We’re running short of shopping time before Christmas, so this’ll be our last look at the gift bag for the season. If you’ve got a comics fan on your shopping list, there’s a pretty good chance they already own these next two comics… but if they don’t have ’em yet, it’s a fairly sure bet that they want them.

Alex Ross, a comic-book painter who actually grew up here in Lubbock, has produced a lot of great comics, but these are some of his best.

 

Marvels

Ross exploded onto the comics scene in 1994 with “Marvels,” which focused on a newspaper photographer named Phil Sheldon and his views of Marvel’s superheroes. The comic, written by Kurt Busiek, let Sheldon take a front row seat at battles between the Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch, at the Fantastic Four’s epic battle against Galactus, and at the death of Spider-Man’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy.

Sheldon is a bit of a hero-worshipper — he’s constantly frustrated by the cynical view most citizens have of superheroes. In the Marvel Universe, superheroes are celebrities, and they get a lot of celebrity media coverage. One week, everyone loves the Fantastic Four and loves the fairy-tale wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm — the next week, everyone hates ’em and thinks they made up the battle against Galactus to boost their Q-ratings. Sheldon sees the heroes, a bit unrealistically, as the greatest, most noble people in the world, and public reaction to heroes drives him up the wall. But he’s also dead terrified of mutants, and in the best chapter of the book, he has to confront his own prejudices about mutants when his daughters meet and befriend a mutant on the run.

The artwork Ross produced was certainly a revelation for folks used to normal comic book art. There’s no painted-on spandex here — the clothing is realistically rendered, with wrinkles, folds, and everything. Faces are just gorgeous, expressive and realistic. And the lighting — Ross understands light sources, and some of his most beautiful paintings — the Silver Surfer reflecting blasts of fire, mutant-hunting Sentinels hovering over a city at night, Dr. Octopus sitting in a dim jail cell — are so striking solely because he uses lighting effectively and dramatically.

“Marvels” is available in softcover — you should be able to pick it up at your friendly neighborhood comic shop or at your average chain bookstore for about twenty bucks.

 

Kingdom Come

After “Marvels,” DC really wanted to get Ross on board for a miniseries of their own. So they got him to collaborate with Mark Wait to produce 1996’s “Kingdom Come.” Where “Marvels” was rooted in Marvel’s early comics, “Kingdom Come” focused on a possible apocalyptic future for DC’s heroes. About 20 years in the future, Superman and other superheroes retire as more violent heroes start to take over. The Spectre, foreseeing the end of the world coming soon, takes Norman McCay, a minister (based on Ross’s own father), as his human anchor to help him view the final days and render his judgment.

Just about everyone in the DCU gets some major changes — Batman has to wear an exoskeleton to move, the Flash is a constantly moving blur, Hawkman is a bird-human hybrid, Captain Marvel has been brainwashed by Lex Luthor, etc., etc. The forces are divided between multiple different factions, including Superman’s Justice League, the new violent superheroes, Lex Luthor’s Mankind Liberation Front, and a few others. Every step, no matter how well intentioned, moves everyone closer to the metahuman war prophesied to destroy the world.

“Marvels” is the book with the stronger emotional impact, but “Kingdom Come” is all about epic, world-shattering action. I always find myself comparing it to epic, big-budget, widescreen action movies.

“Kingdom Come” is also available in softcover. It’ll set you back about 15 bones.

And if you’d like something a bit more traditionally Christmasy, you might try to track this next one down.

 

Superman: Peace on Earth

This is an oversized coffee-table book about Superman trying, with only limited success, to feed all the hungry people in the world. It’s basically a great big, lushly painted Christmas card. Unfortunately, it’s out of print right now, so there’s not much of a chance of you being able to buy this one before the holidays are over.

If you can find ’em, go pick ’em up.

Prepare for the shock of your life — Christmas is only a month away! Hully chee! Time to panic and run around wildly, jabbering nonsensically and purchasing stuff like underwear and bow ties and vitamins for stocking stuffers. Now hold it, hold it, you can solve many of your holiday gift-giving needs… with comics! So I’ll spend a little time over the next month passing along some tips for some gifts you can get for the comics-loving person on your shopping list.

Let’s start with a new favorite that looks likely to become a classic:

 

DC: The New Frontier

This series was published by DC in 2003 and 2004, and was written and illustrated by a guy named Darwyn Cooke. The story is set, for the most part, in the late 1950s. It stars a huge array of DC characters, from Superman and Wonder Woman to the Flash and the Challengers of the Unknown, but the central character is definitely Hal Jordan, who starts out, not as the superhero Green Lantern, but as the only pacifist fighter pilot in the Korean War. The general plot, without dropping too many spoilers: We follow the emergence of a new generation of heroes as we slowly become aware of a growing alien plot against the earth.

There is a lot of cool stuff in this series. The whole thing opens with an incredibly cool, incredibly cinematic sequence with a quartet of soldiers facing off against dinosaurs during World War II. Everything set in Las Vegas is cool, including the boxing match and the fight between the Flash and Captain Cold. And the book also has one of the coolest characterizations of Wonder Woman around, gorgeous and curvy, sure, but also absolutely hardcore, and tough enough to stand up to Superman and tell him to take a walk.

 

You’ve noticed that artwork by now, haven’t ya? Beautiful stuff. Cartoony, but also like something out of a pulp magazine. There are also some animation influences in there, too. Superman looks a lot like he did in the Fleischer cartoons back in the ’40s, and just about everything else is filtered through the animation styles of more recent cartoons like “Justice League Unlimited” and “Batman: The Animated Series.” Yeah, it’s simple, clear artwork, but there’s something more complex going on there, too. It’s great for emotion, great for characterization, great for evoking the spirit and styles of the ’50s. It’s absolutely outstanding for action and motion, too.

 

You can pick up “DC: The New Frontier” as a two-volume collection for about twenty bucks apiece. You can also get what they call the “Absolute New Frontier,” which is oversized, comes in a nice slipcase, and has a bunch of other extras. That one will set you back about 75 bones. You may not want to get this for a kid — though the art has a retro, cartoony feel, numerous people die, and there is some cussin’ in it.

 

Go pick it up.