HEARTBREAKERS MEET BOILERPLATE
Written by Anina Bennett and Paul Guinan and Drawn by Paul Guinan
Published by IDW

I’ve been anticipating this book for quite some time. At San Diego in 2004, Guinan gave me some promotional material for it and talked it up. This year at San Diego, I had the opportunity to briefly chat with Anina about it, and I got even more enthused. Finally, after some stupid Diamond Distribution tricks, I got the book in hand, and I’m very pleased with the results.

Those who’ve read the column and absorbed my love of CONCRETE can probably guess that I was very much just a “Dark Horse guy” back in the late 80s and early 90s. DARK HORSE PRESENTS was a huge part of my comics purchasing, and I was enthralled by series like BLACK CROSS, HOMICIDE and these HEARTBREAKERS. The HEARTBREAKERS were all clones of a scientist named Therese Sorenson, each with a slight alteration to their DNA to give them slightly different talents and abilities. The series featured hardcore action wrapped in strong humanist philosophical discussion about the nature of humanity. Good stuff.

Eventually the series moved on to Image for a couple of digests, and after a long layoff, Paul and Anina’s baby has surfaced at IDW, with one of their best efforts ever.

BOILERPLATE is an ancient progenitor robot who has the good fortune of being revived by the kick-ass redhead protagonists, and that draws the forces aligned against them out of hiding, because they want the metallic man for their own nefarious purposes. Plus, the clones are finally granted basic human rights, but some of those rights (like the ability to have their own children) are still denied, and the guys chasing the Heartbreakers can only make that worse.

BOILERPLATE is a success on multiple levels, which is what you’d hope for with something this long in the making. The story is solid, and easy enough for someone new to the characters to understand. There’s a ton of supplementary material in the book about the Boilerplate character; text, pics, you name it. It adds a layer of clever care and depth to the work. Plus, Guinan puts the art into experimental overdrive, using a technique called “paintography.” Essentially, the book is photorealistic, but purely painted at the same time. It’s very different from what you’d see from an Alex Ross, and I highly recommend you checking out the creators’ website Big Red Hair to get a better idea of what I’m talking about. Suffice it to say, Bennett is the photo model for the Heartbreakers in the book, and each of them bears her lovely face and amazing hair. It’s damned near disconcerting. Guinan himself appears as one of the male supporting cast members, so it is a true family affair.

Don’t let the long ago origins of this series stop you from checking out a very cool reading experience. The combination of story, incredible art, and jaw-dropping extras make this an excellent package for anyone who picks it up off the shelf.

SIBAM?

While the idea of a HEARTBREAKERS film is very appealing to me personally, I’d call it fairly remote. There’s a solid story here, but the financial cost of creating the different versions of Therese Sorenson, and the challenges it would create for a director, would seem to preclude adapting the work in any sort of meaningful way. So instead, I’ll just cross my fingers that we see the next volume of HEARTBREAKERS much sooner than we saw this one.

REHABILITATING MR. WIGGLES
Written and Drawn by Neil Swaab
Published by NBM

This latest entry in the “Attitude” series focusing on unsung and under-seen cartoonists is by far the best one yet. I’ve never seen Swaab’s work before, but after reading this sick, twisted, lurid, disgusting masterpiece, I’ll be seeking it out actively from now on.

Swaab’s work mainly in the NEW YORK PRESS and some alternative weeklies, and whoever those weeklies are, they have my respect and appreciation for their courage. Mr. Wiggles himself is a drunken, drug-addled, multi-perversity laden pederast… and a talking teddy bear, I might add. He rooms with a sad sack named Neil who is alternately reviled by Mr. Wiggles or sexually assaulted by him in his sleep.

I swear to God… this stuff really is hilarious!

What Swaab does is use the fact that Wiggles is a teddy bear to subvert and take the edge off of the horrors that real life throws at us every day. The things the bear says would be stunning in their level of filth if they came out of a human, but you can’t take anything too seriously from a teddy bear. He real lesson here is that horror can come from the least expected places, and if you don’t laugh sometimes, it may just drag you down into the dark.

INVINCIBLE ULTIMATE COLLECTION VOL.1
Written by Robert Kirkman and Drawn by Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley
Published by Image Comics

I love hardcovers. Love ‘em. They look so lovely on the shelf, and for the most part, they collect some truly quality work that deserves solid archival treatment. This is very much the case with Kirkman’s nifty superhero fantasy.

INVINCIBLE is the little book that could. Sales began to choke and die about six or seven issues in, and things looked pretty bleak. But there were some changes, the book got back on a regular schedule, and now the book finds itself living on solid ground and thriving, with issue 25 having shipped just a couple of weeks ago. Hats off to persistence, you know?

You can find the first thirteen issues in-between these covers, plus a plethora of DVD-style extras. There are concept sketches, character designs, unused cover designs, color tests, behind-the-scenes making-of information bits, and the entire script for issue one. That’s a whopper of a package.

Of course, it helps that the thirteen comics collected here are awfully damned good. We meet young Mark Grayson, watch him discover his powers, develop a better relationship with his father, learn how to become a hero, and then see him face the greatest battle and betrayal that any young person could imagine. It’s gripping stuff, told with just the right amount of wonder, awe, and brutality. THE WALKING DEAD has developed as the perfect showcase for Kirkman to display that he’s a man of maturity, but INVINCIBLE continues to show us a man whose inner child is running amok and having the time of his life.

THE COMICS JOURNAL #269
Written by Various
Published by Fantagraphics

I’m a bit late on this one. I think the next one is due out pretty soon.

Still, I can never rush through the JOURNAL, and this issue was no different. There’s too much good stuff in any random issue of the journal to ever just blithely pass through it, and considering this was the best issue yet of the Dirk Deppey era of the JOURNAL, and you find me reading at a glacial pace.

This time out, the focus is turned upon shoujo manga. Much of the comics press has done a good job of ignoring the growth in sales and influence of manga, and when it comes to manga aimed at girls and women, forget it; it just isn’t happening. Deppey and company work to rectify that with this effort; there are terrific essays, tons of reviews and guidance for those who might be brave enough to give something new a try as a reader, and an amazing interview with Moto Hagio, one of the true vanguards of the shoujo movement in Japan, and a living legend. As far as “gets” go for an interviewer, this is special.

You also get plenty of wonderful manga to read inside these pages as well, as the JOURNAL is always good about presenting the art and stories of an interviewee, and Hagio is no different.

I read shoujo manga, because I feel like a good book is a good book, no matter what demographic it’s aimed at. However, I know I’m in the severe minority, period, when it comes to manga. Mainstream superhero readers are terrified of the different, and of things they don’t understand. Some people claim that the JOURNAL is an elitist publication; all I can say is: for once, I happen to agree. And I happen to be quite the elitist myself.

OFF THE BEATEN PATH A BIT

STRIKE THE BABY AND KILL THE BLONDE
Written by Dave Knox
Published by Three Rivers Press

Dave Knox has been working as a camera operator and director of photography in Hollywood for twenty years. That means he’s a bigger film geek than you and I combined. Fortunately, he’s put that experience and knowledge to perfect use with this book.

BLONDE is a guide to the slang used on a film set. Take the title, for instance: if someone on the set yells “Strike the baby and kill the blonde,” they aren’t requesting that you slap an infant and shoot Paris Hilton between the eyes (though who could argue if someone did); instead, the crew will remove the 1 kilowatt spotlight and switch off the 2 kilowatt quartz light. Simpler to say the book title, eh?

Frankly, I thought I knew a lot about filmmaking, but reading through Knox’ book, I began to realize that my knowledge is pretty feeble. This stuff is amazing, and I felt like a much better geek by the time I made my way through the book. Knox also slips in some choice anecdotes about his film work that help ease you into reading what really is just a dictionary; it just happens to be one of the most entertaining dictionaries you’ll ever read.

CHICKEN LITTLE: THE JUNIOR NOVELIZATION
CHICKEN LITTLE: THE BIG GAME
CHICKEN LITTLE: THE SKY IS FALLING
CHICKEN LITTLE: A LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK
CHICKEN LITTLE: A READ-ALOUD STORYBOOK
Published by Random House Children’s Books

In case you didn’t know, CHICKEN LITTLE hits theatres this fall.

Silliness aside, I knew, because I happen to be a fan of animated films, and because Zach Braff is voicing the lead character, and I happen to be a geek for SCRUBS. I saw the first teaser trailer for the film in front of THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY last spring, and it looked pretty good. We’ll find out for sure in November.

What I present here is a strong sampling of the thorough Disney marketing machine at work. The READ-ALOUD is for kindergarten-level readers. The LITTLE GOLDEN version is perfect for preschoolers. BIG GAME is poised right around first grade level. SKY IS FALLING is actually aimed at teaching kids to read, period. And the JUNIOR NOVELIZATION is perfect for kids at grade three and higher. These are only five books of what the press materials show to be nine in the CHICKEN LITTLE publicity push. Amazing.

It’s difficult to really be able to tell you whether or not all the books are actually effective. I don’t have a child who’s just now learning to read. The JUNIOR version is well done, though the lack of an author listing on the cover bothers me a bit. Irene Trimble does some nimble work in pulling together the story and she deserves a bit more credit for her work. I was most impressed, though, by the LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK; maybe it was a small bit of nostalgia for my childhood, but the wonderful way that those books never change warms my heart.

If you have children, I suspect you will find yourself inundated with ads and promotion for the film as November draws near. From what I see here, your kids will be pestering you to take them to the theatre; I suspect I’ll see you there.

See you in seven.

Review materials may be sent to: Marc Mason, P.O. Box 26732, Tempe, AZ 85285. You can also find me at Happy Nonsense and The Comics Waiting Room

E-MAIL THE AUTHOR | ARCHIVES