Comics et al

When I said I’d post a review of Jim Reaper about a week or so ago I hadn’t done any research into the comic. I’d read it, and made some assumptions about it, but most of those seem to have been in error.

I picked up my copy of Jim Reaper: Week One at Wizard World this year from the Silent Devil table. Silly me, I thought they were promoting their new comics. I was wrong. Jim Reaper was done during the summer of 2006 and published by Silent Devil that fall. From the looks of things Jim spawned the other comic I got at the Silent Devil table, Lil Hellions, also from 2006.

The page format for Week One looks like it was a daily, or weekly, strip that had been collected into the book. It was my firm hope to link to Dwight MacPherson’s webpage, but as the comic is really quite defunct, that doesn’t appear to be an option (if you know of a web address, please let me know.) My assumption is that these comics were written with the idea that they would be seen with some time in between, and thus the reptition of the same joke (Jim peeing himself) would help create a cohesive whole. In print with them following seconds after one another the joke gets a little bit old, until we get to the part with the portal, and then all of that set-up makes the reader feel a little like they are party to an inside joke.

The art feels very inspired by the Animaniacs, all of the characters are very rounded and cute, even when covered feces. I also have a sneaking suspicion that had the Animaniacs writers and artists been told to make something a little offensive they might have hit upon Jim Reaper. The situations in the story are surreal and absurd. The premise is Death needs his chicken nephew to take over the business while he is on vacation. And, now that I think of it Jim looks a little like a chicken, his hair makes a bit of a comb. I wonder if that was on purpose?

The art is cute and the story is cartoon mayhem with lots of poop and pee jokes. If that’s your cup of tea, then this is quite a worthwhile find. If not, you will certainly be disappointed.

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I’ve been reading Jennie Breeden’s The Devil’s Panties for about three years now. The comic is semi-autobiographical and updated on a daily basis, including filler art on Sundays.

Over the course of the comic, which started about seven years ago, Jennie’s art has cleaned up a bit and grown much more elaborate. I think part of that is also part of what has made my appreciation for the comic dwindle in these last few months.

Early on Jennie’s life was filled with art student/ comic geek stuff. She worked on class projects and fended off strange comic shop patrons. Later on she worked at a games manufacturer and was accosted by her boyfriend for product samples. The problem is that, like all autobiographical comics, once your life runs out of interesting things you’re just treading water. And most people’s lives simply aren’t that interesting, unless you’re R. Crumb and/or completely batshit insane.

As Jennie’s life has become more focused on the comic her art has grown more complicated, and I doubt if she’s still roughing on notebook paper and fixing everything else digitally at this point. Unfortunately, her spelling hasn’t improved, and she has quite the rant about her spelling issues on her page, that’s worth a look just for it’s absurdity. But as her art improves due to an increased concentration on the comic the less time there is for all of the peculiarity to happen to her in daily life that presented us with such entertaining comics just a few short months ago. These days all of her comics seem to be about kilts and conventions. Granted, conventions can be a hoot, but not all of the time.

I hate to apply a tag line from Cerebus here, but it seems appropriate; “I like the older, funnier ones.” And that’s really the case at this point.

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I grew up reading comic books. I’d read whatever my mom happened to have around the house, which tended to lean toward Archie, but there was a lot of the more grim stuff hiding in there, too. Somewhere we got lots of Sgt. Rock, World at War, House of Secrets, and House of Mystery. So I had quite the healthy dose of violence and horror at a fairly tender age.

I really loved those old stories. Those old horror comics have definitely had an impact in my film and book preferences outside of comics. I was a little taken aback when the House of Secrets title was revived but not the concept. I liked the book and have pretty much the whole thing in issues, but it seemed a little upsetting to not see Abel playing the host. So, this year at Wizard World Chicago when I saw the first issue of House of Mystery I braced myself for a similar shock. And it never came. Right there on page one was Cain. Granted, Cain a la Neil Gaiman (hell, the last image of Cain on page two looks a whole lot like Gaiman) in The Dreaming, but Cain nonetheless. And then, the important part, the series is a collection of fairly creepy stories. The stories are all loosely connected using a similar motif to what Gaiman used in Sandman: World’s End. And running through the book is the story of a young woman dreaming of Cain’s missing house, which is really the thread that binds the whole series to gether.

I still only have issue 1 of the series, and issue 4 came out just last week, so I’m a little behind. Bear in mind that I’m only talking about the first issue here. The whole thing could have gone to hell in the last few months, I don’t know.

I’m glad that Vertigo never really fell for the fashion of highly rendered comic pages with complicated color seperations and gradients. I have never picked up an afinity for that style. Perhaps it’s the sentimentalist in me, but I like the colors to have edges. I like it when the shadow is clearly delineated from the highlight. Of course, that is just a taste thing, but I like my comic art to feel like comic art, not something that really wants to be an oil painting.

The art itself is very clean and tidy, while still having a certain looseness to it. I see a fair amount of Tim Sale’s influence on Rossi’s artwork, which is definitely a compliment. But Rossi’s figures aren’t quite as simplified as Sale’s. There is also a freedom in the brush strokes present here that Sale tends to shy away from. (And I’d almost put money on Rossi using a brush to do the art.)

Most of the book is part of the arc setting up the bar in the dreaming where the storytelling takes place. The story that is presented is a rather grim tale called “The Hollows” about a bride and her giant fly husband. This tale is certainly grim enough to have come straight out of the original House of Mystery. Bill Willingham’s art here is quite the counterpoint to the story proper and truly sets the tone that the teller is truly as naïve as she seems to present herself in the pub. His art is filled with muted colors and the human figure is soft and rounded in such a fashion that almost screams of her innocence, and creates an elegant balance against the brutally grim nature of the story.

The idea of a small piece of my childhood returning to print is something I initially encountered with trepidation, but it looks like Vertigo is going to stick with the old format and that makes me incredibly happy. House of Mystery promises to be something a little different from what’s currently available out there, while sticking to a known, and loved, format for short storytelling.

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I was reading some Hunter Thompson this past night and that reminded me of Warren Ellis. (For those of you that don’t know Spider Jerusalem, from Transmetropolitan was a thinly disguised Thompson.) And that inevitably reminded me of Ellis’s talk at Wizard World this year. One of the questions that Ellis fielded was what he did when/ and if he had writer’s block. Ellis had quite the interesting response. He said that he had never really had that particular phenomenon, and anyone that did probably wasn’t a writer. His point was the the thing that defines a writer is the fact that they write. If you can’t, or don’t, write anything you are no longer a writer, you are now something else, whatever that may be.

I started this blog over a year ago because I want to be involved in the comics industry in some capacity. If you look at the archives (if there even is an archive at this point) you’ll see how incredibly pathetic the number of entries is. I have not been a writer, and I want to be. (Actually, I really want to be an editor, but that’s a tale for a different time.) So, as of today, I’m going to be much more proactive in my writing and reviews.

Later this afternoon I’ll be posting a review of Vertigo’s House of Mystery revival (’cause Vertigo needs more press). Later in the week will be a review of Jennie Breeden’s The Devil’s Panties. And later still I’ll take a look at Jim Reaper Week One from Dwight MacPherson and Mathieu Bendit. After that I’ll have to try and sort out some sort of rational posting schedule that will work with my work schedule (I’m an English teacher of all things) as well as the posting duties I already ignore at Drunken Pumpkin and my own webcomic Stamp of Adventure.

Well, let’s let the insanity begin.

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