I'm embarrassed about having lost my sense of humor over DK2 last month. Even though I'd heard plenty of people say it was a comedy, I suspected it was just a rationalization. I've since gotten to read issue #3, and... Bat-Mite cameos? Overt references to 'Superduperman' from MAD #4? Superheroes making rabbit ears behind the heads of senior Bush cabinet officials? How could I have been so blind?

You still can't call it good by any reputable standard, and as is usual with Miller the sexual politics are rancid- there was no point to the Dick Grayson bit except to show that, gossip and innuendo and that new jokey ULTIMATE book notwithstanding, Batman ain't no fruit after all. Which is a strange concession to Dr. Frederic Wertham, coming from the Comic Code's worst enemy. But still... when did you ever see an artist in any medium travesty their best-known work on a scale like this?

Onward:

PICK OF THE MONTH

THE INVISIBLES VOL. 7: THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM, by Grant Morrison and an ungodly hodgepodge of artists, from DC/Vertigo
SEP02 0248, pg. 93, $19.95

If you follow comics reviewing, you'll notice one of the most common criticisms made is, "I can't tell where the story's going". This kills me. Surely being taken somewhere unexpected is one of the cardinal joys of fiction?

In a comics culture that demands strict adherence to formula, it's no wonder Grant Morrison has gotten a reputation as barely comprehensible. I'd love to be able to tell you that he is and I'm one of the elect few who get it, but in fact, THE INVISIBLES isn't that tough.

The premise is this: Armageddon is coming in 2013, and there's a war being waged for the fate of the world, in secret, between the forces of order and our heroes, the forces of anarchy. The anarchists, a loose agglomeration of guerrilla cells called The Invisibles, recruit and initiate a clever young vandal from Liverpool who may, improbably, be the next Buddha. If you think about it, this is a more basic premise than that of STAR WARS.

And more to the point, Morrison is, for all the madness, a careful writer who structures his stories with a clear agenda and an eye to the long term. If he really were all about "weirdness for weirdness' sake", then it wouldn't have hurt when a couple of the many artists he recruited for the last issues of the series botched their assignments and muddled the climax of the book. But it did hurt, a great deal. Correcting those mistakes is one of the reasons why it's taken DC two years to collect this, the last volume of the series.

Above all else, THE INVISIBLES is genuinely subversive. Subversion isn't about role reversal, turning the bad guys into the good guys. Subversion is about getting beyond the juvenile, binary notions of 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. Mainstream adventure fiction - action movies, superhero comics, etc - is constantly training us to think in us-vs-them terms. Have you ever encountered a situation where that kind of thinking was useful? Real life is never that simple, is it? Who benefits from making us believe it is?

THE INVISIBLES subverts, interrogates, and detours the adventure genre. In the first series, Morrison devoted a whole issue to the life story of an 'enemy' soldier who'd been casually shot by our heroes at the very beginning. In the second series he made the same point by going Hollywood, gorging us with sexy violence and blood and explosions until we couldn't eat enough to vomit enough.

These are only his most obvious tricks in making us see the true ambiguity of the world. Entertaining as the madness is, clever as Morrison's metafictional games are, it's the moral core of the work that makes it special to me. THE INVISIBLES is a pop culture deprogramming session. Strap yourself in.

DARK HORSE

PUBO #1 (of 3), by Leland Purvis
SEP02 0017, pg. 29, $3.50
Website: www.packrabbitpress.com

It's a pleasure to be able to lead off with this. Leland Purvis came our attention in 2000 with his Xeric-funded experimental one-man anthology magazine VOX. Being an experimental one-man anthology magazine, it was selling in the hundreds - but these hundreds were the right people, comics cognoscenti who managed to get the book talked about. The good press VOX garnered must have gotten Purvis noticed by Dark Horse, and just in time, too, as the book was in imminent danger of being dropped by Diamond.

So what's PUBO about? Purvis is fond of castaways and booby traps, and Pubo is perhaps the ultimate Purvis character - a freakish victim of sadistic scientific experiments, who escaped and now forages for subsistence in the deep woods of North America, armed with his wits and nothing else. The couple of PUBO strips that ran in VOX read like Indian folktales.

One of the joys of watching rising creators is being there when it all comes together. Purvis has spent the last few years honing his chops and testing the boundaries of the grammar of comics. He's thunk the Big Thoughts and hasn't been ashamed to look silly in the process, and has acquitted himself admirably. He's developed a distinctive style - his brushstrokes and his layouts remind me of Will Eisner, in spirit. Now he's marshalling everything he's learned and using it to tell you a story.

What makes this even more exciting is that it's being published by Dark Horse, a former trailblazer that of late has been chasing Hollywood and other-media licensed properties so hard as to make people wonder whether it hadn't given up on the new and original. PUBO proves that Dark Horse will still take a risk once in a while. Let's prove that the risk is worthwhile.

RING OF THE NIBELUNG: COMPLETE LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER, by P. Craig Russell
SEP02 0018, pg. 30, $79.95

This will be the only single-volume of Russell's stunningly beautiful adaptation of Wagner's opera masterwork. Limited to 500 copies, all of them signed. Hey, it'll set you back less than would a recording of it...

DC

Ye gods, DC's superhero universe is an embarrassment. The headline book is a 96-page "epic" in which members of the Justice League and the Justice Society hit each other for no real reason. Their next most hyped book is a weekly miniseries that actually seeks to remind readers of The Death of Superman, a craptacular cash-grab that embodied everything wrong with comic books at the time. Next month their headline book is AQUAMAN. Is this really the best they've got?

But DC's imprints, like Vertigo, Wildstorm and Homage, are overall doing rather well. In addition to THE INVISIBLES, there's...

MEK #1 (of 3), by Warren Ellis, Steve Rolston & Al Gordon
SEP02 0238, pg. 92, $2.95

Another of the 'Pop Comics' Ellis has been brewing up, in which cyborging has become a youth fetish subculture. I'm sure I've heard the idea before, but even so it doesn't matter - taking familiar ideas or characters and making them strange again is one of Ellis' key strengths. And besides, this book lives and dies on the artwork.

I was a little skeptical when Steve Rolston was announced as the new penciller; his work on Brian Wood's POUNDED was very good but a little too clean and too blunt, not peculiar enough for a book like this. But 1) he's been called wrong for the job before, on QUEEN & COUNTRY, and acquitted himself admirably, and 2) the art sampled here looks very nice, particularly those uncluttered, striking covers.

For more Ellis, see also:
GLOBAL FREQUENCY #2 (of 12), by Warren Ellis & Steve Dillon
SEP02 0226, pg. 89, $2.95
Website: www.globalfrequency.org

VERTIGO POP!: LONDON #1 (of 4), by Peter Milligan & Philip Bond
SEP02 0252, pg. 94, $2.95

And speaking of 'Pop Comics'... This is actually the second in the VERTIGO POP! series. The first was the well-received TOKYO, by Jonathan Vankin and Seth Fisher, which I completely overlooked. This second is by Peter Milligan, currently riding high with X-STATIX (formerly X-FORCE) for Marvel, and its subject is similar: superstardom and its consequences.

t's about a dinosaur of rock who finds himself consigned to the dustbin of history by the very youth culture he helped bring to dominance. (As the TISM song goes, "If You're Not Famous at Fourteen, You're Finished.") He wants his old life back, but to get it he'll need his old body back - some sort of miracle rejuvenation - and he'll pay a lot to get it...

The Fountain-of-Youth angle notwithstanding, this looks to be a more reality-grounded treatment of the subject of fame than X-STATIX, and as I'm an incorrigible anti-superhero snob, that suits me fine. As does art by Phil Bond, no matter what the context.

ZERO GIRL: FULL CIRCLE #1 (of 5), by Sam Kieth
SEP02 0293, pg. 92, $2.95

I mention this mostly out of sheer surprise that something as self-consciously weird as the original ZERO GIRL sold well enough to warrant a sequel. The original book's about a plain, introverted, and hormonal schoolgirl named Amy Smootster, who is protected by circles and menaced by squares, and who, when feeling shame, sweats profusely from her feet, which helps her teleport. Something like GHOST WORLD meeting SHADE THE CHANGING MAN, I'm led to understand. I notice that Alan Moore lent an introduction to the first collection, and since I've never gone wrong buying a book with his name on it, I'm going to have to investigate this.

IMAGE COMICS

My god, this month mainstream Image may be even more embarrassing than mainstream DC. They're reviving MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (good call on dropping HE-MAN AND THE from the title, guys - otherwise it might have sounded silly), and putting out 10th anniversary dolls to distract from the fact that they haven't put out that 10th anniversary book they solicited last year. And soon we can look forward to their upcoming superhero line... oh, Lord, give me strength...

AGE OF BRONZE #15, by Eric Shanower
SEP02 1159, pg. 104, $3.50

New issue of Eric Shanower's finely-wrought and comprehensive recounting of the whole goddamn Trojan War.

ABBANE INK
Website: www.tocfetch.com

FACTS OF LIFE #1, by Toc Fetch
SEP02 1759, pg. 210, $2.95

Don't run! It's not yet another '80s revival, I promise! This comic is in fact a Xeric grant winner and the latest in a series called THE TEDIOUS/TENACIOUSLY SANE ADVENTURES OF A NOMAN by a fine artist named Toc Fetch. Some of these happened to wash ashore at my local comics shop recently, and I can honestly say that this is the best photo-realistic art I've ever seen in comics. His line work style is also very beautiful, somewhat reminiscent of Charles Vess.

As for the stories... if they have comics in the Immateria in Alan Moore's PROMETHEA, this is what they read like. It's all mystical gibberish to me, as I'm a dyed-in-the-wool materialist (which is a nice way of saying "has all the spiritual awareness of a mollusk"). But that art! Buy a copy of this, so you can explain it to me.

CHAOS! COMICS

I wouldn't haunt the shop waiting for these books to show up, folks.

I know, I know, we're not supposed to speak ill of the dead. Responsible commentators are supposed to argue that the desperate bankruptcy of an independent publisher of a decade's standing is bad for Team Comics, and that it speaks no good of the market's overall health.

But I'm way too heavily invested in schadenfreude to be a responsible commentator. I'm glad Chaos is dead, and I say it's nothing to do with the overall market. Chaos, as it never tired of bragging, started the bad girl craze, and by rights it should have faded when the craze did, years ago. It's only by gimmicks and stunts that it has hung on past its natural lifespan.

Look at what it's selling this month: the first issues of three new miniseries, one a bad girl book, one a teenage zombie book, and the last a crossover between a bad girl and the teenage zombie. Thanks to the magic of enhanced covers, scriptbooks and premium editions, those three new comics have been turned into eleven, retailing for a total of $104.95. Neat trick, but not one you can sustain a company on forever.

As for the Team Comics argument; c'mon, gang, it's not like there won't be plenty of gaudy crap springing up in Chaos's place. For evidence, I give you Beyond Comics, which this month is soliciting a "Holofx Collector's Edition" of CIVILIAN JUSTICE #1 for $15 ($20 if signed)...

COLD WATER PRESS

ME AND EDITH HEAD, by Sara Ryan & Steve Lieber
SEP02 1980, pg. 264, $2
Website: www.unrewarding.com/edith

This is a small, 16-page young adult book illustrated by Steve Lieber (WHITEOUT) and written by his wife, novelist Sara Ryan. Just by existing, it points up the near-complete absence of young adult fiction in comic books. Why isn't there a comics equivalent to Judy Blume? Ryan could do worse than consider filling the void, judging from the raves this book has gotten across the board. And you couldn't ask for a better interpreter than Lieber, who is an outstanding artist.

CYBEROSIA PUBLISHING
Website: www.cyberosia.com

JOHNNY NEMO VOL. 1, by Peter Milligan, Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon
SEP02 2026, pg. 271, $12.95

The definitive collection of the old DEADLINE/JOHNNY NEMO MAGAZINE strip. Milligan's hit-or-miss for me, and this is the same team that did SKREEMER, which I hated. But where that book was pretentious ultraviolence, this is, I hope, ultraviolence with very few pretensions to anything whatsoever.

"He's been dubbed 'Peroxide Designer God of Violence' for a reason. But beneath the exploding nuns, Bing Crosby worshippers, and replaceable lungs, JOHNNY NEMO is incisive commentary on the world we live in today", says the publisher. Incisive commentary I can get from THE BAFFLER; just give me the exploding nuns, dammit. Contains a new story written for the collection.

DRAWN & QUARTERLY

PALOOKA-VILLE #16, by Seth
SEP02 2040, pg. Pg. 275, $4.75

Resolicited from April, this begins part three of CLYDE FANS. This is a story about failed salesmen, but, thank goodness, it is not DEATH OF A SALESMAN. Abe Matchcard doesn't rage and despair the way Willy Loman did; he seems to have eased into his obsolescence almost gratefully. He tells us, "A story like this - you can drag it out, make it into high drama. 'A man's life crushed by a fatal error.' It's not like that. We didn't even understand our failure 'til much later."

It's a low-key story that, unlikely as it may sound, is more compelling this way. The opening of CLYDE FANS, nothing more than a monologue on salesmanship by the present-day Abe as he putters around the family store where he now lives - the store he has not had the heart to dismantle in the two decades that it's been closed - is utterly riveting.

If you've missed CLYDE FANS up to now, you can catch up with these interim collections:

CLYDE FANS, PART TWO, by Seth
SEP02 2042, pg. 276, $9.95

CLYDE FANS, PART ONE, by Seth
SEP02 2041, pg. 275, $7.95

EUREKA PRODUCTIONS

GRAPHIC CLASSICS VOL. 4: HP LOVECRAFT
SEP02 2109, pg. 298, $9.95
Website: www.graphicclassics.com/pgs/hpl.htm

This one is introduced by Lovecraft fanatic Gahan Wilson (about whom more at the end of this column), and headlined by a 22-page adaptation of "The Shadow Out of Time" by Matt Howarth. (Back in THOSE ANNOYING POST BROS, Howarth put Lovecraftian elder god C'thulu in a suit, gave him a cigar, and reduced him to the synth player in Bugtown's premiere noise band. That sort of thing always endeared Howarth to me - he tried so hard to be hardcore, but it always came out sort of sweetly goofy.)

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS / NBM

Trondheim galore! Us Anglophones have a ways to go before we catch up with his actual output - the man has published thirty albums in the past 5 years! - but this month makes a start:

THE NIMROD #7, by Lewis Trondheim
SEP02 2115, pg. 300, $3.95

This is the one I'm most looking forward to. This will be the third chapter of Trondheim's autobio chronicle APPROXIMATIVEMENT that THE NIMROD has run. I know, I know, you're all sick of autobio comics, but Trondheim has a flair for keeping things lively, as with a laugh-out-loud funny anecdote in the last chapter about summer camp and THE EXORCIST. Really, Trondheim can hardly help but be entertaining.

DUNGEON #3, by Lewis Trondheim & Joann Sfar
SEP02 2226, pg. 322, $2.95

This turns out to be an elaborate piss-take of the sort of endless fantasy sagas churned out by French publisher Delcourt, originally done for Delcourt itself. It's pretty good, but so far, unlike everything else I've read by Trondheim, it's a book that a lot of people could have done. Then again, this is supposed to run for hundreds of albums, with all sorts of story threads that won't intersect until way down the road, so there's plenty of time for it to get weird. Should be of interest to fans of gaming humor books like DORK TOWER and KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE.

LI'L SANTA, by Lewis Trondheim & Thierry Robin
SEP02 2237, pg. 324, $14.95
Preview pages at NBM's website

This looks a children's book, and, being a hardcover full-color European-style album, it's also priced like a children's book. I'll bet it's good, but it's a little beyond my purview here.

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

KRAZY & IGNATZ: LOVE LETTERS IN ANCIENT BRICK (1927-8), by George Herriman
SEP02 2118, pg. 300, $14.95

I'm going to assume that you all know the premise, by now. KRAZY KAT is, no hyperbole, the single most acclaimed comic strip of all time - it'd be some work to avoid hearing about it. This is the second Fantagraphics volume, after having taken up the mantle from the long-defunct Eclipse, and boy howdy, they're making Eclipse look shabby by comparison. Despite a slightly overthought cover by Chris Ware, that last volume was presented very handsomely indeed, with at long last the caliber of printing and paper quality that the strip deserves. Includes, among other things, "rare Herriman ephemera from Ware's own extensive collection."

THE COMICS JOURNAL #249
SEP02 2110, pg. 298, $6.95

This month's featured interviewees: Raymond Briggs and Debbie Drechsler, two of the most emotionally powerful creators working today. ETHEL & ERNEST, Briggs' tender memoir of his parents, is the only comic that has ever made me cry; DADDY'S GIRL, which collects Drechsler's harrowing stories of a girl whose father molests her, is the only comic I've ever found too painful to bear looking at.

INSIGHT STUDIOS GROUP

NAKED BRAIN #3 (of 3), by Marc Hempel
SEP02 2170, pg. 313, $2.95

More funny gag cartoons from "America's most beloved semi-obscure cartoonist," Marc Hempel. It's no substitute for a new series, but it'll do for now.

LIGHTSPEED PRESS

FINDER #29, by Carla Speed McNeil
SEP02 2205, pg. 319, $2.95
Website: www.lightspeedpress.com

I jumped the gun, two months back: this is the last chapter of the Magri White storyline, which has allowed McNeil's imagery to get weirder and woollier than ever before. You can, and should, read the first chapter for free on McNeil's website.

ONI PRESS
Website: www.onipress.com

THREE DAYS IN EUROPE #1 (of 5), by Antony Johnston & Mike Hawthorne
SEP02 2256, pg. 326, $2.95

Warren Ellis said recently that up-and-coming writer (and Ninth Art co-editor) Antony Johnston seemed to be trying every genre at once. This time out he's doing romantic comedy, Hollywood style, with a 'Gift of the Magi'-type premise, and with a pair of glamourpusses as protagonists, yet. It's got stylish Paul Dini-ish cartooning, and it looks like a lark.

ANTHOLOGY ROUND-UP

The conventional wisdom says that anthologies are a dead format in the modern direct market. Somebody forgot to inform the small press. In just the past few months, there's been BOGUS DEAD, BLAB, ORCHID, HAPPY END, the SPX book, ROSETTA, HAPPY ENDINGS, MEATHAUS... to say nothing of DRAWN & QUARTERLY and the COMICS JOURNAL specials.

This month we've got new issues of four small-press anthologies: KRAMERS ERGOT, I HATE CARTOONS, NEW THING and THE EDGE. (What does seem to be dead is the anthology pamphlet, like ZERO ZERO. Some of the above-listed books began as pamphlets, but now all of them are about 100 pages or over, and almost all of them are squarebound.)

These four books are all dedicated to presenting new and obscure cartoonists, and sure enough, most of them are so new and/or obscure that I've heard of them. Forgive me? Would it help if I told you that it's just this sort of ignorance that I'm going to SPX next week to dispel?

ALTERNATIVE COMICS
Website: www.indyworld.com/altcomics

KRAMERS ERGOT VOL. 3, by various
SEP02 1781, pg. 216, $8.95

An anthology assembled by a young man, to give young talent a chance to be printed with professional production values. Contains Xeric winners and members of the Fort Thunder minicomics collective. I'd guess that it tilts towards that minimalist, neo-earnest aesthetic that's big with the kids these days, but I could easily be wrong. For more details, you're best off reading the press release.

ATTA BOY

I HATE CARTOONS #2, by various
SEP02 1867, pg. 238, $6.95
Website: www.yumfactory.com

I'm glad they've learned to list their contributors in their solicitations, but unfortunately once again the only one I recognize is madcap Mark Martin. The good news is, he gets full color for his section, as he should.

NEW SUIT

NEW THING VOL. 2: SECRETS
SEP02 2252, pg. 326, $9.95

This launched with the declaration to become the next RAW. It could well be: it obviously demands a great deal of its contributors, and it's a bit pretentious. I mean, the first volume, IDENTITY, had a story in it called "The Loneliest Supermodel". And the story by Tomer Hanuka (BIPOLAR), about an old, forgotten, and senile Johnny Weissmuller, was very well-executed, but to me felt a little dishonest. It may help that Phoebe Gloeckner (A CHILD'S LIFE, and maybe someday DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL) is headlining this issue, since, judging from her utterly vicious piece in the first COMICS JOURNAL special, she has zero patience for art-comics pretensions. This ambitious book is worth checking out.

VANGUARD PRODUCTIONS

THE EDGE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION, by various
With Dave McKean cover: SEP02 2357, pg. 344, $19.95
With Jim Steranko cover: SEP02 2358, pg. 344, $19.95

This anthology, formerly called TAKES FROM THE EDGE, hasn't been heard from since the '90s. It was in part a showcase for renowned illustration teacher Barron Storey and his students, who included - and this will give you some idea of what Storey's own work is like - Dave McKean and Bill Sienkiewicz. And as it happens, all three are in this issue, McKean teaming up with old pal Neil Gaiman again on a story called "Mr. X", Storey doing a story called "Beyond the Clash," and Sienkiewicz doing something unspecified. Also featured are satirical novelist/travel writer Paul Theroux and comics living legend/prudish old crank Jim Steranko. It may be worth it for the Storey alone - he's done some very challenging work that has gone strangely overlooked.

COMIC MAGAZINES

COMIC ART #1
SEP02 2414, pg. 358, $9

This is one of those cases where all I can do - and all I need to do - is quote the solicitation text:

"The premiere issue of a brand-new, full-color, 64-page quarterly magazine, dedicated to the art of the comics! This magazine is produced in associated with ILLUSTRATION magazine, and shares the same outstanding print quality and lush production values of that publication.

"This first issue features: Dan Clowes and his collection of original comic art; Frank King's illustrated books; Chris Oliveros, Drawn & Quarterly, and the art of comics publishing; Gary Panter's new JIMBO IN PURGATORY series; Neal Adams and Carmine Infantino - 1960s superheroes and the counterculture; R.C. Harvey on Noel Sickles and Milton Caniff; 19th century French and British caricature; the Grand Comic-Book Database; and a new, never-before-published, one-page comic strip by a leading cartoonist!"

Great day in the morning, that's one hell of a mix. I don't think there's ever been a magazine with good production values that's embraced the totality of cartooning the way it looks like this one does. If they can keep it as eclectic as this, I'll be hooked.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST #24
SEP02 2427, pg. 358, $6.95

I've never really noticed COMIC BOOK ARTIST before now, to be honest, but this issue caught my eye because it's devoted to the NATIONAL LAMPOON. The counterculture satire magazine went downmarket in the '80s, only to die an ignominious death in the '90s, and you never hear its name nowadays except as the prefix to terrible movies. But in its heyday, the first half of the '70s, it was very influential. (SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE gets all the credit for changing the course of American comedy, but people forget that its tone was set and its cast chiefly assembled by the NATIONAL LAMPOON RADIO HOUR.)

And there are some fine cartoonists, like Shary Flenniken and caricaturist Rick Meyerowitz, who spent the bulk of their careers at the magazine. Their best work is now quietly disintegrating, along with the rest of the contents of the LAMPOON, in back-issue bins around the country. With any luck, this issue of CBA will call some attention to that.

The cover, as it happens, is by the same guy as did the following book...

BOOKS SECTION

GRAVEDIGGER'S PARTY, by Gahan Wilson
SEP02 2545, pg.376, $14.95
Website: www.gahanwilson.com

Gahan Wilson is a gag cartoonist with fangs. It is by now a terrible cliché to call him a master of the macabre, the heir to Charles Addams, etc, but there's no other way to say it. The sort of pitch black humor that THE FAR SIDE, funny as it was, could only approximate. This looks to be a collection spanning Wilson's whole career.

Chris Ekman is a political cartoonist.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.