BOUGHT:
Azuma is an absolute master of sequential art, having completely perfected the most subtle, intangible aspect of comics, that which happens in the space between one image and the next.
I think perhaps the best example of that in this volume, or at least the one I remember most clearly a week or so after reading it, is in the final story in this collection, "Yotsuba & Teacher." In it, the neighbor girls take Yotsuba to the school playground with them, so one of them can work on mastering the back hip circle on the bars.
Unexpectedly, they find their teacher there, also practicing back hip circles; this is the first teacher Yotsuba has ever met, and she's in awe of her, while the teacher feels the intense pressure of living up to Yotsuba's expectations.
As the pair hang from the bars side by side, the teacher talks about various "techniques". In the last panel of one page, the two are shown hanging side by side by their arms and in conversation, and then in the next panel, the teacher is suddenly draped over the bar at the waist, completely still and silent, while Yotsuba reacts with one of her big, intense expressions of surprise.
It's hard to explain exactly why this might have worked as well as it did, but it was one of several times I laughed out loud while reading this volume, mostly in surprise at the sudden and dramatic shift between the two panels. ("Laundry," the teacher says without raising her head, apparently naming the "technique" shortly thereafter. "Yotsuba wants to be laundry too!" the little girl exclaims with intense determination, and, within a few panels, they are both hanging perfectly still and silently side-by-side.)
The book—the whole series—is full of these moments. The majority of the comedy, I think, comes from the characters' reactions to one another, particularly Yotsuba's big emotions, often of surprise or wonder or dismay, which, being a little kid, she has a hard time disguising, and, being a great cartoonist, Azuma is great at capturing.
Another notable sequence, I thought, was when Yotsuba's dad talks to her about how difficult it will be for the two of them to go on a trip to a mountain unless they bring another grown-up, and Daddy's friend Jumbo, who Yotsuba loves, is busy. They have this conversation in front of Daddy's other friend, the younger and more annoying Yanda, who Yotsuba does not like. Realization slowly dons of Yotsuba over a series of panels, and she ultimately looks with suspicion at Yanda, who, being an adult, has already caught on, and is looking at her with an insane look of extreme self-satisfaction and expectation.
Later, when the trio are on the mountain, Daddy notes that the two are bickering, despite the fact that he had made them both promise beforehand that they would not fight.
"It's okay," Yotsuba tells her dad. "We can fight now because we're already here at the mountain." She begins to run away laughing "HAH HAAA!", when her dad retorts simply, "...I wonder what Santa would think of this behavior..."
Yotsuba freezes, and then a close-up of her wide-eyes and open mouth demonstrate how deeply shocked she was by the remark, almost as if she had just been stabbed in the back.
"It's okay," Yotsuba tells her dad. "We can fight now because we're already here at the mountain." She begins to run away laughing "HAH HAAA!", when her dad retorts simply, "...I wonder what Santa would think of this behavior..."
Yotsuba freezes, and then a close-up of her wide-eyes and open mouth demonstrate how deeply shocked she was by the remark, almost as if she had just been stabbed in the back.
She ultimatel answers her father:
The mountain trip seems to take up the majority of this volume, which contains eight chapters, about half of which involve the trip to and up Mount Takao. Yotsuba also gets a Christmas tree, plays restaurant at a playground while her dad and Jumbo talk, plays doctor with the neighbor girls and then goes to the playground where she meets the teacher.
Yes, it's all basic, slice-of-life stuff. It's great.
One nice thing about the series is that there's no real stringent story continuity between the various stories and volumes, no overarching narrative one needs to keep track of, as Yotsuba's little adventures are all basically little vignettes. This means that a reader could pick up any volume and read it and enjoy it, regardless on the number on the spine. So, if you've never read the series before, I think you would be absolutely fine picking this up and reading it. Or if your library only has some random, out-of-sequence volumes? You're cool; pick 'em up.
Reading them all in sequence does reward the reader, as one gets to know Yotsuba and her circle's likes and dislikes and relationships better, which deepens one's appreciation of the melodrama of situations like, for example, Daddy coming down the stairs to find that Yanda has let himself in, made dinner and curled up under the kotatsu, but honestly, all you need to know is that Yotsuba is a little girl, Daddy is her dad, he has two friends and Yotsuba is close with their neighbor girls.
Yes, it's all basic, slice-of-life stuff. It's great.
One nice thing about the series is that there's no real stringent story continuity between the various stories and volumes, no overarching narrative one needs to keep track of, as Yotsuba's little adventures are all basically little vignettes. This means that a reader could pick up any volume and read it and enjoy it, regardless on the number on the spine. So, if you've never read the series before, I think you would be absolutely fine picking this up and reading it. Or if your library only has some random, out-of-sequence volumes? You're cool; pick 'em up.
Reading them all in sequence does reward the reader, as one gets to know Yotsuba and her circle's likes and dislikes and relationships better, which deepens one's appreciation of the melodrama of situations like, for example, Daddy coming down the stairs to find that Yanda has let himself in, made dinner and curled up under the kotatsu, but honestly, all you need to know is that Yotsuba is a little girl, Daddy is her dad, he has two friends and Yotsuba is close with their neighbor girls.
Anyway, if you haven't read any Yotsuba&! yet, please do so. I implore you.
While I was sad to get to the end of the book, I was comforted by the words "TO BE CONTINUED!" on the last page, over a drawing of a Christmas tree and the two-word phrase that could be the book's mantra: "Enjoy Everything."
While I was sad to get to the end of the book, I was comforted by the words "TO BE CONTINUED!" on the last page, over a drawing of a Christmas tree and the two-word phrase that could be the book's mantra: "Enjoy Everything."
Hopefully, it won't take another five years for the next volume, but I'll be excited to read it whenever it does come out.
Anxietyland (Gallery Books) At the risk of making this brief, amateur review of Gemma Correll's excellent comics memoir Anxietyland about me, I think it's relevant that there's some overlap between Correll's experiences as chronicled in this book and my own.
I too suffer from anxiety, and I have since at least the fourth grade, which is when I started getting frequent but entirely random stomach aches, often before or during school, or something else I was worried about doing. And I too went far too long without seeking any sort of professional help (I was in my late twenties before I ever sought out a therapist of any kind), as I didn't seem to realize that what I was dealing with was actually a not unique, or even uncommon medical condition, rather than something particular to me personally. And, for most of my life, I dealt with my anxiety by practicing what a therapist would call "avoidance", simply avoiding any and all potential triggers for my anxiety which, given that it involved a degree of agoraphobia, meant avoiding a lot of things.
Now, lucky for me, I've never had things quite as rough as Correll has. I wasn't treated as poorly by my peers in school as she was, I never tried self-medicating with alcohol as she did (This is a very bad idea! Don't try it! But damn, these are some of the funniest passages of the book). And I never had an episode quite as horrible as the inciting incident of the book, in which she suffered from a panic attack that lasts for whole weeks without ever subsiding, and was bad enough that she eventually went to the hospital for it. (My worst anxiety came when I idiotically decided to just stop taking my medication and had a week-long panic attack that lasted until I started taking medication again.)
Jeff The Land Shark: Friend and Rivals (Marvel Entertainment) I was pretty puzzled to see the back cover copy shouting "Everyone's Favorite Walking Fish Boy Stars in His First Series!" I mean, I've read multiple comics featuring Jeff The Land Shark before. I've reviewed a few of them for Good Comics for Kids. What's this "first series" business...? 
Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2: The Omega Act (DC Comics) I guess some regularly published serial comics just aren't meant to be collected into trade paperbacks and read and enjoyed that way.
Of course, the events of the volume repeatedly reference things going on in other books, particularly involving Superman, Booster Gold, an evil version of the Legion of Super-Heroes and maybe Doomsday/The Time Trapper (He's the thing guy with chains on the cover above). The asterisks and editorial boxes in the book seem to suggest these events are all taking place in the pages of Superman.
Somewhat irritatingly, this collection only has a single credits page listing all of the writers and artists, rather than saying who does what, so I'm afraid I'm not sure of who to credit with each issue or passage. I mean, I obviously recognize Dan Mora's work versus that of Carmine Di Giandomenico, but I couldn't tell you if Yasmine Putri or Cian Tormey drew one special or the other, nor do I know if frequent DCU writer/architect Joshua Williamson or writer Marc Guggenheim each handled a special apiece, or if those were co-written, or if they helped Waid out on JLU. I mean, I could look that all up, but if DC didn't feel it worth delineating in the book itself, I'm not going to do that for them in this blog post.
Lindsey Cheng Dates a White Boy!!! (Andrews McMeel Publishing) If I had to guess at two of cartoonist Asia Miller's influences here, I would guess the Animal Crossing video games and Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim comics. Or, at the very least, those are two things this excellent graphic novel reminded me of.
Though the book is set in the real world, Miller populates it with an equal number of human characters and anthropomorphic animal characters. Our heroine's bandmates are a llama and a dog, for example, and the "white boy" of the title is also in a band, and his bandmates consist of an alligator and what I am going to guess are an anteater and a meerkat...? (Miller's drawings aren't super-realistic). The characters occasionally note that some of them are animals, too, as a human character refers to the alligator character as a gator at one point, and the llama character identifies the particular breed of the dog (they ae a bichon frise).
Predator Kills the Marvel Universe (Marvel) This is, by my count, writer Benjamin Percy's fourth miniseries plopping Predator aliens down into a version of the Marvel Universe, following books in which they tried their hunting skills against Wolverine, Black Panther and Spider-Man (Yeah, I said "Preadator aliens"; sorry, I can't bring myself to say "The Yautja"). While they all seem somewhat connected (I skipped the Black Panther one, personally), I don't think one needs to have read those to follow the action in this one. I mean, that which came from those stories—the Predators apparently gaining access to vibranium, Kraven having been recruited to join their society—is addressed in passing here, and, well, it's not like this is the most complex story. I mean, the premise is right there in the title, isn't it?
In an effort to tell a Predator story that involves the whole Marvel Universe—or at least as much of it as can be jammed into just 100 pages—Percy strays pretty far from the core concept of alien big game hunters targeting the most dangerous prey, which can certainly seem like he's breaking the basic Predator premise here. But, at the same time, the fact that he is doing so, that this is so different from any previous Predator story I've seen, either on the big screen or in a comic book, is also what makes the series interesting.
The Definitive Yokai Field Guide (Drawn & Quarterly) Probably the best way to learn about yokai, the wide-ranging class of Japanese supernatural entities, is to read Shigeru Mizuki's classic manga, like his signature work GeGeGe no Kitaro and the autobiographical NonNonBa, translated and published in the North American market by D+Q.
Opting Out (Scholastic) The headline here is that this is the new book from Maia Kobabe, who created a little memoir that you've probably heard of called Gender Queer. Here, Kobabe collaborates on both the writing and the art with co-creator Swati "Lucky" Srikumar to tell the story of Saachi, a 12-year-old who wishes things didn't have to change and that she and her friends didn't have to grow up. While she can't freeze time, and she can't opt out of growing up, she eventually comes to the realization that maybe she can opt out of some elements of doing so, like gender performance and the romance that so many of her classmates suddenly seem to be obsessed with. Beyond these specific conflicts though, Saachi also experiences several other ones that are more universal, making for a book that should appeal to anyone who has similarly wrestled with the difficult years in which childhood starts to fall away, and one finds themself becoming a teenager. More here.
Science Comics: Prehistoric Mammals: From the Jurassic to the Ice Age (First Second) I like when someone makes a comic about one of my specific interests, like the weird, mammalian megafauna of prehistory.** Joe Flood tells the story of the rise of mammals and their various expressions over the millennia, and he does so in a clear and engaging enough way that someone like me, who isn't exactly science-oriented, could follow along easily enough. While reading this, I did find myself wondering if human co-existed with certain animals, like the Indricotheres, the Chalicotheres and Gigantopithecus (no, yes and yes). I don't know why, but if makes me feel bad that not only did I never get to see an Indricothere, the largest land mammal ever, but no human being ever did. Anyway, more here.
Speed Racer Adventures Vol. 1 (Papercutz) Artist Derek Charm is one of the comics creators on a relatively short list whose work I so admire that I will read anything they do, so Charm drawing a new series of kid-friendly original graphic novels based on the old anime I used to watch on MTV as a teenager (and was the source of a great movie, with one of the best trailers ever cut)...? Yeah, I'm down for that. Charm draws, while the script comes from Franco, a prolific writer of kids' comics, maybe best known for his many collaborations with Art Baltazar on comics like Tiny Titans. I thought it worked and, as a grown-up, I was particularly interested in Charm working in a different style here, and the fact that Franco made the bad guy a pretty transparent Elon Musk stand-in. Yes, let's teach the children that Cybertrucks are ugly and the creation of a villain, and that oligarchs are bad...! Full review here.
Uncle Scrooge: "A Little Something Special" and Other Tales of Fiendish Foes (Fantagraphics) This 350-page collection is devoted to the introductions of and greatest battles with Uncle Scooge's considerable rogues gallery, including Flintheart Glomgold, Magica De Spell, The Beagle Boys and some lesser opponents and rivals. I had read the Carl Barks stories before, but the rest of the book was new to me, and I especially appreciated that each story included an introduction about the particular fiendish foe appearing in it, including behind-the-scenes information, where they came from and how they were used in the future. The highlight here are a pair of Don Rosa stories, the brilliant "A Matter of Some Gravity", in which Scrooge and Donald are magically afflicted by "horizontal" gravity and still struggle to navigate the comic book pages on which they are no longer properly oriented, and the title story, a sort of "ultimate" Scrooge story featuring an alliance of his greatest villains (I posted a few noteworthy scenes from that one here).
BORROWED:
I too suffer from anxiety, and I have since at least the fourth grade, which is when I started getting frequent but entirely random stomach aches, often before or during school, or something else I was worried about doing. And I too went far too long without seeking any sort of professional help (I was in my late twenties before I ever sought out a therapist of any kind), as I didn't seem to realize that what I was dealing with was actually a not unique, or even uncommon medical condition, rather than something particular to me personally. And, for most of my life, I dealt with my anxiety by practicing what a therapist would call "avoidance", simply avoiding any and all potential triggers for my anxiety which, given that it involved a degree of agoraphobia, meant avoiding a lot of things.
Now, lucky for me, I've never had things quite as rough as Correll has. I wasn't treated as poorly by my peers in school as she was, I never tried self-medicating with alcohol as she did (This is a very bad idea! Don't try it! But damn, these are some of the funniest passages of the book). And I never had an episode quite as horrible as the inciting incident of the book, in which she suffered from a panic attack that lasts for whole weeks without ever subsiding, and was bad enough that she eventually went to the hospital for it. (My worst anxiety came when I idiotically decided to just stop taking my medication and had a week-long panic attack that lasted until I started taking medication again.)
The reason I bring this up is because I have never read a comic book or a prose book (nor seen a movie or TV show) that managed to so perfectly capture what anxiety feels like, nor have I ever seen the experience of avoidance, one that I am so intimately familiar with, expressed or dramatized anywhere else before.
This may sound weird coming from someone like me, a straight white cis male, but I've never before seen a work that I related to so much, one in which I could see aspects of my own life and experiences reflected back at me.
So, I speak with some authority when I tell you that this is the best comic (or book, or anything) about anxiety. If you're curious what your friends or family members who have to deal with anxiety might be going through, you need to read this book.
Now, the subject matter is obviously quite dark, even scary, so it might be weird to hear this, but the book is also hilarious. Like, genuinely, laugh-out-loud funny. At times, anyway.
Correll, a supremely gifted cartoonist, tells her story in a book that feels more like a cartoon narrative than the traditional graphic novel/comics narrative most readers have grown accustomed to. That is, for the most part, she eschews grids and panels but fills the pages with drawings and words in what amount to implied panels. In that regard, there's also something of a picture book quality to the narrative, or even the feel of an extremely polished sketchbook.
I honestly can't recommend this book strongly enough...and I can't remember the last time I felt so emphatic about a book's quality, and a sense of urgency when it comes to urging others to read it.
Just to be sure I wasn't insane, I plugged the word "Jeff" into the Grand Comics Database, and found a half-dozen different Jeff The Land Shark books, although those were all under the title It's Jeff, while this one is entitled Jeff The Land Shark. Is that what whoever wrote the back cove copy was talking about? Or were all of those previous Jeff comics ones that originated online and were then later printed, making this the character's first series to be original to published, paper comic books, rather than starting as a web comic...?
I have no idea, but as someone who engages with comics via print, it certainly confused me. I hope kids ages seven to 10, which is the age group the back cover says the book is for, aren't similarly confused, and don't pick this up, read the back and think that there aren't a whole bunch of other, previous Jeff comics to be found at their local library or comic shop.
Well, regardless, we've got a new Jeff comic from writer Kelly Thompson. In addition to the slightly different titling format, there's another big difference between this one and the previous ones: This one is not drawn by the art team of Gurihiru, which drew all of the Jeff comics I've read before (I see now that there was apparently something called It's Jeff: Infinity Paws that was also not drawn by Gurihiru...nor written by Thompson).
I found that cause for some concern, as not only are the Gurihiru team among my favorite (and, I'd argue, the best) superhero comics artists working today, but also because one of the great pleasures of the Jeff comic to date has been seeing Gurihiru tackle so much of the Marvel Universe, Jeff's many friends, occasional enemies and other guest-stars all being drawn in the lovely Gurihiru style.
Gurihiru does provide covers for this five-issue, 2005 series, though, and their absence is softened by the presence of artist Tokitokoro, of whom I know absolutely nothing.
The art is pretty great, I thought, and while it might be interesting for some readers to grab an older, Gurihiru-drawn Jeff comic and compare it side by side with this one, I don't know if a lot of those seven-to-10-year-olds will really notice.
The style is still very much manga-inspired, the Tokitokoro Jeff looks just like the Gurihiru Jeff and the storytelling is quite similar (As one might expect, given Thompson's presence). I think the most notable differences are that this one was apparently created to be published on paper in a comic book and it thus looks built for the comic page in a way that some It's Jeff stories might not (The art is here sometimes more dense and less airy).
That, and the non-Jeff, non-animal characters are more notably the work of a different artist, with a different style. Tokitoro's renderings of these characters still look influenced by Japanese art and still look far cuter than they might in the average Marvel comic, but they also look bit less solid, and drawn with a thinner line, than those of Gurihiru.
So, what goes on here?
Well, Jeff is on his way home from a picnic and nap in the park when he strolls by the Sanctum Sanctorum, just as Doctor Strange is flying out of its open doors. Jeff uses his picnic basket to hold those doors open and invade. Despite the warnings of talking striped snakes Anton and Aleister, Jeff explores and gets into mischief, eventually pilfering a couple of magical gem stones and releasing a Shadow Demon.
The demon promptly steals Jeff's shadow, becoming a sort of Shadow Jeff, and then opens a portal to escape. Jeff, intent on retrieving his shadow, gives chase. What follows is a tour of the Marvel Universe, as each portal leads to another Marvel guest-star (most of whom Thompson has written extensively before), and thus a little mini-adventure teaming Jeff with various heroes.
And so Jeff meets Deadpool, and then Rocket Raccoon and Groot, and then Rogue and Gambit, and then Wolverine, Psylocke and Luna Snow, and then Elsa Bloodstone, eventually finding Gwenpool and a trio of Marvel magic users who can help set things right. (These guest-stars don't map directly onto Gurihiru's cover above—in fact, of those on it, only Rocket and Strange appear within the comic—which is a bit of a bummer, as I was kind of looking forward to seeing Squirrel Girl again. It's been a while.)
Just as seeing Gurihiru's version of various Marvel characters was part of the fun of previous Jeff comics, so too is seeing Tokitokkoro's (I'm curious what X-Men fans might have thought of the artist's versions of Gambit and Rogue. Gambit seems to be drawn about as sexy as I've ever seen him, while this Rogue looks smaller and cuter than I think I've seen her in a mainstream Marvel comic before).
The set-up is one that allows for plenty of guest-stars and Marvel Universe gags (Wolverine inventing "the Jeff-Ball Special" for example, where the throw-ee becomes the thrower), but Thompson doesn't just leave it as a tour of the Marvel Universe, as what begins as a simple chase is gradually explained, and Jeff comes to understand that there's more to Shadow Jeff than he initially thought, so that this conflict can't just be a simple good guy-defeats-bad guy kind of thing.
There are several running jokes throughout the series, and the one that I found to be the most delightful was Jeff's problems communicating, given that he can't really talk. It's a bigger problem here than usual too, as every time a portal takes him to a new character, he has to explain what's going on to that character.
First, he tries charades with Deadpool. Then Rocket gives him a universal translator type device, but it translates his words not into English, but "Modokian," so that each of his "words" is actually a little drawing of MODOK emoting. And then Rocket whips up a little mech suit for Jeff, with a big button that, when pushed, says "Hey!", allowing Jeff to speak exclusively in "Hey!"s for a bit. (Eventually, Rogue kisses Jeff in order to absorb his thoughts/language, and she writes a note for him to carry around with him...this he puts in his "skin pocket" and, like Jeff, I don't care for hearing people talking about his skin pocket).
All in all, then, Friends and Rivals is like all of the Jeff comics I've read before: Cute, fun, funny and quite well-made.
The thought occurred to me while reading The Omega Act, which despite the "Volume 2" on the spine, is actually the third trade collection of writer Mark Waid's JLU title. The second one was the unnumbered Justice League Unlimited/World's Finest: We Are Yesterday, which contained JLU #6-8, and thus slots between volumes one and two of JLU. Hell, that alone suggests that the series is meant to be read in single issues as released, rather than in this collected form.
This volume collects JLU #9-11, but it also collects a pair of one-shots, Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special #1 and Justice League: The Omega Act Special #1, and here those specials come between the issues of the main series, and, due to their differing artists and slightly different focuses, seem to interrupt the narative of JLU.
Of course, the events of the volume repeatedly reference things going on in other books, particularly involving Superman, Booster Gold, an evil version of the Legion of Super-Heroes and maybe Doomsday/The Time Trapper (He's the thing guy with chains on the cover above). The asterisks and editorial boxes in the book seem to suggest these events are all taking place in the pages of Superman.
At almost a dozen issues in, it's become abundantly clear that Justice League Unlimited is functioning as something as a bridge between event series, as it launched out of Waid's own Absolute Power and is now building towards DC K.O. (Indeed, the cover includes a slug reading "The Road to DC K.O."). That, and a generator of spin-off miniseries, of which there have been more than I can keep up with...or am even interested in.
From a sales point-of-view, I suppose that's a good strategy for the publisher, as it makes each issue of the series seem "important" to a certain sort of reader (That is, the sort that buys new DC comics each Wednesday at a comics shop). But from even a slight remove—that is, reading the issues in bunches every few months in a collection—it makes it clear that the book isn't devoted to telling stories so much as selling stories.
From a sales point-of-view, I suppose that's a good strategy for the publisher, as it makes each issue of the series seem "important" to a certain sort of reader (That is, the sort that buys new DC comics each Wednesday at a comics shop). But from even a slight remove—that is, reading the issues in bunches every few months in a collection—it makes it clear that the book isn't devoted to telling stories so much as selling stories.
Also, at this point, I think it's become clear that as fun as the "Everyone's a Justice Leaguer now!" premise of the series is, in practice, when everyone is a Justice Leaguer, it feels a little bit like no one is a Justice Leaguer, and thus the book feels more like a parade of guest-stars than one that has an ensemble cast.
There doesn't seem to be a point-of-view character anymore, or even regulars; Mister Terrific probably appears the most often (alongside the Trinity and Red Tornado, although the latter is more of a plot device than a character in JLU), and Waid has written Terrific with a specific enough tic (growing unreasonably frustrated and angry when he can't solve a problem) that it seems like it might be going somewhere eventually. But otherwise, this is a pure toy box comic.
Again, watching a skilled writer and obvious DC Comics fan like Waid play with the toys might be fun if that's a small part of your monthly DC comics diet (especially when Waid's paired with a skilled artist, as he is in several of the issues within this trade, as artist Dan Mora draws two of the JLU issues), but if you're reading the series in trade, well, it feels like the storytelling equivalent of a bag of potato chips versus a meal.
Somewhat irritatingly, this collection only has a single credits page listing all of the writers and artists, rather than saying who does what, so I'm afraid I'm not sure of who to credit with each issue or passage. I mean, I obviously recognize Dan Mora's work versus that of Carmine Di Giandomenico, but I couldn't tell you if Yasmine Putri or Cian Tormey drew one special or the other, nor do I know if frequent DCU writer/architect Joshua Williamson or writer Marc Guggenheim each handled a special apiece, or if those were co-written, or if they helped Waid out on JLU. I mean, I could look that all up, but if DC didn't feel it worth delineating in the book itself, I'm not going to do that for them in this blog post.
Anyway, here's what this volume contains...
•First is JLU #9, clearly drawn by Mora, the perfect artist for such a comic, where we get to see one of DC's best artists drawing a swathe of their universe. In the aftermath of "We Are Yesterday", the usual crowd of Leaguers standing around the Watchtower are now joined by a crowd of time-lost characters also standing around the Watchtower. Then the newly svelte Doomsday-as-The Time Trapper appears with The World Forger from Scott Snyder's Justice League run (which, come to think of it, was also just a bridge between two big event series). They want to collect Gorilla Grodd in order to vivisect him to study the omega energy trapped within his body; the League are anti-vivisection and put up a fight, and ultimately Grodd convinces the visiting cosmic beings his knowledge can reveal more than his sliced-up body can, and the trio disappear together. Also, Mister Terrific rescues Airwave from wherever he was dispersed, the Trinity holds a secret meeting and I met a new-to-me character, Marilyn Moonlight, who has a pretty cool design.
•Then it's the Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special, in which "Omega Demons", which look like Crisis On Infinite Earths' Shadow Demons but with a red omega symbol on their faces, hunt down and kill various time travelers, starting with a spectacularly off-model Waverider (That's him above. Maybe he got a drastic redesign somewhere recently I missed it, of course). A mysterious time-traveler calling themself "Legend" comes to the Watchtower for help and assembles a team to start rescuing time travelers from the Omega Demons. The team? Gold Beetle, Marilyn Moonlight, Batman Terry McGinnis, Air Wave, Jonah Hex, Plastic Man and a Huntress (Batman and Catwoman's daughter, so from the future, I guess...?). I think most of them are time-lost, but some of them seem to have been time-lost before Grodd broke time in "We Are Yesterday."
They ultimately confront a caped woman that Plas refers to as "the blue lady", despite the fact that her skin is chalk white and she's wearing red and black (and what looks to be turtle shells on her shoulders and over each breast?). Pages later, Legend's narration says they recognize their opponent as "Shadow Lass of the 31st Century," whose skin is supposed to be blue; apparently whoever colored this issue just mistakenly made her white throughout...and DC decided not to correct it when it was collected...?
Then the team finds themselves unable to return to the 21st century, due to a temporal firewall.
•Back to Justice League Unlimited, for issues #10 and #11, the first of which is drawn by Mora, and the second by Di Giandomenico. In the first, Time Trapper is mortally wounded by the evil LOSH (all of whom seem to sport omega symbols and bits of rock on them, so I guess the mis-colored Shadow Lass was actually wearing a stone bra and shoulder pads, rather than turtle shells). He crash-lands on the Watchtower. A group of heroes—Martian Manhunter, Niles Caulder, Metamorpho—use their particular powers and knowledge in an attempt to save his life through emergency surgery, while his built-in temporal defenses age the Watchtower into pieces around them, and Mister Terrific deals with a Parademon Trojan Horse.
Meanwhile, the Trinity continue their secret meeting, apparently about the vetting of the Leaguers, during which Batman and Superman both seem extremely pissy with one another. And, in Markovia, another superhero team (Geo-Force, Power Girl, Captain Atom and Cadejos, the big werewolf with a flaming head and chains I've seen in backgrounds but don't think I've ever formally met) investigates a new fire pit opening and clash with the evil Legion.
•Finally, there's the Justice League: The Omega Act Special, which jumps between the distant past, where a young Lara and Ursa of a pre-exploded Krypton go exploring where they aren't supposed to and discover some off-world artifacts and some Doomsday dogs, and the present, where Superman, an older, skinnier, bearded Booster Gold and Doomsday/Time Trapper gather every hero for a big meeting. Before the meeting takes place, however, Time Trapper stops time so he and Booster Gold can argue and, with The Flash Wally West tagging along, the trio go on a little side quest to visit various familiar futures, where the evil Legion seems to be killing DC One Million's Justice Legion, Superman Beyond, OMAC and others. Then they fight the Legion, and return to the present for the meeting, giving the whole issue/chapter the feeling of a time-killing, place-holding side quest...which is weird, because it happened in a special, not an issue of an ongoing series.
And that's it. Will I be able to make sense out of the Justice League Unlimited Vol. 3, the fourth collection of the title, if I don't read DC K.O....? I guess I'll find out...?
And that's it. Will I be able to make sense out of the Justice League Unlimited Vol. 3, the fourth collection of the title, if I don't read DC K.O....? I guess I'll find out...?
Though the book is set in the real world, Miller populates it with an equal number of human characters and anthropomorphic animal characters. Our heroine's bandmates are a llama and a dog, for example, and the "white boy" of the title is also in a band, and his bandmates consist of an alligator and what I am going to guess are an anteater and a meerkat...? (Miller's drawings aren't super-realistic). The characters occasionally note that some of them are animals, too, as a human character refers to the alligator character as a gator at one point, and the llama character identifies the particular breed of the dog (they ae a bichon frise).
As for the Scott Pilgrim-ishness of it, Lindsey Cheng revolves around college-aged kids in bands, and, like O'Malley, Miller's style is informed by manga and anime to an extent, although her art is much looser, with thinner lines and more abstract character designs; it has the look and feel of a college newspaper comic strip or an alternative comic. When Miller draws a Lindsey in profile though, she looks quite a bit like the way O'Malley draws his characters in profile.*
As for the book itself, it is delightful, a winning comedy of young adults navigating relationships at a time in their life when they are in the liminal period between childhood and adulthood, allowed to focus on and prioritize things like romance, creative endeavors and fun over spending all day every day at a job.
It is set "Once upon a time... ...in some liberal arts college in the 2010s." When we first meet Lindsey Cheng, she has just tried to trim her own bangs shortly before a date; in a panic, she calls her mother for advice, and we get a sense of their particular dynamic, which seems to be a fairly typical mother/daughter one, although their conversation is conducted in Chinese and English.
That date is with Jason, a tall blonde boy whose hair permanently covers his right eye. Jason is the lead singer for the local band Bitch In French, which is apparently popular...or at least popular enough to get to play shows, a milestone that the still-nameless band Lindsey drums for hasn't yet reached.
We learn all about Jason quickly, thanks to a bit of deft shorthand by Miller. First, we know he's dreamy, as when he appears in Lindsey's doorway, he emits sparkles. Second, we know that he's perhaps not all that bright, or at least doesn't have the best of judgement, or perhaps cares more about looking cool than anything practical. Miller demonstrates this when Lindsey, bundled up in a scarf, asks the t-shirt wearing Jason if he's going to be cold and he says no....and then, in the next panel, we see him hunched over with his arms crossed, shivering.
Similarly, in the record shop they go to for their date, it's made pretty clear that Jason might not be all that sensitive to Lindsey, as when he finds a prog rock album and she recognizes it from a playlist he sent her, he thrusts it at her (Complete with "SHOVE" sound effect) and insists she take it, even though she demurs that she doesn't even have a record player (and, a little box with an arrow appears next to her and tells us that she "didn't like it THAT much").
Similarly, in the record shop they go to for their date, it's made pretty clear that Jason might not be all that sensitive to Lindsey, as when he finds a prog rock album and she recognizes it from a playlist he sent her, he thrusts it at her (Complete with "SHOVE" sound effect) and insists she take it, even though she demurs that she doesn't even have a record player (and, a little box with an arrow appears next to her and tells us that she "didn't like it THAT much").
The rest of the book tracks Lindsey and Jason's short relationship, as she goes to watch his band practice and meets one of his bandmates' girlfriends (though human, she's dating the...anteater-looking guy), she takes her friends to a party that Jason and his friends are at, she attends an art show that proves revelatory to her and then the young couple have theirfirst—and last—fight.
Meanwhile, there's another funny and charming (and queer) relationship happening in the background, involving a pair of supporting characters.
Lindsey Cheng Dates a White Boy!!! is pure comics, and I loved it. It's one of those rare comics I kind of want to hand sell to friends I think might like it, and, in any other month, I would say this was the best and my favorite book but, well, this month I also read a new volume of Yotsuba& and Gemma Carroll's outstanding Anxietyland, so...
Lindsey Cheng Dates a White Boy!!! is pure comics, and I loved it. It's one of those rare comics I kind of want to hand sell to friends I think might like it, and, in any other month, I would say this was the best and my favorite book but, well, this month I also read a new volume of Yotsuba& and Gemma Carroll's outstanding Anxietyland, so...
In an effort to tell a Predator story that involves the whole Marvel Universe—or at least as much of it as can be jammed into just 100 pages—Percy strays pretty far from the core concept of alien big game hunters targeting the most dangerous prey, which can certainly seem like he's breaking the basic Predator premise here. But, at the same time, the fact that he is doing so, that this is so different from any previous Predator story I've seen, either on the big screen or in a comic book, is also what makes the series interesting.
Well, kind of interesting. Like, if you've grown up with Predator stories, I guess, or if you're someone who has ever wondered if Daredevil could take a Predator, of if a Predator could lift Mjolnir.
So, the basic premise here is that the Predators, who generally visit Earth solo or in small groups to hunt bad-ass human beings or the occasional superhero, have decided to invade Earth and conquer it (Blame global warming; as Percy's narration says, "The Planet has been cooking itself with chemicals and industry, heating up. And the Yautja like it hot.").
A huge ship that looks a bit like a series of metal triangles blended with modern skyscrapers touches down on the moon. A/the Predator king sits on a weird throne that looks like it is made from the exoskeleton of a giant dead bug, and he receives their advisor Kraven, who hooked up with the Predators in last year's Predator vs. Spider-Man (Which I reviewed in this column, if you're interested).
While learning the aliens' ways, Kraven has also been detailing the names, whereabouts, powers and weaknesses of Earth's superheroes and supervillains to the Predators, so that, when they launch their attack, they are well-prepared for each. Though this is a military operation rather than a hunt, I suppose it's worth noting that the Predators basically use the same tactics, weapons and gadgets as usual; there's just a whole army of them hunting all the Marvel characters at once, rather than one or two or a small handful of them hunting a single character.
The first three issues mainly detail the Predators taking out their opponents: The Guardians of the Galaxy, The Fantastic Four, Magneto and a handful of the X-Men, The Avengers (here represented by just Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow), The Hulk and Thor.
The first three issues mainly detail the Predators taking out their opponents: The Guardians of the Galaxy, The Fantastic Four, Magneto and a handful of the X-Men, The Avengers (here represented by just Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow), The Hulk and Thor.
If you're wondering how on Earth the Predators could take out some of those guys, it's mostly via hand-waving. The Predators have come into possession of a great deal of vibranium, and used it to fashion specific hero-killing weaponry that allows them to, for example, somehow drain all the gamma radiation from The Hulk so that Kraven can kill him as defenseless Bruce Banner, or, for another, design a bullet casing capable of piercing Thor's skin, in which a gravity well is housed, plunging the divine hero from the surface of the Earth to its core.
Essentially, Percy here treats vibranium as a sort of do-anything magic substance, a sort of cheat code the Predators can use to get around the superheroes' powers.
While that accounts for the most popular characters, there's no time to address how the Predators might tackle every big gun in the Marvel Universe. So, for example, how did they take down Doctor Strange? However they did, it happened off-panel, as Strange is simply shown hanging upside down among other dead characters like Daredevil and Elektra in a single panel.
And what about all the other magic or supernatural folks, like, I don't know, Ghost Rider or Dracula? What about Man-Thing? Or heavy hitters like Doctor Doom, Namor or Captain Marvel? Well, there's only 100 pages here, so Percy doesn't have time to have the Predators kill their way through the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. (Predator Kills Its Way Through the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe would be a hell of a ongoing series though; I'd totally read that.)
And what about all the other magic or supernatural folks, like, I don't know, Ghost Rider or Dracula? What about Man-Thing? Or heavy hitters like Doctor Doom, Namor or Captain Marvel? Well, there's only 100 pages here, so Percy doesn't have time to have the Predators kill their way through the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. (Predator Kills Its Way Through the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe would be a hell of a ongoing series though; I'd totally read that.)
Around the midway point, Percy focuses on a handful of characters who have survived the initial assault and begin to fight back. These include Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Man, Black Panther and the Wakandian military and, alone on the moon, The Invisible Woman. An unlikely turning point seems to be the assassination of Kraven, killed by "Predator X", the Weapon X program's brain-washed Predator, who wears a helmet like Wolverine did in the original Weapon X miniseries.
It might seem strange, but I actually think this idea, the Predators launching all-out war on the Marvel Universe's Earth, would have been better suited to a bigger story, something event-sized, with a miniseries acting as its spine and tie-in issues or miniseries focusing on different characters and their individual fights.
It would certainly have made the story seem bigger and more important, as suits the seemingly once-in-a-lifetime nature of this IP mash-up, and it would have allowed for more compelling stories, presenting a series of "final" stories for Marvel characters and letting them go out in various blazes of glory, putting up genuine fights. Here, because the space afforded to the story is so small, most of the heroes of the Marvel Universe, characters who have been repelling similar alien invasions for like 60 years now, all fall remarkably quickly, many of their fights against the Predators occurring mainly off-panel.
(For example, after a surprise attack that takes out Magneto, who was playing chess with Professor X, a group of Predators wander into the Danger Room to confront the X-Men: Cyclops, Beast, Colossus, Storm and Nightcrawler. How did they manage to kill the likes of Colossus or Storm? No clue. One of them smashes Cyclops' face when he turns away from them, assuming they are a Danger Room construct, and then we just skip ahead to the aftermath, where all of the X-Men save Nightcrawler are apparently dead.)
It would certainly have made the story seem bigger and more important, as suits the seemingly once-in-a-lifetime nature of this IP mash-up, and it would have allowed for more compelling stories, presenting a series of "final" stories for Marvel characters and letting them go out in various blazes of glory, putting up genuine fights. Here, because the space afforded to the story is so small, most of the heroes of the Marvel Universe, characters who have been repelling similar alien invasions for like 60 years now, all fall remarkably quickly, many of their fights against the Predators occurring mainly off-panel.
(For example, after a surprise attack that takes out Magneto, who was playing chess with Professor X, a group of Predators wander into the Danger Room to confront the X-Men: Cyclops, Beast, Colossus, Storm and Nightcrawler. How did they manage to kill the likes of Colossus or Storm? No clue. One of them smashes Cyclops' face when he turns away from them, assuming they are a Danger Room construct, and then we just skip ahead to the aftermath, where all of the X-Men save Nightcrawler are apparently dead.)
The art is...well, it's not great, that's for sure. There are three pencil artists listed, two of whom ink their own work, and another inker. I didn't recognize any of the names, nor could I distinguish the work of one from that of another. Like, they obviously handed the baton to one another throughout the five issues—and why did Marvel need four artists for a five-issue mini-series completely divorced from the monthly goings-on of the Marvel Universe?—but I couldn't tell you when the artists changed just by looking at the art.
So, this seemed like a fairly interesting idea for a comic that did not live up to its potential, but, given the page count allotted to it, it's not like it ever really had a chance to do so, either.
There were a bunch of variant covers, some of them featuring characters who don't appear in the series at all (Moon Knight, The Punisher, Sabertooth). My favorite was probably Kyle Hotz's for the fourth issue, featuring Ka-Zar, Shanna and Zabu vs. a Predator (None of those guys don't appear in the series either). It made me wonder what the series might have read like if an artist with as distinct and compelling an art style as Hotz had been hired to draw it...
REVIEWED:
The second-best way? This book, a fun, heavily-illustrated prose guidebook that talks about yokai in general as well as breaking them down, kind by kind, in the style of a kids encyclopedia. In an addition to introducing readers to the world of yokai, it is also a pretty great showcase of Mizuki's artwork, and it contains a short Kitaro story, giving readers a sample of the series, and introducing the title character and his friend/foil Nezumi Otoko,
It was interesting reading this a week or so after reading Matthew Loux's My Journey to Japan: Escape to Yokai Mountain, which was a guidebook to Japan in general that used yokai as host characters to introduce and explain various topics, as doing so made it seem a bit as if the books were in conversation. For example, I was looking forward to seeing an entry on the kudan in Mizuki's Field Guide. That's the yokai that Loux referred to as "a menacing cow" and drew as a cow with a very stern expression; unfortunately, the kudan didn't make it into Mizuki's book (There are a lot of yokai).
Also, in Loux's book, the children protagonists are surprised to meet a Bigfoot on the mountain full of yokai; the big guy, we're told, is there as part of an exchange program between Japan and Canada. I thought Loux had simply chosen a Western monster as a good ambassador to that particular section, which dealt with a part of Japan to great interest to overseas visitors who love Japanese pop culture, so I was delighted to see that Mizuki's Field Guide included a bit on whether or not what we now call cryptids can be considered yokai (Short answer: yes; same goes for our friends King Kong and Godzilla).
Anyway, here's my formal review from Good Comics for Kids.
Anyway, here's my formal review from Good Comics for Kids.
The book seems to be the first in a new series of Fantagraphics Disney collections, called "Disney Greatest Comics Collections". The next in the series, Donald Duck: "Big Top Bedlam" and Other Tales of Visual Duckvolution,is due in October. It looks like the idea behind the sub-line of books is to trace the history of various aspects of Disney characters.
Anyway, for my formal review of the Uncle Scrooge volume, click here.
Anyway, for my formal review of the Uncle Scrooge volume, click here.
*I suppose one could make further comparisons, too. Jason, the white boy of the title, is a rather dim, even clueless band guy, although without any of Scott's redeeming qualities. And, of course, he is dating an Asian woman. Even the title reminded me of Scott Pilgrim, as Lindsey Cheng Dates a White Boy!!! echoed the line "Scott Pilgrim is dating a high schooler!"
Miller seems to acknowledge the similarities in one of the sketches in the back of the book, in which Jason is peeking out of her bag, like Scott in Ramona's bag:
**If you too like comics and these creatures, I'd recommend the manga series Cage of Eden, which I actually just mentioned the other day. It's about a class of Japanese high school students and others stranded on an island full of such creatures.
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