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Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Adventures in thinking aloud
If you came across the 13-year-old Ian Brill chances are he would be wearing the T-shirt Dark Horse produced based on that cover. Madman was an early favorite mine and Mike Allred's artwork is always a treat to see. I'm really glad Madman is coming back. That Newsarama interview mentions the possibility of a new X-Statix miniseries which would also be cool as the Dead Girl limited series was nothing but awesome.
There are a lot of comics publishers who have been nice to send me books that I should be reviewing here and I will, I promise! But I must talk about a far less pressing series, a Wolverine comic from the early '90s. Namely it the trade Wolverine: Blood Hungry, which collects the Peter David/Sam Kieth Wolverine stories from Marvel Comics Presents. My main reaction can be found in the queries "what the fuck?" and "seriously, what the fuck?"
Along with Allred, Kieth was an artist whose work I dug. I would read every issue of The Maxx I could get as well as follow the MTV cartoon. I picked up this trade real cheap out of curiosity. I wondered what Kieth was doing before The Maxx, working on a corporate superhero and from another writer's script. I was glad that David knew enough to let Kieth be really creative. The story is nutso. Part of it is your typical "Wolverine bad-ass" story with the Canadian X-Man running around naked in the jungles of Madripoor and then going up against drug dealers with adamantium skin. Then part of it is this surreal psychological freak out Logan has, where he imagines him and his antagonist Cyber as part of a James Dean-like story of heartbreak and betrayal with pronounced Freudian imagery. Added to this is David's tendency to get really cutesy with the dialogue, throwing in bad puns while dangerous gangsters discuss drug deals. The shifts in tone are jarring but I think it does ultimately create something interesting and with merit (I do consider something being all-out wacky as worthy of merit). Kieth's art get as wild as anything in The Maxx or those early issues of Sandman just now it's with big hulking men who like to grit their teeth. I enjoyed the story just because it was so odd. What was the reaction when this book came out? It seems to be having a bit of fun with the perception of Wolverine at the time.
From Diamond's latest shipping list:
SEP061810 CASANOVA #6 (MR) $1.99
JUL061988 PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #1 CW $2.99
Oh yes.
Any week where we get two Matt Fraction comics is a good week. Casanova I must say is my favorite monthly book. Every issue is full of great ideas pulled of with such style by Fraction and Gabriel Ba. I also look forward to the return of the white-gloved, knife-in-boot Frank Castle. I read the character in my youth and I'm glad he's in the hands of a writer who knows how to make something from the past cool without making it a needless nostalgia trip. And Ariel Olivetti? Have you seen his Atom covers? Oh this is going to be good.
Hey look at that, all three of those bits added up. They all had something to do with the books I wasted my precious, precious youth on. To think, there are comic fans that fondly remember whimsical Mort Weisnger Superman stories and then there are comic fans like me who fondly look back on the days when reanimated corpses ate eyeballs, a big purple guy with claws could be the dream manifestation of a traumatized young woman and a jaunty roustabout named Francis would dispel justice with an armory fit to defend a small nation. What fun we had.
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