42 awesome things about James Stokoe's Godzilla: The Half-Century War

Godzilla's been on my mind a lot more than usual lately, thanks in large part to the recently-released teaser trailer for the upcoming reboot of the previous, 1998 attempt at a Hollywood reboot. So with Godizilla on my mind and a Christmas gift bookstore gift card in my hand, I finally got around to reading James Stokoe's Godzilla: The Half-Century War in trade, the format I've been waiting to read it in.

It was awesome, and I loved it. How did I love it? Let me count the ways...

1.) It was an auteur take on a familiar, corporate trademark type of character. I have a love/dislike relationship with publisher IDW when it comes to many of their licensed comics. They obviously have an ambitious licensing program, and they tend to snap up a lot intellectual properties that I would theoretically love to read comics created around—G.I.Joe, Transformers, Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—but they tend to expand their franchises so quickly, with multiple titles and, in some cases, mutliple continuities, that by the time the books start making it into trade, I'm so lost as to what to read and in what order that I have no idea how to proceed.

Despite that, I'm glad they decided to do this particular Godzilla miniseries, and that they gave it to a single cartoonist—Stokoe does everything but edit the series, and he gets some color assists—with such a distinct style and unique vision. While Godzilla's name is on the cover, and it's his mug that's on almost every page, this is as much if not more of a James Stokoe comic than it is a Godzilla comic, and readers familiar with the cartoonist's work from Won-Ton Soup or, more likely, Orc Stain, will be thankful of that. There are a lot of Godzilla comics and movies. But there's only one James Stokoe, and thus only one James Stokoe's Godzilla.

2.) That scream. If you've ever seen a Godzilla movie, you know what Godzilla sounds like. It's not an easy sound to imitate, let alone translate onomatopoetically into writing. Stokoe got around that in an extremely inspired fashion on the fourth and fifth pages of his first issue of the series, rendering Godzilla's cry into an oscilloscope-inspired visual, meant to remind the reader of the film cry more than recreate it (Or, if one's never heard a Godzilla scream, then to create one of their own in their imagination to match that visual).

It's effective enough that Stokoe doens't need to keep returning to it; whenever he draws Godzilla's mouth open in a howl or roar, you know the sound that's coming out of it after seeing that image. (For comparison's sake, in IDW's Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters, Godzilla appears roaring "SKREEEE-ONK," and in their just-plain Godzilla, his first roar is similarly written "SKREEEEE-ONNNNNK!").

3.) There's almost no variation between the way Godzilla "really" looks in the movies and the way Stokoe draws him. Godzilla's original look has become more and more preposterous seeming the more and more we learn about prehistoric monsters of the sort that originally inspired the character, and as his popularity grew and sequels were spawned, that look became more or less defined by the means at the filmmakers' disposal to pull it off—no matter how great the costume or special effects, Godzilla still had to look like a guy in rubber suit because, well, he is a guy in a rubber suit (Hence the attempt to improve Godzilla for that 1998 reboot, which, obviously, didn't go over well with, well, anyone).

Stokoe's Godzilla looks just like a faithful drawing of the guy-in-a-suit Godzilla of the old Toho films, right down to the way he walks, the way he stands or poses, the huge fat thighs, even the seams of the costume.

4.) Nevertheless, Stokoe's Godzilla still looks cool, and like he belongs organically, intrinsically in the world around him. The main character, Ota Murakami, and others refer repeatedly to Godzilla's impenetrably thick hide and armor, which explains the "seams" that appear here and there on the monster's bulk. That's apparently where the various pieces of "armor" are fused together.

The fact that he's drawn into a drawn environment is largely responsible for making him seem so realistic, despite the unrealistic design. Stock footage and miniatures never need to be married to shots of a guy in a suit, since everything is coming form the same place—Stokoe's pen.

5.) Godzilla's face as Noh mask...? Here's something I never noticed, never considered about Japanese cinema's most famous giant monster until reading this comic, and seeing this particular panel: Viewed from a certain angle, Godzilla's visage looks a bit like a Noh mask, of the sort used to designate gods or monsters in the traditional Japanese dramatic form.

6.) All of Stokoe's lettering is good. While his rendering of Godzilla's cry is the most grabby and impressie bit of lettering Stokoe accomplishes in the comic—there were actually a couple of posts on the major, professional comics blogs about that image alone—it's worth noting that Stokoe similarly invests all of the lettered dialogue with volume and emotion not merely through the usual comics tricks of italics, bolds or starburst-shaped dialogue balloons, but by making the words big and emphatically shaped when someone is screaming or shouting.

He does the same with sound-effects,  similar to the way they're employed in manga: The louder the sound, the bigger the sound effect drawn into the panel of the action making the sound.

7.) The comic tracks the basic, real-world history of Godzilla. The title refers to the main character Murukami's life-long relationship with Godzilla, meeting him as a young lieutenant in the Japanese Self-Defense force in 1954, during Godzilla's first rampage, and by dint of that "expertise" (i.e. surviving it), he and his fellow soldier Kentaro end up spending the rest of their lives seeking a solution to the world's Godzilla problem.

That is, incidentally, the year Gojira was released in Japan, and  during the next 50 years of the comic, we  watch as the story of Godzilla transforms from a sort of man vs. monster one-off horror story into a monster vs. monster drama, with the creatures multiplying and their arena extending to the whole world. Other monsters are introduced in the order they appeared in during the films, until the climax, in which monsters from outer space have begun descending on Earth, and the stakes are finally apocalyptic in nature.

8.) As with the films, Godzilla gradually transforms from villain to hero. In the original film, Godzilla is the bad guy, although perhaps a sympathetic one, depending on the viewer (He wasn't quite as tragic a protagonist as, say, King Kong or Frankenstein's monster, though). As monsters emerged in the sequels for him to fight, however, Godzilla gradually came to be the "good" monster, or at least the monster we were meant to root for as he battled the heel monsters. This was especially the case when it came to invading monsters from outer space, like the three-headed King Ghidorah.

9.) The colors. I suppose this may be a generational thing, but for me, Godzilla exists mainly in pale, slightly sickly colors of 1970s and early '80s afternoon television and, later, in black and white (My fascination with the character existed mainly when I was a child, and the few times I've sought him out since have been to look back at things like the re-release of the original film, and Marvel's Essential collection of their short-lived comic).

Half-Century War is apparently colored by Stokoe and Heather Breckel, who is credited with color assists, and I think it's safe to say its colors don't resemble those Godzilla normally appears in, no matter how much you might have messed with the tint on your old television set.

There are a lot of reds, pinks and oranges, particularly in the skies and fires and action, with the darker color of the title character standing in sharp relief, along with the greens and purples of the settings he stomps on or crashes through. Godzilla's "fire"—radiation, as Murakami corrects a character at one point—is almost unique in the book in its bright, pale, blue-white color, which the growths on Godzilla's back crackle with before he emits in a beam.

10.) It's nice to see Stokoe draw human beings. Best known for Orc Stain, which is full of orcs, many readers probably haven't seen Stokoe spend a whole lot of time drawing human beings, so it's fun to see him do so here, and somewhat surprising to see how much his human characters resemble those of Akira Toriyama and, to a lesser extent, Jamie Hewlett.

11.) The human characters and their drama are actually engaging. I thought that perhaps the fact that while I loved giant monster movies as a child, I actually loathed about 75% of them was simply childish impatience on my part—I was watching Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster so I could see Godzilla fight a sea monster, not listen to all these Japanese people talk like ventriloquists (I had no idea what dubbing was as a child). But returning to some of the films as an adult, it was pretty clear that Godzilla movies—and other kaiju films—were generally pretty terrible, and the human drama was just something you had to sit through—like the commercials—before you could get to the good stuff.

That's not the case here. While we make pretty enormous jumps through Murukami's life time, sometimes a decade or more at a time, his motivation is pretty straightforward and consistent. He wants to destroy Godzilla and his monstrous ilk, and he grapples with relating to the monster and understanding both his role and Godzilla's role in the world.

12.) Stokoe draws incredibly detailed buildings, whether standing or in rubble. The amount of detail in this comic is often stop-reading-and-stare high, from the very first panel where Stokoe draws little squares for seemingly every city block in Tokyo, to the various scenes in which monsters rampage through cities, Stokoe taking the time to have drawn every single window on every building.

13.) Stokoe gets over Godzilla's breath weapon in a few brief panels without resorting to any sort of information dump. The spines on Godzilla's back start to glow blue, make a "KRSH! KRSH! KRSH!" sound, and then "KRKOO" out comes the atomic breath.

14.) Stokoe "kills" Godzilla off in the first issue, the same way he dies in the first movie. While not an adaptation of the original film, the first issue adheres to the broad plot, including the way humanity apparently finishes off Godzilla...temporarily.

15.) The AMF. When it becomes clear that Godzilla hasn't died, and is going to be around causing trouble for a while, Murukami and Kentaro are recruited into the Anti Megalosaurus Force, an international, giant-monster fighting organization that would change missions repeatedly during the course of that half-century.

16.) AMF scientist Doctor Randall puts giant drills on all of his inventions, whether they need drills or not. "He was a bit eccentric," Murukami explains.

17.) Anguirus's grand entrance. The first giant monster Stokoe's Godzilla fights is Anguirus, just as it was in the film series (although Stokoe sets their fight during the height of the Vietnam war, rather than off the coast of Japan and in Osaka). His appearance is every bit as dramatic as Godzilla's, first emerging as spikes rising up through the ground beneath the feet of some of our human heroes, and then appearing in all his glory on a two-page spread. He and Godzilla then oscilloscope-scream at each other.

18.) Anguirus also looks like a guy in a suit. The quadrapedal Anguirus's combat techniques are a lot cooler in the comic than they look on film, but when Stokoe draws the entire monster, he doesn't redesign him either—he still looks like the film version. You know, a guy in a rubber suit on all fours.

19.) Stokoe draws great smoke. Anguirus and Godzilla fight one another in Vietnam; the AMF has developed a super-powered maser weapon (with drills on it) to fight Godzilla, while the American military wants to bomb Godzilla out of existence. Anguirus interrupts the former plan, and the monsters battle during the bombing raid, so that their fight takes place in and out of a cloud of smoke, through which Anguirus repeatedly tries to sneak up on Godzilla. Here, as in all the other scenes of mass destruction, Stokoe draws incredibly detailed and effective smoke and clouds of dust.

20.) Rodan. In the third issue, Murukami watches as a whole menagerie of kaiju convene in Ghana to battle one another. It starts with a roll call of some of Toho's greatest monsters, all drawn by Stokoe. What's better than one giant monster, or two giant monsters fighting? All the giant monsters.

21.) Battra. Like the Rodan and the next four monsters, he looks a bit like he does on film, but the freedom of drawing a comic book has allowed Stokoe to make these winged and insect-like monsters look more natural than they appeared bound by special effects technology.

22.) Mothra. In final moth form. I love this guy.

23.) Kumonga.

24.) Ebirah. Probably the monster that benefits the most from a film-to-comics transition, the giant crustacean now actually looks like a giant crustracean. Stokoe's love of detail pays off quite well in drawing the texture of the lobster-monster's shell.

25). Hedorah. The most Lovecraftian monster is apparently some kind of toxic goop creature? He's one I've never seen in a movie. At least, not one that I remember.

26). Megalon. Wow, what a goofy-looking monster. Stokoe's skills can't do anything to not make this guy look more like something that would menace the Power Rangers than Godzilla, I'm afraid, but he doesn' t have too much to do here anyway ("He looks kinda like a Christmas tree monster," Joel said of Megalon's grand entrance in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode featuring Godzilla vs. Megalon. "And his arms look like the Chrysler Building," Crow added).

27.) Stokoe gives the human heroes a human villain to fight. Since there's only so much even the AMF can do to stop giant monsters—and by the third issue, as he impotently watches the eight monsters fighting one another, Murukami realizes they are essentially forces of nature that can't be slain—there's a cartoonishly over-the-top villain for them to deal with instead. Dr. Deverich was an AMF scientist who developed a "psionic transmitter" meant to repel the monsters from certain areas, but it didn't work right. Instead, it attracted them. Not terribly bothered, he decided to use it as a monster lure, and sell it to the highest bidder, allowing whoever buys his invention to essentially weaponize the kaiju against their enemies.

28.) The AMF is becomes basically a Godzilla-fighting version of G.I. Joe. What did I love as a child even more than Godzilla? Few things, really. But one of them was G.I. Joe. So it was sure exciting to reach the chapter of the book set in 1975 to discover that the AMF had essentially evolved into a G.I. Joe team of colorful soldiers with their own uniform/costumes and signature weapons, a handful of each of them devoted to fighting a different monster. What's better than Godzilla? Godzilla fighting G.I. Joe, obviously.

29.) The paint job on the Mothra team's van. I think it speaks for itself.

30.) The drive through Ghana. As all of the monsters introduced so far (save Anguirus) battle one another in Ghana, our heroes in the AMF realize they have to get past them all in order to shut down their enemy, the one responsible for bringing them all here, Dr. Deverich. To do so, they pile into the Mothra mobile and race between Ebirha's pincers, beneath Mohtra and Road, off a ramp of rubble to jump over Godzilla's tail and right through Hedorah (with a "SPLORCHHH!")

31.) Mechagodzilla. While the original was created as a weapon of mass destruction by one of those goofy alien civilizations that were always trying to destroy Japan or the world in the Toho movies, Stokoe integrates a giant, robot version of Godzilla pretty seamlessly into his narrative about man—and, specifically, a man—trying to come to grips with the unpredictable, destructive force of Godzilla. Here, Mechagodzilla is the ultimate in Godzilla fighting technology, a giant battle-suit piloted by a member of the AMF.

32.) The panel where the giant crystals that shower the earth. The Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla battle is interrupted by a new combatant—a third Godzilla. Before he appears, however, huge shards of cyrstal start falling from the sky like bullets fired from a giant gun, a gigantic, crystalline formation following them.

The scale of the thing is immense, as the two giant kaiju are drawn by Stokoe as tiny figures in an extreme longshot, and we know each of those tiny figures is many times larger than the biggest buildings. The humans in that image would be microscopic.

The crystals smash through buildings, the giant crystal crash-lands, and out steps a new monster.

33.) What's the name of the Godzilla from space? So, the monster that emerges from  the crystal, which I suppose is actually a spaceship of some kind, looks an awful lot like Godzilla, only with stronger, brighter armor on his chest, crystals embedded in his tail, giant crystalline shoulder-pads and a little tiara.

This was a kaiju I had never heard of, so I later went to the Internet in search of the answer to the question of what's the name of the monster that looks like Godzilla, but is from space?

Space-Godzilla, of course.

Space-Godzilla, a Godzilla-like monster from space, apparently first appeared in a movie from 1994, when I was 17, and thus in a particularly Godzilla-less point in my life. Apparently, as is demonstrated in the comic, Space-Godzilla has some powers, like the ability to control crystals, and telekinetically lift Godzilla (Or Earth-Godzilla, I suppose Space-Godzilla would call him).

34.) Godzilla's reaction to Space-Godzilla. When Godzilla attacks his cousin from space, he does so by breathing a blast of radiation at him. Space-Godzilla responds by summoning a crystal shield to block the blast. This is the face Godzilla makes when he sees a weird space version of himself using weird space powers:

35.) Space-Godzilla as herald. Stokoe's storyline starts with one monster in one city  in one country, and spirals out from there, with more locations and more monsters added, with bigger stakes  at each turn of the spiral. At the end of the penultimate issue/chapter, in which Murakami must temporarily set aside his difference with Godzilla in order to help him defeat Space-Godzilla, we learn that the evil Dr. Deverich has boosted the signal on his kaiju whistle machine, and that's what summoned Space-Godzilla to Earth.

"Deverich, in all his ignorance,opened up a whole universe of horror to our tiny globe," Murukami narrates, as he emerges from the cockpit of Mechagodzilla. The final panel of the issue/chapter shows two tiny dark figures silhouetted in front of a ruddy planet that might be Jupiter or Mars. One of them clearly has three heads and large, bat-like wings.

36.) At least one of the space monsters looks awesome. Those silhouettes end up belong to King Ghidorah and Gigan. Ghidorah is the three-headed, two-tailed, bat-winged monster that essentially looks like a three-headed Western dragon. He looks particularly awesome as drawn by Stokoe, who, naturally, draws every giant scale on him. Gigan, on the other hand, well, like Megulon, he's not exactly the greatest design. While he's rendered pretty well, he still looks like a pot-bellied chicken robot dinosaur bug with hooks for hands.

37.) Gigan's first appearance is awesome. Despite his ability to fly, for reasons I don't understand, he's first shown standing atop an aircraft carrier, part of a fleet he and Ghidorah have destroyed on their way to Antartica, where Murukami and the AMF are set to make their last stand against this fearsome pair of monsters, who have pretty much destroyed the whole world between the end of the last chapter and the beginning of his one.

Gigan appears to be surfing atop the aircraft carrier (The panels above are his dismounting from the aircraft carrier; the first appearance is actually a two-page spread, and not as scannable as that scene).

38.) The climax involves the tag-team, monsters vs. monsters action one would expect in a Godzilla story. While there was a monster battle royale earlier in the story, and Mechagodzilla and Godzilla did team-up to defeat Space-Godzilla, this chapter features the most extended, multi-monster action, as two heroic monsters (Godzilla and Mechagodzilla, piloted by the now elderly Murukami, who ambushed the real pilot to take his place) battle two evil monster (King Ghidorah and Gigan). It lasts about ten pages. It's awesome.

39.) Mechagodzilla's arsenal. This upgraded version of Mechagodzilla is brimming with weaponry, and Murukami seems to fire everything all at once constantly, like he's button-mashing inside the giant robot. I like how it apparently shoots missiles out of his back. This may have some analogue in real-life military hardware, I have no idea, but I like to think that they had to put the missiles back there because there was no room on the front of the robot for them, what with all the guns up there.

40.) Humanity's final weapon. Interesting that while Godzilla and his early films were meant as a reaction to World War II and the atomic age anxieties the war ushered in—urgently and palpably in Japan, unlike nowhere else—Half-Century War also tracks mankind's continual efforts to create bigger and more powerful weaponry. To fight Godzilla and the monsters. Who were awakened by mankind's continual efforts to create bigger and more powerful weaponry.

What they finally come up with is the "Dimension Tide," a giant gun that shoots a miniaturized black hole. The plan is to get the evil monsters close enough together, and then shoot them with the black hole, sending them off-planet or inside the black hole or whatever.

41.) The lack of closure. While Murukami's story arc reaches a fitting conclusion, and while the evil space monsters are defeated by the black hole gun, Godzilla's story goes on:  It seems like he is caught in the same black hole as his enemies, but the last panel of the book is of Godzilla's back spines above the surface of the ocean. Apparently he wasn't vaporized or teleported off of the Earth like the others, but escaped, to rise again as he always does.

42.) Brandon Graham's variant cover. There's a mini-gallery of covers in the back of the trade, including one from EDILW favorite Brandon Graham.  Based on its content, I'm assuming its from the third issue of the series, as it features the AMF soldiers, with Godzilla and Rodan as smaller figures in the background. Man, I sure would love to read a Brandon Graham Godzilla series, and it sure would be interesting to see more series like this one, in which auteur cartoonists like Stokoe or Graham get to do their own thing with Godzilla and friends.

...

I was actually shooting for 50 awesome things about Godzilla: Half-Century War, as half of a century would be 50 years, but I guess I couldn't quite do it without repeating myself (Like, this drawing is awesome too, for the same reason that drawing was).  Still, 42 awesome things about a single five-issue series? That's an average of over eight awesome things per issue, and thus a pretty good sign of an awesome comic.

Admit it: You would have read the hell out of Brandon Graham's Gen 13

On an early page of Walrus, PictureBox's publication of a sketchbook of Brandon Graham's (which you can get for half-off if you order before January 2), the artist describes the sorts of things that show up in his sketchbook, and one broad category he described was "Fantasy Football," which he described thusly: "I like coming up with what I would do with mainstream comics to make them into something I'd be into...have they ever put Aquaman inside an alien ocean that's inside a giant fish?"

Er, I don't know, but that would certainly be a pretty awesome Aquaman story, particularly if written and drawn by Brandon Graham.

Speaking of fantasy football, that's the sort of thing I really wish the New 52 reboot would have dabbled in, outside-the-box, let's-try-appealing-to-new-readers stuff like Brandon Graham writing and drawing a new volume of Aquaman where he's inside an alien ocean that's inside a giant fish, although obviously "Just Getting Geoff Johns To Write Aquaman For a While" worked well enough for them financially (Personally, I think Johns went too far into trying to make the character "cool," making him too bad-ass, too powerful and too defensive, but I never thought there was anything particularly broken with Aquaman in the first place; I'm definitely of the There's Now Such Thing As a Bad Character, Except For Geo-Force. And Red Tornado. And, like, 35% of the X-Men school of thought). (As it turned out, of course, DC wasn't terribly adventurous in picking creative teams or new directions for their rebooted line, and it turned out to be more of a numbering scheme and fashion move than anything else; even Marvel's fairly modest ideas like, say, Doing a funny crime book about Spider-Man's lamer super-villains or Having Mike Allred draw us a comic or Letting the Phonogram team have an Avengers title for a year seem radical in comparison to most of the initial The New 52 books. Oh well; maybe DC will throw Scrooge McDuck bags of money at Graham for Aquaman: Earth One.)

Anyway, at the top of this post is one of Graham's final fantasy warm-up sketches, a Gen 13 line-up consisting of original members Roxy and Fairchild, plus Static and Brainiac 5.

Gen 13, if you're not aware, was a superhero comic created in the early '90s by writers Jim Lee and Brandon Choi and drawn by J. Scott Campbell, set in Lee's original WildStorm Universe, which was first published at Image Comics before the imprint was sold to DC Comics. Like a rather astounding amount of the Image founders' creations, it borrowed quite liberally from Big Two super-comics, using barely-veiled analogues of Storm of the X-Men and The Human Torch of the Fantastic Four in its cast. It was about a team of five very '90s teenagers—one was even code-named Grunge—with superpowers, learning to use their powers, X-Men style.  It was mostly pretty terrible, but featured exciting art that lots of comics readers liked at that time, and the three females on the team had a habit of having their clothes fall apart, particularly Fairchild.

Adam Warren wrote and drew it for a while—first as a series of miniseries, then as an ongoing—and it was awesome then. Later DC rebooted it repatedly, as with their entire WildStorm Universe line,  and it seemed to get worse and less popular each time they did so. Finally the WildStorm imprint was shuttered, and the WildStorm Universe and many of its characters were folded into the new DC Universe created in the 2011 New 52 reboot, along with the old DCU and the publisher's "Vertigo Universe" characters.

DC hasn't tried a New 52 Gen 13 series yet (and seem to be shying away from using any WildStorm characters at all in the New 52-iverse), but they did put Fairchild in this book...

...which lasted about as long as one might expect in 2013.

Static got his own short-lived title—Static Shock—which was one of the first books to generate the sort of he said/he said post-mortem bickering of the creative teams that has characterized much of the New 52, and I imagine Brainiac was in one of the two Legion titles DC launched out of the reboot, both of which I think are cancelled now, but I don't care, because it's the Legion (You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe for the New 52 Legion, they hired a writer who has been writing Legion comics off-and-on for about as long as I have been alive).

Anyway, look at that sketch, then close your eyes and  imagine: DC Proudly Presents Gen 13 by Brandon Graham!

Walrus is a really fun book. I plan to discuss it at greater length, and not get sidetracked into fantasy publishing, in a near-future post.

Meanwhile...

I have two pieces of writing about comics up on the Internet today that you can go read, if you like. First, at Las Vegas Weekly, I have a review of Steven Weissman's excellent Barack Hussein Obama. And then, at Robot 6, I have a review of the first issue of Brandon Graham's Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity #1.

The above image is the first half of one of Weissman's Obamastrips, in which the president is confronted in his bedroom by the ghost of President James A. Garfield. Speaking of Garfield, guess what I am doing this weekend...? One of my least favorite things to do! I'm pretty excited about where I'll end up this time, however, as I'll be within walking distance of President James A. Garfield's house. Sweet, huh?

Hopefully it won't interfere too badly with my EDILW posting schedule, as I really should get started posting this year's "Super-Endorsements" series, seeing as how the election's like, days away now...

Meanwhile, at Robot 6...

I wrote a column reviewing Image Comics' Prophet and Glory, now that the first trade collections of each are out. You can go read the piece by clicking here, if you like. And you should go read the trades themselves by going to your local comic shop, and handing them a $10 bill, because each six-issue trade is only $9.99! And for that you get pages and pages and pages of Brandon Graham and Ross Campbell! And other folks doing stuff, too! But Graham! Campbell!

The image atop this post, by the way, is a tiny section of a two-page splash in Glory, which is perhaps one of the better examples of a two-page splash I've seen a comic book lately. Like, that expression? The image accompanying it totally deserves it.

Meanwhile...

In the first issue of Brandon Graham and Simon Roy's new Prophet series from Image Comics (which is numbered #21, just to be Marvel-ous), the title character kills and cures a large, predatory mammal. Then, using one of its bones and a flap of its skin, he makes a hobo bindle out of those two part, in which he then carries around the flesh of the very same animal to use as food.

That is probably the goriest hobo bindle ever made.

For more on Prophet—like, for example, is it any good or not—you might want to check out this week's Las Vegas Weekly, or at least this link, which will take you to my review of the book there.

If you'd like to read still more of me writing about comics on websites that are not Every Day Is Like Wednesday tonight, you might also want to visit Robot 6, where you can find a piece of some length regarding Carl Barks' depictions of various native peoples in the stories collected in the (wonderful, essential) Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "Lost in the Andes".

Please enjoy this rambling 2,438-word post that is eventually about pornographic comic books by Colleen Coover and Brandon Graham

I just tripled the size of my porn collection.

Last week it consisted only of Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls, the over-a-decade-in-the-making epic that imagined real world inspirations for Peter Pan’s Wendy, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’s Alice and wove a remarkably complex narrative in which their paths cross and they do it with each other quite a bit, while sharing stories of their past sexual exploits, most of which are reverse-engineered by Moore and Gebbie from incidents in their real-world fictional exploits.

It kinda makes me dizzy just to think about what Moore did with the book, and, when you factor in Gebbie’s lush art and Top Shelf’s incredible production of the three-book, $75 set, “porn” doesn’t quite seem like the right word anymore, but that’s what Moore himself insisted it was—preferring it to “erotica,” which has generally has less negative and more healthy connotations than the word “pornography”—and who am I to argue with Alan Moore? (Especially when the subject in the works of Alan Moore).

Of course, pornography is a notoriously difficult word to define, which is probably why it does have such negative, unhealthy connotations, and why Moore and a few other talented folks attempted to keep the label attached to works of their that obviously have a great deal of merit to them besides the amount of attention focused on fucking.

The definition that most sticks with me is the famous one offered by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart—“I know it when I see it”—in large part because of how broad it is, and how scary such broadness can be now that we live in an age where technology has begun to blur the lines between documentary representation (photography, film) and fake images that look real (digitally altered photography and film), which, in turn, motivates those rightly opposed to child pornography to over-define what’s dangerous (Er, not to open that can of worms again; but I will come back to that point sometime in the near future).

But never mind what Stewart says; I’ve always assumed “pornography” to refer to a visual work that was created for the specific, primary intention of causing sexual arousal in its audience, something usually rather easily discerned by the ratio of doing-it to not-doing-it in it (That is, a 90-minute film with two five minute sex scenes—even extremely graphic ones—isn’t pornography, but a 35-minute film with six five-minute sex scenes probably is). But that’s just me restating “I know it when I see it” as “I know it when Isee it. “

Wait, let’s see what Word’s dictionary says: “Films, magazines, writings, photographs, or other materials that are sexually explicit and intended to cause sexual arousal.” Huh. Word’s definition is on the broad side, too…

At any rate, Alan Moore says Lost Girls is pornography, I’ll accept his definition, and thus I own a rather large and expensive work of pornography (An aside: When friends ask me what that big, colorful collection of books on my shelf is and I tell them it’s porn, they never believe me…sometimes even after flipping through it).

Now at the risk of over-sharing, I’ve never been much of a pornography consumer.

Not out of prudishness or moral objections—although Olivier Assayas’ 2002 film Demonlover did convince me to swear all forms of pornography off as morally objectionable for a good six months or so after seeing—as much as the simple fact that I simply didn’t get old enough to actually be a pornography consumer until after the scientists had perfected the world’s best source of porn-delivery: The Internet. Why on earth pay actual money to a convenience store clerk for some extremely expensive magazine with pictures of naked ladies—money that could just as easily be spent on comic books—when you could just type “pictures of naked ladies” into a search bar for free, you know?

Over the past month or so, I’ve been thinking a lot about comics-as-pornography though, relating specifically to a few depressing rulings on the matter from courts in Australia, the United States and England, and some of the asinine conversations I’ve been drawn into online about whether drawings of sex acts are the same as photographs of sex acts, and if drawings of children involved in sex acts should be treated the same as photographs of children involved in sex acts. (Again, not trying to re-open that can of worms at the moment, although if anyone would like to explain why those things are equivalent using something other than a variation of because I said so or because I think it’s gross or because child abuse exists in the world, I’m all ears).

And that’s what lead me to seek out a couple of works of self-proclaimed comics pornography (See, the last 745 words? All an introduction leading up to this point! This is the unfortunate difference between my blogging and my writing for pring; here I will literally go on forever because space is unlimited and I don’t stop to edit myself and no one else is here to edit me. I’m honestly surprised that anyone skims, let alone reads this blog with posts like this. Hell, I wouldn’t read 6,000 word posts with 800-words before we even get to a freaking point of any kind).

Of course, I was somewhat interested in these works already, given that they happen to be the work of some of my favorite comics artists: Colleen Coover and Brandon Graham.

For the sake of chivalry/sexism, I’ll say ladies first and start with Coover’s porn, which self-identifies as pornography right in the title. Well, actually, it self-identifies as “porno.”

Small Favors: Girl Porno Comic Collection Book One (Eros Comix) collects the first four issues of the “surprise hit erotic comic of 2001,” plus some sketches, pin-ups and other cartoons Coover did while developing the series that didn’t quite fit with the direction she ultimately went in.

Considering the fact that Coover has since become so well known for her more all-ages work, like the Oni series Banana Sundays and her back-up strips and other contributions to Marvel Comics (particularly within their Marvel Adventures line), it’s both kind of exciting and extremely weird to be reading Coover-drawn pornography.

Her style has changed since Small Favors, getting slightly more simplified and confident (and less obviously influenced by manga and Los Hernandez Bros), but throughout the book the artwork is clearly the product of the Banana Sundays and Marvel Adventures artist. There may be more lines and details, particularly at the beginning (and any time there’s a close-up drawing of a vagina which, given the subject matter, is fairly often), but by the end of the volume, the girls are quite definitely the Coover girls we’re used to seeing, as are our heroines on the cover (Which is the only image I’m going to be able to share; I use a public library scanner, and I’m pretty sure the public library doesn’t want me scanning drawings of vaginas).

Our story opens with Annie working in her backyard garden one day, then pausing to peek through the ajar gate to spy on her neighbor, who is hanging her laundry out to dry. By the second page, panel eight, Annie is on the ground masturbating, fantasizing about doing it with her neighbor, who is also a lady. All the doing-it in Small Favors is girl on girl, so no icky penises to be dealt with. Hooray!

Mid-session, Annie sinks into the ground, and finds herself paralyzed before a trio of Lilliputian ladies, The Queen of Her Conscience and her two elite guards. The Queen explains that Annie masturbates far too often, and is thus assigning Nibbil to watch over Annie and keep her from masturbating quite so often.

Nibbil, who boasts a giant mane of blonde hair in the shape of a spiky heart, takes to the task with glee, since she too is a “masturbation-crazy little nympho.” Once they’re returned to Annie’s home, away from the Queen’s watchful eye, Nibbil finds a foolproof way to stop Annie from masturbating all the time—she’ll just have sex with her constantly!

While Nibbil’s only a few inches tall, leading to some predictable (as well as some charmingly creative) sex acts, she can also grow to full Annie size, for more vanilla lesbian sex (With vanilla being here defined as not involving being spanked with uncooked spaghetti or taped spread eagle over one of Annie’s breasts).

If the sub-title and the fact that it was released by a publishing imprint devoted to porn comics isn’t proof enough, this is a porn comic, by the Word dictionary definition, my definition and, I imagine, Justice Potter Stewart’s.

As such, it lacks much in the way of a narrative thrust (hurr hurr) and there isn’t a whole lot of suspense to any of the sex, Annie and Nibbil start coupling immediately (and the few other characters who wonder through do likewise). Given that, it’s kind of surprising how warm and even romantic the relationship between the two is, as is the fact that Coover’s even able to give the characters distinct and realistic personalities.

That may not seem like much of an accomplishment—shouldn’t all comics be able to do that?—but since the book consists entirely of sex scenes, naughty gags and occasional naughty gags during sex scenes, it means Coover is quite definitely using the, um, action scenes to define the characters while never shirking on the prime intent of the book.

How titillating any of this is will likely vary from person to person, some of it is kinda weird, and some of it made me squeamish (Perhaps its because I don’t have a vagina, but I found myself flinching repeatedly at the things that would end up in Annie’s). It’s certainly pretty creative though, as seen in the story where Nibbil becomes self-conscious about the readers viewing them through the fourth wall, or the one-page gag strips and ads for the series.

I’d feel kinda weird recommending this to readers in general, but if you like Colleen Coover’s art and are curious about what Collen Coover girly porn would be like, then it’s probably well worth your time and cash.

The other work of comics porn I recently purchased for perusal is Pillow Fight (Amerotica) by Brandon Graham. I’ve been a big fan of Graham’s since I first discovered his work via Alternative Comics’ publication of his anthology Escalator, and I’ve since happily praised it and each of his subsequent releases for whatever venue I happened to be covering comics for at the time.

I was vaguely aware that he had created the pair of characters that starred in an Escalator story and in 2007 Oni one-shot Multiple Warheads in an old porn comic, but had never actually managed to track down any of his porn work. I recently received a NBM catalog, however, and the back half of it was devoted to their Amerotica offerings—including Pillow Fight.

It’s…well, it’s not really all that good.

It’s definitely the work of Graham, and bears all the hallmarks of his work. The female figures all have the shape and texture of balloon animals—you can practically hear that balloon-on-balloon sound when they rub together—as well as the soft, round lips and cool clothing choices of the Graham-designed women in his other works. The black and white layouts are rather manga-like, the lettering is Graham’s distinctive style, the images are all packed with little idiosyncratic product designs (though less and less inspired than in King City or Multiple War heads) and some of the dialogue has the playfulness of his other work, and yet this is pornography, more hardcore than Small Favors (perhaps due in large part to the fact that there are men in this as well as women) and the characters are much less developed, let alone distinct from one another.

That’s definitely a deficiency, and something that made this far less pleasant to read (I found myself squirming a lot more, and even averting my eyes here and there), but I realize that it may not be a deficiency or anything that would detract from the work in the eyes of much of its intended audience. After all, it is porn.

The album format book opens with Jem arriving at her new boarding school, where she was sent after her parents caught her doing…something pretty bad with some people, which will be explained by the book’s end, but is at first just hinted at, with plenty of gross metaphors I don’t feel like typing.

There she meets her new roommate, whose name is “Deforest K-Y, but everyone just calls her by her nickname.” This is one of the several jokes Graham packs into the story, which, along with his design sense, helps keep it from being 100% doing-it.

Jem follows a map provided by Bones—her roommate’s nickname—and finds a peephole leading from one locker room to the next. In the next, she sees Bones having five pages of pretty graphic (penetration shots, liquids, etc) sex with “the whole foose ball team”…which is just two guys.

Back in their room, Bones introduces Jem to the world of Sapphism, and then, later, two other girls—including a rather Brandon Graham-y character with hair shaped like cat ears named Cat Face—arrive for an all-girl orgy, which involves ridiculously large sex toys hidden in ridiculously small places, and a magic box that somehow gives Jem a magic penis (I think).

There’s some mildly amusing pop culture talk among all the graphic sex, like one of the girls who prefers girls talking about cock is her kryptonite, and then starts listing the various effects of various spectra of kryptonite cock (“Wow. She’s so out of it she’s speaking in nerd”), but certainly nothing worth justifying the rest of the book.

This one I don’t think I’d recommend to anyone who wasn’t looking for a porn comic already. In fact, I kinda wish I didn’t read it myself, and now I’m not sure what to do with it. If, like me, you simply think Brandon Graham is a fantastic artist who can do no wrong and, since he draws such sexy girls, you were wondering what a book of his devoted to such sexy girls having sex a lot, then you’re probably better off waiting for his next non-porn work then seeking this out.

Also, despite the title, there isn’t any actual pillow fight in the whole book.



(Note: I will try very, very hard to resist succumbing to Blingee addiction the way I did Obamicon addiction last week, but I can't make any promises; if I fail, blame Kevin Church, whose post inspired me to try and liven up old Justice Stewart's boring black and white photo with a little much-needed bling)

Sunday brunch with Brandon Graham

If this whole making comics thing doesn't work out for EDILW favorite Brandon Graham, perhaps he should consider a career in the restaurant business. I mean, the guy sure lays out an intriguing table, doesn't he?

The above breakfast spread is from Multiple Warheads #1, which you should read, on account of there being many more panels just as good in it.

August 2nd's Meanwhile in Las Vegas...

This week's Las Vegas Weekly comics column features reviews of





and

Nikoli's Book Club

Unfortunately, it looks like Barbarian Revenge is currently out of print (I couldn't find it at any of my local libraries, or on Amazon.com).

As a good substitute, might I reccommend Brandon Graham's Multiple Warheads #1, currently available from Oni Press?

Weekly Haul: July 25th

All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder #6 (DC Comics)

Number of times the phrase “Goddam Batman” was used: 4

Number of times the phrase “Love Chunks” was used: 1

Number of months since the last issue saw release: 2

As the above stats should show, this book remains pretty awesome, and the scheduling difficulties seem to be (at least temporarily) under control. Based on these last two issues, for example, the schedule now seems to be bimonthly, same as All-Star Superman. Bravo, DC.

Sadly, there’s nothing here to top or even compete with the delirious scene of last issue’s Justice League intro, with its man-hating, Superman-making-out-with Wonder Woman, and the pace remains interminably slow (particularly when compared to that of the other All-Star book, which has almost always had a complete story in each single issue). But we still have a “Year One” era Bataman who seems to be completely around the bend, we have the introduction of Batgirl, we have an apparently Irish (?) Black Canary’s first night on the job, and we get to see a sweaty Jimmy Olsen trying not to sneak a peek at Vicki Vale while she changes clothes in front of him.

God I love this book.

In fact, I love it so much that I’m not even going to complain about the fact that Batgirl has Robin symbols on her charm chains on the cover, despite the fact that Robin doesn’t even exist yet.



Batman #666 (DC) The Grant Morrison/Andy Kubert Batman book is an incredibly frustrating read. Individually, each of them nail the Batman, creating a story world that seems familiar enough to feel “right,” while putting their own distinctive stamps on it. And they work well together, their work complimenting one another quite nicely. It’s not hard to imagine the team, if they put in enough time, becoming one of the great Batman creative teams. But that’s not going to happen, as their every storyline together is separated by a fill-in and/or delays, and the effect of seeing that much potentia,l and seeing it unable to be applied to a monthly comic book, is not unlike watching a catch slip through the fingers of an athlete at a particularly important part of the game.

In slow motion.

That said, this one-issue story, set in a possible future that will never actually occur, is a lot of harmless fun, even thought it exists in something of a bubble; we know it’s going to have little to no impact on future Batman stories, just as whatever momentum the Morrison/Kubert team is building up here will be lost on a three-part arc drawn by J. H. Williams.

Capitalizing on the anniversary issue of sorts, Morrison retells the story from the first issue of his own run—the real Batman faces a fake, villainous Batman claiming to be the real one—and infuses it with plenty of Satanism (This is, after all, the six-hundrend-and-sixty-sixth issue of Batman). In the future, Damian Wayne, son of Bruce Wayne and Talia, will take the mantle of the Bat and defend Gotham from crime and evil, taking on all comers, including a Batman who has done a deal with the devil and claims to be the anti-Christ (and that walking on water bit is pretty convincing).

Kubert’s designs are a lot of fun, from Damian’s Bat-costume and Batmobile to the looks of the Rogue’s Gallery, the creation of which Morrison went all out with. Some get little more than a mention, but instead of the usual method of futurizing Bat-villains (making the Joker a computer virus or cyborg, for example), Morrison sketches out names and M.O.s that sound like naturally occurring Bat-villains. We’ve got Dr. Pyg (who turns real people into murder-dolls), Candyman, Phosphorus Rex, Loveless, Max Roboto, The Weasel, The Flamingo and, my personal favorite, Jackanapes (Because the only thing scarier than a gorilla is an intelligent gorilla…and the only thing scarier than that is an evil, murderous intelligent gorilla with a machine gun and a meat cleaver…and the only thing scarier than that is an evil, murderous intelligent gorilla with a machine gun and a meat cleaver dressed like a clown!)

What we get of real relevance is only the origin of Damian, and Morrison continuing to explore the concept of different versions of Batman (perhaps not coincidentally, the same thing he’s doing in All-Star Superman with the other pillar of the DCU). Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of juicy hints of big, epic storylines that only exist in our imagination, like the Batman of the future’s own Knightfall, -quest and -end hyper-compressed into just 22 pages.



Black Summer #1 (Avatar Press) If you read every single thing I write and have an excellent memory, then you may recall that in my review of the first issue of Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp’s Black Summer , I said that it just didn’t seem political enough, and, on a purely political level, it was kinda toothless, as it sought to weave a story about a superhuman assassinating President Bush without actually offending anyone. Well, this issue is even less political, as the focus shifts to brutal plainclothes superhuman combat along the lines of something out of The Boys, and a little about the origins of the super-team here, which seems a little like Ellis’ own Authority, who were just a butched-up version of his own Stormwatch, who were a butched-up version of the Justice League model of superteams. With the presidential assassination temporarily removed from the script then, what we’re left with in this particular installment is awfully derivative. I’m going to stick around to see what happens when Ellis circles back to the engine driving this thing, but so far I’m less than enthusiastic with the series. I do like Ryp’s hyper-detailed art though, and Ellis gets off some interesting science babble as it applies to superpowers.





Doktor Sleepless #1 (Avatar) There are some brilliant comics writers who have produced some of my favorite comics whom I literally can’t see enough new books from, like Grant Morrison and um…okay, maybe just Grant Morrison. And then there are some brilliant comics writers who have produced some of my favorite comics that I could stand to see a lot less of, like Neil Gaiman, who, as infrequently as he writes comics these days, doesn’t always bring his A-game (see 1602, The Eternals), or Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis, who seem to have two new series out a month or so, and whose characters and dialogue all start to rung together in a rather unpleasant way. Ellis, for example, has three new books out this week, all from Avatar. This is one of them, which I bought pretty much solely on the strength of Ellis’ name. That’s usually enough to get me to buy a first issue, if not a second one and, honestly, I can’t imagine bothering with a second issue of Doktor Sleepless.

The subtitle says “Future Science Jesus,” and the first page or so sets the good doctor-with-a-K up as some sort of performance artist-cum-messiah adopting a character to speak truth to power in a nondescript city sometime in the near future. There’s an easier way to describe it though. Imagine Transmetropolitan, only instead of being a journalist, Spider Jerusalem is a superhero pretending to be a mad scientist, and instead of Darick Robertson drawing it, Ellis pairs with someone who’s not really very good at all. (Nothing personal, Ivan Rodriguez).

Ellis makes a very interesting point about the future and the way it unfolds in our day to day lives, and there’s a handful of very clever concepts for aspects of technology in here—things that seem both fantastic and yet realistic at the same time—but the title character and his filthy assistant seem a little too familiar, and the art doesn’t do a terribly good job of communicating the world of today, or the world of tomorrow, or the world of today plus little bits of tomorrow. It just looks like the world of a not very good comic book, and who wants to visit a world like that?




Green Arrow: Year One #2 (DC) Man, Andy Diggle and Jock are just flying through this origin. This second issue seems to sum up the entire survialist-on-the-island portion of Oliver Queen’s origin, with this issue ending with some criminals turning up in a vehicle and Ollie fighting them, which, if you know the story, is where the island time ends. Given how little drama there is to this thing already—I mean, we all know Ollie’s not going to die on the island and will eventually become Green Arrow—I was a little surprised how they sort of gloss over the time on the island. We see Ollie take up archery to survive, and even see him putting together a green hood and green feathers for his arrows, but unlike other similar hero origin stories like, say, The Lone Ranger, which used that very lack of drama to add import to the inevitability and make each filled-in blank ring with operatic significance, GA:YO is making some strange subject matter choices. There are roughly 400 million comics in which I can see Oliver Queen shoot at criminals with a bow and arrow, but only a handful in which I can seem him struggling to survive on a desert island, and this is supposed to be the definitive one for that, you know? Still great-looking and tersely written, just not the comic I was hoping it would be.




JSA: Classified #28 (DC) Much like JLA: Classified, this book seems to have taken a real nosedive in terms of essentiality from when it was first launched. I haven’t been regularly reading it since the third story arc wrapped, as it was followed by a series of stories featuring, for the most part, characters I wasn’t interested in by creators I wasn’t interested in. This one, however, I was all over. I really like Jakeem Thunder and the Thunderbolt (apparently more than the logo designer, who struggles to get all that under the book’s logo in an appealing fasion); part of that is holdover from always liking Johnny and his Thunderbolt, part of that is liking the crazy-ass JLA which introduced Jakeem (and redefined the nature of the T-Bolt) and part of it is that Geoff Johns has managed to do some fairly good stuff with Jakeem since inheriting the JSA. I probably would have picked this up for the stars alone, but I was spurred along by Steve Uy’s beautiful anime-like art (the style of the figures seems manga-esque in design, and the colors all bright, airy and full of light, like they were clipped from cel animation and set over fully painted storyboards) and the fact that Jakeem and the T-Bolt have been MIA from JSoA since the relaunch.

Fabian Nicieza writes a very nice done-in-one focusing on Jakeem, probably the JSA’s most powerful member, learning a valuable lesson about that doesn’t come off as too preachy (The whole reason this iteration of the JSA exists, after all, is to teach young heroes like Jakeem and Stargirl how to be good heroes). Alan Scott, Stargirl and Ma Hunkle also appear, and this is the first time in a long time I can remember any of the elder statesmen in the JSA actually acting as a mentor for one of the younger heroes, and certainly the first time in a long time I’ve seen any interaction between Courtney and Jakeem, two characters who play off one another very well. (My favorite issue of Johns’ JSA run, and, I think, his best-written issue is, oddly enough, the Joker’s Last Laught tie-in, which co-starred the pair).




The Mighty Avengers #4 (Marvel) You’re probably going to want to own this book, as it is one of the most awesome Marvel books I’ve read in—well, at least a week. What makes it so awesome? It’s not the Frank Cho art or the thought bubbles or the naked lady with metallic paint over her nipples or even what appears to be the SHOCKING MAJOR DEATH of that one lady who I guess is married to that one guy I don’t really know much about.

No, it’s awesome because of this panel right here:



Go ahead, click on it. Enlarge it. Contemplate it. Yes, that is indeed the Greek god of war and current Avenger Ares firing the bottom half of a set of Iron Man armor like a gun. And no, I’m not going to make a joke about the trigger he’s pulling there. I’m just going to note that this may be the gayest thing I’ve ever seen in a superhero comic, and that it’s the second time this year that Brian Michael Bendis has written a scene revolving around superhero genitals in an Avengers comic book that completely blew my mind.

And I suppose I should point out that the panel above takes place at the climax of a positively Nextwave-ian two-page scene in which Ares jumps from Iron Man armor to Iron Man armor, eventually straddling one and riding it while firing his improvised Iron Man nether region rifle.




Multiple Warheads #1 (Oni Press) My favorite story in Brandon Graham’s Alternative Comics anthology Escalator is the one about the organ smuggler with the two-tone hair named Sexica who sewed a wolf’s dick onto her boyfriend, turning him into a two-dicked werewolf, which Graham’s prose intro said was a sort of sequel to an NBM porn comic called “Multiple Warheadz.” I was never able to track the NBM story down, but I love the design of these characters, the world that Graham’s short story suggested existed around them, and the elegant, straightforward way Graham wrote about them, with lines that sound like deadpan jokes (“When Nikoli became a werewolf, he changed.”) Well, this a brand-new story featuring those same characters, and with King City Vol. 1 having seen release between Escalator and this, I’m sincerely hoping Graham’s awesomeness will have a much bigger and more receptive audience waiting for it this time around it because, damn, the dude deserves it. We’ll probably take a closer look at some of the particularly awesome bits of awesomeness within this particular book at some point in the near future, but suffice it to say that there is a great bit of design on every single page, there’s a beautiful girl with great hair and clothes, there’s a neat looking guy with hair that moves like animal ears, there’s a talking dream wolf with a sharp snout and baby on its back, a giant killer snake, an alien organ dealer, a sex scene, a genius car and a book-within-the-comic-book which sounds like something you’d really like to read. Trust me, this is $5.99 well spent.




Red Sonja #24 (Dynamite Entertainment) I know I probably seem like a pretty picky reader, always complaining about or demanding something or other from my comics, but I’m actually an extremely easy guy to sell a comic book too.

For example, I dropped Dynamite’s Red Sonja after only about three or so issues, since Dark Horse’s Conan was already filling my quota of Robert E. Howard-inspired barbarian stories and there’s just something off-putting about a book with four or five different covers per issue (Honestly, how do regular Red Sonja readers even keep track of which issues they already have, when every month there’s a good half dozen interchangeable images of Red Sonja killing a snake with a sword by different artist on the racks?)

Despite missing the last 20 issues or so, the cover image here was enough to get me to buy the book. Is that a monster whale with glowing red eyes and sharp, carnivorous teeth I see? Yes, yes it is. A flip through showed a substantial amount of monster whale fighting—


—so onto my stack it went.

Having now read it, I’m not really sure I’m happy with the purchase. Michael Avon Oeming’s scripts haven’t gotten any better since the last time I checked in on the book (there’s nothing wrong with them of course, they’re just not great), and relatively little seemed to happen, certainly nothing of consequence to a reader who doesn’t know all the players.

Still, there is a monster whale. And Sonja kills it with a spear, leading to a geyser of blood erupting in her face. That’s pretty cool.





Showcase Presents: Martian Manhunter Vol. 1 (DC) Okay, you got me, I didn’t actually read this yet, so I don’t have a proper review for it, and probably never will (I’m still way back on War That Time Forgot, and still have Brave and the Bold, two volumes of Superman and Batman and a Batgirl to read yet). I did want to point out that this was released on the same day as a trade edition of that recent eight-part godawful Martian Manhunter series that few people read and nobody seemed to like. I’m really surprised to see it even get a trade collection, actually. The first issue sold 41, 263 copies, but by the second it had dropped to 32, 624, and by the third it was in the twenty-thousands, the eight issue moving only 22, 185 copies. So, it sold poorly, was reviewed poorly, and featured a radical new design for the character that was like nothing previous in his decades long print history and years-long cartoon history. DC seems to be just publishing trades of everything now, whether they’re likely to be things people in the book store market would potentially be at all interested in or not. (Not a single issue of John Ostrander/Tom Mandrake’s Martian Manhunter monthly is available in trade, despite the fact that it’s a pretty good series, and one which features a look and direction for the character that’s consistent with his appearances in JLA and elsewhere…anyone who comes to Morrison/Porter/Dell’s JLA in trade and devours it is going to likely also enjoy the JLA/Malefic story arc of Ostrander/Mandrak’s series, whereas this new trade will likely burn their eyes and hands).

Anyway, for $19.99, you can get Martian Manhunter: The Others Among Us, a 208-page trade featuring the eight-issue miniseries by A.J. Lieberman, Al Barrionuevo and Bit (Which actually doesn’t sound right at all; eight 22-page issues is only 176 pages…even if you add in the eight-page Brave New World preview, that’s still a long way from 208. Hmm…)

Or, for $16.99 you can get the 544-page Showcase Presents volume which, yeah, is technically non-continuity, but actually is a lot more like the J’onn J”onnz you likely know and love from any of the Justice League incarnations than the one in Others Among Us. I mean, the Showcase J’onn just has pupils and eyebrows. The Others one has a papaya-shaped head, pointy-ears, a Skrull chin, a weird skintight body suit and a bad attitude.





Superman #665 (DC) Truly, these are good days to be a Jimmy Olsen fan. We’ve got affordably priced trades like Showcase Presents: Superman Family Vol. 1 and The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen, we’ve got a Jack Kirby omnibus program which will eventually reprint all of Kirby’s Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen comics, Olsen is front and center of DC’s current big crossover/unreadable mess, and both Action and Superman are completely focused on Jimmy at the moment. I only bought five DC comics this week, and Jimmy was in two of them. I don’t really know where I’m going with all of this, except to say, “Wow, that’s a lot of Jimmy Olsen!” And that is, as far as I’m concerned, a good thing. Because not only is Jimmy Olsen the Patron Saint of Comics Bloggers, he is awesome.

This issue of Superman stars, as Jimmy himself informs Superman and Lois on the cover, Jimmy and is, in fact, his secret origin. It’s written by Kurt Busiek, who acquits himself quite nicely, explaining exactly in a way that is both logical and emotionally satisfying who Jimmy is, who his parents are, how he came to work at a major metropolitan newspaper despite only being a teenager, and exactly how and why he and Superman came to be pals (Confession: I got a little choked up at the end there).

That said, there was absolutely no reason to tell this story, and as much as I’m always in favor of more Jimmy Olsen stories in general, this is one I don’t really see any need for. Ready for a tangent?

Now, if you watch me closely, you’ll probably notice me complaining about the silliness of the depiction of The Daily Planet. In Jimmy’s Silver Age heyday, it was depicted as an influential company that seemed to work on children’s daydream logic. There seemed to be exactly four employees, each of whom had access to the company helicopter at all times, each of whom had no specific beat, and each of whom only seemed to write stories about themselves. Seriously, 90% of Daily Planet headlines seem to be about Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen solving a crime, with the other 10% devoted to covering Superman’s exploits. In modern Superman stories, the operation of the Planet is now taken as seriously as all other aspects of superhero comics, which draws attention to the fantasy elements more, and make them stand out as mistakes.

For example, you wouldn’t question why Lois seemed to be on the Superman beat and the mad scientist beat and a movie critic and a gossip columnist and crime reporter back in the day because, Jesus, how come this teenager lives alone, is a reporter, time travels or transforms twice a week and is a world-famous celebrity for being pals with Superman?

Now in the Post-Crisis (on Infinite Earths), post-grim and gritty ‘80s when realism is king, even in superhero comics, now that Lois and Clark have beats and go to meetings and so forth, well, the fact that Perry White smokes a cigar all the time inside his big city newspaper office, or that Lois sometimes wears lingerie or club wear to the office stands out as off. So now Jimmy Olsen can’t just be a teenage reporter who lives alone, has a helicopter pilot’s license and a creepy shrine to Superman in his apartment. Who he is and how he came to be has to be explained to us.

And here’s Busiek, explaining it. Like I said, he does a fine job, but I think grounding Jimmy so thoroughly in realism, sucking all the mystery out of him, just kind of dampens that which is most exciting about him in the first place (I should note that this isn’t a modern phenomenon either; I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a single Jimmy Olsen subplot in the Superman books since their Post-Crisis reboot…certainly not as much as any of those genius Silver Age stories, or that one issue of All-Star Superman, which reinvented Jimmy using his Silver Age self as a template).

The art comes courtesy penciler Rick Leonardi and inker Ande Parks and it’s not pretty at all, a fact that sticks out especially given the nature of the art in the current Superman books and the older ones in which Jimmy and the Perry would have figured so prominently. Leonardi’s figures are chunky and expressionistic, their designs shifting greatly from panel to panel, and whatever it’s relative charms, it seems wrong for this story (or the Superman books at a time when their look is mainly being defined by Carlos Pacheco and Adam Kubert’s fill-in artists).

One final thing about this issue of Superman and I promise I’ll shut up about Jimmy Olsen for a while. I scanned the actual cover of the book because, with the logos and text added, it’s actually quite different than the image that was solicited, even though the art itself is the exact same. The original has Jimmy’s t-shirt blank, which itself is kinda clever since, unlike Clark Kent, whose pose he’s stealing, Jimmy’s just Jimmy, and not really a superhero with a superhero costume to reveal when pulling off his outer shirt.

Somewhere along the line someone decided to put the word “Countdown” on it, which is pretty lame. Not only because it kills the visual gag of the original, but because if you were going to put some kind of metatextual joke on the cover, in which Jimmy is wearing a shirt bearing the logo of another series he’s in on the cover of this book, why didn’t they just put Jimmy Olsen in the official Jimmy Olsen/Countdown shirt?

March 22nd's Meanwhile in Las Vegas...

This week's comics col in Las Vegas Weekly looks at two great comic books that each visit a different fictional city, the previously discussed King City Vol. 1 and Elk's Run.

Both are well worth a read.

While you're at lasvegasweekly.com, you may also want to check out film critic Josh Bell's review of TMNT (He's not crazy about it).

There's actually a lot of coverage devoted to sewer-dwelling mutants in this week's LVW. There's also an interesting piece on The Host, and an interview with director Bong Joon-ho.