Wednesday, March 06, 2024

A Month of Wednesdays: February 2024

 BOUGHT: 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Reborn Vol. 8—Damage Done (IDW Publishing) This volume opens with a somewhat incongruous done-in-one chapter, by guest writer Michael Walsh and artists Vlad Legostaev, Santtos and Walsh. In it, the four brother turtles are hanging out alone in their lair together when they receive an unexpected visitor from the future, a middle-aged mutant ninja turtle who is apparently one of them. He's there specifically to warn Donatello not to do something he's thinking about doing, something that will visit great ruin on them in the future and, indeed, imperil the whole world.

This seems to be setting up the next arc, following the one that fills this volume (and, if I'm counting correctly, will be the last of regular writer Sophie Campbell's run, before the big reboot).

After that issue, we return to our regularly scheduled program, wherein the events of "The Armageddon Game" are over, but still reverberating (I meant to read that book in trade from the library, but didn't manage to get a hold of it before reading this, so I was a little lost on a few points, like Mutant Town's wall coming down, and the fact that mutants are now somewhat accepted as part of general, human society). 

As for the Splinter Clan, they are in the act of splintering, with different characters having different priorities: Jennika has her band; Donatello is holed up in his lab, obsessively studying something secret that he's loathe to share with his brothers; Raphael is still preoccupied with Alopex leaving; Michelangelo is feeling the call of travel, embodied by his frequent phone calls with Princess Seri, who is on some kind of press tour and Leonardo is struggling to keep everyone on the same page for regular patrols and crime-fighting purposes. 

In essence, the Turtles are growing up, and struggling with the fact that they don't have to stay together constantly just because they're brothers; they can, in fact, do their own things. 

Meanwhile, mutants seem to be disappearing and turning up dead with alarming frequency; there seems to be a mutant serial killer on the loose. Though drifting apart, the Turtles and their allies have to come together to deal with the threat, which turns out to be a couple of villains we've met before. Things get urgent when one of the Turtles' friends, one of the weasels, goes missing.

The artwork for this arc is provided by Gavin Smith, who also drew the cover, and it's highly-realistic. Perhaps too realistic for my personal tastes, as his drawings of the turtles frequently suggested the original, live-action Turtle movies to me (the ones with the Jim Henson heads). That said, he's quite adept at expressions and acting. 

Personally I prefer Campbell's art, and consider it something of a tragedy that she wasn't able to both write and draw the entirety of her run. We do get to see a few Campbell drawings in this volume, however, as she and Kevin Eastman collaborate on some of the variant covers, and the pair make a fairly ideal Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles art team. I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: I hope IDW finds a good project for the pair to collaborate on interiors for. 

It's pretty clear from this volume that Campbell's run is winding down; in fact, the last issues reads like it could be the last issue of a run or a series, as the Turtles all go their separate ways. But I know we've still got at least one more Campbell arc to go. 


BORROWED: 

Batman: The Adventures Continue Season Three (DC Comics) Batman: The Animated Series producers Alan Burnett and Paul Dini continue their revisitation of the seminal cartoon show they worked on in this continuation of the show's continuity, expertly drawn in the style of the show by artist Ty Templeton and others (The Kevin Altieri-drawn "Old Flames," a Batman/Harley Quinn team-up a rare deviation from the Bruce Timm-inspired aesthetic of the cartoon).

Two major storylines run throughout this volume, each starring one of Batman's greatest archenemies: The Joker and Ra's al Ghul. The former involves The Suicide Squad (and its recent addition The Muscle) going after Straight Man, The Joker's new super-strong sidekick in Gotham, the latter involves Ra's making Batman an offer he has a hard time refusing, especially given the fact that the need for Batman seems decreased more than ever by the fact that crime in Gotham has, mysteriously enough, all but disappeared, seemingly overnight. 

Both are great stories, making use of the show's by-now expansive cast, including characters (and plotlines) introduced throughout the course of The Adventures Continue. Though a bit more adult than the TV show its supposedly a continuation of—there's a scene of Bruce and Talia in bed where it's clear she's naked under the sheet, and Harley rather gorily beheads a Court of Owls Talon with scythe—it's a great celebration of it, and the climactic story, "The Offer" features appearances from just about every member of Batman's rogue's gallery for what seems like it may be his biggest "animated" adventure ever, Mask of The Phantasm and various direct-to-video movies included. 

In addition to the "straight" covers and a few designed to resemble the title cards of the old show, there are several striking variant covers, including Kevin Nowlan's, which serves as the cover for the collection (above), a Daniel Warren Johnson piece showing Batman working on the Batmobile and a Kelley Jones piece featuring Batman and seemingly his whole Animated Series rogues gallery. Though few of these are in the style of the cartoon, it's interesting to see the Timm designs in such radically different styles, including those of Sweeney Boo, Gustavo Duerte, Keron Grant, Cliff Chiang, Guillem March, Rafael Albuquerque, Brian Bolland, Matteo Scalera and others. 


REVEIWED:

Mayor Good Boy Turns Bad (RH Graphic) Everyone in Abby Ableman's world seems to be acting weird lately, no one more so than Mayor Good Boy, who may have...gone bad? What's really going on? Find out in the concluding book of Dave Scheidt and Miranda Harmon's trilogy of graphic novels about a small town with a talking dog mayor. Hopefully more books from the pair are in the future. More here

Tuesday, February 06, 2024

A Month of Wednesdays: January 2024

 BOUGHT: 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Usagi Yojimbo: WhereWhen (IDW Publishing) In 2018, Dark Horse Books published Usagi Yojimbo/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Complete Collection, which included every single one of the comic book crossovers of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's TMNT and Stan Sakai's samurai rabbit, from the 1987 Sakai-drawn six-page short "Turtle Soup and Rabbit Stew" to the 2017 Sakai-created "Namazu or the Big Fish Story," a 40-page IDW-published one-shot.

The title of that book, as vital and rewarding as the book itself may be, is no longer accurate, as IDW just published another TMNT/Usagi Yojimbo crossover, this one the most substantial one to date: The five-issue, 144-page adventure WhereWhen. The book, written, drawn and lettered by Sakai, with colors from Hi-Fi Desgin, technically features the IDW iteration of the Turtles (at least the main four; Jennika is MIA), since they recognize Usagi from the pages of "Namazu", but otherwise these could be any version of the Turtles, so continuity-lite is their end of the story (something that I, a fan of the original iteration, was thankful for; these just read like the real Turtles, rather than a particular version of them).

The continuity is a little heavier on the Usagi side, with some surprising changes in the cast—read: deaths—in this, a crossover. In Usagi's time, this is set just before the events of 2014 miniseries Usagi Yojimbo: Senso, with the ronin rabbit now a general serving as part of an army travelling to eradicate Hijiki and his forces at the request of the shogun. 

As they prepare to set up camp for the day, local villagers approach Usagi and tell him of a kappa that is menacing them. Usagi seeks permission to hunt for the turtle monster, and does so, so we get to see Staki's version of the famous Japanese yokai (and, being turtle-like in shape, it is, of course, an auspicious creature for the Usagi characters to face just before the TMNT arrive).

Meanwhile, in the present, the four Turtles—"naked" compared to their current, Sophie Campbell-written IDW versions—are on the trail of a supervillain, a time-travelling cyborg Dr. WhereWhen from the future, who has come to his own past to conquer the world with his superior technology.

His robots are no match for the Turtles, though, and so he decides to flee even further into the past, where they won't be there to fight him, and thus he arrives in 17th century feudal Japan, or Usagi's time. Due to the vagaries of time travel stories, WhereWhen actually arrived there well before the Turtles, and has had time to build all sorts of clockwork samurai and monsters using his futuristic knowhow and the technology of the day. 

After a brief crossing of swords due to the stories of kappa, General Usagi arrives to greet his old friends (this story apparently takes place 20 years after the last TMNT/Usagi Yojimbo crossover) and straighten everything out. No sooner does WhereWhen hear of their arrival though then he sends waves of attackers after the Turtles in Lord Noriyuki's encampment, first an ambush by mogura ninja (that's mole ninja), then WhereWhen's "Samuroids." 

Not simply sitting still, the Turtles, Usagi and some of Usagi's allies storm WhereWhen's castle, finding various clockwork monsters built to repel them. They succeed in shutting down WhereWhen's operation, and getting his time-travel device, allowing for themselves to get back home (as to why feudal Japan is full of talking animals instead of Japanese people, there are a few brief allusions to this being weird, but nothing that stops the story; as ever, Usagi Yojimbo, like Disney comics, are apparently meant to be read as is the animals were more-or-less human, perhaps moles aside).

At this point in his career, Sakai is as accomplished as any living cartoonist, and he has drawn the TMNT enough times at this point to make him one of their better artists. 

Each issue of the series included a wrap-around cover by Sakai, and a variant by Kevin Eastman, all of which are reprinted within. There's also a single cover by Peter Laird and Eastman, which is a pretty big deal if you ask me, although it's simply relegated to the status of fourth issue variant (it's not too Turtle-heavy, either, featuring one-half of Leonardo and one-half of Usagi only; still, this is the first time the pair has collaborated in forever, and the first time I've seen a Turtle drawn by its creators since I can't remember when). 
Other variants come from Sarah Myer, who draws the "Retailer Incentive" covers, and does so in a highly animated style, including pupils in the turtles' eyes on one cover where they are shown feasting on okonomiyaki, and a connecting cover by David Petersen. 

Sadly, there are no Sophie Campbell-drawn variants; I would really like to see what her version of Usagi might look like. 


BORROWED: 

Komi Can't Communicate Vol. 28 (Viz Media) Never mind what the cover shows, it's not Komi and the girls in the cast that visit a sauna in this volume, but the boys; specifically, Tadano and Komi's dad...and little brother (Komi's dad being too shy to hang out with Tadano by himself still, apparently). They go on this date so that, as Komi's dad finally admits well into the proceedings, so that he can bond with Tadano. They even end up kissing, although it's a kinda sorta medical procedure prompted by Komi's dad pretending to fall ill.

Kissing remains on Komi and Tadano's mind throughout this volume, and they seem to get awfully close during a study date at Komi's, until her mom interrupts them. Komi's parents seem quite fond of Tadano, and, in fact, they get dressed up and join the kids during their study date until Komi eventually shoos them away. 

Other stories this volume include new editions of the Summer Uniform Grand Prix and Quiet While Studying in the Library, Wakai who can't talk to girls finds himself able to talk to Manbagi through a loophole in his logic, and Komi's dealing with a group of friendly stalkers who all want to be her friend but, well, like everyone else in this manga, all seem to have communication problems of their own. 


My Cute Littel Kitten Vol. 1 (Seven Seas Entertainment) The inciting incident of this yuri manga is Yuna bringing home a tiny kitten to the new-pet apartment she's shared with college friend Rena for years. Realizing the time may finally have come for them to go their separate ways, Rena prepares to finally let go of Yuna, despite the fact that she's madly in love with her.

What does that mean, exactly? "You see...I'm in love with you," she confesses. "I don't mean as a friend. I want to kiss you, to sleep with you. That kind of love." 

To Rena's surprise, Yuna returns her feelings...sorta. Or at least she wants to keep living together, and seems willing to go with the flow, even if that means entering into a lesbian relationship with her long-time best friend and roommate. Her attempts to consummate their love keep getting frustrated by circumstances, though, from Yuna getting so drunk she passed out for what was going to be their "first time" (and which Yuna thought might have actually happened, even though she couldn't remember it) to their newly found little kitten pet, Chibi, causing trouble.

Eventually, the pair decide to stay together and find a new, pet-friendly apartment for their new family of three, while their relationship continues to take halting, often-frustrated steps forward, as Rena tries to determine if her cute little kitten Yuna is really ready for a relationship with her, and Yuna wrestles with whether or not she's good enough for Rena. 

It's a charming enough affair, with a sufficient degree of suspense and drama, despite the fact that the confession happens so early in the proceedings. 


Star Wars: Darth Vader—Black, White & Red Treasury Edition (Marvel Entertainment) The character of Darth Vader seems well-suited to the limited palette anthology series, given that it is a limited palette character design, all in black, with a bright red iconic weapon in his hand. This book, produced at 8.7-inches by 13.25-inches, is a nice showcase for the art, which comes courtesy of names I'm quite familiar with, like Leonard Kirk and Klaus Janson, a few from names I've heard of, like Peach Momoko, Alessandro Vitti and Daniel Warren Johnson, and a few I've never heard of, like Marika Cresta, Stefano Raffaele, Paul Davidson and Danny Earls. 

The books four issues are divided up so that there's a chapter of a longer Jason Aaron-written, Kirk-drawn storyline called "Hard Shutdown" (Kirk is inked, in just the fourth installment, by Mark Morales), followed by two standalone short stories from some of the other creators, and so on to the end. The collection follows this formula, breaking up the Aaron/Kirk story with short stories throughout. 

"Hard Shutdown" introduces the son of a doctor who worked on constructing Vader's cyborg body, and who therefore knows a special code that can render the Star Wars villain into the title state, completely immobilizing him. The idea is to then cut him up and sell off his very expensive, state-of-the-art parts while getting rid of the galaxy's worst bad guy at the same time. Things don't go according to plan, however, as despite the fact that Vader can't so much as twitch a muscle, his mind is still active, and he still has access to his Force powers, allowing him to control all the tools in the room meant to cut him up, to fling around the bodies of reinforcements to come to help, to even pull a ship out of the sky. 

The point of the story, other than to imperil the 47-year-old character in a new and interesting way, is to highlight just how incredibly powerful Darth Vader really is. In fact, this is a theme throughout the book, which is basically a celebration of Vader's bad-assery, as he uses his laser sword and Force powers to meet and beat all opponents, even if he has to fight off a pack of Wampas while damaged/injured in Frank Tieri and Earls' "Return to Hoth" or fighting off a planet-wide viral life form while floating limbless in a bacta tank in Steve Orlando and Davidson's "The Inhabitant."

It's a wonder that Luke Skywalker kid was ever even able to go toe-to-toe with Vader.

In addition to the Aaron-written story, stand outs include the bizarre imagery of Momoko's dream story, a little boy learning exactly the wrong message in Victoria Ying and Cresta's "Power" and Johnson's "Annihilated", which contains some especially neat light saber effects, and the pitch perfect "ZROWWW" sound of one swinging in a wide arc. 

I was also intrigued by the variant cover gallery, which includes a contribution from Kevin Eastman, depicting the Dark Lord of the Sith on what appears to be snowy Hoth, all black and white save for the red of his sword. I'm always interested in seeing Eastman's signature style applied to other people's characters, and Darth Vader is about as unlikely a character to imagine the artist drawing as any. 


REVIEWED: 

Punycorn (HarperColllins) Andi Watson's latest finds the long-time creator at his absolute silliest, in a work that seems like a rather great departure from his usual writing...and even drawing. Even when compared to his other kids work, this seems like a departure. That said, it's a fun little book, and the usual charms of Watson's work are all present, even if one has to look a little harder than usual to find them. More here


INTERVIEWED: 

I spoke to Cleopatra In Space creator Mike Maihack about his trilogy of Spider-Man graphic novels for Abrams on the occasion of the release of the second one, Spider-Man: Quantum Quest. You can read our conversation here

Monday, January 22, 2024

Hey, Robert Ableman listens to Cub!

It wasn't something I was expecting to see in a comic book, least of all in the pages of Mayor Good Boy Turns Bad, the third installment of Dave Scheidt and Miranda Harmon's Mayor Good Boy series, about a talking dog mayor of a small town. 

Early in the book, Robert Ableman, the father of the book's heroes Abby and Aaron Ableman, is shown going through his record collection. When Aaron interrupts him, Robert clutches the album he's holding to his chest defensively and holds it there for several panels. As you can see above, it's a Cub album, specifically their second album, 1995's Come Out Come Out.

For those of you who don't know, which I assume is most of you, or at least most of Mayor Good Boy's young readers, Cub was a Vancouver-based all-girl band in the 1990s, their sound defined by simple, lullaby-like pop punk rock tunes with sing-songy lyrics that could be either extremely charming or somewhat cloying, depending on your level of cynicism. They self-branded their style as "cuddlecore." As a teenager, I loved them unconditionally, my favorite song being "My Chinchilla" from their debut album Betti-Cola, which was either a cute and innocent love song...or an ode to an actual pet chinchilla. I interpreted it as the former. 

In an earlier panel, we see Aaron holding two other albums, They Might Be Giants' 1988 Lincoln and The Cure's 1989 Disintegration, so perhaps Robert came to Cub through They Might Be Giants, who covered "New York City" from Come Out Come Out on their 1996 album Factory Showroom. At any rate, we can agree that Robert has pretty good taste in music, and a worthy record collection. 

This isn't the only Cub comics connection, or the only reason they might be mentioned on a comics blog. The cover art for Betti-Cola was from legendary cartoonist Dan DeCarlo.

Now the only question is who on the Mayor Good Boy team is the Cub fan, Schedit or Harmon? Or both? 

Monday, January 01, 2024

A Month of Wednesdays: December 2023

BOUGHT:

Batman: Dark Knight Detective Vol. 8 (DC Comics) This latest collection of post-Crisis, pre-"Knightfall" issues of Detective Comics opens with a mistake: The volume includes 1991's Detective Comics Annual #4, the Armageddon 2001 tie-in, just as the previous volume in the series did. In seems to be a mistake of addition though, as it doesn't look like it replaced anything. The next ten issues of the series from 1992 are all included, as is the 1992 Annual #5, the Eclipso: The Darkness Within tie-in. 

This turns out to be the sole contribution of writers Alan Grant and John Wagner, while the rest of the scripts in the collection come courtesy of Chuck Dixon. In the annual, featuring a nicely crazed cover by Sam Kieth featuring Batman and The Joker and great, spooky interior art by Tom Mandrake, Grant regulars Scarface and The Ventriloquist have a new scheme: A legitimate night club for a clientele of gangsters, complete with ventriloquist act by themselves, in which they have bugged all the tables, allowing them to get all the dirt on their rival gang bosses. This is how they hear of a $25 million job The Joker once pulled off, where in the Clown Prince of Crime was the only one who knew where the money got stashed before he was picked up by the police. 

So they break The Joker out of Arkham—this turns out to be the first meeting between the two characters—and try to force him to reveal the location of the loot. What does that have to do with Eclipso? Nothing. The old JLA villain turned DCU annual event Big Bad comes into play when Batman encounters a couple of his black diamonds on an ancient head piece that was part of a museum job. Doctor Bruce Gordon comes to town warning of the diamonds and the danger of Eclipso, but he's too late; it turns out this night was the anniversary of Barbara Gordon's shooting by The Joker, and her dad Commissioner Gordon is feeling extra vengeful. He has thoughts of vengeance in his heart when he touches the diamonds, and thus releases a 20-foot monster, an aspect of Eclipso, that won't rest until it takes vengeance on The Joker. This leads to a climactic battle between Batman and the monster, way out of his normal weight class, in an old, abandoned toy factory. 

Mandrake handles the drawing of all the characters masterfully, and he's especially adept at depicting a semi-scary Batman as creature of the night and, of course, excels at the monster. I was rather disappointed when I got to the final panel and saw the tags saying "To Be Continued in Robin Annual #1" and "Plus--For More of Eclipso, Don't Miss Superman Annual #4". I read the Robin Annual, of course (also by Grant and Wagner, with art by Tom Lyle and another great Kieth cover), but never did read the Superman one. As with the Armageddon 2001 tie-in last volume (and, um, this volume too), I found myself wishing DC would collect the event. I know annual events are notoriously difficult to collect due to their sheer page count—Eclipso ran through two bookending specials and 18 different annuals—but I think a coupla trades could do it (and do it better than a massive omnibus, of which I'm not a fan of). 

The rest of the collection, as previously stated, is Dixon's, and the stories within find him working with one of two of his more fruitful collaborators: Tom Lyle and Graham Nolan.

With Lyle (doing breakdowns, while Scott Hanna handles finishes), Dixon has a pair of three-parters. The first of these is "Electric City", featuring great covers by Michael Golden, has Batman and Robin trying to stop an electricty-powered killer who survived the electric chair and now wants to electrocute all those who showed up to watch his botched execution (Plus vigilante The Electrocutioner). The second is a rather big one in terms of modern Batman history, as it re-introduces footnote Batman villain The Cluemaster and his daughter-turned-vigilante, Spoiler Stephanie Brown (this one's got great covers by Matt Wagner, two of which grace the front and back covers of the collection).

Rounding out the collection are the Nolan contributions, "The Dragon", in which Batman's hunchbacked fix-it guy Harold discovers that the Batcave cave complex connects to Gotham's underground rail system (while Robin saves a faux Geraldo Rivers from a booby-trapped safe during a television special); "A Bullet For Bullock," in which Batman and the rumpled police detective team-up (this one features what I believe is the very first Kelley Jones Batman cover; someone please correct me if I'm wrong); and a two-part story introducing The Huntress as an active presence in Gotham City. 

The repeat inclusion of the 1991 annual aside, it's a great collection from a high-point in Batman comics, and not to be missed by anyone whose never read these stories before (or who, like me, only read some of them). 

Looking ahead to what next, there's little left before "Knightfall": The three-issue arc introducing The General and two issues of team-ups with Azrael. These are intersesting comics, featuring art from Michael Netzer and covers by Kieth and Jones (taking turns inking one another's pencils), but they've already been collected elsewhere. Even if they include the next annual, I don't think there's enough material for a volume nine of the series.


BORROWED:

Batman: Wayne Family Adventures Vol. 2 (DC Comics) I remain somewhat perplexed as to how exactly this comic is produced, with one of the two inkers, Starbite, getting second credit below the writer (as well as having a bio in the back). In addition to Starbite and fellow inker Toby Fan, there are six artists credited under "storyboards by", two artists under "backgrounds by" and then a "flats & rendering" credit. That seems like a whole lot of personnel for what is a visually rather simple comic (and it's been rearranged to read more like a comic book in these collections; in the original Webtoon format they are simply phone-friendly, equal-sized sequential panels that run in a vertical stream).

My confusion about the process aside, it is clear that CRC Payne handles the scripts, and she's a magnificent writer, doing great character work with a large, even unwieldly cast of characters that includes the entire extended Bat-Family, with occasional appearances of Superman, the Justice League and even some villains and surprise characters. 

This is the only DC Comic that actually tackles the Batman cast as it actually stands, rather than strategically ignoring most of the characters because it's so much easier to do so (It is a little out of date though; Tim and Cassie are still wearing their New 52 Red Robin and Orphan costumes respectively, and Alfred is still alive, instead of temporarily dead, as he is in the other Batman comics). 

Among the highlights in this volume are seeing Alfred fly the Bat-plane to Kansas for a dinner with the Kents wherein they discuss their sons, Bruce Wayne consulting Superman on how to tie a tie (when Alfred is out of town) and the whole Justice League chiming in and the family rallying to keep Bruce Wayne in bed when injuries ground him from being Batman and all teaming-up to support Jason when he has a traumatic flashback to his death.

It's all around great stuff, and by far my favorite modern Batman comic. 



Godzilla Rivals: Round One (IDW Publishing) Godzilla Rivals is a series of standalone one-shots by rotating creative teams pitting Godzilla against one of his classic Toho foes...and telling the story of human characters underfoot in the process. Well, most of the installments in the series pit Godzilla against one of his foes. Some issues feature two non-Godzilla Toho characters duking it out, as in Godzilla Rivals: Biollante Vs. Destroyah or Godzilla Rivals: Rodan Vs. Ebirah. For the first collection, subtitled Round One, all of the stories feature the King of the Monsters himself. 

There are four in total, spanning the decades from a 1971-set battle against Hedorah in New York City to a 2027 encounter with Battra in the small, sea-side town of Hackney-On-Sea. Of these, the most substantial feeling is probably writer/artist Adam Gorham's Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah, set in 1996. 

In it, the Xiliens are attacking Earth in laser beam-spitting flying saucers, and Godzilla is doing his best to down the invading armada. He's eventually downed by a super-cannon and abducted in a little force bubble (as in 1965's Invasion of the Astro-Monster) and taken away to a Xilien outpost on Mars. There he's forced to fight in gladitorial combat for the amusement/distraction of the Xilien masses, fighting such foes as a trio of Kamacuras (this story is full of such cameos to Toho films, as we'll see). 

While Earth seems to be losing the war with the Xiliens, a Dr. Ogilvy Hu (who resembles the cape-swishing villain Dr. Who of 1967's King Kong Escapes) gathers Earth's leaders at his secret base and, after a very talky series of panels, explains his plan: pilot Captain Daitan Matsushita and a robot of his invention will pilot a special interplanetary stealth ship to Mars to drop an "electro-bomb" on the Xiliens' headquarters, disrupting their computer systems and allowing Earth's forces to turn the tide of the war against them.

As it happens, the attack happens just as the Xiliens have allowed Godzilla, who of course made short work of the Kamacuras, to face off against their monster champion, Monster Zero (That's King Ghidorah, of course). The bombing plan doesn't go quite as expected, but Godzilla, empowered by the radiation of the surface of Mars, manages to defeat his rival and, with his radioactive breath, destroy the target the bomb was intended for. Godzilla thus saves Earth, even while stuck on Mars. 

The Hedorah story, written by Paul Allor and drawn by E.J. Su, is mostly interesting for the moral quandaries navigated by the two human protagonists, both of whom seemingly want to survive at all costs, and may have a way of driving the two warring monsters off, if only someone is willing to sacrifice their own life to pull it off.

There's also a Godzilla Vs. Mothra story by Mary Kenney, SL Gallant and Maria Keane that finds a reporter discovering the secret captivity of Mothra and attempting to rescue her...just in time for the giant moth to stave off an attack by Godzilla (there are some nice lettering effects to intimate the strange speech patterns of the Shobijin in this one). 

And in the final Battra story, by Rosie Knight and Oliver Ono, Battra awakens in a small town and seems poised to start its task of destroying humanity to save the Earth, until the human heroes locate Godzilla, who fights the big bug (already in its final form; the larval stage is skipped in this story). They battle for a few pages, but before either monster can win decisively, Mothra shows up to talk sense to them, and gets them to not only stop fighting, but to warn Battra off of attacking the humans, who are just as much victims of environmental degradation as the Earth itself is. There's some particularly strong art in this chapter.

Overall, it's a pretty strong entry in IDW's Godzilla comics (and a far better read then the last couple I've read, the all-ages Monsters & Protectors collections). Certainly it lacks the narrative heft of the longer series that have preceded it, but the anthology format is a nice way to share the spotlight among Toho's wider menagerie of monsters. I am curious how the Godzilla-free stories pitting his rivals against one another read, but I guess I'll have to wait until a hypothetical Round Two for that. 


Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Child (Chronicle Books) The essential conceit of cartoonist Jeffrey Brown's original collection of Star Wars gags, the 2012 Darth Vader and Son, was to imagine Darth Vader as a harried single father raising a little boy version of Luke while also attending to his demanding day job, as evil Sith Lord and commander within the Galactic Empire. That lead to several other, similar collections, including Vader's Little Princess and Darth Vader and Friends, but the idea was essentially the same. 

The problem with Brown's latest venture with the Star Wars IP, focused on the three-season long Disney+ streaming TV show The Mandalorian, is that the show itself has as its core conceit the bad-ass bounty hunter as a harried single father raising a little kid. So here the jokes that Brown seeks to tell are so close to the source material that they are intent on spoofing that it all feels uncomfortably flat. Brown exaggerates the child care angle, of course, but it's only by degree, and thus the jokes all feel fairly small compared to those in his earlier Star Wars books. 

The art is pretty great, at least, but he does struggle to capture the adorable-ness of the Grogu puppet used in the show. 


REVIEWED: 

Tasty: A History of Yummy Experiments (RH Graphic) This sequel to Victoria Grace Elliott's Yummy brings back the cartoonist's food sprite characters for another series of history lessons of common foods, this time including cheese, pickles and pizza. More here

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

A Month of Wednesdays: November 2023

BORROWED: 

Mabuhay! (Scholastic) Teenage JJ Bulan wants nothing more than to fit in and be popular at school, but instead he always feels like he's on the outside looking in, a fact he blames in part on his family and their Filipino heritage. It probably doesn't help that his parents fully embrace that heritage in their business, the food truck The Beautiful Pig, which JJ and his little sister Althea are guilt-forced to work; she giving away free samples, he wearing a pig mascot costume and dancing around with a sign.

As self-conscious as JJ is about all of the things that mark him as different from his peers, the siblings are about to learn that their family is far stranger than they ever suspected: It turns out their mom was raised by witches in the Philippines and can wield rather powerful magic herself...magic that they seem to have inherited.

On top of their regular, everyday teen problems—and, it should be said, these are compelling enough that the advent of the witches plot almost seems superfluous to the drama of the graphic novel—the kids are now being menaced by an ogre and witches at school, and find themselves allied with the characters from Filipino folklore stories that their mom had previously introduced them to in preachy, lesson-stories. 

Will they learn to embrace their heritage, and all that makes them unique, in time to save their family and the world from an ancient, folkloric evil? That's the crux of cartoonist Zacharay Sterling's winning Mabuhay!, which is a Filipino expression used as a greeting or to express well wishes, translating to something like "Long live!" 

It's one of the many terms that appear in footnotes throughout the book, and a glossary in the back, explaining the pronunciation and definition of the many Filipino terms and expressions that are sprinkled throughout Sterling's book. There's even a two-page, illustrated recipe in comics form, for one of the Bulans' signature Filipino dishes, chicken adobo.

In the author's note that follows the completion of the story, Sterling explains that though this isn't quite an autobiography, it is very much his story, and that, like JJ, he grew up devouring all sorts of media, but rarely finding himself or his family represented in any of it, that "when you grow up  noticing how little you or your family fits the mold of anything you see on a screen or a page, you can't help but feel left out."

With Mabuhay!, he corrects that lack of representation of Filipino kids and families in comics and media...well, he certainly doesn't solve the problem forever or anything, but he does make a great stride in the right direction, giving people like his family and his people a great work that reflects who they are.

Which isn't to say that this is a comic strictly for Filipinos; the story is one that should resonate with anyone who struggles growing up in the world with an immigrant our outsider identity, or even just doubts about themselves and their family and how or if they fit into the rest of the world.  Don't miss it. 


The Super Hero's Journey (Abrams ComicsArts) Here's something that super-comics could do with far more of: Something completely unexpected. The 112-page, storybook-sized hardcover is the work of Mutts cartoonist Patrick McDonnell, working with an unusual "collaboration" with Marvel Universe architects Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and others that samples and repurposes many panels of their original comics to tell a new story that is essentially a love-letter to the original, first-generation of the Marvel Universe.

When drawing the Marvel superheroes, as he does throughout the book, McDonnell, one of the most accomplished cartoonists whose work you're likely to still see in a newspaper comic strip, works in a style that differs sharply from that one may be familiar with from his work on Mutts and his several children's picture books. It looks like the work of a rather accomplished child-artist, someone who doesn't live and breathe post-Kirby action-adventure narratives trying his hand at capturing the style (In fact, McDonnell shares some of his own fan art from 1966 or so and it's remarkable the degree to which his new Marvel art echoes that of his childhood. 

His book opens with a biographical note, with a prologue set in Edison, New Jersey in 1966. In panels drawn in his normal style, McDonnell tells of he and his siblings' early experiences with Marvel Comics: "Reading those early Marvel comic books by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko was life-altering...I was transformed--  --AND TRANSPORTED. I WATCHED AND I MARVELED." These words of narration accompany images drawings by Kirby and Ditko, as the McDonnell-drawn McDonnell moves through a portal and seems absorbed into the world of classic Marvel comics, seemingly replaced by that cosmic reader stand-in, The Watcher. 

From there, a mini-Marvel saga begins, with panels from classic Marvel comics repurposed, with occasional bridges drawn by McDonnell, to introduce The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and The Hulk, each wrestling with negative thoughts, the sort of self-doubt and melodrama that differentiated the highly-emotional Marvel heroes from their stoic and staid DC rivals in the early and mid-sixties. 

Recontextualized and repurposed, it is clear that there's some sort of threat to the heroes and their world afoot, a threat perpetuated by one of comics' most iconic villains: Doctor Doom. In a McDonnel-created panel, inset against a Kirby image with Lee-written narration, Doom boasts: "I've harnessed the power of the Negative Zone and started spreading its negativity across the land, crushing the human spirit." 

Eventually, the world turns on its heroes, and the heroes on each other, commencing a giant brawl that will involve them all (including late arrival, The Black Panther). It's up to Mr. Fantastic Reed Richards and The Watcher to try to figure out what's going on and counter it, even as the ante is upped by the imminent arrival of Galactus. After a brief detour into "The Romance Zone", where Reed finds Doom gradually appearing on the covers of titles like Teen-Age Romance and My Own Romance and realizes his archenemy is behind the mess. 

What can counter such negativity? What else but love, a superpower suggested in a quote by Kirby, and when the quote and koan-spouting Watcher and Reed manage to harness it and activate it, all is set right, but did it cost Reed his life?

He finds himself lying in the darkness, asking "What happened?", just as a dying soldier once asked Kirby in a war story he told. 

The story complete, an epilogue set in the present honors Kirby, Lee and Ditko...on a page alongside McDonnell's own parents, and updates us on the state of the settings of the prologue. It's an appropriate enough climax, "mushy", to use McDonnell—or was it Lee's, originally?—word, but, like every other page of the book, generated by the men who made Marvel, the men who are the true super heroes being lionized and glorified in the book more so than the big, strong men (and a couple of women) who make up the roster of tights-clad super-people in the drama. 

The book includes a pin-up of Reed, a letters column (in which letter hacks ask questions about the work a reader is likely to have, making the exercise a bit like a mini-interview with McDonnell about the work), an exhaustive sourcing of all of the images by Kirby, Ditko, Don Heck, Vince Colletta, Joe Sinnot and others that were used in the book, and a long list of all the quotes that are used during the book, some from Kirby and Lee, others from the likes of Eckhart Tolle, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Jung, Marianne Williamson and the like. 

A love letter to the foundation of Marvel, and to the escapist power of comic books in general, it's an amazing work. 


REVIEWED: 

The Accidental Warriors This self-published fantasy adventure from writer Karl Fields and artist David Velasquez finds two little kid friends on their way to martial arts class when they take a major detour—through a portal to another world, in an attempt to save their teacher's daughter from a reptillian monster man. There the pair soon becomes separated, and we follow Jalen as he tries to find his lost friend Ram, rescue their teacher's daughter and find a way back home. Along the way he meets all kinds of characters, including a riddle-telling anthropomorphic rabbit, a version of Norse god Loki and the leader of a tribe of young magic-users, and he must face such challenges as a hell modeled on a school where the bullies run things. Jalen and Ram are interesting characters to throw into your typical kids-in-another-world narrative, and Velasquez's art, brilliantly colored by Gio Wolf, is appealing. 


Godzilla: Monsters & Protectors—All Hail The King! (IDW Publishing) The continuation of Erik Burnham and Dan Schoening's kid-friendly Godzilla series finds three kings in conflict: King Ghidorah, King Caesar and, of course, Godzilla, the King of the Monsters. While hardly the publisher's best offering featuring Toho's characters and concepts—I can't get over just how unlikable our protagonist really is—it's still Godzilla, which, for me at least, means it's still of interest. More here


Monkey Prince Vol. 2: The Monkey King and I (DC Comics) I go on a bit too long about the nature of superhero comics crossovers in this review of the second half of Gene Luen Yang and Bernard Chang's overall well-done Monkey Prince limited series, the end of which is more or less scuttled by the intrusion of the Batman Vs. Robin/Lazarus Planet business. 


Star Wars: Tales From the Death Star (Dark Horse Books) The all-ages Star Wars comics have settled into their new-old home at Dark Horse, after years at IDW, and the annual tradition of spooky, "horror" stories set in the world has made the transition nicely, with writer Cavan Scott and a handful of artist collaborators presenting another tale in which a storyteller presents stories-within-the story, these all intended to scare a youngster out of a dangerous course of action: Visiting the ruins of one of the Empire's titular super-weapons. Scott certainly has the formula perfected at this point, and the comics run like clockwork. More here


Superman Vs. Meshi (DC) While it seems like it was just yesterday that I was introduced to my new favorite superhero comic, it was actually two whole months ago, in September, that I first learned of Superman's recent fascination with Japanese chain restaurants, and his habit of visiting them every chance he got. Now we've got another volume of The Man of Steel's culinary adventures, this one mostly focusing on his sharing meals with various peers. I can't emphasize enough just how fun these comics are (I mean, just dig that cover!). More here


Turtle Bread (Dark Horse) I had no idea who writer Kim-Joy was when I first picked this book up and read it, but she is apparently a celebrity baker that will be familiar to many of the people who read this comic. Knowing that she's a baker, reality show be-er on and cook book author actually makes her comics debut all the more impressive; it doesn't read like the work of an amateur at all, nor of a dilettante transitioning her fame to dabble in a "hot" publishing genre. Rather, it's a highly accomplished work, one that tells the compelling story of a young woman suffering from crushing social anxiety as she makes new friends at a baking club and begins to come out of her shell. A great deal of credit must certainly go to the artist, Alti Firmansyah, given that a long, important passage of the book is told silently. More here

Sunday, November 05, 2023

A Month of Wednesdays: October 2023

 BOUGHT:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Reborn, Vol. 7—Isolation (IDW Publishing) The tag on the cover says "The Armageddon Game", and the seven issues included in this collection are apparently those that were published in the pages of the main TMNT comic while the TMNT: Armageddon Game miniseries was unfolding. As such, it's clear that quite a bit of other stuff featuring the stars of the series is going on somewhere else, stuff that only occasionally intersects with the plotting of the stories collected in this trade. Still, it's surprisingly readable, with only two or three of the issues noticeably impacted by that other stuff.

The first five issues or so are relatively straightforward, focusing on the two ninja turtles still in Mutant Town, Donatello and Jennika, while the other three are off doing other things. Donatello is working a monitor array and trying to keep tabs on everything happening in town, while simultaneously protecting Triceraton regent, Seri. Jennika, meanwhile, is filling in as town constable, while Raphael is off participating in the event series. 

Mayor Baxter Stockman gives a state of the city address and he is attacked on camera by four white-masked mutant turtles with familiar-looking weapons (these seem to be the turtles Campbell drew in TMNT FCBD 2022: The Armageddon Game, which was collected in TMNT: Reborn, Vol. 6). This sets off riots in Mutant Town, as differing factions of the populace react violently in different directions. Meanwhile, the Utrom's from Burnow Island send an assassination squad to take out Seri, and Donatello experiments with a magic crystal that recalled the events of 1986's Donatello "micro-series" to an extent. 

Things get weird part-way through the fifth issue, wherein a bunch of other characters presumably from the pages of Armageddon Game join a fight scene, one which grows between issues to include more out-of-left-field participants, including the IDW version of Cudley from the old Archie Comics. I realize I'm reading this in the "wrong" way, and that the ideal way to read it is in the individual issues as they're published serially; presumably, this stuff would make more sense that way.

From there, the reunited five ninja turtles are whisked away to learn a new, tenth secret move from The Shredder and Kitsune, and, in the cliffhanger ending, face the Rat King, the prime mover behind the Armageddon Game.

Sophie Campbell continues to write the series, while Fero Pe provides all of the art. I, as always, would have preferred Campbell at least penciling the art to anyone else, but Pe is good, and the style is well within the range of Campbell's. My favorite bits of the collection, however, are the cover collaborations between Campbell and Kevin Eastman, of which there are seven. This is, in my mind, the ideal TMNT art team, and do hope IDW eventually has them draw a prestige graphic novel together, perhaps one that Campbell writes as well. 




BORROWED:

Batman & The Joker: The Deadly Duo: The Deluxe Edition (DC Comics) Superstar artist, Image co-founder and Top Cow founder Marc Silvestri gets a special showcase series on DC's mature readers Black Label imprint, playing with two of the most popular toys in the publisher's toybox. 

Originally a seven-issue miniseries, Batman & The Joker: The Deadly Duo features the rather unlikely—and quite unequal—"team-up" between the two archenemies, written as well as drawn by Silvestri (Colorist Arif Prianto provides the color art). 

This is forced by the mysterious new villain, who spends much of the series hidden under a purple-ish hood and cloak (that's the villain on the cover, under Batman's right wing). By kidnapping Commissioner Gordon and Harley Quinn, the villain forces the pair to work together, giving them a series of impossible-seeming, almost Saw-like tasks involving deciding who should live and who should die. 

Meanwhile, a series of gruesome beheadings is being carried out by monstrously strong and tough creatures that physically resemble The Joker. The victims all seem related to a single incident, a botched armored car robbery-turned-hostage situation at a high society wedding, for which the father of the bride, who just so happens to be involved in cutting-edge genetic research, blames Batman, The Joker and the Gotham City Police Department in equal measure for its tragic, high body count ending. 

He would seem to be the obvious suspect, then, and, while it's not a mystery story, Silvestri does manage to throw a convincing curveball. So too is there some misdirection regarding The Joker's motivations for playing along. He's not really trying to save Harley Quinn, but get his greatest desire fulfilled by the villain, who has the means to deliver it. As to what that is, well, it's worth reading to find out, isn't it? 

The story is engaging enough, and Silvestri does a fine job writing the various players, which include Batman mainstays Harvey Bullock, Alfred, Nightwing, Catwoman and Batgirl Barbara Gordon. The set-up, bringing The Joker and Batman together as a sort of team, works, especially considering what a heavy story-telling lift that is, and the various riffs on the nature of Batman, The Joker and their relationship to one another are satisfying. 

Given Silvestri's reputation as an artist, I was honestly surprised by how good the writing was. It's hardly a revelatory or revolutionary comic, of course, but it is not bad at all. 

The real point of the endeavor is, of course, to show off Silvestri's artwork, and, specifically, apply it to Batman. This shouldn't disappoint any of the artist's fans, or, I would think, many Batman fans. While the storytelling isn't the greatest, and the images don't always flow together in a compelling fashion, the individual images are all generally strong, highlighting Silvestri's figurework and his particularly strong Batman.

I read the story in the "Deluxe Edition" hardcover format, which means that, in addition to 38 pages of variant covers in thte back, there's a similar amount of space devoted to Silvestri's original pencils, as well as an aftterword by Silvestri. 

As for the variants, they are by particularly high-caliber artists, and, chances are, your favorite Batman artist drew one of them. Among the EDILW-favorite artists to draw variants include Kelley Jones, Mike Mignola, Kyle Hotz, John McCrea, Simon Bisley and Guillem March, any of whom I would have turned a cartwheel if I heard they were drawing a 150-ish page Batman/Joker story for DC, although Deadly Duo would have been very, very different if any of them did; this is, after all, a Silvestri story through and through. 


Komi Can't Communicate Vol. 27 (Viz Comics) This volume is dominated by the dramatization of the kids playing an online game Amanjite Asu, which I think is an off-brand version of the game Among Us, (enabled by Komi finally getting a new, smart phone), but I know so little about video games that I'm just guessing. This takes up about 70 pages total, and given that I didn't really relate to the game and only had a marginal idea of what was going on, made this a less-than-enjoyable installment of the long-running series.

The rest of the volume involves some new phone shenanigans, the boy who can't talk to girls playing soccer, and the girls discussing kissing—climaxing with Komi bringing the subject up with Tadano. 


REVIEWED:

Ghost Book (Henry Holt and Company) Wanna hear a weird coincidence? I checked this book out of my library, knowing nothing about it other than the fact that it was by the great Remy Lai and that it had something to do with ghosts. I decided to wait until a trip I was taking to Baltimore to read it, as I knew I would have a lot of down time in a hotel room by myself and need plenty of reading material. A few weeks later, on my drive to Baltimore, I was listening to the audiobook version of Ken Jennings' 100 Places To See After you Die. During the section on mythology, there's a chapter on the Chinese afterlife, which mentions "ghoulish bureaucrats like Horse-Face and Ox-Head." Mere hours later, when I cracked open Ghost Book, who do I see within the first few pages but Horse-Face and Ox-Head! In fact, Ghost Book deals pretty directly with the Chinese underworld and superstitions about death. It's a fun kids adventure making great use of those sources of inspiration. You can read more about it here



Wildfire (Little, Brown and Company) Cartoonist Breena Bard puts the recent northwestern wildfires in the context of climate change in this melodrama about a junior high student whose family loses their home in a wildfire and must move to Portland to try to start over. She's not ready to let go of her anger though, or to see the wildfire as part of a bigger, more pervasive threat to the planet instead of an isolated event caused by some dumb kids playing with fireworks. Her participation in her new school's Conservation Club, and her family's embrace of local climate change protests, eventually changes the way she sees things, and gets her to ask for the help she needs. More here

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Some Kickstarter campaigns of note

I feel weird about Kickstarter, the crowd-funding site that some comics folks use to bring their projects to life, instead of going the traditional route of securing a publisher. 

I've backed a couple projects there before (some Jim Lawson comics, Mystery Science Theater 3000*) and been pleased with the results, so I'm not, like, opposed to it or anything, I just think it's weird when certain creators or certain projects show up there, given the fact that they seem like they should be the exact sorts of comics that publishers should be fighting one another to publish, rather than something that the creators have to turn to crowd-funding to produce. (That said, I suppose it just might be a weird prejudice of mine against crowd-funding as a publication model; perhaps there are reasons Kickstarter is more appealing to a creator than working with a publisher, I don't know. I didn't ask any of these creators.)

Case in point? Jeff Smith, the Eisner and Harvey-winning cartoonist extraordinaire whose resume includes Bone, RASL, Tuki: Save the Humans, Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil and Little Mouse Gets Ready, an artist who was on the pointy end of the spear of getting comic books in libraries and re-popularizing comics for kids again, is seeking to publish his early, pre-Bone (proto-Bone, in his words) college comic strip, Thorn, which used to run in the Ohio State University school paper The Lantern when Smith was a student there. (I've seen some of these in the 2008 book Before Bone, published in conjunction with his Wexner Center for the Arts show Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond, and they're pretty fascinating to read in the context of the Bone that later saw print). 

One would think an artist of Smith's stature would have his pick of publishers, but Thorn: The Complete Proto-Bone Comic Strips 1982-1986 and Other Early Drawings is on Kickstarter. Again, maybe this is Smith's first choice, and he didn't even consider going with a publisher, but it strikes me as...wrong that a major publisher wouldn't want involved with the project, as relatively niche as it might be. 

As of this writing, there are 16 days left to go on the campaign. For $30, you can get a trade paperback version of the book, for $75 you can get a hardcover. 

If you've been a regular reader of EDILW for a long time now, you probably know my love of Kelley Jones' art knows no bounds, and little has excited me more than getting a new Kelley Jones comic, especially a new Kelley Jones Batman comic. In fact, I'm so fond of Kelley Jones that if Kelley Jones walked up to me on the street and asked me for, say, $50, I'd gladly give it to him. So obviously I was onboard with a Jones-related Kickstarter.

And this one looks like a doozy, as it also involves Dracula and cartoonist Matt Wagner (best known his Mage and Grendel, but, like Jones, he has plenty of great Batman comics to his name as well). Dracula Vol. 1—The Impaler is written by Wagner, drawn by Jones and will be the first in a series of graphic novels telling the life story of one of fiction's most famous characters. 

It seems like a perfect project for Dark Horse Comics or DC Comics, both of which have worked extensively with the creators in the past, or even Dynamite, where Wagner has been writing the adventures of other famous pop culture icons, like Zorro, The Shadow, The Spirit and the Green Hornet. Whatever though. Like I said, I would be happy to hand Jones money if he asked for it; if I got a Dracula comic by Jones and Wagner in exchange, well, who could ask for more?

As of this writing, there are 16 days left on the campaign. For $45 you get a hardcover version of the book, with either a Jones or a Wagner cover (I chose the Wagner cover, since I'd be getting all that Jones are on the inside).  

Finally, there's something that's only kinda sorta comics that is nevertheless near and dear to my heart, and was a big part in my falling in love with comic books in the first place: The old Palladium role-playing game based on Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's original, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness

I and a friend of mine had played a little Dungeons & Dragons around the time we discovered these books, which featured black-and-white illustrations by Mirage Studios artists Eastman and Jim Lawson (in addition to being based on the early, Mirage issues of TMNT, they also included some short comics from Eastman and Laird, all of which I believe have since been collected repeatedly, including by IDW). 

Palladium quickly overtook D&D in our affections, and between us we had all five of the TMNT sourcebooks, plus a few of the related After The Bomb books, which also involved mutant animal characters. We were playing these as I was buying my first TMNT comics, which brought me into a comic shop and well, here we are thirty-some years later. 

I'm delighted to see that Palladium is bringing the books back in a pair of collections, even though I have some reservations about the way they're doing it; mainly, there will be new covers and everything will be color-ized, which, in addition to never looking quite right to my eyes (I didn't care for the colorized versions of some Mirage comics that IDW has published over the  years), means the Turtles will be wearing their cartoon colors, rather than all wearing red, as in the original color covers of the original black and white covers.

Luckily, they seem to have thought of the exact sort of snob that I am, as in addition to the new, colorized versions, they're also publishing black, white and red editions: "For those who want to enjoy a blast to the past version of the books more akin to the originals, this is for you." Neat! I backed at the level that would get me those versions of the two collections, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness and TMNT Transdimensional Adventures. 

As of this writing, there are 28 days left in this campaign, and there's a huge swathe of options of what you can get, from $50 for the Other Strangeness Collection all the way up to special dice and miniature figures. 

This is the end of this blog post, so you can now leave EDILW and head over to Kickstarter where you can support any or all of these worthwhile projects. I hope you will; I'd like to see them all reach all their stretch goals. 




*They're currently trying to raise funds for a fourteenth season, by the way, and they're doing it here, rather than through Kickstarter this time. 

Wednesday, October 04, 2023

A Month of Wednesdays: September 2023

BOUGHT:

G'nort's Swimsuit Edition #1 (DC Comics) Fare like this from my favorite superhero publisher doesn't exactly make me regret not visiting the comic shop every Wednesday any more. Originally solicited as G'Nort's Illustrated Swimsuit Edition (you can still see the original cover at comics.org, which I've posted below), DC apparently backed off too closely echoing Sports Illustrated, changing the title and its font before publication. 

Unlike most of DC's seasonal specials, 80-page giants containing eight to ten short stories, this one is mostly recycled material, collecting all of the publisher's swimsuit variant covers from earlier in the year. Variant galleries like this are, I think, not a bad idea, and there are certain titles and certain themes I wouldn't have minded a nice collection like this of, however the downside is that, because all of these have been previously solicited as individual comics covers, none of the images are really new or surprising.

They are all mostly okay, and they do feature the work of some of my favorite comics artists, including Mike Allred, Nicola Scott and Babs Tarr, among plenty of other DC regulars. The images are all mostly stately and tasteful, often to the point of sterility, with few really provocative images, with the possible exceptions of the contributions by Frank Cho, Tarr and maybe Scott (who approaches brokeback in her posing of Dick Grayson). 

More problematic are the pair of new comics included within. These are, to put it as blandly as possible, not very good.

The first is entitled "Baewatch" (get it?) and is the work of writers Julie Benson and Shawna Benson and artist Meghan Hetrick. It features a rather random assortment of supeheroines—Black Canary, Vixen, Poison Ivy, Batgirl Barbara Gordon and a Huntress—enjoying a day at Gotham City Beach, which the city made from land reclaimed from The Penguin. No sooner does someone remark that The Penguin is likely to retaliate somehow then the heroines note the presence of a nearby oil pipeline, and scouting reveals a bunch of SCUBA goons under the direction of the villain, wearing a one-piece swimsuit and floating in a bubble.

They save the day, make some jokes at the Penguin's expense, and return to enjoying a day at the beach.  What's problematic about that? Well, if you've read a comic book featuring Vixen since, say, the turn of the century, you'll be aware that artists generally depict her power—which is to mimic the abilities of animals—by drawing an image of the animal she's channeling in the background. It saves the writer having to have her explain in dialogue that she's flying using the abilities of an eagle every time she takes flight. 

The problem is that the Bensons, Hetrick and apparently even editor Katie Kubert have been misreading her powers, and thinking that, rather than artistic flourishes that appear in panels featuring Vixen using her powers, those flourishes are her powers, and that she creates images of the animals she's channeling, which she then can control, kind of like a Green Lantern manipulating light constructs. How else to explain the fact that, when Vixen uses the powers of a shark to investigate the pipeline, she's surrounded by a glowing yellow shark shape, a shape that she later uses to "bite"—again, she's not using the power of a shark's bite to let her bite like a shark, but the shark-shape does the biting—and, later still, Black Canary rides on the shark shape. 

It's weird.

And sure, this story is just an eight-page lark and yes, perhaps I am being the stereotypical nerd reader nit-picking a trivial aspect of it, but, on the other hand, knowing a superhero's super-powers is pretty much the most basic aspect of making a superhero comic, and it's unusual to see one of the biggest superhero publishers in the world dropping this particular ball in such an embarrassing fashion.

The second story reads so much like an inventory story, that I wonder if it was actually commissioned for this special, or if it was cut from one of the previous summer or Pride specials and just got used here. It's by writer Steve Orlando and artists Paul Pelletier and Norm Rapmund and entitled "Out There." 

The Authority's Midnighter and Apollo are enjoying a day at the Coast City beach in one another's arms—a sign in the background of one panel says its Coast City Pride—when Midnighter picks something up on the military bands. They don their super-suits over their bathing suits and head into action. It seems the ship the USS Incredulous is being attacked by a great ape. 

Apparently, the entire ship is one big prison for Doom Patrol villain The Brain, and his long-time ally Monsieur Mallah is trying to free him, making a point of telling the "World's Finest Couple" that Mallah and The Brain are a couple themselves—somewhere along the line, Grant Morrison's old Doom Patrol joke got taken seriously enough that the pair became a romantic coupling, so desperate for gay representation was the publisher once upon a time.  

Our heroes solve the villains' problem, but not in the way Mallah initially envisioned. And that's it. Orlando doesn't do anything particularly funny with the set-up—remember, there's a French-speaking gorilla in its eight pages—are anything particularly clever with the characters' super-powers. It's mainly notable as a superhero power couple vs. a supervillain power couple. Nice art by Pelletier and Rapmund, though. 

Also included in the collection is a prose piece that's supposed to be a journalist's interview with G'nort and the team at the magazine talking about his centerfold, followed by some magazine-like stats on G'nort and a repeat of the cover image, featuring G'nort in what appears to be a Justice League locker room. There's also a fold-out image which I guess is the real centerfold, but it's Poison Ivy by Jen Bartel, not G'nort.  

The whole affair is a great deal cheaper than the usual $9.99 that the seasonal special generally cost, but still, this was not $5.99 well-spent. 



BORROWED: 


Batman/Superman World's Finest Vol. 2: Strange Visitor (DC Comics) The second volume of Mark Waid and Dan Mora's Batman/Superman team-up title opens with a one-shot story resolving the issue of Robin Dick Grayson being lost in time during the events of the first volume; here, he ended up in the late 19th century, where he joined a circus, and where he has a mysterious murder to solve before he can let Superman and Batman return him to his own time. This issue is drawn by Travis Moore.

From there, the second volume begins in earnest with the next  full story arc (if you're wondering about the devil Nezha from the first volume, his story continued in Batman Vs. Robin, reviewed in the previous installment of this column). 

A teenager with a familiar origin story—his dying world is about to end, so his parents put him in a special shuttle and shoot him to safety on the planet Earth, where the sunlight gives him super-powers—enters Superman, Batman and Robin's world, although his origin story has a few notably twists from that Superman's, the first of which is that he's not from another planet, but from another Earth in the Multiverse. 

The heroes take him under their wing, as he adopts the persona Boy Thunder, and they take turns training him, while Supergirl talks to him about survivor's guilt and trauma, and Robin introduces him to the Teen Titans, as Waid and Mora continue to grow the new Silver Age their depicting in this title. (There's also a nice, surprising but very welcome appearance from another minor hero, called on for his specialty). Meanwhile, a team-up between The Key (who here resembles his 1997 JLA #8 makeover, rather than his real Silver Age appearance) and The Joker threatens Gotham City...and then the strange visitor himself, when they get him in their clutches, and seek to exploit the darkness in him for their own purposes. 

Boy Thunder, whose real name is David, ends up being another modern DC superhero, one who, as an adult, plays a key role in a Waid-written classic (This revelation, which might not have been completely necessary given the end of the book, is somewhat clumsily communicated). So if you're wondering why Superman had a Silver Age sidekick that no one remembers, well, that is of course explained as well.

As with the first volume of the series, this is pretty much perfect DC Comics superhero story-telling, from one of the writers who is best at it, and a tremendously exciting artist who breathes exciting new life into DC's stable of characters. 


Superman Vs. Meshi Vol. 1 (DC) Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent gets an hour for his lunch break, but given that he can go anywhere on Earth almost instantaneously thanks to flying at super-speed in his guise as Superman, he can have lunch anywhere in the world he wanted to. And lately he’s been really into Japanese food, flying to Japan–a three-second trip from Metropolis–to dine at chain restaurants there. That is the entire premise of Superman Vs. Meshi (that’s "Superman Vs. Food"), a delightfully weird new manga featuring the culinary adventures of the Man of Steel.

Clark Kent is in the middle of being scolded by boss Perry White when they’re interrupted by Clark’s grumbling stomach. He's dismissed to go get lunch, and he asks office crush Lois Lane to join him. She declines, and while he would normally be heart-broken, he's actually kind of happy. See, there's an all-you-can-eat yakitori lunch special at Torikazoku in Japan, and while it would be crazy for Clark Kent to fly there in an airplane to eat, it's no big deal for Superman.


"One Superman for lunch," he says, striding confidently into the restaurant, where they treat like any other customer ("They’re very welcoming here, even to someone who's clad in tights from the neck down," Superman thinks. "Maybe it's because cosplay culture has become prevalent in Japan, too.") As he waits for his order, the thinks of the first time he tried Japanese food, being gifted with some yakitori during a super-battle in Japan, and the flavor was so good it set-off his heat-vision. Since then, he's been coming to Japan for lunch as often as he can.


Each chapter of Superman Vs. Meshi, subtitled Superman Vs. Something-or-Other, finds Superman indulging in a new Japanese meal, spending most of the time talking to himself about how good the food is, how the components of the meal come together and work on his palette and so on. There's some traditional superhero action and Superman mythos maintenance in the set-ups, but the meat of each story is Superman's meal.


And so after an early-morning, rather boring meeting with the Justice League–the version here apparently inspired by that of the feature film–Superman flies to Japan for an "all-star tempura bowl," the "Justice League of tempura bowls," in which various ingredients are compared to each of the superheroes.


 In perhaps the most unusual World's Finest team-up ever, Superman whisks Batman from the high-end Gotham City traditional Japanese restaurant Bruce Wayne rented out so they could talk about justice (seriously) to Japan, where Superman orders for him. ("You're the Dark Knight… …so the black-vinegar-sauce chicken and vegetable set meal is obviously the only choice.")


When he arrives for lunch one day to find all the restaurants closed, he settles for a Japanese convenience store, only to discover they are nothing like those in Metropolis ("I thought I just stepped into an amusement park!").


And, in maybe the weirdest story of the batch, he goes to a sushi restaurant, only to find Aquaman loudly carrying on talking to the sushi; apparently fish can still speak to him after they've been cut up and prepared with seaweed and rice into lunch ("It’s a little hard to explain," Aquaman tells him. "It's like the ocean tells me everything. So I can hear the voices of the fish.")


One may not be all that interested in Japanese cuisine–that’s certainly not why I picked the book up–but chances are Superman's enthusiasm for the subject, and the slightly surreal juxtaposition of the world's most famous superhero acting as a point-of-view character introducing his unexpected new obsession, will win one over. It's a comic book unlike any that Superman has ever appeared in, and given the character’s 80+ years of comics adventures–not to mention television and movies–that in itself is something of a feat.


Sure, it's occasionally pretty silly–as when Superman tries his movie trick of reversing time to stop his crunchy noodles from getting soggy–but in the context of a standalone manga like this, it works perfectly well.


The artwork, by Kai Kitago, is a nice compromise between traditional Western style superheroes and manga, the story-telling following the rhythms and patterns of the latter; his Superman and Clark look like they are rather heavily influenced by Christopher Reeve. Whether one is already an experienced manga fan–and this does read right-to-left–or used to American Superman comics, this should prove a pleasant amusement. (Note: I had planned on reviewing this for Good Comics For Kids, but Johanna beat me to it; she seems to have liked it as much as I did, so there's two recommendations for you).



Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead Vol. 11 (Viz Media) If you were worried the book was becoming a little too religious during the "Pilgrimage of the Dead" story arc, which started last volume and wraps up with two more chapters in this volume, writer Haro Aso and artist Kotaro Takata course-correct rather quickly with "Cruise Ship of the Dead," a two-part arc that finishes out this volume. In fact, the shift from the spiritual to the carnal is so sharp that a reader might be forgiven for experiencing a bit of whip-lash.


In the concluding chapters of "Pilgrimage," our heroes continue on their walk to visit 88 temples, running into trouble midway through when some escaped convicts discover that they are "rich" with canned goods and seek to rob them—and take Bea captive. Though they intend to rape her, they first interrogate her about the source of their wealth, which puts her in a bind, as she's not supposed to lie at all during the pilgrimage. Don't worry, everything works out okay for our heroes...and even one of the villains, who is visited by a kindness he doesn't seem to deserve, and may have restored his faith in humanity (gradually lost after a life-time of being taken advantage of).


And then, that arc, done, our heroes visit Onomichi City, where they take in the calm inland sea, half expecting to see a luxury liner cruising by...and then they do. A fancy yacht filled with scantily-clad hedonist invites them aboard ("Our only rule is that you like to party!"), an invitation Kencho is quick to accept, and the others more reluctantly do, since the boat's apparent captain mentions some researchers on an island, the object of our heroes' quest (when they're not ticking items off their bucket list, of course).


They're mostly all terribly out of place on the yacht's ongoing bacchanal, until a fairy tale-like twist introduces zombies into the previously zombie-free safe space of the boat (Oh, and apparently the water is no escape from zombies...not if they are close enough to you when they hit the water, anyway). There's some advancement of the barely simmering romance between Akira and Shizuka, and a cliffhanger that should force them to deal with their feelings for one another, as they wash up on a seemingly deserted island together, separated from the rest of the group.


I've seen what I assume are more than enough zombie apocalypses to last me a life-time, in manga and in other media alike, but I've yet to tire from Akira and company's adventures through this one.