One Coin Reads 20: Curtain Call, by Lugano and Rodguen

 Curtain Call, by Wilfred Lugano and Rodguen

2013, English edition 2018

I went in to this book with no expectations, and finished it with a tear leaving my eye.

The cover fits the content of the book, but maybe the first impression was misleading 

One of the great discoveries of my bargain book purchases has been Lion Forge's Magnetic Collection of books. Before buying these books, I had never heard the name Magnetic Collection that I could remember, despite having a volume of their excellent Toppi collections. I just glossed over the publisher label on that one, I have too much information hitting me every day to have it all sink in. 

Once I got a few books though, their name stuck and I realized a few things about them:

-They are putting out some great translated works.

-They must be having difficulty getting their name out their consistently.

I'm not in the shops or at the shows, so maybe they are having better luck in the real world. So much of my experience of what's happening in comics is through the Internet, so I'm not an accurate barometer.

Vincent is the smarter one, Gaby the dumber one

Anyway, Curtain Call was a mere ¥491, not a difficult chance to take. At a quick preview, it looked to have animation style art and coloring, and I wondered if it would be a turn off when reading, but my eyes adjusted to it almost immediately. Rodguen was a Dreamworks animator for 15 years according to his bio, and his illustrations and character designs are full of life. I don't think there was a confusing or awkward drawing in the whole book.

The story is about a screw-up named Vincent who has a plan to rob an armored truck and get out of France, and start over. While the main story is fairly linear, there are a lot of flashbacks for Vincent and other characters to show their background and give an understanding of where they're coming from. It's all narrated from Vincent's point of view, giving the story a conversational feel and a natural flow.

Vincent's home life is fine. It's not great, not terrible. Maybe people can relate to this?

Early on, we see a twist in the heist of the story: Vincent wants to do an ethical heist. He's convinced that he has a way to pull it off where nobody will be hurt and all the people directly involved will be better off. Then the story leads to a climax with the heist, taking lots of turns that all manage to feel organic.

The plan

What's so good about this book is that Vincent is very real character. Writer Wilfred Lupano places him in a realistic setting where Vincent realizes he doesn't have a great upbringing or foundation, but he still has a much better one than so many of the people around him. Vincent isn't a good guy, but he wants to be better, he really wants to change who he is.

The story isn't overly political or about racial politics, but a lot of Vincent's spiritual awakening happens during a trip to Senegal, and the politics of race in France are an undercurrent. Vincent's partner Gaby is a homophobic racist and displays other negative qualities, but he manages to be portrayed in a sympathetic light while showing that he doesn't even understand what he's saying or why he thinks what he does (for example, he calls anyone brown a raghead, not understanding that the slur is aimed at a specific group). It's a clear contrast to the Manquette/Tardi book I read last week where I had difficultly separating the character's racism from the writer's racism. Here, I clearly can tell the writer is using to illustrate the character. 

Gaby is terrible at telling people off because he's just not that smart

Overall, I was just impressed with this book and closed it with a smile on my face. It wasn't predictable, but when it was over the arc of story made sense. By the end, I could see that the story was revealed with precision to get the maximum effect, but nothing felt like a writer's cheat, like information was withheld to create tension. The story unfolded in a naturally as Vincent, the character, would tell it.

The coloring by Ohazar is great. Lively and clear

And yeah, I had a tear in my eye at the end. The book has people who do bad things or stupid things, but it doesn't really have bad guys you're rooting against (at least not for more than a page or two). By the end, you just want everyone to be okay. 

I want to read more books where you like everyone.

One Coin Reads 19: Groo: Friends and Foes Vol. 3 by Sergio Aragones

Groo: Friends and Foes Vol. 3 by Sergio Aragones

2015

Sometimes you want comfort, and in those times, Groo is there for you.

I don't know if there are hardcore Groo fans, in that in his near 40 years of existence, he didn't spawn toy lines, video games, or collectibles like many characters. But it must have sold enough to keep it in print. I was a Groo collector for about five years in the late 80s to early 90s, and bought lots of older issues in the discount bins. If I had to find a popular point of comparison for it, it would be like the Simpsons if the show had maintained all its best creators for the entirety of its run.

Groo has had one creative team for almost all its run: writer/artist Sergio Aragones, scripter Mark Evanier, letterer (and Usagi Yojimbo artist) Stan Sakai, and colorist Tom Luth. The first issue in this collection doesn't have Tom Luth, and that's the only time I ever saw the team broken up, but I haven't read a new Groo book in over twenty years. It's not a book that is based on story. It's a book that recycles the same jokes in an infinite variety. That's not a criticism at all. That's why it's great, you always get what you want when you read a Groo book.

Here is Groo:

-he is unfathomably stupid

-he will kill you if you call him a mendicant

-he likes cheese dip

-if you go against him, he will destroy your life

-if you work with him, he will destroy your life

-if you meet him, he will destroy your life

Groo travels with a dog, Rufferto, who is substantially smarter than Groo yet thinks Groo is a great man.

Somehow, Aragonés has managed to tell jokes based on this for decades and still make them funny. Evanier, who does the dialogue, deserves lots of credit for his work, which is often remarkable. He lets Groo say things in the least sensible way, and gives others dialogue to flesh them out perfectly. He also writes dozens of lines per issue in rhyming verse. I can't imagine how many rhymes he's done in his decades with the book. 

And so with this book, was it as good as the Groo I was reading twenty years before? Not quite, but surprisingly close.

Groo tries to find the father of a girl by asking everyone about a son's mother.  The non-Tom Luth coloring was too dark and over-shaded, and I was happy to see him return

The Groo from Epic Comics (and Pacific Comics and Image Comics) had a formula to their story. It was almost always one issue tales, sometimes two issues, but each issue would have a resolved ending even if a story thread continued. The first page was a set up, the second and third a ridiculously detailed two-page spread with lush lettering and poetry. Then the story would get increasingly convoluted before everything of value was destroyed because of Groo. It wasn't a moral book, but it often had classical irony where someone who tries to plot too much ends up having double the misfortune for their effort.

This series has most of that, but has relaxed the formula. The opening page of each issue is a poem by the Minstrel catching readers up. The two page spread is there, but where the story calls for it.

The ridiculous two page spreads are still in each issue, but not on pages two and three, and without the gorgeous titles

This story is a little different, it's issues 9-12 of a short series titled Friends and Foes, which was a sort of greatest hits for supporting characters, with an overarching plot about a young girl with an inheritance name Kayli who wants to find her father. Naturally, lots of characters want to capitalize on her wealth, except Groo. The story hurt the issues because time was devoted to featuring a character that wasn't really funny. The reader was meant to sympathize with Kayli, which is fine, but it wasn't what I liked from a Groo book.

Kayli is a decent, clever person

The chaos that ended each issue of the old series is here, but more so at the end of four issues than in each issue. Other than that, it's really close to what classic Groo was. Throughout the book, I laughed a lot. And it's really funny, not smirking funny, but actual laugh out loud funny. 

The essential components of a Groo book are still here. It's masterful how organically Aragones can weave a complicated story. A kingdom where music is outlawed forces musicians to gather outside the border. They get Groo to bang a drum and enter the kingdom so that the king's army will be killed by Groo when attempting to stop him. The king realizes he has to kill Groo or lose face, so he sends his army to a neighboring kingdom as an excuse not to attack him. This lets the musicians return and throw a festival. The king sees people flocking to his kingdom and has to stop the festival. The stories in Groo can be so complicated, but they are told clearly and with real humor.

A crazy festival inspired by Groo's drumming

And Aragonés art is incredible. He's a doodler, he's not doing realistic illustrations. But he has a huge variety in the clothes, the characters, the buildings. There is an unimaginable variety. I don't know where he gets his inspiration from, but everything looks unique. It's as impressive now as it ever was.

I'm not going out to buy more of these books because I have 100 issues of Groo already, and while I can remember some stories, they are so dense that rereading any of them still surprises me. I don't think you need every issue of Groo. This book was marked down and I bought it just to check out what Groo was up to in the 21st century. 

I'm happy to say, the Groo abides.

Reading Through 2021 62: Daredevil Epic Collection 15: Last Rites, by Ann Nocenti, D.G. Chichester, and Lee Weeks

Daredevil Epic Collection 15: Last Rites, by Ann Nocenti, D.G. Chichester, and Lee Weeks

1990-1992, collected in 2020

Holy, this was a lot of book. 

The cover is the original cover of issue 300, not recolored!

I'm a fan of the Marvel Epic Collections, they are dense collections offering a snapshot of their time period. Unlike themed collections which collect a single storyline, this is all the Daredevil that was being published in the featured time period. Probably more than any Epic I've read, this was an unfocused book. It covers the transition between Ann Nocenti and D.G. Chichester as writer of the book, and is divided by an annual with a third writer, Gregory Wright. As a result, even though I'm reviewing one book, it feels like I'm reviewing three.

Before picking this up, I was already a fan of Nocenti's DD run. The incentive to read this was to finish reading her run, as I'd fallen off when it came out in the 90's. I've never read anything by Wright to my memory, though if he was working at Marvel in the late 80's to early 90's, I must have. Chichester I only know from the Midnight Suns comics line of the time, which I never read more than an issue of. And I know he was writer when Daredevil got his "realistic" black armor in the 90's, so I never really gave him a chance at the time, and haven't given him much thought in the decades since. With these Epic Collections coming out, I've heard people say they have affection for his run, so I went into this with an open mind.

This feels subversive today! If Cap complained that America was cutting social programs in an issue today, it would be the next right-wing Twitter cryathon. "Is this what they're indoctrinating kids with now?!"

Ann Nocenti's Daredevil has it's problems, but I love it. She wore her feelings on her sleeve, and the editor, Ralph Macchio, must have just not cared at all or been extremely sympathetic. Since the stories make sense, the spelling is correct, there's a fight or two every issue, let her talk about how white collar crime is way worse than the petty crime that takes up newspaper ink! Every time people online today complain about politics in comics, the appropriate reply (if I had time to talk to a brick wall) is: not being "political" is a form of being political, and comics have always been political. Ann Nocenti made some of the most political mainstream comics of the time.

For a scene written by a white person that was mostly read by white kids, it's good? This sort of thing was not on the Cosby Show

As an adult reader, a lot of it is heavy-handed, but when I was a 15 year old reader, I was dense, and I needed something this clearly stated to get through. Sometimes it is just soapboxing, but in other places she weaves it in to the story naturally. One of her best characters, Bullet, is a bad guy, an enforcer, but he's also a single father unequipped to raise his son. His son rarely leaves their apartment, and constantly worries about the bombs dropping in a new world war. That sunk in to me as a kid at the time, and their portrayal in this collection was similarly sympathetic. I still remember a lot of the comics I read in the 80's, and often it was the hamfisted morality they espoused that set me on the path I went down in life. I was impressionable when it came to comics.

Even the drug lords tire of the war on drugs

Unfortunately, the bulk of Nocenti's stories here aren't great. In her main arc, Daredevil returns to New York and immediately gets amnesia for reasons I couldn't understand. I flipped back and forth to get what I was missing, and couldn't find it. Fine, I'll go along with the story anyway. So Bulleye steals Daredevil's costume and goes out into the city as him to ruin his reputation. Meanwhile Daredevil, now using his father's name Jack Murdock, becomes a blind boxer and boxes at a massively hyped match at Madison Square Gardens. That's character breaking stuff. Whenever he goes back to the status quo, there are still newspaper articles and photos of him using his own last name boxing blind. How could he ever have a secret identity again? It's weird. 

The story ends with DD wearing Bullseye's costume and beating up "Daredevil", while the two of them have trouble remembering which person they really are. The ingredients of a good story are there, but it's underbaked. The penciler who replaced John Romita JR on the series, Lee Weeks, can't carry it with his art either. I'm not a Weeks fanboy as I don't have much of his work, but what I'd seen was fairly good. The stuff here is not very strong. And it was inked by the excellent Al Williamson, who did such an incredible job with JRJR's run. I was not feeling great about the rest of the collection.

From Weeks' first issue on Daredevil. It's very 80's Marvel

Then the book takes a break for the 1991 annual. In the 80's, annuals were delightful issues where the writer got to play and make something special, often with artists who didn't do the monthly series. By the 90's, the Marvel editors had decided they could sell more through crossovers, and they were usually uninspired rush jobs with a bunch of filler backup stories, and that's what this was. It was pretty bad.

What editor thought these three characters could support a four series crossover? "It's like those G.I. Joes the kids like."

I don't know who Gregory Wright was, but I feel like he hated his job, or he thought he was writing for kids so he didn't have to try. It's lazy, and while there was a ton of places I got irritated with it, there was only one part that was written even a little interesting.

Hey, crooked cop! Don't take your bribe on the crowded street five meters away from New York's greatest reporter

One of the bad guys created for this story, the Crippler, is not a good character at all. He's Punisher, but he likes making criminals suffer, not just killing them. But, in his origin, we see that before he was a psycho vigilante, he was a cop and a marine, and then he joined Hydra. 

That is throwing some shade on authority figures, and I doubt that would be allowed in a post-9/11 mainstream comic.

The Crippler was too much of a bad boy for Baron Strucker

Still, that annual has little redeeming value beyond a Mike Mignola cover.

"And then, Baron Strucker stands up and cackles maniacally." Take that, Frank Miller

Thankfully, Marvel decided not to publish the other three connected annuals in this collection as they have in some other Epic Collections. I'm figuring the villains were the connecting tissue and DD doesn't appear in them. Moving on.

We then start D.G. Chichester's run, with Lee Weeks carrying over from Nocenti's. The first few issues have some stunt casting. The first story has Punisher, and the next has Ghost Rider. The Punisher story features Tombstone (mainly a Spectacular Spider-Man villain) and Taskmaster (who I only knew from Gruenwald's Captain America run back then), and it was nice. A new writer injects some fresh blood into the stories, and both villains are appropriately down to earth for DD to fight. The two villains are trying to take down criminal targets meant to get them into a fraternity of criminals. It's alluded to more than explained, and it seems to be the ninja organization the Hand, but it's never really clear, and the whole "street level criminals are killing targets to get into a mysterious organization" just disappears. Maybe it's picked up again in the next book, but it's just as likely he had an idea, then decided it wasn't very interesting. I didn't think it was that interesting anyway.

At the end of Nocenti's run, she starts seeding a subplot where Kingpin wants some legitimate business. Chichester picks it up and makes it the center of the last eight issues of the book, culminating in the four part Last Rites storyline. And the book starts getting good.

Weeks' art a year into his run is much better

Weeks' art gets better from issue to issue, and Al Williamson seems to get more in sync with it. The JRJR work was very much rooted in line, and Weeks' work is rooted in shadow. Williamson starts using a brush more liberally on clothes and backgrounds. There are still the odd janky faces in the book, but on the whole it looks good. Drawing 22 pages a month is a great way for a young artist to get in shape, and you can see it here.

The Kingpin story is good too, with a bit of Marvel goofiness on the side. He decides to buy a TV station to influence the public. Because he is a crime lord, he needs legit investors to avoid the FCC, and is duped into opening his bank accounts by Baron Strucker in a Texan costume (white Colonel Sanders suit and goatee with a white cowboy hat) and a Foghorn Leghorn accent ("I say, I say"). The Nazi super-criminal was able to fool the Kingpin into thinking he was a Texas business man. Don't think about it too much.

Long story short, Hydra and everyone who hates Kingpin go after him at once, and DD piles on to make sure he hits rock bottom. The DD in this is kind of malicious. It's a bit out of character, but at this point in DD's history, DD barely knows who he is.

He said it! He said it!

The best story in this, as in, I had to stop and wonder about what I'd just read, was the taking down of Typhoid Mary. Mary is Kingpin's enforcer, but she's sleeping with him too. Kingpin pines over his wife Vanessa, who wants nothing to do with him. He's receptive to Typhoid Mary on a physical level, but he has no love for her. You can feel some pity for her, despite being a villain.

Daredevil, as Matt Murdock, tries to rekindle his relationship with Karen Page, but she isn't receptive. She likes him, she probably loves him, but knows a relationship with him would destroy her. Cut from that to Typhoid Mary taking out some low level mafiosos. Matt/DD has a history with Mary, so rather than fight her, he decides to do things differently.

Weeks and Williamson earned their pay on this page. Did it need captions?

He takes her to a hotel, sleeps with her ("sleep" is such a weak word, Daredevil bangs), then sneaks out while she's sleeping. He then forges her name on a psychiatric admission form, calls the cops and has her locked up in a psych ward.

The issue ends with Matt crying on the floor of a bathroom next to a dirty toilet.

That's crazy. I don't know if it's a sign that Matt is full of vengeance, foreshadowing the his cruelty to the Kingpin. Maybe? But it's not normal for a super-hero. Just to reiterate: he was turned down by one ex, he then slept with another mentally ill ex-girlfriend, forged her signature, then had her admitted to a psychiatric ward. It's not what the hero would do. 

That's why I like it. It's what a person might do, and Matt Murdock is not a flawless hero. He's got issues.

I think I want to read some more of Chichester's run.

One Coin Reads 18: Paradiso, by Ram V and Devmalya Pramanik

 Paradiso, by Ram V and Devmalya Pramanik

2018

It's been 300 years since the midnight event. Jack the tinkerman has the pneumas, but can the guardians protect him? You're not going to find out in this book, because it's merely the opening chapter in a new epic and nothing is explained whatsoever.

The logo looks pretty good. This photo can't do the texture of the cover justice

These discount books are always hit and miss. I know I'm taking a chance with them. I paid ¥267 for this, so I can't complain too much, but I pity anyone who paid full price for this, or worse, bought it in issues. This is a four issue book where nothing is established except the barest minimum of the world. 

The Redwaters are afraid of Darkspots

Paradiso is set in a post-apocalyptic earth™, 300 years after "midnight". Technology is mostly broken, and spoken of in religious terms. There are floating buildings in a city, and people live on the outskirts protected by Guardians. The rest is people walking or driving, and a fight. The hero, Jack, has a scrambled memory, so he doesn't know what he's doing, As a result, the book gives no idea to the reader what it's doing. It's just cryptic clues, broken flashbacks, and hints of a greater meaning. It's Image Comics bingo. 

Are you a Tinkerman?

I read Ram V's Blue in Green in January, and it was interesting. Since then, I've heard his name as one to watch, so I picked this up. I expected more. 

There's nothing wrong with post-apocalyptic™ stories, there's nothing wrong with slow burn stories with dense mythology. I assume this is the tip of the iceberg and Ram V has a bible detailing this whole world.  

There is a big problem with packaging a four issue collection and not even establishing who the characters of your story are or what their goals are. This is not the appetizer for an upcoming meal, this is merely setting foot in a restaurant and getting a whiff of the kitchen. 

The distortion here looks to be traditionally rendered, it was a nice effect

What could the creative team have done to make this better? If they insist on this pace for their book, the initial collection should have been twelve issues. A book like Monstress is very dense, and they opted for a larger first collection and it paid off. That book was a lot to take in, and at the six-issue point I was not sold on it, though the art got me close. Having a proper arc in the first collection made the series much more appealing.

Ideally though, if you want a story this sprawling (and I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that the goal is to create a massive epic), it should simply be published in a single tome or two. It's difficult these days to produce a book without having income coming in, so I understand the need for smaller volumes. But this was not enough.

The pneumas

The art of the book is decent though. Some places it looks really good, in others it's merely serviceable. But it is vibrant. The colors are pretty good as well. It's a brown-looking book, which suits its settings while still being drab. The characters don't pop off the page, but they don't fade into the background either.

The book is well made. There's no problem with the talent working on this. Whether you want to come back for more would depend on how much of an impact it had on you/how much disposable income you have. For me, there are so many post-apocalyptic™/sci-fi books on the market, I don't know what sets this apart.

The floating stuff looks cool

My immediate thought when I got to the end of this book was frustration at how little I knew any of the characters or what it was about after reading the first collection. It's unacceptable. The only motive for me to read more is that I'm being so bitchy about it in this review that I feel like I owe Paradiso a chance to prove me wrong. But I don't have time for that.

Reading Through 2021 60: Murder Falcon, by Daniel Warren Johnson

Murder Falcon, by Daniel Warren Johnson

2019

Daniel Warren Johnson is the current 'it' boy in comics. If his name comes up in an online community, it's shortly followed by people chiming in that he's the bomb, he rocks, that he can do no wrong. I felt some obligation to at least sample his work.  Whether a mainstream artist clicks with me is always a gamble. Sometimes I'm right there with the adoration (Frank Quitely, Sean Murphy), and sometimes I think a popular artist is overrated (David Finch). So I had some trepidation going in to this, because if I don't love it, people can get mighty offended that I don't share their love. At the same time, when some art is placed on a pedestal, it's hard for me not to be more critical than if I went in blind. The work can't just be a pleasant surprise, it has to live up to the hype.

Anyway, this was good, and I say that with my voice raising an octave on "good." Nothing revelational, but it was definitely better than the uninspired stuff that dominates the stands.

Murder Falcon is a rock and roll action comic. Murder Falcon fights monsters with the power of rock and roll. It comes from a lineage of 80's rock where music is a super power. I mostly know it from comedy, where Bill and Ted unite the world with rock, Bobby defeats Satan with guitar riffs, and Tenacious D's whole thing. I get it, but it's not an instant home run for me on the concept alone. Awesomeness is good for an issue, it's harder to carry a book with it.

The sound effects are integrated into the story incredibly well

What I can say is that he does what he's doing really well. He takes the concept of epic rock music, and marries it to epic action fighting. At a glance, the first person I'd say this is influenced by is Paul Pope. Both have that loose, inky line, and art which is anti-photographic. But after an issue or so, I saw Walt Simonson Thor all over the place; in the impact of the fight scenes, but even more so in the unification of sound effects and action. The lettering isn't John Workman-level flawless, but it's a lot better than most books I see. It has an organic quality. Johnson is credited with some lettering, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it was drawn into the original art, rather than layered in with a computer.

There's a bit of manga in there too

The story has a simple set-up: There are monsters invading the world, and Murder Falcon is here to save the day. He comes from a realm called "the Heavy" gets his power from guitar music. He takes a depressed young man and gets him to pick up the guitar again and round up his old band. His old bandmates each get a creature fighter linked to their instrument: a mammoth for the bass, a sea creature for the drums, and so on. They defeat the monsters, and the young man learns a lesson about never giving up, and as the book says it, "screaming into the void." 

It's not trying to be serious, and if you want a serious story, don't buy a book called Murder Falcon.

There's no rules to the world beyond what Johnson feels like drawing. Mythology expands as the story demands

It's never trying to pretend it's anything other than fantasy, and it leans into the comedy in a lot of places. The humor is hit and miss for me. I hated Rambo as a kid, and Murder Falcon is buff, shirtless, and wears a red bandana. They get enthusiastic over beer, which is rock and roll I suppose, but I've never been into American beer jokes. Murder Falcon is a love letter to a lifestyle I avoided in high school. I understand it, but it just doesn't resonate with me as it does to other readers. 

I had a similar experience with Scott Pilgrim, where the first book was really exciting, then I read the second and the novelty just wore off. I didn't find anything too surprising beyond the initial set up in the first issue of this. Johnson throws in a bunch of stuff he wants to draw with a music connection or gives it a musical twist: kaiju, guitar shredding, samurais, vans. 

Looks great

This is to say, it's a mishmash of cool stuff. It's in a story that manages to be coherent. It moves in a straight line: members are added each issue, they get closer to the big bad, and in the final issue they fight the big bad. That's better than a lot of mainstream genre books these days, which often spend four issues just introducing the concept of the book. The book is refreshingly simple and understandable.

Most of the team

I'm sure some people will be touched by the message of the book, the idea of screaming into the void. It's a positive message. I had trouble being emotionally affected by it because the rest of the book was filled with so much goofiness. The book is turned up full blast for 20 pages at a time, then it has a few 'quiet' pages where it's emotional, then it explodes again. The net vibe was the full blast stuff, not the sentiment.

Like a lot of good artists though, it's not what he does but the way that he does it. Johnson gets a lot of narrative leeway just by giving his all on each page.

That's a good looking wolf

My main takeaway was that he drew the shit out of this book. It didn't have a single page where the art felt rushed. Just for that, it was a book worth reading.

I'd like to see him do a story where it wasn't full blast page after page. It sounds stupid to say to a guy, "Hey, you know that thing you do so well? Don't do it so much."  But when every page is so big, it's not so much epic as it is grinding. He's done a well-received Wonder Woman book since, and has a Beta Ray Bill story coming out soon, and I'm interested to see if he can pull off more nuanced writing. This was good, so I'll keep my eye out for it.

I Really Should Read This 20: The Invisibles Book Four, by Grant Morrison and many, many artists

The Invisibles Book Four, by Grant Morrison and many, many artists 

1999!

What's it all about? I don't know. I understood many of the pieces of this, but I'm not sure it made any sense at all, except in the most vibing of ways. And that's good enough for me.

Rock!

I started reading the Invisibles last summer, starting with book one and finishing book four this week, and that seems to be a fair pace. The series came out in three parts over a number of years, but it's barely coherent as it is, so I can't imagine trying to draw it out for years and stay wrapped up in it. For that matter, I can barely imagine reading any monthly comic anymore, so it's just as well I got this in the collected edition.

Yes, that's right

What's it all about? Something about a demon being crowned king of England, and the secret group called the Invisibles who are out to prevent this reality ending event. That's what it seems to be about, but that's not particularly interesting. So it's about the Invisibles and how they navigate reality. Sometimes the book is about reality warping, and sometimes it's about embracing the subversion of normalcy. Again, I can't say what it is about.

Who are the Invisibles? Anyone. You could be one.

What's this about?

There is a plot, and it's the least satisfying part for me. What I enjoy about the Invisibles is how it embraces the fringe. I really wish I had been reading at the time. I was so into subcultures and anything weird the 90's, and I think the book would have pushed me just that much more into the weird. Morrison took every fringe concept he could get his hands on and inserted them either as a part of the narrative or as set dressing for it. Some of it I knew of at the time, but it would be very minor subculture, not well known at all.  I think those things would have been hooks to get me to use the book as a roadmap to other strange subcultures. For example, in a few places Guy Debord and the Situationists are referenced, something that was very exciting to me as a 20-something, but had pretty much no mainstream representation. In another place, he references Terrance McKenna's self-transforming machine elves of DMT, an exciting concept to psychedelic explorers, but had no place in a mainstream culture that was still just saying no to drugs. And those are but a few references, the book is littered with ideas. Does it pull them all together? Not at all! But this was before Wikipedia and the ability to look up any tossed off reference with the click of a button. Underground culture was something that took a lot of effort to cultivate and learn about. It's just a treat to see them referenced so liberally. Shelly Bond was a generous editor to the series.

Is there a difference?

If the book has a unified idea, it seems to be that much like how the universe is unified, a thousand disparate concepts of the underground share a common thread: they are variations on a theme, there is something else. This thing we see is not what it is. Then the book drops some spy shenanigans on top of that for the sake of making a comic book narrative. It's like a capsule to contain the medicine.

Subtle

I loved Lord Fanny. She is a transgender character, and she is a character. She is equal to any other character and is a lead character. This feels so transgressive now, as media is making an effort to have some trans visibility, often looking clumsy with from the obvious effort involved. 

I loved reading a book that, while having some interest in morality, had no interest in being moral regarding anyone's sexual interests, much less orientation.  Characters have sex and enjoy it as they want to.  And it's very human feeling, not over-romanticized. I love the normalization of the fringe. I don't think they should make a TV show out of this unless it's x-rated. Not XXX, just treating sex as a normal human activity.

Do what you wanna do

I loved Edith, the 99 year old Invisible on the cusp of death. She is an old woman and we see her as a sharp, forward thinking woman. I personally make an assumption with seniors that they just don't have a compelling inner life, and sometimes talk to them as if children: don't swear, mention sex, mention anything other than the weather. It's a stupid thing to do, especially as I'm on my way to becoming one myself. It's a product of being young and thinking adults just don't get anything you do, and grandparents really don't seem to. Seeing a character like Edith, and getting to know her, it's not your typical rock and roll comic fare. 

Edith is endlessly interesting because she is interested in the world

The Invisibles is not a clear comic. It's a collection of concepts mashed together. It's a hodge podge. The first run of the series had multiple artists, and that was blamed for weak sales, so the second series only had two artists in its run. Series three has three arcs, with different artists in the first two. But then the final arc has different artists from page to page. It's a lot of whiplash visually. Characters shift from highly rendered to cartoon, from garish to noir, with each page turn. 

Sean Philips inked by Jay Stephens... When I thought the book couldn't get any weirder

I'm sure it was on purpose. If the book was about mashing a thousand ideas together, then maybe that final arc was about mashing a thousand images together too. Whatever the concept, it wasn't normal. But it all fits together.

Ultimately, the book ends, and there is an epilogue issue which I found very abstract. After reading the whole of it, I want a break from this world.  But if I see an article about it, I'm bound to read it. I don't think the story makes much sense at all, but I'm interested to see if others think it made a lot of sense. Are there folks who analyzed this the way some folks analyzed Inception a decade ago? 

Ten years from now, I'm sure the whole thing will get a re-read from me. There are ideas inside I want to puzzle over.

Lord Fanny took my heart a little

What was it about? A bunch of underground agents save the world.

I Really Should Read This 19: Streets of Paris, Streets of Murder 1, by Manchette and Tardi

Streets of Paris, Streets of Murder 1, by Manchette and Tardi

1978, 2005, 1980, collected edition published in 2020

Now I have a new artist to buy everything from: Tardi.

I ordered this two-book slipcase Tardi collection in November, and had given up hope on it arriving. It was released in November, so I should have had it shortly after it came out, but it arrived last week, some five months later. 

Why did I buy it, other than the fact that I've been buying too much since I stopped going out due to a pandemic? The past year I've been filling in holes in my reading, and I figured I should know some Tardi. I've even read some in my life. I saw his work in RAW 25 years ago, and though it looked good, it didn't make a huge impression on me back then. I just felt like reading it though. The noir vibe was something I was in the mood for. And this book blew me away.

No, not like that

It collects three works authored by a French novelist, Jean-Patrick Manchette, and drawn by Tardi: Griffu, a detective story from 1978; West Coast Blues, a detective story without a detective from 2005; and Fatale, an unfinished story from 1980.

Just opening to the first pages, I was in love with how he rendered the city.

That car with one side over the curb in the second panel... it's stuff like that that gets me

His art manages a trick of that Disney animation can do so well: it's real without being realistic at all. There is a weight and mass to everything, but it is not rendered in an illusionary way. It's just ink on a page. I went through Griffu loving the art, and was surprised to see West Coast Blues appear in stark black and white, no grays. At first, I was thinking that the later work might be weaker in its illustration, looser, that the 25 years between the two stories had worn him down a little, but no, it's just different. Probably he spent a little less time with a ruler in the second story, but it's a masterfully drawn work.

Showing off by drawing three completely different car models

Griffu was a good story. Not incredible. I'm not a noir super fan, but I'm aware of the genre, and this is the sort of story like the Big Sleep or the Long Goodbye, where the detective bounces around the city getting little sleep, barely figuring out what is happening, and getting a lot of bruises.

Not such a nice lead character

It's written by an older established writer in 1980, so there are a lot of little racist nods in the story (for example, Griffu continues to call the hotel clerk Mohammed after the clerk corrects him that his name is Rasak). As a reader in 2021, I try to figure out if the writer is writing a character that is racist, if the writer is being racist himself, or if France in that period was, and I can't figure that out, and it's probably a bit of each. It's too much for me to dissect. It wasn't overwhelming anyway, just noticeably not something we'd likely see today. It did make me think about whether the hero of a story needs to be a "good guy." Griffu is not quite a good guy. I'd have a hard time even pinning down his motivation by the end of the story.

That first thought balloon made me laugh out loud

It's a winding story with a dark ending, and it was good, but I liked the art more than the story. It was a good story with great art.

That's a big phone. The panel layouts in this are gold. Bold, clear images bathed in shadow

The second story though, wow, it is flawless. I was riveted from start to finish, and it was about something. A frustrated man is out driving one night and rescues another man from a car accident. That man had been in an assassination attempt and the killers are sent to clean up the rescuer afterward. That's it, a story of a Good Samaritan being punished. The story spins away from there, without a clean, straight-forward plot. It goes unexpected places and has a strange resolution which works as a pulp story but works as something more introspective as well.

After, I thought about my own boring life. It was a great 80-page story. It's amazing what a writer can do with a limited number of pages. 

The rest of the book is a 21-page story called Fatale, that was originally going to be 60 pages. It sounds like an unsatisfying read, but those 21 pages are all set up. While there is no resolution, it ends up reading more like a character sketch than the first chapter of a book. And it has one of the more striking images I've seen in a comic in a while.

A happy person wouldn't do this

With the Ed Brubaker Criminal books, the Parker series, Stray Bullets and this, I think I am a noir fan. Either that or I'm just lucky to stick to the finer stories.

I have the second book of this waiting to go. I'm going to give it a few weeks so that it can all sink in better, but I'm excited to read it. And I'll have to start in on his World War I books after that. This is an expensive hobby.