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Monday, May 29, 2006
Alex Toth 1928-2006
"Death Flies the Haunted Skies" from Detective Comics #442 was the first story by Alex Toth I ever read (I actually read it in the first edition of The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told). I had heard so much about Toth, how he drew like no other and that he influenced so many artists I liked by then such as Bruce Timm and Mike Allred, that I knew I was reading something special. There were startling visuals like the title page where Batman's cape spells out the character's name but when I finished the story I was more impressed with how Toth handled the less flashy but more important aspects of cartooning. The way his story flowed (see above), the use of light and darkness and how he could do so much with so few lines.
I would scan old trade paper backs and back issues for those Toth stories that would often appear alongside other's works. While I loved the work of Joe Kubert, Gil Kane and others in The Greatest 1950's Stories Ever Told it was the two stories by Toth, as well as the Challengers of the Unknown story by Jack Kirby, that my eyes devoured. His work had a feel all its own. I know Toth thought a lot about his work and others and what made for good and bad drawing. Still, whenever I read something like "F-86 Sabre Jet!" from Frontline Combat #12 I see art that just seems to pour out of the artist so naturally, like it was a sixth sense for Toth. By the time what is known to many collectors as "The Silver Age" arrived Toth had his own style that was so powerful it would stay in your head long after you finished a book with contributions from a range of artists.
Toth died at his drawing table, which I find such a romantic and heartbreaking image. He'll never draw again but since he drew so much for so many different comic titles and companies I think we'll all be studying and enjoying his work for a long time. I've talked to fans of all types who wish to see DC put out a book of Toth's work for the company that has been scattered around so many different places. Maybe we'll see that know, so everyone can pick up one large volume of work and recognize what comic book making at its very best looks like.
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Friday, May 26, 2006
One of the most inventive filmmakers of our day...
...and you've probably never heard of him. I've had the opportunity to discover the films of Nacho Vigalondo and wish to share his films with you. The Spanish filmmaker has a website for his Academy Award-nominated short film 7:35 in the morning which is horrifically romantic or romantically horrific. I'm leaning towards the former. That film has English subtitles. Unfortunately for you people of the English-speaking countries (most of you, judging from the comments section) are missing out on the brilliant Codigo 7, which is the most hilarious and smart Philip K. Dick tribute/indictment of slackerdom serial I have seen this year. All three sections are on-line and if you understand Spanish I hope you'll enjoy it. If you can't then you will probably think the whole thing makes no sense. I assure you it does and is wonderful.
It's a sign of the times (and perhaps whatever personal dysfunctions may exist) when the most up-and-down relationship I have is with a television show. It is a relationship I share with millions of other people. Thankfully the second season finale was mostly of the "up" category. This episode never felt like it was plodding, like past episodes were. Instead answers and questions alike were being thrown my way and I was soaking it up.
Heather Havrilesky and Andrew Dignan both offer write-ups that contained enough insight to have me appreciate parts of the show I never picked up on before. Havrilesky's character rundown in particular is fine work. Lost's crew has made me a sucker for season three and I like it.
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Wednesday, May 24, 2006
I've gone insane
Shakespeare:
Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that. (Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1)
Archie:
This is what happens when an English major/comic book fan has been pushed to the edge. Advice: if you can help it do not take finals, work and move into a new place at the same time. You'll end up looking for allusions to The Bard while reading Fantagraphics' new book on Dan DeCarlo (a good book I might add). Hopefully real content will come soon.
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Thursday, May 18, 2006
Post starts optimistic, ends on a downer
If this was any time before the New Golden Age of Television I probably would find the idea of reading about network previews ludicrous. Now I read the blogs of Tom, Lyle, the articles of Tim Goodman and the folks at Aspecialthing.com with avid attention. I’m hoping for more shows that will capture my imagination but so far Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip seems to be the only thing gets me excited (that’s a meaty six minute clip there by the way). Then I read Tom’s description of the upcoming Let’s Rob Mick Jagger (I’ll it by its fun name, thank you very much) and Kidnapped and I notice a trend this New Golden Age of Television seems to be spawning.
Writers and producers have been inspired by 24 and, probably to a lesser extent, Veronica Mars to create shows so high concept that an entire season is devoted to one macro-storyline. I want to say Murder One was the first to try this although I’m sure you readers more versed in this “casual art,” as Martin T. Williams dubbed it, can inform me of earlier examples. Either way Murder One was a failure and it took about ten years for the idea of an overarching plotline to take off. I’ve never seen any 24 or Veronica Mars (I’ll check out the latter on DVD, though) so I can’t say I’ve ever seen this idea executed well. These new shows don’t look good, although I’m certainly willing to be proven wrong. Still, even though I’ve never seen the execution I think the idea of a one season over-arching plotline is one that can lead to great stuff. There’s just one caveat and it goes against common wisdom of the television business.
Let’s say you have a show with a high concept. It needs twenty-four episodes to tell the whole thing and then it’ll end with a real bang-up ending. Awesome, go for it. And then never appear again. No second season, no matter how big a hit it was or wasn’t and no matter how much money the show made and could stand to make. Television use to have high-rated mini-series like Roots and V but it’s a format that seems to be disappearing. From the looks of these new shows it’s a format that could be brought back. Have a show that takes the length of regular season to tell its story, complete with sub-plots and cliffhanger endings, but then spare us the complications of a stillborn ending and dangling plotlines in hopes of a second season that might, but probably won’t, recapture the spirit of the first season and its storyline. That’s what Desperate Housewives should have done. We’ll call these new shows “seasonals.”
I don’t know if this will happen. Even with the new creativity injected into television I think it’s fair to say that the people on the business end by and large still suffer from the same problem. They’re all so scared of losing their jobs rule number one is “play it safe.” So I’ll just sit here as a viewer, a viewer in that 18-to-35-year-old male demographic I hasten to add, and ignore shows that have overstayed their welcome (Desperate Housewives) and watch shows on DVD that should have stayed on beyond one season (Firefly, Freaks & Geeks).
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Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Deogratias
This could be the bleakest read all year. That could make this book disposable. Instead Strassen’s story has enough human truths in it that the book is it vital.
It’s a short read but that just makes the book hit harder. The book’s translator, Alexis Siegel, provides a helpful introduction explaining the history of Rwanda and the genocide that occurred in the early 1990’s. It’s good that information is all in the reader’s head as he/she starts the story because the genocide will hang over every panel of this book. Strassen has the book flash-forward and –backward around the genocide, focusing on the eponymous character who is just a young boy. We read what happens before the genocide and what happened afterward but the actual horror is only seen in the end. There’s this great tension, really skin-crawling at times, especially in the flash-forwards.
All the scenes are real brief with Strassen packing just the right amount of information and emotion a scene needs with in a small amount of time. I never felt like it was a “quick read,” though. Perhaps that’s because even though the scenes maybe short they’re all so heavy with sadness and anticipating horror that I just got captivated.
The book’s bleak atmosphere doesn’t come from the story of genocide. The story is concerned with the human soul at its very bleakest. In the flash-backs we see Rwanda at a (relative) calm and read of both natives and missionaries acting like flawed human beings. The stories of indentured servitude and out-of-wedlock children feel extra-disturbing when you realize what is at stake in this troubled country, a wisdom the characters sadly lack. Strassen draws all his characters with wide faces that can convey a lot of information. Deogratias’ madness in the flash-forwards is a particularly compelling image.
Throughout the story I expected the child Deogratias to be an innocent in this story of human barbarism. I won’t ruin the ending for you but I can assure you that my assumptions were incorrect. Strassen could have just written a book with horrific events happening around a heroic human being. Instead he tells a story of where the horrors on the outside only reflect what the horrors these characters hold inside them.
Permanent Link: 9:17 PM |
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Friday, May 12, 2006
The '60s were weird
Milton Berle's Cock is a fine blog, named after the eighth wonder of the world. Usually the blog posts out-of-print comedy albums but now we've got a treat comic fans! Michael O'Donoghue and Frank Springer's sort-of underground strip Phoebe Zeitgiest is availble for download. I'm only familiar with the strip though Mr. Mike, O'Donoghue biography (loaned to me by this Mr. Mike) but from what I've read it seems to be a reminiscent of Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg's Candy, only this version anticipates the comic book material in National Lampoon. Perhaps I'll write more when I read the damn thing.
Also, you can appreantly read it all at the Phoebe Zeitgeist blog.
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Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Recommended Reading
Eddie Campbell's Fate of the Artist arrives today in comic book stores. You can read my review or, better yet, read this interview with Campbell conducted by Tom Spurgeon. The book is fascinating and well worth picking up. The rest of First Second's first wave of books arrive today as well and I can recommend Vampire Loves and Deogratias as well worth picking up. Hopefully I'll be able to review those two soon. First Second has shown an impressive launch, with the quality of the books and engagment of the comics internet and comics press. They can sell themselves and still come off as genuinely nice people getting the word out on great books. This is a company worth following.
Show Dino some love. 40 minute podcast with Dean Haspiel.
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Monday, May 08, 2006
Where the real is unreal
Brian Doherty's a smart guy, good writer and a comic book fan. So I was glad to see this political reading of Infinite Crisis by the man, although it seems just trying to explain the complications of DC Universe to the unfamiliar hampered him a bit. I would like to see Doherty do a nerd-tastic interpretation of IC that expands on the points he made in the article if just for the smart comic book fans like you, good readers.
Creating political relevancy to your superhero crossover events seems to be the game plan for Marvel and DC. This week saw the first issue of Marvel's Civil War. Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada and writer Paul Jenkins were interviewed on NPR about why they feel this story is relevant. When the prequel mini-series to IC were starting DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio spoke about how 9/11 influenced the tone of DC's superhero books. If just the announcement of Frank Miller's Holy Terror, Batman! is any indication than this is the book where the "real world events meet superheroic fantasy" zeitgeist will really penetrate the mainstream consciousness.
It's hard for me to get a handle on this direction Marvel and DC are taking. I know one comic book reader who has a relative who suffered injuries in recent wars and finds such proclamations by Quesada and Miller offensive. To many people Quesdada, DiDio and Miller’s statements can seem crass because these books are also meant to be money-making entertainment enterprises, which can often come in conflict with the politics. It’s a viewpoint I am sympathetic to. But then I try to see this from the point of view of those creating these books. If you’re seeing soldiers coming back Iraq and Afghanistan with horror stories the idea of just going back to your desk and coming up with slam-bang superhero escapism seems trite. An artist is going to try to make their work capable of considering the bigger issues around us. Perhaps it is out a feeling that everyone in the world has a duty to share their insights about the current situation with the rest of the human race, to reach some kind of better understanding. Perhaps it is out of vanity to make one feel like their job, which cannot mean much compared to a soldier or a war correspondent, is worth something. It is most likely a little of both.
I’m uncomfortable with the political leanings Miller displays when he talks about his work being “a reminder to people who’ve seem to have forgotten that we’re up against an utterly ruthless existential foe who is as vile as any we’ve ever faced” and that he is “appalled at the equivocations.” But I can understand the basic standpoint that when serious events are happening in the world you’ve got to make your art, whatever that art is, mean something in the context of what is happening around you. Howard Zinn told us “you can’t be neutral on a moving train.” Does that go for the people who put together Spider-Man books?
Before I end this rambling post I want to mention a book that I think does a great job of relating mythic characters to real life concerns. Paul Pope’s Batman: Year 100, which I have read Miller had something of a hand in brainstorming, does a fantastic job of using the sci-fi and superhero genres to speak of the loss of privacy. The trope of a secret identity is given weight as it signifies what a citizen deserves in his/her country and what the forces-that-be should not be able to take away. The book has three of its four issues released and so far we do not know who The Batman of 2039 is. Hopefully Pope will keep it a mystery to attest to how important private living is. It’s that kind of thoughtfulness and intelligence that is important when making your art relevant, something other comic creators miss. I haven’t made up my mind on how important it is an artist to use current events to stay relevant, I don’t think I ever will, but a book like Pope has me on the side of the artist who seeks to speak truth not just to power but to the world at large.
Permanent Link: 7:59 AM |
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Sunday, May 07, 2006
Adventures in unpublished comics
Do you want unadulterated Brian Posehn? Hell yeah you do. America's Radio Sweetheart Jesse Thorn, who actually is a sweetheart, posted a near-hourlong interview with Posehn. They talk about comics near the end. Listen for the project Posehn and Simpsons writer Matt Selman had for DC Comics. It's a sequel to Superman vs. Muhammad Ali and...well, you should hear it for yourelf.
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Friday, May 05, 2006
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Clowes alert
The Bay Area Gaurdian profiles Dan Clowes for we are near the release of Art School Confidential.
"Look at Charles Schulz," he adds. "The most successful cartoonist in the history of the medium had over $200 million when he died, and the most beloved cartoonist of all time, and he was still bitter about slights when he was a young guy, when people didn't give him a break. I can absolutely relate to that."
If you get the actual issue you can read comic strips four cartoonists, Sarah Han, Jay Howell, Johnny Ryan and Steve Weissman, did about art school. I liked Weissman's the best.
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Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Casanova #1
"You talk like a comic book, man"
"And I live like one, Mr. Quinn"
-from Casanova #1
In the text page of the first issue of his and Gabriel Ba's new series Matt Fraction name checks both Fell and Godland. The influences of both books are apparent here and welcome. Casanova may follow Fell's format of 16 pages for $1.99 (except this issue, which is 32 pages) but Fraction and Ba's artistic concerns follow Fraction's "Basement Tapes" buddy. If Godland is a book made by Jack Kirby fans regurgitating past works into a new hyper-Kirby book than this is Fraction taking Casino Royale, Danger: Diabolik and the "Our Man Flint" films and creating a louder, crazier and (most importantly) more fun take on the spy genre.
This book will do well in the "Fell Format" as Fraction knows how to pack a lot of information into a short story and make it all work. In the space it takes the average modern Marvel comic to present the prologue to a six-issue storyline Fraction and Ba give us a floating Monte Carlo, alternate timelines and the craziest staring contest in the world. But to Casanova Quinn this is all in a day's work, as he explains to us right at the start. This is Quinn's world and reading the book felt like increments of it were being revealed to us, with plenty more to be seen.
Ba's art crystallizes the '60s/Pop Art feel of the book. Elaborate set pieces have rounded and exaggerated looks to them. There's plenty of "Kirby crackle" and nutty special effects floating around when the story calls for it. This must have been what Alan Resnais and Federico Fellini were seeing when they were praising Marvel's '60s output. Our hero’s look answers the eternal questions "what if Mick Jagger was James Bond?" He's the perfect figure for this environment to surround.
A character that shows up half-way through this book seems to be a tribute to Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run. Casanova exemplifies Morrison's "super-compressed" ideas with aplomb. All while touching a lot of fun culture touchstones.
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Monday, May 01, 2006
The Fate of the Artist
Ha, you all thought you were rid of me for good, didn't you? Sorry to spoil the fun, I'm still here. I can only tell you that when you're in the middle of very boring real world matters fun things like blogging about funnybooks get pretty low on the priority list. That sort of ties into the book reivewed below. The good news is I'm finishing up my junior year of college, moving into a new place, am continuing writing for places that actually pay me and sometimes live, laugh and love in the City by the Bay. But you know I can't go too long without running my mouth off about comics here. Why not start with a book felt almost impossible to review?
In his Comics Journal interview Chris Ware noted how stunned and grateful he was that Gary Panter would tell him that Ware’s generation of cartoonists have set the bar for older generations. One older cartoonist who seems to be picking up some tips from Ware in particular is Eddie Campbell. Fate of the Artist reads a bit like Acme Novelty Library with Campbell changing media throughout the book but processing the same ideas.
Campbell starts the book missing, with a detective on the lookout for him. We learn from interviews with the Campbell clan what Campbell’s life was like. A lot is revealed early on during a fumetti featuring the lovely Hayley Campbell explaining her take on her father. The picture (or rather pictures) of Campbell is that of a household Hamlet. He is full of thoughts about art, humor and life and yet seems to have trouble with proper human interaction. The Honeybee strip is a parody of the many “dumb husband/snarky wife” strips there have been in comics’ history except in this context it seems like serious stuff placed next to Campbell’s real life. Or maybe it makes Campbell’s real life seem much more comedic.
The book’s format is Campbell’s scatterbrain put on paper. No one strip is used for too long and even the parody strips are only two panels long (until Honeybee gets a full page in the Sunday edition of whatever paper it would appear in). Even the straight autobiography becomes more complex as we find there are really actors playing the roles of the Campbells. We use to have Alec to stand in for Campbell, now he it is struggling actor Richard Siegrist. As Campbell’s own recent Comics Journal interview shows, Campbell likes to define and examine what is and isn’t a comic or graphic novel. Anyone else who likes to play along will have a field day here. It’s that love for comics that gives all of Campbell’s experimentation a very real emotional element. It’s through this work, the work that seems to distract his mind from the pragmatic parts of life, which he can communicate his problems with the rest of the world with and the problems he deals with the ones he is closest to. Even with Campbell’s body missing throughout the book his mentality rules it. From the stories in here Campbell seemed to be in danger of just being a brain on legs, so either the body or soul had to go. We find out which won that match in the end.
The story ends with a remix of an O. Henry story about a humorist with Eddie Campbell acting as the protagonist, a newspaper humorist. Our hero finds that when art becomes one’s life both seem to suffer. Dedicating one’s life to the abstract cuts oneself from the rest of the world. The humorist is only content when he gets a job at the laugh-a-minute field of funeral services and uses his humor as a tool for greater business. It’s a cynical idea of what the fate of an artist is and one I suspect Campbell doesn’t fully believe in (he hasn’t given up cartooning and is doing another book for First Second). This fate of the artist seen here still holds a lot of truth to it.
Permanent Link: 7:39 PM |
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