So What I'm Hoping Is...

... In the first issue of the re-launched Superman, Supes flies down like he did in the first movie, but where in that there was a black dude who said "That is one bad outfit!" (or words to that affect), this time the dude takes one look at the new all-blue no-pants kit and says "What the fuck you wearin', motherfucker?"

ATLAS (SHRUGS) part four: By The Time I Get To...

Concluding a series of reviews of the revived Atlas Comics line...

The question that has to be faced is this: is it possible to give these new Atlas books a fair trial? Maybe it is, for a far younger person than myself, one who has no memory of the originals and who therefore has no expectations. For me, and for anybody else with any experience of the originals, I think it’s near impossible to be objective.

Having said that, the time that’s passed since the first Atlas run has afforded a distancing effect. Reading these first issues has been, for the most part, like picking up a genuinely new range of books, with neither baggage nor anticipation. Or, put another way: it’s not been like picking up the first post-Morrison Doom Patrol or the first post-Moore Miracleman.

It pains me, then, that I’m heading into another less-than-glowing review, this time of Phoenix. But from an objective standpoint, a less-than-glowing review is what the book deserves: it’s another less-than-satisfactory comicbook in a field of millions. There’s substandard crap all over the place now, not just in comics but as an everyday part of life, seemingly to be expected and accepted with a resigned shrug and no hope of seeing anything becoming better.

Maybe the problem is that the originals just got on with it, the way that 70s comics had to do. The first issue of a new series had to encompass an origin, a fight scene, a cliff-hanger to drag you back for the next part. Now, what with decompression and ‘writing for the trade’, a typical comicbook is just one small slice of a longer story and as such has licence to drag on for as long as the book makes money. Sometimes this is a good thing: a story that needs room to breathe and explore its theme or its characters should be allowed to do so. However, the other side of that coin is that far too many comics tend to take that freedom and turn it into a reason to expand what ought to be an eight-page story into a six-issue epic during which a great deal of not-a-lot goes on.

But anyway.

Phoenix is a workmanlike comicbook. It’s written by Jim Kruger and it’s co-written by Brenden Deneen who is one of Atlas’ co-publishers. So if anything, Phoenix should be the book that most reflects the publisher’s ambition for the line.

Well, if that’s the case, I’m bailing right now. All I can see in this book is a story that goes nowhere, tin-ear dialogue, and art, by Dean Zachary, which goes with the word ‘amateurish’ better than William goes with Kate. There are panels in this book where the protagonist seems to have one leg a good ten inches shorter than the other. Characters spout exposition like bad soap opera. Heads and limbs join torsos at anatomically impossible junctions. As mentioned before, the Editor-in-Chief of the Atlas books is Mike Grell. Imagine, then, some of Grell’s work – let’s say The Longbow Hunters – lightboxed or badly copied, then equally badly shaded and painted. That’s what Phoenix looks like.

It's actually Interlac for 'Golf Sale'

And the design, my good lord the design; the original Phoenix get-up wasn’t exactly Tom Ford, but this new… thing…takes what would have been a perfectly serviceable bodysuit which could easily handle a little detailing, and smothers it in half-arsed alien symbols which must be an absolute bastard to draw. it’s straight out of the George Perez School of Over-Designed Costumes (there’s a reason why Perez’s Nightwing design was soon simplified down – all that excessive detailing would drive any other artist batshit in seconds).

I’ll tell you what Phoenix puts me in mind of: it’s the comicbook equivalent of an uninterested shop assistant. It doesn’t say “Good Morning” when you walk in, it doesn’t ask if it can help you (or maintain a discreet distance until you’re ready to be helped).  It doesn’t recommend anything to you. It stands there, it has no interest in you as a consumer, you as a person, you as somebody who ultimately pays its wages. It has no purpose except to get to the end of the working day and pick up its money.

And that’s how the Atlas books feel. They just want to get through their 22 or so pages, with little or no imperative to do anything other fulfil than their most basic job description. They’re just enough material to fill a void. You? You expect entertainment? You expect some form of commitment to you as a reader? No. You’re just in its way. You’re just stopping it from doing what it wants to do, which is to become a multi-media intellectual property.

Good luck with Phoenix in that regard; of all the Atlas books, the Phoenix concept – man gets stuck in alien bodysuit, gains amazing abilities, fights aliens (or crime, injustice, uppity socialists, whatever) – is the one that could most easily be transferred to another medium. Whether Phoenix makes that transfer depends, I suppose, on how successful Green Lantern turns out to be as a movie.

In the meantime, Phoenix just sits there, lacking any interest or anything of interest. Well, I expect more. I demand more.  And until I can see that something more, I’ll be leaving Phoenix – and the rest of the Atlas line - well alone. 

ATLAS (SHRUGS): part two: It's Grim, and not just Up North

Full disclosure: one of the three co-publishers of the new Atlas line, also its letterer and designer, is an old friend of mine. Not a ‘round each other’s houses’ friend, but certainly a ‘stop when we see each other and catch up on life’ friend.

Which doesn’t mean his books are getting an easy ride. Or a hard one. I have my integrity.

I’ll give them this; Atlas have spent a few quid on these new books. Not exactly Fillet Steak and Cristal money, but certainly a bit more than Double Cheeseburger Value Meal money. There’s nice heavy covers on the outsides and nice glossy paper on the insides. And there are recognisable creative names in the credits. Again, not Morrison or Johns or the other heavy hitters of today, but men who have a steady body of work behind them. The Editor-In-Chief is Mike Grell, for pete’s sake.

So how have they done?

Not all that well, to be honest.

I mean, a round of applause to them for even attempting to launch an entire new line in these straightened times when even the major publishers have trouble keeping a single new title alive for more than six months. Unfortunately, the quality of the new Atlas books isn’t of a high enough level to keep readers on board. That’s a depressing thing to have to say, but it’s how things are in the modern market, a market where below-par books (and more than a few above-par books) disappear quicker than an unwary stroller across Morecambe Bay.

Let's start with:

The Grim Ghost 1:  I’ll admit I had no idea who Stephen Susco is, but a quick Google told me he’s a scriptwriter who wrote the Grudge films which starred Sarah Michelle Gellar. Tony Isabella wrote the original Grim Ghost series, so between them they should be able to turn out a half-decent comicbook. And yes, this is the best of the three launch titles as far as writing goes; the premise isn’t a radical re-tooling of the original but instead adds to it in order to update. We have a POV character – Michael - who enables the handy first-person captions which in turn enable enormous amounts of exposition to be put across without the requirement of a character standing there spouting it and slowing things down.

Unfortunately, Michael’s captions come over as lifeless (which may for all I know be a deliberate choice, given that the character is dead) and over-expository. There’s no idea that he’s in any way involved in the events; given that he’s new to the ‘being dead’ game you’d expect him to be more skittish, more gobsmacked at what goes on. Instead, he just drones on about what Matthew (the eponymous Ghost) said and what Matthew did and wow Matthew's just soooo great, with the additions of a little bit of whining about himself and a brief interlude with an old man which just sits there, taking up a page. Maybe it’ll be important later in the story. Certainly doesn’t seem to be now.

Speech is pretty much old-style comicbook dialogue (“My name is Matthew Dunsinane and I hate to break it to you… but you’re dead!” Damn, does that mean I’m going to miss next week’s Glee? “Can you believe it, Amy? A baby girl! We’re parents!” Does she not know this? Was she comatose during the entire pregnancy and labour? Or are you just incredibly patronising - more so than I am?).

The biggest question is: What the hell happened to Kelley Jones? His art style has always been a little unusual, with its exaggerated drapery and dramatic compositions, and let’s not forget that Jones was the man who put yard-long ears on Batman’s mask and gave us the Amazing Anorexic Deadman. But here, it seems that any quirks have been knocked out of the art - presumably by a heavy-handed art director -  and if it’s the case that the house style is considered to carry more weight than individual style, why give the job to someone with such a distinct look to their work?

It’s still recognisably Jones’ art, all dark shadows and off-kilter figurework, though it looks dangerously as if it was knocked out overnight or reworked heavily by an art department. Every female figure in the book seems to have been pasted in after being drawn by an entirely different – and entirely inferior – artist. This is especially jarring on a double-page spread towards the front of the book, where the female figure stands out by virtue of being the only brightly-coloured thing on the page, which emphasises the stylistic dichotomy.

I don’t want to damn this book out of hand. It has possibilities, especially in the Fringe, its not-Heaven, not-Hell setting, reflecting the real world in both physicality and in how its residents interact with others. There’s a good idea in there, and it’d be nice to see it built upon.

This is the real world, though, where Grim Ghost gets the same chance of making an impression as every other book hitting the shelves, and on this showing that chance has been wasted.

But it does have a very nice cover logo.



Next: Phoenix. Or Wulf.

ATLAS (SHRUGS): part one

Some of us are old enough to have been part of the original Atlas Comics readership and frankly, some of us have got rose-tinted lenses in our see-behind glasses.

   

There’s no arguing that the original Atlas line had some superb creative talent working for it – Ditko, Wood and Chaykin are only the first three that come to mind – but there’s also no arguing that a great deal of the line, in common with a great deal of every other publisher’s line in the 1970s, was pretty much dross.

For all the talent that was toiling away at it, the Atlas line was incredibly restricted in its scope. Editorial mandates no doubt had a lot to do with this – we all know why the line was set up and how important it was to the man in charge that every item published had to be more Marvel than Marvel, and given how Marvel even Marvel was at that time (and how Marvel DC was), it really wasn’t a surprise that the public very quickly decided that having an extra helping of trite superheroics in their comics was a bit like having an extra helping of vomit in their ice cream.

 

So, the Atlas line went away, and in time it gained the same rosy glow that nostalgia gives to many other slightly sub-par but time-lost things, like Aztec Bars, or Little and Large, or rickets. Grown men waxed lyrical about the merits of Thrilling Adventure Stories and The Destructor, forgetting that these were just two more me-too products at a time when the originals they were aping weren’t exactly breaking new ground either.

For some reason though – probably the fact that those who’d enjoyed the original Atlas line were now well into middle age and therefore getting misty-eyed about everything that, through virtue of not being alive, hadn’t got as paunchy and balding as they had – those old comics started popping up all over the place in the last few years.

The original Grim Ghost
 also had a sideline
modelling knitware

I think the first real blip on the modern radar was an issue of Comic Book Artist that led on the Atlas line. I’ll be honest, I’m not over-fond of CBA. It does a good enough job of dragging up the past and it does spotlight some creators who may not get the due they’re due these days, but on the whole I find it rather superficial and fanboyish in its uncritical yowzering over any old dross that happens to have hit print thirty years ago. Also, its editor’s habit of referring to himself as ‘Ye Ed’ gets right on my tits.

The Atlas issue of CBA wasn’t entirely bad despite its desperate need to remain inoffensive. It featured some quite decent pieces of art which were only improved from being in black and white rather than having garish 70s colours slapped all over them, and it carried a history of the company that revealed what it was really like to work for a comics publisher back then, a history that was only improved by the contributors’ knowledge that as the company was no longer extant they wouldn’t be burning any freelancer bridges by telling the world the unvarnished truth about what went on.

The original Phoenix had
 absolutely no problem with
wearing a light blue jockstrap

Since then, whenever I’ve spent a decent length of time in a comicbook store – by which I mean time measured in weeks rather than hours, time spent actually being a small businessman, which is what I occasionally do when called to do so – I’ve noticed that when copies of Atlas titles turn up, they pretty soon go out again. There’s a demand for them; not a huge one, but it's there. It’s the old ‘buying your youth back’ thing that men (and women) of a certain age do. Atlas comics are bought in the same way that CD reissues of dreadful old prog rock albums are; nobody actively wants to hear an Amon Duul album but owning a copy to replace the one lost in the divorce, or scratched to buggery by inquisitive toddlers, turns the clock back and makes the razorcut pain of impending mortality just a little duller.

It’s inevitable then that somebody should have revived the Atlas characters. It’s also inevitable that one of the resurrection men picking over this particular body should be Richard Emms, and it’s so bloody inevitable you could set your watch by it that Richard should shove copies of the first three new Atlas books into my hands at the last London Comic Mart and say “Here you go Shippy, write a review of those.” 

And that's precisely what I'm going to do.

Next time. 

Round and round and round...

This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, this ‘writing crap about crap’ thing. Oh, no.

In the past a number of outlets have supported my effluvia, from Tripwire magazine through the oft-mentioned Borderline to Comics International and even, a lifetime ago, the venerable British Broadcasting Corporation. The only change is that these days there’s no editor breathing down my neck, no deadline except the self-imposed ones and they can whoosh past any time they like.

It seems to me that in this long, seemingly unending and unendable series of positions as a media commentator, regardless of where the noise is being made, there always has to be a replay of what I’m about to do here.  The words may differ but the sentiment remains, enduring like Ayers Rock or maybe Blue Peter.

Ready?

This chapter would have lead off with the not-at-all-cliched phrase “It’s getting near to Convention Season”, but every day is convention day in this non-stop no-brakes no-filter modern world. Here in the jolly old U of K we’re about to embark on the annual festival of slightly shabby disappointment that is the Bristol Comic Con (which isn’t its actual name. Its actual name is something which I forgot at exactly the same moment I left for home after the last one I attended). Any second now we shall see the inaugural Kapow!, which I’d lay good money on also being the valedictory Kapow!, for there is only a limited amount of time during which the public will swallow Mark Millar’s self-promotion.  In the Colonies there’s a convention nearly every weekend and it wouldn’t surprise if some blighter was planning something for alternate Wednesdays just in case there's someone somewhere who isn't sucking on Geoff Johns' teat.

I’ve had the pleasure of attending many of these conventions, starting with - logically - my first, way back in the heady days when UKCAC was a major event, bringing top names from all over the place and gathering them in a dingy hall just off London’s top open-air gay hook-up spot, to my last, a grey and dismal weekend in a half-full railway engine shed where the only fun to be had that didn’t involve guessing either the weight of the panel moderator or how many years since the star showbiz guest last worked was in getting blind drunk and brandishing the award one had just won[1] out of the hotel bedroom window at the losers down on the street below.

I’ll admit that I’ve never attended a convention at street level, as a civilian. I’ve always been a retailer or a creative or a publisher, my badge has always been a different colour from those worn by hoi polloi[2], I have always had at least a little access to the rarified air in the professional areas. Yay me.

One thing that goes hand-in-hand with standing behind a table with a slightly smug air, as opposed to shuffling along in front of a table with a slightly malodorous fug, is that those among the shuffling humanity who hold artistic pretensions see you as their ticket to a finer life.

As a result, you’re continually bombarded with portfolios. Every other Herbert is slinging a black leather zip-up with many many plastic sleeves inside, and each of those plastic sleeves will contain something which in any civilised society should be banned from ever seeing daylight.

I make a point of asking people’s names when they show a portfolio; it’s only polite and when you’re getting around to asking questions, like ‘I am a retailer and have no publishing interests, so why are you showing me this… Dave?’ or ‘You do understand that this portfolio shows less talent than my dog, and he’s been dead these last three years… Harry?’, it’s good to add that personal touch.

Or, rather: I do this because I have yet to see a decent portfolio. I’ve seen some absolute friggin’ stinkers and I’ve seen a few that didn’t actively make me retch, but I’ve never seen one that made me blink, rub my eyes in amazement and offer the artist any form of work. If you’re offering constructive criticism, and even if you’re enough of a sadist to enjoy taking a fellow’s dreams and stomping them to death as you would a sick kitten, it’s a right and good thing to ameliorate the medicine with the notion that you’re on the artist’s side even if he’s quite obviously incapable of telling which end of a pencil is the sharp one. Using their name, preferably using it without simultaneously projectile-vomiting, is a form of contact, a metaphorical hand to cling to in this Sargasso of destruction.

If you’re planning a convention visit soon, and you’re planning to unleash your talent upon the world, do me a favour first. Take a long, hard, cold look at your work and ask yourself: is this any good? You’ll be biased, of course, as you should be. You’ll need an ego the size of a living planet if you’re going to get anywhere in this game. But put that aside and really critique your work. First question: is your grasp of anatomy as good as it possibly can be? Do your figures have ridiculously over-length legs (the most common flaw in portfolio work)? Have you got any sequential work in your portfolio, or is it mostly pin-up shots? If the latter, remember Rob Liefeld’s influence isn’t as great as it once was, but editors will always want decent storytellers.

And if you can’t see anything wrong with your ‘folio, ask someone else. Not your mates, not your Mum. An art teacher, perhaps. Or someone with a professional interest. Ideally, ask a professional artist, and not necessarily a comicbook artist. In fact, most definitely not a comicbook artist.

Listen to what they have to say. Take on board their advice. And if their advice is ‘please don’t ever draw again’, even if their advice is ‘please chop off your hands and your feet and possibly even seal up your own mouth with molten lead so you can’t hold a pencil even between your teeth because if you do I will hunt you down and kill you’, then listen to them.

I ask you to do this because there are far, far too many underskilled creatives around at present. And next time, we’re going to see what happens when a lack of ability meets an excess of ambition.

I can’t wait!

---

[1] Best Comics-Related Magazine, I think it was.

[2] No, there’s no definite article. Do you not know Latin, then?

THIS WEEK

I can only be arsed to go and buy comics every couple of weeks. The shop’s a good half-an-hour away by bike. The effort involved is more than made up for by the long-standing friendship I have with the proprietor, Mr. Gary Ochiltree, and by the fact that no matter how much I tell myself that I’ll just pop in, pick up my order and pop out again, no matter how pushed for time I might be, every visit turns into a couple of hours worth of discussion, argument, bad jokes, swearing and all-round japery on all subjects under the sun with the usual exception of comics.

On top of that, there’s so very little being published today that gives me any sort of buzz. Maybe I’m jaded. It certainly feels like it’s all be seen before. It also feels like every mainstream title is constrained by the demands of the next great crossover; that’s why I stopped reading any Marvel comics about five or six years ago, and why I’ve recently informed Mr. O. that I’ll be having none of that Flashpoint business thank you very much.  Conversely, even out-of-continuity material is more than a bit lacking in interest these days. Is anybody surprised that DC’s First Wave line has bitten the dust so quickly, given that it’s been confusing, badly-written, and has hardly ever been on schedule? (Such lousy food! And so little of it!)

Anyways, this is what I picked up this week….

(All images copyright DC Comics, etc etc)

Knight and Squire 6: That title needs definite articles. Just doesn’t sound right without them. I so wanted to love this book, honest I did. The first two issues were outright joys, bringing a proper taste of English humour to something so quintessentially American as the superhero comic; just enough silliness, demonstrating examples of many different styles of English comedy (and this is without doubt post-war English comedy, with its roots in Surrealism and Oxbridge and dodgy seaside-postcard puns) without losing its footing as an adventure story.

It lost its way somewhere around the third issue and the fourth dragged quite badly; there was a distinct feeling that Paul Cornell (who is a very nice man) had been given the keys to the toyshop, played with all the good stuff straight away and then had to shuffle a couple of FuzzyFelt playsets around for a few hours before getting back to the Johnny Sevens and the Scalectrix. In short: the sense of fun dissipated.

Here we are at the end of the run, and although it’s still not a laugh riot (but how could it be, with one main character dead, another dying, and the biggest bastard in the whole DCU striding about in a snitty mood?) it’s a big step back up.

And it’s become clear that despite the title, this has been all about Beryl; Cyril’s done sod all except ride a motorbike and date a popstar. Beryl’s the one who’s done the thinking, who’s become more clearly defined as a character and who’s stolen the whole story out from under her boss’s ugly grey visor. And she picked up Cyril’s copy of Total Castle. Good for her.

The Spirit 12: One of those First Wave titles mentioned above and the only one that I think will be missed. Doc Savage has been meandering about like nobody’s business, but we can blame that squarely on Brian Azzarello’s seeming inability to write a story that doesn’t go all over the shop. First Wave itself has been delayed so often it gets admiring glances from Virgin Trains and is also written by Azzarello. 

Anybody foolhardy enough to take on The Spirit has mighty big shoes to walk in. Of course Will Eisner, but also Darwyn Cooke, whose run a few years back was the best Spirit since Eisner’s glory years. And here’s something: if Cooke could make the outdated and racist character of Ebony White work, why the hell couldn’t Azzarello? Where was the need to make Ebony a girl? Next thing it'll be "the only way I can see the Fantastic Four working is if The Thing is a twelve-year-old ballerina!" Jesus, it’s worse than having Claremont around.

Back in the present, David Hine’s been knocking out some half-way decent stories, nothing to bring a tear to the eye or make you give up smack, but better than the majority of the post-Cooke material. Good words here also for artist Moritat, who knows how to draw figures in motion and has a way with drapery not seen for a long time. More good words for colourist Gabriel Bautista’s use of the secondary levels of those primary colours that make up the Spirit’s customary suit and tie, and for Rob Leigh’s Eisner/Oda tribute lettering that still has its own style, and which I do believe is used on the cover of our next pick…

THUNDER Agents 5:   Oh, this book’s pretty much doomed, isn’t it? Just looking at the sales figures makes that much plain. That and the fact that it’s a bloody good superhero book, taking place outside the main DC line. It’s had Beautiful Loser written all over it since issue one. All your fault. You should buy books like this instead of another Geoff Johns travesty. But you don’t. Tossers.

First of all, most of this issue is drawn by Ryan Sook, which is A Good Thing. Second of all, it looks very much as if Nick Spencer has for the last four issues led us all gently by the hand into expecting a certain something, and then, with this issue, set about kicking the shit out of the entire edifice. It’s not one of those EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG!!!! issues, but… yes, it is. Very much so. THUNDER Agents hasn’t been about the THUNDER Agents per se since it started, but it’s suddenly about something a lot more interesting and a great deal more subtle. If I’m reading it right. Which I may not be.

This is a splendid comicbook and you really should buy it. If there’s a niggle, it’s that Cafu’s art isn’t quite on a par with Spencer’s story, but that’s compensated for by the ‘guest artists’ that handle the secondary plotline/flashbacks that are so important to the book.

Special Month-Old Review!

Legion Of Super-Heroes Annual 1:  Oh, I loves me some Giffen. I love his writing (and we’ll come to his Doom Patrol just as soon as the run finishes, too soon, very soon) and by golly I love his pencilling. And here he is pencilling the Legion again. 80’s fanboy wetdream (well, this one’s, anyway). I’ve actually given up on the current Legion monthly, making it the first incarnation since the original Levitz/Giffen run that I’ve had no taste for. It’s seemed that Levitz, despite his association with, and obvious love for, the Legion, has suffered from the same malaise that struck Jim Shooter in the previous series: thinking that comics today can be written as they were back then. Admittedly, Shooter’s writing style has dated far far worse than Levitz’s, but the monthly Adventure Comics and Legion Of Super-Heroes have been lacking any kind of spark.

It looks very much as though being together with Giffen again has given Levitz a kick in the rear: this annual has a fairly routine plot – it’s another Emerald Empress origin story – but it gets into groove nice and early and it stays there all the way through. There are only a couple of actual Legionnaires present and there’s no need for any kind of longer-term foreshadowing, so Levitz isn’t bogged down by repetitive introductions or the need to shine spotlights on the rest of the cast; he can just get on with telling this one story and make it a good one.

Oh, and it’s Giffen in Kirby-channeling mood, not as blatantly as he did when he started out, but in the way he positions and proportions figures, so the women (and this book is very much about the women, in a good way) look like they’ve been fighting for most of their lives; they’re chunky but still feminine, they have real weight and power to them. And if that cover isn’t a subconscious tribute to Kirby’s Barda I’ll eat my hat, even though I don’t own a hat. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a paella to stir...

I would've said 'Xero', myself

Owing to some form of viral bastard kicking at the inside of my head and raking its fingernails down the internal surfaces of my eyes, I’ve spent most of today sleeping and/or sweating. Normal service will be resumed. Meanwhile…

On Sunday I was, as I sometimes am, being of assistance to my good friend Gary O (nephew of Harry O and great-grandson of O, whose Story was so entertaining) at the London Comic Mart. Wasn’t a very good one, it was at the wrong point during the month; one of the Sundays where T (Time elapsed between paydays) > M (Disposable income allowed between paydays) and where W (clemency of local meteorological conditions) < N (Desire to get up, go out, and spend money on old comics).

During a lull, a customer and myself were discussing this and that; the need for slabbing, that recent sale of Amazing Fantasy #15, whether Spurs would beat Real Madrid in the next round of the Champions League. General Bloke Stuff.

Then an excitable youth, there with his dad, asked the most important question of the day, possibly of the year. Which Superhero Would You Want To Be? Most of the admittedly small sample group of respondents answered 'Superman’, because he can do everything. Large response for Batman, with the usual ‘Superman can do everything but Batman does one thing really really well, better than Supes even. Plus he can do martial arts and he’s got like so much money.'

Best response: from a big fella with two full-sleeve tattoos (and very likely more besides; the sleeves were only the visible tats, the tip of the Ink Iceberg). Everybody in the comics is a wuss, he reasons, beside Darkseid. Darkseid, despot of Apokalips. Darkseid, granite-faced conqueror of all he sees. Darkseid, who wears that funny little skirt thing and nobody dares take the piss because he’d Omega Beam their ass right there on the spot.

Care to elucidate, chap? Tell us why old Stoneface is greater than anyone else? Why Darkseid, fella? His reply: Because Darkseid Is. The great propaganda poster slogan that really should replace Keep Calm And Carry On on the country’s tea-towels is also the only justification needed – if justification be needed at all – for The Great One’s supremacy.

Darkseid Is.

And the first person to append ‘A Big Gayer’ to that gets eternity in Armagetto. 

From the Archives (1)

Every so often, something old. First, a Beautiful Losers column, reproduced and lightly edited from the original as published in Borderline Magazine #8, March 2002.

If they were music, they’d be the last two XTC albums. If they were film, they’d be Shiner or maybe something by David Mamet. Lionised by the critics, loved by a small handful of fans, completely ignored by everybody else. We look at comics series which should’ve done better than they did and which vanished far too quickly. These, then, are the Beautiful Losers.

Fifteen years ago. It had been a while since the twin Houses of Secrets and Mystery had closed their doors, and ever since those particular shutters had gone up, the prevalent wisdom was: Anthologies – Especially Horror Anthologies – Don’t Sell. Mike Gold was given the job of disproving this; the book he tried to do so with was called Wasteland.

Gold chose to ignore many conventions of the anthology; there was to be a regular creative team, there was no Cryptkeeper-style ‘horror host’ and the editorial mission was not to jump out and go ‘Boo!’ but rather, to quote Gold, to ‘crawl inside the readers’ head and kick the icky nasty thoughts loose’.

The writers of the series had worked with Gold at First Comics: John Ostrander had since become a familiar name in comics and was probably best known for his runs on Suicide Squad and Firestorm The Nuclear Man, neither of which were any preparation for what was to come in Wasteland. Del Close, Ostrander’s collaborator, was a writer, an actor, a circus performer, a theatrical director and a witch. They worked with a team of four artists; one would illustrate each of an issue’s three stories while the fourth provided the cover. The initial teal were Don Simpson, who was and still is known for his Megaton Man series; George Freeman, creator of the Canadian super-hero Captain Canuck; William Messner-Loebs, who at that time was known for his remarkable series Journey: The Adventures Of Wolverine MacAlistair; and a pre-V For Vendetta (so far as America was concerned) David Lloyd.

But was this ‘experiment in internal horror’ any good? To be honest, especially when looked at today, it’s a little weak. Freeman’s cover, using a format designed by Richard Bruning – the logo and credits in a black frame around the top and left of the main image – sets a trend that was followed n the following three issues, with alien imagery striving for an air of otherness that doesn’t quite come off. Inside, there was one slightly unnerving story about drugs (among other things), one unfunny science fiction comedy tale (which, owing to its controversial subject and denouement, became the main selling point of the book for a while) and the first of Close’s series of autobiographical stories, this first one involving sewer-set hallucinations.

The second issue was where things started to get interesting. The stories were: another chunk of Close’s life story; a twist-ending piss-take of Shirley Maclaine’s claims of reincarnation – this was the Eighties, remember – and a quiet little thing illustrated by David Lloyd, concerning a small boy telling child welfare officers that his step-father was a werewolf. The welfare workers talk to the boy and his family, and everything ends happily. Then, right at the end, one small caption; “One month later, the boy was dead.” No explanation or reason, just the reader left to wonder.

And from there, it flew. Issue three contained one story that satirised Harvey Pekar whilst discussing the nature of fear, and two absolutely cracking jobs by Lloyd and Freeman. Issue four ruminated on success and failure throughout its four stories, including a murder/suicide set to Shakespeare’s Sonnet LXVI. Issue five had ‘guest appearances’ form Swamp Thing, Doctor Fate and Wonder Woman, and carried issue six’s cover. A few weeks later issue five reappeared with its own proper cover. Issue six – labelled ‘The Real Number Six’ – had a plain white cover so as not to unbalance the artistic rota.

Despite these shenanigans, the creative quality of the book improved by the month. At a time when DC were pushing new titles such as Power of the Atom, Action Comics Weekly and The Wanderers, Ostrander and Close were taking on relationship breakdowns, Dickian solipsism, syphilis, the primal urge to reproduce, and the eternal question of whether God is full of shit. They were producing work the like of which would’ve out-Vertigo’d Vertigo before Vertigo had even been thought of (as a rough guide, Grant Morrison’s first issue of Animal Man coincided with Wasteland #9, as did the first issue of DC’s repackaged V For Vendetta).

George Freeman left; Timothy Truman came on board for a short run, as did Ty Templeton, whose ‘Dissecting Mr. Fleming’ was a small masterpiece. Messner-Loebs and Lloyd left; they were replaced by Bill Wray and, for one issue, the legendary Joe Orlando. The stories these illustrated took on greater themes; love, personal responsibility, existential loneliness.

It failed, of course. Or, possibly, it succeeded. One of Wasteland’s stated aims was to up the ante every issue, pushing its readers harder and harder until it could push no further within the bounds of a DC-published book. Gold, Ostrander and Close expected to lose readers every issue, not through the normal attrition of sales but through a continuing process of alienation, and had said that they expected Wasteland to last no more than eight issues. It eventually lasted for eighteen.

The final issue featured a cover that may or may not have depicted necrophilia, and contained the only full-length story to appear in the run. This ended as the first issue had begun; with a man deciding whether or not to ingest a toxic narcotic.

Anthologies – especially horror anthologies – still don’t sell. In 1999, DC’s Vertigo imprint launched an anthology series named Flinch. It lasted sixteen issues. 

We Have Been Here Before

(Warning: rude words in the footnotes. Just in case you're, like, a minor, or someone who thinks a combination of vowels and consonants can actually physically harm a body)

It says here on this website - http://www.huffingtonpost.com - that a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 – first appearance of The Amazing Spider-Man with a hyphen, fact fans! - has been sold for over a million dollars. A MILLION DOLLARS! HOO HOO HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!![1]

Which isn’t really a great deal of money these days. You can’t retire on it, not if you want to live comfortably (insert your own political opinion here).

Can’t really say I’m surprised by the sale. Other key comicbooks have been sold recently for larger sums, and while some would say that the AF1 isn’t as deserving of the million-dollar price tag as the Action Comics 1 or the Detective Comics 27 that have hit the auctioneer’s block lately (and it’s at this point that I’m just going to assume that if you’re reading this you’ll have at least a rudimentary idea of the things I’m talking about, because if you don’t you’re going to get very confused very soon), I’d say it’s still very much a key issue[2] and one of the foundation blocks of today’s monolithic[3] Marvel Comics. Horses for courses, opinions are like pieholes[4], etc.

My take on it is that we’ve hit a point in the economic cycle where there are a number of relatively wealthy people who are aware of the resentment, bordering on hatred, that those who aren’t so fortunate hold for them (and rightly so if you ask this old Young Socialist). They’re also aware, as they’re quite probably from those professions where a knowledge of How Money Works is a prerequisite, that holding on to your money – the excess money, the money that’s over once you’ve bought the houses and the cars and the trophy women – isn’t as good an idea as it used to be.

 There’s a very real danger that we – and by ‘we’ I mean the developed capitalist world – is going to tip into a global depression that will make the last five years look like the opening day of Harrods’ Sale. There’s the first few hints of stagflation here in the UK, with the economy digging its heels in and just plain refusing to grow no matter how much that nice young man Mr Osborne  asks it to[5], and prices rising faster than that Japanese bamboo they used to use for unpleasant torture-y purposes.

 So the financially astute feller, knowing full well that we may well be looking at Weimar Republic-proportioned reductions in the value of coin, will be looking around for other ways to safeguard his hard-earned[6]. It’s the Alternative Investment Market, or rather the Alternative Alternative Investment Market. I last saw it in the early 1990s, when the Conservatives were beginning to head into the latter, decadent phase of their power and the medium-term effects of Thatcherist Monetarism were becoming evident; some were doing well, others who weren’t doing so well were making their disgruntlement known by rioting in Central London and throwing petrol bombs in Brixton.

General financial advice will tell you that it’s a good idea to put your money into bricks and mortar, and for the majority of people that’s true. For the majority of people the most important thing is to have a home for your family. But for some, the important thing is to keep hold of that excess money. And if the world does go to hell and you need a lottery win-sized amount of money to buy a pint of semi-skimmed, there’s no point in having your money in a bank where it’s going to be reduced by hyper-inflation to mere pocket change, and there’s not much fun to be had having a nice big house that’s surrounded by packs of feral schoolchildren willing to kill you and eat you as a packed lunch.

Instead, you need something that will retain a long-term value. Gold usually takes that position. Ideally though, you need something that’s easily portable, so you can take it with you and sit on it until things have recovered enough to make your goodies profitable again. A million dollars-worth of gold would easily exceed your luggage allowance on the last chopper out of Alderley Edge[7]. Several million dollars-worth of gold – ‘cause that’s what you’re going to need to transport – would need its own private jet. But a dozen or so comicbooks, although they certainly won’t be as easily liquidatable as gold, will slip into a briefcase, no problem.

I’m not saying that any of this is what’s actually happening; my economics knowledge is limited to one A-Level over thirty years ago and frankly, I’m ridiculously fond of taking the slightest of events and blowing it up into the kind of Doom that will inevitably come about as a result of any period of Conservative (or Conservative-led) government.

But, that said, there’s suddenly a couple of market-leading comicbooks out there, and now that the million dollar barrier has been breached, others will follow just as surely as Trevor Francis[8] was followed by Bryan Robson[9], prices will spiral ever higher, and before long we could be looking at the comicbook equivalent of Christiano Ronaldo[10].

But your boxful of X-Men #1[11] will still be worth sod all.

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[1] My band does a cover of The BBC Song from the end of Austin Powers: IMOM. Therefore I’m comfortable doing a cover of one of the jokes from that film.

[2] If AF #1 is worth over a million, what price Fantastic Four#1, the comic that started Marvel Comics  - possibly the entire comics industry – as we know it?

[3] Strictly speaking, monoliths are, as the name implies, single stones and as such would not have foundation blocks. I can indeed be pedantic in my own disfavour.

[4] ’pieholes’ indeed. The word is ‘arseholes’. Even if you’re American.

[5] Only kidding. The man is a cunt, and incompetent with it.

[6] Which is probably nothing of the sort.

[7] A part of Cheshire much loved by overpaid professional footballers. Footballers, mind. Not ‘soccer players’.

[8] Sold by Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest for £1,080,000

[9] Sold by West Bromwich Albion to Manchester United for £1,500,000, two months after footnote 6

[10] Sold by Manchester United to Real Madrid for £80,000,000, thirty years after footnote 6. Cheating, diving scum.

[11] That’s the Jim Lee X-Men #1 from 1991. Not the original 1963 Lee/Kirby X-Men #1 (worth a shedload) and certainly not the X-Men #1 from 2010 (go and buy toilet paper, it’s actually meant for you to wipe your arse on). 

Time is running out, seems it happens every day

About ten years ago, I wrote a regular column for Borderline Magazine. 

Borderline was a comics magazine in PDF format, which grew from around 56 pages when we started to around 100 when we finally ran out of money. There’s a long and involved story to be told about Borderline, but  as it’s going to be told by my old friend and the editor of Borderline, Phill Hall, over on one of his various blogs I’m not going into it here (unless Phill and my memories are different, in which case there may be a blog battle). 

Recently,  the print magazine Wizard has ceased publication in the physical world and gone over to PDF. In the doing of it, they’ve made a shedload of PR noise about how ground-breaking  they are and how there’s never been a comics magazine in this format before. Oh yes there has, sonny! TEN! BLOODY! YEARS! AGO!

However, my bitterness can wait until another time.

The column I wrote for Borderline (in addition to being Staff Writer, Features Editor, Reviews Editor, and eventually  Publisher) was called Man On A Mission – a title thrown at me by Phill, just to give the poor bastard thing a name. The Mission was to find better comics, either through recommendation or, as it turned out and which was far more fun, by haranguing creators and consumers into demanding better of themselves.  And if improvement  didn’t happen, I was going to keep a promise I’d made to myself some time before.

I’m one of the age group who were around for Cerebus. Started with issue 36 and kept with it through to the end. Picked up as many of that initial missed 35 issues as I could find and/or afford, made them up with the Swords of Cerebus trades that predated what became known as ‘the phonebooks’.

At some point, probably in the mid-200s of Cerebus’ run, I said to myself: When this ends, it all ends. Just walk away from all of it. The end of Cerebus was going to mark my long-postponed maturity; I was going to do what any sensible man would have done a good twenty years beforehand. I was going to give up comics.

Didn’t do it. Cerebus ended, I kept going.

Still doing it today.

But over the last year or so, I’ve noticed that the number of comics I’ve been buying has slowly shrunk. I’m not excited by the greater part of the comics produced by the larger publishers. I’m taking fewer chances on new titles. I can’t be bothered to hunt down the more obscure material. Part of this is down to the fact that my supplier, Mr Gary Ochiltree of Krypton Comics And Books, is a very shrewd businessman who simply does not order anything that he can’t see a guaranteed sale on. As a result, there’s less – in fact zero – browsing of untried titles.

Add to this my uncanny knack of picking losers. When I was a teenager, my younger brother brought home the first issue of 2000AD. I read it, cast it aside like an unwanted kipper and pronounced that it wouldn’t last six months. But I’ll keep on falling for things that are doomed from the outset. One of my other regular gigs on Borderline was to write, solicit and edit something called Beautiful Losers, a semi-regular feature about failed comicbooks. Thriller. Chase. Slingers. Young Heroes In Love. Books like those. Loved by critics, shunned by readers, dead (or maybe born) before their time. 

Of the nine comics I’ve bought so far this month, four have been just announced as cancelled, one was the last part of a limited series and two are selling in such low numbers they’ll be lucky to see out the next six months. Only one of the four cancelled titles counts as a Beautiful Loser (Keith Giffen’s quite gloriously off-kilter Doom Patrol, since you ask).

I can’t be bothered to go into the West End to look for shiny new things (though the last time I did, something quite spectacular happened). If I do find something that piques, I say “I’ll wait for the trade” and then probably not bother.

Slow attrition is eating away at my comics consumption. Every month I love them less and less. I can scarcely believe I’m saying this, but… it looks like I’m finally giving up.

Let’s see.