Rants & Raves

FIRST ISSUE: KILLING THE COBRA

An admirable first issue must, above all else, contain such matter as will compel a reader to buy the second issue. At the same time, while provoking curiosity through mysteriousness, a good first issue must avoid being so mysterious as to be cryptic or incomprehensible. And, thirdly, it should introduce the title’s principals, preferably in a way that makes us care about them. Fourth, a first issue should include a complete “episode”—that is, something should happen, a crisis of some kind, which is resolved by the end of the issue, without, at the same time, detracting from the cliffhanger aspect of the effort that will compel us to buy the next issue.

 I’m not sure that Felix Gomez, the hero of Mario Acevedo’s Killing the Cobra, needs to be a vampire in order to function effectively. In the first issue, his being a vampire appears to be more of a hindrance in his line of work than a help. Unless, that is, he will eventually dismantle the Corbra network for heroin distribution by drinking the blood of all the Cobra members. But, no, maybe not: he has vowed to confine himself to animal blood, not human blood. “It ain’t the same as human,” he says, sipping animal blood from a bottle through a straw, “but for me, it has to do.” Commendable: at least he seems to be a good guy not a fanatic fanging blood-lusting sort.

Gomez is a vampire in this series because he’s a vampire in several of Acevedo’s prose novels. He became one of the undead when, serving in Iraq, he was bitten by a hooded vampire following an unfortunate episode in which Gomez accidentally killed a child. Now he makes a living as a private detective, battling government assassins, renegade vampires (what are those? in a minute...), alien gangsters, and zombies. In this title, he’s working for the Araneum, a secretive network of vampires that wants him to curry favor with the U.S. government by getting rid of Corbra, the drug cartel. Presumably, a renegade vampire is one who is violating Araneum policies or standards of undead decorum.

In this issue’s opening sequence, Gomez rescues another U.S. agent who is being tortured by Cobra operatives, thus bringing himself to the attention of the Cobra bosses, who, at the end of this issue, promise a king’s ransom to anyone who brings in Felix Gomez. This vow occurs right after the honcho has thrown a miscreant into a pit of cobras; so we know he’s dangerous, and serious, suspenseful enough for an opening issue. The issue offers two completed episodes—Gomez’s taking down the torturers and his conversion to vampiredom while in Iraq. And his courage, fitness, angst over accidentally killing the kid, and his vow to eschew human blood make him at least sympathetic; and he’s got a shapely girlfriend.

Alberto Dose does the drawing in a crisp, clear style, heavily shadowed in black—reminiscent a bit of Mignola and of Risso, perhaps, but with his own twists; nicely varied visuals, close-ups and long-shots and differing angles. But Dose’s cover (one of two versions) shows Gomez about to mount a beauteous damsel with a dragon tattooed on her thigh, and that doesn’t happen inside the book at all. 

 

BONE

Jeff Smith was a guest of honor at the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo (C2E2) a couple months ago when he heard that the fourth volume of his Bone series had been slandered by an Apple Valley, Minnesota woman, Ramona DeLay, who was urging her son’s elementary school to remove the book from its library. She professed shock at seeing “illustrations and content relating to drinking and smoking and gambling," reported Brigid Alverson at Publishers Weekly. “She also alleged that there were ‘sexual situations between characters’” in Smith’s epic fantasy tale, “widely regarded as one of the best all-ages graphic novels.”

 When Alverson asked Smith about it, he laughed. “I'm laughing,” he said, “because it doesn't seem like you could really find those things.” All the characters in Bone are adults, he said, and he acknowledged that some of them, the more unsavory ones, “will try to pull gambling scams, try to rig bets and things, and it always goes wrong. So no one is rewarded for doing any unsavory behavior in Bone, and it's difficult for me to see how anyone could think Bone would encourage kids to do unsavory things. Also, none of the main characters do these things. My conclusion is that some people aren't smart enough to read comic books.”

Smith noted that one of the characters, Smiley Bone, has a cigar in his mouth, but the cartoonist thinks of it as a comedic prop, a “stogie,” a left-over from another age. He recalled the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” in which a baby smoked a cigar. “So a cigar to me was like a Groucho Marx vaudeville prop, it was an anachronism. When I created the dragon, it was not the evil it is now. When I quit smoking in the middle of Bone, the cigarette just disappeared from the dragon's mouth.”

In a letter to the school board that he posted on his blog, Smith said that while beer and gambling are depicted in Bone, they’re only story devices and play “a very small role in the overall Bone story. As far as sexual situations between characters are concerned,” he continued, “I know of none. Nor was it ever my intention for there to be any. The main character Fone Bone has a crush on the young woman Thorn, but it's innocent, and certainly goes no further than holding hands. ... Since the mid 90's, millions of parents all over the world have read Bone with their children. This is the first time I have ever heard it suggested that it was age inappropriate. It is hard to imagine that any bad behavior could be seen to be encouraged in these stories. Frankly, I believe it is just the opposite."

The Apple Valley school committee apparently agreed. Made up of three teachers, five parents, an elementary principal, an elementary media specialist and a middle school media specialist, it listened to Delay's objections, examined the Bone graphic novels, and then voted 10-1 to keep them available in the 12 of the district's 18 elementary school libraries that have purchased copies of the graphic novel series.

9 CHICKWEED LANE SETS A RECORD

 And now we come to a record of sorts: in his 9 Chickweed Lane strip, Brooke McEldowney has been telling a continuing story about Edda’s grandmother’s World War II romance since early November 2009. And the story is still unfolding. That’s eight months and counting. No continuity strip in recent times has performed a stunt like this. Most syndicates insist that their continuity strips (Judge Parker, Mary Worth, Rex Morgan, Spider-Man, and a few others) regale us with stories no longer than, say, six weeks. Said McEldowney when I asked him about this feat:

“I had no idea, when I started Edie's tale, how long it might go. After the ‘We'll Always Have Brussels’ story [Amos and Edda express their undying love for each other], which stretched over a year (I believe), I knew anything was possible. I've certainly never seen so much mail as I have received for the present story (‘Edie O'Malley U.S.O. Singer and Allied Spy’). And it certainly tells me a lot about conventional wisdom concerning spinning tales in a daily strip (by which I mean, if the wisdom is conventional, it is not wisdom, and it is definitely wrong). Had I informed anybody at my syndicate about what I was planning to do, they would almost certainly have restricted it in countless ways. I think the main thing is to ask nobody anything, especially as regards duration of a story. And never, ever, above all, tell them it will involve sex.”

Bravo, Brooke. Not only is your story long, but it’s deeply engaging and fascinating.

THE BOONDOCKS, UNCENSORED

Aaron “Tell It Like It Is” McGruder makes sure that the N-word is liberally sprinkled throughout the animated series based upon his one-time comic strip The Boondocks, but, reported Greg Braxton at the Los Angeles Times, most other questionable language is bleeped.  But now fans of the show’s heroic young black militant Huey Freeman, his little brother Riley, and his foul-mouthed cohorts can find them unexpurgated on iTunes. “Uncensored episodes of ‘The Boondocks,’ which tallied its highest ratings ever when it returned for its third season Sunday, May 2, after an absence of more than two years, will be available on iTunes 12 hours after the tamer versions air on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Each episode costs $2.99, or viewers can purchase a season pass for all 15 episodes for $37.99.” Braxton added: “The season-opener, ‘It's a Black President, Huey Freeman,’ in which Huey is mysteriously depressed following the election of President Obama, scored Adult Swim's highest ratings for an original series in more than a year, attracting more than 2.5 million viewers. It also triumphed over its basic cable competition in key demographics during its 11:30 p.m. Sunday time slot.” 

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: THE SEQUEL

 

More from ICv2: Fox plans to make a sequel to its adaptation of Jeff Kinney’s bestselling quasi-graphic novel Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a movie that was made for $15 million and earned over $61.5 million at the box office. 

The sequel, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, is being adapted by Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah. No word yet on a director or on which actors, if any, from the first Wimpy film will reprise their roles in the sequel. 

Meanwhile, a fifth book in the series is scheduled for November 1 release, reports Alan Gardner at DailyCartoonist. “How popular are Kinney’s books?” Gardner asks. “The last one,” he answers, “  — which was published in October 2009 — had an initial press run of four million copies.” 

Not even Sarah the Palin’s book, which reportedly sold 300,000 copies the first day on sale, matched that number at its launch.

FIRST ISSUE: ELECTRIC ANT

An admirable first issue must, above all else, contain such matter as will compel a reader to buy the second issue. At the same time, while provoking curiosity through mysteriousness, a good first issue must avoid being so mysterious as to be cryptic or incomprehensible. And, thirdly, it should introduce the title’s principals, preferably in a way that makes us care about them. Fourth, a first issue should include a complete “episode”—that is, something should happen, a crisis of some kind, which is resolved by the end of the issue, without, at the same time, detracting from the cliffhanger aspect of the effort that will compel us to buy the next issue.

The first issue of Philip K. Dick’s Electric Ant is virtually a textbook example of what a brilliantly executed first issue should be. It opens in a hospital where a man, Garson Poole, awakens to discover that he’s missing his right hand but experiencing no pain. In the issue’s central episode, he learns that he’s a robot — an “electricant,” of the worker drone variety. Until the accident that resulted in the loss of his hand (which is replaced during this episode), Poole hadn’t known he was a robot: he thought he was a regular person. If that’s not a tantalizing enough concept, we should all go hunt antelope instead.

 Before this revealing episode, writer David Mack and artist Pascal Alixe give us a two-page spread in which Poole looks out of the hospital window to see flying vehicles aloft in a cityscape, the futuristic aura of which prepares us for the subsequent revelation that a lot of the “people” at the time of this tale are robots — an instance of adroit storytelling, one giant picture silently orienting us to time and place.

Poole struggles with the knowledge that he’s an “electric ant”: why couldn’t he know that? Because ants are programmed with “blind spots” that prevent them from knowing certain things about themselves. Later, with his new hand, Poole sets off for his home and suddenly realizes that he’s thinking out loud. “Can I control it?” he wonders. “What about my sexual daydreams? Are those out loud too?”

At home, he decides he will find his internal matrix and re-program it. He opens up his torso, exposing all his mechanical insides, and then he nearly panics: can he put himself back together again? And just then, his girlfriend rings the doorbell. Nice cliffhanger. Poole assumes she’s real, not a robot; so he has some relationship work to do, but, standing there with his metallic guts hanging out, he’s probably not going to be able to gently ease into a discrete discussion about his true nature. Or maybe she’s a robot too—and doesn’t know it.

Poole’s ghastly predicament — not just at the end, but ever since discovering he’s a robot—and his understandable entirely human bafflement about it makes him a sympathetic character, likeable enough that we want to see how he fares. Besides, the basic concept of the story is stunning: robots that are programmed not to know they’re robots — and what happens when one of them discovers this peculiar fact. Not having read any Philip Dick, all this is wonderfully astonishing to me, but I know I’m comin’ back again.

Alixe’s art is thoroughly competent — characters always recognizable, anatomy adeptly rendered, breakdowns and panel composition dramatic and clear. Nothing spectacular (although it seems to me the nurse in the doctor’s office is more voluptuous than the story requires) but nothing detracting from the story either. Christopher Sotomayor’s colors are little too vivid in flesh tones, but otherwise entirely serviceable. Here we sample a couple pages. 
 

COMIC BOOK STORE WOES

Ben Davis, owner of Big Ben’s Comix Oasis in downtown Allen Park (near Dearborn, Michigan), says 40% of his revenue now comes through Internet orders rather than store sales. Interviewed by Michael Hicks for Press & Guide Newspapers, Davis said: “If we were just dependent on our Michigan base, it’d be scary. We didn’t have to sell to anybody else six or seven years ago.” Adult collectors are his customer base these days, not kids caught up in the mythos of superhero fantasies. Back issues and collectibles pay the bills, he told Hicks.

The stalled economy has had an impact. Davis, who had operated his store in four different locations in 26 years, said he’s lost customers who have been laid-off and can no longer afford their hobby.

“We had a nice clientele of Ford guys who just can’t do it no more,” Davis said. “I had one Ford guy who was spending probably $50,000 a year in here, then woke up one day and found out he’s out of a job.”

 But the sluggish economy isn’t the only culprit. Davis’ big concern is that he doesn’t see kids buying comic books anymore. Said Hicks: “Over the last few years, national print runs of comic book issues have shrunk dramatically, according to Davis. Titles that once had a million copies printed for each issue have been reduced to around 100,000. The decline in young readership and the economic troubles of both adult consumers and the comic book industry have changed his outlook on conducting business in a niche market.”

Davis talks to other comic book store owners every day: “It’s all about how we can keep the interest going. There are people out there who will buy this stuff but how do we get these people back in to guy the stuff?”

Camaraderie has replaced competition, concludes Hicks.

(Big Rancid Raves THANQUES to field agent Ed Black for sending the clipping.)

HELLBOY IN MEXICO (A DRUNKEN BLUR)

One of my continuing disappointments is that  Mike Mignola gave up drawing Hellboy, but Hellboy in Mexico (or, A Drunken Blur), drawn by Richard Corben, eases the disappointment somewhat. Mignola’s characteristic flatness of color and figure modeling is missing, but Corben has adapted his more robust rendering manner to the character and its visual tradition with gratifying success, preserving both his style and a hint of Mignola. Hellboy and Abe Sapien are in a Mexican desert in 1982, and to get out of the sun’s heat, they enter a ruined roadhouse, where the find an idol festooned with newspaper clippings about wrestlers. One of the clippings depicts Hellboy and three wrestlers, all wearing masks. Hellboy then tells the story of his 1956 trip to Mexico to fight monsters.

When his two companions gave up in fear and disgust, Hellboy recruited a trio of wrestlers, brothers, and they toured the country and tromped monsters by day and drank gallons of adult beverages by night. Then one night, one of the brothers—the one Hellboy was closest to, Esteban—goes missing. They can’t find him.

Months later, a masked wrestler named Camazotz challenges Hellboy. He’s pretty good, flinging Hellboy around the ring; but then he admits being Esteban and takes off the mask, saying, “Look what they did to me—because you weren’t there!” He has the hideous face of some sort of pig.

Hellboy admits he was at fault, and to make up for his previous neglect, he kills Esteban, impaling him on one of the sharpened uprights supporting the ropes around the ring. “It was the only thing I could do,” Hellboy says, “but that didn’t make me feel any better about doing it.” Esteban’s last words: “Gracias, mi amigo.”

Then Hellboy gets drunk for several months. He can’t remember what he did during that time, but before this one-shot book ends, Mignola tells us in a nicely timed, nearly wordless, sequence that Corben pulls off with Mignolian aplomb.

The book is, surprisingly, a genuine treat. We don’t see enough Corben these days, and he here creates Mignola’s Hellboy ambiance without losing his own distinctive mannerisms. And in this book, Mignola gives the story a punchline that wraps it up nicely, something he often neglects to do, preferring to leave us suspended forever after, bewildered on the doorstep of horror. But he leaves wholly unsolved the mystery of the locked trunk that Hellboy is carting around the Mexican desert when this issue opens.  

 

TINTIN IN THE CONGO

A Brussels-based Congolese man has for years tried to get Herge’s Tintin in the Congo pulled off the shelves on the grounds that the portrayal of Africans in the book is racist. Bienvenu Mbutu   Mondondo has been unsuccessful in pursuing the Herge foundation Moulinsart, so now he’s started a parallel case against the book’s publisher, Casterman, reported edmontonjournal.com. The plaintiff demands that the book be withdrawn from sale—or, failing that, that a warning be inserted in the book to alert readers that the portrait of Africans is not accurate. A spokesman for Casterman said: “Casterman opposes such a withdrawal. This work was created 80 years ago, it is just a snapshot of the sentiments of the day. It is distributed in Europe and Africa without problem," she added. Tintin in the Congo first appeared in Belgian newspaper Le Vingtieme Siecle as a comic strip in 1930-1931; Herge was only 23 at the time, and he’d never been to Africa. “Before his death in 1983,” reports CBC News, “he admitted that he regretted the negative stereotypes and attitudes in the book and in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.” Leo Cendrowicz, Time magazine's Brussels correspondent, said on CBC's current affairs show, “Q,” that he expects the case will be dismissed if for no other reason than lack of financial prowess: Mondondo is an unemployed student living in Brussels and is up against a publishing house with huge resources. But Cendrowicz added that the case could set a new precedent for litigation against classics written in the past. "That is the fear of publishers, that it will open the floodgates for … literature that is more than 50 years old. Everything written in the past was based on the morality and ethics of the past," he said. "We can't assume the authors of the past had the same political correctness we have today."

FCBD 2010

From ICv2, we get a report on Free Comic Book Day at Captain Blue Hen Comics in Newark, Delaware, from Dave Williams: Free Comic Book Day was a success at Captain Blue Hen Comics. More than 1,400 customers came to celebrate Free Comic Book Day. Our visitors came from all over the state and from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to enjoy art activities, see the guest artists and characters, and to get free comics. We gave away thousands of comics to readers young and old — everyone from infants to teens to senior citizens. Visitors donated approximately 30 cubic feet of food. Our loyal customer Mike Clarke said it best, "Free Comic Book Day at Captain Blue Hen was a day for smiles."

Comic book artist Jim Valentino, who was on the steering committee for the first FCBD in 2002, says: “I think it's essential that we introduce more people to the enormous talent, energy, ideas, and the wide range of subjects, genres, and approaches the field has to offer. And what better way to do that than to have an open house where everyone is invited? People who have never walked into a comic specialty store before come to it; they bring their families, and hopefully see what they're missing. I do whatever I can to promote the event,” Valentino said in a FCBD news release, “ — I'm usually in at least one store during it and have been in as many as three in a single day. I think it's one of the most important days of our calendar year and I'm proud to watch it grow and develop.”

 FCBD was a brilliant promotion in its earliest manifestations, but I wonder if the original excitement about giveaway comic books hasn’t become a little mired in the purely financial swamps. Retailers have to buy the comic books they’ll give away; and publishers must print them. Publishers justify this expense by producing special comic books manufactured expressly for the occasion, and these are not much more than brochures touting their other titles or forthcoming series. Retailers defray their costs by controlling how many free comic books a customer can glom onto.

Both of these maneuvers are entirely justified, but they’re also a little on the chintzy side. They suggest that the original impulses that animated the event — Valentino’s desire to introduce newcomers to the medium in some fun way — have dissipated somewhat. The happy frenzy has fizzled.

A few years ago at my previous location, a comic book store gave up ordering special FCBD titles for the event. It cost too much, I was told; and the pay-off was too small. And this was a campustown store. Instead of giving away FCBD titles, the store reduced prices drastically on some surplus inventory. The bloom had gone off the rose for this store.

But if you can get 1,400 customers to tramp through your store on FCBD, that’s good. And then it’s doubtless worth all the extra expense to everyone involved. At the Mile High Comics store where I do my trafficking in “newsstand comics,” the guy behind the cash register was delighted at the turn-out. As long as most store operators feel this way, FCBD forever!