The ADD Blog at Comic Book Galaxy - Pushing Comix Forward

2010-03-03T13:17:00.001-05:00

The ADD Blog is Moving -- Due to Blogger's ending of support for FTP publishing, this blog (and its sister blog Trouble with Comics) is moving. Please bookmark the new home of The ADD Blog at http://addblog.tumblr.com/, and you can subscribe to my new RSS feed as well at http://addblog.tumblr.com/rss. Thanks for your understanding and I hope you'll continue to follow us here on Comic Book Galaxy as we get these technical issues sorted out.

2010-03-02T12:55:00.000-05:00

Moore and Campbell Auction -- I am auctioning off a nice lot of new, unread books by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell (both together and separately), so if you would like to grab a large amount of their work way below cover price, click over to the eBay and have a look.

2010-02-25T10:03:00.002-05:00

Neilalien Marks Ten Years -- Thanks to Tom Spurgeon for reminding us that today is the tenth anniversary of Neilalien's original foray into comics blogging.

In addition to being one of the sharpest observers of the comics industry, the multiverse's biggest Doctor Strange booster, and the Comics Blogosphere's progenitor, I have to note that Neil has been an amazing friend to both Comic Book Galaxy and myself. I have counted on his wisdom and knowledge more times than either of us likely cares to remember, and no one has been a better force for keeping this site running, with his great advice and encouragement.

Happy Anniversary, Neil, here's to ten or twenty more great years!

2010-02-19T12:13:00.001-05:00

American Terrorists are Still Terrorists -- Go read this great piece at Salon about the media's loathsome reluctance to call people like Joseph Stack, Scott Roeder and Timothy McVeigh what they are: Terrorists.

2010-02-08T13:33:00.005-05:00

The Monday Briefing -- Haven't done one of these in a long, long time...

* I want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who helped out in my Emergency Dental Book Sale to raise funds for my daughter's wisdom teeth extraction. It was done late last week, and she's recovering, slowly, but she is recovering, and I'm relieved it's behind us and grateful for the support of so many readers. Thank you.

* On a related note, all books have been sent out as of today, so if you ordered, you should have your stuff soon.

* Now, the next ordeal! You may or may not be aware that Blogger (owned by Google) has decided to end its support of FTP functionality in the next few weeks. Sadly, Blogger's platform is what Comic Book Galaxy was built on a decade ago, and continues to be the foundation of the site's blogs and some of its satellites.

If anyone out there with some tech/web savvy and understanding of what is going on with Blogger is willing to help us navigate (or at least understand) these changes, I hope you'll email me and hopefully lend us some insight. At the moment I have no idea what these changes mean for our site(s), but it doesn't sound promising. I hope you'll get in touch if you have any wisdom to share.

2009-12-31T12:53:00.005-05:00

The Year at Comic Book Galaxy -- As the old year winds down, the final day of 2009 includes a winter storm where I live in upstate New York, a Chris Ware-type whiteout that is pretty to look at and pretty tough to drive in. It also includes a look at some of my favourite moments here on Comic Book Galaxy over the past year:

* My review of Batman: The Black Glove by Grant Morrison and J.H. WIlliams (and unfortunately, Tony Daniel).

* My look at keeping my collection down to the bear essentials.

* My review of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910.

* My reflections on the Baxter Paper period (Part One; Part Two) of corporate superhero comics.

* The release of my eBooks Anhedonia and Conversations with ADD, which received some very nice reviews, especially this one by Graeme McMillan.

* My review of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life.

* My review of Star Trek, directed by J.J. Abrams.

* My thoughts on Marvel acquiring the rights to Marvelman/Miracleman; and some more of my thoughts.

* My thoughts on Borders.

* Some thoughts on the best comics of the decade.

* Thoughts on comics retailers actively trying to sustain and grow their businesses.

* My homegrown shelf porn.

* My review of Abstract Comics, an anthology published by Fantagraphics Books.

* Some new Five Questions interviews: Eric Reynolds, Tom Spurgeon, Tony Isabella, Chris Ryall and Ron Marz.

* My review of The Library of America's mammoth H.P. Lovecraft collection.

* My bittersweet farewell to the periodical version of The Comics Journal, a magazine that literally changed the course of my life.

* Some thoughts on creators rights.

* My profoundly disappointed review of AMC's Prisoner mini-series.

* The posting of my comic strip Carver/Hopper.

* And of course, the launch of Trouble with Comics, the Galaxy's new group blog featuring Chris Allen, Matt Springer, Marc Sobel, and other great writers sharing their socks and feelings about comics.

Wow, it was a busier year than I thought! Hopefully 2010 will feature even more writing about comics and other important matters, both here on the ADD Blog and over at Trouble with Comics. Happy New Year, my friends.

2009-12-30T16:10:00.002-05:00

Feeling Really Old Department -- I'm amazed it was ten years ago today that I first met and interviewed Barry Windsor-Smith. As I type these words, exactly ten years ago I was in the middle of a marathon 12-hour recording session that taught me more about comics than any other year's worth of study could ever have provided. The transcript as posted here on Comic Book Galaxy is just a fraction of the total interview, but worth checking out for Barry's insights into the fascinating text pieces in his Opus books for Fantagraphics, as well as a good laugh or two.

2009-12-28T09:48:00.002-05:00

Double Dose of Vitamin C-A -- Couldn't let today go by without pointing you to two great Christopher Allen pieces -- his year-ending Breakdowns ramble, so good and so dense I want to cut off a slice and freeze it to enjoy later, and his long interview with Tom Spurgeon on the topic of Powers by Bendis and Oeming. Tons of insight from Chris Allen, one of the smartest people ever to write about comics, and truly a great friend.

Posting of substance here is unlikely before New Year's Day, so if I don't talk to you before the new year, Happy New Year, already.

2009-12-24T09:18:00.004-05:00

2009: The Year without a Best-Of -- I'm not entirely certain, but I think this is the first year in all my online comics writing that I won't be posting a best-of-the-year list. I think A Drifting Life (Drawn and Quarterly) is the only book that comes immediately to mind as really deserving any kind of call-out as the year's best effort, so I do encourage you to read my review if you haven't already, and read the book for yourself, as it is quite an accomplishment.

I did read a lot of comics I liked this year -- as far as floppies go, Buffy (Dark Horse), Conan (Dark Horse), Godland (Image), Criminal (Marvel/Icon) and The Umbrella Academy all entertained me mightily, but I never seemed to find the time to write about any of them. New League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Top Shelf) by Moore and O'Neill did get my keyboard cooking, and I loved the hardcover reissues of Captain Canuck (IDW) and Alan Moore's Swamp Thing (even despite DC's monumental goof on the most important page of Vol. 1), and of course Fantagraphics continued to make life better with its ongoing Complete Peanuts collections, and their Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1 was also one of the treasures of the year, filled with tons of the master's weird and wonky comics. (IDW's Art of Ditko also rocked my world).

I also loved but have not yet found the time to write about Top Shelf's two astonishing late-in-the-year hardcover collections, The Complete Essex County and Alec: The Years Have Pants. Two awe-inspiring bricks of great comics that should be on everyone's shelves, and both also available in more affordable softcover editions if you're so inclined.

But my absolute best entertainment of the year was not found in comics in calendar 2009; Star Trek, directed by J.J. Abrams, knocked my socks off in ways I no longer even thought possible. It recaptured the wonder of Trek in ways I haven't felt since The Next Generation's Best of Both Worlds Part One, and was so thrilling and entertaining that it even eventually won over my Trek-hating Star Wars-obsessed 14-year-old son Aaron. Him finally breaking down and watching it with me on DVD (after refusing to see it in the theater with me and truly breaking my heart just a little bit) and actually loving it was literally the best moment of my year. So thanks to J.J. Abrams, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and all involved for giving me back something very important and personal that had been missing from my life for quite a few years.

Well, I said I wasn't going to write a best-of, and technically I don't think I have, but I did want to share with you my thoughts on the year in comics (and Star Trek) as I experienced it, and there you have it. I hope you and yours are enjoying a happy and healthy holiday season, and I wish you all the best in the year ahead.

2009-12-21T09:12:00.001-05:00

What Am I Reading?!? -- Thanks to Chris Mautner for asking me to participate in this week's What Are You Reading? at Robot 6.

2009-11-24T12:34:00.002-05:00

Holiday Hiatus -- I hope those of you celebrating Thanksgiving this week have a great holiday; I am off to celebrate my son's 14th birthday (happy birthday, Aaron!) tomorrow and then Turkey Day, and posting is likely to be scant throughout the holidays, always a busy time both at work and at home. But in case I don't post again before you really start feeling the season, I hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday season.

And please be sure to check Trouble with Comics for updates in the days and weeks ahead, including the final days of Alan Moore Month.

2009-11-16T14:53:00.003-05:00

The Comics Journal #300 is Free and Online Now -- Anxious to jump into their new paradigm, you can now read the entirety of The Comics Journal #300 (the final old-format edition, arriving in stores within the next couple of weeks, most likely) for free. This is an amazing and totally unexpected gift from the Journal gang, and it looks like a great issue overall. Go check it out.

2009-11-12T13:35:00.002-05:00

Carver/Hopper -- I've been working on a short comic strip extrapolating what a collaboration between writer Raymond Carver and artist Edward Hopper might have been like. Click here to go to Carver/Hopper.

2009-11-02T08:28:00.006-05:00

AMC's The Prisoner Mini-Series -- Here's a remake I've been waiting most of my life for. I started watching Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner when it was running in late night on, I think, CBS back in the 1970s. Its rich mix of science fiction, espionage and paranoia wrapped around questions of power, control and identity made it probably my all-time favourite TV series, and a show I think is still ahead of its time some 40 years after it was first broadcast.

It's been vastly influential, echoing in forgotten series like Nowhere Man, popular ones like Lost, and probably a dozen more I could list if I thought about it for a couple of minutes.

There was simply nothing like it on TV before, and nothing ever reached its dizzying heights after; not every episode was perfect, but most were at least very good, all were interesting, and a few were transcendent in the way they involved the viewer in Number 6's struggle for individuality and freedom.

And now it's been remade as a six-episode mini-series for basic cable channel AMC. Starring Jim Caviezel as Six (the "Number" prefix has been dropped in all cases here) and Ian McKellen as Two, the mini-series is inspired by the original but does not seem to be a direct sequel or a by-the-numbers remake. New explanations for the existence of The Village are hinted at, and new shadings are added to the psychological mix, including issues of sexual identity that actually make for a thoughtful addition to the heady brew of social and political issues that the original tackled. Weird new post-Lost elements are added, some compelling (the holes that seem to be appearing in reality) and some not so much (the pigs that are touted as the solution to the holes -- yeah, you definitely have to see it to believe it).

There are some really first-rate performances here, especially from McKellen as Two (and especially Un-Two, a Leo McKern-worthy performance) and Jamie Campbell-Bower as his son, 11-22. There is a mountain of subtext in the relationship between the two, and that aspect is probably the most vital of the series.

Unfortunately, the entire endeavour is hobbled utterly by a lifeless and nuance-free lead actor in Caviezel as Six. McGoohan brought anger, passion and purpose to the original Number Six, but Caviezel brings absolutely nothing to the lead role here. He is very good at playing stunned and confused, as in when he first awakes on the edge of The Village, but I felt nothing at all for his character as he confronted Two and his schemes and conspiracies. One episode features Six recruited by Two to teach surveillance at a school in The Village, but I never felt sucked into his deals with Two in the same way one understood why Number Six would go along with Number Two's plots in the original. At no time in the entire series did I root for Six, an essential element of McGoohan's series -- one never necessarily felt his Number Six was a nice guy or even a hero, but he was always sympathetic and one always wanted to know how he was going to try to get out of whatever dilemma Number Two had thrown him into in any given episode.

The elements that comprise AMC's Prisoner remake are so close to perfect that I truly am sad that it falls so short of the mark. The cinematography is intriguing and occasionally beautiful. McKellen and Campbell-Bower give all they have to their roles. The music is fantastic. But time and again, watching all six episodes, as I continued to feel a gnawing ambivalence for the entire affair, I kept coming back to the weakness of Caviezel's performance, and also the fatal error of spending a good deal of every episode in flashbacks (or possibly forwards? The Lost influence is fairly powerful) to Six's life outside The Village. These sequences spend a lot of time on Six's alternate life as Michael, but really tell us nothing about him as a person, or why we should care that he is trapped in The Village.

Like the original, the final episode ends in metaphysics and scenes open to multiple interpretation. Unlike the original series finale, though, it is torpid and vague and lifeless and will not prompt viewers to ponder the meaning of the mythology for decades to come. Finishing the six episodes, I said to my wife "I don't know how to review this thing, other than to tell people to watch the original." Patrick McGoohan created a timeless epic that still feels fresh, unusual and relevant to our lives. AMC's remake feels like a faint echo of something meaningful, a well-intentioned effort that fails to escape the powerful shadow of its far superior inspiration.

A copy of The Prisoner was provided by the network for the purposes of review.

2009-10-28T09:17:00.005-04:00

The Comics Journal's End and New Beginning -- In a way I am heartbroken over the end of the monthly-or-so edition of The Comics Journal, as detailed by Dirk Deppey on his blog.

I've been an avid follower of TCJ for decades, starting around 1979, not long after it launched. I guess younger comics readers don't know or don't care, but there was nothing like the Journal in its heyday; it stirred up shit, got down to brass tacks, and featured interviews with the most creative and forward-thinking minds in comics that sometimes took days to read, and longer than that to absorb. Think of it as Fanboy Rampage, Journalista and The Comics Reporter all at their peak, all wrapped up in one glorious package.

Getting my first piece into the Journal was a dream come true, the very pinnacle of my efforts in writing about comics. It's all but forgotten by anyone but me, now, of course, but that's the way it is with people and their dreams, whether they come true or not.

I am intrigued and excited about the changes coming to the new online Comics Journal, and I have no doubt at all that the print editions will be a thing of beauty. Comic Art proved over the past few years that magazines about comics can be weighty and attractive art objects, and the TCJ gang certainly has it in them to create something to compete with any magazine or book about comics that can be conceived.

After thirty years, though, it's just very weird and a little sad to think the world has changed so much that something I used to look forward to finding on the stands every month has taken on such a new and different form. I wish them every success in the world and can't wait to see what comes of it. I just wish it didn't make me feel so damned old, me, pining away for the lost print magazines of my youth.

2009-10-19T00:01:00.002-04:00

Beyond the Galaxy 101909 -- What's going on? Not much, it seems...

* Tom Spurgeon talks about how and why he uses Abe Books to buy comics and related books. I'm always fascinated by how others seek out and acquire their comics; at the moment, I probably buy 60 percent of mine in area comic shops and 40 percent online on eBay, mycomicshop.com and Amazon.com, among other sites. I am intrigued by Tom's endorsement of Abe Books, though, and will definitely be giving that a look in the next few days.

* Mark Evanier -- a guy who truly knows his comics history -- remembers artist George Tuska and uses his recent death as a springboard to a very thoughtful reflection on the difference between today's comics industry and the comics industry in which Tuska and countless others plied their trade. There's some genuinely important perspective to be found in both these pieces, but the latter is a show-stopper that every comics reader should take the time to read and ponder.

* And actually not beyond, but rather within the galaxy, the Trouble with Comics gang have been keeping busy: David Wynne reports on a recent UK comics convention, Alex Ness talks to some comics retailers about where the industry is going, and the most recent Flashmob Fridays features a number of views on the final issue of Planetary.

2009-10-06T00:56:00.008-04:00

Lovecraft Tales -- In many ways, the writing of H.P. Lovecraft is autobiography.

I don't mean that he believed in Cthulhu, or Nyarlathotep, or the Great Race that steals your body and casts your mind back to a vast, ancient, Cyclopean prison that serves as a library of all the knowledge of the cosmos, past, present and future. There are people who believe Lovecraft really believe in what he wrote about, or at least say they do, but that's not what I'm talking about. The writing of H.P. Lovecraft is autobiographical in exactly the same way it is resonant for me as genuinely reflective of the universe as I've experienced it. Lovecraft, born in the late 19th century but fascinated and in some ways trapped far earlier, felt the universe was far vaster than we knew, and far colder than we want to believe. Virtually every story of his, the most effective ones, especially, are grounded in the idea that we are all insignificant motes of dust in a momentary ray of light shining through a monstrous reality filled with old and illimitable powers playing out baroque scenarios our minds cannot comprehend without descending into gibbering madness.

Lovecraft's way of crafting words is very nearly viral, which is why he had such a profound effect on writers ranging from his own contemporaries, through to Alan Moore and others not yet born. Hell, I never use the words "illimitable," or "gibbering," but I bet both are to be found many times in Lovecraft Tales, a massive and entirely essential hardcover collection from The Library of America.

I bought the book somewhat on a whim, and under circumstances Lovecraft would have found familiar. He was an antiquarian, fascinated with the past and also in love with "weird fiction," which (and about which) he wrote quite eloquently and passionately. I was browsing a mammoth bookstore in New England (really, I was) when I spotted the dark, foreboding cover with the slightly eerie author photo. It seemed to raise genuine, half-remembered thrills and the promise of wonder. As I saw Lovecraft's name on it, I remembered reading some of his fiction in my very early teens. I remember gray paperback book covers with hints of distorted, mind-warping biology and rotting, dilapidated houses. "Lovecraft," I thought to myself. "I've read him before, but it was a long time ago." The volume promised to be a near-definitive collection (it's not complete, but it's completely fantastic and brilliantly edited by horror writer Peter Straub), and as I browsed the untold piles and shelves of books in this New England bookstore (all right, it was in Vermont, not Boston, or Arkham, but still, it was New England), I was (I really was!) gripped by the desire to, after all these decades, re-immerse myself in whatever dark wonders Lovecraft had led me into as little more than a child.

Digression: There is a small, dreary village half-hidden in a strange corner of Saratoga County. A hundred and thirty years ago, it was a bustling factory town. Then the factory left and the community was devastated, but the people never left. One consequence of my early immersion in Lovecraft is that every time I have heard his name in the past thirty years, I have thought of this small, lifeless village and its boarded-up windows and joyless residents and the sense that as I drive through (only to experience this feeling, for no other reason), eyes are watching me from hidden corners and behind bolted doors I dare not approach. I know now, after reading Lovecraft Tales, that this weird, recurrent experience stemmed from half-remembering the story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," with it's genetically questionable village full of the descendants of people who made a nightmarish deal with beings better left undealt with.

Reading the stories in this volume, every one a dark delight, made me realize just how deeply Lovecraft's shadowy vision is woven into the fabric of our modern fiction. He was inspired by Poe and other pre-20th century writers of strange tales, but, beginning to write his own fiction before he was even 10 years old, Lovecraft's ancient fascinations and sense of alienation combined with a sharp mind to allow him to generate, over the course of his writing career, a vast tapestry of madness and the unknown that self-refers again and again. The earliest tales here seem like avatars of ancient days, but as science and knowledge expanded rapidly in the early 20th century, Lovecraft's mind expanded with them. Quantum physics in general and relativity in particular lent his work more, not less, verisimilitude, even as greater life experience and exposure to the ideas of others seem to tamp down his earliest, most immature and frequently racist touches. The oldest stories in the book seem like stories that could have been told to (or by) precocious children by the fire in the late 18th century; more expansive (in length and ideas) stories near the end, particularly the masterworks The Shadow Out of Time and At The Mountains of Madness would not have been conceivable without Lovecraft's exploration of the then-burgeoning body of knowledge about Earth's true place in the great scheme of the cosmos. How strange, in fact, to experience this book as a whole and note the introduction, over its course, of the automobile becoming commonplace, or of Einstein being named and his theories hinted at as possible explanations for the existence of other dimensions and perverse, forbidden journeys made possible by the very different physics and thought-processes of the elder gods.

Lovecraft's work is prose. Essential, addictive prose that gripped my soul as a child and has excited and recharged my imagination as an adult. More than any other writer I've read, I think he inspired Alan Moore, though it should be noted that Moore was inspired by Lovecraft in the way Moore wishes he had inspired others: fired by Lovecraft's ideas, not slavishly devoted to imitating them; in love with Lovecraft's use of language, but not reproducing it whole and claiming it as his own. You couldn't imitate Lovecraft, after all. Not really. In the same way that Charles Schulz's depictions of his characters are nearly impossible to reproduce, Lovecraft's characters, settings and scenarios are all the unique product of his life experience. Others have played in his sandbox, but no one could ever hope to match the singular and unique voice he cultivated in his years as a writer. Lovecraft Tales is a true treasure of dark delights, and a book literally full from beginning to end with stories worth re-reading, pondering over, and hoping never, ever come true.

---

Buy Lovecraft Tales at Amazon.com.

2009-10-04T11:59:00.004-04:00

Comics Worth Re-Reading -- Tom Spurgeon's posted another one of his joyous Sunday features, On The Subject of Return Reading. He lays out the reasons one does (or doesn't) return to a given comic or graphic novel over time, and then provides four mini-essays on titles he frequently returns to.

This one really strikes a chord with me; when I get a comic or graphic novel, I generally don't keep it unless I have a degree of certainty that I will want to re-read it in the future. Certainly some titles get re-read more than others, but my collection of graphic novels alone (not even counting floppy comics) is closing in on 1,000 titles now. I doubt I'll even live long enough to re-read all of them one more time, honestly.

Off the top of my head, I think the titles I most often pull off the shelf to read again are Watchmen, From Hell, Ghost World and Warren Ellis's Stormwatch/Authority run from beginning to end. All of them provides the same sense of thrill and discovery on being re-read that they did the first time, and every time I re-immerse myself in them, I am amazed at the new layers and forgotten treasures within their pages.

Which is not to say they are "my favourite comics," or even necessarily the ones I would grab on the way out the door as the house burns down. But they do all engage my mind and spark my emotions in ways other titles don't. For example, last night I re-read Avengers Forever by Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco, the first time I'd read it since it came out in single issues. I remember loving it as it was coming out, and finding it nigh-incomprehensible last night, to the point I was soon flipping through the pages admiring the artwork more than I was getting lost in the (over-) complexity of the story. I really enjoyed it years ago, so it must in some ways be better than last night's re-read suggests, but to my 43-year-old self it feels more than anything like a giant book full of footnotes that someone accidentally drew pictures to accompany. Pretty pictures, yes, but it just did not provide the immersion and entertainment my memories of the title had me convinced would follow cracking open the cover.

Just about any Love and Rockets collection, on the other hand, sucks me into it every time. I traded off my original issues long ago (Goddamn it), but I have the trades, the hardcovers, and the close-to-manga-size reissues all on one sagging shelf in my room, and probably have some stories four or five times over when all is said and done, but there are no better storytellers in comics than Los Bros Hernandez, and their comics are among the most re-readable ever created.

2009-10-04T11:01:00.003-04:00

Conversations with ADD: Savagely Critiqued -- My downloadable, free eBook Conversations with ADD is given a critical look by Graeme McMillan at The Savage Critic(s).

Which is a fine reminder to me to remind you it exists, and to thank Graeme for all the things he had to say about it, too. I previously posted links to some other reviews as well, if you're interested.

2009-10-04T10:45:00.001-04:00

Five Questions for Tom Spurgeon -- My latest 5Q is up now at Trouble with Comics, Five Questions for Tom Spurgeon.

2009-10-02T04:50:00.002-04:00

I'm in Trouble with Comics -- The puns never end. I've got a piece in the new Flashmob Fridays segment, and also my latest 5Q is up now, Five Questions for Eric Reynolds. Click on over!

2009-09-28T09:15:00.001-04:00

Putting Flash Forward on Notice -- Ever seen Lost? I don't think I need to ask the "creative" folks behind Flash Forward.

Also: That "D. Gibbons" thing? Really distracting, and not in a good way.

2009-09-28T08:50:00.001-04:00

Alan Moore and the Paucity of Ideas -- Eddie Campbell weighs in with a sterling silver retort to anyone who doesn't get what Alan Moore has had to say recently about the comic book industry.

2009-09-27T16:34:00.002-04:00

Seven Things to do at the Albany Comic Con -- The show is coming up November 1st. Click over to Trouble with Comics for my recommendations.

2009-09-25T12:14:00.002-04:00

Mazzucchelli Market Correction -- Blogger and comics creator Geoff Grogan provides a market correction for the nigh-deified Asterios Polyp.

As I noted in my comment after Geoff's post, I love most everything David Mazzucchelli has done, but Asterios Polyp was not the earth-shaking, career-defining revelation I think most of us were expecting.

Mazzucchelli probably doesn't get enough credit for his visionary superhero work on Batman: Year One and Daredevil: Born Again, both of which expanded the visual possibilities of the superhero sub-genre; but his most personal and visionary work in anthologies like Drawn and Quarterly and his own self-published Rubber Blanket set some pretty high expectations for Asterios Polyp, I think, and those expectations weren't quite met. The few short pages of Mazzucchelli's "Discovering America," contain more emotion, passion and straightforward visual genius than the entirety of Asterios Polyp, the totality of which to me felt ambitious but sterile, sprawling but ultimately not taking me anywhere new, or even anywhere I particularly wanted to go.

I'm a huge fan of Mazzucchelli's comics work, and "fan" is not a word I use often, or lightly. From X-Factor back issues to Batman statues and Italian collections I can't even read, I've spent lots of dollars trying to have everything the man has been involved in. But there remains, in the wake of Asterios Polyp, a feeling that if his career will eventually hit a previously-undreamed-of peak, it won't be with his most recent (and first solo) graphic novel. Maybe his best work is behind him, but I kind of doubt it. I do know that when he exceeds what he accomplished with Asterios Polyp, it will be with a work that feels more personal, more passionate, less sterile, and far less meticulously constructed.