Essential Classic X-Men Vol. 2 #2

X-MEN #s 29-31

What is the fate of Cal Rankin, the Mimic?  In the first of these issues, he seems to have adjusted into the arrogant outsider as a member of the X-Men that anyone could have seen coming.  The rest of the team is enjoying a little relaxation (figure skating, another sure sign that these comics were originally created in an entirely different era, referencing the fairly obscure Carol Heiss of all figures), though Scott Summers beggars off, trying to cope with the anxiety of figuring out how to control his powers, unwittingly awakening the Super-Adaptoid, apparently the Marvel version of Amazo (with far less longevity).

Mimic decides to quit the team and actually deludes himself into believing the Adaptoid will prove a better fit for his abilities (on the surface, yes), until figuring out how wrong he was, and helps the X-Men prevail, before once again seeming to lose all his borrowed abilities and returning to a normal life.  It’s about as average an issue for the team as possible, but shows off exactly the right elements.

The next one resurrects Merlin, renaming him for some reason Warlock, and apparently a sinister personality bent on world domination.  Long story short, it doesn’t work.  What’s more interesting, or perhaps perfectly obvious, is that Marvel Girl, Jean Grey, is dragged once more into the center of the plot as Warlock’s intended bride (everyone has the hots for her, possibly because she’s the only regular female character in the book). 

The final issue in this trilogy of aborted villains features Cobalt Man, who is more likely an Iron Man villain, considering his whole story revolves around Iron Man (much as Warlock had a hard-on for Thor; this kind of inter-continuity probably played a large part in making Marvel in very short order become the preferred comic book publisher, since there was a near-instant sense of familiarity with a bunch of characters who had really only just come into existence).  But Cobalt Man is also the brother of Ted Roberts, the college campus love interest of Jean Grey, solving one of the riddles in this collection, the angst of the otherwise perfect Ted Roberts, always fretting over comparisons to his brother.  Turns out his brother is just as nutty as every other egghead in Marvel, as likely to make bad decisions without really learning from them.  But once again, it’s a story revolving around Jean Grey, who perhaps is not coincidentally codenamed “Marvel Girl.”  Could it be that in some alternate version of Marvel history, she was meant to be the star of the book, and perhaps a central character in the publisher’s lineup?  No wonder that “The Dark Phoenix Saga” eventually made her one of the most memorable figures in Marvel lore.  If the company ever actually rebooted, it would be a tough argument not to make her a star again.

Many Happy Returns

ATOMIC ROBO PRESENTS REAL SCIENCE ADVENTURES #2 (Red 5)

I haven’t read a new Atomic Robo adventure science Free Comic Book Day.  Excuse me, let me clarify, FCBD 2011.  I didn’t read this year’s installment, because for the first time in five years, I missed FCBD.  Heroes & Dragons doesn’t participate.  I may ask them if they can at least get me copies of the free comics I wanted (the annual Atomic Robo offering, plus my regular dose of free DC).  Anyway, back to the matter at hand, I’ve just read Atomic Robo, which I’ve enjoyed doing for four years, give or take, now.  His adventures have been among the most clever material I’ve ever read in a comic book, as if BONE had never gone into deep fantasy, and remained lighthearted.  It’s primarily been the work of writer Brian Clevinger and artist Scott Wegener, but the distinctive appearance of the character has long inspired fan art, and so it was only a matter of time before Wegener actually gave way to other artists.  REAL SCIENCE ADVENTURES is essentially an anthology title that accomplishes exactly that, Clevinger delivering exactly the same kind of witty, sparse storytelling, and our first chance to see variations on the basic style already well-established (there are six paperback collections if you’d like to see for yourself).  There are clear parallels between Robo and Hellboy, but whereas Hellboy is involved in fairly steep mythology and franchise at this point, Robo is still his trademark blissfully carefree self, like the most pure form of what a comic book should be.  In fact, if that’s how you want to consider Atomic Robo, then I would encourage and endorse that view!

AVENGING SPIDER-MAN #7 (Marvel)

At the start of the year, I rather pithily dismissed the launch of this series, but now I get to benefit, so I’m going to quickly and quietly reverse my position, if only for one issue.  I’m a big fan of Stuart Immonen (and his frequent collaborator and wife, Kathryn), but until this issue I haven’t seen the Marvel version of Stuart Immonen compare favorably to the transcendent version I enjoyed at DC at the end of the last millennium.  I would go so far as to say that version of Stuart Immonen as one of the best creators of his generation, both as writer and artist.  The Marvel version of Stuart Immonen has tried a variety of ways to be the exact opposite of that Stuart Immonen, and suffice it to say, I really don’t see the point.  So it was with great pleasure that I saw this issue, which features Spidey teaming up with She-Hulk in a throwback adventure in so many ways.  It’s at once an argument that Stuart should do Peter Parker (he did Pete once before, in ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, but that was Bendis Spider-Man, not Immonen Spider-Man), and that maybe he wouldn’t be such a bad fit for She-Hulk, either (and yes, I acknowledge that Kathryn was the writer of this tale and not Stuart, but for me, when Stuart’s art is the art I best associate with Stuart, the whole story becomes associated with him).  So, Marvel, take note, or if you don’t, then at least let Stuart notice that at least some of his fans are.  This might have been a random issue of a series that doesn’t really seem to have a coherent point to it, but its significance is greater than you can imagine.

HISTORY OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE (Marvel)

One of Marvel’s periodic attempts to chronicle its own fictional history in a journalistic fashion, this comic is also evidence that Marvel has produced many, many stories with a bare minimum of coherence, which may be fun to read at the time, but don’t actually make up a history that inspires a lot of confidence.  This is what people think of when they think of comic books, and maybe that helped THE AVENGERS wildly succeed as a movie, but it’s not a lot to take seriously, unless you don’t look very closely.  A DC version of this would read differently, is all I’m saying.  I know that MARVELS managed to make this kind of history lesson look remarkably impressive, and maybe the same thing could be done today with the same effect, but to see how many times Marvel has changed characters and attempted to kill them off, only to backpedal and still pretend that every single story its ever told actually exists in continuity, well…to a perpetual skeptic who can still appreciate the odd story, it just beggars the mind.  Fans really prefer, on general majority, Marvel to DC?  Maybe it’s because Marvel does the cliché comic better than anyone, I don’t know.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but every now and again, it’s probably worth living up to the hype instead of coasting on reputation.  Just saying…

JUSTICE LEAGUE #9 (DC)

Speaking of which, this is a book that many fans seem to assume is doing exactly that, when it’s doing anything but.  Geoff Johns has been building a coherent story since the launch, and this is an issue that really rewards faith in that, even if you haven’t always been, pardon me, a true believer.  His angle has from the start been about the world’s perception of the League which is why Steve Trevor is relevant as a character for the first time in decades, and why a new villain named Graves (for the moment?) may be the most significant new adversary for the team since Prometheus, emerging first as an anonymous cheerleader who literally wrote the book about the team, and then became embittered and disillusioned, an arc Mark Waid tried to do in THE KINGDOM, but which here may actually work.  The best comic book stories in this millennium will always tell stories on at least two levels: 1) from the ordinary perspective of the characters involved, and 2) from the greater perspective of how that story relates to the world the characters live in, which more or less means they work on objective and subjective levels.  There are many ways to do this, and Geoff Johns has perfected his, first with Green Lantern, and now with the Justice League.  Sit back and enjoy the ride.

NIGHTWING #9 (DC)

Random attacks by the Talons in “Night of the Owls” continue, and for Nightwing, they’re surprisingly personal.  Kyle Higgins continues to exploit his opportunity to give the Grayson family line the same amount of depth writers have been giving the Waynes for years, so that Dick Grayson is no longer just the orphaned son of circus performers who served as a useful surrogate for Bruce Wayne’s war on crime, but rather someone with a rich history of his own.  In fact, Scott Snyder seems to have unwittingly ceded the most relevant part of his epic to his partner in crime.  This issue reveals both the strengths and the weaknesses in the concept of the Court of Owls, how random an opponent they really are, and how convoluted it is to make them relevant in the way they’re supposed to be.  Higgins, though, makes it work in surprising fashion, and it would do well for future Nightwing writers to remember this issue.  This is a greater concern than you’d think, because most new Nightwing writers tend to ignore what’s come before them (there are exceptions, but then if there weren’t, there wouldn’t be a rule).  What Higgins is really doing here is establishing once and for all that Dick Grayson is a viable character in his own right.  I for one hope that Higgins remains onboard for many years to come.

PETER PANZERFAUST #3 (Image)

I’ve been intrigued by this title ever since I learned of its existence.  This is the first issue I’ve actually been able to read, but I’m still infinitely glad and gratified.  Peter Pan as a cultural icon is fascinating, the first time in pop entertainment where a child is held up as an ideal, even if he’s a deeply flawed one, suggesting that youth and experience are not always mutually exclusive in surprisingly profound ways.  Of course, one of the distinctions in the traditional story is Peter’s relationship with Wendy, and by sheer coincidence, this issue of PETER PANZERFAUST, a vision of the character by Kurtis Wiebe that recasts him into WWII, is the introduction of Wendy into the narrative.  Sometimes luck really does work that way.  I don’t know how long this series can last, but I’ll be a faithful reader for as long as possible.

SAUCER COUNTRY #3 (Vertigo)

Not surprisingly, this is going to be a series that deepens its own mythology with every new issue, exploring and meditating on the same themes as they unfold, one narrative and vision, which just so happens to be pretty profound.  What is the proper relationship one should have with fringe experiences?  Like the TV show FRINGE, SAUCER COUNTRY does not have easy answers, but Paul Cornell wastes no time getting beyond that and plunging deeply into his story.  Maybe things won’t happen very quickly, but they’ll be interesting.

THE SHADE #8 (DC)

I’m still shocked that most fans have skipped out on this one, but pleased that DC saw fit to give James Robinson a full year to explore one of the more fascinating elements of his late, critically acclaimed STARMAN series, a reformed villain with a rich history and a thorny future, all of which is intertwined in this story.  I’ve missed three issues since the last time I was able to get my hands on THE SHADE, and you’ve got to know that ensuring I didn’t miss the rest of it was one of my primary concerns in opening a box at Heroes & Dragons. So then, here we go again.

Essential Classic X-Men Vol. 2 #1

Part of the reason I tried to quit reading new comics last year was because I had a series of burgled packages from Midtown.com (which in itself might have been prevented had the postal service actually been performing competently).  The one way the apartment tenants seemed to atone for this was in the random appearance of ESSENTIAL CLASSIC X-MEN VOL. 2 in one of the periodic we’re-moving-out pile of boxes to be scavenged by anyone helping to thin out unwanted possessions.  I must repeat, this discovery was pretty random, because when I first moved into those apartments, it was a pre-retirement community, and only gradually became something else (less trustworthy).

Anyway, so I got my hands on one of those thick black-and-white reprint volumes that serve as an inexpensive window into other comic book eras, and even though I don’t read X-Men comics with anything close to regularity, I was pretty happy.  The only real question was when I was going to actually start reading it (a regular concern for me, because I have more reading material than I can keep up with).  Well, that day has finally come.

I’ll be providing regular commentary as I make my way through it.  Part of what makes ESSENTIAL CLASSIC X-MEN VOL. 2 is that it represents the era that almost killed the franchise, collecting X-MEN #25-53, from the late 1960s.  The X-Men were unpopular, but they were liked enough for Marvel to keep around for the cult audience that grooved to a bunch of merry mutants.  The stories in this collection are written by Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich, and Arnold Drake, names that don’t exactly resound with quite the same significance as Stan Lee, Chris Claremont, and Grant Morrison (Thomas comes the closest).

So far I’ve read:

X-MEN #s 25-28

This is still within the formative development of the team, and so features the classic, original looks (in fact, Beast looks definitively human throughout the collection), even though within these few issues alone new costumes are already introduced.  It shows that Marvel survived on romance comics before the big superhero boom at the start of the decade, because one of the central storylines to be found is the love triangle between Jean Grey (“Marvel Girl”), Cyclops, and Angel.  Jean has in fact recently gone off to college, and is pining after some bloke named Ted Roberts, and Mimic (probably the archetype for the character of Morph from the classic 1990s cartoon) happens to be on campus as well, biding his time for another run at the team, though the circumstances that rapidly bring him into conflict with it quickly transition him into an unlikely new “deputy leader.”  None of the villains in these issues make a lasting impact, though Banshee debuts as yet another Marvel character to start out as an antagonist, only to join the good guys (seriously, how many have there been?).

It should be noted that the team consists of Professor X, Jean, Cyclops, Angel, Beast, and Iceman, and that Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and Thor (in reference) make appearances.

Swear to Bendis, I'm Not Becoming a Convert

BATMAN AND ROBIN #9 (DC)

I feel like I’ve been reading a lot of this book recently for some reason, don’t know why…Anyway, this particular issue is the newest one and is a tie-in with the “Night of the Owls” event inspired by events in Scott Snyder’s BATMAN, and features young Damian Wayne getting to exert himself against a Talon and a bunch of army officers he’s attempting to rescue, one in particular who has become a target of the Court thanks to some unresolved business from centuries ago, the American Revolution to be precise.  If anything, Peter Tomasi helps make clear that the Court of Owls is basically a Freemasons type of secret society in this episode, even if he kind of stumbles in the few scenes not dominated by Damian (any scene with Damian is dominated by Damian).  Nothing overtly connected to previous issues occurs, but there are subtle connections.  Patrick Gleason will be back, and hopefully the regularly scheduled storytelling will also resume next issue.

CHARMED #21 (Zenescope)

My sister is kind of obsessive about CHARMED, the TV show, though she enjoys the comic book, too.  My access to the comic was severed last year when I backed out of my subscriptions with Midtown, so I jumped at the opportunity to resume access to this book, along with some others.  My sister seems content to read the trade collections (there are now three), so I’m actually wondering if I should even pass these individual issues to her anymore.  The comics tend to be a little less about the Halliwell sisters and more about the big stories, which I suppose might simply be a difference of the mediums.  Another difference?  Prue can finally return, as has apparently happened.  Prue was the sister played by Shannon Doherty, who left the TV show at the end of the third season, never to be seen again.  Hopefully Paul Ruditis nails this opportunity.  The current big story?  The sisters have lost their powers, while everyone else in the world now has them, and disaster has resulted.  And yes, this is when Prue returns.

DEMON KNIGHTS #9 (DC)

I’ve been investigating exactly the background Paul Cornell enjoyed before entering the exciting world of comics, and it was usually summed up with, “worked on DOCTOR WHO.”  Turns out he started out as a fan who got to write some fiction, book-form, and some of that led to work on the actual TV version of DOCTOR WHO, and he’s also got a few pieces of original fiction out there, but it may be safe to say that his name has gained greater recognition as he’s begun his career in comics.  Since coming to DC, Cornell has truly blossomed, certainly in his Lex Luthor arc in the pages of the pre-New 52 ACTION COMICS (must-read material), and now in the pages of DEMON KNIGHTS, a fantasy series that functions much in the same way as his acclaimed CAPTAIN BRITAIN AND MI:13, sadly cut short before its time.  DEMON KNIGHTS is what that series would have been like had Cornell been given complete creative control (one of CB&MI13’s most notable arcs was a tie-in with SECRET INVASION), and in many ways feels like what Grant Morrison’s SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY would have read like as an ongoing series.  Most of the characters involved have their own agendas, but their common destinies (as of this moment, since characters like Jason Blood/Etrigan and Vandal Savage are active in modern times as well) are currently involved in the continuing legacy of Camelot.  The famed wizard Merlin is a virtual stand-in for Walter Bishop from FRINGE, which I find utterly fascinating.  It’s Cornell’s ability to make anything fantastic to be relevant that marks him not only to be one of the best writers in comics today but arguably a threat to be the best writer of tomorrow.  If that’s not enough reason to read him now, I don’t know what is.

GREEN LANTERN #9 (DC)

The secret origin of the Indigo Tribe is exploded by Geoff Johns in this issue, and as usual, he manages to tie it in with the intricate mythology he’s both inherited and greatly expanded on within the Green Lantern mythos.  If you’re a fan, you know who Abin Sur is, and how he helped set BLACKEST NIGHT into order; now it becomes clear that he was looking past those events, too, and that’s why he helped create the Indigo Tribe, under circumstances and with a partner you’ll have to read this issue to fully enjoy.  Suffice it to say, but this is probably the most important issue so far in the New 52 era, and is probably the one that finally links the work Johns was doing previously with the soft reboot that “War of the Green Lanterns” helped usher.

MOON KNIGHT #12 (Marvel)

One of the things referenced in the letters column substitute from BRILLIANT #3 was this wrap-up of the series Brian Michael Bendis improbably agreed to do, handling one of Marvel’s problem children, a character who’s had multiple chances at ongoing series and pretty much failed at all of them, for decades now.  Bendis, so far as I can tell with this issue, seems to have concluded it makes sense to make Moon Knight actually seem crazy and isolated, given that his tenuous grip on reality has always suggested that.  If I’d known this earlier, I might have sampled the series earlier, but for many years now, I assumed Bendis was a Marvel stooge the company’s fanboys embraced simply because he was ubiquitous and seemed to write every other title for them.  Granted, a lot of his Avengers work (and there was an avalanche of it) definitely seemed to support that theory every time I sampled it, but there was other stuff that suggested he was more competent than that.  BRILLIANT nailed that for me, and so now I’m free to approach Bendis from a new perspective.  This is one of my rewards.

ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #10 (Marvel)

This is another.  I sampled the first issue of this second reboot of the Ultimate Spider-Man adventures (the first to not feature Peter Parker), featuring the introduction of Miles Morales as only the third new Spider-Man in Marvel history (I’ll give you a nickel for naming the other one, and I’m not referring to clones who may or may not answer to the name Ben Reilly).  It’s amazing how vividly inspired Bendis has been by his long tenure with Ultimate Spider-Man.  This alone has secured his status in comics history, and I’m kind of hitting myself for not reading another Morales adventure until now.  But this is a good one to jump back into with, as he finally learns the truth about Uncle Aaron, which is another of those brain-numbingly obvious superhero stories that few writers have actually done it.  Treat yourself and discover it for yourself.

WASTELAND #37 (Oni)

Another issue!  Concluding “Under the God,” Michael and Abi finally get to leave the Cross Chains town of Godsholm, sort of like THE BOOK OF ELI but with less Denzel Washington, and shev off back along their journey to A-Ree-Yass-I, along with Gerr, who will soon help all of us better understand what exactly is going on.  This is an epic adventure that may finally find its audience once it concludes so that there can no longer be any doubt concerning its brilliance.  Christopher Mitten may be working on other stuff, too, but this will be his legacy.  

Crossing the Threshold

ACTION COMICS #9 (DC)

Sometimes it takes seeing a familiar story in a new light to understand it.  Everyone has a chance to experience this, even if the first reaction is to reject the new version in favor of the familiar one; writers are faced with this challenge all the time.  The main difference between DC and Marvel is that DC has for most of its existence been reinventing itself and its most famous characters.  Grant Morrison accepted the biggest challenge of the New 52 by tackling Superman, who has long been accused of being irrelevant to today’s readers, a relic who survives on nostalgia and tradition.  True, he didn’t toss out or drastically remodel the Man of Steel (even the blue collar “costume” from the first few issues gave way to an updated version of what Superman has been wearing for some seven decades), but rather made some of the most familiar elements of the story as vibrant as he did, famously, in ALL STAR SUPERMAN.  This particular issue does that all over again, with an alternate Superman announced on the cover, who just so happens to still have Lex Luthor as a mortal enemy.  What’s truly interesting is an alternate Lois Lane and Clark Kent who stumble onto this world.  A couple of key differences, before we proceed: the lead Superman is black, and the visiting Clark Kent is not an ordinary guy.  And yet, like in ALL STAR SUPERMAN, Morrison dwells on one of the more overlooked aspects of the Last Son of Krypton, that his abilities do not stop at his powers, as both the Superman and Clark Kent in the story demonstrate.  Morrison never presents his vision of the icon as an infallibly brilliant individual (the delusion of which fuels Luthor and is also what many other characters and creators sometimes try to and horribly botch in execution); in this one issue, which is totally out of canon (but strongly suggests MULTIVERSITY, the project Morrison has been working on for several years now), Superman is both human and superhuman on multiple levels.  It’s essential reading in that regard alone, and is probably the best single story Morrison has done for the character.  As an added bonus, Sholly Fisch adds in his backup feature further ruminations that will challenge anyone who believes they’ve got everything figured out.  Read it and then tell me what I meant (it doesn’t hurt if I now suggest that you consider the presidency of George W. Bush).

BRILLIANT #3 (Icon)

I wrote my first letter to a comic book because of this, mostly because Brian Michael Bendis pitiably laments the lack of such things so far in the letters column he has to fill with an extended interview concerning current Marvel events (before shamelessly plugging his collected works, as he always does).  I love that he is one of the creators who still insists on having letters columns, even if I have not regularly read his books.  BRILLIANT is his reteaming with historic collaborator Mark Bagley (ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN), who is now thoroughly back in his element after the TRINITY experiment that killed DC’s weekly series concept by making it too cuddly (DC’s Big Three are many things, but they are not cuddly, and that’s the general Bagley style).  “Brilliant” is also the way to describe this effort from Bendis, who can get a little carried away with doing a million variations on the same Avengers story without really getting anywhere (yes, HOUSE OF M got somewhere, but it took other creators to get there), though when he’s focused (such as in POWERS or introducing Miles Morales or Peter Parker) he’s really good.  BRILLIANT features a focused Bendis, working with a whole group of precocious teenage geniuses this time, who have created superpowers and now don’t know exactly what to do about it.  This ought to be a really good ride.

EARTH 2 #1 (DC)

James Robinson is a creator who can either get fans to love him or get them to hate him, and it really depends, like Bendis (but with the fans actually caring about the results), if he’s got a good handle on what he’s trying to accomplish.  STARMAN, for instance, was James Robinson knowing what he wanted to do.  EARTH 2 looks like it be Robinson working like that again, but it may be a little early.  Most of this debut issue features a variation on the story Geoff Johns told in the opening arc of JUSTICE LEAGUE, the invasion of Earth by the forces of Apokolips, and the shocking sacrifices of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to get the job done this time.  The fascinating implication of this setup is that the Justice Society characters who for several generations now have represented a quasi-older generation of superheroes even they were all created after Superman, who only had the benefit of sustained popularity to keep him youthful and current for decades, will finally get to be the second generation again.  Maybe that’s why DC did away with the name “Justice Society” in the nU, much as in an earlier time these heroes gave way to their own succeeding generation in an alternate timeline, with Infinity, Inc.  That’s really the best way to explain EARTH 2, as a way to remove the dust from characters with a rich history but who have even in their second Golden Age (the two ongoing series Geoff Johns helped launch, the first with the help of Robinson) been reduced to heroes who can hardly be expected to be the first line of defense, always supporting others, second-class citizens even though they also helped inspire everything DC is now.  Well, now Alan Scott won’t just be that guy who wasn’t a member of the Green Lantern Corps but nonetheless worked under the name Green Lantern; he’ll be his own man.  Here’s to seeing what Robinson actually does with this.

NIGHTWING #8 (DC)

Kyle Higgins was a virtual unknown when he was announced as the writer of the New 52 NIGHTWING, which caused me all kinds of panic, since I believed that Dick Grayson was being relegated back to relative obscurity, even though he’s been around since virtually the start of the Batman saga.  But Higgins started his DC journey on BATMAN: GATES OF GOTHAM, a mini-series he co-wrote with Scott Snyder, who has for many readers become the new definitive Dark Knight creator and current ringleader of the Court of Owls epic.  GATES OF GOTHAM has itself become increasingly important, which is unusual for a mini-series, though not totally unheard-of, especially for Batman (examples to include SWORD OF AZRAEL, for instance, or just about every relevant Bane appearance outside of “Knightfall”), and yes, Higgins is now getting to take advantage of that fact within NIGHTWING, especially in this issue, and how Dick factors into “Night of the Owls.”  That’s as much as you need to know to enjoy this issue, which may be the most important one of the series so far.  It’s a strong indication, too, that Higgins knows exactly how to keep Dick Grayson’s profile both high and significant, and that’s a very good thing.

Amazing Cosmic Mignola

Anyone who’s seen THE AVENGERS in theaters over the past few days or so should know by now that the dude with the big chin in the credits is Thanos, lead villain in THE INFINITY GAUNTLET, a famous Marvel event written in the ’80s by Jim Starlin, who also did a DC event called COSMIC ODYSSEY, which featured the art of Mike Mignola, who is the actual subject of this piece.

Mignola is best known for Hellboy, who is best known for his movie adventures.  Mignola is incredibly respected within the comics community as one of the most passionate creator-owned writer-artists in the business.  I have not actually read a lot of his work, but I do now have THE AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD AND OTHER CURIOUS OBJECTS under my belt, which is basically a short story collection and is a great introduction to Mignola’s style.

Irreverent, would be one way to put it.  Abraham Lincoln technically factors into the lead story, in the same way that I have technically made anyone currently obsessing over THE AVENGERS interested in what I’m actually writing about.  The lead character is a robotic head that screws into the necessary bodies to accomplish his adventures.  The other major story in the collection features Professor Snap, who is executed (“They did me like a pirate.”) in his efforts to discover what happened to his colleague Cyclops, and inadvertently thwarts a Martian invasion and gets a new body for his efforts (this one’s the real highlight for me).

Like Red 5’s excellent Atomic Robo (a fact I’ve been trying to make for years, and anyone who frequents Free Comic Book Day will always have an easy way to acquaint themselves with), Mignola, at least represented here, is easily one of the most fun talents around, with a distinctive art style that features bold, deliberate renderings in cartoonish fashion.  The only other time I’ve read stuff this fun (besides Atomic Robo) is the web comic PX! by Eric A. Anderson and Manny Trembley (collected into several volumes by Image).

Anyway, as I said, AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD is a good argument for Mignola’s place in comics history, just by itself, ably demonstrating the merits of his contributions and also a strong indication that creating collections like this is probably something more creators should do.  In notes on the project that follow the stories, he even explains how the effort allowed him to rework “Abu Gung and the Beanstalk,” redoing the art and expanding it by several pages.  It may be a small indication that what George Lucas has been doing with Star Wars hasn’t been as horrendous as some people tend to suggest.  It’s the creator’s prerogative.  Maybe you just need to hear someone else say it, casually, about something you probably won’t have seen the original version of.

Anyway, I highly recommend this collection, and I guess Mike Mignola in general.

Bottom of the Ninth: the future of comics?

I've just heard of Bottom of the Ninth, Brian Woodward's new comic that actually features animation within its panels.  If anyone (and I'm talking about Scott McCloud here, and maybe Mark Waid's recent ambitions) has figured out what tomorrow's comics will look like, Brian has.  This may be the argument for anyone still looking for one (that's people like me) to start embracing digital comics.  You only have to sample it to see just how brilliant and obvious it is.  Seriously, go look now.

[end endorsement]