Giving Thanks

Here are some of the things in comics for which I am thankful on this Thanksgiving:



Gotham Central. Every month Rucka, Brubaker and Lark bring us the best police comic ever in the guise of a Bat-book.



Sam Hiti, for Tiempos Finales and its Lovecraftian trippiness.



Astonishing X-Men, for bringing me my monthly fix of Joss Whedon.



Spider-Man 2 & The Incredibles, for being good super-hero movies.



The Manga Explosion. Sure it's meant a lot of dreck on the shelves, but without it we wouldn't have gotten gems like Planetes, Uzumaki, or Paradise Kiss. Plus, it's brought comics into bookstores and young people back into comics.



Oni Press. Not only for publishing some of my favorite books like Queen & Country, Courtney Crumrin, and Blue Monday, but for publishing a diverse line of books with something to appeal to just about everyone.



Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely, for We3, which showed even this jaded camics reader that you can still do innovative storytelling within comics.



Fanboy Rampage. Graeme reads the message boards so that we don't have to.



Dorian, Christopher & Brian, for the retailer's-eye view of the comics industry.



Fantagraphics, for bringing us The Complete Peanuts.



Gold Digger. It's my monthly guilty pleasure.



JSA, for being one comic a month that we long-time Earth-2 fans can geek out over.



New Comics Day, for giving me something to look forward to in the middle of the week.



Gary Spencer Millidge, for StrangeHaven, a combination of Twin Peaks and The Prisoner in comics form melded with it's own sensibilities. Even if it does only come out a couple of times a year.



Webcomics, for giving talented strip creators an outlet not available in newspaper syndication.



And the entire artform that is comics, which at its best is the perfect interesection of pictures and story, art and commerce, passive and interactive entertainment; and the creators who work hard every day to bring their vision to us. There's no medium of which I'd rather be a fan.

New This Week: November 24, 2004

Based on the NCRL list for this week's comics shipping from Diamond, here are a few things to look for at the local comic shop tomorrow:



The pick of the week comes from About Comics: It's Only a Game is a collection of the other comic strip done by Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, a single-panel sports feature that ran in the late 1950s. I've never read any of these, so I'm really interested in checking it out.



In other comics:



Abstract has the latest Strangers In Paradise collection (vol. 15).



Avatar has the first of the Apparat titles from Warren Ellis: Frank Ironwine. This is the one I'm most looking forward to, as it has art by Carla Speed McNeil.



Dark Horse has the first issue of a new Jingle Belle mini.



DC has the third issue of Adam Strange, the second issue of Brubaker's Authority: Revolution, another Identity Crisis tie-in with Flash (#216), the second issue of Green Lantern: Rebirth, a second Technopriests volume, and another Superman (#211) with pretty Jim Lee art.



Image has the second Walking Dead collection.



Marvel has new issues of Black Widow (#3), Daredevil (#67), New Thunderbolts (#2), Powers (#6), Supreme Power (#13), and just in time for the holidays, the Marvel Holiday Special 2004.



New Flame has the final issue of Nabiel Kanan's The Drowners (#4).



Oni has the third issue of Sam Kieth's Ojo.



In manga: A. D. Vision has the first volumes of three new manga: First King Adventure, More Starlight To Your Heart, and Mystical Prince Yoshida Kun; TokyoPop has two new manga series: Love or Money and Mouryou Kiden: Legend of the Nymphs; while Viz has just one new series, Wolf's Rain.



And lastly, TwoMorrows has Best of the Legion Outpost for all you old-school LSH fans.



That should be enough to keep you busy reading over the long holiday weekend!

Quick Comics Reviews

Adventures of Superman; Ultimate Spider-Man; Wolverine



Adventures of Superman #634

by Greg Rucka, Matthew Clark & Andy Lanning

This is the most fun I've had reading a Superman comic in quite a while. Smack in the middle of a story about the new Parasites, Mxyzptlk shows up and tries to help. Mxyzptlk is one of those characters with whom it is very easy to mess up a story, but Rucka handles him quite well, and he and Clark pull off some great gags, verbal and visual. Of course it's not the best Mxyzptlk story ever--that honor belongs to Evan Dorkin's World's Funnest. But it does show why Adventures is the Superman book to be reading right now.

Rating: 3.5 (of 5)




Ultimate Spider-Man #69

by Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley & Scott Hanna

Bendis and co. finish off another fun two-parter, this one featuring a team-up between Ultimate Spidey and Ultimate Human Torch. After Johnny accidentally catches on fire he is exposed as a probable mutant and has to leave the school, leaving poor Liz Allen crushed. It was kind of disappointing that Liz didn't show up to meet Johnny, but then she is a teenage girl, and no one ever in the history of the planet has ever been able to figure out how teenage girls think. In the traditional Marvel-U, it's Spider-Man who had the hero worship for the more experienced Fantastic Four, so it's interesting to see the roles switched here int he Ultimate-U (I figure that the previous meeting in Ultimate Marvel Team-Up is going to be ignored.)

Rating: 3 (of 5)




Wolverine #22

by Mark Millar, John Romita, Jr. & Klaus Janson

Part 3 of "Enemy of the State" is a mostly mindless punch-up between the mind-controlled Wolverine and the Fantastic Four, but it is a competantly done punch-up and is not without its charms. Millar has the FF use their powers in some unique ways to fight off the intruder, including one by the Invisible Woman that, while novel, is one of those things that makes you wonder why she has never done it before, and when she doesn't do it in the future it will beg the questio of why not? There seems to be a big reveal on the last page, but are we supposed to recognize who it is? (I'm not nearly as up on the knowledge of obscure Marvel characters as I am with DC.)

Rating: 3 (of 5)

GNs for an Academic Library

It looks as though we're really going to do it.



The library where I work, the Art, Architecture & Engineering Library at the University of Michigan, is going to develop a comic book & graphic novel collection. The collection will focus primarily on indy/art/alternative/underground/mini comics, as well as artistically and historically important domestic and foreign comics.



(We are not trying to duplicate the excellent collections of nearby universities such as the Comic Art Collection at Michigan State or the Cartoon Research Library at Ohio State.)



The bad news is that I don't get to be the person who purchases the items--that job will belong to Annette, our Art & Design librarian. (I'm the Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences Librarian, which means that I rarely get to buy any fun books...) The good news is that Jim O and I will be advising Annette on what to buy; finally after all these years I get to make use of my lifelong obsession in a professional capacity!



Now I need your help.



We will have a chunk of 'seed money' with which to develop the initial collection. Now while I could probably draw up a list of titles on my own, many minds are better than one, and any such list would reflect my own biases.



So I'd like to ask all of you reading this to make recommendations for an Academic Library Comics & Graphic Novels Collection. The recommendations should be consistant with the focus of the collection as I have outlined above.



Please limit your recommendations to 20 volumes. Simple lists are fine, but if you can offer brief annotations as to why you think they should be included, that will be helpful.



You can post your recommendations in my comments section here, on your own blog if you have one (please email me the link), or send them to me directly via email.



(In many ways this is similar to the Lieber's Eleven, but with an academic library focus rather than a public library focus. Plus, you know, 20 instead of 11.)



Thanks in advance to you all for helping me out with this.

Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover.

From 1959's Superboy #76, Curt Swan & Stan Kaye bring us a cover illustrating the feature story, the origin of Beppo the Super-Monkey. A founding member of the Legion of Super-Pets, Beppo stowed away on the rocket that brought Kal-El to Earth, where the lighter gravity and yellow solar rays gave him super powers.

How could anyone not like Beppo the Super-Monkey? He has all the powers of Superman, and he's a monkey!

(I only own two items from DC Direct, one of them being the plush Beppo. Because, you know, Super-Monkey!)

Image is courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a full-sized version.

Moore Films

SciFi Wire has news about two Alan Moore projects making their way to film:



The Wachowski Brothers are set to produce V for Vendetta, with James McTeigue (first assistant on the Matrix films) most likely to direct.



There's also a rumor that Bourne Supremacy director Paul Greengrass is taking of the reins of hte on-again-off-again Watchmen movie.



Of course, if either or both of these get made, the chance that they'll resemble Moore's comics is rather slim (exhibits 1 & 2: From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). It'll be interesting to see how people react to a story where the good guy is essentially a terrorist...

Review: A Gentleman's Game

A Gentleman's Game: A Queen & Country Novel

by Greg Rucka

$24.00 Bantam Dell ISBN: 0-553-80276-3

http://www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/



Besides being known as a comic writer, Greg Rucka also has a career as a novelist, best known for his Atticus Kodiak thrillers. So it makes a certain amount of sense for him to combine his two worlds by writing a novel based on his creator-owned Queen & Country series. This presents us then with two questions: How does A Gentleman's Game work as a spy thriller, and how does it work as an extension of the comic book?



As a spy thriller, it works very well indeed. As the main protagonist, Tara Chase is a great character, highly competant but flawed. The plot is a doozy: following a terrorist attack on the London subway system, Tara's SIS section is called upon to retaliate against the terrorists. I won't spoil the plot any further, except to say that there are a couple of great twists that come just at the right time and are as logical as they are surprising. In fact, one of the greatest joys of the novel is that none of the characters have to act like idiots in order for the story to work. While characters may make bad decisions, they are not stupid decisions. I have no idea how accurate the details and settings of this novel are, but it certainly has the feel of authenticity and that Rucka has done his homework. His prose is detailed but doesn't get bogged down, and he can write action as well as the quieter moments. Given that this is based on a comic with which a majority of the readers will be unfamilar, there is a good deal of info-dumping in the first 50-100 pages to get things set up, but it is integrated into the plot and never feels like a plot summary.



A Gentleman's Game also works well as the next chapter for the Queen & Country series. While it is not necessary to be previously familiar with Tara Chase and the rest of the cast from the comic, fans of the comic will find much here to enjoy. Unlike many novels based on comics where the author has to pretty much put things back in place by the end of the book, since Rucka owns Queen & Country he can do whatever he wants, and by the end of A Gentleman's Game things have definitely changed in Tara's world. Rucka uses the opportunities inherent in the novel format to flesh out Tara's world and to give us insight into her internal life and the lives of those around her. This is a both a deeply personal story and a large plot-driven story; and while it would not have been impossible to tell in comic form, it would have had to have been very different, given the difference in the two mediums.



In closing, if you are a fan of spy thrillers, you will enjoy A Gentleman's Game, and if you are a fan of Queen & Country, this novel is a not-to-be-missed installment in the story of Tara Chase.



Rating: 4 (of 5)