Laptop’s back! Thank you, Steve Jobs’s minions!
Yesterday I wondered aloud whether skepticism toward the new Dirk Deppey-helmed Comics Journal from folks like Dave Fiore stemmed not from a fear that said Journal wouldn’t cover superhero comics, but that they wouldn’t cover superhero comics in a fashion to said folks’ liking. Dave interpreted that as me saying that Dave has some sort of personal problem with Dirk or other Journal writers and editors, which is not what I meant at all. My point was that if the Journal gives “mainstream” criticism an honest go, that’s really all we can (and should) ask for, as opposed to expecting that they’d share our precise feelings about the merit of the books or their authors. (Or, in Dave’s case, their formal implications.) You grok?
Also on the magazine beat is Marc Singer, who’s hyping the International Journal of Comic Art, a scholarly publication edited by frequent Comics Journal contributor John Lent. Sounds interesting, if you dig the superclose analysis, and babies, I know you dig the superclose analysis.
Eve Tushnet returns to comicsblogging, God bless her, with a short and sweet review of Paul Hornschemeier’s Mother, Come Home.
Speaking of short and sweet, Dave Lartigue almost never says anything I agree with, but goddamn if he isn’t dead right about Planetes, which absent New X-Men may be the most fascinating series around right now. It’s science fiction in which nothing happens that doesn’t spring directly and organically from character, and its manga art is among the most beautiful and thoughtful I’ve seen. Folks, this book is stupid good, the perfect gateway drug into manga for altcomix readers. Volume Three came out yesterday–pick up all three for the price of two movie tickets and some snacks, settle in under a tree someplace with your S.O. this weekend, and enjoy.
And speaking of both Mother and Planetes, John Jakala reviews them both as well. He loves the latter, as should we all; he also points out that my comments about the former were more tempered online than they were in my review for the Journal. In part this is because the point of the Journal piece was to praise, not to bury–the idea was that this was chosen as one of the books of the year, so I was justifying that joice (said justification being deserved any way you slice it, methinks). The other part is that it grew on me. Do I think Hornschemeier cheated a bit with the neatness of the tragedy? Yeah, probably. And I’m totally empathetic, because that’s exactly the way I cheat when I write fiction, and I mean exactly. I think it was only because I saw this in myself that I was as critical of this aspect of the book as I was, at first. But I’ve grown to love myself, so I grew to love this book. How couldn’t I?
I’m glad to see that Fantagraphics is keeping the Complete Peanuts ball rolling, but whatever happened to the subscription program they’d planned on offering? Did the syndicate or the Schulz estate put the kibosh on it? Now that I actually have to, y’know, pay for my own comics, I was sort of counting on this option.
Graeme McMillan points to two potentially interesting graphic novels, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis 2 and Aaron McGruder & Kyle Baker’s Birth of a Nation. I’m intrigued, but I’d be more excited if Persepolis had actually been the knockout it was billed as (the book is really fun to read, but I’ve said it before and so have many other people: Epileptic is the best there is at what Persepolis does), and if Kyle Baker used a different color palette, and if Aaron McGruder hadn’t recently morphed into the Angry Left’s Jim Davis.
Well, I didn’t know this was happening! Neat.
Warren Ellis & Trevor Hairsine will be present at the biggest interdimensional crossrip since the Tanguska blast of 1909. (That secret and awesome movie quotation is just for you.)
Speaking of Warren Ellis, I think Marc-Oliver just exposed his dark underbelly.
Much is being made of Marvel’s intention to make a Chris Claremont-scripted epic trilogy out of X-Men: The End, but no one seems to notice that we all read X-Men: The End the first time it came out, when Grant Morrison wrote it and it was called New X-Men Volume 7: Here Comes Tomorrow.
Personal, non-comics-related note to Johnny Bacardi: Technically, they’re just really, really angry, which is why they just kill and don’t eat. (The not-eating part is worth noting by the end….)
Finally, made it, Ma! Top o’ the world!