Gods, Mutants, and Freaks: Funnybooksinreviewarego!!!

So I wanna review some funnybooks, but my day job's still kicking my ass. What's the solution? Why, Quickies, of course!

Supergod #5 (of 5)
by Warren Ellis and Garrie Gastonny

A somewhat disappointing ending to what I've been considering Warren Ellis' best work of the year. [SPOILER] Normally, I'd be okay with Krishna fighting a weird-ass manifestation of Cthulhu on Judgement Day, but Cthulhu just doesn't make sense here. And the way that the ending hinged on what was essentially a rote Ellis one-liner was just annoying. [/SPOILER] I dunno. In spite of some imaginative work in the fight sequence, it felt like he ran out of steam with this issue. That's happened with a lot of his more interesting comics of late: they start out as genuinely fascinating genre explorations, then fall apart in the final act (or, in the case of Black Summer, the second issue) with the central premise only partially paid off. Supergod fares better than most on that front; its examination of man-made gods and the super hero as the divine was fully-explored before the blow-off. It's just that the blow-off wasn't very satisfying.

This cover, though, might raise the grade by half a letter, all by itself:

click to embiggen

It would have been even better if Jerry Kraven was drinking a Coke...

Grade: B+

More of the World's Finest Crap!

So once upon a time, on a nerd farm far, far away... We were en-gaged in an important piece of funnybook archeology: figurin' out, once and for all, whether it was Superman or Batman who had to put up with the most crap in their classic funnybook appearances. Then Halloween happened, and there was that whole "November" thing, and well... We just forgot about it. But today one of the new nerd wranglers (a Christmas temp) fell into the dig site. Turns out some of the boys had covered it with a tarp, hopin' to use it as a sorta... Burmese Tiger Trap? For wayward trick-or-treaters? And it just laid there gettin' covered up with leaves and snow til it finally caught itself a victim. We'll be sendin' his family a nice memorial fruit basket this Christmas, but in the meantime... Let's all go enjoy ourselves some Pure-T Classic Funnybook Crap!

Now, seein' as this thing's a competition, I thought it might be nice to lead off this round with a few covers featurin' Supes an' Bats squarin' off against each other...

1. Whether they were just brawling in general...

Real men battle with boulders!

2. ...fighting over the love of a pretty lady...

Somehow, I never pictured Supes as a size queen.

3. ...or over a love that can't be named...

Are cape rides a Boy Wonder fringe benefit?

...Superman and Batman's relationship was always a tumultuous one.

Why I Hate Green Lantern

So I got an interesting question recently: why don’t I ever write about Green Lantern here on the Dork Forty? It’s not an unreasonable thing to wonder about. Green Lantern is a truly significant book in the super hero genre, one of the most popular comics on the stands today, and considered by many to be the brightest jewel in DC Comics’ 21st Century publishing crown. And yet, I’m not sure I’ve ever even mentioned it here. Why is that? Well…

The first answer to that question is the simplest: I don’t like it. And while I’m not averse to writing negative reviews, I’m also not going to spend money on comics I know I don’t like. If I was getting paid to do this, I’d read and review all kinds of stuff. But in the absence of that, I’m quite happy with my amateur status. It does, however, put certain limits on the things I’m going to write about.

My second answer is a bit more complicated: I prefer to use the Dork Forty to accentuate the positive. As it says in the masthead, this place is part of my own personal nerd farm. It’s a place I come to share my thoughts on the dorky-ass stuff I like, the strange and obscure corners of popular culture that I dig the most. It’s as much about publicly enthusing about things as it is anything else. And while I’m always happy to state my opinion if somebody asks, I also don’t like to use this platform to go out of my way to crap all over stuff that other people really like.

But…

The question that inevitably follows my statement that I don’t like Green Lantern is almost always an incredulous, “How can you not like Green Lantern?!” Which means that… Well… Somebody asked… So I guess it’s time to go negative…

"What the--?!"

First off, I should clarify that I like Green Lantern, the character, just fine. He’s one of my favorite super hero concepts, in fact. Space cop with magic alien ring? Of course I love that!

"Well, alright then!"

I just don’t like the current direction of the Green Lantern comics series. Or, more specifically, I don’t care for the writing of Geoff Johns, who’s been guiding the character’s adventures for quite some time now.

And at this point, in the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that, while I’ve read enough Johns to know that I don’t like his work, I haven’t read him since the earliest days of his Green Lantern run, and no longer own any of the Johns comics I have read. So I can’t give you much in the way of specific examples of the things I’m going to complain about, and any specific Green Lantern plot elements I do discuss are things I’ve gleaned by talking to people who have read the stories, and of course by hitting the Wikipedia in preparation for writing this. So, yeah. Just FYI. If you think that disqualifies me from expressing opinions on Johns’ work (a feeling I can certainly understand), just stop reading now. You probably won’t like what I have to say, anyway...

Batwomen, Demons, and Thunder Gods: Funnybooksinreviewarego!!!

So I thought I might do something a little different tonight, and review some week-old funnybooks. You know, just for a change of pace…

Batwoman #0
by JH Williams III, W. Hayden Blackman, and Amy Reeder

When the Greg Rucka / JH Williams Batwoman strip in Detective Comics ended earlier this year, both creators sounded pretty pessimistic about continuing with the character. Which made me sad, because that book was one of the best pieces of corporate spandex to come down the pike in a good long while, fairly standard modern super-heroics in some ways, but given layers of added depth by Williams’ visuals. But Rucka had a hand in planning that visual depth, so when the Batwoman on-going was announced, with Williams but not Rucka at the helm, I wondered how the new series would stack up.

Pretty well, it turns out. This zero issue is just an introduction to the character for new readers, and a chance for Williams and co-artist Amy Reeder to strut their stuff, but they do a nice job of it by and large. Williams and co-writer Blackman do take the shortcut of showing us Batwoman through the eyes of the recently-returned Batman, and on some level I feel like that’s a mistake. Having Batman express his admiration is a cheap way to establish the new character’s credibility. Rucka avoided that, generally preferring to let Kate Kane stand as her own character, inspired by Batman but not in need of his approval.

But Williams and Hayden still make it work for them. The way they’ve framed it, the story’s less about Kate seeking the Bat-Seal of Approval, and more about Batman’s obsessive need to know who this new cape is, and if she’s worthy of infringing on his gimmick. Also, by showing Kate to us through Batman’s eyes, they’re able to fill us in on her methods and backstory, and even her on-going plotlines, without it all seeming like rote exposition. Even though that’s pretty much what this entire issue actually is.

And artistically, of course, the book is just top-notch. Williams illustrates the sequences where Batwoman’s in costume, while Amy Reeder handles the Kate Kane scenes. They’re mostly working in two-page spreads, with Williams handling the top half while Reeder takes the bottom, or vice-versa as the script demands. Williams seems to have designed the layout on many of these pages; his jagged panel borders and diagonal page divides stand out from Reeder’s more traditional layout. In fact, I’m afraid that Reeder can’t quite hold her own with him in general. Her work is very nice, don’t get me wrong. She’s good with expressions, her staging shows some pizzazz, and her linework is some of the better traditional comics art out there right now. But next to Williams, it looks more than a little bland. Granted, about 95% of all funnybook art would. “Not as good as JH Williams” isn’t really much of a criticism.

So overall, I was pleased with this zero issue. It doesn’t promise a series as good as what came before it, but it still sets the bar pretty high. Looking forward to reading it for a good long while.

Grade: A-

Batman and Robin #17
by Paul Cornell and Scott McDaniel

It’s the first post-Morrison issue of Batman and Robin! And it’s… pretty okay! Cornell captures the glib façade of the Morrison run well, and Scott McDaniel’s a perfect sort of artist for something with that tone. His stuff is light and breezy and fun to look at, if not terribly… deep. And therein lies the problem with the book as a whole: it lacks depth.

Love, Death, and Super Powers: Funnybooks in Review Are Go!!

So I’ve got this pile of week-old funnybooks sitting here on my desk, and I thought I might, like, review ‘em or something…

Highland Laddie #4 (of 6)
by Garth Ennis and John McCrea

Annie and Hughie talk things out a bit this issue, in another example of Garth Ennis turning in some really brilliant character writing. Though he’s primarily famous for extreme transgressive action/comedy, there aren’t many people in the business who write about normal human relationships as well as he does. He’s also making me like Annie January more with each passing issue. Her apparent naiveté has been slowly revealed as just a lack of cynicism, and she’s strong enough to fight for her relationship with Hughie even in the face of the frankly horrible melt-down that happened between them a few issues back. She’s also not going to give Hughie an out on the insanely hurtful things he said to her, which I was afraid she was going to accept as something she deserved. Between this, and her on-going loss of faith, Annie has become refreshingly complex over time, the best female character Ennis has ever written, and maybe the best period, of any gender. Doubly impressive coming from a writer better-known for his “guy” writing.

And she’s made even more interesting this issue, as we discover her “secret origin.” Born with super powers due to one of her parents having been exposed to Compound V, Annie grew up in a Vought-sponsored foster parenting program, and was subjected to the world of (for lack of a better term) “super pageants” as a child. It’s sort of like Jon-Benet Ramsey in tights. Except that, instead of lasting psychological scars, some of these kids wind up with melting eyeballs and such. Ugly. But also a fascinating look into the super-culture, and how Vought prepares and packages their supes pretty much from birth, but gives them zero guidance on how to conduct themselves. It’s no wonder so many of them are messed up. And amazing that Annie turned out as good as she did.

Annie’s also more than a little suspicious about how Hughie got the surveillance tape of the Seven’s HQ, so I suspect that we’ll be getting another round of confessions soon. She also brings up a really good point: Hughie doesn’t have it in him to say some of the things he said to Annie when they broke up. So… What, exactly, is going on here? The answer, for the reader, is obvious: Butcher. He wound Hughie up pretty badly just before the confrontation, putting Annie’s secret-keeping in the worst possible light and making Hughie seem like a gigantic fool for not seeing through her. And though I think Butcher believed every word he said, and that he thought he was doing it for Hughie’s own good… Damn. What a bastard. Hughie’s even seen through what he did, too: before leaving for Scotland, he asked Butcher, point blank, if he’d seen the tapes of Annie before he set Hughie up to find them. He took Butcher at his word then, but if Annie’s gotten through to him as much as I think she has… Butcher’s going to be dealing with a very angry wee man when Hughie gets back to New York.

Batman's Back And There's Gonna Be Trouble

Batman: The Return
Batman Inc. #1
by Grant Morrison, David Finch, and Yanick Paquette

Attention all crime-fighting bad-asses! Batman franchise opportunities are now available!

No, seriously. I mean… Batman just foiled the master plan of the God of Evil and his thematic reflections throughout the history of time itself. What’s he gonna do now that he’s back to his drab work-a-day existence? Go back to protecting Gotham City? Pssh! Hell, no! Gotham’s small potatoes to the Bat now! He thinkin’ bigger! He’s thinkin’ better! He’s gonna found an international brotherhood of crime-hatin’ motherfuckers! A real “Batmen of Many Nations” to protect his new turf: Earth! Or, as Bats himself likes to think of it: PLANET GOTHAM!

That’s the title of the story in the “Batman: The Return” one-shot, and it would have been a far better title for the comic itself. In fact, I think I’ll call it that from here on out. Planet Gotham. It’s a title that sums up Batman’s new crime-fighting philosophy in a succinct and stupid-awesome manner. He’s going global, and he’s not doing it alone. This comes as a direct result of his Thogal-inspired epiphany, his enlightenment to the Truth of the Batman: much as he once liked to think otherwise, he’s never waged his war on crime alone. He’s always had help. So why not reach out? Why not train and fund others to protect their hometowns the way Batman’s always protected his own? Sounds like a natural extension to me. And a great excuse to do a Batman team-up comic, too…

Floppies for Trades: Two Americas

Captain America: Two Americas
by Ed Brubaker, Luke Ross, and Butch Guice

So THIS is the storyline that got the Tea Party’s panties in a bunch? Seriously? For a movement that’s all about individual freedoms, they’re certainly some thin-skinned SOBs. But as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself…

When the on-going Captain America series went to four bucks a pop earlier this year, I decided it was time to start reading it in trade paperback collections. I found the “Nomad” back-up strip pretty much unreadable, making its “added value” an actual detriment to my enjoyment of the monthly funnybook reading experience. And, since this isn’t a book that really needs my monthly support to keep going anyway… It seemed like a perfect candidate for trade-waiting. So here we are at the first of those trade collections, Two Americas. And, sure enough, it’s a better deal than the monthly. I got five issues of All-American Action and Political Subtext for 15 bucks. Which still seems a little steep, honestly, but which nonetheless feels like a better use of my funnybook dollar.

The story concerns “Bad Cap,” the poor bastard who became Captain America in the 1950s and was driven insane by the knock-off of the Super Soldier Serum they used on him. This character’s been knocking around for years now. Initially an attempt to explain the insane Commie-bashing Cap stories of the early 1950s (in which Our Hero did some decidedly Un-American things in the name of freedom), he’s since become a great doppelganger villain to toss out periodically, and remind everyone of just what the real Cap stands for. He was brought out of mothballs in Brubaker’s big multi-year Red Skull storyline (which name-checked pretty much every great Captain America story ever), and escaped into the American heartland to be dealt with here.

And Brubaker, of course, makes the most of it. Bad Cap returns to his hometown of Boise, Idaho, sees the unemployment and the erosion of American Values, and decides that he’s got to change things. And, since he’s crazy and super-strong and solves most of his problems by hitting things, he decides to form a super-militia. Or, rather… He becomes the leader of one that’s already in place: the Watchdogs. I‘ve never read a story with these guys in it, but they‘ve been kicking around since the 80s. They’re essentially a bunch of right-wing terrorist militia types with high-tech weapons and body armor, a perfect group to use if you want to discuss the current political climate in the guise of a super hero comic.

And this is where they got in hot water with the Tea Party. Upon arrival in Boise, Cap and the Falcon watch a protest rally made up of working class Americans:

Last Week's Comics Today!

Scarlet #3 by Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev

So sometimes I feel like a tool when I review the latest issue of a book I like and essentially say, “Another triumph!” But, man… Scarlet #3 really is another triumph for the Bendis/Maleev team. Scarlet continues her manipulation of the audience, which is still my favorite aspect of the book. I don’t know how I feel about all the things Scarlet’s up to, and she only confuses the matter, implicating me in her actions by virtue of the entertainment I gain reading about them. She also puts those same skills to use for the first time in-story, on her dead boyfriend Gabriel’s best friend, who she recruits to film the first public step in the revolution: [SPOILER] taking a sniper rifle and putting a bullet through the head of the Chief of Police. This isn’t a random killing, mind you. The Chief is the uncle of the cop who killed Gabriel, and the man responsible for putting that cop back on the street in spite of his drug habit. [/SPOILER]

She’s slowly expanding the ring of responsibility for Gabriel’s death. The question, then, is how far out can she expand that ring before she goes too far? I can’t answer that question just yet, but I’m really looking forward to seeing where I wind up drawing the line.

Grade: A

The Boys #48
by Garth Ennis and Russ Braun

As the action of Hughie and Annie’s oh-so-painful split moves over to the pages of Hughie’s spin-off mini Highland Laddie, The Boys series proper moves on to the new story arc “Proper Preparation and Planning.” We’re heading into the third and final act of the series now, and this arc seems to be about Butcher and the Homelander getting their pieces in place for whatever ultimate play each of them is going to make. And as worrisome as Homelander’s increasingly sociopathic behaviour is, it’s Butcher that’s really got me worried.

Bat-Finale II: The Next Day

So apparently, I’m a moron. I mis-read something pretty horribly in the finale to Grant Morrison’s Batman saga, something that alters my reading of the story quite a bit. My original reading still works, I think, but not in a way that makes me feel like I can claim any longer to have “nailed it” at all. Ah, hubris! Thy name is Dork!

And I mean it this time. This isn’t something as minor as mistakenly guessing that Alfred was dressing up as Batman, it’s a pretty fundamental breakdown of basic funnybook reading skills. I’m actually kind of embarrassed. But in the interest of honesty (and getting to write about Batman some more), I figured I should probably ‘fess up.

Here’s the crux of it: at the end of Return of Bruce Wayne 6, Bruce rips the Hyper-Adapter-infected future bat-suit off himself, it’s swiftly taken down by the JLA and tossed into a booby-trapped Time Sphere, which then activates and self-destructs. So far, so good. But I read the panels that followed as images of fractured time like the ones we get before and after, caused by the time-shattering effects of the Omega energy built up around Bruce in his trip through time. I thought we were getting some key images of the Hyper-Adapter’s past as it died in the destruction of the Time Sphere.

But then I made a trip to read the discussion of the issue at Rikdad’s Comic Thoughts (always a source of more sober insights than the Circus of the Glib approach we often practice here on the Dork Forty). And following a quick re-read in light of that discussion, it became apparent that those panels weren’t some crazy Morrisonian time fracture, but something much simpler: actual, linear funnybook storytelling. The Time Sphere activates, sending the Hyper-Adapter back in time, but self-destructing as it goes. The next panel shows Dick Grayson’s encounter with Barbatos in the Secret Batcave, with the added detail of the shattering “glass” of the Time Sphere as it breaks up. Then we get a page set back in caveman days, as a flash of light comes out of a cave mouth, followed by Barbatos (and, again, shards of Time Sphere “glass”) as it flies off to meet its death at the hands of Vandal Savage, as we saw back in the first issue of Return of Bruce Wayne.

And that sets up a whole different story than the one I’d been imagining.

Bat-Finale!

Batman & Robin #16
Return of Bruce Wayne #6 (of 6)
by Grant Morrison, Cameron Stewart, Chris Burnham, Frazer Irving, Lee Garbett, and Pere Perez

So I have to admit: I over-thought things on this book. Seriously, I blew it. Morrison’s plot and theme have been so labyrinthine that I got lost in the maze, just another victim of the lit-crit minotaur lurking at its heart. So it is with hat in hand that I come to you this fine evening to admit my critical failure: it wasn’t Alfred in the Bat-Suit after all.

Click to Embiggen

Otherwise, though… I think I pretty much nailed it.

(Oh, and I suppose that now’s as good a time as any to let you know that this post will be ALL-SPOILER, ALL THE DAMN TIME. So stop reading now if you don’t wanna know…)

What was I saying? Ah. Yeah, I think I nailed it. Not in every detail, certainly, but on the whole. Hurt really was trying to take Batman’s place through communion with Barbatos, and didn’t realize that all he was actually doing was taking the place of the Joker as Batman‘s number one arch-foe. Or trying to, anyway. Because, let’s face it: in the field of iconic arch-enemies, Joker has had Hurt badly out-classed from the outset. Sure, Hurt’s a classic “opposite number” villain, and he’s got the weight of history behind him, drawing on all sorts of hurtful minutiae from Batman’s past. But that’s the sort of thing that only matters to comics historians and massive dorks like myself. Joker’s the real deal, the actual antithesis of everything Batman stands for. Plus, his gimmick’s all his own, no previous knowledge of Batman necessary. And he’s way-cool to boot, something Hurt just can’t lay claim to.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?

The Funnybooks of October, Part Two

So our marathon of Halloweenie goodness put us behind on everything but, well… Halloweenie goodness. We still got hours of new Fall TeeVee to watch, an embarrassin’ number of movies layin’ around, and a Lucha Libre pay-per-view! I never even finished that book I grabbed when my house caught on fire! Oh, and of course… a crap-ton of funnybooks to review. Tonight, it’s a cavalcade of corporate spandex, starting with my favorite cover of the month...

Strange Tales II #1 & 2
by Various

Marvel’s second indy-comics anthology mini-series is off and running, and it’s just as much a mixed bag as the first. Some of the stories are a lot of fun, while others just kinda fall flat. I suspect which stories are which will depend on your taste in the avante-garde edge of the funnybook business. For my money, the second issue is much stronger than the first, featuring both Hernandez brothers (!) and Tony Millionaire, and featuring a completely insane heavy metal Ghost Rider story by Sheldon Vella. The first issue can’t be counted out, though, as it features Jeff Lemire, Jhonen Vazquez, and my personal favorite story to come out of the Strange Tales project to date…

Rafael Grampa’s “Dear Logan.” This is a story about a future time when Wolverine founds and competes in a pro rasslin’ style super-bloodsport federation in which every competitor has a healing factor, and thus can be eviscerated and/or dismembered in the ring for the enjoyment of the fans. But it’s not just a super-cool paean to manly violence, oh no. It’s also about pain, and (as the title probably implies) how Logan’s addiction to it has driven yet another woman away from him. It’s hot stuff, drawn in Grampa’s signature sleazy-baroque cartoon style, and well-worth the cover price all by itself. And speaking of covers, Grampa provided that, too, as you can see above. Love his Wolvie there, but that Thor also kicks ass pretty hard. At any rate. I could read Grampa Wolverine stories forever, I think, but for now we’ve only got this one. Something I’d love for Marvel to fix as soon as possible…

Grade: A+ for “Dear Logan.”
             B for Strange Tales as a whole.

Last Week's Horror Comics Today!

So one of our semi-regular Tuesday features here on the Dork Forty is "Last Week's Comics Today," a review run-down of the funnybooks I bought the previous Wednesday. But, since the Halloween Countdown has sorta taken over the blog this month, and since I don't read that many horror comics, I haven't really done that (last night's Batman post doesn't count. Because, you know... Batman!). But last week I actually did buy some horror comics! So here, tonight, are Last Week's Horror Comics Today! Starting with the current version of an old favorite...

House of Mystery Halloween Annual #2
Written and Drawn by Various

I wrote off Vertigo's current incarnation of the House of Mystery after the first issue. The promise of an anthology format with an on-going story as its backbone seemed kind of nifty, but I didn't like the set-up that much: they turned the House into a bar, with a staff that can't leave even though the patrons come and go every issue. I didn't find the cast all that compelling, either. Too normal, or either too whacky, to find my favor. And then there was the biggest problem: without this guy...

...it ain't the House of Mystery. That's Cain, for the uninformed among you, the host of the original House of Mystery comic from the mid-60s on through to its bitter demise 20 years later. Cain's my all-time favorite funnybook horror host, and I just couldn't push past to accept a House of Mystery without him at the helm. If it had been better-written, maybe, but as it was? No way!

So imagine my surprise (nay, delight!) to find that evil old bastard staring out at me from the cover of this Halloween Annual! It's not a great cover, mind you. The art's a little funky, and it's not laid-out well. But to hell with that, I thought! It's got CAIN on it! So I had to buy it.

But Getting Back to Batman...

So all this Halloween talk has been lots of fun, but it’s time today to turn the spotlight back onto what’s really important: Batman. Well, okay… The Batman story I’m going to talk about does have a sect of devil worshippers performing hideous sacrificial rites to summon a demon who’ll give them the secret of eternal life. Plus, it’s got this picture in it:

And that’s pretty creepy, right? So there’s still a strong horror component for Day 18 of the Countdown to Halloween. It’s just wrapped in spandex this time around…

The Return of Bruce Wayne #5 (of 6)
by Grant Morrison, Ryan Sook, and Pere Perez

Morrison takes his “super-condensed” writing style to new peaks this issue, with reams of fascinating backstory packed into a few tantalizingly brief lines of dialogue. He’s also expecting the reader to do an awful lot of heavy lifting on those background plotlines this time out. Which is fine with me; I love doing that kind of work as a reader. Of course, as always with the Moz, it may not be to everyone’s taste. But I get ahead of myself…

And from here on out, we drive directly into the busy heart of Spoiler-Town, so you might not want to hit the jump link unless you’ve read the issue at hand…

Dreams of Chalk and Fish-Men

So it’s back to the funnybooks for Day 11 of the Countdown to Halloween, with a review of a comic that’s actually current…

Neonomicon #1 & 2
by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows

So, uhm… Wow. This book is pretty hardcore. I mean, it’s a horror comic, so I expected something scary or disturbing, but man! I’ve seldom felt more uncomfortable reading a funnybook as I did reading the second issue of this series. I’m getting way ahead of myself with this intro, but I thought I should get that out of the way up-front: there’s some disturbing content ahead. Lots of SPOILERS, too, so read on with that in mind…

13 Horror Comics in 13 Minutes

Hrm. Last time I tried this, my house caught on fire. Let’s hope I have better luck tonight…

I have to admit, I cheated horribly on this list: it took far longer than 13 minutes to compile. But that’s not because I tried to make the list perfect. It’s because I had a really hard time thinking of 13 horror comics I was willing to recommend. That shocked me a bit, because I feel like I’ve enjoyed horror comics my whole life. But when it came time to list them out… I realized there’ve been damn few of them that were really any good. Of course, I suppose I could have listed out the EC, DC, and Warren horror anthologies separately, but that just seemed… wrong, somehow.

At any rate. In no particular order, here’s my list of 13 Horror Comics in 13 Minutes…

1. Tales From the Crypt, by William M. Gaines, Jack Davis, “Ghastly” Graham Ingles, Joe Orlando, etc.

THE horror comic. I’ve always been struck by how… realistic? The stories in Tales From the Crypt (and the rest of the EC Comics horror line) were. I mean, sure, there were ghosts and zombies, and even the occasional vampire or werewolf. But they always played second-fiddle to the very grounded tales of vengeance, greed, and love-gone-wrong that were EC’s bread and butter. There was always a perfectly relatable motive behind all the gruesome shenanigans, written to a pitch-perfect tone for the audience of 10-year-olds that loved them.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention EC’s ground-breaking work in one of my personal favorite fields of pop culture ephemera: the horror host. Each of the EC horror titles had a host, a master of ceremonies who not only served as a continuing character for readers to latch onto, but also did some heavy lifting in the stories themselves, offering introductions that set the mood and sometimes established important plot points. Tales From the Crypt had the Crypt Keeper, of course (though he was a far cry from the emaciated corpse puppet that hosted the TV show). And as for the others…

If you want more: Luckily for you, the EC horror line was more or less interchangeable, except for the hosts. So if you like Tales From the Crypt, you’ll almost certainly also enjoy its sister series The Vault of Horror (hosted by the Vault-Keeper, who was sort of a cut-rate Crypt Keeper) and the Haunt of Fear (hosted by The Old Witch, drawn with aplomb by "Ghastly" Graham Ingles). All three are available in collected editions, sort of a “best of” for each series, and are well-worth a look.

It's 12 O'Clock...

So the blood farming's got me a bit tuckered out tonight, and I'll just be posting some pretty pictures. But, hey! It's not all bad! 'Cause I'm turning the focus back to the funnybooks, and shining the Spooky Spotlight on the cover art brilliance of ... The Witching Hour!

Part of DC's classic horror comic line, The Witching Hour was the relative baby of the batch, not launching til 1969 in comparison to the 1950s debuts of the more venerable House of Mystery and House of Secrets. These anthology series were profitable "try-out" books for DC through the 60s and 70s; many artists (perhaps most notably Bernie Wrightson) got their first professional funnybook work through the horror titles, and the better talents were nurtured for eventual jobs on the higher-profile super hero books. But The Witching Hour launched big, with a series of really fantastic, eye-catching covers from Teen Titans artist Nick Cardy. Like this one, from the very first issue...

Love that cover! The vertiginous perspective, the eerie green, the pose on the witch, the way the title's worked into the image as a word balloon... That's some classic-ass funnybook cover design! And it continued...

Frazer Irving's Crypt of Terror

So... Did I say that I would be missing a day on the Halloween Countdown due to fire? I did? Well, I guess I lied...

Taking the focus of the blog back to the funnybooks where it belongs, I give you today a series of images from funnybook artist extraordinaire Mr. Frazer Irving...

Your Standard-Issue Zombie Apocalypse

Click the link below for more Irving Terror!

World's Finest Crap

So in my tireless quest to figure out who really was the most humiliated character in the history of funnybook covers, I finally settled upon the series Superman and Batman co-starred in for something like 40 years: World's Finest Comics. And here, at last, I hit the motherlode. This book was the king (the KING, I say!) of batshit crazy cover images. I am in awe of its horrible glory. And now, I share a taste of it with you...

1. Early on, the World's Finest covers were relatively tame. They showed Superman, Batman, and Robin palling around together, engaging in any number of wholesome sporting activities, such as... log-rolling!

Revisiting RIP

So here I am, writing about Batman again. Sorry. I’ll get off this kick eventually, I’m sure. But for now, it’s the best-written funnybook on the stands today, so much so that I’ve been doing research and re-reading to really, firmly unpack all its hidden meanings. And to that end, I’ve just completed a re-read of the “first act” of Grant Morrison’s Batman run, culminating in the “Batman RIP” arc, and including the recently-published “Missing Chapter.” Those two issues add a lot more to the story (and to Morrison’s run as a whole) than I’d given them credit for on first blush, so I thought I‘d come back to them for a few minutes.

In some ways they’re spackle, something to make the final collected edition of all these comics read better. They attach “RIP” to “Return of Bruce Wayne,” and they seem intended give you just enough of the Final Crisis part of the story that you don’t have to read Final Crisis itself to understand the Batman run. In that, I suspect they fail rather badly: if I hadn’t read Final Crisis, I don’t know that “The Missing Chapter” would entirely make sense. But it’s a noble effort anyway, and if you read things in the right order, they illuminate Morrison’s larger plots and themes quite well.

FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!!

So it's been awhile, I notice, since I last discussed my weekly funnybook haulings. Which can only mean that, once again...

FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!!!!

Joe the Barbarian #7 (of 8)
by Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy

As many have noted in the past, Grant Morrison tends to deal with similar (or, okay, identical) themes across several works, often at the same time. Thus, ten years ago, Invisibles and JLA both wound up being about humanity transcending into a higher state of being. Now, having gotten his millennial jones out of the way, Morrison's dealing with the death of his father. We got a preview of it in All-Star Superman, where humanity had to cope with the imminent demise of everybody's dad, Superman. But now, in both Joe and Morrison's Batman work, we're dealing with the aftermath. Not the mourning so much, but the effort of the sons to honor their fathers while still moving forward in their own way. And in that, they're both stories about finding yourself, discovering your own personal mythology and using it to shape yourself into something better: an adult in your own right.

Just, you know. With a lot of kicking.

Grade: A