What I bought, read, watched, or otherwise consumed – April 2024

The salvation of a soul, namely Perry Smith’s, was an enterprise the deeply Catholic undersheriff and his wife were eager to assist — although Mrs. Meier had been rebuffed by Perry when she had suggested a consultation with Father Goubeaux, a local priest. (Perry said, “Priests and nuns have had their chance with me. I’m still wearing the scars to prove it.”) (Truman Capote, from In Cold Blood)

COMICS

Avengers Inc. by Al Ewing (writer), Leonard Kirk (artist), Belardino Brabo (inker), Alex Sinclair (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer), and Jennifer Grünwald (collection editor). $17.99, 110 pgs, Marvel.

As you might recall, one of my favorite things about comics are stories set in a superhero universe that aren’t necessarily superhero stories, so the idea of Janet van Dyne doing detective work in the Marvel U. works for me, and Al Ewing is a good writer and Leonard Kirk is a good artist, so I assumed I would like this. And I do … with some caveats. First, I doubt it sold well at all, because everyone reading Marvel comics but me sucks, so it’s highly unlikely we’re going to see more of it. Second, only two of the five issues are really simple investigations – issues #1, 4, and 5 are about the “Mystery of Vic Shade,” the entity that seems to be possessing Whirlwind, and what’s going on with all the super-villains getting killed (in a deliberate evocation of the “Scourge of the Underworld” story). I don’t really have a problem with those issues, but they are a bit more “super-heroic,” and because there’s an Ultron connection (there’s ALWAYS an Ultron connection, just like there’s always a Doctor Doom or Magneto or Green Goblin connection), they’re not as good. Issues #2 and 3 are more “Janet investigates weird, Marvel Universe crimes,” and therefore they work much better. In issue #2, some people are getting killed at the Avengers Mansion (which is now a museum?), and in issue #3, good ol’ Skurge, who’s hanging out in Valhalla and therefore should be immune to, you know, death, gets himself murdered. Both of those stories zing with fun, and the bigger plot, while perfectly fine, just doesn’t have the same verve to it. Third, Marvel’s (and DC’s) ridiculous 20-page issue policy works against these kinds of stories, because they require a bit more build-up and character development, so they suffer a bit from the page restriction. I’m convinced the downturn in superhero comics is partly because of the page restriction, as writers have to get to the punching so much faster these days and can’t take the time to make us care about the characters, so they rely on decades of characterization done by others during times when, you know, they had more space. So this comic doesn’t feel as good because Ewing needs to set up a mystery and resolve it quickly, and he just doesn’t have the room. It’s not a bad comic, of course – Ewing is too good for that – but because he was doing a book that wasn’t going to sell very well and therefore was probably already only going to get five issues (Marvel doesn’t seem to do six-issue arcs anymore) AND because he had his overarching Ultron thing to worry about, some of the details slip through the cracks. We don’t care enough about Vic Shade before it’s time to reveal what’s really going on with him (even with a 30-page first issue – Ewing uses it well, but he’s setting up a lot in those pages), so when the other shoe drops, it feels a bit anticlimactic. This is an enjoyable comic that you can see is bursting with potential that doesn’t come to fruition here and probably never will. Oh well.

I don’t get it. Why read yet another big, stupid superhero fight when the actual genre of superheroes can be so easily adapted to other genres? We’ve seen big, stupid superhero fights for decades. We haven’t seen nearly enough detective stories with superheroes. I don’t know why that doesn’t sound cool to so many readers out there. I guess I’m just a big dummy.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Birds of Prey: Progeny by Gail Simone (writer), Tony Bedard (writer), Paulo Siqueira (penciler), Nicola Scott (penciler), James Raiz (penciler), Joe Prado (penciler), Robin Riggs (inker), Doug Hazlewood (inker), Dick Giordano (inker), Hi-Fi (colorist), Pat Brosseau (letterer), Travis Lanham (letterer), Jared K. Fletcher (letterer), Rob Leigh (letterer), Ken Lopez (letterer), and Alex Galer (collection editor). $29.99, 299 pgs, DC.

DC’s release schedule of Birds of Prey has been weird. First, they started at the beginning of the series – the first trade collected team appearances from before the regular series launched, and the next two trades collected issues #1-21 and a few related issues. All well and good. Then, they released a trade collecting the end of Gail Simone’s run, issues #104-112. Then, they had a nice big trade collecting issues #113-127, which brought the series to an end. Now, they’re jumping back, and this trade collects issues #92-103, which links us up with the previous trade but still doesn’t give us Simone’s run from the beginning. I get that Simone is a slightly bigger name and Nicola Scott was drawing some of this and that’s fine, but sheesh, DC, if you’re committed to trades of Birds of Prey, can’t you just continue with issue #22, and if you’re committed to the Simone run, can’t you start it at the beginning?

Anyway, this is a cool superhero book. Simone knows how to do these well, and she gets the characters very well, so the idea of Dinah Lance and Shiva switching roles for some reason (probably explained in earlier, uncollected issues!), as dumb as it looks on the surface, works pretty well … especially when Shiva is trying to be more heroic and less, you know, murdery. Simone uses interesting characters, too, from Gypsy (oh no, PC police alert!) to Black Alice to Big Barda (everyone loves Barda!). She does a nice job giving us a Barbara Gordon who knows far more than almost everyone but also isn’t infallible, so she misses some crucial things during the adventures and the trade ends with the team in worse shape than when it began. She also writes a Barbara/Lois Lane confrontation that is really well done, showing how smart both women are and how much they respect each other. It’s just a good superhero book. That’s always nice. Siqueira and Scott do very good work – Scott’s line is a bit stronger than Siqueira’s, which means her work is not softened as much by the digital coloring, but both artists do good work. It’s a nice-looking comic. Overall, I like this series. I mean, I know I’m 15 years late, because it got a lot of love when it was coming out, but I’m glad that DC is collecting this, as weirdly as they’re doing it.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Britannia: The Great Fire of Rome by Peter Milligan (writer), Alvaro Papagiani (artist), Mariano Morales (colorist), Exequiel Fernandez Roel (colorist), Ludwig Olimba (flatter), Ezequiel Inverni (letterer), and Lysa Hawkins (editor). $12.99, 60 pgs, Valiant/Alien Books.

The increasingly misnamed quasi-series about Milligan’s Roman detective finds our hero – Antonius Axia – trying to figure out who set the fire that destroyed Rome in AD 64. Nero, the craziest emperor?, famously blamed the Christians, which was convenient for him because he didn’t like Christians and because he really wanted to rebuild Rome in his image, so we get the first large-scale persecution of the new sect in history. Well done, Nero! Antonius, of course, knows it wasn’t the Christians, but Nero impresses on him very vigorously his need to find evidence pointing at the Christians, so Antonius spends this story trying to uncover the truth and keep Nero happy – or at least not unhappy – so the emperor won’t, you know, flay him alive. As with most detective stories from before the invention of forensic science, Antonius talks to a lot of people and basically uncovers the truth simply by being persistent, but it’s not a bad story by any means. I don’t love that Milligan seems to be introducing a bit more supernaturality into the book – it’s always been hinted at, but it seems like in this one, it’s more blatant (unless I’m misremembering the degree of it in the earlier stories, which is possible), and I’m not the biggest fan of it. Still, it’s not terrible, and Antonius remains nice and cynical about it all, and there’s still plenty of realism in the book. I’m a bit of a sucker for detective stories set in times before detectives were a thing, and Milligan is, of course, a good writer (he’s not “weird Milligan” in this series, but he’s certainly not “bad Milligan” either), so as long as he keeps cranking these out, I’ll probably keep buying them.

Papagiani does nice work on the art, too. He has strong, curvy lines that add nice fluidity to the character, and he uses chunk blacks nicely, setting them off with the bright colors (which are quite good). One thing Papagiani does nicely is use nice details on the city itself, creating a place where the rich and poor clash but share a setting, so the city never looks like two disparate places (which is what a lot of cities in comics look like). Here, the high mingles with the low, and while, yes, Nero lives in a fancy palace, it’s not as far removed from the slums as we often see. Rome was not a big city, square-mile-wise, and Papagiani does well cramming all the people into a small space yet still doing a good job showing the classicism that we associate with Rome and the empire.

This is a nifty comic. We’ll see if Milligan gets to continue with his detective dude!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

City Boy by Greg Pak (writer), Minkyu Jung (artist), Mike Choi (artist), Sunny Gho (colorist), Sebastian Cheng (colorist), Wes Abbott (letterer), Benjamin Abernathy (collection editor), and Kristy Quinn (collection editor). $16.99, 150 pgs, DC.

This isn’t the first of DC’s new “Hey, look at us, we’re diverse!” comics that I read this month, but it comes up first in alphabetical order, so here we are. (N.B.: I am all for more diversity in comics, I just find it amusing when the Big Two make such a grand show of it, because they really, really want people to notice.) This is a perfectly fine superhero comic, as Pak rips off Jack Hawksmoor (to be fair, Hawksmoor does show up in the WildStorm 30th Anniversary Special story, reprinted in this volume, so Pak can hang a lampshade on it all) and gives us Cameron Kim, who can talk to cities. To be fair, his power is slightly different than Hawksmoor’s, and after dispensing with that bit of business, Pak gives us a fairly standard superhero story that works perfectly well but won’t set the world on fire. He brings in Nightwing and Superman and Swamp Thing, makes Darkseid the main bad guy, to a degree, as the real main bad guys are the ones trying to mutate the world into Apokalips so Darkseid can move in, and they need Cameron’s help to do it. Cameron is able to tap into the souls of cities and … make them anxious? He brings out their avatars, and it seems that they reflect his mood, so if he’s pissed at the world (which he is), they’ll be too. Or something. It’s fine, and Jung’s art is a bit boxy but also fine, and all’s well that ends well. I do like that Cameron’s mother walked out on him when he was a toddler (ok, not like, but bear with me), because Pak knows that sometimes, those kinds of stories – Cameron searching for his mother – don’t end the way we want them to, so the resolution feels a bit more real. There’s nothing really that great about City Boy, but it’s mildly entertaining.

HOWEVER … so there I am, reading along, and we come to issue #4. Cameron ends up in Blüdhaven, and the city reveals its worst day to him … when it was nuked and 100,000 people died. Fuck the heck? A little caption box tells us we should see the “Final Crisis Omnibus” for details, but it seems like this happened in Infinite Crisis. Whenever it happened, fuck the fucking heck? I probably knew this happened, but I forgot this, but Jeebus, DC, you nuked a fairly major American city and it’s totally back and all is well? This reminds me of that season of 24 when a nuke went off in Los Angeles in the morning (or early afternoon) and Kiefer just went around cracking skulls like nothing happened. I get that in real time, the nuking of Blüdhaven over 15 years ago, but in “comic-book-time,” that’s what? a year? How did they clean up the radiation? How did they rebuild? The U.S. government cut Gotham City off from the freakin’ mainland so they wouldn’t have to help it out after an earthquake, but apparently they have lots of Superfund money to cleanse a less important city of massive amounts of radiation? Yeah, I get it – don’t overthink it. But man, when you have a nuclear explosion on American soil (not a bomb, of course, but Captain Atom, because why not?), you can’t just ignore it until 15 years later when Greg Pak, of all people, uses it as a plot point in your fancy new “Please like us, we’re diverse!” comics line. Come on, DC!

Yes, I like ranting every so often. Yes, I don’t read DC comics regularly, so I assume at some point they addressed this and hand-waved away the radiation and infrastructure damaged (did Captain Atom snort it all up like cocaine?). Still, this is just … so very DC. I wonder if the Space Needle is still destroyed in the Marvel Universe. Probably not.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Creepshow volume 2 by various creators. $14.99, 100 pgs, Image.

Creepshow is back with more fun, twisted horror stories, and while they’re not the greatest stories ever written, they are all quite good, and it seems like some artists like short stories more because it’s not as much work, so we get some good stuff. In order:

Becky Cloonan draws a Garth Ennis story that is, naturally, politically tinged, because it’s Garth Ennis.
Phil Hester has a tale about a dude who thinks something really bad happened to the trilobites millions of years ago, and of course he’s correct, and of course it’s still relevant!
In Michael Walsh‘s story, a boy watches too much television because his widowed dad is always working (or drinking), and you bet that leads to trouble when something on the TV starts talking to him!
Dan Watters and Abigail Larson have a story about a woman who’s the latest in a line of women to whom ghosts speak, but she really doesn’t want to hear it, so she takes steps to stop it, which leads to … something worse, naturally!
The brilliant Zoe Thorogood gives us a story about a woman who figures out how to live forever, and all the attendant distress that causes.
Thieves steal a red diamond for a sinister dude and try to double-cross him in a story by Joel Farrelly and Goran Sudžuka, but they don’t realize exactly why he wants the diamond, and it ain’t pleasant!
Nick Dragotta has a story about how exactly big box stores keep their parking lots so orderly. Oh, the horror!
Alisa Kwitney and Mauricet team back up for a fun story about an assisted living facility where sinister things are happening. Why is it fun? Well, one resident isn’t taking their shit lying down!
A politician wants to burn comic books in a story by Saladin Ahmed and Artyom Topilin, but a comics-loving librarian turns the tables on him!
David Andry and Tim Daniel write a story about a monster under a bed, which Matthew Roberts has a lot of fun drawing.

I like this series. I hope there’s going to be another volume!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Damn Them All volume 2 by Simon Spurrier (writer), Charlie Adlard (artist), Sofie Dodgson (colorist), Daniel Silva De Carvalho (color assistant), Jim Campbell (letterer), Ramiro Portnoy (editor), and Eric Harburn (editor). $19.99, 144 pgs, Boom! Studios.

The first volume of “Chick Hellblazer” was excellent, as is this one, and while I appreciate leaving on top, I’m a bit bummed we’re not getting more of Ellie and her hammer … although I suppose there’s nothing stopping Spurrier and Adlard returning to the character down the line, if they have another story to tell. It might be even more impressive that this section of the arc is so good, as endings are harder than beginnings (as I ruminate about below!), but Spurrier does a nice job with it. Ellie is trying to get the demons back to hell, but she’s still finding resistance. Some rich people have set up a government, using their demons to enforce the law, while Ellie’s old boyfriend has turned up, using demons to create a socialist utopia. Both the boyfriend and the government claim they’re just trying to make things better using the tools they have at hand, but Ellie isn’t buying it, of course. She has to figure out a way to deal with them both or join one of the sides (her ex-boyfriend’s seems more her speed, but will she join up with him?), all while keeping her intentions secret and avoiding a group of homicidal angels, who have decided to show up for some reason and are wreaking some havoc. It’s really interesting how Spurrier pulls a lot of threads together, and while he’s a writer and so it’s not too unexpected, having Ellie “save the world” partly by telling stories is a nice touch. Despite Ellie claiming she’s a nihilist, this isn’t quite as bleak as your average John Constantine story, so while it can be vicious, it doesn’t make you feel like reaching for the Scotch and opening your veins with a rusty can opener, like a lot of Hellblazer stories do. That’s not a bad thing!

Adlard continues to amaze on art – as I noted when I read volume 1, I’ve liked Adlard’s work for years, but he disappeared into Kirkman’s lair years ago and I hadn’t seen his evolution into this, and it’s astounding. The details with which he creates this world are superb, his action is quite refined, his demons are simply stunning, and he drops holding lines so effectively that David Lloyd is considering legal action. He moves effortlessly from the most supernatural action to the brutal reality of London, and the way he draws the demon in dog form is so good he should teach a class about it. As in volume 1, the coloring is amazing, as well, and Adlard and Dodgson do an excellent job giving us a squalid world that just happens to have some bizarre extraordinary beings wandering around in it. It’s a gorgeous book, and I’m glad I’m able to read a book with Adlard doing art again!

I can’t recommend this book enough. I hope Spurrier and Adlard return to the character, but if they don’t, this is a brilliant story with amazing art, and isn’t that why we read comics? I thought so!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

One totally Airwolf panel:

Unstoppable Doom Patrol by Dennis Culver (writer), Chris Burnham (artist), David LaFuente (artist), Brian Reber (colorist), Pat Brosseau (letterer), Steve Wands (letterer), and Ben Abernathy (collection editor). $16.99, 168 pgs, DC.

There are some good things about this latest, short-lived iteration of the Doom Patrol, but there are a lot of things that I, personally, found lacking. I might be in the minority, although judging by its quick cancellation, not many people liked it. It’s unfortunate – Culver is an entertaining writer and he knows how to tell a story, so the book moves along nicely and we get some interesting characters with interesting powers and he does a decent job with the DC-Universe characters that show up in this book – Batman and Robin guest star in the first issue, Guy Gardner and Kyle Raynor show up later, Peacemaker is there – and it can be a fun read. Burnham is excellent, as usual, giving us terrific character designs, interesting layouts when necessary, exquisite inking, and really nice details. Metawoman’s transition from all-American blonde superhero to … something less appealing, for instance, is really well done. All the characters are very neat, and it’s nice to see Burnham doing some weird superhero work, because he’s very good at that.

However … the negatives tend to outweigh the positives, although the scale isn’t too unbalanced. Culver, unfortunately, is too in love with the Grant Morrison run, and while there’s nothing wrong with being in love with Morrison’s Doom Patrol (as it is the best comic ever), I get annoyed when anyone tries to catch that lightning in a bottle again instead of doing something new. I know the nature of superhero comics means that nothing stays dead, but man, it would be nice. The Candlemaker shows up in this, and if there’s ever a villain who never needs to be seen again, it’s the Candlemaker. Morrison made it a truly terrifying creature, but once its power was broken, there was nothing left for it. Culver tries to make it interesting and comes up with a not-terrible angle, but it’s not scary and even the reasons for its resurrection are weak. Culver does not do good work with Crazy Jane, either – she’s another character who probably should not be used again, but here she is. Some of the personae she calls forth are interesting, but … you see that woman on the cover of the trade, on the left, wearing the dark suit and the mask over the lower part of her face? Yeah, that’s Crazy Jane, and she’s now leading the team. It’s a new persona, and I imagine Culver would have done a lot more with her had the book been a success … but it just feels wrong here. It’s just like an echo of Morrison’s run, but either Culver isn’t as clever as Morrison or the PTB wouldn’t let him be as weird, because it’s tough to try to be Morrison-esque while you’re also trying to do a fairly straightforward superhero book. The tones clash, and it doesn’t work. Then, there’s the fact that the Doom Patrol has decided to search the country (or world, I suppose, if need be) for metahumans and take them back to their compound and train them in the use of their powers. I mean, the Doom Patrol and the X-Men have always been linked a bit because of when they debuted, but this is pushing it a bit far, isn’t it? I also get why DC is trying to meld its weirder properties – the ones that were once Vertigo things – with their bigger universe (it’s because they have no guts), but man, the final page of this volume actually almost made me hate the entire thing, that’s how annoying it was. It’s best, if you read this trade, to reach the black panel that reads “The Doom Patrol will return” and skip the 3-page epilogue, because, yeah, it’s rage-inducing. Man. I’m getting angry just thinking about it.

I always have a soft spot for the Doom Patrol because of Morrison’s run (and, let’s face it, the original 1960s run is pretty cool), but I also don’t think DC has known what to do with it since that run, and that’s too bad. I don’t know why I wasn’t grumpy about the Gerard Way stuff when he was also riffing on Morrison’s run – maybe it felt like a bit more of its own thing, instead of just a “greatest hits” kind of thing? I don’t mind if writers go the “weird way” with the Doom Patrol, and even if they use the characters Morrison created. But they should try to do their own thing, and Way seemed to do that more than Culver does here. I dunno. This is just disappointing, and it bums me out. Oh well.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

The Enfield Gang Massacre by Chris Condon (writer), Jacob Phillips (artist), and Pip Martin (color assistant). $16.99, 170 pgs, Image.

As I consult the Top 100 Comics of 2023 from Comic Book Resources once again, I see that this came in at #14, which … seems a bit high. It’s a nice adventure, as Condon “explains” why his fictional Texas county, Ambrose, is so blood-soaked in That Texas Blood (of which this ought to be volume 4, but I guess which Condon wanted to stand on its own so people wouldn’t be put off by the “volume 4” after the title?), but … it doesn’t really do anything great, either. I mean, Ed Brubaker used to get grumpy when I said Criminal wasn’t re-inventing the wheel, but he and Sean Phillips were doing crime stories so very, very well that I didn’t care that the plots were kind of predictable. Condon has leaned into that a bit with That Texas Blood, but he really leans into it here, as there are literally no surprises whatsoever in this book, down to the sole survivor of the massacre and what happens with that person. There’s a gang that robs banks and such led by Montgomery Enfield, and one day a teller at a bank they just robbed ends up horribly murdered. Everyone in town immediately blames the gang, which lives near the ghetto part of the town, and they head out there to bring them in (and by “bring them in” I mean kill them all, including any women or children they happen to find there). The sheriff reluctantly goes along with the posse (which is led by a Texas Ranger who has a rigid sense of right and wrong, plus a local businessman who, naturally, has a hidden agenda), but he resigns early on because the posse is not particularly interested in arresting people, just killing them. Of course, we know the noble gang of thieves didn’t kill the teller, and the ex-sheriff tries to figure out what’s going on, and even if Condon didn’t put a newspaper article at the end of each chapter (purported to be written in 1996; it gives a lot of background information on the principals and what happened, some of it before it happens), it would still be easy to figure out every story beat. Again, there’s nothing really wrong with that, but part of the problem is, like most stories in which a lot of people get killed, Condon doesn’t really introduce most of the characters all that well before he begins killing them, so they remain clichés. Really, only the sheriff gets any kind of good characterization – Montgomery Enfield, the nominal star of the show, is always too stressed to really be developed as a real character, and when there’s any kind of respite from the slaughter, he’s revealed as just another Western cliché. Again, nothing terribly wrong with that, and the story hums nicely along and it’s always entertaining, and Phillips does excellent work with the art … but it just feels a bit too bog standard to be a Top 20 book. If you like Western comics, it’s certainly one to pick up, and if you like just being entertained without worrying about the fact that the whatever is entertaining you is not challenging you at all, it’s a nice comic. I enjoy That Texas Blood, all four volumes, and I hope Condon and Phillips keep up with the series, but I do think this is somewhat overrated. Your opinion may vary!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Godzilla: Here There Be Dragons by Frank Tieri (writer), Inaki Miranda (artist), Eva de la Cruz (colorist), Nathan Widick (letterer), and Alonzo Simon (collection editor). $19.99, 100 pgs, IDW.

As you might recall, I dig stories set in the past using “modern” characters that happen to be long-lived, so why wouldn’t they exist in the past as well? It’s one reason why I dug S.H.I.E.L.D., Hickman’s gonzo History of the Marvel Universe, in which Apocalypse fought the Brood in ancient Egypt, and why I’m annoyed at myself for not watching the latest Predator movie. But I digress! I dig those kinds of stories, so Godzilla menacing 16th-century mariners? Sign me up!

Of course, then I got annoyed right from the get-go. Tieri or the letterer screws up on the second page, and while it’s a small thing, it bugs me. The book is supposedly set in 1556, but Elizabeth is the English queen (she ruled from 1558 to 1603) and Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe (which occurred between 1577 and 1580) is a plot point, so that just bugged me. I suppose it could have been a typo, but if it’s not, it annoys me, because it’s not all that hard to look up dates on something called the internet. So that bugged me.

Anyway, there’s a dude in an English prison in the Caribbean who’s about to be hanged for his various horrible offenses, but he tells his jailer that he has a nifty story to tell, so they let him. He explains that Francis Drake’s circumnavigation was really a mission to find some lost treasure from 200 years before, when a Spanish (or Portuguese; it left Lisbon bound for Avignon) ship was blown off-course after escaping from pirates and found “Monster Island,” where they buried said treasure. Drake hears the story and convinces Elizabeth to send him out to find it. Of course, he finds Monster Island, but he’s also pursued by a Spanish fleet, which means Godzilla can have some fun destroying shit! Yes, Godzilla and a bunch of other extremely large fauna live on Monster Island, and they’re not pleased with the company. Tieri has to figure out how to get the narrator, Hull, know so much about Godzilla, so he comes up with a decent enough solution, but he adds on a secondary plot level about people around the world knowing about Godzilla and what they do about it, which isn’t the worst idea but makes Hull seem far stupider than he should be (but is also probably necessary so that people in the 1950s don’t know what Godzilla is). Oh well – it’s a Godzilla story, what are you going to do? It’s fun, and Miranda – the real reason to get this book – has a blast drawing big monsters and wooden galleons and people trying to fight giant crabs with swords. It’s all a bit silly, but it’s also fairly fun. There’s nothing wrong with that!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Good Deeds by Che Grayson (writer), Kelsey Ramsay (artist), Ronda Pattison (colorist), Shawn Lee (letterer), Russ Wooton (letterer), and Alonzo Simon (collection editor). $17.99, 134 pgs, IDW.

I’m still not sure what Scott Snyder’s “Dark Spaces” imprint at IDW is supposed to be. I’ve read two stories, and Snyder’s was the one about the heist in a forest fire, while this one is much more horror-oriented. It seems like the next one – the one about the actor stuck in Minersville, Pennsylvania – might be more horror-related, too, so is it a horror imprint? If so, why wasn’t Snyder’s story more horror-y? I don’t really care – if we get good comics into the world, I don’t care how they get here – but I am curious.

This is a pretty good book, too, which is nice. A girl – Cheyenne – and her mother, Rebecca, arrive in St. Augustine, Florida, to renovate a diner. It’s clear they’re running away from something, but we don’t know what, exactly. They are not met with open arms, which is one of the odd things about the book, as I’ll get to. Meanwhile, Jean – a reporter in Atlanta – comes to town to cover the town’s 450th anniversary (the book is set in 2015, by the way). Jean was a hotshot reporter who wrote a story that blew up in her face, and she’s a bit haunted by it (both figuratively and literally), and her editor isn’t quite ready to have her back on big stories. Of course, something weird is going on in St. Augustine, and so Jean is going to get a big story whether her editor wants it or not! She eventually teams up with Cheyenne to investigate the weird stuff going on in town, which includes a grisly murder in the diner while Cheyenne is there, the discovery of a mass grave, and a weird deer that is probably supernatural (or just really, really mutated).

Grayson does a nice job with the story, giving us interesting characters and keeping things rolling along, but they aren’t perfect, either. It’s clear that Cheyenne and Rebecca are targets of racists, even though that aspect of the story isn’t as prominent as the supernatural parts of it (both Grayson and Ramsay are non-white, so it’s not surprising they have things to say about this). However, the way the story is presented makes it seem like they’re out in the middle of nowhere, with hicks attacking them. St. Augustine is a city of 15,000 or so, and it’s not far from Jacksonville, and while I have no doubt whatsoever that there are racists a-plenty in the area, it just feels weird, especially because later on the protests against the diner have to do with the man who was killed there, which Grayson puts in seemingly to tamp down the racism angle. It just feels a bit weird, like Grayson really wanted to bring it up but knew the book was a supernatural thriller and so they couldn’t go too far with it. It’s not too big a deal, though, as Grayson does better with what’s really going on with Cheyenne and Rebecca, which ties into the racism angle a bit more subtly. There’s also the fact that Jean seems to get over the thing in her past a bit too easily, which is odd. Overall, though Grayson leaves a lot of things unsaid, just implied, which, as you know, I approve of, and it makes the book more interesting than if they had been blatant about it. Ramsay, meanwhile, has a nice, scratchy lines, which works well for horror and also for creating characters who are far from perfect – they look frazzled by life quite often, which they are, and it’s nice to see. St. Augustine looks grungy and, more importantly, hot and humid, which it is, and it makes the book feel more real. I haven’t seen Ramsay’s work before, but it’s pretty keen.

This is a good book, and if Snyder can bring more creators to the fore and they do good comics, I guess he can put whatever the hell he wants under this “Dark Spaces” umbrella!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2: Grootrise by Collin Kelly (writer), Jackson Lanzing (writer), Kev Walker (artist), Alex Lins (artist), Walden Wong (inker), Matt Hollingsworth (colorist), KJ Díaz (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer), and Daniel Kirchhoffer (collection editor). $19.99, 125 pgs, Marvel.

“Sticking the landing” is, of course, a big concern in fiction, and it’s always worth thinking about, because a great work of fiction can be diminished by a failure to stick the landing (according to many people – not me – this is what happened to Game of Thrones). I don’t subscribe to it completely, but I do think it’s valid, especially in fiction that is largely plot-oriented. If you’re going to have a big plot, you need to resolve that plot well. It doesn’t have to be brilliant, but it does have to be solid. I’ve written about this a lot, of course, and it always comes up because people like to gush about beginnings, ignoring the fact that beginnings are relatively easy, because all possibilities are open to the creator. It’s when they start shutting down options that it becomes harder, and that’s why endings are so important. Especially in comics with corporate characters, because nothing really “ends,” so creators have to figure out a way to end things without killing everyone or changing absolutely nothing – it’s a tough needle to thread. I only bring this up because, of course, Kelly and Lanzing only worked on GotG for 11 issues (one was the Annual), and they wanted to tell a complete story, and this is the end of that story. The first volume of their story was excellent, as they set up a truly astonishingly devastating plot – Groot, seemingly mad, was landing on planets and terraforming them, killing everyone in the process. How could Lanzing and Kelly square that circle, because obviously Groot is far too popular to kill off, yet, I mean, he’s a mass murderer! What the heck, guys?

Well, they manage to pull it off, quite nicely, in this volume. It’s not as gut-wrenchingly gripping as volume 1, but that’s the nature of resolutions, after all. Kelly and Lanzing give us good reasons for Groot’s behavior and show why it wasn’t as horrific as we think, which is not surprising given the nature of corporate (and popular) characters, but they still manage to give us a deeply emotional story about family and love and how we lean on each other in dire times and what that does for us all. They do a really good job with some action, but like all good superhero writers, they know that sometimes, punching just isn’t enough, so when it comes right down to it, winning is all about sacrifice and the willingness to know when not to fight. We’ve seen this more often in the more minor superhero comics recently, and it’s certainly not a bad thing. Lanzing and Kelly make it work very well, and it sets the stage nicely for whatever creators are going to get the team next.

The biggest issue with the series is, as always, Marvel’s insistence on smaller page counts. The “Annual” is 25 pages, which is ridiculous, and of course, the other issues are 20 pages each, and issue #6 feels almost like a throwaway because Walker needed a break and Marvel didn’t want to just skip a month or two and let him get back up to speed (there’s nothing wrong with Alex Lins’s art in issue #6 – it’s actually quite lovely – but because he wasn’t the regular artist, it feels almost like an inventory story, and it seems clear Kelly and Lanzing were just writing something to placate Marvel’s desire to put this out every month). So we get 105 pages to wrap this thing up, and it feels rushed. There’s what should be a powerful story in which Mantis and Gamora go to Earth, of all places, and it’s handled well, but it doesn’t quite feel as strong as it could have been had the writers been able to slow down just a bit. Hulkling and Wiccan, the two most poorly-named characters in the Marvel Universe, show up in issue #7 to investigate what’s going on, and they decide that whatever’s going on in the places Groot has “destroyed” needs to be left alone for a bit, but other factions don’t agree, and that whole sub-plot is barely developed because, you guessed it, there’s not enough room. Lanzing and Kelly admirably still make this a great story, but it doesn’t quite feel as epic as it might because we zip through it. I know I’m tilting against windmills here, but it bugs me. Yes, some comics of the past were bloated with excessive verbiage, but we could spend a page or two with wildly minor characters and get a sense of who they were before they were horribly killed or abandoned or simply forgotten, and it made the Marvel (and DC) Universe feel bigger. With the shrinkage of page counts, it feels like the universes have shrunk. Oh well.

Anyway, Walker is superb, the book rocks, and a saxophone plays a key role. Pick both volumes up and enjoy the ride!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Local Man volume 2: The Dry Season by Tim Seeley (writer/artist), Tony Fleecs (writer/artist), Brad Simpson (colorist), Felipe Sobreiro (colorist), and some random person who doesn’t deserve a name, apparently (letterer). $16.99, 146 pgs, Image.

This continues to be a strong series, as Seeley and Fleecs continue to have fun with the early Image stuff while still telling a good story. As we discovered last time, the villain is a person in town who, like all good villains, believes they’re doing the right thing, but they go about it very evilly, and Jack begins to understand that when the sheriff asks him to investigate the mysterious drowning death of a teenager … who was found nowhere near water. Fleecs and Seeley tie it into the bigger plot and the (gentle) satire of the early Image years they have going on, and it works quite well. As I pointed out above, I like superhero stories that use real-world situations and take them seriously, so the idea that Jack can’t use his superhero name because it’s copyrighted by someone else continues to be a genius move and gives the series its dark, twisted sense of humor, but also, the big plot reflects the idea that small-town America is dying and it needs something to give it a shot in the arm. Yes, people die, but if a depressed area is revitalized, is it worth it? Of course, Jack (and the writers and presumably the readers, as well) would say no, but it’s still an interesting conundrum because it’s a real-life problem. Is the villain of this book just a gentrifier, and not really thinking about making the town great again? Or do they really have the community’s best interests at heart? Fleecs and Seeley do a good job giving us the villain’s side, so their actions are quite so easy to condemn. There’s also a story in the collection that’s a fun time-travel tale with actual Image characters and not “made-up” ones – Scrap from Dynamo 5, Street Angel, Firebreather, Joan Peterson from Love Everlasting, Tony Chu and Poyo, even the dude from Violent Messiahs – which is fun, as it looks at time travel into the “future” from the point of view of the people in the “future” – Jack meets his younger self and marvels at what a dick he used to be, for instance. It’s a clever story.

Local Man continues to be good. That’s nice!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Rumpus Room by Mark Russell (writer), Ramon Rosanas (artist), Ive Svorcina (colorist), and AndWorld Design (letterer). $16.99, 100 pgs, AWA Studios.

Russell continues his string of satires, as he gives us a billionaire who keeps people in a cage in his basement, like you do. The focus of the story is Erica, a cop in the town where the billionaire – Bob Schrunk – lives, who comes to Schrunk’s mansion looking for her sister, who was Schrunk’s accountant but has disappeared. Schrunk manages to drug Erica (rather cleverly) and has his costumed goons throw in the “rumpus room” with a bunch of other missing people. Her sister, pointedly, is not there. At seemingly random intervals, Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” plays over the loudspeakers, and the group has to vote to expel someone, who disappears (we find out what happens to them, but the captives don’t for quite some time). It is, as you can tell, a comedy!

Russell is good at this, although occasionally he makes his satires a bit too on-the-nose, which weakens them a bit. He doesn’t here, which is why this works a bit better. I mean, yes, Schrunk is an obvious stereotype of the billionaire who can’t understand why people don’t like him when he’s obviously saving the world (as he sees it), but Russell does give him a weird and intriguing backstory and relationship with his child. But it’s with Erica and the other captives that he does a nice job, showing how easily the rich get the not-rich to turn on each other without banging us over the head with it too much (he does this in the afterword, which is where it belongs). Erica can’t understand why the captives go along with the selection process, and Russell allows the characters to explain what’s going on but not in too obvious a manner, and it hits harder because of that. And, of course, because Russell can’t change the world in a comic, the ending is a bit bleak even if it’s relatively “happy.” Add to that Rosanas’s strong art, with his very creepy, blank-faced costumed goons and Schrunk’s wild, male-dominating artwork, and the book works quite well. Russell is a good writer, but he sometimes lets his passion about the shittiness of the rich get away from him, and the fact that he doesn’t do that as much here makes Schrunk’s shittiness all the more chilling. This does nothing to dissuade me from getting more Russell comics!

Rating: ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Scarlett Couture volume 2: The Munich File by Des Taylor (writer/artist), Vidal Montgomery (story consultant), and David Leach (letterer). $17.99, 114 pgs, Titan Comics.

Considering it’s been eight (8!) years since the first volume of Scarlett Couture, I’m not holding my breath for more, even though Taylor promises more, but that’s fine, because he does a nice job making sure each trade contains a complete story while still adding long-term plot elements. It’s just that … I hope it’s not another eight years before volume 3!

I love this big, dumb series, and I suspect Greg Hatcher would, too, because it seems so in his wheelhouse it’s not even funny. We get impossibly attractive women and men (no one, not even the older people or the henchmen, is unattractive in this comic) doing wacky spy stuff, and the spy agency our hero works for fronts as a modeling agency, so she and her friends are always dressed to the nines in outfits that would not withstand as much movement as Scarlett does in them, but, through the magic of comics, stay adhered to her body! Plus, we get a villain’s lair worthy of the best Bond villain, a World War II all-female commando unit (because why not?), so many twists and turns and double-crosses and who can you trust?!?!?!?, and it’s just a blast. A ridiculous blast, sure, but a blast nonetheless. Taylor’s soft-focus digital art works very well with the subject matter, and while I don’t love how he blends the pencil art with digital imagery all the time, he usually does a decent job with it. I’m just one of those people who’s never loved, say, “blurring effects” in comics art, but Taylor is still pretty good at incorporating it. I just don’t have a ton to say about this – it’s a spy story that works well, as long as you don’t poke it too hard, and I just love Taylor’s exuberance about the subject matter and comics in general. If he keeps making these, I’ll keep buying them!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Spine-Tingling Spider-Man by Saladin Ahmed (writer), Juan Ferreyra (artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer), Joe Sabino (letterer), and Daniel Kirchhoffer (collection editor). $19.99, 174 pgs, Marvel.

I already read the “zero” issue collected in this book, which takes up a good chunk of it, so that was a bit annoying, but what the hell. The “main” story, which was the part that was actually printed instead of coming out on Marvel’s digital platform, is perfectly fine – Peter wakes up and finds himself in a world where no one knows him and he has no powers, and someone is trying very hard to scare him to death – and Ahmed hits all the beats we’d expect and does a nice job spacing out the surprises until we get to the Final Boss. But, I mean, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Ferreyra is the reason to get this book. He’s superb, which is not surprising at all, and I remain bummed that he A) isn’t working on a creator-owned book for Image or Dark Horse that becomes amazingly popular and raises his profile; or B) isn’t working on a really high-profile Marvel or DC book for a long time that is amazingly popular and raises his profile. When I write X-Men, I will hold my breath and turn blue if Ferreyra doesn’t draw it, and I will demand breaks in the schedule when he gets a bit behind, and you will all love it so much. This is a good comic made amazing by the art. Just go get it!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Spirit World by Alyssa Wong (writer), Jeremy Holt (writer), Haining (artist), Andrew Drilon (artist), Sebastian Cheng (colorist), Janice Chang (letterer), Steve Wands (letterer), Lucas Gattoni (letterer), and Andrew Shea (collection editor). $16.99, 150 pgs, DC.

I’ve written before about how some comics are so politically correct it’s almost humorous, and here’s another example. As with City Boy, I want to stress that I have literally no problem if DC wants to expand their character stable to include more diverse characters, as they’re doing with these Asian characters in these trades I got this month (see above and below). A non-binary character who deals with Asian things rather than boring Western things is fine, and Xanthe’s power – turning origami creations into real things – is as goofy as any other superhero power, so why not? However, there are a couple of things that bug me about this trade, and it has to do with political correctness gone wild. First, John Constantine is both too nice and too bad at his job to be the “real” Constantine. The first time we see him (in the Lazarus Planet story that precedes all of these series, as they spun out of that), he’s whining because the “magic papers” he bought – online, mind you – don’t work, and our hero Xanthe tells him that if he doesn’t know how to make them work, that’s not their problem. This is just such a jarring non-Constantine way to introduce the character – a dumb whiner, basically – that it messes with the entire story, as Constantine is a big part of the story. Then, when the series actually begins, Xanthe enters a shop and finds Constantine, who’s watching the shop as a favor for a friend? Really? And he tells Xanthe to take their feet off the counter, like he’s a grandpa? As always, I get that writers want to make the stars of their particular story awesome, but making other, more established characters act like idiots or at least not like themselves always puts me off. Maybe the new, non-Vertigo Constantine is portrayed more like this whiny dork. If so, blech.

Later, Xanthe and Constantine end up eating dinner with Xanthe’s family. They “dead-name” Xanthe, and they get angry at that and try to storm out. All well and good, but Wong and the letterers deliberately obscure their dead name, and that bugged me. I am certainly in favor of calling people whatever they themselves want to be called, but the political correctness of not using a fictional character’s given name cracked me up, especially because her family, in this situation, is kind of evil, so this shows how evil they are because they don’t care about Xanthe’s feelings, but also … everyone in the comic can understand what they’re saying. It’s not like it’s static or something, as writers sometimes do to show that a character is speaking weirdly, it’s just Xanthe’s dead name, and they, Constantine, and Xanthe’s sister can understand it. It’s only the reader who’s not allowed to know what it was, which cracks me up. I get it, to a degree, but it just seems excessively PC. Just because someone rejects an old name doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or, if someone says it, their words are obscured by politically correct grawlix. It’s odd that this would be a thing, and I get that it’s silly, but it still bugged me.

Anyway, Cassandra Cain gets dragged into the Spirit World, where spirits feed on living energy, and Xanthe and Constantine have to rescue her. It’s all very superhero-y, and it’s fine. Haining’s manga-esque art is pretty keen, and Wong tells an entertaining if fairly forgettable story. It’s not a bad read.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

The Vigil by Ram V (writer), Lalit Kumar Sharma (artist), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Sid Kotian (finisher), Norm Rapmund (inker), Rain Beredo (colorist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer), and Ben Meares (collection editor). $16.99, 142 pgs, DC.

I assumed, of the three of DC’s “Man, we better tap into the Asian market before all the white oldsters who read our books die off!” new series, I’d like The Vigil the most, because Ram V has quickly become one of my favorite writers, and I was right, so that works. In some ways, like the other two offerings, this is a fairly standard superhero story – we get some brief origin stories of the heroes, there’s a bad dude doing bad things, and they have to stop him – but Venkatesan does so many interesting things within that framework that it becomes something weird and neat. Like the best superhero writers, Venkatesan is able to find the oddness in the genre without sacrificing the wonder of it all and that underlying sense of “realism” that writers try to infuse into superhero stories (and don’t always succeed in doing). The Vigil has some strange but familiar characters – a dude who uses energy, a very fast girl, the creepy super-smart person – but Venkatesan puts interesting spins on them, and when we find out what’s really happening, it’s a fairly clever twist. He understands that a lot of superhero stuff could be looked at as horror in the right light, and while this isn’t a horror comic, there are some truly horrific moments. He does a nice job with both the “government agent who watches the superheroes” and the “genius who puts the team together” tropes, and there’s a lot of nice characterization. Finally, like the best superhero writers, he thinks about all the applications of power, so it’s not just punching and blowing shit up (this is known as the “Grant Morrison Has Aquaman Disrupt Fluid In The Brain” application). The art is strong throughout, as both pencilers have similar styles and the few times we get inkers (or finishers), they make sure their inks keep the style solid, and it’s generally a nice-looking comic. I would certainly not mind reading more of this team’s adventures if Ram V wants to keep writing it. This is also the second book I read this month that ends in The Bleed, which DC apparently really digs. Can Warren Ellis copyright a concept?

This is a nifty comic. If you’re interested in DC’s attempts to grab a more diverse audience and you have limited funds, get this instead of City Boy and/or Spirit World. It’s just better!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Wild’s End volume 4: Beyond the Seas by Dan Abnett (writer) and I.N.J. Culbard (artist/letterer). $24.99, 151 pgs, Boom! Studios.

Abnett and Culbard are back, with a new cast of characters (don’t fret, the ones from the first three volumes are still out there, and it’s clear Abnett is going to have them hook up eventually) who have to deal with the alien invaders. A group of fishermen are out on the sea when the invaders arrive, so they don’t know what’s going on when they get back. They find some people still alive, but they’ve been hypnotized by the aliens and don’t respond when our heroes talk to them. They find one survivor who tells them what’s going on, and unlike the first cast of characters, they decide to fight back immediately. The bulk of the book is our group trying to figure out a way to free the townspeople from the hypnotic grip of the aliens. Will some of them die? Of course!

I like stories like this, that are able to expand into whatever universe they’re in. Usually, with end-of-the-world disaster stories, we’re focused on one group, and if they do come across other groups, they usually interact briefly and move on. Abnett reached a natural stopping point with his first group, so now we see the invasion from another point of view, with characters who react a bit differently, mainly because the invasion is basically over by the time they find out about it and also because it seems the alien presence in less in this section of England than it was in the area of the first three volumes. It’s a good story, and Culbard does really nice work with the art, so it’s entertaining, but it’s also a nice way to expand outward from the initial invasion and show how it affected other parts of the country. It will be interesting to see how Abnett gets the two groups together, and I wonder how long they’re planning to go with this series, because the story possibilities are vast.

Anyway, it’s a cool comic. Everyone digs talking animals, right?

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

BOOKS

The Sandman Papers: An Exploration of the Sandman Mythology by Joe Sanders (ed.). 196 pgs, 2006, Fantagraphics.

I enjoy books like this – essay collections about comics (I’ve contributed to two, one of which stubbornly refuses to come out) – and this is a pretty good one, as Sandman is endlessly fascinating. The essays are good, too – lots of stuff about Shakespeare, naturally (the essayists know only two of the issues deal directly with the Bard, right?), ruminations on female identity and queer identity, musings on Borges and the way Morpheus dresses and what Mr. Punch has to do with it all … it’s an interesting, eclectic blend. I don’t want to get too into it, because it’s about what you expect from a book containing a bunch of essays about Sandman. I will say, however, that most of the essayists don’t seem to be comics readers, or if they are, very detached tourists at best, and they’re all Gaiman fanboys and -girls, because the way they write about comics is very interesting. Certainly not dismissive (well, any more than normal comics readers are dismissive of, say, Rob Liefeld), but still a bit … I guess enamored of the things Gaiman – and it’s very much implied that it’s Gaiman through and through with very little contributions from the artists – does in the book. I get the impulse to prop up the writer of a comic when the people doing the propping are all writers themselves, and it’s certainly true that Gaiman is the driving force of the series, but the writers need to pump the brakes a bit when it comes to giving him all of the credit. It’s like many of them haven’t read a lot of comics, so things that Gaiman and the artists do that impress the hell out of them aren’t really innovative. I mean, artists from time immemorial have used borderless panels and full bleeds, but one writer gushes about them as if Charles Vess and Gaiman invented them. They pay a bit of lip service to the EC roots of the series (some writers know more about comics than others), but they look for complex sociological reasons for things when it’s very possible that Morpheus wears an Asian-style robe because Sam Kieth drew him that way and it looks fucking cool. Look, I get the impulse – I do it too! – to overanalyze things, because it’s fun. And these essays are fascinating, and I recommend the book if you’ve read Sandman (and, come on, we’ve all read Sandman). But it’s also fun to nitpick about snooty people trying to make the book even more intellectual than it already is. It’s not necessarily anti-feminist that Lyta Hall has no power in “The Kindly Ones” (the writer doesn’t come right out and say that, but it’s kind of implied). It’s the story of Dream, after all, and he is, you know, Endless. Lyta’s story is not about having power, it’s about the insanity of grief. When you are insane with grief, you voluntarily give up power, and the story from Lyta’s point of view is how she is misled because she doesn’t see the big picture and how that’s both understandable and tragic for her. It’s not that hard, people!

Anyway, this is neat. It’s fun to dissect comics, isn’t it?

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Comic Book Apocalypse: The Graphic World of Jack Kirby by Charles Hatfield and Ben Saunders (editors). 168 pgs, 2015, IDW.

Speaking of essays about comics, this book is a companion piece to an art exhibit at Cal State-Northridge in 2015, and it’s pretty keen. A bunch of writers give us insight, mostly on Kirby’s later period, from the late 1960s to his retirement/death, but there are a few short things about his work in the 1940s and 1950s. Diana Schutz writes about his romance comics, while Howard Chaykin takes a look at a few pages from a war comic and how Kirby manipulates the page and the reader. Craig Fischer has a fascinating essay about how Kirby adjusted to the new page size of the late 1960s (Murphy Anderson liked slightly smaller pages, and of course they were cheaper, so that became the industry standard, much to Kirby’s chagrin, apparently). Glen David Gold looks at how Kirby worked PTSD into Captain America comics, as Kirby – whether he suffered from it or not – would certainly have been familiar with it. Scott Bukatman has a look at Kirby’s used of mixed media, beginning with the famous splash of Reed Richards in the Negative Zone from Fantastic Four #51 and moving on from there. Adam McGovern has a short essay about Kirby’s women, focusing on Barda, while Carla Speed McNeil looks at his influence on later artists from Steve Rude to Jaime Hernandez. Ann Nocenti writes an essay about how she and Trevor McCarthy tried to keep the spirit of Kirby in their revival of Klarion, while Charles Hatfield has a really nice essay about Kirby’s double-page splashes and how he creates them, including a gorgeous one from The Demon #6. Mark Badger’s essay is probably the longest and best, as he examines Kirby’s use of perspective and what lessons he, Badger, drew from them. It’s a cool book with a ton of images, and it will give you a lot of insight into Kirby – at least his comics, if not his life as much (we get some biographical information, but not too much). As with the Sandman book, it feels like the writers are trying to give Kirby some credit for things he might not have invented, but then again, there’s so much he did either invent or refine that it’s almost impossible to overstate his influence. Even the criticisms some of the writers have of Kirby – his occasional wonky anatomy, his impossible architecture – are presented with love and admiration, because the impossible in Kirby seemed to overwhelm the objections and become a new, bizarre reality where everything just … worked. So, yeah, it’s another book of essays about comics. You can’t keep away from them!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

MUSIC

Bastille, Doom Days, Virgin Records, 2019.

I am, you might know, a fan of concept albums, but I’m also a fan of “themed” albums – not necessarily complete concept albums, but albums that just have themes running through them. Of Monsters and Men’s Fever Dream has references to sleeping and dreams in every song, for instance, even though the songs are not related. Similarly, Doom Days is about one night in the life of the narrator, as he goes from a “Quarter Past Midnight” (the first track) to 8 o’clock in the morning, and he has kind of an adventure along the way. It’s not really a concept album, because the songs don’t relate to each other too closely – you can listen to any one of them without listening to any other on the album, and it’s fine – but it is a nice, “themed” album, and I dig that. This is also a nice return to form for Bastille, whose first album was superb but whose second was the tiniest bit uneven. This isn’t quite as good as Bad Blood, but it’s close.

As I noted, the first song kicks things off nicely, with Dan Smith, setting the tone for the album, sings about trying to stay up all night because the day ahead isn’t going to be good and that they want something better in life. It has a nice, throbbing, upbeat beat, which belies the somewhat gloomy lyrics nicely. “Bad Decisions” continues this kind of gloomy lyrics/upbeat music, with the chorus swelling to an excellent riff: “You said that maybe this is where it ends,” a sad lyric that is contrasted by the uplifting music. The album continues like this, with the music never letting the lyrics overwhelm us with sadness. The centerpiece of the album (not its best song, but the fulcrum of it) is the title track, which begins with “When I watch the world burn / All I think about is you” and continues with lyrics that point ahead to where Smith’s mind is going: “God knows what is real and what is fake” and “We’ll stay offline so no one gets hurt / Hiding from the real world” and “Think I’m addicted to my phone / My scrolling horror show / I’m live streaming the final days of Rome” with a great lyric in the middle of it all: “How’d you’d look so perfect / You must have some portraits in the attic.” The music, for once, matches the lyrics, creeping along until we get to the latter part of the song, when the pitter-patter of the drums takes on more urgency, and Smith finally says he’s going to put his phone down and experience life. Then the album shifts with Nocturnal Creatures,” as Smith sings about needing no reason “if we want to lose our minds.” With “Another Place” we get a more hopeful tone despite the cutting lyrics – “Don’t paint wonderful lies on me that wash away” – because Smith is at least singing about real experiences. “Those Nights” is another seemingly cynical song – it’s about a brief sexual encounter, with Smith singing words like “As you trip and fall, dragging me up the stairs / What’s your, what’s your name, now?” – but it’s also about making a connection, with the great chorus spelling it out: “Those nights when your friends are gone / When you’re holding on for someone to leave with / Those nights when you crave someone / To be there at dawn, to wake with ’cause aren’t we all just / Looking for a little bit of hope these days / Looking for somebody you can wake up with / Looking for a little bit of hope these days / We are, we are.” The best song on the album, “Divide,” comes early, in the more depressing section, but it’s a powerfully sad song about the end of a relationship, and it’s the realness of that break that seems to send Smith into a tailspin (if we’re considering this as a concept album), but it’s also a plea for all of us to be kind to each other: “Why would we divide when we could come together?” The music begins quietly, with a strong but pensive piano, and gradually picks up, and when the entire band sings “Roll the window down, won’t let you go like this,” it’s a beautifully chilling moment. The album ends with a happy song, “Joy,” and it certainly feels earned, although it’s probably the worst song on the album (it’s not bad, just not up to the standards of the rest. It’s a terrific album, overall, and it actually sets the stage for their next one, which I’ll get around to reviewing later on!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

TELEVISION

Hightown season 3 (Starz). It seems like in each season of Hightown, someone finds redemption while someone else falls from grace, and this season, our girl Jackie hits rock bottom (again) and decides that she doesn’t want to live the addict life, so she actually goes to rehab and comes out and, at least for the rest of the season, to be doing well. I hope the writers don’t have her fall off the wagon going forward, because it would be so much more interesting if she struggled with her addiction while remaining sober. But what the hell do I know? For every triumph, however, there’s a tragedy, and good ol’ James Badge Dale, who ended season 2 on top of the world a bit, slides back down into the muck thanks to the release from prison of Frankie Cuevas (played with evil charm by Amaury Nelasco), who wants to get revenge on Dale’s character – Ray Abruzzo – and Riley Voelkel’s Renee, as Renee was once his girl but now she’s shacking up with Ray, raising Frankie’s son and having babies with the cop. Things start getting very dark indeed for Ray and Renee as they realize that Frankie is not only getting out of jail (he spends about half the season in prison until circumstances change and he’s released), but he’s going to be a big problem for them if he starts talking about who killed his cousin last season – it was Renee, but everyone just assumes it was Frankie. As usual, this is a nice, grungy cop drama, with a strong cast of morally gray characters – before Jackie turns herself around, Dohn Norwood’s character Alan seems like the only really good guy on the show – and some good plots. Garret Dillahunt shows up this season as a drug kingpin, and Kaya Rosenthal is the rookie cop who, naturally, fucks Ray because Ray can’t keep his dick in his pants but is also pretty darned good at being an undercover cop for someone so new. It’s a solid show, and while it’s not the greatest thing in the world, it’s pretty enjoyable. I don’t ever know if there will be another season (I assume by this time, they know if they’re getting renewed, and they leave this season on a decent cliffhanger, so it would be disappointing if it doesn’t come back), but I’ll be there!

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Here’s the money I spent in April!

3 April: $104.09
10 April: $94.50
17 April: $271.10 (!!!)
24 April: $133.09

On 17 April, both the Micronauts Omnibus ($125) and the second volume of Fantagraphics’ Atlas Comics collections ($49.99) came out, hence the price tag. Because of course they both came out on the same day!

Money spent in April: $602.78
(April ’23: $438.86)
(April ’22: $1090.51)
(April ’21: $651.46)

YTD: $1858.87
(2023: $1858.65)
(2022: $3853.38)
(2021: $2290.90)

Weird how I’ve spent almost the exact same amount through April this year that I did last year. I’m trying to cut down on comics, but they keep dragging me back in! I knew my low spending from last month couldn’t last, but those Marvel Omnibuses really push the amount spent up a bit!

Here are the publishers this month:

Abrams ComicsArts: 1 (1 graphic novel)
AWA: 1 (1 trade paperback)
Boom! Studios: 2 (2 trade paperbacks)
Dark Horse: 3 (1 “classic” reprint, 2 single issues)
DC: 5 (1 single issue, 4 trade paperbacks)
Fantagraphics: 1 (1 “classic” reprint)
Floating World Comics: 1 (1 graphic novel)
IDW: 2 (2 trade paperbacks)
Image: 5 (1 graphic novel, 4 trade paperbacks)
Mad Cave Studios: 1 (1 single issue)
Marvel: 4 (1 “classic” reprint, 3 trade paperbacks)
NBM: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Papercutz: 2 (2 “classic” reprint)
Penthouse Comics: 1 (1 single issue)
Titan Comics: 1 (1 trade paperback)
Top Shelf: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Valiant: 1 (1 single issue)

5 “classic” reprints (16)
5 graphic novels (17)
0 manga volumes (2)
6 single issues (24)
17 trade paperbacks (39)

Here are the publishers of the year so far:

Ablaze: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
About Comics: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 (1 “classic” reprint)
Abrams: 0 + 1 + 0 + 1 (2 graphic novels)
Ahoy: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 (1 trade paperback)
Antarctic: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 (1 trade paperback)
AWA: 0 + 1 + 1 + 1 (3 trade paperbacks)
Boom! Studios: 1 + 1 + 0 + 2 (1 “classic” reprint, 3 trade paperbacks)
Clover Press: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
Dark Horse: 3 + 3 + 1 + 3 (4 “classic” reprints, 5 single issues, 1 trade paperback)
DC: 1 + 3 + 4 + 5 (1 “classic” reprint, 6 single issues, 6 trade paperbacks)
Fairsquare Comics: 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 trade paperback)
Fantagraphics: 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 (1 “classic” reprint)
First: 1 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
First Second Books: 1 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
Floating World Comics: 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 (1 graphic novel)
IDW: 0 + 0 + 1 + 2 (3 trade paperbacks)
Image: 4 + 3 + 2 + 5 (1 “classic” reprint, 1 graphic novel, 5 single issues, 7 trade paperbacks)
Invader Comics: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
Mad Cave Studios: 2 + 1 + 0 + 1 (1 graphic novel, 1 single issue, 2 trade paperbacks)
Marvel: 3 + 3 + 2 + 4 (5 “classic” reprints, 2 single issues, 5 trade paperbacks)
MCD Books: 0 + 0 + 1 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
NBM: 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 (1 graphic novel)
Oni Press: 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 trade paperback)
Papercutz: 0 + 0 + 0 + 2 (2 “classic” reprints)
Penthouse: 0 + 1 + 0 + 1 (2 single issues)
Scout: 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 single issue)
SLG: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)
Titan Comics: 0 + 4 + 0 + 1 (1 graphic novel, 1 single issue, 3 trade paperbacks)
TKO Studios: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 (1 trade paperback)
Top Shelf: 1 + 0 + 0 + 1 (2 graphic novels)
Valiant: 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 (1 single issue)
Vault: 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 (1 trade paperback)
Viz Media: 0 + 2 + 0 + 0 (2 manga volumes)
A Wave Blue World: 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 (1 graphic novel)

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I’ve been in a blah mood recently, which annoys me. I’m not tracking my weight on this blog this year because I’m just stuck where I was, and recently I’ve been eating somewhat poorly, which annoys me as well. I don’t know – my parents were here for a few weeks, and I always eat a bit worse when they’re around, and I feel like I’m stuck in a rut when it comes to losing weight, so who the hell cares, right? But that’s not important – I’ll figure it out. I’m just feeling blah, and I don’t know why.

April is, of course, the month in which my daughter was in the car accident that jacked up her brain, and as always, I wrote an annual review of her situation, which you can read here. Things are fairly stable with her, as they’ve been for a while now, so that’s good, but she’s still getting older and closer to getting out of school, and we need to figure out what to do with her. That will not be fun. In other news, my application to be a substitute teacher finally went through (lots of vetting, I guess), and as of this writing, I’ve substituted once – last week – but there are jobs almost every day, so I doubt if I’ll be idle too much. Right now, I can only sub at two schools, because my daughter gets home at 3 o’clock and I need to be here to get her off the bus, and only one other school has a schedule that allows that, so my choices are limited a bit, but that school and her school seem to have need of subs fairly regularly, so I hope I will be able to do that regularly. I get up in the morning ridiculously early, and the jobs on the app are basically first come, first served, so I have an advantage! I enjoyed my first day, and I look forward to working more.

I’m sorry I don’t have anything more interesting to discuss. My parents were in town, as I noted above, because they missed us at Christmas due to their move, and they went to Oklahoma to visit my sister and see the eclipse (my mom saw the one in 2017 and became a big fan of eclipses, so they had to check this one out!), and then they drove out here and stayed for two weeks. I get along fine with my parents, and my wife digs them (and they dig her), so there’s never a lot of drama … just a lot of Law & Order: SVU and NCIS re-runs, because my mom digs those shows. We did watch Barbie with them, and they were unimpressed. It’s too cool for them, I guess!

Anyway, I hope everyone is having a nice time, wherever you are. As election season heats up here in the States, remember: try to be nice to each other. Just because someone is planning to vote for the Big Orange Baboon for a THIRD TIME doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk. Maybe your friend has some kind of brain tumor?

Have a nice day, everyone!