I spent last Tuesday writing a love letter to Jeff Lemire for his work on Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. but I'm afraid I can't do the same for his reboot of Animal Man. It isn't some fanboy loyalty to Grant Morrison, either, because I've never read his run on the character despite having read about it. For whatever reason, devoid of other context, when I read Animal Man I just don't find myself very engaged. I was really excited to try this title when it first appeared and I liked the first issue but since then it's been more and more of a chore to keep reading. Last week I gave it the axe from my personal pull list because I just didn't care to try anymore.
OK, this book is also super-good. I get a little breathless when I think about it. I don't have a lot of ways to preface my take on it: I get gooseflesh when I read it. No other book in my bag does that to me. When I said earlier this week that Frankenstein has almost everything I want from a comic, that deep, gut-punch of sincere sentiment and chilly thrill is what's missing and Batwoman is the only book under DC's banner that can deliver it so consistently, effectively and beautifully. If this book came out every week I'd buy two copies. Ten years from now there are going to be people who say that Batwoman got them to start reading comics. It has the power to make new readers out of non- which was a part of the whole point of the New 52.
Jeff Lemire and Alberto Ponticelli have given us a gift and there is no way for us to repay them with sufficient thanks. It really is that simple.
No, it's even simpler than that: DC could reboot the whole damned universe every year like clockwork and it would be worth it if it gave us something as good as Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. every time. This book is almost everything I want comics to be and there is no other medium in which this story would work as well.
No, quite the opposite: I've been reading more comics than ever, grad school or no, and biting my tongue about DC's New 52 until such time as I had enough material to be worth reviewing.
What constitutes enough? Nothing less than at least the first five issues. You see, the Internet's self-induced and -enforcing model of insta-reviews so that readers can be told what to buy or leave on the shelf before the shelves are even stocked just doesn't suit me and it sure as hell doesn't suit an event like The New 52. I'm not trying to oversell DC's event, mind you. Rather, I seek to acknowledge two things about the big reboot last year: first, that it was gutsy no matter the output because anything that hyped and weighted with that much potential for customer backlash is gutsy, period, and second that it needed time to develop its own merits before it could be properly judged on them.
A million blog posts were launched on little more than a first issue of one title or another and a shallow impression of what the future might hold for many of them but what the hell is that kind of review worth? I didn't want to know whether some fellow fanboy out there believed Catwoman was doomed from the get-go because they were freaked out by the last page of issue #1 and, similarly, I didn't want to shoot my mouth off about any of the books I've been reading before they had a chance to prove themselves or die trying.
So, as this goes up I am also scheduling automated postings of reviews of the first five or six issues (however many were available when I wrote them) of the following titles:
All-Star Comics
Animal Man
Batman
Batman & Robin
Batwoman
Catwoman
Demon Knights
Detective Comics
Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.
Stormwatch
Swamp Thing
Wonder Woman
I'm also going to be posting a round-up of the #1's I read that didn't make the cut, long-term, and the #1's I read and said, "I love this, but I have to wait for the trade," and why. I haven't given up on my non-DC comics, either, but I admit that those have been piling up waiting to be read. Once these are done I have, like, months of X-Factor and Secret Avengers and Young Avengers: The Children's Crusade and Hack/Slash (which is just crazy good and if you are't reading it then there is something wrong with the world - something you can fix by reading it).
It's ambitious, I know, which is why this isn't going up until I've got the reviews ready to go, too. Then, through the magic of post scheduling, they'll go up over the next few weeks for your perusal.
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.
Review: Frankenstein, Agent Of S.H.A.D.E #1 - #6
Jeff Lemire and Alberto Ponticelli have given us a gift and there is no way for us to repay them with sufficient thanks. It really is that simple. No, it's even simpler than that: DC could reboot the whole damned universe every year like clockwork and it would be worth it if it gave us something as good as Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. every time. This book is almost everything I want comics to be and there is no other medium in which this story would work as well....
