The Comics Grab Bag!

September 3, 2002: This time out I'm going to focus on trade collections I've read relatively recently. If you're interested in some quick comments on recent (last month or so to you) issues of  Alias, Avengers Icons: Vision, Suicide Squad, Thor, Power Company, Thunderbolts, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Comic Book Artist, Powers, Amazing Spider-man, and Black Panther, take a look at last time's Grab Bag.

Road To Perdition:  I've read the comic but not seen the movie, so I can't say how well it transferred, though I've yet to read much that was bad in the movie reviews. The 281-page (just looking at the story pages) graphic novel formed by the original three parts rips along at a fine pace, making this a single-sitting read for me. That these are three- to four-panel pages with a splash thrown in here and there likely helps keep it brisk. Plenty of taught action and gunplay, it's easy to see why it was optioned for a movie treatment. At its core it's a tale of honor, duty, betrayal, crime and punishment, couched in a semi-historical pseudo-recollection.

   Richard Piers Rayner's detailed, cross-hatched linework is expressive, not once was I left wondering what or who I was looking at.

Lucifer vol.3 "A Dalliance with the Damned":  While the stretch between these collections is almost interminable, and I find myself having to reaquaint myself with the characters and plot to date each time one does come out. This volume collects issues 14 through 20 of the series (which puts me nearly a year behind where the monthly readers are, but I can live with it) and takes us deeper into the repurcussions of what the titular fallen angel and former lord of Hell accomplished in volume 2: A new Creation. Along the way this volume shows us life in Hell (with no apologies to Matt Groening), focusing on the aristocracy and its fashions there - not to mention some wonderful court inntrigues, and shows us political changes among the demoniac descendants of Lilith. Seeing Mike Carey's work here has me interested in what he's going to do now that he's the latest to land the Hellblazer assignment. The mix of artists throws me slightly - I prefer the Peter Gross/Ryan Kelly chapters (the court intrigues in Hell) over the Dean Ormston bookend chapter artwork, but each works well enough.

Berlin: City of Stones: One read-through simply will not do this justice. The first in a proposed trilogy, this volume collects the first 8 issues of Jason Lutes' character, cultural and political study of Berlin in the first half of the 20th century. Skipping back and forth, we explore the city's changes both in 1918 and at the end of 1928 and beginning of 1929. We see the city in the face of post-WWI defeat, and the uneven rise of both Communism and the self-mis-naimed National Socialists - the Nazis, seeing them largely throughh the eyes of a journalist who's made the city his home, a mother on a quest for political self-discovery and a young woman trying to pick up her grief-aborted development as an artist rather than fall into the planned social trap of marriage and family her father has planned for her. Lutes brings us the clash of political and social classes in this unique place and time in history, and does it masterfully. Shattered lives, desperation, unfortunate endings and uncertain reinventions of self, it's all in there. Especially as the individual issues are put out by a smaller press (Drawn & Quarterly) I considered picking up the individual issues from #9 on... but I know I'll want these in trade volumes eventually, and he's producing the individual issues at a slow pace... (Consider that issue #8 was a December 2000 release and #9 was June 2002)  I'd rather read each arc as a whole, too. However, if I suddenly become wealthy...

  Finally, one of the items I picked up while in Chicago this year was a self-published bit of autobiography called Stylish Vittles: I Met A Girl by a writer/artist named Tyler Page. He invites the reader to "witness the birth of a life in comics."

   By and large I enjoyed this and was drawn into the events, which is something I realized not only by my reading it through in one, pre-bedtime sitting during that convention weekend, but also because I'm interested in buying the second volume to see how this turns out. Tyler might be buried in fanmail, too busy working on future sections of the story along with work and his last semester of grad school starting, didn't feel there was anything in my note that required a reply, or I inadvertently insulted him, I don't know. It's certainly nothing I'm going to hold against him. My mentioning that I felt an extended opening section surely marked the work as a self-published item (even the most liberal-minded commercial editor would have insisted on cutting at least some of the pages, and even then his boss would've sent it back for a deeper cut) might have easily proven offensive and/or marked me as a philistine. I was simply being honest. Sure, I know he was looking at it as the ultimate crane shot, and that it is meant to resonate with both the Saganesque theme of our cosmic connection to the stars (something I, as an agnostic, connect with though it's intriguing to find someone not becoming more nihilistic as a result) and probably reinforce how incredibly tiny and remote we are in the context of the universe, but it's nonetheless something that struck me as self-indulgent.

         As mentioned, I enjoyed his story, recounting most of this romance from his senior year at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. The shifts in narrative - where we suddenly find ourselves inside Nanette's (his romantic interest's) head, and then there's a two-page break where we're being directly addressed by both characters, talking from some point later than the remaining events in this volume... even during a second read I find that bit disorienting. Still, it pulled me straight through the volume, and that's saying something.

         On top of all this there's an uncomfortable (for me, of course) level of voyeurism involved, as I'm following the events of someone's life from just a few years ago, and all indications are that he's now in a different relationship. It made me more fumble-tongued than usual while trying to talk with him about it at the con the next day, with his current girlfriend (my presumption) there on his arm. I guess it's not a big deal to them - which is great for them - but where I come from it borders on rude to discuss former romances with third parties (especially strangers) in front of the current one. Perhaps that's simply my problem. Apparently it is!

         So, you could do far worse than giving this a try, especially if you're looking for a warm, down-to-earth romance with more than a smattering of cosmological issues mixed in. A pleasant, highly-accessible read, and very likely one of those items one can give to a girlfriend or wife who's not already into comics.

         Having handled all the distribution to date himself, this is finally being solicited by Diamond (and is in the current Previews catalog) now, so if it sounds interesting let your local comics dealer know now.

         That's enough for now. I have to sleep sometime. As always, any comments, reactions or suggestions will be welcomed, whether you just want to email me directly or post them on my still new and barely-used messageboard.

===MJN