Meanwhile... Back at the Comic Book Blog

Soccer Action from Eden #6

2010-06-11T14:10:00.008-02:30

Sorry for the not awesome quality. Click for bigger. Reads from right to left.

2010-01-21T13:37:00.001-03:30

G-Man: Learning to Fly

2009-10-27T15:01:00.001-02:30

G-Man: Learning to Fly
By Chris Giarrusso

Chris Giarrusso is the creator of the Mini-Marvels comics that used to come out from Marvel. They were often the best part of the comics they were printed in and I remember just reading the Red/Blue/Green Hulk backups he drew in the current Red Hulk series.

Mavel, in all their brilliance, decided to stop publishing Mini-Marvel comics, in case they were confused with the not-nearly-as-good Super Hero Squad. Thanks Marvel.

Still, Giarrusso hasn't given up on creating awesome, funny superhero comics. Instead, he's returned to characters he created in the back pages of Savage Dragon.

G-Man (the G stands for G), and his friends, Billy Demon, Suntrooper, and others, fight crime! Well, sometimes. After school. Or at school. Maybe.

G-Man pokes fun at a lot of super hero tropes, but it's also obvious that Giarrusso really likes super hero comics, despite their occasional (or even frequent) stupidity. I'd say he even embraces the stupidity.

The heroes have to help a wizard find his golden chalice (it was in the sink). A Christmas tree comes alive, steals a car, and ends up working for Santa Claus ("Evergreen want to take responsibility for actions and make amends.").

As the comics were orignally backups we see Giarrusso using his limited space in a way you don't see that much in comics anymore. He packs panels into the pages. 16 per page is not uncommon, and 12 is more regular. There is lots of talking in this comic, but it's all good.

G-Man never fails to cheer me up, and I hope that the current mini series is successful enough for Giarrusso to continue making these comics.

Whizzer and Chips

2009-10-24T15:04:00.003-02:30

This is another of the free comics that the Guardian gave out to its readers, and it's far more like the ones I used to read (the Beano, the Dandy, the Topper, and the Beezer) when I was a little kid.

One of the neat things about this one is that it actually is two different comics combined into one. Whizzer has the front page, but inside you'll find another front page, this time for Chips, and instructions on how to take out the staples and have two different comics. The front and back pages of Chips are in full colour, like the front and back of Whizzer, and unlike the rest of the comics which are either in black and white or have a single colour. Chips even has its own joke page!

Some of the comics inside are kind of weird. Most of them are just your average one or two page humour comics that I remember, but then you get the more adventurey ones that had apparently been phased out by the time I started reading comics. "Whizz" Wheels is about a "super-cyclist" who in this issue saves a villainous land agent from a forest fire while riding a penny farthing. Seriously.

There's also "Thingumajig!" which features a rather odd looking alien who, of course, says things like "Gg-uu-uuuh...my head spins and stomach tubes churn! This must be what Earthlings call sickness of the sea!" Oh aliens!

My favourite comic in it is also the only one I've ever seen before (or at least I think I've seen it before): Harry's Haunted House. It's about a ghost who doesn't like haunting people, and I thought it was fairly funny.

Or maybe I just really like the idea of a ghost sleeping in a bed.

Superman and Batman vs. Aliens and Predator

2009-10-22T19:30:00.002-02:30

Superman and Batman vs. Aliens and Predator
Written by Mark Schultz. Art by Ariel Olivetti.

Fuck me, this was terrible. Just incredibly, incredibly bad in almost every way a comic can be.

Well, I suppose that is not true, here are ten ways in which it could have be worse:

1. It could have been drawn by many different artists with completely conflicting styles. Olivetti is far too reliant on digital painting or whatever, but his scenes in the Daily Planet office are pretty good.

2. It could have not featured any aliens of any sort at all (instead of barely featuring them) and just been about Batman and Superman exploring some empty caves.

3. Lois could have been killed along with every other non-superhero in Peru, causing Superman to have to travel back in time to save her.

4. Batman's costume could, somehow, have been stupider.

5. The badguy humans could somehow have been more vaguely defined (this one would be tough, as they didn't even have names, just an organization, I guess you'd have to not even name the organization.)

6. The Aliens could have been even less dangerous, and not even been able to damage Superman's costume.

7. Lois could have been completely useless, instead of saving Batman by having a "basic working knowledge of Kyptonian mechanics."

8. There could have been more tiny, annoying robots.

9. It could have had Aquaman in it.

10. I don't know. It could have been twice as long, that would have been pretty awful.

Judge Dredd: The Chief Judge's Man

2009-10-20T15:02:00.001-02:30

Judge Dredd: The Chief Judge's Man
Written by John Wagner. Illustrated by Will Simpson, Colin MacNeil, and John Burns.

Last time I wrote about 2000ad I said I'd wait until the next "all part ones" issue. But you know what? Screw that. Because for slightly more than the price of the average issue of 2000ad (£1.80) I can just buy collections from bookshops that sell everything for £2. Awesome!

Of course, unfortunately I start with one of the least interesting Judge Dredd comics I've read. Most of what I've read has been in random American reprints, so I really don't remember what I actually have read. Necropolis? with Judge Death? That was pretty good.

This, however, wasn't. It starts off with someone killing pro-democracy citizens of Mega-City One, and while Dredd isn't the biggest fan of democracy, he also doesn't like people breaking the law, so he goes after him.

Now, from the title you can probably guess that something fishy is going on with this killer, he's being told to kill these people by the Chief Judge. And I guess that's where my problem with this arises, I have no idea who any of the Judges that aren't Dredd are. There's a bunch of other Judges in this comic, and, presumbly, I'm supposed to know who at least some of them are? I know Dredd is an ongoing series, and has continuity, but I think this is only the second Dredd story from the last decade that I've read, so I really don't know. Is this in character for the Chief Judge? Iunno.

Anyway, there's some other stuff, and the prison's just outside of Mega-City One show up again (I last saw them in the most recent issue of 2000ad that I read), and it seems that those scenes are moving some larger plot forward.

There's also a kind of bizarre bit which seems retconned in. Maybe it was the intention from the beginning, but the killer suddenly having cockroach DNA just seems utterly ridiculous.

Meanwhile, in the art department, Colin MacNeil does a really good job on his part.

It's a bit static, and thus doesn't show movement/action that well, but that's frequently a problem with painted art. I think it looks pretty awesome. Maybe I should have bought that Devlin Waugh trade he did the art for.

Jackie

2009-10-18T07:58:00.003-02:30

Jackie No. 580
Feb 15th, 1975

Earlier this year the Guardian newspaper gave away reprints of old comics published by IPC.

I used to read some of the comics they published back when I was a kid living in the UK, though, needless to say, I didn't read this one. Both because I wasn't born when it came out, and because it is for girls. Ick.

In fact Jackie is hardly a comic at all. There's only about six pages of actual comics in the whole thing. The rest of it is letters, short stories, agony aunts, pop star things, and other stuff that makes me glad I was not a girl who grew up reading something like this. Aiee.

The comics that are featured are both weeeeeeeeeeeird. The first one is all about how awesome and dreamy Donny Osmond is, though it features some nice art when it's not trying to replicate celebrities.

Just ignore her creepy, pupil-less, eyes.

The second one is even worse, and all about a girl trying to steal her best friend's boyfriend, leading to her friend's death. What a dick! Girls!

Jackie is strange, and I hope to never read it again. It does let me show this video though, which is pretty ace, and I feel a pretty accurate representation of this magazine.

Never Learn Anything From History

2009-10-16T12:54:00.002-02:30

Never Learn Anything From History
by Kate Beaton

Oh man, these comics are awesome. I keep meaning to write about webcomics I read, but I never do. Clearly once they've released print books is the time to talk about them.

I will say once more, Kate Beaton's comics are awesome. So awesome I was willing to buy a book of them when I can (and did) just read them for free on the internet.

Beaton's comics are, mostly, comics about history. And while that doesn't sound very exciting, she is able to make it really funny. Mostly by taking real events, condensing them down to just a few panels, and making pretty much everyone act like an idiot. They are hilarious. Honest.

So this volume collects...a bunch of the comics from her website. Not all of them, I think due to quality problems and the like. Still, there's a lot here, and there's some commentary and the like. Though I think it's just the same stuff that was online.

So while the content is awesome, I had a couple of issues with the actual physical object. First it is expensive. Aieeeeee. $25? It's only like 80 pages or something. (Thankfully I got it at more than half off during a huge sale. Hurray!)

Also, I don't like the paper stock and the binding seems flimsy. I don't know if it is or not, but every time I open it, I am very careful because I am afraid the spine is going to break and all the pages are going to fall out. I don't want that to happen on a $25 book.

With this book Beaton decided to go the self publishing route (it kind of shows, there's not even a copyright notice in the book), and I'm guessing went through some sort of print-on-demand service, which a lot of webcomic people seem to use. I kind of wish they'd put more thought into this stuff. Or, alternatively, try to get someone else to publish it for them. Some publisher must have wanted to put this out right?

Anyway, here are links so you can go bask in her glory.

http://beatonna.livejournal.com/

http://www.harkavagrant.com/

!!! She's just put up a new one. Exciting.

Focus: Touch

2009-10-14T13:19:00.008-02:30

Touch #1-2
Written by John Francis Moore. Illustrated by Wesley Craig and Prentis Rollins.

"Get ready for DC Focus, a new line of gritty, character-driven comics that take place in a world separate from the traditional DC universe."

Or don't. That was the info DC released about the Focus line of comics (way back in 2004). But it quickly became apparent that people were going to take the second option and just ignore them entirely.

Touch was apparently the one least interesting of all, as it debuted with sales of just over 11,000 (#151 on the charts), before sinking to just 5000 (and #223) with the sixth, and final, issue. Admittedly, it was barely behind another Focus title, Fraction, but that just shows how poorly this line was received.

Part of me wonders what DC were thinking with this line. There were no big creators, and while there was a push for the line, it didn't seem like there was any reason for it to exist.

Going back to 2004, when this line launched, we can see DC making a lot of these sort of strange publishing decisions, and putting out piles of comics not necessarily interesting to their typical superhero-comic-reading fan. This was, after all, when the ill-fated DC/2000ad and DC/Humanoids imprints were launched, and CMX, which somehow still exists despite putting out (to me) mystifying manga series.

It all kind of seems to indicate a period when DC was flailing around seemingly completely at random in an attempt to find something that would sell. It didn't work, so now they just put out more Green Lantern comics.

Still, who was the market for the Focus comics supposed to be? Based on the covers by indie comicker Tomer Hanuka, and the drab and murky colouring, I can only assume that the intended audience was indie/Vertigo readers.

Except that doesn't make any sense, because if you want to attract those readers, you should give the books to people that already have followings. Don't just get the guy that wrote X-Force and Doom 2099 (as good as it might have been) to write your titles*.

There's also the strangeness behind launching an entire line of comics (which I'm not sure has ever really succeeded before, it's not like Vertigo just showed up one day), with line-branding, similar covers, style, and colouring, fairly generic names, and yet not have any information inside the comics telling you about the others. The house ads are all for other DC comics, and the back of issue two just tells you about a bunch of DC universe titles. Had DC already given up on the line by that point? I don't know.

The colouring on these comics is another mystifying idea. The entire line supposedly had a drab, washed out look, which doesn't sound like the best idea but could work. It doesn't though. Well, that's unfair. There are scenes where it works, the opening pages of issue one are at the bottom of a mine shaft, and the dark colours work pretty well there. When someone breaks through to rescue the miners he's backlit with brighter colours, and it looks pretty good. The rest of the issue is coloured with the exact same colours (grey-blue and grey-red), no matter if they characters are walking down the street, in a bar, in a hospital, inside, outside, wherever. It's like the movie Dark City, where everything happens at night, except with no point or reason. It's the rare comic that has more colour on the cover than the insides, but this is one of them. Issue two seems even worse, with the red becoming even greyer.

It's like there was a coloured ink shortage.

The comic itself is alright. A guy has superstrength, and helps people. Well, for the right price for him and his manager. The first issue ends with you learning that the hero isn't the main character after all, he's just been given his powers by someone else. And what can be given can be taken away. It's a decent twist, and it actually makes me appreciate the cover (which I thought was pretty good to begin with) a lot more.

The second issue goes into this a bit more, and I guess the point of the series was sort of like Dial H for Hero, except with the mystery of how this guy got his powers. And who that crazy dude in the second issue was. Were either of these mysteries solved? I dunno. And I kind of doubt I will ever actually find out. It does not however seem like the plot for an ongoing series.

One final thing to mention is that only five years ago DC launched an entire line of comics at $2.50 each. It's kind of hard to believe that in the five years since then we've gone from that price up to the $3.99 that so many comics now launch at. Still, I'm sure I'll be able to buy them from a quarter bin in five years time no matter how much they originally cost.

*That's who wrote (and created, and even, according to the indica, had some of the copyright of) Touch, by the way: John Francis Moore. And that's true up above too, I did generally enjoy his run on Doom 2099. It wasn't a masterpiece or anything, but I thought it was pretty fun comics.

Old New Warriors

2009-10-12T22:23:00.000-02:30

New Warriors #1
By Fabian Nicieza and Mark Bagley

Wow, part of me can't believe this comic is so old. 19 years! Holy crap! That is probably older than some of these characters are meant to be.

Um, so yeah. It's a Marvel superhero team comic. It does what it does pretty well, introduces the characters, makes me wonder why Kid Nova (when did he start/stop using "kid"?) has such a terrible costume, why anyone knows who Namorita is, and who the hell invented Night Thrasher. Why the hell does this rich guy with computers and a suit of armour ride a skateboard?

(In related news, go read about Dwayne McDuffie's pitch for Teenage Negro Ninja Thrashers.)

I actually don't know much about these characters, but this series is supposed to be pretty good. This issue didn't blow me away, but I'm willing to check out further issues in quarter bins in the future...

Other things I read recently that I barely remember.

Bloody Mary #1
Garth Ennis. Carlos Ezquerra.

Oh man. Helix. Remember that? No? Well I don't either. It was a sci-fi imprint that from DC that crashed and burned pretty fast (like pretty much every imprint that just starts one day). I think Transmetropolitan was the only thing that made it out alive (transferred to Vertigo) and I don't know if anything else is even in print right now.

(I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and woah. It lasted over two years? That makes all of DC's more recent imprints that have died in less than a year (Focus, Minx, something else I'm sure I've forgotten) look like even bigger failures.)

Anyway, this is really just Garth Ennis war comics in the future. It's pretty good. I'm surprised there isn't a trade of it out. Oh wait, apparently Vertigo put one out like four years ago. Why didn't the comic shop I work in have that? I guess nobody remembers Helix.

Some Batman comic with Anarky
Just. Argh. No.

Some of those end of the world Wildstorm comics: I do not remember which ones.
Hey, these were pretty good (as usual). Though the art in the Gen13 interlude issue (by Dan Hipp) was definitely not as good as the work the regular artist Mike Huddleston was doing. It's not bad or anything, just probably not what superhero comic fans actually want to see.

Metabarons

2009-10-09T21:43:00.001-02:30

What better place than Quebec to read the last bit of The Metabarons in English that I had yet to read? Well, France I guess, but I more than likely wouldn't have been able to find it in English there. And I read this on the bus between Kingston and Montreal, so maybe I read it in Ontario.

Regardless! We most carry on.

The Metabarons: Alpha/Omega
By Charest, Joworowsky, Gimenez & Moebius (what an interesting order for the cover)

So while I really liked the Metabarons comic that Humanoids was putting out back in the day (2000-2002!) I never picked this up, because it was like $15, for 48 pages. Aieee! That was practically the price of the oversized hardcovers Humanoids was putting out. However, when I recently found it for $3, I decided to pick it up.

And hell, I am super glad I didn't spend $15 on this thing. It's three short stories, and an except from the book Charest was doing with Jodorowsky at the time.

(Which he didn't even finish! After completing only 30 pages in seven years, Humanoids got some other guy, with a completely different style, to finish drawing it. I looked through a copy of it in a book store in Montreal, and Charest's stuff is beautiful, but I can't believe how slow it was to produce that work.)

But three of those things are basically the same story with different artists! First Moebius draws it (from his work on the Incal, and terribly recoloured), then Gimenez draws it (and damn, does he ever draw better robots) in an early Metabarons piece that apparently isn't in continuity anymore. Then Charest draws it! Admittedly, Charest's preview does feature a bunch of other stuff, and his version of the scene is gorgeous, but still!

The first story (also drawn by Gimenez) is unrelated to the others (!!!) and acts as a prequel of sorts to the whole Metabarons story. It's filled with the ridiculous things that most Jodorowsky comics have, but didn't really do much for me. Dunno.

The original Metabarons series never finished coming out in English. After Humanoids stopped publishing the issues/collections, DC republished the collections, but didn't finish it either.

Devil's Due currently have the license to publish the Metabarons in English, but I think it's been almost a year since they started publishing Humanoids stuff, and they haven't got very much of it out. To be honest, it's been so long since I read the series, I'm not sure if I'd even read the end. This volume made me wonder why I liked the series so much in the first place, and since I don't have my old issues anymore, maybe I will never find out.

Macedonia

2009-10-07T01:22:00.001-02:30

Macedonia: What does it take to stop a war?
Written by Harvey Pekar and Heather Roberson
Illustrated by Ed Piskor

Fuck, this book is dense. Crazy dense! It's mostly 12 panel pages filllled with text. And sometimes they can't even fit enough text into those, so they put in even more text. I'm not saying it's not good, but I guess I had just forgotten how many words Pekar crams into his comics.

And despite the co-writer, this really does seem like a Pekar comic. Because it is filled with words! And impossible to read in one sitting! I like American Splendor, but I think I've read enough for my life.

However, I clearly haven't read enough non-fiction comics about the former Yugoslavia (I mean, I haven't even read all of Joe Sacco's comics on the area!), and this one definitely delivers on giving you piles and piles of information about a country you more than likely know nothing about.

I find these comics kind of depressing, as I feel as though I am doing nothing to help the world. It's even worse when I consider that I've been in Eastern Europe and SE Asia, which are other places that deal with the corruption and racism that are some of the focal points of what is going on in the Balkans. Why am I sitting on my friend's bed writing about a comic? Why aren't I doing something to really benefit people? Fuck, I am so old (26!) and I don't feel I've really accomplished anything yet (more than many people, but what positive things have I really done?). Refusing to take part in society makes it incredibly hard to change it. And I am frequently left wondering what I can actually do to help the world.

Um, so freak out over.

I'm really curious as to how this comic was weird. Roberson went to Macedonia for her undergrad (!!!) thesis (making me feel like I accomplished nothing doing mine), and the comic shows her taking lots of notes, and recording interviews and her own opinions on things. Presumably she then gave these notes (and thesis) to Pekar, who turned it into a comic script and gave it to Piskor to draw. Did this happen? I really don't know. The book doesn't say, and I'm clearly too lazy to look up interviews. The book also lacks bios for anyone other than Pekar, which just seems weird.

It's good, read it if you want to know about Macedonia.

The Savage Runaways

2009-10-05T23:49:00.001-02:30

All New Savage She-Hulk #1

For a character that's only ever shown up twice before, there's an oddly large amount of backstory here (and eight pages of interviews to talk about it!). It's sort of generic. Time travelling. Fighting some group of soldiery people who's name I forget (HAMMER? SWORD?). I liked the bits in the future with the tribe of women fighting the tribe of people that look kind of like primitive, cut-rate Wolverines. Worth a dollar, not $4 (which is the cover price).

Runaways Vol 3, #11

Noooooooooooooooo! Nooooooooooooooo! Noooooooooooooo!

I was all ready to enjoy Runaways again after the relaunch with Terry Moore writing failed to interest me at all (I read the first issue and I think that was it). This was Katheryn (Patsy Walker: Hellcat) Immonen's first issue, and it even started promisingly, the characters talked more like how I remembered, the art was good, everyone was just hanging out, which is probably what this book should be about as none of the characters want to be superheroes, but then...

But then Immonen had to kill one of my favourite characters. Hell, who am I kidding, I like all of these characters, but so many of them have died in this series already. Stop killing the characters! No! Just stop it. I hate you. I hope that character isn't dead. I guess I'll look for more issues (and I'll probably even read the stuff I missed at some point), but I really don't want more characters in this comic to die. It makes me sad.

Update! Since originally writing this I've read the first trade of Terry Moore's run (bizarrely only including six of his nine issues), which wasn't very good, and heard about/seen some of the final issue of the current run (#14).

The art looks not very good, the colouring is less than awesome (apparently coloured on a laptop at cons), and these combine to create some of the least Asian Nico panels I've seen. Plus the story just stops, it doesn't end. It's just the end of the comic. It seems as though Marvel just cancelled the series before this writer's story could end. Though admittedly this was solicited as a four part story.

Oh well, maybe next time.

Dr. Death and The Night of the Butcher, and Baker Street

2009-10-03T22:01:00.000-02:30

Sandman Mystery Theatre: Dr. Death and The Night of the Butcher

(This is a terrible review made from random notes about a comic I read weeks ago.)

These stories are an improvement over the last couple I remember reading. The Night of the Butcher genuinely had me wondering what would happen next, and I was glad I wasn't reading the series as a monthly.

I liked that the villains in these stories weren't who you expected them to be. The earlier stories really seemed to telegraph which character appearing was the bad guy, so it was nice to be somewhat surprised. It also made the detective work done by both the Sandman and the police make more sense as they had to work to find out about the criminal, as opposed to just stumbling upon whatever.

I also enjoyed the Sandman's relationship with the police: hatred from one, partial trust from another. It sort of made sense in a real world sort of way.

Dian's reactions to what she experienced in this volume also seemed more "real" than what you get in most super hero comics. She doesn't immediately accept what was going on, and has to think about what she's going to do. At least days and possibly loner pass while the characters just think about things.

I'm not really sure what's going on with the art. The title page of the trade credits David Hornung as colourist, but the title pages for each story just say "art by," while the letterist is named. It's weird, but I guess it just means "pencils and ink" and my brain just melted.

While Guy Davis is an artist who's work I have enjoyed on the BPRD comics from Darkhorse, I preferred the art in the first story of this volume where Davis just did the layouts and Vince Locke did "art," whatever that means.

There's one part in the second story, which Davis illustrates it all himself, where a woman finds...something in her toilet. What is it? I have absolutely no idea. It's a bloody something. It's only a couple of pages later that someone says what it is, but even once you know it doesn't really help you identify the drawing.

The colouring!

(Yes this is important in this comic.)

The colouring in the first story is far better (and brighter!) than the second. It wasn't that noticeable while I read both stories, but flipping through the book there's a huge difference.

Colouring in the second story is really weird. People's skin tones just seem to be white. Entirely white, not coloured at all. It looks really strange and I wondered if it was a printing error or something. Considering the colourist was supposed to be the same for both stories in this volume, I really have to wonder what happened.

Baker Street

This is an earlier Guy Davis work, and it's...not so good. Considering there don't seem to be that many comics about the punk scene in general, and even fewer where there is any actual knowledge of the scene involved, it seems weird that Davis, who apparently was in the punk scene, would do something like this weird mashup of Victoriana and punks. I only managed to read the first issue of the trade cause I didn't think it was that good.

2000AD prog 1654

2009-10-01T09:54:00.004-02:30

Oooh, a review of last week's issue of 2000ad, exactly what you want to read. Especially since if you really wanted to read one, you'd probably have gone to this site.

But, no matter, here it is anyway. Mostly because I was so excited to buy an issue of this off the news-stand, something I had never done before in my times visiting/living in the UK/Ireland. (Which is where I currently am.)

For those that don't know, 2000ad is a weekly sci-fi anthology comic that has been published in England forever and ever and ever. It's on issue 1654, I can't even understand that.

Judge Dredd: Tour of Duty part 5
Dredd is in the Cursed Earth doing some prison thing. It's written by John Wagner, so even before reading, you know it's more than likely going to be good, as he's one of the people who created Dredd and has been writing him since issue two or whenever Dredd first appeared. There's some weird caption stuff going on here, where it seems like it sh/could be internal narration/a character thinking. But than later on the captions refer to that character in the third person. So I dunno.
And yeah, it's pretty good. Probably the best thing in the issue. The art by Colin MacNeil is pretty good. I like the robot dressed in Judge gear, though I wish we'd gotten to see a full body shot.

Kingdom: Call of the Wild part 5
This one didn't really do much for me. The main character seems to be mentally delayed in some way. He always speaks in terrible English, and doesn't seem to understand things. Not really a character I want to read about. The character I would like to read more about is the human character who's apparently been held hostage by some mutant people things for two years. Or the other mutants, even if some of them look like Tank Girl kangaroo people.

Strontium Dog: The Mork Whisperer part 4
Strontium Dog is another of the comics that has been in 2000ad forever. It hasn't been in every issue (I think Dredd has), but it's there fairly frequently. It's about a mutant bounty hunter travelling the galaxy, and while I probably should like it, I don't really get the appeal to be honest. It's alright, but I didn't really dig the art (or maybe just the colouring). I mean, it is drawn by Carlos Ezquerra, who's stuff I usually enjoy.
I think Johnny Alpha (the main character) looks like Jesse Custer from Preacher without his armour on.

Shakara: Destroyer part 5

Wow, now this has nice art. Or at least this first floating thing is.

(Yes, I have access to a scanner now.)

The other character designs don't do much for me. And the comic doesn't do much to explain why Robbie Morrison has multiple strips in this issue and is fairly well known as a 2000ad writer. His run on the Authority was super horrible. It's just a big robot fight scene! With teknosaurs! I do not know why I don't like it.

Nikolai Dante: Lulu's War part 4
This is Robbie Morrison's better known comic in 2000ad, and it's actually good. The so called lead "Nikolai Dante" doesn't actually show up, but I have no idea who that is so it doesn't matter. This comic is set in some weird future version of Russia with tsars and the like? I think. I am not sure.
This is good though. Vampires, corrupt aristocrats, some woman who seems to have magical powers with insects for blood or something. I would read more of this. Too bad this is the last part!

Overall? It was alright. I only really liked two of the stories, and the Nikolai Dante one is going to be in the next issue. I think I will wait for one of those periodic issues where every story is a part one before I pick this up again.

Secret Invasion: Requiem

2009-09-29T23:46:00.001-02:30

Okay, so I guess this actually cost 33 cents or something, but close enough.

This is, like a number of recent Marvel comics, actually a couple of old stories that have been recoloured. Plus a new framing sequence drawn by Khoi Pham (whose art I really liked on Hercules, but who didn't impress me that much here).

The framing sequence is really just there to introduce the other comics though, so it's not really Pham's fault as he wasn't given the most interesting stuff to work with. The other comics are there to show that Ant Man (Henry Pym) has always been a jackass. The first story (by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby) is the first appearance of the Wasp, and also features Ant Man's origin. Which is that his wife, who was a Soviet defector, got killed when they went back to the Soviet Union for a holiday. WTF? Is that still in continuity?

So Pym is doing ant science in his lab, when another scientist shows up and asks him to help with his gamma ray beam. To the other scientist's great shock and annoyance, Pym tells him that he doesn't know anything about that field. I kind of love that, this guy shows up at Pym's house to ask him for help, yet doesn't even know what type of science he does. He even mentions that Pym is a famous scientist (for what, I don't know). The real reason this scientist is in the story is to introduce his daughter! Janet Van Dyne. Who apparently looks exactly like Pym's ex-wife. Except they look nothing alike at all. Pym is just crazy.

To add to this, when Van Dyne becomes the Wasp, Pym decides to give her completely untested powers that he hasn't even tried on himself. "Here, let me implant these wings and antenna under your skin." Then they fight a monster. And Van Dyne is all like "Oh Hank Pym, you are so dreamy."

(So this comic was lying on a table at the house I'm staying at, and one of my friends picked it up and started looking through it and said he was amazed at how good the art looked in the first story. He was shocked when I told him that art was from the '60s. Colouring is so important.)

And then! We have the famous issue where Ant Man hits the Wasp. And is just generally insane (he builds a robot to attack the Avengers so that he can then defeat it).

I think one of the most hilarious things about this issue is that apparently the other Avengers are so used to the Wasp's terrible wardrobe (that purple thing!), that when she shows up to a meeting in a turtleneck, coat, and sunglasses (to hide the beating Ant Man gave her), nobody says a word about it until she takes her sunglasses off and they see her black eye.

After both the reprints, we get a couple more new pages and see that Hank Pym has decided to become a new the Wasp, in order to honour the one that just died in Secret Invasion. Ultimately, all this comic does is make me wish that it was Hank Pym (a character who has apparently always been an insane idiot) was the one who had died instead of the Wasp (one of the oldest female superheroes the Marvel universe has). Oh well, I'm sure she'll be back eventually.

But really, this comic was worth the price I paid for the three pages showing every costume/outfit the Wasp has ever worn. Holy shit! I bet that took way too long to put together.

Pirates and space girls

2009-09-27T15:10:00.003-02:30

The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury #295

I liked the idea of this, that there have been hundreds of adventures already, so you don't need an origin story. Yes, fantastic.

And the art is pretty good too. However this felt weirdly light. The first half of the story featured things being stolen and space battles and stuff. But then the second half was just talking heads trying to solve a puzzle. I did get a good idea of who Miranda Mercury is, and I am curious about the other issues in this series, but...

El Cazador Collected Edition #1

I was really hoping for the pirate equivalent of Way of the Rat, the martial arts comic written by the same person (Chuck Dixon) and published by the same company (CrossGen) at the same time (2002-03), but, sadly, I did not get it. This is the first three issues of the series (that only lasted six and a special) and it's sloooooow. So many characters and I sort of felt the pirate character who was killed early on had his character developed through his three lines of dialogue than the supposed main characters. Still, it's not like I can think of a better pirate comic produced recently. Oh wait! Scurvy Dogs!

Big guys hit things

2009-09-25T00:48:00.001-02:30

Savage Dragon #75

Raaaarrggh!!! At Free Comic Book Day earlier this year I got the free issue of Savage Dragon (#148) and was shocked at how much I enjoyed it. That, combined with a conversation I had with a fellow comic nerd, and a pretty nice sketch Erik Larsen did for me at the Emerald City Comicon (monster!), made me pick up this issue. And it's good! It's really just monsters punching each other, but half the time that's really all I want from my comics. Watch out quarter bins! I am looking for Savage Dragon! Or hell, maybe I'll start picking up the Savage Dragon Archives. 25 issues for $20! Wait, that's not such a great deal vs. quarter bins...

The Nine Loves of El Gato: Crime Mangler

El Gato is a Mexican, masked, luchadore wrestler. He apparently mangles crime. However, this comic is set before he is a true crime mangler and is instead about when he was just a dude (mostly a dude who wrestles), and the girls he slept with before finding his true love. Apparently an earlier El Gato comic was "the Nine Lives" which makes the title of this make more sense. Anyway, this is nine different stories by nine different artists, who aren't your average "big dude punches stuff" artists. Actually, looking it up some of the artists are old school Marvel artists, crazy. I wish I still had this comic so I could look at the art again. Some of the artists are indie people though. Still, it's pretty decent stuff. Definitely worth the 25 cents I paid for it.

Tangent comics

2009-09-23T00:38:00.002-02:30

Back when these first came (1997) out I was strictly a Marvel Zombie. Oh, and some Wildstorm/Image books. But I guess that there wasn't much out the week these came out. Or just the differentness of the Tangent covers made me pick up a couple of them (The Joker, which was really good, and Secret Six, which was okay).

(And those covers were so good! So different! White space! Weirdness! Designed by Rian Hughes! And shit, check out all those other logos he's done. And alternative logos he designed that were never used!)

I've read most of the others over the years, which have gone from awesome (John Ostrander's Nightwing) to, uhm, not so awesome. I read...maybe half of that 12 part series that came out last year, but didn't really dig it.

Doom Patrol

I like the idea that this is a basically a doomsday cult that knows the earth is going to end. As they saw it happen before traveling back in time. Overall the comic isn't that great though. The future isn't that interesting. The character designs (and the characters themselves) are kind of blah. And I dunno. It just doesn't do much for me.

Tales of the Green Lantern

I really find it hard to care about Green Lantern and Blackest Night and everything when the main character is Hal Jordan, who I find to be incredibly boring. Even typing this sentence is making me sleepy. The Tangent Green Lantern, however, is one I really wish there were more comics about. The original Tangent GL one shot featured JH Williams III art (yay!) in a variety of styles in an anthology of stories about people wronged and killed. GL acted as a narrator/facilitator and helped the spirits get revenge. It was good. This one doesn't feature as much art by Williams, but it does feature a trio of stories that could all, maybe, be the origin of this Green Lantern. I really want more. It's basically just an updating of House of Mystery or whatever (complete with "host"), but it's really good.

Sea Devils
You know, I think I've read this one before. Or maybe it just seems so boring because all undersea city comics are the same and I just don't care. Oh no, the humans have done something, oh no, a giant monster is attacking, oh no, I don't want the job my father has. It just seems really cliched and blah. I liked the cameo by the Joker though.

Punching people

2009-09-21T14:24:00.001-02:30

Lobo: Blazing Chain of Love

I can't really believe that Lobo has been in so many comics. Even ignoring all the one shots (like this one) and miniserieses, he had a 64 issue series in the '90s. 64 issues! That's crazy! In this one Lobo is trying to track down a hooker and ends up going to a harem planet. It's fairly predictable, but I liked the art by "Denise Cowan" and the last page gag about condom use was pretty funny.

Troublemakers #1

It's alright. The cover blurb of "Choose life. Choose a job. Choose this comic." made me think it'd be more about 20something slackers with superpowers, but instead we get a comic about teenagers who were given superpowers by the company their parents work for and they're raised in some top secret facility and blah blah blah. It doesn't have supervillains or anything, which I suppose makes it different from most of these comics, but yeah. The letters page and other Acclaim/Valiant company info is so weird looking back on it today.

Hercules: Prince of Power #1
Hercules is a jerk. Hercules drinks. Zeus kicks him out of Olympus. Into space! Hercules meets aliens. Hercules continues to be a jerk, and drink, and fight. But he's still a hero. And a jerk. And he gets a robot drunk. Hercules is awesome. I need to catch up on the current series. And find more issues of this.

DC annual things

2009-09-19T00:16:00.002-02:30

Justice League Quarterly #4

Okay, I guess this isn't actually an annual, as they came out four times a year (presumably?) but it's thick and has lots of comics. I've liked what I've read of JLE/I, so hoped this would be decent.

The opening story with the Injustice League is okay, but it's kind of clear I'm missing the joke. Oh look! Cluemaster.

The second story is better, but yeah, Guy Gardner is a jerk. I don't really want to read comics about him. I liked the way the demon was defeated. Talking!

Finally there are 12 (!) pages of a scrawny, gross cat doing scrawny gross cat things to various Justice League members. I find it kind of crazy that DC published something like that. But it was fun enough, and the last panel explaining why the cat was there was funny.

Justice League America Annual 8

Ooooh, an Elseworlds. They don't make these anymore. Though perhaps making _every_ annual you published an Elseworlds one year was kind of overkill. The main story in this annual has (shock!) a post apocalyptic future were everyone has died, but heroes who are just like the JLA will team up and win the day, blah blah blah. This was better than the Elseworlds: Superman annual I read. Which had something about aliens invading earth and slavery, etc. I hope someone did an Elseworlds were it was just a romantic comedy featuring Wally West (or someone) who is not the Flash at all.

There is one good thing to this annual: the Evan Dorkin backup strip. Featuring the JLA doing nothing, while the O Squad (featuring Amazo, Chemo, Despero, Sinestro, Kanjar Ro, Staro, and so forth) team up and fail to fight the Justice League. Evan Dorkin is good. The signatures of the villains are pretty awesome. This site is posting lots of Dorkin's old comic strips.

Teen Titans Lost Annual

Woah, something new? This only came out last year! And yet I can still buy it from a quarter bin. Fantastic.

This was, I believe, Bob Haney's final comic, and I really have to wonder if he meant for it to be so bizarre, or if penciller Jay Stephens made the villains extra ridiculous on purpose. I mean, the story is crazy enough with JFK being abducted by aliens, but making those aliens mods who are fighting another race of aliens who are hippies is kind of crazy. And Aquaboy is completely useless! So useless he doesn't even bother going to the alien planet with the other Titans. Amazing!

The art is totally good too. I get a Jack Kirby vibe from it, but also a bit of Paul Pope. Anyway, it's good. I am curious as to what the pencils looked like before Mike Allred (the inker) got to them though.

And that final page is pretty awesome. JFK in space!

Girls girls girls

2009-09-17T00:00:00.001-02:30

Anima #0

I had heard some good things about this series on the internet recently. And foolishly thought maybe this would be a good issue to start on, as I clearly have no idea what Zero Hour was. It doesn't really make much sense, and it seems to be all about revealing characters' mysterious backstories and giving answers to readers. But I have no idea what the questions even were.

Bad Girls #1

This has a really nice Darwyn Cooke cover. Then the art inside is nothing like it at all. Not that the art is bad, in fact I quite like Jennifer Graves work here, it looks like somebody...good...

The story is nothing new. New girl in school. Nerdy boy. Bitchy girls. Superpowers. Etc. It's done better than some I've read. But I'm not in high school anymore, plus my high school was never like that anyway.

Girlfrenzy! JLA: Tomorrow Woman
I think I read the JLA comic this is spinning out of, but I reallllly don't remember it. Thankfully, enough information is given in this comic to let me understand what's going on. The story is kind of dumb, but given it has to take place during JLA #5 I can forgive that.

I do like Tomorrow Woman's costume though.

Action Comics Weekly 603

2009-09-15T23:37:00.002-02:30

Oh hey, since Wednesday Comics, DC's most recent weekly anthology series is coming out (and almost over), lets go back and look at another time they tried this.

This is the third issue from this experiment, which only lasted 42 issues (it must have sold terribly!), and features Kyle Baker drawing a flying dude, Deadman, Superman, Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, and... Hey, this sounds familiar. Okay, so I'm over exaggerating the similarities. Kyle Baker drew Blackhawk, and he only drew the cover. But now, onto the inside!

Green Lantern

The Green Lantern story is fairly crap, but about halfway through I realized it had pretty good art. Gil Kane isn't someone I've ever really noticed before, probably because...I don't really have an excuse. He is oooollllddd. I started reading comics during the '90s. So yeah. His art in this is good though, after I finished reading the comic, I went back and just looked at the art, ignoring the words, and had a much more enjoyable experience.

If I had a scanner there would now be a picture of Hal Jordan bitch slapping Star Sapphire.

Secret Six!

Oh, this is terrible. Just stupid and I don't know what is going on at all. The 12 year old wunderkind scientist they're going after looks like Kim Jong Il.

The curent Secret Six series is a million times better.

Deadman

So I was at my friend's house last month, and saw she had some issues of a Deadman series from a few years ago. I read issue two, with the intention of reading more, but it was too bad. Just stupid crap I didn't care about at all, wrapped inside really nice Mike Mignola covers

This story is better. I like the ancient Mayan god dude, though it's a bit too "hey brown person, your gods were lies". Then there's some alien stuff and I wonder why everyone seems to think that South Americans needed mystical help to build shit.

Superman

Only two pages! Apparently supposed to look like the newspaper strips. It's fairly good. Stuff happens. But why didn't Superman just move the guy out of the way of the train instead of trashing the tracks?

Wild Dog

I like Wild Dog's logo font. The two (!) pages of letters from people writing in to say how awesome the Wild Dog miniseries was and how there should be more comics about people shooting terrorists is kind of frightening. The comic itself is not as bad as I had first though after it's opening lines ("What in the Hell...Was that a sonic boom?" "No..That was an explosion... Nearby!"). I'm not convinced to pick up that miniseries from quarter bins yet.

Blackhawk

Oh hey, this was good. Blackhawk is hanging out after WWII and needs stuff to do. Stuff that involves sexy dames and flying planes. I would read more of this one.

An ad for TailgunnerJo

This series sounds messed up. Is it any good? Did I once read issue one? I do not recall...

Sweet Tooth

2009-09-13T19:15:00.000-02:30

Hey! It's a new comic that's actually supposed to cost a dollar! Awesome. I've bought and read all the $1 first issues Vertigo has put out this year (The Unwritten, Greek Street, and this one) and haven't really been that impressed by any of them. I thought Greek Street was pretty terrible to be honest.

Sweet Tooth was the one I was looking forward to the most. Post apocalyptic! I love that! Fantastic. However, the series doesn't really give me any reason to keep reading after this issue. Even if every issue was a dollar.

The art is good, and its got Jose Villarrubia colouring it, so that's good too. I do take issue with the way the first three pages are laid out though. I don't really understand why you would spent the first three pages carefully drawing each panel so that you can't see that Gus has antlers until the page four splash, when the fucking cover shows you. It doesn't make any sense to me, it's not dramatic or shocking because you already know.

But yeah, the story just does nothing for me. The main character is Gus, who's a weird mutant kid with antlers living in the woods with his dad. He's never met anyone other than his dad in his entire life, as weird mutant kids were killed by people for...whatever reason. Fear. Money. Something.

Anyway, Gus' dad dies, and seemingly almost immediately afterwards some hunters come after him. Some other dude shows up, end of issue one. Um, what? How is this an ongoing series? What's the plot? Oh wait, look in the text pieces included in the issue it tells us what the series is actually about. Gus is going to try to get to "the preserve," a place where mutant kids like him can live in peace. But why don't you include that in the actual issue? The pacing of this just way too slow.

The other major problem I have with this series is nothing against the book itself, but rather just an indication that Jeff Lemire is not someone who produces comics I'd be that interested in. In the text piece he says "My books tend to focus on small-town life, and small-town folks." Now, while that isn't necessarily a deal breaker for me, it does make me less interested. Lemire's portayal of Gus really hammers this home. He talks like a "hick" and was apparently raised by his god fearing father to be a boring god fearing mutant kid. That is like the thing I least want to read about.

So yeah, ultimately Lemire doesn't seem to be a creator I'm that interested in. And at least I found out by spending a dollar, instead of $20.

However, one neat thing is that if you go to Lemire's blog he gives details on how you can get a free sketch from him! Just send him a copy of the issue, plus shipping costs, and he'll send you the comic back signed, and he'll include an original sketch. Nice!

After the end of the comic there's a preview of the Fables novel. Fables is a series that I don't find to ever be super amazing (maybe one volume somewhere along the line, I remember liking some of the older stuff more than the last few I've read), but is at least generally enjoyable. I'd say this preview is pretty much the same. It doesn't blow me away, but if I saw a copy in the library I'd probably pick it up and read it.

Age of the Sentry/Freedom Collective

2009-08-17T22:47:00.007-02:30

Age of the Sentry

That the comics put out by Marvel in the '60s were incredibly influential is pretty obvious, not just for the fact that they're still in print, that the characters are still around, that people still talk about the character, but also because people are still parodying/homaging the style.

First off the covers of both these comics: words words words. They are covered in words. And things happening. And "Approved by the Cosmic/Kremlin Code Authority" boxes in the corner. I was amused.

Anyway anyway. The Sentry. I heard the character sucked. I heard his first miniseries and this one were good. I didn't know. I don't read New Avengers (well, I read an issue in Malaysia once). This was a dollar, so I bought it.

The first page kind of just confuses me as to its existence. It's a kid asking his dad to tell him a story about the Sentry. In comic book style. It's drawn/coloured much more modernly than the rest of the comic, and I don't really get the point.

Then there's the first story. Written by Jeff Parker, who I usually like and I should really read the Interman some day, and drawn by Nick Dragotta, who did some X-Statix stuff? I think. The story is ridiculous, but it's supposed to be. The Sentry works for an encyclopedia company? Whatever.

It's the Sentry's origin story, and I have no idea if this meshes with his previous one (does he even have a previous one?) and there's a big pink monster thing, and a guy with three brains, and it's cute and all, but I sort of feel it's trying too hard. What I really enjoy is that the colourist, Val Staples, has made the colouring intentionally shitty. Like the various colours don't quite match the lines on every page. It's good. I like that.

The second story is by Paul Tobin, who has written something I've read I'm sure... Oh, he wrote Banana Sunday! That was excellent. Go read that instead of either this comic or this blog. His story does have beatnik Mad Thinker though, which is fun.

The Freedom Collective

The Freedom Collective is the idea of what comics the Soviet Union would have produced if Stan Lee and Jack Kirby lived there. It doesn't quite live up to it's potential. At least part of that due to the fact that it's in black and white, and as much as I love the Essentials Marvel puts out, a project like this would have benefited from colour. Especially at $5.95 Canadian (while the US price is only $3.95). What the fuck Rough Cut Comics? Have you ever looked at a currency converter? They are _free_ on the _internet_. That price should be about $4.50 or whatever. Thankfully I only paid a buck. Still.

Soviet pop culture is something I'm interested in, and if I had continued studying Russia/Russian I probably would have ended up writing essays on Soviet spy movies and comic books (I just met someone who said their friend had written a thesis on Russian comics, I should find out about that). And while this works to some extent, it's still written by westerners, and is still sort of poking fun at the Soviets. I'm curious as to how much research they actually did for it.

Hercules: New Labors

2009-04-01T18:20:00.003-02:30

The Incredible Hercules is the best book coming out from Marvel right now, which surprises me to no end. Hercules? Really? How is he even enough of a character to headline his own Marvel book? Yet it's really good, and it makes me sad that the sales on that title drop so much every month.

But I haven't read it in the last few months (and should probably pick up the newest collection), so instead I'm reviewing a collection of a miniseries about Hercules from a few years ago that I got out of the library. I picked it up with trepidation, as it is written by Frank Tieri, who's not exactly well known for writing super awesome comics.

And, well, this book pretty much makes my fears true. It's not terrible or anything, I mean, Hercules himself is written pretty much in character for the Marvel universe, as a sort of drunk buffoon who likes to fight, but still has a sense of decency. The scene where he crashes Thor's funeral and is like "What the fuck are you doing? This is not the type of funeral fit for a god!" was pretty accurate (and it wasn't a good funderal! Thor needs burning ships and stuff at a minimum).

The actual new labours are done fairly well too. The comic tries to update the old labours by having Hercules fight like, the Mole Man and Dr. Doom and stuff, and while some of the updated versions are just stupid, as a plot idea it works pretty well.

The problem is that the entire miniseries is trapped in ridiculous reality TV show trappings. In 2009 that is an incredibly tired and worn out cliche. In 2004 (when I guess this miniseries was commissioned) I think it was also a tired and worn out cliche. But whatever. So Hercules is on this reality TV show, and we get lots of terrible scenes where he's interacting with the people making it (which is a host, a camera man and...an executive or something? I remember there being three of them), and they interact with other people. These characters are written as completely depraved idiots with no redeeming characteristics whatsoever, and really make me wonder if Tieri has personal problems with TV people. Did they not hire him to write scripts or something? He seems pretty bitter.

Ultimately, there's a good Hercules story in here struggling to get out of a terrible reality TV show idea. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite make it. Thankfully, we do have an awesome Hercules comic coming out right now. Hurray!

JSA: Justice be Done, Darkness Falls

2009-03-29T19:30:00.002-02:30

So pretty much right off the bat I realized that this comic would be about characters I knew very little about. Before the comic has even started there's an intro to the characters that will be appearing, the only two I think I've actually read comics about before were Wildcat and Black Canary. Robinson, Goyer, and Johns were going to bring back all the concepts and characters in the superhero comics they used to love and I know nothing about. I guess I haven't gotten around to picking out issues of Infinity Inc. from quarter bins yet.

But hold on, the Grey Man? Wesley Dodds*? Didn't I just read comics about them? Talk about syncronicity. Of course that doesn't help me know who the hell Mordru is. And I think that name is awful. Ick. And is that Kid Eternity from the Vertigo miniseries? How is he showing up here? And Dream! Oh comics.

One thing I do like about this comic though are the costumes. Or maybe not all the costumes (Sentinel's mask is awful), but the fact that half the team seem to just be wearing clothes anyone could. Sure it depends on which artist is drawing them, but Starman is pretty much always just a guy in goggles. Sentinel has ridiculously puffy sleeves and a huge belt buckle. Flash looks like he's wearing jeans in some panels. Sand, at least at first, is a guy wearing a sweater and a gasmask. That could be me right now! Mr. Terrific wears a jacket! A jacket! I have no idea who or why he even is, but he has a jacket. And a weird T on his face.

And how about the more superhero-y costumes? I love the fact that the Star Spangled Kid wears shorts. Yeah, they're skin tight, but they are a million times more sensible than what most superheroines wear. And while in volume two she's wearing pants, you have to wonder what was going through Black Canary's mind when she wore what was basically a bathing suit to a funeral. What?! I like Hourman's costume too. It seems as though it should just be a jumbled mess (that line on his face!) but it actually turns out surprisingly well.

Of course this isn't to say I love all the costumes. Atom Smasher's costume is pretty lame, but maybe I'm just bitter he doesn't have a mohawk anymore. More superheroes need ridiculous haircuts. I also find Wildcat's mask fairly ridiculous about half the time. And some of the villians and supporting characters (Scarab!), urgh.

I also like that Dr. Mid-Nite is an actual doctor. I like the inventive ways Sentinel uses his powers. That's how you be a Green Lantern! I don't even understand how he made versions of dead superheroes and had them fight. That seems like it would take way more work than is good. And he made a wheelchair and splints for an injured person!

But enough about that, onto the actual comics. I liked the first volume more than the second, even if the artwork in book two is definitely better than the first, and it contains ten issues (I love thick trades). The second book also has lots of characters I like, Mr. Bones (although I know almost nothing about him), Agent Chase (!!!) show up as part of the DEO, and Dove comes back. I love Dove!

Volume two does have a pretty fun issue with an injured Wildcat taking out almost the entire injustice Society by himself. Though what kind of surprised me about that issue was that of the seven members of the IS, I knew one of them (Count Vertigo). I am still not that up on my knowledge of the DC universe it seems. Oh wait, Geomancer showed up in issue five. I didn't remember him though.

But the arc where Kobra is/are the villain(s)didn't do much for me. I mean, I like Kobra and all, but he didn't seem to be treated like a viable threat.

Also, it seems that if you are related to a superhero, even distantly, you are about a milllllion times more likely to get powers. That seems so unfair!

I wonder if in another ten years or so some new writer will be undoing all the stuff done in comics like this. They'll bring back the weird '90s Fate, and get rid of the helmeted one, they'll turn Atom Smasher back into Nuklon, and I don't know what else.

So yeah, I guess I'll read more JSA, but I really want more of the Starfox Justice Critter though. That comic looks awesome! And for the Red Bee to come back. And to be able to write coherent reviews.

*So, unrelated but awesome. I was at a Workless Party Party recently, and like many other people was dressed up in costume. In my case that was sort of '30s style hat, pants (with suspenders), and a gasmask (and some pussy willows I'd found at a skytrain station on my way). At one point a guy yelled out "Hey Wesley Dodds!" thinking I was dressed up like the Sandman, and we proceeded to have a really good costume. Now I need to make an actual Sandman Costume.

Blame!

2009-03-28T19:22:00.002-02:30

Tsutomo Nihei is the only creator who's works I own in three different languages. It all started back in 2002 when I went to Russia for school. I didn't buy any of his comics there (the only comics I managed to find that time were reprints of American superheroes, I think I still have an issue of Gen13 somewhere), but I did become friends with one of the other guys on the trip. He was also into manga and anime, and upon returning to Canada he lent me a bunch of stuff.

While I was looking through his collection, I noticed he had a bunch of books in Japanese, from a trip he'd taken there the year before. I didn't really pay attention to them, as I can't read Japanese and generally prefer to actually read my comics, but I took volume one of Blame, because I liked the art style. Soon I came back and borrowed volumes 2 and 3. This comic was great! And there was barely any dialogue so it didn't matter that much that it was in Japanese. All the English I needed was printed on the dust jacket "Adventure Seeker Killy in the Cyber Dungeon Quest." What did that even mean?

The next year I was in Montreal for a student journalism conference, and when I wasn't making a new friend I went looking for comics. I drooled over all the amazing hardcover collections you could get, but the only comics I actually picked up where a cheap used copy of the Invisibles volume 2, and three assorted volumes of Blame! (somehow even cheaper than English manga).

An aside: How often does that happen now? When I was a kid reading comics I didn't really care what number an issue had. Sure it was exciting when I eventually got every issue of a series or story line, but if I only had some I didn't care that much. I have three random volumes of DragonBall/Z in French too. Why don't I do that any more? About the only time I've thought of picking up the new volume of a manga without reading earlier ones is Monster, where I stopped reading fairly early, but heard such good things I thought about checking out a later volume. I didn't though.

Okay, so back to Blame! I can't actually remember what volumes of Blame I got (2, 3, and 5 maybe?), but I was excited to have them. And now I could even read them! Even if my French wasn't that good. I could at least find out the name of the main character (Killy!) and what sound his "emetteur positronique" makes.*

Some of the French editions are really nice by the way. They're flipped, and slightly smaller than most manga is put out here, but apart from that they're beautiful packages. Dustflaps, colour pages at the begining, translated sound effects, really nicely put together in general. The only real downside being that they've taken the ! off of the title, and don't match the others on my shelf.

A few years later in 2004 I was Montreal again and bought another couple of volumes from the same CD/comic store (I think it's called C'Dment, but I can't find it online). And came incredibly close to buying Nihei's art book at the Beguiling in Toronto (I sort of wish I had, but at the time I had not very much money).

Something I did buy around this time was the incredibly oddity of Snikt, Nihei's Wolverine comic. I think it came out before the manga boom really hit, and the graphic novel was in print for about a day and has never come back into print. I've been confused about this ever since, as you'd think that a comic by an actual Japanese artist with a following would be something Marvel would want to put out in digest format. When Blame! starting coming out in English I figured Marvel would rerelease it, but they didn't. When the Halo graphic novel, featuring a story by Nihei that I totally couldn't understand as I've never really played Halo, came out from Marvel I figured Marvel would rerelease Snikt, but no, never. Sigh, I just don't understand.

Anyway, finally, Blame! did start coming out in English. About a month (or less?) before I left the country for over two years. I managed to buy volume one, but left it...somewhere... (Korea?) I did come close to buying a full run of Blame in Korean for dirt cheap at a comic library store in Korea that was closing, but I decided if I was going to buy the rest of the series I was going to get it in English. One of my students did buy it, but he didn't like it that much. The fool!

After living and traveling in Asia for a while, I decided to go back to Canada, but not before stopping in Japan. I spent a lot of time looking at comics there, but because I didn't have much room to carry stuff I limited myself to just a few volumes of comics I couldn't read. Two volumes each of Abara and Biomega, both by Nihei and found in a Book Off (oh Book Off!).

I also picked up the anime while in Malaysia (?) and when I watched it found it to be incredibly bizarre. I found out it was original a series of animations on the internet. And it's...disjointed. It seems to just take the animators favourite bits and animate them, so there's not real plot there (as much as there is a plot). It's just Killy fighting things. The weird music and sound effects, nonsensical plot, but beautiful art work made me think of it more as an art film than anything else.

When I got finally got back to Canada I worked in a comic shop for a while, where I got volumes 8-10 of Blame, but discovered that 1 and 4 were unavailable for some reason. I eventually found volume 1, and then 4, for sale (cheap!) in a couple of comic shops here, but after almost seven years, three languages and I don't even remember how many countries visited it's kind of bizarre to have the final volume I read by number 4.

Does it solve any long standing plot points? Does it throw light onto the world Killy inhabits? Well, not really. I even started rereading the series at volume one last week, and when I started reading volume four a few days ago I didn't even remember what had happened at the end of volume three (well, I was reading it in French).

Still, it hardly even matters to me. Killy wanders around a world made up entirely of crazy architecture, megastructures, killer robots, and humans who are oddly disproportionate to each other, and that's all you need to know. I could probably read this series in any order and it wouldn't matter to me. I could read this stuff all day.

*Supposedly the comic was supposed to be named the sound a gun firing. Blam! But Nihei's (or someone's) English skills ended up making it the much cooler sounding Blame!

Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service

2009-03-27T19:05:00.002-02:30

I have a problem with manga: I can never remember the character's names. Sure I know who they are, I know how they act, what they want, why they do what they do, I just have no idea what to call them other than "that guy with the weird hair" (isn't that everyone in manga?).

I mean, I've read twenty something volumes of Eyshield 21*, and I doubt I could name even half the cast.

The same problem presents itself to me with Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, which is probably my favourite manga coming out right now. And yet, what are the characters names? I just finished reading volume seven an hour ago and...I don't know. I can just identify them by the way they're described on the cover (psychic, dowsing, hacking, embalming, channeling, puppet).

Is it just because they have Japanese names, which I find to be just random jumbles of sounds when I'm reading them? I'm bad with names in real life too, so maybe I just sufer from this in general (who were those people I met at that party last night?). Yet I seem to be able to remember superhero codenames (and their backstories!) with ease.

But all this is beside's the point: Kurosagi is one of the best comics out there right now hands down. Despite this, when volume seven opened I was a little disapointed. Why? Because the incredible cliffhanger from volume six (which, apart from the Jack the Ripper side story, was one of the best comics I read last year) was completely ignored. The notes at the annotations at the back say that it's supposed to be picked up at some point in the future, but blah.

Still, that feeling didn't last long, as this was yet another volume of gripping, corpse delivery**. Okay, so this volume dosesn't really have any corpse delivery, and instead the Buddhist university graduates (finally! A degree less useful than mine) are doing various jobs to pay the rent. Moving gravestones to a new cemetary, moving box after box of manga for an artist, moving stuff on a movie set (hey! it's just like all those university graduates I know working in construction), and oh, one of them gets to do some makeup at the movie too. But still, "I talk to/find dead people" isn't the best skill to have in the job market.

The first story in this volume has probably the most insane concept that we've seen so far. I don't really want to give away much, though the cover sort of does that anyway, but I will say it involves a robot.

One of the other joys found in this manga are the copius editor's notes found in the back, and written by Carl Gustav Horn, who's pretty awesome. The notes aren't just by him of course, some are from the translator, some are from the letterer, some of them are just random anecdotes that are vaguely related to what's actually happening in the comic. But in between those, there're also incredibly informative notes. Sure, some of them are just explaining in-jokes, but others actually help you understand the story by explaining cultural references that might go over the heads of people that aren't Japanese (or extreme fans). How he figured out that each book's chapter titles are songs from old Japanese singers is completely beyond me. If only every manga had notes like this.

To be honest, based on the other works by the creators involved in this series I'm surprised I enjoy it as much as I do. Mail didn't do much for me (though I only read volume one), and I didn't even notice the character from that the first time I read the story where he gueststarred in Kurosagi. While MPD Psycho just left me confused, what is going on there? Despite that, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery service is well worth checking out. Black Jack's in volume 6! (I think.)

*Which is incredibly good by the way, you should defnitely read it, even if you have absolutely no interest in football. How are they going to win the Christmas Bowl?! How many more volumes can the series go on for?

**Which, based upon Smuggler, the other manga I bought at the same time as Kurosagi volume one, is an actual subgenre.

Wildstorm

2009-03-26T18:46:00.003-02:30

You know, I really like the Wildstorm Universe. Yeah, it started out with loads of terrible comics, but it grew into something interesting. Warren Ellis's Stormwatch was really good, and it's kind of sad/frustrating looking at the supercomics he writes now, because they're not even in the same league.Sure, the Authority eventually degenerated into terribleness after Ellis, but other Wildstorm comics were similarly good. Sleeper is fantastic, and a new edition of it coming out later this year means it has, rightfully, joined it's place amongst Wildstorm books that will stay in print.

I also really dug Stormwatch: Team Achilles, which I finally read a full run of last year. Yes, the writer lied about his past, but I sometimes wish he was still writing comics now.

Even the books I didn't dig that much (I even liked Gen13!), like much of Joe Casey's run on Wildcats, was at least doing something interesting with the superhero genre and trying to see what would happen if the crazy technology found in comics was for sale to the public.

But then came relaunch after relaunch, and I stopped caring. Mostly because the relaunches were supposed to make the Wildstorm universe less "grim and gritty" when, apart from its creators, that was really all the universe had going for it. It was a world that seemed far more like our own in regards to how superpowers would be dealt with and reacted to. The government would be trying to keep it out of sight from the public, while at the same time using people with superpowers to try and get an edge up on the other countries. People would be experimented on, some would have their lives ruined by powers that were given to them and they'd try to rebel, others would work for the government. People with too much power would become corrupt. People who were insane would end up with too much power. Organized crime would end up being run by people with superpowers.

And that's what the average person doesn't even know about. Sure they know about superheroes, but they're terrified of them because maybe seeing one means that their city is about to get destroyed by aliens, or maybe it just means martial law's about to be instated. Sure there's better tech, but that hardly matters when maybe tomorrow everyone you know will be dead. Or never existed at all.

But yeah, relaunch after relaunch. I tried to read some of it. The most recent Gen13 was awful, as it just brought the characters back to where they were when they started. I don't think I made it through more than an issue or two. Okay, so they'd died, but loads of Stormwatch and other characters who had died were brought back without needing to completely reset their status quo.

I read Azarello's Deathblow in trade, though I don't remember much of it, and I thought Stormwatch PHD was at alright and had pretty good art from Doug Manhke. I agree with the sentiment that Christos Gage wrote his scripts like someone who hadn't been reading Wildstorm comics that long.

And fuck, his Authority: Prime mini series was dreadful. Though a lot of the blame for that also has to be placed on Darick Robertson, who seemed to be doing some of the ugliest art of his career. Plus the miniseries just seemed pointless in general. I can understand wanting to continue to have the characters appear in between proper serieses coming out, even if only so that readers remember them. But putting out terrible books like this only damages the brand. You'd think that Wildstorm would have remembered that the last time they killed the buzz on the Authority by putting out a series of terrible Authority comics.

But then, then things started to go right. The Armageddon one shots started coming out, and while they weren't great, they at least indicated there was a direction for the universe again. Revelations was better, but seemed to be somewhat pointless time filling. I guess it was there to build up to the world changing event, make it seem more important. But it was essentially just another tour of the Wildstorm Universe.

And then Number of the Beast. I can't say I was expecting that much from the series, but it delivered exactly what I want from my Wildstorm univese comics. Secret military projects involving superheros, different, rival secret military projects involving superheroes. Combining elements of the Wildstorm universe we know with "the secret history of the 20th century" because there were no wildstorm comics coming out before the 90s, and so they're able to populate it with a fictional history, create new characters, or just analogues of existing ones, and do whatever they want with them.

For Number of the Beast Scott Beatty and Chris Sprouse have created an entire set of WWII era superheroes (yes another bunch) that had disapeared at the end of the war, supposedly vaporized by an atomic bomb. They weren't of course, they've been in a VR simulation based on alien tech set up by an evengelical Christian military leader. And hell, new old superheroes are practically stock in trade for Wildstorm now with Red Menance, the American Way, and Astro City all coming out from them. But they're still interesting! Sure some of them aren't that great, but I want to know more about a lot of them! I want more comics with Neandra and the Skeleton Crew! Even the weird desert plant version of Swamp Thing, Tumbleweed.

So those characters are running around. Other characters from the Wildstorm universe are running around (The High! That's how you bring back a character who died without/despite a line wide reboot!). Secret military organizations are being secretive and doing bad shit. And you know it's all going to end badly because of what happened next. But it's good, I totally enjoyed this series.

Plus footnotes! You never see those anymore!

At the end of the series we've gotten to the point where the Wildstorm universe was actually interesting again. The end of the world happened, what happens next on this post apocalyptic earth? There was some buzz going on, and I wanted to check out some of the most recent relaunches. And I was working in a comic book store! What better time to do so! Except that we ordered so lowly on the titles they'd sell out before my lunch break the day they came out.

There was actually some interest there, but retailers didn't even give the line a chance, it was pretty much dead in the water from the get go. I read that the guys writing Authority have a 15 issue arc planned. What happens after that I don't know, but I doubt Wildstorm can keep on at this level unless Jim Lee signed a contract with DC saying that Wildcats has to come out every month.

Tell Me Something

2009-03-25T18:35:00.001-02:30

Jason was probably my favourite creator discovery last year. Yeah, he's hardly new, but I don't believe I'd read any of his works up until I Killed Adolf Hitler. Now I can't believe it took so long. Sure, maybe there were comics I liked more that came out last year, but I don't think I read as many consistantly good comics by a single creator.

Despite the quality of his comics, I think I will always remember Jason for another reason. For a while last year I worked in a comic book store. One day a guy came up to me and asked about I Killed Adolf Hitler. I told him that it was really good and that he should read it. He asked "what's it about? Does Hitler really get killed?" I responded in the positive and he replied that that was "lame" and asked if Hitler at least "got to kill some guys". I had no way to reply to that and just walked away from the conversation, completely confused and wondering what the deal with that guy was.

When you list the elements included in Jason's comics, they seem like they should be as confusing as that event, but they follow their own internal logic, that works perfectly.
His comics seem to happen in some weird version of Europe that has never actually existed. It lies somewhere between bittersweet black and while films, surrealism, and complete depravity and brutality. In this world everyone wears hats, nobody ever seems to end up happy, and hired killers are only ever a phone call. Oh and the hired killers, like everyone else, are anthropomorphic animals.

In Tell Me Someting, the comparisons to film are even more evident, as Jason chooses to tell the story almost entirely without dialogue. What little dialogue that does occur appears as "inter titles" full panels with nothing in them but the words a character is speaking, a technique used in old silent films. Yet so masterful is Jason's art that characters are fleshed out, and we know their motivations and flaws despite them never saying a word.

To help tell the story, which frequently jumps back and forwards through time, Jason uses a form of artistic shorthand I've only noticed before in Japanese comics: using black borders around pages to signify something is a flashback. I'm not saying that only Japanese comics have used these (clearly they haven't, as Jason isn't from Japan), but that's the only place I've noticed it. Here Jason ues the technique incredibly effectively, for a story that is being told with as little dialogue as possible, captions saying "five years ago" would kind of pull you out of the mood, and even if you have no idea what's going on at first, you'd soon be able to figure it out.

I wouldn't say that this was my favourite Jason comic, I think that's Last of the Musketeers, but it's an enjoyable, if sad (like pretty much all of Jason's work) story, and definitely worth checking out.

Black Jack!

2009-03-24T18:33:00.003-02:30

A visual comparison between different editions of Black Jack. With terrible quality photographs! (Click for bigger versions, or go to the flickr page.

First up a page from the Viz version of Black Jack:

Now the same page from the Vertical version (please excuse the terrible quality of this image):

And now, a photo of a postcard showing Tezuka's original art from the same page:

Check out those corrections! And the amount of detail totally lost in the Viz version.
I went back and forth on which translation I preferred, but the lettering on that page of the Vertical one is waaaay better.

Also of interest here are a couple of other pages (without Tezuka originals).

Viz:

Vertical:

What you should be able to notice here, despite the terrible image quality, is the large amount of gray shading in the Viz edition that isn't evident at all in the Vertical edition, leading me to assume the Viz version was printed from a colourized version. Ooooh.

And speaking of colour Tezuka, I recently got an awesome set of postcards reprinting covers to a bunch of his early work. Here's a bit of a preview, I'll try and post more later.

Oh Tezuka!

Dokkebi Park

2009-03-23T19:16:00.005-02:30

I wrote this for Jeju Life, and found out over a year later that it was never published because it was "not good enough" or whatever. I'll put it here so that maybe someone else will find out about this awesome place.

Unless you're about eight years old or really into monsters, you've probably never heard of Dokkebi Park, Jeju's premier monster related tourist attraction. The only mention of it in the English language guides available is a "goblin park" on one of the maps, no further information is given.

A dokkebi seems to be a sort of friendly, trick playing monster common in Korean folklore. Dokkebi are often shown having only one, cyclopean eye, and are commonly represented as having one or more horns. They also usually carry a club, which can be used to cast spells to summon anything they want (by stealing it from someone else). Still, they're supposed to be friendly, so don't freak out if you meet one while hiking.

Despite this lack of information, and because I'm really into monsters, I decided to go and check this place out. So off I went, armed with a Korean language brochure which promised statues of monsters and well, that's about all I could figure out to be honest. Still, that was enough for me.

Upon arriving at the park we received a pleasant surprise, an amazingly well written guide in English. Amazing! This was probably the best English information I received at any tourist attraction in Korea. I can only assume a bilingual monster fan happened by and wrote it for them, as none of the staff seemed to speak much English.

Most of the park is devoted to really strange statues and sculptures of dokkebi, some of these are really big, and all of them are pretty neat. In addition to the big statues, there are also examples of ones made from "junk" and small ones made of fimo. There's also a number of exhibitions that are more or less incomprehensible if you can't read Korean.

There's a few places that are actually kind of scary (seriously), so if you're easily scared you might want to skip the final performance and be on your guard while walking around the park. To counter balance the fear there is an enclosure with some cute bunnies.

Probably the best thing at the park is the dokkebi mask making available in a building which also houses the gift shop. An employee will make you a neat silver foam mask in one of a number of designs. Then you get to colour in your mask following one of the many examples they have, or just creating your own thing! Fantastic!

The park is a must see for any big fans of monsters, and even if you're not, taking photos of monster statues is an amusing way to spend an afternoon.

Tickets cost 6000 Won for adults and 5000 Won for children. There's a discount (how much? I think it was 50%) if you have your foreigner card with you.

If you've decided you're really into dokkebi it's also worth a trip up to the "mysterious road." In Korean it's known as the "dokkebi road" and you'll see them decorating several of the shops and stalls. There's also a bunch of statues in an abandoned mini golf place a little bit up the road.

How to get there:
If you've got your own transport just drive down road x (Jim! I have no idea where it was, sorry... check your maps?). You'll see bizarre silver warriors where you have to turn off.

Getting to Dokkebi Park without your own transportation is incredibly frustrating. A bus from the main terminal will bring you past it, but it won't actually stop there. Instead it'll drop you off down the road by some weird mushroom houses. From there you'll have to walk about ten minutes back up the side of the road to Dokkebi Park. Not really recommended for children. Thankfully, going back into town is easier, as you should just be able to flag down a bus going down the road.

For more information try calling (064) 783-3013 or go to www.dokkebipark.com (only in Korean, but there's pictures!).

There's more photos here and here (the second link also features photos from Loveland, so maybe not worksafe).

Aquaman: The Waterbearer

2009-03-22T22:45:00.001-02:30

So a little while ago I said I didn't know much about Aquaman, seeing this on the shelf of my library I decided to expand upon my lack of knowledge. I wish I hadn't.

I mean, I like Rick Veitch, he's done some good comics, but this isn't one of them. This book collects the first arc of the Aquaman relaunch from a few years ago, so, of course, it's a bold new direction. And part of it is a little interesting, though the fact that a hand made out of magic water seems more sensible than a harpoon might indicate that Aquaman comics have no idea what they're doing.

But yes, the bold new direction, after something that happened in some JLA comics Atlantis is on the bottom of the sea (what ever happened to Sub Diego?) and Aquaman isn't king anymore. So he is banished from the sea, and goes and lives in a lighthouse off the coast of Ireland with an oddly multicultural cast. And seriously, that's the plot of your Aquaman comic?

I can understand why they went that way, as the king of Atlantis idea seemed to be incredibly broken after a JLA arc where Atlantis was sent back in time and enslaved for years by magic stuff before coming back to the present. Because of Aquaman. So yeah, it's understandable the Atlanteans don't want to be ruled by him anymore, I certainly wouldn't (but of course, I'm against monarchies in general) , but replacing him with sociopathic magicians doesn't seem like much of an improvement.

Oh, one thing I am curious about, what is (are) the religion(s) of Atlantis? I presume at some point they worshiped Greek gods or something, though to be honest, I'm not super hot on my DC universe Atlantean history, but I guess a couple thousand years of isolation must of put a stop to that right? Otherwise the gods over in Wonder Woman might actually care about what was going on there. I mean, it'd probably be the largest group of worshipers they still had left.

But that's not dealt with here, instead we have vague magic magic stuff. And killer barnacles. Yes, the first conflict Aquaman deals with in this collection is when he's somehow restrained to some rocks by a breed of barnacles that is never supposed to let go. So, uhm, how did you attach him there guard guys? Later Aquaman spends most of an issue telepathically inhabiting a fish. Also, barnacles! This is stupid! Why am I reading this comic?

Okay, it's not all bad. The art is pretty good. I like the way Yvel Guichet draws the armour of the Atlantean soldiers (though not as much as the armour in another comic I read recently). I like the colouring on the Secret Files story at the end. I like Aquaman's new pants.

But mostly, I wonder why I read this instead of one of that book by Jason I haven't read yet, or basically anything else.

Wonder Woman: Land of the Dead

2009-03-21T22:23:00.002-02:30

I can understand why companies don't put numbers on the spines of their graphic novels, you're less likely to pick up volume 4 than you are volume 1. The problem is only compounded by the constantly changing creative teams. What number do you put on the spine of a book collecting issues 214-217 of Wonder Woman (and an issue of the Flash) when most of the run not only isn't collected, but probably never will be?

At the same time when you do pick up a volume of a creator's continuing story you might end up totally lost, even with recap pages put in to bring you up to speed.

And while this isn't completely the problem here, it is some of it. I know Greg Rucka wrote Wonder Woman for a while, and the two pages (!) recapping what's happened up to this point seem to indicate this is in the later part of his run. After Wonder Woman has set up an embassy in New York, and the gods have fought about a bunch of stuff, and Wonder Woman has blinded herself with venom from a snake so that she can fight (and kill) Medusa on live television. (What?!)

Ok, so first off I have no problem with Wonder Woman killing*, especially killing monsters. It's what characters from Greek/Roman myths and legends did, and she was made by a god, and raised in a society that wasn't exactly that modern. Plus, monsters!

But that was before this comic started, so what actually happens in this one? Well, there's a crossover with the flash, which is kind of eh. It didn't do much for me. Though there's nice use of the lasso of truth. Then we get into a much more interesting (to me) story, Diana journeying to the underworld. Now this is part of Rucka's ongoing story about gods rebelling and revolting and fighting each other and changing position which seems like a pretty solid base for a Wonder Woman comic. Though, to some extent I have to wonder why it took her 2000 years before Athena decided to overthrow Zeus? What were the gods doing all those years?

I find it interesting to contrast the use of these gods with their use in the Marvel Universe, where the Incredible Hercules is probably the best title they have coming out. They use some of the same characters (Ares especially), but in different ways. Even if they are both totally jerks. Actually, this reminds of a scene from, I think, JLA/Avengers when Wonder Woman meets the Marvel Hercules and is suuuuper mad at him for stuff he did to piss off her goddess a long time ago. Hercules is just like "What? Woah, I'm a fun loving, drunken buffoon, I didn't do that shit!" But yeah, good scene.

This has some decent scenes too. Like I said, I enjoy the battle of the gods, and how Rucka was having it evolve in ways that seemed to grow off the ancient myths. What I don't care for is all the modern stuff. Ferdinand the bull is a pretty neat character, but all the other embassy staff are total ciphers in this collection, and I have no reason to care for them or that kid who shows up at the end. Bah! More goding, less humans. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to read more Hercules comics for that.

*Other superheroes? Yes. I was kind of freaked out while reading Essential Spider-Man 5 to see Spider-Man kill an apparently sentient alien in the savage land by leading it into quicksand. He was wearing clothing! And talking a language you didn't understand! And you killed him and felt no regret! No Spider-Man! Bad!

Promethea

2009-03-20T21:27:00.002-02:30

I think that, apart from the most recent Top Ten mini (and that Cobweb story printed in a Drawn and Quarterly anthology or something), this is the last thing in the ABC universe that I hadn't read. It took me a long time to finish (I bought volume 1 yeeeeaarrss ago), partially because of a combination of "do I want to read a guide to magic written by Alan Moore?" and "do I have the time to spend to properly read a guide to magic written by Alan Moore?"

Of course I shouldn't have worried, considering it is written by Alan Moore (who wrote other well known comics such as Wildcats/Spawn*), and drawn by JH Williams, who seems to be capable of transforming even the most mind bending of scripts into into coherent comic pages. Despite that, what I'd love to see printed (or put online!) would be some of Moore's scripts for this series. We get a brief glance in the final trade, but it's not very much. Moore's scripts are known to be so dense you could probably fill up another five volumes just with them, so I doubt we'll ever see them all in print, but it would be fantastic to compare what Moore described with what Williams actually drew.

Onto the comic! Now, even if the book had been called "Alan Moore explains his personal beliefs about magic" it would have been worth reading if only to discover part of what makes Alan Moore think. And while a lot of it is that, admitedly desguised as Sophie Bangs/Promethea finds out where her powers come from, and done so skillfully that someone other than me is going to have written a much better critique of it, there's more to it that just that.

(I find it somewhat ironic that I'm saying "Hey wait! there's more to this comic than just an explanation about magic! There's also superheroes!" In a parallel universe, every comic is like that.)

The backstories for the various Promeatheas through the ages, stretching through comic books, the pulps, and even futher is a theme that was much being explored in comics at the end of the 20th century (and created some really good comics too!). Here it's something I really enjoyed. The Little Margie in Misty Magic Land comics that was spun off from this, and done in the style of Little Nemo are fantastic. I need to read more Little Nemo.

(A random note I can't think of to put anywhere into this very poorly written review: What was with editing the swearing? You show naked girls all the time but characters can't swear? I do not understand.)

And while presumubly the superhero story that's woven through the explanation of magic given by Moore is one that was created to give the comic a wider audience and allow it to sell well enough to reach it's conclusion (Alan Moore Explains Magic #1 will probably sell fairly well, issue 32 not so much), it's also really good. Promeathea starts doing the general "new superhero" stuff, and later goes through a bunch of the other superhero tropes. Meanwhile, supporting science hero team the 5 (later 4) Swell Guys, are running around New York having a multitude of adventures off panel that we only know about through vague mentions. I kind of wish Moore would right a straightup superhero comic featuring those guys, but after breaking his ties with DC and more or less retiring from comics, it seems unlikely.

*Not worth reading.

-------

In other JH Williams III comics, I read his arc of Batman the other day, and was disapointed. Now yes, I'd been disapointed by Morrison's run on Batman twice already, but this was supposed to be the good arc. And while teh story was cool, and the art very nice, it read really choppy. And I guess that's just the style Morrison has been going for lately. He's trying to supercompress everything, but that means he's not showing everything on the page. I found myself not enjoying it that much as "why/how did that just happen?" situations kept arising.

To my great surprise I may have enjoyed the next arc with art by Tony Daniels better. Cops trained to be messed up Batmans! Suddenly that opening arc makes more sense!

I also read the first issue of Neil Gaiman's Whatever Happened to Batman comic, and yeah, Andy Kubert totally can't draw the different styles well enough to make this work. That was supposed to be B:TAS Joker? If you say so internet...

Wildcats/X-Men

2009-03-19T21:23:00.000-02:30

Damn, Travis Charest can really draw can't he? (And to prove this, I will post no art by him). I mean, he doesn't really draw that many backgrounds, but I presume that's because the book actually had to come out at some point*. It's a pretty dumb little story, with Wolverine and Zealot fighting Nazis in WWII over a thing, but it's readable, and the art means it's worth rereading.

While I knew the Charest comic would be worth looking at, it was to my great surprise that the rest of comics in this collection were pretty good too. The Jim Lee drawn one has a pretty stupid plot, but that's going to happen when you have the WildC.A.T.s (let us shoot things!) cross over with the original X-Men (I have agility and big feet). Actually, it gets really stupid at one point when Nick Fury gives Grifter his uniform complete with mask and coat. Really? Really? But yeah, the Jim Lee art is pretty good.

The Adam Hughes drawn one also looks good (hmm, I know he's a big name, but what else has he drawn? I'll have to find out), and has the most sensible and reasonble excuse for the characters to meet. Oh! It's written by James Robinson. Perhaps that's why? Though I imagine most of the plots of these books was based on "what do you want to draw?"

The final book is drawn by someone I don't recognize, but is written by Warren Ellis. And it's an Ellisy book featuring superheroes in a dystopian future, so it's got fetish wear and ridiculous bleakness (though admitedly, based on previous X-Men comics) and bitterness. I don't think anyone smokes though. Surprise twist!

Considering how big a deal the artist was in early image books, and how Wildstorm produced some books with really nice art (another crossover with Marvel, Wolverine/Deathblow, has an incredibly interesting colouring style not normally seen in superhero comics), it's somewhat ironic that the last several years seem to have more or less developed a "Wildstorm house style" that doesn't seem to be doing the label any favours.

Uhm, so yeah. It's dumb, and the ways it ends means it has no relevance to either set of characters (okay, crossovers rarely do). Well, maybe the Wildstorm ones. Maybe. But the main reason to read it is the art, Travis Charest's art alone is good enough to make it worth checking out (of the library).

*Even in France, where slow artists are the norm, Charest pushed his luck too far when he decided to _learn how to paint_ in order to do a Metabarons comic, and was eventually kicked off the book for producing like 30 pages in seven years or something.

Justice League International

2009-03-18T20:47:00.002-02:30

It's interesting looking back on eras of comics and seeing how certain writers and artists guided the entire line. Growing up in the '90s I had almost no interest in DC comics at all, it was only as an adult (or "adult" at least) that I actually became interested in DC comics. Of course the ones I became interested in weren't the ones coming out then, or even the ones from my childhood (or at least not my childhood in North America), but the ones from the late '80s and early '90s that clearly existed in an interconnected universe I knew nothing about.

The Lords of Order and Chaos exist in comics that aren't The Sandman?! They have stuff to do with Dr. Fate? and Hawk and Dove? Hawk and Dove is actually good?! It was a constant string of revelations that I never get anymore because I know what's going on in most comics coming out from Marvel and DC even if I don't read them.

I can't remember what the first of these comics I snagged from a quarter bin was. Either an issue of Justice League Europe (along with an issue of '90s Justice League Taskforce, which was terrible), because I was really enjoying the Justice League Unlimited cartoon, or an issue of Suicide Squad, because I'd heard it was good and really enjoyed that episode of Jusice League Unlimited they showed up in. Either way it soon led me to other titles written by the same creators (Giffen, Ostranger) or published in about the same time period and I soon amassed a collection of comics that in some instances (issues of Suicide Squad) I may have paid up to cover price (75 cents or $1).

Of course I've since gotten rid of all of them, several moves (cross countries) have made me pare down my comics pretty severly. Plus there was the promise of a Showcase Presents Suicide Squad volume. If that was coming out then surely things like Hawk and Dove weren't far behind? Everytime I see an issue of Suicide Squad I haven't read for sale I can't bring myself to buy it, because the Showcase is still coming right? Right?! I weep.

Anyway, Justice League: A New Begining spun out of the Legends miniseries, that once again rebuilt the DC universe, blah blah. In his introduction* to this volume Editor Andy Helfer presents the conundrum he was given: relaunch the JLA comic, but make it better and great! Because the Justice League at the time was...not so great. Helfer set out to do it, a return to the greats that had made the Justice League what it was! Except other writers had dibs on certain characters, so no Superman, no Wonder Woman, no Flash.

So Helfer (and Giffen, now roped into trying to figure out what to do) had to go in a different direction, and so the "Bwha ha League." Not exactly what you'd expect to come out of crossover nowadays.

Considering how closely Kevin Maguire's name is connected to this era of the League, the way he got the job is fairly ridiculous. A brand new, virtually unknown artist, he'd done a book for Helfer, but the next script was late. He told him unless he got some steady work, he was going to Marvel. Helfer gave him Justice League. Of course! To some extent I feel as though a stressed and busy Helfer's mind was presented with "artist needs book" and "book needs artist" and just did it without thinking, thankfully it turned out well. Well, apart from Black Canary's costume, but I don't think that was his fault.

Okay, so how are the actual comics? Considering how much I remember enjoying JLE and the (ooh, I reviewed it here) flashback miniserieses from a few years ago, less than I expected. I think Giffen and DeMatteis are clearly finding their feet with these characters in these first issues, figuring out what, and who, does and doesn't work in the book. Or maybe I just want more Elongated Man.

There are moments of genius (Guy Gardner suddenly being nice), but also just plain bizarre things (having the first supervillains your team fight be equivalents of Marvel's the Avengers). Still, at least the Justice League were being international, and interacting with other countries, dealing with politics, and fighting truly global threats. Hurray! (Perhaps, not being an American, and spending quite a lot of my life in countries not even in North America makes me more interested in what's going on "over there" than in New York.)

While in these opening issues it's still pretty much all Americans (and aliens) on the team, they diversified at least somewhat later on. Hopefully it also brought up why there was a "superhero" gap for the Soviet Union to try and catch up (or maybe I'll have to read Green Lantern comics for that), or why so many superheroes were Americans to begin with (other than the "written for American readers" bit). Well, I'd like to read more, but not in expensive hardcovers. I figure at the rate they're currently coming out, DC's Showcases will hit this point in about 10 years. I can't wait!

*As much as I enjoy reading comics, I also have a much geekier enjoyment, reading about how comics were made. I think I may have enjoyed this introduction going through all the trials and tribulations of how this League came to be than the comics contained within. Another example of this are the afterwards in Dark Horses's Conan reprints. I've read through several of those in the library, but I don't think I made it through the actual comics in volume one.

Nightwing: Year One

2009-03-17T21:48:00.000-02:30

Chuck Dixon has been writing comics for a long time, and apparently he's now blacklisted at DC or something. That kind of sucks for a guy who's been pretty dependable for putting out at least readable comics (which is more than I can say for a lot of DC's current output). Though maybe he's homophobic or something, so karma, maybe. Oh humans.

Of course, probably everyone has one really good comic in them. Unfortunately for Dixon, that comic is not Nightwing: Year One.*

However, his other "year one" comics haven't been nearly as good. I barely remember anything about Robin: Year One (the Mad Hatter was in it?), while I think this may have actually been the second time I read this comic. It all seemed so familiar.

Of course that could just be because I've read a lot of Nightwing comics (and more specifically, a lot of Chuck Dixon written Nightwing comics). So maybe he's just collecting a bunch of stuff that's been mentioned before and putting it into one arc.

There's also the fact that Nightwing's story is so well known. I certainly known more about him than I know about, say, Aquaman. Even ignoring the comics entirely, I own all of Batman: The Animated Series, and not enough of Teen Titans, but just watching those two gives you a pretty good idea of who Nightwing/Dick Grayson is and who he was before.

For a "year one" comic I felt there was an oddly large amount of backstory here, he doesn't even become Nightwing until the end of the third issue! I guess it's understandable, as it's hard to tell the first year of Nightwing's existence without just retelling old New Teen Titans comics. However, I feel this goes too far in the other direction, with the Titans barely showing up at all. In contrast we've got Superman (yeah, required for the story), Batgirl and the Jason Todd Robin showing up. Plus lots of Batman. It seems that doing this comic without showing more of the alternate life that Dick Grayson had set up for himself isn't really showing how the character had grown. It's like basing a story about your life on when you went home for Christmas and hung out with the people you used to know, instead of the life you spend most of the year living.

Additionally, to me Nightwing is connnected to Bludhaven (he was there for over 150 issues! Well, maybe, he was probably in Gotham a lot, and I don't have any idea what was going on for the last few years of that title) that I for some reason assumed that it was going to be a story set in his early days there. Of course, if I want that I can just go and reread trades of the early issues, so there's no reason to make that comic.

All Nightwing: Year One makes me want to do is read more comics with Jason Todd in them, as he's a character I have pretty limited exposure to. A "year one" comic for him would be worth doing I think. Maybe if he becomes Batman or something after that big crossover that's happening currently.

*It's Batgirl: Year One, which shocked me by being really good. Like seriously, go and read it.

Banya the Explosive Delivery Man

2009-03-16T21:35:00.000-02:30

This was written for Jeju Life, but I didn't even submit it, or even finish it really, after they didn't run the other review I wrote for them.

Fast. Precise. Secure.
Banya the Explosive Delivery Man
By Kim Young Oh
Five volumes from Dark Horse
$12.95US

While the title may lead you to think this series features mail carriers blowing up dogs, Banya is actually about a delivery person in the fictional Gaya desert. Though the act of Banya delivering things is really only there to allow him to encounter people he has to fight.

The first few volumes are Banya, and the other delivery people, Mei and Kong, just delivering things and fighting people.

Volumes four and five are when a plot more indepth than "get this thing to this location" kicks in and we start getting some of Banya's backstory. To be honest I liked these two books less than the first three. Mei and Kong are written out (to "protect" them, oh Banya), and we're introduced (or reintroduced) to some other characters: the evil guy who's trying to take over/destroy the world by gaining control of a dragon, the female summoner monk from earlier in the series who is trying to stop this, and a big strong guy who has a talking sword.

I would have prefered it if Banya had just continued making deliveries as more of his history was revealed. What I would have really liked to see was a story where Banya is delivering something for the "bad guys" and heroes are trying to stop him, but while he knows it's wrong, he feels he must deliver it anyway. Perhaps that will show up in the next comic I read about delivery people.

Despite my disinterest in the plot of the last two volumes, the art still holds up and you get some nice action fight scenes between more of the ugly, ugly villians. Plus it's translated by Derek Kirk Kim, indie comics superstar. Go read his comic "Same Difference and Other Short Stories."

Batman: War Crimes

2009-03-15T21:33:00.000-02:30

Unlike yesterday's Scarecrow Tales, this is exactly the type of terrible Batman comic I don't understand the point of.

To begin with there's an incredibly long recap of the huge crossover that came before it that opens with "The worst case scenario has come to pass." What is the worst case scenario for Gotham City? Gang wars. Seriously? In gotham? This is a city that had a major earthquake and was disowned by America. Gang wars probably happen every day!

Anyway, this is all fallout over girl Robin/Spoiler/Stephanie Brown dying. Despite everyone elses reasons being valid, I think one of the reasons I was frustrated by DC Doing that was that one of the Batman comics I owned as a kid (and I believe one of the first comics I owned at all) was the first appearnce of Spoiler. Hurray! Not that I have it now or anything, but yeah, go Spoiler. I liked that she was kind if incompetent. I'm sure there're loads of kids running around Gotham doing the same thing. Well, depending on whether Batman is on TV leading the Justice League or if he's just an urban legend.

But yeah, this really just seems to be a bunch of people running around and acting incredibly out of character. In a story that's already (thankfully) been retconned, there's really no reason to read it at all.

The arts okay (though whoever drew part 2 draws the worst Bruce Wayne I think I have ever seen, I don't know who it is because DC can't be bothered putting in proper credits), and I like Black Mask as a bad guy, but like, blah.

One thing I sort of wish would happen (but know never will) is for current Robin Tim Drake to just stop being Robin. He's said he doesn't want to be Batman, and he's had so many people in his life killed because he's Robin, so I kind of wish he'd just stop. I know he won't (because comics are comics), but girl Robin seemed like it would have been a good way to continue having a Robin without Tim.

---

In other not good comics news, Exiles gets pretty terrible once Chris Claremont starts writing it. Sure it wasn't amazing or anything before, but it was worth checking out in libraries and stuff. But it was all downhill once Claremont came on board. Why did you have to ruin Spider-Man 2099? I love that character! I still have all my Spider-Man 2099 comics.

I still like old Claremont comics. And I still have his run on Excalibur. I should probably reread those at some point.

Batman: Scarecrow Tales

2009-03-14T21:11:00.002-02:30

As much as I enjoy quote unquote "good" comics, sometimes all I want is comics about people punching other people. In the face. Also kicking.

And along comes Batman to save the day. Scarecrow Tales was presumubly released at the time of Batman Begins, and it seems to be one of the best ways to collect older Batman comics. Batman probably has more collections devoted to him than any other comic book character (or at least American character, there's probably some Japanese ones with more). When I worked in a comic store our Batman trade section was immense, the only thing that rivaled it in size was X-Men comic section, which included all the spinoff stuff, while Catwoman, Robin, Nightwing, and others were filed by themselves. Despite this there aren't that many Batman trades you can tell someone to buy.

The recent years seem to be filled with things that aren't that good (how could I not enjoy Morrison's run on Batman? Awful art and obtuse storytelling it seems), huge crossovers (we sold so many copies of all of Knightfall, which meant that people kept coming back), and, um, yeah. I'm sure Rucka and Brubaker wrote some good Batman comics, but it seems only their crossover stuff is collected.

For older Batman comics you have the Archives and Chronicles collecting the early stuff, and the recent Showcase Presents Batman are collecting some of the stuff from the '70s. But Batman has been around for like 80 years, and there's a bazillion comics out there.

Scarecrow Tales collects some of them, picking about one a decade from the Scarecrow's first appearance in the '40s up to the early 2000s.

It is kind of funny reading the first few of these comics in a row, as they all tell, or retell, the Scarecrow's origin. He was a university professor who spent his money on books instead of clothes and the other (continually updated for the times) professors insult him for this by saying he is shabby and "positively weird"*. Then they don't invite him to a party so he decides to steal some money (to buy more books). Yes, that's it. Oh, and he shoots a flowerpot in one of his classrooms to show his students fear.

Ignoring the fact that he is clearly insane to begin with, lets look at what pushes him over the edge, other professors not inviting him to a party because he dresses poorly. This is something that is not conveyed in any of the _three_ comics in this collection to show his origin. He's wearing a three piece suit! And a hat! He dresses classier than I do! He dresses better than my dad does and he is a university professor. Nothing about his appearance screams "shabby" or "scarecrow" to me. His clothing isn't patched or anything, he looks the same as the other professors shown. Thus we can only assume that the other professors at Gotham U are a bunch of jerks.

The earliest comic here is from World's Finest Comics #3 published Fall 1941, and to my surprise there's actually a few panels of really nice art in there. None of them involve Batman or Robin, but whoever drew it did a pretty good professor Crane and Scarecrow. The story itself is the standard story of the Scarecrow. He tries to scare people into giving him money, he fights Batman. The one major difference in this early story is how Scarecrow repeatedly gets the best of Batman in straight up fights, something few characters could do today, let alone one as physically inept as Scarecrow. He looks as though I could take him. Thus based on bad logic I could beat up 1940s Batman.

The next comic is from the '60s, and Scarecrow hasn't changed a bit in the intervening years. What has changed is that Dick Grayson is now a playground instructor in Gotham Park, which involves forcing other kids to climb on a jungle gym, while Bruce Wayne and Alfred drive around in an ice cream truck. While Batman looks better art wise in this story, the Scarecrow doesn't. And the story itself is kind of terrible. The Scarecrow blinds Batman and Robin aboard a replica of Noah's Ark and releases a jaguar and a panther at them. After some endangered animal punching (good thing Catwoman didn't see you Batman), Batman and Robin chase down Scarecrow and punch him too.

The '70s comics (including an issue of The Joker, where was the collection of that to capitalize on the movie?) feature an abandoned amusement park (Gotham must be 20% abandoned amusement parks) and Scarecrow's seemingly magic crow Nightmare. Seriously.

By the '80s writers have apparently realized that "Scarecrow uses fear gas/machine to make people afraid of him" is a plot that has kind of reached its limit. So we have stories of people being afraid of Batman and Batman having no fear at all.

The second of those stories is drawn by Alan Davis, who apparently drew a bunch of Batman comics in the '80s, but the only other issue I've read is the first issue of Year Two (which isn't that good a story). Alan Davis was probably the first comic artist I really liked, and I find his art so tied to old Excalibur comics, where I first discovered him, that seeing him draw Batman is kind of weird. Davis has a very specific style, that I still like a lot, but he totally has haircuts and looks that he uses over and over again. One thing he totally has going for him is that the flashback origin in this issue actually has Crane looking awkward and weird when he was a professor, and his scarecrow looks considerably more scarecrow-like, then anyone else up to this point (most of the artists just drew him as a guy in a costume). Davis draws him like he's on muscle relaxants and is constantly about to fall over, which is, I guess, how a scarecrow that walked would look like. Floppy.

But the clear stand out here is Davis' grinning, fearless Batman. He looks awesome. It is totally Batman about to have some wikkid fun by escaping a death trap. Yeah! Hurray!

This page ends on a total downer though as the "most terrible fear [Batman] could conceive" is the death of Jason Todd. Something that would actually happen a few years later. How long was Jason Todd Robin anyway? I don't think it was that long. Tim Drake has been Robin for like 15 years without aging hasn't he?

The '90s comic is by Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo, which seems to be a fairly super team if I was trying to think of people to do a Scarecrow comic. Fegredo does a Scarecrow who looks actually scary, and the story itself, featuring Scarecrow trying to use fear to create someone like him, is pretty good.

The final story features probably the worst gas masks I have ever seen in comics, and a story that is more about exploring Bruce Wayne's fears, than it is about the Scarecrow. I guess the current trend of 4-6 issue story arcs to be collected into trades means it's harder for stand alone stories to be found for collections like this. Kind of too bad really.

Oh, there's also various pinups of the Scarecrow by a bunch of different artists in between the stories. It's neat to see different artists takes on the character, though I think I like Mike Mignola's the best.

In the end though, this collection really just shows the limitations of the Scarecrow as a character. Yeah, he's been in a couple of good stories, but it's kind of surprising he's as big a name as he is. Still, I like the way this collection worked, and wouldn't mind reading similar books about other Batman villians like the Penguin or the Riddler.

*Which, when you think about it, is actually a compliment. Better than "negatively weird" at least.

The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea

2009-03-13T21:01:00.001-02:30

A few years ago I was in Singapore and picked up an English language, Singaporean published comic for my brother. It was a retelling of (part of) the legend of the Monkey King, a character well known in Eastern myths, and perhaps most familiar in the west as the basis of Dragon Ball.

It was also something close to my brother's heart (maybe) as he both studied and wrote about it in university.

So it was with some amusement that I recently opened a package from my brother (now living in Taiwan) and discovered he sent me another from this series of comics retelling Chinese legends.

This time it was "The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea" the story of, well, the eight immortals who apparently show up repeatedly in Chinese folklore and are, supposedly, the most popular characters. They also represent the I Ching. Exciting!

The comic itself, is not what I expected. Instead of the eight immortals going off and having adventures together, this is mostly just their individual origins. Each of them achieved immortality in a different way and a number of them would fit in fine with super hero origins. One of them runs away from a battle, finds a mysterious isolated building, studies and trains with the mysterious old man inside, and when he leaves discoveres the building has disappeared. Sure, he's studying the Tao instead of martial arts, but that's a little thing in comparison.

Another sends his spirit off to study with Laozi, but he returns to find his body is gone (burnt in a funeral pyre by an over anxious pupil), so he ends up in the body of an ugly old man who needs a crutch to get around.

The other stories are a mixture of just plain bizarre and cultural teachings I clearly do not understand. Yes, of course, not being sad when your family dies, being incredibly passive when people rip you off, saying that yes, I should indeed be killed for a murder committed in a past life, and eventually not feeling any emotions at all is best! Even I, who sometimes wishes he was a feelingless robot, finds this hard to understand.

The final story, The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea, is more what I expected. In it the eight immortals attempt to cross the sea (yes, I've spoiled it for you), using their various means of transport (a giant lotus, a bamboo container, a paper donkey, and so forth). However they come across the underwater palace of the Dragon King. The Dragon Crown Prince attacks on some flimsy pretense, and kidnaps one of the immortals (the girl, I'm sure you're surprised to know). A fight follows and...why am I even explaining this? You've all read comics were Namor or Aquaman fight the surface dwellers, this is _exactly_ the same.

Except that this story features what is totally the best art in the book. The Dragon Crown Prince may just be a guy in armour with a dragon head (and who's sister looks like a human), but he still looks awesome. And his soldiers? They consist of seahorses, prawns, fish, crabs, sharks, and jellyfish! All wearing armour and brandishing a wide assortment of weapons. They are adorable.

The art in the rest of the book is pretty good too. It's all done in a cartoony manga-y style, which means the demons and monsters who show up in some of the stories aren't actually that scary, but it tells the story.

The writing is where the book really falls down. It was translated by someone (from what language?) and is filled with somewhat awkward phrases. It also frequently is just narrating what can clearly be seen in the panels and is kind of extraneous. Though I guess these are aimed at little kids? The lettering is kind of blah too.

Still, it's an amusing enough book, and I guess if you want a way to learn some stuff about Chinese myths there's worse ways (reading this review for one).

Madman: The Oddity Odyssey

2009-03-12T20:54:00.001-02:30

I have a friend who was raised Mormon. I'm not sure for how long, but she says she wasn't that interested as a kid, and her and her siblings now look back on it all as completely ridiculous (even her parents aren't part of the church any more). It really is probably the most ridiculous "accepted" religion. It's probably about 100 years past the derision Scientology currently receives.

Anyway, my favourite Mormon (as opposed to my favourite ex-Mormon) is Mike Allred. Most people had no idea he even was a Mormon until a few years ago when he started doing that comic book adaptation of the Book of Mormon*. Maybe I should have been tipped off by the bio in the back of Superman/Madman that said his marriage to Laura Allred was arranged. More likely I just didn't believe that, because based on the comics he's produced, Allred may seem crazy, but not Mormon crazy.

The first time I ever saw Madman was probably on the cover of Superman/Madman. I didn't read it at the time, I don't think I even looked through it, but somehow I still remember seeing it on the rack of comics at a Shoppers Drug Mart. I don't remember any other Superman comics, hell, I don't remember any other comics I didn't buy (apart from an issue of Captain Canuck?). When I finally read it years later, it became my favourite Superman comic (not that it would be that hard to do that as, despite the Superman hoodie I own, I don't like the character that much). Still, I though Allred's artistic depiction of Superman was really good, and I'd like to see him do more Superman comics.

But this is Madman: The Oddity Odyssey, the first Madman comic (I think?). Before it was even in colour. When Allred didn't draw the comics on the right size paper (note the filler art on the bottom of every page). When we didn't know who Madman was, because he didn't either. He was just a guy in a costume who ate a gangster's eye. He was crazy.

From the begining Madman was fairly ridiculous. This trade is filled with people stuffed into freezers, so that they can be brought back to life later, train hopping, clones, a deupty mayor gone bad, a head in a jar, creepy diseases, helicopter shoot outs, papermache solar systems, the aforementioned gangsters, and through it all Madman fights it out with everyone using a slingshot and a yo-yo.

I get the feeling Allred had a goal for where he wanted this story to end, but he was just making everything up along the way. It works though, as even at this point in his career Allred's skills are clear. The art is good, if it hasn't completely developed into the later style Allred is so well known for. It's weird seeing Madman without his hair sticking out of the top of his costume.

But yes, it's weird that this comic is made by someone who is apparently a devout Mormon. I don't really know what to make of it, time to find some interviews with Allred I guess. Maybe the library has back issues of the Comics Journal.

*Come to think of it, I don't think I know anyone who's ever read it, is it any good?

Ringworld

2009-03-11T20:45:00.001-02:30

For a long time I finished every book I started. This sometimes meant that I just stopped reading in general because the book I was "reading" wasn't very enjoyable to me, so I just avoided doing the "task" in general.

Thankfully, I eventually stopped that, and gave up reading books I didn't like. There are lots of _good_ books out there that I could read instead! An amazing discovery I assure you!

The most recent book I have failed to read is the classic sci-fi novel Ringworld by Larry Niven, which won both the Hugo and the Nebula.

And is so incredibly '70s and mysoginistic I couldn't bring myself to read most of it. I can see why it was popular, it bounces along at a pretty good pace, has some decent world building (it is part of Niven's Known Space Universe of books), aliens, a main character who presumubly the readers are supposed to identify with, and a terrible, terrible female human character.

Hey role is to be dumb (she is only 20! She doesn't know anything compared to the 200 year old male), and have sex with the main character. Or to pout and refuse to.

Some of the claims seem really ridiculous. She's never experienced pain? How? What type of messed up utopia do you live in where nothing bad has happened to you? Well, based on the ludicrous party that opens the book and where she first appears, I can only assume that she's the equivalent of the poor little rich girls of today. I assume there's some sort of human underclass that's never mentioned throughout the book (or at least what I read of it). A book about them would have been more interesting.

Oh, and she's "lucky" which is why she's on the trip. Or she's supposed to have been bred for luck, but isn't lucky. It's just kind of ridiculous to be honest.

Yeah, that's all I have to say really. I gave up a while after they got to the actual Ringworld of the title. Maybe halfway through the book?

Sandman Mystery Theatre: The Tarantula, and The Face and The Brute

2009-03-10T20:36:00.005-02:30

Written by Matt Wagner
Drawn by Guy Davis, John Watkiss, and R. G. Taylor
Coloured by David Hornung

If for no other reason* I will always be glad I took lindy hop class for the CD of swing music my teacher gave me one class. Its been the perfect background music to reading Sandman Mystery Theatre.

Maybe you think the music you're listening to when you're reading something doesn't matter that much, but I sat down to read The Tarantula, and got about three pages in before getting up and changing the hip hop or electronica or whatever it was I was listening to to something else, as it was completely pulling me out of the story.

And a CD full of unidentified songs from the 1930s (maybe? At least some of it is from then I'm sure) was what pulled me back in. I just talked about how I found a comic about music (Klezmer) didn't really work for me because it was silent. Yet, here I am championing listening to a certain type of music to increase enjoyment of a comic.

Heaven up in Harlem.

I found the music increased my enjoyment as many scenes in SMT happen in night clubs and um, whatever the word for parties that rich people go to is. Soirees? Galas? I clearly do not move in those circles. But Dian Belmont, daughter of the DA, and Wesley Dodds, the Sandman, do. In fact, for Dian, who despite the name of the book really seems to be the main _character_ in these early issues (with Wesley/The Sandman being far more of an enigma), going to night clubs and parties seems to be the only thing she does at all. And Wesley isn't a slouch himself either; sure he claims to be running his father's business, but we only seem to see him when he's either running into Dian at parties or restaurants (oh! That's another place they go, though there are still bands playing) or when he's gassing people.

In fact, I can't really believe the similarities between Wesley/The Sandman and Bruce Wayne/Batman. Sure, I guess pretty much every m/billionaire playboy who is secretely a costumed crime fighter probably ends up doing the same thing, even if only to protect their identity. "Oh Bruce Wayne is such a lush/manwhore, he can't be Batman. Did you know he's covered in spelunking scars? So careless!" "Oh, Wesley Dodds is too quiet/serious/taking care of his father's business to be the Sandman. Did you know he spent several years in the Orient** allowing him mysterious knowledge of all the skills he needs to fight crime all secret."

Actually, that's putting the series in a bad light. It's really good. I haven't read much of writer Matt Wagner's stuff, but what I have read (random issues of Mage and Grendel, the first issue of Madame Xanadu) didn't lead me to think he could do something like this. In fact, I more closely associated later writer Stephen T. Seagle with this series than I did Wagner.

But yes, it's a crime comic set in the 1930s. Corrupt aristocrats, Chinese gangs, cops, misogyny: it's all there. Things happen, the cops investigate, the Sandman investigates illegally, probably almost gets caught (by either the cops or the bad guys), uses his gas gun, Dian will overhear her father saying something to someone, do some investigation of her own, go and have a talk with Wesley because, hey, why not? They are becoming such good friends (despite almost every one of their meetings seemingly only lasting five minutes). And then everything gets solved. But it's really good.

Well, the first two stories are. I don't know what happened with the third, The Brute, but it's not very good at all. Pretty much everything that happens is a cliche, the brutality is seemingly just there to be brutal, and not to move the plot along. And by plot I mean "plot" as things just kind of happen regardless of what the characters motivations or actions are.

Also "Gasp!" "Gasp!" "Gasp!" (from one character, in three speech baloons, in one panel) is some of the worst dialogue I have ever read.

But on to more positives: the art in the first story arc, by Guy Davis who later became the book's main artist, is the most "Sandman" of them all, which I feel must surely have been a calculated move on Vertigo's part. The opening page could have just as easily been a page from a Sandman comic, it is a dream afterall. But his art is quite good and works well with the story.

The art in the other two arcs is pretty good too, though John Watkiss appears to draw what certainly seems to be a one legged hooker, and R. G. Taylor cannot draw children at all. Both artists seem to be far better at drawing talking heads than whole bodies, but in a series such as this that's actually a benefit.

The colouring holds together the vartious art styles. I want to say it's an art deco style, but can't seem to find anything to back up my claim. But the specific colour palette used, and the flat way in which it is used, reminds me of art deco things. I am so specific!

I'm going to check out the next volume on the strength of the first two stories, and hope the next arc will improve over The Brute. As the series continued for quite some time after that I assume it will.

* And there are _lots_ of other reasons why I'm glad I take lindy hop. It is very fun.

** Still an acceptable term at the time!

Goong (궁)

2009-03-09T20:19:00.001-02:30

Originally published in the January 2007 issue of The Ulsan Pear (you can find issues in pdf format at ulsanonline.com).

Che Kyung Shin was just a normal high school girl, but now she’s learning just how much being a princess sucks. Every day is scheduled down to the last minute, she can’t live with (or even see) her family anymore and her husband (the crown prince) is a jerk.

So Hee Park’s Goong is set in a world were Korea still has a royal family and operates as a constitutional monarchy. The royal family are absurdly popular with the general public, despite, or perhaps because of, their extreme ties to tradition. So when Shin Lee, the crown price or “seja,”
starts going to Che’s school, she’s excited. Until she actually talks to him and discovers he’s a jerk who she wants nothing to do with.

Unfortunately, things don’t go that way. It turns out that Che’s grandfather was best friends with the prince’s grandfather (the former king) and before the king died they decided that their grandchildren (Che and Shin) would marry. In the twenty-first century it seems unlikely that you could convince two teenagers, especially ones that don’t like each other, that they should get married, yet in volume two they do. So what happened?

At first Che is going to say no, but having her mother prodding her towards marriage because she would rather have her daughter be unhappy for the rest of her life than her father-in-law feel guilty, doesn’t exactly help. But when Che realizes that this could be a way for her family to escape the poverty they live in, she relents. She is willing to sacrifice herself for her family.

However, Shin’s motivations are nowhere near as self-sacrificing. The prince thinks Che is a clutz and a fool and only agreed to marry her because he knows the life of a princess is horrible. “Do you think I’m crazy enough to make the one that I love be forced to live in the palace like a doll? Since I don’t care what happens to you, I am letting you be sejabin [crown princess].” He also says that later, when things get really horrible, he’ll just divorce her. How nice!

At this point you can pretty much figure out this isn’t the start to a typical romance story.

It is, however, funny and mostly undercuts things expected from this type of comic. At times a page will show what will happen in normal romance comics, and then the next page will have what actually happens in Goong (usually featuring characters doing something stupid).

The art is heavily influenced by Japanese comics (as are most Korean comics), but it looks good
and works well with the story (a lot of effort has been put into making the characters’ clothes look fashionable). At times it becomes super-deformed, which is strange the first time you see it, but is part of this artistic style.

Romance stories aren’t really my thing, but Goong is good and different enough to pull me in. Will Che fall in love with Shin (don’t do it, he’s not worth it!) or will she end up with his brother who seems nice (yes!) but may be too good to be true?

Goong is one of the most popular comics currently being made in Korea, and has also been made into a TV drama. If you want to brush up on your Korean, you can pick up the graphic novels easily enough. Thankfully, it’s also now available in English, just check amazon or somewhere.

Klezmer

2009-03-08T20:15:00.002-02:30

I first read Klezmer, by French comic artist Joann Sfar, a few years ago, and I couldn't really get into it. However, that was before I had read some of Sfaar's other comics last year* and come to really appreciate him as an artist.

I started with The Professor's Daughter, which was very good, but since another artist, Emmanuel Guibert, did the art I didn't realize it was a Sfar book at the time. Dungeon was pretty much the same story, except it was cowritten by Lewis Trondheim and drawn by a number of different artists. Plus the reading order seems ridiculously complex.

Then there was The Rabbi's Cat, which in other hands would be a very bizarre story about a talking cat, but in Sfar's hands becomes a story about Jews living in Northern Africa in the 1930s. This was the book that started changing my mind about Sfar. The hardcover from Pantheon collects the first three books published in France, and while the first story didn't really grab me, by the end I wanted more. Thankfully, more was available in volume two, which is both stranger, and better, than the first.

Then there was Vampire Loves, about a sad and lovelorn vampire and various other monsters. Its release from First Second collected the first four volumes in one book, and after finishing it I actually searched through the BD** at a local foreign language bookstore to find the two volumes not yet out in English. (I didn't succeed.)

Having created several titles I really enjoyed, I decided it was time to reread Klezmer.

And immediately found a major problem I have with most comics dealing with music: they just don't work for me. You can write "Umpa umpa umpa umpa!" and "Bom! Bom! Bom!" as much as you like, but it doesn't sound like music to me. I could claim that this was due to my lack of knowledge of Klezmer music, but a few months ago I actually read a comic (Me and the Devil Blues) about music that was about a genre I knew nothing about. And it worked, mostly I think (or seem to remember) by being entirely silent in regards to music.

Simlarly page after page of people singing songs in Yiddish, or at least I assume it's Yiddish, it's some language I don't understand, doesn't do much for me.

The art is frustrating. The flaps on the book say Sfar uses a "startling, loose watercolour style" and I can only assume that by this they actually mean that he didn't spend a lot of time on the art. This is not to knock Sfar as an artist, some of his other books are fantastic, and this one definitely has it's places where you can see his talent. But I find the art too loose. Too frequently the characters seem like nothing more than squiggles that have been painted strange colours.

The style he uses of more realistically drawn closeups and caricatures for longer shots is one I think is good slash interesting. you already know what the characters look like, but he's able to use artistic short hand. Still I didn't really enjoy it here and found it, like much of the comic, lacking. Perhaps that's why future volumes haven't come out in English.

*Well, I read one of his Little Vampire books years ago too, but I don't even remember which one it was, so apparently it didn't leave much of an impact on me. (Though apparently I loved it!)

**Bande dessinée, the French term for comics.

Tomorrow

2009-02-20T23:00:00.001-03:30

I'm afraid I'm going to burn out. Not on life or anything like that, but on the Tomorrow series of books by John Marsden.

I'm about midway through the fourth book of the series right now, and I only started them a few weeks ago. None of them are that long (I think the longest thus far has been 280 pages), but that's still quite a lot to read.

I picked up the first book in this young adult series, Tomorrow, When the War Began, at an otherwise somewhat disappointing free store just before xmas (but still, yay free store!). I'd heard the title before, but had no idea what it was about. Did I even read the back, or did I just take it to add to my towering pile of books?

To the great astonishment of everyone (or at least me) it soon got taken off the pile (I was probably procrastinating doing something else) and I began reading the story of teenaged Ellie and her friends hanging out in small town Australia. They flirt, they argue, they get mad, they make up, they make out, they worry, they cry, they're teenagers.

In the middle of a war.

Australia's been invaded by an unnamed Asian country, who want some of the luxury and resources for themselves. Ellie and her friends were out camping in the bush when the invasion happened, and they return to civilization to find everyone in town has been rounded up and held captive. They don't know what to do, and, for the first time in their lives, there's nobody to tell them.

They survive (there's seven books, of course they survive!), and became guerillas, waging their own war against the invading army. Yeah, it's somewhat ridiculous, but they don't all become Rambo*. It's done with enough skill that the things they do seem to at least be plausible, and most of what they do is just surviving. As the series progresses I can only assume that Marsden was doing more and more research into what armies, and people in war zones, actually did.

Ellie and her friends feel a lot realer than a lot of stuff aimed at kids (or teenagers or whatever). They drink, they fuck, they fuck up, and apart from Ellie (or at least that's who I presume the sequel series "The Ellie Chronicles" is about), you don't know who's going to survive. In fact, at this point I'm reasonably certain that all of her friends are going to die at some point. But while they're alive, they have personalities, and they grow and change. Frequently this growth isn't in the best of ways, as they end up killing more and more people, but the world they're living in is scary place, and I have no idea what I'd do in the same situation.

Okay, so the premise doesn't really make sense. It's never explained who's actualy invaded (China? Indonesia?), and the goal of moving a shit load of Asians to Australia doesn't work, as I'm pretty sure that the country couldn't support a population twice as large. (Am I wrong? I'm sure I read somewhere that there were increasingly frequent droughts that were making it super hard for farmers to, well, farm.) The rest of the world (except New Zealand and New Guinea), more or less ignore what's going on.

I only wish I'd found these books when I was younger, as I'm sure 14 year old me would have loved them, but I'm going to keep reading them anyway. Sure, they're a little predictable at times, but I want to find out what happens to Ellie and her friends. Plus maybe I'll find some information that'll be useful if Canada ever gets invaded.

*I find it kind of funny I make references to movies I've never seen.

------------------------
Bonus "review" of Milk (the movie):
It made me cry, but I didn't think it was that good really. Still, important historically.

Essential X-Men vol. 7

2009-02-17T22:59:00.002-03:30

Oh, the X-Men. Mainstays of the comics industry for decades. They have, at various times, been the best selling comics around. X-Men #1 from 1991 is still the best selling comic ever (at least in America), having sold eight million copies. Currently, under the title "X-Men: Legacy," it sells sixty something thousand copies a month.

But I'm not reading X-Men #1, or even X-Men: Legacy #222. I'm reading Essential X-Men volume 7, which reprints Uncanny X-Men comics from the mid 1980s.

Marvel's Essentials are huge, black and white books reprinting of older comics. When they started the line in the late '90s they were reprinting things that could be considered "essential," or at least good/important: the original Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, and the 1970s relaunch of the X-Men. The fact that they've since printed things like Marvel Saga (really?) indicates the line has more or less become Marvel's attempt reprint every comic they have ever published from the '60s to the '80s.

And you know what? I fully support this idea. Essential Godzilla may have been terrible, but at least I found out for myself that it was dreadful ("How could a Godzilla comic be bad?" I foolishly asked myself, three issues of Godzilla fighting cattle rustlers later and I knew). Other comics, like Super-Villian Team-Up, may not be essential, or even good all the way through, but they're still fun enough to be worth reading.

Of course I haven't read as many of these things as perhaps I should have. Some Spider-Man, the aforementioned inessentials, and a whole lot of X-Men.

In the last year I've read five of these things, from Essential X-Men volume three all the way up to volume seven. These collect over one hundred issues, annuals, and crossovers from 1982 to 1988. That's a whole lot of X-Men comics (but possibly less than were released last year).

The dialogue is kind of clunky, sometimes the stories don't make any sense because I'm not reading New Mutants or X-Factor or some other random title from the 1980s, and the team in the latest volume is made up of a fairly ridiculous group of mutants (an unpowered Storm, Dazzler, Longshot, Rogue, Psylocke pre-Asianification, Havoc, and Wolverine). I'm reading comics about a character created to tie into a disco record that never came out. (http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2006/04/27/comic-book-urban-legend-revealed-48/)

And yet I want more. And I'm totally excited because next volume is when they move to Australia. Maybe Jubilee will appear!

Of course, a lot of the appeal of this comic is...not nostalgia exactly, as I've never read these comics before, but excitement as I'm reading all the adventures of these characters that were referenced in other comics I had read.

I started really reading American comics when I bought an issue of Warren Ellis' Excalibur (about super heros in the UK). It was the first American comic book I'd read _and_ enjoyed enough to want the next issue. The next month was the Age of Apocalypse crossover, where all the X-titles spent four months telling stories set in a post-Apocalypse-tic (hah) world. I became hooked on the X-Men as only an 11 year old could be. I eventually tracked down every back issue of Excalibur (they weren't that expensive as nobody really cared about them).

Actually, that's not even true. I was already hooked on the X-Men, through the cartoon I watched on TV every saturday morning. I just hadn't found any comics I'd liked up to that point. I did however read around eight young adult novels that featured retellings of older X-Men and Wolverine comics. They were filled with characters I didn't recognize, they were so forgettable to everyone else who read them I can't even find any reference to them online, and yet I read them over and over again.

But now I'm reading the actual comics those stories were based on. I know what's going to happen to these characters. I know Storm will get her powers back, I know Nightcrawler isn't going to die, I know Dazzler is going to struggle to have a point decades after disco has stopped being popular. But I still want to read these comics to find out how they got to the points where they are today (or rather, in the mid '90s, because I can't be that bothered with current X-Men comics). And while I wouldn't pay $3 an issue, I will pay, well, less than a dollar an issue for these trades. Of course this is because I don't care it's not in colour.

Marvel's just pulled the colour plates out of these, so it's just the original inked pages, no toning or anything, and I assume it looks fairly different from how it was originally printed because of that. I think the Art Adams annual that leads off this book actually suffers from being in black and white. How about the regular artist? Well, it's Mark Silvestri I guess, but his longest consecutive run is four issues, while fill-ins come from Barry Windsor Smith, Alan Davis, Rick Leonardi, Jackson Guice (twice), Bret Blevins, and Kerry Gammill (in only fifteen issues!). Despite this, it all generally looks pretty good, and perhaps current editors could learn something from the '80s, as except for one (the last in the issue, which was a random fill in issue), all the other issues moved the story forward.

So should you read it? Well, probably not as your first X-Men comic. It's dated, and perhaps incomprehensible (though sometimes that's appealing). But really, it's five or six hundred pages for $16.99, which is one of the best deals in comics, and if you think it sucks you can use it as wrapping paper or a colouring book or something.

Laya, Witch of the Red Pooh

2009-02-17T02:57:00.005-03:30

[I wrote this for jejulife, but they never ran it.]

Art and story by Yo Yo

Published by Tokyopop (English, two volumes) In Korea it appeared in Young Champ magazine.

Korea may be full of comic books, but it can seem like all of them are just translated imports from Japan. So where are the Korean comics? Thankfully it recent years a variety of publishers have been releasing Korean comics (Manhwa) in English, so now you can find out what the country has to offer.

After reading Laya, Witch of the Red Pooh I really wished that there was magic in the world again. I wished that I could have a friend who could cast magic spells and make magic potions and let me stay at her house indefinitely after I burnt mine down. I wished I could do magic myself, but I'd probably be just as lazy as Laya.

Laya is a witch; not a wizened old crone as usually seen in Western stories, but (as you probably already know from the cover) a young, cute witch. She's also very lazy, with still lazier friends who hang around her house distracting her from getting her job done.

Laya's friends include Puss, her cat who talks, walks around in boots, and is constantly smoking or drinking when he's not sleeping. Snowy the Crow, who has to stay in the form of a cute boy or Laya will kick him out. And Niky, another witch who can't go home because she burnt her house down.

The stories are pretty silly, and usually about Laya procrastinating doing witch work like making magic potions, trying to use magic to make her life easier, or the characters being incompetent in some way or another. Each story is only about four pages long, but a surprising amount can happen in those pages, and each character's personalities really come across well despite the limited space.

Most of the humour is pretty understandable without any knowledge of Korea, though the occasional joke my go over your head if you don't know anything about the country. (You might wonder what the name Digo Re is funny, until you realize they meant "Re" to be the family name, not the last name.)*

The artwork varies quite a lot; the best stuff being nice and detailed, with lots of work put into designing the clothes the characters are wearing and the backgrounds. Then there's the sorta super deformed stuff, and at the bottom is the rather poorly drawn stuff that seems to have been drawn when the artist was horribly behind on deadlines. Yet the occasionally bad art doesn't detract from the comic itself, instead it (somehow) still manages to be enjoyable.

While all the dialogue in the Tokyopop edition is in English, the sound effects have been left untranslated, allowing you to practice your Korean alphabet, or completely ignore them as the case may be.

At around 120-30 pages both books are a bit shorter than your average comic from Tokyopop, but both are still totally worth picking up if you're in the mood for something cute and funny.

*Re Digo = ready go.

Wasteland

2009-02-15T21:19:00.005-03:30

I've been meaning to read Wastland since it first came out, however I was living in Asia and didn't have a chance to.

I read the first issue when the writer and creator, Antony Johnston, put it on a torrent site (and hey, it's still on the website). And I and picked up a couple of issues from a dollar bin in Australia in 2007, but this is my first time reading through the opening arc.

Of course, I was a bit nervous about reading the first collection after waiting so long: What if it wasn't any good? Thankfully, it is.

Wasteland is set 100 years after "the big wet," a so far (as of the first volume) unexplained disaster that pretty much wiped out society. There's still some technology, and people still have communities, but they're barely hanging on it the desert like world they're living in.

The story follows Abi and Michael, two people with spooooooky powers (Abi can heal people, and Michael is a telekenetic), who don't seem to age, and can't remember where they came from. Abi's living in a town (and seems to have been there for quite some time), and when Michael shows up one day, disaster soon follows. Sand eaters, weird mutant things (?) who speak broken english, attack destroying the town and killing much of the populatoin. Thus, the entire town (or what's left of them) head off to the nearby city of Newbegin. Getting to the city isn't eash, and they're attacked by various monstrous creatures and run into other problems on their way. Of course, once they get to the city they're not that much better off.

Newbegin is where the story really gets political. It was founded by Marcus, another seemingly ageless person with superpowers, 80 years ago and is run by a schemeing council (like all good cities should be). The council is trying to deal with the Sunners, members of a religious group who worship the sun. They're the lowest caste around, and many of them are slaves, but that's not good enough for Marcus, who wants to enslave them all.

By the end of the first trade the reader will probably be left with a lot of questions, however it doesn't seem like everything's being made up as it goes along. Instead I feel as though Johnston has a pretty good idea of where his story is going.

The world Johston has created is pretty immense, and it's clear he's put a lot of thought into the back story. He probably has a timeline for the full 80 years of Newbegin, a fair amount of information on the different religions, how they formed and how they act, what technology is still around and why it's still there to be used.

Art wise Wasteland is pretty good too. It's pencilled, inked, and grey toned by Christopher Mitten, and I think he does a good job. I really like the backgrounds he does for the cities (and most other stuff for that matter). His people generally look good, though his women look a bit too similar so far, though there haven't been that many, so we'll see what happens. My one big complaint is probably with the grey tones, which at times seem a bit excessive. I know there's only so much you can do with a black and white comic, but I guess I'd prefer to see a bit more black, and a bit less computer fading.

Wasteland is planned for 50 issues, and it's just about halfway there now. If you want more information, check out the website, which even has songs recorded for the comic, as well as lots of other information.

Future vampire

2009-02-13T02:34:00.000-03:30

Movies I have seen (not so) recently

Back to the Future
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future
So, to make this vaguely comic book related, the co-writer of this movie was Bob Gale, who has written a number of not very well received comics. I remember his Daredevil run being pretty bad.

So yeah, Back to the Future. It's regarded as a super amazing sci fi comedy, it's okay.

Michael J. Fox travels back in time to when his parents were kids. Oh no! He's messed up the timeline, he has to fix it before he can go home.

I guess seeing this when I'm 25, instead of like 10, probably doesn't help that much. Perhaps what really hurt this film is that I generally only watch terrible movies in which people shoot each other because of some cyber based thing. And this had none of that! Hell, there's decidedly little tech in this at all, since once Fox travels back in time he spends most his time interacting with high school students, while the time machine is fixed by the professor character off screen.

Parts of it were decent, but iunno, I guess it didn't appeal to me that much. I doubt I'll watch the sequels.

Shadow of the Vampire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Vampire

This is one of those films I'd wanted to see since it first came out, but just never got around to it.

It's based around the idea that the actor who played Count Orlok in the 1920s German film Nosferatu, is in fact a vampire.

I saw Nosferatu (and the '70s remake) in a German film course in university, hell, I probably wrote essays on it. Though that doesn't mean I remember much of it. I do remember some of the scenes that were in this movie, so I guess that's good?

While I think the idea for this film is amazing, the actual end product kind of disapoints me. It doesn't seem to know if it's being a comedy or a sort of horrific drama or what. The characters just seem to wander around and interact occasionally, doing things for reasons that weren't revealed to the audience. Maybe that's a critique of the films made in the 1920s? Maybe I just watched this film a week ago and can't really remember what happened?

Yeah.

Wastelands

2009-02-12T02:47:00.000-03:30

I love the post-apocalypse. A lot. I read post-apocalyptic books. I read post-apocalyptic comics. I watch post-apocalyptic movies. I dress up like post-apocalyptic people.

Wastleands falls ino the first category. It's an anthology of post-apocalyptic stories that run the gamut, like all anthologies, from "pretty good" to "I didn't finish reading it." Still, the stories offer up many different versions on the same basic theme, showcasing a variety of possible apocalypses and outcomes.

Some of the apocalypses shown were caused by natural disasters, some by manmade disasters, some we don't know what happened. They're set immediately following whatever happened, to hundreds of years afterwards. Sometimes they're optimistic about how society will rebuild itself, and sometimes they think we're about a day away from reverting to complete savagery. Sometimes we have reverted to complete savagery.

So what inspired all these creators to write these stories? Why is this a type of story that people keep coming back to? Do they expect this to happen? Do they want it to happen?

For the stories set immediately in the aftermath (where "immediately" means "people alive now are still alive"), I assume there is some amount of "this is what I'd do." Or at least, "this is what I hope I do."

Or perhaps the people that write these stories hate current society and want it to collapse, Unabomber style.

Or maybe, they love our current society, but think this sort of future is inevitable. In his introduction editor John Joseph Adams says that while there was a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction written in the '80s, there wasn't as much written in the '90s. However since 2001 there's been a resurgence. This seems to imply that much post-apocalyptic ficiton is a creation of fear.

Until the Soviet Union collapsed people seemed to think that a third world war, leading to the collapse of civilization, was inevitable. In comparison t that, the '90s became an era of optimism: technology for everyone! The internet will save us all! Of course, none of it was true (even then), but in the last several years, a culture of fear has again become prevelent, leading to more stories about futures devestated by wars against "the other," and the aftermath.

Stories in Wastelands can be split into two broad categories. The pessimistic stories generally feature lone characters trying desperately to stay alive in the immediate chaos following whatever happened. They're about mobs of people banding together and destroying what's left of civilization. About society collapsing into nothing.

The optimistic, and I use this term broadly, are when there may have been a huge drop in the world's population, people might be incredibly poor, there might be barbarians at the gate (not always, or no more than certain parts of the world today at least), but there's still communities (even if maybe nobody trusts each other, and even if they're barely managing to survive), and there's usually still technology, somehow.

I suppose if you got to the technological point of self functioning robots being prevalent, they could probably run for quite a while. And those same robots could probably keep power plants and the like working, so once you get to a certain level of technlogy it's easy enough to keep it stable.

But we haven't reached the stage of self functioning robots yet, so how would we deal with an apocalypse. How soon would we revert to earlier technology? A book on that subject is Earth Abides, which is about the slow decay of technology, even when society is rebuilding itself after massive depopulation. In Earth Abides, which probably covers 60 years or so, finding food becomes the most important thing, and farming, hunting, and gathering become the most important skills for people to have, more so than reading or other things we now learn. Of course, that book was written 50 years ago, so it's perhaps not as applicable in a world today.

Still, while the current generation would probably use books and the like to learn how to farm properly (or do anything they didn't know how to do), would the second? Or would they just learn from doing? The second seems more likely. If most of your time is spent on survival, everything else becomes less important.

The idea of community becomes incredibly important. If you were in a relatively stable society, probably not that large, you'd know everyone else, and your entertainment time would probably be spent with the other people. Thus reading doesn't really become a passtime.

Sometimes post apocalypses are seen as fun. No more work. No more rent. Just hanging out with your friends and looting shops. For many people, this is pretty much the ideal life, unlikely as it may be.

But more frequently they're depressing. Threads pretty much destroyed the mode a post apocalyptic movie marathon I attended (the rest of the fare had been things like Hell Comes to Frog Town).

One thing I would like to see more of, and that I will probably end up writing myself, is the idea of explorers. In the direct aftermath, going through people's, still more or less whole. houses, and just hanging out. Most stories set in abandoned cities tend to have them looted entirely years before. I guess people hanging out in abandoned cities isn't a story in itself, just the setting for one.

I've gotten offtrack. It's an anthology. It's about the post-apocalypse. You probably already know if you want to read it.

Comics World Busan

2009-01-10T21:50:00.002-03:30

After I stopped updating this blog, I wrote a few articles and reviews for some magazines in Korea. Some of them were printed, some weren't. None of them are online now, so I might as well post them here.

Comic World Busan

Originally printed April, 2006 in The Ulsan Pear (you can find issues in pdf format at ulsanonline.com).

On March 25th I attended Comic World 32 at BEXCO in Busan, Korea. I had no idea what to expect. When I arrived outside the convention hall the first thing I saw were tons of people, and tons of cosplayers.

Cosplay is the Japanese (and Korean) word for dressing up as a character from a comic, cartoon or videogame. People put a lot of work into their costumes and friends will all dress up as characters from the same story so you’ll see gangs of people in weird clothing walking around together. They hang around outside and pose whenever people want to take their photos, and there are tons of people taking photos.

Inside the BEXCO building was quite different from outside, and a bit disappointing too. The large hall that contained everything wasn’t the nicest looking, but that doesn’t really matter that much. There were several rows of tables with dozens of booths set up in them.

Each booth contained not the piles of back-issues you might expect, nor did it feature any hot artists of popular comics, not even piles of mini-comics made by local creators. Instead, looking at what was offered at the booths, it was clear that this was a fan convention.

The booths had merchandise that featured characters from popular comics; usually badges, stickers, art prints, bags, cards, cell phone danglies and dōjinshi.

Well, not actually dōjinshi, that’s a Japanese word. Dōjinshi are usually fan comics. They’re fanfiction taken to the extreme. A fan will read a comic and like it a lot and decide to draw, publish and sell their own adventures of the characters.

The comics themselves are beautifully produced. Square bound and slightly larger than the usual American sized comics. They also usually have covers, and sometimes a few interior pages, in colour. The art is generally pretty good, though it probably won’t look exactly like the characters do in the comic. Also, because Korean reads left to right these comics read in the familiar direction instead of “backwards” like most Japanese comics.

Dōjinshi creators usually produce their comics in low print runs to avoid the chances of them getting sued (they are using other peoples characters after all). So if you see something cool, pick it up, you might not get another chance. A number of comic creators started by making dōjinshi before becoming famous, so maybe that neat looking comic was drawn by someone who’ll become famous.

Interestingly, the costumes, comics and other merchandise seen at Comic World really showed that the most popular comics in Korea are Japanese ones. Naruto, One Piece, Death Note, Full Metal Alchemist, Inu Yasha, Kerero (Sergeant Frog) and Gundamn were all clearly visible at the event and are all popular, or at least available, in English.

The Comic World Busan events happen fairly regularly, with the next one happening on May 27th and 28 th. I only know one thing for sure, next time I go to one of these things I’ll be in costume too. Now all I need to do is learn Korean so I can actually read these comics.

Visit the Comic World website at www.comicw.co.kr (in Korean).

Repo: The Genetic Opera

2009-01-09T21:04:00.004-03:30

Repo: The Genetic Opera

Repo is a goth rock musical featuring Paris Hilton.

No, I'm being completely serious. I almost didn't go see this because she was in it, but it was my friend's birthday, I was procrastinating doing something else, and it was only $8.

We ended up being the only people in the theatre, which has only happened to me once before (High Fidelity, where I was the _only_ person in the theatre, and was kind of weirded out that a giant John Cusack kept talking directly to me).

Anyway, back to Repo.

It's set in a city fifty years in the future after some sort of super disease has made people's organs fail. GeneCo has managed to save the human race by creating new, artificial, super organs. Of course, that wasn't making them enough money, so they started pushing elective surgery, and it caught on because, well, elective surgery is popular now anyway, and it doesn't sound that ridiculous that people would want better livers ("Now! Drink more with LIV-R!") and stuff. I think one of the tag lines was "It's what's inside that counts!"

However, all this surgery is expensive. "Thankfully" GeneCo has a handy layaway method of payment. Organs now, money forever (or close to). And if you don't pay, the repo man (yes, there seems to be only one for the whole city) will come and take your organs back. Can they reuse the organs? I dunno, I can't imagine they could really. I guess they're just dicks.

Anyway, because of all the surgery people are having, they're also addicted to a painkillers (Zydrate). And while they could just buy these from GeneCo, knock off painkillers are available from street dealers, who somehow get the drug by extracting a blue liquid from corpses. This isn't explained either.

If this doesn't really sound like the plot for a movie (or anything), it's not, it's all background info.

The actual story doesn't really matter. There's some stuff about how the founder of GeneCo is dying, and he doesn't want any of his children (including Paris Hilton, and Ogre from Skinny Puppy) to be his heir. And there's this girl, Shilo, who's supposed to be really sick, and her father/doctor apparently killed her mother and gave her this disease, but none of that really matters that much, as the girl who plays Shilo isn't that good. Pretty ignorable really (and the appearance of Joan Jett during one of her songs is more embarrassing than anything else).

Similarly, while Paris Hilton doesn't do a bad job, she doesn't do a particularly spectacular one either, so I don't really understand why the director was so wowed by her (after initially refusing to even let her audition).

So yeah, some of the songs are okay, some of them are terrible, some of them are very Evanescence-y. The best ones generally involve the gravedigger character (see Zydrate above), who seemed to be the most interesting character in the movie, and was, of course, barely in it.

The computer generated sets are really nice though. I really liked the look of...whatever the city this place is set in. It was a pretty neat looking dystopian city. But I like pretty much any gothy dystopian future.

Oh, and something comic book related. There are these flashbacks told in comic book style. And by comic book style I mean there's pictures with word balloons and captions on the screen, and we go through them in sequence. There's some animation and I think a voice over or something. It seems sort of weird, but I guess it's a reasonable way to do flashbacks to "17 years ago" without having to get other actors to play the characters.g

Oh yeah, one problem I did have with them is that they _all_ happen "17 years ago" including the meeting and almost marriage between two characters, the marriage of one of those characters to someone else, and the eventual birth of their baby. That's one busy year!

If a goth rock musical sounds like something you'd like, it's probably worth watching once, even if it's not that good.

Club 9

2009-01-09T01:09:00.006-03:30

As last year I published a grand total of nothing (well, I made a zine), I decided that this year in celebration of having an article published I should at least write reviews of stuff on a blog again. Nobody will read it, but at least it'll keep me writing. I can't believe how much I used to write for here.

First up, Club 9.

I picked up the first volume of this from the library (this will be a recurring theme as libraries are awesome!) because I had a total brain failure and thought for some reason it was by the same creator as Flowers and Bees (that's Moyocco Anno for those who don't know). I read the first volume of Flowers and Bees last year, and enjoyed it, but hadn't had a chance to read any more, so I figured I'd check this one out.

Of course it's not by her, but that doesn't make it any less good. The actual creator is Makoto Kobayashi, possible "best" known in North America for What's Michael?, his comic about cats being incredibly cute (and weird). It is, as far as I know, mostly out of print at the moment, which is a shame, as it's fantastic.

Anyway, Club 9 is about Haruo Hattori, a klutzy, naive girl who's just moved to Tokyo to go to university, and ends up working at a hostess bar. Of course you wouldn't know that from the first chapter, which is mostly about her high school baseball team winning the national championships, and their star pitcher not getting picked in the draft. Sure Hauro shows up (falling into a cesspit and then accidentally flashing all her classmates), but if not for the text on the last page, you could be forgiven for not knowing who this comic was supposed to be about.

Hell, even the next several chapters don't tell what the comic is "really" about. Instead we're introduced to Haruo (kind, clumsy) and her family (her father is stern, her mom is going crazy because she doesn't want to turn 40) before she leaves for Tokyo. Once there she befriends several other girls,and ends up in a dorm room haunted by a lecherous ghost (Kobayashi clearly isn't afraid of including completely fantastical elements in his stories). Eventually we get to the point where she moves out and she gets a job at a hostess club to pay rent.

For those of you that don't know, a hostess club is a type of bar, common in Asia, where men pay women to drink and talk with them. Generally that's all that happens, the men drink and talk with pretty girls, and they pay a whole lot of money to be able to do so.

At first Haruo doesn't seem cut out for the job; she gets lost on her way to the club, shows up without makeup and in clothes that leave the owner aghast, and manages to set a client's mustache on fire while trying to light his cigarette.

Despite this, she ends up doing well, as she's the type of person who can talk to anyone. She soon relaxes, and the men at the Club 9 bar (including one called Makoto Konbayashi, creator of the What's Bear? manga about an incredibly cute dog...), are all incredibly charmed by her Southern accent and mannerisms. Or whatever the Japanese equivalent is I suppose (the Akita dialect?).

This is one place where the translation is rather odd. It's an an example of how complicated translation can be; how do you express accents from another country that don't have any equivalent in English? Haruo (and everyone from her hometown) talks in thick Southern US accents. Haruo is supposed to be a hick, from small town Japan, and sound unsophisticated, so I suppose the accent used is one that most English speakers could understand. It's still a bit odd at first though.

By the end of volume one Haruo seems somewhat settled, and I assume the rest of the series continues to be about Haruo juggling being a "Ginza girl" (albeit, an incredibly clumsy one), being a student, and trying to stay a virgin for her boyfriend (the star baseball pitcher from her high school) back home. But for all I know it goes off in some other direction and the murderer at the beginning of chapter 3 shows up. No matter what does happen, I'm sure it'll be good.

Unfortunately, this comic never really caught on in North America. And while Dark Horse did at least finish translating it in Super Manga Blast, they only put out three or four of the five volumes. I had a coworker at a comic book shop I used to work at that really liked this series, going so far as trying to track down those last issues of SMB to try and find out how it ended. I don't think she was that successful.

Perhaps one of the reasons this series didn't really catch on is Kobayashi's art. I certainly enjoy it, but I can understand how the giant mouths everyone has and the giant eyes Haruo has could be off putting. While not "standard manga," they really help Kobayashi show the characters emotions, which he does extremely well. Yes, they're incredibly exaggerated, but you know exactly how the characters are feeling.

It's too bad Kobayashi's comics haven't been more popular in North America, as I wouldn't mind reading one called Chichonmanchi, about a woman who dies at 92, and is all ready to go to paradise, but! She's still a virgin, so she gets given a new, young body, and is sent off to "pleasure hell" until she has sex. Apparently there's not that much actual sex in the comic, even if there is a lot of nudity. There's some more information about it here.

Shimura

2006-02-09T13:18:00.000-03:30

Shimura
Written by: Robbie Morrison
Art by: A bunch of people

There are some comics that when you hear about them you wonder why they didn’t sell that well. Shimura (and indeed the entire 2000AD/DC line) is one of those. Thankfully it answers it’s own question.

Why should it have sold well? The cover features the words “Frank Quitely” prominently. The same person who drew The Authority (when it was good), some of New X-Men, We3… Popular comics. And Quitely’s a good artist, it’s just that hiding under the beautiful cover he drew there isn’t much of his art. (this collection is over 200 pages long, around 35 of them are by Quitely) And the stories aren’t very good.

I like Judge Dredd. I like the (many) Judge Dredd comics I’ve read. But the spinoffs I’ve read have been terrible. Red Razors (Judges in Russia!) by Mark Millar was so uniformly terribly that I no longer own the copy I bought and it was probably a year or something before I bought any more of the 2000AD/DC trades.

Shimura falls into the same boat. It’s set in the same universe as Judge Dredd (Japan this time) and even the same time period (Red Razors wasn’t), but it’s still dreadful (not Dredd-full despite an appearance).

The book is composed of many short, interconnected stories. As the first story begins Shimura is still a judge, training in a new cadet. However soon Shimura decides to leave the judge system so as battle corruption and the yakuza. Which is what most of the rest of the book is about.

I think my biggest problem with Shimura is that it’s yet another comic about how everyone in Japan is incredibly concerned with honour (but at the same time horribly corrupt). Oh, and they’re really sexist. It’s just boring at this point. Yeah, yeah, honour, face, whatever. I no longer care and I don’t think that the Japanese are going to be as concerned about it in one hundred years.

There’re a few stories about Judge Inaba, the female cadet Shimura was training in the first story. I think the premise of these is better (female judge tries her best to function in a corrupt and sexist organization), but they’re not really fleshed out and feature an over reliance on sex.

The art is just weird. The Quitely stuff is really good, and some of the other art is pretty good, but some of it is just grotesque. There’s a couple of artists who’s styles are interesting and I’m not sure if it’s just not that good or if they’re just being used on the completely wrong type of story.

All I expected from Shimura was Judge Dredd in Japan. A tough as nails, take no attitude judge who gets the job done and has a katana to take down perps. I guess Morrison didn’t want to just rip off Dredd, which is fair enough, but he went in a direction I wasn’t really interested in and was hampered by art that wasn’t really suited to the stories.

So far I’ve enjoyed one of the three 2000AD/DC collections I’ve read, hopefully the other two I’ve bought will be better…

Bad Company, Goodbye Krool World

2006-01-18T12:07:00.000-03:30

Bad Company: Goodbye, Krool World
Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Brett Ewins, Jim McCarthy and Steve Dillon
Published by 2000AD/DC Comics

Bad Company is a war comic. Yes, it may be dressed up in science fiction trappings (there’s a big green guy on the cover with a ludicrous gun), but it’s really just a war comic in space. They may be fighting dehumanised (well, never humanized) aliens who are killing for no apparent reason, but in British war comics the Germans (or whoever was being fought) were shown the same way.

In Bad Company Humanity is fighting the Krool, an alien species who delight in torture and killing, and who are attempting to wipe out all humans. If the Krool take the planet Ararat they’ll have a staging ground to attack Earth from, and the war on Ararat is going badly for Earth.

Danny Franks is a soldier on the planet Ararat. He and his fellow troops have already seen untold horrors and some are on the verge of giving up. Then the Krool unleash war zombies, humanity’s own dead turned into fighting machines for the Krool. The Earthians don’t want to shoot their friends and fellow soldiers, dead or not, so it looks like they’re finally going to be wiped out.

Then Kano and Bad Company appear. They’re the roughest, toughest soldiers that exist. Fighting behind enemy lines without official support they still do more damage then all the other Earth soldiers. They’re feared by the Krool, but they’re also feared by the Earth soldiers. Kano is a monster, incredibly tall, green (or possibly blue) skin and he doesn’t seem to feel any pain, only give it out. The rest of Bad Company aren’t much better, there’s a robot, a werewolf creature, a guy that looks like a ghoul, a guy with a carnivorous plant for an arm and more. Even those that at least look human are insane and think they’re fighting the nazis or who knows what.

Kano recruits Franks and the rest of the surviving soldiers with him. They’re part of Bad Company now. Kano leads them into Krool territory, testing them, using them as bait, throwing their lives away to advance his own plans. A lot of them die, but Kano doesn’t care, those that survive will replace the dead members of Bad Company.

Franks becomes friends with a member of Bad Company named Malcolm. He doesn’t seem to be as monstrous as Kano and the rest, but he’s still worse than the soldiers Franks is used to interacting with. Malcolm explains he’s been with Bad Company for less time than the others. He has yet to embrace the nihilistic death wish the others seem to carry.

So the question is: what will happen to Franks? Will he die (for this seems like a distinct possibility)? Will he escape Bad Company with at least some of his sanity intact? Or will he too become as bad as those he at first fears?

Bad Company is one of Peter Milligan’s first comics and it doesn’t disappoint. Milligan wrote an engaging and interesting comic with Bad Company. Are there problems? Yeah, the fact that each chapter is only four to seven pages long (as it was originally published in the anthology comic 2000AD) means it’s hard to develop all of the characters fully, meaning that with the high death count you know who some of those that die are going to be (ie. those that aren’t developed). Similarly being thrown into a story after it’s already started (who is Kano? Why are these people in Bad Company?) means that the story can be confusing at times. I think this confusion may have been created on purpose to put the reader into the place of Franks who doesn’t know what’s going on either.

Storywise Bad Company follows at least one (and perhaps several) older British war comics pretty closely. One of the most famous of the British war comics is Darkie’s Mob which was about a group of soldiers in Japanese occupied Burma in World War Two. The story is the same as Bad Company really, a group of soldiers are afraid they’re about to get killed when Darkie shows up. He crazy and impossibly strong and leads them on impossible and suicidal missions to harden them and kill a bunch of “Japs.” It’s even narrated by journal entries the same way Bad Company is. So was the idea of Bad Company stolen? I don’t know, perhaps all British war comics were written the same way and Bad Company just stole from all of them. Maybe it’s an homage. It’s still good though.

However, all of the previous is about Bad Company, what of the sequel Bad Company II also included in this volume? To put it bluntly, it’s not as good. Bad Company II takes the opposite approach from the first story in that it takes a long time to introduce the new characters. However, despite spending the time to introduce the characters, it still felt like I didn’t know who most of these characters were. Also whereas the first story was more of a “ohmyshitwhatishappeningarewegoingtosurvive?” story this one has more of a plot and goal, a plot and goal I find sort of boring.

The artwork is good in both parts, though I think I liked the art in part one better (one site said the art in part one had been stretched, if this is indeed the case, though I’m not sure if it is, I guess I like the stretched artwork better). Ewins and McCarthy make the monsters seem monstrous (including some nice homages to Frankenstein’s monster) and the humans seem humany. The storytelling is clear and the action sequences are well illustrated.

There’re a few things with the art that are pretty interesting. There’s a use of photocopied panels that’s used to zoom in or out of certain shots, giving the comic a cinematic style. While this is pretty common these days, I don’t know how common it was back when this comic was originally published in 1980s. There’s also the use of splashes at the beginning of each strip. Whereas in longer comics you might get a full page or double page splash at the beginning of the comic, Bad Company (which had only four to seven pages per chapter) usually has a half page or so splash. Sometimes they’re just pinups of one or more characters, and other times they’re part of the story, but generally I thought they worked well and helped create a consistency between each chapter of the story.

One last thing, this isn’t all of the Bad Company stories. There’re a few shorts and text stories that were published in annuals and specials around the same time as the original series (one of them is actually listed in the indicia, but not included in the actual book). Most (all) of these can be tracked down in an issue of the 2000ad Megazine from a few years ago. There was also a Kano solo series at some point in the 1990s that I don’t think has been reprinted anywhere, and there was a Bad Company 2002 story that was, apparently, terrible.

Despite the second part not being as good, overall I’d say Bad Company, Goodbye Krool World is worth picking up if you’re into war or sci-fi comics. It’s not as weird as other Milligan comics (though there is a scene where some of the characters get drunk after eating alcoholic mud…), but it still has solid storytelling and good art.

You can read Darkie’s Mob (and some other old British comics) here.

Scars

2006-01-13T12:51:00.000-03:30

Scars
Written by Warren Ellis
Artwork by Jacen Burrows

Scars was Warren Ellis’ attempt to write something disturbing. Not disturbing in the “look at these horrible monsters from outer space” but in the “look at these horrible monsters who are your next door neighbours and aren’t aliens or anything, but just humans.” He succeeds.

John Cain is a cop. A not horrible and corrupt cop, but a good cop (as most cops in fiction are). He’s just gotten back from leave involving something horrible about his wife/girlfriend and daughter. What? We’re not told.

He works on homicide cases. And he can deal with dead bodies. Or at least not vomit every time he sees them. Same thing maybe. Though throwing up is one way to deal with things.

So he’s okay. He’s dealing with his life. His job. What’s happened. Maybe a bit highly strung, but it’s okay.

And then a girl’s body shows up. In a box. In several boxes. In pieces. And once the pieces are put back together there’s evidence of torture and rape. Cain wants to catch the guy that did it. He promises the girl’s family he will. And he’s not going to let the law stop him.

Scars is Cain spirally out of control as he tries to find a murderer.

The story’s good, though things happen a bit too conveniently at times. It is horrible. And scary. It makes me hate being a teacher and the position of trust I’m in. Not because of anything I could ever do, but because there’s the chance that someone else could get a similar job to mine and do something horrible easily.

The horror is aided by Jacen Burrows art. It makes the gruesome things gruesome. It’s pretty realistic for the most part, there are a few more cartoony moments but these don’t detract from the details. There’s a few points where it reminds of Rob G’s art a bit, though I think that’s more down to the design of one of the characters then anything. There’s some nice greytones by Nimbus Studios that helps to give the art some nice depth.

One thing I found a bit annoying was the lack of sound effects. Ellis apparently hates sound effects and doing a comic without them can work, but there’s a few times where I think they would have helped create mode and maybe even helped the flow of the comic a bit.

This is an otherwise minor quibble for a pretty good crime graphic novel. It’s not the type of thing I’d want to read everyday, but if you’re into um, gross crime stuff I’d say pick it up.

Sekai Trilogy: Crest of the Stars and Planetes

2006-01-07T13:43:00.000-03:30

Seikai Trilogy vol. 1: Crest of the Stars
Original Story by Hiroyuki Morioka
Composition by Aya Youshinaga
Art by Toshihiro Ono
Published by Tokyopop

Planetes vols. 3, 4.1 and 4.2
By Makoto Yukimura
Published by Tokyopop

It’s taken me a while to write this one as I had to read four different graphic novels. Plus, you know, being late is procrastislicious.

So here’s reviews of two Japanese science fiction comics. Sekai Trilogy seems to be more space opera-y, while Planetes is more hard sci fi-y. (They’re both good though.)

Sekai Trilogy is interesting if only because as opposed to most manga, or at least most manga published in North America, it isn’t an original idea, nor is it based on a cartoon. Instead it is an adaptation of a series of novels. There’s also an anime adaptation of the novels which I think, though I’m not positive, came first, influencing the character designs for this book.

As Crest of the Stars begins the Abh, a race of genetically engineered humans, have just taken over the Hyde star system. Jinto’s father was the ruler of the system and has surrendered instead of fighting the far superior Abh. By giving up total autonomous rule in this way Jinto and his father become Abh themselves, not in the genetically modified sense, but in regards to their status and positions. Jinto then finds himself sent off to boarding school for his own protection. The people of his homeworld now hate him and his father

Seven years later and Jinto is heading off to Abh officer school. He’s picked up at the spaceport by Lafiel, a girl who at first seems to have major personality problems. Jinto is brought up to the ship he’ll be travelling through space on and discovers the weird girl is actually a princess. After ignoring his Abh “heritage” for years, Jinto is probably the only person around who couldn’t identify her. This pleases her greatly as he’s the only one who doesn’t treat her like, well, a princess, while all she wants is to be treated according to her (not very high) military rank.

There’s soon a big space battle (a war has been declared) and Jinto and Lafiel are jettisoned out so that they don’t die horribly in space. Jinto is rather happy about this, but Lafiel, rightly, believes that she’s being given custody of Jinto to get her out of harms way. Nobody, even after they’ve died in a horrible space battle, wants to be blamed for killing the princess.

Jinto and Lafiel then spend a while trying to get somewhere where they can tell people they’re not dead. They visit a tiny kingdom on an asteroid (complete with semi-pointless fanservice) and a planet now under enemy control. There’s a lot of running around and disguises and cultural misunderstanding. Eventually they hook up with a rebel faction that doesn’t like the Abh empire, but also doesn’t like their enemy. It’s honestly better then I’m making it sound.

The art is nothing special really, though I suppose the artist was restricted by having to use the designs for the characters and vehicles that were created in the cartoon. Still, it tells the story effectively and is never actually bad.

One of the downfalls of the Sekai Trilogy is the huge amount of made up words in it. Now I expect a certain amount of made up words in any book I read, and you’ll catch on to some right away, and a few others after a while, but with the sheer number in this book I couldn’t get them all. There’s over one hundred listed in the glossary in the back, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t get them all. (The glossary itself is a mixed blessing because you keep flipping to the back and trying to find words. It really interrupts the flow of the story.)

So what’s the deal with all the fake words? Apparently Hiroyuki Morioka, who wrote the original novels, is a big fan of constructed languages. I think that in some cases this can be used pretty well. You can create words to express things that can’t be expressed in English (or Japanese or whatever). It can reflect differences in society. But why create a new word for car (usiya)? Or roses (bara)? Or others. It just doesn’t really make sense to me…

The language is however just one facet of the entire world (or worlds) that have been created here. The other comics, cartoons and books probably help flesh them out even more, and I’m interested enough to go looking for them (maybe I’ll even pick up a bit more of the language!).

Okay, now for the next sci-fi comic from Japan.

Planetes is set in the 2070s. Humankind has reached beyond the bounds of Earth. There are colonies on the Moon and Mars and piles of astronauts and spaceships going into space all the time. (It also seems to be a fully, awesomely, multicultural society. The main characters come from countries all over the world and of different ethnicities. Russian, Japanese, American, English. Black, white, Asian. It’s a world where these things don’t matter.)

Volume one of Planetes followed the debris collection spaceship Toybox and it’s crew of Fee, Hachimaki and Yuri. The stories were about the group as a whole and the members individually. Volume two was about Hachimaki and his attempts to become one of the crew of the first manned spaceship being sent to Jupiter.

Volume three continues to focus on Hachimaki as he trains and prepares for the upcoming mission to Jupiter. And by “prepare” I mean “goes insane.” Despite this being everything Hachimaki’s dreamed of he doesn’t really seem to be able to deal with it. He keeps blanking out and almost dies after a strange “vision quest” thing on the surface of the moon. His crewmates for the mission worry about this, some because they don’t want something bad to happen to him, and some because they don’t want to deal with a nutcase on a seven year mission to Jupiter. (Which is, you know, understandable.)

Tanabe, the replacement for Hachimaki onboard the Toybox, also gets feature fairly prominently in this volume. We learn about her past (her adoptive father is an aging rocker with an inverted cross tattooed on his face, awesome!) and about her and what she thinks and feels.

Volumes 4.1 and 4.2 again focus on Fee and Yuri as Hachimaki is off on his seven year voyage. I think I prefer these stories of…working class astronauts and how they deal with their lives and their families to the big awesome space project. About people trying to do their job for themselves and their families. Trying to do their best to stop the stupidity of space war in whatever small way they can. The characters try to figure out who they are and what they stand for.

The stories at time have a dreamlike quality to them. Maybe. They seem slow moving. Both meandering and purposeful (even when they feature explosions). The characters act like, well, possibly how I would act if I lived in the future. I love space and space exploration. I think it’s really cool. I wish everyday that I could go up there at some point. I would jump at the chance to be a garbage collector in space.

The problem is that I’m both a slacker and a pessimist. Could I become an astronaut? The possibility does exist, I’m young, fairly intelligent and pretty healthy. I could go back to university, get engineering and science degrees, master Russian, join the air force (or something) and get flight training. I could do it all.

But…the pessimism. Even if I did this I don’t think I’d cut it. I’d do something that would get me cut from the running to be an astronaut. Either I wouldn’t be good enough or my morals and ethics wouldn’t allow me to do something. Something. If I was promised a place in space would I do it? Would I drop everything and spend ten years (or more) studying and training and everything? I don’t know. I think so. Maybe I’d be too scared to do so. Maybe I’m not tough enough to do it.

Not good enough.

This is what Planetes does to me. It makes me think. It makes me hopeful. It makes me sad.

(This review sucks.)

The art in Planetes is really good too. Makoto Yukimura manages to capture the grandeur and the emptiness of space. The loneliness and the silence. These comics sound quiet to me. When they’re in space (where there is no sound) I sometimes have a hard time playing music because I don’t think I should hear anything either. The characters emotions are also captured beautifully and you’re able to tell what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling.

Volume three has a beautiful cover that reminds me of Russian science fiction movies (like Solaris and this weird soviet cartoon).

(Click for cover.)

Volumes 4.1 and 4.2 have had a lot of care put into their production. As you may know many manga have their first few pages printed in painted colour (sometimes when a new storyline stars they’ll get another few pages in colour). Usually when these are collected they turned to gray tones and you get a few pages that look odd. Sometimes you’ll get the colour pages bound in at the beginning of the volume, but not always.

With Planetes 4.1 and 4.2 you not only have the colour stuff bound at the beginning of the volume, but bound throughout the book, wherever it appeared. Okay, so admittedly the colours don’t look that good (though whether that’s down to reproduction or the original colours I don’t know), but nonetheless it’s a cool thing to do.

The backs of 4.1 and 4.2 also have piles of text material. This is partially to bulk up the pagecount (4.1 is only about 160 pages, while 4.2 doesn’t hit 180), but also because the likelihood of Tokyopop reprinting the text book talking about science and history from now until the 2070s is pretty slim. (Hell, I wouldn’t even buy it.) I guess they might as well print some of it somewhere.

(Why are they numbered 4.1 and 4.2? Well that’s how they’re numbered in Japan. And there’s the possibility that the author will come back and do a new volume. It seems sort of unlikely though, as while the ending is incredibly open (to the point of not really resolving everything/anything) he’s working on another comic now. About a viking.)

Planetes got a fair number of reviews with its first volume. A hard sci-fi comic about garbage collectors in Earth orbit is not what most people expect from manga. The second volume received a fair amount of backlash as it changed tack slightly. I still liked it, and I like these volumes as well. Though I don’t think they’re as strong as that first volume.

I honestly can’t say I was expecting much from Crest of the Stars, but I was pleasantly surprised. Apart from a bit of fan service it was a pretty solid Sci-Fi comic. Not as good as Planetes, but still pretty good and I’m interested in reading more.

Planetes on the other hand is just so good. I wish I had the first two volumes here so that I could reread them. Even though I don’t think these volumes stand up as well as the first two they’re still excellent comics. Thoughtful and thought provoking. Full of science and dreams. (I could only wish this was my life.) It’s realistic science fiction (with an emphasis on the science part) that is more about the people then the world they inhabit and the technology they use.

Morbid

2005-12-15T11:40:00.000-03:30

Pete Von Sholly’s Morbid
By Pete Von Sholly (shocking)
Starring the Von Sholly Players
Published by Dark Horse

I should love this.

This is a collection of various short comics homaging and parodying terrible science fiction and monster films from the 50s and 60s, H. P. Lovecraft and The Matrix. This is stuff I love. This is what I fall back on and geek out about when I’m sad or depressed or stuck in another country after having my passport stolen.

It’s also (in addition to comics) what I talk about all the time with anybody who’ll listen. Stupid science fiction and horror stuff make me really happy.

But Morbid doesn’t do anything for me. I think a large part is the way it’s, um, arted. Von Sholly says he’s been an artist for decades, storyboarding films and drawing underground comics in the 60s and 70s. However, he could be the most amazing artist I’ve ever seen and I wouldn’t know, because the amount of actual drawn artwork in this comic amounts to (I think) less than two pages. These are I think the best two pages in the entire book. Check out this picture (sorry for the shitty image quality), these comics look awesome!

The rest of the art is a combination of computer generated effects and photographs of people acting out the scenes.

Von Sholly says in his introduction that he wanted to make the movies he wanted to and by using comics and computer effects he could have the biggest budgets imaginable. I’m not going to knock the computer effects he’s using in this comic, some of them look pretty good and I sure as hell couldn’t do better. My problem is with the photos. They don’t blend well with the computer graphics. I don’t know if this is down to talent or technological abilities, but everything has this horrible fakeness to it. If everything was computer generated it would look odd (humans almost always look odd when computer generated) but at least everything would match.

The writing on short stories is of a variable quality. Some of them are pretty fun (the H. P. Lovecraft one), while others have some really good parts (using a body as a lure for other humans), but most of them are just okay and a couple are really bad. Von Sholly adds a lot of, to my mind, juvenile humour to the old b-movie plots and he hasn’t improved upon the sexism inherent in those old movies. Yeah, he’s mocking it directly but it’s still there. I much prefer to see pastiches of old stupid sci-fi acknowledge that people in the past were stupid and put females in leading (or at least intelligent) roles. I think you can keep the feel of everything and not treat women as sex objects.

In the end I’m glad I only paid $3 for this from a bargain bin.

Adam Strange: Planet Heist

2005-12-07T15:32:00.000-03:30

(bleh, not that well written after a month of not writing because of sickness and travelling and stuff)

Adam Strange: Planet Heist (DC)
Writer: Andy Diggle
Artist: Pascal Ferry
Colourist: Dave McCaig

Andy Diggle is a writer I like. He used to be editor of British comic 2000AD (which, if you’ve read past columns you know I like) and managed to crack the American market with fellow Brit Jock on their Vertigo series The Losers*. The Losers is about a group of ex-CIA agents trying to take out the corruption in the company (it’s a lot like the A-Team in some ways, though sadly no Mr. T). So the question is: can he write crazy space adventures?

Adam Strange is one of DC’s old science fiction characters, and he’s really the only one that’s had any modern appearances, popping up in various other characters’ titles over the years. Recently he’s been put into a more major role appearing in The Rann-Thangar war, one of the lead ins to DC’s mega-event Infinite Crisis. Planet Heist was the lead in to the lead in, though for the most part it can be read without caring about Infinite Crisis.

Understanding every detail without a major in DC intergalactic space characters will be quite a bit harder.

Adam Strange is “the man of two worlds,” transported from Earth to the planet Rann by Zeta beams. On Earth he’s just another guy, but on Rann he’s a hero. He saves the Rannian people time after time, falls in love and decides that the next time he journey’s to Rann he’ll stay. But the last Zeta beam doesn’t come and after learning that Rann was destroyed in a supernova Strange spirals downwards into despair and drunkenness.

Then the alien bounty hunters show up. Strange manages to pull himself out of his stupor when they mention something about the supernova being “faked-up” (them trying to kill him might have helped him regain his composure too…). This leads to some nice aerial battles (with jet packs!) and a tour of DC universe space.

If you know what Thanagar or L.E.G.I.O.N. are, or who the Darkstars or the Omega Men are you’ll probably get more enjoyment in seeing this characters. Me? I was just kind of lost. I’ve read the first few issues of L.E.G.I.O.N. so I at least knew what that was. But Thanagar? It’s something to do with Hawkgirl. The Darkstars? I know there was a comic called that, but I have no idea what it was about. Whereas when the Omega Men first appeared I was positive they were created by Diggle until all but a couple of them were shoved into the background after been introduced.

Thankfully knowledge of these concepts isn’t essential to the enjoyment of story. Diggle’s written a fun action comic with jet packs, public executions, space battles, ridiculous technology and jet packs (I really like jet packs, they’ve got that pulp science fiction feel to them I guess). The story seems to tear across half the galaxy and every issue manages to end on a cliff hanger. There’s also some nice humour throughout script.

The art on Planet Heist is by Pascal Ferry (or Pascual or Pasqual or… his name apparently get misspelt a lot). Well actually I should be more accurate and say the art is by Ferry and Dave McCaig, because the colouring on this book is pretty much essential to the art. The style of illustration used heavily depends on computer colouring. There’s a lot of science fictioney bits that are done with computers (I’m not sure who did them), while a number of pieces of technology seem to be created entirely by the colouring process.

But what about Ferry’s actual pencils (no inking on this comic, though there’s some nice zipatone effects)? Well they vary. Some images look beautiful, while others just look ugly, it’s sort of weird. However a major problem I have with Ferry’s art is that it doesn’t seem to flow that well. Taken individual there are many really nice pieces here, but for whatever reason they lack a certain…motion perhaps. They seem to be lacking something. Perhaps the colouring is partially to blame.

I also don’t like the way Ferry has chosen to drawn some things. There are a number of guns and pieces of armour that seem too rounded. I know it’s space and everything, but the big gun Adam Strange is holding on the cover doesn’t look like real. It looks like a toy. Some of the armour and costumes worn by characters look like they’re made out of foam rubber and belong in a bad, old science fiction movie. And as much as I love those, I don’t want their costumes in my serious, modern science fiction comic. Still for the most part I do enjoy Ferry’s art and design.

Overall this is a good comic. It’s not great. The art (pencils and colours) is great in some places, but great art does alone make a great comic. Especially when it’s not great all the time. I think if you’re a fan of Adam Strange, or the DC space stuff, this is worth picking up. Otherwise

*The Losers is finishing up in a couple of months, at issue 32. How many finite series only go 32 issues? Finite series in the twenty-thirty issue range are something I’d like to see explored more.

----------
In other news…

Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth

2005-10-19T14:15:00.000-02:30

Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth
Written by Pat Mills, John Wagner and Chris Lowder
Illustrated by Mike McMahon and Brian Bolland
(Titan Books/2000AD)

In the 22nd century much of the world has been destroyed, what remains of civilization has gathered in various "mega-cities" where hundreds of millions of people live. In Mega-City One crime is rampant and on the streets the Judges act as judge, jury and executioner. Judge Dredd is the best there is: he is The Law.

Judge Dredd is a character I go through phases with. I think he's awesome and read piles of comics about him. I read about his history. I look at websites. And then... I burn out. I get sick of him. For a while. Six months go by and I see some other Judge Dredd comic and I get excited again. (Now, admittedly I've only actually been reading Judge Dredd comics for like two years, but I do regret passing up lots of cheap back issues when I had a chance earlier this year. Oh well.)

When I found that one of the comic stores in St. John's was selling off some Judge Dredd trades cheap I got pretty excited. Dredd is, to me, a character who I've read...entirely in cheap bin comics or in stuff I borrowed off friends (who I think got it out of cheap bins). And one of the novels (which I bought for like $1.30 or something). The only Dredd related comic I've ever bought for full price was the DC/2000AD trade of Red Razors, which was fucking terrible. But I digress.

The Cursed Earth is old Dredd, from the second year of 2000AD's publication (which was 1978 for those who didn't know). It was the first epic Dredd story, spanning half a year and twenty five issues of the weekly 2000AD comic. Up to this point all the Judge Dredd comics had been one and two parters. A crime happens, Dredd busts the perp. Rince and repeat. This was different.

In The Cursed Earth Dredd is sent across the vast radioactive wasteland that is the Cursed Earth to deliver a vaccine and hopefully stop the plague that is ravaging Mega-City Two. Thankfully Dredd has three other judges, a pile of robots and Spikes Harvey Rotten (the best biker in all of Mega-City One) on his side and the Land Raider, the Killdozer and some quasar bikes for everyone to ride on (and I do mean on, I found it hilarious how Dredd and Spikes would invariably ride on top of their impervious motor vehicle, you can go inside Dredd...). Along the way Dredd fights the Brother of Crazy Mutants, flying rats, dinosaurs (Satanus), robot vampires, the Alien Catcher General (who has the head of a goat), and countless other creatures. He also befriends an alien, condemns the speciesism that is rampant on Earth and finds the last president of the United States of America.

Now admittedly The Cursed Earth isn't an epic like some of the later Dredd stories. It isn't one long story, but rather a series of picaresque adventures (hah, take that English class). After the two opening chapters the next twenty chapters are broken into nine stories (I think), each a few chapters long. These are just "crazy things happen to Dredd as he crosses America" stories and for the most part they could happen in any order. You could not read most of them and it wouldn't affect the story.

This is proven by the fact that the collection I read (and every collection of the story that exists) is missing two of the stories. Burger Wars featured two famous burger chains fighting a war with each other to see who would be the sole burger server in America. While Mascotomania featured a certain colonel and many different products mascots in a negative light. 2000AD was sued, and they've promised to never republish them. Damnit. Thankfully they can be found online if you know where to look (here's part of them). I read both and found Mascotomania (by Jack Adrian aka. Chris Lowder) to be pretty weird. However Burger Wars (written by John Wagner under his T.B. Grover pseudonym) is really good. Wagner wrote another two parter concerning corrupt Judges in Las Vegas and while good, it isn't as fun as Burger Wars.

However, the writing of most of this volume is done by Pat Mills (creator of Marshal Law, Slaine and the ABC Warriors, which is in my pile of things to read) and it's good stuff. You can't expect "the best thing ever," but if you want Dredd fighting a semi-sentient tyrannosaurus that escaped from an amusement park or other, similarly, ridiculous things then Mills delivers.

On the art side of things most of this collection was drawn by Mike McMahon, who's art is pretty good for the most part, though his Dredd is incredibly scrawny looking in the first few parts. Still, no matter how good his art was McMahon can't compare to Brian Bolland who drew about a third of these comics. Bolland's art and design in these comics is just amazing, really top notch.

Overall I think this is a pretty awesome package (especially since I got it cheap). I only wish that it included the Burger Wars and Mascotomania chapters and the Cursed Earth boardgame that was included in a few issues of 2000AD at the time. (Oh some of the boardgame is online, issues 75-80. Who wants to play?)

A History of Violence

2005-10-11T15:24:00.000-02:30

A History of Violence
Written by John Wagner
Art by Vince Locke

This is the second title from Paradox Press’s short lived Paradox Graphic Mystery line that disappeared utterly when it was first released but has now probably sold a boatload of copies because of it being made into a movie (the first one being Road to Perdition).

John Wagner has had a massive influence on modern British comics and British comic writers through the 2000AD comic magazine. Wagner has written for this weekly anthology title since it started in the 1970s, creating or co-creating several of it’s best known characters (Judge Dredd, Stronium Dog) and writing some of the best stories the magazine has published. However Wagner hasn’t really had much of an effect on American comics directly (though in doing some research I’ve discovered he’s done far more work for American publishers then I’d realized, including writing a Xena comic of all things), this is probably due to his lack of interest in superheroes.

However he did write this comic which is now a “major motion picture” (and really, that’s the only reason I have this comic (well, that and because a friend gave it to me). And while it doesn’t feature superheroes it isn’t really something that could have been published in 2000ad either.

When I first heard of this title I thought, for some reason, that it would actually be a history of violence. Start off when one caveman hit another caveman or something and continue on through various wars (too much exposure to the Big Books that Paradox published I guess). “Why would someone want to make a movie out of that?” I thought.

Needless to say, I was completely and utterly wrong about what this comic was about. I went in having almost no idea of what it was about, and the only reason I knew anything about it at all was that I read the back of it when I got it. However reading the back of the comic actually decreased my enjoyment of the comic somewhat (I really need to stop doing that). It ruins some plot points that should be surprises. Interestingly, Wager refuses to tell the reader anything about the plot in the introduction because he hates it when people give away plot points.

So I’m not going to say anything about the plot.

What I will tell you is that A History of Violence is a crime comic. A violent crime comic (as if you couldn’t tell from the title). I can see why it was optioned to be a movie because it doesn’t really seem like a comic book story. It seems like a story that would work better as a movie. Does it work better as a movie? I don’t know, and in fact I don’t want to know.

Why? Not because this comic isn’t good (because it is good), but because there is some horribly violent and gross imagery in this comic that I don’t want to see represented by real life people (or close facsimiles). I’m squeamish. I don’t like gross stuff.

In fact I was going to criticise Vince Locke’s art (it’s scratchy and messy and I really don’t like it that much). But it is exactly this scratchy messiness that manages to deflect some of the grossness that would have been more evident if someone with a cleaner style had drawn the book. So, uh, top job Locke!

Overall though the comic is good. The story is interesting and flows well. So if you can deal with the uberviolence I’d say check it out.

Coming soon:
Reviews of Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth (by John Wagner and others) and Green Candles (another Paradox Graphic Mystery graphic novel).

(An aside:

Paradox Press seemed to have died off around 2000. Then Road to Perdition happened and that graphic novel was reprinted through the imprint and then the sequel comic was published through it as well. My copy of A History of Violence was published last year I guess (it has “Soon to be a major motion picture!” on the cover) and it was still Paradox Press then. But a new edition is out and I’m pretty sure it’s published through Vertigo. It’s sort of sad as I feel that books like this (and Harvey Pekar’s new book The Quitter, also coming out from Vertigo) don’t really fit in with Vertigo that well. The point of imprints sort of fail when you just seem to publish things in them randomly, which is often what DC seem to be doing these days.)

Naruto vol. 7

2005-10-07T14:30:00.000-02:30

Naruto vol. 7
Story and Art by Masashi Kishimoto

Naruto was one of the launch titles in Viz’s Shonen Jump magazine several years ago. Thus it comes out maddeningly slowly compared to some of the other manga series that come out (less then three volumes a year, compared to others that come out monthly or bimonthly). It’s up to volume twenty something in Japan (and Korea) and is really popular. It’s been doing pretty well in North America, and the debut of the anime on tv this fall only increased it’s popularity (hell, you can already buy Naruto stuff in Hot Topic).

It’s also really, really good.

Now, I’ve read a bunch of the Shonen Jump titles Viz is putting out. Some of them are really good and I want to buy more volumes (Bleach), some of them are good, but I preferred to read them for free from the library (One Piece and Hikaru No Go) and some of them I just couldn’t get into at all (The Prince of Tennis). Naruto is better then all of the others (though I will admit Bleach is a pretty close second). This isn’t to say that Naruto is the best comic ever, or even the best manga ever. It’s not, and it doesn’t aspire to be. What it is is a really, really good ninja comic.

Naruto is a trainee ninja, and not a very good one. In fact, he messes up all of the time and is constantly being mocked and made fun of by his classmates. Despite this he is determined to become the best ninja in the world ever! (If you read a lot of shonen, ie. boys adventure, comics you realize that the plot of most of them is about someone trying to become the best something ever.) This isn’t as farfetched as it seems, because despite his generally incompetence Naruto has some serious power inside him. Now if only he could figure out a way to tap into that power when he wanted to…

Volume 7 (Orochimaru’s Curse) is more of the same ninja action (!) I have come to expect from Naruto. Amusingly Naruto is unconscious until about page 50, leaving the ninja action (!) to be between a lot of other trainee ninja and the big evil guys. And the evil guys are evil. They’re shifty and double crossing and powerful and mysterious and everything bad guys should be (at least in kids adventure comics). Plus they look really cool. In fact all of the characters in this comic look really cool. They don’t dress in black like “traditional” ninja (Naruto wears bright orange), but each character that’s introduced has a style of their own. When there’re several dozen characters this is pretty impressive.

I really don’t have anything negative to say about Naruto. It’s pretty light, but it doesn’t cost much, and it gives me action and adventure in a way that North American comics don’t really seem to. Also knowing about Naruto (and other manga) has impressed the kids I teach to no end. They ask who my favourite character is and despite them being like twenty volumes ahead of me I can still say that Sakura is my favourite and they know what I’m talking about.

Now all I need to do is learn Korean so I can read the next volume…

Formerly and Can't be and Identity, oh my!

2005-09-29T15:01:00.000-02:30

Fomerly Known as the Justic League #s 1-6
and
JLA Classified #s 4-9
Written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis
Illustrated by Kevin Maguire and Joe Rubinstein

Identity Crisis #s 1-7
Written by Bran Meltzer
Illustrated by Rags Morales and Michael Bair

Earlier this year I started picking up lots of late 80s-early 90s DC comics. I’ve never really read that many DC comics at all, but for a quarter each I was willing to check them out. The first couple I got were issue one of Justice League Europe and an issue of Suicide Squad (I’d just seen the episode of JLU where Task Force X show up and wanted both Suicide Squad and JLA comics). I dug both of them, and started buying more. I also picked up some of the related titles: the Elongated Man miniseries (well, most of it), Mr. Miracle, JLI, loads of stuff really. Overall my collection of DC comics increased several times over (I really didn’t have that many to start with).

I think one of the other reasons I started buying these comics was that after years the characters in them were being used again. In Giffen and DeMatteis’ miniseries Formally Known as the Justice League and in DC’s big event comic Identity Crisis. Since then some the characters have been used in the lead up to Infinite Crisis.

Formally Known as the Justice League (FKATJL) is the miniseries written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis and drawn by Kevin Maguire and Joe Rubinstein, the main creative team behind Justice League International and it’s various spin-offs. (An aside, I discovered upon reading one of the letters pages in an issue of JLI that Excalibur, the x-sword title, was launched sort of in competition to JLI as Marvel’s humorous team comic. I picked up a complete run of Excalibur in the 90s, and the first couple of years were really good.)

I honestly can’t say I’m all that familiar with all of the characters here. Captain Atom, Elongated Man and Sue Dibney are the ones I’m most familiar with as they were in JLE. I know a bit about Booster Gold, Blue Beetle and Maxwell Lord (and even L-Ron), but barely anything about Fire (or Mary Marvel). But for the most part it doesn’t matter that much that I don’t know all of the histories of these characters. They used to be on the same team and they argue all the time. That’s all you need to know really.

This miniseries has Maxwell Lord trying to start up a new, public friendly, easy access, superhero team: the Super Buddies. Lord tries to recruit the former members of the JLI who aren’t currently on any team. Some of them join in an instant, while others (a more mature Blue Beetle) are less sure they want to be involved at all.

Before they can star doing anything they get kidnapped by someone and forced to fight in gladiatorial combat. I guess they couldn’t just bicker and fight with each other for six issues. The first series also features the return of one of the villains from the JLI series, Manga Khan. He’s coming back to Earth to try and reacquire his robot L-Ron.

I Can’t Believe it’s not the Justice League is the long delayed sequel to FKATJL that finally showed up in JLA Classified earlier this year. The delay was caused by DC deciding to mess around with a bunch of the characters from JLI, making them pretty much unusable in a more humourous comic. Thus the first issue of this story starts with a caption that says “A Long Time Ago, In a Decade Far, Far Away.” If only DC had let the creators keep doing comics in this style.

This series follows pretty much directly on from the last one. The Super Buddies still haven’t done that much, and the biggest problem they’re facing now is that Guy Gardner (all I know about him is that he’s a jerk. He sure is a jerk) and a former super villain are opening a bar next door. Then they get sent to hell (or someplace a lot like it) and end up working in a burger joint and then going somewhere else weird. Power Girl shows up.

However, whatever the plot in either of these stories is really doesn’t matter, as it’s just an excuse to have these different characters hang out again. And as far as I can tell that’s one of the reasons these characters rejoined this team, so that they could hang out. They’re career superheroes, and for the most part don’t really have friends outside superheroing. They want to be able to talk with people and hang out with people, and who better to relate to or hang out with then other super heroes?

The art is really good, and I think it really shows how much better comics look nowadays thanks to computer colouring and better paper. Yeah, I might cry out for cheaper comics, but I do like computer colouring. One thing I’m not sure about is how the art is divided between Maguire and Rubinstien. The credits for issue one say that Maguire doesn’t draw the backgrounds, but Rubinstein does. That’s a pretty odd set up (for North American comics), but whatever works I guess.

The second series has the same quality of art as the first does, but it also (nonsensically) features some characters changing their looks a lot, despite happening directly after the first miniseries. Why does fire suddenly have long hair? Hmm, well I don’t really care as I think she looks a lot better with long hair.

I didn’t find the humour to be laugh out loud funny (despite the era of the Justice League these comics are based on being referred to as the “Bwa-ha-ha” era), but it is still funny. These comics made me smile a lot. The constant bickering between the characters, Mary Marvel being ridiculously naïve, misunderstandings and Batman not making jokes. It’s all good. And I like these characters (except for Guy, but I’m not supposed to like Guy). They seem more like real people with super powers. I think… Maybe it’s just that they seem to have more developed personalities and interpersonal relationships then most superhero characters.

So what about Identity Crisis? I’d be lying if I said that all the people online complaining about how Identity Crisis ruined a bunch of the JLI characters didn’t make me interested in the characters in the first place. I finally decided to read Identity Crisis to see if the characters I’d grown to like were ruined.

They are. Damnit Brad Meltzer! Why did you suck the fun out of these characters? And it’s not like you just don’t have an understanding of these characters. Issue one’s characterization of the Elongated Man was really good (I thought Meltzer captured the relationship between Sue and Ralph Dibney really well). But it’s not like you couldn’t do a slightly more serious take on one of these characters without killing off their friends. Giffen and DeMatteis do that in their recent series by having Blue Beetle be more mature.

I will admit that despite the grim and grittyfying of the characters I thought issue one was pretty good. It was enjoyable enough. The other issues of this miniseries just kind of suck though. It’s rapetastic! Stupid brainwashing something something. And I think the art by Rags Morales is pretty terrible.

So what did I like about this series? Hmm, I like the JLA. I’m going to pick up that DC Showcase Presents JLA volumes that’s out later this year. And Green Arrow is cool. I like him as a character for some reason. Maybe it’s the beard… (Warlord!)

Blade Trinity

2005-09-26T10:25:00.000-02:30

Blade Trinity

People generally didn’t seem to like Blade Trinity that much, and I know one person that hates the Blade films a lot. Still, I think they’re pretty fun generally. I don’t know. I like sci fi action movies as long as they’re not too stupid.

The plot’s the same as the other Blade movies: the vampires have some big new plan to kill all the humans/kill Blade/take over, etc. etc. In this movie they’ve brought back Dracula (Dominic Purcell), well, actually he’s not Dracula. He’s some several thousand year old guy who was also Dracula. Shrug, it’s a stupid idea, but the character is pretty good if you ignore the Dracula connection.

Blade (Wesley Snipes) is good, I liked his action scenes, but what’s the real selling point of this movie? The Nightstalkers! Yes, Hannibal King and a bunch of other people created for the movie show up. Ryan Reynolds plays a really awesome Hannibal King. I have no idea if it’s in anyway related to the comic version, in fact I’m sort of willing to bet it isn’t. This version of King practically has ADD or something. He doesn’t stop talking or making jokes at all when he’s on screen. It honestly shouldn’t work at all, but Reynolds does it in a really good way and I, at least, really liked his character.

Jessica Biel plays Abigail Whistler (Blade’s mentor’s daughter), who in the original version of the script was Frank Drake. Biel is really hot. Yeah. Anyway, her hotness is only added to because she is a wikkid ass archer. Yeah! Um, but she plays the part well too (gee, I’m shallow).

The other Nightstalkers are stupid though (well, two of them are, one of them (the driver guy) could be okay, but he only has like three lines). You want them to get killed. Kill them! I’m so bloodthirsty.

The villains are the basic business/goth vampires, which are old news now. But in one scene there are “punk”/skater/bmx vampire kids. You know I love the goth fetish vampires that appear in everything, but fuck, a movie that features vampires in non-goth, non-business clothing would be awesome. Punk vampires! (Okay, so they’re not done very well in this movie, but the idea is great).

The actors playing the main villains do a pretty good job too. Dominic Purcell (Drake) takes a pretty stupid idea and gave a good performance. Okay yeah, it’s stupid that he adapts to the 21st century so fast, and stuff, but who cares. There’s some good fight and chase scenes with him. Parker Posey is the main modern vampire. The character has ridiculous haircuts and is sort of ridiculous anyway, but she pulled off fairly well. And hell, Reynold’s character makes fun of the haircuts.

The movie does suffer from annoying kid syndrome. Though thankfully the kid isn’t in the film that much, but still. Bleh. Thankfully I can ignore the kid because a bunch of horrible dogs become horrible, gross vampire dogs. And get killed. Hah, yes!

Onto the music. I fucking hated the soundtrack to Blade II. I got it to review when I worked for The Muse, and fuck it was so terrible (I honestly don’t remember how it sounded in the movie). Now here I really liked the soundtrack. It wasn’t just rap (as the Blade II soundtrack was), and when it was rap I thought it fit. If I heard the same tracks on an album I probably would hate them.

Speaking of music, there seems to be some pretty blatant product placement for Apple (iPods and iBooks and stuff), but I was shocked to learn (according to the commentary) that Apple didn’t give them any money. iPods and stuff are mentioned by name and used all the time.

In the commentary track both Biel and Reynolds say they’d do another Blade film or a Nightstalkers film, but since then, sadly, Reynolds has said he doesn’t want to do a Nighstalkers film. Damnit! Do one! Similarly Wesley Snipes says he doesn’t want to do another Blade film. Sigh.

But! There’s a Blade TV coming show coming out on SpikeTV next year. New actors will play the characters, and there’s talk of it being a prequel. It could be good…

Now I want to go and get all buff and learn martial arts and archery and stuff. And ride a motorbike (clearly my scooter is not cool looking enough). And I need cooler clothes. Damnit, why can’t I live in a vampire movie? They always have wikkid ass clothes in them. I’m going to have to try and find something…

I also want to read Blade and Nightstalkers comics. All the Blade comics that have come out since the first movie have apparently been terrible (Marvel: just do an action comic), and I don’t have much hope for the 90’s Blade or Nightstalkers serieses (maybe they’re good?). If only I was still in Canada I could borrow all of Rodney’s Essential Tomb of Draculas, they’d be fun.

Proof of Concept

2005-09-24T15:39:00.000-02:30

Proof of Concept
Written by Larry Young
Illustrated by Damian Couceiro, Kieron Dwyer, Steven Sanders, Paul Tucker, Jeff Johns, John Flynn and John Heebink

A while ago on a comic website Larry Young (publisher of ait/Planetlar) had a “column.” Unlike most comic columns Young just put a bunch of short scripts online and asked people to draw them with the intention of printing them in a collection. Each of the scripts was twelve pages long, and people had two or three weeks to draw them.

Each of the scripts is really just the first twelve pages of a longer idea. So these are really just teasers. The annoying thing is that the rest of the comics don’t exist. Young says that you can send him an email and if enough people request one of the ideas as a full GN then they’ll do it, but until then you’re left with a bunch of unfinished stories.

Kieron Dwyer draws these little two pagers between each script. They’re called “The Phone Call” and introduce each story as Young pitching the stories to an entertainment lawyer. Kind of lame, made only lamer by the fact that Dwyer just repeats the same panels over and over again. I guess he didn’t want to draw huge, half page pictures of people talking on the phone over and over again.

There is one complete story included here. Young used the opportunity to publish his and John Heebink’s “The Bod” originally published in Double Image issues 1-4 (and is like fifty pages). Sadly I don’t think it’s that good. It tells the story of this girl who gets turned invisible and becomes an actress. It starts okay, but then you get these ridiculous Jay Leno and Jerry Springer and Judge Judy scenes. I just didn’t care.

Okay, so how about the actual point of this collection: the five story excerpts. Well, they’re a mixed bag. Some are good and some aren’t… (I’ll go through them as they’re printed, not as the scripts were originally released online.)

“Hemogoblin” is the set in the future and features a vampire on the run from people a group of high-tech vampire hunters hired by rich people trying to gain the secret of immortality. It was drawn by Damian Couceiro and his art is pretty good, but I don’t think it’s great. The major problem with this script is that it doesn’t really get into the plot that much. It’s all setup. The high-tech vampire hunters only show up in the last panel, we don’t get to see them in action at all. Would I read more of this? Probably not.

“Zombie Dinosaur” is about…zombie dinosaurs. That’s about it really. This one was sort of different artwise, because young got Steven Sanders to draw it and then asked for people to ink it. The inking competition was Jeff Johns (who also drew one of the other scripts). The art for the people looks interesting and the zombie dinosaurs look cool. How’s the story? Again, hard to say, there really isn’t enough here to say. It didn’t really grab me though.

“The Camera” is about these kids who find a portal in their back yard. One of the kids jumps into the portal and the others put a video camera into it for a few minutes, only to have it come out with several hours of footage of their town on it. It’s a time portal. This comic is the reason I picked up the collection because the artist, Paul Tucker, is from St. John’s, and someone I played ultimate with. Amusingly while I’m now in Korea, he’s in Japan. Anyway, while I’ve seen some really nice art by Tucker, I though the art in this was terrible. I like the layouts, but I just can’t stand the art. The story’s sort of interesting, but the art ruins it for me. Tucker also drew all the other scripts and used to have them all on his website, but his website is now down and I didn’t have a chance to read them, damn.

“For the Time Being” is another time travel story about the crew of a spaceship that travel through time fixing temporal problems until their captain gets pulled through all of time and becomes the villain. The art by Jeff Johns is really, really good. It’s got an interesting style, and I really like it. The story’s a bit confusing (time travel stuff is tricky, as the intermediate pages point out), but I’d read more of this. The art pulls it through.

“Emancipating Lincoln” is a detective story set in a future populated entirely by clones of Abraham Lincoln. One of them finds a five dollar bill with his picture on it, and he hires a detective to find out what’s going on. John Flynn’s art is pretty good, it’s kind of scratchy, but I like it. The idea in this one is really interesting, and I think it’s pulled off pretty well.

So over all? I think each of the story ideas is pretty good, and the art is generally good, but I just didn’t like them that much. I guess I just don’t like Young’s writing that (and based on how I didn’t like Astronaut’s in Trouble that much either this doesn’t surprise me). This collection is an interesting idea, but I don’t think it was pulled off that well.

And I hate the paper this is paper this is printed on.

Originally when Young put up a new script he’d also put up examples of people that drew some of the scripts and critiqued them. That’s pretty cool. Unfortunately only the critiques are still there, the art (and only a couple of the scripts) are still up there. But they’re still worth reading. You can find them here.

Just a note, I’ll be updating monthly for the next… seven months or so. Hopefully longer. I’m in Korea, and getting English comics here is not very easy here (but I’ve got a big pile of backlog). Plus, since I can’t do the radio show anymore I need to review what I read. I’ll do comic based movie reviews sometimes too.

Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled Over the Marvel Comics Empire…And Both Lost!!!

2005-09-20T11:21:00.000-02:30

Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled Over the Marvel Comics Empire…And Both Lost!!!
by Dan Raviv

I picked this up out of the bargain books section of Chapters just before I left Canada. If it had cost me more then $5 I doubt I would have picked it up and I’m glad I didn’t pay more then that.

What’s contained in Comic Wars is in the title, it’s what happened during Marvel’s bankruptcy in the nineties and how various people tried to take over the company, only to have their way blocked by someone else. I didn’t really know that much about Marvel’s bankruptcy other then the fact that it happened, so I thought this book could tell me something about it (and I was right!).

The primary players in the book are the two tycoons mentioned in the title (Ron Perelman and Carl Icahn) plus the owner of Toybiz (Ike Perlmutter) and that company’s chief toy designer (Avi Arad). Plus a bunch of lawyers. (Actually, what’s the name for a group of lawyers? A colony of vultures? That’s not amusing at all…). There are lots and lots of lawyers in this book.

Perelman bought Marvel in the 80’s and proceeded to make a fortune by selling junk bonds based on the value of it’s stock. Then ran the company into the ground by buying loads of other companies (the purchase of Malibu Comics made an amount of sense, buying two different trading card companies?) and fueling the speculator’s market. The company files for bankruptcy and Perelman wonders if it’s better to just shut down the company and sell the assets.

Enter Carl Icahn, who’s bought up loads of the now worthless bonds in an attempt to use the small print to get a lot of shares in Marvel. Icahn also basically wants to shut the company down and sell off the assets. Clearly these are people you want in charge of Marvel.

However, based on the title of the book you can tell they both lost. Who won? Toybiz (previously a smaller, related company) merged with Marvel creating a new company. Avi Arad is the only character in the book who actually read comic books, and he wants Marvel to keep publishing comics. And to get into the movie business (which eventually worked out well). He and Perlmutter eventually manage to strike a deal with the banks (who are owed $700 million dollars by Marvel) and are able to take over the company.

Perlmutter isn’t the nicest guy either though. In fact he seems like a bit of a jerk. He wanted to put all the employees in the bullpen at Marvel on the clock and have them punch in and out. And do random drug testing. And he actually got rid of the office coffee machine. And didn’t want to pay for a Christmas party. And cut Stan Lee’s contract down to two years (it was later changed back to lifetime, and it’s not really like Stan Lee does much, but fuck! He’s Stan Lee! He created your company!). Anyway, old Ike is crazy.

The book starts off fairly well, but gets boring and repetitive after a while. I guess if you’re really into law or something you will like it, but yeah. I guess this is what law is really like “Oooh, we’ve almost got a deal! Yes this will save the company! Perfect! Hang on a second…. No it’s not going to happen after all. Please give us several more months.” I’m also not sure what lawyers do. They seem to spend a lot of time staying up all night writing documents due in the morning. They sound like university students. Except lawyers get paid disgusting amounts of money.

While there are interesting parts of it, I think the amount of legalese could have been cut down considerably. It also would have been neat if there was more input from actual comics creators and what it was like trying to publish comics during Marvel’s bankruptcy. When Raviv talks about actually comic stuff he doesn’t always get it right (ie. Image is not just Todd McFarlane’s company; Heroes Reborn was a financial success). The previous examples aren’t even that obscure, they’re things that could have been caught.

However I can’t say this is the most boring book ever. I didn’t fall asleep reading it. I managed to read it all. I didn’t hate it. It was just boring in some places. It’s worth picking up if you can get it cheap and are really into law (or alternatively, just skim it).

Blue Monday

2005-09-14T11:44:00.002-02:30

Well it's Wednesday, and I'm not that blue, but...
I'm out of practice writing reviews. Thus this review is terrible. Sorry.

Blue Monday: The Kids are Alright
and
Blue Monday: Absolute Beginners
Written and Illustrated by Chynna Clugston-Major
Published by Oni Press

These two volumes collect the first two Blue Monday miniseries. They're set in the early 90s in California (though all this is used for is to let the characters make references to old music) and follow a bunch of high school students through the trials and tribulations of teenage life. The main character is Bleu L. Finnegan, a music and silent movie obsessed girl who lusts after her substitute history teacher and Adam Ant (amongst other rock stars). Bleu's best friends are Clover Connelly (a foul mouthed Irish girl) and Erin O'Neill. Then there're the boys: Alan Walsh (sort of mod) and Victor Gomez (sort of ska). They're obsessed with porn and girls, yet are too juvenile to ever actually get a date. The girls and boys express their hatred of each other all the time, but they still hang out. Ah, teenagers.

The main plot of The Kids are Alright concerns Bleu's attempts to get tickets to the sold out Adam Ant concert that's happening in a nearby city. Of course there's a healthy dose of pitfalls in the way of her getting tickets and some sideplots (the girls and boys trying to outdo each other in a series of pranks and Bleu practically stalking her teacher).

I must admit that when I first read an issue of this series years ago I had no idea who Adam Ant was (I rectified that situation fairly quickly and his old stuff is good). Also, in the time since I'd first read the issues collected in this trade, I'd forgotten how good this series is. It's fun and funny. The characters sound like teenagers and at least some of them are people I'd want to hang out with. I like Adam Ant and Blur and watching old Buster Keaton movies sounds fun (I wonder if I can find any here?).

Absolute Beginners is as good as the first volume, however it throws out a large portion of the believability that existed in volume one. This time the storyline revolves around Alan and Victor managing to videotape Bleu having a bath and Bleu's attempts to get the tape back after the whole school finds out about it. Now this has never happened to me (as far as I know) but Bleu and her friends are still pretty civil to Victor and Alan. Bleu's embarrassed, but this doesn't seem like it's going to cause any permanent problems. If this has happened to me I probably would have done something violent (and they do a bit I guess) but it's all just too nice.

I have to say though that this complaint comes on looking back on the book, while reading it I didn't really have a problem about this. The reason for this is probably the development of the characters. The characters all seem to like at one another and want to ask them out, but don't know how. They're shy, they're awkward, and when a date actually does happen it's under stressful conditions, made only worse by other people trying to sabotage it. It's the obvious way for the characters and storyline to progress and it's done well.

Then the pooka shows up. Get that damned giant otter out of this teenage romance sex comedy! Damn it! Okay, so it has some funny lines and sort of helps move the plot along, but I would have much preferred this comic without the giant magical animals.

Absolute Beginners also has the neat idea of giving different scenes music tracks to go with them. I didn't have any of the music specifically, but I knew what some of it sounded like and tried to change what I was listening to so it fit the comic better (out goes the electronica, in comes early Britpop). If you've actually got the music I'm sure it's even better and probably helps set the mood.

The art in Blue Monday is manga influenced in the character designs (giant eyes, chibi style character), and it looks really good. Thankfully Clugston-Major isn't going for manga style pacing and each issue of Blue Monday is really dense (going so far as having a comment in a border saying there's a lot of panels). These two collections are digest sized and the art has been shrunk down from the original issues. Thankfully however the art doesn't suffer at all.

As a bonus feature The Kids are Alright features the early Blue Monday strips. It's interesting to see how Clugston-Major's style evolved. The really early strips look, to me, really terrible. They look like a lot of ugly manga style artwork. I can't quite describe what's wrong with it exactly (I am such a great critic), but I really don't like it. Thankfully the art gets better as the strips continue and the art in the actually comic itself is much improved.

I've seen Blue Monday described as Archie with sex. It's not, because, unlike Archie, Blue Monday is actually good. If you're looking for a smart, funny comic about American teenagers it's worth checking out. Now if only those two Blue Monday holiday oneshots I had weren't in Canada somewhere.

Check out part oneand part two of a preview of issue one of The Kids are Alright from Onipress.com.

Coming soon: Comic Wars. A nonfiction book about Marvel Comics' bankruptcy and the ownership battle that took place.

Best of American Splendor

2005-06-18T20:15:00.000-02:30

Best of American Splendor
Written by Harvey Pekar (mostly)
Art by loads of different people

Harvey Pekar is, or was for the duration of this collection, a file clerk in a Cleveland hospital. It's a shitty, unskilled job that Pekar's been doing for a long time and Pekar lets you know this. American Splendor is Pekar being crotchety, he complains about stuff all the time. Weather, money, cancer, TV appearences, it doesn't matter what it is, Pekar will manage to spin it into something negative. That's really the charm of Harvey Pekar though and it came through really well in the American Splendor movie that was released a few years ago.
I really enjoyed the American Splendor movie, though I must admit that despite being a comic nerd I'd never read any of the American Splendor comics until after the movie had come out. I'd heard of them, but I hadn't read them. Since then I've read a number of his works (notably American Splendor and Unsung Hero) and seen him in another documentary ("I, Curmudgeon)" and have discovered that Pekar is...a crotchety old guy. A lovable crotchety old guy who writes some good comics.
Pekar is sort of an oddity in comics in that while he writes autobiographical comics about his boring, kind of shitty life (normal enough) he doesn't actually draw them. Instead he gets other comic artists to draw the stories he for him, and he's worked with a number of well known comic book artists over the years. It's interesting seeing his work filtered through a number of different people's artwork as we see many different visual representations of Pekar and the other people in his life.
In fact the number and quality of different artists who have worked with Pekar on American Splendor is impressive. Sure I knew that R. Crumb was friends with Pekar and had worked with him on his comics, but until I read this volume I didn't know Joe Sacco had illustrated any of Pekar's work, let alone this much. Some of the art in the book isn't too my liking (though most of it is), but even when I don't like the art to a story, it's still worth reading just to see what Pekar will say.
The actual stories themselves are, for the most part, incredibly mundane, which is part of the charm. They're conversations between Pekar and other people, or just random things that happened to him. Some of them are interesting in that they're basically comicbook reviews or articles on jazz or literature. It's interesting to read criticism in the format of comics (it doesn't always work) and through them it's clear that Pekar is incredibly knowledgable about certain areas despite not having studied them at university or anything. I was incredibly happy when a book Pekar said was both incredibly good incredibly unknown (Andrei Bely's "Petersburg") was one I had actually read (and written essays on). My Russian degree has a use after all! (Though I can't admit to knowing anything about the jazz Pekar talks about.)
While this volume is called "Best of" I'm not sure how accurate that is. It's just collecting work from the 90s and early 00s and as the previous book put out by Ballantine collected (I believe) everything published up to the early 90s I'm wondering if this book just publishes everything from the 90s. If so I'm not going to complain as this book is full of excellent comics. In fact I think I actually prefer this book to the other big American Splendor collection I've read. Whereas that one was incredibly depressing and I found I could only read a few stories at a time, this one, for whatever reason, didn't have the same effect on me. Perhaps it's just that Pekar has truly mastered writing these stories by the time the 90s came around or perhaps I've gotten used to his complaining. Either way, there's one thing that unites the comics of this book, which is their overall quality (excellent).

Little Vampire Goes to School

2005-06-05T14:40:00.000-02:30

Little Vampire Goes to School
by Joann Sfar

I've read pretty much all of the graphic novels that can be found at the library here. Or at least in the young adult/adult section. What haven't I read? The stuff in the kids section. Recently I went down the basement of the library to try and find some graphic novels that were designated as being for kids (Astroboy is one that can be found there that I'd read before).
The result was this book, which was left lying around my living room for about a week, during which time at least two other people read it. One of them exclaiming that it couldn't possibly be for kids because of all the horrible horribleness that was in it. However, I think that it is the horrible horribleness that makes this comic ideal for kids (though I really enjoyed it too).
It's the story of Little Vampire, who's a little vampire. He lives in a big old mansion full of zombies and monsters and ghosts and other things. Little Vampire is lonely though, there aren't any other children "his own age" around for him to play with (despite the fact that, as Little Vampire's talking monster dog Phantomat points out, vampires don't have ages).
For whatever reason Little Vampire knows what a school is and that kids go to them, so he begs his mom (a ghost) to go to school. Unfortunately upon reaching school Little Vampire discovers that nobody is there because it's the middle of the night!
The monsters and ghosts and everyone soon help Little Vampire have a school of his own, but it's not long before he meets a human boy called Michael. The Captain of the Dead (a ghost pirate who is Little Vampire's father) isn't particularly pleased with this and summons Michael to the mansion to punish him.
The art in the comic is nicely done. The backgrounds are done in a monochromatic style that sort of reminds me of Edward Gorey (maybe), while the rest of the art is sort of cartoony, but consistent and good. I like Sfar's designs for the monsters and the Captain of the Dead.
The story is told in a really nice style, it's funny and charming and everything you want from a kids book. Is it too scary or horrible for kids? No, I don't think so. I think that kids would love the sort of gross things, like using blood for ink, that happen, while the mentions of killing and torture are just that, mentions. The worst thing that happens in the comic is that several of the characters get quite muddy. While the comic might scare a child briefly, it's no worse then any other book aimed at kids. Now I want to read the other Little Vampire book, Little Vampire Does Kung Fu!

Sentinel

2005-05-29T16:23:00.000-02:30

Sentinel #1-6 (June - November 2003)
Writer: Sean McKeever
Art: UDON

Sentinel was one of the Tsunami titles that Marvel put out a couple of years ago, and like most of the other titles it was canceled incredibly fast. Sentinel made it to issue 12 before cancellation, though I suppose it's possible that it did well in digest format.
Juston Seyfert is just some nerdy kid. He lives with his dad and his brother in a junkyard (their mother left them) and they're dirt poor. Juston's just started high school and he's getting picked no constantly by the jocks. Brutal.
So what does he do? He hangs out with his two friends and they build battlebots to fight with (I wish I knew how to do that) and he pines after a girl who's a couple of years older then him and who, shock horror, talks to him.
Juston also has a sentinel in a shed behind his house.
It's broken and barely working, but he's fixing it up (using skidoos and other parts) because who wouldn't want a robot of their own? At first he's not sure what the robot is, but eventually he finds out that it's a mutant hunting robot. Pushed too far by the bullies at school he's going to use it for his own purpose.
McKeever does a good job of making most of the characters believable, to a certain extent. There are some parts in the high school that just don't make sense to me, perhaps because it's set in a US school. There's a separate corridor for older students? That doesn't parse with anything that happened to me in high school. Similarly hanging out with people in other grades wasn't that big a deal. Another problem I had in relation to this was that the art made the ages of the characters hard to judge. Juston's a first year at high school, so that makes him... 15? 16? What age are the bullies? They can't be older then 18 or so, but they look a lot older and bigger then Juston and his friends. Speaking of the bullies they seem ridiculously mean, more like something you'd find in fiction (heh) then something in real life. Maybe some of these problems just come from a lack of understand of American high schools, I don't know.
Apart from that I thought the writing was good. The issues usually ended on a cliff hanger that made me want to read more. And hell, I wanted to read more, I wanted to see what happened next to the characters. Their actions seemed fairly believable and the ways that Juston interacts with Jessie (the girl Juston has a crush on) and his friends and family are pretty good. There are a few bits where the technological aspects fall down (it's just a circuit board, there's piles of them lying around in the garbage) and how the hell do you rebuild a sentinel with junk anyway?
The art was pretty good, UDON studios have a nice sort of anime feel to most of the art, though I found the difference between the characters and some of the backgrounds to be sort of jarring. I wonder if there were different people assigned to drawing different aspects of the comic. That'd be interesting at least. One other complaint I have about the art is only sort of about the art and is a pretty ridiculous niggle. At one point Juston's holding up printouts from news websites about sentinels. While I'm glad that the text in the stories isn't just nonsense it has just been stolen from a news article. Kind of sketchy...
Also, sort of amusingly, while this story is set in small town Wisconsin Juston uses Gooble.ca (ie. Google) to look up stories, and ends up printing out a story from the Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail's website. Well I found it amusing...
Overall I found Sentinel to be a good read and I'll be on the lookout for the final six issues. I can't quite see how this would be an ongoing though. In a small town Juston's going to be found out to be the person controlling the sentinel fairly soon and even then I can't imagine there being that much for a boy and his robot to do in small town America (he could always go and fight supervillains, but that's not really the mood the series creates). Perhaps it's for the best that the series ended after only twelve issues.

Fantastic Four

2005-05-22T20:15:00.000-02:30

Recently the local library got a couple of Fantastic Four collections. They're pretty random collections, but that didn't really bother me much. With the Fantastic Four movie coming out this summer I thought it might be a good time to see how good some of the supposedly best Fantastic Four comics were.

Fantastic Four Visionaries volume 4
Written and drawn by John Byrne (except for that issue of the Thing, he only wrote it)

John Byrne is currently kind of insane, and many fans believe that he's lost his touch and the work he's currently producing isn't that good. However the comics this trade collects came out in the early eighties, when Byrne was still supposed to be good.
The back of this volume says that John Byrne did the best Fantastic Four since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had worked on the title. Pretty high praise (though, admittedly I haven't read those early issues, despite meaning to pick up the first Essential collection). However overall I was pretty underwhelmed by the stories appearing in this volume.
Perhaps it's just because I was thrown in half way through stories meant that I wasn't really seeing any of the buildup that Byrne had created. Or perhaps it's just not as good as people say it is. I won't blame this all on Byrne or anything, I mean for one thing he had to deal with the Secret Wars crossover and had to spend a couple of issues dealing with setup and fallout from that.
Overall though I'm just not that impressed. Dr. Doom shows up at least, but it didn't really seem like Doom for some reason. I'm not sure why. I do think that when Doom starting protecting the Fantastic Four from the horror he had unleashed upon them because Reed Richards wasn't there to see them fail was... ridiculous, but also sort of in character.
One part that was completely ridiculous was during the trial of Reed Richards issue. The idea is pretty good, putting Reed Richards on trial for the crimes of Galactus because Richards saved Galactus's life, and for the most part it's okay. However why do all the aliens know who Odin is? Why do they care? Odin is, at best, some Earth god who didn't create the universe or anything (I mean they're discussing Galactus who came from the previous universe), and at worst just some shape shifting alien who landed on Earth. There really doesn't seem to be much reason for the Shi'ar empire to listen to him.
The art's okay, I didn't think it was that great or anything. I think it suffers from having been recoloured and put on good paper. The garish colours of old comics just don't work well on glossy paper.
If this is the best since Lee and Kirby there must have been some pretty terrible Fantastic Four stories published for years. I will give Byrne one thing though, he was able to work fast and competently. At the time this volume came out he was writing and drawing at least two books a month (Fantastic Four and Alpha Flight, which has one issue reprinted here), that's a lot of work to do every month.
Fantastic Four volume 5: Disassembled
Writers: Mark Waid and Karl Kesel
Artists: Paco Medina and Mike Wieringo

Meanwhile Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo's run on Fantastic four has been said to be the best run on the book since John Byrne's. If only I had some of the Lee Kirby stuff to compare both runs too.
Anyway, this stuff is far more recent and ties in (vaguely) with the Avengers Disassembled storyline from last year. This volume contains two distinct stories and I think that I enjoyed both of them a lot more then Byrne's work on the title.
The first story is co-written by Waid and Kesel and drawn by Medina. It deals with the Frightful Four, as led by the Wingless Wizard. What an incredibly stupid name, the Wizard is fine, but the Wingless Wizard? Who thought that up? Anyway the appearance of the Frightful Four leads to one thing I thought was pretty amusing, the Trapster (aka. Paste Pot Pete) is the only character not a member of the Fantastic Four to show up in both of these volumes.
The Wizard is sort of similar to Dr. Doom in terms of motivations. "Reed Richards has wronged me horribly in some way and I must get my revenge on him, but I must do it in a way that is fair and equitable." They're both crazy. This time the Wizard has recruited Hydroman, the Trapster, Salamandra and their daughter (five? but I thought it was the Frightful _Four_? Well, it is...). The story's pretty good for the most part, though I thought that the powers of the Wizard's daughter were just stupid. It also left a horrible dangling plot thread which I hope has been cleaned up.
The second story once again deals with alien races trying to stop Galactus. The aliens have developed technology that makes planets invisible to Galactus, but they're afraid that Galactus will use the Invisible Woman's power to counteract their technology. Okay, that's fine, but there's probably tons of other people who have invisibility powers in the Marvel Universe (I can't name any right now, but I bet there are loads!). So just killing Sue Storm won't really solve your problems that easily.
This storyline has "a great sacrifice!" and a nice twist at the end that made me curious about what's going to happen next. I don't really know enough about heralds of Galactus (or Fantastic Four comics in general I guess), so it's got me curious.
The art doesn't do much for me. I'm not that fond of the styles that either Medina or Wieringo use, so the art, while competent, doesn't really capture the Fantastic Four to me. Wieringo draws awesome tiger headed people though (see Tellos).

Overall I'd probably read more of either Byrne's or Waid's runs on the Fantastic Four if the library got it. If I had to choose I'd go with Waid (I do want to find out what happens next at the end of this volume), but I didn't like it enough to want to pay money.

Shonen Jump

2005-05-13T14:50:00.000-02:30

Aiee! I haven't updated in forever. Not that I haven't been reading comics (or watching movies and tv shows based on comics). I just haven had spotty internet access. Hopefully I'm back now and will be updating, um, at least once a week.
Not that anyone reads this...

Anyway! The main library here just got a ton (and I mean a ton) of Shonen Jump collections. So I've been getting them out and reading them. I alrady buy Naruto from Shonen Jump (it's so good!) and enjoy One Piece whenever I read it, but I was curious about reading larger chunks of some of the other stories in Shonen Jump and some of the comics that go straight to graphic novels.

Bleach vols 1-2
by Tite Kubo
This was pretty cool. I like the art style and the story is told well. It seems really similar to, uhm, Shaman King. Ichigo Kurosaki is a sort of "tough guy with the heart of gold" that you see in manga a lot. However his family also has the abilty to see ghosts. Because he's pretty nice he ends up helping ghosts when he sees them (usually just preventing people from knocking over their graves and stuff). However his family is under attack from a Hollow (an evil spirit) and there's nothing he can do. Who can do something? Rukia Kuchiki, who fights the hollows on behalf of the soul society. Unfortunately she gets injured and tries to give Ichigo some of her power. He gets it all and must replace her and fight the Hollows until she regains her strength. The idea of fighting bad ghosts and helping good ghosts is similar to both Shaman King and Yuyu Hakusho, but I think it's done so much better here. I have only read the first two volumes, but I've got another three to read, so we'll see if it keeps up the quality. It's still not good enough to buy though...

Hikaru no Go vols 1-3
by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata
I wasn't that impressed by this the first time I read some of it in Shonen Jump, however reading the individual trades I've become addicted to it. I want to read number four! Hikaru Shindo finds an old go board in his grandfather's attic and sees blood stains on it that nobody else can. He then becomes possessed by a ghost who loves to play go. However Hikaru doesn't care about go at all, which makes the ghost incredibly sad and causing Hikaru to vomit. To prevent himself from vomiting Hikaru has to play go to appease the ghost. Starting from the begining is a lot better in this comic, Hikaru has no idea about go and neither do I, so we're both learning the rules as we go along. I can see why this comic made go incredibly popular amongst kids in Japan again. I think this reads a lot better in larger chunks like this too. However, like Bleach, I do want to keep reading it, but don't really want to keep paying for it. Hopefully the library will get more in as it comes out.

One Piece vols 3-4, 6
by Eiichiro Oda
One Piece was probably my second favourite out of all the Shonen Jump manga in the first four issues that I read. Monkey D. Luffy has a goal to become the best pirate ever, but to do that he needs a crew. One Piece is pretty silly and has Luffy running around and being an idiot ("How was I supposed to know which way North was?!") but accomplishing his goals in the end. The comic is really sort of strange though, as the "bad guy" pirates are all shown as evil and blood thirsty and so forth, clearly the villains, but Luffy, who aspires to be the greatest pirate ever, is really nice and good. I guess Luffy just wants to find buried treasure, but it still seems kind of odd. The often ridiculous character designs (characters dressed up as cats for no real reason, a guy who walks backwards all the time) and powers (stretching! splitting into parts!) only add to the appeal of this series. However I didn't think it was good enough to buy the volumes as they came out. These volumes just added to that. It's good (better then all the Shonen Jump stuff I've read other then Naruto), but not good enough. If only it was cheaper.

Saint Seiya / Knights of the Zodiac vol 1
by Masami Kurumada
This was, um, okay. I remember I saw part of the animated version on tv once and was very amused that the themesong was "I ran" (I ran so far away, I ran all night and day, I couldn't get away) as covered by... Bowling for Soup or something. The art is incredibly 80s and the plot doens't really make much sense. Why does this armour exist? What's going on? How on Earth does this comic go on for like twenty something volumes? I'm sort of curious as to where the story is going, but not enough to even bother reading the comics. I just sort of want to read plot synopsises of each volume.

Shaman King vols 1-3
by Hiroyuki Takei
I quite liked this when I first read it, but reading these three volumes in row made me lose interest. The quest to become the best shaman in the world and be able to follow communicate with spirits (like Buddha and Jesus!) is pretty interesting and the art style is awesome. But! The comic seems to degenerate quickly into a "gotta have the all" type thing of catching spirits, which I don't find that interesting. There are some cool characters (a samuraii, a Chinese warlord, a Hong Kong action movie star who mysterious died at 30 and was then reanimated to be a zombe fighter), but the way the story is told doesn't interest me that much. The comic has a gap of six months (I think), where the main character goes off and trains, but doesn't show any of the training. I'd much rather see the training then more random fights and stuff. I won't be reading any more of this.

The Prince of Tennis vol 1
by Takeshi Konomi
Wow, this was bad. It's really popular, and has at least one imitator (The Prince of Bowling), but I just didn't care. While most Shonen Jump comics are about some kid trying to become the best something (pirate, ninja, shaman, fighter, go player, whatever) in the world this one is slightly different. The main character is already the best player around. He's only twelve or something, but everytime he plays he just crushes whoever he's playing. I just don't find it that interesting. Add to this the fact that he barely even seems to be the main character (he doesn't really speak much, we dont' reallly know anything about him and he's usually shown as not that nice ) and the lousy storytelling (there are times when it seems like a page or a panel was skipped, making it hard to follow what's going on) mean I don't care what happens next.

I think that's all the ones I read recently. I avoided Yuyu Hakusho (didn't really care for it based on what I've read so far) and they didn't have vol 1 of Rurouni Kenshin, but I'll check that one out later.

There's still some Shonen Jump comics I want to check out (Mar for instance), but I wish they'd fix they're Canadian prices. They were pretty good for a while ($7.95us -> $10.95can), but now they've gone back up to $11.95. Argh! They should only be like $10! They're fun, but they read so quickly that $12 is too much. Stupid grumble grumble.

Soon! Reviews of the free comic book day comics. Or tune in today (Friday) from 4-5pm nst to hear me talk about them. www.mun.ca/chmr/

an apology

2005-05-05T15:33:00.000-02:30

Wow, I haven't updated in forever.
I will blame exams, my girlfriend going to Labrador, disease and fire for this and will hopefully have more reviews soon.
You can always tune in Fridays 4-5pm nst (2:30-3:30 est) to hear reviews from myself and Rodney though.

Sebastian O

2005-04-19T14:05:00.000-02:30

Sebastian O
Written by: Grant Morrison
Illustrated by: Steve Yeowell

This is an odd little collection. It's pretty thin (only three issues), and the story itself seems far more like a part of a larger story. It's Morrison doing steampunk, which sounds like it should be pretty awesome, but there's something a bit weird about it really.

The introduction by Morrison just tracks how the world evolved, and why amazing technology was available in the 19th century. Then we're plunged back into the 19th century where there are hand scanners and videophones, computers and clockwork everything. We follow Sebastian as he escapes from prison to seek revenge on the person that put him there. Fairly typical plot, but Sebastian was dandy, and Morrison has him make several almost Wildeian turns of phrase.

While Sebastian O is filled with great ideas (the clockwork house! The clockwork plants! The roaring boys!) it's also filled with some debauched characters I don't really care for (and probably aren't supposed to really). Regardless, good idea and bad, none of them really seem to be done justice. I really felt like I was reading an abridged version of a longer book, letting Sebastian get to his goal without undue troubles. Without developing some of these ideas and plot points further the book sort of fails. For example, while the people that Sebastian O fights look kind of cool I have no idea who they are. They're just random killers. In the first issue it seems as if the roaring boys are going to be really interesting, there's an oddly intricate manner of summoning/employing them and then… nothing. We don't get any follow through, it's not explained to us.

(I'm realizing that the way that sounds and the Clyde Fans review I sound like I hate subtlety and mood completely and need everything spelt out to me. This isn't the case, in Sebastian O I see all these ideas Morrison has created and I just want to know more about them.)

Perhaps a comic just wasn't the best way to do Sebastian O, I'm not really sure, I don't think that Steve Yeowell's art really adds anything to it. The collection's pretty cheap, but it is only 80 pages, and sort of disappointing. Worth it or not? I'm not sure, I'm glad I got it out of the library though.

That was pretty short, so here's a bonus review.
Swamp Thing #10 (Which volume? I have no idea) (February 2001)
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan
Pencilled by: Roger Petersen

Hey! It's a comic by Vaughan before he got all big and famous. Is it any good though? Um, not really. I haven't read any of the rest of this Swamp Thing series, in fact, apart from Alan Moore's run on the character I haven't really read any (and I haven't even read all of Alan Moore's run). So this is pretty weird. It's not about Swamp Thing, it's about his daughter Tefe, who I didn't really know about. So she and some horribly scared guy and some other guy are driving around America when they meet John Constantine who's been trying to find Tefe. Vaughn writes a pretty decent Constantine, but I don't think he looks right here. It's basically a retelling of Tefe's origin; Swamp thing appears in a panel, John Constantine is a bastard, some other stuff about the end of the world, the end. It's okay for what it is I guess. But it doesn't make me want to hunt down other issues of this series.

2005-04-18T13:25:00.000-02:30

Wow! Last week I got feedback on the blog! This is amazing, not most of it was negative and about Clyde Fans, but whatever. The email from David Kruchowski telling me he liked my blog and the 2099 reviews I did was much appreciated! So if you're reading this drop me an email or leave a comment. Now on to the reviews!

Marvel Comics Presents #31, 34-35, 37-38 (November-December 1989)
Writer: Michael Higgins (for the Excalibur bits)
Penciller: Erik Larson (for the Excalibur bits)

I bought these cause it’s one of the few Excalibur appearances I didn’t have. I’m such an Excalibur nerd. Anyway, I had two parts of this story, and found another three recently and was excited.

Anyway these are really terrible. And not like Super-Villain Team-Up terrible, just terrible. It’s yet another Arcade story and there are Loony Toon ripoffs this time around. The only halfway decent bit is in issue 37 where the first two and a half pages are a silent Lockheed and Widget detective style comic. Ridiculous, but a longer one would have been awesome.

Pretty much all the other stories in these issues are equally forgettable/stupid. I’m wondering if I’ll get the other three issues I need though…

Thor #428 (January 1991)
“Plot, pencils & words: Rom DeFalco & Ron Frenz”

I picked this up because it had an Excalibur appearance in it that I didn’t have. A rarity, how did this multipart crossover between Thor and Excalibur escape my attention? Probably because I generally ignore Thor comics.

This is a billion times better then those issues of MCP I talked about above, but it’s still not that good. It’s basically just a fight between Thor, Excalibur, the Wrecking Crew and some cops (Code Blue). Um, yeah, it’s kind of stupid, Excalibur aren’t really written in character either, and the explanation for them being in America is just stupid. Still the last couple of pages are pretty cool, and I want to read the next issue (if not the previous), if just to see more of Emperor Juggernaut.

Thor Annual 7 (1978)
Writer/Editor: Roy Thomas (Is it just me or does it seem like a bad idea for the writer and editor on a comic to be the same?)
Illustrators: Walk Simonson & Ernie Chan

Oh man, comics used to be so fun and stupid, and this annual which I found on the floor at university one day is a perfect example. This comic is an attempt at fitting Jack Kirby’s creations the Eternals, the Deviants and the Celestials into the Marvel Universe to a greater degree. To do this Thomas tells a previously unknown Thor story set a thousand years ago when Thor travelled to South America! But first we learn that just previous to this event, followers of the Norse gods and followers of the Olympian gods fought a huge battle. What?! Where there still followers of the Olympian gods at this point? (There could be, I’m not sure, but it seems sort of unlikely). And where on Earth could they have fought? Well, Turkey maybe, I heard some Vikings got there. Okay, so it’s vaguely possible for this to have occurred, but it seems pretty damn unlikely.

Anyway, Thor goes to South America and meets the Eternals. Who are helping the Aztecs, the Mayans and the Incans become civilized, because as they aren’t white they clearly couldn’t have done any of the stuff they accomplished without the Eternals telling them what to do.

Then they fight two mutates that the Deviant’s created, and a depiction of the Incan thunder god that one of the mutates made. I really sort of wish that Thor had shown up and just met all the Incan gods, that would have been so much cooler then none of them existing. Do other pantheons of gods other then the Norse and Olympic ones exist in the Marvel Universe? I know both of those are apparently just shape changing aliens or something, but did shape changing aliens become gods for anyone else?

The Eternals and Thor eventually win the fight by attacking a Deviant monster with nuclear energy. Apparently the Eternals mastered the atom, but the Deviants didn’t, so everything they made can be blown up by nuclear energy. Virako, the leader of the Eternals (I think) realizes this and attempts to kill the mutate, not by crashing their nuclear powered ship into it, but by exposing himself “to a lethal dose of nuclear energy!” and then flying into it. Okay Virako, I can see why they made you leader…

Overall this was a fun comic, there’s an essay at the end by Thomas about why Kirby is awesome and why everyone should love the characters he created. Some stuff in this combined with some stuff on the Bullpen Bulletins page kind of makes me think that back in the old days the rivalry between Marvel and DC was fierce, but also fun. It wasn’t as nasty as it can sometimes get today. Though neither of the companies was that fair to the people they employed, and for all I know I’m completely wrong. Whatever.

One other note on the Bullpen Bulletins, it’s so odd to read old Stan’s Soapbox. They’re constantly talking about the great movie and television things that are happening with Marvel characters, and while some happened, others didn’t. When I was reading, I think it was Spider-Man 2099, there were constant references to the Fantastic Four film and how it would soon be out. I wonder if Marvel knew the film would never be released?

Clyde Fans

2005-04-15T14:16:00.000-02:30

Clyde Fans: Book one
Written and drawn by: Seth

I read Bannock, Beans and Black Tea recently. It’s a memoir by Seth’s father with illustrations by Seth throughout. It’s interesting, though a bit repetitive. But what about a comic by Seth himself?

This originally appeared in several in six issues of Seth’s comic Palookaville, I’m not exactly sure where most of the breaks are though, the only one I notice is the one between part one and part two.

Part one seems like it could have been better served by being illustrated prose. It’s page after page after page (over sixty) of an old guy wandering around his house telling a story. The story doesn’t actually match up to what he’s doing, no he’s recollecting the rise and fall of what happened to the company his father started and that he worked for (Clyde Fans). The story is interesting enough but there’s absolutely no reason for it to be told in comic form. The art and story connect for maybe three or four panels (that I can recall) out of all of those pages. He mentions the radio as he turns it on, and he mentions postcards and shows them. The rest of the comic is just him wandering around, having a bath, eating a meal as he talks aloud for no apparent reason. Is he talking to someone who we can’t see? Possible, but unlikely as he has a bath and stuff. Instead he’s just talking directly to the audience.

I’m not really sure why Seth chooses to go this route with this part of the comic but it’s one that doesn’t work for me at all. I almost gave up reading the comic a couple of times during this half. As comics barely take any time to read and I’d just read some pretty bad comics this is a pretty big deal. Thankfully the second part of the story actually utilizes words and pictures telling a story together.

The second part flashes back to the time when Clyde Fans still existed as a company, and deals with the brother of the narrator from the first part. He seems incredibly shy, but has convinced his father to let him go out and attempt to be a salesman for the company. He fails, quite badly, and can’t really deal with talking to people. I can’t blame him, I’d hate that job. While this part of the comic was, you know, actually a comic and was much better then part one I still didn’t care for it that much. I don’t know if all of Seth’s stuff is like this, but if it is I doubt I’ll be picking it up.

Manga anthologies!

2005-04-12T16:55:00.000-02:30

Shonen Jump #28 (April 2005)

I bought the first four issues of Shonen Jump as they came out. I thought about half the comics in it where pretty good and started buying the collections of Naruto, which was, and is, one of my favourite comics published.
I picked up this issue as I was curious as to how Dragonball Z ends (it says on the cover “Don’t miss Dragonball Z final monthly chapter!!”). However it wasn’t the last part of Dragonball Z, it was the last part to be published in Shonen Jump, as it’s now switching over to publishing straight into graphic novels. I wasn’t that annoyed, I wanted to see what Hikaru No Go was like and what the other titles were doing.

Dragonball Z
Not the last part, but (it would seem) the last part of the Trunks saga. Trunks goes back to the future and easily defeats all his enemies. Woohah.

Naruto
Ninja action! This is by far my favourite Shonen Jump comic, I buy the collections whenever they come out. It’s so awesome. Practically every part ends in a cliff hanger making me need the next volume.

One Piece
One Piece is pretty good, but there’s just something about it that makes me not want to pick up the collections. The story in this issue has a pretty awesome flashback to two guys stuck on an island with no food, so one of them eats his own leg. Holy shit!

Hikaru No Go
I had high hopes for this series, but unfortunately it wasn’t that good. I just can’t find people playing go online that important.

Yuyu Hakusho
Um, ghosts/demons fight each other for some reason.

Shaman King
Creepy misogyny in the “us women have to let men fight each other all the time, all we can do is make sure there’s food on the table when they get home.” What? (Combined with the sort of racist depiction of a black guy in this comic in Weekly Jump I’m just creeped out). Overall: Nice art, shitty story.

Yu-Gi-Oh
Better then expected. Probably because it dealt with time travel and weird Egyptian monsters rather then card games.

Hunterxhunter
By the guy that does Yuyu Hakusho and much better. It still just seems to be your average quest manga though.

Weekly Jump #1 (2003) (Presumably issue one for 2003)

This is Shonen Jump from Japan, it’s huge, it’s in Japanese, it’s badly printed (on several colours of paper). I picked it up last summer in Toronto for a couple of dollars and only now have finally gotten around to reading it (I have such a backlog of comics, but I’ve been getting through them…).

It’s difficult to read, let alone review, a comic that’s not even in an alphabet I understand. But I’ll try. This issue opens up with Grandia, which seems like a pretty neat manga. There’s parts that for some reason reminded me of Grant Morrison, I’m not sure why. What the comic does feature though is a guy disappearing/turning into sand in midair after jumping off a building, a attempted theft, the earth equipped with things that make it look like a spaceship (with wings, antenna, eyes, hands and a mouth) and a guy with a ridiculous moustache.

Then there’s the numerous sports manga, about baseball (Mr. Fullswing), bowling (The Prince of Bowling), football (Eyeshield21), fighting and dodgeball (Hunterxhunter). This issue also has chapters of comics appearing in the American Shonen Jump: Yu-Gi-Oh (which through some bizarre fluke appears to be the chapter following the one I just read in English, creepy), Naurto, One Piece and Shaman King. These are all at ridiculously high chapter numbers (from 148 to 256) and as this was published like two years ago you can probably add like another hundred chapters to those. We’ll never catch up. As they’re so far in advance of where we currently are I can’t really tell what’s happening in relation to now. I desperately want to know how Naruto got into that situation though…

There’s a few other comics I can identify, either through them having their titles in English (Bleach, A.O.N., Ultra Red, Black Cat) and a whole bunch I can’t. These run the gamut from, I don’t know, maybe crime or something, to ineffective detectives, to romantic comedy, to fighting. There’s also one I think may be Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. I’m not sure, but it sure does have a weird art style.

Some of these comics have parts I just don’t understand. Eyeshield21 has a vampire or monster or something with point ears and fangs playing football for some reason. While there’s another one I don’t have the title of which features a, um, bomb. A female bomb. With legs and arms and eyes and a mouth. And an animate sun who she flies through and blows up. And a big black guy with an afro, who crossdresses in one panel while in another his afro opens up and there’s a guy singing inside of it. It doesn’t make any sense and isn’t that well drawn. I can only assume it’s incredibly funny. There’s also the occasionally piece of English, such as in Grandia where there’s music playing at one point (I can tell because of the music notes in the speech balloon) and there are English lyrics. The Lyrics go “(something in Japanese) / Oh Lady / (something) Dream / (something) Muscle / Wow Wow.” Japan is crazy.

Anyway this was totally worth the few dollars I spent on it, if only to see the comics that will never get released in America. I mean what was with that bomb comic? I just don’t understand…

Manga Twister #6 (2004)

I picked this up in an airport in Germany last year and out of all the manga anthologies I’ve checked out this is probably the coolest. Why? Well it’s got shojo manga on one side, then you flip it and it’s got shonen stuff. Also the comics included seem to be far more diversified then most other anthologies.
The shonen side has Detective Conan, some romantic comedy things (with action bits), a samurai comic and what look like your typical “I’m going to become the best something ever!” comics. There’s also a comic called Mar, which seems to be about some kid who wakes up in a fantasy land. The art and character designs are really nice and this is one I sort of want to check out in English.

The shojo side has your typical school girl romance comics, but also has one set in ancient Persia that seems pretty interesting. “Go! Virginal Hanayuki” is probably the weirdest/funniest title I’ve heard in forever though. There’s also “Mon-Star Attack” which doesn’t make any sense and features a girl in a bunny suit flying around looking at planets. And the bunny girl gets horns and a pitchfork (saying 666) and there’s another girl with wings.

Overall I found the comic styles and content more diversified then most anthologies I’ve seen so far, which tend to stick to just one type of story. This one has comics aimed at girls and boys, seems to choose different types of stories even within those groups and has an article about Bonsai trees!

Wildstorm!

2005-04-11T15:18:00.000-02:30

I have a soft spot for the Wildstorm universe. Probably because I used to read Gen13 and DV8. Hehe. Anyway, in recent years the Wildstorm universe became incredibly popular because of the Authority, lost all of that popularity, attempted to publish some mature superhero comics that were critically acclaimed and sold terribly, then DC went and got rid of two of their imprints (Homage and Cliffhanger) and replaced them with Wildstorm Signature. Now Wildstorm publishes lots of random comics, some in the universe and some not. I believe they also oversee the Humanoids and 2000AD reprints for DC.

Anyway, on to the reviews.

The Resistance #1-4 (November 2002-Febuary 2003)
Writer: Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray
Pencils: Juan Satancruz

This was one of the new titles that Wildstorm launched a few years ago. It was also one of the titles that failed, only eight issues were actually made. Anyway, I liked the other Wildstorm series by Palimiotti and Gray that I’d read (21 Down), so picked these issues up from a dollar bin when I saw them. I was pleasantly surprised. The story is set in the 23rd century, the Earth had been post apocalyptic for a while, but someone had managed to organize it back to a dystopia. The comic clearly takes something from the Matrix of hip, sexy rebellion against the horrible orders that be.
There’s nothing special about this, it’s basically “kid gets caught in wrong place at wrong time and ends up joining the resistance and fighting the good fight,” but it’s told well, the world seems fully realized, and the art is really nice. The “kid” mentioned above has a Tintin haircut, which I find really amusing, and some of the designs are really nice. There are these pretty wikkid looking cyborgs with weird light bulb-like heads.

Masks: Too Hot for TV! #1 (February 2004)

This is an anthology title by a bunch of different writers and artists. It’s basically Cops, except with superheroes. It’s okay I guess, nothing in it is really excellent. I’m really just left wondering why it even exists. What is the point of this comic?

Point Blank #1-2, 4-5 (October 2002-Febuary 2003)
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Colin Wilson

This is the prequel to Brubaker’s acclaimed comic Sleeper. I’ve read the first trade of Sleeper and think it’s really good. It’s hideously overpriced though, and as much as I want volume two I can’t afford it. I hate you DC. Sleeper tells the story of Holden Carver, a deep cover agent who has been climbing the ranks of a super villain organization. He wants out but he can’t, because the only person who knows he’s really a good guy is in a coma. Point Blank is how that guy, John Lynch, got put into a coma.
As I read more of Brubaker’s Wildstorm comics I’m discovering that he’s an incredibly good writer of super powered crime/spy/espionage fiction. These comics have people in costumes sometimes, but not that often. This one features Cash Cole, or Grifter, trying to find out what happened to Lynch. I haven’t really read any Wildcats comics so I don’t really know who Grifter or Tao or anyone in this comic is. And while I think knowing who these characters are and what their powers are might help my understanding of the series, I still enjoyed them.
Cash Cole is a “shoot first, ask questions later” type of guy. But he knows that won’t work in this situation, he has to think, who shot Lynch? For what reason? And as he struggles to figure out what happened he’s also struggling to figure out what’s wrong with himself. His brain seems to be skipping and he doesn’t know why.
Overall I liked this comic, it’s cool seeing Holden Carver before he appeared in Sleeper, and I generally like Brubaker’s take on the Wildstorm universe. It’s filled with spies and criminals, and not just the type that are in the news, but the ones who operate things behind the scenes. I think it might be a more realistic take on superpowers.
I want issue three.

Coup D’etat #1-4 (April, 2004)

This was Wildstorm’s attempt to relaunch their titles. Get lots of people reading them (Jim Lee draws one!), but it failed (I don’t care that Jim Lee draws one). The miniseries is kind of weird, it’s a cross over between the four Wildstorm: Eye of the Storm comics coming out at the time (Sleeper, Stormwatch: Team Achilles, Wildcats 3.0 and the Authority), and is about the Authority taking over the US government. It creates new status quos for these comics but... it’s not that good. The issue of Sleeper featuring characters from Sleeper is good, but I don’t really care about the Authority parts. The issue of Stormwatch: Team Achilles makes me wonder why I liked that comic in the first place. The issue of Wildats 3.0 is okay, but I really don’t know anything about the characters. And the issue of The Authority just isn’t very good.
In fact this miniseries made me wonder why I liked the Authority in the first place. I’ve got the first trade and I think it’s really good and fun, but this is just blah. The Authority were practically parodies of other superheroes, and having them continue forever just makes me not care at all. I guess I’ll pick up issues of the current Brubaker written series if I can get them cheap though.

Wildstorm: Summer Special (2001)

In relation to “I don’t care about the Authority anymore” is this hideous overpriced comic. Three short stories and a few pinups and it’s all pretty blah. I grabbed this for the story by Warren Ellis but found I just didn’t care. Similarly the other Authority story was something I didn’t care about either. The final story had nice art, but didn’t make any sense and I don’t even know who the character is. There are a couple of decent pinups, but whatever. Reading these comics just made me want to go back and ready Ellis’s run on Stormwatch, I liked it the first time I read it.

Jack Staff: Soldiers

2005-04-08T14:53:00.000-02:30

Jack Staff: Soldiers (Volume two)
Story and art: Paul Grist

I came to Jack Staff through a sort of weird route. I’d heard good things about it somewhere, so when I found issue 11 in a dollar bin I picked it up. The fact that the cover looked cool helped too. I thought it was amazing, so when I found issue 1 of the Image series I was pretty excited. It was similarly awesome. I was hooked.

Last year when volume one collection the full twelve issues of the black and white series came out I got it. It was so good. Then I saw that the first volume of the colour series had come out, so I got that too. It was similarly excellent.

Jack Staff was Britain’s greatest hero. Twenty years ago. Then he disappeared. The first volume of Jack Staff tells the story of Jack Staff coming out of retirement, Soldier’s is the story of why he entered retirement. The story jumps back and forth between twenty years ago and the presen, not revealing what happened until the two plots dovetail. The past tells the story of Hurricane (the ultimate military weapon) attacking Castletown and Jack Staff, while the present tells the story of mysterious rage attacks that are becoming more and more prevalent.

Like the previous volume of Jack Staff this one switches between many different characters, given each of them a new introductory splash every time they appear. The comic is thus set out somewhat like an anthology with stories about Jack Staff, Tom Tom the Robot Man, Q (the investigators of the unexplainable), Becky Burdock Vampire Reporter, Detective Inspector Maveryk, and others. The stories all intertwine and while some of the characters may never meet, they’re actions will effect what happens to the other characters.

Grist often uses versions of characters from old British adventure comics. I’m usually not sure what’s new and what’s old in Jack Staff so I was incredibly excited when I saw the first reference to old British comics that I actually got. General Tubbs is an homage to General Jumbo who appeared in the Beano. General Jumbo was a young boy who controlled an army of remote control planes, tanks, soldiers and ships. He controls them through a wrist mounted device (basically a Power Glove) fought other kids with similar robots and had numerous adventures. Both Alan Moore and Grant Morrison have used versions of him in their stories over the years. I always thought that the character was pretty awesome, and Grist just takes the premise and twists it, making it even better.

Grist’s art is really amazing too, he uses a style I find sort of hard to describe. It is not, however, a style usually used in super hero comics, which is part of what makes it so distinct. However in addition to the art style there is the way in which Grist lays out pages that works really well. Grist uses splash pages, white space and minimalism all to great effect during the course of this collection and it’s just amazing the skill and talent which he holds. This volume is coloured by Phil Elliott and the colouring makes this comic look, amazingly, even better then it did in black and white. I didn’t think Grist could make the art look any better but somehow he did.

One of my friend’s who just read this comic was similarly enthusiastic about it and said that the existence of comics like Jack Staff sort of scares him away from drawing his comics because he doesn’t think they can live up to the quality. (I’m going to encourage him to make his own comics though.)

Jack Staff volume one was on my best of the year for 2004, Jack Staff volume two will be on my best of the year for 2005 (yeah, okay, so it came out in 2004, whatever). It’s a truly excellent and original comic that is just so much fun at the same time. Check it out.

Links:
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/j/jumbo.htm: General Jumbo

http://www.weisshahn.de/kane/: Site about Paul Grist and his work

2099

2005-04-07T13:57:00.000-02:30

I’ve got a real soft spot for the 2099 universe. I think for the most part it was well realized and it had some pretty cool characters and stuff in it. I got all of these issue ones out of 50 cent bins when I was a kid I think. Something about the shinyness maybe, or maybe I just liked the future, who knows. However, I recently picked up a bunch of issues of Spider-Man 2099 out of a 25 cent bin. Good purchase. I love cheap comics. It was also fun reading all those old Marvel Bullpen pages. Holy shit Marvel put out so many comics (so many of them terrible) and some of the stuff lets you into the zeitgeist of the early nineties.

Doom 2099 #1, 29
Writers: John Francis Moore, Warren Ellis
Penciller: Pat Broderick

Issue one had someone thinking they’re Doom, and maybe being Doom, showing up in the future and trying to take control of Latveria. It’s awesome. I love Dr. Doom. I’m going to go find more issues. It’ll fill the Super-Villain Team-Up void in my life. There’s also a pretty neat scene where we hear part of a conversation that’s continued in another 2099 title. You don’t need to read both parts to understand it, but it adds to the universe. Neato.

Issue 29 is by Ellis and has Doom taking over America. Hardcore! I need more Doom! It has an incredibly stupid clear plastic cover though.

Hulk 2099 #1
Writer: Gerard Jones
Penciller: Malcolm Davis

This was probably the worst out of the comics I read. It’s set in California, which allows you to find out about more of the 2099 universe, but it’s just sort of stupid. Retelling the origin already told in 2099 unlimited, some random stupidity about movie studios. I just didn’t care. I thought the art was pretty ugly too. It’s too bad cause I liked the story about Hulk 2099 I read in 2099 Unlimited #3.

Punisher 2099 #1, 13
Writer: Pat Mills and Tony Skinner
Penciller: Tom Morgan

How many Punisher comics were coming out from Marvel at this time? 4? 5? It was a lot at any rate. This is basically just the Punisher in the future. Shooting up criminals who got past the law somehow. Issue 13 (a “The Fall of the Hammer” crossover) has an awesome bit where Jake Gallows (the punisher) has a crisis of faith because he was raised a Thorist and has to fight Baldur, one of the Norse gods. Awesome!

Ravage 2099 #1
Writer: Stan Lee
Penciller: Paul Ryan

This was written by Stan Lee! Stan! Lee! Anyway, it’s about a guy who thinks he’s working for a company that tries to protect the environment, but is actually polluting it. He finds out and his bosses try to kill him, he runs off and gets armour from a junk yard. And lets his hair down. I’ve heard this was the worst 2099 title there was, and while it’s by no means great it’s not horrible either. I am however amazed at how corporations like Marvel assume that corporations will be big and horrible in the future.

Spider-Man 2099 #1-7, 9-12, 14-16, 18-20, 28
Writer: Peter David
Penciller: Rick Leonardi (with a few fill-ins and backups)

I actually had seven issues of this series already, and I’m sort of wondering why I didn’t buy more. I’ve discovered recently that Peter David is a pretty good writer of superhero stuff. It’s not amazing, but it’s good.

Spider-Man 2099 is Miguel O’Hara, a scientist at Alchemax working on splicing animal genes. His bosses make him experiment on a human and he wonders if maybe they’re not that great… Then they hook him on rapture, a highly addictive, legal drug they manufacture. To try and beat the drug Miguel attempts to overprint his genes with his old genes that he has on record. However one of his coworkers, who hates him, sabotages it and Miguel gets imprinted with spider genes. He gains spider powers, which in this case means light sensitivity, the ability to shoot web from his arms and talons on his fingers and toes that allow him to climb walls and rip stuff to shreds.

The comic follows Miguel as he fights evil corporations, thugs, gods, samurai and other things you expect to see at the end of the 21^st century. David’s managed to create a future that is, um, I won’t say believable, but at least consistent with some really awesome ideas. One of my favourites bit is the Thorists, people that worship Thor and the other Norse gods.

The cast is filled out by Miguel’s fiancé, his brother, his brother’s girlfriend, his holographic house keeper, his boss and a number of other characters that are actually developed. Shocking really. There’s also backup stories that tell tales of young Miguel O’Hara and how he grew up.

Leonardi’s art is good for the most part, and I think he does a really good job with the costume (which features a sort of skull/spider thing on the front), the fill in artists are decent too.

I like this title, it’s fun. I want to read all of David’s run on the title. I won’t read the issues Ben Raab did though. I hate Raab’s writing so much.

2099 Unlimited #3, 10

This is an anthology title with (I think) three different stories per issue. The first two are just superhero ones. Both have Spider-Man stories that aren’t that great. Issue three has a pretty cool Hulk 2099 story though. It does feature, um, Guerrilla Ecologists who, uhm, set off a massive bomb to save the environment? I’m not really sure, they blow up the fault line in California and make it an island. Weirdoes. There’s bizarre backup stories that aren’t that good (haha, you’re view of the internet is stupid!), and issue 10 has a neat Machina Jones story.

I can’t seem to find a good 2099 page, maybe I’ll have to start one. But first I’ll have to track down those issues I don’t have…

Oh, here’s one, sort of: http://marvunapp.com/Appendix/app2099.htm

2005-04-06T15:40:00.000-02:30

Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score
Story and art: Darwyn Cook

I like heist stories, I think they’re really fun, however I didn’t find Selina’s big score to be as great as other people have made it out to be.

While the comic may be titled Catwoman, Catwoman doesn’t really show up in it. She’s there for a couple of panels in a flashback, but that’s it. What this really is is a Selina Kyle the thief comic. That’s fine by me.

It starts in Morocco where Selina has apparently spent the last of her money getting read to steal a gold cup of some sort. She succeeds, but discovers the cup is fake. Out of money and with nowhere else to go she has to return to Gotham. However apparently Selina Kyle and Catwoman are both dead? I’m not really sure what the details are. I guess she faked her own death to escape, I don’t know and this comic doesn’t really tell me.

Selina gets back to Gotham and starts looking into something that could be a big score for her, set her up so that she can do whatever she wants to. After years and years of thievery I would have assumed she’d have millions of dollars somewhere, but I guess not. Bad planning I guess. She finds out that the mob are going to trade some diamonds for heroin with some French Canadians. She wants in. So she has to get her crew (like all heist stories do really). There’s Stark, who taught her how to be a thief, but who she double crossed years ago, Swifty, who’s a fence or something, he’ll be driving the boat and another guy who’s name isn’t mentioned and isn’t really developed. That’s one of my problems with the comic, some of the characters aren’t developed that much, it’s sort of annoying.

There’s also Slam Bradley, private eye, wandering around in the background. When he first is mentioned there’s something about him looking for Selina so I think that’ll be a subplot. But it’s not, was it dealt with somewhere else? I don’t know. All I know is that he burnt his case files on her, for some reason at some point. During this comic and it’s not mentioned? Before this comic (I know there were Slam Bradley backup stories somewhere at some point)? I’m just sort of left in the dark.

The actual heist itself is sort of annoying too. It’s not complex enough for my liking, well no, it is complex. I think I the characters just found the stuff they needed for the heist too easily. Maybe what I wanted was more heist story less other stuff story. Hmm…

One of the major selling points of this story is the art. But for whatever reason I just can’t get into Cooke’s thick lines and sort of cartoony art. I think maybe it’s the colouring, it just didn’t impress me that much.

Overall this was a disappointment, I thought it was going to be good and really fun, but for whatever reason it wasn’t. Maybe I just read it at the wrong time.

Movie reviews

2005-04-05T23:02:00.000-02:30

I’ve been watching some comic book based movies recently (and eventually I will have non-superhero based reviews up here, I don’t know why I’m in such a superhero phase).

Spider-Man 2
Because I’m a bad nerd I never saw either Spider-Man or Spider-Man 2 in theatres. In fact I hadn’t seen Spider-Man until a couple of months ago when I watched it at my girlfriend’s house. I thought it was good. Anyway I was coming home the other day and stopped by Rodney’s house (yes, he will hopefully soon have reviews here too) and he said he was about to watch Spider-Man 2. I thought “I should watch this,” so I did. And I didn’t get home until 4am. This movie is long! (Okay, only two hours long, but yeah…)

I realized when I started to watch this I couldn’t remember the plot of the first movie at all. Peter becomes Spider-Man, fights the Green Goblin, Stan Lee appears, etc. But it didn’t matter that much, I mean these movies are basically taking the general idea from the comics and just putting them in a movie. I’m not sure if it works better as a movie. I mean they have the ability to just pick and choose what they want to used, they can ignore all the crap and just use the cool stuff.

And cool stuff they use in spades. I think using Dr. Octopus as the villain was a good idea, the science based villains are one of the major villain types in Spider-Man and it’s used well here. There was a good balance between the Spider-Man and Peter Parker stuff. You get your action, but you also get what makes the character so important.

Some of the dialogue was pretty lame, but I think that was in homage to the comic books themselves, which have had plenty of lame dialogue. There were some scenes where this was clearly a Sam Raimi movie. The scene in the hospital with the chain saw, it was excellent. But I have to wonder why Bruce Campbell wasn’t cast as the doctor.

Overall I thought the movie was good, but for whatever reason this review is incredibly disjointed. Um, yeah.

So what about for the next movie? I hear people constantly wanting Venom as the villain, but I don’t know if they could do him in one movie. Other ideas abound, the Lizard (I mean Dr. Curt Connors did appear in this movie… but another science villain so fast?)? Man-Wolf (sort of lame, but the John Jameson appeared in Spider-Man 2 as well, plus lots of J. Jonah Jameson)? The Green Goblin is set up too, but I think that’s too soon. Mysterio? Kraven? Sand-Man? Scorpion? Rhino? There are so many cool Spider-Man villains to choose from. I don’t really care that much as long as the sixth movie (if they get that far) is a sinister six movie.

Anyway, watch these totally wikkid lego versions of Spider-Man 2 (there’s a normal version and an alternative ending version, watch both).

Link: http://www.spiteyourface.com/spidey.html

The Cat Returns
This was one of the Studio Ghibli films released a few weeks ago. It was the one I knew the least about (I’d seen both Porco Rosso and Nausicaa before), but I picked it up anyway.

It’s a film by Hiroyuki Morita, who had worked on other Studio Ghibli films before. Hayao Miyazaki and others had been afraid of what would happen to the studio and were actively seeking out new people to direct films. However if this is representative Ghibli should be in good hands.

The movie based on a comic by Aoi Hiiragi, which hasn’t been released in English. It’s sort of a sequel to the movie Whisper of the Heart, which also isn’t in English. However where Whisper of the Heart is a drama thing, this is a comedy.

The movie follows Haru, who seems to be having some bad luck at school. On the way home she rescues a cat from a speeding van. After being saved the cat thanks her and walks away. Haru is pretty scared and confused. Stuff gets even weirder when the king of cats shows up and thanks her. Then she starts receiving gifts, which aren’t that great.

Eventually Haru meets up with Muta and the Baron (from Whisper of the Heart) and ends up in the kingdom of the cats.

It’s a really fun little story, a bit short (at 75 minutes) but over all good. I’d actually rank it higher then one of Miyazaki’s films (Kiki’s Delivery Service). However it’s not as good as similar “journey to magical kingdoms full of cute things” movie My Neighbour Totoro. But really, what is?

Unfortunately the short included on the Japanese version of the DVD isn’t included here, but overall this is definitely worth picking up if you’re looking for something cute and fun. If you’re looking for giant robots, try something else.

Link: http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/neko/

Commie Superman

2005-04-05T14:06:00.000-02:30

Superman: Red Son
Writer: Mark Millar
Artists: Dave Johnson, Kilian Plunkett

I haven’t read much of Mark Millar’s stuff, but what I have read leads me to believe he’s hideously overrated. I only read his first two story arcs on The Authority, but I felt that they weren’t as good as the stories Warren Ellis began the series with. Still, it wasn’t that bad.
However Red Razors is horrible. It’s just bad and stupid and urgh, I wish I’d never bought it. But this is a review of Superman in the Soviet Union. Not a Judge Dredd type character in SovBlock.

Superman: Red Son has the interesting premise of Superman’s spaceship landing in Ukraine instead of Kansas. Superman is brought up to fully believe in Stalin and the communist state. In the fifties he is brought to the attention of Stalin, who uses him to help prevent disasters and also to show how superior communism is. Meanwhile Lex Luthor is the greatest genius in America, and he spends his time creating ideas to bring down the communist menace that is Superman.

Superman begins turning the world to communism. Not through force, but through his ability to save everyone and make people’s lives better. If a country was communist then his protection expanded to them. If it wasn’t then he usually left them alone. America begins to collapse (though eventually begins to turn around thanks to Luthor). But which side will win? Communism represented by an alien super being or capitalism represented by a human.

The idea of the book is great, but the way it’s pulled off just doesn’t work that well for me. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s Millar’s writing style, maybe it’s the way he went with certain ideas that I would have done differently. I don’t know, I just finished reading this and felt deeply unsatisfied. The idea hadn’t been lived up to.

Okay, so I’m a massive Russian geek. How’s the Russian stuff hold up? It’s alright, I have major problems with some bits where signs in the Soviet Union are in English right next to ones that are in Russian. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Similarly there are a few places where letters are flipped around to make things look Russian. I can’t understand why this is done; I mean why use the Cyrillic alphabet sometimes but not others. It’s not even a case of it being different pencillers, this happens in one panel in some cases. The art’s pretty good though, I like the designs of Soviet Superman, and the designs of the monsters Luthor creates to battle Superman.

On the upside it did actually seem like Russia (or the Soviet Union I guess). One of my problems with Red Razors was that it claimed to be set in the Soviet Union, but it might as well have been America with signs in Cyrillic.

So how is it overall? It’s, um, okay I guess. There are some good parts, and there are some bad parts, but overall I can’t really recommend it.

Link: http://theages.superman.ws/History/redson/: Mark Millar on Superman: Red Son

Short reviews 2

2005-04-03T20:25:00.000-02:30

Silver Age Showcase: The 7 Soldiers of Victory #1 (July, 2000)
Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Dick Giorano

I picked this up for a $1 because I thought it was an actual old 7 Soldiers of Victory comic and with Grant Morrison’s version coming out soon I wanted to check it out. It’s actually part of a crossover from 2000. It’s okay, not great, the art’s pretty good and the villains are pretty fun, but I’m reading one part of a ten part crossover.

What if… Karen Page had Lived? (February, 2005)
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Michael Lark

This is half recap! What the hell? Also, this is totally not what “What if...?”’s are supposed to be about. I want “What if Daredevil was a mutant?” or something.

Arsenic Lullaby #7 (1999)
Story and art by: Douglas Paszkiewicz

I’ve read one issue of Arsenic Lullaby before, but I can’t remember which one it was. I think it might have been the issue before this. This comic is good though, it’s creepy and wrong in some places, but in a really funny way. This issue seems like it was put together wrong, it’s incredibly jumpy in the order of the stories. There’s one longer story going throughout the issue, but it keeps getting interrupted for two or three pages while other, random, stories get told. Still, worth looking out for.

Link: http://www.arseniclullabies.com/

IDW Free Comic Book Day Edition (2004)
Story and art by: lots

This has excerpts from four different comics. CSI, the Shield, 24 and 30 Days of Night. The 30 Days of Night one is the only one that seems vaguely interesting, I can’t believe the shitty art which appears in the others. I mean if you pay big money for the licences why not actually put work into the comic? Especially when your comics cost so much (I’ve wanted to check out 30 Days of Night, but it’s too pricey).

Killer Princesses #2 (June, 2002)
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Lea Hernandez

Several years ago I promised myself I would never buy another comic by Lea Hernandez. Why? Because I was incredibly bitter that she never released the final issue of a miniseries as an issue. You could pay to read it online or buy the graphic novel, but issue seven of Rumble Girls was never released. It just bugged me a lot. I did not, however, pay for this issue. It was pretty good. The writing’s good, though waaaay dirtier then I originally thought it would be. The art goes from really nice to kind of shitty. The variations in quality are strange.