john and jana

Nothing Nice to Say by Mitch Clem

I understand that amiable comic strips about two punk rock guys who have clever punk-themed conversations about life, enthuse about their punk rock record collections and make fun of punk rock bands is going to have limited appeal. That doesn’t stop me from liking it and definitely not from recommending it. It might even open up some avenues for the uninitiated but adventurous.

“Nothing Nice to Say” is web cartoonist Mitch Clem’s ruminations on all things punk as mostly seen through the eyes of Blake and Fletcher, with a supporting cast of characters who pop up now and again, including Clem himself.

Clem’s humor is built around a mix of sarcasm and self-deprecation — Blake and Fletcher are often the vehicles for the former, but Clem puts himself through the ringer for the latter. There are often sudden realizations that are charming for their naiveté, usually having to do with the fact that punk isn’t always as against commercialism as a committed hardcore fan would wish it was, but also following the inherent goofiness of the nice guys who love it and have a band.

Some of my favorite gags include the recurring “Old Time Comedy Hour,” which has the two main characters dressed up for Vaudeville and telling corny jokes with a punk sensibility, and the stretch in which Clem’s one reader storms in and takes over the strip, resulting in stick-figure tirades about sellout bands.

I don’t know if Clem would like this, but I’d say that he’s made punk cute. Thirty-years ago, when I was a little kid, punks scared the living daylights out of me — now they just make me sigh and smile and “Nothing Nice to Say” isn’t doing much to change my reaction.

Scrambled Ink

“Scrambled Ink” seems like an obvious attempt to duplicate some of the beauties of the Flight series by utilizing some top animators for sequential art side projects of a charming variety and for the most part it works wonderfully. Animation and comics are finding equal ground as the elevated ghetto apart from the film world, finally getting their due with mainstream audiences, so it only makes sense that they would come together in such a form. Here, creators for DreamWorks animated division takes to the page.

There is some real beautiful work in here. David G. Derrick Jr.’s “Kadogo: The Next Big Thing” is a nice, old fashioned jungle tale about an elephant grappling with his embarrassing friendship to a bird, with art that, at times, recalls Don Freeman. David Pimentel’s “Burger Run” is a hilarious, retro-fueled crime tale, part O. Henry and part Friz Freleng, that has burger joint heist going sour. “Greedy Grizzly,” written by Keith Baxter and Ken Morrissey and drawn by Morrissey recalls a gentle but wacky Disney of old as a bear attempts to pretty much eat an entire forest and encounters a little girl who teaches him some respect. Don Freeman gets recalled yet again in the old-fashioned girl tale “Point and Shoot,” by Jenny Lerew, about a young girl’s job-related visit to Paris and the unlikely friend she meets.

The two remaining stories, though, create a real problem here and take the whole collection out of balance. Ennio Torresan’s “The Guy From Ipanema” is mildly crude, entirely over-the-top and mostly unfunny, while J.J. Villard’s “Dig, Dig, Die, Die” is like a lesser experimental work that might have appeared in RAW in the 1980s. Given the tone of the other stories in the book, these two are entirely out of place and mature enough that they really undo what seems like the logical market for the rest of the book — kids. Four out of six of the stories would not be out of place as standalone children’s books — in fact, three of those seem to be homages of some sort to old fashioned children’s books — but the Torresan and Villard’s stories make it a little hard to recommend buying the book for a kid. By the same token, the girth of the children’s stories makes it hard to recommend to an adult.

That’s too bad, because the children’s stories are refreshing, not jaded or sarcastic, and with a sweetness that is often lacking in the sometimes cloying children’s book market.

The Dayan Collection by Akiko Ikeda

Hidden away in children’s popular culture in Japan is a big-eyed cat named Dayan who inhabits a magical world not far down the street from the works of Beatrix Potter, thanks to its darkness and absurdity. The books are being translated into English for the first time, giving American kids the chance to encounter the cat’s low key adventures.

Akiko Ikeda’s tales walk a path that welcomes mysticism and a subtle folkloric quality, as well as an existentialism that replaces any sort of humdrum exposition. The first book, “Dayan’s Birth-day,” opens with the simple idea that Dayan does not know when his birthday is, but wants to so he can throw himself a party. Like something out of an old folk tale, Dayan makes a deal with witches to uncover the mysterious date, but thoughtlessness creates a conflict with the witches that can only be solved through fast-thinking trickery.

There is something positively pagan about the comings and goings of the animal characters — “Thursday Rainy Party” involves a celebration of showers and the creation of a calendar; “White Eurocka” brings animals together for a Winter Solstice style celebration that involves a mystical birth; and “Chibikuro Party” unveils a party of freed shadows who plan never to return to their masters, under the leadership of the nefarious shadow of “The Satan of Death Forest.”

Despite the dark, supernatural tones, these are not scary stories in the slightest — and they all unfold around cute forest animals. The darkness functions as a spice that mixes well with the adorable simplicity of the other half of the tales — there will be, perhaps, a cultural difference in what is considered the norm for children’s books. For a little kid who might be ready for something with unexpected texture — or a parent who might want to expose the child to other cultures in a subtle, less dictatorial manner, that involves exciting strangeness traveling through the ether — the Dayan books are just the thing.

Fluffy by Simone Lia

In Simone Lia’s “Fluffy,” an ordinary man is apparently burdened with a small, talking bunny who thinks the guy is his father.

Michael Pulcino seems, at first, highly annoyed by Fluffy, the tiny, child-like rabbit who follows him around, continually asking questions, dispensing trivial facts and generally acting as needy as any real child. Fluffy is a child, really, and, in the time honored tradition of such storytelling, the reader at first assumes that this talking bunny is there to disrupt Michael’s life.

It goes along with this understanding, but once you meet Michael’s family on a trip to Italy and learn a little more about his irritating love life, it becomes obvious that Fluffy is actually a grounding existence in the man’s life. For a man without a kid, Fluffy actually fulfills that need for purpose and functions as a physical anchor into which Michael can put all he has to offer but the rest of the world seems to reject.

Lia’s cartooning is charming and her storytelling is depthful without being complicated. “Fluffy” unfolds matter-of-factly and the larger themes are not intrusive to a gentle and funny tale. Fluffy himself is a riot, a little lump of perpetual energy that challenges a man whose life might otherwise sink into the mire of casual soap opera, like every one around him, so self-obsessed that the man with the talking bunny is the sane, down to earth one.

Green Lama Archives

Not just a collection of one old superhero, but several stories within a title, “Green Lama” — the product of Spark Publications in Springfield, Ma. — offers a modern reader the experience of buying a comic book 60 years ago. Back then, comics weren’t slim volumes with extended serials, but self-contained variety packs that offered a little of this and a little of that for whoever might buy it. There might be superhero action, maybe some crime or suspense drama, perhaps some fantasy or science fiction, and always a good bit of humor. “Green Lama” offers all of these, featuring the first five issue of the comic of the same name, featuring that very superhero and an oddball collection of accompanying tales.

The Green Lama himself is the first encounter I’ve had with a Buddhist-based superhero. Millionaire playboy Jethro Dumont returns from a decade in Tibet with his manservant and mentor Tsarong with the mission of spreading peaceful ways to America. No surprise, the writers use Eastern religion and meditation as a form of magic and mysticism that Dumont decides to use in an effort against crime.

Through his magic mantra “Om Mani Padme Hum,” the Green Lama takes down all sorts of oddball villains, while also — very strangely — using his means to bomb Tokyo. When it comes to pacifism, he draws the line at Tojo!

Alongside the main feature, the book offers the comical adventures of “Lieutenant Hercules,” a buffoon of a superhero who can’t support himself on the side, so hires his alter ego out for pay; “The Boy Champions,” a sometimes absurd contribution to the genre of the time that involved gangs of street kids getting into trouble and solving mysteries; “Rick Masters,” a rather dry suspense series about a commercial pilot and his American Indian partner; and “Pop Flys,” a gag strip about a boxer.

The most amusing and original back-up series is “Angus Mac Erc” the story of a fairy released into the modern world by a war plane that crashes into the tree he is held prisoner in. Angus manages to play tricks on the pilot in order to gain his freedom. Later in the series, he contends with an shifty ancient wizard, Ponce de Leon and horror filmmakers in Hollywood. The art is whimsically cartoonish and often gorgeous in its fantasy realizations.

Mixed in with the comics, Dark Horse has maintained the old extras — impassioned and haunting pleas for readers to buy war bonds and fight racism, as well as offers to join the Green Lama Club. It’s the thoroughness of the presentation — as well as the beauty of the reproduction — that makes this book such a hoot. As the 1940s become further and further away, it’s nice to be reminded of the lesser-known parts of its culture. In “The Green Lama,” we are also given some surprise of a country in transition — some of the scraps of racism still hang around (the depiction of Pacific Asians leaves something to be desired), but the dignity the strips lend to Buddhism and American Indians is certainly progressive — and unexpected — and lends some meat to a book that is otherwise filled with delightful, nostalgic fun.

Harlan Ellison’s Watching by Harlan Ellison

For some people, being a glib smart ass is the key to untold riches and fame, but you have to wonder why that plan worked so well for the likes of Howard Stern, Christopher Hitchens and others, and not Harlan Ellison. Not that Ellison isn’t a success, certainly, but there is always a “never got his due” quality to the man. The reason, it has always seemed to me, is that behind the public persona of glib smart ass, people like Stern and Hitchens are actually team players on some level. There’s always a chance that I’m wrong with that impression, but I really don’t think so. Ellison, on the other hand, is the real thing. He plays his role so well that he’s not playing a role — he is an equal opportunity glib smart ass, he does not save it for an audience.

There is another side to Ellison that is not evident in so many people who do make their name in the glib smart ass strata — he is a perfectionist on his creative side, a superior craftsman with the written word, a man who walks on the literary side as well as the critical one. He takes storytelling very seriously.

Storytelling is the side of Ellison that fewer people encounter than his glib smart ass side — don’t get me wrong, he has a good-sized, very respectable audience for his fiction, but outside certain circles, he is better known as that really mean guy whose always insulting people he’s worked for. He’s a fury and a force and a big mouth to these people.

Both sides of Ellison are never better represented than in his essays, and the power of both are perfectly featured in his review of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which is contained in “Harlan Ellison’s Watching,” a new collection of the man’s film criticism through the years. In the review, Ellison not only takes the time to insult other people’s admiration of the film — friends, critics, the world at large — but explain the film through narrative terms that he has come up with in order to give the film some sense from the nonsense he perceives in it. It’s a tour de force that gets to the core of who and what Ellison is — and the story he comes up with is just great, fun, intelligent science fiction. If anyone ever remakes that film, I can certainly suggest a strong framework for the new version.

The essay also presents a duality of attitudes that is prevalent throughout the book and, indeed, Ellison’s entire career. On one hand, so much of what comes out of his mouth (and pen) seems like a brush-off, like he’s actually saying “I really don’t have time for you people.” On the other hand, he needs us because he needs to exhibit his smarts and one can’t do that very well in a room alone.

Ellison is compelled to show off his intelligence, a trait that, for him, seems to come so easily, while the rest of us struggle to exhibit what wisps of it we might have.

It’s not so entirely self-centered though — Ellison’s intelligence is real and his wit sharp and he makes a fascinating critic. Don’t let the ego obscure the talent — and don’t expect the expected. Within are essays extolling the virtues of not only films like “Repo Man,” but also “2010″ and “Dune” — meanwhile, he lambastes “Star Wars” and “Back to the Future.”

The essays, which cover a period of time from 1965 to 1989, point to Ellison as a watchdog of sorts for the science fiction genre — in film, television, books and comics — and, as such, the reader can certainly feel his pain in the world created by George Lucas.

Ellison’s cry for certain qualities — good characters, strong story, less fetishism towards visual effects — has long since been pushed aside by the film and television industry, but in collecting these essays, a map is provided for how it all went so wrong.

As Ellison points out, science fiction in its literary form has been a forward-moving, exciting field — by contrast, and with a few exceptions, movie science fiction has been a snake eating its own tail, and not a very clever one. Television had nowhere to go but up, though even it has fallen prey to the same traps as films, following worn-out story skeletons more often than not, though actually surpassing movies. Time was television just stretched out movie ideas for its content and replicated it into tiresome eternity until it got canceled — these days, movies adapt television aesthetics and remake actual shows, and its standard for science fiction has noticeably gotten worse.

Through Ellison’s lens, the reader is taken through the genre quagmire of the 1980s, where rip-off was replaced by “homage,” where visual effects first became more important than anything else, where movies became primarily aimed toward youth and the makers of those films did not respect the brains of their audience one bit. It’s a standard of filmmaking set in motion by “Star Wars” that Ellison nails in 1977 — 30 years later, we live in a genre universe propelled by that shallow big bang of a film. You can trace on Ellison’s map the high points of science fiction that were overlooked by a mass audience — and the low points that were embraced.

Admittedly, at times Ellison’s essays might be better described as diatribes, but they are at the very least not ill-informed diatribes — and his legendary rudeness in this context comes off as more cartoonish than threatening. That is certainly part of Ellison’s charm — he can be a bit like Daffy Duck, if Daffy Duck knew what he was talking about. Certainly over 400 pages of Ellison charting our descent can be the literary equivalent to a pummeling — but it’s a mesmerizing, insightful beating that the reader takes. If you want to understand the real history of the science fiction genre in popular culture in the last 30 years, then this book is mandatory.

Bryan Talbot

It’s rare that a graphic novel actually realizes and achieves the intellectual and experimental possibilities that the medium suggests — too often, graphic novels are repositories for narrative stories. Though they can affect a level of surrealism or make use of a stream of conscious narrative, the structure of a graphic novel — panel after panel after panel — provides a physical roadmap that undercuts any ventures into disorientation. There is always a path, always a frame, whereas in literature words on a page are just abstract symbolism that requires the reader’s mind to disseminate any order that might be contained. In other words, it’s a hell of a lot easier to write a novel like “Finnegan’s Wake” than create a graphic novel with the same impact.

If I were to name the best graphic novel of 2007, it would be “Alice in Sunderland,” the work of British creator Bryan Talbot. Not only is it probably the most important graphic novel of last year, it’s one of the most important and transformative graphic novels ever.
Though subtitled “an entertainment,” Talbot’s magnum opus is anything but the trifle such an affectation implies. Instead, it is a sweeping chronicle of British history, mixed with local lore, biography, literary criticism, personal memoir, cartoon studies, and more. There are two focuses in the book from which all points explode in the big bang of Talbot’s mind — the industrial city of Sunderland and famed author Lewis Carroll. With those two as the vantage point to the book, Talbot’s tapestry includes the swirl of people and places from many eras. Talbot realizes this monumental tale through a mix of digital and traditional mediums, photography and cartooning and anything else you can think of. These styles come together seamlessly, you can’t pick them apart, and they create a world unto itself where there are no barriers separating past or present, nor what goes on in Talbot’s mind and what takes place in the so-called real world.

Bryan Talbot’s previous work includes “The Adventures of Luther Arkwright” and “The Tale of One Bad Rat.”

JM: This is not a straight biography or history — what was your process of devising what exactly you wanted to do with this book?

BT: I always think long and hard about every graphic novel I do, usually for years before I start. Once I do, it’s a big commitment — several years’ work — so I have to have everything straight in my mind before I begin. The starting point with this book was me moving here to Sunderland. I’d been thinking about doing something relating to Alice and Lewis Carroll for about twenty years, but it was only when I arrived here and discovered not only Carroll, but also Alice’s family, had many, many links with the city and the surrounding area that I saw a way of doing it. The next step was research - a hell of a lot of it! I realized pretty early on that, if I was going to tell the story of how the roots of Wonderland grew here, then I’d also have to tell the story of the city itself. The framework of the book — that of a performance at the Sunderland Empire — an Edwardian “palace of varieties” - was already something that I’d had in mind. About 20 years ago, I had the idea of doing a graphic novel using a theatrical piece as a setting and made a few notes and scribbled a few sketches. Shortly after moving here, I went to see “Return to the Forbidden Planet” at the Empire and I was amazed by the place. When I started to think seriously about doing a graphic novel about Alice based in Sunderland, the two ideas seemed to spontaneously collide.

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Flood by Eric Drooker

It’s a funny thing. I lived in New York City from 1983 to 1987 and, yeah, I could tell you stories. It was a place that often seemed on the edge of sanity, a place that felt like it was being engulfed by something unseen that was tearing it apart. To those who lived there, it manifested in what appeared to be slow decay, a place that was dying.

After I left, I chose not to tell the stories I lived — those are, honestly, even still stewing inside me — and, instead, put down my emotions and somewhat pretentious philosophical observations about the place in a horrible short story with a science fiction bent that I called “Patmos.” That’s an allusion to the island where the illusions of the Book of Revelations took place.

Yeah, I know, you don’t have to say anything, I know. I was young, what can I say?

In context of this review, it’s worth pointing out that the plot included a nightmarish scenario of high rises being built for the populace to live in so they can survive a mysterious flood that is overtaking the city — in my story, it’s a flood of some sort of grotesque ooze. Eventually, madness overtakes the people in the buildings.

It was bad.

The important point of even bringing it up is the fact that I felt the vibe of New York City as a flood overtaking everything and unleashing psychological demons upon the citizens.

So, apparently, did illustrator Eric Drooker. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there were lots of others who felt the same. Some may never have been able to express it through creative work, others might have, but were far less skilled at doing so than Drooker. Regardless, in Drooker’s book “Flood,” he has captured a vital truth to the daily existence of people in New York City during that time period.

“Flood” is a stark and silent work by a cover painter for The New Yorker that originally saw publication as a complete work in 1992, though Chapter One was done in 1986, Chapter Two in 1990. With the final chapter, the story becomes an apocalyptic trilogy of a city drowning and an artist beset by nightmarish visions of himself and the world around him, not much different from what I imagined at the time, but far, far better.

Drooker portrays New York City of the time through the medium of scratchboard — every illustration is an engraved work, creating a negative stark quality to each image. This echoes throughout the whole work, bringing in an otherworldly portrait of a place that has been long lost in time.

The story follows the bleak existence of an artist as he loses his day job, indulges in hurtful romance and falls victim to the subterranean excesses of the city’s own imagination. Eventually, the artist’s own work flows out into reality, mixes with the decay of the city and cleanses through destruction.

The book’s cover tells you everything you need to know about it — a thick-lined sketch of a man is overpowered by a heavy rain storm, his umbrella being violently tossed away, lightning striking at him out of the top corner of one side of the book. The image is realized in the cold blues and gloomy blacks, but at the center of the man’s chest lies a deep red, glowing, vibrant heart.

It’s an image that any city dweller might identify with.

In Drooker’s powerful work, New York City itself is as much a character as any person portrayed — in fact, the humans whose movements are etched into the narrative can, at times, seem less like creatures at their evolutionary peak and more like vermin that has infected a body. If decay is the work of the vermin let loose, then the titular flood is a necessary cleansing — and the ending that Drooker provides walks the same line, challenging the reader to decide if it is a pessimistic or optimistic tale — or a little of both.

The bonus of the book is an extensive interview with Drooker, in which he has the opportunity to speak about the experiences and psychology that lead to such a vivid work, and about the technical prowess that were his tools to do so.

In Drooker’s New York City, the landscape your body inhabits is inseparable from the way your mind perceives it — living in that overwhelming island can be a hero’s journey dominated by illusion and horror for anyone who lives there, and “Flood” functions as the last testament for any person who might require it. And I thank Drooker for providing such a vivid travelogue to the days of my youth.

Scarlet Traces: The Great Game by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli

Comic books have always had the potential to be a better medium for science fiction than film or television. They aren’t limited by time constraints that get in the way of complicated — or competent — storytelling and illustration allows for more of a stylistic realization of the fantastic, where movies can falter if the special effects don’t click.

It’s only natural — science fiction film has always been several steps behind the novels, which are easily more far-reaching in their wild visions. Science fiction comics are the missing link between the two.

Taking the literary background as a cue, writer Ian Edginton and artist D’Israeli expanded on their adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” in their couplet of sequels, “Scarlet Traces” and its new counterpart, “Scarlet Traces: The Game.” It beats anything Speilberg attempted with his take on the old tale and not just because Edginton and D’Israeli aren’t compelled to turn it into a lame fable of fatherhood — this is the world of H.G. Wells taken to an exciting and inventive extreme.

In the first book, the British government has scavenged the wreckage of the Martian invasion to create a marvelous world of the future far too soon. D’Israeli’s renderings of this world — half Dickens, half Thunderbirds — spring from the pages, as tour guide and hero Captain Robert Autumn seeks to solve the disappearance of his niece. Squirming beneath the rollicking adventure, Autumn discovers a monster at the root of his beloved country.

In the sequel, the evil has spread its tentacles through the British Empire and into space, where the government wages a war on Mars in the name of containment. Much like with Iraqis and Islamic Jihadists, it spirals out of control as the prime minister attempts to spin and suppress.

“The Great Game” not only shifts the playing field, but the hero’s point of view, with dashing photojournalist Charlotte Hem-ming mixing Lois Lane and Emma Peel into one capable package. She’s charming in a way that comic book heroines often aren’t and, through D’Israeli’s pen, looks like a real woman, rather than the usual sexed-up creature. This is the kind of woman you want to have a beer and a chat with — and one you certainly would trust to blast off to Mars and save the world.

Both volumes of “Scarlet Traces” offer edge-of-your-seat political adventure. The next time you’re rearranging your Netflix queue and want to get out the latest blockbuster, order these instead.