Category: Comics

Sometimes I wonder how Vertigo decides what to publish in single issues and what to publish as an original graphic novel. One might think that the OGN format would be reserved for established creative teams who can draw an audience and convince them to look past the $20 or so investment, while single issues are cheaper and more conducive to sampling a new work from an unknown creator. But while Vertigo has recently published OGNs by Brian Vaughn, Mike Carey, and Bill Willingham, Cairo seems to be a different beast entirely. Writer G. Willow Wilson has never written a comic before this, and doesn’t even seem to have written much fiction. Artist M.K. Perker is similarly low profile; most of his work seems to be in illustration.

So is Vertigo insane for expecting people to buy a $25 hardcover graphic novel by creators with little-to-no fan following? Maybe. Of course, they haven’t exactly had a lot of success launching monthly series, or even miniseries – sales on Faker have been pretty poor for a book by relatively big names. So if the bookstore is the end target, why not give it some pretty packaging? (It’s interesting to note that there are no previews of the book at all on Vertigo’s website. This is kind of baffling, since Vertigo is normally very good at providing samples – they’ve got entire issues available for free.)

All of this is kind of irrelevant to the main point: Is it any good? And the answer is “Yeah, kind of.” Cairo has its strengths and weaknesses, but there are worse candidates for a hardcover OGN.

The basic concept behind the story is simple enough: A diverse cast of characters are brought together by the search for and fight over a magical item. Actually, that might be where the problems start: The cast of Cairo seems too diverse. It seems as though Wilson wanted to include as many political, racial, religious, and gender elements as possible, and the book occasionally feels like a parable about how all the people of the world can come together in the name of a good cause. Which is certainly a nice idea, but it leaves the character interactions feeling a bit forced at times.

Taken individually, though, most of the characters work pretty well. Ashraf is nominally the lead, a drug dealer and smuggler (though only a little fish, so he can still be a good guy) who comes across a magic hookah. He’s a fairly typical rogue with the pretense of looking out for himself. His sister is dating Ali, a journalist who crusades for the rights of the poor and downtrodden. Ali meets Katie, an idealistic American student, when she wanders into a bar looking for directions. Katie was on the same flight into Cairo as Shaheed, another American visiting Cairo for reasons of his own.

Oh, and there’s a female Israeli soldier stranded in Egypt who forcibly enlists Ashraf’s help in getting home. She’s the least organic component of the cast, and the most obvious example of the book’s forced theme of “Can’t we all just get along.” She’s also the least engaging character in the book.

Wilson moves the plot around nicely, though. Ashraf pawns the magical hookah off on the unknowing Shaheed. The hookah’s original owner, a mobster/magician named Nar, kidnaps Ali and his accidental companion, Katie, as motivation for Shaheed to get it back. But tracking down Shaheed becomes more difficult when he finds out why everyone wants the hookah in the first place.

The middle of Cairo is easily the most satisfying, as Wilson and Perker mix the supernatural and mystic with some nice character interaction. There’s an almost Gaiman-esque quality in the way the mortals find themselves wrapped up in bigger, magical matters; it’s obviously bizarre and outlandish, yet everyone adapts to their situations fairly quickly, while the mystical beings seem to have adjusted to modern life as well. There are some wonderful concepts, like the Under Nile, and a nice assortment of demons.

The book loses its uniqueness towards the end, with the aforementioned “Everyone must work together to save the day” cliché coming on rather strong, and the surreal fantasy elements taking a back seat to a fairly standard action movie. The finale doesn’t work to Perker’s strengths, either: Perhaps unsurprisingly for an artist with more of a background in illustration, he doesn’t handle action particularly well.

Perker’s work is otherwise quite nice. It’s generally realistic and simple, though it veers into more cartoonish exaggeration when required, whether for mystical creepiness or just a bit of added character. He has a good grasp of character and expression, though Katie feels bit inconsistent at times.

Cairo may be an odd choice to publish as a hardcover OGN, but it’s a pretty good one, all things considered. At the very least, I like the idea of Vertigo trying something new, both in format and creators, and I don’t mind supporting that. And while it’s a flawed book, it also shows a lot of promise for both Wilson and Perker; hopefully Cairo is a sign of greater things to come.

If you were a fan of the brilliant run on X-Force & X-Statix by Peter Milligan and Mike Allred, you may remember that Marvel released three different cover images for X-Statix #1, each presuming that a different character died in the final issue of X-Force.

The “dead” characters from X-Force were replaced with new characters, and the ones featured on the fake covers never appeared. Until now:

With few minor colour scheme alterations, two of the fake X-Statix have joined the Atomics. Horn is right there on the cover, and the weird, stripey one is featured inside.

It’s pretty neat, since they were interesting character designs (then again, how many Allred characters don’t look cool?) I’m kind of surprised to find out Allred got to keep the rights to the characters, though – how many times has a character debuted in a Marvel X-Book (even a fake one), and then wound up on a creator-owned book? Not many, I’d guess.

I discovered this while biking in Nova Scotia over the summer. I thought it was amusing:

(I also saw a small road called “Old School Road”, which I also thought was quite amusing, but didn’t feel like stopping to take a picture. I think it was on the way up a hill.)

Comics by celebrities are not supposed to be very good.

Usually it’s Joe Superstar’s Superhero Comic Book, where the apostrophe indicates that Joe Superstar had nothing to do with the book aside from jotting down a few rough concepts in between work that pays real money. The actual comic would then be produced by some B or C-list comics professional, and be bought by … well, to be honest I’ve never really understood who buys that sort of thing.

So The Umbrella Academy, which is written by a musician – seriously, a musician? Not a novelist or a director, or even an actor? – shouldn’t be anywhere near as good as it is. I admit to knowing very little about Gerard Way or My Chemical Romance, but there aren’t many full-time comic writers who could produce a book this good. He gets some help from the super-talented Gabriel Ba, but it sure looks like one of the most fun and creative superhero books I’ve read in a while is coming from a guy who’s never written one before. (Which, come to think of it, might explain a lot.)

The central theme probably isn’t too original: A cranky old scientist adopts a bunch of kids with unusual abilities and trains them to fight evil. Except in this case, their abilities really are unusual: One can hold his breath forever. One has a rumour-based form of mind control. One travels back and forth in time, occasionally getting stuck in the future. One has monsters growing out of his stomach. One has absolutely nothing special about her at all. An early missions has them fighting a zombie scientist who’s animating the Eiffel tower.    

Fast forward a few years and the cranky professor has died, leaving his “children” alone and utterly dysfunctional. Spaceboy, the one real superhero of the group, has had his head attached to a Gorilla. The Horror is dead. The time traveler disappeared before he could be given a proper superhero name. Vanya, the unspectacular one, is being wooed by a sinister composer who wants to use her musical talent to destroy the world. Everyone resents pretty much everyone else, and the only person keeping the family together is Dr. Pogo, a talking monkey.

The Umbrella Academy reads like Wes Anderson adapting Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol. It’s full of crazy and bizarre ideas mixed with dysfunctional family dynamics coated with an odd gloss of eccentricity. It’s unquestionably silly, but it’s got heart; Way is giving the characters individual identities and motivations. Spaceboy, Vanya, and the nameless time traveler are the most developed thus far, but everyone else has been given at least a spark of life. And he’s mixing his off-the-wall superhero sensibilities with a dark sense of humour – where else will you hear a man tell his adopted daughter “There’s just nothing special about you”?

Gabriel Ba channels Mike Mignola adapting The Incredibles, selling both action and drama. He draws a great atomic wrestling match with a giant cosmic squid, but also does a nice job with Vanya’s sinister audition and the time traveller’s chronal misadventures. And I’ve also got to say that James Jeans’ covers look even nicer than his usual work – they stand out, and tell a bit more story, than is work on Fables.

The Umbrella Academy went from being a book to written by a rock star I’d never heard of to one people were talking about to one that I seriously enjoyed. It’s an entertaining take on the superhero genre that doesn’t read like it was written by a guy who’s been living in superhero comics for the past decade. It has no right to be this good – well, aside from the fact that it’s created by two clearly talented people, but you know what I mean – and it’s enough to make one optimistic about other celebrity-driven comics.

I mean, I’m still not going anywhere near the Nicholas Cage comic, but other than that I’m open to some new ideas.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve only recently started to get into manga. It’s kind of overwhelming – there’s just so much stuff out there. But The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is something that almost immediately jumped out at me: In part because of its fantastic and distinctive covers, but also because it’s about a bunch of university students who go around finding corpses and helping them resolve any leftover issues. I reviewed the first volume a couple months ago, and while I think it topped out at “pretty good”, the second and third volumes were significant improvements.
After enjoying Kurosagi, the notorious MPD Psycho seemed an obvious followup: It’s by the same writer, Eiji Otsuka, and was adapted for Japanese television by Takashi Miike, one of my favourite filmmakers (though one who, even his most fervent fans must admit, produces a lot of crap.) But I was fairly surprised to find that while Kurosagi has its flaws, MPD Psycho both shares those flaws and lacks the charm and with of Kurosagi. In fact, it’s almost hard to believe they’re written by the same man.
Both books share similar concepts and themes: They’re both mystery-oriented, with bizarre and often gruesome deaths that need to be either explained or cleaned up. MPD Psycho is about a detective with multiple personalities who solves bizarre crimes, while Kurosagi is about a group of students who help out the dead. Otsuka certainly has a knack for inventive deaths, both in setup and execution. And both his artists, Sho-u Tajima on Psycho and Housui Yamazaki on Kurosagi, are skilled at bringing it to life (so to speak).

Things start to diverge significantly after that. MPD Psycho is nominally a police/detective story, though there seems to be limited detective work (we’ll get to that in a bit). Detective Kazuhiko Amamiya, along with all the other people in his head, is unquestionably the star, with other characters generally filling the roles of either plot advancement or bystander who notes how crazy and creepy Amamiya is. Kurosagi, on the other hand, is more of an ensemble story, less police procedural than Scooby Doo with more corpses. Karatsu is the most important character, but just about everyone pitches in to help solve one mystery or another; everyone but Makino, the American-educated mortician, gets some character development. (Even Yata’s puppet is more interesting than Makino.)
It’s worth noting that neither series starts out particularly strongly: The first volumes of each series are a bit too in-your-face grisly, and try too hard to show off how dark and fucked up things are. Even Kurosagi doesn’t have much character development in it; it’s just setup, introduction, and a general exploration of the concept. Both books are rather fixated on sexualized violence: There are two attractive and naked female corpses in the first volume of Kurosagi, and several female victims are either naked or in bondage gear in MPD Psycho. It’s the sort of thing that needs to be used sparingly, but Otsuka overdoes it, at least in the early going, for the sake of shock value.
There’s also a chapter break illustration in the first volume of MPD Psycho featuring a lingeri-clad Detective Machi, who is fully clothed in the rest of the book. It makes one wonder about Otsuka’s feelings towards women. Kurosagi‘s Sasaki is a more fully-developed character, smart, together, and generally in charge of her male co-workers, but the art continues to sex her up in subsequent volumes: she surfs the net in her underwear in volume 2, and seems to stop wearing a bra some time before volume 3 starts. It’s the sort of thing that could very well be editorial direction, an attempt to add some sex appeal to an otherwise grim series, or it could just be the way Otsuka and his artists think. Regardless of which it is, things are sufficiently toned down in subsequent volumes that it’s not too distracting.

Perhaps the most puzzling difference between the two series is that Kurosagi is a far more effective mystery book. Otsuka explores different ways of solving the various problems: Often it’s Karatsu talking to the dead, or inadvertently inciting a corpse to action, but everyone gets their turn: Numata finds the corpses with his dowsing medallion and acts as a sort of sidekick to Karatsu; Yata and his puppet get to discover part of the mystery in the second volume; Sasaki hacks computers and does some more traditional detective work; and Makino… well, she embalms things and looks cute. There’s only one story so far, in the first volume, where she plays a significant role, and the reader probably figures things out long before she does.
MPD Psycho, in comparison, is set in a world of police officers and detectives, so one might expect a little more detecting. And while there is some, most of the cases seem to hinge on one of Amamiya’s personalities having some connection to the case. It’s mysterious, no one can solve it… but then, BAM!, another personality surfaces with some new information. It would be interesting if it only happened once in a while, but it seems to be the theme of the book: Everything is connected to Amamiya, who’s done some really fucked up stuff. Unfortunately, that bit of plot decision puts the book on an only slightly higher level than all those terrible Wolverine stories people have been writing for the past two decades where a villain shows up claiming to have some new information about Wolverine’s dark and oh-so-very-mysterious past. It doesn’t even feel particularly conspiracy-oriented, though Otsuka is clearly moving in that direction – just feels like a bunch of really convenient coincidences, which doesn’t leave the reader particularly impressed with either the characters or the writer.
It should also be pointed out – and this doesn’t quite fit with my other comments – that MPD Psycho has some atrocious lettering. It’s not that it’s bad, but rather that it’s all bold. It feels like everyone is either shouting all the time or carefully emphasizing every single word. And the funny thing is that a book like this, with a character with multiple personalities could put some good, creative lettering to use. I don’t know whether this was Dark Horse’s decision or an attempt to reflect some peculiarities in the original Japanese language edition, but it wasn’t a good choice. (This is, I’m pretty sure, the first time I’ve mentioned lettering in any comic or manga. That’s not a good sign.)
On the whole, MPD Psycho just feels more shock-oriented. It’s probably no more gruesome than Kurosagi, but it feels like Otsuka is trying to outdo himself. There are some great visuals – Tajima does some gorgeous work – but it rarely feels legitimately shocking, mostly because Otsuka doesn’t build to it effectively. In Kurosagi, on the other hand, the occasions when Otsuka and Yamazaki really cut loose will knock your socks off. In part, it may be because Tajima’s art is slicker and more polished, while Yamazaki’s feels more visceral and immediate. But mostly, it’s because you expect the depraved and fucked up shit Otsuka does in MPD Psycho, while it always comes as more of a surprise in Kurosagi. Kurosagi has drama and comedy and slapstick; sometimes the body just talks, and sometimes it gets up and does something nasty in a particularly decomposed or mutilated fashion. The uncertainty of Kurosagi makes its horror more horrific, while you just know that MPD Psycho will always go for the grossest and most disturbing option.

It’s probably fair to point out that Otsuka wrote Kurosagi almost five years after he started MPD Psycho, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the latter is a more polished and effective work. The improvement is staggering: They’re both interesting books, but Kurosagi has superior characters, plotting, and a wider variety of moods and themes. It also has an obscene alien puppet, so that really puts it over the top. I’m curious to keep reading MPD Psycho to see if it improves – there are certainly interesting elements to it – but Kurosagi is the one I’m looking forward to continuing.
(You can see some previews of Kurosagi over at Dark Horse’s website.)
Incidentally, if anyone has any good manga recommendations – particularly along these lines, but not necessarily – I’d love to hear them.

So Phonogram has been sitting on my shelf for a couple months now, and I still haven’t gotten around to reviewing it. I don’t know if I ever will, but the short version is that I liked it. Of course I liked it – it’s a comic about sorcery and Britpop. How could I not?

I figure I can make up for that bit of reviewing negligence by covering the first issue of Suburban Glamour, Phonogram artist Jamie McKelvie’s solo outing. Like Phonogram, it’s an odd, quirky book with some lovely art and nice characters. Unlike Phonogram, the casual reader is unlikely to require a glossary. (I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but then I didn’t require too much of the glossary in the first place.)

The first issue is largely setup: Astrid and her friends are bored teenagers in a small English town, until some weird stuff starts happening. Not much happens in Lanbern, aside from the occasional party no one really wants to go to but goes to anyway because there’s nothing else to do. It’s a bit of a problematic setup, as McKelvie has fallen into the common trap: Lanbern is boring. School is boring. The party is boring. And it’s, well, boring. Most of the characters are pretty boring. Even Astrid’s friend Dave is a bit dull, a fairly generic guy friend sidekick.

But at least we have Astrid. Even if the series goes nowhere, Astrid is a creation McKelvie can be proud of. She’s cute, smart, funny, and completely likeable; McKelvie has managed to make her a quirky outsider by giving her a defined personality, not simply by having her reject everything else. Perhaps it’s because Astrid is so well developed that her co-stars seem so flat; even too-cool Aubrey, who’s just opened a new clothing store in town and is almost certainly involved with the supernatural shenanigans, doesn’t seem half as interesting as Astrid.

Astrid is the visual star of the book, too. While McKelvie is generally very good at characters and facial expressions, he does some wonderful work with Astrid, who just leaps off the page. (I’d post some scans, but my scanner is buried under a pile of crap and I don’t feel like moving any of it right now. Maybe later.) Most of the storytelling in Suburban Glamour is fairly straightforward, but there’s a fantastic three-page opening sequence that shows he’s not just about drawing pretty faces. It’s so good, it makes the rest of the book feel a bit stiff; while most of the book relies on dialogue, it’s impressive how much information McKelvie can cram into a few wordless pages.

I’m re-reading what I’ve written, and though it feels like a negative review, I did really enjoy the book. While Suburban Glamour is not without its faults, it also has a lot of charm to make up for it. At the very least, McKelvie has turned in some very nice art and created a great lead character, and that goes quite a ways towards making a good book. It may not get the series through four issues, but leaves you with a pretty good first one.

… if no one died in Death of the New Gods?

No, really, I think it could be brilliant. Instead of putting “Death” in the title and then attempting to surprise readers by killing people, you go the opposite direction and subvert expectations. Every issue ends with a cliffhanger that, one assumes, will lead to death, but the next issue begins with the character making a clean getaway.

Then at the end of the series, someone says “Phew, we all had a lot of close calls!” And then everyone gets together and sings.

Seriously. I’d buy that.

Oh, how I love Dinosaur Comics.

In fact, I love it so much I bought the book from Ryan North at TCAF. And a great shirt inspired by one of my all-time favourite strips.

Yep. It’s pretty great. This is something you need to know.

So I’ve been enjoying Green Arrow: Year One by “Team Explodo”, Andy Diggle and Jock. It’s a fun book; I was going to write a review, but figured I’d wait until the it was finished. It’s only six issues after all, and on a bi-weekly schedule.

Except… it kind of isn’t. It started that way: #1 came out June 11th; #2 followed on July 25th, #3 on August 8th, and #4 on August 22nd. Which means that #5 should be out this week, but it’s not. It’s scheduled for September 26th, and #6 is due October 17th.

I don’t get it. Why would you put out 4 issues bi-weekly, then switch to monthly? I could see some merit if it were an ongoing series – get a bit of momentum out of the gate. But when you’ve only got six issues, what’s the point?

Checking the original solicitation information, we see this is a fairly recent development: #5 was originally due September 5th and #6 on September 19th. So it looks like DC got a bit ahead of themselves and had to adjust the schedule later on. Which certainly seems foolish: Judging by the number of fill-in artists needed on The Losers, I don’t get the impression Jock is one of the fastest artists around. So if you don’t have a particularly fast artist and you’re putting him on a six-issue series (and he’s also doing a second book, Faker), wouldn’t it make sense to have everything done up front?

Granted, this comes with the standard caveat that we don’t know what goes on at DC. Maybe there were unexpected personal issues or something. But even the solicits seem to suggest a lack of foresight: September 5th is a release date, even though Labour Day means (most? all?) North Americans get their books on the 6th.

It’s not really a big deal; I’m still going to be buying the last two issues. But it’s one of those “Huh?” things that works against audience expectations, something that may not be a good idea when dealing with a book that’s unlikely enough to be a big hit in the first place.