Insult to Injury

Short And To The Pointless

2004-08-31T15:19:00.000+01:00

Love & Rockets (vol 2) #10-11, by Gilbert, Jamie, and Mario Hernandez

Y'know, as much as I love this comic, I find it hard to process in such small installments. Sure, I can marvel at the storytelling, art, and humour involved, and I can even dig on the visceral emotional kick that some of these chapters deliver, but for me the stories that these guys tell only really come into focus when read as a whole. Don't get me wrong -- reading this book in single issue form is still really good fun for me, but it's not until I re-read them all later that I really get what's going on here.

Astonishing X-Men #1-4, by Joss Whedon, John Cassaday, and others

This is, in some ways, a very comfortable comic book. The spandex costumes are back, the writing is straightforward and soapy, and issue #4 sees a well-loved character return from the dead, but while all of this could suck horribly, things are working out pretty well so far.

Whedon has spent four issues building up his "mutant cure" plot at a steady, but still exciting, pace, and seems to be having a great time drawing all of the humour and conflict he can out of these characters. Rather satisfyingly, he's picked up pretty much where Grant Morrison left off with Beast, Cyclops, and Emma Frost (three of the characters who Morrison had the best handle on), and the arc he's setting up for Kitty Pride looks pretty interesting too.

Sharp as Cassiday's artwork is, I think I prefer him when he's working on slightly grander material than this, but he still brings a suitible amount of drama to proceedings without going way over the score, so yeah, this is good stuff.

Sleeper (season 2) #1-3, by Ed Brubaker, Sean Philips, and others

Jesus christ this book is bleak. Every month I wonder how Brubaker and Philips are going to move the plot forward, and every month they surprise me by putting Holden Carver in a position even more morally precarious than the last one. Philips' art is a think of monumental beauty here -- the noirish world of super-powered espionage that he depicts is truly oppressive. Just as in Burbaker's narrative there are no clear sides for Carver to take; no easy ways for him to get out of his position as exposed double-agent. If the evident pleasure that I take in this set-up sounds sadistic then it shouldn't -- the reason I come back to this book month after month is in the hope of seeing some sort of light here, even though I know I probably wont. In the end, though, this conflict between hope and the constant deepening of the mess Carver's in is hugely compelling, and Philips' unusual panel arrangements emphasise this fantastically, pushing your eye all over the place without ever once losing focus, and giving the impression of a world at once chaotic and controlled in the process.

Street Angel #1-2, by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca

Ninjas, pirates, time travel -- this comic's got it all, really. It's about a homeless teenage girl who, like, kicks a lot of ass or something, and it's basically one big ball of violent, childish play that's written with a sort of lunatic wit and drawn in a style that is reminiscent of various alternative comic book artists without being derivative of any one of them in particular. In fact, now that I think about it, reading the first two issues of this comic was kinda like reading the last two issues of Love & Rockets but without the sense that there was more to it than the surface rush. This shouldn't be read as a crticism of Street Angel though -- it's a good pop comic, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

That's it for now, but I might do short reviews of a couple of other comics later in the week if the mood takes me. Take care out there!

We3 #1, by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, and others

2004-08-29T18:45:00.000+01:00

Perspective -- that's what it's all about.

As both Marc Singer and Kieron Gillen have noted, and as is surely obvious to anyone with a functional set of eyeballs, this is one formally exciting comic book. Phrasing it that way makes it sound really dry though, and gives entirely the wrong impression -- as Kieron has already commented, We3 is a very physical comic book, and its formal trickiness is an un-ignorable part of its visceral appeal.

On a story level it's definitely one of Morrison's simpler works: it's about three animals ( a dog, a cat, and rabbit) who have been turned into armour-plated killing machines. When the small-scale government project responsible for their modification is spotlighted for further development, the decision is made to dispose of these prototypes (that'd be our furry friends, by the way) in order to pave the way for a new generation of biorgs that have been bred for the job. The scientist who is closest to the creatures sets into motion a chain of events that allows the animals to escape and... That's it so far. As story ideas go, this may sound pretty silly and predictable, but believe me when I say that the execution really sells the plot this time round.

Quitely and Morrison stretch themselves here, using a wide variety of different points of view to stunning effect. At the start of the issue you're clipping along at the heals of the man the animals are sent in to kill, stalking him out until the brutal pay-off; later on you're given an info-dump by a group of humans whose faces are kept off-panel for a ridiculous amount of time, a technique that makes it emphasis how distant they are from the POV that is central to this comic -- that of the animals themselves. And as for the information-overload that ensues when the eighteen-panel grid comes into play -- Kieron's analysis of the overpowering build-up and release that takes place here is dead on, but if you're interested in looking at exactly what's going on in this section on a literal level then this Barbelith thread is definitely worth your time.

By far the weirdest section of the book is the last scene, wherein the animals discuss what they're going to do with their freedom. What -- I hadn't mentioned that the animals talk yet? Well they do. And in a garbled sort of text-speak too!

"I.M. GUD. R. U. GUD 2?"

When we first see the animals talk, it is in the middle of the aforementioned info-dump. This scene has a strange sort of horror-movie atmosphere to it -- both the reader and the senator are seeing these animal-weapons for the first time, and there's a wrongness to the visual and verbal onslaught that ensues that is hugely disconcerting (it's also impressive that Quitely can so completely convey the shock of the senator character without once showing us his face -- truly he is a master of human body language).

When we see the animal characters talking to each other outside of this context at the end of the book, their respective characters (hinted at during the previous scene) start to come to the fore more clearly and the fact that their perspective is the one that we have been allowed closest to in this comic becomes even clearer than it had been before. This is interesting, as while these aren't normal animals, they don't act human either so the reader is left in the odd position of being both emotionally engaged in their position and yet slightly disconnected from it, something that their strange dialogue foregrounds nicely -- it's kinda alien, but the meaning gets through. I mean, it doesn't get much clearer than "WE3 NO HOME NOW", does it?

When I said that this comic book was all about perspective, this is what I was talking about. Just as Quitely's virtuoso artwork pushes the reader into all manner of strange places, Morrison's simple story makes us consider things from an unfamiliar angle. To the people behind the We3 project, using animals as weapons is a fairly sensible move. It'd cut down on human casualties, for one thing. From the point of view of the people who these animal weapons are used against this doesn't exactly make things any better, but it doesn't look like this book is going to explore this line of reasoning too heavily, except in that those who made the weapons are now going to have to stop them. As I've already mentioned, you're put more in the position of the animal characters than the human ones here, which means that we're forced to consider how all of this affects them far more than almost anyone involved in the project seems to have done. As David Fiore has pointed out, the fact that these animals can both speak and question the language they use does a lot to make it easier for us to understand the actions and conflicts of these creatures and map them back onto the human world without sentimentalizing them too much -- in fact, it's this effect that makes the scenes where the animals speak so unsetteling, and I think this is important here.

There is one human character in the book who shows some concern for the animals -- a certain Dr Roseane Berry who comes out with what I would consider to be the comic's most humane line of dialogue. But for all that Berry provides the closest thing we get to a human link to the animal characters in issue #1, there's something slightly unnerving about her attitude: "Kill me. I deserve it." she says to herself when the animals are making their bid for freedom, underlining both her complicity in the process and the massive amount of self-loathing that this causes her. Sure, she provides us with a sympathetic and understandable view on things, but she's too much of a part of this project for us to be entirely comfortable in her shoes.

We3 #1 is a set-up issue, but it's a damned good one, and I can't wait to see where the series goes from here. I'm going to have to though, because the next issue comes out in late October -- argh!! But in the end the delay doesn't matter -- We3 is a beautiful, beautiful comic book, and one that kicks you right in the gut without ever sacrificing its intelligence to do so. Read it and weep.

"1/2-An-Animal-On-A-Stick..."

2004-07-23T12:43:00.000+01:00

First thoughts on Seaguy 1-3, as originally posted on this Barbelith thread [*SPOILERS*]:

Man did I ever love this series!

I noticed that some folk (not so much on Barbelith as on the internet in general) seem to have found issue's #2 and #3 of Seaguy completely incomprehensible or something. I don't get it -- the whole series seemed pretty straightforward to me (in a completely insane sort of way). It's very tight too -- the way that the ending of issue #3 brings things almost entirely full-circle is chilling! But as Flyboy has already pointed out, everything's not quite how it used to be, and that's important.

The artwork was perfect throughout -- the "comfort zone" that Seaguy and co live in is shiny and fun looking, but is still very evidently sinister, something that Cameron (with no small amount of help from colourist Peter Doherty) always keeps firmly in the foreground. And when we get into the high adventure stuff in issue #2, it looks every bit as thrilling and bizarre as it should, but there are costs to be payed for this sort of adventure, and the more melancholy/creepy elements of these parts of the stories come through brilliantly here as well.
I think that was what I really liked about this series: Seaguy is just a naive guy who wants to go have some sort of adventure, and who can blame him? The world he lives in is a deeply flawed consumer society, but the critique of this world that is made in the comic is all the stronger because Seaguy's dissatisfaction isn't sneery or condescending. He's into his escapist thrills like everyone else -- it's just that his taste in escapism is somewhat more overblown than most folks'. Furthermore, as has been mentioned in discussions of issue #1, Seaguy ends up on this particular adventure against the current world order because of his status as a consumer of Xoo, not in spite of it. As of the end of issue #3, the Xoo-creature is still free, and is currently roaming the world as a "living pirate foodstuff." Dare I suggest that we will see more of this creature in the later volumes? Since in issue #2 the Xoo-creature seemed to recognise and not want to hurt Seaguy and Chubby, I can only hope so!

Another thing I like is the focus on ancient civilizations with weird technology (artificial wasps that can extract oil from pollen, jackal-men who can extract "heavy air" from dung). There's a definite sense of wanting to re-discover all of this crazy stuff, but at the same time these places aren't wholly depicted in a positive light. The Pharaoh in issue #3 may have achieved something wonderfully barmy (the moon is his burial home for fuck's sake!), but he did so out of rediculous vanity, and drained his people dry/blew them the fuck up in the process. Similarly, for all the thrills that he may have achieved while climbing Mount Poseidon, the Wasps of Atlantis still cost Seaguy his best friend's life.

"Xoo is multi-purpose. Xoo is low cost. Xoo makes people happy. And what's so wrong with happy?"

So says the scary suit in issue #2, and while there's certainly nothing wrong with happy, there is something very wrong going on in this world. What about the children that were being carted away in issue #1? And that's just for starters -- there's a whole lot of unhappiness here! This is another of the thematic points that I really like in this series: the idea that in defeating Anti-Dad the heroes had defeated evil seems to me to be analogous with the idea of fighting a sucessful war against terror. Evil cannot be vanquished in a big heroic fight; people will still want to nasty stuff after the dust has settled. This is a part of human nature, and to ignore this fact is folly.

The ending of issue #3 is, I think, the most upsetting and sucessful part of the book so far. The scenes that show Seaguy and Doc Hero being reprogrammed are suitably nasty and inventive, and as for Lucky El Loro... I hate the feathery little bastard, but this is surely the point: he matches the same formula as Chubby (talking animal with a silly name and accent), but somehow completley lacks the charm of that character.

All said, the last page is probably my favourite one -- the Eye Moon and "No Xoo Today"/"Sold Out" signs, as well as the prescence of Lucky, make that little wink Seaguy gives all the more unsettling. He thinks he's playing a game where nothing's at stake, but as we know all too well, he's very, very wrong. Of course, that wink could mean the exact opposite, i.e. that he is perfectly aware of what's going on here and is just hiding it very well, but while I like this hint of ambiguity, I'm afraid to say my gut instinct is that he thinks he's in on the joke when he really isn't.

Good god, this post is getting out of hand. Anyway, suffice it to say that this rocked me more than any Morrison project since... I dunno, either Kill Your Boyfriend or Flex Mentallo, and that I am eager for more. I want to see this world fleshed out more; I want to learn what's going on with Seadog in greater detail; I want to see Seaguy remember Chubby. Mission accomplished, guys -- I'm hooked!

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

2004-07-20T15:35:00.000+01:00

Jack Fear nails why the idea of Jack Black playing the Green Lantern actually works for me:

"Jack Black as Hal Jordan is fucking genius casting. Think on it: the whole thing about Green Lantern is that he's fearless, and his power derives from his iron will. Jack Black's entire comic persona is based around his utter self-confidence, his absolute conviction and focus. The part might've been created with him in mind."

The fact that School of Rock was one of the best daft comedies I've seen in the last few years means that I'm feeling very generous towards Black these days, and right now I'm fairly sure that a good Jack Black Green Lantern movie would kick the ass right off of most "serious" superhero movies.

Everything Reminds Me Of Something Else

2004-07-17T17:13:00.000+01:00

Hey guys -- howsit going out there?

Sorry this place has been so inactive for the last month or so, but I've been trying to cut down my internet time of late. Not very successfully, mind, but I have been trying, and this place has suffered as a result.

Anyway, moving swiftly on, anyone who wants to see quite how bad my grammar and spelling can get should check out my flailing attempts to talk about Grant Morrison and Chris Weston's comic book series The Filth over on this Barbelith thread. It ain't pretty, but I think it is fairly rich in terms of how many good starting points for discussions there are in there. Whenever I finally get around to writing a big piece on The Filth, I'll be sure to consult this thread for ideas.

Meanwhile, those of you who find yourselves draw to discussions of Spider-Man 2 could also check out the rambling geek-boy post I just wrote about it over on Cakes & Money 2.0. It's fun, in a gibbering sort of way!

In the time between this post and my last one, a copy of Eightball #23 has made its way into my possession, and you can be damn sure that this comic is right at the top of my "comics to give a thorough write-up" pile.

I've always been fascinated by the way that Dan Clowes can build up a story from little fragments. Ghost World is one of the most cutting and affecting portraits of post high-school friendship that I have ever encountered, and yet it's essentially made up of nothing more than a series of snapshots strung together (something that is, I suppose, true of all narratives, but you know what I mean -- Ghost World is a fairly extreme case). Eightball #22, the Icehaven issue, took this approach even further, running one overarching plot through a series of short comic strips that depicted the lives of various people who inhabitted the small town of the comic's title.

Eightball #23, The Death Ray, develops the various narrative techniques Clowes used in both of those comics, but does so in a way that is far darker and stranger than I had expected. I wouldn't instantly have chosen the same language as he did, but Sean Collins is no fool for pointing out that for all its superheroic garb this is a story about a serial killer. As Sean points out, this narrative is very much directed by Andy himself, and the way that so much is pushed off-panel here (dialogue, events, characters, etc) is a telling and disquietening insight into his character that I feel I have yet to fully unravel. Like its predecessor, this is a comic that will most certainly reward multiple re-readings, and I look forward to this process hugely.

More later!

Because You Demanded It!

2004-06-24T15:40:00.000+01:00

So... Seaguy #2, by Grant Morrison, Cameron Stewart and others -- I've already written a little bit about quite how much this issue tickled me over on the Barbelith comics forum, but I think it's about time I gave it a slightly more cohesive write-up, don't you?

Reading, as it does, like a "how to" lesson in inspired gibberish, this issue of Seaguy seems to have thrown a couple of people who enjoyed the first one. For me, however, it flows perfectly: Seaguy #1 was a melancholic examination of the nastier elements of the brightly coloured comfort in which Seaguy and co exist in New Venice, while issue #2 is all about the reality of the sort of adventure that our hero so desired in the previous issue. "Whoever heard of an adventure ending like this?" asks our man at one point, but he'd be well advised to remember that this adventure isn't over yet!

As with issue #1, it's Cameron Stewart's art that really sells the madness of this story; he makes the dreamlike silliness of Morrison's script look immediate and vital while never failing to convey the more complex ideas that run through it. This issue flips back and forth between "This is the life" style high adventure and something far darker and more upsetting, and Stewart is more than up to the task; witness how creepy he makes the scene on the Xoo Industries ship, or how well he conveys Seaguy's heartbreak at the end of the issue. Oh, we all saw it coming, but that just makes the fact that it's so affecting even more impressive.

That I've been utterly thrilled with this series wont come as any surprise to regular readers, but it's true; I'm loving this bizarro mix of randomness, wit and heart more than pretty much anything else right now. So... Who else is hoping that Seaguy is succesful enough to warrent another two mini-series? I know I am!

More JCD

2004-06-14T14:25:00.000+01:00

ADD reviews John Cei Douglas' Sleeping Beauty.

Sleeping Beauty -- A Conversation With John Cei Douglas

2004-06-13T12:01:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago I interviewed cartoonist John Cei Douglas about his wonderful self-published comic book Sleeping Beauty. Those of you with a good instinct for finding free comic books may remember that Sleeping Beauty was briefly available on Fluxblog earlier this year. You may also remember the short, but positive, write-up I gave it at the time. Since then I've came into possession of a printed copy of John's comic book, and what can I say -- it looks even better when in the printed format!

Sleeping Beauty is currently available at Page 45, Smallzone, and Quimbys, and I highly recommend that you check it out.

John's first comic, Feel The Fear... And Go Back To Bed is available online here. Sleeping Beauty, is much better than that though -- Feel The Fear... has amazing moments, but its fragmented origin shows in the finished product, whereas Sleeping Beauty is gorgeous from start to finish. It's a two-way act of memory, a series of snapshots from both sides of a romance that may or may not be over. I love it, and was well chuffed to be able to talk to the man behind it.

Insult to Injury:
So, what we're mostly going to talk about today is your most recent comic, Sleeping Beauty, but before we start up on that, I'd like to talk a bit about the comic you made before this one, Feel The Fear And Go Back To Bed, which is viewable online thanks at the wonderful Queer Granny website. First up, would you like to try and describe what Feel The Fear is about, and how it came into being?

John Cei Douglas:
It's quite odd, really, how it came in to being. I was sort of lounging about in some sort of stasis after college, and I had done nothing except claim to myself that I would be an illustrator. I hadn't really done much to prove that to anyone... anyway, I'd done a lot of the drawings and bits and pieces that made up Feel the Fear when I visited a publisher in London who seemed interested in my pictures.

They suggested I put together a rough draft of a book type project I was trying to describe to them, and I came home and got right to work on it. And that's when most of the comic-type sections and prose came about - most of the rest I'd already done. I think this is when I started realizing how interested I was in actually trying to do comics.

In terms of what it's about - it mostly relates to me trying to get out of that state of mind and do something. It's about being positive, really. And possibly a little self obsessed. But it feels like something I had to do to move on to other things, if that makes sense.

I2I:
It's very much got that sort of feel to it. One thing I like is that the title is a very tongue-in-cheek sort of piss-take of that whole self-help thing. I take it that was intentional, and I like how it plays into the whole attempt to find positivity in a sort self-deprecating way.

JCD:
I'm glad it worked that way for you! I was always worried it was a little obvious and straight. I think the humour is there to balance it out, really. I think it's something to do with being very self-aware - as in you can be feeling this way, depressed and whatnot, but you're completely aware of how absurd it is to be feeling that way.

I2I:
Yeah, definitely -- I mean... everyone feels really depressed sometimes, so it's not a worthless area to explore, but I think most people are also pretty aware of how weird and dramatic all of these feelings are, and I think that you do capture some of that in Feel The Fear. You've said it was probably something you had to do to move on so I guess I'm interested to find out how you feel about the piece, looking back on it now?

JCD:
Mainly, it's embarrassing! For me to look at, anyway. Which seems only right, whenever something has been finished for a good while I think it's job is to annoy you and make you want to do better... I still think it's something I had to do, but structurally, and art-wise, I find it a little hard to stomach. Sometimes I surprise myself looking back, like "Wow, I really do lay myself on the line."

I2I:
It's pretty impressive on that front. But while there's certainly a lot to like about Feel The Fear, Sleeping Beauty is definitely a big step-up in terms of quality. That said, Feel the Fear does contain a lot of the elements that I really liked in Sleeping Beauty; the soft, rounded feel of your linework in both comics is, to me at least, really effective in both comics.

Moving on a bit, in Sleeping Beauty you put all these little coded relationship moments together and... I dunno, I still found it all very understandable. Was that something you were trying to get across?

JCD:
Yeah, it was always supposed to be understandable, in the sense that you're looking into a relationship, or whatever. I love all that stuff - how people talk to each other in these situations, the little ways they have with each other. I thought it was pretty important to try and show that accurately. I like to think of it in the sense of the dialogue they have in [British TV show] Spaced or something like that. They have their own jokes, and specific words they use, but you're still in on it - that's how I'd like it to be!

I2I:
That's cool, and yeah, that definitely comes across in some of the scenes in Sleeping Beauty. I'd say that the one thing that really separates the two pieces (Sleeping Beauty and Feel The Fear) is the... completeness that Sleeping Beauty has to it, as a story. I think its strength lies in the way you create this sort of... I've been describing it to people as a "two-way act of memory", you know? It's not too linear, there's a bit of ambiguity to it, and this seems to me to be a very deliberate and important part of the piece.

JCD:
Hey, that's a good description! I like that a lot. It was all pretty deliberate, but it's interesting how that happened. It started off as a totally linear type of story.

I2I:
How did it evolve into the final, less straightforward, version?

JCD:
Well, at first, this project only began because I wanted to draw the picture that's on the cover. I totally stole that from a photo (you can probably tell by how it looks in comparison to the rest of the art in the comic, but anyway).

I'd just quit my full time data entry job, strangely just after I'd read Summer Blonde [a collection of cartoonist Adrian Tomine's Optic Nerve comics], and was full of "Wow, I really have to do something again!" because it had been so long. And in drawing the cover, I was planning out this totally Tomine-esque story.

I2I:
Right. A small-scale relationship drama. At what point in the process did you realize that it would work better in its current form?

JCD:
Well, that's debatable! But the other goal was to produce something short and complete, and also easy to print (ie. not Feel the Fear). Oh, and it was also an experiment in seeing if I could draw a whole "proper" comic. But yeah, as I got more in to the story, and it got stuck with the title "Sleeping Beauty", I really wanted to explore certain themes more, that I relate to love and relationships. This whole sort of dreamy sense of being with someone.

I2I:
As I said, it's definitely a much more whole read than Feel The Fear, so on that front I think you definitely succeeded in creating a "proper" comic. It's good that you brought the photo up, by the way, because I really like to think of the comic as being a sort of series of mental snapshots from two sides of a relationship. That's one of the things I like about it -- the fact that you get both perspectives at once.

And I was thinking... there are a lot of moments in the comic where you slow it all down, and you've got, like, one or two panels on a big, white empty page. To me, this kinda reinforced the "snapshot" feel. Was that at all deliberate?

JCD:
Um, yes... and no.

I2I:
Hah!

JCD:
It was more a lucky coincidence, as I needed to fill the comic out and I'd got Chester Brown's "I never liked you", at Christmas - although I hadn't read it yet. I had flicked through. Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more I like the idea of reinforcing these little moments, so I just popped it in. I was worried everybody would call me on my rip-off techniques.

You know, I never thought about the snapshots thing while I was working on it, and I really like it. I think this is the most successful thing about the ambiguity of the story - and the fact I thought about it in lots of ways it could be (like once I decided the two characters could have been asleep for the whole comic) - it's pleasing to hear different theories and thoughts on what happened.

I2I:
Your panel rhythm varies slightly more than Brown's, I think. I mean, he's a master of that form, but you use a couple of different techniques in Sleeping Beauty, so I wouldn't worry about it too much!

JCD:
That's ok, I plan to rip him off more fully in the future!

I2I:
Well, if you're going to rip someone off, at least you've got the good sense to rip off someone good! This seems as good a point as any to bring up the question of influences, both from within the comic book field, and from outside of it. There are little references to Adaptation, Eightball #22, and the Royal Tenenbaums in Sleeping Beauty, and there's the Malkmus lyric at the start, so I guess this is the sort of stuff that gets you fired up, yeah?

JCD:
Yes, yes it is. And you caught them all! I wasn't sure if anybody had noticed all of them.

I2I:
You've not read Jeffrey Brown's Clumsy, have you? I ask cos it seems to me to be a good comparison in terms of tone for people who've never read your work, and because... I think there are further similarities, in terms of both works being little acts of memory (boy do I ever love that phrase!) in comic book form.

JCD:
No, I still haven't read that. I got Be a Man [Brown's own comedic reworking of Clumsy], though, and that was hilarious! Jeffrey was also kind enough to answer my e-mails, plus read my comic, so I really should get that comic. I'm awful with comics, I don't really read that many. You could probably count the indie comics I own on your hands...

I2I:
That's interesting. I think you'd like Clumsy a lot, by the way, and yeah -- Be A Man is awesome! I can see bits of a couple of different indie comic artists in your art style and subject matter, but the way you execute the story in Sleeping Beauty is quite different to anything else I can think of at the moment, within the world of alt-comics at least.

It's quite like a song or a memory or something, which is pretty fitting!

JCD:
Thanks, it's really good to have gotten so much positive feedback! I decided it was like a song once, too, but then I realized I'd worked on it for so long that it had to be a concept album instead.

I2I:
Ok, one more question John -- when are you gonna do another comic?

JCD:
As soon as I can! Probably at the end of the year, at this rate. I'm working right now, and try as I do, I can't get in to doing it now. I need to focus all my attention on it. Then I'm going traveling for a while, and then I'm off to Uni to study illustration. I'm planning all the time, though. Currently I have around 10 comics lined up, and I'm pretty excited about doing all of them.

Some of them continue my "experimenting" as it were, until I feel ready enough to do justice to my bigger, more ambitious ideas.

I2I:
Good stuff -- I look forward to reading whatever you come up with next!

JCD:
Thanks!

"We're not going to war with you this time. No guns, no bodies. This is nothing you'd understand."

2004-06-11T22:07:00.000+01:00

I've been re-reading Grant Morrison's messy, messy comic book series the Invisibles this week, and it's interesting, because much as I love its tangled, fascinating cosmology*, it's becomming clear to me that so much of the book's appeal the first time I read it was in the little romantic moments where the characters sit around talking about how they want to change the world, or about whatever weird experiences they've had. There are better Grant Morrison comics, but... I still have a big place in my heart for the Invisibles, probably because I read it at just the right time in my life. It tuned into a lot of what I was feeling at the time -- that sense of almost infinite possibility coupled with a blooming understanding of the complexity of the world that hit me towards the end of high school -- and even reading it today, fully aware of its faults and strengths as a series, I still get a bit of that feeling off of it. The world still seems just as, big, frightening, and full of potential as it always has. "Who's for a knees up?"

*Does anyone else remember when I wrote about the Invisibles as abstract-prop? I should get back to that idea sometime!

Sequestro Express

2004-06-11T19:32:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I just love comics to bits, y'know? Sometimes I read something that reminds me why I bothered getting so heavily into this medium. Seaguy #1 gave me that rush, as did the last issue of Adrian Tomine's Optic Nerve.

The latest issue of Jessica Abel's La Perdida has reminded me not only why I love comics, but also why I was so damned excited about this series in the first place -- it's great stuff! Here's a slightly tidier version of what I said about the book last time I wrote about it:

When I first thought about La Perdida I wanted to use the word "raw" to describe it, but it quickly occurred to me that this was entirely the wrong word with which to describe any aspect of this particular comic. Rawness denotes a certain lack of thought and craft, a certain spontaneous quality that really isn't present here. When I thought about it a bit more, I realised that the word I was looking for was "evocative". This is a very evocative comic book, putting the reader very much with the character of Carla as she relates to us her experiences of moving to Mexico.

The artwork here reminds me of Dylan Horrocks in some ways (or perhaps David Lapham, though I'll admit that this comparison is somewhat stretched); there's certainly a similarity there in terms of how robust the artwork is and also in the very specific, paired down set of facial expressions and body gestures that both artists use. This may sound limited, but it's not - both Horrocks and Abel are incredibly effective in their communication of human body language, but are good enough to be economic with it. There's a certain quality to the linework and shading here that brilliantly conveys a sense of environment and experience - these pages don't look smudgy, or scratchy, but there's a liveliness to them that really conveys a great sense of being there. My favourite example of this so far comes on page 21 of the third issue; there's a big panel there that takes up more than half of the page, and shows the city as Carla sees it while she's at a party. It's really minimal in a lot of ways, just a wonderfully realised collection of white scratches and blobs on a big, inky landscape, but it's just so..."gorgeous and endless" to steal a turn of phrase from the accompanying caption. It suggests so much life and vibrancy, as does everything else in this comic.

The writing is well observed and engaging throughout - this is slice of life stuff, but that doesn't mean that it is in any way unexciting (just check out the ominous note that the fourth, and most recent, issue ends on). Characters weave in and out of Carla's story -- her ex-boyfriend Harry, her younger brother Rod (a skater who is currently making big money off the internet), her friend Memo, her boyfriend Oscar etc -- all of whom seem fully formed and interesting. You get a good sense of who everyone is here and there's a loose but mesmerising rhythm to this comic book -- it's both relaxed and dramatic at once, and I like that combination.

But all this talk of "experiencing" what the character of Carla experiences misses the fact that there is also a sharp, unflinching examination of Carla's experiences at work in these pages. There's a lot of intelligent thought about what it means to be an American who chooses to live in Mexico here, and also a little bit of neat commentary about figures such as Frida Kahlo and William Burroughs who people associate with the country in one way or another. The great thing about this aspect of La Perdida is how organic it feels; nothing seems heavy-handed or tacked-on as there's always a character-based context for it. La Perdida is both well crafted enough to intoxicate the reader and smart enough to not overly romanticise any of the events it depicts or shy away from showing the good and bad of the decisions and motives of Carla and the other characters.

I don't really feel that I'm doing this book justice but trust me when I say that it is a very smart, wonderfully drawn comic book that works as both a vivid encapsulation of a very personal experience and a sharp examination of this experience simultaneously, and that it is generally brilliant.

"But What Did Police Learn From The Ransom Note?"

2004-06-11T18:50:00.000+01:00

Marc Singer's list of what he considers to be the best comics of the last century is well worth a read, as is the excellent comments thread, wherein several interesting suggestions are discussed. While my list would obviously be very different from Marc's, I can't find much to quibble with in there, and his reasons for what he didn't put in are pretty damned solid too.

That said, I do disagree with what Marc says about the work of Daniel Clowes in the aforementioned comments discussion.

Says Marc (in response to questions as to why none of Clowes work was on the list):

"Why Clowes? I mean, I'm well aware that he's routinely cited as a comics genius, but hearing one more citation doesn't really change my opinion of his arid work: unremarkable character-based "nongenre" fiction, distinguished only because its genre, highly respected in literary circles, was at one point fairly uncommon in comics. But it's not great or remarkable writing in and of itself."

I wont pretend that I'm going to convince anyone who isn't already a fan that Clowes is the best thing ever, and to be honest with you I wouldn't really want to, but it's been a while since I wrote about his work, and this seems as good an excuse as any!

Basically, I think that the later issues of Eightball contain some of the most sustained explorations of the affects and limitations of certain kinds of "alienated" or "outsider" mentalities that I've ever seen. Clowes' characters are mostly distanced, paralysed and swamped in kitschy opposition to the modern world, but I think that the best of these stories work really hard to examine exactly how this affects the characters' friendships, sexual relationships, and dealings with the world in general.

There's a certain critical distance at work here (especially in the artwork), but this is balanced out by the very clear emotional investment that has been made in these characters and their perspectives. Furthermore, I think some of Clowes' recent experiments with genre have yielded some fascinating results -- the bizarro noir of David Boring is very... rewarding, if you give it the attention it requires, and Eightball #22 is one quite simply of the best comic books that I've ever read. The characters in this comic all struggle very directly with the disparate series of narratives they find themselves in (something that is visually dramatised by the multitude of different art styles that Clowes adopts here), but the internal and external links between each story become very clear when you view the comic as a whole.

I wrote a brief, enthusiastic post about Eightball #22 ages ago, but as I said at the time, I think I've barely scratched the surface of that book in terms of analysis. You'll notice that I make quite a lot out of the formal excellence of Eightball #22, and this ties into another reason why I think Clowes' work is deserving of the praise it receives -- he's a master of his craft, pure and simple, and it shows in pretty much everything he does.

Of course, I'm glad there are people out there who don't agree with me on this one. I don't much like it when a creator's reputation becomes unassaiblable, and I think disagreement on such matters can often be healthy and productive. But, at the end of the day, Clowes does it for me, and I hope I've at least hinted at how/why his work does this in this post. If not, well -- I guess I'll clarify my opinions some other time if anyone's interested.

More later on Demo, Love & Rockets, and La Perdida -- it's been a good day for comics round my way!

Smiling With Your Forehead

2004-06-09T11:21:00.000+01:00

Good news everyone! There's a book of Brendan McCarthy's comic/design work on its way. It's called Swimini Purpose, and this Brendan McCarthy website has the details.

I'm mostly familiar with McCarthy's gloriously overstimulated brand of psychadelia through his collaborations with comic book writer Peter Milligan, and would highly recommend that you check out both Paradax and Rogan Gosh if you've not already done so. Both comics are full of good, playfull, witty stuff, and the visuals are spectacular, so yeah -- go find them on ebay or something!

Comics I'll Be Picking Up This Week

2004-06-09T11:07:00.000+01:00

Since I haven't written any short reviews recently, I'm going to list the comics I'll be picking up tomorrow in the hope that it'll remind me to write about them some time over the course of the next week or so.

Demo #7
Love & Rockets Vol 2 #10

A Public Service Announcement

2004-06-04T11:56:00.000+01:00

I would like to apologise for my inadvertant spoilage of the last issue of Amazing Spider-Man, and possibly other books, in my post of last week.

Sorry!

Behold -- Beardless Wonders Previously Unseen By Human Eyes!!

2004-06-01T16:14:00.000+01:00

For Suedehead and others:

(From this week's Lying In The Gutters.)

Plagiarism For Fun And Attention Seeking

2004-05-31T11:33:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post, filching these 226 words from Hyung Sun Kim, over at the webcomic Crazy Kimchi (nee Kung Fool).

(For a good laugh, check out his AWOL! strip of last week)

This caught my eye:

You will see one noticeable difference, unlike most Japanese comics that are serialized in magazines first, most Korean stuff is produced for the Rental Library market.

(In Korea, you go to a comic shop, pay a couple or so bucks and either stay for several hours and read all you want buffet style or borrow a bunch for couple of weeks, just like a movie rental. If you ask to buy them and they'll just stare at you like an idiot. Unlike the Japanese, the Korean public has yet to experience the sheer American pleasure of buying something you'll read/watch once, that will clutter up you home for 20 years and end up at a garage sale for 50 cents. Japan does have a ton of used bookstores just for manga, where you can get the stuff cheap, and in bulk, but the publishing industry still bitch about them cutting into the sale of new comics.)

And so while serialized stories need to fit a 20~ page chunk per episode, the rental libraries deal in whole books, around 150 pages or so. Since you get paid per book, not per page, lot of the Korean cartoonist fit 3-4 huge panels a page and fit a whole arc luxuriously in to a novella, instead of the 6-8 tight panels for a ~20 page episode in some weekly.

"...And You Smell Like One Too!"

2004-05-31T09:59:00.000+01:00

A happy, if somewhat belated, one year blogoversary to Sean Collins from everyone here at Insult to Injury. Keep on bloggin' big man!

Graeme is a Marvel junkie today

2004-05-28T21:10:00.000+01:00

Well, after pretty much three weeks of non-stop work (this is my third day off in three weeks!), I have finally gotten round to picking up some comics from the last cuple of weeks. Here are some small reviews:

THE PULSE 3: Thin Air, Part 3
After spending two issues setting up the premise for the series and for this story, Bendis and Bagley finally have both the main characters (Jessica Jones and Ben Urich) and the plot (Bugle reporter is killed by Norman Osborn) collide. And it's starting to be good. The scene where Jameson and Robertson gather the Bugle reporters to tell them about Terri's death is particularly moving; Jonah can't say it, he is genuinely upset. Robbie grimly tells his people to work this case and solve it:

"Jonah has asked me to tell you...that we take care of our own."

The small scene between Jessica and her beau Luke Cage is fun "You never cry. This a pregnant thing?") and the scene with Jessica, Ben and Kat (another reporter) imagining who could have dropped Terri into the river is simply brilliant:

Ben: "I got nothing."
Jessica: "Me neither."
Kat: "What were we just doing?"

The final scene is the money shot, however, as Ben finally realises who must have committed the crime. Fear grips him (kudos to Bagley on the art here) and he picks up the phone...and calls Peter Parker.

Mmmm. Roll on issue 4.

Ultimate Spider-Man 59: Hollywood, Part 6
The 'Hollywood' story ends, and Bendis has managed to turn it into something more than a crap movie tie-in. Yay! And since the job of beating up Doc Ock is done, we get to return to the interesting stuff: Peter Parker's 'real life', as permanant houseguest Gwen Stacy holds a gun in his face, having worked out that he is Spider-Man, and that he, therefore, killed her father...

This storyline really has been the more interesting of late. The Ock stuff was better than it looked to be, but was still fairly standard comics fare. The continuing Gwen plot has been a highlight of the book for over a year now, and it's good to see that Bendis isn't letting it stagnate. Now that Gwen knows his secret, there is potential for a million interesting twists on the Peter-MJ-Gwen triangle that is slowly developing.

Finally, the way that Nick Fury deals with Ock's arms is genius. Just genius. Presumably, this means that either Octavius has waved farewell to the Ultimate world, or that if he comes back, he'll be new and interesting...

Next, to prove that yes, I am a whore for Bendis, we have

Daredevil 60 (440): The King of Hell's Kitchen, Part 5
Finishing off this, I feel, ground-breaking Daredevil arc, Bendis finally has Murdock back in costume figting the bad guys, in this case the Yakuza who have been dogging him. By using three other Marvel heroes in the issue (Spidey, Iron Fist and Bendis fave Luke Cage), we get to compare DD to others and see that there really is a need for his brand of superheroic vigilantism.

Continuing the Spidey theme, we have J. Michael Straczynski's

The Amazing Spider-Man 507: The Book of Ezekiel, Chapter Two.
This story is what JMS hasn been working towards since he started on the book. All the questions from the early issues of hisrun, about Ezekiel, and about Peter and his powers, are finally answered. To be brief, Ezekiel's a bastard who wants to be Spider-Man. The Spider bit Peter because he was a "hunter without teeth." All the mystical badness that has haunted the last 3 years of the book has been hunting Ezekiel, but been redirected to Peter, and now comes the final showdown...

This is mainly an expositional issue, but that doesn't hurt it, 'cos not only is the exposition well-done, but it's also what we've waiting for. And as for the end...when is 508 out?

They said to would never happen...but it has.
NYX 4: Wannabe, Part Four is finally out.

Issue three shipped in December, and I haven't read any of it since then, so handily we get a wee bit of exposition from Kiden here. Okay, that's a lie. We actually get almost a whole issue of exposition. And more of X-23 in her underwear.

I'm bored. Although Josh Middleton's art is still very pretty.

I'll keep reading this book to the end of the first story, and if it improves, great. If not...well, there's always Chuck Austen...

That, to be clear, was a joke. Austen is the worst thing to happen to comics since Rob Liefield, and with his (and Chris Claremont's) current stranglehold on the X-books, we really need something special from the books they don't crap out.

So, do we have it from Joss Whedon and John Cassady?

Astonishing X-Men 1: Gifted doesn't fill me with confidence, I'm afraid, but it's at least a start.

First, let me make something clear. I LOVE Joss Whedon. I think the man is a tiny God, and I worship him as such. Simply for the creation of the Buffyverse, he is a Very Good Thing Indeed. However, his comics writing is rather patchier than his TV, more akin to his movie work (with credits such as Toy Story and Alien: Resurrection, he has a mixed bag there). Fray, the future-Buffyverse book was good, but in no way outstanding (I'm gonna talk about it another time), while his turns in Tales of the Slayers and Tales of the Vampires have been some of his best work. Ever.

His inaugural work for Marvel is, I feel, rather more Alien Resurrection than Toy Story. While it's not outright bad, and has a lot of that trademark Whedon brilliance, it lacks any real originality. The issue is structured thusly:
1) A mysterious prologue,
2) Kitty arriving at the (rebuilt) mansion, thinking about the past, trading barbs with Emma (Whedon's best-written character by a mile, as you would expect from someone who's written Spike and Anya),
3)An iteration of the new agenda for the school,
4) A touching Scott and Emma moment which ends with Wolverine on the end of their bed,
5) A Cyclops/Wolverine fight,
6) The big exposition scene, with the reason for the costume change,
7) A final intercutty scene with the X-Men gearing up while mutant terrorists attack rich folks and a scientist holds a press conference, declaring that she can cure mutation.

This final thing will be, I hope, where Whedon places his attention. Throughout his run, Morrison looked at the idea of mutants as the new race, with humanity dying out. Whedon seems to be taking a diametrically opposed approach, as Doctor Rao espouses:

"Mutants are not the next step in evolution. They are not the end of humankind. The mutant gene is nothing more than a disease. A corruption of healthy cellular activity. And now, at last...we have found a cure."

Dialogue triumphs? Too many to list, as you'd expect from Whedon, but top prizes to:

Emma: "This, children, is Kitty Pryde, who apparently feels the need to make a grand entrance."
Kitty: "I'm sorry. I was busy remembering to put on all my clothes."
Emma: "So gushingly glad you could join us."

and

Emma: "Superpowers, a scintillating with and the best body money can buy...and I still rate below a corpse."

Art? Gorgeous. John Cassaday has done himself proud here. Every page is a work of art worthy of being framed, but the big hero team shot takes first place for me. Cyclops' body condom might look stupid, but the two-page spread is just beautiful. His portrayal of Kitty throughout also deserves mention, especially as she looks to be the viewpoint character.

Also, it's nice to see that Whedon is taking all of Morrison's changes to the X-World on board and using them to further his own aims rather than simply riding roughshod over them like...certain other X-writers.

All in all, not the greatest of starts, but Astonishing X-Men shows a lot of promise, and is miles better than the other core X-books anyway.

Morrison Madness

2004-05-28T21:08:00.000+01:00

Seaguy #1 - yes.

I'm gonna have to read a few more times before I write about it, but for now...yes.

And the upcoming projects are eagerly anticipated, if only to see Morrison working with Quitely (JLA, New X-Men) and Bond (Kill Your Boyfriend) again. It's gonna be a good summer, folks...

Previews

2004-05-27T13:59:00.000+01:00

So, Grant Morrison's Crack!Comicks site has finally been updated, with previews and information for Seaguy, We3, and Vimanarama now available for your reading pleasure.

This gory splash page from We3 is brilliant, in a deeply horrible sort of way (the Barbelith kids all agree -- it's totally Hard Boiled), but I have to say that I'm even more impressed by this page from Vimanarama.

That's Philip Bond there folk, turning in an excellent slice of gonzo sci-fi! I was going to say that I can't wait to read this comic now, but since it comes out in January I guess I'm going to have to!

The following excellent excerpt from Seaguy #2 is too good for me not to post:

That not enough for you? Then check out this three page pdf preview of the first issue of We3 then.

It's excellent stuff -- very creepy and atmospheric -- and it looks like Morrison and Quitely are trying something here in terms of storytelling; as you'll notice, we never see a human face in close-up in these three pages.

Chris Ware did a lot of stuff in some of the earlier parts of Jimmy Corrigan where character's faces were pushed off-panel/obscured in order to emphasise the sense of isoltion that the story's main character felt, and it strikes me that a similar technique is being employed here, albeit with a slightly different purpose. It's a good way of putting you with the animals in terms of perspective and sympathy, no? I wonder how much of the rest of the book will be like this...

Anyways, that's enough enthusiasm for me from now. Much love to the Barbelith comics forum for keeping me linked up! Take care out there folks!

Run, Xoo, Run!

2004-05-27T13:52:00.000+01:00

Some thoughts I just posted on this Barbelith thread:

Whether or not Chubby is literally a manifestation of some areas of Seaguy's psyche, I like to think of him as working thematically this way. I'm really glad that Seaguy isn't being shown as being somehow more enlightened than "the media saturated masses" or anything like that: he's ended up on this adventure partly because of his status as a consumer (this is where that idea of Xoo as repackaged radicalism comes in), and partly because his own particular taste in escapism comes complete with an exaggerated need for "real" adventure (not necessarily a good thing). Whether or not Chubby and Seaguy are one and the same, they make an interesting partnership in this respect -- while Seaguy longs for to be part of something grand and romantic, Chubby seems more in tune with what's wrong on the ground level (or indeed just under the ground level!), something that is made somewhat tragic by his minute short-term memory.

Somewhat amusingly, given the whole "she'll never notice me" angle, She-Beard seems to be the character who is nearest to Seaguy's own personal frequency when it comes to her need for some sort of "real" heroism/adventure. Given that I've no idea how the plot is going to work out, I'm going to refrain from further comment on this front, but... there's something there, anyway.

"Run At Them!"

2004-05-21T17:29:00.000+01:00

Rather predictably, I've got a couple of things to add to my first post about this comic (even though I only posted it earlier today).

First of all I'd like to point everyone in the direction of David Fiore, who has both compiled a nice round-up of all the posts that the first issue of this comic has generated in comics blogging circles, and has also written a damn good post about it himself.

If that hasn't sated your Seaguy needs, there's always this Barbelith thread, which is packed full of commentary from some of the more interesting Barbeloids, and also features more than a couple of guest appearances from series artists Cameron Stewart.

One thing that I neglected to mention in my previous post was quite how evocative Peter Doherty's colouring is; he gives this most bizarre of micro-universes just the right balance of lovingly textured brightness and murk, and his contribution to the series should definitely not be overlooked.

Well, that's me for now - take it easy out there folks!

Welcome... To The World of Tomorrow!

2004-05-21T12:05:00.000+01:00

It's great when something that you've really been looking forward to doesn't just meet your expectation, but actually betters them.

Seaguy #1 by Grant Morrison, Cameron Stewart and others, is just such a case.

Seaguy is a funny, surrealist romp through an allegedly utopian future, and as such it is full of all the things which Grant Morrison so clearly loves about superhero comics (which is to say, all that is amusing and insane about the worlds and characters they depict). Artist Cameron Stewart turns in a career best performance here, effortlessly bringing to life a vibrant, cartoony world packed full of wonders. This collaboration with Morrison also brings out a range in Stewart's artwork that had only been hinted at in his previous work; the ever present Mickey Eye is deeply unsettling, and there is a soft, melancholy quality to the body language of Seaguy himself that conveys a lot about the character in a very subtle way.

This then, is a comic book about what happens after evil has apparently been defeated (in the form of the splendidly named Anti-Dad). Seaguy presents the reader with a world of unhinged theme parks, where the rides are either terrifying or merely a stand-in in the absence of any "real" thrills; a utopia where everyone seems to feel depressed, scared, displaced, or numb, and where there is most certainly something very wrong going on. Seaguy is a about a guy who wants to be a part of some sort of grand adventure, and from the look of it he's going to find out quite how much the reality of this sort of thing differs from the fantasy. I have no idea where this comic is going, but this much I am sure of; it's going to be an upsetting journey in more ways than one.

I can't stress enough how effective all of this is, in terms of execution; there's clearly been a lot of energy and enthusiasm invested in this book (both visually and verbally, Seaguy is a pleasure to read) and the odd, stilted nature of the world it takes place in seems all the more shocking for it. Morrison has always had a good eye for ideas and images that are both silly and charged with a sort of irrational horror, and in Cameron Stewart he finds the perfect artist to bring this out.

While you can clearly break down what a lot of the elements of this comic are supposed to represent (Chubby and She-Beard seem to me to reflect, among other things, elements of Seaguy's inner world, while Mickey Eye and Xoo are obviously part of an absurdist commentary on capitalist society and the modern superhero comic), Seaguy as a whole still seems somehow inexplicable. Morrison and Stewart have created a light, breezy adventure story that is, rather fittingly, anything but light and breezy, and I'm ready to praise the hell out of them for this. Roll on issue #2!

Runaways: Pride & Joy -- Round 2

2004-05-14T19:39:00.000+01:00

Just thought I'd pitch in with some thoughts about the first Runaways trade, in the wake of Graeme's comments.

The short version: I enjoyed it more than I felt I should when I was reading it.

The slightly longer version: I'm not sure whether or not I think the set up (an inversion of the typical superhero story wherein our hero is haunted by at least one dead parent figure) is clever or just screamingly obvious. The truth is that it's probably a mixture of both. There's something very schematic about the whole thing -- what if you were right when you were fifteen and your parents really had been evil all along? isn't a question I'm that interested in answering, to be honest with you. This is a problem I have with the comic in general; some of the characters are a tad too obvious (the cute goth chick! the jock! the little girl!), but... I dunno, there were enough idiosyncrasies in the execution to keep my interest peaked throughout. What can I say -- I found it very compelling, and if Scott picks up the next collection, I'll probably check it out. One thing though -- the pacing was just right for this digest trade, but I think it would have felt a little slow to me in single issues. That's not the most original criticism in the world, but that doesn't mean it's not true in this case.

I'll admit that I'm at something of a loss when it comes to finding something to say about Adrian Aphona's artwork -- it's... very fitting, I guess, in terms of general stylistics. It's slick, slightly manga-influenced, and the colouring has a nice sort of texture to it. My only big complaint would be that every now and then his facial expressions seem slightly off, but on the whole I guess I just wasn't that bothered by it either way.

On the whole then, yeah -- it's a fun comic book, if not one that I've got a huge investment in. The digest format is excellent though -- not only will it slip in nicely among all the manga books, but it's the perfect size to read on the bus too! That's all for now, folks. Take care.

The Kindness of Strangers. Well, Scott.

2004-05-13T23:16:00.000+01:00

Cheers to Scott for loaning me a few comics yesterday. Here's some thoughts:

Hellboy: Seed of Destruction

I know what you're thinking. I do, really. You're thinking "Graeme...you've never read Hellboy? What the...?

I'm sorry. I repent now of that sin. Why I haven't read this genius (yes, I said 'genius' in reference to a book involving John Byrne!) before is beyond me. I have, at this juncture, three things to comment upon:

1) Mark Chiarello's colours. I was reading this on a bus on a nice sunny day and as the sun streamed through the windows (or as much of them as it could, given the grime) the colours blazed to life! Really! I think it's all the blues and purples and other dark colours. They look all shiny in the light. Graeme like shiny thing. Hehe. The especially shiny (and therefore good) bits were where the Sorcerer's head is looming out of the darkness behind Emma Cavendish. Lovely stuff.

2) The art in general. Lovely and moody. And shiny, of course.

3) HB himself. If he was Ace Rimmer, I'd be saying 'What a guy!' But he's not. Ah, hell, I'll say it anyway. What a guy! The moment I came to love Hellboy? The second backup story, with him falling into von Klempt's lair yelling "Freeze! I don't know what you're doing...but I don't like it!" Excellent stuff. Despite John Byrne. Ho hum.

Next...

Runaways: Pride and Joy

The 'Marvel Age' digest of the first book of Runaways. It's fairly standard Marvel fare really, but entertaining nonetheless. Some characters with potential, although will someone PLEASE shoot the goth girl already? I mean, come on...she has a BIG ROD that can LODGE in her BODY. Subtlety please Brian K. Vaughan!

The idea is kinda cool, and 'The Pride' is interesting. Not being a huge Marvel buff, I don't know if this is an established organisation or something new, but it has potential, I feel, for further work.

If volume 2 tones down the angst (yeah, right), this could shape up kinda cool. As it is, at the low, low price it comes at, I'll definitely be picking up a copy. Sentinel and maybe even Emma Frost are also options (although I'll feel like a pervert if I buy the latter...that cover is AWFUL!)

And so we move onto...

Alan Moore's Top Ten, Book One

I don't know why, but whenever I'm talking about an Alan Moore book, I feel the need to call it "Alan Moore's whatever." Maybe it's because Alan Moore's V For Vendetta is what started me reading comics a few years back. Ah, well...

I loved Top Ten. Absolutely, totally. It has just the perfect blend of action, characters and balls to the wall insanity for me. Much like New X-Men in that regard. The Gograh stuff especially cracked me up, as did the "Libra killer" being a former superheroine porn-star from Antares. Classic stuff.

The art is lovely and shiny (there I go again) and I swear to...well Alan Moore I guess, since I don't believe in God, that within a few minutes of reading this, I felt like I'd known Neopolis and all that comes with it forever. It's really good. Really. Read it. Now.

Status Update v2.0

2004-05-13T23:08:00.000+01:00

Right, here's the situation:

Scott is currently out of the country on a top-secret mission to rescue David, who has been captured while trying to get access to advance copies of Seaguy, and is currently being held and tortured at Guantanamo Bay...

Okay, so that's a lie.

The truth is that David's internet connection was frazzled by a big old bolt of lightning on Monday, so he is currently out of service, and Scott is working. Since he works for the post office, that equals exhaustion. So you have...me. Sorry 'bout that.

2004-05-11T00:30:00.000+01:00

Okay, many apogolies (no, not a mis-spell) for the lack of posting action in the last wee while. Exams and all that.

For the moment, while I still don't have my thoughts quite together, I'm gonna talk a little on Brian Michael Bendis' (now finished) MAX series 'Alias'.

I've had some difficulty obtaining the first two volumes of this series, so I've only read 'The Underneath' and 'The Secret Origin of Jessica Jones' thus far. It's really rather fun. It reads like Bendis pissing about in the Marvel U. and enjoying himself immensely. I mean, Madame Web?

More to follow once I re-read the books.

Tarantino's Superman spiel

2004-05-11T00:28:00.000+01:00

"Superman stands alone.

Superman did not become Superman...Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he is Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red S is the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears -- the glasses, the business suit -- that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us.

Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He's weak, unsure of himself...he's a coward.

Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race."

From 'Kill Bill' vol.2

Status Update

2004-05-07T11:46:00.000+01:00

Comment spam -- why is this website currently swimming in it?

Because it's a website, dummy, which means it's on the internet. And the internet, as we all know, is good for only two things: pornography, and spam.

But why does the spam come to me?

Because your Dylan Moran impersonation is both terrible and probably meaningless to most of your readers?

That's not it, smartarse.

I know, I was just teasing.

So, will the internet eventually evolve into one big spam message then?

Yup. One big spam message for one big porn site.

You're pulling my leg.

I'm not.

Shame.

Anyway, are you going to post anything interesting today, or are you just going to talk to yourself in public again?

The latter, I'm afraid. Though I'm not sure that the line between talking to yourself and writing something interesting is as well defined as you seem to think it is.

I think you'll find it is.

I'll take your word for it then.

And so you should. Is there anything with substance to it on the horizon?

With any luck, I'll be writing posts about X-Statix, Runaways, and Sleeping Beauty in the next week or so.

Good, good. Wait a minute, isn't this is a group blog?

Don't be so cheeky -- Scott's exams haven't finished yet, and Graeme doesn't have internet access at home, so...

You're on your own for the time being?

More or less.

Fair enough. Now lets call an end to this little back and forth -- people are starting to talk.

And what are they saying exactly? That my bargain basement Flann O'Brien-isms are characterless exercises in self-indulgence?

Among other things, yes.

Ok then.

Ok.

Bye.

Bye.

Spandex--Spandex--Spandex!

2004-05-05T18:09:00.000+01:00

Some kind soul named Damien Wood is currently hosting a five page preview from the first issue of Whedon/Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men, and you can find links to these pages over on Millarworld right now. Go check it out -- it's shiny!

Link via this Barbelith thread.

Autumn?

2004-05-05T17:24:00.000+01:00

Sometime during my hiatus I managed to get my hands on a copy of issue #9 of Adrian Tomine's Optic Nerve, and I'll be damned if it isn't one of his best works yet!

This is the first of a three-part story that will, according to this bit of press fodder, focus on "the troubled sex-life of a confused, obsessive, Japanese-American male in his late twenties, and his cross-country search for the perfect girl." If that sounds a little boring and clumsy, then rest assured that the actual finished product is imbued with all of the easy grace that Tomine's linework has attained over the years.

And truly, Tomine has developed a wonderful artistic style for himself. It's reminiscent of many other indie artists (Dan Clowes is the one most people mention), but yet touched with a lightness that is very much his own. This issue is drawn with a smooth, minimal elegance that could be called slight were it not for the fact that Tomine's pages always seem to be just as full as they need to be; his backgrounds are fleshed out, but not cluttered, and his characters are models of well observed simplicity. This approach carries on into the story itself; Tomine is clearly tackling a lot of tricky material pertaining to race and culture in this story, but so far this has all remained neatly embedded in the messy interpersonal relationships that give this comic its drive. There are a couple of scenes in this issue where everything falls away and you're left with little more than a couple of people talking in the shadows, and it's here that Tomine's skills are most evident. The dialogue between his characters is always emotionally loaded, but thankfully it never gets too earnest -- there's a finely tuned quality to the words and situations Tomine comes up with that is both emphasized by the art, and also mirrors it. Tomine's style has developed to the point where it can sustain stories such as this with ease, and I look forward to seeing where this is all going. Expect a more involved analysis when we find out!

You can read a five page preview of the comic here, and there's a good, if somewhat short, interview with Adrian Tomine up on Bookslut if you're interested.

Upcoming Comics: We3, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

2004-05-03T20:40:00.000+01:00

Being a huge fan of what happens when Morrison and Quitely work together on a comic book, I've been curious as to what the hell this particular three issue mini-series is actually going to be all about. Finally, we're starting to get a better idea -- here's a picture of the three main characters and a very vague general outline, both from Newsarama:

"As for We3, a tad more about the three-issue miniseries was revealed, including that it’s a view of The Incredible Journey as only Grant Morrison could imagine it – three ultimate cyborg assassins: a dog named Bandit, a cat named Tinker, and a rabbit named Pirate, armed with missiles, poison gas, state-of-the-art computer technology, rapid fire chain guns and unbreakable exo-skeletons.

Described as a “heartbreaking adventure,” the three issue mini is drawn by Frank Quitely."

To which all I can say is -- what? That's a good sort of "what?", by the way. I wasn't expecting this, but I'm hella curious to see what this comic is actually going to be like, I can tell you!

And, in case you're interested, here's a link to a bigger version of that image.

(This info brought to my attention by Benjamin Birdie on this Barbelith thread).

Shoot Speed Kill Light

2004-05-03T13:59:00.000+01:00

This is your random Warren Ellis micro-update:

There's a wonderful take on Ellis' recently completed Ministry of Space series over on John's Commonplacebook right now. Most reviews of the series have focused on the massive delay between issue #2 and issue #3, pegging the story itself as being little more than a prettily drawn version of the initial pitch, but John makes a good case for it being more interesting than that. Furthermore, in doing so he offers up maybe the most accurate summary of Ellis' ideology and technical skills as a writer that I have ever read.

In other Ellis news, you can check out his first issue as the writer of Ultimate Fantastic Four for free here. I'll have to give it a read over, but on first glance it didn't really do it for me, though it was in keeping with what I've read of Bendis/Millar's take on the characters.

I dunno... I guess I feel weird about Ellis as a writer. I like him, but I think all of the criticisms John offers up in that livejournal post I just linked to ring true for me. That said, I did very much enjoy the latest issue of Planetary (issue #19, I believe) -- it was, in many ways, just business as usual, but I dunno... the pacing just seemed better this time out than it has in a while. There was a big spectacular event, and lots of cool little snippets of dialogue, but it also brought quite a few things together, and there was a certain novelty in an issue of Planetary on an exciting cliffhanger, dontcha think? Lets just hope that Ellis, Cassaday et al back it up in the next issue!

And I'm Back... Again!

2004-04-30T01:32:00.000+01:00

A couple of bits of comic book related rambling for y'all:

--Anyone interested in reading an ancient interview with comic book writer Grant Morrison that was conducted by then-aspiring writer Mark Millar should go right on over to this website and download away. There's nothing particularly illuminating in there; Morrison's Morrissey-aping archness is quite amusing, but while I was oddly excited to see Morrison list Flann O'Brien as an influence, I doubt this will be a feeling shared by many other readers out there. O'Brien's dead good though, and if you've never read his work before you could do far worse than to read The Third Policeman and At Swim-Two-Birds. They're both excellent post-Joycean novels that explore (among other things) what happens when language and imagination turn in on themselves and become cancerous. Rather importantly, they're also funny as all hell; seriously people, O'Brien is one of the funniest writers I've ever read and, erm... I think I've pimped him hard enough for now so I'm just going to stop!

--Being, as I am, a huge fan of both cartoonist David Muzzucchelli and of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, I've always been curious as to how the comic book adaptation of the first part of the trilogy, City of Glass, came off. After reading the various bits and bobs about the comic on the Indy Magazine website I have to say that I'm even more eager to read this particular sequential adaptation. Lucky for me the damned thing's being reprinted this year, eh? Thanks to Flat Earth for the link.

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Silence To Bring You The Following Enthusiastic Bulletin

2004-04-21T17:33:00.000+01:00

Hiya. We're still kinda gone in exam limbo just now. Should be done with that by the middle of May, so hopefully we'll pick up our efforts around here.

Me being me, I just had to mention the fact that as one of the people enjoying the story in Captain America & The Falcon, but not so sold on the art, I was pleased to her that Bart Sears will be moving on to be replaced with Joe Bennett, the artist Christopher Priest worked with on The Crew. Rich Johnston mentioned it on Lying in the Gutters on Monday, but the news was surfacing on the comments board of Priest's blog. Naturally, as someone who enjoyed what little there was of The Crew, this is seriously good news.

Priest has put up his thoughts on the art change and faults in what we've seen so far at his blog. He also answers some questions on upcoming plot points in his most recent post, mentioning that:

I daresay, with the giddiness of a kid at Christmas, that CAF will in large measure drive coming events in AVENGERS. and that was Brian Bendis' idea because he liked what we were doing. Stuff we had planned for Year Two got moved way up to like, NOW, because Brian and Tom thought it was cool and played well with what they have in mind for the AV's. Now, this seems like not so big a deal to many, but I'm a guy used to being thoroughly ignored. I'm incredibly flattered that not only will what we do here be reflected in the AV's, but it will in major turns be cause-and-effect. This book actually EXISTS and MATTERS in the MU, and I'm terribly excited to matter.

Interesting. Now, why couldn't Bendis have been writing Avengers when Priest was on Black Panther?

Anyway, enough frivolity - back to preparing for exams...

Night, Dawn, Day

2004-03-28T14:03:00.000+01:00

Sorry, between the upcoming exams, webcomicing and whatnot, I haven't felt terribly coherent on the subject of comics.

Here's my usual short reviews, ultra-condensed. I picked up Conan #2. Man, it was dull. And I'm not just saying that to try and raise my standing in the eyes of anonymous eejits. My other comic this week was Ultimate Spider-Man #55. The stuff with Gwen Stacy is elevating this obligatory Dr Octopus storyline.

I also got the Hellboy: The Corpse one-shot. I was going to get it anyway for grins, but my local comic shop were giving it away.

That's about it from me, but while I'm here, I'd like to take the time to congratulate David on single-handedly propping up this page while the rest of us are in meltdown!

It's All About The Cloak, Really...

2004-03-25T18:12:00.000Z

The above image comes from Eddie Campbell's upcomming Batman: Order Of The Beasts graphic novel, which I'll definitely be picking up when it comes out. The above picture is just overloaded with atmosphere, and as I'm a huge fan of Campbell in general, I'm sure the story will be excellent too.

Hmmm... come to think of it, I might have to write a post about Campbell's autobiographical Alec series sometime soon.

Who Rocks The Party?

2004-03-24T14:12:00.000Z

Bringing to your attention "Joycore Comics - recommendations?" -- a Barbelith thread dedicated to fun, poppy comics!

Good suggestions that have been put forward so far:

Love & Rockets -- Some of the liveliest comics I've ever read. There's a fair bit of angst in there, but the work of both Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez is just so damned vibrant that I can't help but recommend it regardless!

Madman -- He's got a yo-yo! He fights Street-Beatniks! He's drawn by Mike Allred! Of course he's joycore!

Calvin & Hobbes -- Pretty much everyone I know loves this, even folk who normally claim that they don't like comics! It's just so damned charming, y'know?

Kill Your Boyfriend -- Mmmm... improper joycore deluxe! Sure, it's a black comedy, but man, what a rush!

Kyle Baker's a good nomination too -- he's sharp, funny, and draws real purty to boot!

Anyone else got any suggestions?

Station to Station

2004-03-24T12:58:00.000Z

Steven Wintle has all your Krazy Kat needs covered right here. Is there such a thing as a retro-Furrie, I wonder? Either way, methinks it's time to give some of those Krazy Kat collections a read-over.

All That Fall

2004-03-24T11:46:00.000Z

For more New X-Men related blogging go check out this excellent essay on aggression, evolution and the conventions of the superhero genre over on Gardnerlinn right now.

Do You Really?

2004-03-23T16:44:00.000Z

Those of you looking for a negative perspective on Morrison's last four issues of New X-Men need look no further than X-Axis reviewer Paul O'Brien.

As I think I established last month, I pretty much disagree with O'Brien entirely when it comes to this story arc, but he's a good critic so I figure it's only fair to stick up his opinion here amongst all the praise. Still, at least we both agree that Morrison's run was excellent overall, right? Right. I'm really going to miss it now that it's done... ah well, here's looking forward to Morrison's DC work!

Are These Words From The Future?

2004-03-23T16:35:00.000Z

So New X-Men #154 has come and gone, and Grant Morrison's run on the book is now officially over. Weird. I'm saving any major comments for a post I intend to write after I've read the whole run over again in one sitting, but what I will say is that the last five pages of this issue were amazing, and that I'm very impressed that Morrison managed to wrap up as much as he did in this one issue.

I'd like to thank David Fiore for pointing me in the direction of John's Commonplacebook, an excellent livejournal that is also the home of a wonderful post about (you guessed it!) Morrison's New X-Men run. John gets into the details of the human (or, rather, mutant!) impact of the book's cosmology, and I highly recommend that you check out what he had to say if you haven't already*.

Benjamin Birdie also commented on the end of Morrison's run, though he chose to focus more on the many strange and brilliant character moments that punctuated Morrison's run than on the overarching themes. My favourite part of his post? Right here:

"I remember when the first Quitely pages from Riot At Xaviers were breaking, and there was the one page where Beak and Angel are sort-of-but-not-really hooking up in the woods until they're caught by U-Men. It didn't have any dialogue, so all we were left with was Quitely's mastery of the form and Morrison's incredible nack for situational construction. Sure, he can write sparkling dialogue, but perhaps his greatest strength comes from the things he puts together in one page and in one panel. He makes bird people and weird bug girls and then, naturally, puts them on a camping expedition. Can you even imagine?"

The man has a point - Morrison has a skill with oddly effective drama that's rarely commented on by either his fans or his detractors!

Interestingly, somewhere between these two slices of gushing praise I find space for Flyboy's recent comment that New X-Men as a whole "only works if viewed from either a very close-up or very distant perspective."

Says he: "If you look at it with a sort of medium focus on, it's a complete mess." And you know, on some levels, he's right. For all the neatly developed themes and character arcs, clever bits of double-edged foreshadowing, and just plain mind-blowing little moments in there, there's still something slightly scrappy about New X-Men. Sometimes the "hows" and "whys" got lost amidst the madness, and some of the transitions from arc to arc or issue to issue felt a little bit jerky. But despite these frustrations, I still loved the hell out of this comic! Morrison isn't a "neat" or "tidy" writer these days, but when he's on (and when the artist is right) he really does it for me, both on a gut level and on a thinky level, and that's what really counts in the end, isn't it?

*A note for regular readers of the Barbelith comics board -- don't worry, he doesn't use Morrison's belief system as an excuse to embark on a game of Quaballic Scrabble as some folk are want to do from time to time! He actually, y'know, analyses the text instead! And rather well at that...

Ah Nuts...

2004-03-23T14:45:00.000Z

ARGH! Blogger just ate a rather sizable post about New X-Men #154, and unfortunately it's not exactly coming back to me right now!

Hmm. How does that cliche go? Ah yes - back to the drawing board...

By The Way...

2004-03-22T15:14:00.000Z

If you're at all interested in seeing me write about music and movies and stuff, then you might want to know that Cakes and Money 2.0 is up and running now.

Eye To Eye

2004-03-19T13:08:00.000Z

Here's the cover for issue #2 of Joss Whedon/John Cassaday's Astonshing X-Men, and you know what? I like it! It's simple, striking, and promotes all sort of speculation as to what Whedon and co are going to do with the Emma/Scott relationship, as those kinky buggers on Barbelith will be all too glad to tell you! Also in that thread: repeated uses of the term "body condom" (my bad!), and much back and forth about whether or not Astonishing X-Men is going to be any cop.

Faster Than The Speed Of Wall

2004-03-19T12:43:00.000Z

So Scott's latest comic strip sort of hints at why this place has been so quiet of late. I don't want to start making excuses here, but the truth is that we've all been a bit swamped with Uni work recently, and have thus been goofing off more than normal during our spare time. I'm going to post a couple of things later today, and I think we're going to continue posting throughout the exam period, but if we do so then updates are going to be irregular at best for the next month or two. I really wish I could devote more time to blogging at the moment, but this is just the way it's going to have to be for the time being.

Take it easy out there,
David

Attack of the Cliffhangers!

2004-03-08T18:13:00.000Z

Sorry this is up late, I forgot to pick up all of my books this week, and was in a bit of a haze at the weekend.

Supreme Power # 8

This issue was largely dominated by a big punch-up and set up for the next part, which should be an interesting confrontation between Mark and his masters.

Oh, bugger it! I’ll confess what I really think…

To be honest, I like the general direction, but the pace isn’t quite what I’d like. I’ve been buying this book haphazardly since it started, forgetting to pick it up one month, then getting two the next, so maybe that’s contributing to what feels like it’s slow pace, but we’re 8 issues in just now, and I’m not sure I’m that interested. Also, I seem to be part of that camp that has no idea if this is an ongoing or a limited series.

Yes, it does remind me of JMS’ other series, Rising Stars, which I felt started stronger than Midnight Nation, but that it waned after act one and MN ended up being a much better read than it. But, as I said, the problem I’m finding with this one is not the similarities, which are fine, but that the pace is glacial. Issue’s 7 and 8 could have easily been a single part, because it felt like very little happened in them. If the China angle turns out to have a bigger part to play than I’m guessing it will then maybe I’ll change my mind a bit, but I’m not sure that it wasn’t just an over-long McGuffin for Mark to find Joe Ledger. Plus, the whole Amphibian interlude in 7 did nothing for me. Can we focus on some of the other characters instead of Mark, please? Even Joe Ledger is too connected to him to be much of an interest yet, and he’s been the only one with any decent face time. Basically, if the next issue wins me over, I’ll keep buying it for a bit longer.

Oh, and Gary Frank’s art is still largely quite good, but clunks here and there – especially on that panel where Hyperion’s jaw seems to get larger!

Captain America and the Falcon #1

Stop hiding behind the couch you cowards! Just because this is a Christopher Priest comic, doesn’t mean I’m going to go on and on and on and on…

Yes, I’m only trying this on the strength of Priest’s last two works, Black Panther and The Crew, which I really liked, because I have no clue what to make of it’s protagonists. I was mostly convinced to pick it up on the strength of his weblog entry. Less straightforward than The Crew, we’re back in the odd juggling style that Black Panther kept up quite nicely, giving the book pace while keeping the reader interested, but confused. The jumble of Captain America’s actions seem odd and disjointed until the last page, which is makes the issue make more sense, while leaving us on a mysterious note.

Once again, Priest plays with the themes of identity, loyalty and shady black-ops. The Falcon a traitor? Captain America just a straw man? Government lying to its people? I think it’ll be interesting to see where this is going, but, as I’ve said, I’ve liked Black Panther, The Crew and what I could salvage of Xero. One slight thing I found though was that I’m not too sure about the cast. The Crew and Black Panther had casts that I liked, and I’ll be interested to see if Priest manages to make me as interested in Cap and Falc, instead of just having them end up as sounding boards

However, if there’s one thing about this book that isn’t going to keep my enthusiasm up, it’s Bart Sears bizarrely proportioned art! There’s a lot of steroid abuse and collagen injections going on here, and I have this odd sense that I read a crazily detailed buildup for Wrestlemania. I can see why Priest would want to work with sears, as his art almost evokes ChrissCross (Xero) and Joe Bennett (The Crew), but fails to match up to them. So, I’ll be back for issue 2 of this with slight reservations.

Life In Plastic

2004-03-06T17:02:00.000Z

So the one comic book that I bought this week was... (drum roll please!)... issue #4 of Kyle Baker's Plastic Man.

Now this is a strange little series if ever I've read one. Some folk don't like it because it's not as sharp or adult as Baker's best work, while others aren't happy because it doesn't play to the strengths of the old Jack Cole Plastic Man comics. Me, I fall into a third category of readers: the ones who are not quite sure that the direction the book has taken works.

One look at the inside of this comic is enough to tell you what you're in for, and I like that. Between the constant twists and turns of Baker's line work, and the garish hues in which the book is coloured, this, it is clear, is a light, springy comic book. And you know what? I'm so good for that right now. But still, with each successive issue I've found myself uncertain as to whether or not I'm actually going to bother to pick up the next one or not. Don't get me wrong - the mix of straight-up slapstick, and goofy, tongue-in-cheek superheroics that Baker has served up here has been amusing enough so far. Last issue's joke about the way that so many comic book writers cough up Batman's origin in place of actual characteristation was an amusing little meta-comment, for example. But on the whole... it's all pretty obvious, and while I don't mind that in itself (I like obvious slapstick when it's well executed), I'm not entirely sure it's enough to keep me interested in the book on a long-term basis.

Being A Man

2004-03-06T15:17:00.000Z

Oops - looks like I didn't get around to blogging yesterday. What can I say - my essay writing commitments have just sort of scoffed-up most of my blogging time recently.

Anyways, here's a link to a short interview with alternative cartoonist Jeffrey Brown in which he talks quite a bit about Be A Man, his own piss-take of his debut graphic novel Clumsy.

I found this link on Thought Balloons, which is just one of many excellent comics blogs that I've been meaning to link to for a while now. Honestly, we will get round to sorting out the sidebar sometime soon. In the meantime, I'm off to read over the ~~massive stacks of comics~~ single solitary comic book that I picked up this week, in the hope that I'll think of something interesting to say about it later.

Banana Skin Pending

2004-03-04T21:17:00.000Z

In case you haven't worked it out yet, I'm in a really, really silly mood right now. I know, I know - I've hidden it well, but it's true.

With any luck I'll be feeling slightly less goofy tomorrow, when I should be writing a short post about the comic books I picked up this week, and (hopefully) putting up a rather haphazard little entry about Joe Casey's comic book work.

Dignity, Always Dignity...

2004-03-04T20:24:00.001Z

Well I'll be - it turns out that your mom was right after all!

After the cops let me out of jail (they held me over night for my nudie, nudie antics, the incorrigible swines!) I spent an entire evening smashing comics of varying quality off of my fellow blogger Scott McAllister's head, and could he make any astute critical judgments about said comics based on these four-colour impacts? Could he hell! Whether I was jabbing him in the eye with a rolled up copy of Youngblood #2, or batting him across the forehead with my trusty Ghost World trade paperback, Scott's reaction was the same: the dopey bastard just sat there foaming lightly at the mouth and staring firmly into the middle distance the whole time! The only variation in this came when I smacked him with a hardcover copy of Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan graphic novel, which caused him to topple from his chair, and then crawl out of the room while mumbling about his teeth or something. Weird that.

Anyways, there you have it - solid proof that Scott would not, in fact, know a good comic book if it hit him in the face. Apparently, he wouldn't know a bad comic book if it hit him in the face either, but that's hardly the point here, is it?

This Post Is 100% True

2004-03-04T18:57:00.000Z

So I hope y'all took part in this year's International Read A Comic Book Naked Day. I know I did, and so did Sean Collins, apparently. Good fun, yes? I'd post my own photos, but my attempts to merge this event with International Read A Comic In Public Day resulted in troubles with the law, as predicted, and our camera was confiscated in the resulting scuffle.

Crunch Time

2004-03-04T18:17:00.000Z

Some news you may know already...

John Romita JR is set to leave Amazing Spider-Man . Man, that's not good. I like JMS' work, but at least half the fun of this book is the art. This is a serious case of seriousness...

And, hey, Sleeper's second series starts in June (Don't click if you've only read the Out in the Cold TPB, it'll ruin the end of season one!). Cool. I've made sure David's reading it... Just Graeme to go... Mu-hah-hah-ha!

(both found via Neilalien).

Good News Everyone!

2004-03-02T18:09:00.000Z

Here's a little slice of comic-book related news that should fit in nicely on this blog, given the very obvious enthusiasm that we here at Insult to Injury share for both Hellboy and the artwork of Cameron Stewart - from an e-mail sent to the Cameron Stewart mailing list earlier today:

"Also just announced is a short story that I will be contributing to the second paperback collection of BPRD (for those not in the know, BPRD is the spin-off series from Mike Mignola's HELLBOY). It's an 8 page tale exclusive to the collection, written by Mike Mignola himself, and it's got zombies!"

My Favourite Comics Part 2 - Clumsy

2004-02-29T22:42:00.000Z

A couple of questions:

Just how subjective is this list?

I dunno. Quite subjective, I suppose. These are my favourite comics, after all, and I've not exactly been shy about advertising this fact so far.

How subjective is my appreciation of Jeffrey Brown's Clumsy?

Well... that's a tough question. The story of a long-distance relationship that didn't work out in the end, it is most definitely a story which many people will find relatable. I myself read it just after I'd broken up with a long-term, long-distance girlfriend, and to pretend that this doesn't have a lot to do with my attachment to this book would be foolish. In a way I think that this is probably part of the appeal of Clumsy; it's both rich enough with neat little details to feel personal and vivid, and universal enough to make it very relatable to a wide spectrum of readers. At the same time, I think I'd be vastly underselling if I said that this was all there was to the books appeal. It takes more than a sense that a work is relatable and/or deeply earnest to make something like this come off, as many terrible alternative comics and mopey rock songs will attest.

So no, I don't think that I love Clumsy purely because I can relate parts of it rather directly to my own experience. For one thing, I think that Jeffrey Brown has a remarkable talent for constructing a story out of perfectly selected fragments, put together in just the right order. He puts together the awkward moments and the funny moments and the intimate moments in a non-linear way that recalls a sort of sad, but yet loving, trip through memory. And then there's his art style: his voice, if you will. It's simple, almost too simple at times, but incredibly effective. His characters are practically stick-figures, but this paired down approach adds to the directness of the whole experience and also adds to the inherent sense of kindness that stops this comic from feeling at all cheap or nasty; even when he is dealing with the specific problems he and his ex-girlfriend had, it never feels like Brown is providing a too-detailed expose. His work feels respectful and loving without ever seeming watered down, creepy, or emotionally depthless, and that's no small achievement.

[This post originally appeared here on my old blog, and if you liked it, then I recommend that you check out this companion post, in which I talked more generally about my stance on "relating" to art/entertainment.]

Remember Your Training

2004-02-29T22:28:00.000Z

Hmmm... I'd stick up some capsule reviews, but alas, I didn't actually buy anything this week. Oh well...

Attack of the Cliffhangers!

2004-02-29T20:46:00.000Z

Some thoughts on the comics I picked up this week.

Amazing Spider-Man 504

I liked it, it was fun, but it just doesn’t feel right as a two-parter. This either too short, or too long. I can’t decide. It’s either a filler piece with a weight problem, or a longer story with bulimia. They could have done a lot with the premise, but tying in Morwen with Loki seems a bit too much of a stretch. Fiona Avery does a good job of filing in, as one would expect, but it might have been nice to have her do her own thing, instead of playing up JMS’ pet themes for the series. JR JR, naturally, keeps on delivering, God bless his cotton socks.

Conan 1

First things first: other than seeing the first film, and some vague memories of the 90’s cartoon, I have no background with this character. I bought this on a whim. I got given the promo issue for this for free ages ago and wondered what it would be like as a series. With nothing else out, I nabbed it. Partly so David and I could laugh about the fact I bought a Conan comic.

Now this… This has got to be the ultimate teenage boy book, as it’s pure light entertainment for the immature. It’s simple – there’s a lot of hitting, the occasional bloody injury and some gratuitous semi-nudity. There may have been the bare bones of a plot in there, but I didn’t notice, I was too busy laughing. It uses a nice trick, in that the narrative captions are done as if they are typed by an actual typewriter to create the sense that this is an actual pulp book, rather than some inky, fantasy-writing type squiggle that’ll make it seem as if it takes itself more serious that it deserves. It’s simple, disposable fun (at a higher cost, and with more detailed production). Hats off to Kurt Busiek for getting shirtless and bloody and reminding us that half the fun in the male empowerment fantasy is that it’s all about ass-kicking and fawning women*, and not trying to be ironic about it. Cary Nord provides the art, which tries quite nicely to strike a balance between looking like a fantasy painting while being lively enough to tell the story. Dave Stewart’s colours help set it off that way.

Good fun, by Crom!

*Or ass-kicking women and fawning men, take your pick, I’m good for both.

Comics-related

2004-02-28T18:37:00.000Z

I bought the DVD of Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman yesterday. It's the latest feature-length animated Batman story, and frankly, it rocks.

Hardly incisive analysis, I know, but I'm short on time. More later.

Linky-Linky

2004-02-27T20:20:00.000Z

--"Aye, Aye, Seaguy!" Make with the clicky to see a three-page preview of Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart's upcoming Seaguy comic. This has been today's Seaguy update from Insult to Injury - your unofficial Seaguy dork-blog.

--"Just tea, then bed." You can download Sleeping Beauty, an excellent comic book by John Cei Douglas, from Fluxblog right now in the form of a 12mb PDF file. John's a marvelous guy, and Sleeping Beauty is a work of considerable talent and confidence. It's basically an extended series of happy-sweet-sad-funny snapshots of a romance, but it's the soft, evocative quality of John's linework and the effortless stillness of the storytelling that really impressess, and I highly recommended that you give it a look. Like, now!

--"Naked Time!" I'm glad to hear that Flat Earth's Steven Wintle is still promoting International Read A Comic Book Naked Day as an alternative to International Read A Comic In Public Day. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it. Me, I'd like to try and create a hybrid of the two events, but alas, issues of legality and climate are conspiring to prevent me from embarking on this particular venture for the second year running. Oh the humanity!

Ancient History II - The Revenge

2004-02-25T18:58:00.000Z

As per David's query, Scott steps into the spotlight with his prepared statement...

Yeah, I did find Be A Man amusingly silly, and not having read Clumsy didn't make it impenetrable. I did know that the point of it was to be the inverse of Clumsy, which I understood to be more sensitive, and that it made it a touch funnier because I had a tendency to assume that every sequence was a send up of a much more personal and sensitive scene.

So, yes, it's a fairly straightforward and humorous comic book, which is funnier when you understand the intent, and I'd imagine it gets even funnier if you know Clumsy.

More cash-ins...

2004-02-25T16:35:00.000Z

...also known as Dark Horse's Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Vampires mini-series. In the same vein (sorry!) as the Tales of the Slayers graphic novel a couple of years back, Dark Horse's Buffy editor Scott Allie has paired writers from the show with comics artists and let them loose on the page.

Now, apparently, issue 3 is out (so sayeth the Dark Horse website), but I've only just picked up 2, so...uh...never mind, eh? What's the verdict on what we have?

Issue 1 (aka Whedonfest) has the first part of Buffy creator Joss Whedon's framing story plus a Lord of the Rings-themed tale also by the Man. Cowering amongst this is a Spike and Drusilla story explaining just what happened in Prague (doncha love it when throwaway lines from an episode SIX YEARS AGO are turned into stories?). Unfortunately, the Spike and Dru tale (written by Drew Goddard and illustrated by Paul Lee) is crap. Overly sentimental, twee and lacking in any sort of appreciation for the character of either vampire, this is not what this book should be aiming at. Leave established vamps alone and make up some interesting new ones guys!

Okay, so that's what Joss did. Yay him. His collaboration with Cameron Stewart (Catwoman and the upcoming Seaguy) on a tale about a teenage girl obsessed with The Lord of the Rings is a fascinating look at how Buffyverse vampires view themselves. The "connection with evil" that was getting riffed upon in the final years of the show (one of the few good ideas that they had in that period) takes centre-stage here, with an interesting comparison with Tolkien's orcs - a horde of individually dysfunctional creatures made into a threat by an overriding evil presence. It's a strange, low-key story, but easily the best comics work by Whedon yet - this outstrips the entire run of Fray by several miles. Stewart's art also zings. Nice and clean and crisp, it contrasts beautifully with Paul Lee's dark and sketchy and dull style on the Spike and Dru bit. Stewart has said that he really enjoyed pencilling Joss' work, and it shows.

Whedon's framing story is running through all five issues, so I don't feel comfortable saying anything quite yet.

As for the rest of issue two, Jane Espenson's little "Spot the Vampire" poem is amusing, but a little bombastic at the end ("Vampires are EVIL and will KILL YOU so don't be STUPID!" - not actual quotage.) The final story here is a Jack the Ripper tale (it had to happen) with a genuine twist at the end. Brett Matthews (who co-wrote the Angel comics relaunch with Whedon) takes what could have been a routine tale and adds that proper Slayerworld vibe. Nice work. Looking forward to part three. Or backward, as it now seems to be...grumble mumble...

He rides...

2004-02-25T16:12:00.000Z

David and Scott have been hitting me with sticks to get me to write something. So here be my opinions on a few of last week's releases:

New X-Men #153

Um...actually, just read Scott and David's rambles on this title.

Done that? Good.

I'll add that I think that having Jean and Logan meet up at the end of this issue is possibly Morrison's way of completely turning things around. The Appolyon comment earlier in the issue about Jean's memories returning makes me wonder if we're not going to start the final issue of the arc - and of Morrison's run - some time later ('Planet X' style) with Jean fighting on the side of the X-Men. This would be possibly the most efficient way to finish the story and wrap up the plot threads, explaining some of the wierder elements (Beast/Sublime, notably). It would also fit Morrison's run quite nicely. On the other hand, a big Wolverine vs Phoenix fight scene would be very '80s, wouldn't it? And is that such a bad thing?

Oh wait, yes it would be.

Next...

Fantastic Four #510

An interesting concept here, but I'm really not sure how much it's working as a story. The character moments here held the issue together - Sue's doubts over Reed's plan and Reed and Johnny's grief-fest being the standout moments. The ending was quite, quite mad and if it wasn't for the fact that the book is the Fantastic FOUR and that Waid will not kill Ben Grimm permanantly, I would be wondering what happens next.

As it is, I'm struggling to really care. But then, I am quite tired.

Daredevil #57

I've been dipping in and out of Brian Michael Bendis' run on Daredevil. This current story, a continuation of what seems like a "mega-arc", is fairly interesting. the premise runs thusly: One year ago, Matt Murdock took over Hell's Kitchen. In a period of terror and violence, he cleared all crime from the area and made it all nicey nice. Issue 56 looked at how New York's other heroes reacted to this (hint: they weren't chuffed), and this issue looks at a consequence of his decision. Narrated by Ben Urich, the issue tells of an epic struggle between Daredevil and a hundred (yes, a hundred) Yakuzas. It lasted about three minutes and ended with the FBI arriving (they have Murdock under survellance). There is no sign of Daredevil.

It's an extremely odd wee piece. It has no real story of its' own, being just an extended fight scene broken up by Bendis' trademark snappy writing in the form of Urich's monologue. The real meat comes at the end, when we find that he is talking to Milla, Matt's girlfriend in Bendis' previous arc. She is now his wife, and wants Urich to find her husband, who has been missing since the Yakuza fight.

So...mostly set-up for what comes next. But interesting set-up. It makes me want to read more, and I guess that's the point. Also, with Bendis penning The Pulse, with Urich as a central figure, will it tie in?

My brain hurts now! So let's move on to...

The Pulse #1

Or, Alias: Without the Naughty. Now, I've never read Alias (though I plan to at some suitable juncture), so this is a fresh start for me. It's an issue of dialogue, mostly J. Jonah Jameson talking to Jessica Jones (too many 'J' names) and Ben Urich, setting up the premise of the book. Which is fair enough. It would be better if Jameson wasn't saying almost the same things that the Ultimate version of him said three months ago. Who writes that Ultimate book anyway? Bendis, you say? Now, there's a coincidence.

Anyway, a solid enough first issue, not good enough to really grip, but not bad enough to stop me from wanting to read more. We'll see how it develops. As a final note, I have to agree with Paul O'Brien over at The X-Axis about the last page. I believe it's meant to be a cliffhanger, but man is it badly done. Must try harder, guys.

Ancient History

2004-02-24T16:22:00.000Z

So I re-read Jeffrey Brown's Be A Man the other day, and yeah - the intro makes it pretty clear what Brown's up to right from the start, and I can see how it would make for an amusingly silly read even if you'd never previously encountered Brown's work. But while I probably over-stated how alienating this book would be to those who aren't already familiar with Brown's Clumsy the first time I wrote about it, I definitely think that there's an extra layer of fun to be had with Be A Man if you're familiar with the scenes from Brown's debut graphic novel that he reworks here.

Now here's the part of this post where we show off the fact that this is a group blog/I pressure one of my fellow bloggers into writing something! Scott: you quickly breezed through Be A Man the other day, and seemed to find it pretty funny despite the fact that you've never read any of Brown's output before. I take it that you found it to be fairly straightforward and humorous?

'Big talk for a guy with no pants'

2004-02-23T18:27:00.000Z

If you haven't seen it already, you may want to drop by Ninth Art and read their Thumbnail: Mike Mignola article, detailing the career of the Hellboy super-stud.

He and I are going to run away together and artificially make beautifully terrifying little babies that will live in the lakes of the world, scaring the locals, drawing in the tourists and devouring the local wildlife...

Well, no, but a man can dream, can't he?

Consider This A Lesson

2004-02-23T16:15:00.000Z

In other X-Men related news:

--Paul O'Brien's stunning demolition of Chuck Austen's latest Uncanny X-Men story arc is well worth a look, and is yet another example of how smart and brutal O'Brien can be when he gets going. Apparently Austen has been trying to riff on William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet recently, and (surprise!) falling flat on his face in the process. From the sound of it, Austen could really do with some York/Cliff Notes to help him get a basic grasp of what made Shakespeare's play work in the first place - does anyone want to buy him a clue?

--Jebni has written a very interesting response to the much maligned preview image for the Joss Whedon/John Cassaday X-Men book that's been doing the rounds recently. While I think that Jebni has a fascinating take on the switch back to spandex outfits, and would be very happy to see Whedon and co take this route, I can't help but wonder if the team couldn't have better spandex costumes than the ones they seem to be sporting in the afformentioned image? Wolverine's bright yellow getup has never looked good, and that body condom they've got Cyclops wearing is pretty crappy looking too, but hey - it's not particularly dignified to get too worked up over a couple of preview images, so I'm just going to stop now. I'll definitely be checking out this book when it hits the stands though - both Whedon and Cassaday are talented guys, and I think there's a lot of scope for fun here!

There Goes Tomorrow

2004-02-23T15:56:00.000Z

Ah... New X-Men #153 then: audacity or insanity? You decide!

There may be some light *SPOILERS* in this here post. You have been warned.

Well, with one issue to go, we're still not much closer to knowing exactly how this is going to wrap up. As Scott said in his review of the issue in question, this is a story that has been carried more "the momentum of it's own characters and concepts than any actual connection to the overall Grant Morrison X-Men arc", and as such it stands as a nice counterpoint to some of the stuff that I was talking about in the post I wrote about Seaguy on Sunday. This story has been a break from the angsty soap-operatics of the last three years, which is both a good thing, as it's been a charmingly bombastic romp, and, in some ways, a bad thing, since the main appeal of Morrison's New X-Men run has been the soapy character stuff.

To their credit, Morrison and Silvestri have managed to make this riff on the well worn X-Men "dark future" story type (as Paul O'Brien has been referring to it) highly entertaining, for this reader at least. I'm particularly taken with the Tom/Rover team-up (and was suitably drawn in by Rover's seeming demise this issue, despite the slight clunkiness with which it came about), but, to be honest with you, I'm pretty down with the weird, silly drama of the whole thing - all of the little characters Morrison has churned out, the bizarre babblings of the three-in-one, the preposterously villainous running commentary of the Beast... it's all perfect for Silvestri's artwork, which despite its occasional lapses in the storytelling department, is just bursting with warped, trashy immediacy. It's weird, because Paul O'Brien seems to be quite tired of the story type upon which this arc has been based, and apparently doesn't find the set-up to be convincingly supported in the comic itself, but for me the intersection between this well worn territory and some of Morrison's favourite ideas has been rich and vivid. Sure, we've not exactly been shown much of what this world is like, but I dunno, to me enough of it has been suggested in what we have seen, partly because the territory is so damned familiar. Scenes like the one in issue #152 with Tom talking to the mutant kids or the weird little detour to the "home of the Termids" at the start of this issue have done enough to hint at this world where humanity is dying out and new species are blooming, and what these moments don't provide us with I take from every crinkly line of Silvestri's artwork, which suggests all of the previous "dark future" story lines in which the X-Men have featured while still looking strange enough to carry the "new" elements.

Anyway, while I think I've made it clear by now that I'm enjoying the hell out of the sci-fi superheroics of the story arc in question, it's about time I returned to the initial topic of this post - how the hell is this all going to wrap up? Well, as I see it there are at least four elements of this arc that do very much tie into the grander scheme of Morrison's run, despite how self-contained it all feels:

(1) The return of Cassandra Nova. A lot of people had already worked this one out a while ago, but it was nice to see this handled in such an understated way here. That scene between Nova and Martha was inexplicably sweet - "Like some sad memory of a future that never happened." Nice. There's been some speculation on Barbelith that there's going to be some sort of looping plot line that links the end of this story to back to the start of Morrison's run via Cassandra Nova and a little pinch of time travel, but at the moment I'm not convinced, though I wouldn't entirely rule out further complications on this front.

(2) The overarching Phoenix story line. This is the story arc that I'm most certain is going to wrap up neatly, as it seems to be building up to a fairly straightforward climax next issue. What exactly Morrison's take on this endlessly recurring series of deaths and rebirths is going to be, I'm not exactly sure yet, but the general outline is there, so I'm pretty sure it's all going to come together.

(3) The issue of exactly who Beast/Sublime is and how he fits into the run as a whole. Ah, now this plot thread I expect to be a left little more open/elliptic at the end of the day. I'm not at all sure how this is going to tie up, and as the mass of contradicting speculation out there indicates, I'm not alone in this. I guess we'll just have to wait and see, eh?

(4) What are Wolverine, the three remaining Cuckoo's et al doing 150 years in the future and how does this tie into the end of the 'Planet X' arc? These questions will probably be glossed over by a bit of the old pseudo-science I reckon, which is fair enough, as it's not exactly the most important part of the puzzle.

Obviously it'd also be nice to get to see a bit more of the characters in the "present", but given the amount of stuff that's still got to be wrapped up, I'm not holding my breath.

While I think it's obvious that I'm deeply unsure how the next issue is going to play out, and am at least a little anxious about this, I will say that one of the chief pleasures of New X-Men for me, as a reader, has been that it's honestly never went exactly where I expected it to go. It's been refreshing to read a comic book that plays with tradition while confounding your expectations, and for this I am thankful. Now lets just hope that #154 is a good one, because after that we're in Chuck Austen country, and we all know how much fun that is, right? Right?

Attack of the Cliffhangers!

2004-02-22T19:33:00.000Z

Some thoughts on the comics I picked up this week.

A double-hander of fun with:

New X-Men 153

Maybe it's just because I usually find Wolverine the most boring character in New X (and most other places he pops up), but I have to wonder if his hairy arse has a use next issue, other than to strike a pose? I'm so amused by the fact that the last four issues have entirely been carried by a brilliantly gonzo cast of Morrison-only characters. There are so many points that will probably be picked up by Graeme or David in their reviews (such as the casual, 'by the way' style explanation for the return of Cassandra Nova), but it has to be said that, so far, this has been a fun storyline carried more by the momentum of it's own characters and concepts than any actual connection to the overall Grant Morrison X-Men arc (which is probably why it bewilders many). Mind you, the rest of the fun is actually trying to figure out how it will fit. One issue to go... It's just not enough, is it?

Fantastic Four 510

On the one hand, I really loved the idea for this story, on the other, I was worried that a trip into Heaven might have been an opportunity for something, well, a bit crap. I wasn't won over by the biblical themed dangers, but overall the issue was filled with some good ideas (I liked Reed's corner of Heaven) and nice character moments, such as Reed and Johnny both blaming each other for Ben's death. The most intersting bit was the way that the scene in Sue's corner in Heaven implies that she's no longer comfortable with Reed and his work. Just how far will the fallout from Unthinkable continue to reach? Definitely looking forward to the next part, as Waid continues to paint Reed in a shaky light (which I guess has been a major theme of his run).

And our mystery guest was...

Epic Anthology 1

I picked this up a week late because I wasn't quite ready to fork out the cash for it when it was released. I felt odd in doing that, since everyone was talking about how this book was going to get cancelled fairly sharpish. I never realised it would be so sudden. If this title had gone regularly, then I probably would have picked it up, but slightly erratically, due to the cover price.

Sleepwalker was, well, the hardest to Judge. Other than establishing our protagonist as a self-serving rich boy, we don't really learn a lot in this part. It might have been interesting to see how the self-involved David got on with the entity in his head, possibly making this like a more antagonistic version of Captain Marvel. I found the art, by Khary Randolph and Pierre-Andre Dery, a bit odd, having a tad too much energy for a story that required a lot of moping (but I really liked the final panel! Keep his face hidden, it adds to the look!). The potential was there, so I'd've easily given writer Robert Kirkman a chance to see where it was going.

With a title like Young Ancient One this was going to have to be either really entertaining or a horrible mistake. Guess what? It was great. Between it's action and humour, I suspect this would have been the thing to keep me coming back to this book. It's combination of Kung Fu action, magical events and quippy and anachronistic humour made it the sweet you can eat between meals. Fair play to writer Rob Worley and artist Andy Kuhn, who left us involved enough to want to see where their cliffhanger would go next.

Strange Magic, was, well, strange and magical. It's a reasonably fun tale of magic powers and vampires. It's not so much a walk into the sinister mystical underbelly of New Orleans, more of a club-hopping journey - but not in a bad way. I can't help but suspect that writer Jason Henderson is a Buffy fan, and Greg Scott's art was a nice contrast to the other two titles. I quite liked it, but found it to be the least interesting of the three, but that's possibly because of the shift in tone across the book. If it had been longer, I would have been able to form a stronger opinion on it.

Welcome To The Hype Factory

2004-02-22T00:30:00.000Z

While I understand that by posting this I run the risk of turning this place into some sort of Seaguy promotional blog, I'm feeling a kick of geeky enthusiasm right now, so here's the slightly fuller text solicitation for the series:

"He's the world's last super-hero - and the last one you'd expect!

"Award-winning writer Grant Morrison (THE INVISIBLES, THE FILTH, New X-Men) kicks off the first of three all-new VERTIGO mini-series with colorful heroes, sinister theme parks, beautifully bearded women, and a cigar-smoking tuna fish. Only one comic has it all: SEAGUY, a 3-issue tale with spectacular art by Cameron Stewart (CATWOMAN) that begins with an extra-sized 40-page first issue at no extra cost. Morrison himself calls SEAGUY 'the true antidote to your military-industrial realistic
super-heroes!'

"Morrison charts new territory this adventure filled with charm and whimsy, set in a haunting World Without Evil in which all the great battles have already been won by yesterday's champions. Accompanied by breathtaking art from Stewart, fresh from his critically acclaimed run on CATWOMAN, SEAGUY is a quirky yet heart-wrenching experience ultimately unlike anything even Morrison's iconoclastic imagination has unleashed upon comics readers.

"A wistful, would-be hero named Seaguy and his best pal - a floating, talking fish named Chubby Da Choona - live listlessly in a world obsessed by sinister brand names. From a rigged chess match against a skeletal, seafaring personification of Death to being chased by malevolent theme-park armies, Seaguy and Chubby undertake a fantastical, picaresque voyage through a post-Utopian world filled with bizarre adventure...and terrible sacrifice."

(This text ~~stolen~~ borrowed from an e-mail sent out to those who've subscribed to the Cameron Stewart mailing list, though I believe it's available elsewhere too.)

Song #1

2004-02-22T00:19:00.000Z

"Written by Grant Morrison; art and covers by Cameron Stewart

Award-winning writer Grant Morrison charts new territory with a 3-issue mini-series filled with colorful heroes, sinister theme parks, beautifully bearded women, a cigar-smoking tuna fish, and art by Cameron Stewart (CATWOMAN)! Set in a world where all the major battles have been won, Seaguy is a wistful, would-be hero who, with his pal Chubby Da Choona, embarks on a fantastical, picaresque voyage through a post-Utopian world filled with bizarre adventure and terrible sacrifice.

VERTIGO | MATURE READERS | 40pg. | 1 of 3 | Color | $2.95
On Sale May 19th, 2004"

Does this sound great or what?

First, the artwork: I don't think there are many people out there that would dispute the fact that Cameron Stewart is fast becoming one of the best mainstream comic book artists out there. His limber artwork on DC's Catwoman showed a rapidly developing grasp of the nuances of body language and page layout that leaves most of the competition looking decidedly stiff and feckless, and I look forward to seeing him stretch his talents even further here.

And then there's the writing: It's no secret that I'm a big Grant Morrison fan, and while I've enjoyed the hell out of both New X-Men and The Filth, I'll happily agree that this sounds a lot more straight-forward and fun than much of his recent work. Yeah, I know, I know - New X-Men is a big superhero mash-up, and as such is a hell of a lot of fun, but at its heart it's a twisty, angsty three-year-long soap-opera, and as such it can feel quite draining at times. And while The Filth was a mix of brightly coloured surrealist imagery and black comedy, it was also an unremittingly bleak and fractured read.

Seaguy, however, looks like it's going to be pretty energetic and pop (despite the "Bizarre adventure and terrible sacrifice" involved!*) - which is not to say that it's necessarily going to be lacking in interesting ideas and subtext, or in "heart-wrenching" moments for that matter. Indeed, you could make the case that Morrison's more deliberately "serious" and "difficult" comics (The Mystery Play, for example) are sometimes actually less rewarding than his more playfull work!

Anyways, I'm sure that the Morrison/Stewart team will be able to serve up the pop-fun with aplomb, and elements the premise sounds fascinating (I'm always a sucker for post-Utopian adventure stories!), so yeah - I'm looking forward to this a lot!

*Actually, that does sound rather grim, doesn't it? Am I judging this to be less serious because it has "cartoony" artwork? The Filth, after all, had a couple of talking animals in it - and isn't that a (perhaps rather strained by now) signifier of throwaway comedy? Thankfully, I don't think that I'm making any such judgments about the art style here - I'm largely basing my assessment of what this title is going to be like both on this solicitation and on the handful of hints that Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart have dropped in various interviews/message board posts. And on the fact that, y'know, it's a three-issue mini-series called Seaguy!**

**While The Filth was called The Filth, obviously. Do I judge books by their titles? Well, maybe sometimes, but in the case of The Filth it certainly wasn't a mistake to do so - that comic dealt with all manner of different sorts of dirt and grime in a very self-conscious way.***

***The less charitable comic book fans amongst you may feel the need to point out that given the number of old X-Men concepts Morrison has re-used in his run on New X-Men, the use of the word "New" in the title of that particular book could be seen as being slightly misleading, but I'd pretty much disagree with this - Morrison has, for the most part, wrung new life from these old ideas, so I think he gets a free pass on this one.****

****These footnotes seem to be breeding at an alarming rate right now, and I'm beginning to suspect that if I don't knock this on the head soon then I'm going to end up trapped in some sort endlessly regressing footnote hell! It'll be like something from a Flann O'Brien novel, except, y'know, less humorous!

What? Where?

2004-02-21T20:03:00.000Z

I'm number three in this luscious trio...er...ignore that last bit.

Name's Graeme Lyon and my comic reading is in crisis at the moment 'cause I've spent the last year or so happily reading New X-Men and dipping in and out of various other bits and pieces.

However, with only one Grant Morrison-penned issue of New X-Men to go, this must change. So we'll see what happens with that.

Talk to you soon.

PS, for self-involved ravings and rants about the cancellation of Angel, among other things, visit my solo blog, The Refreshing Taste of Graeme. Or don't. It's all the same to me, mate.

Geek Rapture - Scott's Hellboy Postscript

2004-02-21T18:14:00.000Z

Since David discovered the intoxicant that is Hellboy for himself, he immediately passed his affliction onto me, and I too count it among my favourite comics. There really isn’t a lot I can say about how I feel about it, other than going “me too!” and leaving it at that. However, I did think of something that was a factor for me, which I don’t think David emphasised, so I thought I talk about that for a bit.

The nearest thing to Hellboy in my mind is the Indiana Jones films (kind of obvious, I know), because in my opinion they both feature an immensely likeable protagonist, and an setting which is so interesting*. Both have a kind of playfulness with established mythology and reality, which I guess a lot of people look for in the real world (such as a colleague of mine, who will be featured in a documentary, The Psychic Detectives on BBC 1 Scotland on Tuesday the 24th of February, 22:35 by the way**). By populating Hellboy’s world with creatures and concepts we can go and look up it adds to the intrigue.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I am a sucker for details and connections, and I like when something is dropped in and I can go off and look it up at leisure. It adds texture. It’s even enough for me to know that the Ogdru Jahad and the Conqueror Worm are drawing on the tradition of cosmic horror found in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. Hell, it’s that kind of reference that often brings new material to ones attention (by the same token, I’ll admit to being disappointed that Tobin’s Sprit Guide from Ghostbusters had no real or literary counterpart).

Don’t get me wrong, I own and love the first BPRD trade, but the Hyperborean slaves just feel a little by-the-numbers to me (especially the fact that they had encountered the Nazis), and if it wasn’t for the fact that Abe, Rodger, Liz and Johann were so damn endearing, then it’d be a total waste of a fun concept.

I’m not saying that Hellboy would be any less likeable if it was all a product of Mignola’s head, instead I like to think that I’m suggesting that, if you want to, you can see an extra dimension to it that makes the textual scenery as interesting as the visual scenery. In fact, that’s probably the best comparison I can make. Mignola’s art is often brilliantly evocative of detail, while having a certain simplicity to it, all the while bringing a great mood and energy to the story, letting you get caught up with it – which is exactly what he does with the stories themselves.

Mignola loves his monsters, and he draws them both visually and with enough myth to them so that we love them as well. And as a job, I guess creating monsters is the next best thing to actually tracking them down.

* Also, they feature much kicking of Nazi ass. Can’t really go wrong with that as entertainment, can you?

** Like the shamless plug? Unfortunately, it only appears to be on BBC 1 Scotland, although I think those of you with NTL digital cable can check it out, on channel 927.

Held Accountable

2004-02-21T17:57:00.000Z

Since I wouldn't want to be rude, I'll also make an introduction. Welcome!

I'm Scott McAllister. I did briefly have a blog, but that was ages ago, and apart from the infamous Catwoman post briefly mentioned at the time by Dirk Deppey and a fantastically over-long post about Black Panther and The Crew, there wasn't much on it worth remembering. Trust me on this.

If I have a reputation on this World Wide Wotsit, then it's probably to do with my tinkerings with a thing I like to call Wake Up Screaming. Some would call it a webcomic, and some might not be that kind, but that's their problem, not mine. Heh-heh.

And for my next trick, I'll be adding some of my own thoughts on why I also love Hellboy.

Same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Channel. Or not.

My Favourite Comics part #1 - Hellboy

2004-02-21T13:02:00.000Z

This here post is two things in one - it's both a big old post about Mike Mignola's Hellboy, and also the first in a series of posts where I talk about some of my all time favourite comics. It should be noted that these comics are not being written about in any order, and that I don't in any way consider this to be a list of the "best" comics ever made. This is just an excuse for me to talk about all of the comics that I am most attached to whenever the whim strikes me, though obviously since I like them so much it's a fair bet that I rate them pretty highly on a technical level.

With that in mind, lets get down to it:

Hellboy is one of those comics that I have a hard time writing about in great depth because my enjoyment of it feels so instinctive and immediate that articulating the source of my joy feels unnatural somehow.

It is almost impossibly to do the series justice when describing its basic set-up; Hellboy is all about a big, red demon-man, who works for the Bureau of Paranormal Resource and Defence. He's a lovable, down-to-earth sort of guy, but one whose birth is tied into all sorts of sinister apocalyptic goings on.

A typical Hellboy story mixes pulpy madness (Nazis and Lovecraftian horrors mostly) and elements from traditional folk tales together into something cohesive and wonderful. There's a sense of humour to the whole thing, much of it provided by the character of Hellboy himself, who undercuts some of the more grandiose moments neatly with his wonderful line in crap quips, which rather than getting in the way of things, simply reinforce the sheer sense of enthusiasm and play at work here. *

There's little drama or character exploration in these comics - at least not in the traditional sense. The characters are all interesting and charming (especially Hellboy himself), but they are not lingered on or developed in any great detail. Instead, the thrust of the strip is Mike Mignola's gorgeous artwork, which pushes the readers eye around with its huge swathes of inky blackness, bringing to life the weird world in which the comic takes place brilliantly as it does so. This isn't to say that the story exists merely as a showcase for Mignola's artwork -- Hellboy never reads like a collection of poorly cobbled together splash pages -- but rather that the whole thing flows joyously around the artwork. Mignola's work recalls a whole lot of older comic book artists, the mighty Jack Kirby chief among them, and it's in the Jack Kirby connection that I find a better way to explain what exactly I mean by this. Alongside his epic imagination, the one thing that most comes to mind when I think about Jack Kirby's work is how well the bizarre twisting figures and technologies he drew sent the eye spiraling around the page in an entirely cohesive way; his stories always had a great deal of power and energy to them both within and between the panels, and Mignola's art works similarly, both charging these stories with a suitable amount of pulpy vitality, and also adding weight to some of the grander scenes in the comic.

For example, when the Lovecraftian sci-fi craziness of 'the Conqueror Worm' reaches its conclusion, Mignola's art gives the Worm of the title a sense of magnificence that just leaps off the page at you. Or when we are given hints as to Hellboy's place in the scheme of things - glances at whatever his destiny and true origin are supposed to be - the artwork is suitably immense, giving these story threads far more power than they would have if Hellboy just sat around brooding about them more frequently (as he surely would if this was an inferior comic). Sure, there are quite a few scenes in which Hellboy struggles with his place in the world and with whatever his destiny may be, but these scenes are always rather quiet and underdone ("Did I learn anything? I don't know, maybe... but I can't say it made my day"), with the real fireworks left to the scenes with the big, bold artwork. That bit in Wake the Devil' where his horns grow back is just marvelous. The words and pictures rise together, with Mignola's art adding a grace and scope to the narration that just wouldn't be there otherwise, pushing the drama to an exquisite climax in the process.

There is another dimension to Mignola's artwork that is equally essential to the entrancing nature of the comic, and that is his uncanny way with mood. The swathes of black that shroud each page of the series convey a sort of sustained atmosphere that the absolutely perfect colouring (which is done by a rotating crew of highly talented guys, apparently) aids beautifully. Hellboy is one of the few comics that really strikes me as having a distinctive colour scheme. Ok, maybe that's slightly unfair -- there are many good colourists out there right now (Laura Allred, for one) -- but the truth is that I can't think of Hellboy without thinking of that colour scheme. The murky greens and light blues, the blood-red splash of Hellboy himself - it's perfect. These stories aren't frightening, as such, but they are engrossing and, on occasion, very creepy, and the restrained colour palette has a lot to do with this; it's just so damned shadowy and evocative that you'd be a fool to pretend it doesn't add a lot to the highly refined visual impact of these comics. Much as I'm sure Guillermo del Torro and his crew will give it their all, the film version of Hellboy couldn't hope to replicate the ebbs and flows of strangely vivid shadow that grace every page of the the comic book.

Would I be right to say that some of the shorter stories were originally printed in black and white? I've never read Hellboy in this form, but I'm definitely curious as to how these stories would come across without the colouring. They would have a starker moodiness to them, I'd imagine, but as I'm just speculating right now I think I'll stop before I get started.

So there you go then: Hellboy - it's a wonder of execution that ties together all sorts of fun stuff (monsters, Nazis, folk tales, bizarre cosmic horror) into a package that is energetic and yet moody; self-effacing, but still capable of grandeur. Basically, it's a whole lot of fun. It feels like the work of an artist at the height of his powers playing around with all of his favourite things, and as such it is deeply intoxicating.

*As an aside, the funniest Hellboy comic is surely 'Pancakes', a two page strip in which we see young Hellboy eating pancakes for the first time. It's an adorable looking comic (Mignola's young Hellboy is amazingly cute), and it also gently undercuts the seriousness some of the series' overarching plot-threads, which makes reading it all the more pleasurable. I mention this story both as an example of how funny Hellboy can be when Mignola pushes in that direction, and also as an indication that he knows when not to do this; if something this funny appeared in the middle of a big story arc, it would perhaps be a step too far into the realm of comedy.

[This post appeared in a slightly different form here, and has been updated to make it less hideously clunky!]

Blog Master - Blog Faster!

2004-02-21T12:42:00.000Z

Ok, here we go: welcome to Insult to Injury, a new comics weblog written and maintained by three Scottish students.

We don't have a manifesto or anything like that. We're just here to have fun writing about comics, and hopefully to provide all of you with some interesting comics-related reading in the process.

I'm David Allison, aka Big Sunny D, and this is where you'll be able to find the majority of my comics related musings from now on. I'll be launching a new and improved (?) version of my old blog sometime in the next week or so, and that's where anyone who is interested in reading what I have to say about music, books, movies etc will be able to get their fill of my usual nonsense!

The other guys can introduce themselves if they want to, or they can just get on with it - it's all good as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, I'll be re-starting my series of posts about my favourite comic books today with a re-jigged version of the post I wrote about Hellboy way back when, so look out for that if you're interested.

With all that out of the way, lets get this party started!

Mike Check? Who's he?

2004-02-18T14:34:00.000Z

I'd really like to apologise for that pun.

2004-02-16T00:19:00.000Z

Mike Check, Part Zwei

"Uh-huh-huh! Thangyewverahmuch"

2004-02-12T13:11:00.000Z

Mike Check

Hello world?