Wednesday, October 13, 2010

For Your Consideration...

I like that Fall/Early Winter is becoming the "Oscar season" for comic books.  For the last couple of years, publishers seem to be releasing their heavy hitters during the September/October/November months.  Perhaps they recognize the importance of getting on those year-end "Best Comics of the Year" lists, and they know that comics released around now will have a better chance of being remembered than books that came out way back in January or February. 

This year, the Fall books include Darwyn Cooke's Parker: The Outfit, Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library #20, Seth's Palookaville #20, Carol Tyler's You'll Never Know Book Two: Collateral Damage, Charles Burns's X'ed Out, Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez's Love and Rockets: New Stories #3, Top Shelf's AX manga anthology, Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit vol. 2, Osamu Tezuka's Ayako, and Kevin Huizenga's Wild Kingdom. I'm sure I'm missing a few other contenders, but that's a pretty stellar line-up, wouldn't you agree?

Also, I'd say Scott Pilgrim has an excellent chance of ending up as the most-beloved book for the year, and it came out back in July.  But it kind of perfectly fits the role of summer blockbuster in our movie analogy, doesn't it?
Posted at 9:48 AM 5 comments
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Saturday, August 7, 2010

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.
Posted at 8:36 AM 4 comments
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Friday, July 16, 2010

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.
Posted at 12:45 AM 1 comments
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Monday, June 21, 2010

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:
Disclaimer: Fantagraphics sent me a review copy of this book.
Posted at 12:16 AM 1 comments
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Friday, June 18, 2010

Comic Book Shopping List for the Second Half of 2010

Back in February, I posted a shopping list for the first half of the year.  Now, here's your shopping list for the rest of 2010.  Many of these books are prime candidates for membership in the Best Comics of 2010 Meta-List.

June

July

August

September

October

November

December:
Posted at 12:22 PM 3 comments
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