NYCC 2009: Setup day photos
Listen… you can hear the engines beginning to rev…
But what’s on the floor? Let’s take a look…
Tagged: Village Voice
Review: ‘Typhon’ Vol. 1
Typhon
Dirty Danny Press, $24.95
At 50, I’m pretty set in my comic book reading habits. Having been raised largely on the output from DC Comics and Marvel, I have fairly mainstream tastes. Now and then, though, I push myself to see what else is out there. As a result, reading Danny Hellman’s recently published [[[Typhon]]] anthology was an eye-opening experience.
The 192-page full-color trade paperback allows me the chance to see who else is producing comic book work. Typhon takes its name from Greek mythology and is a creature with hundreds of hissing serpents, outdoing the Medusa. Venom was said to drip form their eyes and lava to be spit from their mouths. There are no super-heroes, no continuing characters, nothing based on a media property (although Droopy appears in one story). Each tendril from the creature’s head is the product of the fertile imagination of the 42 creators who contributed to over the course of several years.
Hellman may be best known for his [[[Legal Action Comics]]] in addition to his own work at Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and the Village Voice. Promoting the book, he said, “I realized that I was looking at a far more ambitious book than what I’d done previously. The work presented in Typhon covers a wide spectrum of what’s possible in comics, from zany, offbeat humor to unnerving existential angst, and on to chilling horror, all of it brought to life with breathtaking, cutting-edge artwork.
“Anthologies give us the opportunity to enjoy work by talented cartoonists who, for whatever reason, don’t produce enough material to fill out solo books. As an editor of anthologies, I’m excited to provide a showcase for artists and work that we might not see otherwise. Diversity makes for a richer comics scene.”
Everything he says is correct and to be applauded. I really enjoyed the colorful, inventive use of the page from Hans Rickheit, Rupert Bottenberg, Tobias Tak, and Fiona Smyth. They created visually arresting images and used color in appealing ways. On the other hand, I could not make heads or tails out of Bald Eagles’ eight page head trip that is hard on the eyes and unreadable.
On the other hand, way too often I’d reach the end of these short works and scratch my head. “What the hell was that all about?” was a repeated refrain. I’m used to stories about character or stories about something. Yet, these works seem to be characters and situations that begin and end and say nothing. Too frequently, I think the creators were out to amuse themselves, forgetting their audience. Rick Trembles’ “[[[Goopy Spasms]]]” feels like it was done because he could not because he had something say or share and was generally off-putting.
Hellman told Tom Spurgeon, “…It can be tough to pin down precisely what ‘good drawing’ is. Ultimately, beautiful art is a matter of taste. Drawing chops, anatomical knowledge, the ability to recreate the natural world in two dimensions and have it be both accurate and pleasing to the eye; these are important. But what’s really vital is that we connect with the art on an emotional, perhaps spiritual level.”
I’m all in favor of creative freedom but if someone wants my $24.95, then the editor of the collection has to step up and guide the talent to make certain their point, if there is one, gets across, from page to reader. Here, Hellman spectacularly fails.
He kicks off the collection with his own “[[[The Terror in Peep Booth 5]]]” which looks and reads closest to a mainstream comic, complete with beginning, middle and end. After that, though, it’s all over the place. Perhaps the most moving piece is Tim Lane’s “The Manic Depressive from Another Planet”.
I enjoyed being exposed to new voices and talents but come away disappointed that there are all these people with very little to say.
Norman Mailer, Neil Gaiman Fanboy
Norman Mailer died this morning, age 84, at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. You can scour the news to read about his importance to literature in the Twentieth Century, from his ground-breaking novels to founding the Village Voice. But did you know he also helped change comics?
One night, we had a dinner party for the express purpose of introducing Mailer to Neil Gaiman. Neil, as was his habit, was so charming that Norman wanted to read Sandman. He liked the series enough to provide a cover blurb for the next trade paperback collection. Neil later reported that bookstore buyers told him that the Mailer quote persuaded them to stock graphic novels. And the rest, as they say, is history. Ancient Evenings is an awesome book. Start there.
COMICS LINKS: Inferior Five Edition
Comics Links
Hipster Dad thinks that there should be an Inferior Five collection.
Comic Book Resources talks to Christos Gage.
Chris’s Invincible Super-Blog presents more evidence that Bob Kanigher was a mad genius.
Greg Burgas of Comics Should Be Good reviews this week’s comics, starting with Batman Annual #26.
Brian Cronin of CSBG reviews the unpublished graphic novel Division Shadow.
Living Between Wednesdays’ weekly reviews start with Countdown to Adventure #1.
The Daily Cross Hatch interviews Peter Kuper about his new book Stop Forgetting to Remember.
Comics Reviews
Fantasy Book Critic reviews The Nightmare Factory, a graphic novel based on four stories from the collection of the same name by Thomas Ligotti.
Wizard reviews the covers of three recent comics.
Blogcritics reviews Good As Lilly by Derek Kirk Kim and Jesse Hamm.
Panels and Pixels has a manga review roundup.
The Daily Cross Hatch reviews the first collection of “Perry Bible Fellowship” strips by Nicholas Gurewitch, The Trial of Colonel Sweeto.
The Savage Critics reviews:
- Brian Hibbs on Amazons Attack! #6 and others
- Graeme McMillan on 52 Aftermath: The Four Horsemen #1 and others
- Jog reviews 1989’s Taboo #2
MARTHA THOMASES: Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was a poet, short story writer and critic for The New Yorker in its heyday. When I was first writing, I wanted to be Dorothy Parker. Well, actually, I wanted to be Nora Ephron, who wrote a column in Esquire at the time, and who said that she had once wanted to be Dorothy Parker. A quick trip to the library, and I had an entertaining week reading her poetry. You probably know at least one of her poems, “News Item,” which goes:
Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
Her literary and theatrical criticism, under the nom-de-plume of Constant Reader, was also hilarious, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. You can catch up with her poems, short stories and reviews in the omnibus Portable Dorothy Parker.
Mostly, however, she was celebrated for being the only woman at the Algonquin Round Table. In a group that included Robert Benchley, Harold Ross, George S. Kaufman, Harpo Marx, Alexander Woollcott and others, Parker was the only woman considered witty enough to be a regular (although Edna Ferber and Jane Grant, Ross’ wife, sat in occasionally).
It was an attractive fantasy for an unpopular girl in boarding school. I was not a person who got to sit at a table with boys. The only males who listened to me were my teachers, who were paid for it. Naturally, I looked for a way to be sought after, instead of merely tolerated. I spent the next twenty years writing, trying to earn my place at the table. If only I had known that the easiest thing to do was to work for a comic book publisher.
I’d freelanced for Marvel in the 1980s, but being on staff at DC was an entirely different animal. All of a sudden, I had everyone’s telephone number, and if I called someone for no apparent reason, my call was still answered happily. I could go to one of the Warner Bros. movie screenings and have people save me a seat. I could sit at any table at any bar near a convention and be welcome. In fact, I was often the only woman at the table.
It was heady stuff. True, these were not the prep school boys whose attention I had craved in my teens, but instead comic book editors, artists and writers. They were often smart and funny, but hardly ever blond or WASPy. Still, it felt as if I was sitting at the table with the cool kids. I was getting laughs telling jokes to guys who weren’t my husband. This was better than therapy!
