Comix

Nerd-r-I

Comix, geekdom
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Just saw the new Dr Who, with Matt Smith as the doctor and Steven “Coupling” Moffat as the lead writer. After several seasons with David Tennant and Russel T. Davies in the same roles Dr Who had become stale and somewhat boring, obsessed as it was with telling the same stories over and over. The teasers at the end of the last season already promised a new, lighter approach and I was glad to see this episode making good on this promise. As per usual at the start of a new seaosn much of it was spent showcasing the doctor again, with Matt Smith having the same sort of manic energy as Tennant and some of his mannerisms, but slightly wittier. The alien menace du jour looked cool and different, there were some nice hints about the overarching theme of the rest of the season and a good balance between tension and humour, we got a new companion and surprise surprise it’s another young woman already obsessed by the doctor and there’s nothing creepy about this, honest. All in all, quite an enjoyable episode, if slight.

I’m at my parents for Easter weekend btw. S. came out of hospital on Tuesday and had her son coming round for the holidays, so I could bugger off to Middelburg for some r&r. Which gave me the chance to sort through my comics collection again. I was a serious collector from about 1987 to about 2000, when I just stopped. It left me with some ten thousand or so comics, most in storage at my parents. As S. keeps telling me, we don’t have the storage to keep them all so I need to cull what I got.

Which has been …interesting, a sort of personal archaeology. So much shit I’ve bought over the years. No clue of what was good or not, just looking for a new superhero or following a favourite character and no matter it has crappy art and worse writing. It didn’t help that I started seriously collecting at a time the direct market went crazy, what with Image and Valiant and eight million copies of X-Men #1. So many comics bought because they were hyped up in Wizard or Previews, so many comics bought because they were cheap at a con and looked interesting, so many comics bought thanks to rec.arts.comics.misc or Comix-L. Then end result was a huge sprawling mess, which definitely needed culling.

But it’s hard. Getting rid of the shit comics is easy, but to get beyond that and cull the ones that are sort of okay, or even good, but just don’t fit — so many miniseries I only have two out of four issues of– that’s harder. I managed to lose about a thousand-two thousand comics in a first pass, but doubt I could do more at the moment…

Wait, what?

Comix, video
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Nobody told me there was going to be an Adèle Blanc-Sec movie!

Bonus: Tardi at the drawing table:



Adèle Blanc-Sec is one of those series that should be a lot better known in English speaking countries than it is. I mean it’s got a feisty heroine, dinosaur monster, strange albinos, weird science and crazy scientists, all set in turn of the century France. Perhaps the movie will chance this relatively obscurity.

Thank you and good afternoon: Dick Giordano (July 20, 1932 – March 27, 2010)

Comix
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Yes, this is sadly one of those posts, as another beloved comics icon dies. Dick Girodano was somebody who as an editor worked on the less visible end of the comics industry but was hugely influential in this role, first at Charlton, later and longest at DC, which is how I mostly remember him. His Meanwhile columns were often the first page I’d read in a new DC comic. But he was also an artist, usually as inker — his work over George Pérez on Crisis on Infinite Earth was beautiful, as was his work as penciler on the Jonni Thunder miniseries. Sadly however his work as editor kept him from doing much art.

But editors are important too and Giordana did good work. At Charlton in the sixties he created a line of “action heroes” with creators like Steve Ditko, Pat Boyette, Frank McLaughin and Pete Morisi, fondly remembered enough to be bought twenty years later by DC, basically as a birthday gift for him. When he moved to DC when Carmine Infantio — then the big man there — headhunted him, he managed to rejuvenate the company at a time when DC was seen as staid and oldfashioned and Marvel stole all its glory. Titles like Bat Lash and Deadman might not have been commercial successes, but they were critically well recieved and pointed the way towards a more adult approach for DC, of comics able to be enjoyed by adults as well.

An approach largely realised of course during Giordano’s second tenure at DC, during the eighties. DC became cool again, had huge successes like New Teen Titans, not to mention Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. Under Giordano DC became a company that published the best (superhero) comics of the decade.

example of Giordano artwork on Jonni Thunder

As an artist Giordano had a nice, clean line and drew in a semi-realistic, slick style that influenced quite a few socalled Bronze Age artists, like Byrne and Pérez. As said, he didn’t have the time do much after becoming executive editor at DC, but what he did is well worth checking out, like Jonni Thunder from which the artwork above is taken.

Your happening world (9)

Activism, Comix, Fascists, Your Happening World
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Your monday slice of linky goodness:

Sidney Mellon lives!

Comix, geekdom
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Reincarnated as a toy collector:

There is a fanboy that I see a lot at my local comic shop. His name is Eric. Eric loves the Marvel Universe line. He told me that he just thinks they are fun toys, that the lower price point makes him feel more relaxed about collecting them and that the scale was easier for him to both display and store. So, basically he was making an argument for how convenient they are. Seriously? That’s how we’re going to evaluate superhero toys now; how “easy” they are to collect? And how much “fun” they are? I’m sorry but I have no time for people that want to half ass toy collecting. If you’re not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to collect toys properly, then in my opinion, you don’t derserve to collect toys.

[…]

Think about it. What happens if we don’t buy comic book action figures? They won’t get made, is what. Toy companies have our nuts in a vice and they know it. They know we’re forced to buy whatever they put out. But I’m not going to sit here and be all Kum-bay-fracking-yah about what they’re forcing down my throat. I’ll buy them, but I won’t buy them without a fight.

Sidney Mellon was a parody of the worst kind of 1980ties Marvel fanboy imaginable, the kind who bought everything they brought out, thought Secret Wars II was piercing examination of the human condition and that Love and Rockets could be a good comic one day if only a solid Marvel writer like Tom deFalco would write it and half the cast was turned into mutants. He had a occasional column in Amazing Heroes, written by Gerald Jones, who took great pleasure in attacking his own comics. The guy quoted above must be a modern version of Mellon, right? Right?