Robot 6
Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: Fringe Benefits RIP
- Posted on January 7, 2009 - 06:59 AM by Michael May
One of my favorite people in the comics biz is DC editor Rachel Gluckstern. I know Rachel from when we both wrote for Comic World News and I love her enthusiasm for awesome comics. It was probably about this time last year that Rachel wrote in a DC Nation article that her goal for the year was to bring about a comic with talking gorillas riding dinosaurs and – sure enough – before the year was out she’d done it. Only she and writer Sholly Fisch had gone one better and made them cowboy gorillas riding dinosaurs… in space.
Super Friends #5
Those, my friends, are the kind of comics I want to talk about. They’re the kinds of comics I want to read. I also love deep, meaningful comics that make you think and feel; I just don't see why they can't have pirates and lion-men in them. The comics that really get me going are the ones with gorillas riding dinosaurs. The ones with people punching sharks in the face. With remote-controlled polar bears.
When the Great Curve first moved to Newsarama, I figured that a lot of our readers were going to be superhero fans. And since we already had Tom and Carla covering DC and Marvel on a weekly basis, I naïvely and foolishly volunteered to talk about Everything Else. I fumbled around for a definition of the kind of books I wanted to cover and finally settled on “fringe.” As in, “not mainstream.” As in, not Marvel or DC. I was trying to avoid using words like “independent” or “alternative,” because they come with lots of baggage, but in hindsight “fringe” didn’t work any better.
Femme Noir
Because the thing is, if the Newsarama blog was ever something that catered primarily to superhero fans; that soon changed. Hell, the whole comics culture changed – or maybe just my perception of it – and the Everything Else category was no longer fringe at all. I became dissatisfied with the name Fringe Benefits because it seemed to imply that I was out there on the cutting edge of comics digging up new stuff to recommend and I never really thought that was true.
But… new year, new blog; new column.
I don’t have any pretension about the comics I like being undiscovered territory for you guys. What I hope to do is to highlight the coolest comics and maybe get some discussion going about them. I’d love it if doing that will introduce new readers to worthy comics like Femme Noir or remind everyone how awesome Atomic Robo is, but I’ll also be happy if we just get a bunch of people talking about how much they still love Hellboy.
Atomic Robo
Unfortunately, I still don’t have a name for the kinds of books I’ll be discussing here. That may be worth a contest or something in the future. But in general terms, we’re talking about adventure comics with a heavy bias towards independents (i.e. not corporate-owned). Though if there’s a cool DC or Marvel book that I feel is being ignored, I’ll try to get JK to let me talk about that too. (I still feel bad about never finding a forum to praise Russell Lissau’s writing on The Batman Strikes).
There’s a lot of cool stuff out there and a lot more coming (I’m looking expectantly at you, Amber Atoms and Johnny Monster). I’m going to get back into the habit of going through Previews every month looking for promising new series and collections and I’ll invite you to help out by mentioning things you’re looking forward to that I missed. I’d love to see this become an interactive column.
Amber Atoms
But mostly, I want this to be a celebration of great adventure-comics. Comics that are bursting their staples and glue with fantastic ideas come to beautifully illustrated life. Comics that epitomize what Atomic Robo’s Brian Clevinger was talking about when he wrote my favorite quote from last year, “Sorry, hypothetical reviewer, you can find your decompressed comics filled with turgid dialog elsewhere. We’re too busy making a robot punch other robots to bother with that junk.”
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13 Comments
Kat Kan
January 7, 2009 at 7:34 am
You're basically covering the fun stuff, as far as I'm concerned. These are the books I like to read, too.
Mysterious Stranger
January 7, 2009 at 9:28 am
"These Books Are FUN!!!" There's your new column title. From what I can tell it sums up what you're going to be writing about in this column pretty well. It leaves it open to any book that you think is fun regardless of publisher and it doesn't pigeonhole you into the "fringe" or "indy" or "alternative" stereotype.
Also if you want to rave about a DC or Marvel book you think is fun, please, by all means do so! Most of the coverage I see is all about the latest "event" books from the Big 2 so I miss some of the good fun books they put out. Like the Super Friends issue you mentioned here. I LOVE gorillas (well all apes really) so I'll be hunting down this issue just for the fun of it. Had you not said anything about it I would have missed it completely.
And given all the "hype" and "good buzz" I've been seeing about Atomic Robo, I'll be back issue diving when I go for my pulls this week. So thanks for that
Michael May
January 7, 2009 at 11:14 am
If I can turn one new person onto Atomic Robo or Super Friends, my work here is done. Thanks for the comments!
Sluggo
January 7, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Hey, not to be too obvious here, but what exactly is wrong with "Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs" as your title?
Mysterious Stranger
January 7, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Sluggo - "Hey, not to be too obvious here, but what exactly is wrong with “Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs” as your title?"
oooOOOoooo good one! I like that one better than mine. I thought about suggesting it too but like Sluggo didn't want to be too obvious. But yeah, Gorrillas Riding Dinosaurs is perfect! Though Cowboy Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs ... IN SPACE! would be even better, it's a bit too wordy for a blog.
Sending an email to my comic book guy today to pull whatever back issues he has of Atomic Robo for me. Super Friends I think I'll just try the CGRDIS!!! issue for now. It's a light week for pulls for me this week but the Atomic Robo issues might eat up my budget for this week.
Michael May
January 7, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Heh! I'm sorry I didn't make it clear, but Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs IS the name of the column. If that had been a contest, you'd both be the winners of it.
What I'm still trying to figure out is a name for this category of comics. I thought about "genre comics," but that includes stuff like serious horror and hard science fiction. And while I LIKE a lot of that stuff, it's not really in the same category as what we're talking about here. So far, I like "fun comics" the best, but I'm not ready to quit looking yet...
Michael May
January 7, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Sending an email to my comic book guy today to pull whatever back issues he has of Atomic Robo for me.
You just made my week. Seriously.
Charles Raymond
January 7, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Hey Michael!
So glad to see the group of you have found a new home!
Looking forward to many great posts from you!
Scott Wegener
January 8, 2009 at 6:57 am
Any day that Robo gets mentioned in company with talking gorillas riding dinosaurs (in space!) is a good day. Team Robo is pleased as punch.
Christopher Mills
January 8, 2009 at 8:45 pm
As you are well aware, these are my favorite kinds of comics, too!
The new digs look great!
Sluggo
January 9, 2009 at 8:38 am
Man, I really feel dense. And I think a good name for this genre is simply "adventure comics". That has a broad enough meaning, and could cover lots of cross-genre activity without being too specific, but still excludes anything too dark or depressing, as adventure speaks to activity and doing things and going places, which are usually associated with fun, for readers if not always for characters.
I seriously think this is going to end up as one of my favorite features. Amber Atoms, Johnny Monster, Atomic Robo, Killer of Demons (violent, but still looks like fun, unless we're going for a more all-ages vibe), Batman: Brave and the Bold (All the Johnny DC titles really), Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova, Incredible Hercules: All of these and more fit into the category, I think.
I look forward to reading about more that I've never even heard of.
Michael May
January 9, 2009 at 12:57 pm
"I seriously think this is going to end up as one of my favorite features."
I hope so. You just listed most of my favorite comics and threw in a couple that I haven't checked out yet like Killer of Demons and Nova.
Though I love all ages comics (I've got a six-year-old son), I'm not limiting the column to just those. Seems like my favorite stuff is usually also appropriate for kids, but I'm not making it a rule or anything.
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