What's That? A Contest?

/

Yes, it’s time for a contest! The good folks at Nerdyshirts have ponied up some sweet sweet apparel and if there’s one thing that I know, it’s that people who read comic books also wear tshirts.

As for the actual contest part of the contest: below you will find a list of the books that I bought this week. Take one or more of those as your inspiration and either

a) Write, draw, sculpt, paint, mosaic, program or otherwise create something based on it

or if you are less creatively inclined,

b) Find a piece of writing, art, etc. that you can point to as being especially relevant in relation to it

We’ve got two shirts to give away, so one will go to an a) style submission and one to a b). In either case, entries will be judged on an entirely subjective basis by me, with another LBWer or maybe my girlfriend called in to break any subjective stalemates.

You can link entries in the comments section, email them to me (contact info in the JOHNATHAN page, linked above) or, uh, send them in the mail if you want to and can convince me to give you my address. You have until Friday, July 2 to get ‘em in, and I’ll announce the winners on Saturday July 3. I will certainly post your submissions to the site, so watch out.

Here’s the list:

7 Psychopaths No. 2 (BOOM!)
American Vampire No. 4 (Vertigo)
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne No. 3 (DC)
Bullet to the Head No. 1 (Dynamite)
Garrison No. 3 (Wildstorm)
Green Lantern Corps No. 49 (DC)
Joe the Barbarian No. 6 (Vertigo)
Joker’s Asylum II: Killer Croc (DC)
Justice League: Generation Lost No. 4 (DC)
The Killer: Modus Vivendi No. 3 (Archaia)
King City No. 9 (Image)
Legion of Super-Heroes No. 2 (DC)
The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century TP (Dark Horse)
Power Girl No. 13 (DC)
Sea Bear & Grizzly Shark No 1 (Image)
Superman No. 700 (DC)
The Tick New Series No. 4 (New England Comics)
Zatanna No. 2 (DC)

I suppose that if you mostly read Marvel Comics you can do something about how I don’t ever buy any and am consequently a jerk.

Bat and Switch

/

As I'm sure basically nobody noticed, I haven't done any weekly reviews for the last couple of weeks. June seems to be a pretty by-the-books month as far as the comics that I'm buying is concerned - the good series are maintaining their goodness and the less-good series aren't driving me to the heights of nerd-rage necessary for a tirade. 

I did, however, pick up Batman No. 700 this week. I'd passed on buying it last week out of despair over missing the Mike Mignola variant cover (not only is Mignola the only person to ever make me care about variant covers, he's the only person to inspire true collector's lust in my breast. I will someday track down all Mignola covers, this I swear). Good ol' Dave worked some magic, though, and now I have this beauty:

After a week of reviews of the thing, I was expecting some sort of explosive mess, but what I found was a pretty danged enjoyable Batman yarn. Granted, it suffered the common Morrison comic problem of having 1.5 to 2 comic worth of plot and ideas crammed into a single issue, compounded by the slightly galling pinup section - not that the pinups weren't great, but a little more story space or even a couple extra future Batmen (Batmaniacs? Batman Year 100?) would have been great.

But this isn't really a review of that comic. No, it's merely an elaborate segue. And not a very good one, either, because it's based on the fact that I read a review that critiqued the plot of Batman 700 and maybe called into question just how much sense some aspects of it made. And even though I can no longer find or remember where I read that review, I'm still going to respond to it by taking a look at the Batman story in Detective Comics No. 422, and a plot element that blows reason completely out of the water.

The story in question is set during the period in which Robin has gone off to college and Bruce Wayne has left his stuffy old manor and its associated cave for the hurly-burly life of downtown Gotham. We find him relaxing in his penthouse apartment, when suddenly a plot hook in the shape of a trucker comes bursting in:

Despite the guy's general craziness, Bruce elects to look into this and other truck disappearances. Possibly because he owns a lot of stock in the company, but probably not. Probably. He finds some truckers, beats them up and gets a quick crash course in the art of the long haul.

Trucker Batman reasons that the missing men were drugged somehow and abducted under the cover of their hallucinations. He dons a truly majestic outfit and starts hitting likely spots:

... and hopefully hasn't been stopping at a lot of places, because he acts like a total dick.

It's considered polite to find a potted plant, Bruce.

Batman hits the road, starts hallucinating - that's right, the fact that he was completely wrong about the coffee just adds insult to injury - shakes off the effects and finds out how the trucks have been disappearing:

And here's the first of two very strange things about this comic. The reason that these trucks were stolen and sunk at sea, at presumably great expense and via a complicated plot?

 

You heard the man: his trucks were manufactured with a defective break line and rather than issue a recall he chose to commit multiple acts of murder-by-proxy. I want you to pay attention to this, everyone who was complaining about Toyota a couple of months ago. I'll bet you'd have cut them more slack if you'd known that they had rejected the option of drugging everyone who had a defective car and then dumping them in the ocean via helicopter, eh?

Strange/insane as the reason for this crime is, it's actually one of the means by which it was committed that I want to point out. Specifically, the drugging. Batman didn't partake of the coffee, so exactly how were he and the truckers doped up?

 

Drugged soap. Drugged soap. The entire plan hinged on truckers washing their hands after using the washroom.  

Never has my suspension of disbelief been more tested. My father is a former trucker, and, well, let's just say that he wouldn't have enjoyed the Doors any more than usual after visiting this diner. This is the most utterly unreal panel in any comic, ever.

EVER.

This Atlas Don't Shrug!

/

Reading mainstream superhero comics is becoming a bit of a chore lately—if a comic isn’t part of a line-wide crossover that has two or three good ideas spread out over way too many issues, it’s rife with death, destruction, despair, and misogyny. Often, it’s both. That’s why I’m glad a book like Marvel’s Atlas is around. I don’t read superhero comics to be bummed out, I read ‘em so I can follow the adventures of reformed killer robots, talking dragons, and wisecracking gorillas who occasionally wear Hawaiian shirts.

 Atlas has been around, in one form or another, for some time now. Writer Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk launched the team (well, re-launched, but more on that in a minute) in a six-issue miniseries a few years back called Agents of Atlas, which introduced the covert superteam comprised of characters who were published separately by Marvel’s 1950s incarnation, when they were called--wait for it--Atlas. The team, made up of Gorilla Man, The Human Robot, Marvel Boy, Venus, Namora, and rejuvenated secret agent Jimmy Woo, had worked together briefly in the Fifties to fight the menace of the Yellow Claw (not really—this back-engineered origin was spun off from an issue of the original What If? series that imagined an Avengers team formed during the Eisenhower administration).

This diverse group reunites to help Jimmy track down his old nemesis, who is behind a globe-spanning science terror organization known only as the Atlas Foundation. However, by the end of that initial miniseries, Jimmy learns that he is the true heir to the Foundation, which dates all the way back to the Mongol Empire; seizing control of his destiny, and with his old comrades in arms, Jimmy sets about trying to change the Foundation from within—a task that may be impossible when the organization he commands is responsible for nurseries full of giant killer plants and orphanages populated by white-haired psychic toddlers.

 

Agents of Atlas appeared again (this time as an ongoing series) in the wake of Marvel’s Secret Invasion crossover, but was sadly cut short after 11 issues. Having that stupid Dark Reign banner on the early issues might have helped out with the initial sales, but that kind of quick sales fix is a short-term solution that hurts a book more in the long run—in my opinion, anyway. Regardless, Marvel’s commitment to this cult favourite has been surprisingly steadfast; the team appeared again in a two-part X-Men vs. Agents of Atlas mini, and then later in a four-part Avengers vs. Atlas series. There was also a recent Marvel Boy three-parter, which filled in the 1950s backstory of the team’s mysterious spaceman. And now, in the wake of yet another crossover (Siege), and with yet another banner (The Heroic Age), the gang is back again, in another ongoing simply titled Atlas. Despite the banner, however, Atlas doesn’t have much to do with the rest of Marvel’s publishing line—it occupies its own cozy corner of the Marvel U, one teeming with secret intrigue, pulp adventure, and mad science to beat the band.

 We’re only two issues in, and so far the new Atlas is loads of fun. The retro adventurers are joined by the current incarnation of 3-D Man (whose predecessor was part of the lineup in the original What If? story, rather than Namora), a fugitive hero trying to unravel the mystery of a cabal of sinister aliens that only he can see. The art by Gabriel Hardman has a gritty quality reminiscent of Michael Lark, but he’s more than capable of handling the otherworldly aspects of Parker’s scripts (like the giant, remote-controlled subterranean golems who appear in issue #2). Elizabeth Breitweiser’s subtly psychedelic colour palette provides the properly glossy finish, and the covers are provided by some of the best in the biz. Terry Dodson turned in a slick montage of the team’s new lineup for the debut issue, and check out Carlos Pacheco’s interpretation of the original 1950s team for issue #2!

 

So, if you’d rather read about mystical hidden cities and electrically-charged zombies than drug-addicted antiheroes and sexually dysfunctional former sidekicks, give Atlas a try. The new series is a great jumping-on point—3-D Man’s entry into the team provides a great point of reference for new readers—but the earlier adventures are available in trade paperback as well. If you’re a fan of Astro City’s wistful approach to gee-whiz superheroics, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s shared universe of pulp archetypes, or even if you just think a book about a talking ape, an old-timey robot, a love goddess, and a secret agent cruising around in a flying saucer from Uranus (yeah, Gorilla Man laughs at it every time too) sounds like fun, then you’ll find Atlas is where it’s at.

LADIES NIGHT AT STRANGE ADVENTURES: Part 2!

/

 We're having our second Ladies Night at Strange Adventures Comic Shop, this Friday, from 6 to 9pm!

You can read about the last Ladies Night, RSVP on Facebook, and check out our special guests Raina Telgemeier and Faith Erin Hicks. Other special guests include me, Rachelle, and Rachelle's baby—who will sketch anything you want, even Wolverine with Venom power.

Time to Wax Enthusiastic About Blacksad

/

 

This week saw the release of the first-ever English collection of the three Blacksad stories, one of which is in its first official English translation, even. Needless to say, this was a very exciting event, made even more so by the fact that I wasn't paying attention and didn't know that it was going to happen. It was like, well, like unexpectedly finding out that there was a Blacksad hardcover that I could buy, frankly. 

For those of you not in the know: an explanation: Blacksad is a comic by Spanish creators Juan Diaz Canales (writing) and Juanjo Guarnido (art), and it is hands down the best example of noir-style detective storytelling that I have ever read in a comic. And also, everyone is anthropomorphic animals. The animal thing might have detracted from the tough Fifties grittiness, except that it is an intrinsic part of the story. The animal forms are used in an almost totemic fashion - what you are inside is reflected in your form, whether you're a cold-blooded industrialist lizard or a literally weaselly tabloid reporter.

John Blacksad is a private detective and our protagonist. In the course of this collection he investigates the murder of an old flame, runs afoul of a racist secret society in small town America and gets tangled up in the early days of Senator Joe McCarthy (here a bombastic rooster named Gallo) and HUAC. Canales and Guarnido definitely didn't simply ape the noir thrillers of yore - which assuredly would have steered well clear of the latter two topics - they were using the tropes of the form to their own ends. Setting a story about what is essentially the KKK as founded by Arctic animals in a country that is still recovering from World War II allows you to look at a lot of the causes of the problems that are still with us today, and as a bonus, the fact that all involved are animals just underscores the ultimate indefensibility of an ideology built around pigmentation.

That having been said, Blacksad definitely does hit all of the classic noir detective notes. He antagonizes the police, heads down morally ambiguous roads in search of justice, frequents dive bars. He asks the wrong questions and someone tries to teach him a lesson:

And then he keeps on asking the wrong questions and gets that lesson. In the face.

He occasionally gets the girl:

But mostly doesn't.

But what these stories really excel at, other than looking frigging amazing, is capturing the world-weary, morally ambiguous philosophies of the works that inspired them. The first book alone is filled with quotable material:

Or how about this:

I get a tingle when I read that: that is damned good writing. Blacksad's interior monologue plays out in your head in a voice roughened by cigarettes and whiskey and maybe a touch of despair (and helped along by some tweaks to the translation that make everything less, well, translated-seeming than the older editions). 

Excellent call on bringing this out, Dark Horse. Keep this up and soon you'll have all of my money.