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Breakdowns - Monks, Hipsters, Vampires, Ex-Prostitutes With and Without Hearts of Gold, Anthropomorphic Guns, Iron-Clad Despots and Old Men With and Without Make-Up

April 3, 2003

With a title like that, who needs an introduction? Herewith, a whole mess of reviews.

Oh, but before that, I saw something today that just made me chuckle, from Augie De Blieck, Jr.’s PIPELINE column. The rest of the column I didn’t have a problem with, and I’m not starting some feud, but see what you make of this:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am here today to tell you that the SILVER SABLE series from the early 90s is one of the most abominable pieces of uninspired trash I've ever read. It's horrible, formulaic, occasionally exploitive, and an overall waste of time. The series lasted three years, but I couldn't stomach more than two years' worth of the material before I set it down.”

TWO. YEARS.

Two years of abominable, uninspired, horrible, formulaic, redundant, verbose, inane…wait, where was I? Oh, yeah. A terrible comic he could only stomach for two freaking years. Isn’t this one of the big problems with fandom? Isn’t this like hating a cd, but hoping the band’s fourth one will click? That band BUSH, I think in just four years, they’ll really perfect that one song they’ve got. Gosh, xXx wasn’t very good, but I’ll keep my hopes up for the second one, and if I support that, maybe they’ll work even harder on the third one. How will the books get better if there are enough people supporting the bad ones to keep them going for two or three years? Let’s give Augie the benefit of the doubt that he’s not so forgiving of shlock these days.

UPDATED: Er, before the e-mails start flowing in, reader Garth informs me that Augie wasn't buying the book monthly in the 90s, and had only recently picked up the whole run on eBay for research purposes. So while my rant stands, the catalyst for it does not. I'm keeping it up because I'm amused that I got worked up over it, and that my reading comprehension was so poor. Sorry, Augie!

FANTASTIC FOUR #67 by Mark Waid, Mike Wieringo and Karl Kesel. Marvel Comics. $2.25

“I visit America only when I must and leave as quickly as I can. I prefer civilization”

One of the better values of last week was this stunning issue. Sure, it’s nice to have Wieringo back, but the star here is Waid, who delivers a fascinating character study of Victor von Doom up until the last couple pages, where he takes it from very good to excellent and surprising. I didn’t see it coming, and won’t spoil it, but it’s a fantastic prologue to the upcoming “Unthinkable” storyline.

Frankly, when I saw the word “prologue” I was worried. Sure, the current BLACK PANTHER story had one, and it was good, but generally in comics that word is synonymous with “nonessential,” like some meaningless WIZARD special issue that has one little scene not in the regular comics, but summarized sufficiently there nonetheless. Not the case here, and Waid’s ability here to twist the plot in an unforeseen direction, without diminishing what came before in the issue, is remarkable and worth studying. Doom may be an unreliable narrator, but not Waid.

BULLETPROOF MONK: TALES OF THE BPM by Michael Avon Oeming, Tim Sale and Various. Image Comics. $2.95
With the upcoming movie, it only makes sense to put out some new BPM product, but just like the original miniseries, this is a visual treat hampered by weak writing. Though the inside cover would tell you there are three stories here, there are just two, illustrated with customary flair by Oeming and Sale, respectively, and the “Kar Stories” are just one-page intros drawn by cover artist extraordinaire Dave Johnson, not at his best here. In fact, the narration in these intros, written by Cyrus Voris and Ethan Reiff, is so awful it might just throw you out of the book:

“Ya’ see, I’m not the first ‘Bulletproof Monk’ – hopefully won’t be the last, either. Any time or place where there’s darkness, there’s gotta’ be light.”

Of course, I don’t live in the mean streets, so I oughta’ not be so judgmental, maybe learn there’s a time you gotta’ listen instead a’ talkin’.

Anyway, “Tokyo Tale” is also written by Voris and Reiff, and has about three cool parts to it that would have made good stories on their own, but somehow don’t work at all the way they’re jammed together. The 1944 version of BPM infiltrates a Tokyo whorehouse (Sale indulging his Frank Miller influence, as well as maybe some Paul Gulacy), then rescues U.S. soldiers from a prison under Mt. Fuji, followed by some leaden platitudes to one of the geishas. The action stuff is all good, but the pace is so brisk the reader will either have trouble following or just not care.

“Tibetan Tale,” a sort-of origin story, is better for being a little simpler and having an emotional element. Puntsok is a monk who many have foretold would be the next Dalai Lama, yet he is passed over for Yongten. He loves Yongten but battles his own envy and bitterness, and emerges as the Bulletproof Monk upon Yongten’s murder, leading the other monks to overthrow Mongolian invaders. The very idea of fighting monks may show a Western misunderstanding of Buddhism, I don’t know, but if you can accept the premise, this is an entertaining tale. Puntsok’s two weepy scenes, over Yongten and his mentor, are not earned due to lack of space to develop those characters, but writers Mark Paniccia and Michael Yanover at least have the right idea.

Those who find the book worthy of the $3 just for the art of Sale and Oeming won’t find much argument from me—just their establishing shots are worth study—but both artists currently do much better work when given more space.

CATWOMAN #17 by Ed Brubaker and Javier Pulido. DC Comics. $2.25

“The empty room wakes me up when she leaves…Like all the warmth she brought in escpes out the window with her when she goes…and leaves me in the cold, wondering what the hell we’re even doing.”

Ostensibly beginning a new story arc for this brutal but heartfelt series, this issue is really a spotlight on gruff but loveable gumshoe Slam Bradley and his love for Selina. She seems to feel the same but has that feline cruelty going, making her unable to fully commit but also unable to leave the poor guy alone. These are the opening bars of what looks to be a real gut punch of a torch song. Javier Pulido, who made a splash a couple years ago with ROBIN: YEAR ONE, handles the art here, in a style even more iconic and right in keeping with the blueprint laid down by Darwyn Cooke for the book. He draws Slam as he was meant to be drawn. That is, as Robert Mitchum.

DEATH & CANDY #3 by Max Andersson. Fantagraphics Books. $4.95

“Don’t worry. We’ll get you a story.”

“B-but Candy, where do we find one?”

“That’s easy. All it takes is a gun and a girl.”

In many ways this book exemplifies the glory and folly of the art comic. The art is carefully crafted, yet primitive. The production is lavish for the slight contents, which demands a price that will deter many curious consumers. And idiosyncrasy is prized more highly than storytelling meant to reach a wide range of readers in its humanity or dramatic intensity.

And yet, I kinda liked it.

“Death and Candy” is a little like NATURAL BORN KILLERS, with the colorful addition of internal organs that have joined in revolt against their owners. With the help of an appendix, D&C take an obese man hostage…from the inside. It’s such a cheerfully grotesque story that it’s actually rather charming. I was less taken with “The Viewers”, which would take too long to describe, but I admired Andersson’s ability to apparently figure out a story as he goes along. This is pretty much the approach of “Bosnian Flat Dog 2” as well, with the addition of some political commentary, but after the surprise if over, there’s not much left, aside from a handful of decent gags. “Johnny Gun & Gloria”, who grace the cover, finish the issue with a cute but pointless silent story, and a more horrific, but no less pointless, back cover story. Andersson’s worth a look, but doesn’t seem to have quite gotten there yet.

NO MORE SHAVES by David Greenberger and Various. Fantagraphics Books. $24.95

“I’ve always been against lettuce for a long, long time—even before I lost my teeth.”

So says Ken Eglin, one of the half-dozen or so senior citizens David Greenberger spent time with at the Duplex Planet Nursing Home. Greenberger had the marvelous idea to depict some of the more interesting stories and thoughts of these men in comics form, with some top talents like Dan Clowes, Doug Allen, Rick Altergott , Jason Lutes and Dave Cooper. It’s a humor book that somehow—and this would seem to be a delicate task—finds the right note in somehow showing, for laughs, these seniors telling addled stories, but showing them in such a way as to not be cruel. It’s just fascinating to see how these guys process the information in their heads, how things mix and blend in unusual and hilarious ways. If it happens to you, you should only wish you’re as funny as these gentlemen were. Leave ‘em laughing.

KISS: REDISCOVERY by Joe Casey and Mel Rubi. Dark Horse Comics. $9.95

“Prepare for your corruption. Courtesy of Dark Czar…”

You know, I never had any love for KISS as a rock band. They were a big deal when I was a little too young to get into it, and out of fashion when I was in junior high and high school and discovering lots of British music. Glam and theatricality to me was Adam & The Ants or New Romantics like Duran Duran. What I did appreciate as a kid, though, was that KISS looked cool; they had a good gimmick. They made for cool action figures.

So I was reasonably open enough for this new series from Dark Horse, which abandons the SPAWN/EVIL ERNIE horror comic from Todd McFarlane Productions to recast the four as superheroes. In fact, they’re like a superhero team that has been disbanded for years, now needed once again to stop a world-threatening menace. Spaceman is the cosmic one, speaking stiffly and having some sort of reality-bending powers, and Catman is the feral, loose cannon type, like Wolverine. By the end of this tpb, which collects the first three issues of the series, he’s a pawn of this Dark Czar baddie, who looks like Frazetta blended with Simonson—sort of a Death Dealer 2099—with a healthy dollop of suck.

Okay, reviewers aren’t supposed to use “suck”, but why should I put more work in on writing the review than Casey did on the book? Oh, there were undoubtedly countless conferences and notes from Dark Horse, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley on just what would be allowed, but knowing this going in, Casey is unwilling or unable to make the story his own. It’s really just a bad superteam book, without enough style or witty dialogue to make the clichés go down easier. In fact, while they’re more prominent statuses on the team shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, Stanley’s Starchild and Simmons’ Demon are indistinct. Demon is alternately the rich guy financing the operations; the idealist; the smartass, and the evil one. He also rides a motorcycle, but I’m not sure if he has any powers. Starchild does…something…not sure what. The back cover cheats and tells you that Demon is a bounty hunter now and Starchild has been living with women warriors in South America, but you wouldn’t know this by reading the book. The plot is mainly a gathering-the-forces story, the villain dispatched quickly.

It’s all relentlessly ordinary and old hat, a 70s script with early 90s art. The only pluses are a nice intro by Simmons about his lifelong love of comics; Casey’s equally heartfelt Afterword; and the fact that there is some mild interest in seeing Casey stick for once to very rigid, time-honored comic book storytelling.

30 DAYS OF NIGHT by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith. IDW Publishing. $17.99

“This is how it was meant to be: humans, like bottles, waiting for their caps to be popped.”

People talk and write all the time about making comics for accessible to those who’ve never read them, or read them and lost interest years ago. And while there’s no sure path to success, Steve Niles hit the jackpot with not just a very good idea, but an idea anyone can explain to a potential reader in one sentence: vampires overrun an Alaskan town where it will be thirty days until the sun comes up. Everyone knows basic vampire lore; millions of people like vampires; bang, you’re done. Just don’t take this great idea and screw it up.

And neither Niles nor Templesmith screw it up; far from it, actually. Templesmith sets the mood and prepares you for something as bloody and disturbing as comics are capable of, and Niles plays it straight with a simple but tight plot, leaving the purple prose and vampiric self-doubts to the Anne Rices of the world. Our heroes are good and resourceful, the vampires brutal and lacking all romance. I could have used a little more time spent on Eben and his wife Stella, but what’s there is good. This is a lean, clean-burning engine of horrific entertainment.

GROO: DEATH & TAXES by Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier. Dark Horse Comics. $2.95
When I read this last week, I started thinking about how this silly humor comic had so many parallels to events happening today, such as the war in Iraq, the previous campaign in Afghanistan, and the ways in which wars often bring out the worst in people: intolerance, bloodlust, arrogance, and profiteering…

Thankfully, Mark Evanier’s Afteword got me back on track a bit, as he takes pains to point out that there is no intentional correlation to current events in this story. It just feels that way because the basic truths I mention above have been evident in every armed conflict.

Maybe I got off on the wrong foot here, because you might be thinking, “hey, this sounds like a really heavy, unfunny GROO story.” Not true. In fact, after a few years of not reading GROO, I’m happy to report it’s as good as it’s ever been, and is also a rather novel premise. Groo has his feelings hurt, because his reputation as a barbarian always makes people flee from him. So with atypically strong logic, he decides people would like him better if he wasn’t killing them. This leads to a stance of non-violence for Groo, offending his loyal dog Rufferto mightily, and it also sets a couple of things in motion. First, three different warlords who had feared Groo decide to strengthen their standing by striking at him in his new role as a pacifist, while a scheming undertaker faced with a decline in coffin sales from Groo-related deaths manipulates several kings to start wars with each other, so that the undertaker will once again profit from massive death. And yes, there are some running gags about taxes, too.

It’s exceedingly clever, and very funny, and Aragone’s gifts for comedic storytelling and period detail are undiminished. And while, again, it’s a fairly lighthearted story not requiring deep thought or an awareness or political stance, there are some legitimately profound thoughts from the Sage character about war, about vanity, and about being true to one’s self.

UZUMAKI VOL. 3 by Junji Ito. Viz Communications. $16.95
I generally write these reviews with the book in front of me, but it’s not necessary here. Images from it will haunt me for some time. This is the final volume of Ito’s “Saga of the Spiral”, in which a teenaged girl, Kirie, her family, and her boyfriend Shuichi deal with the madness, death and deformity visiting their town, all related to the natural shape of a spiral. The first two volumes were more collections of short stories: Kirie’s father becomes obsessed with the spirals he can make on his potter’s wheel; a boy at school becomes a large snail with a spiral shell, etc. Each story was imaginative and disturbing, but they were loosely connected to each other. One began to wonder why these folks didn’t just leave town at some point.

This volume addresses that question: they can’t. Though retaining the same format of chapters/short stories, this is all one connected narrative, and Ito gains more power from recurring motifs and the room to build greater suspense. Kirie and company have to live in one of a row of dilapidated shacks on the outskirts of the village, where the anguished wailing of the unseen neighbor boy leads to the revelation that he is covered with protruding, spiral-shaped cysts all over his body. Soon, everyone is starting to show symptoms, so it’s time to move, and it turns out most of the villagers left have to live in very cramped quarters, since hurricanes have destroyed most of the houses. Sealed in this high-pressure system, some kids discover that they can make their own twisters just by shouting, so the people are at the mercy of these amoral youths for a while. Things go from bad to worse with more people turning into snails, including Kirie’s little brother, and a vicious adult gang of hurricaners. There is a pervasive sense of distress for the reader as Kirie, her brother, and Shuichi attempt to escape the village—which the people are forming into a massive spiral of row houses at an alarming rate—only to find all roads lead back. It’s really a masterpiece of horror, another raising of the bar for Ito. I can’t wait to see what he comes out with next.

URBAN HIPSTER #1 & 2 by David Lasky and Greg Stump.

When we reviewers discuss the slice-of-life artcomic, the names Daniel (EIGHTBALL) Clowes and Adrian (OPTIC NERVE) Tomine are usually bandied about, and it’s not so much a matter of laziness but a simple fact that there just aren’t that many others doing work at the level of Clowes and Tomine. But I will say it might be a little bit of laziness, as UH #1 was nominated for a Harvey Award back when it came out in 1999. Now that the long-awaited #2 is here, maybe some more, like me, will start the Lasky/Stump bandying.

Where these issues differ from Clowes and Tomine is the perspective is a little grungier, more bohemian, and the pieces are less cynical. “411 UH”, the first story in #1, is a great tone poem, brief character sketches in four pages of nine-panel grids. It’s funny, but it also does two things: 1) it announces that these creators aren’t going to dawdle, with a lot of navel-gazing; and 2) it seeks at the start to create a sort of URBAN HIPSTER brand name, kind of a sign of quality. Rather an ambitious start, and the no-time-wasted theme is in play in the very next story, “Lost in Space”, which is a character piece about a girl in an unsatisfying relationship, her immediate remedy being escapism and regression to childhood. It accomplishes almost as much as a Tomine 22-pager does.

“Out of Africa” introduces thrift store clerks Chloe and Natasha, Chloe having a crush on the used cd store clerk across the street. Natasha needles her about it. This is the longest story in issue #1, and it strikes the right balance in characterizing the girls as neither too sweet nor too sarcastic. They seem real, and likeable, and their flaws are apparent but conveyed compassionately. “Slob” is just hilarious.

As the creators choose not to say who did what (though I have a better idea of Lasky’s bolder line by going here), I’ll treat the stories as joint efforts. The more fluidly lined work is more stylish and more readily appealing, but I really admired the inking and detail in the other work, despite the rather flat, stiff figures. The texture achieved is incredible.

Issue #2 finally arrived a couple weeks ago, and it charts some significant growth. I don’t mean improvement, necessarily, as the first issue is very strong, but in #2 both creators work in previously unseen styles of writing and art. “Garfunk” is a silly funny animal strip, kind of like making Garfield hip, or at least, hipper. It’s drawn in a very flat, basic way, about as demanding as DILBERT. A more detailed variation of this style shows up in “Four Twenty Five,” which is not unlike “Slob” in that it’s a wry look at a loser, also reminiscent of some Ed Brubaker LOWLIFE work. Maisie, the tall-haired girl from the cover of issue #1, is formally introduced, first in a wistful one-pager about loneliness, and then in “Babette’s Feast” which is the return of Chloe and Natasha, this time more about Natasha trying to attract another girl. The art has grown up with the artists, becoming more realistic and losing the zipatone effects.

“Room for Rent” and “Lucinda” are engaging one-page character studies, light but more interesting on all levels than the inconsequential “Garfunk’s Island (he better not be a recurring character) and the inoffensive filler “The Kittens.” Both creators are excellent observational cartoonists, and I would hope they stick primarily to that.

TITS, ASS & REAL ESTATE by Eve Gilbert. Fantagraphics Books. $12.95

“It certainly seems like I like it, right? I must be sick…My heart feels twisted & diseased. As I said, the way to a woman’s heart is through her cunt.”

It’s fitting that Robert Crumb provides an introduction to this book, in that both he and Gilbert are creators who use self-lacerating anecdotes and the raw humor of life to expose themselves again and again, rather than reaching for larger truths about humanity. Those larger truths are almost accidental when they occur, as they do, and are all the more precious for it. This book is one of the most disturbing I’ve read this year (or last year, or…), being a collection of story after story where the common element is often Eve making bad decision upon bad decision, about men, employment, men, child-rearing, men, prostitution, men and drugs. An interview in the back describes her as sweet, and that may be, but the work here reflects someone with terrible emotional problems, and I found the book rough going except when read in short spurts. Part of that is the primitive art and scribbly handwriting, but it’s also the bleak world depicted, where 99% of the men are rapists, abusers and manipulators. Gilbert is fair enough to always take responsibility for her own mistakes, but the book’s bleakness will make the going tough for many people.

Full Bleed: Austentatious

Last week, I asked readers to just tell me what the big deal was about Chuck Austen, since, from what I’ve seen, his work is unimpressive. Well, I only received one entry, but I have to say, it’s a good one, well-written and thoughtful. It may not change my mind, but I give the writer, Dewey Yeatts, credit for making a good case:

“Although Chuck Austen is not a "flashy" writer (no one is going to mistake him for Bendis or Morrison), he is a very solid writer. But what I think makes him special, and worth the money I have spent on his titles, is his humanity.

“Let me explain.

“ I love Mark Millar, but anyone who worked through his "Return to Weapon X" storyline knows that he loves to depict degradation and humiliation. Cynical, nihilistic are words that come to mind when I think of Millar.

“But Austen brings an emotionalism to his stories that I find appealing. I don't think his plots are spell-binding, and some of his dialogue can go "clunk!" but he seems to actually care for human beings, and brings people to task for racism and other uglier aspects of humanity, while not forgetting the good that humans can do. It might sound corny, but I think Austen's work is motivated by love. (Jeez, this sounds so lame as I write it.)

“ The first WAR MACHINE was driven by hatred of racism. He has used his UNCANNY X-MEN stories to deal with phobias of all kind (homophobia, mutantphobia), and he strikes me as the guy who is writing closest to what the X-Men books are supposed to be about. I think the CALL OF DUTY minis ran off the rails to some extent, but whenever he focused on the lives and quirks of the firefighters, the scripts rang true.

“ Austen seems to care about his characters, and their place in the world. We feel their hurt, their frustration, and cheer them when they do something good. I was struck by the character of the nurse Annie in UNCANNY who is dealing with her own mixed-up feelings about Havok and her own mutant son. She seemed like a real character, with real problems, and like someone who was trying.

“ Compare his recent NIGHTCRAWLER prequel one-shot to how Millar wrote the Weapon X storyline. In his story, his characters grapple with the best and worst of human nature, and do not just wallow in the mire of brutality.

“ Austen is no genius, but he gives me real reading pleasure month-in, month-out. I enjoy the emotional texture of his stories and his characters. For some reason, this quality makes him stand out to me. Bendis can do it, Rucka can do it--find true emotional textures in their stories. But Austen, from comments he has made in interviews, really seems to care, and to be angry about the world's shortcomings and evils. Instead of going the easy, cynical route, he tries to show a striving for a better world. I guess I see something noble, and refreshing, in that.

And I can appreciate all this and already granted that Austen seems to put a decent amount of thought into his work. We just differ in our opinions of the execution. But for such a well-written reply, I think the best thing to do is to reward Dewey with a grab-bag of comics I have, a range of unusual stuff. And I’ll close this topic with what I think we can agree is not Austen’s finest hour as scribe, from the most recent issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA: "The weather is my mistress, fool, and your lustful hands upon her are the insensitive gropings of a rapist!" Thanks to Paul O’Brien for pointing it out.

Next week: I’ll be in Maui. Ha ha ha ha! So no new column for at least that week, possibly one more, depending on how much I read and how tired I am on my return. Be well.

Chris Allen

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