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.

Was it me, or did "4 Kids..." end abruptly?

When I first read a write up of Tyler Boss, Thomas Mauer, and Matt Rosenberg's "4 Kids Walk into a Bank" back in April of 2016 (or thereabouts) I thought it sounded fun and different and would be something I wanted to check out. I like the idea of sequential art being used to tell different kinds of stories.

The miniseries covers

My son wasn't even born yet. When the second issue came out, the possibilities, while known mostly from the outset, were going to be teased out with a kind of artistic judiciousness that speaks to great art.

My excitement hadn't cooled exactly by having to wait months for the third issue, and once we readers found out there had been a family health emergency with the writer, Matthew Rosenberg's, father, the delay made sense, but I was left wanting maybe more than could be delivered.

Another few months went by waiting for the fourth issue, and by the time it ended, it seemed like if we ever got to the fifth and final issue, TONS of work would have to be done to wrap up the story.

But that's not to say I wasn't enjoying the hell out of it. Double negatives aside, it was fantastic and exciting and all I wanted from Out There storytelling. The art was beautiful if a touch anachronistic and the colors were that wonderful marriage of dazzling and muted that is almost never even attempted these days.

The last issue arrived a few more months later, much to my surprise at my LCS, and my son is walking and babbling and getting into all sorts of shit. It's only after he goes to bed that I ever get anytime to read anything, colorful comics especially, and I devoured the last issue like a starving person.

Only it came and went quicker than its forty pages of heft would suggest.

The characters all seemed to be older and more mature, but that's probably my own projection of the time between issues, but that alone seems weird. It's not like years passed.

Anyway, the opening scene, instead of the kids' game setting the scene, it's the finale of the robbery. The story backs up and the robbery goes down, and the scene is essentially an action movie montage, but that's all any comic is, right? It goes by, Berg is shot, Paige shoots a cop, and in the last panel years have gone by and she's being released form prison and being greeted by two of her pals and her father. "I'm so sorry, dad." The end.

I guess it couldn't have ended any other way, and I guess I'm really just bummed out by my own reaction. It's silly to be disappointed in the ending, because, really, that's the only way it could have ever ended.

Maybe I just expected more because of the cleverness from earlier in the series, and that would be a me problem.

READ IT if you haven't yet...you won't be disappointed...or maybe you will be, but who's counting?

Hot Jazz: November 2017

Something I'm very excited about come November is a newly translated from the French classic "Niourk":

The sample pages are stunning, and Stefan Wul is a writer I've been interested in since seeing his animated collaboration with Rene Laloux "Fantastic Planet":

Looks like they liked "Fantastic Planet" more than "Savage Planet" for the translation?

Stefan Wul wrote the stories that both of these are based upon, and since he died a while back, I'm not sure he was involved with the graphic novel Niourk.

The last few Hot Jazz posts have been about either ongoing series (Grass Kings) or miniseries (Eleanor and the Egret), but this is a longer and denser offering, and one I'm excited to get into.

Weird side note: I came across Fantastic Planet while researching Rene Laloux, and I learned about Laloux from a short animated piece he made called "Les Escargots (The Snails)", and that short was buried on a DVD of hundreds of animated shorts from the thirties and forties, all of which were public domain and after the government put the kibosh on the racier items in animated shorts (which means they were crushingly boring). It was fully out of place among the dreck; it was in color, and lovingly made, and French, and looked thirty years newer than anything else on the DVD. How I even saw it while cleaning the house or making dinner in between gin and tonics is still a mystery to me...

G.I. Joe Cover Homage?

This is weird. Issue 21 of the early 80's run of Marvel's G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero was honored with homage by Valiant with an alternate cover to issue 22, their silent interlude between the "Fist and Steel" storyline and the "Seven Blades of Master Darque" storyline:

I love this kind of thing...