Tagged: Paul Kupperberg

MIKE GOLD’s Top 10 Comics Of 2011

It’s the end of the year and everybody’s got their Top 10 list, and since I went to journalism school I’m obligated to list mine. I’m looking at titles that were released in 2011 because cover dates are meaningless. I’m not looking at original graphic novels or reprint projects, even though in dollar volume they constitute the majority of my purchases. Besides, original graphic novels are done to very different standards. Finally, some of these titles are done by friends of mine; I refuse to disqualify them because they just might buy me lunch. Having said all that…

#1 – Life With Archie Magazine (Archie)

Top of my list for the second year straight. Two stories – Archie marries Veronica, Archie marries Betty. Parallel worlds which converge, but that’s not why this book is great. There’s very real character development here, layered on personalities that existed for 70 years without it. We watch them grow, not into adults, but as adults. Better still, the most interesting character in both series is Reggie Mantle! Paul Kupperberg writes this, with art from Norm Breyfogle, Fernando Ruiz, Pat and Tim Kennedy and a host of others.

#2 – Tiny Titans (DC)

If you see this as a kid’s comic, that’s great, particularly if you’re a kid. If you see this as a brilliant loving satire of DC Comics and its convoluted universe, that’s great too, particularly if you’re an “adult.” Art Baltazar and Franco are pushing towards 50 issues here, and there ain’t a clunker in the bunch.

#3 – Elric: The Balance Lost (Boom)

Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion has been in the hands of a lot of comics creators and a lot of comics publishers, and the output has been… inconsistent. This latest series is among the very best: all of the various shades of Elric are here, and interweaved through the storyline are very contemporary elements and environs. Good stuff from Chris Roberson and Francesco Biagini.

#4 – Daredevil (Marvel)

Once again, Mark Waid does what he does best: he takes a well-established character that, like all well-established comics characters, has been covered in paint about a dozen too many times and strips it back down to the wall, preserving everything that made the character work while imbuing it with a contemporary environment. On this series, he’s going just that – and he’s doing it better than ever. Penciler Marcos Martin ain’t no slouch, neither. This is a real superhero book.

#5 – Justice League Dark (DC)

This one’s my surprise of the year. While very little of DC’s New 52 answers the question “why bother,” this one takes a bunch of characters of a somewhat mystical nature and thrusts them, Justice League like, into a trauma vastly larger than any one of them… and maybe all of them. Sort of like The Defenders, with all the style and John Constantine’s wit. Peter Milligan’s DC work has been inconsistent for me (I tend to prefer his U.K. work), but I’m glad I checked this one out. Mikel Jann draws the series. Very different… and very good.

#6 – Fly (Zenoscope)

I reviewed Raven Gregory and Eric J’s series about a recreational drug that gives kids the power to fly way back here. I liked it then, I like it now. Of course it’s out in trade paperback, so if you blew me off in August, give it a shot now.

#7 – Red Skull (Marvel)

Retrofitting a backstory onto a well-established character is a gambit that is often ill conceived and, worse, boring. Not this one. Greg Pak and Mirko Colak take us back to the villain’s adolescence where we learn – definitively – where his allegiances truly lie… and why. The fact that it’s got the best covers I’ve seen on a mini-series in a long while doesn’t hurt, either.

#8 – Batgirl (DC)

I don’t have a clue about how this series fits into any continuity, current or past. I’m told it does. What I do know is that this is a series about a young woman who’s trying to reestablish herself as a superhero after enduring traumas that shattered her body and soul. She’s not necessarily great at being a superhero, but she’s giving it all she’s got. This is exactly what I expect out of Gail Simone, and that is a very high standard. Adrian Syaf offers solid and exciting storytelling.

#9 – Action Comics (DC)

I went here because of Rags Morales’ art – I’d buy Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes if Rags drew the box – and I stayed for Grant Morrison’s innovative and engrossing script. This is the all-new young Superman, before he figured out what to wear on the job. It’s set well before the all-new older Superman in his eponymous title. I don’t know how this leads up to that, and I don’t care. This is supposed to hold up on its own, and it does. I’ll get over the slap in history’s face with the numbering (if such lasts); this is the best-produced Superman title in a decade-and-a-half.

#10 – To my friends who didn’t make this list: each of you came in tied for #10. Now go fight it out.

Notice how there aren’t any teevee or movie tie-ins? I never warmed up to that stuff. Not even as a kid. Which means it took me a while to realize Steve Ditko actually drew Hogan’s Heroes.

I have no doubt that within weeks at least two of the above-named will start to suck. Like all commercial media, comic books are subject to the whims of the lords and ladies of irony. But as a professional cynic, these titles and perhaps another half-dozen meet and exceed my bizarrely encrusted standards. Your opinions might differ, and that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wrong.

Of course not.

Extra: Happy birthday wishes to fellow columnist Marc Alan Fishman, who turns 30 today and, therefore, is old enough to know better. His son turns 0 in about a month.

Extra-Extra: Thanks to Gatekeeper Glenn for saving my life this year.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

COMING FROM MOONSTONE MARCH 2012

The LONE RANGER Chronicles
Authors: James Reasoner, Johnny D. Boggs, Denny O’Neil
Edited: Matthew Baugh, Tim Lasiuta
Cover: David Palumbo
6″ x 9″, 288pgs, $18.95
978-1-936814-23-7

THE FIRST EVER COLLECTION of NEW Lone Ranger prose stories!

The masked ex-Texas Ranger and his Native American companion Tonto fight injustice in the Wild West!
Stories include meetings with The Cisco Kid, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, as well as the origin of Tonto and the origin of Silver!

Authors include Spur Award winner Johnny D Boggs, James Reasoner, Alex Award winner Mel Odom, Anthony Award winner Bill Crider, Matthew Baugh, Tim Lasiuta, Joe Gentile, Paul Kupperberg, Denny O’Neil, Kent Conwell, David McDonald, Thom Brannon,  Spur Award winner Troy D. Smith, Chick Dixon, and Richard Dean Starr.

The LONE RANGER Chronicles HCAuthors: James Reasoner, Johnny D. Boggs, Denny O’Neil
Edited: Matthew Baugh, Tim Lasiuta
Cover: Ruben Procopio
6″ x 9″, 304pgs, $29.95
978-1-936814-22-0

Exclusive HC Bonus: “75 years of the Lone Ranger”

The SPIDER: Shadow of Evil Author: CJ Henderson
Cover: J. Anthony Kosar
4″ x 6″, 190pgs, $6.99
978-1-936814-20-6

The first new Spider novel in 65 years picks up where the last left off, packed to the gills with the greatest slam-bang action ever penned by master pulpster CJ Henderson!

Richard Wentworth, the Spider, wonders if his long struggle against the forces of evil has been worth it? Should he continue, or grab for personal happiness before his time runs out? Then, at the moment he makes his decision, fate unleashes the most hellish horrors against New York City of all time!

The SPIDER: Shadow of Evil HC6″ x7″, 210pgs, $22.99
978-1-936814-19-0
Author: CJ Henderson
Cover: J. Anthony Kosar

Bonus HC feature: an exclusive brand new hard-boiled Ed Race (“the Masked Marksman”) story by Rich Harvey!

The SPIDER: Slaughter, Inc. Author: Donald Cormack
Cover: Stephen Bryant
6″ x 9″, 190pgs, $14.95
978-1-936814-21-3

For the FIRST time anywhere…the last Spider pulp novel ever written…is published as an actual Spider novel!

A criminal genius has created an organization to sell murder where innocents are fingered for the crimes. When Nita Van Sloan is framed for murder, the Spider must infiltrate the cartel in disguise and clean house!

The HONEY WEST files vol.1 sc Author: G. G. Fickling
600pgs, 6″ x 9″, SC, $23.99
978-1-93681-17-6

The first female private eye is back in action: a volatile combination of Marilyn Monroe and Mike Hammer!
First appearing in 1957, Honey went on to star in eleven novels and the successful 1965 TV show starring Anne Francis, as well as the current series of comic books from Moonstone!

For the FIRST TIME anywhere, the original Honey West novels will be reprinted in one series of books!
Most of the books are long out of print, so here’s your chance to catch her!
In this volume: “This Girl for Hire”, “A Gun for Honey”, and “Girl on the Loose”.

PHASES of the MOON: Full Moon Conclusion!Story: Paul D. Storrie, CJ Henderson, Earl Mac Rauch
Art: Nathan Stockman, Glen Fernandez
Cover: Andy Black
48pgs, PC, $4.99
The conclusion to the decade-spanning craziest serial-killer saga of all time, starring SHEENA: QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE! What started with The Spider, Domino Lady, Honey West, Kolchak and others…ends here!

*Plus a recently uncovered BUCKAROO BANZAI part of this tale!
*Plus an epilogue starring KOLCHAK, as years later he uncovers the even more startling truth behind the lies!

For more on Moonstone Books, visit http://www.moonstonebooks.com/.

NYCC: There and Back Again

NYCC: There and Back Again

Cover of "The Essential Batman Encycloped...

Cover of The Essential Batman Encyclopedia

My time at the New York Comic-Con has come and gone and a good time was had.

As expected, I had countless whirlwind 30-60 second conversations with people, shaking hands, hugging, kissing, and making rather merry. There were some extended conversations and a few business meetings which was nice.

I arrived early enough on Thursday that getting my badge was a breeze and wish more shows were so well staffed. I began running into people I knew the moment I entered the Jacob Javits Center and was delighted. My first appointment was with an editor about a project I can begin talking about next week. We got to know one another beyond the e-mails and phone calls and I think we got along just swell. She then snuck me onto the show floor two and a half hours early so I got a chance to wander and chat with some people who were going to be otherwise mobbed the remainder of the weekend.

Sure enough, once the doors opened to the four-day pass holders and professionals at 4, the aisles quickly filled and moving around was far less fluid. I did make a point of checking booths that had my stuff on display and was pleased to note DelRey had both The Essential Batman Encyclopedia and The Essential Superman Encyclopedia out for the fans. Across the way, Watson-Guptill had Stan Lee’s How to Write Comics out. And just arrived at the TwoMorrows booth were the first copies of Stan Lee’s Universe, where I acted as a consulting editor in the project’s final weeks (and a spiffy looking book it is, too).

(more…)

Let Them Talk

letthemtalk-300x175-2694018Let Them Talk
Hugh Laurie
Produced by Joe Henry Warner Bros. Records

Let us stipulate up front that Hugh Laurie is an insanely talented individual. He’s a comedian, a comic actor, a dramatic actor, a comedy writer, a novelist, plays piano, guitar, and percussion, and, apparently, deep down in his soul, according to the liner notes of Let Them Talk, he’s also an 80-year old, gravelly-voiced Negro ex-sharecropper blues singer.

Sure. Why not?

Most of us think he’s a dyspeptic American medical miracle man (hearing his acceptance speech for his Emmy win as Dr. House, my ex-wife, who knew Hugh Laurie only from House and Stuart Little, asked, “Why is he putting on an English accent?”), so why couldn’t this British born, Oxford and Cambridge educated actor also be Jellyroll Morton?

In Let Them Talk, Hugh Laurie sings the blues, and if he ain’t Jellyroll Morton (and who could be?), he dives into these classic numbers as though he wished he could be. “These great and beautiful artists lived it as they played it,” Laurie writes in the liner notes. “But at the same time, I could never bear to see this music confined to a glass cabinet, under the heading Culture: Only To Be Handled By Elderly Black Men. That way lies the grave, for the blues and just about everything else: Shakespeare only performed at The Globe, Bach only played by Germans in tights. It’s formaldehyde, and I pray that Leadbelly will never be dead enough to warrant that.”

Laurie offers his credentials for playing the blues: a lifelong love for the music and its performers, “I love this music, as authentically as I know how.” The love is there, and combined with some of the abovementioned insane talent, Let Them Talk comes across with some new takes on the old blues worth listening to.

“St. James Infirmary Blues” opens with a quiet, almost symphonic rendition of this great, mournful song that eventually slides into a more traditional take that sets the tone for the rest of the album. The high points include “Swanee River,” the Stephen Foster classic that Laurie weaves with the swinging, piano pounding verve of a Jerry Lee Lewis and Craig Eastman’s haunting violin accompaniment; the energetic power of Robert Johnson’s “They’re Red Hot”; the lazy Ferdinand Joseph Morton composition, “Winin’ Boys Blues,” Cosimo Matassa’s “Tipitina,” and the simple, crisp pickings on Arthur Phelps’ “Police Dog Blues.”

Joining Laurie are such guest vocalists as Dr. John on the Harry Creamer and Turner Layton classic “After You’ve Gone,” which pays no uncertain homage to the 1928 Bessie Smith and later Mac Rebennack recordings; Irma Thomas on the soulful “John Henry,” and Sir Tom Jones (yes, that Tom Jones), plaintively begging “Baby Please Make A Change,” by Armenta Bo, Carter Chatmon/Alonzo Lonnie Chatmon.

For the most part, Laurie’s voice carries him through, but polish and sophistication were never a perquisite for singing the blues. We can forgive him if he has to reach and sometimes strain to hit that note; the blues are, after all, about struggle and pain. But like the first time you heard Hugh Laurie speak without an American accent or play the piano, you’ll be delighted and surprised by what this talented individual can do. Kind of makes you wonder what he has to sing the blues about.

Paul Kupperberg is, deep down in his soul, an 80-year old phlegmy-voiced Jewish comedy writer. He also writes the critically acclaimed Life With Archie Magazine for Archie Comics and is the author of the mystery novel, The Same Old Story (available as an eBook on Amazon.com).

 

MIKE GOLD: DC’s New 52 Drops A Good One

Well, here’s something strange. Within a 72-hour period last week a half dozen people asked me if I had read the new, new Animal Man. During that same period, my daughter was asked the same question by one of her friends. Then I had lunch with comics writer Paul Kupperberg, so I asked him if he read the book. He said no, not yet, but a number of people told him he should.

Hmmmm. Word of mouth is either the best or the worst type of publicity. I noticed not a one of these folks said it was great; just that it was worth reading.

I enjoyed the original Animal Man – the one that was created by Dave Wood and Carmine Infantino in Strange Adventures 180, some 46 years ago. It was unusual in that it was only occasionally published, and the lead didn’t get his costume (one of Carmine’s best) until the third appearance nearly a year later. His run – more like a bunch of skips and hops – was brief, but it clearly had an impact on us Baby Boomer fanboys. Animal Man was more of a cool concept than a fan fave.

Because I’m not quite paranoid to believe that all those people who recommended the book to us were part of a vast conspiracy, I approached Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman’s Animal Man volume 2, number 1 without preconceptions.

Gone is the cool Infantino-designed costume, replaced by something that was clearly influenced by the original: no more contemporary in design, but with a more striking color scheme. We start with Buddy Baker’s home life, and here we indulge a bit in the married life superhero chiché. He’s not henpecked the way The Web was back in the 1960s (one of the first, if not the first, costumed hero with a “realistic” married life); Lemire cleverly uses the rough parts of family life as exposition.

It is that very family that is the root of this first story arc. In the 22-page format there’s very little room to establish the characters in this new reality and really get you deeply involved in an actual story, and Animal Man 2.1 does a better job of it than most of The New 52 stories I’ve read so far. Not as good as Mister Terrific #1 in terms of the quantity and depth of story, but more compelling from the perspective of character.

That seems to be what Animal Man is all about: character development within the framework of a family where the father has superpowers. I say “seems to be” because, well, hell, we don’t know. It’s just the first issue. But this beginning gives me hope.

I always get hinky when I think about how a DC series will get coopted as it is thrust into the DCU – sorry, make that DCnU – but I’ve learned to leave such speculation to time and historical inevitability. And hope that Animal Man beats the odds.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & The New Land

[[[Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & The New Land]]]
edited by Harvey Pekar & Paul Buhle with Hershl Hartman
Abrams Comicarts, 240 pages

It always seemed to me like mine was the last secular “Jewish generation” in America. Born in the mid-1950s, in the depths of Brooklyn in a neighborhood adjacent to the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Crown Heights, surrounded on all sides by three generations of family, including grandparents and great-grandparents born in the old country, the entire world seemed Jewish. Even when my family moved (briefly) to West Virginia (population 5,000, only seven of which were Jews), then back to Brooklyn, to Canarsie and East Flatbush, the feeling of Jewishness never went away. The neighborhoods were now a mix of Irish, Italian, and Jewish, even a sprinkling of Afro-Americans, but when the family gathered, Yiddish was still spoken among the adults when the topic wasn’t fit for kinder, children. As a result, der kinder learned to understand, if not speak, just enough of the mamaloshen (the mother tongue) to get the gist of what we weren’t supposed to hear.

Popular entertainment was Jewish, too. The producers and writers behind many of the sitcoms were Jews and even if the characters weren’t Jewish (with the exception of The Goldbergs), the comedic sensibilities sure were. Ditto for the variety shows, where in addition to everything else, many of the hosts were Jewish as well. Milton Berle, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis (although not Dean Martin), Sid Caesar. Allan Sherman sold millions of comedy albums in the early-1960s with song parodies that were flavored by schmaltz (chicken fat). Today, when he’s remembered, he’s remembered for his (mostly) WASPy “Hello Mudder, Hello Faddah.” Song-writing in the mid-20th century was so Jewish that according to ASCAP’s list of the top twenty-five most popular Christmas songs, twelve were written by Jews.

Even the Italians were Jewish in Hollywood. In The Detective, a 1968 mystery starring Frank Sinatra, Jack Klugman co-stars as one of Frank’s police colleagues who has a brief exchange with his wife in the sing-song cadence of Yiddish about whether or not he wants her to make him a “nice glass tea.” My great-grandmother drank hot tea out of a glass (never a mug), sweetening it with a cube of sugar between her teeth as she sipped.

Jewishness, if not Judaism, was everywhere. Hollywood is still a Jewish town, but the entertainment it now produces is far less so. Even the language of the Jews, Yiddish, has become somewhat catholic in appeal; every schmuck on the street thinks he’s a big macher because he knows a bissel Yiddish. And as the Jews have long known, there’s really nothing like Yiddish to make a point. As Neal Gabler (author of the excellent An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood) says in his introduction to Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & The New Land, “Yiddish is the most onomatopoeic language ever created. Everything sounds exactly the way it should: macher for a self-appointed big shot, shlmiel for the fellow who spills the soup and shlmazel for the hapless one (as in “poor shmuck”), shnorrer for a freeloader, nudnick for a pest. The expressiveness is bound into the language, and so is a kind of ruthless honesty….Yiddish has dozens of words for imbecile, a tribute to Jewish lucklessness…. There is no decorousness in Yiddish, nor much romance. It is raw, egalitarian, vernacular.”

Yiddish is an “amalgamated language, borrowing freely from German and Polish and Hebrew with its own unique constructions and confabulations,” and the people who speak it are the Yiddishkeit, or the Yiddish culture…although as Gabler points out, what the word encompasses is “so large, expansive, and woolly a concept that culture may be too narrow to do it full justice. ‘Jewish sensibility’ comes closer,” but, in the end, “You can’t define Yiddishkeit neatly in words and pictures. You sort of have to feel it by wading into it.” (more…)

Happy Birthday: Paul Kupperberg

Happy Birthday: Paul Kupperberg

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1955, Paul Kupperberg got his start in comic fandom. He and Paul Levitz produced the comics fanzine The Comic Reader from 1971 to 1973, and Etcetera from 1972 to 1973. In 1975 Kupperberg sold several short horror stories to Charlton Comics, and then a few months later sold a World of Krypton story to DC for their Superman Family comic. He has written for many other DC comics since then, including Superman, Doom Patrol, Green Lantern, Justice League of America. He created the series Arion: Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate, and Takion.

Kupperberg has also written a variety of books, ranging from The Atlas to the DC Universe to the Spider-Man novel Crime Campaign to an array of young adult nonfiction books like Spy Satellites and The Tragedy of the Titanic. He served as assistant editor at Video Action Magazine from 1981-82, and from 1991-2006 he was a staff editor for DC Comics. In early 2006 he left DC to become Senior Editor at Weekly World News—he had been writing for them since the year before. Unfortunately, WWN ceased publication in August 2007. At the start of the following year Kupperberg was tapped as Senior Editor for World Wrestling Entertainment’s new WWE Kids magazine, but the magazine was restructured a few months later. He is currently enjoying the life of a freelance prose and comic book writer and editor.

Happy 33rd Anniversary, Paul Kupperberg

Happy 33rd Anniversary, Paul Kupperberg

On this day in 1975, Paul Kupperberg made his first professional sale to Charlton Comics. It was a five-page story titled "Distress" that would ultimately be published in the December 1975 issue of Scary Tales (pictured here) drawn by a kid named Mike Zeck.

Yes, Paul, you’re right — you’re o-o-old. On the other hand, you churned out a good 600+ comics stories since, created Checkmate, Arion, and Takion (how’d you miss creating Ion?) and they turned the cover of a comic book you wrote into a US postage stamp. Your page rate has even gone up since that first story.

And look at the bright side — you’re actually reading this. Which means that this isn’t an obituary post. At your advanced age, that’s always a concern.

 

Kool  komputer komics from the 80s

Kool komputer komics from the 80s

Wil Wheaton found a bunch of comics that Radio Shack/Tandy put out two decades ago to teach kids about computers, written by Paul Kupperberg with art by Dick Ayers and Chic Stone.  Wil samples some of Kupperberg’s dialogue, which in hindsight seems very reminiscent of Bob Haney’s "so hip it’s instantly dated" flair.  (‘S okay, Paul, we still love ya!)

Here’s the whole lot of them, online.  Say, did you know you can use your computers to communicate with information services that will store old PSA comics?  It’s true!