Comics Roundup 28/2/2008

Do you remember me saying that there were no comics worth buying last week? I spoke two soon, because last Sunday, after attending a concert in City Hall, I made my way to Forbidden Planet and bought two issues. Let us see what they were.


Captain America: Theater of War – America First! #1 (of 1), by Howard Chaykin and Edgar Delgado

Howard Chaykin wrote and drew this, with Edgar Delgado providing colours. I always think of Chaykin as one of the Big Names in comics, even if he has never really done that much that was that good. His one really big title was probably American Flagg, which seems to have been out of print almost since the moment it first appeared, if not before. One of the big problems with Chaykin is that he is a sleazebag, or at least the sexual politics his comics propagate are a bit antediluvian. What makes him more repellent is his tendency to cast himself as some kind of arch-liberal. In some ways he is, a leftover of that strand of the Sixties counter-culture that was all about chicks putting out for the guys. He is like some kind of leftist version of Peter Stringfellow.

Why, then, did I buy this? Basically because I like Chaykin art. It typically has a certain pizzazz, a kinetic quality that makes you overlook all the busty ladies and instead focus on the funny facial expressions or the tough guys punching each other out. The art is pretty good in this one, though by Chaykin's standards it seems a bit pedestrian. Or maybe that is the influence of the story, a fairly lame tale of Captain America (or a Captain America) in the 1950s, squaring off a Senator Joe McCarthy analogue who GASP turns out to be a Soviet spy (complete with shrine to Communism in his basement). How very original.

What really makes this book is two olde Captain America strips they include at the end. Neither of them are credited to anyone, but in one of them John Romita has sneaked his name into one of the illustrations, so he may have drawn them both. Anyway, in continuity terms they are both a bit confusing – I had always understood that at the end of the Second World War, while flying back from some important mission, the Captain's young sidekick Bucky had somehow fallen to his death (leading to many "How could I have let Bucky die!!!!" moments of self-doubt over the years) while the Cap himself had been frozen in ice until his re-emergence in the 1960s. These stories, however, have the Captain and Bucky squaring off against Communist spies in the early years of the Cold War. One sees the Red Skull, now an ally of international communism, seize the UN headquarters in New York, holding the delegates as hostages (including the ones from the USSR and its satellitese?). Fortunately Captain America and Bucky are on hand to beat the shite out of him.

The other story is my favourite. The Captain is drawn into helping "loyal Chinese Americans", a "pretty law-abiding group" that he never normally has to trouble with, because spies from Red China are trying to force them into communist spies – by threatening their family members still living behind the iron curtain. The main communist agent is a sinister figure known as The Man Without A Face (because no one ever sees his face), whose true identity is revealed as a terrible twist at the story's end. One thing I liked about this story is that it manages to be high in thrill power yet also presenting the communists as almost akin to real people with something approximating to a valid, if objectively wrong, world-view. That said, the artistic representation of the Chinese characters (particularly in terms of their colouring) suggests that the artists have read descriptions of Asian people but never actually seen any.


Four Eyes #2, by Joe Kelly, Max Fiumara, and Nestor Pereyra

Issue 1 of this came out so long ago that I assumed that subsequent issues must already have appeared but got such bad distribution that they never made it to these shores. But no, it is just that the people who produce this are slow workers. As you will recall, the strangely titled Four Eyes is set in New York during the Great Depression, but one where dragons seem to roam wild for no obvious reason. The main character is a little boy whose father was killed when stealing a dragon's young. At the end of the last issue he learned why his father died – he was stealing dragon babies for the city's secret underworld of dragon fight enthusiasts. In this issue he gets more involved in this twisted sport, hoping that by becoming a dragon hunter like his father he can avenge his father's death. Ultimately, I suppose, this is the usual kind of Depression narrative of desperation, only with dragons, but it has a certain resonance. I particularly like the oddly stylised art.


Madame Xanadu #8, by Matt Wagner, Amy Reeder Hadley, & Richard Friend

This is from this week. You will recall that this title covers the adventures of an immortal sorceress, with each couple of issues moving her on a few centuries. Last time she found herself in Whitechapel during the murders of Jack The Ripper. And like I said last time, the ghost of From Hell hangs heavily over any attempts to do the Ripper in comics, particularly if like that work you are trying to hang a layer of metaphysical bollocks over the brutal killings of a maniac. This particular episode is entertaining enough, but it does look like they are also falling into that other great cliché of Ripperology – did you know that while the Ripper was murdering prostitutes in East London, over in Austria ADOLF HITLER was being conceived? I wonder what other highly original OMG WTF moments this title has to give us.

Dublin Fringe Theatre Festival 2008

Dublin's Fringe Theatre Festival of 2008 finished ages ago, like last August or something, so now is a good time to post considered responses to what I saw at it. I typically make it to almost nothing in this every year, despite my official claims to wuv the theatre. This year, though, I saw three things.

The first one was The Darkroom, written by Neil Watkins, directed by Karl Shiels, and performed in the Players Theatre in Trinity College. It began with Karl Shiels (famous as Dublin's scariest actor) making a voiceover announcement.

"Please turn off all mobile phones and pagers.

"Now.

"Now.

"Now!"

Even though I knew that I had left my phone at home this had me quivering in terror lest someone would ring me.

The programme billed Darkroom as a play about washed up retired superheroes, implying that it would be some kind of HIV/AIDS parable. Sadly, there were no former supers present in this play, as it was actually a series of vignettes set in the seedier end of Dublin's gay scene. It also had loads of songs in it, though not the kind your granny would like. One was called 'Suddenly Semen', about a woman realising that she has been impregnated by her HIV positive rapist, while 'Under Ratzi' discussed how the current Pope is much sexier than the old. A lot of it seemed like maybe it was just being transgressive for the sake of it, though you had to admire the craft. There was a lot to like about this, play, but I feel that I am not really the target audience for this kind of thing, and I did feel a bit out of place in my Nightwing costume.

And then next day at lunchtime in the Project Cube I saw A Distinct Glimpse, a collaboration between singer Natasha Lohan, dancer Megan Kennedy, lighting designer Aedin Cosgrove, and my old friend and quaffing partner Gavin Kostick. This didn't really do it for me – all the individual elements seemed excellent, but I didn't really get what they were doing together. But I did like when the dancer started climbing through the audience and lying on people.

Gavin Kostick does seem to own the Fringe, though. Last year he deservedly won the Spirit of the Fringe award for a production where he recited almost all of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. This year he was doing this A Distinct Glimpse as well as writing an open air performance of a play about The Wars of the Roses (missed by your correspondent because I, eh, wrote down the wrong month in my diary) and some other things. He also did Heart of Darkness again in the Real Dublin Theatre Festival. Busy man.

The last thing I saw was Moonflight by some crazy German guys. This was another devised piece, and seemed to be all about the moon – travelling to it studying it, and its contemplation. It featured music (both recorded and played) as well as movement that bordered on dance, together with the reciting of various things about the moon (Galileo's retraction, some other sciencey stuff about it, Neil Armstrong climbing down the Lunar Module ladder, etc.). Some of it was meant to be funny, some of it wasn't, and it was all done very straightfacedly. I liked it a lot. Given how in broad terms (music, movement, talking) it was not that unlike A Distinct Glimpse, I thought a bit about whether there were any objective criteria that led to me liking one more than another. Ultimately I think not, except maybe that you can always rely on the Germans.

The musical pieces in this were all moon based and broadly German, so they did what I think was that one by Schoenberg and also various versions of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (including a pop-jazz music version with lyrics, bizarre). Moonlight Sonata is a very beautiful piece of music, but once a winking Bill Bailey came to mind I found it very hard to keep a straight face while they were playing it.

One particularly striking Moonlight Sonata thing they did was have it play on a pre-programmed synthy keyboard, turned on its side so that the lighted keys were visible to the audience. There was something genuinely magical to watching the keys move on their own through the beautiful music.

Coming soon: A report on an actual play I saw in the Theatre Festival, all those months ago!

Comics Roundup 21/2/2008

Nothing worth buying this week.

Further reasons to shun Ryanair discovered

Union-busting airline Ryanair will shortly be allowing passengers to make mobile phone calls from its planes, at a cost of £3 a minute.

"I have no patience with the Luddite approach that says people don't want to use their mobile phones in-flight," [said Ryanair duce Michael O'Leary]. "You don't take a flight to contemplate your life in silence. Our services are not cathedral-like sanctuaries. Anyone who looks like sleeping, we wake them up to sell them things".

"I'm on the plane", commented an unnamed passenger.

"We have ye now, Mr Jazdy!"

The Irish Times reports that the Gardaí, Ireland's police force, have cracked the case of a Mr Prawo Jazdy. This Polish gentlemen had travelled the length and breadth of the country, flagrantly disregarding traffic regulations to such an extent that he had notched up over 50 separate arrests but had never been brought to court. It turns out that "Prawo Jazdy" is actually the Polish for "driving license".
It is a mistake anyone could have made.

image source

25 Favourite Albums

Following a Facebook tagging by "Scott", I have spent 15 minutes coming up with a list of my 25 favourite albums. What favourite records of mine have I left out? What favourite records would you come up with in 15 minutes?

Baader Meinhof "Baader Meinhof"
Belle & Sebastian "Tigermilk"
Belle & Sebastian "Dear Catastrophe Waitress"
The Beatles "The White Album"
Black Box Recorder "England Made Me"

Kate Bush "The Kick Inside"
Kate Bush "The Dreaming"
Serge Gainsbourg "Histoire de Melody Nelson"
Phillip Glass "Koyaanisqatsi"
Hawkwind "Spirit of the Age"

Kraftwerk "The Man Machine"
Van Morrison "Astral Weeks"
Morrissey "Bona Drag"
Morrissey "Vauxhall and I"
My Bloody Valentine "Isn't Anything"

New Order "Substance"
Public Enemy "It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back"
Public Image Ltd. "Metal Box"
Sisters of Mercy "Floodland"
The Smiths "Strangeways, Here We Come"

The Smiths "Hatful of Hollow"
Sonic Youth "Daydream Nation"
Spacemen 3 "Playing With Fire"
Toasted Heretic "Songs for Swinging Celibates"
The Velvet Underground "White Light/White Heat"

Comics Roundup 15/2/2008

Incognito #2, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

As you will recall, this title is about a former supervillain who has given evidence against his former boss and is now in a federal witness protection programme. After discovering that his powers had come back, he does what any sensible guy would do, and goes out punching people's faces in (only this time he is dishing it out to street thugs and petty criminals, on the basis that people will ask less questions about their jaws being broken). Unfortunately for him, his former boss (locked away in the sort of super high security hole that supervillains are guaranteed to escape from sooner or later) now knows he is active again, and has in consequence twigged who sold him down the river.

Brubaker and Phillips produce the noir-influenced crime title Criminal. Incognito is essentially a version of that, only with superpowers. This is a good thing, really. The storyline is following the same kind of trajectory – morally shady main character finds himself getting into ever deeper hot water thanks to unwise initial course of action, with no obvious sign of a way out. The one thing that might be a bit more problematic is Incognito's noir-lady character – she seems a bit too much like all the icy women characters that have graced the pages of Criminal. You could say perhaps that in portraying her (and her kind) so two-dimensionally that the creators of this title are just conforming to the forms of the genre, but that only draws attention to the genre's limitations.

For all that, I like this title a lot and can hardly wait for the next issue. I should also mention that this issue comes with an essay by Jess Nevins on the pulp character Doc Savage. I only really know Doc Savage from the knock-off version of him that appeared in Planetary, so it will be interesting to read more on this character


Batman #686, by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert, with Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair

So Neil Gaiman… in the early to mid 1990s he was one of the giants of the comics world, with his Sandman title one of the most widely read comics of the era, especially popular with goths and moody types who like to dress in black. Then he largely gave up comics writing, to focus instead on the far more lucrative world of fantasy novels. This is one of his occasionally forays back into the world of comics writing.

You may recall my writing about the increasingly confusing Batman RIP story that Grant Morrison wrote last year. Bruce Wayne, Batman's alter-ego is still dead, and DC are having to fill in time while they decide whether to appoint someone else as the new Batman or to just suddenly reveal that Wayne is not actually dead after all (or has been resurrected, or cloned, or was able to bring a duplicate of himself in from a parallel universe, etc.). In this issue a load of Batman characters (good and bad) are turning up to pay their respects at an open casket funeral for the caped crusader (there in costume, not as Bruce Wayne). I got a sinking feeling once I twigged the basic premise – could this be something as turgid and unreadably bad as the last Sandman book*?

Fortunately, this is a bit lighter in tone. There are two basically two stories in this, one featuring the Catwoman and another Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred. They tell contradictory revisionist stories about the Dark Knight Detective. Alfred's story is the more striking, as in it he claims basically to have faked all of Batman's supervillain enemies as a way of keeping the troubled Bruce Wayne sane by giving him fellow costumed nutters to spar against.

So it's all alright, but I am not sure if I will bother with the second part of this story when it appears in Detective Comics #853.


*in which a succession of sadface characters pay their respects to the dead Lord of Dreams in a frankly embarrassing manner

Animal Rescue 2: Koalas

While lots of people have tragically died in recent Australian bush fires, fire fighters have managed to rescue a traumatised Koala now named Sam. She is now in an animal rescue shelter, where she has been comforted by another rescued Koala named Bob.

Footage of Sam the Koala Bear being rescued

image source

Koala Bears are not actually real bears.

Animal Rescue 1: The Otter

Scottish postman Kenny Wilson found an abandoned baby otter on the side of the road while driving to a rally for Mini Cooper enthusiasts. He kept the cub warm in his mailbag, fed her on kitten milk and chicken soup, and then dropped her off to an animal rescue shelter the next day after letting her sleep in the family cat's temporarily vacant basket.

Mrs Jayne Wilson christened the baby otter Orla. The animal shelter in Arthurshiel reports that she is doing well, but eating £15 worth of salmon every day.

More words, pictures

Mulatu Astatqé – the synthijazz years

I recently deleted something from my iTunes library not because I was running out of disc space but because it was shite and I never wanted to hear it again. It was the synthijazz record by Mulatu Astatqé that I bought in the Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa,. What was the last straw was realising that there is a version of 'Yèkèrmo Sèw' on it. 'Yèkèrmo Sèw' for me is the Ethiopian jazz track (perhaps because it is in the first track on Éthiopiques 4, my first in the series). Listening to Mulatu giving us a dreadful '80s jazz version of the track was like listening to him pissing on his musical legacy. Irene remarked archly that the sound of him literally pissing on his musical legacy would probably be more interesting.