The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2136: La parthenogeneige, January 2001

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 A weird little Winter tale about the difficulty of being alone. It seems quite appropriate these days. A man makes a child out of snow and spends the rest of the comic trying to make it so that the child will stop melting. There are no words, only pictures, and a wonderfully simple art style. I've had this comic in the collection for many years now, and I read it every now and again. I'm amazed that such a short piece with, relatively, such sparse content can invite so many re-readings. I suppose that's the mark of a really well done comic.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1917: The Pirates: The Golden Medallion, 1989

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I don't know how many times in the last almost 2000 days I've talked about LEGO, but I fucking love LEGO. I'm a collector, though not quite as voraciously as with comics, and these days I really love the Friends series of LEGO. I never got to have cool pink LEGO as a kid, so I'm making up for it now.

I'm not 100% sure where this comic came from, but I've definitely had it in the collection for a while. It's so very European - I'm starting to think it's the formal aspects of the comic that I'm starting to recognize with regard to European comics. The comic sticks to a very conservative panel layout, which makes the comic soooo much easier to read than some of the early Image stuff I've been poking my nose into lately (while doing the project, I've been reading the early Liefeld Prophet series. It's so different from this comic). This is not to say that the panel construction is at all boring or unsophisticated - it's simply that the experimentation with it is far more subtle, and does not make the reading of the comic difficult. Some of those early Image comics are impossible to follow because the look overtakes the facilitation of the story. Not so here.
 

So, a cute little read, though I always thought pirates were a bit of a weird theme for LEGO. It's horrible to imagine little tiny LEGO minifigures going around raping and pillaging in the Caribbean.

L is for LEGO

Best toy of all time

And not a bad comic

Aside from the crime.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts
 

Some more of the LEGO-related posts I've made, mostly about the amazing Bionicle series.

And a few posts more generally about toys. I love toys.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1916: King Classics: The Prince and the Pauper, 1978

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An English translation of a Spanish classic adaptation. The art is, unsurprisingly, really great. I've never read this particular piece of Twain's corpus, but it was a cute story with a good deal of the social commentary removed for the adaptation, I'm sure. Not that I have any real problem with this. If a younger person read this and then decided to read Twain's original, I think the two would complement each other nicely.

Another bad pain day today, so that's it for this one. I see that King Classics also published a version of Moby-Dick, one of my favourite pieces of American literature. Perhaps I should see about tracking down the various adaptations of that book.

K for King Classics

From Spain these arise

Some nice adaptations

But that's no surprise.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1902: Blackmask #1, 1988

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 It's almost the middle of May and there's snow falling from the sky here in Calgary. And I'm reading a Korean wrestling comic. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm definitely living in interesting times. Oh, and there's that pandemic thing that's going on too.

Jason Royt has a very similar back story to Frank Castle, a.k.a. The Punisher. But instead of becoming a gun-toting vigilante, Jason becomes (I presume) a masked professional wrestler in order to track down the fight-fixing mob that killed his family. Actually, his origin is sort of a reverse Spider-Man, in that the death of his family drives him into wrestling, rather than away from it as was Peter Parker's case.

This is a cool comic. It's a collaboration between a Korean artist and an American writer/translator, and definitely benefits from the two different voices. I see according to the GCD that there were only 3 issues published, and I like to think that the story got a chance to play out. Eastern Comics does not look like it lasted for very long, and I wonder if the late 80s was just slightly too early to catch the wave of interest in comics from East Asia that exploded a few years later.

Not gonna lie, I'm probably going to pick up the rest of this series if I can find it for relatively cheap. The art is very cool and the story is pretty intriguing. The lead detective on the case keeps quoting Shakespeare (having been an actor, according to the back matter), which I love, though I'm not sure The Bard is the right thing to be going back to while trying to comfort/question a man whose family has just been killed.

E is for Eastern

Manhwa in the ring

But three issues later

The bell has its ding.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

One of the first essays I wrote in university was on a North Korean comic called Great General Mighty Wing - "Batman vs. Mighty Wing" is the result.

And if you're interested, I've read quite a few non-North American comics for the project.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1864: Metal Hurlant #1, July-August 2002

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I don't actually know that I've got a lot to say about this comic. It was really good. The premise of the series is to bring together European and North American creators, with a little bit of South American thrown in for good measure. It widely succeeds in its mission and tells some entertaining and beautiful stories.

But none of them really stood out to me that much. They were technically very good, but didn't quite have that emotional impact that I like to see from a short story. Ah well. They can't all be life-changers, I suppose.

More to follow.

Related Posts and Further Reading

For more European comics, have a look at Heavy Metal, the magazine that sprung from the original 70s version of Metal Hurlant. 

More globally, here are all the things I've had to say about non-North American comics. 

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1847: Ranma 1/2 part 5 #5, 1996

I had meant to mention something about the comic yesterday, but it shares this particular aspect with today's comic, so I'll address it today. The English translation of this issue was done by comics writer Gerard Jones. He's well-known for a run on Green Lantern in the 80s, and wrote a few books, not all of which were well-reviewed, on the history of comics.

He also, a few years back, was busted on child pornography charges.

I have this dilemma that I wrestle with on a frequent basis. Mostly it's with regard to H.P. Lovecraft, whose writing and creations I absolutely adore, but whose virulent racism is tough to take. (If you're not convinced, consider that so many of his stories are about white families who mix with non-white families and start to devolve.) I've come to the idea that with Lovecraft, recognizing that racism actually makes the stories even more horrific - he's achieving an effect in a way that I'm not sure he'd be completely okay with.

I don't know if I can do the same thing with Jones' work. This is definitely a series that is dealing with younger people and is playing with questions of gender, even if not in quite so deep a way as it might. But the underlying attitude that one inevitably will layer on Jones, that of sexual gratification with underage children, doesn't really add to the humorous intent of something like Ranma 1/2. Where we can take Lovecraft's attitude and actually use it to increase the intentional atmosphere of the stories, here the inflection of the intentional atmosphere (one of comedy) is detrimental, rather than in some ways helpful, to our enjoyment of the story.

That said, I have no fucking clue what was going on here. Way too deep into the story, way too little back story. Ranma turns into a girl, and then back into a boy, and then back into a girl, as people around them are consuming pills that make you fall in love with the first person of the opposite gender you see (systemic homophobia rears its ugly head!)

Back to Mr. Sable tomorrow. More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1846: The Return of Lum Part 4 #6, 1998

A couple days break from the intensity of Jon Sable, and this is about as different from Mr. Grell's series as I could possibly get. I've been slowly but surely discovering Rumiko Takahashi's work, though I definitely could jump right in given the proliferation and popularity of her Inu Yasha and Ranma 1/2. I'm preferring reading the less-well known series, especially her creepy Mermaid stories, so I can get an idea of what her writing is like without the pomp and circumstance of a popular comic. That said, coming in at what appears to be the very end of the Lum series of comics, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. There was a vampire, and a bat, and an alien lady in tiger print, and the ubiquitous hapless male lead who everyone loves for some reason, but who seems completely incapable of taking care of himself, or developing relationships.

Actually, something I'm finding about a lot of the manga and anime I'm consuming these days is that it's often the female-identifying characters who are the pursuers when it comes to romantic relationships, which is really very different from the primary motivating factors in a lot of North American media. I wonder why that is, given that the picture painted for us of the culture is one of demure women who don't pursue a man/partner. As I've noted in my other readings of Ms. Takahashi's work, my knowledge of the culture and the medium is very limited, so my readings really can only come from the comics to which I'm exposed. That said, my limited understanding aside, Ms. Takahashi's work is frickin' weird and I love it. She has a nice handle on taking similar weirdnesses (mostly supernatural ones) and applying very different atmospheres to them, so that the vampire in this comic is comedic relief, but the flesh-hungry characters in the Mermaid books are terrifying. All with very similar aesthetic choices with regard to the artwork.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1347: Cauldron #1, October 1995

I totally underestimated this comic.

I got this comic, both this original and the variant covers, in a lot of "Bad Girl" comics. These were comics, following in the tradition of the Warren Vampirella magazines, whose main characters were often voluptuous women clad in only the barest hint of a costume. Just like the lady up there on the cover. Probably the best modern example of the genre is Lady Death from Chaos! Comics. The propensity to show skin isn't always a sign that the comic will be bad, but it very often is. Unlike something like Kill La Kill, where the pace of the show, and it's all round insanity, allows one to look past the equally ridiculous portrayals of nudity and sexuality. But a comic doesn't move that fast, and in these kinds of comics, the rest of the world is relatively rational, if not normal. It's just the main character that runs around in a little less than a bikini all the time.

However, in the case of Cauldron, that voluptuous lady on the cover shows for about 4 pages, and the main character is actually an ancient, withered crone who has been locked in a dungeon for years. The tale appears to be about this old witch and a similarly aged wizard attempting to find an artifact to defeat an evil ruler. There's also a couple of pages set in our world, probably setting up the contemporary focal characters that would be participating in the story. I say probably, because although a second issue is advertised, it apparently never materialized. This is a shame, because this is a really beautiful, and well-told, story. The art is all painted, and the same kind of care that is lavished on the "bad girl" on the cover is lavished upon all of the characters. In fact, the costume she wears even makes sense, sort of, in the context of the story.

Well, Ulna (that's the witch, who ends up in our reality at the story's end), I hope you managed to find the Necrogon and defeat Lord Vile. In my head, it all worked out somehow.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1187: Amar Chitra Katha #701, December 2012

I was going to read a Batman comic today, but then I found this absolute gem in a thrift shop, and read it while waiting for my wife to complete her Bulk Barn trip. I've a couple of other comics from this publisher, and indeed grabbed a couple more today, but this is the first one I've had a chance to read in translation. The others were given to me as a gift from a kind friend who had travelled home and knew of my love of comics.

This is a historical tale of a young woman of humble origins who becomes a benevolent and beloved Queen. I'm put in mind of an Indian Classics Illustrated, though the catalog of available works includes not only classic adaptations, but heroic biographies, myths, fables, and even some contemporary works. Having read some of the English translations, I'm tempted to track down some more. I've always wished I'd taken a course on South Asian myths in university. It's such a rich set of stories, and every time I've encountered them, I've enjoyed them immensely. And where I quite enjoyed the modern takes on the myths in the India Authentic series from Virgin Comics, these comics exude a certain naive quality that I find suits the tenors of the stories quite well. I can see these being comics that speak equally well to older and younger readers.

Some more random stuff for a few days, and then onto June.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1184: Lust #5, August 1997

Back to some of the naughtier comics in the collection. More after the jump.

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 14: Heavy Metal v.9 #6, September 1985

What I'm going to have to do with these Heavy Metal magazines is read the earlier ones, such as this one, in some kind of order. Before taking on the format that the magazine has now, it was a far more serially-driven publication. Thus one of today's stories is "Tex Arcana" part 23. While the individual pieces of each story do tell some kind of semi-complete narrative, without the context of the surrounding parts of the narrative, it's hard to say whether the story was good or bad.

I'm also going to state outright, as I don't think I have before, that I'll only be reading the comics pieces in Heavy Metal. While the text articles are interesting, I'm not sure I need to be reading reviews of 30-year old video games and films, at least not for this particular project. It also allows me to actually get a magazine read in the time I set aside for it each week.

Some bizarre bits and pieces in today's issue, many of which I didn't really understand (that whole context thing), and others that were obtuse, but intentionally so. The thing that always strikes me about Heavy Metal is the variety of art styles. There's no such thing, as far as I can tell, as a "house style" for HM, in the same way that we might think about such a style for Marvel or DC at particular times in their histories. While the artists within the magazine all come from particular traditions of comics, those traditions don't seem to dictate a particular illustrative style, but rather a series of technical guides within which an artist can experiment. Just like a sonnet, the comic is a very structured creative mode (page, panel, speech bubble, etc.), and the key to innovation is to push at the boundaries of those structures. The Heavy Metal artists are very, very good at this.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Weekly Graphic Novel: Week 50 - Maui: Legends of the Outcast, 1996

I picked this book up a few weeks back, but was prompted to read it this week when the recent Disney film Moana dropped on Netflix. I was intrigued by the occasional references in that movie to Maui's rejection by his own Mother, and today's graphic novel delves into those stories explicitly.

Perhaps it would have been a bit dark for a Disney flick, but it's never mentioned that Maui's mother abandons him not through a lack of affection for the child, but because she believes he is stillborn. When she consigns him to the waves, believing he is dead, he is nurtured by the ocean's creatures, and rescued and raised by the deities of the ocean. This puts a bit of different spin on the bitterness that is evident both in this version of the character and the Disney version. I don't see anywhere in this book any attempt at understanding from Maui that his mother thought he was dead, that is was not utter rejection but grief that brought her to the ocean's edge with her child. Though perhaps this kind of self-reflection is not the purpose of the Maui myths. Perhaps they are more about perseverance in the face of the overwhelming odds Maui overcomes.

The art, by Chris Slaine, in today's piece is nicely stylized, which I think works really well when you're telling stories about mythic individuals. They're not really meant to look, sound, or be like humans. They're meant to resemble us, enough that they can teach, but not to be us, otherwise their stories would lack the gravitas that they have. Even divine characters with human personalities, like the Greek pantheon or the characters in this book, are still just enough removed from humanity (mostly by their own knowledge of their divine origin) to be a bit alien. They are simpler creatures, and as such their stories communicate to us about complex issues from a relatively (in contrast, anyway) straightforward point of view.

If you liked Moana, and you were as intrigued by the character of Maui as I was, this is a pretty great place to go for a bit more of his story.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 12: Heavy Metal v.26 #5, November 2002

After a brief break, the Friday Magazine returns.

I quite like this era of Heavy Metal in which we get a "complete" graphic novel in each issue. I put complete in quotation marks because, though length-wise it might qualify as a graphic novel, I feel like it's really the middle of a story. Perhaps it would be better to say a complete graphic album, rather than graphic novel.

This month's GN, "Yiu - My Promise to You," was stylish and dark, and presented a fascinating future based around a consolidation of power of six of the major religions (it doesn't ever quite say which). Part of the story is about a hitwoman who is trying to pay for a surgery for her brother, and part is about the birth of the Antichrist. I'm not entirely certain how the two mesh, and there's not really a lot of back story. This is why I think it's only a part of a series, rather than what we would traditionally think of as a graphic novel. To me, at any rate, a graphic novel tells a complete story. It might be part of a larger sequence, but within that sequence it itself is a complete narrative. I don't get that feeling from this graphic novel. But if we think of it as a graphic album, part of a numbered series, then we can read the piece in the context for which it's intended, as part of a story. Translation's a funny business, even when it's translation of formats.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 748: Cyborg Gerbils #1, August 1986

At first I was pretty sure this was going to be yet another throwaway TMNT spoof, but as I was entering it into my database and had a chance to have a quick look through it, I realized it was something else. And now, after reading it, I see I was right.

This isn't a perfect comic. It's a bit flawed in its visual storytelling - I wasn't always sure where the panels were leading me. Thank goodness for the tiny arrows that the creators inserted to keep things flowing relatively smoothly. Some of the dialogue also seemed like it wasn't quite sure where it was going. Responses, once or twice, just didn't seem to make any sense. That said, a tale of four angry, surgically-enhanced gerbils that have to travel back in time to stop the spread of a mutated human darkness that consumes the entire world, while also attempting to stop the mad scientist who created said darkness, makes for an interesting story. The characters are interesting, in that they're not completely good or bad. The art, cartoony as it is, belies the seriousness of the story. It's a funny animal comic, but the animals in aren't all that funny.

I hold out little hope of finding the second issue. There's a listing in the GCD, but no cover scan, which never bodes well. That said, I've come across a few comics in the last few weeks that aren't in the GCD, so perhaps Cyborg Gerbils #2 will find it's way into the collection one of these days.

To be continued!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 746: New Orleans & Jazz, January 2006

When I pulled this comic out of the quarter bin, I really wasn't sure what to expect. As far as I can tell, Narwain Publishing is an Italian company, though this comic includes a number of North American creators, all donating their time and the proceeds of the comic to the American Red Cross's work helping victims of Hurricane Katrina. There's some nice art pieces, and a couple of short stories about jazz in the city. I'm not sure the tale of a young Louis Armstrong playing at a jazz recital attended by the big names of New Orleans jazz is apocryphal or not, but it makes for a nice creation myth of sorts, and for a nice part of the myth of New Orleans.

Not much else to say about the comic. It was short on narrative. The art is lovely and varied, and the cause is a good one.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 733: Nemi, 2007

Today's comic is one of those rare ones that doesn't have a GCD entry. It's a preview volume for a series of graphic novels to be published by Titan Books, collecting in English a popular Norwegian newspaper strip. Nemi is a cute goth girl who deals with life's odd little dilemmas. The nice thing about the strip is that goth is Nemi's look, and perhaps lifestyle, but that doesn't mean it inflects everything in her life. She has friends who are not goth, and likes guys who aren't necessarily a part of the subculture. In this way, it's a nice way of seeing the similarities between people of different subcultures and, by proxy, cultures.

The art is lovely and evocative, with the characters occasionally transcending into outright cartoonishness - though only when the situation deems it appropriate. And, as it's a European comic, it's not afraid to stray into topics that might be considered taboo in North American newspaper comics, such as not remembering who it is you've woken up next to in the morning. Honestly, Nemi is the sort of person I'd want as a friend, though is definitely the kind of person whose friends might be required to pick up the pieces of her life on a semi-regular basis.

Recommended, if you can track it down.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 2 - Doctor Who Classic Comics #1, December 1992

Doctor Who comics, in the weekly iteration of the magazine, were amongst the earliest comics I ever read. I like to boast that this means I was reading Alan Moore comics almost as soon as I could read, which, if you've ever met me, explains a good deal about the person I am, I think. But the comics I cut my teeth on certainly weren't the first comics based on the venerable science fiction series. As the editorial in this magazine notes, "it was less than a year after the series's...debut on television" that a comic strip started running in the appropriately named TV Comic magazine.

I only have three issues of this series, but I'm glad to have a chance to read some of the older Doctors' tales in comics. Aside from the annoying habit of actually referring to The Doctor as "Doctor Who," the stories contained herein are pretty cool little pieces that capture the flavour of the television series quite nicely. The longest of the stories, "Timebenders," deals with a Nazi teleportation experiment that accidentally pulls the Doctor back to the Second World War, where he has to stop the Third Reich from gaining time travel tech. Classic Doctor Who.

One of the other features in the comic is one of my favourite bits of Doctor Who comics, "The Daleks." The Doctor's nemeses get their own story told, from their beginnings as organic beings to their eventual attempts at universal conquest. The Daleks may look slightly silly, but when they're handled well, they're terrifying. These comics, published in the 60s originally, were also reprinted in the main DW magazine, and I always looked forward to the next installment of a series where I could, much of the time, root for the baddest of bad guys. I don't know if it's ever been collected, but if not, it should be.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 602: Moon Comix #2, 1977

Did I say I was going to read 60s Marvels for the rest of the week? Why do you even listen to me anymore?

How about weird British undergrounds instead?

I picked this comic up around the same time I bought my Heavy Metal collection, just before moving to Calgary. It's an infuriating comic. Not for any particular content-related reasons (though David Noon's strips in the comic are mildly racist - not uncommon for an underground, and ironically presented - Edit, Jan 2018 - Not that this is accusing Mr. Noon, who left a really nice comment, of being racist - more that the ways we talked about different ethnicities has changed significantly in the last 40 years.), but because of its size. It's just a bit too big to fit into a magazine box nicely, so it currently resides on my bookshelf with all of the oversize books I have. I know, I know. And you think you've got problems.

The content of the comic is pretty much what you might expect from an underground, though it's more reminiscent of the American stuff from earlier in the decade than the contemporaneous stuff that people like Art Spiegelman were putting out at the time. The strips in this comic are like glimpses into someone's dreams, or like those mornings where someone tries to explain a dream to you, and it makes no sense of course because it's a dream, but there is somehow an internal consistency to the "story," if we can call it that. More specifically, there's a Hunt Emerson story in here called "Jacket" that looks like it leapt from the pages of Krazy Kat, which really is quite wonderful, and then the buxom lady on the cover up there shows up in occasional panels to offer a surreal commentary on the action of the strips. There's a chilling, and I do mean chilling, story of self-loathing and body anguish by Pamela Reeves, the sole text piece in the comic.

I'm making no promises as to what's coming tomorrow. It's so much more fun that way. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 584: Smurfs #1, 1982

In finding a copy of the cover image for this comic, I found out that Archie superstar Dan DeCarlo actually illustrated the longer stories in this issue. Peyo's pieces are the shorter, single-page gags. Neat.

I rearranged my comic collection a few months ago in order that I could more easily access the latter part of the alphabet (though, admittedly, the earlier part is now more difficult to access), so now I open up a drawer to the miscellaneous section of a letter and pull something out. The miscellaneous category is where all the very strange stuff is hiding, and when I looked today, these little, blue madmen leapt out at me. I've had this comic for a very, very long time. It's got a 1982 publication date, and I may well have had it that long, though it looks to be in pretty good shape for a comic I may have acquired at the tender age of 8.

The stories are good, and funny, and as light-hearted as the Smurfs are. Though there's a strange darkness to the stories, too. Gargamel's insistence on capturing and doing awful things to the Smurfs is played for laughs, but if he were to win, there'd be some genuine horror going on. Perhaps that should be saved for the inevitable gritty reboot.

The Peyo-created parts of the comic read so very differently from the longer stories - I often notice a marked difference between the style of East Asian comics and North American ones, but having examples of European and North American in such close proximity really highlights the differences between those traditions as well. Peyo's pieces use the Smurfs to tell short, amusing stories with almost the feel of a parable. There's something of the Zen koan to these tales, whereas the longer one really play out the adventure narrative. Very cool thing to see. I may well read the next two issues of the Marvel series, just to see if this continues.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 199: Silky Whip #4, August 1998 (Eros Comix Hentai Week Day 6)

Nearing the end of the road here, and what a strange road it's been. I'll admit, I'm looking forward to returning to the Age of Apocalypse. Perhaps the reason that one doesn't see a lot of attention paid to erotic or pornographic comics is that it's very easy to become desensitized and bored with them. How much sex can one watch? (There's a dangerous question to ask if there ever was one!)