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REVIEW - NIGHT #1-4 from Jester Press
Night #1-4
Review by Dave Baxter, posted February 08, 2008
Words: Troy Hasbrouck
Pencils: Buddy Prince
Inks: Buddy Prince
Colors: John Davis
Price: $2.95 each (#1-3)/$3.95 (#4)
Publisher: Jester Press
Night from Jester Press is one eye-catching offering from the borderline-underground scene. For anyone lucky enough to have spotted one of its classic concept covers from artist Buddy Prince (anyone in NYC or thereabouts, or those who stumbled upon Jester’s booth at a con), they know of its instinctive allure, its irresistable presentation as a candy-colored thing, a physical whimsical comic book . It’s an independent mag that wraps together a small skein of 20th century genre standards including werewolves, vampires, hard-nosed detectives, street gangs, and cosmopolitan villains, and yet mixes them together with such innocent glee, the result can’t help but captivate.
Four issues in, three black-and-white, the fourth making the move to glorious Technicolor, and the book is like a living thing. Writer Troy Hasbrouck and artist Buddy Prince move through adolescence with the first issue, then peak at puberty with #2, before coasting to a smooth and refined adulthood with the double-sized issue #3. What comes in issue #4, then—the beginning of the series’ second story arc and the first to boast a surprisingly spry digital palate—is the wisdom of age, to be sure.
The series begins with Special Agent Voght, a blonde and immortal NYPD vampire-detective specializing in cases of a supernatural bent (but of course), as she hunts a seemingly out-of-control werewolf that spreads its carnage across the city. Said werewolf, a destitute man named David Skinner, is in actuality hunting other werewolves, and he soon finds refuge with a local 80’s fashion disaster...er...I mean street gang, the Reds. But the Reds have a war brewing with blood-thirsty competition the Phreaks. Before you can shout “street fight!” the Phreaks are revealed as linked to the werewolf killings, Voght catches up with Skinner, and a literally “shadowy” mastermind moves to control them all.
So, super: the plot is definitely a mish-mash of pure guilty-pleasure sweetness. Hasbrouck’s pacing is top-notch, moving the story with recognizable but never predictable rhythm. His scripting skills evolve as the series progresses, though throughout it’s wonderfully cheesy and meant to be. It’s not unserious, but it tries for a more classic John Carpenter or Larry Cohen evocation. Hasbrouck’s caption box narrative, in the first two issues, proves overly wrought and ham-fisted, but by the third and fourth books he settles into a steady style, one that, while no less campy, reads solidly so. The dialogue matches the pulp-camp aesthetic, though here Hasbrouck seems on steady ground from the start. The story of Night is the primary factor to merely skip about during the first two issues but then explode high into the inky black sky upon the third. In issue #3, Hasbrouck plain makes this book work, all cylinders firing, all levels leveled. It’s one sweet comic, and should win over anyone undecided from the first two outings.
As for book four, it’s Hasbrouck’s little brainstorming masterpiece: he moves from werewolves to vamps as primary villains, and to mark the occasion (and the title’s move to color) he pulls out a big-big vampire gun. So…Dracula, right? Nope. Hasbrouck smartly avoids tripping over the cliché trope of the good count and brings out Bram Stoker’s historical inspiration instead. And once again, no, not Vlad the Impaler—but Erzsebet Bathory! The lady who bathed in the blood of virgins returns to the modern world to prove she is indeed the vilest, meanest, toughest mother-f*#&@ of a vampire about. It’s a fantastic beginning to a new Night tale, and an issue that’s got me hooked as a fan for life.
Buddy Prince is the boy behind the pretty pictures, a guy who manages to pencil and ink as though Eastman and Laird gone manga. His characters have that TMNT stunted structure to their forms, expressions that are almost exclusively manga-inspired, with layout and composition that combine qualities of both east and west. His art alone, being so much the distinctive 80’s small press thing that it is, will either reel in or cast away readers at first glance. Myself, I found his art charismatic to the extreme, very dynamic, and very enticing. It’s hard to read mainstream comics after a Buddy Prince book, the torsos suddenly too long, postures too languorous, so many mouths not properly angled into leering, protesting shouts. His action is awesome, too, as attests the big throwdown inside issue #3, a 32-page marvel that keeps eyes glued to the very final finale panel.
Even better, his art gets better when swathed in John Davis’ digital coloring. Inside the fourth book, Davis gets to shine as both the new series’ painter dude and also artist/scripter of that issue’s special 8-page back-up tale. The color for the first half of the book is strong, a well-chosen overall design if nothing flashy. The book looks far brighter than one would expect, but oddly that was a concern I had only in afterthought, my actual reading of the issue raising no alarms at all. The second half of the issue, however, is phenomenal: the story moves to a discotheque-style club in full swing, and Davis smartly opts to show the ambiance of pure duo-tone high-glitz glare such a club would offer. I’ve honestly never seen anything quite like it in a comic, the scheme and technique that Davis uses in this section. But it works wonders for the story and it’s a sight I won’t soon forget.
Four issues in and Night is truly looking to hit its stride. It's like watching the birth of a classic, from the very, very ground floor but then quickly, swiftly, up, up, up! I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone cozy and uninterested in anything outside the mainstream, but for everyone else, who enjoys a little haphazard camp with their horror action-adventures, I can’t say enough about how much Night has made me smile the smile of the satisfied, because that’s what good comics made by passionate creators do.
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P.S. - Issue #4 isn’t officially released as of yet, but you can try contacting Troy at http://www.jesterpress.com/ or www.myspace.com/jesterpresscomics and see if he can hit you up with the Convention Special edition of the full ish that I got. He’s a sweetheart. Go hit him.
Biased about Biases - Welcome to the Reactionary Human that Thinks They Think
I'm am officially worked up about this.
Newsweek just posted an article titled "The Secret Haters", subtitled "Some experts argue that even the most politically correct among us may harbor unconscious prejudices against ethnic groups, women, gays and others. Can these dark impulses shape our actions?"
First off: no shit, sherlock, the unconscious mind directing our conscious decisions? No freaking way! Like, that's totally, like, wow - you know? You mean I think things I don't even think? That's way blowing my mind!
Secondly: Anyone with one-and-a-half ounces of self-understanding already figured this literally self-evident "revelation" out sometime during (or shortly after) their college years. "Secret" haters? Hardly. But thanks for mythologizing basic reality for all those who really need to stop mythologizing basic reality just to spice up a concept to sell more magazines. Classy.
But that's not even the bit that's got me riled. Apparently, psychologists developed a test called the Implicit Association Test (IAT), wherein they record - to the millisecond - minute hesitations in sorting words and images into associative grouping. For instance, one person might group the words "light" and "joy" and "happiness" into one group, and "dark" and "horror" and "awful" into another. However, when given images of different sorts of people and/or objects, the unconscious mind hesitates (in frickin' milliseconds, mind you) in ordering them as neatly. This hesitation, according to those psychologists who "brain"stormed this test (I'll grant them "storm", but I dunno about "brain"), reveals biases, and these biases are likley to lead to outbursts of aggression, viloence, or unjust behavior toward those people and objects so biased against.
Of course, this assumes that hesitation to CATEGORIZE...into NEAT LITTLE ASSOCIATIVE PILES...PEOPLE AND LIVING THINGS...and that NOT CATEGORIZING PEOPLE AND LIVING THINGS FAST ENOUGH...means you're BIASED.
Is it just me, or is that the most biased definition of "bias" you've ever heard? Wouldn't it be biased to categorize people sans thought? Three cheers for those unconsciousnesses that hesitate a few extra milliseconds to figure out how they frickin' feel about people. How do I feel about "destruction"? Uh...pretty bad, dude. "Destruction" has a clear-cut definition. How do I feel about "gays"? About "blacks"? About "women"? What, the gender or the sex? A mean average of all individual women I've ever met or my knee-jerk reaction to the collective gender (or sex?) as a whole, to which I shouldn't hold an opinion about at all because to do so would be a bias in its own right? Who are "blacks"? Just dark skinned men and women? How dark? American blacks? African blacks? European blacks? All blacks? Have I even met all the different nationalities of "black" people?
These are just the top-of-my-head questions I have imagining someone handing me a picture of a "black" and telling me to lump it into an associative pile. Actually, my first question (and therefore hesitation) would be: are they serious? I'd doubt the test, I'd doubt what was meant by the picture, by the directive of categorizing, by pretty much everything. Which is GOOD. That's the LACK of bias. That means I don't HAVE a category to toss every "black" into. I hesitate, I don't know this person or people they're showing me in a photo. What am I supposed to think? I don't think anything, or else I'll compare to maybe some I do, but then those aren't the same. Ergo: I hesitate. I can categorize a word without pause. But a living creature? Not so easy. Which...should it not be? Really?
The article does state this opposing argument: "Critics respond that what the test measures is not prejudice at all but simply a lack of familiarity with blacks or whites or lesbians or heroin addicts. They argue further that even if the test is tapping into unconscious fears or animosities, it does not mean that people will actually act on those impulses."
So yes, regarding standpoint theory, who am I, a white straight man, to say where women, blacks, and gays go categorically? Sure, I have to have an opinion, because it's impossible not to, so yes, the unsonscious mind, at the very least, must harbor these opinions. But that's human nature, you can't not judge, you can't not "learn" from experience, from living. But does that mean one "has an opinion"? Self-delusion aside, I have to agree with the critics that this is more due to unfamiliarity than anything else. I don't like shellfish because I've rarely ever eaten then, so I'm unaccustomed. But that's exposure and familiarity pure and simple. I'm "biased" but I'm aware of why, and therefore aware of what this bias is and where the reasoning lay. If I am, then it isn't "secret" or a "dark hidden impulse". Those are out there, sure, but this test doesn't unconditionally test for those and those alone, event though that's the claim.
More importantly: language is not absolute. The reason a man or woman lumps a particluar word or image into a category that's headed by some other word or image, is because they have to define both what they're defining and the definition of the category before they go through with it. When one person says "dark", and means it in a particular way, visualizing and associating very specific moods, feelings, etc. to the word, the person hearing the word likely holds an entire cesspool of opposite associations, meaning we think we've communicated when really we've just heard what we're most accustomed to hearing. Now that in itself is a bias, but it's a bias of literal language, of definition, and not a bias toward the object being defined, just the word. I might feel exactly the same as another person about a book, or a new gadget, but by trying to describe it in a certain way (which makes sense and seems perfectly to the point to me), another might decide I'm saying (through his associations with the words I'm choosing) that we opposites, and that he needs to take a stand and countermand what I've said. This is a purely linguistic issue, not an objective one, though it could take months of mud-slinging at one another (if ever and at all) to figure out we actually THINK and FEEL precisely the same. We just can't communicate this worth a hill of beans.
For example, above I claimed that "destruction" had a clear-cut definition, but...actually it doesn't. What about destruction in video games? In comics and action movies. I love it, love it to pieces. As long as it's perfectly fictional, I revel in it. It's kick-ass. But when real people die horribly or lose their possessions to a fire or a monument is torn down? I feel terrible about those things. But which are we talking about? Are we talking about both? So do I have an option to answer in a way that isn't a lump categorization? No. So is any answer I give an honest or thorough one that can be properly judged? Again, no.
When a psychological exam to test a person's take on specific objects require all people to respond to specific words and directions and what-have-you in exactly the same way, or rather, a test that sets off with the foundational understanding that WE ALL UNDERSTAND WORDS IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY AND IF YOUR FEELINGS ON A WORD ARE DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM YOU'RE BIASED AGAINST THE OBJECT is missing an innate understanding of the human mind entirely.
Even worse, to test the test, they tested nurses who worked with drug addicts - difficult patients to be sure. The test revealed (surprise, surprise) an "unhealthy" bias many nurses held toward the patients. These nurses swore they "cared" for their patients, but were also likely to say they planned a career change soon. This, according to the psychologists, meant they harbored the "secret hatred".
Now, you work with difficult people, you can care, like you care for your 13 year old daughter, but you fucking HATE having to deal with them in their more trying moments. That'd be natural and not at all something the IAT awesomely revealed to the shock of the world. You would stab yourself in both eyeballs if your 13 year old daughter perpetually remained a 13 year old and never progressed or got the #&$^ out the house to leave you to age with a little grace. Wanting an eventual end to nursing difficult people doesn't mean you don't care about them. It means you have limits, some more than others. When you care for someone in their worst moments, you gain biases agianst them. Not "secret hatred", but simple, everyday bias that you deal with and conquer and care for the person while also, with you bias, learning about the extremes of human behavior and what you yourself can handle and deal with.
For example, here's an outrageous paragraph from the article:
"That in itself may not be shocking, but here's where it gets interesting. The psychologists then asked all these nurses about their career plans, specifically whether they planned on sticking with the substance abuse field or switching to another kind of nursing. When they crunched all the data, their findings were strong and unambiguous: as reported in the journal Psychological Science, nurses with an unconscious bias against addicts were much more likely to be planning a career change within the year, regardless of their professed feelings for their unfortunate clients. What's more, the stress of working with difficult clients was not in itself driving people away; they could tolerate the workaday stress. It was only the hidden animosity that was causing these dedicated workers to abandon their own do-gooder commitments."
I like that. "The stress of working with difficult clients was not itself driving people away...". This is derived from what exactly? From "no" and "where", that's what. "It was only the hidden animosity causing these dedicated workers to abandon their own do-gooder commitments." The worst is, that's not wrong, it's just not right. Yes, the biases do drive them away. The biases are MADE DIRECTLY DUE TO THE STRESS OF WORKING WITH DIFFICULT CLIENTS. It's blaming the effect and not the cause. The "hidden animosity" (nice wc there, by the way, Mr. article writer man, nice and objective) is a thing NATURALLY culled from having to deal with the stress of the situation. We have a bad experience or series of them - BAM! Instant bias. You get shit service at a restaurant, you dislike that restaurant, you dislike the whole CHAIN, likely. It happens again, you want it closed down, like, yesterday, because you're offended. You now have a bias. The bias isn't magically gestated from nothing. It isn't taught as a child like a lesson plan. It's learned from EACH INDIVIDUAL'S PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND ABILITIES (to cope, some stronger and more resistant than others).
The idea that caring for others and suffering for it = growing a bias that disallows you from continuing is "harboring hidden animosity" that causes "workers to abandon their own do-gooder commitments" being a problem is ludicrous. Shitty people, however troubled, give people shit, then those people who take the shit are allowed to fizzle and eventually "abandon" their "do-gooder" ways, yes, of course they are. We don't need to stamp out the fucking "hidden animosities". They're considering a career change, that means they're, at least on some level, AWARE of how they feel. It's NOT outright animosity, and so to ask if they harbor "hidden animosity", they should rightly say "no". They don't. They harbor a not-at-all-hidden, growing weariness. This could crest and break into something that resembles animosity, but it isn't, in any way, the same thing.
Gah, this is the most biased take on biases I have ever encountered. It's small minded, reeks of cheap theatrical language and presentation, and simply isn't logical, doesn't take any of psychology's actual minutiae into account, and is therefore, not psychology. It's armchair, at best.
Oh, the best part of the article: "The test has sparked a heated controversy among both psychologists and legal scholars, some of whom are arguing for a radical rethinking of antidiscrimination law to accommodate such hidden prejudice. Stereotypes are as robust as ever, they say, and more insidious because they are not overt." Legal scholars and psychologists are already rallying for how they can ^&ck everyone with the law just for "harboring unconscious discrimination".
As Oingo Boingo said, referencing the classic Orwell novel: "WAKE UP, IT'S 1984! WAKE UP, BUT WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE...." Seriously, though, this is scary policing-the-subconscious desires-of-citizens shit here. It's looking bad for humanity as humans.
REVIEW - CHUMBLE SPUZZ GN by Ethan Nicolle
Chumble Spuzz GN
Review by Dave Baxter, posted February 10, 2008
Words: Ethan Nicolle
Pencils: Ethan Nicolle
Inks: Ethan Nicolle
Title: "Kill the Devil" and "Salmonella"
Price: $10.95
Publisher: SLG Publishing
The Weevil was Ethan Nicolle’s first foray into the highlands of small press country. A good book, a big book, and beautiful, definitely, but not a critical darling, nor a thing that forced industry pros to stand and take note. The Weevil , for all intents and purposes, was a commercial fragment grenade, and could have sent the poor artist into navel-gazing recovery ad infinitum, but instead (thank God), it simply sent him into “&*$ this” mode, which fueled the generation of a gargantuan second graphic novel, a thing crafted with complete devil-may-care abandon, a commensurate pouring out of the hodgepodge that passes for Nicolle’s (seriously twisted) mind, unfettered onto paper. The result, then, is this: the funniest comic book material I have ever read, bar not one past none.
Funnier than Boneyard, funnier than the early issues of Bone; similar to, yes, but funnier still than Ren & Stimpy or South Park; funnier than the latest Will Ferrell or Steve Carell flick; it’s funnier than anything I can think of, actually. Funnier than The Simpsons. Funnier than Family Guy, Futurama, King of the Hill. How am I gauging this? Number of times I laughed, literally, out loud—and I was at work when I read this, supposedly slaving and not reading, and therefore trying very, very hard not to laugh. But I laughed, again and again, having to duck my head and pretend I was suffering from whooping cough disease, or something. Honestly, I wasn’t paying that much attention to the fate of my career. I was enjoying myself far too much.
Chumble Spuzz is the title of this irresistible job-killing treat, a nonsense phrase Nicolle culled from a Calvin and Hobbes strip, and which he puts to wondrous use here. Starring two bizarre little redneck creatures named Gunther and Klem, oh they of the Sam Kieth bucked-tooth grill, the main story begins when the two hicksters win a blue ribbon pig at their local country fair, only to discover that said pig is possessed by the dark lord Satan himself. Horrified, they recruit the passion-filled (read: crazed) Revered Mofo (a cross between a Blaxploitation action hero and a televangelist) along with a gung-ho two-man army corps (no, you read that right, only two) to enter Hell itself and…KILL THE DEVIL! Chumble kicks right off, then, without hesitation, into extraordinarily hysterical waters. It doesn’t so much “poke fun at” as it stabs red hot lances through religious zealotry, unjustifiable biases, the odder parts of middle-American mentality, eating disorders, blood drives, greed, fear of disease, gluttony, the list goes on, and on, and on. The breadth and depth of Chumble Spuzz ’s subject matter is comparable only to the very best of modern humorists, measuring in flavor and approach beyond the heights of absolutely anything and everything ever seen on Comedy Central or the Cartoon Network. Can't quite buy that? Check out the 22-page free preview .
See what I mean?
The rhythm from the get-go is smooth and arguably faultless, the humor hitting again and again at a speed astonishing to experience, especially as it never grows stale. Nicolle’s instincts as a humorist are spot on, and “Kill the Devil” moves with all the natural grace of a live stand-up show, its energy and the placement of the entertainer’s elements coming and going as they should, seemingly with the flow of the audience’s own.
Visually, Nicolle owes a lot to mainstream animation, both Disney-style and the more popular cutting-edge stuff, a little Genndy Tartakovsky and John K., as well as Matt Groening and Doug TenNapel. It’s such a perfect commingling of well-loved aesthetics that the humor turns infallible, allowing for a recognizable array of expression and over-the-top scenarios. And yet the pages of Chumble Spuzz make fun of the very arena they sit so snugly within, the animation and the potty humor, the sarcasm and the punch lines, the classic send-ups, set-ups, and droll or dry witticisms—they’re all here, and they’re exquisitely executed, flawlessly timed, meticulously rendered, and they’re wonderfully self-aware of their own limitations, tawdriness, and yuk-yuk shtick-i-ness. Which magically elevates the entire work to something rare: a funny thing funny for being a funny thing, or, in other words, it’s funny and so sublimely so, that it’s practically art.
Even after the unforgettable “Kill the Devil” storyline concludes, Nicolle treats fans to a slightly smaller (though still giant-sized) second round, that, not surprisingly, as it was drafted after the completion of KtD, surpasses the lead story in every way—no small feat if everything I’m raving about is true (and it is). “Salmonella” is comic infinity-K (that’s karat, or grand, I suppose, either-or, as it’s infinite, and therefore equal). A quick fairy-tale prologue with a guest-appearance by the Keebler Elf and the Cookie Monster (who both suffer wry, dead-on commentary under Nicolle’s pen) and the we’re off for the wrongest, coolest, and, in my opinion, until someone proves otherwise, un-toppable and most unstoppable comedic tale I’ve ever laid my eyes and grey matter to rest upon (wait’ll you see the “chug, chicken, chug” scene—it’s not what you think it is, but what it is, is damn funny).
Chumble Spuzz, ultimately, is…is…what’s a word that means “bestest thing ever and ever and ever?” I’d settle for a word that meant “Sweet Mary Jay-zuz, but Imma in love .” Since I got nothin' for either of those, I’ll have to settle for “unparalleled”. Man…that word seems so small now. I’ve never actually used that word in a review before, but next to the actual book of Chumble Spuzz, it seems so...piddling. Chumble Spuzz is amazing. I don’t think anyone who’s read it has walked away believing otherwise. That makes it “unanimous” to boot. This is one sweet comic sent from the pearly gates above, to show us all how to kick Satan’s a$$ and laugh the whole while doing it.
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To order a copy of Chumble Spuzz of your very own, head over to Amazon or the SLG Website.
And before you do that, read the free 22-page preview and/or check out the book's rather awesome video trailer. As the good Reverend Mofo says: "sweet manna from heaven!"
REVIEW - The Adventures of the Imagination of Periphery Stowe
The Adventures of the Imagination of Periphery Stowe is officially finisico by moi, the book closed, waiting to be opened again, calling itself non-existent, apparently, until such a time as I return to its prologue (which I might, one day, for further enlightenment).
So what is "The Adventures of the Imagination of Periphery Stowe", or, as the book's spine mercifully shortens it to: "Periphery Stowe"?
It's a self-published novel, a first by young aspiring dude named Josh Wagner. I stumbled across his Myspace page due to my usual comic book reviewing, and the fact that he had a self-engineered four-color wonder (soon to be professionally published by Ape Entertainment) called Fiction Clemens (see the very bottom-most below). When I got my hands on an advanced PDF copy of Fic, I loved the little bastard, through and through. Furthermore, I've got my own first novel soon to be self-published, so I was curiouser than most to see what some other semi-pro's first literary offering might be like.
So I went over to http://www.lulu.com/ and ordered myself a copy of the hardcover (oh, come on, none of us are that broke). Due to my hour and a half commute to work via city bus every day, I plowed through the 250 pages in no time flat (four days, reading it on the bus alone). So how was it?
First off, the premise: Periphery Stowe is the man behind "Peripheration", a technique used to remove the mind from the body, then to replace it in a way that rejeuvenates and, for all intents and purposes, offers eternal youth. This of course leads to the deification of Stowe, plus addiction on the common people's part, and, horrifically, when Stowe slips into a near-death state during his latest Peripheriation, a legion of youth-thristy unnaturally aging codgers that cry for the return of their savior and artificial longevity, as the entire process suddenly turns as dormant and ineffective as its founder.
Enter: Riggs, the "boy who wasn't afraid of one single thing", and a boy charged with the task of delivering a mysterious book that supposedly contains all the history of the everything in existence to the one man who wants nothing to do with it. Vortexes and inter-dimensional hijinks ensue, filled with wonderfully bizarre yet fully realized charatcers, and a plot about as head-spinning as head-spinning gets while, miraculously, managing to make complete and perfect sense before the last page is turned.
Overall - Periphery was wonderful, the writing marvelous and far beyond anything normally found...well...anywhere. The plot proves followable, for all its surface-level insanity (at least, I think I followed it, which may as good as it gets, following another person's writing - the belief that one "got it" because we must have gotten something though god only knows what). There's only one ongoing subplot between two characters - a halucination of Riggs named Sylvia, given physical manifestation - and her relation to Riggs-as-son as she somehow also spontaneously sprouts a life history and Riggs seems to become a surrogate in said history - yeah, no, that one part is nutso confusing, and remains obscure to the bitter end, but it's a small little piece and hardly necessary) but beyond this, the book gift-wraps itself, bow and all, quite nicely.
It reads like an early work, like a novel that gets published after a writer makes it big and unearths his past oeuvre, wherein his entire style and voice can obviously be seen in budding form, if not yet bloomed, not yet a full-on pollinating pisser of a plant. It's rough in areas, but the book itself is very much an outside-the-box thing, and therefore one can do little more than applaud how coherent and tight the final result is, no matter how suspect I am that the author's future works will prove far better.
The prologue is perhaps the hardest part of the entire piece, as the author's style, voice, and, frankly, whacked-out story are all thrown uncermoniously at the reader, no holds barred, which will leave some struggling to situate themselves within. I found it took a good ten pages before I was comfrotable, before the words slipped by effortlessly and I was "in", snug as a bug, along for the ride and needing to struggle not one jot more. Looking back, I think this is due to the opening of the book being a set-up, a thing that allows for the conceit/reveal at the end to "work" as the high-concept crazy thing that it is. But of course, at the beginning, with no understanding of the meat of the work or precisely what the beginning is meant to insinuate, it impacts as something burdensome. However, it's fucking fantastic to look back upon once the book is over and done, so.... Is there a better way to approach such beginnings? Yes. Always. But this works, albeit at the sacrifice of a smooth opening.
-STYLE: Awesome description with a veritable galaxy of witticisms throughout. The joy is that the wit never grows stale, which is the downfall of most writers who pen by perpetual smirk. There's a heavy dose of sincerity and sympathy that tails all the humor, and this, I think, is perhaps Wagner's greatest strength as showcased in "Periphery". The ability to forever see the humor inherent in both situation and narration alike, but also the hand-in-hand humanity, which puts him skirting the "Mark Twain" camp of humorists, which is phenomenal.
That said, the weakest link is action, and not bif bam pow action, but simple description of action, which often gets obscured by the humor and the wordplay. The second half of Periphery cleans itself up much better than the first, and perhaps this was merely the growth of the writer as he went (this being his first, after all). The descriptions, as I've mentioned, are expertly handled, and more often than not original in approach and execution, but when such poetry is combined with a minimal description of simple action, the two combine to obscure a lot of what's actually required understanding of basic character movements. The more grandiose action sequences (some seriously ingenious moments with a map that represents the world and how the characters' interacting with the map alter the world accordingly - unbelievably well told!) falls under Wagner's poetic purview, and so work brilliantly, but the small character actions within often plumb fall between the cracks.
The dialogue is perfect for the story, not at all realistic, but more a part of a hyper-real Dr.-Seuss-writes-No-Exit whimsical heavy-philosophical flavor.
CONTENT: The most subjective part, though few rarely admit to it (style really can be considered with greater objectivity, but not EVER is content considered thusly, because we let our guard down, thinking it's the easy part to critique, and wind up whining about the silliest shit).
I highly enjoyed the story inside "Periphery". I'd never write anything so thoroughly whimsical myself, but that didn't detract an ounce from the joy. Wagner is careful to give every small piece its own life, understanding, explanation, and exploration, so that I held little fear the story would collapse upon its own wildness. Usually, books of this tenor and type are notoriously inexplicable as a whole, which is why I avoid them (I can't stand style over substance, the latter works of David Lynch-esque plotless, self-aggrandizing artsy crap). I need a STORY. I need CHARACTERS and a goddamed PLOT. That ENDS (I have a thing about endings - I can't start a series until the end has been published. I NEED an end or I just can't do it). Even when the near-ending of "Periphery" begins to suggest a sort of purely cyclical narrative, I be kepting the faith. There was too much LOGIC going running about Periphery's pages to fizzle at the end with a cop out. And Wagner doesn't disappoint. It's not an easy ending to decipher, but it's not impossible or even improbable.
The philosophy (and there's a lot of it, mostly pseudo-such, as it's made fun of in a way that hints at Wagner's adoration of it, though he remains staunchly cynical as to its general practice and use) was handled with imagination and yet an honest (perhaps TOO honest) grasp of its intricacies. It was fun, if somewhat overpowering at times, sometimes taking the place of writerly things I wanted more of (sometimes I wanted the book to delve into something else, anything else). There were a smattering of moments when Periphery's die-hard grip on philosophy and pseudo-philosophy had me feeling a touch uneasy, a feeling I get PRECISELY whenever pseudo-philosophy is used in super-hero comics to make them "deep". For instance: Daredevil, The Man Without Fear, in caption-box narrative is explored as a man who fears "nothing" and therefore is pitted against some sort of "nothing" powered enemy, or the fear of nothing means he fears losing his love, life, friends, etc. (ultimately having nothing). Or when his lack of fear must = lack of desire. It's not an unfound philosophy, but of course, the phrase in the comic isn't meant so literally, and so the whole exercise hits kind of false. However, in "Periphery", it IS meant literally, and so it works. Nevertheless, to use such logic as sincere story/plot movement, skirts the edge of this kind of ultimately shallow, overly contrived character motivation vs more profound versions thereof. Again, my final verdict is that it works and works well in Periphery, but I can definitely see many a story where such logic loops would come across as frustrating, the author justifying the oddest things with clever but not concretely buyable explanations.
Rounding out the experience is gorgeous and heavily detailed illustrations by one Freedom Drudge (a pseudonym, presumably, maybe?). Intriguing name aside, his full-color cover design for the softcover edition is wonderfully versatile, the far calmer slipcase for the hardcover no less appealing for its lack of density (it's the version I bought, and I love its nearly all-white background, the center of the softcover's illo squeezing through). Drudge also manages spot art for every chapter's beginning, a collage/border that's every bit as multifaceted as the cover. His technique seems a blend of underground comix aesthetics (a la Robert Crumb, Fletcher Hanks, and Vaughn Bode) mixed with a surprisingly more high-art line as I'd expect from a regular New Yorker contributor. My only complaint: just a cover and a few headers? That's it? That's all the Drudge we get? Wagner's a cheapskate, no mistake, and he missed the bus by a mile not shelling out for a few full-pagers at the very least. But I'll relent: word is he and Drudge plan to pen a Graphic Novel someday soon, so that should shift the balance and even the score.
MY CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH: Periphery is unforgettable, and mostly due to good things. Wagner was able to go sky-high and beyond with a capricious plot and yet maintain an honesty to his fantastical, utterly unreal characters, as well as an intellect to his seemingly unstructured plot. To be honest, it's everything I've ever wanted out of a complexly layered tale, and yet it's not audacious enough for the art crowd and not simple enough for the lay, which = self-publishing. I also have a sneaking suspicion that most folks aren't actually logical enough to follow a story as indebted to logic, and yet not at all structured, as Periphery. For most, logic must equate with routine, like the memorization of multiplication tables. By memorizing the answers, and being able to recognize them on sight, they boast of "intelligence". But hand them a mathematical something that has nothing to do with multiplication tables, and they'll deem it "illogical". Science doesn't actually work like that, and baby, neither does writing. Wagner's dropped an algorithm into a world of multiplication-table reciting addicts. So, whoo...good luck with that Mr. Wagner. For what it's worth, I think it was worth it.
And be sure to check out Wagner's latest work, a three-issue comic book mini-seires published through:
Called:
REVIEW: Only in Whispers #1 - New horror anthology from Free Lunch Comics
Only in Whispers #1
Review by Dave Baxter, posted February 04, 2008
Words: Steve Kanaras and Andrew Pollock
Art: Matt Ryan, Stephanie O’Donnell, Anthony Summey, and Andrew Pollock
Publisher: Free Lunch Comics
Price: $3.95
Release Date: Now! And Forever!
With a theme of supernatural and sorcery-laden tales, Free Lunch Comics publisher Steve Kanaras pens a trio of dark-tinted tales, collaborating with a veritable showcase of up-and-coming small press artists, to produce a fat first issue to a new anthology which includes a short prose story (to spotlight Kanaras’ literary chops) and, additionally, the first chapter of a new stand-alone Witchhound serial written and drawn by the inimitable Andrew Pollock. It’s a noteworthy launch, if oddly narrow in subject matter. Let’s take a look-see at the stories as they’re offered:
After a one page I-am-your-host introduction a la The Crypt Keeper (a thing that’s become compulsive with anthologies of this sort), the book opens with a story titled Entangled by Kanaras and artist/Free Lunch Comics president Matt Ryan , a modern update on the classic “don’t take things from a witch’s garden” Rapunzel scenario. A luckless writer finds a journal written in blood, which she whisks away from her neighbor’s backyard, pouncing on an opportunity to scope the item’s history and write a non-fiction book of serious cash value. But the keeper of the journal is far from approving, and what follows is a truly horrific revenge tale. Perhaps the most Creepshow-like in make, Entangled is one of the strongest of the anthology, with dynamic art by Ryan that proves more than effective when the final page of horror comes a-callin’.
A three page short prose story follows, written by Kanaras, titled The Quiet Wager. The wordsmithery here is surprisingly polished—an absolute rarity to find in an otherwise comic book script scrivener. Nearly every anthology out there boasts a short prose piece or two, and nearly every one of them proves teeth-grindingly painful to read, but not so for Kanaras’ proffering. TQW follows an inordinately odd set-up of two sorcerers (I think they're sorcerers), one young and learning, one older and entrenched, and an unspoken wager they hold with each other over the younger sorcerer’s eventual fate and fortune in love. At least, as mentioned above, I think that’s what the story’s about. As much as I was able to enjoy Kanaras’ style, the coherency of his plot was decidedly lacking, the story difficult to grasp in full. Even with multiple readings (and it’s quite short, allowing for an easy repeat if required), I couldn’t quite follow the details, or, if I did follow the details, the details seemed arbitrarily arranged and not entirely fitting to the subject matter. Still, it’s a story that’s left an indelible impression, and one I can’t stop thinking upon or trying to figure out in full. So: Clarity = poor. Intrigue = extremely high.
Next up is One Nibble at a Time by Kanaras and Stephanie O’Donnell. A man dabbles in sorcery to win the heart an undying infatuation, only to fall into a bizarre pickle of a situation: the love of his life and the demon that makes it all happen demand his time and affections in equal measure! And of course, when a demon is your conflict of interest, love doesn’t conquer all! Nibble is a sweetly conceived piece, with a demon awesome in its everyday grotesque lewdness as sketched by O’Donnell, though the piece’s tacked-on framing sequences cause the end to fall far flatter than it should. The meat of the matter, however, is tasty stuff.
The Conscript by Kanaras and Anthony Summey hits fourth of five, and might be the story that spawned this issue’s gorgeous cover by Phil Hester, though if it is, the event on the cover won’t happen until the story continues on to its next installment. However, there’s no “to be continued” at the end of this one, but the story doesn’t come to any sort of satisfying end, and indeed the “arc” of this tale is one hardly worth telling on its own, seeming to go nowhere in particular and end capriciously. If it wasn’t for the fact that I caught onto the character on the cover to (possibly) mirror the main character within Conscript, I would have had to call this tale a complete failure. As it stands however, if it is only a beginning to a longer, continuing epic, perhaps it holds merit.
The story: a warlock circa 1776, by bewitching the son of a prominent German aristocrat, secures passage to the New World, but not before leaving a “gift” behind for the man’s family. An interesting and obviously researched premise, the story unfortunately meanders in odd sequences of unnecessary dialogue between unimportant supporting staff before simply trotting to a close, no real character or understanding of the point or purpose of the piece understood or even hinted at. The art by Summey is clean and expertly detailed, but it’ll take future installments (if any!) to bring about a final judgment. On its own, this was plain old vanilla WTF territory.
Closing the first issue, then, and saving the day from the oddity of The Conscript, comes Anthony Pollock’s The Wailing, a first chapter to a new Witchhound adventure. Pollock’s art is gloriously dark, gothic, and nearly woodblock in its precision; definitely the strongest entry within Only in Whispers #1. Having secured a short run of his creation online (http://www.wickedsmash.com/), Pollock brings his cultured skills to a multi-parter pitting Witchhound against a banshee and all the wonderful Hellboy-esque action this entails. It’s only the first chapter, but it alone will have me back for OiW #2.
Final verdict? Good stories and good art, but while Kanaras is no slouch in the scripting department (and a damn fine prose penner to boot!), his stories seem far too narrowly focused on witchcraft and sorcery, and for an anthology that’s supposedly about the supernatural as a general field of play, I hope for a much broader scope in future issues to come. Stories that push the boundaries, in subject and style, but stories that also maintain the quality of this first issue’s entries.
A solid, strong start, certainly nothing tired here, which is the downfall of most anthologies. But it’ll need more and even stronger entries to keep issue #1’s momentum a-chuggin’. There’s little limit where the supernatural is concerned, and if Kanaras and Co. can get into the sheer depth available, Only in Whispers will prove a flawless flagship title for Free Lunch Comics’ new publishing direction.
REVIEW: Gene Simmons' Zipper #3 by Children of the Grave's Waltz and Maloney
Gene Simmons Zipper #3
Review by Dave Baxter, posted February 03, 2008
Words: Tom Waltz
Pencils: Casey Maloney
Inks: Marc Rueda
Colors: Dusty Yee
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Price: $3.99
If I had to choose one word to describe Zipper —a new retro sci-fi 80’s adventure starring an inter-dimensional alien in leather and chains and, yes, zippers—that word would be “engaging”.
This is a book that can’t help but draw you in, into its world of classic Terminator come-with-me-if-you-want-to-live action and decidedly intelligent characterizations. Zipper is a stranger in a strange land, a being known as “Denizen Xeng Ral”, whose dimension-hopping safety suit just happens to look like something out of an underground S&M club. He’s a runaway from a perfect, “Uni-Mind” type collective, a group that simply cannot stand one of their own (one of themselves ) to do what they flat out won’t. So Zipper flees to Earth, to stake out his independence, and encounters a small-time drug dealer (Ronnie J) alongside the lady cop (Officer Miki) that’s always close behind. Zipper’s very presence endangers his human cohorts, however, and so Denizen Ral moves to evade those his “own selves” have dispatched to bring him back, while also discovering life and thought outside of his one-mind home culture.
The first two issues of Zipper were huge surprises: they were brilliantly conceived, skillfully paced, the dialogue completely believable whether lines from an alien being, a disgruntled street kid, or a smart mouthed cop. Mixing in weighty themes such as community vs. independence, morality vs. necessity, with dashes of critique on media culture, fiction tropes, and more, alongside grisly blood-soaked action and intense high-concept sci-fi conceits, Tom Waltz makes it clear from the get-go that he’s brought his “A” game to Zipper . But issue #3 is where the magic really sparks, the cards fall into place, your choice of metaphor here: four hunters sent from Xeng Ral’s dimension at last attack, and everyone is caught up in high-flying battle, and it is one goddamn humdinger of a throwdown.
I knew Waltz could pen clean dialogue, and overall, I knew that he could set-up detailed activity within a broader range of action to flesh out the characters (see Children of the Grave GN for prime example). But here he outdoes himself, moving from blow to breathtaking blow in flawless step, from moment to moment with believable flow, with flawless continuity of action and consequence, and, as always, his characters and their motivations in full command throughout. Even Waltz’s dangerously poor-choice subplot of a prestigious militant religious wing (inspired by Scientology, no doubt) moving to make war against the coming of the first true alien—possibly a poor pick on Waltz’s part due to the subject matter’s overuse and general unemotional and therefore unsympathetic sector—kicks into high gear here, and proves, shockingly, to be as captivating as the rest of it, due to Waltz’s fine-tuned ability to craft even such unlikable and unapproachable characters as nevertheless authentic, and therefore, frankly, terrifying.
Waltz is accompanied by Children of the Grave cohort Casey Maloney, who pulls penciling duties alongside inker Marc Rueda and colorist Dusty Yee. The trio allow the book an effortless feel, as though, even if only at issue #3, it's long ago hit “its stride", sweetly barreling forward with long-ago gained momentum. Maloney’s somewhat liquid lines don’t, when the action is absent, seem like they’ll do justice to the violence when it inevitably comes (and Zipper is a story where you know violence is forever a-comin’!). But his battle sequence this ish shut the mouths of every would-be critic to think thus: there’s a double-page splash here that I will have as a poster! Maloney is tremendous with the subtleties, and now he’s gone and shown he's got the chops to display jaw-dropping action sequences. If he never manages a book as good as this issue again, allow me to say: bra-freakin’-vo, Mr. Maloney. Well done. Good show. Good show.
Three issues down, the story moving into unputdownable territory; Zipper is starting to worm its way into my psyche as one of those “cult” favorites. One of those Jim Shooter or Steven Grant books that will forever be remembered as the very best, by those who bother to notice it at all. Can’t recommend this book enough. It is indeed one of the best on the shelves currently. Most of you are likely waiting for the trade on this one, and if you are, please remember to pick the trade up! I get the feeling that this one will read even better collected as a single package like that, which gives my heart palpitations just thinking about it (an even better Zipper?!? Be still my beating…or, well, no, don’t be still, but…you get the idea…).
REVIEW: BIRTH GN by Michael S. Bracco a Prelude to "NOVO"
Birth GN (ADVANCE)
Review by Dave Baxter, posted January 31, 2008
Words: Michael S. Bracco
Art: Michael S. Bracco
Publisher: Alterna Comics
Price: 9.95
It’s been a long time since an original graphic novel served as an extended prelude to an upcoming ongoing. I fondly recall Coyote, Fallen Angels, or Jerry Ordway’s 1994 The Power of Shazam. All were brilliant stand-alone tales, and all would have performed too-odd, too-awkward first issues or opening story arcs. They were overlong threads that, while introductions, weren’t much in the way of honest beginnings, not more than they were what I’d call openings. They stood alone, but weren’t an end in and of themselves. Birth, by newcomer Michael S. Bracco, is the first GN in a long while to fit this bill, offering up a tale of spot-on mythological sci-fi/fantasy status, whose grandeur marks it something more than mere character origin (though it’s that as well). It’s also an otherworldly universe-building blueprint, one necessary to move into the upcoming series from Bracco and Alterna, Novo.
Birth opens on a primordial Earth-like planet, where two dominant species, the Aquans and the Terans - the sea and the land mammals, respectively - are engaged in constant war with each other. But each species bears a remarkable flaw besides: the Aquan women
die at childbirth, unequivocally; the Teran men, then, in counterpoint, die to complete conception, literally giving their hearts to the women that carry their unborn child. As time goes on, and the imbalance on either side grows, a crisis point is reached, and the unthinkable is considered as resolution.
That’s the beginning and the beginning of the middle, though if you want to know more, well, you’re just going to have to pick up the book and discover the final fascinating fate of these species for yourself. I can guarantee: it’s not quite what you think it’ll be. Bracco scripts the story like heart-pumping pagan scripture, like something religious, though nothing so dry as the more contemporary holy books, but more something from the chthonic depths of Greek epics, Babylonian epics, or beyond, something tribal and revered. The movements of the story are huge, yet the focus always singular, on a particular player or two, so that the through-line reads like Peter David’s Atlantis Chronicles or Jack Kirby’s Fourth World: something wholly larger than life and yet not entirely unlike it.
Hardly a spoken line of dialogue is uttered, as Bracco relies largely on caption box narrative to drive the plot, like a rousing timpani beat, to an inevitable crescendo-conclusion. The pacing is subtle, but swift, the events momentous although subdued. Think of Hellboy by way of Aquaman and you’ll be close, but even then, only half a cigar. The other half?
Bracco’s use of sparse but considered text alongside large paneled compositions to manage maximum impact brings to mind the truest Mad Libs insert-titles-here summation of Birth: in both art and tone Bracco is Hellboy by way of Aquaman as penned by Dr. Seuss. And that is something worth reading, tu est d’accord, n’est-ce pas? The art wields the same snaking, wild brushstroke of the inimitable good Doctor., as well as the thicker, blacker overlay of Mignola, with a tale as supernatural and heady as it is simple and nearly child-like. It’s a marvelous balancing act, and Bracco pulls it off as though born to it.
Birth is a memorable stand-alone epic. It’s a book that can be cherished as a singular read, devoured in one sitting, nothing necessary to come beyond. But for those won over and willing as me, it leads into the upcoming series Novo , Bracco’s first serial chronicling…well…but that would be telling. Read Birth first. Then you’ll want more, believe me. No matter how much you don’t want yet another comic to add to your pull list, you’ll be wanting whatever Bracco cooks up to spin out on a plate for us hungry hungry hippos. Satisfying, filling, more to come. Eats don’t get better than this.
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Birth can be ordered through your favorite comic shop with the Diamond Code: DEC07 3331.
Or, alternately, you can go to Wowio.com and download the whole thing for free. Yeah. How’s them apples!