Goodnight, Irene [2007] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Goodnight, Irene [2007]

This is a collection of the works of Carol Lay, featuring her character Irene Van de Kamp, published in the title GOOD GIRLS from 1987 to 1991 from Fantagraphics and then Rip Off Press.  Lay also does some new stories in the end of this book, published by Last Gasp.

I'd seen the old comic around every now and then, and it looked intriguing, but I didn't really start paying attention to Carol Lay until I started reading her Story Minute comic strip (later titled Way Lay) around the turn of the century.  Really loved those, so of course looked for her earlier work. Discovered she did some CAPTAIN CARROT comics I enjoyed back in the early 1980s (initially inking, then eventually co-writing and drawing the OZ-WONDERLAND WAR mini-series), but obviously much of her own style didn't come through on that. Read a few of the GOOD GIRLS issues, but eventually this book came out.

Irene's story began as one-shot parody back-up story, making fun of standard romance comics tropes with an extreme version of the situations they're built on, in this case an American heiress lost as a baby and raised by an African tribe that practices face-shaping, including a lip-plate. Returning to America as a young wealthy woman, she struggles to find love, hoping a blind lawyer might be the one, only to have her hopes dashed. A funny little story that Lay created in 1980, but didn't publish until years later.  After a few issues as a back-up, Irene's story took over the books, adding more colourful characters and complications. 

A very fun book, and it's interesting to see the evolution of Lay's style in the long creative process between the first story and the last.  The first story is a solid classic style, as befits the parody roots. Later on she melds that style with a lot of the Love&Rockets look, especially Jaime Hernandez, which is a natural fit, as they seem to have a lot of common influences.  You can gradually see her work going towards that Story Minute / Way Lay style as the book goes on, with some sudden jumps in the two new stories in the back which update Irene's story to the then-modern day.

The original Irene related covers and back-covers are presented in the back, and there's a new preface by Lay and introduction by musician Mark Mothersbaugh.

Upcoming DeMatteis comics news

So, interesting news coming from the always-interesting J.M. DeMatteis that he's co-creating four very different books with four very different artists/co-creators (all of whom he has some history with), to be launched under the umbrella of "The DeMultiverse" from a new publisher, Spellbound Comics.

The four titles are:

LAYLA IN THE LANDS OF AFTER with Shawn McManus

WISDOM with Tom Mandrake

GODSEND with Matthew Dow Smith

ANYMAN with David Baldeón

Details are gradually being announced. LAYLA is set in the afterlife, WISDOM is some kind of fantasy/western hybrid, the other two look like variations on super-heroic myths.

From what I can gather, the plan of the publisher is to publish the first issue of each series, both as standalone comics and a collection of all four, through pre-sales on their own website and Kickstarter, and then let people who ordered the books decide which one will continue on to more stories first, with the plan to eventually continue them all, presumably more quickly the more successful the publisher is. Maybe a bit convoluted to my tastes, but a new publisher has to do what it must to launch, and I'm sure that DeMatteis is able to craft the four stories so that they're satisfying reads on their own, while holding the promise of even more if/when they're able to continue.

Also, good on DeMatteis for having the artists all listed as co-creators right up front, and good on Spellbound for the books being creator owned (by both writer and artist), not work for hire like many new publishers where the books read like movie pitches disguised as comics, owned by just the company or just the writer and the company.  These look like comics undisguised as comics.

BATMAN/SPAWN 2022 vs SPAWN/BATMAN 2006

Well, in a desire to get more timely and clickbaity content on this weblog (the scenes of Herbie meeting Queen Elizabeth didn't seem to cut it. I thought I had a surefire viral hit there)...

I wonder how much the just solicited BATMAN/SPAWN comic from DC was originally done for the SPAWN/BATMAN comic that Image Comics was supposed to publish back in 2006?  Can't find the cover, unfortunately (if anyone has a print copy of Previews from back then...) [got it], here's the description:

SPAWN/BATMAN: INNER DEMONS 

story TODD MCFARLANE

art TODD MCFARLANE & GREG CAPULLO

covers TODD MCFARLANE

56 PAGES FC DECEMBER 28, 2006

$5.99

It’s been over a decade since their first meeting. The Dark Knight and the even darker one. But this time is perhaps the most dangerous meeting of all. A battle for our heroes’ very souls and sanity. Sure Batman knows how to fight The Joker, Spawn and The Clown, but what if Spawn had to deal with Batman’s legendary nemesis? And for that matter, is Batman really capable of fighting a TRUE DEMON from hell? Two great heroes must face each other’s greatest villains! Get ready for drama, mayhem and madness like you’ve never seen before from comics master TODD MCFARLANE!

Let's compare the new one

BATMAN/SPAWN #1

Written by TODD McFARLANE

Art and cover by GREG CAPULLO

[variant covers endless list redacted]

[ratio covers endless list redacted]

$6.99 US | 48 pages | Prestige | One-shot (all covers are card stock)

ON SALE 12/13/22 

 

Two dark heroes, cursed by tragedy, find their paths again crossing…but not by choice! What sinister foe is at work, pitting the Dark Knight against the Hellspawn? From the shadows of Gotham City to New York City, this epic event is the blockbuster you've been waiting almost two decades for!

Well, one dollar higher, which isn't that bad, less than 1% annualized inflation. Slightly fewer pages, which might be a blessing (probably would have been filler/ad pages, and I think Image counts the covers while DC doesn't).  McFarlane not explicitly involved in the art.  Also not doing the main cover, but that may have been moved to one of the many variant/ratio/custom/limited/reprint covers we'll no doubt see.  The first time they explicitly mention the Joker and the Clown as the villains, which is still a possibility with the new one, except that DC these days is never shy about telling you when the Joker is appearing some place.

Now what we need is for Image to publish a new SPAWN/BATMAN, written by the whole current Batman team, let's say Tom King, Chip Zdarsky, Ram V and James Tynion, drawn by, oh, let's give it to Mikel Janin, I like his stuff. Is Klaus Janson still inking? Anyway, the story, given Tom King's involvement, will undoubtedly involve Spawn realizing he's been suffering from PTSD all these years...

(Batman created by Bill Finger with... damn, always forget his name. Kob Brane?)
(Spawn created by Todd McFarlane, I guess, unless he ripped off some co-creator, although many of his supporting characters co-created by Neil Gaiman. Probably not appearing in this book, though, since Gaiman won them in a lawsuit and sold/gave them to either Marvel or the CBLDF.  That's not really relevant, I just like to bring it up.  Miracleman's coming back, too...)

Here's some other ridiculous art I found from the unpublished book:

Classic Herbie somehow fitting the biggest news of the day...

 Somewhere in America, a Duke weeps tonight...

But only because he can't find his rare cinnamon flavoured lollipop. 

And do you knight someone to make them a Duke?  Who researched this thing?

Ogden Whitney and Richard E. Hughes were fond of throwing in celebrity cameos in their 1958-1967 series from ACG, and Queen Elizabeth, Second of Her Name, was there frequently, although kind of inconsistently characterized.

Atom Bomb Thief redux

So, this one actually popped into my head a few weeks ago, when some initial reports of the news of the day indicated nuclear secrets were involved.  Now that it's all intensified, I pretty much had to cobble this together to get it out of my head.

 All apologies to Harvey Kurtzman, creator of the 1950 source story, a remarkably tight and exciting story from early in his classic EC tenure (see MAN AND SUPERMAN AND OTHER STORIES in the EC Artists' Library series).  And a general apology to all professional comic book letterers everywhere, and Jim Wroten specifically in this case, for the slipshod work on my part.

The original page

The Cowboy Wally Show [1996] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

The Cowboy Wally Show [1996]

This is a book created by Kyle Baker, first published in 1988 from Doubleday. That edition seemed to be mostly famous for being hard to find, though those that did find it seemed to really like it.

So eight years later when another "mainstream" publisher, Marlowe & Company, decided to try out a comic book line, they picked a re-issue of this among their early releases, which ended up being just four books that I know of (though I recall they announced plans for a few more). Not sure it did much better the second time around, but it did give some of us who'd heard the praises sung of the first edition a chance to get a copy.

I think the only real difference between the two editions is the new cover.

Overall it's a pretty funny book, presented as a documentary about the bizarre career of television personality Cowboy Wally, a man whose main talent seems to be putting his foot in his mouth. Maybe it's not laugh out loud  as I was expecting from years of build-up, but consistently amusing and clever. I think this was Kyle Baker's first writing work, after a few years mostly inking, and I think contemporary with his work on THE SHADOW at DC, with Andrew Helfer.

The book was subsequently published by DC's Vertigo imprint, and has been self-published in several different print and digital editions by Baker since he re-acquired the rights.

Tom Palmer, R.I.P.

 Sad to note the passing of comic book artist Tom Palmer at age 81. An artist with over 50 years active in the industry, best known as an inker, often considered one of the definitive inkers over artists like Gene Colan, John Buscema and Neal Adams.

Here are a few samples of the rare examples of Palmer doing full art jobs.