Author: Andrew Wheeler

These three books don’t represent the comics community of the Philippines: I know almost nothing about that community and I’m sure of that. Extrapolating from these three stories – from the three comics stories I happen to have – is futile and silly and I’m going to try not to do it. Drawing any conclusions about the larger Philippine comics market would be like reading [[[Iron Fist]]],[[[ Scott Pilgrim]]], and [[[Fun Home]]] and from them alone creating a unified theory of North American comics.

So all I really want to say up front is this: these may be some of the best Philippine comics. But I seriously doubt that they’re all of the best. There’s probably even some projects even better than these. It’s a big world out there. (I also want to thank Charles Tan, who sent me a big box of Philippine comics and SF late last year, and without whom I wouldn’t have heard of any of these books.)

Elmer (issues #1-4)
By Gerry Alanguilan
Komikero Publishing; May and Oct 2006, Nov 2007, Nov 2008; 50 Philippine pesos ea.

There’s something about the comics form that attracts really unlikely premises – flying men, teenagers who want to do their homework, retellings of operas without music, and whatever[[[Alice in Sunderland]]] is. [[[Elmer]]] is another in that proud and odd lineage: it’s a serious contemporary story set in a world where chickens suddenly became intelligent in 1979.

Yes, chickens. The protagonist is a young chicken named Jake, who comes back from his dead-end life in Manila to the rural farm where he grew up, because his father, Elmer, has had a stroke and isn’t expected to last long. He rejoins his sister May (a nurse) and brother Francis (a movie star) there, and stays there after his father’s death. Except for the chicken thing, the plot set-up is very like an indy movie, some Philippine [[[Garden State]]]. (more…)

Arcade of Cruelty
By Joseph Patrick Larkin
Also-Ran, 2008, $18

Joseph Patrick Larkin is a self-obsessed, creepy, sexist shut-in with voyeuristic tendencies. And those are his good points.

I only know this because I’ve just read his self-published book [[[The Arcade of Cruelty]]] – but, let me back up immediately, because “self-published” will give you a certain image, and this book doesn’t fit that at all. It’s immaculately well-designed, looking for all the world like the catalog of some very, very unlikely traveling museum exhibit. It has a real ISBN, the unlikely and wildly inaccurate category of “Queer Studies/Occult” on the back, and a little log on the front proclaiming it the new selection of “Joseph’s Book Club” (with a circular logo that looks not at all unlike that of a different book club, one run by a TV host hose name begins with O). In the middle of all that, on the otherwise classy cover, is that serviceable drawing by Larkin of a zombie tearing out someone’s (his?) throat.

Larkin’s art is all at about that level: he’s not a great artist by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s reasonably good at crude depictions of appalling things – and, besides, the writing is carrying most of the weight here, anyway.

(more…)

Jeffrey Brown appeared in the comics world a few years back, with his painfully confessional (and almost as painfully crudely drawn) graphic novels [[[Clumsy]]] and [[[Unlikely]]]. He’s expanded beyond autobiography since then, mostly into odd but straight-faced takes on geeky topics, such as [[[Incredible Change-Bots]]]. He had three new books in 2008 – well, at least three new books; it’s entirely possible that I missed something – a big autobiographical book and two smaller, weirder books in a new, very loose, series. So I thought I might as well look at them all together, before he publishes another four or five books.

Little Things
By Jeffrey Brown
Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, April 2008, $14.00

This one is subtitled “[[[A Memoir in Slices]]],” and, yes, it’s yet another in the tsunami of memoir-comics from major not-usually-comics publishers. (I guess they’re all hoping for another [[[Persepolis]]] or [[[Maus]]], and not looking to far from the apple tree, either.) Brown has a two-page comics introduction, in which he explains the book to someone on the phone – which comes down to “Anyway, they’re a bunch of autobiographical short stories and they’re funny sometimes.”

(more…)

Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: Prodigal Son, Volume One
Adaptation by Chuck Dixon; Illustrated by Brett Booth
Dell Rey, February 2009, $22.95

There comes a time in every best-selling writer’s life when he realizes that he’d like to make money even faster than he can write books. OK, maybe that realization comes to all of us – but the best-selling writer can actually do something about it. At that point, assuming that scruples aren’t a problem – and how on earth did he become a best-selling writer and keep his scruples, anyway? – the options are two: let someone else write a book under your name, or license something you’ve already written to another medium, and let Joe Hired-Hand do the heavy lifting in that format.

Or, if you’re Dean Koontz, you could do both.

Some years ago, he got Kevin J. Anderson to co-write a novel called [[[Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: Prodigal Son]]], and then a couple of sequels. (There was also a TV deal at the time, though, sadly, it eventually fell through.) And now long-time comics writer Chuck Dixon has adapted that novel, which was at least half-written by Anderson in the first place, into a comics series…which, of course, still has “Dean Koontz” as the largest thing on the cover.

(I’m beginning to think that popular writers’ names have a nearly homeopathic power – no matter how much they’re diluted, the audience will keep clamoring for more.)

(more…)

Graphic Classics, Vol. 16: Oscar Wilde
Edited by Tom Pomplun
Eureka Productions, February 2009, $11.95

Graphic Classics has been adapting the work of famous dead authors – from H.P. Lovecraft to Rafael Sabatini – for at least five years, mostly focusing on the more popular (rather than literarily classy) writers. And that’s a good thing, since no one wants to see [[[Graphic Classics: Henry James]]]. (“The Face in the Carpet” is not nearly as exciting as the Lovecraft-style title might indicate.)

So this is the sixteenth volume in the series, which are all in the same vein: about 144 pages of comics adaptations of said dead writer’s work, usually with a few long adaptations and some shorter ones sprinkled in for spice. The creators involved are a mix of semi-familiar names and newer folks on their way up – this kind of project, obviously, doesn’t tend to attract top talent. (And is almost certainly better without the kind of compromises “top talent” requires.) Editor Tom Pomplun usually adapts at least one of the stories himself – and why shouldn’t he? It’s his series – and the adaptations sometimes tend to the talky, perhaps in an attempt to be slightly more educational.

(The series as a whole tries to walk the line between “good for you” and “good fun,” and individual stories fall on one side or the other of that divide, but I’ve found that the books as a whole generally are fun, if wordy. I’ve previously reviewed Bram Stoker, Mark Twain, and Fantasy Classics.)

(more…)