robot reviews
Robot Review | Mr. Murder is Dead
Written by Victor Quinaz; Drawn by Brent Schoonover
Archaia; $19.95
The premise of Mr. Murder is Dead isn’t a unique one. It’s the story of a retired, Dick Tracy-like, police detective whose arch-enemy turns up murdered. As the cops investigate the crime, the detective – who may or may not have committed the act; that’s part of the mystery – wrestles with his own aging and what it means to his life that such a central part of it is now gone. Aging heroes aren’t new, nor is the technique of looking back on their lives through a series of retro-looking comics, but Quinaz and Schoonover bring depth to the concept that’s missing from similarly-themed books.
Most of the books like this that I’ve read have a strong meta-context to them about the history of heroic fiction. Depending on the author’s point-of-view, the point is often to either glorify or demonize the past in comparison with contemporary trends in adventure stories. If it’s venerating the Good Old Days (the more popular choice, I’ve noticed), the elderly hero will rail against the complicated darkness of modern stories by longing for simpler times depicted with clean lines and basic colors. If it takes a cynical view of Days of Yore, a younger protagonist may reflect on old injustices and stereotypes with art that highlights those elements. Mr. Murder, on the other hand, isn’t all that concerned about commenting on the past. At least, not our collective past. Its story is more personal than that and more affecting.
A better comparison for Mr. Murder would be something like Joshua Hale Fialkov and Noel Tuazon’s Tumor, also published by Archaia. The books are completely different in plot and tone, but they share an interest in looking at an old detective’s struggle to come to terms with his more exciting past. In Tumor, that takes the form of invasive memories making it difficult for Frank Armstrong to separate the past from the present. Mr. Murder’s Gould Kane (aka The Spook) is all there mentally, but has a ton of emotional crap to sort out: the murder of Kane’s fiancée on her wedding day, Kane’s later relationship with his dead bride’s best friend, the child that he may or may not share with her, his changing feelings about the law and what society owes him after so many years of service and sacrifice. Kane is a complex character and Mr. Murder rightly chooses to focus on him and his flaws. It’s not as interested in referencing or paying homage to crime noir stories as it is just being one itself. It goes about the business of doing that in a really interesting way though.
- November 18, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Michael May
Robot Reviews | Hark! A Vagrant, Pope Hats and Mickey Mouse
Hark! A Vagrant
by Kate Beaton
Drawn and Quarterly, 168 pages, $19.95.
The thing that amazes/impresses me the most about Kate Beaton’ comics is how much everyone loves them. OK, not everyone — I do know one or two stragglers that refuse to find anything amusing in her sly little comics — but a lot of people from disparate fan bases really like her stuff. Indie readers like Kate Beaton, Superhero fans like Kate Beaton,, and (perhaps most notably) people who hardly ever (if at all) read comics like Kate Beaton (like my wife). She crosses boundaries in a way I don’t think I’ve seen any modern cartoonist do, let alone a webcartoonist. I think that’s even more impressive when you consider how often she relies upon (relatively) obscure historical figures and literature as the basis for her strips.
Other than that I really don’t have much to say, except that those who own her first book, Never Learn Anything From History, and haven’t bought this one yet because they’re worried it reprints the same material can relax; it doesn’t. Basically if you appreciate intelligence, wit (or smartassery) and the chance to learn something on the side, then this is the book for you.
More reviews after the jump …
- November 4, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Robot Reviews | Bake Sale and Anya’s Ghost
Bake Sale
Bake Sale
by Sara Varon
First Second, 160 pages, $16.99
Anya’s Ghost
by Vera Brosgol
First Second, 224 pages, $15.99
As insufferably precious as Sara Varon’s comics can seem at first glance, they’re frequently suffused with a melancholy that belies their outward cutie-pie nature. Most of her books deal with the tricky nature of friendship, both our essential human need for connection and companionship and also how we often define our own identity through our contact with others. She rarely sugarcoats these relationships, either — Robot Dreams had a rather nasty betrayal at its focal point after all. That all can seem like heady stuff for an all-ages book, but Varon smartly refuses to delve too deep into psychology blather, preferring to keep the actions and visuals as simple and self-explanatory as possible.
- August 5, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Robot Review | Resistance, Volume 2: Defiance
Resistance, Volume 2: Defiance
Written by Carla Jablonski; Illustrated by Leland Purvis
First Second; $16.99
I have fond memories of reading the first volume of Resistance. I was on a road trip with my family last year and took it with me to read in the car along with First Second’s other kids-vs-nazis book, City of Spies. I couldn’t help but be struck by the different approaches each creative team took to their similar subject matter. City of Spies is a romping adventure book while Resistance looks seriously at the reality of what opposing the Germans must have been like for children. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition and I loved both approaches so much that in comparing the two I missed some other themes, at least in Resistance. I may have missed some in City of Spies too, but reading the second volume of Resistance all by itself has allowed me to see aspects of it that go deeper than just “boy, it must have been scary for kids in those days.”
There were several themes that I expected to find in Defiance: freedom, loyalty, courage; stuff like that. What I was surprised by was a strong message that hit closer to home than those lofty ideals: relationships – especially family ones – and how incredibly hard they are. It’s difficult to live with other people – even ones that you love – and balance the variety of needs and priorities that come with several people sharing their lives. Traditional family roles can help with that (for good or ill), but what happens when your country is occupied by invading forces and everything you know and are familiar with has been turned upside down if not completely destroyed? As a mother whose husband has been taken by the Germans to work in their labor camps, how do you balance the needs of your children with the demands of putting food on the table, especially when those very Germans are extorting your livelihood for their needs?
There’s so much going on in the life of poor Mme. Tessier that it’s tempting to focus on her, but this isn’t her story. Mostly it’s Paul’s, her only son, but also it’s Paul’s sisters, teenaged Sylvie and young Marie. Though not quite a teenager himself, Paul struggles with what it means to be the man of the family; balancing that responsibility with his passion for undermining the Germans’ control on his town any way that he can. He’s not doing a very good job of it though. It’s too much to ask of a young boy and helping the Resistance is getting in the way of supporting his mom, especially when he learns that the militant Maquis are camped in the woods nearby. Joining them would mean making a real difference; much more dramatic than drawing propaganda posters and distributing flyers.
- August 4, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Michael May
Robot Review | Olympians: Hera – The Goddess and Her Glory
Olympians, Volume 3: Hera - The Goddess and Her Glory
Olympians, Volume 3: Hera – The Goddess and Her Glory
Written and Illustrated by George O’Connor
First Second; $9.99
I used to hate Hera. Still do, most of the time; the way she’s portrayed. I mean, even in the Greek mythology I read as a kid, Hera was always picking on Hercules; sneaking snakes into his crib; getting him to kill his own kids. And I liked Hercules. I grew up reading comics about him and catching the occasional Steve Reeves movie on Saturday afternoon TV. How could you not like a guy who killed an invulnerable lion and then wore its skin as armor? And none of those stories – right up to and including the ones with Kevin Sorbo – had anything good to say about Hera. Not until George O’Connor.
O’Connor’s been teasing his interpretation of the Queen of the Gods since the first volume of Olympians. That one was about Zeus, whom O’Connor presented as a hero, but one who couldn’t control his own libido. He’s not defined by his sex addiction, but it certainly influences his choices and makes life miserable for the women in his life. When Zeus first notices Hera in that volume, I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her. She’s just minding her own business, talking with a friend, and Zeus appreciates her from afar. “Oh, no,” I thought, knowing where that story would eventually end up.
This third volume of Olympians is where it ends up. Over the last couple of installments – and in interviews and on his blog – O’Connor’s been saying that Hera is his favorite goddess. He explains it again in the Author’s Notes to this book. “Part of it,” he writes, “is because she’s the one person that Zeus well and truly fears.” But the reason for that – and the reason she has the reputation that she does as a shrewish, jealous wife – is because Zeus is a terrible husband. The emphasis is O’Connor’s. So, though Hera’s always been my least favorite goddess, I’ve been eagerly awaiting O’Connor’s stab at changing my mind. His first two volumes, Zeus and Athena were so excellent that I had high expectations for Hera. If anyone could turn her into a hero, it was O’Connor.
- July 29, 2011 @ 04:00 PM by Michael May
Robot Reviews | Captain Easy Vol. 2
Captain Easy Vol. 2
Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips Vol. 2 (1936-1937)
by Roy Crane; edited by Rick Norwood
Fantagraphics Books, 156 pages, $39.99
Roy Crane may have been one of the progenitors of the adventure comic strip, but he stood quite apart from those who followed in his wake.
While the people who picked up his torch — folks like Milton Caniff, Hal Foster, Burne Hogarth, Alex Raymond and the like — shared a fondness for the same genre trappings — exotic locales, tough guy leading men, crazy cliffhangers, bursts of fisticuffs and pretty girls — those artists were devotees of a highly illustrative, almost photo-realistic style. It was a style that quickly became one of the most predominant in the medium, at least where melodrama was concerned, as folks like Raymond influenced folks like Joe Kubert, Alex Toth and Neal Adams, who then influenced folks like George Perez and John Romita Jr. and so forth and so on, until we end up at Rob Liefeld on one end and Greg Land on the other.
But unlike all of those folk, Crane was a cartoonist of the big foot, “plop” pratfall school, less interested in perfectly capturing than in giving a guy a funny potato nose or having stars appear in circles around someone’s noggin after getting whacked upside the head with a bat or broom or even a walking cane. He was just as interested in a quick, and maybe even occasionally cheap, laugh as he was at chronicling the rip-roaring adventure stuff.
- July 8, 2011 @ 04:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Robot Reviews | Snarked #0
Snarked #0
By Roger Langridge
kaboom!
Roger Langride, writer of the Muppet Show comics and Thor: Mighty Avenger, set the bar pretty high when he decided to use Lewis Carroll’s characters, the Walrus and the Carpenter, in his new comic, Snarked. Carroll is a tough act to follow, and there’s a big risk that the new characters will fall flat compared to the original.
Langridge has succeeded admirably, however, in not only making an enjoyable comic but making one in which his story is both an original creation and true to its roots. Carroll’s walrus and carpenter use witty-sounding conversation as misdirection while they lure unsuspecting oysters to their dinner plates. Langridge’s characters, cast as lovable swindlers in some vague past, fast-talk their way into the palace to steal some food from the king’s kitchen, but unlike in the poem, they wind up with empty stomachs after all.
Snarked #0 is a tease, a one-dollar prequel to the series, which launches with issue #1 in October. This comic features an eight-page story, plus some special bonus content—puzzles, a fake diary and newspaper that relate to the story, and all of Carroll’s poems “The Hunting of the Snark” and “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” with the original illustrations.
- June 27, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Robot Reviews | Mickey Mouse Vol. 1
Mickey Mouse Vol. 1
Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Vol. 1: Race to Death Valley
by Floyd Gottfredson; edited by David Gerstein and Gary Groth
Fantagraphics Books, 288 pages, $29.99
It must seem difficult for younger generations to fully understand just how integral Mickey Mouse once was to the Disney franchise. While at one time his smiling, three-circle face was the iconic symbol for the company, today that image has been shoved aside to make room for Cinderella’s castle. The Disney bread is now officially buttered by a bunch of divas and Buzz Lightyear. These days Mickey is relegated to stalwart supporting cast member, fit for entertaining the preschooler crowd on daytime television, though efforts like the recent Epic Mickey video game show an interest in making him a viable player in their stable once more.
Even for my generation (that’s Gen X for those of you keeping score), understanding Mickey’s appeal was a tough proposition at times given how bland he seemed to appear in various cartoons and other products we or our parents were expect to shell good money out for. Everything about him stank of goody-two-shoes pitchman. No wonder he eventually faded from the limelight.
- June 10, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Robot Reviews | Garden
Garden
by Yuichi Yokoyama
Picturebox, 320 pages, $24.95.
It might seem odd at first glance to describe Yuichi Yokoyama’s work as dynamic, given his minimalist, antiseptic style that edges ever so closely to outright abstraction without ever crossing the line. Yet a close inspection of his work, particularly his latest book, Garden, shows what an utterly apt adjective it is. Nothing of significance ever happens in Yokoyama’s world, at least not in the sense we think of it when talking about narrative. There’s precious little plot per se, no threats or crisis, and no character development to speak of. Yet everything is in constant motion, in constant flux, if not already transforming then ready to be transformed into something else or at least be moved about. No one stands still in Garden, and their actions are depicting in tight close ups, off-kilter worm’s-eye-views or panoramic vistas. He’s Jack Kirby without the bombast or violence.
- May 13, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Robot Reviews | Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths
Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths
Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths
by Shigeru Mizuki
Drawn and Quarterly, 368 pages, $24.95.
Disclaimer: At the request of the publisher, I wrote a letter of recommendation when they were applying for a grant from a nonprofit organization to aid in the publication and promotion of this book.
Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is nothing less than a spit in the face of militarism, war and feudal attitudes. It is an angry book, but it doesn’t shriek its indignation, though the temptation certainly seems to be there. There are few histrionics on display or scenes of outright, explicit condemnation. Rather, the book is content to let the general inhumanity on display speak for itself.
- May 6, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Robot Reviews | Planet of the Apes #1
Creating a comic book version of Planet of the Apes is a proposition fraught with danger. It’s been a long time since Mr. Comics’ Revolution on the Planet of the Apes, so I don’t remember if I quit reading it because I didn’t like it or if I decided to wait for a collected edition that never came. I do remember liking Salgood Sam’s art on it, but being disappointed that it was a bridge between Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the two films in the series that I’ve never seen. I haven’t seen them partly because they’re not generally regarded as any good, but also because – as prequels to the original PotA film – they cover a time period that I’m not all that interested in. While intellectually I’m curious to see how the world of PotA came to be, I’d much rather see adventure stories set in the world of the first movie.
BOOM!’s new series doesn’t do that exactly, but it gets awfully close and ends up presenting something that I didn’t realize I wanted, but really do. Set long after Battle for the Planet of the Apes, BOOM!’s comic shows readers a time in which apes and humans are technically equal, but bigotry towards humans and an imbalance of power in favor of the apes have created a tense situation. That doesn’t sound all that different from the last couple of movies in the series, but it is in at least one important way. Where Conquest and Battle were set more or less on then-contemporary Earth (or that’s the impression I gathered from reading Revolution), enough time has passed between then and the new series that the world’s starting to look something like the original movie.
One of the coolest things about the first film was that its version of Earth was a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. So much of what made it awesome was the look of it: the apes’ costumes, the buildings; the primitive humans. It was a world ripe for exploration, which is why it’s so disappointing that the films immediately went away from that in favor of traveling to the relative mundaneness of the past; our present. BOOM!’s series is back in the fantasy world, though it looks better than any that’s been presented on screen.
- April 27, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Michael May
Robot Review | Pepper Penwell and the Land Creature of Monster Lake
Pepper Penwell and the Land Creature of Monster Lake
Written and Illustrated by Steph Cherrywell
SLG; $14.95
I hope it came through in my review of The Incredible Change-Bots that what I liked most about it was its ability to lovingly kid the things that Transformers fans like most about that cartoon while at exactly the same time successfully reproduce those qualities. That’s so difficult to do, which is why most of the time we see skewering, Mad Magazine-style parodies of things instead. As rare as it is though, lightning struck my reading pile again when I got to Pepper Penwell.
I wasn’t much into the kid-sleuth genre as a youngster, other than Hanna-Barbera’s Legion of Meddling Kids. I had one Hardy Boys book and a Tom Swift, but my childhood heroes were mostly grown-ups: James Bond, Sherlock Holmes; Hercule Poirot. It hasn’t been until my adult years that I’ve experienced much interest in stories about child detectives. Maybe it’s an attempt to re-experience childhood; maybe it’s just a search for great literature for my son; maybe my wife – a big Nancy Drew fan – is starting to influence me. Whatever the reasons, I’m finding myself drawn to stories about tween or teenaged detectives and titles like The Clue in the Crumbling Wall or The Case of the Mysterious Handprints.
These stories are the inspiration for Steph Cherrywell’s Pepper Penwell and the Land Creature of Monster Lake, a book about a genius girl detective who’s kicked out of her posh boarding school for uncovering so much crime at the institution that parents are beginning to pull their kids out. Having nowhere else to go, she visits her police inspector father in Monster Lake, a quiet village in the English countryside where he’s investigating the disappearance of a young girl. Pepper’s looking over the case files before she even arrives.
- April 13, 2011 @ 06:56 PM by Michael May
Robot Review | Incredible Change-Bots Two
Incredible Change-Bots 2
As Transformers 3 draws inexorably nearer, I find myself dreading the conversations I know I’m going to have.
My friends will ask, innocently, “Have you seen Transformers 3, yet?”
“No,” I’ll reply, hoping they’ll lose interest and change the subject.
“Why not? It looks great! I thought you were into all that sci-fi, comic booky stuff.”
At which point I’ll either have to lie and say that I just haven’t gotten around to it yet (a tactic I’ll feel horrible about later), or tell the truth about hating Michael Bay movies and come off sounding like a complete snob. Which of course I am, but nobody likes defending themselves against that, especially when it’s true.
You see, my friends just don’t get it. If it’s big, if it’s blockbustery, if it’s got giant robots and it’s based on a popular cartoon from the ‘80s, they’ll go see it regardless of how crap it is. “I know it’s not great,” they’ll tell me, “but come on. It’s fun!” I could argue that last point, but by now I’m tired of the conversation.
I know I’m going to get this because I went through it two years ago with Transformers 2. I don’t want to go through it again. Fortunately, this year I have something with which to deflect the conversation into a positive direction. I have Incredible Change-Bots.
- March 30, 2011 @ 04:21 PM by Michael May
Robot reviews: The Arctic Marauder
The Arctic Marauder
The Arctic Marauder
by Jacques Tardi
Fantagraphics Books, 64 pages, $16.99
Based on what’s been translated in English so far, it seems as though are two kinds of Jacques Tardi books. The first is the dark, grim and gritty type, best represented by books like the wonderful but harrowing It Was the War of the Trenches and the steely-eyed noir West Coast Blues. The second is what I’d dub (rather awkwardly, because I can’t for the moment find better terminology) his goofier, more tongue in cheek style, best seen in the Adventures of Adele Blanc Sec series (and, to a certain extent, the satirical You Are There).
The Arctic Marauder, Fantagraphics’ latest entry in their Tardi line, easily fits in the second category. It’s a wickedly sly take on classic turn-of-the-century pulp adventures that nevertheless manages to both tweak and evoke those stories. It is, in short, a blast to read.
- March 18, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Robot Reviews | Parker: The Outfit (digital edition)
I broke through a barrier on Christmas Day: I paid $9.99 for an e-book, something I swore I would never do. And it was worth it.
I had been wanting to read Parker: The Outfit, Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of the Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) novel, but this is the busiest time of year for me, and I hadn’t gotten a review copy. So there I was, with my best-of-the-year list due the next day, with no copy of a book that I was quite sure deserved to be on the list. Fortunately, IDW, which publishes the Parker books, has just decided to put its graphic novels in the iTunes store as standalone apps, and Parker: The Outfit is available for $9.99.
In general, I think $10 is too much for an e-book, which is essentially an ephemeral thing. You don’t really buy e-books, you rent them, although it’s more of a long-term lease. I still have books that I bought 30 years ago; the same will not be true of my e-books. That said, ten bucks for the Parker book is better than a 50% savings off the price of the print book. And it’s Darwyn Cooke, dammit. So I bit.
Best ten bucks I ever spent.
- December 28, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson