More Library Comics

Some more stuff recently read from the library. Exhausted the currently available 20th CENTURY BOYS, not that eager to finish it up. Took a look at the new edition of ADOLF to see if it'll be worth an upgrade. Kind of liked Alan Moore & Co.'s TOP TEN, less so the related books. And not as impressed with the second FATALE book.

Sitting around waiting to be read, THE HEART OF THOMAS, THE UNDERWATER WELDER, THE NEW DEADWARDIANS and some more DC "New 52" books.

20th CENTURY BOYS Vol. 9-19
That finishes up the volumes of Naoki Urasawa's series that the library has so far. It looks like they've been getting volumes about a year after they come out for some reason, so there's a chance they'll get the rest. After the last few books, though, I'm not sure I care. It was really great stuff for a few books in the middle there, but some of the convoluted twists and drawn out storytelling in the last few books just make me tired. A shame, for a while there I was seriously considering buying at least the books the library was missing, maybe even a full set. Now, I'll probably finish if the library eventually gets the rest, but I'm in no real hurry.

Or, alternatively, I noticed that they also have all three volumes of the film adaptation of the series, so maybe I'll take a look at those some day. Not sure how faithful the films are to the plot of the series, but I assume the general idea is the same, and this is a case where compressing the story would be a good thing, eliminating some of the redundancies and red herrings.


MESSAGE TO ADOLF. PART 1

This is the first of two volumes of a new translation of the Osamu Tezuka series ADORUFU NI TSUGU, previously published in English in five volumes as ADOLF. That was the first Tezuka I'd ever read, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I was glad to see it in the library, since I wasn't sure if I wanted to get the new version (one of the reasons I've been reading so much from the library recently is that I'm trying to avoid accumulating stuff I already have in another form and stuff I'll only read once). I still need to compare the two versions. The reproduction of the linework seems a bit better in the new one, while the translation seems to be roughly of the same quality. It is a much nicer looking book. The publisher, Vertical, usually has a table at TCAF, if they have the two books at a decent price it'll be hard for me to say no.

TOP 10. BOOK 1

TOP 10. BOOK 2

TOP 10. THE FORTY-NINERS

SMAX

The four Alan Moore written books of the series he co-created with Gene Ha, about the police force in the city of Neopolis where everyone has super-powers, with Ha providing the art on the first three, and Zander Cannon doing layouts on the first two and pencils on the last one. I liked the main series quite a bit more than I was expecting to, though it was far from perfect. On the top of the list of problems, I thought the (spoiler alert) "Justice League analogues are frauds and child molesters" reveal of one of the long-running subplots was a bit trite. Ha's art was pretty effective, although sometimes I found the level of "chicken fat" (to use the old MAD expression) on the pages was overwhelming, where I would recognize the reference in just enough background elements for it to be a distraction from reading the actual stories, and sometimes distracting from actual story elements I should have been picking up from the art. Didn't like the two spin-offs as much.  THE FORTY-NINERS goes back to a story about the early days of Neopolis, and it's solid but hardly an essential story. SMAX takes two of the characters out of the city and into the homeworld of one of them, where there's a similar level of reference to fictional fantasy characters, and really wasn't too satisfying in the end. I'm slightly tempted by the upcoming oversized reprint combining the four books, which would probably make some of the more obscure background bits clearer, but I'm not sure I liked it quite enough for that.

FATALE. BOOK 2, THE DEVIL'S BUSINESS

Didn't really care for this second book of this on-going Brubaker/Phillips crime/horror comic, after a mildly intriguing first book. The bulk of the action moves on to 1970s Hollywood from the 1950s setting of the first book (with the continuing modern day plot showing up in "Interlude" chapters), and I just didn't find any of the new characters as interesting or worth reading about, and Phillips art just seemed a lot looser, less detailed. Don't think I'll be back for a third helping.

Continuing library adventures

Continuing some comic book reading from the library, more 20th CENTURY BOYS (pretty good), a six-volume adaptation of THE STAND (tiring, some good bits, don't get the ending), the memoir MY FRIEND DAHMER (very interesting if disturbing) and the second volume of HEREVILLE (a good read, but not really written for me).

20th CENTURY BOYS Vol. 4-8
I've gotten to the 1/3 mark of Naoki Urasawa's 24-book series since last I wrote. Apparently the last volume just came out in English. Unfortunately, just checking now, it looks like my library hasn't gotten more since Vol. 19.  I guess when I get there, if the library hasn't picked up more by then, I'll have to decide if I'm still enjoying it enough to buy the last five books. Doesn't seem to be available digitally, unfortunately, which I'd be more likely to get.

As it stands at the 1/3 mark, I'd probably be inclined to buy the last few books. Urasawa is doing a pretty good job of adding to the complexity of the storyline and bringing in new characters. There are frustratingly slow bits, and I think he's gone to the "Here comes the big reveal! Oops, misdirection!" well on the identity of Friend a few times too many already. I've been avoiding spoilers, but from what I've been unable to avoid it sounds like there's more of that coming and that's what soured some readers on the series by the end.


THE STAND Vol. 1-6
An adaptation of the Stephen King novel by Mike Perkins and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, originally published in 31 parts. I've never really been a Stephen King reader, the only prose stories of his I can recall finishing were the short stories adapted in film as STAND BY ME and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, and both of those I read only after I'd seen the movies. And in addition to being shorter than most King stories, they also lacked any horror/fantasy elements. But this post-apocalyptic story seemed interesting enough, so I thought I'd give it a try. There were a few good bits, but overall it was a bit of a slog to get through, maybe twice as long as it needed to be. Perkins does a decent enough job on the art, but there are long patches where there's not very much interesting for him to draw. I guess overall I just missed the point of the story, since I kept thinking a post-apocalyptic story would be more interesting if it were about real people, instead of people being manipulated at every turn by the forces of good and evil, where the climax could have happened just as easily without the actions of the protagonists. Not sorry I read it, but really glad I didn't pay for it.


MY FRIEND DAHMER
This is a memoir/biography by Derf Backderf, who went to high school with Jeffrey Dahmer in the 1970s, partly drawn from Backderf's own memories and partly from interviews with Dahmer and accounts from others on the teen years of the notorious serial killer. This was a really compelling read, even with the disturbing subject matter. I never really followed the Dahmer case, so I only knew the broad strokes about his background and crimes, so most of that was new to me, and Backderf goes a good job of mixing his personal experiences and thoughts at the time with what he's learned in retrospect.


HEREVILLE - HOW MIRKA MET A METEORITE
And for something completely different...

This is the second volume of Barry Deutsch's series of humourous fantasy adventure comics about Mirka, an 11-year-old orthodox Jewish girl, following HEREVILLE - HOW MIRKA GOT HER SWORD. It's an enjoyable read, mixing in some imaginative fantasy with a look at some the real-world but almost as odd to me culture of orthodox Jewish life. I'm way outside the target audience for this (and lately I find for some reason I'm more in tune with stuff written for very young readers or for adults than stuff in the middle), so I'm sure readers in that audience would like it even more than I did.


On deck to read, more 20th CENTURY BOYS, the various Alan Moore written TOP TEN books, the second FATALE book and maybe, because I never learn, J. Michael Stracynski's run on THOR.

Yet more courtesy of the library...

Continuing some reads from the library. This time, 20th CENTURY BOYS, intriguing so far, LOCKE & KEY pretty decent, better art than story, "New 52" SUPERGIRL some good bits but weak overall and SUPERMAN: GROUNDED, holy hell, I didn't know comics could be this bad.

20th CENTURY BOYS Vol. 1 - 3
The latest Naoki Urasawa comic to see translation from Japanese to English, created between 1999 and 2007 and published in English by Viz since 2009, with the last of 24 volumes set to come out soon as 21st CENTURY BOYS Vol. 1 and 2.

I thought Urasawa's MONSTER was, on balance, a very good comic. Uneven and definitely overlong, and not really a satisfying ending but with a couple of really brilliant bits and generally good storytelling and artwork. On the other hand, I gave up on his PLUTO a few chapters into the second book. So I'm definitely open to giving a well-regarded series by him a chance, without getting my hopes up too high. I've avoided reading too much about the book until now, but I'm getting the impression that some people don't think it holds up across the 24 books.

It doesn't start off great, and if I were paying to read it, or if I didn't have the next two books sitting here, or if I hadn't loved some bits of MONSTER, I'm not sure I would have continued past the first book. I'm glad I did, it picks up a lot as the second volume ties a few things together, and by the end of the third I was pretty much fully on-board. I've got the next three on the way already. I still have my doubts that it'll end up being a story that needed anywhere near its 5000 pages to tell, but that's the case with almost every Japanese comic I've read.

About the actual comic, it's a science fiction tale about some so far unspecified crisis at the end of the 20th Century, and how a group of long-time friends helped to avert it. Flashing back and forth through time, we see these friends making up fanciful stories as pre-teens in 1969, which end up forming the basis of plans for world domination by the leader of a cult in 1997 who may be one of those friends. It gets pretty convoluted, and I can't say I'm going in with a great deal of faith that Urasawa can pull off a satisfying reveal at the end, but I'm fairly confident that there'll be a few pleasant surprises on the road.

LOCKE & KEY Vol. 1 - 5
The soon-to-be-concluded series created by Gabriel Rodriguez and Joe Hill, published since 2008 by IDW as a series of mini-series and one-shots that have been collected into five volumes, with the contents of the final volume currently being serialized as LOCKE & KEY: OMEGA. I actually read the first two books a few years ago, and thought they were okay, but wasn't impressed enough to rush out to read the subsequent books as soon as they came out.

That's pretty much still where I am. I'll definitely read OMEGA if and when the library gets a copy, but I can wait. The story is pretty decent, for the most part, although the middle drags quite a bit. Hill can be a pretty frustrating writer at times, clearly in control of the story and with a lot of stuff planned out, but sometimes a bit clumsy in the execution, with things feeling like writing tricks to achieve an end. I do like that he structured the book for serialization, and think it's a shame that it took IDW until Volume 4 to realize that they should present each issue as distinct chapter, with the cover art as a chapter break, instead of running the comics seamlessly and sticking the covers in the back. It was really jarring in the earlier books to go from one chapter to another without that visual cue. I wonder if they'll revise the earlier books to fit the structure of the later ones?

Rodriguez is definitely the more interesting of the two creators, and I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes after this series wraps up. His art is nice and clear, easy to follow, fairly open but with a lot of detail in the right places, very expressive faces and body language, imaginative designs.  His prior work seems to be mostly some comics based on the TV show CSI, which don't seem to look as interesting, but that could be the need to do actor likenesses.

Basic pitch of this one is that the Locke kids and their mother move into the family home, the Key House in Lovecraft, Massachusetts, following the murder of their father and find themselves drawn into a world of family secrets, magic and horror involving various keys with special properties. The exact nature of the horror is sort of tipped by the name of the town (is it just me, or do comics seem to lean pretty heavy on the Lovecraft influence for horror?).

SUPERGIRL Vol. 1: LAST DAUGHTER OF KRYPTON
Another of DC's "New 52" reboots launched in 2011, this collects the first seven issues of the latest iteration of the character derived from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's creation Superman. Supergirl is probably a poster child for why DC needed a reboot, as I'm really not sure when looking at a "Supergirl" in a DC comic book published between 1987 and 2011 if she's supposed to be Superman's cousin, or a shapeshifter of some sort, or his cousin from another dimension, or his daughter from a possible future, or his clone or something else.

Anyway, for now they seem to have decided to go with the "Superman's cousin" in this continuity. We'll see if that sticks. The comic is written by Michael Green and Mike Johnson, and mostly drawn by Mahmud Asrar. They all seem competent enough, and Asrar at least draws a more tasteful Supergirl than many of the more recent artists, though the costume he's been handed isn't one of her best (but far from the worst in the character's history). The big problem I have with the story is that we're supposed to accept that Superman finds another survivor from Krypton, one who claims to be his cousin, and after a brief fight appears to just leave her to her own devices, unable to speak the language or properly handle her powers, even as she gets captured by a low rent Lex Luthor stand-in and then fights some other apparent survivors of Krypton. That's not a Superman that makes much sense to me, and this initial storyline doesn't establish a Supergirl worth following, or any supporting cast.

I liked Asrar's art enough to consider reading the second book someday, but that's about it.

SUPERMAN: GROUNDED Vol. 1 - 2
Another poster child for DC's need for a reboot is this, the storyline serialized in SUPERMAN #700-711, 713-714, the last year-plus of the previous continuity of Siegel and Shuster's creation.

Now, to be fair, I expected not to like this, and you're perfectly right to ask why I would read it, even for free, when there are stacks of books I own that I know I'd like better waiting for me to read, a huge selection of more promising books available from the library and boxes and shelves full of comics I'd enjoy re-reading. I sometimes mock other people for continuing to read stuff they seem to get no joy from, including a regular column on a major website that seems to be based on the notion of "people reading comics they know they won't like". What can I say, sometimes you have to rubberneck the crash as the side of the road...

And yeah, this is even worse than I was expecting. It took three writers and over a dozen artists to get these comics out. Some of the artists seem decent enough, but often appear to be rushed,  others really weren't ready for prime time. My understanding is that this was initially going to be one of those "bold new directions" for Superman that they need every few years after the last direction left them wandering aimlessly, this time led by the somewhat popular and occasionally entertaining writer J. Michael Straczynski. The storyline was presented with the very easy to mock concept of "Superman decides to walk across America".  For whatever reason, the story first saw "interlude" issues written by G. Willow Wilson, and then Chris Roberson brought in as the credited scripter for the second half. I don't know what was said officially, but it's hard not to assume that as plans were finalized to reboot the whole line the luster really fades on the "new direction" that's suddenly a "last nail in the coffin".

It's hard to know who to blame for this mess.  Based on his solo issues, Straczynski didn't really seem to have a firm grasp on any Superman I'd want to read, but I suppose there could have been a planned third act twist that would justified the set-up. Still, on their merits those are some weak Superman stories. I have no idea how much liberty Roberson had in his issues, once it was clear he was wrapping up the last 25 years on continuity rather than setting up a future direction for the character. His issues were slightly less dire than the preceding ones, with a few hints of a writer who might be able to write a Superman comic I'd want to read (which obviously isn't going to happen), but still far from good.

Ah well, there's no point in going point-by-point on what's wrong with this thing, and looking through it now just makes me more sad than anything else. If you ever ask yourself "Must there be a monthly SUPERMAN comic?", read these and see that there are worse things than DC not publishing Superman at all.

More From The Library

Some other recent readings.  CARTER FAMILY very good, FATALE pretty solid, DEMON KNIGHTS less so and recent Charles Burns inexplicable but intriguing 2/3 of the way through.


THE CARTER FAMILY: DON'T FORGET THIS SONG
Frank M. Young and David Lasky create this 192-page comic book biography of the Carter Family, one of the earliest successful country music acts starting with their first recordings in 1927. This is one of those "I'll try pretty much anything that's comics" reads, I can't imagine that I'd read a prose biography of the family, or watch a documentary about them. I'm not a huge country music fan, although there is some stuff I like directly influenced by this specific early branch of the genre.

Anyway, it's a really good book. It took me a while to get started on it, since it's "written in the Southern dialect of the time", which means a lot of phonetic spellings of odd pronunciations of common words. You get used to that after a few pages, and you get an interesting story of young A. P. Carter growing up in rural Virginia, and how his love of music led to his marriage and a successful family singing career during the Great Depression. The characters are very engaging and the stories are well selected.

Also a very good looking book, with great art by Lasky, an appropriately flat slightly muted colour palate and a nice design that even uses the endpapers to good effect. The book also includes a CD with a 1939 radio recording of several songs by the Carter Family.

One bit of advice if you're going to read it and don't know much about the history of the group, don't read the two-page text preface before reading the full comic. It gives away a few later events which would have been more effective if they came by surprise.


FATALE BOOK 1: DEATH CHASES ME
This collects the first five issues of the on-going comic by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. It starts off with a hardboiled crime feel, but slowly develops into a horror comic with a hardboiled veneer. They kind of give away the nature of the horror early on, with octopus tentacles on the cover and a full page even more explicitly Lovecraftian image before the story, so that doesn't really get a chance to be as surprising a revelation as it might have been. I haven't been a huge fan of the previous Phillips/Brubaker collaborations I've tried, only mildly liking CRIMINAL, but this was a decent quick read, with some interesting stuff in the structure and surprising twists in the plot. I might check out later volumes someday.


DEMON KNIGHTS VOL. 1: SEVEN AGAINST THE DARK
This is one of DC's "New 52" books from their recent re-launch, collecting the first seven issues of the series by Paul Cornell, Diogenes Neves, Oclair Albert and others (noticed Albert is mentioned on the cover, but not in the interior credits, so I had to look up that he's the primary inker on the series. Another quality proofreading job there). It's middle ages sword & sorcery starring Jack Kirby's creation Etrigan the Demon and his alter ego Jason Blood, plus some other DC characters, some pre-existing (Vandal Savage, Madame Xanadu) and I believe some original.

It's pretty readable but mediocre.  The artwork is a little too busy for my taste, but I can tell what's going on most of the time, which is sadly not the case too frequently. The only characters I came in with any fondness for, Etrigan and Blood, don't really resemble any prior version I've read, certainly not the Kirby originals. The plot could use some tightening up, it didn't really feel like seven issues of story, with a lot of set up for future stuff, and the ending really needed to be set up better. The scripting is a lot better than the plotting, but even that seems a bit off at times. I don't think I'll be back for more.

X'ED OUT and THE HIVE

These are the first two books in a trilogy by Charles Burns, published in 2010 and 2012, with the third volume, SUGAR SKULL, still to be come. I'm pretty much completely clueless about what's actually going on in these books, whether we're seeing our lead character Doug at different points in his life, or seeing his memories, or seeing his dreams, or something else.. Maybe it'll all make sense in the end. In the meantime, it's all as gorgeous as you'd expect from Burns, and the writing is intriguing even if it's not explaining anything.

Four From The Library

Been picking up a bunch of things from the library lately.  Sitting here unread right now are multiple volumes of LOCKE & KEY, THE STAND and 20th CENTURY BOYS (hopefully the last issue of that will be out by the time I catch up), plus THE CARTER FAMILY,  FATALE, several of DC's "New 52" volumes and some recent Charles Burns books.

Some things I have read, or finished with, below the jump.  Summary, LEO GEO and STONE FROG good, LEAPING TALL BUILDINGS gorgeous yet awful, CREATIVITY OF DITKO, good comics, many available in better forms, one decent feature, borrow a copy if you can.

LEO GEO AND HIS MIRACULOUS JOURNEY THROUGH THE CENTER OF THE EARTH

This is a clever little book by Jon Chad, featuring a character taking an unlikely but entertaining trip, as you can guess from the title, through the world. The format is pretty innovative, and I think it's better if it takes you by surprise, as it did for me, so I can't talk about it too much.  The script is pretty funny, and probably more so for the smart 8-12 year old that it's directed at, and the art is a nice open but detailed black and white, kind of reminiscent of Geof Darrow's work. 

THE SECRET OF THE STONE FROG

I've enjoyed reading the beginning reader comics of the Toon Book line edited by Françoise Mouly over the last few years, but as someone just slightly older than the target audience, the books always felt a bit slight, taking only a few minutes to read. I understand that for the kids learning to read with the books that's all a feature not a flaw (and I'll happily read them with my niece when she's old enough), but I'm glad to see them expanding to a few more complex books, like this 80-page book by David Nytra, the first branded as a "Toon Graphic Novel". The easiest way to describe the artwork is to compare it to Charles Vess, or possibly to the earlier generation of book illustrators who influenced Vess (Arthur Rackham, Heath Robinson, etc.). There definitely seems to be more than a hint of Winsor McCay in there, as well. The story is the old Lewis Carroll bit, with two children trying to find their way home through an increasingly bizarre and frantic realm of dream-logic.  Fun stuff with some nicely bizarre creatures and intricate art you can read in seconds and then just got lost in for minutes if you want.

LEAPING TALL BUILDINGS: THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN COMICS

A collection of short two to six page profiles of various comic book creators, both classic and modern, written by Christopher Irving, plus full page photographs of most of them by Seth Kushner, and samples of their work (a mix of published work, finished original artwork and production artwork), plus shorter profiles of a bunch of younger artists as part of "The Digital Generation" at the end. This is a very attractive book, but I don't think I can read any more of it. In just a few minutes of reading after admiring the art for a while I saw Mazzucchelli spelled wrong (one "c") in Frank Miller's profile, a profile of Stan Lee that claims Ditko left SPIDER-MAN over a dispute about the identity of "supervillian [sic] Green Goblin" (why am I still reading that in a book published in 2012?) and saying his last issue was #33, a caption for a page which has a Dick Ayers inking credit right on the page saying Steve Ditko inked that page, some wrong information about Jerry Siegel's 1960s scripting on Superman  (and an odd inconclusive statement at the end of the one-page Siegel and Shuster article) and Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN cited as lasting 81 issues. And that's without even trying to look for errors. Anyway, some great photos and art samples to look at, so that's something.

(by the way, one of the Laws of the Internet says that since I spent so much space criticizing someone else's proofreading, there's a huge typo somewhere in this post that I've missed. So let me just say in advance, "Yeah, but I'm not charging $35 for this weblog".)

THE CREATIVITY OF DITKO

A sequel to THE ART OF DITKO book I reviewed over here years ago. Most of the same things I said stand, although at least this volume is missing some of the most egregious errors of the first one (no missing pages as far as I could tell, and no inexplicable void in the artwork every 8 pages). All stories from Charlton, a few from the 1950s, all available on-line, and the bulk from the 1960s and 1970s, four of those available in sharper black&white form in Ditko's own co-published STEVE DITKO'S 160-PAGE PACKAGE FROM CHARLTON PRESS [1999]. Most of the stuff isn't the best Ditko work of the material available, but it's solid stuff, with a few great stories, and at least one clever visual in every story. There's a bunch of original art, most of it stuff that was publicly auctioned so you've probably seen high quality scans if that's something you care about. In one inexplicable decision, they show the artwork to OUT OF THIS WORLD #4, but don't show the published cover, which seems pretty shortsighted to me. The published cover is the payoff, really showing Ditko's skills.

Other than the Ditko stories and original art, the most worthwhile contribution is by frequent Ditko collaborator Jack C. Harris, who shares a few stories about their work together, and several pages of one of their many unpublished works, "The Fantasy Master", some sort of choose-your-own-adventure comic. Hopefully Harris and Ditko will publish more of those things at some point (modern digital distribution would make a multipath comic much more practical). Of the other articles, Mike Gold writes a fairly entertaining account of some of his encounters with Ditko, Paul Levitz writes an introduction almost admirably devoid of actual content, and the rest were largely pointless at best. I was going to say it needed another pass through by a proofreader, but after the previous book the mistakes seem pretty minor. Don't really recommend anyone buy this, but if your library or bookstore has a copy take a look at the JCH pages and any of the stories you don't have access to better copies of.