22Pages.com (Comic Books & Action Figures)

I haven't seen the Ultimate Avengers movie yet, but I'm hoping it will prove something I've believed for a while now, that Comic book movies should be animated most of the time, with some rare forays into live action.

Take the Fantastic Four for example. There are few comics as packed with great stories as the Fantastic Four. If you just limited yourself to the first 100 issues, you have the inhumans, the Galactus saga, and a ton of other material to work with. The old Fantastic Four cartoon show took advantage of this material to great effect, producing entertaining, albeit not cutting edge, TV. The Roger Corman movie as well as the most recent disasterous attempt to bring the FF to the big screen were both 100 times more boring (and laughable) than the animated series. Or look at the Daredevil or Elektra movies. Actually, don't look. Cover your eyes and run screaming. Daredevil worked ok though in his appearances in the spiderman cartoon series.

There is the potential to blend things in a successful way. I actually liked the Hulk movie formally in the way that it brought together computer animation and live action. But even there, did we need the people? Why not have it all be computer generated?

The Spiderman, Superman, and X-Men movie franchises all seem like great examples of how live action comic books could work. However, just think for a moment what could have been produced if you took the same budget those movies had and did them as animated projects instead?

For my recent birthday I was given a few action figures from the Insurgents Wilderness Gruppo distributed by Strangeco and based on the designs of Rocket World. If you haven't seen these things, they're great. The idea of the series is that they are rebel endangered species that are armed and fighting back against their human predators. Each figure has its own backstory, and comes with some kind of weapon and some human bones. They're very Tokyo/Hong Kong influenced in design and well made from high quality materials.

I think someone should take the idea and run with it though as a comic series. The idea of a Sgt. Rock of the forest kind of thing with threatened commando creatures fighting back would be hilarious. It would be kind of like Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew with an anarchist bent. Animal power now!

There are so many great independent publishers these days putting out quality titles. IDW is no exception, with a clear winner in the new series Supermarket, written by Brian Wood with art by Kristian.

Issue #1 introduces us to Pella, the rebelious young woman the series is centered on. Pella lives in the suburbs of a near future megalopolis called the Supermarket, which seems somewhat of a cross between LA and Tokyo. Pella begins the story being critical of the money wasted by the wealthy, the child of wealthy parents herself. By the end of the book, Pealla finds herself orphaned and nearly broke, stranded in the city without a home or money to fall back on.

The writing is crisp and well paced, and while the young rowdy female teen angst thing doesn't normally do anything for me, I found Pella's character appealing. The murder of Pella's family comes as an unexpected twist and what at first seems like an Indie, social critique comic quickly turns into an action story with tons of threat that'll make you eager for the release of issue 2.

The true power of the book though lies in Kristian's Manga-influenced artistic style, and tremendous use of color. Kristian uses an unusual pallette of pinks, oranges, and lime greens to generate a futuristic feel in what is otherwise a very familiar setting. His style is quite loose and uses an expressionist line to create a world that is somewhere between the physical reality Pella inhabits and her mental world of critical, curious irony.

My girlfriend wants to steal the issue off me and frame it on the wall because she likes the cover so much. I know of no better endorsement than that really.

Pick up a copy. You won't regret it.

As someone who is interested in the history of comics, I love the huge variety of black and white reprint compilations that have become available in the last few years. The Marvel Essentials series are a must have, and thankfully DC has followed suit in reprinting their library in black and white at an affordable price. Some of the books in this series so far were disappointing (Green Lantern and Justice League America were both dull, of interest only due to completing one's exposure to the full continuity of some of the DC universe.)

There are two showcase collections that everyone should pick up though, as examples of innovative work in the comic form that are still relevant to the contemporary reader. The first book I liked, Jonah Hex, I'll be writing about in a later post. The second book I've liked is The House of Mystery Volume 1.

House of Mystery reminds me of tales from the crypt or the twilight zone, with each issue being a series of horror / sci-fi tales with dark twists and turns. Due to the large number of stories, in each issue there's usually something really good.

The collection reprints issues 174 to 194, and is jam packed with famous artists and writers such as Jack Kirby, Marv Wolfman, Wally Wood, and Neal Adams. The quality of the stories is high, and since there are so many stories in each issue, you are exposed to a great variety of styles in a short period of time.

The dark tone is punctuated by a great amount of humor. One of my favorite features of the series is that each issue has a foreboding Page 13 done by Sergio Aragones. Page 13 sometimes warns you that you are cursed, or offers you some creepy game to play. It's nice to see Aragones working with some radically different subject matters than I would normally associate him work.

All in all, I've thoroughly enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone that likes compact, dark stories with a touch of humor. I think people working in the form today should take a good look at this compilation about the merits of a series that is more episodic in nature. I would love to see something like this done as a contemporary project.

Combine godlike superpowers and a primary colored spandex outfit and what do you get? One fairly conflicted individual.

If you haven't already seen it, you must look at this collection of covers that explore Superman's dark side. You'll never be able to take him seriously again.

If you haven't laughed out loud by cover 10 or so, you probably aren't very friendly either.

As much as I hate to admit it, I started reading comics when they cost 25 cents each. That means with a dollar, I could get 4 different comics, which at the age of 8 would occupy me for an hour or two at least. For the same four comics today it costs me on average from 10 to 15 dollars (not including the cost of the protective plastics sleeves and acid-free board backings).

What has happened to cause the cost of comics to rise ten times over in just a few decades? Inflation, sure, is a factor, but there is more to it than that. Printing techniques have changed. Economic relationships betwen publishers and artists and writes have changed. Lots of things have changed. To be honest, I don't really understand it yet, but I will be doing research over the next few months to understand why the costs have changed so dramatically, and where the money goes. How much do comic stores make? How about the average comic book author?

I've always had a hunch that the comic book industry wasn't a great career path, but what do the dollars really look like? As I find out, I'll keep you all informed.

If anyone has recommended resources for me to review, please let me know.

Before I get to the new Sgt. Rock 6 issue mini series I should confess that I am a fan, though by no means an expert on war comics. The moral ambiguity of the battlefield has always seemed a rich context from which to explore many of the comic heroic themes of loyalty, bravery, and compassion. Sgt. Rock and Nick Fury were always appealing characters to me due to their no-nonsense direct approach to language coupled with their quick problem solving abilities and cool heads in dangerous times. Sadly, many war comics fall short of their potential, and the art of many of the ones I'm familiar with was not as interesting as the writing.

Sgt. Rock, the Prophecy does not fall into this trap, and Joe Kubert gives us a rare treat of a comic where the graphic elements lend as much to the experience as the fine writing.

The story begins with Rock and the rest of Easy company parachuting into Vilnus, a town in the middle of Lithuania. Lithuania at the time is the meeting ground of German and Russian forces, both of which seem seem to have little regard for the Lithuanian civilians trapped in the fray. The team has been sent to retrieve a "valuable object" that must be taken out of the country. The team meets up with Roskoff, a Lithuanian guerilla whose band of partisans possesses the object Rock and the boys are supposed to take to safety. Issue 1 ends with the revelation that the valuable object is a person covered in purple robes. I assume this character will turn out to be a holy person or prophet, hence the subtitle of the series.

Graphically, I like a lot of the compositional choices Kubert made in this book. His grainy, high contrast style fits the genre well, and he uses it to great effect with lots of partial facial closeups where we see just an eye, or part of a face. The panel layouts are done in an interesting style with some unconventional choices that work exceptionally well (see page 11 for a great course on how to draw out the dramatic effect of a episode using very little text). The use of color is very interesting as well. Kubert of Pete Carlsson use mostly soft muted tones of green, grey, and brown for most the story. Like the moral landscape, the graphic landscape is quite grey, and is punctuated by brighter colors only when we see the orange from an explosion or the red from a soldier's wound. The sparse use of color does a great job of pacing of the story, making the fight scenes seem more active and dramatic than they would had all panels used similar tonal values.

The writing is quite good as well. Rock's crew of soldiers Easy Company is made up of a variety of personalities types that josh and critique each other. It is not clear whether Roskoff and the partisans can be trusted, creating some nice tension in the narrative. Contrasts and complexities abound as for example when Dozer finds and shelters a puppy in his coat as they fight their way through a dangerous and otherwise merciless land.

If you are a fan of war comics to any degree, or the kind of gritty moral complexity of Jonah Hex or Loveless, you are sure to enjoy this series. Aspiring comic artists should also give this one a look as there is much to learn from Kubert's skillful yet subtle choices of color and composition.

22Pages.com is a forum for sharing information about the wide and wonderful world of modern comics. The number of titles on the market continues to climb and with the high cost of books these days, it is too costly to buy them all. At the same time, you should be looking around at new titles because there is so much great talent working on new characters outside the mainstream. So this site was started to share news and reviews of comics to try to keep you in touch with the good, the bad and the ugly of what is going on in the industry. There will be reviews of comics, interviews with people working in the field, as well as a number of collaborative projects where you can get involved in working on comics yourself. Enjoy, and remember that the more you contribute, the more the forum has to offer, so don't be bashful about leaving comments and putting your thoughts out there.