Action Comics #5

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. Our guest today is Marc Singer, author of the very excellent book, Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics, which is an excellent, excellent book that you should read if you’re at all interested in Morrison and his work.

To find out what Singer and other members of the Robot 6 crew are reading this week, simply click on the link below.

Tim O’Shea: If Amazing Spider-Man readers were not already reading Daredevil before this two-part crossover (Amazing Spider-Man 677/Daredevil 8, both written by Mark Waid), the writer sure as hell gave them several

Daredevil #8

good reasons to start reading the book. And for Waid, this must have just been fun to write. In some ways, it read like a throwback to the 1970s Marvel Team-Up issues I grew up reading. In the first part, Waid worked in a scene where Spidey is confused about DD’s secret identity status. Spidey/DD banter is always fun to read, even when it’s marketing work intended to inform a non-DD reader. In the second part, we are given:

1. A Paolo Rivera cover that has me wanting the artist to do a 52-card playing deck of Marvel characters (and a great use of a fire escape for a cover)
2. An exquisite splash page by Kano
3. Waid writes the issue addressing previous plot threads and planting seeds for future issues (a risky approach considering the number of potentially new readers drawn in with this issue) but it works
4. A great billy club meets helicopter scene
5. A smidge more DD/Spidey banter

Amazing Spider-Man 678
This week’s Spidey (Christ, I feel absurd even saying that) offers readers another part one of a two-part story. In the world of neverending event comics (is Fear Itself over yet?), the fact that I get to talk about two two-part stories in one week is a refreshing surprise. If you look back at the number of writers of Spider-Man over the years, there were some writers that seemingly did not know how to write Peter Parker outside of his longjohns. Slott, on the other hand, relishes it. The cast of characters and the scenarios Parker finds himself in, thanks to his Horizon Labs job, allows Slott to stretch his writing muscles. This issue revolves around a time portal doorway that one of his lab associates has developed (Slott, ever the comedic writer, has it be the doorway for the lab’s break rooms. I appreciate Slott and Marvel editorials restraint on this story. A glimpse into the future where New York is destroyed could have easily been stretched out into six parts, so I am appreciative of the fact that this is a fast-paced (so far) two-parter.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents 3
In the third issue of this six-part miniseries, I am pleased to say that writer Nick Spencer surprised me. Admittedly he’s been revamping the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. history throughout his run with the characters, but his reveal at the end of this issue is one I never expected. I have been often on the fence with this series (a fascination with things Wally Wood-related has made me hang in there though). But there is no doubt I would have bought this issue, no matter what, given that I saw Walter Simonson pitched in to do some scenes. (And yeah, I cannot believe I forgot to pick up this week’s Legion of Superheroes 5, a standalone completely drawn by Simonson). On a Simonson-related note, if you are a fan of his like I am, go read the brief interview Josie Campbell did with him for CBR. Even in that brief exchange, Simonson unleashes some great gems of details—about his dad and other things.

Approximate Continuum Comics

Chris Mautner: You know who’s great? Lewis Trondheim, the incredibly prolific French cartoonist. Evidence comes in two recent publications, both autobiographical. The first is Approximate Continuum Comics, an English translation of a six-part series Trondheim published in the 1990s concerning his struggles in the comics industry, desire for success and acclaim and just general angst, anxiety and feelings of self-doubt. It sounds all terribly self-involved to the point of tedium, but Trondheim is simply too skilled a storyteller to allow his own ego to override the quality of his work. Approximate is filled with wonderful visual inventions, like an early daydream about dealing with obnoxious passangers on the subway. More to the point, Trondheim’s self-effacing sense of humor is so charming and revealing that the book never becomes too solipsistic or insufferable. Time has dimmed its

Trondheim continues to reveal his life to readers on a weekly basis over at his Web site (and the NBM blog), most of which has been collected in his “Little Nothings” series. The lastest book, My Shadow in the Distance, offers more of the same, and such a wonderful same it is. The material in Shadows is more one-page humor strips, similar to, say, American Elf, but Trondheim hasn’t lost any of his angst or irritation at modern life and travel. If anything he’s become a more accomplished artist, especially with watercolor, which graces the content of Shadows in lovely wash tones. Plus, it’s really funny.

Do the Gods Wear Capes?

Marc Singer: I’ve just picked up a ton of books, scholarly and otherwise. Right now I’m in the middle of Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes by Ben Saunders (which is absolutely not about how superheroes are “a modern mythology” and is all the better for it). I’ve also been leafing through Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin’s Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives, a collection of essays about comics, television, video games, tabletop RPGs, and other media that lend themselves to huge, open-ended narratives. For fun I’ve been reading Kim Newman’s Mysteries of the Diogenes Club, a collection of short stories published by Chris Roberson’s MonkeyBrain Books. Newman has created his own “vast narrative” about the Diogenes Club, a group of occult investigators and secret agents that stretches from Mycroft Holmes to the present day. But I need to clear some of these out of the way, because the book I’m most looking forward to reading is Charles Hatfield’s Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby.

As far as comics go, I’m pretty much a lock for anything Grant Morrison writes, so I’ve been following Action Comics since the big DC relaunch. I have mixed feelings about this one. For all of Morrison’s pre-release hype about writing a working-class “Bruce Springsteen version of Superman,” the comic never really delivered on his promise of an old-school Siegel and Shuster superhero who takes on crooked contractors and greedy mine owners. Hints of that approach were wedged into the first two issues — just barely — before they were shoved out in favor of the kind of ‘definitive’ origin retelling that attempts to cram in Brainiac, Metallo, Steel, and as many other old familiar faces as possible.

On the other hand, social realism has never really been Morrison’s strong suit and he handles the fantasy elements with more confidence. Each issue has been better than the one before it, with the possible exception of the origin story, which manages to do in twenty pages what Morrison once did in four panels and eight words. Still, he writes a suitably heroic House of El and each issue adds some new details that are collectively adding up to a bigger picture. I just can’t shake the feeling that the book’s craft and its ambitions are moving in opposite directions. (And it’s never a good sign when you find yourself looking forward to the fill-in artists.)

Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes was much more to my tastes. I’m not certain this “corporate franchise” phase of Morrison’s Batman mega-narrative is going to amount to much more than a fast-paced team-up book, but with incredibly talented artists like Cameron Stewart and Chris Burnham on board, I don’t care. And Morrison’s compact, modular storytelling lets him work in a wide range of genres without losing focus: any book that can go from St. Trinian’s to Steranko is all right by me.

The Flash

The most pleasant surprise of the DC relaunch has been Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato’s Flash. Manapul’s approach to the Flash — using the character’s speed powers and accelerated perceptions as an excuse to experiment with different ways of representing time and motion on the page — is so perfect that you can’t believe nobody’s tried it yet. At the moment, Manapul’s still deeply indebted to his influences (the most recent issue trades Frank Quitely for J. H. Williams III) but I get the sense that when he fully absorbs their styles and starts creating his own visual idiom, this book is going to look even more amazing than it already does.

Flash radiates a pure joy in being a comic book that, among mainstream superhero books, is rivaled only by Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera, and Marcos Martin’s work on Daredevil. This is another one of those so-obvious-it’s-genius ideas—building a comic around Daredevil’s senses, which forces Waid and company to devise new ways to represent sound and texture on the smooth, silent page. It’s a testament to their skill that they make it look easy.

If you want to talk about sheer joy in comics as comics, it doesn’t get much more ecstatic than the crescendo of creatively designed, emotionally charged pages that Jaime Hernandez builds up to in his final story for the latest volume of Love and Rockets: New Stories. But Jaime’s command of his art—every aspect of his art, from lines to layouts to inks to body language to facial expressions—is so great that a single panel of Reno slouching away into the shadows can be just as breathtaking as the double-page spread that sums up the relationship of Maggie and Ray. A couple of years ago, I was hoping that Jaime’s foray into the loopy superhero sci-fi of the Ti-Girls would lead to a renewed freshness and vitality in his more realistic stories. “The Love Bunglers” delivers, big time. At this point Love and Rockets: New Stories probably doesn’t need any more rave reviews, but Jaime’s work is still the highlight of my comics pile.

Are You My Mother?

With 2012 still fresh and new, it seems like as good a time as any to look at various publishing companies’ plans for the year ahead and pick out what looks good, or at least interesting. Because the year looks to be filled with so many delights, I decided to double down and offer not just six but 12 comics I’m really looking forward to reading. Obviously this list is reflective of my own, indie-slanted interests, so feel free in the comments section to tell me what a dope I am for forgetting about Book X by Artist Y.

1. Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel (Houghton Mifflin). With a planned initial print run of 100,000 copies, there’s little doubt that Houghton Mifflin is expecting big things from Bechdel’s follow-up to her hugely acclaimed graphic novel Fun Home. Whereas that book dealt mainly with Bechdel’s relationship with her dad, this one focuses on her mom (in case you didn’t grab that from the title). A touchy subject, to be sure, but Bechdel’s proven she can handle such difficult, personal material with considerable aplomb.

Mastering Comics

2. Mastering Comics by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden (First Second). Abel and Madden’s Drawing Words and Writing Pictures was one of the best “how-to” guides comics has ever seen. I’m anxious to see what they’ll do for an encore.

3. Sammy the Mouse Vol. 2 by Zak Sally (La Mano). Volume One of Sally’s surreal, anthropomorphic saga just came out, collecting the first three issues of the Ignatz series. As good news as this is, what I’m excited about is Sally’s plans to have Volume 2, featuring all-new material, out by the end of the year. Sammy was one of the best books in the Ignatz line, and I’m eager to see the story continue.

4. Best of Enemies: A History of the Middle East Relations, Part One by Jean-Pierre Filiu and David B (Abrams). Funny the things you find out when you start strolling through a company’s online catalog. Did you know that Abrams is kickstarting another graphic novel imprint this year? With a heavy focus on Eurocomics? I sure as hell didn’t. One of the more notable releases is an English edition of the award-winning Kiki de Montparnasse. What I’m really curious about, however, is this historical project by the always interesting David B. and friend on the history of the Middle East.

5. Ed the Happy Clown by Chester Brown (Drawn and Quarterly). How long has it been since a collected version of Ed has been available? It’s been a long time. Long enough for me to note that it’s one of the few books by Brown that I haven’t read (other than pieces here and there — it’s shameful, I know). This is definitely going to be one of the big reprint projects of the year.

6. The Strange Tale of Paranorma Island by Suehiro Maruo (Last Gasp). This was initially promised to come out last year but apparently got delayed. Let’s hope we’re able to see a release in 2012. Maruo’s work is rarely for the squeamish or easily offended, but his comics have a haunting, lush quality that makes them worth checking out.

7. Barnaby Vol. 1 by Crockett Johnson (Fantagraphics). Here’s the other big reprint project of the year. Johnson’s wonderful, vastly underrated comic strip about a little boy and his underperforming fairy godfather is finally, finally being collected. Can’t wait.

8. Rohan at the Louvre by Hirohiko Araki (NBM). OK, so NBM has been publishing these graphic novels about the Louvre museum in Paris, and for the most part they’ve all been pretty good. This one, however, looks really interesting as it’s by the creator of the manga series Jo Jo’s Bizarre Adventures and stars one of the characters from that series. Chris Butcher talks a bit about it and offers up a preview over at his site.

9. Skippy Vol. 1 by Percy Crosby (IDW). OK, this is the other other big reprint project of the year. Even more than Barnaby, Skippy has largely been forgotten by a lot of comic readers, even though it heavily influenced works like Peanuts. But it’s a thoroughly charming, thoughtful strip that I expect will find a new appreciation with the release of this book.

The Lovely, Horrible Stuff

10. The Lovely Horrible Stuff by Eddie Campbell (Top Shelf). A new book from Eddie Campbell is always cause for celebration. This one deals with money and mankind’s general relationship toward it, with lots of personal anecdotes provided by the author, no doubt.

11. Lose #4 by Michael DeForge (Koyama Press). Oh, yeah, boy, more DeForge. What’s not to like?

12. Spirit World by Jack Kirby (DC). I didn’t even know this work existed until DC announced the collection earlier this year — that’s how poor a Kirby scholar I am. Still, it’s nice to see DC make a concerted effort to get as much of the King’s work out there as possible and I’m excited to see what this collection — mainly collecting horror/supernatural-style magazine stories if I’m correct — holds.

Salvatore Vol. 2

It’s time once again for our annual look at six books that were, for whatever reason, unjustly ignored by the public and critical cognoscenti at large. With all the titles that are published lately, it’s no real surprise that some books fall through the cracks, though in certain cases it seems grossly unwarranted.

After the jump are six books that, while they may not have made my “best of 2011″ list, I think got nowhere near the amount of attention they deserved. There are lots more that I could include if I had the time. I’m sure there are books you read this year that you don’t think got enough praise either. Be sure to let me know what they are in the comments section.

1. Salvatore by Nicholas De Crecy (NBM). Although highly acclaimed on the other side of the Atlantic, De Crecy is one of those many, many European cartoonists that remains persona non grata here in the U.S. Only three of De Crecy’s books have been translated for American audiences so far: the Louvre-themed Glacial Period and two volumes of Salvatore, the second of which came out this year with barely a peep from critics or readers. That’s a shame as Salvatore is a charmingly absurd anthropomorphic tale involving a philosophizing dog mechanic who, along with his silent, minuscule, bald servent — sets off for South America in a ridiculous contraption of an automobile in search of his true love. As that description suggests, Salvatore is a rather complicated farce, with lots of side stories and supporting characters, including a near-sighted mama pig who searches in vain for a lost child while the rest of her brood becomes ecological entrepreneurs. De Crecy applies an arch, overly formal writing style here that, combined with his rough, detailed art, gives the story an off-kilter, almost grotesque feel that makes it seem both otherworldly and a sly satire of modern foibles, cultures and attitudes. Certainly there’s nothing quite like it being published right now.

King of Flies Vol. 2

2. Pure Pajamas by Marc Bell (D&Q). I have no evidence backing this up, but I suspect Bell is an artist that confounds a number of people. He adopts a big-foot, potato-nose visual style in the best comic strip tradition, and his world is a friendly, anthropomorphic fantasia where everything, from your breakfast food on down is eager to wish you well. On the other hand, his stories lean towards the distressingly surreal, cute characters can easily come to violent ends and things can go bizarrely awry for the most absurd reasons. Myself, I find that tension between the rubbery cute and off-kilter savagery to be one of Bell’s strengths. Pure Pajamas, which collects various strips and stories Bell has done for various media over the years, is about as good an example of those strengths as you’re likely to find.

3. King of the Flies Vol. 2: The Origin of the World by Mezzo and Pirus (Fantagraphics). I suspect a number of potential readers flipped through King of the Flies (either online or in stores) and dismissed it quickly as an obvious Charles Burns rip-off. That’s somewhat understandable. After all, Mezzo and Pirus do wear their influences on their sleeves. Not just Burns, but other artistic lodestones like Quentin Tarintino, David Lynch and Jim Thompson haunt this three-part saga as much as one recently deceased character does. But this dark, disjointed story about an assortment of misfit suburban characters plagued by bad luck and their own poor choices is a compelling, bitterly funny read nevertheless. Despite its obvious influences King never feels like a pale imitation, especially in the second volume, where the ante is upped considerably, both on an aesthetic and narrative level. Don’t let your initial impressions keep you from checking it out.

4. Everything Vol. 1: Blabber, Blabber, Blabber by Lynda Barry (D&Q). It seems odd that a Lynda Barry book should make this list after the deserved acclaim that greeted her last two books, Picture This and What It Is. Yet aside from a review at the AV Club and a New York Times profile (which admittedly is nothing to sneeze at) I’m not sure anyone talked about this new collection of some very early work other than to acknowledge its existence. It certainly seemed to slip off a lot of people’s radar (including my own) when it came time to make a “best of” list. Yet Blabber offers a fascinating look at Barry’s early development as a cartoonist, as she moves from the delicate, oddball Ernie Pook to the rawer, more emotionally savage material of “Boys and Girls.” There’s a lot here for Barry fans, and fans of good comics in general, to chew on.

The Man Who Grew His Beard

5. The Man Who Grew His Beard by Olivier Schrauwen (Fantagraphics). Color Engineering author Yuichi Yokoyama got all the attention this year, but to my eyes Schrauwen is just as innovative and wholly original a cartoonist as Yokoyama. The main difference between the two is that where Yokoyama is focused on expressing motion, machinery and discovery, Schrauwen prefers to explore differences in perception, especially between reality and that of the imagination. Many of the characters in Schrauwen’s collection of short stories (many of which appeared previously in Mome) are mentally disturbed or disabled in some fashion and attempt to reshape what they see in order to compensate for their liabilities. None of this is explicit however; it’s often up to the reader to determine where truth and subjectivity begin and end (though he does frequently drop hints). Incredibly inventive and at times darkly funny, Beard is the work of a master cartoonist worth more attention.

6. Tank Tankuro by Gajo Sakamoto (PressPop). Japanese comics are generally thought to have begun with the end of World War II, but of course that isn’t the case, as this impressive book, lovingly designed by Chris Ware, proves. The Tank in question is an overly exuberant robot warrior/superhero whose metal ball body not only protects him from gunfire but can help produce airplane wings, a drill or even smaller clones of himself — whatever’s needed to get him out of a particular jam. Though decidedly militaristic and nationalistic (Tank is perhaps a bit too eager for war) Sakamoto’s comics from the 1930s are irrepressibly buoyant and loopy enough to delight even the most ardent pacifist. In a golden age of reprints where tons of lesser works are getting dragged back out for a glossy-page omnibus, here’s a little known gem that really deserves a spot in the limelight.

Rick Geary shares some pencils from the next volume in his Treasury of 20th Century Murder series. This one takes as its subject the double murder of Rev. Edward Hall and Mrs. Eleanor Mills in New Brunswick, NJ, in 1922. What’s interesting is how just the frontispiece and two maps present so much information in such a compact form. I know absolutely nothing about this murder, but now that I have a few glimpses, I’m looking forward to reading the book and finding out who the victims were (obviously married, but not to each other) and what the significance is of the crab-apple tree.

While a number of American companies publish licensed manhwa, they usually don’t brand it as such. Tokyopop and Central Park Media started bringing it over in the mid-2000s to supplement their manga lines, which led many fans to dismiss it as an inferior version of manga. I remember sitting in the CPM panel at NYCC in February 2007, when CPM managing director John O’Donnell asked the crowd of mostly manga and anime fans what they thought about manhwa. Hoots of derision echoed off the concrete walls as fans ticked off the things they hate about manhwa, weak art and fractured storytelling looming large among them.

But that had a lot to do with the selection available; at that time, most of the manhwa available in English were second-string genre titles, and a lot of them did look like crappy imitations of manga. What’s more, people didn’t have a sense of manhwa the way they do of manga; the highest-profile manhwa property in the U.S. is probably Tokyopop’s Priest, especially since the movie came out this year, but people don’t necessarily know it’s Korean. Tokyopop made a good try by publishing a number of manhwa by Hee Jung Park that could hold their own in any selection of American indy comics, but they never found their audience, which is a shame. And no discussion is complete without a mention of Bride of the Water God, the beautifully drawn but oft-delayed series published by Dark Horse.

Since then, however, manhwa has been quietly blossoming in the U.S. Netcomics, an online manhwa site owned by the Korean company Ecomics, has done a lot to bring over quality manhwa, and series like Let Dai, Dokebi Bride, and 10, 20, and 30 have developed fan bases among English-language readers. Netcomics was one of the first online comics sites, and it avoided many of the pitfalls that manga sites are prone to for two reasons: Korean licensors are not quite so tight with the rights, and Korea is a heavily wired country where comics sites are already common, so no one was reinventing the wheel. Netcomics had been quiet for quite a while but recently started updating again.

NBM and First Second have had some success with marketing manhwa to indy comics readers, NBM with Run, Bong-Gu, Run and First Second with their Color of Earth trilogy.

The biggest print publisher of manhwa in the U.S. is Yen Press, which purchased the catalog of Ice Kunion when that company went defunct and has since brought over a number of new series—again, not specifically branded as manhwa. Their catalog includes Goong, one of the most popular girls’ comics in Korea, and the violent supernatural story Jack Frost (which I hate but seems to do very well for them).

So manga is here and there, but outside of Netcomics, it’s not particularly celebrated for what it is. That may be about to change, however, as the Bicof people invited a number of movers and shakers, including comiXology CEO David Steinberger, ICv2 honcho Milton Griepp, and representatives from Bluewater Comics, as well as publishers from other countries, to the festival. If you want to get ahead of the game, check out Kate Dacey’s list of 10 must-read translated manhwa and follow Melinda Beasi at Manga Bookshelf, as she has a longstanding fascination with manhwa in English.

Spera, Volume 1

It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes, and first issues so that I don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “Jeff Lemire’s Frankenstein is still awesome!” every month. And I’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.

Also, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell me what I missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.

Archaia

The Grave Doug Freshley – A lot of publishers are doing Weird Western comics lately and that’s just fine with me.

Spera, Volume 1 – I like the sound of this fairy tale in which a couple of princesses combine efforts to save their kingdoms. It’s not that I’m anti-prince, but that’s a cool, new way to do that story.

Avatar

Captain Swing and the Electrical Pirates of Cindery Island – Warren Ellis doing Steampunk sounds thrilling, but really all they had to say was “pirates.” I bet this is still really good though, even if you’re pickier than I am.

Boom!

Roger Langridge’s Snarked #1 – After a well-loved zero-issue, Langridge’s version of Wonderland gets its real, official start.

The Huntress #1

Dark Horse

Turok, Son of Stone, Volume 1: Aztlan – I never read any of the Valiant stuff, nor the original comics they were based on, but having rediscovered my interest in dinosaurs in the last few years, I gave the first issue of this a shot and enjoyed it.

DC

The Huntress #1 – How’s Levitz doing with his new Legion stuff? Can he still write? DC finally rebooted the Legion enough times to pound the fandom right out of me, so I haven’t been keeping up. I’m always curious about the Huntress though, because she seems like a character with a ton of potential. I’m drowning in the hype in this solicit (“Hot new miniseries!” “Largest price on her head in DC Universe history!” “Jaw-dropping events!” “Defines her life!” “Tie-in to upcoming Birds of Prey!”), but I’d like to read a good Huntress story and am hoping this qualifies.

The Shade #1 – This is probably as close as we’re going to get to a new James Robinson Starman series, but you know what? It’s really damn close. And it’s got some amazing artists scheduled for it like Darwyn Cooke, Javier Pulido, Jill Thompson, Frazer Irving, and Gene Ha.

Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus, Volume 1 tpb – Hey! Cheapskate edition! I hadn’t even dared to hope.

Showcase Presents: Batman, Volume 5 – I was getting all excited about the Tales of the Batman: Don Newton collection also coming out this month and was about to write something about how much I love Bronze Age Batman. Then I realized that that’s what this collects too, only cheaper and it’s slightly earlier stuff. Still, that Newton volume is in color, so I’ll probably want both books.

The All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold #12 – Do you know what I like better than a Batman/Zatanna team-up? I don’t either.

Hark! A Vagrant

The Annotated Sandman, Volume 1 - Dammit, DC. You’re going to make me buy this again, aren’t you?

Drawn and Quarterly

Hark! A Vagrant – If I could only buy one thing this month, Kate Beaton’s collection would be it. I cannot wait to start loaning this out and sharing her stuff with my friends and family who don’t read webcomics.

Dynamite

Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris, Volume 1 – Colossus of Mars – Unlike the glut of Green Hornet comics, there seem to be solid reasons for each of Dynamite’s John Carter series to exist side-by-side. I’m eager to hear what Burroughs fans think of this one.

Sherlock Holmes: Year One – Ditto this and Holmes fans. Is it closer in tone to A Study in Scarlet or Young Sherlock Holmes?

First Second

Orcs, Volume 1: Forged for War - Orcs are my least-favorite Tolkien/D&D mythical race, but I trust First Second to change my mind about that. Dwarves better watch their backs if they don’t want to get bumped to the bottom of the list.

Humanoids

The Zombies That Ate the World, Volume 1: Bring Me Back My Head! – My Guy Davis collection is one step closer to being complete.

IDW

Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes #1 – In spite of what I said about my Legion fandom earlier, this really does sound cool. Then again, I’m the guy who liked the Star Trek/X-Men crossovers.

Legion of Monsters #1

30 Days of Night #1 – Very excited about a 30 Days of Night ongoing. This means I probably need to catch up on the last couple of mini-series though.

Cold War #1 – Yes, I do believe I could get into a John Byrne spy series.

Bloom County: The Complete Library, Volume 5 – Eep! I’m falling behind!

Kill Shakespeare, Volume 2: The Blast of War - The massive Fables-meets-the-Bard mini-series is all collected finally. Which means I get to read it now.

Marvel

Avengers 1959 #1 and 2 – See what I said about John Byrne’s Cold War, substitute Howard Chaykin for Byrne; add Namora and Kraven the Hunter.

Legion of Monsters #1 – Someone started a meme a while ago about what titles you’d want in a Marvel version of DC’s New 52. I’ve been giving that some thought and a couple of my wishes were a  comic about all of Marvel’s monster characters and another about Elsa Bloodstone. Marvel’s apparently reading my mind.

Moonstone

Return of the Monsters – I’m already pretty interested in Moonstone’s pulp characters: Black Bat, Phantom Detective, Domino Lady, and the Spider. But I’m hooked right through the cheek when they meet Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, a mummy, and a werewolf in a series of four, separate comics.

Airboy Presents The Airfighters - I’m a little confused about whether this has already been solicited before, but I guess it doesn’t really matter. I haven’t read it yet and I want to.

Nordguard

NBM

Salvatore, Volume 2: An Eventful Crossfire – I do love a good anthropomorphic animal story. Blame Blacksad.

Scar

Madame Samurai, Volume 2 – The first volume of this was quiet and beautiful. Glad there’s a second.

Sofawolf

Nordguard – The blurb for this reads like a standard Northern adventure story about a team of sled dogs who have to brave a variety of dangers to save some miners. I dig Jack London and all, but I’ve seen that story before, usually on Disney. Then I looked at the cover and realized that the sled dogs are wearing parkas and carrying revolvers.

And that’s it for me. What did I leave out?

If you are a comics creator or publisher, and you’re planning to bring something new to the con — a sketchbook, a print, a graphic novel debut, etc. — then we want to hear from you. Drop me an email at jkparkin@yahoo.com and let me know if you’ll have something cool on hand that attendees should know about. Feel free to send any artwork as well.

*****
Aspen Comics sends word of two variant covers they’ll have at the show, for Executive Assistant Iris and Charismagic

Executive Assistant Iris by Joe Benitez

Charismagic by Khary Randolph

*****

A Treasury of Murder: The Lives of Sacco & Vanzetti

NBM Publishing writes to let us know: “We’ll be debuting Rick Geary’s latest Treasury of Murder volume, The Lives of Sacco & Vanzetti and offering copies of a limited (to only 25 copies) hardcover edition of the book, bound in cloth with a silver-stamped jacket. Each copy will have an original plate signed and numbed. Rick will also be at SDCC and will be happy to personalize them as well.”

*****

And creator Mary Bellamy will be in the small press area with her new sketchbook and a plush toy line: “I have a table over in Small Press under Zorilita-Mary Bellamy and I’ll be debuting my new sketchbook: Sugar Bits, a 150 page sketchbook full of sketches, inked drawings ranging from super cute to pin ups. I also will have volumes 1-3 of Faux Facts – The Truth Can Be Strange! and volumes 1-2 of Ah Heck!! The Angel Chronicles. I also have my brand new plush toy line available this year.”

Borders

Retailing | Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg reports that Borders Group may file for bankruptcy protection as early as next week. Additionally the struggling book chain, the second-largest in the United States, will likely close at least 150 of its 500 remaining namesake stores. Company stock plunged in the wake of the news. A Borders spokeswoman declined comment, but referred to a Jan. 27 statement from President Mike Edwards in which he raised “the possibility of an in-court restructuring.” [Bloomberg]

Legal | Rich Johnston and retailer news and analysis site ICv2 look at potential trademark issues surrounding Marvel’s “Who Are the Mystery Men?” They note that cartoonist Bob Burden owns the trademark to the one-word “Mysterymen,” while Dark Horse and Universal Pictures control the two-word “Mystery Men” — both relating to the characters created by Burden and the 1999 movie adaptation. Dynamite Entertainment also has laid claim to “Super-Mysterymen” for its Project Superpowers series. “I have not heard from Universal yet, but I’m sure Universal will proceed in an orderly and propitious manner,” Burden said. [Bleeding Cool, ICv2.com]

Archie Comics

Legal | Archie Comics reportedly has reached an out-of-court settlement with the producers of the Indian film Boys Toh Boys Hain, which has been described as “based on the lines of the celebrated [Archie] comic book but set in Delhi instead of Riverdale.” As the result of a legal threat earlier this month, the producers have agreed to give credit to Archie Comics “during promotions in colleges and educational institutions.” [Hindustan Times]

Legal | Japanese publishing giant Kodansha Ltd. has warned Chinese search engine Baidu to remove the company’s manga and novels from its file-sharing service or face legal action. [The Japan Times]

Publishing | Ada Price runs down 2011′s major graphic novel releases. [Publishers Weekly]

Venom, by Tony Moore

Creators | Tony Moore reports that five pages of his original artwork from Marvel’s Venom #1 were stolen in transit to the inker. There are high-resolution scans, so production can continue, but Moore asks that art dealers and collectors keep an eye out for the original pages. [iFanboy]

Creators | Writer Fabian Nicieza is profiled by his local newspaper. [The Princeton Packet]

Creators | Stan Lee chats about his early career and his stint in the Signal Corps writing training films and creating visual training aids. [Under the Radar]

Comics | David Brothers explains why he dedicates every February to writing about black history and comics. Meanwhile, Black Superhero Fan looks at 1957′s Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, “the comic book that changed a nation.” [Comics Alliance]

Manga | Johanna Draper Carlson has an exclusive preview of NBM Publishing’s The Story of Lee. [Comics Worth Reading]

Captain Easy Vol. 1

It happens every year. Amidst all the hullaballoo of the big-name releases and show-stopping events and sleeper hits there are those titles that, for whatever reason, fail to generate any reviews, discussion or sales (or in some cases all three) whatsoever. 2010 was no exception. In fact, the wealth of stellar material that was released this year made it seem like there were an extraordinary number of great comics that garnered not even a peep from the blogosphere and press.

After the jump are six books that I think got nowhere near the amount of attention they deserved. There are lots more that I could include if I had the time. And I’m sure there are books that you read that you don’t think got enough praise as well. Be sure to let me know what they are in the comments section.

1) Captain Easy Vol. 1 by Roy Crane. CBR rules (no reprints allowed) prevented me from including this in their breakdown of the best 100 comics of the year, which seems like a crime as I consider this to be one of the big publishing events of 2010. I seem to be alone in that regard, though, as few folks managed to put this on their “best of” list except for a noble few. Despite his comparatively crude art style, Crane laid the groundwork for adventure strips that everyone from Milton Caniff to Alex Raymond to Hal Foster would follow. Aside from the obvious historical importance, however, Crane was just a great cartoonist. The Sunday pages in this book are full of high energy, action and slapstick. Crane was one of Schulz’s favorite cartoonists and one of his biggest influences. Reading this book this book, it’s not hard to see why.

Whirlwind Wonderland

2) Denys Wortman’s New York, edited by James Sturm and Brandon Elston. The other big reprint project of the year and a complete surprise to me. Like (I suspect) most people, I had never heard of Wortman before this collection of  his gag cartoons about everyday New York folks circa the 30s and 40s came out, but I was absolutely floored by his craftsmanship and ability to portray that era as richly as he did. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a cartoonist who has been able to capture their environment and culture as well as Wortman does in these pages. He’s that good.

3) Whirlwind Wonderland by Rina Ayuyang. Apart from an interview with Tom Spurgeon, I don’t think anyone paid attention to Ayuyang’s graphic novel debut this year. That’s a shame as it’s easily one of the most notable debuts of 2010. Her art style can come off as crude at times (her Brad Pitt needs work) but she chronicles her family’s foibles, her obsessions with pop culture and her Filipino heritage with love, warmth and humor. Sparkplug published a lot of great books this year, but this one might have been my favorite.

4) The High Soft Lisp by Gilbert Hernandez. Everyone went gaga over Xaime Hernandez’s contributions to the third volume of Love and Rockets: New Stories this year, myself included, and rightfully so — it was arguably the best thing he’s ever done. Less fanfare, however, seemed to come with this collection from Beto of stories concerning Luba’s sister Fritz. Part of that may be due to the fact these stories were originally serialized in the second run of Love and Rockets years ago and fans are already familiar with them. Another part may have to do with just how raw and emotionally devastating these tales are. Those who feel that Hernandez’s work relies too much on female objectification and fetishization need to read this book to understand how self-aware he is of that fact and its real-world consequences.

The High Soft Lisp

5) Harvey by Herve Bouchard and Janice Nadeau. This is a rather touching tale about a young boy who unexpectedly loses his father that I found at my local library. Bouchard narrates the tale from the boy’s first-person perspective, getting the confusion and insecurity just right while Nadeau’s lovely off-kilter, watercolor drawings capture the rural milieu perfectly. A really lovely, sad little book that I don’t think anyone was aware of outside of certain children’s book publishing circles.

6) Dungeon Monstres Vol. 3: Heartbreaker by Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, Carlos Nine and Killoffer. The Dungeon series in general doesn’t get the attention I think it deserves, but this new collection, combining two separate stories about two very different female characters — one set in the past, the other in the future — was especially noteworthy and in some ways seemed like a decided demarcation point to me. The first tale focuses on a cast member who up till now seemed not only dangerous but rather crazed. “Heartbreaker” gives us her back story and in turn makes one of the most sympathetic characters in the series so far. “The Depths” meanwhile portrays an innocent girl who transforms herself into a deadly and heartless warrior who turns against her people  in order to survive. Each tale is uncompromising and unsentimental. Taken together, the pair mark a decisive movement away from the light humor and wisecracking of the previous volumes and into darker, more emotionally resonant material.

John Byrne's Next Men

Welcome once again to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy based on certain spending limits — $15, $30 to spend and if we had extra money to spend on what we call the “Splurge” item. Check out Diamond’s release list for this week if you’d like to play along in our comments section.

Michael May

If I had $15:

There are a lot of great periodicals coming out this week, so I’d have some hard choices to make. With only $15, I’d concentrate first on those with the cheapest prices: the first issue of Dark Horse’s new Mighty Samson ($3.50), Atomic Robo and the Deadly Art of Science #2 ($3.50), and Mouse Guard: Black Axe #1 ($3.50). I’m already a huge fan of both Atomic Robo and Mouse Guard and – based on its concept and vague memories of stories I read as a kid – hope to become one of Mighty Samson too. I’d spend the last of my money on Northern Guard #1, because I’m a sucker for Canadian superheroes.

If I had $30:

I’d add Doc Macabre #1 ($3.99), John Byrne’s Next Men #1 ($3.99), and Strange Tales 2 #3 ($4.99). “Doc Macabre” is an awesome name and I love Steve Niles’ pulp stuff, I’ve been waiting 16 years for that Next Men issue, and the Strange Tales book has a Kate Beaton story in which the Avengers go to a carnival. I’d pay five bucks just for Beaton’s deal, but it’s also got a Thing tale by Harvey Pekar (and yes, Harvey Pekar is in the story).

Splurge:

Speaking of Steve Niles pulp: the Mystery Society collection ($19.99) comes out this week, as does Beau Smith’s Wynonna Earp: Yeti Wars ($17.99). Those should both be a lot of fun.

Graeme McMillan

Strange Tales II #3

I’m having the opposite reaction to Michael this week, with lots of more expensive items leaping out at me, but nothing seeming particularly urgent in the periodicals list. And so, if I had $15, I’d probably start with the second issue of IDW’s Dungeons & Dragons ($3.99) after loving the first so much, and then try out the debut of John Byrne’s reborn Next Men ($3.99), to see where his head’s at after all these years. I’d probably also pick up Marvel’s Strange Tales #3 ($4.99), because I’ve enjoyed enough of what’s come before, and really love Kate Beaton’s work… but that remaining $2.03…? That’ll remain up for grabs, I think.

If I had $30, I’d forget about Next Men #1 and put that money and some of the unused $2.03 towards Jason Little’s Motel Art Improvement Service hardcover from Dark Horse ($19.99). There’s something compelling about Little’s comics, which feel to me like a mix of Jessica Abel and Chris Ware, in some strange way. I only vaguely caught up with this as a webcomic, hoping to read it in print. And here it is!

As far as splurging goes, there’s an embarrassment of riches this week: Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s better-than-Earth-One-even-if-delays-in-original-release-killed-momentum Superman Secret Origin HC ($29.99)? The second volume of Judge Dredd Complete Case Files ($19.99)? A new Yotsuba! ($10.99)? But nostalgia wins me over again: I’d go for DC’s Tales of The Green Lantern Corps Vol. 3 ($19.99), which begins collecting Steve Englehart and Joe Staton’s “The Green Lantern Corps” run from the late ’80s that I loved so much. John Stewart was always my favorite back then. Followed by the kinder, gentler Kilowog.

Brigid Alverson

If I had $15…

Atomic Robo: Deadly Art of Science #2

I have to confess, there aren’t too many books that leap out at me and demand my attention this week. One that I must see, however, is the second issue of Atomic Robo: Deadly Art of Science ($3.50). I really liked the first issue, and I want to see more. That leaves just enough for the ninth volume of Yotsuba&! ($10.99), and I’m grabbing that because it’s that rare book that is funny to adults as well as children.

If I had $30…

I don’t know too much about it, but NBM’s latest Nicolas de Crecy graphic novel, Salvatore: Transports of Love ($14.99) looks like the sort of thing I’d like. It’s a weird fantasy about a dog who works as an auto mechanic and moves his shop to a mountain peak… yeah. Well, it’s something to talk about at Christmas parties, anyway.

Splurge…

Two things, which together add up to less than 40 bucks: I liked Nathan Edmondson and Brett Weldele’s The Light, especially Weldele’s art, so I would like to pick up the trade ($16.99). And Fumi Yoshinaga’s Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy! ($10.99) is sort of a foodie’s tour of Tokyo, with Yoshinaga and a friend sampling the signature dishes of various restaurants. I have no plans to go to Tokyo anytime soon, but the book looks like fun.

Chris Mautner

Big Questions #15

If I had $15:

The trade collection of Anders Nilsen’s Big Questions will be out next year, but I’m the impatient sort, so I’ll probably pick up the final issue, No. 15 ($7.95) this week. Nilsen earned his cred on books like Dogs & Water and Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow, but Questions, which he’s been doing seemingly since before Dogs debuted, may prove to be a defining work.

I’ll also pick up the fifth issue of Highland Laddie ($3.99) though the next time they do one of these Boys spin-offs I might opt to wait for the trade …

If I had $30:

… as I did with Strange Tales. I’m anxious to see the third issue, but in this instance I’m holding off. Instead, I’ll pick up the ninth volume of Yotsuba&!, a book that never fails to charm just about every member of my family.

Splurge:

I already have a copy, but if you’re a Steve Ditko fan then your splurge item for the week should be Unexplored Worlds, the second volume in Fantagraphics and editor Blake Bell’s ongoing attempt to collect his pre-Code and pre-Spider-Man material. My splurge, however, is a $30 hardcover collection of Jodorowsky and Moebius’ Madwoman of the Sacred Heart. I know next to nothing about this book, but c’mon, it’s Jodorowsky and Moebius! The same folks who brought The Incal! How could it not be awesome? (please don’t answer that)

The Purple Smurfs

Welcome to our weekly round of “What would you buy if your budget was limited?” — or, as we call it, Food or Comics? Every week we set certain hypothetical spending limits on ourselves and go through the agony of trying to determine which comics come home and which ones stay on the shelves. So join Brigid Alverson, Chris Mautner and me as we run down what comics we’d buy if we only had $15 and $30 to spend, as well as what we’d get if we had some “mad” money to splurge with.

Check out Diamond’s full release list if you’d like to play along in our comments section.

Chris Mautner

If I had $15:

During the height of the 1980s Smurf craze, when the Saturday morning cartoon was sweeping the nation and there was Smurf-related merchandise everywhere, I distinctly remember walking into a stationary store and seeing an English adaptation of King Smurf, which I immediately purchased. I was aware at the time that the little blue characters had begun in France as comic book characters but was completely unprepared for how funny and delightful the original material was in comparison to the TV show. Sadly, it seemed like that book was the only entry way into that world for a long time.

All of which brings me to the point that this week sees the debut release of two new Smurf books from NBM’s Papercutz line — The Smurfs and The Magic Flute and The Purple Smurfs ($5.99 each). The first is a rather traditional band dessine comic starring medieval adventurers Johann and Peewit, and is mainly noticeable for being the first appearance of the Smurfs. The Purple Smurfs is more in the classic vein, an all-ages zombie tale in which a strange bug bite starts turning smurfs purple (black in the original French version) and hunting down the uncontaminated smurfs, all the while uttering a fearsome “Gnap!” It’s great stuff, and I’m very happy NBM is getting these classic tales by Yvan Delporte and Peyo out in the hands of kids (and grown-up kids like me) who can truly appreciate them.

If I had $30:

That new collection of Zippy strips, Ding Dong Daddy ($20) looks interesting, but so does Harvey, a children’s book by French creators Herve Bouchard and Janice Nadeau about a young boy whose life is turned around when his father abruptly dies of a heart attack. The premise is interesting and the little art I could find suggests something profoundly thoughtful and moving. This is one of those books that could easily slip through the direct market cracks, so if I saw a copy at my shop I’d be sure to pick it up.

Splurge:

Oh man, it’s a good week for reprints, starting off with Four Color Fear, a collection of classic pre-code horror tales edited by Greg Sadowski ($29.99). Then there’s Fire & Water: Bill Everett, the Sub Mariner and the Birth of Marvel Comics by Blake Bell, about the long-forgotten artist (and Daredevil co-creator) that I just finished reading and heartily recommend ($39.99). Drawn and Quarterly has unleashed a collection of Tubby comics in their ongoing John Stanley Library ($29.95), Dark Horse has a new reprinting of Dave McKean’s Cages which really should be on every studious comic lover’s shelf ($29.99) and — of all things — Howard Chaykin’s big x-rated (for the day anyway) pulp thriller Black Kiss is out and about once more in a big $50 volume. Will wonders never cease?

Brigid Alverson

Broadcast

If I had $15…

I’d get Broadcast ($13.99), by Eric Hobbs and Noel Tuazon. I love the idea—a community takes shelter during the panic caused by Orson Welles’s broadcast of The War of the Worlds, but the real menace turns out to be from within. The characters are memorable, and Tuazon’s wispy artwork, vague and expressive by turns, is perfect for the story.

If I had $30…

I’d add some manga. I’m torn between the first volume of The House of Five Leaves ($12.99), Natsume Ono’s story of a not-very-intimidating samurai who ends up working for a gangster, and the second volume of Bunny Drop ($12.99), a comedy about a single, thirty-something salaryman who takes in a five-year-old orphan. It’s a tough call, but I think House of Five Leaves wins on the art; this is a book I will read more than once, while Bunny Drop is strictly for the laughs.

If I could splurge…

I’d buy all three books, and to really stimulate the economy, I’d throw in Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s ($29.99), from Fantagraphics, because I love good vintage comics—and bad vintage comics, for that matter.

JK Parkin

Fantastic Four #583

If I had $15:

Fantastic Four #583 ($2.99) and Thor #615 ($3.99) kick off two storylines I’ve been anticipating for awhile. First, Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting start the war of the Four Cities that Hickman has been building up to almost since he started on the title, the same storyline that will take the FF’s numbers down to three. And Thor #615 sees the long-awaited debut of Matt Fraction and Pasqual Ferry on the book. I’d also pick up the new Image series Skullkickers ($2.99); it’s a simple premise, but Image has been impressing me lately (Chew, Morning Glories, Orc Stain) by putting out a lot of titles I like to read. Lastly, the only episode of the Simpsons I tend to watch anymore is the yearly “Treehouse of Horror,” which for whatever reason usually airs after Halloween. But the yearly Treehouse of Horror comic, thankfully, is out this week. This year’s anthology features the work of Evan Dorkin, Peter Kuper, Kelley Jones, Lemmy from Motorhead and many others. It’s $4.99 and usually well worth the price.

If I had $30:

Legion of Super Heroes #5 ($3.99) and Justice League Generation Lost #10 ($2.99) both contain solid superhero storytelling. On top of that I’d add the latest issues of Walking Dead ($2.99) and Fables ($2.99), both of which are building up to something big. And since I’ve got a couple of bucks left over, I’d grab I Kill Giants #1 for a buck.

Splurge:

I think I own the first issue of Cages, but haven’t ever read the whole thing. So that’s a potential splurge item. I also never read Joe Casey’s Wildcats 3.0, which I understand is supposed to be pretty awesome stuff … I have a review copy at home I plan to take on vacation with me next week, so I’ll find out for sure.

Blood's a Rover

Hello and welcome once again to What Are You Reading?, where the Robot 6 crew talk about the comics and graphic novels that they’ve been enjoying lately. Our special guest this week is comics journalist and critic Dirk Deppey of Journalista and The Comics Journal fame.

To see what Dirk and the Robot 6 crew have been reading lately, read on …

*****

Sean T. Collins

Fallen Angel

A couple of let-downs bookended a pleasantly unpleasant surprise for me this week. Click the links for full reviews…

Fallen Angel by Nicolas Robel (Drawn & Quarterly): This modern-day fairy tale never quite makes the leap from the personal to the universal.

Kaspar by Diane Obamsawin (Drawn & Quarterly): I’m not necessarily nuts about some of the lo-fi visual choices here, but this true story of a young man who may or may not have spent his first 17 years kept in a dungeon in total isolation hit me hard.

Rambo 3.5 by Jim Rugg (self-published): A disappointingly one-note Dubya parody from the talented artist behind Afrodisiac.

Brigid Alverson

I’m used to Osamu Tezuka’s peculiarities by now—the juxtaposition of the cute and the brutal, his oddly sociopathic main characters and his simplistic psychological explanations for their behavior, even his splintered layouts. And Apollo’s Song still struck me as the oddest Tezuka manga I have ever read. It starts with a young man, Shogo Chikaishi, who kills animals for fun, because, apparently, his promiscuous mother rejected him (and he walked in on her with a guy). His psychiatrist subjects him, with grim relish, to shock treatment, during which he hallucinates a goddess who tells him he is condemned to fall in love with the same woman over and over, but each time, one of them will die. This seems kind of harsh when we have just learned that poor Shogo isn’t really responsible for his condition, but that’s Tezuka for you. Anyway, he starts cycling through these new lives, but after two, the story takes a different turn altogether. It’s almost like Tezuka was making it up as he went along. Still, it’s entertaining enough to keep me reading (and guessing) all the way to the end of this first volume, and anxious to see the conclusion in volume 2.

I haven’t gotten too far into Eric Hobbs and Noel Tuazon’s Broadcast yet, but I’m impressed with Tuazon’s loose style and the care with which Hobbs is setting up his story. The characters have all emerged as individuals with strong personalities, and good and evil are sharply delineated. Tuazon’s art is washy and atmospheric, and he does a great job of setting the scene, including small details such as a set table or a scarecrow on a rainy night. Sometimes his art is too loose, and it’s like looking at the drawings through a rain-streaked windshield. I was afraid I would have trouble telling the characters apart, but somehow distinct sets of features emerge from the haze for each one. It’s a book to linger over, not one to read in a hurry, so I’m enjoying taking it slow.

JK Parkin

I’ve started reading a collection of superhero short stories called Masked, edited by Lou Anders and featuring prose by Matthew Sturges, Paul Cornell, Gail Simone, Mike Carey, Bill Willingham, Peter and Kathleen David, Chris Roberson and many others. I downloaded a sample of it to my iPad a few weeks ago and became so engrossed in Sturges’ fun-yet-kind-of-gruesome story that I ended up downloading the whole thing so I could finish it.

Dirk Deppey

The Cold Six Thousand

For the past few years, most of what I’ve read has come from a computer monitor, so I’ve lately been forcing myself to return to printed books. I began with James Ellroy’s Underworld trilogy — American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and Blood’s a Rover. They’re basically crime-noir novels, except that the setting is the turbulent events of the 1960s political stage, and the cast of characters includes JFK, RFK, J. Edgar Hoover, Jimmy Hoffa, Martin Luther King, Howard Hughes and a violent blend of mobsters, Cuban exiles and semi-rogue FBI and CIA agents. It’s trashy, politically dubious and utterly gripping work, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’m now digging into the first volume of William Patterson’s Robert Heinlein biography, after which I’ll probably go back and dig up some Christopher Hitchens to hold me over until the end of the year, when the first volume of Mark Twain’s unexpurgated autobiography finally hits bookstore shelves (after an author-imposed, century-long embargo). Twain is one of my favorite writers, so this new book is going to make for a really good Christmas present to myself.

Comics: I was happy to finally get a chance to read Daren White and Eddie Campbell’s The Playwright, a droll sex comedy about not getting laid. It’s brilliant stuff. There’s a stack of manga sitting several feet high next to my desk, which I’m slowly working my way through — new volumes of Suppli, Mushishi, Nana, Twin Spica and Black Jack, as well as several Jiro Taniguchi books that I’ve been putting off until I can go back and re-acquaint myself with the story in previous volumes. (This is particularly necessary with The Times of Botchan, which is a dense and complex read even without the delay between books.) Also sitting in the stack is a reprint of Dino Buzzati’s 1969 proto-graphic novel, Poem Strip. I’ll be damned if I can remember where I first heard about it, but the New York Review of Books translated and reprinted it last year, and just flipping through the pages, I can tell it’s going to be interesting stuff. I ordered Kevin Huizenga’s The Wild Kingdom before realizing that it was essentially a reprint of Or Else #4 (which I already own), but the larger size and excellent production values are a gold-ticket invitation to read it again, so I can’t get too worked up about buying the same book twice. Finally, I recently ordered a copy of Howard Cruse’s collection of gay-themed comics, From Headrack to Claude, from the author’s website. It’s a print-on-demand softcover — one of the first I’ve ordered — and I’m almost as impressed with the quality of the printing as I am with Cruse’s daring, trailblazing work. This’ll be a fun one to read, I’m sure.

Oh, and someone at Fantagraphics finally got around to sending me a copy of Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories, a week ago. I’m an employee of the publisher and played a minor role in bringing it to print, so I’ll spare you yet another round of Dirk’s Company-Shill Ego Cavalcade… but I would like to note that just holding the damned thing in my hands is by and of itself a deeply satisfying experience. Thanks, Matt! So when are you going to start translating the next one…?

Usagi Yojimbo: Return of the Black Soul

Welcome once again to What Are You Reading? This week our special guest is Paul Maybury, creator of the webcomic Party Bear. His work can be found in Comic Book Tattoo, various volumes of Popgun and 24seven, and, of course, the full-length graphic novel Aqua Leung. Be sure to check out the sketches he shares.

To see what Paul and the rest of the Robot 6 crew have been reading lately, click on the link …

*****

Sean. T. Collins

Exit Wounds

I took last week off from WAYR last, so I’ve got fully half a dozen comics to share with you–well, my bloviating about half a dozen comics, at least. Click the links for full reviews…

Neighbourhood Sacrifice by Steph Davidson, Michael DeForge, and Jesjit Gill: Dark, down and dirty newsprint zinemaking from a trio of intriguing artists.

The San Francisco Panorama Comics Section by various: Uneven but nonetheless enjoyable broadsheet-format comics from an all-star line-up assembled by McSweeney’s.

Paper Blog Update Supplemental Postcard Set Sticker Pack by Anders Nilsen: A minicomic and assorted other goodies featuring never-before-seen strips from one of alternative comics’ best writers and biggest talents.

Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan: Strong art dukes it out with predictable writing in Modan’s much-acclaimed Israeli drama.

Prison Pit: Book 2 by Johnny Ryan: Johnny Ryan goes as far as he’s ever gone.

The Witness by Hob: The artist also known as Eli Bishop serves up an existentially chilling minicomic about the death and afterlife of a dinosaur. No, seriously.

Brigid Alverson

Market Day

I picked up James Sturm’s Market Day from the library, having seen a preview of it online. I thought it was well done but lacked a satisfying conclusion. I liked the main character, and the way the story followed the monologue in his head. I really liked the fact that although this was a story about a traditional society, Sturm didn’t fall back on the standard folk-tale stereotypes. His characters are a bit neurotic and often deeply thoughtful, reflecting on the world around them and their own place in it. At the same time, the internal monologue we are listening to is an interesting one: Mendelman, the rug-maker, observes the world around him, thinks about how to translate it into rugs (in a way that only a graphic novel could show), experiences rejection, indignation, despair, and camaraderie, and reflects on the meaning of his life and his place in the world. It’s a wonderful, human portrait, and it is beautifully drawn with a limited palette and a simple but effective line, but having followed Mendelman through this day of upheaval and self-examination, I really wanted Sturm to finish the story, but it seemed to simply stop, rather than end.

The folks at Norton sent me a galley of Sophie Crumb’s art book. It was a bit of a tough sell—what parent doesn’t think their child is a genius? So I guess if you’re Robert and Aline Crumb, you get to show that to the world? Actually reading the book tempered my indignation quite a bit, however. First of all, from the pictures and descriptions, it’s clear that Sophie was indeed ahead of most kids her age. (Almost as advanced as my children! Hey, Norton, where’s my book?) And while her drawings are still little-kid drawings, she comes up with fairly complex relationships and stories within them. I ended up liking it quite a bit, although in the end, it suffers from the fact that it is a sketchbook—the drawings don’t have the finish of a completed work of art, and they don’t knit together into a single narrative, like a comic book. They just float on the page, and like any sketchbook, weak drawings share space with strong ones. For me, the best part of the book was the end, where she did combine pictures and text into something like a narrative, and I’d like to see more of that—I could see her doing a killer comic about life with her baby and husband. But those little-kid pictures sure are cute.

Chris Mautner

A Home for Mr. Easter

A Home for Mr. Easter by Brooke A. Allen — A rollicking, fast-paced affair from a relative newcomer. Allen could stand to tighten up her line a bit — there were times I had a bit of trouble figuring out what exactly was going on, especially in large crowd scenes with complicated backgrounds. That being said, she manages to keep her hero’s quest story moving at a fair clip without ever flagging once. And I liked how she had a rather unconventional heroine (a rather large, possibly mentally handicapped teen) as her lead. All in all, it’s a solid debut book and I plan on keeping an eye out for what Allen does next.

Booth by C.C. Colbert and Tanitoc — A fictionalized retelling of the day’s leading up to Lincoln’s assassination, from the perspective of his assassin. This was alright — I’m not sure Tanitoc’s impressionistic art style fits the material — I had trouble frequently trying to tell who was who and what they’re relation was to each other. It didn’t help much that Colbert’s script assumed too much on the reader’s part and didn’t really spell enough out for history dimwits like me. Bottom line: If you want to learn about Lincoln’s death via comics, Rick Geary’s version is a much better account.

Tim O’Shea

Roger Stern writing Captain America, I just get giddy reading that phrase. Add to the mix it’s the present day James Barnes Captain America–with Nick Dragotta drawing the 1940s era Bucky scenes and Marco Santucci on the modern day material and it gets even better–with the first installment of a four-part miniseries, Captain America:Forever Allies. Dragotta has a Darwyn Cooke vibe to his art that’s just perfect for Stern’s writing. My one gripe–Marvel’s penchant for reprint back-ups as a justification for the $3.99 price tag: instead of the 100th reprint of Cap’s origin, how hard would it have been to reprint one of Stern and John Byrne’s Cap tales instead.

Gorilla Man #1

Gorilla Man: Jeff Parker’s Ken Gale origin miniseries continues to hold my interest. My one question: in a world where Deadpool seems to publish on a weekly basis–why is there not room for a Gorilla Man ongoing monthly, eh?

Avengers Prime: how much do I cherish Alan Davis artwork? I will endure the tiresome writing of Brian Michael Bendis in Avengers Prime just to see the incredibly executed layouts by Davis (and equally exquisite inks of Mark Farmer).

For all of us that enjoyed Paul Cornell’s Marvel work, we get one last treat with this week’s Spitfire one-shot. Cornell clearly has a bigger Spitfire/Blade story to tell (which we get a little taste of in this adventure) and someday I hope he gets to tell it.

I get the impression that if given the chance, Secret Warriors 18 scribe Jonathan Hickman would write an Untold Tales of the Howling Commandos miniseries. In this issue, he has the Commandos swapping war stories in a manner that says to me this guy understands Marvel history and character dynamics in a way that other current Marvel writers wishes they could.

Sweet Tooth 12: Jeff Lemire makes good storytelling look too easy.

iZombie 4: artist Michael Allred has every right to disagree with me, but the two-page of two characters walking through a mental landscape disguised as Egypt is the best sequential scene he’s pulled off in a damn long time. And I love that writer Chris Roberson snuck a punchline or two in the lush scenery.

Writer Jim Shooter and artist Bill Reinhold’s first issue of Magnus Robot Fighter is a little rushed and uneven in some parts (kudos to Dark Horse for reprinting the Russ Manning’s original first issue for contextual reference, it helped frame the modern day update in a sense), but I’ll likely be back to check out issue two. I wish Reinhold would tone down the cheesecake factor of the female leads, I get that it’s emulating Manning’s approach to a certain extent, but I wonder if it might alienate potential female readers.

Writer Jim McCann continues to hold my interest with the third issue of Hawkeye and Mockingbird. I particularly liked McCann’s pacing (with David Lopez’s art) in the opening where Hawkeye retraced the shooting that ended the last issue. Taking a CSI approach (on a slight level) with Hawkeye is a nice approach that makes sense for the character. He understands the physics of a shot more than most heroes, given his skill set.

Paul Maybury

First on my list, I finally tracked down a copy of Peplum by Blutch. I’ve literally been looking around for four years. While this isn’t the cover on my copy, I was floored by this image years ago, and remains one of my favorite comic covers ever:

Peplum

It’s almost a crime that more of Blutch’s work isn’t translated here in America. For now I’ll be slowly translating as I go while drooling over the imagery.

2 ) Fluorescent Black by Nathan Fox and MF Wilson
Nathan sent me a pdf of this a while back and I was excited to see this totally perverse and imaginative art with an interesting Biopunk story being published by Heavy Metal. Nathan is one of those guys that came into comics a little later, but has the work ethic and drive of a modern master. I finally got to pick up the hard cover in San Diego and man, this is one beautifully printed book. It doesn’t hurt that there’s a nifty pinup by yours truly in the back.

3) Peepo Choo by Felipe Smith
I was a huge fan of MBQ from TokyoPop, and was sad to see it end and then learn that Felipe was moving to Japan to work for Kodansha. I mean, super excited for him, but super bummed that I wouldn’t be able to read it. Thankfully, the fine folks at Vertical have blessed us with an English translation. It’s very much a spiritual successor of MBQ with some great characters like Milton, an American kid and hopeless Otaku who does some really weird Peepo Choo dance to communicate with people.

4) Usagi Yojimbo, Return of the Black Soul by Stan Sakai
The only book I’ve consistently followed my entire life. This volume mostly deals with the evil spirit known as Jei. We see Usagi, Gen and Stray dog team up again to track down a bounty. I love Stan’s pacing and whimsical story telling. The last three volumes really remind of me the feeling I got from the original Fantagraphics published volumes. I was lucky enough to receive this totally awesome Aqua Leung drawing by Stan a few years ago when I sat next to him at a show in Austin. Sorry, I just have to show it off:

5) Crogan’s March by Chris Schweizer.
Yes, Oni publishes Scott Pilgrim, but they also publish another fantastic series. The Crogan series is about a couple of kids learning about their famous family tree and the valuable lessons all of their stories tell. One of the few intelligent all ages series out there, I couldn’t recommend this book more. Heck, I even drew fan art for it. There are currently two volumes out, with a third on the way.

by Paul Maybury

6) Old City Blues by Giannis Milonogiannis
This recently wrapped up and is an amazing read from start to finish. It has a weird Snatchers (a very cool Sega CD game) vibe, with loose gritty art that fits the story perfectly. I hope this guy never stops making sweet sweet comics. Go read it now over on his site and give him a pat on the back. Webcomics can be a pretty thankless job, and it’s always nice to feel acknowledged by readers.

Spawn #9

Legal | A federal judge in Madison, Wisconsin, heard testimony Monday from Neil Gaiman, Todd McFarlane and Dark Ages Spawn writer Brian Holguin, but didn’t rule on Gaiman’s claim that he’s owed royalties from the characters Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany.

In 2002, a jury found that Gaiman co-owned the copyrights Medieval Spawn, Angela and Cogliostro, which he created in 1993 for McFarlane’s Spawn series. Since then the two creators have attempted, with little success, to determine how much money Gaiman is owed for the three characters.

On Monday, Gaiman testified that he thinks Dark Ages Spawn is merely a copy of Medieval Spawn, while Domina and Tiffany are copies of Angela. Holguin, who created Dark Ages Spawn, said any similarities to Gaiman’s character were unintentional, while McFarlane argued that all of the versions of Spawn share certain features. The judge gave both parties until June 25 to submit additional arguments. [The Associated Press]

Eisner Awards

Awards | Today is the deadline for comics professionals to vote online for the 2010 Eisner Awards. [Eisner Awards]

Conventions | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson previews the graphic-novel elements of this year’s American Library Association Annual Conference, being held June 24-29 in Washington, D.C. [Publishers Weekly]

Conventions | Florida Supercon, which kicks off Friday in Miami, gets a spotlight. Comic guests include Pat Broderick, Paul Gulacy, Greg Horn, Clayton Henry, Georges Jeanty, Jason Latour, Jim McCann, Ariel Olivetti, Khoi Pham, Rafa Sandoval, Bill Sienkiewicz and Fred Van Lente. [The Miami Herald]

Invincible Iron Man Annual #1

Publishing | If you can overlook “Pow! Splat!” and “Holy technology, Batman,” this is actually a pretty decent snapshot of the comics market for a general, local audience, with a focus on recent moves toward digital delivery and the reactions of retailers and fans. “The Marvel download is an unknown in the business,” said Scott Croft, owner of Heroic Adventures in Edwardsville, Illinois. “Some retailers are afraid it will siphon sales off. Others think we will reach customers we’re not reaching now. My hope is it will generate interest in the comic itself.” [Suburban Journals]

Publishing | NBM Publishing founder Terry Nantier discusses the company’s early years, format decisions, erotic comics, and more. [Comic Book Bin]

Publishing | Editors John Jennings and Damian Duffy talk about the upcoming anthology Black Comix: African American Independent Comics, Art and Culture. [Publishers Weekly]

Aquaman down

Editorial cartoons | Michael Cavna rounds up 10 of the best cartoons about the BP oil spill. [Comic Riffs]

Retailing | After nearly eight years in Tacoma, Washington, Comic Book Ink is moving just outside the city limits, to a larger, and less expensive, storefront in the Lakewood Cinema Plaza. [Weekly Volcano]

Creators | Ted McKeever talks about his new Shadowline miniseries META 4, which he describes as “a journey of self-discovery on a road trip of bizarre nightmares, twisted romance and scientific comedic insanity, spanning from Coney Island to the desolate Midwest.” [Publishers Weekly]

Creators | Artist Cliff Chiang chats briefly about his work on Human Target, Doctor 13 and Neil Young’s Greendale, and teases an upcoming issue of DMZ and an as-yet-unannounced book with writer Brian Azzarello: “One of my friends told me it was the book I was born to draw, and I’m really excited for it.” [JoBlo.com]

Creators | Tom Mason spotlights cartoonist Roy Crane, creator of Buz Sawyer and Captain Easy. [Comix 411]

WildCATS 3.0 by Dustin Nguyen

• Wildstorm will bring Joe Casey and Dustin Nguyen’s WildCATS 3.0 back into print in September.
• Wildstorm also adds another video game franchise to its publishing line, in the form of Kane & Lynch.
• Dark Horse had a few items I was unaware of in their latest round of solicitations. There’s another Grandville book coming out by Bryan Talbot called Grandville Mon Amour, and Jill Thompson’s Scary Godmother books are being collected into one huge “deluxe” edition. Also, the out-of-print Hellboy/Starman/Batman stories by James Robinson, Mike Mignola and many others are being released as a part of the Hellboy trade paperback line. There’s lots more, of course, coming from Dark Horse in August, but those jumped out at me as stuff I hadn’t heard about or missed when they were announced.
• NBM will collect Gerard Jones and Mark Badger’s Networked: Carabella on the Run in July. This is a webcomic that runs on privacyactivism.org.
• Artist David Hahn is working with comedian John Roy on a new book for Image Comics.
• Tyler James, creator of the webcomic Over, is working with Matt Zolman on a new comic called Epic.
• Sports club bars in a South Auckland, New Zealand will give away an anti “drink-driving” comic by Hicksville creator Dylan Horrocks. “An advantage with the comic medium is that people are more relaxed when they start reading one and you can reach all kinds of people and tell a story of characters making the right choice,” the creator said. Via

Sequence from 'Mister O'

Comics College is a monthly feature where we provide an introductory guide to some of the comics medium’s most important auteurs and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work.

Today we’ll be crossing the Atlantic to take a look at the one of the most prolific cartoonists of the past 30 years, either in Europe or America, Lewis Trondheim.

Why he’s important

Beyond being one of the most celebrated names in French comics, Trondheim was one of the stars  — perhaps in some ways the biggest star — of the small press movement in Europe in the 1990s that gave birth to artists like David B, Marjane Satrapi, Joann Sfar and Chris Blain (indeed, as one of the founding members of the seminal publishing group L’Association, you could argue that he helped give birth to the movement in more ways than one). As Bart Beaty so aptly puts it in his book, Unpopular Culture:

That an artist who, by his own admission, had no ability to draw could become one of the most prolific, popular and financially successful cartoonists of his generation was conceivable only given the redefinition of the field by the artists of the small press. Few cartoonists involved in the movement have yet matched his success, and his victories are not entirely shared. However, the ascension of Trondheim to the top ranks of European cartoonists and his ongoing success in a number of related fields and international markets symbolize the importance of the entire small press revolution and the transformation of the comic book field that it put into motion.

What’s more, having produced over 30 books in as little as 10 years, he straddles genres — be it humor, autobiography, adventure, fantasy, children’s books, historical fiction or experimental works — with uncanny ease. American cartoonists looking to try a similar trick should look to his example.

Where to start

Dungeon Twilight, Vol. 1: Dragon Cemetery

The best place to begin is Mister O and Mister I, both easily available from NBM. These two thematically similar, deceptively simple books (O concerns a round-shaped creature who keeps attempting to traverse a short gorge and fails; I deals with an elongated man who tries to find food only to meet one gruesome death after another) provide a good sense of Trondheim’s black, dry wit, his love of formal play, his excellent sense of timing and his ability to convey action and emotion in just a few lines.  They’re both very emblematic of his general attitude and style and both very funny.

Another good place to start is the Dungeon series, a ongoing, epic fantasy series he’s currently working on (and will probably never finish) with Sfar and a revolving door of artists. The series started out as a spoof of your average D&D-type stuff but has ended up taking on a life of its own, spanning out to cover hundreds of years, many characters and many, many volumes. You should start with the first one though, Duck Heart, also from NBM. (In general, I’d recommend reading the series in this order: Zenith, which covers the “present day;” then Twilight, which looks into the future; then The Early Years; Parade, which is unrelated, fun stories; and Monstres, which focuses on the supporting cast.)

From there you should read

Harum Scarum

Once you finish (or at least get through most of) the Dungeon books, move on to the Little Nothings series, a collection of one-page autobiographical strips (originally serialized on Trondheim’s website) in which the author provides a humorous, off-the-cuff look at his general philosophy and day-to-day existence. The series is up to three volumes here in America — The Curse of the Umbrella, The Prisoner Syndrome and Uneasy Happiness — and they’re all good.

In the late 1990s, Fantagraphics took a stab at introducing Trondheim to an American audience. The books sold poorly (to put it mildly), but both Harum Scarum and The Hoodoodad remain supremely entertaining tales featuring McConey, Trondheim’s shy, nonplussed, anthropomorphic rabbit and his friends.

Not to let one bad attempt keep them down, Fantagraphics tried again with an ongoing pamphlet series, The Nimrod, which sadly only lasted seven issues. It’s a great hodge-podge of some classic Trondheim material though, including autobio stories, McConey tales and the great wordless piece, Diablotus (found in issue #2). The back issues are available at dirt cheap prices too.

For a look at Trondheim at his blackest and most grotesque, pick up A.L.I.E.E.E.N, a dark, disturbing, but frequently hilarious (and again, wordless) tale of life on an alien planet that literally ends with everything drowning in a flood of excrement.

Further reading

Tiny Tyrant

In addition to producing his own comics, Trondheim has collaborated with a number of noteworthy European artists, most notably on the Dungeon series, but also on a number of kids’ comics.

My favorite of the bunch is Tiny Tyrant, done with Fabrice Parme, which chronicles the hilarious adventures of a monomaniacal boy king. Also good is Astronauts of the Future, featuring art by Manu Larcenet and centering on a precocious boy and girl who are convinced that there’s an alien conspiracy afoot in their sleepy town and discover that it’s completely true, but not in the manner they initially thought.

Trondheim initially began Kaput and Zosky, the comical adventures of two would-be space warmongers who can’t conquer a planet to save their lives, on his own but then let Eric Cartier take over the art chores, with somewhat lesser results. Still, it’s a pretty funny series, goofy enough that your kids will get a kick out of it (and successful enough to warrant an animated series, episodes of which you can find on YouTube).

Finally, for the very young reader there’s the Li’l Santa books he did with Thierry Robin. These cute, wordless (it’s a running thing with Trondheim) tales feature the manic adventures of a pint-sized Santa Claus. NBM has released two of them so far.

Ancillary material

Mome Vol. 7

In 2004, Trondheim announced his intention to retire from comics (it didn’t last long) a decision he chronicled in At Loose Ends, a sprawling, thoughtful examination of the creative process, how age can dull the imagination and the thin line between art and commerce. Fantagraphics serialized it in three issues of their Mome anthology (vol. 6-8  to be exact).

If you don’t mind doing a bit of digging around the Internet, and you’re willing to pay a bit more for shipping, I’d recommend checking out some of the artist’s as-yet untranslated works. There are a number of “silent” comics that have yet to be published stateside, like Non, Non, Non or the fantastic La Mouche. The latter is the story of a fly who for reasons best not spoils, finds himself growing to monstrous size. It’s a fabulous comic that, if it were more easily available in the U.S. I would have included it up in the “start” section at the top of this post.

If you want to learn even more about Trondheim, I recommend picking up a copy of issue no. 283 of The Comics Journal, which features an extensive interview with him.

Avoid

I enjoyed Bourbon Island 1730 (co-written with Appollo), but it didn’t tickle many people’s fancy. I can sort of understand why. It’s a departure from what most American readers have come to expect from the artist — much more serious, downbeat and contemplative than the concept (Trondheim does pirates) than you’d expect, and the detailed but loose and sketchy black and white sketch art came off as cluttered and difficult to read. I don’t agree, but I can see where it might not be the best place for a neophyte to begin. Make it your last stop on the Trondheim express.

New edition of The Purple Smurf

The Smurfs are back! What, you didn’t know they ever left? Apparently the little blue guys have been out of print, at least in the U.S., for years, but NBM/Papercutz is bringing them back, with the first volume, The Purple Smurf, set to debut in August. (Incidentally, the Urban Dictionary has two definitions of “The Purple Smurf,” and neither of them is obscene. Go figure.)

Most people experienced the Smurfs as animated cartoons, rather than as comics, but that’s the origin — they first made their appearance in a Belgian kids’ comic in 1958. Jog, who broke the news (on a tip from Pedro Bouça), has more commentary, including the note that the purple Smurfs were actually black in the original comic; apparently the symbolism was too heavy-handed for the folks at Hanna-Barbera, who re-colored them in the animated cartoon.

NBM/Papercutz does a nice job when they bring European comics over here, except for a tendency to shrink them too much. At first glance, these look like full-size albums (like Tintin), but the type makes me think they are going to be smaller. The Amazon listings don’t give a trim size.

Hotwire Comics Vol. 3

Hotwire Comics Vol. 3
Edited by Glenn Head
Fantagraphics Books, 138 pages, $22.99

Once again, Hotwire returns to attempt to fill in that edgy alt-comix niche that was so prominent in the 80s and early 90s and has seemingly been eclipsed by the more literary, rarefied indie comics of today (sort of). If for no other reason, this anthology should be lauded for giving folks like Mary Fleener and Mack White the opportunity to showcase their work, since no one else seems to be interested in doing so these days. There is always the occasional dull or misguided piece (David Paleo and David Sandlin’s work continues to fail to interest me), but the stellar work by folks like Michael Kupperman, R. Sikoryak, Onsmith, Johnny Ryan, Tim Lane and Mats!? make this well worth your time.

Things Undone

Things Undone
by Shane White
NBM, 88 pages, $12.95.

A graphic artist stuck with a bad job and a dissatisfied (and soon to be ex) girlfriend starts literally falling apart at the seams, turning into a zombie to match the frustration and emotional deadness he feels inside.

As visual metaphors go it’s a pretty good one. it’s a shame then, that White doesn’t really explore it more. A good part of the problem is that we never really understand what exactly is the problem with the lead character, Rick, and his girlfriend (it doesn’t help that he jumps around in time a lot without any guideposts to help the reader figure out when, exactly, a particular incident is going on. He ends up coming off more as a petulant jerk than a sympathetic victim and it kind of sinks the book as a result.

Vatican Hustle
by Greg Houston
NBM, 132 pages, $11.95

Houston’s got an intriguing style — I really like the Ralph Steadman meets John Kricaluci look of his characters. And certainly, any story that offers a homage to 70s blacksploitation and features a alcohol-swilling, porn loving pope that plays craps with violent clowns can’t be all bad.

But if Hustle has style and flair to spare, it falls down in the storytelling department. Houston frequently loses track of the plot and lets the story meander into various alleyways, which is often more annoying than charming. It’s also way too wordy, to the point where it’s a detriment to his layouts and the flow of the story. Basically, he could have used a much tighter editing job here. If he gets that with his next book, I’m there.

Missile Mouse

Missile Mouse: The Star Crusher
by Jake Parker
Scholastic, 176 pages, $10.99 paperback

This is a pretty perfunctory space opera that hits all the cliches — sorry, I meant story beats –  you’d expect, right down to the hero having a chip on his shoulder because his dad was killed by the bad guys and the one seemingly sympathetic character turning out to be a turncoat and so on and so forth. I doubt most elementary school kids will mind too, since they haven’t been exposed to these tropes too much — unless they’ve been watching a lot of Cartoon Network.  Older readers, however, may find everything a bit too familiar. The characters themselves — from Missile Mouse on down — aren’t distinctive enough to provide any nuance or variation on such a well-worn theme. Parker’s a good artist — his layouts are nice, his art is clean and sharp, and his characters are visually distinctive — but those traits simply don’t carry over into the writing. Feel free to pass it on to your kids. But don’t expect it to linger too long in their imaginations.

Copper
by Kazu Kibuishi
Scholastic, 96 pages, $12.99 paperback

Copper is not actually the name of the dog, but the small boy. Fred is the dog’s name. Fred is a rather nervous and trepidatious sort. Copper meanwhile, is a bit of a go-getter, live for the day fellow, which sets up a nice dynamic between the two right from the get-go. Together they go on a series of one-page fanciful adventures, meeting strange and interesting creatures and seeing fanciful, candy-colored lands. This collection of mostly one-page strips by Kibuishi (originally done as a Webcomic) is certainly in frequent danger of falling on the “twee” side of the cute fence, and I don’t think that very many of Kibuishi’s insights are nearly as profound as I suspect he does, but Fred’s innate cynicism helps leaven some of the more precious parts of the comic 9it helps a lot that most of the stories here are shorter than short), while Kibuishi’s art, especially in the later strips, gives a real playful pop to the proceedings. It owes a lot to Calvin and Hobbes in some respects, but this is the first strip I’ve seen that bore that influence so strongly and yet was charming and clever enough in it’s own right to make me want to visit its world and characters again.

–NBM publisher Terry Nantier, on NBM receiving no Eisner Award nominations this year

D&D Player's Handbook

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. JK Parkin is off having fun at WonderCon, so it falls to me to handle this week’s column. Our special guest this week is New Zealand cartoonist Dylan Horrocks, who some of you might know as the author of the seminal graphic novel Hicksville, which was just re-released by Drawn & Quarterly.

To see what Dylan and the rest of us are reading hit the link below. Hard. Then let us  know what you yourself are perusing in the comments section.

Blackest Night #8

Tom Bondurant: Hey, I am traveling and I still found time for comics!  (Isotope and Comix Experience helped).  Thought Blackest Night #8 was pretty satisfying, but that might be due to its relative predictability.  My expectations were met, is what I’m saying.  Also got a charge out of Wonder Woman #42, because it set up a nice, dire situation in the context of some unexpected old business.  Same goes for JLA #43, but why is Evil Lightray Southern?  Oh, and I read all of the Demon Omnibus on the plane — which surprised both me and my wife.  Moved on to Essential Marvel Two-In-One Vol. 1, an absolute delight; and now Action Philosophers Vol. 2. So, y’know, keeping busy.

Chris Mautner: I spent most of this week reading Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Invaded the US by Roland Kelts. Published in 2006, it’s one of those “let me explain why your kids are nuts for all those crazy cartoons and comics with the kids with the big eyes” type of books.

Japanamerica

Overall it’s a pretty good book though it has it’s flaws. Whenever Kelts talks about the business of anime and manga he’s on pretty solid ground. He talks repeatedly, for example, about how the anime and manga industries are flailing about these days and how flummoxed they are about Western interest in their intellectual properties and how they can best exploit it.

He’s on shakier ground when he talks about the cultural resonance of this material. He oversells it a little too much. Yes, anime and manga deal with more adult and complex themes than most Western animation, but they also capitulate to just as many genre cliches and formulas as we do (not to mention being just as given to over the top melodrama). And I think he lets the hentai stuff off a little too easily. No, I don’t think that reading tentacle porn is going to turn someone into a serial rapist, but what do the way women are portrayed in these comics and films say about gender relations in Japan? Does the constant submissive portrayal of women in these works encourage a sexist mindset? It’s a question he should have asked.

Plus, he makes a few errors — minor stuff (Robert Crumb’s Fritz the Cat stuff was written and drawn before he started Zap. And his more autobiographical material came years after the hippie era.) but frequent enough to set my back teeth on edge. And I really wish he had stopped the 9/11 allusions about 1/3 of the way through. Still, as these kind of “newbie’s guide to j-pop” type books go, it’s not a bad
read and marked with some occasional sharp insight.

Spell Checkers

Brigid Alverson: Spell Checkers is the bad-girl answer to all those cute high school witch stories. The three antiheroines of Jamie S. Rich’s graphic novel, due out from Oni in two weeks, basically mugged a witch for her spell book and have been using it ever since to ensure they are top dogs at home and at school. With basically no controls, they smoke in school, cheat on their homework, skip out of gym, and slag on each other constantly. They are terrible role models but a lot of fun to watch. Joelle Jones, whose work I really admired in Token, designed the characters and draws the flashback sequences, while Nicholas Hitori De handles the rest of the artwork, using a manga-influenced style that’s a bit heavy on the screentones for my taste. The story is great, though, and it’s a lot of fun watching the main characters be as bad as they can be.

A Home for Mr. Easter is your basic chase story. Tesana, a large, misunderstood girl who spends a lot of time in a fantasy world of her own accidentally comes across an Easter bunny — a rabbit that lays Easter eggs. She decides she will bring him home, and she ends up with half the town — cheerleaders, animal-rights protesters, the avaricious pet-shop owner, and her mother — on her tail. I feel that the story is a
bit weak — it’s hard to make a premise like that work — but the artist, Brooke Allen, does a great job of bringing it to life. You really feel Tesana’s anger and her desperation, and the side characters are lively
and expertly drawn.

Finally, I picked up Tokyopop’s Alice in the Country of Hearts because a lot of other reviewers have liked it, and I also liked the cover designs. It’s Alice in Wonderland redone with handsome young men in all the main parts — the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, and a few others thrown in for good measure. I’m not too far into it yet, but it doesn’t seem to be following the story very closely — more like using it as a set of ingredients for a new one. Alice falls asleep and in her dream she is thrust into a new country, one that is filled with perils and smiling young men. The rules aren’t entirely clear, but basically she is trying to get back home. The art is nice and clean and the character designs are interesting. I’m not entirely sold on it yet, but I’ll keep reading for now.

Amazing Spider-Man #627

Tim O’Shea: I’m really afraid that my role on WAYR is fast deteriorating into Schrödinger’s cat monitor (see WAYR from two weeks ago). I scooped up Amazing Spider-Man 627, totally enthused at the prospect of the Roger Stern/Lee Weeks creative combo. And then I got to the second page of the tale and–you guessed it–Pete internally monologues: “She’s (Cassie) understanding, and she’s as science-geeky as I am, I can make a joke about Schrödinger’s cat, and she gets it.” Added points to letterer Joe Caramagna for putting the phrase in red letters, giving it a “He killed Uncle Ben” level of importance. I exaggerate, but it did crack me up that the words were highlighted in such a manner.

I frequently bash editorial decisions made in comics, but long-time WAYR readers will not be surprised to see me praise Marvel editorial for hiring Stern to write an arc. Getting Weeks on art is sheer gravy. Stern’s history with Marvel is rich, in fact I had forgotten that Stern once wrote Doctor Strange and was only reminded of it when Wong has a brief cameo in the issue. I know Marvel just had the Waid miniseries wrap up, and I was already begging to see Waid do more with Strange, but in case Mark’s too busy — can there be a consideration for Stern and Paul Smith to do a Doctor Strange miniseries? Please? (God I am a fanboy aren’t I?)

Rucka’s announced departure from DC makes me appreciate his final issue (Detective Comics 863) with Jock even more. But I hope Rucka is right and that anyone can step in and continue with Batwoman. I never was that keen on Rucka’s Superman work, but he definitely connected with me on Batwoman.

I’m still appreciating the tributes and acknowledgments of Dick Giordano’s passing. Two pieces that I heartily recommend: — my friend KC Carlson’s thorough examination of Giordano’s editorial
work (and its impact on Carlson) — The three-part 1980 Gary Groth interview with Giordano (one, two and three).

The Midnight Disease

Dylan Horrocks: I usually read nonfiction, and currently in my reading pile are: