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.