DAN SPIEGLE: A LIFE IN COMIC ART by Coates

DAN SPIEGLE: A LIFE IN COMIC ART is a recent book by John Coates about the now 93-year-old artist whose career stretches back to a long stint on the Hopalong Cassidy comic strip from 1949-1955, followed by a long stretch as one of the main adventure artists for Western Publishing until the 1980s, working on many film adaptations, Tarzan stories and his co-creation SPACE FAMILY ROBINSON. I'm mostly familiar with his work from the 1980s, where he drew long runs on BLACKHAWK and CROSSFIRE (both with Mark Evanier) and the "Nemesis" backup feature in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD (with Cary Burkett). While he hasn't been as active in mainstream comics since the early 1990s, he has stayed busy with several projects (a lot of which I didn't know about until I read this book), as well as doing commissions for fans (his art agent's site is here).

The bulk of the text of this book is a recent long interview of Spiegle by Coates (plus a reprint of an earlier short 1972 interview by Dan Gheno), which provides a timeline for the illustrations.  There are some great recent drawings in the beginning where he provides the layout for the chicken farm his family owned in 1930 and the pharmacy his father opened in 1934. Those show a great flair for realism and establishing an accurate sense of place that served him well in the type of comics he'd draw. There's nothing too deep in the interview, a few amusing anecdotes but mostly just Spiegle doing a professional job, sometimes on scripts he wasn't that enthusiastic about.

It was good to see a lot of examples of his pre-1980s work, which I'm only slightly familiar with. It would be great to see some sort of reprint of some of the best of those (as far as I know the only real reprint has been some over-priced books of SPACE FAMILY ROBINSON stories, which I hope Spiegle is getting something for, although he didn't even know they existed until Coates mentioned them). I'll definitely need to get a few more samples of that stuff. It was also interesting to see bits of his more recent work, including a TERRRY AND THE PIRATES strip and a western story published in a 2011 book that I didn't know about.

In addition to the interview, the book also has a few short essays by Spiegle, his wife Marie and their children, which gives a nice peek as the part of his life off the page, pieces by Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones about how they went from fans of his work, without knowing his name, to friends and colleagues.

There's also a good selection of his recent work on commissions for fans, featuring samples from all the big highlights of his career. I especially like a few of the Blackhawk pieces.

Overall a very enjoyable book, although unfortunately far too short to really give more than an overview of a career as vast as Spiegle's. I know it's given me a few books I have to dig up.

RAGEMOOR by Strnad & Corben

RAGEMOOR collects a four issue 2012 series by Richard Corben and Jan Strnad. It's Loveraftian horror, and sometimes I'm kind of tired of comics going to the Lovecraft well too often, but few do it as effectively as Corben. There wasn't that much new in the writing, but it was an effective vehicle for some creepy Corben images. I'm not quite sold on the grey toning on the artwork, which seems to be an attempt to replicate on a computer what Corben used to do with an airbrush. I think I'd have preferred pure black and white.

SAGA v1 & v2 by Staples & Vaughan

SAGA VOLUME ONE and SAGA VOLUME TWO collectively reprint the first dozen issues of the currently on-gong series by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan.  I read the first issue when it came out and thought it was okay and figured I might check it out later, but was a bit surprised at how enthusiastic fans of the book seemed to be. Vaughan's usual trend always seemed to be that his books didn't live up to the promise of his first issues. Anyway, these two books are a nice and pleasant quick read. Staples artwork is definitely the highlight, with a lot of imaginative and distinctive designs and crystal clear storytelling. For the most part Vaughan holds up his bit, with a few stumbles (I especially don't like his tendency to do the big cliffhanger ending, often with a much less satisfying resolution, which probably works better reading the book serialized with a month between cliffhanger and resolution). The biggest problem is that his writing seems vast and expansive on the surface, but so far seems to be a mile wide but about an inch deep. It's quite possible that he's thought through a lot of his concepts and will reveal those things in time, but a dozen issues in and there's not much evidence of that, and given his history (including my regrettable and I'll admit somewhat inexplicable decision to watch every episode of UNDER THE DOME this past summer) I'm not sure I have faith in that. At this point the Staples art still makes it worth reading, and if I can get future volumes from the library or buy them for $5 digitally (both of which I ended up doing for these two) than I'll stick around.

MIND MGMT v1 - THE MANAGER by Kindt

MIND MGMT v1 - THE MANAGER collects the first 7 issues (1-6 & 0) of the currently on-going series by Matt Kindt. I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I'd read the first issue back when it came out, and wasn't really that taken with it. I liked the artwork, and the whole package was very well designed and stylish, but I don't think I got enough of the story. Fortunately the "#0" issue (made up of three short stories) was available free digitally, so I tried that and it made the series look much deeper and more interesting than I thought, so I figured I'd try it again with a bigger chunk. It still starts off a bit slow, but slightly more satisfying knowing the bits of backstory presented in the short stories, but by the third chapter it really picks up, once all the concepts are in place, and it's suddenly a fast moving and intriguing adventure.

The basic story here is that a writer named Meru is investigating a flight from several years ago where all the passengers and crew lost their memories. The trail leads her to similar occurrences, and eventually into a massive secret world of paranormal activity and conspiracies that she may have been involved in all along. I look forward to reading the future issues and seeing if any of this resolves in a satisfactory way (and sprawling stories of conspiracies and secret organizations do have a history of not paying off, which having LOST co-creator Damon Lindelof writing the introduction kind of underscores). I'll also have to try some of Kindt's other comics.

It's also one of the best designed books I've seen in a while, which is very nice compared to the cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all school that applies to most modern comic book collections. You get the feeling that every aspect here was carefully considered, and it doesn't look like any other book.

THE ROCKETEER: HOLLYWOOD HORROR by Langridge & Bone

THE ROCKETEER: HOLLYWOOD HORROR is a collection of a recent 4-issue series by Roger Langridge and J. Bone, continuing the adventures of the Dave Stevens created character. I thought Langridge did a decent enough job on the story, adding a few more pop culture references to the mix that Stevens started, but I'm really not sold on Bone's cartoony art style for the series. I don't expect or even want an artist on the series to slavishly copy Stevens' art style, but I think I'd prefer someone to at least be on the same side of McCloud's pyramid. Overall pretty unsatisfying, but to be fair I'm not sure I'm the market for non-Stevens Rocketeer stories. I did think the Walter Simonson covers were terrific, though.

CONAN - QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST by Wood/Cloonan/Herren

CONAN - QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST. [VOLUME 13] collects some of the recent comic book adventures of the Robert E. Howard barbarian, these ones by writer Brian Wood, with Becky Cloonan drawing the first half and James Harren drawing the rest. I'm a dabbler in the whole Conan thing, getting the urge to read something every few years, and this one looked interesting. Generally I like my Conan in the "John Buscema inked by Ernie Chan" school, so this artwork definitely took some getting used to. Cloonan was just growing on me by the time her story was over.  Still not sure it works completely, but I'd like to see her style on a more traditional Conan story (one not set mostly on boats, that is). Harren had more typical Conan stuff to illustrate, and did fine with it. I didn't care for Wood's writing as much. As I understand it, the first half is a pretty direct adaptation of the first part of the Howard story of the title, while the second half is an original story filling in the period before the end of the story, which will be adapted later (and which I'm pretty sure I've read in the Buscema/Chan version in a previous dabble into Conan, in Marvel's CONAN #100). That first half is okay, but unclear at points. The original half, that didn't really read like any Conan I'm familiar with. There's some weird and infeasible robbery and escape plan, and then some generally implausible plot twists. Not very satisfying at all. Hopefully my next foray into Conan (which will probably be the long-delayed, still unscheduled GROO/CONAN crossover) is more enjoyable.

SPUMCO COMIC BOOK by Various

SPUMCO COMIC BOOK collects some stories created for a 1990s anthology from animator John Kricfalusi and his studio. Kricfalusi is best known for the cartoon REN & STIMPY. I don't think I've ever sat through a complete one of those cartoons, so obviously I'm not the target market (so obviously this is a library one). For the most part I thought the stories were over-long for their simplistic plots, had too many gags that would have worked better animated (and even there would have been pretty cliché at this point) and just weirdly gross, but not in a good way. I think I might have genuinely laughed twice while reading the book, which is a pretty low success rate.  If you love REN & STIMPY or think characters like George Liquor and Jimmy The Idiot Boy are inherently funny than it'll probably work for you.