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 582: Ninja High School #37, March 1883

It's been a long while since I've picked up a comic to read for this project and had absolutely and completely no frickin' idea what was going on in it. It happens, but usually I can piece together something. Not so here. I have no clue what happened in this story.

Which brings up a couple of interesting notions.

First, there are most certainly long-form comics that are written more as graphic novels than serialized stories. I've explained this in many of my introductory comics lessons - if you're reading what's ostensibly a graphic novel, but it's actually a collection of issues in trade form, there's an excellent chance that the ends of each chapter, when read in conjunction with the following one, are going to smack of hyperbole. The medium is the message indeed. However, when this is the case, there's usually recap happening, either at the very beginning of each issue, or weaved in as exposition throughout. There's none of that in this story. Dunn is obviously interested in telling a longer, more complex story, but is bound by the 22-page format of the periodical comic book. And, honestly, I'm sure it makes sense in context, but out of context....nothing.

And that's the other interesting notion: the reading of a comic without comprehension of the story - for me, then, this reading was far more about the artwork than the story. I wasn't given enough information to make any sense of the story (which could be seen as the mark of bad storytelling, but I think it's more that serialized long-form thing I said above), so my attention was far more focused on the art. The art is very good, very expressive..very Manga. As far as I can tell, the premise of the series (not necessarily the story) is to pop in as many of the manga stock characters as possible and somehow weave a coherent story around them. I can only assume that it works, as the series is ongoing. But we have the sexy witch, we have the buxom demon woman (complete, at least in one panel, with a spiky vibrator), we have the powerful magic user who's also the estranged father of the issue's main character. Again, I'm sure it all makes sense in context. Outside of that, though, this was a dizzying array of ideas and images - not a bad way to begin the day.

Onward!