Fare Thee Well, Karen Berger

Today, the news came that Vertigo impresario Karen Berger is no longer working for DC Comics. A rumor that this was coming has been bouncing around for awhile, and I'll leave it to people like Tom and Rich to talk about Karen's career specifically or to guess at what's coming next for the Vertigo imprint.

I will say, though, that I think this is the kind of thing that is bad for comics, or at least it is for us comics people. Although Image is in the process of stepping up to the plate, so to speak, and despite the fact that various comics from Boom! and Dynamite have managed to pass a very high bar in terms of quality, there's not a company in the market right now that is producing the same high number of very good, non-superhero, books that Vertigo was putting out even a couple of years ago. If that era is winding down because the imprint failed as an intellectual property factory farm, it suggests that the industry has gotten even more not-comics focused than I had feared.

Of course, there are always other avenues for high quality comics, but monthlies like Prophet and Fatale are exceptions rather than rules, and books put out by Drawn and Quarterly or Fantagraphics can be intimidating for the uninitiated. It's important, or at least it was for me, to have something like Vertigo around as new readers begin to take comics seriously; although I'd been reading them on and off for close to a decade, it took a chance encounter with Sandman, or maybe Transmetropolitan, on the shelves of my public library for me to consider that maybe there was more to them than spandex and superpowers. By 2006, those readings had driven me to the comic book store and, luckily for me, those were heady days for the imprint, with books like Fables and 100 Bullets in their primes, with Y the Last Man entering its final act and Scalped just about to start up. Without complex, interesting books like those, I'm not sure I would have stuck around, but, because they kept coming out, I kept going to the library and to the comic book store, and I kept looking around, and, eventually, I found my way to comics that better resemble traditional literature as well as superhero books that suggested that that genre, too, was one that had value, at least in the right hands.

And, so, my debt to Vertigo's steward is a great one. It's her fault that I'm out here, kicking this ball around. Thanks for all that, Karen Berger. I wish you well.

Dream's Lost Years

If you don't want to watch the above video, which you should, but if you don't have four and a half minutes and haven't already heard I'll cut to the chase: Neil Gaiman has written an as yet untitled, J.H. Williams III drawn, Sandman mini-series, out in November.

Williams drew a preview image:

There's a lot of reasons to be excited about this. For one, Gaiman has spent his time since Sandman ended doing all sorts of things, and that added variety to his experience that has almost certainly turned an already wide, almost limitless, imagination into a kind of force. American Gods, although already ten years old, took some ideas Gaiman had been working on since the very beginning of Sandman and transformed them, and I have nothing but the utmost confidence that the writer, returning to the particular character that embodied all of that, will produce something of good quality, that he will tell a story worth telling. For another, J.H. Williams III is doing the art. If there's a more perfect artist for the things that Gaiman can dream up, I have no idea who it is. Williams's work on Batwoman sort of subtly revolutionized what was possible in terms of layout and design in comic books, and we now have consistently more interesting, that is, better, panel layouts and general design.

Of course, there are a lot of reasons to be wary of this, too. I have some of the same concerns that I have with Before Watchmen. Obviously, there's no moral issue here, since Dream is Gaiman's character, and he's doing the writing. Instead, I'm worried about the impulse to tell a new story in an old universe. I get that Gaiman is filling a hole, giving us something he had only hinted at before, even if maybe it was fully or partially conceived back in the Eighties. That's good-- it means he had to keep the old stuff in mind as he was putting together this new bit. But if it he feels he had to tell, why didn't he tell it in the eighties? If it was important to Sandman, important to what Gaiman was building twenty-five years ago, why didn't he tell the story then? Why does he feel the need to go put that piece, never really missing, back into the puzzle?

I'm sure there's a good reason. Maybe he wasn't ready to tell that bit then and he is now. Maybe he was constrained by editorial. Maybe this, maybe that. Unless Gaiman comes out and says why he's writing Dream again, after so long, we'll never know. And, doubtlessly, this new mini will be good, even great. I certainly hope that its as good as Sandman ever be. But it does concern me when someone, anyone, a writer, an editor, feels the need to explain everything, or when a fan wants everything explained. I'm sure I'm going to read it when it comes out, and I'm sure I'm not going to be the only one. But, as a reader, I'm going to lose a little bit of the wonder of those first issues of Sandman. I'm going to stop imagining the why, because I know it.

And I just wonder if I want that or not.

Update: It comes out November 2013, which Gaiman pretty clearly says. My bad.

Dig?

First in a series of posts celebrating the collaboration of Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso, on the occasion of the upcoming publication of their new work SPACEMAN and a show highlighting Risso's work at The Rogues Gallery in Chicago.

Fourteen years ago, Argentine cartoonist Eduardo Risso came to the United States. An artist with almost a decade of experience, he had already drawn albums released in Argentina and in Europe, most of which have since been translated from the original Spanish and released in this country. His work was first published in Heavy Metal and by Dark Horse and then, at DC, he was matched with Brian Azzarello, an up and coming writer with a few short stories for the publisher under his belt. The project was Johnny Double, a former cop and private eye based in San Francisco created by Marv Wolfman and Len Wein in the late Sixties.

How they were brought together, and, for that matter, why they were on this particular, rarely used, property, are things I do not know. I may, however, be privy to their method of collaboration: a employee of one of the two comic shops I frequent in Chicago's north suburbs told me once that, when the two creators do talk directly, they do so by way of the Spanish that Azzarello learned working in the backs of restaurants, as Risso speaks only a little English. If writing is a conversation with oneself, than comics, as fundamentally collaborative, are conversations with yourself and with the selves of, at least one but usually a few, others. Azzarello and Risso must, then, mostly communicate through the crime and noir genres, genres with languages all their own, spoken not with words but instead with darkness and light. This is a miraculous thing; the two speak this language so fluently, even in their first collaboration they communicate so well, that their work together is nearly flawless. This first mini would lead to the second longest unbroken creative run of the last two decades, the brilliantly plotted and vaguely philosophical 100 Bullets, a title which is surely either the premier crime comic of that span or a very close runner-up.

With the benefit of hindsight, I suspect that their coming together must have been an accident. Nothing this perfect is ever planned.

Last week, through their Vertigo Resurrected series of 100 page collections, DC Comics rereleased that previously out-of-print first collaboration, Johnny Double: Two Finger Discount. This comic is without a doubt the progenitor of what would come barely a year later: even on the first page, the elements we would now know as the hallmarks of the Azzarello/Risso style are on display. The narrator starts with a story, talking at us like he talks at everybody else. The ink lines are thin, but definitive. The characters are well defined, there isn't a line out of place, but they remain cartoony. The panel design is dynamic, almost interactive, but legible. Few things are approached directly, either in the storytelling or in the pictures. Most importantly, though, there's a sort of subdued glee, as if the two are just barely controlling their excitement at the prospect of unleashing deliciously horrible thing upon deliciously horrible thing.

And the whole thing is as sweet as a first big score.

But there's a seedy core to the sweetness: this isn't a straight up crime story, but none of the good ones ever are. Johnny Double is downright prophetic; the titular character is a beatnik asswipe at the end of the twentieth century, a street wise old man too smart not to get played, a child of love and dope who never really found the first or gave up the second. He's been slinking through life since the sixties, and his world is about to change: the dead bum on the story's first page is the first horseman of the Apocalypse, come to bring the end of days to Johnny Double.

Not far behind are a group of youngsters, street wise in their own way, but not hip like Double; not ready for what comes, not that Double is, either. Nihilists, they see that the world is ending, and they steal for their share and they fuck who they can, knowing that their time is not infinite. And then there's the puppetmaster, a ghost playing the worried father, and his daughter (his lover?), looking for that last big score, that gold wristwatch, so that they can get out of the game.

And then, there's Risso's grubby, sticky San Francisco, all garish lights and overwhelming shadows, with the dead bum under the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge (recognizable, but always in shadows, black rather than the iconic red) and the underground parties and the bodies in the bay. Risso's city is made all the more real because it's populated by Azzarello's bums, beatniks and con-men, because its the character that really does, in the end, seem capable of seeing the whole thing through; Johnny Double can't possibly take place anywhere else. It belongs in San Francisco, at the end of the twentieth century, just like the story, tightly wound and perfectly placed, belongs to crime fiction, not just to noir or to the con but to crime (and the only motives that the criminal understands) on the whole.

Johnny Double's a hipster, a beatnik asswipe, a private dick with nothing except the memory of the way that things were once, and at least he's got that. The other characters, the ones with shorter memories? They've got nothing. Azzarello's Johnny Double is an anti-hero for the ages, one turned into an icon by happenstance of being played and the happenstance of the medium into which he was born; Azzarello and Risso know their medium and their genre, know that they're dealing with icons, and so that's what this Johnny Double is; a figure deified not for taking a stand, but instead for being the lesser of all evils, the one who stands firm in the face of the Apocalypse not because he is brave but because he can't see that far past his shades.

If he could see beyond them, though, he'd find a world that's hyper real, one that's just the other side of our existence, one that's plausible despite its contrivances and yet, because Risso works in cartoons rather than in photorealism, one that speaks to a world where contrivance is plausible, where some one is always pulling the strings. Johnny Double isn't perfect, although it comes pretty close, and it is a good indicator of what's to come: with this book Azzarello and Risso came together. This is a marvel: what comes next is history.

Hard Truths in Smooth Drawings

Since 1990, the Kentler International Drawing Space has showcased "important... work on paper" in their small gallery. The current exhibition, up until just this Sunday December 12th (yes, that's TOMORROW!), celebrates Vertigo's recent release: "Cuba: My Revolution", a graphic novel drawn by Dean Haspiel that recounts the harrowing, but ultimately triumphant, story of the writer, and Haspiel's friend, visual artist Inverna Lockpez. "Cuba: My Revolution" details her indoctrination to, faithful service in, and eventual escape from communist Cuba. Her path brought her torture and loss before finally bringing her to freedom.

On display at the Kentler is Haspiel's early character sketches, and the original page layouts and final pre-production art for a handful of pages from the graphic novel as well as the 1960s pencil work of Inverna Lockpez herself. Her drawings from the period are featured as a part of the comic's narrative and are used to mark each chapter's beginning. A small pamphlet with an essay accompanying the exhibit written by PW Beat's Calvin Reid is only available at the gallery. The space isn't used as well as I might imagine, but the works themselves and the way they are organized makes the trip well-worth it. Haspiel's work reminds me of Steve Rude's: a delicate touch with pencil but a strong smooth hand with ink. Pretty much the whole artistic package. Or at least what I think of as the whole package: A mastery of both of the two tools most utilized to make comics. Seeing Haspiel's strong line in person is a TRIP. Even better is seeing the progression from sketched outline to finished comics page right in front of your eyes. And to see Lockpez's striking abstract drawings that are only here thanks to a network of secret art saviors who rescued some of the work confiscated by Fidel's regime is no laughing matter either. Her images remind me of the graphic style of one comics art giant of the 1960s and 1970s, Jack Kirby. The exhibit is small and a quick walk-through is more than enough, leaving you with a hunger to read the graphic novel itself and learn about one of the saddest political crises of the Cold War era.

Again, this exhibit is only going to stay open tomorrow, Sunday, between 12 noon and 5 PM. The Kentler International Drawing Space sits at 353 Van Brunt St in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY and admission is free to all.

If you're in NYC, do yourself the favor and check it out.

~ @JonGorga

"Metal" Warms Slowly, But It Can Still Burn Hot.

"Northlanders" #30 from Vertigo (an imprint of DC Comics)

Riccardo Burchielli's art gets on my nerves.

Sometimes he has lumps in the wrong places and a good quarter of the time when a panel has a lot of the elements that should make for excellently dramatic imagery it either has something it shouldn't or doesn't have something it should. [See what I mean, from page 4, at right?] I wanted to get that out first. That's the main reason I haven't yet given a solid chance to Brian Wood's long-running project with Burchielli, "DMZ". It's far from bad, but it is frustrating. With all of that out of the way let's talk about the first part of the new "Northlanders" story-arc which Wood (@brianwood) wrote and Burchielli drew. I was looking forward to this and...

It's awesome. METAL awesome.

When I was a kid, my second favourite class was always history. I always thought about it as one big story with a whole lot of different characters and groups of characters who clashed and reconciled and clashed again and grew and changed and occasionally died out. Always-always-ALWAYS with something else taking their place. History was my second favourite class only because English class was about how stories themselves worked. Plus fiction always wins over non-fiction. It's more versatile. It's cooler.

I think history was Brian Wood's second favourite subject too because "METAL" Part 1: "The Old Ways" is as much about Vikings ramming people through with sharp weapons as it is about the friction of societal transition between different cultural belief systems. And it's cool.

First, we meet the blacksmith Erik. Erik Thorsson that is. Simultaneously, we meet Ulf. (Yes, U-L-F.) Then we meet the goddess Hulda. This is followed by a group of unnamed obnoxious monks and nuns. And finally, the beautiful Ingrid. The names, the ethnicities, the worship, the social status-- in short the History (the long, long STORY) of who these people are is far from incidental. [It's on display, in these simple two panels in which Ulf lets Erik go by slipping him the key to his shackles, also from page 4.]

The design of each of these characters is human and expressive. Who they are and what they feel is intelligently written on their faces and into their clothes by Burchielli. There's even some beautifully laid-out pages in here if the visual art is a bit off.

["This is the future... stay out of its way." This image of the cathedral under construction dominating the small village landscape is all kinds of excellent. Not a line out of place here on the splash-page facing the previous images!]

Societies twist and change, sometimes because of pressures from without and sometimes because of pressures from within, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Erik and Ulf live in a society of Vikings being coerced into destroying their own land to build a cathedral for the disrespectful, money-loving monks. Ulf is an unhappy but willing collaborator to their machinations because he sees the huge amount of money flowing into their village as a boon not to be passed on. Erik sees the influence of the Christians as an unacceptable outside control of his home. He chooses, at the behest of the mysterious and terrifying Hulda (goddess of death?), not to give in. To choose the destruction of his home over the destruction of his beliefs. Ingrid is the kidnapped Viking woman he liberates in his violent rampage.

Wood's pacing of this entire issue leading up to, and including, the attack sequence is nothing short of remarkable. The comic-book industry standard 22 pages somehow feel more like 15 because the trajectory is so breathless. The content is mostly set-up, but WHAT set-up! This set-up is so good it completely overcomes my dislike for the art.

Dear gods. Where can we go from here?
I don't know and I can't wait to find out. You shouldn't be able to either.

~ @JonGorga

A Sweet Year

Before Jeff Lemire had a DC exclusive contract, before he was writing the Atom, before he was handed Superboy, there was Sweet Tooth. Even before that there was The Nobody, and way back in the past (ancient history, by now) was the modern classic Essex County- a trilogy that received just as much press for its rural setting as it did for its moody inks and deeply beautiful characters- but those things are, right now, unimportant. All that matters right now is Sweet Tooth, because it seems that Vertigo is at something of a crossroads: several relatively popular and incredibly well-regarded titles from the imprint are about to disappear. There are no apparent replacements and, thus, Lemire's story about a deer boy named Gus in a post-apocalyptic world is one of the few young titles left in the imprint's stable.

Long time readers will remember that one of my first reviews for this site (almost a year ago, if you can believe that!) was the series' first issue. Yesterday, it completed the full circuit around the Sun with the release of issue #12. It's a mostly silent stand alone, punctuated only by supporting character Dr. Singh's narration at the bottom of each page, and it details the history of the plague, fills in some blanks, and suggests that Gus, good old Gus, is the cause of everything that has been wrought. It's a pretty effective technique, particularly because it allows Lemire to tie up some ends from the book's first year as well as remind us of exactly who Gus is, of what drives him. It's almost refreshing, after an arc that brought Jeppard's tragic past to the fore, to see that little glint of hope, tempered as it is by Singh's speculation. It's a little terrifying, too, because it doesn't really suggest anything about the book's future, and thus allows Lemire to be wildly unpredictable, inventive in a way he has not been, as of yet.

That's mostly been Sweet Tooth's problem, up until now- it hasn't blown anyone away. Month in and month out it's good, consistent comics, but it's never anything that you have to share, always sort of a private joy. Issue #12 is no different, but the experimentation with the form as well as the plot's ambiguities suggest that Lemire has something up his sleeve- and I have no idea what that thing might be, which might just be the kick the book needs. As long as he continues to play to his strengths, the book will be solid, month in and month out. He may need something more than that, though, to take his story to its conclusion and, because I believe in Jeff Lemire, because I was as taken by Essex County as I was by Blankets, because I know he has it in him, because of all that I believe in Sweet Tooth and I hope that it, unlike Air or Unknown Soldier, reaches its natural end.

Here's to more years of Gus.

Honest Harvey

To me Harvey Pekar wasn't just an underground comics creator. He was the underground comics creator.

He died this morning at about 1 A.M. 70 years young.

[via @Newsarama & @NBMPUB & @DarkHorseComics & The Cleveland Plain Dealer]

I grew up reading superhero comic-books (and I still do), but actually, the truth is I grew up reading Marvel Spider-Man comic-books. Only in high school did I begin to branch out from Spidey and only in college, when a friend named Abbie lent me a collection of stories from "American Splendor" (the title that became Harvey's most used vehicle for telling the story of his life), did I begin to really 'get' underground comics. In fact, I know the exact moment I understood why this girl was raving about this man's work and I first appreciated the beauty of both underground comics and autobiographical comics: The moment I read a full story titled "Kaparra" drawn by Gerry Shamray originally from "American Splendor" #5. A single page of panels depicting the reminiscence of an old man's narrow escape from the possibility of a Nazi death squad because of some triviality. One page. Whole story. There was no drama, no tension in the story. There didn't need to be. It was a true story. At least as told to Harvey Pekar.

Harvey met R. Crumb in the 60s and as Crumb slowly began throwing off the shackles of the American Greeting Card Company and started making self-published comics he spurred a wave of similar projects from the people around him. Pekar sat Crumb down and asked him to illustrate some very simple stories of Pekar's life. In 1976 Harvey self-published the first issue of "American Splendor" with art by Crumb. The series was such a cult hit there were multiple trade-paperbacks published reprinting stories from the comic-book long before such a thing became the norm. In 1994, a graphic novel co-written with his wife Joyce Brabner titled "Our Cancer Year" followed. "American Splendor" continued on in various forms, finally under the DC Comics' imprint Vertigo.

Harvey Pekar was the kind of man who would get married and then write a comics story titled "Harvey's Latest Crapshoot: His Third Marriage to a Sweetie from Delaware and How His Substandard Dishwashing Strains Their Relationship" in the tenth issue of his comic-book. A remarkable, curmudgeonly, honest kind of man. Harvey's willingness to be entirely transparent with the details of his life has been an inspiration to my prose, to my comics, to my reporting, and to my personal style. I recognize that things were probably changed here and there to make things move, to simplify them. But Harvey never skimped on the details. The awesome little things that made his stories human and true.

If you've happened to read my comics, especially the comics I've been making over the past few years? Single pages that tell stories with details I observe, striving to find things both human and true.

A lot of underground comic creators get so busy trying to be ironic they forget they were telling a story. Some of the guys (and ladies) doing autobiographical comics (even people doing GREAT autobiographical comics) inject a little too much... drama, a little too much 'woe is me'. Give me honest Harvey's work any day.

Crime novelist Elmore Leonard has 10 rules for successful writing put down first in an article in The New York Times, then later in a short book. Rule #10 is "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip" which I always translated as 'Take out the boring parts'. It's damn good advice. Advice I don't follow nearly enough in my own writing. But that was the truly remarkable thing about Harvey Pekar. I suspect he didn't think of parts of a story as boring or exciting.

He told it like it was.

R.I.P. Harvey

~ @JonGorga

"No-one can destroy the metal / The metal will strike you down with a vicious blow"

Comics are a tremendously varied and expansive medium, as I have rambled on about multiple times in the past on this blog. The variety of genres and types of comic-books being produced today is at the widest it has been in the United States since the short period in the 1950s when the Superhero genre was nearly dead and the Western, Pirate, Romance, Horror, War, and Humor genres were allowed to breathe for the first time in a long time.

Today in serialized comics, we have: anthropomorphic dragon-men police officers as well as sarcastic twenty-something slice-of-life magical-video-game-style romantic duelists, alternate-future war photojournalists, and now semi-mythological period-setting politically and violently warring vikings.

Actually, we very likely have eclipsed the variety of the 1950s entirely. And some creators are refusing to stop here!

Brian Wood's (@brianwood) latest blog post, titled "Northlanders as Metal", about upcoming issues of his comic-book "Northlanders", shows how it is possible to stretch your imagination about what comics can be. With issue #30, he will begin incorporating Norse mythology into the series (which has previously only included mythology as "casual superstition") and the new story-arc will be titled "Metal". Yes, "Metal". Now my understanding of metal is entirely confined to the hilarious music of Tenacious D, random musings of our very metal friend Seth, and episodes of Adult Swim's "Metalocalypse", but as Wood himself wrote:

"Heavy metal and Vikings go hand in hand ... I’m taking what I’m able to take from the musical genre and apply it to comics. This is not a story about music, but a story that taps into the same dark mythology and nihilistic worldview that inspires the genre. This is radically different from anything that’s come before in the last 30 months of this series."

This could be a whole new genre for the Comics world: Metal comics.

(Okay, there was "Black Metal", but that was a pretty tongue-in-cheek kind of Metal comic. As opposed to a serious borrowing of the imagery and subjects of Metal.)

Check it out on July 21st at your local comic shop. I'll be looking for it.

And so here to send you off and to welcome a new direction for Wood's "Northlanders" (and possibly a new genre for the entire medium) is the full song lyrics of my favorite metal/humor song from Tenacious D, "The Metal":

"
You can't kill the metal!
The metal will live on!
Punk-Rock tried to kill the metal!
But they failed, as they were smite to the ground!
New-wave tried to kill the metal!
But they failed, as they were striken down to the ground!
Grunge tried to kill the metal Ha, hahahahaha!
They failed, as they were thrown to the ground!

Aargh yaow!!
Aargh yaow!!

No-one can destroy the metal!
The metal will strike you down with a vicious blow!
We are the vanquished foes of the metal!
We tried to win for why we do not know!

New-wave tried to destroy the metal, but the metal had its way!
Grunge then tried to dethrone the metal, but metal was in the way!
Punk-rock tried to destroy the metal, but metal was much too strong!
Techno tried to defile the metal, but techno was proven wrong!
Yea!!

Metal!!
It comes from hell!!
"

I love Tenacious D. They crack me up and rock me hard at the same time.

Happy comics reading folk!

~ @JonGorga

Fables on the BBC

Via Rich Johnston comes this cool Fables ad, which I guess ran in the UK over the weekend during a Doctor Who marathon:



This is neat, because it is basically the kind of thing Jon was begging to see more of last week; people can put comics adverts on television and Vertigo is putting comics adverts on the telly (well, at least in Britain, anyway), which is a huge step in the right direction.

Now, before we get too excited, Rich suggests that Vertigo may have not bought the space so much as traded some with the BBC, so they may not have actually sought out the time for the 30 second spot so much as taken the BBC up on an offer of barter. With that said though, DC/Vertigo/Warner/Whoever did decide to give up a chunk of (very valuable) advertising revenue to run the ad and this is extremely important because it means that DC/Vertigo/Warner/Whoever thinks they can sell comics by advertising them on television. Cool, right?

Well, mostly. Rich has some complaints about the ad copy (which is fair enough- the man does do advertising for a living), but the major problem I have with the ad is that it sells Fables as a series of graphic novels, which it is not. It is a series of comic books. The distinction may seem fine and, to be honest, it is, but it is also extremely important. COMICS is a medium, much like literature or film. A "graphic novel" is (to borrow a term from improv) a long-form kind of comic, while a comic book is a short-form (again, an improv term) example of the medium. Therefore, Fables is a long running comic book which, as a general rule, runs 32 pages per issue while 1001 Nights of Snowfall is a graphic novel set in the Fables universe.* There are other things that separate comic books from graphic novels (for instance, comics are generally part of a series while graphic novels are generally stand-alone) but these are mostly generalizations (this week's Serenity: Float Out is a one-shot while Maus has two volumes, for example) and, therefore, to distill the differences to their essence is to discuss length.

Hence, the problem with the advert calling Fables a series of graphic novels; Fables is a series of comic books, which is occasionally collected into something resembling a graphic novel. This is the heart of something I call The Comics Consumption Problem: because collections resemble graphic novels we treat them as such and, therefore, we consume them as such. The problem is, collections of comic books are just that- collections of comic books! To treat them as graphic novels is to consume them differently than they were intended; it is to consume them as one story rather than as serial chapters of one story. This may not seem like an important distinction, but it is a very important distinction- telling a story serially over a period of months is different than telling a story in one big chunk (this is part of the reason that television differs from film, for example); it forces a creator to put the same sort of overall structure in an individual issue that he or she would put in the series as a whole, when taken together and it forces us, the reader, to read in a very different and specialized kind of way.

I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't buy collections- they do a lot of good, and there is a reason they exist. I am suggesting, however, that there needs to be a new standard, a new way of understanding them that differs from both comic books and graphic novels. We need to understand them in their own terms.

The Fables advert on the BBC is really cool and, like I said, I think it is a step in the right direction. I do, however, think that it represents a kind of thinking about comics that moves us backwards in other ways, ways we need to be very careful of.

*Whether or not 1001 Nights of Snowfall actually counts as a "graphic novel" is an interesting question- most of it is comics, but some of it is actually illustrated prose. A discussion on how to treat something like this will have to wait for another time.

Inspiring "DEMO"nstrations of Skill and Possibility

"DEMO" v2 #1 from Vertigo (an imprint of DC Comics)

Have these questions ever crossed your mind: "Superheroes could be so much more as a genre, couldn't it?" or "Why do they all have to be in that damn spandex, why can't they just be regular people with weird abilities?" If you ever thought these things (and REALLY, haven't we ALL?) you should be reading "DEMO", the anthology comic-book mini-series written by Brian Wood and drawn by Becky Cloonan. Either go back and find the original series from small publisher AiT/Planet Lar or buy these new issues from big publisher Vertigo as they come out. Or better yet, both.

When I came across the collected first volume of "DEMO" on the comics shelf of my good friend Davy Brustlin, I was mesmerized. I still haven't read all of Volume 1, but as the series is an anthology (and as such doesn't have any continuing characters or situations) we all have the freedom to read whatever we can find.

I have come to think of the series' name as an implication more than a label. A dare: 'This is what we can do with superheroes. This is our demonstration. Can you top us?' And this issue shows us once again why they deserve that title: These stories are strong. [At left, is a page from v1 #1. Raw teenage angst portrayed in angsty lines.]

To kick off the new volume Wood and Cloonan show us the mind of Joan. (Which is my mother's name. Weird.)

Joan doesn't really sleep anymore. She can't. She keeps seeing a vision in her dreams of someone falling to their death. Feeling a moral ache and an apparent inability to do anything about it, Joan draws away from her own life in San Francisco in growing concern over this person, this woman, in her dreams who seems to be falling to her doom.

Finally, deciding the location of the girl's fall she rushes across the globe hoping to save her in time. Quitting her job, breaking up with her boyfriend, and spending all her savings in a desperate and STILL sleepless race to St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

What she finds is that there is no girl about to fall, that the life she abandoned was very easy to abandon, and that in the falling moment of final freedom of all her burdens, as she topples over the guard rail to be saved at the very last moment by a nameless security guard, she can finally sleep.

At first glance a pulpy, simple story about a girl who dreams someone falling and rushes there to self-fulfill the prophecy, the story becomes something much deeper. If her life was so boring, by traveling half-way around the world and stranding herself there on a wild-goose chase, she did save the girl in her vision. She saved herself.

[To the right, super gorgeous page from v2 #1. A more mature sleek style for a more mature woman.]

Though this first story doesn't have the raw power of the debut issue of the first volume it is still really, really wonderful. And, although Brian Wood may not have been quite as awesome as he has been in the past, Becky Cloonan shows a great refinement of the crazy intensity and skill on display in her past work. Plus the story of a girl taking a chance, leaving her shitty life, and being helped by a male supporting character actually kinda parallels the story in v1 #1. So that's cool!

THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT?
This comic is like NBC's "Heroes" with all the stupid taken out. Read it.

"For Weyland, mighty Weyland, was advancing to the bat."

Fables had an odd 2009. It started off incredibly strong with The Dark Ages storyline, which brought the book's first mega-arc to a close quite nicely, then trudged into The Great Fables Crossover, which ranged from mediocre to OHMIGODITBURNS and then strolled right back into quality with the Witches arc which, despite its weak start, had, in the development of Bufkin, one of the most satisfying character arcs in a series full of such work.

Starting off 2010 with a break, then, makes a lot of sense and a break is exactly what Fables #92 is. With regular artist Mark Buckingham taking a well deserved vacation, David Lapham takes over the pencils on this issue and, while his work is easy to distinguish from Buckingham's, it's familiar enough as not to be jarring. Furthermore, Lapham is a great storyteller for this kind of tale- a little bit whimsical, a little bit criminal, all fabulous. (Sorry.)

Bill Willingham is no slouch here, either. Although he's taking a break from the seriousness that's overwhelmed the Earthbound Fables as of late, he certainly isn't turning down the quality of his writing- this story is just right. (The fairy tale puns stop now, I promise.) In a way, it's about where Fables is, right now, as a book- this is a story about what it means to be victorious and, as things continue to fall apart in the wake of a war's end, the Fables as a whole seem to be having a hard time dealing with the fall out of a hard victory. The price, for those on the Farm, may seem to have become too high.

What we have here, then, is a tale of the difference between a post-victory hangover and what it means to be a real victor. This means it is a tale with a moral which, of course, makes it a Fable. Kudos to Willingham and Lapham for taking some time to remember their source material, and just how broad it is (considering the "Casey at the Bat" homage that makes up the issue's first half and also the title of this review). If you're looking for a good point to hop on to this ship, I think this is probably it- it's a nice little tale, nothing more or less than it has to be.

Gorga's Looking Forward to Wednesday 1/20/2o1o!

Hellooooooo.

And thus follows the perfunctory pull-list post of what I'm thinking of getting this Wednesday in my weekly comic-book store visit:

"the Amazing Spider-Man" #618
"Amazing" has been consistently good for about four months now. And that means a lot more than usual because it comes out three times a month. That's really more like a year's worth of stories from any other title. I ain't complaining.

"Web of Spider-Man" #4
It's the Spider-Man title that doesn't really feel like a Spider-Man title. Yeah his name's on it and yeah he shows up sometimes, but basically it's the villain of the month book now. I'll probably pass on this again.

"Avengers vs. Agents of Atlas" #1 of 4
I think this looks delightful. I haven't read much of Agents of Atlas, but Josh speaks well of it and I'm really getting even more into the Avengers as "Siege" ramps up.

"Incredible Hercules" #140
Continuation of "Assault on New Olympus", Marvel's other-other-other crossover 'event'.

"Spider-Woman" #5
So the new Avengers might be in here... or they might be more skrulls or whatever. We'll see.

"Dark Avengers" #13
Like Josh, I feel the siren song of the crossover 'event'. I want to know what Bendis will feel the need to hide in "Dark Avengers" that he doesn't put in "Siege".

"The Brave and the Bold" #31
The idea of the Atom and the Joker quote-unquote teaming-up makes little to no sense, but since JMS is writing it that actually means it's probably going to be remarkable.

"Cowboy Ninja Viking" #3
or
"Cowboy Ninja Viking" #4?
Or nothing. Both issues have been solicited for this week. Between the erratic release schedule and erratic tone of this title I'm falling further and further out of love with it.

"RASL" #6
"RASL" #6 might be coming out. This is another series that arrives when it feels like although it's far more worth the wait than "Cowboy Ninja Viking".

"Joe the Barbarian" #1 of 8
I can't help thinking "neato!" Because I'm sure twelve-year-old Jon Gorga would be absolutely enthralled by this title. We shall see what twenty-three-year-old Jon Gorga thinks of it.

Mind you I have no idea what I will really be able to afford... Check back here to find out!


UPDATE: 1/22/2o1o
So... this past Wednesday was a job searching day. I went to some of the comic-book shops in NYC I hadn't been to yet and as I wanted to make it clear that I read comics and love comics I bought a few at every store I visited while I dropped off resumes.

Long story short I'd spent more than I usually do on a Wednesday before I even got around to buying my new books. Mind you, I got some good deals. But money being tight I scaled back my purchases for the week to:

"the Amazing Spider-Man" #618

It was really the only essential buy for me this week anyway. Next week perhaps will be more exciting.

Gorga's Looking Forward to Wednesday 1/13/2o1o!

Okay, in light of the epic kinda-sorta-defeat of last week I really should/will buy something this week. But I still need to finish some reviews for stuff from the end of last year, not to mention the 2oo9 year in review posts all three of us are working on!


The weeklies...
"the Amazing Spider-Man" #617
"The Gauntlet" moves on to revamping the Rhino.

"Batman: Wydening Gyre" #4
This Batman mini penned by Kevin Smith has been good fun so far. If the cover is to be taken as a real indication of the contents I think we're finally going to see a lot of the Joker in this title.

"Daytripper" #2
Issue #1 might be on all three of our personal best of 2oo9 lists. That should tell you everything you need to know.

"the Invincible Iron Man" #22
This series might just be the best in mainstream superhero comics right now.

"X-Men Origins: Cyclops" one-shot
Again, these "Origins" one-shots are hit or miss to me. I'll take a look and make a full report of my opinions to you, the consumer.

"Spider-Man and the Secret Wars" #2 of 4
Still haven't read ish #1, but it looks like the comics equivalent of french fries drowned in ketchup, salt, and vinegar. Smells a bit sour, tastes totally sweet, goes down easy.

The books...
"Ed Hannigan: Covered"
I've never heard this man's name but I do know that there were some awesome covers wrapped around some issues of "Peter Parker: the Spectacular Spider-Man" back in the 70s and 80s. So when you combine this with the fact that there's some money going to a guy in bad health who gave something to the industry and the medium, it is something we should all really pick up.

"Rocketbots: Trouble in Time"
This looks like good fun. Sounds like something Pixar would dream up, right?


Okay, the truth? Although I didn't buy anything out of the new material this past week, I ended up breaking and buying some ridiculously good deals yesterday.

I bought: "MySpace Dark Horse Presents" Vol. 3 (which includes an excellent "Serenity" story) and "Acme Novelty Library" #19 for $16.30! That would have been $36 at full retail price. Both were things I'd wanted and planned to get for a while, so I did good.


UPDATE: 1/14/2o1o
There are those weeks when I just think comics are getting better across the board and I'm just lucky enough to be along for the ride.

I picked up the "Ed Hannigan" booklet. It's nice to learn about someone in the industry who I'd never heard of before. I hope that if the day comes when I'm a professional on in years without pension that something like this would happen to give me some badly needed money and recognition.

I picked up "Daytripper" #2, "Widening Gyre" #4, "Amazing" #617, and "Iron Man" #22 because they are excellent comics. All of them.

I picked up "Spider-Man and the Secret Wars" #2 because it's continuing to flesh out one of my favorite stories from 80s Marvel history: "The Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars".

I passed on "Origins: Cyclops" because it just seemed to be running over territory we'd seen a billion times and trying to tie it into the current stories. I'm sure those current stories are great, but I don't see the point in structuring an origin revamping one-shot to lead-into ongoing stuff. Unless I missed something, I thought these "X-Men Origins" one-shots were supposed to be cool, timeless re-presentations of X-Men characters in their youth. Why can't they all be like "X-Men Orgins: Jean Grey"? Timeless and of high quality.

I also passed on "Rocketbots". Mainly because I couldn't find it to decide if I wanted to buy it or not.

When are the reviews coming, I could not tell you. But come they will. And they will be good.

We are all three really hard at work on whipping up year-end review posts for you. So be patient!

Gorga's Looking Forward to Wednesday 1/6/2o1o!

So, as 2o1o begins and I read my huge pile of unread comics from 2oo9 and re-read my almost equally huge number of bought and read comics of 2oo9 here's my quick first 'Looking Forward To...' post of the new year!

This week of the Wednesday, the sixth of January in the year two-thousand-and-ten we have:

The books...
"The Chill" (maybe)
The idea of a series of crime graphic novels from Vertigo, the 'HBO of comics', is really awesome, but the first two failed to really grab my loins, if you know what I mean...

"Town of Evening Calm Country of Cherry Blossoms" (maybe)
This looks beautiful.

"The Box Man" (maybe)
Well... that sounds crazy, right?

The weeklies...
"Amazing Spider-Man Presents: Jackpot" #1 (maybe)
The chances that this won't leave me feeling lukewarm are slim, but you never know!

"Cable" #22 (maybe)
The last issue wasn't bad. I took a chance on it. I like Hope as a character and I really enjoy the way she interacts with Cable. It's kind of a 'Lone Wolf and Cub'-thing, but it's also a kind of a 'Leon, The Professional'-thing.

"Siege" #1 (definitely)
It's a story that's been seeded as far back as "Secret Invasion" in 2oo8, if not "Avengers: Disassembled" waaaay back in 2oo3. And it's only a commitment of four issues. Why not buy it?

"Siege: Embedded" #1 (maybe)
Well, I don't know if this one will turn out to be one of the titles I'll regret not buying when the event is over and done with so I'll at least look at the damn thing.

Right now, you're thinkin' "Damn that's a lot of maybes." And you're right. What can I say? I'm doing sporadic file clerk work now for cripe's sake! And reading all the comics from 2oo9 I bought and DIDN'T read is making me think hard about the way I spend my money.

Check back and see who wins: the Gorga or the Wallet!


UPDATE: 1/10/2o1o

The Wallet doesn't pull its punches and achieves a knockout folks, he weaved left, he weaved right, he...
I didn't pick up anything this week.

"Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms" turned out to be 2 stories in one and left me confused as to its publishing history, which has left me burned a few too many times lately for me to pick it up and get disappointed that there was a cheaper, earlier version out there.

Quick Amazon.com research shows that there was indeed a cheaper paperback version published in 2007.

"The Box Man" looked like a damn mess of pop-surrealism. That's all I gots ta say about that.

The first issue of the new "Jackpot" mini looked like so much crap. So much rigamarole just to introduce the actual character of Jackpot and not someone pretending to be Jackpot, only to have her be someone who doesn't want to be Jackpot. And now the writers change their minds, have her change her mind and now she's Jackpot.

"Siege: Embedded" looks like something I wouldn't mind reading, but it's not a must read.

And "Siege" itself? Yeah, it's really good. But do I need it?
I read Clare's copy like a Moochie McMoocherstein.

Next week... I'll probably buy something.

Already Tired of Tuesday...Siege!

Hey guys!

After an extended holiday break, it's good to be back- although I had a nice time sitting around and doing nothing, it's time to get back in the game.

The book of the week is, of course, the first issue of Marvel's new event book- Siege! I'm something of a Marvel fanboy, so it's no surprise that I'm picking this up, particularly because it looks to be the conclusion of the publisher's almost decade long macrostory. Trying to figure out where we go from here (and what exactly the promised Heroic Age is all about) is definitly part of the appeal here. Icing on the cake is the art of Oliver Copiel who, at the very least, drew the best Thor of the decade and is one of the best comic book artists at the House of Ideas. Needless to say, it's going to be a lot of fun, if not necessarily great comics.

I've decided that, although I'm not going to buy all of the tie-ins, Siege: Embedded #1 will be on my pull-list for a couple of issues, at least. I've always liked Ben Urich and, inasmuch as I think Embedded will be able to deal with the consequences of the event for the real people of Broxton, it'll have some interesting stories to tell.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to Sweet Tooth #5, which is the end of the book's first arc.

Finally, I just wanted to thank all of you fine readers for stopping by in the first few months of the site. Hopefully, in the new year, our readership will only continue to grow.

Already Tired of Tuesday... Late Edition

I know its Wednesday folks, sorry about that. I'm in the midst of Finals, so I'm afraid blogging gets short shrift, but in return for my being unable to fall asleep, you get new posts.

Which I guess is a fair trade.


This week's featured issue is Fables #91, the conclusion to the Witches storyline. Witches, on the whole, has been pretty unbelievably cool, with just the right level of intrigue, adventure and butt-kicking flying monkey. That's right, Bufkin, the flying monkey, has been playing a major role in Fables for the past five months and, in my humble opinion, it's one of the most satisfying character arcs that Bill Willingham has ever written. Furthermore, in between Frau Totenkinder's quest to discover the origin of Mr. Dark, Ozma's take over of the Fable spellcasters and Gepetto's quest to regain a little power, there's a lot going on here- and it's all building up to something huge. If you haven't been reading Fables, this is not a very good place to jump on- but, as the book is by far one of the best currently on the stands, you really should wait until next month, when a brand new storyline starts.

Also on the pull list for this week is Captain America Reborn #5, which may or may not be the last issue of a mini that I had high hopes for, but has been incredibly inconsistent, as well as Daredevil #503 and possibly Brave and the Bold #30. Daredevil is, I think, one of the most underrated comics on the stands these days, and if you aren't picking it up you should at least take a flip through. I haven't heard great things about JMS' Brave and the Bold run, however, the cover caught my eye, so maybe Dr. Fate is enough to bring me on, if for just one issue. We'll have to see, I guess.

Gorga's Looking Forward to Wednesday 12/9/2oo9

My thoughts on the comics that interest moi this week!

BIG week:

"the Amazing Spider-Man" #614 (definitely)
Still only beginning to catch up with this book...

"Spider-Man and the Secret Wars" #1 of 4 (probably)

The "Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars" was one of my favorite comics to dig through boxes for in comic shops (sometimes all around the world) when I was a kid, so the idea of dropping in at the BEST moment of the series (the opening of issue #4) and depicting it from my favorite character's POV? I don't even care if this turns out to be out-of-continuity I think I will buy all four!

"Web of Spider-Man" #3 (maybe)

So far I didn't buy #1 and then I bought #2, but mainly only because it was a sale weekend at St. Mark's Comics... Spider-Man never seems to actually show up in these, but I get the feeling they really need to be read to follow the story-line "The Gauntlet" currently going through "Amazing".

"New Avengers Annual" #3 (maybe)
I loved the first annual from a few years ago, felt kind of lukewarm about the second one. Depends on whether the Web-Head shows up. We shall see.

"the Invincible Iron Man" #21 (probably)

Well, the first part of "Stark: Disassembled" in last issue was great (as can be seen in Josh's review here), so we'll see how things move along here. Considering the connections this story should have to the upcoming 'events' from Marvel I should read all of it just to best appreciate "Siege" and whatever the hell "The Heroic Age" will be.

"Daytripper" #1 (probably)
A completely original work from the remarkable team of twins Fabio Moon and Gabriel Bá? Why wouldn't I pick this up?

"Ghostbusters: Past Present Future" (maybe)
The Ghostbusters take on the mythical ghosts of Charles Dickens' classic story "A Christmas Carol"! Deeeeee-lightful!

"God Complex" #1 (maybe)

This looks pretty good to me. Fun, cool, smart.

UPDATE: 12/10/2oo9

So Spidey appears in the "New Avengers Annual". Also? It looks like Bendis is finally going to make sense of the muck he has made out of the character of Hawkeye in this issue. Exciting!

"Web of Spider-Man" by comparison looked okay, but had no Spidey... His name is in the title, right?

"Invincible Iron Man" is really about as excellent as superhero comics get.

"Daytripper" is equally excellent. I can't wait for this series to be complete! It could be truly brilliant.

"God Complex" and the Ghostbusters one-shot? Well, they just seemed a bit too rote, you know? Standard choices being made.

I also took a long and hard look at "Wolverine: Under the Boardwalk" and seriously considered it. Looked very good, but I have TOO MANY COMICS. I passed on it.

"Spider-Man and the Secret Wars" #1? I bought it. I make no apologies.

Already Tired of Tuesday- Daytripper #1

So, I've decided to try a new format for Already Tired of Tuesday, and that format is this- I'm going to pick one book each week, talk about why I'm going to pull it in excruciating detail, and then just list everything else I'm going to take a look at. The old format was getting boring, and it was actually pretty difficult to write, which is why I've been kind of lax about this lately. So, we're going to start this new format with....


Gabriel Ba's and Fabio Moon's Daytripper #1, which I'm almost hysterically excited about. Two of the best artists in comics today, artists who have worked with both rising stars like Matt Fraction and industry stalwarts like Mike Mignola, Bá and Moon do work that is distinctive, moody, smooth and, most importantly, consistently awesome. I have no idea what their abilities as writers are, although they certainly seem to be pretty good from the Daytripper previews I've seen, but I think that the concept (the life of Brazilian obit writer Brás de Oliva Domingos, told non-linearly but in a presumably illuminating way) is interesting enough to support the book even if the writing isn't all there. Make no mistake, though- if you're buying this book, you're buying it for that art. I'm hoping to pleasantly surprised by the writing- Vertigo seems pretty high on it, anyway- but I'll be disappointed if the drawing doesn't blow me away. Did I mention it's set in the twins' home country of Brazil? Beautiful Brazil drawn by artists with bountiful brilliance? What could be better?

Other Things Worth A Peek This Week:
S.W.O.R.D #2
Invincible Iron Man #21

Paperback Writer

There's an interview with Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon over at CBR- if you're interested in their work, particularly their upcoming series Daytripper, you should give it a look.

Already Tired of Tuesday...

Short post today, as I have a paper due in a little over 16 hours:

This week is heavy on the Batman, as both the Brian Azzarello penned Batman/Doc Savage Special and Batman and Robin #6, the conclusion of Phillip Tan's work on the title, are out. Also from DC this week is Fables #90 and, as Witches hits its penultimate chapter, I can't wait to see where we go from here. Out from Marvel this week is Daredevil #502, in which I'm sure things will continue to go to hell for Matt Murdock (it sometimes seems like Daredevil is the comic book equivalent of the Book of Job) as well as the first issue of S.W.O.R.D. which looks unbelievably cool- I'll be pulling it at least through issue three because, well, just look at this cover.

Finally, there's Fred Van Lente's history of the comics medium, Comic Book Comics #4, which comes out this week, although I'll probably pick it up at some other point over the internet.

Now, back to Frederick Douglass and Uncle Tom's Cabin.