Coming Soon To A Spinner Rack Near You: Nightcrawler

When I started reading X-Men comics, I was twelve years old. Nightcrawler was my favorite character-- it must have been because of X2, which had come out pretty recently. Chuck Austen's story, running in Uncanny back then, was very heavy on the blue elf; he was busy becoming a Catholic priest. If that sounds terrible, well, I don't know, it probably was. Those Austen books, read now, seem to be too much drama, too much yada yada. Those were the heady days when Juggernaut was on the X-Men. But, I'll tell you, I certainly loved it. Nightcrawler was leading his own team. How could that possibly be bad? 

As time went on, as I became (I hope) a slightly more sophisticated reader of comics, my favorite character leading his own team just didn't seem like enough anymore. Nightcrawler sort of faded into the background, anyway; his presence in the books steadily declined for five or six years. But it's not that I had stopped paying attention when Nightcrawler died a couple of years ago, during the Messiah War crossover, its just that I wasn't going to buy sixteen something books to read a story I wasn't that interested in. Plus, you know, comic book death. He'd back, right? 

Sure enough, he's back. From Marvel's X-Men panel, courtesy of CBR, emphases mine:

The room bursts into applause again as Singh asked who in the audience wants Nightcrawler back in the Marvel Universe. The room cheered again as the panel announced Nightcrawler will be in the brand new series “Amazing X-Men” by Jason Aaron and artist Ed McGuinness... 

“We’ve been having to keep this a secret pretty much since Jason was writing ‘Wolverine And The X-Men,’” Lowe said, adding that this book will answer where the little blue and red Bamfs have been coming from. “Nightcrawler is dead, but that’s not the end of his story,” Lowe continued, explaining Azazel is a pirate that is stealing something the X-Men need and Nightcrawler needs to stop him. The team on the book will also include Northstar, Wolverine, Beast, Iceman and Storm.

Now, all of this is in the language of Con announcement speak; much said, little meant. There's simply no good way to untangle "Nightcrawler is dead, but that's not the end of the story," since, typically, that's what being dead means. Still, I'm excited; my favorite X-Man is back. What could be bad?

Rachael Smith Is Fire

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by English diary cartoonist Rachael Smith to see if I would be willing to share some preview pages from her new book, and her second piece of long form fiction, I Am Fire. It's a great comic about working, growing up, and realizing, sooner or later, that the only person responsible for your actions is you. Below, you'll find that preview and along with a brief interview; as you'll see, Rachael and I chatted over email. If you're interested, you can preorder I Am Fire here. 

Josh Kopin: Before we get properly started, can you give a brief biography of yourself?

Rachael Smith: Well, I'm Rachael Smith. I'm 28, and live in Leicester. I started doing comics properly last year when I started 'The Way We Write.' I'd been doing diary comics before that and short comic strips for newspapers - but only recently plucked up the courage to start writing full length stories. The other thing people might know me for is Flimsy the Kitten - a character I've been drawing for many years. She has her own Q&A blog nowadays which is pretty fun! Most recently, as you know, I've released 'I Am Fire,' so I'm quite excited about that.

JK: What's so exciting about "I Am Fire"?

RS: It's my most ambitious project to date. It's taken the best part of a year to finish, with me having a mini-breakdown about it roughly once a week. So I'm pretty excited that it's done with, haha! I tried to push myself a lot with this one too, I think my drawing and storytelling skills have come on a little bit since 'The Way We Write'. It's already had a couple of good reviews and the people I've shown it to have all reacted well - so that's really lovely (and a relief!). It's also the first thing I've ever released as a pre-order, so I'm excited to see how that goes too ^_^.

JK: Why did you decide to set it in Leicester?

RS: I wanted the story to be set in a department store. One of those ones that's been around forever. We've got one a bit like that in Leicester that specialises in toys and crafts. It appears to be run almost exclusively by friendly old women or grumpy teenagers. So I guess that must've planted a seed for the characters of Jenny and Joan at some point! Then in the comic I needed to reference the county council - so I thought it'd be silly to make it anywhere other than Leicestershire.

JK: As an American, I'm not quite sure I understand the difference between Leicester and Leictershire-- can you explain the difference? Are there other little details that you think an American like me might need explained to them? Will you cure my ignorance of those things? 

RS: Hehe! Sure, sorry! Leicestershire is the county that the City of Leicester is in. Leicestershire takes its name from Leicester City. I guess some of the language might trip Americans up a bit too, but hopefully the context in which it's said should help to explain. The story should hold up pretty well -- do school children usually do a couple of weeks of 'work experience' in America?

JK: No, not usually, or at least that hasn't been something that either me or my friends had to do Although its something that probably would have been good for most of us. What did you do for yours?

RS: You have like, 'Take your son/daughter to work day' don't you? Or is that just on the telly? For my work experience I worked in a little framing shop in this posh little town. It was quite boring. The owner wouldn't let me draw manga girls on the post-it notes or frame any of my Pokemon fanart. I still ended up getting a Saturday job out of it though. Somehow.

JK: I forgot about take your son/daughter to work day! But I don't think that it's about work experience for the children so much as it is a chance for the parents to goof off for a day while showing off their kids to other people. It's also something that parents only really do until their children stop being cute, probably around 10 years old. Sort of along the same lines, it seems like "I Am Fire" is really, about youth and age, or maybe about growing up. Did you set out to write a comic like that? Do you have anything in particular that you were trying to say?

RS: I don't think I set out trying to say anything grand or put across a certain feeling...I wanted to create Jenny as a character and built everything around her really. Other inspiration came from a story I heard from a friend about how he had quite an elaborate fire drill at his office. Apparently once the fire alarm started going off he was leading a whole bunch of people down the fire exit stairs and, unexpectedly, there was a member of the building management staff with a sign that said 'Fire.' Realising that this was a test from the management on how they would deal with a real fire, my friend turned and explained to the person behind him. Unfortunately other people who couldn't see the situation overheard him say the word 'fire.' Panic ensued. I don't think they passed the fire drill.

JK: And so you designed Chris to be that fire, basically?

RS: Yeah, I suppose, story-wise, (without giving too much away), I set Jenny up in her comfort-zone, where she can be a bit of a douche-bag - then put Chris in there to cause havoc and make her have a bit of a look at herself.

JK: As a last thought, I wonder if you could share the names and comics of some other British cartoonists you admire, or any influences you have (wherever in the world they may be from)?

RS: Sure! I've always been a massive John Allison fan - I think you can see his influence in my work. Also Marc Ellerby and Emi Lenox mainly for their auto-bio stuff. Bryan Lee O'Malley influenced me a lot too, I think he's the reason my stuff is quite slice-of-life-y but also quite bizarre and silly.

Rachael Smith's I Am Fire is out soon. You can preorder it here.

Wednesday's New Things: Number Cruncher, Los Bros, Brandon Graham

1. Number Cruncher is actually out this week! Si Spurrier on his new comic here. And there's a great looking preview here. Last week, I said Holden's art reminded of Jeff Lemire's a little bit, and I'm sticking to that, but you'll see on the first and second pages how easily he slides from blocky art with big, thick lines, like Chris Samnee's, into a thin wavering style. You'll also notice, from the preview, that the comic shifts from black and white to color, depending on where a particular scene is set-- it's a clever trick, and I like the use of it here, particularly because black and white is the afterlife and color is here on Earth.

2) Since the beginning of the summer, I've been making my way through the first Love and Rockets series, via the handy little collected editions that Fantagraphics has been putting out. The Companion to those books, and the many others that Los Bros Hernandez have made over the past three decades, includes resources, a timeline, three wide-ranging interviews, a character glossary, a comprehensive bibliography, that should be interesting to even the most casual fan, and of great help to any scholars working on these excellent, heartbreaking as often as they're heartwarming, stories.

3) If the pictures of Brandon Graham's recent gallery show in Amsterdam aren't enough to convince you to take inside the artist and writer's first art book, I think its possible that maybe you just can't love. If you do decide to take a peek, you won't be disappointed. I promise.

Process: Gilbert Hernandez

From the Fantagraphics tumblr: "Gilbert Hernandez sends his originals to us for scanning, which gives him more time to draw. Here’s his next book!"

Coming Soon To A Computer Screen Near You: Si Spurrier's Urban Fairytale

Earlier this week, Avatar announced Disenchanted, a new webcomic by Si Spurrier (he's having a big couple of weeks!) and German Erramouspe. The pair will publish twelve pages weekly, and then those pages will be gathered up and put into physical format about twice a year, a system that Avatar, and Spurrier, has already had a certain degree of success with. This sort of serialization is intriguing to me, because it doesn't follow the model of a syndicated newspaper strip, out of which grows the publishing strategies and schedules of most webcomics. Instead, Disenchanted will more closely resemble a weekly digital comic book; a certain number of pages with a clear beginning, middle, and end, comics serialized like television is serialized. This arrangement seems like it might be more narratively satisfying, somehow, although it will be interesting to see how exactly Spurrier and Erramouspe break their story up.

Anyway, Spurrier's description of the project should get you hooked, just in case you don't get off on the relationship between publishing strategies and narrative structure like I do:

Listen: I’m not going to lie to you. There are faeries in it. Actual one-inch-tall faeries with pretty wings, pale skin, a pathological obsession with knotting human hair, an addict’s approach to teeth and all the rest of that floaty pseudo-Victoriana pre-Cottingley arsewater. But don’t panic. What we’ve got here are non-glittery, non-wanky, non-wish-granting faeries. What we’ve got here are substance-abusing, bar-brawling, civil-rights-demanding, murder-committing faeries. The good kind. The old kind. What we’ve got here is a miniature city made of scavenged soda cans, cereal boxes, dirty syringes and condoms. A city hidden beneath the streets of London. What we’ve got here are pixies, brownies, kobolds, leprechauns, boggarts, goblins and all the rest of the twee “Little People” of yesteryear who, despite being forgotten by mankind, have been dragged along by time and trend into the unsentimental Urban Century.

Just like the rest of us.