Graphic Lit: The big debut

There’s something about the big debut, that new comic or graphic novel from a budding cartoonist suggesting great promise, that gets people (myself included) all fired up.

Of course, not every artist manages to capitalize on all that initial goodwill, but for those who do, it’s worthwhile to go back and re-examine their initial forays.

Take Scott McCloud, for example.

Before he became renowned for books like “Understanding Comics,” McCloud was best known for his superhero series “Zot!”

The comic centered around the titular hero, a carefree teen from another, futuristic dimension, and his relationship with Jenny, a decidedly more pessimistic girl from our Earth.

The new “Complete Black and White Collection” collects the later half of Zot’s saga (McCloud apparently not being terribly satisfied with its initial full-color run) into one brick-sized book.

Reading the series, you can see McCloud constantly experimenting, taking elements of mainstream comics, the burgeoning indie scene and manga (still new and strange back then) and trying to digest them to form his own style.

The first half of the book is mostly set in Zot’s world and is full of fun, zany, dramatic adventures.

Halfway through, McCloud abandons the superhero stuff almost entirely, focusing instead on Jenny and her friends and their everyday lives.

Combining freewheeling sci-fi tropes (robot butlers, flying cars) with realistic, fully developed characters, “Zot!” helped point the way toward comics’ full potential, a trail McCloud would blaze more fully a few years later with “Understanding Comics.”

Another series that initially dealt with superheroes only to change halfway through was “Demo,” which initially attempted to tell slice-of-life stories about teens and twentysomethings coming to terms with their burgeoning supernatural powers.

Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan then abandoned that tack in favor of exploring young people at crossroads in their lives, be it the end of a relationship or wising up to the fact that it’s time to grow up and get a real job.

Wood and Cloonan made their mark with these smart, well-grounded, emotionally involving tales, and while they’ve done great work since, I’m not entirely sure they’ve done anything that’s surpassed their early work.

But while we might look fondly at “Demo” and “Zot!” with the benefit of hindsight, stellar debuts are far from a thing of the past.

Witness “Swallow Me Whole,” a new graphic novel by Nate Powell. I’m not kidding when I say this book knocked me for a loop.

“Swallow” tells the tale of two teenage stepsiblings, brother and sister, each with different mental problems (the brother displays signs of schizophrenia, while the sister has a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder).

Powell’s tale unfolds in a relaxed fashion as the pair trudge their way through school, deal with family and try to cope with their problems.

Eventually, one sibling starts to get better while the other, tragically, does not.

Powell displays a poetic gift for visual metaphor here, articulating the kids’ illnesses with some deft imagery.

He also has an ear for realistic dialogue and situations (a cringeworthy incident at school, for example, seems particularly drawn from life).

In short, “Swallow Me Whole” is a fantastic book. Keep your eye on this Powell kid. He’s going places.

Copyright The Patriot-News, 2008

Graphic Lit: 'Final Crisis' and 'Trinity'

Sorry for the radio silence. Work and other committments (including regular postings at Blog@) have been kicking my tail lately. I've got a ton of columns and reviews to post though, and hope to do so over the next few days. For now we'll start with last week's Graphic Lit, which offered a "Final Crisis" introduction for the uninitiated.


First there was “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Then it was “Identity Crisis.” Next came “Infinite Crisis.”

Now we have “Final Crisis,” DC Comics’ latest and greatest superhero crossover.

Details have been scanty about exactly what sort of crisis Superman, Batman and the rest of the DC pantheon face this time around, but executive editor Dan DiDio had some hints.

“We’ve been describing the story as the day evil won,” he said from his offices in New York City. “The story is what happens on the day that the heroes lose. How do they regroup? How do they fight back? What if the odds are so insurmountable that it’s not even worth fighting anymore? What we want to do is explore the true nature of what it takes to be a hero.”

The new seven-issue limited series is notable not just for its promise to shake up the status quo, but for the fact that it has an impressive talent roster behind it.

Writer Grant Morrison (“The Invisibles,” “Seven Soldiers”) and artist J.G. Jones (cover artist for “52”) are highly regarded within the comics community for their craft and willingness to take risks, meaning that “Final Crisis” might be an artistic success as well as a slam-bang summer blockbuster.

As you’d expect with an event of this nature, “Final Crisis” will also inspire a number of spin-off books and related miniseries like “Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds” and “Final Crisis: Rage of Red Lanterns,” giving readers a chance to see how various characters are reacting to the events in the main story line.

“If you’ve been away for a while you’ll want to peek in to see what the fuss and excitement is about,” DiDio said. “We’re hoping it generates interest.”

If it doesn’t, DC hopes you’ll be interested in “Trinity,” its weekly series that debuts next Wednesday.

Written by industry veterans Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza, the series is a stand-alone story involving the company’s top three iconic characters — Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

Unlike last year’s weekly series, “Countdown,” “Trinity” will be a self-contained story, though there will be repercussions felt in the characters’ main books as the series progresses.

“I love the weekly format,” DiDio said. “There is a real hunger and interest for weekly comics. A lot of people use it as an excuse for stopping at a comic shop.”

Copyright The Patriot-News, 2008

From the Vault: Formerly Known As The Justice League

Sorry for the media black-out recently. Been very, very busy here without much sign of letting up. I'll try to put up some new posts later this week, but for now, here's a review from TCJ #267

“Formerly Known as the Justice League”
by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire and Joe Rubinstein
DC Comics
$12.95

Your enjoyment factor of “Formerly Known as the Justice League” is entirely predicated upon your knowledge of and love for the DC super hero universe. More specifically, it’s especially dependent upon your familiarity with the “Justice League” series that Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire shepherded back in the late 1980s to early 90s. This rather popular revamp was notable mainly for its emphasis on humor, putting a bunch of second banana spandexed heroes through their usual paces while having them talk like Lucy and Ethel.

At the time it must have seemed rather innovative to take such a tongue-in-cheek approach and have tried and true DC characters act boorish, petty or inane, all the while spouting pithy asides and one-liners. And when it worked – when the humor came out of the characters and was leavened with some emotional weight -- “Justice League” was one probably one of the better super hero books going at the time. When it didn’t, which could be often, especially towards the end, the series was like a tiresome sitcom that has long since passed its initial cleverness and rushed straight long into unadulterated camp.

This new collection brings back the original creative team to perform what could best be described as the comic book equivalent of “Return to Mayberry.” It’s better than that, though it does fall into enough overly jokey lapses to irk those who don’t care for this kind of thing. Giffen and DeMatteis have a tendency to overplay their hand. I could have done, for instance, without the witty banter from the overly erudite thugs that attack the team early on, or the way every character’s comment has to be undercut with a reflective muttering of some sort. On the other hand, I did smile at their portrayal of Wonder Woman as priggish, self-righteous snot, and the notion of a super hero complaining about his heart condition was amusing enough to keep me engaged. So, in short, fans of the original series will be pleased with this brisk nostalgic walk. Newcomers to “Formerly” should only pick up the book if they’ve ever taken the time to find out who Booster Gold and Captain Atom are.

Graphic Lit: Superheroes

This week's column is a pretty good example of why I started this blog, in that I had to cut over half the content out in order to fit it on our ever-shrinking newspaper page. Our editorial space keeps being cut drastically. It's not anyone's fault, I'm just stuck in a dying business I guess. Either that or I write too damn long.

Anyway, here's the column as originally intended.


It’s tough to be a superhero comic these days.

As the core fan base grows older and more demanding for “serious” (i.e. excessively violent) stories, it can be difficult to attract new readers.

You see, the older the character or universe gets, the more complicated and esoteric its history becomes. Trying to placate fans who’ve spent time and effort investing in a hero’s lineage while also attempting to bring in new fans can put one in considerable hot water.

Take the recent debacle involving Spider-Man for example. Longing for the days when Peter Parker was a swinging (pardon the pun) single, the powers that be at Marvel decided to undo his marriage with Mary Jane — not through divorce or trial separation but by having him make a deal with the devil, erasing his marriage from existence in order to save his beloved Aunt May.

Reaction was swift and derisive, if not downright hostile. Many longtime fans threatened to stop reading Spidey’s adventures while newcomers may have found the premise too laughable to invest their cash.

Still, high-quality cape and cowl books do exist, if you know where to find them. Here are four titles currently being published by the big two — Marvel and DC — that you can walk right into your local comic shop, pick up and enjoy without having to have a master’s degree in Superherology:

“The Immortal Iron Fist”
by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, David Aja, Marvel, $2.99 per issue.

Brubaker, Fraction and Aja do the rather impressive feat of taking an up-till-now negligible C-list character — martial arts expert Daniel Rand — and suddenly making him relevant and interesting by positioning him as the latest in a long line of “Iron Fists.” The added back story gives the book some gravitas and weight while still managing to be a fun, gritty kung-fu homage. (Note: The first six issues have been collected into a $14.99 trade, “The Last Iron Fist Story.”)

“Omega the Unknown”
by Jonathan Lethem, Farel Dalrymple and Paul Hornschemeier, Marvel, $2.99 per issue.

Originally created by Steve Gerber and Jim Mooney in the 1970s, Omega was an idiosyncratic comic about an overly intelligent teenage orphan and his mute, enigmatic superhero guardian that lasted just long enough (10 issues) to develop a cult following.

Acclaimed novelist Lethem (“Fortress of Solitude”) and indie artist Dalrymple’s 10-issue revamp tries to pay homage to the original’s offbeat tone while creating its own quiet, surreal feel. It takes a few issues to build up steam, but by the third you can sense it simultaneously creating an aura of mystery and dread that makes you eager to pick up the next issue.

“Booster Gold”
by Geoff Johns, Jeff Katz, Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund, DC, $2.99 per issue.

Like “Iron Fist,” “Booster Gold” also focuses on a third-rate hero, in this case an attention-seeking showboater from the future. The catch here is that Booster finds himself becoming the savior of the DC universe by having to travel through time and fix anomalies so that, say, Superman doesn’t end up as Lex Luthor’s little brother.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the comic is that while it’s clearly focused on DC minutiae, it doesn’t become mired in it. It’s more than happy to explain itself to the unfamiliar reader who doesn’t know or care who Rip Hunter or Jonah Hex are. It sets up its rules, explains them concisely and then goes about its business, namely creating a fun adventure.

It’s also rather genuinely funny, which is not something you can say about a lot of superhero books these days.

“The Brave and the Bold”
by Mark Waid and George Perez, DC, $2.99 per issue.

Superhero fans love a good team-up, and “Brave and the Bold” attempts to scratch that itch in spades. In the first story arc (now collected into a hardcover $25 book, “The Lords of Luck”) Batman, Supergirl, Green Lantern and many others travel back and forth through time to retrieve an item of dire importance. The plot’s just an excuse to have these colorful characters bump up against each other, and it’s fun to see, for example, the uber-professional Batman rub shoulders with the nervous neophyte Blue Beetle.

It sounds like the sort of thing only hard-core DC nerds would appreciate, but Waid and Perez bring a light touch to the project — there were characters here I wasn’t aware of or familiar with, but I didn’t feel left out once. It’s a fun thrill ride of a book. 
Copyright The Patriot-News, 2008