The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1892: Razor/Warrior Nun Areala: Faith, May 1996

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 I was going to read the zero issue of Glory today, but, honestly, it's exactly the same story as yesterday's comic, just in colour. I'll wait a bit and maybe read it when I'm done with Awesome's Youngblood stuff. So we're bouncing back (based on that cover, anyway) to London Night Studios for a couple of days to finish off my comics from them. And this one might inspire another read through of a publisher's output in the collection, as it features Antarctic Press' Warrior Nun Areala - I've read some of their stuff, but maybe it's time to read through the rest.

Anyway, on to today's comic. Violence? Check. Scantily-clad buxom ladies? Check. Hypermasculine demons? Check. I'll admit that one of the tings that actually surprised me about this comic, and about a couple of the other Razor comics I've read, is that they're actually quite Christian. I don't know if this is based on a genuine belief in that religious system, or simply because the characters are set in that milieu, but there's lots of claims of doing things in God's name, most of which are acts of brutal violence.

There's always been that link though, hasn't there? For millennia, rulers have done great violence in the name of their religions (not their religious figures, mind you, but their religions - important distinction) - I suppose, since I've argued that the stories we read now are pretty much all descendants of the various stories we've created culture around, that the link of violence and religion isn't that surprising. That said, if I'm right, and Superman is a secular ethical myth, I'm pretty sure I've never heard of anyone doing violence in Superman's name. I wonder why it's okay to do it in Jesus's?

More to follow.

 

Further Reading and Related Links

As I say, I've read a bit of Antarctic Press - some good, some...not so good.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1186: Velvet Touch #6, January 1995

Aside from the adaptation of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" into "I Am the Very Model of a Naked Individual," and the charming art that accompanied it, this was a pretty forgettable comic.

I saw a solicitation for stories for this anthology in an Antarctic Press comic I read a while back, and from that solicitation it sounded like they were looking for good, fun, kind sex stories. But that's not really what's in here. They're just kind...boring, I guess?

Ah well. Can't win 'em all.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1172: Cheeta Pop, Scream Queen #4, March 1995

(Sorry for the delay. Family visits are happy affairs, but they tend to throw off our schedules, I think.)

I'm going to see about tracking down some more of this comic. I quite enjoyed it. Cheeta's life, from what I can tell, is all about making pornographic movies that have the effects budget of The Avengers. Just moments after the scene depicted on the cover, she morphs into a mech-armoured badass and deals out hell with her laser sword. After having had numerous varieties of coitus with the weird alien beforehand. Everyone seems to be having fun, and the sex is handled nicely. I'm starting to notice in my readings of adult comics a nice undercurrent of male authors writing sex comics that are kind and fun. The back up feature, "Muscle Tone," is about three ladies who transform into superhero wrestlers and fight crime.

And have sex with people.

Something else that the comic does nicely is it makes you care about Cheeta. The framing sequence is a friend of our heroine's reading a letter in L.A. Cheeta is in Japan filming a movie. When I teach the epistolary, I note to my students that it's really like reading a diary. Letters and journals are private writing that we may never intend anyone to see. So adding this layer to what might have otherwise been a simply decent sex comic actually turns it into a pretty great comic overall. I'm drawn in by the correspondence - I'd like to know more about the characters.

And, *sigh*, if they have to have lots of sex while I'm learning about them, I guess that's okay too.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1018: Ninja High School v.2 #12, June 2000 (Ninja High School Week!)

And so we reach the end of "Ninja High School Week!" This is the last issue of the second volume of the series and, as is rapidly becoming cliche this week, I understood almost nothing. There were characters who had something to do with some of the other characters I've read about this week, and talk of destiny and stuff, but I got little of it. There were, however, a couple of North American-style superheroes in the issue, and it was interesting that, regardless of not knowing the specific characters, I recognized the story they were taking part in. It's the "superhero is taken over by villain and is eventually defeated by younger hero, possibly superhero's protege" story. I find this story to be a way of showing that the younger hero is worthy of taking on the older hero's mantle. Robin must fight a mind-controlled Batman, and in beating him demonstrates he will one day be a worth successor to Batman (which, for the record, he was in the Grant Morrison's Batman and Robin series). And, generally, this involves the younger hero not only demonstrating the skills they've learned from the mentor, but also that certain something that the older hero is somehow lacking, thus demonstrating how the protege will actually surpass the older hero in their embodiment of that hero, and of heroism.

But then, because it's comics, the younger hero almost never gets that opportunity. How long was Dick Grayson Batman? A drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things. He is still a character that labours in the shadow of his mentor, and perhaps that is what that character requires in order to be that character, that constant ideal to live up to. Without it, why are we drawn to this character?

Sometimes, though, it does happen and it produces something wonderful. When Wally West took over as the Flash, something really great was introduced into the DC universe, a new mythic element, in a way. For my money, West really was always a better Flash than Barry Allen, which is exactly the outcome that that rarely-realized story looks toward. The younger hero surpasses the elder. Or once surpassed, I suppose. I don't really know Wally's status in the DCU these days.

What does this have to do with Ninja High School? Nothing really. I'm not sure the outcome of the superhero story. And I'm not sure where this series continues. Usually on the GCD there's a listing of where the story continues, but there's nothing for this one. I'll have to do a bit of research. In the meantime, tomorrow I'll be starting a daily re-read of DC's really neat experiment Wednesday Comics. I've only read it once, when it first came out, so it'll be interesting to read it in a more sustained way.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1017: Mangazine v.3 #5, November 1999 (Ninja High School Week!)

This anthology series is apparently a number of Antarctic Press comics all bound (and not very well) together, though I'm not 100% sure which issues of each series are included. It was a nice sampler of the AP output, and might have felt a bit more at home in my previous week looking at the publisher, but c'est la vie. From what I can tell, the Ninja High School issue in this collection comes from the second volume of the series that focusses on Ricky Feeple, the younger brother of the first volume's focal character. But, as with most of what I've read this week, I don't know what the heck is going on, or who many of the characters were. The same goes for the other comics reprinted in this issue, though the Warrior Nun story is sort of self-contained, and thus made a bit more sense.

And this is the thing, I think. Dunn and company created their series having been inspired by manga series, and manga series are inevitably not one-off stories, but actually one long story told over the course of a long period of time. Thus Ninja High School almost requires of its reader an investment in the whole series. It's virtually impossible to pick up a single issue and just enjoy it. There's a definite time and place for such storytelling, and I generally love it, but this haphazard way I've attempted to enter the series is just not working.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1016: A Science Affair #1, 1994 (Ninja High School Week!)

It turns out that my scanner does not like foil covers, but here it is anyway.

This comic was weird, but not for the usual (as I'm coming to understand them) reasons that a Ninja High School comic might be weird. Yes, there's all the strangeness that is associated with the title, mixed with the strangeness that is associated with Fred Perry's Gold Digger, but the weirdest thing about it is that there's literally no credits anywhere in the issue. I have no idea who wrote, drew, edited this comic. I know that Antarctic Press published it, but that's about it. I don't come across comics that often that neglect to credit the artists involved, especially from the small press. There's no info on the GCD (actually, this variant didn't even exist there, but I've remedied that), and the only place I could find any credits was a mycomicshop.com which list Fred Perry as both writer and artist. But even lists of Perry's own works don't list this series.

Very odd.

But then, so is the comic. There's a couple of parodies of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers in this issue that come into conflict with one another, an evil, magical Elvis impersonator called (one of the best villain names ever) Spellvis, as well as characters from Gold Digger (the main characters) and Ninja High School (secondary characters). I suppose the inclusion of the main cast of GD but not of NHS could support Perry's authorship, but I'd love something a little more concrete. That aside, the comic is fun, like most of the NHS comics I've looked at this week.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1015: Speed Racer featuring Ninja High School #1, August 1993 (Ninja High School Week!)

This comic was just okay. I like the idea of crossing over something like Ninja High School with a property that was obviously an inspiration, but I'm not sure it totally works. And I don't know why. It could be, I suppose, that I'm just not familiar enough with the characters for it all to gel nicely for me, or it could be that there's just too many characters. Or it could be that the comic is just sort of "meh."

It is nice to see the NHS characters in colour, which I've not seen yet. That aside, there's a whole lot of set up (a race in Quagmire that Speed and his team are attending) and not that much development. Is that asking too much in the case of a crossover, though? I'm just thinking back to the recent Crisis on Earth-X Arrowverse crossover, and there really wasn't that much character development. Even the big crossovers, like the original Crisis, feature little or no characterization. Crossovers are more about story than they are about character, and so we get the 2-dimensions of the character, rather than the full three dimensions. Speed is a race car driver, Itchy is a ninja, Asrial is an alien warrior with mech armour. That's really all that's needed here.

I've no idea what the rest of the crossover was like, but I'm sure it continued much like this issue. Perhaps one day I'll find out.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1014: Ninja High Yearbook #3, 1991 (Ninja High School Week!)

Given that this is Ben Dunn's book, I don't know that I've read too much of his actual work.

Today's comic demonstrates something that I think is somewhat unique to Ninja High School, or perhaps to Antarctic Press. This comic is full of submissions from fans of the series telling stories of their favourite characters from the main comic. And it's solicited and published by Antarctic Press. That's a level of fan-interaction I've never seen from a comics publisher before. Imagine Marvel publishing a comic full of fan-drawn and written stories starring the Avengers. Even in our ultra-connected modern day we don't see that kind of interaction, though it certainly would be very easy to do. That Mr. Dunn was open to this speaks volumes of his understanding of the relationship fans can have with a comic. We get very, very attached to characters sometimes. I can't even begin to tell you the number of Doom Patrol scripts I have locked away in my head. So to be able to tell a story about them that is published by the very people who brought you those characters, that's something special.

The stories vary, of course, in quality and tone. Some are quite dramatic, others parodic, and others romantic. Each is created by people who obviously love the characters they're dealing with, and even though the art is of less-than-professional quality sometimes, the stories achieve a level of quality simply by virtue of that love.

Fanfic comics. From adoring fans. In 1991. Neat.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1013: Ninja High School Perfect Memory #1, 1990 (Ninja High School Week!)

Yep, I put the exclamation mark in the post title on purpose. This isn't just "Ninja High School Week." It's "Ninja High School Week!" Just so we're clear.

Comics like today's have had me a bit vexed. Much like the DC Who's Who and Marvel Official Handbook, Perfect Memory is a recap, profile, non-fiction sort of thing that's long on text and short on comics. But as an entry into the series, it actually works absolutely perfectly. There are recaps of the first 19 issues in this comic, which filled me in on exactly who the main cast are, what their relationships are, and a some of their early adventures. I wonder how much of the previous two issues of NHS I've read would make much more sense now?

There's also a cool little comic either by or about Ben Dunn and the process an issue goes through from drawing board to comic store. It's kind of cool, and happening around the same time that Scott McCloud is putting together the first of his definitive looks at the art form.

What I also get from this comic is that Ninja High School is a comic aimed at a very specific demographic. It's for the anime fan, but specifically the anime fan of the late 70s to the late 80s, stuff like Starblazers and Robotech and Battle of the Planets. This is a comic for the people who tracked down what little manga and anime found its way into the comic shops. As such, there's references that I couldn't possibly get, to old anime series and characters that are parodied/homaged. It's fascinating.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1012: Ninja High School v.1 #50, January 1996 (Antarctic Press Week)

Talk about unwittingly saving the best for last. I've read one other issue of Ninja High School for this project, and my assessment was I had no idea what was going on because it was so far into the story. This seems to be a trend with the AP comics this week. Though perhaps that speaks, as I note in the other NHS review, to the long-form narrative more than any particular artistic failings.

That said, I enjoyed the heck out of today's comic. I still wasn't quite sure what was going on, but the numerous short stories in this issue managed to tell tales that were enjoyable in and of themselves, regardless of any context for deeper understanding one might require. I did a bit of research on NHS, and I'm now intrigued by it. Apparently creator Ben Dunn wanted to put as many Manga and Anime-inspired archetypes into the comic as he could. This might partially explain how I was able to enjoy the comic without too much context for the ongoing story - I recognized the archetypes and understood, at least on a very basic level, what their various motivations might be.

So, since I've found something neat that I like in this week of Antarctic Press, I thought we'd continue on a bit, and read all of the Ninja High School-related comics I've got. Usefully, they'll take up most of the next week. I'll see how much background I need to fill in, if any, through the week, but let's see where this cool little comic takes us.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1011: Gold Digger Annual #8, September 2002 (Antarctic Press Week)

I know that there's been a few times that I've said I have no idea what happened in a particular comic. This time was the worst. I'm still not sure who I was supposed to be rooting for, who were the good guys and who the bad, and what was even remotely going on. And that didn't just hold for the main story, but for all of the back up ones that fill out the annual.

I can say the art was really quite good. It definitely seems to have been drawn by someone who was a fan of large-breasted women, but it's the comic industry, so there's that.

That aside, not much to say. It was a comic. I read it.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1010: Genus #22, January 1997 (Antarctic Press Week)

Well, at least, unlike many of the Hentai comics I've read for this project, this cover is only suggestive and thus does not need to be hidden behind a cut.

You can imagine my surprise (though given the cover, why was I surprised?) that, with my morning cup of tea today, I ended up reading about 20 pages of furry porn. I'm a pretty open-minded guy, and this really wouldn't usually be weird, but I think I'm still in the Avengers frame of mind, and so a comic about anthropomorphic animals doing it "human-style" was not quite what I was ready for.

That said, some actually pretty neat little tales in here. Pun. Intended. The only one I had issue with was "Savage Squirrel's Dating Tips!," which was a take on the old "Goofus and Gallant" strips from Highlights magazine. Well, that's what it recalled for me - I'm sure the format is not unique to that children's magazine. Things get a bit rape-y in a couple of the panels, which may have been acceptable and amusing (not really) 20 years ago, but now are simply in poor taste.

Aside from that, the Misty the Mouse strip (it's funny using that word when talking about nudie comics) is pretty great, nicely illustrated and certainly doesn't take itself seriously. I think that's something I very much look for in an erotic comic is one that accepts that the things people do that involve sex are often quite ridiculous. I'm thinking here, of course, of the wonderful XXXenophile series by Phil Foglio, which I'll have to get to reading for this project some time soon. Most of the stories in here are comedic, aside from one serialized story starring a character named The Mink that focusses on genetically-engineered "toys" that are sold into sex slavery. And I think that's what distinguishes this comic from the other adult ones I've read, both for the project and otherwise - there's a desire to delve into not just the titillating side of sexuality, but the dark side as well - a topic that is very much in the popular consciousness at the moment. While celebrating sex and sexuality (though not all kinds), the comic is also offering us the flip side of the equation and reminding us that there is as much potential for pain and damage as there is for fun and friskiness when it comes to sex.

Oh, and there's also a couple of pin-ups that are nicely-rendered.

As the weekend's here, I'll be reading a couple of longer publications from AP, and I might actually wrap things slightly shy of a week so that I can start a new theme week on Monday. Otherwise my OCD tendencies will get the better of me!

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1009: Onigami #2, June 1998 (Antarctic Press Week)

I've decided to start making the pictures of covers larger. The format I've been using is no good for picking out cover detail.

Even though I had no idea what was really going on, this was a rather entertaining comic. The demonic characters in the story actually evince some compassionate behaviours, which I was fully not expecting from a pseudo-Manga like this. Usually the demons want to kill everything and then violate it. But these demons seem to care about their fellow ethereal beings, and have romantic feelings for one another. I've not idea what was going on with the police characters in the story, so instead I just read the comic as a demonic romance piece and left it at that.

The artwork is quite good, and includes some really neat panel layouts and perspectives. Michel Lacombe has a nice handle on visual storytelling, which is sometimes something of a rarity in comics published by small presses. The really gifted artists tend to graduate to the major publishers before very long.

An interesting little part of a story. More tomorrow.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1008: Betti Cozmo #1, April 1999 (Antarctic Press Week)

A rarity this week in today's comic, in that it's a first issue, so I'm actually coming into the story at the point that I ought to be. That said, I have no other issues of the series, so it's going to have to be one of those ones that simply ends in a cliffhanger forever. Probably.

As the art on the cover demonstrates, and the interior art supports, there's an interesting mix of the manga-esque and the Kirby-esque in this comic. The aliens have very distinctive Kirby features (that guy at the bottom of the cover is pretty indicative of this), but Betti herself cleaves more to the Americanized manga style that AP is known for. It's not perfect, by any means, but it's definitely offering a cool amalgam of two quite disparate styles. Though, perhaps, they're not too disparate on second thought. Both styles privilege movement, though manga movement emphasizes both small and large movements, whereas Kirby's style is more bombastic and hinges on the large movements of characters through space. There's something to both that attempts to tell the story even in the absence of words - this was necessary for the Marvel style of scripting that was the norm when Kirby was producing for them, and in the case of manga there's an equal emphasis on the story being pictorially driven as much as it is verbally. I think, anyway.

The story is okay, though nothing particularly innovative. Betti is a mercenary with a weird, frog-like sidekick, who picks up jobs from a woman who looks like a dominatrix. She's like Han Solo, but female-er. Her sidekick even speaks in an alien language that we only understand in Betti's responses to him. It was entertaining, occasionally amusing, and kind of action packed, which, really, is what one wants from a comic such as this.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1007: Warrior Nun Black & White #2, January 1997 (Antarctic Press Week)

Welcome to Antarctic Press Week! I've planned out a few interesting weeks of comics for the next couple of months, and I guess this one came first alphabetically.

I don't know much about AP - they're one of those publishers whose presence I was aware of, but whose output I had never read. So here we go.

This is a weird comic. Admittedly, I'm coming in well into the story, both in terms of the overall story of Warrior Nun Areala and in terms of this particular series. There's badass fighting nuns, a soulless, then ensouled witch, a pirate captain with really weird eyes, a crew of strange skeleton creatures, and a demon who looks like he's also the north wind. Some people melted, some fought.

The art is interesting. Not the greatest, admittedly, but there's something to the depiction of the warrior nun. She's buxom, yes, and, as you can see from that picture up there, not afraid of the odd panty flash. But within the comic she's given a fairly buff musculature, and her face doesn't look like she's had make-up surgically implanted. She looks like someone who's ready to kick demon ass, and just happens to also be a relatively sexy nun.

I type the weirdest things here, sometimes.

It's wasn't the best comic I've read for the project, but it's far, far from the worst. I'm curious to see what the rest of AP's stuff is like. I know Ninja High School only in passing, and Gold Digger by name. And, apparently, they also published some naughty comics under a different imprint, so we'll check out some of those too. After that? Well, I'm thinking of re-reading Wednesday Comics, some very, very early Image comics, a bunch of undergrounds, some Charlton horror titles...a whole bunch of things. Much as I enjoyed reading The Avengers in so complete a fashion, I'm eager to have a look at some other stuff for a while. Let's set the superheroes aside for a bit.

To be continued.

(Edit: As I typed "Antarctic Press" into the label list, it didn't automatically pop up, making this the very first AP comic I've done for the project. Neat!)