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Friday, September 3, 2010
2005 Top 10
The best thing I can say about 2005 is that it's over. Seriously, this was simply an awful year on many fronts, and we all know the major reasons why: Katrina, the Valerie Plame scandal, the Iraqi torture controversy, riots, the U.S. soldier death toll surpassing 2,000, the avian flu, and so on. Here in New York we've got four more years of Mayor Bloomberg to look forward to and as I write this, we're in the middle of a transit strike at the height of the holiday shopping season. In the comics world, Will Eisner, one of the greatest creators of all time, died. Meanwhile, Marvel and DC continue to put out crappy crossover "events" as if it were still the 90's, variant covers and all. And you know, I try to maintain a modicum of optimism here in this column because too many people would rather wallow in negativity, but it's getting much harder to do so. When the world around you is falling apart at the seams, whether by the wind and rain from a monster hurricane or by the machinations of a paranoid, power-mad president, you'd think there weren't many things to be positive about… but there are. And maybe we can find a few more things next year. Maybe.
For instance: The Comic Shop That Shall Not Be Named, the place I worked at this year and last before getting fired, has finally kicked the bucket. Do I feel vindicated? Yes, I do – but while I have already gone into all the reasons why working there was among the worst experiences of my life (and let’s never speak of THAT again), I don’t think I emphasized enough the reasons why it was also among my best experiences. How’s that for a paradox?
After so many years of writing and talking about the virtues of comics, not to mention learning about the industry from a number of angles, I finally had an opportunity to put all this knowledge to practical use in one of the few areas of the industry I had yet to experience, and easily one of the toughest. I don’t think Fandom Assembled truly appreciates how tricky it can be to sell comics on a daily basis, especially if doing so is more than a job for you. You want to be able to see the books you like best sell, but if you’re operating with limited resources, you have to devote the lion’s share of your shelf space (and ultimately, your hyping tactics) to the titles that appeal to the lowest common denominator – and I think we all know which titles those are, don’t we?
Yet to see someone come back into your store after reading 100 Bullets on your recommendation and raving about how great it was, or to have someone ask for other works by Frank Miller after reading Sin City… well, you can’t beat that. The first time I sold a copy of Watchmen to someone who’d never read it before was such a thrill (and it wasn’t the last time, either). It’s easy to forget the perspective of a newbie to comics until you actually see them trying out books they’ve only heard about through their friends, or perhaps read about in Entertainment Weekly or someplace. You’re reminded of what you went through the first time you read them, and it makes you appreciate their importance that much more. And the more you see neophyte customers reading and enjoying them, the more you want them back – not only because it’s good business, but because they’re beginning to see comics the way you do.
Then there are the creators who came by the store, either casually (there were a few who did) or for signings. Most of them were people I already knew personally, so bringing them by for in-store appearances was easy. Suddenly, though, I was put into the roles of promoter, advertiser and host all in one. I remember the first signing we had was for Josh Neufeld to promote A Few Perfect Hours. I worked on the flyer very carefully, trying to reproduce the cover of the graphic novel at just the right size. I printed up 100 copies, wondering whether it would be enough and it turned out to be too much! I went up and down our street sticking up the flyers on opposite sides, at one point getting stopped by a traffic guard who said something about how putting up flyers is technically not allowed, so I’d better not let myself get caught (even though people put up flyers all the time in New York)! I switched to a different street. Then later, after work, I went to another part of Brooklyn putting up flyers in the cold October wind. I even briefly considered going into the city and putting up flyers in the East Village, but I was too tired.
When Josh and his fiancée Sari appeared, I tended to their every need, getting them pizza and soda. We had a tiny space for creators to set up, unfortunately, but I cleared it out as best I could, sweeping and cleaning as needed. And though it was a small turnout, Josh and Sari had fun and we bought copies of the book for the store. Lots of hard work for little payoff? Yeah, and sad to say, none of our signings brought in big crowds (they were all for indie creators), but I don’t regret any of it. For a brief moment, our customers got to see work by local creators who do stuff other than superheroes, and because we always bought copies for the shelf, they could sample them even if they never got to see the creators. Plus there were benefits beyond selling comics. I remember at one signing a father brought his son to get tips on cartooning.
And then there were the regulars. Oh, the regulars. Let’s see how many I remember: the teenage aspiring artist who was a huge Batman fan (and who I ran into this past Halloween dressed in an awesome Batman costume!). The actor who was a huge Garth Ennis fan and who I’d always had great conversations with. The old timer who lent me the Jack Kirby biography. The gay illustrator who always came with his dog, who we’d hear yapping outside non-stop. The woman who moderates Greg Rucka’s message board, with whom I had a nice conversation about crime novelists. The hot chick who was buddies with this other dude who worked there and was a real sweetie. The little kid who was a huge sports card aficionado. The older dude who would buy $40, $50, even as much as $100 worth of sports cards at a time. The guy who worked at the used book shop next door who was working on a comic of his own. The old guy who was into sci-fi novels. And of course, the ex-Marvel employee who became one of my best buddies.
They all made working there such a great place to be, in addition to my co-workers: Rich, who was never far from either his laptop computer or his camera, and Dave, with his stacks and stacks of superhero pin-ups that he let me critique. Even our octogenarian landlord, a completely lovable man who coaches little league baseball and once showed me pictures of the store from decades ago when it was still a fruit stand.
I wish so badly that it could have been a better place, and as much as I did do to attempt to improve its quality, I feel I could’ve done more. Still, I can’t say I regret the experience because I did have a lot of fun, and I know I learned a few things. So to those retailers out there who do know how a comic shop should be run, and who continue to lead the way in the industry, I take my hat off to you all. Here’s to Jim Handley and Brian Hibbs, Cliff Biggers and James Sime and Gib Bickel. To Dan and Katie Merritt, and Peter Birkemoe, and Joe Fields. To Rory Root and Bill Mitchel, and to others like you. Thank you for being so good at what you do, because now I know exactly how difficult it is.
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Before we start the Top 10, the usual ground rules: all titles on this list are based on new comics material during the calendar year of 2005 that I have personally read. I do not read everything; I cannot read everything. In fact, this year there were several books I really wanted to pick up that might have made this list, but I was unable to. I stand by my selections, though, as I always do, and I encourage any and all debate over them.
Last year’s number one pick was It’s a Bird… by Steven Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen from DC/Vertigo. It’s a semi-autobiographical story in which the Superman mythos is deconstructed and analyzed within the context of a debilitating hereditary disease that threatens two generations of a family and possibly a third. The protagonist, a comic book writer, is offered the opportunity to write Superman, but is unable to get a handle on the character, in large measure because of the memories associated with it – memories of an illness he finds too frightening to talk about. The graphic novel is fully painted in a variety of abstract, impressionistic styles, designed to help examine the Man of Steel in a unique and highly personal manner. It’s now available in softcover and I can’t recommend it enough.
Here are the ten titles that make up the Honorable Mention list:
- Action Philosophers (Evil Twin Comics). A series of witty biographies of history’s greatest deep thinkers.
- GLA (Marvel). Every dog has its day, and these Grade-Z superheroes had theirs, in a darkly funny mini-series that skewers fandom, the industry, even Identity Crisis.
- Night Fisher (Fantagraphics). Teenage rebellion in Hawaii is the basis of this graphic novel; a strong debut by creator R. Kikuo Johnson.
- Project: Superior (Adhouse Books). A plethora of up-and-coming indie stars provide their takes on superheroes.
- Punisher: The Cell (Marvel Max). “I’m going to start the killing now.” Nuff said.
- The Quitter (DC/Vertigo). Harvey Pekar reflects on his childhood in this graphic novel.
- Samurai: Heaven & Earth (Dark Horse). One man travels halfway around the world and risks his life a dozen times over in the name of true love in this thrilling tale.
- Seven Soldiers (DC). Only Grant Morrison could weave a story like this: seven heroes working ignorant of each other in order to save the world, in seven distinct mini-series.
- Solo (DC). A showcase for some of the finest artists in comics today, each issue brings its own set of surprises.
- The Stardust Kid (Image/Desperado). J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Ploog have done it again, this time with a slightly darker, yet no less imaginative, children’s tale.
And now here it is, the Chicks & Romance 2005 Top 10:
10. The Lone and Level Sands (Archaia Studios/Caption Box). The first time I heard about this project – a retelling of the Biblical Exodus story from the Egyptians’ perspective – was at the Alternative Press Expo in 2004, where I met artist M. P. Mann. He gave me an advance ashcan preview. I was intrigued enough by the premise, but as soon as he said that A. David Lewis was writing it, I knew I had to pick it up. Lewis has quickly garnered a reputation as one of the academically smartest guys in comics, as well as a sophisticated storyteller, and his interpretation of Moses and the Israelites’ deliverance from slavery reads more like a Homeric epic than a religious parable. The Egyptian Pharaoh has no problem using his deity to justify the greatest of atrocities, but what he does not realize is that he has no true power, and he is in fact subject to the whim of external forces who decide his fate for him. Sounds kinda like a certain president, don’t you think? Mann’s art recreates the world of ancient Egypt well, from landscapes to clothing to hieroglyphics. After self-publishing the book, Mark Smylie’s Archaia Studios Press has recently picked it up and has re-released it in hardcover, with color, so now’s the best time to see it for yourself.
9. Jew Gangster (iBooks) . Earlier this year, we lost one of our greatest comics legends in Will Eisner. There are fewer and fewer living ties to the Golden Age left now, and of those that remain, even less are active making comics. So that makes Joe Kubert’s continued presence on the scene something to be treasured all the more. Here’s a man who has been in the industry for over sixty years, and now, at an age when other creators are well into retirement (he’ll turn 80 next year), he continues to produce quality comics and he has yet to lose a thing creatively. Want proof? Take a look at this lovely graphic novel, set during the Great Depression, about a young Jewish kid who turns to crime as a path towards easy money and a quick trip out of the slums of Brooklyn. Kubert renders the city streets of this era beautifully, in not just the story itself but the painted vignettes separating each chapter. With every line he uses, you can tell he has a special affinity for this time and place, as if he walked streets like these growing up. The story’s protagonist chooses the life of a small-time hoodlum, but at the cost of his father’s respect, and in trying to provide for his family, the excesses and vices of his newfound life eventually catch up with him. If you like those old-school gangster films from the 30’s with Jimmy Cagney and Paul Muni and Humphrey Bogart, then you’ll dig Jew Gangster – one more example of a living legend continuing to do what he does best.
8. Cinema Panopticum (Fantagraphics). This book didn’t get much attention, and it’s a shame, because it was an enjoyable one, magnificently illustrated. Maybe scratch board art is more eclectic than I realized, I don’t know, but Thomas Ott makes brilliant use of it in this Twilight Zone-like anthology of stories told from a mysterious set of carnival nickelodeons. As I said in my initial review, working in scratch board – illustration board treated with black ink – means going against one’s instincts as an artist; the blade the artist uses is for picking out highlights, not rendering shadows, and if you make a mistake, you really need to work in order to cover it up. Ott captures a full range of gray tones to define his pictures, while at the same time weaving in lovely textures on things like clothing and hair and sky. Also, the stories are dialogue-free, which places an even greater burden on the art to communicate accurately and clearly, and he succeeds in that as well; they’re wonderfully creepy and weird. Scratch board art requires infinite patience and concentration. I can’t recall ever seeing it in comics before, certainly not with as much skill as this. Cinema Panopticum truly was a hidden gem this year, and I’m glad I took a chance on it.
7. Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards (GT Labs). I probably would’ve done better at science in school if I had had the graphic novels of Jim Ottaviani as textbooks. I think I made this point when I first reviewed his latest, about dueling paleontologists in the Wild West era – science is about more than theorems and equations and calculations; it’s about the people who come up with all that stuff. Seeing who they were, the conditions they lived under, and the motivations that drove them to explore the shape and scope of their world provides a deeper appreciation for their accomplishments. I know I can’t think about the atomic bomb without thinking of the way Ottaviani presented Robert Oppenheimer in Fallout, for example. At its heart, Bone Sharps is the (mostly) true story of two old blowhards who wanted to be big men around their peers, no matter what it took. Viewed in that context, the scientific stuff – in this case, dinosaurs and their bones – is more of a means to an end. There’s a good amount of humor in it, the characters are quite well-defined, and the art, by Zander Cannon and his studio Big Time Attic, is great. Ottaviani is the Michael Crichton of comics, and in a better world, his books would sell as well as Crichton. If you’ve never read any of them, this is an excellent place to start.
6. Ex Machina (DC/Wildstorm). I wasn’t looking forward to voting for mayor in New York this year. Michael Bloomberg has done some good things here and there, I suppose, but what sets me off about him most is his coziness with President Bush, his deficiency at demanding accountability from anyone for 9-11, and his pimping out the city for dubious events like the Republican National Convention and, even more egregiously, the Olympics (which we thankfully did not get). Despite all this, the other guy had absolutely no chance to beat him. And this is supposed to be a blue state! If only we had someone in charge like Mitchell Hundred, the protagonist of Brian K. Vaughn and Tony Harris’ political sci-fi series Ex Machina. Besides the obvious cool factor of having an elected official with superpowers – in this case, the ability to control machines – Hundred is a mayor that looks out for the little guy, is not beholden to party interests because he doesn’t belong to any party, learns from his mistakes (or at least tries to), surrounds himself with people who aren’t afraid to stand up to him when they disagree with him, and genuinely wants to make New York a better city. We know this because in his former superhero guise as the Great Machine, he prevented 9-11 from being worse than it was. Plus, he has the great fortune to be in such a beautifully illustrated comic, photorealistic without being stiff, expressionistic without being over-exaggerated, and lushly colored as well. I’d vote for him. Wouldn’t you?
5. She-Hulk (Marvel). I’ve felt alienated from the mainstream of Fandom Assembled this year, in large measure because of all the crossover hoopla. Between House of M and Infinite Crisis, there’s been very little within the Marvel and DC Universes that has interested me, and it seems like the crossover books have been all anyone wants to talk about on the message boards these days (that and play Survivor/American Idol games with their favorite characters – ugh). Which is why I am so grateful for Dan Slott. Beyond making funny comics, his comics are fun to read. He’s smart with continuity; he knows just how much to use in a given story without becoming a slave to it. He does not believe in story decompression; he packs a good amount of action and dialogue in every issue and he writes in small story arcs – something which seems to be a forgotten art these days. And he makes you care about the characters he writes. She-Hulk (she’s a green-skinned super-strong lawyer, in case you didn’t know) is the perfect example of what superhero comics used to be and can be again: accessible, modern looking with classic storytelling sensibilities, and not afraid to embrace the elements that make the genre – and the medium – great. Juan Bobillo and Paul Pelletier have provided him with some nice visuals along the way. Superhero books like She-Hulk used to be the rule; now they’re the exception. One day that’ll change – and writers like Slott will be at the forefront of that change.
4. Moped Army (Café Digital). Life imitates art: mopeds, despite their relative scarcity, are considered a low-tech, cheap, and fun alternative to cars and public transportation. In mid-October, weeks after Paul Sizer came out with his graphic novel inspired by the real-life Moped Army, rider Dave Brzezicki was involved in a hit and run accident with, of all things, an SUV – the embodiment of middle class excess and the “bigger is better” spendthrift mentality. Sizer’s book begins with a similar scene, one which also establishes the theme of class warfare that permeates the story. Moped Army envisions a future where the rich and affluent build their exclusionary society literally atop the poor, brushing them under the carpet and keeping them out of sight. The bonds that make a society, however, keep the misfit riders of the story together through thick and thin, as was the case when the online moped community rallied to help pay for Brzezicki’s living expenses. Moped Army does not argue against technology, but rather the reckless and irresponsible use of it, and the danger inherent when it shapes society, instead of the other way around – a lesson a certain SUV owner would do well to learn.
3. Nat Turner (Kyle Baker Publishing). I feel like I’ve pimped Kyle Baker a million times this year, but you know what? It’s not enough. How can it be? You’ve got this guy, who for years has built a reputation as one of the greatest visual storytellers in all of comics, developing and perfecting a cartooning style that would be completely at home on a prime-time animated network television series, winning awards and critical acclaim all over the place, yet when he lands a gig writing and drawing one of the most iconic superheroes in the DC Universe, editorial fails to market it properly and it gets cancelled after two years. So now there’s this, arguably his most important project ever: a self-published mini-series detailing the true story of an African slave who led a bloody revolution in America. I fear people are waiting for the trade paperback on this one – and I predict the trade will sell like gangbusters – and while I can sympathize, because there are books that I wait for the trade on all the time, I’m here to tell you: pick this one up now! Each issue so far is more than twice the length of the standard corporate comic book, for the same price! It’s almost completely wordless except for the passages taken directly from “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” the document upon which this comic is based, and Baker’s illustrations are chilling and dramatic and powerful. Don’t wait for the trade on this one. Support one of our best cartoonists by buying this book now because this is an important story that needs to be seen.
2. The Walking Dead (Image). I have my former customers at The Comic Shop That Shall Not Be Named to thank for turning me on to this one. I knew Robert Kirkman was writing a ton of books over at Marvel, but the ones I read didn’t impress me much. Still, I knew his Image books, Invincible and The Walking Dead, were currently popular, so I kept telling my boss we needed to get them. Eventually he bought them as trade paperbacks. I read the first Invincible trade and liked it fine. Then I picked up The Walking Dead. I’ve never been a big horror fan, though I enjoy a good scare every now and then. What makes this different? Yeah, the world’s been overrun by zombies in this series, but Kirkman wrings just as many scary moments out of the interactions between the band of survivors that are the focus of the story. Betrayal, lust, selfishness, pettiness, spite, stupidity, it’s all here and the things it makes these characters do – as a direct result of the zombies’ presence, of course – are as frightening as any army of the undead you’ll see in these pages. Amidst all of this desolation, however, love and laughter and hope still abound. Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard’s art has worked wonders at making each character distinct and making this world a believable and recognizable one despite the presence of the zombies. The minute I finished the first trade I bought it and the second one at the same time and now I’m a believer.
1. Tricked (Top Shelf). Lies. We all tell them, we all justify them, if to no one other than ourselves, and we all inevitably have to live with them. When it’s between two people the consequences can be minuscule at first, snowballing over time into something greater and more unwieldy. When it’s between a leader and his people, as we have seen in recent years – “There is a direct link between Sadaam Hussein and Al Qaeda.” “Sadaam is preparing weapons of mass destruction.” “We do not torture.” – the effects can approach catastrophic levels. In a year in which the lies of the Bush administration are finally beginning to unravel, it seems appropriate that a graphic novel should come out whose very theme is deception, and the lies we tell each other and ourselves. Alex Robinson takes the strands of six disparate lives and slowly weaves them together over the course of this story, building to a point where all of them converge at once, and their progression is fascinating to watch. Alex is another guy I’ve supported over the years, and with good reason: great ear for dialogue, understands how to get inside characters’ heads as well as how to develop relationships between characters, not afraid to experiment with storytelling techniques, draws people who look like people you’d know in real life, and can go from being funny as hell one minute to being starkly serious the next. Tricked has all of this and more besides, so what else can I say except congratulations, Alex, for another job well done. Rock on.
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That’s that. This has not been the best of years for me personally, but I want to take a moment and thank some of those who made it bearable: Scott Roberts, Omar Bilal, Guy LeCharles Gonzales, Robert & Caroline Luna, Dan & Katie Merritt, Denise Sudell (and her girlfriend Lisa), Maurice Waters, Erick Hogan, and a special thank you to everyone who has supported Glyphs Online, my blog, from when it began as an e-zine to now. It’s much appreciated.
Chicks & Romance will return January 5. Till then, have a safe and happy new year.
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
