Some years ago it was possible to purchase and read three novella-ish chapbooks of tongue-in-cheek steampunky Victorian adventure prose parody from the store of Wondermark. Those chapbooks are long gone but this year David Malki brought them back in one very large paperback called Dispatches From Wondermark Manor: The Compleat Trilogy. This massive tome, so very true to the "feel" of Wondermark, is over 500 pages in length and beautifully illustrated in his signature parody-Victorian style.
If you don't read Wondermark, at least give it a glance so you can see how it's put together. Malki painstakingly rescues half-destroyed print material from that era and, through physical and digital tools, rescues specific images, old fonts and anything else that looks like it could be salvaged and recycled rather than left to continue recycling itself in the back of a library book sale. There are those who have criticized him for destroying the materials he used for one specific project and his posted response reveals a thoughtful, cherishing, even nurturing view of the materials he uses in his work and makes for interesting reading by anyone who enjoys visual storytelling, a medium almost universally inherently rife with derivation and reuse.
That same gentle touch is reflected time and again in Malki's work, even when it's about needless violence. His sense of humor is as often subtly kind and quietly wry as it is absurd and unexpected. One of his most popular gags is a man bent over a rock, a piece of paper and a pair of scissors, screaming, "Stop fiiiightiiiing," a joke which is nothing less than a shouted appeal for peace. The catalogue text for Dispatches From Wondermark Manor: The Compleat Trilogy mentions that this book includes "casual mass murder" and I have no doubt that is true; half the joke of it is how surprised so many characters are by their own participation and their ironic glee.
This is highly recommended for anyone in your life who's way into the steampunk fad, especially if you're kind of sick of hearing about it from them.
Let me guess: the comics fan in your life already has all the books you can think to get them and they don't need more; worse, you are the comics fan in your life and those shopping for you have no idea what to pick up in a comics shop or online. Solution? Something classy that they almost certainly don't have or to which they can easily be directed: alter-ego prints by Danny Haas on Society6.
The attractive Spidey sample to the right is a personal fave but there's really only one that doesn't work for me somehow. Almost all of them show great taste in art and design and they are easily recognized by anyone who's consumed popular culture in the last several decades. The purchase options are varied, too: everything from an iPhone skin for a few bucks up to a framed 26"x38" print for many, many more bucks than the iPhone skin. Way too hip to display anything other than stretched canvas? They've got you covered, though I note that not all options are available for all designs. Haas has a bunch of different pieces and by no means is he the only artist on that site. I particularly like the various riffs on popular culture being done by artist Powerpig though I confess that the name does elevate an eyebrow.
Say what one may about Alan Moore's current ongoing role as The Genius Who Hates Everything Including His Own Genius, he is widely lauded for his past work and rightly so. He also has a ton of work that has not yet been dragged into the mainstream and of which the comics fan in your life might never have heard. I had never heard of Promethea, anyway, when The Boyf pulled out a TPB of the first volume and said, "Oh, here's a book you might like." Like? I burned more midnight oil on this book than on any other in the last decade. I'll go ahead and link to all the books right here: Promethea: Book 1, Book 2, Book 3 and Book 4.
Promethea is about a woman who finds herself possessed (or channeling, or manifesting, or perhaps graduating into) a super-powered alternate persona and struggling to understand how and why this is happening. In some ways it's a retelling of Wonder Woman and in others it's a spiritual/psychological mirror held up to the bulging physicality of Thor. It's got everything: action in the streets, cross-dressing, a slightly dystopian future, previous incarnations shoving their way onto the page and chapter upon chapter of spiritual journey. Best of all, it's all intricately and hypnotically illustrated by none other than J.H. Williams III.
I'd argue that Williams' art on the new Batwoman book is more mature in some ways, yes, but when I read that current title I can easily see his work on Promethea reflected in the big two-page spreads. I can't imagine a better gift for the Kate Kane fanatic in your life.
You're reading Hark! A Vagrant, right? It's in your RSS feed or your Atom feed or maybe you just sit there refreshing the page obsessively, day after day, with a calendrical reminder in case you forget, right?
OK, maybe that's just me.
My first semester of grad school is over and NaNo is over and that means back to reading and thinking about comics, online and off. It's also time to spend money as a demonstration of affection and that means the return of Stocking Stuffers at Pink Kryptonite! Behold as I combine them all by recommending Kate Beaton's most recent collection of new and previous work: Hark! A Vagrant.
Beaton's work is "cartoony" in the very best sense: evocative and expressive and deceptively simple. It's also incredibly sharp and literate, a bit like Bugs Bunny with an advanced humanities degree. I cannot get enough of it - some favorites are here, here, here, here and here, though this one is also pretty freaking great and more than a little delightfully queer - and this book features work we've seen before and work that is totally new! I am especially pleased when some brilliant corner of the Internet colonizes fleshspace. Give it, now, to the person on your shopping list who wryly smiles when you allude to Nancy Drew.
Oh, honey, my feet are still tired. I have finally administered myself enough medicinal martinis to get back in the game, though, and I have to tell you I had a pretty freaking fabulous time at Dragon*Con 2011. I did take pictures and you remember that part where I said my phone camera was good enough? Yeah, not so much. Next year I'm sucking it up and taking the real camera. That I am already thinking about next year should be taken as a sign of the kind of time I had, though: a very good time, indeed. The Rainbow Flag Party was packed and lots of queer cosplayers were happy to pose for your intrepid reporter; the gaming track was fantaaaaaaaaaaaastic OHMYGODSOMUCHFUN and I only got in one shoving match with other Con-goers which, given my redneck roots, I count as something of an accomplishment.
Read on for the skinny on this year's trip! Oh, and here's an early caveat: the con staff themselves were extremely and very personally rude to me this year so I feel no real compulsion to be nice for niceness' sake. Every opinion expressed in this post is (a) mine alone and no one else's and (b) as honest as it gets.
Last year's Dragon*Con was my first time ever at a truly packed convention. I'd been to a couple of very small local conventions and to HeroesCon 2010 but they in no way prepared me for just how crowded Dragon*Con could be. How people survive things like San Diego Comic-Con or PAX is just beyond me. I did some reading up ahead of time for tips on convention survival and I consulted with my old guild leader from WoW - who's done the BlizzCon thing in heels - and I knew to go prepared.
I'm pleased to say that I had some pretty good ideas on surviving any given day but I'm an engineer, a tinkerer, a hacker; I can't resist making a few upgrades to my con survival kit so that my trip remains fun instead of taxing. The thing to keep in mind in enormous public events like this is that it is really easy to have a bad experience of other people and it is equally easy to create a bad experience for someone without realizing it. A little mindfulness in advance really can help you and everyone around you have a better time at the convention. When I go to HeroesCon I just drive down for the day and hang out for a while and that takes nothing in the way of preparedness. Four days in one place, however, is a whole other matter.
Holy Mother Madonna and Her Sacred Cones! Is Dragon*Con 2011 really only a week away? The husboyfner and I are attending along with two of our dear friends. The very center of my calendar is the Rainbow Flag Party on Saturday night, courtesy of the ever-fabulous OutlantaCon and the Brit Track. Last year it was the absolute highlight of the weekend and I am expecting even greater things this year! Other things high on my to-do list: losing my convention gaming virginity and stalking Garrett Wang.
I know there are PK readers who go - including one who may be doing a presentation at a panel? If you're going to be there, look for me; I'll be the goateed tall guy with the badge that says KlarionPK. If you're going to be running or participating in any special events or you want to meet up with some fellow queer fans for coffee and convo, speak up and let us know to attend! If by wild chance you're also signed up to play Savage Worlds or D20 Modern this weekend, especially give me a shout! You can email me at klarion at pink kryptonite dot com or you can hit me on the tweets as @KlarionPK. If all else fails, leave a comment here and I'll try to check it.
If I don't see you then have a great time, play safe and remember to take a snack so you don't get cranky. I'm not trying to be your mother, I'm just trying to be mine.
Months ago, the boyf and I got together with friends to watch X-Men: First Class. I've seen plenty of comic book movies this year but that's the one I keep thinking back on. It was an excellent movie by any number of measures: as an adaptation of comics characters to film, as an action movie in its own right and as a metaphor for the inner struggle of minority populations divided by competing desires to assimilate and to retain their cultural niche. It was big and fun and stuff blew up real good, sure, but it also involves an admirable portion of character, character development and clever ideas. There were things I didn't love, to be sure, but this isn't actually a review so I'm not going to bother spending significant time talking about what I think did and didn't work. I think it worked really well, overall, and inasmuch as it's no masterpiece (The Dark Knight) it's also no relentless atrocity (The Green Hornet).
No, the concerns and perspectives of a review piece aren't what keep bringing me back to it at all. What keeps haunting me is that, deep down, it made me think. Specifically, it made me think that Magneto was right.
My local comics shop is so ready to rob me blind in September: they got their hands on some beautiful, colorful order forms for the DC relaunch and have made them available to customers so that suckers like me can give them all our money next month. I am extremely glad they've done so, too, because there are some comics I seriously want - and some comics I seriously want to avoid.
After the jump, I list all the comics to which I'm subscribing in the new world of DC comics and why. Am I missing anything good? For that matter, am I dissing anything good?
I am woefully behind on my comics. I don't know any other way to say it: I am so behind that I am full of woe. Can you hear my lamentations? No, but you can read them. The bottom line is that I am a staff member at a university which is a bit like working tech in a stage production: when the lights are up the and the curtain is down is when things backstage are positively bustling. My point here is that summers are a busy time and this summer especially so. I did find time to sit down and steal an hour the other day during which I read the most-dated unread issues of my current favorite comics: American Vampire, Detective Comics, Ruse and the absolutely magnificent Xombi.
Does that last title make your pulse quicken? Does it bring a flush of desire to your cheek? It should. Good gods but it should. It is absolutely this year's American Vampire: a bolt-from-the-blue shock of stark quality. It's a comic so good it makes one look at the other books on the shelf and wonder what the hell their creative teams are doing all damn day. Issue #3 came out in May and issue #4 is sitting on the shelf right now and if you have anything like a soul you will go buy them from a store that deserves your dollars to show some pittance of gratitude for what we're being given in its pages.
I am also absolutely terrified for Xombi's future. I don't mean I fear the contents of its narrative; I mean that a part of me is pretty sure it's getting quietly cancelled in the September reboot.
I have observed, anecdotally, a really strong identification with the X-Men within the queer communities as a metaphor for the queer communities. Listening to the always-worthwhile ComicBookQueers is basically a crash course in X-History, with occasional episodes devoted exclusively to Mutants.
I grew up a DC kid with the X-Men not even on my radar until later and as someone consuming that content for the first time as an adult it has seemed obvious to me that while Marvel's mutant minority can be viewed as a metaphor for many different targets of discrimination the queer communities make the best comparison for a variety of reasons: mutants' powers/identities tend to form when they are teenagers or young adults; some mutants try to hide in plain sight while others can't or simply won't; there are a variety of competing philosophies within the mutant community; the forms of activism they will or won't support lead to shifting and uneasy allegiances; and finally the ones who can't or won't hide turn their difference from the rest of humanity into a point of pride, a foundation for compassion or some other personal psychological tent pole.
Of course, people have always said that was reading too much into a children's story, something everyone reading this has probably heard a hundred million times too many as it is. How nice, then, to see our view explicitly validated by one of the people involved in some of the most high-profile iterations of the X-Men property. From Zack Stentz's Facebook page:
I helped write the movie, and can tell you the gay rights/ post-holocaust Jewish identity / civil rights allegory stuff was all put in there on purpose. Joss Whedon designed the whole "Cure" storyline in the comic books specifically as a gay allegory, and Bryan Singer wove his own feelings of outsiderdom as a gay man into the movie series. The whole "Have you ever tried NOT being a mutant" coming out scene in X2 isn't even particularly subtle, while it is effective.
The story of a potential "cure" for the X gene - really a treatment that would temporarily inhibit a mutant's powers - comes from Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, which remains - for my money - the strongest book with "X-Men" in its title from any time in the last several years. (Obligatory bitchy comment: too bad Warren Ellis sucked all the good out of it after that.) It was an affecting story but also an unmistakable metaphor for the lockstep psychosis of the "ex-gay" movement and its unforgivably hollow and cynical flimflammery. I absolutely saw why it was chosen for inclusion in the movie franchise. That storyline did what the X-Men at their very best are meant to do: represent the humanity and struggle of the Other. In the era of endless iterations of mindless machismo on the silver screen, a ceaseless parade of bullets and braggadocio but little in the way of detectable story, it's so very nice to see a franchise focus on the people who happen to have the powers in order to give viewers something personal with which to connect.
I'll admit to not having seen X-Men: First Class yet, but I plan to do so in the next couple of weeks. Does it live up to the hype? I've heard wildly varying opinions but the media seems to love it.
[X-Men: First Class Screenwriter Confirms LGBT Subtext As Totally Intentional - The Mary Sue]
[A special hat-tip to Vorpal Bunny!]
According to Big Shiny Robot!, six more DC reboot covers have been revealed by someone fiddling with URLs to see what they could see. Included in their list is a cover for Batwoman #1, which they take as confirmation that the J.H. Williams III co-penned ongoing is really going to happen after all. Given the theories I've seen in which people claim the reboot is an opportunity for DC to kill this title while no one's looking, I think that would be mighty nice.
One problem: isn't that the cover we've already seen for the various earlier launch dates of Batwoman #1? It's also distinct from the others by virtue of having credits and the logo already on the page. Yes, it shares some design elements with the (really beautiful) cover for Detective Comics #1 and there's a way to read that as a hint or tribute or allusion or other signal of some sort, but I think that's drawing an exceptionally long bow. I hate to break it to BSR and their friend with the probing fingers but I don't think that image is news; I think that image is old news.
I would love nothing more than to be wrong about this and I will celebrate my error in the streets if this title gets confirmed and launched.
["6 More DC Relaunch Covers Leaked!" - www.bigshinyrobot.com]
Review: Stormwatch #1
Stormwatch #1, the first of DC's new 52 to feature LGBT characters (before the reboot, at least) is out to add a new cosmic dimension to the post-Flashpoint universe. There isn't much to be said for our beloved broship yet (though the last page shows a handshake between Apollo and Midnighter and promises a "Big Bang"), but the issue is a great gauge for whether or not you'll want to stick with the series to see the romance purportedly unfold....
