Meanwhile...

I have two articles posted in places that aren't here this week, that you're welcome to go read if you like. First, at Good Comics For Kids, I reviewed the Afterlife With Archie: Escape From Riverdale, which collects the first five issues of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Franco Francavilla's Afterlife With Archie and all of its one million variant covers.

And then today at Robot 6 I wrote at some length about Batman Eternal #11 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time #1, two comics elevated from good to awesome by some unusually, unexpectedly incredible art (especially on Batman Eternal; I expected the TMNT comic to look pretty great, as it was Ross Campbell-drawn, but man, that Batman Eternal comic sure caught me off-guard).

Guess which one of those three comics the above image came from.

I honestly had every intention of posting a new installment of "Comic shop comics" tonight.

But it turns out there were so many comics waiting for me at the shop this week, and I had a few pieces to write for places that aren't here tonight, that I'm just not going to be able to get to reviewing the 14 comics from the last three Wednesdays that I bought at the shop today. Hopefully Friday night. In the mean time, please enjoy this Ross Campbell drawing of a ninja turtle punching out a velociraptor, from the first page of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time #1, one of the three best comics I read this evening, all of which I will tell you more about in the near future.

The guest-stars of Wet Moon Vol. 4

So I was reading the latest volume of Ross Campbell's excellent (and highly recommended) college melodramedy set in a rather weird place where rather weird stuff occasionally occurs, just hanging out with my imaginary friends in the cast, when suddenly who should appear but Becky Cloonan...?!

She only appears during a single three-page sequence set at a comics convention, where comics fan (and closet Trekkie) Trilby, seen there with the awesome haircut and the barely-there Felicia-from-Darkstalkers costume.

The renowned comics creator isn't the only real-life guest-star to show up in this volume, though. Near the end, Glen is jogging to an alien ghost sleepover (Trilby's boyfriend's dorm room is haunted by the ghost of an alien, he says), when who should he see but...Hogzilla?!

He only appears in two panels in this volume, but I'm looking forward to the next volume, to see if there are more panels of "this giant fucking pig" or Becky Cloonan or all the hot, weird, cool-looking young people that make up Campbell's huge cast of wonderfully-drawn characters.

Meanwhile...

You're right, Myrtle—Bigfoot is cool. I participated in this week's What Are You Reading? at Robot 6, and this week's guest is Landry Walker. I briefly discuss Thien Pham's Sumo and the third volume of Ross Campbell's Wet Moon, which the above two panels are taken from.

Some brief thoughts on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 2: Enemies Old, Enemies New

If I've one complaint about IDW's licensed comics, it's how quickly the publisher expands their lines of them, and how easy it is for me to get confused by the multiple titles and multiple versions of the characters, and the ways in which they are collected. I'd really like to read some of their repackaging of old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comics, for example, but, as near as I can tell, there are at least three different series of it, plus their collections of their monthly TMNT book by Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz and Dan Duncan.

This is the second collection of that series...sorta. Mid-way through, there's a reference to an event in the Raphael one-shot (which I happened to read already, but only because I was reviewing it for one of my writing gigs online). There's an ad in the back of this trade for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Micro-Series Vol. 1, which apparently contains stories that are meant to slot in-between TMNT Vol. 1 and TMNT Vol. 2...?

Reading comics is sometimes a lot harder than it needs to be.

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Anyway, this collects TMNT #5-#8, and picks up where the first volume left off, not counting the at least four, as many as seven one-shots. Co-creator Kevin Eastman's contributions seem to have been dialed back a bit, as he's no longer credited with providing breakdowns for artist Duncan, and just shares a "story by" credit with Waltz. He also provides some of the many, many covers on these books.

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There are a lot of covers. The cover gallery in the back has eleven images, and, again, there are only four in here. The best are, of course, the Eastman ones, as those are always going to look like the "real" Turtles.

This is my favorite of his included here—

—although there are a few more that seem like more typical Ninja Turtles images, including one of his Turtles and Splinter fighting Mousers and another of the Turtles crouched on a rooftop as Foot Clan ninjas pursue a new character.

I really love Eastman's extra-inky, ragged line and how drawn his images look (and jeez, look at that city skyline! I love how lived-in Eastman's New York always looks). I've noted before what an impact Eastman's early work had on me, and I can't stress enough what a pleasure it is to see it coming into comic shops again at a pretty regular clip, even if it's quite limited compared to what, say, Duncan is providing.

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You know who else does a great Turtles cover? Simon Gane. Check this out:

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I was surprised not to see Ross Campbell's image of the Turtles fighting a swarm of Mousers in here, as I've seen that image on the Internet (it's currently my desktop image, come to think of it!), and it seems like it would have been used on one of the issues collected in here, as that is the exact event being depicted.

This is the image, by the way:

I believe this is where Campbell first posted it, so go there for a bigger, better version.

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The biggest unanswered question I had about Splinter and the Turtles' origin as presented in the original volume—how they all learned martial arts, if Splinter didn't learn them from his human master Hamato Yoshi, and the turtles are only 18 months old—is answered here, and it's kind of a doozy.

(Oh, um, "spoiler warning," if you're planning on reading these in trade and are even more far behind than I am).

Apparently, like in the old cartoon series, Splinter actually is Yoshi, but rather than mutating from human to rat, he is the rat reincarnation of the human Yoshi, who was killed by his rival Oroku Saki way back during feudal Japan. He had four sons, all of whom were also killed by Saki, and they were reincarnated into the turtles. Then they all happened to get mutated.

It's...pretty different. And, I don't know, it might have been used in other Turtle narratives from other media before.

I don't really care for the development, as it adds a mystical layer to the characters and conceit that I'm not sure they bear all that well, and makes the story one quite heavily indebted to cosmic coincidence and melodramatic destiny, but as with the other changes in their origin story, this is more of a "That's not the way I would have done it" form of displeasure, and, again, I appreciate the radical nature of the rebooting going on. It's not like there aren't all these other versions of the Turtles characters out there already.

(The above image, featuring the Yoshi and his sons in their human lives from feudal Japan, is drawn by Mateus Santolouco, who drew the past sequences in TMNT #5.)

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As I mentioned in passing, there are Mousers in this comic. They are again the invention of Baxter Stockman, although these ones weren't designed to rid the New York City sewer system of rats; instead they are Minefield Ordnance Unarming System Enhanced Robots, which is kinda stupid (Isn't the word "Disarming," Stockman....?), and doesn't really explain why they have big, bear-trap like jaws (Are they for digging up the mines and thus setting 'em off, isntead of "unarming" them...?).

I like what Duncan did with them though. Rather than mass-producing a single, bipedal version, Stockman apparently made a bunch of different varieties, to the extent that no two of them look alike. They have different numbers of limbs and come in different sizes and with different proportions.

Some of 'em made me laugh just to look at.

I like this little fat one, for example.

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The Turtles get their differently-colored masks from the cartoons here—it's explained that they were all wearing red while they were searching for Raphael in the first volume because that was his favorite color—and there are several other unexpected nods to the original cartoon version of the Turtles story.

In addition to General Krang, who made a very brief appearance in the first volume, we meet two subordinates of his who appeared briefly in the original cartoon series and were particularly difficult mini-bosses in the arcade video game. And there's mention of "The planet Neutrino" and "The Neutrino Resistance Fighters."

While I'm sure that, should they eventually appear, The Neutrinos will be very different from the annoying, 1950s slang-dropping characters that appeared in "Hot Rodding Teenagers from Dimension X", the prospect still doesn't exactly excite me.

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(The Neutrinos, if you never saw that show, are basically greaser space-elves with confounding hair-styles and high-pitched voices who drive hover-cars, which allowed the company that made the Turtle toys to make a flying convertible toy. The girl Neutrino was apparently voiced by whoever voiced Babs Bunny in Tiny Toons, and she has the exact same voice, which is almost as disconcerting as Donatello having the exact same voice as the Nesquik spokesbunny).

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As the series continues, it seems clear that Eastman and Waltz are rebuilding a new version of the franchise, using equal parts of inspiration from the original Mirage comics and the original cartoon series, which makes for an awkward mix, but is perhaps understandable, given their audience, which I imagine consists of mostly grown-up fans who grew up on one of those two versions or, like me, both.

Rather than an episodic narrative, they're clearly going for something big and epic...in fact, I had a hard time distinguishing the starts and stops of the distinct issues in this collection, as the story seemed to simply keep going from chapter to chapter.

***********************

I guess I'm still in for Vol. 3. I hope it includes a checklist of trades though, and a nice short, clear explanation of what, say, the Ultimate Collection and Classics and Adventures lines contain, exactly. (I can't find listings for any Turtles collections on IDW's online catalog, which is...frustrating). I just spent another 15 minutes or so trying to determine it by looking at IDW.com, Wikipedia, BN.com and Amazon and I'm still not 100% on what's what, and if or what I want to buy from IDW regarding their reprints.

Sigh...

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, at ComicsAlliance...

I have a pretty big interview with EDILW favorite and Glory/Shadoweyes/Wet Moon/Water Baby/The Abandoned creator Ross Campbell up at ComicsAlliance today. You can read it here. It's pretty substantial, and well worth a read if you're a Campbell fan or interested in the way women are portrayed in comics or the design and drawing of comics characters in general.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas...

Yeah, what Sparkle said!

Just FYI, I have a brief review of the second volume of Ross Campbell's Shadoweyes series, Shadoweyes In Love, in this week's issue of Las Vegas Weekly. You can read it here.

I went on a little too long, as I tend to do, so here's the bit that got cut off at the end for space: "In a moribund genre that tends towards uniformity, Shadoweyes sticks out like a gorgeous but gnarled sore thumb."

That moribund genre is, of course, the superhero genre, and I think anyone who likes that genre and thinks an awful lot about it will find some pretty compelling questions in this series, and this volume in particular, especially on the question of violence and vigilantes executing their enemies as opposed to beating them up or leaving them for the police. Like, if you've ever offered an opinion about whether Batman should kill the Joker or Spider-Man the Green Goblin, for example, there's some scenes in here that might call those opinions into question.

It's remarkably strong stuff. And, you know, it's also awesome in the way you'd expect a Ross Campbell superhero comic to be.

Plus, more Pony Master:

Can't blog. Too busy playing Pony Master.

That's not entirely true. I can't blog, and I am too busy to do so, but I'm not actually playing Pony Master, the collectible card game enjoyed by Sparkle Park in Ross Campbell's excellent Shadoweyes (the first volume of which the above image was taken from). In actuality I'm just a bit slammed at the moment, due to personal, not-comics-blogging-related stuff (although I should have at least one piece of comics-blogging related news to share in the near future). I had intended to post my usual installment of "DC Previews Reviewed" tonight, but it's taking a lot longer to put together than usual, given that DC decided to go ahead and relaunch almost their entire line. So hopefully I'll have that for you tomorrow night, and I'll get back on track from there. Thank you for your patience.

Shadoweyes is the Spider-Man of the 21st Century.

That's all I wanted to say about Ross Campbell's comic, which I would highly recommend to anyone who likes superheroes and/or great drawing.

....


Wait, that's not all I wanted to say about it.

While reading it, I couldn't get over how awesome Campbell was at drawing pipes and garbage, and I couldn't stop thinking about how fantastic his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might have been. Oddly, seeing the pipes, garbage, graffiti, rooftops and fire escapes of the fictional city Shadoweyes is set in made me long to see a Campbell TMNT comic almost as much as seeing all those character sketches he had previously posted on his blog.

Also, as I alluded to the other day, I was reading Shadoweyes in the midst of DC's daily announcements of new comics suggesting often boneheaded, occasionally depressing publishing decisions. As one of the stated goals of DC's relaunch was to present a more diverse superhero universe then the one full of straight white dudes and a couple of aliens they started with, I was amused by the fact that almost all of the main characters in Shadoweyes are black and female, one of the main characters is Intersex, the sexual-orientation of a few seem to be leaning towards not-straight, and one of the main characters has ectrodactyly. How's that for diversity in a superhero comic? Suck it, Jewish Lesbian Batwoman!

March 14th's Meanwhile in Las Vegas...

This week's Las Vegas Weekly comics column provides some obligatory coverage of the "death" of Captain America, and offers up reviews of Frank Stack's New Adventures of Jesus: The Second Coming and Richard Sala's The Grave Robber's Daughter (which is where the panels of Ms. Judy Drood knocking clowns the fuck out with a shovel and such like were taken from). Be sure to check 'em both out, as they're both great reads full of some fantastic art.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Project Rooftop is staging a much-needed fashion intervention for DC's Supergirl, including a bold re-design by EDILW favorite, The Abandoned creator Ross Campbell. It's worth noting that not only are all of these costumes superior to the costume the "real" Supergirl is currently rocking, but, for the most part, but all of the artists also seem to be superior to the two artists most associated with Supergirl at this point, Michael Turner and Ian Churchill. I do hope DC has been trawling the 'net for Supergirl input, as this Project Rooftop post alone has a few story arcs worth of alternate Supergirls and a couple must-sign artists.

Up until this point, Dean Trippe's Supergirl was by far my favorite, as it captured that which was most likable about the original Supergirl and seemed like it could be any of the major Supergirls from any of the books or cartoons since, while making her look like a real girl with a real sense of style, but I really dig Campbell's.

His Supergirl looks more like Superman (the dark hair), giving her a family resemblance, and she's ultra-sexy in a way that's not completely stupid (that is, she wears clothes tight enough to show her body off, but she's wearing tiny shorts instead of a tiny skirt, so she won't be constantly flashing people). The color scheme is interesting too—it doesn't really say "Supergirl" the way red and blue do, but I would love to see someone make that scheme work in the DCU. I don't think any superhero has really reached icon status with yellow and blue; the X-Men change their costumes too often to ever become primarily known in their blue and gold colors, and the Sentry is, well, he's the Sentry, isn't he? Finally, having read some of Campbell's previous work, I know he can draw sexy, tough girls who look and move like real girls, a talent that escapes far too many of the artists DC has hired to draw Ms. Kara Zor-El of late.

Delayed Reaction: The Abandoned

The Abandoned (Tokyopop), by Ross Campbell

Why’d I Wait?: All I knew of the book from seeing it on the shelf was what I saw on the cover. The image was that of a full-figured black woman with a red mohawk, holding a bloody plunger and splattered with blood. The author credit revealed that the book was created by someone who wasn’t Japanese, meaning it wasn’t really manga, despite the fact that it was published in Tokyopop’s typical manga format. Finally, the back cover included a picture of zombies. As a comic book reader, fan and critic, and as a film critic, I am soooo goddam sick of zombies.

Why Now?:Well, had I flipped through the book in the comic shop the first time I saw it, I probably wouldn’t have waited at all. All it took to sell me on it off the library’s shelf was a quick flip through, which revealed creator Ross Campbell’s awesome, sexy punk character designs, squirmy gore and violence scenes and a gray, white and red palette that was hard to resist.

Well?: The post-millennial resurrection of zombies on the big screen is nothing compared to the revival the undead cannibals have seen in comics—hardly a week ever goes without at least one book featuring the slowly walking undead seeing release. At times, it seems like zombies are getting to be the new superheroes, they’ve become so ubiquitous. So if creators are even going to bother with zombie stories these days, they need to have an incredible hook just to be interesting, let alone to stand out from the rest of the crowded field (Walking Dead’s endless nature, The Savage Brothers’ lived-in vibe and The Last Christmas’ use of Santa and his elves as zombie fighters are some pretty good examples of decent hooks).

Campbell’s fantastic art and the hand-crafted feel of the book (his is the only credit, and the letters feel like the intimate, hand-scribed ones of a little indy comic, despite the professional glossiness of the art) are probably enough to push this zombie apocalypse to the top of the heap, but that’s hardly the only selling point to this 200-page epic.

Campbell also has a point to his zombie apocalypse, in the form of a Big Idea like those in the first few George Romero Living Dead movies, and his cast is an incredibly colorful one, filled with the types of characters one sees too rarely in any kind of comics or pop stories, and certainly not in any from this particular genre.

After Hurricane Riley strikes the southwestern United States, turning out the lights in our heroes’ hometown of Savannah, something strange happens. Just about everyone except our heroes suddenly drops dead. But they don’t stay that way long. Moments later, they rise and start seeking out human flesh, which they bite right off whoever is in their way in gory, red chomps (Campbell eschews ultraviolence and over-theatricality in his gore. When someone bleeds from a bite or wound, or, worse yet, has pieces of their flesh removed by the handful, the red stuff looks like it would in real life, I imagine, rather than coming out in gushers and sprays. When someone is eaten here, they seem like terrified meat, rather than a cinematic punchline).

Just why is it that everyone except our heroes have been turned into zombies? The unhappy birthdays some of them suffer spell it out—everyone over the age of 23 dies and comes back. Which brings us to Campbell’s Big Idea: In The Abandoned, we see a modern society which literally eats it’s young; where you die as soon as you enter adulthood, and then sustain yourself off devouring youth. As a metaphor, it isn’t subtle, but there’s little subtlety in The Abandoned, nor should there be, really. As a plot point, it cranks the suspense and drama up from 11 to 1100. Even in the unlikely chance our teenage heroes can somehow survive the constant zombie attacks, it is quite literally only a matter of time before they themselves become zombies.

As for those heroes, the main one is the punk chick from the cover, Rylie. A seventeen-year-old who works at I Scream, a zombie-themed ice cream parlor owned and operated by white sisters Nikki and Cam and who volunteers at an old folks home. She’s ecstatic that her “true-love-to-be” Naomi is moving to town, and arrives the day before the night where everything goes to hell.

Those four, plus fat, mean girl Mae, big, black Ben and his little white ex-boyfriend John comprise the cast. The only ones who’s sexual identity is revealed at all are gay, itself something of a rarity, but they’re also all punk rock Southern teens with accents, something else you rarely see, and though they’re all fairly pop culture savvy (Rylie used to wish for a zombie invasion, and I Scream has flavors like Nut of the Living Dead), they’re not smart-ass know-it-alls like the kids from the Scream movies.

The women are also refreshingly realistic in their proportions and variety. Naomi and Cam are skinny and boyish; Nikki buxom and hippy; Rylie full-figured; Mae zaftig to the point of obesity. Yet Campbell makes them all seem sexy, even the huge, bull dog-faced Mae, in some scenes. Part of it is their sense of style and the tiny clothes Campbell dresses them in, but it’s also the realism and care with which he renders them. When we first meet Rylie, she’s simply wearing her panties and drooling in her bed; when she moves to get up, Campbell draws all of her curves, concentrating and eroticizing the bulge of her belly as she bends just as much as her breasts or butt.

The Abandonded thus ignores the MPAA’s weird double standard where extreme violence is more acceptable than sexuality, homosexuality and nudity. And while the book is definitely sexy in a Suicide Girls kind of way and does contain some romance, it’s a definitely of the zombie apocalypse genre, rather than the romance genre. There are passages of gory panels that are truly horrifying, in part because we got to know the characters getting eaten so well before Campbell killed them off, and in part because he has such a wildly cruel imagination when it comes to hurting them (a bit involving Rylie and a shard of broken glass that I found myself inadvertently shielding my eyes while reading leaps back to mind).

Despite the invasion of zombie invasion books in comic shops today, The Abandoned is the only serious competition The Walking Dead has to its thus far undisputed title as King of All Zombie Comics. Tokyopop’s website says two more volumes are forthcoming, and I eagerly await both, though I’m a little surprised to hear it—the story told in the first volume is so complete, I assumed it was the entire story.

Would I Travel Back In Time to Buy it Off the Shelf?: Hell yeah. But luckily, I don’t have to, as it’s still on sale.