The A.V. Club - Comics Panel

Books: Comics Panel: Graphic novels & art comics—late February and early March 2012

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:00:00 -0600

As often happened whenever the late Harvey Pekar strayed too far from the short-story format, his posthumously released graphic history Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland (Top Shelf) isn’t always as cleanly organized or coherent as it ought to be. Pekar tells the story of his hometown both in the broader sense and through his personal experiences, and the more general Pekar gets, the messier his Cleveland becomes. He jumps around from topic to topic and repeats himself, trying to get at the economic and racial woes of a city that’s gone through multiple cycles of civic pride and shame ...

Books: Comics Panel: Superheroes and mainstream: January 2012

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0600

Rob Liefeld is a major figure in the ’90s revival currently unfolding in mainstream comics, working on three DC titles in the next year while spearheading the return of his Extreme Comics line for Image. Prophet #21 (Image) is the first of the new Extreme titles, and it’s a remarkable issue that succeeds by completely distancing itself from Liefeld’s initial concept for the character. A hybrid of Captain America and Jack Kirby’s O.M.A.C., the original John Prophet was a musclehead with permanently clenched teeth and comically large shoulder pads, innovative because he preferred giant ...

Books: Comics Panel: Graphic Novels & Art Comics - January 2012

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0600

When the popularity of superhero comics flagged after World War II, the generation of young artists who’d pioneered the capes-and-tights genre scrambled to find new markets. Writer Joe Simon and artist Jack Kirby—co-creators of Captain America in the early ’40s—found an unexpectedly rich vein with Young Romance, which they pitched to Crestwood Publications in 1947. For the next decade, Simon and Kirby made a lot of money for Crestwood pumping out “true confessions”-style stories about lovelorn women and the desperate lengths to which they would go to land a husband. The two men weren’t squandering ...

Books: Comics Panel: Superhero and mainstream comics – December 2011

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:01:00 -0600

Peter Milligan and Michael Allred changed the course of Marvel Comics in 2001 with X-Force #116, a book that was so unnervingly graphic that the Comics Code Authority refused to put their stamp on the cover, prompting Marvel to give a hearty “Fuck you” to the CCA and publish it anyway. By imagining a world where mutants were viewed as celebrities instead of outcasts, Milligan and Allred produced a scathing critique of the entertainment industry using a cast of damaged and mortal characters. The X-Statix Omnibus (Marvel) collects the entirety of Milligan, Allred, and company’s run, more than 40 ...

Books: Comics Panel: Graphic Novels & Art-Comics - December 2011

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:00:00 -0600

In 1970, Jann Wenner contacted National Lampoon contributing editor Michel Choquette about assembling a supplemental comics section for a special issue of Rolling Stone. Choquette was asked to use his connections in the comics, music, and literary worlds to put together 16 to 24 full-page strips about the state of the ’60s mindset at the dawn of the next decade. Only the more potential contributors that Choquette contacted, the more he found who were interested in participating, until he and Wenner began talking about ditching the magazine supplement and putting out a full-sized book, unlike any comic book that had ...

Books: Comics Panel: Superhero & mainstream comics – November 2011

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 -0600

The Jean Grey School For Higher Learning: “The best there is at what we do.” The clever twist on Wolverine’s catchphrase shows what a difference a “we” makes; by reopening the Westchester school, Wolverine is taking the X-Men back to its roots as a makeshift family for outsiders and rejects. With this summer’s Schism miniseries, Jason Aaron proved himself one of the best X-writers of the past decade, but that was just a warm-up for the unbridled fun and excitement that is Wolverine And The X-Men #1 (Marvel). Teaming with veteran X-Men artist Chris Bachalo, Aaron is bringing ...

Books: Comics Panel: Graphic Novels & Art-Comics - Early November 2011

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:00:00 -0600

Most non-fiction books don’t require a second, even-longer book of documentation, but then most non-fiction books aren’t Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Art Spiegelman’s groundbreaking, best-selling graphic novel—frequently cited as one of the most essential artworks of the 20th century. Originally serialized in the art-comics anthology Raw in the ’80s, Maus tells how Spiegelman’s father Vladek survived the Holocaust, using a striking visual conceit that depicts the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats. Maus isn’t just a personal historical narrative; it’s also a comment on the limits of comics’ representational qualities ...

Books: Comics Panel: Superhero & mainstream comics—late October 2011

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:01:00 -0500

Brian Michael Bendis is becoming one of the most inconsistent writers in comics. The fantastic Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man shows that he can still tell emotionally rich, forward-thinking stories, and Moon Knight is an intriguing, albeit slow-moving, look at one of the Marvel universe’s most psychologically complex characters. Then there are Bendis’ Avengers titles, which have been treading water for quite some time now, with plot overtaking character-development in a constant stream of lineup changes and meaningless destruction. Unfortunately, it’s the latter side of Bendis that reunites with his original Ultimate Spider-Man collaborator Mark Bagley for Brilliant #1 (Icon ...

Books: Comics Panel: Graphic Novels & Art-Comics - October 2011

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:00:00 -0500

Craig Thomson’s best-selling, award-winning 2003 autobiographical comic Blankets combined three subjects—child abuse, religious disillusionment, and first love—that could’ve filled volumes all to themselves, resulting in a book that proved worthy of the tag “graphic novel” in its winding narrative and wealth of detail. Thomson’s new book Habibi (Pantheon) was six years in the making, and at 600-plus pages, it rivals Blankets for heft. It’s also every bit as formidable as a work of literature and a work of art—and perhaps even more so. With Blankets, Thompson shaped his own small experiences into something ...

Books: Comics Panel: Superhero & mainstream comics—late September 2011

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:00:00 -0500

In a month absolutely packed with character debuts over at DC, Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli pull the focus back to Marvel with their stunning introduction to Miles Morales. For the debut of the all-new Spider-Man, Bendis follows the same storytelling template that proved so successful when he debuted Ultimate Spider-Man 10 years ago. Perfectly paced and gorgeously illustrated, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1 (Marvel) is a masterful first issue, primarily focused on creating a believable world around Miles that is distinct from Peter Parker’s experience. After an opening sequence with Norman Osborn (a callback to the first scene ...

Books: Comics Panel: Graphic Novels & Art-Comics — September 2011

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:00:00 -0500

In serialized form, Anders Nilsen’s Big Questions (D&Q) was a curious little artifact, featuring page after page of similar-looking birds philosophizing about survival, in between sequences of a grumpy downed pilot and a half-naked, mentally handicapped man wandering through the same sparse landscape. The series appeared to be of a piece with the other Nilsen work being released sporadically throughout the ’00s. The individual Big Questions issues came off as arty, aloof, and meandering, merely hinting at having some larger point. But Big Questions reads much differently in book form. Now collected in a 658-page hardcover (and also ...

Books: Comics Panel: Superhero & mainstream comics—Late August, 2011

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:00:00 -0500

With Barbara Gordon reclaiming the Batgirl mantle as part of the DC relaunch, Stephanie Brown’s fate in the DCnU remains unknown, along with that of current Batgirl writer Bryan Q. Miller. Batgirl #24 (DC) is the bittersweet finale to Miller’s exceptional run on the title, concluding the dangling plotlines from the last two years while giving readers a look at what could have been. Effortlessly balancing Stephanie’s personal life with her vigilante career, Miller brought a combination of wit and drama to the title, reminiscent of the best episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The story comes ...

Books: Comics Panel: Graphic novels & art comics—August 2011

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:00:00 -0500

When comic books emerged as a commercial medium in the ’30s, the early writers and artists had a hard time winning the kind of respect afforded to the top newspaper cartoonists, many of whom were practically celebrities. As more of those early-20th-century daily strips have been collected and re-published, it’s easy to see why there was such a disparity in the public response to artists plying similar trades. The diversity and quality of classic newspaper comics is pretty stunning: the savvy humor, the flavorful language, the well-paced narratives, the lively rendering, the experimentation… none of this needs to be ...

Books: Comics Panel: Superhero & mainstream comics—Late July, 2011

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:00:00 -0500

The X-Men are about evolution, and the best writers on the franchise aren’t afraid to shake up the status quo, as long as they remember the team’s core mission: protect a world that hates and fears them. Jason Aaron has been doing solid work on Wolverine for the past few years, and X-Men: Schism (Marvel), now two issues into its five-issue run, gives him control of the entire X-franchise for a miniseries that promises lasting changes for Marvel’s merry mutants. Lasting changes don’t mean shit in the superhero world, but if Aaron is able to maintain ...

Books: Comics Panel: Graphic novels & art-comics—late July and early August 2011

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:00:00 -0500

Nate Powell’s 2008 graphic novel Swallow Me Whole showed an artist willing to risk losing control of his narrative in order to explore the possibilities of the page. His follow-up, Any Empire (Top Shelf), is much the same. Powell is partial to long, wordless sequences that stretch across multiple pages, with images that are sometimes direct in their meaning, but just as often impressionistic and allusive. Because Any Empire takes place over a couple of decades—jumping back and forth in time occasionally—in a world that’s familiar yet a little fantastic, the book is not always as ...

Books: Comics Panel: Superhero & mainstream comics—June and early July, 2011

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:00:00 -0500

For the past 10 years, Ultimate Spider-Man has been the place for the most consistently entertaining Peter Parker stories in a wave of Spidey titles. In spite of attempts to revitalize the line post-Ultimatum, the Ultimate brand has become creatively stagnant, with only Brian Michael Bendis’ Ultimate Comics Spider-Man attempting forward-thinking stories grounded in honest emotion rather than cheap shock tactics. Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #160 (Marvel) closes the door on the first generation of Ultimate titles, killing the character who started it all, and setting the stage for the next round of Ultimate books, with Jonathan Hickman and Nick ...

Books: Comics Panel: Graphic Novels & Art-Comics - Late June and Early July 2011

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:00:00 -0500

Gene Luen Yang’s award-winning 2006 graphic novel American Born Chinese inventively combined an ancient folktale, wacky stereotypes, and an earnest coming-of-age story into a bracingly honest and entertaining examination of what it means to grow up Asian in the USA. Yang’s Level Up (First Second) revisits the subject, but in a more small-scaled, character-driven way, not as some grand statement on assimilation. The book follows a young man named Dennis Ouyang, who’s struggling to follow his late father’s dream that he become a gastroenterologist, because an obsession with videogames keeps distracting him. As with American Born ...

Books: Comics Panel: Superhero & mainstream comics—May and early June, 2011

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:00:00 -0500

“Everything will change…in a flash!” With the recent news that DC will relaunch its entire line following the conclusion of Flashpoint at the end of August, the miniseries’ tagline has a brand new meaning. New #1’s across the boards (including Grant Morrison on a Superman title and Geoff Johns on Aquaman), Jim Lee redesigns of every major character, and digital day-of-date release are major shake-ups for the company, and what better way to usher in a new age than by having everything instantly change in DC’s big summer event? Even before it unveiled the relaunch plans, DC ...

Books: Comics Panel: Graphic novels & art-comics—late May and early June 2011

Mon, 23 May 2011 00:00:00 -0500

In his book Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud devotes the better part of a chapter to dissecting the appeal of Mickey Mouse, not as a character, but as a piece of design. McCloud suggests that people everywhere are drawn to cartoony faces because they’re blank, and thus can be filled with the audience’s own values and personality traits. The same could be said of the way Walt Disney’s stable of animators and cartoonists handled the boss’ signature creation over the years. In early cartoons, Mickey was a mischief-maker; later, he became a wide-eyed adventurer, then a domestic everyman ...

Books: Comics Panel: Superhero And Mainstream Comics—April and Early May 2011

Mon, 09 May 2011 12:00:00 -0500

Since “Avengers: Disassembled,” Marvel’s summer crossovers have largely served to advance Joe Quesada’s editorial initiatives, with Fear Itself #1 (Marvel) the first line-wide crossover since Quesada handed the Editor-In-Chief title over to Axel Alonso. Just in time for their respective films, Thor and Captain America (technically just Steve Rogers right now, but give it a month or two) take center stage as the Red Skull’s daughter Sin uncovers the enchanted hammer from Fear Itself: Book Of The Skull, transforming into the ancient warrior Skadi to awaken the true All-Father of the Norse gods. Specifically, she awakens an ...