The A.V. Club - Comics Panel

Books: Comics Panel:November 6, 2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:35:00 -0600

In 1975, cartoonist and children’s book illustrator Stuart Hample had the bright idea to take the luckless, lovelorn, philosophical persona of Woody Allen—then famous for what the aliens in Allen’s Stardust Memories would later call his “early, funny films”—and turn it into a daily newspaper strip. Amazingly, Allen agreed, and even offered to provide Hample with a thick stack of pages compiled from his old notebooks, full of jokes and fragments of ideas. In 1976, Inside Woody Allen debuted from King Features, and it ran until 1984, by which time Allen’s stature in popular culture ...

Books: Comics Panel:October 23, 2009

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:45:00 -0500

The team-up between Image marketing genius Todd McFarlane (Spawn) and new Image partner Robert Kirkman (Invincible, The Walking Dead) is exactly what it should be: In a blind taste test, comics fans should be able to read the new series Haunt (Image) and identify its creators based solely on signature styles. It’s solidly commercial, with a quick payoff of sex and violence, and the promise of supernatural superhero mayhem to come; in effect, it reads exactly like Invincible with a harder-edged horror tinge replacing the four-color glossy tone. The “very first debut issue,” as Kirkman puts it in a ...

Books: Comics Panel:September 24, 2009

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:56:00 -0500

Did we need another version of Superman’s early years, what with Mark Waid and Lenil Yu’s Superman Birthright in the not-so-distant past, and Smallville still somehow on the air? Maybe not, but the first issue of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s Superman: Secret Origin (DC) makes that easy to forget. Serving a practical purpose, Secret Origin reworks Superman’s early days to fit the new post-Infinite Crisis continuity. But it still finds a story worth telling in Clark Kent’s days as an angst-plagued teen struggling with his new, unpredictable powers. As the new Adventure Comics ...

Books: Comics Panel:September 4, 2009

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:46:00 -0500

R. Sikoryak’s Masterpiece Comics (D&Q) essentially repeats one joke across its 64 pages, but at least it’s a good joke. Over the past 20 years, Sikoryak has popped up in comics anthologies like Raw and Drawn & Quarterly with superbly crafted, sublimely conceptual strips that combine classic cartoons and superheroes with classic literature. Little Lulu and Tubby star in an adaptation of The Scarlet Letter; Bazooka Joe braves Dante’s Inferno, and so on. Sikoryak’s mimicry of artists like Jim Davis and Winsor McKay is uncanny, and when he combines concepts smartly, he finds ways to comment ...

Books: Comics Panel:August 21, 2009

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:40:00 -0500

A former college football star with a busted knee works as a salesman at a car lot. He’s no good at his job; the boss keeps him around because the last flickers of his fame are still enough to draw in the rubes, but as far as selling goes, the guy is better at screwing the customers’ wives than closing deals. The boss gives him one last chance—help keep the boss’ hot, scandal-hungry daughter out of the papers. It’s a steady paycheck, and if the looks the daughter keeps throwing him are any indication, there’ll be ...

Books: Comics Panel:July 24, 2009

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:21:00 -0500

The late crime novelist Donald E. Westlake was notably protective of his most prominent fictional creation, the hard-as-nails master thief Parker, who starred in more than two dozen books written under Westlake’s major pseudonym, Richard Stark. Though the Parker books were adapted into films seven times, including the acclaimed Point Blank, Westlake insisted that the filmmakers change Parker’s name if they weren’t going to bother with a faithful rendition of the series. It’s a signal of both Westlake’s approval and Darwyn Cooke’s intentions, therefore, that Cooke’s graphic-novel adaptation of the first book, Richard ...

Books: Comics Panel:July 10, 2009

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:28:00 -0500

Weekly comics have been a hit-and-miss proposition for DC since they were reintroduced a few years ago; 52 was largely a success, but it was followed up by the abysmal Countdown. Now comes the simply titled Wednesday Comics (DC), and if the first issue is any indication, it could be just what the industry needs. A series of (so far) unrelated episodic stories by a number of big-shot artists and writers, Wednesday Comics has a fascinating fold-out design that, along with the outstanding graphics (and terrific layout by editor Mark Chiarello), makes it one of the best-looking mainstream titles on ...

Books: Comics Panel:June 25, 2009

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Though in-the-know comics nerds have known about mysterious, deranged Golden Age cartoonist Fletcher Hanks for a while, credit writer Paul Karasik for hipping the rest of the world to his existence. In 2007, Karasik brought the world I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!, a collection of Hanks’ largely inexplicable work; now, he follows it up with You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! (Fantagraphics), which collects all the Hanks material not included in the first book. Hanks’ hyperactive, colorful, robust, and crazily disproportionate art is perfectly matched to his over-the-top storytelling in features like the terrifying, skull-faced Fantomah ...

Books: Comics Panel:June 12, 2009

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

When All-Star Superman finished its run after what seemed like decades of waiting, plenty of critics were more than willing to add Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s maxi-series to the pantheon of the greatest Superman stories ever told. More than a few, though, weren’t satisfied; what could this team, they clamored, do with Batman? An answer to that question began to take shape this month when Morrison and Quitely rolled out Batman And Robin (DC), and so far, the answer has been “a hell of a lot.” Faced with the unwelcoming task of introducing a brand-new version of ...

Books: Comics Panel:May 29, 2009

Fri, 29 May 2009 12:00:00 -0500

A.V. Club Newswire readers are already aware that, starting in Archie Comics #600 (Archie Comics), America’s One-Time Favorite Teen proposes to his loaded brunette girlfriend, beginning the downward spiral that will eventually lead blonde Betty to become Cherry Pop-Tart. The question is, who cares? Well… True, there’s nothing groundbreaking about the stories, and judging from issues #601 and #602, this is little more than a competently executed gimmick storyline to boost sales. And sure, Archie Comics is about as hip as a pair of PF Flyers, and its writers’ attempts to stay hip are so comically unsuccessful ...

Books: Comics Panel:May 15, 2009

Fri, 15 May 2009 13:54:00 -0500

Dave Sim has spent the five years since the conclusion of his epic series Cerebus pissing away whatever goodwill remained after his public acts of misogynistic craziness. Even leaving aside his unhinged behavior, his creative work has been spotty: a comic biography of a little-known Sino-Canadian actress; Judenhass, a controversial, unsuccessful treatment of the Holocaust; and glamourpuss, an abysmal, sexist parody of the fashion world. While he’s sworn repeatedly that he’s done with Cerebus, he may have noticed that these titles aren’t exactly raking in the dough; hence The Cerebus Archive #1 (Aardvark-Vanaheim). A collection of his ...

Books: Comics Panel:April 30, 2009

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Like a lot of long-running series that have blended episodic storytelling with a larger mythology, 100 Bullets has evolved over the past 10 years into something very different than how it started. In writer Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s original concept, a mysterious stranger handed wronged people an untraceable gun and 100 bullets, along with a name of the person they needed to shoot to exact vengeance. The premise was pulpy and flexible, allowing Azzarello and Risso to explore different characters in different communities, and to keep returning to juicy moral dilemmas. Would we kill someone we hate, if ...

Books: Comics Panel:April 16, 2009

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:18:00 -0500

The last time Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill explored the universe of their League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, they emerged with The Black Dossier, an imaginative but largely impenetrable romp through centuries of varied pop-culture forms and iconic characters. Next up: Century, a three-part graphic novel that tells self-contained stories of Moore and O’Neill’s literary League, set in 1910, 1968, and 2008. The 80-page Century: 1910 (Top Shelf) kicks off the epic with arguably the most accessible LXG story Moore has ever written—one so straightforward that it almost seems a sop to all the fans who complained ...

Books: Comics Panel:March 26, 2009

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s reputation as a manga pioneer stems from his involvement with the development of the “gekiga” genre, dedicated to more realistic depictions of the trials of everyday existence. For the 800-page epic A Drifting Life (Drawn & Quarterly), the everyday existence Tatsumi depicts is his own, ranging from his boyhood interest in comics to his attempts to make his own name in the profession. It’s a passionate, personal book, lovingly and gorgeously rendered, and it’s informative reading both for fans of Japanese comics and those who’ve always kept manga at arm’s length. All of A ...

Books: Comics Panel:March 9, 2009

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:44:00 -0500

Marvel Comics’ comic-book adaptation/spin-off of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series has become a runaway success, so it’s no surprise that the company is hoping lightning strikes twice with The Stand (Marvel). A hardcover collection of the first story arc, Captain Trips, just hit shops, as did the first issue of the second arc, American Nightmares. But while The Stand is a better novel overall than the collected seven-book Dark Tower series, the opposite is true of the comics adaptations. While both are being overseen by King himself, and both are following the same five-arc, 30-issue structure, Roberto ...

Books: Comics Panel:Comics Panel: February 26, 2009

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:25:00 -0600

Most people with a passing familiarity with the modern history of comic books are aware of the massive screwjob DC Comics handed to Superman’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Fewer people are aware that in the 1950s, an impoverished Shuster made some easy cash by producing kinky bondage drawings for fetish magazines. Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator, Joe Shuster(Abrams ComicArts), written by celebrated designer Craig Yoe, is a bit sensationalistic, but how could it not be? Aside from illuminating a titillating (though depressing) aspect of Shuster’s career, the book sheds some light ...

Books: Comics Panel:February 12, 2009

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Nobody dies in the comics—nobody important, anyway. So it’s no surprise that fans greeted the news of Bruce Wayne’s expiration with skepticism. After all, anybody who can walk away from a broken spine and survive two Joel Schumacher movies probably won’t stay gone for long. Starting in this month’s Batman #686 and concluding next month in Detective Comics #853, “Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader?” has Neil Gaiman writing and Andy Kubert drawing a eulogy for the man who was Batman; the title is a reference to the last pre-Crisis Superman story, by Alan Moore ...

Books: Comics Panel:January 29, 2009

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:00:00 -0600

What better way to celebrate the dawn of a new era in American politics than with some hastily assembled funnybooks? This month saw the release of a mini-windfall of Barack Obama-related comics, including the Presidential Material Flipbook (IDW), a re-release combining pre-election cartoon biographies of Obama and John McCain; Obama: The Comic Book—Inaugural Edition (Antarctic Press), a straightforward, perhaps a bit too non-partisan biography of the new president by award-winning children's-book author and artist Chris Allen; and The Amazing Spider-Man #583, in which everyone's favorite web-slinger gets a terrorist fist-bump from the new leader of the free ...

Books: Comics Panel:Comics Panel: January 9, 2009

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:36:00 -0600

When editor Sammy Harkham and publisher Buenaventura Press announced that the seventh issue of the influential art-comics anthology Kramers Ergot would be 16" x 21," 98 pages long, and $125 (discounted to $78.75 on Amazon), reactions in the comics community ranged from perplexed to outright hostile. But give Harkham credit: he's made the publication of Kramers Ergot #7 (Buenaventura) into an honest-to-goodness event, stealing some thunder from superhero crossovers, celebrity writers, and movie tie-ins. Is KE7 worth the extra dough? Most of the time, absolutely. In the past, Kramers Ergot has been one of those anthologies that seems ...

Books: Comics Panel:December 19, 2008

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:19:00 -0600

Eight years after the first volume of Jason Lutes’ three-volume, 24-chapter graphic novel Berlin was released, Lutes offers Berlin Book Two: City Of Smoke (Drawn & Quarterly), collecting the middle eight chapters of his epic study of Germany’s Weimar Republic. Berlin: City Of Stones ended with the 1929 May Day massacre, which hastened the German citizenry’s demand for order and thus the quick rise to power of the Nazi Party, whose 1930 triumph in the elections marks the end of City Of Smoke. Lutes foregrounds the history by having his characters react directly to it, and though there are ...