The same unit of story twice—once in words and once in pictures

First Second's recent release Refresh, Refresh is a graphic novel adaptation of a rather short prose short story. Or, to be more accurate, it's an adaptation of the screenplay adaptation of the original prose short story.

I read the graphic novel version, which is written and drawn by Danica Novgorodoff, first, and then eagerly sought out the Benjamin Percy story it's based on. I did so not simply because I was reviewing the graphic novel, and being familiar with its source material seemed like something that would be do more good than harm in reviewing the adaptation, but because the way in which Novgorodoff ends her version was such a strange, such a visual, such a comic book-y way to end the story, that it was hard to imagine how it would have been accomplished in prose, and, if it was an invention of hers, how Percy originally ended the original.

I was more than a little surprised by how different the two versions of Refresh, Refresh are (You can find Percy's version in a 2007 short story collection of the same name, by the way). His story, as it was printed in The Best American Short Stories 2006 is only about 12 pages long, while the graphic novel is 138-pages long.

A lot of that added length is due to dramatizing events the story either summarizes or implies, although Novgorodoff—or, more likely, James Ponsoldt, who wrote the screenplay adaptation the comic is itself adapted from—also adds significantly to the cast. If you're interested in either the comic or the short story, you may want to quit reading now, as I'm going to contrast the endings of each (and thus spoil them, I guess).

Here's the very last paragraph of Percy's story:



And here below is the climax and ending of Novgorodoff's graphic novel. I wouldn't normally excerpt so much from a graphic novel, but that's how many pages Novgorodoff spent attempting to say through pictures what Percy said through words. I should also note that I skipped a six-page sequence between the first page posted and below and the second, plus one abstract image (which I scanned upside down by accident), and another short sequence toward the end in which the boys have another conversation not in the story. I was basically interested in trying to capture Novgorodoff's picture version of Percy's word-evoked imagery:

You go with the Bone One Volume Edition you find on sale, not the one you might want or wish to have at a later time

I try to avoid going into Half Price Books, the chain of used book stores that re-sell books at half their original cover price, since the last thing I need to do is bring more printed matter into my small, one-bedroom apartment, which will one day likely expode from having too many comic books compressed into too small a space. If I must go into a Half Price Books, I try my hardest not to look at the comics or graphic novels, as I'll inevitably rationalize myself into buying them ("I probably shouldn't get this Essential Tomb of Dracula Vol. 4 yet, since I don't have volumes two or three, but on the other hand, it's only nine bucks—when will I find such a great deal on it again?").

Unfortunately I recently found myself brought to a Half Price Books during one of their occasional additional 20-percent off sales, which meant everything there was then seventy percent off, and, well, I couldn't resist the pull of the graphic novel shelf.

I got three great Tarzan collections from Dark Horse (including two by Russ Manning!), three Elephant & Piggie books by the great Mo Willems (whose art on this particular series of books I not only love, but also admire and envy), and, best of all, I found a Bone: One Volume Editon, one of those two-and-a-quarter-inch-thick monster bricks-of-a-book, which puts Jeff Smith's entire epic between two covers.

I originally read Bone in the single-volume series of Cartoon Book trades borrowed from the Columbus Metropolitan Library, so I never owned it any form. There were several times I picked up a copy of the one volume edition, looked longingly at it, considered it, and put it back, figuring I'd use that $40 on comics I haven't already read yet. I kept putting purchasing it off, and then it eventually went out of print, apparently because Smith didn't want to compete with the Scholastic Books color versions of the trades when they were first being released.

But here was a copy of it for half off ($19.98 instead of $39.95!), with an additional 20-percent off on top of that! So, like $17 something, I guess...? I'd be a fool not to buy it, right?

Once I got it home, I realized that I don't care for the cover of the book, at least not compared to some of the other one-volume edition covers (This post on Smith's Boneville blog, which I linked to above, talks a bit about the various covers for the one-volume edition).
It's not all that representative of what goes on within the book and, if I didn't know a thing about Bone, I might think it was some sort of horror-genre story based on this single image.

The newer one-volume edition features this image of Fone Bone sitting upon a rock in one of the goregous landscapes that Smith has often cited as extremely influential in the creation of the comic. It's also much prettier looking.

But as Donald Rumsfeld once famously said, "As you know, you go with the Bone: One Volume Edition you have on sale for 70-percent off. It's not the Bone: One Volume Edition you might want or wish to have at a later time."

Other places on the Internet you can go to

I have a review of Matt Kindt's 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man over at Blog@, if you'd like to read it. In preparation for writing the review, I re-read Kindt's Super Spy and spent some time poking around his website and blog. As it turns out, there is a whole lot of great art on both.

I wanted to call attention especially to some of the superhero artwork he's posted, as it's probably not at all what people think of when they think of Kindt (just as Micronauts fans probably don't think of Kindt as their go-to guy for sketches...but surprise!).

First, check out his Green Lantern, which was apparently a commission:
(Bigger and better version at his blog here).

I'm not a fan of the modern trend in superhero comics of depicting every character like a well-sculpted body-builder, so I always like it when an artist draws a superhero with a slimmer build...or even just doesn't define each and every swollen muscle through the hero's costume.

I love the boots on Kindt's Hal Jordan, too. The laces make them look like the sorts of boots professional wrestlers wear. Now I suppose Hal Jordan's boots, like the rest of his costume, are ring-generated matter that simply appears on him, and thus he never needs to actually put his boots on, and thus laces are unnecessary, but they still look cool, dammit (Actually, this is something I've always wondered about: Do Green Lanterns create their costumes out of the matter their rings allow them to generate, or do they use their rings to transmute whatever clothes they happen to be wearing at the time into their costumes? I would think the former, and I think Geoff Johns even implied that early in his run when he talked about the heat emanating from the energy in Hal's costume, but the latter makes more sense from what I've seen over the decades of Green Lantern comics. Because if it was the Lantern's will alone that maintained the costume, then wouldn't they suddenly become naked every time they lost their concentration or got knocked unconscious*?)

Okay, let's look at one more together, and then you can go peruse Kindt's sites on your own if you like. The front and back covers of his Super Spy featured two spy characters, each seemingly trapped within the confines of the cover as if it were a box, with little cutaway bubbles penetrating their clothing to show the various spy gadgets they have on their persons.

If you haven't seen it—and while I didn't love Super Spy, I really think it's well worth a look—the covers look like this:
(Just fold it in your mind on the spine where it says "Super Spy").

Here's a super neat-o image of Spider-Man from Kindt's portfolio, putting Spidey in a similar pose: Now go scour Kindt's site, and spend some time being awestruck, okay?



*Actually, I don't want to name names or anything, but I bet some Green Lantern fans would prefer that this happen more often.

Terribly important follow-up post

Last week, I spent a few paragraphs talking about the odd announcement that DC's Executive Editor Dan DiDio would be taking over DC's floundering Outsiders title with current Batman and Robin artist Philip Tan. At the time, DC released a rather hard to make-out pencil version of the first cover of their upcoming run, showing two unidentifiable figures shaking hands. At the time, my best guesses as to their identity were a caveman with a bad haircut wearing Geo-Force's costume and maybe a poorly drawn Steel.

DC has since released the final, color version of it, and it's still a difficult to read image—presumably on purpose, to obscure the identity of the new recruit—but it seems that the figure on the left if indeed Geo-Force, and the figure on the right is not Steel.

If not, then who is it? My best guess would be The Eradicator, who briefly lead the team during the short-lived, early '90s incarnation of the title, in some sort of new costume (How early '90s was that incarnation of Outsiders? It launched with two versions of the first title, with variant interiors as well as covers, labeled Outsiders #1 Alpha and Outsiders #1 Omega. I make fun, but I did enjoy that title at the time, more so than the the volumes of Outsiders to launch this decade. I liked that one guy who was basically just a bear wearing blue underpants...Wyled with a Y, I think his name was...).

In other DC Comics cover news, in January, Tony Daniel is apparently going to have Batman fight Spawn once again. I do like his use of power lines in the background though...

Is Owly moonlighting as a snack mascot...or does he have a brother in advertising?

At the grocery store today, I noticed this guy on the packaging for a box of Treasure Mills brand school lunch snacks:
He looked so much like Andy Runton's Owly that I had to stop and look extra closely to make sure it wasn't: As you can see, the wings and feet are shaped differently. And, of course, the first orb-shaped owl is wearing a hat. So they're clearly not the exact same owl. But at the very least, they must be part of the same sub-species of cartoon owl, if not actually related, right?

THERE'S A NEW ANGEL OF JUSTICE

...AND HE'S WEARING REALLY BAGGY PANTS.

If there was a Law & Order: SVU comic, I doubt I'd want to read it...

...unless Sean Murphy were drawing it, in which case I'd certainly think about it.

Murphy's the artist of an upcoming Vertigo series with Grant Morrison, so if you haven't heard of him before, I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot about him in the near future. In the meantime, check out his deviantart gallery, which is full of great stuff, like the above image I stole from there, and his "Wolverine Alphabet" series (It was a Robot 6 post about the latter which drew my attention to his gallery in the first place).

It looks like everyone who wanted to read Watchmen around here has now done so.

Since it is very difficult to live off of the money that there is to be made in the field of semi-professional comics criticism and comics blogging, I also have a part-time day job. It's working in a library that serves a small city of 34,000 immediately adjacent to the city of Columbus, where I live.

The other day while I was at work, I noticed something I hadn't seen all year—a Watchmen graphic novel on the shelf. Looking closer, I saw that there were actually two copies of Watchmen on the shelf.

All year—actually, maybe as far back as last November or December—all of our copies of Watchmen have been out, demand apparently driven by interest in the movie adaptation, and the relentless media attention focused on both the film and the comic that inspired it.

The library system I work in has three branches, but, like I said, it serves a rather small city, so we don't order every single graphic novel that comes out, and thus we rarely if ever have a situation where reserve lists are generated for particular graphic novels. But Watchmen grew such a long reserve list over the course of the last year that not only was it the only graphic novel I've ever noticed to have more than one or two people waiting on it (and those tended to be manga books like Deathnote, from the teen department), but more had to be ordered to accommodate the demand, and all of these went out and stayed out. Until a few days ago.

All together, we now own seven copies between the three branches, and, as of the other day when I checked, five of them were still checked out. So everyone that uses our library system who wants to read Watchmen has apparently done so (I'm sure they'll continue to circulate, but the fact that there are some on the shelf indicates the surge in interest if finally dwindling).

I checked the catalog at the Columbus Metropolitan Library to see what their Watchmen situation was. CML is a much, much bigger system than mine. It consists of 21 different branches that all share a collection, and they're spread throughout the 212-square mile, amoeboid-shaped city of about 750,000 people (1.7 million, if you count the greater metropolitan area, regardless of city borders).

They own 120 copies of Watchmen between all of their branches, and it looks like 34 of them are available at the moment. There are two or three other individual library systems in adjacent Columbus suburbs, but I didn't check their catalogs, because I don't care that much, but from my half-assed research, I think it's safe to say that the boom in interest related to the film has finally died down among Columbus' library patrons.

In case you were wondering.

Weekly Haul: Buying fewer comics leaves more time to complain about them in far greater detail

I generally go over the Diamond shipping lists pretty thoroughly every week, in addition to reading a bunch of columns about what’s coming out on New Comics Day (in addition to writing my own), so I was expecting it to be a fairly light week for me at the comic shop.

But when I got there, I learned that Diamond had failed to ship my shop their copies of X-Men Vs. Agents of Atlas #1, and either hadn’t shipped or my shop hadn’t ordered (I didn’t ask) any copies of the two manga series I might have considered adding to my haul on such a slim week.

The result? I walked out of the shop with only three comics this week. I was able to buy my entire haul with a single ten-dollar bill…and get change back!

I think this is a failure on the part of DC, Marvel and a few of the other, superhero-focused publishers, frankly, as that’s generally all I read in single-issue format—they’re just not publishing enough awesome comics, and/or charging too much for many the comics they do publish. (For example, I’d pay $2.99 to laugh at an issue of Cry For Justice or see what Brother Voodoo’s up to, but $3.99?).

There were, of course, a ton of great graphic novels and collections released this week, but buying something like IDW’s Bloom County: Complete Library #1 is a lot different than just plopping down $3 to $4 for 22-34 pages of super-people doing super-stuff; that’s the sort of thing one has to save up for, and maybe keep an eye on Amazon.com until the price gets slashed a bit (Sorry, brick and mortar store! I’m poor!)

Anyway, what used to be New Comic Book Day for me and had since become New Comic Book Afternoon was, today, more like New Comic Book Hour, and I wonder if I’ve somehow found myself in the transition phase between being a single-issue comics reader and a trade paperback-reader. I actually prefer the former in most instances, but the factors—writing for the trade, rising price, fewer quality books from the Big Two—seem to be pushing me toward trades despite myself. Hell, of the three comics I did buy today, I’m on the fence when it comes to dropping one of ‘em, I hate the art on another and feel kinda bad about rewarding the publisher for hiring the guy by buying the book anyway, and the other book I easily could have trade-waited.

Well, enough of the existential rambling of a Wednesday Crowd-er, worrying about his weekly rituals, let’s get on to the handful of books I did read this week—now with added scans!


Batman and Robin #5 (DC Comics) Grant Morrison’s Batman writing is far from the strongest he’s ever done, but there are some interesting ideas percolating in just about every installment. This is the middle section of the three-part “Revenge of the Red Hood” story arc, in which DC decided to humiliate poor Philip Tan by having him follow Frank Quitely on pencil art.

I liked the way that The Flamingo, introduced in one of Morrison’s trademark name-drops in the possible-future issue of Batman #666, is now part of the actual Batman story in the present. When Morrison mentioned him in the previous story, it seemed like it just a name chosen to sound like a new generation version of a bird-themed Batman villain like The Penguin, and yet now he’s on his way to Gotham, and he’s apparently a pretty big deal (Commissioner Gordeon calls him the “alpha-enforcer” of a crime cartel; Red Hood sidekick calls him “King of Killers, the Ace of Assassins.”)

I also liked the couple of panels in which The Red Hood talks about Batman in marketing terms: “That’s all Batman is now--A brand, a logo.” It reminded me of Paul Pope’s discussion of Batman at the Wexner Center, in which Pope explained how he came to the determination that, at his core, Batman is essentially just a logo for himself. The idea takes on a new emphasis in light of what Morrison’s been doing with the Batman franchise, as Batman isn’t even Bruce Wayne anymore, but whoever is wearing the Batman suit (currently Dick Grayson).

The Red Hood would know this better than most people because—okay, I’m going to spoil this, so if you’re heavily invested in which of the obvious suspects turns out to be the Red Hood, stop reading this blog post now—as a former Robin and former Batman, Jason Todd is familiar with the idea of superhero identities as symbols and sigils that can be passed down or exchanged (Morrison sort of explored this idea from another angle in DC One Million, in which he took the company’s love affair with legacy heroes to the extreme with superhero logos being used as something like power sources and natural resources).

Yeah, it turns out the Red Hood isn’t the obvious suspect—the mask-wearing mystery writer who appeared last issue—but the even more obvious suspect…the same person he was last time he appeared.

At least, I think it’s Jason Todd. The Red Hood seems to think he’s Jason Todd, and I guess I’ll take his word for it. Unfortunately, Philip Tan’s poor artwork doesn’t help:
(Before I proceed to discussing the art, did you read that dialogue? Apparently Batman made Jason dye his hair to look more like Dick? That’s…interesting, right? One wonders why Todd just now let his hair return to its apparently natural red just now, and continued to dye it ever since the “Hush” arc of Batman. And also why he wore that stupid just-a-jacket-and-pants with a lame, Spider-Man like helmet/mask when he first became the Red Hood, instead of this more elaborate superhero costume, complete with cool red guns).

I realize this isn’t entirely Tan’s fault, but it’s really too bad DC doesn’t have its artists work off of any kind of model sheets at all. I understand why they don’t, of course—these days artists, editors and fans all seem to want artists to draw in as personalized a style as possible, and to be as uninhibited by outside force as possible—but I imagine scenes like this would be much more powerful if there was anyway of telling what a character looked like based on his physical character.

A theoretical artist’s guide for popular, commonly used characters wouldn’t have to be overly onerous. I think if DC could just get all their artists to do things like agree on the height, weight and basic build of their character in relation to one another, that would be swell.

That dude up there? He doesn’t look a damn thing like Jason Todd. But then, what does “Jason Todd” even look like now? Who knows?

Also, some sort of guide might avoid panels like this:
I know by the costumes who the characters are, but does the Dick Grayson on the left, the one with the Gambit-like eyes, look much of anything like the Dick Grayson other artists draw? Does the monstrous little hobbit goblin thing on the right look like a ten-year-old boy? Why’s he got more wrinkles in his face and longer side-burns than I do, when I’m over three times his age?

And on the subject of “What’s up with this shitty panel,” what is Damian—the creature on the right—doing with the object in his right hand there? Following the context clues from the previous few panels, that’s either some sort of tool used to remove spirit gum from one’s face, or some sort of butter knife with either grape jelly or maybe butter or cream cheese on it (Two panels previous, Damian uncovers his breakfast while peeling off his mask, so either seems possible).

I don’t like looking at that panel at all.

And that of course remains the problem with too many of the artists DC has assigned Morrison throughout his time on the Batman books. Not every artist has to be Frank Quitely or David Mazzucchelli, but, at the very least, they should be able to do a completely bland, personality-free, complement the script to tell the story without ever sucking so bad that someone has to stop reading it to figure out what the hell is supposed to be going on work.

In the 1990’s, I read a lot of Batman books. Just about all of ‘em, I think. And there were a ton of artists whose style I didn’t care for as much as some of them. But even those guys whose work I used to find kinda boring—Tom Lyle, Jim Balent, Staz Johnson, Graham Nolan*, Jim Aparo** etc.— those guys still managed to draw everything without making me have to start a scene over or read past it to get to a verbal clue of just what the hell I was looking at.

Like this:
What is that? If you guessed The Penguin bouncing off the top of a car in the rain and being thrown into a crowd of people while saying “GAAAHH!”, congratulations, you are correct. How long did it take you to figure it out? If it was any longer than “instantaneously,” then it’s not a very good panel.

By the way, here’s Tan’s Penguin:
It's not bad. Not from that angle, anyway (the nose looks strangely broad from the front, but in profile it looks more beak-like). His egg-shaped body recalls the weird pillow-suit thing Danny DeVito wore in Batman Returns, and something about his face and his legs makes me think of some sort of Jim Henson creation.

I do wish Quitely were still drawing this though. Not just because it would be easier to read and better looking, but because I’d like to see what his Penguin might look like.


Batman: Unseen #1 (DC) Have I got that right? The small print has it like that, whereas the cover says Batman Unseen, sans colon. I could have sworn I’d seen it as Batman: The Unseen before somewhere as well.

My position on the matter of Kelley Jones and whether or not he kicks ass is, I assume, well established at this point. While he was the part of the Doug Moench/Kelley Jones/John Beatty Batman creative team I probably appreciated the most, I do like Moench’s writing quite a bit too.

Now, Moench is no Morrison, and I like some of his scripts a lot less than I like others, but he and Jones both share in common a certain overblown flair. Just as Jones can exaggerate the hell out of everything, while still managing an often quite rigid, formal filigreeing of detail (check out all the little dots expended on the night sky of that cover, all the folds in the bat-wings and bat-wing shaped cape), Moench’s characters will often talk in very purposeful, meaningful dialogue, with a sort of formality that often seems highly artificial.

There’s a theatricality about Moench’s Gotham characters, as if they’re all either engaged in word-play of various types, or, at the least, behave like actors reading too-clever to be natural lines.

This line, for example, might seem ridiculous, were it being screamed by anything other than a Jones-drawn skull-face, the character's hat thrown back with a melodramatic gesture, while a pattern of abstract firecrackers serves as a partial background:
I like Doug Moench. And I love Kelley Jones. And they work together perfectly.

Of course, they’re on pretty familiar ground here. One of their earlier collaborations was Batman/Dracula, which spawned two sequels, and the bulk of their run on Batman was a little like a Brave and The Bold, in which Batman teamed-up and/or fought DC’s creepiest heroes and villains.

Here, Batman is poised to meet and battle a modern-day Invisible Man, Gotham scientist Dr. Nigel Glass, who is perfecting a way to make the human body completely invisible (“Take that, Mr. H.G. Wells…Eat your own invisible heart out!”)

The story, billed as “A Lost Tale of Bruce Wayne as Batman,” is devoted to Batman realizing that his power to scare Gotham’s criminals seems to be weakening, while the Black Mask begins surreptitiously funding Glass’ work.

By issue’s end, Glass has become invisible—after going through some stages which allowed Jones to draw him in a variety of gory states—but not before committing a murder, which sends Batman looking for a partially transparent “meat-man.”

This series is only five-issues long, as opposed to the 12 issues Jones got to play with writer Steve Niles during Batman: Gotham After Midnight, I guess I’ll just have to savor this while I can.


Doom Patrol #3 (DC) Of all of DC’s 30-some-page, $3.99, second feature-having books I’ve sampled, this one is by far the strangest.

The lead story, by Keith Giffen, Matthew Clark and Livesay, has, for three issues now, been rather lifeless and uninspired, flying quickly by. But the back-up, by Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire, has been a blast, and seems to take as long if not longer to read than the feature, owing perhaps to the sort of verbal humor Giffen and DeMatteis engage in needing so many words, and the fact that Maguire’s detailed funny faces invite the eyes to linger.

Clark’s art, on the other hand, often looks like the artist himself doesn’t even want to look at it for very long.

The result is I could take or leave Doom Patrol, but I love Metal Men, and the back-up is so substantial that I don’t even feel like I’m paying $4 for just ten-pages.

I’m not entirely sure what’s wrong with Clark’s art, either. He seems technically proficient, it looks like she spends some time on each panel, he doesn’t take too many obvious shortcuts, and the panels and page lay-outs show some variety.

There just doesn’t seem to be much joy in the drawings themselves, which is so much more apparent when you compare this Doom Patrol comic to, say, that issue of Batman: The Brave and the Bold featuring the DP that J. Bone drew, or even that issue of The Brave and The Bold that teamed The Flash’s family up with the DP that George Perez drew, which depicted the characters in Perez’s more stately, classic superhero style than Bone’s own fast, fun and light cartooning style.

Both of those books featured delightful art. The characters looked alive, and every panel was fun to look at. That’s not the case here, and I don’t know why exactly. I could just say that Clark is no Perez and no Bone, but Perez and Bone are polar opposites—no one draws like both of them.

I think there’s a problem, but I can’t really diagnose it, nor can I imagine what an editor could do. Tell Clark to love the Doom Patrol more? To have more fun drawing it? To make sure his pages somehow emanate joy?

But when I see something like this panel, in which a guy wearing lederhosen who has been possessed by a sentient black hole is arguing with a robot
and I somehow find it dull, I can’t help thinking that something’s just not clicking the way it should.

I suppose all the weird lighting “special effects” in the art work don’t help much, nor does Giffen’s use of Dr. Caulder’s notes as story-telling devices.

I mean, this is the very first page of this issue:
Who wants to read a comic that looks like that? I got discouraged at my first glance, before reading a single word.

I don’t suppose it matters in the long run, since there may not be a long run. According to Marc-Oliver Frisch’s latest sales analysis, the new series debuted right around where John Byrne’s re-booted version was selling by its third issue, which makes it seem like DP should be doomed by the 18-month point.

It’s too bad, as the concept for the series seems strong this time out. Maybe DC shouldn’t have waited so long to give the team a title after Geoff Johns re-introduced them in Teen Titans in the “One Year Later” arc...?



*Whose art I’ve since come to love, and wish I could see more often. Especially around Gotham City.


**What can I say? I was obviously a stupid kid. My opinion’s changed since then. Looking back, my biggest beef with Aparo in the ‘90s was that he drew terribly ugly ties, and that he wasn’t Norm Breyfogle or Kelley Jones.

Come on, Snicket! You call that a blurb?

Seriously Snicket, what sort of nonsense is this? It's supposedly a blurb extolling the virtues of his one-time collaborator Richard Sala's latest work, Cat Burglar Black. But Lemony Snicket—if that is his real name—instead just rattles off about 30 almost completely random exclamations that could be referring to just about anything.

I say almost completely random, because, as you read those, you'll notice they're in alphabetical order. See, rather than saying something about the book he's supposedly providing a back-cover blurb for, Snicket instead makes it all about him and shows off how clever he is.

For shame, Lemony Snicket, for shame.

Couldn't you have just followed that nice Dan Clowes boy's example and said something nice and simple about the book, like, "A deranged masterwork, jet-propelled from start to finish with spooky thrills?"

Aw, maybe I'm just being so hard on Snicket because I'm jealous. Not because his Series of Unfortunate Events books have no doubt made him a scroogeillionaire, or because Lemony is cooler name than Caleb (although, come to think of it, those are probably also pretty good reasons to be jealous of him), but because he thought of a way to say something clever in praise of Sala's latest book, while I found myself completely stumped when I sat down to try and write a formal review of it.

Part of the problem is that I guess I'm just a little too found of Sala at this point, making it hard to talk about how good his work is. In my mind, "Richard Sala" has long since become synonymous with "great art," so reviewing new works of his fill me with a sort of "Aw, what's the point?"-ism. It's Richard Sala, what else do people need to know, really?

Cat Burglar Black, an original graphic novel from First Second, opens with a typically shapely Sala heroine (I wholeheartedly agree with Snicket's V-word, "Va va va voom!"), dressed in a leotard and mask, running through a dark forest and leaping to safety in the twisty, curlicue-esque branches of a typical Sala tree, as her pursuer, a whild boar snorts and "rawnk"s at her heels.

It then flashes back to introduce us to the imperiled heroine, white-haired K., who has just arrived at a mysterious private school for beautiful teenage girls with interesting names who, she's surprise to learn, are all being trained as super-thieves. K. has plenty of experience with thievery, given that her late father was apparently an accomplished thief, and the headmistress of her orphanage was a villanous Fagin-type that forced her charges to serve in a kiddie crime gang.

As expected, it's quite good, and full of the things one comes to expect from Sala—beautiful girls, creepy, kooky character designs, old houses, a degree of timelessness in the setting that makes it seem as if the story could be taking place any time between the Victorian Era and tomorrow, Sala's signature lettering style, etc.

There were a few surprising aspects of the book (other than Snicket's terrible blurb, of course) though, which I could call attention to.

First, the title on the cover is shiny. Like, see the box in the lower right corner that says "Cat Burglar Black by Richard Sala?" That's all in a special ink with a slicker texture than the rest of cover, a special ink that reflects light and looks super-cool. I know, I know it's a sort of cover enhancement on a comic book and I'm supposed to reflexively hate such things, but damn it this one is cool! And it's on a comic book with a spine and doesn't seem to have had any impact on the cover price, so it's okay in this instance.

Second, it doesn't really wrap up all of the loose ends introduced. K and some of the other characters are involved in a much bigger story than the one between these covers, and the ending seems somewhat abrupt, given all of the unanswered questions yet resolved by the final page, on which our heroine determines to find out exactly what happened to some of the cast-members who disappeared throughout the course of the book. I would imagine it is purposely written this way to set-up future installments (or potential future installments), but because of the lack of a "Volume One" or "Book One" anywhere on the cover or spine, I just assumed this would be a complete story without any plot elements saved up for sequels.

And thirdly and finally, I was a little surprised at the tone of the book. Specifically, how much it read like a young adult novel. I shouldn't have been, of course, as that's how it was marketed, but I guess that when I think of Sala I think of Peculia waking up half-naked in bed, or the zombies ripping that poor gal's top off before eating her in Evil Eye #6 or Judy Drood swearing and beating up douche-bag teenagers.

I was reminded of Cat Burglar Black's tone an audience this past week as I was reading through the most recent crop of First Second releases. This book was released in the direct market on September 1, while on September 29 First Second released Ball Peen Hammer, Refresh, Refresh and Tiny Tyrant Vol. 2: The Lucky Winner.

Tiny Tyrant is an all-ages/kids comic, it's style, humor and format all perfectly suited towards grade-school aged kids. Cat Burglar Black is an all-ages book, probably geared toward readers 10-16 or so. Refresh, Refresh is a mature, adult graphic novel, but one that is probably also well-suited for older teens. Ball Peen Hammer is a dark, dark comic for adults that readers under 18 probably shouldn't read (and they probably wouldn't like it if they did anyway).

That's a pretty wide range of demographics covered by a single comics publisher in a single month's worth of releases, isn't it?

Namor's adventures in clothing

Namor, The Sub-Mariner generally wears one of two outfits—a green, fish-scale Speedo or a black pantsuit with a short-sleeved, open-chested top and bat-wings.

Why is he always showing so much skin? Is he an exhibitionist? Is it really hot underwater? Is that the style in Atlantis? Or could it simply be that Namor has a really hard time finding clothes that fit him and complement his unusual body type?

See, as artist Carl Pfeufer demonstrated in "Terror of the Boiling Sea" from 1943's Marvel Mystery Comics #42, Namor has an incredibly broad back, and a tiny, thin little face, which swells into a gigantic, triangle shaped forehead. No wonder he just put on the first pair of swim trunks he could find and left it at that, rather than trying to find a sharp looking shirt that his deltoids didn't shred every time he tried throwing a Nazi, or wouldn't make his head look more wedge-like than it already did.

It's not like Namor spent the entirety of the Golden Age in a pair of swim trunks though. He'd occasionally wear clothes, for one reason or another, and he occasionally made them look good. For example, Namor in a sailor suit— Not bad, eh? That's from the same Pfeufer story the above panels are from, and it certainly seems to have a slimming effect on Namor's hot air balloon torso.

He wasn't too happy to get into those clothes, though.

You see, in "Terror of the Boiling Seas," Namor witnesses a few American naval ships being destroyed and their sailors badly scalded when the seas suddenly begin to boil. When he investigates, he finds submerged heating discs underwater, capable of generating enough heat to boil the seas. He follows the cords to an underwater Nazi base, and, in order to get close enough to the Head Nazi in Charge, he must don clothing: He might not like wearing a Nazi sailor's suit, but I think it's very becoming, and the hat hides his grotesque forehead. Disguised thusly, he's able to eavesdrop on the dastardly Nazis, and think sarcastic thoughts about them: Namor's not so hot at undercover work, of course, and when an officer asks him what he's doing, he can't help but respond defiantly, which results in the officer calling him "Swinehund! Backtaler!" and pistol-whipping, well, luger-whipping Namor off the dock and into the water with a splat.

Rather than resurfacing, Namor takes off all his clothes, rips open the door to the secret base, drags the heating discs inside, beats up everyone inside the base and then, when they next try to turn on the heating discs, they inadvertently turn their own undersea base into an exploding inferno.

A mystery unraveled, a Nazi plot foiled, hundreds of enemy soldiers killed, and Namor owed it all to clothes!

After the war, Namor continued to flirt with garment wearing, at least according to The Golden Age of Marvel Comics, which collected not only the above story, but also the simply titled story "The Sub-Mariner" from 1953's Young MEn Comics #24, by Namor's creator Bill Everett.

In this story, a half-dozen cargo ships have all sunk near a coral reef off the shore of a tiny island, for no discernible reason. Investigators find that the strips have had their cargo stolen and are all stripped bare.

Namor's old girlfriend Betty Dean reads about it in the newspaper to her roommate, who is engaged in doing her hair while wearing only a slip:
Both Betty and her roommate are attractive, by the way, as the narrator is sure to point out upon their introduction.

Betty decides to give Namor a call about these ship-sinkings, and she spends a few word-packed panels telling her roommate all about Namor and his origins.

Everett produces this panel, of a highly polished Namor, reflecting the bright Antarctic sun off his bare torso: Note the Avenging Suns new swimsuit, an intermediary suit between his Golden Age swim plain blue swim trunks, and the green fish-scale ones he'd wear when fighting the Fantastic Four.

When Namor arrives though, he's wearing an entirely different outfit. Behold—
Betty's roommate obviously approves, in the very next panel she shouts "Whatta hunk of man!" as Betty and Namor make plans to parachute onto the island to investigate the sinkings (Sadly, she gets airsick, and must be left behind).

On the island, Namor discovers that a small band of robots are responsible for the sinking and salvaging operation, and Namor asks Betty, her shirt as unbuttoned as far as possible, to call it in.
The Navy doesn't buy it. "LIsten to this crackpot report! Some gal's gone off her rocker," says the message receiver, "Bah! She's crazy! Request denied!!" says the guy in charge.

Betty's so mad, she just might spill out of her top!
Namor tries to reassure her that they'll think of something.

Let's see...how to deal with this robot invasion without the help of the Navy... Hmm...
Oh yeah! Violence!

Namor destorys a bunch of robots, plays possum so they'll take them to their leader, learns they're actually an invasion force from Venus, buries them under a mountain of coal from one of the cargo holds, digs a small hole for them to escape from so that they can only leave single-file and then slaps each one's head off as it comes out until they agree to surrender.

Their leader does so, but as soon as Namor brings him on to the island, the ship blasts off for outer space, and the captured robot collapses dead, its electronic signal shut off.

The Navy's still not sure what to believe, but they search for evidence of Namor and Betty's story anyway. Meanwhile, our hero and his friend have donned matching outfits!
Aw, isn't that adorable?

Clothes didn't really help Namor on this adventure at all, at least not with the robot-fighting, but they did help him make an impression on the ladies, and show his close-ness to Betty at the end there, so, once again, we see clothes have exerted a positive influence in Namor's life.

Eighteen thoughts about Superman and Batman vs. Vampires and Werewolves

—I’m fascinated by the title of this miniseries. There’s an admirable obviousness and, yes, a certain amount of stupidity to it, but it’s the sort of stupidity that is at least leaning in the direction of awesomeness (See All-Star Batman and Robin and Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern for examples of DC comics that have achieved a perfect balance of stupid and awesome).


—Additionally, I’m extremely curious how the title for this project came about. Its construction mirrors that of 2007 series Superman and Batman Versus Aliens and Predator, a of quadruple franchise crossover that possibly did extremely well for DC in trade paperback (I know the trade collection made it onto a Young Adult Library Services Association list of recommended books for teens, for example).

So I suppose it’s possible DC saw that the S&BvA&P trade did unexpectedly well in certain markets and they wanted to replicate that particular formula, but rather than teaming up with Dark Horse Comics again, they decided to pit their Superman and Batman team against public domain adversaries. Instead of choosing, I don’t know, Dracula and Mr. Darcy or Moby Dick and the Headless Horseman they went with two popular species of monster in the generic.

If that wasn’t the case, then I find this project’s existence as a six-issue miniseries a little harder to guess at. Remember, DC already has a Superman/Batman team-up book, in which the two heroes team-up to fight various adversaries about once a month, give or take a shipping delay.

That book is also almost completely divorced from DCU continuity—the stories probably technically all “count” in that they’re not “imaginary stories” or anything, but they rarely reflect what’s going on in a given month or even year within the Batman and Superman titles—so why put this story out under that odd title as a standalone miniseries, instead of as an arc of Superman/Batman?

I was curious enough to look up what sales data was available, and according to The Beat’s monthly sales analysis, the story would have certainly sold more comics as part of Superman/Batman.

According to The Beat, the first issue of Superman and Batman Vs. Vampires and Werewolves sold 27,825 units, and the declined to just 17,273 by the sixth issue. During the same October to December of 2008 period, Superman/Batman only shipped two issues, missing the November ship date. These sold 48,187 and 45,968 units, respectively. So if Superman/Batman pushed back the start of the four-part “Super/Bat” story arc a couple months to accommodate a six-part, bi-weekly “Vs. Vampires and Werewolves” arc, they would have sold a hell of a lot more issues.

Alternately, I wonder if this might have sold better if it was just branded as a Batman book or a JLA book. Batman is the main character, and there are just about enough Leaguers to hold up the weight of JLA branding (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Nightwing and Jason Blood/The Demon…throw in a few cameos for cover and it’s a JLA story if you want to call it one). In fall of 2008, Batman and Justice League of America were DC’s #2 and #3 best-selling comics.


—One more thing about the title and I’ll shut up about it, I swear. It’s also somewhat curious given the story within. As I mentioned, there are a lot of other superheroes involved, and while Superman gets more panel-time than any of them who aren’t Batman, a new character introduced in the series gets a lot more than he does, and that character and Batman are the only ones present in all six issues. That character, by the way, is a vampire, and there’s a werewolf character that also allies itself with Superman and Batman. So really, this thing is more like Superman and Batman and A Vampire and A Werewolf (and Some Other Superheroes) vs. Vampires and Werewolves and Lovecraftian Monsters (and a Mad Scientist, if You Want to Count Him Too).


—Writer Kevin VanHook and artist Tom Mandrake have the ideal last names to work on horror comics. The names “Van Hook” and “Mandrake” look simply perfect on a spine with the words “vampires” and “werewolves” on it.


—I love Tom Mandrake. Love love love love love him. He’s one of the first comics artists I knew by name and whose work I could tell at a glance. I think his work on The Spectre and Martian Manhunter is underrated, and he’s fantastically well-suited for horror stories.


—Wait, when I said I loved Tom Mandrake above, you know I meant his artwork, right? Because I don’t even know Tom Mandrake, let alone know him well enough to be in love with him.


—I kind of hate the cover of the trade (and the first issue of the series) though. That’s a great werewolf face, and a pretty good vampire face, and there’s nothing wrong with his Superman or Batman, but, I don’t know, this just seems kind of lame for some reason. Maybe I’d like it better if the split vampire/werewolf face were green, and it was supposed to be Composite Dracula or something…


—I was happy to see this trade contains an introduction. I love introductions in trade collections of serialized comics, and I think they should be pretty much mandatory. This may be in large part simple nostalgia on my part, for a time when trade collections were much, much rarer and almost always accompanied by an introduction that argued, at least in part and usually even subconsciously, why the comics in question were even being given a spine, collected between two covers and sold outside of comic shops in the first place.

The fact that trade collections are now so common we don’t see introductions as often is a good sign, demonstrating how much more accepted comics are now then they were in the late eighties and early nineties. But I don’t think it hurts for someone to have to spend a few paragraphs explaining what’s so special about what you’re about to read, you know? Also, it’s just a little value added, so if you are buying a story twice (as serial comics and then as a collection), or are paying a little extra for a hardcover or whatever, you’re getting something extra. (Original graphic novels, on the other hand, probably shouldn’t have introductions, as they need to stand on their own in a way that, say, Superman/Batman #45-#49 might not need to).


—This introduction is by John Landis, director of An American Werewolf in London, making him a good “get” for a comic featuring werewolves.


—Unfortunately, Landis premises part of his intro on Superman’s vulnerability to magic, which Landis suspects might be VanHook’s original invention.

Superman can be weakened and even defeated by Kryptonite, but I discovered in Keven VanHook’s new story that Superman can also be affected by “magic.” Exactly how one defines “magic” can also be broadly defined. Whether or not this “magical effect” on Superman’s powers has been long established or not really does not matter.

Come on, Landis!


—The lettering in this book is huge. Like, gigantic. I think it’s because that instead of bolding and italicizing the stress words in sentences—a peculiarity of DC superhero comics that has long bugged me—letterers Steve Wands and Travis Landham use all-caps on the stress words, so that the narration boxes seem to take up more space than they might actually take up.

And there’s a lot of narration in this thing. Not an ungodly Brad Meltzer amount, and VanHook avoids that irritating Batman and Superman narrating about one another constantly strategy that Jeph Loeb used on Superman/Batman, but there is a narrator in this book, and that means narration boxes getting between my eyes and Tom Mandrake’s lines.


—There are a lot of guest-stars in this, as I mentioned above. Wonder Woman, Nightwing, Green Arrow, Jason Blood/Etrigan, The Demon and Dr. Kirk Langstrom/Man-Bat. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself. I certainly enjoyed seeing Mandrake’s GA for what may have been the first time, and he does a mean Man-Bat too, in a rather cool scene in which Man-Bat fights some werewolves and rips off one’s head (And it takes a pretty good artist to be able to draw a were-bat fighting a werewolf and keep the character’s distinct in close-up).

It’s kind of odd how the characters who aren’t Batman seem to come and go, though. Wonder Woman is in the first issue—appearing well before Superman, who doesn’t enter the story until the last page of the second issue—and she fights a vampire, then completely disappears from the story. Her only other mention is Batman mentioning that she called him to tell him about the vampire.

Nightwing similarly appears, fights a monster, hands it over to Batman and takes off. I didn’t really get a sense of why most of the characters were there and where they went, and found myself distracted by it in a couple of instances. In general, I got the impression that certain Justice Leaguers were always dumping their work on Batman’s lap.

I liked Nightwing’s exit though, as it just made him look like a big wussy. He chases down and KOs a werewolf, brings it back to the Batcave for Batman to examine, talks some shop with his boss for a bit, and then when Batman is ready to take on the source of all the vampire and werewolf activity, Nightwing thinks of something more pressing he needs to do:
Ha ha, whatever Nightwing! I’ve read your comic, you never have things to take care of.

—I like page 13, in which Mandrake frames Batman by the jaws of his mechanical dinosaur:


—The mad scientist seeking to pierce the veil between the world of the living and the dead and accidentally brings Lovecraftian monsters to Earth in the process is named Dr. Herbert Combs. Like Dr. Herbert West, the lead character in Re-Animator, the movie based on the H.P. Lovecraft short story, and Jeffrey Combs, the actor who played him. Get it?

Actually, I probably would have thought that was clever when I first started reading Batman comics….maybe it would have even turned me on to the work of Lovecraft and/or stupid/awesome 1980s horror movies earlier…but now it seems over-obvious. (On the other hand, I suppose complaining about an over-obvious character name in a comic entitled Superman and Batman vs. Vampires and Werewolves is kind of silly of me, huh?)


—In one panel, Batman kicks a demon frog-like fetus creature monster thing so hard in the stomach that a shower of its organs pour out the other side,
and in the very next panel Batman flying kicks its head off.


—Mandrake draws pretty cool Lovecraftian horrors:


—Superman, Batman and Green Arrow all kill the hell out of vampires and werewolves in this. It’s established early on that the monsters are essentially already dead, but it’s still weird to watch Superman and Batman slaughtering their enemies. GA’s killed before, I think, but Superman and Batman?

Even with the caveat that their opponents are already technically dead, it’s somewhat strange to see either of these heroes using lethal force, given the extraordinary lengths each goes to preserve life, in Batman’s case usually going to completely insane lengths (i.e. not only not killing The Joker, but usually going out of his way to save the mass murderer’s life whenever it’s endangered).

It’s made even stranger given that Superman spends the majority of his time in the story trying to save a kid who is infected by the synthetic vampirism disease from going all the way vampire. His reluctance to take a life that might be saved—no matter how slim the chances of success—is a part of the story.

I think pitting these two particular heroes against foes that can only be stopped with lethal force raises some extremely interesting questions about who the characters are and why they behave the way they do. This isnt' a story exploring issues like what constitutes life and where Batman, Superman and their allies draw the line between life and not-life, between killing that’s acceptable and killing that's unacceptable. I’d be a lot more excited to read such a story, though.

I should note that the fact that they can’t get around killing their enemies seems like something of a failure on their part to me. Is it impossible to stop vampires and werewolves without killing them? Is searching for a cure completely hopeless? Maybe, but then isn’t that what Batman and Superman are all about? Finding a way to do the impossible?

And at the end of the day, it’s VanHook manipulating what’s happening on the page. They can find a cure if he can think of one for them to discover; they can take out vampires and werewolves without ending their lives or un-deaths as long as VanHook let’s them, you know?

But perhaps that’s something for a different story.


—I’ve seen Mandrake’s Etrigan before, so it wasn’t a great surprise to see how cool his version of the character is or anything, but wow, I love his Etrigan:
Look at the paws on him!

And that’s 18 thoughts about Superman and Batman vs. Vampires and Werewolves.

(Hopefully) coming in 2010: Batman's Skull #1

If, like me, you spent a portion of your Saturday evening checking the Internet for comics news, you may have already heard that controversial DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio and artist Philip Tan were announced as the new creative team for DC's struggling and creatively troubled The Outsiders ongoing series (a comic that must hold some sort of record for creator turnover, as the creative team changed three times before the first issue landed in shops).

I liked this quote from DiDio that the Robot 6 post excerpted from DC's official announcement:

This is an exciting time for me both personally and professionally. I have been a fan of The Outsiders since their inception and with Pete Tomasi moving on to some very exciting projects in 2010, I have been afforded the opportunity to work with some of my favorite characters. Most importantly, this also gives me the chance to work with the immensely talented Philip Tan, and together I hope we can meet and exceed all expectations for this series.

People have expectations for Dan DiDio, or Philip Tan, or The Outsiders comic? Huh.

The more exciting news is that the writer DiDio will be replacing is Peter J. Tomasi, who DiDio told Newsarama's Vaneta Rogers will be leaving the book to work on something that he "can't talk about that now, but it definitely has to do with the post-Blackest Night universe."

That I find very interesting, being something of an Aquaman fan. Now, DC could launch pretty much anything as an ongoing post-Blackest Night I suppose—never in a million years would I have expected them to launch a Magog ongoing, or either of the Red Circle ongoings, for example—but it's hard to imagine any of the various Lantern characters getting a new title post-Blackest Night. DC's already tempting fate having two GL ongoings and spending about a year on a GL-centric crossover story.

Since smart money is one the book ending with Hal Jordan or someone harnessing the "creative energy" of white light to resurrect at least the popular Black Lanterns, I've long assumed the story would end with Martian Manhunter, Aquaman and others coming back to life (Once they killed off Tempest, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, I think a mass-resurrection at the end became guaranteed).

Aquaman seems like the most likely of the dead Justice Leaguers to get his own book, having carried on off-and-on for so long, and having had a few years off now. So if I were going to bet money on what Tomasi's post-Blackest Night title might be—and man, what a dumb thing to bet money on; do Vegas odds-makers do stuff like that?—I would bet that it's a new Aquaman ongoing.

But again, DC's recent publishing decisions have indicated they could honestly publish just about anything. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Tomasi's new title were The Adventures of Batman's Skull (which, judging by how well comics featuring Batman and/or a guy walking around carrying and occasionally licking Batman's skull are doing versus everything else on the latest sales charts, maybe Batman's Skull would out-sell Aquaman anyway).

Back to Outsiders, Rogers also has an interview with Tan about the book here, which may be worth a read if you like either the Outsiders or Tan (I'm not really a fan of either, although the original Jim Aparo-drawn volume of the title was pretty awesome).

Sounds like Tan will be re-designing Geo-Force, Katana and Black Lightning's costumes, which is cool, since their ever-changing costumes are all almost always pretty awful. (Good luck, Tan! I'm rooting for you!)

If you do give the Tan interview a read, come back and explain to me a) what Tan's talking about with the script style...does he just mean old Marvel style, where Stan Lee or whoever writes a synopsis, Jack Kirby or whoever draws the page however he wants, and then Lee or whoever comes back and writes the dialogue? (If so, I might wanna check out an issue of Outsiders to see if the reason I've hated Tan's previous work so much was that he honestly can't draw full-script style, but kicks-ass with the "plot script style" style) and b) who the hell those characters are supposed to be in that little black and white drawing, also posted to the left here. One's apparently bald and has an S-shield, which makes me think Steel, but if so that's a pretty wretched image of Steel. The other looks like a bulked-up Anthro with a Nazi hair-cut and Geo-Force accessories. So I guess maybe it's Geo-Force...? But then, why would his head shine like the bald and/or metal-encased head of the other figure, if the other figure is Steel...?

Some links to reviews I wrote that are in places other than this:

—Danica Novgorodoff's Refresh, Refresh in Las Vegas Weekly

—The latest book from Drawn and Quarterly’s John Stanley Library, Nancy Vol. 1, at Blog@Newsarama.com

—Adam Rapp and George O'Connor's Ball Peen Hammer, also at Blog@