Amazing Spider-Man #666

Today our special guest is the recently married Akira the Don, a musician and artist whose latest album, The Life Equation, can be heard on his website.

To see what Akira the Don and the Robot 6 crew are reading, click below.

*****

Michael May

Alpha Flight #2

I finally caught up with Alpha Flight #2 this week with the return of Puck. I like the way he’s a little unhinged after his time in Hell with Wolverine. He should be unhinged after that. But he’s also still very much Puck, and I appreciate that even more. In the Unity Party, Van Lente and Pak have created a group of villains that I’m learning to hate with relish. They’re not as overtly cool as, say, the Master, but they hit where it hurts most,and I’m looking forward to their comeuppance.

I also read Mystery Men #3 and though I’m not souring on the project, I’m not as excited as I was after the first issue. It keeps introducing new characters to join the team and while they’re interesting, there are already so many of them that no one’s getting the attention they deserve. Hopefully we’re done adding members now and the next couple of issues will let us get to know them better and tie everything together.

As I read The Vault #1, it felt very much like an adaptation of a movie that hasn’t been made yet. There’s a diverse cast of characters in a tense setting and a cool reveal of the high concept on the last page, but the story that ties it all together feels clipped. Like it’s just hitting the high points from a movie script without taking the time to get me invested in any of the characters. Now that I know that it’s already being developed as a movie, that all makes sense. It very much reads like a comic that was created specifically to pitch a film, even if it’s not. I think I’ll wait to see the rest of it in that format.

Ending the week on a high note though, I read Cole Haddon and MS Corley’s The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde #1. It’s like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen except I don’t need annotations to feel like I’m getting the whole story. Haddon includes some cool cameos in the script (Hello, Dr. Moreau!)  and Corley’s artwork is even sort of reminiscent of Kevin O’Neill. A different way to sum it up – Hollywood style – is Silence of the Lambs meets From Hell with Jack the Ripper as Buffalo Bill and Mr. Hyde’s taking the place of Hannibal Lector. That description captures none of the charm and action of the finished comic though. Inspector Thomas Adye is a serious young man, but there’s some very subdued humor in his weariness and that makes him likable. Haddon and Corley also know how to present a creepy Ripper and lay out a mean Underground chase sequence. I’m very excited to catch up on the rest of the series this week.

Brigid Alverson

Black Jack

Vertical puts out a new volume of Black Jack every two months, so you can count on that being on my stack every two months as well. Volume 15 is a little odd. The first story mixes violence and sentimentality in almost equal measures as thugs torture Black Jack to find out where his money is stashed, and it turns out that (spoiler alert!) he spent it on an island tomb for a dear friend. Another story sermonizes about the evils of plastic surgery. Still, the stories are entertaining and you can’t beat Black Jack for some good summer pulp.

Still in the manga realm, I got an advance look at one of Kodansha’s new series debuting in August: Cage of Eden is a sort of cross between Lord of the Flies and Jurassic Park; a planeload of teenagers crashes on a remote island filled with prehistoric creatures—some large and bloodthirsty, some small and cute. Ordinary guy Akira, his brainy friend Mariya (whose laptop, thankfully, survives the crash—it’s the manga equivalent of Piggy’s spectacles), and perpetually bewildered but well-endowed flight attendant Kanako are somehow ejected from the plane, and they learn of their companions’ fate from a video left in a video camera. With prehistoric-animal violence, a weird mystery, and plenty of fanservice, it’s manga doing what manga does best.

In complete contrast to this, Allen Say’s Drawing from Memory is a lovely, quiet, beautifully drawn memoir of a boy who wanted to draw manga. It’s a picture book for older readers, filled with sketches, photographs, and illustrations of the people in Say’s life. This is not a shonen manga—there is no noble struggle, no shaking of fists and vows to be the best manga-ka ever—just the story of a lonely boy who was more or less abandoned by his parents and taken in as a student by a kindly older man who just happened to be drawing one of the most popular manga in Japan at the time (1950). It’s an unusual book and presents a very different view of the manga industry than what we are accustomed to seeing.

Tim O’Shea

Team Cul de Sac

Favorites: The Team Cul de Sac Fanzine/benefit book is an impressive collection (edited by my pal, blogger/scholar Craig Fischer [http://thepanelists.org/]). Don’t ask me to pick my favorite essay, the fanboy in me digs Ben Towle’s dissection of Archie Goodwin/Walt Simonson’s Manhunter; the critic in me was shocked to discover that both Noah Berlatsky and I share an appreciation for Jim Aparo; and there’s a tie (between Ana Merino and Sean Kleefeld) for the most engaging personal essays about people impacted by reading comics. It’s a hell of a 40-page read for a damn fine cause. As detailed at the website: “The cost is $5.00 plus $1.25 shipping and handling. (All the money that isn’t spent on envelopes and postage will go to Team Cul de Sac, and research into a cure for Parkinson’s disease.)” And any Richard Thompson fan will love the cover.

Superman #714: Sigh. As much as Chris Roberson salvaged a crappy JMS storyline and made it a delightful read, I hate hate hate that this storyline was the sendoff to the current incarnation of Superman. I would have enjoyed seeing what Roberson might explore with the whole “Supermen of America” network (which included several superwomen, despite the name). I have to say the plot resolution for Grounded had a Silver Age vibe to it–not sure if that is thanks to Roberson or JMS, but I did get a slight pleasure from that. Sadly I do not think Grounded will be looked back with fondness in the way many of us view 1986′s Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

Hulk #38: Jeff Parker is one sneaky bastard as he actually has figured out a way to write a new improved M.O.D.O.K. that wields as much wit as he has power–and possibly (God help us, introduce an opportunity for a love life. I’m not really digging this whole Fear Itself event, but I do appreciate the ability of some creators (like Parker) to build engaging tales out of the ruins of this event. Fellow Hulk fans, has Annie always called Red Hulk “Thad” or is this an acknowledgment of increasing affection on the LMD’s part?

Snarked #0: Roger Langridge is the best creator producing All Ages comics. This special issue is a bargain at $1.00. Rather than sound like a stuck record, go back and read the intro to my Langridge interview to see how highly I regard this new creator-owned project.

Akira the Don

Wide World of Marvel

Mighty World Of Marvel

I was pulled back into the Marvel Universe after a multi-year post -Civil War hiatus by one of these ill-ass Panini collections us Britishers can pick up in newsagents. I’d woken up on the floor of a strange house in Brixton the day after my bachelor party and had a 70 minute bus ride back to Olympic East London with the Godfather of all hangovers and a borked back (I had inexplicably decided I had superpowers and thrown myself down a flight of stairs on the way out of whatever club we’d ended up at the previous night), so I needed something engrossing to take my mind of the almighty pain and shame that clung to my personage like bricks. I fell into a newsagent, pulled myself up on my elbows and was faced with the leering face of Norman Osborne in an Iron Man suit clutching A COSMIC CUBE with shapeshifting asshole Hank Pym in it.

“Woah,” I said, softly. I apologised to the newsagent, bought the comic, and hauled my sorry carcass onto the top of a double decker, where my world of pain became a world of joy, as I fell back into a familiar world of espionage and lunacy told across 76 beautiful pages of ridiculous fights involving seventeen weirdoes in tights swapping bad jokes and punching the crap out of each other.

Stuff was much as I remembered it, except the bad guys seem to be running the world which seems to me to be at once a way more realistic and way more fun state for a superhero universe to be in. And that was it. I thought I was out, but they’d pulled me back in again…

Amazing Spider-Man #666

Now, a few months later, I am reading flipping Spider-Man for the first time in a decade, and it seems to be in better shape than its been since JM DeMatteis and Sal Buscema were killing off the Vulture and I was waiting for my balls to sprout hair. It is SO FLIPPING FUN. Peter Parker is young again, spending seemingly 24 hours a day swinging around Manhattan being flipping Spider-Man, rather than mooning about over his wife or whatever it was that bored me to the point of not reading it anymore a decade or so ago. He’s in the Fantastic Four. He’s in the Avengers (who sit around being seedy and playing cards). He says things like, “But first things first. A quick adjustment to my unstable molecule suit”, and does actual science.

Spider-world is a great big maniacal smorgasbord of action and intrigue. Some unspeakable supervillianous fakery means that bedbugs are giving people spider powers, and Manhattan is crawling with souped-up web spinners. Meanwhile sometime spider-boo Betty Brant is a self proclaimed “one woman newsblog” blogging from hospital much to the chagrin of her boyfriend FLASH FLIPPING THOMPSON who protests, “Betts! You were targeted by the Crime meter! Strapped to a bomb! And the recent victim of a violent assault!” FLASH FLIPPING THOMPSON meanwhile is flipping VENOM, doing sneaky superviolent CIA type shit for the government. Sweet baby jesus on a hoverboard, it is nuts in Spiderland! Beautifully drawn, deceptively simple but cleverly interwoven nuts that never feels cluttered, or confusing, or anything other than delirious FUN. Damn! I thought I was out…

Cerebus: Guys

Cerebus passed me by in the, um, past, apart from when he turned up in Spawn that one time, but last year one of my reader listeners started sending me the phone books every few months, and I got hooked instantly, and am now over half way through the thing.

What a ride it’s been! From Conan parody to the meaning of life and the birth of the universe, via some of the most gripping character envelopment and the greatest speech bubbles in comics history. It even stopped being a comic a few phone books back and turned into a great big angry patience-testing lady-lambasting wah-fest presumably inspired by the writer’s divorce, or something, but in Guys it is back on track, and a comic once more, exploring with documentary-detail and almost clinical attentiveness the nature of the Male in one of his natural habitats: the pub. Indeed, 407 pages of dudes sat around in a pub drinking and thinking and occasionally falling of bar stools might not sound like the most riveting thing in the world, yet somehow it is. It is sad, sweet, ugly, beautiful and unflinchingly raw meditation on the triumph and tragedy of the conditioned human male. With some jaw-droppingly amazing speech bubbles.

Batman and Robin Must Die

Batman and Robin Must Die

I just got back off of honeymoon, which myself and my new wife spent on a tiny Greek island, frolicking in the surf and reading Grant Morrison’s Batman and Robin run in its glorious entirety in the hotel pool on a lilo. I’d been Waiting For The Trade on the thing since the third issue… the month plus wait for a new issue was was proving too painful and distracting, so I hung a poster of the first issue’s cover on the wall above my twin monitors as a sort of inspirational sigil and left it alone for a year, in which time I made five mixtapes and completed my second album, knowing my reward was imminent.

And what a reward. It looks better than any superhero comics in recent memory, From Frank Quitely’s scratch scratchy all action carnie-ballet at the start to Frazer Irving’s Warhol-With-Photoshop Korean horror movie climax. And it reads like some all consuming Hitchcockian revenge fantasy, the story deepening and spiraling further with every page turn, a thrashing multi-layered abyss-dream with so many OH FUCK moments I had jaw ache by the end of the thing. I read it three times over in a week and if I were still out there on that fucking paradise island I would probably still be reading it, and still finding new things to go OH FUCK at.

My only complaint is the brevity of Tim and Damian’s tenure before Pappa Bruce swashbuckles back into the picture. I could have had years of those two finding their way, but never mind. By the time I’ve finished another fistful of mixtures and my third album, the Multiversity will have explained away the DC Universe Reboot, or whatever they’re calling it, and there’ll be three trades worth of Batman Inc stories for me to enjoy on a lilo on some tropical island I’ve bought with the proceeds of my second album. I better switch the poster above my desk…

Cerebus

But the main impediment to Dave Sim’s literary reputation is Dave Sim himself. His regressive social and political views and obnoxious rhetoric have created a public persona that’s eclipsed his artistic achievement in the comics world much more completely than it would have in the larger, less insular artistic world — where, for example, plenty of people call John Updike a chauvinist but not even his bitterest detractors question his mastery as a prose stylist, where Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ill-advised statement about 9/11 being a work of art didn’t get him ejected from the first rank of postwar composers, and artists like Wagner and Pound are still secure in their respective pantheons despite having endorsed ideas that are, to put it charitably, pretty well discredited.

But Sim’s controversial ideas are not peripheral to his work; he ultimately makes them its central message and purpose. Wagner never actually wrote any operas about the villainy of the Jews, nor Pound cantos praising the wise and just rule of Franco, but Sim incorporated his screeds about women and the tenets of his one-man religion into the text of his novel, so that even a reader determined to ignore all the apocryphal gossipy bullshit accumulated around the artist and concentrate on the work itself is finally forced to confront the fact that the man has some bizarre ideas and an abrasive way of expressing them.

–Tim Kreider, in his must-read introduction to a longer essay on Dave Sim’s seminal (in more ways than one) independent comic Cerebus from The Comics Journal #301. (I made this exact point, complete with the Wagner example, a few years back.) It’s one thing to be an artist with odious ideas unrelated or tangential to your art; it’s quite another to make them your art’s main attraction. Kudos to Kreider for drawing the distinction so clearly.

That said, Kreider’s piece also contains the single best explanation I’ve seen for why you would want to read Cerebus: Its authors resolute determination to follow his bliss, and to better himself as an artist in order to keep up with it.

In the early, sword-and-sorcery issues of Cerebus, Dave Sim drew about as well as the second- or third-best artist in your high school, the guy you’d ask to do the cover for your heavy metal band’s album or airbrush the side of your van. After drawing about a hundred issues, by the time he’d finished Volume II of Church & State — around the same time he hired a brilliant and apparently indefatigable draftsman named Gerhard as his background artist, freeing himself to concentrate exclusively on his characters — Dave Sim had become one of the best cartoonists in North America. And not just in the excellence of his technical skill — he was relentlessly inventive and virtuosic. His exuberant formal experimentation extended from his lettering and paneling to the design of whole issues: Readers puzzled and wowed over the issues in which each page’s background was a fragment of one large picture of Cerebus, or the spinning of an ascending tower was reflected by the page layout rotating several degrees on each page, so that you had to slowly turn the whole book 360º in your hands in the course of reading it. “Thou shalt break every law in the book,” was his injunction to himself.

Sim was also a smart and voracious autodidact (he dropped out of high school after grade 11), and, as he matured, his intellectual passions grew beyond comics, and his artistic ambitions far beyond parody. The single-issue stories expanded into longer and longer story arcs, gradually growing into full-length, 500-page novels. As he continued drawing Cerebus, Sim incorporated everything that captured his interest into the book: He became interested in the mechanics of electoral politics, and Cerebus ran for Prime Minister; he got interested in the history of religion, and Cerebus became the Pope; as Sim’s literary tastes became more sophisticated, Cerebus encountered incarnations of Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway. He insatiably appropriated not only literary, historic and political figures, but fictional characters and screen personae, the likenesses of friends and colleagues, other authors’ prose styles, even another cartoonist’s dialogue in a manner that would’ve been called postmodern if he’d had an MFA. He wrote books within books, invented intricate political ideologies, created whole cosmologies. Throughout all of which the book’s central character remained the same anthropomorphized aardvark.

Kreider essentially argues that Cerebus was always about Dave Sim; this is what made the comic so fascinating for so long, and what undid it in the end.

An early drawing of Lois Lane by Joe Shuster, who used Joanne Siegel as a model

Passings | As Comic Book Resources reported, Joanne Siegel, wife of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and the model for Lois Lane, passed away Monday in California. She was 93. Although news of her death first circulated online via Brad Meltzer’s Twitter account, the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Michael Sangiacomo had the first official report, only hours after he wrote about the installation of signs bearing the honorary street names “Joe Shuster Lane” and “Lois Lane” in the Cleveland neighborhood where Siegel and Shuster created the Man of Steel. CBR’s Kiel Phegley spoke with Meltzer, who met Joanne Siegel while researching his novel The Book of Lies. Heidi MacDonald, meanwhile, has reaction from Bradley Ricca, who’s working on a documentary about the Siegel family. The Hollywood Reporter and The Superman Super Site also have obituaries. More will certainly appear throughout the day. [Comic Book Resources]

Publishing | Acclaimed cartoonist Alison Bechdel (Fun Home, Dykes to Watch Out For) has been named the guest editor of the 2011 edition of The Best American Comics, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. [Shelf Life]

Publishing | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson spotlights the “quiet revolution” at Archie Comics that finds the publisher expanding into graphic novels and digital delivery, further diversifying its characters and tackling more topical issues. [Publishers Weekly]

Comic Relief

Retailing | Comic Relief, the famed Berkeley, Calif., store that’s struggled since the death of founder Rory Root, closed Monday. The inventory and fixtures have been purchased by Jack Rems, founder and owner of Dark Carnival Books. There are plans to open a new store, but it won’t be called Comic Relief. [The Beat]

Broadway | Despite overwhelmingly negative reviews, the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has seen a 3 percent increase in ticket sales, grossing $1.33 million in the past week. It’s the second-highest grossing show on Broadway, behind the long-running Wicked. [Arts Beat]

Creators | Sean Michael Robinson begins a three-part interview with Cerebus collaborator Gerhard. [TCJ.com]

Mike Mignola

Creators | Mike Mignola discusses the setting and architecture of the Hellboy universe: “I have never done a story in a shopping mall because, even if I’m not drawing it myself, I don’t want to see somebody draw a shopping mall. In the Hellboy world, and in other things I’ve done, those places almost don’t exist. When I do Eastern Europe — and I’ve been to Eastern Europe, and I’ve seen the shopping malls and the god-awful housing projects and things, and there are horror stories that take place in there, I have no doubt—but I gravitate toward the classic, clichéd, spooky places, whether they truly exist in this world or not.” [BLDGBLOG, via The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Brian Truitt talks to Top Cow Publisher Filip Sablik and collaborator/longtime friend John Mahoney about the upcoming miniseries Last Mortal. [USA Today]

Comics | Douglas Wolk recommends five comic-book collections to read as an introduction to Marvel Vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds. [Techland]

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. Our guest this week is blogger and critic David Uzumeri, who can be frequently found at Funnybook Babylon, Savage Critics or Comics Alliance. Guy gets around.

And now we have him here as our special WAYR guest! To find out what David and everyone else at the mighty Robot 6 is reading this week, simply click on the link below.

Twin Spica

Brigid Alverson: For some reason, Twin Spica looks much older than it is—the cover has a yellowish cast, and the images of shooting stars have a Sputink-era feel to me. It actually came out in 2000 in Japan, and it has a really timeless, very classic manga feel to it. It’s the story of a young girl, Asumi, who is training to be an astronaut. This first volume is partly a story of the kids making it through the first round of rigorous tests and partly the backstory of Asumi, her family, and the mysterious lion-headed man that only she can see, all of whom have associations with space. It’s a very good read, with plenty of challenges for a  nice assortment of likeable characters, so I’m looking forward to following the whole thing.

Nathan Edmondson gave me an advance peek at the first two issues of The Light, which he is writing and Brett Weldele is illustrating. The story is classic horror—incandescent lights have suddenly developed the power to kill anyone who looks into them. I love the art in this story—in keeping with the theme, the art is very luminous, and Weldele does a nice job of capturing different types of light, such as streetlights against a sky at daybreak, incandescent light on a gray afternoon, or a plane silhouetted against its own lights. The story looks like typical horror: A Terrible Peril has occurred and the hero must flee. Like many horror stories, this seems to assume that the danger is geographically limited—if incandescent lights are emitting a strange virus in one town, wouldn’t that be true everywhere? However, Edmondson quickly sketches out a few strong characters, including an interestingly flawed hero and his obnoxious teenage daughter, which grabbed me right from the start.

The webcomic Cleopatra in Spaaace! flagrantly fails the Zuda Test: Cleopatra and her cat have spent the first 15 pages battling robots, but I have no idea who they are or why they are doing this. Doesn’t matter. Mike Maihack’s lively cartoony art makes this comic a delight to read, and the fact that Cleopatra is now escaping in a space bicycle shaped like The Sphinx gives me hope that there will be much zaniness to come. I liked it so much that I went and checked out Maihack’s earlier comic, Cow and Buffalo, in which the eponymous animals are barnyard superheroes. It’s goofy and funny, and reading the archives should keep me going until the next Cleopatra update.

Artesia Vol. 1

Michael May: I’m going through Mark Smylie’s Artesia series again and just finished the first book. I remember being struck with the beauty of his art the first time around as well as the depth of the world he created. It’s almost too deep a world with all the names of gods, kingdoms, and a huge cast of characters being overwhelming at times. But it’s impossible to let that put you off reading it. The art and characterization pull you through. Artesia herself is a fascinating, seductive character and you can’t not want to spend time with her. And of course, the proper names and plot not only get easier to manage in subsequent readings, but becoming familiar with them also lets you discover nuances that you missed the first time around. If anything, I love it more now than I did when I originally discovered it.

I also read the first issue of Saint James Comics’ Indigo Blue. It’s a dystopian-future story about people who are genetically spliced with animals and end up being hunted. The main character is a half-man/half-dog named Blue who’s an agent in an underground organization trying to fight back against their oppressors. It’s a clever way of doing an anthropomorphic animal comic. When I say that, it reminds me a bit of Elephantmen, but there’s such a different tone to Indigo Blue that comparison is unfair. Unlike the dark, luxuriously paced Elephantmen, Blue is a fast-moving adventure comic. What the two do have in common though is that I like them both quite a bit.

Muppet Show #3

Tim O’Shea: It’s Schrödinger’s cat week for comics apparently. Why? Well, when I opened the latest issue of Roger Langridge’s Muppet Show comic (issue 3 of the ongoing series), I was bewildered and surprised to see the Muppets Lab sketch use the Schrödinger’s cat reference involving Beaker and a number of ties. I saw one of Langridge’s bits involving Fozzie coming from a mile away (as he probably intended). But the writer/artist gave a depth to Fozzie that: A) I never thought was a phrase I would say in reference to a Muppet B) Allowed the issue to end on an incredibly sweet note, which is not one might expect from a bear that personifies vaudeville

Jeff Parker’s approach toward the Avengers (in Avengers vs. Atlas 3) demonstrates yet again his strong grasp of Marvel’s history and character dynamics. I was rolling along enjoying the time travel-based tale, more so because the writer used the characters’ confusion about being displaced in time to clarify the story for readers (for me, time travel stories too often fail because the narrative gets too jumbled to simply follow and enjoy). Then I was slightly bemused when Bob (The Uranian) started explaining Schrödinger’s paradox to Ken (Gorilla Man), but only thought of the Schrödinger coincidence for a second–given that I was enjoying the story. Two other nuances to Parker’s writing to enjoy. At one point in the battle Namora returns Cap’s shield to him (by throwing it in a rampaging Hulk’s face). This prompts Cap to say: “Thanks for getting her back.” I didn’t ever recall it being referred to as having female characteristics before so I asked Parker on Twitter if this something he’d come up with doing. Parker’s response was “Yeah, I’d like that one to catch on!” Secondly I enjoy the manner in which Parker shows what a tight-knit team they are, given that the Atlas team members do not call each other code names in the heat of battle, but rather call each other by their first names.

Imagine my surprise in the midst of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s Nova 35 (with Mahmud A. Asrar and Scott Hanna on art), when Reed Richards started lecturing his fellow heroes about the principle of (wait for it, wait for it…) Schrödinger’s cat. That is right, I pulled the Schrödinger hat trick of comics reading. Or maybe I should call it the Schrödinger turkey. I might have suffered the Schrödinger coincidence in this instance a smidge better, if the quality of art and pacing in this installment had not seemed rushed and somewhat forced.  I’m all for a monthly comic meeting its deadline, but I would be willing to wait a few weeks if it meant the art team could bring a stronger story.

Hercules: Fall of an Avenger 1 (of 2) reminds me of the kind of Marvel comics I read in the 1970s and 1980s (in a good way). I cannot recall the last time I read a Marvel comic that actually referenced previous adventures, complete with footnote references of what issue was being referenced. It was a nuance that warmed the heart of this silly fanboy.

I’m no fan of the X-Men Forever series, given that writer Chris Claremont has an affinity for convoluted continuity. But I was overjoyed when I found out that Louise Simonson was coming back to do an X-Factor Forever five-part miniseries, taking off from when she left the original X-Factor series back in the early 1990s. I like how Simonson views the core X-Factor characters, as evidenced in this late 2009 December CBR interview: “Writing them again is a lot of fun – like visiting with old friends. These characters are ‘retro,’ in that they’re heroic. Sure they’re tortured and flawed, but they try to use the powers they’ve been given to protect the weak and make the world a better place. Even though, sometimes, it’s hard to know what’s right and what’s wrong in an imperfect world.” It’s a series where Hank McCoy has never considered using a litter box, he’s actually happy–he smiles. Sure it’s retro, but it’s the closest that Hank has been to his old Stars-and-Garters self than he has in years. (Speaking of Stars and Garters–you must visit Bully’s Beast/Stars and Garters celebration that he hosted this week — bonus points to Bully for his hilarious Amazon bargain banner)

Befriend and Betray

Matt Maxwell: BEFRIEND AND BETRAY – Alex Caine
How does someone go from blue-collar Montreal to Special Forces to working undercover against drug triads, the KKK and not one but two infamous motorcycle clubs (Los Bandidos and the Hell’s Angels)? If you ever wanted to know, then this is the book to read. As much as I’d like to say this was pleasure reading this was…you guessed it…research. But at least research allows you to read interesting things sometimes.

Spent four solid days on Google for the following keywords:
Maya civilization, Maya priesthood, Tezcatlipoca (who is Aztec, not Maya), Tohil (who is Maya, not Aztec), Maya sacrifice, Maya ritual practice, maya ritual object, modern mayans, life in a Yucatec village, maya cosmology. More often than not, I was doing image searches and then finding related text sites. Google is a truly awesome for breadth of research. I mean, awesome. Depth? Well, not so much, really. Not unless you have membership on various academic sites.

Various translations of the Popul Vuh. Some more interesting than others (yawwwwwn).

Someone needs to do some awesome Mayan comics. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be me.

Oh, started reading SWALLOW ME WHOLE, but I’m going to have to reserve comment until I get through the whole thing. Which should be around Christmas at this rate.

Prison Pit Book One

David Uzumeri: Aside from the standard bevy of weekly comics I buy – which is a lot, usually between 15 and 25 – I’ve been doing a lot of external reading and related watching.

My main reading project, which I’m taking a short break from, is Dave Sim’s infamous Cerebus – an insanely fascinating thing to be coming at from a first-time reader’s angle. I’ve got a longer post coming up this week on Comics Alliance about my experience reading the first two phonebooks, but in short, I’m continually bowled over by the book’s intelligence and creativity. By the time you hit High Society, it’s abundantly clear why the book has the creative legacy it does. It’s a shame about where it’s all going to go, but balancing act between genius and madness and all that.

Johnny Ryan’s Prison Pit is something I keep coming back to – and not just because it’s the only comic book I’ve ever seen that can actively liven up a party. It’s a hilarious, visceral and quick read – if you’ve been reading for fifteen minutes, you’re studying it too hard – and while it’s not something I’d recommend to everybody, it’s still over a hundred glorious pages of Jack Kirby via… shit, I can’t even think of anything as extreme as this. The Postal videogame, maybe. But for really dumb fun, this is pretty much unbeatable. I’ve considered that maybe the fun isn’t as dumb – that maybe Cannibal Fuckface’s journey through the wastes of the prison pit are a Bunyan-style metaphor for, I don’t know, man coming to terms with the restrictions of modern life, but then I remember it’s a comic that features the term “burnt jizz,” and I stop thinking and laugh.

I’m still habitually rereading Grant Morrison’s clockwork-precise Batman run, as well, largely because every new issue seems to reveal new layers in all that’s come before. This book is still a puzzlesolver’s dream, riddled with clues and hints and revealing metaphors. Meanwhile, at Marvel, Jonathan Hickman’s work – especially the excellent Secret Warriors – is doing the same, providing real reread value through careful teasing of the central mystery. Not that this is all of the appeal of these titles – they both feature good character work, excellent pacing, etc. etc. – but the way these titles are almost reader-participatory in the way they disseminate clues is insanely fun.

Finally, I’ve been watching (not comics, but related) the entire Doctor Who/Torchwood sequence, in order because I’m the sort of continuity nut who wants to properly follow plot threads between the two parallel narratives. Until about a month ago I’d never seen an episode in my life, but starting with Eccleston’s first episode I was almost immediately able to interpret aspects of Who continuity as they were introduced by finding incredibly similar comics-related concepts. The “time war” that separates the old production of the show and the new, for instance, is a pretty direct analogue to Crisis on Infinite Earths, filling an almost identical narrative function – to reboot the universe, keeping what the writers liked and dumping what they didn’t. On top of that, though, it’s just clever, rollicking sci-fi action, at its worst entertaining and at its best, like when Steven Moffat or Paul Cornell are writing, thought-provoking and affecting.

Cerebus the Aardvark graffiti

Kris Akwei-Howe probably isn’t familiar with Dave Sim’s landmark Cerebus the Aardvark series, but he’s doing his part to keep him alive via another sort of landmark. The comic character used to adorn a bridge in Blyth, Northumberland, England until the county council cracked down on local graffiti and painted over it.

Now the teenager wants it back, and has started a Facebook group to build support.

It sounds like it’ll be an uphill battle, as the mural’s artist is believed to have passed away and repainting it would be a criminal act, according to the head of neighbourhood services at the Northumberland County Council.

Welcome once again to Send Us Your Shelf Porn. Our guest this week is Marc Mason, newly established PR guru for NBM and proprieter of the Comics Waiting Room Web site.

Remember, you too can be a featured Shelf Porn guest. All you need do is take some photos of your burgeoning comics collection and send them to me at cmautnerATcomcastDOTnet. Feel free to include as much or as little info about yourself and your collection as you like.

And now here’s Marc …

I enjoy this feature very much and thought I’d give it a shot. At this point in my life, I now have over 2000 graphic novels (not to mention plenty of regular comics). Thanks to being a reviewer, my shelves are overflowing! While plenty of these books weren’t review items, many were books I got in trade for comics I no longer wanted or needed. Not sure how this works, but I’ll try to hit some high points…

I don’t own too many action figures, but it just makes sense to have Steel guarding the S-Z shelf. Included here: all of the TRANSMETROPOLITAN, Y THE LAST MAN, STRANGERS IN PARADISE, and SHE-HULK volumes. This bookcase probably has more “mainstream” material than any of my others.

The front part of the alphabet for regular trade paperbacks. Things here include all of the JOHN BYRNE FF VISIONARIES, all the MADMAN trades, each of the volumes of FLIGHT… as you can see, I’m stacking right now because I have no room to add anything new. This problem is only growing as the months pass.

Hardcover land starts here. Plus, over-sized trades, some digest-sized collections and more. In the lower right, you’ll see a ton of minicomics as well. I also have all of the Minx line sitting here. And if that isn’t cool enough? How about statues of Merv Pumpkinhead and the Black Widow? I contain multitudes!

Top row, over-sized hardcovers. I’ll come back to those later. The regular shelves contain 6×9 and smaller books. This is easily the most eclectic bookcase in my collection. Lots of stuff from Oni, Fantagraphics, First Second, NBM, and Top Shelf to be found here. Bottom left you’ll see all the books I have from Lewis Trondheim’s DUNGEON series. I worship Trondheim. Massively. Upper right: statues of Spider Jerusalem (my personal hero) and Harley Quinn. Again- expecting consistency from me isn’t a good idea. J

Couple hundred manga volumes, anyone? Apparently I need to shelve that NOBLE CAUSES book- no idea why that’s sitting there.

The Marvel Essential is probably my favorite format running right now. Plus, it allows me to get the comics I had (and loved) as a kid back into my hands at a cheap price. Also living here: some of the COMPLETE PEANUTS volumes, as well as the complete BUFFY and ANGEL series on DVD.

I’m missing a couple of CEREBUS volumes. The guy I traded with to get 13, 15, and 16 didn’t have the others. Drat.

Top shelf here: the Grant Morrison NEW X-MEN omnibus hardcover. I am certain this is the heaviest book I own. Bright side: potential murder weapon (should I need one).

Back to the over-sized hardcovers. One of the things I love about comics (and my collection in turn) is the eclectic nature of what I enjoy. In a row here I have: the COMPLETE FAR SIDE, the ABSOLUTE edition of Warren Ellis’ AUTHORITY, Fantagraphics’ first POPEYE reprint, and a Chris Ware book. Fun!

Further down this shelf, THE PRO shares space with STRAY BULLETS, THE BOYS, COMIC BOOK TATTOO, and THE PHOTOGRAPHER. Anyone ever tells you that comics don’t have something for everyone, they’re lying. Or ignorant. Set ‘em straight!

A closer look at over-sized trades and the minicomics. Still waiting on one more volume of COMPLETE OMAHA. As for minicomics… they rock. The purest form of comics out there. Anyone can fold a piece of paper in half, write and doodle, hit Kinkos and put their work in front of people. How can you not love that? Even when they suck, you have to respect the effort.

Over-sized manga and the smaller omnibus format Dark Horse and IDW are using. Have I mentioned how much I love omnibus-type books?

Smaller hardcovers. The Ted McKeever books from Image came out really nicely.

So yeah, I have a lot of graphic novels. And running Comics Waiting Room, along with being the p.r. guy for NBM Publishing, means the collection is only going to grow larger. But I don’t see it as a burden- I’m really fortunate to have been able to read and own so many wonderful books. I wish the same for everybody out there reading!

Hello and welcome once again to Send Us Your Shelf Porn, the only Internet comics column where you, the reader, have the chance to be King (or Queen) Geek for a day! Wouldn’t you like to be King (or Queen) Geek for a day? Sure you would! So send me photos of your comics collection, be it large or small, along with any commentary/explanations you see fit to give, to cmautnerATcomcastDOTnet and I’ll post them here so everyone can go “Man, I always wanted that book. Howcum he has that book and I don’t? Life is so unfair.”

This week our special guest is Ryan Kirk of San Antonio, Texas, who has managed to accumulate quite an impressive array of books. Take it away Ryan!

My name is Ryan Kirk, and these are my shelf porn pics. I’m not a prominent blogger or anything, I do post on Comic Book Resources (under Ryan K), for whatever that’s worth. I live in San Antonio, TX and work for the state. Well, that’s enough biographical info, I’ll talk a little bit about my pictures.

The main shelf is the bulk of my collection. It’s made up of three cheap, 5-shelf bookcases I bought at Wal-Mart. I mounted them together and to the wall. As you can probably see, they’re not made of the sturdiest of material and in some ares the shelves are dipping from the excessive weight. I’ll have to upgrade eventually, but that’ll have to wait. For the most part the books are organized alphabetically by cartoonist. From Abel, Jessica to Yang, Gene Luen. Of course not everything on those shelves is the product of a single creator. All of my Alan Moore and Grant Morrison books are listed under their names, because they’re the reasons I have the books in the first place. In the case of Catwoman: The Dark End of the Street by Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke, I put the book under Cooke, because (no offense to Brubaker), I like Cooke more. There’s a couple other ones like that in there. Seems like a bit of a strange system now that I write it out, but it works for me.

On the third section of the main shelf, after Mr. Yang’s American Born Chinese, I have my collection of anthologies. Mome, a couple Kramers Ergots, Non 1-5, etc. On the shelf directly below that I have books about comics in no particular order. Biographies, history, guides. It’s an area of my collection I’d like to expand one day.

On top of the bookcases I threw up some books that just wouldn’t fit anywhere else. Kramers Ergot 7, some of the big Acme Novelty Library issues, Fantagraphics’ Popeye collections, Brian Chippendale’s Ninja. Then I tossed some smaller books in front of them like Lone Wolf and Cub and Fantagraphics’ Peanuts collections. At some point I’d like to integrate LW&C, Peanuts, and the rest of those smaller books into the larger, alphabetical collection. But that’ll require more shelf space, which I’m basically out of as it is.

The bottom shelves of the three bookcases that compromise the main shelf, are filled with the books that would otherwise destroy my flimsy set-up. IDW’s Library of American Comics, Gary Panter, The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. Basically anything too heavy, or slightly too tall. Again, I’d like to integrate everything but the art books at some point in time. It bothers my OCD to have them separated.

The manga shelf is also alphabetical by cartoonist, or in the case of books with an individual writer and artist – by writer (sorry artists, I had to make them fit into my system somehow). These actually all were part of the main shelf at one point, completely integrated with their American and European counterparts. But at some point something needed to give on that main shelf, and separating the manga seemed like a decent enough idea. Again, in my OCD utopian future, they will be reunited with my comics from the rest of the world. Except for maybe the Akamatsu books, which I really should just hide under the bed or something.

At the top of my closet, I have my collection of Marvel Essentials and DC Showcase Presents. I really love the value of these books and the way they look all lined up together. A couple of years ago, I had a standing order at my LCS to pull every one of these that came out. But when Marvel and DC started releasing 2 a month, I couldn’t keep up with even browsing them. So now I haven’t bought any in a couple years except for at used bookstores. Down at the beginning of the line there are my collection of Dark Horse’s Chronicles of Conan and Savage Sword of Conan reprints. And some Vampirella Chronicles from Harris.

Rather than have Chris repeat what’s already on his blog, I asked him if he could give a quick tour of the collection and maybe go into a bit more depth about how how he organized his collection, shelving issues, organizational challenges, etc. He graciously sent me back the photos and text below.

Before we look at his shelves, however, I want to issue a reminder. Shelf porn begins and ends with you, the reader. If you want to keep this feature going, then we need contributions, be your shelves barren and propped by concrete blocks, or hand-carved out of mahogany and filled with every treasure imaginable. Send you pics to cmautnerATcomcastDOTnet. You’ll be glad you did.

Now, on with the show –

The tour begins in my home office, one of three areas in my apartment where I have found space for the various bookcases that hold my collection. Situated in the front of my two-flat apartment, this room has a nice spherical shape and a southern exposure, which meant I could fit a couple of shelves in a nice little arc. One of my many obsessions involving my collection is the categorization and grouping of my books by broad subject area. These shelves hold a combination of alternative and international comics (on the left and in the center), independent (on the right), and author grouped materials (center right). The half-shelf in the center allowed me to fit in in one more bookcase and while not blocking the window. It nice to let light into your batcave every once in awhile.

I like being able to work surrounded by books, but it is also good to have a little breathing space. My first attempt at a home office in a previous apartment was in a thin, long room where in order to squeeze in both a desk and as many bookcases as possible I ended up so boxed in by bookcases I almost literally couldn’t turn around. Now I can actually push my chair away from my desk without running into Batman: No Man’s Land or Madman collections . Above my computer my prized possession: an original Frank King Gasoline Alley strip. It was originally given to my Grandfather by Mr. King, who was his second cousin. Both my mother and uncle also received strips from King when they were young. I was around these long before I really knew who King was. This is probably what I’ll grab first if I ever have to quickly escape a fire.

Two of my “author” shelves, these focusing on Grant Morrison & Alan Moore. I lucked into some real finds back in the mid-90s when a local shop was having a massive sale and I was able to grab such finds as a full run of the Titan Zenith reprints as well all of their Moore collections. Alan Moore is one of the few creators for whom I am willing to shell out a little extra for a nice edition. Other groupings include P. Craig Russell, Mike Mignola, and Paul Pope. I used to have more, but I have cut down on the number of creators I try to maintain all inclusive collections for.

The short shelf doesn’t really have a consistent theme yet. Right now it is my most recent books along with my run of Mome and the Fantagraphics’ Ignatz series. The bottom shelf is a reference shelf of TwoMorrows books and other artist and non-fiction books.

All of my bookcases are cheap, standard items purchased from Ikea. Not to turn this into an unpaid advertisement, but these easily attainable pieces have let me build and shape my library on an ongoing basis for not too much money. They have two standard models: a cheaper bookcase which is less adjustable and on the weaker end of the “wood” spectrum, and a sturdier, more expensive piece which allows more flexibility in regards to shelf spacing. I mostly go with the cheaper versions and have had to perform a certain amount of customization on them so that I could add extra shelves. The extra shelves let me me create these more precisely sized shelves to fit manga sized collections or other books of non-standard size. I hated having all that extra space above books or having to mix tiny books with larger books. Since you couldn’t by shelves separately I endued up buying extra bookcase and then cannibalizing the shelves to add to and customize my existing bookcases.

The nice thing about customizing your own shelves is that you get to do things like create a shelf that fits nothing but Dark Horse Comics’ Lone Wolf & Cub‘s collections. And the full run fits perfectly across the shelf, with room for two more. Maybe it is a little too precise a size for a shelf, because now I need to purchase two items that will fill out two-books worth of empty space and can’t think of anything to use.

Here you can see my prep work for adding extra shelves. These less expensive bookcases only provide you with three adjustable shelves and a limited number of holes with which to adjust them. In order to add extra shelves I had to measure out even spacing for the new holes which matched the general layout of the existing shelving, and then drill extra holes which would fit the little metal pegs which hold the shelves. I had plenty of extra pegs from other pieces, since they are fairly standard across the Ikea world. It was a very hit and miss process for me, considering how weak my DIY skills are. I felt incredibly proud that I was able to pull it off as well as I could. Of course, if you want a heavily adjustable bookcase you have to pay for it; or build it yourself.

This is my “for public consumption” bookcase (actually two bookcases as I had a little room to add the half-width case on the left). These live in the living room and contain a selection of material that has been specifically gathered to provide a public face for my collection. I hate to say the “least embarrassing” material, but certainly the more show-off books. “Least embarrassing” can mean many things. Today it means my Love & Rockets collections, various Art Of books and Absolute volumes, some more New Yorker-esque material (Seth, Jonathan Lethem, Charles Burns), comic strip collections, books about comics, and, for some reason, my Dark Horse Comics media collections. I guess you hit the two ends of the spectrum by displaying Chris Ware on one shelf and Aliens vs. Predator on the next. I do contain multitudes.

I use the high end bookcases for use in the living room. These not only have stronger shelves (important if you are going to use them for giant, heavy hardcover volumes) but a more complete set of holes for use in precisely adjusting shelves. This means I can more easily size shelves to fit the Peanuts or Walt & Skeezix collections precisely, and still have room for a giant shelf of really tall volumes (like the larger Acme Novelty issues or a sweet European Geoff Darrow hardcover). It still isn’t big enough for the Sundays With Walt & Skeezix book which lives on top of a bookcase elsewhere in the apartment.

This room is a bit of a bonus for my current living situation: a small room at the back of the apartment that I have been able to make into an actual library. When I first moved in I completely filled it with bookcases, but my recent efforts to curtail my buying habits and weed out my collection means I should be able to add a bed and make it into a kind of guest room/library. These three shelves contain most of my mainstream and genre fiction. The case on the left is superheroes and few remaining media oriented collections (still haven’t been able to weed out my various Aliens/Predator Vs. books). That one bookcase is all that is left of what was once about three bookcases worth of Marvel & DC collections. When I re-prioritized, those were the hardest (or maybe the easiest) hit.

This skinny bookcase was purchased because I had exactly that much space left on a wall in my last apartment. It is also the perfect size for the Essential and Showcase collections, and is sturdy enough to hold Marvel oversized hardcovers. The one problem with the cheaper bookcases is that the shelves really can’t hold the weight of heavier books, except on the bottom or center shelves which are non-adjustable and thus more reinforced. But when you pay a little more, they are able to take a little more without buckling or needing replacement every few years.

The shelf on the left is the “genre” shelf, containing mostly Vertigo collections and other horror, western, or crime collections. The center shelf has some of the premiere DC & Marvel collections. I’m a huge fan of recent Premiere Classics series from Marvel and have to fight an urge to purchase every single volume (all in the Direct Market limited editions of course) in order to have a complete & consistent set of spines. The wooden racks on the right hold my regular comic book collection. I purchased these a few years back when I was living in a garden apartment and wanted to get the boxes up off of the floor and away from the damp. Two of these racks fit perfectly (if a bit precisely) in a walk in closet I had at the time. They are a perfect size for “shortboxes” but have almost no stability. I hope to find a more permanent solution at some point in the future, but for now I just wrap the end facing the wall with bubblewrap so I don’t do too much damage from the constant bumping.

While I’m a child of the ’70s it was the 1980s when I came of age with comics so I have the strongest sense of nostalgia for that era. I have been extremely pleased by the amount of reprints of prime Eighties material we have seen over the past few years and that has certainly fed my my need to return to that era. I guess it is just another sign of aging that I am willing to drop $50 on a premium collection of Nexus or Mage or Secret Wars II, but we all have to embrace our my baser instincts sometimes.

The bottom shelf of the Eighties Case contains collections that were actually released in the 1980s, back when the larger format “graphic novel” size from Europe was the standard rather than today’s comic sized or manga sized collections. Flipping through the Starblaze Elfquest collections in the back of a Crown Books at the mall was some of the earliest comics experiences. Some of my prized possessions here are the Tim Sale Thieves World series from Starblaze and early Mage hardcovers found at a used bookstore when I first moved to Chicago. The Marvel hardcovers are out of place on this shelf, but I’ve had to use them to fill in space where available after the culling. Consistency would want them all in one section, but needs must.

Cereblog

Talk about ambition. Leigh Walton and Laura Hudson have created a new comics site, titled Cereblog, devoted to (as you may have already guessed) Dave Sim’s seminal (and just a wee bit controversial) series Cerebus. Their goal? To dual critique all 300 issues, one each week.

Cerebus: A Diablog (or sometimes Cereblog) is an ongoing close reading in two-part harmony. Neither of us was born yet when Cerebus was launched, and neither of us has previously read very much of the series. We’re curious to see what Dave Sim’s work, in all its twisted glory, has to say to a new generation of readers. Grab your own copy and read along with us!

All kidding aside, so far they seem to be off to a strong star. Here, for example, is Leigh on issue one:

What’s interesting about the “Cerebus is an aardvark” juxtaposition — seemingly the point of the comic — is that the comic largely doesn’t notice. The opening few pages of this issue, when the human characters are shocked to see a warrior aardvark riding a horse and entering a bar, comprise pretty much the only time in the series (I think) when the comic draws attention to the conceit. “Thought later he would be called the finest warrior to enter our gates, at the time, he was but a curiosity…” “I can’t serve YOU here… YOU’RE A…” etc. But then he’s hired by two thieves to join their heist, with a minimum of hesitation, and that establishes the treatment for the rest of the book: Cerebus is funny-looking, and he’s recognized as an unnaturally skilled warrior, but he’s not a dog walking on its hind legs or anything.

Please join me in wishing them the best of luck. By the time they get to Reads, they’ll need it.