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For the Love of Monster Comics

For the Love of Monster Comics

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A few months back I spent almost $40 on eBay to acquire two dozen Monsters on the Prowl comics — late 60s and early 70s Marvel monster titles featuring the imaginative work of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and the entire Marvel bullpen at the height of their creative powers.

It was an impulse buy for sure — not the first I’ve done on eBay, and I strongly suspect it won’t be the last — and I half-expected I’d regret it almost immediately. Or at least, as soon at the package arrived. But the opposite happened. The moment I held those beautiful old artifacts in my hands, I did feel regret. But not the way I expected.

My immediate thought was, Why didn’t I bid on a lot more of these?

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Absolutely Stunning: Kill Six Billion Demons

Absolutely Stunning: Kill Six Billion Demons

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For almost a decade now, my cliché detector has been set a little too high. This affects what I like to read (if I’ve seen it before, I’ll often take a pass) and what I write (the weirder the environments and situations, the more fun I have).

I keep an eye on lot of comics and in the last years Karnak, Monstress and Nameless have caught my eye, among others. But during the summer, I got to read Kill Six Billion Demons, by Abaddon.

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Reading The Sheriff of Babylon

Reading The Sheriff of Babylon

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28953137I didn’t read many comics growing up. My pocket money was very limited and if I had a spare dollar, I was far more likely to spend it on a used fantasy or science fiction paperback than a comic book. It wasn’t that I didn’t like comics, it was simply a matter of practicality. A paperback would give me a couple of days of entertainment while a comic would only last an hour.

What comics I did read were never of the superhero variety. I liked grittier stuff like Sergeant Rock and Eerie. And of course every straight male adolescent growing up in the 1980s liked to sneak a peek at Heavy Metal.

Now that I’m older and have more spare cash, plus a kid getting into comics, I’m beginning to learn about a vast field of literature I’ve missed. Superheroes still don’t interest me (or my son) but I’ve found some really good stories set in the real world.

One of the best is The Sheriff of Babylon, published by Vertigo. A collection of the first six issues is out now.

The setting is Baghdad in 2003, as the American occupiers scramble to reorganize the country. Former police officer Christopher Henry has taken a lucrative contractor job to help train the new Iraqi police force. When one of his recruits gets murdered along with his entire family, Christopher tries to investigate the killing. He enlists the aid of Nassir al Maghreb, a former police investigator from Saddam’s regime who everyone from the CIA to a shadowy militia seem to be after. He also joins forces with Saffiya al Agani, a female Iraqi politician who spent most of her life in exile in the United States and has returned to join the interim government. Soon they find themselves in over their heads trying to make sense of Iraq’s Byzantine politics and warring factions.

Writer Tom King worked a brief stint in Iraq as a CIA operative and brings an insider’s knowledge to the story. Artist Mitch Gerards knows his subject too, and fills the larger panels with telling details.

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The Doctor Is In: Marvel’s New Doctor Strange Movie

The Doctor Is In: Marvel’s New Doctor Strange Movie

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doctor-strangeOK. I may have let on that I like Dr Strange when I wrote two blog posts about his early development in Marvel Comics:

Dr. Strange, Part I: Establishing the Mythos: Master of the Mystic Arts in The Lee-Ditko Era
Dr. Strange, Part II: Becoming Sorcerer Supreme and Dying in the Englehart Era.

I just watched the movie (here’s a trailer) and have to say I really enjoyed it. I’m not going to do anything spoilery here.

Nor do I have strong feelings about the change in the Ancient One other than to say I don’t care what gender the character is, but a Himalayan mystic should have stayed Asian, despite all the stereotype problems built in the Ancient One figure anyway.

But I am doing some puzzling over what kind of Dr. Strange I just saw. Doctor Strange as a 53-year old intellectual property of Marvel Comics has stayed remarkably faithful to the origin tone, no matter what decade, or what cross-over event he’s been involved with.

Cyclops and Professor X had their turns at being evil. Magneto had his turn at being good. The Fantastic Four has rotated its lineup. Tony Stark was a carefree millionaire who got drunk and lost his company. Steve Rogers became Nomad for a time.

But other than a few failings built into the character early in the game, Strange has remained pretty consistent. But this movie didn’t hit the tone I expected.

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Goth Chick News: The Original Men in Tights Are Still the Best Men in Tights…

Goth Chick News: The Original Men in Tights Are Still the Best Men in Tights…

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batman-return-of-the-caped-crusaders-smallAfter last week’s rant about the evils of tampering with original story-telling genius, it’s time for us all to take a deep breath and collectively cleanse our entertainment pallets with some really inspired news. Though it’s not traditional Goth Chick fare, I could not help but emit a little fangirl squee at the following.

Fifty years after first donning tights to play Batman and Robin on TV, Adam West and Burt Ward are back in a movie titled Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders.

Just let that sink in for a moment, and repair your tattered psyches.

Okay, so it’s an animated feature brought to us by Warner Bros., and it’s a direct-to-DVD release. But the important thing here is that rather than landing some current Hollywood hotties to do cameo voice over work, or worse yet some nameless talking heads, WB sought out the original actors, West age 88 (Bruce Wayne / Batman) and Ward age 71 (Dick Grayson / Robin) along with an 83-year-old Julie Newmar (Catwoman) to reprise their roles.

The original Batman television series premiered in 1966 and ran for three successful seasons. It was a very “swinging sixties” creation with a colorful theme song and comedic tone, coupled with some overt sexuality and topical themes (a heady combo for mid-century television viewers). In the years since it has passed into the pop cult stratosphere, as we witnessed when West, Ward and Newmar made an appearance at the 2013 Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2). Attendees who purchased autographs in advance still faced nearly a three-hour wait and the stars were sequestered in a separate part of the facility, likely for their own protection from the rabid fans.

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Lovecraft’s Dreamlands Via Graphic Novel: Jason Thompson’s The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath & Other Stories

Lovecraft’s Dreamlands Via Graphic Novel: Jason Thompson’s The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath & Other Stories

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Thompson’s Dreamlands has an Orientalist feel but an alien one. (Click to enlarge.)

Jason Thompson sent me a copy of his The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath & Other Stories. It even came in a cool envelope, but I’ll get to that.

I’ve been on a bit of a Lovecraft quest.

HP Lovecraft is more than a Geek-only in-joke, there’s still something powerful about his works — or so I discovered reading “The Festival,” “Shadow over Innsmouth” and “Whisperer in the Dark” to my 8-year-old daughter. She experienced the stories as like Scoobie Doo, but when you pull off the bad guy’s mask his face is made of worms.

So, though the style is dated and thus heavy going in places, the structure is sound: he really nailed the whole “unfolding mystery leading to horrible revelation” trope. (I must therefore take back what I said before, I’m sure people do read HP Lovecraft for pleasure from time to time, much as we might also read Malory, because I am now one of them.)

Lovecraft’s power goes way beyond spinning a spooky yarn. He has a knack of being intriguingly vague with great certainty.

The intriguingly is the important part that people often miss.

As frustrated teenage writers discover, vague descriptions of random stuff you made up are not in themselves intriguing. What makes Lovecraft intriguing as well as certain is that he is referencing what feels like a fully realised and disquieting story world, his famous Cthulhu Mythos.

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WTF Did I Just Read? Grant Morrison’s Nameless

WTF Did I Just Read? Grant Morrison’s Nameless

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nameless_612x929Grant Morrison is one of the most successful and famous comic creators. His comic writing career started in small press when he was just 18 years old, and graduated to Marvel UK and the world of 2000AD in the 1980s, with some work with Marvel and DC as well.

From the mid-1990s onward, he’s been consistently working on big projects for big publishers. My own first experience with him were the early 2000s New X-Men series from time to time, but then intensively through the Batman R.I.P. and Batman Reborn arcs.

I was very, very impressed with the creepy insanity he was able to channel in Batman and Robin while Dick Grayson was Batman. Serious creep factors.

But that wasn’t why I read Nameless, a recent series of his through Image.

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How We Got Where We Are, or Go Adam West, Young Man

How We Got Where We Are, or Go Adam West, Young Man

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Gather round, kiddies, and I’ll tell you a story. Hey — are you listening? Turn off the TV (oh, excuse me, put away your device) and stop watching Agents of Shield, Supergirl, Daredevil, Gotham, Arrow, or The Flash, for just one minute! Hold on a second — don’t run out the door! This won’t take long, and I promise you won’t be late for the start of X-Men: Apocalypse, Deadpool, or Suicide Squad. Pay attention, and put away the deluxe slipcased fifty dollar hardcover editions of The Sandman or V for Vendetta or The Dark Knight Returns. I know, but you can finish your doctoral dissertation on Mimesis and Mutation: Gender Fluidity in the X-Men some other time! Please — close the browser; you can read later about how the two Avengers movies alone have taken in three billion dollars at the box office (not counting home video or merchandising money).

Three billion dollars. That’s two movies. Just Marvel movies. Out of over forty Marvel movies. Add in the take from the less aesthetically pleasing but still insanely profitable DC side of the street and the figure simply stops making sense. The number is more incomprehensibly mind boggling than Galactus showing up to eat the world, more wildly absurd than Bruce Banner being mutated into a huge green monster by gamma rays, more utterly improbable than a blue-blanketed baby escaping an exploding Krypton in a homemade rocket, and more sheerly ridiculous than a smoking-jacket wearing millionaire dilettante somehow getting the notion that bats strike fear and terror into the hearts of criminals. It’s just un-flippin’-believable.

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Wreaking Carnage Everywhere: Marvel’s New Horror Comic

Wreaking Carnage Everywhere: Marvel’s New Horror Comic

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309462__sx640_ql80_ttd_carnage_vol_2_1_perkins_variantI’ve been thinking about horror again, as a genre. I’ve been trying to read some Cthulhu stuff; I’ve reread some Image and Marvel horror comics; and I’ve also recently read Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year #8. Lots to mull over.

And a newer Marvel series I read was Carnage, the first 11 issues, by writer Gerry Conway, artist Mike Perkins and colorist Andy Troy.

Carnage is new territory for me. I’m not much of a post-Ditko Spider-Man reader, and I was slightly too old in the 90s to cotton to those incarnations of Venom and Carnage. So, fast-forward to 2015 and 2016 and me catching up with Venom Space-Knight and Carnage.

If you’ve never met Carnage either, he’s an offspring of that symbiotic black suit that Peter Parker returned home with after the original Secret Wars. The symbiote went on to have its own stories sans Spider-Man by covering a new host.

In the early 1990s, a darker character was needed, so they had the symbiote…. fission… to create a new symbiote that wrapped itself around psychopath and homicidal sadist Cletus Kasady. Carnage played villain for a while and then disappeared with only some minor surfacings until this new series in 2015.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of a series centered on a serial killer. How much can you do with a single serial killer? I decided to give it a try anyway, and was very pleasantly surprised, and in fact, Carnage is turning into one of my favorite Marvel titles.

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Goth Chick News: What’s Not to Love About Love Stories (To Die For)?

Goth Chick News: What’s Not to Love About Love Stories (To Die For)?

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love-stories-to-die-for-2-smallIf you’ve hung around Goth Chick News for a while, then you know the special place I hold in my little black heart for the master of horror comics, Dirk Manning.

We first introduced you to Mr. Manning way back in 2011, courtesy of his nationwide tour promoting Nightmare World, his horror comic series.

As someone who spent a significant amount of my childhood reading contraband horror stories by flashlight under the covers, Manning’s work struck a chord with his vintage-look illustrations and old-school storylines.

So it’s no surprise that his art is displayed prominently on the bookshelves in the underground offices of Goth Chick News. Nor is it probably a shocker that due to his genre of choice (not to mention the black top hat), he’s become a personal favorite as well.

So when I had a chance to hug my goth-boy honey at this year’s Chicago Comic Con, he was anxious to tell me (us) about his latest venture.

Several years ago Manning published an online series of five 22-page full-length stories, each a different genre, each illustrated by a different artist or art team, and each one revolving around the combined themes of love and death.

That series was called Love Stories (To Die For) and according to Manning it remains one of his proudest moments as a writer.

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