Hey there readers. With midterms going full steam I haven't had time to update the blog, and after The Great Kate fixed the RSS feed no less. I've decided to republish a review I did in 2004 of Rick Veitch's Abraxas the Earthman because it was released in trade paperback yesterday from Veitch's King Hell Press. You can read an eight page preview here. I think Veitch is as underrated as he is creative and I'm glad to see his creator-owned work as well as his Swamp Thing comics be available once more. Enjoy this review, I hope it gets you to check out this book.
(As an aside I wonder if it would be worthwhile to take a look at the writers like Veitch, J.M. DeMatteis, Steve Gerber and others who created works that had spiritual and creative outlooks that would see success with the British Vertigo writers. "Fathers of Vertigo?" I don't know just thinking out loud)
Today let's look at the Abraxas and the Earthman serial that appeared in Epic Illustrated. It's one of the best works by one of my favorite comic book artists, Rick Veitch.
The skeleton of the story is an interpretation of Melville's Moby Dick. It concerns a Captain Rotwang's mad obsession over hunting a whale, the Abraxas of the title. It just happens that Rotwang is just one of the many weird alien creatures that populate the book and Abraxas is just one of the many flying space whales that hover over the planet the book takes place on. Rotwang is just one part of the story. The main character of the book is one of the two earthmen abducted by Rotwang, John Isaac. It seems Isaac has had all his skin removed by Xlexu Surgeons, giant and super-smart praying mantises, so that it can be replaced by an invisible aura that will help Rotwang catch Abraxas. The other earthman is the captain of the submarine scientist Isaac was on, Falco. He gets decapitated so his body can mechanically load coal into the ship's engine. His head is still around and sentient but it spends most of its time getting thrown around. All this plus a sphinx woman and giant shmoo-like groupies. This serial certainly feels like Veitch is pulling out every last piece of his imagination into it. It's what makes it one of his best works.
It's Veitch's celebration of his own grotesque creations that remains the most memorable part of the book. I have always felt that Veitch's artwork has on off-kilter feel to it. It often times looks like one part Jack Kirby and one part Tijuana Bible. It might be a turn-off to some but since Veitch's work like this, Brat Pack and The One seem to work well with his weird style I've enjoyed it. Abraxas, with its protagonist that has no skin and aliens that are weirder than the next, takes the most advantage of this bizarre style. This mix of the gross and the psychedelic benefits what this story gets at. Isaac refuses to go along with Rotwang's plan to slaughter whales and instead uses his heightened sense of aura to become one with Abraxas and soon the entire universe.
It's that mysticism that ultimately defines Abraxas. Captain Rotwang is the Ahab whose mania over this whale drives other to around him to their death and himself into further insanity. It is because of the Xlexu Surgeon's modifications to him that Isaac sees a way out of the simple world of Rotwang's (and the military man Falco's). Rotwang lives a life that is defined by opposing or dominating one thing or another be those things hunting whales or commanding men. It's view of life that man in the world, certainly the Western world, subscribes to. Isaac can now see a way out of a life of constant conflict because he is now in touch with the pain of Abraxas and the other whales Rotwang hunts down. Abraxas and the Earthmen, like Veitch's Cold War story The One, is about finding a better way out of the us v. them or left v. right dichotomy. It doesn't take the stand that Isaac and others should go up against Rotwang. If that would happen then they would all be part of the same vicious cycle of aggression. "To fight the empire is to be infected by its derangement" as old Phil Dick would have us know. It seems clear that Veitch would agree with this.
Even though Veitch owns Abraxas there doesn't seem to be any plans to reprint it in trade paperback form. You can hunt down the issues of Epic Illustrated it appeared in (10 through 17) or see if you can download it through Bit Torrent. It's worth the hunt as it is like few other stories you will read. Permanent Link: 12:24 PM |
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Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Can we make Jeff Parker President of the Universe now?
It's not enough that Agents of Atlas and X-Men: First Class keep the spirit of traditional "fun adventures" Marvel alive when hardly anyone else (besides Dan Slott) is interested. Now Parker gives us this (from Newsarma's Marvel solicitations):
In the October 12th edition of Journalista! Dirk Deppey goes over the professional resentment to manga by Westerners. I will now look at the personal side, how readers resist one of the most vibrant, if not the most vibrant, aspect of comics culture today.
But first let me tell you how I see books.
I see most books like pistachio nuts. I read them from cover to cover. I digest the content and mix it with my own interpretations. I feel a work isn't truly complete until it resides in a reader's subjective memory. Once I have fully absorbed a book's innards, the nut, I no longer have any use for the shell. There are books that I come back to because I think they are so good they offer multiple and varied reading experiences. I find re-reading Black Hole and Daredevil: Born Again was rewarding as it was when I first read those books. Yet most books I read give me a singular reading pleasure (or displeasure as the case may be) and never go beyond that. The next step is heading to one of San Francisco's fine used bookstores. I make good use of these stores because I find that it is much more important for me to have a few dollars for lunch than it is to have Batman and the Monster Men, as much as I enjoyed, staring back at me from the bookshelf.
Many manga titles are amongst the books I read. I've enjoyed Anne Freaks, MBQ, Dragon Head and Golgo 13. As much as I enjoyed them I need to pay for my groceries on a college student/freelance writer's budget and that means some lucky shopper at Green Apple Books is going to read about the world's greatest assassin in space or Japanese schoolchildren driven to mania trapped in a subway tunnel. Or they would if these bookstores bought manga. They don't, at least not for the most part. They'll buy the trades of superhero books, classic comic strips, alternative works and seemingly anything else (believe me, I've spent plenty of times in many store's graphic novel sections) but, as I've been told by a book buyer, these stores are very particular about what manga they will buy. The Golgo stuff barely got through, Star Trek manga got sold just through the sheer novelty of the product but all the other books I've been trying to get rid of are rejected. Manga doesn't sell to these used bookstore customers. Which is odd because in the chain bookstores I go to, and I'm sure you've found this to be true as well, manga makes up the majority of the shelf space.
I wonder where this difference comes from. My mind races back to the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con. The Shoujo issue of The Comics Journal had been released early for the convention. I had contributed an article and a review, honored to be listed alongside Jog, Johanna Draper-Carlson, Steven Grant and many of the issue's fine contributors. Dirk told me that manga fans he would show the issue to loved it. The reaction from other comic fans was quite different. Many of those shopping at Fantagraphics' table, who you would think would have a fine and eclectic taste in comics given the company's output, were off-put by the Moto Hagio cover (for the record A, A' is another book I am not willing to part with). I've seen it happened many times. Readers I know who read and enjoy many types of comics are repelled by their superficial impressions of manga. From the art to the size of the books manga is "other." Some misguided comic pundits have even declared that manga is "not comics." I fear it is this type of reader who makes up most of the clientele of the used bookstores I sell to.
I will admit that I felt the same way in my teen years when I started to refine my taste in comics. I thought I was ready for everything but something about seeing Oh! My Goddess, one of Dark Horse's most popular titles at the time, just seemed like something worlds away from me. It wasn't until I read Fredrick Schodt's excellent Dreamland Japan after seeing Paul Pope recommend it in an issue of 100% did I really immerse myself in manga. Now I can't imagine not exploring the works of Osamu Tezuka, Junko Mizuno and Naoki Urasawa, whose Monster is my favorite continuing series second only to Casanova.
I can't expect anyone to shake up their taste in comics or anything else for anyone's reason expect their own. Still, I think it is important as a reader to go towards that which you first resist. I didn't wait for a manga title that was compatible with the Western comics I was reading (some of them, like Pope's work, already bore a manga influence). I surveyed what was out there and found myself attracted to the books that in one manner contained features I look for in most of what I read but also contained ideas I had never seen before.
I don't expect the comic reading intelligentsia of the Bay Area to go from enjoying Chris Ware's 826 Valencia mural to savoring Tokyo Tribes (although speaking as a "protege" of some kind of McSweeney's I can assure you the leap can be made safely). Still, I wish people wouldn't count an entire countries vast history of comics out. There are plenty of great books out there. Believe me, I've got a few I could get rid off. Permanent Link: 9:36 PM |
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Monday, October 09, 2006
Scattered thoughts on The Depahted
Look out folks, there be spoilers here!
1. I'm pretty sure the cell phone was invented just for this film. I know they've been around for twenty or so years now but I think it was all leading up to that scene where Matt Damon calls Leonardo DiCaprio on Martin Sheen's bloody cell phone, DiCaprio's cell phone lurches towards him on vibrate and then they're both on the line to each other, only communicating silence. A great scene in a film filled with great scenes.
2. The previous Scorsese film this most echoes is Goodfellas. Fine by me, I watch Goodfellas about once a month, sometimes more (hey, look at that). DiCaprio's storyline as cop-playing-gangster William Costigan Jr. felt like the "Death of a Wiseguy" scene at the end of Goodfellas held for the length of the film. He's as paranoid as Ray Liotta's Henry Hill (and of course both of them should be). Costigan downs Oxycontin like Hill ingests Valium and cocaine. One of the best things about that Goodfellas scene is how music is used in the background to create tension. The same technique shows up in many scenes in The Departed. I loved John Lennon screaming "Well Well Well" while DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson discussed, amongst other less savory topics, Lennon himself. Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" is also put to great use and you can never go wrong with "Gimmie Shelter."
4. I know the film is based on Hong Kong's Infernal Affairs (rising on my Netflix queue I assure you) but changing the setting to Boston and the Irish Mob gave it a real interesting subtext. The film is most concerned with men and one woman living in between the very rigid sides of law and crime. Nicholson's Frank Costello tells us right at the beginning "When you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference" between cop and criminal? That conflict the main players have to deal with reminds me of an important part of the American Immigrate Experience. Irish-Americans, a group I am a part of on my mother's side, were once disenfranchised. Now by all outward appearance they seem to have been assimilated into mainstream White society. But that history of an excluded community creating their own system, the birth of almost all organized crime in this country and beyond, still exists as long as people like Costello exist. Costigan and Matt Damon's Colin Sullivan live in both the world of respectable society Irish-Americans are a part of and the underworld that was once the only option the community had. This historical/political angle is only really examined in Nicholson's opening scene with a young Sullivan and when Martin Sheen's Oliver Queenan and Mark Whalberg's Dignam go over Costigan's double-sided family history. It's still one of permeating the "dreadful ambiguities [that] coarsen the soul" as Scott Tobias points out.
4. Although the most important things to take from that opening scene: Wolverine comics will lead to a life of crime.
So yeah, as pointed out by an army of film critics this is Scorsese coming back to what he does best in Goodfellas, Casino, Taxi Driver and Mean Streets. I enjoyed The Aviator more than most but I was still glad to see Marty bringing a still vital, vibrant sense of storytelling to the crime genre after so many years. I actually thought this was more of a thriller than the other films were, most notably in that great, great scene where Costigan tracks down Sullivan in the Asian neighborhood. All the surveillance and by extension voyeurism is thematically related to Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma's films. Scorsese is more interested in internal conflicts than genre expectations though. After seeing the film once (I might see it again while it's still in theatres) the scenes that standout to me are Costigan realizing is doom after witnessing Queenan's body on the ground and Sullivan futilely pleading to his wife outside the door after she learns the truth about him. Both scenes are of men knowing that the balancing act they've been trying to keep up has gotten the best of them and now only punishment is ahead of them. Permanent Link: 7:36 AM |
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