You know, I think Gabby Schulz may just be a tad bit dramatic.
It’s a feeling I have — partially based on my readings of his earlier books Monsters and Welcome to the Dahl House
, partially because he can’t seem to decide if he is “Ken Dahl” or “Gabby Schulz,” and partly because Sick is possibly the most self-dramatizing book I’ve ever seen in my life.
Admittedly, it’s the record of a time Schulz thought he might be dying, which does tend to concentrate the mind. (But, then again, says the contrarian part of my mind — didn’t he recover from this fever without any medical intervention? Isn’t it possible that he’s just really, really whiny when he’s sick?)
And, of course, it’s a book: the only record we have of Schulz’s sickness is what he tells us himself, on large comics pages soaked in bile and misery, full of jaundice yellow and starless black. It could all be fiction. Just because it’s by someone named Gabby Schulz and about someone named Gabby Schulz doesn’t mean it’s meant to be taken literally.
But I think it is. I think Schulz means every word, every pen-stroke of this book, and that’s the way he works in comics: heart on the sleeve at all times, everything out there and exposed, all raw nerves and naked emotion and pure pleading about what he thinks are the most important things at every moment. It would be an exhausting way to live; it can be overwhelming even in a short graphic novel like this one — particularly one so oversized and focused on the negative as Sick.
Gabby Schulz is negative. Everything I’ve seen of his work, under either name, is all about the things he loathes and can’t stand — himself always first and foremost among them. Schulz is the kind of left-winger who is both contorted into knots by his unearned privilege as a white American man and sent into a frenzy by the horrible treatment he continuously endures as an unskilled worker in that clearly hellish American society. His getting sick seems to mostly be of interest as a way to ramp up the self-loathing to ever greater heights — to show how much he can really hate things when he gets going.
Sick is a book in which there is nothing good. There can be nothing good. To be Gabby Schulz is to be cursed: the most horrible human that ever lived, worthless and pitiful and also complicit in the worst society in the history of the world, a pyramid of horrors piled on top of each other without end.
Schulz realizes this, in a way: the book is in large part his own arguments to himself that life — his life, specifically — is worthless and horrible and better ended, and his feeble occasional moments of fighting against that sense.
It’s not a book to read if you are in any way depressed, or suicidal, or unhappy about life. Only the sunniest of Pollyannas could read Sick without flinching, or worse.
All this is presented in vibrant, eye-catching, torn-from-his-heart art — glorious in its hideousness and spleen. And his words are precise if not measured: always pushing further and always obsessively circling that same central conceit: that to be Gabby Schulz is a horrible, terrible, worthless thing, even more so when he has a fever.
I can’t exactly recommend this book. It’s so far over the top there’s cloud cover obscuring its lower reaches. It is absurdly strident about its every last thought. But it is hugely impressive, and uniquely powerful, and utterly itself. It is Sick. Take that word in whatever sense you like.
It’s been universally accepted that San Diego Comic-Con is the place to be when it comes to elaborate comic-con parties, including a slew of more exclusive events. For no other genre convention do multiple news outlets make long, detailed lists of where to go for a (potentially) good time each evening.
And while the party scene may be shrinking due to companies focusing more on the activations, there were still plenty of parties to fill out your SDCC weekend.
I’ve been covering the SDCC party scene for years now. And while I haven’t been to every party (because to do so I’d have to propagate more clones of myself than Spider-Man ever had), I’ve been to enough fab parties and flops that I both think it’s worth it to make the rounds if you can, and know the downsides that go along with trying to do so.
Before I get into this year’s parties, let me share a few things I’ve learned about the SDCC party scene:
Unless you are a Legit Famous Person, getting into invite-only parties can be a crapshoot. Even with my consistent press coverage at SDCC and other cons, as well as writing about genre entertainment throughout the year, I’ve had years where the people who immediately put me on the list the previous year didn’t even respond to an event inquiry, and years where the opposite happened or I receive an invite to an exclusive party I didn’t even know about. There are some companies that are more (what I see as) loyal, and consistently invite you to their SDCC parties and treat you well, and some companies that are weirdly flaky. And then, there are events that only happen in that particular way one year; or where you manage to squeeze onto the list for one year, but a spot can’t be spared another despite your knowledge that it’s not personal; or where the rules change so that one year only people who directly work with the company are invited. Sometimes, invites seem random; and sometimes, you truly do have to know someone. But also, even if you are on the list, SDCC is so chaotic that if the person at the door can’t find your name, you might still be screwed (depends on how understanding the check-in staff is, really). Or you’re definitely on the list, they’ve got your name right there, but it turns out the party is already “at capacity” thirty minutes in. Like I said – crapshoot.
It is often impossible to predict how good a party will be. I’ve been to amazing parties that were not that “exclusive,” and really-hard-to-access parties, with famous people right nearby, that turned out to be kinda lame. (And yes, I’ve even crashed some parties. That’s not a predictor either, although it is occasionally a good time.) What’s fun about this spectrum of events is even a lame party is still a party (possibly with free drinks!) and you can always leave if you’re bored (oh, except for that one nightmare time I got stuck in the literal cordoned off press pen they set up at The Last Ship party a few years ago, where we weren’t allowed to go to the actual party if we’d said we’d take red carpet pics first; there was no food or water or seating; and we were told we couldn’t go to the restroom or we wouldn’t be let back in. It was awful and I’m still bitter and PR people take note: press never forget being treated like second class citizens. Anyway. Moving on!)
Another fun thing is the coolest party you go to might be a nice surprise because it’s a thing you didn’t expect. (The downside, of course, is if you roll the dice on two simultaneous parties and it turns out the one you didn’t pick was The Best Thing Ever and all your friends ended up there and had a blast. Oh, FOMO, how I wish you didn’t exist.) This is because a cool venue and big-name company, property, or guests are no guarantee of a hit. What really matters is if there’s stuff to do (this could be literal stuff, like gadgets to play with, photo booths, a game to watch or play, artists to watch as they draw, etc., or interesting people to talk to, including creators and celebrities who actually enjoy mingling instead of being cordoned off at their private tables the whole night, or friends who have been permitted to attend as your plus-one), thoughtful theming in both decor and good food and drink, and people treating each other well and like we’re all people even if we’re not all famous. This is why even the open parties can be a blast if done right (the Nerd HQ parties, which I mourn the loss of, being one example).
Some parties really are just The Best Thing Ever. Events that stand out over the years include the NickelodeonDouble Dare party (put that one in the Hall of Fame, it was perfect!), the American Gods rooftop party, the Scholastic parties, the Dent the Future cocktail parties, the Fashionably Nerdy cocktail hour, the NVE + Nylon Mag parties, the Nerd HQ parties, Michael Davis’s shindigs, and, of course, that time I went to a club to see Elijah Wood DJ on a whim and it turned out he was really good.
So given that, what parties did I hit up this year? And which ones were the most fun? Well:
Wednesday:
Wednesday night is usually low-key, since preview night runs until 9 and can be exhausting. This year we stuck with what’s become a tradition and headed over to Basic Bar/Pizza with a small group of friends. Basic does a really good pizza, and is also the location for Gabe Eltaeb’s Annual Comic-Con Kickoff Party, now in its 5th year. I’ve been to every one of these, and although I confess when I walk in the door the biggest thing on my mind after preview night is “food!” the event is also really neat. They have quality artists doing live sketches which they raffle off along with other prizes to raise money for the Hero Initiative, which helps comics creators in need due to medical or financial crises. This year, the live sketches were done by Gabe Eltaeb (Harley Quinn), Todd Nauck (Deadpool), Jim Calafiore (Exiles), Chad Cavanaugh (The Map), and Jeff Martinez (Skull Thumper); and other prizes came from companies like Blizzard, Funko, and Dark Horse Comics. It’s a cool, laid back event to try on the first night, you can usually walk in without too much trouble, and it’s done for a good cause. And even while rapidly consuming large quantities of pizza, I appreciated both the atmosphere and the party music coming from the event side of the bar.
Thursday:
This year, it seemed like almost every single party I wanted to hit up was on Thursday night. I made it to four of the five I’d decided I might be able to get to based on start times (I really wanted to make the Dent the Future Reception, too, but I confess I took a nap instead). Here are the ones I got to:
Tor Books / Den of GeekHappy Hour – this was at the Horton Grand Hotel Courtyard, and was an invite-only party for industry insiders. The setting was nice (an airy open atrium area with a connecting indoor room) and they had open bars in both rooms with themed cocktails (The Superhero and The Supervillain – I got the Superhero, which had blue curacao and vodka, pineapple, triple sec, lime juice, and soda, and it was mighty tasty), hors d’oeuvres, and a full dessert table. They also had a variety of swag, ranging from funky branded sunglasses and Den of Geek’s SDCC magazine to a gift bag with a bunch of Tor books. I always like it when parties have something fun to do, and this one had a photobooth with great props that I hopped into with NPR’s Petra Mayer, YA author Alexa Donne, and other friends. I also had fun chats with the delightful author and co-editor of Boing Boing Cory Doctorow, YA author Scott Westerfeld, and other industry greats. This party was excellent, and I only left because I didn’t want to miss…
The Scholastic GraphixParty – this was on the pool deck of the Hotel Palomar, which is a great outdoor venue, and was an invite-only party. I always make sure I stop by the Scholastic shindig, which has good food, themed desserts, and open bar; nice (if heavy!) swag bags of books; usually at least an activity or two going on; and fun guests – plus, at this event not only are there friends around, but also I somehow always end up running into at least a couple of industry friends I otherwise might not have seen all con (this year it was author and editor Joe McCabe). This year’s party featured guests such as Raina Telgemeier (Smile), Ian Boothby (Sparks!), Jarrett Krosoczka (Hey, Kiddo), Molly Knox Ostertag (The Hidden Witch), Aron Nels Steinke (Mr. Wolf’s Class), and Gale Galligan (The Baby-Sitters Club), as well as Jim Kay, Daniel Jose Older, Victoria Schwab, Maggie Stiefvater, and Scott Westerfeld (again!). I couldn’t stay at Scholastic forever, though, because I didn’t want to miss…
The Lion ForgeTalent Reception – this one was an invite-only gig at The Bootlegger (and I’m a sucker for anything with a speakeasy feel, so I loved the venue choice). To be honest, that’s about all of the setting I noticed at this party, because my entire time there was spent catching up with the wall-to-wall awesome comics creators and industry folks I was surrounded by – including Gail Simone, Dean Haspiel, Ben McCool, Reilly Brown, Ben Fisher, and Jim Calafiore. (I also got to attend the Lion Forge Fall Preview panel on Sunday, where they talked about a slew of great comics coming soon from names like Michael Uslan, Andrew Pepoy, and David F. Walker, and announced that Gail Simone will be the “Chief Architect” of the Catalyst Prime line of comics. More about that in another piece). How did I end up at this party? Well, let’s just say Ben Fisher and I are working on an exciting new project! As much fun as we were having, though, I still had one party on my list, and I couldn’t miss out on saying hey to the crew at…
The Line Webtoon Green Room Party – this one was an invite-only event at the Altitude Sky Lounge, and it was over-the-top excellent, as are all Line Webtoon parties I’ve attended. (P.S. If you haven’t checked out their comics, you really should. They have a great variety of cool stories you can read for free on their super easy-to-use app.) The view was amazing; they had a crazy setup with green lights everywhere; and we all got casino chips with which to “gamble” before using them to try to win a big ticket raffle item. There, Ben and I met up with Thom Zahler, Luke Daab, The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald, Tony Fleecs, and so many more. It was a great end to a pretty crazy night, and the swag bags had several cool items, including a classy set of branded coasters. Everything Line Webtoon does has style, and this party was no exception.
Friday:
Okay, so Thursday was pretty wild, and we paid for it on Friday. I ended up skipping a couple of planned parties (Sorry to miss you, Nerds of Color/Women in Comics mixer!) but did make it to:
The NatGeoand Nerd NiteMars Party – this party is consistently quality, and this year was great from the get-go – from the reasonably-sized VIP line to the cool red glowstick wristbands. Set on the pool terrace at the Hotel Solamar, this party had a ton of good food, free drinks, and the coolest entertainment I saw at any party – performers inside giant LED-lit hula hoops, whirling and twisting between the crowds and the pool. Advertising the NatGeo series MARS, which begins again November 12, the party had a projection of Mars on the side of a building, a glowing red décor, MARS pillows, miniature MARS cornhole games, and “astronauts” on stilts handing out Mars Bars. And on top of all of that, it featured a number of talks about real science, featuring Alejandro T. Rojas from Den of Geek, Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Emily Manor-Chapman, Bobak Ferdowski, Systems Engineer with Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA, and Leland Melvin, former NASA astronaut. This party is a combination of awesome fun and real nerd substance, and it was an absolute blast.
Saturday:
One thing I love about SDCC is that sometimes, randomly, an awesome event pops up for the first time; and if you’re lucky enough to hear about it, you can end up being one of a select crowd of folks enjoying something that may eventually become another crowded, sought-after evening event; or may be that magical unicorn that only occurs once and that you got to experience. Either may happen with the fun event I went to on Saturday night:
The Bootsy Collins House Party, hosted by DJ Lance Rock and featuring Tom Kenny & the Hi-Seas Rocknsoul Revue. I don’t know how the other attendees got the word on this party, but I lucked into it when I texted Tom (best known as the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants and other great cartoon voices) a couple of weeks beforehand to see if I’d be seeing him at the con. At that time, the event was just coming together, and even Tom wasn’t sure quite what to expect. It was held in the courtyard of the San Diego Central Library, and had the charm of being lively, funky, and a bit unpredictable. I arrived as the band was setting up, only to immediately run into the delightful Fred Tatasciore (best known as the voice of The Hulk). We caught up as Tom warmed up the crowd with an amazing “mic check” song, and then all hung out with DJ Lance Rock until the Hi-Seas, dressed in New Orleans-themed sequins, were ready to go. They are super talented, and Tom, along with being such a versatile voice actor, is a fantastic singer. He’s also a super energetic performer, and totally into it, which makes it more fun for the crowd to let loose.
One of the fun things he did was take down the barriers that had been set up between crowd and performers and invite little kids, and anyone else who wanted to, to come up and dance. A bunch of kids went up, along with a variety of adults including at least one couple who were dressed in classic clothes and could have easily won a couples dance contest. It was great to watch everyone dancing, as well as to see Tom roaming out into the crowd to interact with attendees. The band also sang Happy Birthday to a few folks; and eventually, performed some SpongeBob songs. Around that time I was dying for some food – but happily, the Central Library snack bar had stayed open, so I chilled in the back with Fred and ate a sandwich while the music went on. And then came Bootsy Collins. How do you describe Bootsy Collins? I mean…over the top? The sparkliest man I’ve ever seen? Extremely warm and giving to his fans? (The first thing he did was dance out into the crowd, take a million selfies with anyone who indicated they wanted one, and sign some autograph books, all while grooving to the beat). He was great to watch, and along with performing, hosted a dance competition with Tom (I couldn’t see everyone who won, but congrats to the Death cosplayer who was dancing up a storm and won the first round). The whole thing was crazy fun, and I’m so glad I got to go.
And that was the end of the party scene for me this year – although I also want to mention the fun I have just chilling with friends in the evenings between the other excitement. Sometimes, that’s exactly what you need at SDCC to balance things out and recharge – so shout-out to all my friends who invited me to come relax the rest of the night away at bars and hotel room parties. Cheers to you, fellow nerds. You’re what makes life precious. See you next time!
Reading comics digitally is weird for me: it’s so disconnected from the physicality of a real book, and (at least the stuff I have, mostly publicity copies) generally lack covers and explanatory copy, so it dives right into story without any explanation as to how or why or who.
I also tend to have stuff that’s been sitting around for a while, since I was getting digital review copies for most of the last decade but not actually reading more than a couple of them. (I very easily forget that I have a particular collection of electrons sitting in a folder somewhere; real physical objects on a shelf are much better at reminding me they exist and are waiting to be read.)
For example, I just this second tracked down a cover for this book, so I could slap it into the top left of this post. It looks completely unfamiliar, and The Tooth is a book that was published in 2011 and which I presumably have had since then (or maybe slightly earlier, given publishing schedules).
I also don’t have much of a clue how The Tooth was positioned — it’s clearly a pseudo-retro superhero comic, the mid-70s rebirth of a Silver Age hero, but how serious we were meant to take it isn’t as clear — or who the audience was. And it seems to have disappeared without a trace since then, so whoever the audience was supposed to be, I don’t think they embraced it as fully as the creators [1] expected.
What this book supposedly “reprints” — I don’t think it was published separately beforehand, but I never bet against serialization when talking about comics of giant things punching each other — is issues 34 to 39 of The Tooth, the fourth series featuring that character (after Journey Into Terror, Savage Tooth, and The House of Unknown Terror), just a few issues before the title apparently ended. (As we find from some kid’s “The Tooth Want List,” interpolated between two of the “issues.”)
It is, of course, the All-New All Different Tooth, with a new supporting cast and what’s probably supposed to be a slightly different take on his origin and purpose. So some schmo inherits a haunted house from a creepy uncle, and learns that he’s also inherited…um, well, that one of his teeth grows to a massive size, leaps out of his mouth, and fights evil.
As one does.
The schmo finds a knowledgeable fellow — who is the one hold-over from the prior cast — to give him the silly comic-book background, which is pseudo-mythological in the Thor vein. The Tooth and his compatriots are the warriors grown from the teeth of the dragon Cadmus slew in Greek mythology (the ones who founded Thebes, though that part doesn’t come up here).
There is, of course, also a villain, who wants to resurrect the dragon whose teeth those warriors originally were, and whose plot very nearly comes true. But, obviously, righteousness wins out in the end.
All this is told on what’s supposed to be yellowing newsprint pages — including letter columns — tattered covers, and some interpolated material. (There’s also what looks like some kid’s increasingly-good drawings of The Tooth in the front matter — I think he’s supposed to be the kid who owned these comics.)
So it’s all Superhero Comics, subcategory Deliberately Retro, tertiary category Goofy. It’s all presented straight on the page, like a real artifact from nearly fifty years ago, but it’s impossible to forget that it’s a story about a tooth that enlarges to fight evil through mega-violence.
I think I was originally interested in The Tooth because of the Matt Kindt connection; he’s made a lot of good comics out of various odd genre materials. But he’s just drawing here. This is a very faithful recreation of a kind of comic that was deeply silly to begin with: I appreciate the love and craft that went into it, but I have to wonder why anyone thought this would be a good idea. It’s the comics equivalent of a novel-length shaggy dog joke.
[1] Cullen Bunn and Shawn Lee co-write, Matt Kindt does all of the art and colors and apparently book design.
BURBANK, CA (August 28, 2018) – Batman: The Complete Animated Series Deluxe Limited Edition, one of the most anticipated Blu-ray™ releases of 2018, will now include a Digital version in the all-encompassing package befitting the series’ revered place among all-time fan-favorite entertainment. Remastered for the first time since its broadcast airing from 1992-1995, the stunning Blu-ray™ box set ($112.99 SRP) will now be available from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and DC Entertainment on October 30, 2018.
Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, the Emmy Award-winning series captured the imaginations of generations, setting the standard for super hero storytelling for the past quarter-century with its innovative designs, near-perfect voice cast and landmark approach to DC’s iconic characters and stories. Batman: The Complete Animated Series Deluxe Limited Edition box set includes all 109 thrilling episodes, plus two bonus disks containing the recently-remastered, fan favorite animated films Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero, The box set’s premiere bonus feature is, The Heart of Batman, an impressive 90-minute documentary on the making of Batman: The Animated Series that includes interviews with nearly three dozen members of the cast and crew, detailing the intricacies of production behind the landmark animated show.
The Opening Remastered for Blu-ray
The impressive Batman: The Complete Animated Series Deluxe Limited Edition package features approximately 2,700 minutes of entertainment spread over 10 Blu-ray™ discs, plus the two bonus discs – not counting 11 specially-selected episodes with audio commentaries by cast and crew. In addition, Batman: The Complete Animated Series Deluxe Limited Edition includes an exclusive ensemble of collectibles highlighted by three Funko mini-figurines (Batman, Joker, Harley Quinn) and seven beautifully-designed lenticular art cards. The entire box set is housed in a stunning layflat-book with a dazzling slipcase.
Once again, I’ve gotten to a book several years too late, and that’s confusing me. I read the first Labor Days book (written by Phillip Gelatt and drawn by Rick Lacy, neither of whom I know from anything else) back in 2009 and reviewed it for ComicMix then. And then I got a spiffy digital copy of the sequel later that same year…
…and it sat quietly on my device for nearly a decade.
Lesson: I am not dependable in reading anything, but I’m particularly prone to forgetting things that I have in purely-electrons form. If it’s not on a shelf where I can see it, I’m afraid it drops out of mind very swiftly.
Anyway, I had a week where I was specifically reading digital things on that device, because I was traveling, and so I finally realized I had Labor Days 2: Just Another Damn Day and actually read it.
And it’s been long enough that I don’t trust my memories of the first book. I don’t think it read like a weird mash-up of a Mark Millar story and a parody of a Mark Millar story, but this one definitely does. (At least to me, this many years later.) The main character is still an Everyman, subcategory Dull Ordinary Bloke, and there’s still a big conspiracy that runs the world or something, but this time it all seems to be more specific and moving forward. (My memory of the first book was that it threw that hero, one Benton “Bags” Bagswell right into the deep end and just had complications run around him for about two hundred pages until the book hit something like an ending.)
So there’s a guy called “the Face of History” — literal, actual guy, also the personification of history — and Bags is having prophetic dreams in which he’s told to find and kill that guy to take his place, driven by some female supernatural entity that I don’t think is ever named here but whose job seems to be lining up losers to kill the Face of History about every sixty years or so.
The Face has massive secret societies devoted to him around the world — well, secretly devoted to him, since most of the devotees don’t actually know that. And there are what seems to be an equally large group of equally crazy, equally secret societies headed by people who know the Face exists and want to depose and/or kill and/or replace and/or subvert him.
So Bags and his hot redheaded bespectacled super-competent girlfriend Victoria have been wandering around, trying to join looney groups in hopes that will get them close to The Face. It hasn’t been working particularly well, but Bags has gotten to drink a lot of beer, so it’s not all lost. But the sequence of events that starts at the beginning of this book sends them through some new organizations, and finally to The Face. Also, Bags’s secret dream-fairy finally realizes how stupid he is and tells him explicitly what she wants him to do.
Again, this all seems like either a rejected Mark Millar story, circa 2007, or someone’s idea of a parody of a Mark Millar story, only it would need to be, y’know, actually parodic at some point. Instead, it’s adventurous in a manner that’s serious about half the time and absolutely unable to be taken seriously the rest of the time.
Look, this clearly isn’t a deathless classic of comics: I knew that going in. But I didn’t expect to be this confused at the end….
After a particularly dour third season, fans were promised that the fourth season of The Flash would lighten things up, which was most welcome. On the other hand, the pacing and plotting of the major character and story arcs was uneven and dissatisfying, with lots of highs but too many lows.
The Flash: The Complete Fourth Season is out on Blu-ray and Digital HD combo pack today and across its four discs offers up not only all 23 episodes but the compete “Crisis on Earth-X” crossover event. No doubt, this was necessary considering that Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and Iris West (Candace Patton) finally tie in the knot in the crossover’s Legends of the Tomorrow installment.
While he is taking a moment to appreciate his happiness, his season-long antagonist has determined Barry needs to be taught humility and sets about to beat that into him episode after episode.
We start the season six months after Flash sacrificed himself to remain within the Speed Force to maintain its stability. Iris has gone from fledgling reporter to the brains behind Team Flash, more fully integrating her into the stories but defying logic. At best, she is the team’s heart and soul; at worst, it’s a pale imitation of Felicity on Arrow.
Once they free Barry, we learn this and everything that follows has been carefully orchestrated by Clifford DeVoe (Neil Sandilands), a man in search of knowledge (wisdom not so much) who winds up mutated by the same forces that turned Barry into the Fastest Man Alive. Aided by his devoted wife and partner Marlize (Kim Engelbrecht), the Thinker is racing against time, attempting to acquire massive powers before his body fails. These powers are to be derived from the dozen passengers aboard the same bus that also gave Ralph Dibny (Hartley Sawyer) his stretchable powers.
Along the way, the large supporting cast needs to be serviced, so we watch Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) accept her Killer Frost alter ego, lose it, and work to regain it; Cisco (Carlos Valdes) pine for Gypsy (Jessica Camacho) while helping her father, Breacher (Danny Trejo) cope with losing his powers; Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale) feel like a fifth wheel and head off to be a Legend; and Joe West (Jesse L. Martin) prepare to become a father all over again with his new wife Cecile (Danielle Nicolet). Then there’s the flipside to DeVoe, Harrison Wells of Earth-2 (Tom Cavanaugh), who amps up his brain in an effort to match wits with their foe, only to find the price was his intelligence (but also giving us the godawful Council of Wells).
Thankfully, we also have a new foe in Blacksmith (a scenery-chewing Katee Sackhoff) and other distractions. The most wasteful and illogical thread has to be the trumped up charges against Barry, getting him convicted of killing DeVoe and letting his stew in Iron Heights while the Thinker’s plans progress. The Enlightenment, Thinker’s big scheme to ruin mankind’s intelligence so he can reteach them, is too easily dealt with and the conclusion feels rushed and unsatisfying.
Don’t get me wrong, there are strong episodes and terrific moments throughout the series, but too many times I watched and cringed at bad plotting and overly prolonged threads. Even the addition of Sterling Gates to the writing staff couldn’t stop the badly conceived stories. It was gratifying to watch the Elongated Man become a hero, working to save the other bus metas and become fully integrated into the team.
Sprinkled throughout, we see a pretty, young woman (Jessica Parker Kennedy) working at Jitters and encountering various members of the cast until she arrives for the season ending cliffhanger: her revelation as Barry and Iris’ daughter from the future and in need of their help.
The four discs come in a clean high definition transfer at 16×9 1:78:1 with a good DTS-HD 5.1 Dolby Digital audio track.
In addition to a handful of deleted scenes, there are bonuses scattered throughout beginning with a Gag Reel (8:58) on disc one. Disc two brings us the four show runners responsible for the “Crisis” crossover (41:30) which was too self-congratulatory and not revealing enough. Elongated Man (9:44), on disc three, has the producers gush about the fun of bringing the stretchable sleuth to the screen and what the actor brought the cast. Also on the disc is Flash Time on Amunet Black with Katee, Eric, and Sterling (12:52), the most enjoyable as the star chats with Executive Producer Eric Wallace and writer Sterling Gates, looking at her fourth season appearances. Disc four offers up The Fastest Mind Alive: The Thinker (15:20), a look at the comic book origins and adaptation of the villain. Here, the producers talk a good game making me wish more of this was found in the episodes themselves. Finally, there’s The Best of DC TV’s Comic-Con Panels San Diego 2017.
The CW Seed has been the ancillary stomping grounds for animated versions of DC Comics’ Arrowverse characters, a chance to extend the brand with lesser-known heroes. For their third outing (after Vixen and Constantine), they smartly offered up Freedom Fighters: The Ray for two six-episode seasons, which have been edited together into a feature, on disc today from Warner Home Entertainment.
Although the two seasons arrived in December and July, they act as a prequel story to last fall’s “Crisis on Earth-X” crossover extravaganza. Here, we have the birth of the Freedom Fighters with appearances by not only the Ray but also Black Condor (Jason Mitchell), Phantom Lady (Dilshad Vadsaria), Dollman (Matthew Mercer) and Red Tornado (Iddo Goldberg). According to some behind the scenes shenanigans, the animated story was written first and when the four-parter was written for live-action, things weren’t lining up right, so the keen viewer will notice there are inconsistencies between the two.
The biggest headscratcher may be the Ray fighting alongside Green Arrow (Matthew Mercer), the Flash (Scott Whyte) if they didn’t meet until the crossover.
That said, this is a very entertaining short film with pleasant limited animation aided by strong vocal talent. It’s interesting to note that this version of The Ray, originally created by Will Eisner for quality Comics back in the Golden Age, was a 1990s revival from Jack C. Harris, Christopher Priest, and Joe Quesada. As voiced by Russell Torey (a veteran BBC genre star), he is a likeable kid, coming to grips with his powers at a time when things look fairly dark for Earth-X’s population.
Interestingly, Ray Terrill being gay wasn’t overt in the comics but became a main selling point for the transition to mass media. The third episode focuses on Ray as a closeted adult, living with his conservative parents. Seeing him struggle is good, since it establishes his personality and gives people in similar situations a role model. Things go wibbly-wobbly when we realize this has been Earth-1 and the Earth-X Ray, a hero, arrives mortally wounded and passes on his powers to his doppelganger, sending him to a world where the Nazis won World War II and people like him are sent to the camps.
When the Ray fully comes into his powers and responsibilities as a hero, we can thrill to his battle with the New Reichsmen’s Overgirl (Melissa Benoist). She’s aided by Black Arrow and Black Flash so there are a lot of costumes and duplicates in this event. He gets plenty of support from Arrow and Flash in addition to Cisco (Carlos Valdes) and Mr. Terrific (Echo Kellum)
I have no idea why it took Emilio Ortega Aldrich, Lauren Certo, Marc Guggenheim, Sarah Hernandez, Elizabeth Kim, and Sarah Tarkoff to write this, but it also may explain the slightly shifting tone from episode to episode, which is less obvious when spliced together. What IU can’t figure out is why the various uniforms worn by the heroes come from differing seasons of the Arrowverse so you can’t quite tell how far ahead of the crossover was this set.
The edited feature looks terrific on Blu-ray and sounds just fine, letting you appreciate Blake Neely’s score. The movie has been released as a combo pack so you can have Blu-ray, DVD, and a Digital HD code. The sole special feature is a way too short interview with Tovey.
Everyone gets older, in any world that tries to be real. Most comic-book worlds don’t try — how old is Peter Parker now? And how old was he in 1966?
Jaime Hernandez’s comics world is real — or as real as it wants to be, with only minor occasional eruptions of superheroes and prosolar mechanics. And that world tends to move in forward in time in fits and starts: there will be a clump of stories with his characters at one point in their life, coming out over two or five or six years but covering maybe a month or two of their lives, and then the next clump will begin after that, with another few years passed almost without noticing.
That’s how we live in our own lives — at least how I do. Everything seems to be basically the same for a while, with years that are all pretty much the same rhythms, and then you look up and everything is suddenly different.
Esperanza collects comics from the second Love and Rockets series, from roughly 2000 through 2007. I could say that this book sees the focus snap back to Maggie and Hopey — which is semi-true, since there’s a long story sequence for each of them here — after the stories in Penny Century, which spread further out into the cast. But Ray D. is just as prominent here as he was in Penny Century: there, he was mooning over Penny; here’s he’s in a complicated relationship with “the Frogmouth,” a stripped named Vivian who also seems to have an unrealized crush on Maggie. Penny herself doesn’t show up as often this time out, true: she drops in and out of the Locas world regularly over the years, as if only visiting it from her own, more glamorous and exciting universe.
And there’s two major new characters here, both younger than the aging Locas: Vivian “the Frogmouth” and Angel Rivera, whose name we’re not actually told directly at any point. So Maggie is still the center of this world — Vivian has something like a crush on her; Ray D. is still semi-obsessed with her; Angel lives in the apartment complex she manages; and we all know about Hopey — but it’s a large world, full of people with cross-connections.
Esperanza starts off with the ten-part story “Maggie,” only briefly interrupted by a Ray D. appearance. That’s more reductive than the book really is, though: all of the stories in Esperanza are telling the same overall story. Some are Maggie stories, some are Hopey stories, some are Ray D. stories, and some even more exotic, but these are all people in the same circle and the stories are all placed in time. It’s all one piece in the end: it all comes together.
Maggie is still managing that broken-down apartment complex in LA, blonde and chubby in what’s probably her early forties. She’s still sabotaging herself, still helping Izzy manage with her minor-author fame, still circling Hopey, who is tending bar nearby and working in some kind of office. (If there was ever any explanation of what Hopey did for close to ten years in that office with Guy Goforth, I missed it.)
Vivian — a bombshell of a woman of twenty-five or so who generates trouble just by being in the vicinity — is the motivating force for most of what happens in Esperanza. She dates Ray D.; she almost has an affair with Maggie; she’s caught up in various low-life gangsters and ex-boyfriends who don’t realize they’re ex. And she can spark a fight just by standing there.
The rest of the plot is set in motion by Hopey’s old enemy Julie Wree, whose mean-girl circle is still intact, still more successful than our heroines, and running a popular public-access TV show, where Izzy appears once and Vivian is the “ring girl,” coming through boxing-style in a bathing suit holding large cards.
Well, there’s a lot of incidents here that aren’t set in motion by anything in particular. Hernandez’s characters are restless and unsatisfied and rarely happy with themselves — and that drives them to do a lot of what they do, in this book and in all of his other work.
The back half of Esperanza semi-alternates stories about Vivian and Ray D.’s messy relationship with the “Day By Day With Hopey” series. Hopey is studying to be a teacher’s assistant — we don’t see her do much studying, but we see her leave the old office job and start the new job — and it looks like she’s finally growing up, finally leaving behind the reflexive shit-stirring that was so central to her early punk personality. (You can see Vivian as the same kind of person, only more so: Hopey fomented chaos deliberately, Vivian is an endless source of chaos in herself.) But she’s also having a slow break-up with her live-in girlfriend Rosie while flirting with saying “I love you” to Maggie, chasing the cute girl fitting her for glasses and having a friends-with-benefits thing going on with yet another woman, Grace.
This is a world: these people all know each other. Some of them like each other, some of them love each other, some of them want to fuck each other, some of them want to kill each other. Actually, “some” in the previous sentence might be understating it: the thing about Hernandez’s cast is that they all feel like that to all of the rest of them, more or less, at different times. (Except Julie Wree: everyone hates that bitch.) Epseranza has stories from the time when some of them are starting to think that they might be getting a little to old to be this crazy all the time.
Maybe they’re right. But I also notice that Hernandez has been bringing in newer, younger women all of the time — Gina and Danita previously, Vivian and Angel most prominently here — so that, if his old cast ever does grow up too much, he has more Locas to keep it all going.
I wouldn’t worry about that: nobody ever really grows up. We just get old, faster than we expected. And we’re all still crazy: that’s why we read Jaime Hernandez, to show us the ways we are, so we can laugh and recognize our own craziness.
The Small Press Expo (SPX), the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comics, graphic novels and alternative political cartoons, is pleased to announce the 2018 nominees for the annual presentation of the Ignatz Awards, a celebration of outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning.
The Ignatz, named after George Herriman’s brick-wielding mouse from his long running comic strip Krazy Kat, recognizes exceptional work that challenges popular notions of what comics can achieve, both as an art form and as a means of personal expression. The Ignatz Awards are a festival prize, the first of such in the United States comic book industry.
The nominees for the ballot were determined by a panel of five of the best of today’s comic artists, Mita Mahato, Carolyn Nowak, kevin czap, Leila Abdelrazaq, and Taneka Stotts.
The Ignatz Awards will be presented at the gala Ignatz Awards ceremony held on Saturday, September 15, 2018 at 9:30 P.M.
Congratulations to all the nominees!
Outstanding Artist
Yvan Alagbé – Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures
Ivy Atoms – Pinky & Pepper Forever
Tommi Parrish – The Lie and How We Told It
Richie Pope – The Box We Sit On
Sophie Standing – Anxiety is Really Strange
Outstanding Collection
Beirut Won’t Cry – Mazen Kerbaj
Blackbird Days – Manuele Fior
Language Barrier – Hannah K. Lee
Sex Fantasy – Sophia Foster-Dimino
Super Late Bloomer: My Early Days in Transition – Julia Kaye
Outstanding Anthology
La Raza Anthology: Unidos y Fuertes – ed. by Kat Fajardo & Pablo Castro
Comics for Choice – ed. by Hazel Newlevant, Whit Taylor and Ø.K. Fox
Ink Brick #8 – ed. by Alexander Rothmans, Paul K. Tunis, and Alexey Sokolin
Bottoms Up, Tales of Hitting Rock Bottom – ed. by J.T. Yost
Lovers Only – ed. by Mickey Zacchilli
Outstanding Graphic Novel
Why Art? – Eleanor Davis
Run for It: Stories of Slaves Who Fought for Their Freedom – Marcelo D’Salete
Uncomfortably Happily – Yeon-sik Hong
The Lie and How We Told It – Tommi Parrish
Anti-Gone – Connor Willumsen
Outstanding Series
Ley Lines – Czap Books
Nori – Rumi Hara
Bug Boys – Laura Knetzger
Gumballs – Erin Nations
Frontier – Youth in Decline
Outstanding Minicomic
Dog Nurse – Margot Ferrick
Greenhouse – Debbie Fong
Common Blessings & Common Curses – Maritsa Patrinos
Mothball 88 – Kevin Reilly
Say It With Noodles: On Learning to Speak the Language of Food – Shing Yin Khor
Outstanding Comic
Recollection – Alyssa Berg
Hot to Be Alive – Tara Booth
Hot Summer Nights – Freddy Carrasco
Whatsa Paintoonist – Jerry Moriarty
Baopu – Yao Xiao
Outstanding Online Comic
Woman World – Aminder Dhaliwal
The Wolves Outside – Jesse England
A Fire Story – Brian Files
Lara Croft Was My Family – Carta Monir
A Part of Me is Still Unknown – Meg O’Shea
Promising New Talent
Yasmin Omar Ata – Mis(h)adra
Tara Booth – How to Be Alive
Xia Gordon – The Fashion of 2004, Harvest
Rumi Hara – Nori and The Rabbits of the Moon
Tommi Parrish – The Lie and How We Told It
Outstanding Story
Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures – Yvan Alabge
Why Art? – Eleanor Davis
Rhode Island Me – Michael DeForge
How the Best Hunter in the Village Met Her Death – Molly Ostertag
Nothing is as it seems on Fox’s Lucifer. The charming police procedural series is also a horror story and maybe even an allegory for human existence. Loosely based on Vertigo’s Lucifer Morningstar (from Sandman), the show has underperformed on the network despite a strong lead performance from Tom Ellis. As a result, fans never know if the show will be around or not.
With season three’s pickup iffy, Fox held back four episodes — “Mr. And Mrs. Mazikeen Smith,” “City Of Angels,” “Off the Record,” and “Vegas with Some Radish.”– running them as part of the 2017-18 season. Then, when things looked dire for a fourth outing, they decided to hold back on two more. And finally, once the show was officially canceled, they burned off the final two episodes – “Boo Normal” and “Once Upon a Time” — as a block on May 28,
Thankfully, you can have all 26 of them on four discs in the just-released Lucifer the Complete Third Season from Warner Home Entertainment.
We open with the mystery of where Lucifer was and how he got his wings back. That propels things, especially his consternation at the fact no one noticed his two-day absence. There are, though, bigger issues including a new killer in town, dubbed Sinnerman along with a brand new commander at police headquarters: Lieutenant Marcus Pierce (Tom Welling). You can almost being to suspect there’s some connection between the two and it is revealed across the run of the season.
Each week there’s a crime to solve and character arcs to advance, but really, this season is all about the characters coming to grips with their true natures. Lucifer won’t tell Chloe (Lauren German) who he is, something he’s tried to do since the beginning, usually with his fussy brother Amenadiel (D.B. Woodside) stopping him. This time, it’s Pierce who gets in the way, romancing her, bringing her along for his own reasons that make for a nice reveal in the post-hiatus “All about Her”. He’s Cain, the first murderer, and was cursed with immortality and like so many immortals in fiction, is weary of it and wants to die. His plans are all about bringing him death and peace in Heaven.
LUCIFER: L-R: Tom Ellis and Kevin Alejandro in”All Hands on Decker”
But first, others must die, which brings out fine work from Tricia Helfer, as Charlotte, and Woodside. Welling’s Pierce was a wonderful addition, and his work has been quite effective, coming a long way from Smallville.
Lucifer has other ideas as seen in the rather effective finale, “A Devil of my Word”, with terrific visuals and a nicely choreographed fight. Finally, he stands revealed as the devil and Chloe is left to process the news. And as things wrap up, we’re left with a final meditation on free will vs God’s plan.
The series has, fortunately, been picked up by Netflix so we can see what happens next.
The five DVD discs are fine to watch and come with a handful of deleted scenes for 11 of the episodes. Additionally, disc 2 offers up Off Script with Tom & Tom, Part 1 as Ellis and Welling chat in Lucifer’s penthouse. You can find the entertaining part 2 on disc 3 and part 3 on disc 4. On the final disc, you have the cast and crew chat about moving the production to California in Lucifer Returns! Bringing the Hit Show to LA and the obligatory Lucifer: 2017 Comic-Con Panel, and finally a short Gag Reel.
