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 1893: Razor: Metal and Flesh, 1996

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One last little bit of Razor, though I'm pretty sure I've got at least one issue of one of the Avatar series, so we'll check back in with Ms. Mitchell at a later date.

 

A bit of research on this comic reveals that it was a box-topper for a set of collector cards of the same name. There's not really an indication of when the story takes place in Razor's continuity, though there are ads for the final issue of Razor: Torture in the back, so I'd place it around there. There's also a "next time" caption box at the end of the comic, which is weird given that it was distributed as a promotional item. Does it continue in another box-topper? It is a reprint of something previously published? Are these questions I'm likely to ever answer?

 

That last one I can at least give some kind of response. Razor has been interesting to read, but as I've noted it's not really my thing. I think I like a bit less ultra-violence in my superheroes (which is what Razor and company really are), and a little less randomly-revealed female flesh. Contextually, I can see the time and place that this comic emerges from, but I don't think it was a place that added much to the ongoing narrative of comics themselves. Actually, if it did contribute to that overall narrative, then it was to reinforce the idea of comics as a violent, sexist, throwaway medium that is more concerned with titillation than it is story. And if that sounds like a harsh judgment, answer me one question: why are all the women in comics of this ilk either naked or clad in costumes that may as well be naked? There's literally no story reason for this.

 

Kind of a negative note to end my look at London Night Studios. I'm sure that there were people for whom these comics were very important, and that they enjoyed them in ways that I don't. And that's fine and good.

 

But I still don't really get it.

 

More to follow.

 

Further Reading and Related Posts

 

I recently sorted out all my promotional comics. I have a surprising amount of them, and apparently I've read quite a few for the project.

I don't remember if I've linked to all of my "bad girl" comic reviews, but here they are again.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1276: Ash Mini Comic, 1995

This story literally takes place between two pages of the regular Ash series. I don't know much about that series, except that it's about a super-powered fire fighter. It's got Quesada/Palmiotti art, which is always lovely to look at. Even the cover attests the way they play with solidity and form. There's an interesting body language at play, in that bodies in the comic have their own language. If Ash is losing control, he looks more beastly, almost like a bear.

However, outside of the context of the series, I'm not sure what was going on. There's something kind of nice and zen about reading a comic that one lacks the context for. I can just immerse myself briefly in something strange and exciting, and then I pop back out and delve into something else. Perhaps I'll try to hit up some really random things over the next little while.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1274: Real Heroes #2, 1994

As the cover says, Storm and Namor have to stop a crazed Hulk and Wolverine who have been mind-controlled by the "Gods of the North" to kill all of humanity...by fighting with one another.

I think.

Promo comics that feature mainstream characters are always a bit dodgy, as those characters have to conform to situations in ways that they might not in their regular appearances. This comic is a heavy-handed lesson on environmental pollution and the dangers it poses. I suppose, in thinking through gods as metaphors, the destruction of the environment is causing "retaliatory" damage against human beings.

Where are the superheroes when you need them?

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1106: Rocketmen Adventures: Axis of Evil #3, 2005

One last fill-in for today! I don't know if I'll ever find the other comics in this series, or indeed how many there are. But they've been short, silly fun.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1102: Rocketmen Adventures: Axis of Evil #1, 2005

Not only is this an entry in the project, but it's also a whole comic you can read too! This was an insert into a package of "Rocketmen" cards from WizKids. Each card had a pop-out spaceship you could build and then play a game with. It was an attempt to take their successful "Pirates of..." series of game cards into the realm of pulp science fiction. It wasn't quite as bit a hit, I don't think.

I do like the pulp aspect of the adventure. The dictators are thinly-veiled allegories for Stalinist Communism, or any one of a number of fascist regimes. The heroes are typical Saturday Morning Matinee fare. What more is there to say?

Only that, unfortunately, I don't have all of them, so parts 1 and 3 will have to suffice. It's a pity because I do have a soft spot for pulp adventure strips. I'd love to know how this one turns out.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 803: The Halifax Explosion, 1997

Back to the random comics from the second quarter of the alphabet, and a little slice of Canadiana, today.

The explosion at Halifax in 1917 is one of the major events of Canadian Twentieth century history. As a country that was tightly linked to England but separated by such a great distance, the horrors, at least the conventionally destructive ones, of the First World War seemed very distant to citizens of the country. But this disaster, as the comic says, was "the biggest man-made explosion in the world until the atomic bomb was used in the Second World War." I can't imagine the devastation, and the comic only manages to hint at it. But it must have shown the people of the East Coast, at least, that regardless of how far away the war seemed, the possibility, or even probability, of the destruction in Europe affecting North America was high.

Though based on a historical event, one that most Canadian school children know the outcome of, the comic manages to build a nice bit of suspense as it progresses. We see heroic and foolish actions, and the course of history that inexorably draws us to the climactic two-page spread of an enormous explosion. Rather than depict the disaster from a distance (as one might see a mushroom cloud depicted in a comic), the artist and writer instead choose to place us within the inferno, able to see shards of buildings and blossoming fireballs and little else. It's a rather visceral rendition, one that puts the reader in the center of a horrific accident, and serves to make this historical promo comic, traditionally a sort of boring genre, quite engaging.

Oh, and I should mention that, yes, it's a promo comic, and was distributed with McDonalds' Happy Meals in the late 90s.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 626: Adventures @ eBay #1, 2000

A first for the project this morning: I sat down to read my comic for today, Michel Rabagliati's FCBD title The Adventures of Paul, but when I came to access the information on my database, it turns out I read this comic well over a year ago. I suppose it was bound to happen, especially once I abandoned the alphabetical read-through. So instead, I present today a very, very weird little promotional comic. Given the publication date, I must have procured this while working for Cover to Cover Books in Hanover, Ontario, and basically this is a step-by-step guide to buying comics on eBay. Drawn by Judd Winnick. Written by Jen Van Meter and Greg "I redefined Wonder Woman/co-created Batwoman" Rucka. I, at first, questioned how eBay could possibly have swayed these amazing creators to write what amounts to a long-form advertisement, until I realized that this was 16 years ago, and these were creators still in the process of making names for themselves.

Anyway, it's pretty much what you'd expect. It tries to make the argument that buying online is much better than braving the wild streets of the city, and the dense jungles of the comic store, to get your back issues. For me, the most amusing part is the panel that says "Now you need to send payment...", which anyone whose ever used eBay will know is the reason why it's a terrible place to buy comics. Like most online shopping, you'll get blasted by the shipping.

I have nothing else to say about this. It's literally an advertisement in comic form. Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 474: Hero Factory #6, July 2011

Heavy night of drinking last night, and I'm far too hung over to attempt a reading of Batman #682. We'll get back to it tomorrow.

My other regularly updated blog stands as a testament to my love of Lego's Bionicle series. That line of toys lasted from 2001 to 2010. Over the course of Bionicle's evolution, the elements that made up the toys evolved and became quite versatile for building. Following the closing of the story line in 2010, Lego tried a few different variations on the theme, including a number of licensed properties (Ben 10, Toy Story, Marvel/DC Superheroes), but one of the things that made Bionicle so good was that it was a proprietary property. In an effort to replace Bionicle, and its transmedia potential, Lego introduced Hero Factory the same year that Bionicle folded. While the story is quite different (a factory produces robotic heroes to defend the world against threats), the general premise of robotic heroes and villains whose elements are interchangeable remains.

Bionicle also produced a long-running series of comics, and it seems that Lego tried to continue that trend with Hero Factory as well. Though I picked this issue up in a thrift shop, the discoloured strip along its back tells me that it was included in a Lego Club magazine, much as the Bionicle comics were. It's an aspect of Lego's promotion of Bionicle that I liked, and had I been a fan of Hero Factory, I probably would have liked these too. What's strange is that the series only ran 7 issues, and did not encompass the entirety of Hero Factory's evolution. This particular comic introduces the third wave of Heroes, but I can't imagine that the following issue did much more than finish off this story. The toy series continued for 4 years after this issue, but apparently the comics didn't.

The comic itself is well-realized. The heroes are distinct enough, both in appearance and personality, that one can connect with at least one of the focal characters. The setting is neat, a jungle planet, and the villain, a rogue doctor from the Hero Factory, is creepy-looking. An overall pretty good comic.

I never collected Hero Factory the same way that I did, and do, Bionicle, but I do buy the parts when I find them at garage sales or thrift shops. They're good for building, and many of the elements have made their way into the generation 2 Bionicle series that started last year. One of my complaints about Hero Factory was that it made the builds far too simple, whereas Bionicle, though less and less over its history, retained some of the technical aspects of its Lego Technic beginnings. But this is not the place to discuss this. That's on that other blog I mentioned above. Gotta keep my obsessions compartmentalized.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 415: Anna & Froga/Moomin Valley Turns Jungle, May 2012 ("Hey Kids! Comics!" Week, Day 3)

Today's selection was a giveaway for Free Comic Book Day 2012. There was a time in the short history of FCBD that stores would set out tables full of comics, and you could just take what you liked. It's now become a buy one get one sort of situation, which I'm totally against, but having not been a comic shop owner for quite some time now, I've no say in how these things progress.

"Anna & Froga" is an odd little comic. Froga's a bit of a dick, and from the brief couple of stories in this issue, I can't really see why Anna is his friend. Unless she's a dick too, but we haven't seen that in the stories contained herein. There are, as with most good children's writing, some pedagogical moments happening here (i.e., don't eat gumballs from the ground, don't take advantage of the friendship of a tuna - you know, common lessons we all need to learn), and Anouk Ricard's deceptively simple art style gives the stories not only the thematic feeling of childhood, but also the visual feeling.

The B-side (or is it a double A-side) of the comic is a reprint of the Moomin comic strip. I've been aware of these stories for a couple of decades. Back when I was active on the Barbelith discussion forums, someone recommended the Moomin children's books to me. I never did get around to reading them, but every now and again these reprints crop up in a FCBD offering, and I think that perhaps I ought to read them. Which, really, is what FCBD ought to be about. My understanding of it at the beginning, and I had my store for the first FCBD, was that it was designed to bring in readers, and to expose jaded readers to things they hadn't read before. Now, sadly, it's more a marketing tool for big summer crossovers from the Big Two, and an incentive program for comic stores (well, not all of them, but a lot).

FCBD is coming up in less than a month, and I strongly recommend heading out to your local comics store and trying out something new. You might be surprised by what you read. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 404: BIONICLE: Toa Nuva, 2002

To cap off this stretch of BIONICLE, I'll have a look at the promo comic that came with the 2002 release of the Toa Nuva. I will admit, I was guilty of misjudging this short comic for a moment or two. It consists of 4 pages of wordless story, 6 pages of pictures of the new toys, and 4 pages of ads for other Lego products. And, I was certain, the comic was lifted from BIONICLE #8, specifically the defeat of the Bahrag and the transformation of the Toa. Had it actually been the case, I would have been far more critical of this piece than I'm going to be. It was around 2002 - 2003, very early on, that the BIONICLE toy line began the practice of releasing "clone" sets. The Bohrok were all basically the same model, just coloured differently. The practice is decried in fan communities these days. Had the comic, too, been a clone, that would have been unsurprising.

But it wasn't.

I'm pretty sure, though there's no credits, that this is Carlos D'Anda and Randy Elliot doing the art. It does retell that particular part of the BIONICLE saga, but from completely different angles. It's almost as if the panels of this mini-comic could fit between the panels of the original. If I find myself with a bit of free time, maybe I'll attempt it.

Anyway, I think we'll move back over to Alpha Flight tomorrow. I'm curious to see what's been happening in 1980s Canada. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 403: BIONICLE #9, 2002

Comes the inevitable split. The Toa have never really been one of those groups that works particularly well together for very long. I think it comes from being made up of of leaders. Each team of Toa is made up of the very best of their kind, the Matoran. Of course they're all going to feel like they can handle everything on their own. And it certainly offers a nice look at how actual political relationships work - the various Toa, representing their regions, come together and prove greater than the sum of their parts, but individual interests always come back to the surface. There's a lot going on on Mata Nui.

That's the last full comic for this bit of the BIONICLE series. They title this "The Bohrok Saga Part 6 of 6," which I find a bit weird because it ends on a cliffhanger, and the story continues with more, albeit different, Bohrok in the next issue. Though there's a good chance that issue didn't come for a few months as the toys would have to be released early in 2003 first.

We'll get to those later. Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 402: BIONICLE #8, September 2002

This cover plays on a particular trope of mainstream comics that irks me slightly. Of course it's not the end of the Toa - how could that possibly be, especially in a comic that is, for the most part, an ad for the toys of the Toa? But though it irks me, I also have to respect it, if only slightly. Such hyperbole is endemic of the popular comics genres, a cleaving to the sensational that comics seem to have contracted from film advertising. Though I think, in this case at least, rather than offering the possibility of an "END," to advertise the fact of the Toas' transformation into Toa Nuva could have been just as exciting, and would have seemed less disingenuous.

Enough for today. I'm very tired. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 401: BIONICLE #7, July 2002

The descent into the depths of Mata Nui to face the queens of the Bohrok swarm turns up....power armour? Isn't this a nice little fantasy comic? Where'd the power armour come from?

One of the things I've always loved about the BIONICLE series is that it straddles that line between fantasy and science fiction really, really well. Even at this point, very early in the series, and still very much steeped in the mystical aspects of the story, we're seeing bits and pieces of technology, small clues as to the apocalyptic tale that is to unfold. This is, of course, not to say that the mystical side of the story gets completely eclipsed or erased - as I say, the story straddles the line, and, for the most part, stays there. There's no reason, really, that science fiction and fantasy can't exist in the same continuum.

Enough for now. More tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 400: BIONICLE #6, May 2002

I feel like, having hit 400 straight days of writing about comics, I should have something important or profound to say. But my first thought upon opening this document was that I didn't have much to say so this would be a short post. Let's call that Morrissettian irony.

I have applied to take a leave of absence from my grad program. My supervisor has a very lax notion of what supervision means, and my dissertation committee recently told me of their opinion of the irrelevance of just about every text I'm hoping to write about. It has disheartened me. I was under the naive assumption that a university English department would be a place where innovation of thought would be encouraged - unfortunately it seems that if you don't toe the party line, your contribution to literary scholarship is dissuaded. I'm not certain how we're supposed to innovate if no one in a department is interested in innovation.

So, instead, this year I'll keep writing here. Comics have a vast amount of important information to convey to us, be it through the narratives they contain or through the ways they communicate information to us, ways that are unique to this medium. As foundational elements in fan-driven franchises, they're also vitally important to transmedial storytelling, which is something I'm becoming more and more invested in - it seems to me that there's a conflation to be made between the transmedial and the mythic. And, in the end, I don't need to be in a university department, nor do I need the approval of the close-minded, to disseminate ideas that I think are important and interesting.

Oh. Today's BIONICLE comic was pretty badass - the Toa learn to work as a team, to value one another's input. Also, the Matoran make awesome battle mechs and kick biomechanical butt.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 399: BIONICLE #5, April 2002

The nice thing about this particular run of BIONICLE is that it's a more sustained story than the previous introductory arc. There's development of situations, continuity between issues, and, hopefully, a resolution to the story at the end. This issue also continues the idea that the invasion of the Bohrok is a phenomenon that has to take place in the natural order of things - the trouble is that Makuta has used this natural phenomenon for his own sinister purposes. Of course, this offers us an interesting perspective on the Toa, as they now have to combat something that is emblematic of part of their creed - the Destiny part of "Unity, Duty, Destiny." I'm reminded of the efforts of the Illuminati in Jonathan Hickman's Secret Wars and it's lead ups, this notion of combating something that is unbeatable. Why fight against something that is not only inevitable, but natural? And so BIONICLE asks us one of the fundamental questions of human nature.

Is it any wonder that I love this series so?

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 398: BIONICLE #4, January 2002

Following on from our brief introduction to them yesterday, the Bohrok begin their clearing of the island of Mata Nui in today's issue. I've been cheating a bit and going to BioSector01 to do some background reading on the storyline. As I noted yesterday, the narrative takes place over numerous media, so keeping up with it is sometimes challenging. According to the lore of the series, the purpose of the Bohrok is to cleanse the island, though to what purpose, I'm not sure yet. What's interesting, though, is that, although the Bohrok are awakened prematurely by Makuta as a way of challenging the Toa, the confrontation is really a misunderstanding. The Bohrok are doing work set out as part of the plan for the Matoran universe by the Great Beings. When, or if, we find this out in the official media, I have no idea. But knowing it does make for an interesting take on the current story.

This arc is six issues long, so we'll make our way through that, and then perhaps pop back into the Great White North of Alpha Flight. I'm hoping to get a few of my non-40 Years articles up again soon, though the end of term is coming, and that's always a busy time.

I noticed in today's issue that D'Anda's art is becoming a bit more easy with the restrictions of the toys that he has to deal with. At one point Lewa is holding his axe just below the head, which would be impossible to do with the toy. The series undergoes a number of interesting shifts like this. As I've previously mentioned, the art becomes more and more stylized as the series progresses, and the story itself goes from mystical island adventure to post-apocalyptic adventure, and does so far more smoothly than a lot of stories that take this path. D'Anda finishes his run on the series after "The Bohrok Saga," and I'm curious to note how radically things shift when Randy Elliott takes over. But that'll be in a couple of weeks. Let's live in the now.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 397: BIONICLE: Swarm, 2002

Another promotional comic today, this one included with the six Bohrok figures released during BIONICLE's second wave in 2002. I'm finding the comparison of comics distributed with toys and comics about toys very interesting. I have a fair number of toy inserts, and more often than not they're there to provide scant story and increase excitement about actually playing with the toy. In contrast, the toy comics distributed through the comics market are more about establishing character than form, I guess.

The early run of BIONICLE comics was sparse, and the story skips over bits and pieces that are told through flash animations online or, later into 2003, a film. The story really does exemplify the idea of a transmedial fiction, in that canonical parts of the story are told through different media, but not reproduced separately in each of those distinct media. To get the whole story, you need to experience each of the different media. There's a fantastic project called The BioMedia Project, that actually preserves the various online and print content that was released around the toy line from 2001 to 2010, and continues to archive the current revival content. I'm certain that one day, when the genesis of such transmedial fictions becomes something people are interested in, this project will shed some fascinating light on a very early incarnation of the phenomenon.

So, to get us up to speed, after the meetings that took place in the last four comics, the Toa meet and defeat (sort of) Makuta, who appears in a flash animation in my favourite of his incarnations, a corrupted version of the islanders that the Toa are meant to protect. But upon his defeat, the Makuta sends a signal to the Bohrok swarms, who waken from their canisters with one simple goal: the clearing of the island of Mata Nui.

More tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 358: Alien Agency: The Arrival, 2002

A mini-comic that came with one of the Alien Agency sets from about 10 years ago. I've always had a weird feeling about this comic. It's a Men In Black sort of situation, but there's a troubling dissection scene at the end of the story that makes this series, based on a children's toy, much darker than those movies.

In its defense, the series came with a bunch of play dough forms that one could make around plastic aliens, so you had to cut through the play dough flesh to get to the figure inside.

Which, now that I've typed it out, is really pretty disturbing in and of itself.

But I really liked the sets.

Alright. Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 331: Robots of Cave Alpha, 1986

I wish I felt a little better today so that I could say more about this comic, but I don't.

It's a cool educational comic published by the Soil Conservation Society of America that's not only well drawn and scripted, but actually has some really interesting information in it. I love these sorts of promotional comics, but they're sadly something that's become a thing of the past.

If I'm up to it, I'll update this post when I feel better.