Category: Comics

I was kind of bummed that Cully Hamner was leaving Blue Beetle, since he had the perfect style for the book.

But the new guy, Rafael Albuquerque, is looking pretty awesome. Perhaps most importantly, he seems to be drawing the teenage cast as teenagers. Look – different characters have different body types! Yay.

John Rogers writing solo didn’t worry me, since his solo-penned #7 was the best issue of the series. Now it looks like the art will be in good hands too, particularly if if can avoid some of the last-minute fill-ins the book has seen.

Good book. Go buy.

I’m not even going to comment on this.

As a matter of fact, I don’t even recommend you read it. It will just make you feel dirty, angry, repulsed, or maybe simply pity for others. Or maybe superior to others. I think I’m leaning that way.

Really, don’t go there.

Here it is. It’s about Supergirl. And it’s at Newsarama. That’s all you need to know, right?

(You went there, didn’t you? Even after I warned you? Shame.)

Spurred on by this post over at the Newsarama Blog, I realize that yes, in fact, most indie comics do suck.

Don’t get me wrong: I like many indie comics. It all depends, though, on what “indie” means, a question that gets asked frequently on message boards all across the web. The best consensus anyone can come to is “anything not Marvel, DC, Image, or Darkhorse”, but even the latter two companies act pretty indie at times, seeing how they have to operate in the cracks left by Marvel & DC’s stranglehold on the direct market. Of course, every now and then someone refers to Art Spiegelman or Marjane Strapi as “indie”, which seems fairly absurd given that they’re published by Random House.

It’s just that the more “indie” you go, the suckier the comics seem to get. So, let me qualify my opening statement: Self-published comics suck.

There are probably exceptions. But I haven’t found any, and I’m not terribly inclined to look very hard. Because most of the self-published, or “published by a very tiny publisher located in some guy’s basement in Saskatoon”, comics I’ve seen have been terrible. The art is often generic and clichéd, and the stories are usually recycled concepts that have been done a hundred times over. We really don’t need more stories about superheroes or zombies.

The indie superhero market is particularly bizarre: Superhero fans are notoriously loyal to their properties. They don’t want superhero comics, or often even comics at all – they want the latest issue of X-men. I’m not even sure why DC continues to publish most of its Wildstorm titles, and those at least have a pedigree of star creators and used to be pretty hot stuff. Exactly why someone wants to publish a new superhero book when the superhero audience already has the books it wants completely escapes me.

Even some of the recent bigger indie publishers have been pretty bland: Neither Alias nor Speakeasy offered much of interest, and it seemed the books that were promising didn’t get any press until they moved to other publishers.

Even their websites are pretty sucky. Seriously: If you want to start up your own business, take a course in Dreamweaver or something. If you’ve got a tiny publisher with two books, there’s no reason for your site to be a cluttered mess that looks like a 13 year-old’s Myspace page.

So why do people self-publish, or start their own company? In the purest, most altruistic sense, perhaps they’re really committed to the book and want to maintain complete control over it. As admirable as that is, it’s also problematic: Creators who are their own editors/publishers are seldom doing anyone any good. (cf. Robert Jordan)

No, the main reason seems to be that people want to make comics but simply aren’t good enough to be accepted by existing publishers. Seriously: If your book is that good, why not pitch it to Oni or Slave Labor or Image or Drawn & Quarterly or Fantagraphics or IDW? These publishers put out a lot of very good books, and that gives them something no self-published comic can offer: A stamp of quality. Every book they publish may not be gold, but they’ve put out enough good books that I trust them to adhere to a certain level of quality.

Oni & SLG in particular have very strong brand identities: I know what an Oni book is like. I know that these publishers have printed a lot of books I’ve liked, and that they’re likely to continue doing so. They may print some substandard crap from time to time, but it’s still crap I’m going to look at, if not buy. If New Indie Title looks like crap, I probably won’t give it a second look; New Oni Title may look like crap too, but I’ll probably at least flip through it because Oni usually knows what they’re doing.

Granted, these publishers didn’t build up their reputations overnight. But in most cases, they started up with specific aims and ideas. They didn’t (as far as I know) start with the aim of publishing their own books – they found other people’s books that they believed in to publish. And they had vision, even in the early days, that they were filling a niche that wasn’t being serviced by other publishers. The first SLG book I ever picked up was a copy of Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, and as much as it’s kind of a juvenile philosophy-and-angst 101 comic, it still made a statement.

Most comics are pretty much crap. Perhaps your hot new self-published book puts them all to shame. But if it’s really that good, why not work with an existing publisher? Why not let someone else handle the marketing and production while you concentrate on making the book as good as possible, ideally while working with editors and publishers who have worked on many good books? It just seems masochistic to do otherwise.

On the other hand, maybe your idea really is just that good, and you’ve got a savvy and professional business plan to back it up. If that’s the case, then good for you – we need more comic publishers like that. But just take a look around and see if you can really compete with all the established companies out there: It’s a pretty high bar, and I’m only spending my money on the very best. If you think you’ve got the next Bone, you ought to sit down and consider just how awesome Bone was.

I’m not the squeamish sort.

As a matter of fact, I’ve been told, on occasion, that I have absolutely disgusting tastes when it comes to both graphic content and unpleasant themes. I enjoy the films of Takashi Miike and Lars von Trier. I love Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, and paid an ungodly sum for a signed copy of Lost Girls. I do, on occasion, think Garth Ennis is a brilliant writer, despite what some would call a heavy reliance on shock tactics.

Nor do I hold the superhero genre in such esteem that I deem any deviations from the Kirby/Lee model to be an affront to my personal dignity. As much as I love All-Star Superman, there’s plenty of room for different, less pleasant, takes on the spandex set.

I offer this preface to explain that I’m not opposed to the entire milieu of Garth Ennis and what he’s attempting to do on The Boys with Darick Robertson. It’s certainly an interesting idea: In a world where superheroes are out of control, someone has to rein them in. The destruction they cause is obvious, and it’s not ridiculous to suggest that men and women with the powers of gods might start thinking the are gods. It’s all been done before, of course, but so has just about everything else; Ennis’ good stuff usually comes not from a terribly original idea, but in putting his own unique spin on it.

It started out well enough: The first issue set up the basic premise (superheroes are dangerous) and introduced the two main characters: Butcher, who’s a typical Ennis hardass, and Wee Hughie, a regular guy whose girlfriend was killed in the crossfire of a hero/villain brawl. The image of Hughie holding onto his girlfriend’s disembodied arms was both tragic and comedic, the sort of thing Ennis does very well; that Darick Robertson understands how Ennis works made it even better.

The second issue continued the setup. Personally, I think the first two issues should have been put together as a single, giant-sized debut, but that seems to be a lost cause. But still, it was decent enough: Butcher made his formal offer to Hughie to join the team, and we got our introduction to the rest of The Boys. They don’t have a great deal of personality yet, but The Female seems interesting. It was a bit slow, but I didn’t mind.

The third issue showed the greatest promise, but also started going off the rails. Wee Hughie still isn’t sure he wants to join Butcher’s gang, but at least he meets the rest of the crew. We finally meet the enemy, as bright young Starlight receives a rude initiation when she joins The Seven. The superheroes are egotistical, abusive, and self-centred.

The most effective statement the book has to make is a striking spread of the destruction wrought on New York by various super-brawls. That should be the motivation for hating the superheroes: Regardless of their motivation, their actions cause untold destruction and cost hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. But Ennis seems less interested in that angle than exploring The Seven’s sex drives. It’s effective enough, again mixing tragedy and comedy nicely. The Seven do seem like assholes, particularly the too-cutely-named Homelander.

Of course, when Butcher finally gets around to announcing the team’s first target, the Seven isn’t even on his radar screen – instead they’re going to take out the youthful punk heroes of Teenage Kix. So what, then, was the point of building up The Seven at this point? Those pages could be much better served by either some character development for the Boys or some previews of Teenage Kix, the actual subject of Butcher’s plans.

Unfortunately, Ennis continues to pursue the sordid superheroes into issue four, at which point he beats the joke into the ground. In addition to continuing to show the Seven as depraved, greedy, and self-obsessed, Ennis also shows us the Teenage Kix involved in drug-fuelled orgies with prostitutes. Which seemed to be overdoing it, but I was okay with it until one panel: A prostitute sitting in the bathroom after servicing the superheroes with her hand covered in blood.

That was just too much. First it disgusted me, then it angered me. The image was bad enough, but not entirely offensive in and of itself – there are ways one could justify it with the story. But Ennis and Robertson have done no such thing. After four issues, The Boys seems interested in one thing: Being ugly. The depictions of violence and depravity serve only one point – showing how awful the superheroes are.

We get it. They’re awful people. But there’s such a thing as overdoing it. Ennis has spent more time convincing us the superheroes are awful than he has doing just about anything with the nominal stars of the book: Butcher is a badass who wants to get the superheroes. Hughie is a nice guy who’s sad about his girlfriend dying but isn’t sure he wants to go around killing superheroes. The rest of the Boys seem lucky to get a panel an issue. Ennis has created “superheroes” so reprehensible they may as well be supervillains. And with the revelation in #4 that Hughie has been injected with some sort of super-serum, we’ve now got a bunch of super-powered good guys fighting super-powered bad guys. Somehow, Ennis took an unexplored concept and made it less original in his quest to be as dirty and depraved as possible.

Ennis certainly displayed his fair share of depravity on Preacher. But there, it was often in service of the story and characters. Jody & TC may have been sick bastards, but they never seemed depraved just for the heck of it. On top of that, they were always opposite some much more likeable characters. What Ennis & Robertson have given us in The Boys is Good Old Boys. Except not as funny. And spread out over four issues so far.

Many of Ennis’ critics accuse him of gross-out humour and gratuitous violence. While they may be correct sometimes, they also miss the point at others: These elements are just tools he uses to tell his stories. The tag line Ennis used to describe The Boys was that it would “out-Preacher Preacher.” Unfortunately, he seems to have adopted his critics’ opinion of that work and assumed that it’s assumed modern classic status because it’s really violent and gross. And by that criteria, The Boys is certainly a success – I can’t think of another book that’s this actively unpleasant to read without offering any redemptive qualities.

Bravo, Garth.

Sometimes I think Karen Healey is just a ranting madwoman (though it must be said she’s one of the best), and other times I think she’s a genius. This post definitely falls into the latter category: A look at body mass indexes for Marvel superheroes and heroines.

It is, of course, absurd. Taking height and weight measurements for fictional characters can’t possibly mean anything, particularly when those measurements are most likely added after the fact for various handbooks and encyclopedias. I also doubt they were created by any sort of physiological experts; they’re just guesses about characters whose depictions fluctuate wildly – just look at how often Wolverine is actually drawn at his stated height of 5’3″.

But on the other hand, they’re measurements by Marvel employees (in some capacity or another) based on Marvel comics, and while they don’t mean much in any scientific context, they do say a lot about the people making this stuff up. As Karen points out, guys are big and strong, women are slender and sexy.

There are probably great difficulties in figuring out weights for superheroes, since there’s gotta be something going on to enable Spider-Man to list 10 tons. But even disregarding the super guys & gals, some of the differences are staggering: Iron Fist, martial artist extraordinarie, checks in with a BMI of 22.42; Elektra, also a peak-human type, sits at 19.24. Shouldn’t these two be similar? They’re both agile, fast, and strong, and fight similar types of bad guys.

There are a few real absurdities: The Black Cat only weighs 120 pounds? Okay, I’ll show some suspension of disbelief on that one; she’s more of a thief than a fighter. But Ms Marvel, who flies around, lifts cars, and punches out big-time supervillains, only weighs four pounds more? And then Psylocke, who’s the same height as Ms. Marvel, has no superpowered muscles other than her brain, and is somehow 30 pounds heavier.

The real kicker, though, has to be Jessica Jones, who checks in at 5’7″, 124 pounds and a BMI of 19.46 – at the low end of “normal” for Karen’s numbers. This is a woman who, in Alias, at least, was distinctly not in peak physical condition. She smoked, she drank, she couldn’t throw a tin can at a robber from ten feet away, and under Michael Gaydos’ wonderful pen actually looked like a normal person. Even before she got pregnant, this is a woman who probably carried around a few extra pounds. She wasn’t a very good superhero (though Mark Bagley drew her pretty skinny as Jewel), and since she quit she hasn’t wanted to go back. And yet here she is, at the heavier end of the “superheroines” but still pretty slender for a regular human being. Either no one read Alias, or no one cared that it was one of the few Marvel books not about a supermodel superheroine. In the world of absurdly proportioned spandex freaks, Jessica Jones is the one person I’d expect to look normal.

There’s clearly a lot of cluelessness in assigning these measurements – they barely even make sense on their own, let alone when you start comparing them – but the obvious trend is slender, whether it makes any sense for the character or not. At no point did anyone consider that Jessica should be a bit overweight, or Ms. Marvel ought to at least weigh more than Iceman. I could suggest that few of the people who work on these things have ever seen a real woman up close, but I wouldn’t want to be accused of dabbling in stereotypes.

The people who came up with these things may not have put a lot of thought into it, but thoughtless actions are often very good at revealing subconcious feelings. The numbers don’t mean much, but they show quite a bit.

(Also, something I wouldn’t have come across if not for this article: Thor weighs 640 pounds. I know he’s a god and all, but that still seems excessive. Although perhaps it does make sense in an internal logic sort of way – if you’re going to be able to lift 100 tons, fly around, and smash buildings, your anatomy would be pretty fucked up. So why doesn’t that translate to Ms. Marvel et al?)

A nice bit of coincidence: Just after I promise to talk more about how I love Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Rich Johnston posts the covers to the next three issues. #5 is a work of art, if I do say so myself:

It’s been a busy week, and I’ve spent much of it writing, or thinking of writing, but mostly fiction. Apparently I actually can be productive when I put my mind to it – 3,000 words this afternoon. Yay for me. But in the meantime, a quick wrapup of this week’s books:

Blue Beetle #8: I’m still digging this book – it’s a fun superhero gig with a strong supporting cast, a good sense of humour, and a mysterious-yet-not-completely-frustrating question driving the plot. Jaime hits the road with Brenda and the Peacemaker to meet Danielle Garrett, the granddaughter of the original (pre-Ted) Blue Beetle. But they’re followed by the creepy hunchback guy from #5, and violent hijinks ensue.

Cully Hamner is just about perfect for the book, demonstrating a great mix of light cartooning and serious superheroics. Perhaps most importantly, the cast look their age, and even in Blue Beetle form Jaime looks like a scrawny teenager instead of a bulked up weightlifter. The fight scene could be clearer – there are references to burning down a church and the general decimation of an entire town, but it’s not evident in the art. It’s unfortunate that Hamner is leaving the book, but the upside might be an artist who can handle the monthly grind: As good as Hamner is, most of the fill-ins haven’t been nearly up to his standard. Casey Jones does some decent pages, but aside from a nice page laying out some exposition, it’s generally fill-in quality.

I’m less concerned about Keith Giffen’s departure, since John Rogers wrote #7 solo and that was my favourite issue to date. Rogers, who’s quite possibly out-funnying the Father of Bwa-ha-ha, has a good knack for dialogue, and the opening pages treat us to some nice bickering between Jaime, Brenda, and Peacemaker. Danielle Garret treads a fine line between wishing she had her grandfather’s property and genuinely wanting to help the kids out.

The Other Side #2: I’m not entirely sure the story has much more to offer than many of the “G.I. goes to Vietnam” cliches alongside a similar portrait of a North Vietnamese soldier, but it does it very well. Writer Jason Aaron has a distinctive voice, and he manages to make old hat seem fresh and exciting. The talking rifle makes another appearance, and he continues to capture “the dramatic horrors of war” very well.

Meanwhile, Cameron Stewart continues to knock the book out of the park. Aaron’s taken a been-there, done-that concept and breathed some fresh air into it; Stewart has taken it and turned it into a series of elaborate balloons to be marched down Main Street in the Thanksgiving Parade. I’ve thought Stewart was good for some time now, but his work this book is nudging him into the top ten artists around, and putting The Other Side on the very short list of books I’d be willing to buy even if the story sucked. Thankfully it doesn’t, but still: Check this out, if for no other reason than to see a very good artist blossoming into a great one.

Midnighter #1: The Wildstorm relaunch continues with Garth Ennis & Chris Sprouse’s take on The Gay Batman. It’s okay, perfectly functional without being particularly good at any one thing: Midnighter takes off from the Authority to blow up some bad guys driving tanks in Afghanistan. On his way back he’s abducted by someone who manages to neutralize his incredible fighting powers and wants him to perform a very odd mission.

On the one hand, it’s one of the better first issues of the Wildstorm relaunch: Ennis actually explains who this guy is, what he can do, and what he’s all about. On the other hand, it’s essentially Midnighter kicking the crap out of a bunch of people before someone else kicks the crap out of him. It’s entertaining but uninspiring, though I’m somewhat surprised Ennis has toned down the ultraviolence; he’s definitely writing for a PG audience here, which may be a good thing considering the ugly mess The Boys turned into.

But it does have a pretty kickass final page. That counts for a lot, and probably merits a look at the second issue.

Local #7: This issue is, to a large extent, the flip side of #1, but with a different main character. Megan doesn’t appear in person this time, but in the form of postcards written to her younger cousin Nicky. Nicky’s living an unexciting life with his parents in Tempe, Arizona, and stirring up shit: Drinking, drugs, petty vandalism.

In the first issue, we saw Megan reject her asshole druggie boyfriend in favour of taking control of her own life. The next few issues were about taking responsibility for your own actions and life, and even though Megan’s had an understandable relapse lately (perhaps explaining why I haven’t dug the past couple issues as much), she’s still on the right path.

But Nicky’s just a fuckup. Unlike Megan, he doesn’t take steps to change his crappy life, he just slacks off, gets drunk, gets angry, and breaks stuff. It’s all very mall punk – lots of rage, little constructive outlet. Which is the point, admittedly – life in the suburbs sucks – but it’s not terribly compelling.

I miss Megan.

Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse #4: Ben Templesmith’s book has quickly become one of my favourites, so it deserves its own post. Suffice it to say that this issue is just as funny as the previous three, and it features Wormwood saving the world through the magic of old fraternity connections.

On the down side, Templesmith (or the letterer, perhaps) can’t decide if the big bad demon’s name is Moloch or Maloch. Little respect for the horrid king besmeared with the blood of sacrifices.

But still: This book is like awesomeness on toast. It’s like if someone cast Hellboy as a wacky sitcom. A wacky sitcom that kicked total ass.

As if the book doesn’t kick enough awesome ass as is, Templesmith promises angry leprechauns in the next issue. Fuck yeah.

One of the interesting points to come out of the great CBR Top 100 thread was how a lot of the older artists didn’t get many votes because many readers today aren’t familiar with them. It can’t be argued, of course – I’m a pretty big comic buff, and I hadn’t even heard of some of the guys, let alone have any familiarity with their work. The main reason for this is that most of it’s not easily available, and reading it involves some devoted back issue hunting.

Now, Gemstone is collecting old EC Comics material, which I think is pretty cool – they’re even recolouring the stories, which tends to upset some purists but is probably a good move on the whole. I’ve heard a lot of good stuff about this material, and it’s nice to have it accessible.

But. The first volume is a hardcover collection with a cover price of $49.99, which brings us to the other accessibility problem: When these books are collected, it’s often in a format geared towards people who are already familiar with them. Dark Horse put out some Magnus: Robot Fighter and Solar collections in the same format. It’s about servicing a niche market, not finding a new audience: I’d like to read some of this, but I’m unlikely to spend that kind of money on stories and creators I don’t really know, and god knows I’m irresponsible about spending money on comics. I’ll spend that kind of money on Absolute Sandman, but I couldn’t imagine doing it if I’d never read anything by Neil Gaiman before.

It’s unfortunate, because this is stuff I’d really like to read. If anyone’s got any suggestions for more affordable EC reprints, let me know.