Convivial Parlays

New Comics Content!

2008-01-01T16:05:00.001-08:00

I thought that me not writing about Metal Gear Solid might raise a couple eyebrows: Devil Dinosaur's on the chopping block, and it fares about as well as you'd expect. Link Here

I got impatient

2007-12-19T19:02:00.000-08:00

Here's the link. It's called Psychopomp & Circumstance: I hope you like it!

One Year

2007-12-19T00:19:00.000-08:00

And I already feel the need for change. I've been a little hard at work on some different type of pieces. I feel somewhat restricted to reviewing mostly new comics, but I haven't really felt inspired from those recently. And its not just the new, but the comics that aren't forcing me to write reviews.

A change in format is in order. Around New Year's, I should have something new up along with a bunch of pieces ready for consumption. They've also shifted a lot stylistically. When the new blog is up, I'll be sure to update here, but I'm likely done here, at this address.

Wooh! 102nd Post! Oh Wait. Wooh! 100th Post!

2007-11-29T11:53:00.000-08:00

Yea! Title says all!

I'm hard at work diverting my energies elsewhere. I'm almost done with a Moomin review, which will replace this hopefully before three in the A.M.

Update (Friday Night): I know, I know: I'm bad. This will be my stigma.

Update (Monday Afternoon): So, apparently, finals and papers take time. Who knew? Hopefully I can yield a couple reviews from my free time next week, but even then deadlines loom. Coincidentally enough, this was my 100th post, an occasion I thought gone. Two drafts are clogging up my blogger account, and their inclusion escaped my notice. It's also almost my one-year anniversary of doing this (Well, December 18th, but my last exam is the 12th, so this site may be defunct until then). I've had a great time articulating my thoughts on comics and don't plan on stopping anytime soon, although I feel that I've changed a lot since I started writing and might deserve a change of locale. Regardless from where, Thanks for All the Hits* and Attention!

*Which I still don't know how to check. That might be such a bad thing, but I'm still curious as to how those cool people find out that Bondage Batman Wonder Rock Latitudarian google searches turn up their site? I wanna join the club...

I’m The Type Who Reads Introductions, Afterwords, Prefaces, and Post-Scripts Before the Actual Letters Themselves.

2007-11-24T23:15:00.001-08:00

Storeyville

Some stories need a little context, a little accessibility before jumping headlong into them. This might be one of them.

Frank Santoro began drawing comics in a small, self-published 'zine called Sirk. In these pages, he would conjure a "sincere statement" from "B-level, low culture symbols." Unfortunately, we're only given a teaser of such splendor: the reproduced pages of Sirk are no more than thumbnails of pages. They convey his wildly shifting style, his ingenious sense of design (One page has a girly seductively tempting the reader while her boyfriend is arguing with her in the foreground, as if he's fighting to keep something different than an emotional attachment to her), but these are only teases of different flavors, samples of long since published, impossibly cached art. The book we're given, Storeyville, is not the totality of Santoro's output, although it may very well be his entire output available on amazon.com, a fact of which this book's publishers are keenly aware.

There's some more context needed, some that the rest of the book provides in spades. The introduction by Chris Ware reveals the techniques, trickery and magic of Santoro in the huge volume (literally one and a half times the size of a regular pamphlet), and this is before he gives his readers a spoiler warning, but I can't imagine anyone feeling cheated by learning of the three sentences comprising its narrative breadth. More revealing are Ware's elucidations of Santoro's shifting drawing style, of his page construction. The details of the plot, although important to the story if one is to gain a full understanding of its contents, did not apotheosize the work. The joy in reading it is not derived from reaching the ending, but in reaching how the ending is told, how Santoro conveys the emotions of the ending to the reader.

There's also the context of how other artists have interpreted the work. Seth calls it"the work closest to duplicating that same passionate and intoxicating quality that was found in the woodcut novels of Frans Massereel", and Chris Ware wastes no time proclaiming the book the revelation it is. All of these words enshrine the book before its contents can begin to proselytize themselves.

With all of this care put into archiving the book's importance in the field of comics, I can't shake the feeling that this may not be how Santoro would want the book to be published. He has enough of an online presence that my ramblings here might attract his attention, and I welcome his opinion. Santoro and his then-girlfriend Kate Glicksberg produced 10,000 of these beauties and sold 1,000 of them in six months. The comics were then left around town in "newspaper boxes, bookstores, and movie theatres," and enjoyed by the populace at large. The afterword, called The Road to Storeyville, reveals this. The book, an incredibly personal journey, was seen being read by plenty of people all over town by all sorts of people in all sorts of locales, connecting, it seems, with anyone open enough to open it. One almost feels obliged to enjoy the volume, with the copious circumstantial and professional testimony given about the book's greatness, the commensurate of Ulysses in Greek Epic and English Literature in Comics after reading the statements on the back. This is a work to be studied, mind you, one whose techniques will astound and amaze you. And, wrapped between this apology (I feel inclined to mention the work's positive qualities when people open the book and see an incredibly jarring, amateurish page at first as I envision others do, and the tremendous introduction (complete with Chris Ware's similar story of slight miscomprehension at first) is difficult to read as anything but an apology), we're finally given our book, and what a book it is!

At first glance, its art is less than optimal when compared with other more lavishly delightful artists. The lines are sketchy in terms of quality and linework, but this only the commencement of a style for the volume, a necessary concession to the book's needs, and a jump that introduces the world of Storeyville with immediacy and grace. Although a couple pages reveal the book's stylistic shifts unequivocally when a landscape flits from pencil sketching to inky expressionism in between panels, a closer look at the beginning of the book reveals a similar diligence from the beginning: we've just suddenly become conscious of the world around us, of the world that was more simply viewed before.

This sudden realization fits the book exquisitely. Allow me a spoiler warning, although I've already ruined a major facet of the book for virgin eyes. The main character spends the entirety of the book searching for his mentor, a mysterious character called the reverend, finding him in both memory and person. The book begins with the main character, Rudy, becoming conscious, and the reader's journey follows his (assuming an observant reader. I always get a little agitated when a critic or someone talks about a reader as if the reader is the critic themselves, and aware of everything the critic does, but I digress, and concede the importance of the synecdoche "reader," or, even worse for a book or comic, "audience"). The book then follows his quest for his father, but this is not as important as the portraits Santoro gives us of his character in between. A city's denizens swarm the pencil sketched narrator in heavy, starkly black coats, panels focus on the scenery of a city for panels at a time after a conversation sends the narrator into introspection. Although Santoro only gives us scant, oblique glances into his character form rare narration (and very simply written narration at that, much different than his brilliant, natural dialogue), he brilliantly conveys his mood at all times throughout the story. I could go on, but the book's artistic intricacies are fertile enough that I would miss astounding moments and ruin their beauty by interpreting them.

Earlier, when I mentioned this as the commensurate to Ulysses, the comparison was accurate in more ways than one. Similar to Joyce's usage* of free indirect discourse, the artistic styles shift with the emotions of the narrator, but, whereas the stylistic shifts of prose might only surprise, here the sudden shift between panels of gray, sketched landscapes to thick inks and startle. I don't mean to explain the style only through a simile, though. The style, while it has subtleties, is not subtle compared the less frank style libre: when translating mediums, very little more than stage direction remained intact.

*Yes, yes, this was much more utilized in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners than Ulysses. And Joyce was not its progenitor, just its most egregious implementer. To careful eyes, my statement might not deceive, but you'll probably need bifocals for that.

The comparison to Ulysses also applies to its plot. The Odyssey follows Telemachus and Odysseus as they reintegrate themselves into society after the Trojan War and time has changed both greatly, culminating in the assumption of identity and, consequently, security both physical and mental. Rudy finds himself missing something, needing his spiritual father, and leaves to search for him at the beginning of the story. He finds his father in recollection, just as Telemachus finds Odysseus in Menelaus' stories of the Trojan War, and how Odysseus finds himself by telling the Trojan Horse story. The moment of recollection in Storeyville fulfills a very similar role: when Will, the name of the protagonist, feels at his lowest, drunk in a bar, the moment of their separation overtakes him. Telemachus hears the exploits of his father as a guest at a Spartan wedding, and the two characters share a liminal zone during the recollection as well as feelings of despair. When he last narrated (and a section detailing Rudy's activities separates these two parts), Rudy tells us he was "lost" and "no longer sure in which direction [his] future lay." He then explains his closely guarded identity (Telemachus was greeted as a random guest in the house of Menelaus deserving hospitality), further establishing Montreal as a liminal zone. Rudy suffers a similar loss of identity, and he attempts to hide his past from his crewmates, but for him Montreal is not a liminal zone, but his newly found home. The three years described in the book could no doubt describe his change, but this is not a tale about Rudy, who rebuilt his life after being left wounded by Will on the run, this is a story about Will, the lost individual searching for meaning.

The book makes no references to The Odyssey outside of its plot skeleton. The story is even told from the perspective of the searcher and the object, but the only appropriate comparison is between Telemachus and Will, and not Odysseus and Rudy. Rudy has found his way when he is introduced into the story, and his identity is not shown as a shifting object like Odysseus', but something to be taken for granted. He has already claimed his place in Montreal's society, and does not need to appear a beggar in order to find his place, because he has already done so. There's also no suspicious ten year segments of unexplained absences that normally permeate more allusive works. It follows a similar rite of passage to the Odyssey, but should not be construed as a replicator, just a simile. An incredibly powerful, impressive simile that, unlike Joyce's, retains its rectilinear focus throughout, even moreso than Homer himself, on the time in our lives when change occurs, and how that time feels. This is a powerful work of internal revelation, one that can grip a reader and pull it into its world, its emotive state, and lead us to a beautiful conclusion of self-recognition.

Despite my misgivings about the book's presentation, it really is a classic and deserves an attentive read through by anybody who claims to have more than a passing interest in the medium of comics, but the book may be too big for a shelf. I recommend folding the newsprint copy and stowing it in the pocket closest to your heart, because that's where it really belongs, because this edition evangelizes when a discussion might prove more amenable to its contents.

***

And, just so I'm not completely serious in this post, my brother picked up a couple of cheap Philip K. Dick paperbacks at a library sale (they just don't feel right in teh vintage editions. Probably because they cost more than a quarter, that way), and this is what greeted his opening of VALIS:

We laughed a little.

New Mario Games Always Take Up Time. Always.

2007-11-22T20:27:00.000-08:00

Well, it took some work, but I think I've finally found a list worse than Amazon's Top 10 Comics. This one even has toys on it! And The Ressurrection of Ra's Al Ghul even gets a spot, in a rare break from tradition by including single issues on it! Because it's that good! And unfinished (along with X-Men: Messiah Complex, which just pushes ahead of a World of Warcraft statue)!

***

Last Week's Reviews:

All-Star Superman #9 It's kinda cool.

The Invisibles: Say You Want a Revolution Which is Really Good, especially if hormones dictate your actions more than past experiences.

Nightwing #138 Which is really awful.

***

There aren't many new comics series for me coming out this week (and I say that with the reservation that I'm not too interested in Jack Cole's Betsy and Me, I haven't started reading Love and Rockets yet, and the wide but shallow sampling of superhero titles are not purchased by me currently. This should be a good week for many, but, alas, I am not one of those people. And there's a new Mario game out) and the turkey's gotten to me, so that'll be it for now. Enjoy your holiday! and I should have a couple reviews up this weekend.

Sometimes, Comics Are Just Bad

2007-11-19T22:57:00.000-08:00

Moomin is so cool! Moomim Moomim Moomim! (Review forthcoming)

Nightwing #138

I should have known it wasn’t for me by the cover. (What, did you expect me to paste it on this site? I have some standards, at least).

Funnily enough, those costumes aren’t even those worn by the three chickadees either in the comic itself or in the Batman comic. I think it’s all a clever part by Morrison to show the transient nature these types of women have in the superhero funnybooks, to show how unimportant their actual identity is, but it’s done only through actually stripping them of their identity without winking, and that is not a fun time (well, maybe for some, I admit. Fun can be subjective sometimes).

The rest of the issue isn’t much better. Remember the overwrought captioning of M. Milligan? Nicieza has mastered the art of laconic emoting as well, but doesn’t even offer up an exciting tussle with ninjas to tide us over, just panels of Nightwing being smart and all that while billy clubs clash with swords and occasionally the shoulder of a Robin. I shouldn’t be reading this.

***

There was an interesting discussion stirred up by two individuals three weeks ago, all because of an allusion comparing Joyce and Stan Lee, touching (one might say hinging) on criteria for quality, always an elusive beast. The issue dissipates by the end of the discussion as both parties are complicit in slight miscomprehension of the other (as arguments usually go), but it does touch on the issue of quality and classification in art, two germane topics when I’ve finished lampooning a Batman comic for being a Batman comic (and, no, I will not paint them as concinnities of poor craftsmanship for M. Morrison as I am wont to do)).

Innovation (which might be seen as a criterion for my appreciation of art, given my recurring appreciations of “innovative page usage”) is really illusory and deceptive. It hides the actuality of a beast under a mirage of something new and wonderful. Regarding the flights of enigmatic auteurs, who’s to say that new techniques of portraiture really elevate the quality of art? Surely, one can claim the lines of prose as penned by Joyce inspire and allude to more than the verbiage of Lee, but that only speaks of how people react to a work. And even then, what if an unseen artist scripted a similar event prior to the exhibition of some art? What if Frank Miller’s panel layouts were actually inspired by Japanese Manga, and were actually very derivative of current Japanese comics at the time?

This is all separating innovation from its functions within a piece of art, though. Innovation works best when it isn’t offered as an element to be studied, but as a problem solved, of communicating a complex idea more elegantly than previous methods could muster. It is for this reason that innovation itself should not be counted as a criterion for quality, but a work lacking innovation will not measure up to those blazing trails with wondrous reinventions, now will it?

What is more important than naked innovation is how a work functions in its culture, in its environment (and, as those proclaiming quality to be entirely subjective, of the person reading the work in question, but I feel that groups can be made). Is a work innovative? Compared to those? Does it present a unique vision? Because these are (somewhat) the tenets of what I understand to be quality, but I can honestly say, with finality, that the biggest criterion for quality in a work is its quality, as will be determined by pontification. As dubious as that sounds, as much of an abdication it is, that is how I honestly feel about the issue. Innovation must sometimes be tempered by moderation, and moderation must be tempered by innovation, but it all depends: let’s talk specifics if we’re gonna talk quality.

All of which leads me to how I view Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four and Lee/Ditko Spiderman. If these comics could be read without the following decades of adoration, one might be able to conclude that they are the finest comics published by Marvel and DC, bar none, including Watchmen, Doom Patrol, Animal Man, Seven Soldiers, and all that modernist fluff. The books ingeniously combined the tropes of disparate, stratified comics at the time (romance, adventure, superhero, and big monster) and told wonderfully unique stories within a brilliant new framework. Unfortunately, those comics cannot be read as the revolutions they are except by the most studious of comics readers, devouring DC’s attempts at superheroes and Marvel’s attempts at Big Monster before plunging into the Fantastic Four. And, in some areas, they’ve aged frightfully. While searching for good, even great works, might be a worthy goal, trying to pinpoint two different, disparate work’s abstract quality leads to the rhetoric of subjective quality, and, really, who wants that? Let’s just say that both are in the category of great, and leave the numbered reviews to the unenlightened.

All that’s left is the reaction to the work, devoid of quality. Some critics chase the “best” in fiction and hew a visceral, personal reaction to a demarcation of a work’s quality above others, but, really, such taxonomy is useless. Work is only relative to other works: apposite comments on quality are only culled from comparisons: The Nightwing issue I talked about above really is dreck.

***

Kinda redundant to say now (oh how I condescend!), but, my blog requires

And is rated

All because of these words

death (10x)
kill (4x)
steal (3x)
dick (2x)
crappy (1x)

I hope I didn't use those words creepily...

Some People Find Sprawling, Incomprehensible Works Like Yes’ Tales of the Topographic Oceans Indulgent. I Find Beauty in the Earnest,

2007-11-16T23:50:00.001-08:00

and am banking on similar tastes from you, as well.

***

I’m sure you’ll be able to spot the newly inserted idea. It’s the one with no textual evidence and plenty of rhetorical aggrandizement. Enjoy!

***

Some individual issues impact people a lot. Jim Roeg is a master at documenting the impact something so miniscule as Daredevil #253 had on his development as a child (I have a heart spot for that one. I randomly bought that same issue in a bargain bin when a wee young’un). For me, pretense gripped my tender heart at a young age, and the only instruments able to affect my tender sensibilities were works whose presentation demanded attention and appreciation. I still naively called them graphic novels in those days, and I’m revisiting the monuments of yore. This comic blew my pubertal, puerile mind, and I want to know if it still can rend my mental infrastructure asunder as it could during my youth.

The Invisibles: Say You Want a Revolution

In my mind, Grant Morrison could not be anything other than a comic writer paired with an earnest but insufficient artist attempting to fulfill his vision. So much of his bibliography (particularly Bible John and The Invisibles, but there are some clunkers in Doom Patrol and Seven Soldiers, too) is written with the tremendous weight of experience guiding his pen that anything produced is a translation of a long dead language. His comics are gateways into his mental corridors at the time of construction much more than actual comics, and if I or any reader should fail to find them, the artists can’t quite measure up to Hermes as a psychopomp. I say this to disclaim my unencumbered adoration of the author. I can understand that the artist is not always at fault, but the reissue of Arkham Asylum only reinforced this flattery of Morrison. Forgive my worship, now, and, please, join me on this anabasis.

Before I get into anything else, I feel obliged to mention that Grant Morrison did not write this comic as ably as his other superhero work. Of the first three cliffhangers, the second two are completely awful, random insertions into the plot, eventually resolved at the expense of the first few pages of the next comic. While the act of dominating Dane by the Invisibles (#3’s cliffhanger) is an integral part of the male initiation ritual which Dane undergoes, Morrison presents the act as the start to a chase at the end of the second issue, and then any tension is relieved by the ensuing pages of talking heads. Oh, and Dane gets punched once or twice before they leave. I only mention this to admit deficiencies within the work before I enthrone it as capturing the male initiation ritual and elucidating its consequences. It’s not always a perfect comic, but rarely falters as a concept.

Speaking of concepts, I love the second and third page dearly. The credit page shows us Dane ready to throw a Molotov cocktail into a school, and the third page focuses on the cocktail’s journey through the library, leading to its eventual explosion. Showing the library destroyed isn’t enough for readers of this comic, we must watch the cocktail on its incendiary path; we must revel with Dane as the school blows up. The following sixteen pages, less two for the invocation of John Lennon, delineate the hoodlum’s activities with a similar lingering eye, but aren’t quite as beautiful in their rectilinearality. Also, and this is really important but approaches uninteresting, they portray Dane as the epitome of youthful rebellion, and establishes a conflict between youthful intelligence and authority, which will be recurred throughout the work in different situations. They also establish Dane as a liminal male, and set the stage for plenty of subtle mythic allusions.

Morrison establishes a mythic undertone to the series very early, the first page in fact! Morrison alludes to the Egyptian God Khepri or, as the book spells it, Kheprah, by presenting King Mob with a Kheper, a mummified beetle. In ancient Egypt, beetles would lay their eggs in animal feces and dead scarabs, and the ancient Egyptians felt that the growth of these insects from detritus was a miracle. Kheprah, the god associated with the beetles, became the god of rebirth, and, after the cult of Ra became incredibly prominent, the idea of rebirth and the god Kheprah was subsumed into the youth of Ra (this information is taken from Wikipedia). Dane is the kheper of the story, having begun his life in social filth, and this comic itself can be a kheper, having begun in the poor conditions and public perception and grown into a mature, living thing (which is how Morrison wishes we’d view the Invisibles, as a living text, a hypersigil, but I’ll remark on that subject a little later)

Morrison also trades in Buddhist parables, too. Before Siddhartha Gautama’s enlightenment, he takes on the consciousness of a pigeon and flies around in the mind of the other. This separates Siddhartha from his ego, his sense of self, by learning an extreme form of empathy. Dane undergoes the same ritual as Siddhartha through Tom O’Bedlam, and eventually his identity is completely stripped from himself by dying, by jumping off from a skyscraper. Which is later revealed as less than a complete ego destruction, but the importance here is the ritual he undergoes, as well as the alien abduction experience similar to that from Morrison’s youth. There’s a conflict here between Dane’s old self, the poof-hating hoodlum, and the Buddha O’Bedlam is making him out to be. There’s no possible way the old self can win when the Invisibles have such an institution set for emotional transformations (Another cell makes that their vocation, as seen in volume 5 when Boy’s vengeful motives are extirpated).

There’s another conflict Morrison presents in the story. In order to make the comic more interesting, the jars filled with the brains of aggressive and rebellious boys make the conflict explicitly external, too, necessitating Dane’s future training in martial arts. If the forces of order (and Morrison very carefully lets the reader make all the associations of the opposition. Characters simply shrug when pressed to identify the enemy as “The forces that want to control people’s lives and keep us asleep forever,” Boy states in #5. This is a conflict of ideals, first and foremost, in which King Mob and Gelt are only fashionable marionettes) can strip Dane of his originality and rebellious ideals simply by surgery, He must learn to fire a gun if he’s to survive in this world.

Unfortunately, Dane never quite learns how to fire a gun in the first couple pages (and his first and only subsequent murder at the end of the start of the first volume reinforces his status as a Buddha: the one dying man caused Siddhartha to attain enlightenment, just as the one murder of Dane around the murderous lot of Invisibles instigated his path), and suffers at the hands of Tom O’Bedlam, the Invisibles dressed as Sir Miles’ hobo hunting troupe, and the teachers at Harmony House: although the Invisibles are painted in a sympathetic light, here they resort to base psychological tactics when recruiting Dane. Clearly, some of the evil order must be imposed by the Heresiarch when fighting the Hierarch.

So far, the comic itself has struggled to convey its meaning with the heavy handed fists of ham. While I might give Morrison credit for the authorial foresight to increase articulation of the comic’s message as the pages progress, I can only comment on its effect: Morrison the comic scripter is growing up with Dane, and by the end of the comic’s first arc, Morrison is ready to elevate the comic past the concerns of the individual Dane/Jack Frost and bring more characters into the story’s folds. The author gained the perspective of the pigeon as well as the protagonist. The next four issues composing the story Arcadia are very different from the preceding four, in style and intent.

It’s worth noting that Morrison writes these next four comics much better than the prior four. Each issue ends not with an attention grabbing cliffhanger but the conclusion of the single issue’s story, or a much more fair moment of tension. The fifth issue ends when the Invisibles reach France at the time of the Revolution. There’s no attempt at shocks like the sudden appearance of the Invisibles going to kill Jack, or Tom suggesting suicide and then offering it as a means of shedding the adolescent self. Morrison plays fair by introducing the assassin Xipe Totec, although, admittedly, the sudden quest of Ragged Robin to find the treasure of the Teutonic Knights is an odd insertion (Not that it sounds that much worse than Xipe Totec in this context, I humbly admit).

This isn’t to say that the comics are perfect, though. Morrison or (Jill) Thompson doesn’t portray the scene involving the horrific abuse of children as part of the dream which King Mob, Boy, and the Marquis De Sade experience, and often switches scenes with no indication except the turning of a page between the actions of the four leaders shown in the dream and the conversations between Byron and Shelley. Even then, King Mob and his companions are shown as being a part of the dream only twice. Also, the interludes of Byron and Shelley, while integral to the story’s exploration of rebellion, tonally shift the book whenever they occur, from the blood thirst of the revolution to the quiet exploration of the self when rebelling, and vanishes after a couple pages.

However, Morrison does interweave different visions of rebellion into the comic, something with which he couldn’t be bothered during the first four. Shelley and Byron attempt an internal rebellion against the unnamed forces of order (Morrison has yet to deify the opposition yet), choosing to rebel with their quills on parchment. The French Revolution shows that rebellion (of which there’s only one, says King Mob) writ large upon a society, where the oppressed become oppressors, and institute their world order with as much self-righteousness and recklessness as the former monarchs. This anticipates the second volume’s mental breakdown of King Mob, who becomes distraught over his many murders, and he starts to question his conformity to the other side, to the shifted allegiance from the Hierarch to Heresiarch. Already, revolution is shown as far from the answer to dissatisfaction.

III

This could not have been anything other than a comic for one simple reason; Lord Fanny. No textual medium could convey how feminine she is as simply as a panel can, and, were this a movie, she would be given a distinct voice, whether of a male in drag or an actual woman, but part of the charm of comics is its relation to novels, to the audience’s imagination. She can portray herself as having completely mastered the societal role of female without submitting to clichés, and can just as easily remove her silicon breasts and attack Orlando while the gender associations of her voice are a construct of the reader’s mind (Note: I will refer to Lord Fanny in the feminine, although I don’t mean to deny the masculine traits).

Lord Fanny would seem to be at ease in the world the Marquis De Sade, but she’s partly defined by her separation from a fantastical Garden of pleasure. Although Dane slings his insults at her, she reacts not with melodrama, but continued existence as a transvestite. Which is to say, her identity is well established and does not need the approval of peers. She has integrated herself into the actual world and spends her only time in a place like Marquis De Sade’s mansion, in the Velvet Underground sick and awaiting release (she prefers dance halls and clubs). She is subculture subsumed into mainstream culture.

It then makes sense that Fanny is the one to destroy Xipe Totec. In Aztec society, Xipe Totec was the mysterious god of agriculture, and, as the Greeks innovated with Demeter, the cult deity of rebirth and fertility, who offered an escape from death to cult initiates by rebirth. Victims would be sacrificed and their skin would be worn by priests every Spring in a ritual affirming rebirth (I’m not trying to justify those atrocities, just explicate them). Our modern discovery of Xipe Totec in The Invisibles even shows the God of rebirth undergoing rebirth as a tool of the Archons of order, and Xipe Totec has persisted at living under constant rebirths himself when we find him. The notion of cycles is an important integrand of the Archons of Orders attempt at world domination.

Fanny, by contrast, is separate from the cycle of rebirth. As a homosexual and transvestite, genetic rebirth will always prove elusive. She is naturally at odds with Xipe Totec, but when Xipe Totec attempts to kill her, she succeeds because of her deception, because he sliced her breast and expected her to bleed to death and turned his attentions towards Dane. So she killed the deity by stabbing it with her heel, with a weapon gained from her transvestitism. She literally could not have defeated Xipe Totec had she not been in drag: liberation battles rebirth: nirvana conquers karma. That fact that Fanny, as revealed in Apocalypstick, comes from a separate cult which deliberately changed the natural course of succession, adds even more delicious subtext to the comic, and establishes her as almost diametrically opposed to Xipe Totec by religious affiliation as well as personal. Her cult does not escape death but visits its land, it revels in the limen which Xipe Totec’s cult curtails, just as Fanny does by existing outside any of society’s norms.

The Invisibles was released in a very liminal position itself, apart from the fantastical elements of superhero comics but still indebted to them, apart from the literary splendors of The Sandman and Swamp Thing but still indebted to their progress. Grant Morrison hoped that the comic would become a hypersigil, an “extended work of art with magical meaning and willpower,” and its ease of access to the readers who might veer towards rebellion, who want something meaningful at the fringes of art, might have enshrined the work as a hypersigil. I can tell you without exaggeration that it affected me powerfully, and stopped whatever bathetic youthful rebellion or little epiphanies I might have undergone at my age of liminality, and I sincerely hope that it can do the same for others. Its exterior exudes all the qualities to which adolescent boys might find themselves attracted; conspiracies, spy gun fights, an insouciant disregard for anything resembling mainstream presentation, and a dark undercurrent of sex and gender distinguishing it from more mild-mannered explorations of self. It’s a concinnity of presentation, where people trapped within the conflict of society and self can find enlightenment in a comic seemingly encouraging youthful rebellion while ultimately showing its pitfalls. After embracing Dionysus, Morrison and his audience arrive at Athena, a journey for any with open eyes and hearts. Still, for those not ready to evolve yet, one does not have to reach the temple of Athena, and can simply enjoy the sights of a comic liberating the Marquis de Sade and blowing up schools. Le Mirroir Fastique, as is found within Jim Crow and Dane McGowan, two characters representing rebellion the most ably of any characters in the volume, indeed, where one can see one’s own progress in how the work is enjoyed.

It must be said here that this comic is, as Morrison has stated before, an attempt at a hypersigil, of presenting concepts and ideas, not of telling a complete story. As such, some of the deeds committed by members of the Invisible army are questionable morally, and Morrison is attempting to present ideas, not a story as The Invisibles begins. The comic flits from conspiracy theories to time travel philosophizing after this volume frenetically. As the comic progresses, we’re given a mad rush of ideas and concepts as puissant as King Mob’s mental breakdown after having murdered as many people during the fourth through sixth volumes (second by the single issues). The comic then begins to reconcile its past with its intended future, and becomes more responsible about its message and status as an incomplete comic. Suddenly, during the third volume of floppies, the characters start progressing and becoming balanced individuals. It mirrors Van Gennep’s three stages of a rite of passage beautifully; separation, liminality, and reintegration. We, as readers (and most likely disaffected teenagers. Who else would read this?), follow Dane’s path as he is separated from society in the book, as we start to view the world more in the terms of The Invisibles. We then become intimate in The Invisibles’ actions and folklore, reading their experiences as they fight not the inner demons created by rebelling against society, but as they go about their business, destroying society without the reconciliation of internal conflict. We are then reintegrated into society as the series ends, seeing the follies of being permanently invisible, of being permanently rebellious, and as Dane McGowan and the rest of humanity evolves. So, too, does Morrison wish evolution on his readership as they close the book and have undergone a personal transformation.

I can’t imagine how reading or how impossible it would be to read this book over the course of adolescence with this gravitas. The book is indeed a hypersigil, a rite of passage, more than a story. Whether Morrison succeeds is up to the reader, but the attempt is clearly made.

It would have been unthinkable for a comic to exist outside the Mainstream/Underground divide at this time. Underground comics at the time (indeed, since their inception) were diametrically opposed to mainstream publishing outlets. They were defined as much by their contrasts to modern newspaper and superhero stories as they were by their own qualities. More recent publishers such as Picturebox, as much as they can present a completely foreign world, do so without the anxiety of breaking away from the motherland, and offer the promises of Marquis De Sade at the end of the first volume, of a world where girls become boys who do boys like they’re girls, without the conflict of the Invisible Army and the Archons, the Forces of Order. This comic has the force of publishing history behind it, driving its interior. The same could not be said of a comic produced in a vacuum without the pressures of publication and editors contorting it, and just manages to combine a rite of passage within for the reader.

New Review! And it’s Morrison Related Again!

2007-11-14T21:46:00.001-08:00

Rawr! I'm excited about David Mazzuchelli's new book and the secret history of Batman in Japan! This doesn't extend to the stigma-inducing autobiographical comics down the list.

All-Star Superman #9

I don't think that anyone has really mentioned an important factor of why this series rocks so much: Quitely's art is absolutely fantastic, yes, and presented amazingly. The art for the last Invisibles issue is, hmmm, how can I say this, not quite deserving of mountains of praise, but here the characters aren't always riddled by linework. Jamie Grant is an amazing partner for Quitely, giving his smaller, less important lines less ink, and coloring landscape as a textured expanse (just look at the first couple pages of this issue. That grass looks fantastic!) and Metropolis as a vibrant area of color. Another factor is the huge white space in between panels. It really feels a lot more comfortable than Quitely's other comics, where panels just have a black line as separation.

Let's speak in particulars now: this is the issue where shit goes down. Panel borders break and interact with each other for the first time in the series (unlike the recently mentioned Fantastic Four: 1234, which made a shifting reality a part of its aesthetic) in an awesome battle between Kryptonians. I actually fell to the floor* when Superman was thrown from Earth onto the moon, and then cracked its surface! And then Superman looks up, all confuddled, and asks in shock "What have you done? You've broken the moon." That bit gets me every time. If only Dragonball Z was this well written (or written at all) outside of battles, and this issue might have some competition**...

*I was levitating five inches above the carpet, so no injury occurred thankfully.

** I kid,I kid.

The bit where Superman approaches Metropolis and says "Everything in Metropolis has been repaired… But better…" gets me almost as much as the two Kryptonians lovingly embracing while a volcano erupts lava all over them. There are lots of little moments to like here, but no big moment like Kent's Katabasis with Luthor, Superman's battle with Lois Lane by his side, or the death of Jonathan Kent.

A battle is pretty much all this issue has to offer, insanely cool scrap it is. And the scrap even comes to a lame, logically demanded conclusion of the two elitist Kryptonians being unable to survive on Earth's atmosphere because they were exposed to radiation making their bodies Kryptonite. Because Superman wasn't beating this guys in twenty two pages if we're gonna have Steve's toupee burning (notice the ever-so-slight redness in his eyes the panel before)* and Superman thrown on the moon and sufficient explanation that these Kryptonites are another different self of Superman and the character transformation of the two Kryptonians. This time, Morrison and company are much more honest about the visceral and superficial pleasures of the series, denying the heart beating underneath for twenty two pages.

*Well, this is important because Superman is shown as being vengeful and self-indulgent like those other Kryptons, but it doesn't really go anywhere in the issue.

Last Week’s Reviews Are Down There, I Swear

2007-11-13T10:32:00.001-08:00

Man, The Invisibles gets wonky at the end of the second volume of single issues, volume 6 by the thick books. But it's a different kind of wonky than the preceding issues. Those had a linear story told by more conventional means. Not necessarily a conventional story and one littered with allusive digressions, but it's told with the linear march of a plot occasionally halted by ventures into the past. At around the point where Ragged Robin starts coaxing Quimper into her mind, the storytelling takes a decided turn from all that has occurred before. There's the issue telling the Invisibles story through the narration of Ragged Robin in the writing tank from the future (King Mob is certainly drawn to the dilettante memoirist, isn't he? Who else would appreciate, record, and share in his exploits?), and there's odd captions asking who is telling this information. "Think!" The younger (well, the Ragged Robin prior to jumping back into time) Ragged Robin is revealed as the narrator, instead of the implied Morrison. Those captions are only found in one issue, and disappear, and most of my confusion stems from Morrison having his characters hide their mental processes from Quimper, and, by necessity, the audience.

This moment happens at the same time that Lord Fanny is being inculcated with Ragged Robin's past in an attempt to trick Quimper, as Ragged Robin remains hidden behind a mask during the issue. Part of me wants to claim this as another moment of Morrison inserting a metaphoric author into his story, like Chief from Doom Patrol or the leader of the U-Men from New X-Men*, but that might be pressing allegorical tendencies too harshly on a series often rejecting simple symbols. Still, Quimper as a being who seeks the complete knowledge and control of a character, and just when he feels the most control over her, she is revealed as someone else. Maybe Morrison is voicing some authorial anxieties about creating a character and forcing the character into a role, and can't reveal them candidly to his audience/fictional characters as he did in Animal Man.

Or maybe Quimper is the audience, contorting the fictional characters to his own needs and desires, and is defeated after the fictional characters prove to have a life beyond what Quimper sees in them. Regardless, the reveal at the end still makes for good comics, if confusing information is told at times.

*The Wikipedia page for New X-Men is pretty hilarious. It brushes over a plot synopsis of the run (where can I find my cliff notes for this part of Morrison's oeuvre?), and says that some fans were perturbed by the "pointless violence and cruelty he introduced in the book." Although the article's been cleansed by the Wikipedia Style Police, they couldn't change that line to some fans found the copious violence and cruelty in the book pointless? Really? And then there's this huge exegesis on the twists and turns of the New X-Men following younger mutants in an academy style setting. Also, the book introduced "questionable" concepts, and not "controversial."

The third volume is pretty wonky, too, but mostly because the entire event is an epic wrenched from context. King Mob is blond, we're reintroduced en media res to Division X who hasn't been seen since the end of Volume 1, twenty two issues ago, and Philip Bond, lovely Philip Bond, draws the traditionally tall characters as short, chunky figures approaching a cartoon. I was freaked out at seeing Lord Fanny as a short, skirted Bryan Lee O'Malley (not a fair comparison, I know) character. (S)He's become so much more than that. Then Sean Phillips begins drawing the series in what would be a return to the taller characters and thinner linework of practically the entire series beforehand, but Jay Stephens inks it, submerging Phillips normally thin linework with a thick outline. The colors are different in the volume, too, less shadows and light, but there is less background to color.

And still the story chugs towards its conclusion, invoking even more unreality and contextual jaunts before Quitely's twenty two pages of clarity heralding evolution.

I have a much longer piece almost ready on the first Invisibles trade paperback, a verifiable event during my pubescence. I would be lying if I didn't say that this is the most indulgent, thoroughly researched post I've contemplated (it isn't up yet!) doing for this blog, but I'd also be lying if that wasn't the faintest praise I've ever written. Hopefully I'll have it in a comfortably published form by Friday, but no promises.

***

Last Week's Reviews!

Man, I really slowed down the pace from this week to last week, huh?

Fantastic Four: 1234 Morrison and Lee combine to form an occasionally spectacular failure. If only a comic was attempted instead of a portrait…

Omega the Unknown #2 Lethem and Darymple can make a good comic! Yargles!

Robin #168 Milligan is no Morrison, and while that's normally a good thing, here it's bad.

***

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier is finally coming out! How the march of time effaces the brightest of stars! I've kept my eyes glued to my theodolite in order to combat this, so we're good!

Scott Pilgrim vol. 4 comes out! I think it's been long enough that it can rekindle a little magic! Excitement!

All-Star Superman #9 comes out, too! What is this? Christmas!?!

Okay, it isn't really Christmas. That was two weeks ago (and Santa has yet to slink down my chimney), with four Picturebox releases and MW, but, still. Those are three pretty auspicious comics with plenty of delays behind them.

Sigh

2007-11-12T12:50:00.001-08:00

C'est moi. Now that a manifesto unites us, maybe we can consciously move away the nerd aesthetic, but even that's from searching within a game for its defining rules and exploiting them (and occasionally forcing the appearance of an other on a nerd to society), so it's unlikely the stigma of looking beneath/above will ever part from the world. If only those tube-floating down the rivers of time could accept and understand those who wade…

Sometimes the Sky is Painted by Amateurs Wielding Knives and Rain is Razor Blades

2007-11-10T12:45:00.001-08:00

I waited too long. Powr Mastrs vol. 1 and Storeyville are no longer offered as signed first editions. I didn't want them anyway, I've decided, so everything is peachy!

Robin #168

If there's one thing Milligan gets across that Morrison didn't get to in the first part, it's the emotions running through the characters as they all experience successive anxiety. Unfortunately, it isn't simply gotten across, but beaten by repetitive panels and captions. Tim Drake stares out the window as Bruce has on so many occasions, and then reflects on five murders that he hasn't had the ability to prevent. "Five murders. Someone's loved ones. Maybe someone's father. Or son."Then Tim experiences suspicion over the person usurping his position, and insecurity after letting Damian escape. There is no subtlety in this comic: emotions are painted with frank narration.

Even Batman doesn't escape the sinkhole of frank discussion, and suffers Talia's invective: "Why is facing psychopathic super-villains so much easier than facing your emotions?" To which batman responds by raising his shoulders, lowering his head, and turning his back to Talia, who has assumed a morally righteous pose, hands on hip, staring at the morally inferior being before her.

Damian doesn't fare much better, but he stays in the background for most of the issue. After capturing Alfred's heart with sympathy, he declares, after smashing Robin with a no-doubt priceless painting, he responds to Alfred's pleas of peace with "So what? It'll be all mine one day, anyway!" And they fight, shouting death threats at each other. Thankfully, ninjas come and end the issue on a cliffhanger, with the promise of the next issue in the crossover being dedicated solely to a fight (Fabian Nicieza is writing that one, after all).

The entire issue feels like Peter Milligan is taking stage directions from Morrison. Have the two Robins fight. They feel this way. Batman feels this way about his son (which is important because Damian is the one most changing himself in order to gain acceptance), and Alfred is starting to feel this way about Damian. Milligan is jaunted by purpose at every turn, as if nothing here lacks the prescription of Morrison. Which is fitting for a story about the attempted mental and physical possession of a younger successor, about taking control of another when the limitations of self prevent the desired action, despite the fact that the comic produced isn't all that great.

Admitting False Interpretations is The Mark of a True Man. I’m Thinking of Changing This Blog’s Title to “Where Manly Men Act Like Manly Men”

2007-11-09T21:26:00.001-08:00

I even have four chest hairs too!

***

Omega The Unknown #2

I really don't know what to tell you about this issue's cover:

No way could Alex dress that normally, and even adopt a matching hairstyle to his outfit. I refuse to believe that he's an indypopper as Darymple wants me to believe.

Lethem continues his novelistic parade within a comic book framework (by which I mean the comic continues to convey information much more often by means of scripted action instead of artistic imagery or a graphic language*), and warps the storytelling a little to include urban life. This is done with jarring sequences, like two thirds of a page's buildup to The Mink's truism "This city'll kill you," and a group of ethnic minorities pounding on a taxi cab window. Other important messages are expressed within these hallowed pages, like how stretched from altruism the Mink has become, but Lethem doesn't denigrate his own message by constructing The Mink as a stand-in for modern superheroes, just someone who's abusing the superhero aesthetic to succeed admirably. Lethem does not = Geoff Johns, thankfully.

*I'm generalizing a little too much: There's this one really cool scene where Alex, the kid to whom Omega is connected, is asked what he's looking forward to studying. He replies Robotics, and then the camera view shifts to a slanted bird's eye view in a panel twice as large as anything else on the page, but having half as much dialogue. "No, it's a comparatively new interest," he says, and the character's awkwardness and stifled emotions is conveyed with a sweeping perspective shift. The next two panels are just as economical, with Alex staring out the window at Omega fighting robots, and responding to Edie's questions adroitly, he prevents her from seeing yet another superhero tussle.

The superhero action is better here, though. The battle between the Mink and Omega achieves much more than the opening sequence of the first book. Although a far cry from the invasion of the robots into the hospitable, it tries to do different things. It begins with a well conceived splash page. There are cameramen, amused spectators, bewildered cops (some have their guns drawn, some are observing awkwardly, and some are trying to prevent people from rushing the scene), and a couple reporters. After that, the Mink stumbles onto the scene (on stilts, compared to the more natural fighter of Omega, of course), and proceeds to kick Omega, who just has to not be expecting a battle. He just stands there until he's kicked, and then summarily smashes his opponent, being hurt only by technological superiority. There's a definite maladroitness to the battle: the two just stand there, waiting for the other to do something.

The book also has a much more assured style, visual and authorial. As I mentioned earlier, Lethem implements some thematic statements into the work (although thankfully the Mink rejects simple allegory), and establishes the Mink as a foil to Omega. Darymple and Hornscheimer begin to form a distinctive style instead of differentiate the work from a simple Marvel superhero story. The book has huge swaths of black ink, and the urban setting has this rubbery feel to it, like the buildings aren't entirely perfect and anything can bounce off of each other (just look at the carnage of the battle between Omega and the robots. This is a city that feels its damage, but can still function around it). The book has taken its setting, and promises much better things in issues to come, having established its own identity.

I was perhaps a little overzealous in describing the first issue's shortcomings by calling its stifled expression intentional. This comic is much more of a comic than the first instead of an illustrated script, and I couldn't be happier with the upgrade in quality. Here's to ten issues that will hopefully ship in ten months reifying Gerber's vision of Omega the Unknown.

This One’s for the Archives

2007-11-07T11:02:00.001-08:00

How did I miss this? I need to get out more.

***

I think we're gonna have to start defining terms if we're gonna throw around claims like this. Comic's writing (and this is the actual script, not dialogue or captions) can be more stage direction than actual writing like New York Times Bestseller's List Book #1. But this is a misleading distinction, anyways: books create and populate stages in the minds of readers. Comics have an extra interpreter conveying information from author to audience, so, in a sense, some comics can be seen as a reading of a script. So then comic's writing is a conversation or idea, and not a finished product like a book. This is only if the comic lacks captions and dialogue.

I don't think that Katie wants to explore the distinctions between textual and visual narratives, though (which can be done in so many different ways, and I'm sure that my words here exclude valid techniques). Just a thought.

***

Now, I don't mean to get too pornographic, but my love for Morrison comes in squirts. Here's another one.

Fantastic Four: 1234

(I'm sure you all have read this first paragraph about how cool Jemas Marvel was compared to Quesada Marvel. Sorrys!)

Marvel used to be an interesting, latitudinarian place when Jemas ruled its creative output. Milligan and Allred were on X-Force, Morrison and Quitely were on X-Men, and Morrison was given the Fantastic Four and Jae Lee (Oh, and something about the Ultimate Universe, too. *Yawn*). They produced a four issue miniseries through Marvel Knights (The imprint where superheroes keep it real) to deafening silence. This is Morrison's only mature work for Marvel besides his run on X-Men and Marvel Boy (well, that's debatable), and probably his only work deliberately using superheroes as symbols instead of characters. It reads a lot differently than his copious mini-series and extended runs.

Morrison always reads as constrained when working with a more painterly artist than pencillerly. His trio of works illustrated by painters, Kid Eternity, The Mystery Play, and Batman: Arkham Asylum, flout the stench of pretention, impeding an otherwise intriguing read. While the dilettante in me would propose a theory of finer art propelling Morrison to a different mindset when creating, but it's just as likely that the artist was sought after the conception of the project. Some of the Seven Soldier's miniseries are littered with symbols and visual allusions without the pedigree of paint. This comic only has the veneer of paint. Lee provided inked pages on which Villarrubia worked his magic. It's somewhat fitting that the work itself is stuck between the two extremes of Morrison's work visually and thematically, between the spastic creativity of Doom Patrol and The Invisibles and the hallowed halls in Batman: Arkham Asylum.

The painted coloring has two striking effects on the comic. First, we must talk of the world Lee and Villarubia create. Lee's grimy linework needs to be mentioned. Characters meld into the surrounding darkness, bodies are outlined thinly, juxtaposed with pools of shadows. Villarrubia lathers the seediest colors on top of Lee's figures, and the ugliest, most sterile colors on anything inorganic. Some of the pages are muddy, ugly messes of people and buildings and shadows, but therein lies the beauty of the art. Some pages, enjoyed without the context of the story, are beautiful. Secondly, and it must be said, this kind of art undermines the fantasticality of our heroes and their adventures.

The book is structured around a plot by Doom to vanquish his foes, accomplished by giving the three Not Reed Richards their deepest desires. Ben Grimm gets the event of being shunted into space jettisoned from memory and regains his human appearance. The Human Torch gets the beautiful girl and gets a monster to fight, and Invisible Woman gets the heart of Namor when Reed Richards isolates himself from his family.

Morrison begins by showing the central conflicts in the fantastic family; Sue feels distanced from Reed when he engages in intellectual pursuits, Ben Grimm wants to be normal, and Johnny is fed up with everyone's problems and their moping. Characters often mention how fighting against exterior forces pushes their problems aside and this ennui disappears when the Mole Man rears his face. Lee and Villarrubia's art is perfect for the first couple issue's restless and depressed mood.

There are also really cool bits of art where the panels break apart from their formerly rigid structure and appear as angled, flat planes in a three dimensional world competing with each other for space. Sometimes they illustrate Ben Grimm's fractured memory as a series of conflicting images, sometimes they herald the coming of a huge monster (because Dr. Doom is inflexible biê/strength and Mr. Fantastic is malleable mêtis/intelligence and emotions, which will always ensure him victory against Doom), and its stomping feet affect Namor and Sue. Sometimes they present exposition. They're all cool scenes, and innovative uses of the page. Other cool usages of the page include the use of well defined panels (an elusive beast in most of the work. Most pages are panels on top of an entire illustrated page) when Sue begins to talk to Alicia. The relationship between Alicia and Sue, and later Johnny and the random chick, are much better defined than the other characters, and their exchanges are the only ones in the book deserving clearly defined storytelling techniques.

After the second issue, the art in the book starts to flail a little bit. Johnny fights a monster and there's no action. Doom sics a huge robot on the Fantastic Four and the characters continue talking amidst all the destruction. The conclusion of the work is even reached by a similar feat of underrepresentation when Richards talks very sparsely on Doctor Doom's machine rearranging the lives of people. The Invisibles' sense of a person's self as remaining unchanged and only reacting to circumstance is recalled, but not conveyed with the profundity of Lord Fanny's story arc. Richard's stretching of consciousness is similarly dismissed in a paragraph, but central to the conflict between Dr. Doom's offensive and Richard's defensive roles, of the inflexible metal man seeking one thing and failing, of the flexible defender succeeding because he has not the rectilinear purpose of the aggressor. The only relationship given any kind of depth is between Namor and Sue, of the housewife finding a new beginning with a new lover but rejecting it because of its implications, of proving that "we're more than just slaves to our unconscious instincts," but even that develops along the sideline of the plotline, and is only elucidated when Namor kisses Sue before they leave each other, and the quote above is uttered.

The characters of the Fantastic Four are icons, and Morrison treats them as such. All the characters are shown doing what they normally do, Ben Grimm being mocked by society, Johnny reveling in it, Sue being distanced from her husband (because she's invisible!), and Reed occupying himself intellectually. None of these appear as compliments, and Marvel slapped a reassuring quote on the back, "A Heartfelt tribute to a heroic legacy," because after reading the first couple issues, Morrison does not paint a flattering picture of the four. Perhaps if an affirmation of every character's traits as alternating between conflicting and complimenting each other was not the sole purpose, Morrison could have achieved more than a heartfelt tribute and told one of his characteristically humane stories, but we're just left with a portrait of the Fantastic Four and their traits, without any movement of using the legacy of the World's Greatest Magazine.

Heh, It’s Been More Than a Week, but We’ll Just Pretend I Was Super Productive!

2007-11-06T18:25:00.001-08:00

Reviews!

Beirut: The Flying Club Cup Beirut goes West!

Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew's Spirit If…
You have to slog through detritus from Heidi's argument. And then you have to slog through my review to get an actual description of the band's sound, which isn't that descriptive. I'll try harder next time.

JLA/Hitman #1 I liked it a little, but not for the reasons you'd expect.

Dr 13: Architecture & Morality I liked it a little, but for the reasons you'd expect.

The Past Is a Grotesque Animal A Song by of Montreal. Probably the best twelve minute opus that sounds like a four minute song stretched to its limits. I like it a lot, and now I have the word grotesque in two consecutive review round-ups.

Void Indigo Gerber writes a "Crime against Humanity." I would say he writes an innocuous aition. They are sometimes the same.

Batman #670 Morrison's Not-J.H.-Williams-III Batman loses its damning wanderlust. For an issue, which might not actually imply a change.

***

Comics Deserving Purchases!

A lust for Powr Mastrs vol. 1 and Storeyville (Deluxe HC) populates my dreams. I'm waiting a little while to buy these, because my lust is very particular; two signed first editions from Picturebox's website. I get Santoro's two other comics, Chimera and Incanto, with free shipping if I do it this way! Deal! Now I only have to procure a large sum of funds. New Engineering and Maggots look very cool, too, but I should warn you: Maggots is incredibly tiny. Like, a couple inches bigger and wider than a small, personal notebook.

Peter Milligan writes Robin #167, so the next part of the Ra's Al Ghul Resurrection story (oh how banal that sounds! Isn't that every Ra's Al Ghul story?) might not suck. I've heard that his other comic, Infinity Inc., which has its third issue released this week, straddles the line between sucking and not sucking, too, as well as The Programme. Let's hope it's not chronic to all of his recent work, although the Batman Annual he did a little while ago doesn't fill me with hope.

Superman #670 comes out, and wraps up a three part storyline inserted into the middle of the 2 part finale of Camelot Falls. The next issue, #671 starts another 3 part story. Irony doesn't begin to define the travails of Busiek's run on Superman, but Carlos Pacheco draws slowly hits closer.

Omega The Unknown #2 comes out, and we'll see if the interesting threshold between textual and pictorial information is maintained, or if I'm painting the work in the veneer of abstract art too eagerly. Or maybe we'll remain suspended in doubt. Who knows where Omega goes?

***

You should start by reading this thing here. I, umm, used to read Comics Should be Good. Read might not be the correct word, but I would sometimes venture towards its pages in search of online comic's criticism. I think the last couple pieces that I really liked were before the jump, when Burgas presented his alembic of modern superhero publishing history in the terms of innovative works. They were divided into two parts, one about the early rumblings of authorial control in superhero titles, and the other about the Self Publishing Revolution of the Eighties and the British Invasion securing a measure of esteem for literate authors. It was bogged down a little by Cronin's overuse of self-made argot, but these are forgivable things in a nascent medium like American comics criticism.

After those two posts, I flitted away from the audience that Comics Should Be Good started amassing, but I still kind of hope for the same broad, sweeping post like those where the entirety of some arc of history is summated in paragraphs, especially with a focus on great comics. I still occasionally read the Comics You Should Own Column, but I have moved far away from their audience. I still have the same compulsive need to console myself after reading a great work by reassuring myself that plenty more exist, and part of what I'm trying to do with my blogging aesthetic is to transmit a similar enthusiasm, to spread the naked energy for good comics that those guys have (had? I don't read too often now). I'm as omnivorous and ravenous as most of those reviewers, but I apply my well carved teeth on much different flora and fauna than those cats.

It's disheartening to see such a well publicized writing collective dismiss a work by Tezuka so superficially, is all I'm saying. Surely the esteem of the God of Manga solicits more attention than what is given here, and the first three commenters agree.

I wish I had the keys to the car. Then we might travel to vistas unexplored by quotidian philosophers.

I Feel Like My Paragraphs Would Read Better If I Could Insert Load Times Inbetween Them.

2007-11-05T10:13:00.001-08:00

I hate it when bloggers drop off their pages without notice or warning. It's a betrayal of a pristine, laminated social contract: I give you my attention, and you give me punctuality, Gosh Darnit! It's a good thing I never signed that one, though. Otherwise I might be experiencing introspection spurred by what some amateur high school and collegiate rhetoricians would call hypocrisy, and the white flames of prejudices impugn even the most eloquent of auteurs.

Batman #670

I don't think it's too much of a secret to say that Grant Morrison is the biggest draw for almost anyone here, and he rewards by presenting his most Morrison Batman yet. Unlike his prior issues with Not J.H. Williams III (Andy Kubert and John Van Fleet, but the most important facet is the attention diverted away from the design of the page and more towards the design of the page-turn), we're given a quest over an occult object, intrigue over the conquering of death, and, and this should be familiar to those who were fans before All-Star Superman made Grant Morrison cool, a generational conflict between the rebellious youth and the domineering adults. It almost feels like Tony Daniel drew an extra script for an early issues of the Invisibles, where Morrison substituted King Mob for Batman, Dane for Damian, and Ra's Al Ghul for the King of All Tears (and Talia for Gelt, but even going this far breaks the allusions somewhat).

He begins the issue by talking about a magical object, The Book of Changes. It's an occult object, and it can be heard everywhere, predicting the future. So Morrison writes a cool little scene which could surround itself with Lord Fanny, Boy, and Ragged Robin without being awkward. The other idea, of someone taking a body for a ride, has a lot in common with the possession of many other characters in Morrison's oeuvre, and even alludes to how Ra's Al Ghul is returning from the dead. Perhaps we aren't even seeing Ra's Al Ghul return from the dead, but merely the idea of him, the idea of well-intended megalomania, hijacking a lifeless corpse (Those who point out that this is indeed what happened will get stared at blankly. I'm trying to make the point of ideological as well as physical succession). And as a gift of the ride, we get to turn Batman into the hairy chested love god from Neal Adams, a transformation of which Morrison spoke previously in interviews.

To tie together the idea of destiny conveyed in the book of changes, we see Damian in a position very similar to that of Dane McGown from the early issues of The Invisibles. He's being recklessly disobedient against his father, a very powerful man, and is drawn towards the rebellious Batman (hey, he's seen at gunpoint from policemen in this issue! What a change disregarding continuity! It's actually really important, and I'm glad that Morrison's clout supersedes consistent characterization!). It's almost as important that Damian dresses up in the Robin outfit, showing the shift of allegiance away from his father. Morrison is aiming at including the anxieties of succession in the conflict this time, aware that most rebellious teenagers end up just like their parents.

This can be compared with the central conflict between Dane, King Mob, and the Archons in The Invisibles. Except here, we're given a much more intimate view of the Archons and their prerogative, instead of some nebulous impulse to control, is directed towards their actions. Here they still want to control, but they need to force the conformity of their successor in order to maintain control, and Batman will, of course, come into conflict with Ra's Al Ghul over control of his (which could mean either Batman or Ra's Al Ghul's) son. Also, here, the Archons have lost control, which can be expected when the comic confines itself to the mind of the successor. It's also worth noting the presence of Sensei here, of conflict between multiple Archons over who gets to do the controlling.

Morrison is setting up a conflict between the young and the old, the rebellious and atavistic, nature and nurture here, and there's a surprising amount of drive in the issue, absent in his Batman run thus far. Maybe the detour of J.H. Williams III did more than provide us with three beautiful superhero comics.

When talking about Morrison turning out a script that's like an early issue of The Invisibles, I said almost up there, right? Because Morrison doesn't quite manage to pack the comic as full of mad ideas as he could under the Vertigo and Invisibles banner. He stoops low enough to insert three buxom babes into the story, something Tony Daniel has no problem drawing and augmenting. Sure, the staunch defender could argue that Morrison is trussing up fights between good and evil as a game by portraying the future robbers getting their makeup when preparing themselves for the crime, an echo which could be felt in every modern Morrison work, but the scene still feels like fanboy pandering only slightly justified by artistic intent. Daniel's pencils featuring the women stooping low to the floor when magicking and the full page spread of the Tiger Moth's skimpy costume framed by the black woman's ass and the green woman's tits do little to dissuade.

I'm being a little too harsh on Daniel, though. He can tell a story a little better than the Kubert brother, and all of his depictions of Batman have his as this larger than life menace covered in shadows. As long as Morrison doesn't force (or is allow the right word?) Daniel to draw too many scenes like the aforementioned trio of crime, the comic might turn out alright.

As much as the earlier issues dealt with Batman and his identity conflicts between Bruce Wayne and Batman (seriously, we're never gonna see the end of the cliffhanger of the issue right before Williams III came onboard resolved, are we? Where Bruce is kissing the supermodel after skiing?), this issue plays out the same schism of identities in Grant Morrison the writer, between what is done to satisfy moral obligations and what is done to satisfy superficial impulses, but it doesn't come out that intentionally, and I sincerely doubt that the team of guest writers can extend the comic's themes and central conflicts much further than Morrison has here. If only this run wasn't so strewn with impediments, we might see some beautiful comics. Here's to hoping the cavalcade of guests can maintain this story's integrity. If so, we can even grin and giggle a little at how Morrison's disembodied consciousness has managed to possess the bodies of Milligan, Dini, and Nicieza. At least I would.

The Void of the Indigo

2007-10-29T13:04:00.001-07:00

Or something

Void Indigo

What we have here is a comic penned by Steve Gerber, published as a large format graphic novel in the same series as X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, The Death of Captain Marvel, and, my personal favorite of the ones I've read, Daredevil: Love and War. It is painted by Val Mayerick, and lettered by Andy Kubert. I have no idea about that. It later spawned a six issue mini-series cut drastically to two issues after a tremendously negative critical reaction and incredible drop of orders for the second issue. One went so far as to call it a "crime against humanity." I will only discuss the graphic novel, because the comic really is batshit insane.

Mayerick and Gerber worked together very often prior to this comic's publication. The two had collaborated on Man-Thing when he was only a back-up character in Fear, and would only draw the first issue of the actual Man-Thing comic. This means that the two co-created Howard the Duck, but the success of that character would elude him, too. Frank Brunner and, later, Gene Colan would popularize the character's style. Mayerick began work at Marvel comics drawing Conan starting by penciling over Windsor-Smith's layouts with P. Craig Russell in issue #21 after graduating from college with two degrees in Art and Philosophy. Marvel wouldn't treat the artist too well, and eventually he took his fantastical style to Heavy Metal and the underground publications of the Eighties.

Gerber's history is, of course, legendary, and this comic is an important moment in his relationship with Marvel, almost directly causing the schism between him and Shooter. This particular artifact was released in 1984, and is a farewell of sorts for both. Mayerick would continue to become a commercial artist for publications such as Dungeons and Dragons. Gerber would only script occasional issues of Avengers Spotlight, She-Hulk, Cloak & Dagger, and Toxic Crusaders. A long run on any title would elude him until Hard Time in more than twenty year's time. I guess I should start explaining the actual comic instead of context, huh? It's all necessary, I swear.

The comic looks like the painted fantasy comics from the eighties. You would know what I'm talking about if you know what I'm talking about, those comics where previously unthought-of flashes of color and light attempt to cover derivative body poses and designs. As if Charles Vess required all of his models to start taking Creatine and working out five days a week, and the artist started taking the testosterone to match. This is not meant as a pejorative for the comic, though. It delights in the mythic qualities inherent in the fantasy milieu of fantasy comics of the time, manipulating and rearranging them.

The comic begins, as all fantasies should, at a time before time, in the era between the civilization of Atlantis and the founding of Jericho, when four dark sorcerers ruled the Earth with their mighty spells. We're thrown into the middle of a conflict between these four sorcerers and a horde of barbarians, all with remarkable similarities to Conan (even the timeframe is the reworded description of the Hyborian Age). In order to beat the barbaric hordes, the sorcerers gather all of their subjects, and kill every single one in order to steal their life force. This is likely where the critics found the crime against humanity, because Gerber and Mayerick do not contend themselves with describing the slaughterhouse, but show the slaughter of a female in gruesome detail, as the sorcerers idly chat around her mangled corpse! It's a horrific sight, but Gerber manages to one-up himself a mere dozen pages later, showing a spike being driven into the skull of our hero, and then having his hand chopped off, bone visible and all. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The hero, Ath'Agaar, shown in the book isn't nearly as horrific as the sorcerers, and, although headstrong, he's the victim of the sorcerer's machinations. The evil quartet decides that the life force of someone stronger is needed, and they proceed to steal the hero and his wife, hoping to steal their life force. The passion of the two feeds the sorcerers well, and, possessed with the life force of those able to carry out heroic deeds, the four can easily subdue the opposition of the hero, but make a critical error. After a horrific torture scene (and horrific does not do the full page of maiming justice. I felt incredibly queasy and found visual solace in the copious text while reading), the hero stands up, conquering the forces of death with one final volley against the sorcerers, and he destroys the source of their magic after one of the warlocks accidentally chops off his hand and the spike which it holds sinks deep into the Living Orb (the destruction of which causes a calamity, for some reason. What's important is that the power is externalized, whereas Ath'Agaar will always have his strength). Gerber wasn't too fond of Marvel at the time, apparently.

I should take a moment to explain a feature common in many myths from the world. Many heroes possess either biê, incredible physical strength, or mêtis, incredible mental fortitude. Zeus, the supreme ruler of the entire world in Grecian Myth, possesses both, and secures his reign eternally by encompassing both methods to problem solving. Our hero, Ath'Agaar, has an enormous amount of biê, and his enemies, the four dark sorcerers, could not survive without their mêtis. Gerber is giving us an aition, an origin, for the struggle between these two concepts, so prevalent in mythic structures. This is a self-conscious myth outlining an underlying structure of other myths, an impossible jump for those outside academia, and I couldn't fathom anyone without prior knowledge of myths being interested in this horrific pageant.

The mythic allusions do not end there. Heroes, at least in the Hellenic tradition, are defined by their pain, by how much they receive and give. Ath-Agaar is described as one "who suffers—As no living being has suffered before!" Soon after, Gerber even puts a Katabasis into the myth after he sends Ath-Agaar to the preeminent place of death in the work, the lair of the sorcerers, and has him conquer snakes, a symbol of autochthony in Grecian mythology and the only monster not imported from the Near East. Every hero myth in Greece has a hero undergo a similar journey to a place of death and conquer a snake (or dragon: the Greek word is the same for both). Ath'Agaar is the quintessential Greek hero by the time his astral body is launched into space to find another body to control in the eternal conflict.

After the Aition is finished, the book shifts gears completely and transports us to the present, where the latest incarnation of the hero finds himself alone at Earth, and Gerber assumes his own authorial mantle, and has the hero, Jhager, observe the world as an outsider. TVs are ridiculed (they only recount the adventures of the hero, after all) and a manipulative womanizer is crushed (who has a position of authority in society like the wizards as the corrupt sheriff of a little town) before our hero finds a mediator between him and the outside world, and begins his conquest anew.

The back half of the book, after the aition of biê and mêtis, becomes really uninteresting. Mayerick continues the gratuitous style of the former part, but without the subtle manipulations of Gerber. We only get the traditional tropes of the author in the use of an outsider narration, numerous pop culture references, and the horrors of daily life. We still have the first half of the book, though, which paints Ath'Agaar and Jhager as the artists abused by Marvel, and the four sorcerers as the evil corporation, opportunistically exploiting the life force of young subjects, all encoded in the language of myths. Marvel was a very interesting place in the early Eighties.

I’ve Long Ago Conceded to Occasional Indulgences. Expect Nothing Relevant, and You Might Be Mildly Surprised.

2007-10-28T23:12:00.001-07:00

There's an incredibly beautiful song on Of Montreal's album Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?. Naturally, it's the longest by far, clocking in at just under twelve minutes, called The Past is a Grotesque Animal. Of course, being more than three times the length of most other songs, it's not available for singular download on iTunes, but reviewable content seems kinda light (I'm pretty sure that Pnin or Fantastic Four Omnibus vol. 2 would destroy me completely if I actually attempted to catalogue something resembling my reaction), and the shame of negligence haunts all but the most callous of beasts.

Kevin Barnes (The lead singer and songwriter of Of Montreal. The group used to be composed of actual members, but after two band members left the occupation of songwriters and he got married, Barnes recorded an album almost entirely by himself, creating more personal music with the aid of electronic musicscapes. Now he has a touring group, but the music is produced almost singularly by him. Except for basslines. End lesson) grasps the lost time of Proust enviably well. The lyrics start "The Past is a grotesque animal, and in its eyes you'll see/how completely wrong you can be," and then the grotesque animal is viewed in its different forms. Barnes shifts from clunky metaphors ("the sun is out, it melts the snow that fell yesterday. Makes you wonder why it bothered") to beautiful phrasings of when the past becomes a fantasy, something idyllic ("Sometimes I wonder if you're mythologizing me like I do you, apologizing me like I do you. We want our film to be beautiful, not realistic"), but the focus here is not on how life ravages the self (and here I am, assuming that this alembic of Proust is fair! Go with me, for a little bit, at least), but how life ravages a love.

I should note that I don't want to give the impression that the song's only pleasures involve homage to a century old French writer, though. Barnes conveys the same feeling of distancing himself from something precious, but does so in a much more self-conscious manner, explicitly aware of the imprecision of reminiscing, lamenting the loss of credulity in remembrance as much as the loss of a beautiful relationship. It may be terrible to forget the occasional harsh edges in a relationship, but it's even more terrible to deny yourself an idyllic relationship when faced with an acerbic present.

This is only focusing on the lyrical aspects, though. Barnes has fashioned a simple beat for the song at the beginning, and throughout the entire twelve minutes, it never changes, but becomes heavier, more momentous by the introduction of sundry electronic elements. But this doesn't describe the actual music, just its feeling. Electronic bass drums and a loud snare punctuate ambient synthesizer effects, what sounds like a distant howl, until guitar chords are introduced. These remain in the song through a rubbery synthesizer solo, but the beat isn't that important, just as the particulars of the relationship Barnes described are unimportant. What's important is the merging of the musical cadences with Barnes' frenetic singing, the haunting harmonies which concede importance to the march of electronic drums, as much a metaphor for the march of time as the sometimes long pauses between stanzas, but the actual music isn't that important or integral to the song. Simply the repetition of a simple melody, chord progression, and drum pattern buttress the march of time. This twelve minute opus is not a product of compositional virtuosity, but sheer emotion.

Throughout the song, the singer quietly undergoes a transformation while singing. The first couple stanzas are lightly accompanied by quiet, minor harmonies, resonating the end of phrases with a haunting tone, but, halfway through the song, after the singer has admitted his own need for his lover, and subsequently "flunked out," he relates to a scene in a play, or art, and screams "Violence, Violence." There is no longer the subtle embellishment of a minor harmony, and Barnes sings the rest of the song always reaching a fever pitch of screaming in each stanza. This occurs at the climax of the song, when the singer sees his own relationship in art, and subsequently begins to view the past and interpret it instead of narrate his actions in the present. He enshrines his love for her, extols the potential they could've had together, and tangles himself in knots trying to cope with the loss. He "searches for old selves while speeding forward through the plate glass of maturing cells," trying to find how he can be a part of her "goodness" which makes him "feel so criminal."

At the end of the song, the singer finally allows himself the warmth of an incomplete recollection, stating that he's "explored [her] with the detachment of an analyst," and finally allows himself, whether from actual events or the whims of justifications and mythologizations, to connect with her mentally, stating "we've raided the same kingdoms," while "always touching by underground wires" (I've already admonished him for the occasional clunky metaphor guys, let up). The song ends with the bittersweet conclusion that "none of [their] secrets are physical," connecting the two's admiration for the same art (they met at a Swedish festival, discussing Story of the Eye), but ignoring the girl's shameful righteousness or incompatible passions ("Let's tear this shit apart," but she's prevented the reckless fun, having "red-rovered the Gestapo circling [his] heart," the singer intimates). The song's bitter ending, realistic but not beautiful, attains beauty by sincerely expressing the labyrinth of a mind crestfallen by loss.

Other people might find the winding lyrical passages in the song the product of poor lyricism, but the fits and starts which the singer undergo reconstruct the frantic tone of coping with loss beautifully. But I'm the kind of guy who like Davis' Bitches Brew and Rick Wakeman's (the Yes pianist) The Six Lives of Henry the 8^th, so I would be deliberately misleading if I didn't give you that grain of salt by which to take my admiration.

***

Tomorrow: Gerber gets mythic, Void Indigo Style! It's been called a "crime against humanity by some," (quote from the wiki-Archons, of course) but I'd merely label good comics the victim. Hi-Oh!

Note (11/9/07): I updated a couple misnomers, like that Barnes wrote and recorded the album before his stay in Norway almost by his lonesome, and that I equated Barnes directly with the singer.

A Short One Today

2007-10-25T13:02:00.001-07:00

Drat! While I was all prepared to throw myself at reviewing comics, I sadly came to the conclusion that most of the ones I’ve read inspire any interesting reaction. Hopefully a shorter, uninterested reaction is better than me stilting my non-opinion into an entire review:

Dr. Thirteen: Architecture & Morality

I love a lot of things in this world, and Cliff Chiang’s artwork has the fortune to be far above most, like frolicking in a meadow when it isn’t too sunny or hot outside, and petting a cute kitten (I have allergies. It’s a double edged sword). So I went into reading this with the knowledge that, no matter how didactic an approach Azzarello takes towards the grim and gritty trends of superhero comics (for which the series became notorious shortly after its conclusion. And 100 Bullets scripter who ends every story arc with death is the one saying this!), I would at least have a more pleasurable experience than frolicking in a meadow during perfect weather and petting a kitten. And I did, but Azzarello tried his darnedest to ruin the effort until the story’s denouement.

I get to enjoy imaginative character designs and villains during the story, but Azzarello cannot stray from the skepticism of Dr. Thirteen or the myopia of current industry artists enough to present an astounding comic free from those sensibilities. A lot of the enjoyment will come from Azzarello and Chiang’s unself-conscious treatment of forgotten characters, but, at the same time, he’s just treading on the last three or four issues of Grant Morrison’s Animal Man while lacking the connection between author and character that made the finale so poignant. I also get the feeling that Azzarello doesn’t really love the characters which he’s presenting to us, and just found some off the beaten path so that his story would work. Also, and I hate to sound like a Marvel fanboy here, but the small kid from the dream just suddenly appears on the scene with no explanation. The caveman and him aren’t even targets of the Architects, so I can’t even understand the reason for them appearing. At least the other characters are driven to the scene by the authors. Unless, of course, Azzarello is making a slight jab at DC for having to provide reasons for the appearance of people in comic books, and for showing cavemen, but that whole angle falls apart under any significant scrutiny.

Basically, the comic attempts artistic depth, but fails at providing it. It doesn’t sacrifice good old fashioned superheroics, just sweeps them under the rug, so the last battle against the clothes of the JLA lacks dramatic tension (of course the characters won’t conform to the ideals of others. Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns (and Morrison does not deny the history of characters when revamping them. His inclusion as a villain threw me off a little. Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, and Mark Waid as villains? Totally plausible) have already told them that they just won’t cut it in the future world, so why would they conform after being sent to limbo? Fortunately, we still have the first six parts with the attack of Nazi gorillas and the introduction of Infectious Lass to make the comic a pleasant, if unsatisfying in that I thought this health bar would make me healthier but it’s actually junk food way (I’m sure you can relate).

I Never Claimed to Be Punctual. Only Stylish.

2007-10-23T17:38:00.001-07:00

But I even fail at that, too. What's a blogger to do?

JLA/HItman #1

I like John McCrea drawing a JLA comic a lot, especially one where the marble statues of the heroes contrast with Tommy Monaghan. McCrea portrays his characters in Hitman as slumped, depressed, slouching, always ready to sit down in a nice chair and enjoy a beer in the company of others. His heroes are much different than that. They all stand completely straight, marvelous body posture, and, this is where it gets kinda cool, it looks like there's something a little off about them, as if they can't quite adequately embody their ideals. Wonder Woman's hair, legs, and breasts are a little too big*, Superman's a little too muscular, The Flash is always seen with his hands on his hips and face turned away from the direction of his body, and Batman is always facing away from the rest of the group. The staging of the heroes is fantastic, and instantly conveys their most salient characteristics with ease. That said, he does Tommy Monaghan a little better.

*Yes, I'm aware that I'm reducing Wonder Woman to her more prurient body parts, but it's all McCrea's fault, honest!

When Monaghan first bursts onto the scene with the rest of the superheroes, all of their idiosyncrasies are on full display, and the man has his arms open, mouth open, and he's casually striding. It's a beautiful melding of personalities embodied in a single page. To further make fun of how artists and people have reduced Wonder Woman (at least, that's what I hope McCrea is doing. All the characters here are caricatures, but I can't help disclaiming the chauvinist attitude which the comic has, but the reviewer lacks) to tits, legs, and the maternal instinct which manifests itself in Wonder Woman bringing coffee to the team (There are three cups and four people in the scene. It looks like she's even denying herself the beverage).

Unfortunately, there aren't that many more scenes as beautiful as that full page spread in the comic. The rest of the panels are staged well, with a clear handle on how to tell a story effectively, but we all knew that McCrea could handle such an unimportant task anyways. Ennis' scripting disappoints a little, too. There's an almost unbelievable scene beginning the comic where Superman admits to having a very intimate relationship with Superman to a man searching for a story simply because he stalled a little after hearing the name Tommy Monaghan. And then Ennis has to jump through the hoops of justifying Monaghan's conflicting character ("Jeez, he's an assassin. That's awful! But he truly embodies the American spirit! He's kinda okay, I guess. I'm Superman, by the way!"*) to the audience when his likable smile could suffice for drawing the audience over to his side, especially when Wonder Woman is a mindless warrior, The Flash is a condescending prick bag, and Batman is a callous invader of privacy. The rest of the (oversized!) comic recounts cool scenes in the Hitman series, and sets up the conflict of the following issues.

*I had to paraphrase the dialogue a little to make it fit into one parenthetical section easily.

I don't know if I can quite recommend the package. A lot of the elliptical discussion of Hitman issues don't really add anything to the plot or convey any information. The characters literally say, "Hey, remember that time? That was cool."* And that's it. The coloring of the comic also places it into a much more traditional superhero milieu, from which it's striving to break. And there's an abrupt break halfway through where the story would have ended if DC allowed the story to run serially in JLA Classified. It feels much more like an advertisement for fans to pick up the Hitman trades, and a plea to DC for republishing the entire run (some stories mentioned haven't made it into print, after all!), and much less than a complete adventure. Perhaps things'll pick up next issue when all of our heroes assemble and attack aliens, but, for right now, it's a pretty mediocre example of why Hitman is appealing to so many people. There's next to no characterization of Monaghan, the most interesting character in the forty-eight pages, just a lot of discussion between the superheroes of what is about to come.

2007-10-19T10:05:00.000-07:00

I must apologize for the flights which my life is forcing me to take. Back on Monday, maybe even with a review of, *gasp* comics!

Why Must I Keep Doing Things I Know I Shouldn’t? I Must’ve Picked So Many Scabs As a Kid

2007-10-17T14:53:00.001-07:00

Heidi fortified her argument. Like almost anyone, I could take apart the argument more closely, but I’ll simply quote her reaction to Stephen Hirsch’s response:

Then there’s Stephen Hirsch, who represents the “I’m in grad school and must be rigorous” approach. He has some decent points in there, but in one post writes:

“Heidi’s complaints are all based upon some normative idea of story that not only goes undefined, but is absolutely obscured by her citation of disparate, contradictory works and techniques as examples of good story.”

…then says….

“By reacting to the book the way she does, Heidi implies that it’s canonical and gives it some authority that it doesn’t and shouldn’t have. I see comics as an art form refreshingly free of any rigid canon, and would like to see it remain that way.”

Hm, an art form refreshingly free of rigid canon that…oh, might include disparate, contradictory works and techniques, maybe? Make up your mind.

Hirsch talks about the art championed by MacDonald (“early-modern picaresque, Dostoevsky’s 19th century psychological realism, high Modernism, and Krazy & Ignatz”) as “disparate and contradictory” and does not formulate an argument against “disparate and contradictory” work.

She also lovingly mentions Nilsen. I’m guessing she hasn’t read The End or Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow yet. Dogs & Water is a beautiful book, though I would suggest that its beauty is in how it uses the comic page to convey the loneliness of a completely cipher main character. It still reads much more like a formal work than one focused more on storytelling matters. Big Questions, on the other hand, lives and dies much more by its page turns than page construction.

After seeing what she does with a normal blog post, I can’t wait for her supposed “next post” on the “next generation of cartoonists.” After remarking time and time again how the post shouldn’t be compared with what would have been thought out, well composed entry given more time, she mentions a “further essay” on “economic concerns.” That’s going to instantly cause penguin pregnancies in Antarctica if a normal post blew minds.

Also, I just hope that Chris Butcher does not stoop low enough to answer MacDonald’s comment on her post:

Huh! I’ll leave it to someone else to say “Busiek wins”, but Chris, if you actually read my responses to the responses, as opposed to backtracking, I state that I “DID* say what I said. I clarified a few points but you might have noticed this:

>>>It definitely could have used some tightening up, but I do stand by what I said.

And I stand by that, too!

If this whole thing has taught me anything it’s not to write anything on a blog that is longer than 1000 words! No one can concentrate that long.

Tom Spurgeon, alas, already has. I’ve yet to engage in interaction, so I’m fine, but I worry about the others (Special notice: Kurt Busiek, Kyle Baker, and Dan Nadel guest star in the post!).

***

Did you know that Daft Punk sampled almost all of Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger from Edwin Birdsong’s Cola Bottle Baby? God doesn’t exist.

You Can Skip This One. I Prolly Should’ve

2007-10-16T15:49:00.001-07:00

Before I begin, I promise that I'm not just suddenly realizing that I'm in college. It just hasn't been relevant before. Promise. And, as always, this isn't the real event but a reasonable facsimile thereof. I apologize in advance for writing something that hews too close to a college entrance exam.

So, I'm in a beginning drawer's class this semester, and we just started drawing figures, as in live humans. The entire class is circled around the model, and we're beginning by drawing gesture sketches, which are quick sketches of the model in an action pose, which is only help for a couple minutes at most. The pose is incredibly dynamic, and we're drawing in ink for the first time, so as to not think about erasing and proportion, but only on the movements of the body. So, naturally, secluded around silent classmates for a couple hours, I begin to think of an artist's body, and how that relates to the body I'm drawing in front of me.

After a couple sketches, the professor gets around to me, and tells me that it's not so important to convey the details of the body, but the position and motion of the pose. A couple lopsided circles for a head are added at the end to notate where the head is looking, and the most prominent part about the drawing is the curved line denoting the left side of the body, from foot to outstretched hand. The muscles, she tells me, are forces which cause the arm to reach skyward, but I'm not concerned with you guys accurately portraying these muscles. I just want for you to get a general sense of the movement, of how the internal forces force the body into different positions. So, after handing me my handmade bamboo pen, the paper on which she's drawn to show me how to convey movement has only three discernible lines, that of the left and right sides of the body, as well as the length between the model's two hands.

We do not remain drawing quick sketches. Soon, we begin to examine the body in more detail as the class progresses. The model takes a pose for fifteen minutes, and we, still using permanent ink than the perfectionist's pencil, draw the body's pose, while paying more attention to proportion, detail, and light, if possible. The different poses of the model revealed the entire body through this process, and eventually, as the teacher intended, we would be ready to draw a much more detailed piece on the model within a bigger time frame. Now that we understand this body, she announces to us at the end of class, we can actually attempt to replicate it visually.

When creating art, one should not hope to produce a motionless object. Any oeuvre is an example of an idea put through a different position, of an artist's body of work straining to reach another position. Let's take Grant Morrison as an example because we're all aware of his work. The man started out interested in how loss affected people, with a keen eye on the role of the author in his second major work, Animal Man (I don't have Zenith. Hrmm. Another example might've been better). In his work started soon after, Doom Patrol, the role of the author, of the architect, became more emphasized by the end of the run. Moreso than Animal Man, a work about the power random life has over other people, Doom Patrol was a work concerned with how other people can affect each other's lives, how Cliff can aid Crazy Jane and how the Chief can ruin everyone's lives. By the time of Seven Soldiers, Invisibles and The Filth had covered how society affects the individual, and Morrison had more clearly established the current thread throughout his work, how people are forced to change. So, he examined how exactly different people change under different circumstances much more clearly, and with a more methodical approach.

The same body of work, Morrison being interested in what affects people to change, is put through different poses, in different positions and situations, and different pieces of art are created based on the contortions. Now, with such a broad topic as how people react to things, the body is naturally hazy, but it still has tendencies to find some information useful, some irrelevant, and to focus on some topics more than others (can I BE any more hazy, but, seriously, Morrison has one of the most versatile canons of work, at least in comics if not in the larger field of literature). The metaphor, of course, falls apart when smaller works such as The Authority, his Batman run, Vimamarama, and any others I haven't considered. Please don't mention such minor transgressions.

In Michael Wood's general commentary on Nabokov, The Magician's Doubts, Wood discusses the notion that the entirety of a person could be exhumed through a well developed oeuvre, that a person could be found through their work. He did not clarify the statement by conflating the person found in life and the person found in art. Literature (and here I go, divesting my metaphor from generalities) is by no means a similar plane of communication to daily life, and the tendencies of a person as they approach a novel continuously throughout life begin to manifest themselves as character traits. The body is found after examining its poses, after examining surface elements and how they relate to each other, and, eventually, the internal forces which cause the poses, the muscles, are discovered in an author's body of work. Literally, a stack of similarly authored books can be examined to find a person within, the author's character.

Oh, and my drawings didn't turn out too well. I was a little distracted.

Short Post Now, Long Post Later

2007-10-15T07:56:00.001-07:00

So, today's the first time that I skipped class. While sleeping, in between fitful awakenings and sneezes, I dream of faking sickness to my mom. The thing is, in the dream and my former life, she would always give in to my feigned disease, letting me stay home when the worst I had was a sneeze or nosebleed. So, I'm having this dream and I suddenly wake up, after dreaming that I just woke up on my couch, and realize that I haven't done the reading for French class. I look at this impossible to read clock, and discern an eight for the hour and maybe a two for the minute. I think to myself, I'll just get up and do that right now, it'll be fine. So I fall back asleep, and my mom is sitting right by me, "If you don't want to go to school today, you don't have to." I respond with an "okay," maybe a smile at the mother who loves me, and, in my dream fall back asleep. So, naturally I wake up and it's 8:47 (yes I do remember the time exactly). Well, fudge I says. I don't have nearly enough time to get breakfast, do the reading, and get ready for class at 9:30. After eating a large breakfast, I fall back into the covers on my bed, close my eyes and await the comfort of a caring mother.

I have another class at 10:30. Drat!

***

Update: Drat, I'm bad at these things. I forgot that I switched the time of each post off, and tis post, published right after 10 AM, lost its punchline. This is why I don't do stand-up.

An Addendum and Articulation

2007-10-14T18:49:00.001-07:00

Heidi MacDonald's condemnation of comics which strive to communicate feelings unequivocally without the trappings of a narrative (or she may have been deriding cartoonists without storytelling chops, or those who misapply their storytelling chops to uninteresting stories) can be distinguished from stories forcing those autobiographical experiences into a story can be see most clearly in Anders Nilsen (a contributor in The Best American Comics 2007, by the way), specifically his Ignatz book The End and his not-Ignatz book Don't Go Where I Can't Follow.

Now, as I wrote in my review of the former, the tremendous loss Nilsen experienced was expressed beautifully in a form eschewing anything but the moment and consequences of the loss. I also used the metaphor of Nilsen not processing the meat of his experience into anything other than the well prepared entre of his piece of meat. Let me just leave the issue of MacDonald's post by saying that in the abstract I would prefer almost any meat to sausage, although sausage can be damn good sometimes, especially if it was prepared while thinking mostly about how the sausage would taste after it was a sausage and disregarding most of the original meat which would be used to make the sausage. I'll let you find out where the metaphor breaks. And now for a review unpeppered with the double edged sword (I just can't stop myself sometimes) of figurative language:

Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew's Spirit If…

I love long names like the one above plastered atop regular releases. It makes the albums seem like so much more in conversation. You Forgot It in People sounds like a regular album, but a presentation has mystique in it. Big Boi and Andre 3000 Present… Outkast is another favorite of mine, especially because Big Boi and Andre 3000 are the only members of Outkast. I should've seen the split between the two for Speakerboxxx/Love Below coming. This is an album featuring most of the artists forming the Canadian music collective Broken Social Scene, but are all directed under Kevin Drew's authorial vision, which is to say that the man does more than facilitate the project's pop style by applying a consistent singing voice to each track. It was released almost a month ago, on September 18^th.

Generic Distinctions in modern Indie Rock are almost useless. Terms like Baroque Pop, Post Rock, Grunge Rock, etc arose after artists had developed their particular style after accumulating influences and forging a unique sound of out the various components. Then, like minded musicians who share a similar set of influences and share instrumentation and arrangement tendencies are lumped together, under the umbrella (guarding against the torrential downpour of an apathetic audience unable to appreciate innovation without a frame of reference, of course) of a distinct genre. Generic distinctions in other areas, such as, to pick a particularly apposite example, comics, relate storied traditions and tropes within the breadth of "superhero," "western," or "romance" comics. Baroque Pop has no such mores attached, and designates a movement, or simply a modern tendency of multiple artists rather than an emergent genre. The album I'm reviewing today fits under the Baroque Pop banner, with violins and pianos arranged as compliments to guitar strumming and singing.

For those wondering, any musician who often works with guitars and drums atop a song with a notable focus on instrumentation and composition and who has produced or is producing music within the last fifteen years earns the label "Indie Rock" in my iTunes library*. Any working more in the confines of electronic music or with a similar flair towards composition instead of performance generally is placed under the group "Art Music," unless of course they're members of Fort Thunder. I have my eye on those cross media cats, although I haven't expended that much money on their art yet.

*Not all of whom are on independent record labels. I despise the fluidity of language sometimes, but hope that the usage of a term while being aware of its deficiencies can alleviate concerns of the occasional loss of an important designating term. The term Indie Rock is almost as volatile to me as Graphic Novel to Eddie Campbell.

This is all to say that I enjoyed Kevin Drew/Broken Social Scene's new album. A major distinguishing feature between it and the Broken Social Scene albums prior are longer songs. Almost every full length song exceeds four minutes, and most are six, and most songs need all the time they have. Instrumental melodies flit in at the end of verses, and choruses repeated gradually build up into loud, involving climaxes, and even in songs whose structures repeat, like Lucky Ones, the parts are already exciting enough to bear repetition, and after a couple repetitions the drums get louder, and the song gains more voices.

I like the idea of Broken Social Scene. The group is twenty three members strong on this album, and has no qualms over importing a musician's talent on trombone for a song, and then neglecting them for the rest of the record. Their entire body of work has a casual feel to an entire orchestrating affair, a smile formed by the efforts of twenty three (Well, fifteen for the first two albums, nineteen for their most recent group effort, and twenty three for this one) musicians. Fortunately for most of the musicians here, the sprawling, music-making entity of Broken Social Scene is not the totality of their musical excursions. It's a place for relaxing musical standards a little, for playing around instead of innovating. Kevin Drew once described the band as a meeting of indie superstars to create a pop album, when no members had taken the time to create pop songs before. The entire album is a compositional freedom from every member's established musical identities.

I'm taking all this time to describe what Broken Social Scene is to describe how Kevin Drew's solo album relates to it. I promise I'm not trying to summate all of their works with the most recent subsumed into the themes of the oeuvre. The album has no instrumental tracks unlike every other Broken Social Scene release before it, and all the songs have a lyrical drive instead of instrumental. There are very few extended musical interludes, and the lyrics only fade into the prominence of another instrument in more subdued tracks. Some songs only sport a simple guitar chord progression with percussion and lyrics, unimaginable as tracks on You Forgot It in People, and some are fully orchestrated six minute magnum opuses/opera* with violins interrupting piano chords leading into a loud electronic guitar melody. The instrumental arrangements on all tracks vary a lot, but what remains constant is the vocal presence of Kevin Drew. His delicate voice endures copious effects on Aging Faces/Losing Places, and is belted on Backed Out on the…, but is almost a central fixture of every song. Unlike their debut album, completely instrumental, and their follow-up, You Forgot, which might take two or three minutes to introduce Drew's vocals.

*Using opera just felt weird there, but that is how one would pluralize Magnum Opus.

I feel almost obliged to compare Broken Social Scene to the other large metropolis of a band that I reviewed earlier, Beirut. Kevin Drew's album incorporates the contributions of others while making a less distinct authorial voice, and has a much more improvised feel for the introduction of guest instrumentalists, whereas those guest instrumentalists would play the melody for an entire song written by Condon. This isn't intended to swipe on Condon, just to illustrate that Drew utilizes the appearance of guest artists as guest musicians rather than instrumentalists, composers rather than players. The casual inclusion of guest artists extends to the musical feel of the album, and it never loses the slow swagger of a Broken Social Scene release, where tension and intensity are only reached by playing instruments louder and hitting percussion harder, never by sacrificing a simple rhythm.

There has been very little description of the sound of the band so far. The lo-fi acoustic sound of Broken Social Scene isn't destroyed here, and their earlier masterpiece (now regarded as the fourth best Canadian album), You Forgot it in People, might be a better starting place for someone who hasn't yet been integrated into the Broken Social Scene. This still feels like a BSS release, but with Drew overtaking every song with lyrics when before an instrument may play for a verse, which shouldn't be a surprise, as Drew was one of the formative and ubiquitous musical voices on every album since. This is simply another release in the band's oeuvre, one with many more songs demanding to be sung along to.

Oh No. Something’s Gonna Go Down.

2007-10-13T14:59:00.001-07:00

You know, they must’ve read my review. (No, that isn’t what’s going to go down. Slaes are going to go up, it you clicked the link)

***

It’s just like something sporting a huge Red, White, and Blue cover to elicit controversy:

Well, someone’s taking the moniker of The Best American Comics 2007 too seriously. These two sentences paint the breaking points of logic well:

It’s the American comics cognoscenti’s emphasis on a narrow canon that excludes anything tainted with the scent of imaginative storytelling. In his intro, Ware mourns the fact that Dan Clowes has produced no work in the eligibility period that could be included.

Right there, the American comic’s cognoscenti is translated as Chris Ware, a synecdoche coloring the rest of the piece a tawdry shade of bloody shirt-waving red. Naturally, because the best American Comics don’t include Sakai or Sergio Argones (who both produced what within the timeline for inclusion in the book? A couple of single issues?), then the entire committee in charge of decreeing comics as “good” condemns the two lovable cartoonists. And then there’s the mention that the storytelling of McKay, Herriman, and (remember, this is when reviewing a Chris Ware edited book) Frank King is completely shunned, mostly because of Chris Ware’s praise of the cartoonists in the volume, which obviously implies derision to any who are different. And then the author lets personal taste get in the way of argumentation, comparing C.F. unfavorably to Kirby (because Kirby does a better Kirby impression, donchya know?) and Paper Rad unfavorably to Bagge (because Bagge’s funnier, donchya know?).

*Sigh*

I Should probably qualify my reaction by saying that I'm taking offense with however little attention Macdonald gives to works that I consider powerful and potent, ones which I love dearly and she clearly doesn't. I would probably engage a well-written criticsm (whether critical or praising) of any of the works mentioned as poor (Bechdel's Fun Home, Huizenga's Ganges, Zettwoch's Won't Be Licked! The Great '37 Flood in Louisville, or Seth's Wimbledon Green) but, seeing as how the entire post deals with the comics on the abstract basis of implementing artistic qualities atop and sometimes at the expense of narrative qualities, I can't see the actual point of criticism.

I'd continue but commenters such as Tom Spurgeon and Stephen Hirsch have already commented so well on the rhetorical problems of the book, that it’d be best to read the more lengthy comments themselves rather than my shaky paraphrasing. Hirsch’s comments are particularly keen, with a wonderful metaphor lifted from Nabokov (without a rigorous attention to details, general ideas remain worn passports allowing their bearers (and, in Heidi’s case, propagators) short cuts from one area of ignorance to another.) I’d opt for the less accusatory Nabokovian axiom; the moonlight of generalization should only come after the collection of sundry sunny details, but I generally shy away from conflict. It makes the righteous like the ignorant, and I’d rather retain a healthy, non-leukemia-induced glow.

***

I had the pleasure to find Danger Mouse’s first compact disc, the collaboration between DJ Danger Mouse and Jemini, available on Amazon but my copy has three more tracks and a slightly different cover, differently colored and without any text. It was also $3 cheaper and used. I didn’t mean to relegate Jemini’s position to that of a facilitator, but one of the two has gone on to amazing things, and Jemini still hasn’t produced anything else of value. Part of it is that a producer can be involved in so much more with much more ease than a rapper. Danger Mouse formed half of Gnarls Barkley and produced Gorillaz’s Demon Days, but Jemini and Cee-Lo are both constrained by the sound of their voices when making music, whereas Danger Mouse has the entirety of music from the past to choose from.

Danger Mouse is surprisingly quiet on the album. His beats lack the audacity of The Gray Album and St. Elsewhere, and are mostly a launchpad for Jemini’s frenetic and energetic spittin skills. The beats are still incredibly intricate and detailed, but the entire song is constructed with the rapper more in mind. Most don’t have musical interludes and those that do are just a fadeout with a new instrument or element introduced at the end after Jemini stops rapping. Sadly, Jemini can’t quite shoulder the onus of the creative spotlight as well as Cee-Lo could on St. Elsewhere, and the songs slip into rapping clichés and random compliments to women and the rapper himself. Danger Mouse hasn’t quite mastered the role of accompanier yet, and some songs demand full attention when listening to a layered choir singing atop a spastic drum beat and bass line, with a guitar playing and man rapping. If I’m starting to elucidate the conflict between the (over)production of Danger Mouse and the domineering verbal mastery of Jemini (because he really is a good rapper, but competes with his DJ over airplay), it’s because I’m succeeding at my attempt. It’s no wonder than Danger Mouse went on to contort his production around the planned production of The Gray Album, and then teamed up with Cee-Lo, a singer in Gnarls Barkley. Jemini has still not produced another album, although he and Danger Mouse are apparently working on another release, twice delayed.

The main problem of the album (and I’m saying this as if it isn’t worth listening to. It’s probably the best hip hop album of the year it was released, 2003) lies in Danger Mouse’s use of the Hip Hop producer milieu in order to make crazy sounding compositions able to be defined into a single term and genre, allowing networking and mainstream accessibility. Danger Mouse is on record as saying that he wants a director’s position within the music industry, a position from which he controls almost every aspect of the music, creating worlds that his artists need to desire to enter. Jemini clearly isn’t the partner, but the a capella recordings of Jay-Z and the less present vocals of Gorillaz and Cee-Lo are.

I sincerely hope that no one will remark on the irony of me writing an impression of an album, wherein I completely fail to enumerate the sundry sunny details leading to the moonlight of my generalization. I have to come up with content on the fly somehow!

If You Listen Close, You’ll Hear the Melody of Love

2007-10-11T19:04:00.000-07:00

The Flying Club Cup

I’m probably the right audience for Beirut. The galvanizing horns introducing The Gulag Orkestar filled my heart with joy, and by the time Beirut gave us Postcards from Italy, I was sold by the melancholy of the music presented with a foreign flourish. The fact that Condon, the songwriter, instrumentalist, and singer behind every Beirut song, appropriates themes more integral to Germany and Eastern Europe contrasting with Russian instrumentation? Not so important when compared to the European aesthetic formulated by the immense arrangements on the debut album, although that reaction isn’t universal, and heavily dependent on my ignorance of foreign music. Surely Beirut’s cultural displacement wouldn’t inspire awe in someone familiar with the methods Condon appropriates, but for the majority of indie-rock listeners Beirut is a revelation, despite its modest musical ambitions of pastiche. The Flying Club Cup takes the aesthetic of sincere unflinching imitation formed by The Gulag Orkestar and applies it under a new set of influences, French Chanson. For those needing affirmation instead of a review, it’s much better than The Gulag Orkestar, and isn’t more of the same.

I should start with the presentation of the album. There are no band members at all on the cover or liner notes, only tattered photographs drowned in sepia tones. Some are of white families picnicking or playing on the beach, and others depict places from l’Indochine, or French-colonized parts of Asia. This music is foreign, first and foremost, even to those living in France and attached to the culture to which Condon owes the inspiration of this album. This is besides the clever stories in the liner notes, too, full of a surrealist sense of humor and disquiet. The packaged compact disc is much better than an iTunes download.

The instrumentation for the new album runs circles around the repetitive band of percussion, horns, and plucked string instruments (guitar, ukulele and mandolin). Some jaunt with an orchestral flair, some incorporate piano dancing along an entire band, others have accordion, and the percussion in every song exceeds the tambourine and snares of The Gulag Orkestar, and it’s not merely more instruments, but better implemented ones. Horns don’t drown out every instrumental ornamentation, relegating piano chords to simple chord progressions matching the rhythms of percussion, and Condon hands the baton of melody from instrument to instrument in each song with choruses changing as each song passes and a distinct bridge in almost every song, compared to the repeating choruses and melodies from the debut album.

I find it difficult to speak of the song in particulars (and here’s where I veer back to a personal reaction instead of universal qualities. Forgive my indulgence). Each song is far from a replica repeated with a different melody and words, but the general emotional tone of the album always focuses on lost time, on memorial. Condon experiences tumultuous lows of longing for a lost lover in Cliquot, and, well, a high is never quite reached, but in A Sunday Smile, things are just a little less than before. The entire album moves between nostalgia and optimism, but no songs escape the crushing pessimism caused by an idyllic past. The lyrics convey the same wavering quality of his voice, of hanging on a high note until time forces retreat, until the same high note can be reached.

Techniques are repeated from song to song, too. Condon, a master at layering his voices, does not ignore the talent. A Sunday Smile is a particular effective example, in which Condon reinforces emotional lows with a wavering choir with tremendous vibrato, but every song is replete with dozens of Condons, filling a Masonic church (seriously. It was recorded in one) with the bitter notes of life. The contrast between the plucked chords of a guitar or mandolin and heavy brass remains a fixture of the songwriting as well, where the brass always leaves a vigorously playing guitar filling a musical void. Percussion is almost always implemented as a means of crescendo, of building tension until the percussion is played louder and harder. But I’m speaking in generalities, and a couple notable exceptions on this album (although not the first) break from tradition to allow a little more Condon than Chanson to come through in the music.

Naturally, the best songs on the album are those that distinguish themselves. In the Mausoleum is a wondrous adventure begun with plucking piano. Eventually, voices shimmer in (harmonized by Condon, of course), along with strings. This occurs atop a pulsating beat. Suddenly, the build-up presence in almost every song disappears, and low pitched strings begin playing. Suddenly, the song has a new beat and rhythm, a more primal sound produced by dueling violins and cellos. The piano increases in intensity, too, leading into measures with unresolved chords. Gone are the ubiquitous horns. The next, Un Dernier Verre, continues the infidelity with a song whose only instrument is a piano until two minutes into the track, where the laborious tempo is kept by brass on a promenade, but Condon can’t quite keep the only minimally arranged song from being boring. Cliquot, mentioned before, is another standout track on the album. The verses are dominated by a heavy percussion and Condon singing without a plethora of clones surrounding the vocal delivery, and, unlike some songs where lyrics can become indistinct, every line ends with a harrowing image.

For a paragraph, let me betray a little ignorant pretentiousness. For art to be good, it has to meet two criteria; First, does the art in question accomplish what it sets out to do, and, secondly, is that for which it strives a worthy goal. Beirut ably accomplishes the art of pastiche with some transcendent pieces, but its mission of casual imitation is far from a lofty goal for someone as talented as Beirut. I would imagine that Chanson and Balkan folk music informs Condon’s musical landscape greatly, and that the artist can write much more than what we see here (his Wikipedia page describes a doo wop album, even. I’d love to see that!). The pressures of an entire album (not that Condon is ill-equipped to create music, just in how to fill it) might force him away from whatever he improvises or might develop and towards a more defined style, one with which he’s incredibly familiar.

I want to end this by saying that I like Beirut a lot, but the insistence on working from a particular influence has stifled how wondrous some songs could be. Had each song not been approached as a sincere tribute to French chanson, perhaps the standard of every song could shift a little, and we could listen to songs portraying character transformations and varying emotions. Instead, we get a series of beautiful songs, beautifully ornate (and I do stress the beauty of each song. Beirut is incapable of weaving together an ugly composition), but produced under the oppression of an unchanging intention. Some songs can feel like an exercise, where bridges are placed where they should be, horns come in every chorus, and the singer wails about his lost love, but that’s only after the music loses its exoticism, when reviewing it instead of enjoying it. The real deciding point for enjoyment is how much one likes French Chanson, and, looking at the web page for the album, it hits close to the mark.

It’s Wednesday. I Feel Obliged to Recommend Goodies That I Haven’t Bought Yet but Probably Will.

2007-10-10T14:06:00.001-07:00

The first of which is Beirut's new album, The Flying Club Cup. Gulag Orkestar, his debut album, was an astounding appropriation of Balkan folk music (as liner notes and reviewers say. I'm ignorant of his influences other than Not-Led Zeppelin), and truly sounded European. If everything goes well, a review should be up soon.

Also noteworthy, if not newsworthy; iTunes has a random two song release called Pompeii which was recorded before Gulag Orkestar and a three song compilation called Elephant Gun. Both have two otherwise unreleased tracks, but are really only for those interested in Beirut. Pompeii isn't quite as good in particular. It's a collection of electronic beats, piano, and Condon's voice, and lacks the masterful vocal layering of his debut album. Electronic bass kicks and high hats don't mix well with Condon's voice, and horns are a much better compliment to his melancholic crooning than the subtle, high pitched electronic whistle in the first song, Fountains and Tramways. It does end with a beautiful trumpet outro, but it becomes beautiful mostly because the drums kick out.

The next song, Napoleon on the Bellerophon, has a couple more instruments to it, and another trumpet melody, this time overtaking the chorus, but ugly electronic drums are still used. It's arranged much better, with accordion fading into piano over a wave of Condon overdubs. It almost reaches the emotional plateau of Gulag Orkestar, but is conspicuously missing anything louder than Condon's own voice. It begins small and crescendos towards something not so soft. There's definitely potential in that song, much more so than the one preceding it, but it's still trapped under the monotone ornamentation of electronic instrumentation.

Elephant Gun is something quite different. It was released in June as an EP. The title song remains the same as the first track on the Lon Gisland EP (The releases of Beirut just shrink in length, don't they? We had Gulag Orkestar, 11 tracks, Lon Gisland, 5 tracks, one of which was a repeat, and now we have Elephant Gun, 3 tracks, one of which is a repeat. This isn't even mentioning that One of the tracks in Gulag Orkestar was written and recorded on an unreleased album without Balkan flare), and there are two new tracks following, Tansatlantique, and Le Moribund.

Transatlantique sounds like a Gulag Orkestar song without the pervasive horn section. While Condon sings, a very light horn plays a small melody, almost ignoring Condon's syllables unlike The Gulag Orkestar, which reveled in the similarities of the brass and voice box. Only when Condon stops singing do the horns become the Orkestar and the song begins to sound like a track from the debut album.

The next song, Le Moribund is sung in French, and sounds nothing like any of his other songs. A shrill but quiet brass instrument (iTunes doesn't come with liner notes) flutes in and out in nasal melodies, and a light percussion (claps punctuated by an occasional bass drum and cymbal hit, until snares are introduced two and a half minutes in) surround the only other elements, Condon's voice and mandolin. It sounds like a playful fair until the entire song begins building in intensity with the introduction of snares, and then, after a pause, a more traditional Beirut melody takes the stage, dominating brass section and all. Horns don't play along at the end of measures, and lyrics aren't sung in a pecking voice, but the more full melodies we've come to expect from Condon. The two songs signal a change for Condon, where the influences of his next album, French pop and chanson, have begun to inform his songwriting, but aren't quite integrated into the Balkan style. It feels more like Condon is consciously letting go of his Balkan tendencies, but hasn't yet begun to rebuild on the French side, besides the opening pastiche of Le Moribund. There's much more self-conscious songwriting than the songs of love and lost on his first album, as if any changes to any of the songs would disrupt the delicate balance he's found. Simply put, they're a little boring and repetitive.

***

Also seemingly worthy of purchase: Radiohead's new album, In Rainbows, is downloadable on this page for whatever price you feel comfortable paying. The band ignored record deals while writing this, and a physical copy (besides the $100 discbox with a hardcover book of lyrics, an entire extra disc with as many tracks as the official release, and many more extras) will not be made available until January 2008 at the earliest. I have yet to get my downloading instructions in an e-mail yet (maybe I should've been a more generous patron). Update and a probable review later.

***

And on the comic's side of things, Town Boy is coming out. I've, uh, never read the Lat book published by First Second last year, but it did pop up as number one on Tom Sturgeon's Best of 2006 list. That's pretty high praise indeed, beating out Krazy Kat, Moomin, Curses, Popeye, and Spurgeon's darling The Ticking.

There's also a new James Sturm book, James Sturm's America, and a new Walt & Skeezix collection. This is all besides the Sunday Press edition (those of So Many Splendid Sundays and Dreams of Rarebit Fiends fame, all of which I covet update: They didn't do the Rarebit Fiends book, Checkerbook did, and it's far from every strip ever. That's what I get for not checking facts.) of every Gasoline Alley Sunday page at full newspaper size. Not too many interesting pamphlets. If I was writing at a larger site, I might mention the captain Carrot comic or the new issue of B.P.R.D., but it's not an exciting week to run to the comic shop Wednesday. Maybe a nice time to power walk to Borders, though.

***

And while I'm talking about things I like, Jog's column at the Savage Critics is astounding. I haven't read his latest because I plan on reading Tekkon Kinkrete very soon, but the format suits him very well. His reviews have always focused on the history of a comic's publication and its creators, and a column of his various finds has been consistently fascinating ever since he jumped on board with the Savage Critics.

***

And, to make a compliment to Jog complete, here are last week's reviews. I may be doing this regularly if I can keep up my new pace:

And, not comics, but Kanye West's Graduation. I've been listening to a lot of music lately.

***

The Final Thing of Note, I Promise: Tom Spurgeon's interview with Larry Marder. I especially like that he begins the interview by apologizing for taking time away that could be spent on his "signature creation" Beanworld, and the interview proceeds to talk about all the various projects Marder has worked on when president of a company, and how much time he spent in his prior position at Image. Beanworld fans are vicious, for those who don't know.

At least we can all look forward to this:

To me Beanworld isn't just my comic book -- it is also my sense of aesthetics. I plan to do other things with Beanworld that go beyond comics or animation. It is an amazing thing for me to have my imagination and creative abilities focused on only one thing, me, after so many years at Image and McFarlane.

***

I always feel like I should say a parting after these types of posts. Cheers!

When Shit Gets Insane!

2007-10-09T16:41:00.001-07:00

I am one of the lucky few (SO LUCKY!) to have Windows Vista. It's not too good, right now, but most of my difficulties involve other computers not having Vista and needing to transfer Word files or actually figuring out how to use Word 2007, which doesn't even have a file tab. I've since learned how to save and print files, but that was a fifteen minute adventure, followed by a ten minute period of figuring out how to double space. On the plus side, the insert symbol button (so I can do cool things like communicate Frédéric Boilet's name with expertise) is a little more easily accessed. Yay! Also, and this is actually a benefit, Word can connect directly with blogger and I can publish posts without logging in, copying, and pasting, and I can enter italics while writing, instead of having to manually (well, you know what I mean) reinsert them. So, to celebrate the occasion, I'm posting a review of a surreal comic without even using my internet server! How odd!

Grotesque #1

This is a comic that uses the larger format to its advantage. Unlike Insomnia, or even Ganges, where each page felt like a slightly enlargened version of a standard size comic from artists who commonly produce comics of a regular or miniature size, Grotesque features full page spreads full of detail, intricately structured pages, and widescreen panels full of detail. The third page would be almost illegible in a shrunken state, but, in an Ignatz release, is a beautiful communication of a memory (where the dream is reality and reality is the dream, but themes are the dessert after technique and style, the repast. I'll get to that later), the transition between the eleventh and twelfth page, where a man searches among a field in slight, horizontal panels, eventually breaking out the panel barriers as he approaches the reader, and, page turn, an island in the sky, a page devoid of the movement in the prior panels, only majesty and awe. The immediately following panels zoom out of the scene, highlighting the awkwardness of the situation (he is just seeing a floating island), with no way to get to it.

I recently talked about Omega the Unknown's reliance on scripted actions determining the action from panel to panel, of the comic's stasis between graphic and textual expression. Grotesque suffers none of those deficiencies (well, not quite a deficiency in Omega, but they certainly would be here). As the man dreaming reality and living a dream walks through a forest, he's viewed from many different angles, creating a mood of paranoia and apprehension. Some of the monsters surrounding him include a one eyed parakeet, a reptile with a full mouth of teeth, and a skeleton, as well as a top down view of him, a face view, and a panel of him whipping his head around. The mystery and danger of the forest are communicated through a comic book language instead of a novel's language, and many other sections of the comic express so much emotion with a similar economy.

Unlike the pretty cover,

The rest of the work is in stark black and white, but, through a variety of different techniques, Ponchione manages to populate a surreal landscape with liberal use of charcoal and black borders to alienate the surreal sections from the (still less than) real segments. The rest of the work remains in a more realistic landscape, and is darkened by only one heavy shade of black, often forming large shadows in faces and environs.

Faces are often drawn with heavy shadows interrupted by light, and most characters could have been drawn by Charles Burns without the batting of an eye. Unlike his seminal masterpiece, Black Hole, though, the comic's paper is not a loud, clinical white, and the world of Grotesque is a much warmer place separated into tan and black, instead of a constant contrast between an incredibly bright white and a pervasive darkness. Darkness pervades, but there's no battle between the light and dark here, just a casual diminution from the quirky to surreal.

An intrepid reader might notice a tremendous emphasis on the art of the comic, and little on the plot. Most of the issue focuses on the images and setting, and not plot. The only events which occur in the novel involve the three main human characters entering their respective islands (well, one's a fish disguised as an island), and a group of surreal beings (one has a telephone for a head, one is the masked character on the cover above, among others) waiting for something to happen.

The character of Mr. Oblique is explained very obliquely* as a character creating fantasies in the heads of the three main characters. One thing on which the issue does focus is the interplay between fantasy and reality. In a page mentioned earlier, the third page, in the top left corner, a man's head in the top left corner forms a cloud around the entirety of the panels, which relate why he's sailing along a sea with fish heads sticking out of the water every couple of feet. In what could be called a thought balloon, a story from the man's actual life is related, whereas the one which we're viewing, him sailing along the sea, entering a forest, and using a key to enter a door of a flying fish island is told with the utmost solemnity with thick, rigid panel borders. Clearly, to the character, his life before embarking on the ocean is but a dream, a means of propelling him into the search for where his mysterious key fits. The other two human characters undergo a similar period of searching. The surreal sections featuring the cover's kid and the man with a telephone for a head are the only stories told in tones of gray, with shading and a sense of light outside of austere darkness and light. The imagination is much more real than sensual perception in the world of Grotesque.

*heh heh

Disappointingly, this comic is only set-up, offering the mystery of Mr. Oblique and the islands, clearly some forays into imagination and creativity, but nothing is done thematically in the issue, although a parade of striking images and techniques are more than enough of an enticing introduction.

Daily Blogging Drives One to the Fringes of Human Thought. It's Pleasant There. No Mosquitoes.

2007-10-08T14:13:00.000-07:00

Omega the Unknown #1

Well, this took a long time to come out, didn’t it? At least we can be safe in the assumption that it will ship on time, as long as Lethem was being honest when he remarked that six scripts were finished back in March (It was news to me, too). Farel Dalrymple provides the ink, Karl Rusnak additional help on words and story (the extent of his contribution goes unrecorded) and Paul Hornscheimer the lovely colors.

The issue begins with a lame fight scene, not the most auspicious of starts. Random dorks attack our hero with laser guns, and he nimbly avoids them while kicking them. These pages are thankfully the dregs of the issue in page count and quality, and suffer from storytelling deficiencies such as Omega leaping into the air in the second fight scene panel, kicking off a random dork in the third while on the ground, and switching camera angles completely in the fourth which distances the dork closest to Omega while pulling the one flying towards our hero much, much closer. The grounded dork even switches stances between running directly at Omega to bracing himself for attack, leaning backwards. To illuminate this, Newsarama even previewed the first couple pages (probably not the best idea by Marvel when trying to advertise an unknown writer and artist to an audience used to bigger (not necessarily better constructed, but bigger) fight scenes):

The fuller colors of Hornschemeier (and the battle being told en media res) make the scene look like a depressed version of the first battle in Madman. The accompanying narration disrupts the scene even further, enshrouding a sense of paranoia and implication that the hero’s being dream between phrases as murky as “Problem is, the forms at the edges of your world have their own sense of priorities. They even believe they’re dreaming you.”

Thankfully, the fight scene is but a dream, and Lethem has the grace to script scenes hinging on emotions rather than action. Still, the issue does not escape the fists of ham-handed delivery, with salient excursions into exposition and Marvel styled story telling. In the final three panels, the boy somehow related to Omega finds his hands burnt.

“My palms… The flesh was.. On fire.. The rawness of the nerves… Even in the crash, I never felt such pain…”

“The shape is deliberate… Did you do this to yourself, boy?” After the boy denies such claims, the doctor wonders while elevating dramatic tension, “Then how is it, Alexander, that the wounds on both hands…” and here the panel shifts and the font gets larger, “Take the form of the Greek letter Omega?”

Lethem knows how to write a scene better than this, but, instead of utilizing captions or narrations to convey information less than shocking, the finale hinges on the melodrama of bizarre burn scars. An earlier scene occurring just after the fight relies on similarly stilted dialogue to convey that Alexander, the boy to whom Omega is somehow related, has been homeschooled his entire life and is just now entering a public school. A later scene between a doctor and nurse offer a similarly staged dialogue explaining the situation of the boy, but the comic isn’t just a big ball of maladroit exposition. A scene between a superhero, the Mink, and a cop has swift dialogue intended more for entertainment than explanation, and the fight scene in the final couple pages of the comic has a couple great panels of robots being thrown through glass and a horrified Alexander barely dodging a laser blast.

Despite the drop in quality of the comic when it begins to feature characters expounding on their emotions during social soliloquies, I’m not too sure that Lethem wants to escape that style of storytelling. The final two panels bend over backwards to show, instead of tell, information about the past of characters, about their origins, and about much more, but do so with the grace of a weight lifter performing a pirouette.

Lethem once mentioned that he felt that the original series of Omega the Unknown adopted was “a noble misapplication of novelistic narrative-aesthetics to a soap opera form” (quoted from Jog. The exact quote eludes me on his home page). Surely some amount of doubt should be given to the prolific novelist (who has published eleven books in the past thirteen years in addition to plenty more words) that at least some of the comic’s occasional awkwardness can be attributed to trapping the actual work within the threshold of novelistic and four-color expression, forever making the comic itself an erudite outsider unable to communicate. Otherwise, how else can we view the death scene of his parents, given all the dramatic tension of a casual warning and eleven panels of talking heads, but as a comic trying to communicate through text and scriptable action rather than images? Especially when the finale involves the raising of voices and interrogation over burned scars, all of which is conveyed through dialogue balloons and merely complimented by pictures?

Well, there is one more way to view it. It’s either that, or Lethem hasn’t quite grasped the language of comics on his first outing and is leaning heavily on Seventies Marvel-style writing, where pictures only convey the information unable to be expressed in dialogue or captions easily, and splash pages hadn’t quite become a popular storytelling technique.

However, Darymple does get a few opportunities to imbue his art with qualities outside of those scripted. The panels of Omega breaking out of chains in a basement have a suddenness to them, and the next page’s panel of a robot being carried out a window by Omega in flight conveys much more than Omega angrily tossing an enemy out of a window. Omega’s awkwardness in the real world is shown by a panel of him walking across a street in broad daylight, but all of these moments are few and far between in the comic.

Lethem’s aversion to images, and by this I’m distinguishing images as splash pages or panels conveying more than words could gracefully describe compared to panels which convey movement of characters able to be reduced to a couple lines of a script (“Omega dodges three laser blasts,” for instance), is a much more subtle part of the comic than its foundation of the themes of alienation and an outsider, and it’s entirely possible that it’s an unintentional consequence of a writer unsure of what can be accomplished in a more visual medium. The novelistic approaches to which he refers may involve foils and variations on a theme instead of the actual means by which the contents of a novel are expressed.

It’s too early to remark on more of the comic’s novelistic tendencies, but at least the premiere offers interesting food for thought and a sincere, if slightly bungled, appropriation of the style of the comic on which this one is based. Hopefully next issue sees some movement in the plot and themes, and veers from an adaptation of a summary of the original Omega the Unknown.

Rubber Soul

2007-10-07T21:07:00.000-07:00

Gumby #3

Gumby is awesome, especially when taken seriously. Burden and Geary are aware of this, and continue to plot the comic with reckless abandon (but keen awareness) of the character’s iconic status. This issue, Gumby develops emotions!

We also sees a reduction in paper quality. The departure of slick paper and bright colors is in time to welcome the departure of the slick world in which Gumby and his horse played for the first couple issues and the FCBD special (well, that was in black and white, but thematically drenched in Technicolor). This all happens because Gumby is forced to become the man of the house, and he inherits responsibility. You see, during last issue Gumby’s parents were hypnotized by the mad villain, and given a sack of potatoes in the place of the lovable green hero. The plight of Gumby was resolved after the end of last issue, but the dangling plot thread of last issue (I forgot about it, at least) was never addressed, and thus the fantastic actions of the second issue lead to sobering consequences. The issue even brings up marriage and patriarchal responsibilities for Gumby, when before he never had to battle any enemies above mischief, and certainly never had to stop being a kid.

The dialogue increases in thematic awareness as well as the plot. After Gumby assumes manhood of the household, he marches off after dealing with a small problem, grumbling “I don’t want to be in charge! I just want to have fun and play!” Oppenheimer, an accountant, thinks to himself, in an office littered with money bags, “Where did it all go? All I’ve done… All these years… is move paper from this side to that! Is this my life? Serving paper?” This doesn’t even mention the transformation of a group of salesmen who become cannibals after failing to make sell much, nor the accountants change of heart at the end of the day, when he leaves the scene with a full heart but no revenue. Gumby and the kids are losing their innocence (a theme to which the prior issue’s evil carnival alluded, but without accompanying dialogue and thought balloons), just as the accountant is regaining his.

But this doesn’t leave the entire issue devoid of fun. Burden and Geary are both aware that a lot of the humor of the book is derived from Gumby’s anachronistic morals placed in a slightly less anachronistic world, one somewhat resembling our own and Gumby’s. Burden and Geary take the time to have Gumby’s parents screaming “You’re cooking Gumby’s feet!” while miscreants lob potatoes into a boiling pot. In an even more hilarious part, Cuddles, who’s been latching onto Gumby’s arm while imagining marriage, is sitting down with Gumby, and suddenly Gumby feels obligated to tell her that he doesn’t quite want to marry her yet. The girl who’s spent almost all of the issue fawning on Gumby and wedlock tells Gumby that she’s just being an unrealistic little girl, that all of what she says is “pretend talk,” and “all in good fun.” Characters besides Gumby are realizing more about the world.

If you’re getting the impression that there’s a slightly maladroit sense of purpose in my review of the comic, it’s because there’s an odd insertion of adult themes and character arcs in this issue. Johnny Cash’s ghost doesn’t end up to save the day, characters talk about the events of the day and dangling plot threads are resolved (which involve the parent’s escaping hypnosis this time). The climax occurs much earlier when the Native American swindler clashes with the Caucasian depressed accountant , allowing a denouement unlike the prior two comics. The comic itself is treating its characters and themes with more responsibility here, and the ridiculous humorous bits are window dressing instead of the main attraction of the comic here. It’s become much different.

Hopefully Burden and Geary can maintain the tightrope balance between a bildungsroman and absurdist comedy. They managed to leap upon the line with this issue, but such a precarious balance between two conflicting styles may prove arduous.

Relevance Was Good While It Lasted...

2007-10-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

If comics are ever boring you, I implore that you read either Lermontov’s A Hero of our Time or Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Both are beautifully structured, elegant novels exposing the inner workings of less than likable, but all too common people while hoping to illuminate facets of society, the former from a first person perspective and all the wily Nabokovian* possibilities therein, and the latter from a third person narration enraptured by the daily idiosyncrasies of people. They’re both trying texts, but enriching for those with patience and intrepidity, and that’s generally where the comparisons end. One’s a psychological novel, a case study, and the other chronicles a love story with the intensity of Nietzsche.

*Yes, yes, Gogolian might be the better neologism, seeing as how I’m anachronistically describing Lermontov as following in the footsteps of Nabokov, but Lermontov focuses so much more on the craziness of the individual as it relates to the characters and plot instead of the craziness of the narrator as it relates to how the story is told and from the perspective from which the reader views events, a style appropriated by Nabokov in so many more works than Gogol (and there is a clear influence of Lernomtov in Nabokov. he did translate the titular work into English, after all), although Mr. Lolita has plenty of other similarities to Gogol. I enjoy run-on sentences. And, tangentially, run-on works.

Alice in Sunderland

Talbot has recently (in Talbot years) completed a tremendous work, both in size and scope. It’s taken me many fortnights to digest it, and even longer to write this, but what follows is my review of the 318 page work, graciously published in full color by Dark Horse at the valuetastic price of $30. I recommend a purchase, and will likely do so again at the end of the year.

Occasionally there are books, and occasionally there are monuments. Books need to be read from cover to cover, in an intense, concentrated reading, so that the entirety of the project can be absorbed, a plausible feat in a single sitting given a book's length. Monuments, however, need to be observed before inspection. They must be seen from a distance, from incomplete vantage points. They must become a fixture from their status as a monument not understood, as a glyph untranslated. Alice in Sunderland, either through misfortune or mitzvah, is such a book.

I’ve flipped through it plenty of times, always glancing at the mysterious pages. A Hergé homage, a watercolor painting surrounding by cartooning or any of Talbot’s collage techniques of ideas and images are all so overwhelming that simple perusals like these cemented the book as a monument, an edifice to which I much pray whenever time or my attention span permits only half a minute for reading. Needless to say, I became intimately aware of the different sections of the book long before I finally sat down to discover the Plebian and Performer in person, already knowledgeable of the twenty odd page digression of the Lambton worm, of the boy’s adventure of Captain Jack. My scant readings even warned me of St. Peter’s Riverside Sculpture Project and Talbot’s briefly cured insecurities in a fumetti sequence.

I’ve said this before, but the exterior is so intimidating, even the cover.

The computer generated Alice on the cover (that’s computer generated or painted, right? I don’t see Talbot willingly drawing that kind of figure and plastering it on the cover. It's of a completely different style that any of the art in the actual book. Update: Jordan Smith is the cover artist, and his daughter is the model), the dragon and the stage, all surrounded by dark red and black creates a mood of danger, of disquiet, as does a quick flip through of the chaotic pages, when the actual work is anything but Alice running away from something into a dragon on a stage. The back's mixture of ruins and portraits view the characters about to be discussed within from a more alien perspective. An auspicious cover, but the book has an even mroe auspicious beginning.

Despite the absence of a narrator or a semblance of plot, the characters of the Plebian and the Performer immediately begin the book. The two individuals (later both revealed to be aspects of Talbot himself, along with the future explicator, The Pilgrim) form the relationship Talbot hopes would emerge between the reader and himself, except he likely wants that we don’t talk on our cell phones and fall asleep while watching his performance. The Plebian stares in wonder at the facts the performer spouts, incredulous at first, but the sheer professionalism of his presentation eventually wins the skeptical over, and winning over the spectator is almost the entire point of the book.

After a small introduction featuring the man on stage forgetting lines from a Shakespeare monologue and complaining about his age (a scene which presents the Plebian’s entrance into the theatre as important to the work through the use of fading lines normally shorthand for a television set), Talbot embarks on the entire thrust of his book, the myths and history which revolve around Sunderland and Wonderland. After this point, despite a few sequential interludes narrating a story, the comic becomes a work of collages forming the background of historical digression leading into historical digression, and it’s here that the central purpose of the book becomes clear, albeit shrouded in the constancy of a historical lecture.

Talbot has a very keen eye when composing pages*. Some are almost entirely red and black watercolor paintings enlivened by a couple photos and panels, and others are multi-colored hazes descried by a black and white character, and others are more traditional comic pages, drawn in pastiche. None are ugly, and most approach beauty, limited by the repetition of similar elements.

*And it’s here that I make my stand with regards to whether scans of artwork should or should not be a part of general comic reviews: I don’t have a scanner, but want one.

Atop the artwork, captions and speech balloons abound. Almost every historical fact and myth, of which there are many, rates an accompanying picture, sometimes placing the Performer in a scene of dinosaurs, and at other times the Pilgrim (Talbot at his house, as opposed to Talbot on stage, or Talbot enjoying a performance) is transported to the vista of which he speaks.

I’ve mentioned the multiplicity of narrators, and they perform very different roles, albeit their commingling can efface the distinctions of each. The Performer always speaks at the Plebian, and almost always relates a shocking or unknown fact, often spurring incredulity from the Plebian. The Pilgrim, by contrast, explores more rote subject matters, and strives to find facts and stories for the Performer’s performance, always being the one who actually speaks to people other than the Plebian, and the Pilgrim is always the one articulating myths, providing the causes and consequences of the brash actions elucidated by the Performer and occasional forays into more traditional comic book storytelling techniques. Naturally, the roles do not remain completely intractable, but the two switch at the turn of a page when describing a similar event multiple times in the book. Still, the Performer reveals that Edison did not invent the light bulb, and the Pilgrim calmly discusses the inner workings of an experimental art project in Britain.

Talbot seems to have anticipated the more mundane elements of his work by inserting the character of the Plebian into it. The Plebian feels the need to question stylistic choices, such as the comic’s persistent present tense (a precept which is broken when events of the future are discussed), and the plausibility of some of the more wild stories recounted, as well as feed on the insecurities of Talbot regarding the work. The Plebian talks on his cell phone and falls asleep during the work. It’s no wonder that the persona forced to deal with the stubborn miscreant with poor taste remarks on how tired he is by the end of the novel, whereas the Pilgrim, the one who feeds the Performer with stories, retains a remarkable youth throughout the work when compared to the chubby Plebian and the wrinkled Performer (and let’s not forget the ugly, fumetti Artist who shows up in the work to elucidate the insecurities which naturally arise from mediating between the Pilgrim and Performer). The Pilgrim exists free from the trap of entertainment, and solely in the wellspring of knowledge.

Other than the relationship between the ideas surrounding a performance, the truncation of those ideas, and the audience who digests the work, an admittedly minor portion when compared by page count, the book strives to reconstruct the mystique of a locale, Sunderland. This is done through a tremendous amount of factual information regarding ancestors, buildings, and events, all of which are likely to be learned from growing up in Sunderland. The deification of local heroes is explained, and the lives of celebrities revealed, all in a manner similar to the conditioning of a society. Talbot builds the mystique of the locale by explaining everything of the locale, inculcating the grandeur inherent in every Mackem in every reader, but without explaining that there is grandeur and majesty. The point of the book is the means by which myth and history root themselves into our consciousness, our daily lives, but it proves the point by applying these means rather than explaining, and the reader, the Plebian, is the one to make the final judgment on the aspects myth and history, on how the two intertwine.

After all this, I still don’t know if I can recommend the work whole heartedly. The text can read like a research paper listing aspects of Sunderland society, and the points for which Talbot strives (such as using the present tense constantly, the fumetti portions, and the entirety of the text) are all reached bluntly, with very little subtlety attached to the presentation of the themes of the work, the prism through which most maestros reach their point. Talbot is presenting the research which led to the Performer’s patriotic finale, and a significant amount of reader participation is necessary to reach the same conclusion of the work.

That said, the actual work itself is a marvel of research and artistry, and, despite some awkward pertinacious segments, is a modern comic masterpiece, the style of which can never be repeated. No other work will devote itself solely to historical digression while retaining and applying what makes the medium of comic books unique, and no other work can convey the patriotism present without resorting to platitudes and jingoism. Alice in Sunderland is a marvel both for its successes and failures.

Blogging is Either a Daily Catharsis or Monthly Irritation

2007-10-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

I’ve come to the conclusion that if I’m gonna be blogging, I gotta be doing it at least every other day. I’m missing out on the routine of writing, and every time I sludge together a review or something, it’s an afterthought, not an addition to a weighty catalogue. And they’re far from my best work, which strikes me deeper than any stylistic stultification could.

Let’s see how long I can keep this up. Beirut’s new album is coming out next week, and I have comics necessitating opinions. Fingers are crossed and stars are wished upon, but Bacchus hasn’t been kind lately.

Graduation

Kanye has evolved a lot as a musician. He began doing beats for Beanie Siegel and Cam’ron, eventually offered the largess of three production* spots on Jay-Z’s album Blueprint. The beats were all expert blends of soul and funk, replete with vocal samples layered over guitar, bass, strings, and drums. Soon, Kanye began to develop a strong following and an ego, culminating in the release of “The College Dropout,” and his persistent presence as someone who can rap as well as produce, a versatility which has become a hallmark of Kanye’s braggadocio ever since “Jesus Walks” declared the oppression from which Kanye freed himself.

*I feel obliged to mention that, in hip hop, the producer of a song produces the beat, and doesn’t normally involve themselves with the monetary or conceptual direction of a song. Liner notes get confusing sometimes, as Rick Rubin is credited as the producer on “99 Problems” but he actually conceptualized the song and saw through its recording without actual writing the music for it, but is given the same position of Kanye West on the preceding song, “encore,” the beat of which Kanye created entirely on his lonesome.

Another aspect of Kanye’s rhyming, his overuse of puns and similar phrases (“Top 5 Mc’s, you ain’t gotta remind me/Top 5 MC’s, you gotta rewind me”) is present as well as lines betraying Kanye thinking himself much more clever than he actually is. Complaining about these faults is kind of silly, though. Every verse written by the man is littered with these marks of mediocrity, and most people listening to Kanye aren’t attracted by his verbal virtuosity.

Unlike The College Dropout and Late Registration, however, there are no featured MCs on the album besides one track with Lil Wayne, only singers on choruses, and Kanye even takes up that mantle on “Can’t Tell Me Nothing.” The spotlight is not to be shared, and even in Lil Wayne’s track, “Barry Bonds,” the featured guest follows Kanye’s hook and repeats a couple lines. That’s another anomaly on the album, though; Kanye didn’t even produce the beat for it, but it certainly shows Kanye working his darndest to make a regular rap track, with a bottom heavy beat and aggressive lyrics along with marks of distinction such as his mentioning of his fashion, and relation to Jay-Z. The track feels much more like a Lil Wayne song featuring Kanye than a Kanye song featuring Lil Wayne.

Surprisingly, in a break from established Knaye tradition, most songs lack prominent samples which drive each song melodically, and are instead written and composed by West himself, with the sampled loops complimenting a chord progression and melody, instead of providing that foundation. Plenty are only vocal samples, or even only drum parts, and a couple songs lack any samples at all. This can be seen most clearly in the second single, “Stronger.” The song features synthesizer throughout, along with an extended musical interlude which stretches the unremarkable rap track into a five minute odyssey through electronica. Writing credit is given to Daft Punk, the song from which a vocal sample is taken, Edwin Birdsong, the artist from which Daft Punk sampled, Timbaland, who helped revise the drum programming of the single before it was released on the album, in a slightly different form, and Kanye West, who wrote and arranged the musical interlude mentioned earlier.

The labyrinth of writing credits is even taken to an extreme on one song, featuring the entirety of Public Enemy, three names, Prince Phillip Mitchell, whose contribution is a piano melody, and even George Clinton, who was sampled in the Public Enemy song, of which West only sampled a line devoid of instrumentation which is Djed and scratched by DJ Premier. Five names for a piano riff and a line. Kanye has become quite the gourmand, a fact evinced even more clearly by the sweeping of Young Jeezy’s ad libs barely under the blanket of the beat for “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” a hilarious, if gratuitous addition.

Despite these couple songs, Kanye fluctuates between the musical thief and self-reliant maestro. The closing track features only Mr. West and deals with a more personal issue than any other track, his relationship to one of the people pigeonholing him as a producer, Jay-Z. The lack of any other musical presence on the album besides a self-constructed beat (although West didn’t produce the song, like Barry Bonds as well) focuses on West’s lyrics, presenting him as more of a rapper than producer, but unfortunately poorly chosen electric guitars and synthesizers ruin the confession, although a more intense beat complete with a vocal sample would ruin the effort entirely.

That song isn’t completely without tact, a line straddled by the preceding track with Coldplay, an abrasive but vulnerable (abrasive because of the vulnerability of Kanye) track recounting the journey home of a prodigal son. Unfortunately, West begins the second verse with eight lines taken straight from a lesser-known track from his early mix-tape “Freshman Orientation,” which fit the subject matter by talking about him leaving home, but portray him as leaving behind kids and a family when the following and preceding lines portray Kanye as the victim of poor relations after fame has changed him. Except, of course, he left kids eager to follow in their father’s footsteps, and Kanye complains about the parochial focus of his ex-girlfriend. A beautiful chorus stained.

Until now, I’ve only commented on the sheer individuality of this release, but the relentless originality forbids the copious samples of soul and funk which has defined Kanye’s production up to this point. There’s at least one gem in the album built almost entirely from a sample. The music of “I Wonder” is almost entirely from a sample of Labi Siffre, with accompanying strings, and Kanye transforms his slow rhyming rhythms into an integral component of the song, and obfuscates the bass drums under reverb and Equalizing trickery, while he spits perhaps the most earnest lyrics of his career (“You say I think I’m never wrong. Maybe you’re right”), all atop a conducted orchestra deifying a sample of a Labi Siffre song. For the first couple minutes of Kanye spitting, almost out of breath, his inadequacies, he can almost make us believe that he’s clearly turning over a new leaf, but traditional West idiosyncrasies emerge soon enough.

*As a side note, Siffre once denied Dr. Dre the usage of his song on a beat citing “lazy writing” of the good doctor. Of course, the song eventually got released after major editing and revision, but Kanye’s song sampling Siffre lacks many of his idiosyncrasies and rapping clichés.

There are some low points on the album, as well. Kanye even seems aware that the shortest song, “Champion,” doesn’t quite deserve the pedigree of the second track a patient listener would hear, and thankfully shortens the self-aggrandizing track while shoving the rapping atop a Steely Dan sample loud and fast enough to drown out his claims on being a champion. It’s also the only song only written singularly from a sample: the only elements added are drums, and it doesn’t feature the blending of elements which made other sample heavy songs like “Ain’t No Love,” “Jesus Walks,” or “We Don’t Care” fantastic, all of which are now firmly placed in the past artistic endeavors of West.

Graduation is the commencement of a new style for Kanye more interested in plopping a chord progression and bass line atop sampled vocals instead of late seventies R&B and funk reproduced wholesale, whereas Late Registration was the sublimation of his orchestrating and sampling tendencies. Needless to say, Kanye still in school was a little more refreshing than Kanye graduating, although his future career, after a much more definite Kanye musical compositional style emerges, might be intriguing.

Dude

2007-09-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

Incubus is going to be legendary. Not necessarily now, what with their shifting styles sensibilities, so as to not appropriate them with a particular audience, but, in ten, twenty years, time, when their music is compared to other selections of their own music instead of shifting fads, they’re going to be legendary. Also, they put out some of the best live shows in recent memory, and that sort of identity, when shown next to such a strong studio production identity, always takes a little more time to develop.

The band views their set list as one continuous show, instead of a combination of songs, or at least puts on airs as such. While seeing them live Saturday, they transitioned into Megalomaniac during the calm outro of Drive (not played with the melody on Bass and chords on Piano, as on Alive at Red Rocks, by the way), and transformed Stellar into a Disco Love Song Cover (The name of which escapes me, but it’s the one where there’s a Bass melody climbing up a Pentatonic scale contrasted by 2 pairs of notes a second interval apart played by guitar, bass, and some cheesy synthesizer setting… Hmm. At least I never promoted this post as an actual concert review), all while including a fifteen minute version of Sick, Sad, Little World.

The closest comparison to the band’s live presence is Led Zeppelin. They both feature genre bending rock punctuated by frequent solos of instrumental virtuosity, a very powerful lead singer (although I can entertain those averse to Brandon’s slight alternative rock lyrical and performing tendencies), and a roster of powerful songs performed differently from studio to stage. Strikingly different, though, the member most prone to solos isn’t the guitarist, but the bass player. Ben Kenny was always willing to move songs up an octave, croon on the highest notes when the studio release had the same bass line repeated, and just play his bass whenever Brandon cut out of the music. This is in contrast to the guitarist, Mike, who spent most of his time not spent on planned chords preparing effects with odd chords and constant pedal shifts.

Unfortunately, I can only heap so many compliments onto the band, althought they are many. The DJ did very little in the course of most of the songs. While the scratching and sampling is irreplacable with a four-piece set lacking the turntablist, watching Chris Kilmore sit at his station, head bobbing with the beat, and watching a record spin is so awkward when everyone else is going crazy during the climax of the song. The more orchestrated hip hop performance aesthetic doesn’t mesh too well with the energetic, organic rock performance one. I shouldn’t underestimate his performance in the studio. He is, after all, credited with playing the Theremin and Maxophone in addition to piano and organ style instruments. The clash during live performances also occurs with Boyd as well, although he manages to avoid awkwardness by taking his shirt off and jumping around on-stage. Different strokes.

***

More Music!

Talib Kweli’s new album, Eardrum, is pretty spectacular. His last release, Right About Now*, sounded like B-sides from The Beautiful Struggle, a fact confirmed by the liner notes and constant sub-par guest appearances. And the guest appearances, for the most part, aren’t established names but those needing Kweli’s album space, like Strong Arm Steady, although MF Doom and Mos Def show up, only to deliver lackluster tracks. There are also no well established producers on the track besides J DIlla and DJ Khalil.

*Which is considered by some to be a mixtape, apparently, but the denomination seems only nominal. It was released to Best Buy, Circuit city type places, and doesn’t have any songs repeated on albums like every single other mixtape.

And Ear Drum has Kanye West, Just Blaze, will.i.am, Madlib, and Pete Rock producing. And Justin Timberlake, KRS-One, Musiq Soulchild, Norah Jones, Kanye West, and Jean Grae featured. Also, everyone involved doesn’t just show up on each song, but puts in good work. Just Blaze’s beat, in particular, has an intricate arrangement of piano, strings, and chorus and while Talib sinks into his verses the piano keeps playing an intertwining melody around which Talib raps his words. That song, Hostile Gospel Pt. 1 (Deliver Us) is a particular stand-out of the album, although almost all deserve a listen or two. I apologize for not delving further into the individual songs and feel of the album, but Talib’s albums are almost possible to describe on that level. He works within the underground rapper’s milieu (well, works within is almost an insult, because he did help invent it), and each song remains fairly compartmentalized, able to be spliced onto a mixtape or played individually, and each one has a different producer aiming for a different musical feel. I dunno, if you like Talib, it’s something of a gift after Right About Now.

***

I promise the reviewing me will show up on site next. I did just finish Alice in Sunderland, and I do have last month’s comics awaiting my perusal at my parent’s house…

TItle! I Need One of Those!

2007-08-19T10:13:00.000-07:00

So, I never really got to Hewligan’s Haircut before the semester started. Apologies, apologies, but I can say that those who enjoy Milligan when he attempts to fuse himself with the artist, as opposed to attempts where he completely enshrouds himself as a scripter, can appreciate the volume, but Hewlitt (I wonder how the protagonist got his name), the designer of the Gorillaz’s animated counterparts, defines the book much more than Milligan. The New Gothic stylings of many popular figures (as opposed to the old) permeate the book as well, with cute little gremlins hiding inbetween margins always ready to comment sardonically on the current situation to the reader, and plenty of buxom babes clothed with wicked accessories like knee highs and nose length hair.

Fortunately, Hewlitt produces pages full of other characteristics than that chattel. He also finished Hewligan’s Haircut in the late 80’s, much before Johnny and Invader Zim became popular, so criticism of the artist is too harsh, even if a criticism of the work merits at least a little higher regard. Among a keen eye for page design, Hewlitt also employs a keen eye of impersonation, and, although the conceits causing the need for impressions eschew any sense of logical plot devlopment, Hewlitt's art more than makes up for the dream logic of the book, such as random visits to worlds from the center of the Universe, populated by Easter Island heads which ground the reality of each earth in each separate dimension. If a book featuring plot points like that seems exciting, it probably is.

And so the school year begins. You’ll probably hear from me about as much as you have before.

When Artists Attack Unsuspecting Heroes!

2007-08-14T22:40:00.000-07:00

Batman #667

Morrison seems to be a writer whose abilities increase with those of his artist. The more trust he can place in an artist (and, obviously, the better the artist is), the better the results turn out. All-Star Superman lives and dies by Quitely’s casual mastery of body language and detail. Also, Morrison has collaborated with Dave McKean (although he is reputed to have preferred Brian Bolland) on Batman: Arkham Asylum, Jon J. Muth on The Mystery Play, Duncan Fegredo on Kid Eternity, and, for an even stranger project, Daniel Valley for Bible John-A Forensic Meditation. Unfortunately, most of those projects suffer some amount of unmitigated pretension*. The gloss of critically acclaimed painters and artists increased the pedigree of projects on which Morrison would work while producing his string of early Vertigo work. Prior to that, he was only given short projects at 2000 A.D. besides Zenith, and even that demanded intense serialization. Freedom brought out the playwright in him, and the restraints of a shared universe and iconic characters, or at least the illusion of those, has always forced Morrison to produce more instantly readable, enjoyable, and deeper work, or at least when he experienced bountiful freedom for the first time, he wasn't quite sure what to do with it.

*I would be ecstatic if I could find Bible John anywhere, for a ridiculous ebay price, even. Also of note: I found The New Adventures of Hitler online yesterday. And I thought I’d have to suffer prices like these.

Williams III reminds me, more than anyone else, of Bill Sienkiewicz. His early work in mainstream superhero comics has just a hint of oddity within when compared to contemporaries, and he effortlessly employs innovative panel design while portraying characters in individual panels with a similar ease. This is ignoring the advances his art made in Promethea, Desolation Jones, and the aforementioned Seven Soldiers work, but the man could handle art duties just well as artistic virtuosity as shown when Moore nabbed him to illustrate Promethea. Unlike Sienkiewicz, he hasn't quite moved beyond the mainstream superhero comic style (although Sienkiewicz has indeed moved beyond comics themselves, and does not suffuse every project with a similar aesthetic to Big Numbers, although the transition from Moon Knight to Stray Toasters will always be the definitive Sienkiewicz canon to me), and can still produce pages from a writer who scripts without a specific artist in mind, as a freelance penciler and artistic visionary in the same stroke, although he has enough esteem in the industry so that he won't have to approach comics searching for ways to construct routine scenes and pages within his intellectual and artistic capacity after being handed a script.

More than anything, after these two accomplished masters collaborated on this project, it feels like fun for them. The plethora of references, artistic and textual, present in Seven Soldiers are in this comic, undoubtedly, but they occupy a much different state of being, only commenting on the individual character’s past and personalities, serving as shorthand instead of a path to interpretation. Sure, Gaucho drawn as if by Howard Chaykin illuminates the character, but the Knight and Squire drawn as if by Ed McGuiness only reference their earlier appearance as combatants of Gorilla Grodd. Other tricks such as the marbled faces of Batman and Robin on the first splash page help communicate more about the characters without verbiage, in addition to Williams' homages.

There’s another feeling casually conveyed by Williams and Morrison in the book, too. The team does a bang up job of rekindling the first Seven Soldier bookend. The has-beens and never-will-bes are present in the book as well as an unstoppable threat, all done with a keen eye on the character’s tradition. Morrison even trusses the book up in a similar façade of imposed showmanship. The good and evil conceit into which the villain throws Batman and the Club of Heroes feels as contrived as the ultimate death of a Soldier, a contrivance aware of its own limitations, and all the better for it. This, along with other surface similarities such as the persistent stylistic shorthand and the pre-battle ballroom chit chat scene, recall the duo’s prior efforts in Seven Soldiers.

The book offers a number of visual treats besides those that I’ve already mentioned. There are two absolutely stunning full page spreads, one occupying two pages and showing the destruction of airplanes within a black glove (the namesake and name of our villain), and the other portraying Batman in his godly status, marbled and painted in graytones, white, and black only, framing the Club of Heroes in all of their distinctive looks. This doesn’t even take into regard a wallpaper of a Roman Gladiator in his prime jutting out to kick an assailant while a fat, slovenly Roman Gladiator hero attempts to strike his assailant in his death throes, or the stupendous final page consuming our heroes in fire and the Black Glove as the villain taunts and intimidates.

Despite the sheer talent and eloquence in Williams' art (and Morrison’s writing, although that’s far from the most appealing factor in this particular issue), one is unaccustomed to see such talent on a simple project like this. Instead of the self imposed weight from Seven Soldiers that constant thematic talk helped construct, this book features none of that, and the entire affair has a lightness to it. Sure, Williams may have deliberated on artistic antecedents for his characters, and especially the design of each page, but it all feels far from a product of thematic hammering or didactic intent, and surely not a formal exercise in design. It’s a superhero comic done with artful eyes and energy, instead of an appropriation of art comics in tights, unlike earlier epics penned by Morrison and lavishly painted.

XyphaP with Tintin in America

2007-08-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

During a recent trip to Baltimore*, I visited the Comics Kingdom. Within a cramped, claustrophobic comic shop one can find the normal sequential pleasures to which one has become accustomed from a local comic shop, an overly generous collection of trade paperback collections, a sampling of the past decade’s underground comics, and a couple rows of foreign material. This is all besides some of the truly stunning auxiliary material offered, including spirituals, and, more surprisingly, belly dancing books.

*It was scary at night on the streets. I was told to “Get out of my damn town, you fucking yankee” around a bar after the clock struck past ten. I found my hotel room shortly after, and nestled into my bed, awaiting the delightful company morning brings.

Despite the range of options available, I was able to find a couple gems amid Top Shelf Products past their prime and a clutter of Hulk #107 and House of M #3. The books of immediate interest to me (not necessarily the only ones, but the ones grabbing my attention first and most effectively) were a 2000 A.D. Books edition of Hewligan’s Haircut, by Peter Milligan and Jamie Hewlitt, the designer of the Gorillaz, and a Casterman edition of Tintin in America. The Tintin book actually has a hint of intrigue surrounding its existence. I’ll get to the contents of it in a second, after the mystery has been unraveled.

The name Casterman adorns the bottom of the front cover, which also features Tintin atop a horse, lasso in hand, and cowboy hat on head (they’re given to tourists at the airports like leis in Tahiti). Oddly enough, the Casterman editions appear to sport a completely different cover. Compare: The edition Casterman (a website entirely in French, I might add) claims to publish, which does not feature the Rootin-Tootin Belgian Cowboy Tintin, but one on the verge of death in the grip of Indians(and that cover image is indeed published inside the comic as a random full page spread.) Even more oddly, Casterman advertises the book as full-color, and my version, despite a half dozen random full page spreads in soft, muted colors, features Tintin and Snowy in stark black and white. Also, the European edition claims to be 64 pages long, and my book is about double that. Also, I’ve seen English editions of the books Casterman publishes, and this is a cloth bound hardcover instead of the short, A4 sized albums on the website. These still aren’t what I’m looking for.

Further investigation led me to Amazon.com, and I found my only proof of the book’s existence*, but even then the copy is imperfect. A version of the book with the same cover, but still conspicuously different, this time suffering a linguistic difference. Confounding.

*Everyone knows the internet is the ultimate arbiter of relevance.

This led me back to the copyright page, where a delicious snippet of info rested below necessary ownership information. Last Gasp distributed the book. This led me to their main page, and, mystery solved, the book is a republished, translated facsimile of the original collected edition of the Tintin edition. Also, even more awesomely, the Casterman editions I’ve seen around bookstores and such are actually abridged versions of the same Cowboy and Indians and Gangsters Epic that I hold in my hands, and I own a full length copy. Possibly distressing is the lack of color, but the colors of the Casterman cover don’t match the snippets of color in Last Gasp’s facsimile. They look much more computerized, or at least modern, whereas the six pages of color in my volume are a little dirty, imperfect, and much warmer than any coloring in a modern Tintin book. What I hold in my hands is the original publication of Tintin’s wily adventures in America, before the dominating A4 graphic album size dominated European standards to which Tintin conformed.

After reading the adventure, I can’t see how they possibly shortened the work. Hergé plotted the story manically, with gangsters killing gangsters and Tintin thwarting Al Capone all while Indians start a war under the thrall of a renegade mobster. And Tintin’s dog invariably saves the day. Everything in the comic flows from one plot point to another, and all of them rely on each other. The renegade mobster wouldn’t attempt to kidnap and kill Tintin without the apprehension of Al Capone and his cronies, and Tintin wouldn’t be stranded in the middle of nowhere after his exploits with said renegade mobster, all of which would be impossible without the inciting of a tribe of Native Americans to war. And it’s not like Hergé fills the interim between these plot points with pointless meandering and moody sequences. Captions explain voyages across the country between panels, and every panel features action. Like most Golden age classics, publishing constraints forced plot to become hectic, and Tintin was no exception.

Well, there are a couple things which can be taken out. The most glaring is the casual stereotypes. As can be expected from any material produced featuring a foreign nation before travel was cheap and convenient, American mores aren’t viewed very flatteringly through Tintin’s adventures. The police are incompetent, Chicago is a city infested with gangsters, and every businessman is ruthless (well, some were correct). While most of the not-so-subtle jabs at my inherited culture produced humor at their ridiculousness (a possible intention of Hergé, but the manner the jokes are made seem to spotlight the jab instead of its actual implications. Instead of, say, Ratatouille, a movie which built jokes off of how America sees France and what that would actually entail to their populace), the portrayal of Native Americans offers much more racism. The Native Americans are a tribe built on superstition, and refuse to enter battle (after supposing that a single white man who appears in the tribe must be a god) until they find their buried hatchet. Constant name-calling including Pale Face ensues, as well as the climax to the battle involving the Indians getting enraged at each other over the shooting of a pellet, fighting each other over a small point of pride while calling each other names such as “

But I’m beating a dead horse. It’s easy to pinpoint the racial stereotypes in old art, laughing at the ignorant, racist norms of the time. Unforunately, there’s also another aspect of the book which doesn’t age well; almost every time Tintin encounters seemingly insurmountable trouble, god appears from the machina and rescues our hapless hero. In one of the more erroneous examples, Tintin lies strapped to train tracks (at least Hergé imported American tropes as well as geography) in such a way that the train will not see him until it has passed a bend and unable to brake in time. So naturally, fifty miles back, an old lady sees a Tiger attacking a deer, and pulls the alarm stop. Amazingly, the trains tops right in front of Tintin and the conductor notices the boy there, untangles him, and we’re back on the quest to rid Chicago of gangsters.

Even if I can’t recommend the contents fully, I can heartily enjoy the presentation. The book has wide enough margins that, lying flat, all of every page is clearly visible, and unlike the thin hardcovers in which one normally sees the Tintin books, the book doesn’t naturally fold back and close itself, and the spine doesn’t weather any damage when read with all the pages out and open. Also, the cover is attractively bare, with a single red cloth binding supporting a hard cover illuminated by a single, elegant drawing. There’s no difficult design, just a simple, attractive package. If you are a fan of Tintin, these volumes are worth seeking out.

Needless to say, Tintin didn’t impress me much, although the simple lines and straight-forward storytelling are a sight enough to justify the time to read it. I perhaps lack enough knowledge of Post-Turn of the Century comics to truly appreciate the influence Tintin had, because, as it stands, the volume is an unspectacular example of Golden Age Adventure comics and Newspaper strips, with a fast pace and exciting drawings but little substance. Or perhaps Tintin was so popular that its qualities were impressed upon so many comics of the time that other ancient gems that I’ve read, such as Popeye and Gasoline Alley, offer much different pleasures, whereas Hergés flavor has become indistinct by imitation.

***

I hope that I can get to Hewligan’s Haircut before I head off to school for the Fall Semester, but time approaches quickly, and I want to talk about a couple time sensitive books before I leave, but it’s certainly good and obscure enough to warrant discussion.

When People Make Things Different

2007-07-20T02:57:00.000-07:00

I just recently refound the song from Daft Punk, "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" and realized how amazingly talented the Daft Punk crew is. Besides that one superbly crafted electronic sampling tour de force (and I'd like to think that I enjoy its playful qualities which elevate what a single sample can produce when the implied repetition is approached as a challenge. But it's just as possible that I'm attracted to its dancyness as I am to its formailties), the rest of the album from which "Harder, Better" was taken follows that single with just as many impressive, if not successful, formal experiments. "One More Time" follows a similar question with a much different answer, and rewards anyone who listens to the subtle and gradual changes well. "Digital Love" captures a much different pop feel, and the love from the singer is just so authentic compared to the crooning "oh, how I love you"s in modern music. The rest of the CD follows along similar lines to varying success, but always with interesting and danceable electronica, a rare combination.

And so, after being enamored by “Harder, Better” I found a remix by the Neptunes. The owner of the file on the network even deemed it Super Crazy Version. As I’m sure my foreshadowing has foreshadowed, it is far from Super Crazy, and tones down the craziness of the song, while neutering the iconic parts. They could’ve gone crazy Neptunes style, but instead worked the most on shaping the sound, shifting tones and loops instead of creating new ones. It’s a Big letdown. Don’t go downloading it excitedly.

This really illustrates the common pitfalls of remixes and, to a lesser degree, remakes. The artists are caught up so much in what they can turn the song into, how they can make it better and such, that the intrinsic qualities which the progenitor already placed in the song are forgotten in lieu of what the song can become. Except this time the audience has a clearly defined sense of that for which the artist was/is trying, and, in an ironic twist of fate, the critic has the clear upper hand when deciding what a song is all about and how different paths should be taken, and the artist is the person left trying to understand where everything went wrong and what factors caused the artistic imperfection. Now, lord knows* I involve myself too, too much in what I expect my written words to be and what can actually be inferred from the characters on paper, but that my faults should rarely be extended to published musicians, even if I'm judging what they do in the off-time without pay, instead of what they have earned a living doing.

*I have a shifting relationship with slang and the like. Sometimes, no other expression conveys my intent as candidly as some cliche like lord knows, but by implanting idioms and common turns of phrases, I'm consigning my work to the oblivion of the present instead of letting it maintain its individuality for all of eternity. I become a Balzac instead of a Shakespeare, but unfortunately not nearly as prolific as either.

All of this tension between how to build on the remnants of past art while moving forward, progressing, but doing so with more than a wink to antecedents is why sampling was such a revolution (especially to Lethem). It permits musicians (although my example here is specific, it generally applies to all forms of art. Music just has a more obvious seal of plagiarism than lines of literature) to remix something so drastically as to make it into something new and different, a different artistic endeavor, free from the shackles of audience expectation, and the only evidence is fine print within liner notes. And who reads those things anyways?

The best remixing involves an honest appraisal of the work, finding which qualities made the work appealing and worthy of remixing in the first place, and then applying them in a similar manner to a similar foundation. God perfectly remixed Royal Blue perfectly when he made Maroon.

***

If you’re interested in those who understand remixing well, Lyrics Born and the aforementioned Daft Punk get most of their attempts spot-on, playing within the established milieu instead of trying to make their own. They also create some of the best genre inspired hip hop and electronica tracks respectively, and deserve much more praise besides for their remixing skills.

A Couple Paragraphs For Perusal

2007-07-18T20:21:00.000-07:00

“Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?” By Of Montreal is probably in the exclusive favorite CD’s of XyphaP club. As soon as the last song ends, I’m so excited; now I can listen to the first song again!

It’s joining the ranks of Incubus’ “Morning View”, Outkast’s “Stankonia”, and Mars Volta’s “Deloused in the Crematorium”*, all of which means that in a year I’ll be shaking my head in astonished awe at my musical choices and the follies of youth. But at least it lets me keep a level head when judging other art, even if, as all of you can see, I haven’t been applying the noggin that much lately.

*All good CD’s, but hardly the paragons of their respective genres. Except for Outkast, maybe, but that isn’t even their best.

***

Ratatouille is such an awesome movie! It was good to great instead of Cars-Awful, which means that the developers invested enough time making the characters of the piece work and function organically, and the movie doesn’t suffer from its setting and characters in a mad scramble to tell a meaningful story. Also, humorously, the rats are always shown washing their hands before heading off to work. The marketers apparently want as few health code violations as possible in a movie featuring rats cooking food.

Besides its overly compassionate view on rats in kitchens, the movie presents French culture oddly. Amid the backdrop of cooks chasing rats with shotguns and knives, lovers are seen head over heels in compassionate love embracing each other in a canal driven by a striped shirted mustachioed man, and the French characters without a starring role are demoted to other stereotypes, thankfully taken from France instead of Italy, such as the hard-edged leader of a French Resistance movement taken from a Jean Genet play, and the fickle public concerned entirely with the msot suave and chic. All of this would normally prick my sensitive eyes, but the film presents the stereotypes in as ridiculous fashion as possible, and the main characters in the movie are unmistakably forged from the French culture of which bits and pieces of backgrounds and foregrounds make fun, leading to the realization that the film is far from racist, despite what a superficial viewing of teh film might suggest, as it pokes fun at extremes but encourages the mediums. It's clearly mocking the stereotypes which have been constructed in American culture isntead of mocking itself, and does this to great effect. Also, the show faithfully recreates a French kitchen as opposed to an American one, with every member of the brigade represented.

It’s not the revelation of Finding Nemo or Toy Story, however, but it’s solid in a similar fashion to A Bug’s Life as a well-intended but conceptually underwhelming character movie and not an excuse to sell toys and boast difficult animation. Pixar wisely doesn’t take an easy way out by making the rats cute and cuddly, but impresses the reality of being a rat and gives the movie a very distinct feel from its associated animated opera by focusing on the relationship between predator and prey, albeit focusing almost exclusively on the predator’s side, while foregoing a relationship between all the cuite and cuddly animals or toys such as other Pixar movies, and the cast is rounded out by many more humans than animals. All in all, it's a surprisingly good movie.

***

And that’s it for now. I’m considering placing the blog on a hiatus until I have more energy for reviewing and can maintain a daily schedule, but I appreciate the occasional critical outlet when regular company proves content with enjoyment. Regardless, other interests and responsibilities have somewhat divested me from the comics scene in the past couple of months, and I lack the enthusiasm I had six months ago. We’ll see where the days takes us.

Note:I edited the post a tad, polishing a couple sentences and adding a paragraph shortly after publication.

Aha! It's done

2007-07-05T00:38:00.000-07:00

Maybe Later

This is a comic by two incredibly popular French cartoonists, Phillipe Dupuy and Charles Berberian, but it is far from a normal comic. The two artists, who normally work as both co-authors and co-artists, they created this album in a departure from their previous efforts, and created two separate, distinct sections, each produced separate from each other. The strong relationship that the two have created by writing, drawing, and inking comics in tandem had outlived its usefulness for the two, and their own individual voices needed to be found again. This journal of their lives while working on their third color album of Monsieur Jean thus touches on much more than the pages contained therein hope to explore, as any autobiographical artwork should strive for.

Dupuy and Berberian enjoy a certain level of esteem in the francophone world, and the francophone cartooning world enjoys a certain level of esteem, that such a naval-gazing and self-indulgent work can see print. The cartoonists in the book itself mention the desiccated imagination with which they’re penciling the work, and the sketchy drawings, along with the meandering pace and plot, really make a poor reading experience. This is, of course, as Dupuy and Berberian are figuring out what they want to do with the journal as they’re writing it.

There’s a sequence, drawn by Phillipe, which involves three panels passing by with Phillipe on a drawing board, lamenting the passage of time without creative energy. It’s surrounding by him rereading the panels already drawn, and his insecurities about not being able to fill the panels with anything of interest.

Hardly top shelf material here and Charles runs into other overtly artistic hurdles, too. At the beginning of his section, the drawing is, at best, lackluster. The wavy lines which so amazingly characterize Monsieur Jean’s world, portray Charles’ as a shaky, cluttered world with very little care taken to distinguish foreground from background, and adopts many shaky perspectives when conveying action.

The lack of color as a crutch has apparently crippled Charles as much as Dupuy’s thicker lines and sparser backgrounds, and the beginning drawings lack the spring brought to Dupuy’s and Monsieur Jean’s worlds.

Which isn’t to say that Dupuy doesn’t suffer the same artistic malaise when beginning his journal. Sure, the lines begin with confidence in their ability to express, but the spotlight of color has yet to truly evade his work until the journal progresses. Thick blacks surround small patches of white and the drawn characters lack the prominence adequate coloring would give them. Fortunately, humorous stories are told in the first section, characterized by the self deprecating humor of Monsieur Jean. The scratchy quality of the ink matches the frustrated tone of the artist, but this is clearly a sample of a journal and not a finished work.

Berberian begins with a similar storytelling stance, relating stories lacking emotional development, but focusing greatly on the humor situations contain instead of the emotional resonance of the book’s populace. The artists prove their storytelling chops ably in the respective first sections of the book.

But, as I hinted at in the first paragraph, this comic is not interesting because of the anecdotes contained herein, but is interesting when viewed within the context of the lives of Dupuy and Berberian and the plots of Monsieur Jean. The comic most explicitly covers the production of the new Monsieur Jean album, but as the two books are produced, many anxieties concerning the publishing viability of the book which I’m reviewing and the production problems of Get a Life are explored, but, more importantly, the book itself chronicles the comfort with which the artists begin to express themselves in the journal, and the lines themselves as they dance across the page explore the anxieties and the relief of the more intimate self expression contained in the journal.

Dupuy begins with the repartee of trivial jokes and a light exposition on his personal life. I’ve already discussed the breezy tone which marks both artists’ first attempts at writing a journal. Soon enough, as with Berberian, the comics explode from witty anecdote into a personal journey. Internal dialogues with Batman replace ironic conversation with a cab driver, and domestic problems are solved instead of presented as comedy. The artists travel from approaching the journal as a repository of daily stories never fit for publication into an incredibly personal account of how their environment affects their life, and what they can do to change their problems and become happier.

A similar progression of the depth of emotions which the artists present occurs in the art as well. Phillipe cleans up his sloppy lines by the end of the book, and Berberian utilizes the stark effects of black and white much better by the end of the volume, cleaning up cluttered backgrounds and jamming less into his work. There is a mirror of improvement, both in the art and artists’ lives, as they begin to express themselves deeper and more effectively, and the journey Dupuy & Berberian have presented, full of plenty of artistic hurdles as well as personal, stir the heart of artists alike, proving that any bad position is just the beginning of the road to improvement, and, although a happy ending in life is always ephemeral, Dupuy & Berberian accomplish the feat of deception, all while retaining their trademark style.

You see, my son, here weeks become months.

2007-07-02T20:30:00.000-07:00

10 points if you caught the reference

***

So, as you can probably tell (and here I am, flattering myself with regular readers), I haven’t been posting anything. Which isn’t from a lack of desire, but from not having any new comics for a while for plenty of reasons, the most notable being the time one needs to venture to the Razza-Frazzin Comic Shoptm and purchase new comics, not to mention the daunting task of reading all those comics. So, without further feet shuffling and excuse making, Here’s the main event, which is, coincidentally enough, a comic almost a year old, but the most striking in my pile of yet-to-reads so far. A short review of why Frazier Irving is still teh roxors when producing commercial superhero work under the constraints of editorial ex machine or how Darwyn Cooke manages to fill his Spirit work with so much while maintaining a breezy, casual tone to the comic seems a little anti-climactic.

However, you know what’s even more anti-climactic? A promise ya a post later post.

But, really, It is coming. Probably tomorrow, even. And the comic may not be what you’re expecting, although there is a little precedence for it in my archived reviews.

Hi!

2007-05-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

My regular dailyish posting routine will return in about a week. Thanks for bearing with me.

I Wouldn’t Be Offended if You Skipped Past the First Asterixed Segment.

2007-04-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

Fortunately, I have comics to discuss as well. Y’know, instead of the limitations my language of choice/chance places on some form of expression, but that’s still further down past my quick splurge of excitement.

***

In case you didn’t know, besides Alice in Sunderland, The Salon, and Alias the Cat, all of which are already out, this week sees the release of Porcellino’s King-Cat Classix, Micrographica, and, for some, The Professor’s Daughter, and To Terra vol. 2. And I was just getting around to finishing and reviewing volume 1. That’ll have to wait until after AP tests, then, as well as the literally mounds of new comics I’m accumulating without the time to read, nor the energy to review them.

*Reading comics with the intent to review them later completely changes how a comic is viewed. Not necessarily in an abjectly damning or enlightening manner, but technique becomes so much more integral to the experience when a critical eye garners the stumbles and spotlights the virtuosity. Besides a much more ensconcing reading experience, the sheer brio and vivacity of most works comes across as a much more self conscious enjoyment when the lexicon of (expressed, for the most part) enjoyment limits itself to a richly defined repository of terms describing technical flair and penciling wizardry of virtuous masters.

Emotional work gets words like personal, intimate and meaningful, if one attempts to divine the emotions of a piece. Stylish work can’t earn a compliment other than vivacious, astounding, or some other word that’s become clichéd after Lee and Kirby strip mined all the excitement of alliterative exclamations with synonyms or close cousins to awesome.

Expressing the sheer Excitement of art is hard, too. One has to invent techniques other than explication when intellectuality monopolizes nuanced expression. Leaving the Athenaeum is difficult.

*Back to the topic of exciting comics that have yet to be released…

And, (AND!) Campbell’s new project, The Black Diamond Agency hasn’t been released yet. This comic is sure to be astounding, with a fantastic cover design, and plenty of excitement generated by Campbell’s blog. Although I have plenty more to say on the idea of the comic itself, I’ll leave the issue* by saying that it’s the most exciting forthcoming project from the alternative comic’s scene.

*I feel the need to mention a pun whenever one accidentally comes out. Otherwise y’all would think I’m loose with my diction or something.

Army@Love #2

Last time I talked about this comic, I briefly mentioned an appealing quality of Veitch’s work universal through all of his comics that I’ve read. The man, despite copious changes in style, never loses his signature. Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend traverses a dreamscape connected by an incomprehensible logic, but connects and assimilates the phantasms which Veitch experiences into a smooth read, incomprehensible after only a glance or two, and completely unmemorable after the comic is put down, creates a world as the comic is being experienced, inviting and exclusionary, and ultimately becomes a dream itself with memorable imagery obviating the perception of details and other trifles. But the cat screeching out off the page, or the Alan Moore look-alike mumbling rhymes while riding through the River Styx are all potent imagery, even if the circumstances creating the images are easily forgotten.

Needless to say, Army@Love is nothing like that. While the covers,

#1 here:
And #2 here:
are attempts at striking imagery, and the comic’s future operates much more on damning implications than actual world construction, Veitch clearly wants a gripping narrative, full of endearing characters, because the work would fall apart without any emotional connection.

Well, more accurately, the work would fall apart with any emotional attachment. None of the characters in here have any heart, even the adultery victim. In fact, the adulterated victim especially lacks compassion. After last issue’s domestic shakeups wherein the wife, Switzer, accidentally had sex while connected to her husband. Loman was revealed to be sleeping with a neighbor, though, so Veitch stifled the pity somewhat, and now he’s involved with some sketchy guys, one of whom is called Needhawk. The reason he’s involved with them is because he’s selling cartilage, which is apparently a drug on the street. I’m guessing this from the way Needhawk and Blanch talk. Loman also chronically underpays the shady people, shorting his dealers sixteen grand and his supplier a single thousand.

Did I mention that the supplier of the cartilage “professionally harvested from the best funeral home in Afbaghistan,” is the overprotective mother of a soldier in combat, a diminutive kid named Beau Gest afflicted with Down’s syndrome, who is the most pitiable character of the cast?

The comic doesn’t linger on its characters too long, though. The character’s motivations and machinations are quickly laid out on the table, to get set for the issue’s huge amount of exposition which details the rise of Motivation and Morale in the army, and Veitch removes any semblance of the enchanter that graces the pages of Rarebit Fiends and Abraxas, and becomes a teacher.

The points made about the impending advertisement of war and its accompanying adrenaline rush, as well as how, in the future, corporations supply the armed services with fresh meat are well made in the comic. Even though I normally dread the didactic tone most war comics can’t help but project, Veitch never lumbers around his insights, and matches the book’s depressing outlook with a maniacally deprecating sense of humor to match. Fortunately, Veitch has left us a well rounded comic compared to the commencement of the first issue, but it attempts a similar amount of expositional leaps. Normally this would be a cause for concern, as the first issue aroused nothing but the sustenance of my patience for another month, but at least the second issue’s continued focus lets us know that not liking or caring about the characters isn’t really the point, and makes it a somewhat smaller mess, even if a Vertigo book aimed at an alternative crowd wishes to warn us of the dangers of bacchanalian pursuits of joining the army. At least the lecture features a hippy killing Afbaghistanis with a guitar plug-in to a computer and an Islamic woman applying makeup to get under the good graces of a military officer, even if the humor strikes a little close to the bone.

Don't Pull That Thang Out, Unless You Plan To Bang

2007-04-19T20:10:00.000-07:00

Spirit #5

*Spoilers*

I think Cooke finally showed us what he can do with a straight up Spirit comic. The new issue finally focused on an adventure and its thrills instead of trying to introduce a character and tell the story from their perspective. He also chooses not to do an origin story, or one caught up in introductions that it worries more about the spotlight and its aperture, and the comic feels like the most relaxed out of the bunch so far, with no forced narrative techniques.

And then the villain has to fuck a vulture. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the comic. Although the Spirit is a much beloved icon from the forties created by a straight faced cartoonist, with no such debauchery in his past before (I admit that I may be ignorant. I’ve only read a stack of random Warren reprints and accumulated knowledge from discussion of the comic), some discomfiture could do the comic well, because it has existed largely in its own sphere of influence with harmless action surrounded by charming characters. This could really make the book actually exciting instead of fun and nostalgic like it has been before. But Cooke presents the kinky sex as humorously as possible, and it resides only in implication.

I can’t say I’m that disappointed about that, though. Getting into the mind of someone who actually loves a vulture would be icky (instead of productive, as the exploration of chickenf*cking is). Fortunately, Cooke supplies some racy action with the violence, and after a tremendously gory aftermath to a torture session full of blood and black eyes that don’t disappear when the panels ends like most of the other violence in this comic, someone, check this, stabs The Cossack with a pen! A frickin’ pen! And you best believe that tons of blood squirts out from the stylo’s penetration. And then The Cossack shouts out “You think to kill me with a pen? I AM THE COSSACK!” It’s a great moment of comic-booking, to be sure, and completely unexpected. There’s also a headshot in the comic, where blood gushes out of the victim’s head, and then the next panel focuses on his dead, lifeless, and bloody body.

This certainly isn’t like the other Spirit issues before where the only blood in an issue is from a legshot and bullets magically never hit anyone. I won’t advocate that every superhero comic should feature more bullets, death, and violence galore, but compared to the prudish atmosphere of the previous Spirit issues, this issue’s reckless slinging of shit (and blood) on the page is a welcome change of pace from the more formal affairs the series has been up to this point, with a more clear introduction of plot, sub plot, and the allotted one odd stylistic device Cooke has allowed himself each issue. There’s also a super cute ad for the pork beans on the issue’s cover, and, suffice to say, it’s super cute, as well as the plot of the issue, featuring corporate machinations as well as a fight between two supervillains, two things the kid in me loves. Although I doubt that Cooke could keep up the quality with the next issue, this is certainly the best issue so far, if you’re not squeamish about bestiality displayed humorously

***

The Beatles' song “Don’t Let Me Down” is really a great tune. The way the chorus is just so raging and agonized, leading into the verse, with the more relaxed beat and time signature change. I’m not too big a fan of the bridge’s broken chords, but with such a perfect song besides that small sing-songy section, it really is a great piece of music. And it was never properly released on vinyl, only as a single twice as both an A and B side, only getting an album release when Let it Be… Naked surfaced, but it was also on the Let it Be video from 1969, and plenty of people covered it. (Information take from Wikipedia)

Now is Probably the Worst Time for Me to be Blogging

2007-04-18T20:53:00.000-07:00

I still have college decisions to worry about, and the AP tests are fast approaching (two and a half weeks from now, and I’m taking seven… I’d be biting my nails if my apathy hadn’t already completely taken over), and, and… I’m frustrated that I haven’t mustered an entry in a week. Luckily, writing is cathartic and an enjoyable experience if I have comics to write about, and blogging isn't a burden despite the constant abdications I may post in the future if my current schedule does not relax. Fortunately for you, instead of putting another lame copout about the undulating wave of obligation or somesuch, I’ve actually prepared an entry to go along with my whiny complaint/unnecessary apology.

Enjoy my gaze at last week’s books, conveniently picked up today. Who knows what the future holds, I may even talk about this week's books tomorrows. Ah, the jubilation of choice.

Fell #8

After last issue’s disappointing concentrated storytelling technique stretched out to fill sixteen pages, Ellis presents another issue with a similarly rectilinear script detailing a day in the life of Richard Fell through an assembly of post-it notes and images. Luckily, the story leans very heavily on Ben Templesmith for creating the mood and atmosphere of the comic, a technique of which Templesmith is fully capable, but the entire narrative thrust belongs solely to Warren Ellis, who can’t manage manipulating the plot in any manner whatsoever that doesn’t involve complete perverts or repulsive.

Now, that may seem an odd criticism to levy against Ellis from someone who has purchased the previous seven issues of Fell’s exploits, but the prior issues all had a sense of interdependence and internal urgency, a movement between the characters in each story and the familiarity that a small cast brought. Ellis places his protagonist as the observer of all the action, a passive watcher who’s sure to regale us with his opinion on the events around him, but never a participant. This focuses the book not on any police tactics or character moments, but only on weird ass shit, like the mannequin thief/rapist and the criminal who turns fresh bananas into weapons. Complimenting the characters, Ellis adds plenty of textual descriptions of the city and its denizens, and the book becomes something quite a bit far from the series' nascent canon, most easily compared to Transmetropolitan vol. 0: Tales of Human Waste where the main attraction is how grimy the setting is, and now, finally freed from the constraints of a plot, Ellis can regale with detritus instead of a story, playing to his excesses instead of his strengths.

Which is a shame, because Ellis brings down Templesmith, too. The artist, already mentioned as a master of mood, is no slouch when designing a stage or populating it with characters. The small moments in need of expression, like when the mannequin thief/rapist is taken into custody, shows the criminal as certifiably crazy, panties in his mouth, and the cops, with hats sinking to cover their eyes, look annoyed by his persistence, but nowhere near disgusted as any normal human being would look, but these moments are few and far between. The constant usage of Post-It notes ruins any attempt at design under the obtrusive captions, and only adds insult to injury when half of each page gets cover by text.

But the real problem of the issue is, like the one before it, its ending. The plot of the man at the bar who killed another man lurches from the backdrop and forces Ellis and Templesmith to reinstate the nine panel grid when conveying action. Templesmith supplies a nice rhythm to the proceedings, cutting to dramatic shots of faces or shifting the perspective when the conversation changes tone, but, really, it’s not action but proceedings, as a barely mentioned part of the running captions is given undue precedence, and the story ends, branding the issue as a description of the city immediately after some modicum of plot was reached for. The issue’s too spread out in focus to be anything but another mildly enjoyable, disappointing entry in the Fell series.

All-Star Superman #7

Ah, the pleasures of technical excellence mastered with two aortas and ventricles full of heart. Not to become too apostrophic, but I greet you, abstract ideas full of preconceived and objective judgment, with open arms after Fell did less than stellar with a similar technical purpose. There’s much less to complain about within these pages, mostly because the entire issue doesn’t construct itself from a design motif or experiment, but simply incorporates the innovation as the action merits. Quitely only uses tricky layouts when simple action, like the flight of Superman, is expressed, opting for an enduring widescreen presentation of events occasionally bisected when a little too much action and conversation happens on panel. The comic’s first and foremost desire is to be approachable.

Instead of the formal design attempted in Fell, Morrison and Quitely attempt to fill the book full with as much stuff as possible. From the small, small plot maneuvers like the Bizarro worker shown on the first page tying into #4 (right? My issues aren’t handy, but I’m pretty sure that’s the one where Luthor attempts to make his own Bizarro) and Superman trying out one of his new powers to the impeccable body language, this comic is just full of content, ready to be deciphered and taken in, because who knows when the next issue’ll come out? Maybe in three months if we’re good.

Actually, I like the horrible delays plaguing this book. Not much, mind you, but it causes each issue to be viewed more as an individual artifact than as a piece of a whole, which is a much better view of Superman. He occasionally comes in to save the day, to remind us of his grace, and brighten the tedium of our day (he being a thinly veiled metaphor for the comic), and whenever a new one comes out, it’s just such a heartwarming occasion. Unlike Seven Soldiers, where the constant release dates until the resolicited Halloween finale made it feel like an event comic with all the bells and whistles of constant mental attendance helped invite readers into its maze, this comic arrives with thunderous applause and speaks with a whisper, compared to Seven Soldiers thunderous applause which spurred further rabble rousing and confused clamor, if the time was taken to pay attention.

Now, me divining the tone and identity of the book after a half dozen issues may seem a bit redundant, but after last issue’s complete tonal shift (and completely appropriate collection bookend, but that seems mostly an afterthought for Morrison), the redirection provided by the issue’s global conflict veers it right back into being a Super Superman comic, with an entire world in need of saving after Kent’s heart needed some tending. As much as these comics are about the multiple identities and locales in which Superman operates, it’s also about what he fights and survives, and although this issue tips the pendulum back into the fantastical fights of Superman, I am sure that he’ll soon be back entangled in loss and love, which are the truly inspiring feats of Superman.

***

I promise it’s only Superman that gets me all sappy. Tomorrow I'll be (more) cynical.

The Protein Strands Were Remarkably Hard to Relocate

2007-04-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

I know you were beside yourself with worry, but the effervescence will follow soon enough.

Silent War #2-3

The Razza-Frazzin Comic Shop ™ dangled this deliciously Frazier Irving illustrated comic almost fifteen or twenty issues deep with the new comics rack, but could only manage two beat-up (well, they had a noticeable ding in the spine. I expect perfection!) copies of #2, and had no copies at all of #1 (and just when I became interested. Bad marketing, right?). Still, mainstream comics illustrated by Irving are always worth a purchase, even if the grace of his brush raises the author’s esteem exponentially.

And let me say, after reading this comic, David Hine is a freakin’ genius. Sides are drawn as the comic begins. A war is brewing between two diametrically opposed factions (when the first shot has already been volleyed), as the recap provides at the beginning of the story, which is just begging to draw as many comparisons between it and Civil War as it possibly can. The action related is only brazen war maneuvers, with midnight thievery galvanizing the Inhumans into belligerence. An Inhuman, Gorgon, leads an offense and is captured and exposed to Terrigen mists for a second time (the Inhumane* rite of passage being a single exposure to Terrigen mists, bestowing powers onto the developing individual). And now, people prepare for war.

*Ugh-ug-ug-ug-ug-ug

Which is all well and good, except the second issue never approaches the warmongering tone permeating the recap. The book presents itself as a horror book first and foremost. Irving's gaudy, unsettling pink and blue hues lend the training session that opens the book* an eerie feel (no that sentence was not finished), expressed moreso by the character’s ridiculous poses during fight scenes which tread the line between serious and cartoony:
*A scene with such delightful dialogue like: "Luna Amaquelin. You are a member of the Inhumans Elite. I am an American soldier. I have come to kill your uncle, Blackagar Blotagon, your aunt Medusa, your mother, Crystalia Amaquelin, and I have come here to kill YOU! HI-YAAAA”. I’m sure my killer would enumerate his path of assassination before attempting mine. I don’t know about you, but that would steel my resolve if I were Luna, though. I mean, she’s last on his list and yet he attacks her first? What a douche!

And then suddenly the action explodes! When before, the colors were merely unsettling, the outrageous pinks flit into turquoise, and a black background constricts the horrific mutation of the professor instead of opening the action of the earlier battle. Those who condemn Irving for failing to draw backgrounds will be shot (or openly acknowledged, depending on my mood. He draws a detailed establishing shot occasionally…). Thankfully, the panic on that page has no basis, and all is well, in yet another rapid tonal shift.

A keen sense of timing helps establish the rest of the scenes and give the book momentum. Irving’s pages are very aloof as they move from exciting to intense to horrific to expository. I couldn’t imagine a more elegant transition from Luna’s mist pains to Professor Cartwright’s transformations than the change of color and escaping fist:
Luckily, the entire page is of value, and worth a look-see, especially Luna’s perception of Karnak. The obdurate teacher surrounds himself with perceptions and auras unlike any other Inhuman seen (Black Bolt sports stars, and Medusa’s is full of wavy lines that look just like her hair), and two orbs keep these expanding auras in check as well as others smoothing out the jaggedness of the inner aura. It’s a much better expression of his personality than any body language could muster, and to top it all off, the character’s image is tremendously flat, which befits the straight-edged and didactic combat trainer. Black Bolt’s aura is a simple row of stars, and Medusa’s fades into the air around her. They’re similarly evocative, portraying Black Bolt’s austere countenance and Crystal’s welcoming posture ably and quickly.

I’m talking much more about the style of the story than the content. That’s simply because, although Hine provides a wonderful hook to the art dancing across the page, the best parts of the book are the visual components, when Black Bolt explodes into fury at Pietro, or when Professor Cartwright busts out infected with mist. I’m not trying to deny Hine’s involvement with the story. These are all surely at the cause of the plot, but Hine’s method of embellishment, the caption, completely fails when compared to Irving’s visual outlets. The narration may explain that there are so many colors in Karnak’s head, describing Luna’s powerful sight as some nebulous ability to pry into people’s hearts, but it’s Irving’s representation of that power which sells it. His drawings of people do more than just that for the comic, though. They’re drawn, for the most part, with much more reasonable anatomy than most superhero books, with women looking diminutive compared to hulking scientists and a constant focus on facial expressions. This makes the comic’s events more relatable, and, like Iron Fist, the occasional violence breaks the book in half, especially when Black Bolt attacks Maximilian:
* This is to me, at least. I understand that I’m describing a completely personal reaction to a work, and expressing it universally. I’m sure that, for some, Irving’s flat drawing with random circles swirling around a head with a couple objects around mouth and back of neck does nothing for them, and Hine’s description of the empathy does nothing as well. Those people are dolts.

There’s also another great sequence juxtaposing Luna’s perception of the Inhumans with how they actually look:
How humane do the Inhumans look when viewed between Desidera and hot pink Black Bolt?

There’s more to the book than Irving’s rendition. Hine constructs an analogy between the metahumans in the story and nuclear weapons. Well, constructs is too subtle a word. Sentry (yes, the Sentry) says to Black Bolt: “We are like nuclear weapons.” The dangers of a war’s escalation are clearly present as both sides augment and mutate themselves in order to fight each other better.

The third issue reveals the lengths that the other side in this silent war has bounded across and sprinted from. Quicksilver has actually stabbed himself with the Terrigen crystals so that he can obtain ultimate power, and he became able to travel months into the future. Here’s where my head starts to scratch. Quicksilver traveled into the future, a couple months, and remained there for several days (apparently he was granted the power of Zeta Time Travel) during which he saw America as martializing itself in preparation for war, and, even worse, part of the moon, Attilan*, had exploded. Then Pietro vanishes and a younger self (ostensibly by a couple months), barges into the building wherein all these events occurred, who feels guilty for the actions that are about to happen. Time travel’s a slippery pickle (especially when Crystal makes up with the Quicksilver who had not recently fought with the Inhumans.

*The Inhumane city on the moon at which the Fantastic Four score baby-sitters.

But I’m not terribly interested in the plot machinations of the book. Like the other comparable book coming out this week, Cold Heat, the book is built on its art and style, especially the characterization gleamed from the art. Any plot that moves beyond serviceable would hurt the momentum the book initiated for itself, and the occasional hint of allegory is thrown out of proportion and exaggerated by Irving with such grace. I have no doubt this comic will fail horribly, and it should make an interesting bargain bin purchase years from now, like the other Hine series, District X.

A Whole Lotta Nothing

2007-04-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

I do so love my puns, awful as they are

***

First off, Sex, or the less polemical Nudity! Take your pick! And even more discussion in the comments threads. If I may become a dick for a moment, a lovely post will follow.

Burgas starts off writing a review of Secret Six (with an oh-so enticing flap warning full of NOT SAFE FOR WORKness), and the topic under scrutiny is a completely naked chick, which won’t be reprinted when the author can’t muster enough technological suavity wherein a prurient implication flocks readers by the score. As is usual among the group who feels that comics should be good (I’m of the mind that they should be great, and possibly transcendental), some form of universal application is culled from a review of super heroic funnybooks (which isn’t to say that the extreme other alternative of simple checklist and impression reviews such as the Savage Critic on a productive week is the proper way either. But I’ve littered this with enough parenthetical amendments already. No turning back now).

The subject under scrutiny this time is sex, nudity, and violence in art. Greg found a particular image in Secret Six jarring and ridiculous when hair discreetly covered the soapy (and wet!) bits of Knockout (Great superhero name!) who had just taken a shower. And the hair that discreetly covers happen to completely miss both areolae and the vagina, but DC, Gail Simone, Brad Walker, the editor, or whoever had the ultimate say regarding this issue, decided to show Knockout in all of her naked, mannequin glory. To end the piece, Burgas compares superhero comics to classical art and the nudity often found therein (but only when portraying gods and goddesses. Olympia was avant-garde, if you remember), even broaching the subject of *gasp*, homosexuality and pederasty.

Burgas raises the topic of nudity in a visual medium published in America, like he has on so many other occasions, and uses the panel to both explain his allergic reaction to the work (the post is nominally a review, after all) and, in a broader sense, his allergic reaction to the things DC and Marvel get away with publishing. Then the comments open up, and fart jokes and petty squabbles commence besides the completely atonal “Wow, thanks for opening our eyes, man. Do you have any kids?” Further investigation reveals a nostalgic blog, and I’m guessing that Burgas’ comments at the end suggesting that Marvel and DC should just "Grow some balls and show some" irked a father. There’s also some hairs split over the use of the word puritanical, which has come to express what people thought the Puritans stood for, either through exaggeration and underrepresentation in the media or actual acuity. The leviathan of rhetoric shatters the jocular/fastidious nature of the comments.

T. launches the first barrage with an innocuous conviviality: “Sorry Greg, but I don’t really see what the point of this piece is except a clichéd critique of America.” Then the accused undergoes a change of plurality with the following sentence, “Most importantly, it seems to go against a lot of what this blog usually complains about.” Besides the obvious conflation of the multitude of writers that post on Comics Should Be Good (Burgas is clearly the rebellious upstart on the blog, if it has any now that Jerkwater has entered internet-opinion-slinging hibernation, what with Burgas' catholic reviewing palate and lack of nostalgia), this is no attack on America at all, but its views on nudity. There’s a tremendous difference between attacking a nation and a small sublet of the nation’s views on something.

But wait, it gets better. “People complain about Didio and Johns excessive use of gore and violence and how kids can’t read comics anymore. Then there are complaints [sic] about the objectification of women I see from time to time on this blog. Now the people here are complaining that the sex isn’t ramped up to as extreme a level as the violence?” The plurality of the post’s response remains, and now the argument has suddenly become about much more than the comic in question, and more about how Greg’s comment can be construed as a company wide initiative to implant more sex (when Greg never mooted the subject of sexual penetration, but only nudity) in the superhero books. That’s clearly not the case, and the post merely said that if a company’s going to get all prepared with lascivious portrayals of women, it should not insult the reader’s intelligence by drawing mannequins, fake women in a story fake enough already. I remember a similar uproar regarding Spiderman: Reign, and no, not the poisonous Spider-jizz, when Peter Parker’s crotch was bare and visible, and he didn’t have a penis. Same concept. Poop or get off the pot. Otherwise it’ll get really messy.

There’s more rhetorical flourish, defending the United States’ puritanical views on sex and violence by comparing them to those of India and Hong Kong.

“It really is a tired conversational cliché when people complain about how extremely puritanical America is about sex just because we aren’t at the same level as Europe. In India and Hong Kong, two of the biggest international movie markets, it’s still scandalous to have a liplock on film among married couples!! Also, Europeans supposedly are more squeamish about violence on film than we are, so I’m sure it all evens out in the end.”

I have no idea how showing the attitudes of two completely different nations has no basis when discussing the attitudes of Americans, especially when the countries in question are, as Greg points out, “religion (in the first case) and a totalitarian government (in the second case) keep ‘morals’ strictly enforced.” Then there’s the matter of Europeans being called out for being more squeamish about violence than sex. I, personally, am much more squeamish about violence. Two people caressing each other while whispering sweet nothings? Lovely. Two people hurting each other while shouting invectives? Awful, especially if the violence is incredibly graphic.

Burgas’ reply is a stoic enough affair, guarding each of his points while comparing T.’s construction of them with his actual writing in the post, but the train has already left the station. Tyson’s reply after Greg’s actually recommends books featuring super heroic nudity! As if Greg is actively looking for some sex in spandex! He just happens to view works more as individual affairs and judges them on their internal values, and not their similarities to his already defined lexicon of that which he likes.

Fortunately, the next commentator, Roel, actually views the original post as the basis for his response, and he points out that Burgas is taking the country’s views on nudity from the perspective of a comic book, whose first issue sold 58k, according to ICv2, and whose trade paperback can’t have sold a quarter of that. Roel takes Burgas to task for viewing the culture only through this comic and “trying to pick a fight with an enemy you have created in your own mind.” Now, while he still assumes Burgas is failing in his search for super powered titties, he does bring up the myopia of extrapolating mores from a comic with such a small audience. What he fails to recognize is Burgas talking about a comic that could very probably, assuming newsstand distribution, end up n a kid’s hand. South Park won’t show up before a kid’s eyes with parental outrage because that product clearly isn’t for impressionable eyes. Same for Lost Girls, Powers, and Lady Death.

Then, he says this little ditty:

“Okay, Greg, let me ask you a question — can you name any comic books that have caused a major uproar with the American public because they contained nudity? Do any examples come to mind? Because I can’t think of anything,”

Which means he must have just plain forgotten about this little ditty. The vitriol doesn’t recede.

“In principle, I am in agreement with your stance towards complete artistic freedom and the depiction of the human form. What I disagree with is the shoddy construction of your argument, the distinct paucity of evidence on your side, and the inappropriately condescending tone you take with the people of this country.”

The people of this country aren’t under attack, and it’s only a review which raises a motif running through many of Burgas’ reviews; the consistently odd portrayal of women in modern, mainstream superhero comics.

“Your essay reeks of moral superiority and I object. I know for a fact that I would not have been outraged by nudity in Secret Six. My family would not have been outraged. My friends would not have been outraged. My co-workers would not have been outraged. Almost every single person I know would have been perfectly fine with this. Are you saying that I am not ‘mainstream America’? I disagree.”

“Look, I think it comes down to this: I like to give people the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. Your argument assumes the worst in people without any evidence. My suggestion is, I feel like you would spend less time angry at the world if you tried my approach. If your first thought when you saw that Secret Six panel was: ‘if they drew her anatomically correct, people would have accepted it,’ you would had a much more pleasant experience.”

Yeesh. I could say more, but I’ve vivisected this argument enough, and Burgas does answer the post ably directly after it. Suffice to say, I’m very glad that I’m not subjected to the argumentative and rhetorical audience that Greg has to deal with on a post-by-post basis at Comics Should Be Good.

***

I feel that I should make a note. I’m pretty shamelessly discussing people’s actions as events to be studied, performing tmesis on an argument. I’m not trying to be offensive, but somewhat introspective, or at least inspire that sort of introspection in others.

Link Omnibus

2007-04-05T14:48:00.000-07:00

There are a bunch of cool things on the web. I don't know if you know that or not, but it's true. To assuage the growing blog sidebar with a growing essay collection. While not everything may not be sterling silver, they're all worth a gander. This page will be updated constantly.

***

A Fine Pyrrhonism- A great analysis of Animal Man by David Fiore, who's writing his dissertation on Animal Man. He's written something longer and larger than that paper that you'll need a couple of bottles of water and running shorts to read in one sitting (on his never updated blog *stamps foot* The proper concealment of sadness and despair is anger).

A Ridiculous Number of Annotated Toth Pages- Toth expounds on length about the pages he's composed while offering samples. The same page also has plenty of other Toth goodness including columns, biographies, and even news items relating to the artist.

An Interview With Relative Unknown (to Americans) Aleksander Zograf- He's a very interesting artist, and I wish I could say I've read Regards From Serbia, a huge compendium full of years of work.

Read Yourself Raw- No, not the Mouly and Spiegleman edited bonanza, but a contemporary online magazine. Here are Alan Moore's favorite comics ever, if you're interested.

The Strange, Interesting, and Completely Bedraggled Publishing History of From Hell- As told by Eddie Campbell. I would hate to be either of these creators were it not for their splendiferous beards and smile, respectively.

Paneling Parallax: The Fearful Symmetry of William Black and Alan Moore- I have no idea. My mind may not be ready, but my readership hopefully is.

Watchmen Annotations- From the link above, but well worth checking out and worthy of distinction.

Alan Moore on Porn- "Just to recap, then, sexually progressive cultures gave us mathematics, literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust. Not that I’m trying to load my argument, of course."

No, no

2007-03-31T13:31:00.001-07:00

I haven't vanished off the face of the Earth, but the constricting undulance of obligations has once again strangulated the effervescent spate of words that the nurturing protein strands connecting fingertips to keyboards typically facilitate.

I'm pooped, and am taking the weekend off.

Apparently, I Lost the Magic of a Connecting Reading Order

2007-03-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

That's a clever title for I have no clever title, if you can't guess.

Superman #660

Apparently, Busiek got Dini’s memo on how to make a villain interesting- turn him into a businessman. Prankster’s business, revealed in this issue unless I’m mistaken, gives him unexpected motivation and energy, and suddenly Metropolis the city is given a distinct texture as well, especially considering Pranksters early appearance in Up, Up, and Away. The incredible similarities to the Joker are a little disappointing, but at least a multitude of writers haven’t conflated a murderous, psychotic killing Prankster with the playful practically joking one, and he has a clearly defined personality after just one issue.

That said, DC would have to search hard to find a more indistinct artist. And I don’t often use that phrase when describing my cartoonists, because most at least focus on the dynamics of their super heroics, others on outrageous anatomy or facial expressions, but Manley entertains with a completely sure line, careful to give the Prankster outrageous expressions, but offering the other characters much less, and Superman enters the scene as a large human being, but even then it has no fanfare, and looks just like a man flying up to punch something.

This is a step in the right direction for a fill-in issue, crafting a story focusing on the city of tomorrow instead the man. Next issue doesn’t look as promising, though, advertising Superman and Wonder Woman’s defense against Greek Gods. It doesn’t sound as piss awful as #659, though.

Army @ Love #1

Rick Veitch is an odd creator. Almost everything he’s made straddles the line between raffish and revolutionary. Plenty of people understand the man’s creativity, but many more are turned off by his oeuvre’s off-kilter texture, and all of his works seem caught up in their own purpose, but convey that purpose through bizarrely realistic pictures, almost never stylistically altered from project to project (although Veitch himself seems able to pick up another’s pen when that situation calls. His 1963 work is astounding). There’s a consistency to his projects, and that consistency is peculiarity above all else. Can’t Get No looked like all of his previous work, but felt so different after digesting the turgid prose. This is especially true of his dream comics, too, where the consistent art belies its nonlinearity and dissimilarities to all of his previous works. Reading a Veitch comic is like pulling a jelly bean out a bag with all the normal flavors taken out. Their texture is all the same, but golly does chocolate taste different coca cola.

And golly is Army @ Love different than Can’t Get No. The latter graphic novel focused on the journey after 9/11, offering a remarkably impersonal story (unlike that other famous post-9/11 book by Art Spiegelman) about the regression our country underwent following the tragedy to its eventual return to normalcy. The Eter-No Marks faded and we’re all back to work, which means that Veitch is back to work producing subversive comics satirizing, this time, the war in Iraq. His acuity hasn’t dimmed in the interim between Brat Pack and now, but it still focuses his perspicacity on such easily mocked tropes.

The comic supposes the evolution of combat as war as a video game and party rolled together, and shows the rest of society’s increasing apathy of feelings and appearances as similarly hedonistic. The army men have plenty of secrets to hide, and the only civilians in the comic are cheaters, and both sides in love and war have developed a sort of reckless indifference to being revealed, and Veitch sets up the future shedding of facades as the thrust of the plot with the cliffhanger. He doesn’t leave much in the regular issue, choosing to focus on the characters much more than action or plot (and DC reciprocates with a mini-site giving a detailed roster and a detailed roster only), and the book seems on shaky ground, but at least its concept is clearly laid out, and I’m looking forward to a couple more jelly beans.

Blogger Just Started Remembering Me!

2007-03-22T19:33:00.000-07:00

I think it likes me

Brave and the Bold #2

I have a feeling that this’ll become a blog favorite in years to come. Its sensibilities are so retro, so charmingly old, but it doesn’t present itself with abject appreciation for its Bronze Age style. Some Reviews are quick to point out its presence as a potent antidote, and it’s as much a symbol of comics of yesteryear as it is a physical product. Its lack of pretension and self consciousness is deafening.

The best moments in this issue, as compared to the gigantic penny fights and regularly fantastic layouts and draftsmanship, are the smaller character moments and subtle plot movements. When Green Lantern and Supergirl introduce the issue with well scripted convivialities (I can still use that word, right?), Perez devotes a panel to Supergirl grabbing Hal’s arm, and it’s a great moment in the conversation, when dialogue and action stop. Although the rest of the issue, caught up in progressing its plot (pshaw, who needs that?), never matches the first couple page’s fun, the character’s never break out of their characterization.

Well, except in an odd conversation where Hal Jordan exhorts Supergirl to go someplace where the Super symbol has no meaning to look for romance, because he feels that she’s flirting with him when nothing amorous can occur between them. The scene is very odd and random, butting into the character’s breezy relationship, and the rest of the story never addresses its consequences, besides a sly wink and continued team-up fighting. Unless of course, Supergirl just reacted rashly when she ran off and dropped the issue. If I sound a little pretentious when discussing this or that I’m taking my funnybooks too seriously, it’s only because Waid has done such a good job of clearly defining characters and relationships so far (all three of them, but, as I’m sure you can figure out, this book leaves a strong impression).

Outside of the characters, Waid seems to be losing a little control of his plot as well. The three page ditty with Batman and Blue Beetle promises a battle with an alien assassin for next issue, and the solicitation for the issue after that, due three months after this one in June, promises a team up of Supergirl, who was left on Ventura without Green Lantern, and Lobo, ostentatiously resolving the plot thread of a marooned superhero. None of which have to do with the main plot, which is the book of Destiny’s theft and transportation to Rann. While a Waid written tale involving Adam Strange and Green Lantern sounds wonderful, the prospect of so many meandering plot threads is a little daunting.

Perez also loses a little bit of the polish the first issue had. The layouts on the casino planet Ventura are all remarkably muddled, sometimes worse than the fight with the giant yellow energy monster, especially when a similarly huge and ill-defined monster appears, but the pages full of skyscrapers with colored windows as backgrounds when Supergirl and Green Lantern are tiny figures do not have any clarity of action. It does demonstrate how garish and tacky a casino planet would appear, but that seems a poor goal when most action is muddled for the sake of tonal and stylistic consistency.

The art problems are much more easily remedied than the writing, though, and hopefully Waid can reclaim the book’s mythic status with some clever plotting and consistent characterization.

Urgh

2007-03-21T21:30:00.000-07:00

I promise I'll have something up tomorrow. Trivialities like sleep and work shouldn't conspire to rob me of my free time then when comics are pressing.

Mondays. They're Even Worse When They're Almost Done and You Still Aren't Asleep.

2007-03-19T21:08:00.001-07:00

Here's a drawing by me:

I kinda like it (This blog will not become sketchbook corner, if you're wondering), but the face is off. Luckily I favored stylistic illumination over illustrative prowess.

***

Burgas turned in a not-What I Bought Column, and it's as gripping a read as his other forays into essays on nebulous topics such as the definition of a magnum opus, the second part of said essay, and the paradigm shifts of America as they relate to Superman*. Which is to say that he covers lots and lots of grounds in a flurry of sprints and arrives at his point ably, if a little burdened by idiomatizationing literary terminology. Still, it has a critical energy that I can't find myself not enjoying, even if I'm scratching my head wondering if his final point (Grant Morrison writing more earnest genre fiction as opposed to artistic experiments means that revolutionary superhero comics are dying? Surely he hasn't read the Authority, as that comic's stylistic reinterpretation of superheroes is miles above regular superhero fare, but it is very similar to We3, a book he called more conventional, as well as Seven Soldiers, so it's apparent that he's looking for innovation in the narrative aspects of comics rather than visual or formal).

It also inspired what will be my next post. Check back soon! (Edit from Saturday, May 24th or thereabouts): It didn't turn out insightful or funny, two qualities for which I strove, but Alas! I'm nothing if not merciful)

*A funny addendum: If you misspell goodcomics.blogspot.com by rearranging the s and p, you'll arrive at this site. I had no idea that the old site got so many hits so as to make that domain name viable in any sense.

***

(Found via Campbell and my post-vacationing blogging round-ups)

This is exactly the kind of thing I enjoy in my art- an innovative technique with plenty of potential, barely any of which gets actualized. I can wax poetically about the maze of memory, thought, and/or perception possible with the visual technique that separates thoughts into other compartmentalized thoughts, all aided and abetted by the visual nature of the video as triggers force the recollection of other memories and the main point and reality is completely lost amid the memories.

That might prove interesting, but I'm without time or energy for something like that right now, and the use of thought balloons in a Norah Jones video really testifies to the proliferation of visual comic techniques in other media. How surprising!

***

Brian Bolland is still a god. In case you're unsure, here's the cover to the forthcoming collection of The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen, but as of this moment, the upload picture isn't working, when I was easily able to upload my scanned drawing, so a link will have to suffice (anyone else having the problem. I did publish and immediately edit this post in teh iterim. Hmm).

See? Clearly divine.

And the latest of issue of Jack of Fables has a cover by CLASSIFIED! I have a sneaking suspicion that DC hasn't gotten James Jean to do the cover yet, but my head might explode if they have such a spoilertastic appelation of an artist that knowing who he was would ruin the surprise for the reader, well, that'd be amazing! Van Gogh might be a great choice, then. How cool would it be seeing a portrait of Jack in the style of one of Gogh's self portraits? That would be amazing, and worth not knowing who the artist was.

***

Toodles

When One Hero Dies, Another Is Reborn

2007-03-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

The Helmet of Fate: Zauriel

Steve Gerber is so awesome. I haven’t read a lot of his work, but he has a mythic status in my mind. His work represents the crucible of subversive mainstream comics to me. I know a little about the history of comics. The super-heroics of Kirby with Lee attached paved the way for Marvel’s storytelling sensibilities, and injected a more human element into the stories of untouchable heroes. Before the advent of Galactus and the ensuing Celestials (which sounds so awesome), Kirby created the cast of the Marvel Universe by grafting superpowers onto normal people and subsequently showed them doing good deeds. Gerber did something different than that. He enriched the cast of the Marvel Universe by portraying Super-heroes not as normal people rising above normalcy with their powers, but as more normal people, full of psychological problems to add to Marvel’s persistent heroes facing a hating public and unpayable rent.

Of his work that I’ve read, the Thing becomes an existential hero in Marvel Team-Up, constructing a melody out of Kirby’s undertones. Valkyrie, who doesn’t remember her past, becomes a simulacrum for everyone she ever knew, and, to add her difficulty, she looks as beautiful as any other superheroine, acting as a developing simulacrum in two senses, and in Hard Time, Gerber teased all he could out of what seemed like a quarter bin concept. Although the issues eventually wound up there, it wasn’t from a lack of quality. His work showed that powers have repercussions, mental as well as physical, and subverted Marvel comics by deepening the mold for characters instead of just using it. Wisely, he still retained the generic elements that make super-hero comics special with cosmic space Gods pulling heroes with which they played chess and sported a wicked Stan Lee impersonation whenever he wanted. He produced the most forward thinking Marvel comics during his time, with the possible exception of Jim Starlin.

After a long publishing hiatus, he’s returned with the forthcoming Helmet of Fate mini-series, and this lead-in special.

***

Gerber’s uncomfortable with the thought of a living angel. He mentioned this on his blog a while back, but I couldn’t tell you that from reading the comic. Zauriel’s introduction is perfect, and matching to Grant Morrison’s treatment of the character. He walks and talks knowing that God exists, and acting like an angel would. The comic opens with him answering questions to a religion education class. It’s hilarious in every way an angel walking on Earth should be. The students of the class aren’t too uncomfortable with the angel standing in front of them, having grown up in the DCU, after all, but they’re still eager to converse with the one of a kind being. The part that really gets me is when points to a student with a question with his flaming sword. The first two pages have perfect comic timing. Even though Gerber shows Zauriel with confidence and forethought, something he apparently struggled with, he still has a fair enough skepticism about Christianity to make the scene sarcastic.

Zauriel, apparently, has never encountered skepticism before. He greets the students’ questions about the geographic location of Heaven and Hell with shock and amazement, and is dumbfounded when pressed for heavenly qualifications. He’s shown as dipping his toe into evangelizing, but he’s been around for at least ten years real time (so, he’s basically existed since Crisis on Infinite Earths, I guess? But wait, that was a reboot. Where does Morrison’s JLA run fit on the DC Timeline? Urgh!), and he doesn’t have a response for an apparent incongruity in angelic biology (A heavily devout being not having responses to religious inconsistencies!? At least Gerber hit one point right, Hi-Oh!). When someone doesn’t analyze the scene it works incredibly well as a humorous and tone-setting piece for it, but I am one of those people.

Then Gerber enters exposition mode, where everything for the story is set up, and it’s a pretty boring couple pages. Snejberg does render one amazing pic of Detective Chimp, though,

(sorry about the white space. I'm having slight computer program troubles, like Windows is suddenly not able to locate a program that I've used time and time before to edit a scanned image)

and now the thrust for the main story is prepared. What follows is a remarkably compact (13 pages including a two page prelude to action) where Gerber’s penchant for cosmic plots shines, with an incredibly evil villain who has a completely horrific plot to destroy a kingdom. After all the aerial action rendered well by Snejberg, the story even ends like an old 70’s superhero story, with our hero riding off into the sunset, a couple thought bubbles tying into the plot and wrapping up the story within its retro milieu.

And yet, I can’t help but feel a tad disappointed. With Gerber’s previous reservations about writing the story for Zauriel (and I can’t imagine how the situation of Gerber being called by DC to write a one-shot special focusing on Zauriel came to be. I mean, it’s Zauriel), I was expecting some great, huge payoff. The religious elements never extend past how they affect Zauriel’s world, and any thoughts on God pertain only to the instigator of the book’s plot (and one very funny joke), without any examination of faith. The book’s clear purpose is to establish Zauriel in the DC Universe and define his occupation, and the book’s copious action and charming attitude (if you can handle a little heresy) firmly place it tonally in a superhero universe. Faith isn’t even discussed except in children who are curious and question apparent misgivings. Still, even if it does fail at producing an astounding work of art within the constraints of twenty pages and a five week event (where the five weeks are spread out across three moths, of course), it does accomplish a huge feat of defining Zauriel’s character and giving him a much stronger sense of purpose than Grant Morrison could ever fit into him during his run on JLA. He’s much more than a scatterbrain idea and part of a single plot after this. And I just know there’ll be no ongoing to run with this potential lightning in a bottle.

***

And I'm off on Spring Break. Expect me back writing in at least ten days. Laters

I Am So Happy Today!

2007-03-08T15:44:00.000-08:00

(Which should contradict the comic I’m reviewing)

I completely smashed my mid terms today. I wasn’t unsure if some of what I wrote was incorrect or if some math problems were done incorrectly, I knew I was right, and had time to spare in most (except French… that’s a different story... but I did secure a B, when I was so close to failing for most of the semester). I kept all my grades where they were, and then had a great big lunch full of people I know and love (and who, dare I say, plenty of convivial parlays with), and then, on the way home, I popped in Charles Mingus. When his troupe gets going, they really get going. His energetic stuff is the best music to listen to when happy. I’m positively elated right now.

***

Captain America #25

In my Government class, we share current events daily. It’s little more than a few impassioned people debating topics raised by the rest of the class, happy to spit out something recent so they look like they’re participating. It isn’t too exciting and normally worth a fifteen minute nap for me unless something comes up that I know or feel somewhat strongly towards.

Yesterday, though, someone shared a current event near and dear to my heart. A girl raised her hand, a nice girl who makes anyone feel welcome around her, and who obviously puts a lot of attention into her appearance, and announces that in the comic book universe, Captain America, the symbolic representation of American ideals (well, okay, I added that part), died because, get this (okay, I’m also changing how she told the story), he’s involved in the Iraqi war. A sniper or something shot him, and then the girl announced that, “Now, I don’t read comics (never woulda guessed- Editor), but the article I read mentioned that the writer of the comic is making some sort of political statement.”

The last sentence was delivered a little nervously, and was met with an uncommon, impenetrable silence, the awkward where you imagine everyone is thinking “How could that person say that!?” The rare silence continued. I was not about to admit to plenty of friends who think I’m cool (yeah, like you have friends- Editor) that I read comics, and I had no idea that Captain America died. I assumed that I must’ve missed some huge deluge of blog posts from last week’s Frontline or the last issue of Civil War, which left the Captain America comic I was going to buy after school in a somewhat precarious position.

Fortunately, the thought of reading about Captain America’s death completely left my mind by the time I hit the comic shop, and the piles and piles of comics I was deliciously sizing (and pricing) up distracted me from the death of the American Dream. The store was completely sold out of this cover, so the only one I saw, hardly a memory trigger, was this one:

After dropping off my books at the house and lounging around studying for the mid terms I was about to take for a half hour, I had to get to work. After the initial barrage of customers (I work in the food industry, business is weird sometimes), we had very few patrons to service, and small talk ensued. After talking about Spring Break plans, one colleague mentioned, excited by his recollection, that “they” killed Captain America!

“Wow. That’s the twice I’ve heard news about old comics today,” I thought. Further discussion ceased when some customers decided that they liked being pests (or that their soups were cold, which they were not. I could feel the bottom of the bowl, and it was piping. Urgh! (I’m done complaining)). I was unable to separate the fact that Captain America died with the implication that it was written as some form of political statement. It’s Ed Brubaker, the man known for well executed genre fiction (well, not always- Editor), anything but political statements.

I should have known from the cover, too. This is way too iconic and boring a pose for a 25th issue spectacular, especially when there’s nothing going on in the background. It looks like a memorial instead of a portrait, but, it is a Marvel cover. The employees at the comic store (who never have to deal with reheating hot soup, by the way. Urgh! (I’m done complaining, I promise)) were excitedly pulling copies of the issue off the shelf too. I should’ve known something was going on.

Anyways, as I’m sure you already know or have surmised, I was in for a heck of a shock upon opening the comic. Well, not too much of one. The issue begins with a recap of Steve Rogers’ origin. It’s simply written, and the tone just has to have something else going on, too. It segues into a newscast. Surprisingly, the death of Captain America wasn’t being discussed, but the end of Civil War. Still, the end was nigh for our hero. The rest of the pages continued to impress his imminent death. Everyone’s recollection of him cast a glowing light that would seem to emanate from a candle held during a vigil, but the character has yet to die. If his fall from grace during Civil War inspires a wake, I can’t imagine what his death will do. Well, after everyone remembers our still breathing hero fondly, he’s shot by the dreaded sniper.

Here’s where my jaw dropped. It’s important to know that if I was going to be shocked about Captain America’s death, my jaw would’ve dropped already. No, my jaw dropped because Marvel revealed the Death of Captain America in that gloriously lovely time between Final Order Cut-off and when a comic’s released. You know, when retailers can’t reap the benefits of such a bonanza and readers like me don’t get surprised. It’s not like they didn’t flub the other major spoilers of the series like Spiderman’s reveal or Thor’s return. I shouldn’t be so surprised, but regular people knew about Captain America’s death before me. That’s a rare instance.

Anyway, Brubaker made a great choice by continuing the book not with more reflection, but with action! Bucky and Falcon kick the plot into some sort of gear with a small fight because of a misunderstanding (those silly superheroes), and the book kicks into some normal sort of sense. After his last comic’s poor choices in the exposition department (see my weird reading order!?), Brubaker maintains a semblance of plot while making the issue accessible to new readers. Somewhat ironically, I’d discuss the rest of the plot’s progression

I’m interested in what this guy has to say about the issue’s art. To my uncultured eyes, Epting’s art portrays a wide range of emotion through plenty of well drawn characters, and D’Armata adds plenty of depth with his color work, giving scenes definitive light sources and making it look pretty. There’s something about the coloring that puts me off sometimes, especially when there’s a large portion of gray right next to flesh. D’Armata makes everyone’s flesh shiny and glowing as well as almost any object except buildings, and when shiny flesh coexists with similarly shiny clothing (especially when the entire police force is composed of the same hues), that takes me out of the scene. Epting’s draftsmanship is astounding compared to other comic artist’s, though, but he does repeat the same type of character over and over again, so I may be overestimating his quality, but he is a great superhero comic artist.

He also makes Falcon look ridiculous when he’s trying to look serious, and there’s this huge, golden block sticking out from in between his eyes. The eyes are covered in shadow, and the face looks depressed, but he’s still in a bright red and white costume. And… I’d say more but I’m tired and, oh, damn, I’m over a thousand words right now. Much more. Almost double what my Aya piece was, and I thought that that book was much more worthy of discussion and praise, when my opinion on this book is largely as good as that which has come before it. Good bye, then.

Life Has Me Tuckered Out

2007-03-06T12:59:00.000-08:00

And I haven’t even done anything today.

***

Daredevil #94

I read my comics in an oddly appropriate order. Last week, I picked up Superman #659, and soon after I read The Spirit #3, followed immediately by Iron Fist #3, which showed the progression of how flashbacks can be capably handled in the context of a narrative, from least to greatest. This time, Aya, the comic filled with characters blithely unaware of consequences lead into Daredevil #94, a book where the character expounds on length about the consequences that a lover’s super-heroics entail. The difference, of course, is this is told entirely from an observer’s point of view rather than the participants.

The cover, as I’m sure most of you already know, is stuuuuu-pendous:

That’s by Romita Sr., whose first serious job at Marvel, inking Kirby, was on Daredevil, but he had worked for eight long years in romance before then (which most people don’t know about). He’s a great choice for the cover, if only for sentimental reasons, but he produced a great romance cover for the comic, which exclusively details Milla and Matt’s relationship. (Information from Wikipedia)

This turns out to be a fairly boring path. The entirety of the issue concerns Matt’s history, and only occasionally where it intersects with Milla. The huge amount of exposition, assuredly a failure only in a book, then has to seek distinction and quality in its pages when prose proves rote.

Weeks replaces regular Michael Lark, a weird choice for pinch hitter. He’d be at home on Thor or The Avengers, but his regular work looks nothing like Lark’s. Fortunately, regular inker Gaudiano (who shares an artist credit with Weeks instead of being the inker) coheres the book stylistically, giving Week’s usually thick, broad lines a gritty distortion, with the volume turned down. His effect is clearly shown when not paired with usual artist Michael Lark (weren’t they both said to be part of a production studio when they were doing Gotham Central, and Lark couldn’t quite make each monthly deadline?). The only recognizable tic from Week’s is his character’s fuller faces with a clear pencil line separating the face from the head, a shorthand used commonly by him and many other workhorse comic artists used to quickly indicate how light would affect each part of his work. The rest of the art, from the constant proclivity towards shadows and almost-completely inked black areas originated from Daredevil and not from Weeks. Needless to say, it’s still pretty.

I wasn’t referring to art exclusively as whether or not it looks pretty when regarding the interplay between expository text and pictures, though. The book hinges on its ability to sell Milla’s purple prose. Her staring out the window during the cover page tells us much more than “I try to find some hope for us…” Same goes for her failing to fit the divorce papers in the mailbox. There’s a particularly lovely panel where, when the two reunite, they embrace and kiss each other against a vermiculated backdrop, reinforcing the relationship’s cyclical ways and the moment’s poignancy with just a few curving lines.

The art fails when discussing its most important point, though: the nervous breakdown of Matt and whether or not that figures into his quick marriage to Milla. Milla is shown as reticent, hiding in herself, and the other characters are similarly unexpressive, with a panoramic shot, a forced poor choice when there’s plenty of text and cast members to include. Still, the next panel is free from the prior obligation, and only show’s Matt’s bruised and damaged head to convey the emotion. The turning point of the story, when Milla begins to realize her relationship’s unhealthiness, brushes her off to the side. The following panel shows their communication with hand gestures, and is touching for people reaching to touch each other and finding nothing, but its too little. Most of the other emotional scenes have the same poor emotional recognition and look like the cover. It’s caught up in trying to be a tribute to romance comics, a throwback to an old style of comics, but it’s also trying to be a portrait of an unhealthy and complex relationship. And Brubaker tries to fit years of back-story into the comic, and it doesn’t succeed as an example of all three. Unfortunately, the first two, reducing the comic to an homage to a genre and portraying a relationship earnestly, are mutually exclusive. A comic, at least a twenty-two page excursion, can’t be both when both are striving for the foreground.

It’s still a notable release in a notable series, and I’m certainly not mad Brubaker tried something difficult, even if the better play seems to be introducing the relationship with the participant’s interactions. Brubaker has set up the status quo for his status quo in his first thirteen issues, and although I didn’t enjoy the ridiculous amount of plot hammering it needed, it seems that he can finally go somewhere with the character that isn’t a meandering plot point in Europe.

I’m excited.

Note The First: While putting the comic back, I noticed, rather coincidently (I store my comics that have yet to be placed in my longboxes in a somewhat alphabetical order) that Gaudiano has inked Weeks once before in a story scripted by Brubaker (but not colored by Hollingsworth!), in Winter Soldier: Winter Kills. The book has none of the stereotypical tics of Gaudiano as shown in Daredevil and looks like a Lee Weeks comic much more than a Gaudiano inked comic.

Note The Second: For you convivial continuity buffs, I happened to be in the area of the comic shop this weekend, and picked up the comics. I had not lied two posts ago, I promise.

You Know What You Should Do After You Write a Review For Your Blog? Post The Review On Your Blog. Lessons Will Continue If Anyone Is Interested.

2007-03-05T23:59:00.000-08:00

Aya

Drawn & Quarterly has been on such a hot streak of book publishing recently. Curses, Moomin (which I should really find the time to review, it is one of my favorite strip reprint projects), Lucky, and Abandon the Old in Tokyo are some amazing books published in the last six months, and Aya, their latest import, is a welcome addition to their line.

The story concerns a trio of friends living in the Ivory Coast during its “Golden age” and their dating misadventures. Their situation is far different from that which has become the perceived African problem, as the introduction tells us. These are people that move through their daily lives flirting and having fun, not people wrecked by diseases and violence, and in that sense, the book is very relatable.

I don’t favor viewing the book as a story easily transposed into European, or even American, culture as the introduction attempts to do by making the story as completely relatable as possible, because this is most certainly not an American story. The girls in the book struggle to marry the right man, find love with the cute boys, and still make it home in bed before their father finds them gone, but almost the entire book’s cast, from the ridiculously wealthy boss ruling the town who lives incredibly close to abject poverty to the deadbeat father who works the entire day and gets drunk for the entire night, has no quick symbolic replacement in American culture. The father I mentioned is no deadbeat figure who shirks responsibility, just one that abdicates developmental responsibility, bringing home the bread while the mother slices and feeds it to the kids.

All of this talk discusses the book as a polemic with plenty of anxiety regarding its political message. Africa has been a hotbed of concurrent political activism and apathy, with huge motivating events such as the tragic genocides in Rwanda and Darfur coupled with abject poverty and widespread AIDS epidemics inspiring the most sighs people try their hardest to conceal in convivialities, but Aya, the book and character, exists outside of all those mitigating factors that would denigrate her existence. She is the calm, smiling person on the cover, aware of and concerned with the problems around her, but not stricken with any grief at her surroundings.

I’m talking too little about the book itself, though. It certainly does have an important geopolitical context. The setting of the budding Ivory Coast, just becoming aware of its wealth, grants the story a bittersweet, optimistic tone. The entire setting is filled with the potential for wealth, and even though most of the characters in the story don’t possess it, they are sure they can. Maybe I spoke too soon about the story lacking any relation to America.

I can see why the book took home the best first album award at Angoulême. There’s plenty to enjoy in the book, from its breezy casual atmosphere that’s relatable to anyone to its (supposedly) accurate portrayal of the Ivory Coast, but its most attractive feature is its protagonist. She’s an assured, confident woman who leads her two friends through their lives with her charisma and endearing love, but never steps down from her studious pedestal to tell them that partying, whatever, is wrong. She snaps at one person for being so completely oblivious about his surroundings and life, but other than that good natured invective, she is a force of good in her world. The book does well to build her up through conversation and small acts than a case study. She studies because people say, “Aya, you study too much,” not because we see her encased in books, studying. This manner of representational power has extended to the book, as well. Far after I read it, its charm and endearing sense of fun were what I most associated with the book, granting it a glowing memorial. After flipping through it, the book is surprisingly serious. Many panels erupt into red and the characters actually attack one another. Divorced from the playful, flamboyant way in which Clément Oubrerie expresses his characters, the panels are not always fun and carefree, and some, such as when Moussa is attacked by his father (see how charming the book sounds when I explain it? I swear there’s some fun to be had here) are downright horrific.

The effervescence of the book by which the introduction praised the book isn’t its entire positive qualities. The harmless flirting does have some weight, some gravitas, when one of the characters becomes pregnant. These people are making decisions that will affect the rest of their lives, and only Aya is the one that realizes it. The rest will casually remark that, “Oh, this boy is rich. We should spend all of his money,” when others would casually remark that he is the one to marry. These are tremendous decisions made with a jaunt instead of planned march. These teenagers have yet to articulate the Unbearable Lightness of Being, but they live with it.

The book can be read with much less introspection than I committed. There are running gags in the book, and other tricks conspiring to induce laughter, but its qualities share most of their resonance with a good romantic comedy, where the cast is so evenly characterized that they’re both friends and transgressors in their relationship with the audience. Most of the jokes are derived from the characters’ intimate relationships with one another, which then extend to the audience as well. I can certainly see this project succeeding ably in the United States, were it not for its distribution and foreign names on the cover. It has a similar sensibility to our hugely popular romantic comedies, and it’s executed with candor and panache unlike the monthly drivel of which the genre’s mostly composed. Still, for those of us lucky to run in the comic circles, we have this fantastic comic to read.

XyphaP Hates Your Blog

2007-03-02T20:13:00.000-08:00

First, a little house cleaning. Today's the day where I have so much to say but I'll only swim around in the shallow end of the pool like an old man in a retirement home, because treading water takes too, too much endurance and swimming laps is for those young hoodlums full of vim and vigor (my body's full of vinegar from my many drunken nights, though).

Also, the lack of any substantial sidebar bothers me. One of the main reasons I frequent Jog's site, for example, is his monstrous sidebar. I can spend days scouring that list finding new and interesting blogs, and I hope to extend the same courtesy to my readership. In addition, there are typos all throughout my pieces, ridiculous things like taht and tihs (Don't get me started on mroe!). I should really pay more attention to when there's a spellcheck button available!

***

I can't say I'm not grinning while I'm typing this. Jones (one of the Jones boys, of course*.) linked to my blog (me!) under the title "precocious." If this were somehow conducted through video monitors and my site was a conglomerate of video and text, I'd be fluttering my eyelashes right now in his general direction.

His blog has been routinely fantastic and despite maintaining a consistent reviewing quality, he's managed to post much more regularly than me. I know what I'll be doing this weekend. Gotta keep those whippersnappers in line right after I'm done lounging in the shallow section of the pool. It'll have to wait until after Bingo! (because it's never spelled without an !) and Dominoes, though.

*That joke is officially old now that I've used it. Deal with it.

***

I think I'm officially done with reading What I Bought on Comics Should Be Good. I understand (and agree) that they should definitely be good, but most of the commentary on the site never extends past the art for this issue was good. The script for this issue was interesting. I would recommend it. Now, I'm all for friendly recommendations of keen comics between like-minded people, but I think that now I'm not one of the like-minded people on the site, so the basic, inarticulate reviews don't communicate much. This week's installment was a particularly egregious offender, with the reviews of the Eternals, Dr. Strange, and Seven Brothers mini series all offering very little discussion of story and art but only focusing on broad characteristics of the series.

Burgas is writing about, literally, every story he reads, though, so maybe I shouldn't be so harsh. I just like a little deeper discussion than he's been writing for the issues of series he's teetering on the edge of dropping or keeping them on his pull list. His Comics You Should Own column (holy shit, his writing on Enigma just slid right in there) is top notch, though (heh, I wonder if anyone'll notice the irony where I discuss teetering on reading blogs or not and only discuss it shallowly. It'll probably be lost on a lot of people, I bet).

***

I've been reading through Dick's recent posts, and I must say, a blog explicitly devoted to covering other blogs is oddly appropriate for the Intenet. We are all gathered here to share our opinions, and what else could we form an opinion on besides what we read every week? How about what we read every day? He also looks supremely cool by talking about the trends and faults of others, something that makes the Savage Critics absolutely refrigerated. His rapid posting schedule could be problematic to someone like me, though. Already he's posted something else than when I started writing this column. Egads!

***

Speaking of Dicks and hating, apparently I missed this little ditty during my weekend trip. Now, Kevin's argument makes sense if the ultimate goal of people is supremely crafted comics from every corner of the medium, but, as some have noted, for most people comics are entertainment, and only a select few loud, articulated voices on the Internet feel otherwise. Still, this goes a long way towards cementing Church's style and reputation as being a snob who's almost always funny, and I do agree that continued purchases propagate horrible titles. But it's clearly Chris Claremeont and John Byrne's fault for crappy X-Men stories. If it hadn't been for them, then all of these Days of Future Past pastiches (although it's more like past-craps Hi-oh!), all of these mutant crossovers, they never woulda happened. So, thanks a lot for spawning such hell bred comics the direct market will never extirpate. Good job!

(I also found it humorous that instead of instigating introspection, Comics Should Be Good addressed the topic with a round table discussion of their silly pull-list adventures. I'm sure fodder for nostalgia, even of bad books, isn't exactly what Church wanted, but it certainly proves Tim's point ably.

***

Holy Shit am I going to be buying a lot of comics this week! Shazam #2, Tales of Essex County, Nat Turner Book 2, Fantastic Four #543 (featuring Paul pope, doncha know!), Criminal #5, Captain America #25, Authority #2, and Showcase Presents: House of Mystery vol. 2. I honestly think my head will explode and money will pour out of my wallet right after I enter the store, especially because I didn't go this week. Compounding this problem, I am most certainly going to be on vacation during Spring Break, so I'll only have two solid days of reviewing to cover the amazing amount of material before a tropical paradise numbs my body to anything but the most sublime of pleasures. What am I to do!

***

Wooh, it was fun criticizing on what other people spend their free time doing! Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a review of a book I've read up or something.

Today's The Last Day I Can Talk About Last Week's Comics, Right? Good

2007-03-01T11:44:00.000-08:00

Iron Fist #3

I don’t have much use for flashbacks establishing a character’s identity in the pages of a comic book. The Superman comic was several kinds of awful because it functioned completely as a flashback, and the new Spirit issue, #3, resolves itself to tell the Spirit’s origin completely in flashback, as well, and offers a framing sequence pertinent to an overarching plot as well, but at least this flashback renders itself with harsh, garish colors befitting an impression more than a replicated memory. The reason for recall is better than Superman’s, featuring a crime reported to have been committed by the killer of Danny Colt, The Spirit’s former persona, and the flashback actually pushes the story forward, explaining the Spirit’s reaction to an event, but, for me, and I’m sure Marcel would agree, the memory is way too exact to be any semblance of an actual memory, and places too much recollection in exact facts, dates, and story linearity. I can’t imagine that the entire story doesn’t inspire any kinesthetic memories, but Cooke portrays the Spirit as wandering and floating around the goop when he’s unconscious. I’m stretching capable genre fiction to handle every topic it broaches, though.

The flashbacks in Iron Fist function completely differently than the other two. Instead of the first person narration masquerading as a third person perspective, the flashbacks of former Iron Fist members (because apparently Iron Fist necessitates a legacy in his second ongoing title, but the intercalary legacy fits its martial arts style) don’t come from anywhere. Fraction and Brubaker just want to beef up their character. I have no qualms with these flashbacks. Also, the final fight pose the former Iron Fist members always strike by the end of the segment finally defied actual physics this issue, something I’ve been waiting for. He also looks like a battle-ravaged devil which exists only to devour his enemies. His eyes are even glowing.

The rest of the book spends most of its time solving Daniel Rand’s (Iron Fist) mystery of who else is using the power of the dragon, but it gets there slowly. The scene where former Iron Fist whose last name is confusingly Randall accosts a businessman for his suit is pretty hilarious, and Russ Heath’s flashback scene is deliciously illustrated, but nothing for the most part happens. Except for the introduction of the villain of the piece, who doesn’t disappoint. The introduction where he kills a henchman is unremarkable, but after that, where white birds fly around him and he has his arms opened in proclamation, that is a villain I can’t wait to see more of. His dialogue is great, too, with such memorable gems like “When the time is right… We shall DESTROY them!”

The sample of violence in the book presents itself very well. The earlier fight scenes have all been a gaggle of troops surrounding Iron Fist, but a one-on-one fight scene is handled well, with clear panels showing the action, and when Danny’s hit, the page swirls together in a vortex, which lessens and rotates after he swings backwards. One punch is rarely so exciting in comic books unless Superman slams Captain Marvel into a mountain. The ensuing moves highlight the intended or actual points of contact similar to Williams’ work in Desolation Jones, and the invocation of the power of the dragon looks exciting. I can’t wait for more martial arts action in this comic, especially when its coat proves so amenable.

Flashback To The Future

2007-02-27T21:34:00.000-08:00

Superman #659

Ah, Kurt Busiek. He who has steered Superman in the most positive direction for the main title since, well, since I’ve been reading comics regularly. The Gail Simone run was great while it lasted for ten issues, and she truly revitalized the concept of a mainline superhero book, but Busiek forged the book in a brand new direction (and more importantly is the current writer and thus more issues are expected) with Geoff Johns in Up, Up, and Away and quickly established the tone of his new series with his spectacular introduction by showing the anniversary of when Lois and Superman first flew together, and continued the awesomeness with a fast-paced arc which I’m behind on, but the first three issues were fast-paced, world-hangs-in-the-balance stuff. Needless to say, he botched it with this one.

The story concerns an old, zealous black Christian woman who discovers that whenever she prays for something to happen, Superman appears at her rescue. Superman’s persistent altruism connects her personal praying and Superman’s rescues. So, she becomes self righteous with the approval of Superman’s constant attention. This leads her to become a vigilante who constantly seeks out trouble to send her avenging angel, Superman, to the rescue. As I’m sure you can see, eventually Superman can’t come to her aid and she is shot by a gang. The plot travels along its designated course for the entire issue, and ends up when the example of the courageous black lady betters her community and makes everyone feel better.

A fairly rote, predictable story is not too far out of reach for Superman, especially when paired with Busiek. The man wrote little epiphanies whenever a larger story was lacking, and Superman lives by his ability to inspire the common people to better their lives. This is not where the problem lies, although it did make for a fairly boring, routinely inspirational issue (which is kind of an oxymoron, but the book’s memory serves to affirm what Superman already thinks and his audience knows and reaches such an obvious conclusion). The problem lied in its framing sequences.

Superman begins the story befuddled by Arion’s assertion that Superman causes the eventual downfall of his people. Now, although as I’ve said I haven’t picked up the previous issue of Superman, but the thought that Superman was actually a volatile force endangering the future of human’s mental safety never broached anything more than a curio. In a universe where the world is routinely placed in danger and the threats are big enough for the writer to thrill an audience with while remaining lower than Superman’s ultimate ability, he seems a necessary evil in the fictional world, if not a welcomed force of good.

I’m berating fiction too much for not being reality, though. Whenever a writer steps out of the entertainment ambit of genre fiction to tell a weighty story like this, there are inevitably missteps, such as the misrepresentation of a fictional world as being comparable to a real one. This makes analogies to the real world much more impossible when the fiction tries so little to appear relatable in its view of the entire human race as this issue does, and instead of approaching a greater resonance of meaning, it acts as a small character piece on Superman. And this Superman is emotionally hurt by the implication that his intent could cause so much damage to humans that he searches through his memories to find some justification for existence (I’m exaggerating his emotional damage, but if he isn’t hurt and acts more curious than anything the issue has even weirder connotations). He remembers the story I mentioned above, and by the end of the story flies off, secure in the fact that in one instance at least he wasn’t a horrible force for mankind. Now, besides the horrible statistics class Smallville offers (wait. Did Superman never go to college? I am astounded now), besides the completely emotional and, dare I say, unintelligent, Superman this issue gave us, I’m much more astonished by the fact that Busiek felt that Arion’s suggestion was anything more than a shocking cliffhanger and overture for a story, and that Busiek felt that an issue that never needed refutation could be resolved with this.

And I don’t want to come off as one of those guys that thinks superheroes can never handle bigger, weightier issues. It just shouldn’t approach them with generalizations and parables worthy of Amy Tan.

So, yeah, this isn’t so much a great comic story as it is a great run now. A poor filler issue disillusioned me. What else is new?

It’s Wednesday. I Bought Some Comics. Here's One Of Them.

2007-02-21T19:57:00.000-08:00

The Brave and the Bold #1

This was pretty surprising. I certainly wasn’t expecting a comic so charmingly retro. Not that I wasn’t expecting a nostalgic comic. It is written by Mark Waid and penciled by Pérez (well, they share storytelling credits), but the entire issue isn't filled with respect for the past or tributes, but it actually feels like it was written in the past.

Take the opening page, for instance. Hal Jordan and John Stewart introduce themselves to the reader sharing the tail end of a hilariously untold story: "In the end, We had Mxyzpltk and Mirror Master hating each other so much... That Superman and I pretty much let themselves trick each other into vanishing." Stewart comes back with appreciation: "That was your idea?" The Boy Scout: "Honest."

Apparently, they told stories to each other to see who would do a deep-sector patrol, and Hal Jordan makes a recommendation for the food on Wondil-B, where supposedly Green Lanterns eat free. I expected to turn the page and find Pieface confiding his girl troubles while blithely reminding Hal that Sinestro escaped from Qward after an invigorating abstinence endorsement. Unfortunately, I was treated to a super-hero plot instead, but it isn't incredibly stupid like the comics it emulates.

Sixty-four (after an initial pair was found and Batman learned that sixty-two corpses were found near other superheroes. He realized this minutes after discovering the dead body) identical humans have identical gun shot wounds, and after Batman stabs one, they're established as echoes of one another. There's some delicious scientific jargon where the victim is established as an alien, too:

Batman: "Anything this durable and able to stand in space isn't going to be vulnerable to terrestrial ballistics." Hal responds: ""Confirmed. There's a weird radiation trace to the wounds." Power rings are so useful, especially after we discover in this issue that Hal Jordan has trained his power battery to follow when he calls for it "Like [Batman] did with Robin." I'm not quite sure if he's appreciative, friendly, or sardonic.

The rest of the plot doesn't disappoint with that old-school charm, where Batman and Hal are attacked by a yellow Energy monster (the villains didn't get their copy of Rebirth comped), and continuing with a crazy casino owner who sells villain's weapons and aliens with neural blasters. It's a rip roaring ride, concluding when the aliens steal the book of destiny, granting them "Ultimate POWER!"

Thankfully, Pérez's layouts dynamic enough to put the comic back into some temporal context. Plenty of close-ups on character's faces interact with huge scenes and odd panel designs to make the action more fluid, and more kinetic. The fight scene with the yellow energy monster is the only disappointing section, where the garish colors aren't given a frame, and they kinda blend together with each page when there's no double page spread intended on a page, and the rest of the panels suffer when the fighting parties include an almost shapeless monster.

The rest of the art breezes along with plentiful but distinct characters, and the second fight scene (yes, this is a 21st century comic that manages two fight scenes. It truly is a wonderful day) suffers none of the muddiness of the first. It's still as silly, though, but at least Wayne's gigantic penny doesn't end the fight.

Compared with the other modern appreciative comic, All-Star Superman (not nostalgic. Plenty of modern DC and Marvel comics have love for the past but don't wield that in a similarly styled book), it seems a little lacking. The dialogue isn't quite as hilarious as it could be if Waid wrote with a tad bit more mockery, and the plot doesn't engage quite as much as Superman's impending death because it doesn't take its style and forge a new direction for its characters allowing for some truly innovative storytelling, but it does tread its ground well, and that's more than I could say of most other new DC projects. A great premiere, if only because it showcases itself as such a workhorse without the false promise of an early flare, and has a clearly established identity from the onset. I'm fairly excited for more issues.

***

Sadly, I haven't been too good at updating this week, and this looks to be it until next week because I'm going out of town for the weekend. I promise, promise I'll be better then. I should probably get on updating the sidebar a little, too.

Well,

2007-02-18T20:21:00.000-08:00

I used to think that buying books from Fantagraphics was against Harlan Ellison's wishes. Thankfully, he wrote a letter delineating how any fan buying Fantagraphics' products isn't an ethical issue.

*Whew*

***

As I'm sure you've noticed (after I flatter myself by assuming regular readers), my reviewing pace has somewhat slowed. I've been reading a lot of older comics which haven't provoked very interesting reactions, and they weren't published recently, leaving very little relevance in anything I've been thinking of writing. I have been reading much more, though. It's liberating to switch from wanting to review every comic you read to reading every comic you read. That said, articulating my opinion is kind of liberating, too, to have a formed and well-tested judgment on something.

I guess the Buddha was right: moderation really is the key*!

*Except of course when you use moderation in moderation. Then you get into a nasty, sticky paradox, but let's just pretend there's a footnote (asterisk in these blogging days) which says that, yes, this is a generalization. Moderation in moderation defeats the purpose of universal moderation by subjecting either whatever you're experiencing to gratuitous consumption or moderation itself takes a back seat to full fledged obsession. Either way, something is taken to an extreme, and that ain't cool. So confronting apparent paradoxes in your belief is another means to enlightenment (or at least moderate consumption), and the intent of something must be analyzed to express it more clearly, although the eventual product emerges clunky and cumbersome in comparison**.

**which isn't to say that confronting apparent paradoxes is a means to enlightenment, as someone who continually defines the problems of things is itself a problem, and one very hard to remedy when the person who constantly finds the faults in things finds that that's the fault of himself. So, a haziness is needed when describing things, otherwise a cycle contorts actions and exaggerates emotions while underplaying the need to break the cycle, only to see the light at the end of the tunnel, which will of course become the dark at the beginning of the tunnel soon enough***.

*** which isn't to say that haziness isn't always needed, just that when one looks too closely in the design of things, some disillusionment is imminent, especially when one looks at the design with a preconceived notion of how it works, and the ensuing functions are far different from the fabricated functions of the observer's mind. Thus, to prevent depression or, even worse, nihilism, moderation is key* afer one discovers when moderation really isn't key and when moderation becomes the only worthwhile goal to strive for!

(I hope this makes sense tommorrow morning)

Ha!

2007-02-17T22:12:00.000-08:00

A Quick Glance at Amazon.com's top selling Graphic Novels (It's updated hourly so the list won't be the same for you, unless you're really quick on the draw whenever my site updates. In taht case I thank you):

1) 300
2) Animal Farm (Signet Classic Edition, which everyone knows graphically illustrates the pitfalls of communism)
3) Complete Calvin & Hobbes (amazingly because it's only available from 3rd Party sellers)
4) Speak (a young adult novel focusing on a teenage girl who is afflicted with a symbolic muteness. It's only available from 3rd Party sellers)
5) Lost Girls (amazingly, because it's now being sold at retail, but this list is for overall sales, not daily. I guess people don't want to buy a 30 lb. porno brick and then make conversation with a clerk, and then lug said brick in the house)
6) On the Road (Yes, the book by Jack Kerouac. *Sigh*)
7) Watchmen (hey, the first book actually worthy of ridiculous sales, although I do like Lost Girls more than most)
8) The Far Side 2007 Off the Wall Page-a-Day Calendar (It would be remiss to not mention amazon's separate section for calendars.)
9) Target in the Finder (yaoi. People apparently don't want their gay romance purchases public. This masterpiece features three bonus erotic sections!)
10) Bone: One Volume Edition (I love this comic. Even though the new cover is slightly less distinct than the first edition's)
11) Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (I should really read this comic)
12) 2nd Chance (A James Patterson novel)
13) The Bonesetter's Daughter (An Amy Tan novel. *Sigh*)
14) Astonishing X-Men vol. 3: Torn
15) Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (When I was a pre-teen, I thought this comic was the shit! Fuck all that Watchmen drek, this was where good comics were at. How much I've changed)
16) Dead Sleep (A novel by Greg Iles. I know nothing about this, but apparently it's a thriller)
17) Dilbert 2007 Day-To-Day Calendar (Amazon must've forgotten about their calendar section. One of us has to remember, at least)
18) Mortal Fears (another Greg Iles Novel. I bet his cartooning skills are stupendous)
19) Moby-Dick (Oh lordy. And no, Eisner's adaptation doesn't sell that well)
20) The Pillars of the Earth (A novel by Ken Follet which apparently evokes its period (12th century England) only through its architecture and history, but presents morals and mores firmly rooted in the 20th century, which graphically illustrates the pitfalls of period pieces, obv)
21) The Rescue (A novel by Nicholas Sparks which features rote and banal characters with exaggerated emotions which only enliven the narrative when the exaggerated emotions compel immoderate actions, according to the editorial reviewer from Publisher's Weekly)
22) The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See in The New Yorker (Hey, a comic! One I actually want to read. How about that!)
23) American Gods (I Wonder if these novels are eligible for best-sller status as books)
24) Absolute Sandman vol. 1 (Hey, another brick of a book! I guess huge discounts lead to more sales)
25) Those Left Behind (Serenity) (And the Dark Horse movie adaptation closes out the list)

So, all in all, 12 out of 25 of the items offerred as best-selling comics are, indeed, comics. I should really stop giving amazon so much of my money.

And a tip, if you want to make money from online retailers, make a comic that's somewhat respectable completely erotic! Making it gay helps, and a bonus erotic section (or three) is clutch. There's more yaoi down the list.

And now to edit my browsing history so Amazon doesn't think I'd be exicted at purchasing some thrilling literature called But I'm Your Teacher, because I must ensure Amazon maintains the high quality of reccomendations for me. After all, they keep suggesting the Essential Ghost Rider vol. 2 and Joe Kelly's first Supergirl trade.

My Word Processor Almost Exploded From All The Last Names I Typed Tonight

2007-02-13T16:04:00.000-08:00

Seriously. Look at all the accents needed.

Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators

Along with Drawn & Quarterly's recent publication of Tatsumi's early work, American readers can venture further into manga than Tokyopop's packaged pabulum, and if these are the results, globalization needs yet another catalyst after Columbus and the Internet.

The album (not in the European sense of an A4 sized hardcover, but as an anthology that looks like a graphic novel. Yes I went and looked up the term after reading the book declare itself an album) is composed of 16 stories all dealing with one incredibly broad subject, Japan. To add the perspective of an outsider when viewing a habitually isolated country, half of the stories are done by Japanese natives and the other half are by French authors. Astoundingly for the American reader, only one work is produced by more than one artist, outside of (and I'm making an assumption based on the volume's foreign language) lettering. Also, most of the material features artists whose work has never been seen in America.

Every one of the stories is memorable and distinct, a remarkable feat for any anthology. The volume opens with what is perhaps the perfect volley with Kan Takahama's "At the Seaside." In the story, two people, ostentatiously lovers, discuss the possibility of running away from Japan and all its entrenched provincialism, but still, they know that the outside world is but their own dream and the reality won't be that much different. So the Japanese native stays on the island while the foreigner leaves to pursue his life. The importance of the story lies in its presentation, though. Broad, stretching landscapes supply the background of the conversation, and the panels are so big and expressive when visualizing the conversation as the main characters wander across the perpetually continuing earth but they reach the boundary of the sea. So they begin to walk its coast. The wandering across impossibly large, but impossibly enclosed area characterizes all the Japanese entries in the album. It's also the comic drawn most like what an American would call a traditional manga style (although I have no patience for terms that reduce a country's artistic output in a medium to a genre) with a focus on the characters' tremendously rendered and fortunately not exaggerated expressions.

The next Japanese story by Jiro Taniguchi (who has one work published in America that I know of, The Walking Man) features a similar coastal romance, but a much more doomed one of childhood friends than an artist's fling. The story reaches the same conclusion as Takahama's to leave things how they are despite impulses of passion and emotion, but Taniguchi draws the story much more claustrophobically, where the character's aren't enclosed by the infinity they can never escape, but by the closeness of the walls, enforced by many more smaller panels than Takahama. The story's also drawn in a much less stylized manner, making its emotions more earnest and wrought instead of organic, making Japanese life seem much more austere than "At the Seaside." Taniguchi was born twenty-eight years earlier, which undoubtedly affects their art, too.

The rest of the Japanese stories don't quite muster the same emotional intensity or fantastically moody artwork (which is a rare compliment I bestow on artwork that could be marginalized as in the manga style), but Myoko Anno's "The Song of Crickets" and Little Fish's "The Sunflower" are both incredibly well drawn and designed stories, and both submit mostly wordless stories, the former acting as a more straight forward evocation on the listlessness of being a female in Japanese culture and the latter a masterful silent gag cartoon.

The Europeans get an anthemic story for the album, too, but it's much farther from the commencement of the book. Frédéric Boilet's "Love Alley" views Japanese customs with an enthusiastic eye towards something incredibly mundane, how trash is sorted. The story shows a great empathy by populating the story with only two Japanese characters, and unlike other travelogues in the volume, Boilet combines his observations about Japanese life and culture into a story and not autobiography. The European stories all focus on routine events and, for the most part, remain fascinated with the differences apparent in Japanese life. Boilet's drawing is also lovingly rendered with a fantastic eye for detail and architecture and, curiously, he drafts his buildings with a more organic line than his people. The sides and lengths of buildings are never completely straight and vary in thickness, but when he draws his people, they're constantly blurred and in motion leaving any facial expression indiscernible or invisible from the drawing's perspective. The city is clearly more alive than its scurrying denizens, and the characters of the story, previously portrayed through dialogue in captions (complete with cute emoticons and stick figures in action!), are so warm and expressive by comparison. Although Boilet offers little more than eyes or a bowed head on a character, the staging conveys much about the characters with a wonderful economy. Boilet's story is the stand-out of the album for me. It also unabashedly features sex-toys, casually laid out in front of a mirror. Unfortunately, its quality isn't the anthem the French stories sing along to, but rather the experience of an outsider taking in a foreign landscape, but Boilet does have a head start on everyone, being a resident of Japan and conceptualizing the album.

Fabrice Neaud offers an astounding travelogue right after Boilet's story. The story is much more concerned with summing up Neaud's journey than presenting a self-contained narrative. That isn't to say the story presented isn't self-contained or satisfying, but the fantastic observations in the story represent the bulk of its substance instead of placing the observations into the context of a plot. Joann Sfar constructs a dialogue in "The Tokyo of Oualtérou" to process his observations into a cute story where the ignorant outsider, Sfar drawn as a crocodile, converses with the knowledgeable immigrant, friend Waterloo drawn as a hairy dog with glasses, tells him all his accumulated knowledge of the area, in a more loosely drawn round of observations.

Interestingly, both pieces mention homophobia in Japan. In Sfar's piece, a gay magazine poster advertises a product marketed specifically towards girls, and in Neaud's, the narrator notices a distinct lack of any gay culture in the Japan he frequents, corroborated by a Japanese reader's knowledge of the mythic status of homosexuals. Apparently, along with the tremendous amount of Western culture Japan has assimilated and exaggerated to forge its own aesthetic (an observation made by Neaud), homophobia came along with it, exaggerated and distorted as ever.

There's a monkey wrench loosening my classification of the stories into Japanese and American, though. The only duet in the book, François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters story Osaka 2034 is fake journalism instead of a sequential story, dealing with all the cultural junk of Japan, technological wonders, bug eyed monsters, and the influence of manga, chiefly, into a satiric piece both touching on the country's isolation, technical skill, and love of crappy action stories (not endemic to that region, I might add). It's also wickedly funny and entertaining, the only piece in the album where entertainment is the chief purpose and insight comes later.

If the album has any failings as an anthology, and a compilation of almost ubiquitous autobiography sometimes fails in the variety department, it overcomes them ably by acting as a culture capsule for modern Japan and, through the lens of art, France. The book's mistranslations (seen from the first sentence in the opening flap: "At the beginning, a crossing of two cultures, French and Japanese, which is going to awaken many things in each one of the authors who participates in the adventure…" The book's typist also apparently ran down her apostrophe button, constantly referring to L'Association as L Association) enhance its charm, and especially its translations with a constant preference on terms pertaining to honor and acceptance when a less formal and more powerful word is needed. The cover looks so foreign itself, advertising its authors much more like a magazine than a graphic novel. Could you imagine Mome with its front covered with its contributor's names?

If you can find a copy of the book, tremendously endangered in shops, can be found on amazon.

***

Note to Blogging self: If all I can muster is a trio of Galactus videos with an accompanying sentence each, I should probably hold off on publishing.

Other Note to Self: A Sidebar would be a good idea.

I Never Thought Static Images Could Be So Exciting!

2007-02-11T20:37:00.000-08:00

Fortunately, here's some humor to calm my veins, melted by the seething, scorching metal that is Galactus

And someone saw fit to recreate the Galactic Battle of Yore

Which rounds out the watchable Galactus videos on YouTube (and the first and third are a huge stretch). Somehow I was hoping for more.

(Yes, yes, I'll have content up tomorrow)

I Can't Really Blame these Guys

2007-02-10T20:50:00.000-08:00

It's how I come up with my blog posts.

***

A review of the upcoming graphic novel Aya is up. While reading the review didn't get me too interested in the other parts of the blog (He compares Aya to The End #1 directly on the basis that Aya #1 doesn't "grovel in nihilistic self-pity at life's misfortunes." His review down the page doesn't even touch on how Nilsen does cope with his loss nor what it does gain from not being processed through a narrative, and spends most of his time praising Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind- a wonderful movie, but hardly relevant except in that both feature a relationship ending. Still, if we're talking about art with narrative, he does have good taste, and I don't mean to berate the man, and his review of Aya makes me even more anxious to read the book), I'm even more excited about Angouleme's (the circumflex button on my keyboard eludes me) pick for best comic.

He also really likes Interiorae, which I'm in love with.

***

Other recent discoveries:

Jeff Vandermeer has a blog! And he likes Moomin! Wow!

Phoebe Zeitgeist! Old Comic Satire! Wow!

An Interview With The Bald One! Previously Unfree! Wow!

Horizontally Opening, Convenient Comic Book Drawers! Wow!

*All this excitement is killing me. Storage units even rate an exclamation*

Bon Nuit