The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1353: Twisted Tales #2, April 1983

I have waxed lyrical about Bruce Jones' ability to tell a great short story while I was reading the sister title to today's comic, Alien Worlds. The stories in today's comic are a little darker, and much more brutal, and really, really remind me of the EC horror stuff I've been reading over the last little while. I get the suspicion that the similarities aren't coincidental. Mr. Jones and his collaborators are definitely of the age that they would have know much more about the pre-Code horror titles than someone of my generation. I didn't recognize the influence when I was reading the science fiction comic, but now that I'm a little more elucidated, the influence is clear.

I can't even decide on a favourite story in today's issue. The lead tale, illustrated by Mike Ploog, has an excellent ending that I didn't see coming. The final tale, drawn by the fabulous Rand Holmes presages Crash (the one about sex in cars) by quite some time. I think, really, only the Ken Steacy-illustrated "Nightwatch" fell a bit flat for me. A neat little tale, but I feel like I've seen it all before.

More of this tomorrow, perhaps. I always balk at reading horror comics so early in the morning. I worry that it's going to inflect my day.

More to come...

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 Friday Magazine 19: Epic Illustrated #4, Winter 1980

So I actually read the feature article in today's magazine. It was about the next evolution of comics, the graphic novel, and the various early attempts at the format. Most interesting was reading this from a pre-Maus perspective. Each time writer Archie Goodwin gestured to that unknown work in the future that would cement the idea of graphic novel, all I could think was "Just wait a couple of years!" He does, however, offer a list of interesting works, some I know and others I don't, that might be worth looking into.

For interest's sake, Gil Kane's Blackmark and Ken Steacy and Dean Motter's The Sacred and the Profane (serialized in Star*Reach) are the two that stood out to me most. I'll have to keep an eye out.

The magazine continues to have a remarkable graphic pedigree. The inclusion of Starlin and Russell in the magazine almost guarantees it's going to look great. Throw in some Veitch, some Hempel, some Steacy, and you've got a beautiful thing to look at. Are the stories maintaining the same level of excellence? Maybe. The stories are entertaining, and in some cases quite beautifully wrought, but right now two of the three main pieces running through the magazine (Elric and Almuric) are adaptations of other works. Only Starlin's Metamorphosis Odyssey is an original lengthy contribution. This is not to say that the adaptations aren't good, and aren't important. One of the best ways we see the effect of a piece of imaginative fiction is when it's adapted into another medium. Stories have different things to tell us dependent on the medium within which they're presented. Thank you, Marshall McLuhan. But I think I'd like to see more original work. The shorter pieces that pepper the magazine are all very good. They actually could be considered as being graphic ancestors of today's microfictions. I'm hoping to scan one or two of them in the near future and put them up here. Hopefully no one'll mind.

See you next week!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 432: Alien Worlds #5, December 1983 (Little Tiny Break in "War Week" Day One More!)

Okay, one more. The first comic I blogged from the Edmonton Con last year was a copy of Alien Worlds, so I thought this was fitting. Bruce Jones tells creepy little stories. If you're a fan of The Twilight Zone, this is the sci-fi comic for you. And what's great is that Jones and his collaborators are equally comfortable with 3-page dialogueless stories or longer, complex, and quite verbose narratives. The lead story in this one, "Lip Service," offers a viewpoint of life from the compound eyes of a Praying Mantis. I'm not sure if these stories have ever been reprinted, but they'd be amazing in a genre-literature course in an English program.

So, tomorrow, seriously, I'll get back to the war comics. Promise. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 37: Alien Worlds #8, November 1984

Taking a suggestion from reader Martin de la Iglesia, today's comic will be reviewing a comic that was reviewed here by Aaron Kashtan at The Ogre's Feathers. Because my Web-Fu is not strong, I have no idea how to link directly to the place on the page where the review is. It's about a third of the way down the page.

The comic grabbed me from the moment I opened the cover solely because the title of the lead story is a line from one of my all-time favourite pieces of poetry, Robert Frost's "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening." The story offers a couple of other interesting things to think about. First, it's set in 2022. Yep. Captain Murdock is diagnosed with a terminal alien disease on some incredible alien planet and (spoiler spoiler spoiler) a mere 7 years from now. Even when the comic was published, which I'm assuming was well after Nolan originally penned the story, 2022 was only 38 years. Ah, the optimism of the speculative fictionist. The other interesting notion is whether or not Nolan himself adapted the story from his short story. The credits list Nolan as the writer, but, from a glance at the original story, it's hard to tell if he adapted it, or if artist Al Williamson handled that chore.

Moving on, I would agree whole-heartedly with Aaron's review that praises the artwork in the stories, though I'd add Ken Steacy's work to the list, because I really like his work, and it captures a particular aesthetic from the 60s and 70s of which I'm particularly fond. I've got a bunch of his stuff spread throughout the collection, much of it from indie comics like this one, and the "ground level" comics represented by titles like Star*Reach and Quack!. Shall I move on to a week of Steacy? Perhaps...

As Aaron's review notes, the stories here are all "shock-ending" stories (and I agree, in 1984, the declaration of love between two men probably was considered shocking), and they get me thinking, as I did before, of the sometimes needed gap of a month or so between issues of a comic. I had mentioned yesterday that Louapre's stories, at least the early ones, read very similarly, so the publication space gives one a bit of breathing room. I imagine, with a title like this, that reading them one after the other would have a wearying effect, always expecting that twist ending.

One last thing is a parallel that might make an interesting comparison: these stories are, in their execution and subject matter, very similar to the "Future Shocks" and "Time Twisters" short stories from 2000 A.D. A comparison of the two would be neat, if only to see it there are intrinsically national qualities to these tiny science fiction stories.

Thanks again to Martin for the suggestion. That was fun. See you tomorrow.