July 24, 2003
Avalancho plucked at the dog hair on his costume. This wouldn’t do at all. No, he would never dust him, but he was angry, and because of this, the chances he would use his dust gun on a person were greater. He knew this much.
Avalancho knew a great deal about himself. Why don’t more people do this much thinking? Or do they and he was fooling himself into thinking he was special? But no, that couldn’t really be so. He could tell by looking at them.
So like I wrote last week, I attended this year’s Comic-Con International: San Diego for my third straight year as a columnist/reviewer, and had one of the best and most exhausting times yet. I hope I don’t come off jaded or anything, but for me “SDCC” is less and less about big announcements and cool panels and buying the big new books as it is about hanging out with friends, chatting with professional acquaintances like publishers, editors and creators, and drinking. Oh, I never got drunk this weekend (I attended the show just Friday and Saturday), but the high points of both days were quaffing a few drafts with friends.
It’s always fun to hook up again with Chris Ryall and A.K., the latter given to what must be nervous laughter at my jokes, since he’s much funnier than me. The former is probably funnier as well, just not as nervous. He did a great job manning our side of the View Askew/Newsarama/Graffitti Designs/Movie Poop Shoot booth. Brian Lynch lived up to his rep as an exploiter of children(?) by getting two kids to hawk the Con exclusive Poop Shoot brochure ($1) in OLIVER TWIST fashion. Stuff like, “Please, sir, if you buy ten copies, I can go to camp!” Fun and wrong.
I really can’t talk, though, as I ended up insulting a haggling, excessively chatty, but otherwise pleasant female customer buying one of our t-shirts. The subject of marriage came up and Ryall asked why her husband wasn’t there with her, and I opined that he “needed the quiet.” She said I was witty and funny and where was her apology? To which I told her I was sure she was a very nice person. It did end up all right and we had an interesting, edgy repartee going, but hey, if you’re going to wear a guy down for $14 worth of stuff for a ten spot, you’re going to get four bucks’ worth of verbal abuse, is the way I look at it.
As far as the name-droppy stuff, oh, why not? It’s not like there was much excitement from the comics publishers last week. DC now has almost all the good mainstream writers except Bendis. CrossGen’s big announcement was Rob Zombie doing a monster book, which I can’t imagine even many Zombie fans caring about, nor does it seem like Courtney Love’s name has much positive cachet now to cause much interest in her manga for Tokyopop, but who knows? Fantagraphics’ and Drawn & Quarterly’s big releases (QUIMBY THE MOUSE; THE COMICS JOURNAL LIBRARY: FRANK MILLER; THE FRANK BOOK; THE ACME NOVELTY DATEBOOK) are handsome but expensive and geared for narrow readerships, with only Jason’s THE IRON WAGON being an affordable story. Top Shelf has a few affordable books like THE BAREFOOT SERPENT and SHUCK UNMASKED, and signs are good that the $35 BLANKETS will do pretty well in bookstores, because at 600 pages it falls more in line with the pricing of non-illustrated novels, though hardcover ones. For whatever reason, I don’t remember hitting the Alternative Comics booth, though Highwater Books really stepped up with several new releases, the first in quite some time. I know someone representing the new KRAMERS ERGOT 4 asked if they could send one for review months ago, but I’ve yet to receive it. And there are some other publishers like that—who are great guys and all, believe me—who don’t seem to quite get how to promote their books to the best of their ability. I mean, maybe it’s my fat fuckin’ ego or something, but why wouldn’t you get these books into reviewers’ hands before the big conventions, stir up some buzz on them if the reviews are good? Not to mention getting quotes on the back from some good guys. I actually saw one of mine on one of the books above, so I’m not really complaining about this aspect. Weird to see Dave Sim and I taking a similar approach to a blurb! Oh, and the venerable Poop Shoot name apparently scares off a lot of people from quoting from us, though I guess BOOKSLUT is just fine, or Dave Sim, for that matter.
In no particular order, I met lots of writers, like Marc Mason; Steven Grant; Tony Isabella; Tom Spurgeon; John Layman; Johanna Draper-Carlson; Dave Potter; Hannibal Tabu; writer/retailer Brian Hibbs; publisher/writer Larry Young; Dynamic Forces Director of Marketing Joe Rybandt; cartoonists like Dean Haspiel, Rick Smith; Jacen Burrows; the cartoonist/animator Kyle Baker (who says he’ll never work for Marvel again); and cartoonist/fine artist Dave Cooper. And who can forgiv—er, forget Gareb Shamus, publisher of Wizard Magazine? Lots of interesting folks and some really far-ranging, lengthy conversations about comics. And appropriately, I drank Arrogant Bastard Ale at every opportunity.
ILLEGAL ALIEN by James Robinson and Phil Elliott. Dark Horse Comics. $10.95
Dark Horse has recently unearthed this charming story from a young James (STARMAN) Robinson and British comics veteran Phil Elliott. It’s set largely in Britain, 1963, and is a curious tale of an American mobster, Guido, who renounces his past life and becomes a brilliant inventor, as well as a mentor to his searching teenaged nephew. The reason for the change is it’s only Guido’s body, now occupied by a sentient, sentimental alien gas now that Guido’s been secretly murdered by a rival in his Mob family. And the rest of them are wondering why Guido isn’t completing the assignment he was sent to England for.
It’s an unassuming tale, working not as a thriller but in Robinson’s skill at tales about mentors passing on values and ideals, not to mention that there’s his love for this period in pop culture shining through. Elliott’s art is simple and clear in the style of Chaland, but the faces are at times a little to rubbery-looking. Still, while not a long-lost classic, it’s a good choice for the company’s new smaller-sized graphic novel line, a warm and pleasantly odd little tale.
ALAN MOORE’S YUGGOTH CULTURES AND OTHER GROWTHS: NECROCOMICON by Alan Moore, Bryan Talbot, Antony Johnston, Jacen Burrows and Various. Avatar Press. $4.95 or $10 Sketched Edition (pictured)
It’s been said—actually by the guy I bought the special sketched edition for, and privately—that if Alan Moore left his grocery list behind in his cart, Avatar EiC William Christensen would snatch it up and publish it. Not that the premise of YUGGOTH sounds bad at all—an old horror project with Talbot finally completed and released, some H. P. Lovecraft homages, illustrated lyrics—but this special is a ripoff unless you’re a Burrows fan and get the sketch version. I know, maybe this kind of thing is review-proof, but the reason I liked the recent ROBOCOP/STARGATE preview was because a) the writers contributed entertaining essays about their projects, and b) it was for Free Comic Book Day. Alan Moore provides the raw material here, but the essay from Adaptany Johnston has to try desperately to gain some speed after the dead stop that is the opening line, “There’s something very satisfying about short stories” and then goes on to touch upon other geniuses in Moore’s company like Burt Bacharach and “one of the greatest modern poets”, Dorothy Parker. Hey, I like, “Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses” as much as the next fusty creep, but come on.
Johnston isn’t entirely at fault here—this is an essay meant to get you excited about work you don’t get to see here. Instead, you’re paying for pinups and sketches you’ll get to see when the book comes out, and in context. Probably the only Con purchase that bummed me out.
DEDUCTIBLE #1 by Chris Albrecht and Denise Sakaki. Chris Albrecht Corp.. $2.00
It’s obvious I don’t only read superhero comics, yet my friends and I joke about superheroes all the time. Some of my favorite current comics, like POWERS, SLEEPER and GOTHAM CENTRAL mixes superheroes with other genres. So there’s no inherent bias against a book of this type—a comedic thriller told through the eyes of a claims adjuster investigating claims against his superhero team policyholders…except for the fact that there have been so many attempts at such “superhero-plus” books and parodies that it has to be really good to make the grade.
This story is structured well enough and is fairly entertaining but the writing is forced. Albrecht tries to wring a joke out of almost every line of dialogue and it’s distracting. There’s an early scene where the hero, Blake Kane, doesn’t merely take down the details of some superhero-related property damage at a porn shop, but he needles the claimant up to and including the point where he suggests the guy enjoys being sodomized. None of this is professional, realistic or all that funny, but Albrecht ends up with such a scene by creating his humor in an artificial way, one brittle line leading to the next. Later, the book asks that Kane be likeable, so he becomes shy with the ladies.
These are pretty common flaws with small press comics, as is Sakaki’s computer savvy outmatching her drawing ability. I did find it odd that Albrecht uses names like “Justice, Inc.” and “Sentinel” when those would seem to be copyrighted. His problem, I guess. My problem, as someone working in the insurance industry, is that he makes this adjuster also the underwriter—two totally different jobs—but I realize it’s something most readers won’t notice or care about. Mainly, I’m indifferent about this comic but think it could be fun with improved art and scripts that find humor in character, and letting the jokes occur organically and with room to breathe.
THE BAREFOOT SERPENT by Scott Morse. Top Shelf Productions. $14.95
Morse is admirable for trying something different every time out, in this case a sweet story about getting over grief, framed by an incredibly brief and simple biography of late filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.
It’s admirable, all right, but a really poorly executed idea, this framing sequence. Sure, it’s some typically wonderful Morse painting, but the meaning is all in the images. These should have adorned a book or lengthy article on Kurosawa, and become meaningless with dumbed down entries like this:
“Soon, the allied forces occupied Japan…and Akira had no more limits! He could breath (sic) an air of youth and freedom into his stories.
“Akira could be an individual!”
Wow, what a great day that must’ve been for the guy, when we took over. What better way to end government censorship and creative interference than an atomic bomb! Domo!
It really does Kurosawa a disservice to give such a direct, positive connotation to one of the most horrific events in modern history, and the numerous errors (like “breath” above, Akira’s dad being “proud as punch” that the kid was good at fencing) don’t help convince me there was much point in doing this minimalist bio, especially when there is no room to explore the interesting events mentioned, like Kurosawa’s brother’s suicide and Kurosawa’s own suicide attempt.
Thankfully, one can actually ignore these pages and get just as much enjoyment out of the main story, which finds a young girl in Hawaii wandering off from her sleeping father to find a native friend, some adventure, and a way to make a hesitant step towards getting beyond the grief over her brother’s death. This event, by the way, is why her dad sleeps so much and why he’s so distant from her lately, but at day’s end perhaps their bond will be restored.
Morse, as explained in an Afterword, weaves in familiar elements from Kurosawa films, including the ghostly Night Marchers of Hawaii, and, of course, the specter of suicide and the mounting depression of the bereaved. It’s a beautiful looking book, and with an understated grace to it, but maybe a little too simple and cute. Not a disappointment, other than the framing thing discussed above, but it does feel like Morse took a quicker and easier route than he could have with the subject matter, as if it’s a warm-up to a major, mature work. I don’t think he’s a creator with a lot of brilliant ideas, but he’s very capable at bringing emotional weight to the slightest of scenes with the plain-spoken wisdom and compassion in his dialogue and his intuitive eye for lingering “camera” shots of depth and ambiguous significance. I hope to see him push himself even harder next time.
And I’m not going to push myself harder, because I’ve got to pack for a trip to Chicago, not comics-related. Next week I’ll wrap myself in BLANKETS; present SHUCK UNMASKED and, as always, will be perfectly FRANK. Bienvenudos, valancho.
Chris Allen
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