The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1283: Vortex #5, September 1983

How about we read some independent Canadian science fiction from the early 80s?

Okay.

Vortex is a cool series. Beside the fact that so many big names cut their teeth here (Ty Templeton and Ken Steacy in this issue alone), the stories are thoughtful and entertaining, well-written and well-illustrated. The addition of ads for the comic shops I used to frequent as a young one is a lovely pinch of nostalgia added to a satisfying read.

In today's issue, the standout story for me was "T-Wreks" by Ken Steacy. The cover up there does a nice job of emblematizing the tale, and the story itself spoke to a younger version of me that had very similar fantasies as the narrator of this story. I still see construction vehicles as stand-ins for dinosaurs. And when I finally learned to drive one, it was just like what driving a dinosaur would be like. Well, it was to me.

I'm going to stick with this series, and with some of the others published by the similarly-titled publisher. I anticipate enjoying them a great deal.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1282: Midnight Sons Ashcan Edition, 1994

This is one of those pieces of the collection that really skirts the idea of being a comic. I think of ashcans like this one almost like film trailers - they lay out the basics, but if you want the full tale, you've got to shell out the dough. This particular trailer is for that time when Marvel tried to turn its horror heroes into an Image-inspired superteam.

I'm not sure it was the best idea, but it was the 90s. What can you do?

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1281: Cherry Poptart #1, May 1993

Though there is a preponderance of Betty and Veronica erotic fan art, Larry Welz's Cherry is really, really the girl from the wrong side of the tracks from Riverdale. Cherry and her cohorts fuck their way through everyone and everything, and think nothing of it. I think that's really the magic of Cherry and her world - she's the original girl who gives no fucks. If something feels good, or has the potential to feel good, she's good to go. I think I'd have to think a lot more about the series before I said it was a feminist comic, but Cherry definitely has a significant amount of agency in her life. While titillation is definitely one of the intents of the series, there's also a slight dissonance as we watch a female character pursue sex the way that we're used to seeing male characters pursue sex. From that perspective, I suppose, we can see this as espousing feminist ideals.

And I'm gonna stop there before I inevitably put my foot in my mouth.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1280: The Adventures of Mr. Pyridine, January 1989

An alternately masked and then bearded serial killer sails around in his house made of nightmares, inviting you to stroll the hallways with him. But do so at your own peril.

I really love this comic. It's just weird, plainly and gloriously weird, though like all good surrealist pieces, it exudes the possibility of making sense, but glides just out of reach. More plainly, a film version of Mr. Pyridine would have to be directed by David Lynch. It's that kind of comic.

The artist, one Mahendra Singh, still creates but I think this was Mr. Pyridine's solo flight.

A pity, though perhaps the world isn't really ready for more Mr. Pyridine.

Or perhaps he's really inside all of us.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1279: Zorro #0, November 1993

It's like a 19th century version of Deliverance.

There was a brief time when I thought I might try to track down all of Don McGregor's stuff, around the same time I was really discovering Steve Gerber's work. I did do some work in finding his works, but they didn't speak to me the same way Mr. Gerber's did. In some cases it was genre, in others simply that I'm not a huge fan of his chosen way of telling comics stories. The predominance of caption boxes is just not my thing. I'm more interested in elucidation through context, rather than exposition. Mr. McGregor sees comics a bit differently.

This is a very bloody comic. There's a poor beaver that spends its entire existence in the story gnawing its leg off to escape a trap. And Zorro has to take out a giant, crazed mountain man.

Now that I've written it, perhaps Zorro wandered into Alberta.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1278: All Canadian Beaver Comix, 1973

As I delve back into the underground, we'll have to hide this particular cover.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1277: The Helmet of Fate: Zauriel, April 2007

I don't really have a lot to say about this comic, though once I finally get around to writing my book about Steve Gerber, I'll say more. This is kind of an intro to Gerber's final series, Countdown to Mystery. The end text claims that there will be a new Gerber-written Doctor Fate series after this comic, but I think Mr. Gerber's health problems probably changed these plans.

Zauriel is a great character. I really like him, though I'm actually not certain of his fate after the 3(?) reboots since this comic.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1276: Ash Mini Comic, 1995

This story literally takes place between two pages of the regular Ash series. I don't know much about that series, except that it's about a super-powered fire fighter. It's got Quesada/Palmiotti art, which is always lovely to look at. Even the cover attests the way they play with solidity and form. There's an interesting body language at play, in that bodies in the comic have their own language. If Ash is losing control, he looks more beastly, almost like a bear.

However, outside of the context of the series, I'm not sure what was going on. There's something kind of nice and zen about reading a comic that one lacks the context for. I can just immerse myself briefly in something strange and exciting, and then I pop back out and delve into something else. Perhaps I'll try to hit up some really random things over the next little while.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1275: Strange Adventures #184, January 1966

I just love Animal Man. I don't really know what it is about him. And I've thought about it. I think what it is is that when I started buying his eponymous title, I'd already read his first adventure in an old Blue Ribbon digest of secret origins that I had. I've since lost that comic, but I remember reading, over and over, "The Man with Animal Powers," amongst others (Hal Jordan was one, I think). He was also the first "mature" title that I ever bought - being a very mature 13 year old when the series came out - but that also meant it was one of the first really thoughtful comics I read.

Of course, there is the fact that Grant Morrison's writing is magic.

But these old Animal Man, even pre-Animal Man adventures, they're so strange. And not just because of the comic they inhabit. I can see Buddy and Ellen and Roger in these characters, but it's like they're caricatures of themselves. I'm reading this comic through the lens of the future.

Actually, let me adjust that. I can't see Ellen in the caricature in this story. She's literally there as a prop for Buddy.

Gil Kane's art is really great, unsurprisingly. His enlarged tiger/cat creature is quite uncanny, and the giant pink alien looks as natural as such a beast can. You can see why Gil Kane is revered, even in silly little stories like this one. The shots of Buddy flying are fantastic, and the tumble of his body when he's levitated with an entire lake is entirely believable. I don't have a lot of really nice examples of classic DC art, but I think this one definitely counts.

Speaking of, I actually only bought this comic today. I'd decided a little while back that I was going to start trying to get some more of the key issues I'm interested in, and I happened upon this one for a mere $38 today. And it's in lovely condition.

More to come...

(Oh, and the back-up was about a guy who flies into hurricanes for the weather service running afoul of modern-day sky pirates in a cloud-swathed dirigible - and he has some really real moments flashing back to flying in the Korean War. Weird, well, Strange, I suppose, story.)

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1274: Real Heroes #2, 1994

As the cover says, Storm and Namor have to stop a crazed Hulk and Wolverine who have been mind-controlled by the "Gods of the North" to kill all of humanity...by fighting with one another.

I think.

Promo comics that feature mainstream characters are always a bit dodgy, as those characters have to conform to situations in ways that they might not in their regular appearances. This comic is a heavy-handed lesson on environmental pollution and the dangers it poses. I suppose, in thinking through gods as metaphors, the destruction of the environment is causing "retaliatory" damage against human beings.

Where are the superheroes when you need them?

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 74 - The Weird World of Gahan Wilson, 1975

This book combines two thing for which I'm a sucker. First, it's an old paperback comic collection, those poorly-bound proto-graphic novels that also link back to the old editorial cartoons, the world from whence emerges Gahan Wilson.

And this Wilson guy is weird. Really weird.

Unsurprisingly, he's the other thing for which I'm a sucker. Mr. Wilson sees a world that's banal in its nightmarishness, normal in its abnormality, and I often feel that this is truly the state of the world, that everything is just weird, but we accept that this is normal because what else is there? And if art isn't meant to make us think about our place in the world somehow, I don't know what it's for.

I picked this book up on a recent sojourn to Invermere, a small town near Radium Hot Springs in British Columbia. We have friends who invite us up to the family cabin a couple of times a year for a weekend of good company, good food, lots of alcohol, and a traditional stop at the candy store in Canmore. In Invermere, I always stop at the local used book place, a creaky, musty basement called The Book Cellar, filled to the ceiling with some of the weirdest tomes I've laid eyes on. I always try to pick something up there, as I've come across the all to common occurrence of visiting small towns over the course of a few years and watching as used book stores disappear. To me, this is one of the most tragic effects of contemporary culture. There is a sacredness to books, to their material presences, and all of the labour that they represent, intellectual and industrial. If used book stores are dying, that means interest in books is also dying.

That got dark quickly.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1273: International Insanity v.2 #2, March 1977

More of the same, really. The comics were okay, particularly the King Kong goes to prom comic at the end, but there was still that strange, not quite sure if they're feminists or if they're mocking feminists, and perhaps I read these things from far too 21st century a point of view. Maybe I'm drawing a binary distinction where there isn't one.

But there was definitely a lot of ethnically-motivated humour in here, and it's really pretty distasteful.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1272: International Insanity #2, September 1976

Not sure what to say about this one.

The comics were amusing, though had a strange tone to them. It was very difficult to tell, for example, if the superhero parody "Single Woman" was for or against women's lib. There was a slight sense of mockery, but then the main character in the story is a very forthright and capable character, which seems to be a good thing, but then there are moments where it's like she's being mocked for it.

Anyway, there's a short Neal Adams strip in here which was quite amusing, but aside from that I'm not too impressed. And there was some really dodgy ethnic humour in the magazine too. Though I've just realized that perhaps that's one of the reasons it's called International Insanity.

I'll read through the other issue of this that I have tomorrow. More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1271: Zombie #4, February 2007

I have a soft spot for Simon Garth, the character most often associated with Marvel's Zombie. Well, until those Marvel Zombies comics, I guess.

My history with Mr. Garth stems from his having been chronicled by Steve Gerber for a significant chunk of his existence. I tracked down the comics in a Marvel Essentials collection (which, btw, are not great for the colour comics, but are excellent reprint editions for the old magazines - for Tales of the Zombie, they reprinted the whole mag, not just the comics), and they were cool, creepy tales of zombies and voodoo, and are probably not terribly politically correct these days.

But Simon Garth was this very interesting character in that he was an absence of character. There's a strange similarity between Garth and Gerber's other non-character, Man-Thing. Both seem to wander through their stories as agents of the universe, rather than having any agency themselves.

Which is why I was kind of disappointed in what I read today. Now, I've only read the last of this four issue series, so that's all I can base this on, but it really seems they simply put a character named Simon Garth into a pretty normal-sounding zombie story. Now, perhaps it was the intention of the writers to include the tropes of the genre (the unlikely hero, the troubled woman, the criminal, the shady military) as a tribute, rather than as a crutch. The original Simon Garth stories traded heavily on the kind of zombie lore that was in the public consciousness at the time, as does this update. But I think it's that use of Garth as a cipher, or as a force of nature, that, for me, was often the lynch pin to the story. And that doesn't seem to be how they've deployed Garth here.

As I say, I have a soft spot for the character, and should I happen across the rest of the series for a reasonable price, I'm sure I'll get it. Unfortunately, from what I saw of the end of the story, it seems pretty run of the mill.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1270: Zot #4, July 1984

I read the collection of the latter part of this series a few years back. It was wonderful, but I always harboured some curiosity as to what the pre-revamp Zot! was like.

Now I know, and I totally get why Scott McCloud shifted directions. It's not so much that Zot!'s not good, just that it's kind of usual. There was only one moment that really leapt out at me in this issue, and it was when Dekko, the villain of the piece, starts having a breakdown - the way McCloud uses the page and panels to depict this breakdown is quite amazing. But the rest of the comic was a bit flat. Zot is a superhero from another version of Earth. These are his adventures, accompanied by Jenny, a girl from our Earth. The series gets much more interesting when Zot decides to come and live on our Earth when Jenny goes home.

I'll get to the graphic novel one day. It's a weighty tome, definitely a commitment of time. When do we get more of that, btw?

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1269: Zooniverse #2, October 1986

Another comic in which I had no idea what the heck was going on. It's space, there's aliens, and a courier, and some guys trying to get to their ship.

The art has a kind of cool Ian Gibson vibe, and was probably being done around the same time Gibson was big in 2000A.D.

That aside, it's really hard for me to say anything about this one. I honestly wasn't even sure who I was supposed to be rooting for, or at least focalizing through. And then things got all, if you'll pardon the scientific jargon, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1268: Zoom's Academy for the Super Gifted #2, 2001

Another comic from the far end of the alphabet, and, no kidding, a much better superhero comic than any of the Zero Hour ones I've just read. I'm also thinking that this was the inspiration for the Tim Allen film, but I see very little resemblance between this wonderful story and the movie. I think I'll have to try to find the other two issues of this series, which reads a bit like Harry Potter for superheroes, but achieves an underlying tinge of sadness that I never really got from the Potter series, at least not in the very beginning.

Jason Lethcoe is obviously interested in telling not just a story for children, but a story that can be appreciated by all ages. It's a fine line I've seen trod by only a few creators or properties - Pixar has been, though not always, the most successful in mixing the young and the old audience. And I think it's a matter of making a film that feels child-like, rather than childish. One evokes a sense of wonder, the other a sense of silliness. Not that these are mutually exclusive, but when a story is built on a foundation of childishness, it's hard to evoke a sense of wonder, I think. But silliness can easily be folded into being child-like.

Zoom's evokes both the wonder and the difficulty of being a child. I think it speaks to kids at their level and reminds adults of what it was like to be that small and powerless, but fearless and hopeful all at the same time.

I guess I liked this comic :D

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1267: Zed #2, November 2001

I mentioned a few days back something about balancing, or evening out, the project. You may have noticed that the last 6 days have featured comics with "z" as the first letter. When I started the project, I was working through the collection alphabetically, and actually stuck with that until I could stand Alpha Flight no longer. Because of that, there's an awful lot of "a" material in my project, but not a lot of "z." I'm trying to remedy that.

But there aren't a lot of titles that begin with "z."

It's been a while since I've picked up a comic and had absolutely no idea what's going on. This one was an extended examination of the destruction of an inhabited planet, but told in  a very cartoon-y style. It was fascinating and disturbing.

I have no idea what's going to happen to poor Zed, but I hope he comes out okay.

More to come...

Giant Box of Comics Breaks the Law! - Veronica in "The Devil You Say?"

In which Veronica meets Satan.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1266: Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #0, September 1994

This one's gonna have to wait too. My wife's leaving for Europe and things are in a bit of chaos at the Miller household!

On second thought. This was an utterly uninspired crossover. I don't want to say anything more about it.

More tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1265: Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #1, September 1994

Ugh.

Early 90s DC really was a mess. This series was obviously designed, in part, to bolster interest in some of the newer characters that DC had introduced, but they're so bland that by the time they've been erased from reality, you're not really that bothered. I often wonder, when I see a crop of these "new gods" spring from the pages of a venerable mythic structure like the DCU, whether any of them will go the same kind of distance as their progenitors. A similar thing is happening again at DC in the wake of the Metal Knights event. I think. I didn't follow it at all.

The other thing I'm trying to figure is the utter hate on DC seemed to have for Hal Jordan in this era. I know he went evil, but they seem to go out of their way to make him super-fucking-evil. It's a strange treatment for one of their more iconic characters.

Not that I mind. I really liked Kyle Rayner.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1264: Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #2, September 1994

Gah. Does the "crisis in time" involve my lost time from reading this series? They've lost me. Can you tell? Somehow Extant, who is also Monarch from "Armageddon 2001," and who is also Hawk, of Hawk and Dove, and has Waverider's powers to manipulate space and time, also has a couple of teams of superheroes under his control, and it's never actually explained how this happened, except to tell us on the last page that it's explained in the Team Titans ongoing series.

And that's where they lose me.

This was a major plot point of the entire issue, but there's no reason or logic to it unless you've read an ancillary title that you might not actually be reading regularly to begin with. Once line-wide crossovers started pulling stuff like this, they lost what the crossover was meant to accomplish - all your favourite heroes in one story together, and that story made, as much as superhero stories do, sense. The original Crisis did this par excellance, as did Hickman's Secret Wars. I read Crisis with no other context for the DCU except that I knew of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. And the series made sense. The first Secret Wars is the same. I didn't have to read any of the other ongoing series to get a good, complete story.

I've ranted about this before, but I think it bears repeating. Not only is it, in my opinion, rude for a company to expect us to spend even more of what little we earn on comics we wouldn't normally want to buy, but it's also demonstrating some class-based exclusion. In a lot of ways it's saying that if you can afford it, you can get the whole story, but if you can't, then you get an incomplete experience. And that's not fair, and it's certainly not how art or media should be. But, unfortunately, it is.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1263: Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #3, September 1994

I hadn't realized that this was a weekly event - I was about to complain that all kinds of stuff is alluded to in this issue that we never see, and that that's a sign, to me at least, of poor writing. But with a weekly crossover, you have the ability to so stuff like that. I think the DC One Million crossover is just about the most perfect line-wide weekly crossover I've ever seen. Perhaps some of the failings I'm noticing - rough pacing, moments that should be dramatic but lack any gravitas - are a result of not reading the crossover as it's envisioned, as a line-wide story.

Given the dodgy era that the story comes from, I'm not certain I want to track the issues down. DC was just finishing up with its experiments with grittier, Image-esque superheros, but Starman and The Flash, under Robinson and Waid respectively, were leading the DCU back to a place in which I think it flourished. But then, I quite like that Morrison guy who came on not too long after this.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1262: Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #4, September 1994

Let's just take a complete, 180 degree turn, and read some sort of crappy early 90s DC, shall we?

*sigh*

Another crisis. Granted, this is one of the earlier ones, but I think by this time, DC had figured out that they could make scads of cash doing multi-part crossovers. The one thing I will give Zero Hour is that it introduces Jack Knight, the best Starman, and one of the best superheroes, I've ever read.

That aside, meh.

I'll keep reading the rest of the series, and maybe some of the zero issues I have, but it's pretty run of the mill. I keep worrying that I'm judging these things by the standards I have now - crises like this weren't a dime a dozen back then, or not as much as they are now. But I think even by this point, they were getting a bit ridiculous. This is also around the time that the X-franchise seemed to have two or three major event crossovers every year.

Not that things are much better these days, though I do feel it might have slowed down a bit. Or, perhaps, I've stopped paying quite as much attention as I once did.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1261: National Lampoon #57, December 1974

About time we come to the end of my look at National Lampoon. We'll get back to them soon, but I can only take so much sarcasm. Time to read something a bit more earnest.

What I will say of this small taste of 70s satire magazines is that they weren't afraid to let go with both barrels. Even that picture on the cover. I can't imagine the controversy it would cause today, let alone when it was published. Though, now that I think about it, perhaps things were a bit more liberal, in some ways, than they are today.

Today's issue featured yet another stellar line-up of artists - I really had no idea that they all worked for this magazine. The Vaughn Bode stuff is a real treat, as is Shary Flenniken's "Trots and Bonnie" - a definite draw if I find any more of these magazines on the cheap. Though I still have quite a few to work through.

Tomorrow I'll start evening things out. And you'll see what that means in due time. More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1260: National Lampoon #55, August 1973

Another rather valuable issue of the magazine according to my guide, though given the fact that I can fully remove the front cover, and it has no back one, mine's not quite as valuable as all that. However, given the subject matter of the issue, perhaps being able to remove covers is quite serendipitous.

I'd hazard a guess that, much like yesterday's issue, it's a matter of the confluence of artists, coupled with the spicy nature of the subject being covered. Vaughn Bode makes an always welcome appearance, there's an extended and coloured "Trots and Bonnie," Neal Adams illustrates "VD Comics," and Ralph Reese illustrates a very, very strange sex ed. lesson.

Given that this caliber of artist is working in the issue, it's no surprise that it's all really good. The usual "Funny Pages" are all excellent, there's a great single page piece by Edward Sorel that really captures the hypocrisy of Nixon's presidency, and echoes rather nicely the state of the U.S. at the present time. Though higher and higher prices are really what keep me from reading magazines on a regular basis, I kind of wish we had something similar to National Lampoon now. I suppose The Onion is very similar. Do they do comics?

One more issue of National Lampoon tomorrow, and then on to something else. More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The (Pride) Weekly Graphic Novel Number 73 - post-Dykes to Watch Out For, 2000

I'd originally meant to blog this book during my Pride Month readings, but I got bogged down with work so it got shifted. That said, I'll reiterate what I said in my previous review of one of these collections - it's great. Alison Bechdel's cast is by turns ridiculous and real, which really is what real life feels like, so the characters come across as real. I feel like I'm reading comics about people I know, which, despite her many technical proficiencies, is the true gift that Ms. Bechdel gives the queer community in this series. And while we're starting to see such depictions in media nowadays (can't wait for Supergirl to start up again), Dykes to Watch Out For was doing this at a time when the idea of a queer person being an actual person, not a stererotype, was just about unheard of.

Given my current propensity for undergrounds, imagine the candor of the undergrounds crossed with Lynn Johnston's For Better or For Worse.

Maybe?

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1259: National Lampoon #41, August 1973

Turns out that this issue, according to Fogel's guide, is worth a cool $100 in Near Mint condition. It's a confluence of great artists, Frazetta, Bode, Adams, I think that makes it worth so much. And the comics really are of pretty stellar quality, both the featured ones and the regular ones in the "Funny Pages" feature.

I got these magazines, as I've said, when I purchased a large magazine collection just before we moved to Calgary. I bought the collection primarily because it was a large run of Heavy Metal, spanning the magazine's whole history, and a full run of Marvel's Epic Illustrated. I'd decided this would be a good window into the European comics my soon-to-be supervisor Bart loved so much. The less said of that the better.

But I also got a fair number of National Lampoon, Creepy, Eerie, and various underground comix. It's only in the last little while that I've realized what a great deal this collection was. I think I paid $200-$300 for the lot, and there's some really amazing comics and magazines in the collection now. I've often fantasized about finding that lost cache of comics in an attic or at a garage sale, but in a lot of ways I have to acknowledge that that's what happened here. The person I bought them from wanted to get rid of them, and I was happy to take them. It's only now, 6 years later, though, that I'm starting to really get an idea of what it is I bought.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1258: National Lampoon #33, December 1972

That really is one off-putting cover.

Today's issue has some of the most racist comics I've ever read in it. Now, given that it's National Lampoon, we are most definitely in the realm of satire, but the words themselves, regardless of the context, are still hard to read, especially when coming from the mouth of a person, albeit a cartooned one. This is one of the great uses of satire, I think, not just to amuse us, or poke fun at something, but to remind us of the uncomfortable nature of language. In satire we can use words that we might not in our regular, more civil conversation or consideration, but we should never become comfortable with those words. Ironic detachment is fundamental to satire, but unfortunately we don't teach these ideas nearly as much as we could. I can absolutely imagine someone not schooled in the idea of satire reading "Chess Piece" and either being completely and utterly insulted and disgusted by it (as it would be utterly repulsive if not satiric), or, worse, completely convinced by it. In today's world, a story like this would have to have been prefaced by a disclaimer, so that everyone knew that it was satire. Does this mean we've become less-astute as readers?

Probably.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1257: National Lampoon #29, August 1972

Another discovery I've made since procuring my underground price guide is that a lot of the big names in underground comix actually did work in National Lampoon. A few years back I got a bunch of issues of the magazine in a lot I bought of Heavy Metals and other fantasy magazines. I was never really that into them, but held on to them just in case they came in handy for something. Which, inevitably, they have.

Actually, I have rifled through them a bit. Neal Adams's "Son of God" comics are amazing, and I'm sure I could have fit them into my dissertation somehow. And there's a bunch of Jeff Jones strips in them, and Jones is an artist I absolutely adore.

So what I did today, and probably will for the foreseeable future for this magazine, is I just read the comics. There were 23 pages, plus a few single-panel gags sprinkled throughout, which is just about the same as a regular comic. The text bits are funny, but are also very, very topical. Some of the critique of Nixon that I see in the comics is perhaps a little more relatable to us nowadays, but I don't know who a lot of the figures that get fun (and occasional vitriol) poked at them are.

The comics were cool. As I noted, there's some Jeff Jones with his excellent "Idyl," some single panel and strips from Gahan Wilson, and a full "comic" inserted that's riffs on the old EC titles, but is about the life of George Wallace. And this is the problem - I don't know who that is. The comic was funny, but I was missing the context.

I think I'll poke about through these a bit more for a few days. I had planned out a full month of interesting things to read, but these mags have taken my attention. More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1256: The People's Comics, April 1976

As I've noted, I've been getting into undergrounds lately, and I picked this one up today at Purple Gorilla Comics, my go to place for things weird and wonderful.

I'm never quite sure about Robert Crumb. But I think that's partially the point. The inside of his head is a very strange place, but I think the insides of all of our heads are. Crumb just has the guts to share it with the rest of us.

Of course, sometimes, perhaps, the things in our heads should stay there.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1255: Henry & Glenn Forever & Ever #2, 2013

This comic is just wonderful. Just wonderfully wonderful.

For those not in the know, the Henry and Glenn of the title are Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig, former frontmen for, respectively, Black Flag and The Misfits, notoriously angry early punk bands. Both went on the successful solo careers, and also are well-known as very buff individuals. The notion of them living in domestic bliss is insane, but it works so, so well.

But here's the thing. I picked this comic up a few days ago, based solely on the cover. I saw the title briefly, which reminded me of the logo of The Saga of Crystar, and I'd been looking to find a bit more queer content in my comics, and this just looked like a ridiculous gay fantasy comic. I didn't even click into who it was actually about until I opened up the comic this morning and started reading it! What a lovely surprise.

Anyway, it's great. I highly recommend that you click on the picture and order one. I laughed out loud a couple of times, and that a rarity in any media, I find. You definitely have to have had some exposure to both Rollins and Danzig in some form to appreciate the comic. I imagine it would still be amusing if you didn't know who they were, but it's just not the same.

Here, watch these, then order the comic: (Also, how does Rollins' "Liar" continue to be as relevant as it is, all these years later?)

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1254: Vortex #2, 1983

I recently picked up Fogel's Underground Price and Grading Guide v.1, as I'm getting a bit more into the undergrounds, and I'd like to know a bit more about what I'm getting into. The guide is quite liberal in its definition of "underground," and tends to include the comics that are more commonly known as "alternative" within that definition. Which I don't mind, of course. I like to watch evolutions of genres, which this feels like to me.

Vortex is a title I expected to be included in the guide, but wasn't. It's predecessors, such titles as Star*Reach or Andromeda are there, but for some reason Vortex is not. The publisher, also named Vortex, is represented by, at least, Howard Chaykin's Black Kiss. All this said, the task of tracking independent and small press comics is nigh impossible. Let's leave it at that.

This issue was fun. One of the stories continues from an issue of Andromeda that I have, so I'll have to go back, and then also see if I have the rest of the story in any subsequent Vortex issues. This series is one of those that I see all the time in dollar bins and such, but never really had much interest in - I have a contentious relationship with science fiction. My favourite sci-fi writer used to Robert J. Sawyer. His books are still utterly brilliant, but I made the mistake of reading a couple of his speeches from conventions, and he came across as a really narrow-minded kind of guy. His thoughts on religion and its place in human existence sounded, to me, much the same as Richard Dawkins's view. This, to me, was a strange point of view for someone who crafts stories for a living to have. I think we need to believe in stories. It's just when we start mistaking them for reality that the problems begin.

Thus, I tend to read little sci-fi because I was disillusioned by one of my heroes. Which I should just suck up and not let it ruin an entire genre for me. Look at that! Instant online therapy. Perhaps a week of science fiction comics....?

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1253: Bastard #2, 2001

More nuttiness ensues! After re-releasing Dark Schneider (apparently named after the lead singer of the band Accept), the evil wizard (the heroic one, not the one attacking Metallicana on the back of a Hydra) animates an enormous Stone Golem in the basement of the castle, presumably to use it to take over the kingdom. Instead he defends the kingdom from another evil wizard, and then has feelings for Yoko (who is still 15 years old), kisses her, and turns back into his 14 year old self.

This is some weird, weird shit. I've got half of the series, and if I can find them cheap, I'll pick up the rest, because I think I really need to see what's going to happen here. I do have a later volume, a tankoban, that's in the original Japanese, but I can tell absolutely nothing about the story from what's inside. Can't wait to get there though.

More to come...

Comics' Ephemera 1 - Swimsuit / Lingerie Issues

Beginning a new month, I'm hoping to get back to occasionally writing things other than the 40 Years project. I'm aiming for once a month right now.

Within my collection are a number of items that can really only be tangentially called "comics." They look like comics, certainly, and they often feature comics artists and writers, and well-known comics characters. But they're lacking in a particular part of comics, and that is narrative. But not solely narrative, because we have abstract comics that simply perform the art, rather than tell a story. Still sequential, not narrative. So not solely narrative, but without intent of narrative.

The swimsuit and lingerie issues, for example.

I've looked at one other, the Lady Death entry into the genre. I treated it like a comic, but it wasn't really one. So let's have a look at the rest of them, shall we?

Though it's often said that many Liefeld books are simply exercises in skimpy clothing for women, there's at least the veneer of story to deflect some attention. Not so here. One of 3 covers featuring model Cathy Christian as Liefeld's avenging angel (I think - I actually don't know much about Avengelyne). Within are numerous photos of Ms. Christian in bathing suits, as well as artist's renditions of characters from the series in various states of undress. Mostly, needless to say, women. There's no continuity, no tale being told, between the pages, which seems to me a lost opportunity. Imagine a story that was a series of splash pages featuring swimsuit-clad characters - shenanigans could indeed ensue.

One thing that I do think is important to note is that Ms. Christian appeared at cons as this character, and this is back in the 90s, so she's actually probably fairly important in the history of cosplay. As might this particular publication, too.

These publications, though, I don't think I'd ever call comics. They're art books, more correctly. There are a number of similar cases, where comics-like ephemera accumulates in the collection. We'll have a look at them over time. But first, more swimsuits and lingerie!

Babes of Broadway (get the double entendre, there?) is just awful. I don't know what Broadway Comics was, only that Jim Shooter was involved, as were some super top-level artists, and there's testimonials inside this comic from women who work for the company talking about how not offensive they find the whole idea of a lingerie/babe publication. I don't know, but I can't help but read them with a very large grain of salt.
















The Razor Swimsuit Special is a bit off-putting for the fact that the main character, in her usual romps, is bloodthirsty and violent in a way that only London Night Studios tends to pull off. And Faust, of course.

So seeing many of these characters in "come hither" positions, sometimes while engaged in other, more visceral pursuits, is weird. I've never really understood that aesthetic that links sexuality with brutal, brutal violence. A bit of consensual S&M is one thing, but horrifically mangling corpses while mostly nude - who is this appealing to, and how do I avoid them?

















I will add a caveat - there are actually some really lovely pieces of art in these books. Free of the constraints of continuity or audience expectation, there are occasionally cool interpretations of characters. But such interpretation could easily be subsumed into an art book - why go for the lingerie?

Well, the answer's obvious, unfortunately. Because Men.

Some more recognizable characters in the next couple of issues. The Wildstorm one is okay, I guess. Lots of bikinis, but varied art at least. There is one strange one that's Rose Tattoo from Warren Ellis's Stormwatch, who is literally death (I think) in that series, posing like a porn star on a weird alien planet. It's not just that the comics most definitely objectify women, but that they're completely unfaithful to the source material. I think it does a lot of dis-service to the characters.

The Top Cow entry into this genre does pretty much the same thing as the Wildstorm one, but with another Image imprint. The irony that strikes me is that I mentioned back when I reviewed the first Fathom collection that I understood the Top Cow aesthetic much more in the context of a water-based story, but Top Cow doesn't do a swimsuit issue - they do a lingerie issue.

*sigh*




















One last one for your perusal. A small enough publisher that they have no comics listed in the GCD.

Though the artwork within is very good, it's exactly what you think it is.