REVIEW: Dinopopolous

One of the great things about comics is that their only limitation is the imagination of the creator(s) and, to a slightly lesser extent, the reader. Comics can be anything and do anything any time they want—and they don’t even need a reason for doing it. Cartoonist Nick Edwards proves that point with relative ease in his latest work, Dinopopolous. Creating a world filled with adventure, dinosaurs, evil lizard armies, ancient artifacts, laser knives, and sprinkled with a bit of heavy metal, Edwards taps into an innate sense of wonder and excitement that turned many readers on to comics in their youth. It’s that same sense of wonderment that has made Jesse Moynihan’s Adventure Time so brilliant and that burned movies like The Goonies and Monster Squad into the collective psyche of a generation; it’s what made Kamandi so amazing; it’s what fuels the cult following of bands like The Aquabats. I would even go so far as to say that, at its core, what drives this comic is the same sort of felling that makes people love Tom Sawyer. It’s adventure, it’s imagination, it’s boyhood.

It’s hyperbolic to compare Dinopopolous to something like Jack Kirby’s Kamandi, but the spirit of Kamandi certainly fuels Edwards’ work and gives it a certain quality that makes it much more than just another off-the-wall indie comic.

Bias & Fanboyism in Comic Reviews

As most of you know, I review new comics over at Weeklycomicbookreview.com.  It's an interesting avocation because there is no established source for comics journalism.  Even the "big boys" of Comic Book Resources, Newsarama and iFanboy probably aren't making much money on this stuff and if you go down a notch further down to sites like WCBR, you're talking about folks who are creating content just for fun.  Yet, there are fans and readers who want objective reviews.  

One's life as a comic reviewer is interesting.  You start out just flinging reviews into the ether.  You can see the traffic stats for your reviews and see that you're getting a whopping 15 page views per day and that most of those are search engines.  Then something interesting happens: You get an email from a real, live comic book creator who is thanking you for saying something nice about their comic book.  

You get an epiphany at this point, "Creators read this stuff!"  And, many of those creators are friendly guys.  Lots of them doing creator-owned comics at places like Image aren't getting paid anything and have dreamed of doing comics their whole life and suddenly they've got people critiquing their work in public.  

I don't know about you, but I don't love it when my professional work get's critiqued in public.  

Eventually you get friendly with some of these guys.  You become friends on twitter, learn that you have things in common with a few of them, see them at conventions, have them as sources to ask insider questions, etc.  Yet, along the way....you are still having to review their work.  At some point, it becomes like being asked to critique a friend in public.  It's also good to remember that it is a one-sided relationship in that way......Ryan Stegman probably isn't going to start blogging about my skills at writing patent licenses.

Top 10 (and more) Comics for Halloween

I love Halloween. Not as much as the people who build animatronic skeletons for their front lawns, or my friend Matt, who probably had his daughter just so he could keep trick-or-treating well into adulthood (just kidding, Matt), but I do love it. I also love horror movies and, of course, horror comics. Now, some people claim that comics can never be truly scary, and it's true that you can't apply the same rules to comics that you do to movies, i.e. jump scares are pretty much out. On the other hand, some of the most disturbing, creepy, growing-sense-of-dread entertainment I've experienced came from between the blood-soaked pages of our favorite medium. After the break I'll tell you briefly about some of my favorites. Share some of your own in the comments!

REVIEW: Death Ray

Rare is the time that I feel intimidated before I open my big fat mouth; however, every now and then I question whether or not I am actually worthy to critique a book. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Dan Clowes’ Death Ray led me to one of those instances of anxiety. A lot of my anxiety came not just from Clowes’ standing in the comics/cartooning community, but rather a combination of that standing and my embarrassing lack of direct familiarity with his comics work. Fortunately, it didn’t take me long to get over that initial embarrassment, so I threw caution to the wind and decided to tackle Death Ray.

I have a general familiarity with the visual aspect of Clowes’ work and greatly enjoyed the film adaptation of Ghost World (I haven’t read the book yet…sorry), so I kind of had a good idea of how the book would feel visually and figured that I could guess the kind of complex, often odd, characters I would encounter. Additionally, I own several of Clowes’ earlier works, this just happens to be the first I have actually read. Having taken all of that into consideration, I had received the solace that I convinced myself that I needed before taking on such a giant of a cartoonist. The fact (that’s right, fact) that Death Ray is an incredible story, naturally, put my mind further at ease, and made it very easy for me to feel comfortable commenting on it.

Getting the Expected from Vertigo's "The Unexpected"

I love comics anthologies. I've bought a fair number of them over the years: everything from fairly obscure regional comics collective efforts to classic, long running mainstays like Dark Horse Presents to the enormous, dazzling modern tomes like Flight and Popgun. I love them because of the often bewildering variety of styles of display. I love them because they are treasure troves of newly discovered talent. I love them because you can sample them like an exotic box of sweets, never knowing quite what you'll find, but never having to linger long to find out.

DC's Vertigo imprint has published a fair number of anthologies in the past, usually revolving around broad yet specific topics like horror or crime. There's an unofficial adage in comics publishing...anthologies don't sell...which probably goes some way toward explaining why Vertigo doesn't publish as many of them as they used to. In a recent trip to a comic shop, however, a brand new one-shot anthology, apparently published "just because", caught my eye.

Since you're looking at the cover of The Unexpected right now, you can probably see why. Rafael Grampa (with an accent on the second "a"; not sure how to add that) drew the cover. His art immediately calls Geof Darrow's hyper-detailed linework to mind, but closer inspection reveals that Grampa is a true original.

That cannot be said for much of the content between the covers. That's mostly okay; a lot of these Vertigo anthologies are like modern day versions of the old Warren and EC comics. Twist in the tail stuff. Nothing wrong with that. Done well, I enjoy those stories as much as the next guy. And most of the stuff in here is pretty well done. There are a few stories that transcend the formula and offer work as original and daring as Grampa's cover, and those are the ones I'd like to highlight here.

Writers getting details wrong...

Writing material that is going to be published isn't easy:  You're putting material out there for a world full of chuckle-head bloggers (like me) to nit-pick the smallest aspects of what you're created.  Heck....I feel their pain.  I've published a few articles in scholarly journals in my professional life and in my avocation I always have to be careful when reviewing comics at Weeklycomicbookreview.com for fear that I'll screw up some detail of Age of Apocalypse or the Clone Saga and have some rage encrusted troll attack me in the comments section.  So, I get it.

But, one thing I just can't forgive in a writer are those who purposely include details in their script but then get the details wrong.  All of us have those little areas where we know a hell of a lot.  So, anytime an writer decides he wants to fling around specific terms like the type of engine found in a particular car, scientific details, etc. they do so at their peril because someone reading the material is an expert on that subject.  And, when they screw up those details, especially in a fictional work that is meant to be anchored in reality, it pops the whole bubble.  We, the reader, are supposed to be suspending disbelief and letting the story flow over us: "This stuff could really happen!"  But, then these factual FUBARs arise and suddenly the suspension of disbelief is gone and the reader is on Wikipedia checking your facts instead of reading the story.

Competition vs. Industry Standards

Is there anything safer on a comic related message board than kicking Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc.?  Those poor guys are about as popular as a sexually transmitted disease.  You'll also see folks worrying about other parts of comicdom becoming too monopolistic.  "The Big 2 are dominating the market share and squeezing out the little guys!" or "Comixology is gaining too much power!  I wonder if they'll become the Diamond of the digital era?"  This is a common sentiment in other walks of life and if you doubt that, try to find someone who says nice things about "the cable company".  For some reason, Americans just love the concept of competition.

But, we had other comic news last week that illustrated what happens when you don't have a dominant player in an industry.  Amazon launched their Kindle Fire ("Yay! Competition for Apple and their stupid closed system!") and announced that they would have exclusive comic content from DC Comics ("Boooo!  I better still be able to read those comics on my iPad!").  Shortly thereafter, Barnes and Noble announced that it was pulling all of the Kindle-exclusive titles from their stores in a move that was met with universal score by the online community ("Bad business move.  I want to be able to buy my comics anywhere I feel like it!").

These moves are all good examples of what happens in a competitive market versus a standardized market.  The standardized market is predictable, but doesn't allow for as much innovation and does lead to abuses and sloppy practices by the various players in the market.  On the other hand, a competitive market is chaotic and leads to messy things like exclusive deals and retailers boycotting a product over unequal treatment.

I'm fortunate enough to occasionally lecture to undergraduate and graduate students about competitive dynamics and there are two industries that I always use as examples of how standards aren't always bad and how competition isn't always good.

Consider your garden hose.  Do you know what size the end of it is?  What is the pitch of the threads?  Is it threaded right or left-handed?  How do you know that a new hose will fit the spigots on your house or will connect with your sprinklers?  The answer (of course) is that you don't have to think of any of that because it is all standardized to something called "Garden Hose Thread" in the U.S.  And because of GHT, all of our hoses and attachments fit together nicely.  Surely there were other designs for garden hoses and some of them may have been superior for certain tasks, but GHT won and that's how it is.  Most people are glad that we don't have competition in garden hoses!

Now, go to the area of your house where you store your disposable batteries.  What a cluster F%&#!  At my house, I have a big ziplock bag that is full of AA, AAA, D, C, 9 volt and odd assortments of camera batteries and those little flat bastards that go into watches and other devices.  And, did you know that many camera batteries are just a stack of those little flat batteries with a colorful Duracell wrapper around the mess?  And, did you know that many 9-volt batteries are actually composed of a bunch of really long, skinny batteries called AAAA?  Why can't life just be like a video game where you have generic "powercells"?  I can appreciate that we can't get rid of ALL of the battery sizes, but why must we have AA and AAA?  C and D?  Just have the engineers locked in a room to knife-fight to the death and establish a standard!  If AA wins and my consumer electronics need to be a little larger, so be it!

So, the next time you're inclined to complain about Diamond, just imagine the chaos that could ensue when they go away.  It won't all be peaches and cream!  Similarly, be careful what you wish for when dreaming of ONE standard being established for all digital comics because the standard might not be quite what you had in mind.

- Dean Stell

Longshot Miniseries - Back-Issue Review

Originally Published: September 1985 - February 1986

Writer: Ann Nocenti

Pencils: Arthur Adams

Inks: Whilce Portacio

Colors: Christie Scheele

Letters: Joe Rosen

Editor: Louise Jones

Basic Story: A mysterious man with a blond mullett and luck-based powers finds himself with no memory of his past.  He gets into a series of hijinks with hapless souls due to his naivety before learning more about his background and becoming a hero.  Longshot (as he comes to be called) is an escaped slave from the Mojoverse and needs to protect the Earth and its citizens from Mojo, the despotic reality show runner and ruler of the Mojoverse.

Why read it: This was the coming out party for one ARTHUR ADAMS.  Any comic art fan knows that name well as Adams was/is one of the best and most influential artists of the last 25 years.  It really was issues like this one that were the harbingers of change in comic art in the late 1980's from the mostly classical superhero stylings of folks like Jack Kirby, John Byrne, Gene Colan and towards the styles of Adams, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, etc. who left to form Image comics, made a lot of folks rich, helped fuel the 90's comic boom that powered the Direct Market comic shops and led indirectly to where to are today.  I'm not saying that Art Adams caused all of that to happen, but the appearance of this issue was a sign of change blowing through superhero comics because Adams' art was unlike anything I'd ever seen as a little boy.

Owned by some lucky dude

The story behind the issue is interesting too.  Ann Nocenti was the X-Men group editor at the time and had this story about a dude named Longshot.  Supposedly a lot of other artists passed on the project before she got this relatively unknown dude to draw it.  If you look at the issues, you can see his style evolving and improving with each issue.  Probably some of that is Portacio getting better at inking him too.  But, the end result is an issue #6 that is much more beautiful than issue #1.

The other big reason to read this mini is the first appearances of three useful X-Men supporting characters over the years.  Not only was this Longshot's debut, but it was also the first time we saw Mojo and Lady Spiral (as Mojo's henchman).  Adams really made Spiral attractive as hell and he more effectively conveyed Mojo's Jabba the Hut-esque appearance than most other artists have in the years since.

What's kinda goofy about it: Honestly....the story ain't much and has a lot of goofy 80's stuff.  Let's start with Longshot's basic sense of style.  For as much as folks like to make fun of the Captain Eo-like Beyonder from Secret Wars II, I'm surprised that they never pick on Longshot with his mullet and black leathers.  The funny thing is that the script keeps having women calling out how hot and sexy Longshot is.  If you read the thought bubbles from the ladies....the dude is just knocking them dead.  Then you compare that with image on the page and think, "That guy?????"  Oh well....this was the mid-80's.  Women back then thought David Bowie was hot.

The story is just overall kinda of dorky.  Longshot blunders into a number of silly adventures where he's hanging out with survivalists in their underground bomb shelter, working as a movie stuntman and helping a suicidal man get revenge on the power company.  I think the point is to show that Longshot really is an alien in our world so he lacks judgement about who he mixes with, but it still comes off as really weird.

Is it worth it: Absolutely.  If you're a fan of comic art and/or the history of the X-Men, this is a must read.

How to buy it: The issues are a little pricey for 80's back issues and will cost you $3-6 per issue for "very fine" condition.  Most stuff from that era is dollar bin material, but this is some of the first published work of Art Adams, so there's demand.   It was also collected into both a trade paperback way back in 1989 (when collections were kinda rare) and a hardcover in 2008.  The hardcover seems to sill be in print and can be bought through Amazon for $18.

Grade: B- (Great art, average-to-dopy story)

- Dean Stell