So Long, Mr. Salinger!

A couple years ago I wrote a review of Grant Morrison’s controversial prose issue of Batman (#663) which, despite its excessive length, I was quite proud of. The basis of my analysis was a comparison of Morrison’s story, especially his unusual use of narration, to J.D. Salinger’s infamous “Hapworth 16, 1924.” Salinger has long been one of my favorite writers; so much so that several years ago I voraciously tracked down and read all of his unpublished stories online. I also reviewed Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters here. Although I am saddened by his death, like most fans, I’m also excited by the prospect of 50 years worth of stories finally coming to light. Imagine if Alan Moore had stopped publishing after Watchmen and you kind of get a sense of the anticipation most Salinger fans have lived with for decades. Anyway, despite the fact that it's mostly about Grant Morrison, in honor of Mr. Salinger's passing, I’m reposting my review here unedited.

Batman #663
By Grant Morrison and John Van Fleet
Published in March 2007 by DC Comics, US $2.99

Believe it or not, Grant Morrison’s “The Clown at Midnight”, published in Batman #663, has a lot in common with J.D. Salinger’s final published short story, “Hapworth 16, 1924.”

Having crafted The Catcher in the Rye, one of the most celebrated American novels of all time, Salinger was at the apex of his profession when he wrote “Hapworth.” But when the story first appeared in the pages of The New Yorker in June of 1965, the initial critical reaction was one of distinct outrage.

The crux of the problem was Salinger’s unconventional use of language. “Hapworth,” which is the sixth published tale in Salinger’s series of stories focusing on the eccentric Glass family, (the others include “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” “Franny,” “Zooey,” “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” and “Seymour: An Introduction”) is extremely long-winded, with paragraph-length sentences often encompassing dozens of only tangentially related ideas. The story is written in a manic, rambling, almost incoherent stream-of-consciousness style, in this case as a letter from seven-year-old “wise child” Seymour Glass to his parents from summer camp. The voice Salinger evokes is so academic, so laden with obscure literary references, faux-religiosity and neo-classicism (which, even allowing for creative license, seems implausible when attributed to a seven-year-old) that most readers, even those with Ivy League educations, felt lost and frustrated with the “impenetrable text.” As Janet Malcolm of the New York Times Book Review writes, “it was greeted with unhappy, even embarrassed silence…The critical reception…was more like a public birching than an ordinary occasion of failure to please.” As a direct result of the story’s unprecedented critical backlash, Salinger famously decided to stop publishing his writing.

Of course, the comparison of J.D. Salinger and Grant Morrison, a literary master to, of all things, a Batman writer, may sound absurd, but the strong public outcry against Morrison’s story within the online comic community is not unlike “the public birching” that Malcolm describes. For example, FreakComics.com’s Joe Louis writes in his review, bluntly titled “Batman #663 Sucks REALLY Badly,” “For those of you who didn’t have the extreme displeasure of reading Batman #663, don’t bother. It is not a comic book, it is a novella, and a badly written one at that. Yep, that’s right I said it: Grant Morrison wrote a terrible short story and it got shoved in to the pages of Batman #663 with some horrible art by John Van Fleet.” Tucker Stone, of the Factual Opinion, writes a similar, if less reactionary assessment, stating that the story “seems a bit thrown together, like a late night prequel while (regular artist Andy) Kubert finishes penciling the upcoming chapters,” and goes on to call the issue “a bit off-putting.” Even Joe McCulloch (of Jog The Blog), the comic blogosphere’s critic-laureate, proclaims that the book “winds up about fourteen pages over my personal limit of overextended metaphors and raised-eyebrow faux-pulp.”

But as Janet Malcolm wrote about Salinger’s reviled and misunderstood “Hapworth,” “negative contemporary criticism of a masterpiece can be helpful to later critics, acting as a kind of radar that picks up the ping of the work's originality. The ‘mistakes’ and ‘excesses’ that early critics complain of are often precisely the innovations that have given the work its power."

“The Clown at Midnight” features the highly anticipated return of the Joker, who has been absent from the DC universe after being shot in the face. More significantly, however, this issue marked Morrison’s return to the character after an 18 year gap since his Arkham Asylum graphic novel with Dave McKean was first published in 1989. Though critics remain divided as to the quality of Arkham (interestingly, Jog describes it as “the single shittiest comic Morrison has ever written on his own”), few can dispute that its portrayal of an insane Joker leading a veritable circus of lunatics running loose in the asylum was, if nothing else, unforgettable.

Yet within days of its release, the flood of critical disdain for Batman #663 began. Like Salinger, by far the overwhelming majority of these criticisms focused on Morrison’s unusual prose style. At his excellent blog, “I Am Not the Beastmaster,” Marc Singer writes that “the faux hard-boiled narration…is just bad,” also describing it as “overheated” and “overbaked.” Other critics found similar dissatisfaction with Morrison’s excessive use of metaphors and description. Jog calls the book a “soggy shock show” that’s “just badly written,” while Don MacPherson, at his “Eye on Comics” blog, complains that the book is “marred by…unnecessarily verbose descriptions of peripheral details.” Several critics even extracted individual sentences which struck them as particularly potent examples of Morrison’s “mistakes” and “excesses” and cited them, out of context, as evidence of their conclusions.

While these criticisms are not without some merit, Morrison’s language is actually perfectly suited for its subject matter. The writer uses this “overheated” narrative style not simply as a vehicle for moving the story forward, but as a tool to infuse it with a frantic mania, giving the story an overall sense of insanity. While, admittedly, on an individual sentence by sentence basis, some of Morrison’s conjured images do fall flat (Chapter 2’s descriptions of Gotham City are probably the most glaring examples), the onslaught of outlandish metaphors has the overall effect of creating the sound, rhythm and mood of a madman’s ranting. For example, in Chapter 6, Morrison takes us first inside the Joker’s cell at Arkham, and then drops us right into his head, at the height of his madness. Morrison’s prose matches the chaotic mood one would expect of such a bizarre setting. He writes:

“In the white empty cell, the flat, pressurized silence is relieved by these three things only – the crawling ticks of fluorescent lighting, the slow crackle of breathing – if breathing sounded like paper being torn and torn again and torn again, obsessively, into tiny scraps – and the pin-thin whine of a mosquito that rode in on Batman’s cape and now finds itself locked in a madhouse with something bad for company.

No movement registers either until you look very closely to see the jaws working in stealth beneath surgical gauze and pins. Don’t even think about those sly mandibles chewing down on some poison mantra as the dreadful eyes track the poor mosquito’s lazy flight-path, the way a spider’s might, triangulating its victim.

He’s scrolling through a list of things that make him laugh. Blind babies. Landmines. AIDS. Beloved pets in bad road accidents. Statistics. Pencilcases. BRUNCH! The Periodic Table of the Elements.”

Morrison’s style here is as intentional a device as it is fitting, and like the Joker has done time and time again, it happily calls attention to its own eccentricities. The sheer stylistic madness of the narrator shares an element of the Joker’s madness, crafting wildly imaginative, disturbing and hallucinatory metaphors that are both cringe-inducing and absolutely perfect for this particular tale. Despite the many complaints about Morrison’s use of “purple prose,” it is this wholly distinct and original voice that is the book’s greatest strength.

Another of the common criticisms leveled at Batman #663 is that Morrison offers nothing new in the Joker/Batman paradigm. Jog refers to the issue as “a rather typical Joker story,” adding that “by the final page it’s pretty clear that it’s just more Batman, more Joker, more Harley Quinn, another slugfest, another imprisoning, another run around themes that have been worked out a dozen times before.” Marc Singer expresses a similar sentiment, citing that “Instead of break out of that paradigm, ‘The Clown at Midnight’ looks for a new way to present the same old homicidal Joker” (referring to the classic take on the character established by Denny O’Neil and Neil Adams in the late 70s).

Of course innovation in mainstream superhero comics is a difficult proposition. The editorial constraints inherent in writing superhero books are daunting. You cannot kill off characters (with the rare exception), good must triumph overall, status quo (usually that which was established within the character’s first year of existence) must always, eventually be restored, and action (specifically violence) must govern each story. In addition, most of the more well-known mainstream books have been around for nearly a half century – Batman for more than seventy years – so the volume of back-story, continuity, and popular understanding of a character of such iconic stature greatly limits a writer’s options. This sentiment was perhaps best expressed in Steven T. Seagle’s classic Charlie Kaufman-esqe graphic novel, It’s A Bird, in which the writer’s struggle to find anything original to say took center stage, while the character of Superman became merely a prop.

Yet, despite the claims of some critics, this latest Joker story is much more than a simple variation on a familiar theme. Morrison has delivered a unique and wholly original take on the character which not only takes this weight of history into account, but attempts to do something new stylistically as well. The key to Morrison’s new Joker is the concept that he is perpetually reborn, in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Using this idea, Morrison has found a clever way to reconcile the cumulative history of the Joker without changing the fundamental elements of the character, nor discarding any of the variations that have come before. He has also created a novel approach to explain the Joker’s progressively deteriorating state of mind, while also commenting not only on the fixed, cyclical nature of the Batman/Joker duality, but on the nature of mainstream superhero comics in general.

This concept of “perpetual rebirth,” as applied to the Joker, was first introduced in Morrison’s own Arkham Asylum graphic novel, though back then he referred to it as a “superpersona.” Buried in the middle the Arkham’s erratic script, Dr. Ruth Adams, a psychotherapist to the criminally insane, first introduces Batman, and readers, to this theory on the Joker’s “super-sanity”:

“Unlike you and I, the Joker seems to have no control over the sensory information he’s receiving from the outside world. He can only cope with that chaotic barrage of input by going with the flow. That’s why some days he’s a mischievous clown, others a psychopathic killer. He has no real personality. He creates himself each day.”

Though Arkham Asylum did not explore this idea of the Joker’s perpetual self re-invention further, (focusing rather on the duality of Batman’s identity), the concept of rebirth remains a familiar theme in Morrison’s body of work. As Timothy Callahan, author of Grant Morrison: The Early Years, points out, “ritual and transformation are the centerpieces of (“The Clown at Midnight”), just as they are in Arkham Asylum, only this time it’s the other side of the mirror that’s featured.”

But what exactly is this transformation the Joker undergoes? How exactly does he “create himself”?

The key to understanding this concept requires an understanding of another related theme that pervades much of Morrison’s body of work: the blurring of the popularly understood concepts of space (the “universe”) and time (“continuity”) in the fictional world of comics. In Morrison’s classic run on Animal Man in the 80s, the writer deconstructed the largely artificial concept of “continuity,” expanding the borders of the superhero universe to include, quite literally, everything that has ever been written (though, no doubt for legal reasons, this concept was confined to the "DC universe” only), regardless of continuity. His “comic book limbo,” where long-forgotten characters reside, waiting until they are resurrected by modern writers, was one of the most novel concepts from that revolutionary series, and the idea that stories could intersect in ways that were previously unimagined, is a theme that continues to influence Morrison’s current writing.


In “The Clown at Midnight,” Morrison returns to this idea again, but here the writer takes it one step further, granting the Joker, not macro-awareness of the real world, as he did with Animal Man (in the classic final issue of Animal Man, the main character meets Morrison, his creator, face to face and suffers the ultimate revelation: that he is merely a fictional character), but rather an acute self-awareness of his broader context, his full history. Jog picks up on this as well, noting that “the Joker is acutely self-aware of his many different characterizations over the years, and…his lack of any ‘core’ personality has dropped him into a pattern of necessary reinvention.” This is a key point the casual reader may have missed in the deluge of prose. Morrison’s Joker is not only aware of his colorful history, he has full memory and perspective of his many different incarnations throughout his seventy years of existence. Indeed, in Morrison’s story, this revelation is the very source of the Joker’s madness.

Morrison sheds light on this self-awareness in Chapter 8 by acknowledging the major historical transitions in the Joker’s character:

“His remarkable coping mechanism, which saw him transform a personal nightmare of disfigurement into a baleful comedy and criminal infamy all those years ago (he is, here, referring to the Joker’s origin and early exploits in the late 30s and 40s) – happily chuckling to himself in the garage as he constructed outlandish Joker-Mobiles which gently mocked the young Batman’s pretensions in the Satire Years (presumably the 50s) before Camp (undoubtedly the 60s), and New Homicidal (from Denny O’Neil forward), and all the other Jokers he’s been – now struggles to process the raw, expressionistic art brutal of his latest surgical makeover.”

In a scene which Marc Singer describes as “arresting,” Morrison goes on to describe the Joker’s frightening transition and rebirth:

“Multiple Joker voices vie for control as he prepares to give blasphemous birth to himself like the Word of God in reverse. His only regret is that Batman isn’t here to witness his obscene display, his rampant pathology in full flower.”

Ultimately, the Joker’s rebirth is a physical manifestation of the creative process, a painful awareness of new hands pulling the strings, accompanied by a profound sense of disillusionment that none of it matters, for the cycle will begin anew before too long. This new spin on the Joker explains not only his varying depictions over the years, but casts the character’s evolution and 70+ year history into a new light. The ultimate irony, of course, is that Batman has not been granted such self-awareness, and, as the Joker points out in his endless frustration, all he wants is for “the goddamn Batman to finally get the goddamn joke.”

Morrison also uses this concept of “rebirth” as an interesting and unique way to pay homage to many of the past Batman creators. His prose narrative with scattered spot illustrations, which is more short story than sequential art, is not actually a unique concept. As Timothy Callahan notes, “this issue pays homage to a prose Batman story, entitled ‘Death Strikes at Midnight and Three’” published in 1978 in DC Special Series #15 by Denny O’Neil and Marshall Rogers. “Both titles share the word ‘Midnight,’ which probably isn’t a coincidence,” Callahan notes. Callahan also points out that Morrison himself attempted a similarly-styled Batman story in an obscure UK publication very early in his career. “Two years before he published Animal Man and Arkham Asylum with DC Comics, he contributed a prose story entitled “The Stalking” to the 1986 Batman Annual published in England. The story, a three-page narrative with illustrations by Gary Leach, describes Catwoman’s excursion into the Batcave as she attempts to uncover Batman’s secret identity.”

But “The Clown at Midnight” actually pays tribute not just to the prose writers of the past, but to every creator who has worked on the Joker since his first appearance in Batman #1 in 1940. From the more obvious artist references like “Aparo Bridge” and “Finger Street,” to the more obscure inclusion of two minor characters from Alan Moore’s classic one-shot, The Killing Joke (circus sideshow henchmen, Solomon and Sheba), Morrison is clearly going out of his way to acknowledge the many great Batman creators of the past. In fact, this issue contains many familiar elements that can be traced all the way back to the Joker’s earliest appearances. In Chapter 2, for example, Batman displays a playing card discovered at the clown funeral massacre which is a clear indication that the Joker was behind the murders. The card Batman holds contains the very first image of the Joker from Batman #1, the famous playing card face by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson. Marc Singer also calls attention to the similarities this current Joker story has in common with the classic “Joker’s Five Way Revenge” (from Batman #251) by Denny O’Neil and Neil Adams, which “recast the Joker as a vicious murderer for the first time since the early forties.” In that story, which was deservingly included in DC’s Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told anthology, the Joker murders four of his ex-henchman, each in a cruel and creative manner, all the time leaving carefully crafted clues to lead the Batman on a chase like some helpless rat struggling through yet another booby-trap laden maze. “The Clown at Midnight” clearly draws its underlying “henchman murder’ sub-plot from this classic issue. And as noted above, Morrison even pays homage to himself. “Morrison attempts to canonize his Arkham Asylum interpretation of the mutable multiple-personality Joker who burns through ‘superpersonas’ like a Vegas dealer runs through decks of cards,” Marc Singer notes.

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, Morrison’s concept of “perpetual rebirth” is also a keen commentary on the enduring status quo of iconic comic book characters. Mired in countless origin stories, series re-launches, new creative teams and endless retreads, the classic DC and Marvel characters (not to mention all the superhero rip-offs published by others) are all, in a sense, stuck in a cycle of endless rebirth. Each writer and artist brings to the character a slightly different voice, a different look, a nip here and a tuck there, but for the most part, these changes are cosmetic. They are never drastic enough to fundamentally change the character’s core personality or appearance, which, in the strict editorial shackles of a licensed and copyright-protected corporate property, cannot be altered. But it is these subtle variations, the result of decades of storytelling by hundreds of different creators, which Morrison refers to when he discusses the “multiple Joker voices” (in fact, it is these varying styles that infuse most superhero comics with what little entertainment value they still retain). It is a particularly apropos analysis of the state of superhero comics, and Morrison’s exposure of this deeper truth within the thematic layers of his “rather typical Joker story,” shows the writer’s superb understanding of the nature of the industry.

John Van Fleet’s artwork has also been the subject of much scorn by several prominent online critics. Marc Singer referred to it as “plasticine” while Jog wrote that “the thoroughly disappointing illustrations…weigh the story down with computer-augmented chintz.” Don MacPherson calls the art “stiff” and “confusing,” while Joe Louis complains that it “looks like bad video-game screen cuts (which) don’t capture any sort of drama, suspense, or action that normal comic art might do.”

While, of course, in comics, as in all art, there is always subjectivity and bias on the part of critics regarding the aesthetic value of the work in question, there is no doubt that Van Fleet’s computer animation style is well-crafted. The artist’s style, which relies heavily on photo manipulation, painted art and CGI-like effects, may not appeal to everyone, but his compositions, figure poses and characters are competently rendered, and his use of colors, lighting and perspectives is impressive. At its best, it’s imaginative and downright creepy. His image of the Joker, having just removed his facial bandages after extensive reconstructive surgery (above) is perhaps the single most horrifying portrayal of the character, and certainly conveys the insanity that befits Morrison’s script.

The main problem is that Van Fleet’s art struggles to justify its own existence. In such a dense narrative script, the artwork is almost irrelevant. In a more traditional comic, with actual panel to panel action, the artist’s digital style works much better (see the artist’s work on the Vertigo mini-series Shadows Fall for an example), but here, Van Fleet is forced to punctuate a story which already overwhelms the reader. As a result, the art feels crammed into the text, squeezing out what little space it can find on the crowded pages. At best, these are visually striking spot illustrations whose sole purpose is to give readers a breath before the next dose of “overheated” prose.

Another area where the book falls short, inevitably, given the volume and function of the script, is the interplay between art and text which the best comics (of which Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen remains the gold standard) use to convey story elements. Here, Van Fleet’s art carries absolutely none of the storytelling responsibility, and, as such, serves simply to break apart long blocks of words at its best, and as a distraction at its worst. If there is a failing in the book’s execution, this is it. Even in Neil Gaiman’s similarly-formatted illustrated novel, Stardust, the author knew when to step aside and let his artist convey that which simply could not be as effectively or beautifully conveyed with text.

The other main failing of this particular issue lies not with Morrison or Van Fleet, but with DC’s editorial and design staff who chose the utterly banal and “pedestrian” Andy Kubert cover to hide what is one of the most original Batman stories in years. The stock cover is nothing other than another in an endless string of clichéd Batman vs. Joker images, with nothing new or interesting whatsoever about it. There is no hint of what a radical departure from the previous 662 issues lies behind its cover. It’s not even an aesthetically appealing image, with Batman in an awkward, shadowy action pose staged against the backdrop of a giant, hovering Joker card, inexplicably crying tears of blood. When the editors were willing to take such a bold step as to green light a story which is so far outside the norm of the typical Batman comic, it seems preposterous to then shackle the book with such a mundane cover. It undermines the creators’ attempts at innovation, and is the kind of frustrating, counter-intuitive decision that induces fits in longtime readers and retailers.

If there is one other complaint that has been written time and time again about Grant Morrison, it is that he often bombards readers with dozens of new and interesting concepts, but never lingers on them long enough to flesh them out. This was his fatal flaw in Arkham Asylum, in which he never (until now) explored his own concept of the Joker’s madness. His New X-Men and Marvel Boy runs, for example, were also riddled with seeds of ideas that were never developed. At his best (We3, Kill Your Boyfriend, Animal Man), Morrison has focused on his “bizarre ideas” long enough to deliver a clear and logical conclusion, but whether he fleshes out his new “Clown Prince of Cruelty” long enough to take advantage of his own interesting premise will go a long way in determining this issue’s place in history. Twenty years from now, if readers have a better sense of a Joker whose multiple identities can manifest themselves into a single, ever-evolving character, then perhaps this issue will be looked upon as one of the greatest Joker stories of all time. However, if Morrison, as the writer is prone to, simply abandons this idea, and moves on, then this issue may forever be seen by readers as, at best, a curious anomaly, at worst, a self-indulgent excess and a failure. Don MacPherson expresses this skepticism of Morrison’s commitment to his new Joker, stating that “it’s a novel and compelling take on the character, though I honestly don’t expect the notion to be explored beyond this self-contained story.”

In general, superhero comics are usually too afraid to branch out this far from the norm, and, judging from the general reaction of righteous nerd-rage, for good reason. Comic fans, for all their posturing and angry demands for new and innovative storytelling, do not embrace change. Sure, some minority of them does, but the continued survival of corporate superhero books proves that a built-in nostalgia market will continually consume the products and stories it loved as children. This is not necessarily bad, but the point is that it is often difficult for a market so classically conditioned, so Pavlovian in its blind loyalty, to swallow such a strange and bitter pill as “The Clown at Midnight.” In reality, superhero fans want just enough maturity and characterization sprinkled into their children’s stories to make them feel good about their childish hobby. They want to delude themselves into thinking that comics have grown up, and that the stories are much better than we remember them as kids (which is debatable), but the fact is that superhero comics have not grown up and will never grow up. The “Ultimate Universe” is no different than the regular Marvel universe, and “Infinite Crisis” is just a repackaging of “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”

So in the end, I understand why readers had a hard time with this issue. It’s different, and takes the typical comics reader way outside of their comfort zone. There are no panels, text balloons, or any of the familiar storytelling tropes, and where readers are used to consuming their comics in quick, ten minute snacks, this issue demands your attention for an hour or more.

In that sense, Morrison’s Batman story fails. It is not a comfortable, familiar, predictable reading experience. Nor is it consistent like a bag of Doritos or a Big Mac, where we know what we’re getting even before we’ve consumed it. What’s worse, it’s smart and sarcastic and not quite straight-forward. It looks and feels like no other Batman comic that has ever been published, and like the best David Lynch movies, it requires real thought, a second (and perhaps third) reading, and certainly some degree of imaginative interpretation. It is different, and it is challenging and it knows exactly what it is doing.

Ultimately, while it may not be perfect, “The Clown at Midnight” is utterly original, and as Salinger’s young Seymour Glass writes to his parents in “Hapworth,” "close on the heels of kindness, originality is one of the most thrilling things in the world, also the most rare!"

ADD's Emergency Dental Sale UPDATE!

Please click over to The ADD Blog for a list of the remaining titles in my comic and graphic novel sale, to help raise money to pay for some much-needed dental work for my daughter.

Daily Breakdowns 057 - The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century

The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century
Writer/Artist - Dash Shaw
Publisher - Fantagraphics Books. $19.99 USD

I was rather alarmed to search online and realize I never got around to reviewing Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button, one of the best graphic novels of 2008. This is quite a different animal from that 720 page sprawling seriocomedy/weird romance/exploration of divorce, but that's probably to be expected. After such a huge work, it's natural for authors to scale back, do some shorter stuff, try out some different ideas without the commitment a graphic novel requires. That's sort of true of this book, but it can't be said that Shaw is resting on his laurels, goofing off, or coasting. If anything, the handful of short stories here represent great leaps in, or at the very least previously unseen examples of, his innovative approach to comics coloring, as well as some inventive storytelling techniques. He also swings and misses once or twice, too, but that's fine.

First, though, we have "The Unclothed Man..." to examine. Not a short story, this was originally a series of four two minute animated shorts written and directed by Shaw (with additional artwork from Jane Samborski) for the Independent Film Channel about a rebel in the future bent on bringing humanity back to the almost impossibly automated life in the 35th Century. Shaw's is not a dystopian future in the sense of it being apocalyptic, irradiated and doomed. Rather, it's a placid, dull, unchallenging existence, with the passions and survival instincts of our ancestors largely bred out of us. The first 24 pages of the book are devoted to the series, with some lovely paintings and studies for the series alongside three one-page strips that inspired the shorts, but the majority of the work here are storyboards, often 24 per page. The process is mildly interesting, but ultimately frustrating because Shaw's directing notes are hard to read in this small format, and because storyboard artwork is never meant to be as good as comics or the final animation product. One could question why so much space was given to this, but the IFC logo on the front cover is a good clue. Whether they had anything to do with the book, I don't know, but it's not at all a bad idea to have that logo on the cover, which is striking in itself, its acetate suggesting the qualities of an animation cell. I could easily see someone picking up this book in a bookstore, curious about the IFC connection.

Speaking of the shorts themselves, which can be viewed here, Shaw turns out to have great promise as a director, and his comics strengths are displayed well. Shaw is not really a futurist, but part of the charm is the silly retro quality of some of the designs--both here and in one of the short stories, characters wear helmets of great power and technical sophistication, but they really just look like children's toys, or the designs a child would make of a cool spaceman. I like that Shaw hasn't lost that, even as he playfully lingers on the rebel character clipping his pubic hair to complete his disguise as an art model-droid. The animation itself is jerky, organic, trippy but low-fi, totally in line with the humanistic theme of the shorts.

As with "Unclothed," the short stories are variations on the theme of a man trying to find or retain his identity in a confusing, cold world. There's often a satirical element, as in "Terra Two/Terra One," which has The New Yorker giving an enthusiastic review of a dance performance only unique because it is performed backwards. Perhaps on some level Shaw realizes the story itself, underneath strong art and attractive coloring, is a gimmick more than anything else, a la Benjamin Button, or dare I say, Mork & Mindy? And I say attractive coloring, as it's nice, but I don't see depicting the backwards-living man in blue and his forwards-living paramour in yellow as having a deeper significance, not the way David Mazzucchelli dug deeper with color choices in Asterios Polyp. Still, while it isn't poignant, it's still pretty funny.

Alternating various story/timelines/levels of reality with fields of cyan, magenta or yellow, "Satellite CMYK" is a more successful effort, harrowing, disorienting and sad. Shaw has a gift for finding horror and despair in a simple, friendly drawing style here that would normally be suited to a '60s teen humor comic. The blending of the colors and then the descent into darkness are masterful, with an ending that's nicely ambiguous--it could be hopeful, or just another illusion meant to keep them in line.

"Cartooning Symbolia" looks to be one of the older pieces here, from 2005. It's a long series of funny words invented to convey various emotions, with complex, often brilliant, visual signifiers of those emotions in comics form. Think of a light bulb or broken heart symbol over a character's head, taken to the third power. Some of the other stories almost strike me as juvenilia because of the wild shifts in style and tone, but based on several being from 2009, it seems they're experiments, and produced at a fairly rapid pace. This intense work ethic may explain a certain "living in his head" quality to the work itself (it's nitpicking, but salsa is packaged in jars, never cans), as well as all the protagonists being males, often around Shaw's age. There's a real sense of working through artistic problems and challenges first, with the story second, as in the tale of the would-be screenwriter/gofer on the set of James Cameron's The Abyss, where Shaw employs a series of circles (water tank, salsa lid, hot tub, tape reel, etc.) to little effect, although the dialogue is comparable to a Dan Clowes loser study, or "My Entire High School...Sinking into the Sea!," a flight of fancy that boils down to an escape sequence with triangular panels, an unsure attempt at inking waves, and a particularly ugly coloring decision to do everything in a Photoshop airbrush effect. But that's what experimentation is about. Judging from the examples here, Shaw doesn't seem to repeat things that aren't working.

Much better are stories like "Blind Date 1" and "Galactic Funnels," the latter of which was selected for The Best American Comics 2009. "Blind Date 1" adapts a real episode of the syndicated show, and Shaw lets the awkwardness, forced gaiety and psychological impediment to happiness (the guy, anyway--what's his problem?) speak for themselves, while his cool blues, moody shadows and abstractions add a jazzy sensuality the shot-on-video game/reality show lacks. "Galactic Funnels" is justifiably acclaimed, an assured King of Comedy-style romp through the hollow life of a young man who finds an artist he admires, imitates and eventually tries to absorb. Full of dazzling color choices and smart storytelling that firmly deny this is a satire of the art world, the two key panels are, appropriately, near the beginning and right at the end. We see young Stan Smart toiling away, trying by repetition to lock into his hero Don Dak's real inspiration, galactic funnels, represented by Dak as circles. The splashes of color on Dak's face and the intense look in his eyes makes clear who the real artist is. Dak is obsessed, inspired. Stan is hip, a planner. He slavishly copies, with a compass. His worship appeals to Dak's vanity, briefly, but Dak's muse wins out. There can be only one funnel artist, and his love is sincere. Even when Stan tries to make a small innovation, a new wrinkle to call his own, he succumbs to the impulse of the hack: do the same thing, only bigger.

Shaw ends with what appears to be a new story in storyboard form (although drawn and colored with more of an eye towards publication than the "Unclothed" storyboards) that's another story of disconnection, finding a sort of "Joe the Plumber" instant celebrity trying to deal with his new fame. What's funny is that while his new manager is undeniably a crass womanizer giving him advice that may not help him find a genuine soulmate, the advice is much better for at least getting the ball rolling and starting a relationship than Joe's naked sincerity. It ends up as a nice visual bookend to "Unclothed," a reassuring piece of self-examination from an artist whose star is on the rise, and in its comics/storyboard hybrid format a fork in the road for where his career may take him.

Courtney Crumrin and the Knight Kingdom.

See the finished piece and the sketches throughout this post? Click to see them bigger. Chances are, if you follow comics websites, you probably have at least seen this excellent illo by now. They're all by a personable fellow by the name of Ted Naifeh, whose name should be familiar to you through his wonderful Courtney Crumrin series Oni Press releases, as well as his Burton-meets-Barrie Polly and the Pirates (from Oni as well), and stints drawing Nocturnals spinoffs for Dan Brereton, as well as the first place I saw his stuff, the goth-oriented Gloom Cookie. He is quite simply one of the best artists (and a damn good writer as well) in the field right now, in my opinion; his style is distinctive and idiosyncratic-- you won't mistake it for anyone else's-- with dynamic poses, adroit staging, and sharply realized expressiveness in his figures. As an inker he is a master of contrasts and blackspotting, in the same discussion with the likes of Mignola and Jaime Hernandez, to name a couple. Guess you can tell I am an admirer.

So when I see, on his website's blog, that he is putting these illustrations and sketches out there just in hopes, hat in hand, fer chrissakes-- that someone at DC might deign to give him some work...well, that just blows my head right off my shoulders. From where I sit, why in God's name wouldn't they want him to take a shot at a character, who, along with his extended family, has proved itself to be extremely amenable to widely (and wildly) different interpretations, from the stodgy old Sheldon Moldoff, bland Irv Novick, and dynamic Jim Aparo to the grotesqueries of Kelley Jones and angular Marshall Rogers, from the Kirby-worshipping nostalgia of a Bruce Timm or Darwyn Cooke to the 70's funk of a Neal Adams or Dick Giordano? They should have been calling his number a long time ago- can you imagine the recent Batman: RIP series with Naifeh's art, with the imagination he could bring to bear in interpreting Morrison's scripts, instead of the barely-competent and resolutely mired-in-DC-House-Style-circa-1987 Tony Daniel?

I don't know. Perhaps it's the DC editors' reluctance to look outside the superhero-creators' community; Naifeh may be regarded as an "Indie Guy", and not suitable for a Batman comic, any more than a Seth or Dan Clowes, unless they condescend to start up another Bizarro Comics-type anthology. If so, this, I think, is a mistake. Perhaps they think Naifeh's style would be a turnoff for the modern comic shop patron, who thinks George Perez or (shudder) Ed Benes is the absolute apex of everything comic book superhero art should be. As Ian Anderson once stated on the inside of one of his Jethro Tull albums, "People are geared towards the average rather than the exceptional". Perhaps Naifeh has only just now made his intentions clear, and the brain trust didn't know. By taking this tack, I hope Naifeh has made them aware!

So yeah, not to put too fine a point on it, but I sincerely hope to see a Batman series or story or something with Naifeh illustration work someday. I won't stand on one foot waiting, because it just makes too much sense. But a guy can hope, can't he?

And while I'm at it, even though the man himself has told me he has no interest in the character, I would absolutely love to see a Shade (you know, from Starman) series with James Robinson scripts and Naifeh art. Oh yes, I have a dream.

VON ALLAN: the road to god knows...

I don't often get excited about things any more. Maybe it is my ongoing depression, maybe it is being tired from the sad things of the world, but whatever the reason, it always surprises me when my heart skips a beat. When I got the opportunity to interview a new voice, Von Allan, about his work "the road to god knows" I got excited. Maybe because he speaks in his work about something I am moved by, the plight of others, and my own plight with mental illness. I should say, I have great hopes for this work, and look forward to everyone reading it, especially those who need it. -- Alex Ness

Alex Ness: Your story, "the road to god knows" involves mental illness from a very personal perspective. How did you decide to do it, and why?

Von Allan: When I had gotten my writing and art to a point that I thought I was ready to take a stab at a graphic novel, I knew I needed to tell a story that I could remain passionate about through the entire process. Mainly because I knew that process would be bloody challenging; I was setting out to do something I've never come close to trying before and the personal challenges would be pretty high. Since I came to art late, there would be a steep learning curve in rendering the entire story in pencil and ink. And comics, despite how they've been dismissed historically in North America, are a remarkably challenging medium. There's a lot you need to be able to do – and you need to be able to do it in such a way that it not only doesn't distract the reader from the story but tells the story in a readable way. That latter element, “storytelling,” is something that I find endlessly fascinating.

Anyway, when I was musing about what story to do I explored a lot of different thing. Everything from doing a riff on super heroes to fantasy, but I ruled them out pretty quickly for a variety of reasons. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that the old saw “write what you know” was probably not a bad idea for a first book. Mental illness and schizophrenia is something that's surrounded me for most of my life and it also wasn't a topic that was covered in comics all that much. I figured those two points would serve me well and I think, in hindsight, it was a good choice to make.

Is mental illness more of personal issue to deal with in that it is family, or do you see the need to deal with it as a community more? The reason I ask is that many people who advocate for a cause have a family member who is affected, but to some it is just who they are to reach out.

Oh, I definitely see a need to deal with mental illness on a community (and societal) level. But the most important thing is for someone who is mentally ill to get the help they need and get healthier. While I think “normal” is open to interpretation, being a functioning member of society is one of the the goals of being healthy, I think.. Maybe being one of the results of being healthy, too. Now, getting healthy can certainly be accomplished in-house with family members without involving the community at large, at least in the early goings. I don't know if I'd say it's a prerequisite for getting healthy in the first place and it probably depends on both the individual and the illness.

The problem, though, if it's kept to a more personal and private basis is that the community at large may not be educated that mentally ill people are, for the most part, simply troubled human beings that deserve our compassion and support. Fear, misunderstandings and stereotypes can easily result and that obviously can create feelings of isolation in the mentally ill that doesn't help anyone. The mentally ill person's goal is still to get healthy, but when they eventually start to interact with other members of their community it would be nice if they weren't confronted by fear or hostility, y'know?

In my mom's case, she had an anxiety disorder that went along with the diagnosis of schizophrenia and that only got worse as time went on. She retreated a lot from people around her and that eventually became close to a paralyzing fear of the world. I've never experienced anything like that, but I could see her battling and it was devastating to watch. I often wonder if perhaps there had been more people looking out for her, welcoming her in various community events and the like, things wouldn't have gone that far. I'm speculating, of course, but I do know there really wasn't any type of community outreach in the neighborhood we lived in. And, to be fair, it's a bit of a chicken and the egg argument; it's possible that no amount of outreach would have been able to combat the anxiety disorder at all. Her health was also pretty bad at times and that certainly didn't help the situation, either.

To put it another way, we're better together. Communities are stronger when all its members feel that they're a part of it. People can't be forced to join in (nor should they be), but stronger community ties would probably go a long way.

My mom has Alzheimer’s and thought in her earlier stages she could hide it, as if there were shame attached to it. By portraying your mother, does it not expose her to others in a way she might be saddened? I am not saying it is bad for you to do, but, did she have a sense about her challenges that would make what you are doing uncomfortable?

Well, this is tricky. My mom died in 1994, long before I set out to do this story, so I really have no idea what she'd think about it. I don't think I'm telling tales out of school so to speak, but I'm so close to the work that I could be easily mistaken on that front. If she was still alive I suspect I would have made sure she was OK with some of the depictions in the story. But that said, it's also a fictional work and not pure autobiography. While I drew a lot on my own experiences to tell the story, I certainly played with time to a large extent. That meant that certain events were more compressed than what actually occurred in real life. But the events did happen – it's just a matter of when they happened. Which, of course, kicks the whole thing around again!

So yeah, my suspicion is that I'd have given the final draft of the script to my mom to see what she thought. And then possibly tinkered with it based on her feedback. I certainly don't think she would have hated it, but I could be wrong about that. Would I have chosen not to proceed if she was? Dunno. Possibly, but I believe pretty strongly in this story and even if my mom wouldn't have supported it I suspect I might have gone forward anyway. That said, I think she would have believed in the sincerity of it even if she disagreed with a few things here and there.

In your experience does the health system in Canada respond well to mental illness? You may not know, but if you do, how would it compare to the US?

I don't think our health care system does a particularly good job, but I'm looking at this from the hindsight of my own childhood experiences combined with the media coverage of what the current situation is now. My mom didn't seem to be particularly well consulted with what was happening to her – or if she was, she couldn't communicate details all that well to me. I do know that none of her doctors ever pulled me aside and really explained what was happening with her to me. I also vividly remember my sudden awareness that her own doctors weren't really talking with each other, either. A few issues came up with drug conflicts because her prescriptions weren't being communicated adequately within her network of doctors. I think this is something that's being handled much better now, but is kinda scary in hindsight.

I don't have any experience with the American health care system, so I can't comment on that one.

Do the various systems failures that every health system experiences show through in your work, the layers of mistakes, missed chances to fix something, more?

No, this was something I deliberately avoided, mainly for two reasons. The first is that the story is from the point of view of Marie, so she wouldn't have (just like I didn't) a lot of knowledge of what her mom's care was like. Secondly, I didn't want the story to be commentary on the Canadian health care system without a great deal more research on my part. I was far more comfortable telling the story from the point of view of one family than anything else.

Also, the story is set in the late 1980s, so it would have taken a degree of historical research that would have taken some doing and perhaps not been quite as relevant to the health care system as it currently stands. While I think improvements could (and arguably) should be made, I don't think it would have been fair to make that argument through the prism of the past.

What is your goal for this work?

To tell a compassionate story with believable characters. If it gets people talking about schizophrenia and mental health, then great! If it helps someone in a similar situation to Marie feel less alone and trapped, then that's great, too!

On a personal level, I wanted to do a story that would help me grow as both a writer and artist and hopefully set the stage for future work. From that point of view, I think it succeeded in spades.

What would you say beyond your mother’s experiences were your main motivators to enter into the field of comics with such a work?

Well, I think when you're a new voice and you're trying to break into a new field, you face a number of creative choices. The big one is do you do what the mainstream is doing and try to follow along, or do you set out on a more individual path, knowing that there's more risk and probably fewer sales? In the case of comics, it's pretty simple: do you try your hand at genre work, knowing that more established and seasoned creators have already mined that ground pretty extensively and probably better than you can? Or do you go a more independent route, risking sales potential but doing something very individual and distinctive? I chose the latter, mainly because I knew that sales would be a challenge no matter which path I followed so I might as well do a story that means a great deal to me and one I could be enthusiastic about for the duration of the project. I also knew there would be a lot of bumps and hiccups along the way (whew, boy, was it ever bumpy!), so that enthusiasm was pretty important.

I love comics. I just never thought I could make comics. That I've learned to do it is amazing to me. The learning will never stop, but I'm doing things now that I never dreamed I could do when I was teenager.

What artists or writers or what the hell, just creative people are your inspirations and who would form the most powerful of influences upon the work you do? ...

Well, no single artist or writer made me think, “I gotta do that stuff.” I came to art very late and it was only my growing awareness that most artists are made and not born that made me set out on this journey in the first place. That said, there are many creative people I like: Shane MacGowan, Harry Harrison, George MacDonald Fraser, Matt Wagner, Barry Windsor-Smith, Jim Shooter, Aaron Sorkin, Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Lambert, John Byrne, Mac Raboy, Robert Holdstock, Andrew Loomis, and on and on! Again, not one of them made me think I had to do this, but collectively they all helped shaped a lot of my thinking on art, writing and storytelling.

I'm also going to quote Walter “Killer” Kowalski here: “I credit my success to the practice of ‘Kowalski-ism’: What I thought, I became; What I felt, I became; What I said, I became; I am my inspiration.” Yup, that's it right there. It probably sounds arrogant, but meh – it's true.

Where do you live, are you married, cats, dogs, ...?

Ottawa, Ontario. And yup, married to the very lovely Moggy and we have two cats (a tabby named Reilly and a calico named Bonny) and a husky dog named Rowen.

Does being Canadian help or hurt your ability to reach an audience in the US?

I don't think it matters, though there are pesky details when it comes to currency that can be tricky. The exchange rate makes thing a bit tricky. I'm actually printing the book in the United States for a variety of reasons, but that makes getting it to US-based comic shops very, very easy. Interestingly, I've had a lot more luck getting the book into US stores than I have in Canadian ones (though perhaps counter-intuitively, the Canadian stores are doing extremely well with it). Getting the word out is always the challenge – if enough people are interested in the book, then the customer demand will help build retail support.

The internet, though, also helps a great deal on this front. If someone wants a copy of the book but lives in a city that doesn't have a store carrying it, then there's always Amazon and whatnot to turn to. That's a major change to what retailing used to be like prior to the early 90s.


Von Allan

Quote: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." (Beckett)

My original graphic novel, the road to god knows... (ISBN: 978-0-9781237-0-3) is now available at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Barnes & Noble, and other notable retailers.

Click here

ADD's Selling Comics and Graphic Novels CHEAP

Click over to my blog for details on the emergency comic and graphic novel sale I have just posted. Short version is, daughter needs some pricey dental work, so the comics are going cheap. Click over and see if there's anything that catches your eye, and thanks!

Daily Breakdowns 056 - Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture

Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture Vol. 1
Writer/Artist - Masayuki Ishikawa
Publisher - Del Rey Books. $10.99 USD

The first thing this manga has over a lot of others is a striking cover, with the playful use of cartoony bacteria in place of the stars in Old Glory. And make no mistake, bacteria are the stars of this series. Tadayasu has the unique ability to see them with only his eyes. They're depicted in a simple, cute fashion, basically round heads with different stemlike things coming off them in order to differentiate one species(?) from another. The fact that he doesn't see them as they really looked is even remarked upon once or twice in the book.

Tadayasu and his friend Kei, heir to a sake brewery, are just beginning their first day as freshman at an agriculture college when we meet them. Masayuki immediately finds a nice contrast between the typical big-eyed, overexpressive characters and realistic, carefully rendered flora, fauna and the surroundings. His fascination with microbes is immense and infectious, no pun intended. Who knew learning how fermented seal meat is made, or what makes sake go bad, or how caterpillar mold can be a moneymaker, could be so interesting? But while this is interesting stuff, and very readable with the confident storytelling and handy sidebars identifying this or that germ as well as a frequent rundown of who the characters are, there's a big element missing here. The characterization. The basic premise of the book is great: boy can see bacteria and this creates opportunities for mini-mysteries, humorous stories, and even some suspense as people seek to exploit his ability. But Masayuki has only, in the 200+ pages here, scratched the surface of Tadayasu as a character. Yeah, he's special, and used to be picked on, and now it's worse because he's also a lowly freshman, PLUS he has to try to keep his ability a secret, thereby prolonging his status as a nerd and outcast. But...so what? Aside from wanting to fit in, we don't know anything about him, what he wants or cares about. It's not a bad book; it's amiable and ingratiating, and I admire that Masayuki found a way to make a love of science (I have to believe this is a subject he cares deeply about--that comes through) into art. But maybe it's that side of his brain getting all diagrammatic or something, but the emotion just hasn't been invested in these characters.

Daily Breakdowns 055 - Strange Suspense

Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1
Editor - Blake Bell
Designer - Adam Grano
Publisher - Fantagraphics Books. $39.99 USD

"That's pretty," she said.

"No, he's great," I explained. "Steve Ditko. He co-created Spider-Man, but he's this really principled guy and never sued for any profits from them. He just does his own stuff now, very much influenced by Ayn Rand and Objectivism."

She said, "No, I was serious. It's a really good drawing. I love the colors of it. It's intense."

This is a friend of mine, who happened to spy the desperate figure on the cover of this book. Here I was, sensing a slight and rushing to the defense of Ditko, and she honestly appreciated his artwork. It struck me that as much as we longtime comics readers think we know what to recommend to others when it comes to superhero comics, kids comics, and graphic novels, it's always a crap shoot. Now, she didn't actually read the book, just noticed the cover, so I'll stand by my guess that this isn't the best introduction to Ditko's work, or the best introduction to horror/suspense comics, either. Still, over 50 years since this image was created, it still has power to it.

Strange Suspense is the first of "The Steve Ditko Archives," which one surmises will encompass mainly work for publishers outside of Marvel and DC. Unlike the recent, The Art of Ditko, which was a more personal, idiosyncratic collection spanning around 20 years, this volume reprints seemingly all of Ditko's work, in chronological order (or in order of completion, where that information was available), from late in 1953 to mid-1955. There is about a six month gap between the cover for This Magazine Is Haunted #21 and the cover and story, "Car Show," for From Here To Insanity #10, a period in which Ditko was recovering from tuberculosis.

Bell doesn't have the benefit of being able to choose the best work. This is warts and all stuff, a young artist learning with every six pager. Bell helpfully points out Ditko's style at this point is a mix of Mort Meskin, Jerry Robinson (an early mentor) and Joe Kubert, and certainly the Kubert influence is quite pronounced in several stories like, "Range War," a Western involving poison. There's a romance tale as well, but the bulk of the work here are horror/suspense stories, many of which find bad people meeting a just, if grisly, fate. In structure, many are like EC Comics work around this time, down to the lettering, but many lack the elegance or solid O'Henryesque twist endings. "Triple-Header" is a good example. A guy on a jungle hunting trip overhears his buddy and wife conspiring to do away with him, so he poisons them first, before winding up killed by native headhunters. There's no irony here in the way he dies, just a mild one in that death finds him through other means.

A lot of the stories are like that, and Bell mentions in his Introduction the oft-told fact that Charlton (the publisher for most of the stories here) kept their printing presses running twenty-four hours a day, as it was less expensive than turning them off, and so one can conclude quantity was more important to them than quality. They had to keep feeding the hungry presses, an ideal situation for a developing cartoonist, though not so much for the contemporary reader who has read or seen many good iterations of Tales from the Crypt-type stories. That said, It's interesting to see aspects of Ditko's well-known style in a science fiction story like "You Are the Jury," the female character and aliens very much like what Ditko would bring to later work like Tales to Astonish or Amazing Fantasy, followed by stories such as, "3-D Disaster Doom Death" and "The Night People" done in an alternate, almost as compelling style that Ditko would wholly abandon within just a couple years.

We find Ditko at this point thoughtful but only occasionally inventive, such as the use of captions resembling strips of film in a movie-related tale. Sometimes he doesn't get the most drama out of his scenes, and his huge-eyed monsters are often silly, rarely unsettling. There is some juvenile pleasure to be had in the fact that these stories all predate the Wertham/Comics Code era, so there's quite a bit of blood, some severed limbs, and grisly comeuppance. And although still oscillating between styles and influences here, there is substantial growth between, say, the Feb '54 horror version of "Cinderella" and the June '54 "Rumpelstiltskin," the latter also from a prolific period for Ditko, drawing four to five stories a month. While the number of lackluster scripts do make this volume one that may take a few fits and starts to finish, even in its infancy, Ditko's art is increasingly potent.

Daily Breakdowns 054 - Mash of the Titans

Agents of Atlas: Dark Reign TPB
Writer - Jeff Parker
Artists - Carlo Pagulayan, Jason Paz & Jana Schirmer, Gabriel Hardman & Elizabeth Disadang; Clayton Henry; Benton Jew; Leonard Kirk; Karl Kesel; Michelle Madsen; and Val Staples
Published by Marvel Comics. $19.99 USD

First of all, don't worry overmuch about that exhaustive list of artists. This isn't one of those books where a ton of people were pulled in to do a page here and there to meet deadlines. Well, that could be part of it, but it's really the first five issues of the ongoing (but recently canceled) Agents of Atlas series, which had a different creative team for flashbacks, plus other Parker-written stories from several Marvel specials that featured the Agents.

The Dark Reign storyline is handled with confidence by Parker, bringing any readers up to speed who hadn't read the introductory Agents miniseries or who, like me, weren't that familiar with the new Marvel Universe status quo of Norman Osborn being a powerful "hero" with his own paramilitary group called HAMMER, as well as running his own version of the Avengers. Atlas leader Jimmy Woo has a good idea: get on Osborn's real, dark side by posing as a criminal outfit, offering to build him weapons that will end up not working. They play their hand too early trying to establish their evil cred, which leads to conflict with the Avengers, though handled without much bloodshed. Woven into this is an enjoyable flashback involving dragon scales and time travel and a humorous, harmless retcon centered on Captain America, with nice Hardman art evocative of Michael Lark but lighter and more compatible with the Silver Age tone of the story. Parker sets up some other conflicts including a possible usurper to Woo's leadership of Atlas and some other business, but his emotional scenes are spare and not quite as effective as the crisp, plot-based work, though they're fine.

The bonus stories also attempt to work the Agents into not just the current but the past fabric of the Marvel Universe, with an early brush with Wolverine and a meeting with the time lord, Kang. Parker is He's well suited to writing about heroes with somewhat earlier, more traditional values. Woo is not an amoral tactician--he cares about his teammates and doesn't want them to do anything they don't want to do. I can't comment on whether Dark Reign has made other Marvel titles any grimmer, but I do find the tone of this book refreshing. Artwise, though, aside from Hardman, the various other artists are just okay. I liked them but didn't see anything that stood out.


The Incredible Hercules: Against The World TPB
Writers - Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente
Artists - Khoi Pham, Paul Neary, Dennis Calero, Eric Nguyen, Reilly Brown, Carlos Cuevas, Terry Pallot, Chris Sotomayor, Bob Layton & Guru EFX
Published by Marvel Comics. $14.99 USD

This series did something that's pretty unusual for modern superhero comics--let another character take the lead. It was Incredible Hulk, and that transitional issue is included, as well as the first storyline under the new banner, and a Hulk vs. Hercules one-shot that's basically a flashback to an old fight. Now that story is guilty of the deadline/don't care problems mentioned above, where there are several different artists doing a few pages each, with the regular Pham/Neary team only providing a framing sequence. It's cool to see Bob Layton, who up to this point had done the only real work on Marvel's Hercules, a couple pages, but that's about all I can say for this one. Just another link from the sausage factory.

The regular series, though, there's something there. Or, again, there was something there, as I believe this is another of Marvel's acclaimed series not featuring A-list characters to get the ax. Van Lente is working from the other side of the table from Parker, but towards similar goals. Hercules is not the lusty, grinning adventurer of the Layton era, a flagon of mead in one hand and a wench draped over his shoulder. He's more in line with the Hercules (or Herakles) of myth, the one with the berserker rage that end up costing his wife and son their lives. He's haunted by this, especially when his half-brother Ares, now on Osborn's team, reminds him of it, to gain psychological advantage.

Herc is joined in this buddy action story by young Amadeus Cho, so-called one of the seven smartest people on the planet. It's a good match, as Cho is very smart but too young to have found his moral center yet, and that's something Hercules has struggled with, or willfully ignored, for three thousand years. But as fun as they've had, running from HAMMER and the new SHIELD and all that, it's time to grow up, while still retaining their dignity and freedom. Although a darker book than Agents of Atlas, it's still about people (including demigods) trying to do the right thing. Hercules is flawed, but not evil, like Ares, and he feels remorse. It's an interesting dynamic, seeing him find the balance between being a kind of cool uncle to Amadeus while still forcing the two of them to make the harder and more responsible choice.

It's all too easy, even for a fairly hardcore Marvel fan, to miss out on some gems like these, that have some solid storytelling along with a fair amount of humanity. There are so many books hitting the stands week after week that you can't blame someone for only being able to follow a few core titles. I'm not going to say my life has been immeasurably richer for following the word of mouth and tracking these books down, but at least I can say with certainty that Marvel's output isn't as dire as I thought it might be, and that they still manage to put out some good books. Now if they only knew what to do with them.

PR: Top Shelf Productions Announces Capital Investment Deal

The following is a press release issued earlier today by Chris Staros of Top Shelf Productions.

TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS ANNOUNCES INVESTMENT DEAL
WITH JOHN S. JOHNSON AND PRODUCER ANTHONY BREGMAN

January 13, 2010 -- Atlanta/Portland/New York -- Co-Publishers Chris Staros and Brett Warnock of independent graphic novel and comic book publisher Top Shelf Productions (www.topshelfcomix.com) announced today that it has entered into a capital investment deal with new media entrepreneur John S. Johnson, and independent film producer Anthony Bregman.

Johnson, and Likely Story, Bregman's film production company, have purchased a 33% interest in Top Shelf Productions, Inc. Johnson will join the board of Top Shelf, and Likely Story will get a first-look deal for all new Top Shelf publications for possible film and TV development.

This deal represents a supportive investment in the company; one that leaves Chris Staros and Brett Warnock as majority stockholders (and firmly in control of the company), but also brings to bear the resources, skills and connections of John and Anthony in helping the company expand and grow over time.

The first project slated for development by Likely Story is Alex Robinson's critically acclaimed "Too Cool to Be Forgotten," named one of Amazon.com's Top Ten Graphic Novels of the Year and considered his best work to date.

"Too Cool To Be Forgotten" tells the story of a 40-something father of two who undergoes hypnosis therapy to quit smoking, only to transport back to 1985 and his formative years as a gangly, awkward teenager. Forced to live through his high school years with all the knowledge of his later life; uncertain whether he is destined to relive the mistakes of his past or if he has been given a second chance to get things right.

Publisher Chris Staros elaborates on the history of the deal: "I've personally been friends with producer Anthony Bregman for over five years, and have looked up to him as a mentor and advisor over those many years. Every time we'd meet in New York or talk on the phone -- despite the 'two zeros' difference in our budgets and revenues -- we recognized the fact that we were kindred spirits, shepherding projects to the world that we simply believed in. Top Shelf and Likely Story [Bregman's production company] both put art before commerce, but also celebrate those magical moments when art meets commerce, and a project that was built from the ground up becomes a success.

"Two years ago, I casually mentioned that while I loved every aspect of running Top Shelf, Brett and I were starting to get worn out with being the 'personal banks' for the company, and by the stress that this brought during the rocky periods that publishing undergoes. Coincidentally, at that time, John S. Johnson, a long-time friend of Anthony's (and big fan of literary graphic novels) mentioned to him that he was toying with the idea of graphic novel publishing, to possibly make it a part of his other new media interests. Anthony suggested we all meet, and over the last couple of years, our mutual friendship, common interests and goals, and respect for each other developed to the point that we decided to work together as partners in the future of Top Shelf.

"Behind the scenes, Top Shelf has been presented with several investment proposals over the years, but most of them were either proposals to buy out the company, purchase a controlling interest, or use the name of the company to do something different than what we had built our reputation on. What we really wanted, and what we have now, are people who believe in what we do and want to help it grow without changing what we are doing. The deal that is in place now leaves Brett and me firmly in control of the company, and simply adds the capital, resources, and connections for new media and film that John and Anthony bring to the table.

"As a result, Anthony Bregman will get a first-look at all new Top Shelf publications for possible development in Hollywood, and John S. Johnson, as the primary financier of the deal, will become a member of the Board of Directors (along with Brett and I), and the key link to all the online and other new media applications for the Top Shelf line."

END OF PRESS RELEASE

ADD's thoughts

Not much to say, except that I've been a huge fan and supporter of Top Shelf for the past decade, and I am thrilled that Chris and Brett and their company have reached a deal that will allow them to be even more daring in their publishing choices and hopefully will ensure many more decades of quality comics publishing from Top Shelf.

Not Comics: One Fan's Reaction

I don't do this very often, so please indulge me as I take a rare break from comics blogging to speak about something that's been on my mind.

Having grown up for the first 18 years of my life in St. Louis, I am a lifelong Cardinals baseball fan.

How big a fan?

Even now, living less than 5 miles from Shea Stadium (I know it's now called CitiField, but to me it'll always be Shea), I still think of the Mets as "pond scum," a leftover jab from the heated rivalry of the '80s, before the divisional realignment.

I strictly adhere to the two “Cardinal” rules: I never boo my own players (except when they give you the finger) and I never root for the Cubs.

I still think Don Denkinger cost us the '85 World Series.

I own all kinds of Cardinals memorabilia, from pennants to jerseys to hats to baseball cards to programs to a Wheaties box with Chris Carpenter on it. My son has a full wardrobe of Cardinals gear.

I've even made the journey to Jupiter, FL to see the Cardinals in Spring training and have a baseball autographed personally by 2006 World Series MVP David Eckstein.

As a surprise, my wife actually invited Albert Pujols to our wedding (the autographed reply card he sent back hangs framed in my office).

What I'm saying is, I'm as die-hard and loyal a member of Redbird Nation as you're likely to find.

So, you can imagine the excitement I felt during that magical summer of 1998 when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were assaulting the record books with their home run bonanza. I literally read every newspaper article I could find those last two months, as they both closed in on Roger Maris' sacred record. I tried desperately to get tickets to those final games that season, but had to settle for watching the record breaking game with my dad in a sports bar (still a great memory).

By 2005, of course, the dream had been shattered.

It was obvious to everyone after McGwire's Congressional testimony that he'd used steroids. His infamous line about not wanting to talk about the past was as bad as an admission of guilt.

Still, a small part of me remained in denial. You see, unlike Jose Canseco or Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGwire always seemed like a true gentlemen. This was a superstar who unashamedly did promo ads for a charity to erase the stigma of bedwetting. Was he really the type to lie under oath?

And then there was his sterling reputation within baseball. Everyone who ever played with McGwire (except, of course, for Canseco) swore up and down that he was a top notch teammate, a great guy in the clubhouse, as the saying goes. Tony LaRussa, the Cardinals Manager, staunchly defended him.

So, while I knew, we all knew, deep down, that he was guilty, it became easy enough to live with the possibility, however implausible, of innocence. Afterall, in America, you're innocent until proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt, right?

Well, not really. These days, celebrities are guilty the moment an accusation or rumor hits the Internet. Proving innocence is almost besides the point, the reputation, once tarnished, rarely, if ever recovers.

Anyway, yesterday's admission that he did in fact use steroids probably barely registered with most people. If anything, I expect a "well, duh!" kind of reaction from most baseball fans. We already knew that, right? What's the big deal?

But to me, it hurt.

Why? I'm still not sure.

And it's not because I feel let down, or that I wanted him to remain silent on the issue, it's more because now, after nearly five years, his admission just feels kind of pathetic.

It feels desperate.

Why is Mark McGwire suddenly coming forth, on a random Monday in January, 2010, to unburden his guilty conscience? Why now, when he had so many other, better opportunities to do so?

He says he didn't confess back then because he didn't want to subject his family to a federal investigation. Plus, his lawyers advised him against it. He was just protecting his family. Who could fault a guy for that?

Yeah, I guess.

But then why didn’t he cooperate with Senator Mitchell’s investigation? Why did he go into exile, instead of using his celebrity to deliver an anti-steroids message?

Personally, I think he’s finally coming clean because he desperately wants to get back into baseball (as the Cardinals hitting coach) and still hopes he can salvage his reputation. Perhaps he also thinks a sincere admission, one that was forthright and honest, even if carefully choreographed, with the requisite amount of tears, apologies, candor and TV face time, might somehow resurrect support among the baseball writers of America who vote for the Hall of Fame.

Or maybe he really was just tired of living with the secret.

Whatever the case, McGwire's admission feels like too little, too late. It's almost worse than his infamous non-admission.

As Americans, we’re often quick to rush to judgment, but we're also quick to forgive. We love a sincere apology and we're extremely willing to give second chances to the deservingly contrite. Look at Andy Pettitte or, hell, even Bill Clinton.

But at what point does sincerity melt into theatrics? Were McGwire's tears heartfelt or coached? It’s hard to tell anymore. Is he really so moved to emotion, after so many years, or is he simply telling us what he, and his team of PR experts think we want to hear?

And I'm sure Mark McGwire is a good guy. He seems like a sincere, caring, passionate man. He's probably incredibly generous and kind. I have no doubt he's a great dad and husband (though I thought that of Tiger Woods, too, so who really knows).

But despite the fact that I'm sure he means it, his whirlwind talk show apology tour just rings hollow. I still wouldn't support his admission into the Hall of Fame (which seems pretty unlikely anyway).

I know I sound overly cynical, especially for a Cardinals fan, but like it or not, McGwire’s a part of my team again. I still don't know how I feel about him being the Cardinals hitting coach. I worry that his presence will be more of a distraction than a benefit, and that he'll take some of the spotlight off the team's players, especially MVP Albert Pujols.

But most of all, I just wish McGwire had been smarter. Of course I wish he hadn't used steroids, but that aside, I wish he'd been honest when it mattered most. I wish he'd had more respect for the millions of loyal fans in St. Louis and around the country who supported and cheered him when he was deceiving us all, and for the much smaller number of us who gave him the benefit of the doubt even after the truth became apparent.

Any true fan of the Cardinals is a loyal reader of Bernie Miklasz, the sports columnist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, who almost always has his finger on the pulse of Redbird Nation. In his latest column, Miklasz wrote: "I don't believe McGwire will ever be voted into the Hall of Fame, and I don't think he cares about that. This was about something else. McGwire doesn't need my forgiveness, or yours. More than anything, he wants to be able to forgive himself. And this was a start."

If that's the case, I sincerely hope McGwire feels better.

I sure don't.

The 15 Best Back Issues I Read in 2009

Remember those days when you could sift through long boxes for hours?

I still love to do that, and am just as happy buying back issues as new comics (though these days eBay is my preferred supplier). In fact, with the price of new comics, back issues are usually a much better deal. As you'll see below, my strongest interest is in '80s and '90s independent stuff, but I love to try all kinds of things. The great thing about collecting comics is that there's always new areas to explore.

Anyway, in addition to my best of 2009 list, these are the best back issues I read last year:

1. Birdland - I think I've said more than enough about Gilbert Hernandez's vastly under-appreciated erotic series.

2. Cartoon Cavalcade (edited by Thomas Craven) - This was an unusual and unexpected find at the Strand bookstore - a 450 page hardcover comics anthology from 1944. And for only $7.00! My first instinct was that I had just scored a major find, and that the book must be worth a lot more, even missing its dust jacket, but it's actually available through Amazon's used book service for about the same price. The book is a wonderful helping of pre-war cartoonists, mostly politically-minded humorists in the New Yorker/Harper's vein, although there's plenty of diversity on display. The book is divided into three sections by period, and each section is accompanied by an introductory essay, putting the politics of the time and the cartoonists included into context. It's a great primer for anyone interested in learning about comics pre-history, or just looking for some damn fine black and white illustrations.

3. Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary - I didn't read the high-end, hardcover McSweeney's reprint, but rather the original Last Gasp pamphlet from 1972, on browning newsprint with torn pages and one staple missing. Yet somehow it felt like the perfect way to experience this underground classic for the first time. The story of Justin Green's struggles with adolescence, paranoia and crushing Catholic guilt over his emerging sexuality are timeless and fascinating; clearly this book was the blueprint for later autobiographical cartoonists like Chester Brown, Joe Matt, Jeffrey Brown, etc. But what fascinated me most about this book was the incredible amount of symbolic and representational panel compositions. This book is a study on how to tell comics stories in a non-linear sequential format, allowing the text to carry the narrative while the artwork spirals off into one fascinating visual metaphor after another. I'm glad I finally got around to reading this book, and I can definitely see why it's considered one of the best comics of the century.

4. Disappearance Diary – I reviewed this book here. It's easily one of the best manga books I've ever read.

5. The Wild, Wild Women - I wrote a short blog piece about my discovery and fascination with the great satirist, Virgil Partch, aka "Vip."

6. Hate #1-30 – I'd read some of these issues years ago, but I finally filled in the holes and read the entire 30 issues for the first time this year. This series gets better with age, and is one that absolutely MUST be read in the original issues rather than the collections. Bagge’s letters pages are gems unto themselves, including the classic "Buddy look-a-like" and "win a date with Stinky" contests. The final six issues also featured loads of incredible backup stories by all kinds of great artists, including Adrian Tomine, Alan Moore, Gilbert Hernandez, Rick Altergott, Dame Darcy, etc. Now if I could just track down all those Hate Annuals; they're surprisingly hard to find.

7. Eclipse Magazine #1-8 and Eclipse Monthly #1-10 - These two early '80s anthology series included at least four masterpieces - Trina Robins' outstanding adaptation of Sax Rohmer's Dope (seriously, why hasn't this been collected?), Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers' Coyote and Cap'n Quick and the Foozle, the first Ms. Tree graphic novel by Max Allen Collins and Terry Beatty, and Doug Wildey's Rio (one of the best Westerns I've ever read). The latter series also included Steve Ditko's Static and tons of other great short strips.

8. Vanguard Illustrated #1-7 – This was another great anthology series from the early '80s. I went a little scan-crazy writing a tribute to this forgotten series over at Unattended Baggage.

9. Doctor Strange #48-53 –The classic story by Roger Stern and Marshall Rogers.

10. Spider-Man #27-28 – Can you tell I went through a bit of a Marshall Rogers phase this past year? I know this may seem like an odd and kind of random inclusion, but this story reunited Rogers with Don McGregor (writer of the incredible Detectives Inc. series, also from Eclipse, which was reprinted in HC by IDW this year, though sadly not in color). This was a surprisingly good Spidey story focused on guns and children, rather than the latest villain du jour.

11. The Adventures of Tintin volume 2 - I'm almost embarrassed to admit that up until this year I'd only read the first volume of the Adventures of Tin Tin, so this year I decided to check out the second volume from the library, and man, I get it. You don't have to be a kid to appreciate the stunning, immensely detailed artwork of Herge. Nor do you have to be a kid to get caught up in Tintin's exciting adventures, or laugh at Snowy's comic relief. These books are timeless; "King Ottokar's Sceptre" in particular was just awesome, though all three stories were amazing. I'll definitely be looking for vol. 3 in 2010.

12. A1 vol. 2 - The second volume of this British anthology series wasn't as good as the first one published by Atomeka Press, but it did contain one forgotten gem, the "King Leon" three-part story by Peter Milligan and Jamie Hewlett. There were also some decent short pieces, and generally great art.

13. Heavy Metal - I recently discovered a new favorite artist - Jose Maria Beroy. While on a trip to Philadelphia over the holidays, I randomly picked up two old issues of Heavy Metal for $5 - the July 1989 issue and the November 1991 issue. Both contained stories by Beroy. Beroy is an immensely talented Spanish artist who's done very little work in English. His style reminds me of a cross between Darwyn Cooke and Bryan Talbot. He apparently did a Deadman mini-series for DC comics in 2002, and some Star Trek special one-shots for IDW as well, so I have a few back issue purchases in my future, but if you have the opportunity, get yourself a copy of the July 1989 issue of Heavy Metal and see what I mean.

14. Doctor Strange Classics #1-4 - Inspired by ADD's great post on old Baxter paper reprints, I sprung for these on eBay and oh, what a treat! The great Steve Ditko, in full color, on perhaps his greatest superhero story, all for under $10. Technically, I don't think these are Baxter paper, but still, they're not too shabby and a great, cheaper alternative to the Marvel Masterworks hardcovers!

15. Mr. A – Speaking of Ditko, I also took advantage of the Ditko reprints that came out this year. I don’t agree with Ditko’s Ayn Rand-inspired objectivist philosophies, but the artwork in this book is the best Ditko work I’ve seen (though I’m far from a Ditko completist). I'm looking forward to reading The Avenging World and Wha!?! next.

So, those were my favorites. How about you?