Scarlet #6 -- Current Events

Scarlet #6 by Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev, and Chris Eliopoulos, published by Marvel Icon, released February 2013:  This was one of the damn oddest comic-reading experiences for me of recent memory.  First, there was the surprise of even seeing it-- this was a comic that had just stopped coming out, mid-story, ages and ages ago (2011, according to the internet). I just found it sitting on a shelf, unheralded, nearly two years after #5.  Letter page promises #7 in March; if that came out, it got by me...?  It's been more than 10 years since Bendis-Maleev Daredevil launched; since then: Halo, crossover tie-ins, Spiderwoman, Moon Knight...?  For a team that decent, that celebrated, back-when, a run of (mostly) also-ran’s. What happened?

But more strange:  Scarlet is a comic about a woman who runs around shooting police officers because she hates police corruption.  Uh, which is a thing that actually happened:  that one guy, Chris Dorner...? Remember him?  He wrote a manifesto which accused the police of being dirty (also: how he wanted to have sex with Laura Prepon and how he regretted that he would likely not survive to watch the Hangover 3), and then went and murdered some cops, etc.  That totes happened. This comic ends with a rally inspired by Scarlet's cop-killing antics;  in real life... I wasn't paying too much attention, but the way I remember it:  the police shot up a bunch of random people; found him in a cabin; lit the cabin on fire ("inadvertently"); yadda yadda, he blew his brains out rather than burn to death...?  I didn't follow Dorner too close, all happened during a busy time in my life, may have some details wrong and I apologize, but still:  boy, this made for an extremely odd reading experience, one obviously unintended by its authors and yet maybe unavoidable for readers. (Though of the four reviews I glanced at, only one mentioned him, so … maybe not…?). I found it a very strange time, returning to this comic's world after all that ... hoopla....?

So: a serialized comic's narrative unexpectedly matches up with current events-- that's a thing that happens sometimes.  What do you think?  Surely, it has to effect how we read it, whether we like it or not, whether we want it to or not.  Does it make the story better that the main character's antics actually now seem somewhat more plausible?  Or, alternately, because this story presents events so different from the reality of how you know similar things played out in real life, does it make the story worse?

At the moment, if forced to choose, I'd vote "better." It seems suggestive that Bendis, Maleev and Eliopoulos were at least "asking the right questions," at some point in time.  Even if accidental, even if mere coincidence, it at least creates a pleasant illusion that there's something-- something?-- at the root of this thing worth examining.  Of course, the Dorner story was many things, but not great fiction.  The synchronicity of current events alone isn't enough fissionable material to solve this comic's more pressing issues, namely: is the redhead an interesting character? Her goals are extraordinarily vague and intangible, forcing our attention too much on society’s response to her which now only defies plausibility all the more thanks to Dorner et al. Practically-speaking, if she is an interesting character, I don't remember why anymore-- 2011's too far.  But so, the Dorner thing, it's something.

That'd be my answer, at least at this moment in time.  However, as the story progresses, will we notice its discontinuity with reality more and more?  What's it going to be like not with #6, but #9, #11, #13, as it becomes clearer how much they've "gotten wrong" about how things would play out should a "cop-killer with reasons" gain national media attention?  Hot damn, it's an exceptionally odd situation for a comic to find itself in.  But I guess only if the comic actually comes out, which is really just anyone's guess, at this point...  Maybe?

“They Were Stacked Criss-Cross, Like Cheese Straws…” BOOKS! Sometimes I Fancy A Change!

I didn’t really get around to any comics this week what with one thing and another. But I did read some prose and I ended up writing about that. It was a couple of books of short stories written by the co-founder of The Inland Waterways Association. Sounds gripping, huh? Well, if you’re going to let preconceptions hold sway then, I guess, this one’s for me. I know! The gall of the man, the sheer, wicked nerve! Anyway, this…

COLD HAND IN MINE By Robert Aickman Faber, £12.00 (2008) THE UNSETTLED DUST By Robert Aickman Faber, £13.00 (2009)

The written work of Robert Fordyce Aickman (1914-1981) was a staple of my young life via his collections of, to use his preferred term, “strange stories”. Memory, ever unreliable it should be noted, maintains a plenitude of these books populated the stacks of the library around which much of my young life revolved. For the child library books have their own unique wonder. The primary source of this wonder being the sure discovery, on a page turn, of the, seemingly obligatory, trapped and flattened hair of an oddly pubic cast. So inevitable did such lightly disquieting discoveries seem that a youth possessing an imagination lightly foxed by morbidity might consider it not entirely beyond the pale that, down a quiet and municipally taupe corridor, there could not fail to be some secluded room within which, ill-lit by a crackling bulb, some hirsute creature crouched, snuffling wetly while delicately plucking and pressing a single hair from its own plentiful fund between the pages of a book. Said volume having been taken from the piles mazed around the bristling creature, doctored as stated and finally replaced upon the shelves by a man with a strangely fungal pallor and slurred gait. And upon this book the hand of a child would alight…

…Some three decades later and deciding to add some agreeably bound volumes of Mr. Aickman’s work to my own modest, and largely hairless, personal library I was aghast at the lack of availability of such volumes. O, they existed; their existence could be in no doubt but then nor, alas, could the height of the prices they demanded. Existence and availability should never be assumed to be twinned as many a convicted sex offender has discovered to their chagrin. After a little piggish truffling I did, however, find the paperback volumes noted here which, while not precisely cheap, are at least within reach of most budgets. True, they are a bit on the perfunctory side, with the only variation design wise being the name of the collection in question. A biographical note is also lacking; so one would not know that Mr. Aickman was renowned in his time for his efforts to reclaim Britain’s inland waterways and edited the first 8 volumes of the Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories; modestly excluding his own work from vol.s 4 and 6. Proof reading, particularly, with The Unsettled Dust, leaves something to be desired; Aickman being a most fastidious writer this is not groundless carping. Nor are there found hereabouts any testaments to the high regard with which Mr. Aickman’s work is held by today’s fantasists and fabulists. So, the modern reader would not be attracted by the fact that such as Peter Straub (who attempts to write in the key of Aickman upon occasion), Neal Gaiman (whose less fey work can approach the Aickman-esque) and the British dark comedy practitioners The League of Gentlemen (whose work is sodden with Aickman’s influence) are amongst the many who flit around Aickman’s darkly warming flame still.

With rare exceptions Aickman’s shorter works are primarily allusive and flee from concrete meaning with a singularity of purpose akin to a man who has bolted from his home upon noticing his wainscoting labours as though breathing and, indeed, has done so for some time…But, fret not, it does this in a welcoming rather than an exclusionary way. Aickman’s lithe use of language and precise prose draw the reader in before baffling and unsettling them to pleasantly discombobulating effect. Recently I, perhaps unwisely and certainly rather blithely, posited that the popularity of British war comics in the 1970s was not a result of us being a nation of blood thirsty racists backwardly yearning for The Empire, but rather the result of complications born of adjusting to the unavoidable upheavals such a prolonged period of warfare prompts. Had I finished these books in time they would, perhaps, have helped mitigate the apparent inanity of my premise. For, it soon becomes apparent, that much of Aickman’s work is concerned with the inadequacy of the brittle social conventions of the time (these collections date from 1975 onwards) to endure in the face of the psychic mayhem unleashed by two debilitating wars in quick succession. Aickman’s stories mostly document minds and lives as they intersect with subtly chaotic and leisurely overpowering forces and, as a consequence, dissipate with the tranquil violence of paper separating in a puddle. In doing so he also attempts to convey the dislocation and unease felt by a society as paradigms shifts far too suddenly for comfort.  I feel no shame in revealing that as a child all this completley passed me by. It appears that Aickman's work is work that grows with you, how simply marvellous! There’s another collection in this series, The Wine Dark Sea, now I haven’t acquired that one yet, but be assured I shall. For now I must return down this municipally taupe corridor to my room, ill-lit as it is by a crackling bulb, and bend my back to my task…

Oh, and how does Robert Aickman bear up? Well, brace yourself and let me pour you a stiff brandy because it appears, to all intents and purposes, that Mr. Robert Aickman remains…EXCELLENT! Next time, probably, - COMICS!!!

"You See That? He's STILL The Greatest!" COMICS! Sometimes It's GilWolf Unbound!

A-huh! HUH! It’s another instalment of Gil Happy! Unsightly blemishes are a thing of the past as Gil Kane and his plucky sidekick, Marv Wolfman, team up with friends galore to document the exciting, amazing and thoroughly ridiculous adventures of 1980s Superman. Bonus! Feel the years just fall away as we revisit that time a comics creator flicked DC’s tie back in its face! Documentary evidence provided! Anyway this…

DC's Legal Department in a self congratulatory mood...oh, sorry, it's actually Brainiac!

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN: GIL KANE Art by Gil Kane Written by Marv Wolfman, Martin Pasko, Bob Rozakis, Gil Kane, Cary Bates, Roy Thomas and Joey Cavalieri Coloured by Tom Ziuko, Gene D'Angelo, Anthony Tollin, Jerry serpe and Carl Gafford Lettered by Shirley Leferman, Ben Oda, Gaspar Saladino, Andy Kubert, Milt Snapinn and Todd Klein Originally published in Action Comics #539-541, 544-546, DC Comics Presents Annual #3, Superman #367, 372, 375 and Superman Special #1 and 2 DC Comics, $39.99 (2012)

Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

AN APOLOGY: John's scanner is still acting up. While this sounds like John's housemate is Darryl Revok and he isn't doing his share of the washing up, what it really means is that all images are not taken from this book. All images in the body of the review are in the book but in a much cleaner, nicer form. I apologise for this.

I've mentioned some of the comics contained herein on previous occasions. Usually I've emphasised the art as the stories seemed a bit, er, slapdash. Since my age tanned run was incomplete I thought this was the result of absent chapters. Having experienced the visually splendid whole I find that, in fact, the stories are just straight-up nonsensical and preposterous in the extreme. That’s not intended as a slur on Marv Wolfman, who is a pretty decent comic book writer. Indeed, shortly after these issues he would have a far more coherent run on Adventures of Superman with Jerry Ordway following the Byrne re-boot. This does suggest that Gil Kane had the storytelling/plotting lead here and while he has given himself plenty of ostentatious incidents to illustrate the burden on explaining these, seemingly after the fact, falls to Wolfman. Most of whose intellectual energies are engaged with coming up with various different scientific, cough, results for Superman spinning around very fast indeed. I may exaggerate upon occasion but I feel safe in saying that if you are a fan of pictures of Superman spinning around very fast indeed you will want to marry this book. There are a lot of pictures of Superman spinning around very fast indeed, is what I’m getting at there.

No, he isn't spinning around but it is all quite exciting!

As a writer Wolfman gets some craft scraps in the form of Lana And Lois continually trying to c*** block one another over Clark and a slightly less ludicrous approach to inter-personal dynamics than comics may previously have shown. I said, slightly. Yes, Jimmy Olsen does put on a magic show for orphans because - you don’t fuck with the classics. Wolfman does refer to Joanie Loves Chacchi and for this he should never, ever be forgiven. Ideally there’d be an introduction in which Wolfman explained how the book came to be but DC splashed out on glossy paper instead, I guess. Tightwads. As it is I have made a great deal of assumptions so maybe I am wrong. Maybe Marv Wolfman forced Gil Kane to illustrate his scripts exactly as written so convinced was he of their literary worth. Maybe. I doubt it. Anyway, none of it makes any sense at all but Marv Wolfman does make it hold together enough for rational human beings to enjoy the book’s goofy charms without getting nosebleeds. Just about. C’mon, it’s a comic about a flying man with a good heart drawn by Gil Kane and that’s enough for me.

Gil Kane just straight up drew the Hell out of this panel, didn't he? The collection eases you into the insanity with a couple of shorts one of which is about how if you ignore a hosepipe ban Superman will pay you a personal visit and tell you a story about Krypton expressly designed to make you feel like a proper shitheel. Where I live a man from the Council with cheap shoes and a bad haircut would come round and threaten to fine you which, frankly, lacks razzamatazz in comparison. GilWolf©’s run proper starts with a tale concerning two sorcerers who seek a divorce via time travelling magical violence. Relax, they are a lady and a man so bigots can enjoy this tale too. This magical marital disharmony results in Superman’s doppelganger creating the universe at the dawn of time, where he is spotted by Brainiac whose disembodied consciousness has travelled back to the dawn of creation because mumble mumble. Brainiac, now a fussily re-designed robot, entirely reasonably comes away with the impression that Superman is the Angel of Death or something and pressgangs several planets’ populations into an army. After failing to kill Superman because his plans repeatedly fail to take into account the power of spinning around very fast indeed, Brainiac attacks earth whereupon Gil Kane draws a whole issue where the JLA and Teen Titans fight, fight, fight those coerced alien rascals. This is a mid-way high point as Gil Kane demonstrates you don’t need six fucking months to draw some robots and rubble as well as proving it is possible to draw Starfire without making me ashamed of my entire gender. As I implied, there’s more to come and that more involves a parade of DC’s Lamest Heroes© (who are actually fantastic in their lameness and this world is all the poorer without them), Vandal Savage, some pyramids, aliens, stuff, nonsense, bit, bobs, maybe even a kitchen sink and it all culminates chaotically in that fantastic single issue where Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster create Superman and save the world through their pluck, belief and imagination. I may have mentioned that one before. Fair play though; it’s impressive how each storyline in the main run flows into the next, with elements being carried across and the whole thing building to the magnificently shameless optimism of the final chapter. Sure, it’s crackers but it’s quality crackers. The book ends with a DC COMICS PRESENTS ANNUAL where Superman, Superman of Earth -2 and Captain “Shazam” Marvel fight Silvana which is beautiful in its combination of single minded narrative simplicity and the raw joy communicated by Gil Kane’s art.

Swooping in...

And it’s that art you’ll mostly be revelling in. Because, Gil Kane. Keep up, son. Art-wise the big thing I noticed reading these comics in a fat batch wasn't just all Gil Kane’s usual tricks but a couple of new ones. Well, new to me, I’m hardly Oliver Observant you know. I’ll just focus on one because you look a bit restless; apparently having forgotten that you can stop reading this at any time you like. Now, we all know that people being punched so hard they back flip out of the panel is a ©Gil Kane move. It’s not exactly subtle is it? It’s only due to the limits of reality that the back flipping dude isn't literally in your face. But a slyer move Gil Kane sneaks in is a number of panels where a character will be flying, leaping, bounding etc (as Kane’s athletic characters were wont to do) and some extremity or other crosses beyond the panel border. This basically flips the effect of the “punch out” panels to give the impression of the figure entering the panel/page from without. Sometimes the character’s extremity just fails to cross the border but due to the position and tendency of the figure with the other contents of the panel it’s unmistakably the artist’s intention to communicate the impression of entrance. Over the long haul the combination of these “punch out” and “plunge in” panels create, I think, a particular and magical effect. Rather than the panels on the page being read as images projected onto the flat page and the “screen” of each panel, Kane’s pages are like windows onto another world. Another couple of scotches and I’d be trying to push my face into the panels imagining it looming hugely out of a cloud on the other side of the dimensional barrier that Kane’s art creates the illusion of having broken. Due to Kane’s distinctively friable style it’s obviously not our reality but it could be easily be a world where everything looks like Gil Kane drew it. That’s just the one thing I noticed, there’s plenty of others. As the art goes there’s something to ponder, admire or puzzle over on every one of these pages. Even if that thing is just that someone with talents so awesome and honed by practice could still have such trouble drawing feet.

Gil Kane was quite a humorous artist too. That guy in the foreground is not only doing a "Hey, youse guys, check out alla da commotion!" pose but the fact that the same pose crops up again and again in more modern milieu implicitly makes this chump the ancestor of many of Kane's foreground folk.

Oh, wait, before you all go could DC Comics just stay behind for a minute…thank you.

Now, I take no pleasure at all in pointing this out but if we don’t address this issue it may have ramifications for your future. So, this book cost £39.99, which is no small sum, and on the back of the jacket there is this blurb:

"Kane's work of Superman shined on such titles as..."

Look, DC Comics, I’m not unsympathetic; I realise these are tight times for us all and I guess, allegedly, crushing the dreams of elderly people in courts of Law is a pricey business. But the apparent outsourcing of your proof reading to the linguistically challenged Brian Bendis is just a false economy. No good can come of it. It hardly speaks to a commitment to quality commensurate with your position in the industry does it now? Treating your audience with the same disdain as you now treat creators post Levitz/Kahn might not actually be the soundest policy with regards to the future. Just a thought there. Don’t let me have to detain you again. Now go outside and play in the sun.

Despite DC Comics’ best efforts at self-sabotage ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN: GIL KANE is VERY GOOD!

However, purchasers will miss out on the non-Gil Kane contents of ACTION #544. But it’s okay because I have that issue and I can fill you in on what you missed. The issue in question is an Anniversary issue and so to celebrate DC Comics got the creators of Superman to contribute.

Art by Gil Kane and Dick Giordano

That’s Mr Jerome Siegel and Mr Joseph Shuster I’m talking about there. You may remember them fondly from decades of legal hassle with DC Comics. I guess there was a bit of a truce on at the time. DC was paying them something at least, I imagine. Everybody on their best behaviour and all that. So, being the writer, Jerry Siegel gives us several thousand words reminiscing about the creation of Superman; thanking all the people who helped it become a success; how it defined his life and such. It’s all very temperate and polite. Neal Adams et al are all thanked but he doesn’t explicitly say that’s he’s thanking them for securing Joe and he the payments from DC then currently ensuring the truce and the good behaviour.

The whole thing is sweet and kind of heartbreaky. Mind you, the fact that it’s actually addressed to Superman throughout in the manner of one of those letters dead parents leave for their children to find, the ones which emphasise how the child enriched the parent’s truncated life, kind of gets the ducts filling early anyway. Of course, hearts are harder these days, with most of fandom more concerned with how the Siegel & Shuster legal battles would affect the possibility of a Justice League movie or whether Superman’s trunks could come back. Because, priorities.

Being the artist Joe Shuster submits this charming piece:

Now, as nice as that is the words he sent it with knock it into a cocked hat. This is what Joe Shuster wrote:

"...I have decided to keep the original."

All those years, all those lawyers and they didn’t break him.

HA! Now that’s not comics but it is very - COMICS!!!

Have a good Easter now, y'all!

"A Tiger Doesn't Give A Buffalo Warning." COMICS! Sometimes They aaaAAAIEEEE!!! DAAKEESE MOB!!

In the Burmese jungle of 1942 only one thing was more deadly than the Japanese...In the war comics of 1976 only one strip ruled the playground...That thing, that strip was DARKIE’S MOB by Mike Western and John Wagner. COME ON!!! GET SOME!! CAHMMM AHHHNNNNN!!!! DARKIE’S MOB: The Secret War of Joe Darkie Art by Mike Western Written by John Wagner Introduction by Garth Ennis Titan Books, £16.99 (2011) Darkie’s Mob created by Mike Western and John Wagner (N.B. Darkie’s character defining shiny pate was the masterstroke of then editor Dave Hunter.)

Cover art by Carlos Ezquerra and Mike Western.

May 30^th 1942: “We’re just sitting. Waiting to die…” Taken from the blood stained pages of the battle log of private Richard Shortland comes the story of Darkie’s Mob. This is the story of Joe Darkie and of the men who followed him into Hell. This is the story of Joe Darkie who wore a dragon against his flesh and hid a demon in his heart. And this is the story, also, of the lost and hopeless men Joe Darkie forged with War into a jungle hard fighting force. And when he was done, when Joe Darkie was finally done, Joe Darkie had taught them that war was Hell but he also taught them that Hell could also be a home. And the Hell of War was the only home there could ever be for DARKIE’S MOB.

...and then he'll have to kill you.

This book contains all the episode of the picto-serial DARKIE’S MOB which originally appeared in issues of BATTLE PICTURE WEEKLY from August 1976 to June 1977. BATTLE was a weekly British war comic aimed primarily at children and it was thus a violent, dark, complex and brutal assault on the pre-teen mind. Which is just how kids like it, social services be damned. So, you've probably guessed Pat “Moderation” Mills was involved but only in that he, together with John Wagner, had set up BATTLE for Fleetway in direct response to the tamer and more typical fare of D C Thompson’s WARLORD.  To be fair, when I was a kid WARLORD had its moments but BATTLE still has its moments now I’m an adult, so BATTLE wins. Some might be confused by the fact that during the 1970s there was such an emphasis on the war in British comics. Such people’s confusion would be bolstered by the knowledge that, in addition to BATTLE and WARLORD, there were also the several monthly self-contained digest size titles of BATTLE PICTURE LIBRARY, WAR PICTURE LIBRARY and COMMANDO COMICS.

"British people In Hot Weather-AH!" The simplistic and sweeping answer (you were expecting maybe a reasoned thesis?) is that the War still wasn't all that far behind us back then. In fact a notable feature of early BATTLE was that readers were encouraged to send in the war stories of their fathers and grandfathers. (Of course due to natural attrition this feature became less popular as the years wore on). Basically Britain was still trying to process the massive trauma of the conflict and was having a hard time doing so. We’d helped win the thing but it had pretty much broken us and so, yes, it may well have been the 1970s but, sad to admit, the 1940s were taking some shaking.  In Renegade the autobiography of (i.e. a fascinating interpretation of his own reality) The Fall’s Mark E. Smith recalls how he used to play Japanese Prisoner of War Camp with the kids he was babysitting. This would involve them having to sit under a table and asking permission of the future Marquis Cha-Cha for any water or food. The kids of Britain in general were not unaffected by the tone of the times, is what I’m getting at there, and BATTLE would reflect this. BATTLE would reflect it in a relatively timely fashion as by 1976 attitudes to the war had changed somewhat and this was, as ever, reflected in the entertainments proffered. The slightly harsh but never too far from cosy early post-WW2 war films embodied by the words “John Mills” had started to give way to bleaker, grimier fare such as Robert Aldrich’s Too Late The Hero. Comics has ever magpied from pop culture after the fact but BATTLE was nimbler than WARLORD on picking up on the changes. WARLORD lagged behind in that it was still Millsian in the sense of Little Johnny but BATTLE was about to forge ahead by virtue of being Millsian in the sense of Pat. DARKIE’S MOB would be one of a number of strips Mills, Wagner, Gerry Finley Day et al would develop and script which would be part of a nation’s acceptance of its own past. Proof that true acceptance had been reached came when war comics fell by the way side. And so the healthy British mindset was to be embodied by a giant killer shark eating surfers like plankton and a fascistic future cop with a chin like a knee but, then, that’s why comics are the best of all things ever. Fact.

It's okay, he's just joshing...isn't he?

DARKIE’S MOB is a product of the 1970s and so, as this is 2013 when everybody behaves impeccably at all times, Garth Ennis spends most of his informative, knowledgeable and very enthusiastic introduction pointing out that although racist terms are used, they fall within acceptable parameters for the portrayal of a bunch of desperate men at the end of their tethers fighting an enemy it is in their interests to dehumanise. Let’s face it soldiers swear, and sometimes use less than pleasant terms for the people they are trying to kill. There’s no effin’ and jeffin’ here but there are some terms that might make us uncomfortable. And so they should, after all we’re not currently jungle fighting the Japanese are we? Anyway, you have been warned. Ennis also points out that the Japanese army weren't fucking about either. They meant business. In fact, the extent to which they were not fucking about quite surprised the breath out of the British hence they were somewhat on the back-foot when the tale opens. Although, cleverly, the tale is over when it begins and we witness everything via flashbacks spurred by entries in a diary found after the Japanese defeat. Right there on the first page is the clue to how it all ends, and it won’t be ending with kissing nurses in ticker tape parades. Not for Joe Darkie's Mob.

"Hey Kids, COMICS!!!"

As was usual for strips in British weekly anthologies of the time John Wagner and Mike Western get a whopping three (sometimes four!) pages an episode. Consequently brevity, concision, density and clarity are the order of the day and Western and Wagner obey those orders above and beyond the call of duty. While the initial impact of DARKIE’S MOB will always result from surprise at the savagery of the proceedings its persistence in the reader’s memory is wholly due to the characterisation. No, it’s not exactly Jonathan Franzen, but Wagner nails down the various characters with an enviable certainty and economy. He does this while, in each episode, also delivering at least one explosively violent set piece, hinting at Darkie’s past and keeping a character centric sub plot or two simmering. Wagner is of course known and loved by all comics fans primarily for co-creating Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog but is an excellent comic writer; one whose excellence is often taken for granted due to his comics working so well you often don’t realise how superbly executed they are. To the detriment of his own reputation Wagner always steps back and lets the story take precedence over his personality. Here then is DARKIE’S MOB which is fantastic episodic comic book writing by John Wagner. Oh, the usual warning applies with Brit reprints - it isn't, truthfully, best served by gorging, so maybe put the book aside now and then for the best effect. Self-restraint, I’m talking about self-restraint there. Although that might be difficult given the breakneck velocity built into the strip.

"AIEEEE!", Indeed!

In concert with Wagner’s scripting DARKIE’S MOB benefits enormously from its excellent envisaging by Mike Western. Mike Western is one of a whole host of 70s artists who worked on British comics and whom deserve wider recognition. Thanks to reprints some of them are getting a deserved second wind. This should afford them at least a place in comics history even if it isn’t fully the place they deserve. Carlos Ezquerra’s okay he’s got Judge Dredd (and then all the rest) to keep him in view and Joe Colquhoun isn't going anywhere thanks to Charley’s War and his Johnny Red should give John Cooper a deserved leg up as he shared the strip, but Mike Western’s shot is probably going to be DARKIE’S MOB, so forgive me if I try and make it count.  Because it deserves to count because Mike Western is a kind of old school awesome worth celebrating. Western was a stalwart mainstay of the British comics scene with his realistic rather than cartoony work gracing adventure strips and TV tie-ins in titles such as Knockout, Buster, Valiant and, of course BATTLE. Following DARKIE’S MOB Western would continue working in British comics until he officially retired in the ‘90s. He died in 2008. Throughout his career his work was informed by an admiration of artists from over the pond such as Alex Raymond and Milton Caniff. Studying their work would enable him to maximise the limited page space available in British comics but it was his own remarkable talents which make his work in DARKIE’S MOB so successful.

He's Got A Ticket To DIE!!!!

Western served his country in WW2 and while I do not know if any of his experiences are reflected in his art for Darkie’s Mob I kind of hope not for his own sake, what with the claustrophobic sense of sweaty doom he gives the strip. Reportedly Western enjoyed drawing faces and while this is never a bad thing in a comic artist it’s a sure strength when drawing war comics. As the Army isn't noted for encouraging individuality the Mob are largely differentiated by their faces, somewhat in the manner of real human beings. Western’s solid and lifelike fizzogs ground the melodramatic emotions being experienced and enable the retention of a veneer of realism over events that sometimes might stretch belief. Western’s characters are also placed firmly in environments which in a few lines and slabs of black ensure that the reader comes away from DARKIE’S MOB with a sure sense that the book has occurred within the dank folds of a murky jungle Hell. At first glance Western’s art might appear staid and static but when read with Wagner’s words it comes alive, drawing the reader in and pushing the real world out. Proper Comics there, that is. In DARKIE’S MOB with fewer pages than fingers on a wounded hand Western manages to pack in all the desperate and dingy psychodrama Wagner’s script requires in order to sting. He also works those individual panels. Really works them. Mike Western could cram an indecent amount of action, event, character, information and motion into a single panel and if you gave him a whole page to play with? Glad you asked:

DARKIE’S MOB is a raw blast of ‘70s Brit comics Burmese battle action delivered by the masterful team of Mike Western and John Wagner. War is truly terrible but DARKIE’S MOB is VERY GOOD!

“AAAIIIIEEEEE!!!” – COMICS!!!!

"Decency." COMICS! Sometimes They Do Not Bring Me Out In Hives!

Look, we all know that last time John read some comics released this century it all got a bit hairy. John would like to point out that this was not out of malice, low blood sugar, jealousy, his piles flaring up or sunspot activity. No, difficult as it may be to believe, John maintains it was the result of those comics not actually being all that good. Think of it as being a bit like John was showing you that sometimes he and Comics would argue but it didn't mean they didn't love each other any less and it certainly wasn't your fault. John can see why Doctor Doom talks like this – it’s fun. Anyway, this…

Due to the lack of a scanner all pictures are stolen from other people. That's what I'm reduced to. I hope you are all proud.

(Note: Doctor Doom was created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Or Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, whichever floats your boat. The important thing is to get both names in there. It’s free and respectful, Marvel.)

CREEPY#11 Art by Gilbert Hernandez, Amy Reeder, Peter Bagge, Chrissie Zullo, Johnny Craig and Joelle Jones Written by Gilbert Hernandez, J. Torres, Dan Braun, Peter Bagge, Alisa Whitney, Archie Goodwin and Jamie S. Rich Lettered by Gilbert Hernandez, Amy Reeder, Peter Bagge and Nate Piekos of Blambot® Dark Horse Comics, $4.99 (2013)

CREEPY is a horror anthology comic so it’s a given that it'll be a mixed bag but this issue kicks itself in the head from the off by kicking off with The Gilbert Hernandez Show and so everything after that is done no favours whatsoever. Oh editors, you never put Elvis on first. Hernandez’ tale is haunted by the phantom sounds of a thousand readers’ eyes revolving as his statistically gifted heroine grits her teeth through her lower back pain and bounces through a story as trashy and daft as all get out. By the final full page reveal said fun parched eyes will be revolving so fast that dogs from miles around will be howling at the resulting sound. The only way this nonsensical and nasty strip could have been improved would have been to slather it with hot pinks and crystalline greens a la Stuart Gordon's From Beyond. Ayup, fear fans, that’s the toxic territory we’re in here and while there does not actually exist a monograph called Basket Crepes: The Nearly Edible Imagery of Frank Henenlotter if you wish one did you’ll enjoy this magnificently shameless embracing of schlocky horror by a man so gifted he just doesn't have to care anymore.

"...like a gingerbread man!"

After that, Amy Reeder illustrates a story about a pining husband and his inadvertent contribution to the locally sourced fishing industry. This one is mainly notable for Amy Reeder’s art being far better than it was on her BATWOMAN stint. Then there’s one about how a lady’s monthly cramps might be hunger cramps because women are unknowable monsters who prey on men. I've made it sound really misogynistic there because I wanted to see who reached for their buckled hat and flaming torch. And now I know, don’t I? Now we all know. Alas my New Puritans it’s far more mundane than all that; the tale isn't terrible but is too derivative and tamely delivered to work as a terror tale. Filling in the cheap content reprint slot there’s Johnny Craig joint from an old CREEPY. It may be from the '70s CREEPY, but could just as well have come from a '50s EC Comic which is fine and dandy by me but might not be by you. I feel quite tremulous merely mentioning EC Comics on The Internet as currently any conversation involving them seems to devolve rapidly into a fucking chimps tea party where the winner is whoever gets the most shit in Eddie Campbell’s hair. The final story reads like someone excorcising the baggage of a bad relationship through the medium of words and pictures; with the pictures not quite sleazy enough to do the job justice. Throughout the book there’s a drizzle of Peter Bagge strips which, if you are a Peter Bagge fan, I guess you’ll like. Like I said, it’s a horror anthology so if you like horror anthologies what with their customary blemishes and surgical scars and all then this one was GOOD!

GLORY#31 Art by Ross Campbell & Ulises Farinas Written by Joe Keatinge Coloured by Owen Gieni Lettered by Douglas E. Sherwood Glory created by Rob Liefeld Image, $3.99 (2013)

Ah, Glory. What a fine comic this is. Sales aren't so hot so I hear. That’s most likely because Glory is a female character who hasn't been designed with the aim of appealing to the lowest portions of the lowest portions of fandom. She’s a bit butch, this lass and no mistake. Glory doesn't so much look like she’s built like a brick shit house as she looks built out of brick shit houses. A sturdy pile of at least five on top of which sits a creepy wee Barbie head but with Action Man’s scarring. Flesh may be on display but the flesh on display has the bluish-marbled sheen of freezer burned meat. Fancy your chances, chaps, and Glory will snap it off and feed it to you. Which is refreshing. What’s also refreshing is the jumble of outrageously gory issue(s) long fight scenes and convincing character interactions the series has managed to deliver thus far . The splatterhouse fight scenes are by Ross Campbell, who gives the offally antics a Darrow/Quitely/Burnham/Burrows burnish of detail; a level of detail which explicitly testifies to the relish with which the task is attacked. With GLORY Keatinge and Campbell (et al.)  have built a sweet story of friendship, a brutal story of family and a comic that’s basically just all round engaging entertainment. Although I greatly enjoyed Keatinge's effective deployment of undercutting (pancakes, anyone?) his savage and serious buildup I think I most enjoyed the issue which flash forwarded to a point in the narrative where everything looks to have gone tits up. Now we've jumped back and the suspense is doubled; nice one. I enjoyed this stratagem when I first encountered it in the WARRIOR SUMMER SPECIAL in 1982(ish) where Alan Moore did it in Marvelman. I don’t know if Alan Moore did it first and nor do I care because what’s important is that Keatinge deploys it at least as well as The Magnificent One; meaning GLORY is GOOD!

1982 - That was certainly a special Summer!

Of course a lot of you won’t be familiar with Marvelman due to the reasons outlined so smashingly in Padraig O'Mealoid’s fascinating, informative and wholly necessary investigation into the history of Marvelman. An investigation which promises to reveal who actually owns Marvelman. This, of course, is a bit of a cheeky maguffin as the ownership of Marvelman is beyond doubt. Why, as any fule kno, Marvelman is owned wholly and totally by Marvel©™, man! Oh sure, sceptics call this into doubt and wave at the fact that Marvel©™ has released nothing Marvelman related except for a bunch of insanely overpriced reprints of the Mick Anglo strips and a bad Joe Quesada poster. Now while these Anglo reprints are certainly of nostalgic interest (which is of more interest than the Joe Quesada poster) they are not the Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman material; i.e. the only material anyone cares about. Hataz fixate on this as though it proves something and yet these Hataz fail to take into account Marvel©™’s publicly stated position that they are taking their time so that when the MM stuff appears it will be done right. I mean, let’s face it perfectionism is a major, if not the defining trait, of Marvel©™. After all they do a perfectly good job of (and seem perfectly happy doing so) of denying Jack Kirby any credit or compensation for his co-creator role in the creation of the IPs without which no one at Marvel©™ would have a job. Oh, you thought I was going to do that thing where someone looks at Marvelman and has the shit shocked right out of them like brown toothpaste from a tightly squeezed tube by the bloody remarkable fact that in the last 30 odd years Marvelman has dated somewhat. But I didn't. Probably will do at some point though!

BATTLEFIELDS#4 Art by Russ Braun Written by Garth Ennis Coloured by Tony Avina Lettered by Simon Bowland Dynamite, $3.99 (2013)

Garth Ennis once popped up in one of the Dynamite back pages to bemoan the fact that no one read this here comic and that writing the series was pretty much a thankless and financially fruitless task. Since the contents of Dynamite back pages don't exactly inspire credence I thought Garth Ennis was just being a drama queen because he seems that sort doesn't he? A bit flaky; no good in a firefight; dress as a lady as soon as the lifeboats are struck; you know the sort. Seriously though, who believes anything comic creators say anymore? No, no, no, their wives just say they do; it’s part if the matrimonial pact. Anyway, I had a look at the sales figures and this comic is the #300 best-selling comic. That means people find that there are 299 comics better than this one. At first I thought this meant that readers would much rather read a bad super hero comic than a good war comic. Then I realised these were sales to Retailers. So really Retailers were happier ordering bad super hero comics rather than good war comics. Then I realised the “super hero” and “war” were red herrings and basically retailers were okay ordering bad comics rather than good comics. And at those deep discounts and attractive retailer incentives who can blame them! I guess everyone’s okay with comics being a giant Ponzi scheme? Do they generally work out well those things? Ha ha ha, only joking. I know nothing about retailing and I'm sure it's all fine! Say, while I was enjoying myself reading comics (or, if it was a Tuesday, enjoying myself staring into space silently weeping) my long suffering partner pointed out that there had been a programme on TV about the Hindenburg. Apparently the Hindenburg worked really well. Until suddenly it didn't.

Everything was going so well!

So, this comic no one is reading? Turns out it’s pretty great. BATTLEFIELDS is basically a banner under which Ennis and his various (and variable but very good at the least) artists deliver three part story arcs. Sometimes these arcs are stand alone and sometimes they involve recurring characters. There’s usually a good reason if the characters don’t recur. Death, I’m talking about death there; happens a lot in war, so I hear. Obviously raised on British war comics of the '70s Ennis synthesises the chippily anti-authoritarian swagger and honest violence of these with modern sophisticated storytelling to create (along with his artists) some of the best comics (apparently) barely anyone is reading. They also usually have covers by the divine Garry Leach (and maybe one fine and shining day he could do some interiors?), Leach is of course the man who first drew Alan Moore’s reinvention of Marvelman and is one of the few people who give cross hatching a good name. I’m getting off the subject now, but let’s be clear here – Marvel own Marvelman, Padraig O’Mealoid! MARVEL! Also (SPOILER!) Marvelman may have dated a bit in the last three or so decades. OMG! KIMOTA! Anyhoo, this issue of BATTLEFIELDS kicks off a new three parter involving Anna Kharkova; she being a female Russian pilot previously featured in an arc you need not have read to enjoy this comic. All you need to enjoy this comic is to read it.

"AIIEEEEEE!!!!"

Because, yes, despite the fact that comics is a primarily visual medium this comic, one which consists for the most part of two people in a room talking, is pretty great. It’s pretty great because the words coming out of the characters’ mouths are not bland pap; you know, the kind of page filling sub-TV blather dependant on some weird mutual non-aggression pact between the reader and the writer. These words here have content, these words here have substance and within these words a world unfolds. Admittedly it’s a world consisting primarily of a Quonset hut populated by two people but, still, it’s a world. Unfortunately for all involved it’s a world within a world and all that divides the two is wood, tin and glass which is little use against the irrevocable intrusion of the larger, madder and infinitely more savage world which is the world at war. It’s fine work in the words department is what I’m saying. The staging’s good too with both Ennis and Braun working with very little to convey the passing of time in an unobtrusive but effective fashion. It’s mostly Ennis’ show given the confined cast and setting which means Braun isn't given much to work with. Then again Braun is given the human face to work with and that is everything a decent artist needs; he proves to be a more than decent artist by the way. So, this issue was engaging, effective and intelligent and I’m going to go all the way up to VERY GOOD! Should you have the temerity to doubt my words then you’ll have to read it won’t you now? Check. And mate.

Oh, and because there is no podcast this week here's some thoughts on the latest Big Ticket Thinks in Recentville:

1) There is no question to which the right answer is arming Brian Hibbs. We "don't want any more trouble like you had last year in the Fillmore District", Brian Hibbs! 2) I won't be buying anything by people who actively seek to deny other people equal rights. You do what you want. That's how that Freedom stuff works. 3) Jerry Ordway is a good artist and yet he's still basically turning up at the WalMart parking lot at 6 in the morning hoping someone will pick him to go in the back of the truck. Nope, nothing wrong with this industry. 4) Howard Victor Chaykin is starting a new series about General George Custer in the next issue of DARK HORSE PRESENTS - aw, yeah! You'll miss him when he's gone you know!

Now go and fight like the mad dogs you are! But only fight about what's worthwhile - COMICS!!!

“I Know That Cave!” COMICS! Sometimes They Are Not For The Eyes Of The Vicar!

Hello! It is I, and I have some words! The words this week are about an original graphic novel penned by Gilbert Hernandez - Comics' very own George Clooney-a-like and Living Master of the Form. So, it's probably a safe bet I liked it. Saved you some time there. For those with time to kill this idiocy continues after the <more!>.

LOVE FROM THE SHADOWS By Gilbert Hernandez Fantagraphics Books, $19.99 (2011)

Gilbert Hernandez certainly has his knockers both on and off the page. Quite a lot of the time those off the page are motivated by the incessant presence of those on the page to commence their knocking. After thirty years this knocking has reached a pretty high volume, because yes, this year marks Gilbert Hernandez’ thirtieth birthday. Looking at the author photo on the back-flap he’s had a hard life. Oh, maybe it’s his love that is thirty years old, or maybe his rockets. Either way it’s an anniversary of some kind so I’m joining in by looking at this book. A book which contains knockers and probably has many of same since it also bat-shit.

LFTS is the third in a series of books intended to act as an adaptation of a cinematic opus starring Gilbert Hernandez’ character Fritz from the Luba cycle of stories. CHANCE IN HELL and TROUBLEMAKERS are the two other “adaptations” issued in stand alone form although I believe the stories Hypnotwist and Scarlett By Starlight in NEW LOVE AND ROCKETS are also intended to perform the same function. Then there’s SPEAK OF THE DEVIL which is apparently the real life events which form the basis of the Fritz vehicle The Midnight People which hasn't been adapted yet. It’s all very clever and all very meta but you really don’t need to worry about it unless you want to worry about it. In which case, well, there it is. Really though, all the conceptual fluffery just seems to be a long winded way of Gilbert Hernandez apologetically informing his audience that compared to the high art dishes of his past (Human Diastrophism, X, Poison River etc. etc. etc.(yes, "etc.", he’s pretty good.)) he’ll be serving up a somewhat cruder stew. Cruder both in terms of territory and technique.

Other than strange looks from people with your best interests at heart there’s little to be gained from an outline of the plot. Or “plot” (?!) as it were. Weird business is afoot almost from the off and by p.20 the main character has changed into someone else (maybe?) after entering a spooky cave under her house while being a pursued by some childishly inquisitive men clad in boiler suits and shades.  After that it gets really bizarre. It may be reductive to describe what follows as an imaginatively volatile cocktail of Tyrone Power flicks, Scientology, Russ Meyer and Barry Gifford but as reductive as that may be at least it’s a start. A start which merely intimates the insanity Gilbert Hernandez depicts so dryly over the 120 pages of lucid cartooning herein. So lucid in fact is his art that given the outrageously ridiculous subject matter it becomes in itself a tone, that of deadpan.  This poker faced delivery never falters and lends it all a farcical air which somehow both mercifully undercuts and unmercifully inflates the sense of creeping dread. It’s the work of a comics master tearing into the stained brown paper parcel of his unconscious, and finding a piping hot slurry composed of decades of pop culture detritus. Using his decades-honed skills of cartooning elegance and narrative clarity Gilbert Hernandez proceeds to mould his own serious concerns into the hectic pop hodge podge masquerading as a plot.

Yes, Gilbert Hernandez has flensed the trash of his past but he has not done this for nostalgically onanistic purposes. All these trashily  startling and confoundingly crazed pages point not to a talent titting about but rather to a talent continuing to develop; to develop in areas and ways in which he himself seems more driven than coherent in purpose. LFTS is no spinning of the wheels, it is no plucking of the foreskin. No, it is yet another step out beyond expectations and another skip up and over stagnation. LFTS is nonsensical, filthy, horrific, messy, unsettling, funny, dumb, lurid and as smart as all get out. LFTS is an example of a comics creator who has reached a place where he can do what he wants, however he wants and has found that there is still stuff he wants to do. It's part of Gilbert Hernandez' Big Ern Moment. Thirty years in and Gilbert Hernandez has definitivley won and all these weird, impolite books (of which LITS is but one) are the bits where he staggers around with his comb-over wisping freely and declaring to all and sundry (but mostly to himself), “They can’t touch me now! I'm above the Law!”

And after thirty years who can deny him that? Not I. No, not I. So, LOVE FROM THE SHADOWS is VERY GOOD! Besides he still does the straight stuff, Pops. Who isn't looking forward to JULIO'S DAY and MARBLE SEASON? People who hate COMICS!!!

A Brief Note From The Backroom Boys:

The more visually inclined amongst you will have noted the lack of images accompanying the preceding “thing”. This was not the intention. Alas, life spits on intentions like a sailor on shore leave. Yes, at present John is without a scanner. Last week The Haunted Scanner gave up the ghost and stopped being haunted and became a haunter. Not that there’s actually an after-life for scanners (although given the stuff Gilbert Hernandez comes up with it wouldn't be the most unlikely prospect I've entertained recently). Anyway, we’ve disposed of it in the time honoured and totally safe tradition of disposing of electrical goods (hefting it over a disused building’s fence in the dead of night) and now only the mourning remains. And the waiting. The waiting for a new scanner to appear out of thin air. Until that happens I’m afraid it’s going to be reduced rations content-wise. So, just letting y’all know there.

Ta-Ta For Now!

"Running With The Bulls At Pamplona?" MOVIES! Sometimes I Treat This Place Like I Own It!

So, yeah, to help us through the content drought I one finger typed a few words about a couple of movies I watched. I hear people like the movies, popular amongst the younger crowd so I hear. So maybe you'll like this? I don't know but I know this - it's FREE! People sure like FREE! stuff. Anyway, this...

THE GUARD (2011) Directed by John Michael McDonagh Screenplay by John Michael McDonagh Starring: Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong, David Wilmot, Katarina Cas et al.

Did you like In Bruges? Firstly let me compliment you on your impeccable taste and, secondly, let me assure you you’ll like The Guard. That was easy. Cheers. Piece of piss this reviewing lark. I’ll have a Guinness, if you’re asking. What? Time to kill have you, okay then. Stand us a scotch and we're off. That's the ticket, cheers. Now then, like In Bruges The Guard is a blunt consideration of mortality smuggled in under the cover of comforting genre clichés. Here though the clichés are more tightly adhered to and, as most of them belong to the mismatched buddy cop comedy genre, this movie has a far more affable surface. You can’t get much more affable than lovely Brendan Gleeson can you now? Even though the grand lad himself is playing a man whose lust for life has found itself stunted by the life he has lead, and who now finds sour solace in baiting those around him, magical Brendan Gleeson still charms like nobody’s business.

Smashing Brendan Gleeson is of course one of those rare actors who makes whatever he’s in worthwhile at least while he’s onscreen. This is a problem in awful shite like that there Mission Impossible movie where, when the grand fella isn't on screen, they might as well just turn it off and everybody involved, everybody who isn't sweet Brendan Gleeson, should come out and apologise to you personally for the remainder of the running time. Fret not, this isn’t a problem in The Guard as everyone else in the movie is just grand too. Just not as grand as the grand lad himself, Mr. Brendan Gleeson. Even that there Don Cheadle fellow acquits himself well as the FBI man sent over to help the delightful Brendan Gleeson put a stop to some rum doings with drugs. In fact I'm pleased to report that having checked with everyone we, the peoples of the United Kingdom, have now decided to let Mr. Cheadle off for the debacle of his accent in those Ocean’s films.

It may well be the lesser role but Cheadle doesn't bring any less to bear on his endearing performance as an essentially decent man hampered by his solipsism; a man silently and increasingly angry that everyone he meets is disappointed he isn't from The Behavioural Sciences Unit (like in the movies, you know). The rotten sod role is split between three fine actors so (rather than In Bruges’ towering evocation of evil turdery as personified by Mr. Ralph Fiennes) here the evil is diffused across three equally strong performances which makes it a little more palatable as befits the (slightly) more comedic tone. Because, as I have probably failed to get across, this movie is very, very funny. Early on in the movie Gleeson dryly teases an overexcited rookie with, “So what you’re saying is, this could be the work of…a serial killer.” he’s having fun, but serious fun. And yes, serious fun can be done as it is here in The Guard (which is VERY GOOD!).

THE WOLFMAN (2010) Directed by Joe Johnston Screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self (Inspired by the 1941 Curt Siodmak screenplay) Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving etc.

Sometimes I take time out from being a fussy prick and just watch stuff like this. This is the kind of film where a doctor bellows “This man could no more turn into a wolf than I could grow wings and fly through that window!!!” and you know exactly what’s going to happen in the next three minutes. How you react to this knowledge will, I predict, be an accurate measure of how you react to this film. This film being about lycanthropy in Victorian England. It’s OKAY! Nothing special really but nothing terrible either and there are, fair’s fair, some really nice bits. On a couple of occasions there are werewolf attacks and, man, these are pretty tasty coming across like shark attacks on dry land. Actually, that suggests the wolfman just lays there wheezily expiring while crusty villagers insolently kick him around a bit. That’s because I’m a bad writer.

In actual fact there’s people running and screaming while a furry blur swoops and loops around lopping off limbs and spilling intestines like egg noodles from a clumsy waiter’s tray. They are a bit over the top the werewolf attacks are, is what I’m saying there. And all the better for it. If there’s one thing this film would have benefited from (besides a bit of script polishing. The “My father told me…” scene in the pub just sits there like a daft lad waiting for his tea. That should have been a slam-dunk.) it’s a bit more gusto. GUSTO!

The only person having anywhere near enough fun with this stuff isn't even a person, it’s a pair of sideburns which are wearing Hugo Weaving. Bafflingly Anthony “Hammy Horror” Hopkins declines to chew the scenery until the end when he is required to do so quite literally. For most of the film though the sneaky imp contents himself with tinkering and fiddling with stuff so as to draw attention from whoever else is in the scene with him. Emily Blunt has the most thankless role in the film (well, she is a Victorian lady) and works the minor miracle of making her nothing of a character appear somewhat independent and self-possessed without it coming across as anachronistic as wearing a miniskirt and body popping. Del Toro’s a bit disappointing and comes off as just being really, really tired or something like he’s really missing his dog back in L.A. Distracted, he seems distracted. His finest moment occurs on seeing the corpse of his dead brother, where he unleashes a Full On Frankie Howerd OOOoooooOOOOOO! of a look if ever there was one. I wouldn't seek this one out then, but if I was sat there when it came on I’d stay where I was. Which is exactly what happened. Another glimpse into my rock’n’roll roller-coaster life there. You’re welcome.

(Any quotes are approximate but hopefully retain the spirit of the original. After all I hardly sit there with a notepad and pen whule I watch stuff. Expecting a bit much that is.)

And like Don Cheadle's guilt - I'm gone!

That's right! Those were movies - not COMICS!!!

"Nothing To Hold Onto." COMICS!!! Sometimes They Swarm With Awesome!

I know, I know, it’s the worst kind of week of all! It’s Skip Week! No Graeme McMillion$! No Gentle Jeff! No podcast! While our very own Donny and Marie are off removing shopping trolleys from canals (or whatever it is they are up to) it’s left to us poor schmucks to wonder how things can possibly get worse. Well, things just got worse and it happened like this: I've put some words down about a book by Charles Burns. Look at me! Can you see that? It’s my serious face! I have my serious face on because I am a serious man about a serious business! I’m on about a serious comic, seriously! You can stop looking at me now it’s freaking me out. Anyway, this…

THE HIVE by Charles Burns Jonathan Cape, £12.99 (2012)

THE HIVE is the (curiously neglected by the comics buzz world) second volume in Charles Burns’ enormously satisfying reconfiguring of comics genres to his own unsettling narrative ends. In Vol.1 (X-ED OUT) it was Tin-Tin’s sterile milieu which got a grubby makeover while here Burns’ dark adapted eye falls on romance comics. As ever the friction created by the innocent originals and Burns’ grimy concerns rubbing feverishly up against each other results in all kinds of frisky fun. While weirdness abounds on every page (even the normal stuff looks weird) the real oddity is how Burns’ clean and precise delineations manage to so successfully convey the soiled sense of having licked an ashtray with your mind.

Turns out if you draw a pickled pig foetus in a jar the unsettling material trumps the distanced style. Heck, the distanced style might even amplify the nastiness. I just read the book I didn't do any research or any of that professional shit so I don’t really know where Burns is coming from, but for me his work is evocative of that whole Immaculate Consumptive thang from the ‘80s. That fantastically fiery yet slyly funny Thirwell/Lunch/Almond/Cave aesthetic where you take the fight right to the darkness armed only with the straight razor of your intelligence and a scream that might actually be a laugh cranked too high. I realise from the haircuts and checked shirts that it’s probably more evocative of that whole Sub Pop scene but that wasn't my scene so I guess since this old man gets to play too the work’s concerns are quite supple (universal might be pushing it, though).

Could be David Lynch needs mentioning as well. Not with the aim of suggesting any cheap imitation on Burns’ part, no, rather to indicate just how good Burns is at harmonising the humdrum and the horrific as his multiple narratives blur and cross pollinate in a fashion which obfuscates meaning without obliterating it. If that sounds a bit dry and dull be assured it’s anything but. Reading this book (which I forgot to mention is a book about young love gone bad, sour and black with rot, oh, and memory too and other stuff. It's a busy little book.) I experienced a kind of carbonated tingle in my brain much like that occasioned in my fingertips every time they brushed the volume's almost subliminally tactile spine.

Look, I don’t really like to bang on about the aesthetic experience of physical comics because it quite quickly starts sounding creepy; like I’m the kind of guy who loves his comics so much that not only is my cock scarred by paper cuts but I can tell you which comics put them there (oh, the one just near the hem of the prepuce? POLICE ACTION FEATURING LOMAX #2. ) but…there’s just no denying this is a really nice volume in physical terms. Ayup, THE HIVE is a physically appealing package containing cerebral, sophisticated and very funny comics. That'd make it VERY GOOD!

There you go! It was short too! Because I love you, that’s why and that means I don’t need reasons. Except when I kill. I do, however, still need COMICS!!!

Ta-ta for the nonce!

"Rodeo Ain't Over Yet!" COMICS! Sometimes I Don't Have A Title!

Hello! Here are some words about some comics. The sales figures analysis is just below this. Very good it is too! To clarify, the Hibbs' stuff is good, not this stuff. Anyway, this...

ALL STAR WESTERN#16 Jonah Hex: Art by Moritat, written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, coloured by Mike Atiyeh and lettered by Rob Leigh. Tomahawk!: Art and colour by Phil Winslade, written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti and lettered by Rob Leigh. DC Comics, $3.99 (2012) Jonah Hex created by Tony DeZuniga and John Albano Tomahawk created by Edmund Good and Joe Samachson

I finally realised that it isn't the sticklebricking of DC Continuity and the basic desperate casting about for stunt elements that are hamstringing my enjoyment of this book. No, it's the joylessness of it. Its total and wholehearted acceptance of the current DC mode of storytelling which puts a premium on prevarication and encourages emptiness. Look, this book would be great if Bob Haney was writing it. Bob Haney isn't writing it though so it isn't great. If I'm hankering after Bob Haney in 2013 it's a fair guess your book isn't up to snuff. On the up side this issue doesn't contain the dismayingly frequent page filling device of having that Oriental lass fighting for five pages. In fact she doesn't appear once which means that any entertainment can be rightly said to be just like the cast - purely occidental. You want better jokes, make better comics.

In the Tomahawk back up the most startling aspect as ever is Phil Winslade's bizarre digital watercolours job which I find enjoyable without actually knowing why. In other news, the English turn out to be the villains! I guess that's how Germans feel when they read DC war comics. A taste of my own medicine there. And it is bitter, bitter, bitter. This book, however, is only EH!

DJANGO UNCHAINED #1 Art by R M Guera with Jason Latour Adapted by Reginald Hudlin Coloured by Giulia Brusco Lettered by Sal Cipriano Adapted from the original screenplay by Quentin Tarantino Vertigo/DC Comics, $3.99

I can’t speak as to how good an adaptation this is because I haven’t seen the movie. I’m old and the wild and outrageous young rebel Quentin Tarantino scares me with his outrageously youthful rebelliousness and his youthfully rebellious outrageous movies. Luckily my much younger sister had seen this very movie so I asked her how she found it. She said, and I quote so the record may be deemed complete, “It was entertaining, Johnny, but it wasn’t good.” There you go then. Me, I fear I invite your youthful ire as I just don’t think Tarantino is all that. Oh, it isn't his childishly inflammatory use of the “N” word, after all I’m sure should our paths cross the edgy auteur would be equally forgiving were I to pepper him with the “C” word like it was going out of fashion. No, but some of it is the fact that he uses the word “cool” too much. The only men his age who should use “cool” that much are Grateful dead fans who live in San Franciscan dumpsters. Mostly though it’s that he reacts to proper questions like THIS. Yeah, I'll let that speak for itself I think. On the plus side the iconoclastic Quentin Tarantino does seem to have exhausted his celluloid fetish for Uma “Man Hands” Thurman.

The stated aim of this comic is to illustrate the original script. Every golden word. I guess it does that. It certainly seems like a Tarantino script. The dialogue is surely as self-satisfied and in need of tightening as ever and it retains all the usual rhythm and musicality (i.e. all the rhythm and musicality of a tune played on an arse flute); scenes outstay their welcome or outstay their welcome while also leading up to a totally predictable reveal and the characters haven’t any. Usually it would take hundreds of talented people and millions of dollars to make this stuff at least enjoyable if not actually good. All this comic has is R M Guera. All this comic needs is R M Guera. It’s an amazingly savvy choice since for the last 5 years and change R M Guera has been tasked with tricking everyone into thinking that a tour through Jason Aaron’s 70’s movie memories constitutes something with anything more to say than, hey, wasn't cinema in the 70’s just grand? Or SCALPED as it is known. Elevating the mundane to the magical is just what R M Guera does I guess. He does it bloody well though. Jason Latour throws down a few flashback panels and his art is excellent every time it appears but the shining star here is R M Guera. R M Guera with his ambulatory toby jugs and smooth storytelling once again showing everyone else up. Hey, the poor old writer doesn't even get a credit except here: Reginald Hudlin. I don't know why he doesn't get a credit but it's not a trend I want to encourage. Anyway, thanks largely to RM Guera this was GOOD!

SUPREME #68 Written and Drawn by Erik Larsen Coloured by Steve Oliff Lettered by Chris Eliopoulos Supreme created by Rob Liefeld Image Comics, $3.99

In this pulse pounding issue Erik Larsen basically says that he enjoyed illustrating Alan Moore’s script but since then he’s been noodling about and it’s been just super, thanks, but he’s off now. Apparently someone else will be taking over, no idea who but, yeah, someone at some point. Of all the moves to steal from the DC playbook that’s a pretty strange choice. At least he didn't steal DC’s signature move which is now apparently making comics nobody likes but lots of them. Larsen’s departure is a bit of a shame because I found his Kirby with a split nib art quite charming and in this issue it’s particularly so because, for no readily apparent reason, Larsen suddenly starts drawing this thing like it’s Kyle Baker’s RONIN. (Yes, I know it was Frank Miller's RONIN but this looks like Kyle Baker's RONIN).

I quite enjoyed this book. It had enjoyably stupid characters like Lion headed Supreme and Darius Duck, people flew around, punching occurred and Larsen always respectfully drew Supreme in that scratchy Liefeld mode without actually ever being as shitty as Liefeld. Sure, it was pretty basic stuff but it was basically pretty stuff. Sometimes I don’t actually want all that much from a comic and this certainly delivered that. I wouldn't recommend that Erik Larsen make a habit of just dumping books as people might start referring to a failure to commit as having committed Larsen-y. Unlike that joke this was OKAY!

FATALE#9,10 Art by Sean Phillips Written by Ed Brubaker Coloured by Dave Stewart Fatale created by Sean Phillips and Ed Brubaker Image Comics, $3.50

Everyone can relax because I’m done here. I’ve had my doubts about this one all the way. For starters the horror elements have been inexplicably dusty and dull (cassocks! tentacles!). I don't need my own pet Jess Nevins to know that horror in the '70s was actually engaging with real world events and offering up savage and innovative treats which were leaving Corman's Poe adaptations for dead. Then there's the inescapable drab narration which mistakes deadpan for just plain dead on the page and is written in a fabulous new tense even more inactive than the passive; the comatose tense perhaps. The only sign of life in this one-note stuff is that it works the word “but” like it yearns to be a Salt’n’Pepa track.Then there's stuff like this:

That pivotal oh, go away moment occurred in issue 9 but due to the caprices of my comic dispersal system I still had issue 10 to go. Yes, one more chance! A chance which was immediately crushed when the central character (who thus far has been less like Fatale and more like Docile) just suddenly remembered she had special magic powers and plain killed everyone in a climax as rewarding as being inadvertently brought off by the motion of your train seat. Look, there’s no mystery about why men will act like complete tools for a pretty face, certainly not a supernatural mystery. Unless you think the contents of your pants are supernatural and mysterious. In which case your Pope just resigned. I didn't know Popes could do that! This series always seemed less James Ellroy and H P Lovecraft and more Quinn Martin and Donald P Bellisario. An impression strengthened by future covers which indicate the series is just going to stick a new genre on top of the usual stuff. Now she's a witch, now she's a space man, now she's a turtle, dis-integrating! Like my interest. Mr Ben with a magical woo-woo may well be a new direction but not one I’ll be pursuing. So, I’ll be missing future essays on The Scarecrow And Mrs King and, more importantly, the fine work of Sean Phillips and Dave Stewart which deserves better than to be yoked to work this EH!

SHADOW SPECIAL #1 Art by Ronan Cliquet Written by Scott Beatty Coloured by Mat Lopes Lettered by Rob Steen The Shadow created by Walter B. Gibson Dynamite, $4.99 (HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!!! FOUR DOLLARS AND NINETY NINE CENTS!!!! THAT'S INSANE!!!!)

In the main title The Shadow is currently palling about with George Orwell. George Orwell is the author of a couple of books on how shit being poor is and how we will all willingly participate in a system designed to crush our common humanity. He was right about both of those things and remains right, although he missed a trick in not realising that the main way The System would ensure our complicity would be by making nice things for us to buy. But then there weren’t many nice things to buy back then so we’ll let him off. Rip The System! You don’t bring Orwell to the party unless you want that party to get political! Orwell also did a book about animals on a farm. I can’t remember what it was called but it was about animals on a farm. It was a metaphor or an analogy or some clever shit like that about some animals on a farm. Oh yeah, I remember now, the one about the animals on the farm? It was called BEFORE WATCHMEN.

Anyway, this isn’t the main series so George Orwell isn’t in it. No, this is a “special” but it isn't very, possibly even at all. Except for the price. That’s pretty fucking special right there. There’s the core of a fun and pulpy tale here but something’s gone awry on the pacing front. When there’s more pages devoted to The Shadow moaning about going shoe shopping (yes, really) than there is to his fight in a minefield with a man who has courageously chosen to sport only a bouquet of barbed wire around his nuddy bod (Oooch! Owch!) then, yes, I’d have to disagree strongly with the storytelling emphases.

Ronan Cliquet has a good go at being Alan Davis but he seems to have jumped ahead a bit; Alan Davis didn’t get to be Alan Davis until he’d got the basics right, son. I’m guessing he’s just some wee snip learning his trade but the best I can give him is – promising. The most special thing about this comic is the paper it’s printed on. Paper so much like catalogue pages from your youth that there’s a constant urge to riffle through them to the Hot Wheels section or the sports bra section depending on which age your development is currently arrested at. No, it wasn't special unless special is EH!

And like The Pope - I'm gone! But there's still COMICS!!!

"...Primitive Lyricism..." PEOPLE! Sometimes Gil's Gone!

Gil Kane died on 31 January in the year 2000 A.D.

Time enough has now passed that although I still feel the loss of his gargantuan talents I am past the garment rending and hair pulling stage. I will never be beyond the celebrating his work stage though. So what follows is a brief visual burst of Gil Kane's genius from the '80s. After all ACTIONs speak louder than words and Gil was a man of great experience...

"So I know the one quality that I'm always trying to push through in my work is grace and power. Sort of primitive lyricism that I've been capable of. I thought that that's the one quality that sort of saved me and permeated my work and gave me any kind of legitimate status...the thing that I had going for me was that the only thing I wanted to express essentially was the sentimental fall with grace and power, and I try to do that with every drawing I ever did." Gil Kane Gil Kane: Art And Interviews by Daniel Herman (Hermes Press, 2002)

Superman was created by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster

KANE: I liked those stories. Gil Kane on the GilWolf™’ Superman comics Gil Kane: Art And Interviews by Daniel Herman (Hermes Press, 2002)

Gil Kane (1926 - 2000)

_________________________________________________________________________

Hopefully, this being the anniversary of Gil Kane's passing, The Internet is alive with chat about this man with élan. After all last time on I Will Make You Care About Gil Kane Before Death Claims Me I was more than likely getting all teary-eyed about the fact no one seemed to talk about Gentleman Gil much these days.  Serendipitously I had read Charles Nicholl's Guardian review of  Andrew Hadfield's Edmund Spenser: A Life. Said review began:

"There is a rather deadly kind of literary fame which TS Eliot neatly defined as a "conspiracy of approval". It condemns a writer" to be universally accepted; to be damned by the praise that quenches all desire to read the book; to be afflicted by the imputation of virtues which excite the least pleasure; and to be read only by historians and antiquaries". (Fairy Singer, Colonial Apparatchik by Charles Nicholl, The Guardian, 21/07/2012)

Although I can feel my face fair sodden by your salivations at the prospect of me going on about TS Eliot or Edmund Spenser I am, in fact, going to stop there because I think the point has been made. It's a good point;  one all the better for not being mine. Is that's what has happened to Gentleman Gil? Is he a victim of the "conspiracy of approval"? I don't want that to happen here; in my series of wholly unbiased and never (never!) hyperbolic pieces on Gil Kane the idea will be be to arouse you to such a state that you might go and try some of his stuff. If you go, "Well, Gil Kane sure sounds good. Now, how about I dip my eyes in  some sweet, sweet Tony Daniel magic!" then I have failed.

Or as Johnny Cash put it somewhat more succinctly:

"Did you forget the folk singer so soon? And did you forget my song?"

We are in fact a couple of posts into "Gil Happy!" already so we have avoided the whole here's what I'll be doing oh no I won't rigmarole this time out.

There'll be other stuff too but there will definitely be more Gil Kane and always, always more COMICS!!!

"Your Uniform Makes You An Erotic SHADOW.." COMICS! Sometimes It's A Family Matter!

Firstly, fans of Jog's fine writing on the works of Howard Victor Chaykin are directed HERE. Everyone else gets this. No, there are no refunds. Stop asking me that. Anyway, this...

"Mrs Eisenmann, you're trying to seduce me."

FLYER Plot and art by Gentleman Gil Kane Script by Howling Howard Victor Chaykin Coloured by Steely Steve Oliff Lettered by Worried Willie Schubert Originally appeared in LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #24,25 and 26 Batman created by Bob Kane DC Comics, 1991-92 ($1.75 each)

Originally appearing in LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT in 1991/92 Flyer proves that The Past is another country and that continuity is tighter there. Let it suffice to say that the care and attention to detail in the Nu52 continuity is so desultory that it only makes sense when considered as a vile and cowardly attack directed solely at the sanity of Rascally Roy Thomas. Other than a sadistic assault on everything a fragile old man holds dear it makes no sense. Anyway, I don’t want to get into that whole continuity custard pie fight I’m just pointing out that continuity is at the heart of this comic series and although Chayky Kane© get to produce their own tale it is set as firmly and flagrantly in the then DC continuity as the Cullinan I is set in the head of the Sceptre with the Cross. I may be overstating things there, maybe, but be assured that with LOTDK a great deal of editorial effort was expended ensuring the continuity canvas was so tight you could bounce rice off it.

Gil Kane (after David Mazzucchelli)

At this point in the DCU the sine qua non of Bat continuity was Mazzucchelli and Miller’s monumental BATMAN: YEAR ONE (B: YO). Maybe it still is (who the Hell knows!?!) Using B: YO as the root of all sequels worked out okay back then what with it being recognised as being one of the few examples of genre comics perfection. On a more dismaying note it is also one of the even fewer examples of a genre comic’s success being matched by its quality. While the caped crusader’s adventures continued in their usual manner in the usual monthlies LOTDK featured short arcs by high toned creators. Each discrete story focused on a period prior to the then current Batus-quo with a view to filling in the gaps with contradictions being actively discouraged. A commitment to continuity and also to quality; apparently it is possible. Certainly in Flyer both quality and continuity are present. It’s a Chayky Kane© Joint so the quality is self evident to all with the nous to recognise it Actually so is the continuity, so much so it can seem a little stifling. In the end though Chayky Kane© manage to create something uniquely theirs. It’s a very odd thing but it’s recognisably a Chayky Kane© thing.

Flyer answered the prayers of everyone who had read B: Y1 and wondered about the fate of the chopper pilot. Yes, the one whose craft was engulfed by the bats Batman summoned to cover his escape shortly after he punched a cat-hating man through a wall. No doubt crippling the cop from the waist down and leading to the disintegration of his marriage and an empty bedsit life with only a hot plate and tear stained photos of his estranged son as solace. Until that is he was run over in front of some orphans by The Joker (having now cut his own cock off and stapled it to his face like a wee fake nose) in a clown car powered by the blood of Mother Theresa. That’s not this story. That’s a Scott Snyder story and it’s about family. Flyer, however, is about the chopper pilot we were all worried about at the beginning of this paragraph.

David Mazzucchelli

Gil Kane

Predictably enough he (the flyer!) suffered catastrophic physical ruin and was only saved by virtue of the fact that his Mum was working on a government weapons programme based on advances by Nazi scientists with said advances being brought to bear to build him a jaw, a lower leg and a flying suit or two. As usual in these stories his mother turns out to be an unrepentant Nazi driven insane by her own (hopefully. Jesus, Howard!) unrequited lust for her own father resulting in a mind-soilingly twisted love-hate relationship with her own son. Naturally she uses her own tech-enhanced son to lure Batman into her randy grasp; his physical and mental perfection having made Bats the ideal candidate for helping her turn her well-maintained womb into an Ubermensch dispenser. Babies, there. I’m talking about Bat-babies. Weirdly, Batman declines her kind offer. There’s a fight and it all ends in tears. Mostly hers. And it actually is about family. A lot of HVC’s stuff is about family but a lot more of it is about the monied elite mucking the hoi polloi about as they are charmingly wont to do. Because they can, see. So that’s okay.

Flyer is, in fact, the first Batman tale written by HVC. He would go on to write many others but here we can see the first shaky steps towards laying out the issues he would use the character to explore. Because HVC has a very particular take on Batman, or more precisely HVC has a very particular take on Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne is of course rich and being rich he is powerful. HVC’s work is very concerned with the rich and powerful and the effect they have on the world. I may have mentioned that before. In all likelihood I will mention it again. I'm set in my ways, okay? While HVC usually assigns the monied elite the villainous role Bruce Wayne forces him to stretch a bit and try to find a sympathetic approach to the privileged. This doesn’t come easy to him but he makes this work to his advantage by shunting his concerns onto the Bruce Wayne character. This gives Bruce something to mull over while he isn’t being punched, punching back or being mauled by a bawdy cougar. He doesn’t really come to any real conclusions but it’s enough that Batman doesn’t just accept he should punch people in the face, because. Underneath all the raunchy nonsense and pulp trappings HVC always remembers to provide something to engage the brain. The balance is a bit off here though, largely due to Mrs Eisenmann who steals every scene she’s in and having stolen it probably tries to force it to make Aryan babies.

Gil Kane helps here with a fabulous level of artistry where the demented NILF is concerned. Obviously using Graduate era Anne Bancroft as his cue Kane builds a character whose body language fully plays into the turbo raunch and psychotic mind mess she embodies. Whenever the menopausal supremacist appears with Batman Kane depicts her with eyes glazed with lust and sporting a dirty smirk like a haus frau on a hen do when the boy dancers break out the baby oil. HVC’s overheated and fantastically deranged dialogue is turbid with erotic fervour and in combination with Kane’s body language brilliance result in one of the great lunatics of comics.

This is ‘90s Kane so it isn’t as much to my tastes as ‘80s Kane, but it is Gil Kane and any Gil Kane is good Gil Kane but any Gil Kane after the ‘60s is pretty great at the very least. By the ‘90s though the world is changing and Kane’s art hasn’t kept up in certain areas, particularly the area of technology. So while his architecture, anatomy and action are all as flabbergasting and flowing as ever it’s hard not to agree with the text when it describes the Flyer suit as looking like a “cheap Japanese robot”. HVC hisownself might be having an impish dig here. This strikes me as something he added on seeing the pages rather than an explicit request for Kane’s art to fulfil. After a dense and confident opening chapter Flyer starts to resemble Kane and Wolfman’s (GilWolf©!) Superman work in ACTION comics. Upon reading those delightful comics recently it was hard not to get the impression that Marv Wolfman was being dragged behind the runaway horses of Kane’s art desperately trying to regain the seat and steer the whole shebang in the general direction of sense. Yes, I imagine Marv Wolfman got more than a few new grey hairs trying to explain after the fact how, because Superman had spun around very quickly indeed (for the umpteenth gorgeously illustrated time), everything was okay now. I get the impression here that HVC was a bit on the back foot when the pages came in and had to vamp more than a little. He does it well, I'll give him that. Nifty footwork all round.

A dead giveaway that HVC’s script is not King is present in Kane’s breaking of HVC’s Golden Rule on more than one occasion. No, calm down, this Golden Rule is not something mucky from a ‘70s bath house but rather HVC’s repeatedly stated belief that a scene should only change on the page turn rather than within the body of the page itself. It’s a simple rule and a good rule and it’s hard not to imagine Kane’s flouting of it as his cocking a snook in HVC’s direction. It’s possible (pure conjecture this) that Kane was gently asserting his authority. HVC had been his assistant in the past on two occasions so there might have been a playful little power game being enacted. A cheeky little reminder. Mischief seems to be present, but good natured mischief rather than its sour cousin malice. Two old friends pissing each other about a bit.

One of the best things about Flyer is a thing that appears on none of its pages but is apparent in every page since none of them would exist without it; HVC and Gil Kane’s shared history. Yes, it appears not only comics have continuity but people too. Before Flyer Kane and HVC had had a parting of the ways. Why is none of our beeswax, what counts is they healed the rift before it was too late. Which is kinda heartwarming, aw yeah. And on that note here's the popular singer and terrible dresser Mr. Elvis Aaron Presley to play us out ....

A word of thanks now to Mr. Charlie Hodge, who brings me muh towels an' mah wattah. And mah COMICS!!!

Have a good weekend y'all!

What's wrong this this picture?

I tlooks like a logo designer threw up on this cover!

So, what would you, fairly reasonable person, say is the TITLE of this comic? book?

Of the 18 people I asked last week, 16 of them said "The Hunted?"

But, no, it's actually "Threshold", according to my order form.

With just two or three more logos, the cover could have been all text! Or, as Jeff Lester put it: "It appears as if that pair is under attack by the logos!"

This is such a poorly designed cover that I'm fairly certain that's why it cratered utterly at my store, selling just two rack copies, the lowest-selling first issue of a New 52 comic that I've ever had yet.

The insides were fairly OK, however, with the lead story being sort of kind of a Hunger Games thing in space with the DC Space characters (or reimagined versions of several of them, at least), though I'd like a better understanding of what these characters can't just get on a ship and leave.... space is kinda big and all.   Giffen's a competent writer, and the story moves along pretty well, even if I don't have any real earned affection for any character on display.

I was less impressed with the back-up story of the "Orange Lantern", Larfleeze -- honestly, he's just a one-note joke character, and not a particularly funny one at that. But, overall, the comic was OK.

THE HIGH WAYS #1: I know there are a few people who find Byrne infinitely dated, but I think it's more that it's apparent when he doesn't really give a shit about the story he's telling, and when he does. This felt to me like something that he cared about. It's a reasonably "hard" science-fiction comic about space truckers. It's also got African-American leads, and, best thing, makes no big deal about it whatsoever. I thought this was pretty darn GOOD, and I think you should pop into our digital store and give it a shot.

BLEEDING COOL MAGAZINE #2: It's the "all ages comics special", and, actually, it has some pretty deep and comprehensive coverage about kids comics -- even the price guide is kids comics! I would totally put that on my kids rack... except....

...for the interview with Alan Moore, about HP Lovecraft, smack in the middle of the issue. Or the "worst industry feuds" section. Jinkies, that's not what we want to present to kids as our best face, is it?

*sigh*, got to watch crossing those editorial streams there, guys....

OK, the truck is arriving WAY early today, so that's all I have time for... what did YOU think?

-B

"I'm A STUART, Grandpa." COMICS! Sometimes The Weird Porous Kid Walks It!

Here at Savage Towers the UK contingent is experiencing problems with The Haunted Scanner. So, just the covers this time out I'm afraid. Apparently my brain is no longer under warranty so I can't help the words that accompany the pictures. So here's a shoddy make-shift Sunday look at some comics. Or you could go outside and play in the snow!

G.I. COMBAT Featuring The Haunted Tank #7 Haunted Tank by Howard Victor Chaykin (a), Peter J Tomasi (w), Jesus Arbutov (c) and Rob Leigh (l) Unknown Soldier by Staz Johnson (a), Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (w), Rob Schwager (c) and Rob Leigh (l) DC Comics $3.99 (2011) Haunted Tank created by Russ Heath & Robert Kanigher Unknown Soldier created by Joe Kubert & Robert Kanigher

The lead story here, a lead story about a Haunted Tank we should bear in mind, is a consumate exercise in capturing the gleeful idiocy of DC war comics of yesteryear; that is way back when to the time when Mommy would roll them up and beat me with them. Yes, the day I wrestled that rolled up copy of ALARMING BULLSHIT #235 off her was the day I became a man (i.e. 10 March 2007). Tomasi doesn't blink once as he recounts the tale of a Haunted Tank crewed by a gipper in a string vest and his endearingly credulous Grandson as they go up against a revamped War Wheel piloted by Rommel's grandson and powered by the slack corpus of The Desert Fox himself. It's barmy and all the better for it. HVC seems to have found the perfect home for his clip-art pasting mania with this hardware heavy tale although he doesn't fare as well on the flesh he hardly fails as such, giving The Fox himself a pleasingly senile cast to his confounded features.

Gray and Palmiotti manage the not inconsiderable feat of removing anything of interest from the Unknown Soldier concept, leaving us with some pages where a man falls out of a window and then goes and has sad thoughts in  someone else's garden. They even waste the nonsensical fun of having a diamond laced skeleton. As a result it's purely down to Tomasi and Chaykin's unflinching grasping of the nettle of nonsense that this book is GOOD!

INDESTRUCTIBLE HULK #1 Art by Lenil Francis Yu Written by Mark Waid Coloured by Sunny Gho Lettered by Chris Eliopoulos Marvel, 3.99 (2011) The Hulk created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee

INDESTRUCTIBLE HULK #2 Art by Lenil Francis Yu & Gerry Alanguilan Written by Mark Waid Coloured by Sunny Gho Lettered by Chris Eliopoulos Marvel, 3.99 (2011) The Hulk created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee

Yes, I know I shouldn't have this comic due to THE KIRBY IMPERATIVE but my Retailer forgot and so he wanted to share what he thought was a book I might like with me. Which is okay, because I don't actually expect my Retailer to remember all my mad demands and crazy caveats all the time. Most of the time will do. I'm not an animal. So, I ended up with this comic but because of Marvel's double-shipping and the lag in my deliveries I actually ended up with issues 1 & 2. Thus (thus, yet! Oh yes, thus! Smell my formal indignation!) a simple error sparked by generous intentions ended up costing me £5.98 and taking up space in my package that two comics I actually wanted might have occupied. This is the hidden damage of Marvel's double-shipping! I now want even less to do with Marvel than ever and I wasn't exactly mad-keen on them at this stage anyway.

But stupid English dude, double-shipping is just giving you more of what you like, I hear the less polite mutter. No, not really. Even if it was DAREDEVIL which I do like. For a start you aren't giving me anything. I'm paying for it. Secondly, I've seen Theatre of Blood and I do not want to be in the Robert Morley role while Marvel acts like Vincent Price and bakes my beloved (dogs/comics) in a pie and forces them down my throat with a plunger until I suffocate. Some of the classier of you might want to recast that thought in terms of Titus Andronicus, but I'm okay with Theatre of Blood.

This book was OKAY! Mark Waid is a reliable writing guy and Leinil Yu is still okay even if I think he needs to step back from the fussiness into the alcove of clarity. But it was $3.99 and even without THE KIRBY IMPERATIVE that's too much a month and with double shipping it would be $7.98 a month, maybe more. That's just nuts.

FURY MAX #7 Art by Goran Parlov Written by Garth Ennis Coloured by Lee Loughridge Lettered by Rob Steen Marvel, $3.99 (2011) Nick Fury created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee Frank Castle (The Punisher)created by John romita Snr, Ross Andru & Gerry Conway

Originally I was overriding the KIRBY DIRECTIVE as this was such a VERY GOOD! comic and, more importantly, I am a weak creature always on the lookout for an out. As if to rub my smug face in my own moral doo-doo the quality of the comic seems to have taken a sudden lurch from Ellroy-lite into those issues of THE 'NAM where Frank Castle got introduced to boost sales. Quite a few people fondly recall THE 'NAM (i.e. the comic not the land war in South East Asia. Although I suppose it might have its fans too, human nature being what it is.) but I have never read anyone fondly recall the issues of THE 'NAM where Frank Castle started popping up. Also, I have decided to send the CBLDF the equivalent total monies this comic will end up costing me. Hopefully this combination of unmet expectations and financial excess will encourage me to actually be a man of my word. Then I will really get my Smug on, you betcha!

Goran Parlov's art is still staggering this time out with even the talking heads sections being just as entertaining as the slobberknockers in most other comics. There's an absolutely fantastic panel where Fury is giving Ms DeFabio a Cage-ing. It isn't fantastic for the contents but it is fantastic in that it has clearly been enlarged to make the occurrences within less, ahem, overt. This is a series that clearly, frequently and savagely depicts the effects of violence on large numbers of people, but apparently it still has trouble with a bit of bum fun. Marvel MAX comics - where there are no limits, except when there are! Despite all this it's still a VERY GOOD! comic.

SPONGEBOB COMICS #13 Art by Rick Altergott, Vince DePorter, Nate Neal, James Kochalka, Derek Drymon, Stephen R. Bissette, Rementer, Tony Millionaire, Jacob Chabot, Al Jaffee Written by Chris Duffy, David Lewman, Maris Wicks, James Kochalka, Derek Drymon, Roman, Robert Leighton, Chris Yambar Coloured by Molly Dolben, Cat Garza, Monica Kubina, James Campbell, HiFi Lettered by Comicraft United Plankton Pictures, $2.99 (2011) Spongebob Squarepants created by Stephen Hillenburg

The Kid recently discovered Spongebob Squarepants on that televisual device that's sweeping the nation by storm and so I ordered this. Mostly to make up for all the parenting mistakes I make on a daily basis. Yes, he may end up hating me but he'll hate me less because I bought him a comic, I reasoned. And reasoned well. Being familiar with kid's spin off comics I braced myself for a tie-in comic which was so lacking in care or effort it would probably not even have the creators credited, it might even just consist of screen captures like that shitty Marvel digest of the ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN show, whatever it was it would probably not be worth a second thought by anyone over the age of 7.

Once again proving how right I always am it turned out to be VERY GOOD!

I mean, look at that roster up there! I'm not listing all the names again (it's cold here and I'm a martyr to The Arthritis) but right here on these pages we've got the guys who did Doofus, Tyrant!, Sock Monkey, SuperF*ckers and all those crazy MAD fold-in things. Other people too, but I'm not familiar with them but they don't disappoint either. I guess the highlight is the Mermaid Man strip in which Steve Bissette basically draws a Nick Cardy era Aquaman strip and Derek Drymon has Spongebob draw himself into it. Like many a bored child has done in reality. It's sweet and clever and is surrounded by strips of equal or only slightly lesser worth. It's a crazy good line up producing crazy good comics and I wish The Haunted Scanner was working because then I could show you. But then again, maybe it's better if you just go and buy an issue of SPONGEBOB COMICS. You might be disappointed but with all the talent and invention on show here that's probably going to be all your own fault.

And I'm gone like Fury's eye but there remain  - COMICS!!!

Spiders and such

Hey, the holidays are over, more free time becomes available, back to reviewing, I think. Yay? The "big news" of the month is all about Spider-Man, and I'd like to discuss ASM #700 and SSM #1, but will be doing so in several spoiler-ific ways.  If you don't want spoilers, don't travel below the "more" line (or, if you're on RSS, look away now)

I don't really know what it is with the general public, but they're pretty easily suckered, it seems like. A little media story of "Spider-Man is dead!" and they all come rushing in, waving stacks of money trying to cash in. That's not to say that they're ALWAYS fooled like that -- I mean when it was "Ultimate" Spider-Man, we didn't get that rush of people (even with Miles Morales being, on balance, a much better follow-through idea); but yeah, lots of suckers coming through this time. What I found interesting was how not so many of the regular comics readers seemed to bite at the apple on this -- deaths like Johnny Storm, or Superman or whatever usually have a large component of regular readers who are curious. Maybe it's the $8 price tag?

But we've STILL, two weeks later, got civvies breathlessly asking if we have ASM #700, and when they find out we do, trying to buy every single copy on hand (really? But.... if I did that, then there wouldn't BE  a copy to sell to YOU!) Ah, what can you do, other than smile and sell them the comic, knowing that they'd be better off leaving their $8 on a street corner for all of the chance they'll "make money from it!"

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #700: Here's the thing: even though the set-up is as old as the hills (Oh, Jodie Foster, I had such a crush on you back in the 70s), and even though there's exactly zero chance that this storyline can possibly stick, or even have any real lasting consequences, I very much admire how Dan Slott approached it. The story has been seeded for a long time, built upon established lore, and has been executed with a sufficient sense of dread and skill. I want this up front: I like this plot, and I had a genuine "Oh, what happens next?!" moment or three.

But, in the context of the final issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, or even as "just" an anniversary issue, I kind of didn't like this for the simple reason that Peter lost... and went down like a punk. I'm not dumb, I know that the story doesn't "end" here, but there's no triumph whatsoever in a space where there really should be a significant amount of it. Had this store been in, say,  #699? Well, that would have been a perfect kind of cliffhanger for an issue like that, but just not something that fits as the "final issue" of a serial which has been running, unencumbered and unchanged since 1963.

Worse still, as a reader, there's nothing on the page to lead me back to "SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #1", per se. I mean, as someone in the industry, clearly it's obvious to me that SSM will run a certain amount of time, and sooner or later the plot and thus the character and the title and the numbering will eventually return to ASM (#750?). Obviously, Peter Parker's story doesn't end here, and I know that because I've read a loooooooot of comic books in my life. But, if I DIDN'T know that? If I'm, say, one of the civvies coming in from the news story, who hasn't read a spidey comic in 20 years or more? Man, what a depressing story: our hero goes out as a deformed freak bleeding out in a gutter as his greatest enemy wins and literally takes over his life. Yeah, that's a hook to get me coming back for more.

Or hell, even for the low-information regulars. Man, I know the comics internet is huge and all-(time)-consuming, but I'd estimate that at least a third of my regulars don't "keep up on the news" -- their exposure to comics really is whatever they see in front of them on the stand on Wednesday. Our subber sign up on SSM has been lower to date, and I've already had more than one person tell me angrily that that isn't what they want to read.

Anyway, one other thing that has to be mentioned about ASM #700 is the price -- jinkies, $8! Almost $9 here because of sales tax. That's brutal by any standard, and even though it had two other, decent, Spidey shorts, that creates a lot of expectation from entertainment, I think. Better still, it's $16 for the three comics that tell this story, and they're actually going to ask $25 for the collected hardcover. Like I said: jinkies.

When you add it all up, even though I generally liked the general verve and the specific audacity of the plot, I'm utterly unnerved by pricing and marketing decisions that surround it, and it makes me throw my hands in the air, and average it out to an EH.

SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #1: To a certain extent, the question is whether or not you're interested in spending $4 every two weeks for a SpOck comic -- I mean, if I didn't get to read them for free, I don't know that I'd be willing to do that.

The protagonist is arrogant, is selfish, is cowardly, is leering -- nothing that I want in a protagonist, in short.

I also have a certain amount of problem with "having cake and eating it-ism" -- rather than being ASM #701 (maybe blurbed "1ST ISSUE in a all-now direction!" or something), this is being made out to be a different series. From a story POV, this marks a very not-Peter era of Spidey, but Parker's "spirit" shows up on the last page(s) to show that it is still very much his story. I'm not opposed to that, per se, but I think it undercuts almost all of the inherent drama of the situation now that we're explicitly told he's coming back. Don't trigger that suspension-of-disbelief-sense -- to a large degree, I don't think that the beat was EARNED yet... SpOck attempting to kill someone would, I think, be a much better culmination of a storyline, than randomly happening in issue #1. With Parker already back on the plate (and, sure, maybe it will take quite some time to play out), I think the story dramatically undercuts itself.

Then, I think, the story becomes about Parker's return, rather than SpOck's struggle with heroism, and I think, "well, people are interested in death and struggle, but return stories are usually bombs" -- just look at the difference in market reaction between SUPERMAN #75 and ADV OF SUPERMAN #500, right?

We're selling SSM #1 better so far than ASM #699, BUT *most* of those sales are "Wow, you still have it in stock, my local store is out" indicating that those aren't sales that are going to especially "stick" for me over any reasonable time horizon.

So, yeah, I'd feel different about this if it was ASM #701, than I do as SSM #1, but because the protagonist really is so loathsome, I'm going with, I guess, a mild OK.

That's what I think, anyway, what do YOU think?

-B

"Believe!..BELIEVE!!" COMICS! Sometimes Imagination Changes EVERYTHING!

I hear your pain, people! January is a real nutcracker ain't it. What we need, as  Bonnie Tyler advised, is a hero. And, yes, Virginia, there are still heroes. It's just sometimes you have to root about in the back issue bins to find 'em. I found one. I found a Hero.

What's the best Superman story ever, ever, ever? It's a question that has occupied many minds for many decades; a real bone of contention with the self explanatory importance of the issue justifying every brutally curtailed friendship, divided family, and more than one instance of burning dog poo being forced through someone's letterbox. Sorry about that, Mom, but it's an inflammatory subject and fiery faeces spoke more eloquently than I ever could. Look, tempers can run high. Luckily, I'm here to solve the conundrum for all time for I, as ever, am totally right once again. It's a gift and yet, at times, a curse. Don't envy me too quickly. Anyway, the best Superman story ever, ever, ever is:

ACTION COMICS #554 "If Superman Didn't Exist..." Art by Gentleman Gil Kane Written by Mighty Marv Wolfman Coloured by Bountiful Ben Oda Coloured by Tiny Tony Tollin DC Comics, $0.95 (Apr 1984) Superman created by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster

The title is such an obvious construction that you've probably already completed the missing words signified by the ellipsis. "...then it would be necessary to invent him." And you would be 100% correct. Take a bow! But this is ACTION COMICS where Superman already exists so what, by the ruby rays of Rao, the dingdangdong is going on here? Specifically here being ACTION COMICS #554 and unbeknownst to most ACTION COMICS #554 is the glorious summit of  Gil Kane and Marv Wolfman's run on the title.  A run which I believe has just been collected in a hardback from DC Comics. A book which Babylonian Brian Hibbs will gladly sell you in return for cold hard cash. That's how he works, it's too late to change him.

When I first read this comic a while ago though I didn't know it had been preceded by a long build up, it was just this weird story where there was a world without a Superman but which sorely needed a Superman. It had, in fact, been a world with a Superman but due to a series of quite magnificently preposterous events throughout GilWolf™'s run (I later learned, because it's never too late to learn!) Superman had been erased from the fabric of this (his) world as  thoroughly as your mother erased those adolescent stains from the fabric of your underoos. Although in this case via the use of  "power pyramids" rather than a boil wash and some sturdy tongs.

The details don't matter, all that matters is that the course of world history has been changed retroactively. Not only is there no Superman there is no "heroic concept"! This is because there is no War and never has been. Rather depressingly this has led to an agrarian plough level civilisation of scattered settlements. People wear baggy clothes and sport bowl haircuts like some horrific world-wide Madchester revival and while technology is rudimentary they have, astonishingly, developed corrective eye wear. On balance the drab content of life in 20th Century Earth in exchange for millions of years of suffering and violence is probably a fair trade but, crucially, it has sadly left Earth open to a full on conquering by an alien race. Which was said alien race's plan all along. All resistance has been removed, yea unto the very fish that crawled onto the shores and walked. Cunning, perhaps but  thorough, most definitely.

The source of earth's salvation comes from two wee tow-headed scamps renowned about the township for their useless dreaming and pointless imaginings. Two tow-headed scamps by the name of Jerry and Joe.

Jerry and Joe.

Oh, you worked it out. (Someone give that guy at the back a hand. 'Sokay we can wait.)

Jerry and Joe realise that to resist the invaders the Earth needs a hero so they hide in a cave and chalk upon the walls the design of this man who "...comes from the stars...", this man who's "GOOD instead of being BAD..." this man with "...a Cape...to CATCH THE WIND!" This man ends up being Liberace, who while very entertaining isn't much use against an alien invasion, so they try again and come up with "...a...SUPER MAN!".  This seems more like what they were after and in short order this creature birthed from the human imagination and powered by human belief sets all things aright as Superman is restored to the world and all is well again. Of course, that mean's War is back but so are aspirin and microwaves but, hey, comme ci, comme ça, amiright? That's rhetorical, we already established I am always right back at the top.

Now, this isn't exactly what you might call a realistic premise. It's not terribly likely is it? I mean I love this comic but even I don't think you can imagine Superman up, believe in him and he will exist and sort it all out. I've been trying long enough and hard enough I've given myself a hernia and - no dice so far. I will keep you posted though. No, it's not supposed to be realistic. It's supposed be inspiring and entertaining. Heroic even. And I like that. I like that a lot.

Most (but not all) of the success here can of course be laid at the feet of Gentleman Gil Kane whose art is present in all it's '80s prime. The '80s was, for me, Gil Kane's Shining Time. The time when he had the inking nous to finally do his own pencils justice and the editorial clout to ensure he got to ink himself. While in previous decades Kane was often a hostage to unsympathetic inking the '80s saw Kane unleashed as never before. Yes, I quite like Kane's '8os art. I see '80s Gil Kane in much the same way as '70s Kirby (KOIBY!!!) - a thing unique and entire unto itself. Both styles are so complete that no further development is desirable or, I strongly suspect, possible.  Even Kane's shortcomings work to his advantage here. His perfunctory space ships and goofy aliens play into the childish naivete of the narrative. For it is an intentionally childish narrative I think. It's often thought that people like Kane and Wolfman were unsophisticated storytellers since, um, craft apparently only got invented ten years ago or some such horseshit which flatters the current generation. But there are many levels of sophistication and one of these levels is surely being able to pitch a tale to appeal to children while at the same time winking at adults.

Here kids can thrill to the scrappy youngsters showing the adults what's what despite the initial disbelief, get a little fearful frisson when the parents die, be reassured when it turns out the aliens were kidnapping not killing the adults and, finally, soar with Superman as the impossible becomes possible because two children dreamed a dream which became real.  Adults of course can get a kick out of the goofy antics as well as enjoy the cheeky moments of humour such as when Joe enquires after his parents and an adult just blandly states, "They're probably DEAD. Buried under the RUBBLE." or when the plucky pair outline their insane plan only for a kid to say "But that makes no semnffmfm" his latter words muffled because an adult has just shut him up with a stern hand. GilWolf™ are not unaware of the daffiness they are dealing in and handle it with a balance and surety easily missed. But you can't miss, no one could miss, the glory of Kane's Superman. Initially appearing as a chalk drawing (an amazingly detailed and preternaturally accomplished chalk drawing - a lot like a Gil Kane drawing (another wink)) Kane's Superman is revealed in an amazing sequence that thrums with power, so much so that Wolfman has little recourse but to resort to the Greatest Wordsmith of all  - The Shakespeare. The insane and impossible magic achieved by combining words and pictures and imagination reaches its magnificent apogee here. After this things necessarily fall off a bit (or the risk would be that the reader's head would melt) but Kane's Superman is still like unto a God or at least a Roman Hellenistic statue of a God. A stutue that moves, because, boy, does Gil Kane's Superman move. When he's in motion, and he is mostly in motion, Kane's Superman is fluidity and power in perfect union. Kane's Superman looks delighted to be alive. Kane's Superman is so transported by the act of living even his cape blooms like a physical flare of joy.

And as Superman flies off to heal the world on a monthly basis once more the story shifts scene a final time to another pair of kids. An older pair but a pair engaged in a similar exercise of imagination. The exercise of imagination known as creation. Two kids called Joseph and Jack.

Joseph and Jack.

Joseph and Jack.

'Nuff Said, right?

And maybe that, in the end, is why ACTION COMICS #554 is the greatest Superman story ever told. Because although it could only whisper it tried to tell us the truth. About creation. About imagination and the people who have it and where the real original value in all these creations, all these billion dollar making creations, resides. It resides in the act of creation and it resides in those who have imagination enough to create.

For Joe and Jerry.

For Joseph and Jack.

For the creators.

For COMICS!!!

Oh Good, Another Year. COMICS! 2012 The Year I Really Didn't Pay Attention!

I do so hope all across the globe had a happy holiday and got stuff and ate stuff and watched stuff and generally did stuff where stuff was involved. I did, which is why I've been AWOL so sorries and all that but here’s my wrap up for 2012. A year I paid little attention to while it was going on, made no notes and am now left floundering for stuff to write! Appetising, non? Anyway it’s Saturday night and I've places to be, people to see, y’know how it is. Yes, I am lying. This is all I have. Anyway, let’s see how this goes. My money’s on - badly.

Well, don’t look at me. I only read what I bought and I only bought what I could afford and, worse, I only bought what could afford from my LCS in England. So, no, Chris Ware isn’t here, nor is Michel Fiffe, nor LOVE & ROCKETS: NEW STORIES. And if none of them are here then this is a piss poor reflection of the worth of the year indeed. So, rather than do a list of comics I've sort of done a list of people because, amongst other things, 2012 was the year it finally sank in that people are quite important too. Oh, don’t worry they still aren't all that important or anything. Not important enough to be dealt with equitably or decently or any such pinko nonsense. But they are important because if it wasn't for people I wouldn’t get my comics! Also, some people who don’t even make comics were quite important in my enjoyment of the year and while there are no doubt umpty billion lists praising SAGA there probably are only two lists with Graeme McMilllan on (this one and The Pulitzer Council) Which seems a bit off balance. So here’s my 2012 via some people I managed to think about some words for. Just be thankful I didn't call it a sideways look at 2012. That’s always a golden invitation to run screaming in the opposite direction; a sideways look at…! Christ.

Of the comical periodical stuff I did read I’d have to say it was Richard Corben who ruled the roost for most of the year. It’s unfortunate that Richard Corben is 72 years old since there’s naturally assumed to be some degree of special pleading involved; “Y’know it may look like a pretzel in a pool of sick but, bless, he tried and, really, what can you expect at that age? It’s just sweet he’s still breathing unaided.”<pats Ricard Corben on head in patronizing fashion> But NO! I say thee nay! This year via his RAGEMOOR series, shorts in CREEPY and EERIE, his DARK HORSE PRESENTS Poe pieces and, at year’s end, his issue long masterpiece of luridly coloured puppets and profanity THE CONQUEROR WORM Richard Corben took comics by the scruff of the neck and shook it until its celluloid collar popped open and its top hat lay askew. The stronger stories may have benefited from the presence of Jan Strnad and John Arcudi lending form and shape but even when Corben scripted unaided there was no doubting the colossal talent gracing the page, talent the continuing development of which was a sight to recoil from in stunned disbelief. In 2012 Richard Corben was subsumed entirely into The Eisner Hall of Fame. It wasn't enough but it’ll have to do.

I didn’t see a lot spoken about Corben’s work this year and part of me suspects it was because he confounded expectations by keeping the hefty teats of yore largely under wraps. It was as though without the usual easy ingress to an automatically superior vantage most critics were held at bay. As a theory this was utter tosh of course and belittling to the fine critical minds which scrutinize comics on a daily basis ("All-New X-Men gave sight to the blind! And made the lame to walk!"). But yet it was utter tosh I could easily apply to the almost deafening silence which greeted Gilbert Hernandez’ FATIMA: THE BLOOD SPINNERS. This was a delightfully rough and ready thing which seemed like something scribbled in a notepad during the course of a particularly somnolent double period of Chemistry by a randy and imaginative teenager. Its excess of imagination coupled to a compulsively crude execution was one of the most refreshing things I read in 2012. It was a throwback to the days when comics weren't respectable and didn't give a shit. It was a throwback to The Golden Age and not just because if Gilbert Hernandez is producing comics then it is a Golden Age anyway.

Thankfully, female secondary sexual characteristics are not a staple of the work of Roger Langridge. This is extraordinarily fortunate as there was a bit of a creepy trend developing there wasn't there? It was all getting a bit unsettling, but you can all breathe easier as now we’re on about Roger Langridge, who is decency incarnate. Langridge was a busy little bee this year but his busyness had little impact on the quality of his work. First on my radar was his JOHN CARTER work for Marvel which was a fine (if editorially meddled with) slice of pulp pie indeed. Then he wrote and drew the SNARKED series which was a continuation/expansion of the work of Lewis Carroll with a few surprises chucked in ( A Derek and Clive cameo anyone?)  As beautifully illustrated in Langridge’s signature clear lined big foot style as ever the real surprise in SNARKED was in the writing. A funny, eventful romp brimming with incident and intelligence it may have been but at the end, at the last, it punched you right in the sternum with an ending which was at once heart rending and uplifting. A great ending for a great book because SNARKED was a great book but Langridge didn't stop there. Oh, no, no, no. No. Next up we had THE MUPPETS: FOUR SEASONS which was from Marvel so, rather classily, it didn't have Langridge’s name on the cover. This was a neat little comic and was certainly better than The Muppets movie. Admittedly I saw this movie slumped on the couch in someone else’s house on Christmas Day with sugar fuelled children interrupting my viewing at intervals that could almost have been scientifically calculated to result in maximum irritation. The highlights of The Muppets were Chris Cooper and the fact that Mickey Rooney is still alive! Holy shit! Let’s put on the show right here, Mickey Rooney! The film was okay but Langridge’s comic was better. Which is probably about right for POPEYE too. I've never seen the Altman film but Langridge’s POPEYE was a pitch-perfect resurrection of Segar’s classic creation being both loony and lovable at one and the same time. Some great art too by a bunch of fellas including Langridge himself.

It wasn't just comics though! There were also books about comics and chief amongst these was Sean Howe's MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY. I'm such a shitty critic that, unlike the rest of comicdom I haven’t got around to that yet. It looks fine enough but it isn’t the book I want about Marvel. I know that without cracking it open because its publication wasn't accompanied by news footage of the Marvel building webbed with yellow Crime Scene tape, long shots of people in Hazmat suits on rain misted moors next to excavated piles of dirt,  thirty-something men in sloganed T-Shirts and cargo pants with black bars over their eyes weepingly describing whizzing into milk cartons and coiling into pizza cartons while grainy phone footage of a single nightmarish toilet floated in the top right of the screen, the RSPCA triumphantly releasing the mangy chimp Brian Bendis had held captive for over a decade, Gary Friedrich eating a warm meal under a roof he owned free and clear, herky-jerky footage of a judge with screaming eyes banging a gavel in a room full of people rising as one in a blizzard of paper and the face of Jack Kirby sharing the screen only with the word  “VINDICATED!!!”. No, there wasn't any of that but there were good reviews so I’ll probably give it a go at some point.

I did read CONVERSATIONS WITH HOWARD CHAYKIN, which actually came out last year but I’m counting it because I  read it this year and, y’know, my house my rules, kids! Also, pick your clothes up or you’ll get the back of my hand! CWHC was pretty great being as it was a collection of interviews with the self proclaimed Jew from The Future spanning so many decades I didn't so much feel sad with age but glad I’d made it this far.  I’m glad HVC has as well since he is always such an enjoyable natterer. Brannon Costello does a nice job picking interviews that chronologically flow nicely through HVC’s career showing his changes in attitude (well, refinements) to his work, comics and his position therein. Unavoidably there’s some repetition but it’s the kind that just cements how fundamental some things are to the HVC world view. Since this is an entirely legitimate and productive use of repetition kudos to the author are dutifully tendered. Although I imagine the time spent with the great man himself in order to provide the career-overview-thus-far interview which rounds out the book was a reward worth more than riches. More than rubies. Costello is entirely fair to his subject who comes across as an 'umble man who tries to produce the best work he can despite the restrictions of the marketplace. Oh, and he likes ladies.

There are a couple of omissions here (or, rather, not here); the first being my personal conversation with HVC:

JK:  Your seminal work of the ‘80s, and here I’m thinking specifically of AMERICAN FLAGG! and THE SHADOW, seems to contain a strong John Severin influence amongst the customary Toth and Gil Kane elements. In particular the faces have a crispness to the definition they previously lacked. Would it be true to say that it was at this point that you began to fold Severin into your style? HVC: Bojemoi! What are you doing in my bedroom? It’s three in the goddamn morning! Who are you? Who sent you? I have a gun! Jesus, what’s wrong with your teeth?

Back in the real world, this volume does not include any of The Comics Journal interviews with HVC. Hopefully this is because TCJ are going to publish a big ass lavishly illustrated landscape format volume of them like they did with the Jack Kirby (KOIBY!!!) interviews. Even more hopefully the HVC volume has only not come out yet because they are working on a Gil Kane volume. It would be nice if TCJ did this, particularly as it would count as some small measure of recompense for their poaching of the younger Savage Critics like some journalistic pied piper of fucking Hamlin. A second reason is that TCJ interviews are always good readin’. Particularly those with Gary Groth. Younger readers (i.e. under 40) may not be familiar with the particular and recurrent joys of a mainstream creator getting Grothed. Things would usually start out all chummy with the interview containing a slow but insistent buttering up along the twin lines of “you’re much better than this genre” and “you must have lead an interesting life”. This apparently innocuous praise would lead to the creator foolishly stepping right into Groth’s Horns of The Buffalo whereupon they would snap closed behind them and the hapless chump would be battered by a tirade of variously worded interrogatives, the common gist of which would be that they were letting down themselves, their family, the medium, the children of the world, generations yet unborn, art itself, human civilisation and Bea Arthur from Golden Girls by choosing to draw Spider-Man rather than document their family’s hard scrabble immigrant struggle to survive. Good times, I miss them still. Ah, got a bot off track there. Focus, John!

There were many reasons to thank Jeff Lester this year. The nauseated awe engendered by his latest meticulously reported dietary fad (in 2013 - it's dandruff and vole tears!), the unending hilarity of hearing him justify his consumer choices to people who don't really care beyond the initial act of poking him with a stick, his grace and manners when I E-Mail him to ask a stupid question and, of course, thanks to Jeff Lester I saw a movie I enjoyed. I know Jeff Lester enjoyed this movie because he kept banging on about it like my Uncle kept banging on about God after that piano fell on his head. It was called THE RAID: REDEMPTION and it was very violent which is why I took to calling him Gentle Jeff Lester. I never said it was clever! Or funny! Anyway this was certainly the best movie I've ever seen in which a bunch of Indonesian police get out of a van, cross an Indonesian street and enter an Indonesian apartment building filled with Indonesian criminals whereupon -everyone tries to kill each other for the next 90 minutes – Indonesian style! It’s an Indonesian film, as you no doubt gathered, so we went for the dubbed version. I know, I know, purists are balking here as subtitles are the way to go with the old foreign flicks. Hey, we did try the subtitled version but, being a bit out of practice, I soon grew tired of looking down to read “Look out!” only to look up to find three characters were now dead. As you can tell there isn’t much plot but that’s okay, there’s enough plot to hang all the fighting on and this is some fighting alrighty. The main character has a pregnant wife and his brother’s involved and his Dad looks at him meaningfully so there’s no doubt at least one 20,000 word piece on Culture of Carnage: Tradition & Responsibility in The Raid: Redemption floating about on The Internet. One thing did puzzle me about the film i.e. how outlandish was it? I’m not terribly informed about Indonesia but is it in fact the case that every man Jack of them has a BA Hons in Hurtin’? I like to think so. I like to think that at any moment an Indonesian altercation could escalate from harsh words into a whirlwind of expertly choreographed brutally inventive violence. I bet chucking out time at the pubs is interesting in Indonesia.

This year it was difficult not to believe I had personally wronged Graeme McMillan and that as a consequence my mind was crumbling under the weight of my unassaugable guilt; so often did I glimpse his name in the periphery of my vision like some vengeful phantom in a wordy nerve shredder from the turn of the last Century. But, no, the man who gave up his heathy homeland for the Love of his lady was merely trying to earn a crust. I hope the crust was large and tasty because 2012 was the Year Graeme McMillan would not, could not and did not stop. Graeme McMillan worked so hard this year that I think he broke a fundamental Law of Nature. How else to explain that although no one on all the planet had the time to read everything he wrote Graeme McMillan, just one frail man, somehow had the time to write it? And like the hero of his own story he was, at last, in Time. Graeme McMillan, although with your persistent pace of production you shame all we shirkers I offer you this small reward, I offer you an answer to your question of “What if Brian Bendis wrote Star Wars comics?” Answer: Shit. But in space. No, thank you, Graeme McMillan.

Kim Thompson worked hard this year. Kim Thompson worked so hard Kim Thompson deserves recognition. Particularly so as his hard work had no concrete result. Kim Thompson was the man who tried to corral Dave Sim. After offering a sugar lump of hope to the “controversial “ creator his efforts at open negotiations were met only with finger nips and shoulder bumps as the recalcitrant creator purposefully avoided the proffered treat before, finally, dumping a big load on Kim Thompson’s metaphorical brogues and hee-hawing off with another’s saddle on his back. A fancy gold saddle he had cruelly hidden from Kim Thompson’s view all the while. Not only that but Kim Thompson had to put up with everyone chiming in (mea culpa! Mea bloody culpa!) which while entertaining for the rest of us must have tested Kim Thompson’s  patience somewhat.  Although it is to be hope that Kim Thompson found some respite in the humour afforded by the rather, er, special fan of Sim’s who dominated proceedings and that writer fellow unsubtly jockeying for work doing introductions. Well, they made me laugh and that’s what’s important. Me.

Baby-faced Brian Hibbs was of course important to me this year because, well, he’s Ballistic Brian Hibbs! Whaddya want, I should draw you a diagram?!?!

No doubt Bashful Brian Hibbs would like me to point out that

SNARKED can be purchased from HERE. POPEYE can be purchased from HERE. POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS is also aces and can be purchased from HERE.

What will 2013 hold then? Haven't the foggiest, mate. But it's sure to contain COMICS!!!

The very best to all of you and all of yours from me and all of mine!

All Steve Ditko art from THE STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS VOLUME ONE (DC Comics) Joe Kubert art from JEW GANGSTER (ibooks)

2012: A Year That I Mindlessly Consumed Entertainment

I wrote one of these elsewhere in 2011, a year-end best-of / worst-of wrap-up piece, but I thought I'd do this here this year, if that's okay. I can't promise this is going to be a very edifying affair for anybody-- my memory is not great so this is just what I can remember of 2012. I'll start with comics, in case you want to stop there. Thank you for your consideration.

FAVORITE COMICS

Graphic Novels-- Oooh, How Fancy.  I missed a lot of the big books of the year this year, like every year-- year-end list are always a subject of a lot of guilt for me for being such a lazy reader.  But the book I found myself most responding to this year was Joost Swarte's IS THAT ALL THERE IS?

It caught me at the right time-- it came out right around the time I'd been going back through the non-Moebius-Corben wing of the Metal Hurlant crowd, guys like Serge Clerc or Yves Chaland, the guy who don't fit the stereotype of what that magazine was all about. Daniel Torres wasn't a Metal Hurlant guy but I found an old Heavy Metal with a long stretch of Torres-- man, oh man.

IS THIS ALL THERE IS? was a career retrospective of Swarte's decades in comics, collecting all (or nearly all-- I remember getting confused on that point) of Swarte's work in a slim volume, Swarte being more influential than prolific. The economics of American comics and the attention economy make that a difficult choice, I suppose, but Swarte sure does make a persuasive case for it: boy, these are some pretty comics.

Swarte's comics play around with the form, but that doesn't consume the whole thing-- there are still cartoon characters in there, and more importantly, dirty jokes. See, e.g., the comic about sentient used-condoms-- I really admire that Swarte didn't use his limited output as any kind of excuse to keep him from making a comic about anthropomorphized used-condoms one of the cornerstones of his curriculum vitae.

Serial Comics-- The Kind with Staples.  On the non-graphic-novel side, oh, I liked the usual suspects, I suppose.  I mentioned enjoying SAGA here, I believe. ZAUCERS OF ZILK-- I thought I would just be reading that for Brendan McCarthy but that actually had a whole thing going on, a whole presentational style that I thought was exciting. Definitely MULTIPLE WARHEADS-- that and SAGA alone would have made this a great year for me. What little I saw of MIND MGMT (I'm behind there). I really hadn't liked this latest series of CASANOVA because a lot of it seemed to be purposefully avoiding or dismantling the things that I liked about CASANOVA to begin with. That said, I thought that last issue of that series landed completely-- I remember putting down the last one of those convinced the right choices had been made and excited for whatever comes next, if there gets to be a next. I always just feel really excited to pick up that book. What I saw of the Roger Langridge POPEYE was pretty impressive.

Oh, and any year with an issue of TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE... Some bow or curtsey is required in the direction of that.

For the mainstream, I only read FURY and the FLASH-- those were the only books where I could go, "I don't care if I feel dirty reading these" (which... look perhaps it's not rational, but I tried to pick up a couple of the celebrated books du jour and just couldn't feel right about myself, for various reasons... I don't suggest there's anything wrong with you if you weren't likewise afflicted, but I just have to admit to that particular malady myself). FURY is obviously the better book, the one where  I find the story interesting, where I'm compelled by the AMERICAN TABLOID atmosphere of it all to keep reading, to find out  "what happens next." The FLASH is just the one that makes me happy to see the performance-- I don't really care about what he's drawing; I just want to see Francis Manapul do his job.

The Small Press-- Who?  I read a lot of great small press comics, this year. I just want to list them all, but I guess that'd defeat the point of a Best-Of situation, right? Thanks to anyone who sent me one out of the blue, especially Gordon Harris sending me PEDESTRIAN and Austin English sending me the DOMINO BOOKS releases.

My friend John launched a Cleveland horror anthology that sure was good times, but my opinion there is biased.

The two things that I most reacted to?

(1) Michel Fiffe's work-- I think I'd seen a little of ZEGAS while it was being serialized online, but ZEGAS combined with a Suicide Squad homage comic that he did (and I think I'm expecting COPRA in the mail soon)?  That is some exciting stuff to open a mailbox to; I'd rank that alongside anything else I read this year, easy-peasy.

(2) I really liked this Ryan Cecil Smith thing SF...? Tucker Stone and some other people had been talking it up-- it's, like... like a cover version of a Leiji Matsumoto comic, I think. (I don't really know enough about Leiji Matsumoto to really understand what was going on from that perspective). I really dug the whole package there, though, like on a "look at the way the ink is on the paper" level, and spent a while just sort of paging through it... The story and art were good but that was more a parts-greater-than-sum thing that involved a reaction to the texture of it, for me, a pleasure that's more difficult for me to articulate ...

Webcomics-- What Kind of Weirdo Cares about Webcomics?  Easy call: best thing I saw this year was Click and Drag by XKCD. I just thought that was an achievement.     Not just in its size and scope, but there are so many killer jokes in there... Plus, I loved how people took it and made their own thing with it-- people who made better scrolling versions, maps, what have you.  I've talked about it with friends and compared experiences of it-- my "I got lost the cave system for a half-hour" vs. their "who are you?  why are you talking to me?  why are you drooling on yourself?"  My very best friends.

What else... found myself looking at anything on the Study Group Comics site; Project Ballad;   I don't go to What Things Do enough, as often as I should, but whenever I do is edifying, I suppose. Kate Beaton's post-hurricane New York comics.  I know Cameron Stewart finally wrapped up SIN TITULO but I haven't sat down with it yet-- but... I have just no doubt based on what I read before it deserves to be on her; that thing is great. Super Mutant Magic Academy and Softer World both continued to kill it for me.  And I may be biased, but Eat More Bikes has killed me this year...

Writing about Comics-- The Sport of Kings.  I tried to keep a list of favorite writing about comics last year, but I didn't do that this year so I really feel badly that I can't make a better list there.

David Brothers and Tom Spurgeon come to mind first.

I haven't finished it yet, but Sean Howe's Marvel book! Especially that stretch in the 70's.  That is a book I've wanted to read for so many years and he did a better job with it than I'd even hoped.  I'm still working through that, though.

I spent a lot time surfing by the Comics Journal website so perhaps I got lazy and stuck to their work more than I should've.  That said:  Chris Mautner talking to Eddie Campbell, and Tim Hodler talking to Chris Roberson. Plus, I enjoyed their coverage of the big stories in comics like Spain Rodriguez passing away or the anniversary of the Hernandez Brothers-- those all lead to pieces I recall having enjoyed. The Kirby Hand of Fire roundtable. I can't say I agreed with him, but I thought Darryl Ayo talking about Ben Marra was worthwhile-- I enjoyed thinking about it afterwards, certainly. I sure envied the angry reaction that Sean Rogers's essay on Flex Mentallo was greeted with, though I suppose I liked that book much more than he did.

Finally, a lot of women wrote  about cosplay after the Tony Harris thing.  I felt like I learned a lot about a world I didn't really understand before, and I was thankful for that.

I just feel like I'm forgetting a lot-- I regret not having kept any notes, and so, if I've forgotten something any of you have written, I apologize because I appreciate that there are people out there willing to take the time to try to make my expeirence of comics richer. And obviously, getting to be a part of the Comics of the Weak gang occasionally means I get to be next to writing that I think very highly of, whether from Tucker Stone or Joe McCulloch or Tim O'Neil. That's been a pleasure.

LEAST FAVORITE COMICS

Jonathan Hickman's SECRET. Jonathan Hickman's SECRET.  Jonathan Hickman's SECRET.

This was a badly executed attempt at doing an opaque "70's suspense thriller." Two issues crapped out, and then I haven't seen it again.  Did I miss the rest?

I have to admit that I hated that comic in a way that was really fun and enjoyable, very pure-- everything should be as fun to hate.

It wasn't a "so bad it's good" experience-- I might be too old for that sort of thing to have much purchase with me. No, it was just thoroughly shitty-- dull non-characters, pages crammed with dialogue none of it interesting or memorable, a total obliviousness to the visual possibilities of comics, action-crime comics by guys who just can't sell that they've ever met a tough guy in their life. It all felt phony and un-lived.

Also: "ooooh, Jonathan Hickman is a designer"-- shouldn't there be ANY evidence of that anywhere besides a cover? This is just boring flat grids, humdrum word balloons, dialogue shoved in caption boxes for no discernible reason, same-old same-old tedium aside from a mostly-embarrassing attempt at doing something novel with the color.

Did Steranko never exist? Is David Aja not making comics right this second? Can we quit praising guys for having design skills just because their covers kinda sorta resemble books?

But I loved hating SECRET. I adored hating SECRET.

What I like: you can go and make a million comics for Marvel or DC, but when the time comes to make your own, the blank page is waiting for you.  You have a blank page, and have to make up your own world, and your own characters, and you can't ride off Jack Kirby's coattails, or the coattails of the generations that preceded you.  None of the experience of riding on other people's accomplishments will help you when it's you and a blank page. You can't pretend to be interesting by having a "massive outline," or by killing Sue Storm, or by having the X-Men fighting the Avengers.

The blank page will eat you alive unless you come at it with some goddamn fire in your belly, no matter who you are, and you can't build muscle to deal with that by lifting 5-pound weights. This isn't just a terrible comic by people who don't seem to know what they're doing-- it's a terrible comic by people who don't seem to know what they're doing who have made a TON of other comics.

And I fucking love that.

Look, maybe that guy's hit before-- I know a lot of people are huge fans, of some of his Image books. Obviously, the MANHATTAN PROJECTS was one of the big hits of the year.  Me, I tried the first issue of that, and put it down not feeling any need to find out more about what an actually interesting history wasn't in any way like. I didn't see the appeal.  But it's a big hit.

But that fact that we're all equally susceptible to failure, that the really fucking weird hype of "Writer with a Big-Name Because He's the Guy Who Writes Speedball for a Living has Decided to Make Image Comics" (how weird is that hype!  To me, it's weird because it highlights how UNUSUAL it is to routinely expect artists to fucking create things), that hype can still result in the biggest pieces of shit I've seen this year, I find all that invigorating personally. I take it as a reassurance as to what really matters.

Get that fire in the belly, kids.

Least favorite writing about comics.  Comics Blogger has a list you might find yourself sympathetic to.  It includes one essay that I think has to be hands-down winner for the year, though it also includes people I do like or at least feel a fondness for in that they've been a small part of my own life for however long.

Look, my official policy is anyone engaged in writing about comics occasionally will say some impressively stupid shit just unavoidably in the ultimately worthwhile process of saying anything at all, that we are all lucky to be celebrating a unique art form with a grand history stretching in both directions, and that if we didn't celebrate it, the businesspeople and employees whose care comics are temporarily in sure as shit wouldn't bother.

That said, it's also my policy to be wildly enthusiastic about smack talk, of any kind or nature, whether I agree fully with it or not, because I enjoy it, because I find negativity funny and entertaining.  (Also, I'm just happy I didn't end up on there because oh brother, I probably came close more than once-- "Hey everybody, people tweeted jokes about Green Lantern I didn't like. Derpity-derp-derp. Here's a youtube video of meerkats").

I would just add in conclusion, that regardless of how you feel about Comics Blogger's list, however aggrieved, we can hopefully set aside our petty differences, look to our common humanity, and agree that MTV Geek was fucking robbed. MTV Geek is a clown car.

MOVIES

Favorite.   My top 10, from 1 to 10, I'd go... DJANGO UNCHAINED, THE RAID: REDEMPTION, CELESTE AND JESSE FOREVER, 21 JUMP STREET, THE GUARD, THE MASTER, RUBY SPARKS, KILL LIST, LOOPER and MOONRISE KINGDOM.

The Guard and Kill LIst might both be technically 2011 movies; also, while I really liked LOOPER, I remain convinced that the story in LOOPER made no goddamn sense whatsoever. Everything else was a pleasure without asterix.

Least Favorite. This is a tough call, but I'd say PROMETHEUS because I was looking forward to it more than THIS IS 40.

PROMETHEUS was beautiful to look at, and had some riveting sequences, but on the other hand, I was humanly capable of understanding the story to THIS IS 40 while I was watching it, which gives it a slight edge for me in that I find that to be an important part of going to the movies to me.

After those two, I would go with JOHN CARTER-- I thought that stunk, and its failure becoming some kind of cause celebre among geeks was fucking embarrassing to watch.  "Why didn't the advertising BLAH?"   Because the people responsible for advertising that movie had the thankless task of selling a massive, stinky turd.  The end.  Thanks, and remember to tip your waiter.

MUSIC

Favorite. I really loved the music I was listening to this year-- I was in a very Albert Brooks in Modern Romance "I love my albums" place with music this year.

Favorite? I'd go with Killer Mike's R.A.P. MUSIC, with the new Fiona Apple just narrowly behind as a strong second. (Apple had great songs but I had a tough time getting used to how they were arranged, while Killer MIke's arrangemnet made more sense to me...?).   I really liked that Japandroids album, too...

But what felt unusual... I even liked the big shallow pop hits of this year, for the first time in a long time. Call Me Maybe being everywhere made sense to me, and sure, the lyrics are a little suspicious but that ONE DIRECTION song-- when I saw them perform on SNL, I wasn't thinking "Oh, Boy Bands again, I'm so angry because this isn't intended for my precise demographic."  It seemed like a good idea!  The song is catchy, and those kids seem preferable to that crazy Justin Beiber guy -- is he driving 1000 miles per hour down LA streets?  Why we let that kid become a huge monster made a lot less sense to me.

Least Favorite.  I didn't really understand that thing where people got all worked up by that K-Pop song, Gang-something style. The whole appeal of all that was really inexplicable to me-- I was just really mystified what people got out of that. Is it that he yells into a girl's butt? I guess...?  Or people sure like lassos, all of the sudden!  I don't know-- I just didn't follow what happened there. It was obviously a mass phenomenon, but ... so are fainting epidemics.  I just was very confused by it.

TELEVISION

Favorite.  My top 10 was (1) MAD MEN-- the Roshomon episode (there was a stretch of episodes where it became like a series of short stories that were just relentlessly wonderful to me), (2) BREAKING BAD -- I'd say the one with the laptop, (3) the Parker Posey episodes of LOUIE, (4) the final episode of COMMUNITY, the last I'll ever see of those characters (no thanks to a no-Harmon version-- I've seen a Marv Wolfman Howard the Duck) sent off in a way that felt so loving to the characters, the actors, the audience, everybody, everywhere, (5) the Year in the Life episode of CHILDRENS HOSPITAL, (6) the episode with Nicola on the train of THE THICK OF IT, (7) HUNDERBY-- the one with the medical exam, (8) the ice rink episode of PARKS AND RECREATION, (9) THE ERIC ANDRE SHOW-- whichever one had Dolph Lundgren, and (10) the Los Angeles episode of EAGLEHEART.

Honorary Mention.  It's not TV-- it's CHANNEL 101, but I was very lucky to find myself in the audience for GUMBEL and OH SHIT, as well as the finale of INTIMATE INDISCRETIONS.  I don't think my heart ever felt as full of love for my fellow man as watching those final seconds of each of those shows, each of which could not be more different than the other.

Least Favorite. THE NEWSROOM, but that was a show I religiously hate-watched-- everything I'd mock and deride Aaron Sorkin for was just front and center in that show. I was really delighted to hate it, like I was delighted by SECRET-- as a flaming, jaw-dropping confirmation of my preexisting negative biases.  Setting that aside, I was really disappointed by DEAD BOSS-- maybe it got better but I couldn't get past the first of those.

Books

Books. I read books this year but nothing I'd want to admit to-- didn't feel like I made good choices there so I found my choice in reading a little embarrassing. So.  Oh, I really liked Jonathan Lethem's book about THEY LIVE.  I'll cop to that...

Videogames

Favorite. HOT LINE MIAMI. Terrible boss battles, but I really admired the game design for everything else.  I love how it milked each moment of gameplay.

Least favorite. MASS EFFECT 3; a giant "what was the point of all that time spent" bummer. Don't make me ask that question, games! Sort of put me off games, in general, which hopefully takes because ... I just don't want to play them-- I don't feel good about the time they take up.  We meet all of these characters so we can run past them on the way to some lame "so, uh, which ending do you want?" finale...?  What?  Also: a game where it's embarrassing to complain about the ending because the fanboy gamers threw such a horrible endless hissy fit that I'm not invariably included in their membership.  Ugh to it all.

Comedy Podcasts

I don't have any recollection sufficient to identify my least favorites but.  The ones that come to mind, sitting here today...

(1) Todd Glass on the WTF Podcast;

(2) Riki Lindholme and especially the second episode of Kumail Nanjiani talking to Pete Holmes on YOU MADE IT WEIRD;

(3) Key & Peele on the NERDIST-- real pure comedy nerdery, why I listen to that show at its finest;

(4) any episode involving Sona screaming at RJ and Bley on RJ AND BLEY SUCK AT GIRLS-- this show popped up on my tumblr dashboard one day but when they bring on their friend Sona to scream at these guys, that has become one of my favorite things and I wish it happened more; they really deserve it; and

(5) I was there for it, but the Harmotown where Rob Schrab got pulled onto the stage was just a joyous thing to be in the audience for and I'd expect/hope that joy would translate to anyone listening.

Honorary Mention. Michael Chabon on Michael Silverblatt's Bookworm. I just liked how Silverblatt sounded like he was about to have a powerful and overwhelming orgasm talking about Chabon's new book. Sold me on it.

FOOD

Favorite.  I really got into lobster rolls this year-- I'd say the Loster Rolls at Son of a Gun were a highpoint.  I'd just be sitting around and just find myself thinking about lobster rolls.

Least favorite.  The place is out of business now so it'd be rude to identify it by name, but it was a weird "what if Subway sold sushi" place that just closed down by where I work. Subway shouldn't sell sushi.  Was that not obvious?

PURCHASES

Favorite.  I got an IKEA bookshelf that really ties my apartment together. I don't know what my place was like without it anymore-- it's been a real gamechanger.  I'm glad I finally have a chance to tell you about it, as it has been near to my heart.

Least favorite.   iTunes deleted all my contacts for my phone for some reason I couldn't fathom, so I had to pay to buy a software that would recover my contacts.  I resented it not being free.  Is that unfair to the purchase?  It is.  But ... but make your own damn list!  How dare you question my least favorite purchase of 2012?  HOW DARE YOU?  HAVE YOU NO SHAME?

"I'm Hip." COMICS! Sometimes The Best Diet Is Revenge!

Yes! Just in time for Christmas! Howard Victor Chaykin, Ken Bruzenak and Jesus Arbuto team up to present a breezy paced filthy mouthed corpse strewn comedy of bullshit and revenge in a book of which I said, "It's okay, you know. I liked it. I'm not mad about it but I'm glad I have it."

More incisive criticism, impotent invective against the new fangled medium of Television and a distinct lack of editing skills or even self awareness after the break! MARKED MAN Story and Art by Howard Victor Chaykin Colours by Jesus Arbuto Letters by Ken Bruzenak Dark Horse Books, $14.99 (2012) Previously serialised in DARK HORSE PRESENTS #1 - 8 MARKED MAN created by Chaykin, Arbuto & Bruzenak

Mark LaFarge is so good at life he can lead two. The naughty one pays for the nice one but the price of Life is steep and the price of two is steeper still. When his world explodes and the only life he retains is his own LaFarge goes looking for payback. And payback for two lives is going to be a Bitch indeed.

Despite only just having been serialised in DARK HORSE PRESENTS and now available in 2012 via a tidy hardback form MARKED MAN harks back to projects being touted by HVC as imminent way back yonder in 2004. That would be around the time of CITY OF TOMORROW (2005) where, I think, and I take no pleasure in saying this, HVC’s allotted rope as The Prodigal Returned finally ran out. He went away, cogitated and on his return HVC was seen to be largely lending his art to other people’s scripts. This being something he had done only rarely (e.g. TOM STRONG #19) since AMERICAN FLAGG! It was in fact something he had expressed a dislike for but, hey, that’s what he did for a long spell until his cache rose again and projects he could both write and draw were greenlit. So, it’s kind of nice that he got round to MARKED MAN in the end. They call that surviving, babyface! K-Chow! K-Chow! And, yes, I am doing finger-guns at you. No extra charge.

Of course the reason HVC was The Prodigal returned was that he had gone away in the first place. Up until MIGHTY LOVE (2005) he was working mostly in Television. Television. Not my favourite thing, you’ll have gathered by now. HVC’s work from this period does seem somewhat cramped by TV friendly traits (the high concept! the small cast, the limited locations, the too neat plotting) while at the same time enlivened by the abrasive assholery endemic to HVC’s work; the very abrasive assholery which would be the first thing TV would stamp out. Oh, there’s someone at the back there shouting about The Wire and, yeah, The Wire was fine TV but most TV isn’t The Wire. Last night I watched some TV to see how TV MARKED MAN was.

Chance favoured the idle and an episode of Criminal Minds uncoiled from my screen and into my eyes. I don’t know if you are familiar with this one; it’s an FBI Unit composed of about four or five people whose characters are basically the same elements of quirky and troubled but in different quantities. Genitals and skin colour are calculatedly diverse but of no actual importance. The whole charisma lacking crew revolve around a respected actor in a jumper that by virtue of its daring to be even the slightest bit tatty makes everything around it look as hollow and lifeless as the whole stultifying thing actually was. This episode was set in a real-life run down area of America, the name of which I missed because, er, my heart wasn't really in it, y’know. Anyway there was this montage of poor people, mad people and poor mad people and mad poor people over which was some awful sub-Boss shit-rock (“Oh ain’t no jobs now the looms are rusty/computers makin’ cars/people makin’ trouble/no money or hope but gimme a grope/oh, let me stick by broken off key in your rusty lock, babe/Lovin’s what the poor got ‘stead o’money/and it’s the rich who are poor when I’m up you, babe")…or something I don’t know. You know what I mean.

And you do know what I mean because you've seen this show. Even if you haven’t seen this show you've seen this show. This was the one about the vet who is frightened by a loud noise while changing his tyre and goes to ground as the flashbacks take over reality and he finds he brought the war home with him. See you do know it. There’s even a bit where his sad (but well groomed) wife says “It’s been like living with a ghost.” Because he kept putting a sheet over his head and jumping out at her. No, because that’s what sad wives always say in this story. Yes he was traumatised by the death of a child over there. Yes, the FBI were talking him in when a child strayed into the paths of the guns. Yes, yes, he did end up dead. Because while this show would say it was tackling a very real issue in the end it didn't know what to do with the mad poor bastard except kill him. But only in a way in which everyone kept their hands clean. Cowardly toss, I call it. So that’s TV; I can see why so many of our comic writers are so keen to work in it. It’s the creative opp…oh, give over.

I’ll tell you this for true and proper, I’d rather have been reading MARKED MAN than watching Criminal Minds. That’s not because it’s HVC roaring like a lion or anything. No, it’s just GOOD! Sure all the characters are assholes but they all possess a profanity-rich patter which make them assholes pink with the healthy blood of life and puckered like rosebuds seeking a kiss. I wouldn't really want to explain any of that before a jury so let’s just move on. Because MARKED MAN moves, yes, MARKED MAN has momentum. It might be that this momentum  costs MARKED MAN depth but I don’t think depth is what HVC’s going for here. It’s a fast’n’nasty crime caper about revenge, trust and taking responsibility for your actions. Refreshingly LaFarge doesn't seek revenge because he feels wronged out of all proportion to his deeds, no, he accepts his portion of responsibility but he’s still going to leave hair on the walls. Accepting responsibility is one of the hallmarks of a HVC protagonist; they rarely do it easy but they always have to do it. Sometimes HVC refers to it as being forced to become a higher moral authority.

This is a phrase I associate most with that time in the ‘80s when HVC’s heroes stopped smoking; a development the vigorous one claimed was due to his being responsible to a higher moral authority. Being a pretty spiritually barren kind of guy I’m not too sure what that means. What exactly is a higher moral authority to HVC? A rabbi on a step ladder? (Try the veal!) The point he was making was that if he no longer smoked he wasn't going to portray that vile, stupid and stinky habit in a light of a heroic hue. There’s no no-smoker like an ex-smoker now, is there folks. I raise this because Agent Hecht, the lady FBI Agent and the closest to a heroic figure in this low down dirty tale, sure likes her gaspers. If there’s one thing HVC nails visually in this it’s the total body surrender to the sheer noxious pleasure of inhaling state sanctioned mustard gas. But if she smokes and isn't exactly the hero(ine) what can this mean with regard to HVC and his higher moral authority? I’m not saying anyone’s been going for suspiciously short walks down the beach but I will point out that mints may make your breath kissy-fresh but they don’t stop your clothes smelling. Just throwing that out there.

The other big thing MARKED MAN is about is the big thing most HVC stuff is about and that’s those evil rich old white dudes who summer in The Hamptons, wear v-neck, slacks and bass weejuns combos and mistake golf for anything other than a waste of time, life and acreage. Moral cripples is the usual term he affixes them with but he doesn't do so here. They are though, very much so, and it’s their very moral lack that leads to them being unable to trust anyone that leads to their disastrous decision to clean up a mess; one that should have been left well enough alone. These are the kind of fun guys who all meet up at a boys only retreat to wear hoods, burn an effigy and chant Begone Dull Care. Which banging toon we will of course recall as being either the hidden track on Born This Way or a song which evolved from a French chanson prior to the reign of James II and is associated with West Yorkshire. I am originally from West Yorkshire but I don’t think we should read too much into this. Or should we? Anyway, these are rich white assholes who think no one can touch them and are thus the most deserving people in the world to be touched very hard indeed. Repeatedly and with great vigour.

Overall then, the book has characters, momentum, villains, action, banter, ooh-la-la frisky woo-woo and at least one clever plot point but it also has a couple of creaky floorboards that stop it getting out of the house without a couple of stern looks as it shuts the door behind it. You may remember back when the sun was young I mentioned too-tight plotting and there’s some of that here. There’s a caesura of sorts at he midway point where things change and time passes off page. When the story picks up again it turns out that LaFarge has secretly been The Best At Computers Ever! He has in fact found out everything he needs to know about everyone involved (even the FBI Agent) necessary in order to do what he has to do. Look, I've played Left4Dead so I know computers are amazing but that amazing? Really? No. It’s probably a casualty of the length but it’s also likely that HVC doesn't want to spend time on the boring stuff. And, y’know what, as a reader I don’t want him to either. LaFarge's mad-IT skillz made me laugh but didn't spoil the book. Because there were other things to enjoy which outweighed it. But if I hadn't mentioned it this would have been dangerously close to one of those reviews that are never like this: “John Kane gives CrackPipe Avengers 5 Stars saying “although it tracked dogshit all across the carpet of my mind at least it didn't get all the way into the kitchen...Another flawless triumph from The House I Want A Job At!” how could you doubt him!”

Chief among the compensatory pleasures are the letterings of Ken Bruzenak. Ken Bruzenak, bless him, has just gone balls-out crazy on this lettering. Seriously, it’s like he did this the day after buying a new software app or something. It’s certainly not unobtrusive and I have to say I found it busy and distracting but that’s me. I do give Ken Bruzenak points on the ring tones though they are a twinkly humourous touch. It occurred to me that the letters might look better on a screen and that might be because that’s how this stuff’s put together now, on screens and stuff. Hitting you with the Tech-fu there! Both the lettering and colouring just seem really cold and glossy but then the paper they are on, as with most modern comics,  it occurs to me now is rather like a screen. It’s like someone from the future heard of paper and recreated it but there were no more trees so they substituted polymers and asbestos. It’s not like paper was when I was a lad, all soft and warm like mommy’s cuddles. Damn, maybe HVC’s moving into The Future smoother than I am. Ain't that a kick in the nuts.

MARKED MAN then, not that I've just realised I've got to be off now and have seriously shanked the structure on this thing but...MARKED MAN then is, I'm guessing, HVC's later period art applied to his late-mid period writing. It's got a TV feel but a quality TV feel I'd be okay having watched it on the box but I enjoyed reading it more. Because with comics, HVC comics in particular it's the whole package I'm after. HVC's well honed layouts, Bruzenak's bedlam of letters and even Arbuto's slightly chilly and certainly texturally busy colours. Hey, MARKED MAN was a GOOD! time.

So yeah,  I hope to be around before Christmas but I'm a bit sporadic at the moment, so maybe not. If I don't see you have a jolly nice Christmas and I hope you get some COMICS!!!

He's Still "The Only Bear On The C.I.A. Death List!" COMICS! Sometimes SHAKO! Speaks!

Rejoice fans of quality reviews! For to celebrate the release of the SHAKO! TPB collection I decided not to review it. For a start I won't have any money until Christmas is over. And I'm talking there about the first Christmas after MiracleBoy leaves home in about 2025. No, I decided to do something else instead to celebrate this momentous occasion. What follows is not entirely sane but then again what is, my American friends, what is?!?

Most importantly of course I decided not to review the SHAKO! TPB as I already reviewed its contents HERE. You will of course remember that vividly because you have nothing else to do but remember badly written old posts on The Savage Critics. So, there didn't seem much point in going over it again but it also seemed a bit shoddy to let the occasion pass uncommemorated. Because as much as I love 2000AD's SHAKO! (and, boy, do I love SHAKO!) I never thought it would be collected. Truly, these are the days.

Your luck was in though as since I am a Savage Critic I, naturally, know loads of people in Comics, or as we gifted insiders call it - The Biz. And using my "juice" I reached out and managed to get the contact details for the star of the book, SHAKO! himself. SHAKO! has kept a low profile since his 2000AD appearance moving into the area of plumbing due to the "perennial" nature of the work and the reliable income it provides for a family oriented bear like SHAKO!. SHAKO! still retains fond memories of his comics work and remained humble and gracious throughout our encounter. Because encounter SHAKO! I did. In fact, as his van was in the garage, I arranged to meet him around the corner from his house at a caff where we both tucked into a full English courtesy of The Savage Critics’ robust expense account. The following conversation ensued:

JK: SHAKO!’s quite an unusual name for a bear isn't it? SHAKO!: No, not really. Although in the strip it claims  “It means simply...KILLER!” or some other such guff. But I'll let you in on a little secret - it’s actually Inuit for Grace Of The Sun’s Soft Fade. Sorry to disillusion everyone there.

JK: Ha! I can see why Mills' went for "...KILLER!" That's more in line with the spirit of the strip. Were you ever bothered by the levels of violence? I mean the audience for this was largely children after all...

SHAKO!: No, no. You can't mollycoddle children. The world is full of things children shouldn't be exposed to but they have a quite unerring radar when it comes to locating them. I mean, sure, it was over the top but it could have been worse. Look, it isn't complicated; do you know the only sure way to stop your kids from finding your jazz mags in the airing cupboard?

JK: Er, no.

SHAKO!: Don't have any jazz mags in your airing cupboard.

JK: Er.

SHAKO!: C'mon, who's going to tell the world it can't have its jazz mags? It just doesn't work like that! So inoculating the little blighters was, I guess, the intention behind all that newsprint nastiness. Of course by jazz mags I mean violence. I'm sorry, I had a late call out last night to bleed a pensioner's radiators. I 'm still a bit tired, not as young as I was y'know. I'm no Spring bear! Could we keep it lighter maybe?

JK: Sure. Sure. You were kidding a bit back there weren't you?

SHAKO!: Yeah, heh. Polar bears love deadpan, what can I say?

JK: I thought so, it's just hard to tell with the snout and the fur and all that.

SHAKO!: That does help with the deadpan. Still, I mean the violence in my strip was nothing compared to that in HOOK JAW. That was like, well, I don't know what that was like! It was off the scale. I'm amazed no one ended up in prison over it. He had a real knack for the violence, I'll give him that. And in real life he was such a sweetie!

JK: You mean Pat Mills?

SHAKO!: I meant Hook Jaw actually but I suppose the same might be said for Pat Mills, yes.

JK: You worked together quite recently didn't you? You and Hook Jaw?

SHAKO!: That’s right! We did indeed. It was just a bit of fluff really, stunt casting overseas under nom de plumes. A bit like when Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing would turn up in some Italian fiasco no-one in England would see for decades. Seabear and Grizzlyshark? I don’t think many people saw it but when you get to our age that’s not so important. Your priorities change as you age and it actually gets to the point where it’s just nice to be asked. I mean at my age my cubs have got cubs of their own so they're too busy to bother with boring old me! Something like Seabear? That's just the ticket, you know? A bit of a lark. Peps the old bones up a bit. Hardly high art, of course, but it was nice to stretch the acting chops again and, of course, Hooky was a riot. No airs or graces with that one! Ho! We kept in touch afterwards. Right up until…

(Legal Note: SEABEAR & GRIZZLY SHARK are nothing to do with HOOK JAW or SHAKO! Nor did the creators intend any such inferences to be made. The shark doesn't even have a hook in its jaw. I am just having a spot of fun. Is that still legal? EH!?!)

JK: Yes, I heard you were there when he…went.

SHAKO!: I…yes..it…sorry…

JK: It’s alright, we can move on if you like.

SHAKO!: No…no. I think Hooky would want people to know he was at peace at the end. In fact his spirits were quite high if anything. You know they’d just started reprinting his work in STRIP? People were recognising him again. Staff and kids from the other wards would go see him in the Day Room and ask for his autographs. Oh, he was fair basking in it. It was nice timing as well because a couple of days later…he...it was...

JK: It’s okay. I know this must be difficult for you...

SHAKO!: Yes..but, no, actually in a strange way it was kind of comforting. I’m not really sure what happened to tell the truth. It was Tuesday visiting and I was sat next to his bed and I remember I was telling him about this little cameo I’d made in one of those terrible Event things. One of those art by committee things. Dreadful tat but awfully popular with the youngsters. There were like five writers or something ,and they still got which Pole we bears live at totally arse about tit. Bless his cotton socks, Hooky was trying not to laugh because of the pain; the drugs weren't really touching it by this point. And suddenly, suddenly I realise there’s a man in the room. Seems daft but at first I thought it was a bear. Big fellow he was. And hairy? I’ll say he was hairy, alright! It was his eyes though, his eyes that held you. Great sad things they were. Sad but dignified. Like he’d been hated by the world and forgiven it. And this chap, he puts his hand on Hooky’s dorsal, and it’s a big hand festooned with these big rings, and he puts this big hand on Hooky like a feather landing. And all the tension in Hooky’s body just goes and this fellow says, in this burr, this rumble, he says, and I can remember every word still, he says:

“S’alright, Hooky. S’all alright, now. C’mon, me Duck, time to go home. Time to go back where the stories live. It’s just going home, luv. They've all missed you, Hooky. C’mon, son. C’mon now. Gently Bently and off home we go.”

And when he lifted his big ringed hand, well, I could tell from how he was laid that Hooky was gone. Well, I mean, obviously he was still there but…

JK: I understand. It sounds very…odd. It sounds like a very…I guess quite a spiritual moment.

SHAKO!: Oh, it was. Of course then I look and this big hairy fellow’s only gone and put shoe polish on his face and now he's chasing nurses down the corridor while making farting noises with his lips.

JK: …!

SHAKO!: Yes, it did take the shine off of things a bit.

JK: Well, er, that sounds like a good place to finish. I thank you for your time and I wish the book every success.

SHAKO!: Oh no, thank you. And I just have to say it’s not about success it’s just...when you're young it's all about the future isn't it? But then you get on a bit and you realise you aren't going to be in the future but you want to have done your bit.

JK: Entertained people?

SHAKO!: Yes. Yes! Maybe more but that'll do. That's no small thing. It's a bit of a magical thing even.

JK: The magic of stories.

SHAKO!: Yes. The lovely, lovely stories. Y'know, for the young.

JK: Thank you, SHAKO! ________________________________________________________

Postscript: Two days later I rang SHAKO! to see if he wanted to give the transcript a once over. The phone was answered by a man who said only “Shako’s with the stories now, luv.” Before the receiver was replaced softly.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This one was for SHAKO! and all the stories, and all the kids that read them.

This one was for all of the COMICS!!!

"Why Is That Puppet's Bosom EXPOSED?" COMICS! Sometimes Corben Endures!

Good morrow! It is I, the man who skipped a week without notice! I'm sure your rancour and anger have abated somewhat. If indeed they ever existed. Perhaps it was a feeling more akin to relief. As when the drowning man releases that last bubble of air and watches it rise unhurriedly to the surface through clouded but resigned and unpanicked eyes. No, my American friends, I have no idea what I'm talking about as - Christmas? Getting in the way of your free content it appears.  Anyway, this...

I'm going to do some me stuff now. I don’t know if that’s because Christmas makes sentimental fools of us all or it's just the need to pad this crap out because Brian "Penelope Smallbone" Hibbs pays by the word (cannily he won't say which word hence - so many of the little bastards).Anyway, we (The MiracleKane Family) attended the local Victorian Fayre because, yes, I live in a country which fetishises the time we rounded up the poor into camps and the name of the game was institutionalised sadistic hypocrisy.   After perusing several stalls of overpriced tat, the consumption of heated offal and a couple of goes on Hook-A-Duck the evening ended ended with all souls present being entertained by a firework display set up in the football stadium over the road. And by stadium I mean a field with lines chalked on it surrounded by a wall.  I don’t exactly live in a cosmopolis, is what I’m saying there. Nonetheless the display was pretty impressive. It’s impressiveness was undoubtedly enhanced by the decision to play James Bond themes over the barking tannoy. Sure,  if you played James Bond themes over the sight of a man picking his nose while standing in a field of stale turds it would magically become entertaining beyond all reason. James Bond themes are like that. Well the John Barry ones anyway and that’s what these were. Brian “Holly Goodhead” Hibbs would have approved. Grudgingly as is his wont but still approval would occur within his beefy frame, I'm sure.

I just really like this picture.

But, y’know, fair’s fair the fireworks were pretty spectacular. MiracleKid even exclaimed "Awesome!" and he's at the age when he means "awesome" when he says it and it's not just the result of a combination of affected ennui and an impoverished vocabulary. Yet, and yet, when the almost insanely enthusiastic voice riding the tannoy suggested everyone render a round of applause in appreciation...well now I know what the sound of one Dad clapping is. Christ, people are ungrateful buggers. And on that festive note...

POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS #3 By Bud Sagendorf IDW/Yoe, $3.99 (2012) Popeye created by E.C. Segar

The adventures of everyone’s favourite arse-chinned violent maritime moron continue! But enough about Aquaman! Arf! Arf!! Yes, it’s more crumbly comics from the time when the only people who were tattooed were sailors, whores and convicts. It is truly a Golden Age of reprints when the work of Bud Sagendorf can be disinterred, dusted down and presented to an audience that never even knew it existed (well, I didn't). Because Bud Sagendorf’s Popeye comics are more golden than a dead Shirley Eaton! I don’t think I've read anything about these comics on-line which is weird given how great they are. Sagendorf’s cartooning is timeless in it’s bigfootededly bizarre brilliance as are his strangely sensical nonsensical plots which the reader is propelled through via the simple ,yet incredibly effective, method of ending each page with a “turn” (or whatever Brian “Vesper Lynd” Hibbs calls it).

Bud Sagendorf was not as other men.

In the first (and longest) story here everyone just accepts the idea that when you die in Popeye’s world you turn into a ghost and go live on Ghost Island. This equating of death with geographical relocation is not entirely dissimilar to the premise of Will Self’s How The Dead Live except Popeye is funnier and shorter. But How The Dead Live is unarguably a lot more Jewish. Hey, these are VERY GOOD! comics; each page is beautifully crafted and built to last. But then, personally speaking, the comedy of a man looking in a window while declaiming “I is looking in this window, so I is! Arf! Arf!” is inexhaustible. I don’t know why that is and I don’t want to know. It’s enough I find things funny I don’t need to know why all the time. Sometimes it is what it is and that’s all that it is! ARF! ARF!

Help Brian “Plenty O’Toole” Hibbs blush like a rose in bloom by purchasing POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS #3 from HERE!

EDGAR ALLAN POE'S THE CONQUEROR WORM Adapted by Richard Corben Lettered by Nate Piekos of Blambot Dark Horse Comics, $3.99 (2012)

Again! Again Richard Corben paws and kneads at the raw material of Poe’s poetry shaping and reworking it to his requirements. These being the provision of a showcase for his art. To belittle this because the narrative seems somewhat undernourished would, I feel, be to miss the point. It would be to judge the artwork by the frame in which it is set. Because anyone coming to this expecting all the parts to have equal weight is going to be sorely displeased. This is Corben lifting weights in his garage, but he's left the door open so you can all crowd round and peer in. Or something.

After Richard Corben's first attempt offers for panto soon dried up.

Fortuitously when you’re as great as Corben even your workouts are better than most other actual performances. Artwise, this is the real stuff. There are some brief and yet informative notes secreted in the back of the book which serve to unsettle the assuredness of my readerly assumptions. After all while I was reading this I would have said it was set in a Hammer Horror/Mad Max future limbo but in the brief but informative notes in the back I learn that Corben set it "very definitely in the 19th Century”.  (Much like the imagination of the British people! Not really worth all that set-up was it. Sigh.) This does serve to make the anachronistic dialogue ("Yeah, okay. I'll go for it.") funnier. Anyway this one's all about the art with Corbens's swollen and boiled looking figures capering around a world coloured mustardy rust and chalky grey through which sudden bursts of scarlet punch in horrid revelation. Also, he draws the titular worms to resemble nothing but independently mobile and toothy cocks. That's not something you see every day but neither is Richard Corben who, thrillingly, remains VERY GOOD!

THOR GOD OF THUNDER #1 Artist Esad Ribic Writer Jason Aaron Colour Artist Dean White Letterer VC's Joe Sabino Marvel, $3.99 (2012) Thor created by Jack Kirby, Larry Lieber and Stan Lee (and the people of Norway)

It's not a bad idea to relocate Thor as a serial killer thriller narrative. It's certainly better than the previous writer's decision to give priority to trying on trendy hats and alphabetising his coloured vinyl 7" single collection while letting his artists to do all the work. It's fine, no problems really. Aaron even seeds possible future stories with the introduction of a new pantheon of Gods here represented by The God Butcher.

"Mrs. Leeds changing. Do you see? Mrs Jacobi reborn. Do you see? Mrs. Leeds reborn. Do you see?"

Consequently later stories will no doubt focus on such dastardly deities as The God Baker and The God Candlestick Maker. The whole thing is a kind of watered down Heavy Metal strip the success is which is due mostly to Ribic and White's work which lends the whole derivative but enjoyable thing a grandeur and scale it probably doesn't really merit. At $3.99 it's GOOD! but not good enough for me to continue with. And there's the whole Jack Kirby thing of course; you can thank my LCS for sending me this unbidden.

So, apologies but Christmas will affect productivity but in the meantime you'll always have COMICS!!!