John Buys, How You Say, the Comics

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Another great week! Once again I feel a vague sense of dread – does half a month of terrific comics forebode some stinkers in my future or should I be more concerned. Perhaps my long-overdue Gelatinous Cube attack is finally imminent. Please try to recover my bones from its improbable depths.

First up, Daytripper ended at issue number ten and it was excellent. If you’ve missed the three or four other times that I’ve waxed enthusiastic about this book then here are the basics: 1) it’s by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá (with colouring by John-favourite Dave Stewart) and consequently looks fantastic. 2) It’s the story of the life of a man named Brás, told in non-chronological order and one-day increments. Brás dies a lot. 3) This is an excellent storytelling device that I wish I had something really profound to say about but organizing my thoughts on the matter is going to take a lot of hunting up of individual issues from my disorganized comics-boxes or (much more likely) the purchase of a shiny new trade in a few months time. In essence, every time Brás dies you end up looking at his life up to that point as a completed story and contrasting that story with those generated by his deaths as older and younger men creates a much more intimate view of the character than a straightforward telling of his life story might have. Having seen what his life might have become, I had such an incredible investment in what his life did become that this was one of the most satisfying final issues of any comic series for me.

And then we have Billy the Kid’s Old-Timey Oddities and the Ghastly Fiend of London, which might not be quite as thoughtful as Daytripper but certainly has a longer title. The original BtKOTO was a particular favourite of mine, and I don’t anticipate that this series will change that. I was going to maybe get snarky about the fact that Billy the Kid hasn’t actually changed much as a character despite the events of the earlier series but someone did that in the letters page and I get the impression that “unrepentant asshole” is Powell’s vision for the guy. And that’s okay, really, they do exist. Hell, I could probably hit a couple with a rock from where I’m sitting (Oh wait, I'm at home now. I should probably take that back before I get in trouble with the dog).

Meanwhile: a Weird War Tales one-shot! I will hazard a guess that this was put out in order to maintain the trademark or copyright (delete as appropriate) on one of the best titles that DC has. This was a very odd comic for me, in that I enjoyed all of the stories but was unimpressed by the book as a whole. It was just too damn short, especially for four bones. Damn fine cover by Darwyn Cooke, though.

Did you know that  this week’s Batgirl was a joy? I am very much a fan of superhero friendships, and Batgirl/Supergirl is a team that should always exist as a counterpoint to the often rocky and troubled Batman/Superman relationship. Of course, friendships can’t just spring from the void fully-formed, which is why you need something like this issue every once in a while. I can’t tell you how many friends I’ve made while hunting fake Draculas through the streets of a great metropolis. And speaking of streets, here’s a panel that made my commute this morning 100 times better:

Segway Dracula is one of the hardest Draculas to defeat. He’s so damn mobile!

If you’ve been doing some sort of week-by week analysis of my likes and dislikes, possibly with a line and/or bar graph for visual [oomph], then you might have been able to predict that I found this months Batman and Robin and BPRD: Hell on Earth to be fantastic. But was your science able to tell you that I would be absolutely blown away by The Sixth Gun No. 4 and its increasingly epic story? Huh? Well, it probably was. Hell, the book itself is probably registering on scientific instruments tuned to pick up extreme levels of incredible, or perhaps blowmyfriggingmindium radiations.

And finally, we have a collection of the Dr. Horrible one-shots and digital comics, notable for these reasons:

- No attempt was made to make it a musical comic book. This is very good, as those usually don’t work.
- Aside from (and probably because of) that, these comics are a terrific adaptation of the web series’ feel. Everything in this book works in the context of the show.
- There is a new Evil League of Evil story that is pretty darned fantastic. Fake Thomas Jefferson!
- This one is only really of interest to me but I have this forum and I will use it, dammit. I saw a live version of Dr. Horrible at the Halifax Fringe last week (still on for at least a couple of days! Tickets only ten dollars!) and it was great and there was a new Moist song and I was trying my damnedest to describe his origin story to my friends after the show, AND THEN THE TRADE CAME OUT THREE DAYS LATER. I feel that I may have warped reality a bit, and all so that I could lend this book to my pal Tubby. Kind of a waste of a power, when you think about it.

JOHNATHAN IS OUT OF HERE

Green Lantern Quarterly No. 7 Seemed Oddly Familiar for Some Reason

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Would you believe that not two panels later the evil Raakj nearly flings Green Lantern off of a futuristically high place, and that two panels after that he is so corrupted by power that he nearly strikes down the woman that he was doing all of this villainy for in the first place?

If only I could figure out whet this reminds me of. Repo Man?

 

Archie Sunday: Archie's Gag Bag

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Archie's Gag Bag was an Archie Comics classic feature, a page full of one-joke strips that was usually stuck between a couple of longer stories. Never before has the feature's title been as relevant to one of the gags. 

In an amazing coincidence, both Betty and Veronica made exactly the same sound in a similar circumstance.

(And I didn't get hurricaned to death! Just had no power for maybe 30 hours)

The Unfunnies: Shorty in the Rain

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I'm sitting here waiting for Hurricane Earl to finish crawling up the coast of Nova Scotia to trounce us - okay, I'm sitting here reading old Superman comics, but I'm aware that the storm hasn't started yet and I'll know when it gets here, and that's almost like waiting - and so I thought I'd try to get topical with my Unfunny. This is as close as I could find:

This is middle-era Shorty, after his stint in the Navy but before he becomes a scuba diver. He takes no guff.

Oh hey, the wind is picking up. If Halifax is unexpectedly flattened and I'm never heard from again, consider that punchline as proof of my prophetic genius. Otherwise, have a good Saturday.

- from Superboy No. 22

 

John Buys Many Comics But Only Has Eyes For One

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This was a very good week for me, comics-wise. New Tick, new King City, new Astro City… Stumptown, Secret Six and I, Zombie, Strange Science Fantasy and Gorilla-Man. Any one of these is enough to make me happy and a week that includes all of them makes me feel like I might have done an especially excellent good deed while I wasn’t looking and this is my reward. I’d better find an old lady to conspicuously help across the street, just in case.

Despite this bounty of riches, though, the thing that [really] got me going yesterday was the fact that The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects was there, just waiting for me to shell out some dough and take it home.

If you’ve never read Mike Mignola because you weren’t that into horror comics, or because you’re daunted by the volume of material in the Hellboy library, or for no good reason at all, you should check this out. First of all, while it’s not exactly light and fluffy, it’s lighter and fluffier than Mignola’s other books, and it’s damn funny as well. It's his atmospheric, portentious horror done as an absurdist farce (and I guess that's the reason to read it if you do already read Hellboy), complete with zombie Prussians, Victorian pseudoscience and TNT-powered rocket transports.

Secondly, this is it. There are no other Screw-On Head stories, and tragic as that may be it makes it very easy to catch up. And fourthly, the “other curiosities” of the title are similarly absurd and irreverent and include both a new tale featuring Emperor Zombie's unfortunate companion Dr Snap and "The Magician and the Snake", a comic co-written by Mignola's then-7-year old daughter Katie. 

I’ve been carting my floppy version of the Screw-On Head comic around for years. It’s been from one end of this country to the other with me. It may be the first thing that Dave ever convinced me to buy. And the reason that I have never left it behind or shoved it up in my parents' attic or failed to retrieve it from a friend's grubby mitts is because it is delightful. I own a lot of comics and I love a lot of those comics but for sheer every-damn-time joy it's basically The Amazing Screw-On Head and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen No. 72. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I must go and read it again.