A History of Violence

A History of Violence represents, to me, the perfect use of a comic as adaptable source material. John Wagner and Vince Locke crafted a fantastic crime story in their original version of the story, and David Cronenberg (and his screenwriter) took a sizable seed from that story to tell their own tale for a different time and a different medium, while keeping pure the central spirit of the story.
The original comic flew under the radar for years; many, accustomed to more “mainstream” comic art, are likely turned off by Locke’s scratchy, loose pencils. I’ll admit there were a handful of pages that seemed unclear to me on first read-through, but I can accept that for the intimacy delivered in his frantic pages. It feels as if Locke crafted these pages with a Bic pen from the market down the street, and it makes the material that much closer to home.
Cronenberg’s and Wagner’s visions diverge considerably after the inciting incident, but I feel like the changes made for the film either improve wholly on the story or make elements workable in film that wouldn’t otherwise make the transition from the comic. My biggest example of the former is that Tom’s family does not take so easily to his reveal of a disturbing past life. This beat felt unnatural in the comic, a note of unrealism in an otherwise relatively realistic story.
Cronenberg and co. also dodge some severely difficult plot points to pull off in film, especially the lengthy flashback to Tom’s youth. Had that remained in the film, it would have directed attention away from the brilliant work of Viggo Mortensen, rested on the acting skills of a considerably younger actor, and pushed suspension of disbelief with the story of teens planning and executing an attack on the mob. The disturbing ending of the comic would have also served to push belief (although it remains shocking that Cronenberg, of all directors, managed to pass up a chance at such extreme body horror).

While I feel that the violence used in Wagner and Locke’s comic is effective and shocking, Cronenberg absolutely managed to top them. The film version features some of the most stunningly shocking violence I’ve ever witnessed on film. The crunch of the mobster’s nose sticks with you long after the credits have rolled. The violent sex scenes also introduce a compelling counterpoint – and parallel – to the violence on display, and is without comparison in the sexless comic.
While it’s tempting to declare Cronenberg’s film an outright improvement on the comic, I feel they serve distinct purposes and work for their respective media in ways that don’t easily translate. While tonally it’s a polar opposite, I would compare elements of this to Scott Pilgrim in its handling of the source material and its selective changes in bringing the material to film.

The Crow

It’s funny for me to discuss The Crow after all this time. I saw the film for the first time when I was five; I remember asking my mom what the f-word meant (and my father what the word “hooker” meant – he answered “a woman who crochets”). The soundtrack of the film sent me down the musical path I’ve meandered around ever since then. My e-mail, until I had to apply to college, was Thecrow12789. And… I didn’t even know it was based on a comic when I first saw it.
I’ll come right out and say, despite my feelings on almost everything else in the world, that the movie is better than the book. James O’Barr’s first comic work is really an exercise of thinly veiled catharsis. The film, directed by Alex Proyas, turns that anger and depression into a unique film experience. While inconsistency plagues the comic (it was completed over a period of time, and early in O’Barr’s career), the visual identity of the film is clear and pronounced. And, for as action-oriented as the film is, Brandon Lee instills Eric Draven with a shocking amount of depth lacking from the comic protagonist.
Not enough can be said about the soundtrack. Featuring cuts from The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine, and more, the music of the film creates a mood the comic never managed to do for very long. In an era of music known for its unbridled rage, The Crow managed to gather some of the very best and use it as a perfect outlet for Draven’s passionate quest.
It’s a shame that subsequent iterations failed to capture the same zeitgeist of the first film. The Crow: City of Angels has a suitably good soundtrack, but the supernatural elements of the plot and the convoluted behind-the-scenes drama resulted in a disappointing follow-up to the original cult classic (though Iggy Pop fits the material perfectly as villain Curve). The second two films, and the television series, all misinterpret completely what made the first film so impactful, becoming rote action flicks and a bizarrely dull spiritual journey, respectively.

Much hullaballoo surrounded a potential remake of the film starring, of all people, Bradley Cooper, but it looks like progress on that has thankfully halted. I have no doubt that, like many comic plots, a new version of the story could be successful. However, no film today will unseat the original as a time-specific masterpiece. It remains to be seen if a new film can find a way to be faithful to the concept while being relevant to the twenty-teens in the same way the first film was to the early nineties.

Tekkonkinkreet

Tekkonkinkreet is absolutely beautiful, and I discovered it at the perfect time in my intersecting interests in manga and European comic influences. Created by Taiyō Matsumoto, Tekkonkinkreet is an amazing synthesis of different cultural storytelling methods. Ostensibly seinen, or manga aimed at adult males, Tekkonkinkreet’s story revolves on the predictably contrasting children Black and White as they cling to their decrepit neighborhood. From the first sequences, a sort of Of Mice and Men vibe settles in, in which you want to reach into the page and protect White before other influences can reach him. The tension felt palpable throughout the entire first portion, and I flipped the pages with mounting worry over what would become of the naïve, innocent half of the Cats.
Matsumoto-sensei’s storytelling is really the beauty of the book. Heavily influenced by European comic masters, Matsumoto-sensei populates his pages with bizarre and minute details, inviting the eye to heavily scrutinize every panel. While Americans have a limited knowledge of European comic creators, comparisons with one of the best are earned: Moebius is an admitted influence on Matsumoto-sensei’s work, and it’s evident in the pacing along with attention to detail. In some ways, Tekkonkinkreet feels oddly non-Japanese; the story revolves around two young boys fighting a large corporation, but nowhere does the storytelling devolves into splash pages of blurring limbs and loud exclamations. The action is frequently interspersed with quiet, subtle, and even confusing interactions, such as in the bathhouse sequence.
The animated adaptation seems to maintain much of this, but I still missed the shaky black-and-white of the comic, and the relative “silence” of much of the storytelling. I feel like I would have loved it if it was an original work, but as an adaptation, I can’t see how I would come to prefer it to the source material.
The same sort of cross-cultural pollination can be seen in North American works like Brandon Graham’s King City and James Stokoe’s Orc Stain, which use some very interesting manga tactics, and the work of Geof Darrow, a direct student of the Moebius school. Too often, the influence of another continent’s comic style is limited to superficial details (“big eyes!”) but none of the substance. Tekkonkinkreet (and these titles) are examples of how to do that right. Tekkonkinkreet is also an excellent reminder that Japan produces manga that appeals to more than just 13-year-olds, even if that’s the only thing proven to sell in the States. For readers looking for more in the same vein, I’d recommend AX Volume 1: A Collection of Alternative Manga, and other works from Top Shelf, who aren’t afraid to ignore the market to which Viz and other US manga publishers cater.

Haunt of Horror

Richard Corben’s adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s works falls in a similar vein as some of our earlier readings, notably The Wolverton Bible and R. Crumb’s Genesis, in that the artist is not at all afraid of embracing the ugly and the grotesque in ways that are effective but not necessarily “cool.” Corben’s figures, especially his facial work, is distorted, plumped, bumpy – they look like the character actors you always see, but whose names you never remember. It also bears a strong resemblance, I feel, with the work of Howard Cruse, creator of the seminal Stuck Rubber Baby. All of these creators have a way of drawing completely “unrealistic” figures that feel incredibly real and human.
Corben’s style is also a strong fit for horror, in the most seventies sense of the word. His is not the relentlessly dark, stylized work of Jae Lee or Kent Williams, but the absurdly, almost humorous impossibilities of late EC comics, where grotesqueries and absurdities merge. Most of Corben’s designs look executable with the monster make-up technology of 1975, but work because of that same sense of consistency and suspension of disbelief.
Where his Lovecraft stumbles is in the over-faithfulness of its translation. Lovecraft, for all of his cultural penetration, probably left more impact because of his content than because of his form. The overwrought, obsessive first-person style of his writing would likely turn off many of the legions of people who flock to his ideas. In choosing to stay so faithful to that style of writing, Corben discards some of the most basic benefits of comic book storytelling. There is no need to employ in a comic the large amount of “telling” that Lovecraft uses in prose; Corben carries most of this with his visual “acting.” Hesitation doesn’t need to be communicated with heavy narration when it can be read plainly on a character’s face. While it is faithful to the source material, it also hampers a smooth reading experience.
Similarly, there is an unavoidable problem in attempting to show the “unshowable.” Lovecraft’s horror often comes in the form of indescribable terrors, not fit to exist within our realm of the senses. By choosing, in most cases, to realize these horrors on the page rather than play with withholding visuals, Corben will inevitably disappoint some readers. However, like Lovecraft himself, Corben is an influential creator whose style can be felt in many places, even if his own output is hit-or-miss with many readers.

Just Divine

I absolutely adored Chwast's impeccably cool take on Dante's Divine Comedy. The original text is probably one of the most visually inspiring things ever written; from the Gustave Dore etchings to Robert Rauschenberg's bizarre and fascinating collage take, The Divine Comedy, especially The Inferno, has seen a multitude of visual representations. Many of these, like the 2010 EA video game and its comic adaptation by Christos Gage and Diego De LaTorre, have tried to top each other with more and more despairing portraits of horror and gore, often while ignoring Purgatory and Paradise completely.

It was incredibly refreshing, then, to see Chwast create a visual language that made for a consistently compelling journey through all three realms of Dante's Divine Comedy, while eschewing the downward spiral of ever-darkening portraits. Chwast's style is very much influenced by blocky printmaking and his background in font and design; his compositions pop, his figures are simplified, and his language is, for the most part, clear.

I adore adaptations of period work that update setting without needing to address it in the text. Chwast's mobsters tickled me to no end, and his design for Satan was particularly different than the portrayal we're used to from Dante's text. His style will turn off many who aren't open to simple, cartoonish work. But, as discussed by Scott McCloud, the simpler the figure, the more we can relate to him or her. It's not Jim Lee or Geof Darrow or anyone else know for there kinetic or hyper-detailed work, but I felt like it served the material to anyone with an open mind.

It was certainly more compelling than the video game...

Crumby Old Book

Looking back on our discussion about The Wolverton Bible (and particularly the enlightening video about its influence), I'm not sure there's much to say about R. Crumb's Book of Genesis besides the fact that it's a truthful, narrative take on the subject matter. As was mentioned, Crumb focuses on the personal and the intimate (in all meanings of the word), and less on the epic. In my opinion, this really speaks to his background in the underground comic scene, a movement that drew focus to the mundane, human aspect of life rarely presented in the funnybooks up until then. Wolverton, on the other hand, showed an initial focus on the grand and large-scale, which drew parallels with his illustration and editorial work, where he was tasked with conveying everything he needed to say in one image as opposed to relying on sequential art.

Of course, with Crumb's assertion that he took it on as a "straight illustration job," there's still room for interpretation. One of the tasks of a comic artist is selecting the extremely specific moment to convey (especially in the case of an artist like Crumb, whose work relies less on the illusion of movement, in my opinion, and more on the static scene). Within the selection of that moment comes the selection of the staging and framing, all of which hold countless variables for the artist. So when Crumb chooses to depict a sex scene from Genesis, his crafting of that scene is very much intentional and very much his own.


As with Wolverton, strangely enough, some of my favorite scenes come from the very beginning. This probably isn't too difficult to justify: I have little familiarity with the Bible, and it is at it's most visually stimulating when it is farthest from reality. The Garden of Eden and the great flood (along with Wolverton's Revelations) are scenes that are impossible to see in real life, and so I was always drawn to them more than the scenes of Isrealite conflict, something still to true.

The scene of Adam and Eve crouching in hiding away from God is a perfect example of Crumb's style reaching confluence with the original text. He chooses a scene laden with sexuality and shame and complex human emotion from a rather rote Biblical telling, and it feels more Crumb than King James. It's also a scene that wouldn't have appeared nearly the same under Wolverton's pen.

Similarly, the anthropomorphized serpent in the Garden feels very unique to this telling. Crumb has a rich history of bipedal, talking animals, and having the serpent appear so odd and out-of-place helps bring that history to the surface while also highlighting the other-worldliness of the tale.

It seems bizarre that Crumb has so few long-form work to point to when discussing his oeuvre. Unless I'm mistaken, this is his longest release, which feels a bit like an iconic punk band releasing countless singles and b-sides and then a full-length gospel album.

At any rate, it's not going to be less controversial any time soon. Those unawares should check out what an outspoken Australian had to say about Crumb, and the effect it had. I'd also urge anyone who's seen the film Crumb to follow up a bit on his family, particularly his brother Maxon, whose work I'd love to purchase as easily as the better known Crumb brother's.


A slightly racier look at Adam and Eve from earlier in Crumb's career.

A True Revelation

The Wolverton Bible is engaging as a book related to comics, if not consistently as a comic itself. Drawn and captioned by Basil Wolverton, an artist who rose to prominence bringing life to disgusting and outlandish concepts for Mad, among other clients, The Wolverton Bible feels like a beloved band’s b-sides or demos, a part of the catalog not as well known but containing some of the most successful pieces of art. Though not traditionally a comic – the illustrations are paired with captions but feature little in the way of sequential order – The Wolverton Bible exudes comic style.

Each illustration feels like a panel ripped from a laboriously created alternative comic. Expressions exaggerate freely, villains look poised to tie a maiden to a train track, and the women wouldn’t look incongruous in a line-up next to the Golden Age Lois Lane. The men, with the exception of Adam and David, aren’t overly pretty – crosshatching and stippling cover their forms, and their faces are often plumped and squished like fruit. As is often the case when a younger reader looks through the work of a much older creator, I couldn’t help but compare him to artists who came much later. Constantly at the forefront of my mind was Howard Cruse, the cartoonist behind the seminal gay civil-rights-era comic Stuck Rubber Baby. Cruse’s style, if not inspired by Wolverton, is an astonishing case of coincidental influence – Cruse must have, like Wolverton, used countless pools of ink stippling and cross-hatching his very un-glamorized figures. Both artists’ figures have a softness about them that is almost always absent from mainstream comics, where all figures must be toned and solid. Cruse’s figures, like Wolverton’s, possess the ability to look utterly cartooned and yet very true to life.

Not all of Wolverton’s work for the Worldwide Church of God was successful for me as a reader. When Wolverton shifted from full pages to smaller scenes, some of his techniques became very repetitive. After the third or fourth time, I became very unimpressed with the use of distant shots of crowds walking through desert landscapes, seen on pages 115, 176, 210, 252, and many more. I also picked up on, though was less disappointed with, the many times he used distant shots with animals framed in the close foreground, visible on several of the pages just mentioned. There were also several uses of very close busts of characters displaying emotions like slyness that, while I feel like they definitely captured with very subtle tones in the text, would have benefited from more context in a larger image. I did, however, love the many times Wolverton rendered odd, angular, and otherworldly pagan idols, as well as the white-hot fury of lightning and fire.

The most successful work in this volume, in my opinion, comes when Wolverton is able to play most wildly. The initial chapters of Genesis, with their otherworldly happenings, and the apocalyptic Revelations, with its modern-day horror, were my favorites in the volume. The storytelling along in many of these images, including the birth of Adam on pg. 21, the hand of God coming down to the Ark on pg. 39, and the pure pandemonium on pgs. 269 and 272, accomplish in single images what many stories fail to do with much more space. The Wolverton Bible is absolutely not a comic book, but it couldn’t exist without the medium, and it shows its influences as prominently – if not more so – as its gospel. While it is perhaps lamentable that Wolverton couldn’t craft these stories as full sequential stories, it’s easy to see why he regarded this as some of his best and most memorable work.

Reading the first collection of G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker's Air is a bit like reading letters from another country: everything is a bit off, it's difficult to understand and follow, but it's all very enticing and you want to know more. Air follows an acrophobic flight attendant swept up in an international (supernational?) conspiracy to... Well, I'm not entirely too sure what the conspiracy really is at this point. I know it involves a forgotten kingdom called Narimar, an ethnically shifting paramour, the shadowy Etesian Front, a winged serpent, a fuel-free engine, some mentions of dominatrixes, marigolds, reality-bending flying machines, and Amelia Earhart. And that's all in the first five issues. Sound like a lot? It is.

I read this first volume of Air in three chunks with short breaks in between. After just finishing it, I'm a little confused about what became of the angry female Front member and the priest, and I can't recall if we found out who the pilot of the "flying palace" actually is quite yet. If I were attempting to follow this series with a month lapse between each issue, I'm not sure I would have the will to continue. I applaud Wilson for keeping things moving and introducing a lot in a small amount of time without feeling horribly rushed, but these sorts of Vertigo books benefit from more of a slow build. As comic readers, we can accept some extraordinary circumstances, but I wish Wilson had gotten more milage out of defining how odd this world is to its regular inhabitants. Blythe and her colleagues seem entirely too ready to adapt to every crazy thing that happens along the way, and it lowers the impact of the zanier elements for me as a reader. I have no concept of what life was like before the zaniness set it, so everything has less of an impact on me. I could see how Blythe's reactions would be more open, but Fletcher or Mrs. B could have really filled that role to help contextualize Air's world and strengthen character at the same time. Ultimately, I find the elements of Air very interesting, but I am having trouble finding my window into the world.

The art, provided by the Turkish M.K. Perker, is solid but I didn't personally feel it was exceptional. As pointed out by a review quoted on the Wikipedia page for Air, his work is very reminiscent of an early Brandon Peterson. I'm a fan of Peterson's hyper-detailed, heavily cross-hatched work, but Perker's is less meticulous and occasionally inconsistent. Faces tend to distort, and detail rapidly disappears as the panel pans outward. I feel that Air suffers from an unfortunate case of having an artist who provides vastly more interesting cover work than interior work. While I appreciate great cover work, I would never condemn a book for its cover. But when you look at how many other Vertigo books invite very expressive artists to provide beautiful covers for books with dissimilar interior artists, you find that the gap is wide enough to judge each separately. For Air, Perker's covers are colored in a much finer manner than his interiors, which helps to distract from his figure work shortcomings. Even with that complaint aside, his choice of framing often felt just a little stilted and unoriginal. You don't have to redefine the rules every time you pick up a pencil, but the panel staging could be a little more dynamic. I felt like he hit his stride more confidently when the more visually appealing airships came in at the end of this volume, but it felt like too little, too late for me.

As it stands, Air seems overly eager to get its interesting ideas across without suitably setting up its fictional world. My interests are piqued by the last page reveal, but they're not $9.99 piqued, so I likely will not be flying Clearfleet Airlines again anytime soon.

Beastly Good

Beasts of Burden showcases the kind of episodic-yet-continuous storytelling that, in my humble opinion, is too-often missing from modern comics. Each of these four issues is a done-in-one tale that is more rewarding if you read the issue before and after it. Changes in characters flow from one issue to the next, but there is nothing that can’t be referenced or explained briefly in the next issue without feeling awkward and expository. Whereas as most comics today rely on expansive, decompressed narratives that feature entire issues where very little happens to progress the story, it is such a treat to read an issue and feel that you have gotten a complete story. JMS is using a similar formula on his current run on The Brave and the Bold for DC Comics, but his stories have been pushed into questionable continuity so as not to conflict with any of the long, drawn-out plots DC has been banking on for quite some time.

Beasts also has pedigree going for it. Written by (somewhat) famous indie comic creator Evan Dorkin (whose Milk and Cheese dug into my consciousness at a young age thanks to its frequent appearance on the television show Roseanne in the background), Beasts shows a maturity and confidence in its storytelling. It almost shocked me to see Beasts nominated for an Eisner for “Best Publication for Teens,” not because it isn’t worthy, but because it hardly feels like it’s toned down for a younger audience. I know I was certainly saddened and stunned when the end of the first issue came and the eaten animal comrades didn’t emerge unscathed from the frog’s stomach.
Dorkin also writes to his artist’s strengths. In Jill Thompson’s case, the strengths are many. One of the few creators to be handed the keys to the kingdom of The Endless of Sandman fame with Neil’s blessing, Thompson’s work leaps across genres from quirky-but-traditional (her series work in Sandman) to manga (Death: At Death’s Door), to children-appropriate (Scary Godmother) to painterly (here, obviously). Thanks to her long and varied career, Thompson’s watercolor work doesn’t feel stiff and posed like so many other paint-based comics illustrators. Instead, her palette breathes and comes to vivid life. I would go so far as to say that Thompson is one of the only comics painters whose work I look forward to with glee and not dread.

My own journey with Beasts came after seeing an advertisement in a Star Wars comic (also published by Dark Horse) and biting for the animal-based premise. After I took a gamble on these four issues, I eagerly sought out the compilations that previous Beasts stories appeared in, paying a bit extra to get those that are out of print. Dark Horse graciously offered all but one for free online, but I needed these bound and on my shelf. I sincerely hope that the free offers drag more people to explore Burden Hill and discover a perfect use of monthly comics outside of the regular mainstream hullabaloo. I know I'm in for more.

A Trip Through Dream Country

The most curious thing about Neil Gaiman's Sandman opus is that it really is as good as it's made out to be. With an army of artists at his side, Gaiman crafted what is, in my humble opinion, easily one of the top 5 comics stories ever told. By utterly revamping the idea of the The Sandman into a grand, myth-spanning being known as Dream or Morpheus, Gaiman opened up a gateway to storytelling without limits. That is precisely what is on display here in the third volume, Dream Country.

Rather than suggest we read the first volume (which was more of a horror comic teetering as it found its footing) or a later volume (which would require more context than time allowed), I latched onto Dream Country as the perfect example of what made The Sandman the seminal series it was. Collected in this slim trade are four stories that intermingle horror, comedy, fantasy, despair, and outstanding creativity. Most of all, they barely feature the titular character (except for the last tale, which doesn't feature him at all). I suspect that this method of storytelling will be familiar to those class members who read more than a handful of Spirit stories. Like Eisner and his masked do-gooder, the greatest strength of Morpheus might lie in his creator's boundless drive to tell stories.

The four seemingly disparate tales in this volume all revolve around the idea of dreams. These dreams require captured stimulus ("Calliope"), are the basis for powerful change ("A Dream of a Thousand Cats"), are granted in a bargain ("A Midsummer Night's Dream"), or seem unattainable and mournful ("Façade"). In any situation, dreams are the center of the Sandman mythos, so the title to this volume is exceedingly appropriate.


The first two tales, pencilled by Kelley Jones, show the range that this series is willing to take. In "Calliope," we are privy to a wicked deal to spark a novelist's creativity. This entry perhaps ties the most into the regular fabric of the series, as the Furies and Orpheus both factor in. This story also serves as a sort of hub of metaphors, as Dream's own bondage is mirrored here by the captured muse, and the tortured writer's bargain is a much darker version of the deal that Will Shakespeare will make in a few issues' time. "A Dream of a Thousand Cats" is an issue that tends to stick in the minds of many Sandman readers. I think this is the first (but not the last, no, certainly not the last) issue of The Sandman that made me cry when I first read it years ago. The sadness of the unnamed cat's tale really struck me because it didn't feel forced in any way, and she was such an audacious, powerful female character -- who is also a cat. Here Dream is a dark cat with brilliant eyes, and the issue doesn't feel like a "What If?" but like truth, a quality that was felt in the best of the 75 issues.


"A Midsummer Night's Dream" has the distinction of being the only comic to ever win the World Fantasy Award (not without controversy), and I can certainly see how it earned the prize. By framing itself around and within the famous play of the same name, Gaiman and collaborator Charles Vess get a lot of mileage out of a conventional size comic book. This story is one of those perfect mixtures of comedy and sadness that Gaiman is so adept at, with Robin Goodfellow and the rest of the faerie causing mischief even as Will Shakespeare's young son illustrates his skewed priorities. The end of the story, with its twisted lift from Shakespeare, gets me every time and inspired much of my love for the original play.


Finally, this volume includes "Façade," a story that I suspect readers won't respond to as well as the preceding three. I know that I hardly cared for Gaiman's collaboration with Colleen Doran the first time I read it, but my feelings have changed with time. This melancholy tale of a forgotten Silver Age heroine shows Gaiman's ability to mature a character without going overboard. Rainie becomes more complex and real in these 22 pages than she ever did in her myriad adventures before, even if the story is a heartbreaking one. It also doesn't even feature Morpheus, though the real breakout star of the series drops by at the end. yes, Death is probably the most affecting character to be spawned in Gaiman's epic run. The idea of Death as a spry young goth girl changed everything when she was introduced and provided the genesis for some of the strongest stories Gaiman has ever told. While Death certainly has one of the single greatest lines in all of comicdom (I won't spoil it here), I'll be damned if her greeting on the telephone at the end of this issue doesn't bring the tears right back up.


And I suppose that's one of the most honest things I can say about the quality of The Sandman. I laugh and I cry every time I work my way through a story, no matter how many times I have read it before. I'm so grateful that Gaiman was able to bring this book to the public at a time when overly rendered, grotesquely muscled murderers ruled the comics scene. As comics were striving to become "mature" by virtue of more guns, more blood, and more sex (not to mention more pouches), Gaiman and crew were effortlessly putting the foundation into place for true mature storytelling. Vertigo wouldn't exist in nearly the same form it currently does if Sandman had never been published, and the world would be much worse for it. Luckily, enough of us still dream about the characters that Gaiman and his team of artists created to keep them around.

"Nice One, Scott! Now Turn The Page!"

Scott Pilgrim is a precious little story.
I came across the first volume in the series a few years ago after reading about it in Wizard and online. Initially, I wanted to see what the hype was all about. After years of disliking manga, I wasn't excited to jump into a series created in a similar format, and the volume ended up drifting onto a bookshelf, awaiting its time to be read. Sure enough, after about a year, I finally got around to opening the cover and jumping in.

The funny thing is, I just don't have all that much to say about this first volume because I feel like it's all so obvious. Bryan Lee O'Malley poured all of his geekiness and angst into this series, and it really reads like a passion product from a creator who can still edit himself (not to discredit any work that the fine folks at Oni Comics might have put into the editing process). Sure, O'Malley throws reference after reference at the reader and introduces world-building elements without much warning, but Scott Pilgrim succeeds where so many fan-service projects go wrong: there is a heart and soul to the story beyond the nerdiness.


The characterization displays this best. Scott is a lovable loser/slacker, but O'Malley puts him in situations that deepen his character. The awkwardness of dating a high schooler, the feeling of mediocrity with Sex Bob-omb, his... unique living situation, the dreams of a mysterious courier, and his night with Ramona all affect Scott in ways that lift him above a two-diminesional stereotype for a nerdy guy in his position in life. Wallace is another great example, as O'Malley plays some stereotypes up in a realistic way (teasing and flirting with "straight" characters) while showing Wallace's responsibility for and tolerance of Scott as well as his troublesome drinking habits. Aside from the alcoholism, I can attest that the relationship between Wallace and Scott is strikingly similar to the relationship I share with some of my close friends from home. The key to these characterizations is that O'Malley knows how to have some fun with it all, balancing character maturity with lighthearted moments and plenty of absurdly unreal additions.

Think about it: is there any warning that Scott's dreams will be revealed to be a subspace portal, or that Matthew Patel will attack Scott with magical powers and summon demon hipster chicks? Up until the first instance, Scott Pilgrim could just be a winsome slice-of-life story for a Canadian slacker who likes to make video game references. But thanks to O'Malley's manic manga-inspired art style, these twists of absurdity just feel natural. I had an issue with Death Note because the supernatural elements felt too inorganic and much too easily accepted, but I would point toward Scott Pilgrim as an example of throwing in crazy plot elements without much explanation and having it all make sense. The art is a little rougher here than in later volumes (to be expected), but it's full of energy even when it seems to be cutting corners, and O'Malley never skimps on the action.

With the impending Edgar Wright-helmed movie adaptation starring good 'ole non-actor Michael Cera, it's a great time to be a Scott Pilgrim fan. I mean, even a few years ago, volumes were hard to come by because of small print runs. I'm pretty sure the movie will be pretty good, but Michael Cera will just play Michael Cera like he always does, so prime reading season is anytime from now until August when you'll be unable to un-hear Michael Cera's voice every time you read any of Scott Pilgrim's dialogue. Get in before it's ruined, kids!

"Light" on Appeal -- For Me, Anyway

I last read a manga in eighth grade, if memory serves me right. When the manga book happened a decade ago, I got right onboard, but I ultimately couldn't buy into the differences in storytelling between Japanese (and sometimes Korean) tales and the American books I grew up with. I'm never sure if the difference is in translation or the culture itself, but some things never click with me, but I'll get to that in a little bit.

First, some context that shows how fundamentally different manga really is from American comics. Firstly, manga is a huge, if declining, business in Japan. Since Japan is a commuter culture, the need for quick entertainment is strong. To put it into perspective, the sales for manga on cell phones alone trumped the sales for comics in America last year. This is partially because there are manga aimed at young children all the way through to stay-at-home moms, but another large reason for this is the disposable format and cheapness of manga. Manga magazines, such as Weekly Shonen Jump (where Death Note first appeared in serialized format), are usually the sizes of phone books, feature only a few ad pages, and are printed on very cheap paper. They come out weekly and tend to cost the equivalent of US $4.00. American comics, on the other hand, ship monthly on nice paper and cost between $2.99 and $3.99 (sometimes more) for 22 pages of story content with 10 pages of ads. Manga readers are frequently polled about what stories they enjoy and features are swapped in and out accordingly, with the popular ones being collected into bound volumes that sell for more money.

Because of the weekly printing schedule, most mangaka (manga creators) are aided by a team of uncredited assistants, many of whom are apprentice mangaka. In many cases, the well known artist lays out panels and draws figures, and little else. Someone else is in charge of backgrounds, lettering, inking, etc. This is not wholly dissimilar to American comics; big name artists provide the pencils, and workhorse creators come in to ink, color, and letter over those pencils. The biggest difference is that those inkers and colorists and letterers are always credited in today's world, and have been for quite some time. The notion of having uncredited artists providing backgrounds or figure work would get an American creator excised by fans and publishers, and assists from other artists are almost always done on different pages and credited as such. As a reader and a hopeful creator, I find the idea of uncredited work distasteful and insulting to the people putting in the long hours to insure the book comes out on time, but this is ingrained in the manga industry. In this book, I found the art capable, but nothing extraordinary. I enjoyed the Shinigami designs, but their world was so muddled in shadow that I was left wanting. In some cases, the backgrounds seemed to be computer-filtered photographs or tracing work, which did nothing to win me over.

With all of that aside, Death Note still wasn't for me. Shonen is manga aimed at teen boys, a category that I don't quite fit into. While I read many slam-bang superhero books, the titles that I tend to enjoy most have heavy character moments, serious drama, well-explored concepts, and sufficient build-up. I am intrigued by Death Note's central premise, and I enjoy Ryuk as a character and as a cool visual, but there is much too little story development for me. I can't fault the series necessarily; if it moved at the pace I would have enjoyed, it surely would have bored the teen readers and been cancelled long before it finished. Within one chapter, Light finds a death note, meets a god of death, and starts his massive quest to rid the world of evil and rule over his utopia. I just can't get into a story that takes place in the "real world" where a teen boy is more brilliant than the entire police force and unfazed by meeting a GOD OF DEATH. The introduction of L. as a young man who inexplicably gets free reign over global task forces only made matters worse. The suspension of disbelief fell through, but it might have worked much better for me when I was a lot younger.

I don't mean any of this as an insult to the format, as I still believe that I will find manga that I enjoy regardless of production or publishing differences. I enjoyed Death Note for what it is, but that magical manga that clicks with me probably won't be shonen.

"..."

Shaun Tan's The Arrival is a beautiful, beautiful thing.


For someone with so little connection to immigration -- my family has lived in the country for generations on all sides and have virtually no idea where they originated from -- The Arrival perfectly replicated the feeling of being in an alien place and trying to make a home for yourself and, potentially, your family. That Tan chose to communicate this wordlessly, mostly removing the language that plays such an essential role in feeling out of place, is even more impressive. Tan creates his own vocabulary of symbols and letters, allowing for the book to be completely universal, as long as you can see pictures.

Tan's expansive cities, built like the mash-up of clock cogs and Aztec pyramids, abstract paintings and hieroglyphics, feel wondrous and intimidating. The host of statues whose meanings are never explained draw up echos of foreign landmarks that visitors will never comprehend. Food is confusing and strange, a feeling you can replicate by entering many of the restaurants in the Village. Even the method of obtaining the food is alien; I recall being with a group of friends in a Japanese restaurant as the waiter explained how to eat the food, not simply what it was that they were eating. The delightful animal companions feel particularly relevant to me. I had friends who recently returned from Turkey and they observed that stray dogs and cats were neutered, tagged, given food and shelter, played with -- but not kept as pets. The idea that someone would keep an animal as a companion was illogical, even though those animals were respected. Similarly, I'm always astounded by how tourists react to squirrels. We take the little creatures for granted, as they live in such a large part of our nation and are so friendly here in NYC, but many foreign tourists have never seen squirrels, or at least never so close. The relationship citizens have with pot-inhabiting animals in the novel is not one we're comfortable with (would you befriend any animal that might live in a small space in your house?), but it becomes familiar during the story.

The "heavier" aspects of the story also have a beautiful sense of economy to them, particularly the protagonist's sadly comical search for a job and the dark back stories to several of his fellow immigrants. Whether it is a dark "dragon" that floats above the city or massive vacuuming gasmen or a aimless march to war, the conflicts ring true without evoking a single historical instance. Of course, this is The Arrival's brilliance: this is not an immigrant's tale, but The Immigrant's Tale.

From a technical standpoint, Tan's artwork is strong, but unconventional. On a "traditional" comic, his meticulous pencil work and photograph-quality figure work would look overly static and posed in almost every case, but for a story that evokes the photographic quality of memories, snapshots, and moments, it is perfect. The sheer amount of skill needed to tell a coherent story in pictures alone is unbelievable. Browse any comic news site and take a look at the inked, unlettered pages of mainstream books. Even the masters of mainstream sequential storytelling cannot tell stories alone. You may understand the groundwork and pace of the story, but I defy you to imagine what the character is saying or thinking behind the grins and grimaces, or even what kind of time is passing from panel to panel. Tan slows scenes down a beat, showing movement on a much closer micro-level so that the flow from panel to panel is never lost. Alternatively, he chooses single images that capture moments perfectly and do not require time to convey emotion and narrative.


It's a shame that many readers would flip through The Arrival hastily, moving past the beautiful storytelling in each panel in search of text or flashy action. When I gave someone Asterios Polyp, a similarly monumental graphic novel that relies heavily on images, color, and design to tell its tale, I was astonished that it took him only about twenty minutes to finish its several hundred pages. I expressed disbelief that he actually read it. "I read every word," he said. He might technically be right, but I am sure he missed thousands of "words" in every image. The Arrival has millions.

EPIC

Wow.

Where do I start?

Bone is epic -- in every sense of the word. I'm a little ashamed that it has taken me so long to get around to reading it. After all, I've owned the stupid rat creature toy since I was ten or eleven. I remember looking at the back of the packaging and being disappointed that the other figures in the lines, with the exception of the menacing deluxe Kingdok that I could never find in stores, were so... cartoony. At that time in my life, I was happy to accept cartoons, and I was thrilled to discover high fantasy, but I couldn't accept a merging of the two. Years later, as my tastes evolved and diversified, the massive tome found itself on my short list of books to read. When it was assigned, and I was eager to dive in, but waited until break to do so. Unfortunately, reading Jeff Smith's follow-up, RASL, put a big damper on my excitement. I wondered if Bone would similarly have an awkward beginning, an unstable meld of genres, or iffy anatomy.

Thankfully, I was wrong. From the first issue, Bone displays a sense of consistency and confidence. Of course the artwork matures with time, but the storytelling strength is apparent immediately. Really, the amount of excellent choices that seem effortless is just astounding. Similarly to Scott McCloud's Zot!, each of the Bone brothers is relatively one note, creating an instant relatability but not denying the option for character growth. The Bones are drawn relatively sexless, but still male, allowing boys to connect and girls to find them adorable. Rose is a strong female character, keeping girls even more engaged. Fone Bone, while very much a hero on his own right, is not the story's "chosen" figure, keeping him relatable to the reader even as the mythic parts of the script build up. The world's mythology is well constructed, but avoids being either explicitly Judeo-Christian or pagan, focusing instead on a cultural blend of dragons, one of the most omni-present of legendary beasts. The villainous rat creatures are humanized by way of the two stupid, stupid members of their species, and Barnaby, but Smith postpones much of the inherent sentimentality to insure that the race is still downright scary when he needs them to be. Bearing in mind that Smith has been drawing tales of these little white creatures since childhood, it is truly estimable how well he constructed Bone's basic elements.

Speaking of childhood, Bone is pretty impeccably suited for readers of any age. Bearing in mind that Bone was first published over the course of a decade, the narrative content grew and changed with the reader. While the first three volumes contain almost nothing questionable (beyond Smiley's cigar-chompin' and Phoney's sexual innuendo, both removed from a version published in Disney Adventures), later volumes carry heavy emotional weight. Beloved characters die or are placed in threatening situations. Several scenes are straight out horrific: Briar's appearances, especially when her bisection is revealed; the head guard's dragon-scarred visage; and Rose's final confrontation with Kingdok, where the mad rat king boasts of eating her mother as she still lived and begs to be killed. This material is dark, and the consequences dire. Smith's masterful pacing and build up prepares readers to face this, and his rarely-absent humor alleviates the mood without seeming out of place. And, while I'm not sure how much this device resulted from intention or from a delayed publishing schedule, each and every issue offers a recap of what came before, expertly hidden in dialogue during the opening pages, keeping kids on track and reminded of what they're reading. With a volume so intimidatingly large as Bone, such a helping hand keeps discouraged readers reading on.

While it may not be apparent, it's commendable just how little Smith plays around with form here. With his great love of cartooning and classic comic strips, Smith's panel layouts tend to be very standard, and his angles didn't vary greatly. He made great use of silent panels, as well as panels that involved only slight changes from the previous panel, creating nuance and subtlety in a medium not necessarily known for either. The single bit of tinkering Smith did with comics form that comes to mind is the dialogue balloons of the Hooded One. Instead of having a standard tail that ends approximately halfway between the balloon and the speaker's mouth, the Hooded One's balloon tails slink down and into the hood, constantly teasing at her true identity and adding an air of creepiness to her appearances. In most cases, Smith had no need to mess around with format; his goal, as stated, was to create a comic book epic on par with the Odyssey or Moby Dick, not to reinvent the wheel. He absolutely succeeded.

As for John Canemaker's article about Bone's impending film adaptation? Well, I can confidently say that I'm not interested in the least, but I won't condemn the project. Comics have a fraught history of film adaptation, and discussions of such invariably end up insulting me a bit. I was shocked and saddended to see Jeff Smith say "comics are storyboard." How can such a living legend discredit his medium like that? For the same reasons that I very rarely use the term "graphic novel," I cringe whenever I hear comic books compared to storyboards, or treated like a facet of film development instead of a medium of its own. In my mind, Bone's greatest triumph is crucially linked to its medium. Jeff Smith set out to create a comic epic, not a pitch for a film. Lord of the Rings got lucky with its film adaptations, but there is a reason that Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick hasn't been eclipsed by a definitive film version. The point of reading it is reading it. On top of my stubborness, the news that Smith is not involved in the writing process and that the art will be computer generated as opposed to a style that might capture some of Smith's talent sours the idea even further. Seeing a film version can't ruin my idea of Bone, but I might elect not to taint it at all if and when the film ever debuts.