Author: Andrew Wheeler

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: View From the Top Shelf

  • Uncategorized
  • October 9, 2007

Top Shelf was kind enough to send me a big box of their books (which also included Super Spy), so let me dive right into it.

micrographica-8890974First was a cute little book (about the size of those “impulse purchase” books you sometimes see in Hallmark stores by the cash register) called Micrographica by Renee French. According to the front flap, this originally appeared online, and each of the drawings (one to a page) was originally drawn at about one centimeter square, which French did to keep the drawing loose by not allowing any redrawing. The story follows three small rodents of some kind (maybe guinea pigs?) who discover a “crapball” and then have odder adventures. It reads a bit like a black and white, colloquial version of a Jim Woodring story – weird things happen in an entertaining way, but the voices of the rodents is very modern-American, unlike Woodring. The story also features a much larger rodent-thing, unexplained facial swelling, a giant mountain of crap, an abandoned sandwich, and more. Hey, it’s only ten bucks – how can you go wrong?

black-8013228Jeremy Tinder’s Black Ghost Apple Factory is more like a normal comics pamphlet (despite being only about four inches by six); it’s stapled, 48 pages, and contains a number of different stories. The seven stories here are all pretty clearly “indy” – they feature odd characters doing twisted versions of real-world activities, and usually have something to do with interpersonal relationships. (Also, in time-honored indy-comics fashion, those relationships are sad, depressing and unfulfilling.)  Only two of the stories are overtly autobiographical — and one of those features Tinder befriending a bear, so you know it’s metaphorical at best — which is a nice change. Some of these stories are funny and some are touching; all work well and strike true. And that’s darn good a for a five-buck comics pamphlet.

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Super Spy

  • Uncategorized
  • October 8, 2007

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The life of a spy is a cramped, paranoid, fear-ridden thing, not one of derring-do and adventure. Matt Kindt knows that well. His second graphic novel Super Spy is set during World War II, in England, France, Spain, and other places, and features a large cast drawn from all the nations of the European theater. Some of the spies use fancy gadgets and many of them have a mystique about them, but they’re all mortal, all prone to making mistakes, all caught up in something much larger and more deadly than themselves.

The production design of Super Spy might lead the reader to expect one kind of story – the front cover shows a woman, crouching, with circles explaining bits of spy paraphernalia and events in her career. The back similarly depicts a man. Both are obviously cramped, forced into an uncomfortable position, with their hands at the edges of the cover – perhaps the walls are closing in on them? It’s a strong visual metaphor both for the life of spying – constrained, constricted, having ones life shoved into a box – and for the hardships of WW II itself. So far, so accurate. But the cover also hints that this will be a story primarily about these two people. We don’t know their names on the cover, but the tags on “his” picture refer to “her,” and to their shared experiences.

Super Spy is not the story of two people; there are at least six major characters, of whom these two are only the ones we meet first. These two are not even necessarily the most important characters. And, given the dangers of spying in wartime, it’s wise not to get too attached to any character in this book. Kindt knows that spycraft is a very dangerous profession, and he shows us all of those dangers.

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Some Greasy Kids Stuff

 

 

dinos-6479331Today I’ve got three books that either are for kids or look like they should be, so, if any of you are allergic to greasy kids stuff, just move on to the next post.

[[[Dinosaurs Across America]]] is the new book by Phil Yeh, who has spent the last two decades promoting literacy and art across the world in various ways, including lots of comics. In fact, this book was originally a black-and-white comic that was sold at various Yeh events. It’s a quick look at all fifty states in the US, with a concentration on quick facts and learning all of the capitals. One of Yeh’s recurring characters, Patrick Rabbit, has been suckered, and a group of dinosaurs (also recurring Yeh characters) set him straight on the real facts. There’s no real story here, but it’s a great book for kids interested in state capitals or geography in general. (Or even for kids who aren’t interested in that, but need to learn some of it.)

 

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[[[Korgi]]], Book 1 is the first in what’s planned to be a series of all-ages wordless comics stories. It’s by Christian Slade, and seems to be his first major comics work. It’s cute and fun and adventurous by turns, though the wordlessness doesn’t always help with a fantasy story like this. (The dogs, such as Korgi, are obvious Special somehow, but it’s hard to convey the specifics of something like that without words.) This is perhaps pitched a bit older than Andy Runton’s [[[Owly]]] books – also wordless comics stories from Top Shelf for all ages – simply because there’s more action and suspense in Korgi. (There’s certainly nothing here I’d worry about giving to my six-year-old.) Slade uses a lot of scribbly lines for shading and tones, and – especially after reading James Sturm’s America recently – that looks a bit amateur to me. Slade is very good at it, but it does leave an impression of lots and lots of little lines all over the page; it would be interesting to see him use other ways of showing tone and shading, and concentrate on drawing just a few, bolder, stronger lines. Or maybe not; he gets some great effects with his many lines, creating clouds and rocks and monsters that come to vivid life on the page.

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: James Sturm’s America

  • Uncategorized
  • October 2, 2007

 

The first thing to note is that America collects three previously-published stories: [[[The Revival]]], [[[Hundreds of Feet Below Daylight]]], and [[[The Golem’s Mighty Swing]]]. Sturm’s end-notes don’t make it clear where the 24-page Revival or the 44-page [[[Hundreds of Feet]]] were originally published, but [[[Golem]]] was a stand-alone graphic novel from Drawn & Quarterly in 2001. So if you’re a huge James Sturm fan – and there have to be a couple of them – you probably have all of this already.

Enough with the consumer report, though – what about the stories? All three are historical fiction, set in little-examined, unspectacular times in America. There are no wars, no famous people – none of the usual hoo-hah of historical stories. Sturm concentrates on ordinary people living ordinary lives, in what were fairly ordinary times for the people living them.

[[[The Revival]]] is set in eastern Kentucky in 1801 – as the first caption helpfully tells us. A married couple, Joseph and Sarah Bainbridge, are traveling to Caine Ridge to see the revival preacher Elijah Young. They arrive in the camp, meeting a niece, and are soon caught up in the religious fervor. They do see Young preach, on their second night there, but I don’t think I should tell you what Joseph and Sarah are praying for, nor whether they get it.

[[[Hundreds of Feet Below Daylight]]] takes place at the other end of the nineteenth century in a gold mine, presumably in California. A group of locals slaughter the Chinese workers running the mine and take it over – but it’s still not very successful. Tensions rise between the owners and the workers, exacerbated by the discovery that one dying, incoherent miner is secretly rich.

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Kampung Boy & Town Boy

  • Uncategorized
  • October 1, 2007

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It can be a bit disconcerting to discover that whole comics industries exist in previously unsuspected places. We all know about the large French-Belgian comics market, and of course the massive world of Japanese manga, but who suspected that there was a great Malaysian cartoonist?

Well, there is, and his name is Lat. He’s been working in comics since the late ‘60s, but his work has never been published in the US before. His stories first appeared weekly in the newspaper [[[Berita Minggu]]] when he was thirteen years old, and he was awarded the prestigious Malaysian honorific title Datuk in 1994. (Think something along the lines of “Sir” or “Lord.”) According to Wikipedia, Lat’s real name is Mohammed Nor Khalid, and much of his work seems to be political or topical cartoons for the major Malaysian newspaper [[[New Straits Times]]]. (The Wikipedia entry has a list of his titles, and many of them sound like compilations of previously published work.)

Kampung Boy seems to have been his first standalone graphic novel, and begins his autobiography; Town Boy continues the story from the point Kampung Boy leaves off, and brings him up nearly to the end of his schooling. Kampung Boy is laid out more like a children’s book than like comics; the art spreads across the pages, accompanied by hand-lettered text set like captions. There are no panel borders, and only the occasional word balloon. [[[Town Boy]]] starts off in the same style, but turns into more traditional comics for much of its length, with long stretches laid out as panels with word balloons. The difference is that the purely narrated sections – all of Kampung Boy, and the parts of Town Boy covering general information or longer stretches of time – are done in the first style, while detailed, dialogue-intensive scenes need the immediacy of balloons and borders.

Kampung Boy begins like a traditional autobiography: Lat is born on the first page. The rest of the book chronicles his life in a very rural village, or kampung, up to about the age of ten, when he is sent off to a boarding school in the town of Ipoh. The details of his life are exotic, but the rhythms of rural life, and of boyhood, are very familiar and well captured. Lat may be a Muslim boy on the other side of the world, in a region that farms rubber and mines tin, but the life of a boy in a village, falling asleep during lessons in a small school and swimming with his friends in the river, is not all that different from Mark Twain’s childhood.

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Shortcomings

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Adrian Tomine is an anomaly on the current alternative-comics scene – his stories are absolutely realistic, in both their artistic look and their mundane events, but aren’t obviously autobiographical at all. The closest comparison I can think of is that he’s a Northern Californian Gilbert Hernandez – deeply concerned with ethnicity and identity – but working more as a miniaturist. (Tomine is clearly influenced by the modern New Yorker school of short prose fiction; many of his stories could have been adapted straight from a Raymond Carver short story.)

Shortcomings is Tomine’s longest story to date – his first graphic novel-length tale at all – reprinting a three-issue storyline from Tomine’s irregular comic, Optic Nerve. But his virtues and interests are still those of a short-story writer: close evocation of character, realistic dialogue, small-scale events. None of the events are overly dramatic…but the main character certainly is.

Ben Tanaka is a young Japanese-American man living in Berkeley – managing a movie theater, in a rut with his live-in girlfriend Miko, denying that he’s obsessed with blonde Caucasian girls, and only really connecting with his lesbian friend Alice. He’s angry about nothing in particular, and frustrated about his entire life without quite realizing it himself. He’s our viewpoint character – in every scene, and at the center of most of them – but it’s hard to identify with him, since he is such a prick. He’s young and disaffected, but doesn’t think of himself that way – he thinks he’s doing all right, and doesn’t realize that he’s a complete jerk.

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ANDREW’S LINKS: One Last Ride on the Wall of Death

  • Uncategorized
  • September 24, 2007

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It’s not often that I get to make a simultaneous Richard Thompson/Timothy Truman reference, so I’ll take it this time.

This will be my last set of links for ComicMix. I’ve loved doing it, but it’s just too, too time-consuming. I will continue reviewing various things here, and ComicMix’s philosophy is all about the original content, so a huge bunch of outside links was an odd fit to begin with. Thanks for all the comments, and please stick around for the big ComicMix original-comics launch – I certainly will be!

Comics Links

David Lloyd will be at Orlandocon from Sept 21-23 at the Caribe Royale Convention Centre, and also signing at Coliseum of Comics on Friday the 21st from 2-5.

Mark Evanier has stitched together various YouTube postings to reform the complete Jonathan Ross documentary In Search of Steve Ditko.

The Columbia Tribune visits with artist Frank Stack.

Comic Book Resources interviews Marvel editor John Barber to learn exactly how the Marvel Zombies project came to be…and, just maybe, how Marvel will work it like a rented mule until we’re all sick of it.

CBR also chatted with Jim Shooter about his plans for Legion of Super-Heroes.

Comics Reporter interviews Steven Weissman.

Wizard talks with Mark Evanier.

The Hurting wonders what’s the deal with the X-Men and space opera.

Living Between Wednesdays interviews Scottt Chantler, author of Northwest Passage.

Comics Reviews

Forbidden Planet International reviews Image’s new series Fearless.

The Written Nerd reviews a pile of graphic novels, starting with the first volume of Flight, edited by Kazuo Kibuishi.

The Joplin Independent reviews The Blue Beetle Companion. (I was going to make a joke about obscurity here, but I thought better of it.)

The Los Angeles Times reviews Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings.

Chris’s Invincible Super-Blog reviews the week’s comics, with an extra dose of face-kicking.

Greg Burgas of Comics Should Be Good reviews this week’s comics, starting with 30 Days of Night: Beyond Barrow #1.

Living Between Wednesday reviews this week’s comics, and declares them the “sexiest ever.”

From The Savage Critics:

  • Jog reviews the new 30 Days of Night, and others
  • Abhay finishes reviewing a graphic novel called Runoff, and interviewing its creator Tom Manning
  • Diana Kingston-Gabai says two Hail Marys but still can’t take Penance: Relentless
  • Jog checks out Gutsville #2
  • and Graeme McMillan reviews a pile of comics, including the new Captain America. (And now I channel Mr. Middle-America: “Hey, isn’t he dead? How come his comics still coming out?”)

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ANDREW’S LINKS: I Can Haz Sekrets

  • News
  • September 21, 2007

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What do you get when LOLcats meets PostSecret? Lolsecretz! [via John Scalzi]

Comics Links

Camden New Journal reports on a “market trader” (is that like a day trader, or does it mean a professional?) whose graphic novel Brodie’s Law has been bought by Hollywood for the proverbial pile of money.

Comic Book Resources talks to Daniel Way about the Origins of Wolverine…well, this year’s version, anyway.

A high school teacher in Connecticut has been forced to resign after giving a female first-year student a copy of Eightball #22, which her parents found inappropriate (to put it mildly).

Comics Reporter lists all of the recent firings at Wizard, among other comings and goings at various comics-publishing outfits.

Some guy at Comics2Film is very, very opinionated about what is and isn’t manga.

Comics Should Be Good, anticipating next year’s April Fool’s Day, reports that all indy publishers are now “selling out.”

Comics Reviews

Forbidden Planet International reviews the first collection of The Boys.

Comics Reporter reviews John Callahan’s 1991 cartoon collection Digesting the Child Within.

Newsarama reviews Gods of Asgard by Erik Evensen.

Chris’s Invincible Super-Blog takes on the Haney-riffic “Saga of the Super-Sons” from the early ‘70s.

Brad Curran of Comics Should Be Good reviews the first issue of Umbrella Academy.

Occasional Superheroine is impressed by the high level of emo in Penance: Relentless.

Occasional Superheroine also reviews Booster Gold #2 and Suicide Squad #1.

From The Savage Critics:

And YesButNoButYes also reviews this week’s comics, starting with Jungle Girl #1.

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Two More Minxes

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A few months back, I reviewed the second and third graphic novels from Minx (DC’s new line aimed at teenage girls, published in a manga-ish size and format but not otherwise much like manga). I’ve since dug up the first and fourth Minx titles, The Plain Janes and Good As Lily, for another compare-and-contrast.

The Plain Janes was the Minx launch title, back in May, and was the only one of the first wave of Minx books to have any female creators involved. (Which lack, if you recall, caused somewhat of a hue and cry in some circles.) The writer, Cecil Castellucci (that single female creator), is an established Young Adult novelist, and, perhaps because of that, [[[The Plain Janes]]] is the closest to mainstream realistic fiction of any of the Minx books I’ve seen so far.

Our heroine, Jane, is a young teen who lived in “Metro City” until she was caught at the edge of a random bombing, which made her parents paranoid enough to move the family to the suburbs. (Jane is presumably an only child; we don’t see any siblings.) The bombing affected her just as strongly as it did her parents, but in a different way: it shocked her out of her old complacent life (concerned with boys and clothes) and turned her into An Artist. So she resists the urge to fall in with the same sort of crowd she hung out with at her old school, and tries to make friends with a group of outcast girls.

Unfortunately, those girls are straight from Central Casting: the brainy one, the sporty one, and the theatrical one. (There’s even the school’s token One Gay Guy, who gets involved later on.) Worse, their names are all versions of “Jane,” telegraphing the manipulation even further. They’re all decent characters – well differentiated from each other and generally believable – but it didn’t make much sense to me that the three of them would be friends, and each have no other friends, when they have nothing in common but their outcast status. (Then again, I was never a high school girl, and the social structures boys set up can be quite different.)

Our Jane has to work to get the other Janes to like her – she’s pretty and should be popular, so why would she be hanging out with them? – and keeps turning down the friendship advances of the local Queen Bee. But, eventually, her plan comes together, and she recruits the other Janes into her secret organization P.L.A.I.N. – People Loving Art in Neighborhoods – to do various bizarre “art” events secretly around town. They are, of course, the very po-mo kind of art that doesn’t require any ability to draw or paint or otherwise create something specific; it’s all installation-style pieces that only are art because someone says they are.

This leads to the expected, and overwritten, trouble from the authorities, who clamp down hard on any sign of rebellion in their community. (Sadly, this was all done more deftly, and with a lighter touch, in the ‘80s movie Footloose. Yes, it’s that sort of thing all over again.) But, in the end, art, and P.L.A.I.N., prevail.

So The Plain Janes is a bit obvious and a bit too much – at least for me, jaded thirty-something that I am. It may be much more exciting for a teenage girl who hasn’t seen this plot before and doesn’t realize she can pick her friends and do the things she wants to do. And, if so, then it will do its job just fine.

(I don’t have much to say about the art – it’s solid, in a mostly mainstream-comics style, with lots of close-ups on faces. It’s noticeably less stylized than the art in the other Minx titles I’ve seen, which fits this more grounded, mostly real-world story.)

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ANDREW’S LINKS: Bat-Crime and Bat-Punishment

  • Uncategorized
  • September 20, 2007

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Comics Links

R. Sikoryak’s Dostoyevsky Comics, an adaptation of Crime and Punishment staring a Dick Sprang Batman and originally published in Drawn & Quarterly #3 in 2000, has been posted on the web.

Amazon Daily interviews Nick Abadzis, author of Laika.

The New York Times Magazine last weekend started its serialization of Dan Clowes’s comic Mister Wonderful, in its “Funny Pages” section.

The Baltimore Sun profiles cartoonist Emily Flake.

AnimationInsider interviews manga expert and popularizer Fred Schodt.

The Fresno Bee talks to local broadcaster Dale Berry, who creates graphic novels in his spare time.

New York Magazine has a ten-page excerpt from Gipi’s Notes for a War Story.

Publishers Weekly chatted with David Michaelis about his upcoming biography of Charles Schulz, Schulz and Peanuts.

Publishers Weekly has a preview of Legend of the Dark Crystal, Col. 1: The Garthim Wars.

PW also interviews Jonathan Hickman, author of The Nightly News.

Comic Book Resources chats with Mark Guggenheim about his Oni Press series Resurrection.

To celebrate the publication of their collection Dr. Thirteen: Architecture and Morality, creators Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chang have done thirteen separate interviews, all published the same day. Links to all of them are on Cliff Chang’s blog.

South Carolina’s The State rounds up recent reader reaction to Tom Batuik’s deeply depressing current storyline in Funky Winkerbean. [via Comics Reporter]

Journalista! takes aim at comics’ poster-boy for getting out of the house more often, Dave Sim. (And what is Sim doing these days? Didn’t Cerebus end several years ago now?)

A truck ran into Oni Press’s wall/window, but everyone there is fine.

Wizard interviews Gerald Way, who writes Umbrella Academy (and also has a band or something).

Eye on Comics wonders what happened to the promised Adam Hughes All Star Wonder Woman.

Arowette’s Diary presents the Dan Didio Advisory & Warning System. Is your comic at risk of Rape, Death, or Emo?

The Icarus Comics blog notes that some manga categories (for adults, even!) previously little known here are starting to come out in the US market. The possibly not-so-good news is that they’re having to be in Diamond’s “Adult” section since they actually have sexual content.

Comics Reviews

Bookgasm reviews The Architect, by Mike Baron and Andie Tong.

Los Angeles City Beat reviews Tom Neely’s The Blot.

Hannibal Tatu lists this week’s “buy pile” for Comic Book Resources.

Comics Reporter reviews Al Hirschfeld’s 1951 book Show Business Is No Business.

The Daily Cross Hatch reviews Shannon Wheeler’s Screw Heaven, When I Die I’m Going to Mars.

Comics Worth Reading reviews Fell: Feral City.

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