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Fri Nov 20, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Saga of the Swamp Thing Book Two'
Saga of the Swamp Thing Book Two
By Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, John Totleben
DC Comics, 224 pages, $24.99
DC’s hardcover collections of Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing continues with the release of the second volume next Wednesday. The nicest thing about these releases is that it prompts us to go back and reread the stories to conjure up memories of what it was like the first time we encountered these tales.
By the time these eight stories saw print in 1984 and 1985, the buzz had grown deafening and clearly this was the most talked about series and set of creators at the time. What Alan did was bring fresh thinking to American comic book concepts and played with the readers’ expectations for mainstream storytelling and horror.
Moore’s gift for words crowded the pages with allusions and imagery previously unseen and when we could look at the artwork, it was stunning. Stephen Bissette and John Totleben were ideally suited for the material and they were given free rein by both Moore and their editor, Karen Berger. The critical success encouraged the creators to take more risks and the company wisely backed them, letting Saga of the Swamp Thing be the first series to hit newsstands each month without the Comics Code. Instead, the covers proclaimed the series to be “Sophisticated Suspense”, a gesture to warn potentially offended readers.
Having reimagined Swamp Thing’s origins and exploring the dynamics between the shambling creature and the humans Abigail Arcane and Matt Cable, the stage was set for the return of an old foe. Anton Arcane, Abby’s uncle, was back and the slow realization that he had possessed Matt and therefore committed a form of incest with her was shocking, cold and chilling because we hadn’t conceived of anything so horrible. The trilogy that kicks off the volume is creepy and holds up.
The coda to the tale first saw print in an annual, allowing extra pages and giving Moore a chance to play with the other occult players in the DC Universe: Etrigan, the Spectre, Phantom Stranger and Deadman. All felt fresh and part of some other reality as Swamp Thing traveled to Hell to rescue Abby.
The artists, while incredibly talented, were not speed demons and 22 pages a month was a tough pace for them. The annual, therefore, meant they needed fill-in help. Chapter 2 of the Arcane trilogy was inked by Alfredo Alcala and Chapter 3 was pencilled by Rick Veitch, but at no time is the quality suffering. But they needed a break and Shawn McManus, who already drew the opening story in this wonderful collection, is back for the acclaimed “Pog”. Moore’s tribute to Walt Kelly’s Pogo is a challenging read and still packs an emotional wallop.
The book ends with the award-winning “Rites of Spring” wherein Abby confesses her love to the creature and he offers her a piece of himself as communion, letting her see the world the way he does. It’s touching and once more gives us a new look at the characters while advancing the storylines.
On a personal note, there are two pages that cutaway to the events being watched by the enigmatic Monitor and his aide Lyla. At the time, all of DC’s titles were featuring these teasers setting up Crisis on Infinite Earths. Alan and Karen could have argued against it or thumbed their noses the demand the way Mike Barr did in Outsiders. Instead, Alan complied without complaint and actually made the appearances work, maintaining the eerie feel of the moment. I was always grateful he was willing to play along and rereading them here, does in no way take away from the stories’ impact.
Wed Nov 18, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Logan's Run' on Blu-ray
What a difference a year makes. In 1976, MGM released a film based on William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s 1967 novel Logan’s Run. Generally lambasted by the press, it may have been a nadir in science fiction films putting studios off the genre until the following May, when 20th Century Fox looked forward with Star Wars.
Warner Home Video has just released Logan’s Run
In the film, directed by Michael Anderson, the biggest change was in the location of society: domed and hermetically sealed as compared with the book’s newly formed surface cities. The book also has people voluntarily ending their lives at age 21 which probably meant the culture could not be sustained because no sooner did people learn a trade, they had to die. Instead, the film changed the age to 30 at a time when people still spouted “Never trust anyone over 30” (while forgetting the second half: “Or under, either”).
The hedonistic society is said to be devoted to pleasure until the glowing crystal in palm denoted your time to enter an arena and become the night’s entertainment. Everyone else gathers in a stadium to watch you and others born on that date, float upwards towards an energy field that kills them. There’s a rumor that selected people can be “renewed” so people come back night after night to see if someone will be lucky enough.
Those who eschew this lifestyle, those who question the unseen authority that governs the domed world, are known as runners who flee in search of a place known only as Sanctuary. Law enforcement officers, known as Sandmen, are charged with stopping the runners, usually by killing them. And the film follows one such Sandman, Logan 5 (Michael York), as the Artificial Intelligence in charge asks him to go undercover as a runner and find Sanctuary.
Fortunately, he’s found a potential runner to follow in Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter), whom he met only a night or two earlier. Her very questioning society got Logan to thinking so when the opportunity presented itself; he joined her in the escape. What complicates the assignment and spoils the film is Logan not confiding in his best friend, fellow Sandman Francis 7 (Richard Jordan), so Francis chases them, thinking he’s doing the right thing.
Along the way, our heroes are told by a recording to keep following the trail down but at one point they wind up on a platform taking them up. As a result, the movie starts going off the rails when no one ever questions what was “down there”. When they reach the surface, they find an ice cave (prompting them to strip down and wrap themselves in convenient bearskins) and a berserk robot, Box, who has decided freezing runners for eventual consumption made sense.
Escaping Box leads Logan and Jessica to a surface world they never knew existed and there they find the Old Man (Peter Ustinov), who shows them that aging isn’t all that bad. Unfortunately, setting this sequence in a vine-covered Washington, D.C. adds an unnecessary layer of subtext at a time when the country was already question the Federal Government.
Anderson, who did a far better job with George Orwell’s 1984, and screenwriter David Zelag Goodman completely failed to present a comprehensible society or characterization beyond two-dimensional surface traits for the three stars. York and Agutter are easy to watch but have little emotional range in this whereas Jordan’s pop-eyed style seems to come from some other film. Ustinov’s character is about the only one you care about.
A year later, the nature of science fiction film was turned on its head George Lucas’ Star Wars arrived, washing out the distaste left by this mess. Interestingly, Anderson’s earlier film, The Dam Busters, has been credited as inspiration for the Death Star battle at the end of Lucas’ film.
The Blu-ray edition looks like a basic transfer without digital enhancements or attempt to clean it up. The extras contain commentary from the DVD edition and a featurette produced back in the 1970s. There’s little to recommend adding this your growing Blu-ray library.
Tue Nov 17, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Kevin Smith 3-Movie Collection' on Blu-ray
You have to admire Kevin Smith. Growing up in New Jersey, he found himself a circle of likeminded friends who took his scripts and performed them in a sort of comedy revue that wowed audiences in Red Bank. Inspired, he went on to Vancouver and film school where he met his producing muse, Scott Mosier. Back home, they scraped together $27,500, recruited Smith’s friends and shot the semi-autobiographical Clerks. The black and white film, mostly a series of vignettes tied together by the two leads, wowed audiences and became a cult hit.
From there, Smith got hired by Universal to make a second film, the $5 million Mallrats but Smith and the studio system clashed and the result was a critical and commercial dud. Still, Smith used many of his friends and made new ones, casting with a keen eye towards nascent (and cheap) talent. He also found a girlfriend, Joey Lauren Adams, and as we learn, a confluence of events led Smith to shoot Chasing Amy as his third film and second hit. Mallrats is now considered the multi-million dollar screen test.
Smith is good to his friends and apparently is a good director for actors, most of whom have stayed loyal despite going on to greater fame and fortune. He went on to direct the wonderful Dogma (which he wrote as his Clerks follow-up) which scared the beejeezus out of Miramax so they sold it off to Lionsgate and missed the cash. Instead, Smith gathered everyone once more for 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, in some ways a farewell to the first chapter of his career.
We can watch the evolution of the director and some of his cast with the Kevin Smith 3-Movie Collection, out today from Buena Vista Home Entertainment which includes the Blu-ray debut of Clerks and Chasing Amy, plus Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. The three movies are individually packaged inside a cardboard box. Having never seen the bookend films, it’s interesting to watch how much surer a hand Smith has by the third film. Clerks is raw and very unpolished with genuinely horrible performances from the supporting cast. The writing is all over the place and you wonder how the clerks in question, Dante and Randal, maintain a friendship given what a screw-up the latter is. Still, Smith works in some harsh truths that give the movie its heart and soul. It’s truly the first close-up look at the slacker culture that exposes their wasted potential and lack of ambition.
Continue reading Review: 'Kevin Smith 3-Movie Collection' on Blu-ray ›
Mon Nov 16, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Gone with the Wind' 70th Anniversary DVD
Since Gone With The Wind’s release in 1939, David O. Selznick’s adaptation has become one of the most hailed and loved feature films of all time. Adjusted for inflation, it remains today the number one box office champion with a total gross of $1,450,680,400. It deservedly won 10 Academy Awards and continues to be included in Top 10 lists with many catch phrases entering the public lexicon followed plus a score that is instantly recognizable.
On Tuesday, in time for your holiday shopping needs, Warner Home Video is releasing the 70th Anniversary edition of the film in a variety of formats. What was provided to ComicMix was the standard two-disc “plain vanilla” edition. We can tell you that it looks and sounds great and we suspect looks even more spectacular in its Blu-ray format.
Is there anything left to say about this beloved film? I had heard of it growing up but until HBO first broadcast it for the first time, I had no clue what the fuss was about. I still recall a bunch of us gathering at Beth Zemsky’s house to watch this spectacular without interruption and we were all caught up in different ways. For me, I enjoyed the sweep and spectacle, some of the performances and the nostalgic look back at a bygone era. The girls loved the romance.
In rewatching the film now, I find zero chemistry between Trevor Howard and Vivien Leigh, still befuddled over why she loved him. I also find it confusing to see how both Ashley and Melanie were so blind, in their own way, towards Scarlett’s spoiled rich girl ways. Only Rhett saw her for what she was and loved her for it. Rhett Butler is also the only one to see the South as an unsustainable culture and apparently the only man in the whole of the Confederacy to understand they couldn’t compete with northern factories. As a result, his decision to enlist towards the middle therefore makes no sense.
Honestly, the best character arc is Scarlett’s and there’s little more stirring than her return to Tara, seeing what had become of the lifestyle she understood and then declaring, set against a beautiful backdrop, she would never go hungry again. As the music swells and the intermission sign appears, you could have sent everyone home and they would have been thrilled. Instead, we get the second half which is far too melodramatic leading up to the immortal final scene.
Selznick spared no expense and the film is sumptuous, well cast and filled with enough extras to give it the sense of scale required for the needed emotional impact. From a technical standpoint, there’s not a single false note and the movie holds up during repeated viewings. SO, the bottom line comes down to the Margaret Mitchell novel and the characters adapted to the screen. If this is your sort of story then you can’t miss seeing the film. As for owning the new edition, that’s a subjective call. The new digital master seems superior to the last version but it’s the extras that will decide it for you.
Continue reading Review: 'Gone with the Wind' 70th Anniversary DVD ›
Mon Nov 16, 2009 — by Glenn Hauman
Review: I'm disappointed by Mark Waid's 'Strange' #1...
Oh, not by the comic itself. The book reads well, is entertaining, puts our boy Stephen in a different place than he was, and the art by Emma Rios is fun and quirky, calling to Ditko without ever calling to Ditko.
It's just that Mark didn't do what clearly needed to be done... the tale should have been titled "Strange Sports Stories".
Really, guy, you're slipping.
Sat Oct 31, 2009 — by Alexandra Honigsberg
When Vampires Suck: a review of 'How to Catch and Keep a Vampire'
Diana Laurence’s How to Catch and Keep a Vampire: A Step-By-Step Guide to Loving the Bad and the Beautiful
I kept wanting to like it. I love vamp lit. I’m published in the sub-genre several times over and love to play in that playground. I’ve watched the suckers ever since I was a little girl and first saw Bela Lugosi as The Count and said, “Oooh! He’s cool! He wears capes and goes to the opera!” and lusted after Frank Langella and loved Rice’s The Vampire Lestat (and I’m an adult, so I despise Twilight – vampires don’t sparkle!) and can geeble with the best of them over Vampire Bill and his delicious-but-inaccurate accent! So I get the whole fascination-not-fear idea and how that can be played for amusement. We are not amused.
Laurence’s vamps tend toward the True Blood variety, but with added bonuses. Yes, they drink real blood and synthblood, but they can also eat and they have a drink called Light Shade that enables them to walk in the sun plus an elixir that makes their pale skin more normal looking. They aren’t damned, but are immortal (societal prejudice smear campaign). Flying is merely hypnosis on their victims – they don’t do it. They used to sleep in coffins out of superstition but don’t, anymore. They don’t shape shift – more myth and hypnosis. The worst parts about being a vamp seem to be that they can’t use mirrors and the alienation they have from loved ones due to prejudice and the mere fact that the vamp will live forever (barring staking) and other types of humans won’t (oh yeah, they’re human…they have souls!). Oh, and if you drink a vamp’s blood but are caught in time, you can be drained of all your now tainted blood, have it replaced with synth blood ‘til they can get your proper blood type, and prevent a turning before it’s acted upon all your blood cells and they’ve acted upon the rest of the cells in your body. But it has to be done fast.
It’s all just a bit too neat and tidy and convenient and…well…flat. It should be seductive, like its subject. It’s not. Dry. How can you make talking about vampires, one of the most fun subjects in the world (every culture has a type of vampire myth!), boring? This manages. Not quite sure how. But it does. And that sucks. Excuse the bad pun. I just couldn’t help myself.
Fri Oct 30, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: 'Red Snow' by Susumu Katsumata
Gekiga stories of Japanese rural life a hundred years ago
Red Snow
By Susumu Katsumata
Drawn & Quarterly, October
2009, $24.95
From a Western perspective, it would be understandable to assume “gekiga” meant “short, depressing Japanese comics stories,” even if that’s not the most accurate definition. (Gekiga can also be long depressing Japanese comics stories, of course.) And, since the current exemplar of gekiga for those of us in the English-speaking world is Yoshihiro Tatsumi, there’s a sense that those short, depressing stories need to be set in the modern world, that gekiga is a literature of urban ennui and the dislocations of modern capitalism.
But gekiga is wider than that; Katsumata is another one of its masters, and his collection Red Snow is filled entirely with stories of a rural, pre-war Japan – but one as filled with bitter unhappiness and struggle as any badly-thrown-up Tokyo apartment building of the ‘60s. His rural landscapes have nothing of nostalgia about them; these are insular, stifling, dull little farming communities, full of equally dull and small-minded people, out in the middle of nowhere.
A few of these stories have supernatural elements, but the only creatures that appear are kappa – mischievous water spirits that fill the role of leprechauns or pixies in Japanese folklore, and were thought of as being equally as common and prosaic. The fantasy in Red Snow isn’t numinous or uplifting – it’s just yet another annoyance in a small village full of them, just one more damn thing to have to deal with. Kappa are no worse than the rich guy in town who thinks he has the right to seduce any woman around – who’s also called “kappa.”
Continue reading Manga Friday: 'Red Snow' by Susumu Katsumata ›
Tue Oct 27, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'James Bond Encyclopedia'
James Bond Encyclopedia
By John Cork and Collin Stutz
334 Pages, DK Publishing, $40
Nobody does it better. DK Publishing continues to put out the best assortment of visual reference books on pop culture and as we near the holidays, they keep pumping out one must have collection after another.
Few literary figures have endured changing eras and tastes likes Ian Fleming’s spy, James Bond. Fleming created the spy in the 1950s and continued his exploits through the dozen novels and nine short stories before his death in 1964. He got to see his creation catch the attention of a world made uncomfortable by the Cold War, giving them a clear cut hero to root for as he traveled the world and dispatched the Red Menace in all its guises.
Bond has endured despite the constant change in performer, indelibly begun by Sean Connery and carried through by George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and currently Daniel Craig. The world has remained transfixed by the globe-trotter spy, equally adept with women and firearms, always looking best in a black tuxedo. The films, themselves, have gone from depicting the counterintelligence threat from Eastern Europe to megalomaniacs, trying to change and reflect the times. Much like Batman, Bond reflects the tastes of the masses. As a result, we went from the taut thrillers like Goldfinger to the buffoonery that was Moonraker to today’s reboot, a harsher, less disciplined Bond for a darker world.
All of that and more are covered in the 332-page James Bond Encyclopedia, lovingly assembled by writers John Cork and Collin Stutz. A visual treat thanks to DK’s art department, the oversized tome introduces to all things Bond. The writers wisely broke things down into categories, updating from the 2007 edition to include Quantum of Solace. We have an introductory piece on Fleming, profiles of the six men to play James Bond, and the sections on The Bond Style, The Role of Bond, Bond Villains, Bond Women, Supporting Cast, Vehicles, Weapons & Equipment, and finally, backgrounds on the making of each movie. The book concludes with a comprehensive index that’s quite useful.
The Barry Nelson television version, the Casino Royale satire, and Never Say Never Again are omitted – consider this the canonical Bond reference book. Each entry, where appropriate, compares the film version with its prose origins, and differentiates between the differing interpretations such as M, Q, Moneypenny, and Blofeld. If the character appeared on screen and said something, they were included, making this exhaustive and fun to flip through (I had totally forgotten Minnie Driver was in one of the films, for example).
While Cubby Broccoli, Harry Salzman, Barbara Broccoli, and Michael Wilson get their due for guiding the films through the years, I wish a little more attention had been given to the musicians who helped make each film an event. Visually, a section dedicated to Maurice Binder’s stunning opening credits would have been a treat. Overall, though, this is a book every fan of Bond should have.
Mon Oct 26, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Saturday Morning Cartoons 1970s Vol. 2'
The 1970s remained a good time to be a kid, as the three networks continued to program Saturday mornings with hours and hours of programming aimed right at them. On the other hand, it was clear that finding new series to click with the evolving kiddie set was harder and harder so series seemed to come and go at a faster clip with shows from earlier years revived to fill gaps or revamped to bring the familiar to new audiences.
While super-heroes were largely done, magic, fantasy, and real adventure found their niches with series starting to be aimed at the younger set earlier and slightly more mature offerings as the hour grew later. All told, the dozen shows represented in Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s
For that younger set, there is Help! It’s the Hair Bear Bunch, which ran from 1971-1974, and featured three fairly stupid bears – Hair, Square, and Bubi – who escaped the Wonderland Zoo each episode, had an adventure and wound up back behind bars.
For those weaned on the reruns of the CBS sitcom, The New Adventures of Gilligan continued following the castaways, with most of the actors reprising their voices and a hideous laugh track for what was rather unfunny fare. It was just one of many prime time sitcoms to make the transition – none successfully other than Star Trek.
Older fans were offered Sealab 2020, a solid episode of which is here, showing that attempts were being made to bring in real world themes, plus attempts at characterization and serious stories.
Included here is Shazzan, which is an oddity considering it originated in the 1967-1968 season and was never rerun in the 1970s. Two siblings find halves of a magic ring, which summoned a genie named Shazzan when put together. They were taken to a fantasy world with the hopes of finding their way home but had adventures along the way, getting rescued at least twice a story by the magical being. The two-disc set’s sole extra is The Power of Shazzan as a number of folk look back at the show, marveling at Alex Toth’s strong design and ridiculing the state of writing in the 1970s.
Another show that debuted in 1968 and was gone by 1970 and is therefore in the wrong set is the atrocious Banana Splits Adventure Hour. Inspired by NBC’s Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, four guys in costumes, designed by Sid and Marty Kroft (who got better when left to their own devices) performed short bursts of slapstick humor accompanied by two music videos that owed something to the Monkees. Interspersed throughout were three adventure shows. Two were animated: Arabian Knights and The Three Musketeers and we get their debut stories in this inaugural show. Both were standard cookie cutter H-B fare, largely unmemorable and gone after a season. The third was Danger Island, attempting to turn Jonny Quest into a live-action show that was largely dubbed and poorly performed. Of note here is that the “hunk” was young Jan-Michael Vincent, well before Airwolf. What is astonishing given how bad the humor and the drama are is the fact that the entire first season was directed by Richard Donner. Yes, that Richard Donner.
Better was the two season show, Valley of the Dinosaurs that saw the Butler family accidentally lost in this time-frozen world accessed from the Amazon River. While seeking a way home, they were befriended by Gorak and his family. The mixed families formed the spine of the show as they struggled to learn from one another and survive dinosaur attacks.
Less memorable is Inch High, Private Eye, which brings the bumbling secret agent to animation in the form of the diminutive detective, aided by his attractive niece, Lori, and the dim-witted would-be detective Gator (imagine Jethro Clampett). The episode included was entirely forgettable and unamusing.
Returning from volume one is The Amazing Chan Clan, along with the familiar Batman, Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes.
Studios were increasingly having their hands bound by parents groups and network regulators who didn’t want the viewers adversely affected by the violence they saw while eating their cereal. Much of the conflict was reduced or removed, with the writing suffering greatly for this as witnessed by the witless Hair Bear Bunch or the edits made to Road Runner reruns. Even when Captain Marvel arrived in the live action Shazam! (sadly missing from this set), he could barely touch the bad guys let alone duke it out with them.
Clearly, the Golden Age for Saturday morning had passed and quality fare for children would have to wait for the advent of cable television and the plethora of channels able to cater to their needs with verve and imagination.
Sun Oct 25, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Saturday Morning Cartoons 1960s Vol. 2'
With three networks programming cartoons from 8 a.m. until just about noon throughout the 1960s, there was a rich variety of characters, situations, and styles. While Hanna-Barbera pretty much owned the first half of the decade, Filmation and others arrived and brought some different looks.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell from the second volume of Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s
New for the second volume, which was sent for review, are The Space Kidettes, Samson & Goliath, and The Adventures of Gulliver. The Kidettes, a show I had forgotten about, ran for a single season, 1966-1967, and featured four adorable tykes living in their space clubhouse (a converted Gemini capsule) and outwitting the nefarious Captain Skyhook. Two cute for words.
Samson may have inadvertently inspired Roy Thomas with a teen, Samson, gained an enhanced form and super-powers by clanging together his bracelets, saying “I need Samson Power” and transformed into an adult hero. Clanging them a second time turned his trusty dog into a powerful lion, Goliath. No secret identities and lots of fighting evil organizations. The stories are predictable and Samson seems devoid of personality.
The one featurette, Completely Bananas: The Magilla Gorilla Story is short but points out this 1964 series was the end of an era for animal-centric series with H-B’s Jonny Quest about to debut and a move towards more human adventures. And as the super-heroes rapidly burned themselves out after just two seasons, networks sought other stories such as ABC’s The Adventures of Gulliver. The disc provides the pilot episode showing how the boy, Gary Gulliver, and his dog Bib survived a shipwreck and washed ashore on the very “lost” island they sought with Gary’s dad, now presumed missing. While Gary is drawn straight, the Lilliputians are cartoony and comical but a détente is achieved.
The disc also includes fresh installments of Wally Gator, Ricochet Rabbit, Mushmouth and Pumpkin’ Puss and their template, Tom & Jerry. And assorted other features far more familiar than the above.
The two-disc set does not feel as fresh and inviting as the first and that could be because the mix isn’t as strong this time or, the nostalgia has worn after since the first volume came out earlier this year. Clearly, this is for the late Baby Boomers hoping to relive those years.
Once again there’s the absurd advisory about the material not suitable for this year’s kids.
For a true feel for the decade, we should have had Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, Fireball XL-5, Jonny Quest, Superman, Spider-Man, Banana Splits, Wacky Races, and of course George of the Jungle. Rights issues, no doubt, prevented this from being properly representative.
Thu Oct 22, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Review: 'Stitches' by David Small -- a comics memoir of an amazingly bad childhood
Stitches: A Memoir
David Small
W.W. Norton, September 2009,
$24.95
You can’t write a memoir these days unless you had a bad childhood – call it the Law of Oprah. You have to have some horrible secrets, either your own or those of your parents/keepers/guardians, that you can reveal, tearfully, to an enthralled TV audience when called upon. You may not make it to that TV-show couch, since the competition for a bad-enough childhood is fierce, but that’s the aim. Memoirs of anything positive are utterly passé – even a book like Eat Pray Love needs to start with heartbreak before it can get to happiness.
Then there’s the unrelated but equally unsettling requirement that only non-fictional graphic novels can be taken really seriously by the outside world. From Maus to Persepolis, from Fun Home to Palestine, it’s only respectable if it’s real. As far as our mothers and cousins and next-door neighbors know, “graphic novels” means expensive comic-book stories about either superheroes or the author’s tormented relationship with his family.
Stitches is perfectly positioned at the intersection of those two publishing trends: it’s the true story of author David Small’s appalling childhood, told as comics pages with cinematic “camera motions” that will appeal to readers not used to reading comics. Even the art style Small uses in Stitches adds to the seriousness; Small has a sketchy, loose line of variable width here, strong to define the figures and lighter and looser for backgrounds, and washes in various tones of grey. In fact, the whole book is grey – even the black line looks like just another shade of the murk.
Thu Oct 22, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'The Marvel Encyclopedia - Updated and Expanded'
The Marvel Encyclopedia, Updated and Expanded
400 pages, DK Books, $40
These days, you can’t follow Marvel’s or DC’s continuities without a scorecard and thankfully more than a few reference sources have arrived to help out. The latest is DK’s 70th Anniversary contribution, a revised version of 2006’s The Marvel Encyclopedia. What a difference three years can make to continuity.
The key difference in the editions is the addition of pages, bringing the total to a hefty 400 pages. DK did everyone a favor and kept the cover price consistent at $40. Frank Cho’s cover is replaced with a Brandon Peterson piece that attempts to reflect the full history of the Marvel heroes. Matt Forbeck deftly took the original text, written by a quintet of experts such as Tom DeFalco and Peter Sanderson, and brought dozens of entries up to date in addition to adding entirely new ones where warranted. The crack design team replaced only a handful of images to existing entries but where they expanded or added new entries, the art nicely reflects the subject matter.
Forbeck’s updates take readers into the Dark Reign era but merely its beginnings so many of the events in the second half of 2009 are not reflected in the text. It might have been better to cut things off after Secret Invasion. As it is, some key events -- Aunt May’s wedding to J. Jonah Jameson’s father, Brother Voodoo not listed as next sorcerer supreme, Firestar’s cancer -- are missing. I also think Emma Frost, Nick Fury, Rick Jones and Speedball’s current situations get short shrift. And while many new entries are welcome, some stand out characters are missing such as Jameson’s father, Peter Parker’s new supporting cast, Ezekiel, Valeria Richards and each member of The Twelve. Also, the war and western characters are barely represented which is a shame. Similarly, only a few of the 2099 and M2 characters are here.
New spreads covering the significant modern day events – Civil War, Secret Invasion, and Annihilation – make the book feel nicely up to date but then older events such as the Kree/Skrull War and Secret Wars now feel overlooked. It would have been nice if the Fifty- State Initiative spread actually listed which heroes covered which states or which humans were replaced by Skrulls in the SI spread but these are minor nits. A larger nit is that a few characters receive spreads showing Key Moments and while I agree that House of M is major, I refuse to accept Spider-Man vs. Anti-Venom a key moment. Fortunately, the book ends with a spread on the more prominent parallel universes which will help the less devout reader.
Production demands meant that many entries had artwork reduced to fit in new entries but overall the pages do not feel overly packed and are easy to read. From what I can tell, just a few characters were dropped in favor of more current figures so say bye-bye to Marlo Chandler, Hornet, Libra, N’Garai, Candy Southern, and, Tana Nile.
Of the art chosen, I have very few quibbles over choices made but would have preferred a Gene Colan Dracula and would have updated the mis-proportioned Don Heck illo for Pepper Potts.
Clearly, this is a much neater and more effective updating than DK’s second edition of The DC Encyclopedia (which I was a coauthor on). You won’t want to miss picking up this fact-filled tome.
Mon Oct 19, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Comical Lives: A Paired Review of 'Little Nothings 2' and 'Giraffes in My Hair'
Autobiographical comics from Lewis Trondheim and Bruce Paley & Carol Swain
The impulse to anecdote is ubiquitous in mankind; we all
want to tell our own stories. Since those stories happened to us, we naturally think that they’re fascinating…and
sometime are surprised when the rest of the world doesn’t agree with us. Comics
creators have been spilling out their lives onto their pages for a few decades
now – since the undergrounds, if not before that – and the autobiographical comic
is now its own cliché. But there’s still room to do interesting things with autobiographical
materials – at least, I hope
there is, since it seems that we’re destined to be deluged with books of true
stories…
Little Nothings, Vol. 2: The Prisoner Syndrome
Lewis Trondheim
NBM/ComicsLit, March 2009,
$14.95
Trondheim mostly makes fictional comics – Dungeon and Kaput and Zosky and Mister O and many more – but he also has kept a comics blog in French, mostly focused on the small moments of his life. Three collections from the blog have been published in his native France; the first two have been translated so far for the English-speaking world. (I reviewed the first one here back in March of last year.)
For the “Little Nothings” blog, Trondheim works in watercolor, mostly in single pages – each one the record of a single event, or a short conversation. The emphasis is on observation – each strip is a crystallized instant, and clearly the blog as a whole is not intended to seriously chronicle Trondheim’s life. As with the Dungeon books, all of the people are drawn anthropomorphically – Trondheim and his family are various kinds of bird, and most of the others look like different kinds of mammals – rats and dogs and cats. (In the usual unsettling way of anthropomorphic comics, Trondheim’s family also has a pair of real cats, Orly and Roissy, and other actual animals show up from time to time.)
Either Trondheim travels an awful lot or travel is more conducive to diary comics than his regular life, since a clear majority of the comics here are about trips – to the Angouleme comics festival (a year when he was the Guest of Honor), several other comics events, and vacation in Greece, Guadeloupe, and Corsica. That does keep Prisoner Syndrome from being a succession of Trondheim-sitting-at-his-desk pages – there are a number of those, of course, since that’s where a cartoonist spends most of his time – and ties nicely into the title. In one of the early strips in this book, Trondheim learns about “Prisoner Syndrome,” in which people who spend all of their time in the same place gradually get more and more tired from doing less and less – and so he decides to go to more comics festivals, to keep himself healthy.
There are no grand gestures in Prisoner Syndrome, no deep thoughts or big moments – the series is called Little Nothings for a reason. But there are many thoughtful little moments, of the kind that make up all of our lives, and Trondheim is an artful and nuanced portrayer of his own internal life. It’s a lovely book of the small things that go together to make up an everyday life.
Continue reading Comical Lives: A Paired Review of 'Little Nothings 2' and 'Giraffes in My Hair' ›
Wed Oct 7, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Lego Star Wars the Visual Dictionary'
Lego Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary
By Simon Beecroft
96 pages, $21.99, DK Publishing
It used to be that Lego would never feature licensed characters. Instead, you could construct moon bases or pirate ships and make up your own characters to tell tales plucked straight from your imagination. Then came the first license, Star Wars, which proved so successful that there is now an entire line of licensed Lego toys which in turn have spawned video games and related merchandise.
Now, DK Publishing this week provides readers Lego Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary which breaks George Lucas’ universe into sections: the Movie Saga, The Clone Wars, Specialist Sets, and Beyond the Brick. A handy timeline upfront shows you the explosive growth of the line with every set properly displayed and identified for completists.
Each section properly displays each figure or vehicle with a handy guide to the number of pieces, their set number and which film the construct relates to. Along the way, the capsule descriptions provide information not only about the figure or vehicle but about their construction and history. You learn some interesting facts and I discovered to my surprise and delight that set 7163 features a Jedi Bob (must find!).
This is a treasure trove of information for the diehard Lego collector but written for those 7 years old and up, it also is engaging and entertaining with information about the characters and their adventures.
The book, as is typical of DK’s output, is a visual treat and the bottom corners feature, respectively, storm troopers and Luke Skywalker so flipping through the pages you get a sense of animation.
Not being a kid anymore, I found the Beyond the Brick section the most fascinating to see the level of detail that went into their construction as Jens Kronvold Frederiksen, Design Manager, has a nice interview about the entire Star Wars line for Lego. There’s even a final spread about the Lego Star Wars merchandising which is a growing subset of the overall Star Wars phenomenon.
As with any Lego line, there’s something special here. The book comes complete with an exclusive Luke Skywalker minifigure which begs the question if the book is ruined by taking out the toy to play with his compatriots.
Tue Oct 6, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Pixarpedia'
Pixarpedia
300 Pages, $40
DK Publishing
I doubt there has been a studio to start out with as long a streak of consecutive hits as Pixar. Not only have they succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, but they have helped rewrite the rules for family entertainment and created an armload of pop culture characters that are likely to endure for decades to come. The secret, it seems, has been to take iconic themes and figures and distill them down to their essence then tell engaging stories that never lose sight of character.
You are reminded of those relatively simple and obvious lessons while reading DK Publishing’s Pixarpedia, which was released some weeks back. Written with their core audience in mind, it’s geared for 9-12 year old readers and is a treasure trove of information about every feature and short film they have produced along with details on each character seen in the films.
The book is divided into thirds with the bookend sections about the studio. You can trace their progress from a small company owned by George Lucas to its sale to Steve Jobs and its explosive growth. The final third, Behind the Scenes, provides cast and crew credits and assorted trivia tidbits about each film along with sidebars spotlighting members of the company with career capsules. It’s amazing how many shout outs there are for beloved movies and people) especially Mickey Mouse) hidden in each film. You are shown many, but certainly not all, of them in this section.
The largest third is the movie by movie section that provides information about the major and minor characters. Unlike too many DK books, the visual design is clean and colorful, easy to read and chock full of detail. Sprinkled throughout are “Did you Know?” bullets with factual information that supplements each film. You get a plot summary, character descriptions, lavish looks at the sets and lots of fun reading.
Paging through the oversized book is a treat and overall, you come away with a greater knowledge about the characters than you might have imagined possible. At the end of this portion, there are pages dedicated to the themes that carry through the films and its their dedication to these simple dictates, like “You’ve got a Friend in Me”, that places their output head and shoulders above the competition.
