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Tuesday, July 15, 2014 ( 7/15/2014 05:55:00 AM ) Bill S.   “AND NEVER BE AFRAID TO BE A SILLYPANTS!” Back when I was a smart-ass lad, the prime source for gag cartoons and non-series strips were the back pages of print magazines and in cheap paperback collections. I owned a box full of these paperbacks as a kid: collections by such magazine stalwarts as Virgil Partch (a.k.a. VIP), and I returned to them as often as I did to pb repackagings of newspaper comics like “Peanuts” or “B.C.” The gag collections were a trace edgier than the newspaper sets. Produced to fit a variety of differently themed magazines – including men’s mags – they weren’t as bound by the restrictions of newspaper syndication.
These days, of course, the largest platform for gag cartoons is the Internet. (Magazines? What are those again?) Yet reading cartoonist Jim Benton’s first print collection of web-based Reddit cartoons, Dog Butts and Love. And Stuff Like That. And Cats. To be sure, the level of what’s considered acceptably funny these days has undergone significant revision. Not even Gahan Wilson at his most demented would have come up with a cartoon featuring a demonic Easter Bunny who cuts off kiddies’ eyelids with scissors. But Benton does and he manages to make it funny – if still a bit icky. As a jokester, Benton is as capable of coming up with a silly boob joke as he is a darkly comic riff on existential angst. The cartoons in Dog Butts vary from one-panel to sequential, from philosophical to goofy, thoughtful to groan-worthy – but they had me laughing out loud and shoving pages under my wife’s nose more than once. (“Check this out! ‘The Passive-Aggressive Raven’!”) Benton’s drawing style ranges from Thurber-ish to more meticulous: in one memorable sequence he draws five panels with stick figures, then shows us in fuller final panel that the figures we’ve been seeing are a horned demon and a three-eyed cat. The devil is in the details, right? NBM’s trade paperback printing of Benton’s cartoons is a touch classier than the cheapie paperbacks cranked out by the likes of Fawcett Books back in the fifties and sixties, but it’s still in the service of the same brand of basic belly laffs. VIP would no doubt approve.
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Tuesday, June 24, 2014 ( 6/24/2014 10:16:00 PM ) Bill S.   ”AT LEAST I GOT TO KILL GENGE’S ASS AGAIN!” An inventively violent sci-fi war comic, Stuart Jennett’s Chronos Commandos (Titan Books) posits an alternate Earth WWII where the Nazis and Allies have both developed time traveling technology – and battle for control of it in the dino-populated Cretaceous Period.Collecting the first five issues of his Titan Comics run, Chronos Commandos: Dawn Patrol sets the ground rules in its opening episode. In it, we see a quartet of soldiers landing in the midst of a primordial swamp where two ravenous raptors are feasting on a fallen prey. Led by the surly Sarge (his name’s redacted, but he’s a clear comic book cousin to Sergeants Fury and Rock), the band has its first grisly casualty ten pages in as a bespectacled private gets chomped in two – strands of viscera holding the bitten top half from its dangling bottom – by a T. Rex. If the Nazis don’t get ya, the wildlife will. Sarge returns as the sole survivor of this first mission, and when he gets back to the present, he finds the Professor – an Albert Einstein lookalike – defending himself from Nazis who have infiltrated the secret time base and stolen the core to the chronosphere: the doohickey which powers the good guys’ time traveling equipment. With scant time before reserve energy runs out, Sarge has to take a new unit (“a tech guy and some muscle”) once more into the past to retrieve the core. The fresh dino fodder includes two indistinguishable soldiers and tech guy Peabody, a full-on nerd enamored with a comic book hero named Crash Jordan, whose clean-cut mien is meant to contrast with our scruffy battle vets. Their Nazis nemeses are led by Captain Richter, a Schwarzennegger-ish foe who thinks nothing of shooting one of his own men if they’re lagging. (Richter and the Sarge have history, of course.) While the commandos wend their way through a landscape filled with thunder lizards and Skull Island variety giant spiders, the Professor has to fend off a Nazi spy who has infiltrated the time base. Packed with quick burst battle action, gruesome monster attacks and playful time travel paradoxes, Chronos Commandos provides enough revved-up thrills to glut a classroom worth of fifth grade boys. Writer/artist Jennett’s colorful art is stronger on the beasties and their habitat than it is on his people, who come across fairly flat at times, but most of the book’s target audience will likely not care too much about that – any more than my boyhood self cared about the B-Movie acting level in Ray Harryhausen’s movies. Jennett’s monsters, both reptilian and human, are the big draw here – which is as it should be.
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Tuesday, June 03, 2014 ( 6/03/2014 10:32:00 PM ) Bill S.   ”DON’T COME BETWEEN THE DRAGON AND HIS WRATH.” Subtitled “An Alaskan Crime Drama,” Eric Hobbs and Noel Yuazon’s Family Ties (NBM/Comics Lit) is a striking graphic novel modernization of Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” The idea of dressing up the Bard of Avon in modern garb is nothing new, of course, though it typically isn’t done to “Lear,” which is generally considered one of Shakespeare’s most difficult works.Scripter Hobbs sets his reworked tale in Anchorage, Alaska, where our king figure is an aging mob boss named Jackie Giovanni. As in the play, the elderly leader has three adult offspring, but where “Lear” made all them women, the graphic novel keeps the villainous Goneril and Regan figures sisters, while making the youngest sibling an earnest young man ironically named Cain. Like his theatrical counterpart Cordelia, Cain is the one decent figure in the batch, though Lear/Jackie doesn’t see this when his youngest refuses to accept inheritance of one-third of the family business. Before you can say “how sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” Jackie is pushed aside by his scheming daughters, who are both wrangling for control of the mob. As in the play, there’s a subplot involving the duplicitous illegitimate son of one of Jackie’s lieutenants. To those familiar with the original work, I will note at this point that there’s an on-scene blinding in that part of the story. It’s a bloody play, and Hobbs remains true to the tale’s basics – even if he doesn’t provide a sardonic jester to add any side commentary. Writing in more modern dialog, Hobbs doesn’t provide the bleak verbal poetry of his ultra-dark source. His Jackie lacks Lear’s eloquence and is more plainly portrayed as in the throes of Alzheimer’s. The old man does get his share of poignant scenes, though, most memorably in a sequence where he wanders through the Alaska snow in the throes of his dementia, backed against a tree, lost in a past that may or may not be real. This is no howl but the moans of a man who realizes, if only momentarily, how much he’s missed and gotten wrong.
Artist Noel Tuazon (who previously collaborated with Hobbs on The Broadcast A superb graphic novel that should appeal to students of Elizabethan drama and of grandiosely brutal gangster stories.
(First published in Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Monday, May 26, 2014 ( 5/26/2014 11:31:00 AM ) Bill S.
Proloff, our scruffy runaway, is kept in isolation by the military maintaining watch on the dividing line between the train’s “rolling ghetto” and the rest of its cars, but the member of an aid group from the second class cars named Adeline Belleau hears of his detainment and wiles her way into seeing him. Caught together, the duo is taken in custody to meet the higher ups curious about the escapee. Along the way, we’re provided a glimpse of the decaying civilization that resides in Snowpiercer. “In this closely confined world, even those who live in luxury see no horizon beyond the carriage wall,” Lob writes. When a plague – perhaps brought onto second class by Proloff -- begins to rage across the train, the situation looks even bleaker. Dark and more than a little despairing, Snow Piercer was originally written by Lob (perhaps best known by American comics fans for his appearances in the early years of Heavy Metal) in the seventies but uncompleted with the writer’s death; the tale was finished several years later by artist Rochette and published in the early eighties, inspiring a sequel, The Explorers, which has also been published by Titan Books. Lob’s script is fierce and sharply characterized -- most specifically in the tentative relationship between Proloff and Adeline, which gives its gloomy conclusion even more emotional heft. With its flashes of nudity, earthy language and raging sense of social injustice, this is not an all-ages friendly lightweight comic book, but one that mature graphic novel readers should find fascinating. Artist Rochette’s black-and-white depictions of Snowpiercer’s cramped world suits its setting and the GN’s class-bound themes. As a reader who’s always loved train travel, I’ve got to admit to being more than a little creeped out by some of the sci-fi details of this voyage (the car containing Mama, an enormous living slab of “vat-grown meat” used to feed second class passengers, for instance), but, then, that’s part of Lob and Rochette’s intent. Perfect reading for all of us caught in this polar vortex Winter.
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Monday, January 20, 2014 ( 1/20/2014 09:42:00 AM ) Bill S.   “I THOUGHT THIS WAS IT . . . THIS WAS THE WAY OUT.” The first book in a graphic novel trilogy by congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis, March (Top Shelf Productions) is a well-wrought personal account of the early days of the movement. It opens on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of a bloody moment in civil rights history wherein 600 peaceful demonstrators were violently attacked by Alabama state troopers under the orders of then-governor George Wallace – then moves to the twenty-first century with congressman Lewis getting ready to attend the inauguration of President Obama. These two contrasting moments serve to frame the trilogy, as Lewis tells of his childhood in Pike County, Alabama, to a pair of young boys brought to his office.Young Lewis had dreams of becoming a preacher, and spent his days on his parents’ tenant farm giving sermons to the chickens he fed, but a trip to Buffalo, New York, with a teacher uncle who “knew which places along the way offered ‘colored’ bathrooms” provided a glimpse of a world quite different from the fiercely segregated south of the 1950’s. On his return home, he grew frustrated with his local ministers’ seeming unwillingness to address racial injustice in their sermons – until he heard a radio sermon from a young Atlanta preacher named Martin Luther King. The moment brought the idea of “social gospel” into focus for the young boy and ultimately led to his involvement in the civil rights movement. Lewis got to first meet Dr. King as a young high schooler considering enrolling at the then-segregated Troy State, but it was a young graduate divinity student, Jim Lawson, who had an even larger impact on his future direction. Lawson was a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an organization dedicated to pacifist principles, which had even published a comic book entitled Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, espousing the idea of passive resistance. Lawson conducted workshops training students in the ways of pacifism and was a major positive influence on the civil rights protests of the 1960’s. March depicts the workshops – which included role plays where attendees heaped verbal and physical abuse on each other – used to steel protestors against the very real threats that they would be receiving once they actually got out in public. As the book makes clear, this was scary business and young activists like Lewis needed to have self-discipline. Book One depicts the first big public protests of the civil rights movement: the lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, protesting downtown department stores in Nashville that refused to serve black or inter-racial groups of patrons. Lewis and his collaborators (co-scripter Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell) depict just how startling and more than a little frightening those non-violent protests were for both black and white southerners. The sit-ins were simple events: protestors would enter a department store, buy something to establish that they were paying customers, then move over to the lunch counter and ask to be served; when they were refused service, they would quietly sit until the end of the day then leave. As the sit-ins grew, they drew violent reaction from “the rough element in the white community,” though the only ones to be arrested were the pacifist protestors. The first volume ends with the mayor of Nashville’s soft capitulation to the protestors, though we still have five years to go before “Bloody Sunday” at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. As a reminder of a hard and shameful piece of American history, March is an effective piece of graphic storytelling. Powell’s expressive gray-toned art beautifully captures the simple moments of boyhood and the grim realities of racism. (We’re shown, for instance, the beaten body of 14-year-old Emmett Till, whose killers were acquitted by a southern jury.) If the insertion of two young boys as dutiful audience at the book’s beginning seems an overly obvious storytelling device, the story itself is one that needs to be retold and remembered – if only to counter those who’d like to gloss over those not-so-idyllic days.
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Saturday, January 04, 2014 ( 1/04/2014 06:14:00 PM ) Bill S.   “WE’RE NOT EGGHEADS. WE’RE JUST INQUISITIVE.” The second “Discovery in Comics” to be published by NBM, Margreet de Heer’s Science follows the format of her earlier edu-comic Philosophy . Drawn in a lightheartedly cartoonish style, the book presents the artist and her colorist husband Yiri as they examine and debate the history of scientific thought and exploration.As with the first volume, their overview begins with the ancient Greeks (Thales of miletus, Euclid, Archimedes, Pythagoras, et al). Though Yiri points out that previous civilizations had their own sciences, Margreet chooses to focus on the Greeks as the first to mold “a system of objective inquiry and logical thinking,” initially around mathematics. One of heroes from Philosophy, Aristotle, also shows up in the early chapters: as a “natural philosopher,” Yiri explains, he was heavily involved in the study of natural phenomena. This focus on the observable and measurable bumps up against those who are primarily devoted to the spiritual, of course, and de Heer devotes pages mid-book to the rift between science and religion – which she amusingly dramatizes as a cartoon couples counseling session. “In reality, science and religion can co-exist just fine,” she asserts, though as her recreation of the arrest of Galileo Galilei depicts, that hasn’t always been the case. Science follows the development of all the major disciplines – math, chemistry, astronomy, physics, geology, genetics, quantum theory – while also taking time to examine its role in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, lesser known women scientists, disregarded scientists and more. The breadth of her subject area may keep her from engaging in as many biographies of leading figures as she depicted in Philosophy though she does manage to capture such luminaries as da Vinci and Darwin. She also charts the history of Earth and of man as determined through radiometry and paleontology, while acknowledging with the latter how much of it is theoretical. The book opens with our duo at a party telling the attendees about their plans to create Science, which leads into a loud series of proclamations from everyone in the room. (“Science is the pinnacle of human abilities!” “Science is nothing but a monkey with a stick poking around in places it doesn’t know anything about!”) “Oh boy!” our cartoonist wonders. “What are we getting ourselves into this time?” Another witty look at human history through a sharply inquisitive and visually inventive mind: can’t wait to see what de Heer does in her discovery of Religion.
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Sunday, November 17, 2013 ( 11/17/2013 05:57:00 PM ) Bill S.   “YOU’RE HERE TO ENTERTAIN THEM, NOT MURDER THEM!” Though the title of Arthur de Pina’s graphic novel series Zombillenium (NBM) reads as if it’s part of the walking dead zeitgeist, in actuality the comic horror series provides a wider range of traditional monstrous types. Set around an amusement park run entirely by monsters (“The Family Amusement Park for Chills and Thrills”), the series centers on a hapless guy named Aurelian Zahner who is accidentally killed when he’s struck by a car containing three of park’s employees – a mummy, a talking skeleton and a vampire.The latter “revives” Aurelian by putting the bite on him, but once he’s been transformed the only place left in the world for him is Zombillenium. To make matters even more bizarre for our hero, when he’s brought to the park offices, he is repeatedly bitten in a pissing contest between vampire park director Francis Von Bloodt and the werewolf inhuman resources manager Andrew. As a result, no one knows for certain what type of beastie Aurelian will become once he starts to transmogrify. To be sure, our hero is not an innocent: his accident came in the aftermath of an ill-thought attempt to rob a local bar that was foiled by Gretchen, a young witch with mysterious ties to Zombillenium and its unseen overseer. Gretchen (whose face graces the cover to first volume in this series) claims to be an intern at the park, though her connection proves to be more complicated. Emotionally attached to the park’s freshest recruit, she comes to Aurelian’s rescue twice when the newbie creature runs afoul of the park’s stringent rules. Our multiply bitten hero turns out to be a singular sensation once he’s fully transformed, arousing the jealousy of other park performers, including a troupe of dancing zombies (there they are!) whose choreographed recreation of Michael Jackson routines is no longer drawing in the crowds. They plot to set up Aurelian – who’d been driven to his original act of criminality when he learned his wife was cheating on him with her Tai Chi instructor – so he’ll go berserk in the park and get canned. When you’re fired from Zombillenium, it’s for keeps. Drawn in Adobe illustrator with a lovingly muted color palette, De Pins’ cartoony art captures both the sinister and silly with equal facility. The French artist’s title setting – with its spires, gargoyles and ferris wheel – is brightly realized, and his monster figures are amusingly expressive. Unlike mainstream American attempts at placing old style monsters in a comic book setting, De Pins doesn’t underplay the darker parts of their behavior. “We all want to massacre people . . . that’s how this job is,” Andrea and Von Bloodt console Aurelian after he has nearly killed a customer during a moment of rage. All part of working in the service industry, right?
Zombillenium does for cartoon monsters what Sfar and Trondheim’s Dungeon
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Wednesday, October 16, 2013 ( 10/16/2013 11:02:00 AM ) Bill S.   “OUR TOWN MONSTER SUCKS A BIT, DOESN’T HE?” Whimsical and inventively goofy, Rob Harrell’s comic fantasy Monster on the Hill (Top Shelf Productions) takes us back to an 1867 England awash with giant beasties. They are so much a part of the landscape that every self-respecting country town has one periodically rampaging through the streets, bringing out tourists to be threatened and frightened by these behemoths. But for the town of Stoker-on-Avon (whose town fathers all share last names with the authors of classic horror yarns), their creature proves an embarrassment, so much so that townees have to vacation in neighboring villages to get some exciting monster action.Stoker-on-Avon’s resident attraction is a morose figure named Rayburn, who would rather sit in his cave bemoaning his existence than trodding into town frightening folks. The Eeyore of Victorian monsters, Rayburn’s cause is taken up by the eccentric man of science, Dr. Charles Wilke (whose lab had been shuttered up by town fathers after several smelly experiments went awry), and the plucky tagalong paperboy Timothy. Their goal is build the melancholic creature’s self-esteem, so he can do a proper job of it. If they don’t succeed, than his place as town menace will taken up by a much more vicious type, a ravenous swampish villain known as the Murk. Cartoonist Rob Harrell, creator of the syndicated strip “Big Top,” crafts a visually appealing all-ages fantasy with some wonderfully expressive monsters. Our threesome’s trek to build up Rayburn’s confidence takes them across the verdant countryside where we meet our title hero’s old schoolmate Tentaculor and young Timothy is temporarily turned into a mushroom – a side plot that provides some of the graphic novel’s funniest moments. It all ends in a showdown with the Murk on the streets of Stoker-on-Avon, where Rayburn is given the chance to prove his mettle. Monster on the Hill is the type of graphic novel that is all too rare in America these days: happily cartoony, suitable for kids and adults, craftily plotted and rendered with personality and plenty of grounding detail: the kind of lighthearted adventuring that Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge would have recognized, in other words. Here’s hoping that Harrell has more GN fantasies in him.
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Saturday, August 03, 2013 ( 8/03/2013 12:07:00 PM ) Bill S.  “REMARKABLE HOW PHILOSOPHERS ARE OFTEN CONSIDERED SUBVERSIVE ELEMENTS IN POLITICALLY UNSTABLE TIMES.” The first in a series of engaging volumes subtitled “A Discovery in Comics,” Margreet de Heer’s Philosophy (NBM) sketches its way through the origins of Western philosophy to selected modern thinkers. De Heer opens her personalized educ-comic by depicting her inquisitive five-year-old self confronting the idea of thought for the first time, charting her changing perspective until she reaches married adulthood, then moving into a consideration of the differences between human and animal consciousness. Joined by her husband, cartoonist and colorist Yiri T. Kohl, she moves into an examination of the foundations of Western philosophy.This she accomplishes with wit and clarity – not an easy thing to do as anyone who has taken an Intro to Philosophy course can attest. The Dutch cartoonist’s examination of the cornerstone philosophers follows a simple format: one-page summary of the figure’s life followed by several pages delineating each thinker’s grounding concepts. Occasionally, our heroine will devote pages to a cartoon demonstration of the principles in action as when she engages in a Socratic discussion with her hubby that opens with the question, “Why is everyone and everything always against me?” Starting with the ancient Greeks’ Big Three (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), de Heer moves into medieval philosophers Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, focusing on their attempts at merging Greek thought with Christian doctrine. From there, she travels to her native Netherlands to look at three figures (Erasmus, Descartes and Spinoza) who made their mark and concludes by asking three other people in her life who they consider an "empowering" modern philosopher. (Husband Yiri picks George Carlin, a choice that I personally wouldn't dispute.) In between, she also takes time to debate free will and perception with her spouse.
Heady stuff indeed, but done with a simple, witty cartoon style comparable to Stan Mack in his entertaining dissection of the history
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Sunday, May 19, 2013 ( 5/19/2013 08:21:00 AM ) Bill S.   “NO POINT MESSING UP ARMAGGEDON WITH PETTY FIST FIGHTS.” A swiftly catastrophic Apocalyptic comic, John Byrne’s Doomsday.1 (IDW) hearkens back to one of the first professional comics on which the fan fave writer/artist worked: a short-lived series done with writer Joe Gill for the poverty row comics company Charlton entitled Doomsday +1. Where the civilization trashing disaster in the first series was man-made, though, the dire events in .1 prove natural: a massive solar flare large enough to break away from the sun as a huge sphere hurtling Earthwards. Charting the impending doom is an international space station crew whose shielding protects them from the flare’s radiation.Byrne, in the opening issue, cuts between the station and a series of brief vignettes that will likely pay off in the future: a distraught Madam President who grimly jokes that her opponents had always claimed she’d preside “over the end of civilization,” a callous Pope fleeing the Vatican, the faceless crew of a submarine, inmates in a maximum security Texas prison. When we learn that the area most likely to escape relatively unscathed is northern South America (“a pity it could not be somewhere more civilized,” Byrne’s Pope sardonically notes), we know those nasty Lone Star inmates are gonna show up to bedevil the good guys. The characterization’s fairly sparse in this set-up issue, though a few figures promise to provide some meat in later issues: foremost among these are Benning, the cantankerous capitalist responsible for the space station, and that cynical Pope. The first reads like Byrne’s piss-take on Robert Heinlein’s competent geezer; the second should prove a prime source for sardonic one-liners. When one of his underlings, for example, offers the thought that the flare could be divine judgment cleansing the Earth for a portion of humanity to survive, his Eminence replies, “I suppose you could look at it that way. If you believe in that sort of thing.” A few of the rest are primarily defined by their nationality: the good-natured Canadian crewman (“I’m just a poor farmboy from Manitoba.”), for instance, though hopefully they’ll be given more to do in upcoming installments. Issue #1 concludes with the flare hitting Earth and our space station crew returning to Earth to find a burnt landscape and . . . ? Though much of the debut is – in the tradition of s-f disaster tales – primarily devoted to scenes of talking and desperate strategizing, the panels set in the space station provide some visual variety as writer/artist Byrne depicts his figures from a variety of floating angles in their gravity free environment. Aided by colorist Leonard O’Grady, the artist's handling of the firestorm and its aftermath prove suitably awe-ful. Ending the opener at dawn, howver, he teasingly holds back the full revelations of devastation until issue #2. Bring ‘em on, John!
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Monday, February 18, 2013 ( 2/18/2013 10:10:00 PM ) Bill S.   “YOU WANT TO GO ON A QUEST?” Collecting the first arc of his funny animal post-Apocalyptic web comic into two print packages, Aaron Neathery's Endtown Volumes one and two (Jarlidium Press) provides a welcome intro for those readers who prefer to see their comic art slapped down on bright white paper. The format suits Neathery’s expressive cartoon style and makes lingering over his artwork all the more enjoyable. Call me a twentieth century geezer, but, dammit, comics work best on paper.For those unfamiliar with the science fantasy strip (now in its fourth year and currently running on Go Comics), “Endtown” is set in a future world decimated by an arm race catastrophe which resulted in most its of survivors being transformed into either anthropomorphic or monstrous mutations. The former look like funny animal characters down to their three-fingered hands; the latter turn out to be well-fanged, multi-robed nightmares with no trace of their humanity intact. A few humans survived without changing – most of them seemingly turning toward a neo-Nazi obsession with genetic purity – and take control of the “topside.” The mutant animals and their few still-human allies take refuge in an underground city, the “Endtown” of the title, occasionally sending out foraging expeditions topside to look for canned goods.
Told by an oracle to seek a dying mutant tree aboveground, Gustine and her loyal lover head up to a decaying city where they’re confronted by the maddened scientist responsible for the disaster and swarms of mimicky pixel creatures called Dittos. The latter recreate a flashback to the Apocalypse, resulting in a memorably grim sequence: Neathery’s ability to switch from whimsical Carroll-ian satire to more disturbing fare is reminiscent of Walt Kelly’s “Pogo” during that strip’s memorable Simple J. Malarkey/Joe McCarthy takedown. Since the story arc in these two volumes, “Endtown” has switched its focus to other animalized denizens of the underground outpost, providing some clues into the origins of this mysterious hideaway along the way. As a fan of the Albert/Gustine partnership, I have to admit initially being a bit hesitant in embracing the newer cast, though the big-hearted mouse Holly has since won my heart. Recently, the online strip concluded an engaging second arc featuring our girl and Wally, a feline newcomer to Endtown. Here’s hoping the first two books do well enough to encourage print editions of the second story line. And now that we’re in a new ‘un, maybe we could get a glimpse of how Albert and Gustine are doing these days?
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Thursday, November 15, 2012 ( 11/15/2012 10:05:00 PM ) Bill S.   “WRITTEN, DRAWN, COLORED AND POSSIBLY DROOLED ON.” The fourth volume collecting the adventures of Roman Dirge’s demented li’l dead girl Lenore Lynchfast, Lenore: Swirlies (Titan Books) continues the cartoonist’s agreeably twisted mesh of family unfriendly kids’ comics, Tim Burton-y Gothicism and ADHD storytelling. (As Edward Gorey was to Victorian children’s cautionaries, Dirge is to fifties era Harvey Comics.) Reprinting the last four issues of his sporadically published comic book, the book follows our heroine as she reigns chaos on a child’s birthday party, thwarts the vengeful schemes of the mortician whose life was ruined the day our girl revived on his table, breaks the heart of a button-eyed stalker named Mr. Gosh, and plants her faithful companion, the vampire doll Ragamuffin, in the soil resulting in a bumper crop of tiny yipping Ragamuffins.
Dirge’s pen and brushwork remains grotesquely expressive -- suited to a heroine who goes through un-life happily oblivious to the sound of lice eating her head. One of the book’s highlights proves to be a three-page wordless sequence where Lenore and her companion efficiently dispatch a quartet of mini-Ragamuffins. It’s the kind of sequence that you can imagine the old Warner Bros. cartoon unit depicting -- if they’d been allowed to do shorts featuring living dead kids . . .
(First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # |Sunday, October 21, 2012 ( 10/21/2012 07:57:00 PM ) Bill S.   “YOU CAN’T TRUST ANYONE WHO PUBLISHES THEIR OPINIONS FOR A LIVING.” A graphic novel debut for Dandy Warhols frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor, One Model Nation (Titan Books) is a rock ‘n’ roll blend of tall tale and cultural history set in late seventies Berlin. Centered on an art-rock German called One Model Nation (the name recalls Brit post-punkers New Model Army, but the sound is apparently more Kraftwerk-ian), the story is written as a flashback to 1977, where the Baader-Meinhof Gang was still actively engaged in terrorism. Taylor-Taylor plays fast-and-loose with the timeline here -- the better to connect his synth-y band to the era’s would-be revolutionaries -- but this doesn’t interfere with his engaging look at the ways that art and politics can both feed off and work against each other.German authorities, seeing groups like OMN as reflective of the “Terrorist Generation,” crack down on the band’s concerts. As their story opens, we see one of the police’s violent interruptions of one of these get-togethers, which is heavily attended by members of the Red Army Faction. To the authorities, this is proof that the band has ties to the self-proclaimed communist terrorists, and as the story progresses we discover that some within the OMN’s circle are indeed with aligned with the bomb planters. While the musicians themselves remain contemptuous of politics, they still retain a potent political image, in part due to their faux military dress. Taylor-Taylor moves between the musicians in his largely indistinguishable band (the one exception being keyboardist Sebastian, who briefly leaves the group for an idyllic stay at his father’s farm) and the acts of political terrorism that shadow them. He even restages Ulricke Meinhof’s violent rescue of Andreas Baader from imprisonment, as act that would play as totally unbelievable if it hadn’t actually happened. In addition to the period’s political figures, Taylor-Taylor also sneaks a real-life rock star into the tale: David Bowie appears during a party sequence, more strikingly colored than the muted members of the band, on the verge of recording his Berlin albums. He makes an offer to work in OMN’s studio, but, unfortunately the facilities have been trashed by the cops. Performance artist Klaus Nomi also has a one-panel cameo during a concert scene, but unfortunately only serves as window dressing.
(And for those wondering exactly what this fake band’s brand of art-noise sounded like, the ever clever Taylor-Taylor has put together a faux-greatest hits disc entitled Totalwerks 1: 1969-1977 (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: modern comics # | |
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) illustrates this violently melancholy tale with lots of loose ink strokes and gray wash. Occasionally, as a reader, I had to work to differentiate some of the actors in a particular panel, but this approach ultimately serves to mirror the central figure’s confusion. In a world awash with treachery, you need to be at your sharpest to survive. The central tragedy of both Lear and Jackie Giovanni is that neither man is capable of seeing who within their family is truly looking out for him.
"THE PROMISED LAND IS LOST." Released by Titan Books to ride on the release of a movie adaptation, Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette’s 
albums do for funny animals.
of the American Revolution. The cartoonist has at least two more volumes in her “Discovery in Comics” series, one of which, 
has recently been released by the American comics publisher NBM. This first is definitely recommended for those with an interest in graphic storytelling that goes beyond the usual genre work – or anyone who wants to bone up on the basics of Western thinking.
Goofily ghoulish and grisly -- with at least one good moment that will get the reader wondering “Should I even be reading this?” (for me, it comes early in the kiddies’ birthday party) -- Swirlies keeps its comic eye on both the innocence and casual cruelty of the very young. In one tale, for instance, our heroine pushes aside the obsessed Mr. Gosh by listing all the things she’d rather do than be loved by him (among the items, “be a female in The Hills Have Eyes), then immediately does an about-face when she learns that he lives in a cupcake castle. We know the button-eyed creep’s heart will ultimately be crushed, though, and of course it comically is.
Artist Jim Rugg does a dandy job capturing the mood and look of the era. If he seems at times more visually invested in the terrorist sequences than he does the chattier moments, well, who can blame him? If forced to choose between dissertations on art versus politics and things getting blowed up real good, who wouldn’t go for the big bang? Still, as a look at a creatively and political volatile time, One Model Nation is a treat for those of us who still cherish our copies of Heroes and Trans-Europe Express..
