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Weekly Comic Shopping List 9/10/09

Offered with little commentary today.

  • Green Lantern Corps Vol 2 #40-- So is the Corps just going to remain on Oa during Blackest Night or are they going to take some kind of active role?
  • Wednesday Comics #10-- 2 more issues of one of the slowest weekly comics. 
  • West Coast Blues HC-- European crime. It'll be neat to see how this story compares to the recent spate of crime stories we've been getting.
  • Love and Rockets New Stories V2-- Honestly, I don't know if I've finished the first issue yet and it's been a year.  This also just reminds me that I need to pick up the large Luba and the second Locas collections.. 
  • Yotsuba Vol 6 GN-- Easily the most anticipated book of the week.  How can you not be looking forward to more Yotsuba?
Yotsuba

Technical difficulties

It looks like there may be a few technical difficulties with my last post about reading comics on an iPhone. It seems like the screen shots that I had aren't showing up. Unfortunately I'm trapped away from a computer where I can take care of this. I'll be trying to correct the issue tonight when I get home.

Thanks,
Scott

Never Enough... #6 (Kane's floating heads)

There's never enough of Gil Kane's floating head compositions.  Kane is one of those artists I never really appreciated enough as a kid but I love looking at his linework now (except when inked by Danny Bulandi like he was on Micronauts.)  There's so many things to like about Kane's artwork, from his heroic poses to the way he just has so much action that literally jumps off of the page.  But one of my favorite ticks of Gil Kane artwork is the way he incorporates floating heads into so many images and comic pages.  Kane really designed images, laying them out for impact and storytelling. 

Kaneatom

Never Enough... #5 (Krigstien and Motion)

There's never enough people talking about Bernie Krigsteien's "The Master Race."

A couple of years ago, I contributed to a podcast a piece on "The Master Race," an old EC story about a man having to confront his past and the atrocities he was part of during World War II.  It's an 8 page story from 1955, written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Bernie Krigstein.  Feldstein's story is a perfect suspense story, showing the paranoia that can build up in one man's mind and that could drive him to his own death.

Krigstein's artwork on this story is simply amazing.  Krigstein captures time and motiohn like almost no artist before or since has done.  In the first tier of panels on the final page of the story, the four panels which show a character running and stumbling practically stop time.  It's a quick action but, almost like you'd see in a movie, Krigstein slows down time so you see each stage of his final fall.  What's going through the characters's mind at this point?  Does he know he's dead or is there still some glimmer of hope in his mind that he'll get out of the subway station and escape the black suited man that's chasing him. 

And then there's the final panel of the second tier, showing a train speeding by the man in black.  This panel perfectly echoes the first page of the story, showing the comings and goings of the subway but look at how he once again slows down time.  It's not slowed down so you see a single image of the train but Krigstein manages to practically create a doppler effect in art as the train whizzes by.  It's a fantastic panel and one that I'm kind of surprised hasn't been lifted and used repeatedly in the last 50+ years. 

You can find scans "The Master Race" here

Masterrace8

Never Enough... #4 (Fiction Suits & Dangling Plots)

There's never enough dangling plot thread about travelers from other dimensions that's brought up and then quickly written off.  In Planetary #9 (I think,) Warren Ellis did his best Grant Morrison impersonation by introducing the concept of an explorer from another dimension who traveled to Planetary's dimension.  If I remember correctly, this traveler could have basically been someone from our world wearing a fiction suit (see the total of Morrison's The Invisibles to get a glimpse into the idea of fiction suits.) 

It's probably unfair to call this a dangling plot thread because I'm not too sure that Ellis ever really cared about the extra-dimensional explorer.  Looking at a preview for the final issue of Planetary, it appears that it's the explorer's ship that was the important piece. 

There's a lot of talk around the net about the excitement or lack of excitement about this final issue coming out.  Personally, I can't wait.  In some ways, I think this has been the book of the decade, even though most of it came out in the early days of the 2000s.  In it, Ellis and John Cassaday have written stories about stories.  They were about the stories of our past and how they relate to our present and can change in our future.  Ellis has written a lot of really strong stuff but when all is said and done, the way he wrote about narrative wrapped up in a superhero story may be one of his strongest works.

For more of a preview of Planetary #27, check the DC/Wildstorm blog

Never Enough... #3

There's never enough Dan Brereton inked artwork.

This week's Immortal Weapons #2 by Cullen Bunn and Brereton features Brereton's non-painted artwork.  He's such a great and expressive painter that it's kind of odd to see his work inked and colored by someone else.  Opening this book, I was struck by how much Brereton's artwork looks like Gene Colan, from the action scenes to how Brereton (and his inkers) just have the motion on a page flow.  Visually this book reminded me a lot of Colan's old Daredevil work.

Bunn's story is pretty cool and creepy too.  I haven't been following Iron Fist since Brubaker & Fraction left it but this issue didn't miss a beat.  It's a great stand alone issue, featuring a thief trying to track down something that rightly belongs to the Bride of Nine Spiders.  This may tie into stuff that was happening in the regular series but the story reminded me of some great horror/suspense comics from the 70s, where a lot of the story was about mood and plot.  All in all, this was just a great story.

To check out more of Brereton's artwork, check out the preview on CBR.

(download)

Never Enough... #2

There's never enough of Howard Chaykin's Time 2, a all-too-brief series of graphic novels that Chaykin produced back in the 80s through First Comics.  I don't know how many times I tried to recreate this cover in old sketchpads.  I love the half-hidden Maxim Glory, playing the part of prodigal son and returning to the Square in The Epiphany on this cover.  Looking at it now, the figures are so Chaykinesque but the background almost looks like something Sienkewicz could have done, loose and painterly.

Much like Maxim, I keep meaning to return to Time 2 someday.  This books been on my mind a lot lately so maybe it'll be something to pull out over the upcoming long holiday weekend.

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Weekly Comic Shopping List 9/2/09

A small week but strongly creator driven, which I really like. 

  • Wednesdays Comics #9-- The end is in sight.  Honestly this week, I'm looking forward more to Marvel's Strange Tales.
  • DMZ Vol 7 War Powers TP--I'll have to do a Brian Wood week coming up because I still haven't read the latest Northerners.  Wood is always a strong writer, making his stories about both politics and characters, mixing them up.  I read a lot of criticism about this book and people not liking its main character Matty Roth but I'm not too sure that even Wood likes him. 
  • Sweet Tooth #1--  I'm cautiously looking forward to this book.  I've been poring over The Collected Essex County lately and just awestruck by the story that Jeff Lemire told there.  It's such a human story.  This, on the other hand, is a story about a kid who has antlers.  But Lemire has sited one of my all time favorites Tim Truman's Scout as a bit of inspiration for this work so I think it should be good. 
  • Grimjack Manx Cat #2--  I still have the first issue on my pile of books that I wanted to write about but I guess that can now wait.  I liked the first issue, even if Truman's artwork wasn't quite as sharp as it was on Killer Instinct.  I thought that book was a huge step forward for Truman but the Manx Cat had the feeling of some of Truman's older work and that's not a bad thing either.  
  • Spider-Man 24/7-- I've thoroughly been enjoying this series ever since Brand New Day.  It's solid super-hero action, hearkening back to the days when I first read and enjoyed Spider-Man.  I keep on thinking I should just drop this series but then a new one comes out and I get completely wrapped up in it for the time I'm reading it.  Can you really ask for anything more?
  • Incognito #6--  This has been a solid if somewhat uninspiring story from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.  The artwork, as always, has been a wonder to look at but the story has felt a bit... off.  Maybe it's because I read Sleeper but it seems like we've been down this road before with these creators.  At least this is done so it means more Criminal is up next. 
  • Strange Tales #1-- While Wednesdays Comics hasn't quite grabbed me the same way it has everyone else, I'm looking forward to this short series, featuring some of the best cartoonists working on Disney... I mean Marvel characters.  This should be a fun book.