right -- '38 wasn't a leap year, '36 and '40 were, but if we were to go with the earlier date, then Superman would be 18 today (kinda)

Either way, I love the idea of it, even if there's very little canon or facts to back it up, so Happy Birthday Superman!

-B

Labels: Brian, Superman

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A handful of of pamphlets this week, two of which allude obliquely to Ant-Man. Two different Ant-Men, actually. After the jump: BATMAN #674, NEXUS #100 and WORLD WAR HULK: AFTERSMASH!: DAMAGE CONTROL #2.



BATMAN #674: Couldn't make head or tail of this the first time through; fortunately, Timothy Callahan has helpfully pointed out the connections between this story and "Robin Dies at Dawn" from Batman #156, which I found reprinted in Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, and which includes a reference to an Ant-Man. (Note that this issue is called "Batman Dies at Dawn.") It's still a little confused by Morrison's occasional habit of selecting random fragments of a complicated story and leaving out the ones that would explain what's going on, but at least now it feels like it's going somewhere. But I love Batman trying to push all the horrible stuff he's experiencing into his world-view of "clues" and "crime," and I also think it's interesting that both Morrison's Batman and All-Star Superman are almost totally dedicated to iterations of the "superhero versus alternate versions of himself" story. Pretty Good.

NEXUS #100: Steve Rude's art is as gorgeous as ever, and this issue totally has the look-and-feel of Nexus in the '80s, when I read and enjoyed it. So why, I wondered as I slogged through the lead story, am I not getting any pleasure out of this? Oh, right: the previous issue came out in July, and it's a tightly packed story where almost every panel relies heavily on knowledge of comics that came out 20 years ago. I mean, if you'd asked me in 1987, I'd probably have known what a "Gucci assassin" is, or what Tyrone's relationship to Nexus is, or who Kreed is and why it's impossible that he's back from the dead, but that was a while ago. The backup story with Sundra brushing off advances from sleazy Washington, DC politicians might be a lot more enjoyable if it weren't a very tired old twist-ending story with a science-fiction muumuu flung over it, and if the pretty painted Rude art weren't built around the two sleazy politicians being modeled on Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. (Hillary as a rapacious lesbian? Is there really any appropriate response to that but a blank, pitying stare?) Creepy: two different photos of Jack Kirby, apropos of not much, one accompanied by a semi-hagiographical essay about the history of the series that ends "Undoubtedly, The King of Comics is watching Steve Rude and his cohorts, approving of what they're all trying to create with their hearts and their hands... And he's smiling." Doubly creepy: the fact that Rude-as-publisher begins the letter column by running a letter from a friend of his about how clever and cool Rude-as-artist's artwork in the story we've just read is. And seriously, if you're going to be half a year late with your second issue, serialization is probably not an acceptable strategy. So yeah, it looks really nice, but that only nudges it up to an Eh. (And yes, I know I'm blaming this issue for something very similar to what I just praised Batman for, but the difference is that Batman is approaching its sources with the understanding that it's dealing with messy, primitive memories of long ago, and Nexus is trucking along as if all the stuff it's referring to just came out last month.)

WORLD WAR HULK: AFTERSMASH!: DAMAGE CONTROL #2: As the next-issue blurb suggests, very little happens this time: the cliffhanger from last issue is resolved through a few minutes' worth of conversation, there's some more discussion, and another cliffhanger turns up in the final two panels. But this is a little gem of a story about what happens after the big fight scenes in the post-Civil War landscape, with hugely fun character interaction, one funny line after another ("I don't want any of you having unnecessary origins"), and lots of nice little bits of visual business (I especially like John Porter's Spider-Man key ring). I was happy to see a reference to the "Slaying Mantis" routine from Irredeemable Ant-Man, too. My reservations about Salva Espin's artwork in the context of this particular story still hold--the more he draws these characters as broad caricatures, the more he threatens to oversell the jokes. Still, it's Very Good, and I kept thinking I'd so much rather see Damage Control complements to big Marvel events than Frontlines...

Labels: Douglas

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I'm kinda stupid sometimes about the internet, and we're still figuring out how things work, so it looks like we blew it in getting how Project Wonderful functions -- we got 34 (!) bids for the ad space, but when we looked at it, we didn't understand that the bids were blind and that all we saw was $0.00 bidded, and we passed on all of them. Stupid me!

So... if you tried to bid on the space before, try it again, I now have the slightest idea of what I'm doing! (but, really, just the slightest so far)

Thanks to Bill from Lone Star Press for clueing me in on what I was seeing, and you SHOULD be seeing his ad on the side for the next day or so. Go take a look at his Bill Mantlo tribute book as minor thanks for setting me straight.

-B

Labels: advertising, Brian

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RASL #1:



This is Jeff Smith's new series, a quarterly sci-fi serial of indeterminate length, although it's been estimated that this first storyline will run eight or so issues. Your $3.50 gets you a very no-frills, no-nonsense Cartoon Books package: 32 pages of b&w comics between the covers, with credits on the inside-front and next issue's cover on the inside-back.

There's been some curiosity surrounding this project -- beyond its simply being a new Jeff Smith series -- in that it's the artist's first longform comics project pitched toward somewhat older readers, after a marvelously successful run with very kid-friendly material. Granted, there's nothing in this issue that I wouldn't hand to a 13-year old, but it's not just a question of explicit content. What might this modified Jeff Smith look like?

As it turns out, faintly like some unstuck-in-time, post-Katsuhiro Otomo seinen manga, replete with wordless wandering across detailed environments, fast action racing through subdued page layouts, and strange technologies doing no-doubt scientific things that also happen to look cool - and check out the classic t-shirt getup on our mop-headed anti-hero! Never out of style, that.



It all strikes me as having a very 'action manga' visual approach, primed for sleek, fast reading, egged further on by Smith's preference for white space over background detail. Actually, he might be a little too light; his characteristically nimble, squinty 'tough' characters look fine standing around bleeding or posing while wearing odd equipment, but their punches and grappling don't convey the impact Smith's storytelling seems to want. It's more like especially rough slapstick, or maybe the comics equivalent of a direct-to-video action hero knocking down a bad guy, even though he clearly missed the bastard by a mile. Pantomime.

There's not a lot of plot to discuss - Our Hero is an art thief who leaves the tag "RASL" where he strikes. He escapes the law with the help of a delightfully bulky rocket engine shoulder pads contraption, which allows him to (painfully) zip around time and through alternate dimensions, although he can't aways predict where he'll wind up; an extended visual metaphor of a stone dropping and rising through water helps clarify the process, although not a lot of explaining is needed anyway. Guy's stealing, running. Odd folks and the law after him. Mystery; escape!

A firm chapter one GOOD right now, for its slick style and decent premise, although I suspect this particular sort of drift will move better once collected come 2010 or so.

Labels: Jog

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Now, shall we begin--?!

I.

I got a request to review the latest issue of GHOST RIDER. So:

Sure, sure: steel wire.


Between 1972 and 1973, Gary Friedrich & Dick Ayers produced 9 issues of COMBAT KELLY AND THE DEADLY DOZEN comic books for Marvel Comics.

It was kind-of shitty.

It was the second spin-off of the popular Marvel WW2 comic NICK FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS to fail. CAPTAIN SAVAGE AND HIS LEATHERNECK RAIDERS didn’t catch on, either (except in my homoerotic dreams). Here’s what Gary Friedrich said about the two failed spin-offs later:

I think there wasn’t anything original about them. Martin Goodman, who owned Marvel at the time[…], saw that Sgt. Fury was doing pretty well and told Stan ‘Let’s do some more war comics’. Stan’s ideas were to do more of the same and that’s what we tried to do. I was in it for the money. If they wanted me to write ten war comics, I’d write ten war comics.

So: what do you do when it comes time to write the last issue of a failed comic? Do you have the main character wake up in bed with Bob Newhart? Do you have the main character chat with Grant Morrison? Do you have a mermaid fart, but then have her fart bubbles get trapped in her mermaid fish-tail, one after the other until the fish-tail finally explodes in an underwater orgy of liquidy-shit and sulfur?

If you’re Gary Friedrich and Dick Ayers, and it comes time to end COMBAT KELLY, it turns out you have a Nazi rip out your female lead’s Achilles tendons without using any anesthetic before the surgery.


You know: someday, you’re going to click that Read More and get an eyeful of Not-Safe-For-Work Nick Fury. You’re far too trusting. “Oh, I’d like to read mo— NO, NICK FURY, NO.” You'll have deserved it for being so trusting.

Wait, no: nobody deserves that. Look at him. Look at poor Nick Fury. What the hell were they thinking? What IS that? Anyways, let's get back into character...

II.

35 years later…

Jason Aaron’s first GHOST RIDER came out a week or two ago. I went to pick that up; also picked up a book at random, on impulse—the 4th issue of Greg Rucka’s 52 AFTERMATH CRIME BIBLE FIVE LESSONS OF BLOOD (MAN IN MOTION) (featuring the Question!). All the talk about Greg Rucka cutting out on his exclusivity with DC (plus Mr. Douglas Wolk’s writing for this site) got me curious.

Aaron’s coming off of the “critically-acclaimed” SCALPED, which delves into the previously unseen world of crime on Native American reservations. When Rucka started in the mainstream, he was coming off of the “critically-acclaimed” WHITEOUT, which delved into the previously unseen world of crime in Antarctica.

There’s a noticeable learning curve, when people first start working for Marvel or DC. They launch books like the ORDER or ALIAS or GOTHAM CENTRAL where they try to offer a fresh perspective, try to offer something new to an audience; then, those books go away. They do things right; they do thing wrong, etc. Learning curve.

But: by the point they’ve settled into the Job, when they’ve gotten good, I guess I’m long gone. Shit, I haven’t read a Greg Rucka comic in years.

I’m excited that Jason Aaron’s writing GHOST RIDER. I’m not excited that Greg Rucka’s writing the Question. But, shit, they’re kind of similar guys, doing kind of similar jobs.. so...

III.

Jack Kirby quit working for Marvel in 1970. 1972 comes around, time to roll out COMBAT KELLY... Aaah, fuck it: why not just rip off THE DIRTY DOZEN? COMBAT KELLY AND THE DEADLY DOZEN is about a WWII-era suicide squad of convicted criminals given one chance at freedom—all they have to do is go on a series of high-risk missions to kill Nazis.

No big deal; happened other times: The EXORCIST had been a bestselling novel in 1971; a hit movie would come out in December 1973. Inbetween, Marvel says: why not have a book about an exorcist called SON OF SATAN? Let’s get ourselves one of those new-fangled exorcists! The kids, they love the exorcists!

I want Marvel Comics’s version of WELCOME HOME, ROSCOE JENKINS? “Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins… I hope you survive the experience!” Fuck it— it could work! It will work!

COMBAT KELLY was—it just wasn’t good. The “Deadly” Dozen—there’s a Dean Martin Deadly, a psycho Deadly ala Telly Savalas in the Dirty Dozen, a Native American Deadly with a bow & arrow. Two “British” Deadlies whose accent consists exclusively of randomly ending sentences with “Wot?” and using the word “Ruddy”. INCREDIBLY ANNOYING. There’s a black Deadly, a Japanese-American Deadly, a sexy lady Deadly (eventually Mr. Kelly's ill-fortuned girlfriend).

12 characters sharing 0 personalities. A few amusing moments aside : dreary, nonsensical, haphazard. The letter page is sometimes ruddy, but that’s about all you can say for it, wot?

My favorite is issue #2— Combat Kelly sneaks into a FUCKING CONCENTRATION CAMP in order to rescue three *Native Americans* the Nazis are holding in their Concentration Camp. The Native American POWs teach the Jewish victims of the Holocaust about the importance of hope before they die giving their lives fighting the Germans.

It’s fucking ghastly.

Issue 9 rolls around, and the entire team gets killed off. Most get shot in the back— two don't. Only Combat Kelly survives – but he quits the military. And then Combat Kelly and his shitty comic are forgotten, completely forgotten-- as is appropriate. Oh, wait, also: Combat Kelly’s girlfriend gets her Achilles tendons torn out by a crazed Nazi, and she gets crippled for life.


IV.

Combat Kelly? No matter how bad his comic was, or how few Achilles tendons his girlfriend had, someone's going to bring him back. You can set your clock to it. Fans just like that move from the playbook. Bring back a way-forgotten character? See, e.g. Jonny Double, Slam Bradley, Amazing Man, White Tiger, etc.

Yeah: Combat Kelly will be back.

It's all turning straw into gold, wot? GHOST RIDER? The Question in 52 AFTERBIRTH OF BLOOD CRIME BIBLE FIVE (THE LOVE THEME)? They’re just popular straw. They're both characters that would’a-could’a-should’a been forgotten decades ago, just like Combat Kelly.

I'll pick up an issue of Whatever if a writer I’m following is hired. But: but: but: what do I want to see that writer DO exactly? And how do I judge if they've done it well or not? Whoever’s writing GHOST RIDER is not going to get me to care. I’m going to care about Mr. Rider and his problems? I got my own problems, sister.

Straw into gold, though. Well, it's part of the big ruddy myth of the whole thing now, wot? Alan Moore took SWAMP THING and he- or no, Frank Miller took DAREDEVIL and he-- or no, when all hope was lost, Mark Waid took THE FLASH and he...

“Straw into gold” is an expression from the fairy tale RUMPLESTILTSKIN. In the fairy tale, Rumplestiltskin (or Grigrigredinmenufretin as he's known in France) turns straw to gold in order to impress a girl. He does it over and over and over for her, until she doesn't need gold anymore. She marries some other guy; tells him to fuck himself. He ends up ripping himself into two. I'm leaving out some parts (Rumplestiltskin's usually the bad guy of the story) but...

See: I could write a review of GHOST RIDER but here's what I find interesting tonight. It isn't the review of GHOST RIDER I would write. It's... it's the extent to which that review would be inherently dishonest, completely dishonest, totally dishonest. As revealed by, e.g., a review of 52 FIVE BIBLES OF CRIME LESSONS (FOR A FILM) I could write.

It's funny; I read this Don MacPherson "where is the early Brian Michael Bendis; early Bendis rules; late Bendis drools" piece today that got linked to here and there— the author was confused why he liked Bendis’s early stuff but not so much the later stuff...

My answer incorporates Grigrigredinmenufretin...

Uhm...

So, you guys like AD&D? It's more advanced than regular D&D.


V.

But fuck it, let's just keep rambling on: the GHOST RIDER review would also be dishonest because of the COMBAT KELLY review as set forth in section III, supra.

Marvel’s got a character named Galactus. Big fucking ruddy space-giant eats planets, wot? Not because he’s evil— fool just has this fucking crazy-ass hunger for planets that can never be satisfied. Some people look at the character as metaphor for capitalism or the Cuban Missile Crisis or environmental degradation. I like when he’s seen as a metaphor for fans the most.

Every month, 22 pages; the fans just keep coming and coming, and they’re never satisfied. They just eat and eat and eat, and nothing ever satisfies them. At the end of that first story, Galactus is only beaten because Mr. Fantastic waves the Ultimate Nullifier in his face-- "Here's some shiny New Bullshit to obsess over. Feel better?" Like jiggling car keyes in front of a baby!

Galactus is kind of like one of those rock songs about how the road’s hard, but some big-haired girl in Acid Wash jeans tragic enough to blow the bassist from WHITE LION makes it all worth it.

It's just the all-consuming hunger.

I’m always amused when critics talk about reading ESSENTIAL volumes—I love those too, guilty as charged, but I love that thing of: “Comic XYZ reflects a poor sense of pacing, composition and panel construction, with a narrative that frequently devolves into poorly crafted and meandering subplots. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read 800 pages of the ESSENTIAL CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS. Don't bother me-- I'm eating.”

I could write a big fancy-pants review of GHOST RIDER— sometimes it has this totally cool vibe, it’s got moves, but sometimes it’s going on and on about Mr. Rider’s origin which I don’t understand even a little; art’s *rad* though. Or 52 MATH LESSONS OF THE BIBLE (WE SALUTE YOU)... there's a nice scene set outside, in the snow...

But if the very next thing I read is COMBAT KELLY AND THE DEADLY DOZEN...


It's hard to fake sincerity once the Achilles tendons come out.

Labels: Abhay

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I just want to say, for figuring out how to give us a jump and for doing the general site maintenance, I just want to say that Kate McMillan is awesome. Yay! for her!

Kate's also set up some Project Wonderful ad templates for the site, so if you want to advertise on the Savage Critic, that's now an option.

Thanks again, Kate!!

-B Click Here to Read More...

Well, my lesson from Wondercon was “Never believe anything Bill Willingham says.” What was yours?

Also, it's time to test some exciting new potential technology. If all goes well, you'll have to click through to read my reviews for this week. If it doesn't, then I'll have to fix that later somehow... (If it does work, it's all Kate's doing, by the way).



AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #551: This really has settled into a strange middle ground, in terms of quality; it’s always just Okay, but in a weirdly comforting way, as if it wouldn’t make sense for it to be any better than that and on a mostly-weekly basis. Marc Guggenheim seems more self-conscious about the retro tone of the book (Those narrative introductions to each of his issues are just the wrong side of annoyingly smug parody), but he really does his best to make it work. Sal Larocca’s art has almost been good as well, but really, I’m just waiting to see the Marcos Martin issues that’ve just been solicited at this point…

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #10: Here’s hoping that the rumors of the removal of Mark Waid from this series are wrong, or at least miss out some kind of “and then he gets given a book called Mark Waid’s Awesome Superhero Book Where He Can Do Whatever He Wants” qualifier. Yet again, this is a wonderfully solid, simple reminder of not only why these characters are awesome (Superman traveling through time as if it isn’t such a big deal? That’s the kind of Superman I want to read more of), but how well done short stories can be – the disguised anthology format that the last couple of issues have taken on have been Very Good, and I could happily read this kind of thing for a long time, thank you very much.

HULK #2: I wanted to dislike this much more than I did, I have to admit. Especially when it came to that “Oh, the humanity!” page (which, by the way, what the fuck?). But… I don’t know. Maybe it was a moment of weakness, maybe it was the “Hey, Rick Jones isn’t the Hulk after all… he’s the new Abomination! Called A-Bomb!” reveal, maybe it was Ed McGuinness doing big and bold art again… I just bought into the sheer dumb action of this much more than I had the first issue. It’ll never be the kind of comic that will make you think, but it’s a Hulk comic – maybe smashing and beating up on Iron Man is all you need from that, really. A guilty, but genuine, Good.

THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST: ORSON RANDALL AND THE GREEN MIST OF DEATH: Whereas this was… Okay, and disappointingly so, at that. Perhaps my brain got mixed up and my usual Matt Fraction love got transferred to Jeph Loeb this week, because this seemed like a hastily put-together, familiar story that didn’t have the usual spark that the book has had in the past. The art was uneven, as well; Dragotta/Allred and Russ Heath provided something with personality, while Lewis LaRosa and Mitch Breitweiser’s work was sluggish and generic in comparison. Every now and again, I feel like I screwed up in reading a book because I disliked it, and this is one of those books – Was it really as disappointing as I felt, or should I take another look at it?

JENNA JAMESON'S SHADOW HUNTER #1: This book, meanwhile, was just plain Crap. It’s actually not as crap as it could’ve been, because of the serviceable art and nice coloring, but the plot is generic and the scripting horrific. The worst part about the whole thing, though, is that it’s just bad; I’d wanted something so bad that I could laugh at it, or rant about it, or have some reaction beyond “Well, that sucked.” What has the world come to if I can’t even say that about a Jenna Jameson comic?

MIGHTY AVENGERS #9: Okay, I get that comics are a visual medium and all, but holy motherfreakin’ spit (as Luke Cage would probably say), this book was so lightweight as to almost be insubstantial. Page after page after page of silent double-page spreads of the Avengers fighting generic bad guys, followed by an almost-silent struggle between Iron Man and Doctor Doom that made both of them seem like the most boring comic characters ever created, add up to an issue that felt less like Brian Michael Bendis was thinking “I’m going to give Mark Bagley a chance to shine” – especially because, well, he doesn’t, here. He’s never been the kind of artist who excels in the busy punching that this issue demands from him, and his double-page spreads are just confusing to the eye, with no dynamism or excitement coming from them – but was, instead, rushing to get the issue finished superfast because of a bet or something. That feeling is added to by the plot, which is literally this: “The Avengers attack Dr. Doom’s castle. Iron Man wrestles Dr. Doom, and in the process, accidentally activates a time machine, throwing both of them back in time. The end.” With a lack of dialogue (or, for that matter, any kind of writerly polish) on top of that bare plot – seriously, this review may have more words in it than there are in the dialogue of the entire issue – the whole thing stands out as much more hacked-out than either of the creators involved normally produce. Really, terribly Awful.

THE SPIRIT #14: Aaaaaaand with the addition of a new creative team, the series suddenly reads like the Will Eisner grave-robbing that we were all worried about in the first place. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the book as such, but there’s no reason for it to exist – the story isn’t particularly entertaining, it’s not particularly stylish (in fact, coming after the Darwyn Cooke issues, it’s almost embarrassingly dull), and it feels as if the only reasons it exists are copyright-related. Eh.

Coming tomorrow: Doctor Who! Project Superpowers #1, which has the strangest corporate synergy that I’ve seen in quite some time! And some other books that I’ll probably not have time to read because I bought four Essentials phone books at the convention and currently think that it’s the early 1980s right now (“Dazzler? For $10! I’ll take it!” Oh dear...)

Labels: Graeme

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For the handful of you interested in the back-and-forth over the BookScan issue, I want to point you to Heidi's post, as well as Dirk's first and second sallies.

For those of you only here for the reviews, you can stop reading now. In fact, I'd really urge you to!

If I have edited this properly, it continues after the jump:



For whatever it is worth, I agree nearly 100% with Heidi: my biases are both obvious, (and directly stated in the original piece!) -- I believe in the Direct Market (as a concept, if not, necessarily, in the specific individual on-the-ground iteration) to be a far superior method of selling comics for the simple reason that a specialist, with a specialist's passion, is more likely to be able to do a superlative job in selling a specialty product than a generalist. That would seem to me to be fairly self-evident.

(Does this mean that ALL DM stores are going to be better than selling comics than ALL bookstores? No, of course not -- there are always going to be ends of the curve in either model which out/under-perform their opposite number)

I want to believe that I've been very specific and very exacting both about my biases, as well as the usefulness of the specific numbers. Certainly I went into great detail about how the numbers could be wrong and what they do and do not measure; part of the problem may be that on the internet (and who knows, maybe in life, in general, but we can track it on the internet...) people see what they want to see.

Look, I like me some "art comics", when a new EIGHTBALL or OPTIC NERVE comes out, its usually a Top 10 book for Comix Experience, but the fandom/internet meme/hope of "if only we get into the bookstores, then they'll all suddenly buy everything I think is good" really doesn't seem to be the case. I wanted to believe it too!

But let's stay on target when we look at retail sales -- let's not conflate them with other channels, let's not take anecdote as fact, and let's try not to move the Goalposts in the middle of the game.

By way of example, I point to Dirk's latest, where all of a sudden he's pointing to prose books; what does that have to do with anything? It should be pretty obvious that the math involved for both the publisher and especially the creator is very very different between prose and comics; the breakeven point for one is certainly very different from the other. I should know, I have a prose book in print, and I was involved in setting the print run, and the costs thereof; and I've got a pretty good idea of the physical printing costs of comics, and one is a fraction of the other.

Here's what I said (that Dirk is even quoting directly!):


“Art Comics”, with the exception of a tiny handful of “anointed” books, do not appear to be selling in the bookstore environment. Remember that BookScan includes Amazon, and all major internet retailers as well.

It further seems to me that with approximately 7500 BookScan reporting venues, this indicates that most book stores aren’t even bothering to stock “Art comics” in the first place.



And this seems to be a fairly unassailable fact in relationship to what BookScan reports -- with ~7500 venues (including the majority of the internet sales picture) if you're moving under 4400 copies that means that you're either not being stocked in the first place OR that the audience there isn't especially interested in that material OR both. For the record, I strongly suspect the answer is actually #1, that IF that material was stocked and supported and racked it would probably sell better.

The Elephant in the Room, to me, is Amazon -- Amazon is "bias neutral" in my opinion; that is that each book "displayed" at Amazon is basically equivalent to each other, and that "finding" a book on their "shelves" is a trivial matter, not influenced by physical "racking" decisions. It seems to me that if there was a deep, wide-spread market crying out for "art comics" material that Amazon would be capturing those sales in a pretty significant fashion, as Amazon is "the world's largest comics store". Yet THEY DON'T APPEAR TO BE capturing these sales in any significant fashion.

I have no problem with differing conclusions about the data -- in fact, I specifically asked for it -- but, please, let's not move the goalposts by suddenly claiming that "Oh well, a small publishing house doesn't NEED to sell as many copies", as if that were even slightly relevant to matter at hand. NO ONE said anything about whether the material is PROFITABLE or not, just that it doesn't appear to be selling in significant quantities in the bookstore environment, as far as that environment can be tracked (with all of the caveats and weaknesses of the numbers inherent in that tracking), relative to other comics material. Given the extant data, that appears to be true. If there's OTHER data to show otherwise, I'm sure that everyone would be happy to see that, but since we can't, we can only analyze what we have.

There's a larger issue here, and it is one that Robert Scott has brought up several times -- without marketing and advertising and general publisher support, it is very difficult for any material of any stripe or style or form or content to find its audience without direct intervention by the sellers of the book, be they DM or "bookstores". But that's almost certainly a topic for another day.

This will, hopefully, be my last comment on this (until it is time to write about the '08 numbers)!

-B

PS: to ADD: BONE is now "art comix"?! Buh-wha--?!?

Labels: BookScan, Brian, retailing

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One of the most widespread genres in webcomics is fantasy, specifically that swords-and-sorcery sub-genre usually associated with RPGs (ie: DUNGEONS & DRAGONS). Interestingly enough, many of those webcomics (including all the series we'll be looking at today) have a decidedly subversive tone to them: they poke fun at conventions, they turn basic tropes on their heads, they break the fourth wall with a wink and a nudge. It's probably a reaction to the prominence of fantasy in the mainstream, particularly "serious" fantasy like LORD OF THE RINGS and HARRY POTTER (you have to wonder what Mel Brooks would've done had he picked Tolkien's trilogy to parody rather than STAR WARS or ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES) - but that reaction leads to a whole multitude of stories that work with, and against, the formula.



LOOKING FOR GROUP by Ryan Sohmer and Lar Desouza is a basic "inversion" scenario - Cale'anon, the only good member of a wholly evil race, falls in with a trio of amoral killers on some sort of ill-defined quest. Despite his heroic intentions, Cale keeps stumbling into situations where he does more harm than good. It's comedy, of course, playing on the protagonist's continual mortification at the slaughter and mayhem, whereas his allies are decidedly less troubled. It starts out rather well, though Sohmer and Desouza lost me mid-second issue, when the story takes a more serious turn at depicting an internal Elvish conflict. The quips keep on coming, but the transition didn't really work for me.

Tarol Hunt's GOBLINS takes a different approach. Rather than deal with alignments (good, evil, lawful, chaotic, etc.), what's inverted here is the racial subtext built into the generic RPG world. Our protagonists are, as the title suggests, goblins - typically cast as the cannon fodder of the fantasy realm. Ironically, this doesn't change just because the story is about goblins: they're totally out of their league, clearly outmatched by "proper" adventurers. And I think that's a big part of why they're so sympathetic: they're the underdogs fighting the good fight, and despite their "monstrosity", their heroism is never questioned. The series does have one rather major flaw: unlike LOOKING FOR GROUP, which made a (hasty) shift from humor to serious adventuring, GOBLINS vacillates erratically between the two. One moment, we're all having a good laugh at stupid barbarians, the next we have to watch as a childlike protagonist is tortured horribly. It can be difficult to reconcile these extremes, all the moreso because there's no real transition between sequences: you're just snapped back and forth. The end result is somewhat paradoxical, because the world Hunt constructs is full of wonder (especially since you're viewing it through goblin eyes), but it's also a world where very bad things can happen to weak and defenseless people, without any mitigating effect.

If you're looking for consistency, I highly recommend Rich Burlew's ORDER OF THE STICK, one of the best examples of fantasy subversion - but beyond that, it's also an excellent webcomic in itself. Because there's more to this series than the jokes and the play on RPG rules and "mystical artifacts" - ORDER OF THE STICK is a true epic, offering a wide array of story elements such as romance, action, humor even during heroic confrontations, and a war worthy of Peter Jackson. Burlew should also be commended for his tight story structure: each phase of the Order's adventures reads like a novel in a series of novels, and elements from an earlier "book" (ie: the Linear Guild) recur in later stages to have real impact on the storyline. And while some might find the stick-figure-esque artwork simplistic, I actually think it's all the more effective given the story Burlew's telling - and, of course, there can be intricacy even in simplicity, which is precisely what I find here. ORDER OF THE STICK is one of my favorite webcomics, and with good reason.

I only recently discovered YET ANOTHER FANTASY GAMER COMIC by Rich Morris, and despite the title, this strip has some unique qualities when lined up with the other webcomics featured here. For example, in contrast to the other series, YET ANOTHER FANTASY GAMER COMIC has no central character(s): it's an ensemble piece styled on an Arabian Nights pattern where every storyline leads to the next tale, which may be set in a different place with a completely different protagonist. So what starts out as the romance of Bob and Gren smoothly transitions to Arachne and Drow politics, then we get Mrs. Bloodhand's story segueing directly into her son's tale. The overall narrative is always in motion, maneuvering very deftly between these "character clusters". As with ORDER OF THE STICK, I should make a note of the artwork - YET ANOTHER FANTASY GAMER COMIC relies primarily on pencil-based art, so if you're put off by that sort of thing, you might want to skip it over... though you'd be missing out on a great series.

From its very first page, Rob Balder's and Jamie Noguchi's ERFWORLD stood out as something... different. I can honestly say I've never seen a creation myth attributed to a trio of giant Elvii before, or a Tome of AOL. It's an adorable series, reductive in that it infantilizes RPG conventions - necromancy is referred to as Croakamancy, the local warlord calls himself Stanley the Tool after the divine hammer he wields (which just happens to look like a child's toy), dragons are referred to as Dwagons, and the artwork reminds me of chibi (well, minus the enormous eyes). Aside from being so damned cute, ERFWORLD has more than a touch of the surreal to it, which is actually unusual in that most fantasy webcomics I've seen take a very realistic approach to the worlds they create. So this is a fun, refreshing deviation from the norm.

Tom Siddell's GUNNERKRIGG COURT uses surreality much along the same lines, both in the artwork and the story: the titular Court is a boarding school that, in terms of visual design, serves as the anti-Hogwarts (which may explain, in part, my affinity for it) - it's dark, it's huge, there are subtly threatening mysteries around every corner. But the surreal feeling derives from the fact that no one, not even newcomer Antimony Carver, seems bothered by things like minotaurs, demons and robots. Also atypical is the setting: where other fantasy writers would put a great deal of effort into constructing an entire world to accomodate their protagonists, GUNNERKRIGG COURT is very centralized - the various chapters all take place either on the grounds or in the immediate vicinity (though, as it turns out, there's no shortage of nooks and crannies to explore within the Court itself. I also appreciated the subdued tone here, as opposed to the pomp and noise surrounding the world of HARRY POTTER - it feels more genuine, somehow, in the absence of people shrieking about Quidditch and magic beans.

And finally, technical notes:

* LOOKING FOR GROUP is ongoing, in color, currently at 125 pages. It updates every Monday and Thursday and its archive is organized by issues, each of which numbers around 30 pages.

* GOBLINS is ongoing, starting in black and white for two months before moving to full color. The series began in June of 2005 and updates erratically. Its archive divides the series into three books (so far), with additional divisions highlighting various "chapters" in the story.

* ORDER OF THE STICK is ongoing, in color, currently at 533 pages. The archive contains only a list of strips without any specific division, but the printed editions separate the series thus far into three books: strips 1-121, 122-300 and 301-484. It updates three times a week, more or less at random.

* YET ANOTHER FANTASY GAMER COMIC is ongoing, in black and white (with the occasional color strip). The series began in May 2006 and updates on a daily basis. The earliest strips in the archive are organized according to the featured characters, but this eventually gives way to individual titles per strip.

* ERFWORLD is ongoing, in color, currently at 96 pages. It updates Tuesdays and Saturdays. Like ORDER OF THE STICK, the archive doesn't divide the strips by story, though in this case it's probably because Balder and Noguchi are still on their first "book".

* GUNNERKRIGG COURT is ongoing, in color, currently at 17 chapters. It updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The archive features chapter and page division; additionally, each chapter ends with a bonus page or two featuring less-discussed aspects of the Court's world.

Labels: Diana

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Drop your glasses, shake your asses. My column on comic books has returned.


THE KILLER: HIDESHI HINO



Here's our man, manga artist, filmmaker and swordplay aficionado Hideshi Hino. He is a living legend of Japanese horror fiction, manga in particular. Here we see him dressed as every comics artist is at some point, often on the day their spouse decides to leave them, but Hino belongs in such garb.

Trouble, as you might suspect, runs through his blood.



I. Kill Your Family

Hino was born in Manchuria in 1946, in the midst of the post-WWII twilight of Japan's occupation. His grandfather, whom he did not know, was a yakuza, the head of a gambling ring, and not above using his kids as lookouts for the police. But Hino's father had become a railroad worker by the time of the boy's birth, facilitating the flight of Japanese from the region.

The family soon reached Japan on their own, where the father became a metal craftsman, and the son grew. Hino decided at a young age to become a manga artist, in the wake of the 1959 debut of Sanpei Shirato's Ninja Bugeichô (Chronicle of a Ninja's Military Accomplishments), a sprawling action comic boasting relatively realistic art and a sharp, class-conscious political awareness. The boy took early inspiration from the famously surreal children's mangaka Shigeru Sugiura, and later became influenced by alternative manga godfather Yoshiharu Tsuge. The eventual result:



Hino's earliest works appeared in the late '60s, in arty, progressive manga anthologies like Garo (named for a Shirato character) and COM (founded by Osamu Tezuka), but he soon made horror his forte; his first such work was 1969's Zoroku's Strange Disease, a Ray Bradbury-inspired fable about a mentally-challenged recluse whose body erupts into "rainbow-colored neoplasm," much to the revulsion of everyone in the nearby village. Zoroku is cast out, forced to live by eating maggot-strewn animal carcasses; his boils explode in the rainy season, and he vomits rainbows of ooze. But the colors of his secretions are so vivid that he uses them to paint wonderful, horrible pictures, and he eventually transforms into a turtle with a magnificent color shell and bleeding eyes, finally abandoning human society altogether.

It was a popular story, and ran in a children's anthology, where I suppose neoplasm was big. Hino kept at it, his visual style rotting into a warped spin on loose, fat-faced kid appeal comics. Blood and pus would often drip or spray, and bodily mutation became a fixation. The genre would eventually make him famous, and his works would be kept in print and adapted to film, and all that. He made a lot of stuff.

To be blunt, some of Hino's miscellaneous horror stories, from what I've read, are uninspired space filler; that's how it goes for all the Japanese genre specialists who've had the honor of getting lots of work released in English. And I haven't even gotten to a lot of Hino's more current material, post-'90s stuff, but I've read that it gets very poor indeed - lots of straining to match his round, dripping, kiddie-comics-gone-bad style to 'mainstream' demands (or at least hiring assistants to do so), lots of distracting computer effects and recycled, uninspired plots. Even some of his prime period stuff is loud, stretched-out and formulaic.



Yet the best of Hino begs some telling comparisons with his peers. For example, unlike the early works of fellow future horror manga legend Kazuo Umezu (of The Drifting Classroom), which are sprinkled with affirmations of traditional gender and social roles via normal people's struggles against the weird, many of Hino's comics presented the unusual or fantastic as something people needed to cope with in order to drag some happiness, however fleeting, out of life. A woman might give birth to a lizard, one that grows to eat birds and dogs, and, ok sure, maybe the face of the neighbors' kid, but it's always clear that it's better for the citizens of Hino's world to get the fuck over themselves and adapt to the ugly and strange nature of the world.

Elements of autobiography sometimes seep in. Common to some of Hino's stories is an artist character -- a painter, mangaka, whatever -- who delights in sick and terrible things. Sometimes he is explicitly identified as Hino himself, and sometimes he is explicitly identified as someone other than Hino, but he's always understood to be at least an awful alter ego.

In the early '70s story A Lullaby from Hell, perhaps the character's first appearance, Hino (as he's identified) boasts of his many ugly pets and terrible items. He confesses to having been "a sickly, depressing kid," and tells us about his brutal father, demented mother and gangster brother, and his early love for torturing animals and playing make-believe games in which he'd command devils from Hell to devour and disembowel crucified souls. The magic of Hino's work is in seeing his lil' googly-eyed kid self tittering "tee hee hee... heh heh heh..." in front of a gigantic heap of bloody corpses, all drawn in a friendly, almost doodled style.


(right-to-left, people!)

Young Hino then discovers he has the power to imagine the means of death for anyone he doesn't like, and have his wishes come true (typical child fantasy; shades of Death Note too). Life becomes grand, because Hideshi Hino fucking hates humanity; Mom plunges into a sewer, Dad gets ground into mush at the factory (economic miracle!), Bro is stabbed in a fight, a rival comics artist is struck by lightning, a mean editor is banked off a speeding car into the path of an oncoming steamroller... what delight! The story ends with Our Author crowing about how he now has plenty of time to draw comics, and declaring that you, the reader, will die in three days since you've learned the secret to success in comics.

"Die. Die! Fall. Fall!!

"Fall down to the bottom of the Hell! Fall!"

This mix of self-parody, self-pity, fantastical quasi-autobiography and pure, full-bore hate would inform other works of Hino's.

In 1982, he would remake and expand A Lullaby from Hell into a full-length book, perhaps his masterpiece, Panorama of Hell.

II. Kill Your Work

But hey, you don't need to take my word for all this; believe it or not, Hino is one of the most-published of 'classic' manga artists in English-speaking environs. First and foremost, DH Publishing has a 14-volume series of books dedicated to the artist, Hino Horror, from 2004.



In 2006, Dark Horse released its own collection of Hino shorts, Lullabies from Hell, containing all the stories I've mentioned above.



Just last year, Last Gasp brought over a nice hardcover collection of color stories and images, The Art of Hideshi Hino.



And that's just the newer stuff. The comics stuff.

Really -- and I hope you don't mind a little detour here -- if anything propelled Hino into the cult figure stratosphere, it was a movie that initially didn't even bear his name.

Have you heard of Guinea Pig?

Don't click this. It's gross!

III. Kill Your Audience

I like to imagine it was a sunny, breezy day in 1985, birds chirping and children laughing, when Hino was approached by producer Satoru Ogura with the idea of making snuff movies. Fake snuff movies, of course, but vhs quickies that would employ the most advanced makeup effects (and the least advanced filmmaking technique) to blur the line as much as possible. There would be no credits, at least not on the first release, and the ad campaign would pretend that the material actually was found footage of some young lady getting murdered, on video, over the course of an hour or so.

Ogura was an admirer of Hino's manga, and figured he'd be up for a little creative filmmaking; he was right. But little did Hino know he was to be involved in a grand adventure, involving fame, money and Two and a Half Men cutup Charlie Sheen.



There isn't much to say about the initial pair of Guinea Pig movies; Ogura himself created the first, Devil's Experiment, and Hino the second, Flower of Flesh and Blood. They are literally nothing more than footage of a pretty girl being tortured, disfigured, dismembered, etc., until she is dead. The tapes did very well upon their 1985 release; Hino's entry, depicting one of his typical collector characters ritualistic chopping and carving of a body into the blossom of its subtitle, was supposedly was among the top 10 best-selling cassettes in the nation for two months.

As Hino told interviewer Tomo Machiyama in The Comics Journal Special Edition Vol. 5 2005:

"I really wanted to shock everybody with Guinea Pig. I wanted people to remember who I was and what my talents were, and take them by storm."

The series moved to a larger publisher after the first two episodes, and began to adopt a more typical 'horror movie' approach. Hino returned for the 1988 fourth installment, Mermaid in a Manhole, which is filled to the brim with his pet themes. The plot concerns an even more typical Hino stand-in artist character, who one day discovers a living, wounded, diseased mermaid down deep in the sewers.

In what functions as an extended callback to Hino's very first horror comic, the Zoroku fable described above, the artist takes the mermaid back to his studio and, at her request, uses the liquid hues of her rapidly decomposing body to paint her portrait; the self-absorption of Hino's original comic is thus transformed into a (somewhat) more mature reflection on artists striving to capture a fleeting beauty in their work, even as the world falls toward ugliness as they labor.

Lots of sticky effects too.



Things went well, all things considered. The series weathered the infamous 1989 media frenzy following the Tsutomo Miyazaki case, the so-called Otaku Murders, when one of the later volumes of the series was found along with all the anime and porno in Miyazaki's apartment. A 'best-of' compilation was created in 1991, various copies found their way into the Western world... it was all going well until Charlie Sheen got involved.

There's multiple versions of this story, as you might suspect. I'm going off the official R1 dvd history page (every movie in the world is out on R1 dvd, by the way, possibly including that home video of my dad pretending to be Max Headroom that he made when I was five). It so happened that one day Mr. Sheen came across a splatter movie compilation tape assembled by Chas. Balun of the horror magazine Deep Red; the action kicked off with Hino's Flower of Flesh and Blood. No doubt left agog at Hino's consummate artistry, the Hot Shots star mistook the footage for a genuine no kidding for-reals snuff film produced in the savage land of Japan, where life is cheap, and promptly contacted the MPAA (I bet they even refused it an 'R'!), which then summoned the FBI.

Luckily, the feds soon puzzled out that the movie was only fiction, possibly due to the existence of a 1986 'making of' documentary; snuff movies theoretically shouldn't have a lot of behind-the-scenes scoop available. Or maybe they noticed that Flower of Flesh and Blood climaxes with the girl's head sproooiiinging off her shoulders and bouncing against a wall.

In the above-mentioned Journal interview, Hino notes that he was never contacted by the FBI, although he would have gone to the US to chat if asked. Maybe he could have met Charlie Sheen.

But what to make of Hino? All this shock, mayhem (in the legal sense), slime and pitiable longing.

There was, at one time, a desperate culmination.

IV. Kill Yourself

So, who remembers the manga affairs of Blast Books? Covers designed left-to-right, contents produced right-to-left? They had three Hino-related releases, which I'll present in reverse order.

In 1996, a Hino story (Laughing Ball, 1991) was featured in the excellent, Kevin Quigley-edited anthology Comics Underground Japan, which I'd urge you to find a copy of. It's a great sampler of the 'alternative' manga scene circa 1985-92, and Suehiro Maruo's Planet of the Jap is probably one of my favorite short manga stories ever.



In 1995, Blast released a standalone Hino book from 1982, Hell Baby, the tale of a deformed child's adventures. I haven't read it, but I suspect most of Hino's common themes are in play.



But the first of Blast's Hino releases was the crucial one. It came out in 1989, 198 pages, with an English adaptation co-written by Screaming Mad George(!!). It's way out of print; I found a cover price $9.95 copy sitting forlornly in a comic shop. Rescue this if you see it:



Panorama of Hell is one of the oddest manga I've ever read. It's the sort of thing I can't imagine being released to the general public outside of a culture where comics stand with prose novels as popular literature, therefore allowing even small publishers wide access to the public.

Hino was in a bad way in 1982. Anthology work had dried up for an artist like him. He was out of money, and releasing books mainly through cut-rate publishers. He suspected the horror genre was not long for the comics world. He decided that Panorama of Hell would be his final statement, his farewell. He supposedly drew it quickly, in a booze-soaked, sleep-deprived binge. As I've mentioned, it's a remake of an earlier short story; it's also inspired by a 1918 short story from literary giant Ryunosuke Akutagawa. But it reads like a summary of everything.



As expected, the Artist narrates. He's not Hino this time; he actually mentions that his daughter is a fan of Hino's comics. And for the first 1/4 of the story, he does absolutely nothing but detail the mechanics of his strange world, and the interests of his family. He lives in an awful, violent Japan, painting pictures of it with his own blood and puke; a guillotine atop his home cuts the heads off people, the heads sent down a railroad, blood flowers blooming from the spilled gore. The bodies are burned in huge ovens, leaping and dancing as they crisp, until they go to the graveyard, rising up at night to wear ruined animal heads hung on crosses. And etc. And etc.

Hino's art is at its best here, oscillating between accomplished cartoon renderings, illustrational flourishes and furious scratched and dotted depictions of violence and gore. There is hardly a page in this book without violence or bloodshed; it is relentless, and its endless (yet logical!) opening chain of gruesome social mechanics make it seem like the rantings of an obsessive-compulsive after too much splatterpunk, although its ritual nature joins it to Flower of Flesh and Blood in the Hino catalog. It doesn't help when the Artist reveals how he loves to lick his happy children when they come in from collecting eyeballs for his collection, or how his wife runs a tavern for the headless walking dead, feeding them by carving mouths into their stumpy necks.



However, intent slowly reveals itself. There's hints early on -- one of the Artist's kids drawing a picture of men fighting over food, the state execution flavor of the beheadings -- but things really kick into gear when the Artist offers an account of his family history, one that plunges the story into surreal fantasy autobiography.

The Artist's grandfather was a yakuza and a gambler, prone to big winnings, bigger losses, and violent sex with grandma. When rivals cut him open on the road, piles of dice spill from his guts. The Artist's father moved to Manchuria, after a harsh childhood; in 1945, a ray from the bombing of Hiroshima struck his wife, portending the Artist's birth ("I was born the son of a defeated invader of that country of hell..."). The couple and their young child fled Manchuria after the War, witnessing death and suffering on the road, blood flowers blooming, driving the woman mad.

You see? Slowly, surely, the story coheres into parallel account of Hino's family history, kissed by evil magic; all the pain is encoded. I don't know if Hino's brother was a driven street fighter, like the Artist's is here, though I know from the Journal interview that he wasn't beaten into a coma and buried in the snow; no, he fell from a motorcycle and went into a coma. And he was in bad shape when he woke up, and the Artist's brother literally transforms into a moaning blob of flesh. After that little reminisce, the plot grinds to a halt for two solid pages of the Artist facing the reader, ripping his hair out, and screaming, screaming about how he all he knew how to do was draw, and how he couldn't help his brother out.

The comic adopts a gale force of psychological accumulation; you can't tear your eyes away from the confessions. There's a risk in trying to learn from these tales the Artist tells, because we don't know too much of Hino. Was his mother really mentally ill? Did his father truly hit him a lot? Even the broadest strokes seem primed to scratch against the reader, like when the Artist as a child is hung upside-down and caned by his mother, her breasts spilling from her robe, and he admits to learning ecstasy from pain. For further Mommy Issues, see Hino Horror Vol. 1: The Red Snake.



Eventually, the plot to A Lullaby from Hell kicks in, this time with the young Artist molding a clay model of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud, naming it the Emperor of Hell, dousing it in animal blood and wishing for his enemies to die; it works, and provides the finest inspiration for his hellish paintings. The boy grows, and the Artist becomes more ambitious: ocean disasters, train wrecks, plane crashes, the Falklands War - our man is behind them all. And it turns out we're just in time to witness is greatest, present work, the creation of the Panorama of Hell through the simultaneous detonation of all the world's nuclear weapons! Fuck!

What follows can best be described as a full-scale nervous breakdown on the comics page. The Artists needs as much human blood as possible to make his dreams come true, so he graps an axe and hacks up his family - but his wife is only a mannequin, his children dolls, his brother a sleeping hog. Sample lines from one page:

"Fucking hell!"

"Hell!"

"Hell!"

"Gasp... gasp..."

"Brother!"

He runs outside and hacks down a wall he's never seen the other side of. He's then confronted with a gaping female mouth on the horizon -- like a pair of Rolling Stones hot lips -- with a glowing bridge issuing from his maw over a black sea of blood and wailing bodies. A giant revolving lantern rises from the sea, containing his whole family history, then exploding into a drenching blast of gore. The Artist vomits, declares nuclear destruction to be his true father, and vows to be the last person left on Earth to paint the awesome beauty of annihilation. And he turns toward the reader, finger pointing:

"You will die!"

"You and you and you will die!"

"He will die, and she will die, and you will die!"

"You will all die!"

And he wheels back on the glowing bridge, fading into the ash snowfall of the crematorium, and flings his axe toward the reader, drawing closer... closer... closer...

Until it's The End.



I hope my description has given you a sense of what this book is like, although there's no substitute for reading it, if you can track it down. It is a work of supreme misanthropy, and astonishing intimacy. It is political, matching up colorized details of the author's troubled life with the violence that's marked his nation since the end of its empire-building ambition. The Artist is a child of defeat, and no economic revival can hide the tradition of cruelty that continues in homes and minds.

If not a panorama, it is a map of Hell: the mental state of a proud, lost native of a lost country, guilty that all he can do is collect the elements of a collective past -- all abuses -- and make some art to show the world how a man feels about it. Pity not Hino, here - lament his circumstances, and try to dodge the twirling blade.

Hino wouldn't work in comics again until 1985, the year of Guinea Pig.

"There was still something left inside me," he told Machiyama, in the Journal.

And the atrocity exhibition, mental blood flooding it, opened once again.

Labels: Jog

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Another year, another WonderCon done... I'll have some reviews this week, once I've recovered.

This is the largest shipment (in terms of amount of titles) in quite some time... I'm personally most excited about RASL, I think.

2000 AD #1571
2000 AD #1572
A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #75 (A)
ACTION COMICS #862
ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #9
AMELIA RULES #19
ANT UNLEASHED #3
ARMY @ LOVE #12
AUTHORITY PRIME #5 (OF 6)
BART SIMPSON COMICS #40
BATMAN #674
BETTY #172
BLACK PANTHER ANNUAL #1
BLUE BEETLE #24
CAPTAIN AMERICA #35
CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #42
CIRCLE #4
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 9
CRIME BIBLE THE FIVE LESSONS OF BLOOD #5 (OF 5)
CRIMINAL 2 #1
CROSSING MIDNIGHT #16
DAN DARE #4 (OF 7) FABRY CVR
DAREDEVIL #105
DEADRIDER #2 (OF 4)
DEATHBLOW #9
DOCTOR WHO #1
ELEPHANTMEN WAR TOYS #2 (OF 3)
ENGINEER #2 (OF 4)
FABLES #70
FALL OF CTHULHU CVR A #10
FALLEN ANGEL IDW #24
FEARLESS #4 (OF 4)
GRAVEL #1 WRAP CVR
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #22
GRIMM FAIRY TALES RETURN TO WONDERLAND #6 (OF 6)
HELLBLAZER #241
HOPE FALLS #4 (OF 5) KUDRANSKI CVR A
HOUSE OF M AVENGERS #5 (OF 5)
HYBRID BASTARDS #2 (OF 3)
INDIA AUTHENTIC #10 PARASHURAM
JACK OF FABLES #20
JLA CLASSIFIED #53
JSA CLASSIFIED #35
JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #268
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #13
KICK ASS #1
LAZARUS #3 (OF 3)
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #39
MANY ADVENTURES OF MIRANDA MERCURY #295 (OF 300)
MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #33
MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN #10
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED PICTURE DORIAN GRAY #3 (OF 6)
MARVEL ZOMBIES 2 #5 (OF 5)
MISERICORDIA #2 (OF 11)
MOUSE GUARD WINTER 1152 #3 (OF 6)
NARCOPOLIS #2
NEARLY INFAMOUS ZANGO #1
NEOZOIC #3
NEW WARRIORS #9
NEXUS #100 SPACE OPERA ACT 2 OF 4 (RES)
PALS N GALS DOUBLE DIGEST #119
PROJECT SUPERPOWERS #1 Of(6)
PROOF #5
PS238 #29
RASL #1
REX LIBRIS #10
ROGUE ANGEL TELLER OF TALES #1
ROPEBURN #1
SECRET HISTORY BOOK FIVE
SEDUCTIONS
SHARK-MAN #2
SHE-HULK 2 #26
SOME NEW KIND OF SLAUGHTER #2 (OF 4)
SPIDER-MAN WITH GREAT POWER #2 (OF 5)
STAR TREK ALIENS SPOTLIGHT ROMULANS
STAR WARS LEGACY #20
STRANDED #2
TEEN TITANS #56
TEEN TITANS GO #52
THOR #6
THUNDERBOLTS INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #51
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #119
UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS #6 (OF 8)
UNCLE SCROOGE #373
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #688
WORLD WAR HULK AFTERSMASH DAMAGE CONTROL #2 (OF 3)
WORMWOOD CALAMARI RISING #2
X-MEN FIRST CLASS VOL 2 #9
X-MEN LEGACY #208 DWS
YOUNG AVENGERS PRESENTS #2 (OF 6)
ZOMBIE SIMON GARTH #4 (OF 4)

Books / Mags / Stuff
BARKS ROSA COLL TP VOL 02 DONALDS ATOM BOMB
BIRDS OF PREY DEAD OF WINTER TP
BLEACH TP VOL 22
BLUE BEETLE TP VOL 03 REACH FOR THE STARS
DRAW #15
FIRE AWAY GN
FLYING FRIAR COLOR ED SC
FRANKLIN RICHARDS TP COLLECTED CHAOS DIGEST
HELLBLAZER JOY RIDE TP
HIERONYMUS B GN
HIGHLANDER TP VOL 01 REG CVR (RES)
INFINITE CRISIS TP
JOHN WOOS SEVEN BROTHERS TP VOL 02
JUXTAPOZ VOL 15 #3 MARCH 2008
MMW ATLAS ERA HEROES HC VOL 02
ONSLAUGHT REBORN HC
ORSON SCOTT CARDS WYRMS TP
PREVIEWS VOL XVIII #3
PUNISHER MAX HC VOL 04
SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN TP VOL 02
SFX #166
SHOWCASE PRESENTS SUPERMAN FAMILY TP VOL 02
STAR TREK MAGAZINE NEWSSTAND ED #10
SUPERMAN HC VOL 02 CAMELOT FALLS
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #163
WIZARD MAGAZINE #198 JOLIE WANTED PHOTO CVR
X-MEN TP SUPERNOVAS


What looks good to YOU?

-B

Labels: Brian, Shipping Lists

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The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite #6 (of 6):



That's not really true.

This is the last issue of writer/creator Gerald Way's and penciller/inker Gabriel Bá's (and colorist Dave Stewart's and letterer Nate Piekos') initial miniseries featuring these characters - it's even titled Finale (in the short form; there's no fucking way I'm typing out the 30-word full title, The Umbrella Academy, Featuring the Utter Destruction of Mankind in: Finale or, Brothers and Sisters, I Am An Atomic Bomb being Part Six of Six in the Story: Apocalypse Suite). But, in Mignola-approved Dark Horse fashion, we're clearly dealing with an ongoing series set up as a set of miniseries to offset the perception of delay in between storylines. And, in proper modern superhero fashion, the first storyline mainly serves to establish the extended premise and get all the main players in place for later action.

I liked this storyline, although I think its freshness has been slightly overestimated. When you really go through this comic, there's little that's original, or even particularly odd about it. You've got your fragmented 'family' of angsty superheroes -- a stolid leader, a hothead, an oddball (relatively speaking), a reluctant one with massive power, a badass with dark secrets -- pulled together by fate, a disgruntled teammate made extra-powerful but uncaring by a scheming supervillain, a global threat, some soap opera sexual tension, a supporting character's death to raise the stakes, and, finally, members of the team coming together against the odds through an uneasy mix of love and hate, some of them discovering they're greater than they'd ever realized, so as to save the day and opt to stick together for further exploits as hopeful rays of sunshine beam down to mark a fresh day. There's even a joke where someone says things aren't going like they usually do in these kinds of stories ("Is this the part where we all go home and act like a happy family?"), as often happens in stories like this!

Now, I don't think there's much inherently wrong with that, other than the lingering sense that you've read it somewhere before. The Umbrella Academy does have a lot going for it in superhero aesthetics; all of the visual elements join seamlessly, with this particular issue boasting a nice use of musical notation as a suffocating, near-magical force, something that's just not going to work if everything isn't lined up skillfully, and here it is. Better still, there's a good, complimentary balance between text and images; I liked how the image of the Televator bookends the really heavy parts of this issue's climactic fight, kind of starting and stopping the bloodiest bits like a bell in a boxing match.

There's also a certain subtext running through the series - all of the book's superheroes are without control of their lives, raised to act at the beck and call of a creator that built them into something mighty without having their best interests at heart. All of the threats they face in the present are aftershocks of old adventures, with the emotional ruin of the turncoat teammate being the worst problem of all. It's not hard to read this as anxiety of genre history, the way superheroes get brought back again and again to face often the same old threats, managed to profit but damaged in the process.

The thing is, while this storyline ends on a cute (and unequivocally triumphant) note of the past coming full circle so that everyone can move on, I don't think the book has demonstrated that anything has really changed, aside from superheroes changing a little so as to keep the adventures flowing. Like, they learn something about compassion -- or are some of them still mad?! -- and I guess they're out to live on their own terms now, but I see that as part of some pretty typical genre mechanics, and while the book is neat enough that I'm happy to read it, I don't pick up on anything all that striking. It's nice, and pretty eloquent, but I don't think it's especially interesting.

Still, you know, it's fun. The writerly decoration is peppy, there's some good jokes, and a nice grasp of archetypical characters with colorful powers. As I've said before, if more medium-burn superhero books were as slick and entertaining as this, I'd be picking up a lot more of them. GOOD stopping point, GOOD series so far. Way has an obvious talent for this thing, and I'm totally on board to see where the series goes next; I hope it develops in strange and fantastic ways.

Labels: Jog

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Excuse me while I steal your attention for something that the San Franciscans or Wondercon-bound amongst you may feel interested in:



Saturday night at 111 Minna. Be there or hate freedom. Co-sponsored by my other gig, so go and give them some web traffic as way of thanks.

Labels: Wondercon

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Hey, Wondercon this week! There’s a sign that there won’t be that much sleep happening anytime soon...

BOOSTER GOLD #0: Wow, this really does take me back; ignoring the guest-shot from Parallax and Extant (Just to remind you just how unusual supervillain names got in the early ‘90s. Was there ever one called Ennui, or was that a missed opportunity?), using the issue to give a recap of Booster’s secret origin before setting up the next storyline captured the tone of the Zero Hour “zero issues” far too well, right down to the fact that it left you feeling as if you should somehow find it a lot more interesting than it actually was. Despite the metatextual shenanigans, though, it’s still Good.

CAPTAIN MARVEL #3: Meanwhile, over at the House of Ideas, everybody’s Skrull-Fu Fightin’. Maybe I’m missing something, but following the reveal of the alien sleeper agent conspiracy, the individual reveals that we’ve seen have all been incredibly underwhelming. “You mean this formerly-dead character that no-one cared about is really an alien?!? Now no-one is safe!” Even the hint that Mar-Vell himself may be a little bit Skrully disappoints, and makes you feel as if this series is entirely pointless outside of leading in to the next big crossover. Did no-one learn from Millennium? Eh.

FANTASTIC FOUR #554: Depressingly, pretty much exactly what I’d expected from the pre-release hype, right down to the stylized dialogue that –like a lot of Mark Millar’s work – reads not like the characters themselves, but like Millar has been told what the characters are supposed to sound like by someone else. Yeah, Johnny’s a jerk and Ben is lovable and Reed is the Big Brain, but none of them seem like themselves; they’re all the Mark Millar Unpleasantverse versions of themselves, instead. Like Doug, I was bored by the lack of new ideas and simultaneous sense that the creators thought that these were new ideas, and scenes like the schoolteacher talking about wanting to fuck a super-hero were just embarrassingly bad attempts at making the book “relevant” from someone who has their finger on the pulse of pop culture from last year. I fully expect Mark Millar’s take on Britney’s Meltdown - but she’s a superhero! – before the end of 2008. Bryan Hitch’s artwork is pretty, but also flawed; his anatomy is getting odd in the rush of the work (What happened to Sue’s arms on the cover? They seem too short), and feels very static and lifeless in all the rendering and crosshatching. It’s depressing; I really wanted to like this, for some reason, but there’s just no sense of either wonder or family there for me. Eh.

FANTASTIC FOUR: THE LOST ADVENTURE: God, for an Interesting, But Essentially Distressing rating. On one level, this is a fascinating book because of all the process stuff included – Kirby’s unfinished pencils (with margin notes), the reprint of the previous attempt to complete the story from the ‘70s – but the finished story itself is (perhaps necessarily) like listening to “Free As A Bird” for the first time; there are glimpses of what made you dig them in the first place, but it’s kind of like unintentional self parody at the same time. Okay, I guess?

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #21: On the one hand, I’m sure there’s an interesting story to be done about the dehumanizing of the Alpha-Lanterns, but on the other, this really isn’t it. There just aren’t really any sympathetic (or even reader-friendly) characters here at all, and so the whole thing is just flat. Crap, worryingly, just when I was getting into the book.

NEW AVENGERS #38: I know that Brian liked this, but it just seemed to confirm every stereotype about Bendis’ writing being meandering and driven by dialogue schtick, especially the cut-aways to the New Avengers finding a new headquarters, which were very Venture Bros for some reason. Also, if Ms. Marvel lets the unregistered super-heroes escape one more time, they might as well give up on this whole “living underground” thing anyway. Eh.

NOVA ANNUAL #1: An annual that recaps the hero’s origin while advancing the plotline of the main series? I can’t believe that that feels so much like a throwback, but still, this was an Okay primer for those who aren’t following the regular book, albeit an amusing one to someone who just finished the Essential Nova collection recently.

WONDER WOMAN #17: Goddammit, I really wanted this to be less frustrating than it was, even though I know that I’m frustrated because I got so involved with the story. The Etta Candy resolution feels like I missed something – She’s Wonder Woman’s alibi? So it is the same Etta Candy as before, and not a post-Infinite Crisis reboot? – and The Circle plot doesn’t so much resolve as get derailed by the Nazi invasion, some fighting, and then get pushed out to some later date. There’s still a lot to like here (Unlike Diana, I think it is a Good), but it doesn’t really fulfill the promise of the previous three issues.

WOLVERINE #62: Reading this and X-FORCE #1 back to back is an unusual experience. Both have essentially the same set-up – Cyclops sends Wolverine (and others) out to kill a bad guy because he just don’t done take no shit no mo’ – that I have a hard time buying because, come on, it’s fucking Cyclops. I know that Messiah Complex was supposed to change everything, but still; it’s as if writers can only ever play him in two modes: Neurotic tight-ass or Bad-ass tight-ass, and we keep swinging between the two. Anyway, getting back to the two new books – which seem to share a set-up with Young X-Men, as trailed in the back of this week’s Marvel comics; apparently “variety” is the watchword of the post-Messiah Complex X-franchise. That and “death” – the difference between the two is that, well, Wolverine is actually pretty Good, whereas X-Force is a steaming pile of Crap. Your mileage may vary, of course, but Wolverine sees an attempt to build a story onto the “Wolverine goes out to kill someone!” set-up, complete with retconning motivation in there, putting in an unexpected reversal at the end of the issue, and generally staying within character for the book’s stars, all wrapped up in some nice Ron Garney artwork. By comparison, X-Force does away with character pretty much altogether (Wolverine’s hilarious “You don’t want to do this. Bein’ a killer is tough. Your friends will look at you funny. You ain’t gonna cross this line unchanged, bub. Okay, let’s go and slaughter lots of people” monologue aside), substituting it with X-trivia (Bastion?!?) and muddy, emotionless artwork to give it the feel of being the comic read by nerds who want to feel very, very serious about their hobby. It’s humorless and kill-friendly, and the fact that it has a “Bloody Variant” cover pretty much sums the whole thing up. If you want to see X-Men want to kill someone, read Wolverine. If you’re fifteen and like the idea of lots of people dying, read X-Force.

But what did you think?

Labels: Graeme

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Even though it is "a holiday", it isn't one of the holiday's that affects comics shipping (the rule of thumb is: if UPS is running, it won't affect shipments), so comics ARE arriving on WEDNESDAY this week.

Here's what it looks like:

ABYSS #3 (OF 4)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #551 BND
ANGEL AFTER THE FALL #4
ARCHIE #582
ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #186
AVENGERS CLASSIC #9
BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS #4
BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #13
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ORIGINS #3
BIRDS OF PREY #115
BRAVE AND THE BOLD #10
CABLE DEADPOOL #50
CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #22
CATWOMAN #76
CHECKMATE #23
CONAN #49
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 10
DEATH OF THE NEW GODS #6 (OF 8)
DRAFTED #5
EX MACHINA #34
FLASH #237
FORGOTTEN REALMS THE LEGACY #1 (OF 3) SEELEY CVR A
GODLAND #21
GRENDEL BEHOLD THE DEVIL #4 (OF 8)
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #21
GRIMM FAIRY TALES RETURN TO WONDERLAND #6 (OF 6)
HAWAIIAN DICK #3
HULK #2
IMMORTAL IRON FIST ORSON RANDALL GREEN MIST DEATH
INCREDIBLE HERCULES #114
INVINCIBLE #48
IRON MAN #26
JENNA JAMESONS SHADOW HUNTER #1
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #18
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #136
LOADED BIBLE 3 COMMUNION (ONE SHOT)
LOCKE & KEY #1
LOVELESS #22
MADAME MIRAGE #5
MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #21
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED ILIAD #3 (OF 8)
MIGHTY AVENGERS #9
NEW AVENGERS #38 SII
ORDER #8
PRIMORDIA #3 (OF 3)
PROGRAMME #8 (OF 12)
PVP #38
RED SONJA #30
REX MUNDI DH ED #10
ROBIN #171
RUNAWAYS #29
SCOOBY DOO #129
SCREAM #4 (OF 4)
SHADOWPACT #22
SHOJO BEAT MAR 08
SIMPSONS COMICS #139
SPIRIT #14
STAR WARS DARK TIMES #9
SUPERMAN BATMAN #46
SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #12
TERROR INC #5 (OF 5)
ULTIMATE HUMAN #2 (OF 4)
ULTIMATE X-MEN #91
ULTIMATES 3 #3 (OF 5)
UMBRELLA ACADEMY APOCALYPSE SUITE #6 (OF 6)
UN-MEN #7
WILDSTORM REVELATIONS #4 (OF 6)
WITCHBLADE TAKERU MANGA #12
WOLVERINE ORIGINS #22
WONDER GIRL #6 (OF 6)
WORLD OF WARCRAFT #4
WORLD WAR HULK AFTERSMASH WARBOUND #3 (OF 5)
YOUNGBLOOD #2
ZORRO #1

Books / Mags / Stuff
ALIENS OMNIBUS TP VOL 03
ART OF GENNADIY KOUFAY TP (A)
BEST EROTIC COMICS 2008 SC (A)
BLACK & WHITE IMAGES FOURTH ANNUAL COLLECTION
BONEYARD COLOR ED TP VOL 03
BOYS TP VOL 02 GET SOME
CATWOMAN CATWOMANS DEAD TP
CHERUBS PARADISE LOST GN
CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED HC VOL 01 GREAT EXPECTATIONS
COMICS BUYERS GUIDE #1640 APRIL 2008
COMICS JOURNAL #288
DARK XENA TP
DRIFTING CLASSROOM TP VOL 10
FABLEWOOD GN VOL 01
FEAR AGENT TP LAST GOODBYE
FETISH (RES) (A)
FLASH BLOOD WILL RUN TP NEW ED
GEEK MONTHLY VOL 2 #2
GOLGO 13 GN VOL 13
GREEN LANTERN HC VOL 01 THE SINESTRO CORPS WAR
HERE COME THE LOVEJOYS GN SECOND COMING (A)
HUNTER KILLER TP VOL 01
ILLUSTRATORS ANNUAL OF AMERICAN ILLUSTRATION TP VOL 49
IRON MAN TP MANY ARMORS OF IRON MAN NEW PTG
KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE TP VOL 06
LONERS TP SECRET LIVES OF SUPER HEROES
LOU FINE READER TP VOL 02
MAAKIES WITH WRINKLED KNEES HC
MAD MAGAZINE #487
MORE OLD JEWISH COMEDIANS HC
NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER TP VOL 13
NESTLER GIRLS SC VOL 01
ORDER TP VOL 01 NEXT RIGHT THING
PATH OF THE ASSASSIN VOL 9 TP
SAM & MAX SURFIN HIGHWAY TP
SHAG A TO Z BLAB STORYBOOK HC
SHATNER SHOW HC
SOJOURN VOL 6 A BERSERKERS TALE TP
TERMINATOR OMNIBUS VOL 01
UZUMAKI (2ND EDITION) GN VOL 03
WALT DISNEY TREASURES TP VOL 02 UNCLE SCROOGE


What looks good to YOU?

-B Click Here to Read More...

Reich #1:



Here's an increasingly rare sight in the contemporary Direct Market: a new, serious, pamphlet-format 'alternative' comic from a comparatively small publisher, determined to serialize a single, long story over an indeterminate number of issues, to be released at a regular, quarterly pace, in probable anticipation of a collected edition to follow. Truly, Sparkplug Comic Books is appreciative of the old-time aesthetic!

Ah, but we must check our viewpoint against the realities of today. First off, this is not a new comic. It's new to most comics shops because Diamond, to the best of my knowledge, has just gotten to distributing the series. There's already two further issues out from the publisher. Moreover, writer/artist Elijah J. Brubaker has been working the series subject matter at least as far back as a 1995 minicomic of the same title, and had been releasing the present series' content as a webcomic until recently. And as I guessed above, I doubt this will be the material's final form.



Anyway, Reich is a comics biography of Wilhelm Reich, the infamous Austrian-American psychiatrist/psychoanalyst best remembered today for his development of orgone theory, and eventual imprisonment for failure to comply with a court injunction mandating the destruction of orgone therapy equipment and literature. Brubaker notes in his introduction to this issue that most perspectives on Reich trade on his counterculture value or fixate on aspects of the man's science; in contrast, this comic is set to present a take on the humanity of Reich.

It's also, by Brubaker's admission, "indebted" to Chester Brown's 1999-2003 comic book biography project Louis Riel (from Drawn and Quarterly; now collected), adopting both the simplicity of Brown's visual storytelling -- not one of this comic's 24 b&w pages breaks from a six-panel grid -- and his proclivity for backmatter annotations. Unlike Brown's squat, Harold Gray-influenced artwork, however, Brubaker pursues an oddly three-dimensional arrangement of big-headed stylized characters, their enormous noses casting deep, logical shadows on their faces. Character designs typically act as shorthand for everyone's internal state, although the artist also stretches, squashes or realistically details various heads when a specific, expressive effect is desired. In this way, emotions are known as constantly pliable.



It also gives off the sense of children playing around with Big Ideas; this issue sees Reich's awakening to orgastic potency in WWI, and his caddish romantic entanglements with young Social Democrats and pretty dilettantes in Vienna, while developing a passion for sexual analysis. Brubaker's story, while occasionally darting into diagrammatic illustration, or seeing characters narrate directly to the reader, mainly focuses on conversations between people across a flowing timeline. Politics seem little more than an excuse for fooling around, though Brubaker's Reich is doubly callous for adoring his theories of sex over living, sexual beings.

I wonder how the artist's visual style might impact Reich's later life; for now, for me, it seems to gently undercut the pretensions of youth; it also occasionally tumbles into obviousness, as with a panel of The Nasty Shadows cloaking Reich's face as he suggests an abortion for a poor girl he's impregnated, with awful results. I did find it GOOD on the whole, however, and would recommend it to those piqued by the subject matter.

Labels: Jog

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Go read: Tom Spurgeon's interview with Douglas Wolk.

Go look: the new Indiana Jones Trailer! Looks better than I would have hoped!

(lets try the embed thing, to see if it works)



-B

Labels: Brian, Douglas, Trailers

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