Short Pamphlet Reviews

A brief rundown of a few recently read pamphlets.

Phonogram: The Singles Club #1
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Jamie McKelvie, Laurenn McCubbin, Marc Ellerby, Matthew Wilson

I haven't read the original miniseries, which was based on the idea of the magic of pop music. The lead story Pull Shapes is a beautifully illustrated character piece about the somewhat immature Penny B, a woman who derives her magic from dancing to music. The backup stories aren't as compelling. She Who Bleeds for Your Entertainment is about the dual portrayal of women in music as both victims and empowering figures. Murder on the Dance Floor is a lighthearted piece about how the right kind of music can change the mood and diffuse a tense situation.

Glamourpuss #4

Dave Sim continues tracing photorealistic art by analyzing the development of Alex Raymond's extreme fine line inking technique using brushes - He christens it the nightingale style. After he rejects the conventional explanation of how Raymond achieved the effect, he claims to have found another way to successfully duplicate the results (The reader can judge Sim's copy of Rip Kirby panels throughout the issue), but won't reveal how. As with every previous issue, his obsessive shop talk is mixed with eye-catching fashion illustrations and fake ads. These drawings are some of the best so far in the series, so maybe he does know what he's talking about. Heh. His satire, as usual, is still hit or miss and contains more than a little condescension. This disconnect between the fashion material and art instruction is linked by Sim's formalist fetish for figure drawing.

Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade #1
Writer: Landry Walker
Artists: Eric Jones, Pat Brosseau, Joey Mason

Why does every children's comic book DC puts out feel like it was also designed for the fanboy? Three pages in and the series is already cracking jokes about Kara being a "secret weapon". This is basically a fish-out-of-water story aimed at older children, with the super-powered alien functioning as a stand-in for the middle school student. Kara's developing powers work as a metaphor for the awkwardness of early adolescence. This is the gawkiest visual interpretation of Supergirl being currently published. As if the folks at DC didn't find her modest attire androgynous enough, she's given a boyishly short haircut. All she needs now are braces. The brightly colored art is similar to the retro look used in many Cartoon Network original programming. This could be a successful book, assuming kids still visit comic book stores these days.

Secret Invasion #8
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Lenil Francis Yu, Mark Morales, Laura Martin, Chris Eliopoulos

The final issue to this chaotic miniseries continues the rather confusingly staged Central Park showdown between the Skrulls and Earth's defenders from the last issue. It's the Skrulls for Pete's sake, so it's no surprise who wins. But Tony Stark gets blamed for the invasion, and Norman Osborne is celebrated as a hero, proving once again that Marvel Earth's media is run by a bunch of hapless idiots. Oh, the issue leads into the Dark Reign event arc.

Secret Invasion: Dark Reign #1
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Alex Maleev, Dean White, Chris Eliopoulos

This one-shot sets up the next link in Marvel's chain of event crossovers. Having replaced Tony Stark as the guy in charge of the Initiative and the Avengers, Norman Osborne convenes a new secret cabal consisting of Emma Frost, Namor, Loki, Dr. Doom and the Hood, for who knows what end. No one, except maybe the Hood, seems wiling to work with Osborne. But then he concludes the meeting by revealing some shadowy enforcer, which seems to achieve the desired effect. For an issue full of talking heads, the dialogue has all the flavor of a corporate board discussing a hostile takeover rather than a villainous gathering plotting to rule the world. Where's the bombastic pronouncements from Doom and Namor? Or Emma Frost's dry wit? As for the visuals, the characters, except Doom, appear rather mundane. Namor in particular looks like an unshaven, smelly, fat slob. What's up with that?

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt #1
Writer: Mike Mignola
Artist: Duncan Fegredo, Dave Stewart

Mignola continues to add even more layers to his already texturally dense world. Hellboy finally learns that the fairie folk are preparing for war. He then accepts an invitation to hunt for giants in the English countryside. Most space is used for recapping past events, building tension amongst the supernatural races, and explaining the traditions of the mysterious Wild Hunt. But it does end in a clever cliffhanger. Expect to see some two-fisted action involving our hero next issue.

Glamourpuss #1

"...I want to do photorealism pictures of pretty girls, so that's I'm going to do. The words were an aterthought. Okay, let's stick with that. " - Dave Sim

Dave Sim isn't the first cartoonist who's wanted to spend time drawing pictures of attractive women, nor will he be the last. Not content with compiling his drawings into an art book, he's chosen to engage his audience in detailed discussion about his work. Hence we have a new series called Glamourpuss. This 1st issue contains Sim's attempts to draw his chosen subjects in the style of Alex Raymond, John Prentice, Al Williamson, Stan Drake and Neal Adams, accompanied by comics-style narrative text explaining the results of his efforts. The desire to document his autodidactic obession is combined with an almost equally strong need to instruct and inform the reader. He knows they'll only glance momentarily at each picture before moving on, so he insists they spend a bit more time marveling at the craft involved in order to draw like these old masters of the medium.

It's a curious project to say the least. Dave Sim is an accomplished comics artist - some would argue he's one of the industry's greatest living practitioners. So it's hard to ignore his retro choice of art style to impersonate from. The results are at first glance, very convincing. Sim uses as his reference various unnamed fashion magazine photos, which he draws in the photorealist manner. He also takes panels from the Rip Kirby comic strip out of their original context, redraws them, then juxtaposes them along with his fashion illustrations. Needless to say, the continuity between the pictures is nowhere near as seamless as in a more conventionally constructed comic. But then again Sim seems less interested in telling a story for story's sake than in educating the reader about a bit of comics history. His self-crticism reaches maniacal levels as he attempts to guess what lines to leave in, how to depict certain textures with a brush, or what areas to interpret as pure black.

The centerpiece of the book is a six page sequence entitled The Self-education of N'atashae. It's composed of a series of full page drawings of one fashion model, linked by heavy-handed narration detailing her thoughts and misguided attempts to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Sim is attempting to simultaneously do several things: He's trying to demonstrate the immense difficulty of constructing a story from disparate sources; Provide a kind of secret origin story for the comic; And he's poking fun at the vacuousness of the fashion industry as well as the shallowness of materialistic western consumer culture. Sim just can't help being didactic.


Glamourpuss is basically a hybrid product - Part black and white comic pamphlet, part illusrated essay, and part fashion magazine parody. Digressions about craft are interrupted by spoof articles and fake ads. While the shop talk will be of interest to history buffs and aspiring artists, the attempts at humor produce mixed results. Dim looking fashion models make an easy target, but Sim's jokes are a heavy blunt weapon he ungainly wields to make his point. One article titled Skanko's Dating Guide might remind people of Sim's past controversial statements.

It's not clear where all of this is headed. While the fashion drawings are beautifully rendered, they also reveal the underlying homogeneity of the source material. There's something cumulatively oppressive about the overall tone of the work that probably arises from the disjointed panels and text's attempts to impress its lessons on the reader. Sim's parody gets a bit tiresome by the end of the issue, but he intends to continue Glamourpuss for more that 20 issues. What more does he have to say? Then again, Dave Sim is the man who delivered on his promise that Cerebus would die, alone, unmourned and unloved after 300 issues. So I wouldn't be surprised if he has a master plan that will gradually reveal itself as the series unfolds.