The 40 Years of Comics Project Graphic Novel Number 82 - Green Lantern: Rebirth, 2005

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Let's just take it as read that Ethan Van Sciver is a comicsgating douche nozzle, and move on. I own the work, and I'm not going to let the inclusion of a whiny gatekeeper keep me from enjoying what is probably Geoff Johns' finest hour thus far.

Hal Jordan was never my favourite Green Lantern - that dubious honour is reserved for Kyle Rayner, who I found to be a very compelling and identifiable character. Hal is just absolutely nothing like me. He's the sort of guy that I imagine would have picked on me in high school, and I've always had a bit of a problem with police officers, so the character just never drew me in. Until my son started reading Green Lantern around the time of "Blackest Night," and I got into it. These are really very good stories that Mr. Johns is telling, and they all start here with a summation of Hal's time in the DCU for about the previous 10 years.

Rebirth sets up so much that plays out over the course of Johns' run on the character, not least of which is to retcon Hal's turn to evil as a parasitic infection from within the central Oan power battery. This prompts a plan to bring Hal back from the dead and separate him from the Spectre before Parallax can use that entity's power to become even more fearsome. It's a cool premise, and goes some way to redeeming Hal, though, as we'll see later, some heroes (Batman) need a bit more convincing.

We'll continue with these for a while. As I say, I think this is the best that Geoff Johns has been in superheroes. Johns is a competent writer, and obviously loves the characters and genre, though I often wish he'd push himself and his characters a little farther out toward the boundaries of the genre. I think he's more than capable of writing what might be considered a great comic, and his Green Lantern work comes very, very close.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 81 - Incredible Change-Bots, July 2007

When I read Jeffrey Brown's work, I'm very often overcome with a feeling of identification. I don't know the details of his life, or how much of it he puts into his work, but I get the sense that he thinks, and more importantly feels, very similarly to how I do.

This book is a beautiful, zany, sort-of-critical-but-sort-of-not love letter to the original Transformers comics and cartoons (with a healthy dose of the Go-Bots thrown in), two series I grew up on. Brown's tale of the Change-Bots so neatly mirrors the original run of Marvel's Transformers that I think it would be virtually impossible to really appreciate this story without having read, at the very least, the original 4-part mini-series. We're treated to silly amounts of expository dialogue, waffling from characters about the sides they've chosen, and sublimely ridiculous relationships between giant, war-mongering robots and the unlucky humans who encounter them. In Marvel's series, this is played to an audience of children as little more than an advertisement (at least for the first little while), but Brown's commentary on the series is definitely looking at the kids who grew up on this stuff.

Which means that, while there's definitely love there, there's also a bit of criticism of how those original stories were handled. Brown wants us to know that those originals, with which we grew up, were written in such a way that we would never question the morality, the ambiguity, and the danger of a giant robot invasion of the planet. The rebooted Transformers from Dreamwave in 2002 did much the same thing, but with far less humour than Brown. I love toy-based comics from the 80s, though there's a part of me that wonders if I was programmed to like them because they were based on toys I craved as a child. I still search for Starriors, and am deeply affectionate for the 4-issue series from Marvel in the 80s. But from my adult (?) perspective, I have to question whether or not the stories are actually good, or if I'm suffering from the perspective of nostalgia and unfulfilled childhood want.

Wow. That was a bit deeper than I thought this would get.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 80 - Thoreau at Walden, 2008

Let's try getting back to this one more time. I'm going to wait until I've got 8 - 10 of these written before I start posting them. At least it'll be bi-weekly for a little while then.

I'm fascinated by Thoreau's ideas on civil disobedience, so much so that, having started reading this book, I talked about my Lougheed House exhibition (on the queer history of Calgary) as such an act in Alberta's current political climate in my introductory remarks to the exhibit. He's on my list of Transcendentalists to read, and, inspired by this book, I've just picked up a collection of their writings that I'm thoroughly enjoying.

Artist John Porcellino comments in the introduction to the book that in part he wanted to try to capture some of the atmosphere of Thoreau's time at Walden Pond, the quiet moments of doing the tings of everyday life. He succeeds rather spectacularly. The juxtaposition of Thoreau's words with the often stark and just as often lush depictions of the philosopher in nature add much insight into the process of Thoreau's work. Only in such a setting could these kinds of thoughts occur in such primal form. That's the feeling I get from reading some of Thoreau's work - there's a primalness there.

If you like a bit of 19th century philosophy paired with some deceptively simple art, you'll probably like this book.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 79 - Eros Graphic Album 45: Submissive Suzanne, 2001

It's a pity to have to hide this cover, as I actually think it's my favourite part of the whole book.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 78 - Weird Fantasy Annual #1, 1994

Oh my goodness! What have I been thinking all these years avoiding reading these incredible comics?

All I can think is that I somehow needed to be in this particular place in my life in order to appreciate them fully (not sure what that means, but let's run with it).

These are gorgeous, amazing, thrilling stories. They raise genuine goose flesh occasionally, they entertain, every story, to a fault. The draughtsmanship from Feldstein, Kamen, Kurtzman, and Wood (primarily) is simply wonderful, in all it's catastrophic detail (that cover up there isn't the only story in the book in which the Earth gets destroyed. But it is the best one!)

I have had a few reprint comics in my collection for a while now, though some are mysteriously missing at the moment, but I've not really given them much thought. As I noted in my last look at a graphic novel, the Harvey Horrors book, I've quite taken to these pre-Code stories. The writers are telling really, really interesting tales. Though they may seem like run-of-the-mill twist-ending tales (and let's not forget that these were the comics that popularised that narrative structure), the endings are always either really well renedered, so as to be truly shocking, or are completely not what you expected, which I find is rare in a comic.

(And I'm having deja vu right now about having typed that sentence before.)

I've picked up a couple more of these reprint collections, so I'll make my way through them for a bit. But I definitely think that one of the expensive comics I'm going to have to put on the "One Day" list is an old, pre-Code EC horror comic. That would be a very cool thing to own.

Onward...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 77 - Harvey Horrors: Chamber of Chils v.3, June 2012

I mention Purple Gorilla Comics fairly frequently here, and with good reason: Michael, the proprietor, is a fantastic wealth of comics knowledge, and his store houses some of the coolest, strangest comics I've seen.

He talked me into shelling out for this collection, but at this point I trust his judgment. I've bought enough from his that he knows what I'll like. And he was so right. I've never really been a huge fan of the old horror comics, but these ones were lurid and strange, and reminded me a lot of David Lynch's work - just campy enough that you smile at it, but just sinister enough that you don't take your eyes off it for long.

This collection has definitely given me the desire to track down more of this kind of thing. I don't know what it was, but years ago when I first tried to read old pre-Code horror stuff, it left me cold. Perhaps I just wasn't in the right place for it. The stories in this book are weird and wonderful, with some fantastic twist endings, and some plots that honestly didn't go where I expected them to. And that's always a nice treat.

I think these books had a fairly limited print run, so unless my trusty comics purveyor gets more in, I won't be reading many more Harvey horror comics. Which is a drag, because, as I say, I think I may have developed a taste for them. Perhaps it's time to dig up some of my old EC reprints.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 76 - Lolita v.2, 1994

Continuing, after the break, with the erotic adventures of Belore's Lolita.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 75 - Lolita v.1, 1994

More 40 Years of Comics graphic novel naughtiness after the jump.

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 - 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 - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 72 - Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection, September 2015

I remember learning about the New Woman in a Nineteenth Century literature course, and about the importance of bicycling to these ladies. Kate Beaton does them proud, and probably offers one of the most authentic, as far as their attitude goes, portrayals of these very early Feminists.

That's not all she does in this book, of course, but the total badassery of the lady on the cover merits consideration. She reminds me of some amazing women that I know.

What more can I say about Kate Beaton's wonderful comic?  One cool thing I didn't mention in my last review was the diversity of art style in the book. Or perhaps it's a diversity of finishedness. What I mean by this is that there are comics in both collections that really look like they've been painstakingly rendered, sweated over, perhaps, and there are those that look like they were jotted down on a bus. This is certainly not a criticism of any of the comics - the quicker-looking ones are still very funny, and the difference of art style gives a different reading experience. And an artist most definitely has to keep things different in order to stay interested.

So go have a look at her work. And then go read Wikipedia to find out who the people are you've just read about. Educate and delight. Sydney would be proud.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 71 - Hark! A Vagrant, March 2012

I have of course seen the "Hark! A Vagrant" webcomics flying about on the Internet over the last few years. Kate Beaton's is a name you can't help but have heard if you're at all plugged in to the comics world. So when I found both of her collections (the second will be featured in 2 weeks) at a thrift shop, I knew they had to come home with me.

Ms. Beaton's is a very specific kind of humour. Or rather, hers is a very specific audience. She's not telling dick jokes here (well, there are a few) - she's making very funny, very intelligent, commentaries on a variety of historical, and not-so-historical, subjects. There were references and strips in here that I didn't get, because they feature historical figures about whom I have no idea. Thankfully, history nerd that she is, Ms. Beaton fills us in on the salient details in her commentary below each strip.

I'm also quite taken with Ms. Beaton's Wonder Woman. Sick and tired of being treated the way she has been, WW gives no more fucks, and takes no shit. Someone at DC should hand the Amazon Princess over to Ms. Beaton. It might be magical.

Here's the link to the online archive: http://www.harkavagrant.com/

Definitely worth a read. And probably a re-read.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Pride Weekly Graphic Novel Number 70 - Ada Lee v.2, 2003

Try as I might, I cannot find any information on Ada Lee creator Jack Munroe. The only Jack Munroe I can find is a young UK queer activist who is far too young to have been the author of this naughty little piece of comics.
So if anyone has any information, I'm curious.

And, really, I'm curious as to where Mx. Munroe falls on the gender spectrum. Knowing if this comic was written by a male or a female-identifying person, and by a queer or a straight person, makes a big difference to our understanding. But, then again, so does not knowing. In fact, not knowing allows for a much more reader-inflected reading. As I noted in my previous post on Ada Lee, the comic is quite nicely sex positive, though the story in this volume pushes at some boundaries. Ada's girlfriend is kidnapped by a consortium of Ada's former lovers (and there's a lot!) who subsequently all proceed to have sex with the kidnapped woman. While that sounds very negative, there's a tenor to the story, one of brainwashed lesbian vigilantes, the Girls Against Lesbians who are Straight, or GALS, and the fact that sex is wielded like a martial art here that in some ways asks us to veer off into the ridiculous. The world of Ada Lee is a world in which your enemies are defeated once you have pleasured them into submission.

(I am, of course, aware of writing this as a man, so a female reading of this would be very different. I am, as I try to often, erring on the side of the optimistic, while remaining aware of the side of the pessimistic.)

If you've ever read Jim Mahfood's Grrl Scouts, Ada's adventures are that plus a healthy, whopping dose of explicit sex. And the relative anonymity of the author allows we readers to possibly re-contextualize the content of the book to a more positive perspective. Though having made the comparison with Mr. Mahfood's work, I can now see a definite relationship between the art styles as well. And they do share the initials J.M....

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Pride Weekly Graphic Novel Number 69 - Split-Level Dykes to Watch Out For, 1998

When I finished reading this book, my first thought was "Where has this been all my life?" What a wonderful, wonderful comic. Honest, witty, strange, angry, and often quite funny. And it's not just that I love the characters and the community they're part of - Ms. Bechdel's sense of timing is absolutely incredible. I understand why she's held up as an exemplar of a great contemporary cartoonist. The second half of the book is an ongoing story, not broken down into the two-page installments of the rest of the strips. There are a number of different stories being told through this section, and the cuts from story to story, the tone and pacing of the dialogue, build to an almost frenetic pace before bringing us back to a comfortable, if not quite completely happy, ending. I am floored by Ms. Bechdel's mastery of this form, the sense of urgency that she conveyed to me through a very sophisticated technical use of the medium.

But, y'know, stuff like that aside, this is a great story about a bunch of gay ladies. I'm honestly not sure what else to say. The characters are, to a one, believable and lovable, some more than others, and none of them are perfect, either as people or as queer people. Some of the magic of this comic is that it paints the queer community exactly as it is: a community of flawed people, who don't always get along with one another, who are constantly growing and changing, evolving in our relationships with one another and with the wider society within which we exist. I've not seen a lot of queer comics that give quite so honest a view of the community. I'll be getting all of these books. It's not even a question.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Pride Weekly Graphic Novel Number 68 - Juicy Mother: Celebration, 2005

We're in a bit of an interesting moment for queer comics in print. Though webcomics have been making significant strides in representation and diversity, thanks mostly to the availability of the platform for burgeoning cartoonists, print comics, as a more expensive medium and as a more competitive field, have lagged behind somewhat. An anthology publication like Juicy Mother provides an excellent venue, and the inclusion of such queer cartooning luminaries as Alison Bechdel and Howard Cruse in the book provides the kind of star power that, hopefully, would push this collection into the public eye. Last year's Love is Love did a similar thing, but it's nice to see a queer anthology that doesn't appear to be in response to a tragedy of some sort. As my favourite super-teams will often say, it's nice when we can come together for happy occasions, rather than just for the sad ones.

I think, though, that Juicy Mother was a bit ahead of its time. It's more queer underground, for print comics, than it might be now in a time when queerness is beginning to have a real effect on mainstream culture. Or that's the world I live in, I suppose. It's not the same everywhere.

Picking up on the idea of happy occasions, though, note that this, the inaugural issue (there were 2 more), is titled "Celebration." And though the stories inside aren't all happy ones, and indeed some deal with very profound issues, the impetus of the comic was, as editor Jennifer Camper notes, "to read comix relating to our own experiences of the world." And experiences, good ones and bad, need to be celebrated. They're how we continue to grow as humans.

Though I'm a queer man, and I like to think of myself as...worldly, I suppose?...I definitely find as I explore the variation that exists within queer culture just how much work I still have to do on my own perceptions. The first story in the collection opens with a bunch of punks at a bar, having arguments and conversations, and it was only about 3 pages in that I realized that they were all butch lesbians. On the one hand this illustrates the cool ability of iconically-abstracted comics representations to allow the reader to inhabit a particular character. On the other hand it illustrates a culturally-programmed response to media to assume that the male is the focal viewpoint. I was a bit embarrassed when I realized the error I'd made. The comic is, after all, for "Discerning Homosexuals, Uppity Ladies, Fierce People of Color and all their friends."

Honestly. With cover copy like that, how can you say no?

For those in the Calgary area, I've seen a few copies of this kicking about in the stores I frequent, so it might be accessible somehow.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 67 - Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye v.2: Every Me, Every You, 2017

This series is just so great. What the eye was doing, who made it do that, and what happened after are all amazing, and given that I'd seen, as I said last time, a single panel of Cave Carson prior to reading this, I'm so deeply involved with these characters now. There were some quite emotional moments in the comic, and I'm quite impressed by the creative team that they've managed to make me care that much about these characters in less than 12 issues. I can't wait to see where the follow-up series, Cave Carson has an Interstellar Eye, is going to go.

One thing I will say about the series that I'm slightly averse to is the level of violence. Mr. Oeming has a pretty extremely iconic style. His people look like people, but not any kind of people we can imagine in reality. But his violence is very real. Or, it's visceral, and therefore real in the reality of the characters upon whom the violence is being perpetrated.

More briefly, the violence is a bit gory for my tastes.

I'm going to have to go back and read the "Milk Wars" special of Cave and Swamp Thing, knowing, as I now do, who the heck all of these characters are anyway. And then as soon as I've a bit of money in my pocket, off to the comic store for more of the crew's wacky adventures.

Stay tuned.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 66 - Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways, 2007

In my spare time, rather than glut on any television, I've been binging New Avengers, starting right at issue #1. It's a really great run of comics, all the way through. I was sold on Mr. Bendis right there and then. His gift for dialogue is where the bar should be set. But I'll get to that stuff, y'know, eventually.

Fairly early into the run, we get the mega-crossover "Civil War." Not to be confused with the similarly-titled, yet completely unrelated, film. Well, mostly completely unrelated. Civil War is one of those stories that only really makes sense in retrospect, knowing from afterward who was manipulating things, and how the war played into this. By itself, it's a bit flawed, though this time around I read as much of the crossover as I have, and the bigger picture is confusing and confounding. As most large-scale crossovers, and real-life political stories, often are. And in that it is successful.

This particular little section is okay, but not great. The Young Avengers, seeing that the Runaways might need some counselling from more mainstream heroes their own age, get into the inevitable hero smackdown before a tentative alliance is formed when Marvel Boy is sent by S.H.I.E.L.D. to take them all down.

For me, the best part of this story is the end, at which point (SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT) the Runaways reject both sides of the conflict, citing the notion that it's just adults screwing everything up, regardless of which side you choose. I think perhaps this, for me, is the aspect of the Runaways comics that the television show just hasn't quite grasped. These kids are anarchists. They're not interested in what the adult world has to offer. They're interested in the world they can make.

If they're left alone, that is.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 65 - Mother Panic v.2: Under Her Skin, 2017

I unfortunately did not read this series before reading the Milk Wars crossover issue, and so my reading of Mother Panic has always been skewed by my knowledge of what was to come. I don't think it detracted from my enjoyment of the story, just inflected it slightly. I'll say this for Gerard Way and his creators - they're doing some tight storytelling in all of these books.

I was trying to figure out what kind of feeling Mother Panic gave me, what it reminded me of, and then it finally came to me: The Prisoner. This all reads very much like the plot of that seminal series of the 1960s. Even Mother's white suit, its clean lines, are very Mod. The Gather House experiments are straight out of Cold War spy fiction, and Mother Panic's origin resembles nothing so much as the Black Widow's origin. Is there some homage there, a take on the character, but in white instead of black?

And the remnants of Gather House that keep popping up are terrifying. Not quite insane. Alien, perhaps. That might be a good way to look at it - they've been made alien, Violet included.

Art and story are insanely strong, which I should have mentioned in my review of the first volume, and might have but my memory's not great, but will mention here too just to stress the point. Top level superhero storytelling here. Violet Page is fascinating, and I can't wait to see what happens in the strange Gotham City she finds herself in at the end of Milk Wars.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 64 - Lumberjanes v.1: Beware the Kitten Holy, 2015

I've probably gone on about one of my favourite cartoons, Gravity Falls. And if I haven't, I will this Summer when the new graphic novel comes out.

Lumberjanes draws on a similar aesthetic, or perhaps genre, young people exploring enchanted woods, as Gravity Falls, and really of so many of the fairy tales we're told as kids. The difference between these five ladies (hardcore ladies, that is) and lots of those fairy tale kids is that these guys take no crap. They're open to weird and strange possibilities, but they never let those possibilities push them around. They're pretty badass.

I came across this trade by accident in a thrift shop and I'd heard so much good about it that I thought it worth the investment. It is that and more. A lovely, dynamic art style - the amount of information the ladies convey in facial expression is wonderful. Not every comics artist can do a wide range of expressions, but Ms. Allen manages to say so much with just a few extra lines. And the stories are right out of an adventure novel, Indiana Jones-esque, and, occasionally, a bit of Stephen King novel thrown in. There's definitely some darkness in this series, but I think it's really only there to contrast to the light that the five main characters radiate. They're flawed. They're young. And they're having a very weird Summer.

I will be having at look at the next volume, at the very least. I'm curious to see if the series develops a larger story, which will necessitate the passage of time, and thus of camp coming to an end, or will it remain an eternal Summer of investigation of the hardcore ladies of Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqui Thistle Crumpet's camp.

To be continued...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 63 - Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye v.1: Going Underground, 2017

I think I've read exactly one panel from one comic that featured Cave Carson. It was in one of the issues of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Unless he was a member of the Forgotten Heroes. I forget.

But that's neither here nor there. I knew what he was about, even if I didn't know his story, but now I'm so glad that I have joined this character on his weird, weird adventure. I'm a fan of Mr. Oeming's style. I read Powers for a little while, but then somehow lost track of it. I think what I love about his art is that it manages to achieve a really dark take on the DC Animated style made famous in The Batman Adventures. As with the Morrison/Truog Animal Man, there's something deceptive in reading a dark story through a very iconic lens like this one. The characters look like cartoons in a lot of ways. They're at the same time innocent and corrupted, I think.

Another thing I'm quite appreciating about these Young Animal revivals is that they're acknowledging the histories of the characters involved, and they're carving out a generational aspect for the older characters who really have never had that opportunity. The DCU seems to thrive on superhero legacies, so what happens to a character or a team that never has the opportunity to do that? The Doom Patrol sort of did, but we've always had Cliff there as the link to the foundation. The first generation, in different iterations, has always been present. In the aftermath of The Milk Wars, we'll see how that progresses. In the case of Cave Carson, Cave's daughter Chloe is a main character, every bit as capable as her old man, though not quite as jaded to the wonders of the underground world.

Weird, wacky sci-fi adventures with a good deal of heart. Does that sound corny? Yeah, it's a bit corny. That doesn't mean it's not amazing.

Onward.