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 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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Wow, it’s been over a year since I posted anything. Well, I just got a bunch of new comics at Wizard World Chicago and should have lots of stuff to write about over the next few weeks. And without further ado…

I met the Comics Creators Cabal guys this year. Before I even start on the comic they had for sale I have to say a little something about the group in general. Talking to Adron he told me that the Cabal had formed up just six months prior to the con and started work on the actual comics only four months ago. Now, they don’t have quite finished product out there yet, but their preview book was available and looked pretty good. It’s a glossy covered, perfect bound thing that looks like someone actually knew what they were doing, which is more than I can say for some of the other self-published books out there. And, to be honest, with print on demand becoming so prominent and affordable these days there is really no excuse for those photo copied things, unless it is some strange aesthetic choice. But I digress.

Emergent Phenomena is a preview book of the characters and books about to be released from the C3, so don’t expect a lot of closure from the stories. Their choice of story order worked well for me. I personally think that they started with the strongest work and the rest sort of descended after that. Loop & Hoodie really looks like it will be an interesting title. The art is very slick and controlled. The characters look a little like those little kid toys with the Giant feet that my nephew really used to like, which makes the whole thing feel fairly light hearted. I was slightly confused what exactly what was up with these two characters (a werewolf and some kind of psychic), but at the end there appeared to be a plot device that will help sort out just what’s up with these two in the future.

Percy the Nazi Killer is something else entirely. Human heads in jars attached to the heads of monkeys run around killing Nazis. One thing that bothered me right out of the gate is that in the first two pages there is either a typo or a continuity error. Either that or something I’m just not getting, which is a much worse thing.
Art and story wise Percy feels very inspired by Mike Mignola, but maybe that’s just a side effect of monsters and Nazis.
I’m also not completely sure I understand what’s up with the monkeys and their brains, but the important thing is I want to know. I’ll end up buying more of these things just to figure out the damn monkeys. That plus Emperor Hirohito as a half man half octpus is pretty funny.
Realistically Percy is an extension of whatever genre Hellboy is and it works well. Aaron Pittman (artist and writer) isn’t taking himself too seriously and he’s drawing weird stuff. The story is easy to follow and the pacing is sufficiently gripping. Now, if I could sort out that typo…

Morningstar was cute, but I’m not sure what to make of it. Dan Cassity’s art style is the same in this as the other two stories he illustrated in the anthology, which is well polished, but it makes it difficult to decide how serious to take some of this stuff. Is the main character crazy? Is the idea an Alan Moore-ish take on superheroes mixing with real people?
The story is well put together, but I’m just not sure if the “Masked Avenger” is just a joke or a sympathetic character.

I didn’t really like Bruder at all. The artist had trouble with human proportions and it looked like someone had explained cross hatching to them, but they had never seen it. The use of variable fonts for the different characters is an interesting tool first successfully used by Walt Kelly, but it just makes some of the dialogue hard to read here without really gaining any insight into the characters.
At the end of the story I had no idea what was up with Pierre Lamont, and, quite frankly, I didn’t care to.

The last two stories in the book were really nothing to write home about. Path of the Black Hand is the only story that is supposed to be complete in itself, but I’m not sure I quite got it. Of course that comes out of a long history of Lovecraft style writing. But a little more atmospherics or exposition might have helped.

All told I see a lot of promise coming out of this group. While I didn’t like a fair amount of their stuff, going from nothing to two books I would almost certainly pick up again in around six months is more than a little impressive, and I wish them continued success.

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It’s difficult to categorize Wapsi Square. Some days it’s very funny, and others it’s downright creepy.

Taylor’s drawing style is very loose, but well structured. His characters have moments of looking like a hybrid of Manga and Hanna-Barbera. And the impossibly busty Monica is a strange sight to behold. However, Taylor insists that she is physically based on someone that he knows. An odd side effect of Monica’s shape is that Taylor, and some of his readers, have made numerous posts to the Wapsi Square Forum and Taylor’s LiveJournal concerning the proper fitting and purchase of bras for heavily endowed women.

With just a cursory look at Wapsi it’s difficult to imagine it being much of anything but funny. And that’s where Taylor will kick you. Yeah, the strip is about some girls that live in Minnesota, but it’s also about ancient Gods, both of Alcohol and Destruction. Monica isn’t exactly what she appears to be, either. Though what she is, exactly, is something that Taylor has hinted at, but not yet told us.

A pattern has emerged, and Taylor has confirmed he does this on purpose, where the storyline will take a rather dark and serious tone, but turn into absolute silliness in the next strip. And the opposite holds true as well. Whenever the strip gets a little silly you can be certain some grim revelation will pop up soon and send the cast spiraling into doom.

This shift from grim danger to happy silliness is often cause for discussion in the Wapsi forums, but it is pure genius if your goal is to get people to come back to your site on a daily basis. Taylor clearly works in the tradition of the old cliffhanger serial. Even to the point where the strangest revelations will happen on a Friday, and everyone will have to suffer through the weekend wondering just what is going to happen (the comic updates Monday-Friday only). While I have been personally very frustrated by this, I’m back on his site first thing Monday morning. And I know he’s going to do it again.

If you want well written characters, some humor, and exceedingly weird storylines, you can’t do much better than Wapsi Square (which is why it’s also listed in the links section). Give it a try, and if nothing else, remember, it’s free.

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The first impression you get of Brian Defferding’s School is from the format itself. It doesn’t look like a standard comic. Instead of the familiar six by nine format you are presented with a square. It looks for all of the world like a very dark children’s book. Like a Little Golden Book gone horribly astray.

I’m impressed by the line quality on the cover. All of the figures look like they were drawn with a technical pen or something else with a fixed width, but the art on the cover and inside is incredibly dark containing huge patches of black. I can just imaging Defferding sitting at a drawing table scribbling away at a background trying to cover a vast area with a sharpy without burrowing a hole through the page.

I only bought the first of the three issues of School that are available. But I’m certain I’m going to pick up the rest. I admit, I was a little apprehensive about Defferding’s drawing style; dark backgrounds and children with too big heads and too small arms. However, the strange nature of their appearance compliments the story that Defferding is presenting. I’m not sure if he’s setting this up as a murder mystery or supernatural horror or something else entirely. At the end of the first issue it can go either way, which is something I find compelling.

Defferding presents a number of questions in the first installment that I hope will be answered when I read the rest of the story. The obvious one being, why is Lindsay trapped in the school. But why are all of the student’s eyes sewn shut? And what about Scott Myers, why can we see his eyes? And what’s up with the guys in the smiley masks that can see and interact with Lindsay?

I was quite apprehensive of this comic, to be sure, and there are still a few things about the art and writing that bother me a little. Such as, sometimes Defferding’s illustrations can be a little confusing, he plays with perspective a little too much on occasion. And sometimes he’s a little more wordy than is really necessary, or his phrasing comes across as awkward. I’d try to play that off as the narrator is a dead third grader, but then he drops in some profanity and speech patterns that seem a little strange for an eight year old girl. But all of that is fairly minimal. The story is compelling and I actually am curious about what is going to happen next. Go check out Defferding’s site for a free preview of the first issues, and see for yourself. It’s not for everyone, but it’s certainly worth a look.

Technorati Tags: Brian Defferding’s, comic, reviews

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