Comics

ADD Reviews: Black Blizzard by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

2010-04-21T16:12:00Z

Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Black Blizzard is published by Drawn and Quarterly, but looks and feels unlike any of the author’s other works previously released by the publisher. The Push Man, Abandon the Old in Tokyo and Good-Bye were all stately hardcovers, elegant and thoughtfully designed, obviously worthy of the visionary comics they contained.

Tatsumi’s mammoth autobiography A Drifting Life was published in paperback (albeit one the size of a canned ham), but its rambling narrative and epic sweep demanded a different presentation than Tatsumi’s hardcover anthologies of short fiction.

Black Blizzard arrives garish and lurid, feeling cheap and disposable. There’s a yellow ink applied around the edges of the book that makes it feel like the 75 cent paperbacks people read decades ago, the ones that today are piled up by their millions in used bookstores everywhere. That’s my initial impression of the presentation of Black Blizzard, and I am quite certain the publisher, Drawn and Quarterly, and the designer, Adrian Tomine, intended just that. For the comics within were created a half-century ago by a young manga-ka working at unbelievable speed (the book’s 128 pages were crafted in less than three weeks) for an audience of children buying books like this in the rental book market: garish, lurid; cheap, disposable.

I mean none of these adjectives in a perjorative sense. Like Tomine’s brilliant book design, they are rather intended to celebrate the look and feel of Tatsumi’s work in Black Blizzard. He wasn’t new to comics when he created this book in 1956; rather, he says in an interview with Tomine that this was his 18th such work. But Tatsumi was very far, indeed, from the mature and considered cartoonist he would become in his later years, with work such as that found in Drawn and Quarterly’s other Tatsumi releases.

Let me say that I have them all, and I love them all. I have been fairly eager in my efforts to seek out manga that suits my sensibilities; I have picked up issues of Shonen Jump, I have bought titles like Battle Royale, Oishinbo, 20th Century Boys and many others. I have tried very hard to find manga that speaks to me the way the very best North American comics and graphic novels have from time to time. I’ve liked some and loved a few, but no single manga-ka has caught my attention and fired my senses like Yoshihiro Tatsumi. His work crosses cultural and linguistic divides in a way no other Japanese comics creator has for me. The brutal honesty found in his three hardcover anthologies are unmatched in any comics I’ve read by any other creator, from any continent at all that you’d care to name. Tatsumi’s finest work is as good or better than that by the comics creators I admire most in the world, whether it’s Clowes, Crumb, Ware, or either Hernandez Brother (although he hews closest to Gilbert’s sensibilities if you ask me).

I say all this by way of explaining to you that I knew what I was getting into with Black Blizzard; I knew it was not a “mature” work, and I knew it would not be as “good” as, say, Abandon the Old in Tokyo. I’ve already seen reviews that have definitely cast it in a lesser light or found it wanting. And okay, I get it: Black Blizzard won’t change our world.

But that’s not the point. The point is, it changed Tatsumi’s; Black Blizzard is a landmark on the road to his journey from wannabe comics creator to one of the planet’s greatest living cartoonists. He admits in his interview with Tomine that this new release is “like exposing something shameful and private from [his] past.” And with Tatsumi’s monumental body of more mature and thoughtful work, I don’t doubt that that’s true. But as a record of an important stage of his development, as a key pre-historic relic of a very important part of comics history, Black Blizzard is invaluable.

I’m not saying it’s some boring and bad comic that we should all have on our shelves to prove how much we know about comics. In point of fact, Black Blizzard is a fast-paced and thrill-a-minute crime story about two desperate murderers brought together by circumstance, unaware of their shared secret history, and on a collision course that will allow only one of them to truly be free to enjoy the rest of his life, should he live long enough to do so. In their way stand cops in hard and fast pursuit, brutal cold and constant tension that builds and builds as the story is told.

Oh, to have been a child able to read such violent, pulpy and (yes) romantic fiction whenever I chose! No wonder manga built such a huge and loyal following in Japan over the decades it developed and grew into an unstoppable cultural force. I started reading comics in the early 1970s, and while Tatsumi was busy then crafting some of his greatest works, as a young child in North America I had Richie Rich. I had Archie. I had Spider-Man, but by Gerry Conway and Ross Andru, not Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. I had crap in 1972. In 1956, Tatsumi was giving young Japanese manga readers thrills, chills and the possibility of getting one’s hand hacked off by a desperate, wild-eyed killer with five notches already in his belt. Black Blizzard is occasionally awkward and not terribly well-drawn in places, I’ll give you that. But it’s sweaty, breakneck stuff that absolutely conveys its creator’s passion and desire to tell a thrilling story. Tatsumi says he didn’t get much reader reaction to it at the time, but I can tell you if I had read it when I was ten years old, it would have blown me away and made me love comics far more than Richie Rich and Cadbury’s tame and bland adventures ever could have done.

So yeah. Garish and cheap, lurid and even amateurishly drawn; Black Blizzard is all that. And I had one hell of a good time reading it, and I love how it’s presented and how its creator acknowledges all its flaws, and how its publisher and designer rightly celebrate those flaws and create a conduit through which all Tatsumi’s youthful vigor and muscular storytelling can awkwardly elbow its way through the dismissal of history and the wisdom of those who know there are far better comics than this. But be that as it may, there are also far, far worse comics than this, and there are far worse creative sins than the ones Tatsumi committed in creating Black Blizzard.

Comic Con's Baby Brother

2009-09-18T18:36:00Z

Comic Con is widely known as one of the largest comic conventions in the country and has grown to encompass a lot more than just comics. Beginning in 1970 with only 145 attendees the convention grew to 140,000 attendees in 2009. While most non-enthusiasts know about Comic Con very few know about its baby brother, NDK.

NDK, or Nan Desu Kan, began in 1997 with roughly 200 attendees. This convention, whose name translates to "What is it?" has become the largest animation/comic event in the Rocky Mountain region and has been garnering increased press each year. NDK, hosted in Denver, Colorado, features many fun activities including:

Video Rooms: NDK features two-rooms running various anime films, as well as special events mixed in throughout the three day event.

Video Game Room: NDK features 6 individual tracks of non-stop gaming featuring systems such as the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii. Many tournaments take place during NDK, including cult favorites such as Street Fighter 4, Gears of War 2, and Smash Brothers Brawl. And of course there is a Battle of the Rockbands for fans of the game and Dance Dance Revolution tournament for those with terrific coordination (read: this is definitely NOT me).

Cosplay and Dances: No comic convention would be complete without eclectic costumes modeled after anime's biggest (and not so famous) icons. NDK also features dances where people can unwind and dance to some of Japan's best pop music.

While this year's NDK was held this past weekend and is over just remember that there will be another show next year. Given NDK's success there is no doubt that next year's show will top this year's show and will feature more of everything.

"Hey, What Are You Reading?"

2009-02-05T10:15:00Z

It was as recently as two or three years ago that I was astonished by the discipline of friends of mine in comics that started "waiting for the trade," eschewing monthly floppy comics in favor of their sturdier, often more handsome collected versions. I had been making weekly treks to the comics shop (in one form or another) since I was 8 or 9 years old, and the thought of actually waiting months, or even a year or more, to read stories I could read in serialized for right now (well, once a month), seemed beyond the limits of my imagination.

Then bad writers seemed to take over superhero comics, packing once-beloved titles with mediocre (or worse) stories, often tied into "events" that mattered not a bit to me, whether it was House of M, Infinite Crisis, or any one of a dozen other gimmicks that drove me away from current-day superhero comics. These "events" are designed to increase sales, but in my case, the proliferation of truly lousy comics just made me throw my hands up and give up on the North American corporate-owned superhero comic as something I needed to keep up with on a weekly basis.

So it's always a weird moment for me when someone asks -- and they do, from time to time -- "What are you reading these days?" I genuinely have to think about it to remember what I've read recently that I enjoyed. More often than not it's a standalone graphic novel, probably of the artcomix variety, but of course the person asking my opinion is usually a superhero comics fan and is interested in knowing what I think is good in that neck of the woods. "Nothing much at all," would be the answer these days, of course.

But there are regularly-published titles that still jazz me up -- just, very few of them are monthly. The Scott Pilgrim series of manga-sized books is as good as comics get these days, completely deserving of all the hype it gets.

It's easy to take Love and Rockets for granted after all these years, but the new annual format provides an amazing slab of great comics. There are no better living comics creators than Los Bros -- a few equals like Clowes and Ware, but no one is better. Do I love the idea of waiting a year between "issues?" No, of course not. I'd like my L&R fix weekly if possible, and there was a time a decade ago or so when it seemed like that was actually happening -- but I'll wait that year, knowing that in the end I'll be rewarded with comics that are among the best and most entertaining ever created.

I'm looking forward to the Cold Heat collection from Picturebox -- I was just starting to "get" the floppies when they canceled it, due to Diamond's inability to properly market and distribute single issues of non-superhero comics. Frank Santoro (one half of the Cold Heat creative team) is pretty amazing if you like artcomix; Storeyville was superb and Incanto, a mini-comic he did, was beautiful and mysterious.

Then we come to the actual, traditional stapled, floppy, monthly-type comic books. Godland from Image, Buffy from Dark Horse and Criminal and Incognito from Marvel/Icon are about the only monthly floppies I still bother with. I am, indeed, waiting for the trades on Conan (not as fun as it was under Busiek/Nord, but still good adventure comics). I'd talk about the horror/detective procedural Fell if I thought it was ever coming out again. And my final thought on floppy comics is, I wonder if the last issue of Planetary will be published this decade.

Note: This will be my final blog post for iTaggit for the time being, but I hope to find the time to resume posting in the future. I've had a blast sharing my thoughts about comics with you, and I appreciate all the support and interest you've shown. I want to say a big THANK YOU to Casey Gannon, David Altounian and Chris Burson at iTaggit for making this a wonderful experience. And I hope you'll stop by my website Comic Book Galaxy for more of my writing about the artform and industry of comics. Take care, and be well.

Market Correction

2009-02-02T10:56:00Z

Diamond's latest attempt at making sure everything they distribute has Wolverine in it has now claimed two titles popular with critics and artcomix aficionados. Crickets by Sammy Harkham has been the most traditional "comic book" of the two, while Or Else by Kevin Huizenga has experimented in format and content with virtually every issue.

(Digression: I think I have bought every issue of both series with the exception of the most recent Or Else, which Diamond was not capable of delivering to my retailer despite soliciting for it in the pages of Previews, making Previews even more useless than it obviously already is. I love paying five bucks for a catalog that does not deliver the items I order. That makes perfect sense to me, thank you.)

No less a commentator than Sean T. Collins has used the cancellation of Crickets to predict the end of the alternative comic book, and while I love Sean and swap graphic novels with him occasionally, I don't think he's right about this. In fact, I think, quite the opposite. This is the end of Diamond, not the end of alternative comic books.

It's instructive to note that Or Else and Crickets were so different. Harkham's title delivered fairly standard and easy-to-grasp comics (artcomix, yes, but pretty standard in terms of format) while Huizenga reserved his most oddball efforts for Or Else. We now know that Diamond has no use for either, and can presume that the distributor -- which has always tolerated non-superhero comics, nothing more -- now really has no desire to bother with anything other than superheroes, now that The Long Emergency has settled in.

Unlike Sean T., though, I don't think this spells the end of alternative comics. Certainly it is the end of alternative comic books being published and racked in superhero convenience stores as if they are the same thing, ready to compete against the latest, badly-written Brian Bendis mess or overwrought midbrow Brian K. Vaughan effort. It is the end of Diamond boxes packed with Mark Millar, J. Michael Straczynski and Kevin Huizenga as if they all represent the same thing. Nope, alternative comics will survive, and perhaps even thrive better without the Granny Goodness-like loving care of Diamond Distributors.

Kevin, it's time you and your compadres refocused and relaunched The USS Catastrophe Shop. I'd link to it, but it's far from what it used to be (the premier place to find minis and alternatives you would never, ever see ship through Diamond) and there is a claim that they are re-doing the site. Good. It's needed now more than ever. Sammy, maybe now you understand why I questioned the wisdom of a $125.00 comic book when the economy was clearly headed places that could not tolerate such a thing. I'm happy for those few who could afford Kramers Ergot #7, but the economy has reached nowhere near bottom yet and I hope you have plenty of other kindling around when the heat gets shut off and you start looking around for things to burn.

There have been alternative comic books almost as long as there have been comics. Tijuana bibles, alternatives and undergrounds have always found a way into the hands of the people that wanted them the most, and I think as long as there are people, there will be some form of alternative comics. Superhero junk may thrive in a bad economy because desperate people need facile fantasy material more than ever, but creating alternative comics just takes a cartoonist, a piece of paper and something to draw with. This crazy notion of elegant, timeless comics like Or Else actually having a place in the Direct Market of disposable garbage was the artificial creation of society with too much money paying too little attention to the cliff we were all about to barrel over.

Well, the cliff is in the rear-view mirror, now. Most don't realize it yet, as they hang extended, Wile E. Coyote-like, about to begin the long descent into the true reality of The Long Emergency, but the American Century is over and the economy as we knew it for most of the life of the Direct Market is over. Cartoonists like Kevin Huizenga and Sammy Harkham and Dan Clowes and Chris Ware and many more may find themselves self-publishing what they can, when they can. The end result may be fewer alternative comics, and certainly none delivered en masse by the UPS man once a week, but the ones that do survive will be like sweet water in the desert for those of us that still care, saddened by this momentous market correction (for truly that is all this is), but secure in the knowledge that some people make comics because they have to, and I'd rather have those than the corporate superhero junk that Diamond is killing itself on. I won't miss Diamond at all, and I'll always support alternative comic books. But if those are the kind you make, or love to read, then right now would be a very good time to start figuring out how to get around in the new world we're about to inhabit. Look at how it was done before there ever was a Diamond Distribution, because that's where the answers lie.

Jumbly Junkery #6

2009-01-30T08:45:00Z

The latest mini-comic from L. Nichols comes as a refreshing reminder that whatever the state of the economy, or whatever Diamond Distributors tries to do to limit the market to junk superhero funnybooks, artists compelled to make great comics will continue to make them.

Nichols trades mainly in observational and autobiographical storytelling, a genre that when well-done (as it is when practiced by Nichols) is as addictive as heroin to me. Nichols starts off the issue with a one-page observational strip about a cat who loves boxes, and if it's a minor note on which to enter the issue, it brings a smile of recognition at the bizarre behaviour our pets indulge in and refuse to explain.

Another brilliant-rendered one-pager then gives way to the show-stopper of this issue, "Quantum." Mining somewhat of the same territory as the sci-fi shorts Dash Shaw has been creating in Mome of late, Nichols depicts a time-traveler who has seen a future where science has cracked the very secret of the human soul and used it to facilitate true love in all its myriad forms and allow people of all types to find their true calling in life. "Quantum" is loaded with subtext and resonance for anyone willing to see it, a piece of perfectly-realized fiction laying bare its authors real-life hopes and dreams. It ends with a wondrously realized comment on choosing to create art and what it means.

There's tons more good comics in here, other one-pagers and a longer piece called "Stasis" that is arresting in the empathy it creates for a stranger who may or may not be all alone in the world. Nichols at her best has a way of reaching very deep into herself to show the reader the world we all share, and "Stasis" asks us to just think about that world for a minute.

The drawing throughout Jumbly Junkery is outstanding, thick and thin lines meeting at the place where art meets the real world, gloriously chunky in spots and spare and silent in others. Nichols in one hell of an artist and a gifted young cartoonist, and you should be following her stuff. She creates some of the most rewarding and delightful comics being published today, and the economy and Diamond's half-assed monopoly be damned. You want to see the future of comics? It's Jumbly Junkery and all the other passionate comics waiting to be found out there, created not because they might create a revenue stream, but because their creators have to make comics.

New Bechdel Volume is Essential, Indeed

2009-01-26T07:29:00Z

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For is the manner in which cartoonist Alison Bechdel presents dozens of sexually and racially diverse characters as nothing special at all, just everyday average people. And among this large and fascinating group of individuals, all of whom are breathtakingly individual and startlingly human, Bechdel never seems to play favourites. Mo seems to me to most closely reflect her creator's sensibilities (not to mention appearance), but no one is ever really celebrated in the narrative as being any wiser, or better, or more perfect than any other. It's almost like they were all created equal, or something.

Bechdel is perhaps better known these days for her rightly-celebrated graphic novel Fun Home, which after all garnered "Book of the Year" honors from Time Magazine, without so much as being afflicted with a "Graphic Novel Category" distinction. And make no mistake, Fun Home was just that good.

And The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For might not be even better. Dykes has an advantage bestowed by time: Bechdel has been working on the strip for over twenty years, and she knows her characters, all of them, inside and out.

There are hundreds of strips reproduced in this absolutely essential collection, and while Bechdel picks and chooses (not every strip is reprinted, although most seem to be), each page, representing one strip, has its own purpose, pacing and impact. Cumulatively, the end result is a knock-out blast of amazingly well-told stories and well-constructed characters. Collected all under one cover, it's a vastly rewarding tapestry that reveals itself over time, as in the minor flirtations that surface from time to time, only to blow up into life-altering passions. Just like in real life, see?

I took great delight in how Bechdel organically imbues the strip and its characters with a political consciousness. Whether examining the equal marriage rights some of her characters struggle for, or skewering the hypocritical relationship between NPR and some of its largest corporate underwriters, Bechdel convincingly and smoothly imparts a sense that both she and her characters live not only on the world, but in it.

Their political awareness, and their frustration at the slowness of changes over time, jibes precisely with the world as I have experienced it over the past two decades. Not all the characters are progressives, though. Some want merely to live their lives in peace and relative anonymity, and one, Cynthia, wants to forward a conservative agenda even as she begins to live her life as a young *** adult. Bechdel plays fair with virtually every point of view in the book, and it's all the more readable for that virtue. Some of the characters may hit people over the head with their beliefs, but Bechdel is far more subtle.

The twenty-year arc of the collection also allows for the full breadth of human experience. While some of the women herein remain hardcore in their devotion to their sexual orientation, others find fulfillment in a wide range of partners and experiences. It's almost impossible to imagine a reader -- any reader -- not finding people they know within the pages of The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, and recognizing the all-too-human weaknesses, zealotry and flaws that we all contain within us. Dykes is a vastly entertaining work, but it's also a humanizing and reassuring one. Whatever your orientation, whatever your beliefs, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For presents you with real people and challenges you to find them anything less than human. God help you if you can't find joy, love and compassion within these pages. And God help us all.

Buy The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For from amazon.com.

JLA Deluxe Vol. 1

2009-01-22T06:22:00Z

The Justice League as a concept was worn out and creatively bankrupt at the time Grant Morrison and Howard Porter came along and reinvigorated the series, starting with a new #1 and the simple idea of bringing back the original seven team members, which seemed novel at the time simply because it had been so long since anyone had done so.

"Novel" is what Grant Morrison is about, at his best, and he brings just enough of his imagination to the party to make these stories vibrate with nervous energy. Nostalgia for the simpler time these seven characters represent is not invoked by the creators, but perhaps imbued by readers familiar with their earlier eras. Morrison first throws weird, even somewhat perverse opponents at the League in the first storyline, and re-reading the stories in this new collection I was struck by how cleverly he managed to both hide their true identities and make it obvious in retrospect. Clues abound, but they come so quickly that they're easy to miss. Of course these issues blew readers' minds: Morrison was actually trying to create good and inventive stories, something rarely done with the JLA.

The best story in the book comes in the standalone fifth chapter, reprinting the series' fifth issue. "Tomorrow Woman" tells the tale of a mysterious new heroine who joins the League to battle against an implacable, unstoppable foe. She comes at a time when help is sorely needed, but she has a secret. The secret is kept from the JLA, but not from us, and Morrison has some fun with the true villains of the piece. Their final line is priceless, and as close to nostalgia (the poison in the well of most present-day superhero comics) as Morrison's scripts ever get.

Artist Howard Porter is a fascinating conundrum to me. His work here is awkward, static and oftentimes outright unappealing, when considered apart from Morrison's words. Morrison is a writer whose work, from Animal Man to New X-Men to the current Final Crisis is often compromised by the presence of less-than-ideal artistic choices. On the surface you might think Porter would qualify for that description; the two chapters here drawn by Oscar Jimenez are clearly visually superior. But somehow they lack the urgency and sense of modernity that Porter brings to the other stories in the book. Howard Porter, somehow, was the perfect choice for Morrison's JLA, and a decade on these stories still, in their own paradoxical way, look exciting and fresh despite Porter's deficits as artist qua artist.

The biggest compromises, then, in JLA Deluxe Vol. 1 are not artistic. Rather, they are the same compromises that plague corporate superhero comics year after year.

As the book begins, Superman has long hair and his traditional blue, red and yellow costume. Why does he have long hair? A few chapters later, he is made of electricity and is blue and white. Not just his costume, his entire body. Morrison does some hand-waving with a line like "We live in interesting times," but only longtime readers like myself will even remember the reason for this and other strange differences from the current DC Universe. Why is Green Arrow so young? Why does Green Lantern have a crab on his face? Later on, in chapters in future volumes in this series, Wonder Woman's mom will take over for her for a while. Wonder Woman's mom.

It's not that these inconsistencies, all born out of "big events" happening in other titles at the time these stories originally saw print, hurt Morrison and Porter's narrative. Morrison is a strong enough writer that these tales hold up despite the compromises forced on the creative team. But it's a good example of why series like Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman seem so much more inventive and timeless. Writers and artists should be free to tell the stories they want to tell, in the way they want to tell them. Having to dump The Electric Superman or Wonder Woman's Mom into the middle of your otherwise meticulously-planned narrative really looks kinda stupid ten years later when your stories are collected in a deluxe hardcover.

Despite all that, though, these are JLA comics that deserve the upscale treatment. They are as close as you'll get in printed comics to the creative heights reached by the Justice League animated series, which is the very best use of these characters in any medium (and highly recommended if you've never watched the series). Morrison and Porter's run on JLA (it should take another three or four volumes to reprint the entire series) was a blast, and it actually gets better from here, with storylines bringing back The Injustice League and, oh, the end of the universe, if you haven't heard. It gets much wilder from here, but this first volume lays a strong foundation for what is to come, with unpredictable adventures that make good use of some of the most well-known superheroes in the world.

Buy JLA Deluxe Vol. 1 from amazon.com.

Just the Essentials

2009-01-18T14:05:00Z

"I've tried to pare down my collection to just the essentials," says Seymour, an obsessive record collector clearly failing at his goals, in Terry Zwigoff and Dan Clowes's film adaptation of Clowes's graphic novel Ghost World. One look at the shelves of records, creaking under the weight of thousands of discs, and Enid, and we, know that the struggle to maintain those essentials is a futile one.

Putting aside over a dozen shortboxes of comic books, I've got four bookcases crammed full of close to 900 graphic novels now. When I was 14, I wanted to read just about every comic book published. Staring down 43, I try now to only buy comics and graphic novels that I know I will want to re-read in the future. I do this by focusing on creators I know and trust, such as Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell, Clowes, Chris Ware and the others in my personal pantheon, but of course there are always new creators being discovered, usually after they are well-reviewed by critics I trust, like Jog, Tom Spurgeon, Rob Vollmar and others.

I hate those shortboxes occupying the northwest corner of my bedroom, although I love most of the comics within them. They are not expanding anywhere nearly as quickly as the bookcases full of graphic novels, because in the past year I have whittled my superhero comics pull list down to virtually zero. Here in this fan-fiction age of corporate superhero comics by the likes of Bendis, Meltzer, Johns and the rest, everything is a huge, meaningless event typed with fists of ham and dreams of avarice. Today's best-selling Direct Market creators have pretty much devastated the North American superhero comics landscape, so the money that I would have been spending on superhero comics a decade ago now goes to buying deluxe reprint collections of good DC and Marvel comics, like the new Alan Moore Swamp Thing HCs and Marvel Omnibus editions of great comics like Ditko's Spider-Man.

The shelves are arranged with a method of sorts, although anywhere from five to 15 additions a month of all shapes and dimensions mean compromises often must be made. Most of my Jack Kirby titles are on one shelf, but the Fantastic Four Omnibus is simply too heavy to go on that shelf, so it's on one of the bottom shelves with the other Omnibus editions in my library. Alan Moore is the only creator taking up more than one full shelf; his normal-sized collections and graphic novels fill up one shelf, and larger works like Lost Girls and Absolute Watchmen and Absolute League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Volumes One and Two, of course) take up maybe a third of the bottom shelf of that same bookcase. All Ed Brubaker books are shelved with each other, as are those by Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis, but it's driving me nuts that I have three oversized EC Comics-related hardcovers that I have not yet figured out how to join together in one logical spot.

One of my favorite shelves holds mostly anthologies, from Kramers Ergot and The Best American Comics (2006, 2007 and 2008 waiting patiently for the 2009 edition) to Ivan Brunetti's two brilliant anthologies of comics stories. The shelf under that one holds a number of coffee table art books like Masters of American Comics, The Smithsonian Book of Newspaper Comics, and Seth's sublime Vernacular Drawings. You could no doubt build an actual table using just the hard covers of the coffee table art books on my shelves. I love them, cherish them, am obsessed with them.

As much pleasure as they bring me, I do know from our last move four years ago that having nearly 1,000 graphic novels to haul around is a massive inconvenience. Like Seymour, I really to try to keep it to the essentials. I make it a habit to immediately sell or trade away any purchases that I find were tactical errors toward the goal of only owning graphic novels that fall within my personal canon. But I know the next time we move that either my back will break from lugging these books again, or my wallet will break from paying someone else to do it for me.

Other than the joy I get from re-reading the very best works in my personal graphic novel library, the only other comfort I have from this ever-expanding collection is the fact that both of my kids, and many of my friends, love comics. So at least when I drop dead I'll be leaving behind something for them to cherish and battle over, and gaze in wide wonder at my awesome taste in great comics, and my profound inability to budget wisely. "At least he kept it to just the essentials," someone will no doubt note.

Comics As Art: We Told You So

2009-01-16T06:11:00Z

As I was putting together my 2009 preview of most-anticipated graphic novels, I wondered what was up with the delayed publication of the Fantagraphics history Comics As Art: We Told You So, written by Tom Spurgeon.

The book has been on my most-anticipated list since the moment it was announced; Spurgeon is one of our best writers about comics, and was a longtime employee of Fantagraphics. There are few writers better equipped to create an honest and in-depth assessment of the company's origins and history, and as North America's finest comic book publishing house (with titles like Eightball, Hate, Acme Novelty Library and Love and Rockets to their credit), there is none more deserving of the honor.

I remember the first time I bought the publisher's landmark (and still standard-setting) magazine The Comics Journal; I had never experienced something at once so demanding and so satisfying. Dozens of writers diverse in their tastes but united in their desire to see the comics industry and artform grow up, already. A tacit acknowledgment that some creators do better work than others. No rah-rah cheerleading for the lousy comics that oftentimes top the best-sellers list.

And when Fantagraphics turned to publishing their own comics, it was at first with appealing oddball stuff like Dalgoda, about a dog-like alien astronaut and his adventures, and soon they found their niche by introducing or showcasing brilliant cartoonists like Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Peter Bagge and Los Bros Hernandez. It's hard to remember, decades later and with easily half-a-dozen excellent artcomix publishers in business, but at one point Fantagraphics was the alternative to mediocre superhero comics. Today they publish everything from modest pamphlet wonders like Tales Designed to Thrizzle to super-deluxe hardcover reprints of masterworks like the original Popeye and Complete Peanuts, the latter a 25-volume hardcover project that as of this writing is nearly half-complete, astonishingly enough. Those gorgeous, Seth-designed volumes of some of the most brilliant newspaper comics ever hold a place of honor on my bookshelves, and I am forever in debt to Gary Groth, Kim Thompson, Eric Reynolds and everyone at Fantagraphics for making sure landmark comics like those of Charles Schulz get the top-of-the-line presentation and format they truly deserve.

I think I've made it clear how very much I value Fantagraphics and what it has done, and continues to do, for the artform I love so much. Perhaps you can see and even share my eagerness to read Comics as Art, the history of Fantagraphics, and share my frustration at the fact that it didn't come out as originally scheduled.

So I went to the source to get the scoop: Fantagraphics Publicist Eric Reynolds brought me up to date as to where the book stands in their publishing docket.

Comics As Art is just stuck in the scheduling limbo at this point due to the amount of work involved with it. It's all written and about two-thirds designed, but when it went off the schedule rails we lost our window of opportunity in the art director's schedule and simply haven't been able to find it again. This was probably complicated by the fact that the editor (me) and the designer (Jacob Covey) both had children last summer and have had less time than ever to work on it. We basically just need to find a month or two in Jacob's schedule to dive into it again, at which point it should come together relatively quickly. But I honestly don't know when it'll come out, if it'll be late this year or next. We're just crazy busy and this is a really labor-intensive book.

I'm thrilled to hear the book is still in the works and hasn't been permanently shelved. Whatever year it comes out, it's sure to be one of the most enjoyable and talked-about comics-related books.

Order Comics As Art: We Told You So from amazon.com.

The Year Ahead: 2009's Most Anticipated Graphic Novels

2009-01-14T05:11:00Z

I read a lot of really good comics last year, and as always the past decade or so, I remain amazed at the diversity of the artform and by all the little surprises that pop up during the year (Solanin, for a recent example) in addition to the expected wonders from known talents.

[Note: As I was preparing this piece, Douglas Wolk over at Savage Critics posted a pretty comprehensive list of comics and graphic novels coming out in 2009, click on over and have a look. Thanks to David Wynne for pointing that list out to me. At the end of this list, I am highlighting just the stuff off that list that I intend to buy.]

I always look forward to any new work at all from Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, R. Crumb, Renee French, James Kochalka, Diana Tamblyn, Jason Marcy, Alan Moore, and Los Bros Hernandez, to name a few. I'm definitely hoping the Fantagraphics history book comes out this year, although "delayed indefinitely" gives me enough despair to leave it off my official list of five most anticipated books, below.

Speaking of lists, I asked some notable writers and other comics-involved folks to share their lists of whatever five comics or graphic novels they were most looking forward to in 2009. Not everybody came up with five, but I appreciate everyone taking the time to respond with their thoughts. While you're reading along, take note of the titles that stand out in your mind, and make sure you let your retailer know you want a copy of anything that catches your eye here. Recent reports suggest Diamond may be making it harder to find some stuff within the Direct Market, so it's in your best interest more than ever in 2009 to stay in top of what's good in comics, and to find whatever good sources you can to keep you supplied with the very tantalizing array of titles slated for release this year. All I can say is, if you find a good comic book store that genuinely works hard to service your needs, support the hell out of them in whatever way you can to help them make it through the current economic environment.

Here's my list of five comics and graphic novels I am most looking forward to this year:

1. A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi [Drawn and Quarterly] -- Tatsumi's series of deluxe hardcovers (reprinting his highly personal and political fiction) have been some of the best comics of the past few years. A Drifting Life is his epic stab at autobiography, and is pretty much the graphic novel at or near the top of most artcomix readers' want lists in 2009.

2. The Art of Harvey Kurtzman [Abrams ComicArts] -- If it seems like there's a resurgence in appreciation for EC Comics in general and Kurtzman in particular these past couple of years, let me tell you that it almost always seems that way. As long as I've been reading comics (hint: Nixon was still President when I started), readers have studied and loved Kurtzman's unique approach to cartooning and creating comics, and this book promises to be one of the most sought-after comics related art books of the year.

3. You'll Never Know Book One: A Good and Decent Man by C. Tyler [Fantagraphics] -- Tyler's Late Bloomer (also published by Fantagraphics) was a stunning collection of autobio comics, and marked Tyler as someone on my permanent "must read" list. I can't wait to see what she has in store in this new release.

4. George Sprott by Seth [Drawn and Quarterly] -- It seems like a long time since we've had a new Seth volume to immerse ourselves in; this one collects strips that were available online, but I think his style quite obviously lends itself most ideally to print, and this should be one of the great artcomix delights of the year.

5. Alec: The Years Have Pants by Eddie Campbell [Top Shelf Productions] -- Okay, if you aren't salivating already at the very thought of all of Campbell's Alec stories in one mammoth volume, I don't know how I can help you. These are the gold standard of autobiographical artcomix, and come hell or high water, I will find away to afford this in the pricier hardcover format. It'll be well worth the expense, as this is one I'll be re-reading again and again and passing on to my kids someday as an example of just how high the comics artform could aspire with the proper amounts of will, determination and talent.

...and here's what others had to say.

Dick Hyacinth (Blogger)

1. The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: I feel that I need this much, much more than the Ditko or the Kirby books, and I really like Ditko and Kirby.

2. Babel #3: I'm just guessing it's coming out this year; hopefully I'm right. I think the first two issues of this are David B's best work, so I can't overstate my anticipation for this.

3. A Drifting Life: I'm guessing this will be the most-cited book.

4. The first volume of the new complete Pogo series: This really isn't coming out until November?

5. Little Nothings Vol. 2: Should be out shortly. Hopefully Trondheim will keep doing these strips for a long time to come.

Diana Tamblyn (Cartoonist)

Scott Pilgrim Vs. the Universe, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Oni Press (due February).

O'Malley has turned the Scott Pilgrim book releases into an event. I think a lot of people anticipate these like you do a major movie release. I'm sure this will be THE book at the Feb NYC Comicon.

I am always shocked at how retailers really under-order the book though on release week (except for the Beguiling of course). They always seem to be surprised when they sell out of the 3 or 5 copies they ordered in the same day! Then shocked again when their re-order of 3 copies sells out. I really hope that they are more on the ball the fifth time around. I know I'll be picking up my copy on the day of the release.

George Sprott by Seth, published by Drawn & Quarterly (due May).

Okay, I admit I actually didn't read this when it came out in serial form in the New York Times. This is an expanded and re-mastered version though, so will be even better than that version I'm sure.

Plus you can't beat having it in book form. I'm really looking forward to it. I loved, loved, loved Wimbledon Green and this story seems to be in the same vein.

Cecil and Jordan in New York, by Gabrielle Bell, published by Drawn & Quarterly (due March).

I think this was originally solicited for November of last year and I was bummed when it didn't come out. I love Gabrielle Bell and I think she's just getting better and better. This collection of stories features full-colour work by her that looks really lovely. The one short story has been adapted by director Michel Gondry.

Nancy Volume One, by John Stanley, published by Drawn & Quarterly (due June). Continuing in the new tradition of all the reprints coming out (Popeye, Little Orphan Annie, Peanuts), this book reprints some of the classic Nancy strips with an eye-catching cover design by Seth.

My mom's favourite comic when she was little was Little Lulu by Stanley, and I still have a few of those old comics. They are great!

Ten Against the World, by Scott Morse, published by Red Window (due Summer 09?).

Morse just wrote about this project on his blog. It's to be a 160 pg Kirby/Toth inspired monster comic set in the 1950's. He is doing the whole thing with his cintiq in two-colour. Not sure when it will be out. Maybe for SDCC? He also might release instalments online. It will be printed by his own Red Window press (which often gets distributed by AdHouse Books).

Stop right there, you had me at Kirby/Toth. I think I'm welling up here... What a great sounding project!

And finally, I will add a sixth...

Parker, by Darwyn Cooke, published by IDW (due Summer '09?).

This project was announced last year but I'm not sure when the first volume is supposed to come out. Back then they said Summer '09. Here's hoping!

It's to be four full-length graphic novels that adapt the Parker crime books.I am a big enough nerd that I even bought the promo art cards done for SDCC off of eBay.

They're gorgeous!

This is a project made for Cooke and I can't wait to get it.

Augie De Blieck (Columnist)

Absolute Superman for Tomorrow: I know it wasn't terribly good, but I think it's some of Jim Lee's best artwork. As I recall, he was in Italy while he drew this one, and there's a definite European sensibility rubbing off on his art here. Much more restrained layouts, detailed backgrounds and props. Beautiful work.

Little Nothings: The Prisoner Syndrome - Speaking of European comics...I loved the first volume: charming, humorous, easy on the eyes. I want more!

Absolute Planetary Volume 2: OK, this hasn't been announced yet. It might not be a given for 2009, but I hope it makes it. I've held off reading the last 10 issues or so of the series for the Absolute edition. I'm anxious.

Chickenhare Volume 3: It's fun, it's anthropomorphic, it's action-packed, and Dark Horse didn't pick it up. Wait, nevermind. This one can't count.

The Comic Book Podcast Companion by Eric Houston: I admit it -- I was interviewed for the book. I can't help but anticipate it. Published by TwoMorrows in May.

Saga of the Swamp Thing HC, Book One - I've read and enjoyed the first two trade paperback collections of Moore's heralded run on the title. But then never went any further. Put it all in hardcover format, and I'm sold!

Brian Cronin (Blogger)

The five books I'm most anticipating (I am sure there would be more if I knew for sure everything that is coming out next year) are:

Joshua Cotter's Driven by Lemons - It sounds like a risky endeavor, working directly from his sketchbook, but I am looking forward to anything new by Cotter (from AdHouse Books).

Alan Moore's new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books - It's new Alan Moore and there are supposedly going to be TWO of them in 2009! Kevin O'Neill's covers look great (from Top Shelf).

George Sprott: (1894-1975) - I liked this Seth work while it was appearing in the New York Times Magazine, and I think it will read even better as one solid work (especially as Seth is going to go back and do some changes to make the collected work seem worth reading to those who already read the serialized story) (from Drawn & Quarterly).

Mike Dawson's Ace-Face: The Mod with the Metal Arms - I really loved Mike Dawson's Freddy and Me, and while I wasn't exactly blown away at the Ace-Face short story in Project: Superior, I bet in the long form, Dawson will be a lot more impressive (from AdHouse Books).

Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library #20 - It WILL be out in 2009, right? Well, I always look forward to it, so it has to be on the list (distributed by Drawn & Quarterly).

Steven Grant (Writer/Columnist)

The only graphic novel I'm eagerly awaiting this year is mine, Piecemeal, from Vertigo. I haven't been paying attention, so don't know what others are even scheduled to appear.

Though now that I think of it my webcomic Odysseus The Rebel will likely be collected as a graphic novel this year by Big Head Press, so that's two...

Rob Vollmar (Writer)

The gruesome answer is I can’t think of many graphic novels to which I’m specifically looking forward. I could name fifty cartoonists and/or writers whose work I will gladly pick up if they release some. The only new writers I’ve really enjoyed of late are Jonathan Hickman and Greg Pak, though I’d like to see some non-franchise work from Pak. By and large, I’d say that the comic strip reprint market is getting the largest chunk of my dollars so that will hopefully mean new volumes of Peanuts, Nemo, Little Orphan Annie, Krazy Kat, and a holy host of others too large to own up to. I’m excited to see new work from Nate Powell, Kevin Huizenga, Anders Nilsen, Hans Rickheit, Chris Ware, Jeff Brown, Farel Dalrymple or Marc Bell when and however it comes. There is still a wealth of good material coming over from Europe so you can throw Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, Manu Larcenet, Christophe Blain and Guy Delisle on there too. I’m looking forward to Naoki Urasawa’s PLUTO starting up and am still enjoying a few new offbeat manga like Wild Animals from Yen Press, Kingdom of the Winds from Netcomics, Bride of the Water God from Dark Horse and Sand Chronicles from Viz’s SHOJO BEAT line.

Overall, my impression of the North American comics industry is that it is in a rapid retraction both financially and creatively from a peak that hit about 2005 and began actively cooling off in the first quarter of 2007. There are fundamental problems with the economic arrangements by which graphic novels are produced and eventually distributed that I don’t think have been dealt with yet and are hampering the growth of the form.

Eric Reynolds (Publicity God)

YOU’LL NEVER KNOW, BOOK 1:
“A GOOD AND DECENT MAN”
By C. Tyler
$24.99 Hardcover

COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS / Literary • CQ: 18
104 pages, full-color, 12” x 10 ¼”
ISBN 978-1-60699-144-2

THE ACCLAIMED GRAPHIC NOVELIST DELVES DEEPLY INTO HER FATHER’S WWII EXPERIENCES

You’ll Never Know is the first graphic novel from C. Tyler (Late Bloomer) and sure to be one of the most acclaimed books of the year. It tells the story of the 50-something author’s relationship with her World War II veteran father, and how his war experience shaped her childhood and affected her relationships in adulthood. “You’ll Never Know” refers not only to the title of her parents’ courtship song from that era, but also to the many challenges the author encountered in uncovering the difficult and painful truths about her Dad’s service — challenges exacerbated by her own tumultuous family life.

You’ll Never Know is Tyler’s first first full-fledged graphic novel (after two volumes of short stories). Unlike many other graphic memoirs which have opted for simple, stylized drawings and limited color or black and white, You’ll Never Know makes full use of Tyler’s virtuosity as a cartoonist: stunningly rendered in detailed inks and subtle watercolors, it plunges the reader headlong into the diverse locales: her father’s wartime experiences and courtship, her own childhood and adolescence, and contemporary life. The unique landscape format, and the lush variety of design choices and rendering techniques, make perusing You’ll Never Know like reading a family album — but one with a strong, compelling, sharply told story.

You’ll Never Know’s release schedule and format emulate those of Chris Ware’s hugely successful Acme Novelty Library: three beautifully designed, large-format hardcover volumes released annually to complete a trilogy of astonishing breadth, depth, and sensitivity.

C. TYLER, born and raised in Chicago and now a resident of Cincinnati, was one of the first women to emerge from the underground comix movement. Her 2005 collection, Late Bloomer, created after abandoning comics for nearly 20 years, was named to several end-of-year “Best Of” lists.

---------------------------------

LOW MOON
By Jason
$24.99 Hardcover

COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS / Literary • CQ: 28
216 pages, full-color, 5 ½” x 8 ½”
ISBN 978-1-60699-155-8

FIVE GRAPHIC NOVELETTES AND SHORT STORIES, INCLUDING THE NY TIMES SUNDAY MAGAZINE STRIP

The acclaimed graphic novelist Jason returns with his most eagerly awaited book yet, thanks to the inclusion of the title story, the world’s first (and likely last) chess western. Originally serialized in 2008 to a huge (and hugely delighted) audience in the New York Times Sunday Magazine “Funny Pages” section, “Low Moon” made Jason’s 2008 appearance at the MoCCA Arts Festival in Manhattan the talk of the prestigious show, catapulting the Norwegian star to an even new level of mass appeal.

This 216-page hardcover book features five yarns — all brand new with the exception of the aforementioned “Low Moon,” which is collected into book form for the first time.

The new stories lead off with “Emily Says Hello,” a typically deadpan Jason tale of murder, revenge and sexual domination. Then, the wordless “&” tells two tales at once: one about a skinny guy trying to steal enough money to save his ill mother, and the other about a fat guy murderously trying to woo his true love. The reason we follow these two parallel stories becomes obvious only on the very last page, in Jason’s inimitable genre-mashing style.

“Early Film Noir” can best be described as The Postman Always Rings Twice meets Groundhog Day. But starring cavemen. And finally, “You Are Here” features alien kidnappings, space travel, and the pain and confusion of family ties, culminating in an enigmatic finale that rivals Jason’s greatest twists.

Funny, poignant, and wry, Low Moon shows one of the world’s most acclaimed graphic novelists at the absolute peak of his powers.

JASON hails from Oslo, Norway, but currently resides in the south of France. The Harvey and Eisner Award-winner continues to create new books at a breakneck pace.

------------------------------

LIKE A DOG
By Zak Sally

$22.99 Hardcover • CQ: 32
COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS / Literary
164 pages, black-and-white with 24 pp. color, 7” x 9”
ISBN 978-1-60699-165-7

A DELUXE COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES FROM THE ACCLAIMED ARTIST

Zak Sally is the renaissance man best know for his 15-year career as a musician, having anchored the Duluth, Minnesota band Low for over a decade in addition to moonlighting with the Dirty Three, Enemymine, Hot Tears, and Kid Dakota, and making cameos in movies like Shopgirl. He also is an acclaimed cartoonist and operates his own small press, La Mano, in Minneapolis.

Of all of Sally’s creative pursuits, Like a Dog is the one he’s been working a lifetime toward. This hardcover book collects the best of his acclaimed short stories from the past 15 years, created in between band tours and recording sessions for publications like Mome, The Drama, Your Flesh, Dirty Stories, The Recidivist, and more.

Like a Dog spotlights Sally’s uncanny ability to create emotional havoc out of claustrophobic images, situations and dialogue. Stories like “Don’t Move,” “The War Back Home,” and “Two Idiot Brothers” share little in common on the surface but are united by Sally’s forbidding style, creating a sense of dread that permeates almost every page.

Sally also turns his eye towards nonfiction in Like a Dog, including “At the Scaffold,” the story of the imprisonment and trial of Fyodor Dostoyevsky for allegedly subversive behavior, and “The Man Who Killed Wally Wood,” a story about Sally’s brush with a former publisher of the legendary comic artist (who, contrary to the title of this strip, took his own life after a long battle with alcoholism). It also includes “Dread,” a collaboration with NEA Fellowship recipient, Edgar Award finalist, and O. Henry Award winning author Brian Evenson (Altmann’s Tongue).

Like a Dog will also include extensive “liner notes” by the artist, previously unpublished material, and other surprises.

ZAK SALLY lives in Minneapolis, MN, with his wife and son, where he operates his small press, La Mano, publisher of books by Nate Denver, John Porcellino, Jason T. Miles, and others.

----------------

THE RED MONKEY DOUBLE HAPPINESS BOOK
By Joe Daly
$22,99 Hardcover • CQ: 28

COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS / Literary
120 pages, full-color, 7 ¼” x 10”
ISBN 978-1-60699-163-3

A STONER CLASSIC WORTHY OF HAROLD & KUMAR OR CHEECH & CHONG SET IN SOUTH AFRICA

“I live in Cape Town. It’s a beautiful, dirty, dangerous, laid back port town on the tip of Southern Africa where the people drive fast and talk slow,” narrates Dave, aka the Red Monkey, in The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book, Joe Daly’s sensational follow up to his debut short story collection Scrublands (a 2006 Ignatz Award Nominee).

The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book features two of Dave’s adventures: “The Leaking Cello Case” and “John Wesley Harding.” In the introductory story, Dave, who is equipped with monkey feet that enable him to climb most anything, has a Very Bad Day until — accompanied by his didgeridoo-wielding, freeloading friend Paul and assisted by his babysitting charge Chu Woo — he solves a mystery, getting the girl in the process. “John Wesley Harding” is a tale stuffed to the gills with with action, adventure, conspiracy theories and weed, as Dave and Paul, in their quest to find a missing capybara named after the Bob Dylan album, stumble across an environmental menace with criminal implications.

In this full-color graphic novel, Daly expertly cartoons the Cape Town milieu, the wetlands that surround it, and the ethnically diverse oddballs who occupy it. Dave and Paul, a well-meaning pair of stoners in the tradition of Cheech and Chong or Harold and Kumar, not only get into hilarious trouble in their rambles, but also ask the larger questions, such as “what the hell am I doing with my life?” and “what steps can I personally take to help protect the earth and the other species that inhabit it?” (though most people’s answers to these questions don’t include sword fights and hovercrafts). The South African cartoonist brings a refreshingly original —and utterly hilarious— voice to the comics medium, a dry, deadpan wit anchored in everyday reality combined with an outrageously deranged plot, rendered in a style that somehow successfully merges detailed representational drawing with bigfoot cartooning.

The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book, which is sometimes noirish, often funny and always politically incorrect, is well-suited to older teens and adults.

JOE DALY is a cartoonist from South Africa. Born in London, he studied animation for two years at Cape Town’s City Varsity College. His work has been described as “Tintin meets the Freak Brothers in the Cape of Good Dope.”

--------------

GIRAFFES IN MY HAIR: A ROCK ’N’ ROLL LIFE
By Carol Swain and Bruce Paley
$19.99 Hardcover • CQ: 30

COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS / Literary
120 pages, black-and-white, 6 ¼” x 9 ½”
ISBN 978-1-60699-162-6

A UNIQUE TAKE ON THE SUMMER OF LOVE GENERATION, THROUGH THE EYES OF AN ACCLAIMED GRAPHIC NOVELIST AND HER PARTNER, WHO LIVED IT

Bruce Paley turned 18 in 1967 during the Summer of Love, putting him on the front lines of the late-1960s youth movement. Paley’s tumultuous journey took him from being a Jack Kerouac-loving hippie in the 1960s, on the road with his 17-year-old girlfriend, dropping acid at Disneyland, living in a car, and crashing with armed Black Panthers at the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention, to hanging out at Max’s Kansas City, shooting heroin and cocaine with the likes of rock star Johnny Thunders, and frequenting Times Square’s seedy brothels — a journey that mirrored the changing times as the optimism of the ’60s gave way to the nihilism of the punk years. Over a dozen years, Bruce crossed paths with hippies, violent cops, rednecks, rock stars, and Black Panthers...and ended up a heroin addict for much of the 1970s.

These stories are vividly brought to life in Giraffes in My Hair (A Rock ’N’ Roll Life) by the compelling visual storytelling of Bruce’s partner, the cartoonist Carol Swain.

Swain’s trademark visual approach to comics, typified by exquisitely composed panels that vividly capture both anomie and pathos, is perfectly suited to dramatizing Paley’s life during that confusing, tumultuous period of American history — a life lived in the countercultural margins, amidst personal chaos and social dissolution. Swain’s storytelling rhythms are contemplative and breathes inner life into Paley’s turbulent stories, creating a perceptive prism to view the vast possibilities and endless pitfalls as experienced by a kid growing up in America in the late 1960s and early ’70s.

CAROL SWAIN is the acclaimed British cartoonist and author of the graphic novels Invasion of the Mind Sappers and Foodboy.

Johanna Draper Carlson (Blogger)

The Big Skinny by Carol Lay (Villard), and I'm very much looking forward to Fanta's collection of Sam's Strip (originally due before Christmas).

Grant Goggans (Blogger)

1. The ten-buck Skinny Showcases coming in the summer (The Creeper, Bat Lash, Eclipso)

2. Nikolai Dante: Army of Thieves and Whores

3. Top Shelf's Marshal Law Omnibus

4. Stickleback series three

5. Playboy's Complete Gahan Wilson

David Wynne (Cartoonist)

First of all, I'm including collections in this. I've got back into buying mostly periodicals over the last few years, so I'm just geared more that way right now. The books I'm most looking forward to are often things I'm already reading in serialised form.

Also, I'm not going to do this in any particular order -- just the order I thought of them.

1: Bryan Talbot's Grandville. A steampunk detective thriller with anthropomorphic animal characters? I can't think of anyone other than Talbot who would have my money without question for the premise. Since it's him, I can't wait.

2: Dark Entries by Ian Rankin and a, so far as I can tell, as yet un-named artist. 200 pages, black and white, digest hardcover graphic novel from my favourite living crime writer, as part of the launch of the Vertigo Crime line of books. This ticks more of my boxes than I knew I had.

3: Moving Pictures by Kathryn and Stuart Immonen, due in the spring from Top Shelf. I started following this online when they began serialising it a page at a time at webcomicsnation (like all the cool good looking people do); but a couple of months in I stopped reading it, realising that I wanted to wait till it was done and read the whole thing at once. Since then I've read the occasional page, and I can't help but at least look at each new one, just because they're so pretty. The story has me intrigued as well, apparently something to do with art-smuggling in WWII -- although the writing is enigmatic enough in the early pages that I'm not certain about that.

4: Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp's No Hero. I loved Black Summer, which, in the way it married thrills and spectacle with thought provoking political and scientific questions and then wrapped the whole thing inside a surprisingly fresh take on an old genre, was the nearest thing I'd read to classic 2000AD material in a long time. No Hero seems, so far, to be very much in the same vein -- and I look forward to reading the whole thing in one go, cackling like a disturbed child as I turn the pages.

5: Hellboy: The Wild Hunt by Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo. I love Hellboy, and I found the art transition from Mignola to Fegredo be not only painless, but in fact highly refreshing. Needless to say, this latest volume will be a must buy for me, just like every other book in the series so far.

I have an honourable mention, of sorts -- I agonised a great deal over whether or not to include the next Scalped TPB in this list, since I am looking forward to it very much indeed (it promises to be a doozy, too); in the end I decided not to on the grounds that Scalped is really a long-form work, in the mould of books like Preacher and Transmetropolitan, and as such I won't really regard it as a complete graphic novel until the whole thing's done. The individual trades are just larger periodicals, really.

Dan Fish (Cartoonist)

1. New LOEG

2. Classic Captain Britain team-up with Black Knight (From Hulk Weekly) from Panini

3. Whatever the first comic happens to be that I'll be reading curled up with a milky coffee on my first quiet weekend after unpacking into my new house.

Various V-Hive Folks

Casanova coming back, really. [Kieron Gillen]
LoEG. Nothing else. [Nick Locking]
I am very much looking forward to Fantagraphics actually publishing and shipping the two-volume slip case collection of Humbug
The new Scott Pilgrim is the only comic I'm actively looking forward to. [Andrew Wheeler]
The last issue of Planetary (Only 11 years after the preview was released). [Mark Annabel]
Habibi by Craig Thompson...and the new Scott Pilgrim. Reprints, the DC Showcase Presents: Suicide Squad collection, DC Showcase: Jonah Hex, Vol. 2, and since those two are just wishful thinking, I'll end with a real possibility, Paul Pope's Battling Boy. [Benjamin Russell]
Whatever Garth Ennis will be doing. I'd say LoEG but not if it's going to be another Black Dossier. [Robin Shortt]
Ian Rankin's Hellblazer OGN [Ade Brown] I've had on order forever and a day. [Brian Wells]

Joseph Gaultieri

1. The remainder of Final Crisis
2. Seaguy II: Slaves of Mickey Eye
3. LoEG: Century
4. the remainder of Umbrella Academy II
5. Phonogram II

Reprints:
1. The promised collection of Morrison-influencing Bat-comics (though I suspect it's been replaced by the death themed volume out in a few weeks).
2. Showcase: Strange Adventures (those are some awesome covers. Surely the contents won't disappoint!)
3. JLA: the Deluxe Collected Edition volume II (Rock of Ages!)

---

Finally, as promised way up top, and using Douglas Wolk's list of expected 2009 releases, here's my planned purchase list for this year:

JANUARY:

Lewis Trondheim: Little Nothings: The Prisoner Syndrome (NBM)

FEBRUARY:

Gilbert Hernandez: Luba (Fantagraphics)
Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely: All Star Superman vol. 2 (DC)
Bryan Lee O'Malley: Scott Pilgrim Vs. the Universe (Oni)

MARCH:

Larry Gonick: Cartoon History of the Modern World Pt. 2: From the Bastille to Baghdad (Collins)

APRIL:

Gilbert Hernandez: The Troublemakers (Fantagraphics)
Yoshihiro Tatsumi: A Drifting Life (Drawn & Quarterly)
Ariel Schrag: Likewise (Touchstone)
Paul Hornschemeier: Life with Mr. Dangerous (Villard)
Tom Spurgeon/Jacob Covey: Comics As Art: We Told You So (Fantagraphics)
Alan Moore/Kevin O'Neill: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910 (Top Shelf)
C. Tyler: You'll Never Know, Book 1: "A Good and Decent Man" (Fantagraphics)

MAY:

Seth: George Sprott 1894-1975 (Drawn & Quarterly)
Jaime Hernandez: Locas II: Maggie, Hopey, & Ray (Fantagraphics)
Fletcher Hanks/Paul Karasik: You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! (Fantagraphics)
Ben Schwartz, ed.: Best American Comics Criticism (Fantagraphics)

JUNE:

David Mazzucchelli: Asterios Polyp (Pantheon)
Peter Bagge: Everyone Is Stupid Except for Me (Fantagraphics)

JULY:

James Jean: Process Recess 3 (AdHouse)
Eddie Campbell: Alec: The Years Have Pants (Top Shelf)
Alan Moore/Curt Swan: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? Deluxe Edition (DC)
Warren Ellis et al.: Planetary vol. 4 (WildStorm/DC)
Charles Burns: Skin Deep (Fantagraphics)
Michael Kupperman: Tales Designed to Thrizzle (Fantagraphics)
Zak Sally: Like a Dog (Fantagraphics)

AUGUST:

Los Bros Hernandez: Love & Rockets: New Stories #2 (Fantagraphics)

SEPTEMBER:

Alan Moore/Kevin O'Neill: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century #2 (Top Shelf)

OCTOBER:

Gary Panter: Dal Tokyo (Fantagraphics)

DECEMBER:

VA: AX Vol. 1 (Top Shelf)

SOMETIME IN 2009

R. Crumb: R. Crumb's Book of Genesis (Norton)
Farel Dalrymple: The Wrenchies (:01)

Whew! Here's to hoping the economy picks up. This looks like another banner year for comics and graphic novels. I can't wait. Please let me know what you're looking to by posting yours in the comments section, and thanks for reading.

More Manga, More Better

2009-01-11T18:55:00Z

Something that increasingly sticks in my craw is the provincial attitude the Direct Market of superhero convenience stores and a majority of its customers has toward comics from other countries, especially the Japanese comics known as Manga. Many DM stores carry little or no Manga whatsoever, despite the fact that it is one of the most read and most popular forms of comics in the world. Uncounted numbers of teenagers in North America could tell you chapter and verse about the goings on in their favorite Manga series (and the often accompanying Anime), but wouldn't have the first clue who Alan Scott, Hal Jordan, John Stewart or Kyle Rayner are. (If you're asking yourself "How come he left Guy Gardner off the list?" then you may already be a nerd. Congratulations.)

I see a lot of resistence to Manga and other non-North American comics, and I think at heart it's a blend of ignorance, fear and even a touch of racism that keeps a lot of people away. Because the fact of the matter is, Manga not only is comics, but if you think about it, it's good for comics here in North America, too.

Fact: Many comic book stores could substantially improve their bottom line by wisely developing or improving their stock of Manga. If you own a comic book store, chances are that there is a Borders or Barnes and Noble near you that is selling tons of comics (Japanese comics, yes, but so what?) right out from under your nose. It continues to boggle my mind why any canny businessperson would want to leave money on the table like that, but you don't have to visit too many comic book stores to see that that is exactly what is happening. Some shops will carry a meager offering of Manga as a half-hearted acknowledgement that Manga is Comics, Too, but their efforts are undermined by a lack of ongoing passion for the comics medium as a whole (which would necessarily include the very best Manga), usually accompanied by an unhealthy fascination for nostalgia-laden continuity porn of the type offered up by 90 percent of the titles being published by Marvel and DC.

I've noted before that some people who think they are comics fans are actually superhero fans -- the litmus test is, would you rather watch Heroes or read Love and Rockets? There's nothing wrong with preferring superheroes in any medium to well-told stories told in the comics artform, but the problem comes in when those superhero fans distort the market by their insistence that their preferred drug of choice (superhero comics, in color, thanks, and published by large corporate entities that stifle creativity and abhor creator's rights) is the only form of comics. Or at least, the only form that matters. They shout loud enough to drown out even the most passionate of non-superhero comic book readers, and the artform and the market is left all the poorer for it.

So I'll just come right out and say it. Comic book stores that aspire to be good, full-service stores (ones that welcome buyers of all ages, interests and genders) need to carry all sorts of comics, including a healthy assortment of comics from other lands. My comics reading these past few years would have been so much more desolate without creatores like Yoshihiro Tatsumi or Lewis Trondheim. The comic I am most eager to read this year is Tatsumi's autobiographical A Drifting Life, to be published by Drawn and Quarterly. Publishers like Viz, Fanfare/Ponent Mon and NBM (to name a few who specialize in comics from non-North American origins) are responsbile for a bounty of great comics reading, year-in and year-out, and they deserve the support of the marketplace, and individual readers like you.

If all you're reading is corporate-issued superhero comics, it's very likely you're denying yourself the very best entertainment the comics artform has to offer you. Diversity is a simple prescription for a better comic book industry in North America, but it begs the question, will comic book stores swallow their medicine? Probably not, but I'm betting some of the smart ones will at least start to see where their stores -- and their financial bottom line -- could be improved in the year ahead. In the end, it's a win-win for everybody from Manga publishers, to superhero fans whose stores would be on more solid ground with a better chance of surviving and maybe even thriving in the future.

And think, all they have to do is sell comics.

Batman: The Black Glove

2009-01-08T07:00:00Z

The three issues comprising "The Black Glove" storyline by Grant Morrison and JH Williams are three of the best issues of Batman since, at least, Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli cranked out Batman: Year One fifteen or twenty years ago.

Over the course of the three issues, Morrison and Williams play with Batman's decades-long mythology, creating an eerie and nuanced murder mystery that is visually stunning, the equal -- perhaps even superior -- to Williams's work on Promethea with writer Alan Moore. "The Black Glove" as a story is pure superhero comic book magic.

Unfortunately, DC turned what could have been an elegant hardcover collection into a massive failure by padding it out with four thematically dissonant and visually incompetent issues (another storyline entirely) drawn by Tony Daniel. It may sound like sour grapes, but having paid real money for the book (half the cover price, yes, thank you Borders Bucks, but still, some of my cash was involved in the transaction), I'd like to spend the rest of this review telling you how I would have preferred DC to present the good material from this volume:

* Option #1: Ideally, The Black Glove's three sublime issues would have been presented in a standalone hardcover, preferably oversized, anywhere between the dimensions of the new deluxe JLA hardcovers and Kramers Ergot #7 would be fine with me. Thicker paper, a sketchbook section, interviews and essays could have padded it out if the three issues worth of material weren't enough.

* Option #2: Less ideally, the second half-plus of the book (which were wasted on the Daniel-drawn issues) could have been blank. "Draw your own sequel!" That would have been less desirable than Option #1, but still preferable to what we got.

Well, I'm out of options. Most important to note, though, is this: I would have been much happier paying full price for this volume if it just contained the Williams-drawn Black Glove story-arc and nothing else. It would have been a better value for the money. Pairing it up, as DC does here, with the four-issue Daniel-drawn storyline implies quite strongly that not only are these two stories thematically compatible, but roughly equal in quality. They are neither. "The Black Glove" is superb superhero storytelling, among the best things Morrison has ever written, or Williams has ever drawn. The other stuff -- over half the book, I'm very sorry to say -- is perhaps competently written, but drawn by an artist -- Tony Daniel -- who can draw a comic book but has yet to demonstrate the slightest bit of artistry in anything I have ever seen him draw. Note, for example, a panel in which someone has the barrel of what is supposed to be a gun pressed against their head; the "barrel" is a generically-drawn cylinder resembling a Thermos more than the barrel of a gun.

In sum, JH Williams is an artist working in comics, who always gives more than is required by any assignment he receives. Daniel is a subpar superhero illustrator whose work suggests a lack of artistic training or inspiration, and whose inclusion in what could have been a prestigious and elegant volume results, rather, in an infuriating and narratively incoherent overall package. If no other point gets through here, at least know that I seriously thought about whether the book would be improved by using an X-Acto knife to slice out Daniel's pages. The fact that that thought seriously spent time in my mind is what caused me to write this review.

Solanin

2009-01-05T11:08:00Z

"Every band has its story, I suppose." So says Meiko Inoue, the lead character in Inio Asano's Solanin. Substitute "family" or "group of friends" for "band" in that quote, and you begin to see how universal Solanin is, as it tracks the lives of the members of the band, their dreams and hopes, and where those dreams and hopes intersect with everyday reality.

The universal sophistry of youth is its belief in its own invincibility, and at least some of the members of the band possess that in spades. Coupled with the restlessness of people in their early-to-mid 20s, you can see how a group like this would be drawn together by their common love of making music. Whatever it is that brings people together, there's almost always forces aligning to force them apart, and of course those forces are at work in Solanin.

The bittersweet tone of much of the book comes from where those opposing forces -- coming together and falling away from each other -- collide in the smallest moments of their lives. Meiko is living with her boyfriend Taneda, who is really the glue that holds the band together. The domestic scenes of their relationship ring familiar and true, as does the vague need for something else -- for more -- that threatens to dissolve their relationship.

The bulk of this 400-page graphic novel (part of Viz's Signature series) is the story of Meiko and Taneda and how they relate to and inspire the rest of the band members, but my single favourite moment in the entire story is an almost superfluous vignette involving the drummer, Rip. His day job is clerk at a pharmacy, and almost every day he deals with an elderly man who mistakenly thinks a frog statue in front of the store is a mailbox. The one chapter about the two of them brings enormous humanity and nuance to the story. Even if Rip doesn't get another moment to shine like he does in this one brief incident, that's okay. What we get in this little glimpse into his character is more than enough.

"Every band has its story," Meiko supposes, and at its heart Solanin is about Meiko coming to grips with her own story, and re-writing the band's. In its themes of aimlessness and looming maturity, Solanin certainly echoes Bryan O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim, and will appeal to readers who enjoy that series (like me). But Asano's approach is entirely different from O'Malley's, with meticulous images of the streets of Tokyo, and occasionally arresting glimpses into Meiko's secret heart.

Solanin is about dreams, and life, and trying to bring the two together into a whole tapestry. In some places, Meiko succeeds. In some, she fails. The joy is found in-between, in the quiet moments Asano shows us that make up her life. Where she's been, and where she hopes to go in the future.

Buy Solanin from Amazon.com.

Nicolas

2009-01-02T07:51:00Z

On the day that I found out my mother had died, I remember shedding a tear or two in disbelieving sadness that came nowhere near touching the center of my being. Months later, lying in bed at night with my wife, we were debating the pros and cons of moving into a bigger apartment now that our second child was on its way. A fleeting thought appeared, like quicksilver through my mind, that I should call my mom and ask her what she thought of the idea. That thought was quickly followed by a freight train of grief reminding me that she was dead, and most crushingly of all, I would never get to ask her advice about anything again, ever. I still catch myself momentarily thinking her still alive, from time to time. The same with my beloved cat Spot, who was put to sleep around the same time. It's almost impossible to truly teach your brain that they are gone.

My older brother died a few weeks ago. Upon finding it out, I felt next to nothing. A strange sense of my own aging and mortality, but my memories of the man are so few and far between that grief has yet to well up inside me, and I doubt it ever will.

We are all unique in our responses to death, but we are all the same in the fact that we must experience the deaths of those we know. Slowly, in our youth, but as the years pile into decades, there are more and more names. I think of Jerry Shepard, a radio sales executive who I often describe as "the only man I ever knew." Raoul Vezina, a gifted cartoonist who also manned the cash register at Albany, New York's FantaCo, the greatest comic book store in my personal memory. I never really knew him, but I was in awe of him, and I know that the grief caused by his death is still felt by his friends all these decades later. John Hart, a country music DJ who once helped me change a tire in 20-degree below zero weather. So many lost relationships, so many names.

Nicolas is the name of Pascal Girard's younger brother. Nicolas died very, very young, and because it happened so quickly, Pascal never got to say goodbye, and has lived with the fact of his brother's absence ever since. Pascal Girard's grief does not seem typical, as he maps it out over the course of the graphic novel that bears his lost brother's name, but it does seem unique and all his own.

Here are Pascal and Nicolas fooling around with a cassette recorder. A small moment's entertainment, one I remember doing myself with my own brother. But it becomes huge in Pascal's memory, a gift from the past that helps him process the ongoing grief that will always be a part of him.

Girard's style is simple and to the point, in the way of Jeffrey Brown's cartooning, with stylistic nods to names as diverse as Schulz and Kochalka. It's a basic and appealing visual narrative that is also open and airy, where Brown can sometimes seem closed and claustrophobic. Girard uses borderless panels much the same way Chester Brown does, and that's another positive connection. Brown, Kochalka and Schulz are all imminently readable cartoonists, and so is Girard. No trick layouts or dazzling technique get in the way of what he wants to tell you: What he has learned about coming to grips with loss, sometimes with selfishness and arrogance, and sometimes with silence and, finally, wisdom.

Wisdom is the ultimate lesson that death has for those who open themselves up to it. The wisdom to accept that death touches us all, and the wisdom to accept that we all not only can, but must, come to grips with it in our own way. Girard does so with humor and a bracing honesty that makes Nicolas a treasure to experience.

Let's Get Digital, Comics

2008-12-24T08:52:00Z

Bittorrent is mostly known as the successor to Napster and the main method of downloading music MP3s, movies and TV shows, but if you look around long enough you will find sites that provide .cbz and .cbr files of almost every new comic book released, and most of the old ones, as well. While I prefer to own a hard copy of any comic book or graphic novel that I enjoy, I do think that the bittorrent culture provides some valuable lessons to be learned by the publishers whose wares are being posted, and downloaded, for free.

Many readers say they have downloaded a comic out of curiosity only to enjoy it enough to buy the actual comic. I know an alternative comics fan who read an issue of Garth Ennis's Punisher MAX series online, and liked it so much that they quickly bought up not only all the trade paperback collections, but then went on and bought those stories again in the oversized hardcover collections. In the latter case, this is an investment of hundreds of dollars that otherwise would not have been spent, except for the availability of a free (and unauthorized) online download to sample the series. Lesson? The availability of free, downloadable comics in .cbr or .cbz format can and will lead to large outlays of cash, but there's a catch.

Many, many -- the majority -- of corporate superhero comics that are available for download are so ham-handedly amateurish and uninteresting that people choose not to read them, even for free. The vast majority of downloaders responding to a comics piracy poll a year or two back at a popular comics message board responded "yes" to the statement (quoting here) "I cherrypick which titles I want to read so I don't waste time downloading crap I don't want." (Yes, the question was really written that way, and no, I didn't write it). So yes, the availability of free, downloadable comics in .cbr or .cbz format can and will lead to large outlays of cash, but there's a catch.

The comics have to be worth reading.

The majority of available comics that you can download are corporate superhero comics. I'd submit to you that "I cherrypick which titles I want to read" would not have been chosen by so many readers, if Marvel and DC would spend more time, as artcomix publishers like Fantagraphics and Drawn and Quarterly do, investing in and nurturing talented creators, encouraging them to do their best work and then rewarding them for it. Instead, they continue, decade after decade, to pander and pile up the space-wasting junk on the shelves of the superhero-leaning majority of shops in the direct market -- junk that the poll clearly suggests is not worth reading even when easily available for free.

There's an obvious business model for Marvel and DC to follow here, if they want to compete outside the direct market with the greater mainstream audience for comic books. Because surely not all the people buying comics on Amazon, at Borders, or Chapters, or their local independent bookstore, want to buy Fruits Basket or Persepolis or the other titles they choose; some of them would probably like to spend their money on quality adventure fiction, some of that even superhero fiction. So what's pretty clearly called for is more emphasis on quality, and less on overwrought continuity porn like Secret Invasion and Final Crisis and other, editor-driven, creatively bankrupt trademark maintenance. One more time: To be worth buying, especially in the economy we face as we stand here on the edge of the year 2009, the comics have to be worth reading.

I'd love to see DC and Marvel take up that challenge in the new year. It would make a better year for comics than 2008 was, that's for sure. But we as readers have a responsibility to hold up our end of the bargain as well, and only invest our (increasingly harder-earned) money in the sort of comics that delight, excite and inspire us. Be here at iTaggit in the year ahead, and those are exactly the sort of comics I'll be talking to you about.

I wish you and yours a safe and healthy holiday season, and a very happy new year.