But I’d be denying one truth that I don’t want to deny- 35/30 worked for me in the most important ways. Sure, I only wrote reviews for half the books, and I got sidetracked the last week and a half with the Essential Luke Cage and the webcomic Narbonic. But I wrote a lot more about comics than I ever have in my life, set up a website to do it, and established a level of self-discipline that every writer needs. And I learned a few weaknesses, and I’m happy about that, because I can’t get better as a writer without that awareness.

I’m going to still review the two Masterworks and Alan Moore’s Lost Girls, and a few of the other books may get a longer review as time goes by. And I’ll do a summary of the other books soon. The summary will come sooner than the rest. And I want to finish everything soon; just because I’m past 30 days doesn’t mean I want this program hanging over my head 30 days from now. Call it 35/60, if you wish.

So back when I started 35/30, I vowed to write something on all the books in the pile, read or not. With about a week to go, the pile’s huge, and I’m going to take a stab at the unread pile.

Truthfully, this is a tough month. There’s a lot of books on the unread pile. Part of that is because a lot of the books are part of series I’m a little behind on, but this is still a lot of books. I’ve been sidetracked because I’m reading the full Captain America Masterworks series, and they’re three dense volumes. But I still never thought I’d have this high of a number of unread books at the end of the month.

On the other hand, I’m going to end up with a double-digit amount of full reviews, with The Great Catsby, Lost Girls, Absolute Kingdom Come, Jokes and the Unconscious, and the two Masterworks books to go. I’ll take that for a first month of blogging. I hope you will too.

So here we go:

Concrete Vol 6 Stranger Armor TP
This is a small digest reprint of Paul Chadwick’s Concrete origin story. I prefer the oversized format for Chadwick’s art, like we saw in the short stories collections in the 90s, but the digests do have a nice bonus. The “big” stories such as Strange Armor are presented along with short stories printed around the same time, so you get to see the big picture. This is a fantastic series, and it’s highly recommended.

Daredevil Vol 1 HC (New Printing)
“New Printing” stands for “the first edition has a significant production error and missed an issue”. The first edition had a page that was missing word balloons and didn’t print issue 12 (a fill-in with art by Rob Haynes). The book fixes the error and reprints Daredevil v2 1-14. This book established the Marvel Knights imprint, featured a nice story by movie guy Kevin Smith, and had some fantastic art by Joe Quesada. It would have been a nicer book if Marvel had offered an exchange program for those of us stuck with the first volume, but I still appreciate the new edition.

Deadbeats #78 and Soulsearchers #78
Both books are from Claypool, which will stop publishing comics in 2007. Sales are so low that Diamond is refusing to distribute them anymore, despite Claypool’s claim that they’re happy with sales. It’s a shame; we’re going to lose Peter David’s Soulsearchers because of the shutdown, although there’s been talk of moving the comics to the web. Claypool’s been mocked on the blogosphere for their lackluster marketing efforts; the names of the authors didn’t appear on the covers until this year. In fact, I ordered Deadbeats by accident; I only wanted Soulsearchers, and made an error on my online order form (my bad!).

I’d love to see Claypool consider reinvigorating the line on the web through the sort of promotion Slave Labor’s doing with online comics (89 cent downloads in PDF or CBR format); right now, there are only trades reprinting the first twelve issues, which can be discouraging for new readers. Here’s a thought; with David’s exclusive agreement at Marvel, why not see if Essential black-and-white budget trades could be put out through Icon?

Essential Luke Cage, Power Man Vol 2 TP
From the splash page of Power Man 28 (this is a scan from the comic, not the black-and-white Essential):

“Sir Nose has stolen the Bop Gun from Starchild! How will Starchild lead us all to Funkentelechny? Bring on the Mothership Connection! Ain’t nothin’ but a party, y’all! Flashlight!”

There’s a heck of a lot of talent in this book, actually: Chris Claremont, John Byrne, George Tuska, Sal Buscema (always a friend here at Why I Love Comics), Steve Englehart, Mike Zeck, Marv Wolfman, Don McGregor, and more. I’m looking forward to sitting down with this volume and doing a deeper read.

Finder TP Vol 8 Five Crazy Women
Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder saga continues. And I’m so far behind in reading this great, dense series that I’m stealing a quote from McNeil herself:

“Everybody’s asking about the other ‘lost issue’ now that BEWARE OF DOG has found a home in the FIVE CRAZY WOMEN tpb. Would anyone believe that FIVE CRAZY WOMEN grew out of a need to have a place to collect BEWARE OF DOG? I did those two single issues to Give New Readers Great Jumping-On Points. I hope it worked, because I can’t do short stories to save my ass, and for years those two issues have been loose ends defying all attempts at tidy tying-up. I could do a few more single-issue stories, I’d think. Then I could just collect all of the ‘Jaeger B-Sides.’ Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. Har. Me trying to write a short story is like a twelve-stepper saying he’s only going to have one Cosmopolitan.”

If you really need a jump-on place, why not hop over to lightspeedpress.com and read the webcomic? You can get the first 69 pages (as of this writing) for free.

Halo & Sprocket Vol 1: Welcome To Humanity TP
I bought this book solely because of Johanna Draper Carlson’s review. It’s one of her ten favorite comics. That’s good enough for me.

Hellblazer: Stations Of The Cross TP
I’m a Hellblazer fan going back to the days of Garth Ennis. I find that I like each author’s run after they’re all done. Mike Carey’s run still has another trade or two to go.

I’ll pick up on the pile tomorrow. Tonight, my wife CL and I are going out for fondue!

Fondue: gooey cheese.
Throw in some great dippers and
That’s a darn good time!

(See? Haiku. I sneak it in.)

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

In this story, Bruce Wayne gets some.

‘Bout time.

There’s been this myth for some time that Bruce Wayne, and his Marvel millionaire counterpart Tony Stark, are international playboys, boozing all night, in and out of bed with all sorts of hotties across the globe. But that’s simply not so. Instead, both men drink ginger ale and have the occasional steady girlfriend. It’s no wonder Batman was a target of Dr. Wertham; he spends more time with Robin than with the opposite sex. Tony Stark’s worse; he wears his alcoholism on his sleeve, and I can’t recall him ever being in a successful relationship.

Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne are not playboys. George Clooney is a playboy. In the latest issue of Vanity Fair, he says, "Here is my theory on debunking photographs in magazines, you know, the paparazzi photographs. I want to spend every single night for three months going out with a different famous actress. You know, Halle Berry one night, Salma Hayek the next, and then walk on the beach holding hands with Leonardo DiCaprio. People would still buy the magazines, they’d still buy the pictures, but they would always go, ‘I don’t know if these guys were putting us on or not."

See, that’s a playboy. If we’re supposed to believe that Bruce and Tony live the life, then we need to see a little bit of it. I’m not talking about scenes where Tony’s slipped into the bottle again; I’m talking about seeing Bruce start the night in Paris dancing with Paris, and ending the night in New York dancing with Lindsey. (I’m sure he has something in his utility belt that would protect him from whatever virulent disease he’d get from either encounter.) Alfred should be cooking breakfast for the gaggle of gals that spent the night (not that the tramps actually eat human food, but you know what I’m saying). Bruce Wayne should be the first story in the Gotham equivalent of Page Six, not moodily brooding about the crime scene in Gotham. I realize this view may not play with Time Warner’s licensing department, but I thought I’d share anyway.

Perhaps Ray should wait
to blog for a while after
reading gossip blogs…

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The Book of Lost Souls is an ongoing series by JMS (Babylon 5) and Colleen Doran (A Distant Soil, Orbiter). Marvel’s publishing it through their Icon imprint of creator-owned books. The story centers around Jonathan, a young man who commits suicide a long time ago. His soul is recruited by The Two to help steer humanity’s Lost Souls. One of the Two, the Dark Man, tries to push Jonathan towards evil, but Jonathan, as all good protagonists should, resists, despite the consequences.

I first tried to read this book while waiting on a car repair. I got through the first chapter but was completely turned off by the introduction of Mystery, a talking cat who acts as Jonathan’s helper. The panel where we meet him quite frankly made me nauseous.

No, not really. This is the purplest prose I’ve seen this side of gothy MySpace sites and 70′s horror comics. For a cat? And there’s quite a few panels of this sort. I couldn’t read any more, and I put the book down for a few weeks.

I found myself on a bench outside the Toms River Library yesterday, a beautiful sunny September day at Bookfest. I decided to give the book a second chance, and started again at page one.

I was glad I did. This is a rare work, one that actually has something- a lot of somethings- to say. The prose is still a little overblown, but you can see an improvement over time as JMS grows more comfortable with Doran’s art.

Doran’s the star of the show here. Her inkwork’s scratchier than on some of her other projects, but it fits here in the world of shadows. More importantly, when we hit the sixth chapter and Mystery has to take the stage in a starring role, she pulls of a miracle. Her Mystery is a convincing actor with a full range of human emotions while still looking like a cat. Any other artist would have either made Mystery more cartoony or ignored the needs of the script. Not Doran. She uses Mystery’s eyes and ears to pull it off in a way only a cat owner could do. (I’d post the pages, but I’d spoil the story. You’ll just have to trust me on this.)

JMS and Doran are getting ready to put out another 6 issues of this series, and I’ll be looking forward to each issue.

The Book of Lost Souls:
Cats, dreamers, hitmen, all lost;
Found here in this tome.

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Comics are the second easiest storytelling media to create, behind prose. All you need to make a comic is the ability to make words and pictures come together on a page to make a story. If you can draw, take photos, or use an image program like Illustrator or Photoshop, you’re halfway there. All you need now is a story, right?

Wrong. You need time and dedication, and that’s why most people don’t make comics.

Steven Seagle and Stefano Gaudiano didn’t have a lot of time in the 80s; both were full-time students at the University of Colorado at Boulder. But Steven sold Kafka to Deni Loubert’s Renegade Press on one condition- the book had to be published immediately or not at all. Loubert, best known as Dave Sim’s ex-wife, had an unexpected opening in her publishing schedule and needed to fill it. Within 40 days, they completed the first issue- two color covers, 25 pages of story (lettered by Seagle and his girlfriend), ads, and three design pages. The result was so good (and the deadline was so tight) that Seagle and Gaudiano sent the following five issues of the series directly to the printer without having Loubert look at it first.

The result? A tense thriller about a man in a witness relocation program who finds out that his new identity has been leaked to those he’s hiding from. Not only is his life at risk, but the life of the wife he had to leave behind is threatened. Chased through airports and two countries, he eventually discovers the truth behind the US agency protecting him and the crime cartel pursuing him.

Because of the time pressure, Gaudiano chose a rough, expressive art style for the story. At times, it’s confusing, but it’s otherwise clear and serves the story well. Seagle’s plot is taught, and the dialogue is quickly paced. The story has all of the paranoia of a Franz Kafka story, even though the title doesn’t refer to the famed author of The Metamorphisis. "Kafka" was a term used in World War II prison camps referring to those who vanished at the hands of the Nazis.

Did I mention the series was so good it was nominated for an Eisner? The fairy tale ends there, of course. After all, it was up that year against another series you might have heard about: Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Still, Seagle and Gaudiano used the book as a jumping point to other work, and both still work in comics today. Seagle is writing American Virgin at DC/Vertigo, while Gaudiano is inking Michael Lark on Marvel’s Daredevil series.

Seagle and Gaudiano took a rare opportunity and created a book that propelled them into comics as a career. These days, the opportunity isn’t so rare; anyone can publish a comic through the web and through self-publishing services. You too can create a comic. All you need is the same determination these artists had.

Steve and Stef made this
book in forty days still read
twenty years later.

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Dark Horse put out Sin City in 8 oversized tomes. Marvel’s putting his Daredevil work into two Omnibus volumes, and they’ve already published his Spider-Man work and collaborations with Bill Sienkiewicz in oversized hardcovers. 300, his story about the Persian invasion of Greece, was originally published in an oversized hardcover. The Martha Washington stories are rumored to be put out in an Omnibus format next year by Dark Horse. Even his Comics Journal interviews are in an oversized softcover. By my count, only his Batman: Year One story and Ronin novel are missing from the "big" scene. (Feel free to correct me in the comments!)

This volume houses the classic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns story and the not-so-classic sequel Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Back, along with an elaborate sketchbook, scripts, and the original proposal for the project. Chip Kidd plays designer here, though he doesn’t have much to do; much of this material has been presented before in trade paperback, 10th anniversary hardcovers, and the first round of Kidd hardcovers that came out a few years ago. Strangely, Kidd chooses as endpapers blown-up panels with the sort of "dotted" coloring that you’d associate with material older than Miller’s first book; it makes the work look more dated than it should. The work’s never been presented better, though; sewn binding eliminates gutter loss on two-page sequences, and the printing is top notch. I did see one page in the first novel that was missing some delicate linework, but that’s it; everything else is perfect (as it should be in a book with a $100 price tag).

Chances are, you have at least the first book on your graphic novel bookshelf. Dark Knight Returns, along with Watchmen and Maus, made up the triumvirate of graphic novels in 1986 that marked the first wave of well-publicized literate graphic novels in this country. If you haven’t read this, you’re in for a treat. Both novels deal with the premise of a Batman long past his prime returning from retirement to combat evil. In the first book, he returns to 80s urban America, with New Wave street punks, rampant street crime, and Ronald Reagan locked in a Cold War with the Soviets. In the second book, we start in a twisted Y2K America, an era of stock market heights and teenypop girl bands, but by the third chapter we’re in post-9/11 times, as Metropolis is awash in skyscraper ash.

The first book deserves any kudos it gets. The work is dense and flowing; the page designs absolutely work. Lynn Varley’s washes and Klaus Janson’s inks complement the work, but this is Frank Miller’s best moment as a comics craftsman. And on an oversized page, everything just looks better.

Over a decade passes before Miller takes on Daredevil again, but in the interim, his approach to comics changed. He’s no longer interested in crafting pages with 10 or more panels. While working on Sin City, he learned how to utilize negative space, and his choices run more to splash pages with powerful images. In an interview, he said, "People are attempting to bring a superficial reality to superheroes which is rather stupid. They work best as the flamboyant fantasies they are. I mean, these are characters that are broad and big. I don’t need to see sweat patches under Superman’s arms. I want to see him fly." He’s interested in playing in the toybox of DC Comics, and less interested in plot. We end up with a story that drags at times but does entertain at times. Miller gives us the sex lives of Superman and Wonder Woman, a monstrous Braniac destroying Metropolis, and Batman rising triumphant at a concert.

The accompanying sketchbooks are worth the price of admission. There’s a page where Miller draws Batman nude in black ink, and his costume over the figure in red ink. Miller says, "I learned the approach by studying Yoshitoshi. This way you can feel the anatomy under the capes and clothes." This quote illuminates Miller’s approach to comics. Some artists look for a character’s heart or brains. Miller’s searching for muscle, and he finds it in senior citizen Bruce Wayne. The sketchbook caps a fantastic package, one that will entertain anyone willing to shell out the ducats.

Two Millers have I;
Expensive but exquisite.
How can you resist?

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Scott Kurtz is best known for his work on the webcomic PvP, one of the longest running and most successful in the field. PvP started mostly as a strip focused on video games and gaming, but has evolved into a very entertaining situational comedy.

But before PvP (and this book), Kurtz was struggling to find himself as an artist. Engaged but working at a sign company schlepping Plexiglass around, Kurtz was at a crossroads. His friend and fellow cartoonist, Chris Jackson, offered him a deal- rent an apartment with him and create a comic book, with Kurtz as artist and Jackson as co-writer/editor/drill sergeant. Kurtz and Jackson took seven months and created Captain Amazing, and actually got to pitch the book to Larry Marder, then Executive Director of Image Comics. The book didn’t get picked up, but Kurtz stuck at cartooning, and eventually built PvP into a viable platform for his skills.

I’m left with two thoughts:

1. More young cartoonists should try this. Talent alone does not make a successful cartoonist. You need drive and discipline, the ability to force yourself to draw every day even when you don’t feel like it.

2. Why the hell didn’t Image pick this up back then?

This is rather entertaining stuff- most of the jokes work, the linework is smooth, the composition of the panels is strong, and the story is rather cute. Kurtz talks about how he’s a bit ashamed about this stuff, but there’s no need to be. Captain Amazing is a no-power superhero trying to stop a crime spree, win a loser-leave-town competition against his superpowered rival (Strapling Man), keep his kid sidekick out of trouble, and capture the heart of his crush, Rachel Ryan. Anyone who’s ever chuckled over a Silver Age DC comic will enjoy this story.

But even if the story stunk, this book shows how important determination is for a career in comics. Drawing’s easy; drawing day after day after day is hard. Kurtz became a success only after he learned how to put his pencil to paper every day. Here’s hoping this book inspires others to do the same.

Captain Amazing
Capes don’t guarantee success;
Just draw every day.

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Kickback is a stylish piece about a corrupt cop on a corrupt police force in a corrupt city. It’s by David Lloyd, the co-creator of V for Vendetta. According to an interview on Newsarama, the story sat in his drawer for seven years before being sold to a publisher in France (and eventually brought to Dark Horse this year).

It needed a few more years in the drawer.

Do you know how much it pains me to not like a story by Lloyd? V for Vendetta has long been one of my favorite graphic novels. Lloyd’s done a lot of great work over the years; his covers on the Marvel series Madrox were some of the best any publisher put out that year. Lloyd uses cinematic chiaroscuro to build his noir scenes (or at least that’s what Wikipedia says; after all, my degree’s in math, not art). That style works perfectly with stories of conflicted men in impossible situations, struggling against the darkness in themselves and in society.

The problem in Kickback is that we don’t really have those sort of characters in this story. We’re supposed to, after all; Joe Canelli is supposed to be a cop on the take suddenly faced with a gruesome crime spree that’s the by-product of the corruption in the city. But we never see the dark side of Canelli here. He’s always stone-jawed, doing what’s right, fighting to find out the truth behind the murders. He’s also supposed to be torn apart by some repressed memories of his parents’ death, but we really don’t get that struggle from him. In short, we’ve got a dull lead, and no amount of chiaroscuro and moody color can overcome that weight.

The art’s nice enough, but there’s a sinister threat lurking on the page: the lettering. Ooh, it made my eyes hurt. Remember how I said that this story was originally published in France? It’s obvious that the English lettering was slapped on here, and it really disrupts the reader’s ability to dwell in Lloyd’s murkish drawings. Take a look at these two cell phone drawings:

The top drawing shows a cell phone drawing with hand lettering. The information is conveyed to the reader unobtrusively. The text looks like it fits in the world Lloyd draws. The bottom drawing uses a digital font that looks awkward and breaks the reader from the comic’s setting. And this example is in proper perspective; there’s a few times where the letters don’t fit the perspective of the object it labels. The dialog font is not the easiest to read; the whole thing smells of a poor lettering job.

It’s not fun to give bad reviews to a fantastic artist like David Lloyd. I’m still looking forward to his next work.

Reviewing Kickback
Is hard to do, but I don’t
Have a vendetta.

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Trivia question: Who is the best Spider-Man writer not named Stan Lee?

1. J. Michael Straczynski
2. Paul Jenkins
3. Gerry Conway
4. Howard Mackie

BZZZT! None of the above!

The answer, my friends, is J. M. DeMatteis. And it’s not even close. His run on Spectacular Spider-Man in the 1990s with Sal Buscema was a personal favorite of mine, and his work was so good Marvel trusted him to write the death scenes of two key characters in the Spidey mythos, Harry Osborne and Aunt May.

But this, this is the good stuff.

In his introduction, DeMatteis talked about how this story demanded to be told for years. At first, he thought it would be a good Wonder Man story, or maybe a Batman story. But after years of rejection, he used it here, and cast Kraven as the villain once he realized Kraven was Russian. DeMatteis has a soft spot for Dostoyevsky, you see.

Mike Zeck’s the artist on this book, and wow. DeMatteis writes of his cohort, “I’ve been playing this game long enough to know that writer/artist chemistry can’t be created or forced: it’s either there or it’s not. With Mike, it was there…and then some.” No argument from me- Zeck gets Kraven perfect here. That’s not an easy job- in this story, Kraven emotions run the gamut: wiry, confident, mad, ecstatic, emotional, depressed, mirthful. Zeck gets them all, and he does it through Kraven’s eyes. Take a look:

Young artists, take note. This book doubles as a manual for drawing eyes.

DeMatteis adds a lot of richness and depth here by playing off symmetry; the book’s actual title is “Fearful Symmetry”, and there’s lots of it here. Example- at the beginning of the story, Spidey attends the funeral of a street thug and gives money to his funeral, asking for “a decent box and a piece of ground.” After his first encounter with Kraven, that’s what he gets- for himself. Funerals, spiders, light- all are motifs played extensively in this story, but not for repetition. Each time we see a repeating theme, the stakes are raised, and the tension builds.

There’s an unexpected bonus here: the lettering of Rick Parker, one of the medium’s most underrated artists. Parker’s actually a cartoonist, most noted for his work on the Beavis & Butthead comic, but he was always fantastic on letters. Unfortunately, when the industry moved to digital lettering, there wasn’t a lot of need for hand letterers, and I haven’t seen a Rick Parker credit in a comic for a while. Let us know if you’re alive, Rick!

This edition is the first in Marvel’s new Premiere Classic editions, hardcover reprints of classic stories. The reproduction’s a tiny, tiny bit wonky at times, as you can tell that the trades department at Marvel worked overtime to make this book look as good as it could. I actually had a copy of the previous hardcover reprinting done in 1989, and Marvel should be proud of the work they did. The linework’s much stronger, there’s a great intro by JM, and they reproduce two issues of Zeck’s original pencils.

I only wish they had included Stan Lee’s introduction from the 1989 volume; after all, how often do we get a book with work by the two best Spider-Man writers of all time?

DeMatteis and Lee;
Ah, to be joined in one book.
Still, buy this Last Hunt.

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I want to like this book more than I did.

Paul Jenkins has rarely disappointed in his decade-plus career as a comics writer. He was given the impossible chore of replacing Garth Ennis on Hellblazer and survived with three years of great stories. He not only made the Inhmans interesting, but he revitalized the career of Jae Lee. His run on Peter Parker, Spider-Man with Mark Buckingham restored the Spider-Man comics franchise after years of decline.

Here, we are treated to an occult murder mystery set at the Vatican. A cardinal next in line to become Pope falls to his death. Guards who discover the body, impaled on a fence, also find a bearded man trying to stab the lifeless body while reciting Latin. Detective Charlie Northern, a lapsed Catholic, is brought in from England to investigate the case by a childhood friend, and soon finds himself waist-deep in a conspiracy that threatens to bring down the Vatican- and worse.

Humberto Ramos provides the art, and here’s where we go a bit astray. Let’s say you’re an artist, and your script says, “The bishop falls from a window, trying to hold onto a coin, and is impaled on a fence when he lands.” Would this panel be your choice?

And then, when you’re asked to show said bishop impaled on same fence, would you draw this?

I stared at that two-page spread for a while. I couldn’t figure out if the hair on his head was his beard or his crown. These aren’t the only strange choices. His illustrations of Lucille Pelliccia are positively unnerving at times.

Luckily, we get some good panels along with the bad. Ramos does pull off some interesting sequences at times, and the color work by Leonardo Olea is outstanding. I thought this sequence of Northern swimming was intriguing.

There’s one other maddening problem with this book. A gent named Bob Harris writes a lovely introduction that really sets the mood for the book. Who’s Bob Harris? You wouldn’t know from the book; there’s no biographical information given for him. Wikipedia listed a few candidates, and it seems this Bob Harris is the writer.

All in all, we’ve got a marvelous thriller with some head-scratching art choices. The strange panel choices made this a chore to read at times, but it does gain steam at the end, and it’s a good read.

Your Official WhyILoveComics.com haiku review:

Revelations thrills
Ramos makes weird art choices
Jenkins rocks again

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