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...in which Desperado Dave learns the secret of Cap'n Gown's Wotan Leg
"I want to live in a Garden City This is a piece of advice for publishers, predominantly the self-publishers or small press folks. FedEx is not your friend. What I mean is, don't bother with it. As much as I appreciate those of you who respect my opinion or volume of readers/potential consumers enough to want to send me your new book for review, there is almost no reason to spend the money to get it to me in twenty-four hours. When I see a FedEx waiting for me, I don't get excited anymore. It's usually a bad comic that didn't need to get to me that fast. If you just got your books from the printer and you really want to get some reviews out there because the Previews featuring that book for order is coming out, okay, I can kind of understand, but still, that's a lot of money to spend for a review that, I'm sorry to say, probably isn't going to sell a lot of books for you no matter how enthusiastic it is. One guy recently sent both ADD and myself two copies each of four comics, each bagged and boarded, and overnighted to us. I try not to let this get in the way of the review, but honestly, I look at people like this as somewhat foolish-fools and their money are soon parted, and all that. That's my mini-rant for this week, which surely won't save comics, but might save a few bucks for some creators who want to make a splash but aren't being cost-effective about it. By the way, one of the reviews below turns into a manifesto or call-to-arms, so be warned. No animals were harmed, though. Hey, one other thing--don't forget to Get Strange! You know what I'm talking about-big Strangehaven contest began last week in this column, with the grand prize of all three trades, signed original sketch by creator Gary Spencer Millidge-lots of goodies! All the details are here. Come on, people! The Innocents by Gipi is the third release from Fantagraphics' new Ignatz imprint, edited by cartoonist Igort and in conjuction with Coconino Press. I read it first because, well, the art grabbed me the strongest of the three on my initial, very brief skim. Gipi isn't a realistic artist, but he captures the essence of his characters here: lean, searching, observant. The best single aspect of the book just might be the ink washes, which convey perfectly the still but pensive atmosphere during a boy's visit and drive with his slightly dangerous uncle. It becomes a reflection on the uncle's past, wrongs done to him and finally a chance to redress them, but has he grown beyond it? To praise the art exclusively would be a disservice to Gipi's writing, though. It's a small story but contains many moments to savor, meanings to let sink in. His dialogue is terse and naturalistic, but never on-the-nose-subjects are brought up but talked around, and the reader has to interpret, but his talent for expressions doesn't make this confusing or difficult. This may not be the best book of the year, but it does make me want to find what else Gipi has done. Fantagraphics Books. $7.95
The first volume, Into Thin Air, begins very strongly, with a dead body and a mystery, and weaves in the characters and setting very well. Luke Cage and Jessica Jones make a good couple and their scenes are satisfying, if not the strongest Bendis has ever written. He's good at writing women characters, except that Jessica, Kat Farrell and Kerri sound very close, only modulated in their amount of sarcasm or stammering anxiety to the range that a couple cups of coffee might create. Still, at least it's a sympathetic, entertaining voice. And Bendis does very well with a couple back-to-back scenes showing Jameson's manipulative nature in recruiting both Jessica and Urich. Bagley doesn't bring the realism to Jones and the other characters as Michael Gaydos did in Alias, and some of the large panels expose his design shortcomings and weakness for watery, doelike eyes, but he does a solid job, and is quite good in the scene where Osborn goes nuts on the reporter. Aside from the lack of details on just what The Pulse is about-a Sunday magazine supplement? Do those ever carry hard news? And why would Ben want to wait to publish his stories once a week?-this first volume is strong, with a good main story and fine characterization, and what feels like a fairly authentic newspaper atmosphere. The second volume, Secret War, takes things in a different direction, perhaps editorially mandated, and it throws the whole book out of kilter for a time. Rather than continuing on the course, the doings of The Pulse and Daily Bugle take something of a back seat to all sorts of intrigue about why Jessica and Luke were attacked in their apartment (with Jessica in danger of losing her baby for the second story arc in a row) and what it all has to do with Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. The Secret War referred to in the title was also a Bendis-written limited series that hasn't even concluded yet due to artist delays, and so only six months in, this book has suddenly had to connect with another entity rather than purely telling its own stories. Sure, Bendis may have written both, but that won't help those only reading this one (like me) about just what the Secret War was, how Nick Fury is involved, and what the repercussions were for him. And what Wolverine is doing in here is anybody's guess besides stunt-casting for a series that probably annoyed some fans by featuring Spider-Man on its covers but not in the book itself. Jessica is the star here, and she has some juicy scenes, her pregnant hormones letting her go off on lots of people, and it's pretty fun in a scene with a haughty Hydra babe, a bit awkward with Danny "Iron Fist" Rand, who becomes a dick for the purpose of this one story. Anderson handles the early part of this arc, with decent work that's not quite up to the care he gives Astro City, but fine. From his work on Gotham Central, Lark is an obvious choice for this series, but who's complaining. He finishes things off very well, with a wonderful recap of the attack on the apartment in particular. The fault for the shortcomings of the second volume really lies with Bendis and perhaps Marvel editorial, because the story presented here isn't quite satisfying, with many important questions left to be answered in other books. Marvel Comics. $13.99; $11.99.
My real issue, though, is the uninvolving, predictable story. Call this a ramble rather than a review, but my appetite for surprising, dense storytelling has really been whetted by things like Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers stuff. Westerns and zombie stories are fine-I like 'em-but just slapping the bare elements of each together into one story just isn't enough for me. Especially when the story is decompressed to such a degree. This isn't a Sergio Leone movie, where we can hear the Morricone music and the wind rustling and the guns echoing across the range. No cruel sun or glistening foreheads. No creak of spurs on uneven saloon floorboards. G's good, but he's competing with many decades of iconic images, and he's doing it without sound or color. The beauty of comics is that the reader sets their own pace, but you can hardly flip fast enough here to get to something interesting, to whir past the familiar lines and poses to find some originality. To me, the two genres thing is almost dead-it's like two speakers, when you can have six. Black-and-white, when there's a whole spectrum available. Limitations can be good, and can push an artist to invest a project with more of himself to combat the lack of budget, but that's not what I see here. It's hard to make a cult film once the term "cult film" was coined-that awareness is a killer. But the reason a Reservoir Dogs or Spellbound or DiG! become cult films or gain an audience beyond what their budgets would expect is that they contain vision, and urgency. There's no sense of urgency here, just a sense of checking off two genres on a list as being "done", and now we're onto the heist musical, or teen pirates, or lesbian kung-fu. I remember, about a year-and-a-half ago, maybe two, I asked Warren Ellis if decompression was dead and now the alternative, "supercompression," might take its place, especially as a way to combat manga sales with concise, thrilling, done-in-one stories. Ellis said the market wouldn't support it, but now here he is attempting it with Fell, not that I take a bit of credit for that turn of events. But it is instructive, in that Ellis wrote a raft of not-so-successful miniseries for DC that weren't decompressed but were thin on story. I think the time for more concentrated, more surprising, and even more personal storytelling-even within so-called genre books-is here, and it would naturally fall to the wave of younger writers like Spears, Kirkman et al to lead the charge. I don't know; if I wrote a graphic novel, I'd prefer to hear, "you gave me a lot more than I expected!" and "that took a while to figure it all out, but I'm so glad I stuck with it! Thank you!" to "man, that was kick ass when that guy blew away that zombie!" If you call it Gigantic Graphic Novels, then let's see the gigantic. Gigantic in scope and ambition, not just page count. $14.95 Quick Takes
Round Four by Chris Gumprich and Dennis Culver is a new comic story-I'm not sure if it's being published or just appearing here--I was requested to review. Culver is an online nuisance, but he's not a bad artist. The compositions are fine, but he's better with the more serious style used for the boxers than the cartoonier other characters. The sound effects lettering and logos are decent as well, but the dialogue lettering needs more work. The problem I had was with Gumprich's script, which wants to say something about father/son relationships but instead is just depressing. I don't need the character to triumph, really-he can be a loser and he can fail miserably. But I do have to care about him and what he's trying to accomplish. I think there's maybe some potential to rework this into something that allows Gumprich the space to work the story into more than a man's stray thoughts between pummeling in a boxing match. We'll see.
"I want to be where the seasons change "Garden City" by OMD, 1984
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The Pulse Vols 1 & 2 by Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley, Brent
Anderson and Michael Lark is an odd series that mostly took the place of the
canceled Alias in order to continue with stories of former
superhero-turned-investigator Jessica Jones, but also to give Bendis the
freedom to write about Spider-Man and Daredevil supporting characters like
Ben Urich and J. Jonah Jameson. See, Jonah realizes that his anti-superhero
stance has cost him readers, so he's willing to swallow his pride for once
and put together something called The Pulse that will focus on superhero
stories. To this end he hires Jones, for her ties to The Avengers and other
heroes, and Ben Urich, who is in a rut after being sued for slander when he
rightly accused Norman Osborn of being the Green Goblin. It's not a bad
premise at all, and as with other superhero-related, non-action series like
Gotham Central and Bendis' own Alias and, to some extent,
Powers, the series' success is dependent on characterization rather
than big battles. 
Dead West by Rick Spears and Rob G is the third collaboration for the
writer/artist team, and this time they do the 2-genres-in-1 thing with a
zombie western. I don't have any negative feelings about the book or the
creators, but it just didn't connect with me at all. The art is nice-G draws
the hero in that very lean manner (and similar dress) as Clint Eastwood in
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, with a prickly inky style that's
effective. Honestly, though, I've already seen Danijel Zezelj channel the
same influences to better effect in Brian Azzarello's Vigilante
miniseries a few years ago, and it looks like Azz's other sometime
collaborator Marcelo Frusin is doing similar stuff for him on another
Western series coming.
Tonight We Revolution is a mini-comic by Ira Marcks, and a very
well-drawn one. Marcks doesn't have a distinctive style, exactly; rather, he
works in different styles on the two stories here, the first with kind of
Jordan Crane's simplicity but Megan Kelso's thicker line, and the second an
appealing medley of Tony Millionaire and Paul Hornschemeier. The only
problem is that neither story is completely satisfying. The first almost
makes it, an interesting tale a mother tells her kids, but the last line
sinks the previously nice, matter-of-fact voice with pretension. The second
story, "A Parable," is even more pretentious and hard to decipher, but it is
a better artistic showcase for Marcks at least. Not an unlikeable comic at
all, just not all the way there yet. 
Pupshaw & Pushpaw by Jim Woodring is a sort of children's book that
adults will probably enjoy more. It's a short, silent tale of the two
strangely shaped, quadrapedal lovers walking along and getting involved in
an adventure or two, with shape-shifting hijinks and underwater thrills.
Pure imagination, as Wonka sang, and I find the smooth, brightly colored but
almost unsettling flora and fauna in Woodring's world to be inspiring and
invigorating-a direct path to the brain not unlike the effect Mozart has in
stimulating children.