KILLOGY #1 — Clipping Jamooks

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Posted by: Abhay Khosla on April 12, 2013

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Abhay

ALAN ROBERT’S KILLOGY: GUILTY PARTIES #1 Cover C (possibly KILL-SKULL-SYMBOL-GY) by Alan Roberts and Denton J. Tipton, based on the likenesses of Frank Vincent, Brea Grant, and Marky Ramone, published by IDW Publishing in October 2012:

I would just like to describe this comic to you.  That’s all.

Marky Ramone is one of the three “stars” of KILLOGY #1, a recent comic published by IDW Publishing which utilizes his likeness. Ramone was the drummer for The Ramones. According to his bio in the comic, “in 2009 he launched his first worldwide clothing line with Tommy Hilfiger. In 2010, Marky shared his recipe for pasta sauce by introducing ‘Marky Ramone’s Brooklyn’s Own Pasta Sauce.”  

Ramone’s co-star in KILLOGY is “American actor, musician, author and entrepreneur” Frank Vincent.  Vincent was last seen and may be best known for his role as Phil Leotardo in HBO’s The Sopranos, but he was also in Goodfellas (he was the “Go get your shinebox” guy).

Basically, a cartoon character with Vincent’s likeness named Sally Sno-Cones is trapped in a prison cell with cartoon characters resembling Marky Ramone as well as actress Brea Grant (NBC’s Heroes, Dexter).

Does an existential one-act play ensue? Nope: a zombie comic.

Sample dialogue (and I should note here that I’ve sought to preserve the bold-facing and punctuation featured in the original comic):

Frank Vincent
Let me tell you somethin’, fucknuts. You made my list with that bullshit you pulled back there.
When we get outta here… you and me, we’re gonna sit down, capice?

Brea Grant
Jesus. C’mon, already. Tell us what happened.

Frank Vincent
All right, all right… Aspetta. I’m gettin’ to it. A guy in my line of work don’t get very far havin’ loose lips, if ya know what I mean. So, what I’m ’bout to tell yous two… well, I never told nobody, ya understand? So, if we ever find a way to get the fuck outta here alive… well, this stays between us. YA GOT ME?!

(beat)

Now, let’s see… Jeez, where the fuck do I even start? Okay. Well, my wife’s Eldorado was runnin’ on fumes by the time I rolled back into Brooklyn that mornin’. I’d been drivin’ ’round all friggin’ night– way out to the Jersey Dumps and back again, diggin’ up whatever bones were left from some dead wiseguys I’d whacked like a hundred years ago. See, once I caught wind that The Boss of the family flipped for the feds, I knew it was only a matter of time till they came knockin’ on my door. I mean, this rat fuck was yappin’ all over town, blamin’ me for every goddamned thing. Like he never ordered the friggin’ hits in the first place?! I was furious.

But then a complication arises: a Turban-wearing gas station owner refuses to sell gasoline to Mr. Sno-Cones.  ”YOU NO PAY — YOU NO GET NO GAS!  [...] NO GAS FOR YOU!!“, the brown-skinned “Gas N’ Sip” employee cries, apparently upset that Mr. Vincent’s character had “stiffed” him on a previous visit.

Well, as you might imagine, Frank Vincent’s character Sally Sno-Cones is irritated by this refusal to fuel his wife’s Eldorado, so he draws a firearm and says…

Frank Vincent

Yo, Habib… Get off your fuckin’ magic carpet ova there and fill up my goddamn tank. And make it super while yer at it, you Aladdin lookin’ muddafucka! Start pumpin’ asshole.

Sally Sno-Cones is later confronted by flying severed zombie heads.  The heads serenade him with a rousing rendition of “Just a Gigolo.” However, Sally Sno-Cones shoots the flying zombie heads– “What’s da matter… Don’t know any goddamn Sinatra?!“– and shortly after doing so, this first issue of KILLOGY concludes.

IDW is the 3rd largest publisher of comic books in North America.

Tilting #222 is live!

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Retailing/Industry

Tags: Brian, Tilting

It has been a little while, but here’s a new TILTING AT WINDMILLS, wherein we show the inherent value of conflict!

Not a single comment in the CBR thread, gotta love it!

-B

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #1 — Giuoco Piano

10 comments

Posted by: Abhay Khosla on April 11, 2013

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Abhay

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #1 by Brian Michael Bendis, Steve McNiven, John Dell, Justin Ponsor, VC’s Cory Petit, Manny Mederos, Ellie Pyle, Sana Amanat, Stephen Wacker, Axel Alonso, Joe Quesada, Dan Buckley, Alan Fine, Tom Brevoort, David Bogart, Ruwan Jayatilleke, CB Cebulski, David Gabriel, Jim O’Keefe, Dan Carr, Susan Cespi, Alex Morales, Stan Lee, and Niza Disla, published in March 2013 by Marvel Comics:

I was catching up with SCARLET and the latest POWERS relaunch, so while I was at it, I thought I’d check in with what Bendis was up to in the mainstream. I picked up this, and two of his X-Men comics (issue #3 of UNCANNY X-MEN and issue #3 of SOME MORE X-MEN).

Going in, I was expecting to like GALAXY more than the X(s). Boy, I was wrong– the X(s), Bendis really seemed to show up for those way more. The shifting alliances and competing philosophies / views-of-mankind an X title invites seem really suited to Bendis’s strengths. Bendis writing Magneto in particular seems to make a particular sort of sense, mathematically. Whatever Bendis found exciting about working those comics made it onto the page, and with a noticeable confidence.

GALAXY #1, on the other hand, Bendis focuses on an action scene…? Why? Are there people who tell him he’s good at action scenes? Do those people have their own internet? Why is he writing this comic, other than that there’s a movie coming out soon?  After #1, I couldn’t say. The story promised by the last page of GALAXY is a fart: inconsistently designed spaceships attacking London…? Go, Aliens, Go! Blow all those people up, them and their erotic Jon Lewis snowmen. USA! USA! … Will aliens blow up London?? Too much suspense.

Never read any of this generation of GALAXY comics? Reasonable minds differ on this point apparently, but issue #1 didn’t explain who the GALAXY were, why they were a team, what their mission was, or why a talking squirrel or a talking tree were in outer space (??). (Footnote:  This has been the third first issue I’ve talked about this week that has been just mystifying, in some respect…)

Granted, he was working with better artists on the X(s)– Stuart Immonen and Chris Bachalo are veterans, whereas GALAXY’s Steve McNiven… McNiven doesn’t draw the moon, in a splash page of the moon. He just pastes a photograph of the moon onto the page; calls it a day… Facepalm: they hired a guy who can’t draw THE MOON to draw a comic set in outer space. (Was it a photo-realistic painting of the moon?  It looked like a photo) Plus: science-fiction comics, you want an artist with design skills– those are pretty important for an SF comic. McNiven’s spaceships don’t really reflect him having ever focused much study time on drawing tech before, while his Iron Man armor… No. No.

Sure: I don’t care. I’m not sticking around for any of these. Mainstream comic publishers are too gross; I don’t trust anyone at that company to tell me a story, instead of using the comic I’m reading as a paid advertisement for some rip-off crossover. I don’t want to pay for advertising for a movie I won’t want to see.  I was just curious what Bendis was up to. But if you want to be in that world? I’d go with the X(s). Seem more fun.

GALAXY was interesting at least one way, though: it’s another example of how Bendis so often seems to commence his runs with a long-standing status quo becoming unmoored because of a Spoiler Character.

His Daredevil run starts with the Silke character organizing a coup d’état against the Kingpin. His Avengers run starts twice– once with the Scarlet Witch “disassembling” Avengers, and the second time with some shadowy character engineering some jailbreak. Spiderwoman starts with that character trying to recover from having her identity stolen by the Skrull queen, when she gets recruited by SHIELD or somebody right…? GALAXY starts with somebody’s dad showing up and yelling that all the rules of outer space had changed (in what I took to be a visual homage to that staircase shot in Howard Chaykin and Jose-Garcia-Lopez’s TWILIGHT…? yes? no?).

If I were to think of other writer’s opening gambits, I’d think “our old patterns no longer suffice– we must become new” (a Morrison opening), or “a bold new status quo! … and a bold new threat!” (I imagine most mainstream books use this gambit, to diminishing returns) or “a startling new mystery that reveals a sinister expanded world that the main character was previously unaware of” (e.g. Snyder’s BATMAN #1; Fraction-Brubaker IRON FIST #1 back when, maybe?), or “everything we thought we knew about this character is wrong” (e.g. The Anatomy Lesson– which is pretty, pretty close) or “orifices, they need shy boys to fill them” (e.g. hentai).

Who else does “the Spoiler Character unmoors a long-standing status quo” opening other than Bendis? Who else leads with a Karen Page from Born Again?

And say hypothetically that I’m right, and that Bendis has had this career-long opening gambit that’s semi-unique to him. Why has that opening gambit connected repeatedly with readers? Why are they so moved by these Spoiler Characters? The people reading it—what do they get out of it? In my head, I’m just picturing some adult child of divorce, wanting to yell at his mom’s boyfriends. “Everything was great until you got here, Barry!” But that’s.. I would assume Bendis’s 13-year long success streak in mainstream comics isn’t thanks to a guy named Barry having sex on top of everybody’s mom(s). If you take into account Barry’s refractory time, there’s just not enough hours in the day for that to be true. Even for sexy, sexy Barry.

I’m sure all fiction plays to some insecurity or another, but that seems to speak to such a specific, small insecurity, being constantly afraid of a bully coming and kicking over your sand castle. That your destiny is ever controlled by the whims of malevolent strangers, that you’re standing on a rug that someone will come out and pull out from under you, that other people can and will be the source of ruination … It’s just sad, to think about too much– to think that a large swath of this audience all sharing that same insecurity. It’s sad to think some part of us is trapped in our heads that exact same way, prisoners of that same anxiety, cell-mates for life, building walls that don’t need to be there.

WHERE IS JAKE ELLIS #1-3 — Farmer Ted

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Posted by: Abhay Khosla on April 10, 2013

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Abhay

WHERE IS JAKE ELLIS #1-3 of 5 by Nathan Edmondson and Tonci Zonjic and Joseph Frazzeta, published by Image Comics commencing in November 2012:

WHERE IS JAKE RYAN  is a handsomely mounted espionage-agents-on-the-run thriller, in the vein of a Robert Ludlum or Donald Hamilton pulp:  that “vulnerable (physically & emotionally) secret agents racing through a global backdrop meant to seem realistically drawn” Jason Bourne jazz. (There’s some psychic power tomfoolery too, but it is presented in a conservative way that keeps it visually consistent with the thiller elements).

Zonjic and Frazzeta are working in a “cinematic” mode but it still suffices as a comic— they don’t use the language of comics on every page but they at least know how to drop a background here or slow time there. It’s not as emotionally charged as a Naoki Urasawa comic but they don’t have Naoki Urasawa’s page-count either (or his sentimentality).  Zonjic seems like he’s aspiring to the same school as guys like Caniff, Frank Robbins, John Paul Leon—that’s a damn good school, by me.  He can spot a black; knows how to pace a page. Zonjic and Frazzeta’s colors are full of detail without being showy or crass—e.g. an action scene at an airport in #2 is a nearly one-color affair, drenched in oranges that accentuate the drama rather than drown the art. And thankfully, Edmondson knows how to trust his artists.  The pages aren’t crammed with show-off dialogue or bullshit narration.  He keeps the story moving at a rapid clip — without feeling like that clip is at the expense of missing out on anything significant.  Oh, there aren’t a lot of “character moments” but… it’s an espionage thriller; do you want there to be…?

It doesn’t take much by way of risks, though—FURY does everything this comic does, and it takes wilder risks with its audience.  Or Cinemax’s STRIKEBACK has nudity– pretty nudity. It’s a bit generic.  But WHERE never falls on its face either—seems like they’re hitting the target they’re aiming at.  We can debate the merits of the target or our affection therefor, but this is at least a professionally made comic book.

One thing, though…

I didn’t really have any earthly clue what was going on the entire time.

WHERE is the sequel to a comic called WHO IS JAKE RYAN.  I dug Zonjic’s work on other gigs, but I’d missed that series.  This had #1 on it; I guesstimated that #1 meant it would serve a “jumping-on” point, a place for new readers to smell what this comic is cooking.  Turns out?  Nope.  None of the contents of WHO are ever set out in any detail—even though WHERE appears to be a direct continuation of those events!  Who are the main characters?  What do they want?  How are they related?  What do the bad guys want?  Why are they being chased in WHERE? First base.  Wait, wrong– WHO is on first.  What’s on second?  THIRD BASE!

There’s a PREVIOUSLY section in #1 – it looks like this.  “As a matter of fact, I WILL fuck myself.”  I think a shittier PREVIOUSLY page that actually conveyed information would’ve been swank.  That’d have been nice.  That’d have probably solved everything.  But Jesus– why am I armchair quarterback-ing a PREVIOUSLY PAGE?  Why am I in THAT position?  I admired the craft to WHERE enough that I might someday get around to WHO, possibly.  I wouldn’t spit at the thought of it at least.   But what do you make of this?  Is this anything?

There was Mike Mignola, and Mignola found success by selling his characters in a series of miniseries.  For Hellboy, for BPRD.  And then that became a thing.  It became a Way Comics Are Sold.  The series-of-miniseries approach, it offers all sorts of advantages that an ongoing doesn’t, e.g. a steady stream of new #1 issues, a diminished need to explain long breaks between issues, etc.  But Mignola?  He seems to have his miniseries function as such—at least, when I’ve read BPRD, those tend to start with some new mission, some new situation presenting itself. The series-of-miniseries to present constant jumping-on points.  A character yells “In this miniseries, I am going to go do something something something shadows on statues.”  Hijinx ensue.

That PREVIOUSLY page looks cool.  Changing the title from WHO to WHERE seems cool.  The only thing that was uncool was how I felt like I just wasn’t on the radar of the people making this comic.  But there’s a system for how comics are sold, and they just did the system.  They followed the map that’s in place, stepped in the footsteps of bigger feet, did “What You’re Supposed to Do” … Still, in the end, I’m sitting there and it took me three months, until I finally said, “Oh wait, I think those guy have psychic powers.”  Is the system wrong?  I wouldn’t say that.  But it just seems like they did the system without thinking about the Why of the System.  WHY IS JAKE RYAN?

Easy answers and conventional thinking.  Form over function.  Cool over substance.  A disregard for new readers.  WHERE IS JAKE RYAN does a lot of the things that comics can do right.  Does it also do a lot of the things comics can do wrong?  More importantly, I always thought it was weird at the end of SIXTEEN CANDLES, when Jake Ryan lets Anthony Michael Hall rape Jake’s drunk girlfriend.  I was really hoping that’d be addressed somewhere in this series.  Why did he– ….What?  Jake ELLIS???

… shit.  I’ve really been reading this comic ALL WRONG, you guys.

ANNNND SCENE.

Non-Humans #1 — Becoming Obsolete

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Posted by: Abhay Khosla on April 9, 2013

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Abhay

NON-HUMANS #1 by Glen Brunswick, Whilce Portacio, Rus Wooten, and Brian Valez, based upon an idea by Noah Dorsey, published by Image Comics in October 2012:

 I just want to talk about the opening narration.  Listen to this:

 ”Runaway American dream.  Suicide machines.  Sprung from cages out on Highway 9.  Crome [sic] wheeled, fuel injected and steppin’ out over the line. [END OF PAGE 1]

That’s an old song from my childhood– singer– name of Bruce– was my mother’s favorite.  He was talkin’ about the road.  But he could as easily have been talkin’ about Non-Humans.  They expect us to just live with the madness.  The road exposes everyone for what they really are– you just gotta look for the underlying truth.  It’s a tell– window to their character.  Like you know the douchebag that’s gonna run from an accident… from the dude who won’t.  Worked the 405 for a spell before I got my first promotion  [End of Page 2]

 Or the N.H. that’s gonna lie on a routine stop.  Not because it has to– but because it’s simply in the lying piece of crap’s nature.  Victim twenty-two was my partner on the job.  Even dead, you can tell he was the kind of guy who’d take a bullet for you.  Which brings me ’round to my tell.  Can you see it?  I’m past the point of caring if you keep it to yourself or not.  I’ve failed everyone that’s ever been close to me.  [End of page 3]“

… What?  What the hell is going on, you guys?  I just find this entire speech mystifying.  I’ve read it over and over.

 Born to Run reminds him of Non-Humans (whatever those are) but also the road, which reminds him of a job he had working on the 405 (which is a freeway in Los Angeles), which reminds him of looking for “tells,” which reminds him of his dead partner (who was … victim 22… okay) which reminds him of a dead dog with its brains split open which reminds of him when he really became Rorshach instead of pretending to be Rorschach which reminds him of—

-wait, no. I had it and then I lost it…

Like how I perceived Snapshot a certain way after Scarlet, I was struck by this comic in the context of the other first issues I’ve read recently, one after another of which have been so confusing, so seemingly hostile to just the basic act of explaining shit to a reader, helping them out with the basic concepts of the story at hand. I have been confused and I have been confused and I have been confused.  Non-Humans #1 starts with three solid pages of confusion (two whole minutes underwater!).  Why?  Why would that be a good idea to anyone?

The comic opens with an essay by Brunswick about how he and Portacio worked on this comic for an entire year before it was produced.  This wasn’t the product of haste or sloth. This was by design. This sounds like this because at some point, the people who made Non-Humans, the people who read it for them and gave them notes, the people at Image Comics who saw the pitch and signed it to their line, to all of them, this is just what comics sound like now.  For a non-negligible  crowd of people, this is how a comic should open, with three pages of … whatever is happening here (?).

And I have to acknowledge—I’m not reading Scott Snyder or Geoff Johns, Marvel Now! nor Walking Dead.  I am divorced from what is hip and what is happening.  I am old and I am stubborn and I am outside their intended audience and I am aesthetically conservative and maybe/probably I have become the Voice of Do It like It was Done Back When.  So there is a possibility—a not small possibility, even– that they are right, and that this, this stretch of what is to me pure nonsense, is the Sound of Comics Now, or at least a logical attempt at that Sound.

Once you’ve seen enough comics, a comic from the 60’s doesn’t look like a comic from the 70’s; you can spot a comic from the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s from a distance, with a hand over your eye.  And so, now we’re, what, 4 years into this decade (you count the 0, right?), which mean that styles are due to change again. Or HAVE changed again, while I wasn’t paying attention.  And each time these changes happen, there are the people left behind.  The sad comment-screamers ten years ago whining incessantly about decompression; the 80’s fans who flooded out in the 90’s; 70′s fans whining about the deconstruction of the 80′s (“Frank Miller made Catwoman a whore!  Miracleman showed a baby being born!“); Silver Age fans angry about the death of Gwen Stacy; every time there are those, Cutty say he can’t hang.

Do you expect the Sound of Comics to change again?  History tells you that you should.  But how do you know when it’s happening?  Or has happened already when you weren’t paying attention?  What are you supposed to look for? Do you care about being left behind?  Should you?  Or am I just being unnecessarily jumpy and scared of an obsolescence that again, history guarantees for us all? Maybe everybodys out on the run tonight, but there’s no place left to hide, and together we’ll live with the sadness. I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul but till then tramps like us, baby, we were born to run…? Also this gun’s for hire, even if we’re just dancing in the dark. Jack and Diane are two American kids doing the best they can.

Snapshot #1 — Politics Whining (oh, wee)

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Posted by: Abhay Khosla on April 8, 2013

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Abhay

Snapshot #1 by Andy Diggle, Jock, and Clem Robins, published by Image Comics in February 2013 (and in Judge Dredd Megazine, prior thereto, apparently):

I read this immediately after I read Scarlet #6, and a similarity between the two jumped out, an irritant. Scarlet #6 begins with a monologue dismissing Occupy Wall Street:  nothing changed, nobody learned anything, protests are pointless, no one is listening, blah, blah.  That sort of shit. And so, too, Snapshot, opens by immediately dismissing protests:  a guy at a comic shop tells the comic-shop-employee main character that his girlfriend is “dragging” him to a march: “Some big anti-whatever shindig. We’re all marching to put an end to, I dunno, bad stuff… Even as we speak, my apartment’s ripe with the pungent tang of sharpie-wielding hipster.”

If this scene is meant as a critique of the Bro talking, that’s not successfully communicated. No, this is early– we’re only just meeting the main characters. We’re again expected to agree with this repulsive crap, I think, expected to identify with this dull cynicism.

What is all this, do you think, this insistence upon surrender? Why, this persistent message that to do anything but surrender to the status quo makes one a figure of mockery? What makes comics so eager to trumpet fake heroics, phony, ersatz heroics, but so dismissive of protest, of an actual examples of courage from the least powerful among us? Is it just the particulars of the “creative community” involved, a community that never fought for each other, that routinely betrays its greatest artists, a community whose heroes suffocated communal effort in their womb? Why would we expect any better…? Or is it more than that? Maybe it’s just young people, just youth itself and youth’s silly hopes and impractical dreams of a better tomorrow, that comics find so laughable. Comic books: middle-aged men, to the rescue!

Later in Snapshot #1, the protestor girlfriend is shown, in only one panel, arms crossed, given no word balloons, rendered mute. We don’t ever get to hang out with her. We’re always stuck with the bros.

Have I ever participated in a protest? No, and perhaps that opens me to attacks for being a “hypocrite” for objecting. But I’m Indian, and non-violent resistance, that’s sort of a thing for us. Plus, I’m an American– protests are a big deal for Americans, too, goddamnit. Diggle’s ancestors were The Bad Guys for both those groups, I guess, but even they have their own history, too, last I checked. This cheerleading for apathy, it is ahistoric and uninspiring and boring.

“It’s just a couple panels, and you’re overreacting– maybe it will all be critiqued in a later issue,” you might reasonably say, forgiving person that you are, and probably be right. But here’s what still nags: the comic is in the thriller mode. When you think back on the thrillers you’ve seen in your life, don’t the really great thrillers tend to ask for some kind of transgression– particularly of their main characters? The kink of Hitchcock; the perversions of DePalma; the “Michael Douglas fucked the wrong lady” section on Netflix. But Snapshot? Apathy. Distinterest. Disengagement. Aren’t these the very things a person seeks to escape by their transgressions? The very things that so urgently sends them to all of their sins?

Wait, What? Ep. 120: Beat Up

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Posted by: Jeff Lester on

Categories: Podcasts

Tags: 2000 A.D., Adventure Comics, Age of Ultron, Agent Gates, Al Ewing, Alec Worley, Banana boobs, Bill Sienkiewicz, Brian Michael Bendis, Carmine Infantino, D'Israeli, Dandridge, Dave Cockrum, death, Gene Day, Giant Man, Graeme, Guardians of the Galaxy, Henry Flint, Ian Edginton, Jack Kirby, Jeff, John Peele, Mad Men, Marta Acosta, Marvel NOW!, Mike Esposito, NPR, Roger Ebert, Ross Andru, She-Hulk Diaries, Star Wars, Stickleback, Stormwatch, Stuff Jeff doesn't know until Graeme tells him, Terry Austin, The Inhumans, The Wasp, Wait What?, Warren Pleece, Zombo

Stunner stuff from D’Israeli in Stickleback, currently appearing in 2000 A.D.

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends! (If I was Stan Lee, I’d offer a No-Prize to those of you who really get that reference…but thank goodness there is only one Stan and I’m not him.)

Join me after the jump for show notes for Wait, What? Ep. 120, won’t you?  (Yes, there is one this week.  I assure you, I’m not pulling an April Fool’s Joke on you a week late…OR AM I????

(more…)

Arriving 4/10/13

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Shipping Lists

Tags: Brian

It’s a killer week of new comics, with the latest issues of Walking Dead, Hawkeye, and Saga to look forward to. Even more great books after the break. (more…)

Scarlet #6 — Current Events

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Posted by: Abhay Khosla on April 7, 2013

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Abhay

Scarlet #6 by Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev, and Chris Eliopoulos, published by Marvel Icon, released February 2013: 

This was one of the damn oddest comic-reading experiences for me of recent memory.  First, there was the surprise of even seeing it– this was a comic that had just stopped coming out, mid-story, ages and ages ago (2011, according to the internet). I just found it sitting on a shelf, unheralded, nearly two years after #5.  Letter page promises #7 in March; if that came out, it got by me…?  It’s been more than 10 years since Bendis-Maleev Daredevil launched; since then: Halo, crossover tie-ins, Spiderwoman, Moon Knight…?  For a team that decent, that celebrated, back-when, a run of (mostly) also-ran’s. What happened?

But more strange:  Scarlet is a comic about a woman who runs around shooting police officers because she hates police corruption.  Uh, which is a thing that actually happened:  that one guy, Chris Dorner…? Remember him?  He wrote a manifesto which accused the police of being dirty (also: how he wanted to have sex with Laura Prepon and how he regretted that he would likely not survive to watch the Hangover 3), and then went and murdered some cops, etc.  That totes happened. This comic ends with a rally inspired by Scarlet’s cop-killing antics;  in real life… I wasn’t paying too much attention, but the way I remember it:  the police shot up a bunch of random people; found him in a cabin; lit the cabin on fire (“inadvertently“); yadda yadda, he blew his brains out rather than burn to death…?  I didn’t follow Dorner too close, all happened during a busy time in my life, may have some details wrong and I apologize, but still:  boy, this made for an extremely odd reading experience, one obviously unintended by its authors and yet maybe unavoidable for readers. (Though of the four reviews I glanced at, only one mentioned him, so … maybe not…?). I found it a very strange time, returning to this comic’s world after all that … hoopla….?

So: a serialized comic’s narrative unexpectedly matches up with current events– that’s a thing that happens sometimes.  What do you think?  Surely, it has to effect how we read it, whether we like it or not, whether we want it to or not.  Does it make the story better that the main character’s antics actually now seem somewhat more plausible?  Or, alternately, because this story presents events so different from the reality of how you know similar things played out in real life, does it make the story worse?

At the moment, if forced to choose, I’d vote “better.” It seems suggestive that Bendis, Maleev and Eliopoulos were at least “asking the right questions,” at some point in time.  Even if accidental, even if mere coincidence, it at least creates a pleasant illusion that there’s something– something?– at the root of this thing worth examining.  Of course, the Dorner story was many things, but not great fiction.  The synchronicity of current events alone isn’t enough fissionable material to solve this comic’s more pressing issues, namely: is the redhead an interesting character? Her goals are extraordinarily vague and intangible, forcing our attention too much on society’s response to her which now only defies plausibility all the more thanks to Dorner et al. Practically-speaking, if she is an interesting character, I don’t remember why anymore– 2011′s too far.  But so, the Dorner thing, it’s something.

That’d be my answer, at least at this moment in time.  However, as the story progresses, will we notice its discontinuity with reality more and more?  What’s it going to be like not with #6, but #9, #11, #13, as it becomes clearer how much they’ve “gotten wrong” about how things would play out should a “cop-killer with reasons” gain national media attention?  Hot damn, it’s an exceptionally odd situation for a comic to find itself in.  But I guess only if the comic actually comes out, which is really just anyone’s guess, at this point…  Maybe?

“They Were Stacked Criss-Cross, Like Cheese Straws…” BOOKS! Sometimes I Fancy A Change!

5 comments

Posted by: John Kane on April 3, 2013

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Cold Hand In Mine, Faber, John K (UK), Prose, Robert Aickman, The Unsettled Dust

I didn’t really get around to any comics this week what with one thing and another. But I did read some prose and I ended up writing about that. It was a couple of books of short stories written by the co-founder of The Inland Waterways Association. Sounds gripping, huh? Well, if you’re going to let preconceptions hold sway then, I guess, this one’s for me. I know! The gall of the man, the sheer, wicked nerve! Anyway, this…

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Arriving 4/3/13

9 comments

Posted by: Brian Hibbs on April 1, 2013

Categories: Shipping Lists

Tags: Brian

A smaller Wednesday than in recent weeks, but still a lot of good stuff to choose from! Check out the list after the break! (more…)

Comix Experience’s 24th anniversary

8 comments

Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Retailing/Industry

Tags: Brian, Comix Experience

On 4/1/1989, I opened Comix Experience for the very first time.  I’m crazy pleased to say that today is our 24th anniversary.

No party or anything (24 is almost an anti-climax?), but it is… interesting to be the oldest store in your metropolitan area.

Thanks to all of you for your support over the years! Next year: 25!

-B

“You See That? He’s STILL The Greatest!” COMICS! Sometimes It’s GilWolf Unbound!

7 comments

Posted by: John Kane on March 27, 2013

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Adventures of Superman - Gil Kane, DC Comics, Gil Kane, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, John K (UK), Marv Wolfman, Superman

A-huh! HUH! It’s another instalment of Gil Happy! Unsightly blemishes are a thing of the past as Gil Kane and his plucky sidekick, Marv Wolfman, team up with friends galore to document the exciting, amazing and thoroughly ridiculous adventures of 1980s Superman.

Bonus! Feel the years just fall away as we revisit that time a comics creator flicked DC’s tie back in its face! Documentary evidence provided! Anyway this…

DC’s Legal Department in a self congratulatory mood…oh, sorry, it’s actually Brainiac!
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Wait, What? Ep. 119: Watching You

35 comments

Posted by: Jeff Lester on March 25, 2013

Categories: Podcasts

Tags: 2000 A.D., Action Comics, Andy Diggle, Angela, Brian K. Vaughan, Constantine, Dr. Doom, Graeme, Grant Morrison, Jeff, Jennifer Blood, Joshua Hale Fialkov, Justice League, Marcos Martin, Marvel, Neil Gaiman, nuDCU, Rags Morales, The Private Eye, Todd McFarlane, Wait What?

Yup, we talk about Action Comics #18!  And I think…we even have stuff to say? Maybe, kinda?

Behind the jump: show notes annotating the podcast commenting on the industry having one of its craziest weeks ever!  Action verbs! Jazz hands! Psychedelic Superman!

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Arriving 3/27/13

13 comments

Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Shipping Lists

Tags: Brian

Another big week, with Hickman’s new series East of West launching, as well as the latest issue of Batman Inc & Young Avengers. Lots more after the break! (more…)

“A Tiger Doesn’t Give A Buffalo Warning.” COMICS! Sometimes They aaaAAAIEEEE!!! DAAKEESE MOB!!

5 comments

Posted by: John Kane on March 19, 2013

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Battle, British People In Hot Weather, Darkie's Mob, Garth Ennis, John Wagner, Mark E Smith, Mike Western, Nostalgia By Veidt, Pat Mills, The 1970s, Titan, Too Late The Hero, War Comics

In the Burmese jungle of 1942 only one thing was more deadly than the Japanese…In the war comics of 1976 only one strip ruled the playground…That thing, that strip was DARKIE’S MOB by Mike Western and John Wagner.

COME ON!!! GET SOME!! CAHMMM AHHHNNNNN!!!!
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Wait, What? Ep. 118: Skypenet Techpocalypse

37 comments

Posted by: Jeff Lester on March 18, 2013

Categories: Podcasts

Tags: Ague of Ultron, Alan Moore, All-New X-Men, Before Watchmen, Brian Michael Bendis, Bryan Hitch, Chris Bachalo, Comixology, David Marquez, Giant Man, Graeme, J. Michael Straczynski, Jack Kirby, Jae Lee, Jeff, Len Wein, marketing campaign ideas, Marvel, Marvel NOW!, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Steve Rude, The Hulk, Uncanny X-Men, Wait What?

Why, yes, Stevie Wonder performing Superstition on Sesame Street is indeed relevant to this week’s podcast, thanks for asking!

After the jump, somewhat hasty show notes for our somewhat hasty episode (less than two hours?  What has happened to us?)

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Arriving 3/20/13

9 comments

Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Shipping Lists

Tags: Brian

Holy moly is it a big week of comics! Saga, Morrison’s last issue of Action Comics, and Mind MGMT are just a few of the highlights. Check out the rest after the break!
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“Decency.” COMICS! Sometimes They Do Not Bring Me Out In Hives!

11 comments

Posted by: John Kane on March 13, 2013

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Battlefields, Creepy, Dark Horse, Garth Ennis, Gilbert Hernandez, Glory, Image Comics, Joe Keatinge, John K (UK), Johnny Craig, Padraig O'Mealoid, Ross Campbell, Russ Braun

Look, we all know that last time John read some comics released this century it all got a bit hairy. John would like to point out that this was not out of malice, low blood sugar, jealousy, his piles flaring up or sunspot activity. No, difficult as it may be to believe, John maintains it was the result of those comics not actually being all that good. Think of it as being a bit like John was showing you that sometimes he and Comics would argue but it didn’t mean they didn’t love each other any less and it certainly wasn’t your fault. John can see why Doctor Doom talks like this – it’s fun. Anyway, this…

Due to the lack of a scanner all pictures are stolen from other people. That’s what I’m reduced to. I hope you are all proud.

(Note: Doctor Doom was created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Or Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, whichever floats your boat. The important thing is to get both names in there. It’s free and respectful, Marvel.)

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Wait, No. (Podcast, Interrupted)

11 comments

Posted by: Jeff Lester on March 11, 2013

Categories: Podcasts

Tags: Abhay, Graeme, illness, Insensitive Veterinarians, Jeff, no podcast, Satan's Soldier, Tom Scioli, Wait What?

Hey, everyone–some bad news: because Graeme was struck with food poisoning, we did not record last week…which means no podcast this week.  But, barring further catastrophe, we will be recording this week…which means you’ll have another podcast in your hands next week.  Sorry?

But, hey, I’m sure you’ll find lots of stuff to do in the meantime.  I mean, it’s the Internet, right?  I mean, if you haven’t checked it out, I would point you to Abhay’s recently completed epic: Insensitive Veterinarians? Or, I dunno, I’m a little bit behind on it, but holy god is Tom Scioli going to some truly insane places with Satan’s Soldier. That’s like…if a comic line had spun off from Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Strikes Again?  It’s just…amazing stuff.

But, again: you’ll figure something out.  I’m sure some of you haven’t quite caught up with all 100+ eps. of Wait, What? so…now’s a chance to do so in a leisurely manner.

Sorry we weren’t there for you this week, Whatnauts, and as always, we thank you for listening!

Arriving 3/13/13

10 comments

Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Shipping Lists

Tags: Brian

Another big week of comics! See what to look forward to after the break! (more…)