Going further back, Daniel Clowes’ early ’90s comedy/nightmare graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron also has a musical soundtrack (sold separately), from Victor Banana. The book is a lesson in controlled chaos; the CD, a commentary on it. Tim and Kevin explore the audible and visual aspects of both these comics.

PLUS: Ritz Crackers! Jimmy Durante! The Brady Bunch! This one has it ALL! (including spoilers!)

Life as a salaryman in Japan is already difficult enough. 30-year-old Daikichi works well past 7 p.m. each night and has way too much expected of him by higher-ups. Add in that he has to raise a child, who happens to be his grandfather’s love child, 6-year-old Rin. Such is Yumi Unita’s first (and so far only) manga, Bunny Drop (Yen Press).

What makes Bunny Drop so endearing is how Unita slowly, almost methodically, characterizes both Daikichi and Rin. There are little moments woven throughout each chapter that give us more and more insight into Daikichi and Rin. Arguably the biggest moment comes near the end of chapter one. Daikichi is listening to his family argue about who will take Rin. Not because they all want her, but because no one wants her. It’s tragic to see a family brought together by a funeral be so divided about caring for a child. Daikichi, however, stands up, chastises his family for their behavior, and asks Rin if she wants to live with him. Unita doesn’t have many of these big moments throughout Bunny Drop (she prefers to use smaller moments, like Daikichi asking a co-worker how to raise a child or comforting Rin over wetting the bed) but when she uses them, it’s to perfection.

The pacing can feel slow at times because the story is about raising a child. It’s easy to both blast through a volume and not notice when you’re at the end and to read one chapter at a time, like it’s a day that’s just gone by. The story is so interesting because it’s focusing on Daikichi raising a child, which is often mundane and not filled with grandeur moments.

The comedy elements throughout the volume are from Daikichi fumbling over raising Rin or cutesy moments involving Rin. They weren’t really “funny” or didn’t resonate with me, but rather they’re used to break up the more serious and mundane moments of the volume. They’re situational comedy and the best part of them is the reactionary artwork Unita employs. Comedy is the weak point, but it fortunately doesn’t detract greatly from enjoyment of the volume.

Unita’s artwork is perhaps the most striking part of the volume. It’s basic in how she constructs faces, but complex in the little details such as hair and facial expressions. I was never wondering what face goes to what character simply by the faces, which is a problem some beginning mangaka have. Unita also uses a rather wide variety of clothes for the characters. Each character is never wearing the same outfit twice (unless it’s a business suit, like Daikichi’s). I think the most striking thing in the artwork is Rin herself. Comparing the first chapter to the last one in the volume, you can tell that she’s happier and more at home. Even when she’s uncomfortable around Daikichi’s parents and sister, she’s more timid rather than sad during grandpa’s funeral.

The one hiccup in the translation I saw was Yen Press deciding to not use translator notes on the page. On page 74, Daikichi makes a reference to his name being lucky, but English readers are left questioning why until we flip to the back where Yen has included those translator notes. These were the biggest moments that made me stop in the middle of the volume, because I was unsure of plays on words involving kanji or TV programs about samurai from the late 60’s.

Bunny Drop isn’t for everyone. Being a josei title, it has a relatively limited demographic (females 16-30) because most of their readership are studying for exams, trying to rise up the corporate ladder, or raising kids of their own. But josei titles often bring out the best and most realistic stories. What makes Bunny Drop special is that it’s focusing on Daikichi and not Rin. So many shojo manga are about teenagers growing up and so many josei manga are about adults trying to live in the real world by themselves and both shojo and josei are about trying to find love. Bunny Drop bypasses those story tropes and focuses solely on Daikichi raising Rin. And the story of raising a child is much more interesting than the story of growing up as a child.

Meanwhile, much scarier monsters lurk in the background of Justin Randall’s Changing Ways, Book 2. Tim & Brandon take a look and compare with Book 1. The monsters are scary, but is the book?

What made Barks the standout Duck artist? Were they meant to be satirical, or simply enjoyable stories? Tim, Kumar, and Tom Spurgeon discuss Barks’ work, particularly the Fantagraphics volume “Lost in the Andes.”

Comics Journal review of Lost in the Andes

Stephan Pastis interview (gigaom.com)

Drawing backgrounds is seldom the most enjoyable part of drawing a comic. Many artists dislike it, and might try to give it short shrift. But it’s an important part of telling your story, so you’ve got to do it right. Tim and Mulele discuss some important points to keep in mind when drawing your backgrounds — and a few things to avoid.

Sean Gordon Murphy’s background tips

Drawinghowtodraw.com (beware of the popup ad!)

idrawdigital.com: backgrounds tutorial

Schweizercomics: tangents

The Mindgator: invisible Coke machine in last panel

In more than seven years of doing this podcast, our coverage of European comics has been, um… underwhelming. This week, Tim tries to change that, discussing two European comics with European co-reviewers!

First, Nemi, the overzealous goth girl from Norway, whose eponymous strip by Lise Myhre has become popular in numerous European countries. Norwegian Line Olsson (of the Boston Comics Roundtable) joins Tim to discuss.

Then, the second Blacksad installment, “Arctic Nation”, by animators Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido. Is racism the point of this noirish “furry” tale, or is it just the framing device for something else? Eugenia Koumaki in Athens co-reviews with Tim.

Deb Aoki, who writes about manga for About.com, joins us again this week to discuss the reasons why publishers hesitate to put out new manga titles, why Jmanga died and Manga Reborn’s business model is imperfect, and what bright spots there are for the future.

–Did you grow up reading comics? Making comics?

Like the vast majority of Chinese children, my growth process was accompanied by reading comics. I was born in 1978; in that era, there were few decent comic book publications. It was very common that many children would have to share one comic book. Relative to the shortage of comic books, I preferred watching cartoons on television. There were a lot of animated cartoons, whether Chinese or foreign.  I was very willing to copy some favorite cartoon characters in “Saint Seiya” and “Transformers”. That was the greatest pleasure of my childhood.

–What were/are your favorites?

US editorial cartoons are my favorite.  I like funny comics too, especially nonsensical comics, just like those drawn by Japanese cartoonist Rumiko Takahashi.

–How did you get into doing editorial cartoons?

When I first got into computer painting, I found that my painting skills improved quickly. I liked to share my cartoons with net friends. Chen Changjiang, one of my friends online, who became my boss later, asked me whether I would go to the company he was planning to set up, to draw cartoons. So I quickly agreed to quit my job in a computer room in Nanjing, and came to Beijing in December 2000. Drawing editorial cartoons was just part of my new job then; I also did other work such as layout, animation, and four-frame comic strips in his company.  Gradually, I realized that drawing editorial cartoons is best for me. In 2002, I quit and came to China Daily, and became a full-time editorial cartoonist.

–Is drawing editorial cartoons really your full-time job? Do you have any other responsibilities at China Daily besides drawing? Do you ever do any reporting?

In addition to drawing political cartoons, I am also responsible for some management work in the Art Department of China Daily. And I don’t do reporting.

–Does the paper have a specific editorial point of view that you have to stick to?

I think it should be in accordance with the Chinese official view.

–What kinds of things do you comment on in your cartoons?

International political and economic events, Sino-Japanese relations, some of China’s livelihood issues.

–Of course a Westerner is going to wonder about censorship — especially if you’re doing editorial cartoons! What kinds of topics are off-limits?

Issues about North Korea, Pakistan, religion…and of course, we can not draw Chinese leaders.

–I’m surprised that Pakistan is off-limits. I’m not familiar with the situation between China and Pakistan. Why is that to be avoided?

Because every time we drew cartoons about Pakistan, the Embassy of Pakistan called to protest. As a result, we gave up trying.

–Obviously Tibet is off-limits, right?

Yes.

–Have you done any other kinds of comics/cartoons besides editorial? Have any of them been published?

I draw some four-frame comic strips in leisure time. It’s called A Cynical Rooster.)
But I’m so lazy that only draw one strip a month. A small portion of them are published, not all.

–What’s your hope for your career direction in the future?

I wish I could draw more four-frame comic strips, but my screenwriter capacity is not very good, and I am lacking a good script-writing collaborator, so the large production plan can’t get started. I hope I’ll be able to publish my own four-frame comic books in the future, as well as political cartoons books.

(Thanks to MandMX.com for helping me get in touch with Luo Jie.)

Understanding China through Comics

(Thanks to MandMX.com for their help in getting in touch with Jing!)

We’ll also hear about what Eugenia‘s doing lately, and this weekend’s Comicdom Con

No one’s really sure of the answer to the second question, but its a good springboard for podcast discussion of comics evangelism and the state of the industry in general. What role will digital comics play? In the first installment of an occasional series, Tim bounces these questions off our friend Tom Spurgeon.

FLASHBACK! Fletcher Hanks created some bizarre, sadistic superhero comics in 1939-1941. Tim and Kumar discuss the Hanks collection I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!, edited by Paul Karasik.

Also: Comic Book Comics #2!

(Originally published October 27, 2008)

• Ted McKeever’s Mondo #1
• Jonathan Way$hak’s Toner #6
• Austin Tinius and Robert Salinas’ Doctor Muscles #1
• Terry M Baker’s Fat Guy Comics #APE (The comics shown on this site look somewhat better than the one we had in hand!)

And if we haven’t sold you on these books, then read Seth’s fantastic essay on them!

Then we get the scoop on Mulele’s latest Web comic, a new version of Mindgator.

Tim & Brandon discuss “Batman/Tarzan: Claws of the Catwoman” by Ron Marz and Igor Kordey! Also: Brandon talks about an online figure-drawing class he took, and we different philosophies of how to become a versatile artist. Is it better to start with figure-drawing training, or is it better to figure out your style on your own? How important is it to have experience drawing “Bigfoot” funny comics? (originally published November 13, 2006)

This week, a collection of cut paper comics, each one better than the last. We critique Monarch Monkey and Other Stories, by Brad DeRocher, Dan Mazur, and Hyun Supul.

It’s been more than 70 years now since the debut of Archie comics, featuring (though not quite from the beginning) America’s favorite love triangle of Archie, Veronica, and Betty. Along with Jughead, Reggie, and the rest of the gang, these characters keep us coming back for more, changing with the times while still presenting an idealized America where drugs, booze, and sex seem not to exist. This week Tim talks with Archie ubercollector (and Coliseum of Comics Back Issue Manager) Jack Copley about what keeps Archie interesting, some of his favorite stories and creators, and “The Archie Room”!

Character sheets

Read pages 1-11

Photos below the jump (complete with admittedly goofy captions written in 2007)…

Tim Visits “Comic Market”

December 31, 2006

I attended Comic Market (Comiket for short) on its third and final day. This event is held twice a year at Tokyo International Exhibition Center, better known as Tokyo Big Sight (sic).

More about Comiket on Wikipedia

Tokyo Big Sight

Hi, Mom!

A mob scene
— tables set up by individual comics creators in one of the
arenas of Tokyo Big Sight (TBS). (Apologies for the lousy camera-phone
photography!)

At left,
the one comic I bought, “Winter Holidays.” At right, the
thick, heavy catalog for the event.

An all-too-typical page from the catalog, showing who was at each table and a sample of their work. Notice any certain theme here?

In another area of TBS, where trinkets, postcards, etc. are being sold by small-time exhibitors. After taking this shot, I was told not to take photos in this area. Oooh, illicit photo!

The only area where photography was officially allowed was the roof, where cosplayers posed for pictures.

Another mob scene… hard to avoid walking between cameras and their intended subjects!

OK, I’m in love now.

“BoBoBo-Bo Bo-Bobo” is one of my favorite Japanese cartoons — had to get a shot of this guy. His afro opened up and everything!

Another cutie…disappointly, though, think she was wearing a skin-colored leotard on her legs. A number of girls were.

If anyone knows what manga this guy is supposed to be from, please let me know!

OK, NOW I’m in love! The girl on the right has such an expressive face. Before
I took these shots I was watching her as her expressions changed. There
was just so much meaning there. It was exhilarating to watch.

Yes, I think the girl with pink hair to the left is a guy. There were a number of
guys dressed as female characters — not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Earth, Wind, and Fire? Here??

Mulele is back from New York Comicon! While he can’t talk about what might have transpired in terms of getting work (which is a whole lot better than saying “nothing happened”!), he has plenty to say about the experience of being there & his impressions of the comics industry, how his thoughts about it changed, and about New York, the city.

While at the con, he ran into Jordan Kotebue, creator of Hominids, who Tim met at Emerald City 2011. Tim calls him up this week to catch up on his progress, including how our own critique of Hominids changed his approach to the comic.

Up until the late ’60s, Japanese girls’ comics were mainly done by men, and could often be formulaic and sappy. But then several female creators broke into the field and revolutionized the genre. One of them was Moto Hagio, whose stories (even when they had science fiction aspects to them) dwelt on not fitting in, losing what you love, and other themes that could be depressing, but were usually expressed in innovative and compelling ways. Little of her work is available in English, but Fantagraphics released an overview of her work, A Drunken Dream and Other Stories, two years ago. Tim and Kumar review.

John is 40, in his second marriage, and still dealing with the fallout from the first, especially where his daughters are concerned. With a baby and two cats, he’s dealing with a lot of, er, poop — both literally and figuratively. Will he keep it together, or is that cute singer going to tempt him to mess up his life more? It’s Joe Ollmann’s Mid-Life!

Tim and Brandon discuss both books this week.

A few years later, Tokyo Pop and other US publishers took the risk of releasing girls’ comics stateside, with unexpected success. Yes, American girls WILL read comics!

Manga critic Shaenon Garrity joins Tim to talk about the ’90s evolution of shojo manga and its debut in the States, and the place of Magic Knight Rayearth part 1 in that mix.

Super Corporate Heroes

One of the superheroes who work for Superhero, Inc. is a mysterious hero called The Shroud.  The secret mission he is on makes this hero a very weird guy.  Another Superhero Inc. employee is American Icon, who is an indestructible playboy.  American Icon earns the most money due to the fact that he is indestructible and is the most called on for help.  There is also Ms. Titanium, who does a lot of work, but is under appreciated for her work.  Superhero, Inc also has a veteran worker called Major America, who has been fighting crime for a very long time.  Superhero, Inc. also has a worker who is the last of the Greek gods.  This god is named Olympia.  Finally, we have a superhero named Blue Collar.  Blue Collar has a low salary due to the fact that he has to pay child support and alimony.

The Superhero, Inc. heroes are soon challenged by evil super villains, who begin to destroy New York City.  This destruction of New York City sucks the workers of Superhero, Inc. into the super villains’ corruption.

Super Corporate Heroes is written and lettered by Suzy Dias.  The artist is Miguel Guerra, who also co-writes the comic with Suzy Dias.  The artwork is beautiful and is also sets the perfect mood for the mood of the comic.  The coloring of the artwork has a perfect balance between gloomy and bright.  This is good for a story that is satirical.  The content of this comic is dark, but is expressed with humor.

The first issue shows a burning building on the first panel.  The panel shows a man in a green shirt hanging off the building’s ledge.  He is holding on for dear life and is about to fall to his death.  He is yelling for help.  There is so much smoke that no one can see him.  As the man in the green shirt starts to give up, The Shroud shows and says, “looks like you could use some help.”  As the man in the green shirt thanks God that The Shroud came to his rescue, The Shroud says to the man in the green shirt, “first I need to explain the terms of our contract before I can legally rescue you.”

According to Superhero, Inc. $1000 gets one 5 rescues for a month and $6000 covers one for a year.  Once a person is saved, the superhero takes the saved person’s credit card.  Then, the superhero swipes the credit card with a portable swipe machine.  Then, the saved person is given a receipt.  After that, the saved person is sent a button in the mail.  The saved person has to wear this button to be saved again.

Both the people in danger and the superheroes are in rough situations in this story.  The poor people in danger don’t want to be treated like villains just because they can’t afford to be saved.  However, the superheroes want to make a living off of their talent and be able to have roofs over their heads and food on their tables.  Super Corporate Heroes is an interesting comic book that will make you think and laugh.

You can view the first issue of Super Corporate Heroes for free at www.7robots.com/comics.

If you’re not Canadian, this week’s topic may be a bit of a head-scratcher. Louis, uh, who now? To Canadians, though, including our own Kumar and Dana, Riel is a famous historical figure of the 19th century who led a rebellion against the Canadian government. His story is the subject of Chester Brown‘s recent graphic novel which, while complete with end notes, also takes Shakespearean liberties with the historical record. And what’s up with the weird placement of characters on the page? An accident? No… nothing in this book is an accident.

When we last touched base with Matt Silady, he was teaching at California College of the Arts, in the San Francisco Bay area. Well, he’s recently been involved in developing CCA’s new Master of Fine Arts in Comics, and has been appointed Chair of the program. Tim talks to Matt about developing the program, being locked in a jail cell for your art, and much more.

Tim and Mulele read mail from creators of comics recently critiqued on the show, as well as a couple of listener comments on Deconstructing Comics #328.

Brian’s site, where you can order his comics

• R. Fiore’s comment on Tim O’Neil’s Comics Journal diatribe
• Rolling Stone: “Doonesbury Turns 40″
• NPR: “Trudeau Reflects on Four Decades of ‘Doonesbury’”
• New York Review of Books: “Oustripping the News”

John blogs about Flex

Our own Mulele had some problems as the hired artist for a couple of comics projects when he tried his luck in Los Angeles six years ago. The experience was a harrowing one — more so than we realized at the time. Mulele tells all, and also talks about his next career steps — including a trip to a convention!

• Brandon Easton interviewed at CBR…
• …and on Fanboy Radio

Prince of Persia, by Jordan Mechner, AB Sina, LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland, coasts on notions of romance and intrigue in ancient Persia; meanwhile,

Habibi, by Craig Thompson, takes hold of Arabian Nights-type notions — as well as Islam — and uses them to express more universal themes.

• G. Willow Wilson: Should Muslim readers steer clear?
• Sean T. Collins: “This is not a book about Islam.”

Dale Wilson, who wrote up his experience at BuyIndieComics.com, on why he left “unfulfilled” in some ways, but enjoyed it in other ways;

Justin Hall, who we last talked to in March of last year, on promoting his Fantagraphics book “No Straight Lines” and Prism Comics, as well as the sideline indie comics gathering Trickster; and

Robert Roach, a veteran of San Diego tabling, on his Japanese influences, networking, and more.

By Grant Morrison

Spiegel & Grau 2011

Grant Morrison is a decisive subject in comics. Many love his work. Many love to hate his work. Many just don’t know what to think of him.

What Morrison delivers with Supergods is a unique text about comics. It is part history, part deconstructionist analysis, part personal memoir, part reflexive view of his own work. It is a varied and interesting book that provides some fascinating insight into his ideas about the superhero.

The book follows a basic chronological structure that is divided along 4 ages: Golden Age, Silver Age, Modern Age, and Renaissance (starting the late 1990s). He deconstructs covers of famous comics such as Action #1, Detective #27, and The Dark Knight Returns #1. Certain key characters and stories are reflected on. It is not really any unique ground that is tread as far as the history of comics is concerned, were it not for Morrison’s uncanny intellectualizing of the materials in a way that augments their historicism with a psychological attention reflection on the material.

He notes the strange psychoanalytical current in the work of Mort Weisinger, the relative asexuality of Batman, the Sungod found in Superman. He is rarely critical of other creators or trends. He does occasionally question the validity of the “darkness” of post-Frank Miller comics. I could detect a bit of criticism of Mark Millar, but it was gentle compared to some of the rumors I have heard. True, he has come to praise comics and spread their gospel. In this day and age such an approach is refreshing.

His autobiographical contributions to the text outline his life experiencing the medium at first, then his own experience as a comics creator. While he does not go for explicit depth in any of his creations, he does highlight how his social life, relationships, occult interests, and general head space affected his work and in turn was affected by it. Many authors concede to a careful compartmentalization of their life and work, usually as a one-way flow where the work is affected by one’s life and not the other way around. Morrison differs in this regard because he would actively try to use methods of ceremonial magic in order to better understand the characters and emotions he was writing. He adapted many occult ideas to Constantin Stanislavski ideas of method acting and often became his characters as short experiments.

I feel there are some problems with the text. Morrison repeats himself at times, which I would venture is a result of writing the book in segments with a word processor. The book would have gained greatly from an editor who streamlined the text into a more linear structure. It is a bit noisome to read a certain twist of phrase about something and then read essentially the same comment in the next chapter.

Since Morrison has been on record for his drug use, it is no surprise that he notes a few places where they have influenced his work. Of course he discusses the alien abduction/mystical experience/mental breakdown he experienced in Kathmandu. It has been dramatically recounted in his famous Disinformation convention speech. Here he addresses how it had a unique influence on his perceptions of time and space. In anthropological terms, he seems to have undergone a “mazeway reconfiguration” where information is received from what is classified as an outside source (see the work of Anthony F. C. Wallace). This information can take several forms but usually it contains some ideas about reorganizing the world and a person’s relation to it. This often becomes the revelation that equips charismatic prophets to start revitalization movements such as the Longhouse Religion, the Ghost Dance religion, the Nation of Islam, Pentecostalism, the John Frum cargo cult, one could even argue Scientology. Here Morrison questioned his experience and chose to direct the new ideas inwardly to his own work instead of outwardly towards social reorganization and social action. In this sense I would compare his experience to that of Philip K. Dick…though I would claim that Morrison’s work was made better by his experience while I feel the work that Dick produced after his experience was not as good as his middle period (sorry).

Because of this experience and Morrison’s interests in and incorporation of the occult, the esoteric, and the avant garde there has been a matter-of-fact dismissal of his work as “drug” fiction and the idea that the reader has to be high on drugs in order to understand it. I have issues with this argument. One did not find such a dismissal of the avant garde in literature and art until the late 1960s. James Joyce, Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Luc Goddard, Salvador Dali, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs (though because of the drug themes in his work he would be lumped into drug-influenced art)…these artists were not placed in a special category that precludes the use of drugs in order to enjoy their work, though after the emergence of the late 1960s drug culture, some of them were defined by it, often to the exclusion of their existence beyond a “drug-influenced” category.

This book goes a long way towards questioning that dismissal of Morrison as a simple drug fiend. It presents an interesting and intelligent man who still has the wonder of a little kid. His enthusiasm for comics is something that the form really needs. He appreciates the fun and insanity that is possible in comics and adds high concept ideas mixed with a child’s love of the absurd. He is not a cynical old man…and that is something to be admired these days.

Here’s the Disinfo speech again…turn down your computer, he screams really loud at the beginning.

By Neil Tomblin

Remember rapper MC Hammer? He was the rapper who always said, “It’s hammer time!” This catchphrase resurfaced in Marvel Comics’ Deadpool story arc of “Fear Itself.” “Fear Itself” was a big event that included many different books that feature various Marvel superheroes. The basis of each story deals with magical Thor-like hammers that fall to the sky and endow different Marvel characters with powers. These stories are also an analysis of current events that have brought fear to America. One of the “Fear Itself” stories that stood out for me was “Fear Itself: Deadpool.” This story arc was funny and action-packed.

One thing I kind of never understood about the Deadpool comics is all of the comedy. The name Deadpool sounds so dark and hardcore that one would think to make the Deadpool’s stories dark. Deadpool’s suit even looks hardcore. Instead of getting the ruff stories that are featured in DC Comics’ Deathstrike comic book series, we get the slapstick humor in Deapool’s stories. How does Spiderman get the dark stories, but Deadpool gets the stories that makes Deadpool look like a parody of himself? However, as I began to read more into this Deadpool story, the comedy began to grow on me.

Issue #1 starts with Deadpool at a married couple’s house. Deadpool is in charge of installing a new security system in this married couple’s home. Deadpool has hired two guys to help him install bulletproof windows made of adamantium, panic buttons in every room, and reinforced walls. After Deadpool claims that the reinforced walls are so strong that the Juggernaut can’t even break through them, the Juggernaut comes crashing through the wall. As the couple begins to yell at Deadpool for not being able to protect their house, the handymen that Deadpool hired begin to leave the house. Then, Deadpool looks at the handymen and tries to get the handymen to stick around. However, the handymen let Deadpool know that they are in a hurry to get to Cimarron, New Mexico.

The handymen Deadpool hired have taken an oath to defend the people of Cimarron, New Mexico from a group of werewolves. These two handymen will defeat the werewolves with their magical hammer that fell from the sky. The only thing about this hammer is that the hammer only powers up in the moonlight.

As the handymen begin to leave for Cimarron in their van, a mysterious figure uses a rocket launcher to blow up the van. As the van explodes, the handymen’s magical hammer flies out of the van and falls on the ground in front of Deadpool. Thinking the hammer is just a regular hammer, Deadpool takes the hammer so he can use it to fool a villain called The Walrus. Meanwhile, the two handymen have survived the explosion. As the two handymen get out the van coughing and hacking, for some reason they look too clean to just have been in an explosion. Anyway, when the handymen see they cops coming, the handymen realize that they need to forget about finding the magical hammer and run away.

The mysterious figure that blew up the two handymen’s van was a person working for Lupos, who is the leader of the werewolf group who call themselves the moon-born. These werewolves are trying to grab ahold of the two handymen’s magical hammer.

Deadpool wants to use the magical hammer he found to get the dim-witted villain The Walrus, to go to Cimarron, New Mexico. If he can get The Walrus and the people of Cimarron to think that The Walrus has the power of the magical hammer, Deadpool can then talk the people of Cimarron into paying him to defeat the Walrus. Because Deadpool thinks that the hammer he gave to The Walrus is not magical, he thinks that he will be able to easily defeat The Walrus. However Deadpool’s plan doesn’t turn out the way he planned later in the story arc.

Most of the story arc involves a funny battle of wits and strength between Deadpool and The Walrus. As Deadpool goes up against The Walrus, he is cheered on by a nerdy-looking little girl who wears a Deadpool T-shirt with Deadpool faces for hair berets in her pigtails.

There are also song references that serve as punchlines throughout the story. There is a panel where a man tells a story about Deadpool doing the “Single Ladies” dance from Beyonce’s music video “Single Ladies.” There is also a splash page where The Walrus is in psychedelic clothes while looking up at Deadpool. As Deadpool is sitting on a box of Corn Flakes, resembling like an egg, Deadpool says, “I am The Eggman,” quoting The Beatles’ song “I am The Walrus.”

I also loved the artwork in the story arc. The cover art is penciled by Ryan Stegman, the interiors are penciled by Bong Dazo, and the story is colored by Matt Milla. The story is also lettered beautifully by Simon Bowland. The art is a bit cartoony, but it still has a bit of a darkness in mood. This art is perfect for this type of story.

The only reference to fear in this title is Deadpool’s Fear of not being able to stop a dimwitted villian. Other than that, this story arc doesn’t touch on the heavy subjects that the other “Fear Itself” titles explore. If you are looking for a Marvel title that is both light and edgy, “Fear Itself: Deadpool” is your read.

Critique vs. Review:

• writing.com
• ezinearticles.com
• Andy Webb

Also, Tim is joined by Mulele and Paul to critique a small stack of mini-comics, sent in by our friend Dale Wilson:

• The Idealistic Bowling Pin, by Jake Borowski and Evan Spears
• Drawhard, by John Narcomey
• Scared, by DCASTR and Josh Mihal
• Dark Mouse, by Nathaniel Osollo
• Hourly Comics, by Sheika Lugtu

Tim’s brother Paul isn’t sure he can answer that question, but he finds that early Daredevil run to still be very worthy of notice today, so much so that he’s writing a book, for an academic publisher, about it. He fills Tim and Mulele in on his thoughts as he prepares to write…

By Tom Roberts and Jim Siergey
Iconografix 1993

I was in a comic shop in a small town outside of Madison, Wisconsin, digging through the back issue bin when this caught my eye. It cost me a whole 50 cents.

Culture Vultures is a black and white comic published in the comics high tide year of 1993. I’ll spare you a capsule review and just quote the propaganda from Caliber Comic’s Website:

The Culture Vultures, the Heckle and Jeckle of the 3^rd Millenium, invite you to feed along with them on the carcass of Western Civilization. Let cartoon land’s foremost cultural necrophiles take you on a guided and somewhat morbid tour of the world of culture. Whether they’re swooping down on an artistic figure in decline or plundering the grave of one of the greats of literature, they’re always got something witty and biting to say. From the pages of their syndicated comics trip, the team of Jim Siergy and Tom Roberts serve up a ghoulish but socially redeemable smorgasbord of illogical combinations of high and low culture.

That is a pretty fair description of what the contents of this book are about.  Do not be scared by the word “necrophiles”.  They are not literally “loving” the dead but they do practice necrophagia – eating the dead.  The vultures are not in every strip, but there is a common irreverence to high culture, lampooning high art while at the same time performing its motions as well.  What emerges is something like a MAD magazine written by English Literature graduate students.

Is it funny?  Well here is the rub, I didn’t go to college for English Literature.  I received a degree in Anthropology, finding the job market in a bit better shape by plying my skills as a professional archaeologist than a professional reader.  That being said I was familiar with many of the subjects of these jokes:  James Joyce, Jean Genet, Akira Kurosawa, Camile freakin’ Paglia, etc.  That being said I found the strips to be funny and entertaining stuff.  I must add that I am under no illusion that most people (not comic readers, I am talking about the general population here) will find this to be a confusing mess which features two intellectual vultures talking about someone that you have never heard of.  The joke is that these conversations point to the absurdity of these intellectual postures.

The art owes a lot to the MAD magazine comparison as well.  Siergey’s art has several enjoyable background jokes in the art and is an effective illustrator.  Strong lines, angular and blocky character design that takes advantage of the black and white medium.  The pleasure of a book like this may be in the writing, but the art holds it all together in a way that I thoroughly enjoyed.

I am not sure how much was published beyond this featuring these two vultures.  Cursory google image searches have turned up a few strips, even one 9-11 influenced, but as far as comics this appears the only issue published.  Jim Siergey does have some additional work on his Cultural Jet Lag website.   If you know of more of the story of this little indie book or where I can read more stories with these two misanthropic autodidacts please add to the comments.

Comics Reporter interview with Joseph Remnant

Buy “Elbis”

Then, we catch up with DWAP‘s Dale Wilson, about how he picked up Elbis, as well as his new site BuyIndieComics.com, and the state of indie comics in the States.

Written by Alan Moore.

Illustrated by Jacen Burrows.

Avatar Press, 2010.

This book is several things.

It is a kinky H.P. Lovecraft worshiping Cthulhu Mythos pulp story, with endless name checks.  It is a raw, meaty slab of new Alan Moore story.  It is a meta-narrative that discusses the possibilities of linguistic based psychedelic experience.  It is some high concept, dark science fiction short story.  It was a piece of work made to pay off Alan Moore’s tax bill.

In my opinion all of those statements are true.  This is an example of why Alan Moore is a master craftsman.  The panel layouts, pacing and dialogue are top notch.  Burrows’ art is excellent.  The ideas that are at work here are intellectually rewarding and inventive.  The stories mirror the Weird Tales formula that they are based on, down to the morbid endings that push the indescribable horror by just showing their effects, their aftermath.

This book collects issues 1-4 of the Neonomicon series as well as the color version of a one shot titled The Courtyard that was published back in 2003.  The collection clocks in at 176 pages.

The first story, The Courtyard, follows a special investigator with a special talent for anomaly theory:  the connection of seemingly unrelated events to recognize the especially hidden patterns in them.  He becomes too deeply immersed in his investigation of a series of seemingly isolated ritual murders with very specific and horrid details.  He goes on the trail of a special drug that he believes to be the key connecting all of these murders.  The drug turns out to be a language, the Aklo language, which can produce terrifying hallucinations that change one forever.  Bad things happen as a result of his experience of the Aklo trip, produced courtesy of a yellow veil-wearing weirdo with a lisp.

Neonomicon continues the investigation with a pair of special agents, a white female and a black male.  Working to uncover just what drove the previous agent off the deep end, first they bust a punk rock club that has an Aklo connection, then they investigate a Cthulhu specialty store that has a backroom of sex toys that would scare away the most jaded of porn stars.  From there they infiltrate a bizarre sex cult and the really bizarre starts to happen.

This is an adult book, obviously.  The heavy amount of Cthulhu mythos references here is incredible.  There are several on every page.  What is most striking is that the story treats the mythos as a literary phenomenon just as it is in the real world.  The story is not located in some world where the mythos things are a functioning reality.  The story is instead set in our world with the same questions about the reality of these mythos forces that have been raised by Kenneth Grant or George Hay.  In fact, in the scene that takes place in the mythos specialty store/secret sex shop, the female agent picks up a copy of Kenneth Grant’s The Magical Revival where Burrows has actually taken the time to draw the book’s actual cover.  Burrows also lends his considerable talents to the construction of the strange sex toys that are featured in the back of the sex shop.  Even S. T. Joshi’s (a Lovecraft scholar) biography is seen at the end of the story.

Every element of the setting is geared towards our own shared reality where the Lovecraft et al stories are part of a small literary movement with the implication that it was just a creative writing project that got turned into pop cultural productions of various sorts, from plush animals to speculative fiction to sex toys to germinal materials for musical sub-sub-subgenres and cultic activities.  Moore’s use of the Aklo language as a linguistic equivalent of a drug was genius, as was his development of a strangely compelling philosophy of time based on hidden realities, most of which I have to admit I do not understand.

I have only read this book once.  I plan on reading it again in a couple of weeks.  I was blown away by the sheer amount of mythos stuff he was able to wedge in the story without having it seem forced.  The story didn’t just drop references through the text, but constantly built on them as plot elements.  The characters themselves demonstrated different levels of competency with mythos materials, making the story blend in that Moore layered approach by having surface readings in-story characters supply exposition to explain the points that can be used by more knowledgeable readers (or those willing to do the research) to appreciate the deeper concepts.

By using the form of the mythos as a setting for a story, Alan Moore demonstrates why he is an unconscionably good writer, much the way that he was able to take public domain ideas for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls and produce literary works that, in my opinion, rival the original works they were based on.

I must admit to being heavily read in the mythos literature.  I have read all the Lovecraft stories and most of the Chaosium collections that have been put out.  Is my enjoyment of this book derived from my knowledge/borderline obsession with the mythos material?  I would venture to say that Lovecraft fans will enjoy this at least 300 percent more than those who have never read a word of Lovecraft.  That being said, if you are a Moore fan you have probably read at least a DAW paperback collection of short stories.  Even if you have never read any Lovecraft, you will dig this as long as you accept that you are getting Alan Moore doing an Avatar published book and you know what that means.

On top of that it’s Alan Freaking Moore.  Isn’t that enough?

Batman: Arkham City begins with a segment where Bruce Wayne is making a speech.  While he is speaking, Vikki Vale is shown reporting on the speech.  In the middle of Bruce Wayne’s speech, he is kidnapped by Hugo Strange’s henchmen.  Bruce Wayne is then taken to a room and tied up in a chair.  Then Hugo Strange begins to talk smack to Bruce Wayne.  From there the game starts.  When the game starts, you have to use your XBOX controller to get Bruce Wayne to escape from captivity in the chair.  The screen will give you hints on what buttons to push in order get Bruce to rock back and forth in the chair.  Rocking back and forth will get Bruce to fall and break the chair, thus escaping from captivity.  Once you get him to break out of the chair, Hugo Strange’s henchmen will start running in the room to give Bruce Wayne the beatdown.  It will be your job to fight off the henchmen.  Once you defeat the henchmen, you will have to find the rocket that Alfred will send to Bruce.  This rocket will have the Batman suit in it for Bruce to change into.  From there, you will be able to put Batman into some serious action.

What makes Batman: Arkham City so great is the fact that players of the game can choose to go anywhere they want.  Players can choose the outcome of the game by going anywhere in Arkham City.  Wherever you go in Arkham City will depend on what happens.

Each villain has their own section in Arkham City that that villain owns.  Each villain’s territory is guarded by their henchmen.  When you are far away from a villain, you will encounter thugs that have bats.  The thugs with baseball bats are easier to defeat.  However, if you get close to a villain, you will encounter henchmen with guns.  The thugs with guns are a lot more difficult to defeat.  You will have to use more of a strategy to take down thugs with guns by using smoke pellets.  Once you get Batman to use the smoke pellets, you can get Batman to hide in the smoke and capture the thugs one by one.  Doing this takes a long time to do because Batman will have to use his harpoon to hang from the top of buildings and swoop down on the gun armed thugs.  You have to wait until the right time to get each thug.

The thing that really makes Batman: Arkham City stand out is the fresh new takes on the Batman characters.  Batman: Arkham City does a good job at mixing elements from the Batman comics and all of the Batman movies.

In Batman: Arkham City, The Joker is supposed to be dying from a fatal illness.  As Batman runs through Gotham City, you will overhear people talking about The Joker dying.  There are also parts in the game where you can see the Joker’s sickly looking face.  Just like in the cartoon Batman: The Animated Series, The Joker is voiced by Mark Hamil from Star Wars.  Also, Kevin Conroy, who voiced Batman in Batman: The Animated Series, also voices Batman in the Batman: Arkham City video game.

The interesting thing about The Riddler’s voice is that it sounds just like Jim Carrey in the movie Batman Forever.  However, The Riddler is voiced by Wally Wingert, who did work on the cartoons Family Guy and The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

The Penguin is a villain that had a very good makeover in this video game.  In this game, the Penguin has an English accent.  This works considering The Penguin’s proper look.  Another makeover for The Penguin a change in his monocle.  Instead of a monocle on The Penguin’s eye, he has a piece of a broken beer bottle lodged in his eye.  Other characters featured in Batman: Arkham City are Barbara Gordon, Harley Quinn, and Bane.

If you lose at a certain level, you will hear some very harsh words from the villain who owns the territory you where in when you lost.  This will definitely motivate you to play the game over again.

All of the different elements taken from everything related to Batman makes Batman: Arkham City a great buy.  The game will have you playing for hours with riddles that you will not want to stop trying to figure out.

This book is available on Graphicly.com!

Written by Grant Morrison.

Art by Sean Murphy.

DC Comics/Vertigo, 2011.

Grant Morrison is a decisive writer in the comics form.  Many people do not like his more experimental works, especially when the narratives get characteristically dense or abstract. Final Crisis anyone? Many people don’t enjoy when he incorporates more esoteric ideas like chaos magic, ceremonial magic, occult philosophy, media theory, surrealism, dadaism, William S. Burroughs, psychedelics, alien abductions, etc. Invisibles reads like an incredible mess if you are not familiar with some of those topics. The same could be said of Doom Patrol. Some of his work doesn’t traffic with these outre ideas or experiments in the form though, and Joe The Barbarian is an example of such a work.

I hate to say that this book is an example of a “restrained” Morrison. What Morrison did was write something that appeals more to the Neil Gaiman fan than the Robert Anton Wilson or William Gibson fan. The pitch mashup I would use is The Goonies meets The Never-Ending Story. It’s a self contained eight issue miniseries that has been published in a nice hardcover.

Our  protagonist is Joe, a boy in his early teens. His father was in the military and was killed in the recent Gulf War, leaving Joe’s mother a widow who is trying to keep their house. Joe really loves his house, especially his room…which is probably an example of the room that every boy dreamt about having. Joe also has a pet Norwegian rat named Jack.

Joe is also hypoglycemic. After a visit to the cemetery, where some bullies steal Joe’s candy, Joe returns home and takes a nap. He awakes to hallucinations where he is in a fantasy world where Jack is a warrior rat, Joe is prophesy’s agent known as “the dying boy”, and adventure ensues as the reluctant Joe is recruited to bring forth the light that will drive away encroaching darkness – the great evil adversary of this tale.  All Joe really wants is a soda so he can get his blood sugar back up.

His perception morphs between the real world and his fantasy world. What makes this really interesting is that as Joe tries to get to the refrigerator downstairs so he can get a soda, he struggles in the journey and those journeys are translated into events and environments in his waking dream. An over-running sink becomes a waterfall. A stray dog who wanders through Joe’s house’s open door becomes a menacing monster. Jack becomes a warrior rat, fully armed with sword and combat skills. A blown fuse becomes the spreading darkness. This oscillation between the waking operational reality and the fantasy world where Joe is the reluctant hero provides a unique way for the tale to unravel with real world consequences and an identifiable “mundane” character. There is nothing unique about Joe except his inherent decency.

Morrison delivers some top-rate writing. His dialog and scenes are tight. The narrative plot is a pastiche of things that I have seen before, but the execution is truly a beautiful and rarefied thing. Morrison deserves praise for taking such an original twist on a very old and exploited tale of a boy exploring the fertile world of his own imagination.

Sean Murphy’s art was a great choice for this miniseries. He has a loose line that conveys much energy and he provided some great character designs. Jack the barbarian rat in the dream world is an infinitely cool design. Jack’s fight scenes are also elegantly acrobatic. The designs of Joe’s room are also great. If I wasn’t married I would want to live in a room like that. I don’t think my wife would go for the bunk bed though.

This is a fine story of childhood imagination transformed into an adventure of great meaning in the most mundane of settings. The question of whether this narrative was really a bleeding of reality into the fantasy world is left open to questions at the end, but the fact that the adventure took place totally within the walls of Joe’s house adds to that idea that the imagination at play is a damn powerful and beautiful thing.

Another take from Charley Parker

Written and drawn by Reinhard Kleist.

Abrams ComicArts, 2009.

This book is part graphic biography and part lyrical interpretation.

There were two major pieces of media that I enjoyed that had a strong impact on how I experienced this book. One was the 2006 film Walk The Line. The other was The Man In Black: His Own Story In His Own Words, his autobiography published in 1983. Cash would later revisit the autobiography, but Man In Black ends with the acceptance of sobriety, quitting smoking and returning to his Christian background with renewed faith.

I See A Darkness overlaps material from those two pieces. It deals mainly with the early years of Cash’s career, climaxing with his performance at Folsom Prison. There is some material set after the death of June, his wife, in the last year of his life while he is recording an album produced by Rick Rubin.

What this book offers is some interesting visual interpretations of Cash’s songs. Of particular note is Cocaine Blues from the Folsom Prison performance. The story of the song is played out over several pages, the lyrics recounted as text that weaves through the panels. The song A Boy Named Sue is also developed with this method, and to great effect. In a way it was able to do things which a song could not by providing images to accompany the text of the lyrics. In a way it reminds me of a book I read several years ago, Grateful Dead Comix, which featured interpretations of several Grateful Dead songs by a variety of artists. What separates that book from I See A Darkness, though, is the running narrative both in the book and the way that Cash’s lyrics are much more narrative in their construction. Cash often had stories in his songs, and that lends quite well to visual interpretation while maintaining a grounded structure. Cash songs would be great in the hands of an artist like Moebius, but I think that Cash had a genius that wasn’t visionary as much as it was couched in realism.

Kleist has a bold black and white style that utilizes, appropriately, thick black spaces. The effect is a strong and blocky two-dimensional space, similar in many senses to Frank Miller’s noir draftsmanship on Sin City except with a sharp angularity. This marker-on-paper style fits quite well with the subject matter, a fitting way to represent the darkness that sits in the story of Johnny Cash and the light that is at play against it. That is what makes the Cash story so attractive, that dark world of drugs and alcohol set against against the real heart that Cash demonstrated through acts like his concerts at Folsom prison.

Deconstructing Comics reviewed this book in podcast #221.

• Some of his other illustration work
• CBR interview
• Tour schedule (April-May 2012)

“Rook Bartly” (US Air Force active duty member Jason) tells us about “Okashi na Futari”, the Japanese novel series whose author has hired him to draw a manga version of the story.

Then, Kumar returns to tell us about a couple of his recent manga translation projects, “Stupid Guy Goes to India” (which landed him an interview in the March 25 Mumbai Sunday Mid-Day, pg 38-39) and Osamu Tezuka’s “Adolf”.

All this, plus the announcement of the winning “what do you like about Deconstructing Comics” entry!

Created, written and drawn by James Stokoe.

Image Comics, 2010.

I can think of few books that match Orc Stain in the sheer level of raw creativity, fun, perversity, and originality. Stokoe has embarked on a program of world building worthy of an off-duty cultural anthropologist competing in a science fiction/fantasy pitch contest where the ideas are so daring they cannot be implemented in a medium other than an independent comic book (albeit one published and distributed by Image).

Orc Stain is the story of a lowly orc named “One Eye” who has a talent for being able to see the structural weakness in any container, building or edifice. Whether this ability is supernatural or is based on more normal perceptions is not really explained in the first volume. What it does do is allow him to do something which other orcs are not very good at: figure out solutions to problems that do not involve punching or stabbing.

The book constructs orc culture along the lines of Lord of the Rings, but only to a point. Orcs are born parentless and nameless spawn. Great orc warlords receive names (and numbers) that adorn their stone tombs, but such titles are earned from deeds. Walking around names are based on an orc’s visible physical attributes, such as our protagonist’s lack of an eye, earning him the title “One Eye”.  Stokoe points out in the afterword how this idea germinated from a conversation about the orcs in Lord of the Rings. Orcs in those books were just an evil force in opposition to all other matters of goodness in Tolkien’s world. Stokoe took the orc as a product of an orcish culture and developed a whole set of behaviors, politics, economy, and aesthetics to make his characters actors in a fascinating world that is full of perverse humor and over-the-top violence. That makes the book not for everyone. Those interested in a well-thought-out world building cultural construct book that is for everyone should read Larry Marder’s Beanworld, a great book that is less openly transgressive.

What are some of the things that are not for everyone? Well, orc economics are based on the collection of gronchs – severed genitals of other orcs. These are worn on an orc’s belt as a sign of wealth and prestige, and when dried are skinned and sliced into coins called “chits”. This is orc money and to an orc his own gronch is everything and a bag full of other some other guy’s dried gronch is everything as well. The book is also violent in an absurd splatter slapstick kind of way, so you definitely might want to keep it away from the kiddies. Hand this to wives and girlfriends only if you know they can handle it.

The gronch is only the most visibly outre part of the tale. There are also some original ideas in this book that are based purely on organic manipulations and uses of the natural (fantasy) world. There is a telegraph communication system set up between orc dancers who are connected over remote distances by wires and communicate messages through body movements. Of course this refined use of communication is used by orcish warlords to convey lengthy honorific titles in the process of ritual ass-kissing. There are symbiotic spy crabs which fuse with the brains of their orc keepers to provide espionage surveillance. Countless other marvels of various bizarre creatures are used as technology in this world. David Cronenberg must have been more than a little influence here.

Stokoe’s art is what elevates this work to a thing of greatness. His art has a Jeff Darrow quality to it in the fine rendering. Crowd scenes are populated with a great expanse of characters. Individual character designs are graphically intricate with large amounts of individual body adornments. There are not any really visually simple characters, but these are not gaudy pouch-encumbered early-1990s comic book characters. The visual design fills in nicely with the orc culture that is developed. Individualism is embodied in an orc physically, not only in their contentious (though stupid) behavior. Maybe this is something that develops from their intense need to have some purpose in a life that comes from being nameless spawn?

The coloring also need to be noted. Stokoe did the coloring (and lettering) as well. Some readers might be turned off by the unclear separations at work. The coloring is gradiented in ways that are positively psychedelic. While the effects are not day-glowingly garish, the effect lends to textures and shadows in a way that furthers the unearthly palette of tones. I cannot speak for everyone, but in my opinion the effect was great and I enjoyed it.

I found this book to be a real treat. It was funny, twisted and beautiful in artistic execution. The book may be considered juvenile by some audiences, and I have no real defense against that criticism except to say that, though the specifics of some themes may be based in some gross-out humor, their usage is integral to the internal logics of how orc culture functions in the book. Orc Stain is a book that presents orc culture in a way that is so well-thought-out and detailed that it would make a cultural anthropologist proud.

Written by Neil Gaiman

Art by Dave McKean

Dark Horse Comics, 2007 (New Edition)

Originally serialized in a magazine called The Face (United Kingdom) and collected into a single volume in 1992, this book represents some early usage of digital manipulation, photographic collage and highly expressionistic Dave McKean artwork. Dave McKean has an ability to use a Canon laser photocopier the way many traditional illustrators use pen and ink.

The narrative is essentially about millenarianism. Being written a decade before the year 2000, this book was also accurate in its predictions about how the millennium would result in the changing of more or less nothing. The presaged view of the ten years in the future may not be the most exciting depiction of pre-millennium tension that I have ever read, but after the fact and with the element of hindsight it is probably one of the most accurate. Unlike other works which tie into the Y2K cultural experience, this book manages to transcend such a time-dependent experience to capture the feeling of impending futurism mixed with dread and presents the more rational, grounded view which we experience with our mundane memories of that millennium event.

The main character is a film director with a terminal illness. Having being given only a few months to live, he begins work on a script for a new film that deals with the turning of the millennium in 999 AD. This director explores his feeling about his impending death through the larger concept of apocalyptic visions and eschatology. Gaiman frames this with sparing quotes from the Book of Revelation and anthropological musings about Melanesian cargo cults.

Gaiman uses an interestingly restrained prose style that interjects short lines and paragraphs of musings to represent the motivations behind the thoughts of the director, combined with some creative visuals by McKean. McKean provides an abstract background for Gaiman’s sparse text in such a way that direct dialogue is replaced with bounded commentary that evokes the contemplative nature of a man who knows that he is dying but decides to put his efforts into one final creative act.

Unfortunately, I did notice a typo error. Small thing, but when the text is an integral part of the art you notice it a little more.

This book is a short but pleasurable read. The high level of visual and textual experimentation going on here is not difficult to the reader, but still provides an intelligent challenge to expectations for the sequential form. The story is moving and still captures characters and makes you care about them despite the shortness of the tale and the eschewing of sustained dialog.

Go Nagai Creator, Story and Art; Takayuki S. / Mecha Design; Kazuhiro Amachi / Color; David Lewis and Alex Wald/ English Adaptation

First Comics, 1988

A few episodes back, I erroneously stated that Glenn Danzig was the first to bring Go Nagai’s work over to the US with Devilman (in which he infamously added nostrils to the characters for the American version).

This was categorically incorrect, and I should have known it at the time.

Nagai’s first brush with the US was in the form of the Shogun Warriors comic from Marvel in 1979, which featured many robots originally designed by Nagai: a comic which led to the fan-sweat-inducing photo below from the final issue of FOOM magazine.

Note that “young cartoonist, Nagai Go,” though only about 33 at the time, would have already drawn thousands of pages and been a millionaire.

Anyway, Shogun Warriors still wasn’t the first “real” Go Nagai comic in the US (it was by Doug Moench and Herb Trimpe). No, that “honor” goes to Mazinger, sometimes referred to as Mazinger USA, published by First Comics in 1988 — although, some might argue that it still doesn’t count as “real.”

This was one of those comics that I “co-owned” with my younger brother back in the era when we still skipped past all the credit pages. We didn’t even understand the title, except we knew it was Japanese and it sounded cool: we wondered if “Go Nagai” was some Japanese word that they didn’t translate for authenticity’s sake and was part of the title, or if maybe the author was Mazinger and the title of the book was “Go Nagai,” whatever that might mean.

Of course, reading the book even once would make it clear that “Mazinger” was the name of the mecha, which makes me wonder if either of us actually read the thing or just stared at that wicked cover. (Note also that the book features exposed boobies, so we may have just flipped straight to that every time.)

Or maybe you’re thinking we were just idiot kids. Not so fast! The book is renowned for being awful, and reading it today (the same copy we had more than 20 years ago), it is indeed a disjointed mess that you could forgive a 13-year-old for not making heads or tails of.

The book is a “re-imagining” of Nagai’s classic original Mazinger stories set in an apocalyptic future with lush, fully painted artwork. It opens with a quote from Gulliver’s Travels about relating to giants, which makes you think it’s going to take a philosophical approach overall to human relationships with giant robots. We then get a few pages of lonnnng exposition in captions about the legend of Mazinger on some other world, and how the Earth was ruined over hundreds of years by conflicts and nuclear war until: “Today, as every day, the flames of war rage in every corner of the globe. War without quarter. War without end. War for a race that has forgotten all other ways of life.” What follows is 21 pages (out of 52!) of robots gorgeously hacking the shit out of each other with very little dialog. It’s action of the type that’s so awesome sometimes you can’t even tell what’s going on.

At this point, I’m wondering why the book has such a bad reputation. I mean, what more do you want in life?

Well, this is where things start to go off the rails. Page 22 of 52 might seem late in the game for the sudden development of PLOT (the first real inkling of any so far), but the Mazinger mecha and it’s pilot, Major Kabuto, are caught in a massive explosion, and there is another long exposition. The blast rips open the fabric of space time. “Now, as only rarely before in history, an abnormal resonance of space-time created a vortex” and Mazinger is sucked into a parallel dimension.

Cut to: 6 pages (again, mostly wordless) of Mazinger stumbling across some lizard men (“Zard Man”) attacking a semi-nude princess and hacking them to bits. In this universe, humans like the princess are Mazinger size.

Back at her castle, we get 3 more pages of heavy captions explaining the war with the Zard Men. Now I’m thinking the book is going to be about Kabuto’s life on this world fighting the Zard Men (though there aren’t many pages left to go). Maybe it will end “To Be Continued”…?

Now we get 4 pages of negotiations between Mazinger and the Princess (always semi-nude) in which she wants to hire him to fight the Zard war for her. To which the first words out of Mazinger are: “I am merely a passing traveller. The problems of your kingdom are of no concern to me. And yet… Princess Krishna, if you wish, I shall destroy all your enemies single-handed. For you alone. Princess, you are she of who I have always dreamed. Perfection incarnate.” So, just a few minutes earlier he’s been blown into another dimension through a rare confluence of energies, but he only considers himself a passing traveler? How does he intend on getting home? And then his only desire is to hook up with the first person he meets?

As if the bonkers plot structure wasn’t enough at this stage (exposition/plot change, fight, exposition/plot change, fight…), now the dialog decides to be stupid too. The princess agrees to be Mazinger’s lover (?) in return for his services. I’m not sure what she thinks he is — a robot, a man in armor? Anyway, Kabuto pops out of the head, revealing himself to be a little 6-inch man, who says, “Boy, am I tired! Phew! Being stuffed into these machines really wears me out!” This is the same guy who delivered the “you are she” lines above. He constantly speaks like a 16-year old. P.S. This reveal takes 4 pages.

Seeing him thus, the princess says: “I’ve heard ancient legends about the little people. There once was a man from the world of faerie. I believe his name was — Swift.” Yes, in a few lines of dialog it is then worked out that once upon a time Jonathan Swift also fell through a dimensional portal to this world and was then inspired to write Gulliver’s Travels. No metaphors about mecha here, this shit is literal.

6 pages of Mazinger waiting for the Zard Men to show up on the battle field.

4 pages of Mazinger firing every missile he’s got in one shot, which explode and land him back on Earth. Yes, he did not even fight the Zard Men in a climactic battle, he just blew them up in one shot. And, yes, the plot flip-flopped again and he ended up back on Earth!!

3 pages of dénouement in which Kabuto wistfully thinks of: “A world of beautiful dreams. A world of romance and adventure. Earthmen have forgotten all about such things. We’re just like lizards.”

There are two consistent problems: 1) Too much highly detailed (!) “world-building” exposition, which would have been necessary if there had been any development in plot which depended on it. There isn’t. 2) Too much flip-flopping of plotlines with no noticeable change in events resulting. Meaning: He fights giant robots, he gets zapped to another dimension, he fights giant Zard Men, he gets zapped back to Earth, he fights giant robots. Neither the exposition nor the plot flips are necessary for any of this.

Now let’s a get few things straight here. Nagai is a manga giant. He practically invented this giant piloted robot genre singlehandedly. I love a lot of Nagai’s work, including what I’ve read of the original Mazinger, Devilman, and his sexually offbeat stuff like Harenchi Gakuen. I have a hunch — and this is the snarkiest thing I will say in this review — that he was trying to create what he perceived to be an American-style comic book.

Best enjoyed when you’re 15 years old and can’t understand even the title.

P.S. When we were little kids, my brother and I also had one of the giant Mazinger toys from Mattel’s Shogun Warriors line. Never once did we realize that and this comic were related.

P.P.S. A French-language storybook found in the French side of my elementary school library based on Nagai’s Grendizer cartoons was a formative experience for me in my even younger days.

The original Mazinger.

Goldorak, the French version of Grendizer

KS
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Kumar Sivasubramanian is the writer of Weird Crime Theater.

Also, Mulele revisits Dustin Harbin‘s site, with asides about Matthew Forsythe and boycotts of Marvel & DC.

Written and drawn by Brian Fies.

Abrams Comic Arts, 2009.

Growing up in Kansas we took several school field trips to the Kansas Cosmosphere, a science museum devoted to space exploration. The exhibits devoted to liquid rockets, Robert Goddard, the Space Race and the lunar landing were extremely fascinating. Brian Fies shares some of that fascination with space exploration (and the attendant futurism) and applying his talents of science writing toward those subjects created the graphic novel Whatever Happened To The World Of Tomorrow?

This book begins with a young boy and his father as they are spectators to the scientific advancements that progressed from the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, where the first glimpses of the future are laid out by the awe striking exhibits to a very young main character. The book is divided into decades after this and the events of progress in space exploration (as well as its effects on terrestrial technology) are described through the end of World War II in 1945, Cold War fears of mutually assured destruction in 1955, changing social norms in 1965 and disillusionment with the orbital based space program in 1975 (after the high water mark of the manned lunar landings).

The character interactions between the son and father serve to frame the dialect between an older and younger generations view points. The father’s fears of the world are often counterbalanced by the son’s wonder with the future. The son provides the main narrative voice, but his authoritative narration exposits historical information about the changing world, from the introduction of frozen TV dinners to transistors to the manned space program to integrated circuits and satellites.

An additional narrative device is the inclusion of facsimile comics (short stories of only a few pages) that mirror the ephemeral comics of the time periods not only in fake ads and covers but in the story contents themselves. These comic pieces also track how the zeitgeist changes in opinion about technology, its value and the social construction and understanding of concepts such as good and evil. I found these a really clever way to address how the changing decades reflected society’s relationship to technology through the popular culture it produced.

The art style is cartoonish in the depiction of characters, but the images of space exploration are actual photographs from NASA archives. The compositing of drawn images and real photographs is tastefully accomplished though, and the book avoids becoming a photoshopped version of “fumetti” (which it should be noted is often used in common English to refer to photocomics but in Italian is used to refer to all comics).

Two things I noted that were rather obvious conceits of the book. The age of the characters does not progress in real time though the events that are described do, often being couched in science writing describing specific dates. At the beginning of the book, the 1939 World’s Fair, I get the impression that the son is maybe 6 or 7 and the father is probably late 20s or early 30s. At the end of the book, which I took to be somewhere in the early 1980s the son is maybe early 20s and the father is in his 50s. I chalk this up to comic book time, which has always been an elastic quantity and a prerequisite is the suspension of disbelief in this regard if one is to enjoy the genre of superheroes. The incongruity of aging in this book allows that swath of decades to be experienced as the maturation of the narrator son character into adulthood, which makes sense for the presentation of the story but is noticeable to the reader due to the historical specifics and date facts that are in the text.

The boy’s mother is also inexplicably absent. It is not that this single parent family is somehow contra to imagined nuclear family ideals for that time, but there is never really any mention of the mother or her absence. That absence is made conspicuous by such complete omission, but I find this to be a wise decision of Fries’ part. A simple throwaway line at the beginning that explains the father is a widower would have been most writers’ solution to the absence of a mother. By never mentioning the mother and staying away from too much backstory building, the author makes the dialectic between the son and the father more symbolic, more iconic of the generational gap. That also aids in the reading of the aging of the characters not reflecting real time.

This is a well-written and enjoyable book. I would not hesitate to give this to an American History 1945-to-present high school class the first week of a semester and tell them “by next week I want you to have read this, then we will start the boring old textbook written in 1977 but in the 20th edition now”. Science writing and history that is appealing to a general audience is a great thing and this book achieves that end.

Written and drawn by Kagen McLeod

Top Shelf Productions, 2011.

The buzz around this book has been damn strong. When books have been praised as highly as Infinite Kung Fu it can be difficult to not be disappointed by the actual reading experience when the enthusiasm fails to take hold of you. Kagen McLeod deserves that praise though, because this is a beautifully rendered, fun page-turner.

At 400+ pages in black and white, one might think that this is a North American product of manga inspiration. That is not really true. Though the subject is of Eastern origin, namely a love letter to Shaw Studios’ kung fu films, the execution is not. The story was originally published as serialized comics in 2002-2003, of which this book is a collection. The art style is more greyish ink wash than the defined black line style common to manga.

The story is set in a fantasy world where society is much like the feudal China of the Qin dynasty, but with one important difference from the traditional Hong Kong kung fu film historical setting. It seems that the laws of karma are in effect but there are more human souls floating around than available bodies, meaning that the corpses of the recently (and in some cases not so recently) dead are being possessed and reanimated by deranged dead souls. In other words zombies are a constant menace to all parties, good or evil.

The narrative follows a lowly soldier who abandons his post in the emperor’s army because he is appalled by the cruelty of the emperor and his generals. He meets one of the seven immortals, who are pledged not to interfere with mortal affairs though still influence mortals to behave with some sense of moral character. Our soldier begins training to become a kung fu master.

As he trains with the various immortals, he learns new abilities of superhuman strength, endurance and perception. This follows the Shaw Studios formulas of a warrior monk who trains and through his education gains the ability to right the wrongs of the world, usually through some form of revenge or the overthrow of a cruel authority figure. This alchemical perfecting of the student is expanded out over several encounters and trials in this book, turning the struggles into an epic.

McLeod creates some excellent and memorable characters. Moog Jugular is of particular note and one of my favorites. He is an homage to blaxploitation films of the 1970s, looks like Bootsy Collins, can detach his arm (using that as a weapon) and can break down poisons internally. This proves to be very useful as the emperor’s evil generals have learned the corrupting styles of poison kung fu. Poison kung fu styles is a major aspect of the plot, and those familiar with the 1978 Shaw Studios film The Five Deadly Venoms will recognize that film’s role in inspiring Infinite Kung Fu. Those familiar with historical kung fu films from the 1970s are sure to love this book for these constant references and easter eggs. Gordon Liu even wrote the introduction.

As far as the art is concerned, this work is a masterpiece of sequential storytelling. The ink wash technique that McLeod uses reminds me of the better moments of the Creepy and Eerie magazines.  Titles and sound effects are also inventively rendered in English but using the bold strokes that stylistically recall those found in ink and paper Chinese ideogram calligraphy. Fight sequences are excellently choreographed and adapted to the static panel progressions in such a way that the fluidity of kung fu is translated to the process of reading. The panel layouts in dialog and exposition sequences are pretty amazing.

This book is nothing short of a masterpiece. You should read it. Now.

A preview is available on the Top Shelf website.

Sarah Glidden’s site

Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême