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Friday, December 31, 2004
Oh, Something Else
Before this year ends I will like to share with you my most memorable comics moment. It wasn't reading some hyped-up book or finding a much desired back issue. It was just my friends and I, only one of whom besides me that reads comics, driving in a van. I'll present it as a play as it is based around a conversation.
(IAN and MAX, the two passengers who are well versed in comic bookery, are arguing about Superman. Specifically if he is cool or not. The rest of the people in the car, including driver JESSY, are listening just the same.)
MAX: Superman's just this goody-two-shoes guy. He's not a rebel like Batman, he's always with the cops and everything.
IAN: Not always. In his first story he saves a woman from going to the electric chair.
JESSY: Was she innocent?
IAN (trying remember to but really can't): Um...I think so.
Looking back, I suppose it's the little moments like that matter. Try to savor them as much as you can.
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2004: Good Riddance
This will be the last Brill Building post for 2004 and I don't have much to say (the year in review was done on Monday). I do have one hope for 2005 that I would like to share with you. I would like to see a panel on comic blogging appear at one of the bigger conventions like SPX or San Diego. Might happen, probably won't. I think it would be nice.
See you in 2005 where I'll hopefully have a bunch of ideas and fun stuff to share.
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Thursday, December 30, 2004
Talkin' Chaykin Redux: Comic Book Artist Vol. 2 #5
CBA has provided something I have always wanted to see, a long career-spanning interview with Howard Chaykin. It's no secret that I love the man's work, I did a whole series on him (that's the last one which you can work your way backwards from). I've always wanted to find a great interview with him but most of what I've found is short talks done to promote his latest work. I did enjoy the MP3s that The Comics Journal's site posted of a talk with Kim Thompson he did for Amazing Heroes. It went a bit deeper and also had Chaykin in full-on gadfly mode. I still couldn't find a big long piece that went from his days as a gopher with Gil Kane to his work now on Mighty Love, Challengers of the Unknown and the upcoming City of Tomorrow. That's where Jon B. Cooke and Comic Book Artist come in. It was by no means a perfect interview but it was still darn interesting. Here are my thoughts on it as a Chaykin fan.
One thing to notice is that this interview is just as much about Chaykin the man as much as it about Chaykin the artist. We get his family history, which has interesting twists and turns in it, pictures of him at various ages and the talk even ends with the names his grandchildren call him. It was nice knowing this stuff but I would feel it to be completely trivial if Cooke didn't balance it out with his work as a comic book artist. Cooke did do that and in fact connected the two aspects. Growing up as a Jew from Brooklyn has probably informed Chaykin's work more than anything else. It certainly seems to be where everything else that's important in his career comes from. All the things like getting jobs as assistant to Gil Kane and Wallace Wood to his interest in Manhattan circa 1945 to his interest in the great commercial illustrators would probably not be there if he was Howard O'Brien from Nebraska. I still think there was a bit too much personal stuff in here (did you know that Chaykin and Gary Groth both love the music of Anita O’Day?) but I suppose that just tells you how deep this interview went, which is certainly worth it.
Of course the joy of reading this interview was the fact that Cooke and Chaykin go over every aspect of the latter’s life as an artist. The discussion about Chaykin’s job as a gopher to all these artists also serves as chance to hear Chaykin’s opinions on any number of artists. I felt his views on Kane and Wood were the most informative and I certainly learned something there in regards to how better assess Wood’s accomplishments. Reading that Chaykin strives to combine Alex Toth and Wood more than anything else was certainly interesting to read, as well as confirming some suspicions I already had.
One thing to notice is that while a great timeline is set-up in this piece, going over the actual work like Star Wars or American Flagg! never seems as important as going over where Chaykin’s head was at during the time those books were being put out. We do get to hear the most about stuff like Flagg! and Time2 (which I must pick up) but other works like The Shadow and Blackhawk are never engaged in too seriously. I would have really liked to hear more about the works than Cooke seems to. I would love to hear about Chaykin’s use of having so many plots going on at once in one book than what kind of content guidelines First Comics gave him. In fact I wish Cooke had used that mention of guidelines to get into the way Chaykin uses sex in his work.
This interview is ultimately about Chaykin’s opinions on working rather than the actually work. That’s fine and in the end I loved reading something this informative. We get plenty of Chaykin art to look at (although I did notice that two of the pieces on the slick color pages, the Atari and Star Wars illustrations, had some bad pixilation to them) and the sketchbook at the end was worth the price alone. I’ve never seen a Chaykin Spider-Man before but it is gorgeous.
So for those who already love Chaykin’s work or if you’re just starting to get into the man’s work, I suggest you pick up this little piece of biography.
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Tuesday, December 28, 2004
For Art's Sake
Hey folks, remember when In the Shadows of No Towers came out and Art Spiegleman was everywhere? Kevin Melrose would find some article on him that appeared in the The New York Review of Books and then three seconds later Franklin Herris would link you to an interview with Spiegelman done for The Cleveland Plain Dealer? It got a point where I think Better Homes & Garden and FHM were going over the man's work.
Anyway, you can revisit those nostalgic memories of a few months ago with The Onion A.V. Club as they feature an interview with the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist. It's like 2004 is still here!
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More Best of 2004 Garbage
Best Film
This one’s easy. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind just devastated me with how it mixed the incredibly imaginative with the incredibly poignant. I already knew both Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry were masters of thinking of and then perfectly executing ideas that are gloriously off-the-wall. It was with this movie that their ideas concerning human behavior and living life are just as brilliantly put forth as concepts like memory erasing machine. This really is a film I could watch over and over again.
Best Book
I really, really, really want to put Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude here, a book I read in 2004 but came out last year, because it just might be one of the greatest books I have read ever. Instead I’ll list an old favorite of mine, David Sedaris and his latest, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. The stories in here weren’t as “bwa-ha-ha” as what you would find in Me Talk Pretty One Day or Naked but they were great to read just the same. In fact, I liked reading Sedaris be more serious, although never completely serious, in his stories because it proved he can still tell his readers a good yarn regardless of how funny it is. I love “Repeat After Me,” where Sedaris and one of his sister’s deal with the fact that their lives are going to be turned into a movie in their own way, which is to say that don’t really deal with it. Now if I could just catch one of his speaking engagements.
Best Album
Cripes, as much as I love music I don’t really listen to anything put out past the year I was born in. I still do try to keep my ear to the ground and see what the kids are listening, at least when I can afford CDs or when Soulseek isn’t acting up. Franz Ferdinand’s self-titled album was wonderful in how it featured post-punk music in a completely danceable way. To think that a bunch of guys from Scotland with nothing but guitars and drums could make something that comes close to be considered “dance music” seems like an anachronism, but the guys in the band keep saying that what’s they’re going for. The melodies accompanying those rhythms sound just fine to me. Any time a part of a song that stays with you after the song is long gone from the radio or CD player is one of the truly magical things in life. Franz Ferdinand do it better than most these days.
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Monday, December 27, 2004
Had an atomic bore in 2004
That’s right folks; it’s time for my look at the year 2004. What I liked and what I felt was important. Nothing special.
Best Graphic Novel
The winner here should be Locas but I actually haven’t read all of it yet. I have read a lot of what is in it and that includes my favorite comic of all time, The Death of Speedy. For that reason it should be the winner here on BB. It’s not like that’s the only good part and the rest is crap, right? I remember reading in Comic Art Dan Clowes saying that Hernandez, like Alex Toth and a few others, is wired so that everything they draw comes out perfectly. Not only is everything he draws wonderful but the characterization of Maggie, Hopey and the rest are as good as you’re going to read in comic books. Character driven stories with beautiful artwork? Yes, I think that will do.
As for Best Graphic Novel that I have read the whole way through, that honor goes to James Kochalka’s American Elf. Kochalka presents five years of his life for us and we are all better for it. He deals with the big stuff in his wonderful way. The stuff like getting more famous, Sept. 11 and having a child. But it’s the way he draws about the small things like playing with his cat or hanging out with his wife that makes the book work. It's a large volume of the best stuff from a great cartoonist I can only hope has as long and great a career as Hernandez.
Best Comic Series
In the world of superhero comics we had New Frontier, where Darwyn Cooke presents the most thoroughly beautiful version of the Silver Age DC world. It’s a book that gets the whimsy and wonder of what a book populated with brightly colored super powered men and women should be, without being afraid of giving these heroes a political bent.
Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart packed more into three issues of Seaguy than most people can give us in 30 issues. I read that over again recently and was just astounded with how many mysterious and intelligent ideas are running around in that book.
Street Angel by Jim Rugg and Brain Marcua set the blog world off and rightly so. I’ve only read issue three and four, though, so I can’t really get into the whole thing. Their commitment to have every issue different from the last pleases me a lot and makes me see why they deserve all the praise they get. My bookshelf awaits the first trade.
All those books are fantastic, though, but I think the award here has to go to with the second volume of Love and Rockets, along with its spin-offs. While NF is someone relatively new to comics giving us a landmark series, Seaguy is Grant Morrison embarking on a new leg of his career and Street Angle does adventure comics with more imagination and skill than most, L&R is two cartoonists doing what they’ve been doing since I was born and without any sign of wear. They’ve only progressed as artists, getting better and better as each issue comes out. Beto’s is at the same time wrapping up his Luba saga getting into the wonderfully weird world of magic realism with comics that are one part Silver Age DC and one part Jim Woodring (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!). Jaime continues Maggie and Hopey’s misadventures better than he ever has. The ending to the Maggie serial beats out any new book on the stands trying to be “horror.” His storytelling abilities crystallize more and I expect we might see something from him soon that will go down as his best work ever.
Best Single Issue
The 23rd issue of Eightball deserves mention here, as well. Clowes is making some of the best comics around, no doubt, but count me in the camp that thinks that Clowes is past his prime. I love the funny stuff like “I Hate You Deeply” and when he was drawing characters that were gloriously grotesque like that potato-girl in Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. I must say, though, “The Death Ray” still had a lot going for it. It was a great showcase for Clowes to explore the dehumanization of his characters, especially the main character who seems about as dry as a DVD commentary track with Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy. While I felt the previous issue of Eightball was a better example of Clowes’ current style where the all the characters look like depressed extras out of a Harvey comic (that’s not a slight) and “Black Nylon” is a better example of Clowes doing superheroes, “The Death Ray” is still one of the best single issues that came out this year because Clowes remains one of the masters of the medium.
Punisher: The End might just seem like one more useless spin-off of many that Marvel has drowned us with. When opened up and devour it is instead found to be one of the most vicious books any major publishers has given us in years. Garth Ennis and Richard Corben place their Frank Castle in a post-nuclear Earth that the book explicitly explain is brought to us by the Bush administration's war mad hubris. The Punisher escapes the jail he has spent the past several years in to inflict the type of mayhem he is known for on the masters of war and industry that have safely escaped the fate of so many others in this 21st century Armageddon. In this The Punisher becomes something more than just the epitome of simple vigilantism, he becomes a character not unlike Spain Rodriguez's Trashman or some kind of chilling combination between Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver and Jello Biafra. The two panel sequence of the P.T. Barnum-like bureaucrat offering The Punisher a deal and the fate Punisher deals out for him just might be the greatest two panels I read all year. Corben portrays Castle's physical decay in a deliciously gruesome manner, one that beautifully contrasts the crystal clear determination inside the man. This is the kind of book that viscerally excited the teenage boy I once was and the socially conscience, angry-by-default young man I am today.
As great as the last two books were it was some a small book by a cartoonist I have never read before that became my favorite. When you hear a lot about an artist you wonder if he or she can live up to the hype. When I read Kevin Huizenga’s Or Else #1 it was a relief that all the success he found in the world of mini-comics has transferred itself nicely to this, his first book from Drawn & Quartely. The Glenn Ganges stories display a remarkable talent for pace, dialogue and characterization but it was reading “Chan Woo Kim” that knocked me out. The transcription of adoption papers along side beautiful illustrations of mountains and waterfalls is an idea that few would think of in the first place and even fewer could make work. In Huizenga’s hands it’s one of the most beautiful stories told all year.
Best Blogging
I excuse myself of course, not that I deserve to win anyway.
Ken Lowery proves with some year end posts and a great blogger rundown that it’s quality, not quantity that matters. I don’t think anyone else comes up with better topics for discussion than him.
There are many great grumps in the blogosphere but Tim O’Neill is by far my favorite. His reviews and essays are full of intelligence and wit. I love reading blogs where I know I’m going to disagree with something, as long as that disagreeable item is still well-thought out enriching to read all the same.
While those two and many others were coming up with great stuff n 2004 I have to say my favorite this year was a debut for 2004. Tom Spurgeon combines the best of link-blogging, reviews and comment and is a worthwhile trip every morning. It really does feel like the closet thing to Journalista we have going right now. The design of the site is pretty snazzy, too.
Most Interesting News Story
I’m a proud member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, but the recent additions to their board of directors do give me some worry. No doubt there are some positive things to come out of having two of the most powerful people in comics on their board, Steve Geppi and Paul Levitz. It’s just that the CBLDF has a glorious history of defending comics that Levitz would probably have pulped if DC published them. If Geppi is the kind to suppress Yummy Fur from being distributed, what chances do the Michael Diana’s of the world have? The CBLDF is a great organization and, more importantly, it’s the only type we have that is dedicated to fight for comics. We can’t let them become too conservative as time wears on. If they give up the fight, who else is there? (I know there’s the ACLU, another group I’m proud to be a member of, but they’ve got more on their plate than just comics)
My New Year’s Resolution
Looking over my posts from this year I find myself complaining about the output of Marvel and DC but still devoting most of my time to their stuff. The simple answer is comfort, their stuff is easily available and it’s what I know best. It’s time for me to get the Hell out of my comfort zones. I plan to slowly but surely drop all “floppies” the Big Two put out, with the exception of anything Grant Morrison writes, to instead spend more time and money on graphic novels and trade paperbacks, which I consider to be a superior way to read comics. That means more comix, “new mainstream” and manga. I already have my favorites from those areas but it’s time to really get into them. The worst thing I can do let my critical thinking skills get rusty because any fear of the unknown.
Let’s just hope I accomplish this, unlike my last New Year’s Resolution “seduce Scarlett Johansson.” Seriously, it would be awesome if my like was like that in Entourage, just with more comics and vintage Velvet Underground records.
P.S. There’s still a ton of stuff that came out that I like but couldn’t fit in a place to mention them. So here they are: Rubber Necker, She-Hulk, Same Difference and Other Stories (I should write more about it but I thought it came out in 2003), the first two issues of We3, all of The Filth, It’s a Bird… (that deserves a longer look at), the fact that The Comics Journal reprinted Alex Toth comics and Goodman Goes Playboy in the same issue and then George Leonard Carlon’s stuff in the next, the stuff in McSweeney’s #13 that I hadn’t read before, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips kicking all types of ass on Sleeper, anything that came from Tony Millionaire but especially When We Were Very Maakies and Hard Time, of which I’m one of about five-and-a-half people reading that book.
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Sunday, December 26, 2004
Looks that Kill
Hey folks, hope you had a good Christmas and/or Chanukah (my family did both holidays at once for a year. It didn't go well). Did you get good stuff? I got cash to spend, and I've already spent it all. Lots of the stuff was comics, I hope to write about them here.
I'm here to write about something else, something I noticed looking around the comic store this day on my post-Xmas spree. I noticed how the Motley Crue box set had a "13 & up" label on it (I was going to get it but I'm holding out for the Pam and Tommy Sex Tape box set). Now a lot of action figures have ratings like that not just for small parts that could be swallowed, something that shouldn't be a problem for a child past infancy, but for content.
The thing is, what's the point? Once you've seen an action figure you've seen it, there's really nothing more to it. Anything that's meant to be hidden from a child is exposed in the split-second that the child's eyes are cast upon the toy. The fact that the figure is packaged with a box or a card with more imagery that can be seen as "age inappropriate" just makes those content ratings seem more useless.
I suppose the argument could be made that a child just seeing the toy and not playing with it will be less "endangered" or whatever the screaming mass of censorship would have you believe. I know what it is like to be a child. With just a quick glimpse at something Mommy and Daddy don't want you to see and the images extrapolate in a kid's head. These content ratings are simple appeasement that toy companies make for the Senator Liebermans in the world. I feel that with just a little common sense applied (and I only have a little) we find how bizarre they are. The ratings and the censors like Lieberman.
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Friday, December 24, 2004
Merry Christmas
Have a happy Christams, to all those who celebrate it. I'll be doing what I do every Christmas, getting fatter. Have a happy holidays from this Christmas ham at Brill Building.
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Thursday, December 23, 2004
I love Hate
You know me folks. I have a problem with the apparent materialism found in so much of the merchandising found in comics. All the crap from DC Direct and those busts that people waste their money on just sicken me. It's not just superhero comics that catch my ire, either. I'm well aware of the Little Enid dolls and Rusty Brown lunch boxes and find them to be useless garbage as well.
Then...then...oh man...then I saw this. I didn't think of what a waste of money it is (even though it is) nor did I want to scoff at anyone who would want to buy it (even though they deserve it). All I could think of was how in God's name I could make $35 so I could get that little guy. I thought of how he would look so cool on my desk or on one of my bookshelves. I'm not proud of it, it's just a fact.
I am weak. So very, very weak.
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Wednesday, December 22, 2004
SuperScot
No doubt this isn't going to be the only blog that will link to and go over Grant Morrison's interview about his upcoming Superman run. Dorian has already posted some good excerpts, so has Kevin (who has a neat contest you might want to enter) and Tom Spurgeon has also gone over it a little (and he links to me elsewhere on the site. Thanks, Tom!).
I do think there's enough interesting ideas in that interview that it warrants looking at. First off is the fact that Morrison and artist Frank Quietly are free of dealing with continuity in their Superman book as it will be under the All-Star line. I'm sure this line of books, like the Ultimate books Marvel has, is something that will be around for a few short years and then forgotten almost entirely afterwards. My question is why does DC even need to come up with a whole new banner to put books under when they want to have "continuity-free" books? Why can't creators just take whatever property they have, keep the basics and then do whatever they want with it? What's the point of weighing down creators with stories created long before they came on the character? I mean there are some creators who have weaved interesting enough storylines from a character's continuity but whether a writer wants to do that should be entirely up to him or her. I think it's better if we just take a character's stories on a creators-by-creator basis. Here's Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly's Superman, here's John Byrne's Superman, here's Jerry Siegel and Curt Swan's Superman. Think of them as every creator's version of telling a tall tale, one passed down from storyteller to storyteller throughout decades. Conflicting versions of the same character can easily live side by side with each other. It's the great thing about telling fictional stories.
The other part of the interview I like is just gearing up for what seems to be a pretty cool version of Superman. The fact that Morrsion name checks Jules Feiffer, Will Eisner and Jack Davis(!) in this interview tells you that he's thinking about this better than most creators, many of whom can't look far back enough to the late-80's when it comes to influences. Morrison's talk of the Superman stories during the Mort Weisnger years may be more romantic than those comics deserve, but that's one of the things I love about reading a Morrison interview and he does make some good points there as well. His quotes about the distribution of superhero comics makes sense as well. I'm sure DC and Marvel will listen to this lucid and well reasoned plan and take action immediately. Or they won't.
In the end it looks like we're going to get a bunch of Superman comics that will be a fun ride. Not to much ask for really, so why has it taken so long?
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Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Tuesday link blogging
Hey folks. I'm just pointing you all to some links because yet again work has destroyed any sense of creativity I once had.
Tim gives us a look at Dr. Seuss' later work that made me laugh and made me think. I hope it will do the same for you. Tim's piece is too smart and clever to come right out and say what the point is but if you've been paying attention to comics for at least a week I think you'll catch his drift.
Here's an article from the IMDb on BitTorrent sites closing up because of the pressure of lawsuits from movie studios. This definitely spills over into the trend of sharing comics on-line through BitTorrent. One of the sites that are now defunct, Suprnova.org, had a large selection of comics to download. If this post on Fanboy Rampage is to be believed we know that Marvel is getting serious about people sharing comics on-line. Or at least people having comics on their computers that are ready to be shared. Which, if you hire a good enough lawyer ,is something else entirely.
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Monday, December 20, 2004
Frank Miller, Hollywood Golden Boy
New trailer for Sin City up. This has probably gotten more excited than the footage I saw at Comic-Con, which also found it's way on the internet. Seeing the film fleshed out with the backgrounds and more color makes it look all the more better. I mean, the actually composition of the trailer looks like it's trying to make a weird film into this more mainstream thriller/crime flick. I still don't quite know how so-called "normal" folks who aren't familiar with the comics are going to receive this movie, but you know what? Fuck normal people.
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Swamp Thing, you make my plant sing
Hey, don't blame me. That's the real lyrics to the cartoon's theme song.
I bring up Swamp Thing because of Mike Sterling's contest. Mike has just discovered this character Swamp Thing. He isn't that familiar with a lot of the character's history nor all the merchandise that is still available through eBay but he likes the character all the same. You can win the first trade paperback from the new series in this contest. So go enter. I can't because I'm a member of the Associated Comics and Pop Culture Webloggers of Ventura County, CA and Outlying Environs* but that just means you have a better chance to win.
If things keep going this way with us VC bloggers we just might have a Wildcat contest from Dorian, a Green Lantern contest from Corey and an OMAC contest from me. You don't know OMAC was my favorite character ever? Well he is. Dude fights crime in the future with a mohawk and a talking satellite. That's the greatest thing in the world.
*As always SPECTRE for short.
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Saturday, December 18, 2004
All about that Identity Crisis, you got it while it was hot
WARNING: This is yet another post about how a comic blogger is disappointed with the mini-series Identity Crisis and the dark direction DC wants to go in. You’ve probably read stuff like this before and if you don’t want to read another one you can and should skip over this post.
I heard from a source affiliated with DC that one reason my Metal Men series was canned was because the scripts were deemed "too goofy" by a power-that-be. That's right."Too goofy". The Metal Men. If that's true, I guess I should've had Platinum get raped and killed by Chemo while she was going to have Tin's clockwork baby. -Evan Dorkin in a 12.17.04 post
So I had to see what the big hub-bub about Identity Crisis was. After seeing what felt like 50% percent of the internet comics pundits praise it and the other 50% denounce it I can say that I was a little interested. After the whole thing was finished I knew it would be easily found on bit torrent (if DC thinks I’m paying $3.95 seven times over for something with Michael Turner covers they’re out of their minds) so I decided to take a look.
I’m underwhelmed. I got this weird sense upon reading it. I found myself rolling my eyes at parts of the story that I knew others were going to be excited and intrigued with. That’s totally cool though, everyone’s got their own reasons to love or hate a book. It’s just while reading IC that I felt myself wondering “is this where DC really wants to go with their books?”
First I must tell you that a lot of what I didn’t like about the book is purely subjective. Two things that IC wants to achieve is to have a big gathering of DC characters and to be a mystery/thriller. The series accomplishes both. It’s just that both of those concepts bore me.
I never liked those big crossovers and event books where every superhero shows up for at least two panels. The idea of being excited by seeing your favorite character appear in a book even if it’s a short cameo and the plot’s no good is an attitude that befuddles me. I’m not much of a person who buys books just because a favorite character appears in them and I don’t see the big deal about a bunch of superheroes living in the same universe. There have been books that take advatnge of a sprawling superhero universe that I have enjoyed but that's because they were good stories, not the fact that I get to see Mister Miracle or Adam Strange show up.
Mystery books are beloved by many but not me. I was raised from a very early age to not get caught up in genre literature. Even though I now know that’s not the healthiest attitude towards reading I still get bored at the sight of rows and rows of mass-market paperbacks just ready to be read on airplanes and turned into movies starring Ashley Judd. All plot and nothing deeper might make for good reading at the beach but I just can’t take it. Not to mention Brad Meltzer hasn’t created a very good mystery here. The story seemed to be a lot of red herrings until the end where we find “the wife was…crazy!” and the reader is left wondering “why’d we have to deal with Captain Boomerang and his son?”
I have other problems with the book. Rags Morales’ art is one. I liked his work on Hourman a lot but here his work seems to be about grim, hulking figures that have no center and weirdly pointed faces that creep me out. I think the combination of him and inker Mike Bair is a bad one. The long, dark lines might want to recall late period Gil Kane but instead it just reminds me of what makes this book so unlikable: a bunch of bright costumed characters uncomfortably shoe horned-in to a plot of Murder, She Wrote.
It’s because of that uncomfortable mix we get two scenes that the creators and other fans probably felt were important but I ended up thinking were hilarious. The first scene is Elongated Man losing his shape at his wife’s funereal. I know it was meant to be sad but the look of this big, grotesque head crying made me think of MODOK getting his foot stepped on. The other is at the end where The Atom is feeling so small that his caption box cuts out. It just felt like a silly device and way too maudlin for a character in a blue and red costume that can travel through telephones. I think the creators of this book take the characters and the situation created for them much, much more seriously than I do.
The real bummer about this book is that DC basically wants to this to be the blueprint of how their flagship books should feel in the coming months and I suppose years. I was never going to pay to read the latest issues of The Flash or Detective Comics anyway (although if Carlos Pacheco is drawing Green Lantern it’s worth a look) so I don’t have much invested in where DC is going with their books. Still, it is a little bothersome to see this is where publishers and, judging by the sales of this book and others, many fans want their superhero books to look like.
Some quotations standout for me:
Used to call himself Calculator. Ran around with giant numbered buttons on his chest. Exactly. A moron.
The satellite used to belong to some schmucks called The Injustice Gang. With a name like, they deserved to be beaten.
People always say it was simpler back then. But it wasn’t
One of the goals IC seems to want to achieve is to get DC superheroes away from those sillier Silver Age ideas. It wants to turn the universe that gave as Detective Chimp into some cold 21st Century Olympus with big serious super-guys with big serious problems for them to brood and cry over. Perhaps for some readers that is cool. It’s an affirmation that their love of Green Arrow isn’t some hokey hobby. For me it just seems to deflate the appeal of these characters, if there was any at this point (I first started reading superhero comics in the mid-90s and DC loved going dark then, too). I’m surprised we didn’t get a scene of Krypto being put to sleep.
He used to be a champion. A great dog. Loyal friend. Now he’s something rabid even the Man of Steel can’t control.
It feels too much like DC is ashamed of being perceived as fun or something, what with content of so many of their comics from earlier decades. This might sounds more like a grade-school pep talk than a way to market comics, but I feel DC should know that you shouldn’t start worrying about how you’re perceived by others. If you let that poisonous thinking influence your big decisions you’re dooming yourself. Maybe DC should change their name to IC. Not for Identity Crisis but for Insecure Comics.
The tone of the book just seems wholly antithetical to what makes an exciting and interesting superhero story. In issue three we have seven superheroes jumping into action against Deathstroke. In just that small scene, before any of the fighting has started, we see the Flash gritting his teeth at Green Arrow while Black Canary looks sullen in the background. As for the fight itself, I know it's meant to feels like it’s in slow motion but should that really mean all the fun is sucked out of it? The moody tone of the whole series infects what should be a wild superhero bang-up. Meltzer’s captions are often a chore to read through, I feel like he’s read no other comic book writers but Chris Claremont and Brian Michael Bendis and combines the worst of both, but here they really just make a scene feel as exciting as watching someone watch paint dry. Of course, that fits the tone of the series. I just think that only proves there’s a problem with the whole series.
Now I must say there were things I liked in this book. The double page spread with The Atom finding his wife hanging was done well. The lead-up the murder of Robin’s Dad was exciting, even though I felt the bad art choices by Morales and Bair made a crying Robin look odd. The fight with Deadshot, Merlyn and Monocle was a big improvement over the earlier scene mentioned above.
Overall this book leaves me baffled and depressed. I shouldn’t really give damn about DC’s mainstream books anymore but it was still sad to read this. It’s basically an ode to fans that have too much trivial knowledge of these characters and take them too seriously. There the ones who will always be buying DC’s books (many fans cried out about the rape scene in issue two but I’m sure most of them kept buying the book anyway) so why should DC try to pander to anyone else? I’m 21 and I feel too young and too alienated to be reading these characters.
I’m glad that DC doesn’t put all their eggs in this overwrought basket. It’s still the company that puts out New Frontier, Plastic Man and Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers books. Perhaps it’s an effort to achieve some sort of balance. I ultimately don’t mind a book like IC coming out and being enjoyed by those who will take pleasure in it as long as I still have alternatives to read, from the same publisher no less. It’s just that I wonder if the creators and fans who dig IC mind books like Plastic Man who dare to have a little fun with the idea of someone going around in long underwear?
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Please, no "McGwire's balls" jokes
Spawn creator Todd McFarlane files for Chapter 11
I know you'll probably read this story elsewhere but I thought it was weird going to Yahoo's page today and seeing that exact headline on the front page. No one in the comics reading world cares about Spawn anymore so why would any normal person checking the news on Yahoo's site care? Wouldn't it make more sense to credit him as "toy-maker" or "owner of Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball?" That's something people can recognize, even though I'm sure a few, but only a few, people remember that best selling comic book from the early 90's.
Yeah it's no big deal but it's a Saturday post, so who cares?
Permanent Link: 10:25 AM |
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Friday, December 17, 2004
Three for Friday
Really, I've got nothing for Friday. Running around dealing with that damn "real world" has left me no time to think of and write anything interesting for my true love, the internet. So I'll just get three things out of the way.
1) Joanna's got an Owly contest going on. It's real easy to enter, somewhat harder to win and the prize is free Owly comics. Can't beat that.
2) A contest that I really feel strongly about is David Carter's contest for the CBLDF. All you have to spend is $25 (consider it a holidays gift to the entire comic book industry) for a first time contribution to the CBLDF. If nine other people do the same, Dave will match that bundle with his own $250. I'm already a member so I can't participate but if you're not a member please, please, please join up! If there was anytime time the world needs organizations like the CBLDF that time is now.
3) Does anyone know what to do if your "posts written" number on Blogger is stuck? Mine has said 147 for about a month now.
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Thursday, December 16, 2004
The Perfect Soundtrack to Wearing Black, Thick-Framed Glasses
This post isn't about comics because honestly, I've been thinking about them all week and I need a break. I didn't even buy anything this Wednesday and I'm still going over the latest events in the comics industry in my head before I go to sleep. It hardly seems healthy so I thought, in an effort to relieve myself, I would post about music instead. Taking a cue from what I see many other bloggers here on the comics blogosphere do, I decided to give you a rundown on what I've been listening to a lot:
Transformer by Lou Reed. Really it's been "Vicious" and "Satellite of Love" over and over again. The first just might be Mick Ronson's (a terribly underrated guitar player) finest moment. He rivals the fretwork of one James Williamson's on Iggy & The Stooges Raw Power, easily my favorite album and my favorite guitar playing. With "Satellite" it's just been one of those songs that have hypnotized me lately. I've been playing it on guitar a lot trying to unlock it's secrets. It's that outro that comes out of nowhere with the harmonies and Bowie's backing vocals that kills me every time. Every friggin' time. And of course I'm always listening to my Velvets albums, one of the few bands that I'm a nerd-obsessive about.
Singles Gone Steady by The Buzzcocks. There isn't a month that goes by where I don't listen to this album. The Buzzcocks are one of those bands who have achieved what I believe is ultimate perfection in music: Mixing melodic and smart pop with aggressive and loud punk rock. It's what I try to achieve with my music (I'm going to look into how I can post mp3s here so I can showcase my tunes) and what I come back to again and again with my journeys through music. I love Joe Strummer and Polly Styrene but let's admit folks, Pete Shelley was the best lyricist from the British punk rock era. His words perfectly fit the simplicity of the music with the complexity of the emotions behind the scene and the age of the people making and listening to the music. Great voice, too.
Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds by Teenage Fanclub. These guys did a great job with the pop/punk mix on Bandwagonesque but most of the discography is great, Big Star-influenced power-pop. These Scottish lads do it better than most people when it comes to coming up with a catchy melody, singing beautiful harmonies and playing ringing guitars. It's the whole reason to get up out of bed. "Everything Flows" is one of the most beautiful pieces of work a rock band has ever come up with.
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady by Charles Mingus. You didn't think it was all going to be rock, did you? Ever since I first saw it name checked in Jim DeRogatis' biography of Lester Bangs I've been listening to this album. It actually does have a lot of similarity to The Stooges and White Light/White Heat in terms of how raw and aggressive the sound is. The three tracks basically lead up to the 18+ minute final track that is the closest music has gotten to sounding like a busy city street filled with all different types of people in the same modern-day panic.
Highway 61 Revisted by Bob Dylan. From this and Black Saint you can deduce that I've been reading Fortress of Solitude (expect a review soon). This was from the middle of that great three-album run of Brining It All Back Home, Highway and Blone on Blonde. Dylan was really into the Willaim Blake, symbolism lyrics at the time. Stuff like "Tombstone Blues" just gets to me how imaginative and smart, not to mention how snide, it is. The title track is to me the ultimate Dylan song. Anything I would ever want out of his music is in that one song. I also enjoy the PJ Harvey cover.
In Utero by Nirvana. My favorite album by my favorite band of all time. Nirvana is basically "Creating Music 101" for me. I've studied these songs like some study Einstein's theories. The mighty pop/punk mix (a term I admittedly am uncomfortable with because people start thinking of Blink 182 when I say it) was perfected on Nevermind but here the band turns the guitars and screaming up for a tour-de-fucking-force of brilliance. Not to mention the drum playing. If Dave Grohl did nothing else in his life except this album he would still be known as one of rock's best drummers just because of this record. Steve Albini brings a sound out of Grohl that sounds like Apocolypse as a backbeat. Can you guess what box set I want for Christmas?
Also enjoyed lately: the aforementioned Harvey's Rid of Me, Cheap Trick's first three albums, two Phil Ochs mix CDs Dorian made for me, the Stroke's two albums and David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust.
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Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Dude! Joe Casey Reads My Stuff!
Reading yesterday's edition of The Basement Tapes by Joe Casey and Matt Fraction, the subject being fun in superhero comics and is it lost or not, filled me with a sense of glee. It's only because Casey writes this:
I've seen some random discussions pop up on the Net in the past few weeks that seem to be struggling with this issue, looking at old comics and either marveling at their sheer audacity (and I mean that in a good way) and wondering exactly why modern comicbooks are so... different. It's not a question of nostalgia. As I said, it's a question of self-consciousness.
I'm pretty sure he's writing about the Giant-Size Avengers #2 thread over at Pop Culture Bored. It's a thread I particapted in along with Dave Fiore, Scott Tipton, Tom Spurgeon and others (the thread starter, Abhay Khosla, no longer writes Title Bout for Movie Poop Shoot but you can usually find him at PCB or the comments section of Fanboy Rampage). It was a rollicking discussion that I enjoyed participating in and helped me a lot with my thoughts on comics. It was great to see The Basement Tapes go over the subject as I enjoy the column and Joe Casey is a writer I happen to like a whole bunch. Knowing he read some stuff I wrote on the internet does make me feel good in a trivial sort of way.
Looking at the column there's some interesting points but they keep coming back to the idea of "fun" coming back to established, corporate-owned properties like The Flash. At this point I really don't care either way about how fun some old superhero like that is, I want to see new properties come out with creators behind them going full blast. It's something Casey and Fraction have proven they can do.
It's something I was trying to get at in this post about creators evolving and trying to improve themselves in their work. That post is really the culmination of all my thinking in the above PCB thread. I really think the pursuit should not necessarily be "fun" as much as it should be "creativity" and "imagination" but I know if we see more of that we'll be seeing more fun comics, superheroes or otherwise.
I still love seeing a fun comic using an old character. I second David Welsh's recommendation of She-Hulk (and I'm sure Slott's Humat Torch book will be similar good reading) and I loved stuff like Batman Adventures, Mark Waid's Flash and Grant Morrison's JLA. It's just I prefer reading something where the creator or creators are coming up with their own stuff and doing whatever they want with it (I listed a few examples in the last post). Of course I'm some kid who read a lot of Comics Journal interviews with Frank Miller and Scott McCloud, so what do I know? Come to think of it, McCloud's Superman Adventures run and Dark Knight Strikes Again were both great fun rides that I really enjoyed. I guess a good pop culture thrill can come from anywhere, even characters created before my parents were born.
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Tuesday, December 14, 2004
The Mystery Solved
"Remember when there was one set of footprints in the sand? That was when I was carrying you."
Yes, while everybody is wondering the identity of the person Batman is holding they are missing the real point of the sure-to-be-classic DC Countdown. The image is meant to convey DC's real plan, that Batman is really Jesus Christ. People like Robin, Nightwing and the like are his disciples and all the Bat-imagery is a set up to the next step in Christianty, Bat-Christianty. Of course the biggest clue is probably the fact that Batman and Jesus are both fictional characters.
Permanent Link: 2:15 PM |
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Not for Kiddies!
Dave at Yet Another Comics Blog has been posting some great Christmas covers all this month. I thought this Atheist half-Jew should join in the Holiday to cheer by offering you his favorite Christmas cover:
I believe this was the only comic book-sized issue of Bizarre Adventure. It's also the only one I've read. Filled with a bunch of 80's Marvel bullpen guys creating dark little tales about Christmas. The main reason to pick up this book is it because it contains the only non-Steve Gerber Howard the Duck story worth reading, a Steven Grant/Paul Smith story that is a parody of "It's a Wonderful Life." To be honest I picked up the book from the back issue bins because I have a thing for animated skeletons. To me Army of Darkness and Jason and the Argonauts are the heights of filmmaking.
In other news Comic Book Galaxy has its year end roundtable up at their site. I'll be honest, I skipped a lot of it and only read the comments by the people I already know. It was there that I found this great quote from Fanatagraphics' Eric Reynolds:
The only mainstream comic I liked and followed at all this year was that Darwyn Cooke book about the DC characters. If every mainstream comic was that well done, the Comics Journal could quit publishing, mission accomplished.
God Bless that Reynolds and his scruffy little heart.
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Monday, December 13, 2004
Death Letter
The DC Solicitations for March reminded me of an open letter I have for the good people of DC Comics:
Dear DC Comics,
Please stop producing any and all comic books from now on. I'm sure it was cute when it started but at this point it's just annoying.
Sincerely,
Ian Brill
P.S. Feel free to pass this message to the fine friendly folks at Marvel!
P.P.S. Uh...any chance I could get advance copies of those Seven Soldiers books? Pwease?
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The 2005 Beebie Awards pt. 1
The end of the year is a time to look back as well as a time to look forward. I figured to celebrate the year that was 2004 I could give out awards to what I felt were some of the best and worst of the comic book industry. I also wanted to look forward and make a few predictions on what the comic book industry will look like in the future. In the end I decided to kill two birds with one cliche and give out awards for events that I predict will happen next year. Confused? It suits you. Let's gets to our first Beebie* right now.
Worst Business Decision
Marvel Waging Biological Warfare on the Children of America
It seemed like such a simple plan. Marvel wants to crash the youth market that manga seems to have such a hold on. Looking at the professional and detailed customer research that Marvel is known for they have found that throughout the years children have discovered comics while they were sick and confined to a bed, either in a hospital or in their house. So why not make kids sick so they���ll be in the right place to discover such classics as Thor: Son of Asgard and Arana: The Heart of the Spider? It���s just that I think Marvel went a little far. Dan Buckley shooting missiles filled with anthrax at kindergarten playgrounds? It seemed a bit much. Not to mention it seems no matter how much of the bubonic plague a six-year-old has swimming around his/her system, they're just aren't going to read Tom DeFalco's work.
The sad thing is that Marvel is now considered a terrorist organization by the government. Whenever I go through airport security I have to get rid of my nail-clippers and my copy of Marvel Age: Fantastic Four. It���s just a huge hassle.
Well, congratulations to today's winner. Come back next day when we'll give out the award for Best Comic Book Character of 2005!
*Beebie is a registered trademark of Brill Building Inc. All rights reserved, all right?
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Friday, December 10, 2004
Cash Rules Everything Around Me
Hey folks I'm back, and I've got money troubles.
Here's the thing, I'm moving into my own place. That means paying all that great stuff like utilities and the cable bill. Combine that with paying for insurance (both health and car) and the fact that I'm having trouble looking for work means that I've got to cut out the sundries for the foreseeable future. Of course that means comics.
I'm contemplating two things here. One scenario is that I go down to one book a month. I must say this is practical but not pleasurable. I've been cutting down on books since this semester started. All I've been feeling is bad about low-selling books I don't buy anymore (Plastic Man) and new books that I would like to try out but can't (Ed Brubaker on Captain America is tempting, especially since the reviews I've seen). Not to mention, what book to cut down on? I'm leaning towards all those Grant Morrison books coming out from DC but I don't want to give up on the last few issues of Sleeper. Buy both at the same time? Now I'm fretting about buying two books in the same month while thousands are picking up tons of stupid shit out of habit (must...buy...all...Spider-Man books).
The other idea is to go trades only. I don't want to restrict myself to once a month or anything, just whenever a book that I want comes out I'll see if I can afford it. I'll probably order it on-line to get some discount but I don't really want to abandon my good old comic hut. They're such nice folks.
Downloading comics is an option. Not something I'm unfamiliar with but that always leads to buying more comics and reading those issues on a computer screen is not ideal. I could read my friend's comics but that just seems intrusive.
I do want to read comics, tons of them. One reason is to provide content for this blog. Sure I can read about the comics world on news sites and blogs but I've found that reading about comics more than reading comics is maddening.
You know I always start with a different idea but I always come to the same conclusion: damn you, comic book industry. Damn you for making me love you.
Permanent Link: 8:02 PM |
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Saturday, December 04, 2004
New York Bound
Like I've been saying I'm going to NYC for the week and I'll be back blogging on Friday (hopefully). Just wanted everybody to know. You all behave while I'm gone now, y'hear?
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Friday, December 03, 2004
Are you saying "Boo" or "Boo-erns?"
Your pals and mine at Egon have a little Charles Burns news for one and all (check under the Angoulême nominations). Seems Pantheon is coming out with a collection of Burns' creepy comic Black Hole in "late 2005/early 2006" according to Fantagraphics' Eric Reynolds. I know a Chipp Kidd-designed Pantheon book by a Fantagraphics artist is nothing new but I have to admit I still love them.
But wait, there's more! The Pulse has samples of Black Hole #12 along with an interview with Burns. This should be coming out soon.
But wait, there's more! Fanta bigwig Kim Thompson reveals on this TCJ board thread that a softcover of the Burns collection El Borbah should be coming out soon.
Look at that, a little link-blogging before my trip.
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Warning: Gushing Ahead
If you've been wondering why I've been trying to put a lot of thought-provoking content on the ol' blog lately it's because I've got to take another week off. I know, I know, I did that last week. This time I'm going to NY to see relatives coming in from London. It's only for a few days and I'll be back posting here by next Friday at the earliest. Things are still going to be busy with me but I'll make sure to update as much as I can.
For today, though, let's look at some artists I enjoy that are making comics right now.
Alan David Doane gives Sean Phillips five questions which makes for some good reading. Phillips draws the living fuck out of my favorite monthly book right now, Sleeper. His Wildcats stuff with Joe Casey was awesome as well. Not as stylistic as Sleeper, the simpler approach really worked for the book while being a million miles away from the Jim Lee and Travis Charest styles that had defined the book for years. The fact that he's doing more painting with the upcoming Black Sails really excites me. Those painted Sleeper covers are some of the best appearing on the shelves right now.
Let's look at another artist who I really enjoy right now, Tommy Lee Edwards who currently does The Question. The site is one of the finest looking creator's sites I've seen. Of the many cool features the site brings you, a studio tour of Edward's workplace. There's a portfolio slideshow that includes his comic work and commercial illustration. The stuff is unbelievably beautiful. Probably the best thing is an original serial that takes full advantage of the website's layout. I just hope someone is willing to publish Teddy Grant, Soldier of Fortune as a full comic book that folks can get their hands on.
This leads me to The Question, which I read the second issue of last night. I'm really starting to love this book. In just one issue we've got that Ginsberg-type prose that Veitch creates for Vic Sage. The overheard conversations creating there own poetry, a type of urban Dada composition. We get Luthor being his usually evil industrial self with the plucky duo of Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen trying to get to the bottom of it. In the middle of the book the apocolypse breaks out with the city people reacting like characters in a Stan "The Man" Lee book. Reading that dialogue brought a smile to my face. No one could do civilians in mortal terror better than Stan and Jack and it's good to see a writer like Rock Veitch trying to recreate that. Superman comes into stop the threat like only he can. The end of the world is averted in just a few pages like in the best Curt Swan-drawn Most Wesinger-edited comic. Throw in subterranean bank robbers and it hit me, this book has everything I would ever want to read in a comic. I wish it wasn't just a mini-series.
The 3-D models work well next to the artwork. That's good to see as I've seen other books try to pull that off and it just looks awful at best. Here it makes total sense and helps establish the urban feel of Metropolis. John Workman's lettering has improved since I last read it in Orion. Those word balloons open at the end had a sketchier feel, complimenting Edward's loose line. The issue also had one of the best looking title pages I've seen in a while.
How lucky I am that I'm alive to see new issues of The Question and Sleeper come out?
EDIT: While we're on the subject of artists I adore, Chris Butcher links to Taiyou Matsumoto's latest work online. Remember to pick up Blue Spring, coming out soon!
Permanent Link: 9:05 AM |
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Thursday, December 02, 2004
She don't do drugs but she does the pill
Let's talk about concepts. Can there be something inherint in a concept that turns you off, making sure you won't pick up the book? Or is it all about the execution?
I want to lean towards seeing how the artist(s) pulls off a comic (or movie or novel or whatever). Still I must say there have been a few projects I've been turned off to just by the concept. As I explain here the Iron Man character seems like something that just wouldn't work for me. The man's a weapons manufacture for God's sakes! If Tony Stark was a real person he'd be hob-nobbing with Dick Cheney. I can not in good conscience put that away and just enjoy the superheroics. I have enjoyed issues of Avengers and Ultiamtes but he was only a single player on a team there. Also Ultimates makes a point of many of the members of the team being complete assholes, which is one of the things I liked about the book. Of course now Warren Ellis, a writer whose work I have enjoyed, is doing the book and I'm sure he's not going to take a superhero so highly connected to the military-industrial complex at face value. I'll check it out when it comes in trade. There no real point in picking up any Marvel book in single-issue at this point. In fact I'm beginning to wonder what the Hell's the point of picking up any single-issue superhero book at this point. That discussion is for another post.
For right now let's ponder the fact that if the execution is indeed more important than the concept, how absurd is it that to sell a screenplay to producers or a comic book to publishers and anything to a customer you must sell it on the basis of the concept and/or the creators involved? Of course there are ads and free samples where a person can judge if they want to spend there hard-earned money on something. It still comes down to a producer, usually someone more connected to business than the arts, who wants the concepts summed up in a quick sentence they can sell to the public. Of course the same concept can turn into incredibly different projects in the hands of different creators. We have proof of that in the world of superhero comics. I know I've mentioned this book already this week but I feel it bears mentioning again: look at Grant Morrison and Richard Case's Doom Patrol compared to John Byrne's. Like or hate either one, you got to admit it's different people taking pretty much the same concept and going in completely different directions. And yet when DC sells the trade to bookstores I'm sure it's the same thing about "the world's most bizarre superheroes" or something.
Hey, I got to quote Teenage Fanclub. This post wasn't a total waste.
Permanent Link: 4:26 PM |
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