Three #3's

Fraggle Rock #3 (Archaia) A graphic novel collecting this, as well as the first, second and fourth issues, shipped this week, so a review of the third issue probably a little pointless at this point, but, well, pointlessness has never prevented me from writing something on this blog before.

This is another issue split into several stories each by a different creative team. The first, “Where Have All The Doozers Gone?” is written by Adrianne Amborse and drawn by Joanna Estep.

Like the stories contained in the first issue, it’s a pretty ideal Fraggle Rock story in that it’s concerned with the balance of the universe, and how one element being out of balance can gum up the whole works…while focusing on comedy and little, close-to-home adventures, rather than pounding home the messaging.

Cotterpin, the rebellious Doozer who is friends with Red Fraggle, has convinced her fellow Doozers into building a sort of Doozer Tower of Babel. They place it out in the Gorgs’ garden and don’t want any Fraggles eating it, resulting in the Fraggles going hungry and the Gorgs eventually perceiving the structure as some sort of threat.

Estep draws great Doozers and pretty good Gorgs, and most of the Fraggles are pretty nicely done, although there’s a tendency to give some of ‘em fish-like faces, and this one named Large Marvin is pretty horrifying looking.

It’s followed by Grace Randolph and Whitney Leith’s “Party, Doozer Style!”, a four-page gag strip in which we learn exactly how it is that Doozer’s party (once they learn what partying is, of course), and Bryce P. Coleman and Michael DiMotta’s “To Catch a Fwaggle,” in which we learn a little bit (perhaps too much?) about the inner life of Junior Gorg and his desires to catch Fraggles.

The art in these last two features struck me as a bit stronger than that of the first, but perhaps because they are more stylistically different. Leith draws super-cute Doozers, and draws the story down at Doozer-eye level, so that when Red appears in the last panel, she looks gigantic to readers. DiMotta’s art has a painterly sheen to it, with a lot of dappled light and warm colors, and he pulls off a pretty great trick of making Junior look like a man in a well-constructed suit.


Mermin #3 In the third issue of Joey Weiser’s self-published minicomic about a grade school-aged merman named Mermin, our hero flees the home of his human friend, not wanting to cause him further trouble, and retreats to the tree house.

There he finds one of his old friends from his underwater world waiting…plus that cool-looking whale-man from the previous issue.

A couple of pages of combat involving two pretty cute, simply-designed protagonists ensues:Sure, it’s slight, but I’m still really enjoying it.


Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #3 (Archaia) Nothing has changed with this third issue of David Petersen’s Canterbury Tales-like, invitational anthology, other than the fact that this particular issue features four short stories by creators other than Petersen, embedded in his framing sequence of mice in a tavern in a tale-telling contest.

All four stories are pretty great, and there’s perhaps a greater variety of art styles between the four of them than was evidenced in previous issues. I only had some reservations abut one of them, and only for nitpicky, think-to-much-about-it reasons.

The first is “A Mouse Named Fox,” by Katie Cook. In her regular super-cute style she tells a very fairy tale-like story, about a childless (pup-less?) couple of foxes who find and raise an orphaned mouse on their own, and their son’s journey into the world, where he meets his first mice and the first fox he’s not actually related too. The second—and my favorite—is a short, wordless story by Guy Davis, in which a (guard?) mouse notes a young mouse’s artwork featuring a valiant mouse slaying an owl, and he decides to set about slaying an owl himself. It turns out to be a lot harder than the young artist made it look. The artwork is a lot more stripped-down and simple than what we usually see from Davis, which makes it a little refreshing (On top of just being great art work). Additionally, Davis has the mice speak to one another in Owly-ish pictograms, so that the dialogue bubbles each contain little pictures, which are themselves a slightly more stripped-down and simplified version of Davis’ already stripped-down and simplified artwork here and…it’s just incredible. Man, I can’t tell you how excited I was to read this story…it’s comics within comics. I love it. Next up was “The Ballad of Nettledown” by Nate Pride, and while the story is another neat riff on a fairy or folk tale sort of story, and the artwork lovely, I’m afraid I didn’t much care for this one, as it is told by a mouse bard, and thus sung. (For what it’s worth, I’m the sort of reader who always skipped the songs in Tolkien’s novels, so my dislike of this story is certainly a matter of personal taste—the form certainly fits the context of the series and the franchise in general).

The final story is “The Raven” by Jason Shawn Alexander, who takes all of the dialogue from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem (And Poe is credited with a “Written by”). Alexander gives his mouse a very realistic face and head, although its nicely animated, and the lettering is incorporated into the art rather beautifully. Sure the joke is a one-note one, and maybe at six-pages it goes on way too long, but it’s a nice-looking piece (and I was surprised it didn’t end in the surprise way I was expecting, given the fact that the narrator is now a mouse, even though the raven is still a raven).

The thing is, this story is set in the twelfth century, and Poe wasn’t even born for another 700 years yet.

That is literally the worst thing about this comic.

Reviews of five recent-ish comic books

Darkwing Duck #1 (Boom) I’ll cop to being a fan of Darkwing Duck, the early ‘90’s superhero celebra-parody that was part of Disney’s “Disney Afternoon” suite of after-school cartoons. I think I was in sixth grade or so when Disney started pumping out half-hour comedy adventures based on various reinterpretations of various characters they had lying around unexploited. Darkwing was a particular favorite, as I was just getting into superhero comics at the time, and Batman: The Animated Series debuted around the same time, creating a strange superhero conversation on our television screen, in which Batman and Darkwing echoed one another in weird ways.

Given it’s superhero connections—the character was essentially a Batman-like vigilante battling a variety of villains who were little more than anthropomorphic analogue versions of various Flash, Spider-Man and Superman rogues—Darkwing Duck is, of course, better-suited than most other Disney properties to get a second life as a Direct Market-centric superhero comic (Certainly better than Talespin or Chip ‘N Dale’s Rescue Rangers!)

Despite what a significant portion of my life that was devoted to watching Darkwing Duck over the half-decade or so it was on the air when I really should have been playing outside, however, and the fact that a Disney superhero concept seems well suited to comics, I didn’t have too terribly high hopes for the comic book adaptation. I suspect that the TV show didn’t age that well (I have a second window open and have an episode playing on YouTube as I write this though, and while it’s better in my memories than it is on my computer, there’s some really great voice work on it. DW and Launchpad are both performed suepr-well), and I didn’t really care for the previous Disney superhero comics I’ve read form publisher Boom.

Well, writer Ian Brill and artist James Silvani won me over almost immediately. There’s a swell Dark Knight Returns cover gag on the title page—in which the bolt of lightning the Dark Knight leapt dramatically in front of on Frank Miller’s iconic cover blasts the tail off of the “Duck Knight”—and Brill elicited two “heh”s from me in the two very first panels of his script (A swell duck pun, followed by a coffee flavor/black-out joke).
I’m not sure which creator to heap the most credit on, which is a good sign—they both do such a swell job here that neither outshines the other, or leaves slack that the other must pick up. It’s a really well-made comic, and I was pretty surprised to find I could still hear so many of the characters’ voices in my head as I was reading their dialogue (I had a similar experience with Archaia’s Fraggle Rock; like that book Darkwing had me feeling nostalgia for something I didn’t even really miss until I read the comic based on it), and the issue read an awful lot like the first act of an episode of the cartoon—albeit an episode with higher production values, as Silvani, unrestrained by a shoestring animation budget, really goes nuts filling the panels with background players and action, making them a pleasure to linger on.

The book opens with a recounting of Darkwing’s last big case, which was apparently one year ago. Since then, he’s been forced into retirement by the crime-fighting robots of massive corporation Quackwerks (Sounds like Kraftwerk), which have completely eradicated all crime in the city of St. Canard. Of course, if you’ve seen Robocop, then you know what generally happens when a corporation builds crime-fighting robots, but until they go bonkers Darkwing’s civilian identity of Drake Mallard is a cubicle jockey for Quackwerks, working under the management of former supervillain Megavolt’s civilian identity.

As structured, Brill manages to quickly introduce the character, set-up a new, temporary “Where’s Darkwing been since his show ended?” status quo, and then cliffhangs us toward his reemergence.

Silvani’s designs are dead on and, if anything, sharper and more detailed than that of the show itself. He’s a quite accomplished actor of an artist, using Drake/Darkwing’s eyes to great effect. The character was and is something of a melodramatic, even asinine character, an off-brand Batman who was quite conscious of acting like a superhero, which always means a lot of squinting, grimacing and speechifying mixed with cartoonish eye-popping and jaw-dropping.

It’s only one issue, of course, but if Brill and Silvani can sustain this high level of quality, then it looks like Darkwing Duck might ultimately end up being just at home in this medium as in his native one. In fact, comics’ ability to freeze time around certain actions and Silvani’s skillfull cartooning may mean that Darkwing works better as a comic book character than he did as a cartoon one. UPDATE: Wait, wait, wait…I just thought of some good blurb-bait. Ready? Okay, the Darkwing Duck comic? It’s Ian Brill-iant! Ha ha ha ha! (Has someone made that joke before? I bet someone made that joke before...)


Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #2 (Archaia) Perhaps unsurprisingly given it’s Mouse Guard version of Canterbury Tales structure, the second issue of this David Petersen-curated anthology book is actually just as fine a jumping-on point to his world of medieval mice as the first issue was.

In the Petersen written and drawn framing sequences, the various patrons at a mouse inn continue a tale-telling contest, with three more stories being told, each by a different creative team.

In this issue, those teams are Alex Kain and Sean Rubin, who tell the tale of Guardmouse taking on a bear, Terry Moore, who tells a short story about a couple of mice using a toad to help them escape an aerial attack by shrikes (which may be racist against toads, in the way that dwarves and elves are racist against one another), and Lowell Francis and Gene Ha, who tell a story about a heroic banker mouse who defeats a massive, marauding mink.

As with the previous issue, half the fun is seeing various artists interpret Petersen’s world, and all three of these hew rather close to Petersen’s basic designs, which makes the differences in rendering all the more stark.

I got the biggest kick out of Moore’s story, but probably only because that’s the artist whose work I was most familiar to seeing, and applied to things other than anthropomorphic mice. Sean Rubin’s art in the opening story, “Potential,” was perhaps the best here though, full of many tiny lines which seem to represent every hair and strand of fur on the mouse and bear in the story. It’s highly illustrative-looking, and in-keeping with the tone and spirit of Petersen’s aesthetic, although diverging from his technique.

I really love this comic, both as a fun reading experience and as something to go back and pore over to meditate on art.

I didn’t notice this in the first issue, but if you glanced at the cover there and read my description of the book’s contents, you’ll notice at no point did I mention a ghost mouse. What gives? The cover page has a little paragraph recounting a legend about a ghost. So apparently Petersen’s doing more than just framing sequences; he’s contributing legends to the world of Mouse Guard in this series as well. Neat.


Omega Comics Presents #2 (Pop Goes the Icon) This is the second issue of a quarterly anthology from boutique publisher Pop Goes the Icon, and as such one probably doesn’t need to read #1 in order to get the most out of #2; only the first feature, Omega seems to be a continuing features, and even that was easy enough to jump right into.

It is an anthology though, so standard anthology rules apply: Some stories are better than others, and chances are different readers will rank them all differently, so keep in mind this is just this reader’s assessment.

Omega, by PJ Perez, is a thriller about a terrorist roup taking over the Hoover Dam with high school students taken hostage. Their plan is to blow up the dam, but one of the kids has some sort of strange power that saves them. It’s just a chapter of a longer story, but it has a clear beginning, middle and end, and Perez is subtle enough with the storytelling that it creates a mood of intrigue. The character designs are strong and well-rendered, but as solid as any individual panel was, the art seemed a bit stiff to me…and the computer-lettering left a lot to be desired.

Next up was “Greedy,” a short sex and crime trifle with some obvious twists executed quite well. Russell Lissau and mpMann are responsible for this, and it boasts the strongest and most fluid art in the issue.

Next up is “Greyman: Highway Patrol,” which I didn’t much care for. It’s by Glenn Arseneau and Andy Gray, and is about a sort of liminal superhero being fighting to save the souls of some recently deceased young people from some motorcycle, Venom-esque tongue monster things or something. A lot of it seemed overly familiar to me, but the art was full of some crazy angles and interesting choices; I don’t know that I cared for the art overall that much, but I did like looking at each page in order to see what get drawn next and how.

Finally, there’s a short little gag story by Dino Caruso and J. Korim about door-to-door lawyers selling a pretty good service that has a nice punchline ending. The art is big and cartoony—maybe too big—but it’s all over so quickly that I didn’t have time to dwell on anything long enough to get turned off by it. (The lettering here wasn’t so hot either, actually…I guess I don’t much care for computer-lettering unless it’s so well done that it looks like old-school hand-lettering, maybe…?)

You can follow the link above to Pop’s home page, and see how to order a copy of the book for yourself there.


Pale Horse #1 (Boom) This is a more-or-less straightforward, post-Unforgiven Western comic, which is both it’s strength and its weakness. Cole is a black cowboy who lived with an Native American woman and they had a white baby. Three white men rape and kill his woman, so then he kills them, and becomes a bounty hunter, despite the fact that there’s a bounty out for him as well, raising his son while making his living killing dudes.

Andrew Cosby (who gets a story credit) and Michael Alan Nelson (who gets a “written by” one) don’t do anything wrong, but there’s nothing to Cole that necessarily makes him an interesting character. There’s a bit of mystery, I suppose—like where his baby boy came from—and Nelson does try to ramp it up a bit at the end by suggesting that someone back east wants Cole dead for some mysterious reason—but that’s it in terms for a hook. The character is a hard, cold, emotionless killer and torturer, made that way because his woman was once tortured and killed.

Is this going to turn into a Western Lone Wolf and Cub? Will Cosby and Nelson say something more interesting about race than pointing out the obvious fact that a lot of white folks in the Old West were monstrously racist?

Maybe, but they haven’t so far, and with a book costing $3.99 per issue, it’s hard to imagine decent execution of a straightforward genre book being enough to motivate many readers to spend another four books on a #2 issue. (Might be worth checking back in again with the trade though).

Pale Horse’s biggest selling point (at this point) is the art of Christian Dibari’s extremely expressive art. The backgrounds all look like watercolors—in fact, colorist Andres Lozano gives everything a painted look—and Dibari’s artwork suggests that of a mixture of Leinil Francis Yu and Kevin O’Neil here and there…maybe a slight accent of Tim Sale. It’s pretty great looking, but not so great that it transcends the script it’s illustrating.


Peony Trivet (Beehive Comics) This is an interesting comic. It’s a short, complete, 34-page black and white story about a man named Isaac Gander who is in the process of moving into a new place and attempting to forget a woman who broke his heart and it takes place over the course of about 24 hours.

Isaac and a man from a small moving company named Razel, a comedic if ethnically regressive stereotype character (although his country of origin is never given) unload all of the former’s possessions, and run into one another later that night under strange circumstances—Razel is shirtless and ranting and raving in a convenience store which Isaac has gone into to buy something to eat.

In the parking lot, Isaac meets a woman who appears to be the title character, a sort of magical fantasy girl in striped leggings and a big Flashdance sweatshirt who goes back to his place with her and has sex with him repeatedly. She later leaves under mysterious circumstances.

I’m not entirely sure if there’s another issue to follow or not; the cover of this issue at least implies that the woman has some other stuff going on than meeting and doing Isaac.

The script, by Ed Greene, is a little on the weird side, enough so that it’s difficult to tell if some of the weirder bits—like Peony cajoling Isaac into awkwardly attempting to play out a rape fantasy, some of Razel’s ranting here and there, or what Peony says upon first meeting Isaac—is supposed to be funny or not. I thought much of it was funny, but it was delivered straight enough that looking back, I’m not entirely sure if Greene has super-dry delivery, or if I misread the tone of some of the scenes.

The artwork, by Jeff Sims, is great-looking though. There’s a soft, playful loose-ness to the characters, props and settings that I have trouble thinking of any word other than “charming” to describe. There are very few sharp lines or edges in the work…even the panels are border-less, ending when the gray washes meet the white space that form the panels. Each panel looks a little like a New Yorker cartoon and a little like an illustration in an old childrens chapter book, and is just a ton of fun to look at.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with this comic all the time, but it was a pleasant enough read, made me smile a lot, kept me on my toes and was rather gorgeous.

But don’t take my word for it: You can download a pdf of it here and read it for yourself.

Jeremy Bastian on Mouse Guard: Legends of The Guard

Jeremy Bastian (Cursed Pirate Girl) is another of the three artists who contributed a short story to Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #1. I asked Bastian some questions about his story and the creation thereof for this piece on Newsarama, but didn't have room to include every interesting thing Bastian had to say. So I'm putting it here. As with the previous pieces in this little mini-series of posts, my questions are in italics and the artist's answers are in regular font. (And if you're sick of these, don't worry; this is the last one. Reviews of one billion super-comics are coming up next).



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How did you come to work on this project, and why was it one you wanted to devote your time too? I imagine you must have been a fan of Mouse Guard previously?

Oh yes. I am very fortunate to be able to call Dave a good friend. I've known him for several years and watched as Mouse Guard grew, not only in popularity but also the level in which he tells and draws the stories of these mighty heroes. When he asked me if I could come up with a story I said "Yeah!" with no hesitation. It was an honor and a pleasure to be invited to join his richly detailed world and to create some characters of my own.


How did working with Petersen work? Did you have carte blanche to do whatever you liked? Was there a lot of discussion regarding your story?

Working with Dave is no problem at all. Working with myself is a little different. I originally came up with a story about a band of Guardsmice who overthrow a garrison of weasels. That just didn't feel like a "legend" kinda story, so I went back to brainstorming. I eventually came up with the story you see now and when I told Dave about it I think he was a little bit relieved for the change. He could tell I was more energetic about this story and so he just let me do what I do, I’m sure it would've been different if he didn't know me so well.


What was it like drawing a story set in a world as thoroughly defined by another artist’s style and aesthetic? Did you find yourself trying to draw David Petersen-like at all? You certainly seemed to make the medieval mice concept your own in your short story.

It was a personal challenge, the kind I like the most. Like most creator owned stories, they only look their best when the person who created them is drawing them. I had some con sketch requests for Mouse Guard mice so I've had a little practice in drawing them. I didn't want to stray too far from the original but then again I didn't want them to be cut from the same die.

Coming up with the costumes was one of the points that made me eager to do the story. I tried to do original pieces of functional armor with little homages to Petersen style armor. The shoulder pieces and the vertical pieces hanging from the belt. Dave also has really individual weapons for Guardsmice and so I tried to come up with a weapon that was unique to his owner and reflected traits of the owner. Faulnir's spike represents a hawk's beak, something to do damage in one quick swing. Silfano's flail ends with a metal fox paw, one swing of this would be similar to a fox taking a swipe at you. I had a lot of fun designing the characters and their worlds.


Was it challenging working with animal characters as opposed to humans? It seems like a more difficult task to convey emotion in the face of a mouse instead of a human, particularly since the Mouse Guard mice tend to look more like real mice than overly anthropomorphic, funny animal types.

No, it was not a problem at all. In fact I like to draw animal characters a lot, and these mice were really fun to draw. When you draw an animal and it looks like the animal you were attempting, even from different angles, it just looks really cool and you think you're really talented (heh heh heh). Just small manipulations of the eyes or even ears can convey the expression you're trying to get across.


Do you anticipate Legends of the Guard introducing your work to a different audience for you?

Oh yes, the amount of Mouse Guard fans out there is really staggering. So even if a fraction of those who pick up this first issue and go, “Hey this Jeremy guy uses a lot of lines, I like lines" and search out Cursed Pirate Girl, I will have eclipsed the amount of CPG fans who already exist. This kind of exposure is greatly appreciated. Dave has been pushing people to give my work a glance for years now and I think this will really do the trick.


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While the image at the top of the post form his Legends story is more representative of what Bastian's Mouse Guard story looks like, he actually started drawing Guardsmice a few years ago, and was one of the first artists not named David Petersen to have drawings of the medieval mice characters published. Here are two pin-ups he did for the first Mouse Guard mini, which are both collected in the Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 collection.

As you can probably tell from the fact that I posted all of these, I'm something of a fan of the series and, if for some reason you haven't tried it out, I'd highly recommend giving it a shot—if you live in a big-ish city, your local library should have a copy of Fall 1152, and the Legends issues seem like pretty great jumping on points/cheap samples of the world of Mouse Guard.

And if you happen to be a librarian, particularly a youth one, and you haven't checked Mouse Guard out yet, we really need to, and then to place some orders for your collection. I like Mouse Guard now, but I would have loved it back when I was devouring C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and pretty much anything with capes, swords and castles in it.

Okay, I promise to shut up about Mouse Guard now. At least until I get around to reviewing Legends of the Guard #2.

Alex Sheikman on Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard

Alex Sheikman (Robotika) is another of the three artists who contributed a short story to Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #1. I asked Sheikman some questions about his story and the creation thereof for this piece on Newsarama, but didn't have room to include every interesting thing Sheikman had to say. So I'm putting it here. As with the previous pieces in this little mini-series of posts, my questions are in italics and the artist's answers are in regular font.



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How did you come to work on this project, and why was it one you wanted to devote your time too? I imagine you must have been a fan of Mouse Guard previously?

Yes, I am definitely a Mouse Guard fan. In fact I was a fan ever since I saw the first black and white issue printed by Comixpress. When I heard that David was going to do an anthology type of series, I decided I wanted to try my hand at this great world that David created.

So I e-mailed David to see if there was a possibility of contributing to the project. It turned out that it was so early in the process, nothing has been set yet, but David told me that he already had me down on a list of possible contributors. I started working on putting the story together right away and was glad I got the extra time because of an early start.


How did working with David Petersen work? Did you have carte blanche to do whatever you liked? Was there a lot of discussion regarding your story?

David was great to work with. He already proved that he got “chops” when it comes to writing and drawing and he can now add editing to his comic book accomplishments. Both he and Paul Morrissey (who came in a bit later to make sure the story moved through production at a good pace) put up with all of my neurosis…

I had a pretty good idea of the story that I wanted to do for Legends and to make sure that I did not overstep any guidelines I did rough layouts (with some minimal scripting) right away and sent them to David so we could discuss the story itself and correct any inconsistencies it might have with the purpose of this miniseries.

It turned out that the only adjustments that I ended-up making, were more of a result of our discussion about storytelling and about how to make the story flow better.


What was it like drawing a story set in a world as thoroughly defined by another artist’s style and aesthetic? Did you find yourself trying to draw David Petersen-like at all?

What was it like drawing a Mouse Guard story? It was fun!

Being a fan of David’s art, I very much appreciate his style, both in his rendering technique and also his storytelling, but I did not want to mimic it. That would not be fair to the fans and it would defeat the purpose of Legends miniseries. So I spent sometime thinking about what made Mouse Guard unique and then I tried to interpret those qualities through my sensibilities.

For example, I feel that textures play a big role in creating a certain atmosphere in Mouse Guard. So I focused on how I can render lush backgrounds and gnarly trees.

Also the square format of the printed book is very unique because of how it changes the composition of the page. So I looked through Mouse Guard to see how David was using that format to enhance his storytelling and I used that as a springboard to develop the pace and rhythm for the story that I did.


Was it challenging working with animal characters as opposed to humans? It seems like a more difficult task to convey emotion in the face of a mouse instead of a human, particularly since the Mouse Guard mice tend to look more like real mice than overly anthropomorphic, funny animal types.?

That was a challenge, but it was a fun challenge that any artist would enjoy tackling. Every assignment brings something different and it offers an opportunity to learn something new.

A big challenge for me was the scale of things. I am so used to drawing everything in proportion to human characters, that it took me a little bit of an effort to adjust the scale of everything (rocks, trees, grass…) so that he mice did not look like they were six feet tall.


How different is the world of Mouse Guard from that of Robotika? I know Robotika has its own history and culture too, but I was thinking that pretty much anything could happen or show up in an issue of it, and I don’t think I’d be the least surprised, where as if a ferret with a robot leg or a mouse speaking Japanese showed up in Mouse Guard it would probably freak me out a little.

The two storylines/worlds are very different from each other, partially because they were created with different purposes in mind. However, I must say that idea about the Japanese-speaking samurai mouse is a good one…maybe in Legends II…


Do you anticipate Legends of the Guard introducing your work to a different audience than the one that might read Robotika or some of the other stuff you’ve done?

It’s possible…my main focus here is to do something that might be slightly different than what David does in the regular series and hope that the Mouse Guard fans enjoy it.

Ted Naifeh on Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard

As previously discussed, Ted Naifeh (Courtney Crumrin, Polly and The Pirates, Good Neighbors) is one of the three artists who contributed a short story to Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #1. I asked Naifeh some questions about his story and the creation thereof for this piece on Newsarama, but didn't have room to include every interesting thing Naifeh had to say about Mouse Guard, drawing and drawing Mouse Guard. So I'm putting it here. As with the previous piece in this little mini-series of posts, my questions are in italics and the artist's answers are in regular font.


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How did you come to work on this project, and why was it one you wanted to devote your time too? I imagine you must have been a fan of Mouse Guard previously?

Mouse Guard was one of those books I couldn’t ignore. There aren’t a lot of them. But it has a presence. Something about the format, the craft, the cute little mice treated with such grave seriousness. It’s beautifully complete. I ran into David last year at Dragon Con and we got to talking about his world, and he brought up the Legends book. I was immediately interested. I even came up with the basic idea right there in the midst of conversation. He loved it. In January, I called Archaia regarding another project, and the Mouse Guard editor asked me if I had time for this. It turned out I had a window while I was waiting for approval on the thumbs for Good Neighbors Vol 3. The timing was perfect.


How did working with David Petersen work? Did you have carte blanche to do whatever you liked? Was there a lot of discussion regarding your story?

There was less than I’d expected. I understood David’s world pretty well, and we’d already decided on the idea. But I hadn’t known the format, that it was tales told in a tavern. So I had to re-conceive the conclusion of the story. It had been a bit more tragic. But if everyone dies, no one can tell the tale.


I smiled when I noticed you did a story with bats, given the spooky settings and characters you’ve worked with before. What attracted you to the bats of Mouse Guard as subject matter?

I really liked them in the main series. They struck me as the goblins of the Mouse Guard world, except cooler because the can fly. But more importantly, they’re not wicked creatures. Any more than the mice are. There’s just this attitude of mutual distrust. I like the idea that mutual distrust can turn a foreigner into a monster. I’m a big fan of the Hobbit, but I feel like there was something a little to convenient about the sudden appearance of the goblin army. It seems to me that what everyone wants in a war is a goblin enemy, but what you really get is dwarves, elves and men seeing each other as goblins. Is that too geeky? Sorry.


What was it like drawing a story set in a world as thoroughly defined by another artist’s style and aesthetic? Did you find yourself trying to draw David Petersen-like at all, or modulating your style to “fit in,” even if only unconsciously?

Oddly, I had no trouble slipping in to his world, both in writing and in art. Obviously, I don’t stylize mice the way he does. I prefer to look at real mice and stylize in my own specific way. My bats were based on real vampire bats, but they ended up looking like gargoyles on gothic cathedrals. But it’s clearly a story from his world, because his world is so unique it could hardly be anything else. As for the story, I feel very much in step with the way he writes, so it was easy to write something in way that fits into it. I have a much harder time writing established superhero comics, because I don’t get the style as well. But David’s work just clicks for me.


Was it challenging working with animal characters as opposed to humans (and fairies and monsters)? It seems like a more difficult task to convey emotion in the face of a mouse instead of a human, and the bats especially have pretty spectacular visages.

Not at all. Facial expressions are hard wired into our brains. You can get a strong range of emotion out of punctuation. Look at Wallace and Gromit. Gromit doesn’t even have a mouth, but he has this huge gamut of emotions. The only thing he can’t do is smile. Which is fine, because he rarely has cause to smile anyway. It’s the same with the mice in Mouse Guard. They don’t smile much, but it’s a pretty somber book anyway, so you don’t miss it. I find that artists like myself start losing emotional range when we get caught up trying to be too realistic, or too fancy in our stylization. Artists forget than the first purpose of a comic character is to convey emotion. Everything else, like realism, or other kinds of virtuosity, is an optional extra. If you sacrifice expression for the sake of other concerns you’re putting the cart before the horse. We’re all guilty of it from time to time, but it’s not good comics.

More of David Petersen on Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard

Once again, here's a link to the feature on Mouse Guard: Legends of The Guard series I did for Newsarama yesterday, and here are some of the "deleted scenes," featuring David Petersen. If you're interested, do read the piece on Newsarama first, as the more relevant questions and explanation of the project can be found there.

These are bits that I found super-interesting, but didn't have room to include in the piece. Better to post them here on my personal blog than to let them go to waste though, right? Questions are in italics, Petersen's answers are in regular font below.


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How were the particular artists who contributed chosen? I’m curious what criteria you might have looked for in a contributor, if it was simply a matter of them being artists you liked or if you were looking for artists you knew would have very different takes on the characters.

I picked everyone who is in this collection. I was focused on individuals who are both writer and artist in one (though we do have a few collaborative efforts as well). Good solid fun stories that were well told was the goal, so people who I think do that well were put on a list. The top of the list were people who filled the criteria above, but also were friends of Mouse Guard (had talked to me at conventions about how much they enjoy the book, done pinups in the past, or have publicly helped push my book on to their fans.) I think that I also chose artists who have a very unique style. Something that when you see their work it's immediately recognizable as theirs.


You opened up Mouse Guard to other artists almost immediately, with pin-ups in the back of the very first issues. I take it you’ve always liked the idea of other artists drawing your mice guard?

I like the idea of seeing other takes on my characters and world. The pin-up section started as a way to fill an extra page when I was just starting out and learning how to pace an issue. The idea of one less page to fill was nice. But it resulted in having some awesome folks do some amazing pieces.


What was the collaboration like? Did the artists come to you with their stories finished, or were you heavily involved throughout the process? Obviously Mouse Guard takes place in a world with a very detailed and specific culture and history, but I noticed one of the rules of the tale telling contest was “no complete truths.”

For the guests, I try and offer them a great deal of flexibility. They can use the two hardcovers and the RPG as a guide if they like, but these being the “tall tales” of Mouse Guard, we wanted them to go beyond that. Roughly the three main rules are: No adult language, no gratuitous violence, and no adult themes. I also had them avoid certain characters of mine or major events and wars, but by doing so I hoped I was opening up what they could play with. They could make characters, make their own wars and events, rewrite history! I want these stories to feel uniquely like the creator(s) and not like a David Petersen story so-and-so just happened to draw. I just approve the work as long as it makes sense to me as a good story (it reads well, the thumbnails tell the story, etc.)


Did you get any or many weird questions from any of the contributors about details that might be second nature to you at this point, like, I don't know, how many toes mice have or if ferrets make a particular noise when fighting hedgehogs or anything?

Sure, I was asked about towns, what animals wear clothing (or don't wear clothing), culture differences between mice of different areas, etc. The number of digits on hands and feet has come up too. For some reason, I do three fingers and three toes...but real mice have more than that. Some artists wanted to do something more in-line with nature, others wanted to keep continuity with what I do. I tired to answer their questions as best as I could, but I tried to make sure they were still doing what they wanted to do...what felt right to them.


Is it at all difficult to see other artists, even such incredible ones as these, working on your creations? I was wondering if it was a bit like a parent letting one of their friends babysit for the first time at all?

Not at all. It's a thrill! I really enjoy these people's work and I'm grateful they are willing to do the project. This being an out-of-real-continuity book, it's easier to be so cavalier, I'm sure. If I were handing over the reigns for someone to tell one of my major stories with Lieam, Saxon, and Kenzie, I'm sure I would have the feeling of saying goodbye to my kids.

May 31st's Meanwhile in Las Vegas...

This week’s Las Vegas Weekly column features reviews of David Petersen’s tale of daring (and darling) swordsmice Mouse Guard Volume One: Fall 1152 and Scott Morse and company’s AdHouse art book The Ancient Book of Myth and War.

(Confidential to Chris Pitzer and Nate Wragg: I’d totally buy a floppy comic book starring Pathetos and/or one chronicling he war between Yeti and Sasquatch.)


And while I’m posting links…



—Attention Ed Brubaker fans: This movie isn’t a biopic about the comic book writer. Unfortunately.




—Hey, I know! Let’s talk more about that Heroes For Hire cover, huh?

In this week’s belated Lying in the Gutters column, Rich Johnston dipped deep into his nerd knowledge to point out something I don’t think I’ve heard anyone mention…not the dumb-ass Marvel fans who don’t see what the problem is or Quesada himself, who was sure to promise that no actual rape occurred in the book or was being alluded to in the cover image:


Joe Quesada, on Friday, amply justified it by saying "First, I think people are reading way too much into that cover than was ever intended. I heard terms such as 'tentacle rape' being thrown around when that in no way is what's happening, nor does it happen in the book. Those tentacles are the arms of the Brood who appears in the issue and is a major story point, the Brood have tentacles, sorry about that."

You can read the rest in the interview, but as I recall, the tentacles of the Brood, along with their stingers, are used to implant other races with their eggs, their stolen-from-Alien method of reproduction. The eggs then hatch and take over the host organism. Needless to say without the host's consent.

So, quite literally, the Brood do indeed rape their victims with their tentacles.



(Above: The Brood, apparently attempting to rape the X-Men)

Johnston also interviews C.B. Cebulksi, who was apparently the go-between who hooked artist Sana Takeda and Marvel up for the cover. It’s interesting to hear his reaction, but isn’t anyone going to ask Quesada, the book’s editors or Takeda herself about it? (And by “ask about it,” I mean do more than say “Hey, how about that controversy over the cover, huh?” and leave it at that*).

Cebulski seems to take the position that the comics blogosphere it beating up on Takeda, which, honestly, I haven’t seen any of (Of course, maybe I’m just not reading the same blogs that Cebulski is). Everything I’ve read has been directed at Marvel editorial; the few negative things directed toward Takeda that I’ve seen have been along the lines of “I’m not a fan of manga art” or “That’s not how black women’s hair works” or “Way to contribute to the Western-only comics audience’s stereotypes that manga is nothing but scantily clad women with big eyes being groped by tentacles.”

And for the last word on “Heroes For Hentai” (at least for today), let’s go to Steven Grant:

Marvel hasn't responded that I know of to the groundswell of criticism, but the litany is by this time familiar: the complainers don't know the characters, don't get the context, they're not the intended audience, and they're reading too much into the cover.

This may be true. As Freud once said, sometimes a long, stiff flesh tube threateningly approaching helplessly bound, abused and goo-spattered women as sinister hordes of eager eyes watch excitedly in the background is just a long, stiff flesh tube threateningly approaching helplessly bound, abused and goo-spattered women as sinister hordes of eager eyes watch excitedly in the background.





—As someone who’s spent time making fun of how terrible everything about DC’s current Supergirl is, I think I’m actually going to feel a little guilty if I don’t buy the book when the new writer and new artist take it in a new direction, a direction that includes an art style and skill level that seems to be devoted to portraying a real girl wearing real clothes. Renato Guedes’ “concept art” is remarkable (to me) in that he does nothing to alter this Supergirl’s costume (short of lengthening the skirt a bit); he simply draws it like it’s composed out of cloth and fits the girl wearing it. And it’s a vast, vast improvement.

I’m probably still not going to buy Supergirl (Mainly because I try to avoid pointless reboots whenever possible so as not to encourage DC to keep up their bad habit, and this particular one was one of the worst, as it occurred before the universe-wide continuity reboot).

But I will definitely make fun of Supergirl less.

Probably.





—It occurs to me that it has been days since I’ve said anything derisive about Michael Turner. So I guess it’s a good thing that Marvel gave Newsarama.com a look at Turner’s cover for World War Hulk #1.

Click on over if you’re dying to see a not very good drawing of much of the Marvel Universe’s biggest characters, and, if you do click there, do note that the entire image seems to be composed around the principle of not drawing feet.

In that respect, this may be the greatest Turner cover ever.

We get a big shot of the Hulk from the shins up or so, with small, background renditions of over twenty different Marvels positioned behind the Hulk’s body, fanning out with their feet hidden behind Hulk.

There’s almost 25 characters there, which amounts to almost 50 individual feet, and I applaud Turner’s ability to solve the problem. He gets away with having to draw but one, partial foot—Spider-Man’s left one (It’s hard to tell due to her size in the photo, but I think Wasp’s feet are hidden behind Punisher’s bicep).

Any way you look at it, it takes a lot of skill, imagination and guts to draw that many characters in a single image and find a way to avoid drawing so many feet.



—Note: I suck at drawing feet too, and find superhero boots and/or leotard-ed feet much more challenging than drawing bare feet or feet wearing shoes. (I intentional cut these guys off at the shins so as not to have to deal with their weird superhero footwear in this picture, and did a piss-poor job of Dinah and Diana’s feet in this one.

So don’t feel bad, Michael Turner. You’re in good company in your dislike of drawing feet. Well, you’re not alone, anyway. (I believe Gary Trudeau and Rob Liefeld also have an aversion to foot-drawing).




*Not that I blame Matt Brady for not busting Quesada’s balls about it in “New Joe Fridays.” Newsarama.com is not a site for that sort of reporting in general, and that particular column is simply a place for Quesada to hype Marvel and for Newsaramites to enjoy mediated interaction with Quesada. I’m sure Brady can only push so hard on these sorts of issues for fear of jeopardizing the site’s relationship with Marvel. Which, if ended, would reduce the content the site puts up that visitors are interested in by, oh, 50% or so.

Given all that though, I still don’t understand why Quesada took the question at all. I imagine if he was like, “Look Matt, I can’t really talk about that right now, can we just skip that question?” Brady would have complied and just not posted the exchange at all. It’s not like Quesada’s doing live, televised interviews with the comics press corps in these things.

Nor do I understand why Quesada gave such a poor answer to the question; he really sounds a little clueless about manga, Marvel alien species, comics audiences, geek culture, online comics culture and Marvel’s self-imposed ratings system. And I don’t mean to imply that he is clueless; just that he sounds clueless, and that was therefore a terrible answer. Not only did he whiff on a softball, he seems to have taken the ball right in the groin.