This Is Not News

Clearing out the comics backlog, I read the fourth collection of 100 Bullets. Thoughts follow. This post may be expanded/reformatted into a full review in the not too distant future.

A Foregone Tomorrow pulls the curtain back on several players in the conspiracy plotline; a couple of story arcs do not even feature Agent Graves’ briefcase of bullets. Graves’ presence, on the other hand, looms over the book. Some of the world’s most powerful people wonder about– or fear – his next move, and any number of past, present, and potential allies maneuver around one another. I’m not sure that Brian Azzarello has really answered many questions in this volume – or whether he’s answered any at all, for that matter. But he has opened up the world a little bit, moving from the street-level stories of the early volumes to boardrooms and luxury hotels and then back again. The introductory story uses parallel storytelling to suggest that there is not much different at the core of those very different milieus, which makes a certain amount of sense – after all, Graves moves between them quite easily.

Eduardo Risso and Patricia Mulvihill continue to be an effective line art/colorist team on the majority of the book .There is a special issue included in this collection that features one-page contributions from a number of different artists; each page focuses on a different character or aspect of the overall story. Narrative captions attempt to sum up the tone of what’s gone before. It’s an interesting opportunity to see different visual interpretations of the characters and take a breath before moving forward. I’m definitely on board for the next stage of the ride.

I was gonna steer clear of Comic-Con news posting here, partially because my shift to graphic novels and trade paperback collections means it might be next year before I see any of the titles being hyped this year and partially because I’m filling in on the news desk at theLogBook while Earl is at Classic Gaming Expo doing his video-documenting thing. But one bit today has thrown me for a loop: Mark Waid is going to take the reins as editor-in-chief of Boom! Studios, the comic publisher co-owned by Eureka creator Andrew Cosby. Waid says that part of the gig means that he’ll be releasing more creator-owned works through Boom, and if that’s the case . . . wow, this could be very good news from my point of view.

Completed the DC weekly series 52 today.

By no means was it bad, and there were a number of character threads I liked. But it spectacularly failed at doing what it originally set out to do – explain what happened during the “missing year” in the DC Universe – and it wasn’t able to contain all of the plot threads it did start, requiring some miniseries and specials to handle the spillover. And the big finale involved time travel and someone eating dimensions in order to create alternate realities, which may have set up an interesting new status quo but as a story resolution itself left something to be desired.

Still, I’m glad I read it, and equally glad I’m not going anywhere near DC’s current weekly series, Countdown.

Some of the best Justice League stories I’ve ever seen were written by Dwayne McDuffie. Problem for DC was, he was writing them for Justice League Unlimited, the much-missed animated series. It’s taken them about a year or two longer than I would have liked, but they’ve decided to hand McDuffie the reins of Justice League of America starting with issue 13. (Actually starting with a special issue shortly before that.) This Newsarama interview is worth a read, and I can guarantee you’ll see a review of McDuffie’s first trade here or at the LogBook.

About a week ago I discovered a long-running webcomic called Real Life, a loosely autobiographical comic done in Illustrator by Greg Dean. The comics and some of the situations are based on Greg’s life, his friends, and his various hobbies. Others are clearly science fiction scenarios played for humor, such as dimension hopping, time travel, and evil geniuses taking over the world. There’s also a healthy amount of metafictional fourth-wall-breaking interactions with The Cartoonist. All in all, it’s quite entertaining. Reading the entire seven-plus years in the archives, I was most struck by Greg’s evolution from a 20-year-old with a serious ramen noodle habit to a culinary school graduate. How’s that for unplanned foreshadowing?

The last issue of DC’s weekly series 52 came out today. This would probably be a good time to read the last, oh, 32 issues or so.

Buying a weekly series of issues really has to rank as a lousy idea on my part. Especially because by all accounts, the story shifted somewhere along the line so that it’s original purpose – helping to explain what happened during the “One Year Later” gap – got tossed to the wayside in the name of helping set up yet another chapter in the ongoing continuity-fest.

Ah well. Plenty of trades out there waiting for me to buy ’em.

I reviewed this giant hardcover helping of George Perez art over at theLogBook, so go ahead and check it out.

As part of the effort to cull the backlog, I’ve been bringing some of DC’s Archive hardcovers with me on the bus. I’ve read two volumes of Legion of Super-Heroes from the early 1970s, and an early volume of Batman from the early 40s. The interesting thing about the Legion Archives is that there are 12 volumes out, so you can watch the series evolve over decades, and as the series hit the 70s there’s a noticeable transition in the art. With Dave Cockrum and especially Mike Grell handling pencils, the renditions of the characters look like things you could find on stands today, although now Grell’s style would probably be considered a little bit ‘classic’ or ‘retro.’ But it’s interesting to watch the characters age and take on slightly trendier appearances.

The Batman comics, on the other hand . . . well, I’m not really crazy about Bob Kane’s (and whatever ghost artists he may have employed) pencil work. Frankly, it just looks a bit crude. I do find it amusing how many of the stories end with Batman delivering some kind of law and order moral to Robin. I kinda wonder how Frank Miller’s Dark Knight would have delivered a Respect Fair Play message to all of us impressionable readers . . .

Part of me feels like I shouldn’t write off the Golden Age just based on my exposure to Superman and Batman comics of the day, but on the other hand, there’s plenty of stuff from the ’70s through the ’90s that I still haven’t gotten through yet.

I went ot the comic shop Thursday. It was the first time I had been there in ten weeks, judging by the number of copies of 52 that were waiting for me. I didn’t touch the pile of comics until this afternoon, when I pulled out two issues of Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes, enjoyed the Barry Kitson art, and found myself mildly irritated that the storyline in question would continue for at least one more issue.

I think the lesson has finally cracked my thick skull. I’m just not enjoying comic magazines anymore. I think they’re too short a reading experience, I hate having to organize them in a bunch of boxes in my basement, and the hassle of the aforementioned boxes means I almost never reread them. For the amount of money I’ve been spending on these things I ought to be racing to read them, and I’m just not anymore.

This is part of a larger problem I’ve identified with myself, that I’ve started collecting media more than enjoying it – a backlog of books, DVDs, and stuff on my DVR. But the comics are really the worst example. So I’m culling just about all of the issues. If I care enough about the series to buy a shelf copy, I’ll buy the trade. If not, oh well.

I really hope this isn’t the beginning of the end for comics and me. They’ve given me a lot of happiness over the last eighteen years. (Good Lord.) But something’s gotta change.

Pattie, Alex and I went to the Baltimore Comic-Con earlier this month. We’d heard a lot about the con, but never quite managed to get there. It’s quite a nice gathering – very comics-focused, unlike cons like San Diego and Wizard World that have a heavy pop culture emphasis. I’d say the guest list was 99% comics, and the retailers were probably 80% comics with some non-comics toys and DVDs thrown in. I really wish I had brought my want list, because I may have actually made a dent in it.

George Perez was there, but was swamped. I don’t know if he was taking commissions that day, but if he was, his list filled up in nanoseconds. I did meet Perez’s old partner on New Teen Titans, Marv Wolfman. Wolfman seemed excited to be writing Nightwing for an extended run. I really hope it works out. I like happy endings, and I don’t think the last few years of Wolfman’s run on the Titans count as one by anyone’s measure.

By far the highlight of the con for me was meeting Barry Kitson, who had flown into the States for a meeting and was thus available to do the show. I’ve done two interviews with Barry for the site and swapped e-mails with him over the years, but this was the first time I’d get to see him. Better yet, he was doing sketches – for free! (As long as they were in a sketchbook or personally dedicated, as a small line of defense against the sketch being immediately resold. As one guy in the line joked, “Yeah, could you make that out to Mr. Bay? My first initial’s ‘E’ . . .”) I got in the line, and we pretty quickly realized that Alex was not yet into the whole line-for-sketches thing. We had the following dialogue:

ALEX: Why are we here?
ME: Daddy wants that man to draw a picture for him.
ALEX: Why?
ME: Daddy likes the pictures he draws.
ALEX: Why?
ME: Well, kiddo, art’s a subjective thing . . .

After that, Pattie took Alex back to the hotel pool. There was a fire alarm that evacuated the hall, but once that was over everyone very politely resumed their original place in line. The folks in front of me were serious original art collectors, buying pages and bringing full-sized boards and paper for Barry to draw on. As I watched Barry do full-figure drawings, I started rethinking how I’ve been going about this whole sketch business. Maybe it would be worth it to ramp up to a higher scale. (Then I look at my bank account and think maybe not so much.) At any rate, Barry was every bit as nice a guy in person as he has been over e-mail, and eventually I got this sketch of Golgoth from the Empire series: Read the remainder of this entry »