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Smichal smasks
“You get to curate a big chonky omnibus from the post-TMNT black-and-white indy boom. Roughly 1,000 pages. What’s going in it? (Choices do not have to be animal-related.)”
Oh Smichal, Smichal, Smichal…you say the choices don’t have to be animal-related, but friend, there’s only one choice for such an omnibus. And that choice is ALL THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES RIP-OFFS:
Most of these are pretty short runs, like the three issue run of the above. That would leave more room for the knock-offs that had slightly longer lifespans, like the Hamsters books:
I feel like some kind of more permanent record is needed to remember a lot of these books, especially since the Overstreet Price Guide has declined to list several series from the 1980s black and white boom.
Some decisions will have to be made regarding comics like Aristocratic Extraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves:
…which apes the title style but doesn’t quite feel like the a Turtles rip-off (and in fact changes its name to X-Thieves down the line).
Or does Miami Mice make the cut?
Or even the dreaded…
Some editorial decisions would have to be made, clearly. Anyway, you can see a selection of TMNT-inspired books here.
I feel like this would be a solid collection, particularly if it included supplemental text pieces providing some historical context and background information. We’re getting farther and farther away from this period of time and it shouldn’t just be up to blogs to remember the madness of the times.
So to sum up…either a big book of Turtles knock-offs, or a complete collection of every GRIPS title.
Hi pals…gonna continue trying to have some fun here on the site, but wanted to acknowledge that, well, things didn’t quite turn out as we hoped here in the States. It’s going to be rough, especially for women, minorities, and the LBGQTIA+ community, so let’s all look out for each other and do our best to get through this.
• • •
So anyway, let’s shift gears a bit and talk about EXTREME VIOLENCE, at least as represented by a specific indie comic from the 1980s.
I’m sure I came across references to Grips in the “Coming Attractions” section of the Amazing Heroes ‘zine at the time, but my earliest specific memory of the title is from a comic book convention I attended in the mid-1980s.
This was at a monthly Los Angeles comic con, that had the usual assortment of Special Guests and upcoming movie presentations (inexplicably, my friends and I sat through a preview of the Garbage Pail Kids, for which members of our little group won a movie poster and free passes to see the film — which went unused, might I add). But there were also rows upon rows of dealer tables, and up and down the aisles there was a young gentleman, meandering equidistant from the displays on either side, calling out “Grips! Who’s got Grips! I’m looking for Grips!” over and over again.
And he wasn’t the only one. Well, okay, he was the only one doing specifically that, but I heard other folks asking dealers for Grips and talking about Grips and I believe I recall seeing copies of Grips on display there with very optimistic pricing.
Grips was not a comic I recalled seeing at my local comic shop (the same one I would be employed at a small handful of years later). I did ask my former boss the other day as i was prepping for this post if he carried it, and he said “absolutely,” noting that first series sold very well for him. I can only presume that I missed it on the shelf (or it sold out before I got to the shop for my weekly visit), or that it just didn’t register with me.
And I suspect it wouldn’t have registered with me, as, despite the fact that I was always looking at what small press comics were being offered, Grips did not appear to be up my alley.
Okay, okay…as the Firesign Theatre could’ve said, “What Am Grips, Anyway?” Well, the opinion I sort of formed way back when I first learned of it was that this was about a fella trying to out-Wolverine Wolverine, then the mainstream comics gold standard of A Violent Character. Look, he even had the claws an’ everything. The controversy-courting appeal of the title was its Extreme Violence, and if you don’t believe me, take the Overstreet Price Guide’s word for it:
That’s…kind of an unexpected bit of editorializing from Overstreet there, but when you get down to it that appears to be the main selling point of the comic. And was it violent? Sure, a bit…here’s a slightly disarming panel giving you a minor example of the gory delights within:
This, and other incidents in these early issues, are certainly more gruesome than what you’d find in your standard issue of a superhero comic (despite the companies sometimes giving it the ol’ college try), even if they look crude and amateurish today.
And, well, maybe “amateurish” is a little harsh, given that these are the early works of Tim Vigil, a artist who would achieve fame and/or notoriety for the highly detailed artwork for the violently and sexually explicit series Faust and a mildly less-explicit short run of Badger.
In fact, despite all the demand for the book back in the ’80s, it’s pretty much forgotten now. If it’s remembered at all, it’s remembered solely because it is early work by Vigil. Any high prices they may have commanded once upon a time have slipped away to nothing. Even the Hot Comics App has these as “Non-Keys” at a typical price of about three bucks apiece. (A look at eBay shows somewhat more adventurous pricing, and I suspect the truth is, as usual, somewhere in the middle.)
Speaking of pricing, my Bluesky pal Steve contributed some grist for the Grips mill here, as he was a collector of the title and offered this up for me:
That’s a price listing for the various Grips titles from the publisher, with stories ripped from today’s headlines, apparently. Issue #4 has “High Violence!” Another issue has “Grips infected w/AIDS!”
You may notice, if you looked closely, that there are ea whole lot more Grips comics in this price listing than in the Overstreet Price Guide scan I posted up there. Well, Overstreet only listed the first mini, probably because of the Vigil connection. Otherwise, the Guide tends to not bother with most books from the 1980s black and white boom era, when anyone who could hold a pencil and find his way to the local print shop put out a comic hoping to be the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There was plenty of good stuff that came from the boom, but there was a whole lot of dreck as well, and Overstreet preferred to just not devote the space to it.
In the case of Grips, in addition to that initial four issue run, there was a second series sans Vigil that ran 12 issues, and 8 issue run of Gurps Adventures (which I totally want to be the “Kid-Friendly” version of Grips à la Batman Adventures, and the one-shot Grips Special. It was one of these later comics that got me on this whole Grips kick in the first place, what with a stray issue #7 from the second Grips run turning up in a collection the other day:
Would you like to see a page from the inside? Of course you would, why wouldn’t you:
To be completely honest, I’m very surprised there hasn’t been an attempted revival of Grips in all these years since it vanished off the stands. Of the output from Silver Wolf/Greater Mercury, Grips was the comic that made the biggest splash, despite it being mostly out of comic fans’ minds today.
It was a weird and crude book, one borne out of an exciting and interesting time when it seems like just about anyone could get a title out on the stands, unhampered by an editorial hand that would tell them “no.” I’m not going to sit here and tell you it was, y’know, “good,” but more power to the Silver Wolf/Greater Mercury folks for putting together this amateur press empire for however briefly it breathed.
And just because Internet Pal Steve sent these pics my way, here are a couple more comics from his collection, some Grips variants:
Collect ’em all, kids!
So, alas, I’ve been going through the collection of a late customer of mine…a longtime customer, in fact, going back to the early days of my toil at the previous place of employment. Probably about 30 years or so…when I opened up my shop, he followed me over, which I always appreciated.
He passed away last year, and his brother brought me most of his collection then, but this week brought me several more boxes. I took a first pass through them and pulled out some items of interest…and he was a huge Lobo fan, so he had lots of Lobo ‘n’ related comics, including one I haven’t seen in decades. I thought I’d present a few of them here today.
From the “Lobo-related” category, here are a couple of parodies, starting with Spoof Comics Presents #9, featuring “Hobo: Patricide.”
The title is a parody of the 1992 DC Comics mini Lobo: Infanticide, a title I still can’t believe actually made it to the stands. Anyway, like many parody comics of the period, part of the joke was gender-flipping the characters, so we get a Lady Lobo here. This Is A Fetish for Someone™, as a very wise and stunningly handsome person once said.
Speaking of which, there was a later one-shot by the same company titled Wolverbroad Vs. Hobo…Wolverbroad being a parody of, oh, I don’t know, the old Legion of Super-Heroes character Timber Wolf I think.
In the non-gender-flipped category of parody was this comic, somewhat surprisingly from Eclipse Comics in 1992. It’s Loco Vs. Pulverine #1:
…Pulverine, of course, being a parody of, oh, I don’t know, Puck from Alpha Flight I think. This comic had an amusing wraparound cover, inspired by the similar cameo-filled cover on the famous Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali treasury.
Here’s the back cover:
…where you can see such luminaries as Hagar the Horrible:
…and here is celebrity power couple Krazy and Ignatz from the classic Krazy Kat strip.
Plus, here’s a special note from creator Gary Yap:
Last but not least is the comic I was shocked to see in this collection…well, okay, not shocked that in was in this collection, given the preponderance of Lobo stuff, just shocked that I’ve finally seen it again after all this time. It’s the infamous The Wisdom of Lobo one-shot from 1992:
I last wrote about this on my site in 2011 in these two posts, in which I noted I hadn’t seen it in forever even back then.
To recap, this came in a slipcased set, with the slipcase featuring an image of Lobo’s face. The books inside were Lobo’s Greatest Hits (a compilation of early Lobo appearances from Omega MenLobo mini-series, and this Wisdom of Lobo thing. We sold a lot of these sets, and demand for Lobo was high enough that we even broke up some of these sets and sold the components individually.
I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that the Grand Comics Database included a note on the Wisdom book that retailers were annoyed by the gimmick (in that the 64 pages inside were blank, you see), but that note seems to be gone now. But as I said then, it didn’t really annoy us, and when pricing out the components of the slipcased set vis-à-vis its retail price, the Wisdom book was essentially free.
I didn’t remember then what we sold the Wisdom comic for on its own, but the copy from this collection still had the old shop’s price tag. For a mere $1.50, you could have had this Lobo-branded sketch book for your very own.
To continue repeating myself from those older posts, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen more of these over the decades. I know we sold a ton of those slipcased sets, I figured eventually some would make their way back to me. It took 32 years, and the unfortunate passing one of my favorite customers, but here it is, filling in that little gap in my remembrances of comics retail past.
Thanks, Dale, for the opportunity to see these weird Lobo things again. I’ll find good homes for them.
As anyone who’s been reading this site for a while knows, due to the various eyeball issues I’ve had over the last few years, I fell behind on my comics reading, and I’m still behind even ’til today. While things have improved healthwise in regards to my eyes, I do read a little slower than I used to, and comics ain’t comin’ out any less quickly, so the backlog continues apace.
As such, sometimes — well, usually — I don’t read comics the very week they come out, which is even more sad considering that with the new distributors in play, I often get the new books a week ahead of their official release and I still don’t read ’em until a week or three later.
Which is a long way of me telling you “I just read the last couple of issues of John Constantine Hellblazer: Dead in America series.” Specifically, I wanted to talk here about issue #8 by Simon Spurrier and Lisandro Estherren, in which these panels appeared, with John complaining about the Demon saying his name wrong:
…and a little later, here’s the Demon mocking John by deliberately mispronouncing the name:
YESSSSSS. The battle, once conceded by me when the musician Sting, the inspiration for Constantine, pronounced the name with “-teen,” rages once again thanks to this beautiful, beautiful creative team.
The first salvo was fired back in 1988 in Swamp Thing #73 by Rick Veitch and Alfredo Alcala:
So the war is back on! Take that, too many media adaptations getting his name wrong! Yes, this is the hill I’m dying on.
• • •
Speaking of being behind on reading, I finally got around to a couple of graphic novels. First up was
Palooka-ville #24, the latest in Seth’s volumes of comics and photography an’ such.
The series started as a standard black and white comic book in 1991, transitioning to a small hardcover with issue #20 in 2010. If you’re looking at the years and issue numbers there, yes, the publication is very sporadic, with the previous issue coming out in 2017.
This issue came out July of last year, and I just got around to reading it now, in case you’re wondering just how far behind I am on things. So, you know, it’s probably good it took several years for this come out. Now I’m ready for the next issue in, say, 2031.
With all this time passing just with the most recent volume, I’d forgotten details about it from when I originally ordered it in February 2023. I was reading the first part of the book, with Seth relating stories of his teenage employment at a small inn, in which he mentions someone recognizing him because of his “funny voice.” That had me thinking “huh, I wonder what Seth’s voice sounds like, I wonder if I can find a video with him talking and hear it for myself.”
Then I get to the next feature of the book, which is a series of photographs showing some behind the scenes stuff for the short film of Seth’s puppetry, included as a DVD in this book.
I’d completely forgotten there was a DVD. It’s been well over a year and a half since I ordered it, and over a year since I obtained it, so yeah, no duh I forgot. But I just thought it was amusing that I started the book with the thought “what does Seth sound like?” and then discovering that right here in the book is a way for me to hear what he sounds like.
This short film is good, by the way. It’s essentially one of Seth’s melancholy strips brought to life. And Seth’s voice sounds perfectly fine, not funny at all.
The next book I finally got to was Grendel: Devil by the Deed Master Edition, which is a new 200 page expanded retelling of the original Grendel by his creator Matt Wagner (and colored in a black, white and red palette by his son, Brennan).
Now this book came out last November, so it hasn’t been quite a year yet. And, being a very longtime Grendel fan, I went for the signed and numbered slipcased edition, with a tipped in autographed plate featuring a new Grendel illustration.
At 200 pages, it is something like five times the length of the original “completed” version of this story, the one that ran as back-ups in the first Mage mini-series. The extra pages, I believe, incorporate events from the various comics about the original Grendel, Hunter Rose, that were published after the Devil by the Deed story, though I’ve not read those in a while so beyond some vague memories I can’t say for certain.
This new version continues the conceit of the previous one, taking the format of a book examining the double life of Hunter Rose after his death and the revelation of all his secrets, via blocks of text accompanying illustrations. It’s not a traditional panel-by-panel, dialogue-and-captions, comic book, putting the reader a step removed from the story’s events. Which, I think, is an effective tactic, adding to the mystery and mythic weight of the proceedings.
Speaking of mystery, there is a point in the book where the “author” notes that some pages were removed from Grendel’s journals regarding a particular event. Enough detail of the event is given that I seem to recall it from one of the other, later stories, but I need to check (and actually have pulled out the comics themselves to look when I have a chance). If I recall correctly, this involved some supernatural elements which do exist in the Grendel milieu, but I’m guessing Wagner wanted to keep those to a minium in this mostly-grounded initial story. Argent, the wolf-like monstrous “hero” of the story, the counterpoint to Grendel’s elegant and attractive villainy, remains as the one outright fanciful aspect of this crime story…outside the guy in the costume leaping around the city, natch.
I still wonder what would have happened if Wagner had been able to finish the very first version of the story, intended as a six-issue mini-series but cancelled after three. It was…crude, but energetic, with what I still think are striking covers. It was told in the traditional comic book style, and it would have been interesting to see what story elements from the later retellings would have had their origins in the unseen chapters of this original comic. It’s hard to imagine the depth of the later twists and turns being conveyed quite as well with the standard comic storytelling, Wagner’s youthful abilities aside.
I’ll tell you one thing, though…the book ends with an “author’s credit” for the fictional writer of this tell-all of Grendel, who is the star of the first story of the 1986 series. Which of course made me want to pull those out and reread them. Sigh. And that’s how your pal Mike got even more behind on current comics, because he keeps wanting to look at his old ones again.
I read Peepshow #15 and it made me sad.
This is the final issue of Joe Matt’s autobiographical comic, released last week from Fantagraphics…final, due to Matt’s passing last year at a too-young age (though I’m sure he’d argue about the “young” part).
If you’re looking for a neat wrap-up to Matt’s comic book life as portrayed in Peepshow over the decades (having started publication in 1992), you’re not going to get one. In fact, one of the stories within is titled “Maggie – Part One” and there is no part two extant, though there are mentions of her in further stories and you can probably get a sense of what a Part Two might have been.
Another throughline in this issue is Matt’s move to Los Angeles, pending a potential television adaptation of his comics for HBO. While there’s a lot of grist for Matt’s unique mill here, there was obviously more to be told that we’ll not get (especially since the story dealing specifically on the topic also gets a “Part One” heading, no “Part Two” present). The ultimate conclusion is known — these stories take place years ago, and there is no Peepshow TV show now — but I’m sure Matt would’ve had more to say about the experience.
The only segment of the book that sorta feels like a final wrap-up is his brief summaries of all his sexual relationships to date. And this, as well as everything else in the book, is told with his trademark near-cringeworthy and hilarious bluntness and honesty. He never flinches from making sure his thought processes fully transparent, his mistakes completely exposed.
And I want to make sure that’s clear…it’s still funny. It’s still Joe Matt being the most Joe Matt, with all the cheapness and obsessiveness and selfishness completely on display. Even as he worries about his aging (40 in these stories, set 20 years ago) and his pursuit of some sort of financial and emotional stability, it remains told in a way that amuses in the Mighty Joe Matt Manner.
But it’s still sad, reading these strips and knowing this is the last chapter to his own story. I keep harping on “conclusions” and “wrapping up” in this little overview, even though obviously I know in my head that Matt couldn’t have realized this was going to be his last comic book. But my heart can’t help but want more.
And readers of comic books have an ingrained expectation that a final issue is going to tie everything up in a little bow, or that it ends on pithy note, gathering up your narrative experience in some clever way.
Peepshow #15 doesn’t do that. It gives you one more entertaining piece in the ongoing saga of Joe Matt, just like every previous issue did. It’s just sad that we’re not getting a #16, no matter how long we’re willing to wait.
So I picked up a copy of the normalman 40th Anniversary Omnibus, reprinting in full Jim Valentino’s mid-1980s parody comic series from the mid-1980s. I believe this is the first color reprinting of the introductory back-up stories from Cerebus, as well as the story from A-V in 3-D, presented in color and non-3D. I also believe this is the first color reprinting of the concluding chapter, normalman 3-D in a non-3D format. I appreciate that, given it’s a little harder for my eyes to do 3D in print properly anymore. (These 3D stories have been reprinted in non-3D in previous black and white collections, from Slave Labor and from Image.)
Also featured is the crossover story from Journey #13 by William Messner-Loebs (presented in the original black and white by Messner-Loebs’ request). Other material, such as the later normalman specials from Image, ads, strips produced for conventions, unused pages, and the like round out the book. Sadly not included is 1997’s Max the Magnificent:
…a spin-off starring a character normalman runs into during the course of his adventures. The comic also features an appearance by normalman‘s Captain Everything, which makes it especially odd that it doesn’t make the cut.
Now for the most part, this is a nicely done book…the reproduction of the art is very sharp and clear. The original mini-series and 3D special, however, have been relettered, which…frankly, isn’t an improvement on the original lettering. Maybe in the earlier issues, where the lettering is a little less polished, it is a step up, but in these cases I would always prefer the original, with the lumpier handdrawn word balloons and occasionally funkier typography. However, it wasn’t that distracting, and especially for my eyes it made for an easier reading experience.
Except.
I understand there may be production issues where the art just has to be relettered. It happens, I get it. But it seems like every time relettering like this is done for reprint works such as this, misspellings and such slip in that weren’t in the original printing. As I recall, this happened with Image’s initial reprintings of Matt Wagner’s Mage: The Hero Discovered, and with those strange black and white collections of Jim Starlin’s Metamorphosis Odyssey from Slave Labor Graphics.
And it happens here, in this delxue volume of normalman I’d been wanting to see for years. Granted, for a several hundred page book, it’s not a whole lot, maybe a half-dozen or so errors that I’ve noticed, but they are still pretty distracting.
For example, from issue #1, here’s the original word balloon:
And here it is with an inexplicable word change:
From issue #10, the original panel:
And how it appears in the omnibus, with a couple of extra typos (for “imbecile” and “my”):
And here’s the one that really stood out to me, for what should be obvious reasons…from issue #4:
And here is it in the omnibus:
(Also, making “Or Mister Monster” the same size lettering does alter the gag a little.)
There are more examples (including at least one word balloon in the omnibus that I think has either misspelled a word or left a word out entirely, I haven’t checked yet).
This is just in the original normalman story, which is all I’ve read of this omnibus thus far. I don’t believe the other material has been rejiggered in this fashion. Plus, as I’ve said, it’s only a few of these errors that I’ve noticed, and I’m hoping they’ll be fixed in later reprintings. I should note that the Journey issue reprinted here has not been relettered.
As soon as I saw these, I did pull out my copies of the original series, actually kind of hoping the mistakes were in those. Somehow it would have been slightly less annoying if these were faithful reproductions of original errors, though undoubtedly I would then be complaining about “why didn’t they fix that?”
I am glad I have this book. I mean, mistakes happen — What Can You Do?™ — and given this hardcover was solicited with a first print run of only 1,500 copies, maybe like I said they can quickly fix these issues for new printings. It’s a classic and funny work that deserves to be in print, and I just want it to be in the best possible presentation.
§ November 10th, 2023 § Filed under indies § 5 Comments
Yes, here’s the necessary follow-up to Wednesday’s post with extra info on Jon Sable Freelance that I missed due to 1) ignorance and 2) being too old to work the internet properly.
First, let’s get this out of the way…several folks left comments or sent emails essentially telling me “hey Mike you dummy, that Soldier of Fortune text you linked to actually has a link to actual scans of the magazine.” Said comments/emails were accompanied by links and/or attachments showing THE ACTUAL AD, the very one my dad spotted back in 1986 and informed me about. Hence:
I edited out the address/phone number, obviously, even though it’s right there in the original scans if you want to trek to this Canadian apartment complex and find Mr. Sable. (LEGAL DISCLAIMER: don’t do that.) Anyway, first person through the gate with this info for me was Sleestak of “Lady, That’s My Skull” fame, so thanks to him and to everyone else who tried to set my ailing brain straight.
More additions/corrections:
Chris lets me know that there have been a couple of Kickstarter campaigns (here’s the most recent one) to issue nice hardcover collections of the original Jon Sable series. Of note is that one of the “rewards” is Jon Sable Graphic Album #1, a 56-page “DC’s Black Label” format oversized softcover. Apparently this is a planned ongoing reprint thing for 2024, but available to Kickstarter supporters first.
Pal Nat reminds me that 1987’s Word Warriors contained a jam story that included Jon Sable and work by Grell.
Customer Sean asks how many votes Mr. Sable received in my poll. He was a 4-voter!
Mixmat points out my mix-up, giving the wrong title for First’s crossover series. It’s actually Crossroads, and I should have known better because it’s not like i haven’t talked about it plenty of times on this site. Ah well, fixed now.
Roel Torres (one of the aforementioned four votes!) talks about what sounds like his very impressive collection of Grell art, and notes that Bill Jaaska, the main artist of the Sable series, had a sad end. I went looking for more info and found this detailed accounting of the man’s life. Worth a read in remembrance of an artist who, like many, never really got his due.
CP Bananas slips in this one last question:
“A sincere question for the Sable fans here, from someone who’s never read any and isn’t sure this is google-able: what was the deal with the stuff on his face? I always assumed it was a concession to make a ‘real-world’ character look more superheroic on the stands but what was the in-universe explanation?”
I don’t remember any specifics, but my presumption is that it’s just like “warpaint” or such to help disguise his appearance, and maybe act as a form of camouflage. Just looking at the covers, I presume this origin issue (which was one of the earlier issues I hadn’t read) gets into more detail:
I’m sure one of you know the actual answer, so please leave it in the comments here! Thanks!
So in response to my post about the passing of Keith Giffen, LouReedRichards brings up a title that I’m sort of shocked at myself for not remembering. On one hand, I couldn’t list everything, but on the other hand, I really should have pointed out this comic from 1987:
And here’s a sample page from the first issue:
Did ol’ Keith do 12-panel pages throughout the series? Oh he sure does, for the most part, with some smatterings of six and nine panel pages, so this is one series dense with storytelling. Even the last issue, featuring several guest artists (like Fred Hembeck! Walt Simonson! Trina Robbins! Jim Starlin!) is mostly 6 or 9 panel grids. There’s the occasional breaking of the format, including a pretty stunning two-page spread in the first issue.
So here’s the thing about this comic.
I remember really looking forward to it. I even picked up one of the promo posters at the comic shop, where they had a stack they were giving away, and had it put up at home. And I bought each issue off the stands as it came out, its release coinciding with my beginning months of college.
And I’m pretty sure that was the one time I read it. Well, okay, I probably reread the whole series once it was complete. And it’s been 35+ years and I remember very, very little of it. As I flipped through my copies, extracted from what remains of the Vast Comics Archive, I remembered bits here and there, some of the conceits of the series, the character designs, etc. But there is a lot going on and I’m sure there are plenty of details I’m forgetting.
Hell, I even forgot that this was written by former DC Comics stalwart Cary Bates.
I remember really liking the series. But I couldn’t tell you really anything substantial about it, beyond “dude falls into a TV world” and I’m not even sure that’s 100% correct. But glancing through it, it’s definitely a showcase for this era of Giffen’s art. I definitely would love to be able to reread it, but “rereading older comics” is on the backburner while I’m still trying to catch up with the new stuff. As I posted on Bluesky:
“Well, if I’m going to reread every book and comic I’ve bought and kept over the last five decades, I’d better get started.”
In some cases, it may be just enough to remember that you liked a think, even if it no longer lives in your memory and you don’t have time to revisit. Ah well.
And it took three and half decades, but I finally get the punny joke of the title. …No one’s ever accused me of being too on the ball. Do I need to tell the Ms. Tree story again?
So like I was talking about in this post from last week, I find myself trying to pick between reading a lot of comics and getting the backlog cut down, or reading a single graphic novel in that same time.
Well, I finally decided to pick up Kate Beaton’s autobiographical graphic novel Ducks:
…and I’m only halfway through, but I definitely lost time Sunday evening reading this volume, looking at the clock, thinking “oh sure I’ve got time before I have to go” and then checking again and realizing “oops, I’m late.” That’s probably a sign of a good book, right?
It’s the story of Beaton’s post-college jobs in the Canadian oil fields, which she took to pay off student loans. It’s both fascinating in the details of the work she’s doing, and harrowing in the casual sexism and harassment a young Beaton has to face. It’s densely told, usually lots of panels per page, but it never feels cramped. And for my long-suffering eyeballs, the lettering and the black and white art are both crisp and easy for me to read.
Usually one should finish a book entirely before giving a recommendation, but even at the halfway point I feel confident telling folks this is one worth getting your mitts upon. I’ve long enjoyed her shorter humorous works, and I’m finding her longform dramatic storytelling to be just a compelling.
So Pedro said in response to Monday’s post about Mister X:
“So it sounds like this highly-voted for series kinda sucks, eh?”
And LouReedRichards already gave a solid response:
“I wouldn’t say it sucks, but like many projects, the parts are actually greater than the whole.
“It has good, often amazing (IMHO) art & design work, a wonderful setting and concept. Motter is a good writer and artist, from what I can remember from his other works.
“For some reason it just never comes together as a cohesive package.
“It’s definitely worth picking up any of the Vortex color issues in the cheap bins.”
Just so this isn’t a lazy post where I reprint what you guys wrote in my comments and call it day, I do have something(s) to add.
First off, the votes. I’m just a little ol’ blog that pleaded for readers (and for pals on Xwitter) to contribute to my poll. It’s not a wide-ranging, comprehensive poll by any means. I think it’s not a bad representation of what fans liked, and by and large I think the results of my poll more-or-less reflect fairly well my own experiences over the years in the shops I’ve worked in.
But my poll isn’t perfect, and some titles got fewer votes than I expected, some got more. All it took was enough fans of a certain title to decide to participate in my poll, or enough people deciding not to, to skew things one way or another. Mister X is one of those titles that I was honestly surprised that showed as well as it did when I tallied the numbers.
As LouReedRichards said, there is plenty to recommend the series, even despite its uneven production and storytelling. A failed experiment can still be compelling and interesting and worthy of attention, even if it rarely, if ever, gels as a complete package. And it could very well be that the World’s Biggest Mister X Fan is reading this right now, buildin’ up a head o’steam over me daring to suggest the comic was lest than perfect.
One of my all-time favorite comic books remains the Andy Helfer/Bill Sienkiewicz/Kyle Baker run on The Shadow. It very famously ended mid-story, where the Shadow’s head had been put on a robot body, and someone somewhere decided “ooookay, let’s put everything on pause for a sec.” Many claims had been made to exactly why the series ended, and I covered them in a long-ago post here, probably link-rotted. I would point out that what DC said and what one of the creators said very much contradict each other.
But it’s unfinished. Even so, if I were asked to vote in some kind of favorite comics poll for which this series was eligible (“Series Most Likely to Give Old Fans of the Property Heart Palpitations”), I 100% would hang that chad for The Shadow.
On a related issue, I thought Matt Wagner’s Mage was highly and widely regarded as a classic comic series. Turns out that wasn’t quite the case, and, well, there you go.
Ultimately, there were enough people participating in my poll to give Mister X the good showing it received. That it’s received a certain level of critique for things never quite working out, there was enough there to make it a favorite title of some. It may not have always succeeded in what it was trying to do, but it succeeded enough.
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