Category: Reviews

Review: ‘American Splendor’ #1 by Harvey Pekar

For several decades now, Harvey Pekar has existed in comic book form as a straight-talking, ill-tempered, hypochondriac who can’t go very long without finding something to complain about.

The latest edition of his American Splendor strikes me as an important moment in that career, then, as Pekar is settling into a more mellow existence. In the first issue of this volume (the second from Vertigo), Pekar doesn’t call a pharmacy worker a Nazi (and benefits from the lack of anger) and doesn’t blow his top at a sycophantic fan who invades his life and doesn’t totally trash a critic who didn’t like his book Macedonia.

One of the things that made Pekar something of a phenomenon in the first place was his always-simmering anger (let loose so famously on David Letterman’s couch), so these stories become interesting in two respects: watching Pekar’s personality change and seeing if his fans stay with him through that metamorphosis.

The eight stories collected here are otherwise a fairly typical mix for Pekar, little snippets of everyday life both mundane and striking, and always entertaining.

The two best are: a small moment with Pekar and Hollywood Bob, who makes a random comment that gives an abrupt and bizarre punctuation to a conversation, and a memory of a theater coworker’s painful relationship from Pekar’s teenage years. Though the art is good throughout, the pencil work by Zachary Baldus in the theater story is some of the best pencil art I’ve seen in comics in quite a long time.

Review: Four Books for Pre-Adults

I had a pile of books more-or-less for kids, and thought: why not review them all together? And so I will:

[[[Flight Explorer, Vol. 1]]]
Edited by Kazu Kibuishi
Villard, 2008, $10.00

The popular [[[Flight]]] series, officially for adults but containing a lot of all-ages stories, has spun off a younger sibling. The cast of cartoonists is pretty much the same, and the editor is still Kibuishi, but this book is shorter, cheaper, smaller, and contains many more characters seemingly designed to headline a series of stories.

The stories are all fairly short – there are ten of them in a book just over a hundred pages – long enough to introduce what mostly seem to be series characters and given them a situation to deal with. The cover-featured “[[[Missile Mouse]]],” by Jake Parker gets the most adventurous, and will probably be the most appealing to the boy audience. (There’s nothing obviously aimed at the girl comics-reading audience – or maybe I mean nothing trying to poach some of the manga audience – though there are several strips with female protagonists, like Ben Hatke’s “[[[Zita the Spacegirl]]].”

The art is still mostly clean-lines enclosing solid colors – an animator’s palette – though the book gets more painterly towards the end, in the pieces by Ben Hatke, Rad Sechrist, Bannister, and Matthew Armstrong. It’s all quite professional and fun – all in all, a great book to hand to an 8-12 year old interested in comics.

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Review: ‘Secret Invasion’ #1

The first issue of Marvel’s big [[[Secret Invasion Summer Extravaganza Skrullfest ’08]]] (or whatever they’re calling it) is here, and there’s just too much to talk about for it to fit in my Weekly Haul reviews roundup. So let’s break this one down between the good, the bad and the ugly. And, be warned if you haven’t read it, spoilers lurk below.

The Good:

First, let me just say how happy I am that Marvel let Brian Michael Bendis continue his partnership with Leinil Yu, who is quickly becoming one of my favorites. His art has a uniquely nervy feel, and it would’ve been easy for Marvel to peg someone more “safe” for their big event. And while I like Yu’s work better when it isn’t inked, his inked work in [[[Secret Invasion]]] is still quite good.

Another strongpoint is the barrel-full of action, making this issue the complete antithesis of the yawner of an opener to House of M. Things develop quickly and the final pages are bang-bang-bang with big reveals and bigger reveals. In a sequence of just a few pages the SWORD base explodes, the negative zone is unleashed in NYC, Iron Man is taken out, Reed Richards is taken out, the “other” heroes show up and a Skrull army says hello.

I also got a kick out of the little details Bendis wrote in. For instance, every Skrull reveal is foreshadowed throughout the book by the art. Every character who is shown only in complete black outline somewhere in the issue turns out to be a Skrull. Well, aside from Sentry and Wolverine, who haven’t been outed yet.

The Bad:

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Review: ‘That Salty Air’ by Tim Sievert

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That Salty Air
Tim Sievert
Top Shelf, 2008, $10.00

For a book about the sea, [[[That Salty Ai]]]r feels awfully Minnesotan. (Or maybe I’m just reacting to the underlying Norwegian-ness of both Minnesota and Sievert’s story – but there is something hard and dour and northern about That Salty Air.)

Maryann and Hugh are a young couple who live in a lonely cabin by the sea, and whose main source of income seems to be fishing. One day, the postman delivers two letters from the local doctor – it’s immediately clear that Maryann’s letter has told her that she’s pregnant, but we get a couple of montages of sea life (red in tooth and claw, for some immediate symbolism) before Hugh gets his letter.

From it, he learns that his mother has drowned, and he immediately turns against the sea, blaming it for her death. Really, he curses the sea and throws a rock, beaning an important squid far below (which action will be important later). Hugh curses his life, runs off to town to get drunk, and generally behaves badly through the middle of the book, while Maryann sits at home, trying to keep things together.

She also hasn’t gotten a chance to tell Hugh she’s pregnant yet, since he flew off the handle so quickly and so completely. He eventually does come back, and they reconcile, with each other and with the sea…more or less.

That Salty Air is an exceptionally symbolic story, very obviously so. Sievert is clearly young and energetic, and I expect he’ll be someone to reckon with once he settles down a bit. This particular book has a lot of strong points – the particulars of characterization, the evocation of a particular landscape, the inky blacks and assured panel-to-panel transitions – but its story made this reader roll his eyes more than once. It’s a bit much to swallow.

But, on the other hand, it’s only ten bucks for over a hundred pages of comics by a real talent. It’s hard to beat that. And I expect Sievert’s next book will add some subtlety to the already impressive strengths of That Salty Air. He’s definitely a talent to watch.


Andrew Wheeler has been a publishing professional for nearly twenty years, with a long stint as a Senior Editor at the Science Fiction Book Club and a current position at John Wiley & Sons. He’s been reading comics for longer than he cares to mention, and maintains a personal, mostly book-oriented blog at antickmusings.blogspot.com.

Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Andrew Wheeler directly at acwheele (at) optonline (dot) net.

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Review: ‘Three Shadows’ by Cyril Pedrosa

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This book will break your heart; I warn you now.

Three Shadows
Cyril Pedrosa
First Second, 2008, $15.95

Louis and Lise are farmers somewhere quiet and untouched, doting parents to their small son Joachim. Their life is bucolic, idyllic: “Back then…life was simple and sweet. Everything was simple and sweet…The taste of cherries, the cool shade, the fresh smell of the river… That was how we lived, in a vale among the hills…sheltered from storms…Ignorant of the world, as though on an island…Peaceful and untroubled…Then everything changed.”

Three figures appear ominously one evening, on horseback at the horizon. Somehow, everyone knows that they’re trouble, but they can’t be confronted. They disappear into the mist, into the distance. Joachim’s dog Diego disappears, and the shadows use his barking to lure the boy – and almost get him.

So Lise goes to the nearest big town to consult with Mistress Pike, whose sign reads “Midwife. Exorcist. Sympathetic Ear.” The truth is what they fear most: the shadows have come for Joachim. And they’re not going to stop.

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Review: ‘The Education of Hopey Glass’

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There’s something effortless about the comics of Jaime Hernandez. Both in storytelling and art, his Love and Rockets books glide smoothly, seamlessly along – perfect little vignettes into imagined lives.

This isn’t to say Hernandez doesn’t work hard at his craft. Take a deeper look at efforts like his latest collection, The Education of Hopey Glass (Fantagraphics, $19.99) and the attention to detail becomes eminently clear. But unless you will yourself toward that cause, it’s only too easy to slide right into the story and only come up for a breath when the last page has been flipped.

The first half of Hopey Glass is a particularly good example. More than just a glimpse into an unsettled life, Hernandez casts Hopey as a deeply shallow young woman suffering in the transition into adulthood, maturity and responsibility.

When her hedonistic impulses butt up against her new job as a teacher’s assistant, Hopey faces the pull of each world, and her anguish is palpable.

The book falters, though, when it suddenly drops that story and picks up the journey of Ray in his quest for women and success. While still a quality piece of comics, it’s much less compelling than Hopey’s story. And so the book as a whole becomes an incomplete puzzle, a collection of great but unfinished pieces.

Review: ‘Batman: The Killing Joke’ Deluxe Edition

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As I picked up a copy of the new Batman: The Killing Joke 20th anniversary hardcover, I flicked open the first page and sliced my finger on its edge. The paper cut seemed fitting, a physical manifestation of the violence contained within the book.

What I always forget about this story in the few-year intervals between readings is just how short it is, at 46 pages. And so each time I’m amazed all over again at how Alan Moore and Brian Bolland teamed to pack such intensity, ferocity and (surprise, surprise) humanity into those pages.

The Killing Joke is without question one of the greatest encounters between Batman and his nemesis, and the real reason is that the story serves both as a zenith for the Joker’s depravity and for his pathos. Even if this origin story isn’t true (as Bolland writes in his afterword), Moore shows a trace of a person behind the maniacal grin. It makes a Joker that’s more real, and more terrifying.

This new edition ($17.99) is of note for the top-notch packaging as well as Bolland’s re-coloring (see the differences between new and old right here). I’m sure there are those who hate the changes simply because it’s different, but the new colors really do improve the book, giving it a subtlety and grimness not present in the original.

The only additional features are a few of Bolland’s sketches and a new short story from him about wanting to murder Batman. It’s not bad, per se, but doesn’t add to the main story and comes across like padding. I suppose it’s a necessary inclusion, though. I mean, 46 pages!

Review: ‘Jenny Finn’ and ‘The Stardust Kid’

Boom! Studios has made a name for itself as a comic book version of the Spike TV network, but this week the publisher released two new collections that step away from that formula.

jenny-finn_tpb-1-2427366The first, Jenny Finn: Doom Messiah ($14.99) is a collection of the three original Jenny Finn issues and the all new fourth and concluding chapter. The book is written by Mike Mignola and is his truest channeling of Lovecraft yet. In fact, the story closely echoes one of Lovecraft’s stories (I forget the name) about a fishing town being invaded by mysterious sea creatures.

That’s not to say the story isn’t original – it’s more elaborate and bizarre, with typical Mignola flourishes, like the constant appearance of fish that mutter, "Doom."

The narrative is simple enough – an average Joe finds himself mired in otherworldly terror and tries to fight (and think) his way out of it – but the plot never falls into stereotype and every few pages brings a new surprise.

Troy Nixey served as artist on the first three issues and perfectly captures the ethereal horror of Mignola’s script (and, thankfully, doesn’t ape Mignola’s artistic style). Farel Dalrymple illustrated the fourth chapter, and while I love his work, this probably isn’t the best project for him.

That bit of criticism aside, Jenny Finn is a great piece of haunted fun. And I forgot the best part: plenty of tentacles.

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Review: Terry Brooks’ ‘Dark Wraith of Shannara’

Dark Wraith of Shannara
By Terry Brooks, Illustrated by Edwin David, Adapted by Robert Place Napton
Del Rey, 2008, $13.95

I am morally sure that the following conversation took place somewhere, among some people, before this book came into existence:

“It’s not fair! All of those other fantasy writers are getting comics based on their books!”

“Yeah! Why Salvatore and Hamilton but not Brooks?”

“What do they have that he hasn’t got? He’s at least as popular as Feist!”

I have no idea who said it, or who they said it to, but, somehow, the influence of the Dabel Brothers has led to ever more epic fantasy writers getting the urge (or maybe just the contract) to create graphic novels based on their work.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that; American comics have been a closed guys-in-tights shop for a generation now, and anything that opens that up is nice. But it is a bit weird, personally, when the two sides of my world collide quite so violently.

Dark Wraith of Shannara, unlike most of the recent epic fantasy comics out there, doesn’t adapt anything; it’s a brand-new story set in Terry Brooks’s very famous (and very bestselling) world of Shannara. For continuity geeks – and aren’t we all that, about something? – this takes place soon after the end of the novel The Wishsong of Shannara, and involves much of the cast of that book. Wishsong is the third of the original Shannara “trilogy:” they’re nothing like a trilogy, despite being three books about members of the same family published relatively quickly and all having the word “Shannara” in the title, but fantasy fans will call any conglomeration of three books a trilogy if you don’t stop them with heavy armament.

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Review: ‘Life Sucks’ by Abel, Soria and Pleece

It doesn’t seem a stretch to assume every possible vampire story has been done, from the classics to Anne Rice’s romanticizations to the modern Blade to the self-obsessed Shadow of the Vampire to the Dracula: Dead and Loving It spoof.

I won’t claim that Life Sucks (First Second, $19.95) is jaw-droppingly revolutionary, no. But it does deliver a riff on vampires that hasn’t been seen before.

To put it bluntly, Dave is a loser. He’s a wimpy young guy stuck working a dead-end job at an LA convenience store, and he’s in love with a goth girl who doesn’t know he exists. On top of all that, he’s a vampire, which just makes the life of the former-vegetarian all the more miserable.

The story of Life Sucks began several years ago when co-writers Jessica Abel and Gabe Soria were talking about vampires and wondered what it would be like for a young vampire stuck in the real world. After all, vampires don’t just start out with a big castle and tons of wealth, Soria told me.

Like a typical young adult, Dave is just starting out and trying to establish a life for himself. The vampire angle adds to his difficulties (despite a few cool powers), with the need to hide from sunlight, forage for blood and obey his master, Count Radu, the old vampire who infected him and owns the convenience store where Dave works.

Instead of obsessing with drudgery, the authors craft a simple but effective story of Dave’s pursuit of love, one that becomes expectedly complicated given the indie comics background of Abel. Life Sucks works because it’s a good little yarn about young adulthood, with the vampire angle serving more than anything as extra flavoring.

The art, by Warren Pleece, is appropriately grounded and manages to stay lively even during lulls in action. I interviewed him about his work on the book a little back, which you can read right here.

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