Steve Gerber

Most of you know by now that comics writer Steve Gerber passed away Sunday.

Most long-time comic readers are fans of Gerber's form his work on Howard the Duck; or perhaps The Defenders, Man-Thing, or Omega the Unknown.

I was a mostly DC kid, so my introduction to Gerber was in The Phantom Zone, a four-issue head-trip by Gerber and artist Gene Colan:



Basic plot was that Superman was trapped in the Phantom Zone and had to make his way through a multitude of dimension to make it back to Earth to stop the nasty Phantom Zone criminals who had escaped. Nearly all of the DC heroes took part in the battle for Earth while Superman struggled to reach home, and it was truly epic. It would be great (though alas unlikely) if DC could collect this into a trade.

Giant Green Shirt!

No, that's not a forced perspective shot or an illusion, it's an actual giant green shirt, which was being raised in the lobby of the Duderstadt Center when I came in to work this morning.

Here's another shot:



What does this have to do with comics? Not much, excepting that some days coming into work is like entering a comic written by Grant Morrison...

BTW, I'm working on a plan that should make our library the coolest academic library ever. Can't say anything right now, but hopefully I'll have something to announce in a month or so...

Regarding Judd Winick

There's a common attitude towards his work that you seem often from online commentators; Valerie D'Orazio's recent comment is typical:

Judd Winick is still the guy nobody understands why he is still writing these books but somehow he is.

Most likely Winick continues to get work due to some combination of:
a) he turns his scripts in on time
b) he writes what the editors ask him to
c) his page rate is reasonable

Doing what the editor wants and turning it in on time for a good price will no doubt keep a career going, even if it doesn't result in great comics.

Recall that Winick's early career as a cartoonist was much different. After struggling in syndicated newspaper strip purgatory with the funny but overlooked Frumpy the Clown (based on a character he created for his student strip Nuts & Bolts at the Michigan Daily), Winick created the multi-award-winning Pedro & Me OGN, did the Eisner-winning "Road Trip," and did several hilarious mini-series of his Barry Ween character for Oni. It was only when he started writing multiple super-hero scripts for DC that he gained the reputation of being a hack--and even then, his early work on Green Lantern and Marvel's Exiles was, while not universally praised, at least well regarded.

(Winick also created the kids cartoon The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, which was better than 90% of the cartoons these days and also better than most of his recent super-hero writing.)

I'd like to see Winick go back to drawing his own stuff at some point, to see if he can recapture the magic. But sadly I expect that cranking out scripts for DC pays better.

Weekend Reading

It was downright frigid outside this weekend, so I stayed indoors and got caught up on some comics:

I finished "The Good Prince" arc in Fables, and was pleasantly surprised at the relatively happy ending (though there are plenty of dark undercurrents and foreshadowing).

Read the first volume of Mike Carey & Jim Fern's Crossing Midnight. Thankfully Carey's writing was much more like his Lucifer work than his X-Men, and Jim Fern has stepped up his art to a whole new level. I'll be looking for future volumes.

I finally got around to reading Fantastic Four/Iron Man: Big in Japan. I had been resisting due to not normally caring much for Zeb Wells' writing in the past, but this was fantastic. I don't know if it was Seth Fisher's art bringing up Wells' game or what, but it worked. And speaking of Fisher, the art was astounding, with nearly every page tripping out into the fantastical.

Finally, I re-read some Yotsuba&!, because it still makes me laugh even on multiple readings.

(I also read Richard Matheson's I Am Legend for book club on Tuesday, and watched two movies: Waitress, which was every bit as good as I'd heard; and Sunshine, which was almost great but never quite gelled and might have better on the big screen where's its visuals would have impressed more.)

(Just realized that with Big in Japan's Seth Fisher and Waitress's Adrienne Shelly that makes two creative types who left us too early, but their last works were creative high points.)

Monkey Covers

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

The FF and ol' Shell Head face off against a Kong-a-like on Seth Fisher's cover to 2005's: Fantastic Four/Iron Man: Big in Japan #2.

(Standard disclaimer about city-smashing gorillas not really being monkeys applies.)

Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version, or see a larger, unmarked version.

New Library Comics: Week of January 28, 2008

Here's a list of the comics we added to our library collection last week:


Abadzis, Nick. Laika / New York : First Second, 2007.

Akira, Shouko. X times 2 / San Francisco, CA : VIZ, 2005.

Blurred vision 3 : new narrative art. / New York : Blurred Books, c2007.

Borus, Justin. Opening lines, pinky probes, and L-bombs : the Girls & sports dating and relationship playbook / Santa Monica, CA : Santa Monica Press, c2007.

Carey, Percy. Sentences : [the life of M.F. Grimm] / New York, NY : DC Comics, c2007.

Cavallaro, Mike. Parade (with fireworks) / Berkeley, Calif. : Image Comics, 2007. no. 1

Crilley, Mark. Miki falls vol. 3 : Autumn / [New York] : HarperTeen, c2007-

Cult fiction. / Southbank Centre, UK : Hayward Publishing ; New York : Distributed in the United States of America through D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2007.

Elder, Joshua. Mail order ninja / Hamburg ; Los Angeles : Tokyopop, c2006- vols. 1-2

Giandelli, Gabriella. Interiorae / Seattle, WA : Fantagraphics Books ; Bologna [Italy] : Coconino Press, c2005- nos. 1-2

Gipi, 1963- They found the car / Seattle, WA : Fantagraphics, c2006.

Hankiewicz, John. Asthma : ten short comics / Portland, OR : Sparkplug Comic Books, c2006.

Hope : New Orleans / [S.l.] : Ronin Studios, c2007.

Kurtzman, Harvey. Two-fisted tales / Timonium, Md. ; West Plains, Mo. : Gemstone Publishing, 2006- vol. 1

Lemire, Jeff. Ghost stories / Marietta, Ga. : Top Shelf, 2007.

Lemire, Jeff. Tales from the farm / Marietta, Ga. : Top Shelf, c2007.

Luthi, Morgan, 1980- Snow / Los Angeles, CA : Tokyopop, c2006- vol. 1

Mills, Tarpé. Miss Fury / New York : Pure Imagination, 2007- vol. 1

Ninomiya, Tomoko. Nodame cantabile / New York, N.Y. : Ballantine Books, c2005- vol. 1

Page, Tyler, 1976- Nothing better / Minneapolis, Minn. : Dementian Comics c2007- vol. 1

Paszkiewicz, Douglas. Arsenic lullaby : pulp edition / [Milwaukee, Wis.] : Arsenic Lullaby Publishing, 2007- no. 1

Ponchione, Sergio. Grotesque / Seattle, Wash. : Fantagraphics Books ; [Bologna, Italy] : Coconino Press, c2007- no. 1

Rucka, Greg. Whiteout / Portland, Or. : Oni, 2007 vol. 1

Sís, Peter, 1949- The wall : growing up behind the Iron Curtain / New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

Talon, Durwin S. Panel discussions : design in sequential art storytelling / Raleigh, NC : TwoMorrows Pub., c2007.

Tan, Shaun. The arrival / New York : A.A. Levine, c2006.

Tatulli, Mark. Liō. Happiness is a squishy cephalopod / Kansas City, Mo. : Andrews McMeel Pub., c2007.

Varon, Sara. Robot dreams / New York : First Second, c2007.

Yoshinaga, Fumi, 1971- Antique bakery / Carson, Calif. : Digital Manga, 2005- vols. 2-4

Yurkovich, David. Death by chocolate : redux / Marietta, Ga. : Top Shelf Productions, c2007



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My Crazy Half-Nekked Wife

I am married to an unusual woman. She has strong beliefs and battles injustice as fearlessly as any comic book hero. She glows with the charisma of a drunken aurora borealis. She grabs life by the horns and honks loudly. She is married to a man who boldly mixes metaphors.

Last week, she was honking that horn on Wall Street, in front of the entrance to The New York Stock Exchange. Stocks were volatile and brokers were dropping like flies, so PETA came up with a quick slogan about protecting your ticker by becoming vegetarian. (Vegetarians, and especially vegans, have a fraction of the risk of heart disease than do consumers of animal-products.) The idea was to get someone to do something newsworthy out front of the Stock Exchange and pass out vegetarian starter kit pamphlets. Something to attract attention of both passers-by and the press. My wife readily agreed and now I have a funny picture of her in a lettuce-clad bikini parading up and down Wall Street in 30-degree weather.

Yes, 30 degrees, as in "below freezing and windy." My crazy half-nekked wife did this for an hour on two subsequent days, passed out hundreds of brochures, took dozens of pictures, and became the imaginary girlfriend of who-knows-how-many armed guards and financial drones.

Sometimes these demonstrations are met with resistance from New York police officers. They admonish the participants to keep moving, stop blocking the sidewalk, move their box of literature, etc. But not in this case.

Since 9/11, the streets in front of the stock exchange have been blocked off and posted with armed officers in complete riot gear: helmets, flak jackets, machine guns, shields, tear gas, catapults, jousting lances, breath-right strips. These guys are ready for the worst but bored as hell. In a neighborhood full of stock brokers, bankers, and tourists taking pictures of stock brokers and bankers, nothing much ever happens. So an hour-long visit by a crazy half-nekked woman in a salad suit is a welcome distraction.

A month earlier she did a similar thing out front of the Mars Candy Company headquarters in Manhattan. Apparently, the Mars Company performs cruel tests on animals to find out what would happen if you shoved too many M&Ms into your eye or something. So a handful of volunteers made themselves up like M&Ms of different colors and held protest signs. That event scored a story and a picture on the cover of New York Metro. Crazy Half-Nekked Wife is the one looking at the camera in the shot below.

Like many people, I used to think this kind of stunt by PETA was stupid and made animal rights people look foolish. But the theory behind it is that you can't get the word out if media won't cover you and you can't get the media interested unless you do something outlandish. PETA does something crazy, the media shows up, they write a story which contains info about animal cruelty, and everyone goes home. The success of this strategy is undeniable as PETA has changed more laws and attitudes than any other animal protection group. In the end, people scoff at PETA but learn about animal abuse and what they can do to change it. I have to admire their self-sacrificing commitment to a higher cause.

I also have to admire my crazy half-nekked wife's resolve to freeze her cabbage off to open a mind or two. At the very least, she got a few cops thinking about the salad bar.