Comic Quickies: Recent Great Reads

Comeback #1: I've been waiting for there to be an Ed Brisson penned comic ever since I picked up his three issues of Murder Book at last year's Emerald City Comic Con.  Those three issues showed me a writer with a knack for telling compelling stories and I've been eagerly awaiting Comeback.

In Comeback, time travel has been developed, but is illegal.  However, the technology is used very discreetly by the ultra-rich who enlist the help of a secret company, Reconnect, to go back in time and save a loved on from death. For a hefty fee Reconnect will collect the loved one, stage their death, and bring them to safety.

Mark and Seth are two of the agents who do the collecting and time traveling.  However, on the mission that plays out in the opening pages, something goes terribly wrong, and the person they are meant to be saving dies during the time travel.  If that's not bad enough, Seth is starting to look a bit worn down by their job, which isn't good considering that in the wake of their most recent mission, they've been given another tough job.

The art, which is handled by Michael Walsh, is definitely easy on the eyes.  His art reminded me a lot of Tonci Zonjic from Who is Jake Ellis? fame and Where is Jake Ellis? (which I'll cover here shortly).  Anyway, Walsh's art is another strong aspect of this title.

This one gets positive marks for being a story about time travel, with a healthy dose of crime mixed in...a combo that I couldn't resist.  This opening issue is definitely a stage setter, but I like how things are looking.  I just hope that this doesn't wind up being one of those "Just one more job, then I'm out" kind of stories. For now, I'm feeling it.

Where is Jake Ellis? #1: The five issue series (Who is Jake Ellis?) which proceeded Where is Jake Ellis? was one of my top reads from last year.  High octane espionage action anyone?  However, since then, I've admittedly become a little bit lukewarm on writer Nathan Edmondson.  The stuff he's written since then hasn't impressed me nearly as much.  In fact, I almost didn't pick this issue up.

I did though, and I'm glad because it appears that Edmondson is in his groove when it comes to writing stuff with "Jake Ellis" in the title. If you haven't read the previous Jake Ellis material, I urge you to do so, not only because it is awesome, but because nothing in this new story arc will make any sense if you don't.

That being said, it will still be a shit ton of fun because Edmondson has distilled his comic down to pure, unrelenting action.  His agent, Jon Moore, is on the run from mysterious spooks who want him dead.  It's that simple.  Moore uses his considerable spy/survival skills to narrowly avoid death in awesome and exciting ways.  The kicker is, in the past he's had a voice inside his head (Jake Ellis) who has helped him survive, and now that voice has mysteriously gone silent, and Moore's head is on the chopping block.

Tonci Zonjic's art is stylish and cool, and very inviting.  He captures action and emotion with equal skill.  He and Edmondson are a great pair for this title, and I'm definitely excited to see what they have in store for us.

Batwoman #14:  All hail the best superhero title on the shelves.

(I actually have zero proof that the above statement is true, given that this is the only superhero title I read...but it is really fucking awesome so there!)

So why is Batwoman so awesome?  It's awesome for a lot reasons: Kate Kane is a really cool character, Batwoman battles stuff straight outta myth and urban legend, and there's a whole bunch of stressful and distracting stuff in her life such as relationships, family, and job stress, that make Kate seem like a real person. And now this comic is even more awesome because Wonder Woman has been added into the mix. Okay, sure, Wondy's been on the scene for at least two issues now, but I'm loving the Wonder Woman/Batwoman team up.

On top of a fun team up, and a cool story that has spanned the entire length of the series so far, this comic has J.H. Williams III on art knocking that shit out of the park with each issue he works on.  I love looking at Williams' art.  He has the most creative panel layouts, and he always experiments with interesting ways for the art and story to interact.  I was really taken with how he chose to show how Pegasus received his grievous injuries in this issue.

After dropping all the other DCnU titles I was reading, Batwoman continues to go strong, despite putting a lot of Kate Kane's personal issues on the back-burner for the moment.  I will say, I like this title a lot more when JHW III is doing the art, but Batwoman is good stuff.

Comic Review: Ghost World

Whenever I want to treat myself, I head down to the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery in South Seattle.  It's located practically next door to the airport, so I always feel like I have to dodge landing airplanes just to get in the front door.  Regardless, I love spending time in the shop because it has a fantastic atmosphere.  It's connected to a record store, so there's always great music playing, and the bookshelves hold more treasure than I could ever hope to read.

It seems like nearly everything Fantagraphics publishes is a comic that's worth reading, and to top it off, the store also carries stuff from other indie publishers like Drawn and Quaterly, Koyama Press, Top Shelf and more, so there's just an amazing amount of great stuff on the shelves.  It can actually be an overwhelming endeavor, what with so many great comics close at hand,and picking out something to read is often a lengthy endeavor.

For my last trip to the Fantagraphics Bookstore, I came prepared with a few hours worth of comics research under my belt and a list of books, and artists I wanted to check out. Despite that, I was still in the store for about two hours, but I left feeling confident that my purchases were good ones.  I decided that Dan Clowes' Ghost World would be the read I dove into first.

Ghost World follows two recent high school grads, and best friends, Enid and Becky.  Both girls are sort of just aimlessly living out their days in their unnamed, middle american town, while they try to sort out exactly what they want to do with their lives.  The girls mock and criticize their town, the people in it and their friends and family as the story progresses.  Neither girl seems all that happy with their life, but at the same time neither seems all that willing to do anything to change it for the better either.  Eventually, with some urging from her father, Enid starts to make plans to move away for college, which leads to tensions in her friendship with Becky.  Despite being so close, as the girls start to grow up, they begin to grow apart.

Now that I'm a decade or so removed from adolescence I don't often find myself drawn to stories about mixed up teens, but I've started to learn that this type of story can be a personal touchstone for me, and get me reflecting on my life, the decisions I've made and paths I've been on.  Ghost World is definitely a comic that provides that personal touchstone.  There's a lot of familiarity between Enid, Becky and myself.  Their cynicism, criticism, and inexperience definitely reminded me of my younger days.

Additionally, the unnamed town, with its strip malls, its encroachment by corporate america, and the experiences the characters go through can be cultural touchstones for the reader as well.  Clowes' frank depiction of these elements seemed to work their way right into my subconscious and draw out all these old memories and emotions from when I was roughly the same age as Enid and Becky.  This is a book that seems to effortlessly find its voice, effortlessly make a connection with the reader, and thoroughly  pull the reader in.

Obviously, this is a comic that resonates strongly with the reader, and the lion's share of that credit should go to Clowe's art.  As I was reading this, I almost felt like I wasn't engaging the art at all, rarely did I even pause to study a panel.  The reason being is that Clowes' art is so completely integrated into the story, that I was absorbing it at a subconscious level.  After I finished the whole book, I went back and flipped through the pages, just taking the art, and I realized that many of the images brought to mind certain bits of dialog, just like how, when reading a passage from a book, it will bring to mind certain bits of imagery.  I don't think I've ever had this experience when reading a comic; I feel like my mind almost always distinguishes and draws a line between the art and the writing.  The connectivity and integration of both art and writing in Ghost World is an impressive feat and one I hope to experience more often when I read comics now.

So, yeah, I'm definitely proud of my latest purchase from Fantagraphics.  Ghost World is a book that will find a connection with nearly every reader who opens it up.  Despite being written in the early 90's, before cell phones and texting, and all that, it is a book that still resonates strongly, and can still find an audience in modern times because of its brutal honesty. I can see why so many people consider this a classic.  Definitely worth a read.

Grade: A

Book Review: Echoes of the Past

It's always an exciting day here at Battle Hymns HQ when a Demon Squad book makes its way into my mailbox.  It was especially exciting this time around because the last installment in this urban fantasy series left me more eager than usual to see where things would go next.  Once it arrived, Echoes of the Past only sat on the shelves for a few days before I picked it up and dove in.

From the get-go the personal stakes are high for our hero Frank Trigg.  Up to this point, a typical Demon Squad novel usually finds Frank fighting long odds in order to save the world, but this time around we see Frank trying to sort out and deal with some very personal business while dire threats to the world build around him.

Echoes of the Past is a stand out novel in the Demon Squad series for many reasons, but likely the biggest reason is because so many burning questions get answered here...I don't want to be rude and spoil anything, but there were some very satisfying reveals in this installment. All of which upped the stakes a few notches and added layers of depth to the series.

I was surprised to find that Echoes of the Past felt like a much different read compared to the past Demon Squad books...and not just because Frank finally has himself a steady lady-love.

Each of the books in this series focus on some sort of threat, and Frank's battle to stave off that threat. This time around we see a similar situation crop up, but while Frank hustles to find a plan to save the earth from a cross-dimensional war with demon-aliens, he uncovers some particularly unsettling bits of information about his past.  This sets Frank off on a path of personal discovery, the likes of which he probably hasn't seen since he hit puberty.

Jokes aside, I learned a lot about Frank Trigg in this one, and it was really nice to get some of the back story on this character.  These reveals also informed a lot of the whys and wherefores of the grand, over-arching plot which has been sort of hovering just out of reach for the past three books.  That grand plot has now moved to the forefront, and the result is that the stakes for this series have somehow managed to get higher than ever before.

I will say that Echoes of the Past is less of a thrill ride than the past Demon Squad books, but that's not a bad thing. This book still has it's share of action, plot twists, and large scale battles, just less of that than the past volumes. It was interesting to see this book, and series, take a different direction than what has been the norm for rest of the series.  This change of direction caught me unawares at first, but I eventually came to really enjoy the level of character development and plot building that takes center stage in Echoes of the Past.

I was pained (in a good way) by the fact that this book doesn't provide much sense of closure. There's a brutal cliffhanger ending that makes Echoes of the Past feel like more of an opening salvo, or first act to a much larger story.  Even though many of my series-long burning questions were answered in this installment, the tantalizing ending meant that those questions were replaced with new ones that will beleaguer me until the next Demon Squad book.

Tim Marquitz' Demon Squad series is one of the few series I've managed to start, and stick with as the series progresses... Not something I've been so good at the past few years, which is a testament as to how good this series is.  Not only that, but it's a series that has grown on me and gotten better with each installment.  This is a series that appears to be building towards great things, and I'm very much looking forward to what's in store next.

Grade: B+

Comic Review: Batman Year 100

One of the first things I sought out upon my return to comics as an adult were some good Batman comics. I was a big fan of the Caped Crusader as a kid, and was hoping to get that yummy feeling of nostalgia by reading up on my favorite superhero as an adult. Well, that didn't turn out so good.  Sure, The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Year One were pretty good, but they didn't give me what I was looking for.  Then I read some other Batman stuff, specific titles I don't even recall, and I found out pretty fast that most of the Batman stuff out there is pretty weak.  I felt that most of the Batman material published in recent years felt childish or silly to me.

Most of it.  Not all of it.

I discovered one grand exception to the norm earlier this year when I read Batman Snow, and now I've discovered another: Paul Pope's exceptionally awesome Batman Year 100.

The year is 2039, and a federal agent has been murdered in Gotham.  The only piece of evidence, a blurry bit of video from the crime scene, seems to indicate that a caped and cowled figure with no identity is responsible   The government sends in squad of storm trooper-like soldiers and spooks to attempt to find the killer. All the while, Gotham City Police Detective Jim Gordon, grandson of the former commissioner, begins an investigation of his own on a masked vigilante straight out of legend.

The first thing that stands out about Batman Year 100 is the art.  It is absolutely stunning, and absolutely unlike any other art you'll ever see on any Bat-title.  Pope is one of the most well-regarded names in the industry that doesn't get main-stream recognition.  This was my first exposure to Pope's art, and I was resoundingly blown away.

Pope's art was so unique looking to me that I was curious to see who he's influenced by.  His wiki page lists a number of influences, among them guys I'm somewhat familiar with like Kirby, Toth, and Herge, but even after checking out the other artists I struggled to see direct influences. To me, Pope is an artist that has developed his own incredible, and unique style.  That said, I'm not yet great at seeing art influences in the comics medium, so I could be missing something.  Personally, in Batman Year 100, I see a sort of mingling of eastern anime stylings with western indie comics with a bit of mainstream comics action sequencing.  Whatever it is, it's a great blend, and it works perfectly for this unorthodox Batman comic.  

Though it is quite easy to just enjoy Batman Year 100 on the basis of it's great art, I also enjoyed Pope's take on the Batman character.  Pope strips away all the goofy bat-gadgets and high-tech baloney that takes away from the fact that Batman is just a regular dude fightin' crime.  The Batman of Year 100 is a stripped down, back to basics Batman who uses real life stuff like ropes, and carabiners instead of grapple guns and other high-tech inanities.  The batsuit doesn't make Batman look like a transformer, and instead looks like an actual article of clothing that someone might actually wear, and still be able to move around in.  Not only did this make Batman seem way more human, but it also made him seem much more vulnerable, which helped make the story all the more interesting.  

Oh and the coolest Bat-gadget of all....

 Creepy-ass Bat-fangs.

To top it all off, Pope delivers a story that is quite compelling.  As a reader, I always like having a narrative that creates burning questions that I can't wait to discover the answer to. That's a sensation that is very prevalent here as I kept wondering how the hell Batman is still around and doing his thing, in the year 2039.  Additionally, it was great to read a Batman comic that felt like it stayed true to the character, rather than staying true to what a typical superhero comic should be like.  Batman felt more rooted in his origins, and it was cool to see him square off mentally and physically against "the man".  If superhero comics were always this good, I'd probably read more of 'em.

Batman Year 100 is definitely one of the best comics I've read this year, and certainly one of the very best Batman comics I've ever read.  Great art, great story, and the best take on the Batman character I've ever seen.  Absolutely fantastic stuff. I gotta check out more of Pope's work.  This one is a treat for both the eyes and the mind.  

Grade: A+  

Graphic Novel Review: By This Shall You Know Him

I was initially drawn to Jesse Jacobs' By This Shall You Know Him thanks to an Inkstuds interview he took part in.  Jacobs' intricate, geometrical artwork and limited color palette immediately caught my eye as unique, and I had a lot of fun reading through this work, and absorbing all the cool art.

The art is amazing, and the story in By This Shall You Know Him is no slouch either.  It follows three god-like beings who participate in these giant cosmic experiments at the encouragement of their instructor, another cosmic entity.  One of the cosmic beings, Ablavar, has created our universe, with a focus on our earth, and the living creatures on the planet. Blorax, one of Ablavar's fellow cosmic-colleagues, is a huge fan of his work, while the other, Zantek, is a jealous prick.  Zantek's early criticism led to the destruction of the dinosaurs, but brought about the creation of animals.

Everything is going great on Ablavar's creation until Zantek decides to further sabotage things by adding humans into the mix.

There's an additional story thread that follows the humans, and this piece is an up close and personal look at the Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel story.  At first, I didn't enjoy these sections of the story as much, mostly because I didn't have a full idea of what Jacobs was trying to pull off with this story. They also tended to jar me out of the peaceful, cosmic, slow-motion feel Jacobs portrays during the scenes with Ablavar and company.  However, Jacobs did a great job of weaving these two threads together to make a great story.

I gotta say I really loved this comic. The story has so many beautiful, graceful, and peaceful moments.  Yet, like real life, these moments are surrounded by bleak, sad, and violent periods as well.  By the end, all the events of the story build up to a beautifully, fitting ending...note that I didn't say it was a beautiful ending, but it is the right ending for this story.

By This Shall You Know Him is one of the most unique comics I've ever had the pleasure of reading.  I loved Jacobs' art, it is highly textured, highly detailed, and incredibly intricate.  I also enjoyed how he would pause the story every now and then to add some sort of exquisitely detailed, full-page illustration like the one on the right above.  I also loved this comic because there's nothing mundane about it.  So many comics that get widespread attention are essentially the same story, and same events over and over, while this is a creative, artful take on the creation of our universe and the cosmic events that led to our current state of being.

As I continue to develop my tastes and preferences in the comics medium, I find myself increasingly drawn towards works like Jacobs' By This Shall You Know Him.  This provides more than just fleeting thrills, and instead delivers a story that will linger in the mind of the reader long after the last page is turned.

Grade: A

All pictures courtesy of Koyama Press.

Book Review: The Wise Man's Fear

About a year and a half ago, I reviewed The Name of the Wind, bought The Wise Man's Fear, and went to a Patrick Rothfuss author event all in the span of two days.  You'd think with such fervor devoted to one author, I'd have read The Wise Man's Fear long before now.  Well, shit, I thought I would have too.  Okay, so this wont be the most timeliest of reviews ever, but what matters is that I did get around to reading and reviewing this monster of a novel.

And oh, what a monster it is.  A monster in terms being one of the biggest fantasy novels released in the past couple of years, and a monster in terms of sheer size and girth.

I have been known to steer clear of giant cinder-block sized books, but The Name of the Wind left me with very high expectations for its sequel.  Expectations which likely likely colored my enjoyment of this volume a bit, as I was left feeling some twines of disappointment despite this being an all-around fantastic book.

The Wise Man's Fear picks up the story more or less right where things left off on the previous volume.  It's late in the night after the shocking events at the Waystone Inn, and when morning comes, Kote and the chronicler pick up the story of Kvothe's youth at pretty much the same spot where the storytelling left off the night before.  I'd like to say that Rothfuss ramped the story up a notch or two, but instead the story lingered while depicting the ins and outs of Kvothe's life at the University.  It was hard for me to not see the parallels between Kvothe's life at the University, and Harry Potter's time at Hogwarts.  That's not really a bad thing, as Rothfuss, like Rowling, has a great skill for writing incredibly engaging stories, but this portion of the story felt a little too recycled for my tastes.

The good news is, Kvothe doesn't spend the whole book at the University.  Not by a long shot. In fact, Kvothe spends a good portion of this novel out exploring the great wide world.  That's when things get interesting.  Kvothe's character starts to develop and he begins his path towards becoming a living legend. Along the way, during his attempts to unveil some secrets about the Amyr and the Chandrian, he rises in status in a far off royal court, learns some of the martial skills of the Adem Mercenaries, and ventures into the Fae realm for an extended love affair.

I enjoyed the fact that Rothfuss took things away from the University for a big stretch of this novel, and it was cool to see Kvothe in a bunch of different situations. At the same time, it wasn't easy for me to get completely lost in the stream of events.  For my tastes, a lot of the tension has been taken out of the story by having Kvothe tell his own tale. As a reader, I don't like knowing, without a doubt, that Kvothe will survive no matter how sticky the situation he finds himself in, and there's some incredibly sticky ones to be had.

Personally, I tend to be more engaged in a story when I fret for the safety and survival of the main characters, which is why I've been enjoying the brief interludes at the Waystone Inn way more than I have the yarn that Kote has been spinnin' to the Chronicler.  There's much more tension involved, and definitely a greater premonition of doom than there is in the main portion of the book.  Yes, I am enjoying both narrative threads of The Kingkiller Chronicles,  due in large fact that Rothfuss is a fantastic story teller, but I've found that I'm more interested in what is about to go down, rather than what has gone down already.

Though there's tons going on in this second volume of The Kingkiller Chronicle, there's also very little movement in what I perceive of as being the main plot, that of Kvothe's struggle with the Chandrian and his struggle to find out more about them.  A fact that is a little frustrating given the epic length of this novel.

As I mentioned earlier, The Wise Man's Fear left me with a slight taste of disappointment.  I felt like there wasn't a lot of movement in terms of the greater, overarching struggle, the beginning third of the book felt too akin to Harry Potter, and story,  for my tastes, lacks some much needed tension.

All that said, this is still a strong novel.  As I mentioned earlier, Rothfuss is one incredibly sharp story teller.  He's so good in fact that he can almost make me forget all my nit-picks and get totally lost in this great tale.  Tension or not, there's plenty of great story here, and The Wise Man's Fear is still one of the more entertaining books on my shelves, and one of the better fantasies released in the past few years.

I'll be looking forward to the concluding third volume whenever it finds its way to publication, as I have a ton of burning questions and plot pay-offs that I can't wait to see unfold.  Sure, this volume didn't hit all the high notes for me, but I've learned that my expectations can be a dangerous thing.  Make no mistake, Rothfuss is one of my top writers in the genre, and I can't wait to see what he has in store for us next.

Grade: B+

Graphic Novel Review: Madwoman of the Sacred Heart

Alan Mangel, a professor of philosophy at La Sorbonne Univeristy,  is pretty much the Prince of his university.  His students treat him like a rockstar; the women want to sleep with him, the men want to be him, and his devoted followers all wear purple.  Too bad on his sixtieth birthday it all comes crashing down.

In one fell swoop, his wife leaves him for another man, and his students lose all respect for him.  However, one student continues to believe in Mangel, the beautiful Elisabeth, who also might be a little bit, or possibly a lot bit, crazy.  See, Elisabeth seems to think that she has received a vision from God that Mangel will impregnate her with the second coming of John the Baptist.

A vision that seems totally, and completely implausible right?

Well, that's how Mangel feels about the whole thing, except he soon finds himself experiencing a series of seemingly miraculous events that seem to prove otherwise.  Eventually, Mangel gives in and succumbs to the miraculous forces that seem to have taken over his life, and engages on a wild, spiritual journey that challenges his views of reality.  Along the way he meets an Arab man who claims to be Saint Joseph, and the daughter of a Colombian drug lord who might just be the Virgin Mary.

Madwoman of the Sacred Heart is definitely one wild ride of a comic.  This is a comic that starts out with a normal pace, builds speed as the narrative progresses, and by the end, features an almost break-neck pace as the events of the story get increasingly strange and surreal.

I picked this up because I've heard so many wonderful things about Moebius, the man behind the art in this story.  Moebius is quite possibly the most well respected artist in the comics medium.  I guess you could make an equally strong argument for Jack Kirby, but Moebius is definitely the epitome of the artist's artist for the comics medium.  For that reason, I'd been looking to check out some of his work.  Too bad much of his work is out of print, and the stuff that is in print tends to be on the pricey side.  This one cost over $25 for a softcover edition.  Lucky for me I got it during a sale event.

Anyway, even a quick flip through this comic will tell you that Moebius is a gifted artist, and provide plenty of evidence as to why he's so well respected.  The man excels in every aspect of illustration.  His characters bodies and movements come off as very natural and never look stiff.  Also, he can pack a lot of emotion into his facial expressions and body language.  This provides the reader with a lot of information about what the character is thinking or feeling, without that information having to be relayed in the text itself.  Not only that, but Moebius can draw some incredibly vivid, detailed and well rendered environments.  Put simply, each panel looks damn fine.  To cap it all off, Moebius also has a unique color palette that sets his work apart and lends it a bit of personal flair.   

Madwoman of the Sacred Heart is a story told in three parts, and as the story progresses, Moebius' art style changes.  Over the course of this story, his artwork shifts from a very life-like, realistic style, to a sort of middle ground between a realistic style and a cartoonish style, and finally to a style that is more akin to cartooning than illustrating.  Working in tandem with the shifting art style is a shifting page and panel structure.  What begins as a comic that features a few large panels per page, eventually works itself to a point where there are often ten or more panels all jumbled onto a page.  These busy pages, seem to match the busy pace of the story towards the end of this comic.  My feeling is that this art and panel shift was a deliberate move by the artist and writer, Alexandro Jodorowsky to make the art and story work together.

Despite some impressive artwork and a story that is well structured and quite interesting, I can't say that Madwoman of the Sacred Heart was my cup of tea.  It's a weird story.  Everyone in this comic seems at least little bit crazy, yet incredible things happen to them when they give in completely to their spiritual beliefs. The story walks a tightrope between miraculous and absurdity, and my inability to completely buy into this story probably deterred from my enjoyment a bit.  I also haven't had much experience with Euro-comics yet, and it may be a case of different styles across the water that I'm not yet accustomed to.  Either way, this was a comic that was technically very good, but not one that scored high in terms of personal enjoyment.

Grade: C+