Panel
Blinky’s Mad Movies “King Kong”, art by Nick Brennan, The Dandy Annual 2007, DC Thomson, 2006 (yes, I’m a year late in noticing)
Friday, 2 November 2007
Miss What?!?
How on Earth did this get published in a comic for small children?
Panel
Blinky’s Mad Movies “King Kong”, art by Nick Brennan, The Dandy Annual 2007, DC Thomson, 2006 (yes, I’m a year late in noticing)
Panel
Blinky’s Mad Movies “King Kong”, art by Nick Brennan, The Dandy Annual 2007, DC Thomson, 2006 (yes, I’m a year late in noticing)
Thursday, 1 November 2007
An Excuse for an Otherwise Gratuitous Picture
News from Variety, by way of Blog@Newsarama: Joss Whedon is working on the scripts for Dollhouse, a seven-part TV series starring Eliza Dushku, due to be broadcast by Fox TV next year.
It’s good to see that Whedon can still get paid employment in Hollywood. But the last time he tried to combine running a TV show with writing comics, we got gaps of up to thirteen months between issues of his Fray mini-series. Let’s hope that Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 is not similarly affected.
Picture
Cover by Jo Chen to Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 issue 9, showing Eliza Dushku as Faith
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Hallowe’en
From ghosties
and ghoulies
and long-leggedy beasties
and things that go bump in the night
good Lord protect us.
(First published by Walter de la Mare as an old Scottish prayer in Come Hither, 1923)
Panels
My Dead Girlfriend Volume 1 “A Tryst of Fate” by Eric Wight, Tokyopop, 2006
Buster Gonad and his Unfeasibly Large Testicles, art by Simon Donald, I think, reprinted in Viz: The Sausage Sandwich, John Brown Publishing, 1991
Daredevil “Stilts” by Frank Miller (scripter/storyteller), Klaus Janson (penciller/inker/colourist), Sam Rosen (letterer) and Dennis O’Neil (editor), Daredevil issue 186, September 1982, reprinted in Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 3, Marvel Comics, 2001
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2 by Alan Moore (writer), Kevin O’Neill (artist), Ben Dimagmaliw (colourist), Todd Klein (letterer) and Scott Dunbier (editor), America’s Best Comics, 2002-2003
and ghoulies
and long-leggedy beasties
and things that go bump in the night
good Lord protect us.
(First published by Walter de la Mare as an old Scottish prayer in Come Hither, 1923)
Panels
My Dead Girlfriend Volume 1 “A Tryst of Fate” by Eric Wight, Tokyopop, 2006
Buster Gonad and his Unfeasibly Large Testicles, art by Simon Donald, I think, reprinted in Viz: The Sausage Sandwich, John Brown Publishing, 1991
Daredevil “Stilts” by Frank Miller (scripter/storyteller), Klaus Janson (penciller/inker/colourist), Sam Rosen (letterer) and Dennis O’Neil (editor), Daredevil issue 186, September 1982, reprinted in Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 3, Marvel Comics, 2001
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2 by Alan Moore (writer), Kevin O’Neill (artist), Ben Dimagmaliw (colourist), Todd Klein (letterer) and Scott Dunbier (editor), America’s Best Comics, 2002-2003
Review: Eduardo Risso’s Tales of Terror
Eduardo Risso’s Tales of TerrorFeatures eleven stories written by Carlos Trillo, art by Eduardo Risso, translation by Maria Barrucci, lettering by Jason Ullmeyer, no original publication details given, Dynamite Entertainment, 2007, 154 pages of comics, US$14.99
At first, it seems unfair to put only Eduardo Risso’s name above the title, as every one of these stories is written by his frequent Argentine collaborator Carlos Trillo. But then again, it is probably not the stories themselves that will lead anyone to buy this book. They are efficient little shockers, of the school of EC Comics, with ironic O Henry twist endings, but without EC’s air of moral retribution. Most of the characters are pretty nasty, and many of the set-ups are clichéd (a marriage between a vampire and a werewolf, for example). The most affecting tale concerns a mummy’s boy forced by his mother into becoming a torturer’s assistant – and I’m sure you’ve already guessed who he will end up having to torture.
No, it is Risso’s art that provides the best reason for buying this book. It is an art that thrives on the tension between fluid shapes and precise delineation, between fine line and solid shadow. When Risso draws a wobbly line, we know that it shows not uncertainty, but the clear edge of a wobbly shape. The composition contains the same dynamic pull. Sometimes, Risso uses a simple grid, but the panels are out of balance, their contrasts of dark and light, weight and emptiness spinning the reader giddily across the page. More often, the panels float more freely, but they are always perfect rectangles, anchoring the moment.
All of this benefits enormously from being reproduced in crisp, unadorned black and white. Something of the strength of Risso’s draughtsmanship is diluted in the colours of 100 Bullets or Batman. But here, he can show his mastery of chiaroscuro, with displays such as this page, on which an invisible woman performs a striptease.
So perhaps calling it Eduardo Risso’s Tales of Terror is only fair after all.
Tuesday, 30 October 2007
Reading the Reads
There seems to be an opinion at large – evident in the comments section of Heidi MacDonald’s infamous “whither storytelling?” post at The Beat - that anglophone comics are split into the polar opposites of superheroes and autobiographical art comics. But looking at the list of the ten most recent comics I’d read which I posted yesterday, I see that none of them falls into either category (except possibly Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, depending on how you define “superhero”). The dominant genre, if there is one, is social comedy.
As it happens, that list was atypically light on periodicals. If I expand the list to include the floppies I bought and read last week, that adds one fully fledged superhero title (X-Men First Class), but also horror (Hellblazer), TV sci-fi spin-off (Doctor Who Adventures), rude adult comedy (Viz) and satire (the comic strips in Private Eye).
Limp conclusions? First, that there’s a wide diversity of comics material available, even if it doesn’t always get the sales or recognition it deserves (though Doctor Who Adventures and Viz are, I think, in first and third places in the UK comics sales charts). Second, that I’m lucky, at least from a comics-reading perspective, to live in the UK, where I can get almost everything published in North America and domestic products as well. Third, that I buy far too many comics.
Panel
Posy Simmonds True Love, Jonathan Cape, 1981
Monday, 29 October 2007
Recent Reads
Once again, I’m going to use a subject suggested by Tom Spurgeon’s Five on Friday feature as an excuse to throw together a random mix of observations, each too inconsequential for a post in its own right. Plum pudding or mess of potage? You decide.
I’m going to expand the theme of “the last five comics you read, good or bad” to the last ten.
10. Posy Simmonds True Love
Eddie Campbell blogged about this book and wrote, “In a better world, you'd read my affectionate recollection and immediately go out and buy a copy.”
I’d like to think I’m making the world a little better.
9. Jules Feiffer Jules Feiffer’s America: From Eisenhower to Reagan
I have long underestimated Feiffer as a draughtsman. Based on my memories of reading his Village Voice strips (published over here by The Observer), I had categorised him alongside Thurber as a writer who also drew a bit, rather than as a cartoonist. But there is some very fine drawing and cartooning here, with solid and effective composition and a particular understanding of the uses of repetition. Feiffer gets a remarkable amount of weight out of his nervous lines, particularly in his gnarled caricatures.
8. Andi Watson Glister Issue 2: “House Hunting”
Somehow, when I reviewed the first issue of Watson’s charming children’s fantasy, I failed to notice how reminiscent his drawings were of the work of the classic children’s illustrator Edward Ardizzone, especially in the quality of line. So I’ll mention that here instead.
7. Ilya (ed) The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga Volume 2
Sadly, I am coming to the conclusion that I don’t really like the most obvious elements of manga – the pacing, the melodramatic “acting” of the characters, the graphic devices used to convey emotion, and, above all, the ubiquity of pointy-faced goggle-eyed androgynes. There are manga that I do enjoy a lot (Lone Wolf and Cub, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Ranma 1/2), but that is probably despite their common stylistic ticks, rather than because of them. Volume 2 in Constable & Robinson’s series is, on the whole, more faithful to the surface elements of clichéd manga style than Volume 1, and I found less to enjoy in it. It is probably no coincidence that by far my favourite comic strip here is Laura Howell’s The Bizarre Adventures of Gilbert & Sullivan, which may render its characters in a style somewhere pitched between chibi and Rumiko Takahashi, but which does so on top of a structure that is pure Leo Baxendale.
6. Rick Veitch Army@Love Volume 1 The Hot Zone Club
There are some good satirical side-swipes here, and a solid handling of narrative. But just as a million and one books, films and comics about the Vietnam war pay no attention to the Vietnamese, Army@Love treats America’s wars in the Middle East as being entirely about Americans. The natives of the fictional country of Afbaghistan appear only as targets and set decoration, except for a small family whose supporting role is to disrupt the marriage between two more important (because American) characters. There’s a huge flaw in the central conceit of the comic: the army is using a hedonistic lifestyle as a recruitment tool, but it is also trying to keep it secret. How do you use a secret in your recruitment ads? But look at this panel which addresses the desire for secrecy.
The implied belief – which may be the character’s, but which may also be Veitch’s own – is that what was shocking about Abu Ghraib was the embarrassment caused by the lack of self-control among Americans, not the torture and humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners. There’s a difference, and its an important one.
5. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, John Severin, Jim Steranko and others Marvel Masterworks: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Volume 1
4. John Aggs Robot Girl
3. The Beano Issue 3404
Something of a relaunch, with a higher price, all of 99p, a Dennis the Menace strip that ends on a cliffhanger, and two new series: London B4 12 (is that a pun on the lost Lon Chaney silent horror movie London After Midnight, and if so, how many 11-year olds will get it?) and Tales of Johnny Bean from Happy Bunny Green, which uses twee stylings, including the return of the libretto, recounting the whole story in narrative captions, to tell a tale of juvenile delinquency. The art is by the versatile Laura Howell, looking quite different here from her manga. She also provides inks to Hunt Emerson’s pencils for Ratz.
The inside front page provides quite a break from publisher DC Thomson’s tradition of leaving the comics’ creators in anonymity: it lists “top stories” (six out of fifteen this issue) and actually credits the artists. That leaves nine strips uncredited, and the writers’ names are still nowhere to be seen, but at least it’s a step out of the nineteenth century.
2. Scott Adams Dilbert
The first book I ever read about cartooning was The Cartoon Connection by William Hewison, then art editor of Punch. He came up with several categories of cartoon humour, one of which was “Recognition Humour: Recognition Humour at its most humble is straightforward reportage heightened very slightly by a dash of theatricality; here the cartoonist plucks at our sleeve and points to an ordinary everyday event, and as we are looking he flashes a beam of torchlight at it. The edges become sharper, the shadows darker, the action a little more exaggerated – we see that this very familiar thing is suddenly more significant.” Most days, Dilbert shines that torch with precision. (On the other days, it goes to Elbonia.)
1. Andy Riley Roasted
I’m going to expand the theme of “the last five comics you read, good or bad” to the last ten.
10. Posy Simmonds True Love
Eddie Campbell blogged about this book and wrote, “In a better world, you'd read my affectionate recollection and immediately go out and buy a copy.”
I’d like to think I’m making the world a little better.
9. Jules Feiffer Jules Feiffer’s America: From Eisenhower to Reagan
I have long underestimated Feiffer as a draughtsman. Based on my memories of reading his Village Voice strips (published over here by The Observer), I had categorised him alongside Thurber as a writer who also drew a bit, rather than as a cartoonist. But there is some very fine drawing and cartooning here, with solid and effective composition and a particular understanding of the uses of repetition. Feiffer gets a remarkable amount of weight out of his nervous lines, particularly in his gnarled caricatures.
8. Andi Watson Glister Issue 2: “House Hunting”
Somehow, when I reviewed the first issue of Watson’s charming children’s fantasy, I failed to notice how reminiscent his drawings were of the work of the classic children’s illustrator Edward Ardizzone, especially in the quality of line. So I’ll mention that here instead.
7. Ilya (ed) The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga Volume 2
Sadly, I am coming to the conclusion that I don’t really like the most obvious elements of manga – the pacing, the melodramatic “acting” of the characters, the graphic devices used to convey emotion, and, above all, the ubiquity of pointy-faced goggle-eyed androgynes. There are manga that I do enjoy a lot (Lone Wolf and Cub, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Ranma 1/2), but that is probably despite their common stylistic ticks, rather than because of them. Volume 2 in Constable & Robinson’s series is, on the whole, more faithful to the surface elements of clichéd manga style than Volume 1, and I found less to enjoy in it. It is probably no coincidence that by far my favourite comic strip here is Laura Howell’s The Bizarre Adventures of Gilbert & Sullivan, which may render its characters in a style somewhere pitched between chibi and Rumiko Takahashi, but which does so on top of a structure that is pure Leo Baxendale.
6. Rick Veitch Army@Love Volume 1 The Hot Zone Club
There are some good satirical side-swipes here, and a solid handling of narrative. But just as a million and one books, films and comics about the Vietnam war pay no attention to the Vietnamese, Army@Love treats America’s wars in the Middle East as being entirely about Americans. The natives of the fictional country of Afbaghistan appear only as targets and set decoration, except for a small family whose supporting role is to disrupt the marriage between two more important (because American) characters. There’s a huge flaw in the central conceit of the comic: the army is using a hedonistic lifestyle as a recruitment tool, but it is also trying to keep it secret. How do you use a secret in your recruitment ads? But look at this panel which addresses the desire for secrecy.
The implied belief – which may be the character’s, but which may also be Veitch’s own – is that what was shocking about Abu Ghraib was the embarrassment caused by the lack of self-control among Americans, not the torture and humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners. There’s a difference, and its an important one.
5. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, John Severin, Jim Steranko and others Marvel Masterworks: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Volume 1
4. John Aggs Robot Girl
3. The Beano Issue 3404
Something of a relaunch, with a higher price, all of 99p, a Dennis the Menace strip that ends on a cliffhanger, and two new series: London B4 12 (is that a pun on the lost Lon Chaney silent horror movie London After Midnight, and if so, how many 11-year olds will get it?) and Tales of Johnny Bean from Happy Bunny Green, which uses twee stylings, including the return of the libretto, recounting the whole story in narrative captions, to tell a tale of juvenile delinquency. The art is by the versatile Laura Howell, looking quite different here from her manga. She also provides inks to Hunt Emerson’s pencils for Ratz.
The inside front page provides quite a break from publisher DC Thomson’s tradition of leaving the comics’ creators in anonymity: it lists “top stories” (six out of fifteen this issue) and actually credits the artists. That leaves nine strips uncredited, and the writers’ names are still nowhere to be seen, but at least it’s a step out of the nineteenth century.
2. Scott Adams Dilbert
The first book I ever read about cartooning was The Cartoon Connection by William Hewison, then art editor of Punch. He came up with several categories of cartoon humour, one of which was “Recognition Humour: Recognition Humour at its most humble is straightforward reportage heightened very slightly by a dash of theatricality; here the cartoonist plucks at our sleeve and points to an ordinary everyday event, and as we are looking he flashes a beam of torchlight at it. The edges become sharper, the shadows darker, the action a little more exaggerated – we see that this very familiar thing is suddenly more significant.” Most days, Dilbert shines that torch with precision. (On the other days, it goes to Elbonia.)
1. Andy Riley Roasted
Sometimes Wishes Come True
Reviewing The Mammoth Book of Best War Comics, I wrote, “Perhaps we can hope for a Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics or Horror Comics or Romance Comics...”The introduction to The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga Volume 2 says, “Joining Best New Manga on the shelves is War Comics, Horror Comics and very soon Crime Comics: all of them thick as a brick with tons to read.”
The tense suggests that The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics should be out already, in time for Hallowe’en, but Constable & Robinson’s ad in The Bookseller gives a release date of 24 January 2008 (with Crime Comics following in June). But so long as the nights are still long and dark, I’m not complaining.
The blurb at Amazon.co.uk - I take no responsibility for its accuracy - says, “In over 500 pages, this book collects the finest tales of terror from the past sixty years of comic book publishing. It encompasses all eras of the genre, from the 'weird menace' horror of the perennially popular 1950s pre-Code comics published by EC, to the dark modern gems of the 90s and 2000s. Discover the tales that drove the American youth of the 1950s into a frenzy and resulted in legislation to put an end to their gruesome content - the pre-Code comic book macabre that was Dark Mysteries, Chamber of Chills, Weird Terror and Journey into Fear. Contributors from these early years include Bernie Wrightson, master adapter of Lovecraft, Mary Shelley and Stephen King; Mike Kaluta, the man behind The Shadow, Metropolis, and The Spawn of Frankenstein; and Rudy Palais, the EC artist responsible for such twisted works as Marching Zombies. Modern contributions include Pete Von Scholly's The Graveswellers (the man behind The Shawshank Redemption, The Mask, and The Green Mile), David Hitchcock's self-published Immortal - A Vampire Tale (creator of the Jack the Ripper comic Whitechapel Freak), Thomas Ott's G.O.D. from Greetings from Hellville (acclaimed Swiss noir artist), L” – yes, it breaks off suddenly at the initial letter L, presumably interrupted fatally by some shambling thing from beyond …
Pictures
Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics cover by José Muñoz taken from The Bookseller
Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics Cover taken from the Constable & Robinson web-site
Sunday, 28 October 2007
Review: Marvel Masterworks – Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD
Marvel Masterworks: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, Volume 1Features:
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “The Man for the Job!” by Stan Lee (writer), Jack Kirby (artist), Dick Ayers (inks), Artie Simek (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “Find Fury or Die!” by Stan Lee (script), Jack Kirby (layouts), John Severin (art), Artie Simek (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “The Prize Is … Earth!” by Stan Lee (story), Jack Kirby (layouts), John Severin (art), Artie Simek (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “Sometimes the Good Guys Lose!” by Stan Lee (writer), Jack Kirby (layouts), John Severin (art), Sam Rosen (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “The Brave Die Hard!” by Stan Lee (writer), Jack Kirby (layouts), Joe Sinnott (art), Artie Simek (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “The End of Hydra!” by Stan Lee (story), Jack Kirby (layouts), Don Heck (pencils), Joe Sinnott (inks), Artie Simek (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “Operation: Brain Blast!” by Stan Lee (writer), Jack Kirby (art), Frank Ray (inks), Sam Rosen (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “Who Strikes at – SHIELD?” by Stan Lee (writer), Jack Kirby (pencils), Mike Demeo (inks), Artie Simek (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “To Free a Brain Slave” by Stan Lee (story), Jack Kirby assisted by Howard Purcell (art), Mike Demeo (inks), Artie Simek (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “The Day of the Druid!” by Stan Lee (writer), Jack Kirby (designer) Howard Purcell (pencils), Mike Demeo (inks), Sam Rosen (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “Lo! The Eggs Shall Hatch!” by Stan Lee (writer), Jack Kirby (designer) Don Heck (pencils), Mike Demeo (inks), Sam Rosen (letters)
Captain America “Them!” by Stan Lee (words), Jack Kirby (art), Frank Giacoia (inks), Artie Simek (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “When the Unliving Strike!” by Stan Lee (script), Jack Kirby (layouts) Don Heck (pencils), Mike Demeo (inks), Sam Rosen (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “The Enemy Within!” by Stan Lee (script), Jack Kirby (layouts) Don Heck (pencils), Mike Demeo (inks), Sam Rosen (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “Death Before Dishonor!” by Jack Kirby (script and layouts) Don Heck (pencils and inks), Sam Rosen (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “The End of AIM!” by Jack Kirby (layouts), Denny O’Neil (script), Ogden Whitney (art), Artie Simek (letters), Stan Lee (editor)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “Hydra Lives!” by Stan Lee (script), Jack Kirby (layouts) John Buscema (pencils), Frank Giacoia (inks), Sam Rosen (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “Overkill!” by Stan Lee (script), Jack Kirby (layouts) Jim Steranko (art), Sam Rosen (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “The Power of SHIELD!” by Stan Lee (script), Jack Kirby (layouts) Jim Steranko (art), Sam Rosen (letters)
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD “The Hiding Place!” by Roy Thomas (script), Jack Kirby (layouts) Jim Steranko (art), Sam Rosen (letters), Stan Lee (editor)
Fantastic Four “The Hate-Monger!” by Stan Lee (writer), Jack Kirby (artist), George Bell (inker), Artie Simek (letterer)
reprinted from Fantastic Four issue 21 (1963), Tales of Suspense issue 78 (1966) and Strange Tales issues 135-53 (1965-1967), 281 pages of comics (including cover reprints), Marvel Comics, 2007, US$54.99
That’s a huge and cumbersome contents listing, but the credits bring home two things: first, that Nick Fury went through a widely fluctuating set of artists in its first two years, and, second, that Jack Kirby never gave up on it, always proving layouts, sometimes providing full pencils, and once even providing the script (in a reasonable pastiche of Stan Lee’s style, rather than the fractured dignity of his scripting and text pieces of the 1970s). Kirby had been happy enough to pass the parent series Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos over to other artists, just as he had done with so many others. Was there something in SHIELD that he wanted to nurture? As things turned out, he hung on until the most worthy of his replacements on any of his series was available.
Colonel Fury the spy was introduced as a CIA agent in the Fantastic Four issue for November 1963, two months after OSS agent Reed Richards had cropped up in Sgt Fury. That story appears at the end of this volume, though it is omitted from the index. At this stage, Fury has two eyes and no gadgets. It’s tempting to see this version as a response to Connery-era Bond, while most of the volume takes its cue from the slightly wilder tone of The Man from UNCLE, and Steranko is, by the end, just starting to nudge in aspects of his exercise in style which we can see as a response not just to pop-art and op-art, but to The Avengers. That’s The Avengers where the long hair is worn by Mrs Peel, not by the Mighty Thor, of course.
Steranko’s version is what dominates our image of SHIELD nowadays, but this volume kicks off with a very different look, with the solidly realistic draughtsmanship and lush but controlled linework of John Severin as the first artist to work over Kirby’s layouts. Fury, Tony Stark, Dugan and their cohorts never looked more at ease in ordinary street clothes and on ordinary streets. But Severin only lasted three issues, and the rotating teams of artists who succeeded him never managed to give the strips a character of their own.
The stories floundered too. After a strong start with SHIELD’s initial confrontation with Hydra, things just got silly. Exuberantly daft inventiveness can be one of the glories of comics, but it is harder than it looks. When subterranean druids start attacking their enemies with flying mechanical eggs, the result is as clunkingly unamusing as a fourth series Monty Python sketch. Things perk up a little with the AIM plotline, but it is uncomfortably close to a rerun of the initial Hydra story.
Steranko turns up for the last three stories here, but is constrained by working over Kirby’s layouts and to scripts by Stan Lee and Roy Thomas. With the next issue, Kirby would be gone and Steranko would take over plots and layouts and, soon after, scripts, turning Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD into one of the most distinctive and memorable pieces of entertainment of its times. But that’s a story for subsequent volumes.
Reproduction in this volume seems fine, crisp and clear. Colouring uses flat tones. I don’t know how faithful they are to the original colour guides, but certainly the Steranko issues look more consistent and coherent than they did under the rather overwhelming modelled computer colour of the 2000 reprint volume of his Strange Tales run. Marvel is to be commended for including not just the Fantastic Four Fury story, but also the Captain America crossover which forms part of the AIM storyline.
Unexpected Comics: The Observer
Just a quick note, while it’s still on sale, to point out that the magazine section of today’s edition of The Observer contains a four-page comics story spun off from the regular single-tier strip Roasted by Andy Riley.
I couldn’t find it on The Observer website, but, then again, I can never find anything on The Observer website.
Panels
Roasted “Markings” by Andy Riley, The Observer Magazine, 28 October 2007
I couldn’t find it on The Observer website, but, then again, I can never find anything on The Observer website.
Panels
Roasted “Markings” by Andy Riley, The Observer Magazine, 28 October 2007
Saturday, 27 October 2007
Happy Birthday, Leo Baxendale
I’d have missed this, if it wasn’t for the Comics Reporter: today is the 77th birthday of Leo Baxendale, the brilliant and influential comics artist who created (among others) Little Plum, The Three Bears, Minnie the Minx, the Bash Street Kids, Grimly Feendish, the Badtime Bedtime Books and Baby Basil, which was another of The Guardian’s forays into comic strips. Together with writers whose names I still don’t know, Baxendale was responsible in one way or another for getting on for a quarter of all the reasons I started reading comics in the first place.
So, happy birthday, Mr Baxendale! This blog is largely your fault!
Panel
Minnie the Minx, art by Leo Baxendale, The Beano, 1950s, reprinted in Dandy and Beano: Famous Faces from the Comics, DC Thomson, 1992
The Guardian’s The Comic
Now this looks promising: a new comics section in The Guardian, the UK national newspaper that regularly employs such luminaries as Posy Simmonds, Steve Bell and Martin Rowson (and, less regularly, a range of interesting cartoonists from Biff to Tom Gauld), and whose sister Sunday paper, The Observer sponsored the Comica short story competition alongside Britain’s leading mainstream graphic novel publisher, Jonathan Cape. Of course, below the fold, the front-page blurb explains that “The Comic” is intended for kids, but even so, that’s a good track record.
What you actually get is the single centre sheet of The Guardian’s “Family” section, folded twice to make eight half-tabloid pages. Five of those pages are used for competitions and other child-friendly filler. The remaining three pages contain a comic strip, Robot Girl versus the Universe! episode 1, by John Aggs. It is drawn in an anime-inspired style - and yes, I do mean “anime”, not “manga”: it looks like a series of screenshots. It tells of a United Earth spaceship being overrun by Robot Girl’s robots – and yes, again, I mean “tells”, because we see almost none of this: most panels just show the bridge crew shouting things like “We’re under attack,” or “The shields are failing.” We don’t see the robots overrunning the ship at all. Actually, it’s a little difficult to make out even the spaceship or the bridge crew, as the colour work is too dark and over-rendered for newsprint, and everything comes out muddy (I’ve punched up the brightness and contrast for the panel below). It looks a lot clearer as a series of PDFs at The Guardian Unlimited website, which I found after I'd done the scans.
Overall, quite The Disappointment
Update, later that day Lew Stringer reports that Robot Girl will be part of The DFC, "a new weekly anthology comic coming soon" - now, that's a phrase you don't see too often these days.
Panel
Robot Girl versus the Universe! episode 1 by John Aggs, The Guardian 27 October 2007, “The Comic” section
Tuesday, 23 October 2007
Something in their Form that Dooms them
Douglas Wolk’s book Reading Comics: How graphic novels work and what they mean was reviewed in brief in the Times Literary Supplement last week by Jon Barnes, a novelist. Here’s an extract.
“Despite the medium’s burgeoning seriousness and respectability, it has a quality which seems to lend itself to colourful heroics, something innate in the form that persuades it to return to caped melodrama.”
“A quality … something innate”. Not very rigorous analytically, is it? It is a singularly odd innate “something” that fails to persuade capes to manifest in comics in Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Argentina. Indeed, it seems to be a “quality” only of comics from the United States of America. One might even think it was a product of some historical contingency, such as, to pick an example entirely at random, a self-censoring Comics Code that neutered all genres other than superheroics. But that is far too concrete. Let us fall back upon airy metaphysics instead.
Now, I won’t deny that comics is a medium that does lend itself to colourful heroics, but it has that in common with, oooh, every other narrative medium and quite a few non-narrative ones too. Better, perhaps, to conclude that colourful heroics have a quality that appeals to the human imagination, sometimes.
I wonder if, had he been given a book to review that drew largely on examples from British comics, Barnes would have concluded that there was something innate in the form that persuades it to return to monochrome slapstick?
I expect better than this from the TLS.
Panel
Lewis Trondheim demonstrates something innate in the form that makes it return to black and white autobiographical meditations using funny animal tropes, while discussing artists whose work can rarely be described as colourful heroics, “At Loose Ends” part 1, Mome issue 6, Winter 2006-07. Original French edition 2004, I think.
“Despite the medium’s burgeoning seriousness and respectability, it has a quality which seems to lend itself to colourful heroics, something innate in the form that persuades it to return to caped melodrama.”
“A quality … something innate”. Not very rigorous analytically, is it? It is a singularly odd innate “something” that fails to persuade capes to manifest in comics in Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Argentina. Indeed, it seems to be a “quality” only of comics from the United States of America. One might even think it was a product of some historical contingency, such as, to pick an example entirely at random, a self-censoring Comics Code that neutered all genres other than superheroics. But that is far too concrete. Let us fall back upon airy metaphysics instead.
Now, I won’t deny that comics is a medium that does lend itself to colourful heroics, but it has that in common with, oooh, every other narrative medium and quite a few non-narrative ones too. Better, perhaps, to conclude that colourful heroics have a quality that appeals to the human imagination, sometimes.
I wonder if, had he been given a book to review that drew largely on examples from British comics, Barnes would have concluded that there was something innate in the form that persuades it to return to monochrome slapstick?
I expect better than this from the TLS.
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Lewis Trondheim demonstrates something innate in the form that makes it return to black and white autobiographical meditations using funny animal tropes, while discussing artists whose work can rarely be described as colourful heroics, “At Loose Ends” part 1, Mome issue 6, Winter 2006-07. Original French edition 2004, I think.
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