| Profil von JasonObsessed With ComicsFotosBlogListen |  Extras  Hilfe |
Eerie #135 (1982)After writing the other day about Steve Ditko's work drawing Batman, it put me in the mood to find more Ditko comics. I found one of the nicest collections of Ditko's work, the all-Ditko issue of the Warren magazine Eerie. Ditko drew horror comics for many years, both before and after his epochal work on Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, and built up his repertoire in such a way as to become a master at them. His mastery is on full display in this magazine.
Collecting ten stories drawn by Ditko from Warren's golden age of '65 and '66, these stories show Ditko as a master of light and shadow, intelligent styling and passionate storytelling. Just look at the depth of the images he shows below and the intelligence of his design. Ditko took some fairly pedestrian stories and turned them into masterworks.
The only flaw in this issue is that only ten of Ditko's sixteen strips are collected here. Now I have to seek out the comics that contain the other six. Infinite Crisis #3 (2005)Okay, so there are about 327 different reviews of IC #3 out there on the Internet, so I might as well add to the general buzz about it with my usual insightful review. Ready for the great insight? I liked it. I liked the battle for Atlantis, and I even like that most of the story is continued in this month’s Aquaman - that’s cool epic action stuff. I liked the Amazons and their Purple Death Ray - that’s just wacky fun superhero crap. I liked the Earth-2 Superman visiting Batman and somehow trying to persuade Bruce that things would be better if he was dead or something - that was just crazy stupid comics logic. I liked the Earth-1 Superman saving a building in a way that completely violates the laws of physics - again, wacky comics stuff. I liked Luthor vs. Luthor and that crazy tower with the Anti-Monitor and the evil Alex Luthor. Fun comic. I liked it. Now go read the other 326 reviews out there on the 'net. Nexus #4 (1983)Great Goulessarian, this is a great comic. Early issues of Nexus were full of wonderful art, snappy writing and gorgeous coloring. If things were sometimes a little bit awkward around the edges, they were offset by the cleverness of the whole thing.
In this issue, Nexus, the man who dreams of mass murderers and then must kill them, dreams of a woman who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people. He finds that she's living in a ziggurat, or temple tower-shaped building, on a planet mostly covered by water. He finds the woman, and she dies.
Okay, that's vaguely interesting, but the greatness lies in the exciting ways that creators Baron and Rude fill in the details. Nexus lives on a moon called Ylum, a place for refugees from the galaxy's wars. Nexus is a hero to those creatures. They call him Great Nexus, idolize and deify the man. Wonderfully, as the series progressed, all of those plot points progressed and became more complicated. First Ylum started filling with refugees, forcing the colony to decide its admission policies, which then forced politics to enter the picture. The adulation of Nexus changed as the series progresses, too, as he often lost face with the people of Ylum. The story progressed in interesting and unpredictable ways, just like real life.
Anyway, Nexus leaves Ylum and travels to the water world. First, he tries to be the heroic alpha male, attacking the ziggurat. But it turns out that the attack would deplete the planet's sun, so Nexus has to commune with the planet's dwellers, some very intelligent frogs, to help him decide what to do.
And on and on the comic goes. We see the heads encased like President Nixon on Futuarama, except they have amazing kinetic powers, and we see the old murderer take a heroic end after a wonderful conversation between her and Nexus.
None of this would work without the magnificent art of Steve Rude. Even at this early point in his career, Rude's art was gorgeous, with its clean lines, wonderful composition and thoughtful fanboy love. Rude's art is pure energy and intelligence, a perfect match for the story.
I guess Dark Horse is collecting these early issues of Nexus in Archive-type books. Great. They deserve it. Man-Bat #1 (1975)Steve Ditko is one of the most distinctive artists in comics history. He's best known as the creator or co-creator of Spider-Man (accounts and interpretations of history vary on this point)and had his hand in many classic comics. I thought that Ditko had never drawn Batman, though, until im picked up a beat-up copy of this comic.
Man-Bat #1, logically enough, guest-stars Batman, and the issue is drawn by Ditko and inked by Al Milgrom. Ditko's Batman is very intriguing: dark and mysterious, with his face always hidden in shadow, a truly mysterious creature who seems unknowable. It's a different interpretation than that of almost any other artist. The color that best describes Ditko's Batman is black. Black in silhouette, black in the shadows, black even in the light. He's a frightening man, a man who has secrets and does things for his own reasons. It's a wonderful interpretation, as innovative and interesting as you might expect from this great cartoonist.
The story? Written by Gerry Conway, it's incoherent crap that demands knowledge of obscure continuity that no person with half a brain in their head would care about.
But wow, that art! Hot Stuf' #4 (1977)Hot Stuf' was another example of what was called a "ground-level" comic back in the mid-'70s. That term is almost meaningless in 2005, but in the '70s, it was used to describve a comic that was neither an underground (meaning R. Crumb or S. Clay Wilson-type creation of comic strips that were pure expressions of the id - meaning mostly sex and violence - onto the page) nor an overground (meaning sacrificing one's values at the altar of getting a steady paycheck from Marvel or DC. Much like Star*Reach's publications (I wrote about their Quack earlier this month), this comic represents a middle ground where craftsmanship is competent and stories are linear. Of course, those definitions don't imply anything about quality, but what else is new?
Actually, there are a few nice stories in this issue. The best is a piece by the legendary Alex Toth, starring his adventurer The Vanguard, as he breaks up an illegal mob-run gambing operation. I have no idea of Toth ever reused this character, but he looks like a jet-setting playboy with a beautiful girlfriend who wanders around helping his rich friends. Toth's art is, as always, gorgeous, and the printing job on the story is spectacular.
Which brings up another important point about the ground-level books: the production values were much higher here than they were in the mainstream or underground books. The big publishers were always looking to cut corners with cheaper printing technologies and paper, which often made Marvel and DC book unintelligible. Meanwhile, the ugs were always run on a shoestring, preventing good quality printing for the most part.
Hot Stuf', however, was published by a man named Sal Quartuccio, who primarily printed art portfolios and posters. The portfolios were absurdly overpriced sets of art by well-known artists; their best quality was in the spectacular printing quality of the pieces. Sal Q, as he was known, applied those same principles to his comic, which resulted in a terrific-looking comic.
Anyway, back to the comic. Then-fans Jan Strnad and Ken Barr presented a short piece about aliens taking over a spaceship. Later on in the comic, the team of Bob Keenan and Ernie Colon revisit the spaceship setting for a tale that seems influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey. Neither piece is special, but neither is especially bad either, and Colon's art especially has a really interesting touch to it.
The funny piece in the issue is "The House on Whore Hill" by Mike Vosburg, a longtime fan-turned-pro who worked for Star*Reach and also for Marvel and DC. Voz always seemed to play up the sex and nudity in his ground-level stories, and this cute piece about the ghosts of a brothel taking over a beautiful real estate agent has that. It's a cute story.
The other main piece is a bit of oddness, a Japanese Samurai yarn with a twist ending, by someone named William Thomas Stillwell, M.D.. I've never seen anything else by the good Doctor, but this is a solid little eight-pager that probably had a really unique setting in '77 but seems old hat now. Dr. Stillwell has a nice wash-oriented style that looks really pretty with this nice printing. Who was this guy and did he do any other comics?
Hot Stuf' is a neat find, and one of the reasons I'm so fond of '70s comics. There was so much that was odd and unique that came out in that era that there are always a few more obscure treasures to be found. The new Doctor Who: the Christmas Invasion (2005)Tonight I had the pleasure of watching the new Doctor Who special, broadcast by CBC, and I have to say I loved it. So much of what I enjoyed about the revival of the series was on display in this episode, and as expected it still had a wonderful sort of nostalgia for the original series.
First and foremost, the new Doctor, David Tennant, is wonderful. From the moment he steps on screen and speaks, he seems to command things, in a way that the Eccleston Doctor didn't. As he appears, the new Doctor makes a wonderful speech about how he doesn't know what his personality will be like yet - a common problem when he regenerates - and then quickly shows his true nature. This Doctor is a man of action, a man not afraid of confrontation or battle, a man who's capable of deep anger and vindictiveness. In short, he seems a man of great passionate emotions.
Of course, the Doctor being the Doctor, his greatest passion is helping his beloved Earth, and we get that plenty in this episode. Earth is under attack by a group of nasty aliens who have discovered a British space probe, found the drops of blood included there as information about people, and come up with a nasty scheme for conquering the Earth. Things seem in dire straits, especially since the Doctor's latest regeneration has, as it often did in the past, knocked him unconscious and vulnerable.
I've recently watched Jon Pertwee's regeneration episode, "Spearhead from Space," and it's wonderful to see how much this episode is a tip of the hat to that one. Not only does the Doctor act much like he did 30 years ago, but UNIT is involved, and the Doctor by the end shows that he's his own man.
Harriet Jones, the MP from the Slitheen episodes is back, and she's gotten a terrific promotion - though there's a wonderful twist to that as well. We also see Rose's family, Mickey and her mom, which is only appropriate for Christmas.
Viewers also got previews (also available online) of next season's episodes, which will include the return of K9 and Sarah Jane, as well as redesigned Cybermen - and the Doctor and Rose kiss!
There are some flaws in the episode, but the wonderful introduction of the new Doctor offsets them. I can't wait to see more of him. Christmas with the Super-Heroes Special #2 (1988)Isn't this a nice cover? Behind it is work by an all-star group of creators: Paul Chadwick of Concrete fame on Superman, Dave Gibbons and Gray Morrow on Batman, Eric Shanower on Wonder Woman, John Byrne and Andy Kubert on Enemy Ace, Bill Loebs, Colleen Doran and Ty Templeton on the Flash (Barry Allen) and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), and Alan Brennert and Dick Giordano on Deadman. All of them celebrate the Christmas season in grand style in this book. Reading it on Christmas night is the perfect capper to a wonderful day.
This comic is a real treat, each story as charming as the one before. It's obvious that all of these creators were doing top-notch work.
Paul Chadwick's Superman story is a sweet and wonderful story about Superman's real super-power: his never-ending love of life. The art and story are as humanistic and thoughtful as any classic Concrete tale.
Gibbons and Morrow's Batman story features some gorgeous art, saturated in black (and unfortunately a bit hard to make out on the printed page) as we see why Batman needs a family.
Wonder Woman by Shanower is up next, and it's clear that he has a grasp on what makes the post-Crisis WW such a neat character: she's truly heroic, but it's a heroism that comes from her internal doubt and growth, not something from the outside.
John Byrne's silent Enemy Ace story might be the best in the comic. It's a wonderful poignant piece about how Christmas can change people, and shows a side of the Lord of the Killer Skies that is right out of the work of his creator, Robert Kanigher. You don't have to know the character at all to enjoy the story. Byrne's been bashed a lot lately, but in 1988 he was a star for good reason.
Fans longing for the Silver Age versions of the Flash and Green Lantern will find that in Bill Loebs and Colleen Doran's story that might have come right from a Julius Schwartz-edited comic from the '60s or '70s. Barry and Hal go to a small town where they meet a millionaire who doesn't believe in Santa. To prove Santa exists, they go around doing good deeds, finding the holiday spirit in a family that's down on its luck. It's a charmer.
In the final tale, Deadman is visited by a special spirit who had recently died in a giant crossover tale. Brennert always keeps the story grounded as we see the Deadman find the spirit of life within himself. and Giordano produces art that's wondefully humanistic and alive.
This comic fills me with the holiday spirit. It's absolutely wonderful. Merry Christmas!Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa!
 Gotham Central #38 (2005)In Gotham, honest cops are rare. Virtually the entire police force is on the take, the only exceptions being Commissioner Gordon and the cops of the Major Crimes Unit. Only the MCU officers seem to be driven by a need for justice, and it's that drive that puts them in direct conflict with their fellow officers.
Detective Crispus Allen is one of the most honest cops on the force, and he's made it his personal objective to take down Jim Corrigan, one of the most corrupt cops. Corrigan is pure evil. He treats police investigations purely as ways to enrich himself, stealing drugs to resell, and driving a fierce loyalty from those who work for him, at pain of death. Jim Corrigan is a lot like Office Vic Mackey on the TV show The Shield; he's so steeped in corruption that there's just no redeeming him.
This issue details Cris's efforts to take down Corrigan. Cris patiently gathers evidence, talks to informants, does everything he can by the book to do the right thing. But, in a shocking ending (do not skip to the last page), it appears that evil might triumph over good.
This is a sensational police comic from the keyboard of Greg Rucka and the hands of Kano and Gaudino. Readers see, panel by panel, as the story matches inexorably towards a tragic conclusion. We get a feel for who Cris Allen is, the sacrifices he makes to do good, the way his dogged determination forces him to make decisions. In issue 37, readers saw Cris desperately try to come home to his family in the midst of the Infinite Crisis; that history adds even more
intensity to the story.
Parallel to Cris's story is the increasing depression and violent attitudes of his partner Renee Montoya. For the last few months, beginning perhaps with a confrontation she had with Corrigan, Renee's been getting a quicker and quicker temper. Finally in this issue that problem comes to a head. Will she grow from the experience, or will she sink further down into her problems?
After last issue's IC cross-over, this issue is completely superpower free and it gives the comic a wonderful feel. We can predict that Corrigan will eventually become the Spectre - it's hinted at on the cover - but this issue has a wonderful street-level feel that fits the characters well.
The art by Kano and Gaudiano, along with art by Lee Loughridge, is perfect for the story. There's a sense that Gotham is a city in decline, where life is tough and danger lurks around every corner. The scenes at the climax are especially dramatic - I was on the razor's edge watching the confrontation between Cris and Corrigan.
It's too bad there’s only two more issues left of this series. This was perhaps the best issue of the series so far. Hard Time Season Two #1 (2005)I'm so glad to see this comic back on the newsstands. Steve Gerber has always been a great writer at exploring moral ambiguity, and Hard Time is all about that moral ambiguity. Protagonist Ethan Harrow was involved in a school shooting, which landed him in a maximum security penitentiary. He also has an ancient spirit living in his body, for reasons yet unexplained. "Season one" of Hard Time, the first dozen issues, explored Harrow's bizarre and frightening life in prison and his interesting reactions to it. Harrow's emotions never could be completely pinned down in "season one." At times he seemed motivated by his idea of right and wrong, while at others he seemed willing to leave things alone. He seemed oddly able to get by in prison for a 17-year-old kid, and that fact added an odd sense of edge to Ethan. Season two begins with a return to the events of the first issue of season one. A legal aid team comes to Ethan's prison to interview him about the shooting and the events leading up to it. Ethan tells the story of his life as an outsider, of getting beat up by the biggest jock at the school, and at finding fellowship with another outsider, Brandon Snodd. Ethan and Brian create their own secret world - Ethan to escape his small size, Brian to escape his mother, who "slept all day and entertained 'guests' all night." Ethan tells of the boys humiliations and the ways they tried to escape them. Even though it was a hell, the boys seemed to be able to learn to get by somehow. At least it seemed that way until the jocks escalated the battle. The pair's friend Inez was the victim of an attempted rape, which Brian breaks up, only to find himself the victim of a much more evil stunt. Finally the boys had enough. Without thinking, they decided to go to school, wave around some guns, and scare their bullies. But it was in that moment that everything went wrong. Much of this information is new to the comic, and adds an extra level of moral ambiguity to everything. When a boy is attacked so cruelly and endlessly, eventually something has to snap. His actions can't be condoned, but they can be understood and analyzed. Who can say that if they were in Brandon's position, they wouldn't do something similar? Season two seems to be all about exploring the intense ambiguity of this story in greater depth. Ethan and Brandon's crimes can never be condoned, but they can be understood. To what extent that understanding should mitigate Ethan's blame for these horrific crimes is a difficult question. On the flip side, however, the bloodthirstiness of the judge in Ethan's case, out to throw the book at a boy who was vilified in the media to help gain re-election, can't be ignored either. These are deep questions. I trust Steve Gerber, along with co-writer Mary Skrenes to not give definitive answers but rather let the reader decide what they think. Moral ambiguity has always been Gerber's great strength as a writer. Weird Western Tales #20: Jonah Hex (1973)Jonah Hex was one bad-ass cowboy. With an enormous scar on his face that matched the scars in his soul, Hex was the perfect anti-hero for an age that rejected heroes. Hex was a bounty hunter, always looking for his next dollar and caring little for the people he helped - unless they deserved his attention.
And many of the people he liked ended up betraying him. Like the woman in this issue, who's happy to see Hex before it seems he'll somehow mess up her happy lifestyle. When that happens, she fights like a tigress to defend her interests.
In Hex comics, everyone was self-involved. There was no real hero of most stories; instead, most stories were about survival and making a few dollars more. It's kind of refreshing to read a comic like thyat. Marvel Premiere #3: Doctor Strange (1972)"While the World Spins Mad" is the only collaboration between Stan Lee and artist Barry Smith (pre Windsor-), and one of the very few comics of the Silver/Bronze Ages where both the writer and artist were headlined on the cover. In fact, I'm having trouble thinking of another comic from that time which mentioned both writer and artist. Maybe some issue of Fantastic Four mentioned Stan & Jack, but it wasn't common. So this gives the reader the feeling that something special was about to happen.
And the story inside is pretty special. It feels a bit dated for its time, but the tale of a world-weary Doctor Strange falling victim to one of his greatest enemies, Nightmare, is actually quite entertaining. Stan's writing is melodramatic as ever - "We? Do not speak of we to Dr. Strange! I am no part of one who would surrender. Let the madness fight on! I fight till I fall!" - but it at least fits the melodramatic figure of Doctor Strange, who's the most erudite Marvel character this side of Asgard.
And the Barry Smith art here is awfully nice, too. It's illustrative without being overwhelming, with some nice art deco touches that are surprising. He's terrific at displaying the increasing desperation of Doc Strange, doing a wonderful job of conveing the surrealistic intensity of the battle.
Is this comic a big deal? Yeah, why not? There may have been better Doctorn Strange comics, and better comics written by Stan Lee or illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith. But the combination of all three is a pretty damn neat combination for a comic book. Quack! #4 (1977)Reading this comic makes me feel like 1977 was a long time ago. A whole different world, where things were slightly familiar but seem really out of place.
Take this comic in general, for instance. Quack! was created in part to capitalize over the fan frenzy for Howard the Duck, which at the time felt like a revolutionary comic book. Howard seemed to take an underground sensibility to mainstream comics, a sensibility where all of society's conventions were questioned, where society seemed an empty set of outdated and ridiculous conventions, where one had no choice but to be extranged from society. Howard the existential duck was a perfect vehicle for such estrangement - he was such an absurd figure that readers naturally had an affinity for him, while also retaining compassion. If that sounds a bit convoluted for a damn funny animal strip, well, that was the spirit of the times.
So Mike Friedrich, who had been publishing a monthly comic called Star*Reach that combined mainstream creators with rebellious sensibilities, was precisely the right guy to put out this comic. Friedrich was a fan who began writing for the mainstream companies in the '60s (he wrote a run of Justice League of America, among other books) and was notorious for being a rebel.
But enough of the background. Is the comic any good? Actually, yeah it is. The lead story, "Home on the Range, Rabbit" features some absolutely sumptuous art by Steve Leialoha, illustrating a clever tale (or is it a tail) about the pursuit of a notorious bank robber, El Drako. The story succeeds because it plays it both straight and silly; there's a scene where our protagonist is chased by a bear, only to have the bear return to his cave and chat with his bear wife about hilbernation. There's real passion in Leialoha's story, and that passion makes it special.
The second story, "The Beavers," is even more interesting, since it was created by Dave Sim right around the time that the first issues of Cerebus came out. It's easy to forget now that Sim was a popular fan artist back in this era, contributing to dozens of paying and non-paying fanzines, including Quack! and Star*Reach (in the latter comic he illustrated an interesting story called "I'm God," which is very interesting in the context of his later issues of Cerebus). "The Beavers" is a meditation on what it means to be Canadian, and how Canadians are perceived by the rest of the world. It's also damn funny and is followed by a second strip about Star Trek that's also awfully damn nice. It's interesting to see where Sim was then, and how dramatically his work changed over the years.
Readers also get a story of Michael Gilbert's The Wraith, a character inspired by Will Eisner's great character the Spirit. Gilbert always created some nice stories with the Wraith, and this tale of love lost is typically charming. It's by far the straightest thing in this comic; take away the funny-animal looks of the characters and this could appear in any magazine.
These are the good strips in the comic. Beyond the work by Sim and Leialoha are a dull and overwrought strip by Alan Kupperberg, and the pointless "Adventues of the Oregon Bobcat" by Dot Bucher, which just recycled a set of cat jokes that were old 30 years ago.
Overall: nice old comic. Fade From Grace (2004/2005)John and Grace are a happily married couple, very happily married. One seemingly quiet night, their life changes when John goes to the store to buy ice cream. He returns to find their apartment building is on fire. Like any man in love, John charges to the couple's apartment, where Grace is trapped. Grace can't open the door, so John starts pounding on it, suddenly developing an amazing superpower as he does so. John saves Grace and sets their lives along a whole new path.
This is a sweet and wonderful graphic novel. Written from Grace's standpoint, the story really makes readers feel the emotions of being married to a hero. Readers feel then rush of excitement, the stress of worry, the thrill of seeing your spouse on TV, and see him finally make the ultimate sacrifice to save the one he loves, as he truly becomes a hero. The story of Fade From Grace is all about the growth that both characters make throughout the book, as readers see them mature and become more aware of the world around them. John/Fade may be the hero, but Grace is his most important source of support and inspiration. Without her, he's nothing.
In some ways this story reads like an inversion of standard super-hero plots. With most super-hero books, the powers are the most important facts of the story. The main thing is seeing how the hero learns to use his powers and how he fights evil with those powers. Here the main focus is on John and Grace's marriage, and all the battles and growth are reflections on the marriage instead of vice versa. It's a nice change of pace, and makes the comic feel nicely intimate.
Jeff Amano's art is wonderfully unique in this book. Instead of using linework to drive his images, he uses bright and evocative colors that give the whole story a kind of iconographic feel. The art has a wonderfully impressionistic style that somehow manages to intensify the emotions of the story. Just as the story is an inversion of comics writing, so too the art inverts standard practices.
The only real problem I had with the book is that the couple just get along too well. How can a married couple going through this sort of change never argue about what they should do, or what their long-term goals are? Would a young married woman really be willing to give up the man she loves for a higher cause?
In the end, though, Fade From Grace is a kind of Valentine. It shows a noble, self-sacrificing love that transcends normal people and verges into the super-human. Any why shouldn't a comic embrace the super-human? The Secret Voice #1 (2005)What happened to the solo comic from a new creator? The independent comics section of the rack used to be full of such comics - creators such as Dan Clowes, Chester Brown and the Hernandez Brothers started that way. In the last few years, however, these sorts of comics seem to have completely disappeared. Perhaps it only seems that way, since there are so many comics listed in Previews, or perhaps new creators have migrated to graphic novels - Craig Thompson was a virtual unknown until Goodbye, Chunky Rice - or perhaps those comics are still out there, and just ignored by the general public.
In any event, it felt oddly notalgic to read a comic like The Secret Voice, the first solo comic by new creator Zack Soto. And, though it's always hard to tell from just one issue, Soto looks like a promising new writer/artist.
Soto's evocative and moody cover leads into a fun and mostly silent adventure featuring his character Dr. Galapagos. Readers learn almost nothing about this action hero as he fights a group of rock trolls. There are hints of a greater mission and previous adventures, but the reader is mainly left with a fun set of almost stream-of-consciousness action scenes and a set of implications of past and futue adventures. The story mainly works because Soto sells it weill - he has a wonderful art style that helps pull the reader through the stranger sequences (a spit golem?). Zoto's art in this story has a touch of Paul Pope and a touch of Scott Morse, but is also uniquely his own.
The backup tales are less successful. "Day 34," the story of a hallucination by a man lost at sea, has some clever storytelling techniques but at eight pages is a bit long for what Soto wants to say. "Ghost Attack?!" reads like something an angry kid might create in high school, while "Smog Emperor" is just a juvelile revenge fantasy.
But overall this is a nice debut. I hope that Soto keeps Dr. Galapagos mysterious and strange, and that Soto piles up more myseries as he goes on. Zack Soto's comics have the potential to be very interesting. Sunset City (2005)Frank McDonald is a recently retired widower who moves to a retirement community at the behest of his daughter. But he's not happy: "The sky is always blue. The air is clean. The people are nice as hell. And there is always some nice activity planned. You don't have to work anymore. You're retired. So live it up at Sunset City. The streets are paved with friggin' gold. My daughter assured me that I would learn to like it here. But after six months I'm asking the same question. Why am I here?"
Frank is consumed with sadness. Sadness at the death of his beloved wife, sadness at being pushed into retirement, sadness at being towards the end of his life. Slowly, Frank finds himself more unhappy and still more enmeshed with life in Sunset City, until a horrific event starts to push Frank out of his shell. In a moment of great drama, Frank discovers who he really is.
Sunset City is an interesting and thoughtful graphic novel. Osborne does a nice job of conveying Frank's boredom and self-pity. Frank is oppressed by his emotions, tangled up in his frustrations, unable or unwilling to change himself to meet his surroundings. I found myself contemplating what life would be like when (or if) I were in similar circumstances. Would I grasp for something meaningful, as Frank does, or would I be able to take a different path?
Frank's ultimate decision is one that I find myself debating in my mind. I don't want to reveal the key plot point, but I have to wonder if Frank does the right thing or not. He takes the step to unlock his life, but does so in an extremely unexpected way.
Osborne's art is the only weak point of the comic for me. His cover is gorgeous, with a full palette of colors, and I can't help but feel his interiors are missing the full color treatment. The art is also rather stiff - I kept wishing Osborne's characters had more energy to them.
But overall this is an interesting and thoughtful graphic novel, one that brings up interesting questions for any reader. Stray Bullets #40 (2005)This might be the most darkly hilarious issue in the entire run of Stray Bullets. See, there's this kid, Kevin, who's kidnapped this girl, Amy Racecar, that he goes to high school with. Amy keeps trying to escape but keeps failing and gets beaten up. Meanwhile, Kevin's dad, who wears a hearing aid, has somehow gotten tangled up with some other kids' drug business.
I know it doesn't sound funny, but somehow in the execution, it all works. In this wonderfully syncopated story, the two plots keep twisting around each other, never quite touching. The father's hearing aid completely isolates him, to the point where he seems completely lost in his own small world. He has no idea that Amy is around and, since he's already in his own hot water, probably doesn't care. Meanwhile, his son, like most teenagers, is oblivious to his father's crises and just cares about his own life. The ending, where the father gets double-crossed, is a wonderful twist, a perfect ending for a crazily breezy story.
This is typically brilliant work from David Lapham. Who would believe that such a horrific storyline would be so funny? Bill-Dale Marcinko, 1959-2005Recently I read the news that Bill-Dale Marcinko had passed away. That was a real shock to me. In his time, Marcinko was a legend: a brilliant fanzine editor, a merry prankster, a wonderful and heartfelt writer, and a tremendous influence on his fellow fans.
I never met Billy Marcinko, never even traded mail with him that I remember, but he was indirectly a big influence on me. See, when I was 13 or 14 years old, a gawky adolescent discovering that there was a whole world of people out there who shared my passion for a juvenile art form like comics, I discovered fanzines. One of the best was Ultrazine, published by a cool guy from Pittsburgh named Matt Bucher. And Matt's greatest influence was a guy named Bill-Dale Marcinko.
Marcinko was the publisher of a controversial and exciting fanzine called AFTA, or "Ascension from the Ashes". The first two issues of his zine contained the standard reviews and articles about pop culture icons of the time like Steve Martin and Star Trek, but they were done in a way that directly spoke to the fans of the time. Marcinko's opinions fit the adolescent angst of so many of his readers, and felt extraordinarily revolutionary. He even did wacky stuff like taping raisins into every copy of AFTA #2, a stunt that people still talk about today. Matt would publish interviews with Marcinko in Ultrazine, mention AFTA in every possible editorial, even plug Marcinko's space-filler zine In-Betweena, which was intended to raise money for future issues (and it worked, AFTA 3 was published.).
Eventually, as always seems to happen, Marcinko drifted away from comics as he went to college. His friend Elayne Riggs has many stories to tell about Billy and it's obvious that he had an incredibly incisive and cutting intelligence, both thoughtful and melodramatic, and fond of the odd gesture. He was like the Andy Kaufman of the fanzine crowd.
When we all started having reunions online in the late '90s, Marcinko was one of the first people that everyone thought of. Where had he been all these years? What had this mercurial genius been doing with himself? Unfortunately, last week, the news came out that Bill-Dale Marcinko had died in a house fire, living as a shy recluse in his parents home, a home filled with boxes and boxes of his beloved collectibles.
How could a man who once seemed like such a towering figure die in such a way? It seemed impossible that Bill-Dale Marcinko, who was once a legendary figure in my world, passed away under such banal circumstances.
Several years ago, I found a copy of AFTA #3 for sale at a comic shop for a quarter. My heart actually jumped when I saw the comic, and it was truly one of my great fan thrills to find this zine. Reading the zine, I could see why Marcinko was so popular. He had a way of writing that was wonderfully personable and completely his own. Please allow me to share a few paragraphs of Bill-Dale's editorial from AFTA #3:
How could writing like this not attract a following among a bunch of misfits? Marcinko almost seemed like a new Salinger of our very own, speaking of alienation and presenting an exciting alternative vision.
And now, damn it, that man is gone. I never knew him, never even traded mail with him, but Bill-Dale Marcinko was a legend. Thank youThank you to all of you who sent or posted condolences about my father's death. They truly mean a lot to me. I truly appreciate each and every note that was sent. Elliott Sacks, 1936-2005My father passed away yesterday afternoon at the age of 69. It's hard to express in words how much I'll miss him. Anyone who's lost a parent knows how difficult it can be to summarize the life of a person you knew so well, in just a few words. So please allow me a lot of words.
My father wasn't famous, nobody more than a regular man, but to me he was a giant: a man of great personal conviction and integrity, a man who loved his family dearly, a man of great insight and intelligence.
Elliott Sacks was born on April 22, 1936 in the East New York area of Brooklyn, New York, the son of Ida and Saul Sacks. Saul had been a freedom fighter against the British in Palestine, who came to the USA in his twenties. In East New York, he met Ida, who had come from Poland as a child. My dad's parents owned a neighborhood grocery, and my dad often helped out in the shop. He also liked to run the streets like any other kid in that era, playing stickball with his friends, ignoring his schoolwork and getting his kicks. One of the family jokes about my father was always that even though his parents owned a house right next door to Thomas Jefferson High School, he somehow often managed to be late for school.
By the time he was 18, in 1954, it was pretty clear to my dad that he needed to kick-start his life. He might have had wanderlust, something he felt much in his life, or might have yearned to just get out of East New York and away from his family and friends. So he joined the Army and got shipped to beautiful Dover, Delaware, which was a living purgatory for him. As soon as his two years duty were up, Dad left the Army and joined the Air Force, which quickly shipped him off to Germany.
It was in Germany that my father started to become the man that I knew. My dad often said his time in the military completely changed his life. Going to Europe must have been an incredible adventure. He had traveled inside the US with his parents, but never internationally, and when he went to Europe as a handsome young man, it must have been literally like a whole new world opening up to him. He traveled around Europe every time he got liberty, visiting Copenhagen and Venice and Paris and traveling up and down the Rhine River. He had a romance with a French girl named Rosie (my sister and I found wonderful love notes from Rosie buried deep in an old foot locker one year when we visited him and my mom) and had a nice, easy tour as a file clerk. He returned after his five year tour in the Air Force, having left as a boy and come back as a man.
Returning to the US, my father took part in the GI Bill, got a degree from the Culinary Institute of America and began working as a chef at various hospitals in New York. One family story has my father serving dinner to Barbra Streisand when she had her son Jason. In the same years, he got set up on a date with my mother, who was seven years younger than he, and on Groundhog's Day 1964, after dating for only a few months, they got married. They stayed married for nearly 42 years until my father passed away.
In 1966, I was born. My mom often likes to talk about the excitement and wonder that my parents felt about my birth. While she was pregnant, my mom often would wake my had up in the middle of the night to show him how much I was kicking her. After I was born, my parents used to stare at me in wonder, amazed that they produced a little baby. This is another constant in my father's life: his family was always the most important thing in the world to him.
Three years later, in 1969, my sister was born, and, as my parents always told the story, I changed from being a happy baby into one in constant conflict with my sister. (I was spoiled as a baby, after all, so why would I want to share my parents' love?) With Sabrina's birth, it seems my parents felt their family was complete since they had a son and daughter who they loved. My parents bought a nice house at 246-07 Memphis Avenue in Rosedale, Queens, New York, in the flight path to JFK Airport, and set out to raise my sister and me. They rented out the top floor of the house - my father always took pride in getting along with the renters - and my dad went to work as an executive chef at the Long Island College Hospital, working there for several years until, as the story goes, the hospital went from fresh meals to frozen meals. (I'm surprised, by the way, looking at a Google Map, that the hospital wasn't in fact in Long Island but actually in Brooklyn. It must have been a bruising journey to get to Brooklyn from far out in Queens, but dad obviously decided that we should live in what at that time was a nice, quiet neighborhood.)
After he left Long Island College Hospital, my dad embarked on a new adventure. He took a job as executive chef at Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in bucolic Cooperstown, New York, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Only about 2000 people lived in that small town, and I think it's here that my father might have been happiest. This street kid from Brooklyn bought a farm house with 8 acres of land and set out on a new adventure, raising pigs and goats, walking the fields with his loyal dog Malissa, and creating a wonderful huge garden. My father was living a great adventure on the farm. My sister and I were in elementary school at the time, and he would take us for drives on long country roads to auctions, where he would buy old glassware, bottles, and assorted tchotchkes. He never spent much on stuff, preferring to buy big boxes of junk for just a few dollars. The thrill of the hunt was everything to him.
I'm not sure why he left Bassett Hospital, but my father ended up working as exectuive chef at a Holiday Inn in Syracuse, NY, for one year, before being transferred to Reno, Nevada. If Cooperstown was his favorite place to live, Reno was a close second. My dad was always immensely proud of the loyalty and friendships he had with the people who worked for him - he didn't have a prejudiced bone in his body - and quickly turned the hotel restaurant he ran from one of the least profitable in the chain into one of the most profitable. Along with his professional satisfaction, Reno also fit my father's life well. He loved to go to the casinos and play poker all night at the end of the work week. He loved Texas Hold 'em long before most people knew what it was.
Unfortunately, it all came to an end after four years, Impressed with his success in Reno, Holiday Inn asked my dad to transfer to Corpus Christi, Texas. After trying the place for a few months, he decided the position wasn't for him. Holiday Inn wouldn't transfer my dad back to Reno, so he had to pursue a new job. He found work in San Jose, CA. I honestly don't remember where he worked, but for whatever reason my parents and he badly missed Reno. This is around the time I moved away from home at 18, so the details get a bit fuzzy for me at this point.
Several years later, he took a job as manager of an Officer's Club at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and later worked as a traveling instructor for Air Force Base managers, traveling around the US to different Air Force bases, passing on his wisdom. My dad loved the teaching work, and often commented about how much he enjoyed working with the young military men. That's no surprise to me; with his humor and real love of people, my father was really in his element in that job.
After that, my father basically retired. He worked for a time at the military academy at West Point, but after about a year decided to move to Florida. My parents moved to Ft. Lauderdale, and began to travel all around the world. This was a very happy period in my parents' lives. Having raised two kids and put us through college, they were free to go all around the world. And they did. They went to over a dozen countries: China, Thailand, Germany, Morocco, France (where my parents insisted that the people were actually the nicest in the world), Turkey, and many others. There are wonderful photos of my parents sitting on camels and on elephants, on top of the Great Wall of China and outside the Louvre. Finally my dad got to revisit so many of the places he had seen thirty years before.
About five years ago, at a normal doctor's visit on his 65th birthday, my father was diagnosed with an agressive form of long cancer. He had smoked for about fifty years, since he was a boy running the streets of East New York, and was never able to kick the habit. He was operated on almost four years ago to the day, and was given only a year to live. Stubborn guy that he was, my dad lived three years longer than the doctor predicted. He had his operation and took his chemo, and things stayed pretty steady.
My parents moved to Everett to be closer to me and my wife and my three kids. After they moved here, I grew to get to know my parents again. After they moved up here, my father always treated me as a peer. He was always infinitely generous with his time and energy, always willing to help out in any way, always enjoying spending time with his grandkids and taking a sincere interest in all of our lives. He accepted my wife Liisa in the family as if she had always been a member of the family, unconditionally, and loved to lavish attention on his grandkids. And my father would always pick up the check after our weekly lunches together.
About six months ago, his health began to decline again. The cancer, which had been in remission, charged back with a vengeance. It reached his brain and began metastacising there. My father began to fall and feel lethargic all the time. He started withdrawing from things. That hurt a lot. My father was always a man who embraced life, who hated to be held back by anything. His disease had begun to make him into a man different from the one I had always known. I still loved him unconditionally, as he always would love me, but he had changed.
His health got worse. My father was admitted to the hospital, and then to a rehab center, where he rallied a bit, but when he and my mom moved into an assisted living center, his health went downward still more. The cancer had really metastacised to his brain, and mt father saw no point to taking on heroic measures to extend his life. My mother, sister and I gathered at his bed, and he died knowing the love we all felt for him. The last thing that ever happened to him was when my sister kissed him on top of his head and told him that she loved him.
My father was a good man, and he had a good life. He had many friends and a family that loved him. He left my mother a nice inheritance, which I know was important to him, and had two kids who have been successful in their chosen fields. He had three great grandkids, got to travel all around the world, had lots of interesting adventures. For a kid from the streets of Brooklyn, he did damn well.
I will miss my father, but I'm also glad that he went quickly and in a way that was true to who he had been for his whole life. Of course, he'll always live on in his family's hearts and minds. Liisa often finds me using one of my dad's phrases. That makes me feel very happy. |
|
|
