365 Comics...17: Batman #16 (2013)

...in which Batman punches a horse... 

...then mounts it.

Of course that horse's head later gets flash frozen and smashed by Mr. Freeze.  'Twas not a good day for that horse (spoiler alerrrrrt)

That horse is all like "Aw shit, is that Batman.  Batman's aweso...ow why the fuck did Batman punch me in the face.  Aw, wait, now Batman is on my back.  This is some wicked shit right here... is that Mr. Freeze.  Aw no, worst brainfreeze ev..."
...
For some reason that horse thinks like a 14 year old suburban kid who totally just discovered Wiz Khalifa a couple weeks ago after previously only ever listening to top 40 radio and now is trying to establish his whole identity around liking Wiz Khalifa but his stupid parents wont take him to West 49 to get some new clothes and aren't really even sure where he got the Wiz Khalifa music from or what his attraction is to it (really parents, never heard of torrenting?).  They think it's just a phase and leave the kid to his own devices, and he will delve deeper into current rap trends for about a year, buying a new era 59 hat of some sports team he doesn't even know but he saw it in a video, but ultimately abandon this new identity when he totally gets into whatever MMORPG is popular in two years time, and he totally unknowingly virtually hooks up with a 39-year-old single mother from Missouri for about a year.  He goes on to be a moderately successful investment banker, divorced with one kid who he doesn't spend enough time with because he has a crippling addiction to internet pornography.  It's the life the horse concocted in his mind and which flashed before his eyes in the panel between when his head got frozen and then all smashed-like.
...

I've not been so super keen on two Bat-crossovers happening in such quick succession like this, and have largely stuck with only the main Batman book, but I'm kind of curious how Joker managed to best all of Batman's allies, corral all of Batman's enemies, and set up the many, many, many elaborate schemes and set pieces, and also set up a trap crazy enough to checkmate the king of Gotham.  I think I know why the Joker's pupils are so tiny...

365 Comics...16: X-Factor #250 (2013)

X-Factor writer Peter David had a stroke on December 29.  He's recuperating but it's slow and therapy is intensive.  I've been reading Peter David's works for about as long as I've been reading comics.  I believe my first was a spectacularly avant garde Wolverine story he did with Sam Kieth in Marvel Comics Presents in '91, and I kind of noticed him ever since.  From Hulk and Aquaman to Fallen Angel and most seminally to me, in the 1990's, X-Factor.  At the time X-Factor was the heir apparent to the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League which had just ended, but it carried on its tradition of building a dysfunctional family team dynamic with heart, humour and plenty of action.

I'm a fan.  Obviously, I've not read everything he's done over the years mind you, since he's done so much,  but I know there's something in his oeuvre for everyone.  (I just remembered that my wife has his Young Justice run which I've been meaning to read for years so I may dig those out soon).  David is a journeyman writer, true, in the sense that he is most frequently a writer-for-hire, but he's also a talented one, able to manufacture a dramatic output effortlessly with a consistently high level of quality.  He's never reached outright superstardom in his comics writing career, though I don't think he's ever courted it.  He seems quite content to work in any corners of any universe presented to him, and in every example of his work I have read, he's able to do something interesting and entertaining with it.

X-Factor is the only title at Marvel that I pick up monthly right now (and has been for some time, though to be honest, I pick up a few others in trade).  David is obviously the key to that, considering he's cycled through dozens of artists at this point. Marvel revived the title 100 issues ago (or 102 I think, if I did the math right?) starting with issue 1 and then renumbering again after issue 50 to issue 200 (for whatever reason).  The truly surprising thing is it's only been about 7 years (which, looking at the math, would take most series about 8 1/2 years), and with only a few artistic weak points and overlord-mandated crossovers to gripe about.

Since hearing about his stroke, I've been wondering about what will happen to X-Factor.  I imagine David has quite a few in the pipeline as is (hopefully the entirety of the "Hell on Earth War" which kicks off this issue), but obviously recuperation is of highest priority.  David's wife is updating his blog (peterdavid.net) and twitter feed (@PeterDavid_PAD) and David managed to use a dictating service to verbally write a script, so he's still working (I get the feeling very little could stop him from writing).

If you want to help... picking up X-Factor, adding it to your pull list is about the simplest thing you could do (and it's freaking worth every penny), or you can buy David's novels via the links on his website (my wife picked up a half dozen of them tonight, having much of his prose library already on her bookshelf), or you can donate (tax deductible) to help with medical bills.

The Hell on Earth War that starts this issue is indeed a jumping-on point that will allow new readers a lifeline to get in, but also a great payoff for some long-running plotlines in the series.  It's, as usual, exciting, surprising, and entertaining.

365 Comics...15: Inkybook Vol.1 (2013)

I`ve pretty much given up hope that I`ll ever get back to prime drawing form.  I was never incredible, but there was a time there, in my late teens, and even in my early 20`s, where I could produce some solid illustrations.  My prime frustration was not hand eye coordination but a lack of visualization.  My brain is not a space for details, which makes illustration difficult, unless you learn how to cope with that weakness.  Trying to draw today, I see that I can still put an illustration together that isn`t terrible, but it`s not good either.  I need practice, but more than that I need time, of which I have little, and what free time I do have, I, like many others, spend it consuming.  I should be creating, but that requires effort.

Eric Orchard I had a brief interaction at a local comic convention a few years back (approximately this far back, in fact) when he was looking to sell some mini-comics in the storefront of the retailer I was working the booth for.  I gobbled up those mini-comics from him because they're effing gorgeous and I started following his blog on my blogger feed (unfortunately I don't check my blogger feed all that often, and only recently fixed into G+ which reminds me I have to add him).  His work continues to impress, I love his style, the texture to his characters and pages are so facinating to me.  

Since I have a terrible sense of colour, I almost always worked in black and white.  I have a strong appreciation for comics people who can do colour (I particularly love monochromes and duochromes) and do it well, but I have an even stronger appreciation for people who can work in black and white and make it so the absence of colour is essential.  Sean Murphy's Punk Rock Jesus proved to be one of those things.  Eric Orchard equally amazes me with his black and white illustrations (he's good in colour too, but his b&w stuff is most stunning to me).

Inkybook Volume 1 is the first digital collection of homeless material from abandoned (or at the very least shelved) projects that Orchard has amassed.  This includes the first 10 or so pages of pencils from his (unfortunately shelved) project Suburban Witch Detective Agency, which is interesting to see how much detail is included in his illustrations prior to inking (pretty much all of it), as well as a few pages of his abandoned project with Ben Towle called "Alphabeasts", an alphabet book featuring a beast for each letter.  That both of these projects look so amazing and are, at this point, castaways, one comes to understand, if only minutely, how much of an artist's portfolio doesn't make it for public consumption.

It's an art comic, rather than storybook, but no less interesting to look at and pour over Orchard's craftsmanship.  (It's available from ericorchard.blogspot.ca as, I just learned, is another project of his, Marrowbones issue 1 and 2, which you can bet you'll hear about here soon enough.

365 Comics...14: Punk Rock Jesus #6 (2012)

Well that was... awesome.

Sean Murphy's bracing and immediate tale of the second coming of Christ, by way of cloning and "reality" television is just... stunning, phenomenal, adjective.  It's a curious title, one meant obviously to grab attention, and by the time the titular "punk rock" side of the Jesus clone shows up, it's deep into the fourth issue, but the build up to it makes it a worth while name, establishing it as more than just a provocative title.  It's punk rock, the kind of anti-establishment disposition with something to say.

But it's the characters are the lifeblood.  Chris, the Christ clone, is what the book is built around, but he's not even truly the central figure.  It's a genuine ensemble piece with Thomas, the security chief, an ex-IRA terrorist and mass murderer searching for redemption, getting the biggest spotlight.  But Murphy gives his cast plenty of room and moments of their own, creating a rich and lived in near-future, one that seems even more fucked up (if only marginally) than that which  we live in today.  Murphy obviously has a few things to say about the deification of celebrities (going quite literal with it here) as well as the commercialization of religion, the beast of commerce, and the status of America as an increasingly reactionary and divisive landscape, desperately needing to be placated.

This issue opens incredibly strong concluding the flashback in Thomas's IRA past with yet another seminal moment in his life where he realizes that everything he knows is wrong, and the prower of the truth, not only about his history and his lineage, but the very core of his being, unsettles him tremendously... it's something he struggles with from issue one, only it's with this issue that we come to understand why.

Murphy's art is incredible.  Beautiful in black and white.  Necessary even, like Citizen Cane or Raging Bull, it just has to be this way.  Just look at this establishing shot.  I spent a good five minutes studying the details in this panel:

All through the headiness of Murphy's story is still the occasional slice of dark humour, frequent moments of surprising blockbuster action, and an intensity that doesn't stop simmering and often boils over.  If Vertigo's going down as quickly as it seems to be (with only three books remaining -- Fables, Fairest and The Unwritten -- it looks more and more probable) it's done so with one of it`s most daring and rewarding stories in a long history of them.

365 Comics...13: The Shadow Annual #2 (1988)

I haven't had much of a history with the Shadow save for the 1994 Alec Baldwin movie which I quite hated. I've heard people say it's misunderstood and that it's supposed to be both camp and pulp but any time I've tried to watch it again (which may have been twice in the past 18 years) I can't invest much more than two minutes before I have to flee.

I've never read the pulps, never listened to the radio plays, and I don't think, until recently, that I've read rare than one or two comics.  So, what I'm saying is I don't know the Shadow, any more than I know what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

l do, however, know Kyle Baker.  He's one of my favorite artists, and a few years ago I learned (or was reminded... whatever) that he basically started in comics with a run on the Shadow in the 80's. I wasn't even a teen at the time so a book from DC featuring a guy in a trenchcoat and fedora that had NO ties to superheroes wasn't much on my radar then... Except that I remember the cover to the Shadow Annual #2 quite distinctly as it was quite prominently advertised in DC's comics that year.

Every so often I go through these collector phases where I start bin picking as many of the books from a writer or artist I like until eventually the whim leaves me, or I get distracted by something else.  When  I discovered Andy Helfer and Baker's Justice, Inc. mini-series-- which I loved-- during my Baker collecting fixation, I knew I had to get their Shadow work together even though I wasn't all that keen on the character.  I wound up finding for cheap a 6 issue run of The Shadow # 14-19 a few years' back but my lack of interest in the character kept the books in nerd storage (where things are acquired with the intent to appreciate but languish, squirreled away leaving only the cold comfort of possession) until recently. 

Issue #14 picks up immediately after the Shadow's death, and the subsequent issues are a madcap farce of pulp adventures and excessive vigilanteism. I can't tell if Helfer reveres or despises the character and/or the genre he sprang from, but those 6 issues are insane... like unbelievably so particularly given the time and the fact that it was a licensed property.  I could see an indie book of the era marking all sorts of insults upon its books' protagonists' corpse but this... roughly 25 years later... it still seems ballsy (of course the book was cancelled with issue #19, where the Shadow had his reanimated head attached to a suit of robotic battle armor and was set to face off against his greatest enemy who, voluntarily, had the exact same thing done.  Yeah,I don't think Helfer really cared about protecting the image or brand of the character).

This Annual #2 takes place between issue # 15 and 16 and was explicitly referenced in the latter's pages, so it seemed to the completist in me that I had to have it.  Plus, seeing that cover again tweaked some nostalgia buttons.

It's not as zany or bizarre as the main storyline at the time was, but Helfer and Baker certainly maintained their less than serious tone for this homage/rip-off of Citizen Kane (it's even dedicated to Orson Wells) as a wanna-be reporter searches for the meaning of the Shadow's last word, "Lenore".  It's frequently silly, and at times long-winded, but definitely a fitting and perhaps integral part of understanding the Helfer-era Shadow.  I could see this being a very polarizing book, because it's so antithetical to the character's nature and intended tone, and at the same time it really is fun (and often funny). 

Helfer does some really entertaining scripting,but for me it really is the Kyle Baker Show.  His style has changed pretty drastically in recent years as he's delved futher into utilizing animation styles and techniques, more pure cartooning than illustrating but here his distinctive line work shines.  It's a master class in surreality, where perspective and proportionalism don't even remotely require an adherence to reality.  I love his characters' over-gesticulating, hyper-expressive physicality, which here seems the perfect compliment., or rather additional accent to Helfer's words.

It's not "important'' and it won't be to everyone's liking but this is a buried gem of the 80's... if only for those of a certain disposition.

365 Comics...12: Change #2 (2013)

I read issue #1 with the definite impression that some weird shit is going down... something related to Lovecraftian mythos... but what? I had no idea, I really wasn't even sure if I enjoyed what I read, but I'm certain I didn't understand it.  With the second issue close at hand I dove in, searching for enlightenment.  Like a match Struck in pitch darkness, for a Second, and only a second, I could see... burned into my retinas are the after images, silhouettes mostly of what I think I saw,but now back in the black I'm trying to make sense of these vague shapes.

I'm playing a lot of Elder Signs: Omens on my phone lately, part of the Arkham Horror line of gang, steeped in Lovecraft myth.  As such, I am perfectly in the mind to explore the emergence of the dark ores even though I haven't read much of ol' H.P.'s scribblings and am obviously missing something (or things) referentially.  But, after two issues, and two more to go, I'm very curious to see how this opaquely told tale comes together.

365 Comics...11: Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 9 #17 (2013)

The same thing happened with Season 8 of Buffy.  I picked it up for a little over a year and then realized I'm really not that big of a Buffy fan.  I just am not getting all the references to prior characters and old stories. I like the show and I like the comic, but I just find, at least on a month-to-month basis, I just am not invested and I don't retain Buffy lore.  I'm not a studied Buffy fan.  I only watched the series once all the way through over about a 10 year span, although in every single case I watched the seasons on DVD and typically in a 4-or-5 day binge.  I think Buffy works best in binges like that, where you can gloss over the weaknesses of the show... the acting occasionally, the action sometimes, the scripts here and there, the dated music (often)... and focus on the epic storytelling and bigger-than-it-appears mythology.  I admire Buffy, I'm just not that into it.

It's why with Season 8 I came back to it in trade (steeply discounted trade from remainder shops and comic conventions mind you) and devoured 8 volumes in less than a week.  I've been enjoying Buffy Season 9, including Angel & Faith, and even each of the Spike and Willow mini-series... but it's just too much and I should really know better.  I dropped Angel & Faith about 2 months back, I didn't complete the Spike mini, and I only made it as far as the first issue.  I burned out.  I decided to stick with the central Buffy book only, and I realize, as much as I do like it, I'm burning out here too.

Illyria's back, which is the main reason I've stuck around.  I don't know why, because I'm not all that partial to the character from Angel (although I find Amy Acker delightful... so glad to see her in Cabin in the Woods and Person of Interest in 2012, and Phil Noto nails those SMG and AA likenesses on the cover attached, which unfortunately my store was all out of), I guess after binging through seasons 2 through 5 of the spin-off in 2011, I guess I was kind of wondering what happened to her.  Here we learn she's joined with some of the remaining most powerful and magical entities left trapped on Earth, forming a power counsel, an Illuminati of sorts, and are asking Buffy to join.  Among their members is a talking red balloon, which makes me wonder if this is the red balloon from Mr. Show with Bob and David. (Red balloon will push you down a well/ Red Balloon will send you straight to hell!/ You've got to follow your baloon).



Point being I'm undecided about whether I'm going to stick it out with Buffy as a monthly (8 issues left for this season) or if I'll just throw my hands up and buy it all a second time when it reaches the remainder shelves in trade.