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.

Two Ladies' Titles Finished Up on Same Day

On the same Wednesday at my LCS the final issues of two limited series arrived. The first was the fifth and final edition of Sam Kieth and John Layman's creation, featured as a Hot Jazz title earlier this year:

All five issues

Eleanor and the Egret was an enjoyable title, two old heads in the industry playing around and stretching. I'm glad I picked the story up. The last two issues took about four months to come in, but what can you do. Almost like 4 Kids... the story's ending felt abrupt, but that may just be my own issues. In a year I'll sit down and read all five in a row over an hour and try to get a better feeling for the flow of the story. I found it whimsical in a non-annoying way.

The second title that came in on that same day was the fourth and final issue of Valiant's heroine of the future:

All four issues and last year's standalone chapter from the 4001 AD story

Valiant featured a "top secret" title back in the run-up to last year's 4001 AD summer event, a title that turned out to be War Mother. I went with the normal David Mack covers for each, because they're both awesome and fully distinct, like Cary Nord's covers for Britannia. This story felt both realized, cohesive and self-contained, and like the building blocks to a bigger thing. Pretty neat to hit all those topics, but I've learned you should never doubt Valiant's storytelling. Also, having met and conversed with Dinesh Shamdasani at a convention recently, it sounds like Rai and the 4001 timeline will return to the main slate of titles in due course, a timeline that will certainly feature Ana, the War Mother.

Hot Jazz: December 2017

This edition of Comics that I'm Excited About is purely driven by nostalgia and most likely won't last beyond issue one, appearing in December:

One of the best cartoons from he early to mid-nineties, Rocko's Modern Life was way ahead of its time. Episodes like "Who Gives a Buck" taught kids about the troubles of credit cards, while other jokes were too deep for kids, like Rocko's buddy, Heifer, a Steer, fell in love with a milking machine.

I hear they're bringing back the show with new episodes, which I'll attempt to see, and this book I'll purchase and read through, and depending in the quality, I'll keep reading them.