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Flashmob Fridays: Harvey Pekar's Cleveland

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For some reason, I'm about a week behind on this.  Last Friday's Flashmob Fridays was all about Harvey Pekar and his new book Harvey Pekar's Cleveland.

As Pekar chronicles the history of the city, for every success there is an equal or greater failing that the city experiences. His recounting of the 1948 World Series at the beginning of the book perfectly introduces this pattern. They won in 1948 but the Indians would go on to lose the 1954 World Series. It would take them another 40 years to reach the World Series but they lost twice during the 1990s and haven’t been back since. “For me,” Pekar writes, “the 1954 World Series was a turning point. I always looked at the Indians as an up-and-coming team. But now they seemed to be rotten to the core with success... A few years later, that’s how I viewed Cleveland: rotten.”

You can read my, Alan David Doane, Christopher Allen, Roger Green and Johanna Draper Carlson's essays here.

This book is actually due out in a month or two.  If you've never read any Harvey Pekar, it's actually a fascinating look at the man and the city.  You can see a lot about how one defined the other.  

Is that the smell of 90s nostalgia? A review of Prophet #21 @ Newsarama

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So last week a comic about a Spider-Man clone came out and this week, it's the return of the posterboy of 90s comics Prophet.

Instead of picking up where the series left off in 1997 (at least that’s the closest I can figure out to when a new Prophet comic book was last published) with its hyper-muscular bodies and headwear out of some medieval sport, Graham and Roy begin a brand new story and a brand new character. He may share a name with the old Prophet but this one looks more like an astronaut in an orange jumpsuit. Imagine more Charleton Heston in Planet of the Apes as a stranger in a strange world and that’s the story that Graham and Roy are telling. Prophet wakes up 10,000 years in the future and has to survive long enough to find out what his mission in this world is. Maybe there will be ties to the old character later on but this issue starts out fresh, like we’re seeing a new character in a new world.

You can read the whole review here.

Have you ever been Snarked? Well, I have...

Even as the character have a life their own on the page, this story is missing some of the manic energy of Langridge’s earlier work like Fred the Clown or even The Muppets. Because those comics were made up of short bursts of stories, sometimes even in one page, Langridge gave those books a real forceful energy that enveloped the reader as well as the characters. Snarked #4 is sadly missing some of that driving energy because it gets diluted as Langridge is working on a larger story. The lively characters are still there as is the humor but this book could use some of the propulsive power that kept his Muppets comics a lively read on every page. His previous work had a bang on nearly every page while Snarked is much more quieter and deliberate. It’s like his Thor: The Mighty Avenger work that way. The story builds up over the span of pages where his earlier humor work built up energy over the span of panels.

You can read the full review here.

The Wrap Up Show at FMF-- Action Comics #5

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So, this is kind of embarrassing.  You see, I wrote a piece on Action Comics #5 for last week's Flashmob Fridays but was kind of shocked when it didn't show up in the Friday roundtable post.  I thought maybe I had been kicked out already for saying I really didn't get Carl Barks' comics the previous week and that Alan just hadn't told me yet.  I had finished it up last Wednesday, well before out deadline but somehow I never emailed it.  So for the week, I get to show up on our Monday Wrap Up Show, talking a bit more about Action Comics #5 and how so far this seems to be a series of unfulfilled potential.

In this last few years of political, economic and social upheaval in the United States, I think Morrison is on the right track in trying to redefine Superman. The 21st Century started out with a Superman that somehow tried to renounce any American citizenship and even was proclaimed as standing for “truth, justice and all of that other stuff.” But like the times when Superman was created, the “American way” is either corny, an anachronism or a lie depending on your views of the country. And how does the country’s #1 adopted son respond to that? That’s the story that it felt like Morrison was trying to tell in the first two issues of Action. How does the ultimate boy scout live in an era where the Boy Scouts are eventually sent overseas to fight wars that no one understands while those who stay home get rich and fat? 

You can read the full review here.

@Newsarama- The Shade #4 and Wolverine and the X-Men #4

So Thursday is supposed to be our pellet review day at Best Shots but I think last week I ended up rambling a bit on a couple of comic books.

Wolverine and the X-Men #4:  Jason Aaron and Nick Bradshaw have given us “The Breakfast Club” of the X-Men as we get to see these kids in a class that’s just a thinly veiled fortune telling session.  Instead of “ a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal,” we get a killer, a monster, an alien, a madman and a Phoenix.

The Shade #4: Cooke pulls you ever closer and closer into the confidential discussions of these two men and then quite literally broadens your horizons with large panels as Shade begins telling the man about his grand adventures.  And it all works because Cooke makes you privy to the personal moments just as skillfully as he gets you excited by the fighting and punching.

You can read both reviews here.

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Weekly Comic Shopping List 1/11/12

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  • Lobster Johnson The Burning Hand #1 Regular Dave Johnson Cover
  • Star Wars Agent Of The Empire Iron Eclipse #2
  • Star Wars Legacy Vol 11 War TP
I'm beginning my yearly reread of B.P.R.D. so I'm looking forward to hitting the Lobster Johnson stuff in there again.  I think Star Wars Legacy was one of the best books of the past 5 years that no one was reading.  John Ostrander built this fantastic take on the Star Wars myths and created a richer story than Lucas was ever able to consistently achieve in the movies.  
  • Batwoman #5 Regular JH Williams III Cover
  • Frankenstein Agent Of S.H.A.D.E. #5
There's no denying that the artwork on Batwoman is gorgeous but Williams III and Haden-Blackman are just playing setup-the-future-stories right now.  I dare anyone to tell me from memory what the main thread that Batwoman is facing right now?  Something about water and missing children I think and I just read the first four issues over the weekend.  I really like the Kate Kane plot threads in the book and the stuff with the DEO is fun but the story loses me whenever Batwoman actually shows up.  
  • Avengers 1959 #5
  • Wolverine And The X-Men #4 Regular Nick Bradshaw Cover (X-Men Regenesis Tie-In)
I'm still not sold on Wolverine and the X-Men #4 so I may end up leaving this one at the shop (or more likely on the digital stand.)  It's cute and clever but it just feels like it's too much.  Enough people are liking it so I think it's more just me.  The whole Regenesis thing has left me kind of bored because it doesn't feel that different than the last couple of reboots of the X-Men and I'm sure we'll be seeing some "brave, new direction" in another year or two.
  • Roger Langridge's Snarked #4
 I haven't quite gotten into this series the way that I want to.  I think I need to sit down with all 4 (5 including the #0) issues and give it another go.
  • Before The Incal Classic Collection Deluxe HC
  • Ballad Of Halo Jones TP Simon & Schuster Edition
  • Complete DR & Quinch TP Simon & Schuster Edition
How would you like a bit of Jodorowsky and Alan Moore together in one week?  That would be a good week, wouldn't it?  And artwork by Zoran Janjetov, Ian Gibson and Alan Davis?  That's just icing on the cake.  Actually, this edition of Before the Incal is a bit too rich for my blood but I would recommend waiting for the inevitable non-deluxe Classic Collection, like the one that they did for The Incal.  (note: I guess those two Alan Moore books came out last fall but Midtown Comics was listing them this week.  Either way, they will be mine.)

Review Linky Dinky: Animal Man #5

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Over at Newsarama, I wrote a few words about Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman's Animal Man #5, trying to focus mainly on the art.

Foreman doesn't hide anything from the reader.  The bulbous monsters and the horrible disfigurement that Buddy suffers battling it are front and center in this issue. Nothing is hidden or left to the reader's imagination. A vision of Animal Man's daughter Maxine as the corruptor of the world is made complete by her spider-like legs and a thoroughly dissected Animal Man. It gets far more shocking when she pulls the skin off of his face in the vision, an image repeated from the cover but the vision in the book is more vivid and terrifying. Foreman makes an image that's impossible not to see. His horror is presented so matter-of-factly that you can not avert your eyes from it. It's not hidden and it's not implied. Foreman is drawing a horror story that won't let you look away from it. It's the kind of horror that's terrible in idea and concept but beautiful in execution.

You can read the whole review here.  

Jesus Christ: Superstar or Superman?


For at least the last 30 or 40 years, there’s been attempts by many to try and read a Christian message into the myth of Superman.  You can take it back to Action Comics #1 and the story of a baby being sent into the world of men to protect and lead it.  Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s (two Jewish kids, by the way) hero was the best of us.  He was a child without sin or compromise showing up in a time of great turmoil in America to inspire us.  That’s probably one of many ways to read a story about the ultimate man, imposing myths and stories on him that put him in a greater context but it’s also one that sort of works.  There are even ways to view 1978’s Superman: The Movie as a mystery play where Superman is quite literally Christ in skin tight blue spandex.

Grant Morrison even intentionally or unintentionally played with this during All Star Superman, where the ending is basically Superman as Christ on the Cross, dying to save the world.  My own reading of that story is here and here.  You can draw some really interesting connections between the story of Jesus and the story of Kal-El, sons of their fathers who sent them into our world.

While those connections are often inferred by the readers, I don’t remember them ever being explicitly implied by DC.  Sure, there’s the whole death and resurrection thing of the 90s but Superman’s was much more comic booky and no one ever accuses Superman of being a zombie either.  There was that Church of Superboy back during DC’s 52 and there’s probably been more focused Superman-like-character-as-Christ stories done but when has it ever been done in a continuity driven Superman book?

The answer is now in 2012 and Action Comics #5.

The back up story written by Sholly Fisch and drawn by Chriscross shows us the young Jonathan and Martha Kent’s troubles with having children.  Like so many, they’re just not biologically capable of it, even after over a year of hormone treatments.  Feeling like God is punishing them, they go to their pastor and Martha asks “Why is God punishing us this way?  What did we do wrong?”  The pastor quotes Bible stories to them, telling them how Sarah couldn’t bear a child to Abraham until she was 90 years old and he was 100.

The story of Isaac is one that’s always fascinated me.  When Isaac is a boy, Abraham is told by God that he has to go up the mountain and sacrifice Isaac as an offering to god.  Being a godly man, Abraham listened and obeyed believing that there was a purpose to his Lord’s command.  Before he could plunge the knife into the boy’s body, an angel appeared to them and seeing Abraham’s faith in the Lord’s word, knew that Abraham loved his Lord.  A ram was substituted in place of Isaac for the sacrifice.  Isaac was a proto-Christ, a sign of the function that Jesus would fulfill centuries later.  

The story of Isaac is held as a sign for the coming of Jesus, showing how Jesus would be sacrificed by the world to atone for its sins.  And here, in 2012, a preacher is telling the story of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac, using it to illustrate the patience that the Kents need to have.  You have to wonder though if they have to have the patience of Sarah and Abraham, is their son going to be the next sacrifice for the world?  Is their son going to be Isaac or Jesus? Again, see the ending of All Star Superman #12.

If that’s the case, you could almost read the opening of the recent Action Comics #1 as Jesus in the temple kicking out the money changers.

I can’t help but think since first reading Action Comics #5 that Grant Morrison’s punkish Superman is his Christ story and honestly, I can see Morrison worshiping Superman in a religious kind of way.  This is the beginning of his Superman gospel while All Star Superman was the conclusion of it, even if they’re written in the opposite order.  It’s not that Morrison (and Fisch in the backups) are writing the story of Jesus Christ but they’re setting their Superman up to be something more than human or alien.

Flashmob Fridays-- Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes

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With the rest of the merry mobsters (I want to make that a thing,) I take my turn at tackling Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, a collection of Carl Barks' duck stories.  Honestly, I think I've only ever read a small handful of Carl Barks.  I don't even know if I really read any Walt Disney comics before a couple of years ago.  I'm finding it this odd struggle to go back and read comics as a 41 year old that I probably should have been reading and loving as an 8 year old.  I was such a Marvel zombie when I was a kid that anything that didn't feature tights was not something that I wanted to read.  Sure I even picked up the random DC comic here or there but it wasn't until Marv Wolfman and George Perez brought a Marvel storytelling sensibility to The New Teen Titans that I found my gateway into DC comics.  

So as an introduction into Carl Barks' storytelling, here's a snippet of what I wrote over at Flashmob Fridays:

What I enjoy about Barks (and his spiritual descendant Don Rosa) is that he doesn’t tell stories about cartoonish ducks but he tells them about characters who happen to be cartoonish ducks. The stories themselves, from the adventurous and titular “Lost in the Andes” to the screwballish “Plenty of Pets” and even to the one page gag strips, are built around characters. Donald Duck is the loyal but easily flustered hero. He seems to be all about himself and how everything affects him but he’s always doing things for his nephews or his uncle out of a strong love that exists among these characters. Even as characters lose their tempers and get mad at each other, there’s never a sense of spite or selfishness around these characters. Donald Duck is like Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners. He’s quick to anger but there’s hardly a bigger heart around.

You can read my whole short essay here. 

@ Newsarama: Fatale #1

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Phillips' art takes a nearly imperceptible shift away from his usual Criminal work. He’s embracing his inner classic EC artist as he’s able to draw a comic not as grounded in our reality as Criminal has to be. Fatale #1 is more suggestive than anything we’ve seen him draw lately. The storytelling and pacing in Criminal and Incognito was all about building suspense in the moment of the panel. Playing with very familiar genres, Brubaker and Phillips don’t have to do a lot of world building in either of those series. Those worlds (superheroes and neo-noir) are practically pre-built in our imaginations nowadays. With Fatale #1, they almost have to take a step back and show the reader how to read it. The suspense in this issue is built not through our expectations of the story, but through the panel-to-panel pacing and the story elements that happen in the shadows.