1. "American Splendor" by Harvey Pekar, Robert Crumb, and Others (1976-1991)
Underground comic, largely autobiographical in nature. Parts of it are good, but it's extremely repetitive, and at times crosses that line between art and masturbation. The author, Harvey Pekar, writes about life in Cleveland, and people that he knew there. Everything I said about "Ordinary Victories" could be applied to this one.
It was later adapted into a film starring Paul Giamatti. The movie is probably much better than the comic book.
2. "J. Michael Straczynski's Midnight Nation" by (of course) J. Michael Straczynski and Gary Frank (2002)
Super boring comic book about a policeman trapped in limbo. The art is also too "superheroic" for the subject matter.
Dear Mr. Straczynski: If you're going to put your name above the title, you really ought to come up with something less derivative than this. You've got a good ear for dialogue, but good dialogue doesn't make up for a lackluster story.
3. "Nailbiter" (Volume 1) by Joshua Williamson and Mike Henderson (2014-2015)
An "interrogation expert" investigates his friend's disappearance in a town full of serial killers.
The writing is ok, even if the concept of a town full of serial killers is a bit implausible. The art veers between manga and Frank Miller.
If Nailbiter was adapted into a movie (stranger things have happened), it would be a campy affair, but under the right director it could work. Writer Joshua Williamson doesn't have J. Michael Straczynski's ear for dialogue, but other than that this comic book is much better.
4. "New Avengers" 1-33 + Annual by Jonathan Hickman and Various Artists (2013-2015)
Secret Wars makes SO much more sense after you've read Hickman's New Avengers! Now I know what those "other Earths in the sky" really are! Now I know how Doctor Doom got involved in the first place! Now I know how the Avengers first learned of the "Incursions!"
This, and it's also a good run of comics in its own right. I think I might like Hickman's run on New Avengers even more than Secret Wars. To be sure, Secret Wars is still vastly superior to DC's Convergence, but Secret Wars - despite a great beginning - was something of an unfulfilled promise.
Hickman's New Avengers issues build more gradually, and he maintains a nice sense of tension throughout. Most of the art isn't that great, but the story more than makes up for the art. I really liked the interplay between Namor and the Black Panther, and Black Swan is/was an interesting character.
5. "Preacher" 1-66 + 6 Specials + Saint of Killers by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon (1996-2000)
I wouldn't blame you for finding a comic like Crossed off-putting. It's violent, it's transgressive, and it's more than a little repetitive.
But Preacher? Yes it's violent, but it's as cleverly written as any comic book out there, and the art - although far from flashy - tells a great story. Preacher is iconoclastic in the way that all great art is iconoclastic - it says what it wants to say, and the devil take the the hindmost.
Preacher is excellent stuff, and if you have the patience I think you'll find it just as spellbinding is I did.
6. "Punisher MAX" by Garth Ennis and Various Artists (2007-2009)
Garth Ennis brings a bit more of the old ultraviolence to this series featuring Marvel's most famous psychopath.
It's not as riveting as Preacher, but it's easier on the digestion than Crossed. I haven't read through all the issues yet - just the first two storylines, but I plan on returning to them when I have more time.
Time for another round of comic books. I'd like to say that these are the newest, most up-to-date, most fashionable comics out there, but I can't. What you see below is what I could get a hold of, and not necessarily my first choice(s).
1. "Black Science" 1-7 by Rick Remender and Matteo Scalera (2013-2014)
A group of "anarchist scientists" hop between parallel dimensions. Reminded me a lot of the Fantastic Four, and their many adventures in the Negative Zone. A strong family dynamic at the center of the narrative, though more dysfunctional than anything seen in the FF (outside perhaps the Ultimates). Surprisingly good, though the writer is much better with dialogue and plotting than with exposition.
2. "Captain Atom" 1-13 by T.J. Krul and Freddie Williams II (2012)
The New 52 version of Steve Ditko's most famous (non-Marvel) creation. This one is something of a mix between Captain Atom and Firestorm, which makes sense because those two heroes were always a bit too similar.
In the post-Dr. Manhattan era, Nathaniel Adam is blessed/cursed with godlike powers following a scientific experiment that's never explained to anyone's satisfaction. By the end of the run he fights his future self, with the whole world (possibly) hanging in the balance.
I really liked the art, and it gets satisfyingly trippy near the end. The New 52 failed for many reasons, but 2012's Captain Atom wasn't one of them.
3. "Daytripper" 1-10 by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba (2010)
An extended meditation on what life means in the presence of death. A sometime author, sometime obituary writer in Brazil dies at several different points in his life. If the last issue doesn't have you teary-eyed, you probably need to rethink your priorities.
4. "DC One Million" 1-4 by Grant Morrison and Val Semeiks (1998)
Like most comic book readers, I have a love-hate relationship with Grant Morrison. I'll read things like the first half of Final Crisis, or All-Star Superman, and think that he's AWESOME, and that he should be even more famous, and that I should immediately track down all the other comics he's written that I haven't gotten around to yet.
But then I'll read things like the second half of Final Crisis, or Aztec: the Ultimate Man, and think that he's TERRIBLE, and that he's ridiculously overrated, and that I should avoid him in the future (at all costs).
Happily for me, DC One Million was one of the ones where he got it right, and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it. Sure, the time travel scenario poses some issues with regard to causality, but who cares about causality when you've got so many interesting ideas flying around?
I could provide a synopsis of the story, but it would just give you (and me) a headache. Instead, I suggest getting your head together as best you can, clearing out an afternoon, and finding a quiet place to read (and think about) DC One Million.
5. "The Earth X Trilogy" by Jim Krueger and Alex Ross (1999)
This has to be the most seriously overwrought of all the seriously overwrought comics ever.
It starts from an interesting premise: The Celestials are using the Earth to incubate one of their offspring, and all of the superhumans inhabiting the globe act as "antibodies" which protect the incubating Celestial.
But aside from that one cool idea it's really hard to care about any of the characters in Earth X, and the series is so rife with plot holes - and lame attempts to close these plot holes later on - that I really struggled to get through it.
To be fair, it's not nearly as bad as the latter parts of the Ultimatum event, but it brings to mind a lot of other, better comic book series using similar plot devices; comics like Kingdom Come, or the still earlier Marvels.
6. "Ghost World" by Daniel Clowes (1997)
This comic book reminded me of why I sometimes hate people in Seattle - the hipsterishness, the use of irony as a defense mechanism, the disdain for sincerity, or for anyone who genuinely attempts to improve themselves - it's all there.
The two girls who feature in this comic book are, in a word, horrible, but it's a familiar kind of horrible, and not something I enjoy remembering about the city where I grew up.
And yet there are these moments where reality intrudes upon their little, self-obsessed worlds, and it is these moments that make this comic book truly great. The girl with a facial tumor. The lonely guy with a beard. The astrologer hurt by the unkind phone message. It's hard to see these people, but at the same time it's hard to look away.
I'd never heard of this comic book before two weeks ago, and of course I was unaware that it was later adapted into a movie, but having read the comic book, I'll probably see the movie soon.
1905? A comic strip from 1905? A comic strip about food poisoning from 1905? A collection of comic strips about food poisoning from 1905?
Yes, my friend, this is a real thing. Winsor McCay drew these comic strips for the New York Evening Telegram in 1905, and most of them have been lovingly reproduced in this volume.
The set-up is pretty simple: someone eats something called "rarebit," or "Welsh rarebit," gets sick, and has strange dreams. Some of the dreams are about getting rich. Other dreams are about getting fat. And still other dreams are about furnaces coming to life, turning into devils, and chasing you over rooftops.
Definitely one of the oddest things I've seen in a while, but not by any means bad. McCay was a good artist, and if the "dreams" that occupy each page of the collection are a bit repetitive, that's to be expected given the time period in which they were produced.
We are, after all, talking about a time before comic books even existed.
"Alternatively, their real needs might emerge later. The more arid and effectless life became in the high-rise, the greater the possibilities it offered. By its very efficiency, the high-rise took over the task of maintaining the social structure that supported them all. For the first time it removed the need to repress every kind of anti-social behaviour, and left them free to explore any deviant or wayward impulses. It was precisely in these areas that the most important and most interesting aspects of their lives would take place. Secure within the shell of the high-rise like passengers on board an automatically piloted airliner, they were free to behave in any way they wished, explore the darkest corners they could find. In many ways, the high-rise was a model of all that technology had done to make possible the expression of a truly 'free' psychopathology."
If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably noticed that I'm a big fan of J.G. Ballard. I would list him among the most influential and talented authors of the last century, and despite the creation of an adjective ("Ballardian") in his honor, I think it's a shame that he isn't more widely read.
1975's High-Rise is the eighth of his novels, coming after earlier efforts like The Wind from Nowhere, and The Drowned World, but before his later, best-known book, 1984's Empire of the Sun. Crash, another novel reviewed here, came out before High-Rise, in 1973.
In High-Rise, modern man - in the guise of physician Robert Laing - finds himself deconstructed within the confines of a high-rise apartment building. Laing is one of three main characters in the book, the other two being Richard Wilder, a filmmaker, and Anthony Royal, the architect who designed the high-rise which they inhabit.
Once the high-rise reaches maximum occupancy, the society within it becomes stratified into three levels relative to the floors they inhabit and the services they enjoy, and after this point they begin a long, slow slide into barbarism. The modern world gives way to something more medieval, the middle ages give way to a world of warring tribes and nomadism, and by the end of the book people are eating each other - all without the authorities having the slightest idea of what's going on.
This is definitely the most sociological novel I've read in some time, and I think Ballard's use of the high-rise as a metaphor for the modern world works very well. My only complaint is that Robert Laing isn't a very interesting character, and the narratives of Wilder and Royal aren't given quite enough time to develop properly. Wilder's ascent of the high-rise is a nice attempt at mythologizing their situation, but it would have worked better if he'd had a little more depth, and if he hadn't been absent from so many of the earlier chapters. Laing could have easily been ignored in favor of the dialectic between Wilder and Royal, and the result would have been a more gripping power struggle between the upper and lower classes.
Still, High-Rise is an excellent book, and far better than the recent movie adaptation. It also shares many themes with Crash, Ballard's exploration of modern technology as applied to human sexuality. Crash, however, is a lot more disturbing. It's also much better.
