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Review: ‘Demo’ by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan

It seems every month that a new comic comes out purporting to offer a new, more realistic slant on superheroes. From Watchmen to Next Men to Powers to Kick Ass, that idea has long been a popular one.

Except, none of those comics feel very real. Sure, they take elements from reality and offer a slightly more grounded or cynical look at heroes, but the stories within their pages don’t begin to evoke everyday life.

And this is why Demo stands so far apart. The on-again, off-again series from writer Brian Wood and artist Becky Cloonan is finally concluded, and all 12 issues are now collected in a substantive new softcover (Vertigo, $19.99).

Begun in 2003 with a first issue featuring a girl struggling to handle her newfound telekinesis, the series was always about the people in the stories, not the abilities that set them apart. That first issue is rich with metaphor: the girl learns how to break away from home, become independent and not get in the way of her potential. Valuable lessons for anyone.

One of the strongest issues (#5), follows a girl who physically changes in appearance to match the desires of the people who see her. She could be a kooky X-Man, but Wood instead uses the strange ability to explore perception and desire, and the line between love and lust.

While the material is well worth reading on its own, one of the subtexts to watch is the continued development of Wood and Cloonan. You can trace their growth as creators along with the issues, and in the end the series is something entirely new again, not really touching on superpowers at all.

Cloonan’s work is exceptional, bouncing between styles from issue to issue. It’s hard to believe one person was responsible for such a disparate collection of art.

And while Demo features almost entirely young, hip characters — Wood’s bread and butter — he writes their interactions with as much grace as any writer in comics. There is a deep, haunting truth to these stories, so realistic it almost hurts.

Van Jensen is a former crime reporter turned comic book journalist. Every Wednesday, he braves Atlanta traffic to visit Oxford Comics, where he reads a whole mess of books for his weekly reviews. Van’s blog can be found at graphicfiction.wordpress.com.

Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Van Jensen directly at van (dot) jensen (at) gmail (dot) com.

Rutu Modan’s New Comic Strip Debuts

  • Uncategorized
  • July 1, 2008

The people over at The New York Times Magazine clearly have a great sense of the contemporary comic book scene. Earlier this year they picked up a new series by Jason (of I Killed Adolf Hitler fame), and now they’re debuting a new series by Rutu Modan, whose graphic novel Exit Wounds was one of the best books of 2007.

The ongoing strip, The Murder of the Terminal Patient, is kicked off with a selection of Modan’s comics, which you can view right here. One of the pages is at right, from Exit Wounds. The first chapter of Terminal Patient is also available to download as a pdf.

As with much of Modan’s work, it’s set in Israel. So far, it features Dima, who emigrated from Russia and works as a nurse in a hospital. 

(via The Beat)

Interview: Hugh Sterbakov on ‘Freshmen’ and the ‘Summer Vacation Special’

fr_special-7594482When Freshmen was first solicited by its publisher Top Cow, the series was promoted as "The adventures of college freshmen with extraordinary powers."

And while many writers might respond by rolling their eyes, smirking and claiming that their characters were a bit more serious and tackled deeper social issues, Freshmen creators Seth Green and Hugh Sterbakov embrace that tagline for their popular series. When the series kicked off, their heroes were naive college freshmen making the same mistakes any other freshmen might, but on a much larger, action-packed scale.

Majoring in outrageous situations with a minor in young adult drama, the original Freshmen: Introduction to Superpowers miniseries passed its first semester with honors. The second volume, Freshmen II: Fundamental of Fear, is currently wrapping up — soon to be followed by a Freshmen: Summer Vacation Special in July.

While actor, writer and producer Seth Green gets a lot of the spotlight because of his involvement with movies, the Family Guy TV series and co-creating Robot Chicken, co-writer Hugh Sterbakov is very much the heart and soul of the series.

COMICMIX: For new readers who haven’t studied the Freshmen curriculum, what do they need to know for the test? Let’s hear the CliffsNotes version of the series…

HUGH STERBAKOV: It’s a whole dramatic and comedic saga with a crapload of characters and relationships, but if we’re cramming, I’d say that a bunch of college freshmen have been given superpowers by the explosion of a special machine, and the powers are based on whatever they were thinking at that moment.

So one guy can burp at anyone and make them drunk, one girl can make everyone fall in love with her, another guy is totally sticky, that dude can talk to plants, this girl can jump into people’s minds… and they’re (sort of) led by a comic book geek who didn’t get any powers and a talking beaver obsessed with building dams.

The important story elements leading into this [special] deal with three traumatic goodbyes from the end of our last series, Freshmen II.  Green Thumb, the plant guy, left his beloved plant, which had a Fatal Attraction-type obsessiveness over him. Brady and Renee, sometimes called the Drama Twins [with the powers to repel and attract whenever they are in contact with each other], ended their toxic relationship for good, because Brady fell in love with Annalee, the Puppeteer, who can jump into people’s minds.
 
Norrin, our resident "Wannabe" comic guy, watched his beloved girlfriend die. It was a dark ending, but this Summer Vacation Special is the first step toward a bright new future.

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Dennis O’Neil’s Moving Words

Sunday afternoon. Two hundred and four days left before he gallops on back to Texas and that consarn brush that always seems to need clearing.

Listen, I want to make an offer… George and Laura, if you need help moving, just give me a call. I can be at the White House in five or six hours and, sure, I’m not as young as I once was, but I can still lift a box or two, and I’ll be more than happy to buy the pizza.

And now for something completely different…

Last week, we mentioned crossovers – specifically, how Marvel’s movie division seems to be getting ready to emulate the comic book division’s old, old ploy and engage in crossovers. The trick, as I’m sure you know, is simple: take a lead character from one series and put said character into another. Comics have, as mentioned in the earlier column, have been doing crossovers for a long time, probably beginning with Sub-Mariner and The Human Torch hassling in the early 40s. I’m not counting DC’s Justice Society title, which assembled a small herd of super doers, because these guys and gal weren’t moving into each other’s magazines, but into a separate venue. (Does anyone know of any crossing over earlier than that of Subby and The Torch?)

It didn’t stop with the comics, even way back then. About once a year, Batman and Robin took over bad-guy-catching chores from the radio version of Superman for a week or two while the Man of Steel was indisposed and the actor who voiced him, Bud Collyer, took a vacation.

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Rough Cut of ‘The Spirit’ Completed

  • News
  • June 30, 2008

spiritposter-4746720The always worth reading Variety Bags and Boards blog has an update on the upcoming The Spirit movie, adapted by Frank Miller from Will Eisner’s cherished comics series.

We recently spoke with “The Spirit” producer Deborah Del Prete, who says a green-screen cut of the film has been completed and has everyone very excited about the results. The production is now waiting as more than 1,800 VFX shots are coming in from San Francisco-based house The Orphanage. … Expect to see some new footage from the film at Comic-Con …

This shouldn’t do anything to ease concerns some fans have expressed that The Spirit is going to follow the visual cues of 300 and Sin City, both of which relied heavily on green screens and special effects. But at least we’ll soon be able to see some actual footage and judge for ourselves.

Meanwhile, four new posters have been released for the film, each featuring one of the femme fatales from the Frank Miller-directed film. Head over to Yahoo! to hear the actresses speak the lines. Can’t say I’m thrilled to see the “keep the mask on” line reappear after All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder #7, but it should work better with The Spirit than Batman.

The posters, available right here, are of the various female characters in the film, including those notorious femme fatales.

thessaly-6610434

Happy Birthday: Shawn McManus

  • News
  • June 30, 2008

thessaly-3441323Born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1958, Shawn McManus got his comic book start in the early 1980s, working for Heavy Metal. He illustrated two issues of the Alan Moore run on Swamp Thing, then went on to draw most of the “A Game of You” storyline in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.

McManus also drew issues of Omega Men, Batman, Doctor Fate, and the Thessaly limited series in The Sandman Presents. He has done work for Marvel Comics (Peter Parker Spider-Man and Daredevil), Dark Horse (Cheval Noir), First Comics (GrimJack), Image (Supreme), America’s Best Comics (Tom Strong), and others.

In 1985 he was nominated for a Jack Kirby Award for Swamp Thing #32.

 

New York Times Profiles Comics Art Collectors

  • News
  • June 30, 2008

batmankillingjokespecialalanmoorebr-4924521Comics have long been a haven for collectors, that niche of consumers who’ll drop six figures on an old Disney issue or a near-mint of a Golden Age superhero.

As comics are becoming less of a disposable form of entertainment, the issues are increasingly common. So individual issues are no longer a hot commodity.

I don’t see it as a new trend, but The New York Times saw fit to devote a lengthy story to the new target of comics collectors — original artwork. The article mentions how originals were once used to sop up ink stains, but they’ve gradually become more and more valuable, to the point that they’re now selling for inordinately high prices.

Collectors of original comic-book art sound like a subculture within a subculture, and that’s fine with many aficionados. “There was a thrill in finding something nerdier than collecting comics,” said David Mandel, 37, an executive producer of the HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” who first bought original art during a visit to the San Diego Comic-Con in 1995.

Mr. Mandel has pieces that would make many fans drool, like the cover, by Gil Kane and Dave Cockrum, of Giant-Size X-Men from 1975, which trumpeted Wolverine, Storm and others as the new incarnation of the mutant team, and the 1982 cover of Daredevil No. 181, by Frank Miller, depicting the death of Elektra, the title hero’s girlfriend.

His collection also includes the last four pages from “The Killing Joke,” a seminal 1988 story that helped usher in a new level of maturity for comic books. That Batman tale chronicles a possible origin for the hero’s nemesis, and was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Brian Bolland. In November the last page of the story became available at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas. Mr. Mandel landed it for just over $31,000.

It would’ve been nice if the reporter had talked to Scott Dunbier, currently an IDW editor and formerly one of the better known art dealers. If you want to hear some great stories about buying and selling comics art, I highly recommend Scott’s blog.

Review: ‘Superpowers’ by David J. Schwartz

superpowers-us1-4585912Superpowers: A Novel
By David J. Schwartz
Crown, June 2008, $14.95

There are two kinds of superhero novels, with very different rules. The more common – but less respected – kind of superhero novel takes characters and situations we already know from an existing comics universe and tells a story using that furniture. Those books can be amazing, like Elliott S. Maggin’s two Superman novels, Last Son of Krypton and Miracle Monday, or they can be mediocre, like…fill in your own example here. But they all hit the ground running, since they work from our knowledge of those universes. Who would read a Spider-Man novel if he’d never heard of [[[Spider-Man]]]?

The other kind of superhero novel tends to come from people outside the comics field, and usually reinvents the wheel in its vision of superheroics. (Like everything else, sometimes doing it elegantly and sometimes producing an oval object that doesn’t even work as a wheel.) Some of the better examples of that type of superhero novel are Michael Bishop’s Count Geiger’s Blues and the recent Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. Those books often have aggressively obvious titles – [[[Superfolks]]], [[[Hero]]], that kind of thing – to immediately signal to the audience that they’re novels about superheroes.

[[[Superpowers]]] is one of the latter kind of novels, down to the title. The British cover (see the continuation) even has line drawings of the characters in costume (by Norm Breyfogle, a name we who read comics will nod knowingly at), much in the style of last year’s [[[Soon I Will Be Invincible]]]. And the set-up is quite typical of an outsider superhero novel: five undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) develop individual superpowers after an evening of drinking homemade beer. (One of the endearing things about Superpowers is that Schwartz doesn’t even try to explain their origin – something unexpected happened, and they now have powers. Period.)

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Joss Whedon Teases ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’

  • News
  • June 30, 2008

With all the superhero movies coming out this year, we almost forgot about Joss Whedon’s Doctor Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog project. Well, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer hasn’t. He’s been hard at work along with Niel Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion. The superhero musical is done and details about its debut have been announced on Whedonesque along with a trailer. Find out which of your friends has the biggest monitor and bring the over the popcorn.

We’ve posted the info about the project’s debut below, and the video trailer is posted after the jump.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog" will be streamed, LIVE (that part’s not true), FREE (sadly, that part is) right on Drhorrible.com, in mid-July. Specifically:

ACT ONE (Wheee!) will go up Tuesday July 15th.

ACT TWO (OMG!) will go up Thursday July 17th.

ACT THREE (Denouement!) will go up Saturday July 19th.

All acts will stay up until midnight Sunday July 20th. Then they will vanish into the night, like a phantom (but not THE Phantom – that’s still playing. Like, everywhere.)
 

 

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Review: ‘All Star Batman and Robin Vol. 1’

assbar-9206861A couple years ago, back when Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All Star Batman and Robin started inconsistently shipping, I read the first few issues and then waved the series off. I hated it so much I added an extra “S” and started referring to it by the acronym ASSBAR.

At the time, it seemed like a good portion of comics critics felt similarly about the book. Then a curious thing happened. More and more reviewers started to come around to the new, harsh [[[Batman]]] that called Robin “retarded” and tried to kill cops.

Now with the first volume conveniently collected, I decided to revisit the series. Had it improved? Had I just given up to early? Or was it still ASSBAR?

As much as I love that nickname, I may have to retire it, because this series is not as bad as I first thought. Miller displays a near-mastery of pulp dialogue and narration, and Lee proves what everyone already knows, that he’s a master draftsman of superhero comics.

In case you’re one of the select few who haven’t read the book, it’s a wholly new take on Batman’s first years, and he’s portrayed as essentially a psycho. Which, in a lot of ways, makes sense. You have to be pretty nuts to put on tights and kick the crap out of muggers.

But Miller pushes it to ugly extremes, with Batman kidnapping Dick Grayson and forcing him into the war on crime, nearly killing fellow superheroes and possibly killing corrupt police officers. This Batman is completely unhinged, which becomes fully apparent in a later issue when the Joker appears and seems sedate by comparison.

Now, this is what Miller does well, crackling along at the harsh edge of humanity as he has in Sin City, 300 and elsewhere. But there are two inherent problems: First, this goes against every incarnation of Batman we’ve seen and degrades the character. Second, and most importantly, that degradation doesn’t work because it’s paired with Lee’s artwork.

(more…)

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