Thor #1 and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #1

Thor #1

By Jason Aaron, Russell Dauterman, Matthew Wilson, Joe Sabino, Frank Martin, Sara Pichelli, Laura Martin, Esad Ribic, Andrew Robinson, Alex Ross, Fiona Staples, Skottie Young.

Thor created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby.

The new status quo for the latest Thor series relaunch begins with the Asgardians assembled on the surface of the Moon to watch a moping thunder god. Having recently returned from yet another period of self-imposed exile, Odin finds his son hunched over his magic hammer Mjolnir, inexplicably no longer worthy of lifting it. His response to this sight is to blame his wife and interim leader Freyja for letting the emasculation of one of Marvel’s manliest heroes happen on her watch. This bit of dickishness being exhibited by one of the publisher’s more awful father-figures provides a not too subtle setup for the grand entrance of a much publicized, all new, unmistakably female Thor. But she only makes an appearance at the very end of the issue, so the reader’s denied the great pleasure of witnessing Odin’s horrified reaction.

What this issue does offer is a cantankerous Odin and sharp-tongued Freyja trading verbal barbs (in which she usually gets the better of the exchanges), Malekith behaving like a complete sociopath by happily tormenting a couple of mere mortals, and Thor acting depressed until he’s snapped out of his funk by the call to action. Always be the hero, even if only an unworthy one. While previous artist Esad Ribic drew in a more classic fantasy vein, Russell Dauterman finds a balance between the fantasy and superhero approach, which suits the demands of the story. His facility with faces allows him to portray perhaps the most emo version of Thor I’ve encountered in the series. And he seems comfortable recreating a variety of sci-fi and fantasy settings, whether deep space or the bottom of the ocean, immortal gods, frost giants, or killer sharks. He’s capably aided by colorist Matthew Wilson, who keeps everything bright and saturated with judicious use of a limited palette tied together by carefully shaded blues, greens, reds and yellows. Probably my favorite panel is a two-page spread portraying in dramatic panorama an army of giants attacking an undersea base, their skin faintly illuminated by the artificial lights. This is a comic of high stakes realized in the widescreen format.

Discovering someone other than Thor who can lift Mjolnir has become a bit cliched at this point. But if you don’t count alternate continuities, the candidates have all been invariably male. Writer Jason Aaron emphasizes the significance of this point through revealing some of the misogyny found within Asgardian society. Putting gender roles aside, the story does strongly imply that the new Thor is a supporting cast member who’s decided to step up to the big leagues. But unless her identity is quickly revealed next issue, this could be a form of misdirection.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #1

By Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Robert Hack, Jack Morelli.

Sabrina the Teenage Witch by George Gladir, Dan DeCarlo, Rudy Lapick, Vincent DeCarlo.

Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s various media adaptations have tended to play to the Disney Channel/Nickelodean/ABC crowd through employing inoffensive tween humor. By contrast, her first appearance in the short story written by George Gladir and drawn by Dan DeCarlo portrays a character with a sinister edge to her. She’s been tasked to interfere with the lives of her fellow high school students, which she does by making them fall in love with each other, or by altering the outcome of various sporting events. As dastardly acts go, it’s still relatively innocuous stuff. But that darkness at the heart of the character forms the basis for this latest, horror-driven, reimagining of her.

Visually, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina smartly moves away from the seductive imagery of the legendary DeCarlo by using more realistically drawn figures. Robert Hack’s heavily textured surfaces and inky blotches certainly imbue the otherwise bucolic setting in an uncomfortable, claustrophobic haze, making everything look like they're covered in soot. Adding to the level of uneasiness is the intense yellow and orange color scheme. The whole story sometimes looks like it’s set on Mars, or a post-apocalyptic desert landscape. Everyone shambles around like zombies. Nothing about this world would make me want to live in it.

If I have one complaint, it’s that Hack still doesn’t have a firm grasp on the characters yet, especially the main protagonist. Sabrina’s jawline and eyes keep changing every few panels, and that’s pretty distracting.

Storywise, this issue jumps around a lot, feeling a little disjointed in places. It starts with an origin tale featuring Sabrina’s parents, followed by a montage of Sabrina’s upbringing, ending with her first day in Greendale High School. Many of the classic supporting characters are introduced from aunts Hilda and Zelda, cat familiar Salem, cousin Ambrose, school crush Harvey, and teenage rival Rosalind. In keeping with the horror angle, the witches worship Satan, practice the dark arts, and are casually cruel to mortals. Sabrina herself comes across as a mostly amoral figure with a touch of Carrie and the Anti-Christ. There’s this unexpected subplot involving two famous Riverdale characters being members of another coven that’s largely disconnected from Sabrina's narrative. But the creepy cliffhanger raises some questions as to how the supernatural is supposed to interact with the mundane world.

Read an Online Copy of Action Comics #1

Go to: CGC Comics, by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster et al.

Doctors

by Dash Shaw

The premise for Doctors would have formed the basis for an expensive, effects-laden Hollywood techno-thriller where the cast engages in spectacular battles for the fate of the world within elaborately-constructed virtual settings. There’s some interplay between the real and the illusory in these kinds of blockbusters. But for the most part, the difference between the two realms remains clear. But for an artist like Dash Shaw, such epistemological plot devices are employed to chip-away at the borders separating the land of the living and of the dead. This serves to illuminate his characters’ own pathetic experiences, desires, ambitions and fears. And this complicates the choices they make when confronted with their own mortality.

Ever the restless experimenter, Shaw’s artistic choices are designed to enhance the reader’s disorientation. Doctors is a terse graphic novel, barely under a hundred pages. Virtually every page is a vignette, which keeps the dialogue short and to the point. And each is dominated by a minimalist color overlay. On one hand this emphasizes the graphic quality of Shaw’s unadorned black and white drawings. But his selection of muted tones can often obscure its finer details. And the choice to give each page a different color overlay forces the reader to recognize the abstract nature of art and the illusory nature of the comics medium.

Towards the end, certain background details and oft-repeated patterns suddenly come to the foreground in rapid succession. There’s no clear symbolism to these objects, just a random assortment which seem to only have personal significance to the characters. It’s fragmentary, subjective, and an appropriately confounding way to end the story.

The book’s titular characters are a Doctor Cho, his daughter Tammy, and medical assistant Will. They run a clandestine business that revives the recently dead. Cho has invented a device he ironically dubs “Charon”, which allows the user to enter into the mind of the deceased (apparently confirming the mind-body dichotomy). When people die, their minds enter a kind of afterlife molded from that individual’s memories, hopes, and desires. This condition is only temporary and the mind itself will eventually “fade to black.” The trick to reviving the deceased is to convince them that the afterlife they’re experiencing isn’t real.

The story begins deceptively enough with the introduction of a wealthy widower referred to as Miss Bell. One day, she meets a young man named Mark and after a brief courtship, begins a May-December romance with him. For Bell, it sounds too good to be true. But their idyllic relationship is eventually disturbed by the presence of Bell’s daughter Laura, who begins to utter several cryptic remarks. Bell initially believes that Laura has joined some kind of religious cult. After awhile, she realizes that Laura is actually an avatar being used by the doctors to establish contact with her in the afterlife. This revelation causes her to return to consciousness. Shaw’s portrayal of her resurrection is particularly unnerving, a horrific process signalled by the zap of a defibrillator. She wakes up in a makeshift operating theater surrounding by medical equipment connected to her by various tubes and wires. The doctors inform her that it was the real Laura who had arranged for her to be brought back to life after she suffered a fatal accident.

Turns out though that resurrecting people has tragic consequences because everyone who was ever revived was just too traumatized from being torn from their afterlife to successfully return to their old self. After witnessing the toll it takes on Bell, Tammy begins to openly express her simmering doubts about the usefulness of Charon. But she’s unable to stand up to her more callous and overbearing father (whom she nicknames “Dr. No” for his ability to reject all of her requests and suggestions). Cho could care less what happens to his patients afterwards as long as new clients are lining-up to pay for his services. But has Cho bitten off more than he can chew when he agrees to help his friend Clark Gomez, a self-centered, hedonistic man who refuses to succumb to a terminal condition?

Ferrying people between life and death causes the doctors to suffer in their own way. Cho has lost all empathy and has become obsessed with controlling every aspect of his life. Tammy continually questions whether she’s even truly alive, and can only cultivate a meaningful relationship within the confines “The Sims” video game. Both have lost the ability to connect with each other and with the outside world. How can anyone remain convinced that what they experience is real when they spend so much time inside their own heads while invading the minds of others? Shaw does allow them a reconciliation of sorts. Even there, the reader is left adrift with an epilogue in which life and death cascade into one other like a recursive dream.

Webcomic: The Underdog Myth

Go to: Medium, by Mike Dawson (via Heidi MacDonald)

Cartoon Essay: Writing People of Color

Go to: Midnight Breakfast, by MariNaomi et al.

Cartoon: Me and the Universe

Go to: New York Times, by Anders Nilsen (via Heidi MacDonald)

Webcomic: The Last Saturday

Go to: The Guardian, by Chris Ware

Gallery: Darwyn Cooke's DC Universe Widescreen Variant Covers

Go to: ComicsAlliance, by Darwyn Cooke

Do not make any sudden menacing or threatening gestures

Go to: Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling. 

Go to: Medium, by Matt Bors.

Journal Comic: July Diary (2014)

Go to: Lucky by Gabrielle Bell

Webcomic: Graveyard Quest

Go to: Gunshow by KC Green

Being good to each other is so important

Go to: Naterade by Nate Swinehart

Codename: Sailor V

Created by Naoko Takeuchi.
Translated by William Flanagan.

Anyone coming to Codename: Sailor V from Sailor Moon is going to experience a certain degree of déjà vu. After all, the latter began by cannibalizing its predecessor for ideas, then simply proceeded to annex it wholeheartedly. Sailor V went into hiatus, returned after a prolonged absence, and completed its arc after Sailor Moon had already concluded. So this manga is both the defacto starting point of the Sailor Moon saga and its prequel. The reader can spot when this change occurs by the obligatory Usagi Tsukino cameo. And the rest of the inner senshi drop by at various points in their civilian identities, as the Sailor V timeline takes place well before Usagi had assumed the Sailor Moon mantle. Since all the truly epic stuff will only take place in her manga, nothing of great consequence to the cast can happen here.

This does free Sailor V to be its own thing. And what a goofy thing it is. The two manga's respective casts have often been compared to each other given that Sailor Moon recycles much of Sailor V’s character designs. Naoko Takeuchi was not the most inventive cartoonist in that regard, and it’s hard not to notice the close resemblance of everyone's faces, especially the supporting males who function primarily as interchangeable bishonen. Even the heroes Usagi and Minako Aino posses a “siblings separated at birth” similarity to them when placed side by side. On a metatextual level, that actually makes sense. Minako is the cooler, tougher, more physically capable, boisterous, and overbearing older creation who’s used to getting her own way. Even after the animal familiar Artemis unlocks Minako's mysterious superpowers and instructs her on their noble purpose, she feels just as entitled exploiting them for petty gain as she does for fighting crime. But it’s played for comic effect, so the reader simply laughs it off when Minako ignores Artemis’ admonitions by using her magic items to cheat on school homework.

Speaking of which, those two have a pretty adversarial relationship due to Minako’s total lack of interest in taking her mission seriously. Sailor Moon fans will of course be aware of the high stakes at play in the future. But at this stage, Artemis is either unable or unwilling to reveal too much to Minako outside of telling her to kick evil's butt whenever it appears. The manga hews closer in mood to the early Sailor Moon anime episodes with its monster-of-the-week structure and the arch villain still only a vague threat. Heck, the second antagonist Minako confronts is an obnoxious otaku who can’t stand that girls now hang out at his favourite video gaming spot. Wow. Nice to know that the “fake geek girl” complaint isn’t actually that recent an invention.

Two recurring plot elements are used to emphasize the action-comedy nature of the manga. The first is Minako wielding her magic to assume different disguises before revealing her Sailor V identity. It’s a trope popularized by past magical girls from Cutey Honey onward, and Minako uses it to similar effect here. Usagi dropped this tactic as Sailor Moon became more serious, but Minako simply can’t resist the desire to keep changing her appearance. Each transformation sequence works as crucial story beat. And gratuitous as that sounds, Takeuchi’s art comes alive when she’s showcasing her characters in various outfits.

These pinups are also signposts of Takeuchi’s artistic evolution. I have complained in the past about the busy page compositions of Sailor Moon, but they’re positively claustrophobic in Sailor V. Takeuchi sticks to more grid-like layouts here, and her figures have a slightly blockier look to them. It’s as if Takeuchi fears the negative space. The overall effect is frenetic, and perhaps a little inelegant. It’s only in the later chapters where she gradually drops the number of panels and gives her transformations space to breathe on the page.

The second is Minako’s propensity to keep falling in love with the wrong guy. The opening chapter has her crushing on the BMOC, who naturally turns out to be evil. She keeps fantasizing about every cute boy she meets, only for her hopes to be dashed at very turn, usually because the boy has his eye on someone else. Minako's bumbling efforts to land a beau even get lampshaded by the supporting cast. But midway through the manga her latest failed attempt ends on a more melancholic note when she helps reunite two star-crossed lovers. This prophetic incident is followed by an encounter with a masked hero named Phantom Ace. Fans will recognize him as a variant of Tuxedo Mask who prefers to toss playing cards instead of roses. Most of the remaining chapters have Minako and Ace teaming up to fight the bad guys. So does this mean she'll find true love?

Given how Minako Aino was introduced in Sailor Moon, the answer is a definite “no.” What awaits her in the final chapter instead is an unexpected escalation of hostilities. The art for the climactic showdown provokes the most drastic stylistic shift found in the entire series. Its participants begin to unleash enormous waves of energy more characteristic of Sailor Moon's world-shaking battles, which succeeds in finally warping the panels of the traditional grid. This precipitates Minako's ultimate, and excruciating transformation. But she emerges from her ordeal as a more mature Sailor Venus.

It’s a majestic scene overflowing with self-awareness, but also a peculiar downer of an ending for such a bubbly shojo adventure. Minako may have started out a typical magical girl protagonist, but during the manga’s run, she became destined to be the supporting character in someone else's love story. A happy, romantic resolution to her manga was no longer in the cards.

Journal Comic: Eleanor Davis

Go to: The Comics Journal: Pt 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, by Eleanor Davis

More NonSense: Ferguson Edition

The Militarization of Officer Joe

Go to: MAD Magazine, by Desmond Devlin (via Kevin Melrose)

The militarised response to protests over the police killing of unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri has provoked outrage among many in the comics community. Brett Shenker collects a sampling of their tweets.

On the other hand, Casey Johnston notes how Facebook's tendency to filter for uncontroversial feel-good content makes it more difficult to discover Ferguson-related posts.

Everyone else is linking to this Jon Kudelka cartoon.

Mike Dawson muses on the Kajieme Powell police shooting.

Sean Howe's profile of Frank Miller, who's currently in the spotlight for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, is the best comics-centric summary of his career so far. His portrait of the man paints the rise, fall, and possible redemption of one of the industry's most influential, not to mention outspoken, figures from the last 30 years.

According to Alan David Doane, the accompanying photos taken by Richard Burbridge have generated speculation about Miller's health. Bill Sienkiewicz quashes the rumours. I really admire how Miller has successfully retained his firebrand persona. It's something that animates everything he draws. But my one takeaway from these articles is how much he's weathered as a person and as an artist. 9/11 galvanised Miller in a thoroughly unpleasant way. His divisive rant on the Occupy Wall Street movement exhibits no empathy towards the concerns of people half his age.  And that's a little disheartening for even a curmudgeon like me.

Milo Manara's alternate cover to Spider-Woman #1 has sparked outrage for its suggestive pose, dredging up the usual issues of female representation and the industry's systematic failure to attract a larger female audience. Manara's own confused response did him no favours by ranging from the "women are naturally sexy" excuse to mentioning Ferguson, the current Ebola crisis, and Islamic fundamentalism. Meanwhile Tom Brevoort defends the publication of the cover. Tom Spurgeon and Amy Reeder each give a more nuanced response.

The marriage of Manara's sensibilities to American superheroes is actually rather atypical. The resulting image is erotic, but in a freakish rather than a seductive way. I'm not sure if I like it. But if Manara was trying to emphasise the inherent weirdness of superheroes, I think he might have succeeded.

Yale Stewart has put his webcomic JL8 on hiatus after admitting to sending unsolicited photos (NSFW) of himself fondling his privates to two women with whom he was involved. Before that, Stewart was threatened over the phone. He has since apologised for his gross behaviour.

What's interesting is the indirect manner in which the social media firestorm arose in the first place. Ulises Farinas initially accused Stewart of cynically capitalising on tragic events as a means to self-promotion, most recently the selling of his Ferguson desktop wallpaper. This prompted references to the existence of various "dick pics." Now, sending erotically-tinged messages isn't odd in this day and age, but the practice turns ugly when its unasked for. Stewart's actions can't be condoned, but neither should the making of threatening phone calls. Turns out the Web is still a very clumsy tool when wielded as a means to mete out justice. Who'd have thunk?

Only Stewart knows what was on his mind when he fashioned the Ferguson wallpaper, so I'll give him the benefit of doubt. But given the circumstances, employing the military-style Green Lantern Corps to call for unity might not have been the best choice.

Chris Sims on the splendid mess that is "Crisis on Infinite Earths." Even I could tell back then that the motive behind the series was editorial's desire to mold its diverse properties into a much more homogeneous unit. In retrospect, that it didn't succeed wasn't all that surprising. Not that it stops DC from continuing to shoehorn Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman into the same milieu.

I contribute to Twitter Nation.

Sketch: So What He Stole A Box Of Cigars?

Go to: Medium, by Dan Archer (via Tom Spurgeon)

Cartoon: You Might As Well Live

Go to: Darryl Cunningham Investigates (via Brigid Alverson)

You can also listen to this podcast for another perspective on the very same anecdote.

Gallery: Tribute to Robin Williams

Alex Fine

Go to: Vice (via Tom Spurgeon) and Robot 6

The Playboy: a comic-strip memoir

By Chester Brown

Playboy magazine has been around for so long that its boudoir-inspired aesthetic has practically become the very definition of kitsch.  And yet, it’s arguably due to the publication’s historic success that the tale found in a high school memoir like The Playboy isn’t really all that remarkable for the countless number of adolescent males growing up in the suburbs. Sure, the multimillion-dollar publishing empire has dwindled away over the decades. But its legacy continues in the constant stream of moderately titillating, slickly produced, and slightly pretentious imagery of half-naked women now ubiquitous in pretty much all visual media, despite the objections coming from both the more puritanical and the more progressive. It wouldn’t be surprising if this larger societal conflict informed the experiences of a young Chester Brown as he goes through the typical cycle of lust, attraction, anticipation, satiation, emptiness, guilt, paranoia, self-loathing, loneliness, only to circle back to lust. But Brown carves out a small niche for himself by navigating between the more familiar territories of self-flagellation, the blatantly pornographic, the polemical, or the farcical. Brown’s approach is to crystallise the inner turmoil he felt as he recalls his oft-repeated encounters with Playboy during the mid-70s. Everything else recedes into the background.

What’s at first striking after reading TP is what’s being left out of the main narrative. Brown’s minimalist self-portrait effectively converts him into a blank slate, which allows readers to project their own anxieties on to him. They won’t delve too deeply into his religion or politics. His family or friends. Or his love life. But they will be able to gaze at some of his favourite centerfolds. Observe his odd masturbation technique. And identify with his frantic attempts to hide/get rid of his magazine collection. The terse narrative inadvertently functions as a kind of Rorschach test. Some readers might see in it a tacit condemnation of all pornography. Or a confessional about a youthful addiction Brown eventually outgrew. Or a cautionary tale of how Playboy might have irreparably damaged his ability to form healthy relationships with flesh-and-blood women. Some might even remark on how he never makes the transition to more hardcore material.

For my part, I detect no real moral disapprobation. Brown uses an interesting narrative device where his older self from the 90s visits his teenage self in the 70s as a tiny bat-winged figure. The daemonic avatar enlivens what is otherwise a visually monotonous and lonely pursuit. The supernatural appearance works in conjunction with Playboy being viewed at the time as forbidden fruit, but the interaction is entirely one-way. The older Brown doesn’t tempt his younger self but merely provides commentary on his actions while the latter remains completely oblivious to his presence. Older Brown might express occasional frustration with himself, but never any remorse for having possessed multiple copies of the magazine in the first place. And who knows what other forms of pornography he's gone on to consume since he outgrew this obsession? The book only focuses on Brown's relationship with Playboy during a very limited time period. Unsurprisingly, this provoked speculation about his sex life since TP's 90s publication. Brown has tried to address some of them in the 2013 revised edition through copious additional endnotes. This adds another layer of commentary, which complicates the book's overall impact. But this tactic is preferable to making significant revisions to the original comic itself (though he does make several minor changes), as that would have altered its rigorous structure.

The other thing that made an impression on me are the visual juxtapositions. Brown doesn’t come from the realist school of cartooning, and TP is representative of his earlier deconstructed style were the pages contained only a few panels in order to let the negative space dominate the composition. In contrast, he’s remarkably literal when reproducing the magazine's pictorials. The June 1975 issue in particular becomes an important motif as he goes through the act of buying, then throwing away his own copy, only to purchase another on a later date. As a medium, photography takes advantage of the sensuous qualities of light, colour and atmosphere. But when Brown translates the original glossy magazine images into black and white inks with his own awkward style, what ends up mostly coming across isn't the glamour but the artificiality of the poses and facial expressions. Yet when these conscientiously hand-drawn copies are placed next to Brown’s less detailed, wispier, big-headed characters within the book, they transform into something both more static and larger-than-life. After almost 40 years, it's evident that they still have some totemic power over the artist.

Animation: Manly

Go to: Cartoon Hangover, by Jesse Moynihan and Justin Moynihan (via Lauren Davis)