Blog 2.0

By Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

The Teetering Tower of Review Stuff is perilously high, so let’s bang through some of it:

* I usually enjoy DC’s “Vertigo Crime” line of mature-reader graphic novels, but the latest needed some tighter editing. Cowboys ($19.99) features two different levels of law enforcement infiltrating the same criminal organization, a street cop from the white-collar side down, and an FBI agent from the street-level side up. Neither is aware of the other, and lethal mistakes are inevitable. That’s a pretty good concept for a noir-ish crime mystery, but author Gary Phillips takes waaaay too long setting it up, and since both cops are wife-cheating, smart-mouth jerks, and all the supporting characters are equally venal and unlikeable, and the criminals are the worst kind of scum, it’s hard to care what happens to any of these people. Fortunately, the art by Brian Hurtt is no-frills, crystal-clear storytelling, and I wouldn’t mind seeing more of it.

* Archaia’s Okko is about a band of demon hunters in a fictional place very much like Edo-era Japan called “Pajan” where the supernatural is very real. It’s a sort of cross between a samurai epic and Dungeons & Dragons, with our little team consisting of a ronin swordmaster; a drunken, magic-using cleric; a mysterious, seven-foot warrior who never removes his demon mask; and the cleric’s teenage disciple, who serves as the reader’s POV, narrating the stories from his old age. In the latest collection (Okko Vol. 3: The Cycle of Air, $19.95), our glum little group fights another demon-hunter who is virtually unbeatable for reasons I won’t disclose. It’s inventive and fun, although writer/artist Hub could be a bit more forthcoming with exposition; for example, it took three volumes for me to figure out that the gang was fighting supernatural agents on purpose! Also, the artwork – while very intricate, plausible and faithful to the historical era, is over-colored and very, very dark. So dark that my over-50 eyes struggled with the immense amount of detail, and I have to take the word of other critics that it’s as good as they say it is.

* The “Hardy Boys: The New Case Files” series by Papercutz is meant for readers much younger than me, and yet I’m enjoying it probably more than I should. Full credit goes to author Gerry Conway, who has spent decades scribing comics and television. Conway’s as good as they come, and has a light touch that never lets the reader see the little man behind the curtain. The latest book, Break Up! ($6.99), is a case in point; friction between Joe and Frank has been skillfully foreshadowed, and you fully expect the boys to end their famous team. But Conway maintains suspense by keeping all his balls in the air, until the story seems to find an organic but unforeseen conclusion. I wish comics written for adults were this good.

* Abrams ComicArts’ Empire State ($17.95) is subtitled A Love Story (or Not), and that pretty much sums it up. It’s the story of a mismatched pair of friends in Oakland, Calif., who both journey, for different reasons, to New York City. First it’s the boy, an unsophisticated but good-hearted dimbulb who tries out for a Google job he is grossly underqualified for; then it’s the girl, a chubby, intelligent, prickly, Jewish girl who moves to “the modern Rome” because she fits in better there. The boy, deciding he’s in love with what had been his best friend, again travels to New York, where the yawning chasm between the pair’s intellect, ambitions and values is thrown in high relief. Drawn in a cartoony style by writer/artist Jason Shiga, the storytelling is excellent and easy to follow, although Shiga alternates coloring everything in shades of red or shades of blue for no reason I can figure out. Perhaps I just didn’t care to figure it out; the ending seemed telegraphed to me from the first, and I found the journey to that expected conclusion to be rather dull. I did find the art interesting, and I bet readers of a more romantic bent will really dig Empire State. It’s good work, just not my thing.

I’ve already reviewed the second volume of Vanguard’s Frank Frazetta library, but I just received the first, and it’s worth a mention. But only a mention, as poster Jeff Plackemeier said all that needs to be said about The Complete Johnny Comet ($49.95) on my website. Let me just direct you there.

Photos, from top:
1. Cowboys is the latest mature-readers graphic novel DC's "Vertigo Crime" series. Courtesy DC Comics
2. Okko Vol. 3: The Cycle of Air is the third collection of the series combining samurai epic with the supernatural. Courtesy Archaia
3. Hardy Boys: The New Case Files: Break-Up! is a clever little story keeping the title's meaning a mystery until the end. Courtesy Papercutz
4. Empire State features a would-be lover and a disinterested second party. Courtesy Abrams ComicArts
5. The Complete Johnny Comet" collects the failed newspaper strip by the legendary Frank Frazetta from the 1950s. Courtesy Vanguard Productions

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.

By Andrew A. Smith

The bid by Archie Comics to become a bigger player in pop culture keeps expanding, buttressed this month by the first comprehensive history of Archie and the company that bears his name.

Craig Yoe’s Archie: A Celebration of America’s Favorite Teenager (IDW, $49.99) isn’t going to surprise anyone. But it is a handsome book that fills in the basics.

Yoe, a comics and pop culture historian, does yeoman work here in clean, concise prose. He covers the company’s 1939 founding as superhero publisher MLJ Magazines (the name derived from the first initials of founders Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater), and its later transformation into Archie Comics, when that character, who first appeared in 1941, became the star. He provides summaries of the main Riverdale residents, and biographies of each of the major editors, writers and artists. He devotes a couple of pages each to big Archie spin-offs, like Little Archie and The Archies cartoons, band and records. He mentions some of the lesser lights, like Josie and the Pussycats, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and various fads.

It’s a handsome book, with a die-cut cover of the famous three-on-a-soda scene that the United States Postal Service recreated as its representative Archie stamp. The reproduction, even of 70-year-old stories, is top-notch.

But don’t expect any surprises; Yoe toes the company line. For example, the acrimonious debate over who created Archie isn’t even mentioned, with all credit going to editor Goldwater and none to writer/artist Bob Montana or presumed early writer Vic Bloom. The company’s aggressive role in the formation and perpetuation of the Comics Code, long a thorn in the side of comics fans, is only given a few perfunctory nods.

And so forth. But, really, I didn’t expect much more than that. This is just a starting point for examining Archie Comics, and it is very welcome.  Archie: A Celebration is a fine – and fun – addition to any bookshelf, for fans and casual readers alike.

REPRINT ROUNDUP

* Frank Frazetta, known to most people for his 1960s and ‘70s Conan the Barbarian paperback covers, also drew a lot of comics. Vanguard Publishing seems determined to reprint them all.

The latest volume in Vanguard’s Frazetta library is White Indian ($49.95), a strip that appeared in various Western comics published by Magazine Enterprises from 1949 to 1953. It featured Dan Brand, a Philadelphia socialite during Revolutionary War times who ends up being trained by Native Americans, gains a sidekick named Tipi and runs around the frontier in a breechclout. Brand, who is heroically proportioned and amazingly competent at everything, mostly arranges peace between Indians and settlers, while fighting frontier bad guys like “bad” Indians, bootleggers, gun-runners and Tories.

This is pretty clichéd stuff, of course, not to mention historically inaccurate, incredibly implausible and more than a little insulting to Native Americans. But we’re not here for the stories – we’re here for Frazetta’s art, which does not disappoint.

By the time of the famous Conan paintings, Frazetta had become unique in style and technique. But in these earlier works, you can see his influences, which include Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon), Hal Foster (Tarzan) and possibly Joe Kubert (1940s Hawkman). Frazetta’s muscular male figures in action are consistently breath-taking, and emphasized to the point of homoeroticism. Frazetta’s backgrounds and animals are equally lush and impressive, so the entire package is page after page of stunning eye candy.

The back of White Indian is fleshed out with stories from other publishers of the era from a variety of genres (including Western, war and Viking) and a series that called “Heroic True Life Stories” from 1952-53 Heroic Comics. Presumably these stories are included because they weren’t numerous enough to carry a volume of their own and/or White Indian didn’t fill the necessary pages.

* Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Strange Tales Vol. 4 ($59.99) is the first volume to reprint Strange Tales from after the imposition of the draconian Comics Code of 1954, and they are almost painful to read. As comics historian Michael Vassallo says in the foreword: “What’s noticeable is how tame these post-Code stores immediately are. There is no serious conflict, no death, no destruction and no violence. Just Code-scrubbed blandness.”

Especially objectionable is when a sad or serious story has a clumsily pasted-on final panel that puts the “bad” ending on another planet or dimension or something. This is fascinating from a historical perspective, but pretty tough slogging for a casual reader.

Art from top:

Archie: A Celebration of America's Favorite Teenager is a basic overview of the character and the company that bears his name. Courtesy IDW Publishing

In 2010, the USPS released this Archie stamp

White Indian collects the strip by legendary artist Frank Frazetta that ran in the early 1950s. Courtesy Vanguard Productions

Marvel Masterworks: Strange Tales Vol. 4 straddles the era when the Comics Code of 1954 was introduced, and contains stories on either side of that division for comparison. Courtesy Marvel Entertainment

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.