52 Week #52 – That year went by way too fast for my liking. Could this be age and the attendant time-retrodilation creeping up on me? I’m onboard for at least the first month of Countdown, because I’m a sucker for Jimmy Olsen and Darkseid, and I hope that Dini being in charge means things will hang together better without a fourth-quarter Hail Mary pass in the shape of something like World War III. SHAZAM: The Monster Society Of Evil #3 – Man, I’m going to be so, so bummed when this is over, especially considering how clumsy and “x-treme” the evolution of Mr. Mind ended up being. I wonder why DC feels the need to shoehorn Captain Marvel into their mainline universe instead of pulling a Spirit and having it kept discrete. Showcase Presents The War That Time Forgot Vol 1 – GIs fighting dinosaurs. Yeah, that’s my idea of a near-perfect Silver Age comic.
IDW
Ashley Woods D’Airain Aventure #2 – I really, really enjoyed the first issue despite dismissing Woods in the past for his more… esoteric material. It looks like he’s found collaborators that match his storytelling instincts. I actually just ordered the upcoming Zombie vs Robot collection.
Marvel
Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways – Do I want this? If I’ve only read through the second hardcover of Runaways (which ends on V2, issue 12), am I going to get spoilerated? Fantastic Four Visionaries: Walter Simonson Vol 1 – Despite the fact that Simonson doesn’t take over pencils until the fourth issue, this manages to redeem itself nicely with a hilarious Acts Of Vengeance crossover and serviceable, if not stellar, art by Ron Lim and Rich Buckler. Incredible Hulk #106 – With Apologies to Mark Millar. (No, not really…)
Marvel Illustrated: Last Of The Mohicans #1 – It’s so weird, watching Marvel try to re-establish a foothold into comics that aren’t part of its core universe. Icon all but amounts to a vanity imprint to satiate certain creators and the Dabel Brothers material appears to be aimed at the bookstore market, but only after half-heartedly flogging things out through a direct market that seems like it couldn’t care less.
AdHouse
Ancient Book Of Myth And War – Scott Morse, Lou Romano, Don Shank, and Nate Wragg all contribute art to this slick-looking package full of original art and designs related to, you guessed it, mythology and war.
BOOM!
I wrote about what’s coming out from my booze money providers over at BOOM! Studios Blog.
Excuse me while I try to gouge out of my ears out after hearing a particularly horrible butchering of “Bizarre Love Triangle” in service to Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
Comments Off | Posted: April 30th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
DC sent me over copies of Amazons Attack #1 and the latest issue of JSA. I do understand the first, as it’s the start of the latest in status-quo-altering events for the stalwart giant, but sending me the second part of a JLA/JSA crossover that also throws in the Legion for good measure is sort of baffling.
That said: I thought Amazons Attack was a perfectly acceptable genre comic. Will Pfeifer’s a heck of a dialogue writer with a real knack of putting together a compelling flow while Pete Woods continues to provide clean, clear storytelling that shows a great handling of subtleties like facial expression and body language. My one complaint is the complete lack of information given as to Wonder Woman’s current status and why Hippolyta is angry to the point of sending the Amazonian armies to topple Man’s World1. There is a handy caption box telling the reader to refer to issues 7 and 8 of Wonder Woman, but another panel or two with captions explaining the goings-ons over at Picoult’s book would have been appreciated. There is one violent part near the very beginning I could have done without, but I can see why its inclusion was deemed necessary and overall, I have to say that the first issue of Amazons Attack is much more of a success than I anticipated.
JSA #5 featured less in the way of disembowelings and more things like Batman going fighting nightmare alternate versions of himself and Superman being nice to younger heroes, which is something I always appreciate. I actually felt like just enough was being explained here that I was able to catch up on the gist of things pretty easily, even if I wasn’t quite sure why they were doing what they were doing, just that something was being done and they were doing that thing. To modify my complaint about Amazons Attack: a flashback or recap page at the very beginning wouldn’t have hurt this one bit2. To end this positively, I feel that it should be noted that Fernando Pasarin provided some nice-looking art that was perfect for the material.
1 Capitalized like that, it looks like the name of a gay-friendly theme park. I can picture it now: Cowboy Island, Construction Worker Mountain, the Closeted Actor Pavillion.
2 Yes, I know it’s being written with an eventual collection in mind, but it’d be nice if DC’s editorial could work with the audience a little bit.
Comments Off | Posted: April 30th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
Terror, fear, madness, and destruction strikes the back alleys of a small Southern California town in the latest installment of The Rack. Are you ready to see what evil lurks in the heart of Benjamin Birdie? The answer may surprise you!
Comments Off | Posted: April 27th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
We’re a bit late this Friday, thanks to a blackout. For once, though, it wasn’t one of my bourbon-induced spells of unconsciousness and instead involved Con Ed and our Queens-based office. It was worth the wait, though, I daresay, with a Jerry-centric strip I’m really proud of. Birdie, again, proves he’s worth his weight in gold, if not platinum.
Yes, the defunct Dial B For Blog also did this story. I found out after I’d already done all the heavy lifting here. Read it anyway because it’s fantastic.
Comments Off | Posted: April 26th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
Some people hate George Bush for leading American troops into a war that’s killed hundreds of thousands of innocents. Some people hate Democrats and liberals for thinking that may not have been that good an idea. I hate Jonathan Adams for making me laugh at some of the darker elements of the Iraqi imbroglio with the thinly-veiled allegory of Truth Serum: The Lonely Parade. Unlike, say, Superfuckers (a tiny bit more on that later) and other books that embrace the more surreal aspects of superheroics, the new Truth Serum uses the idiom in combination with an utter banality that’s closer to reality than most fans of the genre would like. Along the way, it creates a comedic tone that hits some of the same spots that Wes Anderson or Todd Solondz manage to tickle. Adams’s deadpan dialogue frequently reduced me to laughter, especially in scenes involving the blackest of relevant humor:
Orifist: Okay, so it turns out that some photos were taken of our people torturing the prisoners and then, somehow, those photos were released to the media.
Ameriman: Yikes. That’s no good. Was I in the photos? I wasn’t, was I?
Orifist: No, why? Were you there?
Ameriman: Nope. Say, what kind of torture exactly?
Orifist: Some electrocution, waterboarding and sodomy. Run-of-the-mill torture. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Ameriman: Alright, now I really need some more good news so I can get back to sleep. Give me something inspiring, with maybe a touch of eroticism to it. Just for fun.
Orifist: What?
Ameriman: C’mon. I said I wanted the bad news cushioned.
Orifish: Um… Well, they successfully remove that tumor from my mom’s breast yesterday.
Ameriman: Close enough.
Originally published on the Dark Horse website, the best analogy for the majority of pages here is something like a New Yorker-style gag panel with extended dialogue. A panel is presented and the dialogue for the scene is offered on opposite page. After a while, the experience is akin to reading a copiously illustrated screenplay that uses the art to actually provide setting and direction. It’s a daring, interesting approach that suits the dialogue-drive comedy very well, especially when combined with Adams’s stark snapshots of seemingly minor moments. I thought the first Truth Serum collection was funny. I’m very close to declaring that the second is brilliant.
This is why I love Superfuckers:
It’s like James Kochalka sees into my everyday life and manages to slide it into the Legion Of Super-Heroes comic I’ve been wanting to read for the last 15 years or so.
No, I’ve never worn pink “man-frills” before. Honest.
Comments Off | Posted: April 25th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
There’s a brand-new Nitroglycerin available on BOOM’s front page as well as in a larger format over on Birdie’s WebComicsNation page. This week’s installment features the lead from Hunter’s Moon, who I’m pretty sure would never appear on a show dedicated to how “fun” comics can be.
You may also want to spend some time ogling the newly-redesigned (by me) BOOM! Studios blog, which is going to offer more than just links to reviews by the time I’m done beating it into utter submission. Check it out, let me know what you think so far.
Comments Off | Posted: April 25th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
Be not afraid when crossing the entryway into your local Magic: The Gathering (We Also Sell Comics) Depot, for the staff of Yavin IV is there to help you out! From Lydia’s raised-eyebrow suggestions to Rick’s unabashed enthusiasm, there’s a staff member that will cater to your interests and needs. Why don’t you swing by The Rack today and check to see what’s on offer?
While we’re on the subject of recommendations: if you’re a bit richer this week than you’d like to be, I give Nick Bertozzi’s The Salon, which came out last week, a hearty one. Funny, thrilling, magical, and so, so pretty – it’s fantastically entertaining throughout and deserves heaps and heaps of praise. (Unless you live in Georgia, of course.)
Comments Off | Posted: April 24th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
Courtesy of our pal RJ White, here’s Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan on CBC in 1968. Fascinating contrasts between these men, not just on their viewpoints but their very demeanor. Mailer explodes in bursts of theatrical bombast while McLuhan maintains his academic demeanor throughout. The latter reminds me of a minister, evangelizing gently.
Semi-related by time period if nothing else: everything you need to know about naturalistic dialogue is contained in The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century and Terkel’s Working. The reissues of his work from W.W. Norton have been outstanding.
Bill Maher reveals some frightening truths in this piece for Salon.com while rallying around “elitism” as a good thing.
I don’t get it: In other fields — outside of government — elite is a good thing, like an elite fighting force. Tiger Woods is an elite golfer. If I need brain surgery, I’d like an elite doctor. But in politics, elite is bad — the elite aren’t down-to-earth and accessible like you and me and President Shit-for-Brains. But when the anti-elite crowd demonizes the elite, what they’re actually doing is embracing incompetence. Now, I know what you’re thinking: That doesn’t sound like our president — ignoring intelligence.
You know how whenever there’s a major Bush administration scandal it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment and you think to yourself, “Where are they getting these screw-ups from?” Well, now we know: from Pat Robertson. I wish I were kidding, but I’m not. Take Monica Goodling, who before she resigned last week because of the U.S. attorneys scandal, was the third most powerful official in the Justice Department of the United States. Thirty-three, and though she had never even worked as a prosecutor, she was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all 95 U.S. attorneys. How do you get to be such a top dog at 33? By acing Harvard, or winning scholarship prizes? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College — home of the “Fighting Christies,” who wait-listed me, the bastards — and then went on to attend Pat Robertson’s law school.
I’ve always ripped my MP3s at 192kbps. “No Compromises!” I would declare when dragging and dropping. Turns out that I may have been wrong. I’ve shaved off 20% of my file size by switching to variable bitrate encoding and I don’t notice a difference, even on my too-expensive Shure headphones.
Speaking of MP3s: I may have actively hated Daft Punk’s last proper album, but this Coachella set from last year is pretty impressive.
Comments Off | Posted: April 24th, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
Is Lois implying that Superman wouldn’t rescue other astronauts if something went wrong?
If this is the case, it would appear that NASA lets Superman’s fickle nature decide who’s going up in space and who isn’t. “Sorry, Neil, but Superman thinks Jimmy Olsen should be the first man to step foot on the moon.”
Amazons Attack #1 - After the debacle that was World War III, I hope that Will Pfeiffer manages to do that silk purse/sow’s ear trick.
God Save The Queen – I actually received a review copy of this last week and have been meaning to give it a bit of a kicking. It’s lovely, of course, with John Bolton painting the hell out of the thing, but Mike Carey’s script is tired and only manages to occasionally rise above just-plain-derivative. Note to Vertigo: you’ve been to that “someone in our world (preferably English) discovers a link to a magical world” well a few too many times. Maybe it’s time to try a crime OGN or something science fiction?
Hawkgirl: The Maw - Oh, I so, so wanted to like this. Really, I did. Shame it was…ok, it was pretty awful. I’m embarrassed that I tried to get people to read it just because Chaykin and Simonson were the auteurs of this atrocity.
IDW Comics
Star Trek Klingons Blood Will Tell #1 English Language Edition Incentive Joe Corroney Variant Cover - Ha.
Star Trek Klingons Blood Will Tell #1 English Language Edition Incentive Joe Corroney Virgin Cover - Ha. Virgin.
Star Trek Klingons Blood Will Tell #1 English Language Edition Regular David Messina Cover – Ha.
Star Trek Klingons Blood Will Tell #1 English Language Edition Regular Photo Cover - Ha.
Star Trek Klingons Blood Will Tell #1 Klingon Language Edition Incentive Red Foil-Stamped Cover - Ha.
Star Trek Klingons Blood Will Tell #1 Klingon Language Edition Regular Cover - Ha.
Marvel
Agents Of Atlas – Yes, it’s $6 more expensive than the original issues, but it features some swell bonus features. Take it away, Marvel Solicitation writers:”…the Agents’ first appearances in stories from Yellow Claw #1 (Jimmy Woo; October 1956), Menace #11 (Human Robot; May 1954), Venus #1 (August 1948), Marvel Mystery Comics #82 (Namora; May 1947), Marvel Boy #1 (December 1950), Men’s Adventures #26 (Gorilla Man; March 1954) and What If? #9 (1950s Avengers; June 1978). Also featuring blogs, creator interviews, character designs and more!” Wow, all this stuff and it’s actually a really freakin’ good Marvel Comicâ„¢, too, using the history of the Marvel Universe to do more than offer cheap continuity porn and providing a real sense of gravitas to the whole shebang. Parker and Kirk did a bang-up job on this one and I’m looking forward to future collaborations between the two.
Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus Vol 1- It’s $62.99 on Amazon.
Punisher War Journal Vol 1: Civil War – I read and enjoyed the first two issues quite a lot, but then opted for the trade. At least I’m giving comics a chance before killing them.
Adhouse
Johnny Hiro #1 – This is a pun I’m getting a little sick of, even if the book looks like a lot of fun. Heroes (ugh, yes, I know I’m supposed to like it) features a Hiro, and Stephenson started used in Snow Crash way, way back in Precambian times. Yes, I’m petty.
BOOM!
Hunters Moon #1 – Written by James White, who managed to fit Ray Charles’s entire life neatly into a two-and-a-half-hour screenplay. Planetary Brigade Origins #3 – More Giffen and DeMatteis haw haw. Tag Cursed #3 – “Zombie, Zombie, zombie-hie-hie.”
City Cyclops
Truth Serum: The Lonely Parade - An all-new graphic novel featuring a return to the mundane, hilarious adventures of costumed heroes and villains that aren’t very good at what they do. Think Seth writing The Avengers and you’re about a third of the way there. You can get an idea of what to expect over at the City Cyclops site.
Tiny Tyrant – If I were six or seven when I first read this, I would haven eaten it up. Trondheim and Parme do a bang-up job telling the mirthful misadventures of a thumb-sized thug that rules with an iron fist. More information and a preview are available here. I promise I won’t alliterate again if you give it a look.
Top Shelf
Micrographica - While I’m not a fan of Renee French’s work per se, I have to admit that each book is worth of a good strong look at the very least.
Super Fuckers #4 - This is the greatest comic ever, at least for this week. Nice to see it back on the shelves after a too-long hiatus.
Comments Off | Posted: April 23rd, 2007 | Filed under:Uncategorized
At The Rack, we have heard the word and the word is WANG. Everybody else has had their say in the silliest comics controversy of 2007, so we decided we’d drag that dead horse over the finish line while beating it a few more times. If you’ve not, for some reason, discovered what the hoo-hah is all about, check out Citizen Steel’s package.
Some people hate George Bush for leading American troops into a war that’s killed hundreds of thousands of innocents. Some people hate Democrats and liberals for thinking that may not have been that good an idea. I hate Jonathan Adams for making me laugh at some of the darker elements of the Iraqi imbroglio with the thinly-veiled allegory of Truth Serum: The Lonely Parade. Unlike, say, Superfuckers (a tiny bit more on that later) and other books that embrace the more surreal aspects of superheroics, the new Truth Serum uses the idiom in combination with an utter banality that’s closer to reality than most fans of the genre would like. Along the way, it creates a comedic tone that hits some of the same spots that Wes Anderson or Todd Solondz manage to tickle. Adams’s deadpan dialogue frequently reduced me to laughter, especially in scenes involving the blackest of relevant humor:
