Instructions

a) Go here.

b) Consider how many such drawings DC had erased while Kirby was working on Jimmy Olsen.

c) Weep a little.

(Yes, I’m linkblogging. It’s Sunday morning, and I’m still in my pyjamas, drinking coffee. The work ethic will kick in later.)

Secondhand Supes

I went browsing yesterday in the two remaining secondhand bookshops in Whitley Bay, Bay Books and Oliver’s. One of the books I came away with was the 1983 British Superman Annual, which reprinted the trilogy of stories by Len Wein and Jim Starlin from DC Comics Presents issues 27-29 (cover-dated November 1980 to January 1981) that introduced the alien super-villain Mongul. There’s also a Superboy story by Cary Bates and Bob Brown.


A major selling point was the cover by Brian Bolland. Twomorrows later reprinted it for an article in Draw! about the artwork produced for British DC reprint annuals, but they printed it in monochrome. This allowed them to misidentify the floating head at top left as Darkseid. But it’s not him, or Thanos, either. I wonder if Jim Starlin is throwing himself into the upcoming Death of the New Gods in the hope of getting rid of Darkseid, and so covering up his artistic tracks.

Coincidentally, the illustration on the endpapers is an undistinguished piece by Dave Gibbons, who would go on to draw Mongul in his most memorable outing, “For the Man Who Has Everything”, written by Alan Moore.

The stories are quite fun. One point of note is that, after Superman has screwed up and allowed Mongul to get the key to the star-sized weapon platform Warworld, he turns to Supergirl for “heavy duty super-help”. Supergirl soon demonstrates that she is more level-headed than her cousin.


It’s not a characterisation I expect to see any time soon in the current run of Supergirl.

Pictures and Panels
Superman Official Annual 1983, cover by Brian Bolland, London Editions Magazines, 1982

Superman and Supergirl “Warworld!” by Len Wein (scripter), Jim Starlin and Romeo Tanghal (artists), Ben Oda (letterer), Jerry Serpe (colourist) and Julius Schwartz (editor), DC Comics Presents issue 28, DC Comics, December 1980, reprinted in Superman Official Annual 1983, London Editions Magazines, 1982

Review: Superman 666

Superman issue 666, “The Beast from Krypton” by Kurt Busiek (writer), Walter Simonson (artist), John Workman (letters), Sinclair and Loughridge (colours) and Matt Idelson (editor), 38 pages of strip, US$3.99, DC Comics, October 2007

It’s a dream! It’s a hoax! It’s not an imaginary story! (Except that, you know, aren’t they all?)

The last demon from Krypton’s Hell – destroyed along with the planet and its inhabitants – arrives on Earth and tries to corrupt Superman as he dreams, gaining strength from Superman’s descent.

I’m tempted to quibble with the universality of American Christian concepts in DC’s cosmology: a hell with demons tormenting sinners is not even a part of all of Earth’s religions, let alone a necessary component of those of other planets; and the idea that Superman has only to sin in his heart for it to be real is oddly reminiscent of Jimmy Carter. But that would be unfair. After all, this story owes its very existence to the fact that its issue number matches a cryptic crossword clue in the Book of Revelations.

And the story is, mostly, a lot of fun, with an increasingly surly and sulky Superman (amusingly cartooned by Simonson) dealing unrestrainedly with the frustrations of his life: all those people demanding protection, Jimmy Olsen and his screeching signal-watch, the parade of pointlessly aggressive super-villains. In doing so, he produces an array of ever-sillier silver-age super-powers.


(Hmm. I’ve never been able to dictate the rules in my dreams. But then again I’m not Superman, so we’ll let it ride.)

Eventually, of course, the real, pure-hearted Superman reasserts himself in a manner that recalls the best bit of the movie Superman III.

Busiek paces the story nicely, with an ominous build-up and a nicely graduated slide into corruption, and keeps a decent handle on exposition by the device of having Zatanna trying to work out what is happening. The story can be taken as a counterpoint to his ongoing “Camelot Falls” arc, in which Superman is confronted with the possibility that his selfless heroism is holding back humanity’s development. Here, in contrast, we see the consequences if he gives in to selfishness. There are oddities – I’m not sure why Hawkman, Animal Man and Aquaman should make portentous announcements to thin air as the demon passes, and I was strangely distracted by the fact that Clark Kent is still using a manual typewriter in 2007 – but the only part of the story that really failed for me is that it goes out of its way to raise the question of whether, in the current version of the continuity, Superman has killed (as he did in John Byrne’s 1980s run on the title). Really, is there anyone who regards this sort of guessing game as entertaining? It’s not as if we can engage with it: we can merely await an arbitrary decision by DC editorial.

Wholly on the positive side of this issue is Simonson’s artwork. It’s not strikingly developed from the mature style he was already using by the time of his work on Thor or New Gods (except, perhaps, by adopting a touch of Ted McKeever for the demonically-possessed versions of Batman, Wonder Woman and Supergirl), but it’s good to see it again. Simonson seems to have been devoting more time to his writing lately: it would be nice if he got his pencils out more often, as in many ways, he is an ideal superhero artist.

Simonson’s artwork reconciles a number of apparently opposing traits. It is monumental, but massively energetic. It is loose, but makes extensive use of rigidly geometric shapes, circles and straight lines. It is sculptural, but flat – an impression reinforced by John Workman’s lettering, which never leaves the two-dimensional picture plane. The result is like some mad Assyrian bas-relief, only livelier, more colourful, and a good deal less vile.

Overall, an entertaining one-off issue. On this evidence, stepping aside from long arcs and crossovers can clearly make for good storytelling.

Reviews: Action Comics, Gutsville, Spider-Man Fairy Tales

Action Comics issue 850 “Superman: Family” by Kurt Busiek, Fabian Nicieza and Geoff Johns (writers), Renato Guedes (pencils and colours), José Wilson Magalhães (inks), Rob Leigh (letters) and Matt Idelson (editor), cover by Renato Guedes, DC Comics, Late July 2007, 38 pages of strip, US$3.99

This is a disjointed story, as Brainiac 5 helps Supergirl, still trapped in the 31st century, use a gizmo to peer into the past, specifically picking up key moments in Superman’s life (after a few attempts showing other versions of Superman throughout the multiverse), including some previews of forthcoming attractions in the Superman comics, in the manner of issue 1 of the latest run of Justice Society of America. These fragments are used unsubtly to hammer home how lonely Superman has been until he learns that he has an actual living relative. The story doesn’t really hang together well, and the dialogue is clunky and full of forced exposition.

But that’s not the selling point here. What makes this comic worth looking at is Renato Guedes’ artwork, which combines a figurative approach as realistic as any you’ll find in comics with an almost ligne claire approach to linework and an abstinence from black shading. The unusual distribution of work on the art, with Guedes handling colour as well as pencils (but not inks), is crucial, as all the weight of the pictures comes from the colour modelling.


Guedes is taking over as the regular artist on Supergirl later this year. Numerous bloggers have already praised his advance sketches for showing a Supergirl who looks like a real person in real (if odd) clothes rather than the half-naked distended sex object who has populated the title’s pages since its revival. This issue of Action Comics suggests that there are more reasons than that to keep an eye on his work.


Gutsville issue 1 “Part One: Ingestion” by Simon Spurrier (story) and Frazer Irving (art and letters), plus appendices “A List of Oddities and Curiosities” by Ray Fawkes (text) and Fiona Staples (illustrations), “Gutsville Map” by Simon Spurrier, “The Butler and the Bolt: A Gutsville Mystery” by Simon Spurrier (story) and Simon Gurr (illustrations), Image Comics, May 2007, 22 pages of strip plus 9 pages of appendices, US$2.99

Gutsville tells the story of a community living in the belly of a colossal sea creature, which swallowed their ship 157 years earlier (or so the prologue tells us: the clothes worn by the characters mix influences from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth). There is class conflict and a killer on the loose.

Spurrier sets up his story nicely, limning in the main characters neatly, and creating convincing details of how his community would talk and act after generations in the belly of a beast. Irving’s art is clear and precise yet dark and foreboding, with one brief interlude making good use of his psychedelic style from Storming Heaven. An occasional experiment, such as using semi-transparent word balloons to indicate whispering, fails to come off, and it is still a puzzle how an isolated ship-load of people manage to obtain enough food, let alone clothing and furniture and even art materials, but on the whole this is a confident and well-realised comic.


However, I think it would have come across better if I had not recently read the collected edition of Leviathan, a 2000AD series by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli, the story of a community living on a giant ocean liner that was possessed by a demon twenty years earlier, where there is class conflict and a killer on the loose; and also Seven Soldiers: Klarion the Witchboy by Grant Morrison and Frazer Irving, in part the story of a community living underground, having been dragged there hundreds of years earlier by the fairy-like Sheeda, and whose inhabitants could wander around Gutsville without anyone remarking on the oddity of their clothes. The prologue to Gutsville even concludes with the phrase “Gutsville endures”, a clear echo of the chant “Croatoan abides” which peals through Klarion.

Still, there’s enough that’s good about this opening for me to hope that future issues escape from what at the moment seems like a high concept pitch of “Leviathan meets Klarion”, and tell a story of their own.


Spider-Man Fairy Tales issue 1 “Off the Beaten Path” by C B Cebulski (writer), Ricardo Tercio (artist), Artmonkeys Studios (letters) and Molly Lazer (editor), Marvel Comics, July 2007, 23 pages of strip, US$2.99

This is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, with a version of Mary-Jane Watson as the heroine, a Peter Parker as the Woodcutter, and an Aunt May as a substitute for Grandmother. J Jonah Jameson also appears as a grumpy and distrustful village elder. But really, the Spider-Man elements here are at best irrelevant and at worst a distraction. The setting is classic mitteleuropan forest, not New York, and no superheroics occur. Spider-Man is used only as an external heroic ideal, which the heroine must replace with her own courage and initiative and that of her fiancé.

There are two variations from the classic story. Mary-Jane plays as active a part in killing the wolf as Peter (fair enough, though the way it is done is not terribly plausible), and Aunt May is not eaten, which I am sure would have disappointed me terribly as a bloodthirsty toddler. Still, at least Peter doesn’t have to put on his black woodcutter costume and become all vengeful. (And Mary-Jane doesn’t do any laundry in this story, either.)

The style of writing is clearly pitched at children, which is refreshing, though it makes it hard for this middle-aged man to judge its success. The art is bright and exuberantly cartoony, with computer colours allowing Tercio to miss out black lines altogether for anything other than black objects, creating a Matisse-styled cut-out effect.

Reviews: Atom, Simonson’s Fantastic Four, JLU, Superman

The All-New Atom, Volume 1: My Life In Miniature by Gail Simone (writer), John Byrne and Eddy Barrows (pencillers), Trevor Scott (inks), Travis Lanham (letters), Alex Bleyaert (colours), Ariel Olivetti (cover and original issue covers) and Mike Carlin (editor), DC Comics, 2007 (originally published 2006-2007), 143 pages of strip, US$14.99

This collection of the first 6 issues of the new Atom, plus the teaser story from Brave New World is almost as much fun as I’d heard.

Gail Simone throws in one splendidly mad idea after another: an invasion by a microscopic alien race living on the hero’s dog, a Cthuloid monster being worshipped by film-fan puritans, the Atom being swallowed by a naked giantess, foul-smelling ants and chemically-dependent scientists. She holds this all together using some off-beat narrative devices, and deftly sketches in our new hero, Dr Ryan Choi, and his supporting cast at the same time.



So why “almost”? Well, there’s a knife-wielding psycho with a taste for dismemberment who seems to have wandered in from a different story (possibly by Geoff Johns) and doesn’t fit the wacky tone here at all, despite his fondness for poetry. And then there’s the art problem.

Byrne’s stuff is fine: characterful, energetic, action-packed and humorous by turns, and with a fuller finish than I remember from the last comics of his that I read about a decade ago. But half way through, he hands over to Barrows, who provides another argument for DC establishing remedial art classes for its pencillers. He lacks most basic skills, but in particular his perspective drawing is appalling. In the panel below, for example, Choi is supposed to be full sized and sitting on a chair which is level with the feet of Dean Mayland (the character in the foreground). Instead, Choi appears to be minute and Mayland must be on a raised platform. The walls don't match the floor, either. (Amplification added later: The floor tiles appear to be converging on a vanishing point to the left, but the bookshelves and horizontal window frames run parallel to each other.)



There is still enough enjoyable material here for the book to be worth buying, but if Barrows is still the artist on the second volume, and hasn’t managed to learn some draughtsmanship from his assignment pencilling over Keith Giffen’s layouts on 52, I won’t be bothering with the next one.


Fantastic Four Visionaries: Walter Simonson Volume 1 Fantastic Four by Walter Simonson (writer and artist), Rich Buckler and Ron Lim (pencillers on opening stories), Romeo Tanghal and Mike DeCarlo (inkers on opening stories), Bill Oakley and Todd Klein (letterers), George Roussos and Max Scheele (colourists), Ralph Macchio (editor), Marvel Comics, 2007 (originally published 1989-1990), 182 pages of strip, US$19.99

A quick tip: skip the first 73 pages of this book. The first three issues of Fantastic Four that Walt Simonson wrote were part of a long-forgotten, dreary corporate cross-over called “Acts of Vengeance”. In them, the FF go to Washington to testify against a proposed Super-Human Registration Act (yes, yes, how ironic), and are attacked by various C- and D-list villains. Simonson seems bored, and the art is by other hands.

Then, with his fourth issue, everything changed. Simonson took over the art and went cosmic. The FF, augmented by She-Thing, Iron Man and Thor, travel into a future that seems to be vanishing, and encounter a plethora of Kangs the Conquerors, a galaxy-sized Galactus who is devouring the whole Universe, the gigantic armouries of the Shi'ar Empire, guarded by Superman-alike Gladiator, and the ancient implacable menace of the Black Celestial. Wild ideas, artwork so energetic you could plug it into the National Grid and some remarkably daft double-talk from Reed Richards – it's everything you want from the Fantastic Four, really.




Justice League Unlimited issue 33, “Everything Old Is New Again” by Jason Hall (writer), Carlo Barberi (penciller), Bob Petrecca (inker), Robert Clark Jr (letterer), Heroic Age (colourists) and Rachel Gluckstein (editor), DC Comics, July 2007, 20 pages of strip, US$2.25

In this issue of JLU, the League’s oldest member, the Crimson Avenger, and its youngest, Stargirl, find themselves in body-swap comedy territory after they try to stop Morgaine Le Fey from stealing the London Stone and using it to de-age her son Mordred. As is often the case with JLU, our heroes learn a life lesson along the way: constantly sniping at each other for being too old and too young respectively, by the end each has come to respect the other’s viewpoint.

This air of lecturing prevents Hall’s otherwise zippy and well-constructed story from being as enjoyable as it might be. Of course, it is aimed at children, but children can recognise adult propaganda when they see it.

Barberi and Petrecca’s art is efficient and attractive in the animated DC style. The thick outlines they use to delineate characters actually provide something of the feel of a previous generation of animation, when characters stood out more from static backgrounds.




Superman issue 662, “The Weight of the World” by Kurt Busiek (writer), Carlos Pacheco (penciller), Jesús Merino (inker), Sinclair & Loughridge (colours), Comicraft (letters) and Matt Idelson (editor), DC Comics, May 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

I haven’t followed Superman regularly since the days of Byrne, Wolfman and Ordway, but I normally like the work of both Busiek and Pacheco, so I thought I’d see what they are making of it.

Unfortunately, this issue seems to fall in the middle of a longer story arc. Superman is trying to establish the truth of a prediction by the magician Arion that his interventions will eventually lead to the death of humanity, while also investigating the claim by an alien called the Auctioneer that there is another Kryptonian on Earth besides himself and Supergirl.

On the plus side, I could easily work out what was happening, despite not having read the earlier issues. On the minus, Superman doesn’t find the answers to his questions, and nothing much else happens. The artwork is as nice as expected – detailed but clear, fluid and expressive – but otherwise the main thing I found to enjoy was the delightful new style of lettering used for Zatanna’s backward magic spells, which is as stark a case of damning with faint praise as I can think of.



This issue also features a new superhero called Sirocco. He is active in Iran, but had planned to call himself by an Arabic, not Persian, name, before adopting the one suggested by Superman: an Italian (and English) word for a wind that blows in North Africa. His main personal characteristic is that he is easily offended if he thinks his integrity is being impugned. Really, he just needs a scimitar and a camel to hit all the orientalist buttons. It’s good that DC Comics have decided to create a hero from the Islamic world, but it’s a shame that they seem to think that Berbers, Iranians and Arabs are all the same thing.




Not reviewed this time
Also out this last week were Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil issue 3, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 issue 3 and Welcome to Tranquility issue 6. All are running serial stories which I plan to review when they are complete (and since issue 6 did end the current Tranquility story, I’ll have a review of that for you in a few days’ time).



In the meantime, I should advise fellow drooling fanboys (and fangirls) that Willow does not wear that outfit on the inside pages. Is there no truth in advertising?

Pickings from Previews

The End of the World is Nigh
In the TV series Whoops Apocalypse, the new British Prime Minister, Kevin Pork, bases his defence policy on his belief that he is Superman. This is part of the chain of events that leads to global nuclear holocaust.

So it’s a little worrying that DC Comics is bringing out a Superman doll that looks like Gordon Brown.



Update
It seems that Norm Breyfogle is, after all, working on comics. He’s listed as one of the creators of the new Guardian Line range of Christian super-hero comics from Urban Ministries Incorporated.

Empty Spaces

Marvel Comics is content to present its trade paperback collections as what they are: collections of stories that originally appeared in shorter periodicals, complete with covers, titles and credits. DC, on the other hand, wants to pretend that it is producing proper books. Covers are relegated to the back of the volume, along with other supporting material like concept sketches and author interviews. And, nowadays, titles and credits are deleted from splash pages.

Mostly, this is merely ugly and irritating. Sometimes, it is worse. Take, for example, the opening page of “Frankenstein in Fairyland”. Above is how it first appeared in issue 4 of Frankenstein. Below is how it appeared in Seven Soldiers of Victory, Volume 4.

So, instead of the narration building to the climax of “Can you imagine … Frankenstein in Fairyland,” we are given instead the dying fall of “Can you imagine…” And we are left to wonder what it is that we should imagine.

Presumably not an imaginary story. Because this is what the editors of DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore have done to the opening page of “Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?”


Whereas the Frankenstein omission could have been an oversight, here we can only conclude that someone at DC thought that it was worth sacrificing this …

… for an expanse of yellow space.

These are some of the worst examples that I have noticed. But there are plenty of stories that I have read only in trade paperback collections. So who knows what I have missed?



Panels: “Frankenstein in Fairyland” by Grant Morrison (writer), Doug Mahnke (artist), Nathan Eyring (colourist) and Phil Balsman (letterer), Frankenstein 4, DC Comics, May 2006.

“Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” by Alan Moore (writer), Curt Swan and George Pérez (artists), Gene D’Angelo (colourist) and Todd Klein (letterer), Superman 423, DC Comics, September 1986.