Todd Klein's Blog, page 292

And Then I Read: GREEN LANTERN CORPS 0, WONDER WOMAN 0

Images © DC Comics, Inc.

This issue is an origin story for Guy Gardner, beginning with his first mission as a GL recruit (not yet officially a Corps member), flashing back to his family life on Earth, then concluding with the rest of the first mission. The family story is the one that I liked best, showing Guy as a misfit among a family with a long history of serving in the police force in Baltimore. Guy has already been thrown out of his own attempt at the family business, with the reasons why different from what I, and you, might expect. A very violent and modern story that would not have worked when Guy made his first appearance, but as a New 52 origin it’s pretty good. Writer Peter Tomasi and penciller Fernando Pasarin (with two inkers) have given us a fine story.

I’ve saved the best of my Zero issue reviews for last. WW Zero is a surprise and a delight, as it’s a somewhat modern take on the kind of WW stories I was reading in my childhood, the ones written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. It’s a story of the young Diana as a sort of Wonder Girl on Paradise Island. First she’s making a risky theft of a Harpy egg as an initiation stunt, then she’s taken in hand by the God of War himself for further training, and an encounter with the dreaded Minotaur. Writer Brian Azzarello does a great job with this fun fantasy. His grasp of “thee and thou” archaic languaage may be a little off here and there, but in spirit the story goes to all the right places. The art by Cliff Chiang is as wonderful as ever with just a subtle flavor of Andru/Esposito here and there to bring back fond memories for this longtime reader.

Both issues are recommended, WW Zero is highly recommended!

And Then I Read: THE COMPLETE PEANUTS 1985-86

Images © Peanuts Worldwide LLC.

Thirty-five years into his fifty year run on this strip, Charles Schulz continues to keep me smiling and laughing. Yes, the lines in the drawing are getting a little more shaky, but the lines of dialogue are as sharp and witty as ever. The one exception for me is the cover-featured character, Snoopy’s brother Spike, living alone and lonely in the desert, pretending that cactus are people he can interact with. There are quite a few of those here, and I find them sad rather than funny. Did Schulz really find lonely people funny, or was this some kind of personal outlet for his own feelings? Most of the collection is full of great material that I did find funny.

There’s a great example, one that really resonates for me. Lucy is so self-involved it’s fun to see. Another strip has her telling Charlie Brown that she missed school because she had a cold. “There must be something going around…lots of kids have been getting colds,” he says. “Mine was a lot worse though,” Lucy tells him, “because it happened to me.”

Charlie Brown’s sister Sally is nearly as self-absorbed, always sure she knows the answer to everything. On the other side of the coin, Peppermint Patty and Charlie Brown are always struggling with self-esteem, and Linus is often struggling to have his own fun in a hostile world, as above. At least Snoopy has fun with his rich fantasy life, bird pals and an assortment of roles, all appealing. There’s one new character here, a girl that Linus is attracted to who thinks he’s too old for her, an amusing idea when “too old” is a few months!

Highly recommended.

Cape May Christmas Visit

At least once in the Christmas season Ellen likes to get out for an evening’s entertainment with an appropriate holiday theme. Yesterday we drove down to Cape May, where the season is very much in evidence. Here we are in a shot taken by a friendly stranger in front of the town’s Christmas tree.

You never know what you might see in Cape May, and in the small park where the tree was, we found a group of riders enjoying the warm, foggy evening and attired for the season. “Why can’t I do that? I want to do that!” said Ellen.

Even the horses were in holiday gear.

After dinner at the Jackson Mountain Cafe, we walked around the historic area a little, enjoying the decorated mansions and bed and breakfasts like The Queen Victoria, seen here.

Just outside we enjoyed hearing a group of very professional carolers entertaining the crowd.

As far as decorations go, Columbia House was the most gaudy one we saw.

The main reason we were in town was to attend this performance, which Ellen had seen listed in the paper. We both like Alcott’s “Little Women” which was part of this performance (the Christmas section), as well as two short stories about Christmas. We weren’t sure what to expect, but it turned out to be a one-woman show by Gayle Stahlhuth, the director of this small local theater company. She was excellent, doing narration and all the speaking parts from little girls to men to several characters with ethnic accents, very lively and entertaining, filling the small church’s stage area with her enthusiasm. Afterward my first comment to Ellen was, “I couldn’t even TALK that long!” There’s another performance at 8 PM on Dec. 14th if you’re able to catch it.

We enjoyed our evening out with a Christmas theme, and it’s put us in the right mood for wrapping gifts today.

And Then I Read: DAVE STEVENS COVERS & STORIES

Images © The Rocketeer Trust.

This handsome oversized hardcover collects all of Dave Stevens’ comics work other than THE ROCKETEER, which IDW editor and Dave’s friend Scott Dunbier has already put out in several editions. Considering that Dave was notoriously slow and finicky about his work, and his untimely early death, there’s a lot to see and enjoy here. While Rocketeer certainly showed Dave had tons of potential beyond his ability to create images of beautiful women, that does dominate this book. The stories are mostly fluff with cheesecake, though there are a few good surprise endings. The covers and pinups are largely what Dave was known best for, and there are many great ones, as well as some surprises. I’ve seen about three quarters of the work inside, but mostly not reproduced this well. Many of the images are scanned from the original art, and there are some fascinating close looks at Dave’s technique like this one:

There are also lots of preliminary sketches, unfinished work, and collaborations. If you’re a Stevens fan or just a fan of great comics art, you’ll enjoy this book as much as I did. My one quibble is the cover image, not one of my favorites. That young lady seems to be smirking too much to me, while most of Dave’s work combines a more joyful innocence and sexiness that was reflected in the title of one of his collections, “Just Teasing.” But that’s a very minor quibble and probably a matter of personal taste.

Highly recommended.

And Then I Read: BLACKSAD, A SILENT HELL

In case you’ve missed it, a brilliant series of European albums featuring Blacksad has now reached its fourth volume in this country, with the previous three being published together by Dark Horse, and this one on its own. Blacksad is a classic film noir detective series with a twist: all the characters act and look mostly human, but are also animal in form, most obviously the heads. These are not simply anthropomorphized animals as in, say “Pogo,” it’s a more complex mix. The characters act very human overall, but with little moments of their animal natures coming through here and there, just enough to keep things fresh.

This story takes Blacksad the detective to New Orleans in a story full of accurate local color, characters and references, and wrapped around a plot featuring jazz musicians that’s so well done you can almost hear the music. It’s a missing person case for Blacksad, but he soon uncovers other layers to the life of Sebastian Fletcher, the missing piano player, that takes him into bars, jazz clubs, a prison, and the lives of many of Fletcher’s fellow musicians, friends and family. The mystery at the center of the story is a deep one that almost no one wants uncovered, as Blacksad discovers the hard way.

The writing on this book by Juan Díaz Canales is superb. The characters are full of life: flawed, cruel, generous, loving, weak, strong, a wide range of the human animal in each of them. If you aren’t moved by this story, you aren’t paying attention. And there’s plenty of action as well.

The art by Juanjo Guardino is equally superb. Every panel is full of wonderfully expressive characters rendered artfully in watercolor and ink. The storytelling is so good, you could probably follow most of it without being able to read any of the dialogue. Guardino’s work has all the best elements of cartooning and realism mixed seamlessly into a style that rivals that of Will Eisner in my opinion.

If you haven’t tried BLACKSAD, this book would make a fine introduction, each volume stands on its own quite well. It has my highest recommendation.

And Then I Read: A CITY IN THE AUTUMN STARS by Michael Moorcock

© Michael Moorcock.

The second book in the Von Bek series follows another of the family beginning in Paris during the French Revolution. This Von Bek has been lured there with hopes of furthering the ideals of the revolutionaries, only to see the entire enterprise turn into mob violence and chaos. Soon he’s trying to flee the country, and barely escapes the clutches of Montsorbier, a soldier on his trail. Von Bek is heading for the city of Mirenberg in Austria. On the way he makes a friend of balloonist and con-man St. Odhran and falls in love on first sight with a noblewoman named Libussa. All of them end up in Mirenberg where a convocation of alchemists has gathered, some of whom want to help Von Bek, some want to kill him, making for an interesting few weeks. Eventually Klosterheim turns up, the villain of the first Von Bek novel “The War Hound and the World’s Pain.” He’s still alive, sort of, and still hoping to conquer the world. Everyone seems to need Von Bek for something, and he eventually realizes it’s because of his family legend tying him to The Devil and The Holy Grail, a legend he doesn’t believe and has always ignored.

St. Odhran and Von Bek have a plan to escape all this in the former’s balloon, and when they do (with two unwanted passengers) they travel to another magical version of Mirenberg, the city under the autumn stars. There things get much more complicated as the book turns into a series of explorations, chases and fights in this old, deeply layered city. The Grail does turn up eventually as well as lots of other magical beings and artifacts, and the story culminates in a massive battle and ritual that Von Bek realizes too late will be a re-inactment of the Crucifixion with someone he cares for as the centerpiece.

I enjoyed the characters and much of the writing in this book, though not as much as the first one. While the plot does have an overall structure that will bring it to an exciting conclusion, much of the story seems to wander about without a plan, or at least a consistent one. Like the first book, it begins with real history and very gradually introduces elements of fantasy until, by the second half it’s very fantastic indeed. I like that part, and Moorcock’s writing is creatively rich in inventing those fantasy settings and characters, or incorporating existing ones in ways that work well. I never felt the title character has a handle on his own story this time, though. Instead he’s pushed along from one event to another by circumstances and other characters. Perhaps that’s my biggest problem with the book. This Von Bek is like Charlie Brown of “Peanuts”: the star, but often the goat as well.

I still found it worth reading, and will continue on with the Von Bek collection in the future.

And Then I Read: JUSTICE LEAGUE 0, LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES 0

Images © DC Comics, Inc.

After running it as a backup feature for a dozen issues, writer Geoff Johns has chosen the Zero issue of this title to bring SHAZAM front and center as the main story. While this version of the old Fawcett characters is miles away from every previous version, I have to admit I find it enjoyable reading. I was never a huge fan of the light-hearted original anyway, and here we have a more modern and darker take on the idea of giving a boy not only super-powers but a man’s body to use them. As the wizard in the story realizes, he’s run out of time to find a really good boy, and will have to settle for this one, who has mere elements of good among some pretty bad habits and personality traits. What this new “hero” chooses to do with his powers is both sad and funny at the same time. The art by Gary Frank is terrific, as always.

There’s a backup about Pandora and The Question which I don’t quite get, but maybe I’m not reading the right other books. The art by Ethan Van Sciver is quite excellent.

For this one, writer Paul Levitz has decided to tell a fairly typical Legion story, early in their history, but in my opinion not a jumping-on point for new readers or even an origin story. Of course, he’s just retold the Legion origin in another miniseries. Here we have lots of Legionnaires in the mix, and not much explanation of what they’re all doing on Colu, other than the usual: fighting crime. There is one interesting element for longtime DC fans: the crime is the opening of a sealed vault containing the technology of the first Brainiac, the one who plagued our time’s Superman as one of his toughest foes. And the reveal at the end is good, too. The art by Scott Kolins is fine, though a little too cartoony in a stylized way for my taste, at least on this book.

Both are recommended.

Incoming: “Immortal Love”/ “Home With You” 45rpm

This may be the oddest thing that’s come to me in the mail in years. Around 2006 or so, when I was doing design work for THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN BLACK DOSSIER, Alan Moore and Tim Perkins cut the songs on this record, and Kevin O’Neill and I designed the label. It was planned as an insert, first with the regular hardcover edition of the book, later with the Absolute Edition. Things happened, and the record was never made at that time. Last year I heard from Alan’s UK publisher, Knockabout that they were going to press the single, and I provided the label I’d assembled then. The original plan was for it to be dark blue with silver ink, but I think this color scheme actually works better with the art.

Here’s the B side in the sleeve (which Knockabout produced, I wasn’t involved in that). I’ve actually heard the tracks online, and haven’t played the record yet, but it’s kind of cool that it was finally produced. I’m afraid I can’t tell you how to get one, other than contacting Knockabout in London. I know they were including them as a premium with some Alan Moore books at one of their signings.

In case you’re interested in the fine print on the label, it reads “KAPITAL RECORDS, INC., THE BRILLCREEM BUILDING, 1619 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, NY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.” (Except on the B side where it says “ALL RIGHT RESERVED.” Oops.

Toy Trains

I’ve had trouble finding time to blog lately, what with a heavy workload, Christmas tasks, and so on, but I’ll try to do better. Yesterday Ellen and I visited this train museum near our home. We’d been to it when it first opened some years ago, and after our ride on a real steam train recently, Ellen thought she’d like to get her father’s train set out of storage and see if it will run. We thought a visit to this shop might be helpful for tips and ideas.

The setup is pretty large, with at least five tracklines running at the same time, and lots of trains on the walls, too. We enjoyed seeing it again, and the proprietor, Mr. Jones, was happy to talk trains with us. His setup is all “S” gauge American Flyer trains. He gave us some advice about our set, which I hope to write about and show here at Christmastime.

It was hard to get pictures of the trains in motion, as the light level is not the best for that, but it’s a great setup.

Lots of accessories and signage.

Mr. Jones told us about the evolution of the American train makers over the years. This is a fairly new Lionel train, now made in China. Unfortunately we learned that Flyertown will be closing at the end of this year, at least as a public museum. It’s become too costly to run, mainly due to insurance costs, so Mr. Jones will be returning to a private train buff then. If you have a chance to visit south Jersey before the end of the year, Flyertown in Clermont is worth a visit.

And Then I Read: THE JUDAS COIN by Walter Simonson

Images © DC Comics, Inc.

I’ve long been a fan of artist Walt Simonson, and I like it even better when he writes as well, so as you can guess, I was very happy when this book showed up in my comp box. The plot is simple enough: one of the coins paid to Judas for his betrayal of Jesus goes down through the ages with a curse that affects everyone who finds it. The fun part is seeing where in the DC Universe Walt would want to go with that episodic idea, and it’s a mix of familiar places for him and some less so. The outskirts of the Roman Empire first with all new characters, then to the Viking Prince in 1000 AD, pirate Captain Fear in 1720, Bat Lash in 1881, Batman and Two-Face in the present, and Manhunter in 2087 (the one from the brief series Manhunter 2070). Each section gets a different style of sorts. I mean, it’s all Walt’s unique, energetic linework, but there are nice color and layout variations as well as some unusual character treatments to keep it interesting.

I also love the lettering by John Workman and the coloring by Lovern Kindzierski, who each add unique variations of mood and style as well, such as the ones for this page from the Viking Prince chapter. I imagine Walt had a strong hand in all the choices, but the execution is excellent all around.

A story of this length made up of episodic chapters doesn’t have room for a lot of emotional resonance because we’re not following characters throughout, but each story has its charms, including lots of action, energy and creativity. I highly recommend it!