The Zone 4 podcast crew of Brant Fowler, Gordon Dymowski, and Captain Ron Fortier, return. Episode #230 shines a light on some books and online comics they are enjoying that are not from the “big two,” Marvel and DC. Everything from Dark Horse, to Thrillbent, to Action Lab, to Bottled Lightning and more!
But before all that, there are some headlines. Some of them are pretty heavy, like the Kevin Maguire and Kirby Heirs situations. And some are light, like an actor interested in taking over Iron Man, and Groot being cast. And the crew has some words for Dan DiDio… again! And there are new shout-outs again this week! Plus some plugs.
So hunker down with some bacon bits, put aside your mainstream books, and get ready for some indie goodness. It’s time to enter the Zone!
You can listen to Zone 4 – Episode #230: Non-Big Two Spotlight! here.
You can now find Zone 4 on Stitcher as well!
If I quit my day job, I just might possibly keep up with the output from TwoMorrows Publishing. Sundry regularly published magazines (Alter-Ego, Back Issue, Draw!, etc.), trade paperback and hardcover profiles of significant creators, publishing lines, eras and events – I can’t begin to list them all here. Well, I could, but they do a better job on their own website.
Did I mention they do everything up in both hardcopy and digital? Well, they do, and they’ve made many an otherwise tedious commute into Manhattan a lot more palatable.
I only get to bring to your attention a small fraction of their books. I’m still pissed that travel and work schedules didn’t allow me to review their MattBaker: The Art of Glamour. So, to paraphrase the great Jack Kirby (and, yeah, they also publish The Jack Kirby Collector), just buy it.
Dan Spiegle is a proper legend. As a kid I missed most of his “early” work because I didn’t like westerns (aside from Maverick; lucky for me, Dan drew the comic version) or teevee tie-in comics. Therefore, I missed out on his beautiful Hopalong Cassidy newspaper strip and his work on Lost In Space and other Dell/Gold Key titles. I did latch onto his work in Korak, Green Hornet and Doctor Solar, but he met me more than half-way when he started working at DC Comics in the 1980s (Jonah Hex, Teen Titans, Unknown Soldier). The work he and Mark Evanier did on Blackhawk single-handedly justifies the overworked and overwrought concept of rebooting. He and Evanier (who wrote the introduction to this book) also did one of my all-time favorites of the era: Crossfire, published by Eclipse Comics during the Great Independent Age of Comics.
Dan Spiegle: A Life In Comic Art contains everything you would expect in such a volume: history, index, interviews. It is lavishly illustrated, and, yes, it’s okay to just look at the pictures (yeah; just try that!). There’s eight color pages reprinting some of his watercolors; most of us haven’t seen them before and, damn, are they worth the wait. There’s at least four of them that I would steal if I was clever and fast enough to get away with it.
The Star*Reach Companion is a long-overdue analysis of and tribute to Mike Friedrich’s classic anthology comic. Mike thought it was a great idea to get some of the best people doing comics at the time to create, writer and/or draw stuff that was of a more mature nature – and I don’t necessarily mean salacious – and there “some of the best” includes Neal Adams, Frank Brunner, Howard Chaykin, Steve Ditko, Michael T. Gilbert, Dick Giordano, Steve Leialoha, Marshall Rogers, P. Craig Russell, Dave Sim, Walter Simonson, Ken Steacy, Dave Stevens, Mike Vosburg, Barry Windsor-Smith, John Workman …you get the idea. I’m hard-pressed to think of an anthology series with a better line-up.
Not that a lot of folks didn’t try, and a great many of them were quite, quite good. The Star*Reach Companion covers most of these publications as well, and here it serves an important historical function.
The problem with books like these is that, if they are successful, they leave the reader with a thirst they can never quench. Sure, we can pick up the back issues and the reprint books – and after reading these two, I’ll bet you wind up doing at least a bit of that. If you don’t, you’re missing something.
In fact, this is why I implore comic book stores with large back issue inventories to stock TwoMorrows’ books and magazines. They publish the true comics Who’s Who of What’s What.
Obviously, the honchos at the multi-media behemoth that Marvel Comics has become don’t agree with Mr. Newman’s lyricized sentiment. There was an item on Yahoo’s news site that told all of us who care about such information that Mighty Marvel is planning an Ant-Man movie.
Well, this could be a real creative challenge, because Ant Man was never what you’d consider a game-changing creation. His superpower was…he could shrink, like a cheat suit. But he did retain the strength he had as a full-size dude. Okay, that doesn’t seem like a trope that would suggest myriad storylines and that may be one of the reasons that the original Ant Man didn’t last too long, at least not as Ant Man. After sharing one of Marvel’s Tales to Astonish with the Hulk for a bit, Ant-Man switched personae and became Giant Man, who later called himself Goliath. He was big.
The little-guy-with-big-muscles idea wasn’t originated by Ant-Man’s creative team, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Marvel’s rival, DC, had several heroes who were known, individually, as The Atom. The first, who trod DC’s pages way back in 1940, was Al Pratt and he didn’t change size. He was just not very large, but, boy, was he tough! The second of DC’s Atoms, brought to life during Julius Schwartz’s wholesale reinvention of DC’s superhero pantheon, was Ray Palmer, a scientist whose futzing with some white dwarf star stuff that somehow landed on Earth enabled him to shrink while retaining his molecular mass, a stunt he apparently shared with Ant-Man. (This, by the way,explains what happens to the mass that’s apparently lost in the shrinkage. It doesn’t go anywhere, it just gets more dense. You science lovers satisfied now?)
There have been several additional versions of both Ant-Man and the Atom since the originals moved on. But I’m a silver age guy so I’ll ignore them. (And if any of them don’t like it, they can just go get shrunk.)
Back to the movie. The film makers told a convention audience that, though the flick will have humor, it won’t be a spoof. And that causes me to want to see it. The other superhero entertainments, past and present, delivered what we expected. Some of them delivered it extraordinarily well, but they didn’t stray too far from the basic good guy’s-powers-defeat-bad-guy’s powers structure, nor should they. But Ant-Man might prompt a different approach – present a challenge to which the film guys can rise. Watching them do that might be worth a trip to the multiplex.
RECOMMENDED READING: (You thought we were done with Iron Man? Not quite, Bucko.) Inventing Iron Man, by E. Paul Zehr and Warren Ellis.
The Inhumans were one of the last great creations by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Beginning with Medusa, introduced in Fantastic Four #36 in 1965, the full complement showed up nine months later. They were another branch of humanity, although it was a long time before readers learned the full story, especially as succeeding writers found new ways to tie them in to the evolving Marvel Universe cosmology. They were a fascinating, colorful bunch but each time they received their own series, it never quite caught on. Still, that hasn’t stopped people from trying, including Paul Jenkins who brought a radical approach to the race for the fourth attempt in 2003. His twelve issue maxiseries was drawn by Jae Lee, propelling him into the spotlight.
Jenkins focused on what the societal structure of Attilan, must be like. We knew previously of Black Bolt and the royal family, but we also came to know that there is a subservient class of Alpha Primitives. The maxiseries contrasts relations between the Inhumans and the mutants along with the Inhumans and the world governments. To tell the story, he focused on a group of teens as they undergo Terrigenesis, a rite of passage that exposes each to the Terrigan Mists, which unlocks their special genetic heritage.
Stirring the unrest among the Primitives is one young Inhuman, an outcast from their society. Stirring unrest among the governments is the king’s insane brother Maximus the Mad. And yes, there’s an insidious connection between the two. Various governments covet the high tech prowess possessed by the Inhumans while Black Bolt just wants to live apart from humanity. Geopolitics, fueled by family infighting, ignites and propels the story.
This was adapted into a series of motion comics shorts that ran online a while back and has been collected onto DVD by Shout! Factory. As with the other motion comics, the process is a modern day version of the 1960s Marvel cartoons with the artwork lifted from the comics and limited animation added. Jae Lee’s artwork does not lend itself well to the process and the modifications to his work by others are evident.
Jenkins’ story, already episodic, breaks into neat chapters and flows nicely. He clearly has his favorites such as Karnak the Shatterer, and doesn’t know what to do with others such as Triton and Crystal. In the center remains the mute Black Bolt, long-suffering sovereign of a people that cannot find lasting peace. He also gives new characters to embrace such as Tonaja, one of the newest Inhumans and Rexel Toiven, who considers himself an outcast and decides to take his problems to the world governments in the name of his king. Of course, the humans fight back and Attilan is brought to the brink of a global war. With Maximus stirring up the Primitives, Black Bolt has his gloved hands full.
As befit Marvel Knights at the time, this is a darker take on the Marvel Universe and their allegorical themes. In this case, the Inhumans stand in for the standard fear of mutants but there are several other themes Jenkins explores and does well, although the comic actually does a better job with this aspect.
I wish I could explain it, but as usual, the vocal talent here is lackluster although better than most of the other motion comics from Marvel. Brian Drummond’s Maximus gets an A.
Shout! merely collects the chapters without editing them into a seamless movie so you get each installment’s recap and by the midpoint it feels very repetitious. The 132 minute running time could have been streamlined and the story made stronger in the process.
Unlike some of the other DVDs in the series, this one comes with A Look Back At The Inhumans with fresh interviews from Jenkins and then-Marvel Knights chief and now Chief Creative officer Joe Quesada. Jenkins does a nice job talking about the motivations for the project, his thoughts on the Inhumans as characters in the Marvel Universe, and writing the maxiseries. Quesada is a bit more generic and rah rah.
Because his parents were shot down? Really? I mean… really?
That’s weak. Even for an obsessive-compulsive who’s borderline psychotic, that’s just silly. He’s got a belt full of lethal weapons, he’s got more in his car, and even more in his cave. And, speaking of OCD, they all have the same first name.
So, why doesn’t Batman use a gun?
Because it’s boring. It’s visually boring, and comics is a visual storytelling medium.
If the Joker comes running at him, he can whip out his Batgun and splatter the walls with green hair. Or he can start off a nifty three-page fight sequence.
Well, he can also whip out his Batarang and separate the crown from the clown, but that’s just one long panel. It might be entertaining if we were in one of those once-every-generation 3-D fads, but those fads never last long.
Let’s try it again.
The Red Skull is out after Captain America. Cap whips around and:
A) Shoots him, obviously in self-defense and likely saving the lives of dozens if not hundreds of innocents to come, or
B) Frisbees his mighty shield across the page and leaps upon the evil bastard and pummels the poo out of the guy, who even in defeat, manages to escape.
Yeah. What would Jack Kirby do?
Superheroes are not anti-gun because they are possessed by the liberal media. Superheroes don’t use guns because it’s unexciting storytelling. Gunplay in superhero comics is visually boring.
Police use guns because they are not paid by the panel and they have some concern over what their spouses are making for dinner. Taking the longer view, our military uses guns for much the same reason. In their world, visual excitement will likely get them killed.
A few weeks back, an esteemed colleague of mine (oddly enough this time, not Mike Gold…) pitched a debate for my podcast: “Have nerds won? And if they have… is it a good thing?” Well, it was a great idea, and the debate on my show was fairly one sided. Now, after plenty of time to steep on the topic, I can plainly state my opinion; we have, and it is.
DC released Young Romance this week, using the title of one of the overlooked and (imho) underappreciated gems of comics history, the seminal romance comic that was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and was published from 1947 to 1975. I’m old enough to remember many of the stories contained within those pages; they were attuned to the morals of the times, and regularly told tales of unrequited love, of compromised love, and of love triumphant.
The characters were easily identifiable: there was the bad girl, the bad boy, the good girl, and the good boy.
The bad girl (think Betty Rizzo in Grease) smoke and/or drank, wore too much makeup and perfume, wore incredibly slinky dress that didn’t leave much to the imagination, preyed on other women’s men, and was quite free with her, uh, favors. Not that anything was ever shown except for kisses, but somehow Simon and Kirby – especially Kirby with his magnificent art – definitely got the message across of what followed that forbidden kiss off-panel, even to a young and innocent girl like me.
I always rooted for the bad girl.
The bad boy (think Johnny Strabler in The Wild One) smoke and/or drank, rode a Harley or drove a wicked muscle car with fins, wore a leather jacket with a one-size-too-small undershirts and jeans, had a ducktail and a comb, dropped out of high school and worked at the gas station, and was always hot for the good girl.
I always wanted the bad boy.
The good girl was a secretary or a librarian or a nurse or a high school senior or a college freshman. She wore modest clothes and flats, pink lipstick, no jewelry except for her grandmother’s pearls, and never smoked or drank.
She was so boring.
The good boy was a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer or the BMOC (big man on campus) or the high school football team’s star quarterback. He wore a suit and tie or chinos and a windbreaker, never showed body hair, and always obeyed the speed limit in a Chevrolet or Oldsmobile – definitely your father’s car – and above all respected the good girl and would safely see her to the door after a date and say good night with a chaste kiss, saving “the act” for the marriage bed.
No thanks.
My preference for the “little bit of naughty” also made me veer towards those characters in the superhero world, caped and non-, that I imagined had some, uh, good times, whennot saving the world.
I think Adam Strange’s relationship with Alanna moved quite quickly into intimacy, even before they were married. After all, Adam could not control when the Zeta-beam would either take him to the planet Rann or return him to Earth, so there was no time like the present, right? Though I do hope that that damn Zeta-beam didn’t snatch Adam away right at wrong time, if you know what I mean, for Alanna’s sake.
Certainly Sun Boy, a.k.a. Dirk Morgana, was an out-and-out roué: check out a little story called Triangle in Legion Of Super-Heroes #320, February 1985, a tale I dialogued over Paul Levitz’s plot, with artwork by penciler Dan Jurgens, inker Karl Kessel, letterer Adam Kubert, and colorist Shelly Eiber. But I always had a thing for Rokk Krin, a.k.a. Cosmic Boy. Maybe it was the black hair and the blue eyes, but there was just something about Rokk – I knew he was not above stopping by the 30th century’s version of the Bada Bing or hitting on the boss’s wife. And succeeding.
I know the newest couple in comicdom is Kal-El of Krypton and Diana of Themiscrya, but the pairing of these two, the classic “good boy” and “good girl” of DC, just doesn’t float my boat, y’know. Now Diana’s mother, Hippolyta… that’s a woman whom I suspect walked a bit on the wicked side in her youth. She just too worldly just knows life, with all its ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies, too well. It’s in the way she holds herself, the way she talks, the way she rules.
Lana Lang may have started as a “good girl” in Smallville, but I think once she left home she had some fun. Getting over Superman throwing her over for Lois, she let the “bad girl” come out in college, cutting classes, never missing a beer bash, smoking the ganja, and saying yes to whoever asked. As an adult she may be the “sadder-but-wiser-girl,” but damn, the woman knew how to party.
And of course there’s Selena Kyle, who brings home the bacon and fries it up in a pan. Hey, the lady knows what she wants. I’d like to see her paired up with Wolverine, the “bad boy” of comics. Hard-drinkin’, hard smokin’ Logan hooking up with Catwoman.
Comics About Cartoonists • Edited by Craig Yoe •192 pages • $39.99 retail in hardcover • IDW Publishing, on sale January 22nd
The creative life has its own circle of hell. The blank page, the blank canvas, the empty stage, all exist to remind us of our failure. When one is a professional with a deadline, the taunting is even more painful.
For those of us in the audience, it can also be excruciating. I don’t like songs about how difficult it is to be a rock star. I don’t like novels about how misunderstood teaching assistants can’t get laid.
But then it can also be fun. The Stunt Man is a wonderful movie about making movies. My Favorite Yearis a laff riot about writing television shows, and it’s one of my favorites. All That Jazz? It’s show time!
And now, Craig Yoe has put together an anthology of comics about creating comics, Comics About Cartoonists. It collects sketches and finished stories, newspaper strips and comic book covers from some of the most celebrated creators of the last century.
The book has comedy, horror, and romance. It has work by Jack Kirby, Winsor McKay, Steve Ditko, Ernie Bushmiller, Jack Cole, Al Capp, Milton Caniff, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Charles Schulz and lots, lots more. It has deep personal insight into the real lives of working stiffs, and also what happens to cartoonists when aliens attack.
To meet this deadline, I read the whole thing in one sitting, and that’s not something I would recommend to you, Constant Reader. There are only a few plots. Cartoonist has no idea, so he fells asleep and his characters have an adventure. Cartoonist isn’t appreciated by his editor. Cartoonist stumbles on plans for an alien invasion. Beautiful girl doesn’t realize that the dumpy guy who looks like the cartoonist is beautiful on the inside. I’m sure I would have enjoyed these stories more if I read them one at a time, instead of in a lump.
And then, it has Basil Wolverton, with a story that not only exhibits his energetic wit and exuberance, but dialogue that is so much fun it should be read out loud. I would pay for Childish Gambino to record it.
My favorite comic stories about comics were the ones Cary Bates and Elliott S. Maggin wrote themselves into with the Justice League. Yoe also doesn’t include Grant Morrison’s appearances in Animal Man. The rights were most likely not available, and all of these are too self-consciously meta for the book’s shaggy-dog aesthetic.
On the other hand, the book’s endpapers are old ads promising to teach you — yes, you! — how to make big money and attract beautiful women as a cartoonist. “Cartoon Your Way to Popularity and Profit” says one ad that goes on to promise you a “Laugh Finder.” That ad alone is darker and more meta than anything on the market today.
When I was a kid, comics were all I thought about. There was no better time in my day than when I was finished all my crap schoolwork and was able to turn my attention to the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man or Batman
I was a child of DC but soon I was just as vested in Marvel as I was in DC. I remember when Kirby left Marvel to do the Fourth World books at DC. That to me at the time was as big a deal as Obama becoming the first black President is now.
Really.
Kirby coming to DC was Huge. I’ll never forget when I got my first issue of the Forever People and saw Kirby’s Here on the cover.
Comics golden age for me was the second silver age. That second silver age was Walt Simonson’s Thor, Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!, Frank Miller’s Daredevil, Marvel’s Secret Wars, The Killing Joke, the Dark Knight, The Watchmen and about another dozen or so titles.
I freely admit that I’m biased in my thinking about comics and what’s important and what’s not. I also freely admit that I have no right nor do have any influence over what you may think.
But…
In my day I think comics were better than they are today.
That’s my opinion and I’m welcome to it but consider the following before you dismiss me, are you tired of new universes and new number ones?
In my day a number one was the Holy Grail of the comic book world.
Now?
New number ones are as common as a new Kardashian lover and just as relevant.
While I’m on the subject, Kim Kardashian has no talent and contributes nothing to the world, yet millions of people hang on her every stupid move. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for her milking America for millions of dollars when she has no value whatsoever.
That’s not a joke, I respect anyone who can figure out a way to milk millions from people with absolutely no talent or value. Again I’m not kidding I respect that kind of moxey.
But…
Come the (bad word here) on, what does she or her family contribute except some of them have really nice tits? Oh and yes, I’d hit that but that’s beside the point. She and her family really have no significance in the real world.
Comics on the other hand do have significance in the real world.
How so you ask?
A hundred years from now Superman will still be relevant. Kim? She may not be relevant in two years. I know this for sure because America has a way of waking up to bullshit. It may take a moment but soon perhaps very soon the country and world will see that the Emperor (Empress?) has no clothes.
How do I know this for sure? Two words: Paris Hilton.
But I digress (thinking about you, Peter). I maintain that the comics in my day were better than the comics today and what follows are my admittedly flawed arguments.
When ever a comic universe goes to a new number one that erases the vast history of what was gone before. It’s a ‘do over’ and a ‘screw you’ to fans that loved the universe at the same time. When Marvel did Secret Wars and DC did Crisis those were really massive events but they were not do overs or a screw you to fans. Those were events that changed the universe not events that discarded the universe.
They were also the kind of events you talked about for years because they really were events.
Now an event is talked about until the next event, two, three weeks later.
B L A M!! R I M S H O T !! I’m here all week! Try the veal! Herman Cain, try the watermelon!
When Marv Wolfman killed Barry Allen (something to this day I have not forgiven him for) I felt that lost. When Stan Lee killed Gwen Stacy I felt I had lost a girlfriend. Now these sort of deaths are commonplace and it my humble opinion it’s because of Superman.
When Superman “died” no one and I mean no one in the comic book world thought for a second he was really dead. The only people who thought he was really dead were the suckers who brought 50 copies thinking one day they would be worth millions.
BAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
If you can kill the most important superhero in the history of the industry then everything and I mean everything is fair game.
But…
That fair game seems to be monthly now. When DC killed Superman it, at the time, was a bold move designed to boost the icon’s lagging sales. Now characters dying, coming out of the closet, going over to the dark side, etc. is no longer an event it’s as common as the Cubs not making the World Series. The Cubs suck; that’s why they don’t make the series. Comic book creators don’t suck; comic book creators are better than the bullshit event like Archie kissing a black girl.
What the heck was that anyway? Archie Andrews pulling a black girl? Talk about imaginary stories.
Yes, I’m quite aware that the audience today is not me. Yes, there are books being done today that quite frankly are works of art and literary genius. Yes, some books today have transcended comics, TV and film and become part of what fuels movements.
But…
Forget all of that. In my day comics were better and that is that.
It’s the end of the year, so it’s time for still another mindless list of favorites – maintaining a cloying, egotistical annual tradition throughout the media. Once again, here are my self-imposed rules: I’m only listing series that either were ongoing or ran more than six issues, I’m not listing graphic novels or reprints as both compete under different criteria, I’m not covering Internet-only projects as I’d be yanking the rug out from under my pal Glenn Hauman, and I’m listing only nine because tied for tenth place would be about two dozen other titles and I’ve only got so much bandwidth. Besides, “nine” is snarky and when it comes to reality, I am one snarky sumbytch – but only for a living. On Earth-Prime, I’m really a sweet, kind, understanding guy.
Having said all that, let’s open that hermetically sealed jar on the porch of Funk and Wagnalls and start.
1. Manhattan Projects. If I had to write a Top 9 of the Third Millennium list, I’d be hard pressed not to include this title. It’s compelling, it’s different, it’s unpredictable and it’s brilliantly executed by writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Nick Pitarra. It turns out the scientists and the military leaders behind the creation and the execution of the Atomic Bomb had a lot more in mind than just nuking Japan… a lot more. And their plans run decades longer than World War II. Based largely upon real-life individuals who are too dead to litigate, each person seems to have his own motivations, his own ideas for execution, and his own long-range plan for how to develop the future. Yet the story never gets bogged down in political posturing or self-amusing cuteness – the latter being a real temptation for many creators. Each issue gives us the impression there’s more than meets the eye; each successive issue proves there most certainly was. If the History Channel spun off a Paranoia Network, Manhattan Projects would be its raison d’être.
2. Hawkeye. If you’ll pardon the pun, Hawkeye has never been more than a second-string character. An interesting guy with an involving backstory and enough sexual relationships to almost fill a Howard Chaykin mini-series, this series tells us what Clint Barton does when he’s not being an Avenger or a S.H.I.E.L.D. camp follower. It turns out Clint leads a normal-looking life that gets interfered with by people who think Avengers should be Avengers 24/7. He’s also got a thing going with the Young Avenger who was briefly Hawkeye. Matt Fraction and David Aja bring forth perhaps the most human interpretation of a Marvel character in a long, long while. Hawkeye might be second-string, but Clint Barton most certainly is not.
3. Captain Marvel. Another second-string character. Despite some absolutely first-rate stories (I’m quite partial to Jim Starlin’s stuff, as well as anything Gene Colan or Gil Kane ever put pencil to paper), the guy/doll never came close to the heritage of its namesake. This may have changed. A true role model for younger female readers and a very military character who uniquely humanizes the armed forces, Carol Danvers finally soars under writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Dexter Soy – both as a superhero and as a human being. DeConnick doesn’t qualify as “new” talent, but this certainly is a breakthrough series that establishes her as a truly major player… as it does Marvel’s Captain Marvel.
4. Creator-Owned Heroes. Anthology comics are a drag upon the direct sales racket. They almost never succeed. I don’t know why; there’s usually as much story in each individual chapter as there is in a standard full-length comic. I admire anybody who choses to give it a whirl (hi, there, honorary mention Mike Richardson and company for Dark Horse Presents!), and I really liked Creator-Owned Comics. Yep, liked. It’s gone with next month’s eighth issue. But this one was a lot more than an anthology comic: it had feature articles, how-to pieces, and swell interviews. The work of Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Steve Niles, Steve Bunche and a cast of dozens (including swell folks like Phil Noto and Darwin Cooke), there wasn’t a clinker in the bunch. I wouldn’t mind seeing follow-ups on any of the series featured in this title, although I must give a particular nod to Jimmy and Justin’s Killswitch, a take on modern contract killers, and on Steve’s work in general. This is no light praise: I’m not a big fan of horror stories because most of them have been done before and redone a thousand times after that. Niles is quite the exception.
5. Batman Beyond Unlimited. Okay, this is a printed collection of three weekly online titles: Batman Beyond, Justice League Beyond, and Superman Beyond. But it comes out every month in a sweet monthly double-length printed comic, so it meets my capricious criteria. Based upon the animated DC Universe (as in, the weekly series Batman Beyond and Justice League, and to a lesser extent others), these stories are solid, fun, and relatively free of the angst that has overwhelmed the so-called real DCU stories. Yeah, kids can enjoy them. So can the rest of the established comics audience. Pull the stick out of your ass; there’s more to superhero comics than OCD heroes and death and predictable resurrection. These folks have just about the best take on Jack Kirby’s Fourth World characters than anybody since Jack Kirby. That’s because Jack remembered comics are supposed to be entertaining. Honorable mention: Ame-Comi Girls. It’s based on a stupid (but successful) merchandising idea but it’s just as much fun as anything being published today.
6. Batgirl. O.K. The real story here is that DC Comics mindlessly offed writer Gail Simone from this series only to restore her within a week or so after serious (and occasionally, ah, overly dramatic) protest from both the readership and the creative community. But there was good reason: Gail took a character who was in an impossible situation and, against all tradition, put her back in the costume without resorting to ret-con or reboot, which have been the handmaidens of the New 52. She brought Barbara Gordon back to action with all the doubts, insecurities and vulnerabilities one would expect a person in her position to have, and she does so in a compelling way exercising all of her very considerable talent. This title thrives despite being engulfed in two back-to-back mega-non-events that overwhelmed and undermined all of the Batman titles.
7. Orchid. I praised this one last year; it comes to an end with issue 12 next month. That’s because writer/creator/musician/activist Nightwatchman Tom Morello has a day job and the young Wobblie still has a lot of rabble to rouse. Orchid is a true revolutionary comic book wherein a growing gaggle of the downtrodden stand up for themselves against all odds and unite to defeat the omnipresent oppressor. Tom manages to do this without resorting to obvious parallels to real-life oppressors, although the environment he creates will be recognizable to anybody who thinks there just might be something wrong with Fox “News.” But this is a comic book site and not the place for (most of) my social/political rants (coughcough). Orchid succeeds and thrives as a story with identifiable, compelling characters and situations and a story that kicks ass with the energy and verve one would expect from a rock’n’roller like Morello.
8. Revival. A somewhat apocalyptic tale about people who come back from the dead in the fairly isolated city of Wausau Wisconsin (I’ve been there several times; it is a city and it is indeed fairly isolated). But they aren’t zombies. Most are quite affable. It’s the rest of the population that’s got a problem. The latest output from Tim Seeley and my landsman Mike Norton, two enormously gifted talents. Somewhere above I noted how Steve Niles is able to raise well above the predictable crap and that is equally true here: the story and formula is typical, but the execution is compelling. That I’ve been a big fan of Norton’s is no surprise to my friends in Chicago.
9. Nowhere Men. I’ve got to thank my ComicMix brother Marc Alan Fishman for this one. Admittedly, it’s only two issues old and it has its flaws – long prose insertions almost always bring the pace of visual storytelling to a grinding halt – but the concept and execution of this series far exceeds this drawback. Written by Eric Stephenson and drawn by Nate Bellegarde and Jordie Bellaire, the catch phrase here is “Science Is The New Rock ‘N’ Roll.” Four guys start up a science-for-the-people company and that’s cool, but twenty years later some have taken it too seriously, others not seriously enough, and things got a little out of hand. Sadly, I’m not certain who understands that, other than the reader and one of the major characters. Science is the new rock’n’roll, and exploring that as a cultural phenomenon makes for a great story – and a solid companion to Manhattan Projects.
Non-Self-Publisher of the Year: For some reason, I’m surprised to say it’s Image Comics. They’ve been publishing many of the most innovative titles around – four of the above nine – all creator-owned, without going after licensed properties like a crack-whore at a kneepad sale.
No offense meant to either publishers or crack-whores; I said I’m really a sweet, kind, understanding guy.
