In this post, I talk about two very good comic books that came out on Wednesday.
Having two of the people behind the seminal (well, at least I think so) 90s anthology Instant Piano releasing new comics in the same week is something worth no small amount of celebration. The fact that they're wildly different and equally entertaining just makes it easier to hoist Evan Dorkin (and Sarah Dyer's) Biff-Bam-Pow! and Special Forces by Kyle Baker loftily and point at them as highlights in a year packed with excellent comics.
Biff-Bam-Pow! uses some of the characters and setting from Dorkin & Dyer's contributions to Nickelodeon Magazine and Disney Adventures to introduce One-Punch Goldberg, a female Jewish prizefighter in the far future. The eight-time pan-Galactic Underweight Champion finds herself battling Otto Von Ripsnort the III in a match that even her manager attempts to fix in the opponent's favor. Fast moving, funny, and quite smart for a book revolving around people punching each other, the main story is sure to please fans of Dorkin and Dyer's other work. The additional material, in particular the Nutsy Monkey two-pager, only adds to the general positive impression I've gotten from this book.
On the down side, the first issue of Biff-Bam-Pow! did take approximately 43 years to come out, so a second issue may be a long, long time coming.
Where Dorkin and Dyer provide an all-ages romp, Kyle Baker's Special Forces is sort of like Nip/Tuck meets one of those CNN specials like Anderson Cooper Presents "Oh My God They're Fucking Shooting At Us!" Sharp, blackly funny, and leaden with satire much more biting for its not blunting the edges with fictional locations like Army @ Love, Special Forces was a book I was originally going to wait for the trade on, but now I can't wait to see what happens next. Even better than the writing is Baker's art. His figures and composition are easy on the eyes and draw the reader in, if not hindered, then greatly helped by the trademark Baker cartoonishness. Baker's occasionally too-heavy palette is up to the task at hand as well: Technicolor moments provide dramatic counterpoints to the documentarian brown that pervades this book.
In some ways, it feels a bit perverse to enjoy a book like Special Forces - it uses a war where people are dying right now to prove a point. At the same time, that's rather the point of satires like this and Dr. Strangelove: to grab readers and say "This is how ridiculous things are right now." I think we need as much of that as we can get right now, and Kyle Baker handles the task with aplomb.
Biff-Bam-Pow! uses some of the characters and setting from Dorkin & Dyer's contributions to Nickelodeon Magazine and Disney Adventures to introduce One-Punch Goldberg, a female Jewish prizefighter in the far future. The eight-time pan-Galactic Underweight Champion finds herself battling Otto Von Ripsnort the III in a match that even her manager attempts to fix in the opponent's favor. Fast moving, funny, and quite smart for a book revolving around people punching each other, the main story is sure to please fans of Dorkin and Dyer's other work. The additional material, in particular the Nutsy Monkey two-pager, only adds to the general positive impression I've gotten from this book.
On the down side, the first issue of Biff-Bam-Pow! did take approximately 43 years to come out, so a second issue may be a long, long time coming.
Where Dorkin and Dyer provide an all-ages romp, Kyle Baker's Special Forces is sort of like Nip/Tuck meets one of those CNN specials like Anderson Cooper Presents "Oh My God They're Fucking Shooting At Us!" Sharp, blackly funny, and leaden with satire much more biting for its not blunting the edges with fictional locations like Army @ Love, Special Forces was a book I was originally going to wait for the trade on, but now I can't wait to see what happens next. Even better than the writing is Baker's art. His figures and composition are easy on the eyes and draw the reader in, if not hindered, then greatly helped by the trademark Baker cartoonishness. Baker's occasionally too-heavy palette is up to the task at hand as well: Technicolor moments provide dramatic counterpoints to the documentarian brown that pervades this book.In some ways, it feels a bit perverse to enjoy a book like Special Forces - it uses a war where people are dying right now to prove a point. At the same time, that's rather the point of satires like this and Dr. Strangelove: to grab readers and say "This is how ridiculous things are right now." I think we need as much of that as we can get right now, and Kyle Baker handles the task with aplomb.
