Tagged: ComicMix

Review: “Air” by G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker

There’s something so unabashedly original about writer G. Willow Wilson that it’s nearly impossible to not enjoy her comics projects, like last year’s graphic novel [[[Cairo]]] and this week’s new series [[[Air]]].

Wilson brings an entirely new voice and outlook to comics, keeping relevant to contemporary culture while digging into issues like terrorism, nationalism and identity. In Air, the focus is on Blythe, a stewardess who has the unfortunate disposition of being afraid of heights.

While a lesser writer might use that gimmick as a crutch, Wilson allows it to simply exist as one aspect of a fully realized world. The focus from the first stunning page (M.K. Perker deserves a lot of credit here) is on the shadowy forces hijacking Blythe’s airplane, and a world of intrigue opens up chaotically.

For such a structured writer (Wilson’s end note on writing is worth a read), she lets the reins go slack a little too much in this issue, with its convoluted narrative and repetitive settings.

With nearly every scene being set in an airport or airplane, it’s difficult to follow the issue’s chronology, though that has the likely intended effect of establishing how confused Blythe is.

Vertigo allowed me to read the first arc of the story, and it takes about that long to gain a sturdy footing in this new world Wilson has created. But it’s an endlessly fun and inventive ride, and by the sixth issue Air appears on the verge of becoming the next great Vertigo book.

If nothing else, it’s deeply ambitious and delightfully new. Of course, I might be biased, as Wilson is a fellow journalist turned comics person.

Van Jensen is a former crime reporter turned comic book journalist. Every Wednesday, he braves Atlanta traffic to visit Oxford Comics, where he reads a whole mess of books for his weekly reviews. Van’s blog can be found at graphicfiction.wordpress.com.

Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Van Jensen directly at van (dot) jensen (at) comicmix (dot) com.

Framing The Question, by John Ostrander

Framing The Question, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • August 21, 2008

There’s a lot of buzz on the Internet this last week stemming from new Image partner Robert Kirkman’s video-taped manifesto calling for … well, I’m not exactly certain what he called for. A subsequent article/interview on Newsarama said it was “a call to arms for fellow creators to focus solely on their original stories, instead of the licensed work from the big two comic book companies, Marvel and DC.” Although he is also quoted later in the article as saying, “I want everyone to understand, I’m not saying no one should aspire to write for Marvel and DC characters … I’m just saying that it shouldn’t be the pinnacle of a comic book career.”

The article adds: “While Kirkman sees contemporary creators who try to do both creator owned works, and books for the big two, he believes they’re hurting their opportunity to succeed with their original stories.” It then quotes Kirkman further: “You can’t put your feet on both sides of the fence you have to take that plunge … if I’m doing Invincible and I’m also writing Spider-Man, and I’m giving fans a choice to try my unknown book, or Spider-Man who they know, they’re going to choose Spider-Man.”

OR … maybe some of those fans try Invincible because they really like what the writer is doing on Spider-Man. The savvy ones follow the talent – whether it’s the writer or the artist. The majority, however, are reading Spider-Man because it’s Spider-Man and it doesn’t matter if a hundred monkeys are typing it – unless the monkeys do something really dumb with it like use a Mephisto ex machina to get rid of a pesky marriage or bring out a clone or something. Stoopid monkey!

The point is … more readers get exposed to the writer as a result of his work on Spider-Man. A fair question to ask is – did the sales go up on Kirkman’s own creator owned books after he started writing the webby wallcrawler at Marvel? If not, then he had no benefit from doing it. If they have gone up, however, then at least part of the reason will be his stint at Marvel.           

As I understand it, Kirkman wants to re-energize/save the comics’ industry. If all the established talent left DC and Marvel, he thinks the two companies would have to “re-focus the majority of their titles to the teen audience.” The established creators would then work on creator owned books, revitalizing the industry.

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Review: ‘Red Colored Elegy’ by Seiichi Hayashi

Review: ‘Red Colored Elegy’ by Seiichi Hayashi

Red Colored Elegy
By Seiichi Hayashi
Drawn & Quarterly, July 2008, $24.95

[[[Red Colored Elegy]]] is like no other manga you’ve ever seen, a blast of pop art- and film-inspired storytelling from 1971 that was hugely influential to a generation of Japanese youth but has never been published in English until now. It’s like the American underground comics of the same era in being a break from the mainstream comics of its place and era, but unlike them – and unlike anything else I’ve seen before [[[RAW]]] in the ‘80s – in its style and visual language.

Sachiko Yamaguchi and Ichiro Nishimoto are a young couple, both connected to the manga/anime world, living together in Tokyo but unsure of what to do with their lives, in the way of all restless young people everywhere. Ichiro wants to be an artist of some kind: he abandoned painting when he couldn’t make a living at it, and quits an animation job to work on a graphic novel that he can’t sell. Sachiko is a tracer for another animation company; she has only the ambitions of a girl in a story by a man: to get married, to have kids, to run a house, to have a life.

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‘Batman: Arkham Asylum’ Game Announced

‘Batman: Arkham Asylum’ Game Announced

  • News
  • August 18, 2008

ComicMix recently commented on the lack of a Batman tie-in game for The Dark Knight movie. Well, we’ve got some follow-up news for you.

According to the Associated Press, it turns out that EA did indeed have developer Pandemic Studios working on a Dark Knight — a fact that ComicMix deduced from online (Dark Knight) detective work months ago. In an informal red carpet interview, Gary Oldman had told cable television’s G4 that he had worked on The Dark Knight game. But development halted at some point before the movie’s release. Basically, EA (and most other media watchers) didn’t think that The Dark Knight was going to be as big as it turned out to be.

Whether or not a game based on The Dark Knight ever gets made, Game Informer magazine has announced a new Batman game in their upcoming September issue: Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Published by Eidos Interactive and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Batman: Arkham Asylum promises to be as dark and gritty as last year’s critical hit Bioshock. Co-written by Paul Dini, the game story is of a prison transfer gone awry and ending with the Joker set loose in halls of Gotham’s infamous asylum for the criminally insane. When the lunatic’s set loose, it’s up to Batman to go in and restore order.

The September issue of Game Informer goes on sale August 18th with two variant covers; one of Batman at the gates of Arkham and one of the Joker in a straight jacket.

Girls Talk: Wall-E, by Lillian Baker and Martha Thomases

Girls Talk: Wall-E, by Lillian Baker and Martha Thomases

  • News
  • August 18, 2008

Even though the newest Pixar feature has been in wide release since the spring, we just got around to seeing it together. Here’s what we thought. The film is about a deserted Earth, abandoned by humans when it got too polluted. Robots were left to clean it up, and only one is still working, the title character, Wall-E.

MT: My husband says that one way to tell an animated movie is good is to see how much it relies upon dialogue for exposition. A really good cartoon doesn’t need words to tell a story. Wall-E, for the first chunk, used hardly any dialogue, just some television news to explain the set-up.

LB: Wall-E has a cockroach friend in this movie. Lots of movies seem to have cockroaches these days, like the movie we reviewed last, Enchanted.

MT: Do you think that’s realistic?

LB: Yeah, I think it could happen. Not the robots trying to take over the spaceship or anything. I don’t think robots can malfunction that badly.

MT: Wall-E is the only robot still working on Earth, and he gets swept away to a spaceship that has people on it when he falls for a robot, Eva, sent to see if there is any plant life on Earth.

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Review: ‘Flight, Vol. 5’ edited by Kazu Kibuishi

Review: ‘Flight, Vol. 5’ edited by Kazu Kibuishi

 Flight, Volume Five
Edited by Kazu Kibuishi
Villard/Random House, July 2008, $25.00

As always, the stories in the annual [[[Flight]]] volume are gorgeous and fun, created by a group of artists who worked on storyboards and other art for animated movies, and Flight is easily the most visually diverse of the new breed of mass-market comics anthologies.

But I can’t help but think that most of these stories are square watermelons – the products of creators trained and taught to run their imaginations down narrow channels to produce upbeat, kid-friendly stories with defined beats and clear morals. Nearly every story in Flight 5 could be seen as the treatment for a big-budget “family” animated movie, and many of them feel explicitly like the first scene or two of such a movie. Even once these guys – and all but two of them are guys, which some people may find notable – have been given the freedom of Flight, they continue to tell stories in that one, confined mode, like so many victims of Stockholm syndrome unwilling to leave their own prisons.

The stories are each well-told, but, as they pile up one after another, the number of naïf protagonists learning about the world (often under mortal peril) become just more variations on the same theme. There’s the fox-like world-saver of Michael Gagne’s “[[[The Broken Path]]],” the anthropomorphic fox-man of Reagan Lodge’s “[[[The Dragon]]],” the self-consciously ironic Bigdome of Paul Rivoche’s “[[[Flowers for Mama]]],” Dave Roman’s series of folks who could all be “The Chosen One,” the probably-delusional child Princess of Pluto in Svetlana Chmakova’s “On the Importance of Space Travel,” and – the youngest and most obvious lesson-telling of all of these – boy hero of Richard Pose’s “Beisbol 2.”

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The Real World, by Mike Gold

The Real World, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • August 18, 2008

In an environment where we debate the finer techniques of villains who travel the galaxy to gobble up planets for lunch, the awesome realities of day-to-day life have a habit of intruding upon our vocations and hobbies. Sometimes, the intrusion of reality shatters us completely.

Last Thursday night, 20 year-old Robbie Greenberger lost his struggle with leukemia, surrounded by his family. That’s a real-world horror of incalculable proportion; as we all know – yet, from time to time, must ignore – that sort of thing happens somewhere to somebody every minute of the day. And there’s no villain afoot to acknowledge our outrage.

Robbie was the son of Robert and Debi Greenberger and brother of Kate. For a long time, Bob was an editor and administrator at DC Comics and at Marvel, and an occasional comics writer. He’s also written a ton of Star Trek novels and stories and is editor of the Famous Monsters of Filmland website. Bob is also part of the ComicMix crew: he’s been involved in behind-the-scenes activities for quite some time (you’ll be seeing the fruits of these labors anon), and he’s contributed nearly 50 articles and columns to our site. He’s a real pro.

I remember when Deb went into labor with Robbie. The father-to-be showed up at DC’s offices, ready for work. I asked him if… well, if he was crazy. No, Bob just wanted something to do while waiting, and he had deadline stuff to clear off. He politely asked if it was okay if he were to leave early to join his wife at the hospital.

Unfortunately, I also remember working with Bob on Thursday. I knew the family was at the hospital with Robbie 24/7, doing what they could, giving Robbie comfort. Through Wi-Fi and cell phone, Bob was able to keep busy and meet his deadlines. There’s a strength there that would put a super-hero to shame.

I don’t know how Bob, Debi and Kate will be able to deal with this. There’s a saying that a parent losing his or her child is life’s greatest tragedy; by definition, you really can’t compare. Life has no “11” on the dial; we all max out at “10.”

But the Greenberger family is not alone, not by any stretch of the imagination. Our love and our support will always be with them.

Contributions in Robbie’s memory may be made to The Tommy Fund for Childhood Cancer, Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital, 20 York Street, New Haven, CT 06511-3202.

Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix, and is proud to have shared many a credits box with Bob Greenberger.

ComicMix Columns & Features for the Week Ending August 17, 2008

ComicMix Columns & Features for the Week Ending August 17, 2008

  • News
  • August 17, 2008

You know, it’s not like the Olympics broadcasters on NBC get paid to talk for a living or anything.  I actually heard one of them exclaim, after Michael Phelps won his record-breaking eighth gold of these 8-8-08 Games, "This has never happened before, and may never happen before!"  I immediately looked around for a TARDIS.  Then again, I keep confusing "Citius, Altius, Fortius" ("Faster, Higher, Stronger") with the opening from the Six Million Dollar Man ("better… faster… stronger") anyway, so there you are.  Meanwhile, ComicMix columnists have been jumping some hurdles of our own for  you:

How can geeks be this into international competition?  Well, when else are you gonna see dressage and badminton and water polo and trampoline?  At least, in between the endless bouts of beach volleyball?

Bigfoot Found, Cryptozoo Crew on the Way… Coincidence?

Bigfoot Found, Cryptozoo Crew on the Way… Coincidence?

  • News
  • August 16, 2008

With all of the recent chatter about Bigfoot being discovered in Georgia, it seems appropriate to mention some big news regarding one of the upcoming series you’ll be seeing here on ComicMix — because if anyone can determine whether that’s a real Bigfoot in the cooler, it’s the Cryptozoo Crew.

Previously published by NBM, writer Allan Gross and artist Jerry Carr’s Cryptozoo Crew is headed to ComicMix for an all-new online series exploring the facts, fables and funny business surrounding mysterious creatures like, for example, Bigfoot. In fact, Gross has promised that the first storyline in the series will involve our ol’ buddy from Georgia — so the timing couldn’t be better, eh?

In case you haven’t been keeping up to snuff with the goings-on of the ‘Crew, here’s a quick synopsis of the series, according to Gross:

The story of CRYPTOZOO CREW is the story of Tork Darwyn and his wife Tara. Tork is a Cryptozoologist. He can understand all the "unknown" animals he discovers, but can never figure out his wife (or wife to be in this origin story). It is a mix of Indiana Jones adventure and Moonlighting/Romancing the Stone type male-female (mars/venus) relationship interaction. All ages appropriate.

What’s more, Gross tells me that Cryptozoo Crew was recently optioned for film adaptation by Alcon Entertainment — so it might be a good idea to get to know Tork and Tara real soon. (Well, before all that fame goes to their heads, that is.)

You can find out more about Cryptozoo Crew on the series’ official website, www.cryptozoocrewonline.com.

 

 

Manga Friday: The Naughty Bits

Manga Friday: The Naughty Bits

  • News
  • August 15, 2008

It’s another one of those weeks when I have to shoo the kids away; this time, Manga Friday looks at three books about sex. (This is all fairly mainstream stuff, not hentai and without any tentacles to be seen. But there are still naked body parts doing their thing, however tastefully.)

What we have this time is three views of sex – one a general guide (in fictional form) for the young and inexperience, and two romances of different genres.

Futari H: Manga Sutra, Vol. 1: Flirtation
By Katsu Aki
Tokyopop, January 2008, $19.99

I think of this as just Manga Sutra, but the title on the cover is Futari H Manga Sutra – and, on the first page, there’s the completely different title Step Up Love Story (which also seems to be the title of the related anime series). To avoid confusion, I’ll just call it Manga Sutra, since that’s what everyone has been and will call it.

This is the story of two very, very sheltered newlyweds – Makoto and Yura Onoda – who had a semi-arranged marriage somewhere in Japan at the age of twenty-five, and who seem to have not even seriously dated anyone before they met each other. Their families, though, are heavily populated with horndogs, and Makoto and Yura are the objects of much unwanted advice. They’re virgins – in the most extreme, literal sense of the word – when they marry, and it takes them about a week to manage to consummate their marriage. Even then, the sex isn’t all that good – Yuka is embarrassed by everything and Makoto has a major problem with premature ejaculation.

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