Reviews: Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, Orc Stain, Uncanny X-Men: The Heroic Age, Spider-Man: Fever

I haven't been writing much recently, but I have been reading a lot of comics, so I thought I'd throw myself back into things by talking about a few recent comics.

Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four #1, by Christos Gage and Mario Alberti

I wrote about X-Men and Spider-Man, the previous series by these two creators, here.  This is pretty much the same thing as last time: each issue takes place at a different point in Marvel's history, the heroes in the title fight a bad guy, and slightly intriguing overarching plot ties it all together.  Unlike last time, the X-Men are swapped out for the Fantastic Four, and this means that I am less interested in the characters and have less knowledge of their history, so the plot feels pretty insignificant.  Doctor Doom pops up, of course, although maybe because I haven't been reading Fantastic Four comics for my entire life, I enjoyed seeing him.  But the only real reason to read this is for Alberti's art, which really is quite beautiful stuff.  Unlike most of the factory-line art produced by Marvel and DC, Alberti pencils, inks, and colors it all by himself.  Everything is swooping and dynamic (which is perfect for Mr. Fantastic) -- it looks like the guy really enjoys drawing.

(click to enlarge)

Orc Stain #4, by James Stokoe

Speaking of somebody who seems to be having fun, James Stokoe is ripping off one great issue after another with this series.  Stokoe's colors in particular make this book feel different than everything else on the shelves; the bright reds and greens just make you want to stare at the pages.  I want this series to continue forever.

 (click to enlarge)

Uncanny X-Men: The Heroic Age, by Matt Fraction, Whilce Portacio, Steve Sanders, and Jamie McKelvie

This, however . . .  This was a piece of crap.  I had stopped buying Fraction's Uncanny X-Men a while ago, planning to get it in collected format but never doing so, and I thought I'd just grab this one-shot because it wouldn't require much knowledge of recent happenings, but man, this really sucked.  It's three stories, drawn by three different artists, and the book jumps back and forth between them.  My main problem was with Whilce Portacio's art on the Cyclops story.  Now, I'm not one of those people who instantly criticizes anything done by an artist who was popular in the 90s (see: title of my blog) and I still have some residual good feelings for Portacio because Wetworks was one of my favorite Image series when I was first getting into comics.  And I heard that he was coming back to Uncanny X-Men as the regular artist, and that kind of sounded like a good thing, but this comic was not good, so now I'm put off of buying the regular series.  Cyclops gets told off by Beast for wanting to turn the X-Men into an army, so he heads off to the Savage Land for some R&R.  Sure, fine.  But just look at this drawing:

(click to enlarge)

Who the hell dresses like that in a jungle?  Shirtless, with jeans and boots?  And gloves?  (Would it surprise you if I told you those gloves disappear on the very next page and are never seen again?  Sloppy.)  What's up with his hair?  Is Cyclops going for the "Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible movie that opens with him free-climbing" look?  And then the next page contains an action sequence that doesn't make sense -- things happen when Cyclops and dinosaurs are facing the wrong way, it's unclear how he kills one of the dinosaurs -- it's just a mess.  Everything about this story just rubbed me the wrong way.  But then we get to the Beast story, drawn by Steve Sanders.  While visiting the La Brea tar pits, Beast randomly bumps into Molly Hayes, one of the kids from The Runaways.  She is twelve years old, and she says -- I'm serious here -- completely out of the blue,  "What's 'extinction'?  I mean, I know what it means, but ... like, what does it really mean?  To be extinct?"  Beast answers:

 (click to enlarge)

What?  Really?  What twelve year old doesn't understand what extinction means?  Kids learn this when they are interested in dinosaurs, when they are four or five.  Molly comes off as a complete idiot.  And why does Beast stammer when trying to explain the concept?  Beast is supposed to be a genius -- how does he not have a quick answer?  This just ends up being Fraction's way of ramming the theme of the book down the reader's throat, because it leads into a discussion of mutants, and whether they are becoming extinct, yadda yadda.  So on top of being stupid, it's heavy-handed.  And I'm sorry if I'm coming off like some X-Men nut who wants everything to look just perfect, but Beast is wildly off-model here.  And I'd be okay with that -- I'm all for people putting their own look on characters, but this Beast just looks like an absolute ninny.  Who wants to spend any time reading about that guy's adventures?  (On this episode: Beast loses his pocketwatch!)  The third story is drawn by Jamie McKelvie, who gets a lot of love on the internet for being involved in the Phonogram series that he did with Kieron Gillen.  His art is fine, although it feels a little out of place in a super-hero comic.  Just a little too quiet and restrained, maybe.  I don't really have any complaints about that story.  Anyway, yeah, didn't like this comic.  I wish I hadn't spent money on this.

Spider-Man: Fever #3, by Brendan McCarthy

Here's another comic that didn't really do it for me, unfortunately.  McCarthy's been talked up a lot on the comics websites that I visit, but I'm not really loving his work.  The story in this was kind of dull -- Spider-Man is abducted by spider-creatures into an astral plane kind of place, and Dr. Strange goes to rescue him.  It sounds really cool, but so little happens -- there isn't much to the plot.  Mostly it's an excuse for McCarthy to draw wigged-out psychedelic landscapes, with computery colors that seem at times to be the result of somebody just messing around with different features in Photoshop.  Didn't hate it, but didn't love it either.  This mini-series was usually the last thing I would choose to read when going through a stack of new comics.

And apparently, that was the last thing I wanted to write about tonight, too.  Although I will say that The Return of Bruce Wayne has been fun so far, King City is still amazing, X-Women (the thing by Chris Claremont and Milo Manara) was pretty bad, and Abe Sapien: The Abyssal Plain was -- of course, this is Mignola we're talking about -- a good, solid story.  And I just finished the third collection of Invincible Iron Man, another book written by Matt Fraction, and I really liked it.

Review: Twin Spica vol. 1

Twin Spica vol. 1, by Kou Yaginuma, 2010, Vertical, 192 pages, $10.95

This sci-fi manga is about a young girl named Asumi who leaves home to attend the Tokyo Space School to become an astronaut.  If you only look at the cover and flip through the first few pages where Asumi interacts with a guy with a lion head, you might think this is some manga that would only interest tween girls and Matthew Brady.  (The cutesy-sounding title doesn't help, either.)  But it's actually pretty great.

It starts getting cool fairly quickly, as all the kids who want to go to space school are locked into rooms for several days straight and asked to line up thousands of dominoes as a sort of entrance exam.  Most of the story takes place with Asumi and two other girls stuck in their room, trying to overcome this test of smarts and willpower.  It reminded me of Ender's Game, a fantastic book about genius kids in space making tactical decisions in a zero-gravity battle simulator.  (Ender's Game was written by Orson Scott Bigot, in case you want to find it in your library.)

Twin Spica also has got some solid heart-wrenching going on:  Asumi has a tragic past and has had to deal with a lot even though she is so young.  Her new roommates also appear to have some issues, which helps to keep the drama cauldron bubbling.  I'm interested to see their relationships develop as they face new tests and hardships.  One can only hope that this reaches the same emotional highs that we experienced when Leaf "Joaquin" Phoenix became "friends for-ev-er" with the robot named Jinx.  Ah, Space Camp.

(Space Camp is a fine movie.  Yes, that's Lea Thompson and Lamar from Revenge of the Nerds floating in a space shuttle. Not pictured: Tom Skerritt.)

About the only downside is Yaginuma's odd penchant for occasionally only drawing one eye of a character, even though the character is standing at an angle where you should see both eyes.  Instead, Yaginuma leaves a blank spot.  I assume it is some kind of manga quirk that I haven't seen before, but it didn't seem to add anything and just distracted me. Other than that, the art is solid and there are some pretty lovely images in there.

In sum, at first I was a little worried, but I quickly came around and I really enjoyed reading this.  But don't just take my word for it -- tastemakers both real and fictional approve of this book! Retailer Christopher Butcher recently tweeted:

I'm handselling the hell out of Twin Spica! ... The covers make it a bit of a tough sale. :-/ But I persevere.

And fictional retailer Lydia from The Rack recommended volume two:

Uh. It's science fiction manga that's good.  Like, it's Planetes good.  That's really good.

I'm with Lydia on this one.  Give it a shot.

READ MORE: Vertical's website has an excerpt.

BUY IT: From Amazon here: Twin Spica vol. 1

RELATED: Vertical also publishes Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack, and I reviewed volumes 1 and 2 and volume 3.

Review: It Was the War of the Trenches

It Was the War of the Trenches, by Jacques Tardi, 2010, Fantagraphics, 120 pages, $24.99

This is a series of short stories about French soldiers during World War I.  It is the third book by French artist Jacques Tardi that Fantagraphics has translated and published in the U.S.  The first was West Coast Blues, a crime story about an everyman on the run from two hitmen that I quite liked.  The second was the surreal farce You Are There.  And due out in September is The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec: Pterror Over Paris / The Eiffel Tower Demon, released to coincide with the new Luc Besson-directed movie.  This one seems to be a very personal work, one that occupied a large chunk of Tardi's time (it was begun in 1982 and completed in 1993).

A quick and easy way to get a handle on the book can be found in the fact that the two blurbs on the back cover are from Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco.  The book reminds me of Spiegelman's work because it draws from a similar well of aggressive unpleasantness: Spiegelman calls it a "devastating crater of a work . . . a kaleidoscope of war's dehumanizing brutality."  The book also is impeccably researched and puts the reader into the shoes of the soldiers in the war, not unlike how Sacco's non-fiction investigations unearth all of the buried details of his chosen topics: Sacco says that "it can be compared to the work of the artists who actually served in the trenches."

Everybody dies in this book.  It's sad, gory, brutal, depressing, visceral, and overwhelming.  It brings those poor soldiers back to life and, instead of celebrating any victories or glorifying any heroic acts, just shoots them in the gut all over again and leaves them to die in the mud and filth of no man's land.

It's an impressive work of art that floods the reader with a feeling of hopelessness.  How Tardi managed this feat without having participated in the first world war is really quite amazing.  It is worth reading.

READ MORE: Here is a ten-page excerpt, Tardi's foreword, and a video/slideshow preview.  Here is Tom Spurgeon's interview of publisher, editor, and translator Kim Thompson, and here is an Inkstuds podcast interview of Thompson.

BUY IT: From Fantagraphics here or from Amazon here: It Was the War of the Trenches

RELATED: My posts on other books published by Fantagraphics:

• All and Sundry, by Paul Hornschemeier
• Billy Hazelnuts, by Tony Millionaire
  
• Blazing Combat, by Archie Goodwin and many others
  
• Bottomless Belly Button, by Dash Shaw
• Chance in Hell, by Gilbert Hernandez
• Ganges #2, by Kevin Huizenga
• The Lagoon, by Lilli Carré
• Love and Rockets: New Stories #1, by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez
• The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book, by Joe Daly
• West Coast Blues, by Jacques Tardi

Disclaimer: Fantagraphics sent me a review copy of this book.

Review: Two from Toon Books

Here are my thoughts about two new books from children's comic book publisher Toon Books:

1) Zig & Wikki: Something Ate My Homework, written by Nadja Spiegelman, art by Trade Loeffler, 2010, Toon Books, 40 pages, $12.95

In Zig & Wikki, an alien and his talking encyclopedia/robot friend land on Earth looking to abscond with some local wildlife to fulfill the alien's homework assignment.  They run across flies, dragonflies, frogs, and a raccoon, have a small adventure, and learn some science factoids courtesy of robot Wikki's encyclopedia screen.  It's a cute and simple story, appropriate for all ages.  There isn't too much to say with this one: like all of the Toon Books, I can pretty much guarantee that small children will like it.

READ MORE: Here is a six-page excerpt from the book.

BUY IT: From Toon Books here or from Amazon here: Zig and Wikki: Something Ate My Homework

2) Benny and Penny in The Toy Breaker, by Geoffrey Hayes, 2010, Toon Books, 32 pages, $12.95

The brother and sister mice Benny and Penny have already starred in two previous books (Benny and Penny in Just Pretend and Benny and Penny in the Big No-No), so my kids were already familiar with them and looking forward to the new story.  As with the earlier books, Benny and Penny face a problem while playing in their backyard.  Here, their cousin Bo comes to play, and the three of them just don't play well together.  Bo doesn't treat their toys well, and Benny and Penny don't want to include him in their playing.  As with the other books, unfortunately, the kids are pretty mean to each other (every book uses the phrases "cry-baby" or "go crying to your mommy," which seems a little unnecessary -- even if it is clear that it is not a nice thing to say, I don't really want to introduce this phrase to my  kids in the first place).  But the ultimate message of the book is good:  they learn that when they treat each other nicely, they all have more fun playing together.  And I like Hayes's drawings -- they give enough detail to make the world interesting, but don't become overwhelming or too confusing for little kids.

READ MORE: Here is a six-page excerpt.

BUY IT: From Toon Books here or from Amazon here:  Benny and Penny in the Toy Breaker


Lastly, everyone should check out the "Toon into Fun" section of the publisher's website, which has an excellent cartoon maker. My kids LOVE using the characters from the various Toon books to make their own cartoons, complete with word balloons, props, and backgrounds.  Here's one I just made using characters from Eleanor Davis's Stinky (my favorite Toon book):

RELATED: Here are my other reviews of children's comic books published by Toon Books:

• Eleanor Davis's Stinky
• Jeff Smith's Little Mouse Gets Ready
• Art Spiegelman's Jack and the Box
• Geoffrey Hayes's Benny and Penny: The Big No-No

Disclaimer: These reviews are based on complimentary copies provided by the publisher.

Review: On the Odd Hours

On the Odd Hours, by Eric Liberge, 2010, NBM, 72 pages, $14.95

This is the third in a series of comic books that NBM has co-published with the Louvre museum (the first was Nicolas De Crecy's Glacial Period; the second was Marc-Antoine Mathieu's Museum Vaults, which I thought was fantastic and reviewed here; forthcoming books include Bernard Yslaire and Jean-Claude Carrière's The Sky Over the Louvre and a book by Hirohiko Araki). After Museum Vaults, I was really looking forward to reading On the Odd Hours. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations. It's not terrible or anything -- there are actually two very neat ideas in here, and Liberge surely gets points for trying something different -- but problems with the story, the storytelling and the coloring seriously hampered my enjoyment of the book.

The story is about a young deaf punk named Bastien who stumbles into the role of being the night guard at the Louvre.  The first neat idea in the book is that the art comes to life during the "odd hours" of the night, and only Bastien and his mentor-predecessor know how to communicate with it and treat it properly.

For the most part, the plot follows a fairly standard trajectory:  Bastien is asked by the current "guardian of the odd hours" to become his apprentice, Bastien sees some of the art come to life and (sort of) rejects his new calling, Bastien's life falls apart, Bastien accepts his position as the new guardian, and the artwork accepts him and all appears to be well.  Add in that Bastien starts out an angry person who can't control his temper, but grows to become a better person as he finds his place in the world, and you could have a tidy little story.

But Bastien's personality issues are not actually resolved at the same time that he accepts his position; he ends up lashing out, hitting a patron of the museum, and getting fired.  Bastien then uses (abuses?) his new powers to let all of the spirits of the artwork out of the museum so that they fill Paris with strangeness, startling everyone and forcing his boss at the museum to re-hire him and give him room and board at the museum so that Bastien will bring the spirits back inside.  It's an awkward fourth act that takes up a significant chunk of the book, and it makes it seem as though Bastien hasn't actually grown at all -- he's still kind of an ass, but now he's a more powerful ass.

Aside from the plot, I had other problems with the book. The coloring somehow manages to be both psychedelic and unrelentingly dull. It's as though the comic has been placed at the bottom of a puddle that has a sheen of oil coating it, so that every page has weird rainbow colors floating on top of a dim gray-green color. I could understand if this technique was only used during the scenes when the artwork came to life -- it would accentuate the fantastical events and set them off from the rest of the book. Unfortunately, the entire book is colored this way, which both diminishes the impact of those scenes AND doesn't help with the somewhat confusing storytelling.  Here's one example:

Now that you've looked at the coloring, take a second look at the placement of the captions on that page.  Notice how several of the captions intrude on other panels?  If used properly, this lettering technique can connect a sequence of panels, so that a reader's eye looks at Panel A, sees the caption from Panel B breaking the borders of Panel A, read the caption, and then looks at Panel B.  Unfortunately, in this book many captions connect two panels that are not meant to be read one after the other (Panels A and C, for instance).

Below, I've added green arrows that show you the correct way to read the page, while the red arrows show you an incorrect sequence that at first appears to be correct because of the placement of the text boxes (click to enlarge):

On a single page, there are at least four places where the eye could be led astray by the text boxes.  The layout is already fairly complex, and this problem really makes it difficult to follow.  This occurs throughout the book, and hurts the storytelling.

I did say that there were two neat ideas here, however.  The second neat idea in the book is how it shows deaf characters using sign language:

This is a technique that I have never seen before, and it is really quite cool.

The idea that art comes to life during those dead times of the night when most people are asleep, that art needs to be listened to -- I like that idea. Unfortunately, this book flunks the execution. I'll still look forward to any future books in this series, but I'll try to keep my expectations a little lower.

READ MORE: Here is a three-page excerpt.

BUY IT: From Amazon here: On the Odd Hours

RELATED: My reviews of other comic books published by NBM:

• Give It Up!, by Peter Kuper
• Mijeong, by Byun Byung-Jun
• Museum Vaults, by Marc-Antoine Mathieu
• Nocturnal Conspiracies, by David B.

Disclaimer: This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.

Reading Riel #2: One Cover and Two Maps

This is the second in a series of posts about Chester Brown's Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography.  Click here to see all of the posts in this series.

Now that I've gotten the introduction to this series of posts out of the way, let's dig in to the real meat of this book: the cover!

That's the cover to the 2006 softcover collection over there.  I've got a few thoughts about it.  First, it's a nice, striking image, simple yet dynamic.  Second, it's the first time we see Riel, and it presents him in a somewhat ambiguous light: is he defiantly facing the oncoming storm, or do I detect a bit of fear or concern in his posture?  And his cloak and scarf are swept back behind him by the wind, looking almost like the cape of a superhero.  Third, this might be a preview of the setting for this story.  It's going to be outdoors in the wilderness, and cold.  Canada, baby.  Fourth, there is some heavy symbolism going on here.  A storm's a-brewin', and Riel has nowhere to hide from it. Trouble is on its way, and although he sees it coming, he might not be completely prepared for it.  He's also alone on a rocky mountaintop.  This does not bode well for our hero.  One final thought: the hardcover version is black-and-white, while my softcover version adds that nice golden color.  I like the color (especially the very subtle difference in shade between Riel and the mountain-top), which really makes the image pop.  The color is also used on the spine for the title and author, set against that dark gray background, which really helps the book catch the eye when it's on your shelf.  Smart design choice.

All right, I think I'm ready to open the book.  And in case I didn't know that this book was a critical darling, the first thing I see are five pages chock-full of glowing quotes from various publications, along with the following statements: NOMINATED FOR EISNER, IGNATZ, AND LIBRIS AWARDS.  WINNER OF TWO HARVEY AWARDS: BEST WRITER AND BEST GRAPHIC ALBUM OF PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED WORK.  Yup, I can say now that I have HIGH expectations for this book.

We also get a page listing Brown's other books: Ed the Happy Clown (1989), The Playboy (1992), I Never Liked You (1994), and The Little Man (1998).  If you've read any of these, I'd be happy to hear your opinion of them in the comments.  Also, since Louis Riel ended its serialization back in 2003, I wonder what Brown has been working on recently.  Anyone know?

Next comes a foreword, written and hand-lettered by Chester Brown.  I like the decision to hand letter the foreword.  Nice move for a book that is both a serious literary work AND a comic.  Brown notes that the book includes both an index and a bibliography (again: serious work here, don't you forget it).

He also gives us two keys to the book, one about the story and one about the art.  First, he tells us that he isn't going to deal with Riel's entire life, but has instead "mostly concentrated on Riel's antagonistic relationship with the Canadian government . . . ."  Sounds like a smart decision, since trying to construct a dramatic narrative out of a person's life is always a difficult task.  Focusing on a particularly important conflict will give a nice arc to the story.  The second key is that while he loves Hergé (The Adventures of Tintin), his "main visual inspiration" was Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie:

(click to enlarge)

Interesting, and certainly something to keep in mind as I write about the book.  Maybe I'll spend a future post going into how the art in Louis Riel draws from Little Orphan Annie.

And after the forward comes two maps!  I admit it, I'm a sucker for maps.  If you asked me to choose between two books that I had never heard of, and one had maps in the front and one didn't, the one with the maps has a definite edge.

The first map is of Northern North America in 1869, and shows how the land was divided up into "Land that Britain claims to own," "Rupert's Land -- which the Hudson's Bay Company claims to own," "Canada," and "The United States of America."  It also includes a caption that gives a little history of Rupert's Land.  It's nuts to realize that a fur-trading company used to control a huge swath of what is now Canada.  What, doesn't Canada have spices or particularly nice silk?  Finally, the map points out that the location of the "Red River Settlement," the U.S. city of Pembina, and the Canadian cities of Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto.

What's particularly interesting about this map is that it helps to set up what I expect are some of the conflicts in the story.  First, it's clear that who controls the land is going to be important.  There is a lot of land here that is not listed as "Britain's land" or "Hudson's Bay land," but only land that those two entities claim to own.  My guess is that those claims will be disputed.  It also shows us the distance between the main Canadian cities and the Red River Settlement.  Since I already know Riel was out on the western frontier of Canada and rebelled against the Canadian government, it's neat to see this issue depicted spatially.  Of course he's going to  rebel -- he's way out there on the frontier!  How could they hope to control that area back in 1869?  And don't they know that "he who controls the furs controls the universe"?

Here's map 2:

(click to enlarge)

This map isn't as detailed as I would normally like, but, like the first map, it's helping to set up a major conflict in the book: there are English parishes and French parishes in the Red River Settlement, and I'm thinking that those two groups didn't get along so well.  There also the little line of a river winding down to the U.S.A. and Pembria, and a "Stone Fort."  Perhaps, significant?  Just maybe...

Thus, in addition to orienting us by showing us where the action is going to happen, Brown has already given us a lot of information about the sort of political and social problems that the book will be dealing with, and in the space of only two pages, simply by using hand-drawn maps and captions.  These two pages are a nice example of the power of the comic book medium to effectively and efficiently communicate ideas.

NEXT: Onward to Part One of the book!

FURTHER READING: Here is the Wikipedia entry for Chester Brown.  Did you know that "in September 2008, Brown entered politics as the Libertarian Party of Canada's candidate for the riding of Trinity-Spadina in the 2008 federal election."  What's a "riding," you ask?  A Canadian electoral district, silly!  (No, I didn't know either.)

BUY IT: From Drawn & Quarterly here or from Amazon here: Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography

Reading Riel #1

Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography, by Chester Brown, softcover collection published in 2006, Drawn & Quarterly, 280 pages, $17.95

Let's try something a little different here: I'm going to read Chester Brown's Louis Riel and write a series of posts as I read it.  My goal is to dig deeper into: (1) the story; (2) the art; and (3) why I am or am not enjoying it.

Also, I'm not going to presume anything, but if anyone feels like reading along with me (whether you've read this before or not), go for it.  Weigh in with a comment.  Maybe we can get a little book club-type discussion going.  I'll bring the stinky cheese plate if you bring the margarita mix.

But before I get into the book proper, I thought I should tell you what I know about it, so that you have a sense of what sort of baggage I am carrying with me as I embark on this project.

First, I'm embarrassed to admit that I know next-to-nothing about Chester Brown.  He's the author of the long-running series Yummy Fur, which I have not read.  And he's Canadian.  That's all I know, unfortunately.  But hey, that's one reason why I sought this book out.  Gotta start somewhere.

Next, here is what I know about Louis Riel: zip.  I'd never heard of him before hearing about this book.  From the back of the book, I know that he helped to lead a rebellion on the western frontier of Canada back in the 1800s.  It sounds like he is a pretty important figure in Canada's history, and as with Chester Brown, I feel like I should know more about him.  Sadly, my history classes here in the United States never covered him, to the extent that they acknowledged the existence of Canada at all.

As for the book, I know that it's considered one of the best comics of the 00s by many critics and reviewers.  It was originally serialized from the late 90s through the early 00s, and collected into hardcover in 2004.  (That's why  I completely missed it and only learned about it recently: like many people, I quit reading comics for the most part from around 1996 through 2006.)  It was published by art/literary comics publisher Drawn & Quarterly, which is pretty much a surefire stamp of quality.  Note: D&Q is a Canadian publisher.  I would guess that D&Q considers this acclaimed book, by a Canadian about a famous Canadian historical figure, as the jewel in its crown.

So that's what I know.  Unless you have already read this book, you are probably in the same boat as I am.  Let's all LEARN together.

NEXT: I talk about the cover and the introductory material in the book.  Exciting, right?  You will be able to find all my posts on Louis Riel here.  (Thanks to Tom Spurgeon for that idea.)

READ MORE: Here are the first six pages, and here is an interview with Brown about the book.  Also, a lot has been written about this book, but after I'm done with it the first place I'm going is over here, where comic critics Jeet Heer and Tom Spurgeon discuss the book.

BUY IT: From Drawn & Quarterly here or from Amazon here: Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography

Review: Crogan's March

Crogan's March, by Chris Schweizer, 2010, Oni Press, 168 pages, $14.95

This is the second in a series of books about the daring deeds and derring-do of the ancestors of the Crogan family. The first, Crogan's Vengeance, was about "Catfoot" Crogan, a pirate back in the early 1700s. This one features Peter Crogan, a member of the French Foreign Legion serving in Africa in 1912.  Peter, a former boxer, appears to have joined the Legion for the same reason many others did: to run away from his problems.  Now he's stuck in a desert in Africa, ferrying rich locals from one town to the next, and trying to fight off bandits, sandstorms, and a mysterious cave-dwelling creature that might or might not be a djinn.

It's a solid adventure story, appropriate for young teenagers but enjoyable for adult  readers too. The characters are well-developed; the "good guys" have flaws and the "bad guys" aren't just evil but have reasons of their own for opposing the Legion.  Peter is a fun character to root for, as he isn't just some hapless guy in over his head -- as I said, he's a former boxer, and also a crack shot and a natural leader.  And he's not blind to the fact that many of the locals don't want the Legion around.  He's just trying to do his best and keep people safe.

One nice aspect of the book is that Schweizer has clearly done his research. I learned a lot about the Foreign Legion without feeling like I was sitting in history class. He loads it up with information about the sort of people who joined the Legion, its goals, the relationship between the Legion and the standard French army, the locals it protected, the locals it fought against, and lots of other little details: How do you survive a sandstorm? What kind of pets did wealthy Africans like to keep? Why is it a good idea to wear underpants?

I also like Schweizer's art, which seems to have loosened up some more since the first book.  Characters are a little more cartoony-looking (I'm particularly thinking of the brash, short commander of Peter's unit -- the man has a jutting, pointy chin that looks caricature-ish) and the storytelling is excellent.

I do have one problem with the book, however, and this was also something that bothered me with Crogan's Vengeance: everything feels a little cramped.  From a photo in the back, it looks like Schweizer works in a bigger size, and then the art gets shrunken down to fit the 9" x 6.3" inch dimensions of the book.  Perhaps as a result, there isn't a lot of room for the images to breathe, and every panel is packed.  There isn't a single full-page image in the book, which is a shame because the story and setting lends itself to a least a few glorious drawings of sweeping vistas -- the African city! the fort being attacked by thousands of rebels! etc. -- I want some full page spreads of these things.  It feels like Schweizer has so much that he wants to say that he can't spare a page or two to show us a big awesome drawing.

I have a strong interest in wanting this series of books to succeed (both as good stories, and financially, so that Schweizer continues to make them), since I have two young boys and I'm hoping to have a nice collection of age-appropriate comics for them to read as they grow up.  This series is already lot of fun, and it has the potential to be really great.  I hope that Schweizer continues to up his game with each successive book.

READ MORE: Here's a 26-page excerpt and an interview with Schweizer.  (And here's an older interview with Schweizer.)

BUY IT: From the publisher here or from Amazon here: Crogan's March

Review: The Best American Comics 2009

The Best American Comics 2009, by various, edited by Charles Burns, series edited by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, 2009, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 332 pages, $22

The editors of this anthology have done a very good job of collecting a significant number of terrific comics under one cover.

The book includes some comics that I have read before and really enjoyed, such as "Freaks," by Laura Park (originally published in the AdHouse anthology Superior Showcase #2), and Kevin Huizenga's "Glenn Ganges in Pulverize" (originally published in Ganges #2, which I reviewed here and put on my "Best Comics of 2008" list here).  Other pieces that I had previously read and are certainly worthy of inclusion are Gilbert Hernandez's "Papa," from Love and Rockets: New Stories #1, Michael Kupperman's "Indian Spirit Twain & Einstein," from Tales Designed to Thrizzle, and Art Spiegelman's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@#*!!," originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review and recently republished in Breakdowns.

Of the comics in this book that I had not seen before, my favorite is easily Dan Zettwoch's "Spirit Duplicator: Selected Church Bulletin Comics of Darryl Zettwoch, 1968-1998."  Zettwoch gives us glimpses of the history of St. Batholomew's Episcopal Church in St. Louis, Missouri, as captured in five weekly church bulletins produced over the course of thirty years by Dan's fictional uncle Darryl, the staff artist for the church.  Each page includes a "reproduction" of one of Darryl's comics drawn for the bulletin, along with annotations by Darryl and a few panels discussing the techniques Darryl used to create the strip.  Thus, along with the history of this fictional church, Zettwoch gives the reader a primer on the developments in comic-making technology from 1968 to 1998.  Zettwoch packs so much information into each page, yet manages to keep the comic lively and funny.  I'm definitely going to try to hunt down more stuff from Zettwoch.  (Oh right - googling him has reminded me that he shares a website/store with one of my favorite comic creators, Kevin Huizenga.  No wonder I liked this comic so much -- the intelligence, love of the medium, and sense of humor seen here is very similar to Huizenga's work.  IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW.)

Another comic that I enjoyed was Gary Panter's "Dal Tokyo," originally published in Riddim.  It's a fantasy story set on Mars.  Panter obviously has fun creating this comic, and that energy comes through in his drawing.  I particularly liked how the panels of each four panel strip share a contiguous background.  It's as though Panter is gradually revealing this world he has created, and only after finishing the fourth panel can you pull back and see the entire scene.  It's neat stuff.

But I didn't love everything about this book.  Tim Hensley's Wally Gropius character appears in four stories throughout this anthology, including the very first and last stories.  While editor Charles Burns clearly was taken with these stories, I was not.  These comics appear to be comic strip parodies: the art style and colors could come straight out the Sunday funny pages.  But they aren't very funny taken at face value, and one story goes well beyond what you'd ever actually see in the newspaper, so I'm guessing Hensley is trying to comment in some way on classic comic strips.  What exactly he's getting at is unclear, however.  Between the unfunny jokes and lack of any real story, I was left with a sour taste in my mouth.  (Hey, look -- here's Dash Shaw with a more positive look at Hensley's work.  Sorry, I still don't like it.)

I should note that mercifully, there are fewer representatives this year from the "alternative weekly newspaper comics" world, which tends not to be up my alley.  (Last year's Best American Comics 2008 was riddled with entries from that crowd.)  Unfortunately Kaz makes an appearance again, bringing along his ugly art and crappy punchlines.  No thanks.

Also: not a big fan of Michael Kupperman's cover.  Something about that woman's face is just so repellent, it's possible that people might turn away from the book rather than peek inside.  It's a shame the illustration on the inside cover was not used as the cover of the book instead.  Dan Zettwoch's (there's that guy again) drawing of a nutso highway, complete with cut-away views of each driver -- and each one with an eye popping out reading a comic book -- is really quite fantastic.

There are many other comics collected here, and many are worth reading.  Despite a few clunkers, on the whole this book was excellent.

BUY IT: From the publisher here or from Amazon here: The Best American Comics 2009

RELATED: My review of The Best American Comics 2008

Disclaimer: This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.

Review: Invincible Iron Man vol. 1: The Five Nightmares

Invincible Iron Man vol. 1: The Five Nightmares, by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca, 2009, Marvel, 184 pages, $19.99

This collects the first six issues of this ongoing series about everybody's favorite member of the military-industrial complex.  It's slickly-produced, fact-paced, and has lots of explosions.

Ezekiel Stane, the son of Iron Man's nemesis Obadiah Stane and fresh off his first appearance in the Matt Fraction-penned The Order, is out to destroy Tony Stark.  He's upgraded Stark's own technology and implanted it in terrorists, creating super-human suicide bombers (let nobody say that Marvel isn't trying to be timely).

And while the plot is driven by Stark's hunt for and battle with Stane, I found that some of the most interesting parts focused on Stark's relationship with his assistant Pepper Potts (you remember her: she's Gwyneth Paltrow).  She also was featured in The Order, so it's clear that Fraction likes the character.  Here's our first look at Pepper in this series (click all images to enlarge):

Did you know that "Girl Friday" just means "an especially faithful female aide"?  I always thought it meant something more than that -- something that involved a relationship that had an underlying current of, "oh, if only he realized that everything he is looking for is right under his nose."  And that works here, too.  Pepper is sharp, sassy, and beautiful.  If only Tony could drag himself away from the vapid sport sex with the Contessa, he'd see that Pepper is the one for him.  The reader just wants them to get together.

Tony and Pepper's relationship gets about one to two pages per issue.  The only other times she shows up is to act as his support staff when he's in the armor and blowing away bad guys.  So although I don't like to give away the story in a review, this is a fairly minor piece of the book, and I wanted to talk more about why I liked it so much.

Briefly, Tony acts like a bastard during a party and treats Pepper poorly.  She walks out, and then the whole building explodes.  Chunks of the building fall on her.  Tony desperately searches for her and rescues her.  At the hospital, this happens:

I really liked this page.  Probably everybody sees what is going on here, but just in case, re-read it again only imagine that Tony is asking Pepper to marry him.  The way he holds her hand, the little box that could have come from Tiffany's, the ring.  It makes me happy to see a Marvel comic book working on multiple levels -- most of the time they don't even try to do things like this.  And the proposal-imagery does work, since Tony is asking Pepper to accept Tony's technology -- the same technology that kept him alive and which is a part of him -- and place it next to her heart.  They will be bonded together like no other two people on the planet.  Remember, this happens after Tony rescued her from near-death and in the process realized how much he cares about her.

So... Pepper recovers, and then this happens:

When Pepper rejects Tony's ring, by extension she has rejected Tony. He is devastated.

Here's one of the things about Fraction that makes him special among Marvel's top writers: he puts romance in his comics.  Compare his stuff to comics written by Ed Brubaker, Jason Aaron, and Brian Michael Bendis. Brubaker's Daredevil was pretty great, but damn it was bleak. Fraction has a great way of highlighting the relationships between people, and isn't afraid of straight-up romance in comics.

Did you know that Fraction and Larroca have collaborated previously, on the Sensational Spider-Man Annual #1? It was a touching look at Peter Parker and Mary Jane's pre-One More Day/Brand New Day relationship, and was nominated for a 2008 Eisner Award for Best Single Issue. It was one of the first things written by Fraction that I read, and definitely made me want to read more.  Again, it was the romantic aspects of that comic that made it stand out.

Back to "The Five Nightmares."  In a later scene, Pepper tells him she wants him to take out the ring. Tony tells her that it's made from different, non-weapons-based technology.  Then he takes her hands in his, and asks her to close her eyes and focus on the ring.  Then there's a neat little bit, where it looks like Tony is slowly lowering himself down to a kneeling position next to her, but you flip the page and realize that Pepper has actually been slowly rising above the ground:

That image?  Loved it.  First, definitely caught me off guard with the whole floating thing, since I thought Tony was kneeling, not Pepper floating.  Second, Pepper's floating!  It's a wonderful, super-heroic twist on the whole "love makes you feel like you're floating" idea.  That "Oh, Tony, I --" line could be straight out of a Jane Austen novel, when Elizabeth Bennet finally realizes that Mr. Darcy really, truly loves her.  Look how happy Pepper is!  And Tony is happy too!  And he's down below her again, looking like he is proposing!  It's just so sweet!

Like a romantic comedy, the two leads are interrupted just when things are getting interesting.  (Tony's relationship with Maria Hill also has some interesting things going on, but I won't get into them here.)  That's their last scene together.  Yes, I want to see where this is going.

READ MORE: Here's an excerpt of issue 1 and an excerpt from issue 2.

BUY IT: From Amazon here: Invincible Iron Man vol. 1: The Five Nightmares

RELATED POSTS:

• Matt. Fraction. Really. Means. It.
• Review of Matt Fraction's Uncanny X-Men #501
  

Review: McSweeney's Issue 33: The San Francisco Panorama

San Francisco Panorama, by various, 2009, McSweeney's, 320 pages, $16.00

The independent publisher McSweeney's recently released a new issue of its quarterly literary journal in the form of a newspaper called the San Francisco Panorama. It's huge, beautifully designed, and includes contributors like Michael Chabon and Steven King. It's a celebration of print newspapers, and the writers, editors, and publisher have clearly attempted to show off every facet of what makes newspapers unique and vital.

I'm struggling to come up with an appropriate metaphor for it: is it the last spark from a dying fire, or a brilliant torch lighting the way for others to follow? Either way, perhaps the smartest thing that they did was to not make the content available on the web. The only way for people to see this sucker is to pick up a hard copy and open it using their hands.

Here's one of the few samples that they've put online:

(click to enlarge)

Looks great, doesn't it? And as you can see, one of the pages in the spotlight is a comic by Adrian Tomine. McSweeney's has already shown it is pro-comics, having published a well-regarded comics anthology (McSweeney's Issue 13) and a new printing of a piece of graphic novel history, Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary.

The San Francisco Panorama includes a entire section devoted to comics, with contributions from some of the most respected comic book creators around. Let's turn that sheet of newspaper and take a look at what's inside:

First are several short comic-strip style entries, from Keith Knight, Jon Adams, and Gabrielle Bell, and two from Michael Capozzola.  Perfectly fine stuff.  Capozzola's "Sorro, the Gloomy Bandito" is pretty funny, and Gabrielle Bell packs her panels with a eye-pleasing detail and color.  Jon Adams's stuff reminds me of Farel Dalrymple, but the strip doesn't really go anywhere, while Keith Knight turns in a classic-style comic strip, complete with a punch line.

Next is a full page from Dan Clowes, whose upcoming Wilson graphic novel is already being hailed as one of 2010's bright lights.  Here he gives us an episode in the lives of "The Christian Astronauts," who encounter a man from their past, now hideously deformed and harboring designs on the mother of the astronaut family.  I can't say that Clowes really takes advantage of having an entire broadsheet-size page to work with -- there are a lot of similar-sized rectangular panels and a lot of dialogue balloons, so that if you stand back and look at the page as a whole there doesn't appear to be any grand design going on.  The story is interesting, though, and raises some interesting morals dilemmas for our heroes.

The next page is split into thirds: one from Ivan Brunetti, one from Alison Bechdel, and one from Gene Luen Yang.  Brunetti shows off his nice, geometric cartooning, with a bright yellow background to make his story stand out.  I liked this one, which was about getting his tonsils out as a kid.  Bechdel's contribution might be my favorite one of the whole paper; it's a take-off on the game of Life.  It's funny, interesting, and thoughtful, and her personality shines through.  It reminded me why I liked Fun Home so much.  I didn't like Gene Luen Yang's story, on the other hand (I'm beginning to think I just don't like his work -- American Born Chinese was perfectly fine but didn't blow me away, and I really was not into The Eternal Smile).  The drawing looks cheap, as though he didn't spend much time on it, and the layout is dull.  The story is a simple joke that isn't all that funny.  Oh well, they can't all be winners.

Art Spiegelman gets the entire next page, and man, talk about a cartoonist's personality shining through in their work.  He delivers a wide-ranging screed on the intertwined history of comic books and childhood.  It's abrasive, demanding, funny, and unique.

Ian Huebert draws the next page, which looks like a Fletcher Hanks impersonation.  It's one piece of a supposedly longer story about a superhero with three heads defending a city from a dastardly scientist.  It's okay, I guess, but the "to be continued" bit kind of bothered me. We all know it's not going to be continued, so maybe try to give your readers a complete story, instead of copping out and pretending that you're just continuing that long tradition of serial newspaper stories.  There just wasn't enough to this one.

Tomine's page is next, about a superhero named Optic Nerve who is woefully in need of self-confidence.  It's funny, and sweet.  I liked it.

Then we get to the center spread, and the full two pages goes to . . . you guessed it, Chris Ware.  And he earns that two-page spread.  Good stuff.  At this point, I think you can all imagine in your head exactly what it looks like, so we'll just move on.

Kim Deitch gets the next page, and provides a biography of Paul Winchell, a 1950's entertainer who wewnt on to guy with a varied and interesting life.  Like most biographies, the story meanders and doesn't really have a point.  Kind of meh, for me.

Next is Seth's page, about a man who walks to a diner for lunch and then back, narrating as he goes. I liked this one.

And then we turn to the token superhero entry: two full pages for Erik Larsen and his Savage Dragon.  I approve of the choice to include Larsen, plugging away as he has been for so many years, and he does give us a nice huge shot of the Dragon reaching out as though he is going to grab the reader.  The rest of it is kind of simple and silly, but that's perfectly representative of many superhero comics at this point, so who am I to complain?  Ha ha, I kid. Or do I?

Next, Jessica Abel's True Tales of the Early Colonists is an old-school science fiction adventure about astronauts exploring Mars and encountering some aliens, but the strip is presented as though it is from a newspaper from Mars itself.  Clever.

That's it for the comics.  On the whole, I highly recommend grabbing this paper -- there is so much content that you are bound to find something of interest.

Oh, to have something this substantial show up on my doorstep once a week.

READ MORE: You can view a nine-page promo here. And here is a story about it by the San Francisco Chronicle.

BUY IT: From McSweeney's here or from Amazon here: McSweeney's No. 33: The San Francisco Panorama

Disclaimer: This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.