John Buys Comics: The Hunt For the Best of 2011 Begins

This is going to be intensely abbreviated, as I can imagine that  reading my thoughts on comics is beginning to pall. After this, you get a week off.

New:

Hellboy: the Sleeping and the Dead, which is a two-parter set in 1966 and features Hellboy vs. vampires, one of my favourite situations. This is supposed to be a very big year for Hellboy, and this is a very good start. 

Meanwhile, I haven't been paying attention again. I expected Batman Inc. No. 2, and it was as entertaining as its predecessor, but this Batman: The Dark Knight yangle caught me off-guard. I almost rolled my eyes and skipped it in protest of over-saturation but two things stopped me: firstly my crippling Batman addiction and secondly Dave offhandedly mentioning that the series was supposedly going to feature Batman tackling some more supernatural threats, which hits my other major weakness for comics where big dudes punch monsters. And then it turned out to be a decent read, which is nice.

And finally Weird Worlds, which I got because I'm finally ready to admit that I like reading comics with Lobo in them. Plus, see above reference to liking monster-punching. Hmm. Maybe I should have picked up Steel as well.

Ongoing:

How weird is it that I forgot that Keith Giffen had created some characters based on the movie The Aristocrats for Doom Patrol?Because that was one of my favourite things of all time and now that storyline is done and I'm still very glad I put this on the extended best-of list.

Ending:

The Bulletproof Coffin finished this week with No. 6 and caught me completely off-guard. What a weird, bleak, wonderful ending. Definitely would have bumped something out of the Top Ten if this had come out earlier.

BOOP!

A Fresh New Year: Time For the Best of 2010

Well hell. This has been sitting here as a draft for two days. Pretend that didn't happen.

Yes, everything is shiny and new in 2011 and my hose is abuzz with the sounds of my girlfriend tossing things out to make room for all the junk sweet loot that we were presented with over the last week or so. Time to look back on 2010 and lay down some opinions on just what the very best graphical literature to come out over the course of the year was.

I made up a list that was about a million items long and managed to whittle it down to the ten comics, graphic novels, trade paperbacks or whatever that brought me the largest amount of joy this year - no other judging criteria were used. Also, they will be presented in alphabetical order because I am far too lazy to go through the agony of numbering them in either ascending or descending order.

Axe Cop

 

Hey, it's this again! Yes, it may have just came out a couple of weeks ago but this trade definitely deserves its place on the list of greatest joy-givers. The team of 6 year-old Malachai Nicholle and his 30 year-old brother Ethan produce some of the most legitimately hilarious comics I have ever encountered. You can tell that every idea that Malachai puts forth is chosen for its complete awesomeness and delivered with supreme enthusiasm, while Ethan displays not only impressive technical ability (translation: his drawings are totally sweet) but is an important secondary storyteller as he chooses when to interpret what his brother says literally and when to embellish or downplay in order to create a smoothly-flowing narrative.

Plus, you know, it has a scene where everyone in London soils themselves simultaneously, which is pretty funny.

Crogan's March

 

Huh. Oni's website claims that this came out last December. Well, no matter, because I didn't see it until February and it's great and I love it.

Crogan's March is the second in the Crogan Adventures by Chris Schweizer, the first being Crogan's Vengeance which came out in 2008 and the next being Crogan's Loyalty, which can't come out soon enough. The series takes place as a series of stories that a father tells his two sons about their ancestors - in this case a member of the French Foreign Legion - in order to teach them lessons about life.

The tale of Legionnaire Peter Crogan and his days in the desert is filled with characters who exemplify a series of world views: loyalty, cowardice, colonialism as stewardship, colonialism as bullying. This makes every character in the book compelling and delightful, while also lending weight to both the humour,  horror and pathos of the tale. I can't recommend this one enough.

Daytripper

This should be no surprise, as I've been going on and on about this series all year. One more time: this is a comic by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Bá, about the life of a man named Brás. Each issue takes place at a point in his life between childhood and old age and tells a self-contained story, and each issue ends with Brás' death. The art is as amazing as usual for Bá and Moon, and the portrait of Brás that you develop over the course of the series - complete with multiple potential paths, a web of relationships and enough ambiguity to satisfy but not enrage - is entirely worth the read.

Grandeville: Mon Amour

 

Another late entry, but Bryan Talbot has scored a decisive hit on my psyche with this series. In case you missed it, here's the skinny: in the late 1800s, the books follow DI LeBrock as he unravels world-shaking plots in an England that has just emerged from the domination of a monarchical French empire. There are fascinating tidbits of alternate history to unravel, bizarre spins on real-world politics, nods to the Euro comics of my youth and genuinely exciting action sequences - a winning combination for ensnaring Johnathans. Plus, everyone is an anthropomorphic animal of some kind, if you like that kind of thing.

I, Zombie

This one is simple: I like weird stories about the supernatural, I like girl detectives and I like Mike Allred, so I like I, Zombie. That might be where things ended but Chris Robeson has really been delighting me with his writing, starting with the aforementioned girl detective stuff and introducing a fairly delightful cast of characters to act as allies and foils to zombie Gwen and her pals as they attempt to solve the problems that she acquires along with the gooky sustenance that she derives from her monthly meal of human brains. Plus: one of the better explanations for the supernatural that I've ever encountered.

Joe the Barbarian

There is some conflict raging in my mind of the inclusion of this one. On the one hand, I've been living in suspense while waiting for the final issue for so long that I'm inclined to be spiteful, but on the other... there's a reason for the suspense, and it's that the comic is just so damned. good.

This is, of course, another one that I've been going on and on about this year, but in case you're new or have been tuning me out: the titular barbarian is a youngster named Joe with a semi-troubled life that includes an absent father, money woes and school bullying. He's also, as of the first issue of the series, going into diabetic shock on a massive scale. In one sense, that's all that this book is about: a kid going downstairs to get a can of pop so that he doesn't die. BUT. Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy have taken that mundane-if-important trip and dramatized it as an epic journey through a disaster-stricken fantasy land, a quest to find and defeat Lord Death. The action changes perspectives between the real and fantasy world frequently and introduces a fair amount of doubt as to whether the other world is real or just some sort of diabetes hallucination. Morrison and Murphy have done something wonderful here; now I just need it to end and I'll be just as happy as a clam.

Orc Stain

 

I think that the first issue of Orc Stain came out in January last year. It was early 2010, anyway. The important thing is this: I knew that it would be on my Best of 2010 list as soon as I read that initial comic. James Stokoe has created a world that is filled with detail and crazy creatures - some of them functioning as everyday objects like safes or beverage containers - and societies and then filled it with his take on the classic fantasy orc: wild, drunken, violent, nameless savages that ravage the countryside in search of loot and ladies, but now with their own society and with a sympathetic edge that most low-HD humanoids lack. The first six issues have been concerned with getting protagonist One Eye, a thoughtful and talented orc of few words, in way over his head as a potential pawn of the power-seeking Orctzar as he attempts to unite the chaotic orcish tribes and conquer the entire world.

Parker: the Outfit

Richard Stark's Parker novels are basically amazing: the titular Parker is a near-emotionless and entirely ruthless career thief who spend each book meticulously planning and executing a robbery, as well as (usually) dealing with some bullplop that he never asked for. There are very few people who I would have considered able to adapt the feel of those books to a comic page, but any list that I might have made up would have definitely been topped by Darwyn Cooke, so it's a pretty good deal for me that he started adapting them a couple of years ago. Not only has he nail the mid-Sixties style of the first few books perfectly but his strong character design skills ensure that the books' cast of interesting characters make the transition to the illustrated page without becoming the usual smear of bland sameness.

The Sixth Gun

And alphabetically last: The Sixth Gun by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt. An innocent girl is dragged into a conflict between an amoral wanderer and an undead Revolutionary War general as they attempt to gain control over a set of six enchanted pistols older than the human race. The Wild West is given a supernatural history that is unique and thematically appropriate, the art looks amazing and seven issues in I'm still trying to puzzle things out. In a good way, not a bad writing way - I know that someday I'll reread these earlier issues and have astonishing retroactive insights and be well pleased. Plus: cowboys!

And that's the lot. Tune in tomorrow (and yesterday, dang it) for supplemental lists of runners-up.

Johnathan... out.

John Buys Comics, the Cad

Dungeons & Dragons – I just picked up issues 0 through 2 this week, and as a – and I’m surprised how tentative I am about admitting this, given the forum – as a Dungeon Master I am enjoying it a great deal. The basics of the plot are similar to those in basically any comic based on any RPG: a party has some adventures in the official setting. Unlike a lot of the RPG adaptations that I’ve read in the past, however, this one actually reads true – goals are reached despite all parties involved following their own semi-random course of action, party members are added with little to no preamble and larger-than-life tactics are constantly employed. Plus: a lot of bickering.

Aside from the “Perry White vs. the Internet” aspects of Superman no 706 (news-bloggers! You are wrong even when you have noticed a legitimate pattern of interview bias! Also, you will leap onto a low-paying position at a newspaper at the drop of a hat!), this issue is remarkable for the truly ridiculous level of fake swearing. (examples, separated by periods). This is unacceptable.

Green Lantern, Green Lantern, Green Lantern – I was set to make a snide remark about Emerald Warriors No. 5 being maybe the hundredth time that someone’s been barfing on the cover of a DC comic in the last year, but looking at it now I choose to believe that this specific instance is actually a Christmas thing. Green/Red Lantern is the jolliest being in the DC Universe! Plus, bonus barfing both in this book and in the regular Green Lantern title, which features people upchucking entire metaphysical entities! Gross!

Meanwhile: a Green Lantern/Plastic Man one-shot, and it’s a yawner. No, scratch that – it’s okay, but it utilizes Plastic Man’s Lazily Clever Story Idea. You know, like Spider-Man Almost Gives Up or Batman Relates Current Events To Memories of his Parents or Superman Doubts His Humanity Even Though He is the Most Human of All (currently ongoing!). Every character has one or more – they’re the plot ideas that lie somewhere in between a story where the character acts exactly as he usually does and a legitimately clever idea. In this case, it’s Overly Serious Character Teams Up With Plastic Man and Treats Him With Contempt Because He’s Goofy Until He Realizes That Goofiness Doesn’t Preclude Effectiveness, and it’s been done before and better (Morrison’s run on JLA and recent episodes of The Brave and the Bold are good examples).

John Reviews: DC Comics The 75th Anniversary Poster Book

I feel a bit sheepish about this one, as the only reason that I didn't buy it for myself is that I was offered the review copy before I tracked it down. I actually saw it in London but was being foolishly frugal - for all I know, that particular copy is still pining for me in a gift shop across the sea.

I'll state my only problem with this book right now because it's right there. and because it's not really a problem with the book so much as it is with DC's concept of the Batman-Superman-Wonder Woman trinity. It certainly works sometimes, but it also occasionally forces a bit of straightforward cover design down a road of inadvertant cheesecake. Or maybe it's my problem for not being able to see past the breasts to the giant W in front of them.

Aside from that, though, everything is copacetic. And so easy to explain - it's a poster book in honour of DC Comics' 75th anniversary. One hundred posters, all falling into three categories that I just made up:

Classics - Superman upending the car on the cover of Action Comics No. 1, two Flashes racing to save the same man, Jesse Custer's mug looming over a church. The death of Supergirl. The death of Superman. Junkie Speedy. I won't claim that every iconic DC cover is in this thing, but a pretty decent portion of them are.

Wild and Wacky - "I Am Curious (Black)". Turtle Boy Jimmy Olsen. Ant-headed Superman vs. the world. Invasion of the alien snowmen. Zebra Batman. There is a pretty wide range of Gold and Silver Age zaniness on display, sufficient to delight the most jaded heart. Check these out (note: the book is way too big for my scanner so these are taken from other sources. They look better in the book, plus there are no UPCs):

Lincoln armwrestling Scalphunter. Nazi Gorillas. And there's a great one where Superman and Lex Luthor have a boxing match on a world orbiting a red sun.

Pretty Pictures - Covers from Fables, Sandman and Y the Last Man. 100 Bullets No. 33 and The Killing Joke No. 1. Showcase No. 12, featuring the Challengers of the Unknown rumbling with a Kirby octopus that is one of the greatest things ever drawn. Swamp Thing and Abigail Arcane having a snuggle. House of Mystery No. 174, with that classic creepy beckoning hand. Even if you don't want to hang fascist primates on your wall just 'cause, there is some legitimately beautiful art here.

 

The only reason that I don't have some of these (read Adventure Comics No. 247) hanging up already is because I'm just st that age where I don't want to Fun-Tac stuff to my wall while still not yet solvent enough to be swinging Casual Picture Frame money. Hell, I just counted my list of possible images to use in this post - these were the especially good ones, the ones that I wanted to point out as extra interesting - and there were fifty. 

And hey, it's not just images. Every poster has a short piece by Robert Schnakenberg on the back that puts the image in context, showcases a few other DC covers that have a similar bent and usually delivers up a few yoks. It's not an overwhelming amount of text per poster in aggregate they form a fairly comprehensive pocket history of subject.

I'll leave you with this:

John Buys Comics: December Edition

That's right, it's December, that magical month in which I don't seem to actually be doing a whole lot more with my time but somehow there still never actually seems to be enough time to do things. 

So much was bought but little was read, so sad, so sad. No matter! Here are some bullet points for you all.

- King City No. 12: Either this was the end of the series and I will be sad or issue 13 will be a fantastic jumping-on point for newbies. In either case this was a terrific comic. Seldom have I felt such satisfaction as several plotlines wrapped up at once, a task at which comics are frequently terrible. 

- Doom Patrol No. 17: I don't even care if this story continues next issue. That was one of the most brilliantly groan-worthy last-page gags I have ever seen. 

- Action Comics Annual No. 13: I'm still processing this one. The inclusion of what amounts to mentoring from some of the greatest super-menaces in the DCU to Lex Luthor's origins is an interesting one and it certainly could work with the character that I hold so dear. It's still a pretty radical addition to the Lex Luthor: Self-Made Man characterization that is so central to his interactions with the world. I'll wait and see how they handle this - frankly, the most unnerving thing about the issue was Luthor's eerie resemblance to Jimmy Olsen.

- Marineman No. 1: I liked this, and it has potential, but I have no ability to gauge a series' worth from its first issue. Check back in January.

And of course:

- Achewood: A Home For Scared People: One of the greatest comics on the Internet gets another beautiful hardcover from Dark Horse. Features not only Roast Beef's trip to the Moon but a series of intensely enjoyable text pieces on the nature of Ray and Beef's relationship. Smiles for miles!

And now I am off to once again fret over season obligations and stresses. Ta ta!