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.

Inkweed

The news spread rather rapidly over the comics blogs this week that Dylan Williams, cartoonist and publisher of Sparkplug Comic Books, is seriously ill and in need of financial aid (i.e. please purchase some Sparkplug books).

Though they arguably haven’t always gotten as much attention as PictureBox or Drawn & Quarterly, Sparkplug has been one of the most interesting small press publishers in recent years, releasing challenging, striking work from many new and up and coming cartoonists.

Lots of people are making recommendations on what to get, but if you’re on the fence about purchasing something from the Sparkplug shop, or just plain don’t know what book to buy, I thought I’d add my own two cents with a short run down of some of my own personal favorites.

1. Inkweed by Chris Wright. I wrote at length about Wright’s excellent collection of short stories here, so let me just quote a bit from that:

I really like Chris Wright‘s art style. I like his not quite-abstract, not-quite cubist characters, and the way they’re knocked down to basic geometric shapes that intersect at odd and slightly uncomfortable angles. I like the way his line squiggles, harking back to classic strip artists like E.C. Segar while at the same time suggesting a nervous, barely containable energy. I like that his dialogue frequently sounds as though it walked out of the second act of an Ibsen play to knock back a few at the pub across the street. I like that he frequently goes crazy with the cross-hatching.

Beyond his unique art, though, are some very emotionally dense tales about people (usually older men) desperately trying reach closure/happiness in their family and romantic relationships and often coming up short. Wright’s own self-deprecating humor leavens the despair a good deal and .

Whirlwind Wonderland

2. Whirlwind Wonderland by Rina Ayuyang. Again, at the risk constantly relinking to old articles, I’ll repeat what I said here: “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.” Looking at the book now, I still find it utterly charming.

3. Asthma by John Hankiewicz. Hankiewicz’s work can be off-putting for the uninitiated at first glance. His odd juxtaposition of word and picture doesn’t always jib together in neat, sensical ways and his flat, iconic style can seem (deliberately, I think) eerie and haunting. Once you get into the rhythm of his comics, however, you start to appreciate his work more and succumb to the stark beauty he presents. Let me put it this way: A lot of cartoonists attempt to do poetry. Hankiewicz is the only one who can do it well.

4. Reich by Elijah Brubaker. Brubaker’s biography of controversial psychologist Wilhelm Reich owes an obvious influence to Chester Brown’s Louis Reil, but Brubaker nevertheless manages to craft a compelling tale about a man obsessed with the role sex plays in human nature and his own life, and so obsessed with certitude that he was not only willing to face censorship, ridicule and ostracization, but also madness.

5. Flesh and Bone by Julia Gfrorer. Here’s a wonderful, grim, lovely, dark and very, very disturbing book about … well, it’s about this guy who’s distraught over his beloved’s death and goes to see this witch so he can try and meet her in the afterlife and the witch … well, let’s just say that if you’re the type who doesn’t care for explicit sexual images or pictures of horrible things happening to children, then this book is probably not for you. If you’re willing to steel yourself a bit, however, you’ll find a memorable, captivating comic that delivers its jolts like a short, sharp shock to the system.

6. Service Industry by T. Edward Bak. It’s not like Bak has become a cartooning superstar since the publication of this book, but I do feel comfortable in saying that Service Industry is the book that got him noticed, and led to stuff like his current story being serialized in Mome. It’s easy to understand why people sat up and paid notice, Industry is a tight litte phantasmagoria, with Bak examining his own personal history and current menial labor job, only to artfully segue to a rich fantasy world. Despite its off-the-cuff feel, it’s a very confident, assured work, that makes the reader aware that Bak is a cartoonist to be reckoned with.

Other books worth buying: The anthology Orchid; Christina and Charles by Austin English; The Heavy Hand by Chris Cilla; Lemon Styles by David King; and Bookhunter by Jason Shiga.

The barriers to entry for getting your comic work out in front of people may have changed, but as Sean Kleefeld points out, the Xeric Foundation provided another benefit to comic fans. “…here’s why I’ll miss the Xerics: they have been an incredibly powerful shorthand for identifying great comics,” he wrote on his blog. “Oh, there’s other comic awards out there, of course, but those always come across as hit or miss for me. Just because a comic won a Harvey or an Eisner or whatever doesn’t mean I’ll really enjoy or appreciate it. But the Xerics, I’ve found, are consistently high quality and enjoyable. I have yet to read a Xeric-winning book that I didn’t enjoy, a claim I can’t make regarding the Eisners.”

So when I threw out the idea to do a Six by 6 list highlighting some of our favorite Xeric Foundation recipients over the years, I didn’t realize what I was asking; it didn’t register just how many completely awesome creators out there have benefited from the grant. So, when I say “Six Xeric Foundation grant recipients we love,” that’s not to say that they are the only ones we love. Hell, just throw all the names in a hat and pick out six, and you’ll have a list just as legitimate as this one.

Also, it was interesting to see how my fellow bloggers interpreted my request for entries for this list; while some, like Chris Mautner, did what I was expecting and talked about what one of their favorites went on to do after receiving the grant, others reached out to some of them to get their thoughts on the discontinuation of the grants. So the content of the list is … varied.

As always feel free to share thoughts on some of your favorites in the comments section. You can find a list of all the recipients here.

Jeff Lemire

Lost Dogs

When I talked to Jeff Lemire back in early 2008, he did not mince words when emphasizing how important his March 2005 Xeric grant had been (for Lost Dogs, which Lemire self- published through his own Ashtray Press imprint):

“It was a huge break. I would never have gotten a book distributed by Diamond without a publisher if it wasn’t for the Xeric Grant, and that helped put me on the map with publishers like Top Shelf. I also learned a huge amount about the business side of the comics industry, which, even though I am not self-publishing any more, still helps me a lot.” (Tim O’Shea)

Sam Hiti

Sam Hiti won the Xeric Grant in 2002 and used it to produce his first graphic novel, Tiempos Finales. The book used a combination of influences from Jack Kirby and manga to Christian imagery and Latin artwork that resulted in a unique style and brought Hiti instant acclaim from fans, critics, and professionals alike. I asked him how winning the Xeric affected his career:

“I was saddened to hear this morning that the Xeric Grant will be no more. I received mine in 2002 when I published my first graphic novel Tiempos Finales. Wow. It’s almost been ten years. Time flies.

“I remember the work that I put into filling out the forms; the inside scoops I received from Rhode Montijo and Nick Bertozzi (also former winners). Rhode was the one who pushed me to apply last minute and I am so grateful, because I thought I had no chance of winning.

“I remember that someone congratulated me through an email that I had won, so I called up Xeric and they confirmed. I was so ecstatic! Awards like this are good for new creators. It gave me momentum and let me know that somebody other than myself believed that I was capable of doing good work. I wanted to make Xeric proud and show them that their money wasn’t going to waste. The pressure was on.

Tiempos Finales

“I reworked the book, adding many pages and a second color. I wanted to bleed every penny that they gave me. My thought was that if this book was my last project, I would go out in a ball of flames. It took what seemed like forever to finish it, I was learning many new things. I was painting houses in those days and I had little bursts of time to work on the book. The Xeric people would check in periodically and ask if I had printed the book yet. I told them I was working on it and not to worry. I hoped that they didn’t think that I had already blown the money on toys and candy.

“In the spring of 2004, about a year-and-a-half later, I printed the book at a local mom-and-pop shop with whom I built a great relationship. I’m still using them to this day. I remember holding the final book in my hands as if it was my first child. I remember handing over the complete $5000 to pay for the printing. I remember meeting Peter Laird at the Toronto Comic Con a few months later. His booth was right next to mine and I thanked him and apologized that I reworked the book from what I’d originally sent in. Peter shook my hand and assured me that he was very pleased with the way the book had turned out.

“I am honored to be a Xeric Grant winner, it pushed me to my creative limits and allowed me to be at the right time and place to launch my career. As they say, the rest is history.” (Michael May)

Megan Kelso

Gilrhero

The central and simple idea behind the Xeric grant was to give budding cartoonists a financial leg up, and it’s hard to think of a better example than Megan Kelso. The spring 1993 recipient had been self-publishing her initial, magazine-sized comic Girlhero for about two issues before getting the award, which enabled her not only to publish a more slicker looking product, but also reach a wider array of stores and readers.

Since then she has gone on to become one of the most notable women cartoonists in the alt-comix field, publishing such acclaimed books as The Squirrel Mother, the (recently re-released) Queen of the Black Black and Artichoke Tales. She’s had her work published in The New York Times (“Watergate Sue”) and won several Ignatz Awards for her work. Would she have stuck with it and had her work as well-received if she hadn’t won? Probably. But winning the Xeric surely gave her the self-confidence and enough of a financial windfall to keep her publishing and convince her to turn it into a career. Considering this is still an industry where women cartoonists seem like an anomaly, that’s something worth celebrating. (Chris Mautner)

Jason Lutes

Jar of Fools

Lutes received his grant in 1993 to collect his weekly comic strip, Jar of Fools, which was running in The Stranger, a Seattle alternative newspaper. I remember discovering it in 1995, shortly after moving back to Dallas after living in an outlying suburb. As a life-long reader of comics, I never truly gave up on the medium, but there was a time in the 1990s when I came close. A few books like Sandman and Bone kept me coming back to the shop each week, but it wasn’t until I discovered a shop called Einstein’s in Garland, Texas that I felt a sense of renewal and excitement about comics and what they could be.

Einstein’s was one of those stores that went out of their way to push, promote and carry comics from the back section of Previews — the stuff from smaller companies who were coming into their own at the time. In fact, they had a money-back guarantee section in their shop; if you didn’t like one of the books the store recommended, you could bring it back for a full refund. These shelves had some of the staples I was already enjoying, like the previously mentioned Bone and Sandman, as well as one I had never heard of called Jar of Fools.

In its pages I met Ernie the alcoholic magician, plagued by the death of his brother; his estranged girlfriend Esther; con man Nathan and his daughter Claire; and Ernie’s mentor Flosso. It was both depressing and uplifting to see this complex cast struggle through life, emotions and their problems. It was subtle, and ultimately fantastic, and I can remember thinking not only what a great story it was, but how much skill and talent Lutes brought to the storytelling. Thanks to Drawn & Quarterly, the book is still in print, so if you’re a fan of Lutes’ Berlin or just good stories, check it out. (JK Parkin)

Tyler Page

Nothing Better

Tyler Page first came to my attention through Stylish Vittles, his heart-breakingly honest trilogy of graphic novels depicting his relationship with his college girlfriend. I’m a total sucker for realistic college stories and ate it up, so I was also thrilled when Page announced his follow up project, another college series, but this time completely fictional. He launched Nothing Better as a webcomic and in 2007 won the Xeric Grant to publish his first collection. I also talked to Page about what that meant to him:

“I was definitely surprised by the news about the Xeric Grant, as many were. I think it’s unfortunate, though I do understand where Peter Laird is coming from. But even with the Internet and things like Kickstarter, I feel like the Xeric still had a place. For me, winning a Xeric was a big deal. I’d heard about it from a colleague back when I was in college and I made it one of my missions to try and win one some day. While I was committed to self-publishing on my own, and racked up an impressive amount of debt doing so, I wouldn’t have ever published the first Nothing Better collection if I hadn’t won the grant for it.

“Getting the grant did a lot to boost my sense of professional approval and it got me a lot of free press at announcement time as well. And at the time I got it, I was at the end of my financial rope as far as publishing. I couldn’t really risk any of my own money any more on publishing; getting the Xeric really helped in that regard. Then again, who’s to say that if I hadn’t gotten a Xeric and waited a few years until Kickstarter was around, that wouldn’t have worked just as well?

“I think the main difference is just the process of having the work judged and the place of honor the Xeric seemed to hold within the comics community. Funding your comic through pre-sales or crowd-sourcing with Kickstarter is fine, but it will never have the caché the Xeric Grant did.

“I’m sure we’ll continue to see lots of amazing work from newcomers, but it’s still sad to see the Xeric leave the comics world.” (Michael May)

John Kerschbaum

The Wiggly Reader

For creator John Kerschbaum receiving a September 1996 Xeric Grant (for The Wiggly Reader) literally changed the kind of work that the cartoonist wanted to pursue. As he succinctly put it in a public statement on Google+ “Sad to see this end. I would most likely not be making comics if not for the Xeric grant I received.” His statement was reminiscent of something he said in a January 2009 Comics Journal interview–and that Tom Spurgeon picked up on in a March 2009 interview:

“SPURGEON: You once told The Comics Journal that you might not be making comics at all if it weren’t for the Xeric grant you received. Why is that? What did the Xeric give you that’s continued to pay dividends in terms of your overall artistic output the last 10-12 years?

KERSCHBAUM: What I meant was that prior to submitting to The Xeric Foundation, my goal was to sell gag cartoons to magazines. I wasn’t doing comics longer than a page. So writing The Wiggly Reader and getting a Xeric grant turned my attention to longer-form comics, comic books, self-publishing, etc.” (Tim O’Shea)

Our Love Is Real

As we noted a week ago, Sam Humphries and Steven Sanders self-published a science fiction comic called Our Love Is Real, which subsequently sold out in print in nine hours. A second print is on the way (that’s the cover you see to the right) and it’s still available digitally through their website or comiXology.

Humphries, a former Robot 6 guest contributor and my fellow panel member in San Diego next week, agreed to share a list of what he considers to be some of the great science fiction comics. Note that he chose not to use the words “best” or “favorite” to describe the list. “‘Favorite’ or ‘best’ implies more commitment than I’m ready to give,” he said.

So without further ado …

Six great science fiction comics, by Sam Humphries

1. AKIRA by Katsuhiro Otomo
A giant of science fiction, often imitated, never surpassed. At its heart is a tale of a bromance gone wrong, two best friends who carve their years of brotherhood and resentment across Tokyo, Japan, and the Moon. The anime adaptation is superlative, but the manga, sprawled across six thick volumes of meticulously drawn, hi-octane pages, is a true monumental achievement. I’ll be gunning for this No. 1 spot ’til I die. G.O.A.T.

The Filth, by Grant Morrison and Chris Weston

2. The Filth by Grant Morrison and Chris Weston
If you’re not sure you’re ready for The Filth, then you aren’t. It’s dirty, it’s beautiful, and once I pick it up I can’t look away. Weston’s artwork is spectacular. Protagonist Greg Feely travels through the trash and filth of human existence with a depraved organization called the Hand, and eventually finds redemption. All for the love of a cat. This is a grim tale, Morrison’s most twisted, most rewarding, and frankly, most hilarious.

3. Freakangels by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield
Twelve Freakangels, embodied with supernormal abilities, struggle to protect a small neighborhood in post-apocalyptic London. Unfortunately, they can’t even decide what to do with themselves. The futurevision is compelling, but it’s the characters that keep me coming back…smart, benevolent, cranky, sexy, crazy, gloomy and murderous. Some prefer Transmetropolitan, but to me, this is the best of Ellis’ sci-fi jams.

4. Give Me Liberty by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons
This book is criminally under-appreciated. Martha Washington is a hero of the powerless in a country where power is just another devalued currency. Miller’s dark humor and wild ideas are perfectly paired with Gibbon’s sleek imagination and razor-sharp storytelling. It is a gold mine of world-building; nothing escapes their satirical scorn. As I’ve said elsewhere, I steal from Give Me Liberty relentlessly.

from "The Long Tomorrow" by Dan O'Bannon and Moebius

5. The Long Tomorrow by Dan O’Bannon and Moebius
The short story that started it all. The undisputed master Moebius illustrates the hell out of this tale, a mash-up of American noir and French science fiction, cramming in a futureshock metropolis, rocket ships, robocops, kidnapped brains and weird sex into a handful of pages. This is the one that influenced everything from Blade Runner to George Lucas…to Our Love Is Real.

6. Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka by Naoki Urasawa
This is Urasawa’s reinterpretation of a classic Astro Boy tale by Osama “Godfather of Manga” Tezuka. It should have been a disaster, but it’s brilliant. Pluto is a gripping thriller and an atmospheric mystery, where the rain falls on human and robot alike. But it’s also a warm, emotional sci-fi story, where the elements of the future are pushed to the side, and the human drama of being alive takes center stage.

Good-Bye Chunky Rice

Cartoonists rarely produce great work right out of the starting gate. It usually it takes lots of time and lots of effort for an artist to hone their style and storytelling abilities. Debut comics — even those made by the greats — rarely offer any indication of what type of treasures lie ahead. Even Chris Ware had to make Floyd Farland before he could produce Jimmy Corrigan.

Still, sometimes a cartoonist seems to spring out of the sea foam fully formed, producing a work that not only draws attention and great buzz, but also indicates exactly where they’re headed — what direction they plan to take as an artist and what you as a reader can expect from them.

Here then, are six debut comics that made people go “Who the heck is this guy? And why haven’t I heard of him before?” I’m sure I missed someone. I always do. Be a dear and let me know who I forgot in the comments section, won’t you?

Night Fisher

1. Goodbye Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson. True, Thompson had done a few mini-comics before Chunky was published, but those weren’t seen by many until years later. Chunky was really the book that introduced readers to Thompson. The reaction to the book was swift and laudatory. I remember people buzzing about the book at SPX that year, wondering who this guy was and how could he produce so moving and assured a work at so young an age. With only three major books to his name so far (four if you count this year’s forthcoming Habibi), he’s remained one of the more beloved and significant creators in the alt-comix landscape.

2. Clumsy by Jeffrey Brown. Rare is the cartoonist who gets a glowing cover blurb from Chris Ware on their very first comic. Brown, however, was lucky enough to do so with his debut book, a cringe-tastic tale of awkward, and ultimately doomed, young love. He’s shown quite a bit of diversity since then, especially in humor books like Incredible Change-Bots, but I don’t know that he’s produced anything as emotionally affecting as this particular title yet.

3. Yummy Fur by Chester Brown. Looking back, it seems hard to believe that Yummy Fur was Brown’s first comic, that he was that good right out of the gate with so few missteps, but it’s true. That very first issue, with the start of the Ed the Happy Clown serial, stories about toilet paper that killed people and oddities like Walrus Blubber Sandwich let readers know from the get-go that there was something unique and potentially unsettling about this particular comic. I remember reading that first issue in my local comic store at the time and being profoundly unnerved by it. So much so that it actually scared me off of Brown’s subsequent work for several years afterward. That’s gotta be a mark of some kind of quality, no?

Lose #1

4. Bone by Jeff Smith. You could ostensibly argue that Smith’s first professional comics work was Bone’s precursor, Thorn, a comic strip he drew for his college newspaper while enrolled at Ohio State University. You could make that argument, but I’m not going to. For all intents and purposes, that first issue of Bone was Smith’s debut into the world of comics, a debut which proceeded to change the landscape for all-ages and alternative comics for years to come. Smith had obviously spent a inordinate amount of time thinking about and developing the series beforehand, since  it’s so assured and fully formed from the first page. His craft and storytelling abilities are just as confident in that first issue as they are in the last.

5. Night Fisher by R Kikuo Johnson. As with Chunky Rice, there was quite a bit of hype and brouhaha over the publication of Johnson’s inaugural work. Publisher Gary Groth even compared its release to the arrival of the first issue of Love and Rockets, or words to that effect. It’s not that good, although this tale of disaffected adolescence and drug dealing in Hawaii is certainly compelling and suggests that Johnson is an artist capable of producing great work. Unfortunately, he has yet to follow up on that initial promise. But Night Fisher still marks him as an artist to watch out for.

6. Lose #1 by Michael DeForge. What planet is DeForge from that he is able to produce such stellar work with such seeming effortlessness? And how is he able to make comics so profoundly creepy? So far he’s produced three issues of Lose and a rather wide assortment of mini-comics and anthology contributions with next to no drop in quality. The confidence this guy exudes on the page, especially in that first issue, is rather shocking honestly. I say we can expect great things from him, but he’s already produced great things, starting with that very first issue of Lose.

Planetes

The announcement last week that Tokyopop has closed its publishing division (at least in North America) has led to a lot of thoughtful critiques about the company’s legacy, both good and bad.

Less discussed is their vast array manga publications and the aesthetic qualities that may or may not lie therein. Having offered a memorial of sorts to the Mome anthology last week, it seemed only fitting to do something similar for the house that Sailor Moon built today.

But first an apology/explanation of sorts. The honest truth is I came a bit late to the manga revolution and didn’t immerse myself much in Tokyopop’s oeuvre, not because of a dislike towards shojo or manga in general as much as a general feeling that most of their offerings were heavily contrived and derivative, whether aimed at a male audience or a female one.

Also, my budget being what it is, there were plenty of titles I missed that I probably would have included on this list had I had the resources to track them down, like Aria and Happy Mania. Consider this more of a starting point for an ongoing conversation then, and feel free in the comments section me know what an idiot I am and what books I missed.

So taking all that into consideration, here are the six titles that I feel justified Tokyopop’s existence:

Lupin III

1) Planetes by Makoto Yukimura. While I’m not the biggest sci-fi geek in the world, I do have a fierce appreciation for hard science fiction, especially when it’s done as well as it is in Planetes, a manga about an outer space garbageman of sorts who dreams of owning his own ship and attempts to join a crew making a historic trip to Jupiter. Yet as well thought out as the science stuff is, it’s ultimately the characters and their conflicted emotions as they try to juggle their love for family and friends with their driven need to explore the solar system that makes Planetes such a exemplary and moving work.

2) Lupin III by Monkey Punch. Monkey Punch’s super suave thief, a much-beloved character over in Japan, is probably best known on these shores as the main character in the Hayao Miyazaki film Castle of Cagliostro. The source material, however, is much sillier — in a good way — than the movie would suggest. His rough-hewn line (think of it as Mort Drucker by way of Osuma Tezuka), quite unique compared to other manga-ka it seems, refuses to keep it’s tongue out of cheek resulting in one of the most gloriously slapstick-y comics I’ve read in a long time.

3) Dragon Head by Minetaro Mochizuki. Anyone who’s read my meager writings over the years probably knows that I’m a big fan of horror manga by the likes of Kazuo Umezu and Junji Ito. Throw Mochizuki’s apocalyptic 10-volume tale on the “fave” pile as well. Beginning with an absolutely terrifying train wreck, the series maintains a deep sense of tension and claustrophobia as the three survivors attempt to figure out what happened and how to get out of the enormous underground tunnel they’re trapped in. The series deteriorated a bit in scares once they made it to the outside world, but those first few volumes are some of the best horror comics around.

Life

4) The Abandoned by Ross Campbell. Unfortunately I still haven’t gotten around to reading Becky Cloonan’s East Coast Rising or Brandon Graham’s King City (shameful I know), so let’s let Campbell’s great zombie comic with the zaftig women stand in for all the solid North American cartoonists TP introduced readers to during their big OEL push. There was a lot of dross among those titles, but books like The Abandoned made the experiment worthwhile.

5) Life by Keiko Suenobu. I haven’t read the later volumes of this shojo series that takes a hard look at teen self-mutilation, bullying and suicide, but I remain impressed with the first volume, which dealt with such touch issues with grace and and sensitivity and, perhaps most important of all, without ever once coming off like a maudlin TV-movie of the week melodrama.

6) Welcome to the NHK by Tatsuhiko Takimoto and Kendi Oiwa. Despite (or perhaps because) of my own nerdish, socially awkward personality, I’m all for making vicious fun of nerdy, socially awkward people, especially when they exhibit distasteful attitudes towards women. Which goes a long way towards explaining why I so enjoyed NHK, a rather savage at times satire about an unemployed shut-in whose life starts to change when he meets a young woman who takes a curious interest in him. Basically, anything that makes fun of the whole “moe” movement is going to be tops in my book.

The series has had a rather remarkable and distinguished run since its inception in 2005. In addition to featuring work by such notable cartoonists like Jim Woodring and Gilbert Hernandez, it’s served as a publishing venue to highlight the work of up and coming artists like Laura Park, Tom Kaczynski and Sara Edward-Corbett, as well as introduce American readers to work by notable European creators like Emile Bravo and Sergio Ponchione.

As a memorial of sorts for the anthology’s oncoming demise, I thought I’d attempt to put together a quick list of my own favorite stories from Mome. This was a tough list to put together actually, and there are a number of names I feel a bit guilty for leaving off, but I’m sure you all can duly chastise me for my omissions in the comments section.

1) Wally Gropius by Tim Hensley. Mome serialized a number of lengthy tales in the past six years, but as good as many of them were, none were as inspired as Hensley’s oddball ode to the teen/humor comics of yesteryear. Truly one of the most unique comics to come down the pike in however many years, it showed how Reynolds’ original ethos of giving new cartoonists a venue to get their work in front of readers could bear brilliant fruit. (I reviewed the book here and interviewed Hensley here, if you want to know more about it.)

Mome Vol. 7

2) At Loose Ends by Lewis Trondheim. Anytime you can get someone of Trondheim’s stature and talent in your anthology, you’ve already got me reaching for my wallet. This is especially the case when you’re translating something like At Loose Ends, Trondheim’s farewell essay/midlife crisis of sorts, where he approaches middle age wondering how he can continue to keep his creative juices flowing and produce good work in his declining years and whether he shouldn’t just give up on cartooning altogether. It’s a rather insightful, frank and funny look at the toll drawing funny pictures can take on your psyche and easily one of the best things Trondheim’s done (at least that’s been translated so far).

3) Seven Sacks by Eleanor Davis (Vol. 7). Davis is an incredible talent, an artist seemingly capable of tackling any type of story, be it folk tale, children’s story, or horror. Sacks hints at the latter as it focuses on a riverman who ferrys across a number of gruesome monsters on their way to some sort of strange gathering. And each monster carries with him a rather bulky and squirming sack that contains … rabbits? Maybe? It’s one of the most haunting things Davis has ever done and one of the stories I’m constantly reminded of when I think of how Mome gave young artists a chance to shine.

Mome Vol. 13

4) The Veiled Prophet by David B (Vol. 4). As acclaimed as David B’s work has proven to be here in North America, a short work like the Veiled Prophet wouldn’t be easy to publish as a stand-alone story in today’s graphic-novel heavy climate, so kudos to Reynolds, Kim Thompson and company for making the effort to translate this haunting story, a cautionary fable about a cult religious leader who stirs up revolution and in ancient Asia. If you missed it, the good news is that it will be included in the forthcoming David B. collection, The Armed Garden.

5) Satelitte CMYK by Dash Shaw (Vol. 13). Shaw contributed a number of great short pieces to Mome, many of them collected in the book The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D., but this one, about a space station with different levels, each one getting its own color scheme, is probably my favorite. In particular I love its sci-fi trappings, the way it doesn’t fully reveal its secrets until the very end and its inspired use of color. I don’t know if it’s the best thing Shaw’s ever done, but it’s the best thing he ever did in this anthology.

6) 5:45 a.m. by Al Columbia (Vol. 11). I almost went with one of Killoffer’s submissions for this spot but ultimately decided upon Columbia’s wordless story, one of the creepiest and most frightening things to run in Mome, and this an anthology that frequently featured the work of Josh Simmons. A mere four pages long, Columbia offers glimpses into a rather disheveled and seemingly empty home early in the morning before coming upon the ugly punchline, and then finally pulling back and forcing us to completely re-evaluate what we’ve seen before. It’s a typically grim entry for Columbia that, while perhaps less gruesome than his Pim and Francie material, is no less unsettling.

Endnote: At the risk of plugging my stuff so much, I feel I should note I interviewed Reynolds about Mome last year at the old Comics Journal website.

I worried at first about picking seven characters for a Six by 6 column, but since the precedent has been set…here they are in reverse order:

7. Triton

The Inhumans are a weird, mixed bag of characters. Medusa and Lockjaw are awesome, but Gorgon and Karnak? Not so much. Others – like Black Bolt and Crystal – are entirely dependent on who’s writing them. Triton’s one of the great ones though. An outsider amongst outsiders, Triton wears his strangeness right out there where it counts: on his skin. There’s something awesomely underdoggy about characters who can’t blend in with “normal” people and Triton gets props for not only being a fish-man, but looking like one too.

6. Marineman

In contrast to Triton, Marineman blends in with human society almost too well. Writer/artist Ian Churchill is still revealing the origins of his creator-owned hero, but what we do know is that Marineman (aka Steve Ocean) has worked hard to keep his powers from even his closest friends by hiding in plain sight as it were. He’s a popular marine biologist/activist with a reality TV show, but until recently everyone thought that was all he was. Everyone, that is, except for his mad scientist dad and the top-secret military group that they both work for. It’s a combination of that drama with the sheer awesomeness of the environments that Churchill’s designed (the undersea base, the marine research facility that supports Marineman’s public research, the ruins of Atlantis, etc.) that earns Marineman a spot on this list.

5. Sea Ghost

Sea Ghost is probably the most obscure character on this list, but he’s also one of the coolest. Spinning out of Jay Piscopo’s The Undersea Adventures of Capt’n Eli, Sea Ghost is as an homage to Space Ghost and other classic Hanna-Barbera characters and concepts.

Piscopo’s put a lot of thought into Sea Ghost and Capt’n Eli’s world. Though it’s a relatively new series, the allies and villains all have back-stories that give everything a sense of grandness, like every story is a special event. Even if you don’t know who Commander X and Lord Hydro are, seeing them team up with or fight against Sea Ghost is almost as exciting as if you’ve grown up with these characters and been waiting for this battle your entire life.

4. Mera

When I was growing up, Mera had a bad reputation for sitting at home in Atlantis and whining that Aquaman was neglecting his duties as husband and king. And there’s a certain amount of justification to that perception, because once they got married, she was written that way. But in Mera’s earliest appearances, she was a partner with Aquaman on his sea-trotting adventures. I’d say “equal partner,” but that’s not accurate. With her ability to control water, she was way more powerful than he was, making her post-marital sidelining even more criminal. Fortunately, Geoff Johns is working hard to return her to her former status as a true, fellow soldier in Aquaman’s mission.

3. Namora

Speaking of soldiers, how cool is Namora? She’s a total badass without all the douchery of the Sub-Mariner. Don’t get me wrong, I love Namor’s jerky side. It’s part of what makes him such a fascinating and enduring character. But rather than mimicking that with breasts, Namora’s her own woman. She’s tough, powerful, and enigmatic, but also able to work well with others, which opens a lot of great, unpredictable story possibilities.

2. Marrina

John Byrne once made a dismissive comment about Alpha Flight’s only reason for existence being to survive a fight with the X-Men. That’s been quoted a lot, but the John Byrne who said it seems like a very different person from the man who wrote the first 28 issues of the series. A lot of thought and care went into these characters and none more so than Marrina.

Her story is tragic in more ways than one. Found as an egg on the beach by a loving family of lighthouse-keepers, her quick development of underwater powers landed her a spot in Canada’s Beta Flight program. Her promotion into Alpha Flight however brought horrible consequences when – on her very first mission – she learned her true origin. Her sweet, shy demeanor was a product of the nurturing she’d received from her human family, but her true nature as a member of an alien race of world-conquerors was vicious, as Puck learned the hard way.

Even when she thought she got that under control and entered a romantic relationship with the Sub-Mariner, Marvel writers couldn’t leave her alone. They continued to bring up and manipulate her alien DNA whenever they didn’t know what else to do with her, which was all the damn time. Ultimately, she was unceremoniously killed, but like with Mera there’s hope that Marrina will get some interesting stories written around her in Fred Van Lente, Greg Pak, and Dale Eaglesham’s upcoming Alpha Flight mini-series. Her nature/nurture conflict deserves to be explored, not exploited as a cheap way to propel someone else’s plot.

1. Abe Sapien

This one has it all: Triton’s fish-man looks; a mysterious background like Marineman; the tragedy of Marrina; a fully-realized, but self-contained world to explore and lots of great team-up possibilities like Sea Ghost; the toughness and power of Namora. Abe may have started as just a cool-looking sidekick for Hellboy, but thanks to some one-shots, mini-series, and of course BPRD, he’s become nobody’s sidekick, but a hero and a respected leader.

So that’s my list. What’s yours? Any great, sea-based superheroes that I didn’t mention?

It’s the end of an era. B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth: Gods #3 hits stores today, the final issue of the long-running Hellboy spinoff’s latest miniseries — and with it, the tenure of Guy Davis as the series’ regular artist draws to a close. Davis will be returning for the occasional project in Mike Mignola’s unique horror-adventure universe, and everyone involved gives his replacement, near-overnight success story Tyler Crook, their vote of confidence; given Mignola and company’s track record in selecting artists, from Davis to Duncan Fegredo to Richard Corben, I’m inclined to take them at their word. Even so, as I wrote at length the other day, Davis’ work on B.P.R.D with Mignola, lead writer John Arcudi, and colorist Dave Stewart (not to mention letterer Clem Robins and editor Scott Allie) has been one of the past decade’s absolute high-water marks for superhero (or supernatural action, if you prefer) comics. From sadness to spectacle, horror to humor, stunning creature designs to quiet character moments, there was pretty much nothing the guy couldn’t do.

In honor of Davis, Arcudi, Mignola, and Stewart’s remarkable achievement, I’ve selected a suite of my favorite moments from the Guy Davis era of B.P.R.D.. And in honor of the Ogdru Jahad, the Seven-Who-Are-One dark gods whose rise the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense is battling (perhaps in vain) to stop, I’ve expanded the list past our usual “Six by 6″ format to include seven stunning scenes. My hope is that they showcase the range, subtlety, sophistication, and power of one of the best artists working in genre comics — arguably in all of comics — today, and highlight just how well he and his collaborators worked together. Just be warned: SPOILERS AHEAD.

1. Sadu-Hem Reborn (B.P.R.D. Vol. 3: Plague of Frogs)

Demons, vampires, Nazi occult experiments run amok, Lovecraftian entities bent on destruction: Horror has always been the heart of the Hellboy universe. But while many comics display the trappings and markings of horror — after all, it’s as easy as drawing some rickety mansions and creepy creatures — it takes a real mastery of the form, of pacing and tone and knowing just what to show and how to show it to us, to make an image that genuinely unnerves, disturbs, frightens. That’s what Davis pulled off in his first full B.P.R.D. arc, with Mignola on scripting duties. When the mad priest the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development had been tracking finally rips the shroud off the hulking, shambling monstrosity he’s been shepherding, the resulting vision — the evil cosmic entity Sadu-Hem in quasi-human form, or an “elephant-man fungus” as Mignola’s direction to Davis put it — is as horrifying to us as it is to Agent Kate Corrigan as she watches through the window. It’s the eyes that do it, the beady eyes in that massive fleshy head, staring right at us, recognizing us, knowing that we’re there. I feel exposed when looking at this page.

2. The Caverns of Num-Yabisc (B.P.R.D. Vol. 3: Plague of Frogs)

So we know Davis can draw awful things; turns out he can draw awe-inspiring things as well. During an out-of-body experience, the “anthro-amphibian” Abe Sapien has a vision of an underwater temple where dwells a giant jellyfish-like entity — one whose gills and markings bear a striking resemblance to his own. We soon find out that it was an attempt to harness the powers of this being that transformed an antebellum occultist named Langdon Caul into the fish-man we know and love today. But this initial revelation really needed to impress, since Abe’s secret origin was so very different from what most readers likely expected. (I assumed he was from some underwater race, not a one-off mystical mutation.) With Dave Stewart’s luscious blue-greens riding shotgun, Davis created a vista of vast yet simple splendor, and a deity of strange, sinister alien beauty.

3. In the Boardroom of the Black Flame (B.P.R.D. Vol. 5: The Black Flame)

When writer John Arcudi joined the B.P.R.D. team to take on lead writing duties, with Mignola as co-plotter, overseer, and impresario, the black humor always present in Hellboy and its spinoffs started burning darker and hotter than ever. No other sequence illustrates just how weirdly, creepily funny the book could be than this one from The Black Flame, in which the titular villain — a corporate C.E.O. with what eventually proves to be a very unfortunate fixation on Nazi occult programs — calmly strolls into a board meeting in full flaming-skull regalia and sacks his entire slack-jawed staff. Mignola says in the collection’s afterword that the sequence was his idea, but only because he thought it was the kind of thing Arcudi might write himself, showing just how fluid a collaboration the team’s work really is. The idea itself is a beaut, but it’s Davis’s masterful character design for the Black Flame and expertly calibrated body language and facial expressions for the man beneath the mask and his underlings that sell the sequence on the page. Simply put, these are two of my favorite pages from any comic ever: Bizarre, hilarious, perfectly paced, and utterly unforgettable.

4. The Death of Roger the Homunculus (B.P.R.D. Vol. 5: The Black Flame)

In an explosion that seemed to hit me nearly as hard as it hit the doomed members of the Bureau, Roger the Homunclus — a seemingly throwaway character born of a medieval alchemical experiment, revived and rescued by Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. centuries later, and until these three pages a surprisingly charismatic man of action in the team’s adventures — died. With him died the sense that B.P.R.D. would stick with a status quo: A motley crew of scientists, soldiers, and supernatural beings shutting down hotspots of evil activity around the world. No, in this book, our friends and heroes can die, and even the fact that they’re made out of mystically animated inanimate matter can’t put them back together again. It would take several more issues before the team truly gave up on the idea that Roger could be revived, but it was clear to me that all hope had vanished the moment I saw Davis’s menacing rendition of the Black Flame, small and silent and glowing with malice, standing in the corner, waiting to snuff out a hero’s life.

5. Katha-Hem Triumphant (B.P.R.D. Vol. 5: The Black Flame)

Talk about overturning the status quo. In this spectacular spread, Davis and company did more than kill off a character we believed untouchable — they tore up everything we thought we knew about how the world of Hellboy would work. Until the colossal entity called Katha-Hem appeared, towering over the fields and cities of Nebraska, the incidents faced by Hellboy and the Bureau were mostly localized in nature, to the extent that the team’s existence and activities could be kept, if not quite secret, than at least somewhat subdued in terms of public profile. But when the Black Flame and his plague of frogs summoned Katha-Hem, the world as we knew it changed. There’s no denying the existence, presence, and menace of the supernatural once it’s left a Godzilla-style trail of destruction through the American Midwest, killing untold thousands of people and thwarting the mightiest military the world has ever known. No longer was the B.P.R.D.’s mission a matter of small towns overrun by frog monsters or haunted by ghosts, or of abandoned castles occupied by vampire monarchs or relict Nazi scientists. Now it was a matter of stopping the destruction of life on Earth, on a scale no one could possibly miss. Davis’s gargantuan whale/slug/insect creature, bearing down on a town it dwarfed it size, brought this home in a way words could never do; leading up to it by showing us a chastened Black Flame, sitting with his arms on his knees like an exhausted commuter and barely able to articulate the magnitude of his transgression (“I…I think I made a mistake.”), simply proved that for Arcudi and Davis, character beats and world-changing two-page spreads were inextricably linked.

6. Abe Betrayed (B.P.R.D. Vol. 7: Garden of Souls)

Meet the men who drank champagne while their friend became a freak. “Are you the same men making rather merry as I changed from man to fish-creature?” Abe Sapien’s later words to his former colleagues in the Oannes Society — a Victorian cult dedicated to harnessing mystical oceanic energies in order to preserve humankind (well, some of it) in the face of the coming apocalypse, to which Sapien, in his former incarnation as the fully human Langdon Caul, once belonged — were quietly vicious, or as vicious as he dared to get when chatting with nearly 200-year-old cyborgs and übermenschen. But their response to him is even more vicious, in its way: They tell him that back before he transformed, he’d been 100% down with their “you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs” approach. Abe’s discovery of the story behind his creation in Garden of Souls was as shocking to him as it was to us. We’d known since his communion with the jellyfish god how he’d become an Icthys sapien, but neither he nor we had imagined that he’d originally set out on the journey that led him to his watery preservation tank for reasons as coldly, murderously utilitarian as those of the Oannes Society. The beauty of the sequence above lies in how Davis’s cross-cutting, figurework, and facial expressions reveal just how callous the Society could be — and how Abe’s glass-smashing rage at their betrayal of the man he once was comes with the knowledge that that man would have been just as cruel had their positions been reversed.

7. Daimio and Daryl (B.P.R.D Vol. 8: Killing Ground)

Here’s another desert-island page for me. Killing Ground was still another overturn-the-apple-cart arc for B.P.R.D., in which their field commander Ben Daimio’s terrible secret — that within him lurked a bloodthirsty god of the jungle, held back only by great effort — was revealed at terrible cost. It was also another case where seeds planted long ago — in this case Daryl, a hapless family man who’d been possessed by the rampaging spirit of the Northern wilderness called the Wendigo — blossomed and bore horrible fruit. As these two creatures ran amok in the B.P.R.D.’s mountain headquarters in a story as tense, claustrophobic, and sometimes explosively violent as Alien or The Thing, we wondered how the shattering of the Bureau by Daimio’s transformation would ever be resolved. In the end … it wasn’t. Escaping from the base and wandering into the snowy wastes, a devastated Daimio, the blood of countless friends and colleagues on his hands, sits and waits for what he knows must be coming. Then it’s there, an implacable spirit of vengeance, featuring one of Guy Davis’s strangest and scariest and most unique designs. And that’s how the team leaves us at the end of the arc: With a moonlit image of a guilty man, naked and alone, silently standing before a thing that should not be. There’s so more mystery and melancholy in this one eerily beautiful image by Davis than in many entire runs. As such, it’s a fitting symbol for a truly wonderful body of work.

Today’s Six by 6 sprang out of a recent post Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon did on five of his favorite superhero fights. It’s a pretty excellent list and made me want to come up with my own, though I thought I might see if I could expand it a bit by staying away from the superhero genre and moving into other realms. What great fights could I find in the world of manga or alt-comix, I wondered?

Turns out I didn’t have to look too far. I should note though that this list is by no means definitive — it’s simply a list of six comic book battles that I like a whole lot. I’ve probably forgotten some. Actually I’ve probably forgotten plenty. Feel free to let me know what I’ve overlooked in the comments section.

1. Popeye vs. Bluto. The animosity that spawned a thousand or so animated cartoons began in E.C. Segar’s comic strip in 1932, where the spinach-eating sailor faced off against a then burly pirate who evenly matched Popeye in strength and ferocity. The battle lasted about two weeks and reached such a fever pitch that it became almost an abstract arrangement of slashing lines. Popeye socked a lot of folks in the strip and some of them even socked back rather hard, but none of them were as ferocious as this one was.

2. Captain Easy vs. Slugg. Though Fantagraphics has only just begun reprinting the work of Roy Crane, I was first introduced to his work in that seminal coffee-table tome, The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. In a lengthy sequence from the daily Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy strip, Tubbs and Easy are shanghied aboard a whaling vessel ruled by a brutal hook-handed first mate named Slugg. The whole thing comes to a climax with Easy battling the now-insane Slugg aboard the burning ship. It one of the most memorable sequences in a book that’s full of memorable sequences, and sold me forever on Crane’s genius

3. Knives Chau vs. Ramona Flowers. It seems ridiculous to have a list like this and not include something from Bryan Lee O’Malley’s epic video game/anime/romance mash-up. It’s hard to pick just one sequence here, so I’m going to go out of left field and pick the library battle between Knives and Ramona in Volume 2, partly because it has some of my favorite bits of dialogue (“My name is Knives Chau and I’m a Scottaholic”) and mainly because I just love the way O’Malley paces out the fight. There are a lot of great battles in Scott Pilgrim, but this is one of my favorites.

4. Hellboy vs. the Hectate. “You’re very, very ugly and you have a giant snake body.” So says Hellboy while rejecting the advances of a rather evil supernatural figure in as violent a manner as possible. As with Scott Pilgrim, there’s a seemingly infinite number of great fight scenes to choose from in Mike Mignola’s Hellboy series. I picked this one just cause I love Hellboy’s banter and the way Mignola draws snake ladies.

5. Ogami Itto vs. a lot of ninjas and Retsudo. Kazuo Koike and Goeski Kojima’s Lone Wolf and Cub makes a lot of claims to being about honor and integrity, but really it’s about disgraced samurai executioner Ogami Itto killing a whole lotta people. It all comes to a head in the final two volumes of the 28-book manga, with Itto facing wave after wave of deadly killers before finally squaring off against Retsudo, the man who framed him. It’s a tense, relentless finale that serves as a fitting capstone to the bloody saga.

6. Sangrecco vs. everybody. Rafael Grampa came roaring out of the gate with the release of Mesmo Delivery, a high-octane, gory short story that revolves around two big fight sequences, the first involving a burly truck driver and a collection of oddball hicks; the second featuring the trucker’s traveling companion, a ruthless killer named Sangrecco, who proceeds to lay the afore-mentioned hicks to waste with a pair of knives. It’s easily the most violent and gruesome entry on this list, but no less thrilling or mesmerizing because of it.

The Man Who Grew His Beard

Like you, I’m all a-twitter about the release of those Carl Barks books from Fantagraphics later this year. (you are a-twitter, aren’t you?) Not to mention Craig Thompson’s Habibi, Paul Pope’s Battling Boy, Chester Brown’s Paying for It and that Grant Morrison Multiversity mini-series. And, hey, maybe we’ll even see the first volume of Pogo! Yep, by any yardstick, it seems like 2011 promises to be another year of really great releases.

But, even beyond the big-name titles and huge company crossovers, there are a number of comics and graphic novels arriving in stores this year that warrant further attention. They may have not have garnered much of your notice, since they’re not attached to a well-known creator or license or come from overseas. Here then, are six such books, all due this year, all of which I’m willing to bet good money aren’t on your radar, but should be. As usual, be sure to note any books you’re excited about but haven’t generated much buzz yet in the comments section.

1) The Man Who Grew His Beard by Olivier Schrauwen (Fantagraphics). If you’ve had the lucky opportunity to read Schrauwen’s My Boy, or perused his work in the anthology Mome, then you’ll know this Belgian artist is the real deal — a true, utterly unique and frequently inspired cartoonist who draws upon century-old cartooning styles (McCay, Outcault) to create something contemporary and frequently bizarre. This is the first American collection of Schrauwen’s work and I’m really excited to see him reach a potentially wider audience. Actually, I’m just excited to read more of an artist I’ve only been able to catch in dribs and drabs.

Psychiatric Tales

2) The Adventures of Herge written by Jose-Louis Bocquet and Jean-Luc Fromental and illustrated by Stanislas Barthélémy (Drawn and Quarterly). Not to be confused with the biography by Michael Farr, this is a somewhat fictionalized, truncated account of the Tintin creator’s life, ably illustrated in the ligne claire style by Stanislas (as he’s usually known). It was originally translated for one of the final volumes of the late, lamented Drawn & Quarterly anthology and, as a big Tintin fan, it’s nice to see it be collected into a book. I don’t know if there’s more material to the book than what D&Q initially released several years ago, but even if that’s not the case, I’m more than happy to become familiar with this book once again.

3) Psychiatric Tales by Darryl Cunningham (Bloomsbury). I’ve really enjoyed reading Cunningham’s thoughtful look at different types of mental illnesses and his experiences working in a psychiatric ward and am very happy to see them collected in book form and released on these shores. I expect this to make a lot of “best of” lists come December.

4) Lychee Light Club by Usamaru Furuya (Vertical). North America hasn’t seen much of Furuya’s work translated in English, apart from the release of Short Cuts a number of years back. That drought seems to finally be ending. Viz released the first volume of Genkaku Picasso last year, and now Vertical plans to bring the one-volume Light Club to our shores. The book is about a group of nerdy boys who create a powerful machine to help them find the most beautiful women in the world, only to have everything go wrong. It all sounds delightfully subversive and strange, which is how I like it.

Lucille

5) Lucille by Ludovic Debeurme (Top Shelf). If you follow the Eurocomics scene at all (and no points against you if you don’t), this title may have caught your eye, as it won the René Goscinny Prize and the Angoulême Essential Award back in 2006 or so. It’s about two psychologically damaged people who bond and run away across Europe together. Eurocomics expert Bart Beaty wasn’t too crazy about it, but I’m intrigued enough by the concept and small samples I’ve found online to want to check the book out when it arrives in stores in April.

6) Garden by Yuichi Yokoyama (Picturebox). Yokoyama’s no stranger to American readers. His 2008 book Travel won a good deal of acclaim and interest among a certain segment of alt-comix and alt-manga fans. Still, I was completely unaware that PictureBox was going to release his latest 328-page masterpiece until publisher Dan Nadel mentioned it in our year-end round-up. Do I have any idea what this book is about? Not a clue. Am I still going to get it anyway the day it hits stores? Oh yeah.

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.

Small Favors Vol. 1

Dirty comics have been around almost as long as the medium itself. No doubt a few years after the Yellow Kid first appeared, some wiseacre created a Tijuana Bible of him getting busy with Buster Brown’s mom.

Sadly, most of the sex comics produced over the years are awful, dreary affairs — works that either feature abysmal art and writing or indulge in such ugly stereotypes (or both), so that you feel ashamed for all the people involved, including yourself for having read the thing.

But there are a few gems amidst the x-rated dross. Below are six smut-laden books that, while you may not want to be caught reading them on the bus, can proudly display on your bookshelf without embarrassment.

I had a couple of self-imposed rules with this one. First of all, the comic had to be sexually explicit. Second, it had to be primarily designed to titillate the reader, thus nixing darker, serious work like Phoebe Gloeckner’s A Child’s Life.

Also, I’m sure there are plenty of books I’m forgetting about (catering to my own tastes, there’s a focus on heterosexual fare here), so feel free to mention your own particular favorites in the comments section. You naughty thing you.

Finally, while I’ve tried to keep everything below the jump relatively safe for work, I can’t promise that all the links will be PG-rated, so caveat emptor.

1) Small Favors by Colleen Coover. Before she started doing kid-friendly work for Marvel, Colleen Coover made her reputation with Small Favors, a lesbian sex comic that’s most notable feature is how gosh-darned cute it is. Seriously, the most amazing thing about the book is that it manages to be rather filthy and yet utterly adorable at the same time. It’s the easily the most endearing porn comic you’ll ever encounter. The good news is Top Shelf is planning on publishing an omnibus collection of the series, so you can feel the x-rated wuv all over again.

Birdland

2) Birdland by Gilbert Hernandez. Let’s be honest here. Most of Eros Comix’s output has been awful to put it mildly. Not so with Birdland, one of the initial stars in the line’s stable, and easily one of the most freewheeling, genuinely goofy works Beto has ever produced, which is saying something. A riotous, hardcore affair involving space aliens, time travel, magic lockets, gender bending and just about every character in the cast getting down and dirty with every other member, with little shame or bad feelings involved. Hernandez would later work many of these characters, most notably the sisters Fritz and Petra, into the main storyline of his Palomar/Luba work, with a decidedly more realistic and occasionally grimmer results. As much as I like those stories, part of me kind of prefers the carefree, upbeat versions portrayed here.

3) Maka-Maka by Kishi Torajiro. Maka-Maka is one of those rare x-rated manga that doesn’t involve tentacles, rape, schoolgirls or annoying gender stereotypes. What Maka-Maka does have is even rarer: an honest, insightful portrayal of a romantic relationship, in this case between two close female friends who slowly starts to get more serious and involved over time. The irony is that they see their sexual relationship as just fun and games and continue to pursue a number of bad relationships with men even though they clearly are in love and belong together. Though it was originally serialized in a men’s magazine, Maka-Maka is anything but exploitative. Indeed, it’s written with a good deal of sensitivity for its characters and their relationship that makes the sex scenes all the more intense and meaningful.

Niplez n Tum Tum

4) Nipplez ‘n’ Tum Tum by Mary Fleener. Imagine if Betty and Veronica were more jaded, street savvy, took recreational drugs and got laid a lot more often and you have a basic idea of what Nipples ‘n’ Tum Tum is like. After initially appearing in the second volume of Fantagraphics Dirty Stories anthology, Fleener put out one issue starring the lusty pair through Eros Comix. It’s a rather funny, sex positive affair involving rock star poseurs, lesbian drug dealers and uber-cute boys that ends with the girls getting the upper hand, as per their wont. Overall it’s a really funny, smart comic filled with Fleener’s great, cartoony-cubist art (especially during the more intense sex scenes; no one draws an orgasm like Fleener). One wishes she had tried to keep the comic going for awhile longer. It deserved a longer shelf life than it ultimately got.

5) Chester 5000 by Jess Fink. Notice that a lot of the comics on this list are by women? That seems to be a growing trend these days, as more and more female cartoonists have said “damn propriety” and started drawing pictures of naked people doin’ it. It’s a welcome trend overall, especially when the results run towards something like Fink’s Chester 5000, a sweaty steampunk porn romance involving an inventor, his well-equipped robotic creation and the neglected wife who finds a new bedtime companion in the metal man. Like Small Favors and Maka-Maka, Chester manages to offer a bit of sweetness and warmth amidst all the commingling of genitals, making it an easy choice for inclusion on this list. Top Shelf (which is quickly becoming the go-to company for tasteful porn) will be offering a print collection next year.

6) XXXenophile by Phil Foglio. But of course you eventually return to the classics. After Omaha the Cat Dancer, Foglio’s hot and heavy collection of short story erotica is probably one of the best known and beloved sex comics from the 80s and 90s — or at the very least it didn’t make people scrunch up their noses in disgust when they read it. Frequently delving into the realms of fantasy and sci-fi, the series won acclaim for its playful, positive attitude. Foglio has famously  said he won’t do any more erotica while he’s still on his kids’ PTA board, but you can still get .pdf copies of the comics online (check that last link).

'Fourteen' by Kazuo Umezu

Horror comics fans have plenty of material to choose from when looking for a good, scary read this Halloween. Even if we just confine ourselves to manga (since, as we all know, the Japanese cartoonists excel at scaring the pants off their readers), there are plenty of options, from grand guginol pieces like MDP-Psycho or Ultra Gash Inferno, to more traditional, semi-bloody, spooky fare like Presents or Mail. Still, there are plenty of great, terrifying, mind-blowing manga that would delight the hardcore American horrorist if only some enterprising publisher would make an attempt at publishing them. Here are just six titles that I’d like to see translated and released in book form some time in the near future:

(Note: A potentially NSFW image lurks beneath the jump)

Chicken George, from 'Fourteen'

1) Fourteen by Kazuo Umezu. Umezu is regarded by many both here and in Japan as the king of horror manga, and with good reason. Few cartoonists are willing to work on such a primal, surreal level and pull as few punches as he does. His masterwork, The Drifting Classroom, still packs a visceral wallop even after repeated readings.

There’s been quite a bit of Umezu published in North America recently (Classroom, Cat-Eyed Boy, etc.), but not nearly enough to suit my tastes. Manga like My Name is Shingo and Left Hand of God, Right Hand of the Devil remain unfairly ignored by folks like Viz. The one Umezu series I’m aching to see translated however is his last work Fourteen, (Umezu retired from manga after completing it). Fourteen is about nothing less than the complete and utter end of the world, brought about in large part by man’s utter disregard for the planet, but also by a mad scientist with a chicken head. Set in the year 2121, when pollution runs rampant and the planet is far too overpopulated, a hybrid man/chicken embryo grows out of a vat of bio-engineered foodstuffs. Calling himself Chicken George he vows revenge on all of humanity for their ecological crimes and starts by letting loose a zoo of deformed animals on a group of children and families. From there it gets really weird, as mankind suffers from insect attacks, volcano eruptions, birth defects, kids with green hair, toxic waste and air so bad that it melts people’s faces off. Epic in just about every sense of the word, Fourteen is Umezu at his most unrestrained, brutal and downright crazy. No doubt this fact bars some publishers from attempting to publish it, but a comic this insane and eerie deserves to be shared with Western horror  fans, if only to soak in the scene where the professional wrestlers that rip each other’s hearts out while in the ring before one sodomizes the other?

2) Museum of Terror by Junji Ito. Ito is no stranger to American readers, as his books Uzumaki and Gyo remain easily available in stores and are mentioned whenever the subject of horror manga creeps up. Dark Horse even put out a couple of volumes of his Museum of Terror series a few years ago, which collects all the various short stories he’s done over the years (the first two are especially notable as they contain the utterly creepy “Tomie” series). However, they stopped rather abruptly at Vol. 3, completely neglecting at least seven or so other volumes in this series. That seems almost criminal to me as Ito is truly one of the horror greats (his story “The Bully” in Vol. 3 remains one of the most deeply unsettling comics I’ve ever read). Certainly the popularity of books like Uzumaki would suggest that more of his work would find a receptive audience here.

3) Neo Faust by Osamu Tezuka. As the title suggests, Neo Faust, one of Tezuka’s last, and sadly unfinished, works, is a modern retelling of the classic Faust story of a man selling his soul to the devil in exchange for power and knowledge. Here, a scientist on the verge of suicide is given a chance at a new life by a strange sorceress. Accepting her offer, he is thrown back several decades to 1958, transformed into a handsome young man, and given amnesia. From there he sets on a path of dark decadence and degradation, as he attempts to create life itself in the most Frankenstein-like manner possible. The little birds on my shoulder tell me that even unfinished it remains one of Tezuka’s darkest and most gruesome stories ever, which makes me all the more curious to check it out.

From 'Nijigahara Holograph' (remember, read right to left)

4) Nijigahara Holograph by Inio Asano. Asano is probably best known on these shores for his twenty-something slice of life manga Solanin. But many in the know claim that Holograph is his best work to date. A psychological horror story featuring a cast of deeply disturbed characters who interact with each other over the course of a decade (and presented out of chronological order) , Holograph features “attempted rapes, murders, extortion, sexual deviance, and a freakish explosion in the butterfly population,” according to Mangascreener. It’s surreal nature combined with sharp character observations have won plaudits from those who have read it. The fact that it’s already easily available in scantillation form makes it seem like a perfect candidate for publication.

From 'Ashura'

5) Ashura by George Akiyama. Set in medieval Japan during a terrible famine, Ashura caused a stir when it was first published in 1970 for its depiction of cannibalism, most notably in its opening sequence, where the title character’s mother, in a fit of hunger-induced madness, attempts to eat her progeny by throwing him on the fire. That scene alone got it banned in many prefectures. The series’ blend of black, cartoonish humor and stark horror and seems perfectly aligned for modern sensibilities. Hopefully that, along with the fact that Toei announced earlier this year that it plans on adapting the work into anime, will inspire an American publisher to take a chance on it.

6) Garden by Usamaru Furuya. Not every story in this anthology by the author of Short Cuts qualifies as horror per se, but I’m including it here because of the final story, “Emi-chan,” which, according to Adam Stephanides, takes up about half of the book. Split into a series of 16-page chapters, the story is starts with a young teen-age girl who comes across a dangerous murderer and sexual deviant in a dark forest and takes off from there, apparently getting more grisly with each chapter.

The catch is that each 16-page chapter is sealed shut, so that you literally have to take a knife to the book in order to find out what happens next. It’s this inspired bit of interactive formalism, forcing the reader to become complicit in the increasingly grim story, that makes me add this to my list. The story’s graphic nature and the fact that it involves sexual abuse of underage girls more than likely means that no American publisher would dare touch it. Still, one can always hope there someone out there willing to take that risk.

Thanks to Joe “Jog” McCulloch, Ryan Sands, David Welsh, Matt Brady and everyone else who recommended titles to me. Your help was much appreciated.

House by Josh Simmons

Editor’s note: As a part of Robot 666 Week, we welcome guest contributor Van Jensen, writer of Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer and its upcoming sequel.

by Van Jensen

I was on a panel with Steve Niles and Bernie Wrightson to discuss horror comics earlier this year, and I admitted that I didn’t really like horror as a genre. I can’t even see a trailer for Saw MCXVII (or whatever number they’re up to) without feeling repulsed. But Steve and Bernie talked me down from the ledge. The problem isn’t so much with the horror genre, it’s with the trend of comics and movies that use gore as a substitute for real fright. So here’s my list of favorite horror comics and films, and they’re all projects that rely heavily on atmosphere and thrills (the real hallmarks of horror) rather than buckets of blood.

1. House, by Josh Simmons.

Simmons’ debut graphic novel is a relatively simple story, with three teenagers exploring a giant old house in the woods. Things go wrong, which is predictable, but in an unpredictable way. Simmons uses no words through the entire story, but his real accomplishment is utilizing the design of the pages to deliver an increasingly claustrophobic, disorienting and terrifying story.

2. Creature from the Black Lagoon.

My grandparents used to run a theater, and there were lots of stories of how my grandpa would do different things while horror movies were playing to scare the audience. During a showing of Creature from the Black Lagoon, he waited for a dramatic moment and then — wearing tights, scuba flippers and a mask — ran through the aisle. I only saw the movie on VHS years later, but I always loved it. Not just for the iconic design of the creature, but more because it excels at slowly building tension.

Beasts of Burden #4

3. Beasts of Burden, by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson.

The concept of a group of pets protecting a neighborhood from the occult sounds kind of silly, but this series is both genuinely scary and, more importantly, haunting. The difference is that Beasts of Burden is full of well developed characters, and Dorkin and Thompson create them in such a way that when the horrific violence surfaces — as it inevitably does — one is left with an emotional pain that far outlasts the momentary frights.

4. The Host.

This Korean film is far from flawless, but it earns a lot of credit for breaking so widely from genre conventions. It’s the exact same type of giant monster movie as Cloverfield. But whereas Cloverfield offers nothing new beyond the gimmick of the handheld camera, The Host defies expectations at every turn. It’s a monster movie that becomes a family drama, a social critique and finally something of a ghost story. It is weird, daring and beautiful — words too seldom associated with horror.

5. From Hell, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.

I was tempted to choose Moore’s Swamp Thing run, but for my money, his masterwork is From Hell. Part historical graphic novel and part pseudo-journalistic examination of the Jack the Ripper slayings, the book is an in-depth examination of one man’s insanity played out in the larger insanity of a turbulent time in England’s history. It also deserves a lot of credit as a book that immediately reveals the identity of the villain and still manages to keep readers on edge.

6. The Devil’s Backbone.

Pan’s Labyrinth always earns mention as Guillermo del Toro’s best film, but his earlier foray into the Spanish civil war, The Devil’s Backbone, is far superior. Its protagonist is a boy who’s taken into an orphanage, which happens to be haunted. The ghost is what terrifies the children, at least until they begin to see just how horrifying adults can be. It’s an almost painful movie to watch, one that will alternately have you covering your eyes out of fear and covering your eyes so no one will notice the tears.

Sleeper #1

After 18 years, former Image studio and current DC Comics imprint WildStorm is shutting down this December. And as many have noted already, the house that Jim built has produced many awesome, memorable and even game-changing (to steal a phrase from Rob Liefeld) works in the last two decades.

Here are six of them that we found to be particularly awesome; let us know what we missed in the comments section.

1. Sleeper: There have been many comics that mash up superheroes with down-and-dirty genres like crime and espionage over the past decade; this may just be the best. The high concept is a gripping one: Super-spy Holden Carver is so deep undercover in an international super-criminal organization that when his one contact is placed in a coma, literally no one knows he’s secretly on the side of the angels. Carver’s predicament, the way he plays and gets played by both sides, his growing unwillingness or inability to draw the ethical lines needed to save his soul, if not his life–such is the stuff of a great crime drama. Superstar in the making Ed Brubaker brings all his talents and obsessions to the table here: his knack for crafting morally compromised characters while neither romanticizing their misdeeds nor softening them up, his recurring theme of how the secrets and sins of our pasts never truly leave us, his belief that damaged people seek out other damaged people to repair that damage, his eye for and ability to work with strong visual stylists. In this case that meant Sean Phillips, never better in his ability to believably root spectacular action and super-powers in a naturalist-noir milieu. All of this in a WildC.A.T.s spinoff, proving just how wild WildStorm was once willing to go.

Even its relatively short run redounds to its benefit: The complete story of Holden Carver is yours to own inexpensively, read easily, and ponder at your leisure. (Sean T. Collins)

2. Astro City: For 15 years, and despite all manner of extracurricular difficulties, Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, Will Blyberg, Alex Sinclair, and Alex Ross (not to mention the good folks at Comicraft) have produced one of the greatest odes to superheroes ever committed to paper. On its face, Astro City may look like a mash-up of the DC and Marvel universes – a place where the truly-super Samaritan can rub elbows with the fantastic First Family – but like the decades of superhero stories it evokes, it’s not quite that simple. See, everyone in Astro City has a tale to tell, whether it involves horror or crime, romance or even funny animals. It’s Exhibit A for folks who believe that superheroes can be used to relate all kinds of stories. Sure, there are the requisite number of cosmic calamities, villainous capers, and existential threats to civilization, but they’re not really the point. Whether they’re about teenage sidekicks, time-lost crusaders, or a man robbed of love by a literal twist of fate, the best Astro City stories make those very personal connections in a way that makes the reader feel like part of the place’s history. You come to Astro City for the pastiche, but you stay for the people. (Tom Bondurant)

The Authority

3. & 4. Planetary/Authority: All right, I’m going to cheat here a little bit and talk about two titles at once. And while the Authority certainly had life afterward, especially when Mark Millar and Frank Quitely got their hands on them, for the purpose of this exercise I’m going to be talking about the first 12 issues, by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch. Spinning out of his work on Stormwatch, Ellis and Hitch assembled a team of ultra-powerful, bad ass heroes, The Authority, who promised to make the world a better place by any means necessary. Around the same time, Ellis and artist John Cassaday created Planetary,which focused on three super-powered individuals aimed at discovering the secret history of the WildStorm universe — a history shaped by everyone from Sherlock Holmes, the Lone Ranger and Count Dracula to an evil version of the Fantastic Four.

Both of these books debuted in 1999, right before the turn of the century, a time of anxiety and uncertainty in the world at large. The comic industry itself had survived the 1990s, the speculation fallout and, let’s face it … it really just needed someone to light a fire, someone who was willing to push storytelling forward into the new century. Both of these comics did that; while Planetary did it by challenging the notions of the past and everything we know about fictional characters, Authority did it by defining “widescreen” comics, with bold plots and concepts, and a grand visual style. They changed a lot of notions people had about comics and set a high bar for the medium in this century. (JK Parkin)

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

5. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Anyone could have had the idea for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It’s such a simple concept: The Justice League of America for Victorian literature. But it wasn’t just anyone, it was Alan Moore. That meant that it included not just main characters like Mina Murray and Captain Nemo, but also cameo and guest appearances by John Carter of Mars, Fu Manchu, and obscure folk like Inspector Donovan and Miss Coote. It wasn’t just a nineteenth century JLA, it was a bona fide and thorough exploration of the Wold Newton Universe. It was also the flagship for an entire imprint-within-an-imprint at WildStorm. Though relations were still unpleasant between DC and Alan Moore, WildStorm was able to serve as a buffer for a while and America’s Best Comics lived up to its name, publishing such awesomeness as Tom Strong, Top 10, and Promethea. (Michael May)

6. Ex Machina: I still remember the day I bought this at the local comic shop. One of the employees and I, both being fans of Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man, had been eagerly awaiting it for months. He handed me my weekly stash, which had Ex Machina on top, and said, “Wait until you read the last page.” Vaughan and artist Tony Harris went where I never expected them to on that last page, just as they did in every subsequent issue. Was this a superhero title? Sometimes I forgot, because it was the characters, politics and philosophical/moral debates that were featured in every issue that really connected me to the work. Although I lament the end of the title and the imprint that spawned it, it is somewhat fitting that it’s one of the last exclamation marks WildStorm will leave in the comics world. (JK Parkin)

Sojourn

Today’s Marvel announcement, regarding its intention to utilize CrossGen’s concepts at least partially in an attempt to do “a little more genre publishing” in 2011, was rather lean in terms of details. But don’t think that stopped Michael May and myself from compiling a Six by 6 list of CrossGen series we’d like to see return (in some form) and the folks we’d like to see creating them. As always with these lists, we’d love to read your input for what CrossGen properties and/or creators you’d like to see return in 2011.

1. Sojourn. Remember when everyone loved Greg Land? I do, because Sojourn was my favorite CrossGen series and apparently a lot of other people liked it too since it was one of the last to be canceled by the spiraling company. Arwen was a gorgeous, badass hero with a cool dog and a quest to collect five shards of a magic arrow that could kill the evil sorceror Mordath. It sounds like standard fantasy stuff, but Land’s detailed, realistic artwork (no one accused him of tracing back then) brought it to life. He wasn’t solely responsible for its success though. Ron Marz’s writing elevated the characters and situations from genre cliches to honest tragedy and human stories. I’d love it if Marvel could get him back on the book. Land too, if he can still produce the kind of work he did back in the day. (Michael May)

2. Scion. I had a hard time deciding whether I’d more want to read this or a resurrected Sigil. I’ve already picked a favorite Fantasy series, so it’s tempting to go with the Pulpy Sci Fi one, but Sigil never quite lived up to its potential; changing tone with each writer: first Barb Kesel, then Mark Waid, and finally Chuck Dixon. They all brought interesting things to their stories, but the series never found a definitive voice. Scion, on the other hand, had greater consistency in the hands of Ron Marz and Jim Cheung. And with its medieval, Arthurian inspirations and its focus on family conflicts, warring nations, and slavery, it was very different in tone from the Tolkien-esque Sojourn. Marz and Cheung should get another shot at continuing the story. (Michael May)

3. El Cazador. One of my major problems with CrossGen’s series was their unwillingness to set certain stories on Earth. That’s not an issue for Sci Fi and High Fantasy, obviously, but I kept thinking that I’d enjoy Ruse more if it took place in a steampunked version of London instead of on a whole other planet that just so happened to develop in a similar way to Victorian England. They corrected that problem with El Cazador, setting it in seventeenth-century Earth, but I still had a gripe about the pirate series: it was too much origin story and not enough swashbuckling. The concept of a pirate captain named Lady Sin is awesome, but not when her sole focus in revenging herself on one particular, other pirate. The ocean’s too big for such a limited story, so if Marvel were to bring it back, I’d prefer to see it written by someone with as wild an imagination as say Jeff Parker or Paul Tobin. And just to continue shaking things up, let’s get Kody Chamberlain to draw it. (Michael May)

4. Crux. What first attracted me to this CrossGen series was a chance to see Mark Waid writing a team of heroes, unencumbered by DC or Marvel editorial mandates (granted who would realize Mark Alessi’s mandates would prove far more annoying for Waid…). Looking back at the Crux team, it’s interesting to realize Waid’s utilization of twin brothers (Galvan & Gammid) would be an element he would tap into again with Irredeemable‘s Scylla and Charybdis. While it was Waid’s writing that initially drew me in, it was Steve Epting’s art that made me stick around. Honestly, the plot was almost secondary to the enjoyment I got from Epting’s polished approach on this series. I doubt Waid would be interested in returning to this book after so many years, then again he might be eager to tackle the project without Alessi’s interference. If not, while I know Rosemann is quite busy in his editorial role at Marvel, I wonder if he’d be open to tackling the kind of genre work Marvel has in mind for the CrossGen properties. And given that Rosemann spent some time at CrossGen, he may be uniquely qualified given his past and current experience. In terms of the art, for it to be of any long-term interest to me, they’d have to get Epting onboard. (Tim O’Shea)

5. Ruse. While Simon Archard was the detective/lead of Ruse, the appeal to that series for me was always Emma Bishop, Archard’s “assistant” (an intentional misnomer, given the magical power that she secretly wielded). When I more recently interviewed the initial series writer Mark Waid (he left in the middle of the series to be replaced by Scott Beatty) about BOOM’s detective mystery, The Unknown and its lead character Catherine Allingham, I asked him, if there was a connection between Allingham and Bishop. Waid replied in part: ” Actually, Emma’s more tender than Catherine. Catherine has no time for tenderness.” I was surprised then to find Waid speak of Emma as a character he still clearly had a grasp of (in a compare/contrast manner in this instance, understandably). I don’t know if Waid would be onboard for new Ruse tales, but the book was creatively at its peak when he was writing (and Butch Guice was on art). There was a delightful snark to the banter between Archard and Bishop, which I wish to read again. As Michael pointed out already, in retooling this property it would be great if it was set on some form of a fictional Earth, or anywhere other than where the original series was set. (Tim O’Shea)

6. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. This was a project that CrossGen released in early 2004, as the walls were starting to crash around the company. It was another of the concepts late in the company’s history that had no ties to sigils or the CrossGen universe bible. As Tony Bedard explained in my late 2003 interview (with him and artist Mike Perkins): “Mike came up with this series, the characters, everything, then asked me if I’d like to write it.” While the original project was a 1960s British spy thriller, as evidenced by the current Steve Rogers miniseries–doing a modern day spy thriller is a genre Marvel clearly has enjoyed for a very long time (at least back to Steranko and Nick Fury). Not to be a broken record, but I would only want to see this series revived if Bedard and Perkins were the team to do it. (Tim O’Shea)

1. Flex Mentallo and Rick Veitch Swamp Thing announcements for “Vertigo Resurrected”: With the announcement that the Warren Ellis/Phil Jimenez Hellblazer story “Shoot” will finally see print under the just announced “Vertigo Resurrected” banner, one can hope that plans are in the works for the DC imprint to finally print Rick Veitch’s aborted Swamp Thing meets Jesus story and collect the Flex Mentallo mini-series into a trade paperback. One can hope. (JK Parkin)

2. Wednesday Comics 2: We’ve already listed what we’d like to see in it a few months back, so it’s about time that DC Comics announced the follow-up to their successful Wednesday Comics series from last summer. With a ‘Mazing Man strip, of course… (suggested by Tom Bondurant)

3. What’s next for Alvin Buenaventura: Alvin’s got a lot of history with San Diego–his publishing imprint basically launched with an art exhibition during SDCC ’03–and even though you don’t get a lot of “announcements” for alternative and arts comics at the show, it’d be great to hear what’s next for what has been a cornerstone of contemporary cutting-edge comics. (Sean T. Collins)

The Thanos Imperative #3

4. Cosmic Avengers: After teasing it in a promo image for the Thanos Imperative, it only make sense that Marvel would continue their ongoing space saga, by architects Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, with an ongoing Cosmic Avengers series. Heck, use the team from the promo, throw in Rocket Raccoon, Moondragon and Mantis, and let them run wild. (JK Parkin)

5. A collection of Dick Giordano’s “Meanwhile” columns: Tom mentioned these some months back; a collection would make a nice remembrance of one of the industry’s greats. (suggested by Tim O’Shea)

6. New Hulk actor announcement: Not only should we find out the contender for the role of Bruce Banner in the Avengers film, but he has to defeat Edward Norton in one-on-one, no disqualification Last Man Standing match. If Norton wins, he gets to play Bruce Banner. Also, I get a pony. (Carla Hoffman)

by Cullen Bunn

This is an exercise in nostalgia for me. My collaborator on The Sixth Gun, Brian Hurtt, suggested this topic, and he said he could probably guess the projects I’d mention. Anyone who talks to me long enough will have a pretty good idea of the books that meant a lot to me during my formative years. Hell, you might think most of my comic book influences came out of one of those Whitman 3-packs so prevalent in Piggly Wiggly and Stuckey’s in the 70s. Well, you might be right. I think every comic creator has a list of a dozen or so books they’d love to work on. Here are just a few of the titles I’d love to take a crack at reinventing or re-imagining. I could easily create a second (and maybe a third) list of six projects I’d love to tackle. Rom: Spaceknight … Scare Tactics … Blackwulf … Warlock 5 … The list goes on and on … but the following list are the dream jobs that pop most readily into my skull.

Keep in mind, this isn’t about blowing anyone away with these notions. It’s about daydreaming.

The Micronauts

Easily my pick for favorite comic book of all time. I credit The Micronauts with getting me into collecting comics … not just reading, but really collecting. I can remember the first day I stumbled onto an issue of the book very clearly … from picking it up at the grocery store to reading it a dozen or so times in the back room of my dad’s office. For a comic about a line of toys, The Micronauts (like ROM: Spaceknight) tore past its humble origins into something really special. Of course, I would almost kill to write their story.

With licensing and such, it would be tough to tell the story of Marvel’s Micronauts without some significant changes, but for the longest time I thought I had a way to do just that. My story, The Microverse, would follow the ‘Nauts after the defeat of Baron Karza. I even thought of a way to ret-con the end of New Voyages, but damn if I’m at a loss to remember it now. Anyhow, Commander Rann, Marrionette, Bug, and Devil would be a few of the characters on the team. Acroyear, who was a Mego-owned character, would also be in the group—but he would have abandoned the name of his people, as well as his trademark armor and helmet—to lead the contemplative life of a monk. Rounding out the team would be Psycho-Man. He would play the Dr. Smith role to our group of adventurers. My story would send the ‘Nauts a thousand years into the future, where the Enigma Force had been driven mad and was becoming a tyrant more destructive than Baron K—uh, he who should not be named …

That’s it! I’m digging out my action figures and playing this story out right now!

Man-Thing

Man-Thing #1

I think almost every writer who grew up in the 70s would love to take a shot at writing a Man-Thing story. I don’t know what it is about the character … Maybe the whole tragic, near-mindless monster vibe appeals to me. My first encounter with the creature was in an issue of The Micronauts (the first issue of that series I read), and I came across him again in the first issue of his 1979 re-launch.

“Are those tears trickling down your face, monster? Tears for Dr. Oheimer, that good man who lies dead in your arms? Are they tears for the life that might have been, now vanished in the smoke of the raging inferno? No, monsters can’t cry. It must be the moisture of the swamp.”

Those lines sealed the deal for me, and I’ve been a fan ever since.

Much of my desire to work on a 70s-style monster hero has been satisfied with my upcoming project, The Tooth (from Oni Press). Still, telling a Man-Thing yarn remains a goal of mine. I’ve got a story staged in my head and ready to go. It’s a solid, no-holds-barred fright fest that I believe could actually put Man-Thing on the map as a really scary horror character. That’s all I really want to say about that one, because I’m really keeping my fingers crossed to make that happen!

Devil Dinosaur

Devil Dinosaur

A boy and his dinosaur … What kid wouldn’t freak out over this comic? I think I first saw Devil Dinosaur in an issue of Marvel’s Godzilla, and I read that issue over and over again. Since the original run, Devil Dinosaur has appeared in a few books, and he’s getting a little play in Jason Aaron’s Astonishing Spider-Man/Wolverine. As with Man-Thing, I have an idea for a Devil Dinosaur story that (to my all-too-self-important point of view) would change the way readers look at the character. Okay … maybe not, but I still think it would be a lot of fun! My initial premise was a Devil Dinosaur MAX story, something that throws a little Dinosaurs Attacks and The Mist into the mix. It’ll almost certainly never happen, and I guess I could always try to tell that story with a T-Rex other than Devil Dinosaur, but it would most assuredly be a bit of a love letter to that character.

Druid

Druid

In the 90s, Dr. Druid had an all-too-short-lived series that I thought had a lot of potential. It cast Druid in a much darker light, gave him a team of creepy sidekicks, and amped up his power and scare-factor. In issue 4, the Son of Satan killed Druid, and that was that.

… Or was it?

I dream of a world where Druid, burned to ash by the Son of Satan, manages to reconstitute himself. His ashes float on the ether until they reach a place of power—the Nexus of Reality—and he slowly begins to re-grow, stealing bits of meat from swamp creatures and insects to build his body. The Man-Thing is drawn to Druid’s place of re-birth, and the two form a kind of symbiosis. Druid spends some time in the swamp, regaining his considerable strength, before the Son of Satan finds him again. The two face off, and the Son of Satan realizes Druid is more powerful than ever before. Is he a little afraid of Druid? Yes … and whosoever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch!

So what if it sounds a little goofy? It’s the beginning of a story that’s stuck with me for years! I think Druid and Man-Thing would explore all things dark and mysterious in the Marvel Universe—kind of like a B.J. and the Bear story—and it would have a cool supernatural 70s vibe like nobody’s business.

Shogun Warriors

Shogun Warriors #1

Even though Marvel couldn’t the attain licensing for my favorite Shogun Warriors (Dragun), I still loved this comic. Besides the connection to the toys, this book hooked me with the monster in issues 10 and 11, the Five Heads of Doom/The Hand of Five. There’s a creature that would have made a great toy! I gobbled up the rest of the series in hopes that the giant robots would ever face another creature so awesome. Alas, it was not to be. The book was fun, but it never again lived up to those first couple of issues I read.

I’d love to return to the world of Shogun Warriors, whether continuing the story set up in the Marvel series (with the Guardians of Light and Dr. Demonicus) or starting fresh. As much as I wanted to see robot vs. monster battles back in the day, I think I’d focus more on the Shogun pilots, their training, and the other characters in their world. Our heroes do their best work when they’re shut off from everyone else behind a thousand tons of metal. Would they be similarly shut off in their day-to-day lives? Could they even have day-to-day lives? Sure, there would be giant monsters, but not every issue. We’d have to have some build-up so the battles would be a little more impactful. Maybe it would play out a little like Neon Genesis Evangelion, only without the nonsensical ending.

Those Pesky House of Mystery Kids

House of Mystery 174

Forget the short stories inside every issue (although I loved them)! I’m talking about the covers! Starting around issue 174 of House of Mystery, three kids (two boys, a girl, and sometimes their pet dog) showed up on a number of issues. As far as I know, the characters never appeared in a single story, but they made the covers come to life. The kids were almost always depicted as spying on some unfolding horror (the way us brats in the real world often spied on the horror movies our parents or older siblings watched when we were supposed to be asleep).

Well, I’d love to write a series following these kids on their many adventures. The children of a famous occultist, the trio follows their pop around town as he solves mysteries. As far as I’m concerned, all the mummies, vampires, cultists, evil puppets, swamp monsters, and boogeymen dwell in the same small town. (Didn’t every kid think their home town was as haunted as all get out?) Of course, their father never realizes the kids were shadowing him, nor does he know how many times they save his bacon. In my mind, the girl was most likely the leader of the trio, and she was quick-witted and brave. The older boy was a bit of a scaredy-cat, while the younger boy was always bumbling blindly into trouble. The dog would pop up every now and again, like he did on the covers, either to save the day or accidentally spoil the kids’ best plans. The kids battle evil using the only weapons kids really have — youthful creativity and dumb luck.