Best comics of 2010: No. 5: Chew

Another one that eluded me at first. Hence its presence on the 2010 list, not the 2009.
CHEW is about a cibopath. For those not "in the know" that means that Detective Tony Chu gets psychic impressions from every food he eats.
Except beets.
As the series begins, he's working vice in Philly. His brother's an ex TV chef who had a psychotic episode on the air concerning the "chicken conspiracy" (more on that below).
While on stakeout, Tony and his partner John Colby observe Tony's  brother on infra-red. He's packing. Not heat, but meat. Turns out chicken has been made illegal due to a bird flu epidemic, and the FDA now has more power than the FBI. As a result of this, there's a huge bootleg traffic in chicken parts.
Well, that's a summary of the first 6 pages of issue 1.
After a preview in The Walking Dead no. 61, the book took off. It remains one of the few books to demand any sort of coin on the back issue market, despite numerous reprints and a couple very tasteful (sorry) TPBs. 
(House ad from Walking Dead No. 60)

Ahem. Back to issue 1.
Tony and Colby are having lunch, when Tony's gift/curse reveals that one of the sous chefs is a serial killer who eats his victims and cooks with them, serving the results to restaurant customers.  They confront him. Colby gets a hatchet upside his head for his trouble.
At the end of issue, Chu becomes an FDA agent. He works on cracking the conspiracy behind the bird flu scandal. Colby becomes his reluctant partner, following a facial reconstruction that leaves him looking like a poor man's Terminator.
As the story twists the readers into abstract sculptures, Tony finds a girlfriend, a food critic whose reviews are so well written that they make people taste the food.
It's also revealed that Chu is one of three cibopaths.
Who are the others?
What is happening with the mysterious octopus-pineapple-chicken plant thing in issue 6?
It might seem like this facile device would wear out in short order. After all, the bit only works if you keep putting food with criminal ties of some kind on the protagonist's plate.
Surprisingly, writer John Layman and artist Rob guillory manage to keep it fresh (there's really no way to avoid food puns on  this one, so let's just muddle through, shall we?).
The book has been optioned for a TV series. The production company is the one responsible for The Walking Dead show on AMC, which is quite good, so I have hopes that the material will translate successfully.

The comic's writing is action-driven, but not the expense of intelligence. A book based on an idea this wild could be terminally stupid. This is not. There's a delightful balance of humor, empathy and the macabre.
Not so surprising when you think about it. Some of the best horror stories are also comedies.  Perhaps instead of whistling by the graveyard, we ought to chuckle.



As with Meta4, kudos to Image for putting out such an unusual and delightful book. It's also to their credit that these books have such different styles and, one presumes, different core audiences. But then, I'm reading both, so possibly not so different.
Perhaps the difference, if there is one, is in the core readership for each book. People who read Meta4 might be more willing to give CHEW a chance than vice versa, akin to Clockwork Orange fans being more accepting of Singin' in the Rain than the reverse.
I hope the pop culture references in CHEW don't wear thin over the years. I'd like to see this book become one of those comics that is recommended for decades.
Hm. Maybe this cover really is timeless at that.

Tomorrow: Best of 2010, no. 4: it burns!

Top 10 Comics of 2009: #1

The whole notion of "best" is spurious. Best according to whom? In what way?
Rather than give myself fits trying to define the undefinable, I decided to go with the practical. These are the works I like the best, the works that take greatest advantage of the possibilities of integrating text and image, the ones I'd likely to re-read over the years (I considered putting the end of 100 Bullets on the list, but it was crowded out by Bonds).
Simple. Clean. I can live with it.
To recap the top 10, then:
10. ECHO
9. Lone Ranger #18
8. Black Jack Book 3 hardcover
7. Brave and the Bold #29
6. Sweet Tooth
5. Bonds #3
4. Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?
3. Sandman: The Dream Hunters
2. The Unwritten
And the #1 comic of 2009:

Planetary #27!
Part superhero, part SF pastiche (past issues have incorporated characters representing Doc Savage and the Fantastic Four, and have joyfully incorporated Japanese monster movie motifs), all high-tech dystopia, this story, along with The Authority, expand on Alan Moore's concept (articulated in Watchmen and Miracleman) that superbeings will either be hunted to extinction or create an enforced utopia, whether we mere humans like it or not.
This issue, appearing some 2 1/2 years after the previous issue, wraps up the storyline, at least for now. Our hero finds a way to enter a time bubble and rescue a comrade long thought fallen. But the risk is reality itself.

 

 

John Cassaday's art on this is spellbindingly precise, as is most of his work. His work kept me coming back to Desperadoes through a rather bleak  storyline. He reminds me of the silver and golden age masters of precision, Curt Swan and George Perez.

I must confess that I've only read about a third of Planetary. But I have found a fair amount of the work of Warren Ellis that grabs me. He infuses impossibly bleak scenarios with characters who act with undying hope.

A couple cases in point. First, the graphic novel Orbiter, about the death of the space program after the disappearance of a manned shuttle, and the rebirth of possibility in its reappearance years later, with only one of its occupants aboard, in perfect health (physically). Elegant, strong art by Colleen Doran, whose A Distant Soil blog is linked to elsewhere on this page.

Then there's Global Frequency. An autonomous worldwide network of specialists in the impossible, responding on a central frequency to dangers, operating apart from government structures. Ellis wrote a chilling, convincing SF/horror story of bionics for the best of the 12-issue run.

Then there's Fell, a detective with hope living in a hopeless city. This was done by Image as a cheap title run. I'm using one of the collections as a text in my upcoming Comics History course at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, to represent the sensibilities of the modern era of comics.

That sums up the best of Ellis.
"No one can help me."
"Help me."
I was never the fan of Transmetropolitan that most were, but looked at in light of this model, as a character more brittle than cynical, I owe Spider Jerusalem another chance.
So it's time to put the old year away at long last- hold onto the best and learn from the worst, as we always try to do.
It was a hellish year for me in personal terms, but family, good friends, teaching and finding work of this caliber helped me make it through.
I suspect there will be comics aplenty this year. The demise of the comic book has been predicted since its creation, yet it has endured and thrived. The retail models for floppies are tentative, but graphic novels, online comics, TBP collections and hugely spiffy and pricey archive editions are holding their own, even in this treacherous economy.
So here's to Warren Ellis, a force of nature in comics writing whose stories and their denizens always find something noble in the most desperate, cynical situations.
Now back to writing syllabi, cleaning house and reading funnybooks.
As Nexus artist Steve Rude once said, it's a lot of work, but hey, what else you got to do with your life?

Top 10 Comics of 2009: # 2: The Unwritten

I always look at new Vertigo titles, but rarely pick them up. I've lost faith in cynicism, I guess.
But this one, coming in at $1 for the first issue (a stunt they also used for Sweet Tooth) roped me in.

The Unwritten is the story of Tom Taylor, whose father ostensibly used him as the model for the Tommy Taylor novels (think Harry Potter on that one).

Problem is, the father is long gone, presumed dead, and Tom is forced to scrape out a living doing fantasy conventions, trading on his father's name and work.

A fan asks him an unnerving question.

Whereupon it is revealed that Tom's parentage, hence his livelihood,  is questionable.

Shortly thereafter, when visiting his childhood home, also the place where both Frankenstein and Paradise Lost were written (Tom's father insisted that Tom be well-versed in literary geography), Tom is set up for the multiple murder of a gaggle of horror and fantasy writers.

As Tom is taken to prison, in France no less, it is revealed that his father was but one in a line of authors who worked in thrall to a powerful paranormal cabal, the parameters of which are not yet fully revealed. But we readers are shown that this group had Kipling's child destroyed in retaliation for his rebellion, and that Twain's refusal to do business with them had its price in his life as well.

 

 

 

 

The bloody henchman of the literary cabal is alluded to being behind Kipling's son's demise is the same being responsible for the murders our Tom is accused of some 75 years later, and looks to be the same age as he was at that time.

While in prison, tom has one of a series of conversations with the Frankenstein monster.

In this talk, the monster states quite directly that Tom himself is a fictional character and is unaware of his own nature and power.

This book is revelation on revelation. Along with Sweet Tooth, the best things to come out of Vertigo for a long time.

The writing is an improvement over Mike Carey's past work. I've always like his plotting but found that his characters tend to have the same voice. That is hardly the case in this book. The character of the warden is noteworthy- fiercely loyal to his children and defending and fostering their imaginations, yet sere in his approach to his inmates.

There's a device used to advance the plot that's getting a bit old. Pages are meant to represent chat rooms and blogs, seeing events unfold online from the public's perspective. There are several of these per issue, and it makes for some frustrating pacing at times, switching between simulated screens and more conventional comic pages. It works, but is a bit overused.

The art moves the story along well. In full disclosure, I did study under the artist, Peter Gross, for two years while completing my undergraduate degree, and have a larger sense of his narrative technique as a result. Also, his assistant on the first issue or two (uncredited) was a former comics history student of mine and coworker in SES, Evan Palmer. So my view of the art is slightly tainted by Old Home Week.

But let that not distract us from the quality here. Though more spare than someone like Craig Russell, Peter Gross's work is fluid, imaginative and works cleanly in service to the story.

Issue 9 is schedule to come out this week. I await it eagerly. What began as a mildly interesting Harry Potter pastiche immediately turned the corner and ventured into challenging territory.

I mean, where else can you see the knight Roland materialize outside a 21st century prison?

 

Tomorrow: the #1 comic book of 2009, and all the worlds it sets free.

Top 10 Comics of 2009: # 3: Sandman: the Dream Hunters

In spring 1973, a Marvel anthology title, Amazing Adventures, debuted a storyline extending the concepts of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. The story of the same title concerned the Martians returning to Earth and winning the war (a concept revised even further in the syndicated TV series of the same name from the late 80s/early 90s). The Martians had human gladiators engage in arena combat for their amusement. What should have been a silly space opera was redeemed by Don McGregor's smart characterization and by the art of relative newcomer P. Craig Russell.

Russell, who trained formally in painting at Ohio State University and apprenticed under 60s comic artist Dan Adkins, bought a delicate line and visual flourishes reminiscent of the Raphealites to his work. His fascination with opera, which resulted in numerous comic adaptations of operas, also showed in his staging of the work.
35 years after that run, Russell is established as a comics master. Some of his most successful collaboartions have been with Neil Gaiman.
This year, Russell adapted Gaiman's story Sandman: The Dream Hunters.

Spread out over four issues and recently collected as a HC, this is an adaptation of a Sandman story  published in HC years ago as an illustrated text, with illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano.

This delightful story involves a fox who falls in love with a monk. Knowing her love will remain unrequited unless she acts, she takes her case to the Lord of Dreams, who...

But that would be telling. The book is in print and well worth a trip to your bookstore, comic store or library.

When the book was first published, admirers scurried to find the original Japanese fairy tale. Gaiman subsequently revealed that there wasn't one. No big scandal, as he never claimed there was!

My admiration for Gaiman and Russell notwithstanding, I was a bit nonplussed at first to see this. The original was fine, why adapt?

But as was the case with Russell's GN adaptation of Gaiman's Coraline, the images add a new dimension to the story, a welcome one that does not detract from the original.

 

 

 

And hey, it's P. Craig Russell. An artist who I've admired for decades, and the first out gay comics artist in the mainstream.

The old saw that a picture is worth a thousand words is dead wrong. Great pictures, like these, telling great stories, leave me wordless in reverent apprecitation.

Tomorrow: Top 10 Comics # 2 will be written. Or it won't, but you'll be able to read it anyway.

Top 10 Comics of 2009: # 4: Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?

The world of comics can be rather pessimistic at times. Worlds destroyed, brutality and amorality (especially in the recent Punisher books, which turn vengeance into self-parody), and, as Scott McCloud observes in ZOT!, justice should be more than a punch in the mouth.
Thank the Diety for the personal memoir.
A few years ago, Brian Feis, whose line style is quite similar to Tom Batuik's work on Funky Winkerbean, gave us the quiet revelations of the award- winning Mom's Cancer.
Now he's back, with this summer's Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? Hereafter I wil use the acronym WHTTWOT to save my fingers.

It should be noted that the front bottom scenery is a die-cut cardstock sort of half a dustjacket. The effect, reminiscent of Chris Ware's Acme Library in design, is subtle and eloquent.

The book, a proper graphic novel rather than a collection of floppies, as are so many mislabeled GNs, begins with a lad and his dad attending the 1939 New York World's Fair.

While at the fair, both are astounded by the promise of the future it offers.

The boy embraces the  streamlined possibilities of the future promised in 1939.

He's given a comic book while attending. Using a surprisingly effective metafiction (I loathe the overuse of that term but it applies here), the comic reappears at various points in WHTTWOT. Its evolution echoes not only that of comics themselves but that of the society in which they, and the boy, grow. The comics contained in the larger narrative are printed on a yellowed newsprint stock simulating period books, a nice touch!

The boy and the man remain fascinated with technology, especially as it relates to flight and the space program, even when it fails to live up to its anticipated promise, and offers new possibilities instead. As the world grows around them, we see the father and son respond to that growth and perceive their own place in the world shifting.

 

As the two age, they do not lose their hope, despite the technological utopia's measured successes.

When the subsequent generation- the daughter of the son who saw the proposed wonders in 1939- is seen living on the moon, her father and grandfather are there to share in the fulfillment of their dreams and to nurture the birth of hers.

It's a little gosh-wow in spots, and the inevitable teenage clash between father and son over rock music plays out very softly, as some light-hearted jibes rather than full-blown rebellion. But the key to the book is the idea that even if things don't turn out as planned, optimism is always a possibility, even a desirable goal. Beyond that, the father and son trust one another to face whatever comes together.

The story has its holes. Our heroes revel in the docking of the Apollo and Soyuz missions, but no mention is given to the Challenger disaster.

It should be noted that the creator, Brian Fies, will be Artist-in-residence at the Charles Schulz Museum on Saturday, Jan. 9.

If there's a TPB of this by the time it's needed, I hope to use WHTTWOT? as a text the next time I teach Graphic Novel.

Tomorrow: if I can hunt up the right dream, #3 on the best comics of 2009.

Top 10 Comics of 2009: # 5: Bonds #3

Several years ago, I presented my first paper at San Diego Comic Con. I shared a panel with comics theorist Neil Cohn and teacher/colorist/theorist/ all around nice guy Durwin Talon.
Shortly thereafter, I realized that Mr. Talon had edited a book on comics technique that I find indispensable, Panel Discussions.
So when the first book of his solo title BONDS was released from Image comics in later summer 2007, I was pleasantly surprised to find such a smart read.
Told in three movements, Allegro (book 1), Adagio (book 2), and Finale (book 3), this is the story of a woman avenging her father's death at the hands of his corporate masters. Said masters were hell-bent on using the father's invention for military purposes, anathema to his intent.
Unbeknownst to all, including Faith, our heroine, she is also heiress to an elemental power. She can move life energy. But that's all it does- it moves. Its previous inhabitant no longer lives.
Since Durwin teaches at various institutions (he was working in the much-debated comic art program at Savannah College of Art & Design at the time of our panel) and gave a paper on color theory in comics as his portion of our panel (mine was a structural analysis of the work of Vaughn Bode'), I was eager to see his colors applied to his own ideas. The book did not disappoint. It's visually stunning in a very precise way.
Issue 2 came out shortly thereafter.
Then nothing.
I ran into Durwin working a table at San Diego the following year. Eagerly, I asked about BONDS #3,  and was told that the work was not quite done, but would I like to see preliminary pages to date?
Trying not to drool on them, I eagerly lavished over the plastic-sleeved color prelims.
Fantastic work.
Late this summer, BONDS #3 finally surfaced.
Here's Durwin with the book, from his shared blog.
Did I mention he's very cute? Well, he is. 

And the cover of the book in question:

I love the design sense that Durwin brings to his work, and that he doesn't rely on line to define form. His use of color for narrative flow and psychological effect is amply effective.

And it's an exciting, smart story that does not lack for humanity.

 

 

 

 

I'm also delighted that Image is publishing such smart stuff now.

This one snuck under the radar of a great many people, probably due to the long wait for the final issue. But it's  worth a hunt. I hope it gets a proper collection at some point, and I'd love to see more!

Tomorrow: Best of 2009, #4, and all the tomorrows that implies.

 

Top 10 Comics of 2009: # 6: Sweet Tooth

Here's an odd little ditty.

The work of sort of indy creator Jeff Lemire, whose Essex county Trilogy won a Xeric Award and was nominated for an Eisner,  Sweet Tooth is a bloody, post-apoacylptic male-bonding Bambi of sorts.

It's got just the right blend of crazy, bloody and tender.

The title character, a mutant boy whose father sheltered him from a world that would hunt and capture him, is an innocent left to his own devices when the father apparently dies.

 

 

He's taken into the protection of the gruff man who saves him from these two poltroons.

The character design and line quality remind me of some aspects of BONE as well as Jason Asala's 90s book POE, which despite becoming a bit repetitive towards the end, was a bright, challenging book.

By turns melancholy, sentimental, brutal, and quirky, this is one of a handful of new titles from Vertigo that really shined this year. Great to see something fresh. Vertigo has been in a bit of a rut these past few years- carnal, decadent, carnal, decadent, blah blah blah. Great to see some fresh ideas surface. And they've mined some wonderful new talent, like Mr. Lemire here, and made great use of established creators. More on the latter later in this series.

Addendum to a past post: Black Jack Book 9 is scheduled for January 19.

Tomorrow: #5 of the year's top 10, if I'm not too tied up!

Top 10 Comics of 2009: # 7: Brave and the Bold #29

The Brave and the Bold was primarily a superhero team-up book of the 60s. Lots of slam-bang action and often some smart space opera plotting.  Currently, there's a series on Cartoon Network teaming the 60s Batman with other era heroes, that recaptures the fun but loses the smart. I saw a musical episode last week with Black Canary, a sort of superhero slugfest version of West Side Story.

Ouch. I'm almost sorry to share that.
This comic is the other side of the coin.
The book was revived a couple years ago, given a more serious direction than the TV series, and was  taken over a few issues ago by J. Micheal Straczynski. He's  a writer whose work on Babylon 5, Midnight Nation (a meditation on the value of life with overtones of Milton) and Rising Stars, not to mention his stint on the new Twilight Zone in the 80s and the series Jeremiah (based on a bande desinee' by Herman Huppmann, reprinted by NBM in the 90s- I've had no luck finding a copy), has impressed me so much that I'll give anything with his name on it a chance. He's got a novel out, a horror story that I gave as a gift a couple years back but have yet to read myself. His work in comics has been uneven but overall worthwhile.
His model in Brave and the Bold is consistent with the best of his other work. His template is consistent. Use the story as a vehicle for meditation on an aspect of the human condition.
This specific issue has an unusual co-star: Brother Power, the Geek. Created in 1968 by Captain america co-creator Joe Kubert, this rag doll symbolizing naive hope in the romaticized mainstream vision of the hippie world ran a scant two silly issues. Brother Power reappeared in a Swamp Thing annual written by Neil Gaiman and a Vertigo one-shot written by Tarot expert and novelist Rachel Pollack.
And then this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there this guy dressed like a bat, talking to a 40-year old rag doll between beating up criminals. Should be completely dismissible, yet it works.

What I love about this issue is what it says about the 60s. Rather than ridiculing the hippies as pathetic lost fools, as appears to have become the default, this book mourns the loss of optimism that is reflected in that attitude.

The nobility of silliness in the 60s. Wavy Gravy, Lord Buckley, the Firesign Theatre. A resurgence of mainstream interest in the Marx Brothers and Dali. Experiments in consciousness, some of them failures, but some glorious successes that opened us to the possibility of seeing life differently, as something always new.

And in the middle of it was this silly rag doll.

Way to go, JMS (as he is referred to by those in the comics world).

Tomorrow: something sweet for #6 of 2009.