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.

Movies - LES MISÉRABLES (2012)

On a whim I went to go see LES MISÉRABLES today (am I the only one who always wants to translate that and call it THE MISERABLES).

I'm not really big on musicals. I think the only ones on my list of favourite movies would be THE WIZARD OF OZ, WEST SIDE STORY (the bits without Tony and Maria whining) and WILLY WONKA. And I suppose THE MUPPET MOVIE would qualify. Other than those, I would re-watch stuff like BRIGADOON, THE MUSIC MAN, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, MARY POPPINS or SWEENEY TODD if they were on. That's actually more musicals I like than I was expecting, especially considering I haven't actually tried to watch most of the others considered classics... But still, not a whole lot of heavy dramatic stuff there.

Anyway, I'm trying to watch more movies in the theatre, especially things that look like they'd benefit from the experience, and the trailer for LES MISÉRABLES looked pretty good. And I missed the start time of DJANGO UNCHAINED. My relative lack of experience with musicals and not overly great hearing means I sometimes have trouble picking up all the words in musicals, which is why I prefer to watch them at home, where subtitles and rewinding are an option, but I figured I'd take a chance. If I ever read the original Victor Hugo novel it was long ago that I forgot, but I know enough of the story from cultural osmosis that I was sure I could follow it even if I missed some words.

I liked it quite a bit more than I was expecting to. I don't know if I'll ever watch the whole 2 1/2 hour thing again, since it did drag in bits, but I'll definitely take a look when I can watch it at home and revisit some of the good bits. It took some getting used to just how much singing there was, compared to most of the musicals I like, but by about half-way through it began to seem odd when there were brief bits of spoken dialogue, like, "why didn't he sing that bit?" or something. And I did end up missing a fair bit of the dialogue, but it was worth it to see some of those visuals on the big screen. And a lot of the performers did a great job, with Anne Hathaway on the top of that list, and Hugh Jackman not that far behind, and those aren't two actors I've been that impressed with before. Not as convinced by Russell Crowe, but its kind of a complex role and I'd have to see it again before being too critical.

So that was a Sunday afternoon well spent.

On the BONE hardcover trilogy...

Jeff Smith's BONE in convenient colour hardcover trilogy form

A few people have asked me about the three volume BONE collection I mentioned in my year in review post, so I figured I'd post a bit more about it.  You can also check out this post from two years ago when I got the first volume.

First off, that's red foil on the cover logos, so the books look much nicer than the scan.

As I noted back then, I believe Scholastic Canada is the only branch of the company to release the books in this format so far, publishing one a year from 2010 to 2012. They include all the covers to the nine-volume colour books, and the first one has a "Possum Interlude" short story, with Smith doing his best Walt Kelly style artwork, which I assume appears in the second Scholastic Graphix book but doesn't appear in the black&white BONE ONE VOLUME. I haven't seen the more recent colour ONE VOLUME.

Here's how the various editions look side by side, with copies of the Graphix hardcovers borrowed from the library:

And here's a comparison of the same page in each edition:

For those interested in numbers, the vertical height of the image areas are 190 mm on the Graphix edition, 198 mm the ONE VOLUME edition and 217 mm on the "Trilogy". And not pictured, but the original comic book serialization pages were 230 mm and the Ipad edition via Comixology has pages 173 mm high. So the "Trilogy" edition is by a good margin the largest currently available edition (unless the colour ONE VOLUME is bigger than the b&w version).

And the reading experience is generally better. The paper quality and binding is the same as the Graphix edition.  I love the ONE VOLUME version, but the thin paper required to make a 1300+ page book practical means I have to constantly check that I didn't flip two pages at a time. The individual books are also lighter than the ONE VOLUME version, and lay open on a table better.

And the best part is probably the price.  At $40 cover price, and often heavily discounted, the ONE VOLUME b&w softcover is still the cheapest way to read the series. The "Trilogy" versions are $27 dollars each, discounted to about $17 on major Canadian retail websites, so you can probably get the set for $51. The Graphix editions look like they're $13 softcover, $23 hardcover now, so a set of those would be $117 or $207, minus whatever discount you'd get.  On Comixology the series would cost $86 for the nine collections, or $108 if you got the 55 individual issues for some reason (that might be the only way to get the original Cartoon Books covers, but you can find scans of those on-line pretty easily). And the colour ONE VOLUME is $150, sometimes discounted to as low as $90. So the "Trilogy" version, in addition to being the best way to read the series in colour, is also the cheapest.

So, bottom line, very highly recommended set if you want to read BONE in colour. The ISBN of the first book is 1443104809, you can get it at Amazon Canada or Chapters and should be able to find the other two there easily enough. Looks like shipping to the US would be about $14 for the set on either of those sites, which still makes it only $65 total. Or urge your local branch of Scholastic to release the books in this format.

State of My Digital Comics Union, January 2013

So, as I mentioned, last year was the year I really got into digital comics. So some rambling thoughts on that.

Now, I've been reading comics on a screen for a long time.  Mostly public domain stuff from before 1960, found in places like this, where among other things I read almost every non-Marvel story Steve Ditko drew in the 1950s. And I've even bought a few items as DRM-free PDF files. But I never found the experience very satisfying, more of a necessary evil to read some interesting stuff I either could not find or could not afford in print. The resolution of my computer screen (800 pixels vertical) was such that the only thing to do was constantly switch back and forth between a full-page view so I could properly read the art and a zoomed view so I could read the script and somewhat appreciate the linework. I also read some webcomics, which were designed for the screen and worked better, but didn't really keep up with any of them for that long.

Getting an Ipad last spring changed that. Reading a comic page in portrait orientation gives a vertical resolution of 2048 pixels, so over 2.5 times what I got on my computer, and the full image has over 6 times as many pixels. That makes it readable. Not quite print quality, except in the case of some especially poorly printed comics, but good enough for 2012, higher than the resolution most of the stuff was scanned at, and enough that some of the other advantages of digital start to weigh in. Having over 15000 comics and related publications, bringing more paper into the house is something to avoid.

So, first order of business was finding the right reader on the Ipad for those public domain comics, most of which are just image files bundled together into RAR or ZIP format archives. For the laptop, I mostly used a program called CDisplay, which has always worked pretty well, even with no updates in about a decade.  And writing this post has paid off, since I just found out there's a newer program called CDisplayEX, which has most of the same features and some new ones. Have to try that out. But back to the Ipad, I still haven't settled on a single program. There are three of them I like, ComicBookLover (free), iComix (free) and Bookman ($3). Each has some features I like, but none has everything I want. I tried most of the other free programs and found them inferior to those alternatives. There are a lot of paid programs, but none seem that much better than what I'm using. Anyway, all three of those I have do the job, and provided they're well scanned the public domain stuff looks great on them, very easy to read. It helps that double page spreads, one of the big problems I don't think anyone has found an elegant solution for in digital comics, are rarely a consideration in those older comics.

So that provides me with some great reading, and a whole lot of entertainingly awful reading, on my screen. Let's go on to the paid stuff. I wrote a bit about the reading interfaces of the major platforms (Comixology, iVerse and Dark Horse) a few months back, and that pretty much stands. Comixology is serviceable, especially for shorter works, Dark Horse isn't quite as polished, but mostly the same in fundamentals, and iVerse is pretty awful. Still haven't found anything to buy on the Kindle or iBooks apps to test them out.

I'm still hopeful that the future, at least for major works, will be standalone apps, like the Eddie Campbell, David Lloyd and Hunt Emerson books published by Panel Nine. That structure just gives more flexibility to tailor the reading experience to the material, to include special features and to properly navigate something longer than 25 pages. Other than the Panel Nine stuff, the only standalone app I've really liked is for Eric Shanower's AGE OF BRONZE, with the first four issues up, in colour for the first time ever, and extensive historical and cultural notes for every page. The interface could use a bit of work, but it's functional, and $1 an issue for full colour Eric Shanower is a bargain.  Unfortunately updates appear to be almost as infrequent as new issues of the print comic.

On the major platforms, a lot of publishers have embraced the "first taste free" model, either permanently or as a series of limited time offers. So I've gotten a lot first issues. Reading them has mostly been good practice at reading on the tablet, very few of them have interested me in going on and reading the whole series. Part of the problem is that the pricing still seems a bit out of whack to me. I tend to think a fair price for digital content, especially stuff you don't really "buy", meaning you're at the whim of a company staying in business and being able to provide continued access, is in the range of one-third to one-half of the cover price for a quality print edition. That takes into account that I expect to be able to get most wide-release print books with a discount of 20% to 40% off cover price. In practice, that means I'm not paying more than $1 for a standard single issue, and probably never much more than $10 for anything. Most publishers haven't really embraced a pricing paradigm compatible with my views, so mostly I'm only buying stuff on sale, which usually drops them down to the range I'm comfortable with.

I've still found about 50 items to buy, at a total cost of just under $100. About half of that is stuff which I already owned in some print edition, but liked enough to want a more portable version.  That includes some Eddie Campbell stuff from Top Shelf, some of Larry Marder's Beanworld from Dark Horse and some Bissette/Moore/Totleben era Swamp Thing from DC. And when they've been on sale I've picked up a handful of older books I was mildly interested in but were either too pricey or too hard to find.

I did buy two books which were newly released in 2012 at their regular non-sale price, both from Top Shelf, one of the few companies that seems to share my ideas on digital vs. print pricing.

BLUE by Pat Grant is a bargain at $2 digital, compared to $15 for the hardcover. It's an entertaining first book from the Australian artist, with a strange story about aliens and growing up, plus a lengthy essay in the back detailing the history of Australian comics. It worked really well on the screen for the most part, as you'd expect for something that started as a webcomic, with a few awkward bits where there were double page spreads.

And Eddie Campbell's THE LOVELY HORRIBLE STUFF, in 2011 I would have definitely bought in print, but in 2012 I decided to try digitally instead. The $5 price felt right, compared to the $15 print cover price. It  was a pleasant reading experience for an enjoyable book, although the 100-page length is outside of what works well on Comixology's navigation system. I didn't like it as much as some earlier Campbell work, but I think that had less to do with the delivery system than it did Campbell's heavy use of photographs and sometimes bizarre computer colouring.

Meanwhile, on the webcomic front, most of them do look better on the Ipad, so that's nice, but the real breakthrough for me will probably come from the introduction of Comic Rocket, a webcomic navigation service which makes it easier to keep your place on any number of comics you're reading and navigate them in a consistent way, while still maintaining the page format of the original site. I still haven't gotten around to exploring all the stuff I might want to read, but I'm much more likely to do so when I have the time than I would be without it.

So, that's the state of the union on digital comics for me. It looks like they'll definitely be a part of my comics reading going forward, though there's still a lot of paper coming into the house (currently in the mail, the second POGO strip collection by Walt Kelly and the third and final NEMESIS book by Pat Mills and various artists). There's still a lot of room for improvement in the general presentation, which I expect will continue to improve, and the pricing, which I doubt will improve.

Looking back on 2012

Couple of days late, but year in review time, I guess.  As usual, here for the Ditko and here for the Kirby.

Other than that, kind of a slow year for me in terms of new comics. It was the year I really went digital, after getting an Ipad.  Print first, though...

USAGI YOJIMBO only had two issues before it went on hiatus so Stan Sakai could draw 47 RONIN. I'm not too interested in the latter, might pick it up when it's collected, and might take this opportunity to switch to either collections or digital for USAGI when it comes back. Not an easy decision to make, since I've been reading the book for over 20 years, and with back issue purchases have 198 consecutive issues, plus specials and such, and it's not a matter of quality since the book is still top notch. We'll see, still a few months before I have to decide.

ROB HANES ADVENTURES #13 came out, the first issue in three years, which was a pleasant surprise. Enjoyable issue with two complete stories by creator Randy Reynaldo.

Only one issue of SERGIO ARAGONES FUNNIES came out from Bongo, and the planned GROO/CONAN series didn't come out. Hopefully Aragones' health problems are all in the past and he can get those back on the schedule for 2013.

Picked up a couple of issues of Paul Grist's MUDMAN, and they were enjoyable enough, though I prefer JACK STAFF and KANE. Unfortunately, like just about every Grist project, it's fallen into a black hole of lateness, so I think I'm definitely going to digital or collections for that one.

Mark Crilley got out one book of his BRODY'S GHOST series.  Good stuff, but I do wish it was coming out a bit faster. That really does seem to be a common problem with just about every new serialized comic book I'm interested in.

Alison Bechdel's ARE YOU MY MOTHER?, the long-awaited follow-up to her 2006 book FUN HOME, was pretty good. Maybe a bit too much about the process of writing, too "meta" as the kids say (do they still say that? Did they ever?). I want to re-read the two books sometime to fully form an opinion on them.

DOTTER OF HER FATHER'S EYES by Mary Talbot and her husband Bryan was entertaining, about the relationships between James Joyce and his daughter and between Mary Talbot and her father, a Joycean scholar. Still, I keep hoping every new Bryan Talbot book will live up to SUNDERLAND or ONE BAD RAT or ARKWRIGHT, and so far the last few haven't. I guess that's the problem when a creator has set the bar so high with earlier projects that just "very good" becomes a letdown.

The only other new thing I've picked up is Hunt Emerson's adaptation of DANTE'S INFERNO, but I haven't gotten around to reading that yet.

Couple of new things I'd probably be buying if I went to a comic shop more often (I think I made fewer visits to comic shops in 2012 than in any year since I started going to them  in 1988).  Linda Medley made a surprise return to CASTLE WAITING and had three issues wrapping up the second book. I kind of want to get them, but at this point I'll just wait for the revised second book with the whole story.  JOE KUBERT PRESENTS has some nice looking work from the man in the title, plus some new USS Stevens work by Sam Glanzman. If I was seeing it that would be hard to resist, but as it is I'm hoping for a nice collected edition. Ideally one of the Kubert material, along with more of his later work not available in other books, and the Glanzman stuff as the ending for a complete USS Stevens book. But I'd take just a collection of the anthology. And ADVENTURES OF AUGUSTA WIND is a pretty intriguing looking book from J.M. DeMatteis, which I'm sure I'll buy in some form eventually.

Spent a lot more on reprints, as usual.

CORPSE ON THE IMJIN AND OTHER STORIES BY HARVEY KURTZMAN, I just got and haven't had a chance to read, but just a gorgeous looking book. It's good that someone finally cracked the code on how to do a proper EC reprint series.  Who knew you needed an Enigma Machine to figure out "creator themed collections, split by genre for the more prolific creators". I'm definitely going to pick up the Wallace Wood suspense story book. And I'm disappointed to find out, according to what I just checked, that the Al Williamson book that was supposed to come out last month is delayed a few months.

TALES OF THE BEANWORLD (BOOK 3.5) is a nice little collection of some of Larry Marder's colour stories to prepare for Book 4: Something More, coming... eventually.

It was pretty nice to see a reprint of the Goodwin/Simonson ALIEN - THE ILLUSTRATED STORY movie adaptation. I'd found a copy of the original a few years ago, but it was a bit fragile, so the fresh edition is welcome, and it's good that new people get a chance to discover it.

BONE - THE EPIC CONCLUSION is the third and last of Scholastic Canada's three volume colour hardcover reprint of Jeff Smith's comic. This is my favourite way to read the story now. Nice large pages, good paper, good binding, comfortable in the hand. And a really good story.

I need to catch up on some Osamu Tezuka. I got BARBARA a few weeks ago, but haven't got around to reading it. I think both volumes of the new edition of ADOLF are out, and I'll have to see if I want to replace my old 5 volume version.

I picked up GRENDEL OMNIBUS #1, which has all the Hunter Rose solo stuff by Matt Wagner and various artists, all in black, white and red. I think I prefer the colour version of DEVIL BY THE DEED, but the other stuff, most of which is new to me, has been pretty good, as I work my way through. Haven't decided if I'll pick up the later books.

DOUG WILDEY'S RIO - THE COMPLETE SAGA might be the book of the year. All of Wildey's published Rio stories, with as much as possible newly shot from the original artwork, plus two unpublished stories, one finished and one pretty far along but never completed, which means you get some nice looks at Wildey's pencils and work process. He seemed to work really out of order, with the ending of the story fully done while earlier stuff is still just sketched out, sometimes sketched panels on the same page as finished panels.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS SEA DEVILS #1 and SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE LOSERS #1 are two welcome big thick black and white reprints from DC, with a lot of Russ Heath in the first, and John Severin in the second.

And it was good to see DC reprint THE BIBLE by Sheldon Mayer, Nester Redondo and Joe Kubert.

And, somehow I missed this, the second POGO comic strip collection by Walt Kelly came out, and a copy is now on its way to me. A lot of other good comic strip reprints came out, but I'm way behind on almost everything.

I guess that's enough on comics.  I'll get to the digital stuff in another post.


In movies, I've mostly been trying to make time to re-watch some old favourites and stuff that I should have watched years ago but somehow missed. I mean, re-watching THE USUAL SUSPECTS, FIELD OF DREAMS, WEST SIDE STORY, THE GODFATHER, WILLY WONKA, TIME BANDITS, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and THAT THING YOU DO (that was just December) makes me wonder why I'd ever want to see a new movie again. But I did see a few.

LOOPER was a nice diversion, with a few clever bits, all of which completely fall apart once you start thinking about what's going on, even more than most time travel stories, but pretty good as long as you can avoid that trap.

RED TAILS had some decent bits, enough to be worth seeing, but was a pretty uneven movie overall. A shame, as the Tuskegee Airmen story is pretty interesting, and could have led to a much better movie. Not that I think very many more people would have seen it if it had been a better film.

CHRONICLE wasn't too bad.  The "found footage" conceit was kind of strained, especially in the early going, but it led to some pretty clever visuals in the second half. Some very good effects in the super-powers and their "real-world" consequences.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES wasn't, I guess, a bad movie, but it wasn't a very good Batman movie. A shame, as I thought Nolan had a pretty valid interpretation of Batman from the first two movies, but after this I think I was reading in some things that weren't there and ignoring some things that were. Glad to see the end of this version of the character.

When I saw THE HOBBIT a few weeks ago, I walked out of the theater thinking it was one of the worst movies I ever saw. I've softened a bit on that, but I still think it's far from good, and is so far inferior to the LORD OF THE RINGS movies that it's hard to believe most of the same people are involved. Won't be going to see the next two (at least not in theaters), and overall I'm just confused that most people seem to like it as much as they do.

On the other hand, I've been hearing for months that JOHN CARTER is really good, but Disney screwed up the marketing (deliberately or otherwise), and dismissed that. I've now seen it on DVD, and I'll say now that I was wrong. I thought it was a great movie, something I'd never expect from the handful of ads I saw, and now really wish I'd seen it on the big screen with an audience. I can't remember the last new action/adventure movie I saw that worked as well as this, with good pacing, a plot reasonably faithful to the source, if I remember correctly (it's been a while since I read Burroughs), with changes that made sense, rather than being gratuitous, funny bits that were actually funny (as opposed to every attempt at humour in THE HOBBIT), solid special effects, mostly good acting. The movie they put out clearly was not the movie they were selling. No clue if that was deliberate or just run-of-the-mill incompetence, but I'm kind of upset now that the chance of a sequel seems remote.


On TV, I think KEY AND PEELE is a pretty great sketch comedy show, and may be my favourite show now. I liked the final season of COMMUNITY for the most part, uneven but more good than bad, and always watchable and re-watchable. I liked some of the episodes of LOUIE a lot this year, in particular the story with Robin Williams (as a character) and the one with Marc Maron (as himself), and parts of the "Late Night" plot. Almost caught up on BREAKING BAD, which has been pretty spectacular. MAD MEN is still good, but not as good as it was.  DEXTER, already on a long downward spiral since the Trinity Killer season, went right down the drain, so I think I'm done with it. Still enjoy THE COLBERT REPORT and THE DAILY SHOW, though I skip over huge chunks of both (about half the interviews, and most of the field pieces on THE DAILY SHOW). I watch THE LATE SHOW WITH CRAIG FERGUSON sometimes, and mostly enjoy what I see.

The only music I bought this year was the new Bob Dylan album, TEMPEST. And that was the first time I bought an album digitally, which makes sense since I don't think I've touched any of my CDs in over a year. A couple of good songs on there, but that title song, a 14 minute song about the Titanic, is kind of ridiculous. If Dylan of old did an epic song about the Titanic, it might be about hubris, or class, or something bigger than a boat sinking. This is a song about a boat sinking.