Category Archives: Comics

> Curses by Kevin Huizenga

rating: 5 of 5 stars

Very good stuff. The whole modern suburban mysticism is neat. The book is a collection of stories about a character named Glenn Ganges that share the theme of religion or spirituality. The best ones are the hilarious and interesting 28th Street, about a magic feather and secret fertility ceremony, and Jeepers Jacobs, about a seminary student and preacher who’s working on a thesis about Hell.

I liked this more than another collection of stories based on the titular character, titled Ganges.

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> The Best of the Spirit by Will Eisner

rating: 5 of 5 stars

Great stuff from a master in the medium. Visually inventive and ahead of its time. I disagree with other reviewers comments it’s completely misogynistic. The Spirit gets beat up a lot and several of the most clever and independent characters are women. One of the few ‘negative lights’ you see them portrayed in that most of them are “bad guys.”

The stories are fun and the character’s genesis is fairly unique, although I think I know where the name Cobra, for the evil forces from G.I. Joe, may have come from now.

The collection does span the entire run but rightfully skips out on the years ghost writers took over while Will Eisner was in WWII. If, like me, you become interested in more after getting a taste, note that the DC Archives hardcover reprint editions include even those years when Eisner wasn’t involved, so you can skip volumes 3-11. That’s a big help when there’s like 28 volumes. :)

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> Wasteland Book 1: Cities In Dust by Antony Johnston

rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first six issues of Antony Johnston and Christopher Mitten’s Wasteland are a bit of a mixed bag. There’s the post-apocalyptic wasteland (“I had the titular line in that” tee hee), supernatural powers and a fairly intriguing main character.

There’s also dialogue with too many made-up words (if you haven’t read the xkcd strip on this theory, do so now at xkcd.com/483/), a hokey religion of sun and moon worship and cities with pretty dumb names.

Despite all of this, there was enough drama that I am encouraged to read more. But the second volume will determine whether or not the bad parts outweigh the good ones. So far they do.

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> Maximum Fantastic Four by Stan Lee

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I learned things about Marvel and the history of the American comic scene that I hadn’t known before. For instance, that the Fantastic Four were the first of Marvel’s super-hero team-based comics and helped to revitalize lagging sales and creative output.

But the main purpose of Maximum Fantastic Four is to showcase Kirby’s iconic art. The premise of blowing up each panel of a single comic and selling it as a hardcover book is amazing. I used to do this on my own because I tend to read comics slowly, panel by panel. So this book was very exciting for me to find cheaply on Amazon’s used section.

The first Fantastic Four comic is broken up into two actual stories, and the first part of the book is the most interesting, art-wise, to me. The second part is not bad, but it reads and appears less impressive. Regardless of how innovative it was at the time, it’s impossible for me to look at it with completely fresh eyes.

I was surprised to find Ben Grimm/The Thing such a multi-dimensional character, and that this was planned from the start by Stan Lee.

Anyways, if are a student of comics and comic art (not only in the literal sense), you should definitely check this out. There aren’t any other inventive studies of historic comics like it.
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“This is a moment of great importance. You know, we used to feel very much like a Mama Rabbit and a Daddy Rabbit, who were running around, being chased by a bunch of dogs. They dove into a hole and the Mama Rabbit is quivering. She’s saying, “Oh, this is terrible. We’re doomed.” The Daddy Rabbit says, “No, don’t worry about it. We’ll stay here, and in half an hour, we’ll outnumber them.” [laughter] I always think of that when people ask me how I felt about all those years of so-called struggle—sooner or later, we’ll outnumber them, and I think we’re outnumbering them now.”

-Will Eisner, in his Keynote address to a University of Florida (Gainesville) crowd at the ‘Will Eisner Symposium’ there in 2002 (I can’t believe I missed that!)