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JSA: Ghost Stories

JSA: Ghost Stories

By Paul Levitz & various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-441-2

With the cancellation of the monthly comic book an open secret, sentiment seemed to prevail in the DC offices and veteran Justice Society scribe Paul Levitz returned to write the “final” story-arc of the original super-team, before the company wide reboot of the DC universe took permanent hold (Permanent being defined as “until we decide to change our minds again”).

Ghost Stories is a simpler tale from a more traditional perspective, and I suspect, produced for a die-hard audience like myself. It begins with Power Girl learning of and experiencing a 1950’s exploit of Superman and Batman involving the mysterious ‘Gentleman Ghost’. Drawn by George Perez and inked by Bob Smith, ‘Ghosts in the House’ is as much pastiche as prologue, and leads into the next chapter which fell under the umbrella of DC’s One Year Later relaunch.

When the spirits of the dead start appearing to modern day JSA-ers and their families, the heroes mobilise and soon confront the Gentleman Ghost who wants not only revenge but also to live again, which he can only achieve by killing the team. ‘Who’s Afraid of Ghosts?’, ‘When the Dead Call…’ and ‘…The Living Must Answer!’ are illustrated by Rags Morales and Dave Meikis, with flashback sequences by Luke Ross.

Long-time fan and fan-favourite Jerry Ordway returns to draw the series to a close in ‘Where the Highwaymen Rode…’ and ‘Ghost in the Castle’, with the plain, honest indomitable good-defeating-overwhelming-evil plot coming triumphantly together to close the current series in a deeply satisfying manner. This tense, action-packed old-fashioned romp is a fitting close to a possibly over-extended chapter in the long history of this greatest of super-teams. Although possibly not to everyone’s taste, this is a series with more highs than lows for the fan of costumed do-gooding.

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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How to Draw Manga 1: Getting Started

Wondering, “WHAT SHALL I GET HIM FOR CHRISTMAS?”

How to Draw Manga 1: Getting Started

By K’s Art (Graphic-Sha)
ISBN 10: 1-59396-066-2 ISBN 13: 978-1-59396-066-7

With the popularity of Manga and Anime seemingly unquenchable it might be worthwhile to take a look at the one of the many reference volumes available to the would-be exponent of the Japanese method of comic making.

Getting Started is the first in a long series of books that includes specialised editions covering Maids, Giant Robots, Tone Techniques, Colourful Costumes, Girl’s Life, Guns & Military and Super-Deformed Characters amongst others. It is pretty much the equivalent of a comic strip foundation course, and in many ways it follows the tried and true western publishing format and ideology, although there are a few noticeable – one might say philosophical – differences.

Sub-titled ‘Basic Tools, Tips and Techniques for Aspiring Artists’ there is a heavy emphasis on using the right technology for creating pictures on paper, with great attention paid to which paper, pencils, erasers, pens, markers, rulers, and such paraphernalia. This stressing of the right tool is sensible and correct but I am unsure if this is purely the cultural ethic of a meticulous craft industry, or if it has something to do with the fact that the publishers run an internet Manga art-supplies company. As any artist will attest, we’re all suckers with hungry eyes when it comes to a new, sleek and shiny piece of kit.

Chapter 1 tells in great (some might say excruciating) detail everything anyone could possibly ask regarding not just pens and papers, but even how to recondition nibs and how to blot ink and apply corrective fluid. Chapter 2 deals in the same manner with the creation of characters. This includes Desirable Manga Proportions, Balancing a Frame or a Page, Drawing Heads, and How to use a Mirror.

Everything you need to know about applying those signature Tones and patterns is the topic of chapter 3 followed by a meticulous description of the Japanese way to tell a comic story – featuring Proposal Drafts, Frame Allotment Theory, Transferring Proposal Drafts to the Manga Page, How to Prepare Large Frames and How to Draw Frame Borders, Dialogue Balloons and even Flashes – those spiky circles of lines used to denote strong emotion. Chapter 5 reveals all the secrets behind the creation of backgrounds including a thorough examination of various point perspectives. Each chapter is concluded with a Question and Answer section.

In most ways this is a thorough and informative package, although it should be remembered that some of the tools and materials may not be available in your local art-shop, or may be called by another name. Also worth stressing is that even in Japan the concept of a “right” and “wrong” way to do Manga is just a value judgement, and one that is constantly ignored. All over the planet, the true maxim is, “as long as it can actually be reproduced, whatever works, works”.

Also, the book does seem to be addressing two completely disparate levels of accomplishment, with mind-numbing, patronising simplicity of tone and address side-by-side with passages of extreme complexity. Perhaps there is a more formalised approach to art education at work than we’re used to in the free-wheeling West. On a more personal note, I found the chatty folksiness a little off-putting, and got very tired, very quickly, of the cute talking animals ad-libbing on most pages. Still I’m not the one the book is aimed at, am I?

© 1997 K’s Art. ©1997 Graphic-Sha Publishing Co, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Hellblazer: The Red Right Hand

Hellblazer: The Red Right Hand

By Denise Mina & Leonardo Manco Green (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84576-568-0

Continuing the epic saga begun in Empathy is The Enemy (ISBN 1-84576-382-3) (see previous review) Denise Mina and Leonardo Manco complete the horrendous storm of events created when a Christian sect accidentally contact an entity that abides in a third spiritual space neither Heaven nor Hell.

A plague of Empathy has infected Glasgow, and ordinary mortals cannot survive other people’s pain. An epidemic of suicides results in the quarantining of the city, but the soldiers policing the cordon will soon be the first new victims as the effect of the mystical Empathy Engine begin to spread.

Degenerate and dissolute trickster magician John Constantine and his dwindling band of resistors are trapped in the city, desperately striving to fix the problem before it goes global, but their resources, and time itself is running out…

Mina and Manco crafted a moody and awesomely daunting premise and carried it to a brilliant conclusion. That they fittingly end it all with an ideal solution that manages to be the wickedly last word in the centuries old rivalry between the Scots and the English is an absolute comedy masterstroke. In a long and varied career, John Constantine has seldom been better.

© 2006, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Hellblazer: Empathy is the Enemy

Hellblazer: Empathy is the Enemy

By Denise Mina & Leonardo Manco Green (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84576-382-3

If a bloke came up to you in a pub and started telling you he felt things too intensely, you’d be pretty suspicious – nervous too, I’ll bet – and for all the right reasons. If you’re John Constantine those reasons include nasty black magic and the imminent destruction of humanity – as usual.

This empathy is crushing, overpowering and contagious. When the spiritually calloused magician gets a sobering dose of debilitating fellow-feeling, he returns to Glasgow with the overly emotional victim on the trail of a decidedly new kind of menace, but one that could spell the end of humanity, unless Constantine is prepared to make a supreme and wholly uncharacteristic sacrifice.

Novelist Denise Mina’s take on Hellblazer is both captivating and surprisingly fresh, and all without iconoclastically breaking the toy she’s been lent. Juggling human horrors such as abuse and isolation with ancient Christian cults, cosmic horrors from the outer dark, angry ghosts, hungry goblins and evangelical do-gooders she has crafted a subversively gripping thriller with a memorable punch and delightful charm. As ever Leonardo Manco’s moody illustration impresses by its subtle understatement.

A wonderful debut (originally published in issues #216-222 of the monthly comic-book), but the impatient might want to ensure that they have the sequel readily to hand before they start this compelling thriller…

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Harlequin Valentine

Harlequin Valentine

By Neil Gaiman & John Bolton (D H Comics)
ISBN: 1-84023-411-3

This pretty but slight romantic horror story features a modern spin on the Commedia dell’arte scenarios performed by the travelling players of Italy’s 15th century. If you’re interested in the details, the history of the art form – which can be traced back to ancient Greece, if not further – are readily researchable on the internet and in many, many books, but for our purposes the cast (archetypes for different characters, drives and philosophies) perform dramas of the most primal and human sort and resonance for the delectation of paying crowds, each in a highly proscribed and defined form. If you get this book there is a very useful Dummies guide by Gaiman at the back.

Possibly the most well known character today is Harlequin the clown (although Punch would come a close second if we still had Punch and Judy men) and this character opens our proceedings by telling we readers directly (in the accepted manner) that he is in love…

Missy is thoroughly modern lass, and her pursuit by the tricky, ruthless supernatural Harlequin makes for a clever exercise but is oddly lacking in passion for such a torrid subject. As ever John Bolton’s photo-realistic art is beautiful and technically brilliant, but it too seems devoid of any emotionalism. Is that perhaps the point? Am I missing something really obvious here?

I’m always happy to see any comic material that breaks out of the mould and these are two of the industry’s most high-profile creators. I’m just a little worried that this one isn’t as clever as it thinks, and after all, nobody likes a smart-ass or a show-off…

Harlequin Valentine™ © 2001 Neil Gaiman. Illustrations © 2001 John Bolton. All Rights Reserved.

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Can’t Get No

Can't Get No

By Rick Veitch (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-4012-1059-7

The terrorist atrocity of September 11th, 2001 changed the world and in our own small corner, generated a number of graphic narrative responses of varying quality not to mention deep emotional honesty. Rick Veitch’s Can’t Get No is as powerful and heartfelt as any, but benefits also from a little time and distance.

Chad Roe’s company sold the world’s most permanent and indelible marker pen, the “Eter-No-Mark”. Everyone was flying high but then the lawsuits hit all at once. A cheap, utterly irremovable felt-pen is a godsend to street-artists and the most virulent graffiti weapon to building owners. As his universe collapses on him Chad goes on a bender, picks up two hippie-artist-chicks in a bar and wakes up a human graffiti, covered literally from head to toe in swirling, organic, totally permanent designs.

Even then he tries so very hard to bounce back. A walking abstract artwork, he is ostracized by mockery, unable to conceal his obvious “otherness”, and neither self-help philosophies, drugs, nor alcohol can make him feel normal again. Defeated, reviled and ultimately spiritually crushed, trapped in a downward spiral, he meets the girls again and find solace and uncomplicated joy in the artist’s world of sex, booze and dope. Lost to “normal” society, he goes on a road-trip with the women but they haven’t even left the city before they’re arrested. It is morning on September 11th. As the girls violently resist the policemen an airplane flies overhead, straight towards the centre of Manhattan…

With no-one looking at him, just another part of the shocked crowd, he watches for an eternity, and then no longer anything but another stunned mortal, he drives away with an Arab family in their mobile home.

And thus begins a psychedelic, introspective argosy through America’s philosophy, symbolism and meta-physicality. With this one act of terrorism changing the nation, Chad is forced on a journey of discovery to find an America that is newborn both inside and out. His travels take him through vistas of predictable cruelty and unexpected tolerance, through places both eerily symbolic and terrifyingly plebeian, but by the end of this modern Pilgrim’s Progress, both he and the world have adapted, accommodated and accepted.

Rick Veitch is a criminally undervalued creator, with a poet’s sensibilities and a disaffected Flower-Child’s perspectives informing a powerful social and creative consciousness – and conscience. Can’t Get No is landmark experiment in both form and content which deserves careful and repeated examination.

Black and white in a landscape format, and eschewing dialogue and personal monologues for ambient text (no word balloons or descriptive captions, just the words that the characters encounter such as signs, newspapers, faxes etc.) this graphic narrative screams out its differences to usual comic strip fare. But the truly magical innovation is the “text-track”, a continual fluid, peroration of poetic statements that supply an evocative counterpoint to the visual component.

Satirical, cynical, strident: Lyricism employed for examination and introspection, in perhaps occasionally over-florid, but nonetheless moving and heartfelt free verse and epigrams don’t make this an easy read or a simple entertainment. They do make it a piece of work every serious consumer of graphic narrative should attempt.

© 2006 Rick Veitch. All Rights Reserved.

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Barbe

Barbe

By André Barbe (Volksverlag)
ISBN: 3-88631-075-2

I’m not saying this is setting any precedent, but to be honest there’s so much great comic material I’d like to share, and it’s not just separated from us by a gulf of years and publisher’s timidity: Lots of it has simply never been collected in English language editions. So when I came across this mostly wordless little gem I thought, “I’m Free, (as good as) Single and so very Over 21”… and this review is the result.

If you Google the name André Barbe you’ll find lots of stuff about “Shift-add correlation patterns of linear cellular automata” and the like. Well, I’m talking about the other one, the artist and cartoonist fascinated both by sex and by the progression and sequencing of pictures which slowly transform from one state of meaning to another.

Most of Barbe’s output is lasciviously erotic, with many overtones and similarities to the designs and vision of Vaughn Bodé, but the silent panoramas indicate very personal obsessions. The fascination with minute pictorial changes which lead to a total transformation, not just of the physical representations but usually also the mental or spiritual state of the subject, as well as the content make his drawings and strips a mesmerising, languid journey of discovery. He also has a wicked, sly, sardonic sense of humour.

I honestly don’t know where or even if you can find examples of his work. Perhaps some of our European readers might be able to offer some suggestions? All I know is that this is brilliant and innovative use of the techniques that are uniquely the province of graphic narrative and sequential art, and that I for one and probably many of you, would love to see more.

Artwork © 1981 André Barbe and Volksverlag. All Rights Reserved or Alles Rechte vorbehalten if you prefer.

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Male Call 1942-1946

Male Call 1942-1946

By Milton Caniff (Kitchen Sink Press)
ISBN: 0-87816-026-4 (hc) ISBN: 0-87816-027-2 (sc)

As well as being one of the greatest comic strip artists of all time, Milton Caniff was an old-fashioned honest American Patriot, from the time when it wasn’t a dirty word or synonym for fanatic. The greatest disappointment of his life was that he was never physically fit enough to fight. But during World War II he not only continued the morale boosting Terry and the Pirates newspaper strip seven days a week, he also designed art, brochures and posters (unpaid) for the War Department and made live appearances for soldiers and hospital residents. But even that wasn’t enough.

Again unpaid, he devised a comic strip that could be printed in the thousands of local military magazines and papers around the world. Originally using characters from Terry he swiftly switched (for reasons best explained in Robert C Harvey’s wonderful Meanwhile… a biography of Milton Caniff (ISBN: 978-1-56097-782-7) to a purpose built (and was she built!) svelte and sexy ingénue that would titillate, amuse but mostly belong to the lonely and homesick American fighting men away from home and under arms.

Funny, saucy, racy but never lewd or salacious, Miss Lace spoke directly to the enlisted man – the “ordinary Joe” – as entertainer, confidant and trophy date, building morale and giving brief surcease from terror, loneliness or boredom. Although comparisons abound with our own Jane (created by Norman Pett in 1932, she ran in the Daily Mirror until 1959 and was famously reputed to lose her clothes whenever the war effort needed a boost – always resulting in huge Allied successes), Miss Lace was different. She spoke to and with the soldiers, and she wasn’t in normal papers. She was simply and totally theirs and theirs alone.

Long out of print, this complete collection of strips and articles is a fascinating insight into a forgotten world and a parlous time, and a beautiful example of the humorous talents of a truly great American.

Male Call © 1987 Milton Caniff. Collection © 1987 Kitchen Sink Press, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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JSA: Mixed Signals

JSA: Mixed Signals

By Geoff Johns, Keith Champagne & Don Kramer (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-347-5

As the company readied itself for the massive shake-up generated by the Infinite Crisis crossover, some DC titles experienced an unfortunate decline in quality, and none more so than the once excellent JSA. Although initially a worthy continuation of that landmark concept which was the foundation of all superhero teams, by the time of this collection (reprinting issues #76-81 of the monthly comic) the glorious history and triumphs had been diluted by a kind of thematic “burn-out” as the original world-savers became over-mired in interpersonal dramas. But the real killer wasn’t a lack of story balance: It was that the threatened changes elsewhere seemed to leech the life out of this venerable superhero team by pulling the team in too many directions.

The legal fate of wayward member and accused international criminal Atom Smasher is finally resolved in the first tale, but that’s merely an excuse to introduce the cyborg Omacs (see also The Omac Project ISBN 1-84576-229-0) and the new Suicide Squad into this series, and when the energy based hero Airwave crashes into their HQ seeking reinforcements for a universe shaking catastrophe, the team are alerted to the cosmic component of the Infinite Crisis.

Meanwhile Earth’s magic users are under assault and a small team are dispatched to the Fifth Dimension to rescue Jakeem Thunder and his mystical Thunderbolt, only to become embroiled in a titanic civil war, whilst their own magic members face destruction from super-wizard Mordru in a prelude to Day of Vengeance (ISBN 1-84576-230-4).

This volume concludes with a small personal story of the type that so well counterpoints cosmic epics, as the teenaged Stargirl reconsiders her life with her semi-retired superhero stepfather Pat (Stripesy) Duggan as the Crisis builds around them all.

Despite feeling a bit rushed and convoluted, this is still credible and competent work from writers Geoff Johns and Keith Champagne, and artists Don Kramer, Dale Eaglesham, Jim Fern, David Lopez, Art Thibert, Mick Gray, and Fernando Blanco, although perhaps the piecemeal nature of this beast might deter all but the dedicated fan.

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Daredevil: Fall From Grace

Daredevil: Fall From Grace

By D.G. Chichester, Scott McDaniel & Hector Collazo (Marvel)
ISBN 0-7851-0024-5

Daredevil is a lawyer in his civilian identity, and as a crime fighter his blindness is compensated for by his hyped-up remaining senses and a sixth “radar” sense that gives him a supernatural awareness of events and objects around him. It’s safe to say that none of these talents are available to we mere mortals, and they’d probably be of little use to the Man Without Fear in unravelling the unnecessary convolutions of this overly complex thriller.

Collecting issues #319-325 of the monthly comicbook, this tale is a good example of everything good and bad about 1990’s Marvel comics. In 1963 (this storyline was designed to celebrate Daredevil’s 30th anniversary so there’s lots of in-jokes and pictorial markers for veteran fans) telepathic secret agent Eddie Passim was distributing vials of a super viral weapon throughout the New York Subway system when an accident occurs and he loses one. Thirty years later Daredevil subdues a deranged bum who screams that someone named Eddie has put pictures into his head. He’s the twelfth person to claim so…

Meanwhile, in the Louisiana Bayou a voodoo ceremony is enthralling Hellspawn; a magical evil doppelganger of Daredevil…

Meanwhile the insane Cyborg SHIELD agent John Garrett recalls the surreal adventure he had with the ninja assassin Elektra…

Meanwhile Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich is reviewing the case of US General Kenkoy who admitted in 1975 that the military were testing nerve gas on unwitting metropolitan commuters in the ’60s…

Meanwhile a Snakeroot ninja is breaking into the Pentagon and stealing the file on an old project, a viral agent called “About Face”…

Meanwhile millionaire Harry Kenkoy has hired Super-mercenary Silver Sable to find a man missing for thirty years. His name is Eddie…

All these threads are ambitiously but bewilderingly drawn together in an action-packed hunt for the lost agent and last vial, involving not only DD and Elektra, but loads of then-hot guest-stars (such as Venom and Morbius), and every modern bogeyman from Ninjas to gangsters to the Government.

Scott McDaniel’s art is phenomenally good but looks oddly crushed; crowded, small even, but the real problem here is narrative clarity. There’s simply too much going on in the mix, and the tale is desperately in need of a savage editing.

Despite – or perhaps because of – a number of attention-grabbing stunts such as revealing DD’s secret identity to the world, a new costume, and the apparent death of Matt Murdock, this is a floundering beast of a tale which was so nearly another masterpiece. Pictorially powerful, this is a little too much everything for all but the most dedicated Fan Without Fear.

© 1993, 1994, 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.