Hot off the Presses

Haaaaay, guys. It’s time for a totally unnecessary comics post! Weehaw.

The Invincible giant-ass compendium #4 is out! It took a ridiculously long time, but the fourth volume of this quality teen superhero epic by Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley is finally available. Following the highs and lows of teen superhero Mark Grayson as he battles all sorts of nasties and uncovers conspiracies, the latest issues have been blood-soaked and filled with intrigue. After a slightly lackluster third volume, the pace is picking up and a whole lotta loose ends seem ready for tying off. If you haven’t read any of this series, it’s time to give it a try—especially for those who think everything has already been said about the superhero genre.

Speaking of extremely heavy, glossy, hardcover compendia, Y: The Last Man super-duper-schmooper-special Volume 2 is out. Arguably one of the best graphic series in the last decade, Y explored what would happen if the entire male population of the world were suddenly killed off—save one young man and his male monkey pal.

Now, follow me here. Each of the original trades encompassed roughly four to five issues of the comic, with no additional materials, and sold for $12.99ish. All of them, obviously, are still in print and prolific. The new deluxe volumes encompass four to five issues of the comic, with no additional materials, and sell for $29.99. DOES NOT COMPUTE.

The final trade paperback came out in July of 2008, very definitively ending the series. So, why on earth do we need a super-deluxe hardcover fanboy iteration of a series that just ended a year ago?  Perhaps if the publishers had waited five years since the completion of the series for some nostalgia or geek cred to build, or even scheduled them to precede the movie version (yes, :sigh:, a movie), maybe this would have been a clever marketing strat.

Do yourself a favor and read both of these quality series. The Invincible compendia are bargains, but skip the (10?) Y hardcovers in favor of the 10 trades. Duh.

Wrangling “Watchmen”

Yep, the Herders all went to see “Watchmen.” Our opinions varied somewhat, but I think we found it to be above our expectations and all-around better than we feared. It is not howlingly awful, nor is it transcendantly brilliant. We all agreed strongly that it stuck impressively to its guns and its source material, and that some portions (including a brilliant history-altering opening montage and the wholesale changing of the ending) were improvements over the graphic novel. We also were in agreement that more than half of the acting was terrible, the pacing was muddy and that the two separate sex scenes between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre combine to be the most horrifically awkward we’ve ever ever seen.

But enough about what we think: how is “Watchmen” faring with reviewers? A mixed score on Rotten Tomatoes of 65% reveals a major difference of opinion (and more likely, difference between those who are familiar with the graphic novel and those encountering it for the first time). That score isn’t half bad, actually, considering the incredibly dark, haunted and hopeless themes that make up the core of both movie and book.

Time Magazine has a fairly good review that describes the overall effect of the movie, and does a nice job of discussing its history and the challenges faced in filming the book:

From the start of the Watchmen cult, film people knew two things about the comic book: (1) that it simply had to be made into a movie and (2) that it couldn’t. An epic superhero saga, spanning 45 years, with six major characters who all sport double identities and crucial, intertwined back-stories, does not lend itself to the narrative turbo-thrust of a standard action film.

Maybe Watchmen is one of those cult films that doesn’t expand beyond the true believers. It probably won’t make even alternative movie history… But it bravely pursues its agenda with a monomaniacal grandeur…

It also includes some passages that ring absolutely true for me:

Snyder spends much of the movie’s 2 hours and 40 minutes on the splatter of crushed limbs, the chatter of Strangelovean science fiction and the nattering of the obligatory romance. He also encourages a little festival of tone-deaf acting. Yet Watchmen has moments of greatness.

Rolling Stone’s review lapses into incoherence occasionally, but a few paragraphs are worthwhile:

Caught between the rock of fanboy adulation and the hard place of newbie indifference, the R-rated, nearly-three-hour movie version of Watchmen is a cinematic piñata getting whacked from every side.

Moore recalled his four years of toil on the 12-issue DC Comics series as “slam-dancing with a bunch of rhinos.” That description also fits watching the movie, which stumbles and sometimes falls on its top-heavy ambitions. But there are also flashes of visual brilliance and performances, especially from Haley and Crudup, that drill deep into the novel’s haunted soul.

Finally, there is the The Wall Street Journal’s review, which is a smidge less kind, and clearly designed for Watchmen virgins who are thinking of seeing what all the fuss is about:

Unless you’re heavily invested — as countless fans and fervent fanboys are — in the novel’s flawed superheroes, its jaundiced take on heroism and its alternate vision of American history, watching “Watchmen” is the spiritual equivalent of being whacked on the skull for 163 minutes. The reverence is inert, the violence noxious, the mythology murky, the tone grandiose, the texture glutinous. It’s an alternate version of “The Incredibles” minus the delight.

And that does make me wonder about the folks who wander blindly into the theater expecting another Spider-Man or X-Men, only to see war crimes, assassination, ignoble death, cold-blooded murder, torture, insanity, rape, and big blue penises. Let’s take Johnny to the movies!

Visualizing the Death of Comics

The title is a lie. As is the article this one refers to. Comics are not dying, and they certainly are not going to be killed by an iPhone app.

Call me old-fashioned — in an age of computers and screens that I admittedly partake in often enough — but I believe that the future of comics does not lie within the digital realm. A recent article at io9 sprung me off on a tangent of extreme proportions… to which I’ll try and condense it here.

The basic idea: a program for the iPhone that enables comics to be read on-the-go from the device, one panel at a time. It’s the same kind of fantasy that devices like the Kindle bring: A world where thousands of books can exist on a single device! If the iPod did it for music storage, surely other media can follow suit!

The flaw in this reasoning is that music is an aural artform that has no tangible form. No matter the format it is stored on, so long as the content gets from the device to the inner-ear, it remains a pure (relatively, depending on bit rate and compression) analog to the original media.

Books and comics however are a media created with a tangible container of their content. The physical page, a canvas, binding… all of these contribute to the craft of creating a book, whether its primary contents are words or art.  With devices such as the Kindle and this comic-reading UClick, we are taking the fundamental contents and stripping from them their carriage. It’s akin to drinking milk from the carton: Convenient, but ultimately less satisfying.

Granted, there is a caveat to my argument: Web comics. Created solely for the digital screen, these forms of comics are often not intended for page-by-page viewing though eventually end up in printed form if they become popular enough.

There are several quotes in the article about UClick however that really get me going:

“The iPhone’s 3.5-inch, 480-by-320-pixel high-resolution screen, relative ease-of use and portability finally provide a perfect platform for comic-viewing pleasure.”

False. This is just blatant fluff as far as I’m concerned. As you’ll realize by reading further into the article, it is simply a lead-in to what is apparently the author’s preferred comic-reading style: panel by panel.

“No longer are you accidentally viewing a frame or two ahead because of the nature of multi-panel pages; you’re actually able to see it panel-by-panel — just like the artists originally created it.”

Also false and entirely against the design practice of comic creation as a whole. When I’m reading comics, I certainly don’t think oh… I saw a few panels ahead, the experienced is ruined. No, a well-designed comic is not intended to be created panel-by-panel. It is created page-by-page, perhaps even with multiple pages taken into account. Panel breaks are an artistic device, as are page turns. Viewed simply one panel at a time, a comic would be flattened of all its intention and turned into a slideshow of moments in time. With a well-designed page, a comic gains a sense of flow and pacing that single panels alone cannot represent.

“Also, because the iPhone is backlit, you’re able to see more vibrant colors and artwork than you’d ever see on crudely-printed paper.”

And with this quote, I can clearly see that the author and opinion-giver for this iPhone app has no credibility. It also makes me wonder exactly what comics he’s reading that the paper and colors are so badly damaged to the point of ill impressions. Must not be very good.

All said, I’d much rather read a dimly-lit page of art and words than a backlit JPG swiped panel-to-panel any day.

Take Flight

As you might be able to tell, all of the Cloud Herders are comic book, graphic novel and webcomic fans. Some of what we like is mainstream, some of it is a little under the radar, and some is hiding in the oddest places all over the internet. We read a little bit of everything, but the one thing we all agree on is where you can find some of the best graphic storytelling curently being published: the five Flight anthologies.

Edited by very up-and-coming graphic novelist Kazu Kibuishi, these beautifully produced anthologies collect graphic stories from artists all over the world. In Volume One the theme was very definitely stories about “flight” (however interpreted), but over the course of five books the theme has dissolved to allow stories and snippets about any and everything.

The quality of the art is unimpeachable: these are artists and writers who are at the top of their game, often working out of creative epicenters such as Vancouver BC, Portland OR, San Francisco, and all down the East coast. While storytelling is sometimes not as strong as the art element, there is rarely a clunker in the mix, which cannot be said for many of the hastily arranged comic anthologies being produced (I’m looking at you, Popgun). These are not household names, but some very well may arrive at that status within a few short years, and you’ll certainly find some personal favorites within the five volumes.

If you’re new to the graphic novel/comics scene, these short story volumes are a perfect place to start. I consider Volume One to be a little weaker than its four successors, and recommend picking up any of the others in its place. The Flight website offers online previews of all the volumes, so get reading!