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Breakdowns - Why Don’t We Review It In The Road?

May 8, 2003

Free Comic Book Day came and went, the X-MEN sequel came out and opened big, and I didn’t participate in either, so I guess I need to turn in my fanboy card. I’ll probably catch up with the movie soon enough, I guess. Opening night I found myself drinking vodka and lime, eating corn and the cob with butter and Tabasco, and reading comics standing up in the kitchen. It didn’t really turn out that well for me.

As for FCBD, I actually got my stack of freebies last Thursday, so there was no need for me to make it to the shop on Saturday. I’ll have some mostly brief reviews of those below, including ALTERNATIVE COMICS, FRANK MILLER’S ROBOCOP, BATMAN ADVENTURES, PEANUT BUTTER & JEREMY and ROCKET COMICS. And I just read this about an hour ago and don’t really have time to review, but the free issue of ARCHIE COMICS isn’t bad at all. It’s not funny or fun to look at, really, but it’s a decent story that serves two purposes, one good and one debatable. The good one is that having this kid who’s a reader of the comics have a dream in which he changes the status quo so that Betty and Veronica learn to share Archie, Reggie and Mr. Lodge are nicer to Archie, and Jughead doesn’t get Archie in trouble through overeating. In other words, it’s a quick introduction for new readers of the typical stuff they’ll see in the books, and there’s a definite ending. The arguably bad thing is that the story essentially says that the stories will never break out of these narrow parameters, or the comics will become boring (by everyone getting along). Nothing more conducive to creativity than rules! But it’s worked pretty well for this company for more years than I’ve been alive.

And besides the FCBD stuff, there are reviews of Taiyo (No. 5—order the second volume now!) Matsumoto’s BLACK AND WHITE, Joe Sacco’s NOTES FROM A DEFEATIST, SANCTUM; JOHNNY DYNAMITE and horror comics ROUTE 666 and FRAGILE, the last being sort of a preview rather than a review.

BLACK AND WHITE VOL. 1-3 by Taiyo Matsumoto. Viz Communications. $15.95

“Black has already lost all faith in living. His only purpose in life is to protect White. If White dies, Black will have no reason to go on.”

Black and White are two screwed-up little kids who consider Treasure Town their own. They’re scrawny and they’re prepubescent, but somehow they are feared and admired by many citizens, including the Yakuza. Black is both brains and muscle of the team, with White, who may very well have a learning disability or autism, being the soul.

The three volumes contain some familiar tropes of both manga and Japanese gangster cinema, with a lieutenant called The Rat finding himself out of alignment with his boss’ visions for the future of the city. Rat has played his part dutifully but what place is there for him if the city is going to be dominated by New Vegas-style “family” amusements? It’s an interesting and flawed subplot, that good old-fashioned, unvarnished crime is somehow less objectionable than legitimate commerce, but it really seems to tie into an overall theme of chaos vs. order. Life is chaotic and joyful and even bloody and violent, and it’s better to have the lows with the highs than this packaged existence Rat’s boss plans to offer the citizens. Rat’s protégé, Kimura, is presented with an even more familiar conflict, having to preserve order by killing Rat, the one who wishes to preserve chaos. Rat has trained Kimura and given him the tools he needs to destroy him.

The reshaping of Treasure Town deeply affects the lives of Black and White. In the second book, White becomes separated from Black and is taken into protective custody by some kindly detectives. It seems that in the care of symbols of order such as the police, White is becoming healthier on some level or levels, but between his elliptical comments is heard to explain that he has the pieces Black is missing. He has them all.

Meanwhile, without the gentler influence of White, Black has become increasingly more violent and detached. He is Chaos personified, living only for destruction. As the city is gutted and changed for the worse, so too does Black degrade and lose hope. It, of course, comes down to a climactic internal and external battle to save Treasure Town by reuniting Black with White, yin with yang. Matsumoto brings a great deal of ambition to the story, and for the most part realizes his themes effectively and dramatically and always with great style.

JOHNNY DYNAMITE by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty. AiT/PlanetLar. $12.95

Being the writer of the (graphic) novel that becomes an award-winning Tom Hanks/Paul Newman film hasn’t exactly vaulted Collins into any comics top ten lists, but he’s at least got some ROAD TO PERDITION prequels coming from DC (the first came out last month), and AiT publisher Larry Young was smart enough to bring this little 90s gem back into print.

I first read it as a Dark Horse miniseries, at the time they were first really championing creator-owned work. It was in color, of a sort—basically black, white and various shades of red. This worked a lot better when Frank Miller did it in SIN CITY, but was more distracting than anything in the miniseries. Thankfully, it’s all just black-and-white now, though it is a shame to lose the Mitch O’Connell covers.

Johnny Dynamite is not a typical creator-owned comic in that the character was first created in the 50s, drawn and sometimes written by Pete Morisi. Collins and Beatty were both fans of the work, which Collins describes in his Introduction as an “incredibly bold Mickey Spillane steal…50s psychotronic comics at their best.” The two ended up purchasing the character and existing stories outright, and eventually got the opportunity to tell a new tale, “Underworld”. An older, cancer-ridden Dynamite (yes, that’s his legal name, a rash decision carried over from his boxing days) tells of his strangest case, involving the two meanings of “underworld”—the criminal one and the place where the dead go. It starts with Johnny agreeing to put a scare in mob boss Tony Mal, who’s been roughing up his mistress Vicki, an old flame of Johnny’s. Johnny gets Tony to agree to leave Vicki alone, but he returns home to find he was too late, one of Tony’s goons had already killed her. Before Johnny kills Tony, he gets the name of Vicki’s murderer: Freddie Faust. Yes, corny names are a favorite of Collins’, but don’t hold it against him.

Johnny leaves a gut-shot Freddie to die in the desert, but somehow the man survives, though without a soul, having bargained with the devil. And this is all in the first chapter! The rest sees Freddie, now in the identity of up-and-coming mobster Felix Sartana, amassing power, and Johnny even accepting a hitman job with Mafia Don Evello, because Sartana’s evil is so much worse than Evello’s. For one thing, he uses zombies, who will keep coming back unless you shoot them in the head. Perhaps because he owns but did not create the character, Collins has Johnny go farther than most private eyes to get the job done, so expect plenty of gunplay and a fair amount of sex.

FRAGILE by Stephano Raffaele is going to start serializing in METAL HURLANT #7 from Humanoids.

I was lucky enough to read what will apparently form the first graphic novel collection of the story way down the line, and have to tell you that this could be the next 30 DAYS OF NIGHT for horror comics fans. I don’t mean it’s similar in story, art or tone, but the quality level is just as high. If I can talk Hollywood for a minute, it’s a zombie story with a difference. First, it’s from a zombie’s point of view, and second, these are not zombies appearing in the world we know. It’s more of a science fiction premise, where something causes the recently dead to not quite stay that way. They don’t shuffle around and eat flesh, but their vast numbers make them a kind of powerful new political party or alien invasion that changes the complexion of the world. The government essentially hires some of these zombies to hunt the others and keep the numbers down; they’re called Disinfestors. The lead character breaks his neck and dies from a common household accident, and takes off for parts unknown, knowing the living and the Disinfestors will soon be searching for him. He meets an attractive dead woman who used to be a supermodel; other than the missing eye and arm, the bone structure is still fabulous. So there’s a romance of sorts, which is novel, and it will play out during their quest to find a fabled city where zombies don’t decay, and where the Disnfestors fear to tread. Of course, one or both of our sweethearts may fall to pieces before they make it. Raffaele’s disturbing but clear, accessible art is one of the main attractions, and he has fun blending genres, where the Disinfestors hunting our man through the desert is very much like a posse in a Western. Perhaps more significant to point out, however, is that there’s none of that usual Humanoids Eurostink all over this book. I’m being facetious, but what I mean is that Raffaele, or whoever translated, writes good, understandable characters in a hip but controlled voice. I found similarities to Brian K. Vaughan, actually, with some of the jokes. It’s very entertaining, and I wish you could just go buy the book right now, but you’ll just have to read it in the MH installments come June. It’ll be worth the wait.

ROUTE 666 VOL. 1: HIGHWAY TO HORROR by Tony Bedard, Karl Moline and John Dell. CrossGen Entertainment. $15.95

Collecting the first six issues of the ongoing series, the book tells the story of former college gymnast Cassie Starkweather, now an escaped mental patient. She’s not crazy, though; ever since she was little she could see and talk to the dead, and this gift also extends itself to an ability to recognize living monsters in human guise. And there are a lot of them, and they, and some black apparitions, and the police, are all after her.

It’s a fast-paced story with enough narrative drive to help the reader swallow some of the goofiness and excess. Cassie is likeable enough, and Bedard is a good enough writer to pull off a tale such as the one where Cassie unwittingly teams up with a serial-killing hobo, even when most readers will guess his identity before the end. But as something labeled a “retro horror series”, there is little sense of time here. Some aspects are like the 50s, such as Cassie’s teammate chastised for wearing toenail polish before a gymnastics competition, and I guess hoboes may have still shared a code of conduct into the 50s, but Bedard writes the dialogue in a mostly contemporary voice, with “nutjob” and “ease up” and the like. I’m not sure if it’s a lack of awareness on Bedard’s part, or an editorial suggestion to keep things hip even for a period piece, but since this doesn’t seem to apply to RUSE, I’ll guess the former.

Moline does fine work, somewhat reminiscent of Amanda Connor. He’s good at setting the scene with enough background detail, but curiously, isn’t able to make anything scary. There are werewolves in here that look almost cuddly, and worse, the black apparitions are very much like the shadow of Oogie Boogie from NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. This isn’t a book for kids like a lot of CrossGen fare, since there’s plenty of blood and violence, so I think the art team needs to work harder to make things creepier. I do think it’s one of the more enjoyable and entertaining books out of CrossGen, though.

SANCTUM #1: NEBRASKA; #2: DISCOVERY by Xavier Dorison and Christophe Bec. Humanoids Publishing. $15.95

Since LA FEMME NIKITA, Americans have known the French have a fondness for big, loud American action cinema, but until now, I hadn’t seen them attempt it in comics form.

SANCTUM is about a U.S. submarine crew hearing a distress signal far below where they might expect one. They investigate, finding the crew of the other submarine dead, many tied down in their beds. Soon, the Nebraska’s crew themselves begin to die in strange ways, victims of different diseases they wouldn’t be exposed to in their scrubbed-air ship, such as bubonic plague. It seems some of their worst inner fears are coming to pass. The commander, who has left behind a very sick, possibly dying son for this mission, is faced with a difficult decision when an explosion sentences the crew to a slow death. Only a handful of officers can take a small craft and escape, but then there’s the matter of this strange temple they find carved into the undersea rock. It purports to have been created by the Ugarit, and ancient race, but they were supposed to be a peaceful people, and everything about this temple screams evil, murderous conquest. When they finally discover one horrific living resident of the temple, they might not be able to stop him, not to mention escape in time.

These first two of a three-book series felt less like a Humanoids book and more like something one would find in 2000 A.D., big on action and style but lighter on ideas. There’s also no character with whom to identify, and the cast is a little too big. The credits don’t say who did what, so I’ll just write that the artist is effective at capturing the feel of the submarine and its lighting, as well as the cold vastness of the deep, but his photoreferenced faces are extremely distracting. He very obviously casts actors in this movie on paper, so that the lead is Scott Glenn, the scientist type is probably William Hurt, and Beau Bridges, Nicolas Cage and even Ed O’Neill appear in ill-defined roles. The artist sometimes integrates these stars into the shots smoothly and sometimes the faces are awkward or a little off, and each time this throws one a little out of the story. There is a very cinematic feel to the storytelling, but it’s unfortunately not great cinema, just a kinda-cool b-movie one finds on cable. But this one will cost you almost $50 to own, when all is said and done.

NOTES FROM A DEFEATIST by Joe Sacco. Fantagraphics Books. $19.95

Probably in your life you’ve come to have a friend who’s really a dynamic personality—he’s very smart but dominates any conversation, and has such a harsh, rapid-fire delivery that it’s both hard to get to really know him, and hard to embrace him. There’s enough there that you value his friendship, but you can’t hang out with him every day.

Joe Sacco is like that.

At least, his work and the Joe Sacco character and voice in that work is like that. In masterworks PALESTINE and SAFE AREA GORAZDE, he achieves a greater maturity by matching his lacerating commentary with compassion and humanity, and by keeping his self-deprecating know-it-all personality in check, just enough of a presence to mark the work as unique and personal but without being the dominant aspect of it. This massive collection of earlier stories and strips charts this growth, starting with scathingly funny examinations of personalities he loathes, from corporate climber Stanton K. Pragmatron to selfish, pompous artist Alessio Easelsmear. Sacco quickly establishes not just what he hates, but possibly what he fears, which are often intertwined. One doesn’t want to read too much into an obviously humorous introduction to the Apocraphy at the end of the book, where Sacco chides editor Kim Thompson for sequencing the book against Sacco’s instructions and makes it clear he makes more money than Thompson, but such irony is out of place in comparison to Sacco’s early work.

Sacco pays his dues with sputtering stories like “Meat” that rely on cheap punchlines to finish, but nonetheless he establishes that he’s willing to explore anything he’s passionate about in comics form. It’s just that it’s in the later work where he seems to take more time to write the story, considering all the angles to make it as effective as possible. “Edward L. Warren” is a curiosity; a character assassination piece about an old college acquaintance. A picture continues to form of Sacco as an entirely unapologetic guy; he’ll talk about, write about and draw about whatever he wants and too bad if you don’t like it.

The “In the Company of Long Hair” section finds Sacco at his most experimental in terms of laying out a page, panel shapes all swirling and liquid, any space between them taken up by his increasingly free-verse writing. These short stories form a sequential diary of a third-rate rock band on a European tour, and their refreshingly free of any pretense about music. It really is just sex and drugs. “A Disgusting Experience” is a sudden leap in artistry to somewhere close to Sacco’s current style. All the art prior to this has been recognizably his, and quite bold and confident, but the sheer volume of lines on these pages and the surreal, fisheye composition represent an artist turning a corner. The story itself is a nonstop monologue, an unburdening from Sacco during a long dark night of his soul. There is some distancing quality here, though; as Sacco may be at this time, he doesn’t want your love. He wants to impress you with his word jazz, and when you think you’ve found a foothold he’ll kick it away with talk of Stukas and janissaries and the like. There is, however, a mitigating ambiguity in the plot weaving itself through this rant, a waiting on a friend that may have been the catalyst for this crisis or may just be making it worse. Despite its flaws, it’s one of the best things Sacco’s done.

“Voyage to the End of the Library” is a brief return to socially conscious comedy, and then the comedy is largely jettisoned for the next, most political (and current) phase of Sacco’s career, starting with “When Good Bombs Happen to Bad People”. It’s significant that there is no real Introduction to the stories preceding this, but there is one to this, Sacco adding some relevant notes about the British bombing of Germany from 1940-45, the U.S. bombing of Japan, 1944-45, and the U.S. bombing of Libya, April 14, 1986. The thing is, “Good Bombs” is a stifling bore, some well-drawn panels of bombings and military leaders framed by shelves of quotes from the respective eras, hammering the same point home over and over that when you bomb another country, you end up killing some innocent civilians. Got it. Sacco is more successful with “More Women, More Children, More Quickly”, which depicts his mother’s recollections of Malta in 1935-43 as it underwent constant bombings from Fascist Italy. Writing in the plain, often weary voices of the common people is just, frankly, a smarter move for Sacco than his own abrasive delivery. And he proves himself an excellent observer of the small, telling moment, often gaining resonance by stringing smaller, more ambiguous ones together rather than overdramatizing, though the sequence with the young girl Carmen, Sacco’s mother, narrowly evading a strafing and then not telling her mother about it later, is both suspenseful and moving.

The “How I Loved the War” section is a spotty but intriguing intersection of Sacco’s passionate denouncement of, and fascination with, the first Gulf War, while his personal life was in a shambles due to a girlfriend dumping him. His barbed misery is at its apex here, and his obsessive rendering of himself as a naked, scalped misanthrope trying to score chicks amid holocausts in the book’s title story is an almost ovation-worthy grotesquerie. There are moments in his other books where one realizes as much as Sacco’s heart bleeds for suffering innocents, it gushes for himself. I don’t blame him for it, and as an artist, it puts him in the company of greats like Crumb, Henry Miller and Picasso for being perversely willing to display their warty behinds like iridescent plumage. The rest of the section is notable only in that it provides a neon arrow pointing to PALESTINE being his next project.

“On My Day Off” is pretty funny and self-aware, as Sacco tries to take one day to enjoy himself in Germany, putting his political awareness on hold, and he’s beset by demonstrations and other reminders of turmoil. He even ends up in a museum, only to discover it used to be Gestapo Headquarters. The “Apocrypha” are really uninteresting, and Thompson was right to apparently suggest dropping them, but it’s just a handful of pages, anyway. By this time, most readers will have found plenty to startle, amuse, anger and provoke them into thinking about some things a different way, or doing some research, or even doing their own comics. It’s a powerful book, and necessarily uneven, but of almost constant interest and value.

Free Comic Book Day Stuff

ROCKET COMICS: IGNITE by Giffen, Titus, S. Moore, Opena, Peyer & Sommariva. Rocket Comics/Dark Horse Comics.

Cool cover, but as much as I like a good deal of what Dark Horse puts out, this has to be one of the more cynical offerings, including the endless STAR WARS spinoffs. The story here is you take three veteran writers (one more a veteran editor, Moore, who has written some for a small publisher the past couple years) who need work and get them to do some high-concept work-for-hire that has as its apparent primary goal a spinoff to movies or television series. Match them with some stylish young artists and hope something cooks. I don’t blame anyone involved for this, but from the looks of it (and keeping an open mind for Brian Augustyn’s HELL, though his writing has never done all that much for me), nothing is working here.

“Syn” by Giffen and Titus, is the first and best story, a prologue of sorts to the ongoing series (as are the other two), which in this case is about a female android learning to assimilate. Or is she an android? I tire quickly of robot narration, and it certainly puts the brakes on Giffen’s sense of humor, but the ending was intriguing, and Titus’ art is striking and ready for prime time. “Lone”, by Moore and Opena, is an okay apocalyptic warrior story, but if you’ve read that thing Ennis did for Black Bull, or Missionary Man for 2000 AD, you’ve seen it before, at least as good as this. “Go Boy 7” by Peyer and Sommariva tripped me at the name, and with the ugly artwork—like Al Milgrom taking a crack at manga with his other hand—I never recovered. Dark Horse already does import authentic stuff like this such as the far superior CANNON GOD EXAXXION, so I’m not sure why they bothered with this. Overall, hey, it’s free, but your time isn’t.

PEANUT BUTTER & JEREMY #4: “FREE COMIC BOOK DAY” by James Kochalka. Alternative Comics. $.0

Peanut Butter, the sweet, simpleminded cat who thinks he works in an office, and Jeremy, the cruel, manipulative crow, return for their fourth episode, this one a free entrée into their world. This is probably the most kid-friendly of the PB&J comics, though Kochalka still has Jeremy skew a little too mean for some tastes. Other than substituting “silly” for “dummy” and “stupid” when I read it to my son (sorry if this review is taking a scary turn towards something Michael Medved might write), it was fine, and often downright adorable. And I don’t like cats. It’s all about Jeremy being hungry for French fries and getting Peanut Butter to leave the house to find some with him. The cartooning is superb, Kochalka creating a convincing Winter atmosphere out of the least number of lines and dots possible, and the story is another fine example of how pleasurable comics can be when created with such near-beatific sincerity. As a bonus, Jeff Smith, Jason and others contribute some one-page PB&J strips of varying quality, but it’s fun to see them try.

BATMAN ADVENTURES by Ty Templeton and Rick Burchett. DC Comics. $.0

This was available as a FREE COMIC BOOK DAY edition as well. I picked it up primarily for my son, and was happy to find it crumpled the next day, meaning he looked at with interest. He’s too young to read, but likes Batman. The approach here is to do stories in the style of the old animated series, but not tied into the continuity, as far as I can tell. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t create quite a bit of continuity on its own, starting off with the Penguin somehow being elected mayor and putting the Gotham police force to work hunting down Batman, as vigilantes are no longer to be tolerated. Meanwhile, a team of operatives are sent to kill the various supervillains residing in Arkham Asylum. Batman has to stop them and save lunatics like the Joker and Killer Croc at the same time, and of course they’re going to try to use this opportunity to either kill him or escape. It’s only the luck of a coin flip that finds Two-Face saving Batman’s bacon, while apparently the Riddler escapes. Slott and Templeton trade places for a brief Batman origin, and then there’s one brief done-in-one story where Batman exposes new “hero” The Cavalier as just a common thief.

Overall, this is a strong start to the series and I will be coming back. I think many would agree that despite the high quality and sophistication of many of the current Batbooks, there’s always a welcome place for tales recalling more innocent times. Batman is not going to have his back broken. No Robin will die here. Bruce Wayne will not be framed for murdering his girlfriend. Instead, some colorful villains will try elaborate schemes and be foiled handily. If it’s done well, it’s sublime. I liked the first story well enough, but did find some of it jarring, such as Penguin being Mayor, some of it maybe a little too mature or sophisticated for younger readers (“what’s an asylum?”; “why are the police after Batman?”), and of course, some will be dismayed that the story continues into next issue, which is a little cheesy for a freebie.

Note: I didn’t provide a cover scan here as my son has already crumpled the book, but in a good way—he likes it and reads it.

ALTERNATIVE COMICS VOL. 1 by Various. Alternative Comics.

The lovely Steven Weisman cover and creative lineup set my expectations pretty high for this one, but it ends up being insubstantial. One would hope that Free Comic Book Day would be an ideal time to show new readers a taste of the quality work being done by indie cartoonists, personal stories of depth and sophisticated storytelling, but to a man (or woman), the otherwise talented folks here produce some of their slightest or least accessible work. Publisher Jeff Mason, with subtle artwork by Nick Bertozzi, provides one of the only highlights, a one-page vignette of his father, and I would have really liked more of that kind of thing. Matt Madden does a silent story that, for someone so concerned with form, is almost incomprehensible. James Kochalka provides his patented whimsy, but cute stories like this work better in anthologies as confections to comfort one between more challenging work. Here, the story leads the book off, and things don’t get much heavier, which is unfortunate. There’s a willful inconsequence to the work, and even Sam Henderson, who’s usually good for a laugh, can offer nothing better than a sketchbook page full of doodles and scribbles. It’s funny he had the audacity to submit this, but not, you know, funny. There’s a decent story by Tatiana Bell and David Lasky, and the art is strong throughout the book, but it’s not the showcase it should have been.

FRANK MILLER’S ROBOCOP / STARGATE SG-1 FCBD EDITION by Steven Grant, Juan Jose Ryp, John Layman, Rich Bonk and Others. Avatar Press.

Oddly enough, this little teaser book works for me a lot better than that Rocket Comics one, and there’s no actual story here. It’s a similar situation—veteran writers teamed with young hopefuls, and again, it’s work-for-hire, this time on licensed properties, usually meaning more interference. And yet, I’m kind of excited by these projects. The E-ticket is obviously FRANK MILLER’S ROBOCOP, and it’s cool just to see that title, since Miller doesn’t own the character or anything. But this is an extremely faithful, generously paced (nine issues!) adaptation of his original screenplay for ROBOCOP 2, little of which made it into the final version of the film. Grant knows what he’s doing and appears to understand and appreciate Miller’s script enough to not want to “fix” anything, and Ryp, while not a great artist yet, looks to be a solid choice for plenty of carnage. It’ll be fun.

I’m less familiar with SPECIES and STARGATE SG-1, but both of their previews and introductory essays have me interested. In fact, Layman’s is downright hilarious and quite in keeping with the unabashed men’s room spirit of Avatar. Advancing the medium? Doubtful. Fun? Likely.

Next week: I only finished reviewing half of DIRTY STORIES VOL. 2, so I’ll definitely get to that, and possibly VOL. 3 as well, plus the lavish reissue of P. Craig Russell’s adaptation of Mozart’s THE MAGIC FLUTE, the first volume of Tokyopop’s adaptation of the controversial Japanese film BATTLE ROYALE, and more. I also feel like a rant is building up steam…

Chris Allen

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