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Book Review: A Pile Of Comics
Apr. 8th, 2019 12:17 amOh shit, it's been a week! I intended to make this a regular thing, and lost track of it. Time flies when you're not desperately unhappy, I guess. Also haven't felt the urge to make postcards, or anything, really. I'm in a much better place, but also a much less productive place right now. I've been reading and slowly dragging my room into order. Mostly reading. I've made my way through all the non-werewolf comics (I saved the woofs for last).
Highlights:
Phil Foglio! I've got Angel and the Ape, and a couple issues of Myth Adventures, and I really like seeing how his art style and humor has developed over the years. I can see Agatha Heterodyne's face in Angel O'Day, and the early cluttered scenes and heavy inking in the bazaar scenes of Myth Adventures - not to mention the Jägermonsters! I'm not saying I'd obsessively buy everything Phil has ever written, but I do own a bunch of Dragon Magazines purely for What's New With Phil & Dixie, and I always gasp in delight when I find his stuff at the comic book sales.
Astro City! Not my favorite issues - the Blue Knight storyline with the lawyer, and the Roustabout story with the city kid learning Valuable Lessons about how Smallville works - but I actually appreciate them a lot more outside their TPBs, since I'm not spoiled by all the other fantastic stories crammed in with them. (My favorites are Jack-in-the-Box and Steeljack. You'd think I would go for the Furst Family, since I really like the Fantastic Four, but there are too many of them, and they just don't get compelling plotlines or emotional arcs. Kurt Busiek is the master of character studies via AUs and What Ifs, and there's a lot more Astro City to go, so there's still hope for the Fursts, but The Tarnished Angel and Family Album are so damn good.)
I was initially disappointed I only found the last half of Huck, but turns out it is actually waaaaay more tolerable than reading the whole thing - I had forgotten how queasily conservative the beginning actually is. Thanks, Mark Millar. It's got that unpleasant aura of nostalgic wholesomeness that Shazam has to it, where you are in no doubt about the author's worldviews and where someone like you would rate. Once it drags itself past the smug politics (do NOT use real life tragedies to grandstand, you motherfucker) and gets into the action, it is a fairly enjoyable spinoff of those Superman In Russia plotlines. Man, I shouldn't have borrowed the first half from the library.
Anyway, onwards to better comics. Jim Henson's The Storyteller is beautiful and fuckin wild. So much dragon bullshit, it's great. I was already familiar with The Worm of Lambton, but Albina was unexpectedly gay and delightful. Such great art, too.
I was pleasantly surprised to find Brave Chef Brianna and Moonstruck at the sale. Soft urban fantasy leads are such a good take - chefs and baristas and cities full of diverse monsters. Same warm queer vibe as Les Normaux. I have a soft spot for reclaiming monsters.
I enjoyed the Fantastic Four fluff I picked up - a wedding special, a Marvel Age reboot for the kiddos, a Doom origin story, and a grim What If. Also, what seems to be a parody - a FF-like team called Mystery Incorporated. The hothead younger brother has flight and electricity powers - and he's the younger brother of the Thing parallel, who can freely transform into a crater-faced moon-headed super-strong monster. Mr. Fantastic's replacement can turn into a Sandman-like swarm of pink crystals, and has a few intriguing tricks, while Invisible Woman's replacement is way less interesting, just turning into gas clouds while keeping all the limp uselessness of early-continuity Sue Storm. While it's interesting to look at the shaken-up power dynamics and relationships a bit of power-swapping and family-rearranging does, goddamn does the sexism grate my cheese. I hate it when they deliberately reproduce the bad bits of an era while making parodies. Oh man, it's Alan Moore. Well, that explains it.
There was an intriguing Lynda Barry comic that has the feeling of a zine, but I like her actual comics much better than her writing-about-writing-comics book. I didn't like Scott McCloud's try either. Just not a fan of the narrative framing. Ah well, I still like Lynda Barry, and should chase down 1000 Demons again.
I picked up Dragonfly vs Stardust purely because it had two women having a superpowers fight on the cover. There are in fact more women inside, passing the Bechdel Test, but it's still a fairly lukewarm comic. I feel like some people just don't know what makes superheroes interesting besides Cool Powers.
Cat Claw, meanwhile, is hilarious. It's like if Spider-Man got his powers the usual way, and had his constant classes-vs-heroism struggle, and his rogues gallery, but also ripped his costume so his dick showed every few pages. There's no sex and very little sexy posing - mostly she just bolts into a fight half naked or gets a strap ripped off her inadequate little swimsuit costume. In a way, the willingness to go tits-out makes the fanservice easier to tolerate - she is simply half naked and kicking men in the face, and there's no coy smugness about how much objectification the creative team can sneak in. The fishnet stockings are lovingly contoured, but I'm just not sure what to make of this comic - are you supposed to jerk off to it? It's just not sexy. It would be like trying to jerk off to a Spider-Man comic where the plot continues as normal, but every now and then Spidey's costume rides low enough to show his pubes, or his roommate Harry strips naked and wanders past to brush his teeth and nobody ever acts like that's weird.
The last notable story is Solar: Man of the Atom, a Valiant superhero I've never heard of, but who has a hilarious cover featuring him in full costume trying to explain himself to his angry wife, while a pissy-faced supervillain sits tied up by their Christmas tree. What a cover. I have a small collection of comics I bring out every Christmas, and this is gonna be one of them.
Well, it's late and that was nowhere near as brief as I thought it was gonna be, but I had fun chattering about comics. I have many opinions! And the nice thing about Dreamwidth is, it's so quiet that nobody's gonna jump up my ass with 2,000 of their friends because I talked shit about Their Faves. There are many things I don't miss about Tumblr. I say, having opened Tumblr twenty minutes ago. Anyway, goodnight!
Highlights:
Phil Foglio! I've got Angel and the Ape, and a couple issues of Myth Adventures, and I really like seeing how his art style and humor has developed over the years. I can see Agatha Heterodyne's face in Angel O'Day, and the early cluttered scenes and heavy inking in the bazaar scenes of Myth Adventures - not to mention the Jägermonsters! I'm not saying I'd obsessively buy everything Phil has ever written, but I do own a bunch of Dragon Magazines purely for What's New With Phil & Dixie, and I always gasp in delight when I find his stuff at the comic book sales.
Astro City! Not my favorite issues - the Blue Knight storyline with the lawyer, and the Roustabout story with the city kid learning Valuable Lessons about how Smallville works - but I actually appreciate them a lot more outside their TPBs, since I'm not spoiled by all the other fantastic stories crammed in with them. (My favorites are Jack-in-the-Box and Steeljack. You'd think I would go for the Furst Family, since I really like the Fantastic Four, but there are too many of them, and they just don't get compelling plotlines or emotional arcs. Kurt Busiek is the master of character studies via AUs and What Ifs, and there's a lot more Astro City to go, so there's still hope for the Fursts, but The Tarnished Angel and Family Album are so damn good.)
I was initially disappointed I only found the last half of Huck, but turns out it is actually waaaaay more tolerable than reading the whole thing - I had forgotten how queasily conservative the beginning actually is. Thanks, Mark Millar. It's got that unpleasant aura of nostalgic wholesomeness that Shazam has to it, where you are in no doubt about the author's worldviews and where someone like you would rate. Once it drags itself past the smug politics (do NOT use real life tragedies to grandstand, you motherfucker) and gets into the action, it is a fairly enjoyable spinoff of those Superman In Russia plotlines. Man, I shouldn't have borrowed the first half from the library.
Anyway, onwards to better comics. Jim Henson's The Storyteller is beautiful and fuckin wild. So much dragon bullshit, it's great. I was already familiar with The Worm of Lambton, but Albina was unexpectedly gay and delightful. Such great art, too.
I was pleasantly surprised to find Brave Chef Brianna and Moonstruck at the sale. Soft urban fantasy leads are such a good take - chefs and baristas and cities full of diverse monsters. Same warm queer vibe as Les Normaux. I have a soft spot for reclaiming monsters.
I enjoyed the Fantastic Four fluff I picked up - a wedding special, a Marvel Age reboot for the kiddos, a Doom origin story, and a grim What If. Also, what seems to be a parody - a FF-like team called Mystery Incorporated. The hothead younger brother has flight and electricity powers - and he's the younger brother of the Thing parallel, who can freely transform into a crater-faced moon-headed super-strong monster. Mr. Fantastic's replacement can turn into a Sandman-like swarm of pink crystals, and has a few intriguing tricks, while Invisible Woman's replacement is way less interesting, just turning into gas clouds while keeping all the limp uselessness of early-continuity Sue Storm. While it's interesting to look at the shaken-up power dynamics and relationships a bit of power-swapping and family-rearranging does, goddamn does the sexism grate my cheese. I hate it when they deliberately reproduce the bad bits of an era while making parodies. Oh man, it's Alan Moore. Well, that explains it.
There was an intriguing Lynda Barry comic that has the feeling of a zine, but I like her actual comics much better than her writing-about-writing-comics book. I didn't like Scott McCloud's try either. Just not a fan of the narrative framing. Ah well, I still like Lynda Barry, and should chase down 1000 Demons again.
I picked up Dragonfly vs Stardust purely because it had two women having a superpowers fight on the cover. There are in fact more women inside, passing the Bechdel Test, but it's still a fairly lukewarm comic. I feel like some people just don't know what makes superheroes interesting besides Cool Powers.
Cat Claw, meanwhile, is hilarious. It's like if Spider-Man got his powers the usual way, and had his constant classes-vs-heroism struggle, and his rogues gallery, but also ripped his costume so his dick showed every few pages. There's no sex and very little sexy posing - mostly she just bolts into a fight half naked or gets a strap ripped off her inadequate little swimsuit costume. In a way, the willingness to go tits-out makes the fanservice easier to tolerate - she is simply half naked and kicking men in the face, and there's no coy smugness about how much objectification the creative team can sneak in. The fishnet stockings are lovingly contoured, but I'm just not sure what to make of this comic - are you supposed to jerk off to it? It's just not sexy. It would be like trying to jerk off to a Spider-Man comic where the plot continues as normal, but every now and then Spidey's costume rides low enough to show his pubes, or his roommate Harry strips naked and wanders past to brush his teeth and nobody ever acts like that's weird.
The last notable story is Solar: Man of the Atom, a Valiant superhero I've never heard of, but who has a hilarious cover featuring him in full costume trying to explain himself to his angry wife, while a pissy-faced supervillain sits tied up by their Christmas tree. What a cover. I have a small collection of comics I bring out every Christmas, and this is gonna be one of them.
Well, it's late and that was nowhere near as brief as I thought it was gonna be, but I had fun chattering about comics. I have many opinions! And the nice thing about Dreamwidth is, it's so quiet that nobody's gonna jump up my ass with 2,000 of their friends because I talked shit about Their Faves. There are many things I don't miss about Tumblr. I say, having opened Tumblr twenty minutes ago. Anyway, goodnight!
