Sunny Days Indoors

F is for...Fegredo, Duncan Fegredo

2012-01-08T03:41:00.000-08:00

A commision of Enigma & friends

When I started collecting comics it was with my mate Mustafa who lent me the X-Men #1 that got me started on superheroes after having bought the Beano and toy related comics previously. My other friend who was into comics was Arunan who had other older friends who read comics and so was into stuff that wasn't normally on our radar such as Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre, Warren Ellis comics and Preacher. One of the comics he put in my hands that opened my eyes and nudged me away from the mainstream was Milligan and Fegredo's Face.

Opening page of Face

Face was the story of a a fairly typically flawed Vertigo/Milligan character, a self centred, neurotic plastic surgeon who, for example collects telephone numbers from strange women to get himself off on later, although in a long term relationship. He gets hired to operate on a Picasso type who wants to look like one of his paintings.
The thing that most struck me about the book, aside from being a great creepy, human horror story, was that the art and story seemed to come from the same place. The underlying humor that Milligan infused the script with is also felt in Fegredo's art. The same is true with what was, pre Hellboy, Fegredo's largest body of work Enigma. I struggle to think of anyone else who could have bought the screwed up tapestry of english silver age villains, their gay creator, lizards and white trash to life the way Fegredo did.

The art on both Face and Enigma has an art school sensibilty with overtones of Sienkewicz, Kent Williams, Bill Koeb to it. What's there from the beginning is a constantly moving camera in even the most static scene so there's an energy to the work that's incredibly compelling.
For me, the most notable thing about Fegredo's next series, Millenium Fever with Nick Abadzis, was the absence of the frenetic inking style of Face and Enigma. There's a lot more control in the inking; it all gets a lot more economical and the art benefits from it greatly. This would mark the direction for the rest of Fegredo's comic work.
It's very pretty art but the colours are a little lively and the story's mental!

Vertigo Verité was a series of "realistic", non fantasy books about normal things like aids, class conflict and global conspiracy. Milligan and Fegredo gave us Girl, a three issue mini series about an English teenager stuck in a desperately mundane life with crappy parents and friends. It's a great, funny, sad story which Fegredo gets to animate a very pedestrian setting to life.

DC's fifth week event New Year's Evil, with great covers by Jason Pearson, included a Grant Morrison Prometheus story, introducing the character prior to his JLA appearance but more importantly for me, Scarecrow: Mistress of Fear by Milligan and Fegredo. This is the story that gave me an unhealthy appreciation for the Scarecrow and the psychosis that drives him. The colours are by Teddy Kristiensen's collaborator and painter on Superman: For All Seasons, Bjarne Hansen. With a limited palette of what feels like predominantly greens, the Gotham City of Fegredo is creepy and perfect for the Scarecrow to muck about in. As he attacks the Gotham suburbs, terrifying people into attacking each other with irons and Hoovers over their fences, the Scarecrow comes across a girl with seemingly no phobias, who of course, must be his so he sends his goons, the Blues Brothers, to get her.

After "directing" the bridging story between Chasing Amy and Dogma with Kevin Smith in glorious zip-a-toned black and white Fegredo jumped around quite a bit. X-Force (with Milligan), Tom Strong with Ed Brubaker, Ultimate Adventures (a funny Batman cypher with Ron Zimmerman), Reed Richards with Peter David (an Indiana Jones style pre FF story), a Marvel Monsters one shot with Steve Niles and various Vertigo fill ins and short stories.
While all the above were great (with the possible exception of the Reed Richards book), Fegredo found a home for his sensibilities with Hellboy.

One of Bermejo's completed Hellboy pages

The first choice to replace Mignola on the art for a while was Lee Bermejo (Batman/Deathblow, Joker, Lex Luthor, Batman Noël) who I like quite a bit. I honestly can't imagine the last three books of Hellboy with such an agressive, dark style. While Mignola's universe is a dark place it's also fun.
Glen Murakami of the WB Superman and Batman cartoons suggested Fegredo for the job, which I have to say, I would have too!

Dark Hellboy

Fegredo got to do the Empire Strikes Back arc of what is set to be one massive trilogy with Mignola returning to illustrate what I hope isn't the Return of the Jedi arc (yub,yub).
Hellboy has forced a kind of restraint on Fegredo's style that makes it simmer in all the quiet moments. While almost everything in Fegredo's published career leading up to it has been overtly humorous and kinetic, his Hellboy run was full of quiet moments that made the punching and the leaping and the running all the more frantic. Dave Stewart used the same palette for colouring Fegredo's Hellboy as he had on Mignola but in a more lush, painted style so while it was consistent with what had gone before it was also fresh.
In all my years collecting comics everyone recognised how much talent Fegredo has but it's taken Hellboy to really put him on the map of the general comics readership. We understand there's more Hellboy to come from him and I can't wait.

Fegredo to seek out, in a vague, top of my head chronological order:
Kid Eternity (Vertigo)
Face (Vertigo)
Enigma (Vertigo)
Absolute Vertigo (Vertigo)
New Years Evil: Scarecrow (DC)
Weird War Tales 3 (Vertigo)
House Of Secrets 6 (Vertigo)
Batman Chronicles #9 (DC)
The Dreaming 26 (Vertigo)
Winter's Edge #1 (Vertigo)
Chasing Dogma (Oni Press)
Flinch #6 (Vertigo)
Spiderman Tangled Web 5-6 (Marvel)
Ultimate Adventures 1-6 (Marvel)
Tom Strong 29 - 30 (DC/ABC Comics)
Monsters on the Prowl (Marvel)
Hellboy: The Wild Hunt (Dark Horse)
Hellboy: Darkness Calls (Dark Horse)
Hellboy: The Storm & The Fury (Dark Horse)
Also check out the twenty something brilliantly inventive covers on Shade the Changing Man from 42 onwards.

P.S.Vertigo have 48 pages of Face, 3 issues of Girl, a Weird War Tales 8 pager (War & Peas), a Weird Western Tales 8 pager sitting there desperate for a nice collection. Come on! Get on with it!

Unfettered Shade cover

Wedding present from a friend

Return to Enigma

Totoro!!!

Love to Halo Jones

Love to Shigs Miyamoto

PIG!

E is For...Eisner

2011-12-11T02:21:00.001-08:00

Eisner by Eisner

While I'm by no means an Eisner completist, I have a particular affection for one particular period of his work and recognise his influence in other creators I love.
Back when my first comic shop in London was floundering and I'd read everything on the shleves that I wanted to, the local Islington library which was ably supplied (by us) through a lovely lady called Sue with all kinds of good stuff (or certainly had been).
It's where I read Sandman (out of order) but more importantly Cowboy Wally, Will Eisner's Space Spirit and Will Eisner's Contract with God. Space Spirit was an exposure to Wally Wood's brilliance rather than Will Eisner.

Contract With God was the first time I encountered such pathos and deep human story telling in comics. In the years since it might feel a little melodramatic compared with the work of Chris Ware, Clowes, Seth and Pekar but as a dyed in the wool super hero kid, branching out it had a massive impact.
The page layouts, fantastic lettering, and time period (30s New York) are so personal to Eisner in comics along with the hand wringing, lip bitting and wailing which you might only see in Jeff Smith's Bone.

The Super, not concious of impending doom...

The story of the Super lulled into looking at a little girls knickers by the awful little girl who then goes on to kill his dog and ends up driving him to suicide was pretty fucked up. You have to wonder how much is based on and inspired by his own growing up in the period.
What's generally grouped together as being his Dropsie Avenue work is such a pleasure to read, full of hyper real characters an lush, innovative storytelling.

Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art book was very instructional as a reader to help understand what I was looking at and for, why some comics succeeded in grabbing me and others not. I honestly feel that along with Understanding Comics (and to a lesser extent, How to Draw Comics The Marvel way) should be required reading for anyone with more than a passing interest in comics. They certainly aren't the only books on the subject but for me they laid a solid foundation for my passion for great comics.

Lovely little hard cover with nice essays and an ecclectic collection of Eisner work.

I recently picked up the PS magazine articles collection which has his work showing soldiers how to maintain their jeeps and guns which is also very nice stuff but goes further to demonstrate his skill as a teacher.
I've never managed to get into his Spirit work but now that DC has finished publishing it all in 24 x $50 books, perhaps I'll start at the last one and go back as far as it's interesting to me. I could do with a nice collection of just the splashes to be honest but I understand the last volume contains a lot of work done for Kitchen Sink Press' Spirit Magazine so it sounds up my street.
Eisner continued producing comics until he died and there was still a lot of good work there but, for example, Family Matter in particular, I was enjoying until a number of pages in someone whips out a mobile phone and for the first time I realised it wasn't a period piece.
I have my Eisner and I'm certain it's not everyone's. I haven't even touched on the massive impact he had on comics at several stage of his life, including the above mentioned Contract With God being a contender for the first original graphic novel and the massive impact of his storytelling in the Spirit on all kinds of storytelling, not just comics or the Eisner/Iger studio which was so important at the birth of comics as we know them. All that's out there. Look it up.
Eisner was great, with a massive library of work but for me it doesn't get any better than Dropsie Avenue.

All images grabbed from a facile google search.

One of the several Dropsie Avenue books.

Exemplary Eisner setting just the right tone...

A typical Eisner relationship from Life on Another Planet

One of the most famous Eisner Spirit splashes

The other most famous Spirit splash

D is for...Davis, Alan Davis

2011-10-16T09:20:00.000-07:00

Terrifically dynamic cover made this book a must have for me before
I even knew my X-Men collection would go back this far.

I'm not sure if I first came across Alan Davis' work in a collection of Alan Moore's DR and Quinch while rifling through whatever could be found in my local library or in back issue hunting for X-Men and coming across his X-Men Annuals. Nothing struck me too much about his work in either of those books though retrospectively they definitely have something I like. As you might expect I've gone back to his great Detective Comics run with Mike Barr and Captain Britain with Alan Moore but my affair with Davis beganwith a shockingly ugly shiny covered 90s number one.

I think odd costume design and odd characters helped make ClanDestine as short lived
as it was.

My real first Alan Davis was his own creation ClanDestine. Beginning collecting comics in earnest in '91 meant there was plenty to choose from. Marvel and DC drowning the market along with Image but I lucked onto ClanDestine.
The book is extremely English and I think was never goning to take of. Issue three featured a cameo with Spider-Man which is where I was hooked on Davis' always charming and slick style added by the equally slick Mark Farmer, his now long-time art partner following the very competent Paul Neary who'd inked him for the first chunk of his career.

The splash that got me hooked. Nice!

I've heard that he's said to refute any real move towards Neal Adams style but I find it very hard that he expects us to believe that or that if it's subconcious he can't see it himself if. His men are rugged and his women gorgeous, his panel layouts owe a lot to Adams too. ClanDestine/X-Men even features some of Adams' panel compostions which together make up one image (below).


Pile of bones becomes androgeanous old lady hair becomes trees, a la Neal Adams

We got a brief overly coloured, pretty unreadable three issue Fantastic Four run before he went quiet for a little while and came back at DC with Justice League: The Nail, an Elseworlds hung on "What if the Kents had got a puncture and never found baby Superman".


Davis draws tonnes of characters interestingly as well as Golden or Art Adams

Davis' writing is always super dense but always so earnest that I find while I generally need a bit of a mental run up to read it, I always enjoy it. The Nail was around 180 pages featuring Davis getting to draw every major character at DC comics, the majority getting a one page splash to show off on a la Steve Ditko's Spider-Man Annual.

Davis came straight back to do a sequel with an uninspired title (Another Nail) but again showcasing great art. It allowed him to spotlight all DC's weird 60s and 70s characters like the Creeper and Black Orchid with as much gusto as he'd shown to Batman and Green Lantern in the first. Both solid books!
The Nail books set the precedent for what we would get from Davis going forward, a George Peréz style drive-through all his favourite bits of comics, drawing the characters he obviously has great affection for. Fantastic Four: The End, Killraven, Avenger:Prime, Uncanny X-Men, Superboy's Legion (with Farmer wrting) all have this "get everyone in" approach which works largely because he draws everyone so well.
Davis continues at Marvel today doing special projects and covers for the most part, the next being a Cap America run with Ed Brubaker which I hope will be full of Modoks and weird Kirby Nazis.
His ability to draw almost any character (always something odd about his Wolverine and Hulk for me...) combined with great composition and great Farmer's super slick inks and ink effects makes his covers always worth a look.
Davis' own website here including pencils which hightlight Farmer's contribution to the work.
As always a smattering of images pilferred via a Google search: "Alan Davis Comic"

Homage to Davis' own Excalibur #1 from ClanDestine Vol 2


God, I loved this cover. It would be years before I bought it just for the cover! (It's nice inside too!)

Davis keeps pulling out the spectacular!

Dynamic at a glance with horror upon closer inspection

C is for...Cowboy Wally

2011-10-09T05:13:00.000-07:00

Cowboy Wally was the second book I read by Kyle Baker. Why I Hate Saturn was the first and I loved the banter between the characters, each character smarter than the last drawn in a style fast and loose with a wash thrown in to add some depth. The book, first published in 1990, was already a couple of years old when I came to it. I would later find out it had been Baker's second graphic novel done with with Baker's ever commercial eye on Hollywood pre-empting a trend which is rampant now.
Cowboy Wally, however, to me feels a lot more heartfelt. Published on the back of the success of Maus and book publishers trying to be the first to put out new Graphic Novels, Baker bluffed his way in with a book about a fat alcoholic TV cowboy who, as the story develops, we discover managed to blackmail his way into TV and the various projects we learn about throught the course of the story.

The four faces of Wally

What particularly struck me about this versus any other given Baker book was the quality of his art. At the time I hadn't read he and Andy Helfer's spectacular "could only happen in comics" run on the Shadow where the same style was used. For the most part Baker hasn't gone back to it since (he has a massive range of influences including Jules Feiffer, Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Wally Wood, Charles Schultz and he's not afraid to flex his muscles). The style used in Cowboy Wally and The Shadow is an incredibly effective mix of exagerrated cartooning mixed with highly rendered inks and perfect shadows and light sources which results in the feeling of watching vintage black & white footage with a hyper real veneer.

Baker's comedy is spot on, largely black humour dense with sparkling wit but as opposed to every character being whip smart (as in Why I Hate Saturn), Wally himself is oaf, savvy enough to more than get by in life, surrounded by characters who struggle to resign themself to being in his orbit, suborbinate to this essentially disagreeable crook who gets the money and as many vacuous, stunning women as he wants.
The third, most memorable chapter of the book finds Wally and his unwitting (and of course far more book smart) sidekick Lenny in prison on a drunk and disorderly while under an obligation to make Hamlet, which they proceed to do in their cell with their cellmates of a more hardened variety.
The Cowboy Wally Show's focus on the nature of empty celebrity is even more relevant now, over twenty years later and remains timeless thanks to an art style that is both backwards looking and hyper real and still very, very funny!
Baker has maintained a foot firmly in the comics world throughout his long career and is constantly evolving his style, an early adapter to any technology that will facilitate his work. Inteviews with him show him as being very comercially minded and confident, far from a naval gazing auteur but his output ranges from Truth for Marvel showing how the US military tested their Captain America serum on black soldiers before risking it on whites to The Bakers, a slice of life family comedy strip, personal, but ready for syndicates at any given point.
While I don't want to say that "I liked his old stuff better" I am always ready for a return to pen and ink over digital work but it can never be said there's a dull moment if Baker's on a book and it's pretty much always worth a look.

You can dip into real living legend Kyle Baker's world here and currently find him at work on Deadpool Max with the excellent David Lapham.
Below various bits pilferred from a Google image search: "Cowboy Wally".

B is for...Edvin Biuković

2011-10-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

Back before the internet, when Wizard was required reading, they published a small article about a Croatian creative team who were going to work on one of Matt Wagner's Grendel Tales mini series. The article explained how the story had been submitted almost fully formed and how they'd had to rush through contracts to prevent artist Biuković from been sent to war.
Batman/Grendel was the first time I'd seen Grendel and to this day remains one of my favourite Batman stories and is hands down my favourite work by the ever changing Wagner.
I'd originally been attracted to Grendel Tales because of Grendel prime which, although I was a pretty pleasant teenager, spoke to me fore being "Cool", "Dark" and "Edgy", a case it turns out of liking the right things for the wrong reasons. The ecclectic early Grendel Tales artists Rob Walton and Paul Grist did nothing for me (I must stress, "at the time"!). You had to pick them up though for the short painted back-ups by Wagner which were leading up to Batman/Grendel 2, the slightly disappointing sequel.

The two parter by Macan and Biuković changed every for me. Not since Batman Year One had I seen such acting, such emotion in a comic with not one mistep in the storytelling meaning it's only on rereading where it strikes you how notable the work is, carrying you through without any distracting mistakes. The story is only nominally anything to do with Grendel and is clearly influenced by the conflict going on in Yugoslavia at the time with abtract leadership setting a nation to war with itself.
The story is that of a dying soldier, Drago, poisoned by the enemy's dirty weapons looking to die with honour while tribal politics try to stop him, his younger brother looking on. The tribe's blind leader rules with the add of his young son literally directing him (from up on his shoulders) until he sets up an epic betrayal. In TWO issues!!!!

Spoiler. One of the final scenes from the final chapter of Devils and Deaths

As good as the story is the characters are brought to life by Biuković's early, loose style with perfect pacing.
The pair returned after a break with a four part sequel which continued the story with Drago's younger brother Goran among an expanded cast and a larger scale. The fact that this book is out of print is a flat out crime but if it can be found on Amazon etc, snap it up. This was a book I sold hand over fist while working in the comic shop with a money back guarantee that was only ever used once, and he was just a contrary idiot.
(Before continuing I have to mention the handpainted colour by Matt Hollingsworth which was subtle and naturalistic, completing the package)

Biuković was apparently not great with deadlines so his Star Wars X-Wing Rogue Squadron series was finished by Gary Erkine which was respectable enough but Biuković was a tough act to follow and it falls a little flat.


One of the latter pagesof Last Command

He was given more time for the third volume of the Star Wars Thrawn Trilogy, The Last Command.
Olivier Vatine's first book was beautiful and stylised with hints of Simonson and Leialoha. The second book has Terry Dodson inked by Kevin Nowlan ending up as neither fish nor fowel with a fair ammount of heavy photo referencing resulting in a fairly flat experience.
Biuković turning up for the final series was very welcome although it wasn'te the Biuković I was expecting. I intially put the change in stlye down to Eric Shanower's inking on all but the first issue but upon hindsight that makes no sense at all (I was young). The cleaner style turned out to be an evolution in style for Biuković. He was moving towards a more fastidious style with no excess rendering, a less is more, no fuss style. The acting, pacing, composition was still mostly perfectwoth a couple of clunky pages but he was obviously investing more time in a slick finish that I don't think helped him get any faster and you can't help but sense some Lucas involvement with likenesses.

Human Target Issue 2, Page one. Ledge hanger more than Cliffhanger.

Biuković surfaced next at Vertigo on Peter Milligan's Human Target series, currently collected along with Javier Pulido's graphic novel (which I'd bet money was orignally meant to be a mini).
Biuković's staging of Milligan's script was absolutely perfect, with Milligan writing a taught, psychlogical thriller with heart and Watchmen style scene transitions which a lesser artist would not have been able to bring to life. A perfect project for an artist walking so fine a line as a great comic storyteller with an eye very much on what cinematography can add. Four issues of text book action comic storytelling.

His next couple of stories were for Vertigo anthologies. The first in Strange Adventures was a sci-fi strip by Bruce Jones with an ending that Biuković's consistent character designs couldn't help but signpost making for an anticlimactic twist ending.
His last strip had him reunitied with Darko Macan and was literally a fantastic love letter to soldiers written from the point of view of the women they leave behind.
This was tragically his last story as he died two weeks after being diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of thirty. To this day the loss saddens me, so young and such a talent gone before the comics world got a chance to know it should miss it.
We're left with the above mentioned works, a few early strips reprinted in Negative Burn and a couple of covers which are shown below.The first piece of original art below belongs to this guy, the rest are mine.

Comic Artist Alphabet Introduction

2011-09-25T05:28:00.000-07:00

Nothing overly original about an A-Z list of...anything. This will be nothing more than my list. My dirty laundery of likes guilty in places, not so much so in others. It will reflect my time reading comics (starting in '92 going back 20 years or so and up to current day). You won't see an appreciation of greats like Wally Wood, Will Eisner or Walt Kelly as they're not what got me reading what I read today.
The above is from Sean Murphy's warm up excersise featuring Wolverine plus date, in a compostions reflecting each letter of the alphabet. See them close up at his Deviant art page.

A is for...Art Adams

2011-09-25T04:32:00.000-07:00

The first time I became aware of the work of Art Adams was the above image from the first part of a three parter replacing the Marvel's First Family with the four big Anti Heroes of the time (with Punisher turning up for a cameo in the last part).
Clearly over-ordered, London's Fantastic Store above the Virgin Megastore had decorated the walls with it (and wouldn't sell me a copy).
Art Adams could take all these grimacing, smoking, swearing, violent character and always keep it fun.
Adams' first big break into comics was the 1985 series Longshot which made a big splash stylistically but was still fairly wonky. The level of detail and texture at the time matched by awkward anatomy and psychotic facial expressions (which evidently sent the message to Rob Liefeld that there comes a point where you can just stop practicing).
At seven issues long to this day it still represents Adams' largest body of work and for many his most memorable.
The time needed to get the finish that Adams wanted and became known for straight away led to him becoming a cover and annuals kind of guy. The list of special projects and annuals includes 1xAction Comics, 1x Excalibur,1x New Mutants,4x Uncanny X-Men, 2x Gumby and 1x Spder-Man.
For my part I'm going to have to stick my neck out and say my favourite is Monkeyman and O'Brien which kicked off as back up strips in the original long time friend Mignola's Hellboy miniseries (the plan being that Hellboy would be the back up in the M&O'B mini series which took so long to come out that Mignola had to move on to other things).
The series is so clearly a labour of love, infused with everything that Adams loves, monsters, apes, cosmic sci-fi, Kirby comics that I find it hard to resist although there are in total 3 issues, a two part Gen13 crossover and a few short strips. The work, particularly the short strips in black and white, is pretty spectacular.

I can only assume that after experiencing no massive success with the property Adams returned to covers for the rest of the 90s only returning to sequential work for a few
pages here and there.
His next major return came working in Tom Strong's Terrific Tales with Alan Moores mentor (but no relation) Steve Moore on Jonni Future. Again getting to draw everything he loved but with the added selling point of Cheesecake and T&A. For me this part of Art Adams' repertoire has had is currency devalued by the sheer number of imitators of his women. While Adams seems to have strived to toe that fine line between realistic and cartoony, caricature and accuracy, most of his copiers don't have the good taste to know where it lies.

Jonni Future wasn't a gripping character but the stories were certainly beautiful, Adams' line benefiting from a lavish top end colour job.
Today you can See Art Adams' work on Ultimate X, a series written by his brief Hulk collaborator, Jeph Loeb. Loeb writes "to the strengths" of the artists he works with which is another wasy of saying he exploits what they're popular for and in know way pushes them to do anything new or challenging (exhibit A above: what could be cooler than someone else with Wolverine's claws). This means that that while the book is certainly very pretty, for me it lacks the soul and love of Monkeyman & O'Brien.
nb: I'll still end up buying it in some form.

Today if you want proof that while the comic output seems thin on the ground Adams is still in fact pretty prolific you only need a quick Google image search to see the vast number of comissions and covers he's done over the years, just a few found examples below:
Next up..."B"

Mucha Do about nothing!

2011-09-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

Good ol' Freaks in Barcelona. Just when you think you know everything that's coming out and what you want they surprise you. The new book published by Prestel serves to my mind as being the definitive Mucha book I've seen. The posters make up the first part of the book but it goes on to highlight the rest of his career as demonstrated in an exhibition doing the rounds.
Beautiful stuff and a collection that pretty much has everything you could want in a book about a guy who (along with Gustav Klimt)inspired so many graphic oriented illustrators in comics and made Hughes' Wonder Woman, JH Williams' Promethea and Quesada's Daredevil what they are today.
Find it here

Brunner & Co.

2011-07-17T00:53:00.000-07:00

Last week saw the release of Loose Ends #1 from 12 Gauge Comics.
The book is written by Jason Latour and drawn by Chris Brunner with colours by Rico Renzi (http://kickstandkids.blogspot.com/).
I thought I'd spoken about Chris Brunner before but it doesn't look like it.
The first time I saw his work was in Star Wars Tales in 2000, drawing a Lando Calrissian story. It stood out as being kind of cartoony and very kinetic but the storytelling was very strong and fluid. He was added to my list of people to watch out for.

The name wasn't too fresh in my mind when he surfaced again in late 2003 on Batman Legends Of The Dark Knight. The 5 part story running from 172 to 176 was written by John Wagner with colours by James Sinclair. A great story with a load of hillbillies coming for revenge on Gotham City. The art, again very strong on the storytelling, reminded me of a mix of Michael Golden and Paul Pope with nice flat colours giving the overall effect of a Gaijin book by Jason Pearson or Brian Stelfreeze.
The covers are striking, coloured by his studio mate and artist partner, Rico Renzi. I gather that DC weren't willing to take a chance with a new artist and his own choice of colourist but the covers point to what it could have been.
Well worth looking up as back issues as it was never collected.
One of the first birthday presents from my wife (along with myself and my flat mate) were the twos pages below form part three. Again the fluidity is striking and you can see the windows and lights inked and in collaboration with the colourist, flipped and colour held to striking effect.

And a Green Arrow sketch sketch which came with:

Brunner has done a few covers over the years but has spent a lot of time working on production art, trading cards, ad work, a short story in the Ride: Foreign Parts with Rico Renzi on zipatone(below) and it would seem, Loose Ends.

Loose Ends #1 was a great start to a crime story. While Jason Latour has surfaced in the last couple of years as a really strong artist, according to him in an interview on Sidebar, apparently the production of this book with him writing has been going on even longer.
If timing had been different he'd be a writer who can REALLY draw as opposed to an artist writing. Latour, Brunner and Renzi share a studio and it's evident in the strength of the collaboration here. The dialogue is very strong, the sense of place is great. I don't want to go too much into the story as it's barely begun but I loved it. Don't take my word for it
Preview here and Tim Callahan's review here

Unsung Heroes - George Freeman

2011-06-25T02:54:00.000-07:00

I first became aware of George Freeman's work as an inker over Paul Smith on Leave It To Chance. The fact is the majority of his work was from prior to that, throughout the 80s pencilling and inking and colouring. His inking is a forerunner of the Karl Story/Gaijin studio look, great smooth sharp brush strokes, striking areas of black. I don't think his cartooning is for everone, his lantern jaws and very stylised women, I love it! When he's inking himself where are few I like more.
His influences appear to be Golden Age comic art and I see a lot of Ditko in it too. Like Ditko inked by Frank Giacoia There are many short stories, odd inking and colour jobs since Leave it Chance but I just want to highlight the work which has spoken to me, of which there's enough.

His first comics work was on Richard Comely's Captain Canuck which I was given by a good friend. I don't know that the story stood the test of time but Freeman but you can see Freeman's foundation as a stylist clearly. He participated in most issues either finishing over layouts and colouring or drawing himself. Interesting but just the start.

His break in American comics came on a four issue Jack Of Hearts mini series with Bill Mantlo. Marvel around this time also published several George Freeman stories in Marvel Fanfare, home of recycled try out and inventory strips which are also nice! A servicable enough mini with a weird alien protagonist, I guess it's a very 80s Marvel series. Well worth a look though.

This was followed by a nice Batman/Catwoman Brave & The Bold working dominating Joe Staton (including a gag that slipped by editorial about a shoe shop called Pedo Phile)

Following a very nice strip with Peter Milligan (reprinted below), his next significant work was following P Craig Russell woking over Michael T Gilbert's layouts for Roy Thomas' scripts on Elric. The last leg of this work looks a little hurried but the examples above are from Weird Of The White Wolf #1 which is strikingly pretty!! That great First comics look that you also see on Nexus, great colours.

Batman Annual 11 contains a pitch PERFECT Batman story with Alan Moore. Similar to the best issues of the Batman Adventures. I was very happy to hear Moore also prefers this story to Killing Joke. Freeman's art gracefully leads you through a nutty Clayface's love for a shop manequin and jealousy of Batman's presence around the store.

A Secret Origin story of the Golden Age Green Lantern with Roy Thomas, complete with World Trade Fair and the prototypical "Lantern Jaw" is very well suited to his style.

Next up was a blackly comic anthology called Wasteland with comic Del Close, John Ostrander, Bill Messner Loebs, David Lloyd, Don Simpson. Freeman contributed half a dozen strips though only the one above from issue 4 managed to shine, neon lit. All the rest are very nice but kind of washed out. All round a series worth looking at if you come across it cheap or they ever finally collect it somewhere.

There was a Block Widow Marvel Graphic novel he did with Gerry Conway but artwise there are some shocking moments due to a cocktail of inkers. Not a highpoint but a curiousity.

His last significant work for the either of the two big US publishers was an 8 page strip over Stuart Immonen. He's been paired with some shockingly mediocre artist in order, I guess, to drag them up a notch but this pairing was beautiful, each page about a different Legionnaire in a different style. I would love to see more.

There are many more bits and pieces but Freeman, truth being there's probably some in everyone's collection in some shape or form; inking Tarzan, Star Wars, JLA, colouring Nexus, X-Files.

His last big body of work was a Mr Monster story of 48 pages of Mr Monster craziness. Fun enough but I want more!!!!!

Below is a stip with Peter Miligan from Pacific Comics' Vanguard 6. A classic feeling with Wally Wood and Steranko over and undertones. Enjoy.

More Chango

2011-06-14T23:07:00.000-07:00

Been way too long since I posted anything so here I go. Gonna try for weekly.
Here's more Chango. If you like it, seek out the book. THe cover is torture with a photo of him stood in front of more than a hundred different pieces, covers and posters.
More books please!

Tony Salmons with check list added

2010-07-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

In honour of this months "The Strange Adventures Of H P Lovecraft" from Image.

Around twenty years ago I bought the above G.I.Joe comic when it was seriealised in the the back of Transformers weekly. It was hands down the ugliest comic I'd seen at that point. Unbelieveable. Off model, ugly girls and a pretty good story which always makes bad art feel worse (imagine if it was drawn by Ron Randall!!?!?!?!).
I was also disappointed when Mignola drew X-Force 8. Were I a little older I probably would have hated Bill Sienkiewicz on New Mutants.
A few years later when I realised that people like Kevin Nowlan, Bret Blevins, Mike Mignola, Klaus Janson were great and had all kicked off their careers working at Marvel under Jim Shooter I ended up digging through titles like Marvel Fanfare, Marvel Premier etc which you could always find cheap.
I came across this great Hulk story in Marvel Fanfare. Kirby lines with Frazetta ballet, strange colours but really a lovely little strip.

He did a five issue mini called Dakota North which was fine but I came to realise that he'd done very little over the years.

James Robinson and Archie Goodwin until recently had managed to get the most work out of him between the almost four issues of the EXcellent Vigilante mini (with Mark Chiarello on colours, also recently collected by DC after more than a decade) and a stand-alone issue of Batman: Legends Of The Dark Knight. He had worked on Bruce Timm's Batman Adventures so has been busy and when you follow his super fluid storytelling you understand why.

According to an article I read with/by Toby Cypress, Salmons has burnt a lot of bridges over the years and many won't work him which is a sin. Below are first a Thor/Iron image which shows what we might have had if his early Avengers series had come off. Following that is a story from Penthouse Comics (the only two I own, I hasten to add...). Ninteen pages in a smutty comic so I guess not too many have seen it. Enjoy and check out the Lovecraft book at 160 pages, first issue free here

In my opinion, the Tony Salmons books worth tracking down are:
Dakota North 1-5 though not a great read!
Doctor Strange 2nd Series 64
GI Joe 69
GI Joe Yearbook 3 from 1986 or thereabouts
Captain America Red White and Blue
Adventures Of Lovecraft
Vigilante Miniseries 1-4
Legends Of the Dark Knight 85
Batman Gotham Knights 4 (Batman B&W collected in Batman B&W Vol 2

There's also a characteristically unfinished website
http://www.tonysalmons.net/

All too Beautiful

2010-06-21T08:31:00.001-07:00

Like Batman, Black Canary is a character for which Toth is famous for defining in very few pages. This two part 16 page story from Adventure Comics has Toth down as a definitive Black Canary artist.
For me he also manages to to completely nail Green Arrow in either one of the two panels below. He just brought some swashbuckling Errol Flynn love to it and there you go. I assume this is also what lent to Trevor Von Eeden's great version of the character in the 80s Green Arrow mini.

Also, how amazing is penultimate panel below...!?!?!?

And below, Photoshopped into black and white to highlight the amazing composition of the page...

Bogota Second Time Around Part 1

2010-06-09T11:38:00.000-07:00

So I'm back in on and off sunny Bogota. At 2,600m above see level weather's weird here. No seasons to speak of and erratic temperatures.
We're here for a month again and so once again I was challenged to divine what I might want to read for the next four weeks.
This time I managed to resist bringing Batman Year One or Daredevil Born Again which are my usual go-tos though Frank Miller made the list as well as trying to finally finish Catch 22 and get novel reading again.
Thus far I've read:

Solo 12 By Brendan McCarthy. Inspired by the great Spider-Man/Doc Strange love letter to Ditko currently coming out from Marvel, I thought I'd have another go at this which disappointed on the first read. It's gorgeous, if you like Brendan McCarthy, which I do, but the stories are a mixture or stream of consciousness rambles which perhaps you've got to be in the mood for. I think I was much more in the mood for it this time around and loved, particularly, the Robbie Morrison written Batman strip about a fictional classic Batman artist adapting a story which our narrator never knew was a dream or perhaps some forgotten comic from his childhood. It's really a vehicle for McCarthy, the whole thing, but like a vehicle for Moebius or a vehicle for Darrow, who would complain.

Solo 3 by Paul Pope. Reading the Strange Adventures in the Wednesday Comics HC which came out a couple of weeks back really put me in the mood for some great Paul Pope. This isn't as easy as I'd have thought, considering how much of it I have. Strange Adventures has this great open quality, taking advantage of the scale of the thing. It reminded me a lot of some of THB and some of the strips he did in Dark Horse Presents and some of Jeff Smith's work. Generally speaking Pope's work is kinetic and can be claustraphobic. So I opted for Solo as one of my holiday re-reads. The first strip "The Problem In Knossos", a retelling of the story of the Minotaur and Thesus was as great as I remembered. Again it left me wanting more of these stories from him.
The Omac strip is a great and faithful re-telling of the first issue of Omac with great Dave Stewart colours. A little autobiographical strip, a very Paul Poe how cool is New York with a bit of Spanish dropped in and a great Robin strip with colours by James Jean with a great Joker appearance, whited out moustache included.
Great stuff.

Deadman Mini by Andy Helfer & José Luis Garcia Lopez. Also inspired by the Wednesday Comics HC. Andy Helfer comics are a strange thing. They're always a bit like hard work and I always need to psych myself up for it but It's generally worth while (The Shadow, Justice Inc, Atari Force). This series is one I've read a couple of times as it does have I think the best Garcia Lopez work I've seen (along with Twilight). I think working on a book that Neal Adams pretty much defined the look of set a goal for him in terms of effect and layout. The use of grey tones combined with a with a great late 80s colouring job with lots of great colour holds makes the very best of his great draftsmanship and beautiful finish.

Wintermen by Brett Lewis & JP Leon. The last book of those I've read thus far is the collected Wintermen which, much as though I enjoyed it as it was coming out, really benefits for being under two covers. The dialogue had me laughing out loud and the art is just fantastic. The story comes to a stop quicker than originally planned, due to sales, which one really felt in the "monthlies" but in one book it's less jarring and almost fits the storytelling of certain issues. I think anyone who enjoys Punisher Max, Planetary, The Wire, Scalped should read this book.
Next...more holiday reads...

Mas del Chango

2010-04-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

A difficult book to post from as I don't want to damage it but I'll do my best once in a while.

Check out this bad boy!! Lovely

God Bless Photoshop

2010-04-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

A beautiful splash from a not too often seen strip, The Mask Of The Red Fox.
The line work on Cain's clothes is amazing. The more you look at Toth it's interesting to note how much like Pratt it is at times.

Before:

After:

I wish They All Could Be Alex Toth

2010-04-05T11:01:00.001-07:00

How Toth managed to achieve grace on evey panel of every page and still never be happy is unbelieveable.

All in a day's work

2010-03-06T10:20:00.000-08:00

What a nightmare. Awful 80's quality printing of a great story.
Borderline un salvagable.

Can but try.

Halfway there.

After:

Before:

Two More

2010-02-21T01:21:00.001-08:00

Splash from a great Robert Kanigher story...

Had to get rid of the clutter on the original published version of this even though there're probably lines missing.
Most unecessary blurb I've ever seen. As if someone would see that cover...be on the fence "should I, shouldn't I" and then realise "Oh my God "Thrilling Adventure Stories", "Final Three Stories", now I've gotta have it".

Toth Splash 1

2010-02-06T11:32:00.001-08:00

As a creative diversion from a nice, good job that doesn't let me flex any creative muscles, I'm retouching my Toth collection page by page.
I'll paste the splash of each strip as I do it and here's the first.
Enjoy

Comics of Months Past

2009-11-15T02:23:00.001-08:00

In no particular order books that I've read over the last few months with a degree of enjoyment.

First up, Luna Park. Now maybe I was drunk when I ordered this or directly after but I got to the point that I thought a book by an unknown writer (to me), drawn by Danijel Zezelj and coloured by Dave Stewart was a dream. Zero publicity until this week I saw an interview here that bought it back to reality.
It's actually quite appropriate set up for the read. As the story begins, you have the feeling that this is a crime story leaving me to wonder at first why it wasn't included in Vertigo's so far unsatisfying crime imprint. As it progresses it takes surreal though flashbacks across time and feels more like a Vertigo proper book.

Maybe it's the setting of Coney Island, the story jumping through time, syringes full of heroin or all of the above but I couldn't help but think of Darren Aronofsky throughout, which is no bad thing.
Of course, the highlight for me is Zezelj's truly beautiful whilst stark art which is combined here for the first time with Dave Stewart reinventing himself to perfectly compliment another great artist. While trawling the book for images to scan to prove my point I was stuck for choice. In short, check out the interview linked above and make sure to check out the book ASAP.

Dark Horse's Noir anthology is another that felt like it was a ling time in coming. The line up of talent made the book a no brainer; Dave Lapham, Brubaker & Phillips, Dean Motter, Mr X, Azzarello & Bá & Moon, Paul Grist, Eduardo Barreto and so on.
I then found out that Motter would do Mr X, Paul Grist would to Kane etc which took the wind out of my sails a little. First story, Dave Lapham with an exemplary Stray Bullets story, truly gut wrenching, scratching a bit of an itch and a pitch perfect kick off to a noir anthology. There's plenty of good stuff in the anthology, some of which didn't live up to expectations but was enjoyable enough and the Azzarello Moon/Bá story was really nice, expecially as I read it straight after the disappointing Filthy Rich. A very good value book!

I've been very patiently waiting for Eric Shanower and Skottie Young's adaptation of the Wonderful Wizard of OZ and it doesn't disappoint. I know from blogs and podcasts that Skottie Young's a big fan of 90's comics and Chris Bachalo and all this is evident from his embracing of technology in the process of creating of his art and his constant evolution over these past years (I've watched his growth from a seemingly Humberto Ramos influenced artist on Marvel's Human Torch in the Tsunami line up through Venom, a fairly major reinvention on New Warriors on to New X-Men where everything suddenly clicked). He draws several Marvel covers a month while working on Oz and everyone's a gem. The real pleasure of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is that the storytelling is always spot on and the designs of all the characters that I'm only familiar with from the movies have such charm.
Not having read the source material, it's difficult to comment on the quality of Eric Shanower's adapatation of the story apart from to say that it never feels excessively wordy or heavy handed which is probably as much as you can ask from an adaptation ofa novel.
The second series is underway and I'm once again waiting patiently for the nice oversized hard cover.

I ultimately buckled and picked up Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchi's Astonishing X-Men hard cover collection. From the start I'd say I could have waited for the trade as the book is quite expensive and is intended to showcase the art which I basically don't overly care for. I thought his art was perfect for Shining Knight with Morrison with it's fantastic setting but it did nothing to help sell me the great sci-fi babble Ellis was offering.
(This is a very geeky thing to be annoyed by but his redesign of Cyclops gave the visor a brige across the nose making it look lie glasses. Don't ask why this bothered me but I guess if the character's called Cyclops, giving his costume the appearance of having two eyes makes no sense.)
What the book does have is a wierd few short What If's at the back which show various catastrophes could have taken place if the wrong decision had been made in the story. These somehow serve to really ground the story and give it a sense of importance. They're drawn by Alan Davis, Adi Garinov, Clayton Crain and Kaare Andrews and each is grim and pessimistic but satisfying.
The book has nothing to do with the Whedon & Cassaday series which it continues and which I liked well enough and also alludes to current X-Men continuity (San Fransisco) so I really don't understand why this is an Astonishing X-Men book but it's good Warren Ellis and worth a read.

Fantagraphics are publishing a really nice series of Jacques Tardi books which is long overdue. I've always like Tardi's art which looks like Guy Davis finished by Joe Kubert and Hugo Pratt. West Coast Blues is the first I read and is a GREAT crime story which makes me think of great american 70s crime films like with it's questionable, grubby protagonist and surprising twists and turns all through. Ed Brubaker likes it according to the back cover and it's no surprise. Check it out!

Marvel's Strange Tales anthology of indie creators doing turns is a mixed bag, as you'd probably expect. Some of the stories are great almost straight stories such as Paul Pope's, Jim Rigg's, Stan Sakai's, Jay Stephens'. There are some great odd turns by Max Cannon, Pete Bagge's Hulk strip at last, Jhonen Vasquez and Jonathan Hickman. Lastly of course you have the unreadable which just make me feel old! I'd recommend checking out each issue to see if it's for you. There's enough in there to keep me happy but not in the inevitable hard cover for 20 quid or whatever.

I picked up the Charlatan's Ball trade by Joe Casey and Andy Suriano based on the various images I'd seen and a confidence in Joe Casey. Great Book!! It reminds me very much of Milligan and McCarthy's Paradax which is high praise. It's no surprise that Suriano comes from animation from the balls out confidence of the thing. Gorgeous brushwork and great design, touch of Kiby, touch of Ditko, all good! It's a 'book one' and finishes like an old fashioned book one with little closure and a promise of great stuff to come. I hope it comes quick.

P Craig Russell adapting Neil Gaiman's Sandman Dream Hunters was as inevitable as it is beautiful. A great book.

Amazing Spider-Man has been great on and off since Brand New Day. Depending who's on it, it's perfect Peter Parker. The trade paperbacks arbitarily collect issues x thru z so you can end up with Chris Bachalo, Javier Pulido and Barry Kitson. As such I keep an eye on the issues in general. I held off on New Ways To Die however knowing the JRJR would bring it home on his own. Dan Slott writing, JRJR drawing, Janson inking and Dean White colouring. Check it out if you've any interest in Spider-Man.

Happy 10th birthday, Avengers Forever. The series FINALLY got the treatment it deserved, collected in an oversized hard cover matching the Morrison X-Men hard covers with great reproduction correcting errors on the only previous collection. As good a Pacheco as you'll see once he started working with Jesus Merino (post Bob Wiacek) and a great writing collaboration between Busiek and Roger Stern. A definitive collection of a benchmark series which made it out in a time when Marvel was producing some very questionable comics.

Batman and Robin's second three part arc came to an end this week and I MADE IT! Not to say that Philip Tan ever has to worry about being in the same league as Tony Daniel but following Frank Quietly and preceding Cameron Stewart and Frazer Irving is just bad luck. Towards the end the line work got sloppier for the better but unfortunately the damage was done.
Morrison's story has the same vibe as his Batman run of constantly feeling lie it's part of a greater whole which has yet to be revealed. This is fine when its well drawn but is a bit like pulling teeth otherwise

I think I'm in the minority in prefering the brushwork of Fabio Moon over the shadowy Mignola and Risso influenced work of Gabriel Bá. This isn't a criticism really. Like saying you prefer Jaime Hernandez to Beto. Both great but Fabio Moon does something for me. Dark Horse did me the favour of collecting the Sugar Shock story by Joss Whedon in a one shot. Colours by Dave Stewart and off beat space story which is all perfectly good fun with some great dialogue. $3.50 well spent.

More soon...

Ernesto García Cabral (El Chango)

2009-08-16T12:31:00.001-07:00

It's a rare week when you can find something completely new under your own sun. There's always the feeling when you discover the work of someone from the 20's that someone else will laugh at your discovery but I thought I'd share that this week I came across the work of a Mexican illustrator Ernesto García Cabral in the form of a book about his career. His line and figurework is amazing, his lighting too. Obvious comparisons to Mucha etc but from the book alone, something truly beautiful and original too. Above are bits found on the web about the book in question but over time I'll be sticking up other pieces from the book, dependant on being able to scan them.

Money Up Front

2009-08-09T04:30:00.000-07:00

The above Polish film poster has nothing to do with the this post but isn't it great?

After a good couple of months of stress at work and weekend lethargy and a crisis of commitment I'm back with a post on the books I've ordered money up front for the next couple of months. I've been reading plenty recently and will review books over the next weeks to get back up to speed.
In no specific order:
Young Liars
Batman and Robin
I Kill Giants
Scalped
The Art Of Harvey Kurtzman
Amazing Spider-Man
Hellboy
Northlanders
Asterios Polyp
Wednesday Comics
Hunter
The Nobody
Seaguy
Dark Reign Zodiac
Detective Comics
Ghost Rider by Jason Aaron
You'll note that my priorities are well aligned in the face of the credit crunch...

Dark Horse Noir should be out very soon. Featuring a ton of great creators doing short crime stories, this looks like an anthology that will definitely have more good than so so in it. Brian Azzarello, Ed Brubaker, David Lapham, Rick Geary, Paul Grist, Jeff Lemire, Sean Phillips, Eduardo Barreto are the known quantities while M. K. Perker, and Alex de Campi, who knows. As always the "and more" bit causes a little concern but we should see soon. Preview available here.

3 Story is very much a leap of faith. I've heard good things about Matt Kindt and the premise for this book is interesting. Kindt has a reputation for creating a whole world with a lot of work invested in the design and supplementary material to give a 'whole' experience. Rather than paraphrasing the sollictiation I'll just direct you here.

The next Modern Masters is a retrospective interview with Darwyn Cooke. The success of these books is very dependant on the subject. The Lee Weeks and Chris Sprouse volumes recently were great while the Kyle Baker one left me kind of cold (apart from the part where he talked about helping Lynn Varley with computer colouring for Dark Knight 2). This should be good as Cooke doesn't come across as a guy who wastes his time on projects.

Gotham Central volume 2 will be great. I know this as I've already read it. Brubaker and Rucka with Michael Lark. What's not to like. If you didn't follow this series, can't recommend it enough. I think by the end of it we'll have four hard covers and I'd recommend at least the first three. Volume 2 has a great Joker as a sniper, randomly (?) taking out passers by.

This is one of those satisfying moments where I'm gald I've waited all these years before spending money on Groo as we're gonna get it all collected book by book in it's entirity, "Collecting material from Destroyer Duck #1, Starslayer #5, Pacific Comics's Groo the Wanderer #1-#8, Eclipse Comics's Groo the Wanderer Special #1, and Epic's The Groo Chronicles #1-#6". Great stuff to sit next to my seven complete Concrete books!

Umbrella Academy: Dallas was a painful wait for me. The first series was excellent and Gabriel Ba's covers are so well designed and so well coloured (Dave Stewart of course). Nice to have something genuinely new under the sun.

As a die hard Mignola slash Hellboy slash beautiful books fan this is an absolute no-brainer. My Sunday afternoons sail by with these librart editions and I struggle to think of anyone else's work that would merit the format and the cash.

This is another example of glad I waited. For some reason the Fantagraphics versions of the Usagi books have always been about a centimeter smaller than the Dark Horse versions and with boring design. Recently they improved on the design but they're still smaller than the Dark Horse versions. Now Fantagraphics are doing a two book slipcase hard covers containg all of the Fantagraphics books with all the covers and supplementary material. There are two versions, a normal one and one signed with a sketch at 95$. Not going to comment on which version I'm getting. Usagi is a pure pleasure, great cartooning and solid characters. Self contained stories which conribute to the greater whole of the saga.

A good time to be reading Usagi. To celebrate 25 years Stan Sakai is producing a new full colour graphic novel, fully painted. At $14.95 it'll be a great opportunity to sample the character if you haven't tried it yet. The talking animals aspect of the series as an off-putting factor crumbles under the great story telling and intensly researched feudal Japanese backdrop. Check it out if you haven't.

This is a mention of something that I'd be getting if I didn't already have it (and I still might trade up for new Dave Stewart colour sections in Hell). On the back of Guy Davis's long overdue recognition as one of the great storytellers and designers in comics, Dark Horse are releasing a collection of the two Oni Marquis books, in preparation for more material coming up. The Marquis is a good and creepy series about a guy who has been gifted with a sight that allows him to see through the disguises that demons ware to allow them to move freely though a vice ridden, hedonistic alternate 17/1800s. He has his doubts about his sanity and as the book goes on, you do too.

Collecting the serialised adaptation of the original Vertigo novel by Gaiman, the Sandman Dream Hunters is P Craig Russell at his best, artwise. No slavish photo reference as in the Ring, to drag you out of the story. I loved the Coraline adaptation and have high hopes of good P Craig with this.

The current series of Thor has been GREAT. I've only read the first trade which is all Olivier Coipel but the series is so understated, so subtle and graceful for superhero book that your constantly taken aback at what's not happening. When the action comes its welcome but you also want to get through it again to the quiet Oklahoma moments. Love it and this looks like it'll be volume two of three as Straczynski's off to DC.

Coming soon...

2009-04-26T05:03:00.000-07:00

Rather than flatly recap on everything I've read in the time since my last post and perhaps things that can't easily be found, I thought I'd show where I'll spending my money 'sight unseen' in the months to come. In order of publisher/imprint.

From Vertigo, I've the final 100 Bullets book, having avoided spoilers online. Thinking on it, I've no idea what to expect as I don't feel that the series has been building to a climax so I'm very intrigued to see how the last 12 years or what have you come to a head. You know what you're getting with Risso's art but Azzarello's endings have been pretty varied in success over the years. This has a lot to live up to and the mumblings I've seen online suggest that he pulls it off.

Also from Vertigo come the first two of the Crime Graphic Novel line. The Iain Rankin one I'll wait and see on but the the Azzarello one I will pick up knowing his work of course but also that of Victor Santos, a Spanish artist who while still wearing his influences on his sleeve (Cooke, Muñoz, Timm, Miller) can really tell a story and engage.

The second (and apparently penultimate) Young Liars TP is also coming. While the characters are all pretty unlikable (as you'd expect from Dave Lapham) by the end of the first book I was onboard. I've seen him say that it was always gonna be a slow burn and my lack of monthly support of the book probably contributed to it's demise but some books, full of ads, on shitty paper need the wait. Vertigo monthly books aren't nice objects, and the collections aren't much better but at least they don't have 30% ads. Great covers by Lapham though...

A fill in on Northlanders by the amazing Daniel Zezelj will get snapped up. Brian Wood's work is always readable enough and this book has peaked my interest a little already but from what I've seen this will be the best looking issue thus far. This'll maybe tide me over while waiting for the rest of Warren Ellis' excellent Desolation Jones.

The final part of of the middle chapter of Morrison and Stewart's Seaguy will undoubtedly leave me wanting more as much as the first one did. Of Morrison's trilogy of trilogies from a few years back, while I loved WE3, Vinamarama didn't do much for me but Seaguy blew me away and looked liked a likely candidate for a Big Numbers award for unfinished comic symphonies.

Unbelievably, Spirit #29 will be a one-off story bringing together Dean Motter and Paul Rivoche. While often linked to Mister X together, this will be the longest collaboration between the two that I've seen and one thing's certain, that it'll have lots of gorgeous city and shadows. Rivoche spends most of his time doing distinctive design and background work for animation and I'm always happy to see him in comics.
Also Spirit #30 will be by Mike Oeming and I'll be getting that too!!

Following an issue by Paul Gulacy (the previous one he did was great, by the way) the first six parter in the series starts. When they originally talked about this story it was going to be by Rafa Garres but in the end it'll be drawn by Cristiano Cucina who a quick Google image search show looks like a good fit.

DC have got me buying two Batman books a month again having given me a couple of skip months with Tony Daniel comics. Morrison and Quietly are back, doing Batman with no indication of what we can expect. Don't overly care what I get, I'm sure it'll be great regardless of who's Batman, who's Robin etc. Reason to get the issues? This has been set up to be a rotating art team (as opposed to "Quietly as the artist" that we got on the X-Men).

Detective Comics will be nothing if not gorgeous with JH Williams on art with Dave Stewart colours and a Question back up by Cully Hamner. I like Greg Rucka a lot on various things (previous Detective Comics, Gotham Central, White Out) but not enough to swear by (Wolverine, Wonder Woman). Through in Batwoman and the female Question and my doubts increase. Everything to play for...

Got rid of my old Sleeper trades in favour of the new two complete books. If you've not read Sleeper, it's as good as anything else Brubaker's worked on. Great intrigue, character, dialogue and great art by Sean Phillips.

From Marvel, as always, my only interest is in the odd one-shot, fill-in or mini that they've gotten really quite good at. The Trial Of Thor is a great title for a book and makes me think back to John Byrne FFs. Written by Peter Milligan who can be great and drawn by Cary Nord who's work since Conan (always at Marvel) has left me a lttle cold. I don't think people should stick to a genre because they're good at it necessarily, but this will definitely be a return to subject matter which he excels at. Hope Dave Stewart's on colours. We'll see.

Continuing Marvel's 70th Anniversary specials, comes The Young Allies by Roger Stern (who is one of the few 80s writers who I think can still impress) and Paulo Riviera. Riviera has done quie a bit of painted work for Marvel, largely with Paul Jenkins, and didn't do much for me (as painted comics often don't). A couple of months back he did half of one of the large Spier-Man Extras with Zeb Wells. This was all done in pen and ink, a Spidey/Wolverine story that was Zeb Wells great and funny but his art was really gave it something more. Someone to keep an eye on.

Written by Jesse Alexander, one of the Heroes/Lost guys, Sgt Fury will tie-in (hopefully tenuously) to Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Captain America White. I expect to pick that TP up as I think Tim Sale's great and I'll just have to hope the story doesn't get too much in the way (as it did with Catwoman: When in Rome, which was terrible). Back to the book at hand, Sgt Fury will be drawn by John Paul Leon, reason enough for me. After Winter Men, I'll follow him anywhere. I've a list of guys I'll follow onto everything and It feels like its getting shorter. A subject for another post, perhaps.

Fin Fang Four is another outing of a team of various Kirby monsters as a team. Drawn by the great Roger Langridge and written by by Scott Gray, I imagine that the various shorts of this will end up collected in one book but for me it's a bit of an oasis in the midst of all the Civil War/Dark Avengers/Secret Invasion type stuff that I find a real turn off. Genuinely funny, this comic feels like it shouldn't exist but I'll take it while I can.

Wolverine #s73 & 74 are two stand alone issues cut in half split over two issues. A bit annoying as either half of these two would hold up. We get Daniel Way (who's alright) and Tommy Lee Edwards on one half of each and Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert on the other half. Should be good.

Mark Waid is on a three part Spidey story with Mark McKone. McKone doesn't do a massive ammount for me but he's got his own style and can tell a story. The hook for me on this is Mark Waid. He recently did a Spidey two parter with Marcus Martin which was excellent bringing in J Jonah Jameson's dad and a great Peter Parker. I dip in and out of Amazing Spider-Man depending who's on it but lately Zeb Wells, Bachalo, Dan Slott, JR JR, it's worth keeping an eye on.

Lastly, Dark Reign; Zodiac, a three issue mini by Joe Casey and Nathan Fox. At three issues, the chances are that when they collect this they'll stick in some old appearance to pad the book out and thet drives me nuts. As such, I'll get the issues on this. Nathan Fox has a great brush style (influence of Paul Pope in there) and drew the great looking Pigeons From Hell from Dark Horse. Joe Casey has been great for years and his Iron Man enter the Mandarin was excellent. Worth looking at.

Well that's it. There's no Dark Horse or Image here, and maybe I'll do that later but that ammounts, more or less, to Joe Kelly at Image and Mignola at Dark Horse.
There are plenty of things like Scalped, Criminal and different minis but I'll push them as they come up.

Update

2009-04-12T00:48:00.000-07:00

Hi there! Been way too long since my last post. Good reason though as we've been in the process of moving for the last six weeks. Constant and exhausting but we're at the end of it now. We're in a fanTAStic flat which has daylight and everything!
What I thought was going to be a spare room has in fact evolved into 'my' room full of comics and basically my stuff!!!!
Above is the view from the balcony and photos of the room follow, including the bookshelve for library voyeurs like me. But first a wedding present from the increasingly fantastic Duncan Fegredo:

The following is a turn around of the room!

...and a close up on the Toppi shelf!!!

IDW are publishing one of their little swallow books of Toppi in June:

This'll be the first full publication of a Toppi book outside Europe. I'm hoping this means IDW are planning to do something with the rest of the Toppi back catalogue. Fingers crossed.
Done all sorts since I last posted of course, read some great comics, read some ok ones, saw Watchmen but more on all this later.

A Little bit of Genius

2009-02-23T08:51:00.000-08:00

Had a nostalgic moment today, remembering Bugs Bunny on Broadway and telling a colleague. This was a show with a full orchestra playing an original version of a piece of classical music, then a cinema screen showed the Chuck Jones cartoon inspired by it with the full orchestra playing the music for it (think 'Kill The Wabbit, KILL THE WABBIT')
I can think of few experiences in my life as hugely fullfilling than hearing the Looney Tunes opening theme played live.
Below is a short called High Note

Leonardi Request

2009-01-30T23:52:00.000-08:00

Following an article I read on Brian Conlin's comics should be good, here
about who designed the Spider-Man black costume, someone posted whether they could find Zeck or Leonardi's designs online anywhere. While I get the impression that Zeck's sketch was just that, Leonardi's fairly complete designs were published in Wizard's Spider-Man 2009 1/2 and are scanned below for your pleasure.

Time Out and Happy New Year

2009-01-01T18:58:00.000-08:00

Been a long time as always between posts. I got into a slump between my wedding and my honeymoon, which I'm now on.
I write this from sunny Bogota,Colombia, in the house of my family here accompanied by my wife and my mum's here for a bit of it too.
2009 holds a move of house which I'm very much not looking forward to. A flathunt ahead and literally tonnes of books to move makes it all seem a bit daunting. I've not thought of work stuff for two weeks and that's marvellous.
My chosen reading for the holiday, last minute, the evening before flying out, was Dylan On Dylan (the collection of interviews), Catch 22 (which I've not had any significant time to sink my teeth into) and a bunch of comic rereads.
As I invariably write about comics I'll focus on them.
The comics are:
Batman Year One. I brought the new version of the softcover with me (not the old hardcover or the original issues which sit at home). Yes, it's an obvious choice but a book that never bores me, that I read cover to cover every time I pick it up and casually read the first page "I should have taken the train...". Can't help it. The new version contains a new Miller text piece "22 year old paralegal Stacy Lynch withdrew charges of gang rape..." (thanks Frank) and waaaaay more impressive Loads of supplemental Mazzuchelli bits and 4 pages of new comic by the great man on the subject of...Batman. I'm aware that I'll dig out the issues when I get back too...
Trinity by Matt Wagner. I like Matt Wagner a lot. My old mate and boss at the comic shop agrued that he gets worse all the time. While I agree on both his main points (he's never done anything, visually better than the original Batman/Grendel and that his cover paintings for DC over the years have been really poor) I can't help but feel, as with Miller (artwise) that the choices he makes are based on choices, rather than arthritis or failing eyesight. Trinity suffered from the start for me by pitting the three DC bigguns against three respective villains, a little contrived. The book is full of nice moments for each of the characters showing that Wagner does have a strong opinion on how each of the characters should be handled. The art is solid, the storytelling as strong as one would expect and the art is elevated by Dave Stewart (one of the best elevators in comics). The book is strong enough that I manage to enjoy it while only caring about two thirds of the cast.
JLA Earth 2 by Morrison & Quietly. Not a great deal to say about thebook apart from it breaks my heart that Howard Porter got to draw all those great Morrison JLA stories when Quietly so perfectly nails each of the characters and so succinctly tells a great story full of great moments. "Their hearts are on the right side of their bodies". We get the Earth 2 Crime Sindicate so brilliantly realised that Owlman comes across as cool as Batman. Love to see more of it.
Lastly Metal Men by Duncan Rouleau. This was a second reading of this odd, dense but compelling book. The story is based on Morrison concepts (and I'd like to know quite what that means) and so is fairly mental. Rouleau's art has come a long way since Alpha Flight and Superman, largely thanks to a strong design sense and able use of, I assume, Photoshop to create digital collages of cityscapes and techno. His storytelling is ambitious, and some could argue at times overly so, but the end result comes across like a mix between Chris Bachalo and a modern Steranko. Storywise the book flows out 52 which I didn't read but explains the events of Oolong Island that act as a catalyst for everything in a way that makes me feel to read 52 but not that I have to. The colours are amazing in a Dave McCaig vain and contribute greatly to the feel of the book. Well worth look. Ambitious and inventive.
Next up, the last book of the holiday, a well overdue reread of Elektra: Assassin.

Joker

2008-11-14T07:40:00.000-08:00

To avoid banging on about how great Morrison is, how inappropriate Tony Daniel is and how much everybody should be reading Criminal, Scalped and Jonah Hex, I'm gonna take the opportunity to review one of the books I was very much looking forward to and mentioned in my last post.
Azzarello and Lee Bermejo are undoubtedly a good fit for one and other. Azzarello's dark, jerky script goes great with Bermejo's dark, jerky art. They're obviously coming to the material from the same place.
Their first collaboration on Batman/Deathblow way back in 2002 was excellent. He was inked by Tim Bradstreet (who's also obviously coming from the same place) for most of the book and various inkers stepped in for the last part. The story was a great mystery/spy story jumping backwards and forwards in time (as Deathblow's dead) and coming together to a satisfying conclusion. Recommended!
Their second series/book was Lex Luthor, Man Of Steel. This series was announced at the same time as Azzarello's odd Superman run with Jim Lee and the great Question mini series by Rick Vietch and Tommy Lee Edwards. Lex Luthor actually appeared quite a bit later, coloured by the always impressive Dave Stewart. The series featured a couple of great Lex/Batman/Bruce Wayne moments and was a good look at Lex Luthor from his own point of view, with Superman very much a supporting role. This series debuted Lee Bermejo's new trick of some panels being shot from very finished pencils and the rest inked. More on this in a minute. A good book but a little disappointing after Batman/Deathblow.Around the same time we got Azzarello's run on Batman, with 100 Bullets buddy, Eduardo Risso. This book when serialised, was disjointed and Azzarello's generally lauded, jive talking, noir dialogue was weird stuck on a Gotham City backdrop. When collected, the whole thing reads better but it was definitely a very different Batman to any previous version of the character. Azzarello definitely had a very strong take on Batman, his connection with the city and the tragedy and obsession that drives him. It serves as the best reference point to the Joker HC released a couple of weeks back, more so than the previous work done by the Azzarello and Bermejo.
The Joker, similar to Batman Broken City, stands completely apart from any continuity which is a good thing. Azzarello gets to write his own version of everything, based on core concepts, from Killer Croc being a hard man with a funny diet and bad skin to the Joker being a unpredictable psychotic. We get a gimpy, tatooed Riddler, a genuinely jarring take on Harley Quinn that would likely come as a surprise to Paul Dini and a great Penguin (though inexplicably called Abner. An aside; I looked around thinking I might be missing some hip slang, political reference or old DC continuity but no-one online seems any the wiser...answers on a postcard).
The whole story is told from the point of view of a Joker goon who's trying to make a name for himself but very quickly realises he's out of his depth with no concept of where the Joker will lead him next.
Far and away the strongest point of the book is the depiction of the Joker (fair enough, condidering...). His mood swings, he breaks into tears, he's confident in everything, ambitious and at moments appears suicidal. As such we never no where the story will takes us either, apart from a sense of impending doom for our narrator.
Bermejo's contribution to the book can't be understated and I struggle to imagine the thing drawn by anyone else. His take on the Joker is excellent (also fair enough...) and bears such a striking resemblance to Heath Ledger's vituoso performance in Dark Knight that its difficult to believe no crossover behind the scenes. I think a lot of it comes from the sliced up cheeks that Joker's had in Morrison's Batman, the movie and here. No way that there wasn't some corporate involvement on that element at least. There are also elements of Cesar Romero, sans moustache, but Jack Nicholson is nowhere to be found.
Bermejo's Gotham City is as strong here as it's been in the past, feeling like a real place and not a mish mash of photo ref of New York and Chicago. The downfall for the book, artwise, is the choice to switch, a lot more awkwardly than on the Lex Luthor book, between digitally painted pencils and subtle, borderline flat colours over inked art by the very capable Mick Gray, long time art partner of JH Williams III. The change in style appears to happen with no rhyme or reason, with some whole sequences in digital wash and otherwise random money shot panels in the middle of the inked work. I'd be curious to know the motivation behind the changes, if anyone out there has any insight.
Its a strongly written piece with everything you expect from Azzarello, both good and bad, and solid artwork, despite the above mentioned changes in finish. Definitely a keeper, largely because of a really great Joker, and a really good Gotham. Once again an Azzarello book that underwhelms at first but grows on you as it sits in your head.

State of the Nation

2008-10-26T01:20:00.000-07:00

Time just keeps flying by. I was recently asked what comics I'm enjoying and was stuck for an answer. Then as I began to think, the names started to come like pregant rain drops, slowly but surely. The problem I have living in Barcelona is that I kind of forget that the books which I buy in collections do still come out as comics and the comics I buy monthly I wouldn't buy as books, for the most part.
On a monthly basis I'm picking up Morrison comics, Action Comics, The Spirit, more often than not Jonah Hex, depending who's drawing it and less frequently, Amazing Spider-Man, depending who it's by.

On a less than monthly basis I'm only picking up All Star Batman, Rasl and Acme Novelty Library, now that the outstanding All Star Superman has finished. That's it!
The latest issue of All Star Bats was the best to date, despite the mess around the swear words etc. Everything kind of comes together on story front and Jim Lee's art is the best of his career.
(On a related note, a LOT of fuss was made about the swearing, blacked out or otherwise, in the latest issue. While I don't particularly feel it's appropriate or necessary in a Batman comic, it rings slightly truer than Miller's bogus slang of the two Dark Knight books. Plus it would seem that Bastard is no longer a swearword at all, turning up all over the place in mainstream comics. Coming soon: C#nt)
Rasl has been really nice but it's only loyalty which has me getting the issues rather than waiting on no doubt one of the several formats it'll be collected in.
Back to the monthlies...
Morrison's Batman only began to speak to me after explaining to a friend what he's been missing. Can the villain of the piece really be Thomas Wayne? In a comics world where people talk about the death of Gwen Stacy and Bucky as sacrosanct, I don't think they'd ever considered that someone might try to bring back Batman's dad. Or is Alfred Batman's dad..? You've gotta keep coming back really.
I still don't know what the R.I.P in the current story holds for the future of Batman but I'm still very interested to find out; a testament to the strength of Morrison's writing in the face of unforgivably poor art and colours.
The main Final Crisis series has been a great, breakneck Morrison superhero story, full of, but not bogged down in, everyone and everything DC. It's hard to care about continuity when a company with Obsessive Continuity Disorder can publish the Death Of The New Gods eight part series before Final Crisis which hinges on a different death of the New Gods. So you have to take it on it's own terms, or certainly I do, as I couldn't care less about the rest of the 'Universe'.
Unfortunately, JG Jones who was described as the only person for the job has now bowed out. Initially he was going to share art duties, from half way through, with Carlos Pacheco but we now know Doug Mahnke will finish the book. This would be fine but he'll be inked by Cristian Alamy who he worked with on the dreadful Final Crisis: Requiem. I like Cristian Alamy a lot as an artist and an inker but he cleans up Mahnke which is quite unecessary. Morrison once more scuppered by the art of comics. An interesting note is that JG Jones has been quoted as saying Mahnke should have drawn it in the first place. I can't help but think that a reined in JH Willliams or Adam Kubert would have been better choices for the book from the get go.

Action Comics has been consistently great as mentioned in several previous posts. Geoff Johns is breathing so much life into the stories and characters and Gary Frank has nailed every design, page and deadline making it the best all round monthly. In a turn for the worse, DC have decided to tie it to James Robinson's Superman (which hasn't been great) and even Supergirl.
While the foundations which Johns has laid full of potential, with the whole of Kandor made full size (squashing who knows how many polar bears) in antartica , I'm simply not going to buy three Superman books of varying quality. A great jumping off point and really bloody irritating.
The Spirit has suffered from rotating artists but as the stories are done in one it's not too bad. New regular artist Mike Ploog did one issue. Paul Smith's done several but seems to have disappeared to be replaced by Chad Hardin and Aluir Amancio. The stories are still fun (and funny) thanks to Aragonés and Evanier though I really hope they'll still do the occasional special with good, big name artists. DC haven't released the sollicitation details correctly in months so you never know who'll turn up. We'll see.
Last up is Jonah Hex which is great fun. A labour of love, heavily researched, dense and pared down to fit most every story in one issue. I recently picked up a couple of stray back issues ,having started buying when Jordi Bernet began as frequent contributor. There was a great Pual Gulacy issue, though I'm not the biggest fan, and one by a guy, who's new to me, called Rafa Garres. His art is meaty and visceral, cartoony and realistic and coloured by himself to great effect. He's now done two issues (including the latest) and I believe is slated to be the artist on the series' first big six part story coming next year featuring Hex and pretty much every other DC western character.
While the above are the regular monthlies I keep an eye on/pick up I still scan Previews for fill-ins or minis by people who are worth following. This is how I know to look out for Vigilante by Marv Wolfman and Rick Leonardi (no word on the inker)in December. This'll be an ongoing though time will tell how long he'll keep it up for, we're looking at some good street level Leonardi for at least a few months.
While the above list doesn't look too positive as a representation of the thousands of comics published a month the list of regular and up coming collections just keeps getting bigger;Hellboy, BPRD, Umbrella Academy, Casanova (number one online here), Jason Aaron's Ghost Rider, 100 Bullets, Scalped, Fear Agent, Kyle Baker's Special Forces, Criminal, Dave Lapham's Young Liars, Joker by Azzarello and Lee Bermejo, Conan, Joe Kelly's I Kill Giants, Joe Casey's Godland (number one here)and Charlatan's Ball, new Top Ten (sans Alan Moore).
Collections bought over the last several months and enjoyed include Silver Surfer: In thy Name by Simon Spurrier and Tan Eng Huat, Metal Men by Duncan Rouleau (at left) , ClanDestine by Alan Davis, the Coraline adaptation by P Craig Russell, Local by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, Berlin by Jason Lutes, Superman: Kryptonite by Cooke and Sale (at bottom), Omega the Unknown by Jonathan Lethem and Farel Dalrymple and Fantastic Four: The End by Davis and Farmer.
I appreciate the the above is all a bit dense but I feel the need to justify why despite the fact that the Previews catalogue is a daunting and depressing monthly browse, I feel there're still enough good solid books being made to make it worthwhile coming back. We have the likes of Mignola, Pearson, Fegredo, Sean Phillips, RM Guera, Alan Davis, Jeff Smith, Grant Morrison (more Seaguy coming!!!!), John Romita JR, Gabriel Ba, Risso...the list goes on, of great comics creators who are still producing great comics with varying degrees of regularity. We just need to invest the effort in filtering through all the tat. We'll see if I still feel this way this time next year.

Walt Simonson

2008-09-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

I'm having a bit of a Walt Simonson moment after reading the great Modern Masters book about him and went and picked up bits I didn't have; all his Star Wars issues with Tom Palmer inks, Orion for DC, his Star Slammers series for Malibu (finished at Dark Horse) and an old DC trade called The Art of Walt Simonson. It's a funny mix of stuff and really interesting to watch his growth. It's important to note, he's always been great.
I believe that beyond the the visual power and the solid storytelling that there's a certain conviction behind everything he does that makes it real. You never feel like he's phoning it in or taking the piss. He managed to write and draw three issues of Thor with Thor turned into a frog and keep it real. The Frank Miller written Robocop Versus Terminator had no reason to be as entertaining as it was but they pulled it off and while a lot of it is due to Miller's straight faced telling of the absurd (ref Miller's out put of this century) Simonson's ability in telling a story carries it all through and makes it a good comic as opposed to a marketing man's wet dream.
I kick myself upon hindsight for not picking up Orion when it was coming out. I remember thinking, working in a comic shop, that I could read it anyway and was jaded enough to believe that it couldn't last and we'd get so-so fill-ins and what not. He put out 25 issues of inventive storytelling with every issue demonstrating some new trick or page design or lettering element to keep you hooked. To the point of it being very difficult to highlight one page as exceptional as they were pretty much all exceptional.
His next big project (skipping past Just Imagine Stan Lee creating Sandman...brrrr) was Elric The Making of a Sorcerer with Elric creator Michael Moorcock. Though I've never read the Moorcock novels, I enjoyed the Roy Thomas, P Craig Russell, Michael T Gibert and George Freeman adaptations of the past. The concepts are nuts but well constructed and Simonson was once again an ideal choice to bring it to life. Simonson had long been a fan of Moorcock's writing (evidenced in his nutty Fantastic Four run of the late 80's) and had collaborated with him previously on the Michael Moorcock's Multiverse series for DC in the mid to late 90's. I found that series a bit of a mixed bag but loved this four issue mini, now collected in trade paperback. As if Simonson's art wasn't already incredibly intricate, he worked on particularly huge art boards to get everything in. (nice latter-day Steve Oliff colour job too!).
While Simonson is often likened to Kirby, his style doen't really show Kirby as much it shows Phillipe Druillet, Bernie Krigstein, Sergio Toppi. I'm certain, however that his influences go on and on but the end product is something completely unique.
I did look for a definitive checklist to link to but all I got was Wookiepedia (for his Star Wars work). In brief, as well as all the books mentioned above, look out for his Lawnmower Man (the novel) adaptation in Bizarre Adventures #29, Temple of the Spider, a samurai story with Archie Goodwin from Thrilling Adventure Stories #2 (nice bit of Toth in there too!). Also with Goodwin, Manhunter (of course) and the Alien movie adaptation. X-Men/Teen Titans is a great looking book too, though a little of it's time (Chris Claremont!).
One final mention to letterer John Workman who always manages to compliment the power, intestity and insanity of Simonson's work with the perfect effects.
Check out the Batman below from the Art Of Simonson book. I thought "Flicking hell! It's Miller's Batman!" Simonson says "The only change I had to make on the job was to alter the Expression on Batman's face...I had originally given Bats a grin, feeling (as I still do) that a grin in the wrong place is more fightening than a snarl".
Sounds like Miller's Batman too!

I'm not gonna call swipe but look at the two images below.

Miller's Absolute Dark Knight cover
and...

Simonson's Batman in action from Detective Comics #450
I'll finish by saying only that Simonson's influence is felt far and wide and is always worth revisiting.

In brief

2008-09-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

A hectic summer has kept me away from the blog but hasn't stopped me visiting the local shops (Freaks and Gigamesh).
I'll post some reviews over the next few days but first up I thought I'd share an illustration that my mate Guera gave me.
Guera's the artist on the fantastic Scalped, written by Jason Aaron. If you're not reading it your missing out on one of the best monthly books being published at the moment. It's a brutal crime story set on a reservation and has the feel of all the best collaborations, that of one voice, one vision.
Enough. The drawing...:

Re:Views 18/07/08

2008-07-18T04:44:00.000-07:00

Hihowareya?
Literally nothing for me this week but this isn't a problem as I didn't write anything last week!
Criminal book 3: Dead and the Dying came out. (n.b.the image shown is from what'll be in the next book, lifted from Sean Phillips' blog. Can't scan the inside of Trades) This series is just great. It's different to but fills an open wound I have where Stray Bullets used to be. So far we've got a load of meaty crime stories about grubby, real characters in a grubby, real underworld with occasionally overlapping names and references to characters we hope we'll see later. In fact the only constant character in the book is the bar, 'THE UNDERTOW(n)' which often serves as the catalyst for the unpleasant fates of the principles.
The third volume collects the first three oversized issues of the second series. Three standalone stories which overlap greatly telling one story from three perspectives, also gives us a chunk of the origin of Mr Hyde who rules the modern day Criminal world. A great book. Part of me wants the issues with the great back matter written by all sorts of great writers and directors about crime/thrillers in all mediums. Space is the limitation for me, after years as a comic fiend, but either way, if you're not reading this you're missing good comics; both Brubaker and Phillips at their best.

Welcome back to the monthly Action Comics is great section. Action Comics is great! Tee latest issue gives us great Daily Planet moments, great Clark and Pa moments, and great Superman moments. What I find most impressive in the writing is that we're getting all of this Superman continuity stuff but told in such a way as to be completely accesible to anyone who doesn't know these characters. I've always thoughs Superman had the worst villains gallery in comics but Geoff Johns has already given us a definitive Lex Luthor, Bizarro and is now in the process, along with great designs from Gary Frank, of a definitive Braniac. We're also getting The Bottled City of Kandor for the 'first' time. I've always fancied the idea of The Bottled City of Kandor.
Lastly, a comic I'd been looking forward to for months! One of those great gems that'll dusty and forgotten to all but a few with good memories. Every once in a while both DC and Marvel will publish weekly mini-series or fifth week events to fill in the publishing schedule gaps left by the fact that 52 doesn't divide by 12. There's generally a gem in every bunch. I've yet to see one which has all quality books. Here are some examples of previous winners.
In '97 DC published the Tangent universe. An idea of Dan Jurgens, this was all basically concepts created from scratch based only on existing DC names. It was alright. Forgotten until recently made canon in the current DCU and collected in trades(!?!?!?). Far and away the best of the buch was Green Lantern by James Robinson, JH Williams and Mick Gray. The interpretation of the name is a ghost narrator who carries a chinese green lantern and tells stories of the unjustly dead coming back for closure/revenge. Though reitively early in his comic career, JH Williams already shows off his chamaelionic abilities, giving each of the short tales a different style. ONe looks like JH Williams, one has a Kirby/Kurtzman mix and the third has a weird mix of what looks like Noel Sickles, Alex Raymond and George Evans. Robinson's writing is great, as it generally is.
In '98 DC came up with New Year's Evil. Not too much of a high concept here, just one-off stories about baddies, all with great covers by Jason Pearson.Grant Morrison introduced his anti-Batman, Prometheus, who'd become a running villain for the JLA but the rest of the books only really made an impact if you were reading the related books (Flash, Resurrection Man). There was also a lame Darkseid one and a so-so Gog from Kingdom Come. And the winner was, by a country mile, the Scarecrow by 'Milligan' and Fegredo, with great colours by Bjarne Hansen (Superman: For All Seasons. This story got me good. A great impromptu redesign of the character (which stuck), Fegredo's kinetic art really coming into it's own after comics like Enigma and Face. We see clear influences of Toth via Mignola as well as an obsession foe page design and detail when necessary and empty space when not. The story has Scarecrow getting the run around by a girl that he can't scare and deciding that he's in love. It's screwed up as all tales of Batman villains should be.

Perhaps the most successful overall of these weekly books was Marvel Monsters from...Marvel. All the books had a monster reprint at the back and nice Eric Powell painted covers. We got Monsters on the Prowl by Steve Niles and Fegredo which has Hulk, Thing, Giant Man and (pre blue) Beast from the X-Men. The collector nicks loads of the monsters from Monster Island, which the Mole Man's not too happy about and while trying to get them back, accidently sets them all loose on Manhattan. Who can save the city, with the Fantastic Four out of town, if not the aforementioned Good Monsters? A fun story with great art as well as a Kirby reprint at the back.
FIn Fang Four by Scott Gray and Roger Langridge has a where are they now team up of monsters reduced by Reed Richards and holding down a steady job in society. Fin Fang Foom as a chef in a Chinese restaurant, Elektro as a delivery boy, Googam, Son Of Goom working as valet parking and Gorgilla as his sidekick. It's a great, funny, loving homage to Kirby/Ditko monsters that we'll see more of. Lastly is Devil Dinosaur by Eric Powell which has Hulk zapped back in time to be misled into fighting Devil Dinosaur. Then there's the inevitable team up against their manipulators. Like all the rest of the Marvel Monster books, there's a real affection for the source material (Kirby) and it's difficult not to enjoy it. (Plus the Coming Of The Hulk; but not THAT Hulk).
All of which brings us to DC's current outing into seemingly random weekly one-offs. Joker's Asylum are all stories narrated by the Joker. Now, Penguin is the first I've read, awaiting the Scarecrow but skipping the ones that I've no 'in' to. With Jason Aaron and Jason Aaron, there was no way I was going to pass. We seem to get a comic per year out of Jason Pearson over the last few years. They're always worth waiting for artwise but this is the strongest collaborator he's had in a long time. Aaron writes grim, violent, psychosis/physchotics and a lookback over Pearson's career and his own Body Bags show that he likes drawing them. His style has always evolved including colouring his own work but here he's coloured by Dave McCaig who's never failed me. The story's a great tale of the Penguin's neuroses and violent, defensive, overeaction for being a fat midget with a big nose. The character came to life a bit during Batman: No Man's Land but Ed Brubaker's run set him up as a villain to contend with. Though Burgess Meredith was Cool! Wagh!
That's it!

Gobsmacked

2008-07-10T04:37:00.000-07:00

Just when I think I'm immune to Mike Mignola's magical powers, getting used to the various covers for the Hellboy Universe that are never less than great, we get a cover like the one above for October's HELLBOY: IN THE CHAPEL OF MOLOCH one off.
Heavens to Betsy that fella can draw.

Reviews June/July

2008-07-09T12:31:00.000-07:00

Ahem...This is like the early nineties Image comics of review columns. TO be fair (to me) there were a couple of weeks here with no comics. However I won't bite the bullet and go monthly...I'll make like Travis Charest and his bi-monthly run on Wildcats...optimistic all the way!
Where to Begin?

Let's do random!

'What if THIS was the Fantastic Four'. I loved the original Walt Simonson/Art Adams story from back when American comics come onto my radar but seeing this team supreme gave me more of a feeling of relief at having grown up than it did of nostalgia. THere's something TRULY sad about reading a great artists last comic, let alone the odd pages of Wieringo at the start of this book. Jeff Parker's story's great as it always is in my limited experience and the line up of artists involved is mostly top notch. Given the nature of this tribute book it would seem a little crass to pick faves among the artists though I will say with a lot of talent in there, I'd have happily just seen Skottie Young or Stuart Immonen. That said, there's something for everyone.
Action Comics 866. Don't know what 'Sighting' means, but that's what it says on the banner of another great Action by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank (et al). I saw somewhere that someone thinks it means that it's important to big DCU continuity. I've NO idea what that's upposed to mean. It looks great, the pacings excellent, the 'no spoilers please' splash is seriously dramatic and I'm about a day away from the next one by now! yay!
James Robinson's first Superman was good. I think the artist has gotten worse since I saw his work last but maybe I'm being unkind. To be fair, he tells the story well enough, but he's no Tony Daniel (!). Robinson's distinctive writing style is on here, though I feel I've seen his 'tell us about the troops bit' before, years ago on his first Wildcats two parter. Has promise...
Walden Wong did a good job over Paul Smith on the latest Spirit. It looked a little flatter than if he'd inked it himself (or had the great George Freeman over the top). Evanier and Aragones are still telling fun, perhaps overly light, stories of the Frank Miller creation ("I am the city") but I enjoy it every month even without Darwyn Cooke. This is especially good as PMS gets to draw mummies and make me feel fuzzy about Leave it To Chance : (
I've heard that we'll be getting some Jordi Bernet issues shortly, which can only be good for the Spirit but a loss for Jonah Hex. Maybe Paul Smith can draw some Jonah Hex!!!!

More monsters in the SUPERB Hellboy Crooked Man. The level of collaborator Mignola has at the moment doesn't even have me wishing he'd drawn it anymore. I always wish he'd draw something but I can't argue with Corben. Mignola's particular vision permeates every bit of the crooked man and while one can still tell that he's tailoring it for his artist(s) it's just more Hellboy. Exactly what Weird Tales wasn't. Buy it!
Back to Batman. Same as always. Weird complex, Morrison story with dreadful trainwreck Tony Daniel art that makes me feel more foolish every 3€s. Still happy to see where it's going based on the assumption that Morrison's not let me down recently but I never knew I could miss Andy Kubert so.

Jesus H Christmas, it's Darwyn Cooke with Palmiotti and Gray on fantastic Jonah Hex 33. Ol' Jonah comes off looking a lot worse in this story in the sense that he's really pretty unlikable but he's also seldom looked better as rendered by Cooke and given pish and vinegar by DAVE STEWART. If you're reading this and you've read it before than you've probably read the comic and there's nothing more to say or you've seen the names attached to the book and have already left to go and buy it! Coming up we get a JH Williams issue too! What I'm really looking forward to, though, are the Batman RIP Final Crisis tie-in issues.
Rasl 2 came out. Guest staring the Grinch on the cover and nothing but good comics on the inside. THis story has real tension building and the principal character's a very likeable anti hero. I think this boook succeeds and for me kind of needed to after the Shazam book which I liked but didn't love. Following Bone was never going to be easy and, again, while Shazam was good, I think I just want my Jeff smith in black and white.
Finally Crisis 2 hit with the cliff hanger we all knew we were waiting for. The return of Barry Allen. Have I mentioned that I've never read the original Crisis, or Flash for that matter. None of this mega continuity means anything to me and I'm really enjoying this book so far. It's building, building...J G Jones' art is very good, the colours are loud and the Japanes Super Hero team is just wicked. It reminds me of the Ultramarines storyline in the JLA with Ed McGuiness which is just pure flash but on every rereading shows more and more substance. The inevitable, but unwelcome, new of shared art chores from issue 4-7 is only slightly softened by the fact he'll share the gig with Pacheco. A few years back this would have been great news but he's either changed or is relinquishing more of his art to his inker Merino, and this isn't good. As always, we'll see. It'll all be over by Christmas...

Into the library for the book group and I get four trades I've been looking forward to for a while.
The longest wait is the Conan Born on the Battlefield trade. I'd picked up the first chapter in number 8 a few years ago and when I realised that they were 'ongoing stories' I'd wait for the trade. I'm really not a fan of the genre at all but what Dark Horse have managed to do with Conan is really incredible. Obviously, the talent involved helps. I picked up the first Conan trade on a whim...Kurt Busiek, solid enough looking art, good word of mouth and Dave Stewart colours. I learnt to love Cary Nord and Dave Stewart's collaborration. After Shock Rockets, Untold Tales Of Spider-Man, Superman:Secret Identity, Arrowsmith, Kurt Busiek is obviously the 'coming of age' man, and with such success on every project, it's worth following onto the next(anyone know if the Aquaman trade's worth picking up????). Greg Ruth's art is also something else. Muddy, moody, graceful, brutal, exagerated, realistic and basically perfect for the story of Conan's two births on the Battlefield.
I got shot of my Hellboy Darkness calls issues once I'd read the thing complete awaiting the trade and epilogue(s) it would bring (for a third reading : ). I got my Gosh bookplated edition to make it better still and found new details from the rereading as always with Hellboy. Fegredo's art is as perfect for this story as Corben's is for his and it's really interesting to see the supplemental material, showing Fegredo getting a handle on Mignola's world. There's also the mention that Fegreo was leaning towards a clean line/no solid blacks style prior to the series so viva Hellboy!
Vaya, vaya, vaya. I try not to buy 'comics' anymore. The nominal difference in cost is meaningless in real terms, though from publisher to publisher, my rationale for this decision varies.
With Image, I've always the worry that the series will stop dead in the middle, and I'm left with 1 and 2 of 6. With DC it's that they don't collect books unless they sell and all the books I like get cancelled. Hence the issues. With Marvel, there's a bit of the DC theory about it but also, I'm often excited by a series with all the hype and I don't care by the time the book comes out. It's grass roots money saving. With Dark Horse, the collections are just lovely. What's the Hurry? It looks better in the book.
This brings me to Umbrella Academy. I knew I liked Gabriel Ba. If you've read Casanova, you like him too! 50% Mignola, 50% Risso and 90% Gabriel Ba. Plus ol' Dave Stewart. Plus Factor X...the writer. I don't know his band so I didn't have any opinion or bias going in. The series is eccentric but consistent, an obvious labour of love by all concerned and meshes superhero/sci-fi and family drama seamlessly. Strongly recommended for fans of good fun, Grant Morrison and the new.
Lastly, but no means leastly, Kirby's Omac. A HC collection of the eight issues of stuff I'd read bits and bobs of. I bought this as a sampler for the Fourth World collection which are pricey, gorgeous, but can I justify $200 on Kirby writing. I was really pleasantly surprised that the nutty writing suits the nutty art. The semi prophetic inventions of Kirby are great even without trying to force context on the material in the reading. I not only recommend it but look forward to the Demon coming in a couple of months followed by the Fourth World when the money permits.
That's it. Sooner rather than later people!

Back On track

2008-06-11T01:37:00.000-07:00

Wow. Long time no see. One of the things about living in Barcelona is that, occasionally people like to come visit. Sometimes they all come back to back and everything else goes out of the window. The long and short of it is I've got loads to review (on the day when even more stuff comes out).
Into the deep end, which would be the Grant Morrison end...
Final Crisis #1 finally hit, after months of full page ads and a good couple of years of build up and could it possibly justify the wait? Well for a start, the great JG Jones/Chip Kidd cover with Green Lantern on it, used in all the hype, seems to be in the minority, though I managed to get one, but now it won't necessarily match the rest (a bit retentive I know but it does bug me!).
There's a lot of set up in this issue, which is fine with me as I haven't followed two years of weekly comics and spin offs, I've never read the Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman with any regularity and I've also no idea why Martian Manhunter has a rubbish costume. Story wise it starts hundreds of thousands of years in the past with Anthro the first boy in the past and finishes with Kamandi, last boy on Earth so there's nothing if not scope here. There've been some criticisms of continuity issues surrounding the New Gods, following all those weekly comics. Having not read them, I basically really enjoyed the first issue and am looking forward to where its going. To read Morrison's take on the first issue you can go to Newsarama here.
Artwise, I don't think there's anyone at DC who could have done this any better. JG Jones has quite a static quality, from the photo reference, but its all well drawn and Alex Sinclair's suit it really well, same as when he colours Jim Lee. One thing that worries me is whether, even with the skip month between issues 3 and 4, we'll not get DCs version of the Crusty Bunkers jumping in to help him finish. I was mildly traumatised by the ONE page in Marvel Boy he didn't draw, so forgive me if I'm edgy. We'll see.
Batman R.I.P. is two parts in already and as with anything Morrison, its not clear where its going but there's build up and stuff going on that you KNOW will be meaningful on a re-reading. The Black Glove from the JH Williams arc is revealed to be a group rather than one person, the Joker knows everything Hannibal Lector style but is being obtuse and we're not sure whether the first love interest Jezebel, is in on it.The panel above gives us a Batman sounding indecisive and also shows the bewildering art of Tony Daniel. We see the inside of the Batmobile and are still left with no idea what it looks like. Wow! Mysterious, edgy...

Lastly from the Morrison file is All Star Supes. What to stay. Understated in the extreme in both the dialogue and the art and yet so Huge that one feels obligated to go back and read it again to take it all in. Superman's getting sicker and sicker, 'dead' at the end of it. Lex Luthor is great, camp, genius al la Gene Hackman in the movies. Morrison also touches on DC One Million again with Solaris introduced, established and magnificently dispatched before you even have time to absorb the concept and chew over the questions posed as to how Superman knows that Solaris will be benevolent in the future. It's all so fertile and I can't imagine how anyone will be able to follow it. One more issue to go!
Dave Lapham's Wolverine: The Amazing Immortal Man and Other Bloody Tales is...weird. I'm a big fan of Lapham and this comic has Lapham illustrating one story with two guys touted as new comers on the other two. The title story has nice cartooning by a guy called Johnny Timmons that could get him on Gotham Central or Daredevil. The story's solid and features a silent Wolverine, clearly a bit down and out as a sidehow freak and in Lapham style has no innocents and plenty of revenge! The Second story, illustrated by Lapham with Daredevil's inker Stefano Gaudiano, features one of Lapham's other themes; the influence of one powerful force, be it Spanish Scott, Batman or the Punisher, on the weak people it comes into contact with.
A brief appearence by Wolverine inspires a bus driver to copycat and try to clean up his bit of the bronx. The thrid story in the book drawn by a fella called Kelly Goodine, did nothing for me on any level. The art's a bit Lenil Yu (who also does nothing for me), the colours are dreadful and the story's a bit of a nonsense about a parasitic baby mutant?!?! Probably worth the money for the first two stories and the nice Simone cover. WIll also sit nicely next to the great Giant Size Wolverine Lapham did with Iron Fist's David Aja a year or so back.
Finally got my Hellboy FCBD comic. Just great! It's no secret that the Mignolaverse is the most consistent group of titles being regularly published today. To get three new eight page stories by Mignola/Fegredo, Mignola/Arcudi/Davis and Mignola/Dysart/Azaceta couldn't be better. The Hellboy story takes place before Darkness calls and is a surreal story that's all 'a dream' while we know that nothing that goes on in Hellboy'shead is just a dream. Fegredo's art is excellent, consistent with Mignola's storytelling without aping as previous artists Matt Smith and even Ryan Sook had done.
The BPRD story follows on from the Killing Ground story where Johann Kraus acted kinda weird after getting a body that had senses, having been ectoplasm stuck in a bag for the longest time. This story has him go beyond weird, to suspicious...to be continued! The last story is by the team of BPRD 1946 which I've not read yet. This story stands alone and bodes well for the series. The art is moody and consistent and the writings good. A solo Professor 'Broom' story. As always, I'm left wanting more.
I picked up the collection of Lobster Johnson this week which I knew I was gonna like. I'd read the first issue in England and knew it was something to look forward to. It's good and pulpy, nuts and the art is great. Jason Armstrong's art is great cartooning, fitting nicely with the blacks all over and great Dave Stewart's colours you expect from the Mignolaverse. I was left a little underwhelmed because I was expecting so much and it was no doubt damaged by the anticipation factor. The Hellboy books are always great with the developmental art at the back showing the artist's take as well as Mignola's and in this case we get a bit of Guy Davis' too. It's all such a labour of lve that its difficult not to go back in and scrutinise it all to feel the love!
Palmiotti, Gray and Jordi Bernet deliver yet another great done-in-one Jonah Hex story. This series is obviously a labour of love and is a western, in 2008, which is not just good but great! Take the hint people. Pick it up. The balance of humour, horror and action is seldom found better. I'm sure the Darwyn Cooke issue next month will shake some life into to you!!!!
Loveless made it to 24 and the last issue is by Daniel Zezelj so it goes out on a high note. While it does feel like there's history here you need to be aware of the issue also stands alone well enough. It would be worth the $3 for the art alone but the story's sound too.Axxarello was kind of frank about it all: "I failed you guys with 'Loveless,'" Azzarello said. "It had a birth defect, and it just didn't survive. If we can come back to it, we will." My curiousity is where Zezelj will turn up next.
Neither Paul Smith or Mike Ploog turned up for Spirit 17 and we get art by Aluir Armancio who I'd never heard of and inked by Terry Austin who seemed to disappear some years back from comics. I wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't pre ordered it and felt obligated. A good fun read with great looking girls and nice storytelling. The colours are nice the whole thing holds up well. Could have been a lot worse, artwise, to the degree I'll order it in future if they actually tell me he's going to be drawing it!
To wrap up, I picked up American Spendor 3 because it has Darwyn Cooke in it as well as on the cover. Harvey Pekar comics are always solid and rarely surprise. Annecdotal shorts or monologues that give us a 'working stiff's view of the world. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it and I found that 22 pages really wasn't enough so I'll problably be picking up some collections soon. The real surprise for me was the art of John Cebollero, who's work I knew from inking over Marshall Rogers on several funny looking comics. This was great caricature and nice storytelling. I'll keep an eye on him..!
That's it! If anyone's still out there, I'll be back weekly give or take holidays and I'll see you soon.

Reviews 12/05/08

2008-05-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

Well no reviews last week because my motivation ebbs when I've nothing new to tell the world. Last week I picked up the excellent B.P.R.D Killing Ground collection which has no surprise in the sense that it's excellent but plenty of twists with the characters, the whole story taking place at 'home' in Colorado. If your're reading it already, there's nothing to tell as you know it's great and if you're not picking it up, you're missing one of the best monthly books currently published. Guy Davis' art just gets creepier and creepier and the freaky monsters just get weirder. On a side note I picked up his own series the Marquis a little while back which he wrote and drew, black, white and lots of great zipper tone...and cracked out monsters too. It's collected by Oni in two books but tricky to find.
The only floppy comic I picked up was Action Comics 864, which I must have ordered based on how much I was enjoying the previous run with Gary Frank. While I'm now much more up to speed on the Legion Of Superheroes, this issue left me lost with a big reveal of a villain who I don't know but suspect I'm supposed to. Also leads into the Legion of Superheroes Crisis thingy which I won't be reading. Artwise, nothing to show, feeling if I've nothing nice to scan then don't scan anything at all. I feel used...
This week, however, I had comics to buy! First up to show no hard feelings, Action Comics Annual 11 which I believe we've waited a year for. Though I don't know what happened to Adam Kubert to make him run SO late on this, I don't overly care. There've been plenty of good Action Comics and Busiek Superman(s) in the meantime and some iffy fill-ins which I just skipped : ) Check out upset people's feelings here. They are funny! Artwise, though Dave Stewart's not on the colours, Edgar Delgado fills in fine, mostly matching the style and finishing Kubert's art and maintaining the unique finish. Also fun is is that Richard Donner and Geoff Johns manage to surprise on the story, but I don't do spoilers. A great read that if you've not followed, will stand alone happily as a trade paperback.
The softcover of New Avengers Illuminati came out, which I'd been waiting a while for. I really like Jimmy Cheung, and have done since Iron Man and Maverick, back before he was a "Marvel Young Gun". There's something straight but fun about his art that I can't put my finger on. I feel he makes everyone look like a teenager, but its not really true (see the collection's cover). It did make him the perfect choice for Young Avengers where, with great inker John Dell and perfectly suited colourist Justin Posner, I decided to keep my eye on what he was up to in the future. I wouldn't pick up everything he does...but this series fits. A retrofitted marvel history telling of how a few key Marvel Players have manipulated things from behind the scenes. Secret Wars, the Kree Skrull War are good my personal fave was putting a punctuation mark at the end of Morrison's Marvel Boy which was a great cosmic trilogy cut short by shortsighted Bill Jemas worrying about how he couldn't make a movie of it.The book also coincided with an all Skrull, Secret Invasion tie-in that follows on from Illuminati but otherwise just left me Jimmy Cheung non Skrull stuff.
The third part of Risso and B K Vaughn's Logan mini came out and while overall the series was a little light, it was good fun that didn't stray from the character, though perhaps a slightly dated version of him. Risso's art is superb as always and the last page almost justifies the series alone. I imagine there's a Hard Cover coming of it but for three issues, I'd be careful...
Following my last post I found out the Hellboy Golden Army preview I got free was maybe not very liberally distributed so I've taken the liberty of scanning the thing. My logic, and I hope it'd stand up in court is that 1)the comic was free and 2)it was meant to be READ for free and used to promote the movie and comic. Well here it is. Low res so you can't print it but complete so you can enjoy it. Enjoy it!

Reviews 30/04/08

2008-04-30T00:16:00.000-07:00

A slow week last week. I'm starting to come to terms with the ideas that I'm in an abusive relationship with Morrisons Batman. No matter how bad the art gets, I keep coming back. I could handle Andy Kubert, to my mind the lesser of the two Kubert brothers, and inked by Jesse Delperdang who has done nice things for Kubert's art since Ka-Zar. The text story was heavy going but still had promise. JH Williams is a personal favourite so I was very happy for three issues. For about a year now, it's been relentless bad art. Batman 675, which years back would have been one of those special issues, Ryan Benjamin takes the ball and runs with it. Even Tony Daniel will have to work to achieve the level of thoughtless, amateurish rubbish that Grant Morrison gets to work with. I don't know what kind of editor gets to see this stuff in black and white before the colourist comes in and has to try to save it.Ryan Benjamin came onto the scene shortly after Tony Daniel in about '94 as part of one of Jim Lee's talent searchs, along with Travis Charest, J Scott Campbell, Aaron Weisenfeld, all of whom have gone on to better things. I can only hope for his sake, as I'm not malicious, that he had about an hour to draw these 22 pages. Storywise Morrison moves Batman more and more towards the breakdown he kees referring to in interviews and we get to see that its not Talia (Ras Al Ghul's daughter) who's behind these various future Batmen or the murder attempts on Bruce Wayne. Someone else is out to get him and knows his identity. Shoulda been good!
Marvel will make sure their A-list writers get the approriate level of artist, or at least the artist they want. Mark Millar seems to get whatever he wants, Bendis too yet DC's treatment of one of, hands down, their best writers on their flagship title gets...this. I think all of the above is what's gettng me really interested in Final Crisis. I've never read any of the other Crisis books and I'm sure it won't matter but at least I'll be able to pore over the art.
Moving on...
Spirit #16 came out and I loved it. I really enjoyed the breezy story, Spirit wondering around a film set, the Spirit splash was great and Paul Smith's art was excellent and less 'on model' than his previous issue. Lee Loughridge's colours are good and its all wrapped up in a Bruce Timm cover. If the last two issues were a little shakey and made you feel Darwyn Cooke took all the good stuff with him, I recommend checking out this issue.

My local comic shop here in BCN gave me some deservingly free comics for Free Comic Book Day which was a nice thought. One nice surprise in there was Hellboy and the Golden Army. An annoying film still cover, which I won't bother scanning, but a really nice story which is a comic ad-ap-ta-tion of the prologue to the second movie. Guillermo Del Toro says in the introduction that this is in the movie but told with puppets. Cool! The art is by Francisco Ruiz Velasco who drew Lone Wolf 2100 and apparently also works on designs for the second Hellboy movie. There's not really any Hellboy in it but Mignola scripts Professor 'Broom' telling the story to Hellboy Jr. All good.

I finished reading Michael "Heroes" Green's Batman:Lovers and Madmen HC collecting the story with Denys Cowan art from Batman Classified. Telling a story from Batman's early years and a new origin for the Joker, it has to be read with some suspension of disbelief; we all know the origin of the Joker ie our established favourite or mixture of various. Jack Napier kills Tom and Martha Wayne and sets his ironic destiny at the hands of Batman. Desperate, unamed, unfunny comic gets knocked into chemicals and comes out nuts and gorgeously drawn by Bolland. Those are my two. One's a film, one's a comic.
This book reads like a film, in a comic and the Joker looks like the pending Heath Ledger version. Like any sensible writer, he keeps Year One in play and the story shows bored/suicidal criminal who gets a a new lease of life after meeting Batman (like a reversal of JM DeMatteis' Going Sane story). Taken on it's own terms, out of DContinuity etc, the pacing's great, the characterisation of Alfred, Bruce, Batman, the Joker is all spot on. Denys Cowan and John FLoyd's art is great, nutty looking cartooning far from any previous published work by them. ILL's colouring is the best I've seen from them but still...Recommended!

Almost Weakly

2008-04-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

Back again to get up to date.
Now where to begin...?

All Star Superman great. It's not controversial to say so. However, it's getting better. Frank Quietly made the choice towards the end of his X-Men issues to ditch inkers as he felt no-one managed to make it look how he wanted. It's taken a while (ie all of WE3 and the previous nine issues of All Star Supes) but this is the first issue I didn't read wincing at bits that I wish he'd inked or had someone else ink.
The storytelling, grace, detail and sense of scale that he's always had hasn't gone anywhere and Morrison is stripping the sory back to the absolute minimum of text etc but the book is so rewarding on a reread. Highlight of this issue are a great Lex Luthor moment, the innovative illustration of Superman's X-Ray vision (above) and Superman creating a mini universe to see what would have happened if he'd never 'come' to Earth (below).

Continuing with Superman, Action Comics 863 finished up the Superman and the Legion of Superheroes arc. Difficult to to remove any image to show without damaging the resolution of the story. No beat is wasted by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's art, as repeatedly mentioned before is great. I was left wanting more and I'll get more. IN future though, when James Robinson starts on Superman, Action and Superman will run closely together and crossing over. This pisses me off a bit as I like James Robinson but I'm really not sure about the regular artist on the book (Renato Guedes). IT's really souless and I'd already stopped getting the Busiek Superman because of it.
We'll see.
More Superman (what the f*ck's going on). Well Darwyn Cooke and the Justice League New Frontier Special which came out about a month ago. Cooke's written the whole thing and drew half of it, a missing scene from his mega mini New Frontier. A conflict aluded to but only briefly in the series is ellaborated on, Batman Versus Superman. The whole thing is told on three panel per page and feels a little like storyboards. Everything is set up perfectly. Batman stages the fight in a junk yard so the lead will screw up Superman's X-ray vision and then doesn't stop hammering at him. Interesting too are mentions of Batman stuff that retroactively forshadows Dark Knight Returns; interesting because Cooke was very outspoken about Miller's Dark Knight Strikes. However as much as New Frontier was very settled in time because of Cooke's research and structuring of the series within the "real" events of the DC silver age, these nods to Dark Knight, for me, secure it as part of DCs future.
The back ups in the book are good too. The director of the DC:NF cartoon, Dave Bullock does a great Robin and Kid Flash story and Darwynn Cooke's frequent collaborator Jay Bone does a fun Wonder Woman/Black Canary strip.
Oh and DAVE STEWART colors it all.
Which reminds me...the Eisner nominees were announced this week, reminding me how out of touch I am for the for the most part (http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=153595) but Richard Isanove nominated for best colourist!?!?!?!? Awards are always controversial but bloody hell...my finger's really not on the pulse.
Moving on, in my last review of Loveless, I mentioned that it was one of the series I pick up just for the art, when its drawn by Daniel Zezelj. This latest one stand alone story makes me question my judgement. While the art is superb and the colours a perect fit, the story is incredible. Really great. X ammount of years after the main story takes place, a couple of gangsters turn up to hide at a farm house and lie low. They're pretty callous and the old man lives alone and tells 'em a story of when he was a kid, racing horses in a touring racing team. The reveal at the end isn't necessary (though I still shalln't spol it) but if you've read 100 bullets, this is similar to the Kennedy issue. Pick it up, if only when Zezelj is drawing it. Great stuff!
Along with Loveless from Gosh I received issue one of Suitcase Nuke #1. The comic's funny, very well drawn with creative layouts and story telling. I don't, however, know what Wangchung is. Regardless the comic was a really pleasant surprise (I've met him) and I recommend checking out his stuff at http://crowleeey.blogspot.com.
The book also inspired me to flex my polish poster muscle for the first time in ages, the result of which you can see at the bottom of this post.

Also funny Zeb Wells and Bachalo finished their three part Spidey story this week in Amazing 557. This is very much the kind of story which would've bee given a mini or have been relegated to Tangled Web (a place for good solid Spidey stories which don't fit into the convoluted continuity). However, thanks to a load of convoluted continuity, there's now a new unconvoluted continuity so while some stuff might go over your head, you can enjoy what you're reading. As my mate Anthony pointed out, if Spidey was that good every month, we wouldn't miss it. Chris Bachalo's seamingly involved in the colouring of the book, from what I understand, directing the colourist so it looks like he coloured it himself. It looks great, though yet again Tim Townsend ducks out just before the end of the three issues and while Bachalo's pretty hard to overpower/ruin, the art suffers a little for it. Could be worse though, Barry Kitson's on the next arc.
Couple of last mentions of things I can't scan cause it'll f*ck the books up.
The new recoloured Killing Joke has a healthy pricetag but is really gorgeous. I had the book in black and white, which I love, but would never have imagined anyone else colouring it other than the very lively John Higgins. I had a happy moment at Alan Moore's signing at Gosh when he agreed that the Batman Annual story he did with George Freeman (love letter coming soon) was a better Batman story than Killing Joke. It's questionable of course whether its supposed to be a Batman story at all.
Picked up the Mad Archives volume 2 a few weeks back and though I'm dipping in and out (as I feel I have to with really old comics) it's plain gorgeous. Not much to add really, just don't assume it's the weakest link in the EC stable until you've looked at what Wally Wood's capable of with Kurtzman.
Lastly, a friend bought me a book (in the form of giving me the money for me to pick it up). I chose the collection of Michael (Heroes) Green and Denis Cowan's Batman Confidential arc. I'll give it the full review next time but so far, really liking it.

Ketchup

2008-04-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

Here we go. Brief recap of my reads from the past month due to waiting and waiting, keeping loyal before finding out my order'd been missed. For the most part I'm up to date and even read a couple of new things that I'd otherwise not have picked up.
In no particular order...

I picked up Kick Ass #1 and subsequently #2 in the out of a sense of keeping my finger on the pulse and always hoping for the best for JRJR. For the record, I get the idea that Mark Millar is 1) a really nice guy b) loves to publicise/overpublicise himself and thirdly, operates in his own bubble in the world of comics.
Every interview I've heard with him tells us how the artist he's working with is the best currently working in comics. Steve McNiven has something, Tommy Lee Edwards is a great illustrator, and Bryan Hitch has come a long way baby. John Romita Jr is probably the closest his claim comes to validity. His art on Kick Ass plays to one his many strengths which is street level. The book looks gorgeous, inked by Tom Palmer who couldn't do any wrong over such a great draftsman. The colourist Dean White also did a great job over him on Black Panther.
The problems start with what I think is Mark Millar's weak point; the high concept. Warren Ellis used to suffer the same thing for me. You come up with a great idea. "A+B=Wow. Now to add to the idea and you have a story". The problem with this is that you get the nice element of surprise at the newness in the firstplace, enjoy it all the way through but can never go back to it. Twelve issues of Wolverine by JRJR, inked by Klaus Janson and I just couldn't go back and read it.
Kick Ass already has that feeling for me. If I get a slow week I might continue with it and keep you posted but I'm not optimistic.
To get it all out of the way, I also picked up the Morrison Batman I'd missed. The story's taken an up swing and has a great Batman moment at the end to remind me why I'm sticking with it but the art attached backs up my feelings about Tony Daniel. Roll on the fill-in issues.

Now Jonah Hex, moving on and up is just a joy. I found one I hadn't noticed in Previews, while desperately seeking my fix. Plus a new one. Great, (generally) stand alone stories by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray that I'd read every month if I didn't have to pay for 'em. I'm spoiled for working in a comic shop in the past to the point of only buying books I feel I'm gonna keep wanting to go back to. Fortunately, every xth issue is drawn by Jordi Bernet who has a mixture of classic styles in his own, not the least of which is Alex Toth, and I feel a bit of John Buscema, Dan DeCarlo there too. As you'll see from the scans, it's just fuggin gorgeous. The stories give him plenty to work with, in terms of environment, characters, violence and comedy and is completely faithful to Michael Fleisher and Garcia-Lopez stories from the 70s. Pick it up!
Wolverine's on a roll. The regular monthly has a three parter by Jason (Scalped) Aaron with Wolverine hunting to kill Mystique, who's generally a treacherous bitx, and great for it, but really screwed the X-Men during the recent X-Men crossover. This was one of those great meetings of the stars. Ron Garney who's comics I always want to buy the writing lets him down, Jason Aaron who's great and, well so far so good. Lastly Wolverine who's a character I love to read done well.
Ron Garney's drawing it, at his absolute best, adapting his style for every project and to this one bringing a lot of John Buscema, shot straight from pencils which gives it a good, rough, Klaus Janson finish. His story telling is great and fluid and his Wolverine is great.
The story is twisty-turny, violent and fun and recommended for Wolverine fans, not however recommended for people that don't like Wolverine.Marvel Knights Logan is by Brian K (he's good) Vaughn and drawn by Eduardo Risso. Dean White colours and while its loud, its also good. A good water colour vibe without the apparent colour blindness that afflicts Richard (three tone) Isanove or Guy (one tone) Major. Dave Stewart makes it look easy and has plenty of peers to show that its not.

Its Risso so its gorgeous. Its Risso Wolverine so it can't go too wrong for me. Plenty of reviewers have gone on about another lost Logan love and another surprise, old enemy who needs revenging and to be honest, I don't know what they want. There's really not too much to add to the character. Get over it. Don't read comics you know aren't going to offer you something new because you only disappoint yourself.
George Pratt wrote and drew a great looking Wolverine story called Netsuke a while back. It bombed, isn't collected because...it's not following the 'formula'. Wolverine+Revenge...Wolverine+Loser at Love=...Wolverine+PLus World War 2=...
This is just a good Wolverine story...And its gorgeous.
Bachalo's just come on for his first arc on Spider-Man with the funny and fun Zeb Wells who never disappoints me and Tim Townsend inking who does him the most justice of any inker (close second of Richard Friend).
I, for one, don't care about Spider-Man's marriage, deal with the devil, dead/dying/alive aunt. I've been seeing scans of pages here and there for a while so I was stuck for what to scan. Hence a good Spidey picture! This is one of those 'does what it says on the tin' reads. If you like the look, pick it up. I thought it was great.Paul Smith on the Spirit. I was excited by the prospect but found the experience jarring. One minute its Paul Smith, the next its Eisnery. Good fun, good Lee Loughridge colours, good fun Aragones and Evanier story...though Cooke is missed. Both Ploog and Smith, I feel, are being overly reverant in dealing with Eisner's flagship character. They could both relax a bit. Regardless, I'll stick about, though I'm really, really dreading Waldon Wong (deadline corrector) who only seems to emerge from the shadows of comics shadows to ink great artists into the ground when they can't meet deadlines.The Iron Man movie's coming and so there's a lot of Iron Man comics about. This is one of the few I jumped at. I fked up a bit and bought the issues, not banking on a collection as Joe Casey+Great Idiosyncratic Aquired Taste Art generally= Critical acclaim, commercial flop.
Great, contempory, year one type story by Casey, incredible art by Eric Canete (see the blog links above) and DAVE STEWART on colours! The quality starts there! Saturfaction guaranteed! Seek it out or buy the book in a couple of months!
To be continued with All Star Supes, New Horizon Special and Action Comics.

Absent Without Leave

2008-04-07T03:03:00.000-07:00

Hello cruel world,
Contrary to my slanderous accusations of poor couriers causing delays here in Barcelona, it was in fact a clerical error at my comics shop here that left me without comics for a month : (
I've got a couple of Jonah Hexs, Iron Man Enter The Mandarin, Amazing Spider-Man, Killing Joke Reissue, The Spirit, Batman, Action Comics,Wolverine, Logan, All Star Superman and Kick Ass.
I'm now up to date and will get a load of reviews up over the next few days. In the meantime, here's one of those reminders that no matter how much we love to see creators working on their own stuff (particularly Mignola), there's something about seeing 'em cut loose on Kirby, Ditko etc.
These images are from the Upper Deck Trading Cards so you're probably seeing these bigger than published size.
Watch this Space!

Last weeks reads

2008-03-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

The amazing work of Spanish couriers means my comics arrived very late. So here I am the day before (hopefully) getting my new ones, giving opinions on what everyone else has already read.
Anyway...
To begin with a non review.
Batman by Grant Morrison may hold up better upon hindsight. The run started with 'superstar' Andy Kubert on the art who seems like a nice guy and has a distinctive style that really does very little for me. It's very typical of current DC (and Marvel to a certain extent) to tell us how awesome someone is when all the evidence in front of you tells you otherwise. We then got a great three parter by J H Williams with Dave Stewart to show us how good it could be before new 'superstar' Tony Daniel came on as the regular artist with Guy Major colouring.
Now my understanding of the logic behind this decision is that he can do a monthly book with a cool style.
The problem for me is that he doesn't have a cool style. His art is jarringly ugly and I would go so far as to say he was better in '93 on X-Force. It was actually an alright style for the time, Following Greg Capullo (when HE was of interest) and before Adam Pollina. Hence the non review. After wincing through the first few parts, wishing I needed glasses so I could take them off, I then had to read the just plain rubbish Ras Al Ghul crossover and called it a day. This week the first one I didn't order came out and I'd like to read it but I can't spend money on it.
I probably will later though...it's Grant Morrison on Batman and I wanna know what happens : )
Continuing with Batman, though one I've read this time, All Star Batman & Robin #9 hit the shelves and continues to show that while Frank Miller never seems to disappoint every time he opens his mouth lately, he still writes really entertaining comics.
At some point it became fine for me to like Jim Lee's art again. He's as much of the reason I got into American comics at sixteen as Image was responsible for me seeking out good comics elswhere (Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, Europe etc). It seems to me very much that if he's got Scott Williams inking him, you're all right. I even ended up buying the Absolute Hush as a present for my inner child and while it's a crap read, it's nice seeing Jim Lee experimenting with styles and keeping both himself and me interested. He's doing this even more-so in All-Star Batman.
The comic is a real guilty pleasure. I actually enjoy it. That's my review. If I analyse it too hard I'll find I've very little good to say about it but I do enjoy it and recommend it...(if you're me or someone who found you enjoyed DK2 despite yourself).

The post midlife crisis reboot of Action Comics by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner was troubled from the start by delays, all of which would seem to be the fault of Adam Kubert who turned in fantastic work with colours by Dave 'satisfaction guaranteed' Stewart. I really can't imagine what could have caused delays so huge as to have them keep the series going in the meantime and elect to finish his first (only) story arc in an Annual. I liked it and am looking forward to the end of it.
Anyway, in the meantime we've had a great, strange, Bizarro story by Eric Powell and they've also welcomed as the new regular penciller Gary Frank. I've never been a huge Gary Frank fan, marginalising him as "solid" and once he started getting inked by Top Cow inker Jonathan Sibal a few years back, I thought that was the end. However, the current Action Comics arc has been gorgeous, really. We've got Christopher Reeves as Superman, interesting page design and colours by Dave McCaig bringing it all together. The story, for one not at all up to speed on the Legion, has been great fun and I'm looking forward to good long run on the comic I thought I'd never be able to buy.
Number 1 of Rasl, the new Jeff Smith series also hit and was very well received, by me. The printing's a bit sh*t and while I prefer Jeff Smith's work in black and white, the pinting left it all a bit dark grey and white. Only criticism. I thought the story was a great start which got me really interested but the experience was too short. As you can read anywhere, its a sci-fi adventure about an art thief who can jump through dimensions to nick the same thing various times. This takes a lot out of him and so he's got to drink, smoke and meditate before getting back into the swing of things. This is the premise of the series and is pretty much all we get from the first issue so you kind of read it with a sense of de ja vu. Two months till number 2.

Comic Review 27/02/08

2008-02-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

As suggested by my friend Anthony 'the great white' Hope-Smith, here begins my reviewing bit. I'll be reviewing the new comics I've bought or or the old comics I've read (thanks to my obsessive online shopping to recollect everything that ever made an impression on me). I'm finished with buying old tut like crazy and now I get to start reading it.
This'll be weekly (weakly) written and will be as long as my pile of comics at Freaks is high.

First up is the latest Loveless, no 22 by Azzarello and regular fill-in artist Daniel Zezelj. This is a series, that much like DC's Jonah Hex, I started to pick up because it was drawn by someone who's work I love and a writer who's work I generally like. I generally pick up comics depending on who's drawing them.
With Loveless I read the first issue when I worked in a comic shop and could do so for free. It was good but Marcelo Fuisin, the original regular artist, does nothing for me so I passed. I've now a few issues of the title because Daniel Zezelj comes along every couple of issues and draws great stand-alone stories with his stylistic, high design, heavy blacked art. His story telling is great and the high design doesn't interfere with reading great Brian Azzarello character pieces.
The latest issue opens with convicts shitting in the woods. THERE's character. The two chained together convicts are on the run across swamps and up mountains. The language is strong as you'd expect from Brian Azzarello and I've yet to read one of these fill-ins that hasn't held it's own as a story and left me wishing I could get passed my art magpie to read the whole series.

The Immortal Iron Fist Orson Randall and the Green Mist Of Death is next up and I won't be typing that again. I picked up the trade paperback of 'The Last Iron Fist Story' by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction with art by David 'Aha!' Aja, a while back. I'd heard good things but not enough to invest in the hardcover. I kinda wish I had upon hindsight. The art's great, dark and distinct, with nice storytelling and nothing more than Matt Hollingsworth colours so, yeah, easy on the eyes. The story is something else. Having read Matt Fraction's sublime Casanova (with art by the great Gabriel Ba) I knew the series would easily combine action, and science-philosophy without shoving it down your throat. Like the best Grant Morrison work you can take it at face value and enjoy it or just keep digging to see how many levels he's firing on. None of this mentions Ed Brubaker who's work is the gift that keeps on giving, bringing pulpy and mystery(/y) stories to established characters and their world.
This one-shot is written by Matt Fraction on his own and, to be honest I'd forgotten I'd ordered it. Marvel comics, slightly more than DC in general, drive me up the f*ckin' wall for all the adverts, largely comic themed (to interupt even more!). I'm not fussed about comics versus trades apart from monthly comics being printed on crap paper and full of adverts. Yet I ended up with the one-shot. I'd probably just read the trade when I ordered. The issue's by four art teams but the most impressive (for me) is pencilling Nick Dragotta with Mike Allred drawing all over the it. I loved Allred at one point (Dark Horse Madmad, Red Rocket 7 era) but went off his art when he began using less and less black in collaboration with his wife, the great colourist Laura Allred. This art takes me back a bit reminding me what I liked and nudges me back towards buying all the stuff I passed on over the last few years. Russ Heath paints a great chapter and Stefan Gaudiano, regular inker of Michael Lark on Daredevil draws nice too. The whole thing holds together really well and leaves me wishing I bought the issues every month rather than waiting. Following the early 20th century/pulpy incarnation of Iron Fist versus an ambiguous enemy. The stories solid and adds depth to the Iron Fist history while always looking forward.
Kaare Andrew's GREAT cover gives me hope of seeing him working on the interiors at some point.

Lastly but not leastly is the latest Fear Agent trade which I finished reading this morning. I re-read the first couple of trades before reading this third collection which has made me a fan for life, I think. Rick Remender first came to my attention as the friend of Kieron Dwyer. Then he wrote loads of comics I never got around to reading and drawing some too. During a spare half hour I read the first issue of Fear Agent at http://www.imagecomics.com and enjoyed it enough to pick up the first trade. Tony Moore's art was first seen (by me) on Image's Walking Dead, which I really liked. A strong sense of storytelling and a manly approach to his cartooning, its really engaging stuff. When he's not drawing it Jerome Opeña is who renders the whole thing with the same level of action focussed storytelling as Tony Moore, but different. It ALWAYS feels consistent.
The book is genuinely funny, genuinely sad and relentless in it's telling of Earth's fall at the hands of two alien races. It's all told from the point of view of the protagonist Heath Huston, a Texan with drink dependancy issues a well of loss and no aversion to violence following his principles. The Jack Davis quote on the back of the collection says it fine "Fear Agent is just beautiful, I couldn't put it down. God Bless him I wish Harvey Kurtzman was around to see it"

Rick Leonardi Part 3

2008-02-24T11:20:00.000-08:00

Just before going into the final part of this bootlegged interview, I should remind everyone that this interview was published in February 2005, and the upcoming work mentioned has long since been and gone. The Star Wars mini series he mentions towards the end of the interview was good fun. He's done a few issues of Superman with Kurt Busiek, inked by Dan Green (for old times' sake?), he did a fantastic JLA story focusing on the Martian Manhunter, inked by Sean Phillips, which was a great fit (but with overly heavy colours). Most recently we got an issue of Witchblade (above) inked by Kevin Nowlan which I've yet to have in my hands but looks to be a really nice mixture of what one expects from both Leonardi and Nowlan (with colours by Dave McCaig). Coming up currently we can 'look forward' to more Superman and Supergirl work. I'm sure it'll be nice enough looking but I personally hope for more Batman related work. Regardless, as long as the editors that be keep giving him work I'll be along for the ride.
One last note regarding one great book not included in the scans, Green Lanter Vs Aliens. Great book, decent inks and great Dave Stewart colours but I've got the trade, which I couldn't scan. Check it out!
Dolmen: Let's talk about your work for DC comics. After spending most of your career working for DC, at some point you decided to move to DC. Why?
Leonardi: It was during the bankrupcy era of Marvel when they made radical changes in the editorial staff. What occured to me was that in just one day I found that all of the editors that figured in my agenda, those that I could call looking for work, disappeared from Marvel. By luck, one of those that went to Marvel called me. At first he gave me a little work and put me in conact with other people. After, Joey Cavalieri arrived at DC and then I had a couple of contacts. I was lucky in that Greg Land went to Crossgen and left Nightwing free so that I had to do a couple of quick issues of Nightwing. Later another couple of creators went to Marvel and again I had to fill in for a a few issues. It wasn't that they gave me any kind of prize rather that they knew I was there and that I could do a good job on time.
Dolmen: At that time you were part of No Man's Land. It wasn't your first experience with crossovers (I think you worked on some mutant crossover) but do you like crossovers?
Leonardi: I think that it's difficult for a writer to tell his story right after someone else and finish it so that someone else can carry on where he finished, but for the artists it's a real probelm to adjust costumes and environments so that they're the same as the other artists.
Dolmen: Do you like working with Chuck Dixon?
Leonardi: Yeah. Chuck fits very well with my way of working because he's a veteran and experienced enough not to tell an artist more than he needs to know. He doesn't tell you what the character's thinking or that how to focus the scene rather he describes person's doing full stop.
Dolmen: Some of us believe that he's a good writer but he always bases his stories on the same structure and that hampers the originality.
Leonardi: You could be right. His speciality are crime stories, in those that might have superheores implicated but they have a lot of plice intrigue. En the case of Nightwing that haas a certain logic, in that Dick grayson is a policeman himself, but on other occasions not so much. Anyway, I like Chuck's work a lot from my point of view as an artist, he's a straight forward guy, he doesn't involve himself in my work and knows what he wants. The rest, it's up to the readers to decide.
Dolmen: I believe that you worked with Devin Grayson too, right?
Leonardi: Yeah. Her strongpoint is the enthusiasm she put into Nightwing (he's her favourite character). In fact, she changed her name and is called Grayson in honour of the character (at least that's what I heard). Her biggest problem is that at times she thinks she's writing a movie and you find camera movements seperated panel to panel as if it were a film, something that's used to great excess unecessarily in the story.
Dolmen: You've drawn Batgirl, a character relatively new and difficult to draw, in that she's got her face completely covered and the face lacks expression. Did it help that you'd drawn Spider-Man in the past when you were confronted with her?
Leonardi: Spider-Man's been with us long enough that people imagine in part the expression based on what he says or thinks. In anyway, her body language is very important and at the moment of expressing one thing or another that also works for Batgirl.
Dolmen: Maybe Spider-Man's eyes account for a lot of the expression that Batgirl lacks completely...
Leonardi: I believe that the dialogue that Stan Lee and all those who've followed him are also a fundemental part of the characterisation and when you have a character like Batgirl, who you can't make speak, the thing is much more difficult. In anyway, it's a challenge for the artist and the character has potencial and isn't simply a female Batman.
Dolmen: What about Birds Of Prey?
Leonardi: It could be a great series. Everything about Barbera, a woman of action who sees herself obligated to live the rest of her life in a wheelchair is a theme difficult to handle. I don't know if the associations for the disabled are very active in Spain or not, but in the US there's a lot of sensitivity to respect and you never know exactly how to sink your teeth into the subject. I don't know why Dick and Barbera stopped going out, if it's because she was in a wheelchair or what, but the implications for that are strong and nobody has touched the theme further. And if he stayed with her? Would he do it out of guilt? Is that better? I tell you, it's a great theme that no-one's approached with valor.
Dolmen: Let's talk about your inkers. Terry Austin inked over you on Cloak and Dagger and at the time he must have been one of the most popular inkers...
Leonardi: Terry got really involved with the characters up to the point of writing stories for the series. He tried to keep it going as long as possible. At the time I thought that they were stories a little silly, but surprisingly I ended up hooked and it made me realise that I was having a good time. We're still in touch. It occurs to me to call him once in a while and we talk. He not much of a talker and at times he's isolated and alone. I recieve more calls from him when there are changes in the industry or he's worried about something. It's something that happens to everyone.
Dolmen: Do you know why he's disappeared a little from the spotlight? By all accounts he continues to be one of the best inkers or at least better than many others that are working on big series...
Leonardi: I completely agree that he's still one of the best. One of the things that happened was that with the change in paper from that new print paper, really absorbant (which was really good with his style of fine pointed inking) he lost a bit of his appeal, and it looked too fine on the high quality paper and the drawings didn't turn out too well.
Dolmen: Bob Wiacek also inked over you at times and is another inker who's practically disappeared from view today.
Leonardi: Bob used a different technique. While Terry uses a black ink really dark and fine, I believe Bob uses some kind of Rotring. The results of Bob's inking is a lot less attractive than Terry's, although it gains a lot when printed.
Dolmen; We know that you like Jesse Delperdang's inks. Can you tell us what are his good points?
Leonardi: Jesse is one the best inkers today. He can ink with thick strokes or fine strokes. I think he's the guy who best known how to interpret my pencils.
Dolmen: What writers would you like to work with in the future?
Leonardi: I'm not really up to date with who are the hot writers today. I don't get those bundles of free comics anymore that the publishers used to send me it I don't feel like buying too many. I think it's a big problem in my career and that's that I've never tried to collaborate with any 'prestigious' writers (like Vertigo writers). It would be fun to work with a British writer and play a little with their dark tendancies.
Dolmen: I don't know, I think that you'd work well with Greg Rucka or Ed Brubaker, in that both specialise more in in telling stories with few superheroic elements and with your ability for characterisation, you could do good stories.
Leonardi: I agree. I should try it. They've always told me that editors look to me when they need characterisation: We chose you because you know how to draw different faces they've told me one time or another as if all the rest only know how to draw one face.
Dolmen: Well, talking about what the future holds. Can you tell us something about your upcoming work?
Leonardi: Star Wars. I'm going to be doing a four part mini series with Chuck Dixon which stars one of the main villains from the third part of Star Wars, Grievous.
Dolmen: Sounds interesting. May the force be with you.
Leonardi: Gracias.

Rick Leonard Part 2

2008-01-14T12:48:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note before I continue with what I now know to be part two of three of this translated Leonardi interview. It is REALLY hard to choose pages to show. Similar to someone like John Romita Jr so much of Leonardi's strength is in his story telling so rather than grabbing splashes, I've tried to reflect what for me is the best of Leonardi. It's also become apparent to me doing this that, to date, His Batgirl run is the best run of comics he's done. The writing's nice, his art is great, Jesse Delperdang's inks are a perfect fit, Jason Wrights colours are gorgeous. Now I'm already starting to debate with myself (but what about Spider-Man 2099?) but I'll leave it there.

DOLMEN: You also did an issue of Fantastic Four 2009
LEONARDI: I think it was an attempt to clarify a little the whole history of the 2099 universe. I think the whole 2099 universe was created against the opinion of a lot of professionals. The problem with stories set in the future is that if they have the smallest success, the reader begins to assume that its the future that awaits their characters and that its something fixed and unchangeable. For example, if Miguel is the son of Peter Parker and there’s an issue of Amazing Spider-Man in which he apparently dies, the fans will know that its not true because he still hasn’t had this son that they know he’s going to have. The reason expressed against stories set in the future is they undermine dramatic possibilities, which is really nonsense, as no-one ever said that this was necessarily the future timeline of what we know as the real Marvel Universe.
DOLMEN: Its funny to think that Tom DeFalco was against stories set in the future because he’d later be the main architect of another future Marvel Universe, Spider-Girl’s, which he’s been with for eight years.
LEONARDI: Well, to me at least, they always said it was Tom himself who was against the 2099 Universe. In any case, whoever moved the strings to finish the series would be someone in the upper levels because those types of decisions are made there.
I believe that the main prejudice against future stories comes from Dark Knight, Frank Miller’s mini series which gives us an old Batman and although in theory it didn’t influence the Batman of the present, many writers began to write stories which appeared to be inspired more by Dark Knight than by what Batman had been until then. I don’t think this is Miller’s fault, rather a lack of imagination of those writers.
DOLMEN: Changing the subject a little, you did a few stories for Marvel Comics Presents. Were they part of your unconcerned attitude for working on a career or was it just what they offered you?
LEONARDI: A little of everything. On the other hand they were stories that looked interesting, remembering that they were eight pages and had to be done relatively quickly as the series was weekly. It was excellent training to learn to draw faster…
DOLMEN: Did you not have some kind of safety net of time just in case one day your sick or something?
LEONARDI: You had a little time in reserve but not too much. It was a very immediate job, much more than your classic monthly book. With a comic book of 22 pages I’m almost paralysed until I get to the most important part of the story and I structure everything from there while the episodic nature of a serial stops you thinking in terms of the climax, which hasn’t necessarily even been written yet. You have to focus on a different kind of urgency.
DOLMEN: In Marvel Comics Presents you drew a Colossus story along with Ann Nocenti which was also inked by P Craig Russell and was one of your best works of that peridod. Would you agree?
LEONARDI: Craig Russell’s inks are magnificent: he’s a genius. He’s one of the few artists in this industry who looks out of the window. When I draw a tree, I try to get them to look like trees. I lived in the East when I drew most of those pages and a big part of the nature that I drew was what I was out my window. There are a lot of artists who have never left New York and the only tree they know how to draw is a Christmas tree.
Ann is a really interesting writer. Almost unique. She never begins a story because of a character or an interesting idea, rather because of a message. She’ll then fit the message to the character and from there, arrive at the point of the story.
In the Colossus story she uses the nature of Colossus as a citizen of the Soviet Union to underline the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of American society and to a certain extent I believe that in the same way she was critical to American society she should also be aware of the problems of Soviet society. Colossus isn’t an idiot and he couldn’t say that he wasn’t aware of Soviet totalitarianism or of the injustices committed in his own country, but in this case I think that what you can see is that the way Ann writes is a bit of a cheat.
I think in Daredevil (another series that we worked together on) she got it; to explore psychological aspects of the character, like in the story which she uses the blindness of the character and his ability to penetrate the psyche of the people around him.
To be sure, when Ann gives importance to combining the message and the character, she has a really good story, but when both aren’t strong, the thing doesn’t end up working.
DOLMEN: Do you think Ann Nocenti’s way of working is compatible with superhero comics, with the current market?
LEONARDI: There are always independent publishers that publish all kinds of material. I think there are a lot of independent publishers and this means you can get to readers no problem. Today they publish more than 500 comics a month and a store has to carefully select which books they’re going to order and if they order a book no-one’s going to buy, they’re stuck with it. This is a problem with a difficult solution, but it means that a few works go almost un-noticed though they’re of high quality.
I believe Ann has pretty much abandoned the world of comics and is the editor of some magazine (High Times, a magazine related to marijuana and drug culture).
DOLMEN: There’s a moment in your career when you start to work for independent publishers like Event Comics, for whom you did Painkiller Jane. What brought you into contact with Quesada and Palmiotti?
LEONARDI: They had a great reputation and they went on the adventure of creating their own characters and they invited me to work with them. Obviously I can’t comment about the character. I think it was a character with a few possibilities…
DOLMEN: The Punisher with tits?
LEONARDI: (laughs)Yeah, they never described it to me like that. More than anything it was an experiment in working for someone that wasn’t Marvel or DC. It was enjoyable, Brian Augustyn is a great guy, married with kids, goes to church on Sunday who now runs a publisher of comics with Christian content. This was the guy who was writing Painkiller Jane so our level of commitment was similar. You’ll put me in an uncomfortable position if you ask about the Vampirella/Painkiller Jane crossover…
DOLMEN: Basically, I don’t want to be unkind but as you already said it, why the hell did you do that comic?

LEONARDI: Because I needed the money! (laughs)
DOLMEN: Another slightly risky question is how come you didn’t get more fixed work at Marvel when Quesada was made Editor in Chief, having worked with Quesada and Palmiotti in their own company?
LEONARDI: Yeah, that’s a question I’d also like to know the answer to. It’s interesting that you’re asking too. I’m not going to answer directly but I’ll tell you a story. Three years ago, I think it was at the Philadelphia comic convention, the night before at the launch party. There was a small private party for invited guests. In this bar there were two groups of people around two different people; Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti. Both were sat at two different tables with their backs to each other without speaking or looking at each other. I suppose there are things that happen in all businesses (Rick’s talking about the moment when Palmiotti and Quesada broke up their personal relationship and stopped working together on Marvel Knights. Although there’s a kind of unspoken agreement around the topic, its evident that whoever sat at the wrong table didn’t get work at Marvel).
DOLMEN: Let’s talk a little about Rampaging Hulk. What was it like working with Glen Greenberg?

LEONARDI: He was a really young guy for that at the time, a guy who had been an editor and still had a lot of fan about him. I suppose that they gave him the job as he’d read every comic published and knew the past of the character, but I think more than that a good writer’s necessary.
To understand the creation of The Rampaging Hulk you have to remember that at the time Peter David wrote The Incredible Hulk and as we’ve already said, it’s Peter’s style to make the protagonist the smartest guy in the place. What we had was a character who was not only one of the strongest beings on the planet but who also wasn’t one of the most intelligent. The fans were divided into those who followed Peter in everything he did on the series and those who wanted to return to classic Hulk forever, ‘Hulk Smash’ Hulk. So, Marvel decided to resurrect the old Hulk for the fans who missed him.
DOLMEN: Did it not have anything to do with the interest Marvel had in selling Hollywood a cinematic adaptation and wanting to show them a classic version of the character?
LEONARDI: Could be. Its definitely a good theory and I wouldn’t be the one to say its not the real reason. It would definitely explain why it only lasted six issues when we were planning a much longer run. If their main idea was to show the original idea (a kind of mix of Jeckyll and Hyde with super powers) it would work and to sell Ang Lee the project. Once sold, it wouldn’t make sense to continue with the series.
Dolmen: Another interesting fact about The Rampaging Hulk is that it’s the first time you wrote a story on one of your comics, or at least the first time you’re credited for your part in the story. How did that come about?
Leonardi: Basically what happened is that Terry Kavanagh, the editor, told us that the series was cancelled at number six and that we should try to wrap it as neatly as possible. Greenburg had been let go at issue four and an idea occurred to us for what we thought would be issues six and seven of the series. Later they told us no, the series would only last one issue more and we had to condense the story to one issue. I think it was Terry who suggested the base the story on a Navajo reserve and it just so happened that I’d been reading a lot about the Navajo culture at the time and their ceremonies. So I started to suggest things that could happen in the story (the psychodrama etc) and I think the funny thing is that it worked well as a description of the motivations of the character.
Dolmen: The main problem with Peter David’s Hulk is that while it’s a good comic, it leaves out the basic principal of the Hulk, which is little more than how we handle the violence we have inside us and the different ways to express it…

Leonardi: What a sentence! I think I’m not going to sleep tonight thinking about that (laughs). Seriously, you’ve got a point. This would bring us to talk about the amount of things comics can do for the reader while entertaining. Just the other day in conversation we were talking about the role of the comic book in real life. Its not so much that comics can tell us what would happen if Reed Richards discovered a cure for cancer. Rather the function that comics can assume symbolically to educate the reader or make them aware of a certain problem. This is terrain we should explore, to find something that enriches the reader while entertaining them.
Dolmen: How come you didn’t write anything following that issue?
Leonardi: Well, for the first part, nobody read Rampaging Hulk and I only contributed to the plot. I don’t consider myself a writer, other than bringing story elements occasionally and frequently doing an ‘editing’ job with the text, rewriting scenes to make them more logical. Normally the writer takes a couple of days in front of the word processor to write their story. Wel perhaps I’m not being fair and some take as long as I do in drawing it. If I pick up on errors, inconsistencies or problems with the structure, I correct those kind of things.

Seasoned Greetings

2007-12-24T02:30:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to wish any paying attention Happy Holidays. I've been busy with a Christmas present which has taken a lot of my energy but I'll get the rest of that Leonardi interview up real soon.
Also, here's what comics can do for Christmas, from upstanding Christian Rob Liefeld's comic company 'Maximum' (Not 'Awesome' or 'Extreme', his other companies but 'Maximum').
I think it's a satirical statement on how Christmas has become too commercialised, though it may have come with a Scratch and Sniff Green Santa Variant, which thinking about it, I'd pay money for.
Have a good one.
Billy

Rick Leonardi 1

2007-11-25T13:09:00.000-08:00

Rick Leonardi is an absolute favorite artist of mine. He's anatomy is spot on and his charcters dance across the page when in motion. His story telling is great, never sacrificed to show a moment of flash or pin-up. In fact choosing images to scan along with the purloined interview I'm about to publish, was very difficult as you've really got to read his stuff to get it.
I don't buy everything he does as a shitty inker or colours really break my heart and I can't look at it. He's an artist who an inker can make or break and has had the good fortune to be inked by P Craig Russell, Al Williamson, Terry Austin, Kent Williams and Jesse Delpergang. He's had other good inkers like Dan Green and Mark Pennington but I feel the above really complimented his style to perfection, building on the bones that he laid out. The shitty inkers I won't mention as it's not good form! He's also been coloured by Dave Stewart which is a sign of quality and Jason Wright's subtle colours on Batgirl were also particularly well suited!
He spent years kicking around Marvel doing fill-in issues and had a great couple of moments at DC with Jesse Delpergang inking him to perfection on Batgirl and Nightwing.
He's just finished a short run on Superman which was nice but more notably a five issue JLA story arc with Sean Phillips inking which was a joy to behold and reminicent of Kent Williams' great sloppy, stainy inks on Uncanny X-Men #252 (though the afore mentioned shitty colours come into play a bit but not enough to ruin it).

I've taken the liberty of translating an interview from Dolmen magazine with Rick Leonardi. It's gonna be clunky because it was conducted in English, translated to Spanish and I've translated it back. My motivation is the seeming lack of interest from the American market in recognising the man's abilities while most of my friends recognise him as a modern great. He came onto the scene around the same time as Mignola and Art Adams but never achieved their level of commercial or critical success. The interview is pretty candid in regards to the writers he's worked with and the projects he's worked on and I think shows him as a cool guy!

Published in Spanish in Dolmen #109, Feb 2005. Originally conducted by Koldo Azpitarte (with thanks to Yavhe Mediavilla for their help). Translated back to the English by me. Part one of two maybe three.
Note: I don't have any of the early ropey stuff to scan and I've holes in my colection where the production made all comics look ugly in the nineties. Thus all the scans are of good stuff rather than images relevant to the text. But that's okay, right...?

Dolmen: We like to begin our interviews with a question that's become a tradition over the years. When did you begin to read comics?
Leonardi: I think the first comic that I read was Enemy Ace by Joe Kubert. I must have been about six or seven years old. Shortly after, I read Deadman by Neal Adams. Not a bad start, right? Joe Kubert and Neal Adams.
Dolmen: The problem is that from there it's difficult to find better comics.
Leonardi: That's what happened to me. In fact from then on I began to focus on who it was that drew each story and bought comics for the art rather than the story. If an artist left a series I left too, as it was the only reason to buy the series.
Dolmen: Did you continue reading comics in your teenage years?
Leonardi: Yes, I remember that I read Spider-Man, for example. I read Amazing Spider-Man from #110 to #120 and really enjoyed Gil Kane's pencils, like John Romita's work, more than anything inking over Gil. It was then when they killed Gwen Stacy an I stopped reading the series; it was so frustrating that I didn't go back to reading Spider-Man for many, many years. I've always been interested in comics and never wanted to work as anything but a comic artist since my childhood.
Dolmen: Your first published work was Thor #303. What age were you when that happened?
Leonardi: I was still at University. It was January of 1980 Jim Shooter himself at Marvel that hired me. Number 303 was one of those archive stories, a fill in, a story out of the continuity of the regular series. I drew the issue in Spring 1980 and later moved to New York. I went to Marvel with the pages under my arm, they saw them and while they were looking at them they were saying "Look, this panel here isn't bad but change this one". It was horrible, I'd been drawing this issue for three months and had put everything into every panel but I was still young and needed to improve.
Dolmen: The inks didn't help much...
Leonardi: Chic Stone was a veteran inker, but I don't think anybody considered him a genius exactly...
Dolmen: You didn't have much luck with your subsequent work either, the mini series Vision and Scarlet Witch, where the inkers were Akin and Garvey. I remember when I read that series I thought: How can it be possible that not even between two guys are they capable of inking a comic? (laughs).
Leonardi: When an artist is starting outt they don't offer him the best inkers. In the case of Akin and Garvey, I think I remember that they were beginners like me, so it was all an experiment, a test to see if we had what it takes or not. I was surpised by the effect the story had and the fact that there are people who remeber it today. I don't think the inks were great: they were heavy handed and very busy, but my pencils weren't all that either.
Dolmen: It's interesting that you've commented that Kubert, Adams and Kane were among your early reading because, although from the start you've had a distinct and personal style, one can see the influence of these three artists in your work.
Leonardi: I would add that there are also other influences. Further to the three comics we've spoken about Prince Valient, Flash Gordon, Tarzan by Hogarth, Eisner's Spirit and Steve Canyon by Caniff also found their way into my hands. All of these individuals reinvented the language which we use daily and were a huge influence on my development as an artist. It's incredible to me, the amount of artists today who have no idea who those guys were.
Dolmen: From your beginnings until now, you've never tried to ink your own work. Why is that?
Leonardi:For me to ink is like doing a drawing twice. Inkings not the same as drawing. Its like the difference between speaking Spanish or German. They're two completely different languages, There are people who can speak both lanuages and I have a lot of respect for them...I settle for pencilling.
Dolmen: Your characters' faces are extremely distinctive. You can tell that you've drawn a comic by any one face. In an industry like comics in which a lot of artists copy the way of drawing faces from one artist or another, has this ever been a problem for you?
Leonardi:No, I've never had any problems like that. I don't think it's so difficult to carve out a career if you meet certain minimum requirements. I remember speaking to John Romita Sr., which was during his many years as Art Director at Marvel, and he said to me that the secret of success in the world of comics (and he had a long and fruitful career) was that in every page of five or six panels is to have at least one panel which is something new or fresh. The rest of the panels can be standard, the kind you can draw in your sleep. It worked for John Romita and he's a genuine master of the form. I still don't see it so clearly; for me every panel is a battle, I can't draw a flat standard panel, the story dictates when I have to find a new solution. It takes a lot for me to find the rhythm of the story and it's rare that I can fall back on that advice.
Dolmen:Let's talk about Cloak and Dagger. Do you consider them your creation?
Leonardi: Well, their designer was Ed Hannigan who drew them for the first time in Peter Parker. I had to get involved in the project on the fly and did an important bit of redesign work. I reinterpreted the characters physically so that they seemed more like the fifteen year olds they were supposed to be, trying to make them move and appear more like they'd been described. Furthermore I made changes in Dagger's outfit and to Cloak's cape, moslty in the way it moves (more integrated to the character). I made contrast stronger between both charcters, the light in front of the darkness and all that. I can't say I created them but I believe they're also partly mine.
Dolmen: You drew the mini series and after began to draw the regular series. Do you think they were strong enough characters to maintain their own series or perhaps they'd have worked better as supporting characters y stars of the occasional mini series or special?
Leonardi: That's a good question. I think that Cloak and Dagger were a great concept, a really good idea, but I don't think they were characters capable of starring in a number of indefinite stories. They were created to fight against their own tragedy, drugs, and evidently this greatly limited the type of story they could tell. You could make them travel, change the environment and make them fight against drug trafficking, but in essence it was going back to telling the same story as the mini series, a story that in my opinion was really good but didn't need to be continued.
Bill Mantlo introduced a subplot in the series which was that Dagger wanted to leave the life of a super hero and return to a normal life. I think that was a subconcious reflection by Mantlo himself in that he wanted to say to the reader something like 'Don't think that this is going to last very long', a sign of how limited the possibilites were of the characters.
Dolmen: Di you have any kind of contribution to the plots of the series or did Bill write and you drew and that was it?
Leonardi: Our way of working was something strange. Normally I receive a writers plot and I try to draw what the writer asks of me in his text. Sometime I think that the writer is asking things of me that I can't draw for them or that there's a better way of doing it and in those case I try to correct them on the go, something which over the years has caused me problems. With Bill I never had any kind of problem and yes, you could say I contributed a little to the stories of the series although I was never going to be credited for it.
Dolmen: Speaking of Bill Mantlo, there's a question I always ask artists that worked with him and I've never found a definitive answer. What happened to him?
Leonard: It's a sad story. I suppose you know he was hit by a car, right? While he was writing Cloak and Dagger and some other series, he went to study Rights at University, he wanted to be a lawyer. When he was hit he'd left comics to make a career in Law. Bill went into a coma and I don't know more than that. I don't know if he woke from the coma or if he died.
Dolmen:I think that Mantlo is one of Marvel's best writers of the seventies and the fact that he'd left the industry (and his subsequent accident) have made it so that many young people don't know his work today.
Leonardi: I imagine that you've searched on the internet and all that, right?
Dolmen: Yes, of course, it was the first thing I did and the only one who gave definite information was Tony Isabella
Leonardi: The truth is you make me a little sad for not worrying more about the subject.
Dolmen: Continuing with Mantlo and retreading your collaboration with him...did you like the way he wrote?
Leonardi: I think he was an interesting one. A writer who could at the same time write a series like Vision and Scarlet Witch, wrapped up in a continuity in which gives little room creatively speaking, and have fun with it, who at the same time wrote a series like Cloak and Dagger in which the social elements played a fundamental part. He also wasn't one of these people that only lives in the world of comics, that had a life outside of comics. He didn't try to write superhero comics for thirty or forty years, rather one fine day decided to leaveit all (and probably because he earned very little). He was unique in more than one sense.
Dolmen: Changing the subject, based on a little sketch by Mike Zeck, you gave shape to the deign of Spider-Man's black costume.
Leonardi: Mike's sketch needed changes as it was a very preliminary work. It was Jim Shooter who gave me the task of developing it. Jim Shooter was a great editor but he had his favorites and I think that one of the reasons I survived at Marvel of that age was that Jim cared for the people that he'd hired and he took me under his protection. I was very sorry when Jim stopped being Editor in Chief at Marvel but it wasn't so bad because he was replaced by Tom DeFalco.
Dolmen: You had worked with Defalco on Spider_man so you already knew him. What do you think of him as a writer?
Leonardi: He's a very traditional writer. That's to say he wrote in the traditional Marvel style consisting of a page to page description, leaving a lot of room for the artist. For example, it was typical in his stories to find 'Page 7 to 14: Fight. Spider-man wins' and with that you had to choreograph the complete fight.
Dolmen: Considering that you were pretty accepted by the public, following your work on Cloak and Dagger you haven't another regular series, rather you've done fill-ins. What was this down to?
Leonardi: Well, it was a financial consideration. I wasn't married and I didn't need to much money to survive. I could draw a comic book and and live for a month or to on the profit, goining from one place to the next and doing whatever I wanted. Then, when the money ran out I'd draw another issue and it was a good time.
At the time, Marvel were publishing fifteen issues a year of the X-Men and they were always looking for someone who wanted to do these three additional issues a year. I had no problem drawing them and it was as simple as drawing them and being paid. I never had any royalties (they came in the nineties) and you tried to do your job well and on time. Nothing more.
I've never had insurance of any kind. If I don't work I don't get paid and no-one'll pay me if I have an accident or illness that stops me doing it. I that time I was travelling the east coast of america, I did a lot of Skiing, hitch-hiking, hooked up with women (laughs)
Dolmen: You weren't as bothered about making a career rather enjoying life, right?
Leonardi: That's it. It wasn't until the nineties that I got married and began to replan my career in a more proffesional way. It was then that I did a regular series with Spider-Man 2099.
Dolmen: You also worked a lot with the mutants. Did you enjoy those characters or was is a way to get paid better?
Leonardi: It certainly wasn't for the royalties. When they began to pay royalities I'd already left the X-Men (or rather they made me leave). The best royalties I made were for Spider-Man en 1989 and it was because we were in the middle of a speculator bubble. It was the time when Image started.
Dolmen: What can you tell us about Claremont's scripts?
Leonardi: If you're going to draw a script for Claremont you have to be clear that you've been invited to another person's world and if you accept that, perfect, but you have to work according to the rules of that world. The problem with Chris is that he often comes into conflict with people that have their own ideas. It's got nothing to do with that some ideas are better than others rather 'different'. In those cases its the job of the artist to shut up and draw, especially if those stories are written by someone as capable as Chris.
Dolmen: They say his scripts often have more information than the artist is capable of putting on the page. How do you work it out to adapt the text to your needs?
Leonardi: It was very educational for me to work with those dense plots and it obliged me to reduce and stick two or three actions into just one panel. The problem a lot of artists have with Chris is that they read the plot saying 'this is one panel, this is another and then they realise they have ten panels per page and they go 'I can't draw this!', without realising that they don't have to do it if they're capable of condensing three actions into one panel. It's good training and I recommend it to any starting artist.
Dolmen: Let's talk a little about Spider-Man 2099. You designed the costume yourself, right?
Leonardi:Yes, this time yes. There were initially four series set in 2099. Spide-Man was one of them, the one that was supposed to be the first published. They wrote a 'bible' which showed all the details that a writer or artist should know about a series 2099, like the type of transport, technology, architecture and loads of other details. I believe that with Spider-Man 2099 we were serious with the atmosphere and we did a solid job respecting the premises the 'bible' had. The idea was that New York was so tall that the new buildings covered the old buildings, in a way that the old city still existed beneath the highways of the new and that it divided the society between the rich and the poor. Remember all of these technologcal advances had to be designed and I suppose a it was an important job to check that everything worked that every aspect was consistent.
The problem was that while we forced ourselves to make sure that our comic fit in the world they'd described to us, others didn't do it which made the slight consistency of the group redundant. For example, the vehicles moved through the air using jets or magnetic fields but not antigravity. Imagine my surprise when in Punisher 2099 I see that anti-gravity is even used in a theme park. I think the world of 2099 could have been more consistent and it would have been better.
Dolmen: How was your collaboration with Peter?
Leonardi: Good! I think Miguel O'Hara was a really memorable character. Peter David has his strength in his dialogue and conversations. The characters 'sound' good. His weak point is that it always the he always gives the role of the smartest guy in the room to the protagonist (regardless of whether he's writing Spider-Man or Hulk). Miguel is the hero but he's also the smartest, quickest, most together. I've asked myself many times if it could be that Peter David has a badly handled superiority complex and it's reflected in his comics. It's a shame because I believe that if anything is a little forced in the series it's the excessive perfection of the main character.
Dolmen: Another problem of the series is that it constantly opened plotlines without ever resolving any.
Leonardi: I think that the idea of the hero having adventures and ending up discovering that the villain is his father isn't too much of a new thing. Anyway, I believe that many of the stories being created didn't have a concrete objective, rather to simply try to entertain. Plus in any issue, you can see that structure isn't Peter David's strong point and he dedicates various pages to construct a gag, a joke that doesn't advance the storyline.

To be continued...

Thirty Juan Today

2007-10-10T00:20:00.000-07:00

As of today, the heady heights of my twenties are a year further away, like watching the familiar harbour of the mother country get further away as I drift to an uncertain future. I currently stand on the cold deck of the present, contemplative, knowing I'll end up down below dancing a flaming jig with the swabs in a few hours. Thirty was good to me and I've no doubt thirty one, Lucia and Barcelona will continue to treat me well.
When I was a kid, I'd sit and read from joke books to anyone dumb enough not to get out of the way. The picture is reference to one that stuck with me from the sort of racist bit that it would have seemed fine to leave in a kids joke book in the eighties.
"How do you tell the age of an englishman?...
cut off his head and count the rings."
Doesn't even make sense...

Love letters straight...from your arrrrrrt 1

2007-10-07T03:38:00.000-07:00

Kevin Nowlan is generally referred to as an 'artist's artist'. It's a dubious compliment suggesting that one's popularity doesn't match one's ability. A bit like 'You're really good! Shame no-one cares apart from me and my half dozen enthusiastic friends'. This doesn't detract from the fact that his sense of design is boggling and his use of black is unmatched apart from maybe Mike Mignola. His lettering is elegant and inimitable (once you've seen one of his logos you can spot 'em a mile off, Hellboy being one and the early nineties Dr Strange another). His colours, only ever over his own work, complete the package and his work gets better and better relative to the ammount of the above talents he gets to apply.
In a roundabout way, this brings me the topic of this love letter, Secret Origins #39, generally in demand for the Grant Morrison Animal Man short at the back.
The secret origin we get from Nowlan and Jan Strnad is that of Manbat. The story is a great little story that shows the previously unknown role that Kirk Langstrom (Manbat) played in the creation of Batman and vice versa. For Manbat's part he 'blinded' a bat's radar so it flew through the window at Wayne Manor the night Bruce Wayne was sat wondering kind of image would help him against criminals, by all accounts a cowardly, superstitious lot. Batman later wanders in on Manbat and causes the loss of the only chance of an antidote to him being a giant bat. Great stuff!
None of which addresses how flicking gorgeous the story is. Illustrated with a fair bit of Alex Toth like economy and shadows you can stick your arm through, great use of zipatone and colours that make the absolute best of the technology available at the time, the story showed Nowlan to be a definitive Batman artist.
His influence is very much felt in the Batman Adventures cartoon, particulary the earlier episodes and Nowlan was responsible for the design of Manbat for the series as well as submitting designs for Killer Croc and the Joker.
This comic is one of those which is almost painful for me to look at with the, what, fourteen pages of near perfection it is. In the eighteen years since, all we've had from Nowlan that came close is the '5 x five pages is never enough' that is Jack B. Quick and 8 gorgeous pages of Batman Black & White. There were a couple of nice bits in Details Magazine and X-Men, Gen 13 and Goon shorts and tonnes of covers.
The style he uses for covers nownowadays is quite illustrative with big figures lots of his famous cross-hatching and quite often a combination of elements slapped in the middle of an empty space. However, as this relatively recent example shows, Gotham City still seems to bring out the best in him.
Generally he gets brought out to be slap his style over, mentioning no names, not-so-remarkable pencillers (which does not including great inking over Mignola, Gil Kane (Kane's favourite inker), Jon Bogdanove, José Garcia-Lopez and Joe Quesada). In a way I should be grateful for the scraps I get but I can't help but wish for the ideal world in which he would have drawn the Mignola Hellboy/Mermaid story that was planned, or wrapped up the Man-Thing graphic novel that he came so close to finishing.
Or drawing the 144 page Adam Strange mini he was to draw (drawn by Andy Kubert in the end).
How about an issue of Batman or Solo or Plastic Man or...?
The next time we'll see Nowlan's heavy handed team-work with a fantastic penciller is over Rick Leonardi on Witchblade #112. My curiosity is well and truly piqued!
Secret Origins #39 is rarely available at one of the few of the remaining comic shops, generally really cheap 'cos no-one knows any better or at mycomicshop for $4,80 and worth every cent.

No New News Is Bad News

2007-08-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

So my next post will be the first of, if not many, then various 'Love Letters to Whoever or Whatever in The Woild'. The idea is that I'll try to focus my enthusiasm and passion for something into something, hopefully interesting to them what care and very hopefully interesting to them that don't.
It'll come soon (very) but I'm hoping to write in a 'non-ranty' way about things that I can generally only rant about.
In the meantime, here's an illustration I did for a competition I didn't win. To give an idea, they'd've reproduced it as big as a house. Would've been nice to see : (

A P BIRTHDAY

2007-07-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

Talk about your limited interest blog! This post is of interest to those who know me and or my sister. To be honest I imagine that's everyone reading (both of you!).

I believe an older sibling is there to be learned from. Kerry taught me my first (but not last) lesson in rejection. Seven years older than me, picking me up from primary school while full of contempt, I thrilled her with tales of my day but was left curious as she walked twice as fast as me, muttering all the while. While "looking after" me one evening, she dyed my Heinz spaghetti green and wouldn't let me go out to play until I finished it. You have to remember that tinned spaghetti has these foul looking lumps in it when they're red. Green, it just looks like an old man's had his morning cough into your food. The same day, however, she cut her hand open on a tin of pineapple (not for me), bled in it and had to have stitches...my first lesson in karma! (my step brother David ate the bloodied pineapple! Ha!)
It was when my first niece was born that bridges were built. We grew together through babysitting and have been close ever since.
I recommend having an older sister to anyone who has a choice. Mine is a wonder woman. You wonder how she can be so much younger than her years after bringing up such HORRIBLE kids largely on her own and making a huge success of herself all the while. You also wonder when she'll stop looking younger than you and grow old gracefully.
Happy Birthday Kerry Love Billy x

Dad's Armory

2007-07-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

Undercover, embedded in concrete, along the streets of Florence they've waited, Mussolini's Secret Robot Army. Spotted by our excitable newshound, these poor old S.O.D.s (Strategically Outside Doors) were more than willing to chat.
"Sometimes when they lean in all close, like,...you just wanna bite their fuggin' faces off" tells us semi retired Alberto Marscapone. "When you've been waiting on the call to arms for sisty years and all you get is 'il bloody postini'...oooh...I tell ya! And he always rings twice".
When Alberto's questioned on how he looks back at his life, we see a philosophical side of the six eyed killing machine. "I've seen 'em come, I've seen 'em go...I've seen 'em come back again, but I'm still here..."
Regrets, just one "Six eyes and a penchant for death and ol' Geppetto stuck me with a brass mustache!"
Ciao, Alberto. Don't let 'em get you down!

Well Come, Well Come

2007-07-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

This is my blog, I'm a member of that elite crowd of people that know a bit more about computers than those who simply have emails and that means I can put my opinions up for the world to see. I can invite ridicule and throw my virtual hat into the virtual arena from on top of my virtual soap box, make mistakes in the MOST public of forums and upset strangers.
I'll be updating as much as possible, as often as I've something to say.
I'll be talking comics really old, old and new, films and music that pique my interest and maybe a bit of my view from Spain.

The above is a doodle from a year and a bit back. I don't like that the people in cities get more and more isolated, plugging themselves into whatever will have them, to avoid human contact. It's like a form of contraception. Unfortunately I'm getting to be part of the MP3 and a free newspaper crowd too... : (