Pop Culture Gadabout

Pop Culture Gadabout

( 5/05/2012 06:03:00 PM ) Bill S.

”LOCALS ONLY” The title to Australian comics artist Pat Grant’s Blue (Top Shelf/Giramondo) refers to more than the foaming ocean waves depicted on the cover of this graphic novel. It also connects to the skin color of the tentacles ocean denizens who show up in a small Aussie town -- much to the chagrin of the community’s close-minded residents.

The book opens with two vignettes designed to illuminate its theme of localism and bigotry. In the first, a young boy comes across a trio of young teens building a sand “keep” on the beach; when the three identify him as a stranger, they refuse to let him help with the construction, trashing it before they leave so he can’t play with it afterwards. In the second, a couple of blue beings make their way into town from the beach, only to be driven away and carted off by the townspeople.

These two small moments lay the groundwork for the book’s “big” story: the reminiscence of a geezerly townee named Christian who does a half-assed job painting over the elaborate blue graffiti that some of the ocean immigrants have been leaving all over the small town of Bolton. Where the town once proudly claimed itself the “1989 Tidy Town Winner,” it has since become grubby and economically strapped. To Christian, it was the arrival of the blue people that signaled the beginning of the end for the town’s prosperity -- and he recollects the day he and his two friends first saw the blue beings.

The three teens of Christian’s memory prove to be the same ones who destroyed their “sand keep,” and the day in question opens with them “wagging” school to go surfing. On their way, they run into a mate who tells them of a dead body he’s seen on the railroad tracks, so the day also turns into a trek to go and see the body. (Noting the similarity to Stephen King’s “The Body,” the artist writes in an afterword that he was born the year that novella came out -- and that he himself actually saw the scattered remains of a young boy when he was a youngster -- so despite some qualms about using a piece of story that had been well-claimed by King and the movie Stand by Me, he wisely kept it in.) The body, Christian tells us, is one of two blue beings he saw on that first day, and while he isn’t entirely telling the truth when he says this, the body’s presence in the tale foreshadows the harsh treatments that these creatures will receive in the years to come.

“When you start telling stories about your life, things seem more clear-cut than they were when you were living it,” our fallible narrator tells us, and Grant packs his simple story with telling detail and strong characterization. His central threesome are believable and their half comradely/half hostile relationship are true to their age. “If I’d met Vern and Muck a few years later,” Christian says of his companions, “I wouldn’t have wanted anything to with them.” But like the changed town, Christian’s friends are part of a different life.

Grant illustrates this in an expressive big-foot style that makes his human characters almost look like aliens themselves. His sense of location is detailed and he is especially strong at capturing his half-fantastical land- and seascape. In his lengthy afterward, he describes a personalized history of Australian comics with a particular emphasis on surf comics. You can see this influence throughout Blue: though our threesome never themselves hit the waves, the presence of the roiling ocean permeates the tale, so much so that we can’t help feeling a sense of regret over the missed experience.

Blue works as both a tale of memory and of bigotry, of youthful innocence and of ignorance. Sharply unsentimental and often darkly funny, it makes a powerful debut for artist, writer and zinemaker Grant -- a must read for anyone invested in following literary comics.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: art comics

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( 4/17/2012 06:16:00 PM ) Bill S.

“THE WORD THAT SUMMED HER UP WAS LUSH.” As a storyteller, Robert Silverberg is primarily recognized for science-fiction (Nightwings, The World Inside, the Majipoor novels, many more), but like most hard-working free-lancers, the writer went through a period when the publishing options in his favored genre were slim. At the end of the fifties, when a distribution crisis put a lot of s-f mags on the verge of extinction, young Silverberg aimed his pen at other writers’ markets under a variety of pseudonyms -- soft-core erotica, historicals and crime fiction, primarily -- that kept him busy until the s-f market re-emerged. Among these was a hard-boiled pulpish novel about a government agent pursuing counterfeiters in Philadelphia. Initially appearing in the November 1962 issue of a crime mag entitled, Trapped, Blood on the Mink is receiving its first book publication fifty years later as a part of the Hard Case Crime series.

Those who know Silverberg from such elaborate science-fantasy constructions as Lord Valentine’s Castle may be taken aback by the young journeyman’s work here: Mink is leanly written pulp closer to the series character fiction of writers like Lester Dent -- with more than a trace of Mickey Spillane tossed into the mix. Silverberg’s hero, who we only know as “Nick” (in homage to Nick Carter, perhaps?) is a hard-bitten undercover man who specializes in convincingly impersonating thugs and infiltrating gangs. In Phillie, he pretends to be a West Coast gangster named Vic Lowney to strike up with a deal with the “Mr. Right of the queer-pushers,” counterfeiter Henry Klaus.

Klaus is holding a Hungarian refugee named Szekely for his counterfeiting skills, while Szekely’s strong-willed daughter looks to our hero to rescue her papa from the gangster’s clutches. Complicating matters are Klaus’ shapely moll Carol, who cozies up to “Vic/Nick” so he will help take down her crime boss lover -- along with some competitors looking to horn in on the lucrative counterfeiting racket. Our hero struggles to keep his false identity intact amidst multiple double-crosses and gunfights -- and, yes, somebody’s mink does get bloody. Story highlight is a shoot-out on the empty late night streets in the City of Brotherly Love.

To fill out the slim pulp-sized novel, the paperback appends two crime short stories from the same era, also featuring gangsters and counterfeiters. The first, “Dangerous Doll,” is a somewhat stolid yarn with a dull-witted protagonist and a flatly executed twist, though the second, “One Night of Violence,” proves crisper. The story of a traveling salesman who inadvertently gets caught between two feuding Chicago mobsters in the wilds of Wisconsin, “One Night” captures our innocent hero’s predicament convincingly and suspensefully.

Silverberg’s fictions hold up as period genre work, though I suspect most of his fans will consider this reissue an unnecessary distraction from the stuff that matters: namely, the s-f work that he began writing after this economically driven detour into other genres. Crime fic aficionados should get a kick out of Mink, though: another diverting piece of pulp archeology from the gang at Hard Case Crime.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: pulp fiction

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( 3/26/2012 10:13:00 PM ) Bill S.

MARX HAPPY Originally published in 1996 and now released in a “Revised and Expanded New Edition,” Glenn Mitchell's The Marx Brothers Encyclopedia (Titan Books) is an imposing compendium of all facts Marxian. It's a tribute to the density of the bros.' work that there's so much to be found in this volume. The Marx Brothers' oeuvre, lest we forget, comprises a fairly short list of 13 feature films, some of which are of decidedly dubious quality. (Love Happy, anyone?) Still, Minnie's Boys offer an entrance to so much 20th century entertainment -- vaudeville, theater, movies, radio and (say the magic woid!) television -- that there's loads of great material for fans and dabblers alike.

The entries in this book range from the little seen (as in a description of the boys' first vaudeville routine, “Fun in Hi Skule,”) to the minute (a discussion of Groucho's fake-then-ultimately real mustache) to full-blown, somewhat flat synopses of each flick that the quartet/threesome made. If that last seems unnecessary to the fanatic who can spout Groucho or Chico patter before the comics have a chance to deliver 'em on film, Mitchell also includes snippets of some dialog that didn't make it into the completed product. In at least one instance (a courtroom scene from At the Circus) the material proves superior to much of what finally appeared on film.

At times, the book's exhaustive attention to the supporting cast of each feature can seem a bit much, though when it comes to such figures as the indomitable Margaret Dumont (the grand dame in seven Marx flicks, she also played the comic foil against W.C. Fields, Red Skelton and theater comedy vets Wheeler and Woolsey) and Marilyn Monroe (in a brief but memorable role in Love Happy), the attention is fully justified. In the much debated question as to whether Dumont understood the jokes in the movies in which she appeared, Mitchell doesn't clearly take sides but seems to favor the idea that the lady knew more than she was telling. I like to believe that myself.

Mitchell also excels when it comes to detailing the relationships between the Brothers Marx and many of the literary figures who came within their circle (Alexander Woolcott, S.J. Perlman), a rich source for anecdotes since in many cases the writers themselves chronicled their experiences with the Marxes. Two of the brothers themselves have written about their history -- Groucho in a slew of entertaining books, Harpo in Harpo Speaks -- and on more than occasion in the encyclopedia, Mitchell notes where their stories have diverse tellings. It seems apt that this most anarchic of comedy troupes would have such a malleable history.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: classic cinema

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( 3/22/2012 06:30:00 AM ) Bill S.

“EITHER YOU ARE CRAZY OR I AM.” For all the talk about the U.S. being a multi-cultural society, it’s telling that the material in African-American Classics will be largely unfamiliar to most of its audience. Where earlier “Graphic Classics” collections like Fantasy or Christmas Classics have included comic art adaptations of fare most readers will recognize, the work in this set is a different matter. The names may be familiar (Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. DuBois), but their actual written words are less so.

The relative “newness” of the material (much of it written in the twenties and thirties) proves to be one of the collection’s biggest strengths. Where most educated Americans know “The Tell-Tale Heart” (if only from more than one parody on The Simpsons), they’re less likely to recognize Robert W. Bagnell’s horrific revenge tale, “Lex Talionis,” even if its core plot idea has been later used on more than occasion. The material in Classics ranges from fiction to poetry to philosophical ruminations on the nature of race. Dubois’ “On Being Crazy” provides a strong example of the latter, a set of dialogs between the narrator and a quintet of racist Southern folk who repeatedly turn him away. Artist Kyle Baker wittily captures the narrator’s rueful recognition of the reality surrounding him even as he acknowledges the insanity of it.

Many of the adapted short stories here prove highly allegorical: Ethel M. Caution’s “Buyers of Dreams,” for instance, depicts three women who enter a mystical shop to purchase a dream. The first two seek baubles and career; the “wise” one chooses love and family. (You can definitely tell the piece was written in 1921.) Other stories inevitably prove didactic: opener “Two Americans” by Florence Lewis Bentley, puts white and black Southern soldiers in the Great War for a not-unexpected lesson about the importance of putting aside racial differences against a common enemy. Trevor Von Eedon, an artist best known for his work on super-hero titles, makes his debut in “Graphic Classics,” and it’s a welcome addition.

More startling to modern readers, perhaps, are several dialect pieces (Hurston’s “Lawin’ and Jawin’” and “Filling Station,” Leila Ames Pendleton’s “Sanctum 777 NSDCOU Meets Cleopatra”) that at times read like a couple of white radio comedians playing Amos and Andy. (Looking at “Lawin,’” for instance, I could help conjuring up the image of Sammy Davis Junior strutting before the teevee cameras on Laugh-In.) The book’s invaluable author notes state that writers like Hurston saw some critical disrepute for a time due to their reliance on heavy dialect, and I have to admit to having some mixed reactions to the stories featuring it myself. Love Milton Knight’s cartoony art on “Filling Station,” though.

Where this trade paperback collection really shines is in its moodier entries: co-editor Took’s evocative reworking of Alice Dunbar Nelson’s “Carnival Jangle,” a tale of murder at the Mardi Gras, and Matt Johnson/RandyDuBurke’s version of Jean Toomer’s “Becky,” both linger long after they’ve been read. The latter, a story of a young white girl shunned by all in her community for giving birth to bi-racial sons, is especially effective. With the exception of its opening panels, the whole piece focuses on the ramshackle cabin where the title figure is exiled, observing its unknowable isolated protagonist from a distance. A very effective treatment of this disturbing story: artist DuBurke’s green-washed panels add to its considerable melancholy.

Tom Pomplun’s Eureka Productions has been putting out these well wrought literary comics collections long enough (this is volume 22 in the series) that it’s been easy to take ‘em for granted. Here’s hoping that the distinctness of African-American Classics sparks renewed interest in this enjoyable series of trade paperbacks.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: classics illustrated

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( 3/04/2012 09:13:00 AM ) Bill S.

“KOO DAVIS IS IN TROUBLE, AND HE KNOWS IT, BUT HE DOESN’T KNOW WHY.” Both a fascinating time capsule and a strong character-driven crime novel, Donald E. Westlake’s The Comedy Is Finished is sold on its cover as “The MWA Grand Master’s Great Lost Novel.” Reportedly begun by the prolific writer in the late 1970’s, it was withdrawn from publisher submission when 1983’s King of Comedy was released -- ostensibly because the book’s central premise (the kidnapping of a famous comedian) was too similar to the movie. Fortunately for posterity, a copy of the ms. was sent to fellow writer Max Allan Collins, who brought the novel to the attention of his publisher Hard Case Crime after it had put out another posthumous Westlake novel, Memory.

I’m not sure that’s the full story, though, for while the central idea behind Finished is similar to King, the two works’ focuses are distinctly different. In King of Comedy, a disturbed Robert de Niro kidnaps Jerry Lewis’ late-night talk host out of fannish desire and a neurotic need to himself become a beloved comic; in Comedy Is Finished, the misdeed is done by an out-of-time group of leftist radicals who go after a Bob Hope-styled comedian that they see as “court jester to the bosses, warmongers and the forces of reaction.” (“You left out the Girl Scouts,” eternal wisecracker Davis points out when he’s given this list to read on tape.) So while the Scorcese film works as a darkly comic look at the Cult of Personality, Westlake’s novel considers the ways the personal imposes on the political.

The quintet that kidnaps Davis call themselves the People’s Revolutionary Army, and while this army of five spouts the appropriate political rhetoric, one of them turns out to have a more emotional reason for picking the comedian as a target. Foolishly clinging to the belief that the publicity generated by their criminal act will re-ignite radical public action in the post-Viet Nam era, the group calls for the release of ten jailed radicals, a demand that we know from the outset won’t be met (though Westlake pulls a surprising flip on it, nonetheless). Pursuing the kidnappers is F.B.I. agent Mike Wiskiel, a hard-boiled hard-drinker who is out-of-favor in the bureau due to his ties to the Watergate break-in. Though Davis’ wife and family is brought onto the scene, the only one hand-wringing over his safety is his agent Lynsey Rayne. While Wiskiel sees Rayne as a typical Hollywood liberal, in this battle between two sixties relics, she serves as the voice of moderation. Where Wiskiel sees his job as beating and capturing the ragtag self-proclaimed “army,” Rayne is concerned for Davis’ safety.

Old pro Westlake deftly moves his cat-and-mice novel between Davis’s PoV (written in present tense), that of Wiskiel and of the five radicals, each of whom develop their own relationship with the aging comedian. His treatment of Davis, who could easily have been drawn as an Old Hollywood monster, is both canny and sympathetic. While his two women radicals appear a bit underwritten, his presentation of the two dynamic male kidnappers seems right on the money, most notably team leader Peter Dinely, who we watch steadily deteriorate as the comedy approaches its finish.

Because it is set forty years ago, some readers may have issue with some of the book’s plot mechanics (there’s a bit with a severed ear that wouldn’t work at all today on a forensics-savvy readership.) And while the novel’s well-tuned political dialog will ring true to those of us who remember such Judean People’s Front debates from the sixties and seventies, I suspect that readers of a different generation will skim over ‘em to get to the good stuff. Westlake, known for both comic crime novels (his Dortmunder novels) and noiry caper books (the Parker series), keeps the book balanced between suspenseful and bleakly comic. He even inserts a joking reference to himself when he has Davis mention a “writer I call the Tragic Relief with the initials dee-double-u.” Reading this Hard Case resurrection, you can’t wishing that dee-double-u was still around crafting new novels.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: pulp fiction

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( 2/26/2012 09:44:00 PM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND PET PIC: Another photo taken by Becky, this time of Savannah Cat in the dirt driveway.

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 2/20/2012 02:32:00 PM ) Bill S.

”SCIENCE ISN’T GOING TO DO ANY GOOD AGAINST THAT THING.” A sci-fi valentine to what Frank Zappa once called “cheepnis,” Hiroshi Yamamoto’s MM9 (Haika Soru) posits a world in which giant creature attacks are so common in Japan that there’s a special government agency designed to counter ‘em. Comprised of five short stories focusing on the adventures of the Meteorological Agency’s Monsterological Measures Department (MMD), MM9 provides an amusing read for anyone who has fond memories of watching a translucent Glenn Manning stomping through the Vegas Strip or any number of rubber suited beasties battling each other on a barren Japanese landscape.

The monsters (a.k.a. kaiju) battled by the stalwart members of the MMD range from a hive mind mass of sea creatures to a monstrous mandrake to a gargantuan little girl and a multi-headed Ghidrah-like creature. Yamamoto gets much mileage out of blending natural disaster techspeak (the title refers to a “Monster Magnitude” scale which works much as similar ones do for earthquakes) with a quasi-mythological explanation for monsters that scientifically speaking should be able to motorvate across the country. This approach allows him to write around those science-minded spoilsports who delight in pointing out how the giant ants in Them, for instance, would collapse under their own weight in “real life.”

The MMD’s crew of plucky monster handlers prove largely indistinguishable save for scrappy heroine Sakura Fujisawa, who establishes a unique rapport with the giant-sized li’l girl Princess and who also has a connection to a mysterious astrophysicist lurking in the background. Their fights against the imaginative collection of kaiju are peppered with equal parts gleeful destruction and scenes of serious types spouting sci-fi gobble-de-gook -- much like the book’s movie predecessors. Yamamoto presents it all with a pulpish straight face, though he’s not above playfully sneaking in refs to such beloved drive-in fare as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (a sea monster named Ray after fx master Ray Harryhausen) or the giant grasshopper epic Beginning of the End, folding in these storylines as part of a shared history of world-wide kaiju attacks.

Cheepnis, as any monster lover knows, is a global phenom.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: pulp fiction

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( 2/17/2012 06:24:00 AM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND PET PIC: S'been a while since I posted one of these, but my lovely wife Becky has been going crazy with the camera at our newer digs recently, and there's a slew of pet photos just dying to be posted. This yere shows Kyan Pup and Ziggy Stardust out in the front yard.

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 2/15/2012 06:48:00 AM ) Bill S.

“WHY DO NASTY PEOPLE HAVE SUCH NICE MINDS?” I first remember noticing the prolific Martin Clunes as the amiable pothead PCP in Saving Grace, but for many Anglophiles, his defining comedy part has to be as the socially stunted title lead for the series Doc Martin. Somewhere in between these two roles, though, is his turn as a not-so-talented Mr. Ripley type in Dirty Tricks, a two-part mini-series based on a novel by mystery wrier Michael Dibdin. In it, Clunes plays Edward, an English-as-a-second-language teacher who we first meet running from the coppers for a Latin American banana republic to the right (geographically and politically) of Guatemala. “I’m in a bit of bother with the law,” he tells the camera, which proves to be a bit of an understatement.

Edward is accused of multiple murders, but our unreliable narrator assures us that he is innocent. The whole sordid business begins when he’s invited to dinner at the home of a bourgie besotted accountant (Neil Dudgeon) and his sexually voracious wife Karen (Julie Graham). Karen pulls our gold-digging anti-hero into a series of comic sexual liaisons, the most memorable of which occurs right in front of her oblivious husband. From this follows: two accidental (at least as Edward tells it) deaths, more than one cuckolding, an intentional kidnapping and our narrator’s flight across the ocean for an unfortunate meet-up with one of his former students.

Jauntily directed by Paul Seed, Dirty Tricks tells the tale of a self-absorbed underachiever who’s never half as clever as he thinks he is. He’s immediately seen through by the precocious daughter of a wealthy widow, while even the soused accountant Dennis characterizes him as a “perpetual student.” Snobbishly asserting, “I was born to believe in something called culture,” he fakes his way as a wine connoisseur with accountant Dennis but looks forever out of place as he tries to worm his way into moneyed society.

The two-part black comedy proves broadly ribald in its first half, then swerves into violently darker territory in its second. The full package is filmed with an intentional flatness, which comically undercuts the sexy aspects of the storyline, in particular. Clunes makes his caddish would-be social climber appealing through all but his most loutish moments. While some viewers may be put off by the openness of its sex scenes, others (this writer included) will find the Clunes/Graham couplings amusing -- especially in contrast to their later work together in the rom-com series William and Mary.

Acorn Media’s DVD package skimps on the extras -- a filmography of the primary players and a piece on author Dibdin, basically -- which is oddly suited to a character who spends his days bicycling to work at his “bucket shop” of a school. If you can see the story’s finish half an episode before our scheming lead reaches it, the voyage there is still a treat. Dirty Tricks may not be as much fun as watching Dennis Price knock off multiple Alec Guinesses, but it’s still a grand addition to the British comic tradition of wittily unscrupulous misbehavior.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: tv dvd

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( 2/07/2012 06:50:00 AM ) Bill S.

“JE TWISTE!” It’s still cold as hell, so what better time to pull out a disc of French surf music? Bourdeaux’s threesome the Summakers provide beaucoup reverb and high-speed drumwork with their debut disc Viens Twister ce Soir (Violent Lovers Records), and it couldn’t come at a better time. Mixing revved up twist music and rockabilly with beach-y instrumentals, these retro soundsters run the gamut from Dick Dale and Link Wray to Radio Birdman and the Rezillos. You know you’re in for a real cool time when the first sounds coming through your speakers are a roaring engine followed by echoey electric guitar, head Sunmaker Billy Dorado clipping out lyrics in heavily accented English that at first sounds like some strange chant (“omm ah stah far”) only to ultimately clarify as “I’m a star fire.”

From there it’s onto a pure instrumental (“Le Rail du Judgment Dernier”) followed by a twist number sung in French. The trio energetically shifts through a continuum of pre-Beatles rock sounds with loads of instrumental snap: whether it’s engaging in sinister Duane Eddy-esque sounds over a cackling invite to “Welcome to the Surfing Horror Show” or zipping to a rockabilly paean to a gal with “Crazy Legs.” If lead Dorado lacks the vocal largesse of the Beach Boys -- or even Jan and Dean -- his instrumental support is so strong that you can readily imaging this stuff coming out of a tinny transistor on the French Riviera as leggy babes in bikinis swivel the night away. Bassist Dolly Sunmaker, it should be noted, has an appealing Fay Fife chirpiness on her one lead track (“Yakitori”) that makes you wish she’d been given more vocal work on this debut release. Maybe next time.

Boss sounds, in sum, even if your high school French isn’t capable of translating anything deeper than “Je twiste!” So let’s all twist again like we did last été.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: pop-n-roll

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( 1/17/2012 06:51:00 AM ) Bill S.

“HOLD ONTO YOUR PRIVATES; I’LL SEE YOU ALL ON THE OTHER SIDE.” Midway into the second episode of their four-ish mini-series, the creators of Tank Girl: Bad Wind Rising (Titan Books) let the reader know what they’re getting for their entertainment dollars or pounds with the following pledge:

”In our continued quest for quality and value, we would like to assure readers that at least one character in each episode of this story will be shot in the bollocks.”

Writer Alan Martin and artist Rufus Dayglo stick to this promise, too: assailing the crotches of both humans and male mutant kangaroos. (The “Adults Only” U.K. comic book may be rudely groty, but it keeps its word.) This latest hardback collection of post-Apocalyptic snicks and giggles splits our punkish anti-heroine from her mutant boyfriend/partner Booga, when a mad scientist’s implant foments discord between the two. Our estranged duo sets off for disparate Outback adventures that have Booga hooking up with a pair of panty stealing surf punks and TG being impersonated by the equally feisty Jet Girl in an attempt to throw off the diabolical mad monitoring those tracking implants.

As par for this series, the results are packed with inventively filthy insults, tons of random violence, casual sex and drug use -- all smirkingly delivered without a smidge of seriousness. There’s a convoluted back plot involving a time machine that can only travel back in time to the invention of the first time machine, the use of which may destroy the universe as we know it, but to reveal any more would be to blow some of the final episode’s best jokes.

Artist Dayglo, continuing in the style established by TG original co-creator Jamie (Gorillaz) Hewlett, captures all this nonsense with his usual grubby élan. Per reports, this is his last work on the series, with a present mini-series (“Carioca”) currently running in England illustrated by Mick McMahon. His energetic work on the band-aid festooned adventuress will be missed, but at least Martin will be continuing to churn out more of these never-mind-the-bollocks antics -- and bully for him.

Labels: modern comics

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( 1/08/2012 04:00:00 PM ) Bill S.

“THIS MUST BE WHAT THEY CALL FATE. I GUESS.” It’s been a while since I’ve impulsively picked a new manga title to read, but a chance viewing of a YouTube clip from its anime adaptation got me seeking Oh!Great’s Tenjo Tenge (Viz Signature) recently. Fortunately for my manga explorations, the series has been reissued in large volume “Full Contact” Editions collecting two of the original smaller-sized paperbacks. A “mature” readers series about a high school heavily populated with fight clubs, the manga features gobs of gratuitous violence, obscenities, flashes of nudity and fulsome breasts that look like they’re yearning to burst free of their confines. Full-blooded entertainment, in other words.

Set at Todo High School, an institution where all of the students possess martial arts savvy, Tenjo Tenge focuses on the members of the Juken Club, which is “seen as one of the weakest martial arts clubs on campus.” This situation, we suspect, is about to change with the arrival of two new street-brawling students, spiky-haired Soichiro Nagi and dread-locked Bob Makihara. Their appearance on campus sparks more than one fracas and draws the attention of the Executive Council, a group of arrogant upper classmen who also have it in for the Juken Club. The first act of the aggression by the council is to send a bespectacled creep named Ryuzaki to kidnap and sexually assault Bob’s girlfriend Chiachi.

Though Soichiro at one point arrogantly declares, “I’m supposed to be the hero of this story,” the first two books of Tenjo Tenge devote just as much space to other members of the Juken Club. First, antenna-haired Maya Natsumi is the club’s leader: when we first see her, she looks like a little girl, but when it comes time to fight, she transforms into a scantily-dressed large-breasted woman with mega fighting abilities. “When you’re as skilled as I am,” Maya immodestly states, “it’s a piece of cake to pull of a transformation like this.” (We later learn that she’s not the only one capable of such transmogrifications.) Her sister Aya is a trace more modest -- in both personality and dress -- though she is the possessor of a great power known as Dragon Eyes, which enable her to see into the future and exert her will through humans and inanimate objects. As in Naruto, for instance, this great power itself has the potential of corrupting and taking over its wielder.

Aya falls in love at first sight with Soichiro when he comes crashing into her shower during a fight with Maya, much to the chagrin of Takayanagi, her straight arrow fellow club member. As the series opens, he meets the possessor of the Dragon Eyes for the fist time and himself is instantly smitten. “At that moment,” he narrates, “time stopped dead for me, and I couldn’t look away from her eyes.” The poor sap -- just one of the victims what looks to be an increasingly more entangled storyline full of star-crossed relationships.

In place of chapters, Oh!Great’s series is divided into “Fight”s, an apt label since each episode features at least one face-to-face confrontation. A lot of these are accompanied by imposingly titled moves (“Whirling Cuff,” “Mount Tai Avalanche,” “Heart and Mind Six Harmonies”) that may be pure nonsense but sure sound cool -- plus plenty of verbal posturing. Some of this is done tongue-in-cheek by the manga artist -- who wittily couples his martial arts melodrama with adolescent histrionics. In one scene, for example, Takayanagi’s head is pierced by a word balloon after Aya calls him a “second-rate martial artist.” The taunt pushes Tak into kicking the ass of his opponent, of course -- but the moment remains an amusing one.

Tenjo Tenge has seen two editions in the U.S. The first, published by the now defunct manga line CMX, was criticized by fans for being heavily censored. Viz Signature’s shrink-wrapped edition, in contrast, contains an abundance of sweaty naked female body shots and obscenities, along with lots of over-the-top violence. Not a series for younger readers or the prudish, but definitely a treat for those of us who happily cut their teeth on R-rated grindhouse kung-fu.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 1/02/2012 11:07:00 AM ) Bill S.

“SOLITUDE IS REALLY COOL. . . WHEN YOU’VE CHOSEN IT.” A charmingly illustrated French funny animal comic Renaud Dillies’ Bubbles & Gondola (NBM) recounts the “Adventure of Charlie the Mouse,” a would-be writer who is struggling to finish a book of “prose poems.”

When I first started reading this graphic novel and realized that one of its foci was gonna be the young mouse’s writer’s block, I have to admit my first response was, “Oh no, not another work about the struggles of being creative.” But Bubbles & gondola makes this concern secondary to its bigger theme: solitude and its dampening of the spirit. Introverted Charlie, the “solitary muridae,” spends his days holed up in an attic playing music for himself, watching television and futilely trying to eke out a few prose poems. When asked by his family what he’s writing about, all Charlie can tell them is “silence” -- because it’s all that he knows.

This changes when our hero is visited by a top hat wearing bluebird who calls himself “Solitude.” The bird’s first appearance prompts Charlie to leave his house and go into the village where preparations for a carnival are being made. There, the mouse is persuaded to ride a ferris wheel where he starts to engage in flights of fancy. Though the wheel’s gondolas can’t leave their moorings (“deprived of their liberty,” they’re “sad airships of an impossible adventure”), Charlie’s seemingly flies off into the clouds, the first of a series of sweetly surreal moments in this book.

Dillies’ art evokes the work of an earlier poetic penman, George (Krazy Kat) Herriman, though with a trace more detailed elegance. (The book’s carnival scenes are particularly splendiferous.) NBM is marketing this as an all ages graphic novel, but while the art is decidedly kid appealing, I suspect that the book’s language and thematic concerns will put it beyond all but the oldest child reader. (I’d love to be proven wrong on this.) Bubbles and Gondola -- the first half of the title refers to the ephemeral nature of art and beauty -- ends with our hero happily scribbling away, a conclusion that we knew we’d reach. It’s the delightfully imagined journey to arrive at that place which makes this whimsical graphic novel so appealing.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: art comics

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( 12/31/2011 09:49:00 AM ) Bill S.

FACE, MEET FAN! Most weekday mornings, I follow a fairly boring schedule: wake up worrying about finances, get up and feed the dogs, start the coffee machine while the dogs follow their morning outside routine, bring ‘em back into the house and head for the study to check email and perhaps do a little Blogcritics editing before getting ready for my day job. Pretty mundane. But Friday saw a major break in this routine: getting up to leave the study, I hadn’t noticed that one of our 75-plus pound pups was lying on the floor right behind me. I tripped over the big galoot, fell and did a header right into a pillar fan.

The lower half of my face made the most contact -- nose and mouth primarily -- though I also get a major gash on my right hand middle finger where I apparently struck the fan’s base. Some heavy bleeding ensued from both nose and finger. Wife Becky heard the commotion from bed and quickly got up to do the Florence Nightingale thing, retrieving the bandages while I worked to staunch the blood flow. Sat in a living room chair with rolled up pieces of toilet paper in both nostrils -- not a good look -- feeling like a clumsy idiot.

The end results could’ve been much worse: my lower face looks like I got into an argument with a belligerent drunk who passed out before he could do too much damage, my finger’s still bandaged and I have a very irritating slice of missing inner lip, but at least I didn’t connect with my forehead. Wound up going into work on time without any significant aftereffects, though I popped a lotta generic Tylenol over the course of the day. It's a heck of a way to end the year: battered and bruised.

I feel like a walking metaphor. . .

Labels: me me me

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( 12/26/2011 04:41:00 PM ) Bill S.

“JUSTICE TRAPS THE GUILTY!” The latest entry in Titan Books’ “Simon & Kirby Library,” Crime is a hefty 320-page collection of work predominately produced in the forties for the era’s “true crime comics.” Having already amassed an impressive body of comic book work in the super-hero genre (creating, among others, Captain America), Joe Simon and Jack Kirby turned to other genres when it looked as if costumed crime fighters were losing their young audience. Initially inspired by the success of Lev Gleason’s Crime Does Not Pay, these pre-Code comic books -- saddled with evocative names like Real Clue Crime Stories and Justice Traps the Guilty -- attempted to straddle the line between exploitation and moralizing much as earlier Depression Era gangster flicks reveled in the exploits of their anti-heroes. If S&K;’s work for these titles lacks the over-the-top irony and bloody mindedness of later comics like EC’s Crime and Shock Suspenstories, they remain crackling entertainments.

Kirby’s pugilistic art is one of the big draws, of course: the guy had a knack for serving up believably ape-like thugs and cheeky dangerous dames, in particular -– in addition to his dynamic action images. There are plenty of wonderful panels in this opulently packaged color collection: one of my faves accompanies the flight and final gun fight of Babyface Nelson, who thinks nothing of running over one of his own men in his flight to escape the feds. One panel, showing a hunted John Dillinger surrounded by floating eyes, looks downright Steve Ditko-esque.

The stories in this collection shift between obvious fictions (e.g., an incomplete series featuring a dapper hero named the Gun Master, as well as another series of tales narrated by “Headline Comics’ super-duper snoop ‘Red Hot’ Blaze”) and quasi-historical retellings of famous criminal exploits. A few of the latter (as with the story of Chicago serial murderer H.H. Holmes and his infamous murder mansion) are predominately accurate, while others (“The Last Bloody Days of Babyface Nelson,” for instance) are as true as to the facts as Brian de Palma’s version of The Untouchables. Crime writer/comics fan Max Allan Collins touches on a few of scripter Joe Simon’s factual filigrees in his intro to this collection, but he doesn’t try to catch ‘em all -– nor should we expect him to. Best to treat the whole she-bang as an outsized display of two great comics creators working at their boyishly most exuberant.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: golden age goodness

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( 12/17/2011 11:31:00 AM ) Bill S.

“BLOODTHIRSTY VAMPIRE LIVES AGAIN!”Though it doesn’t by any means claim to be a definitive history of the influential British horror film company, Marcus Hearn’s The Hammer Vault (Titan Books) serves as a tantalizing overview of Hammer Films. Following the company’s releases chronologically -- from its earliest sci-fi releases (Quatermass Xperiment, X - the Unknown), its bloody gothic remakes (Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, et al) and their multitude of sequels through later hits like the Raquel Welch break-out One Million Years B.C., Hearn’s coffee table book devotes two pages apiece to depicting publicity material, script pages, and props to each film, with text providing historical context for each release.

While much of the company’s oeuvre looks tame today, it’s amusing to see how much outrage they generated among British film critics back in the day. Hammer cannily took advantage of this notoriety (placing the letter “X” prominently in two of its earliest title, for instance), later making a practice of hiring Playboy playmates as heroines in their films -- and trumpeting this fact in their promo material. Among the collectibles included in this book, Hearn amusingly includes some scathing contemporary reviews. 1957’s Revenge of Frankenstein, for instance, drew a newspaper piece lamenting its release -- and ending with a plea for gentler movies (“the films longest remembered are the ones in which truth is coupled with the warmth of kindness.”) Though the company made periodic bids for critical respectability (e.g., the Bette Davis stage-based black comedy, The Anniversary), its origins as a manufacturer of gory gothics repeatedly worked against it.

Prudishly critical nay-sayers aside, to lovers of old-fashioned horror, just the Hammer brand name conjures up a body of richly filmed genre works. The company made the careers of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, who both appeared in its first two gothic remakes, Frankenstein and Dracula. That first is particularly noteworthy for the way scriptwriter Jimmy Sangster treated Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein, changing him from an obsessive misguided scientist to an amoral s.o.b., a reconfiguration that would characterize Hammer’s anti-hero through a number of sequels.

Going through Vault, I was happily reminded of some lesser-known flicks that I first saw as a teen at the drive-in (Plague of the Zombies, Countess Dracula, Vampire Circus) and took note of some that as far as I can tell never saw release in the states (The Brigand of Kandahar?) Though its primary reputation resides in its horror fare, Hammer regularly put out other types of genre works: pirate movies, H. Rider Haggar-styled adventures (including the Ursula Andress version of She), prehistoric women yarns and black-and-white girl-in-peril suspensers. There was even a misguided attempt at creating a white Shaft (named Shatter) starring Stuart Whitman that went nowhere -- plus a fiscally disastrous stab at blending vampire flicks with Shaw Brothers kung-fu entitled Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. Vault covers ‘em all, but the image that inevitably achieves cover prominence is a poster shot of Christopher Lee’s fanged Dracula hovering over a comely damsel.

At times, Hearn’s accompanying text seems to focus more on production minutia than necessary -- occasionally at the expense of telling the reader what each movie is actually about. We’re never told the meaning behind the title of Satanic Rites of Dracula, for instance, though the book notes that screenwriter Sangster was apparently drafted to craft the film’s base storyline and today has no memory of that commission. There’s a nice photo of Rites heroine Joanna Lumley smoking a cigarette between takes, though, looking very Ab Fab.

Though the company went through a period of prolonged invisibility, more recently it has re-emerged with a trio of stylish horror films (Wake Wood, The Resident and Let Me In) that has brought back fans’ attention. Considering this resurrection, I found myself recalling a droll poster that was used in America to sell the 1968 movie Dracula Has Risen from the Grave: featuring a photo of a full-breasted girl with two pink Band-Aids on her neck, the poster followed the movie title with a smaller lettered “Obviously” parenthetically included underneath it. In horror films, nothing stays dead forever . . .

Not even horror movie companies.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: psychotronic psinema

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( 12/10/2011 01:54:00 PM ) Bill S.

“SHE IS A RUMOR. A WISP OF SMOKE.” A posthumous “collaboration” between the late best-selling pulpster and one of his most vocal admirers, Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins’ The Consummata (Hard Case Crime) is a follow-up to Spillane’s 1967 best-seller, The Delta Factor. Introducing a new Spillane creation, Morgan the Raider, a “robbin’ hood” who “never took any spoils from anyone who didn’t have it coming,” the debut novel served as the basis for a rote Christopher George action flick that so dissatisfied Spillane that he put aside the start of a sequel. Forty years later, Collins has completed the ms., resolving the storyline that had been introduced in the first book.

The book opens with hero Morgan on the lam from federal agents after he’s been falsely accused of stealing $40 million in currency. Hooking up with a group of Cuban expatriates in Miami, Morgan divides his time between dodging federal agents led by the smarmy special agent Crowley and tracking down the sadistic Jaimie Halaquez, a former soldier in Castro’s army who has swindled $75,000 from the Miami Cuban community. Halaquez’s sordid leanings take our hero through the seamier side of Miami – and ultimately to the awkwardly named title figure, a near-mythic madam who specializes in sado-masochistic tricks for the powerful – sort of the Lady Heather of her day.

Through the course of his pursuit through the brothels of Miami, Morgan comes up against more than one beddable working girl along with the inevitable dumb and vicious thugs: the kind of guys who think nothing of blowing up a hotel just to stop our hero. In the end, Collins brings it all to a perhaps-too-tidy conclusion, but you can understand his urge to do so. Our hero, after all, has been left out in the cold for a good forty years.

Though not as visceral as some of Spillane’s earlier Mike Hammer novels, The Consummata moves snappily through its period terrain. Collins, who has done his share of solid historical crime dramas, wisely keeps the action in the late sixties where Spillane initially placed it. If a few period references come across more Collins than they do his late collaborator (e.g., a reference to “Catwoman in the old Batman funny books”), that’s a small plaint. In general, the book reads true to the voice of Spillane’s wise-cracking hero. I’m thinking Morgan’s creator would be happier with Collins’ treatment of the character than he was with Hollywood’s.

(First published on Blogcritics.

Labels: pulp fiction

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( 12/03/2011 05:22:00 PM ) Bill S.

“MY HOME IS THE REGIMENT.” The eighth volume in Titan Books’ continued reprint of the hard-nosed British war comic, Charley's War: Hitler's Youth opens with an intriguing plotline. Chronicling the Great War adventures of young Charlie Bourne, serving as an assistant sniper on the Western Front at this point in the storyline, the series imagines a young Adolph Hitler as a corporal in the regiment on the other side of No Man’s Land. Moving between Charley’s unit and the Germans, delving into the psychology of the future Nazi who self-reportedly survived several major attacks during WWI, the strip works to avoid the cartoonish portrayal of Hitler that has characterized so many boys’ war comics – and to a large extent succeeds.

As reported in an intro by Steve White, the facts behind Hitler’s actual participation in the Great War have since become clouded by propagandistic efforts to either elevate or debunk his involvement along with the Gestapo’s destruction of many paper records from the first war. Still, research-minded scripter Pat Mills’ treatment of this monster-in-training rings believably. Though Titan Books’ description of the set gives the impression that our hero Charley will have a confrontation with the man, this never really happens: instead, we’re treated to sequences depicting Hitler as a fierce young soldier. When the rest of his fellow soldiers take advantage of a Christmas armistice celebration, for instance, the corporal remains behind, hunting rats in the trenches, stubbornly refusing to fraternize with the enemy.

Even with the temporary truce, Mills does not let the reader forget the grim realities of war; despite its appearance in a weekly boys’ war comic, “Charley’s War” decidedly did not indulge in gung-ho fantasizing. Thus, as both sides return to their trenches, the strips narration notes each soldier who won’t make it out of the war alive. “1918 would be the last and most terrible year of the war,” we’re told before the strip leaves Hitler and young Charley to follow the latter’s brother Wilf as he serves as P.B.O. (Poor Blinking Observer) for a half-mad bi-plane pilot named Morgan. Artist Joe ("Johnny Red") Colquhoun clearly relishes the opportunity to get out of the mud: his flying battle sequences and lavished with loving boyish detail and explosive impact.

In writer Mills’ hands, the world of the P.B.O.s and their glory hungry pilots has its roots in the British class system, with observers being treated as expendable proles in the air. Captain Morgan, we’re told, has already lost three observers, and we get to see a fourth fall to screaming death in the course of battle. Just another poor blinking observer. . .

“Charley’s War” first appeared in three-page installments as a part of the black-and white British comic magazine Battle from 1979 – 85, a remarkable run for so unglamorous a war comic. This current volume ends with two sequences returning to our title hero in the trenches. Hitler’s regiment, we’re told, has left, but there are still plenty of Jerries to fend off. To add to Charley’s woes, he’s also accidentally roused the enmity of a former comrade recently raised to officer’s rank. “He’s jealous of my success,” this new antagonist thinks, “the way I worked my way up from the ranks!” At times, it seems like the Bourne Boys’ war is less against the Germans and more against undeserved rank and privilege.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: classic comic strips

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( 11/24/2011 11:10:00 AM ) Bill S.

“THEY SAY A HEART’S NOT QUITE A HEART UNTIL IT’S BEEN BROKEN.” Of all the eighties groups to affix the word “human” to their name (League, Sexual Response), Ohio’s Human Switchboard were arguably the most deserving of the moniker. A garage-y threesome who combined the boho sensitivities and sounds of early Velvets and Patti Smith with a more poppish flavor, the group released one great album in 1981, Who’s Landing in My Hangar?
It was the only studio album this unit would release (a ROIR cassette of an in-concert performance came out in 1982), but it stands as a major moment in the early days of indie rock. After years of being out-of-print, the disc has finally gotten its long-deserved CD reissue courtesy of Bar/None Records.

Composed of Reed-y vocalist/guitarist Bob Pfeifer, keyboardist/singer Myrna Marcarian, propulsive drummer Ron Metz -- and a revolving set of bassists -- Switchboard specialized in relationship songs that primarily alternate between pissed off and desperate. In the title song, Pfeifer rants against an unfaithful lover, pushed along by Marcarian’s sparkling Farfisa, while “(I Used to) Believe in You” uses the singer's striking guitar to emphasize his sense of betrayal. In two of the album’s tracks, Marcarian takes throaty vocal lead to portray the wounded distaff side of the relationship wars. In “(Say No to Saturday’s Girl,” she and the boys recall the late-night melancholy of “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” while “I Can Walk Alone” pits our beleaguered heroine against a presumably unfaithful, overly needy storytelling lover.

It’s in Hangar’s magnum opus, “Refrigerator Door,” where the band’s keen-eyed and unsentimental take on missed connections gets its fullest delineation. Called “the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ of punk” by band admirer Kurt Cobain, the track features a duet with Pfeifer and Marcarian singing at cross-purposes in both English and Slovenian over a slowly building rock backdrop. When Marcarian gets the last word, plaintively waiting for the ring-ring-ring of the telephone, we know she’s doomed to disappointment.

All is not complete doom and gloom on this disc, though. Another album high point is Pfeifer’s sax-fueled “Book on Looks,” a full-bodied bragfest with the singer rhapsodizing about how hot his girlfriend is -- even as he chastises his friends for their “locker room talk.” It’s a surprisingly playful moment in a predominately pessimistic take on modern romance.

Sparely produced by sometime bassist Paul Harmann, Hangar favors an Exiles on Main Street readiness to bury its vocals within Pfeifer and Marcarian’s compelling guitar and keyboard work. I’ve been listening to this platter since its initial release as a Faulty Products long-player, and there are still moments when I don’t know what the hell its singers are saying. Still, the band’s sound is so solid and compelling that even when you don’t get the specifics, you get the point.

In addition to the album’s original ten tracks, Bar/None’s reissue also features eleven more tracks that will get the group’s admirers wishing that the trio’d been able to hold it together long enough for a second polished studio disc. The band’s sound expands over the four years repped on these tracks: from sixties-ish dance rock (“Shake It Boys”) to country (“Always Lonely for You”) to a song that wouldn’t sound out of place on a John Hughes movie (“A Lot of Things”). But in a way thoughts about What Might’ve Been are apt for this band -- since you know their songs' protagonists are spending much of their days and nights pondering that same unanswerable question.

(First published on Blogcritics).

Labels: art-pop

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( 11/17/2011 09:57:00 PM ) Bill S.

”HE HAS ROUSED IN ME A MOST TERRIBLE ENEMY!” The first in a four-volume series by the creator of Vampire Hunter D, Yashakiden: The Demon Princess (Digital Manga Press) is an agreeably lurid yarn set in Demon City Shinjuku, an earthquake ravaged burg where reality is mutable and monstrous types roam the streets with impunity. It is, author Hideyuki Kikuchi explains, “a city where life was lived and death dealt without regret,” where the landscape can shift without warning (the walls of a department store “mutating into the shape of a female human pudendum,” for instance) and vampires inhabit their own housing project in a shaky truce with their human neighbors.

Into this unsettling setting, a quartet of sadistic Chinese vampires sails to take control of the city. A series of vamp attacks ensues -- both bloody and sexually explicit -- led by a preternaturally beautiful demon princess. Countering this unholy quartet are two womanishly handsome leads: private investigator Setsura Aki, who possesses the ability to channel his chi as “devil wire” capable of severing anything it contacts (think we’re gonna get at least one detached limb in this volume?), plus Dr. Mephisto, the city’s “demon physician” who utilizes both magical and medical knowledge to heal his patients. Our dashing duo spends most of the first book catching up to the bloodsuckers, who pick off sundry victims for our entertainment.

Author Kikuchi, who displays a Stan Lee-like flare for self-promotion (calling this series “the masterpiece of all vampire works I have ever created”), tackles his bloody tale with a ten-in-one talker’s enthusiasm. If at times, Eugene Woodbury’s translation comes across a bit clunky, that only contributes to the series’ overall pulpish feel. Added to DMP’s paperback package: a series of moody looking black and white illos by Jun Sue Mi, which gives us more than one nekkid shot of the depraved Demon Princess. Looking at these striking images, I can see Yashakiden morphing into as enjoyable a manga adaptation as Saiko Takaki's version of Vampire Hunter D.

“Masterpiece” or not.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: pulp fiction

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( 11/10/2011 06:36:00 PM ) Bill S.

"WHEN ONE'S MESSED UP, EVEN THE STUPID FISH KNOW IT." From its very opening -- police find a junked out vehicle with two bodies, a long-dead male and a more recently deceased dog -- you know that Takashi Murakami's Stargazing Dog (NBM) is going to end on a melancholy note. And so this best-selling manga does, though writer/artist Murakami also manages to imbue his effectively sentimental dog tale with enough lightness to keep it from bludgeoning you.

The story of Daddy, a somewhat dim patriarch who loses his job, home, and family -- but never the company of his loyal pup Happie -- Stargazing Dog tracks Daddy's misfortunes through the canine's naive eyes. To Happie, all that matters is the time he spends with his owner. When Daddy loses his job, for instance, the dog is overjoyed to have walks in the daytime; when the two travel south, living out of Daddy's car, all the dog sees is a “fun road trip.” Just being in Daddy's presence is sufficient. Everything else is just details.

With its opening panels of dragonflies buzzing around the trashed car to its penultimate scene where a bedraggled Daddy and Happie look up at the night sky, Stargazing Dog has a visual sweetness that carries you through even its saddest moments. The key to it all proves the title character, of course, who views Daddy's downfall through a childlike/canine perspective. As Murakami notes in an “Afterword,” the tragic flaw of Happie's master proves his inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to adapt to the changing world around him. Yet, ironically, it's the constancy of his dog who provides his salvation. “I lost everything,” the human tells his companion at one point, “but as you are sitting next to me, I'm strangely happy.”

The title story is followed in NBM's edition by a 50-page sequel, “Sunflowers,” about a social worker named Okutsu who is driven to learning the story behind the nameless vagrant and his dog. In so doing, he recalls his own life living with a pair of elderly ailing grandparents and the dog they'd given him for the day they passed away. In this piece, the meaning of the book's title is explained. “It's an expression for a person who hopes for too much,” Okutsu notes, adding that it's human nature for all of us to do so. In the end, the companionship of Daddy and his dog stands for something that is attainable in our lives -- even in an era when so many other dreams are being dashed. No wonder this book resonated so much in its native land.

“I myself was also saved by my own dog,” Murakami writes in his “Afterword.” We don't doubt him at all.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 11/08/2011 06:43:00 AM ) Bill S.

WHERE I’VE BEEN: Where I’ve been is in the nether zone between one mailing address and the next. Four years after our move from IL to AZ, it became increasingly apparent that the place we’d called home had gotten too expensive for us. When we first moved to Safford, AZ, the town was still in the midst of a mining boom (copper being the ore of choice) and housing was at a dear premium. One long recession and two job changes later (not to mention several major budget cuts to behavioral health services where I work), and we found ourselves looking for a cheaper place to rent. Found one two towns over in Pima, AZ, home to pima cotton, and so the past month has been spent boxing and storing and ultimately lugging all our goods to their new spaces. Once we moved, it took over a week to get our ISP transferred over to the new home – we definitely live out in the frontier.

But we’re quasi-settled now (still a lotta stuff in boxes, of course), so hopefully I’ll be able to get some reviews and commentary up on this here blog. Got a pile of material that’s demanding to be attended to.

Labels: me me me

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( 10/16/2011 12:25:00 PM ) Bill S.

“I’M YOUR BAD GUY.” Not too startling to see Max Allan Collins popping up on two titles (one a posthumous “collaboration” with his idol Mickey Spillane) as a part of Hard Case Crime’s new re-launch -- the man has been a hard-boiled fanboy and a prolific pb pulp craftsman for years now. With Quarry’s Ex, Collins takes us back to the mid-career of his brutal hero, a Vietnam vet and former hitman now hiring himself out to rich targets to kill their would-be killers. In Ex, his client proves to be a low-budget action film director who also turns out to be married to Quarry’s betraying ex-wife Joni.

Taking a cover job as unit publicity manager for Hard Wheels 2, a piece of video store fodder being filmed in Las Vegas, our hero seeks out Nick Varnos, a contractor who specializes in kills that look like accidents. Quarry’s task becomes twofold: figure out how Varnos intents to off director Arthur Stockwell and identify the person responsible for putting out the hit on the director in the first place. The suspect pool includes a variety of dubious movie types (former Playboy centerfold actress, gay “tough guy” movie lead, mob-indebted producer) and, of course, his shapely, duplicitous ex. The only one of this quartet who doesn't try to seduce Quarry is the producer.

Collins tells his cynical little tale with plenty of tough wit; he especially has fun with his narrator’s take on the dying days of drive-in moviemaking. As a storyteller, Collins has a knack for capturing period with a few succinct details; he also has a pithy way with violence that at times reminds me of Robert Bloch at his nasty punchline best. A while back, reviewing Collins’ first Ms. Tree novel, Deadly Beloved, I criticized the book for not being as dark as the best Hard Case entries. No such plaints with Quarry’s Ex, though -- it’s every bit as mean as you want it to be.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: pulp fiction

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( 10/10/2011 02:31:00 PM ) Bill S.

“THE WORLD NEEDS A VILLAIN AT PRESENT.” The idea of centring a series on Sherlock Holmes’ arch-enemy, Professor James Moriarty, is nothing new. British writer John Gardner (who also successfully commandeered the James Bond franchise for many years) wrote a trio of Moriarty novels in the 1970’s, though his approach was not as fantastickal as the crew who put together Moriarty: The Dark Chamber (Image Comics). Scripted by Daniel Corey with a dash of sci-fi plotting and more than a trace of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen pastiche-ry, the four-ish mini-series provides an entertaining riff on Sherlockian lore. If Corey lacks League creator Alan Moore’s penchant for complex literary play, he does construct an enjoyably slam-bang divertissement.

Set at the start of the Great War, twenty years after Moriarty “bested” his detective adversary at Reichenbach Falls, the series follows our anti-hero as he is pressed by British intelligence into uncovering the whereabouts of Holmes’ brother Mycroft. Hiding under the name Trumbold, Moriarty has seemingly lost much of his reason for living after vanquishing Holmes: now he ekes out a living as “a sort of investigator for the criminal element” and an import/exporter. His enquiries pit him up against a cultish group named the Sons of Chaos and a mysterious box that Moriarty calls “A Dark Chamber of the Mind.” What this device can actually do is never concretely explained, but we know it will be monstrous.

Author Corey brings in other figures from the Holmes canon, of course, but the most engaging secondary figures to be a Sax Rohmer-esque queenpin named the Jade Serpent. Teaming with, betraying, then re-teaming with the Professor, she’s just the kind of lithe-limbed action-ready anti-heroine that this story needs.

Artist Anthony Diecidue’s ink work captures the milieu, though at times comes across a mite too sketchy to convey the full weight of the action. There are times (a confrontation between Jade and Mata Hari, for instance) where his figures look more like manikins, while in other sequences his lines look like they’re about to fly apart. Throughout Dark Chamber, you can see him striving for League artist Kevin O’Neill’s blend of caricature and more straight-laced comic art without quite getting there. Still, I like his basic visualization of the series’ anti-Holmes (who’s given more than one opportunity to display his own style of deductive reasoning), even if he looks nothing like Conan Doyle described him in the stories. This, we’re told is the real Moriarty, not the figure pictured in those published Strand stories.

When Watson shows, though, he’s much as we’d expect him to look even if Jade flatteringly states that he’s “not nearly as rotund as the illustrations in The Strand would lead one to believe.” Some genre figures, happily, remain visually unassailable.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: modern comics

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( 10/06/2011 08:21:00 AM ) Bill S.

“I WAS THINKING IN A SOFT-PEDAL MODE.” With the latest entry in Titan Books' ongoing series of “Modesty Blaise” reprints, Million Dollar Game, Spanish artist Enric Badia Romero returned to the strip after Britisher Neville Colvin's six-year stint. The largest running artist to assay Peter O'Donnell's adventuress, Romero was also the most unabashedly sexy. His Modesty was more voluptuous and exotic, with eyes that in particular hinted at realms of experience to which we were never privy, and he wasn't the least bit reluctant when it came to drawing either his heroine or any other comely damsel topless. Which still remains startling to American readers unaccustomed to this sight in a newspaper comic strip format.

The three offerings in Game come from 1986-7, and though the strip was over twenty years old by this time, Blaise creator O'Donnell's enthusiasm still showed no signs of flagging. These are solid little action yarns, ranging in setting from Tangier to the American West to Transylvania. In the America story, our heroine and her loyal knife-throwing companion Willie Garvin run up against a modern gang impersonating the Butch Cassidy band; in “The Vampire of Malvescu,” O'Donnell combines Transylvanian lore with a would-be terrorist plot. (If you find yourself mentally hearing Lionel Atwell's voice in bad guy Sebastian Clegg's dialog in the latter story, you're not alone.) The title yarn teams an old flame up with our gal to take on a ruthless gang of poachers.

Most intriguing from a character stand-point is the vampire tale, which introduces us to a former member of Modesty's old crime network, a techno wizard named Hans Braun who is married to Hilde, a sweet young thing so innocent that it temporarily rubs off on our hard-nosed heroine. “Somehow Hilde and guns don't mix,” she says, placing herself at a momentary disadvantage when she comes up against her kill crazy antagonists in Europe's Fist. Fortunately, Modesty snaps out of it. “A really lovely girl with a really lovely nature, like Hilde, just isn't the right company for bad types like us,” she finally tells Willie. And though we may disagree with this reformed crime chief's self-characterization as a “bad type,” we can see her point.

If there's any flaw in this zippy set of three, it's in the antagonists' reliance in two separate stories on impersonating classic villains. You'd think that these guys'd want to be a little more surreptitious with their dastardliness, but, then, in the still-potent pop world of Modesty Blaise, a little flamboyance is definitely part of the show.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: classic comic strips

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( 9/29/2011 07:08:00 AM ) Bill S.

“NO POINT SECOND-GUESSING YOUR FIGHT AFTER THE BELL’S ALREADY RUNG.” Having announced their new beginnings with the hardbound publication of a new Lawrence Block novel, the folks at Hard Case Crime have happily recommenced releasing fresh paperback pulps. One of the first of these, Christa Faust’s Choke Hold, is the second in a series featuring Angel Dare, a hard-bitten former porn star on the run from Croatian mobsters. When Hold opens, our heroine is working as a waitress down in Yuma, Arizona, after her WitSec cover has been violently blown. A chance encounter with a former industry flame, Thick Vic Ventura, forces her out of hiding after Vic is gunned down at the diner where she’s been working.

The catalyst for this sudden burst of gunplay turns out to be Vic’s son Cody Noon, a dumb-ass would-be fighter beholden to an Arizona businessman with ties to south of the border extreme fighting and drug trafficking. Teaming up with Cody’s trainer, a somewhat addled former pugilist named Hank “The Hammer” Hammond, Angel comes up against Mexican thugs and also winds up drawing the attention of the aforementioned Croatian mobsters. It all comes together in a high body count set of showdowns that ends in Las Vegas, where the auditions for All American Fighter are being held.

Having not read her debut, I initially wondered how well I’d be able to get into Miz Dare’s sophomore escapade, but Faust’s tough gal heroine and punchy way of delivering her violent plot quickly grabbed this reader. The opening action holds two-thirds of the book, and by the time the Croatians make their appearance I was sufficiently attached to Angel and her punch drunk pals to wonder who would manage to survive this secondary menace. Found myself wanting to go back and read the first book once I’d finished, of course, which is also a testament to Faust’s sexy and damaged narrator -- a character who isn’t above using her porn experience to get what she needs even as she recognizes all that she’s lost in doing this. A definite hard case heroine.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: pulp fiction

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( 9/27/2011 06:37:00 AM ) Bill S.

“YOU DON’T HAVE THE SLIGHTEST IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON HERE, DO YOU?” An energetic low-life comedy of noir, Viktor Kalvachev’s Blue Estate (Image Comics) follows a large cast of schemers and patsies through a convoluted crime plot involving real estate scams, drugs and Russian mobsters. Though the twelve-issue comic mini-series opens on the narration of Roy Devine Jr., a clueless nerd of a would-be p.i. who we first think is going to be our window into this neon lit world, Roy quickly vanishes from most of the first four issues of the comic (collected in trade paperback as Blue Estate: Preserves.) Instead, we’re shown the sordid and bloody double-doings of a variety of hard-edged So Cal types.

Chief among there are Rachel Maddow, an alcoholic Hollywood wife whose direct-to-video action movie hubby Bruce appears to be involved in money laundering; her brother Billy, in the middle of a disastrous house flipping scheme for the ill-tempered mobster’s son Tony Luciano and Vadim Radow, Don Luciano’s Russian mobster rival (“The most dangerous Russian this side of Rasputin.”) fronting as a “legitimate” Hollywood producer. Also adding to the show are a cover-stealing fake-breasted pole dancer named Cherry Popz, a 12-stepping hitman and a hopped-up drug dealer who calls himself the King of the Jungle. That last has an unfortunate rendezvous with a meat grinder, though he isn’t the only minor character to meet a bloody demise in the first four issues. (Two nameless college jocks buy it after jumping the stage in Luciano’s club -- strict rules in that joint!) Once we get a gander at the casually gory doings in Blue Estate, we can’t help wondering how the amiably ineffable Roy Jr. is gonna survive this mini-series.

Though its sprawling cast may initially throw some readers, Kalvachev’s story (co-written with Kosta Yanev and scripted by Andrew Osborne) and setting should prove plenty entertaining to those attuned to the violent excesses of moderne Pulp Fiction. Kalvachev’s art, abetted by a shop’s worth of additional artists, proves cacophonously expressive. Watching one pen style collide against another in adjacent panels, at times I found myself recollecting the acid-drenched storytelling of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, though Kalvachev and Osborne don’t indulge in the heavy-handed theme pounding of Stone’s ultra-violent road trip movie. Morality tomorrow; dark comedy tonight. . .

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: pulp comics fiction

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( 9/21/2011 05:43:00 AM ) Bill S.

“THE UNIVERSE IS SO MYSTERIOUS.” Having taken on stats, calculus, even the theory of relativity, the crew behind the Manga Guide series have elected to think bigger. Kenji Ishikawa and Yutaka Hiiragi’s The Manga Guide to the Universe (No Starch Press) tackles the huge huge questions: the theoretical origins of the universe, its shape and size, the possibilities of extraterrestrial life. As with other titles in this series, the lessons are presented via cute manga teens and a wise teacher, though unlike The Manga Guide to Statistics, our teacher isn’t as comically nerdy.

The typically negligible plot serving as a set-up for our manga lecture centers on the Kouki High School Drama Club’s efforts to put on a performance for the school’s arts festival. If the small club can’t cobble together a show, the school will shut down the club, so brainy senior Yamane, headstrong junior Kanna and new American exchange student Gloria strive to work up an adaptation of “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.” An ancient folk tale about a princess from the moon, the story leads our drama-minded threesome to try and concoct an “outer space romance.” To research the play’s sci-fi elements, they enlist the aid of Kanna’s older brother Kente, who takes them to one of his professors. It’s Prof Sanuki who schools our quartet on the nature of the universe: the first question is whether the Earth is the center of the universe.

As in the other Manga Guides, the professor’s lessons are presented through comic interactions and histrionics on the students’ part, plus sudden costume changes and metaphors. The professor uses more than one sports prop to demonstrate size and distance, which particularly appeals to the athletic Yamane. The usual heavy text pages are interspersed between each manga segment; in several instances they consist of play-like dialog between the students as they hack out topics like Heliocentric Theory, the Big Bang and our expanding universe. Since the book culminates in our cast putting on their play, this approach seems apt.

Yutaka Hiiragi’s shojo art is light and amusing, capable of portraying his winsome characters as well as the theoretical visuals used to convey the professor’s take on the universe. Kenji Ishikawa’s script examines the history of scientific thought from Galileo to Hubble -- also appropriate since so much of what we “know” today remains largely theoretical. Unlike many of the earlier volumes in this series -- which focuses on topics so specific (e.g., Databases) as to push away many manga readers, Manga Guide to the Universe has plenty of broad appeal.

A strong entry for this charming and informative EduManga series.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 9/16/2011 01:53:00 AM ) Bill S.

“I’VE BECOME A REAL ROAD WARRIOR.” Cartoonist, world traveler and observer of comic minutia, Lewis Trondheim returns with a fourth volume of Little Nothings (NBM). Subtitled “My Shadow in the Distance,” this newest set of funny animal autobiographical one-page strips follows our man/bird hero as he travels with his family on vacation in the U.S.A. (spying a “real cowboy” out west, he’s disappointed to see the cowpoke wearing a baseball cap), then hits a variety of European and South American locales for book signing and comic con appearances. Unlike some autobiographical alt cartoonists, Trondheim has a global range of tiny li’l experiences to illustrate. Walking the streets of Prague, dismayed at the “string of tacky souvenir shops” dotting the promenade, he looks up at the old architecture and thinks “from 8 feet up, it’s very beautiful!”

The fourth volume’s most enduring sequence takes place closer to home, however. Told that his sinuses have polyps and advised to avoid flying, Trondheim ultimately has to go under the knife. The strips capture our hero’s pre-op dread and post-op processing with a sharp and distinct wit. Clearing his nose in the aftermath, he describes getting a “gigantic monster” out of his nostril. “I should have taken a picture,” he tells his spouse. “I’m sure your artistic talent will be able to give us an exact idea of it all,” she responds. And, sure enough, the last image we get in the book is of Trondheim standing in the bathroom, a large red glob dripping out of his beak.

Yet for all the anxieties and small annoyances catalogued by the writer/artist in these self-deprecating strips, he ultimately knows he’s got a pretty good life. Advised that sea bathing is highly recommended during his recuperation, the cartoonist tries snorkeling in the ocean off Mayotte (an island near Madagascar) but is unable to get any seawater in his nose. “Right. . . feel sorry for yourself, you poor dear,” he tells himself as he sits back in the water. Sometimes life’s little nothings really are little nothings.

As with the previous entries in this series, Trondheim’s animal world plays the French artist’s cartoony figures against frequently detailed backgrounds (he loves rendering old European streets) and a soft water color-y palette. The latter is especially well suited to the cartoonist’s understated punchlines: these are the kind of comics more likely to elicit a nodding smile than a laugh. Those reading these strips for shockingly frank autobiographical confessions are hereby advised to look elsewhere. For the rest of us, Trondheim’s ongoing Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Bird continues to charm and deliver.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: art comics

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( 9/13/2011 06:26:00 PM ) Bill S.

“WHAT CROOKED GAMBLERS SAY DOESN'T MEAN MUCH TO ME.” A prolific crafter of genre fiction and TV/movie novelizations, Richard Wormser's writing life was ironically encapsulated by the man himself in a posthumously published memoir, How to Become A Complete Nonentity. Yet Wormser (not to be confused with a younger filmmaker of the same name) had a full career writing westerns and crime fiction for the pulps and Hollywood. Horse Money (Black Dog Books), a slim 108-page collection of four novelettes from the 1930's, resurrects a too-short Blue Book detective series set in the world of horse racing. If Wormser's stories aren't exactly Dick Francis, they do provide a breezy snapshot of the pari-mutuel life circa mid-thirties.

The quartet of tales are narrated by Chief Van Eyck, a racing commission cop who hangs around the tracks, thwarting bookies and race fixers, catching the occasional killer. Described as “fat” by both Van Eyck and his seen-it-all secretary/girlfriend Elizabeth, Van Eyck is himself an inveterate gambler with a rep for honesty, though he's not above playing fast and loose with his good name if it can sucker some bad guys. In one memorable moment, he even plays at going “blood simple,” threatening to gas both a straight-laced homicide detective and a suspect to get the latter to confess to a killing. Fortunately, the homicide detective is a somewhat forgiving type.

Three of the pieces in Horse Money are set in an undisclosed, probably West Coast city; the title tale places our hero on his own in NYC. In “Right Guy,” Van Eyck's attempts at stopping a race fix are waylaid when the culprits kidnap his gal pal Elizabeth; in “Heat of the Moment,” our man gets between a machine gun toting gang of crooks and the tong, which leads to gun play and a few twists on period stereotypes. In “Horse Money,” Van Eyck has his own betting winnings stolen with the help of a shapely chorus girl. Though he has his own brief night on the Wonderful Town, we never doubt that our hero won't be riding the rails back to his girlfriend at story's end.

Wormser doesn't slather on the race track lingo as much as a Damon Runyon, though he can craft some snappy, if decidedly un-PC patter. Confronted with a knife-wielding thug named Snapper McGill, for instance, the racetrack copper tells the mug, “Guys named McGill ought to confine themselves to bricks. Racially, the knife is not your weapon.” Like all good hard-boiled dicks, Van Eycks is a hard-ass smart-ass. When one of his wounded underlings manages to crack wise, he even affectionately grouses back: “Stop trying to steal my stuff. The boss makes the jokes.” And so he does.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: pulp fiction

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