http://www.brickweekly.com/ Brick Weekly News en-us sitehelp@gatewayva.com Wed, 22 Apr 2009 1:21:37 EST http://www.brickweekly.com/index.php/booksprint/comics_strange_adventures_of_h.p._lovecraft_1/ 2009/04/22 Mac Carter & Tony Salmons, $4.99 Image Comics Taking another hit to my cred, I admit to you all I’ve not read much HP Lovecraft. I dig on a great deal of the stuff that’s been influenced by him, so you might wonder what my problem is. To which I’d say, “Hey, buddy, I don’t have a problem, I just have a lot going on.” Anyway, that’s not germane. Back to the review. THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF HP LOVECRAFT is a terrific debut issue, and I could immediately see why it was optioned for film (by no less than Opie Cunningham himself, Ron Howard) before it was even released. It’s got everything I want from a new issue–clearly defined characters and situations, an air of dread and mystery, and plausible, internally consistent settings (a must for period pieces). I don’t know if I would’ve enjoyed the company of HP Lovecraft–he seems like a bit of a dick, truth be told–but I can’t wait to see how he deals with the reveal that his writer’s block is cured by malevolent shadow beasts the likes of which he creates for pulp novels. Quite a sticky pickle, eh? Wed, 15 Apr 2009 1:26:08 EST http://www.brickweekly.com/index.php/booksprint/comics12/ 2009/04/15 Edited by Craig Yoe, $19.99, Fantagraphics Books Crashing in the wake created by last year’s smash hit Fletcher Hanks retrospective I SHALL DESTROY ALL CIVILIZED PLANETS, Fantagraphics’ latest collection of lost and forgotten comics from the 40’s arrives in the form of BOODY.  If Hank’s stories were fascinating for their anger, lunacy, and wild urgency, then these rediscovered gems are a revelation for being every bit as strange, but seemingly on purpose. It’s akin to David Bowie coming along and taking the unstoppable id of The Ramones and The Stooges and crafting something much more complex and layered.  Of course, I actually prefer The Ramones and The Stooges to Bowie, but that doesn’t mean I can’t occasionally snap along to Speed of Life. And anyway, the Bowie analogy ends there.  Far from being as weirdly androgynous as Ziggy Stardust, Boody’s comics are jam packed with sex.  He draws babes the way babes used to be drawn, with sturdy flanks and powerful pelvises.  Look no further than “The Mysterious Case of Mystery Mountain,” where a beautiful hillbilly named Babe is lured into a strange land where a society of all male centaurs trap women and ride them around for sport.  I’m not even sure what kind of sex that hints at, but damned if it isn’t some kind.  If that’s not your bag, how about the story of Sparky Watts, the boy who shrinks unless he’s constantly blasted with cosmic rays, or Mrs. Gooseflesh, who loves nothing more than “The pop—ee—de—pop of a good compound fracture!!” Get it together, America.  Check out this strange book and dare to dream, one last time, because dark days are ahead, and when the bullets start flying you’ll wish you spent more time laughing.  Wed, 08 Apr 2009 3:41:09 EST http://www.brickweekly.com/index.php/booksprint/comics11/ 2009/04/08 Jason Aaron and R.M. Guerra, $9.99, Vertigo I’m not that bright. It’s true. I’ve had people telling me about how good “SCALPED” is for months now, years even. But I put off checking it out, and put it off, and put it off. Next thing I know, three collections are out and a dozen single issues beyond that. So on a slow week, I figure, what the hell, if it’ll shut these folks up I’ll give the book a considered glance. Fast forward a week and I’ve blazed through everything I can get my mitts on. Turns out this book really is the best kept secret in comics. In Volume 1, we meet Dash Bad Horse, an FBI agent with a penchant for self destruction, as he is tasked with infiltrating the reservation on which he grew up but left in the dust decades ago. His mission: take down standing chief and murderous criminal mastermind Red Crow. Nothing I say in this short amount of space can do this book justice. It’s not just about crime, or just these specific characters. It’s about broken families, and broken people desperate to touch something that might redeem them. It’s about poverty in America and what hopeless people turn to when they’ve got nothing else. And it’s about the subjugation of a whole people too proud and powerful to simply role over. Dumb ole’ me officially declares “SCALPED” the BEST MONTHLY COMIC coming out. And it only took me 27 months to figure it out. It’s not too late, jump on board! Wed, 01 Apr 2009 2:12:17 EST http://www.brickweekly.com/index.php/booksprint/comics_a_drifting_life/ 2009/04/01 Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Drawn & Quarterly, $29.95 You are lazy.  You are.  I don’t care if you’re Barack Obama or a single mother burdened with seven babies under the age of three, compared to Yoshihiro Tatsumi you have accomplished little.  While you’ve frittered your life away on video games and beer pong, Tatsumi spent his revolutionizing manga, producing thousands of pages of the weirdest and most disturbing comics ever made.  He’s a master of crafting stories infused with creeping doom and real emotion, examining the psychological toll on the working class Japanese citizens post WWII.  And he’s been doing it since he was a child. A Drifting Life, his new memoir, dispels the image of his persona that the casual reader may have held, that he’s some kind of twisted hermit, living beneath the streets of Tokyo and emerging only for strange sex or to delight in the struggles of the proud and the damned.  Instead, Tatsumi is revealed to be an extremely hard working ordinary Joe, deeply in love with manga and driven to create a new form that will push the medium in a new, vital, and more adult direction.  SPOILER ALERT:  he totally does it. A Drifting Life is much more than a portrait of an artist, though, it’s also a history of manga and a study of the Japanese national character post-WWII. In over 800 pages Tatsumi weaves together the personal and the political to create a coming of age tale for the medium itself, showing how manga grew from adventure yarns for children to an art form capable of telling mature stories that capture the concerns of the average citizen.  It’s one of the few books available in English to offer some insight into the history of manga and its creators, and that would be enough to mark it as important even if Tatsumi didn’t manage to make the story deeply felt, humane, and incredibly inspiring. Wed, 25 Mar 2009 1:40:22 EST http://www.brickweekly.com/index.php/booksprint/comics_air_volume_1_letter_from_lost_countries_tp/ 2009/03/25 G. Willow Wilson & M.K. Perker, $9.99, Vertigo Comics If you like your comics simple and straight-forward, you probably won’t like AIR. It’s infuriatingly obtuse, and several issues in I’m still unsure what it’s about. I could go into synopsis mode and dole out the major plot points for the first story arc, collected in this volume. But that’s a bit of a fool’s errand, because it doesn’t give you enough of a sense of what’s cooking in here. There’s acrophobic stewardesses, winged serpents and letters from countries that don’t exist. There’s topical political intrigue, racial issues and terrorism. It’s been compared on more than one occasion to TV’s LOST, and as a deeply immersed fan of that show I can confirm the similarities. G. Willow Wilson has jumped over from her career as an international affairs journalist to give writing comics a crank, and in doing so either forgets or ignores many of the rules. And I’m thankful for it, because as tough as it is for me to chew on AIR, I can’t wait to get another bite. There isn’t anything else like it on the stands these days, which is cause for celebration. This one could be another flagship feather in Vertigo’s cap, reinventing what comics can and should be. Check it out! Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:54:07 EST http://www.brickweekly.com/index.php/booksprint/comics_the_wolverton_bible/ 2009/03/18 Basil Wolverton, $24.99, Fantagraphics If you think that God was the greatest contributor to the Bible then you are wrong. In fact, when compared to the creative feats of legendary cartoonist Basil Wolverton, God’s work seems trite and superficial at best. So, throw out all of your old Bibles because you don’t need them any more – Velocity Comics has the greatest edition of all! Entirely free of all of the boring parts, “The Wolverton Bible” is lushly illuminated by an evangelical underground cartoonist’s horrifying pictures of agonized human beings in the way of God’s great wrath. Basil Wolverton is most famous for his work in the early issues of MAD magazine where he contributed some of the most uniquely bizarre comics in history. He was unlike most of his peers of the time, as he was a moralistic, God-fearing man who did not succumb to the evils of modern city life. Commissioned by evangelical preacher Herbert W. Armstrong, Wolverton brought his highly detailed cartooning skills to the second greatest story ever told, and now all of those great pages are fi nally collected in this new book from Fantagraphics. If you are a fan of the bizarre American phenomenon known as Christian evangelicalism, or of low-brow comic books then you will love “The Wolverton Bible.” If you are an intellectual comics historian who must have a bigger collection of the obscure than your neighbor, then you will love “The Wolverton Bible.” If you are a religious zealot who thinks good ol’ time religion is long overdue in the decadent world of independent comic bookstores, then you will love “The Wolverton Bible.” I love “The Wolverton Bible” so, if you love me, then you will love “The Wolverton Bible.” Wed, 11 Mar 2009 1:19:32 EST http://www.brickweekly.com/index.php/booksprint/comics10/ 2009/03/11 Matthew Sturges, Bill Willingham, Luca Rossi, Vertigo, $9.99 Fans of Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” will recognize the titular abode as the home: of the biblical Cain, and the physical manifestation of Mystery in the universe. But you don’t have to be a former goth kid to enjoy this all-new series, the first six issues of which are collected here for a special introductory price. See, the “House of Mystery” is loose upon the multiverse, wandering around picking up strangers and trapping them within its hallowed walls. Why is it doing this, and what strange force is behind it all? IT’S A MYSTERY. See how clever? See? Writers Sturges and Willingham pack each issue with creepy intrigue and reality bending adventure, the kind that some people might find strangely sexual in a way that they’re not currently ready to explore any further. The highlight of each issue in the collection is a short story by one of the authors and a rotating member of comics’ elite illustration community, ranging from comedy to horror to adventure to some indescribable hybrid of all three that lives for only a few moments before being destroyed by the weight of its own expectations. Wed, 25 Feb 2009 1:16:33 EST http://www.brickweekly.com/index.php/booksprint/the_darkness_tpb_vol._1_accursed/ 2009/02/25 Comic by Phil Hester and Michael Broussard, Top Cow Productions $4.99. When “The Darkness” first trickled onto the comics scene in 1996, the character seemed like just another heavily armored/deeply anguished/blade wielding dude, the likes of which were being pumped out at about a dozen a month in the mid 1990s. The setup was typically overwrought—Jackie Estacado was not just a Mafia hitman, he was also the bearer of demonic powers. The kinds of demonic powers that only work at night, and will be passed down to any offspring he might have, killing him at the point of conception. This could have been the set-up for a weird and wild parable about living with HIV, instead, he just fought a lot of dudes with names like “The Angelus” and “The Magdalena.” And all my glib condescension aside, the character turned out to be one of the more successful properties to emerge from outside the mainstream in the last decade, selling a bazillion copies and inspiring a popular video game. Suddenly, just as I entered my 11th year of being unable to care less, writer Phil Hester launched an all-new series starring the character. And here I am, advising you to check it out. Hester is better known for drawing characters like “Green Arrow” and “Ant-Man,” but over the last five years has written some of the most interesting horror comics to come around in a long while. His greatest strength as a writer lies in his plotting, which is both weird and wild. He plunks the character down in a situation unlike anything anyone ever would have imagined, running a small South American country, and totally makes it work. Artist Michael Broussard doesn’t always rise to the challenges that the story creates, but nails the more monstery-fighty-killing parts. Wed, 18 Feb 2009 1:31:48 EST http://www.brickweekly.com/index.php/booksprint/comics_dead_irons_1/ 2009/02/18 Dead Irons #1 by James Kohuric and Jason Alexander, Dynamite Entertainment, $3.50. As a seasoned comics reader (I cake Adobo All-Purpose Seasoning into my nooks and crannies to avoid chafing) I have come to enjoy more challenging material. I appreciate it when the work encourages thought on my part, eschewing spoon-feeding or over-simplified story-telling. This is only a success, though, when the creators’ intent is to create mystery. It’s not so so great when I can’t tell the characters apart or I have to go back and reread prior pages because of weak scene transitions.  The jury’s still out on which kind of book DEAD IRONS will be, mystifying for good or bad reasons. It’s the kind of genre mash-up toward which I veer, but it’s frankly a bit of a mess. In the debut issue just released, I THINK we are introduced to protagonist Silas, a man on the run in the Old West who isn’t quite a man anymore – dude’s a zombie! Some of the bounty hunters might be monsters, too, but I couldn’t tell if those monsters were chasing the lead guy or if that was a cutaway scene. As beautiful as Jason Alexander’s pages are, his panel-to-panel storytelling lacks clarity. Unfortunately James Kohuric’s sparse dialogue does little to aid. But the team knocks the somber atmosphere of creeping dread out of the park, which will keep me interested for a few more issues. I’m hoping things gel together a bit more as we go deeper. Can I give you a “let’s wait and see” on this one? Too soon to recommend, too pretty to ignore.  Wed, 11 Feb 2009 1:09:47 EST http://www.brickweekly.com/index.php/booksprint/comics_capacity/ 2009/02/11 Someone somewhere floated the idea that perfect understanding equals perfect love—at least I think someone did—and that’s a pretty tough one to ponder, if you’re prone to pondering such things. Isn’t it possible that perfect understanding could just as easily equal perfect annoyance? Or I am being cynical? Theo Ellsworth’s “Capacity” raises this question for me because it is as raw and unbridled a look at one creator’s psyche and process as I have ever seen. The book collects several issues of Ellsworth’s self-published mini-comics and fattens this previously published work with all new material that offers biographical context and explanation for each issue. Ellsworth is unflinchingly honest about his work habits, his goals, and his limitations—and while this kind of full disclosure can be fascinating, it is also occasionally alienating. Ellsworth wants the reader to know everything there is to know about him, gambling that you might be unable to resist his work if you knew exactly what he was thinking when he made it and exactly what he was going for with each drop of ink. It should be annoying, and sometimes nearly is. Fortunately, Ellsworth makes it all worthwhile by making sure that damn near every page in the book is packed with beautiful illustration and brilliant innovation. He manages to manipulate the author-reader relationship in a way that you have never seen before, transcending experimentation because he pulls the whole thing off so well.  And that, to be glib, is hard not to like.