Luna Park

Our guest this week is the esteemed critic Ng Suat Tong, who has written some quite memorable pieces for The Comics Journal, but lately can be found as a regular contributor to The Hooded Utilitarian blog.

To find out what Suat and the rest of us are reading, click on the link below. And don't forget to let us know what you're currently reading in the comments section.

Daytripper #4

Tim O'Shea: Daytripper: I've bought the first four issues of Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá's Daytripper (Vertigo). but waited until today to read all four issues in one sitting. I'm of two minds: Damn I wish I had been reading each issue as they came out, but then again I'm glad I got to take in the lives of Brás de Oliva Domingos all at once. Looking at the credits, the editors on the series are Bob Schreck & Pornsak Pichetshote. If this 10-issue miniseries is the last Schreck Vertigo project to bear his name, it's a helluva great way to end his career there. (Aside this reminds me I need to keep an eye out for Shreck's impact on IDW). The project redefines the term "one and done" given the regular arrival of death at the end of each issue. Finally kudos to Vertigo's marketing with the book, in the first four issues the cover has been adorned with laudatory blurbs from Gerard Way (no stranger to the creative team, of course), Terry Moore, Jeff Smith and Becky Cloonan.

Marvel Adventures Super Heroes 21: Someday I hope Paul Tobin is the writer on one of the main Avengers books, but in the meantime, I'm quite happy with the tales he tells in Marvel Adventures Super Heroes. In a way, he's 2010's Roy Thomas, as evidenced in this issue by his ability to dig up obscure 1940s Marvel characters (Gary Gaunt and Sun Girl) and bring them into the present day story. I'm hoping Sun Girl, at the very least, turns up again in Tobin's Marvel Adventures work.

Secret Six 19: Gail SImone's gift for dialogue shines this issue with the lines she gives Rag Doll. The plot and players in this issue left me slightly confused, but I assume things will become more clear (it was the first part of a four-issue arc story) as the story progresses.

Batman and Robin 10: Damn you Grant Morrison, I hated Damian Wayne at first and now he's my favorite part of the series. It's almost like you planned it that way -- oh wait. I was expecting an artistic letdown with the departure of Cameron Stewart and the arrival of Andy Clarke. Fortunately I underestimated Clarke, he draws a great Batman & Robin. Have no idea who Oberon Sexton/The Gravedigger is, but I really like the simplicity/Victorian Age Updated vibe of his costume.

Every chance I get, I go to bookstores--and on a recent drive through Chattanooga, Tennessee, I hit McKay Used Books, CD's, Movies, and More. They sell used books/CDs/DVDs and even magazines. That was how I came upon the Summer 2005 edition of Brick:The Literary Journal. I've never bought Chris Ware's work in the past. But after finding (in Brick) the advance excerpt of Ware's 2007 Acme Novelty Datebook Volume Two: 1995 - 2002, I'm curious to see more of Ware's sketchbook material: Not for the art necessarily, but more for Ware's candid diary/text pieces.

On the Odd Hours

Brigid Alverson: On the Odd Hours is one of a series of comics commissioned by the Louvre. It’s a supernatural story that presents an interesting twist on the paintings-come-alive idea, but what intrigued me most is that the main character is deaf, as are a number of the supporting characters. This allows the creator to explore the unique struggles of deaf people to fit in with (or reject) the hearing world, as well as the unique visual characteristics of sign language. The art in this book is absolutely amazing; it looks like creator Eric Liberge threw every technique in the book at these panels, but the result is nuanced rather than chaotic. It’s also very dense, so although it’s a slim volume, it’s taking me a surprisingly long time to read it.

On a much, much lighter note, Calamity Jack is an updated version of Jack and the Beanstalk, with a Native American trickster as the hero. It’s the sequel to Rapunzel’s Revenge, and Rapunzel returns to help out in this book as well. The story starts a bit slow but soon picks up steam, and there’s plenty of action to keep things moving. Although it’s a kids’ book, Calamity Jack has a lot to offer adults as well; they will probably appreciate the strange animals and steampunk contraptions more than the intended audience, and Nathan Hale’s superb art make this book truly something out of the ordinary.

Hicksville

Chris Mautner: Finally finished Jeanne D'Arc, but I also managed to get my PS3 fixed after being down for a long while, so I don't know how many comics will be taking up my time in the next few weeks. I have however, been sticking my nose in the following:

Hicksville --Dylan Horrocks' masterpiece remains as potent and rewarding a read as ever.

Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons -- I'm in the final stages of transcribing an interview I did with Wilson for CBR, and have been referencing this massive collection as I go along, mainly in the hopes of inspiration striking me when it's time to write the introduction.

Sand and Fury: A Scream Queen Adventure -- Tom's recommendation last week made me dig this out of the bottom of the review pile.

Footnotes in Gaza -- I keep picking this up, reading a few pages, and then putting it back down again for awhile. I hope to have it finished by the end of the weekend though.

Monster Vol. 16

Sean T. Collins: Big reading week for me! Click the links for a more in-depth look at each, if you please...

Naoki Urasawa's Monster: I finally finished Urasawa's epic suspense saga, chock full of tangled conspiracies and people shouting about the value of human life. I had my quibbles with the conclusion, but it was addictive stuff.

All-Star Superman, by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely: Morrisonia quite aside, this is just a magnificently pleasurable superhero comic to read. This was the first time I'd done so all in one go as opposed to its serialized installments, and I enjoyed the heck out of it.

Two Eyes of the Beautiful, by Ryan Cecil Smith: A member of Baltimore's Closed Captioned Comics collective pays homage to horror manga master Kazuo Umezu in this fun, freaky minicomic.

Also, inspired by the greenlighting of the HBO series, I started George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones. I haven't read enough fantasy to say for sure whether this is full-fledged revisionism, or "The Sopranos with swords" as the trades are saying, but its blend of Tokienian epic with a Howard-style edge of sexy ultraviolence has been pretty engrossing so far.

Prince Valiant Vol. 1

Ng Suat Tong: I don't usually read many comics in any one week. Part of this is due to the fact that there are so many other distractions my comics reading list has to contend with (books, movies, computer games, concerts etc.). I've read a few articles which have stated that there is so much comics-related material coming out nowadays that it's hard for one person to keep up with everything. I would suggest, however, that most of it isn't really worth paying much attention to and even less writing about. But here are two comics which I did read in the last week or so.

Prince Valiant Volume 1 (1937-38; by Hal Foster). I flipped through this book when I first acquired it a few months back from Manuel Caldas in Portugal on the recommendation of Domingos Isabelinho. This was a more detailed reading. I have a near complete set of the earlier Fantagraphics edition and there's simply no comparison between the new editions and the older ones. The new Fantagraphics and Portugese books are the only way one should read Foster's masterwork.

Unlike the new Fantagraphics editions of Prince Valiant (which are in color), these volumes have been reproduced in black and white so as to preserve Foster's linework. It's the closest thing to seeing what a Hal Foster original looks like in person (huge - some of the largest original art around - and quite impressive). The art for first decade or so of Prince Valiant is also that which is most desired by collectors of original art. I would hazard a guess that almost any art originating from the first year would be a steal at under $20,000. One such piece (the sixth Prince Valiant depicting Horrit the witch which influenced the Old Witch of the EC horror line) has been listed at two succeeding Russ Cochran auctions before being taken down prematurely (presumably because of legal problems). The strips collected in this first volume are from Prince Valiant's prime period and it should be easy to see why Burne Hogarth and Wally Wood (among others) were admirers of Foster's work.

This is the only volume which Caldas released in English (the rest are in Portugese). A lovely article by Dan Nadel on the appeal of Prince Valiant can be found at the Comics Comics website.

Luna Park (written by Kevin Baker and drawn by Danijel Zezelj). I read this book quite quickly and haven't viewed any of the more detailed reviews that can be found online, so these are just the vaguest of impressions.

The main reason for getting this book is Zezelj's art. He's an artist who can turn the most prosaic of scenes into something both moody and entrancing. Having said this, Baker's story is by no means poor. The narrative is reasonably complex but the structural conceits sometimes feel like an excuse to tell a number of short stories (of varying quality) revolving around Russian history. It would be interesting to know to what extent the recursive moments in the imagery were scripted in or deduced by the artist. I also have mixed feelings about the palette chosen which comes through as a sort of perpetual night. It works well in the context of the story and certainly fits Zezelj's art but it can become a bit monotonous. It may well be a decision which was arrived at through consultations between artist and colorist. In any case, this is a comic which probably bears rereading if only to pick up the pictorial reiterations which reinforce Baker's themes of violence, fate and despair.

A final note: Chris mentioned being distracted by Jeanne D'Arc on the PSP last week. I'm sort of distracted by the recent release of Final Fantasy 13 in English myself. All the reviews complaining about the game's horrible linearity and constrictive gameplay are probably correct but the experience has left me wondering why it is often so difficult for Japanese video game writers to take some lessons from their manga counterparts. Articles on the failures of the Japanese gaming industry have been popping up with increasing frequency of late and this is but one of many problems.  Of course, no one actually plays these games for their stories but the gap in quality between manga storytelling and that of video games is pretty huge. Just a thought.

The Year of Loving Dangerously

The Year of Loving Dangerously
by Ted Rall & Pablo G. Callejo
NBM, $18.95

For a brief time, in my supposed salad days, I had the alleged good fortune to date two different women at the same time. My friends frequently kidded me about my good luck, but the truth was I was absolutely miserable. Plagued by guilt, constantly shuttling between the two women, desperately trying to remember who was responsible for, say, the flowers left on my car, and knowing that sometime soon I was going to have to break one of their hearts, put an amount of stress on my shoulders that outweighed any supposed benefits. My behavior during that time still ranks as one of my biggest regrets.

Ted Rall doesn't have that problem. In the 1980s he juggled, lied to and slept with numerous women, a fact he chronicles in his latest graphic novel, The Year of Loving Dangerously, without much angst on his part.

To be fair, Rall had some justification for his caddish behavior. To wit: A run of bad health, bad behavior and just plain bad luck that led to him being evicted from his college dorm, fired from his job, dumped by his girlfriend and kicked out of college. Flat broke and too proud to head home, he basically (and surreptitiously) pimped himself out to a variety of single women in exchange for a place to sleep.

Rall is a natural raconteur and his tales of economically-forced debauchery have an engaging, off-the-cuff feel that draws you in almost immediately. His stories have a fascinating "you won't believe what happened to me" aspect to them, and while he attempts at various times to justify his behavior, he's not afraid of letting his younger self seem like a callous jerk in order to serve the story better.

Unfortunately, Rall's various tales don't really gell into a cohesive whole very well. Rall pinballs from one anecdote to the other, and it can be hard at times to figure out what they all have to do with each other. The result is not only in a lack of focus, but also in a sense that some stores are being relayed expressly for bragging rights. Why else reveal that he got backstage passes to a Dead Kennedys concert and knows Jello Biafra? What purpose does that serve to his story beyond attaining some sort of hipster credit?

As entertaining as Rall's stories are they're also maddeningly short on detail at times -- at least the sort of detail that matters. How, exactly did Rall go about finding all these women? It couldn't have all been dumb luck. Was there a method to his madness (he does share details on how he was able to maintain these relationships, and that's some of the best parts of the book). Why was his mother so hostile with him on the phone? Why doesn't she send him some money? Why exactly did his relationship with Kelly fall apart? Rall speeds through some of these stories, omitting answers to questions like these and ultimately not asking hard enough questions about his own behavior (the closest he comes is when he admits that he gets turned off immediately when a woman shows any interest in him).

The art by Callejo varies between solid and sloppy. He adheres to a primarily illustrative, "here's the story" approach, but shows a facile ability with facial expressions and body posture that keep the book from feeling staid. Unfortunately, more than a few panels come off as rough, ill-defined or featuring odd, off-kilter anatomy and should have been redrawn from the get-go.

There's enough good stuff in A Year of Loving Dangerously to keep me from throwing the book into my "library donation" pile, but ultimately the book's pleasures are shallow and temporary -- not too unlike the adventures Rall chronicles.

Dungeon Twilight Vol. 3

During the next month or two, we'll be looking at various indie and small press publishers' plans for the coming year. Today we're taking a quick look at NBM. Based on material found on the company's Web site, as well as some catalog pages they sent me, I've managed to come up with a quick rundown of their line-up for the first six months of the year. FYI: The dates are based off of the Web site, and not the catalog, which are off by a few months due to trade shipping dates (translation: comic stores get it first).

January

Little Nothings Vol. 3: "Uneasy Happiness" by Lewis Trondheim. The third collection of Trondheim's one-page autobiographical gag strips. I really enjoy this series and am glad to see NBM's doing well enough with it to keep putting out new volumes on a yearly basis. 128 pages, $14.95.

On the Odd Hours

February

On the Odd Hours by Eric Liberge. Another book in the ongoing 'Louvre" series of French graphic novels ("Glacial Period" and "The Museum Vaults" being the other two), about a deaf night watchmen who takes us on a tour of the museum late at night, when the art work comes alive. I'm not at all familiar with Liberge. Do any of our eurocomic readers know anything about him? 72 pages, $14.95.

March

Dungeon Twilight Vol. 3: The New Centurions by Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, Kerascoet and Obion. Yay, another new Dungeon book! This one is set in the Dungeon's later years, when everything's literally falling apart around them. As with Hours, I don't know anything about the artists (Sfar and Tronheim only write the series) but Dungeon hasn't failed me yet, no matter what era it's set in. 96 pages, $12.99.

April

A Home for Mr. Easter by Brooke A. Allen. a young girl finds a cute white bunny that lays colored eggs. Is it the Easter Bunny? Just in case the answer is yes, our heroine sets off on a quest to return the animal to its natural habitat, wherever that may be. Sounds like it could be cute. In a good way. 208 pages, $13.99.

May

Boneyard Vol. 7 by Richard Moore. The final volume, for those of you keeping count, in Moore's lengthy sitcom/horror/soap opera series about a young man who inherits a graveyard full of monsters and a hot vampire next door neighbor. 96 pages, $10.99.

June

A Treasury of XXth Century Murder: The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans by Rick Geary. Geary talked to me a bit about this book when I interviewed him last year. It chronicles an unsolved series of gruesome murders that took place in the Big Easy right after WWI. Sounds like it could be the bloodiest book in the series yet. Can't wait. 80 pages, $15.99.

Criminal: The Sinners #2

Here at What Are You Reading, we don't let a little thing like a holiday weekend keep us from our comics, no sir. Nor do we stop blogging about them.

Our guest this week is David Brothers, who can be found saying interesting things about comics at 4th Letter. Want to find out what he's reading this week? Me too!

Dominic Fortune

Matt Maxwell: DOMINIC FORTUNE
Howard Chaykin is a very bad man. Very bad indeed. I don't unequivocally love everything he does, but I sure love this. The eponymous hero romps through the seedier side of the 30s, from Hollywood to the Berlin Olympics and back, lovingly trashing cherished notions about treasured history the entire time. The set-up? Fortune is asked to babysit three iconic actors who may have refined reputations, but the truth is they're all party lunatics that make Bluto Blutarsky look like Gallant. And they're going to the Berlin Olympics at a time of Nazi Germany's ascent, when people openly asked if perhaps we shouldn't be supporting the Germans after all. This is a great read by one of the living masters of the comic craft.

BPRD: THE BLACK GODDESS
I'd stopped reading this awhile ago, waiting to switch over to the trades. And I'd really missed it when I was away, though I hadn't known how much until I read through this. Mignola/Arcudi and Davis have all hit a teriffic sweet spot between military fiction, occult conspiracies and pulp action. Instead of paranormal investigators tiptoeing around and avoiding the government, we get the two working hand in hand (mostly), which means you get to read splash pages of titanic monsters from before humanity's birth wrecking armored columns outside mythical cities, US troops backed up by yeti and Kalashnikov-armed warrior monks. I'm enjoying this much, much more than I'm enjoying the current HELLBOY (have actually stopped reading those altogether, though I can't entirely explain why other than I don't dig 'em anymore). But this? This stuff is great. Great ensemble cast, art by one of my favorite artists (and more imaginative monsters than you're going to see anywhere).

Mighty Avengers: Earth's Mightiest

Michael May: I bought Mighty Avengers: Earth's Mightiest partly because Hercules and Amadeus Cho are in it; partly because I knew some of the Young Avengers would be joining. But it's not my favorite Young Avengers and Hercules isn't nearly as fun as he is when Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente are writing him. I would totally dig the Hank Pym as Doctor Who concept except that all the characters in the book keep talking about what an untrustworthy loser he is. I don't really want to read about a superhero team led by an untrustworthy loser. I'd love to let that part of Pym's history go and move on to concentrate on his being a half-mad genius, but Slott's not letting me. I doubt I'll be buying any more of this series.

Tom Bondurant: This week I bought a truckload -- or at least it rhymes with "truckload" -- of comics at the LCS. Fortunately, most were quite good. Detective Comics #859 was excellent as always, especially with the Huntress helping to enliven the "Question" co-feature. I also enjoyed the Amazonian intrigue in Wonder Woman #38 and the who's-haunting-Betty-Draper storyline in Madame Xanadu #17. The conclusion of the current Unknown Soldier two-parter makes me want to re-read the whole series, because everything seemed to come to an emotional head and it's a little hard to grasp month-to-month. I liked the shocking twist at the end of Blackest Night #5, and I thought Gary Frank (intentionally or otherwise) depicted the hard-luck Daily Planet staffers of Superman: Secret Origin as appropriately haggard. However, I'm still trying to figure out if I missed an important plot element in Justice League: Cry For Justice #5, or whether (gasp!) someone on the team really did do those horrible things to a colleague. Either way, CFJ just got a whole lot more maudlin.

Detective Comics #859

As for the old stuff, obviously I've been reading selected JLA/JSA team-ups, and decided to take in the three-part Earth-S saga from 1976. These issues were Justice League of America #s 135-37 (October-December 1976), plotted by E. Nelson Bridwell and scripted by Marty Pasko, pencilled by Dick Dillin, and inked by Frank McLaughlin. In fact, JLA #137 was probably the first Justice League comic I ever read ... not that I am susceptible to anything like nostalgia, you understand. As it turns out, though, the crossover doesn't really come together until #137, when (SPOILER!) Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt provides the spark which restores the Marvel Family's powers. The two issues prior are basically vignettes featuring various mixed-Earth teams, each fighting similarly-mixed villains. (Earth-2's Joker meets Earth-S's Weeper, and Dr. Light teams up with the Shade, that kind of thing.) It's all rather light-hearted, which isn't bad -- but it seems like a lot of meandering up until #137. The main event that issue finds the two Flashes and the god Mercury, along with the two Green Lanterns and Earth-S's Ibis, trying to stop the combined forces of Brainiac and Mr. Atom from destroying an Earth-1 "city of the future." Now that's a set piece I can get behind! After that comes a brief mop-up at the Rock of Eternity, where the just-gassed-up Captain Marvel takes on a Red-Kryptonite-angered Superman. That fight's kind of anticlimactic too, but the rest of #137 makes up for it.

I went back to the LCS on Friday for a 20%-off sale and picked up (among other things) a Manhunter action figure and a copy of Secret Origins #40 (May 1989). I was a little disappointed that the Manhunter figure didn't include his broom-handled Mauser, and when you pose him with the Bandi knives he might look like he's fighting with crutches. Still, how could I have resisted that Secret Origins issue? It has all of the requirements for a successful DC comic-book cover, including apes, dinosaurs, a motorcycle, tears, a question, and the color purple!

The Big Kahn

Brigid Alverson: This week I treated myself to The Big Kahn, written by Neil Kleid and illustrated by Nicholas Cinquegrani. The story starts at the funeral of a rabbi, when the grieving is interrupted by an uninvited visitor — the rabbi’s brother, who announces that the deceased not only was not really a rabbi, he wasn’t even Jewish. That’s a great start, because so many questions flow from it, and Kleid does a nice job of showing not only how such a thing could happen but how it affects the family and the congregation as a whole. The strength of this book lies in its complex characters and the unexpected ways the rabbi’s death, and the truth about him, changes their lives.

With some time on my hands this long weekend, I re-read an older manga, the first volume of Mushishi. It’s an odd little series about mushi, semi-supernatural creatures that affect our lives in strange ways. It’s a very Japanese concept, akin to the germs in Moyasimon and the yokai in a million other manga, but unique unto itself. In five self-contained stories, a mushishi, or mushi master, helps someone who is afflicted by the mushi. The setting is vaguely pre-modern, and everything happens in rural villages, so there is a lot of nature imagery. The art is moody and the stories are all a little sad, as most of them deal with illness and death. This makes me want to read more of the series, though, to see how the concept and the characters evolve.

I just started reading a new webcomic, and while it’s a bit uneven, it definitely has potential. Cross Hare, by Matt Gorball, is a noir-ish detective story in which the PI is a rabbit. Or maybe a hare. It’s a cute concept and some of the gags are quite funny, so while the story is still a little wobbly, I’m adding it to my RSS feed.

Batman: Year One

Tim O'Shea: I am out of town for the holiday and not eager to find a local comic book store. So my reading for this installment is a wealth of TPBs from the local library or used book store.

I read the original single issues of the Batman: Year One arc by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli as they were released. Rereading it many years later, a few things stick in my mind:
-- Just how well Mazzucchelli's art holds up--after 20 some odd years.
-- How solid an editor Denny O'Neil was on this project
-- Why is this the first time I've ever noticed or appreciated
-- Richmond Lewis' coloring on the story (hat tip to Jeet Heer for more insight on Lewis). Question to the WAYR audience, does anyone know if she is currently involved with comics or graphic novels in any form or has she moved on to other creative pursuits?

A great many people online seem to love bashing Jeff Loeb -- and after reading the first trade hardback collecting his first six issues of the relaunched Hulk series (2007-2008), I think in this instance heightened derision of his work is unfounded for the most part. I understand there may be some continuity gaffes in play here (I'll admit I'm befuddled by the growth of Leonard Sampson's hair between
issue 1 and 6)--and I could do without Rick Jones incessantly calling himself A-Bomb (clearly Jones listens to NY Yankees announced John Sterling too much and his "A-Bomb from A-Rod" call...). But overall, the story held my interest and was fairly straightforward. Plus, it's hard not to enjoy the absurdity of seeing a Watcher punched in the middle of his "I am here merely to observe" speech.

I was an early fan of Matt Fraction's Marvel work (and long for a day he is able to revisit his independent project Casanova, if his art team ever becomes available again). But I could never get into his Iron Man series. I bought the first few issues and bailed because I found it too bogged down and boring. It continues to garner strong sales and critical praise, so I scooped up the first two TPBs from his run to read. Alas I was still bored -- and I was flummoxed by the decision that Pepper Potts iron costume had to be fashioned to emulate the shape of her breasts. This means that Pepper even has to tell guys her eye slits are "up here" when she's in the midst of a fight. I just continue to fail to see what all the fuss is about on this project.

On the other hand, Fraction's Secret Invasion Thor TPB released earlier this year was pleasure to read (as opposed to the Secret Invasion itself, which I tried my best to avoid, when possible). In the new Thor ongoing, the town of Broxton and its interaction with its "neighbor" Asgard has been a great dynamic for the series -- an element that the writer taps into with this mini. Add to that the return of Beta Ray Bill and I really enjoyed Fraction's approach on the miniseries.

Finally I snagged a used copy of The Essential Iron Man Volume 1 (Tales of Suspense 39-72), which features a variety of artists on the art chores, including a few appearances by Kirby, at least one Ditko and a majority of Don Heck (inked by a variety of Marvel vets, but one issue inked by Wally Wood [TOS 71). One highlight is the first appearance of Hawkeye (TOS 57) and another is the classic sound effect
of FOOM (TOS 71). For every great story moment that Stan Lee constructed in Marvel history, he stumbled into some duds. In this set, it is TOS 58, which features Iron Man battling the Chameleon -- a
mistaken identity (he poses as Cap, but Shellhead is convinced the real Cap is the fake ... wackiness ensues. It's serviceable enough as story goes, but then out of nowhere Stan tries to add poignancy by
claiming to quote then President Johnson's motto (no, not "I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party as your President."), but rather "Let us reason together! For a man's brain is
still his most potent weapon." Here's a few aspects that really makes this scene grimace-inducing: 1) I can find no evidence that LBJ ever said it [only evidence of it is a 1968 government report on the
prevention of violence that quotes the comic book.]

Not to go off here, but really check this text out, as I love a point in history where Congressman Hale Boggs is connected to a report with gems like this: "One of the newest series is Brother Power, The Geek, whose leading character is a tailor's dummy which has been given life and superpower by a bolt of lightning and who both protects the hippies of San Francisco and exhorts them to be productive contributors to society. Issue number 2 projects an exceedingly ambivalent picture of the hippies in what appears to be an attempt to use the hippie image to attract young readers in order to preach against the general hippie ethos."

Anyway, back to the absurdity of the last panel with the supposed LBJ motto (which is at least partially from the bible...). Heck has him crouching side profile in the Rodin's Thinker pose -- while sitting on
nothing. If anybody can get the scoop on if this was really an LBJ motto or something Stan threw in as LBJ, I would love to know the backstory.

Boilerplate

Chris Mautner: I actually spent most of the week (and the month really) reading two non-comics-type books. The first is Boilerplate by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett. The book is one of those "alternative history" type stories about the first robot or "mechanical marvel," invented at the end of the 19th century. The book follows him and his inventor around on a variety of Forrest Gump-like adventures, where he meets lots of famous people from that era and beyond, like Theodore Roosevelt and Lawrence of Arabia and gets to participate in several significant historical events, like the Spanish-American War. And, of course, along the way, the reader gets to learn a bit of American history that may not have been taught in school (I didn't know anything about how Hawaii became a territory for example) It's all very clever, and I appreciated the time and effort the authors clearly took, not only with the text but with the forged pictures and Edwardian-styled illustrations, but Boilerplate, pardon the analogy, never came to life for me. He might as well have been one of those garden gnomes that show up on those travel commercials for all the personality he (and his inventor for that matter) showed.

I'm also reading Conversations With Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies and Moviemaking by Eric Lax. Lax is Allen's official biographer, and this is a collection of interviews he had with his subject over a span of several decades, from his directorial debut with Take the Money and Run, to 2006 and Cassandra's Dream. The book's been on my shelf for awhile, I'm not sure what suddenly possessed me to take it down -- I haven't seen one of Allen's movies in years, though I used to be quite enamored with his work. It's a pretty engaging, interesting read overall, especially if you're at all interested in filmmaking or Allen's movies; his rather critical assessment of his own abilities is rather bracing and at times refreshing.

Vizbig Vagabond Vol. 1

David Brothers: My interest in the major comics from the Big Two has waned over the past year or so. Dark Reign, Blackest Night, and Flash: Rebirth are all pretty much lost on me, so I've become pretty choosy about my comics. I'm still reading Amazing Spider-Man, of course. The thrice-monthly pace does a great job of keeping my interest even when the stories sometimes lack. The Gauntlet, though? That's shaping up to be good stuff. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips's Criminal: The Sinners #2 was a delight, with my only complaint being that it doesn't come out every single day of the week.

What's really taken up all my reading time, though, is Takehiko Inoue's Vagabond, a retelling of the life of Miyamoto Musashi. Viz Media is re-publishing it in their VIZBIG format, and I can't think of a better way to read manga. Volume 1 is a 700 page monster, chock full of realistic and beautiful samurai action. Inoue uses a variety of styles, ranging from painterly to hyper-detailed to blunt and harsh brush strokes, while telling the story of a boy becoming a man becoming one of the greatest swordsmen who ever lived. It's touching, violent, and really very good. And like most good books, it has reignited my interest in Musashi and samurai stories, something I'd let lapse over the past few years. I've picked three of these volumes over the past week alone, and it's just a matter of weeks days hours minutes time before I break down and pick up the rest.

There are a few older books that I'm looking forward to enjoying this week, too. I picked up John Layman and Rob Guillory's Chew Volume 1 mostly because Ron Richards of iFanboy is a firm believer in peer pressure and supporting good books. One Piece: East Blue 1-2-3 is a collection of the first three volumes of One Piece. I remain convinced that One Piece is the best adventure comic on the stands, and a 600 page brick of OP is a good way to start the Christmas season. And Marvel's Masterworks: Deathlok is the most tempting Masterworks volume in ages.

Cold Heat 7/8

Cold Heat 7/8
by Ben Jones and Frank Santoro
PictureBox Inc., 48 pages, $20.

This may be my favorite issue in the series so far, and I'm not sure I can easily articulate why. It's hard at times for me to talk about this series without coming up with empty, awkward phrases and stumbling cliches. There's something about hitting the time travel/memory wipe/reset plot button that appeals to me though, as protagonist Castle finds herself back at home and romancing a overly eager British music critic, though little has actually changed and dangerous aliens and evildoers are still lurking about.

Hitting that button must appeal greatly to Jones and Santoro as well, as they seem to be firing on all cylinders here. There's an ever so slight shift in tone that brings plot and dialogue a little farther up center than it had been before, though little of the series' sublime weirdness has been abandoned. Santoro offers some of his best compositions yet here; there's more than a few pages here that are quite striking. I like how he tries to think of the page as an entire unit and not a collection of separate tiny panels that tell a story. Too few contemporary cartoonists, indie or otherwise, follow that example. I also like how he uses overlapping lines to suggest a character's inner emotional state or provide different perspectives of the same scene. Meanwhile, Jones continues to show off his gift for hilarious, idiosyncratic dialogue. Twenty dollars may seem like a high price point (it's due to a limited print run) but you know what they say about no good comic being too expensive? It's true here.

Reviews of Dungeon and more after the jump.

Dungeon, the Early Years Vol. 2

Dungeon, the Early Years Vol. 2: Innocence Lost
by Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim and Chris Blain
NBM, $12.95.

What really strikes me about this series is how it's steadily and almost imperceptibly moved from light parodic farce to dark melodrama. The more we learn about the characters and the more we see of their eventual futures, the more the characters' initial sunny disposition and smart-ass attitude seems like foolish naiveté.

In this case, said naivete belongs to Hyacinthe, the first keeper of the Dungeon. Having donned a dashing secret identity in the first Early Years volume as the Errol Flynn-ish Night Shirt, he quickly finds his ideals compromised again and again as he's placed in one difficult ethical dilemma after another. By the end of the book he's become a corrupt official who secretly leads a dangerous guild of assassins by night, while inadvertently bringing about the destruction of the city he's supposed to protect by day.

If I've made this sound like a dour slog, my apologies. It's anything but. The Dungeon series remains a thrilling, sharp read, in this case thanks largely in part to Blain's stunning art work. Certainly this isn't a good jumping-on point for newcomers, but it's well worth getting through the series to arrive at this point. You'll be surprised where the journey takes you.

Fat Freddy's Cat Omnibus

The Fat Freddy's Cat Omnibus
by Gilbert Shelton
Knockabout Press, $29.99.

For Shelton/underground comix completists only. It's basically a thick collection of one-page cat jokes, a little saltier than your average Garfield to be sure, what with the constant references to litter boxes and defecating in shoes, but it's cat jokes all the same. The longer stories are the best, as Shelton gets to engage in a bit of satire that's notable mainly in the way it careens from subject to subject like a pinball. I liked, for instance, how a story about the cat's battle with the apartment cockroaches becomes first a cold-war satire, then whiplashes to Hollywood, then just goes balls-out crazy. That was fun. But in between those fun stories are a lot of tired cat jokes. And I'm honestly not that crazy about cats.

Joe and Azat
by Jesse Lonergan
NBM, 104 pages, $10.95.

A young peace corps volunteer heads to a vaguely authoritarian Central Asian country and becomes friends with one of the locals, an ever-optimistic schlub, who's always coming up with get-rich quick schemes. And, as you might imagine, it's through this relationship that the volunteer learns about himself and the wide world outside his safe home.

The book suffers somewhat from Longergan's vague descriptions of the country and culture, so that no real sense of place is ever conveyed, and Lonergan isn't a skilled enough artist to provide a lot of background detail that might enrich the story's telling.

That being said, this is still an entertaining book, mainly due to Longergan's deft characterizations, both with Azat and his extended family, especially his abusive drunkard of a brother. Lonergan may be vague on a number of details, but the dialogue nevertheless rings true. The fact that it doesn't overstay it's welcome helps too. It gets in, makes its points and leaves. I wish more comics would follow that example.

Little Nothings Vol. 3

• NBM announced over the weekend they will release a third volume in Lewis Trondheim's autobiographical Little Nothings series. You can read samples of the work on the company's blog.

• The University Press of Mississippi will be publishing My Life With Charlie Brown in April. It's a collection of essays, lectures and articles by Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. If April seems to far away for you, this book is coming out next month.

• Fantagraphics unveils the covers for their next Krazy and Ignatz book (designed by Chris Ware), as well as the second volume of Prison Pit.

• Van Jensen gives readers the scoop on the upcoming book tour for Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer and announces plans for a sequel in winter of next year.

• Speaking of SLG, they will be releasing an omnibus collection of Gene Yang's early work, entitled Animal Crackers, in January.

• The Kingdom of New York is a new book featuring essays and articles from the New York Observer magazine. It also sports a spiffy cover and interior art by Drew Friedman. And apparently Fantagraphics will be releasing a collection of Friedman's celebrity portraits in summer of 2010.

• I don't know if we caught this on the blog yet, but apparently Chuck Dixon and Gary Kwapisz are forming a publishing company devoted to historical comics.

• Dash Shaw, who has redesigned his Web site, apparently completely reworked his 2006 book the Mother's Mouth, cutting out pages and changing colors. The alternations are only for the French and Spanish editions, however, which seems a shame.

The Alternative Press Expo, or APE, is coming up this weekend at The Concourse in San Francisco. The show runs from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Special guests include Jamaica Dyer, Phoebe Gloeckner, Dean Haspiel, Batton Lash, Lark Pien, Dash Shaw and Jeff Smith. I'll be there covering the show, while Matt Maxwell will have a table to sell copies of Strangeways.

And over the next couple days, I'll be posting what various companies and creators have planned for the show. If you'd like to be included, drop me the details on where you'll be, what you'll be selling and all that good stuff.

Exhibit A Press | Jackie Estrada dropped us a note about what Exhibit A Press (table 312) will have at the show, where special guest Batton Lash will be celebrating 30 years of Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre.

"He’ll be signing the limited-edition Supernatural Law Tales from the Vault Anniversary Special as well as comics and trades," she writes. "We’ll also have Batton’s 'monster cameos,' one-of-a-kind hand-painted miniatures of everyone’s favorite monsters. Plus: new Graphitti Designs Supernatural Law T-shirt!"

More info at www.exhibitapress.com/pages/index.php

SLG Publishing | Jennifer de Guzman sent over an update on SLG's plans for the show. "Jamaica Dyer will be a special guest, so we will have plenty of copies of her new book Weird Fishes," she writes. "Jamaica will also be on the panel Personal Stories on Saturday at 5 p.m. with Dean Haspiel, Phoebe Glockner, and Dash Shaw. I'll be moderating her spotlight panel on Sunday at 12 p.m."

Things Undone

NBM | Ted Rall and Shane White will be at APE; Rall will have a few copies of The Year of Loving Dangerously, while White will sign copies of the recent release Things Undone (which is sitting on my dresser in my "to read" pile; I should read it before this weekend).

Top Shelf | Brett Warnock posts on his blog that Nate Powell, Grant Reynolds and Jeremy Tinder will be at their booth, along with himself and Leigh Walton. And as always, he'll be at the Isotope party Saturday night.

Creators | Scott Morse will be on hand doing commissions and selling the last few remaining copies he has of The Ancient Book of Sex and Science.

Manga | Deb Aoki rounds up what various manga publishers are doing at the show.

Famous Players

Rick Geary has been regarded as an “underrated” cartoonist for so long now that it’s almost a cliché at this point to label him as such. But in the many years he’s been making comics, he’s produced an impressive body of work that seems to escape a lot of folks notice. His stellar Victorian Murder series, now bumped up a few decades to encompass the 20th century, alone show such a high and consistent degree of quality that most cartoonists would give their eye teeth to have on their resume.

Having made his name with true crime, he’s recently attempted to tackle the biography genre, producing two books for Hill and Wang’s graphic line, one on J. Edgar Hoover, and most recently, one on Leon Trotsky.

I talked to him recently from his home in Kansas City, Missouri, about his new Trotsky bio as well as the latest book for NBM in his Murder series, Famous Players, about the mysterious and currently unsolved slaying of silent movie director William Desmond Taylor. Here’s what he had to say:

Q: I wanted to start by asking you what originally prompted you to do the Murder series. I get the sense that true crime is a subject of great interest for you.

A: Yeah. I got interested in true crime cases years and years ago. I think it dates back to when I was living in Wichita, Kansas, back in the late ‘70s. I had a friend who was an ex-journalist and ex-policeman. He gave me this collection of mug shots he had accumulated over the years. I get into things through the visual end most of the time, and those pictures kind of got me going. I did research on local unsolved murders and that was about the time that the BTK killer was around in Wichita. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that case.

Q: I don’t think so.

A: He was a serial killer who operated in Wichita back in the early ‘70s. He was only just recently captured and put in prison a couple of years ago. That kind of started me out. When I started doing I just naturally turned to those kinds of subjects.

Q: Why initially Victorian murder?

A: The publisher, Terry Nantier at NBM, suggested the idea to me. I had done a couple of stories for different publications, shorter pieces that dealt with cases of the Victorian era. He suggested doing a whole book of Victorian cases. That kind of mustered from there into the series.

Q: What prompted you to move into the 20th century? Did you feel like you had covered the 19th century pretty well?

A: There are still more cases in the 19th century, but I felt like I kind of, as you say, had done that era and I wanted to move on to more recent times, especially the early 20th century. There are a lot of juicy stories. More than I could ever do.

Q: Focusing on the new book, Famous Players, what drew you to this case?

A: That’s another case I’ve been interested in for years and years. I’ve always been a movie lover and been interested in the early history of Hollywood. And since that’s the very first unsolved murder in the Hollywood community, it’s one I was fascinated with.

In fact, back in the early 80s, I had actually stared to do a graphic novel about the case, although they weren’t called graphic novels back then. It was just going to be a long story that I was going to see if I could publish myself and do as a mini-book, but that never came to fruition. There’s been a lot more information uncovered about the story since then so I’m glad I waited. I just found it was a natural for me.

Q: What sort of new information?

A: At the time, back when I was first researching the case, it was [believed] that Taylor was this extreme womanizer and there were all these rumors going on about the affairs he had and the stuff that was found in his apartment, which was mentioned in newspaper accounts at the time. More recent researchers have found that to be totally false. Things like the women’s negligees and lingerie that were supposedly hidden away in a drawer. Each one of them had a name and a date attached, chronicling his conquests. More recent research has uncovered that he was bisexual and wasn’t nearly the womanizer that people thought he was.

Q: Is there something that defines 19th century murder versus 20th century murder?

A: Not that I can think of. People’s motives for murder remain constant through history, either for personal gain or out of some kind of psychopathic undercurrent to their personality. I’m not sure that the actual motives are that different from era to era. It’s the details and the trappings that change.

Q: It does seem that when you say Victorian people have a certain image in the mind of foggy nights and back alleyways versus modern times.

A: Serial killers aren’t really a modern phenomenon. Jack the Ripper was in the 1880s and H.H. Holmes in the 1890s. I’m not sure what would typify a modern case because the elements remain the same.

Q: I guess the thing is that people want to typify.

A: That’s a good way to put it.

As an illustrator I really enjoy drawing the details of the Victorian era, the interiors and the costumes and hairstyles. Horses and the harnesses and carriages and wagons and stuff like that. Now I get to draw early-day automobiles, which is a whole different route to go. I find it different in that regard. Otherwise I don’t look at it that way. I don’t see it as a different era as far as the content is concerned.

Q: Was there anything about this particular story that seemed different from the others you’ve done? There seems to be a greater mystery, even compared to the Lindbergh case, in that so much seems to be unknown about Taylor’s death.

A: I know. I’m really drawn to the stories that are unsolved and have a lot of unknown elements. Those are my favorites. I like getting all the details straight and laying out the mystery in as clear a way as possible. I try not to push any theory of my own. I just want to lay it out so the reader can make up his or her own mind if possible. Or else just leave it as a mystery. I think questions are more interesting than answers most of the time.

Trotsky: A Graphic Biography

Q: Is there a trick to doing that in comics? I would imagine there is a temptation to push a theory one way or the other.

A: Well, in the Lindbergh story for instance I have my own idea about the case, but I tried not to push it or lean on it. I took pains to illustrate all the different theories that are out there, no matter how unusual or silly they may sound. There are a lot of them. I don’t know if there’s a trick to it but it is something you have to really be careful about. I don’t know if I’ve really mastered any trick.

Q: What’s your next entry in the Murder series?

A: I’m finishing up and inking the next book, which is about the Ax Man of New Orleans, who is a pretty obscure serial killer. I don’t think he’s widely known because he was never captured or identified or anything.

Q: I don’t think I ever heard of him.

A: He operated in New Orleans in the 1918-19 period and used an ax to break into people’s houses and chopped them up. It put the city into a panic for a while. And then he just vanished. There aren’t any major theories about who it was or what happened to him. It’s a real foggy mystery, but there are a lot of juicy details. I had to use newspaper archives to ferret out the details, because no one’s done a book about this particular killer.

At the moment I’m doing research for the book after that which will be the Sacco and Venzetti case.

Q: Now that case I’ve heard of.

A: That’s another one where I have to keep an even tone and not play sides.

Q: It strikes me in a lot of these cases like the New Orleans one and the Beast of Chicago that you really try to avoid getting too gory, even though a lot of these cases are rather gruesome. You hang back a little.

A: I do. It’s not me being squeamish. I just think it’s effective to leave things to the viewer’s imagination. I am kind of reticent about portraying extreme gore and gruesomeness. But I have to say with this Ax Man story it’s pretty gruesome. There’s a higher blood quotient than most of the stuff I’ve done before.

Q: But even in something like Bloody Benders, I noticed at the time how careful you were to avoid the gore. And it made for a much more intense read I think.

A: I hope so. That’s my own predilection.

Q: Who do you look for as an influence in that manner? Is there anyone in comics who’s good at that sort of thing or do you look more towards movies or other mediums?

A: As I said I’ve been a film buff for years and I tend to look toward certain directors from a long time ago rather than other comic artists for my inspiration. Hitchcock of course. And a lot of the filmmakers from the film noir period of the 40s or the Val Lewton films of the 1940s. They get across horror without being gory or direct. It’s less in-your-face than the movies of today, that’s for sure.

Q: I also wanted to ask you about the Trotsky biography. I was curious why Trotsky instead of, say, Lenin, Marx or Stalin?

A: Actually, I was assigned Trotsky. I wouldn’t have chosen him. My first choice would have been Rasputin. I suggested him to the publisher, but he said, “Let’s do Trotsky instead.” I’m fine with that. I didn’t know much about his life at all when I started it. And it was a learning experience for me all the way around.

J. Edgar Hoover

Q: I thought it was especially interesting since your previous biography was about J. Edgar Hoover.

A: Talk about opposites! That’s one thing I liked about it. I get to take on this large swath of history and take someone’s life from a totally different angle.

Q: Did Hill and Wang come to you initially with this idea of doing biographies?

A: Yeah, they contacted me. The editor, who was working on the series got in touch with me and said. “We’re doing these graphic biographies,” and asked me to do one.

Q: Are you going to do any more for them in the foreseeable future?

A: Well, I’m told the market has gone soft so I don’t know. They’re holding off. We shall see.

Q: What are the challenges in trying to summarize someone’s life like Hoover’s or Trotsky’s? You’re working with a larger span of time and have a lot more detail to cram in than something like Bloody Benders.

A: That’s true. It’s certainly a more daunting project than the Murder books, especially with someone like Trotsky who is a very contradictory character. He was heroic to some people and a real negative character to others. It was kind of a balancing act. I tried to be as even handed as possible. Same with Hoover.

Q: I did notice with Hoover you didn’t come down one-way or the other.

A: Yeah, when there was some kind of scandalous accusation I put it in terms like “Some people say.” There wasn’t anything scandalous in Trotsky’s life except his affair with Frida Kahlo in his final years.

Q: Is it difficult to edit down, once you have all the information on a person, to pick and choose which events or what to put in or leave out?

A: There’s always too much information. It’s a matter of winnowing down. With Trotsky I tried to find the most dramatic aspects of his life because most of his biography is pretty un-visual. It’s these internal disputes within the Bolshevik party or the different questions of setting up a new country. The more dramatic episodes of his life like escaping from exile, where he was on this reindeer sleigh, and later on when he was the military leader during the civil war, those are the incidents I wanted to give more play to because they were more visual and more melodrama.

Q: Tell me a little bit about the research you do for both the murder books and these biographies. I would imagine in both cases it’s difficult to find the right book or biography but visual research as well.

A: That’s true. When I decide on a subject I read as much as I can on it; as many books as I can read and keep on the deadline. I use a lot of online sources as well. I can usually find pictures of just about anything I want – anything that’s out there anyway. For the Ax Man of New Orleans book the only visual references I found were in this old newspaper file that had photos of the murder scenes and the victims and overhead views of the house. That was really all I had for this book. Other cases like Lindbergh there’s more visual reference than I could possibly use. It’s the same thing with books on that case. Some cases have a library of stuff written about them.

Q: What do you do when it’s like the New Orleans case, when you don’t have a lot to go on?

A: I never have anything less than I need to do an eighty page book. This and the Bloody Benders, there wasn’t much info about them. If I need to I can fan it out by having a double-page spread or having an illustration fill up a whole page. There are ways to finesse it visually. But sometimes you can tell when there’s less information out there.

Q: Whether you’re doing Trotsky or Famous Players, what’s your work method? Once you have all the information you need, how do you go from research to book?

A: Once I’ve done all the reading and taken all the notes, I write a pretty detailed script. The script for these murder books I don’t include visuals I just write bits of information that eventually form into the captions under each panel. My publisher at NBM has gotten used to this. The visuals are either self-explanatory from the captions or else I don’t know what they’re going to be until I actually sit down to draw the page. Hill and Wang demanded a little more detailed script and description of what the visuals were going to be in each panel. So I make it up if I can’t think of something off the top of my head. That’s usually how it turns out in the final comic. Or it’s something completely different.

When I have the script done I start penciling each page one at a time. When I’ve got the whole book completed in pencil then I go to the inks. If all goes well.

Q: You have a really neat visual style. It’s slightly photorealistic but also slightly cartoonish and you have this spare line you use for your shading that I admire. How conscious were you in developing this style?

A: I don’t know. I feel that a style develops in a semi-conscious way. I just know I go for a certain feel or texture in the line work. I really don’t know much more to say about it than that. It just comes out of working. It just emerges.

Q: More intuitive than anything?

A: That’s how I think of it. This is stuff I’m not used to ruminating on. But it emerges the more work you do. I know my stuff falls in this crack between straight illustration and the more exaggerated kind of cartooning. There’s a humorous edge to these things.

The Big Kahn

The Big Kahn
Written by Neil Kleid, art by Nicolas Cinquegrani
NBM, 176 pages, $13.95.

Here's the thing. I have a friend who fell in love several years ago with a wonderful, intelligent woman. His parents, however, refused to recognize their relationship and threatened to disown him if he married her. Why? Because she didn't practice the same religion they did. Eventually they thankfully relented and embraced his now-wife, but it resulted in several years of ugly tension and discomfort for everyone involved, to put it mildly.

I have another friend who has two sisters who were both disowned by their father because, you guessed it, they married outside of the church. In the one case the sister married a Mormon. In the other, she just abandoned the church altogether. My friend has told me several times that her dad's decision all but rendered her family asunder and caused scars that are still linger these many decades later.

So when one of the main characters in The Big Kahn, an up-and-coming young rabbi, has this huge guilt complex because in a moment of weakness he slept with a gentile girl, I'm not really feeling his pain. In fact, I want to punch him in the nose.

Because, you see, author Kleid makes it very clear that the character's crime of fornicating outside of marriage is nowhere near as great as having casual sex with a shiksa, and that's something I have a big ethical problem with.

The Big Kahn is ostensibly about a Jewish family who discovers, only a day after his death that their father, an upstanding rabbi and community leader, was not only Catholic, but had led a previous life as a con man.

That's a pretty good hook for a story. I can imagine a number of ways a creator (or creators as the case may be) could examine the emotional repercussions such a revelation would have on a family like that. It would make for quite an engrossing, moving read.

Unfortunately, Kleid and Cinquegrani don't really seem all that interested in making that sort of book. Instead, they have produced a tedious comic where every answer is a foregone conclusion, especially when the question is "Can religion solve all our problems?" Keep in mind: I'm not necessarily objecting to Kleid's desire to cast spirituality and specifically Judaism in a positive light. Far from it. No, what I'm criticizing is his setting up of straw man arguments, his apparent refusal to really grapple with the questions he raises and his seeming inability to examine what the real honest consequences of the father's actions would be and how a real family would react.

I didn't believe a single thing in this book. Not the plot, not the characters, not their dialogue and certainly not their behavior. Ask yourself: Would the con man's brother really interrupt the funeral to announce in front of the entire assembly that their beloved rabbi was actually Catholic? Wouldn't he confront the family before or even after the service? Would the rebellious sister who's always shunned her religion really use this an excuse to rediscover it? Wouldn't it drive her further away? Wouldn't the youngest son act out in worse and more damaging ways than the occasional game of three-card monte behind the back school steps?

But perhaps my negative reaction to this book merely stems from dislike towards the goody-good eldest son and his guilt over not being "spiritually pure" any more. You see, I've seen and heard what the desire to be "spiritually pure" has done to families, and quite frankly, I want none of it. My sympathies lie elsewhere.

Brave and the Bold #27

Sunday's here and that means it's time once more for What Are You Reading. Our guest this week is the incredibly talented cartoonist Rick Geary. Geary has two books out this fall, his latest entry in his ongoing XXth Century Murder series, Famous Players, and a biography of Leon Trotsky that should be coming out from Hill and Wang any day now.

Look for an interview with Mr. Geary appearing on this blog in the coming weeks. For now though, let's just see what he's currently reading ...

Drifting Classroom

Chris Mautner: I'm finally, finally, finally getting around to finishing Kazuo Umezu's seminal horror classic The Drifting Classroom. One of the things I like about the manga is how it's just one damned thing after another. No sooner are the hapless elementary school kids attacked by horrible mutants than they somehow disappear and make way for a toxic gas. The best part is the mutants are barely mentioned again. Whatever terror has passed is nowhere near as horrible as the one in front of them.

I also just, just got in the mail the new book from Sunday Press Books, The Upside Down World of Gustave Verbeek. Verbeek was an early 20th century comic strip artist whose claim to fame was that his strip relied on optical illusion. If you turned it 180 degrees the whole picture changed and you could keep reading the story. I haven't gotten far enough in it yet to make any comments, but I look forward to diving into it this week.

I also finally saw the first Fantastic Four move, courtesy of the FX channel and Comcast's free movie selections. Boy am I glad I didn't pay any reasonable amount of money to see that on the big screen. A really dumb, loud, incoherent movie, with little in the way to recommend it beyond Michael Chiklis' performance as Ben Grimm. The guy playing Dr. Doom was especially horrible. I can't imagine the sequel being any improvement.

American Born Chinese

Michael May: I'm reading Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith's Dark Days again. Partly because Halloween is coming; partly because news about the direct-to-DVD movie adaptation is getting me excited about revisiting the story. It's my favorite of the 30 Days of Night stories and I keep finding new stuff to like every time I read it. Dane's emotional journey is what keeps drawing me to the book, but this time around I'm also especially curious about his partner Yuki. There's an untold story there.

I'm also revisiting American Born Chinese and it's even better the second time around. My first reading was great, but you have to spend some energy trying to figure out what the three plot threads have to do with each other. Since I already know that this time, I'm able to concentrate better on how he tells the overall story and - more importantly - how beautifully and powerfully he communicates his message. I'm really sorry that I'm almost done with it. I already want to read it yet again.

Marvel Monsters

Tom Bondurant: The Marvel Monsters hardcover was half-off, but a bargain at any price. It's got a lot of great stuff, blending classic Kirby monster reprints (and one from Don Heck) with the stories from the "Marvel Monsters" event from a few years back. The highlight for me was Scott Gray and Roger Langridge's original "Fin Fang Four" story, just a gem of a thing which has the robot Elektro finding love and Fin Fang Foom working as a chef in a Baxter Building restaurant. I especially liked Langridge's page of the Thing as romance-coach. The book opens with a fun Devil Dinosaur/Hulk battle (orchestrated by a couple of middle-management Celestials) from Tom Sniegoski and Eric Powell. The new stuff is all in the same good-natured vein, like Keith Giffen and Mike Allred checking back in with Bombu and Peter David and Arnold Pander revisiting Monstrollo. The book also reprints a text-oriented special cataloging the various Marvel monsters, which is nice as reference, but I would have liked more classic reprints (like the original Tim Boo Ba story, for instance). Still, though, overall quite a nice package.

I thought JMS's first issue of The Brave and the Bold was something of a missed opportunity. From the "Death of a Hero" title I could see where the story was going. Admittedly, I wasn't expecting the twist JMS put on it, and I suppose Batman's closing speech was meant to make it all work out, but I can't help but think what a Waid, Morrison, or Busiek could have done with Batman dialing the H-Dial. At the very least I was expecting the H-Dial's heroes to be credited to readers....

Beasts of Burden #1

Tim O'Shea: Evan Dorkin's and Jill Thompson's Beasts of Burden is even greater than I expected it to be. When I interviewed Dorkin about the series a few months back, he definitely got me enthused for the series, but he and Thompson far exceeded my raised expectations. It may seem like a simple compliment, but I love Thomspon's layout sense for how it heightens the drama and action in the book. Also the facial expressions she gives the animals are amazing. Dorkin's gift of dialogue reaches it's pinnacle for me with Pugs' line "A mother-humpin', big-ass, giant frog." It was only on my second reading that I really grew to appreciate how much Jason Arthur's lettering (particularly with the dialogue of the aforementioned mother-humpin' frog) adds to the tale.

When I was a kid, what appealed to me about Captain America was his secret identity. I distinctly remember one issue where Cap was vacuuming his apartment, cleaning up the mess after the Constrictor had driven a car through it. OK, so as a 41-year-old man, I realize my critical mind was dormant in the 1970s. He'd have to do a hell of a lot more than vacuuming to fix that apartment. Heck it's been 30 years since I read the comic, I might be misremembering the scene. As I'm older now, I realize what actually appealed to me about Cap was his relationships with folks like Sam (Falcon) Wilson, Nick Fury and Sharon Carter. During Mark Waid's run on Cap, he emphasized the friendship with Clint (Hawkeye) Barton. Captain America Reborn 3 reveals a few things to me. Ed Brubaker would write one extremely good Avengers book. Brubaker clearly loves romping through Cap's history (best part in this issue is either Cap reliving the hell of his frozen man period; or the all-out action of the Kree-Skull War). But best of all, Brubaker shares my love of Cap's relationships, as exemplified by his outstanding use of Cap's supporting cast.

Speaking of Nick Fury, another book with a great supporting cast is Jonathan Hickman's Secret Warriors. (But boy when does Black Widow sleep, what with her role in Reborn and Secret Warriors). When Norman
Osborn ultimately gets taken down (please tell me that's coming soon, Marvel), I'll be curious to see if Nick gets the pleasure of dethroning Normie. As an aside, does anyone else wish that Bendis and Marvel editorial had picked someone other than Osborn to be the ringleader behind this Dark Reign malarkey? I prefer Norman Osborn as the traditional crazy myopic "must ruin Peter Parker" character. Sure it's a one-note character, but it's a damn good note. The present day Osborn just smacks of a heavily medicated Lex Luthor with a hate-on for every superhero. Sorry, went off the rails there ... really enjoying Secret Warriors.

I enjoyed the latest issue of Batgirl, mostly because a good chunk of it was devoted to Oracle. I was absolutely flummoxed, however, that they devoted so much storytime to having Oracle's servers crap out
(the woman that plans everything does not have a back-up server?) so she had to drive over to the Batcave (that's right, Oracle could not just hack into the Batcave, she had to drive over there) just so Stephanie could look at the shrine of costumes (hey where's Bruce's, Dick?) and a discussion that will either please or annoy DC/"Stephanie should have had a shrine" critics.

J. Michael Straczynski finally begins his run on The Brave and The Bold with issue 27. It's not a traditional team-up with Dial H for Hero and that's actually what makes this issue work. Even better, the issue is that rare endangered comic book species--the one-and-done issue.

This past week at my pop culture blog, Talking with Tim, I interviewed Mike Sacks about his book (that I am still enjoying), And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on their Craft. Unfortunately Sacks was not able to include all the interviews he wanted to feature. So instead he's offering those four interviews for free on the book's website . Those interviews include Daniel Clowes and Roz Chast.

Both interviews are great (as is the whole book, Sacks offers snippets from each interview at the book's site, Chast talks about a variety of topics from Charles Addams to Diane Arbus. But, here's my favorite snippet from the Clowes interview, talking about his 2007-08 New York Times experience:

As far as subject matter, they never said a word, but as I said they were very touchy about language — their little “stylebook” is very important to them. Aside from “Jesus,” for instance, I wasn’t allowed to use the word “schmuck.” Mad’s been using the word for fifty years! It’s not as if I were using it in the Yiddish sense: “Wow, that guy has a huge cock!” I even found an old William Safire column from the NY Times magazine about “schmuck.” He wrote something like, “The original meaning of the word has long ago been forgotten, and it’s commonly accepted for general use.”

I showed this to the editors, but they told me, “No. We can’t run the word.” I could have acted like an asshole and told them I was going to end the strip halfway through, but this was a really good assignmentfor cartoonists. I didn’t want to be the guy who killed it for everyone else.

Stone Rabbit: Deep Space Disco

Brigid Alverson: I haven’t had a lot of time for reading this week, but I got a review copy of Stone Rabbit: Deep Space Disco, and that was about right for a quick read during a busy week. It’s a kids’ comic in a handy digest size, and although Craddock puts a lot of imaginative detail into his panels, including giant robots and all sorts of bizarre aliens, the pages never get too crowded or chaotic. I think that’s because he limits himself to one or two panels per page and manages to create a hierarchy, keeping the main characters in the foreground and letting everything drop back a bit. That seems simple and obvious, but a surprising number of artists can’t do that and instead let foreground and background blend into one confusing web. The story is pretty straightforward — an evil alien switches places with Stone Rabbit and
wreaks havoc on earth, while Stone Rabbit is prosecuted for his crimes on his home planet. There’s more action than talk, and lots of giant robots, so it really is a great kids’ comic — it has a real Saturday morning cartoon feel to it.

On a completely different note, I also got review copies of Eric Heuvel’s  A Family Secret and The Search, two comics about the Holocaust, sponsored by the Anne Frank House and originally published in the Netherlands. At first glance, they look uncannily like Tintin — not only does Heuvel work in the ligne Claire style that Herge pioneered, but the design of the book, the page layouts, and even the lettering are similar to Tintin. However, the stories are obviously more serious. A Family Secret is told in flashbacks, and because the creator has to give a history lesson to set the scene, the dialogue is a bit stilted. Still, the characters are three-dimensional, and it’s interesting to watch them struggle with the difficulties of living
under German occupation (without the hindsignt of history to sort things out for them). It’s also interesting that it’s written from the Dutch point of view; the main character is a Dutch girl who befriends a Jewish refugee from Germany. I am only about 20 pages in, but it looks very promising.

Sacco and Vanzetti

Rick Geary: I'm currently immersed in research on the Sacco & Vanzetti case for my next 20th Century Murder graphic novel. I've finished two books about it and now I'm in the midst of a third, entitled simply Sacco & Vanzetti by Bruce Watson. The other two books were rather dry accounts of the legal issues involved and the international uproar following the sentencing. This one, though, is a full-bodied rendering of the entire story, featuring dramatic details, and rich characterizations.

Next up is The Quaker City, or The Monks of Monk Hall, A Romance of Philadelphia Life, Mystery and Crime by George Lippard.