Archive for June, 2008

Horror, Old and New

 hauntlovecraft1

H.P. Lovecraft’s Haunt of Horror #1

Wait, wait. Richard Corben, one of the most legendary and outright coolest illustrators in decades, adapting the stories and poems of horror super-legend H.P. Lovecraft? Sign me up.

We get three adaptations in this issue — Lovecraft’s story “Dagon,” which is a pretty straight adaptation, and two poems, “Recognition” and “A Memory,” both taken from “Fungi from Yuggoth.” The poems are both interpreted a great deal more broadly to give them an actual plot. And on top of that, you also get the original text versions as written by Lovecraft.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great illustrations, the stories rock, and you get the full text of the adapted works? That’s a complete shoggoth-load of awesomeness, all for just four bucks. If you love horror comics, go pick this one up now.

 evildead4

The Evil Dead #4

The final issue of this adaptation of Sam Raimi’s modern classic horror flick sees Ash making his final stand against the demonic forces possessing his dead friends and the cabin itself. We get a little violence, a little gore (okay, okay, a LOT of gore), a little bravado from Ash, and a very nice re-creation of the film’s mood while the house tries to drive Ash crazy. But is the horror over, or is it just beginning…?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The entire story was a pretty straightforward, no-nonsense copy of the original movie, sure, but John Bolton’s painting in this series has been completely phenomenal. Lush, perfect, gruesome, you name it — all by itself, it’s been entirely worth the price of the comics.

Comments off

Real Men of Genius: An Interview with Adam Freeman and Marc Bernardin

With any luck, you’ve already heard of Top Cow’s “Pilot Season” promotion, now in its second year. Basically, Top Cow picks a few of its creators, lets ’em create a new series, lets readers vote on their favorites, and the two that get the most votes get awarded a new ongoing series next year.

One of the entries in this summer’s “Pilot Season” is a story called “Genius,” about a girl named Destiny Ajaye who organizes Los Angeles’ gangs and takes on the LAPD. It’s written by Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman, the creators of “The Highway Men” and “Monster Attack Network,” with art by Afua Richardson. When they’re not creating comics, all three have other jobs, too — Marc is a senior editor at “Entertainment Weekly,” Adam is a TV producer who’s worked on everything from “Gene Simmons: Family Jewels” to “Total Request Live,” and Afua is a professional singer, songwriter, voice actress, musician, and graphic artist.

Adam and Marc offered me an opportunity to interview them, and I jumped at the chance.

 

HERO SANDWICH: Can you tell us something about your lead character, Destiny Ajaye? Personality, background, motivation, you name it… Is she a hero, a villain, or mid-way in-between?

ADAM: Destiny is a 17 year old girl from South Central L.A. She has been surrounded by violence, drugs, street crime etc. her whole life. She decides she is the one that will do something about it. Every generation has its military genius – Hannibal, Napolean, Patton…who is to say Destiny is not ours? I guess hero or villain doesn’t really apply to her. She is doing what she feels she needs to do to ensure survival. And she’s hot.

MARC: It’s always worth remembering that every villain is the hero of his or her own story, and that good and evil are subjective labels. It’s like, the only thing that separates a cult from a religion is numbers. From her perspective, I think she sees merit in what she’s doing, even if she becomes the necessary evil.

HS: How did y’all come up with and approach the story? Is this a story that’s been kicking around your brains for a while?

MARC: I’m a junkie for Discovery/History/Learning Channel documentaries–I could watch those all day long. Anyway, I caught one a couple of years ago about the Middle American Militia culture, and one of these dudes was asked why they’re training so hard. And he said something like “Because you don’t think those gang-banging animals aren’t training? That’s all their lives are, learning to exist under fire, and learning to kill. We need to be ready.” And as he trailed into ranting about the inevitable race war, it planted a seed: What if these people had a leader, a real battlefield commander? What couldn’t they do, unafraid and organized?

ADAM: I have always been fascinated with prodigies. How many go undiscovered because they are not put in contact with their gift? Who says a brilliant strategist or military mind has to be born to an upper crust West Point family?

HS: The descriptions I’ve heard of the story make it sound like something with a fairly strong political focus. A story about LA’s gangs, lead by a teen girl, taking on the LAPD sounds like something that’d have something to say about racial politics, cop culture, feminism, and more. Can you talk a little about the comic’s politics, if any?

ADAM: What I find interesting about “Genius” is that everyone who reads it will imprint their politics or racial feelings onto it. I actually don’t think it is political. It is pretty neutral, as far as the storytelling goes, in that it is “documenting” an event. It doesn’t take sides. How you interpret it will say more about your politics than ours.

MARC: Yeah, neither of us have any axes to grind. We’re not looking to further any sort of agenda; we just went where the story took us. We both first came into comics in the late ’70s/early ’80s, and one of my favorite books ever was Marvel’s “What If?” series. This is, essentially, our version of a What If book, but instead of flights and tights, we’ve got ‘bangers and Barettas.

 

HS: I’ve already heard some good buzz about the artwork in “Genius.” Could you tell us a little about Afua Richardson and how she’s approaching the book?

ADAM: Buzz is good. She has completely blown us away. I don’t know how to describe her style. It is gritty, but clean. Sexy, aggressive, even elements of pop art at times. Marc is better with the fancy words.

MARC: When we were searching for artists for our first book, the AiT/Planetlar graphic novel Monster Attack Network, I spent long hours trawling the internet, just link-diving from artist website to artist website. I stumbled across her online portfolio and thought “She’s not right for giant monsters trampling Tokyo, but she’s pretty awesome.” So I bookmarked and kept going. Flash-forward three years, and Rob Levin at Top Cow was asking who we’d like to do the Genius art. I tossed out her name and he said, “You know, I’ve got her card right here.” And it all fell into place. We couldn’t be happier: not only does she have a terrific line, and an amazing design sense, but she’s a phenomenal colorist. Her palette is breathtaking.

ADAM: I told you. I just woulda said she draws good.

HS: How did you and Marc come to work in comics? It doesn’t seem like the type of career path we’d expect for a senior editor at a major weekly magazine and a reality-TV producer… 🙂

ADAM: Marc and I have known each other since 5th grade. We have been writing partners for years writing TV and film specs. We are lifelong comic fans going back to the Marvel/Electric Company “E-Z To Read” comics with the little Morgan Freeman logo on them. Marc was instrumental is getting EW to cover comic books and he made so many great relationships we thought, “This is our chance to do something we always dreamed of.” I personally think our day jobs have perfectly prepared us for this new line of work – we have learned to tell stories, respect deadlines and pry our eyelids open till the job is done.

MARC: I just wanted to blow stuff up. This seemed the safest route.

HS: How do y’all rate your chances in this year’s Pilot Season?

ADAM: That’s a tough one. The competition is pretty fierce. I hear that “Lady Pendragon” dude has some pull at Top Cow (we kid!) “Genius” admittedly is a different kind of book and I hope all the people that claim to be open to something new really are. We hope this issue really leaves you wanting more, because we have some unbelievable stuff planned if given the chance. You would not believe where this baby is gonna go. Regardless, it is a story we were passionate to tell so even if we don’t win we got tell a little piece of it.

MARC: I think it’s 6-to-5 and pick ’em. (I don’t know what that means, but I heard Leo McGarry say that once on The West Wing, and always thought it sounded cool.) Seriously, all of the Pilot Season books have something special going for them. I wouldn’t count any of them out. But we’re gunning for the Number One spot, for sure.

HS: Are there any questions I should’ve asked but didn’t, or any other info you wanna make sure gets out about “Genius” or anything else?

ADAM: We were just named as two of Wizard’s “28 Titans to Watch” (I think that is the title), which is pretty cool. Highwaymen was released as a tpb. We have a bunch of anthology work coming up: A western book from Image, a bonus story in a Grunts tpb to be released by Arcana; a resurrection of a classic pulp character – The Sphinx. If you see us at the San Diego Con please say hello. We don’t bite… hard.

“Genius” hits the stores this week. It sounds more and more interesting the more I hear about it, so I’m fer sure gonna try to grab a copy.

Comments off

Gog Be Praised

 

Justice Society of America #16

The one, true Gog has risen from the jungle — a couple hundred feet tall, purple skin, glowing eyes, and he barely even notices the Justice Society staring up at him in shock. When he finally deigns to speak to the JSA’ers, he tells them he’s a god from the Third World — not Earth’s more poverty-stricken nations, but the world that preceded the Fourth World of the New Gods. He says he was cast down to earth millennia ago for refusing to participate in a war and has spent all these centuries in stasis. Now, he says with a nearly-constant but very creepy smile, he wants to do good. And he does end up traveling to a nearby village and healing everyone there of a plague. But Damage isn’t buying Gog’s act, and when he calls Gog out, Gog works a miracle for him. Meanwhile, Black Adam has his powers back, and he’s on the trail of his lost bride Isis.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of cool stuff here — Gog can’t hear Mr. Terrific’s voice because Terrific is an atheist; Citizen Steel, even thousands of miles from the kids in his family, ends up getting surrounded by adoring kids in the African village, which is a nice little wink toward what seems to be one of his major personality traits; we also get some exceptional Alex Ross artwork scattered here and there. But the star of the show is definitely Gog. Sure, we all know he’ll wind up being a villain. No one that tall with a smile that creepy could possibly be a good guy. But I love the way they’re setting him up.

 

The War that Time Forgot #2

More dinosaur fun with our group of timelost soldiers. Turns out there are two distinct groups of warriors on the island — one with a bunch of modern soldiers (if “modern” includes characters from the Revolutionary War) with a more barbaric group opposing them from the ancient world. The old-timers, including a couple of Greeks, a Roman centurion, and a Viking prince, capture Col. Jape, the base commander, and take him to their colosseum to fight a raptor. First, they take him before their ruler — holy cow, it’s the G.I. Robot! Kewl! Elsewhere, the modern soldiers meet a woman from the future, capture a Japanese Zero pilot, and go hunting for Jape, who is in the midst of getting a lesson in how to fight an angry dinosaur from one of the Greek warriors.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Dude! The G.I. Robot!

Comments off

The New Weekly

trinity1

Trinity #1

After the unmitigated disaster that was “Countdown,” I kinda expected DC to quit weekly comics. But they’re gonna try a new one — namely, this one, “Trinity,” focusing on Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. We start out with our main characters getting together in their secret identities to discuss a dream they are all having. We also get the Flash, his kids, and Clayface as guest stars, plus a follow-up story about Morgaine Le Fey and a futuristic version of the Riddler named Enigma teaming up to try to take down the Big Three.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Much better than I was expecting, honestly. The best bits are probably Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, and Diana Prince sitting around ordering coffee — great character interaction here. If they can keep this up, it should be pretty good.

youngxmen3

Young X-Men #3

Ink has already betrayed the new team, knocking out Blindfold as they defeated Danni Moonstar — now he’s delivered both of them to some mysterious evildoer, and when Moonstar wakes back up, she takes out her frustrations on Blindfold. Elsewhere, the rest of the team manages to capture Magma, but not before she turns Dust’s body to glass. We also get our first good look at Graymalkin, who’ll be joining the team soon, and he has some plans to take care of Cyclops (or whoever he really is) once and for all.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m enjoying most of these characters quite a lot. I’m a bit concerned about Graymalkin’s bizarre speech patterns, though — after all, they’ve already got Blindfold and her loopy dialogue. What happens if they ever get both Blindfold and Graymalkin in the same room? Total linguistic meltdown?

Comments off

Friday Night Fights: Twerp Stompage!

It’s Friday night already? And we all feel the need to fightin’? Well, that must mean it’s time for Friday Night Fights!

This week, we turn to Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #24, by Jeff Parker, Ig Guara, and Jay Leisten, where the dastardly Hate-Monger shows Wolverine that insulting words really can hurt.

fnf-avengers1

fnf-avengers2

Let that be a lesson for all of you: avoid people who can grow to a hundred feet tall and stomp you into the dirt.

Comments off

Come Together

 gsastonishxmen

Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men

This is the long-awaited finale of Joss Whedon’s “Astonishing X-Men” series. Previously, the X-Men have been stuck on the alien Breakworld. They’ve learned that the Breakworldian behind the prophesy/blueprint claiming that Colossus would destroy the planet was actually the supposedly compassionate priestess Aghanne, who’s decided that her people are too violent to live. In an attempt to disrupt a gigantic missile aimed at Earth, Kitty Pryde has phased into it only to learn, just as it’s fired, that it’s actually an immense, planet-destroying bullet.

Well, the X-Men on the Breakworld just don’t have a ship fast enough to catch the bullet, but they are able to tell the superheroes of Earth. Unfortunately, the bullet has special magical defenses that put all of Earth’s superheroes into dream-like trances where they believe they’ve stopped the bullet and saved the Earth. Cyclops and Emma Frost can get a rocket near the bullet, but they’re too small to stop it, and Kitty can’t phase back out — the alien metal has weakened her too much. The Super-Sentinel that took out Genosha makes a last ditch effort to destroy the bullet — and fails. There’s nothing that can stop the bullet from hitting Earth — until someone pulls off the greatest superheroic feat ever.

Verdict: Thumbs up. As far as I’m concerned, this is a complete triumph for Whedon and artist John Cassaday. Almost everything here is spot-on perfect, from the wonderful scenes with Spider-Man (I would buy the snot out of a Spider-Man series by Whedon and Cassaday) to the new revelations about Agent Brand to Kitty’s final act to the entirely right aftermath.

 bluebeetle27

Blue Beetle #27

Jaime and his girlfriend, magic-using Traci Thirteen, run into a minor invasion of demons, getting progressively more and more dangerous, as they target a group of unrelated normal people for elimination. And Blue Beetle finds himself trying to stop threats that are far beyond his abilities. Even if there’s a way to save everyone, will anything save Jaime’s self-confidence?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is officially another fill-in issue before the new writer comes in next month, but I still think it was pretty good. I started to complain that we don’t see more of Jaime’s supporting cast — but the thing is, Jaime already has one of the largest and most richly developed supporting casts around, so there’s always room to spread the spotlight around to other characters. And it’s an interesting story anyway, with Jaime finding himself more and more helpless against the demons and questioning his ability to function as a superhero.

Comments off

Stand Up and Salute!

americandream1

American Dream #1

The healthy young lady above is a character named American Dream, from an alternate future of the Marvel Universe. Her real name’s Shannon Carter, and she’s the daughter of “Captain America” supporting cast member, Sharon Carter. We get to see Dream take out a horde of arms smugglers, then we’re treated to a short recounting of her origin. She doesn’t have any friends or even much of a social life outside of the Avengers team she leads. And she doesn’t have any powers, which may end up making her a sitting duck for the supervillains stalking her in secret or the giant crystal monster who attacks her.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nothing real deep here, but the story is fine, the character is fun, and the action is pretty good, too.

teentitans59

Teen Titans #59

This is part of the “Dark Side Club” crossover that showed up last week in “The Flash” and “Birds of Prey.” The Terror Titans are actually working for Dark Side to capture the Titans so he can stick them into his underground fight club. They’ve already captured Kid Devil and Miss Martian, but they think Ravager is dead. Robin, Wonder Girl, and Blue Beetle start working to track everyone down, but they get ambushed and overwhelmed.

Verdict: Thumbs up, but just barely. The stuff with Dark Side isn’t nearly as cool as it was in “Flash” and “Birds of Prey.” It was nice to see a bit more info about the Clock King (he’s a precognitive), and the rest of the characterizations seem to be alright.

Comments off

Roleplaying for Metaprodigies

 

PS238: The Roleplaying Game

Here’s something I don’t get to do too often — reviewing a pen-and-paper roleplaying game. If you’re familiar with Aaron Williams’s “PS238” comic book, this should be fairly clear — PS238 is a school for kids with superpowers. They get training in how to use their powers and how to maintain a secret identity. The entire school is secret, located three miles underground beneath a normal elementary school, and the super-powered kids have to attend both schools. It’s a very funny comic, and I recommend it without hesitation.

So Hero Games put out a PS238 game, written by Steven S. Long, and made it compatible with “Champions,” the best-known and most popular superhero RPG. In addition to a complete set of the HERO System rules, the book also includes a complete description of the school, character stats for the faculty members, students, villains, and other important characters, and some general gamemastering advice.

I do have a few problems with the book. First, I’m not a big fan of the “Champions” system. I know, lots of people play it and love it, but I just can’t get into it. Back when there was a such thing as GURPS Third Edition, I liked their treatment of superheroes, and nowadays, I like to pick up “Mutants and Masterminds,” which really does seem to be the best superhero game I’ve ever seen. Still, obviously, my dislike of “Champions” is a personal preference only.

A bit more substantial a problem is the book’s typos, which range from “barely noticible” to “fairly wacky and embarrassing.” One thing that jumped out at me while I was reading the book was that they stuck Julie Finster with some of Captain Clarinet’s disadvantages — specifically, they said she had the same vulnerability to the Kryptonitesque mineral that CC did — of course, Captain Clarinet is an alien, and Julie is a human, so there was clearly a problem with copy-and-pasting stats from one character to another.

I was also unhappy with the quality of the gamemastering and player tips. Specifically, there’s no advice for either players or GMs on how they should roleplay children. It’s not that obvious, of course. Sure, we were all kids once upon a time, but slipping from an adult’s mindset into a child’s isn’t as easy as it sounds. Williams does a good job of it in the comic book, but there needs to be some advice on this subject in the book.

And this may seem overly nitpicky, but the cover of this book just plain honks me off. Look at it up there — completely off-balance. Obviously, the kid heroes confronting that bully is what’s supposed to be front-and-center on the front cover, while Victor von Fogg and (unseen) Zodon arguing about their laser-beam tic-tac-toe game on the moon is supposed to be on the back cover. Something went bad wrong in the design process, however, and we get the amateurish crap job we see here.

So that’s a lot of griping, but I still like the game. All the art in the book is by Williams, taken from his comic book, and there’s just tons of great info about the characters and setting — it’s really like having a complete guidebook to the PS238 universe. With the right bunch of players, I could see this being incredibly fun to play — in fact, it might be a good system to use for young roleplayers — instead of asking them to play adult psychopaths raiding dungeons, let ’em play themselves with superpowers.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Even with the problems, you should check it out.

(I keep considering whether to start reviewing roleplaying games more often, but I usually resist the temptation. It’s been something like a decade since I played an RPG, so I keep worrying that I don’t know enough about the current state-of-the-art to be able to do a proper review. Ehh, maybe I’ll review some more, maybe not…)

Comments off

Ripping the Mask

 batman677

Batman #677

The latest chapter of the “Batman R.I.P.” storyline is pretty freakin’ weird. Batman is obsessed with the international assassination organization called the Black Glove. The Club of Villains puts evil schemes into motion. The Gotham Gazette plans to run a story claiming that Bruce Wayne’s parents — and Alfred the butler — were degenerate drug fiends. Jezebel Jet suspects Bruce himself may be the Black Glove. Batman has been hypnotized somehow. The Club of Villains has gotten into the Batcave and plans to do some killin’.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s almost unstoppably weird and random and baroque and chaotic, and it seems to be awesome. The Club of Villains, by the way, is the best mass supervillain addition I’ve seen added to a comic book universe in years.

 1985-1

1985 #1

A bit of high-concept here. Our story is set in 1985 in a non-superhero universe. Toby is a normal kid with divorcing parents and a fascination with comic books. He and his dad happen across an old mansion being renovated by a bunch of out-of-towners who seem oddly familiar to Toby. So what are a bunch of Marvel comic book villains doing hanging out in an old house on the outskirts of a small town?

Verdict: Thumbs up. In places, this one is really pretty spooky. The brief glimpse we get of the Red Skull, peering down from an upstairs window at Toby, is pretty chilling. Dr. Doom is plenty scary. And the big guy who Toby runs into at the end of the issue looks really, really terrifying. I’m not sure where they’re going with this, but I hope it’s all this good.

Comments off

Comics as Journalism

 

I’m going to assume that you all know about the huge Chinese earthquake on May 12th, right? Tens of thousands of people dead, probably the biggest and most tragic natural disaster we’ve seen in the past several years.

Well, there’s a Chinese cartoonist named Coco Wang, and she decided she’d draw what she’d seen.

 

Steel yourself. This is utterly heartbreaking stuff, completely soul-crackingly sad and triumphant stories, beautiful stories of death and survival, horror and humor. But you need to read these comics. Read Coco’s introduction, then read the “5.12 Earthquake Strips” over in the sidebar. They’re all pretty short, so it won’t take long. But go read them.

And look at that art style, too. It’s not complex or realistic at all. It’s deceptively simple cartooning. Some of the most powerful stories can be told with simple and straightforward art. It drags you into the narrative, because it’s easier for any reader to picture himself or herself as part of the story.

Beautiful work. Please go read it.

Comments off