Author: Andrew Wheeler

Something can be both an obvious idea and a bad idea. I think we’ve all had that weird vertiginous feeling when looking down from a great height, like we want to jump off.

Nearly all of us manage to foil that impulse, and, of the few who don’t, a large proportion have tethers or parachutes or other safety apparatus to save them from immediately dying. But that’s the feeling I mean: the sense that doing this thing would be really dumb, and yet wanting to see what it would be like anyway.

I have to assume some such impulse led to the 2014 comics series Groo Vs. Conan . It’s such an obvious idea — two barbarian adventurers! utterly different worlds and personalities and styles of story and even art! — and just as immediately a bad idea.

And yet, as we can see, it happened.

The story is by Groo creator Sergio Aragones with his long-time collaborator Mark Evanier. The art is by Aragones (the cartoony, Groo-filled bits) and by Thomas Yeates (the heroic-fantasy stuff with Conan in it), regularly drawing radically different images in the same panel. And, yes, it is about Groo meeting (and fighting) Conan.

But wait! There’s an even worse idea lurking within!

Groo Vs. Conan tells two stories: one is the regular fictional story that starts in Groo’s world, heavily features the words “mendicant” and “Crom,” and has a lot of swordplay of varying levels of silliness. But the other story, and I swear I am not making this up, is about Aragones himself trying to save his favorite comic-book store from an evil developer (who is also very, very parallel with the villain on Groo-world) and along the way is treated with so many random medicines that he goes crazy and starts believing he is Conan.

This may be a spoiler, but I will at least admit that the two levels of story never interact: Aragones does not summon Groo to cartoony-Los-Angeles through the power of his dementia. And this is entirely a good thing.

Now, many of the panels here are amusing, particularly the all-Aragones ones. Aragones and Evanier are good at humor involving dumb swordsmen; they’ve been doing this for decades. But the Yeates art sits very uneasily alongside Aragones’s art to begin with — they don’t mesh at all, or seem to depict the same world — and the more serious tone of the Conan bits are a drag on the whole proceedings. There’s no way to take Groo Vs. Conan seriously, but the reader keeps running into serious sword & sorcery art and dialogue that are supposed to be taken seriously.

Groo stories were never high art, and never tried to be. But they were internally consistent, and stayed on a particular level of abstraction. This thing, though, is all over the place, trying to be serious, silly-funny, satirical-funny, and just plain goofy, all at the same time. I don’t want to say that level of tonal shift is impossible in one work, because it isn’t. But it’s as hard as all of those individual things put together, and they’re each already difficult. Plus doing it with cliched, well-known characters adds yet another level of complication and difficulty, and then throwing the metafiction on top of that…

Groo Vs. Conan is a mess: a weird, shambling combination of things that don’t really work together. That it exists at all is impressive, I’ll admit. But it’s the book equivalent of Doctor Frankenstein’s creation, and I’m afraid I have to lift my pitchfork at this point.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

What is this book about?

Well, the title is You & A Bike & A Road . It’s by Eleanor Davis. It was published by Koyama Press in May 2017.

The outside of the book will tell you no more. Opening it doesn’t give much more information — some legalese on the copyright page, and more of the pretty cover scenery on the French flaps.

The only way to know what You & A Bike & A Road is about is to read it. But it’s a comic, so reading it is easy. You might as well just jump in and see what you find.

The same spirit drove Davis to try to bike from her parents’ home in Tucson, Arizona to her home in Atlanta, Georgia. Her father had just built her a bike, so why not ride it back? Why not draw a couple of pages each day along the way, and see what comes of it?

So this is a travelogue, of what Davis hoped would be a month or two of biking across the southwest and southeast US, starting March 16, 2016. Davis works in what looks like soft pencils, and gives us an impressionistic view of days on the road — knee pain, headwinds, flowers, friendly fellow bikers, and the omnipresent Border Patrol. It was over two thousand miles, but she sets off in good spirits: alone but happy to see the world and push against it for a while.

Any travel book is as much about its creator as the territory covered, and You & A Bike & A Road is no exception. Davis was riding alone, camping alone, spending most of her days alone with her thoughts and her bike beneath her. That’ll lead to a lot of introspection, a lot of thinking.

You & A Bike & A Road is a lovely, thoughtful book, as much a meditation on life and physical activity as anything else. Davis makes great pictures and thinks serious thoughts — and is open enough to meet people and learn about the landscapes she travels through. This book is as wide and open as the desert and as welcoming as the people you meet. If you see it, pick it up, even if you’re not sure what it is.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Early success is the most dangerous kind. Great success for something you did quickly can be even worse. When the two are combined…well, it’s hard for your career to be other than disappointing afterward.

Nicolas  wasn’t Pascal Girard’s first comics work, or first book — but it was really close, on both counts. And it’s pretty clear I wasn’t the only one really impressed by this short book — it was widely praised for its raw honesty and authentic grief at the time.

Girard has an introduction in this expanded 2016 edition of Nicolas about how it came to be and how it affected him. And his other memoirs — I’ve seen Reunion  and Petty Theft ; there may be others still lurking in Quebecois French I don’t know of — show other sides of Girard, of the man who lived through this as a boy. I don’t think it’s something you get over.

Nicolas was Girard’s younger brother. Girard was born in 1981, and, around 1990, when Girard was nine and Nicolas was five, Nicolas died. Girard didn’t know what killed him for a while — he eventually learned it was lactic acidosis, which was probably just as meaningful to him then as it is to you or me right now. It’s two medical words, technical terms, that mean “your kid brother is dead.”

Nicolas, the original book, is bookended by scenes with Nicolas alive. The two boys are playing with a tape recorder, making Ghostbusters jokes. I have to imagine that tape still exists. I have to imagine Girard listening to it, years later, when about to make this book. But I can’t imagine what that must feel like.

Girard says, in that new introduction, that he wanted to do a quick book, inspired by Jeffrey Brown. That he planned it out a bit, writing some stories and memories in a notebook. But that the comics pages themselves, one or two quick borderless panels to a page, came out over a long weekend. Sometimes strong material is like that: it needs to come out, and forces its way onto the page.

This new edition of Nicolas includes the original book, that new introduction, and a comics afterword — twenty-five pages about Girard in the years since Nicolas was published. As Girard says in his introduction, those pages ended up being about Girard’s other brother, Joel. The one even younger than Nicolas, the one who didn’t die. The one that grown-up Girard mostly ignores, even when they live in the same city.

Girard, as always, is unsparing of his own flaws and foibles — his comics sometimes feel like penance on his part, as he drags his worst self out for self-ridicule and as the butt of every joke. Nicolas, maybe, explains why, or points to a possible reason. It’s still the strongest comics work I’ve seen from Girard, for all its rawness, for all it was done quickly by a novice creator. Some stories need to be told, and this one made Girard tell it brilliantly.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

It was just a little over a month ago that I covered Jack Staff Vol. 1 here, a decade after it was published. I’m accelerating a bit now, getting to 2010’s second volume with what passes for blinding speed around here.

Jack Staff, Vol. 2: Soldiers sees Paul Grist’s superhero universe transformed into full color with the addition of Phil Elliott as colorist to the team, and possibly some increased distribution from a then-new publishing management with Image. (The first series of Jack Staff came out from Grist’s own Dancing Elephant Press.) Otherwise, this is still an all-Paul Grist production: he writes and draws and (I’m pretty sure) letters as well.

Since this was the big relaunch, it needed to stand on its own. Traditionally, that’s the time to trot out a retelling of the origin, but Grist hadn’t revealed that yet — I’m not sure if he has even now, actually, and I hope he hasn’t. So, instead, we get a less-deep flashback: the story of the case that sent Jack Staff into retirement “twenty years ago” — roughly the late ’80s, given when the Jack Staff series started.

Jack, to refresh your memory, is a really long-lived — we don’t know how long, but he’s looked young and exactly the same since WW II, at least — who is a mid-level brick. In this book, we learn a little more about what he can do, but he’s basically a strong guy with a big stick and occasional glowy hands. He was, as the cover claims, Britain’s greatest hero, though he seems to spend all of his time hanging about a minor provincial city called Castletown. (Maybe that’s why Britain did fine for twenty years without him.)

Anyway, Soldiers is told in a complicated flashback structure, jumping between twenty years ago and “now,” sometimes on the same page, in a style I’m coming to think Grist particularly likes. (And I’m completely in sync with him: if you’re telling a story about big guys punching each other for pages on end, it definitely helps to do something to mix that up and make it more interesting.) So Soldiers bounces back and forth in time like a yo-yo, also bouncing around the large cast almost as much as the stories in the first book did. (Becky Burdock, {Spoiler} Reporter gets less obvious on-page time here, but there are some new superheroes, from the ’60s and ’80s.)

The big fight scene twenty years ago was between Jack and Hurricane, the British Army’s secret and greatest weapon, who of course is a Hulk-ish guy with an anger problem and an exceptionally limited vocabulary. In between bits of that fight, there’s a more complicated plot going on in the present day, plus some military machinations back twenty years ago. It may sound confusing, but on the page it’s always entirely clear who is doing what when and to whom.

There is a lot of talking in between the fighting, and plenty of fighting in the modern day as well. This is a superhero comic, after all.

Grist tells a zippy story here, and his art is dynamic and fun — he still uses a lot of black here (as he did in the early Jack Staff stories, as well as Kane), but the addition of color does make the whole thing that much more superhero-y.

Nobody needs any more superhero comics, but this is a good one, unencumbered by any stupid continuity and entirely owned by the guy that thought it up. If you need superheroes in your life, this is the kind to have.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

I am in great danger of dancing about architecture here, so I’ll acknowledge it, first, and then try to move on.

Nat Turner is a nearly wordless graphic novel: it contains only narration taken from The Confessions of Nat Turner (a contemporary account), and some sound effects. All of the characters in it are silent as we see them — for dramatic effect or because the vast majority of them were silenced at the time and by history, you can decide for yourself. So what I’m here to do is use words to talk about a story told only in pictures.

“Dancing about architecture,” as I said.

Nat Turner was written and drawn by Kyle Baker, and originally self-published by him as four individual comics. The book edition came from Abrams exactly a decade ago, in 2008. The copy I have in my hand has a slightly different cover than the one I’ve found online: there’s only a light spattering of blood drops over the word “Turner” and down the left side, connecting to a red-patterned spine and back cover. I light the brightness and visual metaphor of the version shown here, but maybe the bookstores of America balked at so much blood.

Nat Turner [1] was born into slavery in Virginia in 1800. His father is believed to have run away and escaped from slavery when Nat was very young. Nat was very intelligent, and self-taught as much as he could, learning to read on his own and devouring every book he could. He led a rebellion of local slaves in 1831, which had some immediate success but was quickly suppressed. And, of course, he was tried and killed soon afterward. (Depending on how cynical you are, it can be counted a victory that a black man in 1831 Virginia was actually tried and found guilty before he was killed by white people.) Those are the bare facts.

Baker takes that story and extends it, beginning with Nat’s mother, captured by slavers in Africa and shipped to America. That was the first issue; the second covers Nat’s youth, growth to manhood, and religious awakening. (Like so many others who led massacres, Nat thought God talked to him and made him for a special destiny. Unlike most of them, we still have sympathy for Nat.)  The third issue has the events of the rebellion, in all of their bloody, chaotic fury. And the fourth is the aftermath: Nat’s hanging and Baker’s notes and afterword.

Baker’s art is dark and moody, a chiaroscuro of browns and blacks. The faces are expressive and with just an occasional touch of cartooniness — much more realistic than most of his work. His choice of images and panel-to-panel storytelling is superb, and the whole thing — even told originally across four issues — is entirely unified. Nat Turner has a massive moral and imagistic power, even to this white guy whose ancestors were entirely Northerners.

I don’t see Nat Turner listed in those standard compilations of the “Best Modern Graphic Novels” much — maybe because it’s too raw, too shocking. It should be; it does stand that comparison and should be in that company. And it’s a good reminder to oppressors everywhere — even if they don’t think themselves oppressors, even if they think they’re the ones oppressed — that when there are people under you with no way out and no recourse, they will rise up eventually, and you may not survive the experience.

[1] “Turner” was the family name of Nat’s owners. It’s not clear to me if he ever used a second name while alive, or if that was a luxury held by white people.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Doreen Green is still cute, still a bit chunky, still indomitable, and still the most upbeat character in comics. But she’s now a second-year student in Computer Science at Empire State U — which state is weirdly referred to as a “second-year alum” more than once — which means she’s that much closer to actually being able to create {insert technical thing that I don’t really understand here}.

The “big” change in her status (oh, she’s also a New Avenger, which is mentioned in the first issue and ignored otherwise) is because this third collection starts up what was in late 2015 a new series of comics about Doreen, aka Squirrel Girl, after she was involved in whatever crisis was going on that summer. (I think it was the one where all mutants died, since there was a fourth-wall-leaning reference to her very definitely not being a mutant of any kind. But who can keep track of which money-grubbing Marvel Secret House Civil Infinity Age of Death Fear Chaos Shadow happened when?) It was the second issue #1 that year for Squirrel Girl, which game creators Ryan North and Erica Henderson mock here, but not so much as to piss off their Marvel overlords.

Anyway, it’s The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 3: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now . Given the way Marvel keeps books in print, it’s probably impossible to find now.

It starts out with a done-in-one story re-introducing Doreen and her supporting cast — who knows! maybe there’s a substantial comic-shop-going audience that missed the first first issue that year! hope springs eternal! — and then dives into a longer story involving Doctor Doom, time travel, and fashions of the early 1960s. Along the way, there are lots of pseudo-alt-text comments at the bottom of the pages by writer North and extensive letter-column pages with responses from both North and Henderson. (Do most comics reprint letter columns these days? Is that a thing? Because it’s nice that people like the comics and send in pictures of themselves as Squirrel Girl, but it’s kind of a distraction from the actual story here.)

Reader, Marvel did not have to change the title to The Only Beaten That One Time Squirrel Girl after this volume. But you knew that already, if you know anything about how comics work. It’s a lot like the first two collections — see my posts on volume one and volume two , if you have some time to waste — showing that the relaunch was entirely pointless. This is sad, but reinforces what I already believe about big corporate comics, so it makes me Schadenfreudenly happy. If you think comics about a superhero with a great attitude, a realistic body, buck teeth, and the proportional whatever of a squirrel would also make you happy, for whatever specific reason, I think you’re probably right. You might as well try it.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.