CBR Review: Guardians of the Galaxy #24

I recently reviewed Guardians of the Galaxy #24 for CBR and, in the process, wrote the following sentences: "As the Marvel cosmic line builds to 'The Thanos Imperative,' the main push is in Guardians of the Galaxy, but this issue seems somewhat limited by the upcoming story. With the entire issue leading to the final page, there’s only about half an issue’s worth of content while Abnett and Lanning stall for time somewhat. The issue is still a fun, entertaining read, but it’s lacking compared to previous issues of the title."

You can read the rest HERE!

Art Discussion Month 2010: Global Frequency #7 by Simon Bisley

[Continuing Art Discussion Month 2010. 31 days, 31 artists, a whole lot of discussion. The explanation behind my choice of comics and the archive can be found here.]

Global Frequency #7 ("Detonation"). Written by Warren Ellis. Drawn by Simon Bisley. Coloured by David Baron.

Some group is going to kill some spy-type folk. The Global Frequency needs to stop that from happening. So, they fake some cars and catch some of the would-be killers. But, the top guy has a phone that will send a signal to a plane that has a nuclear device on it. He's bleeding from a gut wound and the GF agent on the other side of the room is bleeding from a shoulder wound. He's got a pistol; she's got a shotgun.

Simon Bisley draws this in such an over-the-top manner that it comes off as a mad caper romp. Sure, there's death and pain, but it's kind of fun. Was that the intent? Other issues of Global Frequency have some playful moments, but this one is so out there visually that it's hard to take it seriously.

All of the characters look like weirdos, for one thing. He plays with the contrast of the two main GF agents, a small Chinese woman and a large, scary-looking Russian who looks like he's been cut out of white wood. They're a humorous-looking duo. But, most of the other characters display odd looks or mannerisms. A bodyguard holsters his gun, while giving this cockeyed snooty look to Miranda Zero. A bald, fat cop with a squiggle of hair on the very top of his head. Miranda Zero even dresses a little bit fancier/stranger with an odd fur-lined coat. The Chinese woman wears a pin-stripe suit.

The violence is insane in it's kinetic movements. A shot of rockets being launched from rocket launchers (yes, I know, that sentence is fucked) over three panels conveys the uneasy movement of the rocket through the air as it joins with two others and they hit their target. The Chinese GF agent shoots the top half of one of the terrorist's head off. Lower jar and up? Gone. In three straight panels, she isn't touching the ground. She runs up the stairs, hunched over, shotgun in one hand, phone in the other, feet well above the steps. Next panel, she kicks the door down with a jump kick. Next panel, she shoots the head off while diving toward the terrorist. All movement, all insane.

The Russian, a hulking monster with pale skin and white hair, odd scars, looks like wood. Wears these glasses with small, rectangular frames. His weapon of choice is an axe. He's nothing but over-the-top scary violence. So, yeah, perhaps that was the point of this issue.

Crazed action that is told in extremes is the visual style and Bisley nails it. With him on the art, it almost reads as a parody of an issue of Global Frequency, exactly the sort of you need at this point to break the tension of these big life-or-death stories. Plus, things get very fucked up in a few issues.

David Baron's colours come across wonderfully in this trade. The paper is glossier, higher grade, and it displays the colours especially well. He uses some of his usual tricks, but also embraces the over-the-top nature of the story. The Russian is an unearthly white, including his hair. Lots of bright red blood. Too bright and contrasted with pale greyish blue or black backgrounds often. He makes the kinetic violent nature of the art stand out.

(Minor critique: the end of this issue is very similar to that of issue four's end. Except for an added scene. Involving an axe. Ha ha ha.)

Tomorrow, we go in the opposite direction almost with Chris Sprouse and Global Frequency #8.

Quickie Reviews (Mar 17 2010)

A small week for me with only four books... and one of those I'm reviewing for CBR. I'm also going to be super-quick.

Joe the Barbarian #3: My favourite issue yet. Lots of fun character bits. Morrison playing with the fantasy quest characters and types is really entertaining. Sean Murphy's art looks a little less polished here, but I could be seeing things. A little bit. Not much. [****]

Siege #3: This shit is craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy. Gorgeous art and not at all what I thought this issue would be. Better than that, honestly. [****]

Spider-Woman #7: The series that's actually a mini-series. I'm okay with that since this book never really blew me away. It's been good, but something just didn't click. Maybe it will read better as a whole. A good conclusion to the story that would set up the ongoing. I'm curious where Bendis and Maleev wanted to go with the character. Good finish. [***1/2]

Now, on to other writing... Later.

Art Discussion Month 2010: Global Frequency #6 by David Lloyd

[Continuing Art Discussion Month 2010. 31 days, 31 artists, a whole lot of discussion. The explanation behind my choice of comics and the archive can be found here.]

Global Frequency #6 ("The Run"). Written by Warren Ellis. Drawn by David Lloyd. Coloured by David Baron.

Global Frequency 6 is all laid out in my head: should have the script out to David Lloyd in a week or so. It's a chase story, in London. A hungover 22-year-old Pakistani girl in Soho is the only Global Frequency agent close enough to stop a particularly nasty bomb going off on the Embankment. And she can't drive, and she's unarmed. All she can do is run. And half the city's closed off due to a Royal appearance. It's fun. And I've been going through David's earlier work to look for the tricks he uses to denote speed. There's a wonderful little thing he does in V for Vendetta. The batard Almond has a gun on V. He fires, but the gun's defective. And V goes at him with a knife. And in that panel, David tips the angle, so that V is at the top of the panel on the right, and Almond is in the lower left, so that V absolutely surges towards him, sudden vertiginous motion. It's simple and subtle, but it works amazingly.

That's from Warren Ellis's August 10, 2002 Bad Signal. It serves two purposes: tells you the plot and introduces a bit about David Lloyd's art here. What Ellis doesn't mention is that Sita, the Pakistani girl, practices parkour, which is how she runs through London: through and over buildings, using the environment to push her forward. This issue relies on the art quite a bit.

One way that Lloyd communicates motion and speed is through the shadows on buildings and surfaces surrounding Sita. They're not solid shadows, they're done with thin lines, sometimes meeting in a solid spot, but mostly just parallel thin lines. Not quite motion lines, but not far off either. They work as shadows and as speed lines. Nice little trick.

Lloyd's line work is thicker than you'd expect for a speed-heavy issue, but there it is. Sita, often depicted at a bit of a distance, so we can see her in her environment, is drawn in heavy blacks. Thick lines, giving her a sense of force and weight, communicating how hard this is. While she's thin and in shape, what she's doing is leaping off buildings and over cars and running like hell, and, fuck, that's almost certainly one of the most physically taxing things you could do. By depicting her and her environment with thicker lines, that sense of the physicality of it comes through. She's not floating through the air like a light nothing.

Wisely, most of the time, Sita is running left to right. She's running with the direction we read, but she's also running from page to page, throughout the comic. If she were going the other way, it wouldn't work. We need to go with her as she takes us with her.

Near the end of the issue, Sita arrives the Eye of London where the person with the bomb is and has to climb the fucking thing. Lovely moment where there's a little girl with her family, of Indian or Pakistani descent, and she says "DADDY, LOOK. / SPIDERMAN'S A GIRL. AND SHE'S JUST LIKE US. / COOL." Lloyd does this scene very well, aided ably by David Baron, with five panels laid atop a backdrop of the Eye. In the first panel, Sita is on her way up and, in the background, we see the girl in the crowded pod, standing out because of her red clothes. In the second panel, we get a full-body shot of the girl where she speaks the above dialogue. Then, we switch perspective so we're behind the girl and just at the top of the panel, over her shoulder, we barely see Sita. In the fourth panel, we close in on Sita as she winks at the little girl. Lovely little moment.

The final scene where she breaks into the pod with the bomber is a flurry of action as she breaks the window with this little glass-breaking hammer, hitting it over and over again. Eventually, she breaks the glass, is forced to kill the guy, drenches the biological bomb with some liquid and has to dive into the fucking Thames to put enough pressure on the case to keep the biological agent from escaping. Lloyd stays pretty close to Sita throughout this, except when she dives off the Eye and, then, he pulls back, showing us how crazy this is.

What makes the art work so well in this issue is how Lloyd moves us forward while also doing everything he can to show how insane and tiring this is for Sita. Capturing both of those things is quite difficult and, honestly, is not something most artists would do.

Tomorrow, it's Global Frequency #7 and Simon Bisley.

CBR Review: Breaking into Comics the Marvel Way #1

I recently reviewed Breaking into Comics the Marvel Way #1 for CBR and, in the process, wrote the following sentences: "This two issue series is a showcase of young, new artists that C.B. Cebulski has encountered in his travels around the world, scouting talent for Marvel. Each issue provides six short stories, partnering these artists with some of Marvel’s most established writers. This first issue has a pretty good showing. The preview pages give two or three pages from each story, showing what these artists can do."

You can read the rest HERE!

CBR Review: Daytripper #4

I recently reviewed Daytripper #4 for CBR and, in the process, wrote the following sentences: "Daytripper #4 shouldn’t be as good as it is. Beginning with a cliché, the issue should fall apart. Brás de Oliva Domingos is 41 and his wife is about to give birth to their first child and, just as they’re on the way to the hospital, there’s a phone call. Leaving it for voice mail, Brás doesn’t hear the message left by his mother that something has happened to his father. At the hospital, Brás goes for a cigarette and finds his mother downstairs, smoking, where she tells him that his father has died. Died in the hospital where his first child, a son, is about to be born. It shouldn’t work, it should induce groans and rolling eyes, but, instead, this comic is poetic and touching, executed with such careful skill, so steeped in the humanity of Brás, that even a cliché can rise above itself."

You can read the rest HERE!

Art Discussion Month 2010: Global Frequency #5 by Jon J Muth

[Continuing Art Discussion Month 2010. 31 days, 31 artists, a whole lot of discussion. The explanation behind my choice of comics and the archive can be found here.]

Global Frequency #5 ("Big Sky"). Written by Warren Ellis. Drawn by Jon J Muth. Coloured by David Baron.

Does Jon J Muth even pencil his stuff? I remember reading somewhere (I don't remember where exactly) that he just goes straight to inks and that's what it looks like here. Drawn with brushes. Maybe pens. Thin brushes along with thick ones? Christ, I'm over my head with this. I'm going to stick with brushes of varying sizes and a whole lot of ink.

In this issue, a small Norwegian town's populace has all gone a little crazy after everyone saw an angel when the town's church burnt down. Miranda Zero and a team of three go there and try to figure out what happened. There's a parapsychologist and a magician in the group. It's a smaller, quieter story.

Muth's art is somewhat ambient, somewhat mythic. This is a story of science and magic and religion and the human mind. You don't need someone who's tied to realism too much, though Muth does operate within a semi-realist style. People look like people, etc. etc. etc.

Because Muth is using such heavy inks, there's an automatic feeling of darkness, of the world being a little bit darker, a little bit not right. That's not to say that the art is dark, because it isn't (aside from the scenes that take place at night), there's just an extra amount of black ink with Muth's thicker lines.

Panels don't flow in the same way, standing alone a bit more. In some spots, he tries to overcome that by overlapping panels slightly, having them lead to the next more directly, but there's a very cinematic look to the way his panels don't flow. In one case, a page of three panels where Miranda Zero walks through the snow, some trees about, eventually winding up in the remains of the burnt church. It looks like three series of shots rather than three panels. In each panel, you can picture her walking before the camera changes to a different shot. Odd.

That painterly quality of his heavy brushstrokes conveys the environment, that barrenness... the page where we see the angel is stunning because it doesn't look right. It doesn't look great and holy, it looks unnatural.

He really excels in the two pages showing the aftermath of seeing the 'angel' on people as they look... broken. There's a certain despair in their body language and faces. A certain feeling of unease.

David Baron uses a lot more solid colours here, working in blocks a bit more. Drab colours often, even ones that could be bright are muted and dark. He gets the colour of snow right, too. Lots of texture and subtle differences in his work on the snow. Great looking.

Muth... his figures are almost like sketches. His people look distinct and individual. The magician, Alan Crowe, is lean and somewhat spooky... his people don't always look the exact same. There's some shifting of their features and hair a bit. They're stiff, too... but, this sounds weird, it works. Sometimes, what's normally a 'bad' thing works. Just the way it is.

Tomorrow: David Lloyd and Global Frequency #6.

The Splash Page Podcast Episode 8.2

The second episode of the week is up. It's a longer one, but it's full of Tim and I... talking. I guess these episodes are always full of that, aren't they? In this one, we answer the cliffhanger question, discuss some new comics, prose novels by comics writers, Tim's baldness, and I swear this time to match Tim's swearing from the first episode.

You can download and listen to the Splash Page Podcast Episode 8.2 HERE!

CBR Review: Punishermax #5

I recently reviewed Punishermax #5 for CBR and, in the process, wrote the following sentences: "With the first story arc in Punishermax concluded, Jason Aaron and Steve Dillon have definitely proven the ideas that no one could follow Garth Ennis on a Punisher book aimed at mature readers and that it was a mistake to introduce a character like Wilson Fisk to be wrong. I’ll admit, I definitely thought both of those to be the case, but Aaron and Dillon have crafted five issues is tense, exciting action to show the rise of Fisk from bodyguard to Kingpin that it’s hard to deny them their due. Not that I would want to, of course."

You can read the rest HERE!

Art Discussion Month 2010: Global Frequency #4 by Roy Allan Martinez

[Continuing Art Discussion Month 2010. 31 days, 31 artists, a whole lot of discussion. The explanation behind my choice of comics and the archive can be found here.]

Global Frequency #4 ("Hundred"). Written by Warren Ellis. Drawn by Roy Allan Martinez. Coloured by David Baron.

Look at the list of Global Frequency artists and one name stands out: Roy Allan Martinez. Who the fuck is he? Before you see any of his art, he stands out, because he's the only artist that you've probably never heard of. It's not a slight against him, it's just that this was a book filled with well-known artists, many of whom don't do a lot of interior comics work and Martinez was (and still is, I guess) something of an unknown. It's a case of 'one of these things is not like the other,' right?

And I rather like his work in this issue. It's an action issue. A web development company/cult has taken hostages and will kill them all as well of themselves unless their weird demands are met. The GF has two operatives in Melbourne, Australia. A black cop named Danny and an English tourist named Jill. They need to go in and save people using guns.

Martinez's style is a little stiff in places. His characters are rendered with clean lines that vary between very minimalist and photorealistic. It's a little jarring in places, the switch. On one page, we have two panels with detailed close-ups of Danny and Jill each sandwiching one where Danny is a vague, somewhat impressionistic blob despite being... oh, let's say five to ten feet from the reader's perspective. It doesn't always flow strongly. Taken as individual panels, they look nicely almost always, but that's only half the job (or is it a different fraction of the job? Discussion question!).

Near the end of the issue, there's a wordless series of panels where I honestly can't figure out what I'm supposed to be getting from them. Danny kicks down a door; looks back at Jill, looking slightly nervous; we see Jill's mouth in the foreground, almost smiling, Danny behind it still looking nervous but not as much; the two run forward guns in hands. It almost looks like there are word balloons missing, because I can't understand the meaning of those panels based on the art alone. I can guess -- but I don't know. And there's no reason to be vague in this issue. This is not a vague, read into the subtext, and form theories sort of comic. This is action kicksplode shoot the fuckers dead sort of comic.

And, generally, Martinez does that well. His jumps from panel to panel convey the chaos of action well, showing the key moments. His layouts, for the most part, are basic. He uses a lot of page-wide panels, not always strongly since they're limiting in ways that hurt the art. Page-wide panels work, ideally, for four panels or less on a page. And, even with four, it's pushing it. Three panels is the perfect amount for that 'widescreen' look with page-wide panels, but Martinez uses them on pages with five or six panels, meaning some are just so damn short and long that what they can show is limiting.

Sorry, it sounds like I dislike the art more than I do. It's easier to pick up on the flaws. It's serviceable, though. Martinez's style doesn't really help the issue the way that the other artists' styles have. David Baron's colours even look a bit more flat and bright/shiny to match the art. So far, it's the weakest Global Frequency art (probably the weakest of the series... though we'll see), but, again, look at the competition. Standing alone, it wouldn't look as bad.


Tomorrow: Jon J Muth draws Global Frequency #5.

The Splash Page Podcast Episode 8.1

In the first of this week's episodes, Tim and I discuss a wide range of topics, moving from one to the next with the grace of gazelles. There's Amazon, music, Apparat, Warren Ellis, prolific writers and artists... and we conclude this episode with some Sandman talk. Lots of Sandman talk, which leads to another cliffhanger question ending that will be picked up in the next episode. We didn't even plan it that way.

You can download and listen to the Splash Page Podcast Episode 8.1 HERE!

Art Discussion Month 2010: Global Frequency #3 by Steve Dillon

[Continuing Art Discussion Month 2010. 31 days, 31 artists, a whole lot of discussion. The explanation behind my choice of comics and the archive can be found here.]

Global Frequency #3 ("Invasive"). Written by Warren Ellis. Drawn by Steve Dillon. Coloured by David Baron.

Well, fuck me, I don't know if I'm ready to do Steve Dillon yet.

Probably the most difficult thing I've found in discussing art is truly conveying, in words, what an artist's style looks like. Most of you have seen a comic that Steve Dillon has drawn, so you know how unique and distinctive his look is. Show me any random panel of his and I know it's his work. His style is his own and I have no idea how to get it across in words.

But, hey, that's the challenge, isn't it?

Warren Ellis tailors this script to Dillon's strengths, which is in his characters, of depicting the subtleties of body language and facial expressions. While Dillon characters have automatically, immediately recognisable Dillon-drawn faces, they don't really all look alike. In this issue, some sort of alien (not UFO, but foreign, not what we're used to) thought idea (or meme) infects an area of a city. While there are numerous people with killing skills put on the Global Frequency here, the issue really focuses on Lana, an expert on the subject of memetic attacks. She has to, firstly, figure out exactly what the alien idea is and, then, how to destroy/kill it. And, if it can't, the area will need to be carpet-bombed to keep it from escaping its limited quarantine area. In the end, she does it by, basically, summing up human civilisation/existence through her conception of love. (I told you people before that Ellis is a sappy bastard at times, I know I have...)

One of the things that Dillon does in his art with facial expressions to communicate the character is in how he draws Mirando Zero. She's drawn fairly consistently throughout the series, but Dillon does something rather smart. Up until the day is actually saved, she always has a look of focus, determination... almost anger on her face. Tightened jaw, thing lips, eyebrows arched down, eyes squinting slightly. She's no-nonsense, a bit of a hardass... she looks kind of bitchy. And justifiably so since she has a limited time to save not just the infected people, but, possibly, all of humanity. She looks like the sort of person you want handling this. Her expression doesn't change much in the broader sense, the characteristics I mentioned show up all throughout. Except in one panel, after everyone has been cured of the alien thought: Lena has said that there is one side-effect (that everyone infected may now be bisexual since that's her concept of love/how she relates to the idea) and Mirando looks over at her and says, "I CAN LIVE WITH THAT." It's a close-up of her face, slightly turned away, and she looks relaxed and relieved, almost happy. Her eyes are wide, her eyebrows straight, only arching down at the outside, a hint of a smile coming across her face. Visually, Mirando Zero tells the reader how to feel: she looks focused, determined, conveying that this is serious business until it's not and she relaxes, telling us that we can, too.

That's what Steve Dillon does. He does that with other characters, but I'd just be repeating myself by discussing them.

Since an indication of the infection is bleeding from the eyes, Dillon draws our attention to eyes throughout, using that as a motif. While the alien thought is passed verbally, eyes are, as the saying goes, the window to the soul: what we see in a person's eyes help define them as people. So, Dillon makes sure that we see characters' eyes a lot, focusing on them, trying to give us a hint of what's inside of them. The eyes aren't the same throughout. Different colours, shapes... how much the lids are closed/squinting changes. Very good.

David Baron's colouring is a little paler here than in the previous issue. His skin tones are paler, I think. I don't know why, but Dillon-drawn characters always seem to have a certain skin tone to them. Maybe that's me seeing something that's not there. But, since this issue is about characters and being able to see everything, Baron's colours are crisper than usual, particularly with regards to the characters. They're more defined and separated from the backgrounds.

Tomorrow: Roy Allan Martinez and Global Frequency #4.

Art Discussion Month 2010: Global Frequency #2 by Glenn Fabry

[Continuing Art Discussion Month 2010. 31 days, 31 artists, a whole lot of discussion. The explanation behind my choice of comics and the archive can be found here.]

Global Frequency #2 ("Big Wheel"). Written by Warren Ellis. Drawn by Glenn Fabry with 'additional inks' by Liam Sharp. Coloured by David Baron.

A couple of firsts with this issue regarding this month of discussion. First, this is the first issue where another artist did inking of any kind. I think the majority of the comics discussed this month were drawn by one person, but I hadn't decided how to handle inking. I'm not sure my eye is good enough to necessarily pick up good or bad inking all of the time. Obviously bad inking, yes. But mediocre? Or great? I don't know. Wanted to say that.

Second, this issue's visuals suffer in the trade a bit from the paper and printing. While the paper is the same used for the Hellblazer stuff, the printing job with this issue isn't perfect. It's a little muddled and not entirely in sync throughout. The first page of this issue, for example, looks like something wasn't quite lined up, giving the vague impression of two slightly off printings of the page. Maybe it's unique to my copy. Later in the issue, some pages aren't as clear as they could be. Figured I'd mention that bit, too, in the interest of being up front about... everything.

"Big Wheel" has a small strikeforce of GF agents sent in to a military facility to take down a 'super-soldier' gone crazy. Basically, a technologically-augmented soldier saw himself in the mirror and it drove him insane. Right there, there's a bit of pressure on Fabry to deliver a freakish-looking creature. Something mutilated and different enough to believe that seeing that it's yourself could drive you insane. I think he succeeds.

The build-up to seeing the soldier is done well with him using his tech to hear the GF operatives talking, listing everything done to him, as he see him the shadows. This mess of meat and metal. Eyes with no lids. Mouth with no lips. Big hunks of metal that take up his forehead and the top of his head, his nose, the front of his neck, his chest... His body doesn't look too bad in that respect, but his face... he's an ugly monstrous thing he is. Grotesque and horrifying. While the soldier volunteered for the proceedures, even that couldn't prepare him for the horror of seeing his altered self.

This is, really, a horror comic. GF team goes in to take down a monster. Lots of dark passageways, lots of nothing followed by intense, quick somethings. Fabry's rough, messy style works well. It's a mix of darkness and sketchy horror.

While he handles the cleaner build-up pages ably, his work shines when the soldier/monster is introduced and he does pages of the GF folks trying to kill him, while he just takes it and tries to kill them. He looks damn scary and they can't stop him. He towers over them, his flesh just hunks of fucking big muscles. He lurks in the shadows, big eyes bulging...

Even the tough GF people look scared shitless...

The panel-to-panel work is strong. The attack on the monster is quick, each character moving in and out of the fray logically. A sequence where the monster comes out is handled very well as he walks towards us in three panels, each panel getting closer, but also getting bigger somehow. In the first one, he's more skeletal, but the muscles and metal get larger, more full as he approches. Not 'realistic,' but it's good storytelling, a good way to make him getting closer even scarier. Fabry doesn't draw realistically, he deals with moods here more than anything. While most everything looks like it should, he distorts a lot to convey the tension and horror. Effective.

Baron's colours are very dark here. It's hard to give an accurate description/discussion of them since the printing job is a bit fucked. The colours are darker than the first issue, more browns and dark reds. The monster brings the reds with him, contrasting the blues of the outside world. The monster overwhelms the outside world, so, by the end, all of the colours are influenced and affected by the reds he brings.

Tomorrow, Steve Dillon. I'm not sure I'm ready for him yet.

CBR Review: S.W.O.R.D. #5

I recently reviewed S.W.O.R.D. #5 for CBR and, in the process, wrote the following sentences: "To tell the truth, I wasn’t exactly blown away by the first couple of issues of S.W.O.R.D. I read reviews by my fellow critics praising the book and, while I didn’t dislike it, I couldn’t quite see how they were jumping from my view that it was a good, solid book to it being one of the best comics to launch in recent months. But, as the series continued, each issue impressed me more and more, leading to the very good final issue, which wraps up the book’s first (and only) story arc and the series itself, making me wish that there was an issue six shipping next month."

You can read the rest HERE!

Fuck Me?

I just have to share a comment that I got in this week's Wrestling 4Rs over at 411mania where I did a review of Monday's TNA Impact:

Fck Chad Nevett

You are like the typical smark who btch just for the sake for bitching.

Bring back Wilcox.

And the thougth of this live show being worse than January 4th is stupid, and you are clearly a jackass.

Posted By: FckChad Nevett (Guest) on March 12, 2010 at 07:12 AM

I love fans. (Also, I love the name he used for the comment. Isn't that cute?)

CBR Review: The Twelve: Spearhead #1

I recently reviewed The Twelve: Spearhead #1 for CBR and, in the process, wrote the following sentences: "With The Twelve on hiatus for various reasons involving creators J. Michael Straczynski and Chris Weston, an opening in Weston’s schedule means that fans of the group get a special treat this week with a 38-page one-shot written and drawn by the book’s artist. Weston, wisely, avoids the plot of the main series and focuses on a story from the waning days of World War II, mixing the characters from The Twelve with Captain America and the Invaders for one big adventure involving the Spear of Destiny."

You can read the rest HERE!

Art Discussion Month 2010: Global Frequency #1 by Garry Leach

[Continuing Art Discussion Month 2010. 31 days, 31 artists, a whole lot of discussion. The explanation behind my choice of comics and the archive can be found here.]

Global Frequency #1 ("Bombhead"). Written by Warren Ellis. Drawn by Garry Leach. Coloured by David Baron.

Global Frequency seemed to have two purposes: 1) Write a series of self-contained issues with a maleable high concept that would work both in singles and in the collection, partly as an experiment to see if it could still work well. 2) An excuse to work with a bunch of great artists who may or may not have time for longer works, but could fit 22 pages in. The high concept is: there are 1001 people on the Global Frequency, a private group of people with a wide range of skills all dedicated to stopping bad things from happening. The group is headed up by Miranda Zero with a young tech-savy woman, Aleph acting as the coordinator most of the time. Very simple, very open to different stories with differing casts.

In "Bombhead," a Russian man who has an implant in his brain left over from the Cold War that will teleport a nuclear warhead to his location. It is malfunctioning and the GF must prevent that from happening. Not all of this information is available from the beginning. It's partly a story wherein we find this out.

I remember Ellis talking about this script being a very hard one to write as he tried to compress all of the necessary information into 22 pages, cutting out whatever wasn't essential. After all, unlike the other issues of the series, this one needs to tell the story and introduce the concept. While the self-contained element means the concept needs to be introduced every issue, as you go, you can take for granted that readers will have increasingly familiarity with it. Here, it's entirely blank. That also puts a bigger burden on Leach since he has to set the visual tone a bit.

(Semi-unrelated question, but: who designed the looks of Miranda Zero and Aleph? Was it Leach or another artist?)

Leach's style here is realistic, suiting the real world nature of the book. While dealing with some pretty out there ideas, Ellis usually works off of things he's read in scientific journals and other (semi-) credible sources. While not everything exists exactly as shown, there's something real in it. So, Leach's realistic style kicks things off wisely. The people look real, but not photoreferenced. It's what we'd probably call a retro, classic, basic sort of style.

The panel-to-panel progression of this comic is different from most in that it's unlikely to stay in the same location from one panel to next. That makes the flow of the comic a little different with quick cuts. That requires the art to be more focused on clarity in each panel, of communicating exactly what's going on since there isn't necessarily any other panels to provide a lot of visual context. At the same time, there are also recurring images or progressions that the readers need to pick up on and remember later in the issue. The image of the warhead progressing down its track in the Russian silo before it goes through the teleportation doorway is repated a few times. Each time, it's closer to the reader... the perspective is always the same, but the warhead has moved closer.

Near the end, Leach does some very impressive work with lighting and minimal, strong bold lines to show the strength of the light produced by the teleportation effect. Characters lose their hard outlines, existing in shadow shapes. Very well done.

Leach's layouts are very basic, mostly done in two tiers, diving the page in half. He breaks from that division a few times for specific effects... like the recurring three page-wide panels on the final page of the issue. But, with the frequency of cuts from characters and locations to others, linear, rectangular panels are a smart choice. He doesn't get fancy with the layouts, instead focuses on clarity.

Yeah, if one thing comes through in the art, it's that Leach is trying to make sure that, visually, the comic is as easy to read and understand as possible. Characters all look different, almost unique in their types; the panels are arranged in simple layouts; and the images are very focused. There's detail in his art, but not distracting detail. He uses a lot of close images to make sure the reader's attention is on the focus of the panel. He doesn't leave much to chance in the hope that the reader's eye will be drawn to specific characters or portions of the panel. It's storytelling 101 almost.

Same with David Baron's colours. They're not muddled or trying to be too subtle or nuanced. They're very basic and very clear. He does alter his style throughout the series since he colours every issue except the final one. He definitely takes his cues from the artist and since Leach is focused on clarity, so is Baron.

Tomorrow: Glenn Fabry.

Is It Just Children?

Over at the 4th Letter, David Brothers quotes Tucker Stone on the differing approaches to violence against children in two comics from last week, one from DC (Cry for Justice #7) and one from Marvel (Ultimate Comics Avengers #5). Now, I didn't even pause in UCA #5 when I read it and the Red Skull tossed a baby out of the window. He's a bad guy. That's what bad guys do. But, as I asked in the comments section of David's post: are people just offended by the killing of the baby? After all, prior to that, a man is killed with a pair of old scissors, which, I have to believe, is much worse than being tossed out a window. If the man's death doesn't bother people, why does the baby's? It's far less painful and graphic... if anything, it adds a slightly comic touch to the scene with the baby seemingly safe and then, aw what the fuck, the Red Skull just tosses it out the window. Tim and I touched on this a bit in the podcast this week, but, really, is it just that killing kids is 'wrong' or what?

Art Discussion Month: Simon Spector #1 by Jacen Burrows

[Continuing Art Discussion Month 2010. 31 days, 31 artists, a whole lot of discussion. The explanation behind my choice of comics and the archive can be found here.]

Simon Spector #1. Written by Warren Ellis. Drawn by Jacen Burrows.

Jacen Burrows was the only artist who had worked with Warren Ellis prior to the Apparat books. He hasn't actually worked with him since except doing covers for some of his books. Funny that.

Unlike previous work by Burrows, there are no tones, no shading. It's all strict black and white, which gives his art a different look. It's a lot more empty and spaceous than normal. He purposefully operates in those heavy contrasts here.

Simon Spector is your Doc Savage type. An old nemesis has kidnapped a man to get his attention. He must rescue the man and kill the nemesis. He does this by taking a small pill that makes his brain work faster and better. The transformation he undergoes after taking the pill is some of Burrows's best work. He's not a man with especially kind eyes before, but the crazy look in his eyes after is fantastic.

The visualisation of Spector talking and thinking his way to his nemesis is handled perfectly visually in three pages. The first page has three panels of equal size, all taking up a third of the page, stretched right across. We see Spector from the shoulders up, he tilted, looking off to his left/our right. He never moves, but the backgrounds change as he goes from a wide map to a closer one to a specific view of an area. On the second page, it's again divided into three tiers, the top two with two panels each, the bottom one with a page-wide panel. The first four panels are all profile views of Spector, all the exact same, again with shifting backgrounds to match up with what he saying. The final one shows him standing, cars speeding behind him, him looking badass and cool as he says, "YOU'RE INSANE AND I'M SUPERSANE. / I ALWAYS THINK FASTER THAN YOU." The third page has six panels, two per tier (notice how it went from three to four to six), we see Spector's head from just below the chin to partway up his forehead. His head is on the left-hand side of the panel and we only see half of it. Heavy shadows, eyes mostly white except for a purposeful pupil dot. Again, backgrounds change. The shadows get heavier as we progress, and we get closer to Spector, leading to the fourth page where it switches to a splash, pulled away from Spector, looking down on him, him facing away from us... he's in his library/study/thinking room, books scattered on the floor, computers and all sorts of other tech around, the whole thing arranged in a circle. Very few shadows, very white: the clarity of knowing where his prey is. He's figured it out. He has seen the light.

Burrows's style leans towards realism with a European influence in the faces. He uses clean, thin lines, but with a lot of shadows in this issue. A fight later takes places mostly in a dark room and allows Burrows to play with light and shadows quite a bit. The fight is choreographed wonderfully, using these big meat hooks hanging from the ceiling. Very interesting visual with Spector in his white suit fighting this roided out moron, using the hooks for leverage and as weapons, unless he uses brass knuckles with these big spiked claws on them to end the fight.

The confrontation with Christos (the bad guy) is brief and done well. Christos is confined to a wheelchair, faced scarred to shit, computer speaking for him, gun trained at the kidnapped man (the hand holding the gun the only part of his body he can control). It's a stand-off that concludes with Spector shooting him in the head. Great comic timing by Ellis and Burrows as Christos even says "I. MEAN. WHAT. ELSE. CAN. YOU. DO. QUESTION MARK. / SHOOT. A. PARALYZED. CRIPPLE. IN. HIS. WHEELCHAIR. QUESTION MARK." and Spector responds (as he look straight him, his gun held out, head lowered slightly so his eyes are focused just below his brow) "WELL, YEAH." We then see this shot of Christos's face that is oddly funny as he looks stunned despite his face not looking any different than before. He can't move his face or change his expression, but it still looks like he's thinking "oh shit" before the next panel where his head explodes.

There are two main thrusts to this comic: Spector finding Christos by thinking and the fight with the meathooks. One goes from light to dark to light, a pattern the other one follows somewhat. However, Burrows really uses these big, broad backgrounds, endless whites and blacks it seems. His art has a real sense of space and scope here. It's an approach I haven't seen him use elsewhere.

And so concludes the Apparat Singles Club. Tomorrow, we kick off twelve days of Global Frequency with Garry Leach.

CBR Review: Prelude to Deadpool Corps #2

I recently reviewed Prelude to Deadpool Corps #2 for CBR and, in the process, wrote the following sentences: "While most of the plot deals with Kidpool and Scott Summers as they overcome their antagonistic relationship to work together after being stuck in detention and forced to miss the big dance with the girls from Emma Frost’s, the best material in this issue is in Xavier’s efforts to impress and win over Frost. Beginning with his series of toupees and some funny one-liners at the dance, he’s the best part of this issue. Depicting him is also the only place where Whilce Portacio’s art actually works."

You can read the rest HERE!