Usagi Yojimbo #5 [1996] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Usagi Yojimbo #5 [1996]

A nice standalone issue in the long-running still on-gonig samurai comic by Stan Sakai, early in the third series (currently it's on the fourth series, from IDW). The story this issue is "The Chrysanthemum Pass", opening with news of a plot to assassinate  Lord Miyagi who is travelling to vote against a trade deal which would benefit Lord Hikiji, the evil Lord who has long been in conflict with our hero Miyamoto Usagi (being responsible for Usagi's ronin status)

Usagi himself is in the middle of his wanderings which take him down the picturesque Chrysanthemum Pass, which happens to cross with the path of Miyagi's procession. As you'd expect, he winds up part of the conflict, which also features the return of the mole ninja clan not seen since the early days of the series.

A nice little story building on some of the past of the series and planting a few plot elements which will come back in the future. It's been a while since I've read an issue of Usagi, and this reminds me of how much I always liked it. I think I'll try to re-read most of the 200+ issues I have in the next few months and then decide if I want to catch up with the current series (which, wow, is already up to #24? I'd have guessed it was up to #10 at most. Time flies when the world is in a pandemic...).

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.