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Utilitarian Review 1/16/10

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Best Comics Criticism 2009

The big news about the blog this week was Suat’s announcement of the Best Online Comics Criticism of the year.

All the judges beside Suat weighed in with discussions of the list and of their own choices. And those judges were me, Tucker Stone, Frank Santoro and Matthias Wivel.

In other reactions around the web, Johanna Draper Carlson pointed out there could have been more women and manga critics on the list. Melinda Beasi responded by putting up a list of her favorite female manga critics. And David Welsh picked some of his favorite criticism of the year.

Finally, Brigid Alverson notes that she was supposed to be involved in the judging but had to drop out at the last minute due to work and family pressure. She also provides a look at her picks for best criticism of the year.

On HU

Also this week on HU:

Kinukitty reviewed Age Called Blue.

Richard Cook reviewed Sayuki.

Vom Marlowe reviewed Godchild.

I sneered in passing at The Dirty Projectors and Michael Chabon.

And last but not least, this week’s free music download features early doom metal.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Splice Today I review a newish graphic biography of Johnny Cash.

The exercise does affirm Cash’s power as a storyteller, mainly through contrast. Kleist is a pretty good artist—his drawing of a young Johnny standing at the microphone, head cocked, preparing to deliver “Big River” is lean and striking. But the effort to show the narrative itself is determinedly bland: Images of the mooning swain and his traveling lover lack the lonesome sparseness of the sung original, not to mention its barely contained, self-parodying humor. The pictures seem generic, taken out of any Twainesque riverboat setting, where the original reveled in its specificity as Cash’s deep baritone caressed each place name and ventrioloquized voice. It’s like Kleist decided to draw the sequence without ever stopping to wonder what made the song worthwhile in the first place, with the predictable result that he gets the general framework and leaves out the soul.

And I have another discussion of Zizek with Bert Stabler over at his blog.

Bert: It’s been occurring to me that Jesus defined modern social relations– defining a private sphere apart from state interference, rejecting traditional value systems and extended and even nuclear family relations in favor of abstract inner pursuits, extolling radically egalitarian values, dying for his principles. He despised work and ownership. And, strangely, he was completely the ideal for which our civilization continues to strive. He was a humanist, without the solipsism, nihilism, and hubris.

On tcj.com I have a review of Lilli Carre’s illustrated version of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Fir Tree.

At Metropulse I review the really strikingly bad new Vampire Weekend album.

And finally, Tom Spurgeon has the final wrap up of his massive end-of-decade interview series in which I participated.

Noah’s Picks for Best Online Comics Criticism, 2009

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Suat has already posted the official selections for best online comics criticism of the year.

To create the final list, each of the judges submitted ten selections. Two judges (Tucker Stone and Frank Santoro have already posted and talked a little about their ten picks. (Matthias Wivel hasn’t weighed in, but may get to it yet. (Update: Ah, there’s Matthias’s piece.)

So in this post I’m going to give the list I submitted to Suat. I’ve arranged it in increasing order of bestness from 10 to 1.

When Suat asked me to act as one of the judges for this project, I initially declined on the reasonable grounds that I don’t necessarily read a ton of comics criticism. I changed my mind on the more half-assed grounds that what the hell — but it remains the case that I am, I’d be willing to bet, far less versed in comics criticism than my fellow judges.

Nonetheless, my choices are, of course, right, and, to the extent that anyone else disagrees with me, they are wrong. So here we go.

Honorable Mentions

If I had more than ten slots, I would have loved to include Shaenon Garrity’s Acme Library #19 koan, Steven Grant’s discussion of why there aren’t more black supervillains, and Jog’s epic discussion of smurfs.

If I were able to vote for my fellow judges, I would have loved to include this amazing piece where Tucker Stone pretends to be Michel Houllebecq. I was also very taken with Matthias Wivel’s review of Kramer’s 7, and with Suat’s discussion of the contribution of artists to super-hero comics.

__________________________

10. Matt Thorn — “On Translation”

As a scholar and a widely respected translator, Thorn’s take on the limitations of current manga translating is riveting. He manages to be both measured and acerbic, a devastating combination — and he also provides some fascinatingly specific examples of translation difficulties and decisions. As is often the case on the Internets, the piece is as worthwhile for the discussion it sparked as for what it initially said. Numerous translators and fans weigh in on the comments thread, with Thorn elaborating thoughtfully on his points. Elsewhere the essay sparked great responses from Simon Jones and Shaenon Garrity.

9. Juan Artega — “The 5 Creepiest Sex Scenes in Comics”

This is what it says on the tin; a Cracked magazine charticle providing a narrative overview, with first-rate snark, of some of the great moments in comics history. Ms. Marvel being turned into the incestuous brain-washed sex slave of her own son and some random bird-guy from the third-rate super-team the Wanderers impregnating a dinosaur are two of the highlights. This is the sort of piece that would provoke Gary Groth to run foaming into the streets shrieking, “See? See? Online comics criticism is shallow trash! I will write a sharp 150,000 word piece attacking it and praising Pauline Kael, thereby bringing capitalism to its knees!” So, you know, as a Marxist, I had to vote for it.

8. Nina Stone — “The Virgin Read: You Need More Janet Jackson in Your Life, Power Girl.”

Nina Stone isn’t a longtime comics reader, but her loving husband (that’s Tucker) is, and he convinced her to write a column about comics from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know or care much about them. The result has been some of the sharpest comics commentary going, focusing mostly on the mediocrity of the mainstream, but occasionally at other outcroppings of comicsdom as well. Nina’s take on Chris Ware, for example, is as perceptive an evaluation of his work as I’ve seen.

Still, despite the greatness that is the Ware review, I pledge my heart to the Power Girl review I’ve selected here. It’s a lovely meditation on men and women and feminism, and whether you can change other people and whether it even makes sense to want to.

Also, it contains the immortal line “Go fly your Power Girl boobies around the world fighting evil.”

7. Robert Stanley Martin — “Comics Review: Chris Claremont & Frank Miller, Wolverine.”

Robert Stanley Martin is a thoughtful, informed, and perceptive critic — but even I have trouble holding that against him when he’s such a fine writer. His take on the Wolverine mini-series begins with a brilliant discussion of alienated characters in the Marvel Universe; how central they are, how they work, and how they really, really don’t. His view of Claremont as a lesser, stumbling Ditko was one of those “oh my god it’s so true!” moments, and his appeciation of the many virtues, as well as the several flaws, of the Claremont/Miller series couldn’t be much more spot on. His review of Alan Moore’s What Ever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? is also highly recommended.

6. Dirk Deppey — “The Man Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight”

I originally wanted to include Dirk’s skewering of super-hero decadence, but on further consideration I think the hive-mind was right — “The Man Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” which made the final list, is really the Deppey piece to pick from this year.

“The Man Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight” is an evisceration of former DC boss Paul Levitz, and a celebration of his firing. It’s a masterful prosecutor’s brief, as well as a lovely example of sustained, sneering contempt. The only thing that ever disappoints me about Dirk’s longer critiques is that there aren’t more of them. I know he’s invaluable as a link-blogger, and HU probably wouldn’t even exist without him, but I can’t help feeling that his talents are a little wasted in pointing to other people writing on comics when he could instead be writing better pieces than anyone himself. I especially miss his actual comics criticism, which is even better, and even rarer, than his industry commentary.

5. Jason Thompson — “Moe: The Cult of the Child”

Jason Thompson wears his vast knowledge of manga extremely lightly. This piece is a case in point; Thompson takes 1000 words or so to provide a thumbnail historical, literary, and moral analysis of manga’s obsession with prepubescent girls. Discussing pedophilia without resorting to exploitation or outrage is an accomplishment in itself; doing it with the grace, humor, and perceptiveness that Thompson manages here is a quiet tour de force.

4.Craig Fischer — “Deep Tezuka”

This is probably the most academic selection on my list — and it pretty much sums up everything that can go right in academic criticism. Fischer uses film theorists (most notably Andre Bazin) and film concepts (“deep focus” — the framing device in movies such as Citizen Kane where everything on screen is in focus) to contrast the experience of viewing a film with that of reading comics in general and Tezuka in particular. The theory background here doesn’t obfuscate, but instead brings into focus (appropriately enough!). Fischer skips lightly through a barrage of cultural and theoretical links, touching on everything from Dan Clowes’ grandmother to the off-color clouds in the Lion King to the film “Best Years of Our Lives,” and on and on and on. It’s dazzling; a real demonstration, not just of knowledge, but of a love of knowledge, and of art.

I’d also highly recommend Fischer’s discussion of repression, anxiety, and hands in the work of Steve Ditko.

3.Tom Crippen — “Age of Geeks”

Tom Crippen blogged at HU for most of 2009. I asked him to join because I love his writing, and working with him regularly only increased my respect for it. He was actually working on “Age of Geeks” through a good portion of the time he was at HU, and little dribs and drabs about it would pop up in offhand remarks here and there. The final result is worth the wait; it’s one of Tom’s absolute best, I think.

It’s also, as it happens, the piece of all of those on the list that I in large part disagree with. I don’t agree that Alan Moore is at core a geek (I think he’s a crank, which is somewhat different.) I don’t agree that geekery is necessarily the ideal metaphor for late capitalism, in part because I don’t entirely agree with Tom’s definition of geekdom (I think it’s more arbitrarily determined — which is why baseball fans and rap fans, for example, don’t really count.) I don’t agree that Moore’s geekery prevented him from treating his characters with respect or fully examining the human condition: on the contrary, I think his willingness *not* to fully explain why Sally loved the Comedian is in many ways the *most* respectful choice he could have made. I don’t believe that Moore’s sentimentality is excessive or forced; I don’t think From Hell is overall a failure.

Those disagreements don’t make me think less of the piece, though. On the contrary. Just looking at that list above you can see how much thought and how many ideas Tom put in here. Even if I don’t entirely acquiesce to the thesis, the idea of geekery as central to modernity, as Tom explains it, isn’t something I had come across before. It set me back; I had to argue with it and figure out if I agreed or not. Similarly, his take on why the Sally/Comedian explanation didn’t work wasn’t something I’d thought through; responding to it in my head actually helped me figure out why I liked Moore’s handling of it so much.

And even if I disagreed on many of the big points, the individual details and insights are just a joy. The image of modern mankind as legs on a caterpillar; the comparison of William Gull and Bruce Banner; the fat tear rolling down Alan Moore’s face; the on point takedown of Watchmen the movie; the brilliant insight about Veidt’s super-power being information processing…the whole thing just bristles with ideas from front to back. It reminds me how much I miss having Tom on the blog to disagree with.

For Tom in a somewhat different mode, you can check out his review of Dykes to Watch Out For at tcj.com.

2. Robert Alter — “Scripture Picture”

This is the only review of American art comics on this list. I noted recently that participating in this best of effort left me feeling that comics criticism of genre work and manga was overall in a healthier state than comics criticism of art comics. This is the exception that proves the rule.

As a Biblical translator, Alter’s knowledge of the Bible is incredible, and following his exegesis is one of the great pleasures of reading his review. He’s also a very fine writer, in a somewhat formal vein, and his descriptions of the Biblical text and of Crumb’s imagery are vivid, thoughtful, and often humorous. This, for example:

In a very different sex scene, when Lot’s two daughters, imagining after the devastation of Sodom that there is no man left for them on earth, get their father drunk so that he can be led to impregnate them, Crumb provides contrasting variations on the sexual act: the elder daughter is shown in the missionary position, evidently enjoying herself, while in another frame the younger daughter bestrides her besotted father, who is still clutching a wineskin, her face turned to one side in an enigmatic expression that might reflect dismay, or an inner distancing from the act, or a kind of solipsistic concentration on it.

I love “bestrides her besotted father.” Plus, I’ll be damned if that isn’t all one sentence. That’s some old-school prose style, that is.

In addition to knowledge and style, though, Alter is graced with a third virtue — lack of reverence. It’s not just that he’s willing to suggest that, in some ways, Crumb is not Lord High Poobah Over All (though don’t get me wrong — I appreciated that a good deal) It’s also that he’s willing to suggest that *comics*, as a medium, may have certain limits.

The point of Alter’s esay, ultimately, is that the ambiguity of the Biblical narrative is simply not something that can be represented through sequential pictographs. This assertion caused a howl of protest from the usual quarters. Tim Hodler argued vociferously that, contra Alter, comics could indeed express ambiguity — an entirely reasonable dissent which was rather undermined by the tone of aggrieved schoolmarmish disappointment in his peers which accompanied it. Tim seemed viscerally irritated that critics “who should know better” might entertain the idea that comics couldn’t do just absolutely everything. Team Comix, Team Comix, — why have you forsaken me! (Update: Tim says, with some justice, that he didn’t say what I said he said. You can read some back and forth in comments.)

I can’t speak for the rest of the team of course. But for myself, I can say, I don’t really need comics to do everything. Comics are a really young art form, developed in a commercial, modern milieu, long after the Bible was written. And given that, it seems to me that, perhaps, form does matter — not just in that you can get to the same place in different ways, but in the sense that you really, truly, can’t necessarily get to the same place at all. This is the point of Craig Fischer’s essay about film vs. comics discussed above. It’s also implicit in a recent essay by Bill Randall, where he notes that comics are uniquely suited to representing fragmentation — and therefore, perhaps, one might argue, less suited to representing the kinds of great, unifying narratives represented by the Bible.

Alter, in short, is willing to talk about what comics can’t do. That willingness to focus on limitations rather than accomplishments is, it seems to me, really important in a critic — and it seems to me too often absent from writing about art comics, where there’s still often, among some critics, a certain level of defensiveness — of trying to prove that comics are serious, already. Which is a shame since, as Alter shows, there’s absolutely no reason that an essay about Crumb’s Genesis can’t be just as good as one about Power Girl or Tezuka or Watchmen.

1. Bill Randall — “Bring the Noise”

I mentioned one of Bill Randall’s essays just above there, and this is that essay. As with Tom, I was lucky enough to get Bill to blog with me on HU for a time. I’ve actually gotten to know him better since he left the blog, and I feel pretty lucky for that too. He’s an incredibly smart and funny observer of comics, and, also, you know, of all that stuff out there that isn’t comics but which still might be important to somebody, I guess.

“Bring the Noise,” which appeared in issue 300 of the Comics Journal, and which is now online at tcj.com, is effectively Bill’s farewell to comics criticism, at least in the short form and at least for a while. It’s a history lesson, a memoir, and a speculation about the potential and the limitations of cross-cultural influence. As with all of Bill’s work, the writing is lovely, and works almost more as poetry than prose — not because the language is flowery, but because the connections it makes are as much about memory, intuition, and rhythms as they are about logic. The way he uses declaratives and often leaves the connections between his insights implicit rather than explicit is almost Emersonian; ideas shimmer through the text, free to form different sparkly patterns. It can be off-putting at first for those like me who are more prosaically minded, but once you get into the rhythm it’s addictive. For example, this paragraph:

One of the main reasons it still makes sense to pay Japan the attention it, as a country long stagnant in politics and economy, no longer deserves, is that it offers a model for contemporary life. What has long been a comfortable place to live has taken to extremes, as with, say, the hikikomori, broken students who avoid the outside world entirely. In some ways Japan seems like a Petri dish for the extremes of urban alienation. And it produces fascinating subcultures. A city like Tokyo has a place for everything as long as it stays where it belongs and doesn’t ruffle any feathers. I find some of the most interesting artists working now speak to some small niche in a minor key. Previously, it was the grand narratives from hugely popular artists. These works addressed a time when worldwide conflict was a living memory and everyone felt its effects. Then Japan became middle-class and fantasies replaced a comfortable, mildly unsatisfying life. Now, everyone’s frittering away in their own individual holes on their own individual things. So group life becomes termite life and each subculture gets its own voice.

I love those last two sentences; the repetition of “individual”, the repetition of “life,” the jump from “holes” to the quick metaphor of “termite,” the way the careful, relatively short sentences of the whole paragraph mirror the sense of individual cultures carefully cocooning. Each time I return to this essay, my respect and affection for it grows.

I can’t find the link, but I’m pretty sure I remember that Bill once mentioned that he’d feel like comics criticism was actually art when a piece made him cry, as film criticism had on occasion. I can’t say this essay made me cry. It’s still beautiful, though.

Best Online Comics Criticism 2009

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The Year in Reviews (Part 1)

This is an effort to collate and acknowledge the good work that has been done (mostly to little notice) by online comics critics over the course of 2009. These writers have helped make comics a slightly more interesting place to inhabit for readers like myself, ensuring that the conversation doesn’t end the moment a comic is consumed or half-digested by the reader

At the risk of stating the obvious, the articles here aren’t really the “best” pieces of comics criticism of 2009. They are merely the pieces which have been arrived at through the votes of 5 people (namely Noah Berlatsky, Frank Santoro, Tucker Stone, Matthias Wivel and myself). Such a process is prone to exclude worthy articles of a more esoteric nature. A more accurate reflection of the best pieces of writing on comics available online in 2009 may be found in the long list of articles which received votes in the final stage of this process.

While there will be some overlap in critical concerns, it should be clear that the needs and preferences of people who write about comics often dictate what we like and thus vote for in such situations. When you read a piece of comics criticism by Noah Berlatsky, what you’ll find apart from the engaging tone are opinions which address the merits of a work in the context of wider social and political issues, an approach which is clearly different from that of Frank Santoro who is more interested in the history, inner workings and craft underlying individual works. Tucker Stone wears his knowledge lightly and brings a broad interest in comics across all genres as well as a specific interest in criticism directed at entertainment and performance. Matthias Wivel brings a European and more academic perspective.

Continue reading →

Utilitarian Review 1/9/10

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On HU

Lots of bytes through the sluice on HU this week.

To start off, I sneered at the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and wondered about Fantagraphics’ marketing policy (Fantagraphic marketers showed up to explain in the comments.)

I denounced Lady Snowblood, movie and comic, on the grounds that they are evil. Suat came back with a lengthy defense

I defended blogging and even got all emo about it. In another meta moment, I defended my right to think Ganges is boring and sneer at other comics critics and spit bile more or less indiscriminately, damn it.

Kinukitty reviewed the yaoi Dining Bar Akira.

Richard kicked off a new series, Anything But Capes, in which he looks at genres other than super-heroes. He started off by looking at the state of Barbarian comics.

Suat reviewed Ooku, which he doesn’t like as much as me.

I explained what my son has and has not learned from Peanuts.

Vom Marlowe drew a comic expressing her disinterest in X-Men Forever.

And this week’s music download features lots of doomy drones and other metal. (Last week’s, if you missed it, features Thai country music (Luk Thung.)

Utilitarians Everywhere

My enthusiastic review of Dokebi Bride is up on Comixology this week.

That departure, I think, points to the core knot at the heart of Dokebi Bride. The book, like many ghost stories, is about grief and dislocation and how the two circle around each other like black, exhausted smudges. The first volume opens with Sunbi’s father carrying her mother’s ashes back from the grave; that volume ends with the death of Sunbi’s grandmother, who raised her and cared for her. The central loss of a parent, and therefore of self, returns again and again through the series, a literal haunting. Sunbi can’t function without putting the past behind her, but the past is everything she is — she can’t let it go. When a fortune teller offers to read her future, Sunbi rejects the offer angrily. “No, I don’t want to know about my stupid future!” she bites out through her tears. “Just tell me what all this means to me! Tell me why they’ve all died and left me, why they’re even trying to take away my memories!”

On Tcj.com I reviewed Strange Suspense: Steve Ditko Archives Volume 1.

Did you read that whole thing? If you did and you enjoyed it, you’re a hardier soul than I. “I got my letter and then I thought about my letter and then I thought about my letter some more and then I used a metaphor: ‘leaden feet’!” That’s just dreadful. And, yes, that’s the one romance story in the book, but the horror and adventure comics are not appreciably better; there’s still the numbing repetition, the tin ear, and the infuriating refusal to finesse said tin ear by leaving the damn pictures alone to tell their own story.

Bert Stabler and I talk about Zizek and art over at his blog Dark Shapes Refer.

I like the idea that you need a transcendent background in order to appreciate, or even allow for, multiplicity. I’m thinking about this a little bit in terms of culture and art, and the impulse that I think most everyone has to want people to consume/listen/read/whatever the right thing. It seems like that’s coming from a place where the transcendent is material; that is, your worshipping the art itself, therefore moral choices become essentially consumer choices. Alternately, you just cut culture and morality apart altogether, and argue that neither has anything to do with the other. Whereas if you have a transcendent ground of some sort, you can say, well, culture connects up to morality and or important things in various ways, and you can talk about it in those terms, but choices about art are not in themselves good or evil.

On Madeloud, I review the soundtrack to the BBC miniseries Life on Earth, which profoundly affected my life when I was, like, 8.

Over at Metropulse, I have a review of avant Japanese guitarist Shinobu Nemotu’s Improvisations #1.

At the same site there’s also a review of the slab of black doom that is
Nihil’s Grond.

At the Chicago Reader I review the fairly amusing gimmick book Twitterature.

Other Links

I enjoyed Tucker Stone’s Best of at Comixology, especially since he picked the right thing for book of the year.

Ta-Nehisi Coates explains why he wants to be able to check “Negro” on his census form.

And finally, Johanna Draper Carlson has a nice summation and round up of links relating to the devil’s bargain between MOCCA and Archie Comics.

Anything But Capes

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Alternate Title: Barbarians at the Blog!

Back in 2000, the world was a better, simpler place.* The American comics market exemplified this simplicity. It consisted of Marvel superheroes, DC superheroes, Image superheroes, a few dark fantasies from Vertigo, and those Star Wars comics that Dark Horse keeps churning out. Not exactly a broad selection, but perfect for aging nerds who grew up reading superhero comics and watching Star Wars.

But something happened over the past decade. Publishers started producing more comics that had nothing to do with superheroes. Suddenly, there were a lot more horror comics, crime comics, science fiction comics, war comics, and even Westerns (you know something big is going down when Westerns make a comeback). If the comics industry didn’t grow much in size, it at least grew in variety.

Over the next couple months, I plan to see what the American comics market has to offer that doesn’t involve capes and tights. Because I’m interested in what the comics industry is producing at the beginning of the new decade, I’ll only be looking at recent titles, not reprinted material. To keep myself focused, I’m going to organize the books into genres and review a sample of titles. I have no intention of reading and reviewing every title of every genre, so instead I’ll rely upon a complex scientific formula to select titles that are most representative of each genre. The explanation of my method is provided in footnote **. After the reviews, I’ll summarize the state of each genre, looking at both its size in the market and the overall quality of its titles.

I’ll begin with a genre that has had its share of ups-and-downs in the comics market … barbarians! For the sake of clarity, barbarian comics are fantasy stories about muscular men in loin clothes killing shit with swords and axes. Of course, there’s room for variation on this basic model. For example, woman in chainmail bikini can be substituted in for man in loin cloth. But barbarian stories are not simply high fantasy tales; there needs to be a significant amount of violence, sex, and characters who never wear pants (as a counterexample, The Lord of the Rings has some violence but no sex and way too many pants). Also, comics about fantasy strongmen who arrive in the present day and fight crime are not barbarian stories. They’re superhero stories that steal the surface appeal of barbarian stories.

I looked hard for recently published barbarian comics, but I found only about half a dozen titles, four of which I chose to review below. None of these titles were selling well in the Direct Market, but all of the titles had prior storylines collected and sold as trades, so presumably the DM isn’t the only source of sales. Now, onto the reviews…

Conan the Cimmerian #16
Writer: Timothy Truman
Artists: Timothy Truman and Tomas Giorello
Colorist: Jose Villarrubia
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Fact: The Cimmerians were a real people who inhabited the region around the Black Sea in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C.

Fact: They didn’t look like Austrian bodybuilders.

Of course, the Conan story has nothing to do with history and everything to do with Robert E. Howard‘s testosterone-fueled fantasies. But Conan isn’t just another masculine power fantasy. He pretty much is THE masculine power fantasy, the epitome of violence, sex, and rugged individualism. And no survey of barbarian comics would be complete without covering the latest iteration of the muscle bound brute who started it all.

I lucked out with Conan the Cimmerian #16, because it’s the beginning of a new storyline. There’s no recap page, but I had no problem figuring out what was going on. Conan somehow landed himself a sweet gig as the military adviser to a hot princess named Yasmela. Conan’s in love with her, but she only has eyes for an exiled prince named Julion, who’s girly compared to Conan. We know he’s a girly man because he does girly things, like giving flowers to girls and using multisyllabic words.

So Conan decides to impress her by doing something stupid, which results in his war band getting ambushed, and then Conan almost gets eaten by a velociraptor (it’s fantasy, not history).

As Conan stories go, this isn’t bad. It has character-driven conflict, Conan is a badass but not infallible, and there’s violence and (implied) sex.

The comic falters on the art. Tomas Giorello does the first seven pages and the final page, and his work is perfectly suited to a Conan book. His backgrounds are lush, and he uses numerous small lines to give more detail to his characters, which would be annoying in a different context, but in a barbarian book it gives the characters a distinctly savage look.  But the majority of the comic is drawn by writer Timothy Truman, and his style is far less detailed and far more cartoonish. It isn’t terrible art, but the transition from Giorello to Hutton and back again is jarring, especially in a comic that’s only 24 pages.

Overall, a decent barbarian comic, but not one that entices me to follow the series.

Hercules: The Knives of Kush #1
Writer: Steve Moore
Artist: Cris Bolson
Colorist: Doug Sirois
Publisher: Radical Comics

Reading Hercules, I couldn’t help but take pity on the Nemean Lion. The Nemean Lion was just doing what lions do when a violent Greek showed up and killed him, skinned him, and decided to hear the Lion’s head as a hat.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the Nemean Lion because this comic wasn’t very interesting.

The plot is serviceable: Hercules and his band of misfits arrive in Egypt during a civil war. They decide to work as mercenaries for the legitimate pharaoh, who’s losing the war to his half-brother. It seems that the would-be-usurper has formed an alliance with a sorcerer who leads the titular Knives of Kush.

Unfortunately, nothing else about the comic is the least bit engaging. Most of the characters, including Hercules, lack a distinguishable personality or voice, and in any case they spend spend the entire issue delivering page after page of exposition and occasionally engage in non-witty banter.

The art is also pretty bad. Cris Bolson puts a lot of detail into his panels, but his characters look stiff and plastic. As a result, the fight scenes resemble action figures posed in mid-attack, which robs the violence of any excitement. His sexy women aren’t very sexy either.

Hercules is a hard character to screw up. But he’s also been so extensively ripped off and parodied that creators need to bring something more to the table than just a standard sword and sorcery plot. That’s about all you get here.

Warlord #9
Writer/Artist: Mike Grell
Colorist: David Curiel
Publisher: DC Comics

Warlord follows the adventures of Travis Morgan, a man from the regular world who somehow got trapped in the barbarian world of Skartaris. But other than the occasional war, being trapped in Skartaris doesn’t seem like such a bad deal. Morgan has a hot princess girlfriend named Tara and a hot pseudo-girlfriend named Shakira who can turn into a cat. In fact, hot, scantily-clad women are as numerous as trees in Skartaris. And Morgan seems to have embraced the local dress-code because his outfit consists of boots, a helmet, and armored underwear.

Not much happens in this issue, but that may not be a failure in the writing so much as the fact that this is a “down-time” issue. In a superhero comic, down-time issues are normally where characters sit around and whine about their relationships, but in Warlord the characters just have sex. And there is a lot of sex in this issue. Nothing too racy, of course (this is still a DC comic), but Grell manages to include some nice cheesecake. Though the guitar as phallic symbol is a little too obvious.

As an artist, Grell has his share of strengths and weaknesses. His backgrounds are well-designed and his characters can be quite attractive. But his fight scenes lack any real sense of impact, his characters often seem disconnected from the panels they occupy, and panel layout can occasionally be rather confusing.

Problems with the art aside, of all the barbarian comics I read, this seemed the most polished and one with the most depth to its characters and universe. Not surprising, given that Mike Grell created Warlord, and he clearly knows what he’s doing with this book. Unfortunately, this comic has some dense continuity, not just with the previous 9 issues but also with prior Warlord comics. To be fair, there’s a quite a bit of exposition that’s intended to help new readers catch up, but knowing what happened previously isn’t the same as caring. Like so many comics that have been around (off-and-on) for years, Warlord proceeds with the assumption that its readers are already fans, and there’s only minimal effort to show new readers why they should care about any of this.

But I’m curious enough about Warlord that I’ll probably look for the first trade paperback and see whether my opinion changes.

Queen Sonja #1
Writer: Joshua Ortega
Artist: Mel Rubi
Colorist: Vinicius Andrade (*that is an awesome name*)
Publisher: Dynamite

Don’t let the title fool you. This is not a Female Force bio-comic about Queen Sonja of Norway. Rather, this is the sequel to Dynamite’s Red Sonja comic, but there’s no evident continuity with the previous title. As someone who never read a Red Sonja comic, I can appreciate the fresh start.

As the title makes clear, Sonja is now a queen (of Made-up Land), and the comic is mostly a flashback about how she ended up on the throne. Sonja agrees to avenge an old woman’s late husband and recover a family heirloom, and along the way she’s clearly going to come into conflict with an evil empire. There’s also plenty of violence and gore in this comic, in the best barbarian tradition. But the plot and the action (not to mention the one-dimensional characters) are completely overwhelmed by the massive amounts of cheesecake. Every other panel focuses on Sonja’s perfect body and the chainmail bikini that seems perpetually about to fall off.

Now, I don’t have a problem with cheesecake, I just wrote a paragraph praising the cheesecake in Warlord, but in this title the cheesecake was ridiculously excessive. But when I stopped to think about it, the cheesecake is ultimately what this comic is all about. Let’s be honest: the selling point of Red Sonja is not really the violence and it certainly isn’t the plot. It’s a comic about a hot red-head in a chainmail bikini. Either you want to look at a hot red-head in a chainmail bikini, or you don’t. Giving her a more tasteful outfit would only take away the one thing that makes Sonja memorable. And there’s no point in pretending that readers, especially women, are going to be won over by Sonja’s “personality,” or the slim bits of dialogue.

Admittedly, my interest in barbarian comics is that of a casual reader, not a fan, but a monthly comic seems  like an expensive way to indulge a fetish for barbarian pin-ups. Still, the current Red Sonja franchise has lasted for over 4 years, so there must be plenty of people out there who like this. And unlike superhero comics, barbarian comics aren’t (or shouldn’t be) marketed towards children, so the cheesecake here isn’t age-inappropriate.

_

State of the Genre: meager. Very few titles to choose from, and most of them lack truly distinctive features  that set them apart from the rest. They all satisfy the basic expectations for a barbarian comic (fantasy setting, violence, cheesecake, lack of pants), but only Warlord suggests that it might have something more in content.

The next time I appraise a genre, I’ll try one that’s a bit more robust, maybe horror.

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*This is not true.

Fantagraphics Sale

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You can help keep HU’s benefactors running and get a deal on exciting comics as well by participating in Fantagraphics’ 20% off everything on the website sale.

Not to harp on this, but…I had to find out about this sale from Tom Spurgeon’s website, and there’s no mention of it on the Tcj.com page either. I understand the impulse to separate editorial and marketing, I guess, and maybe it’s just because it’s early days, but…you do realize that the way you make money from a web presence is through sales right? Not through advertising? Tell me you know that, please?

Update: With remarkable restraint, Eric Reynolds tells me he knows that in comments.

Utilitarian Review 1/2/10

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HU Elsewhere

HU took last week off, but I still had a few pieces up elsewhere around the webs.

I snuck in to the tail end of Tom Spurgeon’s holiday interview series over at the Comics Reporter with a discussion of the Elephant and Piggie children’s book series. (Update: Tom informs me that there’s another week of interview left, apparently — I am in the middle, not at the end at all.)

I don’t think it’s an issue of seeing it in the context of comics; Willems’ work is comics. He uses cartoony simplified animal characters and makes extensive use of comic tropes like motion lines and speech bubbles. The narrative is entirely advanced through sequential action; the movement and words of the characters directly tell the story; it’s absolutely not text with illustrations. Some of the chicken books even use panels. The only reason you wouldn’t call it a comic is because it’s not sold through the direct market, basically.

The second half of my survey of Thai Luk Thung videos is up on madeloud.

Still, there are other approaches. For example, there’s Por Parichart’s “Krai Sak Kon Bon Tarng Fun,” or “Someone on a Path to My Dreams.” It basically follows the usual luk thung formula — with a slight conceptual twist. Luk thung is often referred to as “Thai country music” because its audience and lyrical themes are both mostly rural. However, “Krai Sak Kon Bon Tarng Fun” is unusual in that it actually sounds like American country music. The band hits a Nashville groove like they’ve been listening to Hanks and Merles all their lives, while Por, the singer, imitates Dolly Parton down to the breathy yodeling quaver. And as for the video — well, the set designers appears to have seen Hee Haw.

Also on Madeloud, I have a review of a reissue by shoegaze legends Teenage Filmstars.

And at Metropulse I review the blaxploitation comp “Can You Dig It?” and the gospel comp “Fire In My Bones.”

Other Links

There are a couple of amazing essays by former Utilitarians up on tcj.com. First, Tom Crippen has a spectacular essay about Alan Moore and geekism. And then Bill Randall has an equally spectacular essay about the odd progression of manga in America. You really need to go read both of them; they’ve both kind of outdone themselves.

Also on tcj.com, Steven Grant has a brief, acerbic, and hysterical take on the Spirit pop up book.

Then Shaenon Garrity has an even briefer, even more acerbic, and even more hysterical take on Acme Novelty Library #19.

I enjoyed Chris Mautner’s discussion of Scott Pilgrim, a comic I’ve never read but am now thinking I should.

The one-woman comics-news dervish that is Brigid Alverson has a thorough round-up of this year’s manga news over at Robot 6.