Recently Read 2020.11.20

 A few comic types that passed before my eyes, more recent than most of my reading, courtesy of the Toronto Public Library

MONSTERS by Barry Windsor-Smith
DRAGON HOOPS by Gene Luen Yang
THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH vol. 1 by Martin Simmonds & James Tynion IV
THE WICKED + THE DIVINE vol. 1 by Jamie McKelvie & Kieron Gillen
BATMAN/FORTNITE - ZERO POINT by Christos Gage, Reilly Brown, Christian Duce, etc.
PAUL AT HOME by Michel Rabagilati

MONSTERS by Barry Windsor-Smith

This is a long-in-progress book by Windsor-Smith which began as a Hulk story for Marvel back in the 1980s, eventually growing into over 360 pages in this mess published earlier this year. You can still see the super-hero story in the genesis of it, and in fact it's hard to see how major parts of the story make any sense if you don't know it was a Hulk story, which the book itself (and any of the official publicity material) doesn't mention. Absent the Hulk backstory the "modern" framing sequence (set in 1964/1965) it a bit incongruous with the bulk of the book, told in flashbacks within flashbacks set in the 1940s. There's also an uneasy mix of Nazi genetic science-fiction mixed with some Stephen King style fantasy horror straight out of The Shining, which might work in a Marvel Universe story where by definition all those things can co-exist, but not as well in a stand-alone book.

Not that there isn't a lot worth looking at in the book. At his best Windsor-Smith is an innovative stylist with an intricate pen-and-ink style that really rewards slowing down and spending time poring over each image. Unfortunately in the long gestation process for the book, those parts are spread out in the book, and there are parts which feel more like one of the many artists he inspired over the years. Still attractive for the most part, but with detail that feels more like noodling without really adding too much. The writing is also stretched a bit thin, with scenes going on far too long, repeating points that have already been made. It's not hard to see this thing being winnowed down to a much stronger 100-page book.

Overall worth taking a look at at for the parts that succeed, as they reach quite a high level, but hard to recommend the overall book.

DRAGON HOOPS by Gene Luen Yang

This is the latest major solo book published last year from Yang, following AMERICAN BORN CHINESE in 2006 and BOXERS & SAINTS in 2013 (he's done a lot of other comics as writer only in the interim, both original concepts and work-for-hire). For the most part it's a documentary look at a season of a high school basketball team. Of course, like most modern documentarians, Yang makes the story a lot larger, both by extensive digressions into the history of basketball and by making the story about himself, both as a teacher at that high school and as the creator of this book.

I had mixed feelings about this book. For the most part I'm like Yang in the early part of the book, not really caring about sports. He comes around based on his personal connection to the team in the process of creating this book, but for the most part I really don't. So the history of basketball sections I really didn't care about, while the story of the team did have some points of interest in the personal stories of the players, too much of it was taken up with the actual play on the court, which was hard for me to follow. So as easy as it is to make fun of the documentarian for making the story about himself (something Yang himself attempts to diffuse by confronting it head-on) the only part of the book I found consistently engaging was the autobiography, set around the time Yang began to write super-hero comics for DC on a regular basis. 

All in all worth taking a look at. My memories of his earlier books are a bit faint, I'll have to go back and re-read them some day, but I think I liked it better than BOXERS & SAINTS but not as much as AMERICAN BORN CHINESE.

THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH vol. 1 by Martin Simmonds & James Tynion IV

This collects the first five issues of the still on-going book that started last year.  Looks like it's doing pretty well, so it'll probably keep running for quite a while. I might check back in when it's got a more satisfying chunk to experience, five or six books in. What we get in here is okay, but nothing too groundbreaking. The story is about conspiracy theories, with the twist that while they aren't true, enough belief in them can turn them true. So far it's just second rate X-Files stuff, but it has the potential to turn into much more. The artwork is pretty good, so far just 1980s Sienkiewicz with the more excessive bits filed down, but that's a pretty decent style, and not one which Sienkiewicz is using much these days.

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE vol. 1 by Jamie McKelvie & Kieron Gillen

This is the first of nine collections of a series that ran from 2014 to 2019, with 45 regular issues and a number of one-shot specials.  I read this early on, and put it on the list to check out when it was finished and all available.  The high-concept of this one is that there are a dozen beings with god-like powers, who reincarnate every ninety years, living for just two years. The latest reincarnation takes place in the modern age of social media and pop culture, dragging various mortals (most notably teenage girl Laura) into their machinations.

It starts pretty strong with the first few issues collected here, although I found the middle of the book a bit of slog, picking up again towards the end. I have the next few books sitting here, but haven't been motivated to start on them for a few weeks.

BATMAN/FORTNITE - ZERO POINT by Christos Gage, Reilly Brown, Christian Duce, etc. 

This collects a recent six issue series featuring the Bill Finger created Batman sucked into the world of a popular video game. Personally I lasted about five minutes into the game the one time I tried playing it. I assume that was set in the Loop world Batman is in the first half of the book, where he fights random characters, resetting every 22 minutes (I must have always died long before reaching that mark). Of course, being Batman he's able to pass messages to himself across resets, getting himself and Catwoman into the next level, where they team up with various other colourful characters to escape.

It's all kind of mindless, but pretty fun. It doesn't need to be six issue (which, spoiler alert, all end up being just a prequel to more Batman/Fortnite stories in the future), one of which is just devoted to Batman fighting a member of G.I. Joe, but it's readable. The over-rendered art style isn't my ideal for Batman stories, but does the job. I ended kind of surprised that I might actually read more of this someday. Probably not for a while, until it looks like the whole thing is finished, but someday.

PAUL AT HOME by Michel Rabagilati

This is the latest book in Québécois cartoonist Rabagiati's series of semi-autobiographical tales of his alter-ego "Paul Rifiorati". The character ages with the cartoonist, so while the earliest stories in the series were about his summer job, now we see a cartoonist in his 50s, dealing with health issues, an aging mother, a teenage daughter, pesky neighbours and all the rest of modern life.  Been a while since I've read the series (I don't think I've read the previous two books), but I enjoyed this one a lot, so I'll have to go back to the start and catch up. 

Free Stephen Bissette lecture series starting Wednesday

Coming up this Wednesday, and every other Wednesday until February 2022 (with a break for Christmas), Stephen R. Bissette is presenting a free on-line lecture series, "Comics Go To College" through Jackson College. Wide range of topics, including (no surprise) dinosaurs, early comics history, early Japanese comics, comics production, Afrofuturism and much more. 

Dates, times, descriptions and registration links (again, the lectures are free, but registration is required) are available at Jackson College's site for the lecture series.

Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #13 [1996] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #13 [1996]

This book was part of a small line of 99¢ books Marvel did in the mid-1990s, back when most of their line was averaging $2 an issue. Most of those titles were pretty unappealing to me, as was most of the regular Spider-Man line at the time, but this book mostly worked for me, and I picked for the entire 25 issue run, plus two annuals and some other related books. In fact, I think this might be the last Marvel comic I bought brand new off the rack for more than a year of consecutive issues (there are a few later ones I bought as back issues following good word-of-mouth).

The basic concept of the title is that it tells stories that occur between issues, sometimes between panels, of the original Spider-Man comics done by his creator, Steve Ditko, back in the 1960s. It starts around the original AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #6 and runs to about AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #24. It uses the existing characters (sometimes using information that wouldn't be revealed about them for years, like a Mary Jane Watson story which takes place before she met Peter Parker), and also creates some new characters. A few new villains, a few new classmates for Peter Parker (at least some of them, I think, based on unnamed background characters Ditko drew in the original comics). The implanted stories aren't quite seamless with the original comics (more on that later) but are occasionally pretty clever.

This issue is by the regular creative team for most of the run: Kurt Busiek story, Pat Olliffe pencils, Al Vey & Pam Eklund inks. The story this time revolves around one of the original characters, Sally Avril, a classmate of Peter Parker who has taken up a super-hero identity of her own, Bluebird. As we've found out over the last little while, she's pretty reckless, much to Spider-Man's chagrin, and that ultimately leads her to (spoiler alert, but there's a gravestone of the cover) die in this issue.

On its own, this is a pretty decent comic, but you can see why it doesn't work at all as a continuity implant. There is no way that Spider-Man, midway through the Ditko run, had a classmate who played at being a super-hero and died as a consequence. That's a bit harder to accept than some goofball new villain or an extra battle or two with Electro.

But, ignoring that, it's a pretty decent comic. It evokes the feel of the original comics while still in most ways being what passes for modern in the mid-1990s, but not in those regrettable ways you usually think of when people mention mid-1990s Marvel comics.

Purgatory USA #1 [1989] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Purgatory USA #1 [1989]

Bit of a strange duck here, with what was planned as the first issue of a series but became a one-shot. Despite the cover jam piece by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, this isn't a Love&Rockets spin-off, but an early book written and drawn by Ed Brubaker (credited as "Edwin" on the stories). Can't think of very many creator owned indy books that start off with a cover drawn by someone else entirely, and the actual creator not even named on the cover.

Brubaker sets the series in the fictional small town of Maynardville.  Brubaker does an introductory "Welcome To Maynardville" page introducing some of the characters and then three short stories. Two are standalone stories, "Chicken" and "A Minor Altercation", and the third is the first chapter of a projected 3-part story "The Rain". I'm pretty sure Brubaker never returned to Maynardville after this comic, and "The Rain" remains unfinished. He wrote and drew a few comics after, notably the series LOWLIFE, and then became primarily a writer.

I remember kind of liking this when it came out. I was about a year back into comics buying at the time, and willing to sample almost anything, and I think had already found a few favourites among Slave Labor's books. Might even have seen a house ad for this in one of them (in fact, I'm almost certain I remember the tagline, "Between Heaven and Hell lies Purgatory USA"). I guess I was forgiving of the huge dissonance between the quality of the art on the cover and the insides. I know I'd casually look around for a second issue, and would have bought it if it came out, but wasn't so impressed that I was that interested in Brubaker's other work.

Anyway, "The Rain" had a pretty promising start. It's partially a history of the town, leading up to what happened to make Herman, a descendent of the town founder, leave the town years earlier, with a mystery about why he's now returning. It's all told in narration, what would be a Morgan Freeman type voice-over if it was a movie, no dialogue. I kind of wonder if Brubaker intended to continue that, or it was just for the intro. Still kind of intriguing, but having seen a lot more movies and read a lot more books than I had when I read it at age 19 I can now see it as being a bit derivative. And the art does look a lot like the work Chester Brown was doing at the time...

(most of it. A few places look a lot like Love&Rockets swipes, especially the female characters)

Bucky O'Hare #2 [1991] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Bucky O'Hare #2 [1991]

Bucky O'Hare is a funny animal science fiction series created by Larry Hama and Michael Golden for the Continuity anthology ECHO OF FUTUREPAST back in 1984-1985. It features the titular rabbit captain of a spaceship with a crew of various other mammals from another dimension teaming up with a precocious human boy against an army of evil toads. It was collected in 1986. In 1991 it was adapted to a TV cartoon, and got a toyline, so Continuity repackaged the comics to a 5-issue series.

It's all a bit of a mess, unfortunately. The story is expanded to over twice as many pages, and the reformatting isn't very well done, even without any of the originals on hand to compare. The size of the lettering and line-weight of the art will vary from panel to panel, some of the transitions are awkward. And if you're familiar with Continuity, you won't be surprised to hear that the colouring is overdone.

All a shame, since Golden's artwork, what you can make out of it, is really good, and there's some decent humour in Hama's writing. I'm not sure if there's ever been a decent modern reprint of it.  Looks like there was a black and white digest reprint back in 2006, which might be the reformatted version based on the page count, and a colouring book a few years ago which seems to have the full story, possibly in the original format, and some new material.

Power Pack #20 [1986] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre 

Power Pack #20 [1986]

This is in the middle of series co-creator Louise Simonson's run on the book. The other co-creator, June Brigman, had left a few issues earlier, so there are a few issue before the next regular artist, Jon Bogdanove (who would later have a long and successful collaboration with Simonson across town), begins his run. But the artists they got are no regular fill-ins, with a few issues by Brent Anderson and this issue by Bob McLeod. That's appropriate, since the guest stars this issue are the New Mutants, a team that McLeod had co-created a few years earlier, and Simonson was his editor on those early New Mutants stories.

There's also a very nice cover by the unusual team of Mike Mignola and Terry Austin.

As I've noted before one of the things I liked about this series is the way it integrates into the wider Marvel universe. While the regular guest stints and crossovers could in many books be more of a marketing ploy (and I'm sure that played a factor in this book as well), they worked well in this book because Simonson played with the idea of the kids experiencing these odd characters for the first time. She also usually did a good job of making sure everything that needs to be explained was on the page. Slightly less good of a job this issue, but my vague understanding of the X-Men family of books (which Simonson had been an editor for and would soon be a writer for) were pretty convoluted at the time. There's something going on with demons from an alternate dimension, Limbo, trying to invade the Earth, which builds up slowly and eventually culminates in the Inferno story that Power Pack are part of almost two years from now. At this point the demons are trying to steal some babies for a sacrifice, which brings them to a hospital where the Power Pack kids' mother is in critical condition from recent events in the book. The demons decide to try to use Katie and her energy powers for the sacrifice, bringing the kids together with the New Mutants to stop it.

Fun issue, a little confusing without the full context, but a lot to like. Especially nice to see McLeod doing full art. I'm mostly familiar with him as an inker, which he always does very well, but I really like his full art, like some of his New Mutants work before this and some Superman work he did a few years after this.

On FOUNDATION and my Asimov history

So, a TV series based on Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION series is coming out, probably already started by the time anyone reads this. As I mentioned in a previous post, I wasn't even aware that this was a thing a month ago, when I came across one of the ads for it. Which is kind of weird, because in a previous phase of my life it would have been all I was thinking about for months prior to its debut. So I've had Asimov on the brain a lot for the last month.

(as to the TV show, while the first ad I saw for it looked good, subsequent investigation has seriously tempered my enthusiasm. And watching stuff on AppleTV is a pain. I've been willing to do it for TED LASSO, but not much else. It's a ten episode season, so I'll probably wait for five to air and start those, see how long I last)

Isaac Asimov's writing was pretty much a defining feature of my teen years. As I recall, it started when I was twelve. I was a pretty voracious reader prior to that, but most of the stuff I was reading prior to that was very much kids' stuff. Nothing I'm too ashamed of, but I know a lot of it involved precocious kids who were too smart for their age and had to solve the problems of grownups. We're talking Danny Dunn, Encyclopedia Brown, The Great Brain.  Anyway, that year we had a daily reading time in school, which in retrospect was probably break time for the teacher, where we had to sit and quietly read a book from the school library for, if I'm recalling correctly, fifteen minutes a day. The second one I picked was NIGHTFALL AND OTHER STORIES, a short story collection by Asimov. Not sure why I picked that. I might have been familiar with Asimov's name, maybe from the science fiction magazine bearing his name. I was definitely motivated by it being a short story collection, much more suited to 15-minute chunks of reading five days a week. Anyway, I don't think it's exaggerating to say that book changed my life, in tiny increments, over the next month or so. There are just whole ways of looking at the world that I'd never encountered before, a huge variety of imaginative settings used to tell stories about basic human truths. Also, and this can't be overestimated, Asimov wrote introductions to every story, which gave some fascinating insights into the process of writing and publishing that were all new to me.

Now, at twelve I was pretty undeveloped as a cultural consumer. I watched a lot of TV, but probably the only show I loved back then that I can still watch with anything other than nostalgic affection is THE MUPPET SHOW, and, y'know, that's kind of sui generis. Maybe DOCTOR WHO, I kind of go hot-and-cold on that. The only movies I remember seeing that I'd still watch today are THE WIZARD OF OZ and WILLY WONKA, maybe the STAR WARS movies. I was late in developing any affinity for music, so it would be a take a few more years for me to like anything, and a few more for me to really discover my groove.  There are a few comics I was reading back then that I still think highly of (the Perez/Wolfman TITANS and Giffen/Levitz LEGION among them), but even those I'd place as solid second tier behind that stuff that really clicked with me, which was still years in the future for me, even if it was mostly published decades in the past. So Asimov took root in a pretty fertile but empty field. After painfully finishing NIGHTFALL in fifteen minute increments (no, I couldn't just take it home, yes, I asked) I took it out as a regular library loan and re-read it in days, and then revisited favourite stories and scenes (in retrospect, I could have just lied and said I finished it, then taken it out as a regular loan. Oh, stupid honest 12-year-old Bob...). The school library was lacking in more, but the public library came through (hat-tip to https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/). I'm not sure, I think I, ROBOT was next, maybe some of the Robot or Empire novels. The man wrote a lot.

It didn't take me too long reading works by and about Asimov to become aware of the the FOUNDATION series (in fact, looking at the dates, it seems FOUNDATION'S EDGE was published just a few months prior to my discovery of NIGHTFALL). I admit I was initially a bit intimidated by it. I don't think it was helped by the covers of the available library copies being kind of weird. I've yoinked copies off the internet:

Tell me that's appealing to a 12-year-old boy. Also, for some reason I could never wrap my head around the fact that SECOND FOUNDATION is the third book (something whoever did this graphic didn't seem to know, either).

Obviously I eventually got over my issues, and exhausted all the other available Asimov science fiction in the library (little knowing what awaited me scattered throughout Dewey's decimal system). And probably had another birthday, so I was thirteen and officially a man, mazel tov. Okay, maybe not, but I was ready for the next level of storytelling, and this was it. Still kind of hard to believe that it was written from 1942 to 1950. It feels much more modern than that. Anyway, I have no idea how many times I read those books in the ensuing years. At least twice before I tackled FOUNDATION'S EDGE, and again after I finished that, and every time another book in the series came out (1986, 1988 and 1993) I'd re-read at least the original trilogy (my feelings about the later books are, let's say, complicated and still evolving, and a tale for another time). So I'd say at least seven times I read the trilogy in ten years.

But it's been a while. I still revisit Asimov on a regular basis, maybe every year or so, but I'm more likely to hit some of the short stories, maybe one of the (not quite) stand-alone novels, or some non-fiction. I think it's been at least 20 years since I've read the original FOUNDATION books. There was a time I'd have thought that was unthinkable. There was also a time when nothing would excite me more than then thought of a screen adaptation of FOUNDATION. But that was before THE BICENTENNIAL MAN and I, ROBOT broke my hearts. I'm still intrigued, even though it looks like some of what's going to be in the first season comes from the prequels PRELUDE TO FOUNDATION and FORWARD THE FOUNDATION, which are okay on their own merits, but a bit problematic in the grand scheme. There also seems to be a lot of original material in the adaptation, which, given the past work of the writer/producer, does not feel me with glee.

So I've got a few weeks, I think I might re-read the original trilogy again, maybe some of the other books. I'm just kind of sorry that it took this to get me to think back on my history with Asimov in such detail (trust me, the first draft of this post was much longer, and all the tangents in my head that didn't even make it to the screen would have made it three times longer). And hopefully, regardless of quality, this TV show will bring a new readership to Asimov's work (I haven't looked at how they're marketing the inevitable re-issues of the book, I hope they aren't trying to sell PRELUDE TO FOUNDATION as the first book and ideal starting point. I assume not, since Hari Seldon is being played by an old guy and Gaal Dornick appears to be a major part of it, and Salvor Hardin is in the cast list, so maybe flashbacks to the events of the prequels?). It definitely does deserve it. 

My own advice would be to pick up an Asimov short story collection (anything with "Robot" in the title), read a few of those, maybe pick up a short novel (THE CAVES OF STEEL, perhaps, is your best bet), then dive into FOUNDATION, remember that FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE is the second book and SECOND FOUNDATION is the third (fool me once...). Then, no matter what you think of it all, take a break. Do not dive right into either the sequels FOUNDATION'S EDGE and FOUNDATION AND EARTH or the prequels PRELUDE TO FOUNDATION and FORWARD THE FOUNDATION. Let the original trilogy sit in your head for a while. At least six months is probably good, ideally a year. Then re-read it, and then read the other four gradually, in publication order (EDGE, EARTH, PRELUDE, FORWARD). Actually, before you read EARTH there are other things you need to read, and a few more that might help, but revealing what and why those are here would be a spoiler (even saying this much is a spoiler, for which I can only apologize). Which I suspect will be spoiled by the end of the first season of the show.

But that's just my thoughts. Do it your own way, but definitely try the books, regardless of what the TV show turns out to be. I'm sure they'll be more readily available for the next little while than they ever have been before, even if you have to buy AppleTV branded editions.

State of the weblog address...

Linus: Oh, well. It was a short summer, Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown: And it looks like it's going to be a long winter

For some reason I always think of that line from one of the more obscure Peanuts animated specials this time of year. September 1969 release, I was just months from being born then. And more relevant a few weeks ago when I started to write this.

Anyway, if anyone is still reading this... I'll resist the natural urge to ask "Why" and just say "Thank you". And feel free to chime in if there's anything you'd like me to post about.  I know this exists mostly for my own amusement and future reference, but that's no reason anyone else shouldn't be amused or informed by it as well.

So, let's go around the horn on some topics I think I might want to discuss here, but history shows I won't get around to.

So a TV adaptation of Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION starts in a few days. There was a time in my life when that's all that would be on my mind at this point. Instead, I didn't even know that it was a thing until a few weeks ago. I kind of liked the first ad I saw, which I didn't even realize was FOUNDATION going in. I allowed myself to get unreasonably enthusiastic for a few minutes, until I looked it up and saw who the writer/producer was, not someone to be excited about, and the second ad I watched was less interesting. I'll probably still watch it, having learned no lessons from I, ROBOT and THE BICENTENNIAL MAN, maybe waiting until the first half of the season is over (I have Apple TV+ free for a few more months. Unfortunately you can see why they have to offer it for free, since it has easily the worst interface of any of the main streaming sites).  Before that, I should probably write some more about Asimov here, for posterity. His writing, in particular the original FOUNDATION trilogy, was a big part of my life in my teens, though it's been a while since I revisited it.

Other TV I've actually watched which might come up, TED LASSO is still enjoyable, if less so than the first season. The last year of BROOKLYN NINE-NINE was pretty decent. SCHMIGADOON was an entertaining diversion. The "last" year of BOSCH was a bit meandering, but okay. LUPIN started off pretty good, didn't really deliver on the promise with the back half, but was okay. JUPITER'S LEGACY, kind of hard to believe that got made and released. INVINCIBLE was decent in places, but all kind of inexplicable. I did discover and love TASKMASTER after the producers started putting it on-line. Other than that I mostly still watch older stuff. Watched all of STAR TREK - DEEP SPACE NINE a few months ago, most of it for the first time. Better than I expected. Carried on to watching highlights of VOYAGER, also mostly for the first time, and it was mostly worse than I expected. 

In politics, the superfluous Canadian election just wrapped up, with the Liberals winding up with a minority government almost identical to the one they won just two years ago.  Let's see if this one lasts the full four years. For me, that was close to the ideal result. In general my views on most issues lie a bit to the left or the Liberals, but maybe not quite as far left as the NDP or Green Party (or in some cases even further left than any of them, but tempered by being realistic enough to know the country will never go that far left in my lifetime). So a Liberal party pulled to the left by being forced to get the cooperation of the NDP for a majority puts most things closer to my liking. For the local riding, I voted for the Liberal, although as usual I ended up regretting it. Federally this is a pretty safe Liberal riding, has been ever since I moved here back in 1988, so I could probably get away with voting for the NDP or (when they run a candidate) Green without risking helping a Conservative get in. But I'm never 100% sure (especially with the riding picking Doug Ford in the last provincial election), so in this stupid first-past-the-post system I always play it safe. And then the Liberal wins by 35%. There really needs to be a better system...

In comics, I'm still on my new paper acquisition moratorium (which means I don't buy anything printed within the last ten years, except under certain circumstances (one of those circumstances is "if I feel like it", so it's not that strict)). I still manage to read a lot of new stuff, in both print and digital, thanks to the local library and the occasional digital sale. And until the pandemic hit I could hit a local hotel conference room convention every other month and pick up a stack of cheap back issues. And I own an unholy amount of old paper which I really should get around to reading to re-reading if I'm going to justify holding on to it all. 

I haven't been reading as much comics for the last little while, for a variety of reasons. My eyesight went a bit south just prior to the pandemic, I probably need some prescription reading glasses at some point. Been delaying going to the eye doctor, even after things opened up. For now, reading in bright lights or with off-the-rack glasses helps somewhat.  Also, I kind of get disgusted by the comics industry every now and then (for obvious and justifiable reasons), and let it bleed into my love of comics. One story about vileness or stupidity in the industry can sour me on reading comics for a month. I know, I shouldn't do that, I'm going to try to avoid it in the future. Anyway, a few things that probably deserve a closer look are some of Rick Veitch's recent comics, some DeMatteis work, a few of the things Joe Hill is "curating" over at DC, the long overdue O'Neill/Moore CINEMA PURGATORIO book, all sorts of stuff.

Never really get into music on this weblog. I decided to be a middle age cliché and get a turntable, first time I've had a working one in well over a decade. A pretty cheap model, but enough for me to finally get the vinyl out of the basement. It's about fifty records, mostly bought in the 1980s, a few later, plus a few dozen more left at the house by my brother. Nothing too interesting, almost (but not quite) everything readily available on-line now, but some interesting nostalgia bait, plus the listening experience is definitely different. In almost all ways inferior, but definitely different. Might start posting about one record a week as I listen to what I have and decide what is worth keeping and what can safely be disposed of. 

Slowed down quite a bit on watching movies over the last few months, after a brief period of averaging two a day. Maybe I'll get settled into a comfortable medium. Of some stuff I watched recently, I still think that SUPERMAN (1978) is a great, only slightly flawed movie. I'm finally going to get around to watching the "Donner cut" of SUPERMAN II soon. I thought TENET was pretty incomprehensible on first viewing, and I'm not sure good enough to earn a second viewing.  WONDER WOMAN 1984 was very disappointing, after the first movie was as close as a modern super-hero blockbuster has been to being good.  I thought A QUIET PLACE PART II was okay on the merits, but quite a letdown compared to the first. 

Curious case of the missing metal

Mike Sterling of Progressive Ruin fame is providing an invaluable service to comics with this new site, which reminded me of something I meant to post about.

A little while back I was looking for the last few issues of the Aparo/Barr (BATMAN AND) THE OUTSIDERS run I was missing, and came across this seemingly normal copy of #18 of the Baxter format series, nicely bagged and boarded.

"I'll buy that for a dollar", I said, and proceeded to do so. Taking it home and opening it up, it seemed okay, until I started to leaf through it to admire the Jim Aparo artwork, and it started to fall apart.

Which was odd, to see a book that was so sharp on the outside evidently had been manhandled enough through the years for the interior pages to be coming out.  But closer inspection revealed something much odder.

The comic had no staples at all. For a second I thought that someone had taken them out for some unknowable reason, but it was quickly evident that there had never been staples.

Not just not on the cover, but all the way through, right to the center spread.

Which, got to say, is pretty neat. I've seen an occasional one-staple comic, even a three staple comic, but never a no-staple (among comics meant to be stapled, of course). A few of the pages are stuck together with some light glue, which I guess is a pre-staple part of the binding process. It would be slightly neater if they were all loose, which would have been the case in other binding processes.

So, kind of cool to get a nice surprise like this when opening up a sealed comic you got, as opposed to the usual surprise you sometimes get of finding coupons cut out, whole pages missing, major tears on some pages, random writing or colouring or some other defect. I have occasionally come across books which were signed by one of the creators, but never anyone all that exciting, and even then I'm not really into autographed comics where I didn't meet the creator in person to get the autograph.

Also kind of neat to see a reunion of the CAMELOT 3000 team of Brian Bolland and Mike Barr on the backup (one of two such reunions I know of), and the odd artistic team of José Luis García-López and Jim Aparo on the cover.

Blue Devil #22 [1986] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Blue Devil #22 [1986]

BLUE DEVIL was one of the longer lasting DC comics launches of the mid-1980s based on an original concept, starting with a preview story in FIRESTORM and then a 31 issue series plus an annual.  The character was created by writers Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn, who wrote most of the issues, and artist Paris Cullins, who left the interior art after a half-dozen issues, but returned for the annual a year later, and stuck around on covers for the whole run.

The series revolves around a stuntman and special effects expert, Dan Cassidy, who designs a giant Blue Devil prop suit for a movie, only to find himself trapped in the suit following a chance encounter with a real demon. He eventually settled in as a costumed adventurer with light-hearted escapades in Hollywood and on the fringes of the DC Universe, 

By this time the artists are Alan Kupperberg and Bill Collins joining creators Mishkin and Cohn on the story "Bounty Hunter". Dan and his friend are travelling cross country and stop in Las Vegas, where Dan had been back in #6, so he reunites with his alien friends Jorj and Lehni who settled down there in that previous issue. 

As luck would have it, an alien bounty hunter shows up in Vegas around the same time, and chaos ensues. This is a decent issue overall, a bit of a step down in quality from the first year of the book, but part of a solid middle run before it began to coast in the last year. There are also a few pages advancing some subplots with the rest of the regular cast, and a full three page letter column, including namechecks for some fifty or more writers whose letters they couldn't print. 

Unfortunately most of the series has never been reprinted, other than a few "Year's Best" digest reprints back in the day and a few issues tangentially related to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS reprints in a few expensive anthologies of such crossovers a while back. The whole series is available digitally.

Spin World #3 [1997] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Spin World #3 [1997]

SPIN WORLD was a bit of an oddity from the mid-1990s, a four issue science fiction series drawn by a fairly successful mainstream comics artist, Brent Anderson, probably near the peak of his career with ASTRO CITY coming out at the time, but published in black and white by a small and rather niche publisher, Slave Labor under their Amaze Ink imprint. How this came to be is explained by Anderson in the first issue, where he goes over the 20 year journey this comic took to being published, starting when he did six illustrations for Eric Vinicoff's novella "Spacing Dutchman" in 1976. Short version is that Mike Friedrich asked him to adapt the story to comics for one of the StarReach books, the project passed on to Fantagraphics when StarReach folded as a publisher, but that didn't work out. Later Neal Adams wanted to publish it, with thoughts of selling it in Europe, but that didn't pan out for various reasons. In 1991 DC agreed to not only publish it, but expand it with adaptations of two other related Vinicoff short stories in the same setting, making a three issue fully painted prestige format series. By the time Anderson finished the line art two years later, DC no longer thought the book was viable. So eventually four years later it wound up at Slave Labor, now with greytones instead of fully painted art.

Which is all a shame, because it seems to be pretty much an unknown work now, and it's pretty decent stuff overall. At some point someone should really look at getting a decent edition of it out, ideally replacing the greytones with the full colour it was drawn for, either painted or computer coloured in a painterly style (which wouldn't have been technically viable when this came out). The tones aren't bad in this particular issue, but in some of the other issues they came out a few shades too dark, and obscure the linework, and pure black and white would have been better. It could probably have also used one more pass by an editor at some point.

This issue features the second half of the original "Spacing Dutchman" story that started off the whole thing, an adventure set aboard a space station in the late 21st century which rotates to create gravity, hence the "Spin World" of the title. The first issue had a prequel story, "The Snake & The Staff", set earlier and featuring two characters who have a minor role in "Spacing Dutchman". The final issue adapts "Politics of Plenty", which has the lead of this story in a supporting role and explores the alien technology which is the McGuffin of this story a few years down the line. Neither of those other stories really deal with the space station, which makes it a little odd that it's the title of the whole book.

This story involves a government agent who arrives at the station trailing a mysterious woman, hoping she'll lead him to an old Nazi war criminal who's been cloned countless times since WWII. This gets him involved in the politics of the station, which culminates in an attempted invasion to acquire a piece of alien technology. And a hologram of Sherlock Holmes is somehow involved. Not sure about that last bit. Pretty entertaining stuff, though overall I think the stronger parts of the series are the other two stories added later, which make up #1 and #4. Anderson's artwork is quite good in this, the peak of his earlier style, heavily influenced by Neal Adams, which he had evolved away from a bit by the time of his ASTRO CITY work published alongside this.

Anyway, pretty decent obscure little book, would love to see it done up right someday. Single volume, full colour, maybe with a bit more framing material to integrate the three stories better (I'm not sure if Vinicoff  wrote any more stories in this setting).

Elfquest - Two-Spear #2 [1995] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Elfquest - Two-Spear #2 [1995]

This 5-issue mini-series was one of my few exposures to Elfquest comics not done by creator Wendy Pini. There was this unusual period in the early-to-mid 1990s where there was a small publishing empire built around EQ, with as many as six books a month, set in different time periods in the complex universe the original series spawned, plus some alternate universe stuff.  For my part, shortly before this time I had caught up to 1993, the point where Pini began opening it up to other creators. Continuing beyond that seemed more than a bit daunting, but this series, set in the past of the original series, seemed like it might be a good way to dip my toe in.

The Two-Spear of the title is the fourth of the previous chiefs of the Wolfriders, who gave main series lead Cutter his "Blood of Ten Chiefs" title. A few bits of his back story had been alluded to in the earlier comics, as some of them affected the main narrative, and I believe there were several prose short story Elfquest books that I haven't read which also flesh out parts of his story. This seems to be the main place where he's explored, courtesy of writer Terry Collins and artist Delfin Barral.

It's a pretty intense story. Elfquest was always known for displaying a lot of Pini's disparate influences, so it would casually go from adventure to high fantasy to humour to horror to drama in telling her long and complex tale. In this series, it's like taking one thread of Pini's tapestry and focusing on it exclusively for over 100 pages.

It's been a long while since I've read any Elfquest, and even longer since I've read this series (I tried to start THE FINAL QUEST when it began in 2013, but quickly decided I needed to go back to the beginning and also fill in some holes in my reading before reading that). By itself this is an intriguing story, advancing Two-Spear's war with the humans and eventual descent into madness and drawing on some of the origin backstory of the elves (I don't think any of the main backstory was newly presented in this book). Barrel's artwork, a lot of it seemingly done just in pencils, sometimes with greytones, is an interesting contrast to Pini's usual slick animation inspired style, while remaining true to her character designs. Looking at the other issues, there seems to have been some struggle to reproduce the art, too light in some places and too dark in others, this issue seems to strike the best balance.

I think sometime soon I'll finally start at the beginning again on Elfquest, and then re-read this whole series when I get to that point, and finally get to THE FINAL QUEST series.

The entire series is currently available free on-line, along with most Elfquest comics published prior to 2013. The first issue starts here. It also appears in Volume 9c of the 1998-2002 Elfquest "Readers" collections, but not apparently in the more recent reprints yet.

MY LAST SUMMER WITH CASS by Mark Crilley

MY LAST SUMMER WITH CASS is the first new fictional comics work by Mark Crilley in quite a while. Having spent the first two decades of his career working on fantasy/adventure comics like AKIKO (1995 to 2004, 52 issues and a one-shot, collected in 8 volumes, plus 10 prose books adapting and expanding on the story), MIKI FALLS (2007 to 2008, 4 volumes) and BRODY'S GHOST (2010 to 2015, 6 volumes and a one-shot comic, collected in one book in 2016).  He's also done a lot of art instruction work, both in print in a dozen books and on video on his popular Youtube channel.

This new book is a departure from his previous work in a lot of ways. It's complete in one volume, instead of serialized. It's full colour, while the previous books were mostly black&white (often with copious greytones), except for some short bits. And in the widest deviation from his previous work, there are no fantasy elements in MY LAST SUMMER WITH CASS.  Just a real life young adult story about art and friendship.

The "My" of the title is a young girl named Megan, who spends summers in her childhood at a cabin with another girl named Cass, where they discover a mutual love of creating artwork, and especially working together on pieces. After a few years apart they're reunited as teenagers when Megan convinces her parents to let her spend a few weeks in New York City, where Cass now lives. While some aspects of their relationship continue as if there was no pause, in other ways they find they've very much grown in separate directions, as Megan tries to fit in with Cass's big city lifestyle.

This is a pretty entertaining book. Crilley's art has always been detailed and expressive, but he seems to turn it up a notch in this book, maybe because he now has the extra tools of full colour to work with, maybe because he's drawing real-world settings. For me personally the story is a little less appealing than normal for Crilley, but then I'm increasingly far removed from the lucrative young adult audience this is clearly aimed at.  Even with that, I found a lot to like in the discussions about art that are interspersed with the relationship drama.

Highly recommended, especially to readers who liked stuff like Raina Telgemeier's comics, in particular DRAMA and SISTERS. 

Imagine how Charlie Brown feels now

Eighty years old now.  Happy Birthday, Mr. Dylan.

Cartoon by Charles Schulz from fifty years ago, of course.

Good Miracle Monday

A quick reminder to remember to set a place at the table for Superman tonight, the classic Miracle Monday tradition, as seen in this story from SUPERMAN #400 [1984] by Elliot S! Maggin and Klaus Janson.

Next year in Metropolis!

And if for some reason you've never read them, pick up Maggin's two Superman novels, LAST SON OF KRYPTON and MIRACLE MONDAY, now available in new editions self-published by Maggin.

(Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster)

RESIDENT ALIEN OMNIBUS vol. 1 by Parkhouse & Hogan

RESIDENT ALIEN has been a series that Steve Parkhouse and Peter Hogan have been putting out since 2012, with five 4-issue miniseries collected in individual volumes, with a sixth and possibly concluding 6-issue series currently being serialized and to be collected soon after.

It's also been recently adapted to a TV show, so with the extra attention on it from that it got a recent omnibus collection of the first three minis, with the balance presumably set for an eventual volume two.

The series is the story of Doctor Harry Vanderspiegle, a retired doctor living in seclusion until the murder of a local small town doctor in Patience, Washington presses him into service. Oh, and he's also an alien, stranded on Earth for the last three years waiting for rescue, with mental powers that allow him to make almost everyone see him as human.

Along the way there are also brief flashbacks to his life before coming to Earth, the time right after his revival, and the ongoing FBI search for him, which had run cold until his new job brings him out into the open.

Fun little series, I’d read some of it before, but it definitely works better in one big solid chunk.  Parkhouse’s artwork is subtle and expressive, mostly dealing with realistic small town settings and characters in the Pacific northwest, with sudden splashes of fantasy/science-fiction fitting in seamlessly.

Looking forward to eventually reading the second half.

John Paul Leon, R.I.P.

Very sad to wake up to the news that comic book creator John Paul Leon has passed away at the far too young age of 49, after a long battle with cancer.

Like a lot of people, I first encountered his work back in 1993 when he was the artist on STATIC #1 from Milestone. Incredible to check the dates now and realize he was 20 years old when he drew that issue, already remarkably good and getting better with every issue of his too-short initial run on the book. Might be the first time I was regularly buying a comic by an artist younger than I was. Also kind of sad to note that both the writers he worked on that book with, Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III, also passed away before the age of 50.

That first year of STATIC, and his subsequent returns to the character, that's some special stuff. Very much a fresh and exciting take on classic comic book and comic strip storytelling, standing in stark relief to the common trend in young artists of the era to rely on excessive noodling and linework.

 

He did a lot of interesting stuff in the years since. The three career defining works are probably EARTH X (with Jim Krueger, Alex Ross and Bill Reinhold), THE WINTER MEN (with Brett Lewis) and BATMAN: CREATURE OF THE NIGHT (with Kurt Busiek).

He was also, understandably, very much in demand as cover artist for books he didn't draw, coming up with lots of striking images over the years.

There's a fundraiser for his family over here.

Recently watched movies 2021.04.11

Some shorter comments on some recent movies

Ad Astra (2019) - new to me

Bend It Like Beckham (2002) - rewatch

Primal Fear (1996) - rewatch

Die Hard (1988) - rewatch

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) - new to me

American Psycho (2000) - new to me

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) - new to me

The Old Guard (2020) - new to me

Only the Brave (2017) - new to me

Midsommar (2019) - new to me

Happy Gilmore (1996) - rewatch

Stand by Me (1986) - rewatch

Dunkirk (2017) - new to me

Ad Astra (2019)
directed by James Gray
(new to me)

Somewhat decent little science fiction thriller about an astronaut who has to go to the outer solar system to prevent a disaster that's about to be caused by his father, whose mission to the stars lost contact with Earth decades before. It looks pretty good, but overall it's too long and slow for the amount of story that it has, and the lead comes across as incredibly unlikeable. Some of the science seems a bit ridiculous as well.  Not sorry I saw it, wouldn't watch it again.

Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
directed by Gurinder Chadha
(rewatch)

Watched this when it first came on video, back in the days of DVD rentals, and I liked it well enough that I bought it a while later, but somehow never got around to actually watching it again until now. Not sure why, it was even better than I remembered it. It helps that it's very much in my cultural wheelhouse (my one trip to England was to attend a wedding very much like the one in this movie, and I visited many homes very much in neighbourhoods like those seen here), but that's only part of it. It's funny, it's charming, it has real conflict born of best intentions rather than contrived situations. Really, I should have watched this a half-dozen times by now based on how much I liked it this time.  I'm looking forward to trying some of Chadha's other movies.

Primal Fear (1996)
directed by Gregory Hoblit
(rewatch)

A legal thriller featuring Richard Gere as a publicity seeking lawyer taking a high profile murder case. The film is probably best known now for being the screen debut of Edward Norton as the defendant, part of a pretty ridiculously talented and recognizable cast. This was at the peak of my "going to theatres to watch movies" period, when I probably saw at least one a week, sometimes as much as three, and it was definitely a favourite. Watched it a few times since then, and while it doesn't hold up completely (especially going in knowing the ending), it still works.

Die Hard (1988)
directed by John McTiernan
(rewatch)

Not much to add to what you can find written about this. Probably watch it every five years or so since it first came out. It's much better done than it has any right to be, clever and funny in ways you wouldn't expect. And at least four times better than any of the four sequels.

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
directed by Blake Edwards
(new to me)

Not sure why I never got around to watching this before. It's been sitting here forever. It's pretty engaging, mostly on the strength of  Audrey Hepburn's performance. A lot of what her character says and does would probably come off as annoying from most other actresses. And of course the less said about one aspect of it the better. Wonder if they could do a cut of the movie excising that character entirely?

American Psycho (2000)
directed by Mary Harron
(new to me)

I don't think I ever realized that this movie was a comedy. Or, more accurately, tried to be a comedy. It wasn't close to successful on that score, but at least with that element it moved in ways that I didn't expect, which was pretty entertaining in its way, and it wasn't that long, which was nice. But, y'know, don't bother watching.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
directed by Aaron Sorkin
(new to me)

This doesn't feel like it was very good as history, and I'm not sure it explains enough to be intelligible enough to someone who didn't go in with at least a passing familiarity with the events. But as a Sorkin fan, someone who lived by the early seasons of THE WEST WING, devoured two seasons of SPORTS NIGHT in one weekend when it came out on DVD, saw A FEW GOOD MEN an absurd number of times and suffered through some of his more recent TV and movies, this felt good. There were any number of flaws, I sincerely hope it doesn't win an Oscar for Best Picture or Screenplay, but I enjoyed it and would watch it again. Might have to go back and watch MOLLY'S GAME, which I skipped after the few Sorkin projects before it.

The Old Guard (2020)
directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood
(new to me)

An action/fantasy based on the 2017 comic by Leandro Fernández and Greg Rucka, making for one of the quicker transitions from page to screen in comics. And in an added rarity, Rucka is the sole credited screenwriter of the adaptation. Not sure if that's ever happened in a high profile comic-to-screen adaptation before. Anyway, I read the first series (OPENING FIRE) when it came out, and re-read it and its recent sequel (FORCE MULTIPLIED) shortly before watching the movie (a final book, FADE AWAY, is expected eventually, but first there's an anthology of short stories mostly by other creators). 

Usually I like to give a bit more distance between source material and adaptation, but doing it this way was interesting.  Rucka does a pretty good job translating his own story, keeping much more than is usual in an adaptation, mostly just moving a few things around, changing the emphasis on a few things what might work better in one medium or the other and fleshing out a few things.

Anyway, short form is that it's about a group of mercenaries who, through unknown reasons, are effectively immortal, being able to recover from any wound. After hundreds or thousands of years, they now find themselves in modern times where being able to keep such abilities secret isn't quite as easy as it was before. Very well done overall, I wouldn't be surprised if we got a sequel a few years down the line (maybe based on the second comic series, maybe something completely different), and I'll be there for it, as well as the final comic series.

Only the Brave (2017)
directed by Joseph Kosinski
(new to me)

A biographical movie about a group of Arizona firefighters, specializing in containing wildfires, following their training for a period leading up to their final mission in 2013, where 19 of the 20 team members died. Pretty good for what it is, a bit paint-by-numbers for such a movie, but Josh Brolin is really strong in the lead.  

Midsommar (2019)
directed by Ari Aster
(new to me)

An odd little horror story about some college students who travel to rural Sweden attend a festival, only to find themselves drawn deeper and deeper into a violent cult. It was pretty unsettling in a lot of ways, especially with some of the discordant natural beauty of the setting and some of the unconventional cinematography. Not really sure what I feel about it overall. Might have to revisit it eventually when I'm in the right mood, but not for a while.

Happy Gilmore (1996)
directed by Dennis Dugan
(rewatch)

Not sure why I decided to rewatch this, except that I had vague memories that I liked it more than most Adam Sandler movies I'd seen. That might still be true, but now it's really damning with faint praise. Only found a few short bits funny, most of it was one miss after another. Even the goofy Bob Barker bit, which I remembered being much funnier, seemed mostly clumsy, like it was a good idea for a joke that they forgot to finish writing.

Stand by Me (1986)
directed by Rob Reiner
(rewatch)

I was a few years late to this, not watching it until the mid-1990s, and probably would have loved it a lot more if I'd actually seen it in 1986, when I was closer to the age of the characters. Still like it a lot, and am happy to revisit it every few years. Am I the first to note Reiner had a really amazing run of movies in the first decade of his directing career? What's that, the last to note it? Well, that's got to be worth something...

Dunkirk (2017)
directed by Christopher Nolan
(new to me)

I started this a couple of times since it was first available to watch at home, would generally get about a half hour or so in before something would distract me and I would somehow never get back to it.  Finally got all the way through this time.  It's a little bit confusing, I'm still not sure I completely get how the timelines work with each other. There's a lot to like in it, but I think it needs some stronger characters to really tell the story, which I recall from my long-ago reading of WWII history is a really good story which is only hinted at in this telling, the most high profile telling we'll probably ever see for it.