Archive for the ‘Oni Press’ Category

Visiting Stumptown’s Damp Streets with Matthew Southworth

August 19, 2010

Southworth at an exhibit of his Stumptown artwork at Floating World Comics in Portland.

A RELATIVE NEWCOMER TO THE COMICS FIELD, Matthew Southworth scored a high-profile title early in his career, drawing Stumptown, a creator-owned private investigator series written by Greg Rucka. Rucka’s name, made on his novels, his creator-owned comics Whiteout and Queen and Country and his long stint at DC Comics, brought Stumptown instant attention, but since its debut Southworth’s art has received equal notice, impressive considering that he was largely unknown before the first issue was released.

Coming from a background in film and theater, Southworth’s primary work in comics prior to Stumptown came as assistant to artist Stefano Gaudiano, a penciler and/or inker on series such as Gotham Central and Daredevil. After a few penciling jobs of his own, Stumptown is Southworth’s first major project in comics.

I spoke to Southworth at his table at the 2010 Emerald City Comic Con, where we discussed Stumptown, his collaboration with Rucka, what assisting an artist entails, his research for Stumptown‘s Portland setting and how he uses photo reference, how a theater background informs drawing comics and several other subjects. During the interview, Southworth sat between Rucka and Gaudiano, as the three met with fans and signed books.

Wright Opinion: Since we’re talking at Emerald City, I guess the first thing I should ask you is, is this your first Emerald City as a guest, with a book?

Matthew Southworth: It’s the first one I’ve done where there’s a book out. I’ve had kind of an unusual trajectory in that the last time I was here I was doing a book, with an established creator that a lot of people had heard of, that hadn’t been published. And now, of course, it’s out, and people know about it, and a lot of people like it, and I’m thrilled about that. But, yeah, it’s totally a different experience. I had a table last year, but nobody knew who I was.

WO: What did you have at the table last year?

MS: Pages. Pages of something that hadn’t been published. And I had these little giveaway books.

WO: How has the show been this time around?

MS: It’s been thrilling. I’ve had a really exciting time. I’m supposed to tell myself that I’m above other people’s attention and praise and stuff, but I’m not, and so I’m sure pride comes before a fall. But right now I’ve got the pride part, and it feels really good. People have been really nice, and they seem to like the book for the reasons that I like it and what I think is good about it, and so something good is happening.

WO: To get into your background a bit, I noticed that you have degrees in theater and play-writing and directing. How did you get into and learn to draw, given that your background is elsewhere?

MS: Well, it’s an open question as to whether I’ve learned how to draw, but I’ve drawn since I was three, and I’ve made a lot of detours. Essentially, what happened is I used to draw all the time, I made comics as a kid. I grew up across the street from Joe Casey, so we made comics together, We trained each other, basically. And then I went off in theater, and he went off into doing whatever—he hadn’t really found his niche at that point—and gradually found his way into comics. I had gone from theater into film and moved to LA where he lived. While he was doing comics in LA, I was doing film stuff in LA and getting more and more frustrated writing screenplays that no one was buying, no one was going to produce, including myself.

And so then I would see him, and he was doing real well, and making a lot of—well, not a lot of money, but making money writing comics. And I said to myself, “Jeez, writing comics, that looks easy.” It looks fun and easy, and the best thing about it is you do it and two months later, three months later, it comes out, as opposed to writing a screenplay and maybe ten years from now they might make a screenplay which seventeen people rewrite and has nothing to do with you, but you make a little money. So, I said, “I’m gonna write comics.” And because of our history being what it was, he kind of kept going, “Well, what you really ought to do is draw some comics, and maybe we can do comics one day,” so I did and discovered drawing comics is not that easy.

(more…)

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Scott Pilgrim on the Screen and on the Wall – My Week in Comics August 1–7

August 9, 2010

This week: What being a movie actually brings to Scott Pilgrim, a look at some Bryan Lee O’Malley originals and a super-sized What I Read.

BOY, HE’S SURE BEEN WRITING ABOUT THE SCOTT PILGRIM MOVIE A LOT FOR SOMEONE WHO CLAIMS NOT TO BE ALL THAT ENTHUSIASTIC

I’VE WRITTEN BEFORE about my reservations regarding the film version of Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. I got a chance to see it at a screening here in Portland last month and, while some of that trepidation turned out to well founded, I was pleased to see much of it prove baseless. Overall, I came away feeling the movie was flawed, but a lot of fun, and even if it doesn’t quite capture the charm of the original, it comes close enough to consider the movie a success. But the greater realization came from the very appreciative audience I saw it with.

The Scott Pilgrim series works wonderfully as comics, taking advantage of the form in countless ways and drawing much of its comedy from manipulation of comics’ rules. In that respect there’s very little for a movie to add, but the best thing it can offer by far is the audience experience. Scott Pilgrim has always been a crowd-pleaser without a crowd, since reading is a solitary experience, not generally given to group cheering (as Warren Ellis memorably put it, when we open a comic we “come in alone”). And so the theater I saw the movie in was filled with people who loved the books or, like the friend I brought, had never read them but was looking forward to a loud, rowdy time, shared with a crowd.

I’m still never going to be convinced that most books or comics need to be made into movies, that they are any more interesting as movies or for having been made into movies, but watching Scott Pilgrim did remind me that there is an impulse when we love something to share it, and movies are perfectly suited to sharing an experience.

As for the movie itself, I had a good time. It works best when it takes advantage of the film form like the original did with comics, with clever editing carrying conversations across scenes and getting laughs from changes to characters’ appearances between cuts. It doesn’t work quite as well when it wears its comics influence too obviously on its sleeve, and I quickly got tired of tricks like ringing phones shooting out visual RRIIIINNNNGG sound effects. As Scott, Michael Cera surprised, turning in a better performance than I’ve seen from him before. He didn’t stretch quite far enough, but at times he was almost convincing as a cocky dim bulb. The supporting actors were excellent, and Ellen Wong as Knives in particular made as much as possible of her role, despite the script simplifying her arc considerably. In general, the changes made for concision work, even solving the problem I had with the comics of too many similar peripheral characters, and many of the original lines are as funny as anything in the comic.

Where Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is less successful is in the thematically confused climax, which like the comic feints away from the actual conclusion, but in a way that doesn’t feel like it resolves properly, leaving a few characters and subplots hanging and presenting a final confrontation that is anti-climactic. The need to move the story along makes the last third of the film an unbroken series of fights, and the lack of any breaks becomes somewhat tiresome. I found myself wishing as well that more was made of the setting. While the comics are full of real locations and give a sense of Toronto, the movie takes place largely in apartments, clubs and on nondescript snowy streets. Since the unusual setting was part of the comics’ charm, it’s disappointing to see it largely absent from the film.

Most irritatingly, in classic Hollywood fashion, much of the subtext of the story turns into dialogue, Ramona in particular explaining to Scott, and us, what the story is really about. Not only are viewers likely to get the point even without being told, but one of the pleasures of the series is how well it works on both the surface and subtextual level, so it’s enjoyable whether one delves below the surface or not. It’s also always a little depressing when a movie assumes you aren’t smart enough to grasp its subtext.

Those objections aside, the film is fast-moving, funny and very entertaining, only dragging a bit in the third quarter leading up to the last evil ex. It doesn’t come close to matching the affection I have for the books, but it was a pleasure to experience it in a crowd setting. And the friend I mentioned, who hadn’t read the comics (and isn’t really a comics person at all, actually)? On the way out, he said he planned to buy the books soon, which is about as positive a review as a comics movie can get.

I still think most comics benefit from the intimate author-reader relationship, though, so let’s not go crazy, okay?

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE FLOATING WORLD


Click on any image for a larger size

SPEAKING OF Scott Pilgrim, my local comics shop, Floating World Comics, opened a gallery show of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s original art from the series on First Thursday (a monthly, citywide night of art and other exhibits) this week. The show was pretty full when I arrived, and stayed that way for a few hours, tapering off before the store closed at 10PM. There was a lot of movement, with people coming in to see the art and leaving, replaced by new visitors, but it being a Portland event, there were also a lot of comics people sticking around to chat and drink the free PBR and Full Sail Session lager. Vancouver, BC, cartoonists Brandon Graham and Simon Roy were in store for a signing as well, receiving less attention than the exhibit, but each with a steady trickle of fans showing up to chat and receive a sketch.

I knew it was a fantasy, but in the back of my mind I hoped this might be the last moment in which Scott Pilgrim art would be selling at a price I could afford it. Alas, the originals on display were $1,000 apiece, which I could technically pay if it wasn’t important to me to eat, at all, for the next few months.

Still, it was a pleasure to look at the artwork up close, and fascinating to see how the work broke down between the work O’Malley did on the boards and what was done digitally or by assistants. Since each original was accompanied by a copy of the published page, all the space left for toning, unfinished backgrounds and spotting of blacks was evident, like in this page:

On this page, it appears that an entire panel has been left for an assistant to ink:

Here some of the second panel is uninked, but more interestingly, Kim Pine’s throat is inked black, but in the final version O’Malley has decided to simply black in her whole mouth except for her tongue:

And finally, these two pages made me desperately wish I wasn’t poor:

READ THIS WEEK:

Between a much-needed day off spent napping and reading, and the effort I made to turn my old minicomic storage system (spread out on surfaces all over my apartment) to a new one (in one box)—which led to reading several I hadn’t gotten to before—this was a big comics-reading week.

  • Adventure Comics #516 by Paul Levitz, Kevin Sharpe, Marlo Alquiza, Jeff Lemire, Mahmud Asrar & John Dell
    Brightest Day: The Atom Special by Jeff Lemire, Mahmud Asrar & John Dell
    Sweet Tooth #12 by Jeff Lemire
    Comics is a funny thing; behind a nifty, paint-by-numbers cover, DC’s most indie-style series, Sweet Tooth, goes for an issue-length homage to issue #10 of Crisis on Infinite Earths, perhaps its most superhero-y series ever. Definitely some unexpected mashups coming from the current generation of young cartoonists’ apparent affection for both mainstream and indie comics (everyone caught the Watchmen reference in Matt Kindt’s 3 Story, right?). Anyway, I’m really enjoying the narrative experiments Lemire has been trying out in Sweet Tooth, with #10 my favorite so far. Meanwhile, in The Atom and Adventure Comics, Lemire makes his, I think, superhero debut. It’s definitely wobblier so far, but I’m happy to give it a chance to pick up based on Lemire’s track record.

  • Avengers #3 by Brian Michael Bendis, John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson & Dean White
    Liked this more than #2, less than #1. I may just stick with New Avengers, both issues of which I’ve enjoyed so far.
  • Blacksad by Juan Díaz Canales & Juanjo Guarnido
  • Chi’s Sweet Home vol. 1 by Konami Kanata
    Not sure yet if there’s enough here to keep me coming back, but I had already preordered vol. 2, so I’ll decide after I read that. Definitely cute, though.
  • Chronicles of Wormwood by Garth Ennis & Jacen Burrows
    Crossed by Garth Ennis & Jacen Burrows
    Thumbs up for Avatar giving Ennis and Burrows these outlets for whatever they want to do.
  • Comic Book Comics #1 by Fred Van Lente & Ryan Dunlavey
    Opening with the clearest explanation I’ve ever read of just why exactly The Yellow Kid was so revolutionary, this goes on to recount the history of comics in extremely entertaining fashion. It actually reminds me slightly of glamourpuss, but broader in focus and without the frequent breaks for fashion magazine parodies. I’ve actually been borrowing this from a friend for probably over a year (which you totally cannot do on the iPad—the iPad would prevent me from being a jerk who doesn’t give something back for a year. Buy an iPad and Brendan Wright won’t “borrow” your comics and take a year to give them back. Apple, you can have that ad idea for free), so he’ll probably be happy to get it back, while I wonder what took me so long to read something so enjoyable.
  • Controller by Robin Enrico
    I bought this pretty much just for the packaging. The cover of the comic is a Nintendo cartridge, complete with the illustration and title being on a sticker, and the whole thing comes in a paper sleeve like the sleeves Nintendo games came in. Turns out the story inside isn’t too bad either, a “semi-autobiographical” short that gets into how video games both provided the main character with escapism at a pivotal moment and threatened to ruin his social life through subsequent addiction. You don’t see those two sides both addressed in the same place often.
  • Cromartie High School vols. 1 & 2 by Eiji Nonaka
    I’ve never seen any manga like this before. I’m still on the fence about it after two volumes; I got a few good laughs out of each one, but it feels like a formula has been pretty quickly established, and if the author’s notes are serious, he doesn’t seem to know where it’s going. It’s funny stuff, the kind of absurdist humor I didn’t know existed in manga, but American humor it reminds me of is niche enough that I can see why it hasn’t made it big in English. However, I also watched the two anime episodes that came packaged with volume one, and while I don’t have cable and can’t say for sure, I’d be shocked if this hasn’t shown on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. It seems like exactly the type of humor their shows are built on.
  • Dead Lands #1 by Simon Roy
    Good Business by Simon Roy
    Pillow Fight by Brandon Graham
    Universe So Big #2 by Brandon Graham
    These all come from the Brandon Graham/Simon Roy signing that Floating World held alongside the Scott Pilgrim art show. I was already a fan of Graham from King City and Multiple Warheads, but Roy is new to me, though clearly someone to look out for.

  • glamourpuss #6 by Dave Sim
  • Legion of Super-Heroes #3 by Paul Levitz, Yildiray Cinar, Francis Portela & Wayne Faucher
  • The Man with the Getaway Face by Darwyn Cooke
    Loved the bigger size. I’m looking forward to The Outfit, but it’s too bad this format is a one-off.
  • Over the Surface #1–#2 by Natalie Nourigat
  • Scarlet #1 by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev
    One of the best debuts I’ve read in a while. I am definitely a Bendis fan, but having largely opted out of the major Marvel universe stuff the last few years, this is the most excited I’ve been by a new project of his in ages.
  • Secret Warriors vol. 2: God of Fear, God of War by Jonathan Hickman, Alessandro Vitti & Ed McGuinness
  • Strange Science Fantasy #1 by Scott Morse & Paul Pope
  • Twin Spica vol. 2 by Kou Yaginuma
    The people who tell you this is good are right. Once again reminds me why as a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. This is great stuff.

  • Ultimate Comics Spider-Man vol. 1: The World According to Peter Parker by Brian Michael Bendis & David Lafuente

Images from Scott Pilgrim movie © Universal Studios. Images from Scott Pilgrim © Bryan Lee O’Malley. Images of Sweet Tooth © Jeff Lemire.

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My Week in Comics: June 13–19, 2010

June 20, 2010

Since posting has slowed to a crawl, thought I’d try something different, see if I can keep up a weekly column. The format is up in the air, and it may not ultimately end up posting on Sundays, but this what I’m going to try for now. Instead of a “Week in Comics” news-style column, since a lot of people already do that better than I could, I’m going with “My Week in Comics,” one to three short essays on whatever I’m thinking about related to comics that week. This could be mini-think-pieces, or things like events I attend that I might not have written up if I felt like I had to do a full-length piece on them, plus a list of what I read that week, maybe sometimes with brief comments. Not this time anyway.

This week: Scott Pilgrim the movie versus Scott Pilgrim the comic and my experience trying out the new Legion of Superhero comics. Future weeks: things that are better, as I get the hang of this.

Thoughts on the Scott Pilgrim movie

I’VE DEVELOPED SOMETHING of a reputation among the folks my age at work for hating both fun and joy, which may be fair, but I’d like to think isn’t. It seems quite natural to me that a guy seeing TRON for the first time at twenty-six won’t get as much from it as those who first saw it when they were five.

Anyway, the latest thing that gives me pause in outright denying the charge is that I seem to be the only person in comics not terribly excited about the upcoming Scott Pilgrim movie. Which is not to say I’m particularly against it—I’ve thought the trailers have looked fine, and of course I’m happy for Bryan Lee O’Malley and everyone at Oni for the Hollywood windfall and for the attention it’s brought to the books—but it would never have occurred to me that Scott Pilgrim needed to be a movie, and I simply don’t find myself anticipating it very strongly, in spite of my affection for the series and love for previous Edgar Wright films.

It’s Edgar Wright’s involvement that has been the strongest argument from a friend as to why the movie is worth anticipating. But I’d rather see him do something original, something that’s meant to be a movie, than an adaptation of something so unique to its creator and so thoroughly designed to take advantage of the comics medium. In short, why does everything have to be a movie?

A Scott Pilgrim movie will be missing O’Malley’s artwork, which is what makes Scott and his friends unique and charismatic. In the trailer, the characters all appear sullen and dumpy, and since they’re played by real people, are no more or less interesting-looking than kids in any other movie. Fitting the six books into a single film will also necessitate speeding up the series’ relaxed pace and focusing more closely on the plot—of which there is quite little—at the expense of the pace and tone I enjoyed in the comics.

It’s interesting to me that I haven’t had a similar apprehension to other types of comic book movies. Sure, I wouldn’t miss the various Bat-Spider-Iron movies that much if they were gone, but neither did I feel like they were a bad idea. I think the difference is that a character like Batman is already just a product, with as many interpretations as there have been writers and artists working on the character, so the movies are really just one more. I think it would be different if the studio chose a particular version to interpret. I imagine I’d feel much more trepidation if the next movie were to be specifically based upon The Dark Knight Returns or an adaptation of Grant Morrison’s current run.

In short, without O’Malley’s artwork, unique sensibility, and the fun he has playing with the medium, I don’t know what makes this any more or less worthy of anticipation than any other Summer movie. If the exact same movie weren’t based on a comic I like, I doubt I’d even notice it was coming.

Legion of Superheroes relaunch

LOOKING FOR A NEW superhero franchise to try out, this week I read both of the Legion of Superheroes comics released in the last month, Legion of Superheroes #1 and Adventure Comics #12 (which a ghost number behind the “12” tells me is also #515). Each is written by Paul Levitz, who had a fondly remembered run on the series decades ago, and his return coupled with a new #1 seemed like an inviting place to give the concept a try. While neither of the issue numbers on Adventure were a #1, it also appeared to be a new beginning, Levitz’s first, and the first to feature the Legion as the main attraction; previous issues were dedicated to the current iteration of Superboy.

I’ve been reading comics long enough to know that a #1 on a cover—even one announcing “An all-new era begins!”—is no guarantee that the contents of the book will actually be the beginning of a story. In this case the change of writer from the last few series the Legion has appeared in and my apparent misunderstanding of the point of Legion of Three Worlds—I only read the first issue and found it impenetrable, but had thought that part of the point of it was to clear the decks for a restart—led me to go in expecting something a little more new-reader-friendly. And while I wasn’t as lost as I was reading Legion of Three Worlds, I still had to navigate references to plot threads from that story, a recent Superman or Action Comics arc involving the Legion, and, I think, Blackest Night. Some interesting ideas and compelling character moments popped up in between, but so many balls were already in the air that the overall effect wasn’t inviting.

These aren’t full reviews, but I bring the two issues up because I found it ironic that the much more new-reader-friendly of the two issues was the one that wasn’t a #1. A standalone issue that introduces the many Legionnaires more gradually and uses Superboy (the classic Superman-when-he-was-a-boy version) as a familiar point-of-view character, I enjoyed the story in Adventure Comics much more and felt eased into the world more smoothly. The story, Superboy visits the future for a day and is able to be himself in ways he can’t in twenty-first century Smallville, while perhaps not the kind that can fill every issue, had much more charm and was a satisfying whole.

Compared to the other series’ grown-up Legion dealing with the fallout of several half-explained events from other series, it was an intro that made me want to read more. Now if only the art in Adventure were as good as in Legion. I like how Kevin Sharpe makes Superboy actually look like a kid, but Yildiray Cinar does a much better job differentiating the many characters and depicting their individual facial expressions and body language in Legion.

I’ll likely give Legion another shot to see if it works better as it moves further from those past events, but I’m actually looking forward to checking back in with Superboy and the younger Legion next month.

Read this week:

  • Adventure Comics #12/515 by Paul Levitz, Kevin Sharpe, Mario Alquiza & Marc Deering
  • chapters from Essential Defenders vol. 2 by Steve Gerber et al.
  • Fear Agent vol. 2 by Rick Remender & Jerome Opeña
  • Fortune and Glory (color edition) by Brian Michael Bendis
  • Freakangels vol. 2 by Warren Ellis & Paul Duffield
  • Hard Boiled by Frank Miller and Geof Darrow
  • Legion of Superheroes #1 by Paul Levitz, Yildiray Cinar & Wayne Faucher
  • Other Lives by Peter Bagge
  • Private Beach: Secret Messages by David Hahn

Images from Scott Pilgrim © Bryan Lee O’Malley. Images from Scott Pilgrim movie © Universal Studios. Images of Legion of Superheroes and Adventure Comics © DC Comics.

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Up North and Underground with Steve Lieber

October 20, 2009

DESPITE HIS PLACE AS ONE OF THE FINEST DRAFTSMEN IN COMICS, Steve Lieber has stayed mostly below the radar, putting in work on such diverse series as Detective Comics, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gotham Central, Hellboy, The Escapist, Grendel, Civil War: Frontline, Hawkman, On the Road to Perdition, and others.

Lieber gained notoriety in 1998 for his work as the co-creator and artist of the Oni Press series Whiteout with writer Greg Rucka. A murder mystery set in Antarctica, Whiteout was one of Oni’s biggest early successes, and earned four Eisner Award nominations, including one for Lieber as “Best Penciler/Inker.” Lieber and Rucka returned to the Ice and to United States Marshall Carrie Stetko for a sequel, Whiteout: Melt, and the two books remain the work that Lieber is best known for.

Whiteout has been adapted into a film, which was released in September. While enjoying the attention the film and his work have been receiving, Lieber has remained busy with a variety of comics and commercial projects through Portland’s Periscope Studio (which I recently visited), and has launched a new series with writer and studiomate Jeff Parker. Underground, a personal project that Lieber and Parker have been developing for several years, is poised to replace Whiteout as the book mentioned first when Lieber’s name comes up. The second issue will be released this week. I spoke with Lieber at Periscope on September 2nd.

Wright Opinion: So, after getting together everything I wanted to ask you, I also asked a few other people if they had any questions for you. And one that I really liked was from [Dark Horse digital artist and friend of Periscope] Ryan Hill, who wanted to know abut your recently learning to drive. How’s your experience with that been?

Steve Lieber: I still haven’t gotten a license. I went to one test. I’ve taken a whole bunch of lessons. The most recent go around trying to learn was my fourth, I think. I haven’t gotten the trick of not thinking of all the different ways I could die or kill somebody else, and I really have to change that, but so far it hasn’t happened. Fortunately, I work a job where it really doesn’t matter at all.

WO: The reason I liked that question and wanted to ask you about that is it seems you hear about a lot of comics people who do not or cannot drive, and I’m assuming there must be a reason for it, something connected to the job, or the fact that people work at home. Is there a reason that you keep hearing?

SL: I like to think that we all share the “dweeb gene.” I don’t know, in my case I just never got past that horrible visualization of crashes. I’ve been in two car-totaling crashes, and I’ve seen the end of a crash that wound up beheading somebody. That’s the first thing that I think of when I get into anybody’s car, much less the driver’s seat. The beheading actually happened at the Kubert School. I heard the crash, went outside and saw the car turned upside down. I think it flipped over off of a snowdrift by the side of the road. And the paramedics had to reach in and pull the head out by the hair.

WO: Jeez.

SL: Not one of the happier memories.

(more…)

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Resurrection: Relaunch as sequel and reboot

June 9, 2009
Resurrection vol. 2 #1
By Marc Guggenheim and Justin Greenwood
Oni Press — saddle-stitched, $3.99

I DON’T USUALLY REVIEW individual chapters of larger stories, as I prefer to stick to collections or at least full runs, but I enjoyed the recent Resurrection: Insurgent Edition paperback and Free Comic Book Day issue enough that this week’s new #1 had my interest. Writer Marc Guggenheim has come up with a great premise and presents it with a compelling point of view that instills the actions of even the unlikelier characters with believability.

The first chapter of Resurrection vol. 2 is something of a strange animal; similar to several recent film franchise reboots, it is part sequel and part remake. Oni Press has heavily emphasized the new series’ independence from the old one, and it’s true that all the information necessary to understand the premise is there. The first two pages use a very effective time-lapse sequence of presidential addresses to quickly establish the background: in 1998 aliens invaded Earth and, within a matter of days, completely conquered it. The sequence elegantly shows the progression from confusion to panic to defeat that characterized those few days.

The next page jumps ahead to 2007, setting up Resurrection’s real premise, the sudden and unexplained disappearance of the aliens after nearly ten years. This is where the relaunch gets a little weird. Pages three through eight are a word-for-word replay of the first six pages of the previous #1, reintroducing a group of characters who haven’t been seen since then. This certainly vindicates Oni’s confidence that new readers won’t be lost, but it does feel redundant to the returning reader, coming so soon after the collection of vol. 1. You couldn’t ask for a more direct method of recruiting new readers than returning to the series’ ground zero, but I found myself wondering if it couldn’t have been abridged somehow, instead of spending a fifth of the pages on something we’d seen before, staged exactly the same.

A positive effect of repeating those early pages is to flatter vol. 2’s new artist, Justin Greenwood. In every instance where he’s slightly altered a panel, his version is a little more dynamic, with greater depth and movement to it. His work throughout the issue is punchy and tells the story clearly. While David Dumeer’s art in the first series had an appropriate grit to it, it was often a bit flat and occasionally inconsistent, with characters sometimes looking different on some pages than others. Greenwood’s art is cleaner, but still largely captures the desolation of the post-invasion world, though it sometimes looks a little too spare, with small pieces of rubble spread thin against otherwise featureless landscapes.

After the repeated pages, the story diverges from Resurrection vol. 1, as characters go their separate ways. Where the first volume followed Sara, the character who went off on her own, here the story sticks with the remaining members of the group, spending the entire issue with them, and reintroducing various elements of the series’ world through their travels rather than jumping between several sets of characters in different locations, as in vol. 1. No single member of the group ends up receiving as much development as Sara did in vol. 1, but their adventures do have a sense of urgency—there are strong moments of drama that feel earned, and the ending takes the kind of left turn that leaves the reader with no idea where it might go, which is always good.

Following one cluster of survivors instead of several makes Resurrection more closely resemble The Walking Dead than before, with a similar focus on a diverse group attempting to survive in a post-disaster, monster-infested world, facing the potentially greater horror of their fellow man. That being the case, the addition of color was a wise choice, as it makes Resurrection more visually distinct from The Walking Dead, which it is not much like beyond those superficial elements. The colors also further the series’ aesthetic with a desert-dry palate dominated by orange, as though fires just beyond the horizon haven’t yet burned out.

Overall, the issue feels like a recap right after reading the collection of the series to date, and will actually probably read better for someone new to the series than returning readers. After I had such a good time with vol. 1, the new #1 didn’t add much that was new, but certainly fulfills its new-reader-friendly mandate. Since the story quickly moves in a different direction from vol. 1, there’s promise of more momentum in future issues, and this taste of what’s to come—and especially the revelations in the FCBD Resurrection #0, which introduced another subplot and actually advanced the overall story more than this issue—has definitely got me curious to see what comes next.

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The State of Romance Comics

August 31, 2007
True Story, Swear to God vol. 1
by Tom Beland
Image Comics – softcover, $14.99
Love as a Foreign Language vol. 2
by J. Torres & Eric Kim
Oni Press – softcover, $11.95

While subject diversity in comics is stronger than it was ten years ago, romance is a genre that doesn’t seem to have taken off as much as others. I think there might currently be more ongoing Western comics from major American publishers than romance comics. Imagine how different the movie industry would look if that were true of it!

I admit to not knowing a lot about classic romance comics, but I imagine them to be told largely from the point of view of women and the existence of the collection Romance Without Tears implies to me that the majority were fairly weepy and melodramatic (I would love to be corrected on either point, if any more knowledgeable person cares to comment at the bottom of this article). As to their disappearance, I suspect that, as they were being replaced by superhero comics, romance comics were also absorbed by them, as a melodramatic tone and soap opera structure have become superhero staples. In fact, True Story, Swear to God‘s Tom Beland was recently in contention to take over Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, Marvel Comics’ attempt to bring in teenage girls as readers by overtly blending the genres. That romance has been so thoroughly appropriated by superheroes probably explains why large publishers haven’t felt the need to launch separate romance series.

What got me thinking about romance comics was reading the second half of Love as a Foreign Language from Oni and trying out True Story, Swear to God for the first time in its new collection from Image. Though these came out a couple months apart, I happened to get them and read them around the same time and found the similarities––and differences––between them striking. Both feature men as their protagonists, and both play their romantic plots against culture shock stories set in other countries where neither main character speaks the language well. Foreign Language’s Joel is teaching English in Korea and True Story’s Tom (as you might guess from the title, the series is autobiographical) has moved to Puerto Rico to be with his girlfriend, Lily. Each uses periodic narration to describe the fish-out-of-water circumstances of the main character. Beland’s narration is his own, describing his thoughts and feelings as he tries to get by. In the case of Joel, the narration is general, meant to read as if it comes out of a guidebook on Korea and foreign living, and Joel’s experiences reflect its observations.

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Posted in Eric Kim, Image, J. Torres, Oni Press, Tom Beland | 3 Comments »

“To satisfy a woman, you need multiple warheads.”

August 3, 2007
Multiple Warheads #1: The FallBy Brandon GrahamOni Press – saddle stitched, $5.99  

If I had had $120 to spare last night, an original page of Multiple Warheads would have been mine. I was admiring them at the release party my local comic book shop, Floating World Comics, was throwing for Multiple Warheads author, Brandon Graham. Graham was in attendance, as was his roommate, Corey “Rey” Lewis of Sharknife fame, and when I presented him with a copy of Multiple Warheads to sign, he asked me what I’d like him to draw in it. “I don’t know,” I said. “What do you like to draw in the books?” He gave me the choice of a cute girl, a monster, or a robot. This boded very well for the contents of his new book. I chose the girl.

Graham’s style is cartoony and his figures cute and sexy. Multiple Warheads reveals a lot of influences in common with Lewis’ work, including manga and especially graffiti and video game aesthetics. However, Graham uses a thinner, much more consistent line and makes more limited use of greytones and off-kilter layouts, creating a less frenetic and cluttered page.

The book is in the same format as Lewis’ Peng and benefits from the standard-sized pages. Oni’s other series of the same length and pricepoint, Love as a Foreign Language and Love the Way You Love, are both serialized in digest format, with spines. Considering that they’re eventually collected into digest format anyway, I’d prefer this format for the single issues. Anyway, I’m glad that Multiple Warheads is presented this way, because the size really gives Graham’s art space to breath (I think that Sharknife was hurt by its size, even smaller than Oni’s usual digest format).

The story concerns Sexica, a designer organ smuggler, and her werewolf boyriend, Nikoli, trying to get by in a walled-in, neo-Soviet city full of aliens and robots. The title refers both to the many rockets that seem to be lodged into everything, and the extra wolf penis that Sexica has sewn onto Nikoli, making the wolf “part of him.” That detail, inspired by something an elderly Chinese cab driver said to him, is representative of the kind of unusual outlook and humor Graham brings to the book.

It’s self-contained, but also the first of a planned series of stories, so a lot of the book is given over to familiarizing readers with the world of Multiple Warheads. The first eight pages consist of Sexica approaching the city from the desert, while narration fills in details on her, the Dead City, and the aftermath of Wolf War III. The pacing is easygoing throughout, providing time to take in the technology and culture of the city and spend time with the characters while they aren’t up to much, so we’ll care more later when more’s at stake.

Overall, it’s hard to tell much about where the story will go from this issue, but the characters are endearing and the world is compelling, so I’m interested to see what becomes of Sexica and Nikoli’s ambition to leave their current lives and head for the Impossible City. Even if I weren’t, I’d be back for more of the unique and wonderful artwork. Wish I’d had that $120.

Note: The cover above is changed slightly in the published version: The logo is different and now says “Multiple Warheads” instead of “Multiple Warhedz,” so my spelling throughout the review is correct.

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Posted in Floating World Comics, Oni Press, Readings/Signings | Leave a Comment »

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