Some suggestions for queer comics to read...

I gave a talk at the Memorial Library in Calgary this weekend as part of the kick-off celebrations for Pride this year. I love doing this event. When else is a comic-geek like me given 2 FULL HOURS to talk to a captive audience about comics?

It's a really great chance to meet other readers and collectors, people dipping their toes back into comics after years absent, creators, and the merely curious. I like to think we have a good time and get a chance to talk about comics from a perspective that's interesting to all of us.

I promised a list to this year's audience of titles that I mentioned in the presentation, and some others, that I think are interesting parts of the history of queerness in comics. I welcome any suggestions, for sure. This is a history that is fascinating to uncover.

The earliest stuff I mentioned was Marston's original Wonder Woman stuff. There's lots of reprint volumes, depending on how high quality a reproduction you're looking for. Very cool, and much more readable than I find many Golden Age comics.

A recent discovery, for me at least, is David Anthony Kraft's Defenders #48-50 arc featuring Scorpio - I recently read an interview with Kraft where he says he was trying to subtly suggest that Scorpio was gay. To be honest, from a contemporary perspective, it's not that subtle.

Must mention Northstar in Alpha Flight, of course.

The next section dealt with Vertigo. I'll just list the titles. It's hard to go wrong with early Vertigo in general, though be warned that it's often dark and quite violent.

Sandman Mystery Theatre (specifically #13-16, "The Vamp") - Seagle, Wagner, Davis
Enigma #1-8 - Milligan and Fegredo
2020 Visions (specifically #4-6, "La Tormenta") - Delano and Pleece
Doom Patrol (specifically #64-88) - Rachel Pollack and others

I didn't mention quite a lot of Vertigo titles. There's The Sandman, The Invisibles, Lucifer, lots of really great stuff.

21st Century starts to get copious.

Kevin Keller #1, I still think, is one of the most important queer comics. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, all-American Kevin Keller is gay, out, and headlining his own comic in Riverdale for goodness' sake! I've always thought Archie Comics were a pretty great publisher. They're not afraid to change and shift with the times. That's the secret of their success.

Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams' Batwoman in Detective Comics is a beautiful piece of art, a challenging and tense narrative, and a queer woman headlining one of the most revered superhero comics titles in the history of the medium. You can't go wrong, honestly. Can't wait to see the television series this Fall.

Other stuff: The Infinite Loop from IDW publishing, Small Favors by Colleen Coover.

I'd recommend anything from the Young Animal imprint at DC. Though I haven't read Bug yet, the first wave of titles is highly recommended, with Doom Patrol and Shade, the Changing Girl being particular favourites for me. Eternity Girl is amazing too. I just pick this stuff up on principle now. I've never been disappointed.

And I think that's it. I'll see if I can upload the presentation for those who might be interested. And I'll be back to updating in the next couple of days. Gotta recover from the vacation ;D

From the Depths of Marvel: Elf

One of the great characters that Steve Gerber created. Surely worth more than this simple summary, but on the other hand, what else is there to say?

(There was a back story given to this character eventually, but all without Gerber's input. There was never meant to be any rhyme or reason.)

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 879: The Defenders #77, November 1979

This is the way the world ends...in the story, with a bang. But for Omega the Unknown, it's more a whimper, I'm afraid.

Now, don't get me wrong. The way that Steven Grant finishes off this tale is a wonderfully epic superhero tale. It's just that, in a lot of ways, Omega wasn't a superhero story. When I went to pick this up at Purple Gorilla Comics, Michael, the proprietor and THE guy to go to to find the comics you're looking for, told me it wasn't the ending I was hoping for. We chatted about the weird vibe of the Gerber series, and I fell back on my oft-repeated thought that Gerber would have fit late-80s DC so very, very well. He was simply writing 15 years ahead of his time.

SPOILERS AHEAD

While we'll never really know what Mr. Gerber, Ms. Skrenes, and Mr. Mooney had up their sleeves, the revelation that this entire time Omega and James-Michael have been the danger was actually a very cool way to finish up their tale. Thinking about it a bit, it's really the sort of thing that one could have wrapped a pretty epic Summer event around - run the Omega series for a bit, build things up, and then have the finale be a Summer event revealing that James-Michael has the power to destroy the world. Imagine the epic moral struggles of people like Captain America and Mr. Fantastic. Maybe I'll pitch it to Marvel.

So the Grant/Trimpe ending was a pretty great superhero story, with a nice twist, and some interesting moments. What's really great about these issues is that the Defenders are all women. Moondragon, Hellcat, Valkyrie, and guest-Avenger The Wasp. It was cool to see this configuration of the team, and gets me thinking about the Fearless Defenders series, which I really want to track down.

I know I've missed a couple of magazines and graphic novels, but I'm trying to catch up. Eventually I'll read the rebooted Omega by Farel Dalrymple and Jonathan Lethem, and have another think about the enigmatic man in blue.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 878: The Defenders #76, October 1979

Grabbed the two issues of Defenders that finish Omega, so I'm gonna get into them.

But got a horrendous sunburn today, so I think I'll talk about them both tomorrow. It'll work better as an ending of the Omega series that way anyway.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 360: The New Defenders #133, July 1984

A few years back I attended the Northrop Frye centenary conference at the University of Toronto. I presented a paper on Superman and typological thought, the last paper presented in a panel at the conference. I had thought I would be the only presenter dealing with comics, but I was pleasantly surprised by one paper that introduced me to this comic.

Now, New Defenders #133 is not a great comic, although writer Peter Gillis is really pretty good at what he does. There's a nice sort of confusion deployed in this story. The Defenders themselves seem to have little idea what's going on, and are pulled in medias res into a smuggling and espionage story. The tale really revolves around Typhoon and Cutlass, "import expediters" whose clients and contacts keep turning up dead. What is quite effective about the story is that the reader experiences the Defenders' confusion in a very fundamental way. While reading the story, I kept asking what was going on, a sentiment echoed by nearly all of the superheroic characters in the piece.

But that's not why, after having heard the paper at the conference, I tracked this issue down. A small interregnum in the comic follows Hank McCoy, aka The Beast, on his lecture tour, which has taken him to Toronto, Ontario. And there, while fending off eager undergrads, he spies the one and only Northrop Frye strolling along the street, and bounces over to him to discuss Blake and the apocalyptic imagination. It's literally a 4 panel interaction, but it definitely shows Gillis' familiarity with Frye's work, and also, perhaps, stands as a testament to his popularity outside of the academy. I'd be hard pressed to think of another literary theorist who's appeared in a mainstream superhero comic.

As I say, it's not the best comic. But is does, for me, at least, represent a very concrete link between the theoretical apparatus that I love and the genre that I cleave to. And so it needed to be in the collection.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 317: The Fearless Defenders #4AU, July 2013

What's kind of nice about this particular crossover issue is that I have pretty much no idea of what the Fearless Defenders are like in regular continuity, so this just seemed like a cool story with some semi-familiar characters, like another chapter of Age of Ultron (which it is), as opposed to a reimagining of something with which I was already engaged.

So, the first question that pops to mind, of course, is when the hell did Hippolyta become a character in the Marvel U, and how come she's so frickin' badass?

This issue gives us the most comprehensive look at the Latveria-Asgard Wars, though saying that it's comprehensive is a bit of a misnomer. We see a few aftermath shots, and that's about it. I have to say, were they ever to return to the AoU, I'd love to see this war played out as a proper, boots on the ground (a la Siege:Embedded) title. Style it after the old 70s DC war comics, keep the level of superheroic silliness (said in the most affectionate manner possible, btw) to a minimum, and give us a good, solid war tale. Doom versus Odin, with Thor and Sif, and the Warriors Three, and Baldur and Loki, and (somehow) Ares all mixed in. I'm getting Illiadic shivers down the spine.

Not much else to say about this issue. Hippolyta's costume is fantastic, but I would have expected nothing less from Phil Jiminez. I used to equate him with the second volume of The Invisibles, but really he's more one of the men who now sits at the feet of the Wonder Women. Maybe they'll give Hippolyta her own series, and he can write and draw it, and not have to deal with silly New 52 Wonder Woman.

(Y'know, every now and again I'll write something like that about the New 52 and feel bad, since I've read so little of it. And then I'll pick up an issue and read it and it's just fucking crap. *sigh*)

Coming up to crunch time with two issues left. Who will live, who will die, will anything even remotely change at the end of the crossover? Stay tuned!

Live-Post: Reorganizing my comic collection, Sunday, April 5, 2015 @ 17:47

I was just filing Jonathan Lethem's re-imagining of  Omega the Unknown. I just picked up a hardcover collection of it at my local Chapters for 8 bucks. It pays homage to Steve Gerber's bizarre little 70s project, one of the great mysteries of superhero comics. Gerber fell out with Marvel well before the original series ended, and he, to his dying day, never (at least to my knowledge) revealed how the story was supposed to end. I think Marvel had someone finish it up in Defenders some time later, but Gerber (and co-writer Mary Skrenes) never revealed what was meant to happen.

At this point, I think whatever we've imagined is going to be better that what was. But then again, it was Gerber, and he's never disappointing.