Rants & Raves

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY: MAY 1, 2010

A list of some of the available titles for this year's Free Comic Book Day has been announced by Diamond Book Distributors. The premiere of Jim Shooter's new take on Magnus Robot Fighter and Doctor Solar, Larry Hama's return to the original G.I. Joe comics series, the premiere of DC's War of the Supermen and a summer beach party special from Archie will be among this year's offerings. For the younger crowd, there will also be a Toy Story comic from Boom! Studios, a mini-collection of Fractured Fables and a Mouse Guard / Fraggle Rock special among others. Free Comic Book Day is an event organized by Diamond Book Distributors every May wherein comic book stores nation-wide give away special free comics to lure people of all ages into the stores and get them interested in comic books.

THE SPIRIT

In the last years of his life, Will Eisner, having emerged from the relative obscurity of historic icon to the eminence of living legend, authorized new adventures for his famed creation, the Spirit. Eisner had been pestered from some years — since his re-emergence in the late 1970s — to revive the character in new stories, but, except for a few short pieces he did for Denis Kitchen, Eisner successfully resisted. His interest lay elsewhere — in the graphic novel as a literary form and in New York’s tenement life as subject — and I think he realized that his Spirit was a character that belonged where he’d been created, in the 1940s. Our national morality was simpler then — cleaner, starkly contrasting black and white choices — and against those well-defined absolutes of yesterday, the grays of his Spirit stories played with dramatic, and sometimes comedic, intensity. But the forces for revival finally prevailed: Eisner said he wouldn’t do any new Spirit stories himself, but he said he’d have no objection to other creators conjuring up new tales. And so they did.

Alas, the essential Spirit, the creation we so fondly remember and quietly worship at the altar of, still eluded a confident and convincing grasp by any of this generation of dedicated votaries. But Mike Ploog in a brace of issues of the DC reincarnation, Nos. 31 and 32 of The Spirit, came close.

Ploog once worked in the Eisner shop during the period Eisner was producing educational comics and the military safety magazine, P.S., and he drew in a style that echoed Eisner’s almost exactly. Ploog’d got the job with Eisner because he had military experience as well as artistic ability: he was an ex-Marine, and at Leatherneck, the Corps’ magazine, he’d learned to draw by aping Eisner. Here, I thought, was a candidate with promise. And so it proved.

Writing for his own pictures, Ploog lays out a three-stranded narrative involving an ancient Irish artifact with magical properties, an Irish elf, a clutch of homeless bums on the waterfront, a gang of hoodlums posing as a dock workers union, a Marine general blinded by his dedication to all things military, and a band of rough-looking Arabs led by a femme fatale of the best Eisner San Serif P’Gell sort — Adios, a beret-wearing blonde beauty with a  plunging neckline and bare midriff, who packs a pair of very large pistols and who seems not at all smitten by the Spirit’s macho manners. Typical Eisner. As are numerous elements of comedy that enliven the proceedings throughout (the Marine general being one of the most blatant).

In the final pages of the book, Ploog’s three strands interlock in a grand crescendo of a finale in which each of the threads achieves a satisfactory individual conclusion. The artifact is recovered, the elf goes back to Ireland, captives are released or rescued, the Marine general doesn’t get to attack the island in the city’s bay with atomic weapons, and the waterfront riffraff get a reward.

In the ingenuity of his devices and the interlocking of a three-stranded tale, Ploog ably mimics the Master, and in slinging satirical barbs at mindless militarism and the equally mindless preoccupations of environmentalists, he goes the Master one better.

For a more detailed — well, longer — examination of how the Spirit has fared since taken on by another generation of cartooners, consult the usual place, R&R, Op. 248.

CHEW

Chew No. 1 presents about as unappetizing a foray into four-color funnybooks as you could ask for — even in our present ZAV (Zombie Age of Vampires). Tony Chu is a cop and isn’t exactly a zombie, but he eats the face off a crook’s body in this issue because, we are informed, he is cibopathic, which means he gleans, by intestinal osmosis, information from whatever he eats — where it came from and how it became food (who killed the cow or laid the egg or plucked the apple from the tree). By cannibalizing the crook’s corpse, he learns that the dead guy had killed several young women, their names, and the location of their remains, thereby solving a clutch of missing persons cases. When Chu’s boss learns how he solved these cases, he suspends Chu, but, at the last minute, Chu is hired by the Food and Drug Administration, where, we assume, he’ll spend ensuing issues of this title. The first five issues have already been gathered into a single graphic novel volume, Taster’s Choice (nice), due out this year.

The whole idea of a guy chewing the face off another human being — for whatever noble purpose — is repulsive enough to turn one’s stomach away from this title, but, at the same macabre time, it’s an intriguing notion, and writer John Layman stages the grossest moment so comedically — enough to seduce the reader into wondering how Chu will fare (pardon the expression) in his future endeavors. And Rob Guillory’s visuals further dissipate the grossly unsavory aura of the concept with exaggerative abstract anatomy that turns a revolting idea into absurdist comedy.

ONE IN TEN

According to a press release from Simba Information, which describes itself as “a leading authority for market intelligence in the media and publishing industry,” one in 10 adult book buyers read comics and 70% of those adults who have read comics in the previous 12 months also bought at least one book. Simba’s monthly Book Publishing Report says: “Nearly overlooked for decades, the burgeoning market for graphic novels and comic books has led retailers to pause and address the industry in new light. ... ‘Graphic novels are unlike any other segment of publishing, but are often mislabeled as just another category within children's book, so they miss the chance to really shine,’ said Warren Pawlowski, analyst for Simba Information's Trade Books Groups. ... Graphic novels have almost become their own industry at a time when growth in traditional publishing has become practically non-existent. ... ‘Graphic novels appeal to the largest audience possible and have untold potential because of it,’ said Pawlowski. ‘The niche that graphic novels have been forced into has exploded, and what could never be found elsewhere is being seen [in major media] in droves.’”

KEVIN AND KELL

The anthropomorphic Kevin & Kell, about the marriage of a fox and a rabbit, may not have been the first comic strip to be distributed digitally, but it was probably the first to generate income for its creator, Bill Holbrook: starting on September 4, 1995, the strip appeared on several CompuServe forums — eventually, 50 of them — each one paying $5/week. Since the collapse of the dot-com empire, Holbrook says, the strip has been sustained entirely through donations from patrons. Since you’re reading this online, you can easily get to the ethereal edition of the strip (kevinandkell.com), but if you want a dead-tree archive of the strips, you can find most of the first years of it in Historic Kevin & Kell (176 8x10-inch pages in b/w; paperback, $24.95 at the Bill Holbrook Store, same website).

Bill Holbrook is a cartooning fool, and a brilliant one. He performs the seemingly impossible feat of producing single-handedly three daily comic strips: K&K was his third concoction, preceded by On the Fastrack, a jaundiced look at life in corporate America, which debuted March 19, 1985; then Safe Havens, which initially focused on children in a day care facility, starting October 3, 1988.

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG

According to Brooks Barnes, Disney's "The Princess and the Frog," while earning a healthy hoorah of critical acclaim and finishing first in the box office sweepstakes on its opening weekend, came in at “the low end of industry expectations with $25 million in ticket sales at North American theaters.” Judging from the previews I’ve seen, this “high-profile effort to revive hand-drawn animation” is a remarkably successful effort: it has visual energy and the comedic liveliness of exaggerated action that we once saw in every Disney animated film but haven’t seen much of for at least a generation. Barnes adds that the sales on “Princess” improved on Disney's last effort in the hand-drawn genre: 2004's "Home on the Range" opened to just $13.9 million. Barnes goes on: “Disney has been criticized for years for its lack of African-American royalty. Some black commentators attacked Disney's handling of the movie's characters and story early in the production process, but the finished movie has largely quieted critics worried about racial insensitivity.” Lurking hereabouts, the phantoms of Walt Disney’s frustrations when “Song of the South,” which he carefully vetted with African Americans and even engaged a “liberal” scripter to insure it would be politically correct, nonetheless outraged segments of the black community with a stereotypical plantation Uncle Remus, chuckling and chortling in “live action”as he regaled us with animated cartoon tales of Bre’r Rabbit.

JEWISH HUMOR

The New Yorker’s cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff, described “uniquely Jewish” humor last fall during an interview at momentmag.com. “When you look at Jewish humor,” he said, “for the most part, the jokes are layered — they build up and eventually show some sort of logical inconsistency, either in the world or ourselves. In the broader culture a majority of jokes have an aggressive component, a scatological component or a sexual component, but Jewish jokes work through understanding our shared vulnerabilities as fallible human beings. It’s based on a mindset that looks at things from many different angles. ... The habits of mind acquired by studying the Talmud — discussing things seriously and quickly switching perspective — are applied to other subjects. A lot of Jewish humor deals with identity,” he continued. “Jews developed an insider/outsider sensibility in the countries that they came from. If you were Polish, you were Polish-Jewish, or if you were Russian, you were both Russian and Jewish. ... Here's an example of a joke that deals with Jewish identity: A Jewish man goes to a rabbi and asks the rabbi, ‘Rabbi, what should I do? I raised my boy to be a good Jewish boy and he became a Christian. What should I do?’ The rabbi says, ‘Funny you should ask. I'm a rabbi and I too raised my boy Jewish. My son went to yeshiva and he went and became a Christian.’ The man asks the rabbi, ‘What did you do?’ ‘I asked God,’ said the rabbi. ‘What did He say?’  ‘God said, “Funny you should ask ...”

NO PASARAN!

The third and last volume of Vittorio Giardino’s No Pasaran! has been released by NBM (72 9x12-inch pages, color; paperback, $14.95) after a long hiatus since Vol. 2. Giardino helpfully provides a text summary of the events of the two preceding books as introduction. The story follows Max Friedman who goes to Spain during the infamous “Spanish Civil War” to try to find his friend Guido Treves, who has unaccountably disappeared. Max and Guido are on the side of the Republicans (ostensibly “democratic”) in the conflict, opposed to Franco’s Nationalists (fascist).

The war is often termed a rehearsal for World War II: France, Germany, Italy and Communist Russia participated in various ways, sending money, arms, even soldiers, and new weapons and accompanying tactics were tried out — including aerial bombardment of the civilian populations of cities, most famously immortalized in Picasso’s agonizingly tortured painting of the bombing of Guernica.

While the clash of military forces is confined to the battlefield, the opposing parties infiltrate the civilian population, and the war spills over into streets and alleys.  As Max tries to find his vanished friend, he is followed and sometimes assaulted by operatives on both sides of the struggle, although loyalties are vague, so confused is the conflict. Kirkus Reviews observes that Giardino had “clearly read his Orwell, Dos Passos, and Koestler,” and throughout his story lurks the vague menace of an environment fraught with unreliable “friends” and unpredictable “enemies,” plots and counter-plots, successful and failed schemes.

At one point, Max enlists the help of an attractive young woman journalist, Claire Blon, who seems to fall in love with Max, but he declines to consummate the affair, saying he is “not alone.” She interprets that to mean Max is married; but Max is thinking of his daughter, whose recital as a ballerina he hopes to be able to attend in Geneva. When he slips into the back of the recital hall and she notices him, the book enjoys its only undiluted happy moment.

Giardino’s drawings are masterful: simple linework, a bold line not much embellished with feathering or modulation, clearly delineates his story, and every character is portrayed at every appearance in a thoroughly recognizable way. Giardino paces events expertly, deploying silent sequences when appropriate and shifting his camera around for visual variety during talky episodes. In these books, we are in the hands of a skillful storyteller who is in complete command of every nuance of his medium.

THEREFORE REPENT!

Jim Monroe’s graphic novel, drawn by Salgood Sam (which may be Maxim Douglas backwards) takes its title, Therefore Repent!, from Revelations 2:16: “Therefore Repent! If you do not, I will come to you soon and fight against them with the sword of my mouth” — an utterance as ambiguous in meaning as the book and therefore appropriate. In this tale, a man dressed as a mummy and his girlfriend, who wears a bird’s head from the shoulders up, have a dog that suddenly starts talking. They are among the survivors — those “left behind” to employ the parlance — after the Rapture (the “Big Snatch”) has taken into Heaven all worthy souls, leaving us sinners behind. Not much seems to happen in the book except that the relationship between Mummy and Raven (to use their proper names) is momentarily threatened but endures. Otherwise, to quote from the book’s back cover blurbs, Monroe and Sam use their time to acquaint us with what life is like after the Rapture, answering the question: “What if the Religious Right is actually right? ... For the immoral majority,” the back cover continues, “life goes on pretty much as usual, except that after the Rapture, magic works — for those willing to risk demonic mutations. And an angelic army appears to have been deployed to mop up the sinners.” Life may go on pretty much as usual but various vital services and supplies are no longer readily available — electricity, for example, may be scarce; ditto milk—and living conditions are therefore reduced to ghetto squalor worldwide.

Sam’s art is deft — inked drawings with pencil shading for gray tones that impart a gloomy overcast to every page — but at the size it appears (on 160 6x9-inch pages, b/w; IDW paperback, $14.99), some detail is reduced too small for visual clarity. Monroe’s story, through which numerous unnamed characters wander without anything to do, doesn’t help: the purposeful vaguery, while ramping up the overall mysteriousness, leaves us pretty much in doubt about who these people are and why they are in the book at all.

At his website, nomediakings.org/BE.htm, Monroe explains that Therefore Repent! has no particular relation to the Left Behind series of novels, which he hasn’t read, but from what he understands, they are “sincere bible fan-fiction, careful not to violate the canon.” Monroe’s book, on the other hand, is “closer to Bible slashfic, what with the bisexual angels and nipple-clamp-enhanced demonic communion. I like to think I’m re-imagining the Bible franchise, like Frank Miller did for Batman.” Nicely conceptualized but I’m not convinced he’s succeeded.

GOD

In discussing with cohorts R. Crumb’s Illustrated Book of Genesis, I speculated that it would be only a matter of time until a certain barnacle of overenthused religionist would make its objections to the pictures known, and, sure enough, in Fon du Lac (Wisconsin?), Heather Stanek reports in the Reporter that members of that community “fear that the Bible in a comic format — depending on the artist's motives — may belittle God, mock Scripture or promote the sexuality and violence often seen in graphic novels. The full-frontal nudity in the book shocked Kathy Heinzelman, a mother and children's ministry teacher at Community Church. She said she wouldn't expose her youngsters to graphic material. Eve's cleavage and measurements also concern her. ...  Of greater concern is the artistic rendering of God. Crumb drew God as a stern, wizened man with flowing white hair and a bright robe. He means business, focusing intense eyes on His creation and doling out commands to all creatures. ... Depicting God in this form is ‘dangerous,’ said Jennifer C.M. Dawson, co-pastor at Church of Peace. She said showing God as a human, who has numerous flaws, diminishes His presence as the ultimate power.” I expected objection to cleavage, but I thought most people accepted the convention of depicting God in human form. Michelangelo did. Live and learn, don’t we all?

STAN LEE AND ART

“Stan Lee applauds a TV show you may have missed,” says Jeffrey Ressner in USA Weekend for December 25-27. He’s touting the PBS documentary series “Art:21,” which focuses minutely on the creative processes of 14 artists from around the world. Says Lee: “When I started in the 1940s, an  ‘artist’ had a paintbrush and stood in front of a canvas. But Jeff Koons, one of the artists featured here, is more like a movie director or a comic book editor: he has an entire team of craftsmen following his vision as he creates these huge, colorful figures and paintings. It’s not the usual conception of an artist, but the finished product is what he had imagined, not the other people. ... It’s fascinating to watch these artists, who are all so different, yet so creative. I’m more familiar with dramatic hyper-realism — artwork that tells a story with as much excitement as possible. ‘Art:21' is really about personal expression.” The legendary Lee turned 87 on Monday, December 28; his POW! Entertainment recently launched a digital comic book called Time Jumper.

DISNEYFIED MARVELS

On Tuesday, December 29, the day after celebrating his 87^th birthday, Stan Lee was interviewed at splashpage.mtv.com by Rick Marshall who wanted to know what the likelihood might be of seeing more and more movies based on characters he co-created for Marvel Comics. "The funny thing is,” Lee said, “I think all of them will come to the screen sooner or later because they're always looking for new properties, and Marvel has more than anybody." He dropped a few likely names: Doctor Strange, Ant-Man, Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos. “Every one of the Marvel characters, there's somebody working on it. Somebody is trying to put together a story that will work. It's just a matter of time — they can only do so many a year," he explained. "You don't want to flood the market. I'm sure [they'll do] the Black Panther, eventually."

In fact, even as Lee spoke, Disney, which recently acquired Marvel, is exploring movie possibilities for Marvel’s “second string” characters, the first stringers — Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron-Man, the Hulk, and Fantastic Four — already been locked up in long-term deals with rival studios before Disney took possession of the famed “house of ideas.” Ryan Nakashima at AP says the Mouse House is considering Ant-Man, Dr. Strange, and the Avengers line of characters, and such newcomers as the Runaways, a street-savvy pack of teenagers that have recently become popular.

 Marvel’s operations will stay in New York, Nakashima reports, adding that Marvel CEO Isaac "Ike" Perlmutter, who owns 37 percent of Marvel stock, has “the top job overseeing the Marvel business after the acquisition, including decisions on which characters are developed into movie stars.” But no one is saying, yet, which of the reputed 5,000 Marvel characters will be tapped. “Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company may initially develop new characters on television rather than in movies. Its boy- focused cable channel, Disney XD, already airs 25 hours of Marvel cartoons every week and recently launched in Japan, as well as in several European and Latin American countries.”

Television is where Disney launched such hits as "Hannah Montana" and "High School Musical," which, since their debut on cable tv’s Disney Channel, have spawned movies, concerts and a cascade of related merchandise. “Analysts note that when Disney does land a hit, it is quick to spread the success around to its other businesses. That's why ‘Hannah Montana’ and ‘High School Musical’ have combined to sell billions of dollars in merchandise, and why ‘Cars’ —  a product of Disney's purchase of Pixar  — is getting its own section at Disney's California Adventure theme park.”

GOING GAGA

Lady Gaga, the “poker face singer,” is the latest famous female to get comic book treatment at Bluewater Productions, which is producing the Female Force biographical series, focusing on powerful women like Michelle Obama, Princess Diana, and Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling.

The Gaga hairdo and wardrobe will be the first in a new series, dubbed “Fame,” hitting the stands in May. Says Bluewater prez Darren G. Davis, “Fame gives us the ability to tell more interesting stories about a wider variety of notable personalities”—like Robert Pattinson, Taylor Swift, David Beckham and 50 Cent, notes Amy Eisinger at the New York Daily News, quoting E! Online.