Ninjak's Second Ongoing Series Finishes

Ninjak's second iteration with the revamped Valiant, Ninja-K, has finished up, as their Livewire title gears up for release.

Here are the four separate ongoing titles that have featured Ninjak over the years, dating back to 1993/4:

The second was conceived after the sell-off to Acclaim, and is actually better than we fans generally give it credit. Maybe it should be called something else entirely and not be considered when speaking about Ninjak (which is how the practice is now).

Anyway, here's one espionage-comic fan pouring out a little for a homey.

UPDATE: Ninjak returns in July 2019 in what appears to be titled "Killers."

Nice

Farel Dalrymple's Prequel Mini-Series Finishes

I picked up in its entirety Farel Dalrymple's prequel to his GN "The Wrenchies" called Proxima Centauri:

Through the six issue mini-series, we follow the main character Sherwood as he tries to escape an inter-dimensional ship and return to his brother and the school/organization that trains these young children/warriors for the fights they'll be engaging in in their future and their world.

To say that this series is cohesive, or makes a ton of sense, or makes sense in some way, would be stretching the definition of the word. The art is interesting if not spectacular, but I could see some fans call it spectacular.

I was sold on the idea that it was "psychedelic," but after reading it I feel like the term has been applied for lack of a better one.

I try to find stories that are weird and out there for their own sake, and this fits, but it also doesn't strike me as one that should be handed over to the fans-of-weird-shit-but-not-always-on-the-lookout-for-comics in my life. I was hoping it would fill that category, but I found it somewhat unfulfilling.

Regular fans of sequential art in the superhero vein certainly won't be interested in the title, and I'm sure Farel and Image know as much. Weirdos like me who are game for weirdness and ideas labeled as "psychedelic" probably either loved it for found it unsatisfying for a litany of reasons. Fans of the art style or of Dalrymple's work itself, would surely be fans of this mini-series.

I didn't dislike it, specifically, but I didn't fully love it either. Just like a weak or mediocre mushroom trip.

Dialogue-less from France

I picked up a discounted graphic novel at my LCS the other day:

It was marked at $4.99, when the cover price was twenty bucks more. It takes place in a dystopian future society in which there are two competing corporate overlord companies that make life rather lame for the denizens. Or so it seems.

On the cover in this preceding picture is a briefcase that, when opens, houses another dimensional realm, like more of the ship of the aliens that crash land in the opening scene. It is decided that it should be used by the blue company/overlord against the red/black company/overlord.

The scenes play out in an episodic form until you can tell that they are all related.

Another very creative element is that there is nor dialogue in this graphic novel: the story unfolds in action only, and that underscores that it was written by Frenchmen Lucas Varela.

It was a gem discovery, for sure.

Seventeen Years On...

I picked this up for a buck a few years back at my local Dollar Bookstore:

The collection has dozens of artists and their reactions to the attacks. All are very somber, as you can imagine. Some are very angry as well, and that also makes sense.

Many of my high school students weren't yet born seventeen years ago, so that kinda ties down the space.

Anyway, it's a timely piece, having been created and released by mid-2002. It's an artifact of a moment, for sure, cultural detritus.

Independent Wednesday, Two Years Later

Two years ago I wrote up a little review of a recent trip to my LCS. It highlighted three independent titles I was then reading.

This summer, between vacation trips and other obligations, a month had passed before I was able to return to my shop. When I did, there were a bevy of books waiting for me (seven), none of which was from the Big Two. I'll be highlighting them here, starting with the three from my favorite company, Valiant:

Ninja-K is the new title starring NInjak, and in this series we get the story of the British Ninja Programme, in which they specially train ninjas and give them sequential names, Ninja-A, Ninja-B, and so on, and that's the origin of Ninjak's name. Anayway, this issue is the culmination of a fight in mexico and features a rather bizarre teamup: Ninjak, Livewire, Punk Mambo, and Dr. Mirage...three ladies and the English spy.

Shadowman #5 sees Jack Boniface still falling through the shadow-time-stream or whatever and we see what he sees: a story of the Shadowman from the Reconstruction era.

The last issue above, the first issue of the third story in the life of Antonio Axius, the first detectioner in Rome, is Britannia: Lost Eagles of Rome #1. I'll pick up Brittania stories until they stop making them.

The next two titles are from Image:

Gideon Falls #5 continues the story as we get deeper into the mystery of the Black Lodge, and I'm starting to believe the first character we met, the young man with the mask, has a stronger connection to the other players in the story. I like this comic more than I expected.

Proxima Centauri drew me in with talk of psychedelic art and weird stories, and that was before I learned the main character's name is Sherwood, which is my last name. Later, after trying to make sense of the first issue, I learned that this six issue miniseries is a prequel of  Farel Dalrymple's "The Wrenchies," a GN I'm curious to find. Dalrymple's art is very cool, but looks to me like an acquired taste. I know some people who hate Jeff Lemire's art, and I'd guess this part comic/part comix/part children's story book art would not appeal to them.

Lastly, I got two final issues to miniseries:

Gravetrancers #4 came out within a year of issue #1, so we consider that a strong victory for Black Mask, one of my favorite publishers. The only thing I don't like about Black Mask is their, eh, aggressive release schedule. Gravetrancers as a story is gleefully fucked up, and while it seems like some characters disappear from the narrative, it doesn't really detract, as long as you're willing to read the entire thing.

I've discussed Frank Miller's Xerxes story at length already, and the ending seemed the logical capstone for the blocky, uneven story.

It was a good Wednesday at the shop.

One Issue to Go, and We're Still Waiting...

Twenty years ago Frank Miller, during the end of his peak years as a comic creator, released the beautiful, sweeping, five issue epic 300, the retelling of King Leonidas of Sparta and his personal entourage of 300 soldiers holding off the Persian king Xerxes at Themopylae:

It was turned into a movie, which has a full circle aspect to it: Millers 300 was partly based on the 1962 film "300 Spartans."

Maybe Miller had always wanted to make this follow-up, prequel/sequel storyline, seeing the other side...is this supposed to end the anti-Iranian controversy?

Having read the first four issues of the full-mouthed titled "Xerxes: the Fall of the House of Darius and the Rise of Alexander," I can't say for certain that stemming controversy is one of Miller's motivations.

Mainly because there isn't much going on at all in this series. There are some sweeping panels, but what I mean is that nearly a third of each issue are sweeping double-page layouts, like taking one of the novel things about the first miniseries and exploiting it to a ridiculous degree.

I call it exploitation because these sweeping layouts are just not as good, which isn't fair, but while not as good, they're also not very appealing in their own right.

Xerxes plays a small role in issue 1 and appears in issue 2 near the end, while both issues 3 and 4 begins with Xerxes being murdered. Issue 3 backs it up and we see a little before the death, while issue 4 sees more of the start of Alexander's attacks on Xerxes' kid, Darius III.

The name of the series is nominally Xerxes, right?

So I wait...I'll purchase the final issue, of course, and I don't expect to find the artists and tight story from 20 years back, but it is precisely that twenty year old memory that leads fans like me to this nearly incoherent story and mostly unappealing art.

And that says something, right?

Excitement over Gideon Falls

So far, I've been loving the covers of Jeff Lemire, Andrea Sorrentino, and Dave Stewart's "Gideon Falls" from Image, here they are all together:

The overhead view is awesome.

Inside issue 4 I saw adouble-page spread from Sorrentino that blew me away, and shows off the abilities of the medium of sequential art. I showed it to my wife and we marveled at the execution:

This supernatural/loss of faith story is intriguing and deliberately paced. I was waiting for a few more months of cool map covers before talking about it, but this spread is incredible.

The narrative spreads up and down simultaneously in two places shown on different faces of a cube. A master class could be done on art like this.

In Defense of "Niourk"

I was reading some reviews of the French graphic novel newly translated into English "Niourk." They were unkind at best.

It didn't seem like the writers took into account the historical setting of the original novella---written by a Frenchman during the Cold War. Should that matter? Should you be versed on geo-political history of the setting of the time of a work's creation as a prerequisite? I haven't answered that well enough for myself, but because I did have that background, I knew what I was getting into.

And still I was surprised! It was an original tale, even with a little shark-jumping at the end. One of the female characters is scantily clad for a large portion, and this was taken as issue by one critic as well. All I can say to that is: 1) the French have less hangups on the nearly nude female form; and 2) the character is recovering from some crazy injury during the time of the mostly-naked scenes, and it isn't outside the realm of justifiable.

Anyway, the sweeping deep-time imagery would paper over an awful story, and this is far from awful. Look at this:

In four panels we travel through thousands, if not millions, of years. And that's in the very beginning.

Later we see Manhattan like we never see today:

And again:

I'm a sucker for images like the following, the arteries and veins of today turned into crumbled relics of a bygone era:

And seeing the East River as a meadow makes me smile:

And a sweeping image at the end of the story, a double page spread that would give away too much if you knew what to look for or what you were looking at:

And like I mentioned earlier: imagery like this would make up for some of the story deficiencies if those story problems were severe. The story here isn't the issue, at least not with this reader.

Old Quesada Find

Quite possibly my favorite superhero artist from the 90s when I was a kid was Joe Quesada. He runs Marvel now, but he stared out doing covers for Valiant and minor DC titles like The Ray, but moved to the more important Sword of Azrael mini-series, helping to create Bruce Wayne's replacement as Batman during the Knightfall storyline.

Quesada went on to create Ninjak for Valiant, and eventually went and created his own company with his inking partner, Jimmy Palmiotti, called Event Comics. I was so excited when that was announced, and their first creation, Ash, about a firefighter/superhero, was even more awesome.

After 9/11, I figured that Brooklyn's favorite comic team-up, Joe and Jimmy, having created a firefighter-superhero, would have garnered more attention. Maybe there's still time...

Anyway, at my LCS the other week I came across this, priced for $3.99:

Not a bad mark-down...originally $14.99.

I picked it up and thumbed through it and saw images that I'd forgotten about. The Event guys give shout-outs to other popular independent titles of the day, showing off their own tastes:

Evil Ernie and Sin City. Rock and roll.

Also Jae Lee's Hellshock:

And the first shout-out in the series goes to the indie-superhero godfather, brilliantly acting as the logo for the whole enterprise, Spawn:

My Disney uncle has met plenty of famous people, but one story my mom was telling me about how my uncle had gone to Cuba with an artist and help reunite that artist with his family, had been very meaningful.

With and artist? I asked. 

Yeah, she'd said, that comic book guy who works in the offices now, that guy who drew that poster I got signed for you...

Joe Quesada? I said, Yeah, yeah, the Q...the one with the Q...

It was a rare star-struck moment for me.

Uncle Tom and Joe Quesada traveled to Cuba? Together? To help reunite their family?

FCBD Haul 2018

This year I heard one of the two shops close by had closed, and after heading by to check it out, noticed that was the case. Shoreline Comics in downtown Long Beach is no more.

It makes a sad sense. The only books they shelved were from the Big Two and really popular licensed content, and tried to live on the margins of a marginalized industry, feeding off of a diet of tourists. In an area where rent is finally getting out of control, the tourist-only market proved too lean.

So there was the only my main shop, Pulp Fiction.

They had an arrangement with Food Bank LA where patrons could make a donation and earn more Free Comic Book Day books.

I made a cash donation and was allotted 11 books, twelve actually, since the shop was giving away the DC Nation #0 book, which was priced at a quarter. I guess they had so many they decided that everyone would get one no matter what.

Here's the haul:

The DC Nation #0 is in the first spot, followed by, in Row 1: Image's Barrier #1 (of 5), a western-meets-sci-fi that is set to come out weekly for five weeks, and while I also got issue #2 on Wednesday, I've yet to read either; Bongo Comics' Simpson FCBD Special; and Valiant's FCBD special, the main book I go out for.

Row 2 has Scout Comic's edition for the Day, with excerpts about a mall robbery as well as some of their other fare, all of which I'm ignorant of, something I should remedy. Next is the 2000AD FCBD edition, followed by the Oni edition. Britain's 2000AD put together what looks like a kid's style book, much less dark than the normal Judge Dredd universe material, and Oni produced a nice little taste of Cullen Bunn's latest western fare. Next was for my students, a young reader's Star Wars Adventures book about Han and Chewie.

Row 3 stats with the Aftershock FCBD edition, with a preiview of their new sci-fi series and a taste of other offerings. Next is a book I didn't know would be available, but was excited about; a Metabaron piece from the Jodoverse by Humanoids. After that is Terry Moore's newest Strangers in Paradise preview, which looks great; and bringing up the last spot is a collection of the "World's Greatest Cartoonists." Those kinds of collections I really enjoy because they tend to be exclusively writer/artists with unique looks you'd be hard pressed to find outside of Drawn and Quarterly or Fantagraphics, and they always have interesting things to say.

I haven't read all the books I plan on reading from this haul, but if anything is amazing and needs a write up, it'll be here.

Birthday Exchanges

A colleague I work with and I share the same birthday. We also share an affinity for graphic novels and sequential art in general.

This year we again exchanged books as gifts. I gave one of my all time favorite books (sequential art or traditional), Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics:

It's a master's class in the history, development, and way the art form works that is as amazing as it is informative. If you haven't yet, READ THIS BOOK.

He knows that I used the live in New York and how I feel about music, so he grabbed me the hardcover edition of Lennon: The New York Years:

Based on the Foenkinos novel, this is a lush black and white watercolor feast for the eyes created by the Frenchmen Horne. Most of the story I wasn't familiar with, seeing as how I haven't done a ton of research on the true-life stories of most bands.

It's beautiful and quick, like cotton candy for the visual sense.

Far Better than they Needed to Be

The two #0 issues of Valiant's Secret Weapons have both been released, each an origin story about a different misfit kid from last year's miniseries:

The first #0 is Nikki's Story. Nikki Finch is a psiot whose power is to communicate with birds. The second #0 is Owen's Story. Owen Cho is a psiot whose power is to conjure things from thin air, only he can't control what he conjures or when it appears. These powers are low on the list of cool things Harada and the Harbinger group envision as useful, so they were shipped to the facility in OKC that opens the acclaimed miniseries from last year:

What I noticed about each of these 0 issues is that both are far better than they needed to be. Fans of the miniseries will likely have purchased them anyway, or, as was the case with me, having the original miniseries on my pull lead to each of these being added without my asking. This is just one more moment of Valiant doing that extra something that makes fans believe.

The storytelling in each is different than most books coming before, and each are incredibly novel and successful in their approach, and each is different enough from each other that we fans should be celebrating a company willing to be different and succeeding to be excellent at the same time.

Nikki's story is framed by a calendar year in her life, and each page is broken up into four equal-sized rectangles. Nikki appears in the center of all but a single panel, while many panels are dated when necessary. In the beginning of the year we see her getting a call from a Harbinger recruiter who saw some footage of her executing a perfect gymnastics routine on Youtube. A year later at the end we see her and Owen in a scene from the first issue of the miniseries. In between we see the tragedy unfold rectangle by rectangle...her parents don't want her to go to the Harbinger training facility; she leaves high school after her 18th birthday and goes anyway; she survives the activation; her power takes a while to be discovered; Harada goes down and the feds come shooting the place up; a monster gets released...all in all it's a busy year. The framing device and so-old-school-it-qualifies-as-experimental storytelling really nail the pathos of Nikki Finch's plight. Why shouldn't she be able to go back home sometime in the future?

If Valiant had used the same style of framing device and approach, it would have been lazy, but challenging and interesting nonetheless. But Eric Heisserer wouldn't have stooped to that level. That device and structure worked for Nikki and her background, but Owen needed a different approach.

Owen's story is framed by a yard sale. He struggles to maintain a job because of his often inopportune conjurings, and has decided to have a yard sale to raise some funds, really just enough to get a friend to let him couch surf until he gets a little more sure-footed. The framing device is a series of vignettes about the circumstances about which he conjured individual items. Readers begin to see how some items have serve no purpose, some items serve an immediate purpose and give hope that Owen may one day have control over the power, and some items are needed in the future, but that's unknown at the time they're conjured. Heisserer spoke specifically about the difficulty of writing the vignettes, about how to make everything fit, and in doing so, the world fleshed out by the six issues becomes more alive. We get to see particular rectangles from Nikki's story from Owen's POV, and come up on the same moment from the end of the other zero-issue and the start of the first issue of the miniseries.

Individually the books are great, and no history is necessary to pick either up randomly, but to see how all six issues fit together, and the story puzzles itself together, the full mastery of the art form is on display.

Dinesh Out at Valiant

I met Dinesh Shamdasani once at the Long Beach Comic Convention. He was very personable and gregarious, even making me feel like he was listening to me and cared about the things I did in my life. I was glad to be able to tell a powerful person at the company I really dig how happy the excellent work they create each month makes me.

A good comic habit is a nice thing.

And now the Super Fan, the self-proclaimed Nerd Boss, is out at Valiant after the buy-out and force-out from DMG.

For a guy I've always styled in my own imagination as my own generation's Stan Lee---the deity-like creative force behind the very structure of the universe if not the exact scripts themselves---and I have to admit: the thought of a modern/contemporary Stan Lee walking around and living that particular dream is something I found very heartening, like the limits of creative work were pushed back, further and further away.

It seems like the reality is that Dinesh is closer to our contemporary Jim Shooter, the visionary driving force behind the first Valiant iteration.

Whatever you get into going forward, O Nerd Boss, I will pay close attention and involve my own energy.

And I only hope that the quality of the work remains top notch, Valiant. The glimmers of the first big post-Dinesh event in 2019 has me pretty excited.

Capturing the Zeitgeist

After the election two Novembers back, I figured that the voices of the comic scene would eventually be able to speak for the rest of us., or at least to speak to the times. The first series that came up that was/is poised to do this, to try and capture the spirit of rebellious anarchy in the face of white-supremacist autocracy, was Black Mask's "Calexit:"

I written about Calexit here before, possibly more than once. I found it a very satisfying first issue. It has a tense pacing, a really good antagonist/bad-guy (beyond the autocratic president with a familiar haircut), and some potential with the unlikely pair of protagonists. The setting is the middle of an occupation, an occupation of a hostile collection of west coast cities. The book has some extra pages of story and a few more pages of essays from activists.

But that was to satisfy the thirsty readers who wanted to snatch up this offer as soon as it was announced, and had to wait just a bit longer. I was one of them. And being a fan of Black Mask, I knew that I should be prepared for a delay or two. It was announced in March, due out in May; it arrived in July and we await the second issue.

I was sure someone from this administration would have put the kibosh on the company by now, and that we would never get a second issue, but I hear it's due of later this month (February '19). And I can't wait.

The newest indie that is attempting to mine this vein is from Image, "Days of Hate:"

When I saw some of the interior art in the Image+ publication, I immediately recognized Danijel Zezelj, the Croatian artist I first encountered in Image's Starve. I remembered Ales Kot from a Valiant mini-series and The Source from a few years ago, and decided that this was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to try: two creators, writer and artist, both immigrants, trying to capture the anger and desire to fight that many people feel these days.

Whereas Calexit is taking place during an insurrection and occupation of coastal cities, Days of Hate is a little further down the war/Civil War avenue. The two main characters are an estranged lesbian couple, one infiltrating and bombing a white supremacist group, the other already captured by the ruling power authorities and being interrogated about the other, the dangerous member of the insurgency.

Both are riding a wave, an angry nervous and scary wave, and I'm curious to see how they settle their arcs.

Thanks LCS!

I found these two classic collections at my local comic shop, and spent probably a combined seven dollars on them:

The first collects the first four issues from the original X-O Manowar series and the second is the first four issues of the original Harbinger series. Both are so good. I was surprised, mainly because I didn't ever read Harbinger back in that time, and I started on X-O later than the first few story arcs.

I mean, I wasn't surprised that the Valiant books that critics and fans raved about were good, rather, how their stories progressed. These comics did not fuck around.

The opening panel from X-O Manowar #1 has Aric the Visigoth naked and swinging a metallic shard he's torn from the ship into a green-bleeding wound of one of his alien captors.

The opening panel to Harbinger #1 has Pete Stancheck, the teenage psiot at the center of the story, using his telekinetic powers to fly a car away from pursuers. He's already been burned by the evil corporation Harbinger and their evil boss Toyo Harada...but is he really evil? Doesn't Pete pose a threat because he can't control his powers.

Can a barbarian who's about to realize that his entire family unit is long dead be trusted to wield a scientifically "magical" suit of armor?

Thanks, LCS! I was planning on reading these sometime, and you made it happen faster than I ever imagined.