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Breakdowns - Lurid Goons and Their Mystic Souls

The Con is over. The Contest is over. Let's get back to business.

As far as the contest to win an Ashley Wood poster, dozens wrote in with the correct answer: Wayne Kramer, formerly of the MC5, wrote and sang, "Brought a Knife to the Gunfight." I think I said "a Gunfight," but it didn't confuse anyone, least of all our winners Chuck Keilberg, Jr., and Scott Senay. I'll send those off soon.

By the way, while I had a good, if brief (just two days) visit to the Comic-Con, hanging out with some of the other Poop Shooters, I'm not going to do another recap. Ryall and A.K. have covered much of this ground already. Let me just say that Scott Shaw! would only be slightly less unfunny to me as Eisner Awards host if there wasn't the clear and present danger he was going to go into cardiac arrest mid-joke. Oh, and nice ad lib comparing the guy who was just at the podium, who gave his emotional story of tracking down a Golden Age artist, to the Crocodile Hunter. Real classy, Scott, and way to break ground with another McFarlane baseball joke. I wonder if there's some sort of pH test to differentiate between his flop sweat and all the regular sweat? Anyway, enough of the bitter jolly funnyman. Jackie Estrada, please hang it up. Between you and Scott, the Eisner Awards are as boring as the Oscars would be if the representatives from Price Waterhouse hosted the whole thing. And judges: Shame on you for awarding Eisner for that simplistic, broad jeremiad THE NAME OF THE GAME. He's done great work; will probably do more. Not this time.

Last thing, and this one's not mean-spirited at all. Good to see that Marvel swooped in and snatched the talented Olivier Coipel from DC's LEGION to be the new AVENGERS artist. Dwyer was lousy, and now the book has a fighting chance to be top team book again, below maybe THE ULTIMATES but certainly above JLA. DC, you should've put Coipel's stuff into trades quickly; I'm sure Marvel's turnaround time had to be one of the enticements.

We've got plenty to cover again, so herewith are some short, sharp shocks of reviews.

THE GOON COLOR SPECIAL #1 by Eric Powell. Goon Comics $2.95
I'd never heard of this before, but the extensive hype says it's "the return," so ... now I know. The Goon is a plug-ugly slab of beef with gray morality and a seen-it-all-before attitude. His little sidekick convinces him there's treasure in an old haunted house, so he checks it out, and finds himself mixing it up with the zombie tenants. The character's no-nonsense, unsurprised attitude towards these monsters is reminiscent of Mike Mignola's HELLBOY, with the art a confident throwback to Al Williamson's style. HELLBOY or ROCKETEER fans should enjoy this. I'm an instant convert.

LURID #1 (OF 3) by Paul Lee and Adam Huntley. IDW Publishing. $2.99
Though the cover prominently features a stripper's g-string-clad ass, and there's copious nudity inside, this is all just window dressing for a realistic, almost mundane story of a young woman trying to pay the rent and keep some semblance of dignity doing it. The crux of this issue is that the landlord, thinking her occupation automatically equates with loose or absent morals, offers to take the rent out in trade, which she won't do. But an altercation with a customer at the club (Club Lurid is a real So-Cal strip joint) leads to a two-week suspension, so who knows what her other options are? The suspension seems a bit contrived to me; you figure they either fire her or tell her to go home for a night or two. Other than that, it's a mildly interesting story so far, though Lee doesn't give us much reason to care about her plight as yet. Huntley's art is very good on realistic anatomy and posing, though he mostly fails to convey the feel of a dark, strobe-lit club, instead giving us clear, sterile images with no light source and no backgrounds. There's almost an industrial or institutional feel to the art, which can't be what was asked for.

X-FORCE: NEW BEGINNINGS and X-STATIX #1 by Peter Milligan and Michael Allred. Marvel Comics. $12.95 and $2.99
During an X-books panel at the just-concluded Comic-Con International: San Diego, it was revealed that Milligan had never read an issue of X-MEN. While this no doubt caused further apoplexy to the faithful who have kept sales strong on the books through bad times and worse, I think it's perfect.

See, if things had gone the way the longtime fans wanted, we'd have yet another "new direction" for the same ol' second-and-third-rate characters, with distracting crossovers and lesser villains not already booked for the main X-titles. Even the attempted Warren Ellis-plotted revamp failed, utterly.

So the only way to save X-FORCE was to kill X-FORCE. Milligan didn't do that literally, but he just took the name and came up with all-new characters, a new slant - celebrity satire with a superteam going through problems similar to what boy bands or athletes would - and an exhilarating look courtesy of Mike (MADMAN, THE ATOMICS) Allred. Well, they have more than just the problems of media scrutiny and self-promotion while trying to be an effective team - they also get killed. Milligan leaves few stones unturned in examining these characters, who go through things like infighting, drug problems, being a role model for your race, homophobia and the question of whether heroism counts if a camera isn't there to record it.

The trade collects the first five issues of a 15-issue run, and even in these early tales one can see Allred, with wife Laura coloring, make dazzling advances in technique, adding sublime photorealistic effects to his tangy Silver Age style. As we move through an ever-changing roster, from the leadership of Zeitgeist to The Orphan, through sex and death and deadly vomit, the only constants are the alien documentarian Doop, sharp humor and stinging social commentary, and commanding entertainment.

And now we have X-STATIX, picking up smoothly from the previous book but without the confusion of calling the team X-Force when they don't resemble the previous holders of that name at all. As Guy tries to deal with the name change, Edie's death, and unwanted advances from Venus Dee Milo, there's a new team grabbing some attention: O-Force. There's also a deformed kid with a mad-on for the team. It's a little more open-ended story than many of the X-FORCE issues, but that makes sense for a relaunch. Darwyn Cooke illustrates a Blair Witch-inspired Corkscrew/Doop backup story that's fun but not his best art. If you haven't jumped on board, though, now's the time.

MYSTIC FUNNIES #3 by R. Crumb. Fantagraphics Books. $3.95
Yes, it's true: this is my first Crumb comic. I hate dishonest reviewers who act like they're hip to everything from the start, you know? So, yeah, aside from a couple short stories in some anthologies, this is my first real exposure to his work.

However, I have seen the movie, CRUMB, and so I was prepared for stories of political incorrectness, bitterness and obsession with girls with huge butts and thighs. Oddly enough, what I found in this comic had some of the latter, but everything was much milder and more conventionally humorous than I expected. "The Hipman" of the first story is after one of these powerful lovelies, but he's short and transparent and no match for either her strength or her confident spirit. It's funny and real, and quite contrary to the misogynist claims sometimes leveled at Crumb - the Hipman is the one to scorn here. "Don't Tempt Fate" is an autobiographical story about how young Robert busted his teeth by tempting fate, laying the foundation for dental problems as an adult. It was here that I realized that Crumb draws a lot like MAD MAGAZINE's Al Jaffee, except with much more gorgeous crosshatching. This deliberate style is especially suited to period stories like this. The last one, "Super Duck the Cockeyed Wonder in 'Freak Show,'" is in a simpler style, more like Carl Barks, and it's probably the funniest effort here, though the plot, involving a lackluster lover ingesting twice the recommended dosage of Viagra, has been seen in many variations elsewhere. Still, this was a great all-around book, with some extra one-page strips to boot, and I'll finally be grabbing more of his work.

REX MUNDI #0 by Arvid Nelson and Eric Johnson. Image Comics. $2.95
This was one that just snuck up on me. Never paid attention to the solicitation, don't like "zero" issues, and the title and logo are bad. And yet, the store proprietor handed it to me and said he was excited about it. I took a look, and here we are.

It's Paris, 1933, and Father Marin comes to Dr. Julien Sauniere with a problem. He's never told anyone before, but for years he has been the custodian of some ancient books and scrolls formerly belonging to the Knights Templar of Jerusalem. If any fell into the wrong hands, it would be disastrous, and because of a moment of weakness - a dalliance between the priest and a prostitute during which he told her his secret - one scroll has been stolen, one that gives the location of the tomb of a monarch named Clovis II. Sauniere agrees to help, and when he goes to talk to the girl, he finds her brutally murdered in the middle of a pentagram.

It's a little too quick a read for what should be a complex period mystery, but still an intriguing beginning. Johnson's art has a bit of the fussiness of Matthew (FELON) Clark, but is nicely detailed, with good composition. Cox' colors veer between moody and just monotonous, but it's not a bad start to a series. There is also a backup story of "Brother Matthew" that is not entirely successful, but the text pages between the two stories, a sort of fake Parisian newspaper, gives valuable information about the era and possibly a clue or two as well.

POTLATCH 2002 by Various. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. $4.95
This is the first such benefit anthology for the CBLDF, and one can only hope it's upward from here. If it's a choice between just sending the organization, which provides legal aid to comics creators and retailers in need, five bucks, or buying this book, sure, buy the book. There are a few good contributions here in this 150-page volume, notably Sal Cipriano's and Kristof Spaey's story of adultery turned upside down, "Heartache Hotel;" Stan Yan's funny customer service dialogue in "The Wang;" or Chris Staggs' and Marc Deering's schmaltzy but sweet, well-drawn "Stick With It," but that's honestly about the only stories that succeed. There are a couple more with good art but flawed stories, and many, many more with mediocre to poor, unattractive art and insipid, overly earnest, pointless or incomprehensible writing. I commend all the creators for their charitable efforts here, but it doesn't excuse bad work. Hopefully next year will find a higher percentage of stories of the quality of the ones I singled out above.

MORTAL SOULS #1 and 2 (OF 3) by Steven Grant and Phil Xavier. Avatar Press. $3.50
A review of Grant's most acclaimed work follows, but I'd been wondering what he's been up to lately. So I was happy to receive a few books from Avatar, the Publisher for MEN. OK, that's not their motto, but their demographic is clearly men. Men who like horror and bloodshed and girls with thongs. And if that's good enough for Warren Ellis, Grant and now Alan Moore, it's good enough for me.

I don't know how much horror Grant's written in his career, but this book plays to his strengths. We have a hard-boiled, hardheaded protagonist in Detective Eric Sharpe, who finds he has the ability, THEY LIVE-style, to see the walking dead among us. A sort of avenging angel aids him and shows him the ropes, while he tries to avoid getting killed. What makes it tougher is that his partner is in league with these zombies, though he doesn't know it yet. So far, like much of Ellis' Avatar work, this is a nice little three-act horror B-movie, with art that's competent and exuberantly gross, but a little stiff and not quite ready for prime time.

BADLANDS by Steven Grant and Vince Giarrano. AIT/PlanetLar. $12.95
BADLANDS is a speculative JFK assassination story told as punchy crime fiction. Although Oswald plays a small role, we're dealing with a whole 'nother patsy here, one Connie Bremen, an ex-con who can't find honest work. A guy he used to run with, Janetty, descends upon him like a big, bad wolf, and the trap is set. Connie is put up by a Texas millionaire, with the singular duty of chauffeuring the man's daughter and seeing that she doesn't get into trouble. This isn't so easy, since the girl is a nymphomaniac. This Jim Thompsonesque subplot takes up a significant part of the book, actually, but throughout, Grant doesn't forget to move the players into position for the attempted kill, with Connie forced to be the shooter. Once the kill is accomplished, Connie is forced to hide, girl in tow, and try to find a safe place, knowing he's a big loose end the men behind the conspiracy want to tie off. Whether he makes it or not is unimportant; what's interesting is the journey. There are no heroes here; everyone is playing a part, looking after their own interests with varying levels of enthusiasm. Janetty is a fully realized fixer, a psychopath given to corny pop hits and never happier than when he's killing someone. The characters are all vividly degenerate, and the book is much closer in style and execution to the work of James Ellroy than, say, Howard Chaykin and David Tischman's AMERICAN CENTURY is. Giarrano is a great artist for this book - very grounded, no flash at all. He tells the story with ruthless efficiency, serving the script instead of trying to make a name for himself. For this reason, he's barely in comics anymore, but hopefully this reissue will wake some editors up again. AiT ought to be commended for bringing this '90s sleeper back into print.

SPACEMAN by Michael Allred and Lawrence Marvit. Oni Press. $3.50
There are a handful of comics creators at the forefront of cool. You know, where whatever they do is fun and exciting and worth getting, where even the silliest, least promising project is guaranteed not to disappoint. An Arthur Adams or Matt Wagner in the '80s; today, Scott Morse, Darwyn Cooke or Mike Allred. Here, as in the IT GIRL one-shot a few months back, Allred offers a collaborative effort. He writes and draws this time, but lets Marvit, of SPARKS should-be-fame, do the painted backgrounds. The plot is simplicity itself, involving a spaceman, with Buck Rogers-era raygun, exploring a strange planet and encountering menacing aliens. Adventure happens. But it's done with unironic zeal, and Marvit's backgrounds, which resemble Cartoon Network-style animation, add a wonderful new flavor to Allred's art. He favors a lot of blue, which makes this seem more like an underwater tale, actually. There could be a better story, true, but there's enough there to make this more than just eye candy.

Anyway, I'm going to fight my habit of squeezing in just one or two more reviews, despite the stacks of books I still need to get to. Just keep reading and we'll be getting to lots of Fantagraphics and Drawn and Quarterly books, and maybe even a couple of Marvel's Essentials to keep things fun. Later.

Chris Allen

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