Akira - Volume 1

Akira - Volume 1
By Katsuhiro Otomo

I first read the complete Akira saga maybe about six years ago, just as Dark Horse completed their six-volume reprint of Katsuhiro Otomo's 2,000-page masterpiece. Previously I had only read one volume of the colorized Epic reprints (Akira was originally presented in black and white), and watched the film adaptation a load of times.

As was the case for many Americans, the film was my introduction to this world. It was awesome. I had never before seen animation like that, and the story was a heady mix of Big Concepts and Awesome Action. Loved it enough that when I learned it was a comic, too, I wanted to check out the full original manga. The film adaption was written and directed by Otomo himself, so it reflects his vision, but I knew from that one Epic collection I read that there was a lot more to the Akira story than what we saw on film.

And oh BOY is there a lot more in the comic, and it's super awesome.

For instance, this first volume has but one scene that will be familiar to people who saw the movie, maybe two (and even the second is quite different than the film). Some 500 pages -- and it's practically all new if you've only ever seen the film!

Yeah, there is a lot going on here.

The characters tend towards the unlikeable in this first volume, so the reader interest is mostly wanting to know what the deal is with these Big Secrets. It's the mystery that pulls you along initially, not the engaging story because to be frank, the story in these first stretches isn't very engaging. We get a load of kind of boneheaded motorcycle gang fights; lots of bang and clamor, little substance. From here the ride just gets bigger, crazier, and more involving than you can imagine. Initially, though, Otomo takes his sweet time letting the core story unfold. Most of these 500 or so pages deal with the motorcycle crash seen early in the film, and Tetsuo falling in with a rival motorcycle gang, which is not seen in the film. It finishes with a climactic standoff that shows Tetsuo for the uber power that he is.

If the truth be told, as magnificent as this epic is the early stages feel burdened with directionless filler that never really pays off. Sure, Joker, head of the Clown gang, has an enjoyable return late in the saga, and the issue of Tetsuo's drug use is also dealt with, but some of this still feels stretched out far beyond its welcome.

Stretched out, yet still frantic. This thing moves as a breakneck speed. You've got to force yourself to slow down or you'll miss much of the amazing detail Otomo painstakingly gives his Neo Tokyo. His art on inanimate objects and landscapes and cityscapes is astonishing.

Wait, inanimate objects? Well, yes. His people look great and distinctive and exude a sense of motion -- no complaints here -- but his faces veer towards the cartoony (in the Japanese style), which is at odds with the hyper-realistic environments he draws. It's not bad, it's just that you've got to get used to this seeming clash of styles.

The storytelling takes some getting used to, too. The text is relatively sparse compared to American comics -- there are no captions and very little exposition -- and the transitions between scenes are sudden and jarring and often done mid-page. I don't have enough experience with Japanese comics to know if this is common. Could be.

None of these are bad things by any means, they're just things you have to get used to. But no worries, because by 40 or 50 pages into this volume you're into the story and zooming along with motorcycle gangs and the military and watching a mystery unfold involving people with powers and a world that survived WWIII and, and, and ...

And the amazing thing is, though this is pretty good, it's still the weakest of the six volumes. Things only gets better from here. Like, a LOT better.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Swamp Thing Vol. 6 - Reunion

Swamp Thing Vol. 6 - Reunion
By Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch

The end of the sixth volume of Alan Moore's legendary Swamp Thing run is, in fact, The End.

Oh, the series went on. There was critically acclaimed work that followed, including by the excellent Rick Veitch (Can't Get No), but this truly feels like the end of a saga.

Volume six caps off everything Moore built and created starting with volume one, and it does so with as much inventiveness and experimentation as when he started. Swamp Thing is in deep space, coming in contact with an array of unusual cultures on his journey back to Earth. The tales here may not be as strong as what came before -- I did not find the stories here as engaging -- but I appreciated Moore's continued willingness to experiment even as he neared the end of his time on the book. A spaced out psychedelic text story told from the point of view of a massive organic machine, for instance, did not engage me as a reader, but I admire the fact that this team took chances even at this late stage of the game. It would have been easy to coast at this point, to take it easy and finish out their run, but they weren't content to do so. That's the mark of a great creator.

Through these space tales Moore messes around with viewpoint and style again and again. When it works, it works. Really liked the Adam Strange story and REALLY liked the Green Lantern tale on the world with sentient plants. What a disturbing mess that incarnation of Swamp Thing was! Thousands of lifeforms fused into one massive, crazed Swamp Thing!

There are two non-Moore stories here. Normally that might be a knock against a collected edition, but not here. Stephen Bissette and Rick Veitch each turn in a tale, and both are excellent efforts that fit nicely with the tone set by Moore. If you removed the credits many readers wouldn't notice (though some would). They're not quite as effortless as Moore's work, not as graceful or refined, but geez, whose is? Both are excellent and well worth inclusion here.

Alan Moore has been criticized by some as being bad at endings, but that's not an issue here. This is a great, entirely appropriate end to his run. It feels like an end, THE end; like the saga he began several years prior had reached its natural finish and that this character's story had come to a close for good. An easy place for other writers to pick up with their own stories, yes, but really ...

This is The End.

Overall this run was amazing. I wasn't as drawn into this final batch of stories as the earlier stuff (nothing to do with the space theme, either, which I liked), but that's not because they were bad, it's because the other stuff was so extraordinarily good. Reading this only solidifies my view that Alan Moore is the greatest writer in comics.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Swamp Thing Vol. 5 - Earth to Earth

Swamp Thing Vol. 5 - Earth to Earth
By Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch

The start of the third duology in what amounts to a trilogy of them -- Volume 5 works as a pair with Volume 6; Volumes 3 and 4 also stand together as a whole, as do 1 and 2 -- Earth to Earth is in some ways one of the most enjoyable stretches of the series for me. Maybe because Alan Moore wasn't content to keep hammering at that Gothic horror nail and instead wanted to keep experimenting. Maybe because the idea of Gotham being turned into a primordial forest fascinated me.

Maybe a lot of things, but the bottom line was, I really enjoyed this.

So Abby's (admittedly creepy) love affair with the Swamp Thing is revealed, and she is charged and held for crimes against humanity. I can buy that. Interesting how traditional the way in which this story is built up. Moore introduced the plot strands setting this up quite a few issues back, taking it slow until his epic American Gothic arc was finished. The moment that story wrapped up the seeds of this one germinated and flowered into the most serious display of Swamp Thing's power to date.

The very idea of this arc fascinates me. It is the fruit of seeds (there I go with seed references again) planted waaaaay back at the start of Moore's run, when he first began to toy with the idea of Swamp Thing and Abby's love. See, you can't have a love story without tearing it down. Basic rule of fiction, right? So here we get a wedge driven between them. She is taken away. Swamp Thing is driven to rage and brings Gotham City to a halt by overgrowing the entire city with vegetation. It's an awesome display of power that could have felt comic booky had Moore not handled it with a kind of lyrical meditation on the way in which urban settings asphyxiate us. (Interestingly enough, just days prior to reading this I read a news story indicating that scientific research supports the idea that people who live on tree-lined streets live happier, healthier, safer lives. Here is that story.)

If we're in Gotham that means the Dark Knight. Moore's handling of Batman here was excellent. Moore and Batman are not necessarily a combo that fills me with glee -- I feel that The Killing Joke is Moore's most overrated work -- but you wouldn't know it here. I like this Batman. Tough, relentless, unwilling to give in, but also reasonable, noble, and fiercely loyal to his city.

It doesn't all click, though. Why couldn't Swamp Thing just free Abby and take her away? The explanation we get is half-hearted at best, as if Moore knew he had to address the question but didn't feel like fully thinking it out. Building a statue to this creature after he paralyzed your city? I didn't buy it. An excuse for some long speeches looking back at who Swamp Thing was. (I did like the melodrama of Abby's mourning, though. Absolutely lovely, stirring writing.)

And though I really loved the build up -- if you're willing to go along for the ride the core of this arc is outstanding -- the way in which Swamp Thing is "killed" is a wee bit hokey, laced with Star Trek gobblygook that didn't really ring true to me. Swamp Thing is an elemental, essentially a god, and they're talking "frequencies" and all that? Pseudo science jargon? Didn't click. But I guess Moore needed a way to have Swamp Thing defeated. See, while I can't say for sure that by this point Moore wrote himself into a corner, it was becoming clear that he had a supremely powerful being on his hands, a creature closer to a god than a mere horror. The only things he could throw at him were purely supernatural in nature, and as we know now Moore rarely treads in the same territory for long.

So, he figured out a way to shoot Swamp Thing into space.

This is one of those stories that shouldn't work, yet does in spite of itself. Swamp Thing is on some distance planet, manipulating plants and fungus to recreate the comforting world he once knew, but it's all empty and hollow and eventually falls apart. The false love he creates for himself. The comforting home. All of it a lie, and so he casts it aside before he falls into madness. Quite tragic, really, and handled well. A perfect setup for further adventures in space because it showed the potential behind such a seemingly outlandish idea. I mean, this is a swamp guy. What the hell is he doing in space?

And why the hell does it work?

Because it's in the hands of a writer arguably at the peek of his powers, in the midst of a period during which almost everything he wrote was pure gold. This is just more of the same.

Which is to say, another big pile of gold.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Swamp Thing Vol. 4 - A Murder of Crows

Swamp Thing Vol. 4 - A Murder of Crows
By Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch

So Vol. 4 of Alan Moore's legendary Swamp Thing run is very much a companion to Vol. 3 -- not surprising, I suppose, as these are collections from an ongoing series, not a series of graphic novels -- and continues the American Gothic tale started there. John Constantine (of Hellblazer fame) is still leading Swamp thing here, there and everywhere, forcing him to confront the ugliest sides of mankind. We do horrible things to one another, you see (a stunning revelation, that), and Swampie needs to see it. It's all in preparation for some vague Great Big Evil that is going to be dropped on the world. It's like Creeping Death, only not the Metallica song, and it has nothing to do with flatulence.

Anyway, as with the previous volume, the building sense of dread and foreboding is well executed and highly effective. Each story stands on its own two feet as a great piece of dark fiction, yet when read together each seems to be bringing us closer to an awful end. Long before collected editions were the norm (or even on the radar, for that matter), Moore was creating stories that managed to be both effective serial fiction and fantastic long-form stories. That kind of work is a balancing act. Even today, decades after these comics first hit the shelves and years after these trails were blazed, it's a trick very few comic writers manage to pull off.

Know what else? This volume has a Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover!

Ahhh, the crossover, crutch of publishers and bane of the reader who just wants a good, self-contained story. Worse still that this was a crossover with the famous (infamous?) Crisis, a landmark moment in continuity wank that prompted lots more continuity wank. Continuity wank that continues to this day. (I am very much on record as someone who despises obsessive comic book continuity.) Kudos to Moore for not making Crisis come across like the massive masturbatory effort it was. A crossover like this is the sort of thing that really should have seemed out of place in this book, especially coming in the midst of a dense storyline about the end of the world, yet he made it work.

Know what else he made work? A bunch of trees with faces. That's right, trees with faces.

This whole SERIES is full of stuff that has no business being good yet manages to be good anyway. I mean, at one point Abby, Swamp Thing's lover -- right there is something that shouldn't work -- eats a chunk of plant off him. Eats a chunk of plant off him! And this is supposed to be sensual! That should not work. Not even a little. Yet it does. It does come across as sensual and erotic. Okay, maybe kinda a touch goofy, but Moore and company play it so straight that ultimately, it works.

A Murder of Crows culminates in an extended climax featuring a burning hot seance kinda thing, Swamp Thing and a whole slew of quasi-mystical guests fighting a giant tower of black goo in Hell, and a vague ending right out of anime. This sounds scattered and strange, I know, but trust me, it's full of teh awezomes.

Some 25 years after the fact, this remains some of the strongest periodical comic work I've ever read. Highly impressive and essential reading for any lover of the craft.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Swamp Thing Vol. 3 - The Curse

Swamp Thing Vol. 3 - The Curse
By Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben

It's a good thing Alan Moore and company do what they do well, because the heavy-handed politics on display in the first portion of this volume are the kind of thing that usually sours me on a story. But it was handled well. Obvious and in your face, yes, but well written and illustrated, and enhanced with newspaper clippings tossed around on the pages like so much litter, a presentation so strong that it's easy to forget that the politics are clunkier than the Moore of legend would give us.

At this point Moore started to use Swamp Thing as a platform to talk about Important Issues, from environmental issues to guns to racism and more. It's all a bit in your face, lacking the more refined approach he'd later develop, but he was probably able to develop that more subtle approach in part because he cut his teeth here. Besides, as far as I'm concerned it's hard to find fault with someone who is aspiring to do something great, and that is certainly what Moore was attempting. He was aiming high.

Like in "The Curse," for instance, a story centering on the societal abuse and subjugation of women. Moore takes the ancient tradition of "menstruation huts" and turns it into a tragic werewolf-on-the-loose story. A standard story with a shot of social commentary thrown in the mix. It's a good tale, but what really stands out is the way in which he uses repeated words, phrases and symbolism to underscore the thematic material he's dealing with. Moore would go on to use techniques like this in landmark works such as Watchmen.

The most notable thing in this volume, of course, is the introduction of John Constantine, star of the popular Hellblazer series, central character of a Keanu Reeves film, and the tie that binds so many of DC/Vertigo's magical/supernatural worlds together. It's interesting to see how fully formed he was from the start. This isn't an embryonic version of the character, it's him in all his surly, mysterious glory. He's great.

Also great is the way in which Alan Moore begins building a huge mystery, as if the end of the world is coming. Most of these stories are standalone tales or two-parters, yet this entire volume holds together as a unified whole because Moore injects this mounting dread into every story. They call it the "American Gothic" arc (which continues into Volume 4), and it's pretty great. The narrative jumps from place to place, dealing with the uglier aspects of Americana as he does. It's all over the map, but again, it stands together as a unified whole.

Reading this stuff makes me scratch my head at the people who dismiss Alan Moore as overrated. Here it becomes clear that he was dead brilliant even before he became Alan Moore Creator of Watchmen.

This is essential reading by any measure.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Swamp Thing Vol. 2 - Love and Death

Swamp Thing Vol. 2 - Love and Death
By Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben

"Hey, that's Matthew the Raven!"

Pretty much my thought while reading the initial arc of this Swamp Thing volume. It was my thought because I am an ass. I never put two-and-two together and realized this Matt was Matthew the Raven from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. Maybe it was obvious the whole time, maybe it was discussed in interviews and the like, but up until recently I hadn't read many Gaiman interviews and don't recall reading about this connection until seeing it mentioned in, I think, an Absolute Sandman edition.

So right away I had a small joy while re-reading these stories.

Anyway, Love and Death picks up right where The Saga of the Swamp Thing left off, which is to say it continues to make most mainstream comics look not only like work for children, but the work of children. This second collection of Alan Moore's legendary run picks up threads of a story that only existed in the background of that first volume and expands them into a story that is about as horrifying a thing as I've read. I'm talking specifically about Abby and Matthew and, and ....

bugs ...

For all the flack Moore gets for going too far with comics -- misguided critics claim he relies on cheap, easy shock -- stories like this one show that he does indeed know how to use restraint. His restraint is, in fact, what makes the horror here so damn HORRIBLE. He doesn't outright show us or even tell us of the terrible thing that leaves Abby a shaking, quaking mess, but we know what it is. Oh yes, we know. And holy hell does it ever leave you itchy and squirmy and grotesquely unsettled.

Deliciously well done arc, quite disturbing in every way.

Also in this volume, Moore dabbles a bit in the mythology of the afterlife, a bit of DC's world that is not quite consistent between this and Hellblazer and Lucifer and Sandman, all spinoffs of Swamp Thing in one way or another. Moore was among the first (the first?) to really start fleshing out the idea of what DC's heaven and hell are like. Here we get it in an embryonic form only, and it doesn't always jive with what came later. But whatever. It works despite that.

There is also a homage to Walt Kelly's Pogo near the end of this collection, one that has garnered a good deal of praise, and you know what? I don't care for it. It didn't grab me the first time I read it and didn't grab me this time, either. Mind you, it's an astonishing piece of writing. I marvel at Moore's amazing wordsmithing. He forges dozens of brand new, perfectly understandable nonsense words that actually have layered, nuanced meanings. From a writing perspective it's an stunning achievement.

But I just didn't enjoy reading it. I found it a chore to slog through the otherwise impressive wordcraft here. Was terribly heartbroken at the tragic ending made all the more tear-jerking for its mix of light cartoonishness and dark happenings, but overall this story just doesn't win me over the way it wins over many critics.

The final story in this volume is "Rites of Spring," which is the semi-infamous "Swamp Thing sex issue," only it really isn't that at all. That's a dumb tag thrown onto the story by dumb people who probably need to get out of their dumb house for a few hours or something. Anything to make them less dumb. This is more of a drug trip issue, which, let's be honest, almost nobody has ever done well.

I'm not enamored with the trippy part of this issue -- "psychedelic" stuff often seems like a good idea in theory, but in execution it rarely is -- but thankfully it's not the bulk of what makes it special. What makes it special is the mature way in which it explores its thematic material. "Rites of Spring" is a rather stirring look at the consummation of love between two people. It is the culmination of the courtship began in the first volume. When it gets into the stretch of pages with all sorts of crazy I find it loses me, but Moore's examination of the spiritual side of love is moving and ends on a gloriously upbeat note.

Most impressive about Love and Death is Moore's refusal to keep things easy for himself. Far from being content to find a good approach and milk it, he relentlessly challenged himself. He refused to tread the same ground and pushed himself to experiment every chance he got.

I still can't imagine what people were thinking as this was coming out. Must have been mind-blowing.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Swamp Thing Vol. 1 - Saga of the Swamp Thing

Swamp Thing Vol. 1 - Saga of the Swamp Thing
By Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben

I was not among the lucky ones who first encountered Alan Moore's now legendary run on Swamp Thing while it was first being published. At that time I was still immersed in the world of standard superhero fare, blissfully unaware that comics could be more than one guy in tights beating up another guy in tights. It wasn't until I had dropped out of comics and then returned again years later that I discovered these books. I first read them as presented in DC's collected editions, and it is those collected editions that I read here.

We begin with The Saga of the Swamp Thing, within which legendary writer Alan Moore, with the help of artists Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben, reinvented a swamp creature, and in the process helped change the world's understanding of what comics could be. Landmark series like Sandman, Hellblazer and Lucifer, all of which I'll be reading for this blog, sprang from what began here.

So how is it? A better question would be, how many different kinds of awesome is this collection? About 17 or so, I'd say. It's pretty astonishing that these stories hit the shelves in 1984. Think about that. These tales are already 25 years old! The writing is just so far ahead of virtually everything else that was on the shelf during that time, I can only imagine the shock people must have felt when they first read them. It must have been a terrible blow for established comic writers of the time. "Oh shit, guys, look at this. This guy ... he can actually write. We're doomed."

I mean, boom, right out of the gate Moore reinvents Swamp Thing with a stirring, chilling tale about as well crafted as they come. "The Anatomy Lesson" is probably in the top 10 single issues Moore has ever written. He dismantles everything we knew about Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson's creation, replacing their man-turned-into-monster with a creature of nature, a beast birthed of the Earth itself. And he did it in a gloomy, heavy, dark fantasy story that sends chills up the bone. What a wakeup call!

And then he keeps going with two superb storylines (the first better than the second) that manage a nightmarish sort of brooding without feeling overly melodramatic or purple. It shouldn't have worked. He uses an obscure B-grade villain called the Florian Man as the main nemesis. This should have been goofy as hell, but instead it becomes magically delicious horror.

Really, if you can't see the awesome in this, you're dead and filled with bugs inside.

Mind you, the art takes a little getting used to. Even upon rereading, Bissette's art is vague and distorted, ugly as often as it's beautiful and often looking like a first draft. But that's what makes it WORK, I think. The art and Moore's writing were a perfect marriage. Closeups of bloated faces and intricately drawn swampland and humans who sometimes barely look human. Perfect. Anywhere else you wonder what this guy is drawing, yet here you wouldn't ask for anything different.

I do hate Moore's Etrigan, though. Maybe it's because I hate verse in general. I've an aversion to rhymes not unlike my aversion to mayonnaise. I know people like it and I'm glad for them, but keep it away from me, please. Whenever Etrigan was on the page I wanted to rush through things.

That's how good this is. It's so good that I'm forced to resort to lousy nitpicks like that just to avoid gushing the entire time. This volume is solid gold. Solid freakin' gold. Anyone who hasn't it read it SHOULD. Like, NOW.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Hellboy Vol. 7 - The Troll Witch and Other Stories

Hellboy Vol. 7 - The Troll Witch and Other Stories
By Mike Mignola & others

So I sat down with the first seven Hellboy collections (I believe that as of this writing there are now eight) in an effort to get caught up and wrap my head around the cult phenomenon that is this big-fisted, cigar-chewing, red devil guy. That's what you've been reading the last week or two. Me churning my way through Mike Mignola's Little Franchise That Could.

It just sort of crept up on me, this Hellboy thing. One day it was this little book by some guy who was pretty good but far from a superstar, the next it's this whole Thing, with movies and cartoons and devoted fans. Word was, it was awesome. When my buddy Bill pushed, pushed, pushed for me to read it, I could not refuse. The collected editions landed at my door (thanks, Bill!) and I dove right in.

And now I’m done! The Troll Witch and Other Stories caps off my reading of this series (for now), and I've got to say, this was a satisfying finish. I've mentioned before that I think Hellboy shines in the short story format, and that continues to hold true throughout this volume. Here we've got short entries in the Hellboy mythology that get us in, show us something wild, and get us out again. Cool. I love that.

Following the events of Strange Places, Hellboy is now wandering the globe, searching for who he is, what he is, his purpose, answers, and so on and so forth. Yada yada yada, big mystical journey, you get the picture. But really what he's doing is allowing Mignola to toss him into all sorts of wild situations.

And toss him into wild situations he does.

The title story might have been the weakest one here. The standout for me was "Makoma," lifted from African fables and lovingly drawn by Richard Corben. Absolutely gorgeous in every way and bizarre in the way ancient fables are, this was a GEM. Lovely landscapes and happenings that leave you scratching your head, it's a great example of the sheer, limitless possibility inherent in Mignola's creation.

The other stories are a mixed bag, some better than others but largely solid stuff. This volume isn't as consistently strong as The Chained Coffin or The Right Hand of Doom, but it's well worth a dip even if only to see Mignola make world mythology his own.

This series has been a delight to read. Thanks to Bill Johnson and his monkey for making it possible.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com and was also featured at Popthought.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Hellboy Vol. 6 - Strange Places

Hellboy Vol. 6 - Strange Places
By Mike Mignola

Near the end of "The Island," the second of two stories contained in Strange Places, Hellboy says, "Well, that was something."

And Hellboy is right. That was something.

Strange Places brings together two two-issue miniseries, but they might as well be one longer tale since they flow directly into one another. In one, Hellboy goes undersea (we later learn he's down there for years) and romps about in watery kingdoms. In the other, he goes ... well, I don't know where he goes, exactly. A ship graveyard and a weird old inn and to Hell, I guess. Something like that. Creator Mike Mignola doesn't exactly hold the reader by the hand. Chris Claremont he is not.

Both stories are connected with Hellboy's journey to find out why everyone expects him to destroy the world. (Was that a spoiler? Oops.) Both stories, especially the latter, reveal a lot about Hellboy's nature and the forces lined up against him. So, cool stuff, right?

Pretty much.

The first tale, "The Third Wish," is the better of the two. It's got mermaids and an undersea witch and an African dude and a bell that I don't quite understand. That's right, a bell. So that's neat. I still don't understand it, but it's neat.

The second story delves more into Hellboy's nature, but it's also kind of confused and all over the place. Mignola throws out ideas and concepts and creatures and places willy nilly. The reader's job is to take all this raw information and try to get it. There were times when I had to backtrack and reread what came before just to be sure I was still following things okay. I think I wrapped my head around it all, but this story is so impressionistic I may well have missed lots. As noted in another post (I think), Hellboy seems like a series that will reward rereading, in part because you'll get a lot of stuff you missed the first time around.

In the notes for this volume, Mignola says these stories close the door on the first chapter of Hellboy's life. What does that mean for the future? I don't know. What I do know is, I'm in. I'm on board. I'll follow along. I can call you Betty, and Betty you can call me fan.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com and was also featured at Popthought.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Hellboy Vol. 5 - Conqueror Worm

Hellboy Vol. 5 - Conqueror Worm
By Mike Mignola

In the previous two collections, The Chained Coffin and Others and The Right Hand of Doom, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola indulged in an array of short stories. They ranged from quirky fun to dark mythology. And most importantly, they were awesome.

With Conqueror Worm, Mignola tosses aside the short stories and works in the long form. Well, four issues isn't exactly "long form" in these days of 12-issue story arcs and massive 60-issue crossovers, but for Hellboy it is.

And this is the best long Hellboy story to date. It's got pretty much everything you could want: Great art, cool action, excellent supporting characters, a deeper glimpse into the workings of the Bureau, an exploration of Hellboy's true nature and a FREAKIN' AWESOME look at the dark universe Mignola has created. In short, this kicked ass. I guess that's why it won an Eisner in 2002 for Best Limited Series.

The homunculus from the colossus story returns (thanks in part to a short not collected here, damnit). He's now called Roger, and he's probably my favorite supporting character to date. I love this guy. Despite his inhumanity, in many ways he's the most human character in all of Hellboy. A thoughtful being with a lot of heart and a desire to improve himself as a person ... or thing ... Roger gives the cast a sympathetic hero. This was sorely needed. We also get Lobster Johnson, who is sort of like a Golden Age hero in Hellboy's world, but with a twist. Great character.

As for the story, well, it's like a nightmarish version of Jack Kirby's wildest flights of fancy. Dark space gods intent on returning to Earth and killing all. A really strange and twisted cosmic mythology. Nazi space programs. All sorts of borderline nonsensical stuff that manages to work despite being so nonsensical. I liked it!

And the worm mentioned in the title? Awesome. Huge and gruesome and evil and amazing to behold. A very satisfying conclusion to the whole thing, too, one that makes me want to see what happens with Hellboy next. No question about it, Conqueror Worm is twisted and strange and totally rad, as the kids say. Or used to say. Or something.

Oh yeah, did I mention Nazi space programs? Yeah. Awesome.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com and was also featured at Popthought.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Hellboy Vol. 4 - The Right Hand of Doom

Hellboy Vol. 4 - The Right Hand of Doom
By Mike Mignola

First things first: "Pancakes" is the greatest story in the history of comic books. It's two pages long and the greatest story ever.

Okay, with that out of the way ... If I raved about The Chained Coffin, I must do the same about The Right Hand of Doom, another collection of shorter stories and another home run for Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. From start to finish, from the brief but brilliant "Pancakes" to the shocking "Box Full of Evil," this fourth volume of Hellboy stories was nothing short of a kickass treat. This is how Hellboy is meant to be read. In short bursts of awesome; bits of mythologies and stray ideas plucked from the crusty cracks of Mignola's mind; bite-sized nuggets of excellent.

There is lots to recommend here. "Pancakes" is just two pages, but I defy anyone to read this and not fall instantly in love. I read it over and over (and over and over). HILARIOUS! Hellboy as a kid is as cute as they come. "King Vold" is a very strong short that plays with some familiar European myths and some very traditional thematic ground. Nothing wrong with that, as Mignola knows how to twist those old tales in interesting ways. Really stunning art here, too. "Heads" was among my favorites. It's short and to the point, but it also features some of Mignola's best visuals and has a wicked sense of dark humor. How can you not love a swarm of angry, biting heads? This has to be seen to be believed.

But the real core of this collection are the title story and "Box Full of Evil," both of which offer insight into Hellboy's origins ... including telling us pretty much exactly what Hellboy truly is. And what he is ain't pretty. The truth had been hinted at before, but this just lays it out for all the world to see. Quite a bold character concept, and one that sank me into Hellboy's world for good.

With every story I read, Hellboy's unique blend of superheroic sensibilities, Gothic horror, myth, and small doses of noir grows more appealing. Mignola races through his tales at a brisk pace, utterly relentless in the flow of information. His art is as unique and stylized as anything else out there, yet his storytelling is generally clear and punchy and as good as anyone's. The writing is sparse but suits the tales being told.

In short, Hellboy rocks. I now get what the accolades are all about. I'm glad to call myself a fan.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com and was also featured at Popthought.com.

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Hellboy Vol. 3 - The Chained Coffin and Others

This review was originally posted at IMWAN.com and was also featured at Popthought.com.



Hellboy Vol. 3 - The Chained Coffin and Others
By Mike Mignola

When I dipped into The Chained Coffin, the third collection of Mike Mignola's brilliant Hellboy, this one a collection of short stories, my reaction was immediate: Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, YES, as in the "yes" of great, great pleasure.

What I'm trying to say is, the third Hellboy collection is nothing short of pure, distilled AWESOME. Utterly, completely and totally awesome. Mignola completely ditches the Epic Story Arc approach so common in collected editions. Instead, this is a collection of short stories, and wow does Hellboy shine in the short format. And this is coming from a guy who reeeeaaaallly likes his epics.

Mignola gets in, gives us a dose of dark fable-laden adventure, and gets back out with the unpredictable grace of a drunken vampire bat, sometimes coasting on a current of moody visuals, at other times darting and swooping through bizarre characters and landscapes. Every story here is a winner, but each in a different way. From the wickedly funny "The Corpse" to "The Chained Coffin" and all it reveals about Hellboy's origins to the dark and ugly "The Wolves of Saint August" to the imaginative follow up to "Wake the Devil", "Almost Colossus", this volume is chock full o' reading goodness. Picking a favorite is difficult. The story of the sentient constructs in "Almost Colossus" was quite compelling, while Mignola's ability to get across tense, lurking horror in "The Wolves of Saint August" really grabbed me. WAY too much good stuff for one slim volume.

Hellboy + short stories = teh winz!

The list of things to like is extensive. Bits of humor help keep the Gothic horror from getting too suffocating. The highly stylized art is a real treat, Kirbyesque in its visual power, dark and brooding like Colan at his best, yet unlike either of them in execution and approach. The writing is just right, neither overbearing nor too sparse. Mignola carries his end of the bargain just fine. All in all, a rock solid bit o' dark adventure. I really, really liked this.

No, that's not correct. I LOVED this.

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Hellboy Vol. 2 - Wake the Devil

This review was originally posted at IMWAN.com and was also featured at Popthought.com.



Hellboy Vol. 2 - Wake the Devil
By Mike Mignola

Mike Mignola, who hand-built a nice little empire for himself with his fan favorite Hellboy, continues the Big Red Dude's saga in this second volume, Wake The Devil.

What an interesting, sometimes confusing, sometimes compelling story. Even more hints at who and what Hellboy really is? Check. More Nazis? Check. Vampires and strange creatures? Check. Suggestions something much larger is at work? Check.

Cool.

Mignola's unique, wild style is, as the kids say these days, wicked as hell. (Actually, I don't think the kids say that.) Strange angles and swaths of shadow and rough-hewn edges abound. It's dark, exciting art, as if Gene Colan's horror work were merged with Jack Kirby's wildest 1970s imaginings, and then tossed into a Frank Miller blender for good measure. He uses this style to great effect, giving us a story about vampires and talking heads and mysterious elder gods. Hellboy was maybe sent here to destroy the Earth or something, and Rasputin never really died and is conspiring to release some cosmic dragon or something, and it's all tied together into some big end of the world thing.

What?

Got to admit, there is a lot to swallow here, and it's thrown at you without hand-holding. There were brief moments when I had to pause in order to wrap my head around what I was reading. See, Mignola is sparse with his text and forces the reader to pay close attention to his rapid shifts in perspective. He doesn't litter his stories with captions, either. He just go, go, goes, leaving me sometimes scratching my head and saying, "What's going on here?"

But part of that is because he's clearly not playing his entire hand. He's got more to show you, but is in no rush to do so. Keeps you guessing. Keeps you interested. And that's cool with me.

The parts you do get are really interesting. Mignola seems to have taken a bunch of real mythologies and mixed them up and dished them back out as something new. It's a big fat blender filled with stuff nicked from here, there and everywhere. I love stuff like that. I like the bits he's playing with, how he's reinventing stuff, how he's re-imagining old myths as modern stories. Makes me curious to see more, to see exactly what he's got up his sleeve.

Seeing this, it's pretty to understand how Hellboy went from being the little book that could to a mini empire all its own.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Hellboy Vol. 1 - Seed of Destruction

This review was originally posted at IMWAN.com and was also featured at Popthought.com.



Hellboy Vol. 1 - Seed of Destruction
By Mike Mignola and John Byrne

Mike Mignola is pretty awesome. Here's a guy who was doing mainstream comics and making a living from it, then once day he decided to toss all that out the window and go do his own thing. He wanted to pursue his own interests - mythology, monsters, magic, pulp and fantasy - and forge his own path. I can get behind that.

The result was Hellboy, a big red demon with sawed off horns and a giant freakin' fist and a bus driver's attitude. I kind of missed the boat when Hellboy first came on the scene, though, but with a little help from my buddy Bill I've been able to get myself up to speed by tearing through the collected editions at a rate not unlike the rate at which Michael Phelps inhales. Which is to say, fast.

So I began at the beginning.

Seed of Destruction is a very interesting start to this cult favorite. Mike Mignola (with some help from John Byrne) doesn't hold your hand or serve you with massive infodumps. Instead, he just launches you into the world he's created and trusts that you'll keep up. I like that.

Lots of good stuff to wrap your head around, too. I'm fascinated by the Bureau and intrigued by Hellboy's origins. There is a nice teasing element there, akin to the days when Wolverine was still a good, mysterious character. Hints, tidbits, but little more than that. I get the sense that there will be a lot to explore as this goes on.

The bad guys are neat. I mean, Nazis, right? Nazis always make cool villains. Tossing together Nazis and horror has been done before (Return of Castle Wolfenstein, for instance), but this is handled well. I like that the horror isn't the standard kind of Gothic horror. It's non-traditional. A bit of magic, a bit of superhero, a bit of myth, all mixed up in a blender and poured back out in a delicious shake. Very cool.

The writing was okay, but pretty flawed. It rarely felt as if different people were narrating/talking. The characters often had the same voice, making it a bit difficult to differentiate between them. This is no surprise coming from John Byrne, though, a once great artist with a spectacular ability to write dialogue even more lifeless than his waning career.

Speaking of narrating, the lettering was off. Three times I read things in the wrong order and it wasn't my fault! I swear it wasn't! But both of those are minor faults; not deal breakers by any means.

Oh, and the art? Yes, the art. The art was AWESOME. Just awesome. Loved it, loved it, loved it. Moody use of (mostly) flat colors, GREAT stylization by Mignola, good storytelling. Superb visuals all around. This doesn't surprise me, of course, because once Mignola broke out of the standard comic book style and pursued his own vision his work took a leap into orbit. He's a fabulous visual stylist with a unique look you either get or you don't.

I really enjoyed this. It didn't blow my mind and won't have me singing from the mountaintops, but I can see there will be lots of fun stuff to chew on, and can't wait to get to it. This was a good start. Looking forward to the rest of this series.

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Can't Get No - Rick Veitch

This review was originally published at DVDinmyPants.com. Read it in full here.

Can't Get No
By Rick Veitch
(Swamp Thing, 1963, Abraxas And The Earthman)

As an artist and writer, Rick Veitch has paid his dues in the world of comics. While probably best known for his work on Swamp Thing (first as an artist with writer Alan Moore, then taking on full duties with his own acclaimed run) and Heavy Metal magazine, as well as other Moore collaborations, including 1963 and co-creating ABC Comics' Greyshirt character, he has in recent years built up an impressive library of graphic novels, including The One, Brat Pack, and Abraxas And The Earthman.

The most recent addition and one worthy of inclusion on your bookshelf – if you're up for a challenging read, that is – is his latest work, Can't Get No. Billed by some as a post 9-11 work, it's far more than that.

Chad Roe, a businessman who is down on his luck, gets terribly plastered one evening and against his will is tattooed from head to toe by two women. This sends his life into a downward spiral, a spiral accelerated when he is witness to the attacks of September 11, 2001. What follows is a journey of introspection and self-discovery.

First and foremost, and the hardest thing to avoid when talking about Can’t Get No, is the presentation. Not as much the sizing of the pages – it is presented in a “widescreen” 7.25” x 5.75” format, which made for some attractive layouts - but rather the mix of image-driven storytelling overlaid with a twisting, druggy poem of epic length. The images crispy, clearly and dynamically tell a story, while the text is a book length, sometimes pretentious poem that ostensibly has nothing to do with the narrative, yet more often than not intertwines with and comments on that narrative. I really enjoyed this device. While from time to time the two would drift a bit too far apart, when they two came together they really impacted one another in a big way, the verse adding weight and heft to the story, and vice versa. When we see the markers that will disrupt Roe's life in several ways, and the text speaks of a “suffocating self-embrace,” the two separate works become one. Very effective technique. It moves along at such a smooth and rapid clip that the moments when the text gets jarring or clunky or pretentious (and there are a few, most especially the latter) are put behind you swiftly. Far from being a gimmick, it’s truly an essential part of the experience.

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