Hey simps, Harry here again... Couldn't fit all the comics stuff into a single story, so had to divide em up. I'd like to point some of you at Paul Dini's trade paperback of MUTANT, TEXAS the nearly true stories of Sheriff Ida Red. I know this isn't the typical comic book fodder... personally that's what I love about it. Dini dares to wallow in obscurity while others continue in established paths. MUTANT, TEXAS not only features a cameo by yours truly --- hey, I'm a mutant from Texas --- but puts together the epic arc that Ida Red has gone through thus far. Dini's JINGLE BELLE is being turned into a film over at Revolution, and frankly... I would be stunned if Disney or Fox or Dreamworks didn't end up sinking their claws into MUTANT, TEXAS with the idea of going CG Animation with the tale. Anyway - here's the @$$holes...
NIGHTMARE WORLD
Writing by Aaron Weisbrod
Art by Golden Goat Studios
http://nightmare.goldengoatstudios.com/
Reviewed by Buzz Maverik
Everyone always talks up the old EC horror comics, and they should. The stories were surprisingly adult, everything was graphic and violent enough to make the comic industry censor itself before Congress did it for them, and you could occasionally get a real chill. The reprints are worth checking out. But...
...for me, the Bronze Age brought the best horror comics. These came in the form of black and white magazines. Because comics are pop culture, some of the best material was contained in Marvel-published magazines that imitated the edgier and more original Warren line of CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA. These magazines were with the hot rod and cycle mags in the convenience store, never with the comics. You had DRACULA LIVES!, HAUNT O' HORROR, TALES O' THE ZOMBIE and others. In later days, you could still hear their echoes against the pages of HEAVY METAL and EPIC.
To get anything this cool (yet thoroughly modern) today, you have to go to the source of all cool stuff ...the internet.
Writer Aaron Weisbrod and a talented roster of artists have formed Golden Goat Studios just to bring us horror, humor and genre comics out of the goodness of their warped little hearts. The stories are updated weekly and feature both Weisbrod's sardonic wit and some really dazzling art.
In YOU OUGHTA KNOW, the Golden Goat boys have put some sex into Lovecraft. Jeff Wellborn and G.W. Fisher depict Great Cthulhu in one of the sickest, scariest ways I've ever seen. After reading this, you'll be a little more careful with one night stands. MOMMA'S BOY is almost a 21st Century EC story by artist Ray Dillon. RUN LIKE HELL allows Weisbrod and artist Leonard O' Grady to build a mood of comical tension. If you're ready to see 80's licensing nostalgia roasted alive (and who isn't?), you'll enjoy Jon Malin's HOW DO YOU SLEEP? with the Commie Smur--...Smorfs! They're Smorfs, not Smurfs. Or if you're in the mood for some old school, Paul Gulacy-style art, you'll enjoy the ninja vs. samurai tale BITTER WINE, illustrated by Shannon Gallant.
Remember these names. They'll be the next wave of superstar comic creators.
ARROWSMITH #1
by Kurt Busiek, Carlos Pacheco
Cliffhanger/Wildstorm (via DC Comics)
reviewed by: Lizzybeth
Kurt Busiek has a talent for series concepts, which gives him a leg up on many of his peers. He manages to create scenarios that put a twist on traditional comics material, but without diverging enough from the formula to frighten away the more mainstream comic readers. It’s been a busy 2003 for Busiek, with the relaunch of ASTRO CITY and now the start of a new project, ARROWSMITH, which has been in the planning stages since 1998. ARROWSMITH is probably his most radical departure from superhero material, which is to say: it’s different enough from MARVELS and ASTRO CITY to be fresh, but not quite original enough to make many waves. Still, what Busiek does, he does well, and ARROWSMITH is off to a promising start.
The alternate universe of ARROWSMITH involves a world where magic and otherworldly creatures live side-by-side with regular humans and technology like the steam engine. History seems to have followed basically the same course; some names have changed, but the song remains the same. Europe has erupted into war after the assassination of a Tyrolian prince in Serbia, while America watches nervously. WWI is augmented this time by wizards, sprites, and flying aero corps, who use tiny dragons to power them through the air without use of machinery. We begin, following some intense battle scenes on the Gaelic/French war front, with a youngster in America named Fletcher Arrowsmith, who watches these corps, and their magical allies, with awe and perhaps some envy. Just when I was deciding that the comic was treating its topic too superficially, there came a bit of startling introspection -- the last page of the comic shows two youngsters, including Arrowsmith, sneaking off to sign up for the army, speaking excitedly of making a difference in the world, followed by a panel showing boys their own age dead on the battlefield. This small emotional punch is what above all else builds my interest for the series.
I’m not getting the kind of excitement from this project that I did from ASTRO CITY’s first few issues, back when I was still interested in superhero deconstructionism, and it doesn’t seem that the general comics community has it either. Busiek is in a different playground here, that of history and myth, and where the two intersect. He’s in Orson Scott Card’s territory of alternate history, Miyazaki’s vision of steam engines and magic spells, and joining David Brin’s “Thor Vs. Captain America” in re-envisioning a world war in terms of necromancy and the interventions of the gods. Brin’s short story concerned the Nazis and their well-documented fascination with the occult, but Busiek is looking to the first Great War. There’s a lot of room for exploration there; America hasn’t mined that period of history, artistically, for quite some time. I’ll wager most readers (and I’ll include me there as well) will be familiar with the actual history of the subject in the most general of terms, enough to recognize the various factions even though Busiek has renamed them, but not enough to dispute his revisionism. The series looks to be, while not entirely original, at least imaginative, with the art to back it up. While I think THE RED STAR beat them to the punch as historical allegories go, Busiek and Pacheco are off to a good start, and there are a lot of interesting places they can go. This is the most interesting series debut I’ve seen in 2003.
RUNAWAYS #4
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Adrian Alphona
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Reviewed by Cormorant
One of the staples of classic adventure stories is the scene where the hero receives a magical weapon or token of some sort to defeat the villain. Perseus got winged sandals, a magical sword, and a polished shield to help him put down Medusa; Bilbo Baggins got a magical sword and ring to take on the orcs in THE HOBBIT; and Luke Skywalker…that kid got a bitchin' lightsaber from the British dude who could whistle in BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI. I like these scenes. You read them or watch them and wonder, "Could I do that kind of stuff if I had magical goodies? Could I be a hero? And more to the point, wouldn't it just be the coolest thing in the world just to have that shit?!" Well, in RUNAWAYS #4, after three issues of our cast of teens being chased and terrorized, the kids finally get their hands on such cool goodies, and lo, it is cool!
Now if you remember, the six leads in RUNAWAYS are just your average group of teens – most of them leading fairly privileged lives – who happen to discover at their parents yearly get-together that said parents in fact belong to some sort of villainous illuminati bent on world domination. The teens juuuuust managed to allay their parents' suspicions that they were on to them, and for the last few issues have been investigating the nature of their parents cultish activities and trying to figure out just what to do about it. The tone reminds me of nothing so much as the suburbia of the 70's and early 80's films of Steven Spielberg, mysterious and exciting, with none of his post-COLOR PURPLE social consciousness evident to bring down the creepy fun.
Ah, but the magical weapons, that's what you want to know about! Well, they're more sci-fi than magical, but sure, we'll cut to the chase…
If you've seen the latest issue's endearingly cute cover, you know one of 'em. The girl's name is Gertrude and the giant lizard she's hugging like Lassie is her new pet velociraptor. In a hilarious scene in issue #3, it was discovered while she and the other kids were poking around a secret room discovered at her house. Turns out the raptor was planned to be a gift from her time-traveling parents once she'd grown up and (presumably) followed in their eeeeeeevil footsteps. That's not quite how things panned out, but you better believe she's keeping it! Later in the issue, another one of the girls discovered that if she took off the pendant her parents warned her never to remove…she's actually got an extraterrestrial heritage that allows her to fly (and more). For a brief moment, these discoveries allow the kids to put behind them the fact that the most trusted adults in their lives are actually villains, and just enjoy the adventurousness of their situation. It's a welcome, upbeat change of pace, and of course, suddenly all the other kids want to go rummaging in their houses for secret rooms and cool goodies. Which is what happens throughout this latest issue.
Amidst all the conspiratorial sneaking about, what keeps me coming back are the kids themselves, a likeable lot with dialogue that compares nicely to early seasons of BUFFY (pre-staleness). Artist Adrian Alphona brings the group to life with a clean-cartooning that emphasizes goofy, teenage expressions. Think of his style as a more exaggerated version of Kevin Maguire's stuff (as on the recent FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE) and you're on the right track. I particularly commend his work in the area of lips – pouting, sneering, or twisting in a scream, they're overlooked by far too many artists these days! What's blows is that Alphona's mildly cartoony style may be dismissed by some folks at a glance because Marvel's Tsunami line is promoted as manga-inspired, and those readers predisposed to dislike manga might make a snap judgment that that's what he's doing and walk away without giving his art a chance. Stupid marketing horseshit has folks thinking that any art more cartoony than Neal Adams is manga. Don't fall for it, my friends. Alphona's no more "manga" than stylists like Mike Mignola or Sam Keith.
Any real problems with the book? Well, that depends on your outlook. If you're the kind of person who can read an issue of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN and say, "Okay, not a lot happened, but I definitely feel I got my money's worth of entertainment," then you'll have no beef with RUNAWAYS. It's a little slow, but every issue is fun, fun, fun. But if you're one of those people who reads an issue of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN and says, "What the fug? Lee and Ditko coulda done all that in two panels!", well…it might not be for you. Me, I'm somewhere in between those two extremes. I'm perfectly fine with five and six issue story arcs as long as I don't see the creators getting self-indulgent. This happens a little too often with ULTIMATE SPIDEY, but so far, I think RUNAWAYS' pacing is just about right. My biggest gripe is just that the coloring's a little "blah," a little too "Vertigo," and the airbrushy color gradations too clumsy. Not really bad, but could be better.
The real problem with RUNAWAYS is that not enough of you are reading it. Here we've got one of the best new titles Marvel's published in years, and what other Tsunami titles are outselling it? Fucking all of them. Mediocre teen drama, SENTINEL, outsells it. Shitty "wants to be John's Carpenter's THE THING," VENOM, outsells it. Oh, and here's the one that kicks me in the nuts: Bill Jemas's teen-drama bastardization of The Avenging Son, NAMOR, outsells it. The only Tsunami book I can't get mad at for outselling it is MYSTIQUE, a pretty slick espionage book that just happens to be written by…yep, Brian Vaughan of RUNAWAYS.
So it's time to make amends. The buzz is building on this book, and I have a feeling it's gonna make a huge leap up the sales charts when the first trade hits, but this issue's a pretty good sampler. Curious about the closest thing Marvel's got to an all-ages title in the HARRY POTTER tradition? Check it out. And if you know any younger teens you wanna introduce to comics? Definitely check it out. And if you're buying NAMOR or VENOM instead? I hear sleeping pills and alcohol is a pretty painless way to go.
