Anomaly Book Review

I can just imagine what it must have been like to pick up a copy of The Fantastic Four #1 off the stands or The Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns.  To sit there and read them and just know that the game has changed.  That from that moment on the art form of comics had just taken a giant leap forward and could never go back.  That is the feeling I had reading Anomaly, the original graphic novel written by Skip Brittenham and Brian Haberlin with art by Brian Haberlin and Geirrod Van Dyke.

If Avatar and The Lord of the Rings had a love child it would be named Anomaly.  The year is 2717.  Having stripped the Earth of it’s resources a handful of power companies under the banner of The Conglomerate have banded together to exploit distant planets.  The Conglomerate controls a powerful army lead by Enforcers and the best of them is Jon, at least he was the best until an accident on a planet leaves many of his men dead.  Years later he is given the opportunity to redeem himself by accompanying a group determined to try to peacefully contact another planet.  A betrayal by the Conglomerate leaves this group of humans stranded on a planet controlled by dangerous mutants and it is up to Jon to figure out how to gather the free “people” of the planet together to battle the mutants.

If the story seems a little bit basic and “been there read that” it is.  The idea of the outsider coming in and leading the natives has been in used in so many books and movies by now (the latest being Avatar) that it is almost a cliché and that’s not a bad thing.  If the formula works why change it?  The story is there only to serve as the hooks to hang all of this beautiful artwork on and after 7 or 8 pages I stopped actually reading the story and just experienced it.  It was like watching a big screen epic play out in front of me and I just had to hang on for the ride.

When you buy the book you get a free UAR (Ultimate Augmented Reality) app to download.  Just point it at certain pages and the creatures pop off the pages and perform some basic animation.  Since we are on an alien world the UAR segments didn’t feel out of place but instead kind of functioned as a moving encyclopedic guide to the strange creatures on the planet.  Click on THIS LINK for a demo to get a taste of what I’m talking about.  If you don’t have the ability to use the app don’t worry as this will not affect your enjoyment one bit.

While the book might set you back $75.00 every bit of this 12 x 16.5”, 6 pound, 370 page book is worth the price you pay.  And even though it is the longest original graphic novel ever published when it ends it STILL feels like it ended too soon.  This is easily the best graphic novel of the year hands down, period, end of sentence.  If you love comics you owe it to yourself to make sure this is at the top of your Christmas list.  

Comic Reviews: Delilah Dirk & Fairy Tale Comics

Delilah Dirk & The Turkish Lieutenant

She first causes his execution and then saves his life.  To repay that debt Selim the mild-mannered Turkish Lieutenant joins firecracker Delilah Dirk on her adventures, and thus a partnership is started on page 30 and they (and the reader) are off and running at breakneck speed on an adventure that sits squarely at the crossroads of Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, Moonlighting, the Hope/Crosby Road movies, Buffy, and Robin Hood.  

In a wonderful inversion of the normal roles Delilah is the skilled thief who acquires a diamond-in-the-rough distressed damsel sidekick in the form of Erdemoglu Selim who prides himself on his ability to make great tea.  They steal treasure, are pursued, lose treasure, steal more treasure, and each comes to the conclusion by the end that the greatest treasure is the adventures themselves.  The story such as it is exists only to move along our “heroes” from one adventure set piece to the next.  While the pace may be fast author Tony Cliff still manages to sneak in enough character bits to give us fully fleshed out characters and not just cyphers.

Lately it seems to me that the big two are putting out nothing more than complex cross-connected stories you need to have read the last five years of continuity to understand.  And the violence, blood, and language would rate at least a PG-13 rating on the big screen it is nice to find a self-contained, fun book suitable for all ages.  This is a summer blockbuster of a book and I mean that in the nicest possible way.  And speaking of younger readers…..

Fairy Tale Comics

“The reason we have smaller numbers of comics readers is because we don’t have any comics for kids.“  How many times have you heard this?  Despite what you’ve been told there are comics for kids, you just have to look a little harder to find them.  And if you did find suitable titles what kind should they be to hook the little rugrats and breed a whole new crop of readers?  My suggestion would be to take a bunch of stories that should be familiar and put them in a comic format that is perfect for parents to read to their kids before bed.  And better yet let’s make it an anthology with a whole bunch of great artists such as Jaime Hernandez, David Mazzucchelli, Craig Thompson, and Emily Carroll to do the adaptations.  First:Second Comics editor Chris Duffy must have had the same thought because he did just that when he put together Fairy Tale Comics.

As a comics reader myself I realize that I have to do a lot of the work for the comics companies to help grow a new generation.  And obviously a book called Fairy Tale Comics isn’t written for someone in his late 30’s so I decided the only way to see how good it really was meant reading it to my 5 year old and over the space of a week we read one story after another.  Did he enjoy every story?  No, but he enjoyed many of them and by the time he was done he was asking me to reread some of them.  Basically what I witnessed was the beginning of a new comics reader and I can’t give a title a better endorsement than that.  If you have children find this book and buy it and share it, it really is that good.

Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle Review

On October 15th at 8 PM there will be a reason to watch PBS for something other than Antiques Road Show.  The first of three parts of a new documentary called Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle will air.  Hosted by Liev Schreiber (that‘s right, they got Sabretooth to do the voiceover duties), this special covers the history of comics from their beginnings in 1938 to their block buster movie status of present day.

As someone who has been not only a collector of comics but a student of history, I made a mental checklist of what highlights they would hit and one by one I crossed them off.  Seigel and Schuster?  Check.  Bob Kane?  Check.  Fredrick Wertham?  Check. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby?  Check.  And so on.

So if you are a comic fan and you already know your history why should you watch it?  Well, the talking heads are worth the price of admission alone.  Neal Adams gets a lot of face time talking about how his contributions helped comics change forever.  Of course what else would you expect of someone known as “The Living Legend?”  But the icing over the whole thing are the rare clips and photos that they included.  Not only do we get Neal Adams talking about his work but we actually get video of a young Adams working on a comic.

Other talking heads get their time as well.  How about Mark Waid and Gerry Conway talking about the The Coolest Man in Comicsdeath of Gwen Stacy and how it changed the whole game of comics?  Or how about having Jim Steranko not only talking about his work on Nick Fury, but actually showing us original pages and talking out his thought process?  When else are you ever going to get a chance to do that?  Steranko oozes so much cool in this show that you just know they sent a pretty young thing to interview him.

 

In the end this three-part special doesn’t stray from the well-worn path that many other comic specials have done before but I have to admire them for going the extra mile.  The value of this special is in the little extra they bring.  As I said before, we all know how The Watchmen changed comics, but when have you seen footage of Alan Moore actually reading The Watchmen to you?  THAT is why you should watch this special, for the little extras like that. 

Episode 315: SPX 2013 Reviews

Oh boy, did we buy a lot of books! Oh boy, did we read a lot of books! Oh boy, did we review a lot of books! Oh boy! Here is a hopefully comprehensive list of creators we discussed from our pickups at SPX. Included are links so you can check them out and find out how awesome they are!

Runtime 1 hour 3 minutes 12 seconds

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Creator of books we picked up include:

Lamar Abrams
Sam Alden
Carolyn Belefski
Sam Bosma
Boulet
Box Brown
Joe Carabeo
Michele Chidester
Jared Cullum
Farel Dalrymple
Eleanor Davis
Patrick Dean
Nick Drnaso
Henry Eudy
Sean Ford
Charles Forsman
C Frakes
Monica Gallagher
Lee Gatlin
Nicole J. Georges
Alex Kim
Joe Lambert
Roger Langridge
Laurel Lynn Leake
David Mack
Chuck McB
Melissa Mendes
Pranas T. Naujokaitis
Robert Newsome
Flynn Nicholls
Ed Piskor
David Plunkert
Jim Rugg
Vanessa Satone
Katie Sekelsky
Katie Skelly
Jamie Tanner
Sara L. Turner
Drew Weing
Joey Weiser
Runner Runner (anthology)
Secret Prison No. 7 (anthology)

Episode 315: SPX 2013 Reviews

Comic Reviews: Nowhere Man & Rebetiko

 Nowhere Man: You Don’t Know Jack

     Let me start by saying I love receiving books by small publishers.  Nothing makes me happier to get to see what kinds of titles are being produced outside of the mainstream.  And I really love it when someone takes an old idea and gives it a fresh spin.  Nowhere Man: You Don’t Know Jack by Jerome Walford is the story of an NYPD detective using super powers he got in a mysterious accident trying (perhaps just a little too hard) to live up to the long shadow that his father left In the police department.

     What starts out as a routine case quickly spins out of control leaving Detective Jack Maguire in the middle of the biggest conspiracy of all time.  All that’s been done before in other books but what I like is that the lead character is black.  He’s not a walking stereotype but a real 3-D person with the kinds of problems that all men have and that works to the book’s favor.

     The problem is how do I give an in depth review what is essentially only the first  chapter of 40 pages of a longer story?  What kind of accident gave Jack his powers?  How long has he had his powers?  What happened to his father to make him try to hard?  What is the conspiracy about that we start to learn of?

     The book kind of starts with no back story and then just stops with no real ending.  I know that this is the first of at least 3 volumes and I wish that the author had waited until he had the 120 or so pages finished to release all at one time as I felt I came into a movie 5 minutes after it started and walked out after 30 and tried to write a review.  I would like to know what’s going to happen next but this is a tough book for me to recommend.

Rebetiko

     First off, I want you to click on this link and listen as you read.  As I may have mentioned before, I am a student and lover of history.  Every continent in every time period has fascinating stories just waiting to be told.  Rebetiko by David Prudhomme has been referred to as his masterpiece and I wish I could agree.  I wanted to enjoy this book.  I really did but the experience felt like trying to run through a swamp.  I would slog and slog and then hit a patch where the author really nailed it and I was off and running for a little bit until I again had to wade through the next slow patch.

     Rebetiko refers to a kind of bluesy, jazzy Greek folk music popular in the 1920’s and 30’s.  The book itself follow the lives of a group of musical rebels who fill their days with smoke, drink, women, settling debts, and of course the music itself and their story is told against a backdrop or a repressive military dictatorship.  A clear parallel can be made, I think between Rebetiko music being a cry from a repressed people and poor African Americans in the delta almost needing to create the blues as a way of giving voice to their hopelessness.  The irony, of course, is that repressed people are often the ones in a society with the most freedom to express themselves.

     As many problems as I may have had with the story his art is never less than amazing.  Prudhomme has a painted style in this book that is very reminiscent of poster artwork of that time further grounding it in that time period.  I also was fascinated by his use of shadows.  Day or night, there are the shadows.  People are sitting in them, walking through them, or casting them on the walls behind them.  It is a subtle trick he uses that helps to convey not only the oppression that the Greek citizens lived under but also I think signifies the shadow of suspicion these artists and their music had cast on them by the ordinary citizens.

     All this comes down to if I can recommend it.  Let me say this, comics are a marriage of art and words.  If you removed the art you’d be left with a book.  Remove the words and you still have a comic.  And while the words might not be all I had hoped for the art is incredible and worth looking just for that if nothing else.

Comic Reviews: Boxers & Saints

Boxers

In the late 1890’s China was a weak country.  European nations moved in and began to carve up the country among themselves similar to how they did in Africa and South America.  And with these nations came Christian Missionaries who felt they were doing the right thing by converting the native Chinese and eliminating their culture in favor of a more European kind of culture.  This did not sit well with a growing number of young Chinese men who started forming small groups and these small groups joined together to form The Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fist (or commonly known as Boxers), a group dedicated to driving out the “foreign devils” and more importantly protecting Chinese culture.  The group believes that by following a ritual they gain the powers of the Chinese Gods in their war against the “invaders”.

The book Boxers follow a character called Little Bao from a small village who kind of falls backwards into leading a group of Boxers whose ultimate goal is to march on the capital city of Peking to drive out the “foreign devils” from their strongholds and cleanse China once and for all.

 

 

If you have seen Apocalypse Now you know that the further up the river Benjamin Willard journeys to find Colonel Kurtz the more he loses his humanity until madness threatens to take him.  In a similar way the closer Little Bao gets to Peking the more of his humanity is lost.  He begins his journey as a humble peasant who starts out killing only to protect other Chinese from marauding foreigners, to ordering the killing of a few Christians on a train, and then ordering the slaughter of everyone in a church to ultimately ordering the burning of the great library of Peking to gain access to the Western section of the city.  In doing so he has destroyed most of the written history of his country and in doing so has in a way destroyed that which he had hoped to save.  

The internal conflict within Boa between staying true to his principles and the growing feeling that perhaps those same principles are what is keeping him from doing what he feels he has to is the core of this book and the writer/artist Gene Luen Yang deftly combines carefully chosen words and powerful images and I feel that the reader cannot help but sympathizes with Bao.  This is remarkable since this book is published and will undoubtedly be read by a largely white, Western audience and the fact that I could not help but cheer on Bao is testament to the skill Yang has with his craft.

Unfortunately the book has a few problems that bothered me.  Yang felt the need to craft on a lot of supernatural elements that I felt detracted from the story.  Apparently Bao learns the ritual to harness the powers of the Gods through a mystical teacher and that was not really needed.  The representation of each of the warriors as a God was interesting but I am still not sure why Yang felt it necessary to give a supernatural source to this.  The other thing I was disappointed in was the scope.  In the fight scenes when Yang should have given himself license to cut lose and open up his art and show the scope of the battles he chooses to still keep it intimate and ultimately I think this goes to cheapen the smaller scenes since there is no real balance.  If you are going to attempt an epic story parts of it need to be, well, epic.

So, it always comes down to should you spend your time and money on this and I think the answer is yes.  Yang is a masterful story-teller no matter if the subject matter is grand in scope of personal.  And speaking of personal stories…..  

Saints

Much like Boxers; Saints follows the life of a single individual during the Boxer Rebellion.  The Chinese culture Four-Girl grows up in is harsh; involving beatings for not knowing her place and in fact is worth so little she is not even given a proper name.  The hopelessness of her situation is so that when she is introduced to Christianity we understand how she can grab on to it not only as a way to save her soul, but to salvage her life as well.   

Throughout the book Four-Girl sees a vision of a young lady who she learns from her teachers is Joan of Arc.  At periods in her life that mirror the trials that Joan went through Four-Girl is visited by Joan and provided guidence and reassurance that her life is on the right track. Unfortunately Four-Girl is ignorant of French history and so does not see that if she is not careful her life could end horribly the same as Joan’s.

Much like Clint Eastwood did with Flags of our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima; Saints is not really a sequel to Boxers but is instead a companion piece that gives us the point of view from the other side of the Boxer Rebellion.  One of the most interesting things of this book is that the author chose to release both volumes at the same time.  It doesn’t matter which one you read first as Bao makes an appearance in Saints and Four-Girl makes an appearance in Boxers so the two stories intertwine very well.  You do not need to read the other for each one to make complete sense but I recommend that you purchase both and read them back to back.  If you want to know the real final fate of Bao you must read Saints and only by reading Boxers will you ever know if Four-Girl becomes a champion to the Christian Chinese she so desperately wants to protect.  I will not spoil the endings except to say they are some of the msot powerful images I have seen in comics form and while sad are ultimately inevitable.

Taken as individual experiences both books are well-researched, thoughtful works but taken together these two books make for a single powerful experience that I feel in some way the author has been working towards his entire life.  The only question I am left with is what he could possibly do to top this.