Project Superpowers #0-#3
By Alex Ross, Jim Krueger, Doug Kaluba, Stephen Sadowski, Carlos Paul, Andy Smith, and Various
#0: $1.00, #1-3: $2.99 each, FCBD: Free
Published by Dynamite Entertainment

Two series’ launched recently with very, very similar premises: Forgotten heroes from the Golden Age of comics, roughly World War II, are taken out of commission for 60-odd years, re-emerging into the present day with times having radically changed around them. One of those series, The Twelve by J. Michael Straczynski and Chris Weston and published by Marvel Comics, has been surprisingly good. I look forward to each issue and the progress that these forgotten heroes are making in the post-Civil War Marvel Universe, and no one is more surprised about that than I. But with a full 30 days between installments of The Twelve I figured I’d give the other series a go, see if I could find something to fill my “old-timey-men out of place and out of time, with seeeeeeeeeeecrets” jones.

So, that was pretty much a mistake. Despite very, very similar starting points, the two series could not be more different than one another. Whereas The Twelve is a gritty and intriguing mystery/drama slowly being revealed to the reader, Project Superpowers is a pretty straight-forward superhero beat’em-up by Alex Ross and Jim Krueger, the creative team behind Earth X. Actually, if you’ve read the Alex Ross vehicles Earth X and especially Kingdom Come, you’ll be on incredibly familiar ground here as all of the standard Alex Ross tropes are here: Repentant old-man narrator, guide from the spirit world, classic heroes appalled by the sorry state of the modern world and its heroes, and more iconic characters standing around posing than you can shake a stick at… Which isn’t to say that Project Superpowers is particularly bad either as a comic or as an example of the contemporary superhero genre, it’s just not what I was looking for.

So on its own merits then, how does the series hold up? I’m not as ‘into’ the big superhero mythology stories as most, but I still found enough to enjoy in the series to keep reading through. The series itself isn’t drawn or painted by Ross, but instead by a fella named Carlos Paul, who has a cartoonish vibe to his pencils, sort of half-way between one of the contemporary anatomist pencilers like Steve Sadowski or Doug Braithwaite, and someone like Norm Breyfogle. The art is always at least functional, with the characters clearly blocked out and the story easy to read, and occasionally there’ll be a nice level of polish on the illustrations as well. Granted, it’s still got a bit of that garish contemporary superhero colouring to it–something that Ross seems to have largely eschewed in his own work lately–but it’s got more of a painterly vibe than most contemporary comics work which created a great deal more visual interest than most books on the rack. It’s still going to be a bit of a shock-to-the-system for readers picking up an “Alex Ross Book” and getting not Alex Ross art inside, but the work is much more Brent (Astro City) Anderson than contemporary-meh-DC-penciler, which will soften the blow.

As for the story? I’ll be honest, it’s a step above most contemporary superhero comics, but that’s quite clearly me damning this with faint praise. Alex Ross is a poor writer, and I’m not quite sure what Jim Krueger’s contributions have been, but I really remember liking some of his earlier work… The biggest problem Project Superpowers faces is that ‘clarity’ seems to be a four-letter-word, with the writers mistaking confusion for drama. There are lots of short scenes dropped in without explanation, lots of cuts back and forth in space (and occasionally time), blind prophet characters shouting about the end of days, ghosts shouting about spectral duty, superheroes just shouting at one another, and so far it’s added up to not-very-much. The narrative through, the story of a golden age hero named “The Fighting Yank” hoping to atone for past sins, is easily the best part of the book, and the scenes moving that story forward have been enjoyable. The rest of it, with random heroes getting little introduction alternately screaming or “being mysterious”? I could do without that. I feel like Ross and Krueger are relying a little too heavily on their past writing styles here… It’s one thing to have The Spectre, Captain Marvel, or any number of popular iconic characters shouting at one another or uttering mysterious nonsense that might eventually pay off in the story; the reader is already invested in those characters thanks to years and years of familiarity–it’s the very definition of a fanboy-oriented event comic. But when the reader has no idea who any of these characters are? When you haven’t sufficiently invested them with any humanity (other than: blanket tragedy, ‘mystery’, and screaming) it’s really hard to give a shit and I don’t. By contrast, The Twelve has done a great job of the ’slow reveal’, with plenty of characters populating the book that you want to spend time with or, if not, at least want to figure out how their stories will end. But there I go comparing Project Superpowers to something else again. I guess what I mean to say is, in Project Superpowers I’m curious to see where the plot is going but so far I don’t care if anyone introduced in the series makes it to the last page, you know? And since the whole vibe of the book seems to be about re-introducing these golden age characters to the modern world (and aren’t they all nifty!?) that’s kinda-sorta a problem. I guess when you’re Alex Ross you don’t need an editor to point out huge flaws in your storytelling…which would explain why no editor is listed in the credits page. Guys: give these new characters you’re introducing something to do, or leave them out of the story until you figure out what they’re for.

So, to sum up: I’ll probably wait another few issues and then catch up with the story again. Anyone who’s liked Ross’s last few outings in big bold superheroes will probably really enjoy this one and should check out that $1 issue #0 (28 pages for a buck!) at the very least: It’s a big, bold superhero story that is very close to all of the work you already love.

But The Twelve will be one of those books that I read first thing in the morning, standing at the rack on the day of release, wondering if Dynamic Man and Captain Wonder are gonna hook up.

- Christopher
P.S.: Skip the FCBD story, it’s poorly drawn and nothing happens in it, and it jumps past the end of the current story arc, which is vaguely stupid when you’re trying to write a mystery…

Image: Cover painting used for Project Superpowers #0a and #0b, by Alex Ross.

I think it’s important to point out that in the first issue of PiQ, the magazine calls its readership the following names: nerds, dorks, geeks, freaks, maniacs, and pervos.

They seem to mean these little bon mots with affection, but it does tell you quite clearly what the editorial staff thinks of its readership. Of course, the new magazine from ADV (nascent anime and manga publisher) is meant to replace Newtype USA, their former chronicle of otaku culture with a name and content licensed from the original Japanese Newtype magazine, and so some recognition that it is the hardcore fan who may be used to such derisive terms may simply be a way to ingratiate itself to the new readership. But it’s going to take a lot more than saying that we’re all nerds together and adopting the tagline “Entertainment for the rest of us” to convince me that they have anything to say, let alone that we’re all alike…

I previously covered PiQ magazine when I got my hands on the press-kit for the magazine prior to its release. The press kit broke down the aims of the magazine and their demographics quite clearly: they want men age 18-34. I’d say the magazine delivers on that promise, though they don’t quite realize that not every man in that demographic is interchangable…
I’m going to be upfront and say that I disliked the first issue. I’m not going to string you along listing good and bad before revealing my ultimate conclusion; PiQ Magazine #1 wasn’t very good. That out of the way, PiQ does have strengths to recommend it, and a lot of potential, but going by the first issue they’re going to have to work awfully hard to achieve any measure of success. It’s incredibly problematic and likely quite rushed, and with a lot of former Newtype readers already very, very angry at them, they’re going to need to improve, and quickly, to get a chance at long-term survival.

I’ve written an incredibly thorough page-by-page analysis of the magazine. It’s taken days to actually put it all together. I’ve included it behind the cut because people browsing here probably have no interest in a 6500 word essay on a magazine that they will never read, but when I say POST MORTEM I actually mean it. I am digging through the entrails of this thing CSI-style to find out what they’re doing and why. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, and you probably shouldn’t bother reading unless you’re really, really interested in the subject.

With that, click to continue: Read the rest of this entry »

Tokyo Is My Garden
By Benoit Peeters and Frederik Boilet, with Jiro Taniguchi
$18.99, 152 pages
Published by Fanfare/Ponent Mon
http://www.ponentmon.com/new_pages/english/princ.html

Brigid at Mangablog called me out regarding my appreciation for Tokyo Is My Garden, a 2007 release by Fanfare Ponent-Mon and, like most of their releases, doomed to obscurity for some reason. Well I didn’t take her up on her challenge due to my blogging time being cut short as of late, so she just kicked me in the butt and posted her own, very balanced, review of Tokyo Is My Garden. I have a little bit of time on my hands while at work (hurrah for dinner-breaks) so I figured I’d link to Brigid, but also talk a little bit about why I enjoyed the book so much.

First though, I want to complain about Iron Chef America, on The Food Network.

Despite loving show host Alton Brown and being happy to see fellow Canuck Kevin Brauch on the screen, I find the whole thing to be so much lesser than its Japanese counterpart and originator. It’s considerably more crass, with less of a sense of humour or pagentry, making up for it with bitchy reality TV nonsense. The worst part though, the part that just grates on me when I watch it, are the judges and their inability to be anything but literal and low-minded when it comes to their duties. The role of the judges is to determine how well the chefs articulate the theme ingredient in their dishes, but the most common and common complaint of the judges is that “I can’t taste the theme ingredient!” If it’s bacon then the dish isn’t bacony enough; fish isn’t fishy enough; leeks are “overpowered” by the other flavours. Admittedly some judges are worse about this than others, but for the most part, the judges seem to believe that the only way to articulate an ingredient is by having the dish scream out that flavour above all others.

Where’s the subtlety? What about articulating the theme ingredient through… I dunno, the texture, like the real Iron Chefs do (wherefore art though, Kenichi-sama?). Or in the subtle melding of flavours? Or just for colour? Is the only facet of cuisine the purest and brightest essence of what its cheif ingredient? Or is food subtle, layered, and surprising? The answer is the latter of course, because if it weren’t, than the Jones Soda Turkey-flavoured holiday soda would be available all year round! Everyone likes turkey, why wouldn’t they want it concentrated in carbonated form, right? Because there are other facets to eating, and to enjoying a meal obviously. But try telling that to an Iron Chef America judge. Dicks.

Right! So, why did I enjoy Tokyo Is My Garden so much? For its sweetness, its sense of place articulated by its lovely art. Because it is a story of young love where the challenges the lovers face are internal. Early on in the book, the characters talk about “sad French novels” and the book is quite conscious of being a sad French graphic novel throughout, brilliantly turning those expectations on their head through a number of plot contrivances that evoke the classic romantic comedies of the 1940s through the 1960s. A happy ending and the sort of gentle redemption that comes from the various characters’ gentle transgressions. It reminds me a lot of the work of Dupuy & Berberian actually, a sort of upper-middle class existence in a fabulous city, where the characters tribulations are largely due to their personality quirks and their fears and inadequacies. It’s a fantastic change of pace from the melodrama of most manga (let alone most commercial graphic novels). A smart, funny, romantic romantic comedy.

But, the plot! There isn’t enough plot! I understand Brigid’s criticisms, that the plot is ‘thin’ but I don’t agree (obviously). Rather, the plot is thick enough. The plot doesn’t need to scream at you, in my opinion, for a book to work. What is the best way to articulate the themes and aims of your story? Sometimes it isn’t a bold, bright, forthright “flavour,” but rather subtlety. Sometimes it is the texture of the relationships, simple clues about how people interact (the lead and his French boss, the lead and his girlfriend, the boss and the rest of Japan) that generates the friction that drives the story forward. The colour! The interplay! Were this story a contemporary manga (rather than nouvelle manga, as the author calls it) I feel that it would be told quite differently, the stakes much higher and the action more intense! If it were published in North America I feel it might read exactly like one of those terrible 100 page “film treatments masquerading as a graphic novel”. If it were a film made today, I feel like it might end up exactly like the sort of uninspired tripe that A.O. Scott talks about in his review for this weekend’s “Fool’s Gold.” (Thanks to David for the link). Instead, we have a delightful hybrid French/Japanese graphic novel that, when I put it down, I feel great about having read. A book that I made my husband read and he similarly enjoyed. A book that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to you. That’s not to say that I don’t understand why it felt a bit flat for some reviewers, I do, but I think it comes down to the expectations of story that you bring with you to the table. It may be why Dupuy & Berberian’s Get A Life and Maybe Later didn’t set the blogosphere on fire either…

I think that if I’d never seen Iron Chef in its original Japanese incarnation, I’d be far more charitable to its American sequel. But I know that there’s a show out there that is just more enjoyable, where the judges have a greater and more nuanced appreciation of food, and it makes it hard to watch Mo Fucking Rocca blather on and on about nothing, only present to resuscitate his own failing career. Likewise, I think I appreciate the light touch of Tokyo Is My Garden, the gentle appreciation of a beautiful city, a beautiful young romance, and the cultural differences that separate and ultimately unite us.

- Christopher

I just re-read Frederik Peeters, Frederic Boilet, and Jiro Taniguchi’s Tokyo Is My Garden from Fanfare/Ponent-Mon. It’s really good, surprisingly good even. I’ve heard less discussion of this book than any high-end ‘art-manga’ released since… hell, Blue Spring or Number 5. Did anyone else read this? Thoughts?

For the uninitiated: http://www.ponentmon.com/new_pages/english/princ.html.

- Christopher

Though the official release date isn’t until today, The Best American Comics 2007 can already be found on store shelves everywhere, be they ‘comic’, ‘book’, or virtual. In fact, even before this Chris Ware guest-edited volume was available, the vast majority of the works in this volume could be found on the bookshelves of any artcomix fan who was paying attention from August 2005 through August 2006. Even though the raison d’etre of the Best American series of anthologies is to scour the totality of printed material for good works, the 2007 Comics edition is particularly notable for drawing the majority of its material from the output of publisher Fantagraphics books, and in particular their anthology Mome makes a very strong showing. In fact, upon receiving the book a few days back one of my more outspoken retail compatriots remarked (with a good measure of actual anger) that there was nothing for him in this book, since he’d already bought all of the Mome volumes, Kramer’s Ergot, and Charles Burns’ Black Hole. It’s actually that anger, which I’ve heard from more than a few people now, that made me want to review this volume and Mr. Ware’s examples of the best of comics in 2006.

Ware’s introduction to the book is interesting, as he writes about visual literacy and invention in the context of his own work and in the work of the artists he has assembled here. Of course (and in typical self-depreciating fashion) he throws the idea that this is the ‘best’ work in comics right out the window in the first paragraph: No matter how much you criticize Chris Ware, you can be sure that he has already beaten you to the punch in doing so. Instead he talks about the work in terms of “telling the truth,” which he states to be the primary attribute in comics stories that he personally enjoys. This shouldn’t be mistaken for an elevation of non-fiction over fiction or any other such fallacy, but instead Ware seems to best respond to works that seek to understand, explain, and celebrate the human condition, and that’s evident in the book. More than half of the books’ stories are outright biography or autobiography; the only real concession to the fantastic seems to be in Ware’s appreciation of C.F.’s Blond Atchen And The Bumble Boys and Paper Rad’s Kramer’s Ergot; the hypercolour cute-brut works descended from the Fort Thunder collective and, in Ware’s estimation, the work Gary Panter (Panter also included here via an excerpt from his Jimbo In Purgatory). If “Fiction,”as Mr. Ware has posited elsewhere, “allows details and doubts about actual events to be bypassed and the remembered essence of a person to suddenly ‘come alive’ again,” then it seems very much like that fiction oughtta stay as close to plausible as possible, if the choices here are anything to go by.

The collection isn’t a bad one, and seeing as it is produced and marketed for a ‘general public’ graphic novel reader it’s a lot harder to fault it for being picked from a fairly small (though very deep pool). I’d have a hard time arguing against any of the included works as being undeserving of the “Best Comics” tag, and I probably wouldn’t bother either because that kind of behaviour is kinda dickish. But even the briefest page-through of the book will show that while it is a coherent and considered opinion on comics, it also isn’t representative of the North American comics publishing industry as a whole. Luckily Ware has already forestalled such criticism (told ya!) but it’s still a little aggrivating that, for example, anything with a whif of genre about it is seemingly disqualified, despite its ability to get to get at “truth” in it’s own way. Further absent are any comics that don’t mark print as their primary medium. I wonder what kind of view of the industry this presents to the ‘general public’?

Next year (and for the foreseeable future) the Best American Comics collections will feature new, permanent Editors in the tag-team power couple of Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. I feel fairly confident in saying that their vision of the Best Comics will look substantially different from Ware’s, just as my own ideas about the best comics released this year do. Will that make for a better, more coherent or thorough anthology though? Will those opinions be any more or less correct? I quite honestly have no idea, but there’s a much better chance I won’t own previously released versions of 80% of what’s in the book, and that’s pretty exciting to me at least!

So my recommendation? Check out the table of contents for this one over at The Publisher’s Website and see how many of the works–or creators–are new to you. If you haven’t purchased much of this work already I’d strongly recommend you do so through this volume… but maybe keep the other eye open and on the rest of the graphic novel rack too.

Meanwhile, Chris, What Did You Think Were The Best Graphic Novels of 2006?

Well I’m glad you asked. Now that literally every award for graphic novels published in 2006 has been given out, AND they made a book out of it, here’s what I thought were the best comics in 2006. I’m not limiting myself to works by North American creators as Mr. Ware is, but I am requiring English-language publication in 2006. I’ve included my (whopping) 28 choices behind the cut below. Let me know what you think: Read the rest of this entry »

I READ SOME COMIC BOOKS THIS WEEK. HERE IS WHAT I THOUGHT OF THEM.

All Flash Comics #1: It’s so… awkward… and self-congratulatory. Ick. I want to say “Hey, Karl Kerschl’s art was the best thing about this” but then I’m sorta-friends with Karl and my opinion is suspect. I dunno. I was reading it and it’s exactly not-bad, not-good in the way that many (most?) superhero comics are these days. The multiple art teams, the overliance on history and continuity, the weird torture of the bad guys… None of it stood out as bad or good, it was just “here is a sequence of events that will keep you reading until next month”. Wow. There’s nothing there for people who aren’t long-time, die-hard fans of the character, and even though I’m somewhere in that sphere I was just… I don’t like this at all. And the cover by Seinkewicz is… distressing.

Batman: Harley & Ivy TPB: This collection of three disparate stories featuring Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy is pretty fun stuff, with some nice art through and through. Has anyone ever looked at the subtext… or even the text… of these stories though? Yikes. It’s exactly “Dudes who are attracted to hawt cartoon characters put them into vaguely pervy situations for their own edification,” which is… every single female hero or villain in comics? It’s fun, just don’t read too deeply into… any… of it. Like the women-in-prison-flight ‘homage’ at the beginning of the second chapter of the titular mini-series, where the butch lesbian prison guards get rough with our two hot antiheroines. Actually, that whole last mini-series feels like Paul Dini letting loose after too many years dealing with cartoon censors and Hollywood… It’s interesting, and like I said, fun… if you don’t think too hard about it. Mmmm… probably not for kids.

Big Plans #1: This is a Xeric-grant winning comic that we got in because we more-or-less support every Xeric Comic. It’s a mini-comic though, which is kind of weird, because I’d always assumed that the Xeric thing was to help you do something a little more professional than something that looks like it came off of the Xerox machine. The comics themselves are interesting, each page a six-panel staccato with lots of white-space elevating stories of the mundane into the… what’s less than profound but still pretty interesting? Well-observed, anyway, particularly the terrorism story. If I picked this up at MoCCA for $2, I’d be pretty happy. For it to be solicited through Diamond at $5, I’m less happy. There’s just not enough to it to justify the price tag, and I can’t help thinking that the author’s chosen format won’t really help him get noticed, let alone further develop his career. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there’s a whole industry for stapled 5.5″x4.25″ comics that I’m unaware of. That are also available at http://www.aronnelssteinke.com/ entirely for free. But yeah, this is one where the format disappointed me much more than I enjoyed the actual content.

Captain America #28: This one felt a bit like a place-holder issue, particularly after the starling revelations and non-stop action of last issue. It’ll read better in the trade. Aside from the bad guys showing you they’re bad by killing a lot of people, and Sharon Carter awkwardly dancing around a few questions… yeah. Brubaker’s setting up the pieces in this issue, which didn’t really grab me the way that the rest of the arc has. Even though it came out a few weeks ago I finally read the newest issue of CRIMINAL, which was similar (setting up the pieces, pulling together the plot, showing what a bad ass you are) and it worked far, far better.

Comics Journal #284: I’ve only skimmed this so far, but man, do I not care about Roger Landridge at all. There’s just nothing there that I find interesting. Anyway, somehow I got sucked into reading Tom Crippen’s piece on the fanboy inside all of us and that was just brutal. Like, massively depressive, mostly because you could insert “There but for the grace of God, go I” after every paragraph. I haven’t seen any online reaction to this column yet–maybe The Journal has stopped being relevant for that sort of thing, I don’t see them stirring up much controversy lately unless it’s fucking with Harlan Ellison–but I’d be curious what anyone else thought. But yeah, I’ve not read much of the rest of it yet. The Gene Yang interview is on my list though.

Don’t Say Anymore Darling: This is a new collection of old short stories from Fumi Yoshinaga, the author of Antique Bakery. It’s mostly yaoi-centric (though there is at least one entirely straight short-story about a marriage that fails due to… well… the crazy, I think) and fans of Yoshinaga’s gentle, humanistic storytelling will probably love this as much as they love everything else she does. Mmm… me included. Granted, I read this while sick in bed with a head-cold so my retention isn’t entirely there, but the stories are all strong little shorts, usually with a nice shock right at the ending to cast the whole thing in a new light just as you end the chapter. I hope the existance of these interesting, sort of random works means that Ms. Yoshinaga is fabulously wealthy and gets to do whatever she wants with manga; I’ll happily keep reading.

Flight Volume 4 GN: Reviewing this is basically impossible since 1/3 of the contributors at any given time are friends of mine, but here goes: Another strong entry in the Flight series. More gorgeous art, more lyrical short stories, definitely worth the cover price. The stand-outs are, once again, Clio Chang (this time with a meta-commentary take on the nature of fables) and Kazu Kibuishi (his story featuring duty and tradition butting heads with desire). It’s a handsomely designed and thoughtfully edited collection, each story sticking around just long enough to be enjoyable, and occasionally leaving you wanting more. I’d have hoped though, 5 years in, to see more of the contributors to the book making more of a name for themselves in the industry outside of the anthology. It still seems like a lot of the breakthrough work is in the pipeline, and as nice as 8-24 pages of work is from many of these creators, I feel like 150 pages of the same is what I really want.

Ghost Rider #13 WWH: I haven’t been “reading” Ghost Rider, so I’m assuming that there’s just someone inexperienced or whatever behind the mantle of the character right now, making the first 2/3 of the book an “inexperienced hero fights Hulk in comedy of errors” routine that was occasionally chuckle-worthy. It all comes down to earth at the end though, when we’re reminded that Iron Man is a bastard, and the Hulk is rightfully seeking Vengence on him, leaving The Ghost Rider to fuck off back out of the crossover. Not bad, I guess? Funny, but hardly essential.

Programme #1: Winner of the “Comic that would most be benefitted by re-reading” award of the week. I think I liked this, all gritty, dirty cold war paranoia mixed with ongoing wars and impotent hulking Americans. I’m not sure though, as scenes rarely last for longer than a page or two, and writer Peter Milligan has had some spectacular misfires as of late. But yeah, despite Jog’s excellent breakdown, I kind of want to figure out what’s going on here for myself, and sadly the cursory reading given to FLASH or GHOST RIDER simply won’t do. At least you’re getting your 3 bucks worth.

Shazam: The Monster Society Of Evil #4: The ham-handed political nature of the story is toned-down just enough to be enjoyable rather than distracting, leading to a fun, over-the-top conclusion. Smith has picked up a few tricks out of contemporary young adult fiction here, making the adults-don’t-believe-kids stuff just annoying enough as to make the kid in me want to jump up-and-down in place going COME ON ALREADY!, which means it’s working. The ending has plenty of heroics, gross moments, a monster-punching or two, and sets the stage for great things to come… which is why what comes next is so depressing. (”Hey kids! That character you just grew to love? HE’S DEAD NOW. Also, his little sister has grown up into a goth cheerleader. Enjoy!”) I’m also wondering about the artificiciality of serialization breaks and their negative effect on the story… but that’s for a bigger discussion down the road.

The Order #1: Sorry Matt. Nothing here grabbed me. And I was actively put-off by the colouring, which couldn’t decide if the lead dude was grey-at-the-temples or not. I’ll read the next issue I guess, but this wasn’t your best stuff and I really, really want Casanova #8 now.

Warren Ellis’ Black Gas 2 #3: I still, honestly, can’t believe that Ellis would let a comic be named after his (presumably) deadly farts. Did no one think about what this would be called? Or maybe they did, and that’s perhaps worse. Ah well. BLEAK! SO FUCKING BLEAK! And, if the gas makes everyone crazy and itching to fuck, how did they all manage to pair off into neat boy/girl pairs? Isn’t that… fortunate? I guess? That the zombies don’t have to have the added stress of having their sexual identities challenged? “Fuck, I just tore the face off that guy but at least I’m shagging the dismembered lower-half of a woman instead of being some faggot zombie!” Ah well. it’s Avatar, you get what you pay for, you just usually get it very late.

World War Hulk #2: Totally enjoyable. Whenever anyone asks me if this is any good (specifically because Avengers Disassembled, House of M, and Civil War weren’t) all I need to say is “Well, Hulk DOES Smash.” I don’t go out of my way to promote this because, quite frankly, I don’t have to. Hulk fucks shit up, which is really all you need from a Hulk comic in the first place and that most stringent of conditions is met? People gladly part with their four dollars. Hulk Smash.

–

I also ready a bunch of stuff from previous weeks like SILVERFISH (alright), PHONOGRAM (alright I think, not sure about it), and some assorted manga. i guess being sick has it’s up-sides.

- Christopher

WHOOPS! Got a bit negative for a second there, didn’t I? I forgot my promise not to engage all of this. Sorry about that, didn’t mean to harsh your mellow. Out with the jive, in with the love.

I am in the newspaper. The GAY newspaper. The fine folks at XTRA magazine (publishing in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, and even on the internet) comissioned me to write a little overview of what’s hot in gay graphic novels, and I turned it into a sort of fun, on-its-ear SUMMER READING LIST. It saw print on my birthday (yay!), and it went online earlier this week when I wasn’t looking:

Porky #1 & Pornomicon #1 by Logan. Published by Class Comics. 32 pages; $9.95 each.

In the past year Class Comics has begun publishing gay comics from around the world and these two comics from France’s Logan (so hot he only needs one name) are downright dirty, in all the right ways. Featuring worlds seemingly comprised entirely of hot’n'hairy muscle bears with impossible proportions, anyone searching for something a little more hirsute in their smutty summer reading will have it made in the shade. A word of warning: If guys with PIG tattooed on their tummies and sex with the Octopus-faced baddie from Pirates Of The Caribbean (and all that entails) make you squeamish, Logan’s work is definitely not for you.
- Review by Me.

It includes everything on the spectrum from the suggestive to the smutty, and all points in between. It was a lot of fun to write too, and even more interesting? I WAS EDITED! Usually I just rail on and on here at the blog, but I got to work with an editor who actually made the piece stronger and tighter overall! Suck on that, Internet!

For those of you that need a reason to click through the link, here’s what I reviewed: Stripped: The Illustrated Male, Porky #1, The Pornomicon #1, Fun Home SC, Aya HC, All-Star Superman, Casanova: Luxuria, PRISM: Your Guide to LGBT Comics, Shirtlifter #2, and Young Bottoms In Love. There really wasn’t much point in picking stuff just to rag on it, so I’ll spoil the surprise and say that I generally liked all of the books in the review.

They even let me plug The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, which was really rather nice of them. I’ve got another article for them almost completed which has a decidedly Eastern bent. I’m sure you can figure it out…

I hope my friend at Fab doesn’t get mad that I wrote an article for Xtra. DRAMA. :D

- Christopher
Image from this year’s PRISM Guide, which you should all go buy to support a worthwhile organisation.

(Warning: Rambly)

An Appreciation of Questionable Content

Do you know what I did Saturday? If you do, that’s actually a little creepy. But I’ll tell you anyway: I read all 900+ pages of the webcomic Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques, freely available online at http://questionablecontent.net/. It’s a four-panel “gag” comic with a heavy daily continuity, making the each strip essential for hardcore fans, but making the comic as a whole fairly accessible for folks just jumping in, espescially if they ‘get’ that days’ joke.

I’m bad at webcomics, only reading (with a few small exceptions) the strips that my friends do. Luckily, I’m friends with R. Stevens of Diesel Sweeties, Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics, and Ramon and Rob over at Butternut Squash, so I’ve got most of the best and most popular webcomics covered. But every once in a while, I’ll be introduced to like, Jeffrey Rowland (of WIGU and OVERCOMPENSATING), or Jonathan Rosenberg (of GOATS) or my dear sweet Dr. McNinja Chris hastings, and I’ll be all “Oh, you do a webcomic? Really? I’ve never heard of it…” and make a total asshole of myself.

So at the Paradise show a few weekends back when I picked up a bunch of the shirts from QC, I figured that maybe I could avoid making an ass of myself IN FUTURE by… you know… reading the comics. Plus I think Mal told me that I should at one point. Anyway, it’s all a very good idea, and a time-consuming one, but what better use for 7 hours could I possibly have had?

Right off the bat: If I didn’t have a vested interest in finishing this series, I would have given up in both anger and frustration about half way through. The sexual politics of the first few hundred strips are, to put it bluntly, completely fucked up, and so aggressively wrong-headed that I actually considered stopping at strip 400 to write this post with a WHAT DO PEOPLE SEE IN THIS? HOW IS EVERYONE NOT KILLING THEMSELVES? sort of a vibe going on, which probably wouldn’t have been the best or most productive review. Thankfully at strip 500 the author decides that enough is enough and that a beloved lead character really oughtta stop emotionally and physically abusing the rest of the cast, and does, and that character has been working to redeem themselves ever since. Since this thread of emotional and physical abuse is kind-of the emotional core of the entire comic and the springboard for much of the plot, that it is so completely fucked up will likely turn off… many? Most? of the people I would normally send over to read it, if I didn’t specifically qualify the early strips with: Don’t worry, it’ll turn out okay in the end. The horrible attitudes towards sex and intimacy disappear about half way through, and from then on the strip really blossoms into something excellent. So, yeah. Either start at strip #500, or just grit your teeth like I did.

The strip is excellent though. Even through the occasionally torturous first half, there’s a humour, levity, and real heart to the series. Questionable Content is about a group of young adults in their early-to-mid 20s, working crappy jobs and hanging out and commenting on popular culture. Relationship-oriented drama and humour, through a Pitchfork Media sort of lense (but ironically). It’s a sitcomic… kind of like a gritty, lo-fi Friends with concessions to genuine whimsy and innovation vis-a-vis the occasional talking robot, magical creature, and wrong-headed superhero. Man, if ragging on the sexual politics didn’t piss people off, comparing this to Friends probably will… But seriously, millions of people watched Friends, what’s the big deal? It was a popular show that made you laugh once! Admit it!

(Look! They’ve even got a couch!)

Anyway… As I was mentioning I did really enjoy my experience, and have made visiting the site to see the newest strips part of my daily routine as of Monday morning. I guess what I really liked about it, especially reading it all at once, is seeing where the author’s eye tends to land, and seeing how the strip is shaped because of it. The afformentioned popular culture references usually take the form of band and music genre references, and it’s interesting to me because from 2003-2007, the time that the strip has been running, the authors musical interests have taken a similar path to my own musical interests and experiences. Music has a huge role in the strip, with characters being defined by the music they listen to, their romantic compatibility presaged by their musical compatibility. Sayeth the character Marten in regards to a potential relationship: ”Man I hope that doesn’t become an issue with Dora. What if she can’t stand my musical taste? I mean, I know she likes the Flaming Lips, but we don’t really have a lot in common musically.” It’s just one of the many moments where music defines the various characters and situations, and it really works to give the strip a cohesion that a lot of comics lack.

But the real payoff is in seeing the characters that are introduced and ‘don’t make it’. What if everyone decided that they didn’t like Joey after the first season, and they made Mark and Carol permanent cast members instead? Wouldn’t that be weird? Heh. I love seeing the author’s process and development on the page (and just an aside here: the art undergoes a fairly substantial upgrade from start-to-finish as well, with the most recent strips looking fairly slick and cartoony, and the early strips… Well, there’s a charm to them for sure, but…) and seeing the realisation that the uptight coffee barista wasn’t going to work out, or that the first iteration of a character was a bit… shallow… and needed to be overhauled. It’s great. Author Jeph Jaques even manages to do that rare thing in almost any kind of long-form serialised comics: have the characters grow and change, and have it feel natural. The plot develops out of the characters’ attitudes and behaviour, it’s what good storytelling in this genre of comics is all about.

Actually, one of the things I was going back and forth on with this series was the constant external thought process of all the characters. I can’t tell if I find it refreshing or annoying. No one seems to have an inner monologue, or a thought that doesn’t go unspoken. It might be why I found the early going so difficult as well, because the behaviour of some of the characters was really aggrivating, but hearing their constant justifications for that behaviour was just waaaay too much. It does work really well for the humour though, and even seeing characters fumble through social interaction and dating is fun when they can’t stop babbling to themselves. But if one more character utters “I have issues!” unselfconciously… I dunno. It will probably spark The Rapture or something. Not the band The Rapture either, but the Jimmy Swaggart Rapture. The Charleton Heston Rapture. (Both of those would be good band names).

Anyhow, if you’re looking for another enjoyable, subtantial comic strip to add to your webcomics browsing, I can definitely recommend Questionable Content. Even their shirts are very good. I mean, She Blinded Me With Library Science? That’s gold, Jerry, gold! Wait, that’s a Seinfeld reference, not a Friends reference. So much for my strong closing remark. Ah well.

Sorry.

- Christopher

The nice thing about being assigned books to review is that you get to experience titles you might normally have never picked up, or even actively avoided. The nicer thing about this is the feeling of confidence you get in your own taste and aesthetic, knowing that you avoided a title for looking like crap and then it turning out to be far worse than you imagined. It’s kind of amazing.

–

Meanwhile, in the ‘books I am sadly not being paid to review’ dept., King City is exactly as good as I was hoping it would be, and possibly moreso. It’s totally worth running out and picking up. I got asked 5 or 6 times if it was any good this week at work, and now that I’ve read it I can answer with an enthusiastic ‘Yes!’. Maybe if I finish the reviews I’m working on, I’ll do one of this too.

- Christopher

Casanova #3
By Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba
$1.99, 16 pages, Two Colours
Published by Image Comics

Reviewed by Christopher Butcher

PREVIOUSLY IN CASANOVA
  Casanova Quinn—a bon vivant in two different timestreams—is kidnapped from his home in Timeline 909 and forcibly brought here, to Timeline 919, to serve at the behest of superterrorist Newman Xeno, leaders and CFO of gloom-and-doom corporation W.A.S.T.E., to betray his own father, Cornelius Quinn, the strongly-jawed and ruggedly-moustachioed leader of E.M.P.I.R.E., known to you and me as the good guys.
  Where Cass comes from, he’s the bad egg and his twin sister Zephyr was the apple of E.M.P.I.R.E.’s eye—but in the 919 she rolls suspiciously more sinister, usually draped on Xeno’s arm, and is just aching to put the screws to daddy. And wouldn’t you know it, here it’s Cass that’s the big hero, so in he slips to E.M.P.I.R.E. to act as his own evil twin. 
  Tasked by E.M.P.I.R.E. to infiltrate exotic Agua Pesada and retrieve a deep-cover agent named Winston Heath who had gone several degrees south of crazy, and counter-tasked by W.A.S.T.E. to kill Heath, Cass was trapped between a rock and a dead place. Killing Heath in self-defence and destroying his compound, Cass then shot his sister and left her bleeding on a rooftop while Agua Pesada went shithouse. 
  And as he made his great escape, Cass asked Zeph the one question she’s dreaded having to answer: 
  Where’s Mom?
     - Matt Fraction, Inside front cover of Casanova #3.

It’s been three issues and I haven’t actually talked about the covers to the series. I’ve been including them with the reviews (or as Gabriel Ba described them, analyses,) but the covers themselves are so completely different than the interiors and yet complimentary too. Not to mention ballsy as fuck starting next issue. But yeah, the sickly-green that tones the interior art is kept as far away as possible from the sixties acid-orange, lush grape, and black and white that stain the covers. The cover illustrations eschew black linework entirely, opting instead for bold graphic shapes and characters composed entirely of colour. It’s a gorgeous effect, the comics look like nothing else on the stands. Each of the first three covers also includes the tiniest little bits of red accent, which totally pop and provide a delicate counter-balance to big bold areas of colour. I’m curious how much of the covers are designed by series artist Gabriel Ba, and how much of the design comes from author Matt Fraction, an accomplished designer in his own right who has a few things to say about cover composition. Matt, if you ever feel like doing a whole bunch of unpaid work, I’d love to see some writing about comic cover design (and Casanova’s design in particular).

Meanwhile, story structure happens! In this issue Fraction plays with threes; the story comprised of three inter-related 5 page vignettes with a one page epilogue. The three stories are Right Now, 7 Days Ago and 97 Days Ago, and each story arc/time period also corresponds to a different ’side’ of Casanova in this new timeline: His Own, E.M.P.I.R.E.’s, and W.A.S.T.E.’s.. The story cycles through the three storylines, a page from each until the issue is over (plus the one-page epilogue). The stories are chronologically distinct, each following it’s own order of operation and taking place at a different part in the overall timeline. However, just for shits-and-giggles, I went back and re-read the story not as it’s presented, a page from each thread at a time, but the whole thread from start to finish. It helped open up my thinking on this issue. Anyone can tell three five-page stories and then just shuffle ‘em up, but then it’s just crap. This issue works like a 15 scene short film, each page a whole that works within the larger whole of the issue (sort of like how each issue is distinct but works within the larger context of the 7-issue series). What’s really phenomenal is that each page/scene is cognizant not only of the scene that follows it from the other storyline, but of the next scene in the story arc as well! For example, Page 1 ends on special agents Kennedy and Johnson telling Cass it’s time to go and get the show on the road, a pretty effective way to jump-start the issue. The next sequential page has Casanova in front of E.M.P.I.R.E., seven days ago, being returned to active service, which fucks with your head a little by implying that K&J brought Cass to the E.M.P.I.R.E. tribunal, even with that big SEVEN DAYS AGO at the tip of the page. The next page in the story arc though, features Cass, Kennedy, and Johnson out on the road in their convertible the story flowing along marvellously and not suffering a whit for the two pages of different storylines between them. Good stuff.

The other strong bit about the issue brought about by the story structure? The one so obvious it’s right under your nose: Telling a successful story where each scene is exactly one page long. In his previous writing about comics writing, Fraction has talked about the rhythm of a story, of the page. Here the rhythm is very consistent and aided by the scene-per-page rule, resulting in a sort of a meditative lull inspired by the quiet, reflective nature of the Right Now and 7 Days Ago sections, and then gloriously interrupted by the sharp intense shocks of the 97 Days Ago pages (Revelations! Torture! Sex! Violence! More revelations!). Sort of a bum-bum-BAM-bum-bum-BAM sort of a thing. Neat stuff, and I’m kind of surprised that Fraction didn’t dig into that more in the back-matter, as I think this issue probably makes for the clearest and easiest-to-follow learning-aide for “story beats” of any comic I’ve come across.

So, yeah, on one level coming up with a structure and then trying to force a story into it is wankery; the exact opposite of art and entirely artifice. But on the other, sometimes it works too, and as long as the story manages to cover it’s ass and remain internally consistent (it does) and thematically consistent (it does) then why not, you know? The results are great; don’t listen to McKee because it turns out there’s more than one way to tell a successful story after all.

But… speaking of the back-matter, it lets loose a wonderful little secret that never was: this three-focussed issue was originally intended to have three unannounced variant endings! I love shit like that, it’s even better than having 13 variant covers on Gen 13 #1. Apparently printing variant interiors is more expensive than one might expect, and so (sadly) the idea was scrapped. The rest of the back-up material included this issue shows the reader how Matt Fraction turns a fun day in San Francisco into an issue of Casanova; a neat trick.

I want to state for the record that I do enjoy the storytelling, but I find that my mind craves order and I’m having a hard time intuiting why the creative team is making certain storytelling decisions. The big issue for me is that Casanova’s visual storytelling is based on a 4-tier page: 4 “rows” of panels each. To explain via famous example, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen is based on a 3-tiered page, and more specifically a 9-panel grid of 3 panels on each tier. Reading an issue of Casanova, it seems that the 4-tiered approach seemingly disappears at random, sometimes having 2 of the tiers compressed into one creating a differently balanced page, or sometimes featuring three equally weighted tiers. It took me three issues to really notice that the storytelling structure in that regard wasn’t consistent, so it’s probably not even a problem so much as a ‘quirk’, but part of my brain is craving a more consistent application of this structure so that when it is broken it’s really notable and affecting. I dunno. Maybe Ba’s style just resists a rigid grid (though he used it to amazing effect last issue in the fight-scene between Casanova and Winston Heath), maybe it’s just not what the series creators want. But it is noticeable…

As to where this issue fits on the whole? If issue one was puberty, the lead character being forced into a strange new status quo, and issue 2 was a young man testing his boundaries, then issue 3 is all about the punishment; reproach. But the punishment is all for his own good and no one goes home mad at the end of the day (heh). And pretty soon, our boy’s going to start being interested in girls…

- Christopher Butcher