Collection catchup: Gods and suicides and lesbians, oh my

Elsewhere: I reviewed the second volume of Demo at IndiePulp; it's really good (and hopefully the review isn't bad either).

Links:  This Sophia Wiedeman (The Deformitory) comic at Top Shelf 2.0 is quite good.

This partly animated comic by Vincent Giard is also pretty great, a cool example of the way animation can be used effectively in comics rather than as a distraction.  I've got to check out more of this guy's work.

I'm also curious about this new Japanese comics anthology which is available in English for the Kindle (or really any platform, since Kindle books can be read on Iphone, PC, etc.).  It got attention because Shintaro Kago has some comics in it, which makes it his first officially available English work, but from what I understand, it's only a few gag strips, but he'll have a longer-format story in the second issue.  I dunno, maybe I'll get a subscription or something.

So, here's my latest collection of (probably) shorter looks at stuff I've read recently:

Godland, volume 5: Far Beyond the Bang!
Written by Joe Casey
Art by Tom Scioli

Some comics hit my buttons just right that I love them intensely while having trouble expressing the reasons for doing so beyond "Wow, that's awesome!"  The Jack Kirby riff that Joe Casey and Tom Scioli do here is a perpetual winner, and they manage to nail the feel of the King's cosmic bombast perfectly, with the shouted proclamations and the world/galaxy/universe-shaking implications of the fights made perfectly clear.  They keep things going at a breakneck pace, with hero Adam Archer dragged into interstellar cosmic battle with forces he barely understands, while back on Earth the villainous Friedrich Nickelhead launches a political takeover for the super-criminal set.  There's some weird social/political commentary going on, but Casey never sits still long enough to make it seem didactic, and the gigantic action and bizarre character designs by Scioli constantly dazzle the eye and grab hold of the mind.  It's the almost-too-big-to-comprehend Kirby-style godly morality that I dig most though, as in a scene in which an evil being prepares to influence the evolution of two warring species on some distant planet, declaring "Eventualism now!", before being attacked by two other baroquely attired space-farers who declare, "We bring forth the anti-pillage! Prepare to defend your religion!" before being sent 12,000 years into the future (taking them to our present) to face the results of the evolutionary shepherding that was inflicted on the winners of the species war.  It's totally nuts, and also totally awesome.  I can't get enough of this madness; it's the closest anyone has come to recreating Kirby, and it comes from understanding that you can't just keep trotting out the New Gods or the Fantastic Four and running them through the same old adventures; you've got to push the limits, explore new frontiers, come up with your own exciting ideas.  That's exactly what Casey and Scioli are doing here, and it's glorious to behold.  I wish it would never end.
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Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, volume 2
By Koji Kumeta

The second volume of a manga series is often the place where the series really gels, and that seems to be the case here.  The first book was mostly focused on introducing the cast, including the ostensible main character, a suicidal teacher who exudes despair and hopelessness, trying to convince everyone he meets of the pointlessness of life.  The focus often turns to his wacky students though, who include his opposite number, a girl who is so optimistic that she can find a bright side to everything, as well as an ultra-precise neat freak, a shut-in, a boyfriend-obsessed stalker, a panty-flashing immigrant who threatens to sue everyone for sexual harassment, a refugee who barely speaks Japanese, and a girl who tries to stand out, but ends up being completely ordinary.  Having spent the first volume introducing all these goofballs, mangaka Koji Kumeta, who is apparently well-known as a satirist, can now just have goofy stuff happen and see how everyone reacts.  Sometimes a theme is established early on, like when Zetsubou-Sensei refuses to list grades on students' report cards, since life is better when you're ignorant of bad news, or when the Tanabata Festival, in which people write down wishes and hang them from trees, sees everyone sharing their wishes (and culminating in the teacher hanging himself from a tree).  This lets Kumeta riff on a theme, throwing out jokes left and right, having each character do something goofy that fits their personality, and always filling at least one panel with a list of examples of whatever the topic of the day is, usually making obscure references to Japanese culture that have to be explained in the footnotes.  Other times, something bizarre happens, making for a bunch of strange jokes, like a chapter in which a character claiming to be Admiral Matthew Perry (who forcibly opened Japan up to trade with the United States in 1854) shows up and goes around opening everything he sees, including a boy's zipper, the school's pool, and (in a failed attempt) Zetsubou-Sensei's heart.  Another story sees everyone travel back to the teacher's hometown, where his family apparently has an arranged-marriage custom in which anyone who looks into someone else's eyes has to marry them, which leads to all sorts of hijinx.  It's a totally ridiculous comic, but it's frequently really funny, even in the comedy that actually translates.  And that's a qualifier that must be made, since so many of the jokes are based on obscurities of Japanese language and culture, or pop culture and events that nobody on this side of the Pacific knows much about.  The extensive translator's notes do their best to explain things, but even with that resource, one gets the feeling that a lot of material is going right over their head.  But that's okay, since it just seems surreal and strange, and what does work, like the running jokes about things like a line of stalkers or a balding student that everyone ignores, is often laugh-out-loud funny.  It's that brand of odd, deadpan Japanese humor that you see in four-panel strips and the like, mixed with the loud proclamations and elaborate setups of other manga, ending up being a delightfully quirky collection of goofiness that makes just enough sense to be enjoyable. 
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Batwoman: Elegy
Written by Greg Rucka
Art by J.H. Williams III

I'm just about the last person on the internet to say this, but this is a pretty damn good comic.  If more superhero books were like this one, the genre wouldn't be a tiresome slog of soap opera plot developments and gratuitous violence.  This is a pretty simple deal about a crime fighter who stops a city-threatening scheme while balancing a private life and discovering a connection to a villain, while making some nods to a larger continuity that seems interesting enough to seek out more information or ignore as suits your purposes.  There's also an origin flashback and hints toward future plots that may or may not get around to happening, but that doesn't matter, because as an introduction to the character, this collected version works really well, telling a rousing story and quickly and memorably defining the characters.  It's really solid storytelling, although I must say that my favorite moment is when a fight between Batwoman and her arch-nemesis, a crazy lady who only speaks in quotes from Alice in Wonderland, is interrupted by a bunch of beast-men that just come rampaging through and start tearing into everybody.  It ends up being explained, but when it happens, it's a crazy "what the fuck?" moment, the kind of thing that can only happen in superhero comics.

But of course, the thing to talk about here is the art, by best-of-his-generation artist J.H. Williams III.  Without him, this would be an above-average exercise in Batman emulation, but he raises it to the level of the sublime, giving people realistic human motions and expressions and filling pages with dazzling layouts that propel the action excitingly across the page while highlighting the heightened-reality nature of superheroics with an art deco flair.  The great thing about it is that he does all this, encapsulating small actions in lightning-bolt-shaped panels, tilting frames and enclosing them in bat-themed shapes, turning panel borders into curlicued swirls of psychedelia when Batwoman is dosed with a hallucinogen, while still making all the action and movement perfectly clear.  During the flashback/origin story, he manages to transform his art into an imitation of David Mazzuchielli's work on Batman: Year One, but as the story progresses toward the present, it subtly metamorphoses into Williams' style, with a bit of Tim Sale or Sean Phillips.  It's pretty gorgeous work, worth all the acclaim it's received.  If the story ever gets finished, I'll try to read it as well, which is more than I can say for most Batman-related nonsense.
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Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love
Written by Chris Roberson
Art by Shawn McManus

The Fables franchise must be a tough one to get right, since what seems like a fairly easy story to handle (Cinderella as a spy, working with Aladdin to uncover a magical threat to the "mundane" world) comes off as fairly rote here, with little in the way of suspense or surprise, no real action to write home about, and some especially tiresome attempts to smoosh together fairy tale stuff with the real world.  Maybe it's the first-person narration, which constantly hangs over the proceedings, working in as many fairy tale references as possible, without much wit or humor.  It could be the fast-moving plot, which never sits still long enough to gather any sense of import, or the occasional shoehorning of a dumb moral into things.  The tiresome subplot about Cinderella's shoe-store employee screwing things up by selling magical shoes (like the ones from that fairy tale, you know, the one with the shoes that never stopped dancing) certainly doesn't help.  Whatever the case, writer Chris Roberson just doesn't have the feel for the Fables world that Bill Willingham and Matt Sturges do, as if he's managing to take things both too seriously and not seriously enough.  Artist Shawn McManus does his best to make it work though, turning his style into a reasonable facsimile of Mark Buckingham's distinctive work on the main Fables title, with some nice, thick lines, big expressions, and nicely anthropomorphic animals and monsters.  If it wasn't for him, this would probably be eminently skippable, but as it is, it's worth a look for Fables completists, but far, far from essential.

Drifting Classroom: Children are evil

Before I start, I have to link to Jog's latest column on the Savage Critics, in which he discusses the work of horror mangaka Hideshi Hino. After reading that, I feel that my latest mission in life is to track down and read Hino's Panorama of Hell. Wow, it looks fucking insane, in all the best ways.

In other news, I see that Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan will be doing a new six-issue Demo series for Vertigo. Awesome. I loved the first series (even if I was a couple years late getting to it), so I'm all for more of it. Wood is one of my current favorite writers, and Cloonan is a current favorite artist, so I'm stoked to see them do more work together.

Okay, on with the show:

The Drifting Classroom, volume 6
By Kazuo Umezu



Behold, the face of childhood evil:



Man, that is one creepy-looking kid. That's right there on the first few pages of this volume, and it makes me sorry I had gone so long without reading this series. At first, I had forgotten what was going on at the end of the last volume, but I got right back into the swing of things; the kids stuck in their horrible future wasteland were all dying of bubonic plague, and that mean kid had led a group of troublemakers and trapped our heroes in a building with a plan to burn them to death. Good times.

Man, every volume of the series is full of that sort of delightful awfulness, with kids exhibiting the worst humanity has to offer in terms of distrust and murderous impulses. This volume veers a bit from the formula though, spending over half its length in the present day, following protagonist Sho's mother as she tries to figure out how to send a cure for the plague to him in the future. It's as crazy as everything else in the book, as we see her pursue her goal of helping Sho, shoving aside anyone in her way, to the point where people think she's gone nuts:



Interestingly, there are a few scenes where she is confronted by the mother of another of the missing children, who blames Sho for her son's disappearance. But Sho's mother shoves her aside and refuses to listen to her, giving her the same treatment she has been getting from everyone else. I'm not sure if this is supposed to represent anything, but it stuck with me. Is it a comment on how even those with noble goals can be single-minded, ignoring the plight of others? Maybe Umezu will do more with these characters in future volumes.

Also of note in the "Sho's mother" chapter is a harrowing scene in which Umezu shows that the ruthless, violent attitudes and actions of the kids aren't exactly a deviation from the norm. While she is at a baseball game planning to confront a famous player (it's a long story), her actions cause a giant brawl to break out, with fans and players rushing the field in a near-riot:



Key dialogue: "Kick the shit out of her!" Oh, Umezu, how you give me pleasure.

I know Matt Thorn said I was trying too hard to find metaphors in this series, but I've got another one that hopefully isn't too far off base. We learn that the plague was caused by a couple of diseased pet squirrels that a diplomat brought back from the United States. It sounds to me like a representation of fear that the influence of foreign cultures is corrupting the younger generation. Or maybe Umezu just hates squirrels.

In addition to the myriad deaths by plague here, we also get to see some drownings, accidental decapitation, and quicksand-related tragedies. That Umezu gets pretty innovative with the means of juvenile death. I don't know how he's going to keep up this carnage for another five volumes, but I can't wait to find out.

UPDATED: Demo: Quite the melange of tastes

UPDATE: I've added images to the post, so now you can see examples of what I'm talking about.

Well, within the spectrum of "youthful angst illustrated in a manga-esque style", anyway. I've been meaning to write about this ever since I finished it, but I haven't been able to gather my thoughts sufficiently, or something. I was planning to do a sort of review of each of the twelve chapters/issues, and I guess I'll still do that, but the ones I liked less might be limited to a few sentences and an art sample. We'll see how it goes.

Demo
Written by Brian Wood
Art by Becky Cloonan



I pretty much missed this series when it originally came out, since I was just getting back into purchasing comics regularly, and while it looked interesting, I guess I didn't want to take a chance on it. But my tastes have changed since then, and I've discovered that I like Brian Wood's writing and Becky Cloonan's art, so I've been meaning to read this for a while now. And now that I finally have, I think it was worth the wait. Yes, some chapters are better than others, but it's an interesting project to see develop, and I especially like the way the theme of the book seemed to evolve as the series progressed, going from "teenagers with superpowers" to "young adults living their lives". I'm also amazed at Cloonan's art, especially the way she varied her style to fit each individual story. So anyway, I think I'll take a look at each of the stories and offer my thoughts.

1. "NYC"

This story starts off right in line with the original purpose of the book, showing a young couple running away from home to live in the big city. The girl, Marie, has some sort of psychic powers, and her mom has been forcing her to take medicine to suppress them all her life. So along with running away, she's going cold turkey and trying to control her abilities. It seems to be a metaphor for the pent-up feelings of youth and the desire to break free of the control of your parents, teachers, and whatever authorities you feel are holding you back. But at the same time, it's scary, and you worry that you'll hurt or even destroy yourself and those you love with this newfound freedom. Or, it could be more literal, speaking about drugs like Ritalin, that many young people must take to suppress their "hyperactivity". I've never taken them, but I could see the feeling that these are being forced upon you to squash your creativity and individuality, and wanting to get free, but still feeling like you won't have any control over yourself if you do. It's an interesting idea to think about, especially in how the story begins with a flash-forward showing the kids happy in the city and ends on a note of hope.

Cloonan goes for a scratchily-rendered manga style in this chapter, and it works pretty well. The best bits (art-wise) were when Marie was trying to control her powers:



But other than that, I think the art gets much better in later chapters.

2. "Emmy"

This chapter has a less-rough manga feel, about a teenage girl who never speaks, due to the power to compel people to obey her and the unfortunate consequences that resulted when she got angry and spoke without thinking. I suppose it's a metaphor for the guilt we feel when we say something hurtful and instantly regret it. This is especially true for adolescents, whose emotions seem to be in constant turmoil (that's how I remember it anyway). It's a decent little story, but far from the best of the bunch. As I mentioned, Cloonan uses an interesting variation on her style, but remains manga-influenced:



As always, it's very nice-looking.

3. "Bad Blood"

Another teen angst tale, this one about the agony of growing up in a broken home. A teenage girl goes to her father's funeral, bonds with her step-brother, and complains about the family that she never knew. Eventually, she discovers that she shares a trait with other members of her family, and since I'm belaboring the metaphors in each chapter, this seems to be about how you can always connect with your family, even if you don't get along with them. Or maybe I'm reaching.

The art style seems to shift slightly away from a manga influence in this chapter, and a lot of blacks are added, fitting the funereal atmosphere:



Looks nice, but this is another of my less-favorite chapters.

4. "Stand Strong"

Ah, now we're getting away from the teen-angst material. A young man working in a small-town factory resists his heritage (his father and grandfather also worked there), hoping to make some illicit money and escape from the small town with his friends. But then he realizes that his friends only want him around because of his super-strength, and his family loves him for who he is.

There's some really nice character art in this chapter, with James (the protagonist) arguing with his girlfriend about money:



And later realizing why his friends really want him around:



Some nice dynamic scenes too, like this one of James breaking into a building:



Beautiful stuff. I love the sunburst effect when he uses his "powers". I think this chapter is where Wood and Cloonan realized they wanted to go with the series, with the stories shifting to subjects of adult responsibility and relationships, with characters in their twenties rather than teens. Cloonan's art shifts become even more obvious, really setting a distinct tone for each chapter. I should also mention that she closes nearly every chapter with a quiet landscape shot, or something similar, punctuating the story with a nice image. Very cool.

5. "Girl You Want"

This one is a nice story about a girl who assumes the visual form of whatever the person looking at her wants to see, physically changing to match their mental image. I think. She describes it in captions as people "filling in the blanks" about her without even realizing it, but as it's depicted, she often changes into the person's fantasy girl (if they're a guy). The plot thickens when she meets a girl who sees her as she is, and her appearance stays the same. So then she becomes obsessed with the girl, thinking that they will be lovers or something. Eventually, she realizes that she doesn't know anything about the girl, and was doing the same thing she hated about everyone else, projecting her own image onto the girl and seeing her as she wanted her to be. It's a good reversal, and a nice bit of writing.

And the art is also very nice, filled with shadows to reflect her inner mood, but breaking away from Cloonan's usual style when illustrating the forms she assumes when people look at her:



Again, perfect atmosphere for the story. Have I mentioned that I really like Becky Cloonan's art?

6. "What You Wish For"

This one is a bit different from the usual story, with a just-married guy flashing back to his childhood when he revisits the old neighborhood. He was a mixed-race (white and Asian) kid, and he got a lot of comments from neighbors and schoolmates, eventually growing to hate them. Things boil over one day when the guy across the street kills his dog, and the kid's latent psychic powers kick in, bringing all the dead animals in the neighborhood back to life and slaughtering all the neighbors. It's pretty creepy, and it leads to a lesson that you can't let hate consume you. Actually, it kind of reminds me of American Born Chinese.

The character art is nice, with thin, clean lines defining the characters. However, there are some excellent illustrations of animals, whether depicting living ones, like Ken's pet dog as an adult:



Or the creepy zombie animals, like the dead puppy:



Yikes.

7. "One Shot, Don't Miss"

This might be the most famous issue of the series, since it was nominated for an Eisner award. It concerns a soldier in Iraq who has the ability to never miss a shot. To tell the truth, I don't know if it's one of the best-written chapters of the series, but it's rather striking, especially the shadow-filled art style that Cloonan uses, which makes everyone's face look the same, with blank spots for eyes and darkness around their nose, mouth, and cheekbones:



It emphasizes the faceless nature of soldiers, how they're just cogs in the military machine. And that's the point of the story, that the protagonist doesn't want to be just an instrument of destruction. He joined the army to provide for his family, but then the country went to war, he got sent halfway around the world, and people are expecting him to use his skills to kill possibly innocent people. While manning a checkpoint, he is faced with a car that is trying to speed through without stopping, and he can't bring himself to kill the driver, so he shoots out the tires. Having gone against orders, he gets discharged and sent home, disappointing everyone, including his wife. It's a tough situation, but if I was in the same situation, I don't think I could bring myself to kill someone. Sure, now he's going to have to find a way to provide for his angry wife and infant kid, but how do you balance the well-being of your family against someone's right to live? That's the question behind this story, and it's left up to the reader to decide; all we see is the uncertainty of his future.

That said, while it does raise an interesting point, it does it kind of ham-handedly, with gung-ho officers and fellow soldiers berating our hero, crowing about how he'll be so good at killing when he gets the chance, and belittling him as a coward when he is unable to take the crucial shot. And his wife isn't any better; sure, she's worried about their future, but shouldn't she be able to put herself in his shoes? And the car that runs the checkpoint is little more than a plot device; we never find out if its occupants were terrorists, or even see their faces. So it's kind of unsatisfying, and an odd choice for the award nomination, probably only getting noticed for the political content.

8. "Mixtape"

This might be my favorite chapter of the series. It's a simple tale of a guy whose girlfriend committed suicide, but left him a tape to listen to in his Walkman. When he plays it, she appears in front of him (in his mind, at least), and he gets to have one last day with her, walking around the city and visiting their favorite spots. Or so he thinks; she informs him that he never really considered her and usually just focused on himself. It's a sad conversation, but a lovely character piece.

And Cloonan's art is excellent, as always. I love the image of the girlfriend with ribbons of tape swirling around her and entwining her limbs:



Good stuff; one of the best chapters in the book, in my opinion.

9. "Breaking Up"

This is another good chapter, and probably the first one that doesn't deal with any superhuman abilities. Sure, one character mentions that he remembers everything everyone says to him, but that's just a photographic memory, isn't it? This "ability" factors into the story (which is about a couple doing what the title says) in that as they are talking, he remembers various events throughout the history of their relationship, both good and bad. It's really well done, in the manner of real memories: jumbled together without much context. A very effective presentation. The couple's conversation is heartbreaking; it's sad and true-to-life, a conversation that happens every day to somebody. It's just a fact that couples grow apart and eventually break up, and it's rarely a pleasant experience. But when you see the flashbacks, you can see how they ended up at that point, even though they did have some good times. Good writing, if you ask me.

And the art is excellent as well. Lots of thick outlines and shadows, reflecting the serious nature of the conversation. And there are some great designs, like this shot of the heat rising from their coffee cups like the dark clouds gathering over their relationship:



Beautiful stuff (am I getting redundant?).

10. "Damaged"

This is an interesting chapter which uses the premise of the series to fool the reader (and protagonist) into thinking a character has psychic powers, but then it turns out to be a scam. It's a good twist on the "formula". A twenty-something New York businessman is approached by a homeless girl who seems to know everything about him and tells him she can help him learn to feel something in his empty life. He ends up seeing her regularly, giving her money because he feels sorry for her; the two seem to be getting friendly, until he discovers that she is scamming him, and something tragic happens. It's another nice little character piece, and even though these later chapters don't seem to be as heavy on the metaphors as the earlier ones did, it seems that this could be a commentary on how we tend to sabotage our relationships by telling little lies or misrepresenting ourselves, and eventually that comes back to haunt us.

The art is a bit more manga-inspired in this chapter, especially in the case of the girl, who has a pointy chin and larger-than-normal eyes. It's a good way of emphasizing her seeming innocence. Cloonan also does a neat trick where the thin lines defining characters are outlined with greytones, as in this beautiful picture that I'm going to go ahead and call my current favorite panel:



There are some nice photo-manipulated backgrounds too, as well as some other neat visual tricks. Definitely one of my favorite chapters, in both art and story.

11. "Midnight to Six"

I don't think this story involves superpowers at all; it's just the tale of three friends (two guys, one girl) who decide in junior high to live by "The Slacker Pledge", which states that they will attempt to do the minimum required in terms of school or work and "live life to its fullest". Ten years later, they are all roommates, and they work the night shift at a grocery store, cleaning up and stocking shelves. One of them has taken the pledge to heart, expecting to follow it for the rest of his life, but the other two are starting to strain against the pledge's confines, hoping to actually have careers and do something with their lives. So they end up spending the night fighting amongst themselves about their ideas of how to live life, with the girl (since girls are much smarter than us dumb guys) finally snapping and telling the others to grow up. It's a pretty nice character piece, but definitely not my favorite story of the bunch.

The art is also pretty nice, with nothing much to really distinguish it like in some of the other chapters. More manga stylings, especially in the opening junior high sequence. Cloonan does use those stylings well, however:



12. "Mon Dernier Jour Avec Toi (My Last Night With You)"

I'm not sure what to think about this final chapter. Rather than provide a statement that wraps up the series, or something like that, we get a series of images of a young couple, accompanied only by the words of a poem/song about their last night together. The images are certainly beautiful:



But the words have an air of finality. I suppose it's up to the reader to interpret, and I thought it might be a suicide pact. The final image (which doubles as the back cover of the book) shows them seemingly flying over a building, but maybe they're both jumping to their deaths. Or maybe I'm just morbid and cynical. It's certainly a beautiful chapter, but I found it slightly unsatisfying as an end to the book. But really, that's okay, because I also like ambiguity.

So, as a whole, the book has its ups and downs, but it's a really nice collection of stories, and it improves as it goes along. I definitely like Brian Wood's writing (his book DMZ is one of my favorite series currently being published), but Becky Cloonan's art is arguably the star here. I'm very impressed with how she was able to vary her style to fit each story while still providing clear, coherent storytelling. This book is a testament to her skills, and I would recommend it for that reason alone. So if you missed it the first time around, it's definitely worth checking out.

By the way, I've read that the single issues contain some significant "backmatter", with sketches, essays, and other behind-the-scenes material. Even though I have the collected edition of the book, I might seek out some of those issues someday (especially my favorites among the bunch) and check them out.
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That's my last post for tonight. I don't know when I'll get another one done, since I rely on my scanner so much. God forbid I use words to describe a picture! We'll see what I can come up with in the interim.