World of Weird and World of Indigo

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. Today: reviews of Duke Étrange's World of Weird (Nova-X, 2008) and Greyshirt: Indigo Sunset (America's Best, 2003).



"Hey, Pops - Just 'cause the man hits the stick don't mean that the great green cheese ain't gonna rain down 'pon your knowledge box, you dig?" A comic so cool it comes with its own CD-R soundtrack of cah-razee garage rock, Duke Étrange's World of Weird is a 48-page anthology which pays tribute to 1950s EC horror books, but played through the sensibilities of hyperbolic sixties Marvel Comics. Contributors include Leah Moore, John Reppion and rising 2000 AD stars Al Ewing and Nick Dyer, along with small press vets Ed Berridge, who spearheaded this madness, Omnivistascope's Paul Scott and Richmond Clements.

The book leads with one of its strongest strips, Ewing and Brian Coyle's "Frightening Force," a three-page merry Marvel pastiche which reworks Universal monsters into a misfit, angst-ridden Lee & Kirby superhero team. There's a strong sense of affection for America's B-culture throughout the book, from the bombastic 1950s sci-fi world of "National Socialists from Beyond the Moon" to "One Man and His Dog," which evokes a certain horrible movie with Rosey Grier and Motherfuckin' Ray Milland that I've been known to mention a time or two. There are utterly goofball advertisements and over-the-top editorializing, and great fun from start to finish.

The comic will set you back only £3 and will be available at better cons and shops in the UK. The publishers don't seem to have a web page for ordering yet, but I can put you in touch with one of the groovy hepcats behind the shenanigans if you want to get with the scene, daddio.

A complementary copy of this comic was provided to The Journal of Zarjaz Things for the purpose of review.



You know, I just do not read enough Rick Veitch. This is a completely wonderful book starring one of the supporting characters from Alan Moore's America's Best Comics line. Greyshirt is an homage to Will Eisner's The Spirit, a well-dressed vigilante fighting organized crime in the violent streets of Indigo City.

Veitch, who illustrated Greyshirt's appearances in the pages of Tomorrow Stories, took up both script and art chores for this six-part series. Masterfully, the book suggests to the reader that it's an anthology book with contributions from Dave Gibbons, Frank Cho and others, but gradually all of the disparate elements begin to come together, and the audience realizes that characters and story elements introduced in sections set in other times and places are part of an ongoing "present" narrative, and that the "newspaper" section at the end of each issue provides much more than just local color...

Honestly, I've never been a fan of Veitch's style and his disagreeably ugly people, but his layouts, pacing and storytelling are eye-popping. Indigo Sunset is a deceptively simple book, one which uses the format in an incredibly innovative way and which I recommend highly. Veitch is currently working on a Vertigo series called Army@Love which I intend to look at soon.

(Originally posted May 23, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Supernatural Not-So-Serious Edition with the Phantom Stranger and Bec & Kawl

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. Today: reviews of Showcase Presents: The Phantom Stranger vol. 2 (DC, 2008) and Bec & Kawl: Bloody Students (Rebellion, 2006).



I've always had a soft spot for the Phantom Stranger, a pretentious dandy who wanders through the DC Universe offering portentous warnings about impending doom in creepy little occult stories. You'd call them morality tales, but they all have pretty much the same moral: don't be a greedy jerk.

The first volume was weighed down by an overreliance on a the Phantom Stranger's skeptical opposite number, a short-tempered loudmouth named Dr. Thirteen who doesn't believe in the supernatural. Dr. Thirteen doesn't make as many appearances here, mercifully, but there is a small supporting cast who show up from time to time, so it is not quite as episodic and patchy as this might otherwise feel. But speaking of short tempers, so many of the characters in this book are on their last nerve before the Stranger shows up that it's no wonder everybody's shouting all the time. The Stranger also makes an enemy of a "scientist" who's so utterly demented that his illogical, idiot ranting is quite unlike anything else I've seen in comics.

Anyway, it's a good buy, just under 500 pages for $17, and I found it consistently entertaining, and would recommend it to readers of all ages. The same can't be said for the next entry...



I think I like the idea of Bec & Kawl more than the reality. This is a series which appeared in month-long bursts in the pages of 2000 AD periodically from 2002-06, and it's occasionally very funny, but also equally frustrating. It's about a pair of university students who keep having brushes with the uncanny and impossible. Beccy Miller is a goth in the fine arts program who dreams of world domination via demonic assistance, and Jarrod Kawl is a film student who'll probably never amount to anything because he spends most of his time stoned.

Bec & Kawl was the first ongoing series for Simon Spurrier and Steve Roberts, and frankly, it shows. The storytelling, particularly in the first half of the book, is simply awful, with no feeling of flow from panel to panel. Both creators have improved dramatically over time, but even the last two stories here are overwordy, with confusing climaxes. When Bec & Kawl does work, it works very well. I quite liked a mumbling friend of the pair with no self-esteem who spends three episodes being overlooked, finally exploding with so much to say, seconds before she's killed, and there's a hilarious page where Kawl spends an entire day with the same goofball expression of happiness. And then there's Kawl's pothead uncle, who owns some pretty substantial real estate in Hell which a certain former British prime minister wants to privatise. But much as I want to champion this series, great moments like these are few and far between. It's sort of like that great Star Wars essay where it's explained that Star Wars fans actually hate everything about Star Wars, apart from the idea; the promise itself is what they love.

There's an interview with Spurrier in the back where he notes some forthcoming storylines, but Bec & Kawl has been MIA for more than two years at this point, while Spurrier has been spinning his wheels doing trademark protection at Marvel. I'd certainly prefer to see him back at work on his wonderful characters Lobster Random, Jack Point, Harry Kipling and even these two than wasting his time on past-their-prime bores like Silver Surfer and Ghost Rider, who should have been retired thirty years ago. I can't give this a really strong recommendation, but the occult comedy would probably go over well with fans of Lenore and Emily the Strange.

(Originally posted May 21, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Punch and Goth-y

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. Today: reviews of The Best Cartoons from Punch (Simon & Schuster, 1952) and xxxHolic vol. 1 (Del Rey, 2004).



One of the neatest finds I ever came across was a stash of boxes full of Punch, the long-running British humor/cultural/political magazine, dumped behind a door in UGA's Park Hall in 1990. I helped myself to one a day until I decided at the end of the year that nobody cared and helped myself to most of the rest of them. Much of it was over my head - oh, you Tories in 1965 and your plans for the Tarminster by-election! - but there was some damn fine cartooning on display throughout the magazines, which covered chunks of a twenty year span from about 1962-82.

A few months ago, I found a rather beaten copy of this book, assembled more than fifty years ago for American readers, in a wonderful secondhand store in Columbus. The humor is sometimes polite and obscure; this is comedy that predates almost all of our modern templates for British humor. So before Galton & Simpson, before Sellers, Seacombe & Milligan, it looked like... well, not entirely unlike The New Yorker, honestly. Some of this is very funny, and I was torn as to which cartoon to use to accompany this. (My copy lacks the dust jacket and the plain red-brown cover is dull enough to make an illustration a little pointless.) Some of it is really more notable in a historical context, however.

The link in the cartoon above takes you to a listing at an antiquarian site I found, where you may purchase what sounds to be a considerably better copy than mine for under $10. I'd certainly recommend you do so! You can also see a few dozen other specially selected Punch cartoons at the company's website.



Sometimes it takes me a while to try something. I spotted some merchandising from this comic, or its accompanying TV adaptation, when I was in Toronto a year ago. Shaindle told me it was from xxxHolic and I told myself I'd have to look into that sometime.

A year later, and it could've waited. In its favor, xxxHolic features some absolutely gorgeous artwork by the Clamp studio. It's sort of an inversion of their usual style from Sakura and Tsubasa, which are bright, ribbony and sunny comics. This is instead dark, lacy and smoky, with long-limbed figures reclining decadently in expensive surroundings.

But the list of strikes against xxxHolic is as long as your arm. I was perversely intrigued by the protagonist Watanuki's non-sexual, but nevertheless kinky, submissive relationship to the witch Yuka, but Yuka herself is as dreary a character as they come, a smug, superior bore with the drama-killing power of knowing everything that's going to happen. There's no sense of urgency or danger; everything just sort of plays out following a cryptic warning from Yuka. I found myself spending more time studying the intricate chapter-opening title page illustrations than the actual chapters, because nothing happens that will have any impact on characters who'll be around for more than two or three episodes.

This was my first Del Rey book, and I was a little appalled by the high price tag of $10.95. If they charged the same retail eight bucks that Viz charges for, say, Death Note, I could possibly justify cashing in a Borders coupon to get more of this gorgeous artwork, but eleven? I won't be bothering again. Your prices stink, Del Rey, and so does this story. Not recommended.

(Originally posted May 15, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Volumes One of The Bumper Book of Solar Wind and Thor Visionaries: Walt Simonson

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. Today: reviews of The Bumper Book of Solar Wind vol. 1 (Omnivistascope/Lulu, 2008) and Thor Visionaries: Walter Simonson vol. 1 (Marvel, 2001).



The British small press scene is a pretty interesting one, with lots of very talented young creators working away in relative obscurity. It's a market that I don't know very much about, and that's entirely my fault: when I was very interested a few years back, I used neither credit cards nor PayPal, and now that I use both, I'm trying to limit the number of single issue comics in the house for cost, space and storage reasons. But when the complete run of Solar Wind and its companion homage anthologies Big War Comic and Sunny for Girls were announced in low-price bookshelf editions, I ran out of excuses.

I'll look at the second collection in a month or so. This first one compiles the first five issues of Solar Wind, with work by the likes of Al Ewing, Matt Timson, Paul Scott, who edited the work, along with several others, and it is a real treat. I read the first third of it over lunch and was laughing so hard that a lady at the next table said "That must be a funny book!" It sure is. Solar Wind is a tribute to British newspaper comics of the 70s, with a smart-aleck editor, awful advertisements for stamp collecting kits, and a whole pile of over-the top comics. So the lunch in question, at the nearby "Loafing Leprechaun" faux-Irish pub, with British soccer on television and Led Zeppelin's "D'yer'maker" in the background, was a good setting!

Even better, after the first issue, each Solar Wind is a "merger" issue, so Solar Wind absorbs some other, non-existant other comics, taking on some girls' comics (Zoe Biddle, Wheelchair Ballerina is the greatest thing ever), war comics, crunching hard-man action comics and horror comics. The humor ranges from playful and loving to mean-spirited and over-the-top, and it all works very well indeed. None of the strips run for more than four pages, so those rare jokes that fall flat don't linger for long, and they're more than matched by the very successful ones. It's triumphantly silly, a real winner from start to finish, and very highly recommended, especially at less than eleven bucks! Don't be stubborn and miss out on this like I did!

Read more about the Omnivistascope small press world, from which Solar Wind emerged, at their web site!



I featured this book on my old Weekly Comics Hype in March of last year. A reread has prompted the following observations:

1. It's so nice to be able to read old comics in a vacuum. There are occasional references to other Marvel comics, but what you get in this book are twelve chapters of absolute awesome, with no backstory needed. If you know that Thor is a superhero take on the Norse god of thunder, then you're good to go.

2. Simonson's pacing is very odd in places. There's a sequence in the early pages where the warrior Volstagg is relating a tale, but several days seem to pass in the "meanwhile" of the main story before he finishes.

3. "The Last Viking" story is just amazing. Much has been written about Simonson's run on Thor, but I think this brilliant story, full to bursting with heart and life, is often overlooked.

4. Is this the best American superhero book of the 1980s? It's certainly close. Unless I'm overlooking one, it's either this or Levitz/Giffen Legion.

5. There are now five volumes of Simonson Thor in Marvel's Visionaries line. The second and third are still pretty hard to come by, but a couple of months ago, the company promised that new editions would be in print soon.

(Originally posted May 13, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Secondhand bookstore edition with Liberty Meadows and Modesty Blaise

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. Today: reviews of Liberty Meadows: Eden (Image, 2006) and Modesty Blaise: Bad Suki (Titan, 2005).



I've been curious about Liberty Meadows for a long time, since Frank Cho's art is so wonderful. While he is currently spinning his wheels illustrating turgid Brian Bendis superhero stories for Marvel, he used to draw this newspaper strip about life in an animal sanctuary where the vets are surrounded by a supporting cast of loudmouthed lunatics. The strip eventually evolved into a comic book which Image published, and later repackaged in these handsome, oversized editions. So I found a used copy of Eden in Nashville last month, and my kids adored it, and it's easy to see why it appeals to younger readers. Personally, I didn't see much here that Berke Breathed hadn't already covered. Even the animals' speech patterns reminded me of the critters from Bloom County.

At its best, Liberty Meadows offers some surprises and cultural in-jokes. At its worst, it follows a vet named Frank who can't find the moxie to ask the gorgeous Brandy out, and that tedious subplot gets old instantly. We may call Charlie Brown wishy-washy, but at least he tried to kick that football, you know? On the other hand, if you're a dog lover, you'll probably adore this book. A subplot about a duck named Tyler and his bestest buddy, a non-speaking wiener dog called Oscar is so darn cute I had to brush my teeth afterwards. Recommended if you like children or small dogs.



Of all the Titan reprint series, I get all but two. Modesty Blaise is not on my pull list simply because I find secondhand copies of them practically everywhere. I found this for $10 at Acapella in Little Five Points last month, for instance. Bad Suki is the fifth of the series, and reprints a trio of (about) five-month serials. Of them, the title story is surprisingly the first Modesty Blaise adventure that I have not enjoyed. It's just incredibly dated, and while Peter O'Donnell's incredibly detailed research almost always brings his locations, scenarios and deathtraps to life, this look at Swinging London's drug culture feels as awkward as "Hollywood hippies" from an old Jack Webb show.

The other two stories are very solid and have aged well, and it's always thrilling to see just how well O'Donnell and Holdaway choreographed their fight scenes. A gun battle in "The Galley Slaves" goes on for several utterly absorbing pages and serves as an excellent climax to a great, unpredictable storyline. It's two-thirds' fabulous, at any rate. I certainly recommend Modesty Blaise to anybody looking for classic pulp adventure, but perhaps one of the other editions might be a better introduction to the character than this one.

(Originally posted May 7, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Set-Before-1930-Edition, with Enemy Ace and the Wizard of Oz

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. Today: reviews of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Image, 2006) and Showcase Presents Enemy Ace (DC, 2008).



This has actually been sitting on my nightstand for longer than anything else in that teetering stack, as it's a Christmas present I purchased quite some time ago and may finally get to deliver this month. Well, before it went, I wanted to actually have a look at it. It's a very charming adaptation of the L. Frank Baum novel, created by Enrique Fernandez and David Chauvel, made three years ago for a French publisher and released in this country by Image towards the end of '06.

I've actually never read the original novel, so I can't say whether it's that accurate an adaptation, but I was surprised by how very unlike the film it is, with the Wicked Witch of the West being a much smaller part of the narrative, and sorted before the book was two-thirds complete. It also takes place over the course of several weeks and, without spoiling anything, does not suffer from that awful cop-out ending the movie has. I do like the artwork, but with some reservations. Having finished it, I'm still not completely certain what the Tin Man actually looked like, since he's mostly seen from odd angles and in the shadows. He also sports a deeply bizarre, grisly origin not alluded to in the movie. Man, I'm going to have to track those books down if they're as creepy as this. Recommended, if for no other reason than it will spark your curiosity.



Ah, Robert Kanigher. We meet again.

Readers of "What I Just Read" may recall that I've been deeply disappointed with the comics work of Robert Kanigher, the prolific DC Comics scribe whose work from the 1960s and 1970s is seeing so much reprint in the Showcase Presents series. Fortunately, Enemy Ace is much, much better than some of the other books I've slogged through. It's a series set in World War One and featuring the taciturn Hans von Hammer, a German flying ace with no friends and a grim obsession with honor.

The series was only sporadically published, appearing from time to time in four separate anthology books from 1965-1979, and finally as a backup feature, drawn by John Severin, in some 1981-82 issues of The Unknown Soldier. Much of the other material is drawn by Joe Kubert, who makes up for some sometimes slapdash anatomy with a wonderful depiction of emotion in his characters and detailed reference for all the airplanes roaring over the skies of No Man's Land. Other artists contributing include Russ Heath and Howard Chaykin.

As for the stories, well, at least 400 of the 550 pages on display here are, despite some note of repetition (Von Hammer has a suck-up of an orderly, he takes his leaves in the woods in the company of a black wolf), really first-rate stuff. From time to time, it must be said, Kanigher slips, and his patented "three-beat" formula becomes evident (for example, trapped in France and trying to make it back to his lines, von Hammer meets three women, each of whom know a French airman whom von Hammer has shot down in the last week). There are even a handful of occasions where everything goes to hell and things get completely ridiculous - there's one completely braindead story about an English ace who, as a young boy, was obsessed with the tale of St. George and the Dragon, grew up convinced he was the reincarnation of St. George, and now takes to the air in full plate armor.

But when he wasn't being lazy and he wasn't giving von Hammer some retarded version of a rogues' gallery to fight, Kanigher really delivered on this title, making it by far the best of his work I've read, and streets superior to either Sgt. Rock or The War That Time Forgot. That's not to say that you won't find even better air combat in Johnny Red, or better WWI-set drama in Charley's War, but overall, this has turned out to be among the best of the Showcase books, and recommended for anyone curious in the material.

(Originally posted May 1, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Chaos Edition with the Girls of St. Trinian's and Nemesis the Warlock

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death.



No, wait, forget what I said about America. Right here, this is the reprint book of the year, the book to beat. It completely surpassed my expectations, giving 176 pages of Ronald Searle's gleefully demented, mean-spirited drawings of little hellions murdering each other and passing out drunk. And only a few appear to be teenagers like in the films and the book's cover (she is a recurring character called Angela Menace), for the most part, the gags center around little kids who've transformed the school gym into a torture dungeon, take baths in the Trevi Fountain and catch fairies on flypaper. St. Trinian's was never a recurring strip or panel, and there are probably far fewer of them than readers might think; like Charles Addams' single-panel comics, they would appear as sidebar illustrations in magazines and occasionally readers might recognize some recurring characters or places in them. It's very like The Addams Family, in fact, only done with even more gusto and eye-popping shock. Highly, highly recommended... especially if you're that family of Mike Huckabee supporters across the street from me or that bunch that's afraid of Doctor Who behind me, because you're needing this badly.



In three large books, Rebellion has compiled the entire run of Pat Mills' Nemesis the Warlock. This last volume includes three long-form stories with art by David Roach, John Hicklenton and Henry Flint, along with supplemental art by several others, including Kevin O'Neill, who was working on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in late 1999 and was pulled away for the series' final episode, and Chris Weston, who contributes a fascinatingly ugly color story about the evil Torquemada's long-suffering wife Candida. This is all great stuff, free from the confusing "time loop" business that made the second book a bit of a head-scratcher, and Rebellion did an excellent job restoring the several color pages and reprinting them along with the black-and-white stuff. It must have been a production nightmare to put this volume together! Nemesis has aged very well, and depicts a "hero" whose contempt for his enemy isn't much like anything else in comics, and I certainly can't name two opponents who are each guilty of murdering the others' children. On the other hand, you don't often get the sense that Torquemada has the upper hand, but underestimating his power, and his hold over the bigotted, hateful, stupid human race depicted here is a mistake that Nemesis makes a time or two. Highly recommended.

(Originally posted April 28, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)