Our last graphic novel was intended to tie in with the new Suicide Squad movie, and from what I hear, audiences liked that movie just about as much as our readers liked the New Suicide Squad collection. By which I mean they're not liking it much at all. Interesting how that works out.
Anyway.
New Suicide Squad, Vol. 1: Pure Insanity
collecting New Suicide Squad issues 1-8
ISBN: 9781401252380
writing: Sean Ryan
breakdowns: Tom Derenick
artists: Rob Hunter, Jeremy Roberts, Norm Rapmund, Vicente Cifuentes, Scott Hanna, Trevor Scott, Mark Irwin, Batt
colorist: Blond
letterers: Taylor Esposito, Dave Sharpe
Read August 2016
So the OLD Suicide Squad was disbanded apparently, so Amanda Waller is working with a bull-headed, homicidal, over-achieving Vic Sage (what a name) with his hand-picked new Task Force X (why so many names, y'all?) purposefully picked to cause as much strife and mayhem as possible. Poor Amanda.
So returning from the old team we have Harley, Deadshot, and Black Manta, and Vic drags in Deathstroke and Joker's Daughter (who really isn't, but ok, let's have more crazy women with strange issues about the Joker being the formative male figure in their lives because THAT's totally not sexist and old news already). At some point the Australian dude and Totally Not Evil Flash get dragged into this ridiculousness, just to have more characters involved I guess?
I'm sure there is a plot, I just couldn't find it. The team gets sent to Russia to research something, and explodes it instead (quelle surprise), gets sent to tactically explode something in China, and DOESN'T explode it before a bunch of vat-grown mutant (does DC have mutants?) supers lurches zombie/Doom-like out to pummel them (they eventually explode things). Then there's Chinese Superman, who I think dies because they can't figure out what to do with him... and all the while Vic the dick and Amanda are jousting for position back at HQ.
Anyway - it's a hot mess. The women are simply crazy - no characters there to speak of. Harley's a far cry from the self-possessed crazy but somewhat self-aware character she is in her flagship series (review coming soon for that one), and Joker's Daughter is simply a mess and spends most of the time being useless or unconscious. Characters defect or are invalided out nearly every issue, making it difficult to care about the team. Honestly, the only one I felt anything for was Black Manta, who really just needs to get out of there and find a team of reasonable people to work with. (Good luck, man.) Waller is presented sympathetically, Vic is amazingly cardboard for being the major antagonist, and honestly Waller's assistant has the most "humanizing" moments in the whole thing.
Art was decent, but oddly stretched and warped in places, like the panel layout wasn't finalized before the scenes were drawn, and someone just used the stretch tool in MS Paint to make things fit in their new locations. Lots of red, lots of explosions as backgrounds (saves drawing buildings) lots of cement-bunker environments or nearly-empty cubical farms. The women (save a few moments for Waller and her assistant) are constantly sexualized, even when in the middle of mayhem, or when unconscious. The male characters are differentiated by costumes, and that's about it. Once in their prison/psych uniforms, I had trouble recognizing characters from earlier panels.
Not hugely recommended, but there's a possibility for interesting development for Manta and Waller, so if you're interested in them, it might be worth it. Otherwise, the characters are mostly there to provide a superficial reason for all the explosions.
Showing posts with label DC comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DC comics. Show all posts
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Graphic Novel Book Club: Superman Red Son, Mark Millar & Dave Johnson & Kilian Plunkett
Superman Red Son
Mark Millar
Artists:
Dave Johnson & Andrew Robinson (Red Son Rising & Red Son Ascendant)
Kilian Plunkett & Walden Wong (Red Son Ascendant & Red Son Setting)
Colorist: Paul Mounts (seriously good work here)
Letters: Ken Lopez (not so fond of the stylized capitals, but otherwise excellent)
ISBN: 9781401247119 (soft-side trade collecting all three volumes: Red Son Rising, Red Son Ascendant, Red Son Setting, with intro, marginalia, and process art)
Another month, another graphic novel for the club. This time we went with a well-regarded alt-universe Superman fan-fic: Superman Red Son. The premise (and a twist at the end) has our Kryptonian ubermensch landing in a Ukrainian communal farm instead of in cornfed central USA. The idealistic and straightforward hero absorbs and internalizes the ideals of the communist party, and sets the world down a very different path.
This is very much a alternate-universe "what if" scenario, driven almost entirely by plot gears, with only the bare minimum of characterization to flesh out our main cast: Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman (holy hand grenades, Batman!) Lex Luthor, Lois Lane Luthor (still a Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist), Bizarro, Brainiac, the Green Lantern Corps, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few here and there. Before reading this comic, everyone should be familiar with those characters and their basic archetypes, because that's pretty much all you're going to get as they karoom around this inverted world and everyone makes pretty much uniformly bad decisions (often from good intentions) that drive the plot deliciously down an interesting path to destruction and difficult choices for all. A few well-placed heel-turns, a bit of shoe-horning in of characters (I thought especially Batman was shoveled in by main force and then tragically underutilized), and a bit of hazy plotting (was the somewhat extended Green Lantern diversion really actually necessary to the development of the plot? Discuss.) the story was overall interesting and fast-paced enough to keep me entertained. Besides, it's essentially an "elseworlds" story, so even if it was horrid, it's easy enough to fling back into the murk and forget about it.
The art was delicious, the forms and poses were classical and clear and well-defined. People had faces that aged and changed over decades of time, and even through the change of artists, the characters looked like themselves all the way through. A special shout-out to Paul Mounts for some really stellar coloring work here. There was a lot of black and a lot of grey and a lot of red, plus loads of stark contrasts that very easily could have slid into melodrama or cartoon, and he held the line excellently.
Overall, a fun excercise in "what if" that stands well clear of politics or economic realities to focus on the fun story potentials in a world only slightly different from our own.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Graphic Novel: Batman HUSH, Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee, Alex Sinclair, Richard Starkings
Our second Graphic Novel Book Club was the beginning of this month, and because of the Summer Reading theme of heroes, we decided to go classic with a good Batman story.
Batman: HUSH
Jeph Loeb
illustrated by Jim Lee
inked by Scott Williams
colors by Alex Sinclair
lettering by Richard Starkings
ISBN: 1401229921
Batman's detective skills are tested by a mysterious rash of villainy that all seems to center around creating personal stresses and tragedies for the caped crusader.
I enjoyed reading HUSH, and I enjoyed the group discussion even more. The consensus seemed to be that the story was as good as the framework of the genre allowed it to be: in other words, there wasn't really a possibility for character growth and change, as everything has to revert to roughly the status quo at the end of the run for the next person to pick up the torch and go. While to some extent, that's inevitable, for a story like this that tries to have such dramatic stakes, it really saps the urgency and power of the events to know from the start that nothing essential is going to change at all.
I personally thought the artwork was breathtaking, but I was also taken aback by the choice to make the menfolks as physically imposing as semi-truck cabs, while all the women were quite literally half their size, and less than half their mass, and often contorted into unfortunate poses to accentuate their assets. It was visually effective, but it was also more than a bit irritating.
The story was interesting, and it was nice to see a good villain's gallery (which is part of why it was chosen) for Bats to go up against. It was also nice to see references to history and other characters in the universe, even though with such a crowded cast list it was impossible for anyone to be treated decently. There were some really powerful and disturbing moments (Bats vs Joker was physically difficult to look at) and some interesting set-pieces (the Bats vs a certain boy scout) which were fun, even if the set-up was occasionally highly improbable.
It doesn't make me want to run out and grab all the Batman stories, but it does make me want to keep an eye out for Jim Lee and Alex Sinclair's artwork, because that was really the clincher for me. The dynamic movement of the scenes, and the mesmerizing color choices was truly stunning, and the best part of the experience.
Batman: HUSH
Jeph Loeb
illustrated by Jim Lee
inked by Scott Williams
colors by Alex Sinclair
lettering by Richard Starkings
ISBN: 1401229921
Batman's detective skills are tested by a mysterious rash of villainy that all seems to center around creating personal stresses and tragedies for the caped crusader.
I enjoyed reading HUSH, and I enjoyed the group discussion even more. The consensus seemed to be that the story was as good as the framework of the genre allowed it to be: in other words, there wasn't really a possibility for character growth and change, as everything has to revert to roughly the status quo at the end of the run for the next person to pick up the torch and go. While to some extent, that's inevitable, for a story like this that tries to have such dramatic stakes, it really saps the urgency and power of the events to know from the start that nothing essential is going to change at all.
I personally thought the artwork was breathtaking, but I was also taken aback by the choice to make the menfolks as physically imposing as semi-truck cabs, while all the women were quite literally half their size, and less than half their mass, and often contorted into unfortunate poses to accentuate their assets. It was visually effective, but it was also more than a bit irritating.
The story was interesting, and it was nice to see a good villain's gallery (which is part of why it was chosen) for Bats to go up against. It was also nice to see references to history and other characters in the universe, even though with such a crowded cast list it was impossible for anyone to be treated decently. There were some really powerful and disturbing moments (Bats vs Joker was physically difficult to look at) and some interesting set-pieces (the Bats vs a certain boy scout) which were fun, even if the set-up was occasionally highly improbable.
It doesn't make me want to run out and grab all the Batman stories, but it does make me want to keep an eye out for Jim Lee and Alex Sinclair's artwork, because that was really the clincher for me. The dynamic movement of the scenes, and the mesmerizing color choices was truly stunning, and the best part of the experience.
Sunday, May 3, 2015
YA: Fallout (Lois Lane), by Gwenda Bond
Fallout (Lois Lane)
Gwenda Bond
ISBN: 9781630790059
Read April 28, 2015
Lois Lane often gets relegated to the shadows in Superman stories. Or, even worse, exists as a victim to rescue, or a sacrifice to fridge to up the angst points in our Man of Steel. It's about damn time we hear from her in her own voice, and man, what a strong vibrant voice this is.
Bond starts with a teen Lois finally landing in Metropolis, after a string of moves and a dismal career of getting into trouble at various schools, all with the best of intentions. Now tho, she has great resolutions, and she's going to be scholastic, invisible, and stay out of trouble. That lasts for the literal minute it takes before she overhears her new principal haughtily rebuffing a loquacious young lady pleading for help; she's being bullied by the school super-stars, a freaky synchronized gang of youngsters who are part of a pilot collaboration between the school and a local technical and development company.
Before Lois can even get her class schedule, she's made enemies of the principal and the gang (the ominously named Warheads), and even the bullied girl wants her to just go away and leave her to her inevitable fate. But our heroine is nothing if not tenacious, and she'll get her story, and save the girl while she's at it.
Everything about this book is lovely. The sweet but still-innocent txt relationship between her and SmallvilleGuy in Kansas, the contrast between Lois' foolhardy and courageous exterior and her worried and insecure feelings, the tentative developing friendship between the debut members of The Daily Scoop (the Planet's teen-run online offshoot).
I especially like that Lois is willing to admit that she needs help, and to accept it from people (although grudgingly) but she is also more than willing to do what needs to be done on her own, and to shield her friends and companions from her reckless actions. On that same note, it was nice to see certain super-powered persons relegated to a chatroom window, some text-messages, and a couple of instances of nerfed avatars in an online multiplayer game. Lois deserves the chance to be seen standing on her own, and in this book, she does just that, and does it ferociously.
I really hope there's a sequel.
Gwenda Bond
ISBN: 9781630790059
Read April 28, 2015
Lois Lane often gets relegated to the shadows in Superman stories. Or, even worse, exists as a victim to rescue, or a sacrifice to fridge to up the angst points in our Man of Steel. It's about damn time we hear from her in her own voice, and man, what a strong vibrant voice this is.
Bond starts with a teen Lois finally landing in Metropolis, after a string of moves and a dismal career of getting into trouble at various schools, all with the best of intentions. Now tho, she has great resolutions, and she's going to be scholastic, invisible, and stay out of trouble. That lasts for the literal minute it takes before she overhears her new principal haughtily rebuffing a loquacious young lady pleading for help; she's being bullied by the school super-stars, a freaky synchronized gang of youngsters who are part of a pilot collaboration between the school and a local technical and development company.
Before Lois can even get her class schedule, she's made enemies of the principal and the gang (the ominously named Warheads), and even the bullied girl wants her to just go away and leave her to her inevitable fate. But our heroine is nothing if not tenacious, and she'll get her story, and save the girl while she's at it.
Everything about this book is lovely. The sweet but still-innocent txt relationship between her and SmallvilleGuy in Kansas, the contrast between Lois' foolhardy and courageous exterior and her worried and insecure feelings, the tentative developing friendship between the debut members of The Daily Scoop (the Planet's teen-run online offshoot).
I especially like that Lois is willing to admit that she needs help, and to accept it from people (although grudgingly) but she is also more than willing to do what needs to be done on her own, and to shield her friends and companions from her reckless actions. On that same note, it was nice to see certain super-powered persons relegated to a chatroom window, some text-messages, and a couple of instances of nerfed avatars in an online multiplayer game. Lois deserves the chance to be seen standing on her own, and in this book, she does just that, and does it ferociously.
I really hope there's a sequel.
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Graphic Novel Collection: The Spirit, Volume 3, by Will Eisner
Will Eisner's The Spirit Archives, Volume 3
July 6 - December 28, 1941
Published by DC Comics
ISBN: 1563896761
Read April 10, 2015
Three down, twenty-four to go! Well, twenty-two, because I'm not sure I care that much about the dailies, or about the various more modern reboots.
Still not seeing many signs of inventive formatting yet, and the stories for this half-year didn't seem as interesting and punchy as the ones from the first part of the year. Fewer highlights, but the overall collection is still pretty solid.
There were quite a few uncomfortable characterizations and scenes this time around for me. I was a little disconcerted by the shooting "death" and near-immediate miraculous revival of The Spirit in "Women!" (September 28, 1941), but I'm chalking the annoyingly supernatural recovery up to an unreliable narrator, as this one is given to us by an opinionated barkeep. The mangled English given to Ebony was really distracting in "The Spirit Am Unfair to His Assistant" (August 17, 1941). There was an even more uncomfortable scene in "Ellen Dolan, Fullback" (November 23, 1941) where a mob of women football players sexually assault a bound and helpless Spirit, who initially resists and cries out, but subsequently "decides he likes it" and therefore gets further physically assaulted by a jealous Ellen, which scene in total actually made my toes curl under. Finally, there were two separate stories where an effeminate man impersonates The Spirit, and is the butt of many jokes thereby; "Pink Perkins" (July 27, 1941) and "Dorothy Heartbern" (September 7, 1941).
On the interesting story side, not so much this time around. I enjoyed the Halloween story, which sees the one-night jailbreak of the mad Dusk and his even madder wife Twilight in "Hallowe'en Dusk" (October 26, 1941). I also liked the totally-expected-but-still-fun bloody twist at the end of "The Oldest Man in the World" (October 19, 1941) which also was the only oddly-formatted story in the bunch, being framed by a team of archaeologists from 1,000 years in the future finding a preserved printing of the weekly insert of The Spirit out in the desert. Finally, I enjoyed the odd little tale in "The Element of Time" (August 10, 1941) that has a mad scientist make the less-than-optimal decision to test his elemental form of Time itself on a gangster bent on murder (although if it wasn't for the stinger in the last panel, I don't think I'd be as keen on it, if I'm totally honest). On the totally opposite side, I really thought I would love "The Last of the Minstrels" (December 7, 1941), but it felt choppy and rushed, and was not entirely coherent. A sad letdown.
Recurring characters get thrown around fairly liberally in this volume. We have the previously-mentioned mad hatters Dusk and Twilight, we have a few stories with Silk Satin (still a spy for England, and thus able to be both ally and antagonist depending on the story) and Ebony's personal sidekick Pierpont makes more regular appearances. Our supporting cast of Ellen, Commissioner Dolan, Ebony, random unnamed foreign dictators, and the unending stream of gangsters and mob bosses are of course everpresent.
I've got some other modern comics to catch up on, and of course all my other reading, but I'm planning to keep on trucking through these regularly - they're a fun and informative bit of comics history, and so far, they're actually fun little stories overall.
July 6 - December 28, 1941
Published by DC Comics
ISBN: 1563896761
Read April 10, 2015
Three down, twenty-four to go! Well, twenty-two, because I'm not sure I care that much about the dailies, or about the various more modern reboots.
Still not seeing many signs of inventive formatting yet, and the stories for this half-year didn't seem as interesting and punchy as the ones from the first part of the year. Fewer highlights, but the overall collection is still pretty solid.
There were quite a few uncomfortable characterizations and scenes this time around for me. I was a little disconcerted by the shooting "death" and near-immediate miraculous revival of The Spirit in "Women!" (September 28, 1941), but I'm chalking the annoyingly supernatural recovery up to an unreliable narrator, as this one is given to us by an opinionated barkeep. The mangled English given to Ebony was really distracting in "The Spirit Am Unfair to His Assistant" (August 17, 1941). There was an even more uncomfortable scene in "Ellen Dolan, Fullback" (November 23, 1941) where a mob of women football players sexually assault a bound and helpless Spirit, who initially resists and cries out, but subsequently "decides he likes it" and therefore gets further physically assaulted by a jealous Ellen, which scene in total actually made my toes curl under. Finally, there were two separate stories where an effeminate man impersonates The Spirit, and is the butt of many jokes thereby; "Pink Perkins" (July 27, 1941) and "Dorothy Heartbern" (September 7, 1941).
On the interesting story side, not so much this time around. I enjoyed the Halloween story, which sees the one-night jailbreak of the mad Dusk and his even madder wife Twilight in "Hallowe'en Dusk" (October 26, 1941). I also liked the totally-expected-but-still-fun bloody twist at the end of "The Oldest Man in the World" (October 19, 1941) which also was the only oddly-formatted story in the bunch, being framed by a team of archaeologists from 1,000 years in the future finding a preserved printing of the weekly insert of The Spirit out in the desert. Finally, I enjoyed the odd little tale in "The Element of Time" (August 10, 1941) that has a mad scientist make the less-than-optimal decision to test his elemental form of Time itself on a gangster bent on murder (although if it wasn't for the stinger in the last panel, I don't think I'd be as keen on it, if I'm totally honest). On the totally opposite side, I really thought I would love "The Last of the Minstrels" (December 7, 1941), but it felt choppy and rushed, and was not entirely coherent. A sad letdown.
Recurring characters get thrown around fairly liberally in this volume. We have the previously-mentioned mad hatters Dusk and Twilight, we have a few stories with Silk Satin (still a spy for England, and thus able to be both ally and antagonist depending on the story) and Ebony's personal sidekick Pierpont makes more regular appearances. Our supporting cast of Ellen, Commissioner Dolan, Ebony, random unnamed foreign dictators, and the unending stream of gangsters and mob bosses are of course everpresent.
I've got some other modern comics to catch up on, and of course all my other reading, but I'm planning to keep on trucking through these regularly - they're a fun and informative bit of comics history, and so far, they're actually fun little stories overall.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Graphic Novel Collection: The Spirit, Volume 2, by Will Eisner
Will Eisner's The Spirit Archives, Volume 2
January 5 - June 29, 1941
Published by DC Comics
ISBN: 1563896753
Read March 30, 2015
We're still slogging through the weeds - I just got Volume 3 in the delivery at work, so my timing is working out well so far! My goal is to be finished with at least a few years worth by May when the free graphic novel class taught by Stan Lee begins. I want to have at least some footing under me besides my random Marvel interactions.
Volume 2 has some really nice stories, and we're starting to see a few breaks from the traditional panels and good-guy vs bad-guy stories. I'll give my shout-outs below, but despite individual stories being interesting, the collection is still very visually traditional with old-school designs and lay-outs.
March 16, 1941: Introducing Silk Satin
A clever, hard-ass lady villainess (literally her first scene is to extract a bullet from her own arm) is introduced, and given a convenient "death" offstage with no corpse. Hmmm....
April 6, 1941: Introducing Scarlett Brown
Our intrepid (and still visually stereotyped) Ebony gets a girlfriend!
These next two were interesting back-to-back, as neither of them really involved The Spirit except tangentially. They were both visceral stories, and to have them so close together made me wonder if this was a first minor bout of getting sick of Spirit's normal shtick.
April 13, 1941: Croaky Andrews' Perfect Crime
A criminal commits the perfect crime with his girlfriend, escaping the clutches of The Spirit to a private island he's secured with traps and guns. His own conscience makes him believe The Spirit is on his tail until the last, when he realizes his error just before death. Quite grim.
April 20, 1941: The S.S. Raven
Another grim tangent. A "killer ship" that murders sailors and captains and thirsts for blood, and plots revenge against those who have injured or slighted her. Frankly, a little on the weird side.
May 25, 1941: Thomas Hawkins
Our "moralizing" story for this half-year zeroes in on ex-convicts, blaming re-offenses on a society that marginalizes and penalizes them even after they've done their time. Spirit offers a young man his own small business to help keep him on the straight and narrow, and the Commish helps out after a jilted mobster takes offense to young Hawkins going straight. (This episode, more than any other, makes me really wonder how a dead guy makes so much money?)
June 1, 1941: Killer McNobby
A bizarre illustrated jingle, mostly resembling a barroom musical round (it probably was based on one) focusing on McNobby, who killed at least one person per day until The Spirit had enough and challenged him to a... MMA match ?!?! Lots of punching. Very masculine, I guess.
June 8, 1941: Five Passengers in Search of an Author
(Spoilers!) We see the return of Silk Satin, this time in drag as an English gentleman spy, working against the Third Reich (unnamed, but obvious) and outsmarting our own intrepid hero at every turn! Hmm, I sense that Miss Ellen (the Commish's daughter, still popping up at random to incite plots or be threatened) has some serious competition here!
June 22, 1941: The Tale of The Dictator's Reform
An obviously wish-fulfilling sequence shows a certain unnamed short, balding, German dictator visiting America incognito, offering military support to any disaffected segments of the population, but discovering to his dismay that not only are even the disaffected still insanely patriotic, they're actually ready to lynch him! A short moralizing lesson from The Spirit alters the Dictator's heart, but sadly, when he returns home, he realizes that one man cannot stop the engines of war, and he's killed in cold blood and replaced with a body-double who thirsts for war and conquest.
January 5 - June 29, 1941
Published by DC Comics
ISBN: 1563896753
Read March 30, 2015
We're still slogging through the weeds - I just got Volume 3 in the delivery at work, so my timing is working out well so far! My goal is to be finished with at least a few years worth by May when the free graphic novel class taught by Stan Lee begins. I want to have at least some footing under me besides my random Marvel interactions.
Volume 2 has some really nice stories, and we're starting to see a few breaks from the traditional panels and good-guy vs bad-guy stories. I'll give my shout-outs below, but despite individual stories being interesting, the collection is still very visually traditional with old-school designs and lay-outs.
March 16, 1941: Introducing Silk Satin
A clever, hard-ass lady villainess (literally her first scene is to extract a bullet from her own arm) is introduced, and given a convenient "death" offstage with no corpse. Hmmm....
April 6, 1941: Introducing Scarlett Brown
Our intrepid (and still visually stereotyped) Ebony gets a girlfriend!
These next two were interesting back-to-back, as neither of them really involved The Spirit except tangentially. They were both visceral stories, and to have them so close together made me wonder if this was a first minor bout of getting sick of Spirit's normal shtick.
April 13, 1941: Croaky Andrews' Perfect Crime
A criminal commits the perfect crime with his girlfriend, escaping the clutches of The Spirit to a private island he's secured with traps and guns. His own conscience makes him believe The Spirit is on his tail until the last, when he realizes his error just before death. Quite grim.
April 20, 1941: The S.S. Raven
Another grim tangent. A "killer ship" that murders sailors and captains and thirsts for blood, and plots revenge against those who have injured or slighted her. Frankly, a little on the weird side.
May 25, 1941: Thomas Hawkins
Our "moralizing" story for this half-year zeroes in on ex-convicts, blaming re-offenses on a society that marginalizes and penalizes them even after they've done their time. Spirit offers a young man his own small business to help keep him on the straight and narrow, and the Commish helps out after a jilted mobster takes offense to young Hawkins going straight. (This episode, more than any other, makes me really wonder how a dead guy makes so much money?)
June 1, 1941: Killer McNobby
A bizarre illustrated jingle, mostly resembling a barroom musical round (it probably was based on one) focusing on McNobby, who killed at least one person per day until The Spirit had enough and challenged him to a... MMA match ?!?! Lots of punching. Very masculine, I guess.
June 8, 1941: Five Passengers in Search of an Author
(Spoilers!) We see the return of Silk Satin, this time in drag as an English gentleman spy, working against the Third Reich (unnamed, but obvious) and outsmarting our own intrepid hero at every turn! Hmm, I sense that Miss Ellen (the Commish's daughter, still popping up at random to incite plots or be threatened) has some serious competition here!
June 22, 1941: The Tale of The Dictator's Reform
An obviously wish-fulfilling sequence shows a certain unnamed short, balding, German dictator visiting America incognito, offering military support to any disaffected segments of the population, but discovering to his dismay that not only are even the disaffected still insanely patriotic, they're actually ready to lynch him! A short moralizing lesson from The Spirit alters the Dictator's heart, but sadly, when he returns home, he realizes that one man cannot stop the engines of war, and he's killed in cold blood and replaced with a body-double who thirsts for war and conquest.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Graphic Novel Collection: The Spirit, Volume 1, by Will Eisner
Will Eisner's The Spirit Archives, Volume 1
June 2 - December 29, 1940
Published by DC Comics
ISBN: 1563896737
Read February 8, 2015
These are part of our library's promotion for Will Eisner week coming up in March, and while I've read a few scattered stories of The Spirit, I haven't ever sat down from the beginning. And what a beginning it is. This represents just six months of work, and the stories are crazy pulpy ridiculous fun from beginning to end. This volume also has some really good articles in the start from Will Eisner, Alan Moore, and RC Harvey, talking about the state of comics at that time, and the implications of a serialized, regular, dependable comic hero as a newspaper staple. Some really good stuff in there, and very interesting to hear about the challenges and worries that these comic greats had way back when they were unknown and just starting out.
I have to say, other than the character of Ebony, who is just horribly visibly caricatured (along with the other black characters) and the sexist attitudes towards poor Ellen, the stories hold up amazingly well. When I read the stories as a younger person, they had a very strong Dick Tracy vibe for me, and that was very pronounced in the larger collection. Unlike Tracy, there wasn't as much of a focus on gagetry, and the death toll that was such a large part of Tracy's noir feeling wasn't present here. In fact, other than gangsters (who got mowed down in droves) and the occasional necessary-to-the-dramatic-moment side characters, not many people died at all.
The only thing I missed in this particular collection was the more visually-inventive strips that came later, as Eisner got really solidly into his stride and started innovating. My experiences with The Spirit are scattershot, and I didn't realize that what I thought of as a "signature" Eisner layout was something that he developed over time - this first year of The Spirit is amazingly straightlaced and conventional. You catch glimpses of characters starting to slide out of their boxes, or title-pages nad headline blocks starting to morph into splash pages, but really, it's all quite boxy and straightforward. Very odd to see.
I'm hoping that the later volumes are available, but I shudder to thing at how many there will be if this thick book (nearly 250 pages) only represents six months of a feature that ran for twelve years solid until 1952.
June 2 - December 29, 1940
Published by DC Comics
ISBN: 1563896737
Read February 8, 2015
These are part of our library's promotion for Will Eisner week coming up in March, and while I've read a few scattered stories of The Spirit, I haven't ever sat down from the beginning. And what a beginning it is. This represents just six months of work, and the stories are crazy pulpy ridiculous fun from beginning to end. This volume also has some really good articles in the start from Will Eisner, Alan Moore, and RC Harvey, talking about the state of comics at that time, and the implications of a serialized, regular, dependable comic hero as a newspaper staple. Some really good stuff in there, and very interesting to hear about the challenges and worries that these comic greats had way back when they were unknown and just starting out.
I have to say, other than the character of Ebony, who is just horribly visibly caricatured (along with the other black characters) and the sexist attitudes towards poor Ellen, the stories hold up amazingly well. When I read the stories as a younger person, they had a very strong Dick Tracy vibe for me, and that was very pronounced in the larger collection. Unlike Tracy, there wasn't as much of a focus on gagetry, and the death toll that was such a large part of Tracy's noir feeling wasn't present here. In fact, other than gangsters (who got mowed down in droves) and the occasional necessary-to-the-dramatic-moment side characters, not many people died at all.
The only thing I missed in this particular collection was the more visually-inventive strips that came later, as Eisner got really solidly into his stride and started innovating. My experiences with The Spirit are scattershot, and I didn't realize that what I thought of as a "signature" Eisner layout was something that he developed over time - this first year of The Spirit is amazingly straightlaced and conventional. You catch glimpses of characters starting to slide out of their boxes, or title-pages nad headline blocks starting to morph into splash pages, but really, it's all quite boxy and straightforward. Very odd to see.
I'm hoping that the later volumes are available, but I shudder to thing at how many there will be if this thick book (nearly 250 pages) only represents six months of a feature that ran for twelve years solid until 1952.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Graphic Novel (Trade collection) Wonder Woman: The Circle, Gail Simone
Wonder Woman: The Circle
Gail Simone
Pencils: Terry Dodson, Bernard Chang, Ron Randall
Inks: Rachel Dodson, Bernard Chang, Ron Randall, Jon Holdridge
Colors: Alex Sinclair, I.L.L., Lee Loughridge, Pete Pantazis
Letters: Rob Leigh, Travis Landham, John J. Hill
ISBN: 9781401219321
Finished November 24, 2014
This one has been on my desk for months, but for some reason, intelligent apes and super-Nazis just bugged me too much, and I never got rolling with it until today. The Nazi's and apes petered out pretty quickly, but I'm still confused by pretty much everything that happened in the modern world, and would have been totally happy to stay on the island (in the past and the present) to watch the political / religious / jealous intrigue work itself out over time.
Gail Simone
Pencils: Terry Dodson, Bernard Chang, Ron Randall
Inks: Rachel Dodson, Bernard Chang, Ron Randall, Jon Holdridge
Colors: Alex Sinclair, I.L.L., Lee Loughridge, Pete Pantazis
Letters: Rob Leigh, Travis Landham, John J. Hill
ISBN: 9781401219321
Finished November 24, 2014
This one has been on my desk for months, but for some reason, intelligent apes and super-Nazis just bugged me too much, and I never got rolling with it until today. The Nazi's and apes petered out pretty quickly, but I'm still confused by pretty much everything that happened in the modern world, and would have been totally happy to stay on the island (in the past and the present) to watch the political / religious / jealous intrigue work itself out over time.
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