This is shocking. The writer Si Spencer has died at the age of 59. Although Si worked outwith comics on the likes of Eastenders, it’ll be comics he’ll be remembered for, and a nicer bloke in comics you couldn’t wish to meet. A well known face in fan circles since his days on Crisis and editing Deadline, Si would be found at conventions chatting away to all and sundry.
The last few years has seen him produce some great work, with what I think is his best work, Bodies coming out a few years ago.
After a massive fan campaign, Zack Snyder has finished his version of the Justice League film which was released in 2017 to resounding shrugged shoulders and now there is this ridiculously overblown trailer released.
In one sense I’m glad Snyder has made it perfectly clear about the inhert fascism of the superhero, but at the same time these are still children’s power fantasies so there’s this bizarre ever-so-serious tone which imparts these characters with a supposed mythology which gives them a gravitas they don’t deserve. It is basically, pompous.
But this is Zack Snyder we’re talking about. Now he’s clearly a talented filmmaker, plus his version of Dawn of the Dead is actually really good, while his adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300 is very good especially with Snyder’s obsession with the neo-fascist elements of Miller’s work. However Sucker Punch was offensive, patronising bollocks which I’m astonished got made at all, and his DC work is relentlessly humourless, bleak and endlessly dark. From Pa Kent’s needless self-sacrifice to the ‘Martha’ scene in Batman V Superman, Snyder has managed to get away with some dreadful stuff because his work appeals to a hardcore of fans.Those fans are incredibly vocal online and you have to applaud how they’ve convinced Warners there’s money in getting Snyder’s version made,though for a more general audience they’re perhaps tired of the enforced grimness of Snyder’s work.
However if at all successful this could effectively change how films are made. The pandemic means studios have to reconsider new ways to get to audiences, and if there’s a large enough one out there shouting for something then give it to them. I await it’s arrival next month in the same way I awaited my last set of medical tests, but whatever happens it will cement a place as a cinematic oddity. Just how much we’ll see in March.
The generation of American underground comics lost one of its major talents and inspirations to others in the shape of S. Clay Wilson, the creator of the Checkered Demon.
I love Wilson’s comment when interviewed by The Comics Journal that comics should be something where you can draw whatever you want, which is exactly what Wilson did often getting himself into trouble with the law, and on this side of the Atlantic, customs would gleefully seize his works.
Wilson was transgressive in a way few comic artists ever could be, and few today ever try to be, but he (along with Robert Crumb and a handful of others) shifted what comics could be over their careers with artists like Tim Vigil clearly picking up threads of what Wilson left lying around. He deserves our appreciation as fans of the medium for what he did and his wife and family deserve our condelences. It can be safely said there won’t be another like him.
Last time I gave a lot of recent comics a good and well-deserved kicking, especially DC’s titles which are mainly awful at the minute so I’ll start this off with something different from DC which is an excellent comic book.
The Other History of the DC Universe is a sequel of sorts to DC’s History of the DC Universe published 35 years ago, but this time it focuses on DC’s black and other minority characters in a five-issue series which dissects what it would be actually like to be black in DC’s superhero universe. Written by John Ridley (the screenwriter responsible for 12 Years a Slave) makes it clear from the issues published so far that it’d not be too much fun.
Drawn by various artists over the five issues, this promises to be an important series for DC who haven’t always been great with minority characters or representation as a whole. This could well be an important work when completed so get on board now.
Department of Truth is a massive disapointment. A great idea that there’s groups of people fighting to present the world in a certain way with one unit run by the not dead Lee Harvey Oswald is a great idea and at times it does work. The main issues with this is writer James Tynion makes great concepts but I couldn’t care less about any of the characters. This is a high concept series so it either needs a good everyman to have this world explained to them, or we as readers are dropped in this insane world and we pick it up as we’re going along.
The other problem is Martin Simmonds painted art. It frankly is a mess with characters wading through this shit-grey palatte at times and the entire thing having often such poor storytelling that I had no idea what’s going on. This is a shame as when it does click it can be great, and if rumour is true it’s heading for a TV adaptation which will make this a huge book for Image, maybe even fully replacing The Walking Dead in monthly sales, but otherwise this is disapointing.
Since the first Iron Man film, Marvel have struggled to find a decent selling let alone readable comic featuring the character. Part of the problem is that awful Civil War crossover written by Mark Millar which has hung round the character’s neck for over a decade. This may change now as Marvel have a decent title which looks like it’s selling better than before.
The creative team of Christpher Cantwell and Cafu don’t do anything spectacular. They just strip the character free of much of the crap built up over the last few decades just to concentrate on simple superheroics which creates a readable version of Iron Man in the first time for ages.
Dark Horse Comics may well be hurt by the loss of the 20th Century Fox titles such as the Aliens books which helped grow the company to what it is today, but it still finds diamonds in among all the rough. Spy Island is one of those wee gems.
Written by Chelsea Cain and drawn by Elise McCall, this is a comedy romp with roots going back to Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad, which isn’t a bad thing to be inspired by. It’s a load of great, fun nonsense with some great covers. A 4-issue mini which I’d recommend picking up.
And on the subject of great mini-series from Dark Horse, Mike and Laura Allred’s X-Ray Robot is a sheer joy. Now out in trade form I’d also recommend this typical surrealist bit of pop culture from the Allred’s just for a joyful, fun read from a team who remembers that superhero comics are supposed to be something other than grim and miserable.
And lastly, Al Ewing has come on leaps and bounds over the last few years, and his latest series, We Only Find Them When They’re Dead, is a so far interesting SF drama set in a future where giant god-like figures are found dead floating in space so humans being what they are, decide to harvest their body parts for a vast variety of uses.
Drawn by Simone De Meo the whole thing looks and feels like a strip from mid-80’s Heavy Metal, which again, is not a bad comparison. It clearly has been written for trade collections, so it doesn’t quite flow well reading it monthly, then again decompression in mainstream comics is abused, but I feel here that Ewing is working towards something big but right now everything feels like set-up and backstory. This aside I’d pick this up as it looks lovely and as said, there’s a purpose for all of this, I hope!
One of the times in my life where I thought I’d be locked up for distributing ‘obscenity’ happened in the year of 1990 when I was still working for Neptune Comic Distributors and we could a shipment of comics, including the glorious Squeak the Mouse.
Comics shipped from the US would normally land at Heathrow, so over the years we built up a relationship with customs there, but this time we had to pick the shipment up from Gatwick where the customs lads were akin to the fucking Stasi! So imagine a young version of me, and another member of staff standing there watching customs decide to go through every single box and imagine my face when I spot Squeak the Mouse and think ‘oh fuck, that’s me fucking fucked’.
Just to explain, at this time the UK was suffering a wave of overt morality led by Thatcher who was trying to hide the disaster of her final days and the Poll Tax, a fiercly unpopular policy which helped her exit from power. Comics were just one thing being targeted by this new ‘moral majority’ with Howard Chaykin’s Black Kiss, and Lord Horror being the two main targets for these two-faced moralists. This meant that we dreaded Gatwick with its scary customs officials who didn’t look the other way, or just couldn’t be bothered with the paperwork for nicking three copies of some obscure underground.
Just to explain why this may well be an issue here’s Cartoonist Kayfabe showing you Squeak in all its glory…
The gore wouldn’t be an issue that much, but the slightest sign of an erect penis, even a cartoon cat’s penis, would send customs insane, and seeing one go into a woman’s vagina, even a cartoon cat’s vagina would send them reaching for the handcuffs. By some small miracle we appeared to have the work experience officer or the blind one, or both as he picked up the obviously gory cover, flipped through obviously seeing enough erect cartoon cat cocks than one would expect to see in a lifetime shrug and put it back in the box. I made sure that box was firmly stuffed into the van and as we drove back to Leicester (where we were based) it felt like we’d stolen the crown jewels, or in this case a cartoon cat’s testicles.
Stupidily I sold my copies some time ago thanks mainly to a girlfriend reading them one day when I was at work and decided I was a bit more of a sicker freak than she’d expected, but that close call with customs nearly denied me a read of what is a fantastic bit of comics. Yes, it was the template for Itchy and Scratchy but don’t say it too loud, especially now The Mouse owns those characters but as a piece of comics it is one of those works fans of the medium should own, preferably wrapped in a brown paper bag and hidden underneath the matress.
As a wee bonus treat here’s an animated version of part of the first volume. Enjoy.
The Covid pandemic made a small blip on publishing comics, but they’re coming out thick and fast with the Big Two especially turning out some uninspiring rubbish. DC’s Future State ‘event’ is an example of editorial coming up with an idea to sell comics and creative decisions made waaaaaay down the line.
Take the Flash issue as an example.
We’re now 40 years on from when Alan Moore revolutionised superhero comics with his version of Marvelman, and here we are several generations down the line and we have writers still trying to do ‘dark’ superheroes. In this case we have poor Wally West who has been generally treated awfully as a character by DC over the years who does his best to be a sort of Kid Marvelman type character. It’s all pretty derivitive from writer Brandon Vietti with decent enough art by Dale Eaglesham.
Moving away from DC’s BIG EVENT titles, the recent Joker War (out soon in trade paperback) which ran across the Batman titles is another example of the creative ditch DC especially seems to find itself in. Having given up even tryin to appeal to a wider audience in the mainstream titles, they now pitch at a more established, ageing readership.
Written by James Tynion IV (writer of the splendid series Memetic from some years back) this story sees the Joker and his new partner, Punchline (essentially a pornofied version of Harley Quinn) do their best to destroy Batman and company. Tynion is a good writer but this pushes this to ridiculous degrees so for example, we’re to beleive people will stay in a Gotham where tens of thousands have been murdered overnight, while a barely competent Batman eventually beats a murderous psychotic Joker and the bodycount rises, and rises and rises…
It’s as a bleak, nihilistic and depressing view of Batman as any DC have churned out over the decades since Frank Miller gave us Dark Knight, but like Alan Moore’s copycats, these people writing these stories today don’t have the skill or talent of Miller so credulity is stretched so a decreasing audience laps up the mindless violence in these dark, joyless comics. These comics also suffer from DC’s habit of hiring artists with poor storytelling which makes me wonder what the editors actually do?
Then there’s the ongoing road accident which is the Brian Bendis Superman titles.
Bendis hasn’t written anything worth reading in well over a decade and has been trading upon past glories for some time, but this run has been a complete disaster. He doesn’t get the character for a start, however it’s the overly wordy scripts (show don’t tell, this is comics after all) which again, editors should be returning but DC are paying Bendis stupid sums of money though with little return so far. The issue with Bendis is he needs to be reigned in and this doesn’t do this. I’ll see what he does when he leaves and starts Justice League, but I expect little or no change.
As for Marvel things are improving, however Jason Aaron’s turgid Avengers title displays all the problems with many modern comics in the writer has been brought up on a diet of comics and genre fiction, so we get recycled ideas from this.
It isn’t that this title is awful, but it’s just the same old stuff rehashed for the same old audience with little in the way of style or wit. A problem with many a comic coming from the Big Two. Stuck between pandering to an adult audience with one eye on the new readers who often get chased away thanks to the simply disastrous way companies, and fans, conduct themselves. Make these kids characters for kids but at the same time make it capable for adults to derive enjoyment out of them without having to read a bloodbath every issue or see someone like Bendis cram six word balloons into one panel.
I’ve realised I’ve been far too negative here, so in the next part some titles worth looking at…
Richard Corben has sadly passed away. Corben was one of the great comic artists of the late 20th century and managed to leap from underground to mainstream effortlessly, and I ensure that virtually every person reading this will have seen his most famous work.
Like many fans of a certain age, I first found Corben’s work in Heavy Metal, and especially his Den strip which is like a sexed up Conan for those who’ve never seen it’s beautiful insanity.
I then came across his work in Jim Warren’s magazines Creepy and Eerie, which is fucking spectacular works of horror, and it is in the horror and science fiction genres Coben did much of his best work. One of my favourite works is his and Harlan Ellison’s Vic and Blood, which is a wonderful work.
He did dabble in the world of superheroes with varying success, but there is a splendid run he did on Hellblazer which is worth searching out, as well as a Hulk miniseries which shows that Corben should have drawn the character years before he did.
However to millions he’ll be known for drawn the cover to Meatloaf’s Bat Out Of Hell. It’s a good work but one that verges on self-parody, but as an image to seel a style,this was perfect for someone with such a varied and long career. Nobody’s art looked like Corben and although some of the 70’s and 80’s airbrush artists tried, it just wasn’t Corben…
A unique talent is gone and he’ll be seriously missed.
The Overstreet Price Guide is and essential for dealers and fans for 50 years now, and when I’ve been a ful-time dealer it was something I always had in my box of stuff I’d carry around with me in the shop or at conventions. It wasn’t always right, sometimes it’d be horribly overpriced but as a reference book it was essential though it never dealt with UK prices (I’ve often wondered why Overstreet never did a UK guide) which meant going on memory or relying on the often sketchy UK Price Guide Duncan McApline produces.
But 50 years for what was a glorified fanzine (it grew out of the fandom that sprung up of EC Comics, and in fact it’s often missed how EC drove what we know today as fandom) is extraordinary, as are the top reams of talent that have produced covers for it over the decades who’ve helped the Overstreet guide what it is. This celebration is a fascinating read of the backstory of the guide, plus the comics that have made it as after all, people really buy this to see what their copy of X-Force #1 is worth.
There’s some nice articles reprinted here too. Especially of interest is the interview with Bob Kane from 1989 which in hindsight misses out some large bits of history but is still fascinating, plus the article on ‘patriotic’ (some might say jingoistic) covers is nice, but most of the book just celebrates Bob Overstreet and what he’s done for comics for 50 years and although the guide is normally a book for the hardcore fan or dealer only, this is a more accessible book and a lovely bit of history. Go check it out if only for the galleries of beautiful covers…
There’s dozens of possibilities. Is it Frank Miller’s first issue of Daredevil or Dark Knight Returns? One of Claremont/Byrne’s X-Men run? Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing or Watchmen? Warrior?
The answer is Love and Rockets #2.
It was this issue that Alan Moore saw in 1982, as the story goes at a comic mart in London where it opened his eyes as to what comics could be and the first, most direct influence was Moore dropping thought bubbles from his scripts, and secondly he started to use a lot more female characters and directly led to him creating Halo Jones.
On top of that the mix of reality and fantasy that Los Bros Hernandez were mixing in their strips at this point became a template for many a future Marvel or DC title, though mostly without the skill or talent of any of the Hernandez Brothers. This single issue is the Rosetta Stone of comics of late 20th century, and the 21st century so far,and is dissected here by the lads at Cartoonist Kayfabe.
It’s an extraordinary comic mixing the mass market genres of superheroes and fantasy, with old-style adventure comics but framed in a slice of reality with Jaimie’s Mechanics story while Gibert and Mario lay down a touch of surrealism and more reality respectively. Again many have tried to follow in their footsteps only to fail but Moore was not one of those people, though imagine had not Moore see this issue when he did?
It is an interesting thought but we can be thankful he didn’t. As for Love and Rockets it still marches on though Maggie and Hopey are much older, maybe not wiser but it’s still the best ongoing comic of the last 40 years, and without it the industry would be an entirely different beast completely.
Whatever you may think of Stan Lee’s role in the history of comics, and his part in ensuring the myth he was the main creator of the likes of Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four there’s no doubting that his last years before his death were the subject of some debate in regard the role certain members of his family had over him, and more importantly, his money and his part in creating characters worth billions to Disney/Marvel. So much so there is a massive legal argument over who has control of what by a load of people who are, to put it mildly, dodgy as fuck.
In his last years Lee was shipped round conventions around the world for signings, which is fine as many a person did that in what seems a long time ago in these days of Covid-19.but people made a good living from that. Most people limit their time spent at conventions mainly for work, but Lee was working every con you heard about. Tales would come of a clearly confused Lee being told to spell his own name by his helpers, or spending hours having his picture taken with fans to the point he’d fall asleep or look seriously pained in the picture.
Lee was a cash-cow and with authograph’s being charged at ridculous rates a day of Lee signing when he should be at home resting meant his supposed team of advisors could walk away with tens of thousands in cash.
Now the magazine AARP have a lengthy article about Lee’s final days and it is seriously shocking to read how badly Lee was abused and it really is a tale which is shocking.
There’s legal cases going on everywhere but the fact is watching Lee struggle is a tragedy, and is abuse. There’s questions his daughter and the motely crew around her need to answer, but also conventions have a duty of care to not just their attendees, but to their guests. Cons were booking Lee knowing fine well he was poorly, and especially in his last year, he was being exploited. They’re not responsible for his abuse but they share a level of culpability in what is a tragic, but avoidable, mess.
My Little Underground 