This is an inside joke.

No Comments | Posted: August 31st, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

Classic Trek Week: Frankly, I like Kirk’s way of dealing with hostile, reptilian aliens more.

No Comments | Posted: August 31st, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

Relentless Self Promotion: The Rack – DELAYED.

No Comments | Posted: August 31st, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

So, it looks like, due to an unfortunate and possibly-deadly cocktail of chain-linked minor catastrophes involving technology, the normally-on-Fridays edition of The Rack is getting pushed back just in time for the Holiday weekend. I’ve been informed by our production staff (hi, Birdie!) that it will most likely be online tomorrow morning, when nobody’s going to be around to check it out. That’s OK – I’ll remind you guys that it exists on Wednesday, when we’ll be back and running at our normal pace after having a long weekend away.

In the meantime, you can take this opportunity to update your browsers so that you’re pointing your internet experience to http://www.therackcomic.com. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post on the site, we’re looking at doing a bit changeover in the near future so that domain’s the new home of the strip.

Classic Trek Week: How Awesome Is Panel 2? (Answer: Very)

No Comments | Posted: August 30th, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

From Marvel’s Star Trek #7.
Art by Mike Nasser with Inks by Klaus Janson.

It’s a difficult trick, getting the…unique nature of Shatner’s delivery across in static art, but Janson’s inks did that very thing several times, across a succession of artists, in a few issues of the original Marvel Star Trek comics series. Sadly, however, the scripts were generally (at best) lackluster, possibly because of the hamstringing nature of the licensing agreement (which stated they could only use concepts and characters as they had appeared in the first movie) and the art soon joined the written end of things. Dave Cockrum would be inked by a relative unknown to disastrous effect, or Gil Kane would show up just for the paycheck, creating barely-recognizable versions of characters before wandering off to have Dan Adkins replace him on the same issue. (However, there is an early Luke McDonnell appearance worked in there, though, and that’s pretty nice.)

Anyway, I can look at just about anything Klaus Janson inks and feel a little joy in my heart. The pupil-dilated, mouth-agape face in the second panel is Kirk in a way that a Greg Land-style photoreferenced version of William Shatner with his mouth open could never be.

Relentless Self-Promotion: The Rack

No Comments | Posted: August 30th, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

There’s some really great sandwich-eating action in the first panel of today’s strip. There’s also some violence and something resembling dark foreboding gloom for everyone’s favorite recently-shorn comics nerd. So, hey, there’s foodporn, action, then drama! All in three little panels! How nice is that?

Some handy pointers.

No Comments | Posted: August 30th, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

Bah.

No Comments | Posted: August 29th, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

DC to Kevin: eat me, fanboy, but only after you get bombarded with rush solicitations.

Sure, there’s a few things in there I’m really excited about: Sgt Rock and Supergirl getting Showcases is a nice thing, and I love World’s Finest quite intensely. However, there’s this bit…

Also, current orders for the following SHOWCASE PRESENTS titles are cancelled. These titles will be resolicited at a later date:

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: CAPTAIN CARROT VOL. 1 (JUN070217)
SHOWCASE PRESENTS: THE GREAT DISASTER FEATURING THE ATOMIC KNIGHTS AND HERCULES VOL. 1 (JUL070210).
SHOWCASE PRESENTS: THE SUICIDE SQUAD VOL. 1 (AUG070283)
SHOWCASE PRESENTS: SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPER VILLAINS VOL. 1 TP (AUG070284)
SHOWCASE PRESENTS: JONAH HEX VOL. 2 (SEP070223)

The real reason I love these books is the ease with which I get my hands on more obscure material. Seeing it get pushed back for whatever reason is kind of annoying, especially if I’ve pre-ordered it already and maybe even had DCBService take my money. Bah. I’m sure they’ll sort it out, but still…

Classic Trek Week: The Gold Key version – Spock’s a dick. So’s Scotty.

No Comments | Posted: August 29th, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

None of the Gold Key Star Trek comics are any damn good, but I enjoy them for their sheer lunacy anyway. If you’ve got an hour or so to kill, you should go check out this site devoted to the off-model series. Lots of panels, covers, and commentary on the badly-executed run.

Relentless Self-Promotion: The Rack has staff picks!

No Comments | Posted: August 29th, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

This Wednesday may not seem lean compared to many recent new comics days, but the staff at Yavin IV is glad to provide you with 15 different suggestions, where you’re sure to find something worth your time. (I particularly like how Lydia refers to a certain creator by his first name, something I’m fairly certain she despises when “fans” do it.)

At least I have some Best Buy gift cards to use on her replacement, Motherboxxx.

No Comments | Posted: August 28th, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

If you’d like, you can mourn with me by listening to “Numb” by Pet Shop Boys. (Yes, I put “Integral” on the iPod’s screen, but that’s because it’s my favorite song.)

Classic Trek Week: From Who’s Who In Star Trek

No Comments | Posted: August 28th, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

Happy Birthday, Jack.

No Comments | Posted: August 28th, 2007 | Filed under: Uncategorized

Please Note: This is the third year running I’ve reprinted this thing. I now find the fifth paragraph a bit amusing, since the last year has seen two deluxe hardcover reprints of Kirby’s Marvel work from the 70s, as well as the final Captain America trade paperback covering his work from that period.

Today, as you probably don’t know unless you care about this sort of thing, is Jack Kirby’s birthday. He would have been 90. It’s easy enough to get the basic biographic details, along with some great resources as far as his bibliography, so instead I’m going to tell you all what Jack means in regards to my perception of the medium. To be brief, it’s as simple as ‘comics=Jack Kirby’ in my mind. Yes, there’s many, many other excellent creators with long and storied careers, but I simply can’t imagine comics without Kirby at Marvel and DC.

The matter of who created what in the early Marvel Universe is, of course, up for a lot of debate. Kirby’s own stories varied wildly from having decided to save the company after walking in on Stan Lee crying over the fact that bankruptcy was looming to just accepting the Fantastic Four job as he would with any other western or monster or science fiction story Stan cranked out and not knowing or really caring about the script as long as the check didn’t bounce. Here’s what is a cold, hard fact, though: without Kirby, we probably would not have had the same Fantastic Four comic that captured so many young hearts and helped make superheroes cool again.

As Stan found himself busier and busier with his myriad responsibilities as editor-in-chief, huckster, and writer, the burden fell on Jack’s shoulders (which already bore the weight of a full two-thirds of the company’s artistic output) to create more and more from plots that were less and less defined, and create is exactly what he did. The Negative Zone! The Inhumans! Galactus! The Silver Surfer! Annihilus! All of these now long-standing characters and ideas came out of his imagination in a remarkably short amout of time in a single title, and mark the beginning of his most fertile period as a creator. His individual Marvel creations grew much larger than life and his art changed to reflect these concepts and the powers they contained, becoming more minimal while still imparting a sense of scale and urgency to the reader.

It’s this near-constant sense of panic and clear depiction of action that defines the idea of what a superhero comic’s art should be for me. After departing Marvel for DC’s promises of complete control, Jack’s storytelling in both scripts and art became more and more epic, showing the boundaries of comics at the time by slamming against them and knocking them a few inches out of place. Only a few of the most ambitious of Kirby’s Marvel creations would have fit well into his DC work. Long gone were the petty concerns of Johnny Storm, wondering if his hot rod was going to win the big race next weekend and in their place was a New God’s realization that his father was a Space Hitler that made Odin look positively pacifistic. Making sure that we beat the Russians in space seems like a quilting bee compared to a mohawked soldier pumelling his way through a horde of enemies in the World Of Tomorrow.

Even after his DC titles were all canceled and he came back to Marvel in the mid-70s, his creative impulses were still slanted towards the grandiose. It seemed that Kirby wanted to know why, in his absence Captain America duked it out with second-rate villains when he could and should take on a high-level conspiracy armed with something called “Madbomb?” For whatever reason, a lot of the work from this material is derided by the fans, but I find myself captivated by his ambition: turning 2001 into a psychedelic showcase and remixing Chariots Of The Gods to create The Eternals. Sadly, he didn’t quite fit into the Marvel of the time, where Steves Englehart and Gerber were leading a new direction that, while insanely creative, was much more self-aware and sardonic compared the earnest nature of Kirby’s work.

It’s after this second departure from the house he helped build that Jack’s career fell into an irrecoverable retrograde. He tried publishing a few books that never got off the ground wih several companies and even came back to DC to wrap up his own New Gods saga as well as draw the (frankly, mind-numbing) Super-Powers tie-in comic along with a few pinups and occasional stories, but it was never the same for him.

Looking back, though, that decade-and-a half that bridged the Silver and Bronze Ages, when Jack was creating the new each and every month makes a lot of what’s happening in mainstream superhero comics seem positively dull. Outside of Grant Morrison, I can’t think of a single writer working at DC or Marvel that is intent on creation instead of maintenance, much like the Silver Age Superman stories that would occasionally excel, but most of the time seemed to be a matter of station-holding for the readers and characters.

Some would argue (just as I have, on occasion) that these companies are filling a need: to exploit pre-rendered universes to tell stories that the readers who like said universes will buy. There are some excellent writers who are very good at doing exactly that, but I’m missing Jack more than usual lately, and it’s not out of nostalgia. Do I want to read comics stories featuring people aping Kirby’s more easily utilized tropes? No. I want people to take the lessons that each page of his best work can give and apply them in unique ways. It’s the best way to pay tribute to The King.

Yes, I just ignored the cheesy drag-racing bit.