Valentine's Day - Grand or Grim?

Your feelings about this day depend entirely on your love life. When I was a kid, we decorated white paper bags and put them on a shelf in the classroom and everyone put a valentine in everyone else's bag, whether you liked them or not. A strange ritual for prepubescents on a day designed for lovers.

In middle school it became a public test of your attractiveness to the opposite sex. Just what you need at the most vulnerable time of your life. It made for a miserable and anxious day for virtually every student in the school – faculty members likely went home with hormone poisoning just from breathing the air. I can only imagine how gay and lesbian students dealt with it.

As adults, if you're in a relationship you're happy with, you're cool. If you're not, this day sucks. It also sucks for those in relationships with difficult people who expect the day to be perfect and mope for days if it isn't. I was in a relationship like that once and I dreaded Valentine's Day and her birthday more than my yearly colonoscopy.

Whatever VD means to you (pun intended), I hope you're well today. Here are a couple of cartoons on the subject that may give you a smile.

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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