Review: ‘Confessions of a Blabbermouth’
Mike Carey is a noted writer of both comics and prose – Lucifer
Confessions of a Blabbermouth
I’ve reviewed Minx comics twice before for ComicMix – Re-Gifters
Tagged: Andrew Wheeler
ComicMix Columns For the Week Ending Feb. 17, 2008
The WGA writers are back at work, thank goodness, so there’s finally some good stuff to watch this President’s Day weekend (how can one have a "day weekend" anyway?). Meanwhile, our ComicMix columnists have been typing away as usual; here’s what we’ve done for you this past week:
- Mike Gold – Whizzy’s Wazoo #53: Today, We Are One
- Dennis O’Neil – The Four-Color Answer #53: Lost in ‘Lost’
- Me – It’s All Good #52: The Dancing Bear Exposé
- John Ostrander – Tales From The O-zone #53: Star Trek My Eye!
- Michael Davis – Straight, No Chaser #53: My Follow Americans
- Andrew Wheeler – Manga Friday #16: A Slight Return
- Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise #44: The ‘In’ Crowd
- Michael H. Price – Forgotten Horrors #44: On the Wavelength of ‘The Signal’
- Ric Meyers – DVD XTra #37: He-Man and the Nine Amateurs
Just as a reminder, Denny O’Neill’s column was a bit waylaid this week so we didn’t get to enjoy it until Friday, but he’s still listed in his usual date order above…
ComicMix Columns For The Week Ending Feb. 10, 2008
There’s a new Marshall in town, and he’s laid down the law against punny headers. So let’s just get down to business and rustle up this past week’s worth of ComicMix columns:
- Mike Gold – Whizzy’s Wazoo #52: "…this is Captain American calling…"
- Dennis O’Neil – The Four-Color Answer #52: William James and the Superbowl
- Me – It’s All Good #51: Birds of a Feather
- John Ostrander – Tales From The O-zone #52: Me Eat Meat
- Michael Davis – Straight, No Chaser #52: Pow! Zap! Dim! Thick! Asinine!
- Andrew Wheeler – Manga Friday #15: Something Old, Something New
- Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise #43: The Look of Love
- Michael A. Price – Forgotten Horrors #43: George A. Romero’s ‘Diary of the Dead’ in Review
- Ric Meyers – DVD XTra #36: Turok, Son of Stanley Kramer
So if ComicMix newbee Rick is the Marshall, does that make me the schoolmarm with the heart of go — nah, I’m more like the extra mumbling "rhubarb" in the background…
‘The Wind in the Willows’ Review
Classic Illustrated Deluxe # 1: The Wind in the Willows
Novel by Kenneth Grahame; adapted by Michel Plessix
Papercutz, 2007, $13.95 (paperback) / $17.95 (hardcover)
I’ve wasted a lot of time not writing the review for this book, mostly because I suspected it would be one of the shortest in my career. (And both you and my ComicMix overlords deserve better than a super-short review.)
The problem is that there really isn’t much to say about Michel Plessix’s adaptation of The Wind in the Willows: it’s lovely and sweet, one of the best adaptations of a novel into the comics form that I’ve ever seen. When a book does everything right, it can be hard to talk about it, and I can’t see anything that Plessix does wrong here.
Plessix’s linework is careful and assured, capturing complex scenes with ease and giving life and emotion to a wide variety of anthropomorphic animal characters. Even more than that, he’s mastered the tricky art of those animals: they’re human enough to have gestures and body language, but animal enough to be believable as talking frogs, badgers, rats, and so on. And then he draws humans in the mix as well, and makes the combination not just work for the space of a few pages, but feel natural and obvious.
On top of all that is a carefully-chosen palette of mostly light, pastel colors, trying it all together with the perfect touch. The art of The Wind in the Willows is simply exquisite, but you need to look at it closely; it doesn’t demand attention but instead serves and advances the story. (more…)
ComicMix Columns For The Week Ending Feb 3, 2008
Snackies at hand? Ready to cheer on the best ads in between the quarters? Me, I’m psyched to see me some Tom Petty at halftime. Before they take the field for Superbowl XLIIayeaye!!one!, why not warm up with this past week’s ComicMix columns?:
- Mike Gold – Whizzy’s Wazoo #51: Sex
- Dennis O’Neil – The Four-Color Answer #51: Hate
- Me – It’s All Good #50: Death, Warmed Over
- John Ostrander – Tales From The O-zone #51: Rant-O-Rama
- Michael Davis – Straight, No Chaser #51: The Worst TV Show Ever – Part 2
- Andrew Wheeler – Manga Friday #14: Is That a Giant Sword in Your Pocket, Or…?
- Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise #42: Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead
- Michael A. Price – Forgotten Horrors #42: Capt. Marvel and Serial Retro-Mania
- Ric Meyers – DVD XTra #35: Across the Midnight Express Universe
I love how the titles of those first three columns kind of go together… sex, hate, death (warmed over)… Anyway, Giants in, erm, four, just to be weird…
Good For What Ails You
There’s something in the air, and unfortunately your author has caught it. But it’s well worth rising from one’s sickbed to bring you the weekly roundup of ComicMix columnists! Isn’t it?:
- Mike Gold – Whizzy’s Wazoo #50: I Am Not Running For President
- Dennis O’Neil – The Four-Color Answer #50: Morality and such
- Me – It’s All Good #49: The Great Divide
- John Ostrander – Tales From The O-zone #50: This Is Not My Column
- Michael Davis – Straight, No Chaser #50: The Worst TV Show Ever – Part 1
- Andrew Wheeler – Manga Friday #13: Sex and Death
- Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise #41: Ballad of a Thin Man
- Michael A. Price – Forgotten Horrors #41: Ingagi: Gorillas in Our Midst
- Ric Meyers – DVD XTra #34: Life of Groundhog
Apologies for not adding in Andrew Wheeler’s "Manga Friday" columns before now, but he’s only started numbering them himself. And by the way, the best thing about being sick? Erm, well, nothing, actually…
Sex and Death, by Andrew Wheeler
This week: three manga series featuring sex and death in high school. (I don’t know about you folks, but if my high school was like some of the ones in manga series, I wouldn’t have bothered to graduate.)
Case in point: Sundome by Kazuto Okada, a story about a young woman who may just be the single biggest tease in the history of the human race. (By the way, the title is pronounced “sun-do-may” and is a Japanese term meaning “stopping just before.” And, yes, the general implication is pretty much what you think it is.) Her name is Kurumi Sahana, and, in time-tested manga fashion, she’s the transfer student who arrives at this high school on page two. Narrator Hideo Aiba falls for her immediately, and thus tries to resign from his “roman club” – a collection of three other exceptionally geeky young men dedicated to vague “romantic” ideals. One of the rules of the club is that members must remain virgins until graduation, and Hideo, being an honest young man, is hoping he can break that vow, and, being very Japanese about it, wants to quit first.
What follows is a very exaggerated but not completely unbelievable sex comedy. Hideo is a whiny little schlub – of course, he’s the hero of a sex comedy manga, so I’m repeating myself – and Kurumi knows exactly what he wants and refuses to give it to him. On the other hand, she’s more than willing to torment him, with a glimpse of this or a touch of that, to get him to do what she wants. One of the things she wants, though, is for Hideo to grow a spine and stop being such a wimpy little stereotype, so she doesn’t come across as a bitch. Manipulative, yes. More than a little cruel, clearly. Not someone to introduce to your mother, absolutely. But she’s honest, and not capricious, and she does follow through on what she says.
(Another girl – somewhat more conventional but also in her way tormenting Hideo and his fellow members of the Roman Club – shows up about halfway through the book.)
I feel I should apologize for liking Sundome, but I did enjoy it. It’s “sexy” in a completely sophomoric way, full of panty shots and nipples straining against fabric, but it’s authentically tawdry and juvenile. It’s probably not a book for women, or for men who have completely outgrown their own childishness (which I clearly haven’t), but if you’ve ever wished Superbad was a book, you are in luck.
The Art of Bone Review
The first thing I should mention is that, although this book is credited to Jeff Smith, it doesn’t seem to have been written by him. I think the text in it – aside from a stilted introduction by Lucy Shelton Caswell, curator of the Ohio State Cartoon Research Library – was actually written by the editor, Diana Schutz, but the book itself doesn’t actually say. The text talks about Smith in the third person, and doesn’t show any strong connection to his personal thoughts, so it certainly looks like it was written by someone else.
But no one reads a book like this for the text: the pictures are the main draw, and this is full of pictures. Over two hundred large, well-designed and cleanly printed pages showcase lots of Smith’s Bone art, from early sketches to final color work. The text tends to be descriptive – dating particular pieces, or explaining where in the process they were created – rather than more discursive.
The Art of Bone begins with a 1970ish comic from a very young Smith, in which a very Carl Barks-ian Fone and Phoney Bone have an adventure trying to retrieve a lost gem. (This is clearly juvenilia, but has some cute touches, such as a “title wave” which is not a misspelling.) There are a few other bits from the prehistory of Bone as well, such as a few strips from the Thorn comic Smith drew for Ohio State’s Lantern daily paper. (I’d love to see a full collection of these; the art is clearly professional quality, and the fact that he re-used a lot of the plot in Bone proper is no longer a big problem, since Bone is complete.)
Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil Review
The old Fawcett Captain Marvel (as opposed to all of the other Captains Marvel since him) is a character that pretty much all comics kibitzers agree should be handled with a light, semi-humorous touch, kept out of tight continuity, and allowed to be fun. But we’re usually left deploring the situation when he’s given yet another grim ‘n’ gritty makeover to be “relevant” and to shoehorn him into continuity. But Jeff Smith is on our side – as a million comics bloggers have mentioned before me – and his Captain Marvel is much closer to Otto Binder & C.C. Beck’s than it is to Judd Winick’s.
Smith spent his first decade-plus in the comics industry working on one long story – the bestselling and critically acclaimed Bone – so the first thing The Monster Society of Evil does is prove that he’s not just a one-trick pony. (It also shows, by implication, that the center of gravity of the field has still not shifted: even a massively successful independent creator, who could do anything at all for his second major project, will still have a tendency to want to work on a superhero for the Big Two, featuring a character created decades before he was born and owned by an international conglomerate.) Smith, as we all suspected, is just a good storyteller, and the odds are that he’ll have a lot more stories to tell over the next few decades.
The Monster Society of Evil is a very loose retelling of the story from Captain Marvel Adventures of the same name, serialized over more than twenty issues during World War II. (Which, incidentally, proves that it wasn’t all “Done in One” stories back in the Good Old Days – there have always been different kinds of stories.) The original story was very much a serial, like the movie serials of the day, with cliffhanger endings and escalating dangers from episode to episode. It’s a fun roller-coaster ride, but, re-reading it these days, it’s also very much of its time. (more…)
Manga Friday: Wandering Assassins
Manga are just as full of fossilized genres as any other popular media, as I’m coming to discover. A case in point is this week’s haul: three series, all from the same publisher, all of which can be vaguely characterized as being about a wandering assassin.
OK, I’m stretching the term too far with the first book, Gin Tama. Our title character, Sakata Gintoki, is a samurai on a near-future Earth economically dominated by aliens, where carrying a sword has been outlawed. He doesn’t actually go around killing people for money – though he will kill them along the way to doing other things, if they really deserve it – but instead works various odd jobs, which tend to require violence by the end. At the beginning of the book, he picks up a sidekick, our viewpoint character, Shinpachi – who was also trained to be a samurai, but has few skills and is in the book mostly to be the reader identification character (pop-culture- and food-obsessed, slightly overweight, glasses wearing – these Japanese creators know how to pander like no one’s business). They pick up a third member of their team in the middle of this volume, but I shouldn’t give away her secrets ahead of time.
Gin Tama doesn’t take itself all that seriously; it’s clearly a historical story (set in the Meiji period, more or less) moved bodily into a SF setting, with only minor changes to make things fit. And, like a lot of comics, it’s easier to enjoy something mildly silly if it knows that it’s silly – Gin Tama is quite aware that it’s quite generic, and quite hard to believe, but it’s ready to entertain anyway. I appreciate that, even if I find the winking at the audience and obvious melodrama a bit much. This isn’t the greatest samurai comic out there, but it’s a fun samurai comic that I don’t expect will ever get terribly serious, and there’ll always be a market for that.
