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.