A friend of mine suggested recently that I should spend more time here recommending writers and artists worth reading. Fair ’nuff — there are a lot of wonderful creators out there, and it’s always a good idea to steer people toward the Good Stuff.

So let’s start with the Best of the Best: Alan Moore.

Moore is a shaggy, shaggy Englishman, a practicing magician, a worshiper of a Roman snake-god called Glycon, and the second-best-known comics creator in the world, after Stan Lee. He’s known for intricate plotlines, razor-sharp characterizations, and scripts so detailed, a single panel description can go on for a page or more.

Moore has always worked to create comics for adults. That means there’s violence, nudity, swearing, and other stuff that parents may not want their kids getting their hands on. Moore sees the comics medium as something that shouldn’t be mired in juvenilia, though he also recognizes that superhero comics can be a great deal of fun for grown-ups as well as kids.

Here’s some of his best stuff, with short descriptions.

Watchmen

We’ve discussed this a bit already. This is widely considered to be the very best comic book ever created. They teach this one in many universities as literature. If you’ve never read this, you should.

V for Vendetta

A masked, swashbuckling anarchist battles a fascist dictatorship in Great Britain. Not a perfect work — there are way too many characters to keep track of — but the story absolutely blisters the brain with excitement, derring-do, and mad, dangerous ideas. An extremely political comic — Moore wrote it in response to Maggie Thatcher’s hard-right British government.

From Hell

This is a story about Jack the Ripper. Moore comes up with his own solutions for the Ripper slayings, ties it all together with head-trippy stuff about sacred geometry and time travel. Moore did a lot of research into “Ripperology” and includes an excellent bibliography and panel-by-panel endnotes. This comic is violent and absolutely blood-drenched, but if you have any interest at all in the Ripper slayings or in the seamier side of Victorian England, it’s highly recommended.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

It’s a superteam composed of characters from Victorian-era adventure fiction! The British government assembles a covert team of Mina Murray, Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Henry Jekyll, and the Invisible Man to battle Dr. Fu Manchu. A second series of the comic has the team taking on invaders from Mars. Guest stars include everyone from Auguste Dupin, Mycroft Holmes, Dr. Moreau, the Artful Dodger, Mr. Toad, John Carter, and many, many more.

Tom Strong

A modern-day superhero book that takes most of its inspiration from old pulp adventure novels, particularly Tarzan and Doc Savage. The quality is a bit here-and-there, but in general, it’s grand, frothy fun.

Top 10

One of my favorite Moore comics, it’s a hard-boiled police procedural set in a city where everyone — citizens, cops, crooks — has superpowers and wears a brightly-colored spandex costume. It’s a fun commentary on comics in general, plus it has a lot of really wonderful mysteries for the cops to solve. If you like TV shows like “Law and Order” or “Homicide: Life on the Street,” you’ll like this one.

Promethea

A psychedelic/metaphysical comic about a superhero who is destined to bring about the end of the world. If you’re into new age stuff, magick, Qabalah, or the Tarot, you’ll love this. This comic is also the one where Moore does the most experimentation with visual styles and symbolism. It’s not light reading — it’s a very challenging book that requires fairly deep reading to understand.

Marvelman/Miracleman

A British superhero, similar to Captain Marvel. The original version got its start in the ’50s, and Moore started working on it in the ’80s. In his version, Marvelman ends up taking over the world and ruling as a god. It’s awfully hard to find this series anywhere in the U.S. — the rights to the character and the series are in dispute. (They even had to change the name from “Marvelman” to “Miracleman” when Marvel Comics threatened to sue.)

The Killing Joke

This Batman story presents the definitive origin of the Joker. And it’s the story that started Barbara Gordon on the path from being Batgirl to becoming Oracle, the wheelchair-bound super-hacker. It’s a wonderful comic, one of the best Joker stories ever.

Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

DC was preparing to reboot the Superman from the beginning back in the mid-’80s, and Moore wrote this story to bring an end to everything in the old Superman mythos. Supes is forced to deal with powerful enemies who destroy his secret identity, turn his old rogues gallery into psychotic murderers, and threaten to destroy him and everyone he loves. It’s a sad and scary story that’s soaked in nostalgia for the lost innocence of DC’s fabled Silver Age.

Saga of the Swamp Thing (especially “The Anatomy Lesson”)

When Moore took over this comic, the Swamp Thing was a low-selling comic on the fast track to cancellation. In the space of just a few issues, he turned it into one of DC’s best-selling and scariest comics. “The Anatomy Lesson” revamps Swamp Thing’s origin and re-introduces the character as a terrifying monster. Highly recommended — go hunt it down.

Terra Obscura

This one was just plotted by Moore, but it’s still great fun. A simultaneous spin-off from “Tom Strong” and a series of superhero comics from the ’40s, this series featured a bunch of characters with a strong Golden Age flavor but modern personalities and characterizations.

Most of these stories are still in-print in various anthologies and trade paperbacks. You can go out and buy them today. In fact, you should, because they’re all wonderful reads. Git after it, kids.

DC has released their solicitations for the comics they’ll be shipping in October. Lots of stuff about Countdown, the Crime Syndicate, the New Gods, the Sinestro Corps, the Justice League, the Justice Society, and much more.

But for me, there were only two comics listed that really set my geeky heart a-thumpin’.

During the early ’80s, I, along with a lot of other people, re-discovered comics, thanks to Chris Claremont’s work on Marvel’s X-Men, and Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s work on DC’s Teen Titans. But not me. I got back into comics because of “Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew.” And it’s not like I was the only fan of funny-animal superheroics — the Zoo Crew has acquired a dedicated cult following over the years, despite more than a decade of open contempt from DC’s bigwigs.

But we wore them down.

CAPTAIN CARROT AND THE FINAL ARK #1

Written by Bill Morrison

Art by Scott Shaw! & Al Gordon

Cover by Shaw! & Morrison

The Zoo Crew is back in a 3-issue COUNTDOWN tie-in miniseries! Captain Carrot reunites the team to face a threat that begins at the “Sandy Eggo Comic-Con” and quickly menaces the entire world ! The gang’s all here: Fastback, Pig-Iron, Yankee Poodle, American Eagle, Alley-Kat-Abra, and the Captain himself, taking on the Salamandroid!

On sale October 10 – 1 of 3 – 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US

I have no earthly idea how this is supposed to tie into “Countdown.” But hey, the Zoo Crew’s back! Everyone do the happy dance!

For the second one, you have to go back further — as far back as I seem to be able to remember, I’ve loved monster movies (even when I wasn’t allowed to watch them as a child), monster makeup, scary stories, and Halloween. It’s now just about the only holiday I really celebrate, and by the time October gets here, y’all should expect to see me running around town in a vampire cape, biting random people on the leg, and making werewolf noises.

And DC knows what I like to read in October.

DC INFINITE HALLOWEEN SPECIAL #1

Written and illustrated by various

Cover by Gene Ha

Don’t miss this collection of 13 stories of tricks and treats by some of comics’ top creators, including writers Steve Niles, Mark Waid, Steve Seagal, Dan DiDio, Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Peter Johnson (TV’s Supernatural), David Arquette (Scream), Cliff Dorfman (Entourage) and many more with art by Ian Churchill, Dean Ormston, Dustin Nguyen , Bernard Chang and others! The inmates of Arkham horrify each other with terrifying tales involving Superman and zombies, Batman and vampires, Robin and werewolves, Aquaman and witches, Flash and the dead, and more! Plus, the return of Resurrection Man!

On sale October 31 – 80 pg, FC, $5.99 US

It’s an Eighty Page Giant — with monsters! HUZZAH!

That is, by the way, an entirely awesome cover, but everything Gene Ha draws is golden.

History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man

Cloverfield. Bad Robot. The Untitled J.J. Abrams Project. That weird trailer before the “Transformers” movie.

If you know what any of that means, then you’ve been successfully targeted with one of the neatest marketing maneuvers since “The Blair Witch Project.”

For the rest of you, here’s the rapid summary. Viewers of the “Transformers” movie have been treated to an untitled movie trailer (some folks think it’s called “Bad Robot” but that’s just the name of the production company, which is flashed on the screen as the trailer begins) in which a handheld camera records a small going-away party in an apartment in New York City. The party breaks up when there’s an apparent earthquake accompanied by a strange roaring sound. The partygoers go up on the roof to see if the view is any better, and they see a terrific explosion, again accompanied by the monstrous roar. As debris rains down, everyone flees in a panic into the streets, where we overhear someone say something along the lines of “It’s alive, and it’s huge.” After the head of the Statue of Liberty is flung into the street, the trailer ends with “From producer J.J. Abrams” and “In theaters 1-18-08.”

People seem really electrified by this trailer. The working title is apparently “Cloverfield” but no one expects that to be the final title. The mystery about the title, the monster, and everything else is helping to really ramp up online speculation and interest, and Paramount is doing their part by having the trailer pulled every time someone posts it on YouTube. (If you want to see it, you can try the version I just watched… if Paramount hasn’t had it pulled again. If so, do a search for “Cloverfield” and see what you come up with.)

J.J. Abrams is pretty darn good at this sort of thing. He’s kept viewers coming back to “Lost” over and over for a couple of years, and a lot of that show is all about perpetuating the ongoing mysteries. And Abrams is pretty well known for both action and character work, so folks are hoping that it’ll be an action movie that won’t get lost in expensive special-effects sequences, like so many sci-fi/action flicks do these days.

A lot of people are guessing that it’s a new Godzilla movie, or else a Rodan movie, or Gamera, or even Cthulhu. Those don’t make a lot of sense to me — the last Godzilla remake was a colossal flop, and I can’t see Hollywood revisiting the franchise. Rodan, Gamera, Ghidora, and the rest are also-rans compared to Godzilla, and I can’t see anyone paying for the rights to those characters. If it’s a Cthulhu movie, I’m gonna have to fight someone, ’cause I love H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos stories, and I’d hate to see Hollywood screw it up this badly. The eldritch monster-gods those old stories were more about blasting humanity’s sanity and less about destroying cities.

There aren’t a whole lot of giant monsters in comics that could carry a movie either. Maybe Galactus, but he’s reserved for the Fantastic Four. I’d love to see Fin Fang Foom in a movie, but I doubt that’ll ever happen. And hey, if it was going to be a comic book movie, we would’ve seen a Marvel or DC production stamp at the beginning of the trailer.

I’m betting it’s an all-new monster. Probably something that landed from outer space, judging by that big seismic “whump” that gets everything started off. That way, the studio doesn’t have to pay royalties to anyone else.

A better question may be whether the entire movie is going to be shot with hand-held camcorders. If so, you’re going to hear a lot of the same complaints about headaches and nausea that you heard from people who didn’t enjoy the camerawork in “The Blair Witch Project” back in ’99. However, if they decide to shoot it traditionally, a lot of the people who are excited about the immediacy and drama of the trailer are going to be extremely disappointed.

So let’s let the speculation run completely wild. What are the best stories you’ve heard about the secrets of “Cloverfield”?

UPDATE: If you’ve got Quicktime, you can see the official trailer right here.

The best science is comic-book science

Though I doubt most people should want anything to do with comic book science (getting struck by lightning will never give you superspeed, and being bitten by radioactive spiders is a good way to get a radioactive spider bite), there are still some folks out there thinking about the places where science and comics intersect.

First, there’s biologist P.Z. Myers, who’s being reading Vertigo’s “Y: The Last Man,” which is about a disease that’s killed all but one man on the planet — and Dr. Myers has actually found a reference to a disease that does target males for elimination. Lucky for us (well, lucky for the male us), it only affects arthropods…

And here’s Polite Dissent, a comic book blog written by a doctor. Much of the emphasis is on how comics often mishandle medical terminology — incorrect anatomy, bad diagnoses, crazy medical procedures, etc. It’s grand fun to scroll through, really.

Bahlactus demands whuppins — SO LET THERE BE WHUPPINS!

From the most recent issue of “Justice Society of America”: Citizen Steel unleashes on some bad guys.

First, he grabs a guy out of the air…

And then he — owww, my gosh, I think he killed him! I’m pretty sure that guy’s skull’s crushed, man…

And I’m pretty sure both those guys are dead, too.

Is this the type of thing we want kids reading? Shouldn’t this stuff be regulated? Can’t we — Oh, wait, they were neo-Nazis? Never mind, killin’ Nazis is legal. I think it’s in the Constitution and everything…

I’ve snagged a pretty good crop of new comics this week — just in time to get hit by a sudden busy spree, both at the office and at home. So let’s see if we can get some reviews done very quickly for some of the new books.

Shadowpact #15

The plot is fairly straightforward. Dr. Gotham is an insanely powerful sorceror who wants to kill the magic-based superheroes in the Shadowpact on behalf of his evil, interdimensional god. He eats a sandwich and holds a busload of kids hostage in Chicago ’til the team shows up, then he kills Chicago.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The entire story is all about establishing Dr. Gotham as an unusual and very dangerous villain, and it does an incredible job. You really wouldn’t expect the two highlights of a story to be (1) Dr. Gotham eating a sandwich and (2) killing every living thing in Chicago, but it works amazingly well. Of course, I’m sure they’ll undo the “killing Chicago” thing next month, but still, this issue is a great ride.

Runaways #27

There are really two reasons I picked this one up. First, the cover here is just awesome. Second, I was told that the Yellow Kid (the star of the very first comic strip, “Hogan’s Alley,” back in the late 1890s) had an appearance, and I’ve long been a fan of old comic strips.

Well, the problem is that the Yellow Kid appears in just one panel. And beyond that, I know almost nothing about the main characters in the comic, so most of the stuff that went on here was completely lost on me. I will say, however, that I guffawed at the bit where the little pre-teen character (Molly Hayes, Wikipedia tells me) warns everyone that girls are on this side of the room, boys on that side, and no kissing or yucky stuff is allowed. I also like the fact that they hang out with a dinosaur. Don’t remember whether anyone ate sandwiches, although one character threatens to eat someone else.

Verdict: Can’t really give one. I’m just not familiar enough with what’s going on.

Justice Society of America #7

First of all, let me direct your attention to this cover by Alex Ross of the JSA’s newest member, Citizen Steel. This was not the same cover that was previewed — the preview got a lot of attention when it was released because Citizen Steel was, um, well, shall we say, in a state of, umm… Well, hang on just a second. (gets out thesaurus, looks up various interesting words, giggles in an immature manner) Tumescence. Turgidity. Perpendicularity. Upstandingness. (giggles some more)

Anyway, this caused a lot of hollering and weeping amongst the fanboys — you see, while they consider it a constitutional right to leer and drool over upskirt pictures of Mary Marvel and “Turkey’s Done” pictures of Psylocke, fanboys apparently run the risk of actually dying if they see a picture of a dude sportin’ lumber.

Anyway, it seems that DC decided that, if they were willing to reduce the size of Power Girl’s breasts on the last “Justice League” cover, maybe they should reduce the number of socks stuffed down Citizen Steel’s shiny shorts.

Oh, the story? The story’s fine. Citizen Steel makes his grand debut by helping beat the heck out of a bunch of neo-Nazi thugs. All that, plus Starman and Superman eating sloppy joes.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Who doesn’t love sloppy joes?

You may remember we discussed the concept of the comics crossover a while back. Well, the problem with a lot of them is that their primary purpose is marketing — stick a couple of popular characters together and hope people will buy some extra comics. The story may be alright, or it may not be. Not that many people care. What they care about is the fact that we’ve got Superman and Spider-Man together in this comic! Or Wonder Woman and Witchblade! Or Wolverine and Deathblow! We need to sell a lot of comics, think the company bigwigs, and we sure hope the suckers are willing to buy this one…

No, they’re not all that way. You find some where it’s clear that the folks involved said to themselves, “Wow, we can have a heck of a lot of fun with this. We can tell a cool stories about both of these wildly different characters, we can tell ’em so the fans won’t get mad, and even if it doesn’t sell that well, everyone who reads it is gonna LOVE it!”

Which leads me to what I believe is the greatest crossover in history.

Yes, it’s “Archie Meets the Punisher.”

Just the backstory on this one is great. The people at Archie Comics were sitting around joking about comics crossovers and picked out the Punisher, Marvel’s grim-and-gritty vigilante, as the worst possible crossover candidate for their all-American teenager. Batton Lash, the creator of the “Wolf and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre” series, heard the idea and wrote up a story proposal. The Archie folks sent it on to Marvel, still half-thinking of it as a joke — and the Marvel publishers decided they wanted to do it. Lash ended up writing the story, with art chores shared by Marvel’s John Buscema, who drew all the scenes with the Punisher, and Archie’s Stan Goldberg, who drew all the scenes with Archie.

The comic was published in 1994. The serious comics fans rolled their eyes and passed it over. The oddballs grabbed it, cackled over it, and loved it.

So how the heck do you bring two characters this different together into one comic book? Well, you start with Frank Castle pursuing a dangerous drug pusher named Red Fever — and he has to bring him in alive, because the government thinks they can get lots of info about the underworld from him. Unfortunately, Red gives the Punisher the slip, heads for the bus station, and buys a ticket. Gee, this guy looks strangely familiar…

Holy moley, you don’t think this is gonna lead to some uncomfortable mistaken-identity mix-ups later, do ya?

Hmmmm. Could be!

So the Punisher thinks Archie is Red, Archie’s friends think Red is Archie, a bunch of thugs from out-of-town are gunning for everyone, Jughead really, really likes hamburgers, and then there’s the big sock-hop over at the high school! Miss Grundy falls in love with Frank when she thinks he’s the school’s new coach, Frank marvels at how clean and crime-free Riverdale High is, and all the excitement has Arch starting his own version of the Punisher’s War Diary…

The story is almost unbelievably weird, but it’s still fun to read, and it’s still one heck of a good story. The characterizations and artwork are perfect — you don’t get stuck with either Archie or the Punisher acting out-of-character. It spotlights the great stuff that make both the Punisher and Archie work so well. Yes, the concept is bizarre, but it works because the creators loved the characters and because they were having mad, crazy, howling fun when they put it all together — and that comes through when you read the story.

If you can find it, check it out — but be prepared for a long hunt, and be ready to shell out some serious cash. This one’s reputation has grown steadily over the years, and it’s not at all easy to find any more. But it’s worth the time and worth the price.

Doug Marlette died Tuesday in a car accident. He was an editorial cartoonist, the creator of the “Kudzu” comic strip, and a novelist. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartoons back in 1988.

Born in Greensboro, Marlette grew up in North Carolina, Mississippi and Florida. He graduated from Florida State in 1971 and joined the Observer the next year. After more than a decade in Charlotte, he moved to the Atlanta Constitution before stops at New York Newsday and the Tallahassee Democrat.

“Cartoons are windows into the human condition,” Marlette said in 2006 after joining the staff at the Tulsa World. “It’s about life.”

Marlette was a distinguished visiting professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s journalism school, and was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2002.

Robert E. Lorton III, publisher and president of the Tulsa World, told the newspaper’s Web site that Marlette’s death was “a great tragedy, not only for the Tulsa World family, but for all who knew Doug.”

“He was more than a great cartoonist and author, he was a tremendous human being,” Lorton said. “Words cannot express the grief that we are all feeling today.”

Marlette’s website has a pretty good overview of his work.

The much-despised dork

I don’t read “For Better or For Worse” — pretty much for the same reasons I don’t read “Judge Parker” or “Mary Worth”: because soap opera comic strips make me want to hit people with sticks. But Lynn Johnston’s “For Better or For Worse (let’s abbreviate that to FBOFW, okay?) has always irritated me more, because it tries to be a gag strip and a drama strip at the same time, and because it’s badly written, and not very well drawn, and because it drowns everything in cheap, syrupy sentiment.

In the overall scheme of things, FBOFW is far from the most important or interesting comic strip. It ain’t in the top 50. It ain’t in the top 100. “Snuffy Smith” is a better comic than FBOFW. “Marmaduke” is better. “Nancy” is better. It certainly doesn’t hold up when compared to the giants like “Peanuts,” “Calvin & Hobbes,” “Pogo,” “Little Nemo,” or “Krazy Kat.”

Gaaah, I don’t like “For Better or For Worse” a bit, and that’s all there is to it.

So reading that other people — even fans of the strip — are irritated with both the direction FBOFW is taking as it heads toward the end of the strip and with one of the character’s apparently impossibly-irritating love interest Anthony? Well, that’s music to my FBOFW-hating ears.

In retrospect, Liz’s story arc is clear. Many readers — particularly, no doubt, young readers of Liz’s age like myself — thought that Liz’s enthusiasm for her teaching career and exciting life in Mtigwaki represented a young woman’s development into an independent person capable of fulfilling her dreams and making her way in the wide world. To Johnston, however, Liz’s young-adult life — the fulfilling work, the exploration of new places and cultures, the sexy boyfriends — has been nothing more than playtime. She’s had her fun and sown her wild oats, and now it’s time for her to grow up and adopt a “real” adult life: a life as much like her parents’ as possible, complete with prefab house, prefab toddler, and a husband picked out by Mom and Dad. For years, characters have periodically commented on how much Anthony resembles Liz’s father, with the implication that this makes him perfect for her. By reuniting with him, Liz will accept her destiny as a pale copy of her mother, keeping house right down the street from her watchful parents. The path to adulthood doesn’t lead to independence and a vast horizon of possibility; it leads right back to the childhood doorstep.

 

Makes more sense than Liz and Anthony

This is why I, and so many other readers, hate Anthony. His joyless, colorless, sexless presence hovers over us like a sulky specter, the Ghost of Dreams Deferred, reminding us of the deadly dull version of adulthood we might one day awaken to find ourselves trapped within. Even in the funny pages, traditionally the one haven of childlike fun in the gray, grown-up world of the daily newspaper, we can’t hide from the clammy fate that Anthony represents. So we hate him, in a deep, primal way.

Really, the entire essay makes me BWA-HA-HAA like nobody’s business.

Here’s the big problem — FBOFW has been the beneficiary of a couple decades’ worth of fans insisting that the strip’s real-time storylines make it “more realistic” and “more involving” than other comic strips. And now, Johnston has pulled the rug out from under all those fans — in real life, most people don’t have the option of living next door to their parents, even if they wanted to, and most people don’t find their True Loves in high school. (And who’d want to? High school blows.)

But Johnston has decided that she wants her strip to end with a completely moronic fantasy, and she’s willing to honk off her fans to do it. That’s wonderful. More BWA-HA-HA for me.

Interesting news: DC Comics has worked up Zudacomics.com, a new online imprint that will let aspiring comics creators submit their own work for publication.

Most people who produce online comics do so as labors of love. Some post their work online free, hoping to catch a publisher’s eye or gain a following, but Zuda will offer a rare chance to become a paid professional.Each winner will be awarded a one-year contract to produce their online series, DC Comics executives said. The company, a division of the Warner Brothers Entertainment, part of Time Warner, views the initiative as a chance to increase its library of intellectual properties, which can be lucrative as films, television shows and toys. DC Comics will also have the right to print the comics in collected editions.

“We’re not looking for a specific type of material — we’re actively looking for everything,” said Ron Perazza, the director of creative services for DC and one of Zuda’s chief architects. “We’re going into this with no ego. We can’t possibly know what an entire community will want to read,” he said.

I remember back when all the publishers would let you send them submissions. DC announced they were going to stop accepting submissions a few years ago — I guess they decided they needed a little new blood in the industry.

Any cartoonists out there interested in sending something in? Click here to go to their website.

(Link from Kevin Church)