A conversation worth reading

Hey Everybody! Joe McCulloch has posted a transcript of his really cool Conversation With Bryan Lee O'Malley from SPX-2008. This is exciting because I am featured prominently in it!!*

*sort of, but not really

It is actually exciting because it was my first SPX that I attended, and I was very excited about this program specifically since O'Malley is awesome for any number of reasons.

So... Read this piece, and don't skip the questions. I am AUDIENCE #7. I make fun of something that someone else said and then I ask a question about Working with Hope Larson on Bear Creek Apartments, which I was pretty high on at the time. Mostly I wanted to say out loud how awesome I thought it was. My words are captured in all my sputtering half finished sentences glory.

It's a neat conversation, and O'Malley is fun to listen to. It is certainly worth giving it a read.

Trickster: Native American Tales, A Graphic Collection

A friend of mine went to the book signing event for the Trickster Anthology of Native American 'trickster' stories. He surprised me with a copy of the beautiful paperback volume signed by a good number of people involved in the collection. I will start with my only complaint about this book before I say anything else. The cover, which is great, and is the image I am including with this, is printed with a good portion of it matte black. It is a finish that provides a great contrast to the image and slightly raised text. Sounds good so far, right? My only issue is every time I touch this thing I feel like I must be the oiliest guy on the planet. Despite my best efforts, I add new fingerprints each time I open it. Honestly, that's it as far as complaints go.

The project itself is a great idea. It pairs Native American story-tellers with artists and presents 21 tales which range from pure myth to How the elephant got it's trunk style tales, to more classic trickster stories. I like the loose interpretation on the theme as it allows for pretty decent variety. I have only read the stories once, but really there are only two that stood out to me as being particularly similar in theme. The art, and the styles of telling the stories are all visually very different as well. Some are cartoonish and some are very much written as children's stories, but not all of them are that way.
The book is $22.95, and is worth having if you are a fan of comics or mythology and folk tales, or both. I didn't love every entry, but there are surprisingly few instances for an anthology of this size where I didn't like both the art and the story, and a healthy majority where I was taken by both. I also enjoyed reading the blurbs about all of the participants. It is a nice feature, and there is something about each of the artists and storytellers.

Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne

This is an important post, so everyone will want to read it. It's not like you've heard this from 50 better blogs than mine already.

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne from Grant Morrison and Chris Sprouse(issue 1) and Frazer Irving(issue 2) is a mini series that is well worth picking up. I don't buy a lot of Batman these days. I get Batman and Robin, and only picked up Detective Comics for Batwoman. I was not able to get myself worked up for Final Crisis, but I can't say too much negative about it if it resulted in this.

So far in this series we get to see Batman as a caveman and Batman as a pilgrim. Those stories are made out of love for the character. Both issues contain more or less self contained stories that also tie in to a larger thing, and support what has been going on in Batman and Robin with the recent scrutiny of Wayne Manor, and exploration of the grounds, etc. The real concept here is that Batman is made of survival. Also, no matter what you do to him or where you put him, etc. He is the World's Greatest Detective, and maybe the most determined and driven character in the DC universe.

The art in both of these is great. Sprouse and Irving each do an amazing job. I guess if I have to pick I prefer Irving's art which is in Issue #2 as there are opportunities in the story that take great advantage of his style and are just beautiful. Beautiful tentacle monster no less.

I wasn't going to pick this up because, among other things, it is $3.99 an issue, and I really try to limit the number of 4 dollar and up comics that I get. This is worth it, and if you are inclined to like Batman, but haven't been picking much up lately, this promises to be awesome.

Four for All

Recently I have bought and or borrowed several items that just leap out as being things both kids (young adults) and adults(old adults) can enjoy equally. I will keep it fairly brief.

The Amulet Book Two: The Stonekeeper's Curse , Kazu Kibuishi - Get volume 1: The Stonekeeper, if you haven't read it already. I was very excited to see this book in the library. I had been waiting for it, and new it had come out, and it was finally on the shelf the last time I went. This continues the story of a girl and her younger brother who inherit a powerful magic stone from their grandfather, and find themselves on a quest in a land of magic to save their mother from a deadly poison. The art is beautiful and brilliant, the story and characters are varied and fun, each with personality and depth. The story combines elements that make it reminiscent of other works like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Howl's Moving Castle,Narnia, and many others. A young girl with a good heart and a strong sense of duty to her family is the main character. She is strong willed and resourceful, and although she has some doubts and fears, she does not succumb to the great temptation of the powerful and sentient artifact she possesses. Her brother is separated from her in this book, and put into the role of commander of his own army of strange volunteers from the world they are in. A new character steps forward in the form of a fox who is sort of their Aragorn, a creature they are suspicious of at first, but who later shows himself to be beyond reproach. This is epic fantasy with robots and walking mecha-like houses and evil elves and animal-people and magic stones, talking trees, good versus evil, the works. It is something that could be read to a child, or by a child, or fully enjoyed by adult fans of the genre.

The Good Neighbors, Book 2: Kith - Another volume 2 here. Holly Black is the author and Ted Naifeh is the artist. I love Naifeh's art and this has very much the same sort of feel and similar subject matter of his Courtney Crumrin books, while not being his creation in this case. A teenage girl begins seeing strange things that no-one else seems to see. A world of Fairy and magical folk is suddenly unveiled to her and she doesn't know why. The first book takes us through that, and some mysteries regarding her mother and her creepy grandfather, and uncertainty about her father's actions, etc. The second book continues the story and continues to set her at odds with her grandfather and his plot against the town she lives in, and humans in general. There is a good cast of characters, and I would think that this is a book that Teen fans of supernatural fiction would enjoy. My 16 year old daughter liked it.

The Last Unicorn #1 - My daughters and I love the movie the last unicorn. I loved it long before I ever thought I would be married or have any kids. This comic is a stunningly beautiful adaptation. Not a great deal happens in the first issue(of 6), but the scene is set, and we learn a good bit about the Unicorn, and the world it is in. Honestly, the art sells this one as much as my love of the subject. I set it down then bought it the next time I was in the shop, and both my 10 and 16 year old daughters have read it already and raved about it.

Mercury - Hope Larson. Another fantastic book from Hope Larson. I love this trend of female creators making graphic novels that feature realistic settings and real personalities, with very real seeming young female leads in them, and a touch of the fantastic that does not seem to alarm or surprise anyone all that much. I am calling it a trend, even though in this case I am really just referring to Faith Erin Hicks' War at Ellsmere(also excellent), although not actually comparing the two. Mercury ties together two stories of two different girls across centuries. They share a bloodline, and a common location, and a mysterious piece of jewelry. Both face difficult situations in their own ways, and both encounter strange occurrences without thinking them to be particularly alarming. This is a sweet story with a bit of creepiness to it, and what I would interpret as a fairly happy ending. It is a good size and a great price at 9.99

All of these would be great recommendations for young readers, perhaps female teen readers in particular. I am neither of those things and enjoyed each of these completely. I recommend them in the following order of awesome:(1 being the highest)
1.Amulet
2.Mercury
3.Last Unicorn
4.Good Neighbors

Free Comic Book Day, The Holiday Made for Me

I believe that the Friday before FCBD should be a national holiday. I also think it is bad form for anyone to schedule non-FCBD events on FCBD. I should tell that to my 10 year old daughter I guess. She was hosting an event today for her Bronze Award for Girl Scouts. She was teaching a decent sized group of Girl Scouts and their Mothers to make knit hats so that by winter time they can donate them to a local shelter. It is hard for me to argue with that, but I did make sure my oldest and I got to slip out for an hour after it started so that we could hit up my LCS for the festivities. Unfortunately the festivities were just some free comics (three per person), and nothing else. Not even a sale to coincide with the day, or even, say some concerted effort to showcase comics for kids, or the wide variety of comics available, etc.

I think it's a shame to miss an opportunity like this. My LCS tends to be pretty conservative as I have said before in their ordering, etc., but as I have hopefully pointed out equally, it is owned and staffed by some pretty great guys. Regardless of what the shop was doing, everyone had their kids there as far as customers were concerned. As I was walking up to the shop, a dad was pushing a stroller with a toddler in it reading a comic. When I went in, there were two little girls with their dad (I would say both were 6 or under) and they were looking at heroclix naming and discussing all the heroes and villains. The dad was just as proud of his girls as I was of mine when they were little and did similar things. It was heartening to see so many kids excited and feeling welcome in a shop.

I asked to make sure it was ok, and my friends there let me pick up freebies for my youngest as well. I also tried to tell as many people at my daughters event about fcbd. Hopefully at least a few went and checked it out.

Here is what we picked up, although I don't have opinions about them yet:
Atomic Robo (they set this one aside for me)
Iron Man / Nova
Doctor Solar / Magnus
War of the Supermen
Looney Tunes (not labeled fcbd)
Mouse Guard / Fraggle Rock
Shrek / Penguins of Madagascar
Archie
Toy Story
Fractured Fables

So what did I miss out on that was awesome?

Hope everyone had a great day

Underground - Jeff Parker & Steve Lieber

On Valentines day I received an email from Steve Lieber. Last week I actually got off my figurative butt and read the comics he had sent a link for. I understand that this was probably not exclusively for me, and that perhaps everyone else in the world with a blog may have received the same thing, but guess what doesn't matter one bit to me...

Underground, a graphic novel in 5 issues, is written by Jeff Parker, and illustrated by Steve Lieber. If that alone doesn't get your interest up then you are reading comics wrong in my opinion. The really good news is that this comic is very good, and really pretty different as well. You would expect solid writing, good characterization and an underlying sense of humor to be found, given that Parker is a master of that. You would expect the art to be solid, with a good deal of comic realism without seeming heavy or stiff or overly photo referenced, etc., because Lieber is pretty great at that. You would expect those things, and you would not be disappointed. Where there is different for me, is that this is a very small, self-contained story set in a park in Kentucky, and it is, for lack of a better word, a thriller.

I use the word small here, but only to describe the relative scope and timeline of the story. It takes place within a day, and is mostly limited to a relatively closed environment. It has a solid beginning, middle, and end, and shows us for the most part, rather than just telling us, but pretty much everything is explained and resolved within the five issues.

This is a cinematic sort of work, and could make for an excellent movie. The sort of surprising thing is that as a comic that features two park rangers in a mostly unexplored cave system, running from a group of men that need to stop them from getting out of the caves, it works brilliantly as a comic.

I really don't want to spoil one bit of this thing, so I won't give away much more than what I have said already. This title does something that is really difficult in my opinion to do in comics. I have said before that horror is something that is difficult to pull off in this medium, but another thing that I think is equally difficult, perhaps more so, is suspense. This series, manages to create edge or your seat, uncomfortable suspense expertly as it draws toward the climax. As uncomfortable as it was, is a testament to the quality and abilities of the creators on this.

It accomplishes this in a story that contains no particularly extraordinary people or situations. There are people with specialized skills, and the awesome wonder and unpredictability of nature is present, but this is all real world stuff in the claustrophobic confines of a real world setting.

This is a title well worth picking up. The base concept is not really a new one, but this isn't exactly 'Die Hard in a Cave" either.

Release The... Robot 13 !!

R13 - Colossus (Thomas Hall, Daniel Bradford) Blacklist Studios: I received an email in late February from Thomas Hall. I had received one from him some time earlier and stupidly had not given it the attention I should have. I had access to a digital version of Robot 13 #1 since June of last year, and I had looked at it, but not really tried to read it. By the time I got the second email, There were three issues available to me, the entire first story arc, and I decided I really needed to read it.

A bit of my issue, I guess, was probably that it looked absolutely beautiful, but absolutely looked like something Mike Mignola had done. This is not a bad thing, as I am not sure i have met anything Mignola has done that didn't range from 'very good' to 'brilliant' in my opinion. Whatever my feeble reason was (probably laziness), it was a dumb one, and my loss for not having dived into it sooner.

Issue 1 starts with a fishing boat off the coast of Spain. They pull a metal, man-shaped object out of the water, It turns out to be a robot of sorts with a skull inside of a glass dome for a head. This is also something that we have seen before more or less, but that doesn't preclude this from being original or good, in the same way that it doesn't guarantee it will be as cool as that concept sounds. (This comic is every bit as cool as the concept of a 'being with a skull floating in a glass dome for a head' sounds.) 13 Doesn't remember anything or know where he is at first, but it doesn't take long for him to figure out he is pretty adept at the fighting of giant monsters. He is also immediately sympathetic. His interactions with people are all done in such a way that you know that despite the evil looking floating skull thing, this is a hero of some sort, and a decent sort of character that you are dealing with. Fortunately he is not exclusively met with fear, and in the course of these three issues you learn a good bit about his history while still leaving vast amounts that can be filled in, and limitless questions that can be answered.

In reading interviews and things that are available out there, it is a fact that the story changed somewhere between the character design and actually getting things on paper. I think the direction that Hall and Bradford took with this is really perfect. There is a heavy Greek mythology tie in, with big monsters of greek mythology tie-ing in to the story as the villains (at least so far), and I thought it worked really well. I am a big fan of mythology and the creatures and characters that figure into the myths of various cultures, etc. and I like it when things are put together that use those things in a neat way.

The art as I said is beautiful. It really is perfectly done within the style it is done in. Like the cover to issue 1 that I have posted, there are pages from the first issue of tentacles that are absolutely stunning. I am not necessarily a big tentacle fan or anything, but the color and design and layout are really just perfect.

It is extremely fortunate that this project has an artist as capable as Bradford on it, as Hall's writing is excellent graphic narrative writing. This series does not shy away from dialog when it is needed, but it uses it efficiently, and the story is successfully told in the panels more than in the balloons and boxes. There are plenty of pages that are nearly wordless, and even if you don't read the dialog, and focus just on the images presented, you can have a good sense of what is going on, and a strong feel for the emotion and pacing, etc.

I almost passed up reading this, and certainly didn't go into it predisposed to like it, but I am very glad that I did read it, and it certainly ranks among the best comics I have read this year.