Ugly American 2013 Year in Review

2013 Book of the Year: Hawkeye
Marvel Comics
Scripts: Matt Fraction
Art: David Aja, Francesco Francavilla, Annie Wu, Matt Hollingsworth, others


Every time I get done reading an issue of Hawkeye, I set the book down with a puzzled look on my face and state out loud:

"I can't believe Marvel is publishing this comic book."

I kinda mean that in all the pejorative ways you think I do. I have a complicated relationship with Marvel comics. I respect their ability to make short-term profits while simultaneously pouring kerosene all over themselves and fumbling with matches. They produce wildly entertaining comics for the most part, and attract the best talent in the industry.

But finding Hawkeye at Marvel Comics is like discovering a 4 Michelin star chef at a Mos Eisley tavern.

It just doesn't fit. This is a "superhero" comic in which the superhero will wear anything except his costume, and balks at folks even mentioning his alter ego. It's a superhero comic that firmly believes that an Event is when Lucky the Pizza Dog gets his own issue.

It's hard to describe exactly how Hawkeye transcends Pop Art into Art Art. Easier just to show you, maybe. A great deal of the book is built upon the insanely complicated relationship between Clint Barton and Kate Bishop, who also carries a bow and the Hawkeye name. Here's a scene from issue # 13:

It's almost impossible to get at all the subtext buried in that little bit of elegance, but I'll try to unpack a bit of it.

Clint is a broken man with a good heart. He never actually means to do harm, but he can never be bothered to curb his impulses enough to avoid it. Particularly when it comes to women. He knows he ought not get involved with Kate, who is far too young for him. It feels sort of inevitable, though. He won't stop himself - that's his history, and he's still an emotional child.

As the physical adult and card-carrying Avenger, Clint is in the....I don't know, authoritative position? But here Kate is playing the part of wife, or maybe even mother. For most basic human interactions, (in this case they're preparing for a neighbor's funeral) Kate is actually in control.

Sort of. She plays the part of the young adult well..you can see her growing in that "fake it until you make it" way as the issues go by.. She's still a very young woman, though, working her way through confidence foibles and stumbling through a lot of bad decisions. Her pursuit of Clint being one of those bad decisions.

We'll blame Clint if and when that relationship does take an inappropriate turn, and we probably should. But Katie flirts as well. I remember a scene where Clint is packing boxes, and asks for tape. Katie hands him a Scotch tape dispenser - part of that was her being passive aggressive, but part of that was school girl flirting. Do you have a lot of comics in your stack that can build an indelible memory out of packing boxes? Do you have a lot of superhero comics doing that for you?

So there's Clint and Katie getting dressed for a funeral, figuring out how to love each other the best they can, taking turns pretending to be the adult of the situation, balancing their needs to rely on each other with their physical desires, wanting the best for each other while simultaneously waiting for the inevitable calamity.

That's not a quippy piece of pop art...Fraction routinely aims for Art Art, and he nails it in this book again and again and again. Depth. Subtext. Emotion.

There's enough emotion in that scene that Clint can't take it, and has to bail. "Great, now I got another thing to worry about I never worried about before", he says, tugging uncomfortably at his collar.

What he's actually saying is "You taking care of me feels too good, and I don't love myself enough to accept that, and I know this ends with me hurting you any way...so I'm going to skip right to it and say something to break the spell right now." So he does. And it works. He hurts her enough to cut the tension, she leaves in a huff, and he feels like crap.

And that's Hawkeye, the Ugly American 2013 Book of the Year. I can't believe Marvel publishes that comic book, and I can't believe it's a big seller, but kudos to us for recognizing that great stories don't necessarily have anything to do with Thanos trying to take over the universe. This is a special comic, and my greatest hope is that it frees up Marvel to allow creators to take more sophisticated chances.

And please don't misunderstand - I'm not going all froofy on you, here. Not every book has to be Hawkeye. I just like the idea of living in a world where we can rack Hawkeye in with Amazing X-Men and Marvel just trusts that we're capable of handling a variety of approaches.

Other Great Books In No Particular Order

Saga, Image
Another book very comfortable with subtext and sophistication, but dressed in the gaudiest of genre trappings. It's also a book very comfortable with uncomfortable things. Like the child sex trade. Or just regular sex. Or debating the value of "pulling the wagon" for the 99%.

To be honest, Saga is basically the best porn on the stands. The problem with most porn is that it gets so excited about being able to give you the sex that it forgets there are other things in the world, and so it comes off as obsessive and unbalanced. Saga is as dirty as life is, and that's pretty dirty, thank God!

Fiona Staples is a marvel, just in case you weren't aware. I could look at Alana all day long. Don't be surprised if this comic takes the top spot in 2014.

Nowhere Men, Image

This is such a weird little gem. Nowhere Men is supposedly about a world in which science is the "new rock-n-roll", and it does pay some attention to the ramifications of a world in which science is infected with celebrity. It's "Fab Four" scientists are by far the least interesting characters in the book, however. It's possible that the enigmatic Mr. Walker might buck that trend, but we never really see him "on camera", and the only things we know about him are what we learn from other people's perceptions.

It's also possible we never get to see Thomas Walker, and Stephenson just holds him as a legend and a MacGuffin. He's doing the same thing building up Peter Panic, who we've also yet to meet on the page. I'll say this for Nowhere Men - it implies a very large, very strange world. Eric Stephenson builds in a lot of magazine-style interviews and advertisements and such that are just spot-on, lots of fun, and really help you feel immersed.

What else to say without ruining it? I don't want to say much about the plot itself, best to just go and read without too many preconceptions. If you like science fiction with a dollop of horror, this is perfect. If you liked X-Files, yes, come on in! If you like reading creators that take chances telling big stories with big worlds, you should absolutely spend the pittance it will take to buy the first Nowhere Men TPB. Retail is $9.99, and you can certainly find it for less. I don't know exactly where this is going or whether it will pay off. I don't know if the ever-slowing production schedule is going to bog this into oblivion. I do know that the Nowhere Men comics that came out in 2013 were more interesting than 93.8% of what's out there.

Ballistic, Black Mask
This is another science fiction gem from something called Adam Egypt Mortimer and a guy you may have heard of named Darick Robertson. You probably haven't heard of Ballistic, though, largely because it came from Black Mask publishing. I bet your LCS just spaced it.

Ballistic is a delicious little imagination bomb that can't be stopped. A lot of comics writers get very precious with their ideas, as if they're only going to have about five in their whole life. So they dole out the good ones one per issue, or one per arc. Adam Egypt Mortimer trusts his Muse, because he lets a brain bomb rip about every other panel.

This comic looks great, and it's kinetic at a level rarely attempted, much less achieved. Pick up an issue, any issue, and tell me you aren't instantly infected by Ballistic's charms!

Afterlife With Archie
Can you even imagine how good this comic would have to be to crack my Best of 2013 list while shipping only two issues?

You'll never believe how strong a horror story this is until you pick it up and experience it. Whatever your feelings about the Archie universe might be...I'm telling you...do not discount this comic until you've had a chance to see it for yourself.

I'm awestruck at how adeptly Aguirre-Sacasa was able to integrate lame little Riverdale into a straight horror story, and the Francesco Francavilla art is to die for.






Harbinger
Harbinger has now solidified itself as the best of the Valiant Universe, in my opinion. Most of the Valiant titles are strong, so that's significant.

I don't hear many people talk about Josh Dysart as an ascendent talent. That's a mistake. Between his work on Unknown Soldier and now this, Dysart's work is just smarter and edgier than than the pack. Whatever Dysart puts his name on...that's a mandatory test-drive for me at this point.

What shines on Harbinger are the characters and the twists that recharge the plot. You do not know what's coming....trust me. You do not know what character is going to be driving the A plot at any given moment, because Dysart knows and loves them all so much, there's no choice but to take turns. Toyo Harada is now one of the more interesting characters in the medium, as well.


Avengers Academy was a standout surprise treat this year. Superior Spider-Man is so, so good...why can't they sell that for $2.99? I would ride horses through the streets with a trumpet announcing to the world how good that book was if they just charged a reasonable rate.

East of West has supplanted Manhattan Projects as my go-to Hickman fix. That thing is raw ambition. It suffers for its lack of a rooting interest, but the assholes are certainly interesting, and the scale of that book defines epic.

Snyder and Capullo's Batman is prime cut, and never fails to entertain. When this generation remembers Batman and his supporting cast, it will be Snyder's Batman they remember. The only other DC book that stands out in my mind was Injustice: Gods Among Us. When creators are allowed to do what they want with the toys, good things happen. Tom Taylor did some remarkably fun things with those DC toys.

That's my very brief take on the best of 2013 - which books were your favorites?

Bloated Halloween part 3 - Afterlife With Archie!

Afterlife With Archie # 1
Script: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Art: Francesco Francavilla

Just a quick heads up...I'm going to spoil the crap out of everything, so if that's a problem, stop reading this and then sprint to your nearest LCS to grab a copy of this book.

It is the greatest of all understatements to say that I had high expectations for this comic. A good story can be crushed by those kind of lofty demands. Perhaps my review is complete when I tell you that the first issue of Afterlife With Archie satisfied all of my unfair preconceptions about what it could and should be, and exceeded most of them.

This is a really, really, really good comic book, and a nearly perfect horror comic.

I talked about this comic for a bit on the latest installment of Chronic Insomnia, and I placed most of the credit for AWA's success with Francesco Francavilla. My thinking has crystallized a bit more in the few days I've had to sit and ponder.....and while I still believe that Francavilla's efforts are the lynchpin, I shorted Aguirre-Sacasa just a little, and I mean to rectify that here.

The primary obstacle to Afterlife With Archie is the fact that every fiber of Riverdale's being strains against darkness and horror. Neither the characters, nor the tone, nor the history of the concept want anything to do with Somber Town or Disturbing City.

So....how do you do it? How do you build a fort of dread out of cheesy smiles? How do you get a modern audience to invest in your world when there's a guy with a crown on his head in the scene? A yeomen stands no chance of crafting a structure that will stand up to the audience's disbelief, and a master craftsmen would look at the materials, furrow their stately brow and pass, wouldn't they?

But if you had to do it with those tools - what's your plan?

Well, here's what Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa did: Firstly, he made the incredibly brave/bizarre decision to play it straight, and hew closely to the zombie classics. It's hard to overstate the balls it takes to attempt something like that. If you were worried about the book treating the material seriously - put those worries to bed.

This is a pure horror book. It's dark, it's apocalyptic, there are moments of Kafka/Cronenberg level body horror. The comic begins building dread with the first page and never lets you off the hook for a moment. There is no ironic winking to the audience, self-deprecation, or "aw shucks" smarminess to rescue you from the sense that things are going terribly, terribly wrong and you're not sure you want to see how wrong but goddamnit you have to turn the page to watch it happen any way. If you like George Romero, you'll love this comic.

So what tools does Aguirre-Sacasa have to use? Well, trouble in Riverdale often begins with its resident jerk and bad seed, Reggie. In this case, the end of the world begins with Reggie's ill-advised decision to drive home after a few too many drinks.

His impaired driving takes him on a collision course with Jughead's lovable pooch, Hot Dog. And he dies.

Uh-oh.

In order to get zombies, you're basically stuck with two options - science or magic. Well, the Archie house has licensed Sabrina the Teenage Witch. So Jughead takes Hot Dog over to Melissa Joan Hart's house to see if there's anything to be done. It makes sense. Not logically, of course. You've seen Pet Cemetary, you know how this works. But grieving hearts don't engage in high-level thinking, they only know the hurt of loss.

The witches examine Hot Dog and declare him a lost cause. Had he still been breathing, they could have coaxed more life into him. But once a creature has passed into death...only necromancy brings them back, and that is strictly verboten. For good reason.

Sabrina is a good friend, though, and can't bear to see her friend in such pain, and do you see where this is going? Of course you do, because you've seen this story before. If you want to assign five demerits to Sacasa for borrowing too much and innovating too little, I will understand. I forgive it in this case because it makes so much sense, both in terms of plot and character. I believe these people might do these things in those situations.

Sabrina grabs her Necronomicon and tells Jughead to grab a shovel. They bury Hot Dog, Sabrina chants the incantations....and then comes another wave of building suspense. The comic is constantly reminding you that you have X hours before the end of the world begins. Hot Dog comes back, but he isn't quite right. He bites Jughead. Then Jughead isn't quite right.

When you think about it, it absolutely had to be Jughead. Who else but the character defined by his depraved, gluttonous eating? This is what I'm talking about when I say that I underestimated Aguirre-Sacasa's input. Part of the reason why the book is so air-tight is because he found a way to take those seemingly impossible ingredients and create a savory dish without cheating. That's the character: grotesque eating! Sacasa found a real zombie story in the available materials, without changing or denying any of them.

Once the stage is set, he ratchets up the tension. Sabrina's infraction is instantly discovered. This isn't Fantasia, where the apprentice gets swatted on the behind with a broom for his hijinx. Sabrina's elders remove her offending mouth and then park her into another dimension for a year to cool out for a bit! That might be the moment where I completely submitted and said "Holy shit, this is for real!"

It's all for real, and it all feels "real" because Francesco Francavilla makes you believe it with his incredible art. I'm not sure what else to say about it other than to declare the obvious - looking at these pages is like walking into a classic horror film.

The angles, the lighting, the coloring...I don't know what it is. I don't have those goods in my analytical tool box. The lines aren't strictly evocative of anything I can point to. It doesn't photocopy Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead. It doesn't precisely look like those things, but it indisputably makes me feel like I felt while watching those things.

Aguirre-Sacasa brings a kind of poetic sense to the story, but it's Francavilla who sells the authenticity of the horror. This is Eisner-worthy stuff. No, I'm not even close to kidding about that.

Bottom line here is that if you have any interest in horror at all, this is a MUST buy. If you have no interest in horror, this comic is so good it might just swing you over and is a MUST buy. It's $2.99, people, you can feel good experimenting and rewarding the effort.

It even feels like a real comic when you hold it in your hand, because the cover stock is thicker than most anything published these days and has a little "grit" to it. Kudos to the folks at Archie for going all out and paying attention to even the production value.

It's even interesting in a Market Spotlight kind of way. AWA is a direct-market only book, they don't want kids at the grocery stores grabbing this off the shelves and scarring their souls for life. So these might be the scarcest Archie comics in well, ever.

In the back matter, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa tells the origin story of the comic, and cites the zombie variant to Life With Archie # 23 as the inspiration. That makes it an instant classic, and if you should find one at your LCS, I would grab that with gusto. And then sell it to me. I desperately want one of those!

What this reminds me of, oddly enough, is a speech that Alfred gives to Bruce in Batman # 24. (side note: Batman # 24 is a piece de resistance, tour de force, instant classic, and slap any other superlatives you care to on it because it deserves them all) He tells Bruce that he needn't worry about his identity being discovered because deep down, people want to believe that something eternal like The Batman can exist. Now, if you're a fraud, people will reject that and delight in tearing you down. But if you have the skill to sell it, people will delight in submitting to the show.

Francesco Francavilla will have you a believer. Go get this comic.

Ugly American: Attack of the 50 Foot Froofy Comic….and Other Tales of Horror!

Froofy comics are just not my thing. I suppose I should define “froofy”, as not everybody has listened to Chronic Insomnia, and therefore can’t properly translate Ugly Americanese.

To be froofy is to engage in haughty pretense, false airs, and an undeserved sense of superiority. You know the kind, because they’re absolutely everywhere. Nobody actually liked Echo & the Bunnymen, OK? A lot of people like the idea of being the kind of person that liked Echo & the Bunnymen. A lot of people were desperate for you to believe that they liked Echo & the Bunnymen, so they could prove how cool they were. Some people pretended to like Echo & the Bunnymen so they could get in the pants of the chick in The Cure t-shirt
with way too much eye makeup. That I understand.

But mostly people actually liked Duran Duran and just didn’t want to admit it.

In the comics medium, froofery is alive, well, and rampant. If you want to see what it looks like, just go ahead and observe pretty much anything published by Fantagraphics, and the people that read them. Of course the absolute pinnacle of froofosity is Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library. Now, a lot of different people claim that Acme is quality, so I’m not specifically saying that it isn’t. I’m told that you’ll probably want to kill yourself after reading anything by Ware, and the Ugly American is fully behind that concept.

I’ve read bits and pieces of Acme Novelty…and what I saw just wasn’t all that fantastic. Give me any issue of Secret Six instead, please. If Acme is an indictment of everything supposedly broken with the oppressive superhero genre, I sincerely hope the comics industry stays broken. But it isn’t even the comics themselves, really. It’s the fetid stench of attitude wafting off the clique that swears by them.

If you want to get a flavor of that attitude, I recommend stuffing an open pack of bologna under your friend’s car seat and then checking back with his or her vehicle in about a week. To get the full effect, your friend’s vehicle should be parked in a lot of direct sunlight in a scorching hot environment. That’s the froofy attitude in olfactory form. If you want it in audio, go catch an episode of the Inkstuds. Warning: the Ugly American recommends you have one of those airline vomit bags handy in case you try either.

My attitude regarding Froofy comics is equivalent to my attitude toward unscheduled butt sex. I’m not into it at all, generally. But every now and again you have to pull a Risky Business and say “what the fuck?” You get it over with, you deal with it, and then you don’t speak of it again outside of the safety bubble of your therapist.

And that’s how I approached Adrian Tomine and the latest issue of Optic Nerve, a paragon of froofervescence if ever there were.


Optic Nerve # 13 – Drawn & Quarterly
Scripts: Adrian Tomine
Art: Adrian Tomine

The first thing that will grab your attention is the cover, which is cut so that it appears to be missing 40% of its width. I’m sure that’s clever on some planet. Tomine seems to have pulled the same trick for the cover of Optic Nerve # 12, so that might be his new thing. Well, it’s sort of new. Looks like the last issue of Optic Nerve shipped in late 2007. He must have been busy or something, because Nate Simpson thinks that’s slow.

The cover mostly obscures a one page joke. (I think it’s intended to be funny?) Apparently Tomine is something of a Luddite, pining for the days of yesteryear without Facebook, tweeting, and Cintiqs. I sympathize with that bit, actually. I have successfully avoided Twitter, and have said my final farewell to Facebook….but it got me for a bit. I still spend too much time staring at my phone, and I recognize it as a problem. Generation FW stands no chance. So I get it, but the bit comes off more smug than endearing. I hope you’re all sitting down for that bombshell.

The issue is comprised of two stories. The first is an exceptionally powerful story titled “Go Owls”. The best way to read that story is to do like I did, with no framework to guide your expectations. I think the tale works no matter what, but you will certainly get a richer experience if you just fall down the rabbit hole without preparing yourself. What I suggest is that you stop reading this review right here and don’t come back to it until you’ve had a chance to get properly bush-whacked by “Go Owls”. If you’re going to read that story, I suggest you skip ahead in this column to the lovely picture of undead Archie characters by Andrew Pepoy.

So…. now that I’ve warned folks not to get spoiled, is everybody else ready?

Good.

One of the most perplexing things in life is watching otherwise intelligent, capable women chase abusive relationships, and then compound the problem by sticking with them. Why do people date losers who hit them? What kind of sorcery chains a person to a situation that is obviously dysfunctional?

“Go Owls” is the most authentic and most chilling exploration of that concept I’ve ever seen. Part of the reason it works so well is that the seeds of doom are planted so subtly in the reader’s mind, and this mirrors the problems that the abuse victim has.

The tale begins when a woman who remains nameless meets a dead beat named Barry
at some kind of a 12-step event. She’s in need of some mentoring, and Barry has some charm, and of course that’s the problem. He’s a charming loser, almost in equal doses. At least at first.

Having no preconceptions, it took me some time to find my footing in the story. Is this a story about addiction? Is this a “love conquers all” romance? Is this an examination of slacker downfall? What the hell is happening?

What’s happening to the reader is the same thing happening to the woman – this mildly charismatic degenerate is pulling you closer and closer to the black hole, and by the time you figure out the stakes involved it’s almost impossible to pull out.

Go Owls is an incredibly dark mind-jammer that lands so hard because it feels so much like life. There is a monster there, yes. But the monster also offers hope, and guilt, and humor, and affection, and weed in irregular cycles. Your standard after-school special or Lifetime Channel movie disguises the real power of the monster, because they usually make him a moustache twirler that swindles the woman with lies.

That situation does happen, of course. This story is more nuanced, and I think more true to life. Tomine paces the developing monster perfectly, and peppers the tale with genuine human moments - funny moments that demonstrate why it can be difficult to cut the monster loose. Those scenes don’t diminish Barry’s sins. They make for a far more powerful cautionary tale, though.

The ending is…problematic, but not a deal-breaker. I give Tomine points for staying outside the box. None of “Go Owls” plays to expectations. It felt a little cheap to me, because it was the first item introduced in the story that didn’t feel real. If such scenarios actually exist in the realm of law enforcement, I might feel differently about it.

Again, not a deal-breaker. “Go Owls” is a story worth your time. Is it worth the $5.95 admission price? Tough to say. Maybe. It doesn’t help that the last 10-11 pages are some kind of not-story translated from some Japanese source. I don’t even know how to categorize it other than “waste of time and effort”. Standing next to Owls, this collection of limp memories about waiting in airports and driving to diners feels exceptionally hollow. Not good.

So that was my dalliance at the Hotel Froof. I survived it fairly intact, and was actually impressed with the main feature. Still not sure it was worth $6, and still not sure if I feel tainted by it or not.

My strong impulse is to send this thing to CGC and get it graded. You know that would drive Froofites absolutely bananas. Someday I’m going to show Adrian Tomine my CGC 9.8 copy of Optic Nerve # 13 and sell it to somebody for $150 right in front of him, strictly for vengeance. Oh, sweet justice!


Afterlife With Archie

I wanted to talk briefly about Afterlife With Archie, because I think it’s an interesting beast that is flying a bit under the radar.

Just in time for October and Halloween, Archie comics is going to section off one of their titles into the direct market only and flood Riverdale with the walking dead. I know, I know, it sounds kinda lame, and way too late to the zombie ball, and all of that stuff.

Stick with me, though.

This is not a half-assed stunt or a campy throw-away. This is not Archie Meets the Punisher. This is an ongoing series, or at least as ongoing as anything is. If Uncanny X-men has to re-boot every other year, I don’t know how long this is really going to last. Point is, they are planning on publishing it as long as people will buy it.

There are some quality people handling the creative chores, too. Scripts are by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. No, he’s not Alan Moore. But he’s not chopped liver, and he’s an industry vet. His work on Nightcrawler a few years back tells me that he’s not a bad fit. Pencils are by Francesco Fracavilla, and that is phenomenal news! He’s perfect, absolutely perfect.

The thing that generates the most interest from my end is the fact that they are playing the horror straight. Archie makes a very nice living selling to kids in the retail market at grocery stores and such. Afterlife with Archie is not that kind of book. Apparently, Sabrina the Teenage Witch
is going to have a spell go sideways, and then these kids are going to start eating each other! They don’t want that in the hands of kids, and they aren’t distributing it to the retail chains. Comic book stores in the direct market only!

In just about every obvious way, this feels wrong. Why in the world would anybody try and shove raw horror into plastic, ever-bright Riverdale? Who could take any of this seriously when there’s a dude with a goddamn crown on his head involved?

The whole concept plays so aggressively against type I just can’t help but be fascinated. It might end up being a total train wreck. If so, Afterlife with Archie still has my blessing. I’m of the mind that I’d rather see an adventurous flop than a re-tread success. And part of me thinks they might actually pull this off, and it makes for the most entertaining read you never knew you wanted.

And hey, for you Market Spotlight fans out there – these might be the scarcest Archie comics ever. I can definitely see some hard-core niche appeal from the Archie crowd and the horror crowd. If you’re at all interested, final order cutoff hasn’t elapsed for Afterlife with Archie # 1. Your local shop can still order you some if you ask. I would look into it, because I predict the book is massively under-ordered and sells out quickly.