Changing the Tune: Better Comics than DC Rebirth you can Buy for the Same Price!

The conversation surrounding DC Rebirth is irritating me to no end. This comic appears to address the failings of the DC Comics of the past decades by actively refusing to do any sort of introspection. It fixes problems by creating more and misunderstanding the core appeal of their own comics. It's done by the same people who did the wrecking in the first place. It seems wrong-headed, mean-spirited and just unwelcoming. I see it in the same way I see the Star Wars Prequels. Maybe Shazam will have midichlorians now, Alfred is Jar Jar...

I also saw this particularly grating comment by Tom Spurgeon on the Comics Reporter to the effect that a comic book store employee recommended he buy the comic because it was cheap: “Should you buy it? I guess. It's like 80 pages for three bucks. You might as well”. That just seems wrong to me, I understand that comic book shop benefits from selling this comic and getting it out there is good for their business, but if the quality of the product is lacking and the story being told is problematic, why would you as a consumer purchase it at all. Are we bound by the need to read a comic simply because of value or does quality has a higher value than simple cost? If as a reader, you've felt betrayed before, why trust that this will be any different?

So I thought to move the conversation towards actual good comics you can buy for three bucks RIGHT NOW that are of good and for which you’ll be supporting artists directly rather than a corporate publishers who, by any indications, seems to actively hate you. There are so much good comics, let's see what three bucks can get you.

--

Let's start with Uncivilized books and with Doomin by Derek Van Gieson. It appears to be a riff on Tove Janssen's Moomin, but with a music/drunken twist.

Over at Ray Ray Books, Club Queen Rat King by Emma Louthan, a small comic from the artist behind Three Fates, a comic I really enjoyed. This one is about Club Queen, finding "her rightful place as the object of worship for the denizens of a surreal frenzied night club". Next up is Consumption by Jensine Eckwall, Here's the description from the author: "This winter I got sick, sick in a way I’d ever been before.  In my desperate search for answers, I came across a group of people whose desires had shifted from self-preservation to quite the opposite". There's also the extremely talented Laura Knetzger's Flowering Vine (I reviewed her latest comic Sea Urchin here). Flowering Vine is a comic I have yet to read described as follow: "Wonders blossom in the inner-most thoughts of a young girl’s mind. I'm looking forward to reading this"

Speaking of the incredibly talented Laura Knetzger, her excellent comic Find me, Look for Me (Reviewed here) is available for three bucks over at Yeah Dude Comics.

Over at Czap Book, Rising, comic superstar Cathy G. Johnson & Kevin Czapiewski's newsprint comic He Fought Like a Little Tiger in a Trap loosely based on a novel by Carson McCullers I've never heard of. It's a comic about identity and expression. They also have Rind by MJ Robinson, a comic poem about frustration.

Speaking of poetry, if you want to try something truly different, InkBrick has a bunch of experimental poetry comics for three bucks or less over at the InkBrick Store

Over at Radiator Comics, the sci-fi comedy comic by Miranda Harmon Intergalactic Dance Party will lighten your mood and make you want to dance. Any issues of the series Frankie by Rachel Dukes (about a bizarre cat adopted by a family) are available for two or three bucks. There's an interesting looking comic AND a guide on useful things you should know about by Isabella Rotman called Good to Know . All the issues of Madtown High by Whit Taylor are available as well. 

Moving on to Study Group Comics, a single sketchbook by artist Zack Soto called fukt' bros is available for just three bucks.

Over at 2Dcloud, an avant-garde publisher of quality materials from interesting authors, a few comics of note are available for under three bucks: A Rudy mini comic by Mark Connery, a poetry comic called Easter Island by Christopher Adams of which I know nothing about, Looking Good by Will Dinski on office gadgets; No Title by Ellen Redshaw, and the talented Anna Bongiovanni's mini comic Cavities & Crevices, same with MariNaomi's Great Heights, and a comic by Nicholas Breutzman called Harvest based on Jailhouse stories.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE. You want a Universe of comics? At your local comic shop, all the issues of the phenomenal 8 House project and Mirror are $2.99. Lighten up the load of back issues of your local comic shop, they’ll be grateful.

BUT WHAT ABOUT MY ELECTRONIC MULTIMEDIA READING DEVICE?

Digital Retrofit comics: I’m cheating a bit here since I’m suggesting digital comics rather than print comics, but with such a good selection of solid titles, it would be a shame not to point them out. Retrofit Comics have been releasing extremely interesting comic from phenomenal talents for the last few years. Most of those are available as .PDF on their website for just $2.99. The 2014 Ignatz Award winner for Outstanding Comic Wicked Chicken Queen by Sam Alden, Debbie’s Inferno by Anne Emond, Number One by Box Brown, Ikebana by Yumi Sakugawa, Bowman by Pat Aulisio, The Monkey in the Basement and Other Delusions by Corrine Mucha. And a personal favourite, the newly released The Experts by Sophie Franz (reviewed here). Take a serious look at their digital catalog, any of these $2.99 comics will be an impeccable read. That Sam Alden comic and the Sophie Franz comic will change how you think about comics.

Speaking of good digital comics, over at Youth in Decline, you can get the first issue of Lovers Only, an romance anthology by Cathy G. Jonhson, Sophia Foster-Dimino and Mickey Zacchilli for under two bucks.

You can also get any of Sarah Horrocks comics on digital for two or three bucks.

--

So there you have it, options of comics for three bucks. None of these comics are mean-spirited, confusing, unwelcoming, angry or filled with pointless decapitation (don't quote me on that last one though, but I'm pretty sure there is no decapitation in those). They don’t require you buy more comics to understand it, nor do they require you to have read 15 to 20 years of comics before it to understand it. It's importance will not be wiped away in 3 months. They will stand as artifacts, intemporal pieces of art, of comics well executed by caring artists, and hopefully will be well-liked by you as a reader. 

Comic book doesn't have to be a spiteful place. You don't have to buy something out of nostalgia alone, you don't have to buy a comic out of habit. You don't have to buy a comic you don't like. It's not fun to "anger-read" books and comics. You are your own person. You can make your own choices. Be the comic reader you want to be. If after looking at all of those suggestions, DC Rebirth still appeals to you, that's fine too. But do let me know, I'll send you the exact location of Alan Moore's grave and we can all go dancing on it while burning money and talking about how good the Batman V Superman 2: Electric Superman Blue is going to be. That scene where Mongul rips Lois Lane in half with her intestines splattered all over the floor. Just the gore movie I think of when I think of a Batman/Superman team-up movie. 

P.S. don't watch the Batman/Superman movie, maybe watch another comic book movie like Turbo Kid instead. It's a better movie in almost every conceivable way, and it's Canadian. Oh did you watch Diary of a Teenage Girl yet? It's amazing!

Jon Vaughn's Schwartz on the Schwartz: What We Are Like On The Inside

Inside My Head

What are we made of? Objectively, we know what a human body contains. We even know the chemical composition of our body. But what about our consciousness? What about our souls? What are they made of? What are we made of? I am not sure if any of us have any answers, but Jon Vaughn tries to explore this in Schwartz on the Schwartz.

Vaughn depicts the outline of human forms in various positions, but the only signifier of humanity is this outline. We recognize what humans look like, but we don’t see them from outside, instead we gaze into what the souls contained in their bodies might look like. Lines twist and turn into abstraction in the outline of the bodies we see. Souls are warped and we observe them, unable to ever grasp what we’re meant to see. We dig deeper and deeper into a depiction of human psyche that is completely wild. We see what looks like cerebral tissue, overlapping flesh and weird shapes. As one tries to unravel the meaning of the book, we are haunted by the mystery that surrounds this oddity. It stayed with me long after I put it down.

The comic, although short, is quite dense. As one tries to unwrap the meaning of this, we get to hold this nicely risographed mini-comic on beige paper with blue and black ink. It really is a neat little book. I doubt I’ll ever see any other comic from Jon Vaughn; I’ve had a hard time finding information on him online apart from his artist resume. In any case, I see an artist with a grasp of perspective and potential to turn into a great comic artist.

A subjective view of a soul

Book Club Report: Marvel Knights: Spider-Man by Matt Kindt & Marco Rudy: Extreme Highs and Lowest Low

Excellence & Mediocrity

It's been awhile since our group met for Comic Book Book Club, November was cancelled, and December, well everyone's busy in December so that was also cancelled. So here we are, in January 2015, with our first book of the year. This is one of the rare occasions in which we've done a superhero book. We tend to stay away from those for a variety of reasons. They're repetitive, stale, and often time limited in their perspectives. We've done Batwoman: Elegy about 2 years ago as a way to discuss LGBT and style and we haven't done any superhero comics until today. We looked at the terribly uneven Marvel Knights: Spider-Man. The members of the group had very mixed opinions about the book. Some loved it and praised it's artistic boldness, while others hated it, with myself fitting in the latter category. It was an interesting discussion because the book is flawed beyond belief, but there are also some incredible moments within. Let's take a look.

I don't normally split reviews into different components of "art" and "story", but I feel I must in this case. Mostly because superhero comics have long ago compartmentalized those 2 aspects. The focus is usually first placed upon writing the story, and then a group of people will be tasked with illustrating it, often trying to respect the publisher's house style. Specifically here, the story accounts for most of the problems of the book. What is this book about? Well, the book seems to have 2 subtitles, Fight Night and 99 problems. I couldn't tell which one was the correct one, maybe they were both correct. Anyway, Spider-Man (Peter Parker, not any of those guys) is drugged and must fight his way through his entire rogue gallery for no apparent reason or purpose. The back cover says 99 villains, but I honestly couldn't tell how many there were. Not that it matters much anyway. It could have been one elongated fight sequence against 1 enemy and it would have achieved the same effect. Spider-Man is the underdog and he wins, I guess? He goes from one set piece to the next to fight villains, then collapses and wakes up in a new environment where he dukes it out with more villains. Repeat for 120 pages and you got yourself a book! It's revealed in the last couple of pages that it was a bet between the Kingpin and his nephew to see if he could survive fighting 100 people. Are they part of the 99 or are they the people who started this, so 101? That's it, that's all it is. 

The glorious art!

Unfortunately, this is the only thing you'll find in this book. There are no themes, no effort has been put into making this any more than it is. It's really as exciting as an old school video game without cut scenes. It's empty. And yet, this is the first point where our group disagreed. Some of us were thinking, is it enough for a book to simply have a confused guy fighting other guys for 120 pages? Can we expect more from a Spider-Man book than a constant rehash of his concept? Yet some of us, not necessarily superhero comics reader, thought it was just fine. As a standalone comic, it works perfectly well. If it's a standard action plot, should we be expecting more than what we got here? And can we see this book, as an artist showcase and nothing else? I will leave this to the readers to decide. None of us found the story to be particularly good, even those who adamantly defended it. What was surprising was that the writer was Matt Kindt, who most of us knew for writing Mind MGMT and his Top Shelf Spy books. All of his other work we were familiar with is incredibly superior to this. This felt like a wasted opportunity as we were all certain that it could have been much better than it was. 

Pain and memories, Spidey can't manage his mind...

What we could all agree with, though, was that this book was saved by Marco Rudy's incredible art and page design. This is truly what sets this book apart. Rudy cleverly designs his page to reflect the state of mind of our protagonist. At first, when he is stressed out by his life, the page is full and very crowded. When he is drugged, the page design becomes more fluid. It's a mix of painting and standard art. We'd have love to have a longer version of the book with some process pages at the end. 

The glorious art!

I'm not so sure we would recommend this book. In fact, we would recommend an equally gorgeous superior hero book by Frank J. Barbiere and Marco Rudy. New Avengers Annual #1 is the story of Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) as he is asked by a group of techno monks to rescue a young girl who's been possessed by a demon. The story draws parallel with the character origin. Dr. Strange was an arrogant surgeon who, after a car accident, was unable to use his hands again. He began dabbling in the mystic arts and became the Sorcerer Supreme. He had to learn to be humble and discover that there were lots of things he didn't know. Yet to win against this demon and save the girl, he must set aside his humbleness and be confident in his own ability; if he wavers, he will fail. A book about humbleness and hubris, and the art is superb as per the example below. We highly recommend it. It's cheaper too, and your comic book store retailer will be happy to unload copies of back issues. Everybody wins.

New Avengers Annual #1

New Avengers Annual #1

Roman Muradov: Picnic Ruined: Undeniable Talent, Unbelievable Pretention

Talent and Failure in one convenient package

A fantastic recommendation from the tall fellow at Mission: Comics & Art in San Francisco. Picnic Ruined is my first experience with Roman Muradov's work (he of the Tolstoy Google Doodle from 24/09/2014) and, oh boy, was it a mixed bag. There is clear talent and mastery in the art, but the story it illustrates is so weak, it's painful at times.

Picnic Ruined tells the story of an artist who feels worthless and pathetic. His life is dedicated to art, but his failures are always at the forefront of his mind. Self-loathing seems to be the main motivator for the lead characters. We meet a genuinely annoying man whose sole problem appears to be self-created. He blames everyone and no one for his failure. It all feels terribly banal and full of platitudes. He is smug artist (or someone with artistic inclinations) who thinks he is better than everyone else. He talks constantly about how the world has failed him and how he has failed it. This character`s woes are that he has too much, knows too much and has too much ambition. And yet he suffers because all the doors are open, and he doesn't know which one to take. So desperate from knowing he can accomplish anything, yet he`s not decisive enough to pick. What a trite and dull story.

Fortunately for the reader, there are some redeeming qualities.

The art is superb.

This is a masterpiece in comic-making. Muradov's layout is freeflowing throughout the book. Thoughts are given abstract form. Memories, and the inability to remember somethig properly, are illustrated so well. State of mind becomes visually alive in this book. The use of black and white here is also wonderful. It combines many artistic methods and manipulates them on the same page. The art is expressive and magnificient. Yet as I read Picnic Ruined, one question kept coming to my mind. Is art enough to anchor a comic book? 

I will seek out Muradov's other book cautiously. Perhaps his other efforts at a story won't be as misguided as in this book. I'll come around to reading (In a Sense) Lost & Found in the future. At the very least, it will be pretty to look at.

Horror Vaccui by Jono Currier - The Many Ways to Interpret Fear

I had a chance to pick up a copy of Jono Currier's  Horror Vaccui when I visited Montreal. I stopped by Drawn and Quarterly at 211 Bernard and I found this little gem. A collection of two horror short stories "The Story of the Flesh Hood" and "Tunnels".

I am not usually of fan of horror comics so it was very unlike me to pick up a horror book. I tried countless times to enjoy horror in comics and I have always been disappointed. It is difficult to accomplish proper horror feelings in comics. Since it is such a visual medium, a lot of artists have a hard time balancing the restrictions to achieve the desired feelings in the reader. Although horror has been a historically linked comic genre, I have always had a hard time seeing how it can be effiicient in sequential arts. Comic books are an inherently visual medium, one where you show and don't tell. Horror is a combination of frightening mood and moderations, menacing yet restrained feelings. Too much over the top gore or ridiculousness and the balance is lost. It must balance the untold and the revelations. It is a fine line to walk and not everyone is successful in doing it. That's not to say that there are no good horror comics. They are simply few and far between.

A typical shitty horror comic

Sam Alden: The Man that Dances in the Meadows
An exceptional, rare instance of a good horror comic book

I have nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed Jono Currier's Horror Vaccui to be quite excellent. I have wondered which of the two prominent interpretations of the horror vaccui expression this comic refers to. Is it that nature abhors emptiness, or is it a fear of empty space? Which way should we look at the text? There are many possibilities. Let's take a look:

Cenophobia

• Cenophobia: A fear of empty space

This is a concept linked to visual arts which consists of filling the entire surface of an artwork with details. A simple version of this would be "Where's Waldo". The entire page is filled with details, and it's also a game. Altough Currier's pages may have some panels which uses empty spaces, most if not all the panels are filled with white lines and the pages are filled with drawings. Nothing is left blank. The feeling of fullness is accentuated by the colour of the paper used. The use of black paper and white ink allows for a more dramatic effect. This colour technique, combined with the saturation of the pages, leaves the reader with a strange feeling of unease. The protagonist in the first story (The Story of the Flesh Hood) is unsure of what he experienced and neither does the reader. The excessive lines and rendering provides us with a surreal depiction of reality. The forest is filled with humanoid shapes and the sky is undulating, moving like waves over a man whose mind may well have been lost to the darkness long before we met him. 

The second story is even more related to this concept. Tunnels is completely filled with esoteric darkness, M.C. Escher style staircases, and extreme landscapes. Each panel is filled but it serves a purpose. It is the protagonist`s sensory overload. Madness and fear of the unknown twists and merges into a dark pit of despair. The reader can only gather the clues from these packed panels and is left to interpret for himself or herself.

Plenism

• Nature abhors a vaccum

This is a concept related to physics which indicates that nature contains no vaccum because the denser surrounding material continuum would immediately fill the rarity of an incipient void. I didn't know this before I read the story, but had to refer to Wikipedia. In both stories, someone is gone and an emptiness is found and must somehow be filled. In the first stories, three bodies have been found and a killer is on the loose. These disappearances reveal a darkness; a long forgotten hole in a man. As he tries to uncover what once was, he discovers that this hole may be more than he can handle and that nature will find a way to fill this void, even if it means taking his life. 

In the second story, the tunnel is also a void that will be filled. A person finds a hole with a ladder coming out of it and, against all sense, he decides to go down. The tunnel cannnot be explained by senses. He discovers arcane figures and will eventually fall through the darkness and to his doom. This emptiness is unnatural and will be filled by both gravity and despair. It is not completely filled as the man is still alive, forever trapped in a universe that will never be let him free.

Brilliant & Terrifying

I did not think I would enjoy a horror comic and yet, here I am praising it. It is thoughtful, wonderful, brilliant and I absolutely recommend you seek out this artist and this book. I have been impressed on many levels. I am still unsure what to think of this book, what it means and how to read it. There are so many layers. It is frightening and riveting. I will read it many times over and so should you. Here is Jono Currier's website. Enjoy!

Rub the Blood - The Dark Ages of Mainstream Comics Ridiculed and Respected

Bloodwulf...fuckin' hell

Alongside my Yeah Dude Comics subscription, I received a fantastic reward. A copy of an earlier Pat Aulisio and Ian Harker's Kickstarter project Rub the Blood, a tribute tabloid art comic that explores the early 90's mainstream comic industry, including the rise of Image Comics, with it's over the top art, stupid stories and Rob Liefield.

The 90's comic book era has often been referred to as "The Dark Ages". It is a thing of wonder, fascination and terrifying piles of garbage. The mainstream comic book industry spearheaded by Marvel and DC began changing. The superhero deconstruction style began with "Watchmen", "Marvelman" and many more. Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" ushered in a new age of dark anti-heroes. Gone were the days of  hopeful good guys; it was now a time to get bleak and dark. Superheroes were no longer intended solely for a young audience. This redirection is still going on to this day. Just look at how many dismemberments there were last month in DC comics and the sheer volume of senseless violence. The comic book market also changed during the 90's. Collectibility, major crossover events, and speculation brought on more buyers. Image Comics was founded and Diamond took control of the market. Man, copies of X-men sold in the millions! A lot of crazy stuff happened, and only some of which are looked back upon fondly. The market crashed and many of people lost their jobs, mostly in retail. I'd recommend you read the archives of Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin on his retailing sections. It's a gold mine of information.

I was too young to remember most of it as I only started reading comics in the mid 90's. I watched the X-men and Batman cartoons and those were the only comics I read for a while. I remember enjoying the craft. The whole variant cover thing was really nasty. I remember having my parents buy me 4 different copies of X-Men #1 so I could have all the cool covers and impress my friends. It wasn't even a good comic book. Just people standing in awkward poses with ridiculous amounts of narrative captions. It's exploitative to a point of being ridiculous. And they've been peddling the same shit for longer than I've been alive.

Child abuse

I went off track for a while. Rub the blood is an homage to this period. It is irreverential, both ridiculing and and admirative of this time period. In spite of all the garbage spewn out of the 90's, a few nuggets of good came out and most of them came from Image comics. It is more culturally relevant than ever before, yet it started in such a weird way, with dark overstylized rip-offs of DC and Marvel comics. Rub the blood is an anthology of short stories; some last a few pages, some are a simple illustration. What emanates from it is a sort of admiration for the silliness of 90's comics culture, such as Rob Liefeld and Youngblood. This is a tribute to a decade of comics. Nostalgia and appreciation from a generation of artists who grew up with this vile material. Those comics were the pieces of garbage they grew up with. There has to be something there to redeem it, even if it's to put a spotlight on how terrible it was. 

I found the story of Josh Bayer on Herb Trimpe Trimpe Loses to be particularly interesting. Herb Trimpe is an artist who worked for Marvel for over 2 decades and is mostly associated with the creation of Wolverine in the pages of The Incredible Hulk. He stopped working for Marvel in the early nineties. Bayer assumes it's because the market was changing and consumers were only interested in the X-treme comics. Trimpe is driven away from his career by the ludicrous creations of 90`s comic book artists. 

Benjamin Marra's Prophet and Box Brown fan letter page are also quite fabulous.

All the public ever wanted, Deadpool decapitating shit

I'd recommend Rub the Blood to anyone with an interest in this decade of comics. If you have fond memories of Spawn, Nighthawk or Bloodwulf, then you may actually hate this book. Nonetheless, its satire is as sharp as Cable's sword. It should interest anyone who wishes to know what good actually came out of the 90's. It is a generation of alt-comix makers expressing their frustration and disappointment in the comic books of their childhood by recreating them in the only way they know how: awesomely and expertly.