hypnoray

No Heroics - not quite comics, but still superheroes

2011-03-07T09:58:00.001-05:00

So, this weekend I watched No Heroics and I really can't recommend this enough for any fan of superheroes and crass British comedies. This is basically a foul mouthed version of Seinfeld who are B-list superheroes in London. The language is much more adult, the situations a lot more out there, but all in all this is well worth checking out.

It originally broadcast on ITV2 in the UK in 2008 and as far as I know was never released in North America. In 2009 ABC ordered a pilot that had Freddie Prinze Jr in the Superman pastiche role but it was never picked up. And thank Christ for that as a neutered version of this show is basically The Cape: After Hours and there's enough pabalum on TV as it is.

What worked for me is that this was just a full formed world that didn't need to be set up for the viewer. No origin stories here, although I'd love to see how they handle one. They writers clearly know the genre as the final episode is a play on the common superhero funeral scenes. No, this show works because the characters are charming losers and really, who does that better than the English? Plus, they get to hang out in a pub full of beers and alcohols that are superhero and comic book puns - from Shazamstel, and Von Doomenstein beers to Grey Widow Gin and V for Vodka, this is a great world to visit. Sadly, I don't think it was ever taken up for a second season.

I guess what I appreciated the most here is that it's actually an ironically mature take on superheroes, and it's successfully played for laughs - something so rarely found in actual superhero books, maturity and comedy. You can get one of the other in the books, rarely both. In fact I can't think of anything recent that fits this bill besides Nextwave (granted this show isn't exactly current at 3 years old).

This is great

2011-02-18T12:16:00.000-05:00

I realize there's little point in having a link post for a blog with a couple dozen hits if I'm lucky, but IO9 has a great list of what to expect from summer superhero comic crossovers.

Well, crap.

2011-02-07T15:02:00.001-05:00

I listened to the debates and encourage everyone to do the same. Sadly, Jeff Lemire's Essex County was the first book to get the axe from Canada Reads. In the end, I think it was a very uphill battle for Sara and the book and that it would have either gone first or gone all the way.

The reasons for dumping it were spurious at best and sort of petty and pedantic. The reasoning was that it, basically, wasn't all words. Which is fine, but it is also a very narrow view of fiction and what constitutes literature. Then again, anyone reading a comics blog will likely already be coming from that point of view.

I was hoping to see a much more informed debate about the nature of fiction and literature. Instead, I think it was simply too much work for the other panelists to learn how to read differently. Not only that, I think they needed to discover a new way of explaining what they read. They needed to develop a new vocabulary as readers and it was a task that was simply too tough for them. Instead they hid behind arguments of form rather than content.

My question would to them would have been, "how is looking at an image any different than reading description?" Or I could go further and ask whether their logic discounts most work by Kurt Vonnegut when he doodles within the plot, or something as foundationally important to the novel form as Tristram Shandy?

There was some illogical discussion about the most essential book has the widest appeal that went to getting young people to read, and well, go to a classroom and see which one of these books they'd choose.

What I find interesting is that the book voted by readersonline to be given the door, by a large margin, is the one that won the Pulitzer prize. I have no problem with challenging work being held up as something to read but I got to say I was expecting more out of the debate.

I am glad that Essex County has been brought to wider attention. I'm glad that it's consider on equal footing along with the five other books. I'm just really disappointed that the panelists couldn't see outside of a very narrow definition of what constitutes fiction and literature.

The Two Generals

2011-01-24T10:02:00.001-05:00

The Two Generals by Scott Chantler

It’s a dangerous proposition to write your thoughts on a book without having it opened beside your keyboard (or fresh in your memory, for that matter). But, that’s exactly what I’m going to do here since I find it hard enough to post on anything of a regular basis. I first came across mention of this book on Chantler’s blog and since then it’s been appearing everywhere. It was a pick on the iFanboy podcast as a gift suggestion, it was reported on by various CBC news outlets and was a focus on the CBC website during Remembrance Day. Finding comics mentioned outside of the comics media is sort of like when someone mentions Canada on an American sitcom - you feel a bit of pride when they get it right but still tell everyone about it whether or not it was useful.

This is a gorgeous book. If every trade paper back or collection of comics came packaged like this I would be a happy, happy man. The format, in that the book appears as a large moleskin notebook relates directly to the content that was developed from the journal of the creator’s grandfather. This is one case where you can actually judge the book by its cover. It pulls you in visually because it feels outside of the realm of what comics traditionally are. This package appears personal and like you are taking a glimpse into the private lives of those involved.

I’ve been a fan of Chantler’s art since I picked up Northwest Passage and I’m an even bigger fan here. I find that comics are strongest when they are stylized rather than trying to limit themselves to duplicating reality. And here, that’s how the characters are presented. They’re simple designs that allow the characters to act and emote but mixed into larger scenes that are drafted impeccably. It fits into the Hergé school of cartooning - well crafted, clean lined characters in a much more detailed world. The cartoonist can then exaggerate for effect but can keep the characters grounded by reality.

The limited colour palette reinforces the nature of the content as well. The whole book is rendered in a sepia toned green and a somewhat muted red. It feels like you are experiencing something from the past while the red highlights the horrific realities these men faced. These are excellent examples of showing how history is as coloured by how it is presented as much as by the available facts, which is, I believe the premise of E.H. Carr’s “What is History?” Although, I could be mis-remembering, since I read that a long while ago.

And that brings us to the narrative. This is an engrossing read and glimpse into the lives of two Canadian guys experiences during WWII. It’s not a thrilling war movie but it does present the brutal realities and absurd decisions these men were faced with. It’s a great book for anyone interested in “true stories” or non-fiction tellings of these events. This would be an amazing work for every classroom across Canada - it’s accessible, a quick read, and just chock full of information. And, I feel bad for saying this, but that’s sort of what it felt like at times to me. Just a relating of facts mixed in with a great real-life story. It doesn’t suffer too much for it though and that’s meant to be the most minor of criticisms because it’s a book I truly love.

The pacing does slow a bit because of this, and I think it’s just my reading of it rather than something being poorly crafted. Chantler is intentionally letting his moments breathe and linger rather than move on to the next plot point - I’m just too haggered with exhaustion of having a small child to enjoy the peace and reflection of the moment.

I hope this book finds the audience it can and should. This is a great cross-over book for anyone interested in the history and experience of WWII. It should be an eye opener for an American reader to see these familiar events from a different perspective and it should be considered by any Canadian interested in reading more or researching D-Day.

Chew - now this is good stuff!

2010-12-15T09:36:00.000-05:00

Chew by John Layman (Author), Rob Guillory (Artist)

Ever since I first posted on this here blog I’ve been writing (off and on) about trying to find a comic that plays both to the strengths of the medium in terms of imagery and maturity in storytelling and narrative. I believe I’ve found that in Chew. I’ve read the first two trades and feel like I’ve found another comic that fits into the ideal niche for me. The characters are not drawn to look realistic and the plot is not exactly something you can do in many other forms. The structure of the stories, from the prologue to payoff to the larger underlying narrative are all masterfully created and simply fun to read.

The content is a mixture of grotesque gore and the theatrical grotesque. The characters are being asked to partake in activities that go against the very nature of what they feel is right, yet they do it because of their commitment to a greater value they hold. They want truth, justice and to do the right thing and the roadblocks they hit always play upon their actual skills (be it chibopath or police training).

The grotesquery is all mixed up together in proper proportions, like any good recipe. There is humour and there is a plot that has some real consequences for the characters playing simultaneously. This isn’t done easily or all that often in comics. It’s a bit how you can enjoy Hellboy as both a supernatural tale and because the characters approach it like any blue collar day job with the language to match. Here, it’s a boss trying to literally make an employee eat crap mixed in with a police mystery.

This is how I like my cartooning. There is a basis in reality in that the characters all behave logically within the world they find themselves. There is grim subject matter, but there is no excessive grimness in how the characters deal with their reality. They have the full range of emotions from love, hate, silly to angry - all wonderfully rendered in an unique style. But they also have talents, skills and technological upgrades that would just look silly if this was going for a realistic look. And, really, why would I want realism in a comic book? Why limit it in that manner when there is enough other media that handle it better. To me, comics are best when they go for broke and use the visuals to convey a world that can’t exist in reality, and Chew certainly achieves that. The nature of the art lets the characters act and exaggerate in ways that just doesn’t work in other media, which is why I’m reading a comic in the first place. Good stuff.

Canada Reads Jeff Lemire's Essex County!

2010-11-24T16:08:00.000-05:00

Yay! Jeff Lemire has made the top five for the Canada Reads contest. I've said it before a few times and I'll say it again - this is fantastic Canadian Literature. I really wish him the best and at the very least this work should reach a new audience. I'm hoping this is the next Louis Riel crossover.

Wasteland: Enjoying the apocolypse, as much as I can

2010-11-22T09:20:00.000-05:00

Wasteland by Antony Johnson and Christopher Mitten

Way back when I had a lot more time and was updating this site on a daily or almost daily schedule I came across the solicitation for Wasteland. I was incredibly excited about a new post-apocalyptic book coming out from an author whose work I had already enjoyed. Heck he even posted a comment here. Then five years went by and I never found myself actually picking up the book. I didn’t get a copy of the initial release at the local comic shop so decided to wait for the trade, then a lot of life happened and I’ve ended up finally picking up the Apocalyptic Edition recently.

Boy, am I glad to have finally gotten around to this book, and this edition in particular. Now, I know if I want more issues to come out I should be buying the monthly releases as monthly books live and die by their monthly numbers, but that’s just not possible for me anymore. I don’t have the time to date a store every Wednesday. Getting this cloth bound tome onto my shelves, though, I’m more than happy to do. I’m as every bit an aesthete for the physical product as I am the content and this is one of the better looking books to grace my shelves. It’s next to my pholio versions of Ulysses(it was a gift and I’ve only managed 40 pages about 10 years ago) and 1066 and All That because it just looks like it fits in there. I’m always happy to have a comic book that looks as attractive as anything else I may have lining my shelves.

As for the content, yeah, it matches the presentation spot on. This is both familiar and new at once, something that can either work incredibly well or fail spectacularly. When disparate ideas are mashed together to add new flavour to a genre I’m half reading to see if the writer and artist can pull it off as much as I just enjoy the plot and action. The influences I see here are the Mad Max films and Charlton Heston’s religious epics.

Adding the religious persecution to a wasteland desert is one of those ideas that are so wonderfully apt that it amazes you that you’ve never seen it before. The Sunners are building infrastructure in the same way that the Jews in the Old Testament were building pyramids. They’re slave labour for a pharaoh who has bigger problems than religious intolerance and labour unrest. Add to that a diesel powered caravan and some post apocalyptic city dwelling mutants and you’ve got a corker of a wasteland romp.

There’s a bigger mystery at play here, and it’s mired within religious politics and brutal survival in an unforgiving climate. The mystery gets slowly revealed, piece by piece without ever losing sight of the main characters, Abi and Michael. They’re really the heart of the story, with a few sub-plots amongst city politicians, watchmen and Abi’s friends (current and former). There’s a lot of subterfuge, harsh-realities and mixed in there is unending hope and optimism for something greater that may or may not exist. Is their fabled land of milk and honey real, and if so is it a blessing or a curse? I’ll be there to find out, and I’m planning to take less than five years to find out.

Blacksad - finally.

2010-11-02T13:53:00.000-04:00

Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarrido

In my new quest to read less superhero based comic book fare I’ve turned to the vaunted shores of Europe and picked up the recent Dark Horse English translation of Blacksad. The long and short of it are that this is an incredibly beautiful book that is superb cartooning which captures a time, place and genre almost letter perfect. The bad, is that ever since Chris Butcher saw the item in the Previews catalogue he’s placed the furries idea in my head and it tainted the experience (oh relax, I’m not pissed at him or anything). I know that this is just fiction and all, but I’m glad I never had to explain why I’m reading a book with the naked cat people having the sex.

Regardless, this is a great companion piece to the Darwyn Cooke Parker books in that it’s another thirties-forties-fifties based noir book that must be seen to be truly appreciated. The cast is made up of humanized animals where each character is reflected by the animal he is. The cold blooded killers tend to be reptiles, professors are owls, white supremacists weasels - you get the idea. It’s a conceit that is pulled off with aplomb. I kept waiting for the moment it would feel forced, and it never does. It feels like the creators took the funny talking animals genre and recast them in a gritty noir reboot that tries to engage in a realism form, like Marvels or Ex Machina.

What I found even more engaging than the characters was the rendering of the settings and backgrounds. The draftsmanship that goes into setting the stage for these comics is simply stunning. There are shades of Eisner’s New York (the universal setting not necessaryily the book) that are coloured in a muted pallet that feels aged properly, almost water coloured to give it a time appropriate production feel. The props are all note perfect as far as I can tell, which brought me into the world and simply kept me there. It’s not often that I notice the setting, but when it’s done right, it brings me into the story and here it was done so masterfully that I couldn’t look away. When something is done right, it either fades into your memory as accepted or it confidently recognizes its own beauty.

The stories are standard noir fare. Secrets are unleashed, heads are knocked together, people are stabbed and killed. Generally the horrible underbelly of humanity is cut open and spilled on the ground. There are some great ideas presented in the plots, particularly how the creators use the conceit of the anthropomorphic cast to tackle race riots in the middle volume (Arctic Nation) but I felt most of the ideas were related to the craft rather than the actual plot. I’m a story guy through and through, but I felt my enjoyment from these stories came more from appreciated the craft of the stories rather than the fairly generic noir plots. They hit all the key notes and call back to a lot of classic noir movies so it should work but it did just feel all too familiar and expected in terms of twists, turns, and Pyrich victories.

Not having a French volume to compare, I can’t really comment on the quality of the translation but I can say that on a very few occasions the dialogue actually felt translated. It was straightforward and wasn’t broken English but it felt a bit flat and more of a literal translation that lost some of the charters’ voices. It was very few and far between, and not having a copy of the original makes it hard to know if this is an issue of translation or the original writing. There were a few times, as well, where it felt the plot just jumped forward a hell of a lot. I understand the nature of the medium but sometimes those jumps were too pronounced and it felt disjointed, as if the creators wanted to explore moments, characters and develop the plot more but were forced to cut out because of page limits. It never derailed the plot but it would have been nice to see the development or escalation of situations before seeing the setup then resolution on the next page (often in the first panel of the next page). I’m not sure that wanting more of the story is any kind of a valid criticism or not, but httre it is.

But the craft comes through in spades. Not just in the rendering I’ve already mentioned but in how the majority of situations would flow throughout a page. The creators really understand the art of the page turn with often somewhat odd panels ending an even numbered page being revealed on the page turn. It was generally handled with aplomb when moving from one character situation to other times and places. It is only occasionally that it would jump along one character’s arc and feel off. And, ending each volume with a negative black and white image of a loose plot thread was always fun and rewarding. Particularly the confused Australians. Fun stuff.

All in all, this is an easy book to recommend for anyone who likes comics and appreciates both Uncle Scrooge and the Parker books.

What is fair in super hero comic criticism (starring The Flash).

2010-10-18T10:13:00.000-04:00

Amazingly, having a small child in your life kind of takes over. Who knew?

Anyway, I had a whole post ready about Flash: Blood Will Run and never really got around to hitting the publish button or whatever. I wasn’t too thrilled with it as I offered a bit of middling commentary about the story and some more vague thoughts about superhero comics. Well, I’ve clearly had a few more weeks to think about it and to think about what is fair and unfair in superhero comic criticism.

Sure, there is a lot out there already about the role of the comic critic, what is needed and what is just tired and biff-bam played out (not for kids no more, baby!). It’s not exactly a new topic for the comic blogging internet, and really, you should have a supply of salt grains when reading about it from someone who updates monthly, or so after quitting a few times because he couldn’t update regularly.

There I was reading my first ever Flash comics. I enjoyed Wally West as both the hero and the regular guy who has issues with being a public hero. The story was hit and miss for me, in that I liked the basic idea of tracking down people the hero saved for nefarious purposes, but it also seemed a bit unneccessary to have that much death and gruesome murder involved. This is an otherwise bright and hopeful hero and I felt like playing up the goofier elements of superheroes would work better here. It seemed to try and set up the antitheses of bright hero dealing with bloody murder and having a kid he didn’t know about. I feel I could write a whole post about how this story treats women. Maybe somewhere more serious than this though.

Throughout it all, I had a nagging thought in the back of my mind. Wally West is such a great character, why would they replace him? It just seems so pointless. This is a character that acknowledges his past, his shortcomings, and his attempts to live up to a legacy. He’s struggling to fit into multiple different roles all while becoming himself. How can the current superhero comic reader NOT identify with these things?

And, yet, he’s gone to be replaced with Barry Allen, who deals with what? Survivor’s guilt? I suppose the ultimate end to Wally is to struggle with everything he has and to eventually come into his own only to sacrifice himself like his forebearer, Barry Allen. Is this what happened or did Wally only get sacrificed by editorial decision rather than narrative and plot driven measures.

I realized all of this was unfair to the comic. I should be able to read it on its own merits etc etc etc. But then it hit me. If comics are sold as a shared universe, and that to get the whole story you need to buy and read more than the story you have in front of you, criticism of the same can go beyond the story in front of you. If you’re expected to get all the Blackest Night tie-in books to understand Blackest Night, then criticising what happens outside of the story you’re reading has validity as well. If everything impacts everything else within the shared publishing medium, the same holds true for criticism of the form.

Unfortunately the sword cuts both ways. If the shared narrative expects the critics and readers of it to work outside of what is immediate, then criticism is required to go outside of what is immediate. It is fair to compare Silver Age Superman to All-Star Superman just as much as it is to wonder why Wally West was replaced by Barry Allen. You do both as a critic, for different reasons, but both end up being valid. Sure, a lot of people use criticism as a synonym for complain but I think it is equally valid to look beyond what is presented to examine and explore what is presented. Wally West is a character who exemplifies the traits of someone living up to expectations and his arc as a character needs to follow that in order to capitalize on this foundation - not have him walk off to alternate realities, or work alongside his mentor again. It was ballsy to kill off Barry Allen and keep him dead, now it’s just kind of cheapened and wasteful. It doesn’t help move superhero comics passed the junkfood of literature, not that it needs to be, but even junkfood needs to be tasty for me to have more.

My next post will detail how I shook my cane at those damned kids on my lawn.

This is what I'm going to keep looking for more of.

2010-09-21T08:59:00.000-04:00

Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cook

With Darwyn Cooke’s upcoming release of Richard Stark’s The Outfit, I figured it was high time I finally got around to buying and reading Parker: the Hunter. I’m so incredibly glad that I did. This is a book that completely captures everything about reading comics that I enjoy - from the visual aesthetics of the art, which is bar none some of the best out there, to the narrative, to the visceral feeling of the book in my hands. This just has it all. It’s the perfect example of something that is just fun to read.

This book feels good in your hands and from the colours used on the cover and the designs on the inside covers, it is a package that completes itself in every detail. This is tough guy action and a dark revenge plot that kind of shows the origins of something like The Punisher, Max series that I’m continuing to read. This is an unstoppable guy out to exact revenge with a heartbroken, beaten down core only he uses it to his benefit and to terrify his enemies.

The other thing about this book that hits the right note with me, particularly, is that the art looks like comic book art. It’s exaggerated, but it captures the characters perfectly. Comics don’t need to look like reality and by not doing so, they tend to work better for me. As long as their internal structure remains intact throughout, then it works well. Why limit yourself to trying to copy reality when you can design your own world. Yes, use the basis so the reader isn’t lost - the core relationship of actors and props (perspective, car and head size, etc) still need to be done right, but they don’t need to be of photographic quality to be hard hitting or mature. This book proves that in spades.

I’m anxiously awaiting the next volume.

Punisher Max by Garth Ennis and various artists

2010-09-10T07:59:00.000-04:00

I’ve recently begun to read the Punisher: Max series (first two volumes so far) and this seems to me to be how mature superhero comics can be done well. I know that the Punisher isn’t really a superhero per se, but being a Marvel creation is enough. I mean he is the guy that thugs are freaked out by because he just shoots them in the face while Spider-man or Cpt. America might slug them in the jaw.

The level of realism is jacked up in the clothing style and, (not being a gun guy) I’m guessing weapon design. Although I’m pretty sure some of the facial damage is exaggerated for effect. Still, having the stories of a cold, unfeeling killing machine actually be interesting, tense and perhaps a bit heart breaking is no small feat.

At the core of the motivation for Frank is the death of his family that he couldn’t prevent and the atrocities from Viet Nam that he never recovered from. This felt a bit in the vein of First Blood more so than Rambo II (until they dropped him into Russia and he flew out of a military base on a nuclear missile). This feels mature like a great grindhouse movie. It’s simple, I get the motivation, and it’s just damn fun to look at. Then there’s the ridiculous amount of blood spilt and the various amputations and extremely villainous plot for revenge on one man.

Frank is the unmoveable object against the unstoppable force of crime and harm in New York. New people are always ready to fill in the gaps of the people he brings down and he’s ready to oppose them too. He’s fatalistic and accepts his role and eventual death. He continues his fight despite the hopelessness of his situation. He is a self aware man and it is that self awareness that allows him to win. He knows he can stand in one place and fire a gun until the bullets run out while someone else will duck and cover when attempting the same thing.

It’s his self awareness as an unmoving force and not his ruthlessness that allows him to be the Punisher. Only if he is fully aware and realizes his abilities can he be as unfeeling and ruthless as he is presented here. Sure the self awareness is brought to extremes but it was refreshing to read about a character that is completely accepting of his role and the place he created for himself rather than another old man riddled with self-doubt, wondering if they’re doing the right thing. Frank just knows that it won’t stop, he knows he won’t inspire the populace to behave and get along, that for every bullet he spends, he’ll need ten more. He just accepts that and gets on with it. No grandiose statements, no profound personal codes, just one man doing what he can to the best of his abilities.

And sometimes, those abilities mean he gets to take on the entire Russian army and fly away on a nuclear missile, which in case you didn’t know is completely rad.

The Sinestro Corps War has revealed my fear of event comics

2010-09-02T13:55:00.000-04:00

The other late great event comic that I’ve read somewhat after the sell-by date is the Sinestro Corps Wars as found in the pages of the somewhat recently relaunched Green Lantern. I was never a very big Green Lantern fan. Not through any problem I have with the character or any sort of Marvel vs. DC loyalty. I was just never really interested in him. I never dismissed him outright, like other readers have, as just some dude with a magic wishing ring. But I have to say that I used to love the panels on the old Absorbascon blog that had Hal being hit in the head with random yellow stuff.

Is this a great story line? For the character – yes; for the uninitiated – not really. Luckily I had read some of the other recent DC crossovers, so I got the whole superboy prime stuff and the Anti-Monitor being a big deal but so much of the threats and reveals of this story required knowledge of past DC Comics that is felt a bit like a long inside joke. Sure you wouldn’t be totally lost coming to this cold, but unlike Planet Hulk where previous knowledge of the Marvel Universe merely enhances what is there, the big developments and shocking reveals in this storyline require you to have the same knowledge that the writers have.

There’s nothing wrong with giving your new readers something to go back and research. Hey, they’ll buy old comics (or at least the trade collection of Crisis of Infinite Earths, or whatever), and by showing them these really wild and crazy characters that are huge threats could spark imaginations to a point where they go back to just know more. Then again, who am I kidding, anyone reading this comic is likely to have been reading all the comics required to understand everything that happens. I know I’m building a bit of a straw-man argument here, but at the same time, there was enough going on that I just couldn’t follow.

I guess, Blackest Night, would be more of a proper Event comic for me to read but that wasn’t available. And really, this was enough for me. Again, I like the idea of it. Having an opposing force of Yellow Lanterns that take the fight to the Green Lanterns is an idea so perfect for the comic that it’s unbelievable that this is the first time it’s actually happened. Then the spectrum of rings coming out was just that much better. So, why the heck was I basically feeling “meh” about this?

Well, it comes down to a few things really. I didn’t read the complete run of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps before reading these collections. It bothers me that I need to have collected and read two entire series in order to build a relationship with characters I’m supposed to care about. That relationship should be built into the actual story. Heck, I ended up empathizing with the Forgotten Lanterns or whatever they were called, more than the heroes. I kept reading a lot of the non-human characters as “sexy elf chick” or “XXXX-treme army dude” or whatever since they were all basically characterized a bit overly simplistic to a point where I didn’t really care if they made it or not. Having the Guardians of the Galaxy basically address me by saying “oh yeah, make sure that guys lives, he’s super important” is not exactly my favourite type of storytelling.

And then there’s the plot jumps. Okay, it wasn’t the worst, but it could have been used so much better. Rather than have “meanwhile, back at the ranch” type of breaks between areas of the corps war, we could have one plot developing along one narrative line. I felt like I kept getting pulled back like a little kid trying to tell you a joke he once heard at recess. “Oh yeah, and so he was all like ‘bllaaaah’ and, oh yeah, I should have said that he was a vampire, and then, there was this rabbit, did I mention is was happening at the north pole?” etc. etc. I appreciate getting more of the story, but the result felt scattered and pulled me out of the narrative flow a bit too jarringly, only to jump back to finish up the last story. Couldn’t these have been handled in separate books without damaging either narrative?

So, anyway, that’s it for me and event comics for a little while.

Two parts of the same Hulk: Planet Hulk and World War Hulk

2010-08-25T10:36:00.000-04:00

Soooooo, Planet Hulk and World War Hulk. Yeah, I’m kind of coming late to a lot of parties here. What do you want, I’ve got a new kid, so I read what I can get at the library.

I was reading Planet Hulk when it was being released but a job change meant cutting down the subscription and it was one of the books I knew I’d likely get in trade. It’s a pretty simple idea that works unbelievably well. Send the Hulk into space but have him as the protagonist in Spartacus or Gladiator. Voila, comic book gold. There are new characters introduced who are all wonderfully atmospheric to the setting and who are also that wonderful breed of character only found in the Big Two superhero comics – the revamp/archival character rewritten for a modern story. This could be cynically keeping intellectual property on their creations or just a great way to add characters relevant to a story but with a bit of extra “wink, wink” to the comic reader with an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel’s history. Sure there’s some recaps in there too where they talk about their own history just for good measure, but really, there’s some good easter eggs in the new warriors.

Now, why is Planet Hulk so dang good? I have a fairly standard conversation with my wife regarding The Incredible Hulk whenever he comes up, for whatever reason. She simply says, “I just don’t understand The Hulk. I mean what’s the point? He’s not a hero. He doesn’t really do anything.” Whereby I’ll follow up with, “well, that’s kind of exactly the point. It’s sort of about the duality of man. That if left alone we can be peaceful but we have a tendency not to leave well enough alone and end up creating very destructive things from our own technologies and within our own nature. It’s not about him not being the hero but being something that shows how cruel, petty and evil people can be. Yeah, he’s the uncontrollable force but he wouldn’t be a problem if people just weren’t dicks.” Whereby, she says, “Okay, but I still don’t really see the point. Why would I want to watch/read that?”

It kind of hit me while reading Planet Hulk. It’s what surrounds him. It’s how he affects and plays off the characters surrounding him that make him interesting. Create a great setting with great characters then throw him in the middle of it and the character works. Otherwise, it’s just finding a reason to make Bruce Banner mad then smashing stuff. It becomes the slapstick solutions to the problem of Hulking-out that you can find in droves on YouTube.

Give him a reason for his anger that isn’t physical – yes, he’s isolated physically, but it’s the emotional betrayal that fortifies the Hulk here. It cuts on a whole different level that just gets more and more reinforced through his physical challenges until it is brought around full circle to another deeply emotional wound at the end of the arc.

The big difference seems to be that on Sakaar the Hulk has an audience that is being influenced by him. What is the message he gives his followers – destroy at all costs, never stop making them pay, etc. On Earth, those around him tend to either pity him or want to control/destroy him. On Sakaar, they either fear or love him. Fear and love are much different beasts than pity and desire to control/destroy. On Sakaar the desire to understand Hulk are also found on an emotional level rather than the scientific level found on Earth.

In other words, it’s wonderful stuff and by the end of it you simply can’t wait to have him go back to enact his revenge. It is all justifiable and righteous.

And then there’s World War Hulk which just felt like a lot of wasted potential. There was a great game with home runs, the bases are loaded and while there’s a few runs scored, it’s not the grand slam it could have been. Sorry, I’ve been watching a lot more of the Blue Jays than I ever have in my life. There’s some great punch ups, and it’s great to see Hulk being the same righteous leader that he was in Planet Hulk, only playing with the toys of the Marvel universe. The trouble is the same old bugaboo as all these event comics of the last few years. There is simply too much happening outside of the main book for it to have much impact. The original Secret Wars, this is not. That was a comic that explained everything in the comic series itself. Here, there are some good action scenes with Iron Man in his Hulk busting suit, General Thuderbolt Ross, and some bits with Stephen Strange, but overall there were too many quick hits that could have been much more interesting than, hey, I think Hulk is hitting Luke Cage or some of the X-men.

There’s also a gratuitous butt shot of She-Hulk that stands out like a sore thumb to me. There’s a massive sound concussion that blurs everything, except her ass. Okay, maybe her ass has some kind of special sound cancelling properties but this is just completely gratuitous and just annoys the hell out of me. It pulls me out of the comic because it’s one of those unnecessary things that just doesn’t need to be there and cheapens the whole experience for me as a reader.

In the end, what really kind of gets me is that other hobgoblin of the superhero comic mind – the retcon. They didn’t even wait that long for this one. At the end of World War Hulk the protagonist discovers that “hey, this was all a misunderstanding because the justified and righteous reasons that brought you back to earth were actually caused by someone else completely, who went back to their home planet and died there.” So, while there’s an argument that, yeah, the Hulk is still justified because the other heroes acted like dicks, the retconning is a blatant attempt to make them seem somewhat less dickish. The story works better when they are simply wrong and get their asses handed to them like they deserved rather than, oh yeah, whoops I probably shouldn’t have beaten you to near death because something completely unrelated and not even hinted at was the real cause for setting me on this course.

It’s cheap, and it makes me glad I didn’t buy this when it was coming out. It also really just shows the whole problem that Marvel started with Civil War. You can’t have heroes on both sides. Superhero comics just don’t work that way. You can have protagonists, you can have anti-heroes, villains, misunderstood villains, but you can’t have heroes on opposing sides. I know I shouldn’t write in absolutes here, but if you handle things this sloppily, you’re just making your heroes into dicks because you don’t want them to be villains. At least have the gumption to make them out and out villains. Dickish heroes can also work but when it goes across your line and into characters that were never set up that way, it just doesn’t work.

I feel like this whole part of the Marvel history should be like that episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine when the crew goes back to the Tribble episode and they ask Worf about the Klingon’s looking differently. He looks annoyed and says, “we don’t talk about that time.” I kind of hope that’s what happens in the Marvel Universe. It seems to need a good solid flush of the toilet rather than a deal with the devil, that’s what got it into this mess and it ruined a great set up story.

These are good creators who create stuff I like. I guess I understand what it’s like when you’re stuck doing a project that your manager, director or committee ruins. You’re stuck trying to finish it with the most dignity you can and in a manner that you can still try to salvage, but in the end you’re stuck working on yet another lame duck. What a shame.

The New Frontier - do we really need to explore this all again?

2010-08-17T15:43:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I'm reading a lot of books from years ago that people really liked. So sue me, I've been busy.

I’m really torn on this one. On the one hand, I pretty much love anything that Darwyn Cooke does; on the other hand I think I’ve hit critical mass of exploring the DC Universe. I've got to accept my crotchity-old-manness here and just shake my cane at the fools not doing things exactly how I want them.

Here’s the thing though, I wish that the world Darwyn Cooke created for The New Frontier was simply the DC Universe. I like what he’s done and the tension between the super-heroes and the rest of the population in the setting he’s made. A slightly tweaked DC universe that lets all the heroes be heroes without the faux gravitas handled clumsily in so many of today’s superhero comics.

They’re heroes because that’s what they should be doing. Sure there is tension and all the tropes found in the genre, but at its core this is yet another hopeful book that writes over the past to create a retro-future. Sure there’s some rose coloured glasses that are used to view the past, but it makes heroes for today by giving them a past I can identify with and enjoy. Yes, the quirks and social norms of the past can be used to great affect but when the goal is to make a bright and shiney superhero yarn then cleaning up things is fine by me.

It’s sort of a non-problem when what I want is more of what is hinted at and glanced at to tell the story. Each little vignette that tells the larger plot is a world I want to see more of, and it kind of annoys me that the only chance there is to get these stories are in stand-alone stories. I guess this is sort of a rail against the medium type of critique which I didn’t intend since I pretty much love the comic. I guess I just don’t want to be limited to only getting heroic stories that are yet another exploration of one creator’s version of the DC universe. It should just be done in the regular books (in any superhero book at any company).

That’s the rub. This proves that bright, positive comics are extremely well received so why don’t we see more? They aren’t light on conflict, tension or even relevant social issues. They can explore themes, story ideas and even go along the superhero tropes as well, if not better, than yet another grim, everything changes plotline.

These are stories where adventure reigns and the adventurers simply do what needs to be done - some dealing with personal issues, self-doubt, political pressure, or whatever. In the end, they're all heroic which is what the focus should be, rather than the woe-is-me hand wringing followed by "hey! look, something shocking!" It only works when it's not the norm, which is, I guess, why The New Frontier works so well for me. It's the diamond in the rough.

Say, what's that over there?

2010-08-06T10:15:00.000-04:00

A new blog about English Premier League fantasy soccer picks?

Why yes, yes it is.

Dr. Thirteen: I read the modern mainstream superhero critical darling

2010-08-05T13:19:00.002-04:00

I’ve been trying to limit my reading to comics that have been generally well received by sources I trust. Obviously, I trust myself most so I’m okay in just picking up anything by certain authors, but like most anyone reading this, I have a group of blogs and other online sources that I find steer me right. Since the whole reworking of the multiverse in DC over the last few years, this book popped up and was loved by anyone who read it. Or so it seemed in the circles I ran in (i.e. sites I lurked on).

I find that, for whatever reason, I tend to read a lot of superhero stories that explore the nature of the superhero shared continuity. This is no different, and it is done how I like it. The writing and the art both perfectly capture the sheer joy that can be found in the DC universe. It hits the high notes of being able to go metatextual in having the Architects subbing in as the four main creators brought in to guide the comic line over the recent past/present; exploring the past of adventure, war, magic and space comics; and to explore how a normal guy who is logically skeptical can exist in a fantastically illogical setting.

The story hits on what DC has been very successful at lately, in dusting off their legacy properties and introducing them to the modern reader. The real highlight for the non-comic book reading public was probably JLU, but if you look at DC from about the late eighties when Swamp Thing was relaunched this is pretty much their M.O. Heck, they’ve managed a heck of a lot of reboots in the last decade, and sure, not all of them stick or are good, I still think there’s a definite winning ratio here.

I love how there’s no shying away at just how simply wacky and frenetic DC comics can be in this series. Azzarello just starts playing with the toys, so to speak, and goes hog wild with them. I think the last Azzarello DC comic I read was from his Batman run and while I liked the individual aspects of the story, in the end I just didn’t follow it. Then again, I’m half remembering that but it did have me a bit hesitant to pick up this book, even with all the positive reviews. And, well, I could just look at Cliff Chiang’s art all day long. The bright happy presentation just matches the zany plot perfectly.

This is one of the books I’d recommend to people who want to understand what being a superhero comic fan is all about. It introduces all the ideas of a shared universe without requiring a crazy amount of time and money investment to get the back story. I feel overwhelmed by a lot of ongoing superhero books where if I just join the story mid-arc I’m lost but there’s just a rabbit hole of back story to get in order to catch up. Not so here. Sure, knowing about the various Crisis bits might help, but I don’t think it would take away from understanding. It didn’t for me.

Minutes to Midnight: Twelve Essays on Watchmen

2010-08-03T14:51:00.001-04:00

Get out the dusty pocket book, open the wallet and let the moth fly away free and use that hard earned credit to buy the first published book that has me listed as a contributing author. I’m crazy excited by this development and it ranks second only to the birth of my son in terms of recently amazing developments in my life.

Available in this month’s Previews (August 2010) for an October release, you’ll find Minutes to Midnight: Twelve Essays on Watchmen. Inside you’ll find my hopefully fairly coherent writings on how the different points of view that frame the comic and give it structure and symmetry also creates meaning in the text. I explore how the idea of fearful symmetry is explored in the physical text but also in the different world views of the characters and their accompanied symbols.

It’s edited by Richard Bensam with essays by Mary Borsellino, Tim Callahan, Julian Darius, Walter Hudsick, Geoff Klock, John Loyd, Patrick Meaney, Chad Nevett, Gene Phillips, William Richie, and Peter Sanderson.

The book will be available from Amazon and Lulu as well as at New York Comic Con on October 8th. Buy a copy for yourself, someone who loves Watchmen, or anyone else that can read English.

Like my wife says, this should really get me blogging again. I'm hoping it'll get me writing more, too.

The Swamp Thing's the Thing.

2010-07-13T09:04:00.001-04:00

A few months ago I finally finished reading Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing. At the time I was reading it the Darkest Night/Brightest Day event was taking place (or is it still going on?). Anyway, I found it slightly amusing that Alan Moore did a similar type of arc in Swamp Thing. Okay, not the emotional spectrum aspect, that’s a great idea, but having Swamp Thing travel through space an becoming different colours at each location seems fairly reminiscent. Related, probably, direct rip-off, not likely.

When I first started to read Swamp Thing I thought that the key metaphor was tree rings. That the series and stories were structured around a series of concentric rings that envelope one another. The series would hop from one layer to another and as the years passed a new layer would be added. As I finish up Alan Moore’s run on it, that metaphor feels more apt than ever.

These stories went from exploring the roots of the character to the depths of a recreated shared universe. They found Batman in Gotham and Adam Strange on Raan. They invented a mythos of their own while playing with the toys of a shared space. There were mysteries, horror comics, postmodern cut-ups, sci-fi stories, you name it – Swamp Thing managed to explore the aspects of creativity as much as the form of comic books.

I guess with the whole thing about Vertigo and DC getting the band back together, that’s what I’d hope for. I don’t really care if these characters interact or not so long as the stories being told are masterful. I’m a simple guy that way. Tell a good story and I’ll be happy.

Today I learned that Harvey Pekar died and I regret not ever reading any of his work. It’s been on my list of things to read for years now. I feel like I never found the time because I was too busy catching up on Alan Moore’s career. Now seems like the time to, at least, get something out of the library.

Great Canadian Theatre Company Poster

2010-04-19T09:51:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I was walking home from the grocery store when I passed the Great Canadian Theatre Company (http://www.gctc.ca/) and notice this wonderful poster. To advertise their next season they've apparently contracted a bunch of Canadian Cartoonists (I'm assuming they're all Canadian) to make advertising materials. You can see the poster I originally saw at the bottom of the link I sent although depending on when you read this, it may have changed.

Anyway, I see Jeff Lemire's work along with what I think is Faith Erin Hicks. Can anyone identify the rest of them?

Mind = Blown

2010-04-15T10:04:00.003-04:00

I just finished reading the first book of the Omnibus collection for Jack Kirby's Fourth World. When my friend lent it to me his words were "prepare for you mind to be blown." I knew it was going to be wall to wall ideas thrown onto the panels but I don't think I was quite ready for what I got.

I love how everything is simply introduced and the reader just runs with it, much like the characters. I was told that the core element of the whole Fourth World stories is that it's basically a passion play. While I can see that I also think there's something a bit more going on. Yes, there's the structure of myths and legends that's found in most religious stories but there's also a blending of ideas.

I think these stories reflect the time in which they were created as much, if not more than their structure as mythical legends and stories of new gods. Jimmy Olsen and the new Newsboy Legion are at odds with the older generation embodied in Superman and the original NBL. The older generations take a patronizing view towards them, even when they're right to worry and protect their general approach to keep information hidden is what really leads to the trouble. As much, if not more so, than the youthful energy and curiosity of the protagonists. These people were once just as impetuous and unflappable that it's frustrating when they don't realize how they're acting in a way that doesn't recognize the same quality in their kids.

Science is at a point where it takes on mythical procedures, raising people from the dead and creating fantastical and grotesque versions of humanity. Light and dark are split along with nature and manufacturing. There is a blending of ideas on fundamental ideas to present very familiar foundations to the viewer. Sure, the details are different but Mohammed still goes to the mountain or the mountain comes to him. I can never remember how that saying goes, but when Jimmy Olsen looks for the mountain, it literally snatches him up. I could sit here all day pointing out how Kirby has taken countless dichotomies to create new synchronies to create a new reality full of dichotomies within which the characters struggle.

All of this reflects the reality that I believe Kirby was seeing around him. Young people and their parents were looking at the world in vastly different ways because of the events that shaped generations. It’s present here, not just in the wars they fought, but in how they carve out a place for themselves in the world. They fail to see the similarities they share because of events that distinctly cut off youth and adolescence with adulthood. The young man volunteers for a war and comes home an adult to a changed place. The current youth are being dragged into a new war and are aware of what happened to their parents so are going reluctantly. Behind all of this is a society that is struggling with its ever increasing secularity. God is dead and science killed him only to end up being worshiped in a similar manner and God won’t wait around to die but marshal forces to come back ever more fervently. Just look to how religion and science co-exist so peacefully today.

I think these are some of the ideas Kirby’s work is revealing. Although you might not get a chance to see it behind all the wonderful crackle that is thrown at you asking you to simply keep up and enjoy the ride. Just wear an explosion proof helmet or your brain may explode if you’re not ready for this.

What I do like though, and I think needs more attention drawn to it, is that even though Kirby is dealing with big ideas here, he’s coming at it with such joy that it just reads as ever more groundbreaking. You can be contemporary without being realistic, without being gruesome and without trying to consciously be adult. In fact, that’s the problem right there. Be contemporary without being immature and you’ll create good comics.

Comics on the radio

2010-03-16T15:44:00.006-04:00

Last night I heard All In a Day interview Tom Fowler and Jeff Parker about Mysterius the Unfathomable (aka yet another comic I forgot about but am now reminded to get but is in good company). It's always so nice to catch a bit of my nerdly leanings on the "normal" media. Not just because it's something I like being talked about but because when two guys like this who are personable and clearly having fun doing something they love, it gets me all excited about comics again. It reminds me of their charm and joy along with the fact that with the internet I can simply avoid crap comics now and continue to focus on stuff I enjoy or am more likely to enjoy.

It made my day and I hope I can sneak out of the office long enough to get a copy of the trade and get it signed by Tom on St. Paddy's day (or as I like to call it "Invent an Irish Relative Day" - my great great grandfather's cousin once had an Irish setter which is why I speak with this outrageously mangled Irish accent).

Collecting some thoughts on Essex County

2010-02-19T09:00:00.002-05:00

One of the things I love most about comics and all cartooning for that matter is that they create an obviously interpreted world. In my opinion comic art that exaggerates or simplifies the world in meaningful ways is what appeals so much about the artform. Yes, there is a lot of personal aesthetics involved when approaching or talking about art – some people don’t like black and white, me – I’m not a huge fan of photorealism. If I wanted things to “look real” then I’d just watch something with live actors. This isn’t to say that photorealism is worse than other art, there is a lot of skill and love that goes into that work and it can be very impressive. However, the strength of the cartoon medium is that nothing needs to be realistic.

Blending realistic elements into comics, on the other hand, does seem to work when you think about narrative. I should really get my thoughts together on Maus, which I just re-read. It is a masterful combination of real and cartoon, but if you flipped the elements and made the art more photoreal and the narrative more fictional it just wouldn’t hold the same appeal. Now, simplified doesn’t mean lazy or messy. When I see simplified artwork I see a wonderful economy of linework. Every piece must be just right in order for it to work; there is care in the placing of every element on a page.

Combine this style of art with a good story and you’ve got me hooked (most times). For whatever reason I find that in having characters that can be expressive and “act” for the artist seems to allow for stronger storytelling. This allows for really fantastical stories but it also allows more down to earth and real “slice of life” storytelling. By keeping one aspect stylized, the rest of the elements become more powerful in the weird balance of ideas that Scott McLoud explores a lot better than I ever hope to.

So what’s all this leading to? I reread Jeff Lemire’s Essex County and it’s really fucking good. I’m generally burned out on the usual Can Lit stuff (depressing things happening in small communities) but his art and story telling completely sucks me in. I’d read the first two volumes previously, and my wife picked up the collected edition for me as a Christmas gift, and I happily read the whole thing cover to cover. The way these lives intersect and inform one another is made all the more engaging simply by how the pages look. The characters come to life with Lemire’s lines and inks that is both heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. You see the pain of ages on faces and the desire to get lost in imagination. The connection to the land and the ties of history are all reflected in the enduring love that one character has for another.

Essex County is really a great place to visit that slowly draws you in and reveals the connection that these characters have to one another and to the place. This isn’t a tapestry, it’s a lovely torn rag mat that was put together by someone who is wisely frugal. Shit, I should have written this based around that metaphor – it really is a beautifully woven and solid piece of work that invites you in and stays with you after you put it down, which I used to find incredibly rare in comics (but I’m seeing my tastes change and my purchases lead me to more material that isn’t just simple plot).

The Decompression Project - The End?

2010-01-20T09:28:00.001-05:00

Aaaaaand, I finally managed to get my library account up and running again. The local branch is being renovated, I moved and met various other life goals in the last few months – so comic books have gone waaaaaaaay down the priority list. Writing about them is slightly in front of getting poisoned in my list of things to do.

Anyway, I got Volume 20 of Ultimate Spider-Man and pretty much forgot the entire plot of what happened before this volume. I know I enjoyed them, the proof is throughout the archives here. But this time, I got to say that I found it a lot less enjoyable. I still think that it’s a well constructed comic. I think the dialogue is fine, I think the action could be a little more exciting though, but all in all, it’s a decent distraction.

I think what’s happening is that this is just more of the same. It’s starting to get a bit less distinguishable from anything else that I could read and with so much great stuff out there I wonder why I’m reading something that’s merely good. Okay, damning with very faint praise I know. It is good, but I just feel like I can’t relate to this anymore or don’t particularly want to. I’ve realized that I’m glad high school is long behind me and I don’t particularly need to revisit any of it in my entertainment choices anymore.

I think this will be the last volume I check out of the library. I’m going to try some manga instead as my next long-term library reading series. Thankfully Chris Butcher has given a bit of guidance, although I’ll likely be checking out a few other things that catch my eye rather than just go through his best of the decade stuff. Or, most important of the decade as I guess he’s calling his series.

So yeah, this just felt more teen drama than teen drama superhero comic.

The Batman Bible

2009-12-16T11:54:00.003-05:00

Okay, while that might be a decent idea for a single issue comic this isn't about any type of Batman based religion. Someone has posted a pdf of the writer's bible for Bruce Timm's animated Batman series.

As I've said many times before, this is probably one of, if not my all time, favourite incarnation of the character. What I particularly like about this document is that it says what all Batman and superhero fans think - there is no real need to re-tell his origin. Yes, it plays a big part in the very nature of the character, but there's no need to get caught up in the details of retelling it. It is basically common knowledge, so move past it and just start to use the format to tell stories.

For the most part the information here was seen throughout the series, except for the origin of Mr. Freeze. The eventual show about him was much better than the original idea. It's probably one of the best reworkings of a Batman villain that this series offers, although I'm quite partial to the Clayface two-parter.

I always find it interesting to see the nuances that are created by this type of document. How the show's creators work out the subtle relationships between the characters while in and out of the costume. I think the end result was a series that approached Batman as a millieu through which they could tell fantastic crime stories - from mysteries, to scary stories, to riddles, to death traps and global spanning espionage intrigues. In short this is the idea of Batman distilled to its essence all while keeping the sense of wonder and fun that is at the core of anything animated or comic book based. When you're just making shit up, you don't need to worry about the budget, so go nuts as long as it makes sense to the story.

Neat-o - Girl Comics

2009-12-15T13:42:00.002-05:00

Heidi at The Beat, has this wonderful new announcement from Marvel. What a great idea. I'll be going to pick up an issue when it's out to support this type of creative effort by any company. Funny how it's the exact contrast from the last post here...

I really hope it's as good as we all want it to be. Well, all of us except the guaranteed jerks who'll start asking for Boys Comics. Sheesh.

Y the Last Man, Women In Marvel and DC Earth One: All-in-One!

2009-12-08T11:26:00.004-05:00

I was gathering my thoughts on the last two volumes of Y the Last Man that I’ve just recently finished when there are suddenly two comic book internet stories that peaked my interest. I think they both relate to what I was going to say. Firstly there was Abhay Khosla's story about the role of women in the recent Marvel mega-crossovers. Then there’s DC’s announcement of the new Batman and Superman original graphic novel series.

Yeesh, where to start? I’ll do the quick hits first I suppose. Y the Last Man’s narrative continues to move along crisply as Yorick arrives on the shores down under to discover his quest has been extended as Beth has moved on to Paris. The main action then gears towards Japan as the misfit group goes to find his monkey who is likely the key to the whole gendercide. Hijinks ensue and this continues to be one of my favourite series. There are more flashbacks giving the reader greater insight into Agent 355’s past as well as Dr. Mann’s. I think I’ve kind of figured out what it is that I like about this series. It just presents its ideas to the reader as fact. Australia is dealing with a major heroine problem (good pun by the way). Yorick is a talented escape artist. 355 is a bad-ass. Japan has sexbots and a Canadian pop star managed to take over the Yakuza. Things just come and go and while you never get the whole story, the narrative is stronger because of it. There is just enough plot and information provided to keep things moving. A lot happens and people continue to all focus on their own agenda as they try to survive.

At it’s core, this is a book that continues to show the petty nature of people as everyone continues to have their own personal goals and objectives and that is their focus whether it benefits others or not. All of the loftier goals are merely a side product of the personal quests for each of the characters and that is what makes the quest continue to be interesting. We, as readers, are experiencing the plot through these characters so having them each bring something relatable to the narrative is key to keeping us engaged. Sure we can also see the bigger narrative which makes all their petty nature seem even more frustrating. In the end though, these are characters that just seem human. There aren’t a lot of people who are altruistic – most of us would spend all our time pining over lost loves or trying to make ourselves more comfortable. It’s all very human in all its frustrating glory.

Then I read The Savage Critic post about the women of Marvel and I’m stuck with a terrible thought that the only way I can read a superhero comic where the women are presented as characters is only when all the male characters are killed off. I know that Y isn’t a superhero comic and that equating the two is apples and oranges but I think it’s a decent thought experiment. I wonder what would happen if a similar gendercide took place in the Marvel U. The cynic in me thinks that we’d end up with the flip side to Y the Last Man where all the same criticisms and failings of people are reduced to the criticisms and failings of women. I don’t think Y strays from critically examining certain behaviours, and it really shouldn’t – I mean how could it? This is a world populated by women, struggling to survive gender roles are explored but not in a hamfisted way. Yes, there’s subtext that reaches into the real world and by not ignoring that, the creators of Y the Last Man have created a stronger narrative in my opinion. It works because it is aware of what it is saying beyond the page.

I shudder to think what a Marvel cross-over that involved all the male heroes dying would entail. I just think it would involve too much of a cultural shift at the company to manage anything other than more male power fantasies and stories that more or less continue to entrench perceived gender roles rather than explore, critique or comment upon them. It could all very well be coincidence what Abhay points out, after all, but there is still a trend that he easily identifies and to not be aware of that is in itself a problem. Sort of like the racist stereotypes in the last Transformers movie - you see it and wonder how the heck that could happen, then you think of all the people disinterested, unconcerned or simply too busy to provide positive oversight. In the end, I’m just glad I continue to buy the comics I buy and that I’m not limiting myself to reading superhero stuff.

Then there’s the DC announcement that’s been making the rounds on all the other comic blogs and retailer blogs that you already read, right? I want to be optimistic about this, and I’m going to be until there is a reason I shouldn’t be. I like what they’re trying to do, and I wish them all the best in their efforts. I agree with pretty much everything I’ve read about yet another origin story. These origin stories are pretty much in the realm of public domain. Ask anyone on the street, at random, to give you the origin of Batman or Superman and they can do it. Then ask them if they read comics, or have ever read comics and you’ll see that it doesn’t matter. Sure, an updated origin can help set the context for the narrative but change it too much and you don’t have the characters anymore.

I’m no retailer or marketer so I won’t presume to tell anyone how to market and sell their books, but I do know what I’m looking for when I buy something. If this series takes the same old approach to continuity as all other comic book series then it won’t be on my list of items to buy. Yes, if the stories are strong enough and the creators are creating something fantastic I’ll buy, however, I don’t just want more stories where I need to read everything in the series to understand it. If they take a “monster of the week” approach rather than a “to be continued” approach, then I’d be more likely to be interested. I hope the creators just come to this project from a place where they assume you already know the basics so they just explore the story and the characters revealing the new world through the plot and narrative presented rather than “oh but this Alfred is Scottish SAS and he has a goatee! And Robin is an interdimensional robot!” Actually, that robot thing would be kind of cool. What I’d like is a series of GNs that could be read in any order. That would be groundbreaking. It worked for Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers, and it worked for superheroes when they started. It can work again with this undertaking.

I guess I can’t help but be cynical about something marketed directly at a core demographic in the core demographic’s terminology with a smattering of “new reader friendly.” I don’t think that’s a concern for new readers. They just want Batman and Superman stories that they can pick up and enjoy without being required to read x, y or z to understand what’s going on. Heck, I want that and I’m not a new reader.

Scott Pilgrim: +5 Critical Hit

2009-11-05T09:58:00.002-05:00

In my continuing quest to only review comics that everyone has already read, I finally get to Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe.

I find myself running into the same problem as most reviewers at this point in the series. We all know it’s a solid series and this volume is no different in that regard. This volume doesn’t play up Scott’s battles as the focus of the plot. The focus tends to be on the characters around him reacting to the constant battles; in this case, a bunch of hi-tech battle-bots.

Having the main narrative focus switch from Scott to Ramona (and to a lesser extent Kim Pine) was quite a brave move here. I mean, Scott’s name is on the title of the book but he’s certainly not the main focus. Rather we’re given more of a story about the supporting women in the larger plot. It works out well because by this point, five volumes in, the audience “gets it.”

The refocusing onto these characters allows the reader to get a better connection to the world. It helps us understand why they are important to Scott and why he’s important to them. That even though he’s generally self-focused their friendship for him is stronger. Although, to be honest, I was getting a bit tired of it in this volume. While he’s certainly a charming character I was starting to wonder why everyone was being so patient with him all the time. It certainly feels real for the time of life these characters are in, but for me I kind of moved beyond spending too much energy on selfish louts.

Weird, I didn’t think I felt like that about this book. I generally liked it and it has me anxiously awaiting the final volume and the movie version, but I found myself beginning to lose patience with the main character. I still love the ideas behind this series and I love the characters but I was also happy to have something of a refocusing onto characters I wanted to know more about. While it would be fantastic, part of me hopes we don’t get a Ramona Flowers Adventures type of follow up. I like her mystery and to see where her story goes. I have a feeling it’ll lose that beguiling nature if it’s explored.

Swamp Thing: A Murder of Crows (or how I learned to stop worrying and start loving crossover events again).

2009-10-28T14:04:00.002-04:00

Trying to come up with anything new to say about these Swamp Thing Collections is not the easiest task I’ve ever set for myself. What can I say that is possibly new after all these years of this series sitting on shelves being well known, well read and well respected?

I suppose I can recap how this is a book of two halves – the horror story tropes that make up the first few chapters (the serial killer episode is particularly well done, I’m a sucker for superhero fare where the hero is a background player) and the second half that is Alan Moore involving Swamp Thing into the Crisis of Infinite Earths. It’s kind of weird to be reading something involved in the first major publisher-wide cross-over event when it seems that each time the seasons change we’re given a new one. Each summer we have a corporate cross-over and each winter we’re given a title-wide crossover that might affect other titles if the thing does well or “gets legs.”

The more I read Swamp Thing, the more I kind of want this book to be a primer for anyone thinking of writing mature superheroics. It’s sort of the bible for mature superhero writing – it’s the template that everyone follows but there is a heck of a lot of misinterpretation. It’s not the mature themes that make this a mature book but the construction of the narratives. The crossover chapters don’t simply bring in forgotten characters willy-nilly they bring them in because the characters are relevant to the narrative. Heck, there are characters that are dramatically killed off, but in a manner that actually has relevance to the story other than being merely sensational or as a tableau for some gory artwork. Imagine having everything and everyone there to actually move forward the plot/narrative in your current summer crossover? It’s been done, I’ve read the proof.

I guess what I’m enjoying underneath all the other greatness of the series is that these are stories where the creative team was simply trusted to create good stories, even when they were dragged into larger events. I don’t think I get the feeling from today’s large events, although there are always a few exceptions (heck I have a few that I really liked). This doesn’t mean I dislike today’s event comics; I just like the type of thing on offer here a lot more. This is good writing and art done within the bounds of editorially mandated crossover.

There is a real innocence here as well. Sure, Swamp Thing as a series maintains a connection to the horror comic tropes it was founded upon but it is also thrust directly into the DCU proper. Yes, the wider DCU characters tend to be the ones inhabiting the fringes but it’s kind of fun to see how this is all happening in the same world where Batman can show up and scowl at John Constantine for a bit. I can understand why the Vertigo books are now in their own silo, but there’s just something inherently fun about having the DCU underwear perverts show up in all these early Vertigo books (heck Animal Man was basically mature DCU too). It’s nice to be reminded that even silly superheroes can be done well and with a bit of meaning.

On a completely different note, I’m always shocked at Alan Moore’s knowledge of obscure stuff. I think I’m just too easily amazed at how people knew stuff before Google. I just found out about the Winchester House through the Cracked website. One of the ghost stories in this collection is based on this place. I thought it was a brilliant idea and now I’m a bit more creeped out that it’s based on a real place.

Superhero History of World War 2

2009-10-22T11:58:00.005-04:00

I read this post on io9 and this one on Comics Alliance and decided to take Agan Harahap's idea and rip it off completely.

I wish I had the brains to come up with these great ideas. In the absense of unique thought, I'll just contribute to online memes - they're quicker and easier.

Just in time for Halloween: The Walking Dead Vols 9 & 10

2009-10-20T14:08:00.000-04:00

As I was reading the last few volumes of The Walking Dead I had moments where I kind of just felt I had enough and that I got the point of the whole thing. People are pretty shitty and horribly violent to one another in the face of unprecedented fear and that violence begets more violence (and that it is an easy slippery slope to find yourself on once you commit one horrible act).

I found the whole ordeal with the Governor a bit tiring as my taste for the ol’ ultraviolence has tempered as I leave my teens further and further behind. Less of that pent up angst once you own a house I’m guessing. The siege of the prison was appropriately thrilling and the deaths were legitimately shocking to me and when it was all said and done I must say that I was seriously hooked on the whole series again. It managed to pull the rug out from under me by essentially hitting the reboot button.

I read volumes nine and ten in conjunction and in many ways it feels like the series has found its feet again. That wasn’t meant to be a pun on the whole road trip thing that the characters are on, but it works, so self-congratulatory pat on the back for that unintentional pun. Anyway, I enjoyed the slower pace and seeing Rick and Carl meet up with some fellow survivors both new and old. Having the heroes get a purpose again helps feel like the series has a bit of direction again as I always felt that the prison setup was just going to last until Kirkman could figure out how to evict the survivors.

Volume nine focuses more on Carl and what his role as a kid who witnesses tragedy and horror entails. It’s a weird place for a still young child to be, at the age just before really hitting puberty but still capable of being responsible while not quite at the stage of wanting independence. He’s not deluded but he still holds a love for his parents and a fascination with the world he’s still discovering. In some very direct ways he’s dealing with the death of his mother and sister in a more mature way than his father who still requires something physical to hold onto.

Volume ten has the survivors both new and old on the road to Washington. The tension and suspense is ramped up because of the prison siege and there are some great new ideas about zombie herds and how some of these people survived. I find myself being sucked into the double guessing and the suspicion of the new characters – is he really a scientist or just a survivalist trying to be important? Will he be gunned down randomly?

There is the familiar setup of the two alpha males at odds and the long suffering support character ready to abandon hope as well as the elements of tension thrown in like the unsound friend or depressed lover. Having a quest for the hero is always a more appealing story structure for me rather than seeing the details of how the hero lives at home. Sure it’s interesting to wonder what happened after the grand adventure but even the greatest of heroes tend to use that time to try and figure out how to get back on the road, so having Rick, Carl and the other survivors out there amidst the walking undead is something I like in this series – it feels to me to have more purpose, in thought and action.

And yet it’s strange because while the plot feels to be back on track and going somewhere the narrative action remains quite intimate. There is a lot of time spent between father and son, and a new group of survivors slowly sniffing each other out. You feel the tension of all these people having witnessed horrible events, and Kirkman sets up this feeling really well when the groups meet. There doesn’t need to be a longer explanation right away but when it comes, it’s sort of an extra spice to a solidly built meal.

Don’t read this if you’re looking for a happy little read – it’s incredibly depressing but because it’s actually presented really well, not in a “jeez, I guess they’re all getting horribly tortured and killed again” way. Now, lets see the challenges they need to overcome along the way. I’m back on for the ride.

New to me Comic Shop: Golden Age Collectibles, Vancouver, BC

2009-10-16T12:42:00.000-04:00

Wow, it seems that having a new house, a steady flow of guests and a conference on the other side of the country every two weeks means that posting to an already spotty scheduled blog gets even more random.

What I’ve been enjoying recently though is that I get to see comic shops in other parts of the country. Sure, they’re more or less the same in the most basic sense but after my experience in Victoria I’ve noticed that there’s a huge difference in the spirit of shops. Last night I went to Golden Age Collectibles in Vancouver. I wasn’t as much a fan as I was of Legends, but it’s still a great shop and one I liked more than the local shops in Ottawa. It could just be the novelty but I liked the arrangement by favourite authors and then everything else alphabetically. The staff was nice, they were helpful and knew their stuff and well, they were located by my downtown hotel and open late enough on a weeknight for me to hit the shop after the various events, receptions and cocktail parties I had to attend.

If you’re in Vancouver it’s well worth a stop.

Iron Man vs. Penguin Classics

2009-10-06T10:25:00.003-04:00

Via io9.

Wow, these new Rian Hughes/Matt Fraction Invincible Iron Man covers are simply fantastic. They remind me of the old Penguin Classics covers which immediately associates forward thinking and smart in my brain. I like the idea of retro-futurism, the idea of looking forward by mining the best aspects of our past. Go with what works and repurpose it into something new - an idea that sits at the heart of Tony Stark and Iron Man.

So easy and spontaneous: Invited to a Windows 7 Release Party

2009-10-05T15:01:00.005-04:00

Okay this is definately not comics, but I've just signed away the rights to my likeness to be used as promotional material for Microsoft because a friend of mine is hosting a Windows 7 Release Party. I'm a bit torn about this because on the one hand, he's a great friend and I really don't have the same hate-on for Microsoft as most people but on the other I really don't want to be used as part of a marketing plan by a major conglomorate and I like the parties I attend to not be sales jobs (not that it'll be a sales pitch in the least - Maritime kitchen party). I suppose I can just look dishevelled and get shitfaced enough so they won't want my likeness anywhere near their product unless they're going for the even beligerent drunks can use this angle. I'm sure my wife would appreciate that approach.

When the promo "how to host a party" videos first went online I was worried about this, but thankfully the remixes show just how much fun one can have with this type of thing. I wonder if I can use this to combine the themes with my next post about the latest couple of Walking Dead collections?

New-to-me Comic Shop: Legends

2009-09-29T13:57:00.001-04:00

I finally found another example of my ideal comic shop. The only problem—it’s in Victoria BC, which is the other side of the country. Much like The Beguiling, I found myself walking into Legends with a real sense of peace. It was almost like a homecoming.

It’s a small space packed floor to ceiling with comics, many arranged to highlight writers, artists and cartoonists. There’s art books, indie stuff, and the superhero trades with nary a figurine in sight. It felt sort of like walking into the ideal home library, is the best way to put it.

They know the audience they’re going for, and I feel like I fit right in. I ended up picking up the last couple of Walking Dead trades and I went back to get a gift for an eight-year-old, and was recommended Amulet (he’s about to finish Bone). All-in-all a great comic buying experience that just had a cool vibe. It could just be the whole West-coast thing since Victoria generally had a more laid back pace to it but I think this shop is something special. It seems like it should be easy to have more places like this but for whatever reason, I haven’t found them.

I really wish there were more shops like this, bookstores specializing in comics (or whatever you feel like calling them). Well worth the visit if you’re in Victoria BC.

Not-so-supreme

2009-09-15T11:36:00.002-04:00

I was recently at a friend’s place and he recommended that I try reading the first volume of Squadron Supreme by J. Michael Straczynski and Gary Frank. So he lent me the Supreme Power trade and I eventually found the time to give it a whirl. We’d talked about it before and I knew the general idea behind it and in the end all I can really come up to describe it, is that first sentence he used to describe the series. It’s basically a Marvel version of an Elseworlds Justice League story that’s kind of trying to be like Watchmen.

Okay, maybe that is a bit harsh since there really isn’t anything wrong with this comic. The art is good, the characters are well developed and well written. The plot is engaging and the motivations for the characters all make sense. In the end, I sort of felt like this was all very familiar though and that while good it wasn’t the kind of pastiche I usually go for. On paper, it sounds like it should be my kind of thing and I’ve been trying to figure out for a few weeks now just why it wasn’t. I guess it just felt a bit too tied down to the analogous source material in some ways.

I don’t mind the riffs on the Justice League, but this just didn’t go far enough I think. These characters are full of potential, as is the plot, but the setup was just a bit too familiar and it all kind of felt a bit too much like what people who criticize superhero comics complain about. It’s all sort of been done before.

I’ll likely borrow my friend’s copy of the second volume and read a bit more of the plot since I do think it’s a decent conspiracy story and I’d like to see where the characters are going and how they all end up as players in the narrative. I guess I’m just a bit burned out on origin stories or something. I think it works as a more adult version of the Justice League but I kept wondering why I couldn’t just be reading a Justice League story instead. Does that make sense?

Busy day...

2009-09-02T15:47:00.002-04:00

I am making a concerted effort to post more but when I consider how I got the keys to my new house yesterday and am painting the whole thing, today is my birthday, my major work project got sent to the printer, and I'm stuggling to organize my thoughts on Supreme Power, I have to say one of those things has to give.

Disney buys Marvel

2009-08-31T15:11:00.002-04:00

Holy moly, true believers! Disney has purchased Marvel for $4-billion. I could try and do this in Stan Lees wonderful purple prose, or I could think of the awesome possibility of Pixar taking on one of Marvel's properties. Pretty much any of them really, although Pixar has already managed quite well with The Incredibles and they've got way to many of their own stories to tell to really get bogged down in licensed properties. But on the flip-side, I kind of worry about a Dark Avengers/Scrooge McDuck cross-over in anything other than, say videogame form like Kingdom Hearts.

What I like about Hellboy

2009-08-27T10:07:00.001-04:00

Well there are many things that I like about the series and the character but when it comes down to it, what I really like about both is just how succinct the whole thing is without feeling rushed or empty.

MCMX - Back to the posting.

2009-08-25T14:30:00.003-04:00

Wow, and out of the blue there was another post.

A couple of weeks ago I was waiting for my take-away Pad Thai so I went across the street to see what comics were available at the local library branch. I ended up picking up the latest League of Extraordinary Gentlemen trade Century 1910. It seems I can only really read comics by Alan Moore these days. I don’t know, I think it’s in my contract or something. Actually that’s not so true, I just read another Hellboy trade but how many times can I just write, “Hellboy trades are just so awesome!”?

Anyway, I knew this wasn’t the whole Black Dossier, 3D glasses, confuse the bloody bejeesus out of everyone hybrid graphic novel so I gave it a whirl. I really liked the original story, but the second volume left me a bit cool. This one, left me a bit more disconnected from the material. I liked it well enough and thought the caper and characters were all quite well done and interesting. I just didn’t find them as engaging as the characters in the first volume.

There were some great ideas presented – the man trapped in London throughout history, bringing in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (which really is a great book by the way - Woolf is one of the rare classic authors whose prose I find extremely readable), and well the general intrigue of the times engaged by the occult. But what happened more, for me, was that this was Alan Moore referring to a bunch of things I had no connection to or little understanding of. While it doesn’t completely detract from the enjoyment of the work, it does a bit more than in the original volume or even Watchmen. In those works the deeper understanding reveals hidden layers to the narrative whereas here understanding the narrative almost requires a passing knowledge (or more) of what is being referred to.

Thankfully there are Jess Nevins’ online annotations because it really helps me understand just what the heck is going on. I know nothing about the Threepenny Opera, or Jenny Diver (other than she’s referenced in the song Mac the Knife, which also plays a role here) and well, all the English pulp heroes. I realize that I’m complaining about being a lazy reader here, but honestly, I would rather enjoy the work for what it is rather than as a source for further reading in order to come back and understand it. Although that’s mostly what this work is about for me, and that’s not really a bad thing.

What I think this book is really about is rereading. Read through the text once and while you can get the surface plot elements and whatever references you’re familiar with, the rest of the meaning comes through by actively learning about the elements. Read Jess Nevins’ annotations, find out what the visual metaphors are, use them to read more and discover new works you didn’t know about (populate your own fiction collection the way Alan Moore combines them in his world where all of fiction exists together).

So yeah, it’s good, but at times it feels to be a meaningless read, particularly if you just want a quick yarn about some potential Armageddon starring some literary characters. You do get some of that, but with enough Greek Chorus and sung narration that you kind of realize that your nose is being rubbed into what you might not know or be familiar with.

Story ideas - the next Super-Pro

2009-07-22T08:38:00.003-04:00

Okay I seem to be in about a once a month posting schedule now - life happens, don't ya know? - but I came across this story today in the Globe and Mail that is pretty much an origin story for the Canadian version of Super-Pro. Nice American kid comes up north and just starts tackling would be street toughs around Edmonton. The best thing is that he could actually call himself the Edmonton Eskimo even if it's a slightly racist term these days - I'm not entirely sure on the protocol for using Eskimo anymore.

I'd read at least one whole issue of this dude watching street crime and saying , "Well, KJ, you gotta do what you gotta do" before he dives into action. He could fight all your typical Edmonton crime, not just purse snatchings - bars watering down the draft beer, someone not driving a pickup truck, people not voting Conservative, all the classics.

Other people's ideas

2009-06-30T10:06:00.003-04:00

Over on the always updated and always enjoyable to read Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin, he's got a bit of a thought experiment going on about what would happen if the big companies limited their characters to being in one core title only, and one team book. It's a neat little idea, and has given us the concept of Wolverine: The Roaring '20s #1 (guest-starring the Great Gatsby), which sounds like the best idea for a Wolverine comic since the Agent of Shield stuff.

It's got me thinking a little bit about the industry side of comics again, and while I'm not about to make a blanket statement about something I know next to nothing about, I will say that what he's thinking about is kind of how I'm feeling about the whole thing for a while now. I don't buy monthly books anymore, which is just my choice more than anything. Personal finances, not working right next door to a comic shop any longer and well, just wanting to know I'll be getting quality material has lead to this.

I don't want to take a dig at any company but when I'm trying to be better with my finances it just doesn't make sense to have a monthly obligation. There's a lot of good comics out there for good value, the trick is to know what's good. So that means waiting for the new stuff to pass muster from the other reviewers or buying older stuff in collected formats. Sure I think people should collect whatever they like, it's just not really for me, and particularly not at this time. I'm only now reading Alan Moore's Swamp Thing for the first time, which to me feels better than having delayed books on Hero X with too many unknowns about quality. I call it discerning customer taste, you might call it cheap, in the end it's still how I'm reading comics - out of fun and desire to, not out of a sense of obligation.

Oh for the love...

2009-06-24T10:32:00.003-04:00

I just found out that my manager is away on an all day "advance." It's called an advance because some genius didn't want to use the word retreat. If I find out who did this I may not be held responsible for punching them right in the fucking throat.

Essex County

2009-06-22T11:27:00.004-04:00

Well, my Red Hulk prediction didn't pan out I suppose, but I think it would have been way awesome!

On the flip side of comics, guess who just won an autographed copy of Jeff Lemire's Essex County?

I really loved the first two volumes of this work and will find the time soon to read volume 3. I really think that what's been created here is some of the strongest material to argue for comics as literature. Engaging stories, elegant construction of narrative and subtle questioning of the reader's assumptions are found in what I've read.

REBORN!

2009-06-04T13:48:00.002-04:00

From a completely uninformed position: Could it be possible that the Red Hulk is Steve Rogers having an adverse reaction to the super-soldier serum and multiple bullet wounds?

Garage Sale Comics

2009-05-25T11:18:00.002-04:00

This Saturday was the Great Glebe Garage Sale and once again I put out a box of comics I wasn't ever going to read again. I was a bit surprised at what sold and what didn't - not so much at who was buying. It was mostly guys around my age, probably a few years younger (in their mid-twenties) but a lot of early twenties, late teens women flipped through the box (none bought), one gothic-lite woman bought five books "for her son", and two groups of boys flipped through and bought a few books.

The boys were kind of a hilarious revelation. They wanted number ones but ended up buying my run of Infinite Crisis, and a couple of Batman comics. They almost destroyed the box though, but I restrained myself from saying anything - I mean dollar comics I'm selling isn't something I should be overly concerned about. There were a few comics they kind of were interested in but then shied away from - Villains United and some Morrison Batman comics. They bought some of Dini's Detective Comics run though. The reason - they flipped open a random book with "future batman" on the cover and saw this Batman laying in a bloody pulp and they deemed the book "too scary." I'm guessing they just have parents who would be a little pissed if they found them with excessively violent books (and I'm not going to draw that line for other people). Although I seem to recall Infinite Crisis involving at least one decapitation, so at least they avoided Identity Crisis.

It was weird because it happened twice with the Batman books. Another group of boys thought it was too scary as well. Weird.

I ended up selling a run of Ex Machina (12 issues after the first trade), the entire run of Ultimates 2, the three issues I had of Action Philosophers, an Iron Man mini-series (can't remember the name just now) and a smattering of other comics here and there. One kid bought the first issue of Countdown, so I gave him the next 3 or 4 that I had and it made his day - until he starts to read them, I suppose (zing!).

What I'm left with:

A bunch of Morrison's Batman run
A bunch of Dini's Detective run
the first 19 issues of Godland

There is more comics in there but I haven't gone through them just yet so I can't really remember if Identity Crisis went - I think it did. I'm really quite surprised there wasn't at least one Morrison fan who flipped through. I sold Warren Ellis's JLA: Classified a few years ago based on his name being on the cover. And really, have we already moved on from The Dark Knight being in theatres? I'm guessing so. Weird. I thought the Batman stuff would be a lock for sale.

I understand the Godland stuff not going. I think anyone who saw it and was interested would already own them. Everyone else figured it was religious or "lame." The fools.

There were also a lot of guys trying to get the box for $20 or so. Now if there were close to 20 comics in there I'd have been fine with it, but I wasn't going to just get rid of 70 or 90 comics for that. Sorry, I was selling them at $1.00 each or 6 for $5.00, but if you got like 7 I took $5.00. And I was pretty generous if someone picked up 9 or 8 or whatever - I wasn't THAT much of a stickler so would usually take what people offered (within reason). Most people got 2 or 3 extra comics beyond that sixth, and for any younger kids I threw in complete stories if they were buying number three of five or whatever.

It was kind of neat seeing the kids weighing their purchases because most of them only had two bucks or five bucks to spend for the day. If they were digging through and were unsure I'd just say, hey, if you want the Iron Man stuff, I'll give it all to you for a dollar. They kind of looked at me in disbelief and say, "well I only have two dollars" but I'd just pass them the lot and say "don't worry about it, enjoy the whole story." It was they dudes with the fulltime jobs trying to get a bargain that annoyed me for whatever reason.

The last thing I'll mention is that there were twice as many people who would look at the box labeled "comics" and pretend not to be interested. They'd sort of stare it down as they walked by but wouldn't stop because they were with a guy or girl and wanted to look "cool" - even if they had an LP of German Drinking Songs or a ratty stool that looked like a frog. Just as many women did that as men. Okay, maybe they were just thinking "comics, they still make those?" but I saw the longing in their eyes. Just go for it people, it's a neighbourhood wide garage sale - go for the fun stuff - board games and comics.

So, yeah, selling comics is weird.

The Gateway Book

2009-05-13T15:22:00.000-04:00

Well, it has finally happened. I did something I kind of promised myself I would never do and buy a comic for my wife. I’m not one to try and convert the masses to something I enjoy because I really can’t stand when people try to tell me about crap I don’t care about. But I took a chance on this one after we watched Watchmen and we had a few chats about the book and the medium in general.

It all started when my wife said that she’s read to Pulitzer Prize winning books and loved them. We were talking about how yet another Canadian book prize was given to another book that neither of us had any desire to read, ever. I think we’re a bit more cynical than most readers what with the excessive English Lit degrees between us. I’m not trying to point out my ability to study, just that in the course of our educations we’ve both been exposed to way too much crap. In fact, my standard joke about CanLit is that it requires a minimum 2 of the following 3 contents – rural setting, sexual abuse (best if it’s incest) and substance abuse (best if it’s alcoholism). So reading prize winners that had nothing to do with these was quite welcome.

I know I’m tarring with a large brush here and that some Pulitzer winners probably fall into my CanLit theory but the whole point of this is that I told her about Maus. She seemed interested and asked about it a few more times, so I ended up buying it for her birthday. After a few months she’s picked it up and is just completely absorbed by the whole thing.

At first she asked how I read comics and I have to admit I didn’t know what she meant. She clarified the question by asking if I looked at the pictures as much as the words. I haven’t really thought about it much which I think comes from having more familiarity with the medium, and that I think of it as more of an organic whole. But really, I probably favour the words then go back and look at the pictures closely if I reread. Although I try to absorb as much as I can from the images because they contain the action.

We discussed how easy it is to read comics and how it’s kind of refreshing to simply be presented with the action and setting rather than excessive description which can be found in some writings. I’m not the biggest fan of minute detail description but I can get absorbed in pretty much anything. I just know if I notice it, I tend to get pulled out of a story so comics kind of helps with that.

What really opened the idea to write a post about this is when she said that what makes the book amazing is the presentation of the characters. It’s easy to forget that this is a true story because you’re reading about cartoon mice and cats. And if it wasn’t for the presentation then this would just blur into the fog of thousands of other books upon the subject. It’s precisely the presentation that makes it unique and unforgettable but provides enough distance from the horror through the cartoon representations for the reader not to feel entirely hammered with a message regardless of the importance of the message.

We briefly talked about how the presentation of the father felt new in that after his experiences he’s still not always the greatest guy. Even if he’s presented as a mouse he’s still a very human character full of human failings despite what should be experiences that make him into something audiences have come to expect. The other point she mentioned was that the mice have incredibly expressive and human hands – I’m not entirely sure what to make of this, but I haven’t read the book in a heck of a long time, so when she’s done I’ll pick it up and have a look.

I have to say, I’m looking forward to talking about this a bit more and I’m wondering what anyone else has found to be a good gateway book? Personally, I think it needs to be something that the reader would actually have an interest in and that’s pretty much it. She had tried to read an issue of Buffy a while back but just found it kind of distracting whereas Maus just seems to be presented right while containing a gripping enough narrative to hold my wife’s attention. I didn’t think something like Watchmen, Fables, The Dark Knight, or Sandman would work because like it or not you kind of need to already have an interest in comics to grasp onto those regular offenders as “gateway” books. (Although Fables might work here if she has any interest to read anything else comics wise).

I don’t really want blanket recommendations or anything but has this type of thing worked for you? Why do you think a particular book worked? Was it random or did you put some effort into matching a request to have a comic with the person’s established interests/temperament?

Form and function

2009-05-08T09:19:00.003-04:00

Okay, I'm pretty much your average blogger these days in that, I don't really blog at all. Sorry, not actually reading all that many comics because of other life things - I'm about 50% a home owner depending on how the inspection goes tomorrow (please no major foundation problems!). But I have been contemplating the Watchmen a heck of a lot and the more I look into the book the more I find I can't separate the form from the content.

I'm finding myself more and more in Moore's camp that this really works best as a comic since most of the meaning is derived in the same way that words and image create the comic book medium. Now, I actually liked the movie, but the more I look into the comic the more I'm finding it a bit staggering how it all ties together - then again, look too long at anything and you can see connections that don't exist.

Things I never really figured before:

For the most cited and offered graphic novel for new readers to use as a gateway, you kind of need to have a lot of preknowledge to make sense of the whole thing. Sure it's a solid Whodunit? but the book isn't really about who killed the Comedian.
It lays a lot of the groundwork for the symmetrical structure of Moore's later work Promethea.
You're forced to deal with linearity and chonology as separate aspects.

The other thing I noticed is that while the comic used a cinematic approach to a lot of its presentation, these were dropped for the actual cinematic release. I can't say if this is for the best or detriment of the work, but it's funny how we use this word to denote a certain approach but when it's most appropriate the actual approach doesn't work as well. I don't want to get too much into this since it'll be explored a bit more somewhere else.

Watchmen - again.

2009-04-27T14:39:00.002-04:00

So I've been writing an essay about Watchmen these days and I'm wondering if exploring the idea of fearful symmetry is over done? Part of me feels too many people write about Rorschach and while I think I manage to use the idea of fearful symmetry to create something more than "Rorschach is teh awesome!" I am conscious of focussing on the obvious things in the comic.

What I'm basically trying to tease out of my brain is the idea that the front cover, the text pieces, and some of the main visual metaphors all work together to create a symmetrical form between the comic and the real world. Too much for a general audience?

Vaction and Doug Wright

2009-04-16T11:52:00.001-04:00

Just got back from vacation, found time to work on my Watchmen essay and found a great photo gallery on CBC's site about Doug Wright.

Go look: http://www.cbc.ca/photogallery/arts/2127/

Lights!

2009-03-30T13:59:00.003-04:00

On Sunday the Juno awards were held in Vancouver celebrating Canadian music and music sales. I'm normally not interested in crappy awards shows - I love a lot of Canadian bands but I'm no fan of mainstream radio fodder. What, you may be asking yourself, does this have to do with comics?

Simple. The woman who won best new artist (Lights) has a back tattoo of Wonder Woman fighting Giganta. I'm sure the amount of internet offers of marriage she gets has increased about 5000 times because of this.

Personally, I like anything that shows geek stuff as slightly less geeky but not quite redundantly mainstream. Anyway, cool stuff.

Classic Seth

2009-03-26T09:31:00.000-04:00

I’ve recently finished Seth’s It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken. It was a weird experience as I only read it in little chunks of time here and there while the rest of my world had some kind of a fit. Me and my wife started house hunting but then her place of business just announced impending large cuts (she’ll be safe though so that’s okay), and I get to interview for my own job. So reading about a slightly misanthropic and depressed protagonist searching for some kind of meaning that may never exist wasn’t exactly my idea of escapism I usually seek in comics.

I did enjoy it though for what it is and it is a book I’ll certainly recommend to others looking for a certain type of read. I have to say that Seth’s quest for a past that somehow feels more honest and real hits close to home these days. He’s looking for something that exists in the creations around him – buildings, clothes, literature – but I’m just looking for a time when our current Prime Minister wasn’t in charge of anything.

At the moment I’m seeing a lot of Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation in things I read because of another project, and really It’s A Good Life If You Don’t Weaken is a perfect example of searching for a more truthful and honest past that never exists. That what current life is simulating may never have existed in the first place. That can be a very powerful and depressing idea or it can free you to simply enjoy what is there now. It’s a frustrating story to read on quite a few levels, from Seth’s search for John Kalloway to his interactions with people and constant self-reflection. You both love the character and get frustrated by him which makes the character appear all the more real and human. He can’t be distilled down to a core idea or element (well, maybe the idea of moving forward while watching the road through a rear-view mirror – see Marshall McLuhan for more on that).

I love Seth’s lingue Claire artwork that feels as much like an anachronistic detail as the buildings and clothes surrounding the protagonist. It’s equal parts comic books and newspaper comics (as well as the New Yorker cartooning), that is somehow more expressive and clean than you feel it should be. It shouldn’t be able to portray the content because it is a style meant for gags and single panel cartoons but it is precisely the freedom of the style that allows for a beautiful world to be created. I’d say the art style hits at the core of the word decadence – something overly beautiful with something decaying at the core or as the subject in this case. Beautifully rendered buildings that are falling apart and the like.

Kate Beaton - wow

2009-03-20T12:40:00.002-04:00

Okay, I'm late to the party, I know, but I just discovered Kate Beaton's website Hark, A Vagrant and it is fantastic. Everywhere I turn I'm reading more about this wonderful talent and I understand why. She's producing material that is just north of the New Yorker and just absurdist enough to match her endearing style.

Go. Look.

I Viewed the Watchmen Movie

2009-03-09T08:52:00.003-04:00

Yeah yeah, we're all tired of the "watching the watchmen" puns online, on tv and in newspapers. I went to see it on Friday and the quick review - I really liked what they did.

Things I think were actually better than the comic:

The world creation during the opening credits. Hot damn, that was probably one of the best opening credit sequences I've ever seen. From the song choice to the visuals working with the name credits (I admit, I didn't really pay attention to the actors' names, I was busy watching the scenes) the opening credits set up the world of The Watchmen in a matter of minutes. So anyone new to the movie knows what fans of the comic learned in the text pieces, the role playing game, obsessively looking up Watchmen articles online, etc. I think it really played to the strengths of the medium of film, and was so successful because it actually added to the core text in a positive way.

The repulsiveness of the violence. Okay, in a few years it may look hokey when this is being played on Spike TV, but in the theatre it was enough of a turn-off to get that point across what with the broken limbs and blood splatter.

Things I found slightly distracting:

They kept referring to themselves as The Watchmen. Yes, it's nit-picky, and I completely understand why it was done but I think I have more faith in the audience. It sounds like some exec was wondering why they kept talking about The Minutemen as a failed super-group, wasn't this movie called The Watchmen? They should call themselves The Watchmen.

Rorschach's narration at the very end. I liked the more ambiguous ending of the comic where his journal is left in a stack of other cranks. The ending narration implies it is read but it could have been added just to make sure the point is driven home that it's Rorschach's journal.

The narration in general except Dr. Manhattan's. This is the constant problem of adapting written fiction to film. The way the narration was handled in the comic is all on written materials (except Dr. Manhattan's) which simply can't be adapted onto film except as someone reading from the journal, etc. The narration in the comics works much better in regards to the narrative because these objects exist within the world of the Watchmen as actual objects, not dramatic readings. It helps sell the "realistic" nature of the Watchmen world because the audience is only allowed to see into the characters' minds via additional media except for Dr. Manhattan whose thoughts are in blue boxes (and thus the closest to the traditional thought balloon). This kind of reinforces his connection to classic superheroes as well as emphasising how far from humanity he has drifted. His relation to the world is different from the other characters because he doesn't need a separate medium to communicate directly to the audience. In the movie, all characters have that relationship to the audience because there is no way the director will show you page shots of Rorschach's journal to read while the action happens.

This I wished were included (please ingest your grain of salt from here on in):

Okay, this is just my fanboyishness here so you know, it's subjective. Where was the fate of Hollis Mason? No, I don't really want to see an old man lynched, but it would really have helped sell the idea of this being a time of crisis and heightened paranoia. It could have been included if they reduced the sex scene, no? I'm no prude, but I felt the owl-ship sex scene went on just long enough to be kind of embarassing - we get the point, make the visual joke, move on.

Captain Metropolis. The way the failed meeting was handled was fine, but I kind of miss the connection to history all the old heroes brought to the story. If the opening credits show how vital they were to the world, then having them removed from the plot kind of feels like a missed opportunity.

Final thoughts:

Anyway, I went to see the movie with both geeks and non-nerd-herd people. Everyone enjoyed it but the nerds complained about stuff more - no pirates, my thing about calling themselves The Watchmen, etc. The only slightly negative I heard from the non-nerds was that it seemed like a movie you should watch again to understand more of it. That's something I felt as well, which means it's pretty much how I felt after reading the comic for the first time. In that regard, it was great and all in all, I think the changes made were necessary for the film version and should have been made.

One of these things is not like the other...

2009-03-04T09:48:00.004-05:00

So, today I went to the TSN trade centre website to check out whether or not anything is happening early this morning on the NHL's trade deadline. While there were no updates, I did notice the list of sponsors along the bottom of the site. There are your constant sports sponsors - sports shops, fast food restaurants, beer companies. But near the end was a blood splattered smiley face.

Now, I know that your average sports fan will go see Iron Man or Spider-man or Batman movies, but I'm not so sure there will a lot of love for Watchmen. I'd love to be proven wrong, and I wish I could remember how V for Vendetta did when it was released for a bit of context for this release.

Anyway, I just thought it was a bit odd there. Happy consumerism and post-modern deconstruction of the entire genre of superhero comics and the form of comics itself just doesn't seem to flow for me. I'll still go see the movie at some point because I'm reasonable enough to know it won't affect my love of the book.

Growth Rings as the Core Metaphor in Swamp Thing

2009-02-19T11:24:00.001-05:00

Since that last post I’ve read the next two volumes – Love and Death and The Curse. Again, I feel like I have a lot to say but don’t know where to begin with it all. I guess the big thing I finally noticed is how there is a great visual metaphor used that reflects the structure of the plot.

Growth Rings. Much like the way new growth on a tree expands from the centre (as well as up) the plot for the series begins to reflect itself and grow to reinforce itself. Depending on how you look at it, these levels appear different. If you cut it open and look down, you see the rings forming into themselves, but if you tap it from the side you only see lines in sequence.

Having these stories in collected form lets me as a first time reader see the cycles and reinforcements much easier. I’ve got the collected firewood, so to say. But, I can imagine getting Swamp Thing month after month you would only see the lines in sequence (at first). Once you see where they come from you can adapt your perception to the wider whole. The lines are part of a bisected circle.

Anyway, growth rings are a great metaphor here, not just for the organic and organized nature of the larger plot that begins to support itself, but hey, he’s a conscious plant. What I have also come to notice is that this cyclical metaphor (here growth rings in a tree) are also used in Moore’s other works, particularly Watchmen and to some extent in Promethea. A perfect circle is symmetrical, and well, just open the pages of Promethea to any random pages and you’ll see the symmetry of the layout fairly clearly. In Watchmen, there are the cogs of the watch that Jon Osterman was working on when his father chucks it out. Again, the cogs are important in reinforcing the cyclical nature of time – something I’ll be exploring elsewhere in a bit more detail (I hope).

So where in Watchmen the circular cogs have specific points of contact that as a whole can create some kind of meaning (making a watch move and tell time, or how the heroes lives create some terrible and fragile peace) the growth rings of Swamp Thing show the organic progression from monthly comic towards comprehensive graphic novel.

Make sense? Perhaps I’ll find the time to write more on it.

Dipping a toe in the swamp

2009-01-21T11:32:00.001-05:00

Okay, just wanted to check in with any lost souls shambling in a muck-encrusted way to this here site and give a very quick update. Finished reading Saga of the Swamp Thing, and will be posting something in greater detail soon (I hope). But, I wanted to get one thing out there first.

What really struck me in the first issue was the contrasting panel layouts between Swamp Thing’s story and Sunderland (or whoever the old man is in the story). Swamp Thing’s story is told in organic panels without borders that grow and merge into one-another, while the old man is presented in hard, sharp angled frames that are both slightly off kilter and confining.

Both feel slightly threatening in different ways, but a wonderful visual metaphor for what I’ve seen as a theme being established in the first few stories. The connected whole of the organic earth struggling against the conscious constructions of man.

Death of an Icon

2009-01-14T12:36:00.005-05:00

There's something to be said about reading a much hyped comic long after the hype has died.

No, I've still not had a chance to get to that Swamp Thing trade, but I did get the Death of Captain America trade. Again, I'm just completely bowled over by Brubaker as a writer and how he's handling these editorially mandated stories. I mean talk about a clunker! And yet, you still have a generally readable item, but man, would I not want to come to this thing cold!

While there are a lot of good things here, from the great characters found in The Winter Soldier and Falcon, to the new array of retrofitted Cap villains, there is a huge millstone around the neck of this story - Civil War. I read the trades leading up to this story but not Civil War so I was okay in understanding some of the backstory and motivation. Being a former comic book blogger (reformed) and knowing the general plot of Civil War meant I knew some of the main plots even if I have no idea why Peter Parker is in the black suit. But coming in cold? Nope, this would not be very fun to read at all.

You'd still enjoy the character moments but I could barely piece together the larger picture which kept forcing itself onto the plot. There is almost no way to separate the larger Marvel Universe from the plot of the story and really, that is unfortunate. I have no problem with how the title was both updating itself and honoring its history. Kind of making all the old villains new again, so why not the same with Cap? The idea flowed well, but then we've got someone I had no idea was Tony Stark in a SHIELD outfit, and cap's corpse looking Skrullish.

Part of me just wishes I didn't know the bigger picture but then I'd be completely lost rather than kind of lost and bit disappointed at what could have been a great and timeless story. I guess this is a great example of how comics haven't really changed only rather than getting them out as fast as possible now it's getting them out while meeting some kind of mass crossover content. In both cases you do the best with what you got, only now the reader kind of needs to have a lot of money (or less scruples and a bittorrent connection, I suppose).

What Brubaker can offer is always high quality but what Marvel offers is a bit unfortunate.

Hiatus in Review

2009-01-07T10:56:00.006-05:00

Okay, looking at that last post before the extended hiatus I should report a few things. I didn't read Labyrinths of Reason or Wasteland. Much like Swamp Thing I'm a bit shocked I haven't read Wasteland yet. I'll likely pick it up when I pick up Fallout 3 for the ol' X-box 360 some day. It's a series that I was really excited for when it was announced but I couldn't get a copy in Ottawa and well, it just sort of stayed that way until the trades started coming out and I was just lazy about picking it up. Huh, funny how that always happens. I guess it means I get to savor its post-apocalyptic goodness with a fine electronic parallel. And I'm still on the waiting list for the Hellblazer trades at the library, which seems really weird to me. I had no idea that many people wanted to read John Constantine comics from the Ottawa library.

I guess we should start with the comics first hey?

Wanted. Read it before the movie and I think the changes they made were completely necessary. The comic only works as a comic and well, I don't need to be told I'm a worthless prick for not being a completely selfish asshole. Otherwise, it's a rollicking villainous adventure. Liked the movie a bit more to be honest.

Sleeper and Criminal. Reading these made me kind of depressed knowing I would never write anything this good. I read a lot of Ed Brubaker and I really thought these were fantastic crime stories. Sleeper is the comic villain equivalent of something like Good Fellas, Donnie Brasko or The Departed in that you have a hero, Holden Carver, you become a bit unsure of and you start to understand the circumstances of the bad guys. I always appreciate the skill going into making killers seem sympathetic, something the Animated Batman series did amazingly well or Pulp Fiction did to a mass audience. Yeah they're the bad guys but you feel bad for them, you can relate to them on a basic level to a point where you're reacting to them much like Holden Carver is. Criminal, is a living breathing world where crime is the one thing tying everyone's story together. It's like the shared superhero universes only with a continuity that reveals itself rather than feel forced to make sense of things that weren't meant to be tied together. And with capers and characters that rival any in this genre, there was no doubt this would be a winner with me.

Scott Pilgim Gets it Together. It took me a long time to finally get this book. I did. I read it. I was slightly less charmed by it this time. I don't really know why because it's still great comics but I almost feel a bit too out of touch with the youth ethos in it as I get less lost in my own life.

Cpt. America – Red Menace and Winter Soldier. I can't remember the last time I ever read a Captain America comic book. These were the same solid procedurals in a superhero dressing that Brubaker presented in his other work. The more realistic based artwork really worked in these stories as it tried to humanize a symbol and bring him back to the real world. Yes, grown men in silly costumes do a lot of damage to each other and the world around them, but having things look almost real made the stories seem a bit more real as well. And that's the goal of comics isn't it, to have the art reflect the words – it works well here.

Watchmen. Just as good as the first time I read it. Actually, slightly better because you catch more of the things you missed the first time. I tried to explain it to my wife after we saw the movie preview and while it was a kooky rambling effort on my part she did consider reading it for about ten minutes after our chat. Never really understood the pirate comics until I read a few more interviews with the creators – makes sense that a world with superheroes wouldn't have superhero comics. Seeing a few more examples of how deep the metaphors run, especially visually, was a real treat. From the recurrence of clockwork mechanisms, to the marquee showing the band Crystalnache playing just before the tragedy brought onto the city's population by some self-proclaimed superior human.

Books (without pictures)

Catch-22. Great metaphor, great message, but really, I got it long before the book ended. How can you be sane in an insane situation when you have no sane option or sane action. I do understand why it's considered a great work of fiction but I also understand why people don't like it either. It can be tough to sit and read such a looping text once you understand that the characters are living their lives in the same way the text is written – reliving events over and over and feeling trapped by them only to relive them all over again when something similar happens. Perhaps the point is to get you to give up on the whole mess?

The Chrysalids. Man I love John Wyndham's writing and how his stories are considered sci-fi without any real noticeable sci-fi elements or stand-bys. I think he helped lay the foundation for the genre expectations so reading this book felt completely new to me. It's about the human condition more than anything with a few fantastical ideas thrown in there. The kids struggle for freedom only to find it in a society that is just as intolerant only in line with their abilities. Is this a reflection on the role religion plays in human society? Most likely showing how the exclusionary message of anything is not something that helps anyone except those preaching and conforming. Like the atheists say, be good for goodness sake. I'll be making a stronger effort to read more Wyndham, and really, I'd like a lot of superhero comic writers to do the same to see how you can get a message attached to a story with fantastic elements.

Blood Sucking Fiends and You Suck. These were fun and the perfect read just around Halloween. I mean having a group of late night grocery store employees called The Animals who become vampire hunters is in and of itself enough of a fun idea but throw it in with the rest of the loveable characters, and you've got a great series. Although I enjoyed the first book more.

And finally, skated into work today in a bit of a snowstorm. The canal looked like a frozen ocean with the mini-snowdrifts across the ice. Hitting them sort of slowed me down so it felt a bit more dangerous than it was. There was less than an inch of snow down but there was a solid sheet of ice down under the snow. Was listening to Gorillaz - Demon Days which was the perfect mix of creepy and fun.

Not a New Year's Resolution

2009-01-06T11:11:00.003-05:00

Hi there ten or so people that remember this was once a blog about comics. It's a new year and I got a new idea. Oh, this will still be about comics and all that but I'm not really buying weekly floppies anymore and haven't for quite some time. Nope, I've been kind of doing this random read through the history and current publications of comics in their trade paperback form or "graphic novel" format. I've not really had any desire to post online for a while then something strange happened this Christmas.

My wife bought me the first trade of Alan Mooe's Saga of the Swamp Thing. And, well, I thought it would be kind of neat to record my thoughts on this book seeing as I've never read it. Mike Sterling is shaking his head in disbelief as are most comic fans, I'd imagine. Don't feel sad, feel glad, let's see where this goes.

This isn't a resolution or anything. I'll try to post some interesting things as often as possible but I'm not going to try to create a daily blog, others do it much better than I. My only real resolution was to try and skate to work as much as possible this winter. The Rideau Canal froze on New Year's Day (although I didn't know until the 3rd because I was cocooned in my house) and I've since started skating to work. I think that makes me the most Canadian comic book blogger online right now, not that it's a contest.

This is most likely the end

2008-06-26T11:32:00.003-04:00

Well, life has certainly got in the way with my updating the blog for the last few months and I'm pretty sure I've all but pulled the plug on the machine keeping this thing artifically alive. I'm a bit unwilling to drive a stake into the undead heart of this blog, but for all intents and purposes I think anyone still coming here can agree it's over and done with.

So, one last parting shot. Here's my summer reading list:

Proper Books:

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I've been meaning to read this book for a long time and I finally got around to it, with a couple of chapters left to get through. It's taken me a while to get through it and I do find it almost terrifying in its ability to perfectly capture the inherent evil of any bureaucratic system. Stark reality is found here in a book about the cyclical nature of our lives and the horror wrought because of a larger system guiding us that is beyond the control of an individual, and cannot address the needs of an individual. Yossarian is a true anti-hero in that he does everything completely opposite of a classic hero. He isn't the anti-hero in the sense of the hero who uses bad methods to get good ends, but he does everything humanly possible to not act like a hero - he uses bad methods for selfish ends, yet he's the hero for standing up to the completely batshit insane system he's thrown into.

Blood Sucking Fiends and You Suck by Christopher Moore. My wife bought me Blood Sucking Fiends for Christmas and I just haven't had a time to read it yet. Nothing like an undead romance for some beach reading.

Labyrinths of Knowledge by William Poundstone. Because I feel like blowing my mind sans chemicals for a little while this summer. Give the synapses a workout rather than make them surrender.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. I just read Day of the Triffids this past year and really enjoyed it. I'm always a fan of apocalyptic type fiction and this also comes highly recommended from my wife. Plus, it's a short book which is perfect for the long hours and weekends of summer.

Comic Books

Right now I'm just about to start reading Mark Millar's Wanted because my wife wants to go see the movie. I was as shocked as anyone because I wasn't totally interested. Maybe I should see the movie first in case I need to rinse out my brain with the comic book version?

I'm apparently going to read a lot of Ed Brubaker this summer. And why not? On top of my pile are Sleeper and Criminal because I've heard nothing but good things. But to balance it out with good and proper superhero fisticuffs I've also got four volumes of Captain America ready to go - the Red Menace and Winter Soldier story arcs.

In between I'm still reading any Hellblazer trades I can get from the library. Nothing like demon stories involving a complete dick who fucks them over in the hazy humid summer days. Well, it might not seem right to you but I really like it.

I'm hoping to finally getting around to the fourth volume of Scott Pilgrim, and starting Wasteland which I've been meaning to read since it came out.

And finally, I'm planning on re-reading Watchmen before the movie hype starts and I run the risk of soul erosion and desolation.

Time to fire that chimp at the keyboard.

2008-05-20T13:14:00.001-04:00

Well it has been quite a long time since I had a moment of free time to dedicate to the old blog here. If there is anyone still out there remotely interested, here's the quick hits of what I have read over the last month or so along with a few initial thoughts.

The Essential Avengers, Volume 1.

I had this book for quite a long time and started reading it when I was home sick with the flu. That long? Really? Wow, I'm almost embarrassed to say I never actually finished reading it. I love to see the Jack Kirby art on it's own, well, inked I guess. It just gives such a great view of how to lay out a panel, and a page for super action in a constrained time/format. Then Don Heck takes over and suddenly the page layouts appear a lot more vertical. Panels rise and stretch up as opposed to Kirby's much more horizontal spreads. It's actually quite impressive that although Kirby's panels are generally smaller they seem to contain way more action. He really is the master of having the panel frame the action to a point where the frame implies there is much more going on outside of it. Don Heck's panels tend to completely contain all the action. The weird part is, when I was younger and thinking of comics in my daydreams, I was probably thinking of Don Heck's art. He just seems to be the image of what I remember Marvel Comics being. Not so much these days, but still, he's good at being generic I guess. That wasn't meant to be an insult, it's what I think any work for hire artist needs to work for – like the Hardy Boys authors or whatever. It doesn't ruin the work, but they survive by being quick and consistent not rule breaking and bold.

Planetary Books 1-3 and Crossing Worlds

I really loved this collection. Nothing like a bit of comics more or less about comics, in my opinion. I'm a bit of a sucker about media examining itself and playing with the form and genre assumptions. I like the relationships that are build and how the story is build around an espionage story but it's really about the relationship of comic books and pop culture.

30 Days of Night: 3 Tales and Spread the Disease.

They do a decent job of tying together some loose ends and random characters from the other stories. Decent X-files type material with special agents and vampires. Also, vampires in space is a great idea.

Corto Maltese: Encore un peu plus loin

This collection shows how Hugo Pratt really shines in the short tale. I enjoyed this collection of short Corto Maltese stories a million times more than the book length adventure I had read previously (which is still exceptionally good). A few of the characters from Tango are introduced in this collection, and the art being in black and white means there is just that much more wonderful linework to take in. It's simply breathtaking. There are a bunch of small morality tales and the double-triple-cross taste of your own medicine adventure yarn. But really, what other collection of comics will have a surly amnesic sailor regain his memory by taking magic mushrooms, a zombie-priest led island uprising revolution, and a WWI British soldier relive a battle through his dying delusions? There is a lot to enjoy here, but mostly Pratt's love of the Caribbean and South America.

Now, I've read a bunch more of the Ultimate Spider-man trades as well and I'm trying to figure out how to say "I liked it and it's good comics, but it won't really challenge your assumption of the medium or anything, which is really the point I guess anyway, so while inessential in the long run, still enjoyable when you read the story" in more than one way. I do have to say that I really don't know how I would feel about the stories if I was reading them in the monthly format. I think it would completely remove the level of enjoyment I get out of the stories.

The Decompression Project without Orange and Purple Armour

2008-04-22T12:49:00.001-04:00

I've managed to read the Ultimate Spider-man collection starring Silver Sable. I have to say I'm kind of disappointed with the update. I thought she was a fine enough character and all but where was the ridiculous hair and the purple and orange jumpsuited Wild Pack? Really, without the gaudy armor it's not The Wild Pack. Otherwise this was more or less a decent story that didn't try to be something more than just a random encounter in Peter Parker's life as Spider-man.

There's some fun dialogue with the bumbling Wild Pack, a bit of mistaken identity as Peter gets tracked to his school and a great issue that allowed the creative team to do something a bit different when summing up the lives of the triumvirate at the centre of the story. The little break was well executed and appreciated even if it didn't completely flow with the story – the Ultimate Spider-man epic to this point has more or less followed a similar pattern so anything slightly different is extremely noticeable. That's not a bad or good thing really, just noticeable in and of itself.

So this was a neat story of how difficult it would be to track down an anonymous superhero. It won't change your life or explain the world in a new way, but you'll be engaged from start to end and really, there are much worse things in the world.

*sent via e-mail

That was Unfortunate

2008-04-15T08:18:00.003-04:00

Last night the Ottawa Senators lost for the third straight time in the NHL playoffs and while that has very little to do with comics there was this odd connection. It was the home opener of the playoff series last night and if you don't know anything about hockey or this team in particular you should know that their logo is this Roman Centurion.

Skip ahead to last night and the opening ceremonies for the home run was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. It was one of those moments where me and my wife watching at home both got embarrassed watching this thing. There was this video of the hockey players watching this centurion guy walking out and then there's this guy in a 300 Halloween costume with a wonky microphone trying to yell something. It didn't really sound like any language I've heard and well, I felt bad enough for the actor. I'm guessing he was probably some local wrestling entertainer but he really looked like he was trying out for the porno version of 300. It was ridiculous to the point of insulting Frank Miller.

I guess if this happened last year, or whenever the movie came out, it would have helped a bit by being slightly more current but I don't think that idiocy could have been saved no matter what. And he was still better than the performance put on by the team.

Comics and Hockey

2008-04-14T10:27:00.001-04:00

Sorry for the crappy html hyperlink text, but this was on CBC and I found it incredibly poignant for my two current interests.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/instigator/index.html

I really hope Ottawa wins tonight but I won't be holding my breath. I've always liked Pigpen.

*Sent via e-mail.

The Decompression Project: Warriors

2008-04-08T14:37:00.001-04:00

Oh right. I also managed to read the Ultimate Spider-man version of professional wrestling's Royal Rumble - "Warriors."

This collection is just a huge bust up as Hammerhead decides to move in on Kingpin's turf. Add Spider-man, Black Cat, Iron Fist, Shang Chi, Elektra, Moon Knight and the Kingpin's three thugs I can never remember the name of. It'll come to me after I e-mail in this post I'm sure.

Well, it's a fun little story arc full of over the top fisticuffs. And in the end, I should have seen it coming, there is a reveal that removes the one single good thing I was seeing develop in Peter Parker's life. Other than Black Cat, and there is some great developments in that relationship as well.

My only real complaint is that even though heroes and villains get stabbed – one even in the back of the skull – they all end up in comas, which just feels like a huge cheat. Yes, I know it's a superhero comic.

I'll also get to the Avengers collection at some point. I seem to have been reading that thing forever.

Corto Maltese: Tango

2008-04-07T15:44:00.001-04:00

I've been sitting on this book for quite some time for quite a few reasons. Well, three really: New job, the book is in French and I had the flu. Add to that, other outside time commitments and the Ottawa Senators sucking in the lead up to the NHL playoffs my mind wasn't exactly in a frame to read something in my second language.

Well, I've persevered and I'm always glad I did whenever I read some Bandes Designes. I'm such a genre whore when it comes to comic books that whenever I read something non-North American it feels like a revelation because it isn't about superheroes. Not that that's all I read, but it's a fairly substantial amount. Heck these days it's mostly just Ultimate Spiderman trades at that. Anyway, having a straight up adventure serial to read is gloriously refreshing from the over-exuberance of superheroics. This is like the cultured European cousin that just inherently has more style, knows it, and is quietly confident in what s/he is. There is a bigger size format to the thing which sort of announces to the world what you are reading, but it's artistic enough content wise that you don't look like you're reading about super-boobies.

Ever since my first random Corto Maltese purchase during my lean years living in South London I've felt that Hugo Pratt has created the comic book equivalent of the Indiana Jones movies. He's a scruffily handsome man that can take care of himself and moves around the world with a swagger and confidence that verges on cockiness but is never so blatant that people are put off by him. Yes, the major differences are that Corto is a sailor and Indy is a treasure hunting archeologist but the core characteristics are quite similar.

I guess the two sentence movie pitch is that Corto Maltese is Tintin as an adult (without the dog and with Cpt. Haddock's job). He's entirely more laconic than Tintin but just as able to give and take a punch when the need arises. Also, Hugo Pratt was Italian so there are lots of lovely women characters as well. In that respect I'm reminded a bit of Eisner's Spirit work with lots of strong, sexy women who aren't all the same character in different costumes.

As for this volume in particular, I kind of just picked it up at random because I was at the library one day and the idea of reading more Corto Maltese books popped into my head and well, there was this one and another one I'm now reading. I really should have read them in the opposite order because Tango is one of the last collections. Heck, some of the characters that Corto visits in this book are introduced for the first time in the collection I'm reading at the moment, so that's slightly annoying when trying to make sense of what's what. Also, the French doesn't help.

What drew me in initially was the massive text introductions. They're all about the history of prostitution in Argentina, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. As for the story itself, I was mostly lost I'll admit, because shockingly it's not just super hero comics that require a slight continuity obsession to keep everything straight. The story here is about Corto trying to find a long lost friend who was kidnapped (I believe) by a prostitution ring. In his searches for her he runs into a bunch of characters from his older adventures which you don't really need to have read to understand this story but it did feel confusing. Almost like you were invited out with someone you knew from work who proceeds to only make in-jokes with his or her friends all night long. Universal themes will come through but you'll be lost on the details.

And I think it's the timing of when this book was created that speaks a lot towards how I felt towards most aspects. It was later in Pratt's career and it felt a bit like he was taking a few things for granted, almost cutting corners. The art is, for the most part beautiful as I've come to expect, but the action in the panels is not as dynamic as other Corto Maltese stories. There are only a few poses and expressions used, and while there may be some unbelievable artwork when he's drawing a car chase sequence the inking process seems to be a bit thick, almost as if an edged marker was used in places (mostly on noses too, which is just odd looking). It all makes the action seem somewhat less dynamic than it should be, and with a story that isn't exactly action packed that is somewhat unfortunate.

I still think Pratt's style is one of the best but in comparison to his other work this one just isn't as good, in my opinion. There is a lot of research text prefacing this book, and a lot of potential (and while I'm sure I missed a lot because of my language barrier) so it was disappointing to have the story and art let me down.

This is a story of corruption on multiple levels in a location that I know next to nothing about and really, if I can stay engaged in a story written in a foreign language I can mostly read then it's doing something right. It was an unfortunate choice of texts to get back into Corto Maltese with, but it's out of the way and I'm reading an earlier volume that is making up all the ground this book let down on.

I've not abandonned the blog just yet

2008-04-02T08:12:00.002-04:00

I'm just exceptionally busy at my new job and suffering from some kind of evil virus which makes me not really want to think because it hurts my sinuses.

I will say that reading the first volume of Essential Avengers while not feeling the best is a real treat. I'm shocked at how bad I feel for Hank Pym for being married to Jan and her very obvious lust for pretty much every other man. I know it was a different time and I'm probably seeing it totally out of context but holy moly talk about your troubled marriage. I don't think it's bad for her to be open about her sexuality or desires but right next to your husband?

And then there's the way they chair their meetings and pass motions that only serve to put words to what is going on anyway. Like when Iron Man is missing and they can't reach him at all they vote to give him a leave of absence. Coming from my history with the Green Party, I have to say that The Avengers, even in their absurd manner, manage to conduct board meetings better than that political party.

And finally I noticed that the major shift between Kirby and Heck on art is that Don Heck seems to lay out his pages in a much more vertical aspect.

The Decompression Project - Teenage Wasteland

2008-03-18T14:08:00.001-04:00

Okay I guess I got a little bit confused between collections I was reading in yesterday's post. It seems that the scene with Spider-man and the police officer was in the Hobgoblin collection and not the Superstars collection. My comments still stand, that I think it is a solid bit of development and it's a refreshing change to see Peter being reluctant to accept a mentor, and more so that there is what appears to be a decent mentor figure being developed for him. They're not quite colleagues but they certainly are aiming for the same goals and with somewhat similar attitudes although she is able to better express herself.

Now, I know the Harry Osborn story and most people had exposure to a version of it in Spiderman 3. This Ultimate version is done exceptionally well. Whenever Peter fought Norman it was completely one sided, in that one figure was superior in all regards but was constantly defeated because of his pride in his science. Peter's strength isn't from his person or even from his belief in himself but his ability to consider others no matter the cost. That is what helps him win the day, along with a few well timed kicks and webbings.

With Harry, things are different because Peter is being forced into a situation that isn't just personal but also one of equals. Both Peter and Harry are victims of circumstance and end up clashing because of outside influences. Neither of them want to do it, which makes the situation entirely tragic. They are characters without the freedom to avoid this clash. It is tragic because it is simply unavoidable no matter how hard both try to avoid the situation.

And there is major heartbreak here too as Peter starts to actually react to the death and violence that has occurred simply because he exists. Yes, his actions ultimately led to Uncle Ben's death but it was his existence that led to Gwens, and really, in both cases he was never directly responsible. Here we see a teenager begin to grieve by simply not being able to process his role or accept that he was entirely helpless. He's terrified for his loved ones and the art and dialogue capture that sentiment note perfectly here.

Now the Harry Osborn story is also captured quite well in that it is never quite clear what is real and what isn't. Yes there were hypnotherapy sessions, but what is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s role in all of this? Did Harry bring it on himself or was he programmed by his father? Was he exposed accidentally to be latently activated or did he experiment upon himself? There are no answers here and while it helps enforce how scary dealing with mental illness can be it also makes Harry a sympathetic character as well. He is dealing with demons just like Peter is, but this is the result of having (letting or being programmed to) the demons win. It moves him to embody rage and destruction of anything connected to him, which is what Peter is feeling but he manages to embody the sadness and grief that is required to process these situations.

This collection ends with a MJ centric issue that manages to hit all the notes that the Aunt May issue flubbed. She is given believable situations to react to, rather than talking to a therapist about seemingly random fears that have no bearing on her day to day existence. It's about MJ and why she loves Peter and in the end it is a solid issue offering a fly on the wall point-of-view for a day in the life of a superhero's girlfriend. Suddenly, I feel like MJ has a bit more depth, which is what I needed from the series quite a while ago so it was nice to see it here.

*sent via e-mail

The Decompression Project Cuts Loose and Has a Bit of Fun

2008-03-17T11:10:00.000-04:00

This volume is all about the guest stars. There is Wolverine, The Human Torch, Dr. Strange and The Ultimates. And, you know what? It's a solid volume nonetheless. I think it's because the stories managed to change their pace a bit and while some were relatively forgettable you actually get to read a fun little caper involving Marvel's two guest stars – Spidey and Wolverine.

Yes, it is very easy to be cynical about these two characters. They're completely over used and exploited to the point of ridiculousness but Bendis manages to create a story that is very much in the spirit of yesteryear Marvel hijinx. You get a story that Bendis introduces as himself with a rather wry sense of humor, and he goes on to poke fun at his own creations during the intro to the second part that even he couldn't force three issues out of this story. And, well, the story is that Wolverine and Spider-man swap minds. That's pretty much it. There is no explanation, they just wake up and deal with each other's reality. It's hackneyed, it's been done to death, but it hasn't been done since probably the early seventies with any sense of humour about the whole thing and it's just a fun little break from the bleak seriousness.

The Human Torch story is slightly forgettable but it's a decent riff on the friendship between the two characters of relatively the same age that has been in comics for quite some time. And the Ultimate Dr. Strange was a decent enough, trapped in your own nightmare scenario that seems kind of like Peter is just going through the physical psychokinetic nightmare version of a recap of his comic up to now. It's kind of like a visually interesting take on what he discusses anyway, so decent but somewhat unnecessary except for the intro of the good doctor and another interesting step towards a budding relationship with a police officer. Not romantic but I do like how it is developing as it's a nice change of pace from his normal interactions. Kind of a mentor relationship is being put forth, which I have to say is something I can't really remember from Spider-man 616 but I'm no authority on the matter. I know he had Dr. Curt Connors and some people at the Bugle that were decent colleagues but nobody he really had as any sort of mentor role, and I guess I'll see how it all goes down. With my luck it all happens in the Ultimate Team-Up book or something.

And that would be my only complaint about this collection. That while I could certainly read the stories on their own and follow the action there was enough of a sense of being lost because I don't read all the Ultimate titles to be distracting from what is here in these stories. I could sort of get a feel for what is happening in the FF book but I had no idea how many times Peter met Logan other than that one time he went to Westchester in his own book, and whether Wolverine was even there. Still it was a very slight story and very upfront about it, which is very welcome in my book. Yes, it's a cheat in the end but it wouldn't have been as good if it wasn't.

Now, in the end, I think where the story is going with the internal struggle Peter is facing is a very good setup for some good melodrama. Spider-man is a character tuned into the proper "life gone awry and I don't know how to handle it" vibe. The character is just as well suited for that as the silver-aged flavoured silliness here. I think the continued fall out from Gwen, uncle Ben and the rest of it is spot on. Peter is a character full of pathos and he reacts like a freaked out teenager would act in the final story here. If there is one thing I consistently enjoy in these books, it's that Peter is constantly fighting with the control of himself and his emotions. He wants to lose control but he won't let himself, and it's handled in these books extremely well. He has highs and lows and they all bring him back to the character he is – responsible and surrounded by tragedy. He is heroic because of his actual deeds but more so because of his inability to stop despite what happens that is out of his control. It is taking it's toll on the kid and it was nice to have some stories that let Peter just be the goofy version of Spider-man because I see the return of Harry Osborn is coming in the next collection, so that should be a full on matching of psychological misery matched with physical violence.

*send in via e-mail.

Bloody Cold Nights

2008-03-13T10:03:00.001-04:00

30 Days of Night

by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith

When the movie came out I remembered that I had been meaning to read 30 Days of Night for a while now. I finally got around to it after not going to watch the movie.

In many ways I feel this is a dark coffee table art book with some words attached. I really like Templesmith's artwork and it really does fit the genre. It's always dark, it's unclear at points but it's frightening on a core level. The somewhat unfinished, unpolished look helps it terrify the reader. I'm using unpolished here to mean that there isn't a lot of tight linework with colouring precisely defined by those lines. Nope, here colours, textures and art materials are used to bleed into one another making things beautifully muddled. The bones are loose but the colour is tight. I really love what he manages with such a limited palette of colour.

Sadly, I found that it was the art to be partly problematic to the actual plot. While the art is so bloody cool the plotting and characterization needs to be next to perfect. With the art being kinetic and emotional I found that jumps in story and characterization to be slightly confusing. In fact I got lost a few times. It starts out strong but by the time the plot is halfway through there seems to be one too many massive jumps in plot that were kind of frustrating to read while remaining artistically strong.

It starts strong, the idea is sound, the art suits it perfectly, the pacing and narrative sort of falls off. I guess that's the sum up.

I hate criticizing works that I actually enjoy, for the most part. I think I'm getting slightly more curmudgeonly as the snow continues to pile up here in Ottawa and I'm suffering from sleep deprivation because of the stupid hour change being moved. Reading about a bunch of vicious beasts on a murderous winter rampage is a little too close to home as people are starting to crack because their sidewalks aren't cleared and pedestrians are forced to fight traffic in the streets. Winter madness is setting in with the approach of Spring and 30 Days of Night captures the feeling of it a bit too precisely in that respect.

sent in via e-mail

Comics Just Aren't HD

2008-03-03T10:09:00.000-05:00

No comics reading since I picked up a new TV and my friend left his X-Box 360 at my place. Too much time has been spent trying to kill the Locust in Gears of War, Nazis in Call of Duty 3 and awesome drum fills in Rock Band - all in glorious High Definition.

Now if I could only figure out how to CBC HD from Rogers Digital Cable I'd be set. Man, if you want a lesson in a website design that shows your customers how much you loathe and despise them then head over to theirs. That thing is full of something that has the appearance of information but is next to incomprehensible and is generally useless. I have no idea how to find out if I already have one channel included in my current package, and if not which package is it actually included in. Thankfully it is in my wife's name so she gets to call them about this today. The last time I called, they tried to blame me for a pay-per-view hockey game losing its feed. Seriously. It was batshit insane, not simply bad customer service.

The Decompression Project - Oh the Carnage!

2008-02-27T11:57:00.001-05:00

I should seriously consider just changing the name of this blog to Jon's Once a Week Thoughts on the Ultimate Spider-man Trade Collections. But I'm not totally into the whole, overly descriptive thing. If you've read any of my posts, you'll most likely agree. Anyway, I do have some Corto Maltese comics at home but reading in French takes a lot more effort than I'm able to give these days (new job, started yesterday) and I've been slowly enjoying the first Essential Avengers collection – more marvelous marvel machinations soon! Ugh, too much Stan Lee in my brain.

So, on with The Decompression Project. You know, I have to say that for the most part I've been enjoying my time spent with Ultimate Spider-man. I think this is a great interpretation on both Spider-man and Peter Parker. It works well with him as a high-school student although it would be nice to have him a bit more science geeky and just once I'd like him to remain confident and non-emo for one entire story arc. Okay that's probably not ever going to happen, since that is the core of the character. Bad things happen, he feels bad and perseveres simply because it is the right thing to do no matter how much he tries to dress it up with recurring inspirational quotes. He almost can't help himself and that point is brought home in this story where we have the Ultimate version of Spider-man No More for about a half issue or so.

I do find this a weird series though because while on the one hand it is very slow on the other hand it is guilty of skimming the surface of the conflict. Yes, I like the character moments but there needs to be further examination into the conflict as well as the personal. The formula appears to be spend a lot of time with Peter and MJ (as well as the rest of Peter's personal life cast) then the same amount of pages only with big splash fight panels for the villain of the week. I have no problems whatsoever with the villain of the week approach, in fact I quite like it. No, I just find that each issue feels like wasted opportunity to really delve into the differences, themes and metaphors presented by each conflict as Spider-man.

This book is obviously about Carnage. Now, I'm lucky in that I managed to never read a Carnage comic. I mean, Venom I can handle but giving the suit to a maniac, okay more maniacal maniac, was just a bit too much. It always felt like, hey kids, Carnage, the new Spidey villain is like Venom only more extreme, to the max! And in that regard I do like what they did with the Ultimate Carnage. Simply removing any humanity from the character helps make it actually somewhat terrifying and moves it into Dr. Frankenstein territory for Dr. Connors. That is not such a terrible move.

Having Curt Connors as a sympathetic character was a decent break from the Ultimate villains as actual scary threats. It allows Spider-man to not only have a scary brainless thug to beat on, in the doctor's monstrous creation, but a victim of circumstance for Peter to interact with. It's never a bad thing to add a bit of humanity to your villains when you are exploring potential for conflict. The good doctor is trying his hardest but is fated to fail because he cannot see beyond himself and his own beliefs in what he is doing, in his own reasons for acting.

And then we have the death of Gwen, which cheapens the whole thing for me. Okay, I don't need total rehash of the original story, but why the heck was Carnage the villain to do the deed? I guess it should work because it is a creation of Peter in a certain sense. That Peter's life has a direct effect on those around him is probably what the driving idea was but it just felt like the book was required to set Carnage up as a major threat and since everyone knew Gwen was fated to die anyway….. So it goes.

It's too bad because I think it should have all been handled a bit better, and could have been within the story. There were some great aspects that simply weren't connected as well as they should have been – Peter giving birth to a perverted image of himself and his father, Dr. Connors in the role of Dr. Frankenstein, and well just evil genetic stuff. There was some very strong stuff to work with but in the end it rang hollow to me. I won't presume to be able to do a better job or anything but while the connections are there under the surface of the story, I may just be seeing things that were never intended and that's where my criticism comes in.

The Boys Need Pegg

2008-02-21T08:39:00.002-05:00

So with Garth Ennis's The Boys being picked up for Hollywood, how long before the internet campaign to get Simon Pegg attached starts? Oh wait, I think it just did!

The Rebirth of Superman

2008-02-20T08:51:00.001-05:00

Supreme – The Return

Having read and loved Alan Moore’s Supreme: The Story of the Year collection it was a No-Brainer Supreme for me to pick up this follow up collection. You know how I really like Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman? Well, Alan Moore did something rather similar with Superman a few years ago, only he didn’t exactly have Superman so he called his character Supreme. Everything is the same but different in the mythos, but talk about your love of silver-age goofyness. It permeates these stories to the point where the goofy stories are actually the driving conflicts of the plots here.

Supreme and the supporting cast jump through time to old Supreme adventures that visually manifest themselves as if they were old comic books. Why try to erase the goofy past of comics rather than accept and celebrate them, seems to be the message here. Goofy stories do not preclude bad stories or take away from the kewlness of the nineties, or anything else for that matter. So rather than reinvent bits of Supreme from square one for a new generation of readers, Moore is basically showing how you can restart a character by accepting all iterations before the current one. These are comics, have fun with them for a change.

The Decompression Project - Hmm, do you think we could place MORE products in that shot?

2008-02-12T14:28:00.003-05:00

Ultimate Spider-Man: Hollywood

I swear I am reading comics other than Ultimate Spider-man (okay, not really), but I’ve been managing to get these all in a row so the project continues. This is the collection that shamelessly plugs the Spider-man movie. A lot. It feels a bit too much like Avi Arad’s Spider-man Unlimited compared to the Spider-man cartoon that preceded it. And guess who is one of the guest stars? I can just imagine what fandom was like when this was just hitting the shelves. Heck, it annoyed me a bit, I can only imagine the mouth frothing that occurred during the actual release of the comic.

I guess in some ways this is the Ultimatization of Marvel’s tradition of shameless hucksterism. Only rather than Stan Lee show up or an editor’s note telling you about something related to another series, it’s a plug for their Spider-man movie. It’s all a bit distracting when the real world crosses over into the fictional one in ways that don’t particularly contribute to the story. This is the dark side of Grant Morrison talking to Animal Man, in that it doesn’t really do anything but plug the movie. Sure there is a connection to the plot but it’s a real MacGuffin in that regard. The movie could be anything to get Dr. Octopus and Spider-man to showdown and get Gwen involved in Peter’s secret life.

I do have to say though, for shameless plugs it is slightly charming. I like this version of Peter Parker quite a lot and having him generally annoy the filming but be taken in by big bad Hollywood is perfect for this universe. Then there is the new Dr. Octopus. I do quite like his connection to the arms and having them act as two separate characters. It moves him out of any possible sympathy or goofy villain of the week syndromes he suffered from previously. Yes, he’s still the chubby goofball that gets beaten up but when he’s in full moustache twirling mode I like the Ultimate Dr. Octopus quite a bit.

He’s more of the brilliant doctor that is unable to deal with everyday things like combing hair or using manners, but he’s also a much scarier and formidable threat with his consciousness split between his human and robotic side. He’s part symbiotic, part Two-Face, part mad scientist and just perfect for slightly undercooked plans of destruction. All in all, he’s just inhuman enough here to really remain someone you don’t feel sympathy for in any regard. He’s creepy, he’s violent, and while he’s really a sad case you really want Spidey to hit him a few more times for good measure because he’s the underhanded small man.

And, while all this is a decent little bust up between Spider-man and Dr. Octopus the real crux of the story was getting Gwen to put the pieces together to move her from outsider to insider in Peter’s secret life. I do like Gwen in this series because to me this character is much better set up than Mary Jane to be the girl with problems but is working them out partly because of the naivety of youth and partly because she is simply put into a tough spot and has the strength to simply continue. Whereas the conflicts in Mary Jane’s backstory seem somewhat tacked on to give her some more depth, Gwen’s were created to serve a story. This, to me, is what helps her fit into the Ultimate Spider-man milieu better than MJ. Yes, MJ is now integral to Spider-man (although the current run of reportedly good stories after the impish annulment would point to this not being completely true), so she had to be involved but Gwen feels more like a creation than an addition if that makes any sense.

Her confidence feels slightly more real, her independence is more understandable and her blame laying is also something that works within the universe as it has been created as opposed to Aunt May suddenly expounding about how she’s freaked out yet obsessed with Spider-man. Gwen’s life was directly affected by Spider-man and it was inevitable that she would piece it all together. I think her personality is a good counterpoint to Peter’s and their relationship together is one that feels better than the Peter and MJ duality that feels more reflective than anything else. And at the same time I find it completely ridiculous that Gwen is living with the Parkers. It’s like they needed her to be in Peter’s life somehow so voila, she’s been taken it. Then again, that’s probably why I like it so much – because it is simply the most comic-booky of all relationships.

So this is a lot of reflection upon a decent villain vs. Spider-man story that leads to Gwen’s somewhat rushed entry into Peter’s private life that is distracted by the fact Marvel was making a Spider-man movie in the real world (and they really wanted you to know that Avi Arand was important). In the end I’m glad they’ve gotten Gwen involved but because it felt rushed I feel myself being slightly suspicious of her behavior. I do think the revelation works and fits both characters but I can’t help but feel this would have worked better if it was the first time Peter’s identity was revealed to anyone (whether it was MJ or Gwen). I can’t help but think that a bigger build up would have helped set up the Ultimate world a bit more. Then again, the way things have been up to know I think that going against expectations for that type of thing has worked out quite well.

Batman Beyond

2008-02-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

I never watched this cartoon when it originally aired and it's next in line of the Bruce Timm animation collection, so I popped it in and was pleasantly surprised. I've only watched disk one of the first season but I'm thoroughly impressed so far. I guess when you don't hold onto any expectations it is much easier to be impressed or let down, but still, it's good stuff.

It works for me because they keep the core that made the animated Batman and Superman stories so good. They focus on simple capers and well told stories rather than recreate point for point the comic books. Whereas the Batman and Superman cartoons would plunder the characters' deep histories for stories to retell, that gets left behind so far in this series. It's sort of freeing in that way I suppose in that telling Batman of the future stories you don't have the mythos to rely on and the writers get to stretch their own minds for a bit. There are still some homages for the long time fans such as Bruce Wayne's dog Ace, and the Oracle face showing up in advertisements, which are fun to spot but not occuring often enough to be distracting.

The villains tend to be riffs on Batman's rogue gallery but not too sexed up as to feel hacked out. I think the aesthetics of the Bruce Timm style go a long way to help that. There's Inque who is kind of like Clayface mixed with the Shadow Thief and that Bic pen mascot, as well as some classic Bat-foes like Mr. Freeze and the Royal Flush Gang. The classic villains, even if appearing for the first time, are all managed in a way that makes sense. Plus, there is crusty old Bruce Wayne who is a great character idea and would be better used if he did more than tell the new Batman to "get out of there!"

At first I thought the music and the sort of now outdated computer animation would be distracting but they lend a certain charm to the place. Whereas the original animated series was sort of like Batman crossed with Chinatown, this is like Batman crossed with Blade Runner. The original series felt more retro-sci-fi-noir, this series is very much futureshock-sci-fi-noir. The simplification of the colours and the experimental use of shadows and colour on the characters really help move this series into something familiar but different territory. The visual cues remind you of the setting that needs to be foriegn to the viewers but with enough visual pop as to keep you engaged. I think it works, if not only for the advances in the animation itself that help give the characters more fluid and quick movement onscreen.

Like the other series, it can stumble into goofball territory, but in the end I like the freedom of the series. It shouldn't work because of the changes they made but in the end it works precisely because those changes are really just minor tweaks. There is a hook and point of familiarity for the audience but the rest is more or less all new. And really, how many dystopian sci-fi cartoons are there?

Daredevil and The Flash

2008-02-04T16:31:00.000-05:00

You know what? I don't think I have ever read a single Daredevil comic. Ever.

I mean, I'm sure I did at some point because I know the score on the character but I can't recall any single comic that I read. Perhaps I only read guest appearances.

Also, I can't recall ever reading a Flash comic. I think I've only ever read him in team books.

Weird.

My Secret Invasion

2008-01-31T12:04:00.000-05:00

With Marvel gearing up for The Secret Invasion of the Skrulls and with their push to get Marvel characters closer to their roots, I'm hoping they decide to go full bore here. I of course mean that the Marvel heroes, in particular The Fantastic Four, defeat the Skrulls using comic books.

The Decompression Project - The Ultimate Five, sorry, Six

2008-01-30T13:06:00.000-05:00

What to say about the Ultimate Six? There were really on five of them? Sure, I know what they were going for with the Spider-man connection but really, there should be six villains if you’re trying to make the Ultimate Marvel version of the Sinister Six. I guess they didn’t create Ultimate Chameleon or establish Black Cat as more of a villain or something. And I guess Mysterio and Vulture just didn’t want to be involved, although I can’t recall seeing Ultimate Mysterio – doesn’t mean I haven’t read a very obvious story in one of the first trades, but I honestly don’t recall him appearing in the Ultimate Spider-man stories at the moment.

Again, this is a story with a lot of good bones and decent structure but lacks any sense of urgency when being told, or simply lacks any urgency to be told at all. I guess I’m hitting the point where I’m no longer seeing a re-imagining of Spider-man so much as rehashing the Spider-man shared mythology with minor changes. The Sinister Six was a fairly neat idea that allowed itself to have a rotating cast of Spidey villains, so why they couldn’t come up with a sixth member here seems slightly wonky to me.

I do applaud the attempt at connecting the creation of the genetic anomalies from the villains to Peter Parker. I get that they are two sides to the same coin and how minor differences can create major diversions in outcome. This aspect felt slightly glossed over to me and could have been a much stronger element of the story. The story is set up as a villain showpiece and a decent caper revenge heist type of plot, with a much better handling of Civil War type activities thrown in for flavour, only to kind of lead to a confrontation that felt more like a bunch of adult villains lecturing Peter Parker about how he’s from the same formula that created them, and some vaguely motivated attack on the White House. Once again, great set up, great potential and not so great ending. It didn’t leave me wanting more, it just sort of left me.

The story is set apart from the rest of the Ultimate Spider-man trades by the art as much as the focus. It was a bit odd to suddenly not be seeing Bagley’s art, and to have the youthful vibrancy of his art not present meant the tone of the presentation changed with it. This is stiffer, darker stuff that seems to help root this story into the bigger Ultimate universe. There is more SHIELD and the Ultimates here than normally found in Spidey’s solo Ultimate adventures. I think the art change helps reflect that change in focus but I’m not sure if it’s a benefit to the Ultimate Spider-man stories on the whole. I think that the tenuous connections work best and I believe this was originally a miniseries outside the main book so that would work for me, but in trade format it feels like a bit of a departure. It feels like the flow gets interrupted in order to follow up with a few villains and remind Spider-man fans that there is more to the Ultimate Marvel Universe – which I suppose the X-women showing up would have managed previously. Whereas their appearance felt like guest star showing up, this story seems to focus more on the interconnected Ultimate setting more than on Spidey himself, and that’s sort of missing the reason people will buy Spider-man books.

But did I enjoy it? Yeah, I actually did. I don’t think it’s groundbreaking or does anything to profoundly update any of the ideas found in the characters and the reasons for bonding into a villainous group, but it’s a decent caper and goes a long way to reminding me why I first found Dr. Octopus so threatening or Electro so uniquely terrifying. Kraven is the character I am least familiar with and I think making him some rage induced werewolf was kind of nifty. So the villain showcase aspect worked well, and the story worked best when focused on them. When the story strayed away from them, it started to fall apart at the seams.

Boing Boing link

2008-01-28T11:23:00.000-05:00

Wow, I got a post on Boing Boing. So to all you Boing Boing readers that may have shown up here, thanks for reading and welcome.

For non-Boing Boing readers, I basically sent along a link to a news story about the employee only CSIS museum. CSIS is the Canadian version of the FBI and CIA - more or less. Well, it turns out they run their own spy museum that is sadly, only open to employees. This was discovered by a report given to parliament or some other government committee. Well, it was just recently discovered that they run a gift shop as well. Again, it's only open to employees but the employees can buy anything in the museum. Okay, maybe only things for sale but it's never made clear that there is a distinction between for sale and not for sale items.

The kicker is that you write down what you want to buy on a blank sheet of paper, put the proper amount of cash into a blank envelope and deliver it to the museum. I'm assuming they will contact you on how to pick up your item once payment is received.

It sounds like a lot of fun for the spies, but seriously, who wouldn't want some cool cold-war era spy gear?

They do have a small virtual museum.

The Decompression Project: Cats and Kings

2008-01-23T13:23:00.000-05:00

Something Plok wrote sort of stuck with me when I was thinking about this collection. Pay off. While reading it, I enjoyed it. While thinking about it and reflecting upon it, there’s kind of little to talk about.

It’s all about character creation, and while the characters are great while relating to one another the actual plot seems to become secondary. And I have to say that for genre fiction, plot tends to be a major player although a good balance of characters and plot is essential. When one takes over then the resulting work seems somewhat skewed and hard to talk about other than in a purely craft based manner. I don’t need to talk about why I think the dialogue is so well done seeing as anyone who picks up the book can get that as well.

In comics, obviously the character creation has a heck of a lot to do with the artwork. The emotions and positioning of the characters adds a much more solid dimension to any character dialogue. In some ways, it takes the interpretation away from the reader but on the flip side it really helps reinforce what the characters are doing, thinking and feeling. And the art is still entirely fitting here, although the amount of fake boobs is starting to get silly proportions.

Basically this is a long intro for me to say that I liked most of this story and the beginnings of the relationship between Peter and Felicia. Of course he’d be attracted to her, he’s fifteen and she’s showing more boobs than Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl. The subplots connecting the various characters together is all very neat and tidy, but somehow it feels like I should know a bit more about everyone at the end of it. There was some neat revelations about Wilson Fisk, and I like how Ultimate Elektra is used but for the most part the motivations seemed slightly missing even though the relationships all felt real. Again, great characters but little pay off.

So I’m finding it hard to put my finger on it but this stuff is good to read but hard to talk about is all I’m coming up with at the moment. It sort of frustrates me that I can’t come up with much of a reason as to why it seems so hard to talk about other than that’s simply a flaw of genre fiction that is happy to be really successful at the genre and only the genre. It really does feel like a very long single issue. That really the extra reading is an expansion of the whitespace between the panels that gets expanded in the Ultimate universe. In the end, the story is simply stretched over multiple issues with the same payoff, hooks, cliffhangers and setups of single issue storytelling.

What are we left with? In the end I think it can be something extremely positive. New readers can pick up any trade of Ultimate Spider-man and not really be lost by the story presented therein. That is a good thing. You get about six issues with no advertisements and you don't need to buy them in order - at least it doesn't feel like you need to at this point. Let's see how things develop from here.

Magpies and Rock Band

2008-01-21T09:19:00.000-05:00

First I'd like to follow my idea of the last post for a moment. Please indulge me. I compared the idea of running the big two comic book companies to a sports team that constantly sells out games but never delivers a good product. I then thought up two possible outcomes - one is the quick fix that really doesn't do anything and the other is to get someone who knows what they are doing and takes the time to figure out how to fix things making a much stronger product in the end.

I used Newcastle United (the soccer team I'll be forever dedicated to) as an example of the second tact. They've recently hired a beloved former manager who had the most success with the club in the modern era. Well, I watched the game on Saturday and if I'm going to follow my metaphor then the part I need to add is that having a good manager is one thing but not having any talented contributors is another big problem. Yes, you could see them doing certain things better and different from how they were recently, but in the end the product still stunk. It's not to say there isn't any talent there at all, there certainly is. There is a lot of top drawer talent but the team has never gelled into something that works like a well oiled machine. The problem I see is that the players don't recognize what their role is and are comfortable in doing that thing well with the trust of their teammates doing the other roles well. The same goes for the comics. If there is a trust that the different books in different genres achieve their own goals well, they all play their own role, then the over all product is improved. If they are all trying to be the goal scorer then there are no goals scored. If the comics are all trying to be a part of crossover madness then no stories are told.

-----

In other news I played Rock Band this weekend. It is phenomenal. It is probably some of the most fun I have ever had sober in my adult life. My friend bought it and he invited me and my wife over to start a band. We went on Friday and I have to say I really can't carry a tune. I might know all the words but I have zero pitch control. I could fudge my way through most of the songs and actually realized that songs with long sustained vocals allow you time to correct your pitch. So I could sing Radiohead's Creep or The Yeah Yeah Yeahs Maps quite well. Trying to be dead on for the stacatto Blitzkrieg Bop was zero fun even though I love The Ramones.

I was slighly less crappy on the drums. Heck, his six year old son was better than me on the drums. I've never played any sort of percussion instrument before and I have to say that if you really want to take some beginner lessons then this is probably the funnest place to start. I did find that I was getting better the more I played, but I found the game a bit unforgiving in that I would manage to catch the beat but I was hitting it between the notes scrolling down. So being slighly off was killing me. I still liked it more than singing, which, while I sucked at it, was still kind of fun.

So the first night my wife and his wife would alternate between bass and guitar and me and him would alternate between drums and vocals. Things went so well that we got a few calls the next afternoon trying to plan us coming over again. So we did and took up some similar roles, but I ended up pulling a Pete Best and took up my place in a long line of replaced drummers. His wife took over vocals, I picked up a guitar and my wife requested bass because she found it way more fun to just hit all the individual notes (something she discovered was a heck of a lot of fun in guitar hero - moreso than the serious guitar shredding she like the beat and riffs)

And on our first song we rocked the hell out of it. His wife was almost perfect on the vocals and we were all kind of shocked. So we tried another one to see if the first was a fluke and she was better. We played a few gigs and then agreed we had found our sweet spot. So we made a new group and rocked it out on medium from there on in. And now I dream of streaming notes and ache to play again.

I did find the game a bit less forgiving on missed notes than the guitar hero series. It could just be that it's all about the perceived aesthetics - Rock Band used scrolling rectangles where guitar hero uses these oblong (forced perspective) dots. But I think guitar hero is more forgiving on hitting the notes while the guitar hero 3 songs in themself are simply harder to finish. It just takes some getting used to more than anything.

The only majorly annoying aspect of the game was the band management. It really didn't make a heck of a lot of sense. We had one band but wanted to start another, so we thought we could just juggle our characters onto the new instruments. Turns out you can't. Or, if you can, there was simply no way we could figure it out. So from my understanding each X-box live account has individual characters assigned to separate instruments per X-box account. So you might make a drummer called Mr. X but you want to play guitar. Well you can't just sign into the guitar and select Mr. X, you need to make Mr. Z. Now if someone else signs into the drums and wants to play with Mr. X, tough luck he's only available to you.

It would be nice to see a common pool for the created characters, or at least the option that lets you make your character available for other players and instruments. I understand that certain people would rather keep their own characters out of the hands of other players, but when you're trying to find out what you like to play it would have been nice to not be required to create a totally new band - well except for my wife who got to keep her original character and thus had twice the amount of cash for outfits and instruments. Although, it is great that you can use the same character for solo play and multiplayer games. And the customization aspects are a heck of a lot of fun. Hell, I would have been happy to just sit there and make tattoo sleeves on my characters for hours.

And really, in the end, it's all about getting together with a few friends and doing something together. It really shouldn't be as fun as it is to sit in a living room and play karaoke on little plastic toy instruments but sweet baby Jesus it was a shitload of fun! I mean, they have The Pixies on there - The Pixies!! That's pretty much the best thing ever as far as I'm concerned but then they added The Clash, The Ramones, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and have CCR and The Buzzcocks available for download. It's like they beamed radiowaves into my head via my fillings and made a song list just for me. Now if they would only make Drunk Teenagers and Nowhere With You by The Joel Plaskett Emegency and Don't Walk Away Eileen by Sam Roberts, I'd be exceptionally happy with the Canadian Rock content.

Well this is even MORE unfortunate

2008-01-17T14:09:00.000-05:00

Well the Spider-man marriage thing was finally picked up by the CBC website so that means I got an e-mail from my wife asking about it. Do you know how hard it is to explain this to someone outside the medium? It starts with, no I haven’t read it and probably won’t ever read it unless someone gives it to me and I have a lot of free time. Then you sort of have to explain the nineties and the whole Death of Superman really screwed up people planning to retire on their comic book collection money and how this is more or less the same kind of mentality here but with a bit less media attention or actual glut of buyers so the effects won’t be as huge. And then explaining how this was a quick fix and the writer didn’t want his name attached to it because they’re going for sensation more so than actual good story telling.

I made a comparison to the Toronto Maple Leafs (yes, it’s spelled incorrectly, and yes, it’s okay to laugh at it) and Newcastle United. Both are in trouble in their respective sports and have rabid fans – I’m a toon army member myself. So in order to fix their problems the teams have two options, spend money to bring in some temporary help and maybe turn things around although that rarely ever works. In the end bringing in a quick fix just prolongs the problem you’ve started with. The second option is to bring in someone in charge who not only has a proven success record but the fans respect and trust, and, most importantly, is someone who is willing to spend time to improve upon the core product that you have. While taking longer and less flashy it does managed to build a stronger base and more rewards come from it.

So, Newcastle United went back and got a well respected coach who knows the team and the fans will, more likely, be patient with in order to turn their collective fortunes around. And while they won’t win this year they will all feel they’ll have a better shot at simply doing better next year. The Maple Leafs just aren’t doing anything differently since they are still selling out the arena each game.

Marvel is operating like the Maple Leafs. They never break from the cycle of screwing up and while it may frustrate some fans, they still make money hand over fist so there is no real incentive to change. A quick fix here, a big trade there, an unmasking here, a metaphysical divorce there and things just keep going.

That’s a long way and a weird metaphor to go with, and I was hoping to avoid talking about this all together, but my real point that I was making to my wife was that it simply didn’t look like a good story to me so on a basic level it held no appeal. That’s what gets lost in all this. Sure it’s a news story and it smacks of sensationalism, but not once in any of the news stories is there any mention about whether or not this thing was actually any darned good. Heck, when the writer doesn’t like it, I’m thinking it’s not the best written story out there. But that’s just me from the outside looking in.

Well that is kind of unfortunate

2008-01-16T08:39:00.000-05:00

I read the last issue of The Spirit by Messrs Cooke and Bone and with it goes my habit of buying floppies. Or, at least, what was left of that habit. And I have to say that reading this story, which I loved by the way and think the tone of lost love is incredibly appropriate for thier last issue and Cooke's view towards big two comic creating, was distracting. I've come to notice that ad placement is really starting to get on my nerves as I become a crusty old dude. Well, crustier old dude. When something about a video game interupted the flow of this fine story a thought that I should have waited for the trade popped into my head because at least then the story would be allowed to take prominence.

You know how there's a saying about how it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? That's sort of how I feel about this book's short life with these creators. I also think that saying is complete bullshit because if I never saw just how good corporate owned comics could be then I wouldn't be so bored by the rest of them and be completely enamoured or at least pleasantly distracted for a little while. As it is, I'm just a bit sad to see this fine run end.

What impressed me most was that I was a bit trepidatious for the first issue since Eisner's Spirit rose quickly in my esteem when I finally discovered it. I had no idea how anyone could duplicate that verve and dreamy flair. Boy was I wrong to worry. Know I can't think of The Spirit without this take coming to mind in much the same way I can't think of Batman without the Animated Series in mind. It's not the primary thought of the character but the new version is hard to beat in terms of overall quality.

I wish the new writers and artists a lot of luck, and if it gets a lot of good press I may even pick up the trade. As for now, I'm totally done with floppies for now. Huh.

Weirdness

2008-01-10T09:55:00.001-05:00

I got a phone message a couple of days ago from the comic shop I had a subscription at, asking if I wanted them to continue to hold books for me. I cancelled it in August and got my deposit back. Now I feel a bit guilty if they've been holding books for me for so long, but on the flip side they need to, I don't know, pay attention to their business.

Sheesh.

The Decompression Project - Irresponsible

2008-01-09T14:36:00.000-05:00

Yes this is the collection that contains the issue where Aunt May goes to see her therapist. That issue isn’t so great is it? I mean it starts out okay. I like the idea of looking into the character of Aunt May a bit more but then it just starts to feel a page, then two, then three, four pages too long. I found the longer that particular scene dragged out the weaker it got. Which is unfortunate.

The rest of the story has Peter trying to come to terms with his inability to make or keep his costumes. It’s a cute little sub-plot and probably the strongest aspect of this collection. Much like the previous trade about the Venom story I felt that this collection had some great basic plots but it tended to focus a bit too much on the least interesting aspects. Spidey spends a lot of time dealing with a teenage possible mutant that can make things explode – kind of like Nitro, I believe? I do love that he’s named Geldoff.

The play between Peter Parker trying to learn responsibility and express that message to this kid who really just wants to be accepted so tends to act like a reckless teenager is a decent conflict, but like the Aunt May talking to her therapist scene, the interplay tended to feel a bit too drawn out. Extended scenes are fine but this one never developed beyond, be responsible, I’m a teenager, well try to be responsible, I’m a teenager. It made me feel sort of teenagerish towards them and just want to go “pfffff” roll my eyes and ignore them until they went away.

Then the Ultimate X-(wo)men show up. There’s a funny bit with the attractive mind-reader and then your standard X-men plot where their plane blows up. I bet their airplane insurance is out of this world the way they destroy Blackbirds. Anyway, I was looking forward to a bit more interplay between Spider-man and the Ultimate X-men but again I felt a little let down by it all, although I’m happy to know that Kitty Pryde does come back to the series because I honestly think that’s a great Mary Sue relationship.

So while I just don’t quite like the choices made here on what to focus I can’t really criticize anything too much. The art is still fun and the characters really try to express themselves, the actual focus just wasn’t what I wanted to know more about or see explored. I got the point, I wanted it to move on. There were, however, two major things that I just didn’t understand. One: Why was MJ dressed like she was going to a Tarts & Vicars party or was in costume for Pretty Woman? Maybe I just didn’t go to that type of high-school but it just didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the setting and character design which all looked their age. Two: Was there any consideration for issue breaks? It felt a lot like they reached the page limit and just stopped until next month without any attempt whatsoever to have some part of the story conclude. I know it happened in the other issues but this arc really stuck out for me, probably because I wasn’t totally engaged in the story. The name of the collection is either appropriate or unfortunate.

Mildly Informative Review - Laika by Nick Abadzis

2008-01-08T09:13:00.000-05:00

This is a very good comic book. I am late to the plate and just the latest in a long line of people to really like it. It's about the first dog to go into orbit and it is beautiful, heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. From inspirational greatness and indominable spirits to the utter futility of doing things because of politics.

Help a nerd out

2008-01-07T15:14:00.000-05:00

When I read about this Warren Ellis thing on the Bendis Boards I couldn't help but think it would be great if he took something like the Golden Age Angel or Blonde Phantom and did his thing. Then I thought maybe something like SuperPro, but really it would just come off as some kind of Michael Vic saga when you think about it, only tougher.

The Decompression Project - now continues

2008-01-02T14:31:00.000-05:00

So the library finally fixed, re-purchased or bound their copy of the sixth Ultimate Spider-man book. It's the one about Venom. It has been one heck of a long time since I read the previous volume and while I remember most of the story up to now I have to say I was still a bit lost on some minor details, like I don't remember Spidey fighting The Lizard, but that's not entirely the major point of this story.

This was a bit of a mixed bag for me, in that I liked aspects of the update such as the bio suit using the body's natural abilities and enhancing them to superhuman aspects rather than an alien symbiote from Ultimate Secret Wars. And while there is a lot of development of Peter's back story, mostly in the form of posthumous videos from his father, there is very little development of the actual Venom story. It just sort of happens and feels slightly rushed when compared to the father son relationship that gets explored. It's fine if this is what they wanted to explore but I think it really could have been a lot better if some of the aspects that are examined and explored between Peter and his father get reflected through the main plot of the Venom suit as well. I'd like to see it more as a whole that is exploring different aspects of similar relationships rather than the somewhat disjointed story it turned out to be with Peter sort of reconnecting with his past and Eddie Brock being a two-faced jerk.

Still, the whole Nick Fury foreshadowing was kind of cool and I'm hoping I'm in for some better payoffs as this story continues. So this is still a decent Spider-man story, just not for the story that is being advertised to you. If you're a Venom fan then you may be a bit disappointed, but I have to say I like this take on him than the 616 version, even if I like the 616 background for Eddie Brock a bit more. This works in this universe but it really could have been fleshed out a lot more, which is really weird for me to type in something I call The Decompression Project.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T10:48:00.000-05:00

I hope anyone reading this is having a very Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season.

Cheers!
Jon

Mildly Informative Review - The Salon by Nick Bertozzi

2007-12-21T08:58:00.000-05:00

It seems that I'm the last in a long line of people to praise this book, and worthy of praise it is. Not only is the story engaging (who doesn't like a good murder-mystery?) and the characters all well rendered and written (I can't think of Picasso in any other way now) but the use of colour is exceptionally striking as the panels adhere to a really structured format throughout.

I love this movement to take early twentieth century figures in Paris and turn them into a sort of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This book explores quite a few things at once, which is the essence of the art that Braque and Picasso were striving for. In one story we have the exploration, definition and construction of a new artform, multiple character interaction subplots and a surreal murder mystery. And at its core each element presented in the book is an exploration or reflection of that basic artistic idea presented via Braque and Picasso. To see something from many angles and using colour for emotional resonance allows the art to explore a new type of reality.

The comic itself, the physical object of the book, reflects this as well. The book is a landscape format often used to gather newspaper funnies, but it is vibrantly colourful in a minimalist sense with two colours used per page. And while all this fits into the idea of looking at the form slightly different, Bertozzi also manages to show how all movements that work out a final definition also become constraining in its own way. There is a rigid grid of four panels per page, that doesn't ever change. This can reflect the cubist ideas but it also shows how that movement itself, after its novelty wore off, became restrictive in its own right.

So, you can explore this book on whichever level you like, and I feel that if I had a bit more art history knowledge I'd enjoy it a bit more (or at least be able to place more of the characters easily). On it's purest level, this is a story you can just pick up and enjoy on face value. You don't have to think about the form or the ideas if you don't want to, you can simply read about a bunch of guys doing wild things in order to capture a demon sprung forth from a canvas. It is a rollicking adventure as much as it is a meditation on immortality through art.

3rd in a series

2007-12-18T14:15:00.000-05:00

I totally forgot I had this in my sketchbook because the course ended, and well, I got really busy the day I meant to post it. Here's my sketch of a relatively serious Chris Sims. His is one of few blogs I read on a regular basis and am always thoroughly entertained and as inconceivable as it may seem for a blog especially renowned for kicks to the face in comic books, informed. He's proof that the internet is not bereft of great writing talent.

And since that sketch looks a bit too much like a cross between Mr. Hooper and a character from The Far Side, here’s my sketchbook take of how our blogs compare to one another.

See how I spent seconds lettering and decided to forgo such artistic mainstays as head to body proportions? Yeah, I almost spent minutes on that thing.

Insert coal here

2007-12-18T13:00:00.000-05:00

Well if Santa's list was based solely on blogging activity I'd be getting nothing a pile of coal. Not a big pile, mind you, but nothing but coal nonetheless. This has been a bit of a weird year. I was sort of thinking of doing a year in review type post but don't really have much to say except this is the year I sort of faded away from comics, not so much as burned out on them. I did find that the big two super-hero companies had changed their focus enough to lose most of my attention. A few years ago they were creating stories that brought me back in and then squandered opportunity after opportunity to really knock things out of the park. I guess it's that road paved with good intentions.

On the bright side, all that pap makes the diamonds shine all that brighter. Books like All-Star Superman or The Spirit were fantastic, if not exactly prompt in delivery. World War Hulk seems to have gone over well as far as massive cross-overs go, but to be honest I didn't read a darned thing attached to it. I did however enjoy the heck out of the Marvel Adventure titles. Particularly the Avengers and Iron Man ones.

But honestly, most of my enjoyment this year was being able to read books that did come out this year at all. I enjoyed exploring the library system a bit more and just taking random chances on a few books that I ended up loving the hell out of. I've just picked up The Salon and Laika, both of which I'm enjoying a heck of a lot. And there was that last post - man I loved that book.

So in case I don't post again, Happy Holidays all.

Mildly Informative Review - Essex County: Tales From the Farm

2007-12-12T13:58:00.000-05:00

I’ve been trying to come up with a good post for this book for quite a while now but it seems that the workLIFE continuum had other plans for me. In essence I’ve read Jeff Lemire’s Essex County: Tales from the Farm and I’ve also been slowly reading Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics. In McCloud’s book he explores the notion of comics not only as art but as literature and how, at the time of publication for his book, comics were still coming to terms with this notion. That comics have yet to achieve that potential while facing the numerous challenges within and without the medium.

And then I read Essex County, which to me, is the modern of embodiment of comics as literature. This is a book that has a unique yet approachable voice, from a story that understands its audience to a look that is a departure from the superhuman copy reality blandness. Here you are presented with characters that look rough around the edges because they exist as characters that are meant to be rough around the edges while still being easily identifiable and unique. This is actually a book that looks like nothing else on the shelves, which is very welcome, but that uniqueness does not detract from its appeal or ability to convey the narrative or emotions of the characters.

The story itself is quite stark, again something I find Lemire’s character work and general layout of panels helps portray. The main characters have all suffered a loss, from a sister, to a mother, to a fabled career and possibly a son. The plot involves Lester as the boy always in a cape and mask living on his uncle’s farm as his mother, Ken’s sister, dies. While this is a generally strained relationship between two men at different points in their lives dealing with a shared loss Lester does manage to befriend the local gas station attendant Jimmy LeBoeuf. Their relationship starts because of their appreciation for the make believe worlds in comics but develops into a shared trust of one another, since they’re both cast as outsiders (amplified by comics' status as outsider entertainment)

But none of this really explains why I think this is my new example of comics as literature. No, for me it’s in Lemire’s storytelling. Whenever the characters retreat into their minds the panels have a new presentation, from Lester’s own comic book to Ken’s remembrance of his sister. When the somewhat jarring climax takes place it is never presented differently, which leaves it up to the interpretation of the audience. Did it really happen or does Lester just believe it happened? That is the open ended question being asked of the audience, and without reading it again I’m unsure I can come down on one side of the coin or the other. It works because it is so out of left field but also perfectly sensible within the story being told. That’s the moment that really sealed the deal for me, to say nothing of the reminiscent of Sling Blade relationship between the boy and man.

All in all, this is a fantastic piece of comic bookery. I think Jimmy LeBoeuf says it best.

Thanks Jimmy.

Mildly Informative Review – Zombies Calling

2007-12-06T12:58:00.001-05:00

I know, I know, what’s with the relatively current comic book review here? Well, sit right down on that comfy chair by the wood fire and let me tell you a tale. It turns out that if you forget that Volume 4 of Scott Pilgrim is coming out on a Wednesday you can’t actually get it on the Thursday. So I bought other comics, okay, I bought Zombies Calling and All Star Superman, so a brace or pair, if you like. It just looked like my kind of thing and I was looking for something new.

I’m glad I picked it up because for the most part I enjoyed the book. Yes, I used “for the most part” in that sentence. It’s not meant to be a backhanded comment or anything but there were a few things that I’ll get to at the end although nothing too discouraging I hope.

I know what you’re probably thinking as I thought it too – Another zombie book? Hasn’t that well been dipped into one too many times? Well, turns out not really, no. This is a book that is in many ways part of the self-aware zombie movement. Not that the zombies are self-aware but the story and the book acknowledges the source material not just as references and sources but blatantly by the characters. They watch zombie movies and are thus prepared for the zombie invasion moreso than pay homage to the materials they are homaging. I can appreciate that self-awareness, a lot because it helps alleviate a lot of the blasé repetitiveness that you can get when reading genre fiction.

This is a book that has a heck of a lot of charm. Faith Hicks manages to create characters that are cute but not cutesy and expressive without being over-wrought or over-rendered. In other words, pretty much what I'm looking for in pulp art. The characters lend themselves well to kinetic action scenes (like various face kickings and other zombie violence) as much as their emotional moments which comes off as feeling charming. I’m not using charming to be dismissive or belittling here, it’s a genuine compliment because it is so rare in so many comic books these days. Heck even the zombies are cute and goofy versions of the undead more so than the nightmare inducing rotting corpses one is used to.

The characters are all easily relatable if not on the verge of cliché but, hey, it’s a zombie comic and apparently there are rules. I get a bit of a Mary Sue vibe from Joss, but hey I can relate to anglophiles, zombie movie fans, Canadian student debt, and Halifax so I may be a bit biased there. There is basically the geeky leader, the attractive arty friend and the dumb as a defense guy. They’re relationship together is well balanced and I’m glad there wasn’t a bloated cast of protagonists.

This is also a funny book what with the evil professor commanding an army of zombies to some of the humor is based solely in Canadiana, which again, I’m happy to read.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the core message of the story. It is simple and yet it is highly appropriate. Basically, the current post-secondary education system in Canada is full of zombies that ensure you go through the next twenty odd years of your life as a dazed corpse. As someone who is paying off student debt until he is forty, I’m very amenable to this message. I’m a sucker for anything criticizing Canada’s delusions of grandeur.

I think this book is a fantastic beginning for Ms. Hicks as she has created the most charming twenty-somethings in Canadian comics since Scott Pilgrim took up his fight. We get some raw emotion at what I can only guess if personal experience of a higher education but it’s filtered through such an approachable cast of characters that I’m really interested to see what Faith Hicks takes on next. And that’s the only slightly annoying thing with the book, that while all the pieces are strong on their own, it still feels like a first work in a few ways. I kept reading about how the rules of zombie movies would help the characters survive without ever having the characters tell me what the rules were. It’s the classic first work mistake of telling and not showing, and while it is slightly distracting it’s not a deal breaker for enjoying the heck out of this work.

Two fun things for a Snow Day

2007-12-03T09:54:00.000-05:00

Today I am enjoying my first snow-day since I was in Grade 12. I was still a gentleman and walked my wife to work but I'm home now drinking coffee wondering if I should fire up The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker or Night of the Living Dead dvd? Decisions, decisions.

Otherwise, I did managed to watch a fantastic movie this weekend as well as read a fun, if not hard to explain its existence, comic.

I read the Hellboy Animated: Black Wedding digest. It was great Hellboy story with witches, demons, and magic book stores all taking place in Paris. It's basically the equivalent of the Batman Adventures comics only with Hellboy. There is a long explanation of the series in the introduction that is sort of a primer on how big time animation happens, and it is both and interesting story and a slightly foreboding message to anyone thinking of just breaking into the animation world.

So what you have is a slightly more cartoony version of the Hellboy characters in a fairly standard Hellboy adventure although there is still the death of an agent so I'm not entirely sold on whether this was completely censored for kids - which of course makes it awesome. I mean, really, it can't be a Hellboy comic without some BRPD agent dying. But unlike the Batman adventures which took a bloated franchise and reduced it to its core awesomeness, this is a bit unnecessary for a franchise not really flagging. I guess it can introduce a new audience, but I'm not sure a lot of parents who aren't already familiar with the character would be willing to pick up a cartoon book called Hellboy, especially when there is a blood-slug eating through the chest of a man in the middle of the story.

That being said, I really enjoyed it, but I generally like this kind of thing anyway. I have to say the Young Hellboy/Lobster Johnson backup story is pretty much worth the cover price on its own. I mean who can't love someone who replaces the word "pain" with "justice" and uses phrases like "Time to inflict some justice"? If you don't like that you pretty much don't have a soul. Or Hellboy may have used his right hand of doom on your sense of humour.

Movie wise I watched Equilibrium and it was pretty much one of the coolest movies I've seen in a long time. It's basically The Matrix without Keanu. It stars Christian Bale who does a wonderful job of acting emotionless as opposed to Keanu's inability to emote. Let's just say this movie is a mixture of 1984, ritalin, Fahrenheit 451, and Gun-fu. In order to avoid war humanity has come up with Grammaton Clerics who study the Gun-Kata in order to punish Sense Offenders in the name of the Tetragrammaton and Father. If that doesn't sound like the best movie ever then know that the big change is sparked by someone finding a puppy. Yes, a cute puppy. Then reems of unfeeling armored thugs are taken out at extreme close range by a dude with two guns in a mix of kung-fu and wild west quick draw because someone tries to kill the puppy.

It is really good and don't let my attempts at humor or flippancy deter you from giving this movie a whirl. If you are in the mood for an action movie but don't want to watch something like Live Free or Die Hard, it's because you want to watch Equilibrium. It was recommended strongly by two people at Elgin St. Video and it's the first time I put a note on the returned DVD thanking someone for their recommendation.

The Eternals - Briefly

2007-11-28T09:40:00.000-05:00

So I was reading the relaunch of The Eternals by Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr when I got to the end and discovered this was only the first half/part of a bigger story. That was disappointing, even moreso than the constant shoe-horning of Iron Man and the Civil War mandated appearances. Although, having the Eternals out dickhead Tony Stark was kind of a nice touch - the did kill an eleven year-old kid afterall.

I never experienced Kirby's version so I have no reference point for comparison here, but I liked what I read which makes the random ending all the more disappointing. This is good comics that sort of ends like someone ripping a band-aid off your scraped elbow, it's just sudden and jarring and you're not too sure it was such a good idea.

Beautiful, beautiful artwork though. I could honestly just open this thing up at random and gaze at the colours on the verge of glowing themselves off the page. This book is luminescent as far as the artwork and coloring is concerned. Fantastic pairing.

Eisner on Racism and History

2007-11-27T13:31:00.000-05:00

Reading Will Eisner’s Fagin the Jew is a bit like reading three separate stories that are related via one character. If you are thinking of writing comics and have tried to read as many writing resources as you can before putting pen to paper you will have come across the three act structure more than once I can assure you. And this story is no different, however each act feels almost detached from the previous one. Of all the Eisner stuff I have read this work feels the least structured.

The majority of what I’ve read by Eisner, outside his work on The Spirit, tends to be thematically linked works that don’t necessarily equate three acts of one story. Work like The Contract with God trilogy or New York Stories tend to share a setting or some characters to achieve their ends so their multiple arcs under one banner work in their own separate ways. In Fagin the Jew, the connection between the three arcs is one character so the difference in narrative is more pronounced.

Fagin’s early life is pure Eisner comics with a run down kid living as a refugee Jew in the unforgiving streets of London. Here he quickly learns how being streetwise is what will let him survive in a city that has nothing but contempt for him. From his father’s lessons and short life, to his apprenticeship with the accepted Jews who try to lift up their brethren by collective charity or simply by deciding to be culturally Jewish but religiously Church of England. It is a fascinating exploration of an immigrant culture at a specific time that feels timeless in many respects because of the shared history of the Diaspora.

When the story moves into the plot of Dickens’ Oliver Twist it feels like a different actor has been introduced to play Fagin. Suddenly this rather sympathetic character is forced to fit into the mold cast by Dickens and I’m not sure it is completely successful as Fagin becomes a harder personality with a few moments of warmth. It feels like he is suddenly removing himself from culpability and being entirely too selfish all of a sudden in order to fit the Dickens role, when he was entirely more accessible and slightly more gullible leading up to this point. In many ways that warmness is repressed as a reaction to his previous treatment and while understandable on an intellectual level, and upon recollection, it still feels like Eisner is trying to balance his message with the plot of Oliver Twist.

And in the final arc the message comes full circle in Oliver’s treatment of Fagin. How this man we’ve come to know and understand is so easily cast aside. His life only becomes important upon recollection and as the future generations take a more generous and accepting attitude towards one another does he become a more powerful and important figure worth remembering. And in that, I think the book is success in delivering its message even when it struggles to balance the two narratives.

Eisner’s run down artwork is the perfect presentation for this story. From the sepia tones to the fuddled lines of the characters clothes it is the perfect presentation for something meant to feel historic. And what it does is make the work feel timeless. It is next to impossible to remove Eisner’s non-Spirit work from a certain period in New York and even this story looks and feels as if it could easily be displaced there rather than Victorian England.

I’m a huge fan of Eisner’s ability to give his art emotion. From the embarrassment at their position in life to their pride and joy at other moments, every emotion looks genuine. And they look genuine even through their shabby dress because the structure of each character and panel is simply masterful, that no matter how many layers of rags are heaped upon it the natural understanding of comic book art always shines through.

This is a book worth your time both as entertainment and as something of a historical document. Just reading Eisner’s own introduction makes it something worthwhile to any student of Eisner’s and the comic book medium where Eisner confronts his own creations. He speaks of creating Ebony and how looking back at it, it is obviously racist even with all the qualities the young character portrayed and Eisner explores his relationship with the character and his later attempts to fix those errors. I have to say that I think the approach that The Spirit Archives is taking is the one Eisner would have approved of, in that these stories deserve to be read, warts and all, because they are important for their content as much as for how they recorded attitudes in a specific time and place which is lost for various reasons in the Tintin removals. Eisner is aware of what he did and he realized that apologizing wouldn't simply make it go away, so in many ways this work here is both an exploration into how his own racist portray came to be as much as it is an atonement for it.

Both still good

2007-11-23T13:41:00.000-05:00

I just read book five (or six, sorry can't recall at the moment) in The Walking Dead series and the last Runaways digest. Both are still quite good, although I don't need the torture porn in The Walking Dead, but that's because I'm not a fan of the genre. I understand that The Governor is a bad man and did horrific things but that was a bit much for me, which is odd seeing as this takes place in a zombie book where the living undead constantly evicerate or are blown away with rifles and hatchets.

This just isn't my thing

2007-11-21T08:41:00.000-05:00

I started to read Apparat and by the time this guy vomits into his lover's vagina I figured, I got the point of the comic and decided I had enough.