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PICK OF THE MONTH
THE FRANK BOOK, by Jim Woodring, with an introduction by Francis Ford Coppola, from Fantagraphics Books
APR03 2242, pg. 324, $39.95
Jim Woodring used to hallucinate on a nightly basis when he was a kid. Starting around age four. It was terrifying, but he got used to it. It was years before he realised that this wasn't normal.
FRANK is very difficult to put into words.
Frank, the title character, is an anthropomorphic critter of indeterminate specie, the sort that was all the rage during the early days of animation, complete with rolled white gloves and puffy white shoes. He is saved from cuteness only by his buck teeth and his mismatched eyes. He never speaks. Nobody in these stories does.
Frank's world is not Toontown. It is certainly not the blissfully bucolic Wonderful World of Disney. There is something of the true state of nature in it. And nature is not fair. Frank is generally kind, but Woodring has referred to him as "the Ignoble Innocent: naive but not virtuous". And in a world where everything seems to vibrate with hidden dangers, he survives.
Frank's world is also intensely supernatural. It is informed by Indian mysticism. What architecture there is on FRANK's scrubby plains could be described as Arabian Psychedelic. Omens are everywhere. Brightly coloured souls frolic in the air. Frank is sometimes quick enough to lasso one.
Sometimes Frank searches for his pa, or someone like him. Sometimes he is beset by the Manhog, a brutish prisoner of his own hungers. Sometimes he is chased by giant hammers. Sometimes he beats back the ocean with a shovel. It is a mystery.
Sometimes Frank's world is glossy and candy-colored; sometimes it is black and white, delineated with Woodring's trademark wavery hatching. Either way it is indescribably beautiful.
THE FRANK BOOK is a deluxe 344-page hardcover collection, with a ribbon bookmark yet, that collects every FRANK story. That includes the complete "Frank's High Horse" story, the serialisation of which stalled out before the last chapter was reached. If Johanna Draper Carlson were still doing Previews reviews, and assuming she'd mention FRANK at all, she would no doubt complain that this constituted a gouge of the work's most loyal supporters. And she would have a point. But I can't bring myself to care; I'm too grateful to have this work in any form. To me it's a miracle that something this delightful and disturbing and otherworldly exists.
ALAN MOORE MEMORIAL SECTION, PART THE SECOND
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE: THE DC UNIVERSE STORIES OF ALAN MOORE, by Alan Moore & various
APR03 0174, pg. 87, $19.95
When Alan Moore debuted his America's Best Comics imprint at DC, there was a lot of loose talk about how it could "save comics". A bit of it from Moore himself. This was arrant nonsense, of course. But what ABC has done is transform Moore's name into a license to print money. It was not always thus, remember. After the phenomenal success of WATCHMEN, Moore ditched corporate comics to strike out into creator-owned, more personal, non-genre work, and found himself struggling mightily just to get his work into print. His self-publishing concern went bust, and he had the poor foresight to take the projects that survived to the quite spectacularly doomed Tundra. And the trouble did not end with getting into print; as I mentioned last month, A SMALL KILLING sank with hardly a trace, despite being published by a prestigious publisher of prose.
But now? Now Moore could arrange for a leather-bound gilt-edged collection of MAXWELL THE MAGIC CAT, if he wanted. Thanks in no small part to the success of ABC, there are no end of publishers eager to snap up anything he chooses to offer, and, what's equally important, to keep it in print.
And now Moore has announced, in these very pages, that in a year he's ditching corporate comics again, for good this time, in favour of creator-owned, more personal, non-genre work.
Heh.
From ABC this month, there's a superhero pastiche spin-off from TOM STRONG called TERRA OBSCURA #1 (of 6, APR03 0229, pg. 96, $2.95), written with Peter Hogan and drawn by Yanick Paquette and Karl Story.
WRITING FOR COMICS, by Alan Moore & Jacen Burrows
APR03 2022, pg. 266, $5.95
Says the solicitation: "the main essay was originally written in 1985 and appeared in an obscure British fanzine, right as Moore was reshaping the landscape of modern comics, and has been tragically lost ever since". Well, in addition to being a little melodramatic, that's not quite true; it was reprinted in THE COMICS JOURNAL #119, 120 and 121. But that quibble aside, it will be nice to have this readily available again. It's a useful and insightful guide not just to writing for comics, but writing fiction in general (there's a bit about self-interrogation that has particularly stuck with me). It's illustrated by Jacen Burrows and supplemented by a new postscript by Moore.
EGOMANIA MAGAZINE #2, by Eddie Campbell
APR03 2229, pg. 321, $4.95
In case you missed this when it was first offered- and you almost certainly did, because sales were so low that Eddie Campbell gave up publishing afterwards, you bastards - the bulk of it is taken up by an interview with Moore that is one of the best I've read. Also contains a couple of chapters of Campbell's quixotic new project 'A History of Humour'.
COMICS
LOBO's got his own title again? What's the point, without the context of the boom time craze for violent anti-heroes that it was created to parody? The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS have their own title again? What's the point, if Wally Wood isn't drawing it? NINJA BOY, which has to be one of DC's lowest-selling books ever, gets a trade paperback collection? I could name you half a dozen Vertigo miniseries off the top of my head that deserve the honour more and didn't sell any worse.
I'll never understand these people, truly I won't...
UNDERCOVER GENIE, by Kyle Baker
APR03 0247, pg. 99, $14.95
Magazine pieces, mostly, from the chequered career of Kyle Baker, one of the funniest men in comics. It's hard to say what will actually be in this, but since they mention New York Magazine, I'm guessing a good chunk will be taken up by BAD PUBLICITY, a celebrity-spoofing strip that showed off Baker's gift for caricature, written by Larry Doyle. It was funny, though very much of its time and of its place - expect lots of gags about people like Al D'Amato, Tina Brown and Joey Buttafuoco.
They also mention INSTANT PIANO, the short-lived anthology created by Baker, his former comrade Evan Dorkin, Robbie Busch, Mark Badger and Stephen DeStefano. They'll probably reprint Baker's gag strips (and there were some excellent ones, like the EC-style horror story about Mormons and polygamy), but not the chapters of the work-in-progress YOU ARE HERE (no relation to the book Baker eventually released under that title - this was more in the angsty WHY I HATE SATURN mould).
Also from Baker this month: THE COWBOY WALLY SHOW (APR03 0236, pg. 97, $14.95), now in its third issuance, billed as the "16th Anniversary Commemorative Edition!" This no doubt heralds the impending release of the COWBOY WALLY sequel, which I anticipate with equal measures of glee and dread.
PLANETARY/BATMAN: NIGHT ON EARTH, by Warren Ellis & John Cassaday
APR03 0218, pg. 94, $5.95
Remember a couple of months ago, when I hailed the long-awaited return of PLANETARY? That solicitation has been cancelled. DC figured they'd grab attention with this special one-shot before reviving the regular series. I can't imagine why they didn't decide that beforehand, since this special has been in the pipeline at least as long as PLANETARY #16 has, but the ways of DC scheduling are not for you and I to know.
Also this month from Ellis: TOKYO STORM WARNING #1 (of 3, APR03 0225, pg. 95, $2.95), a piss-take of the manga giant robot genre drawn by James Raiz.
PROJECT: TELSTAR, by various
APR03 1908, pg. 239, $16.95
A themed anthology on the sure-fire geek-bait topic of giant robots. The design looks very sharp. The contributor list contains some of my favourite creators, among them John Pham (EPOXY) and Paul Hornschemeier (FORLORN FUNNIES). See the website for previews.
LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS, by Matt Fraction & Kieron Dwyer
APR03 1915, pg. 240, $12.95
This is where Matt Fraction proves himself. He's still best known for his comics commentary, and while he has a volume of actual comics under his belt (THE ANNOTATED MANTOOTH, also from AIT/PlanetLar), it's a funnybook about a big gorilla and therefore likely to be discounted by most people, as it seems too easy. (It's not easy to do well, of course. Just look at SKY APE, also from AIT/PlanetLar, which is agreeably silly but shapeless.)
LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS is proudly billed as a "Man Movie on paper". Artist and scourge of Starbucks Kieron Dwyer (LOWEST COMIC DENOMINATOR) says it's "in the James Coburn-Robert Mitchum-Lee Marvin mold," though Fraction says it's to do "with directors more than actors - Ford, Hawks, Peckinpah, Siegel, Leone, Eastwood", and acknowledges that its biggest debt is to a Walter Matthau movie called CHARLEY VARRICK. Does Fraction take this stuff seriously? Not totally, no - that much is obvious from his list of Man Movie rules, written in his CBR column's usual smart/dumb tone. But he's clearly attracted to the weird nobility of it.
The plot: Aging hood Cole Caudle, out to make One Last Score, walks with his sidekicks into a small-town Nevada bank, and leaves with a whole heap of money that doesn't belong to him. The problem is, it doesn't belong to the bank, either. That much is obvious from the sheer amount of it. The real owner of the money is the Mob, which very urgently desires it back.
Fraction's been blessed with a perfectly simpatico artist and publisher. The versatile Dwyer is here firmly in the grand adventure-strip tradition, and his characters are the best 'actors' a comics writer could ask for. And AIT/PlanetLar head honcho Larry Young has elected to print the book in horizontal format, in sepia ink on what looks like parchment paper, giving it a uniquely weathered look.
Newsarama has an extensive preview up (the pages are lettered, though that's not quite the finished artwork). And Dwyer has a page showing how the look of the book has evolved.
THE VAGABONDS #1, by Josh Neufeld
APR03 1923, pg. 244, $2.95
Chiefly composed of Neufeld's travel comics, which originally appeared in his and Dean Haspiel's anthology title KEYHOLE. Neufeld hasn't got anything like Haspiel's flamboyance, but he's a good meat-and-potatoes cartoonist.
ARSENAL PULP PRESS
WHAT RIGHT? VOL. 1, by various
APR03 2016, pg. 258, $16.95
WHAT'S WRONG? VOL. 1, by various
APR03 2017, pg. 258, $16.95
Here's your good deed for the month: these are benefit books for Little Sisters, a gay & lesbian bookstore in Canada that's taken their fight against the capricious censorship of Canadian Customs all the way to the Supreme Court. (Canadian Customs makes a special target of comics, because, as everybody knows, comics are intrinsically juvenile and have no redeeming social value.)
The first book, WHAT RIGHT?, contains work by 1st Amendment warriors such as Frank Miller, Peter Kuper and Brian Wood, as well as from less overtly political cartoonists such as Donna Barr, Evan Dorkin, Bill Griffith, Linda Medley, and Bryan Talbot. The second book, WHAT'S WRONG?, is the 'pornographic' one, so you'd have to get the Previews Adult Supplement to find out who's in that.
DRAWN & QUARTERLY SHOWCASE, by Kevin Huizenga, Anders Nilsen, and Nicolas Robel
APR03 2181, pg. 306, $18.95
Just what it sounds like: a showcase for rising young talent. Call me conservative, but the contributor who most interests me here is Kevin Huizenga, whose minicomic SUPERMONSTER was the talk of last year's SPX. As an artist he's something of a minimalist, but he's evolved a style that wouldn't look too out of place next to, say, MUTT & JEFF. And as a writer, from what I've seen, he's able to be gentle and ruminative without slipping into preciousness, which is something I can't say for John Porcellino, to whom Huizenga draws comparisons, or much of the rest of the New Sincerity crowd.
There's an extensive sampling of his work at by USS Catastrophe, and a preview of his story at the D&Q website, which has been greatly expanded and completely redesigned, exquisitely as ever, by Chris Ware. And speaking of Chris Ware...
ACME NOVELTY DATEBOOK, by Chris Ware
APR03 2182, pg. 306, $39.95
People who read ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY get dates? Why wasn't I told about this sooner?
No, wait: by "datebook" they pretty much mean "sketchbook." It's just that "sketchbook" wouldn't sound right, since what the notoriously exacting Ware thinks of as a "sketch" beats a lot of the finished, published art on the stands today. "This deluxe cloth book collects Ware's sketches, doodles, paintings, brainstorms, shopping lists and To-Do reminders from the ACME NOVELTY years."
In addition to FRANK, above, there's:
MEATCAKE COMPILATION, by Dame Darcy
APR03 2241, pg. 324, $22.95
She's a bit shaky on everything else, but nobody draws consumptive Victorian nymphets like Dame Darcy. Darcy was doing daffy goth comics before Slave Labor made a cottage industry out of it, and though they're eccentric as hell and not at all easy to read, the fantasial obsessiveness of it tends to pull you in. And you have to admire anybody who refers to herself as a "high-steppin' filly."
TALES OF ERROR, by Thomas Ott
APR03 2245, pg. 324, $13.95
Further EC-style suspense stories with hard twist endings from Swiss cartoonist Thomas Ott. His stories aren't deep, but his scratchboard style makes for the best noir cartooning I've seen this side of THE SPIRIT. Beautiful and pitiless.
UNCLE SCROOGE #319, by various
APR03 2276, pg. 328, $6.95
WALT DISNEY'S COMICS & STORIES #634
APR03 2277, pg. 328, $6.95
Inexplicable Quirks of the Direct Market #8009: Disney comics, especially those involving the Donald Duck family, are best sellers throughout Europe. But demand in America and Britain has been so low that Disney hasn't bothered putting out any new English-language comics in four years. It's taken the assiduous efforts of no less than Steve Geppi, president of both Gemstone and Diamond, to bring them back. The revived series will mix classic stories, particularly the duck stories of Carl Barks and Don Rosa, with previously unseen and untranslated material.
YEAST HOIST, by Ron Rege Jr.
APR03 2316, pg. 338, $8.95
I'll admit it: much of what Highwater publishes, particularly the Ft Thunder crowd's bold new experiments in illegibility, is leagues beyond my comprehension. And yet, though Ron Rege has in common with the Thunderites what's called, vilely, the "cute brut" aesthetic, I find myself fond of his work. I can't explain it; best to let someone else do the talking:
"Ron Rege, Jr. is probably the greatest 'new cartoonist' (whatever that is) I can think of. In the tradition of 'pioneers' like Herriman, Sterrett, McCay, et al, he has wholly reinvented the comic strip language to suit his own idiosyncratic vision; his apparently simple yet beautiful complex little line drawings seem to spring from the very essence of 'the form'; they're warm, funny, sad, smart, stupid -- and best of all, alive. His stuff should shut up every idiot who thinks the comic strip is 'dead'."
- Chris Ware, creator of ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY.
STRIPPERELLA #1, by Stan Lee and various
APR03 2318, pg. 338, $2.99
You'd think he'd have learned after the BACKSTREET PROJECT (the print version of which can be found elsewhere in this month's Previews - no, I'm not telling you where), but Stan Lee gives starfucking another try with STRIPPERELLA, conceived as an animated vehicle for Pamela Anderson. She's a stripper; she fights crime. Lee explains: one of her nemeses is "the evil plastic surgeon Dr Cesarean, who has been installing nitroglycerin breast implants in her ecdysiast friends - to explosive result. The local strip club will also be the setting for the (slightly) more down-to-earth personal stories in which Stripperella helps fellow dancers like Persephone, who's in a tumultuous love triangle with conjoined twins." Nitroglycerin breast implants and conjoined twins. I can't decide whether Lee should be put in a home for his own safety or given a MacArthur Genius Grant.
CHALAND ANTHOLOGY VOL. 2, by Yves Chaland
Hardcover: APR03 2319, pg. 338, $24.95
The second of four volumes collecting the life's comics work of Yves Chaland, a renowned French cartoonist who injected some jazz into the clean-line style. This book finishes off the 'Freddy Lombard' adventure stories.
Byron Preiss gets back into the graphic novel game (though, really, he's hardly been away). The opening lineup consists of HONOUR AMONG PUNKS, by Gary Reed and Guy Davis; VIC AND BLOOD, by Harlan Ellison and Richard Corben; and a Philip Marlowe adaptation.
FINDER #32, by Carla Speed McNeil
New story arc, called "The Rescuers"; as in KING OF THE CATS, Jaeger serves as liaison for a group of his fellow tribesmen uneasily sharing space with white-person civilization.
JOHNNY JIHAD, by Ryan Inzana
APR03 2376, pg. 352, $9.95
Inspired by the story of Johnny Walker Lindh, this is the story of a young American who joins the Taliban, only instead of being a privileged West Coast kid from a left-leaning family, he's a working-class East Coast kid with a wife-beating drill sergeant for a father. Which strikes me as a less interesting premise for a story, but there you go. Might be of interest to fans of WORLD WAR III ILLUSTRATED or CHANNEL ZERO. There's an extensive preview on NBM's website.
LOVE FIGHTS #1, by Andi Watson
APR03 2403, pg. 356, $2.99
Andi Watson is the latest indy creator to go write superheroes, helping to head up the parapseudoquasimanga Tsunami initiative at Marvel. But not to worry, he's still doing indy books, like this romance... about superheroes. Hell. What's a comics snob to do? ...Buy the book anyway, that's what he's going to do, because it's too hard to resist the powerful charm of Watson's work.
RUNOFF #5, by Tom Manning
APR03 2426, pg. 358, $2
This is a curious project. It's about mysterious deaths in a small town in the remote mountains of Washington state (shades of TWIN PEAKS), but there's a cute li'l googly-eyed floating alien or apparition or something, and there are moments when the narrative switches to the style of the comic strip BLOOM COUNTY (shades of EIGHTBALL #22). Manning's chops are a bit rough, but he gets better as he goes on, and what the hell, it's a lo-fi comic anyway (printed on flimsy newsprint, which must be how he keeps the cost down). Worth a look.
SIRIUS ENTERTAINMENT
AKIKO VOL. 6, by Mark Crilley
APR03 2431, pg. 358, $14.95
New collection of Crilley's excellent children's title. The story, what I've seen of it, has a bit of a STAR WARS-y feel, except that, being a genuine thing of the imagination, it floats in precisely the way STAR WARS doesn't. Whimsical and cheerful, and Akiko, a levelheaded and capable fourth grader, makes an admirable heroine.
THE MASTERPLAN, by Scott Mills
APR03 2484, pg. 367, $24.95
New graphic novel from the Xeric Award-winning Scott Mills, and by god it's 320 pages. Between this and his other graphic novels from the last 12 months, TRENCHES (176 pages), and MY OWN LITTLE EMPIRE (128 pages), it looks as if he's out to out-produce his fellow prolific overly-cutesy minimalist James Kochalka.
COMIC BOOK ARTIST VOL. 2 #1, by various
APR03 2554, pg. 384, $7.50
This is one of those comics magazines that aims to fill the yawning chasm between Wizard and The Comics Journal, the type that everybody claims to want but not enough people ever seem to buy. Perhaps it will better find its audience now that it's been picked up by Top Shelf. This new edition kicks off interviews with fan favourites Alex Ross and Neal Adams, and a feature on ARCADE, last of the underground anthologies, helmed by Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, and Bill Griffith.
BOOKS SECTION
THE COMIC STRIP ART OF LYONEL FEININGER, by Lyonel Feininger
APR03 2702, pg. 401, $7.99
Feininger's a strange case. He had great success as a cartoonist in Germany, but it's America where he started to really cut loose, indulging in rampant anthropomorphism, enormous hands, and the sort of weirdness that made LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND look almost normal by comparison. This collects the entirety of Feininger's two American comic strips, THE KIN-DER-KIDS and WEE WILLIE WINKLE. And it's only 56 pages.
Why so short? Because Feininger decided he'd pushed the form as far as he'd ever be allowed to, and so chucked it all in to devote himself to modernist painting, which was not at the time a step up in prestige. It was the right decision - he helped found the Bauhaus school and became one of the great fine artists of his time.
This book was originally priced at $16.95; this edition has been reduced to $7.99. It includes a biographical essay by Bill Blackbeard. (You might also want to read this COMICS JOURNAL review, which disputes it.)
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.
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