|
CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
|
 PLEASE SUPPORT COMIC BOOK GALAXY BY VISITING OUR SPONSORS
“When I am king you will be first against the wall, --Radiohead, “Paranoid Android” Though it’s been discussed amongst ourselves here and there over the past few months, the fifth anniversary (yesterday) of Comic Book Galaxy still came rather abruptly. A lot has changed in my life since then: address; marital status; gender; ethnicity. I’ve nearly eliminated carbon from my diet, and have a lot more energy. Oh, okay, that’s just my defense mechanism, using humor to hide my real feelings. The truth is, I really believe in this site and think it adds value to the medium it covers. Every medium needs good criticism, and I think we have that, and though we might get overzealous at times, I don’t think honest passion is a bad thing most of the time, and liking everything and supporting everyone is endearing in, say, your grandma, but not in a critic. I mean, I just finished a wonderful bio of Will Eisner and came away liking the guy even more, but I’m sure I’ve done more negative reviews of his work than positive, because he did a lot of bad books in the last five years. That’s just how it is. But as much as I believe in Comic Book Galaxy, and honestly enjoy its latest incarnation more than any in the past, I really would be happy to just shoot the shit with Alan David Doane every other day, as I do now, and not have to write this column. He’s always fun to talk to, and probably the most plugged-in guy I know about this industry, and plenty of other things. Anyone labeled a cynic is usually just a romantic idealist who’s been burned often and badly, but they rarely lose that streak of hope and romance, and I don’t think ADD is any different, as you can see in Kochalkaholic and many, many reviews and other pieces. But hey, you can only go on what you read if you don’t know a guy, and people can and will judge for themselves. I’m not the best guy to ask, anyway, as I’m almost as interested in being misunderstood as in being understood. I’m just saying that CBG is a very real, personal extension of my friend ADD, and even during the tough times, it’s never been less than a privilege being here, waxing all over his personal extension. There I go again. Elbows on the counter
That DC collected the eight issue series in trade paperback format is something of a testament to their faith in its quality or ability to reach bookstore customers, this faith not shown to the other series in the line. This has the advantage of suggesting to the knowing reader that this is the cream of the crop, and also, that the unusual, monochromatic coloring scheme is unique to this book. Or it could just be that Allan Heinberg (The O.C., Sex and the City) cocreated the book, and they’re trying to tie into that somehow, I don’t know. If so, it’s a loose connection, as Heinberg’s name is only mentioned on the back, and the scripting is done entirely by Puckett. It’s not unusual for the hero-to-be to be a teenaged loser, but Puckett takes it farther than many, making Tom Morrell not a bookworm or just scrawny but actually disabled, a hemophiliac with a progressive nerve disorder that has rendered his right arm inoperable. His condition so severe he can’t participate in any but the lightest physical activity. A little like Samuel Jackson’s character from Unbreakable but without the melodrama and turn to villainy. Tom just wants to fit in somehow, and maybe get a girlfriend. The usual. He falls instantly for the new girl, and as young men will often do, he pushes his luck, ignoring the reminder to take his seizure medication in order to walk her home, and it nearly costs him his life. Puckett finds an exceptional collaborator in Pleece, who proved how suited he is to depicting real people—especially awkward youth—in the Ed Brubaker-written Deadenders of a few years back. Tom is thin and shy but still handsome, with the brooding face of most teens, their affected emptiness one of the few ways they can gain power over adults. In the brief moments it changes, such as his open, unguarded joy in talking to Angela, it’s really a beautiful thing. Tom’s face and hair reminds one of a pre-fame rock star, which is somewhat appropriate, considering what soon happens to him, when his dream comes true, sort of. Puckett’s pace is rather slow, perhaps too slow for the monthly format, but it’s just fine all collected. He trusts Pleece and colorists Brian Haberlin and Wendy Broome to open up with large panels, rarely detailed but always holding a mood and creating drama with just he right expression or pose. Though interesting, Tomer Hanuka’s covers were too distorted to convey the very human core of this story. What makes the work stand out is that Puckett is not afraid to present Tom as essentially a typical teenage boy. If you suddenly regained the use of your right hand, and you’d just met a really cute girl who turned you on, well, what would you do? Self-love aside, you might also act reckless as Tom does, testing the limits of his powers and using them not for revenge, villainy or heroism, but just for secret enjoyment. Tom’s relationship with his over-worried mother is great—loving but resentful, as one might expect, and yet one can see his upbringing was good because of his actions: he stands up for himself but doesn’t show off or use his powers for gain, and he lets his mother in on what’s going on. He makes mistakes, sure—very understandable ones—and the story, like most “just got powers” stories, is about how he learns from these mistakes. The difference is in the sympathetic approach and the reliance on a character-driven, realistically unfolding story over contrivance. DC Comics. $9.95 Elbows on the desk
It should be noted, as Andelman does right away, that this is not a critical examination of Eisner’s body of work. That’s not Andelman’s area of expertise. But neither is it merely a series of facts and incidents. Andelman’s research and the skillful editing create a book bubbling over with anecdote upon anecdote, from the humorous to the startling to the downright stirring. One comes away from the hard-to-put-down book with a fuller picture of Eisner the man, artist, and businessman than has ever been presented before, a man bursting with ideas but just as interested in business details; a man cheap but fair; stern but encouraging; loving and self-deprecating but supremely confident, and always curious and forward-thinking. Interviews with comics figures such as Stan Lee, Denis Kitchen, cat yronwode, Jules Feiffer, Mike Ploog, Alan Moore, Jim Shooter, Marv Wolfman, Neil Gaiman, Mark Evanier and others yield nugget after nugget, from young Eisner double-dating with Bob Kane, whom he came to despise, to Lee’s trying to get Eisner to run Marvel so Lee could go work in Hollywood, to Eisner’s connection to not only underground comics but the start of punk rock. Eisner’s influence on comics and the creators who worked with him and those who came later has been discussed elsewhere at length, but this book is about the man’s life, all the best stories framed by illuminating details of everything he was involved in, not just The Spirit and the later graphic novels but his decades of work for the military in Army Motors and P.S. and his many other entrepreneurial ventures. It should be required reading for any comics professional in how to be creative while still protective of one’s art, and in how to live a life of dignified accomplishment. M Press. $14.95 Elbows on the sink Stylish Vittles Vol. 3: Fare Thee Well and Nothing Better #1-3 by Tyler Page. It wasn’t until receiving photocopies of the first three issues of Page’s first ongoing series was I moved to read what I had thought was the final volume of his series of graphic novels about his college-bound first love. Reading it was instructive, because it highlights the changes Page has made in his style, and what hasn’t changed. In this volume, which is not in fact the last, Tyler and Nanette go to their respective homes for the holidays; they see each other a couple times and have some car trouble; and finally, Nanette leaves for Thailand for a semester, and she fears this will make her even more in touch with her religion. How can this take some 184 pages? Because Page is apparently drawing almost every moment of his college experience, from bland gabbing with friends about tough professors to truly dramatic moments like having one beer and a mildly homoerotic joke with the guys. Once, Tyler runs out of gas on his way to see Nan, and this and other minor auto mishaps are seen by him as signs of Fate trying to keep the lovebirds apart. When the two are together, the book does fairly well, depending on one’s ability to luxuriate in innocent, melodramatic and unabashedly gushy young love. It’s hard to feel negatively about the character of Tyler, but aside from the fact that most of us have felt this deeply in our first love, it’s hard to really identify with the guy. He has no faults. By contrast, Nanette, who showed potential in the first book, begins an uncomfortable transition from being Tyler’s perfect prize in Book Two to a bit of a pain in the ass here, frankly. Half the time she’s sweet and sexually open and willing to listen to everything about Tyler’s art projects, but the rest of the time—significantly, the most interesting scenes—she comes off as insensitive and judgmental in matters pertaining to her religion. This religious conflict between her and Tyler, who is not an atheist but doesn’t explore his faith to any great degree, has been hinted at in the other books, and it’s really at the heart of the story. It’s a very interesting element, too, not written about much in any romantic fiction, much less comics, and it’s a shame Page has done so little with it so far, so concerned with accurately depicting his college friends at their best, and least dramatic. Basically, very little of this book is necessary—most doesn’t advance the plot, nor does it echo the theme, as I see it, of religious intolerance getting in the way of love. What we have here is a near-perfect guy and a good girl who’s been hardwired by her religious upbringing to screw things up. Whether that’s how things will play out in the final volume is irrelevant, since there is nothing else foreshadowed in the several hundred pages so far. In the notes at the end, Page explains that he took so long getting to the real meat of the story (Book Four) because he was afraid to show himself as a bad guy, and he promises “hate” and “psychological torture,” but if this is the case, he hasn’t done himself or the complete work any favors by doing nothing to even suggest that there are any dark layers to Tyler. I mean, while it is one of the better sequences in this volume, one of Tyler’s and Nanette’s biggest fights is because he didn’t think to pack nice clothes for church, and has to wear jeans. These aren’t people who live on the edge. Though Page has squandered much good will generated from the more direct first book with the past two volumes of unedited tedium, it can’t be said there hasn’t been some improvement over the past few years; namely, his drawing is greatly improved. The character designs have grown more appealing and the backgrounds increasingly lush with laborious crosshatching and some tonal effects. Even the superhero sections are attractive, though still ill-advised and incomprehensible. Hopefully, whenever Page attacks the final volume, he will have gained even more artistic strength, but also the necessary distance to tell the story effectively and without all the dull distractions. Nothing Better, unfortunately, shows Page continuing down the wrong path. This one’s about two college freshmen roommates, Jane and Katt, and their efforts to get along with and understand each other. Jane is, like Nanette, very religious and judgmental, while Katt is more fun-loving but abrasive, with a chip on her shoulder because she has to work and get student loans for college, plus she’s in a Lutheran school to study Art and isn’t religious. Notice how I had more to say about Katt? Well, the problem is that Jane is more the lead in this series, and while presumably Page is going to tone down her priggishness, three issues in she’s pretty much insufferable, either pissy at Katt or just polite and boring with everyone else, including an even-more-righteous male student who doesn’t even want her to take Science, since it might get in the way of the worship. Issue 3 only works during a fun sequence where Katt and two male buddies drink beer on campus at night and then are chased by campus security. The rest is spent on Jane and Katt separately gabbing about their belief systems, and in a dull excursion to the city that Page intends to show is boring for Jane, but he pads it out with so many panels about one girl’s D&D greatest hits and the obese girl’s endless hunger that it’s even more excruciating for the reader. He constantly uses a page where a panel or two would be really effective, and it’s not like the cartooning is so pretty you’re happy just to groove on it. Actually, while Katt has a good design, Jane is just a boy’s face with long hair, the bushy eyebrows rather disconcerting for a female lead. I’m not asking for T&A at all, but at least make her interesting to look at. That obese girl has an egregious design—her head is literally the size and shape of a $50 pumpkin, complete with a crown of hair in the center that resembles a stem. It’s hard to find such a caricature sympathetic—her head just doesn’t fit the logic of this world; that is, the designs of the other characters. Perhaps due to the demands of a monthly, Page has simplified his style quite a bit, getting rid of the crosshatching for solid outlines and graytones in the backgrounds, and that works very well. I still think the manga-influenced exaggerated mouths are incongruent with the rest of the faces he draws, though, and as with Pumpkinhead, Page draws some supporting characters much more cartoony than the others, which is distracting. Still, it’s not a bad book at all to look at, and giving Katt Doonesbury eyes is a nice touch. As with Vittles, I do admire Page for exploring the divisiveness of religion as his theme, because I think it’s a challenging one not even seen all that much in contemporary fiction, much less comics. I’m curious where he’s going with this and what sort of compromises either or both characters will have to make to be friends, or if that’s the goal at all. It will be hard to keep going if Jane doesn’t start becoming more than a clutch of outbursts, dogma and polite chitchat, though. Page finally does have an editor for this book, but it’s his girlfriend, and that doesn’t appear to provide the provide the professional distance required to be brutally honest about what needs to be tightened up, punched up or dropped entirely. Dementian Comics But never on your neck
Quick Takes Jack Cross #1 by Warren Ellis and Gary Erskine begins a new ongoing series for Ellis, some kind of counterterrorism thing involving a CIA conspiracy to discredit domestic agencies the way they were discredited after 9/11. Like the character from Ellis’ Red, Cross is one of these cool cat experts who would be happy to be left alone, but if you give him a job the lights come back on in his head and he’s up for a round of torture and deadpan humor. Ellis is always good at beginnings, but you just never know if he can bring it home in the same shape. I didn’t read much about this book, but the fact that Erskine is not listed as a cocreator suggests to me that he is just drawing this first four issue arc and that other artists will follow, which I think would be a good idea. Erskine is okay, but draws very strange hair and dead eyes, which would be fine if the book was called JC Penney Mannequin, but not so good for a book with human types. He also, at least on the cover, draws an arm with a shape more suggestive of a railroad tie, or ball python. Very odd style. Again, though, it’s a fine start. DC Comics/Vertigo. $2.95 The Fog by Scott Allie and Todd Herman is a prequel to the upcoming remake of John Carpenter’s and Debra Hill’s 80s horror film, the original still well-regarded for mood and chills overcoming its low budget. In graphic novel format, Allie and Herman are only confined by space, not budget, and yet the story of the first cursed fog on Prince William Island feels very slight, a moodily effective beginning that murmurs in a minor key before a jarring, gore-filled finale that feels gratuitous instead of an inevitable release of tension. Herman is fine, though seeming to cut some corners to finish, but it would really take a horror veteran like Mike Mignola to carry this story on his back to the finish line. Dark Horse Comics. $6.95 Five more years.
Send review copies to:
|
Kinetic by Kelley Puckett and Warren Pleece was a short-lived series concluding this year from DC, part of an unsuccessful imprint. The intention behind the handful of series was to bring something of a more realistic approach to superheroes, or superheroes who don’t enjoy their superpowers that much and perhaps have just as many problems as non-powered people. Some would argue that the appeal of superheroes lies in their ability to help readers escape from real-world problems and the limitations of being human. It’s not something I’ve resolved myself, to be honest.
Will Eisner: A Spirited Life by Bob Andelman is the definitive biography of the comics legend and innovator. And sure, that’s not much of an accomplishment on its face, as there are no other bios of Eisner. But Andelman was close to the Eisners and worked with their participation right up until Will’s death, and did exhaustive research on par with biographies of any other celebrity or political figure. If anything, Andelman goes into too much detail on a few occasions, covering some things Eisner worked on even after Eisner has moved onto other things. This was an uncorrected proof, though, and perhaps some of this will be whittled down.