"Reckon our romance is over." A few thoughts about Red Range: A Wild Western Adventure

I was a supporter for publisher Drew Ford's Kickstarter project Red Range: A Wild Western Adventure, a hardcover collection of a western comic book story from 1999 by writer Joe R. Lansdale and artist Sam Glanzman. Ford wanted to get the book back into print and it sounded interesting enough. Unfortunately, due to some postal mishaps, I didn't receive my copy of the book until a year after I should have.

During the time from when I backed the Kickstarter to the present, Ford took his label 'It's Alive' to IDW, but continued launching Kickstarters to republish various comics, many of them by Glanzman, who passed away during one of the Kickstarter campaigns. I didn't feel right supporting Ford's efforts until I knew what he was capable of... and frankly, I was also ambivalent about supporting someone whose work was being printed by IDW. I mean, it's just reprints - and you've got a major publisher. I don't feel right putting money in the hat at that point, especially when most of what he's reprinting can still be obtained in its original format for much, much less than one of his Kickstarter copies. All the same, I was very tempted by his hardcover reprint of Dope by Trina Robbins, but I have all the originals.

Red Range, then. It's the story of a black man who is a masked outlaw and rescues a black boy from being killed by Klansmen; the Klansmen give chase. Eventually the pursuit leads into a weird time-lost land made up of various time displaced things like conquistadors and dinosaurs.

In the afterword, Stephen Bissette compares Red Range to Quentin Tarantino's film Django Unchained. I mean, I guess so? Both of them are well-crafted pieces of exploitative trash where white creators get to depict lynchings and use the n-word a lot, but it's okay because the protagonist is a black guy who is rather good at using guns and the villains are comical scumbags. Hooray? (I am not a fan of Django Unchained, suffice to say) It's an unpleasant read, with a black man being castrated on the first page and a few beastiality jokes in the middle. And then, somehow, the setting changes to a lost valley with conquistadors and dinosaurs. It's an abrupt change to the story and has no payoff - Red Range simply runs out of pages.

At least the pages are lovely; I have never seen Sam Glanzman's art looking so spectacular, being used to seeing his work printed on cheap Charlton paper with their lousy colours and dull lettering. This book pops, it looks absolutely terrific. But if I'd taken just 5 minutes to learn what Red Range was before supporting the Kickstarter, I really wouldn't have bothered.

"Why do I have to choose?" Out of This World #20 and #25 review

Yet another Steve Ditko comic book has been produced via a Kickstarter project run by his long-time editor Robin Snyder. You may recall last time (as I posted here) Snyder printed one reprint comic and one of Ditko's newer Snyder books. This time there is again one reprint book, Out of This World #20 and the all-new #25.

Out of This World #20 reprints various Ditko comics which are either in public domain or are Ditko's own property. From Ditko's Charlton days are reprinted "A World Where I Was King" and "From All Our Darkrooms." Also featured are "In Due Time" from Strange Avenging Tales #1 (which I covered on my blog here), a tale from Mort Todd's Monsters Attack called "Face It" and a pair of rare 1970s stories published in Questar magazine featuring the Destruction Agent and Star.

Taken together, Out of This World #20 is a splendid look at Ditko across the years - Ditko of the 50s, 70s & 90s. Strangely, it's the stories from the 50s & 90s in which I find him most disciplined, telling stories with identifiable plots and characters. The 70s tales from Questar are full of weird energy but aren't paced quite right. In both tales it feels like compilations of an adventure comic strip where you only have the Sunday pages and none of the weekday pages which were building up to that Sunday's events. Throughout the tales I found myself wondering - "wait, what are they after?" and "hold on, who's this guy? is this the first I'm seeing of him?"

It's a shame that comic book culture doesn't often speak about Ditko's contemporary work, for here we have #25, containing six brand-new comic stories by Ditko. At this point, it feels as though fandom has rendered its judgment upon Ditko's self-published works and are no longer interested in talking about it - only Ditko fans in the echo chamber are still examining his work. To some extent, I am likewise guilty of this for I struggle to have anything new to say about his present-days works. Very often, his stories are screeds about objectivism which I find unpersuasive and while I frequently admire his penciling, I'm repeatedly irritated by the rough scripting and half-formed characterizations.

...And so I feel much the same about #25. Many of the pages look unfinished and unprofessional. One begins to feel as though they are not so much supporting new Steve Ditko comics as new Steve Ditko sketchbooks. The new tales include recent creations of his such as the Madman, the Cape and the Hero. The tales include "Either or" and "Choices" which are both objectivist tracts, while "Action-Reaction" is another instance of Ditko musing upon his relationship with his fanbase.

I'm not old enough to have witnessed how the Ditko/fandom dynamic has played out over the decades but at this point, Ditko seems quite frustrated by people like... well, me - people who presume to criticize objectivism without having read Ayn Rand (per his editorial "Philosophy vs. No- or Anti-Philosophy." In "Action-Reaction" Ditko depicts the arrival of a new Steve Ditko comic and the consumer's choice to either accept or reject it; when the exchange of money and product occurs, the purchaser then flies into an angry rage, tearing the comic apart. At this stage, rage is not what I've seen from today's Ditko followers - very few people talk about Ditko at all and most of the reactions I see in the fanzine Ditkomania are very forgiving (and tend to be objectivists like him). I'm afraid the days of people becoming enraged by Ditko's comics are long past - that may very well be how fans reacted in the late 60s when he first began telling his Mr. A stories, but today... Ditko's known for his Spider-Man & Doctor Strange work which predates Mr. A; the rest is being steadily ignored.

Taken as a whole, I am glad Mr. Ditko is still telling stories and has a modest audience who are interested in his work. He's a living legend and regardless of how much I enjoy his recent stories, I am happy to continue supporting his publications.

"I don't know what's worse, Wolff -- when they criticize our work -- or when they ignore it!" A Vampire in Hollywood review

Thanks to Kickstarter, yet another collection of Batton Lash's Supernatural Law comics has been produced: A Vampire in Hollywood. It collects the last few issues of Lash's now-completed Suernatural Law ongoing series, featuring lawyers Alanna Wolff and Jeff Byrd. Lash has indicated this will be the last collection of its type as the series now exists as a webcomic; future collections will be webcomic reprints. Included in the collection is "The Works Speak for Themselves" in which works of art gain the power of speech and begin interpreting themselves; "Werewolves... and the Women Who Love Them" in which a Dr. Phil-style talk show host holds a special episode about lycanthropy; "A Vampire in Hollywood" in which a minor vampire decides to sell his story to Hollywood, much to the irritation of other vampires; "Wolff & Byrd, the Movie" in which one of Wolff & Byrd's friends tries to sell them on a Hollywood adaptation of their lives; "Weird Eye for the Normal Guy" in which Mavis the secretary deals with an ex-con and a trio of not-so-scary ghosts; finally, "People v. Toxic Avenger" is a licensed story featuring the Troma film character Toxic Avenger who needs Wolff & Byrd to clear his reputation in Tromaville.

Once again, these stories grant Lash (and his occasional aides) a chance to mimick the styles of other artists, most notably a letter-perfect imitation of Frank Miller's Sin City in "Wolff & Byrd, the Movie." He even has Art Spiegelman receive criticism from his own Maus work in "The Works Speak for Themselves." Lash also has great fun modeling his characters after famous faces, most obviously in all the Troma people found in "People v. Toxic Avenger" and the aforementioned talk show host in "Werewolves... and the Women Who Love Them," but he also has a ghost who is rather reminiscent of Errol Flynn in "Wolff & Byrd, the Movie."

What makes Supernatural Law so consistently great is how Lash seizes upon familiar tropes and subverts them, usually through the form of litigation (which is not a common solution to problems in fiction). This collection features a woman suing the vampire who bit her, the owners of a haunted house suing the realtor because the ghost wasn't a famous person, and other ghosts sued for being too friendly. Lash's work on the series has slowed down since the ongoing book ended but hopefully there will continue to be an audience for this series for many, many years to come.

"Your viciousness blackened me!" Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #19 review

Steve Ditko's publisher Robin Snyder recently released another new Ditko comic, Tales of the Mysterious Traveler #19. They are currently preparing another one via Kickstarter, so check it out if you're any kind of Ditko fan.

The new book is (like all Ditko-Snyder titles) a black & white book. As the Mysterious Traveler property seems to be in the public domain now and because of Ditko's history drawing for that title at Charlton in the 1950s, he and Snyder have revived it as a series of part-new part-old stories. This issue contains seven Ditko stories, with the leading one the only new tale.

Said new tale, "Both Ways," concerns a scientist who takes out his rivals by planting a bomb in their room then confronting them while wearing bomb-proof armor so he can gloat before they die. However, one of the victims' sister vows revenge. Another recent tale is "Your Shadow Knows," in which a killer is tormented by his own shadow, which refuses to serve as a collaborator to an evil man; Ditko has a great history with living shadows, such as this fellow from his Marvel days.

Only two of the tales actually include the Mysterious Traveler, but at least there's enough to validate the book's title. One tale, "Test of a Man" features have shadows and thick lines quite unlike what Ditko is known for - different, but I like it. I wouldn't be surprised to learn he had an inker on that story

I should also note after my disappointment with Jim Salicrup's introduction in yesterday's post that Snyder's introduction opens with a proper reference to the Mysterious Traveler intro and closes by referencing the outro. See how easy it is when you put in more than a token effort?

My Kickstarter rewards included a copy of 2009's Ditko Once More. It's a collection of some of Ditko's more didatic writings about objectivism, the sort of arch straw man tales he's frequently told on his own. However, one of these is actually quite good! In it, one man (his usual straw man type) argues there are no truths; the other makes the above argument, to which the first must concede. This gentler, funnier side of Ditko should come out more often - it makes his editorials much more entertaining.

"You self-blinded fool..." Mr. A #18 review

One of the best things to come of comic book creators turning to Kickstarter is that it's helped a true living legend of the medium - Steve Ditko - to continue producing work. Perhaps the exposure he's gained from Kickstarter is greater than what he had before, as self-published comics have a terrible time gaining traction in today's comic book market.

The latest Kickstarter production from Ditko is a new issue of Mr. A. Of all of Ditko's creator-owned characters, Mr. A is surely the best-known. Because the character is used to help enact Ditko's objectivist philosophies, he is also a character quite close to Ditko's soul.

In Mr. A #18 there are two stories; in the first, "Mr. A and the Horror," a man in a monster mask goes about extorting money from people. Mr. A sets out to stop the extortioner, but his victims are far too protective of him. In the second tale, "The Score," a businessman commits suicide and Mr. A sets after the men who drove him to that end.

Surprisingly for Ditko's work, there are sub-plots in these tales, whereas his self-published stories normally each tell a single tale. In both stories, there's troule at the Daily Crusader newspaper where Mr. A's civilian identity works, eventually leading to the return of the paper's first publisher who sets things in order at the climax.

Although I have no great love for objectivism, I rather like this book more than the other recent self-published Ditko comics I've read. His art seems more detailed and the lettering sharper. I only hope there are many more stories to come.

"Everyone wants me helpless." Duster Review

More than three years ago, I supported a comic book Kickstarter for the first time; last week, the product finally arrived. It certainly took its sweet time, but here at last is the graphic novel Duster!

The book is written by Micah Wright and Jay Lender and drawn by Jok, with that spiffy cover you see by (of course) Howard Victor Chaykin. I became interested in the project in 2012 because it was being championed by creators such as Kurt Busiek and - being inexperienced with crowdfunded projects - I felt that established creators deserved my funding to see their self-published comics come to life. In particular, although I had never read any of Micah Wright's comics, I vaguely recalled skimming past Bleeding Cool's expose of his having lied about his military career. This was the first comic book I had seen Wright's name on since that scandal so I suppose I gravitated to this project because the idea of seeing Wright redeemed would be compelling, even if the comic book weren't. As Wright appeared to be someone whom the comic book industry had abandoned, it made perfect sense to see his name on a Kickstarter project. The delay from when the books were mailed out to its arrival in my mailbox was much greater than usual, to the point where I wondered if I had been forgotten. The book finally arrived with something I had never seen before:

Canada Customs stopped the parcel at the border! Boy, align yourself with Micah Wright and the world conspires against you! (seriously, is he on a watchlist?)

Duster concerns one Jo Baker, a single mother and crop duster living in a small Texan town near the end of World War II. Just as Germany has surrendered in Europe, a plane full of Nazis who have cut a deal with the USA are headed over Texas airspace, en route to safety in South America. Unfortunately for everyone, they encounter Jo's plane and this results first in an aerial attack, a farmhouse raid, a town held hostage and finally a showdown in a wool processing plant.

Duster is a thick book, the main story running about 220 pages. Considering many Kickstarter comic book projects aim to deliver perhaps 20 pages of original content, Duster definitely falls on the heavy end of the scale, which helps mitigate the lengthy production time. However, the story is broken up into six chapters which are each comparable in length to that of a monthly comic book - despite this book being a first-time publication, not a collected serial! Likely, this is because Duster is also being sold broken up into its chapters as a set of digital comics.

I've never seen the work of artist Jok before; he's well-suited to this tale and its quick-paced action. He also does a terrific job of desining distinctive characters, both amongst the townsfolk who populate the background and the Nazis, so that even characters who aren't identified by name become familiar and demonstrate quirks.

The plot is fairly pedestrian, usually ramping itself up to an action scene, then building a ramp to the next such moment. The story is mostly notable because of the strong female protagonist (yes, that's why Greg Rucka likes it), the wartime setting and the flashes of humour throughout the tale - occasionally rather grim humour, such as a memorable death scene in the wool processing plant.

The only note in this book which struck me the wrong way came from the introduction, written by Martin Olson: "This should be a movie. Make Duster into a film, dammit. I want to see it. Badly." Once again it hits open my pet peeve about film and comics - that comics are seemingly incomplete as a work of art without a film - that the process of reading words for yourself and choosing how to interpret the page is better left to cameramen and sound mixers - that a labour of love created by a mere handful of folks is inferior to that of a major motion picture's hundreds of staff members. Where do we see this attitude but in comics? Who listens to a radio program and thinks, "Now adapt it as a painting!" Or watches television and remarks, "I can't wait for the magazine!" I beg you, my readers - don't be that guy. The medium of comic book art is sufficiently capable of telling stories intended for the medium of comic book art. End. Of. Rant. (for now)

I no longer support every Kickstarter run by a personality whom I merely recognize - I'd be broke if I kept that up! Nowadays I'm much more choosy in terms of who and what I support - plus, I prefer the digital option over print 'cause my shelves really don't need any more crowding. Regardless, Duster is a good package - a page-turner in the tradition of classic comics. It may not be more sophisticated than a 1930s comic (the crowdfunding aspect is perhaps the most notable thing about it), but the Strong Female Protagonist should help it find an audience with contemporary readers.

Mr. Monster on Kickstarter!

He's been super; he's been duper; now he's going to be collected!

A Kickstarter project has begun to bring yet another 1940s Canadian hero back into print; this time, it's Doc Stearne, alias Mr. Monster! This is yet another rare opportunity to feast one's eyes on seldom-seen Canadian comics, so I certainly encourage all interested peoples to follow my lead and support the project!

Happy Canuck Day with Johnny Canada!

Yesterday I received in the mail my copy of Johnny Canuck, a new collection featuring all of the 1940s adventures of the titular hero, created written and drawn by Leo Bachle for Bell Features' Dime Comics, one of the so-called "Canadian Whites." Appropriately, I received this handsome hardcover volume just in time for Canada Day!

The book was produced via Kickstarter by Rachel Richey, who had earlier helped publish Nelvana of the Northern Lights, another Bell Features hero. Included with my package were a Johnny Canuck bookplate and this stylish "What Would Johnny Canuck Do?" wristband, seen above.

Johnny Canuck has retained some familiarity with we Canadians over the decades, whether it be through his stature in Canadian comic book history (Captain Canuck owes him his own nom de plume) or his relationship to the Vancouver Canucks. For myself, I first saw him in a grade 4 social studies textbook which reprinted a few pages from one of his adventures. I wish I could say this sampling made me a fan, but in those days I had been successfully brainwashed by the US publishers to believe they were the sole purveyors of "legitimate" super hero fiction.

Seeing these stories together in one place, I do have to admit Leo Bachle had some real chops as an artist. Some of his body language is stiff or poorly-proportioned, but his facial expressions were quite good. The stories themselves are fairly familiar stuff - less exceptional than what his US cousins the Destroyer or Spy Smasher were getting up to. Still, Johnny toured across the scope of World War II, from Libya to Berlin to Russia to Yugoslavia to Africa and Japan. The war's end likewise brought about Johnny's end as the returning US heroes gave Johnny the boot.

One way in which Johnny managed to outplay his southern cousins is in his relationship with Hitler. Captain America famously socked Hitler in the puss on the cover of his first issue, yet less-famously didn't meet Hitler at all in the pages within. Johnny, however, caught up to Hitler in his second appearance and gave him a Canadian knuckle sandwich! Strangely, however, Germans in the Johnny Canuck stories tended to call Johnny a "Britisher." The meaning of his surname was evidently lost on them. Johnny also loved to talk about rugby; perhaps that was a popular sport in the Canada of the 40s, but unlike most of the Commonwealth we since given up such British interests in favour of sports beloved in the US (namely, football).

Top: Dime Comics #2 (1942) Bottom: Dime Comics #4 (1942)

If Bachle's stories have one serious failing it's that he would occasionally recycle art from previous tales. Unlike his friend Ross Saakel, he did at least trace his own work, rather than Jack Kirby. There are some typically-disappointing racist caricatures of the Japanese and a very strange jungle in Libya which is inhabited by a tribe of people who stepped out of a Conan novel.

Top: Dime Comics #3 (1942) Bottom: Dime Comics #7 (1943)

How wonderful to have such hard-to-find comics preserved for future generations! Thank you Mr. Bachle for being one my country's pioneering artists. Johnny Canuck lives again!

Kieron Dwyer on Kickstarter!

I have a lot of affection for the art of Kieron Dwyer, he being one of the best artists who collaborated on Mark Gruenwald's Captain America run. I don't see his work often, but his name always manages to perk me up a little.

It so happens that Dwyer is presently preparing a new comic book project called West Portal, which you can learn all about through its Kickstarter page. I've noticed in the past how much Dwyer's art has changed from one decade to the next - now on this project, he has a chance to demonstrate his ability to emulate artists as diverse as Alex Raymond and Jack Chick! As the feature's protagonist bounds about from one type of comic book story to another it's a fantastic opportunity for Dwyer to show off his talents.

Unfortunately, the Kickstarter hasn't received much attention. I didn't learn about this project because of promotion via other comic book sites, but simply because I happened to be browsing the Kickstarter site. If this project sounds cool to you, perhaps you can help it out? With a proved talent like Dwyer, you can be assured of a professional piece of work.

"Windsor is a remarkable man in almost every way, but when it comes to that sort of thing he's about the dumbest man I have ever known!" Brok Windsor review

Through supporting the Kickstarter which produced Hope Nicholson & Rachel Richey's collected edition of Nelvana of the Northern Lights, I came to learn quite a lot about the era of 1940s Canadian comics which produced the so-called "Canadian Whites" (much of what I learned arose because I found myself promoting the book on behalf of my employers, the University of Calgary). With both women turning to new Kickstarter projects along the same lines, I happily endorsed Nicholson's new book Brok Windsor, collecting the adventures of the obscure Canadian hero featured in the obscure series Better Comics (sometimes a black & white series, sometimes color) by the obscure publisher Maple Leaf Publishing. Obscurely.

Created by Jon Stables, Brok Windsor is rather nice Canadian fellow who goes canoeing one day and finds himself in Chaqua, a lost land featuring enormous monsters, sorcery, advanced technology and heads without bodies. He soon befriends Torgon, a First Nations chap who is son of the local chief; eventually they join forces with Starra while saving her from a depraved sorceress and the trio endure many adventures together (with Starra developing feelings for Brok). Brok also obtains superhuman strength and grows taller due to the Chaqua environment. He also acquires clothing which might best be described as a halter top (possibly also the reason why Torgon refuses to wear a shirt).

The content of Brok Windsor includes a heaping tablespoon of Flash Gordon, a dash of John Carter and a liberal pound of Pellucidar. Like Gordon, Windsor is thrust into a land of both science and sorcery, of rebel armies and sinister witches, of flying machines and terrifying beasts. Like Carter, he obtains special powers from his environment and clashes with despicable creatures who plant their heads on other people's bodies. And as in the Pellucidar tales, the backdrop is a hidden land somewhere on Earth where anything is possible.

Indeed, anything -- even a First Nations sidekick hero who defies most of the "Indian sidekick" tropes! Torgon speaks English perfectly, is actually taller and stronger than Windsor and has his own love interest. Although he enters the tale in a loincloth and with feathers in his hair, he quickly puts on pants and boots. Although he's the son of a great chief, his father's kingdom is a super-scientific city with advanced aircraft ("Zipcars") which Torgon can fly. In general, Torgon is smarter than Windsor, not only in the ways of Chaqua, but in craftiness. At one point he even demonstrates real agency - when Brok has temporarily lost his memory, Torgon decides to abandon him in the prison they've landed in, deciding it's more important to escape and complete their mission than to drag Brok along. Yes, the book's nominal hero is left behind by the sidekick!

Part of why the series reminds me of Flash Gordon is that, as in Alex Raymond's strip, the goals of the protagonists are constantly interrupted as they wander into the clutches of menaces which are entirely unrelated to their present predicament and this tends to set off a domino effect; Brok and Torgon's attempt to rescue Starra from giant rats leads to Brok's amnesia, to their capture by an evil sorceress, to their journey through an underground world filled with monsters and so on - all of this interfering with the larger mission of saving Torgon's father from a rebellion. However, unlike Raymond's strip, the characters occasionally find time to rest, eat and (gasp!) converse with one another. As I noted in my review of Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo, it seems unbelievable that Gordon could fight on day after wearying day - I appreciate that not everything in Chaqua is life-or-death - sometimes Brok and Torgon can drop everything to hunt their next meal.

Also unlike Raymond is the pacing of the series. Fights in Brok Windsor can carry on for pages, whereas Raymond would short-cut his characters' actions, leaving his text boxes to exposit on what occurred. Brok Windsor fits more comfortably into the realm of comics than Flash Gordon because it escapes the confines of "illustrated text story" which far too many comics of the 30s & 40s fell into. The only real misstep is that the adventure in Chaqua comes to an abrupt finish when the heroes meet a figure who grants them each one wish, which they use to end the story. It enabled Stables to take Brok into new territory by returning him to Canada proper, but sadly the series didn't last long enough for him to finish the next tale (the Kickstarter raised enough money to publish Stables' last-known unpublished script, but the story is still left on a cliffhanger).

In parting, I have to say Jon Stables' artwork is a treat. I certainly ragged on one Canadian Whites creator - Ross Saakel - for his poor art and traced tales. Brok Windsor demonstrates that Stables had real talents as an illustrator, moreso than many comic book artists of that decade (be they US or Canadian). He understood anatomy, perspective and fight choreography, plus he had weird and wonderful ideas about what to draw. Brok Windsor is great fun, but I think the real take away is that in Stables, Canada had one fine artist.

More Canadian whites on Kickstarter!

Earlier this year, Rachel Richey & Hope Nicholson combined efforts to produce a quite successful Kickstarter for Nelvana of the Northern Lights (as I've mentioned on this blog before). With "Canadian whites" (original Canadian comic book content of the 1940s) being so expensive and only lightly researched over the decades, it's a tremendous gift to see this renewed interest in the field.

With Nelvana in the rearview mirror, Richey's new Kickstarter project is a collection for perhaps the best-known Canadian adventure hero of the 1940s - Johnny Canuck, a Bell Features hero like Nelvana.

For her part, Hope Nicholson is now creating a collection for Brok Windsor, a Maple Leaf Comics hero who's quite obscure, but I'm fascinated to learn more about him.

Maybe I'm a little more excited than most about these projects - in the last year I've gone from being pretty ignorant about my home & native land's 1940s books to being able to rattle off the history of the "whites," the major creators and characters at the drop of the hat (which I've had to do thanks to the media attention the Nelvana book brought to my workplace).

These are new Kickstarter projects but have brought in money so quickly they're pretty dang certain to fund themselves. I mention them here not so much to promote the Kickstarters as to get the word out - anyone who missed out on the excitement of their book about Nelvana (or who is looking forward to IDW's release of their book), make sure you get in on Johnny Canuck & Brok Windsor too!

From IDW in October

Usually when I post solicitations it's to promote something I had a hand in creating; in this instance, it's something where my involvement ended with the Kickstarter project, but I think you should consider this puppy:

Nelvana of the Northern Lights—CERTIFIED COOL

Adrian Dingle (w & a & c) Nelvana of the Northern Lights returns from the lost pages of Adrian Dingle’s Triumph Comics! Nelvana was one of the world’s very first super-heroines, predating Wonder Woman by several months, and is among the ranks of the first Canadian superheroes to emerge after Canada placed an embargo on US luxury goods during WWII. First appearing in 1941, Nelvana was tasked with protecting Canada’s northern lands. Using the powers of the northern lights, Nelvana could fly at incredibly fast speeds, become invisible, and even turn into dry ice! She used her great powers to ward off Nazi invaders, shady fur traders, subterranean mammoth men, and inter-dimensional ether people.

Featuring an introduction by editors Hope Nicholson and Rachel Richey, and foreword/afterword by Dr. Benjamin Woo and Michael Hirsh. HC • FC • $39.99 • 352 pages • ISBN: 978-1-63140-128-2

Nelvana was one of the world’s first super-heroines, predating Wonder Woman! For the first time, her complete adventures are collected in one volume!

I've already given interviews to CBC Radio & Utoday about this book and, happily, now it will be available worldwide thanks to IDW! More books celebrating the "Canadian whites" heroes will be arriving from this tome's author. I hope Dingle's other great hero the Penguin will get his due eventually!

Another story about me and my ego

It's a little strange to me to find myself back in the public eye, years after leaving Marvel, but that's what's happened over the last week and all over a single e-mail intended only for my immediate colleagues.

I helped support the Kickstarter for the book Nelvana of the Northern Lights, which collected all of the 1940s adventures of Nelvana, Canada's first super-heroine. Happily, we at the University of Calgary were asked to help provide material for the book, so I found myself able to support the publication from two separate ends!

Receiving the book last week, I informed my colleagues that University of Calgary Archives had received a special thank you for our efforts; there I thought it would end, but the story grew from there as the rest of campus became interested. As of this writing, it's led to a story at UToday (read it here) and may yet lead to me appearing on radio or television to speak more about the George Morley Collection, which, despite having been in our hands for most of a decade, hasn't received a great deal of attention until recently, largely because of my efforts.

Compared to the days when I had to struggle to get anyone interested in promoting my work at Marvel, I rather enjoy this set-up - people approach me, ask if I'd like to talk to them about comics and voila, the media machine takes over!

Gone Hollywood

Although I have been editing at imdb.com for some time, it's only recently that I received an entry at that august website; a page has been dedicated to me in recognition of my co-producer's credit on the documentary film Comics in Focus: Chris Claremont's X-Men.

I became attached to the project via Kickstarter - in fact, this was the first Kickstarter I contributed to. My motivation was, in part, sheer vanity, an ego boost, a naked attempt at giving myself an imdb page. However, it was not only about my ego, but also my complicated feelings about Chris Claremont.

I say "complicated" because although I grew up reading his X-Men comics, I knew none of the details behind his departure from the franchise in 1991. By the time he returned in 2000 I had become part of that jaded, cynical internet audience which was eager to see Claremont fail, to expose his new work as worthless, to even reexamine his original 17 year run as overrated. I was a chump, in other words.

Only when Grant Morrison began his New X-Men run did my feelings begin to change; so much of the series' lore had been cast adrift that I soon myself looking at Claremont's contemporaneous X-Treme X-Men and appreciating how he kept the series anchored to what had come before, while still integrating what Morrison had begun introducing. Happily, I came back to the fold in time to enjoy many more years of Claremont's stories and eventually I contributed a supplementary text piece for an issue of his series X-Men Forever; Claremont graciously autographed that issue for me.

By the time this film turned up at Kickstarter, Claremont's writing prospects at Marvel were - for the first time in 12 years - nil. Having then only recently resigned from my own work at Marvel, it bothered me to realize Claremont had run out of work; he's someone who, ideally, I would like to see keep working until he think he's had enough. My support for this documentary was founded primarily on a desire to demonstrate support for Claremont.

Happily, not only was the film successfully funded and produced (replete with my ego-stroking credit), but Claremont has since resumed working at Marvel via Nightcrawler, which I would surely read if I were still reading Marvel Comics. The documentary itself is concerned with Claremont's first 17-year run on X-Men - there is a brief mention of X-Men Forever, but the narrative the film chose was to follow Claremont's career only up until 1991. Along with many discussions with Claremont himself are included the reminiscences of Louise Simonson, Ann Nocenti, Len Wein, Jim Shooter and my friend Peter Sanderson (conspicuously absent are John Byrne, Jim Lee & Bob Harras). Although the film is a brief 42-minute jaunt, there are many bonus clips from the interview sessions of interest to anyone who likes to hear behind-the-scenes anecdotes about 1980s Marvel.

"I'm going to tell you everything because I want you to know the full depth of your defeat." The Black Coat: the Blackest Dye review

I came early to the independent series Black Coat, joining it in 2006 for the mini-series A Call to Arms. The titular masked hero is based out of New York in 1776 and wages war with the British, aided by a network of operatives called the Knights of Liberty. The concept brings to mind Dr. Syn, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro, even the Shadow. It's a great premise.

...On paper. I like the concept behind Black Coat, it's a fine premise for an adventure hero series - yet I've always been disappointed with the book. I'm not sure why I've followed it for so long - Francesco Francavilla's artwork on the initial series helped, yet I wound up following the subsequent Or Give Me Death without him. The series has a very erratic publishing schedule - although the stories are intertwined so that they would be best served by monthly publication, a year or more might elapse between Black Coat series.

The most recent series is actually a graphic novel: the Blackest Dye by Ben Lichius (writer) and Dean Kotz (artist). It saw funding through Kickstarter, where I happened to be one of the supporters. I guess I wanted to show my support for independent comics, even if I don't find the product especially memorable.

The back cover blurb declares: "this new graphic novel picks up after the events of "Or Give Me Death" but is a great place for new readers to jump in as well." To which I say: horse hockey! I read Or Give Me Death and even I'm baffled by this book.

The high-flying swashbuckling adventure the concept promises is constantly undermined by the heavy scenes of characters talking to each other; so little of visual interest happens, instead letting exposition or melodrama envelope the publication. And for all the exposition - page after page at a time, including the villain bragging about his plot to the hero. Yet for all of this, one of the villains from the previous mini-series returns without any explanation of who or what he is; another supporting character, Nadia, holds an important role in this story but is never given a proper reintroduction - I confess I've completely forgotten who she was, but considering how her story plays out in the Blackest Dye, I doubt rereading Or Give Me Death would be fulfilling. How can such a small cast be so complicated to introduce?

Little as I know of Revolutionary War-era USA, something about this series seems unconvincing - and not only because it involves the Black Coat battling supernatural creatures. At one point he wields a wooden stake against a vampire and he - living more than 100 years before Dracula will be written - remarks, "Looks like I'll have to put a stake in this vampire the old fashioned way!" He's pretty self-aware to be deconstructing tropes in an era before they've become cliche!

No, you must be reading lines from an old script.

The Black Coat's Knights of Liberty tend to fall into a single heap of talking heads, but team leader Ursula Morgan stands out. Sadly, her role is limited here to exposition and a subplot where she's jealous of the Black Coat spending time with Nadia. Still, it's a pretty progressive role for a woman... by the standards of 1776.

More of comic books and the spirit of '76 tomorrow!

Sixteen thoughts about Cerebus

This last weekend I finished reading the 16th and final collected edition of Dave Sim's Cerebus. It's taken me some time to get through the series so I thought it fitting to gather up some of my impressions into Sixteen Thoughts About Cerebus. As befits Cerebus, the following is a bit of rambling:

#1: Coming at Cerebus so many years after its inclusion has given me a strange perspective on the series - I say "strange" because my years as a comic book fan and collector ran parallel to the development of Cerebus, yet not once did I seek the series out nor even glimpse it on the shelves. From all I knew of Cerebus - first gleaning it was very well-considered in the 80s, later ill-favoured in the 90s & 00s - I determined I wasn't in the target audience. Who was this assumed target audience? I have no clue, although I may have imagined them as caricatures of beatniks, replete with turtlenecks, goatees and bongo drums.

When I read of Cerebus on the internet today, it's difficult to untangle how people feel about the series because they all seem to have lived through the 300-issue run. They hitched their waggons to the Dave Sim pony, only to later grow furious at said pony for choosing to ride through a muddy, swampy bog. I lack the original context Cerebus was published against and while I likely missed many, many situational references, I think I'm better off reading Cerebus now. I doubt I would have had the patience to last until #300 if I had begun any sooner.

#2: The availability of Cerebus is a tricky thing. Even though my local shop keeps two shelves worth of Dave Sim material in-stock, some volumes of the trades are not easily acquired. This delayed me from reading the series as quickly as I'd hoped - I actually thought I could read 1 volume per week when I began this more than 2 years ago! It was also during this two year period that 1) I supported the High Society Digital Kickstarter and 2) my employers (University of Calgary Library) set out to acquire a full set of Cerebus. It seems as though there was something in the air.

#3: Part of what eventually drew me to Cerebus was the knowledge Dave Sim is a fellow Canadian. Which, I think I had known for decades, yet because Canadian media tends to lower your expectations when compared to British or US standards, I think I assumed Cerebus and by extension Sim were inferior. Mea culpa. I had already come to enjoy Sim's storytelling via Judenhass and glamourpuss - finally, I know him for his most widely-read work and recognize he is easily numbered among the greatest comic book creators.

#4: I'm even fond of the very early Sim when he was still learning his craft. It's not great, but it's an earnest effort. One of the joys of the first volume of Cerebus was seeing Sim discover his talent story-by-story, until he was essentially fully-formed by the end. Gerhard's later backgrounds were certainly very fine, but the panel shapes & sizes, the facial expressions, the carefully-considered placement of captions - that's what I marvelled at.

#5: However, for me, Sim's lettering was easily the most astonishing aspect of the series. Lettering is one of those disciplines (like colouring) which fans only ever seem to bring up when it's done poorly. Sim's lettering is phenomenal. So much of his characters' personalities came through in the way their speech was designed - the shape of their words were as important as the words themselves. It became particularly noticeable in later volumes where often verbal repartee was the only "action" on the page.

#6: I'm not normally one who enjoys fiction about horrible people (hence my spurning Mad Men), and yet Cerebus' cast of terribly disappointing people are fairly tolerable. Certainly the humourous bend of the series helps. Cerebus himself was clearly unlovable by the end of the first volume and that's firmly cemented through Church & State. Yet I was willing to carry on with his story in a large part because of the humour. Even then, as awful a person as Cerebus was and as certain as I was that the prophecy of Cerebus' death would come true, I did want to see good things happen to him. Even though I'm very forgiving to fictional characters, it's strange I should be so forgiving to someone whose author was clearly not going to let off the hook. Colour me naive.

#7: Speaking of humour - Sim's range runs the gamut from pratfalls to jokes so tasteless they cross the line twice. This was a series which makes gags about hurling infants to their doom. That's jokes, plural. Fortunately, comedy was never too far from the centre of this series. I thought the Roach was an odd distraction the first time he appeared, but oh, how I came to appreciate his appearances as the series progressed.

#8: I can't say I share in those interests of Sim's which become part of the narrative, being indifferent to Woody Allen and the Three Stooges, more interested in the fiction of Oscar Wilde & F. Scott Fitzgerald than I am in their personal lives and as of yet uninterested in Ernest Hemingway. Heck, I'm not even a huge Barry Windsor-Smith fan and the series originated as one great BWS/Conan parody. Regardless, at no point was I unable to follow the narrative because of Sim's references; no one ever seems to interpret art in the way its creator would prefer, but even though I may have been on the outside of many of Sim's references, I didn't feel excluded.

#9: The plots, though - whew! By Church & State I was having considerable difficulty keeping up with the references to the Cirinists and Kevillists, etc. Because the series was usually told from Cerebus' perspective, frequently significant events occurred outside his ken and I found it difficult to catch-up on what was occurring off-panel.

#10: For that matter, the series had a tendency to become text-heavy (oh, you think so? sneers everyone who read to the finish). Giant, staggering blocks of text broken up by illustrations, rendering the series as much of an illustrated novel as it was a comic book. This is the one place where I think serialization held an edge over the collected format - I think I would have been a more attentive reader had I been handed an issue of text-heavy Cerebus, as opposed to, say, 100 text-heavy pages in the Latter Days trade. Similarly, while I digested glamourpuss just fine as a serial, I doubt I could endure it as a collected work.

#11: Is the later Cerebus any good? I think so. The religious commentary seemed to be a diabolical test of the audience's willpower, but Latter Days contained many gems: notably, the tournament between Cerebus and Paul "Coffee" Annan was Sim at his best; the Spawn parody brought back fond memories of earlier Roach gags; I even found a lot of humour in the Three Wise Fellows, despite my lack of interest in the Stooges. It's only when Woody Allen entered Latter Days that I began to tune out; fortunately, I found the Last Day to be a very strong finish. I don't regret reading the entire series, despite the many internet screeds exhorting readers to quit after Melmoth.

#12: Misogyny. As a human on the internet writing about Cerebus, I am contractually obliged to mention it somewhere, yes? I signed the I Don't Believe Dave Sim is a Misogynist petition before ever reading Cerebus and I still hold to that opinion. I do believe Cerebus' content was, at times, misogynist - but I don't hold to the popular opinion that this content is the true face of Dave Sim. I appreciate that Cerebus tackles issues about male/female relationships from a perspective many would balk at assuming. Again, you are free to call me naive - but I enjoyed approaching these ideas from an unorthodox viewpoint. I like to question authority and people's innate assumptions - perhaps that's why I found the ideas Sim expressed fascinating. Opposing the mainstream was surely part of why I decided to tackle Cerebus to begin with.

#13: After Church & State, there's a terrible sense of melancholy which permeates Cerebus. Cerebus was informed he'd die alone and unloved and we readers had no reason to doubt he both deserved it and would get it in the end. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Cerebus - moreso than anything to do with hurled infants or its relationship to feminism - was that promise of Cerebus getting what he was due. It lurked behind every fleeting moment of happiness the character achieved in the remaining twelve (!) volumes. But then, even Cerebus' latter debauchery (opening a titty bar or founding a terrible religion) seemed fleeting - things were terrible but never so bad they couldn't get worse. At least there was nothing good to look forward to!

#14: Melancholy crept over me as well. Cerebus was doomed to struggle through 12 more volumes of his book and I, having determined I would finish reading the series, was doomed to struggle with him. Humourous asides such as Cerebus' suspenseful climbing of his chair (in the Last Day) or bizarre diversions such as Roarin' Rick lecturing Cerebus (in Guys) could only briefly distract me from the overall pointlessness of it all. The gradual thinning of the cast down to merely Cerebus himself just reinforced the sense of futility. If you dared invest yourself in the Regency Elf, Lord Julius, Elrod, Astoria, or, Tarim help us, Cirin (oh, how I perked up when her name appeared in the Last Day!), you were damned to disappointment.

#15: And there, I have to applaud Sim for daring to refuse fan service. He could have coasted from on the format popularized by High Society and Church & State for the rest of the series. He could have made Cerebus (gasp!) a decent person. Cerebus wouldn't be the only misanthropic cynic who audiences found favourable. Thinking (for instance) of Howard the Duck, there you have an outsider who sits in judgment over the rest of culture and we (presumably) want to see Howard stick it to The Man (even if The Man is us) because we identify with the underdog. Early in the series you could mistake Cerebus for an underdog protagonist who outwitted people which were his seeming betters (it even felt as though High Society were leading him to such an end). And yet, it was gradually clear that Cerebus' myopic avarice was not a design flaw for him to repair - it was his built-in feature. He was terrible and if we did see ourselves in him... well, congratulations, we're terrible too. Just because you're a cynic and an outcast, it doesn't imbue you with righteousness. All those muttonheads you look down upon? There always someone else looking down on you.

#16: The conclusion of Cerebus, in which our titular protagonist was drawn into The Light, held some interesting commentary from Sim about readers mistaking this as some form of Heavenly reaward - understandably, seeing as Cerebus' fallen castmates were waiting for him on the other side. All the same, I'm surprised so many people fell for it. Why would an eternity with all of his semi-friends be rewarding when he was so supremely unsatisfied to be with them in life? Come on, Elrod is on the other side. Ah say, it's The Other Place. Hades, that is, and ah don't mean Missouri. That's a joke, son.