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.

Movies - THE BIG YEAR (2011)

I don't know if it was just having seen a great Wes Anderson movie less than a day earlier or what, but I couldn't help but think while watching THE BIG YEAR (2011) that it felt like what would happen if a Wes Anderson style screenplay were somehow handed to a completely average, non-adventurous mainstream director.

I didn't know too much about the movie going in, just that it was about bird watching enthusiasts and it starred  Owen Wilson, Jack Black and Steve Martin, three actors who have done some great movies in the past, but also put out a lot of fluff between the good ones. And I think Kevin Pollak mentioned it once or twice on his talk show, so I knew he was in it, and is usually entertaining.

I think I would have to say that I liked it overall, but the script really seemed to be fighting against the direction throughout. Everything in the script was quirky, from the premise to the plot to the characters to the settings. I couldn't help but to picture how someone like Wes Anderson would interpret all of it, the exact opposite of what the actual director (David Frankel, for the record, who I'm only familiar with from THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA) chose to do. The film makes all the safe, mainstream choices in how to tell the story, how to handle the music cues. That ended up turning it into a good film that was nothing special, and I was left with the feeling that if it was bolder it could have been a great film. Or possibly a spectacular failure, but either way something memorable. I mean, the script has a remote Alaskan cabin where birders go to spot a few rare birds at a particular time of year. In a Wes Anderson movie, that cabin would just look like nothing you'd seen before, but if he succeeded look exactly right. In this movie, it's just a cabin in Alaska.

So I'm not sorry I watched it, and it was pleasant to see Wilson, Black and Martin all doing better work than a lot of their choices, but I'm not sure I'd ever watch it again.

A few recent things... (mostly movies)

Just wanted to throw up a few things I posted on Facebook for some reason, just to have them in a place where I can find them in the future. Just a few movie/tv thoughts (THE HOBBIT, MOONRISE KINGDOM and a few Sherlocks) and some images I wanted to save.

A few quick links.

A colour Milk&Cheese image by Evan Dorkin.

James Vance announces two long-awaited books coming from him in 2013, ON THE ROPES, the sequel to KINGS IN DISGUISE with artist Dan Burr and the final OMAHA THE CAT DANCER book with Reed Waller and the late Kate Worley.

Steve Bissette's been posting some Swamp Thing head sketches he did recently.  Here's a good one, along with an article on some vintage movies and related comics.

A couple of good histories of the now defunct COMICS BUYER'S GUIDE from some people who were there, Maggie Thompson and John Jackson Miller. I quickly went over my relatively brief time as an occasional reader of the publication over here.

More than you probably thought you needed to know about Charlton artists, courtesy of Nick Caputo, over here and over here.

Newly acquired books 2013.01.15

Figured I'd start posting briefly about books as I get them, even though I won't finish reading some of them for a few months or even years. Or in rare cases, I never will. First some print stuff, and then some free digital stuff below.

   

COMPLETE NEMESIS THE WARLOCK #3 [2007] is the third and final volume of the adventures of the Pat Mills / Kevin O'Neill creation published in the pages of 2000 A.D. from 1980 to 1999, featuring the last three books:
8 - Purity's Story (art by David Roach)
9 - Deathbringer (art by John Hicklenton)
10 - The Final Conflict (art by Henry Flint, final chapter by Kevin O`Neill)
Plus an assortment of painted stories by various artists.

Other than the various works by Alan Moore, Nemesis The Warlock is the only 2000 A.D. feature I have more than a passing interest in.  The few dozen Dredd stories I've read have been enough for me to get the idea, and nothing else has really captured my imagination. But Nemesis always seemed intriguing, and after reading all the Mills/O'Neill MARSHAL LAW I could find, I picked up the first book a few years ago, got the second soon after, but had trouble finding the third for some reason. That's resolved now, but I'll probably go back and re-read the whole thing from the beginning before I get to this one.


POGO - THE COMPLETE SYNDICATED COMIC STRIPS #2 [2012] continues Walt Kelly's comic strips, with both daily and full colour Sunday pages from 1951 and 1952.  I'll have to try to ration this out, since they only seem to be publishing a book a year, and with every two volumes coming in a slipcase, I'm tempted to wait until two more come out to get #3 and #4 in a set. Oh, I'm kidding myself that I have that kind of self control...


ESSENTIAL BLACK PANTHER #1 [2012], I'm always somewhat reluctant to pick up anything from Marvel for various reasons, but I figured waiting until almost a year after the book comes out works out nicely. I've always been curious about Don McGregor's 1970s run on Jack Kirby's creation, the "Panther's Rage" storyline, highly praised by some people whose opinions I respect, and this seemed like my best bet to get it. It helps that this also reprints most of the Kirby/Royer run on the series. Kind of wish they squeezed in those last two issues, but then I wish the colour reprints didn't continue beyond Kirby's last issue. Just leafing through, Billy Graham's art seems pretty sharp, Gil Kane's single issue looks great, even Rich Buckler as inked by Klaus Janson looks better than most of the his work I've seen.

By the way, I've joked before that I can count on finding at least one typo or production error in any Marvel book within five minutes of picking it up.  The table on contents for this one lists "P. Craig Russel [sic]" as the inker on one issue. Hopefully that's it for this book...


SHOWCASE PRESENTS WEIRD WAR TALES [2012], the latest of DC's big black&white reprint books, with the first 21 issues of the series launched in 1971, I've got a backlog of these I want to buy, and a backlog of those to read among those I've bought, but this one I had to get right away. Launched by editor Joe Kubert as primarily a reprint title for the 1950s DC war books, he also included some new framing sequences and a few new stories by Sam Glanzman (including a USS Stevens story), Russ Heath and others. Then Joe Orlando takes over with #8, and it becomes more of a war book in DC's mystery line (as opposed to a mystery book in the war line under Kubert), including a lot of work from the Filipino artists then becoming regulars in Orlando's other anthology books, such as Tony DeZuniga, Alex Nino and Alfredo Alcala. Their work always looks especially good in black and white. Sheldon Mayer also contributes a few great stories, one drawn by Alex Toth, and there's a memorable early Walter Simonson story in there. I have about half these issues, so I'm glad to have this book so I no longer have to look around for reading copies of the others.


And on the digital side...

Comixology gave me a copy of Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover's BANDETTE #1 for free after I filled out a survey. It's a cute enough thing, mostly thanks to the art, and the other two issues so far are only $1 each, so maybe I'll check them out.

Marvel generally makes three or four comics a week temporarily available for free on Comixology, mostly first issues or first chapters of storylines. I justify downloading them since I figure free to me must cost them some amount of money, however minuscule. They generally remind me modern Marvel comics aren't written for me. Most interesting thing this week is a Hulk issue drawn by Steve Dillon. Haven't read it yet.

As I've mentioned before, I find the iVerse interface inferior enough that I'd only buy something there if there wasn't a choice. That hasn't happened yet, but the closest they've come is with some of Rick Veitch's work. BRAT PACK (the revised version) is available in five chapters, with the first free and the others $1, so if I didn't have the collection and the original issues, $4 for the series would be a bargain. Check it out if you've ever been curious. Veitch also has an anthology called BONG, the first free issue includes the Peanuts parody "Nutpeas", "The Tell-Tale Fart" (with Steve Bissette, scanned from the original art), a new Subtleman story continuing from the last RARE BIT FIENDS (previously seen as a webcomic) and the first chapter of ABRAXAS AND THE EARTHMAN, the classic story seen in EPIC ILLUSTRATED. If I didn't already have the ABRAXAS book published in 2006 that alone would be worth buying #2 for $1, though I'd prefer to buy just an ABRAXAS digital book for $5 or so.

[and to update, there are a few presentation problems with BONG which I asked Veitch about, and you might want to wait to see if those are fixed before getting anything but the free issue]

The British children's comic THE PHOENIX launched a digital edition. I wasn't that interested in the contents, but the app is done by Panel Nine, and I'm always interested in what they do in terms of format, so I checked out the sample issue. Pretty well done, and some of the content made it tempting to subscribe, while most of it was professional but obviously not for me. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I missed the bargain price subscription offer. It was worth checking out to see how they handled double page spreads, which hasn't been an issue in the previous Panel Nine books. They came up with the first really elegant solution to the problem I've ever seen. Maybe not quite perfect, but definitely a path forward.

MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY by Howe

Just some quick thoughts as a placeholder on a book I might want to do a full review of later.

I was kind of disappointed by Sean Howe's recent MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY. I guess my expectations were a bit high, since it was pretty heavily praised by quite a few people whose opinions I respect. I guess overall it's okay for what it is, a breezy pop history of the publisher, with a special emphasis on a few items of special interest to the writer. I guess I've read too much about the stuff I'm interested in, since there wasn't that much I learned about comics I liked, and just some trivia I've already started to forget about the comics I don't care for.  Howe seems to like 1970s Marvel a lot, whereas my history of Marvel in the 1970s is "Jack Kirby left, Steve Gerber and Gene Colan did some interesting work both together and separately, Jack Kirby came back for a little while and soon after Gerber and Colan were gone. And Steve Ditko came back towards the end of the decade, drawing characters he didn't create". Howe seems to like Gerber, so it was cool that his work got a significant amount of attention. In comparison to their importance, I thought the 1960s got way too little room, there's a lot more you can get into there that I've read about in interviews with and articles by the people who were there, and the later eras got too much, and a lot of the wrong stuff was emphasized from those eras (the entire Epic line just seems to get a few passing references). And overall I think the book was too kind to a few individuals, presenting their stories in a "their side, everyone else's side, you figure out the truth" manner. I will say I took a certain joy in Tom DeFalco's telling of Jim Shooter's final days in charge.

Where I actually did learn a lot was the material on the various executives in charge of Marvel. Mostly that there seems to be a parade of incompetence, malfeasance and dishonesty in those positions, with no clear idea of what they had and how to properly exploit it until they happened to stumble into the success in the movie business more in spite of their actions than because of them.

The book did need at least one more run-through by a comics knowledgeable fact checker. Roy Thomas has some corrections specific to his areas of expertise (the Golden Age and his own career) here and here, and I noticed a number of things that seemed off, some of them easy to verify. Jerry Siegel is referred to as a "sixty-three year old proof-reader" circa 1968, when simple math would show that meant he co-created Superman in his late-20s and sold it to DC in his mid-30s, so definitely off by ten years. And there's a reference to George Perez's 1998 return to AVENGERS being his first work for Marvel in over 20 years, which is wrong twice, since he left for DC only 18 years earlier, and had worked on Marvel books like INFINITY GAUNTLET and HULK: FUTURE IMPERFECT earlier in the 1990s.

So, y'know, read it, don't take any of it as gospel (which isn't an expression I should use, since I don't take the Gospels as gospel...), pick up a bunch of ALTER EGOs, KIRBY COLLECTORs and Ditko essays for more details on the important stuff.