Picking up where the first volume left off, Howard finds out the banished King Abdul has a new ally. Abdul is coming after Howard and the book Howard has been tasked to guard. Howard’s adventures have him teaming up with his not-as-crazy-as you-thought father and a remarkably well-armed local policeman.

Howard Lovecraft
and the Undersea Kingdom

I asked my nephew Christopher (now 10) to help me in reviewing this book, since he enjoyed the first volume. Christopher really enjoyed this book and read it quickly. He said it was a good adventure story with major twists and turns. He didn’t find the book scary at all. In fact, he thought was a good blend of action and humor. He found the policeman and his cat particularly funny.

Christopher admired Howard’s bravery and liked him as a character. However, Christopher didn’t want to be friends with Howard because he is surrounded by people Christopher hopes to never meet.

I asked about the art. Christopher thought the art was good and easy to follow. He liked the colors used in the book. They let the reader know that the book could be creepy or eerie at times. He especially liked the change of art style when Howard is given a vision of Azathoth. It really caught his attention.

This was the first chance I had to have Christopher read a comic book on the iPad. For the most part, it was a positive experience, but it wasn’t impressive enough to get him to give up physical books. The boy is a true bibliophile in the making. For him, comics on the iPad meant other kids couldn’t bend or mark on pages. He didn’t like how carefully you have to hold the device to keep the display in portrait mode.

For myself, I also enjoyed the book and found it a very quick read. Brown has done a solid job of crafting his own all-ages verison of the Lovecraft universe. Honestly, I didn’t imagine you could do that. I’m happy that kids like my nephew will get some exposure to H.P. Lovecraft and that this series could encourage them to check out Lovecraft’s own writings one day.

I welcomed the change of artists. Boatwright is a better draftsman, and Howard now has a proper character design. Thankfully, the use of watercolor tones was retained, since it’s one of the aspects of the art I liked from the first volume. There’s a lot of use of green in this book, and Christopher is right, it does an excellent job setting the proper mood.

Both Christopher and I recommend this book to kids who enjoy a good action-adventure story. It’s been two years since the first volume appeared. I’d like to see another volume come out next year. A volume every other year will only hurt the series. It’s a lot to ask of adults to wait that long, never mind kids. Lovecraft fans should do like I did and order two copies: one to keep and one to pass on to a child reader or to give to your local library.

Arcana has a five-page preview for the book on their website. You can preorder the book through Diamond using the item code JAN12 0814 or order through Amazon. (An advance PDF review copy was provided by the publisher.)

written by Dave Dwonch; art by Daniel Logan
Action Lab Entertainment, $7

Everyone’s had the thought at one point or another: what if I could go back and make things work out better? In this short graphic novel, three friends, together since high school, create a time machine and return to the summer of 1987, when their lives still stretched in front instead of behind them. One of them, Darren, is obsessed with what might have been if he’d ever spoken to the girl he had a crush on. The settled married guy wishes he’d played around a little more. The third, the self-declared ladies’ man, regrets not sleeping with a classmate’s mom.

Basically, this is Hot Tub Time Machine done right. The guys are authentically crude, at times, but the emphasis here isn’t on stupid barrel-bottom jokes; instead, it’s about how we become the people we are. What we want, and whether it’s sensible and what it does to us.

The characters are nicely expressive, with emphasis on their feelings and reactions. Although the figures can be a tad inconsistent, Logan has an excellent grasp of body language. He also handles the young/old versions well in their resemblances.

There were only a small number of books, 500, printed, but you can get it digitally for half the print price.

One Model Nation

One Model Nation

written by Courtney Taylor-Taylor; art by Jim Rugg
Titan Books, $24.95

The incoherent tale of a German band caught up in politics in the 1970s by someone who really wanted to be there. (Which makes this an interesting book to read right after Back in the Day.) I presume this would make a lot more sense to those who already know the stories and people of the era. I couldn’t have figured out what was going on without the introduction, explaining the premise. The story is flat and boring, so much so I couldn’t finish it.

I would have rather read the book about how this graphic novel came to be, with Mike Allred (who helped this get made and contributed some drawings of David Bowie, a high point of the book) gushing over the experience of meeting Taylor-Taylor, whose Dandy Warhols band is one of his favorites. There’s something strange about how they allude to this being a republishing (it previously came out from Image) without going into any details, even with extras related to the previous version. Perhaps they needed it back in print to sell to CTT fans; that’s the best audience for this book.

The Adventures of the 19XX

The Adventures of the 19XX

by Paul Roman Martinez
The19xx.com, $17.95

I want to call this a steampunk historical webcomic, but since it’s post-1900, I think the preferred term is “dieselpunk”. Anyway, this first collection is titled “Rise of the Black Faun”. There’s a select group of scientists and explorers, formed post-WW I, who know that another Great War is coming and are trying to make sure the Good Guys win by hunting down mysterious inventions and magical relics. A 15-year-old boy is new to the group, and he promptly finds himself in the middle of the action as he meets everyone.

The author’s active, adventure-based nostalgia for the time period shines through, even though the writing is purely functional, without much style beyond informing the reader of the basics. The art is similarly practical, getting the job done. The only time a particular visual image impressed me was the occasional full-page splash, although the costumes and settings were fun in their detail. Panel-to-panel flow sometimes feels stiff and choppy, but that’s not unexpected in a first-time project.

I love the 30s without needing to jazz up the period with mystically powered spheres or other artifacts, but those who wish there were more Indiana Jones stories might want to start following the webcomic.

The Next Day

The Next Day

written by Paul Peterson and Jason Gilmore; art by John Porcellino
Pop Sandbox, $16.95

This spare, black-and-white book is based on interviews with four people who have attempted suicide. The recollections of what led up to it are interspersed, with each page bearing one of the four names in the bottom corner to allow the reader to keep the stories straight. I found the structure distracting. I believe the writers want us to see the similarities among the stories of depression, molestation, and substance abuse, but it was difficult to remember which trauma went with which speaker when you’re only reading a page of their story at a time.

Porcellino’s extremely simple art keeps the focus on the text — this is a book that can be read through the captions only, with the minimal images reinforcing the narration in the subjects’ own voices. It comes very close to not needing to be a comic, but Porcellino’s use of symbolism, such as word balloons filled with hearts and musical notes to show the happy people, enhances the text in a subtle way.

I was surprised at how downbeat it was. Given the title, I expected more focus on what happened after they survived, but the majority of the book is what led up to the decision to commit suicide, with relatively little information on the aftermath. It’s a difficult topic, and I applaud the creators taking it on. I can imagine finding this book may help others know they’re not alone. However, as an artistic creation, I thought the book was flawed, although the intentions are excellent. There’s an interactive documentary online, as well as a book preview.

Hidden

by Mirranda Burton
Black Pepper Publishing, $20

One of a number of graphic memoirs inspired by the success of Persepolis, but I appreciated the confident blacks on display in the solid art. Burton teaches art to intellectually disabled adults in Australia, and the stories here deal with how it is to work with people who don’t operate the way others do. “Memoir” is somewhat incorrect, since we learn nothing about Burton herself, why she came to this job, or her life outside it.

The first character introduced, Eddie, speaks only in sounds, but his obvious care for others in the face of his own obsessions is touching. Eddie’s verbal tic is illustrated through pencil scratchings in his word balloons, a visual technique that sums him up elegantly. Steve is annoying in many ways, his focus on illustrating the weather report only a small one. The autistic Julie is obsessed by rock’n'roll and literally hides behind her art. It’s not all discouraging, though. One patient, Kate, shows improvement through diet changes and art therapy. Underlying all these glimpses into moments in patients’ lives is a fear of encroaching budget cuts.

If you liked Psychiatric Tales and wanted more, this would be a good next choice.

Rise: The Story of the Egyptian Revolution as Written Shortly Before It Began

Rise

by Tarek Shahin
Self-Published, $12.99

The “Al Khan” comic strip ran daily in The Daily News Egypt from 2008-2010. This book collects those comics, and like most daily strips, each one ends with a joke punchline. I found that structure a little off-putting in this collection, with its tie-in to last year’s pro-democracy protests. When people died to bring about political change, it’s weird reading gags about the situation — although that’s also one of the contradictions of humanity, that we need a light-hearted moment to make such nation-changing events more bearable.

The cartooning is good, although many of the references will pass by the American reader. Other strips, those that involve the personal lives of the various journalist characters, will seem more universal. I found those relating to the idea of multiple wives particularly foreign and particularly eye-opening. Many of the strips tackle the roles of women, which I was most interested in.

Rise is an excellent example of international comic-making and how examples of the medium can reflect world events. Anyone interested in modern Muslim culture should check it out.

(Review copies were provided for many of the above.)

Tina’s Mouth

I didn’t mind reading it, although it will clearly resonate much more with an audience that’s 1) closer in age to its protagonist and 2) less familiar with the comics it’s being compared to. The marketing department keeps mentioning Persepolis. I understand why, I think — autobiographies (or those that seem like they could be) are the most successful comic genre in the mainstream book market, and that book was an eye-opener for a lot of people in the industry as well as a sales success. As another story of a non-white teen girl growing up, I suppose Tina’s Mouth does have SOMEthing in common with Marjane Satrapi’s better-known work, but my concern is that the tone is so very different. Tina’s story is set in Southern California, where the big struggle is getting a role in the school play; Persepolis was about surviving a repressive political culture that might kill you for deviating from the norm. A better comparison for Tina’s Mouth would be Sweet Valley High in comic form. Someone who picks this up looking for another Persepolis will be sorely disappointed, and they likely won’t see the charms of Tina’s Mouth taken on its own terms.

While I’m criticizing the marketing instead of engaging with the book itself, I also don’t care for the tendency to label works of this type as “by (writer); illustrated by (artist)”, as though the roles were grossly unequal in contribution. Unless Keshni Kashyap knew enough about comics to dictate what all the images would be and how they were placed — and I don’t believe that, given that this is her first graphic novel; she’s previously been a filmmaker — then the work should be credited as co-authors to acknowledge the partnership of creation.

So, back to the content of the book. As an assignment in her Honors English course in existential philosophy, Tina begins keeping a diary. She lives in California and goes to a private school, so you can imagine that she doesn’t have many struggles, although she’s still trying to figure out which groups she wants to be part of in a clique-ridden world while worrying about when she’ll get her first kiss. Meanwhile, her former best friend is more interested in chasing boys and being a clotheshorse. As we follow Tina through the semester, she gets to know new people and tries new experiences.

That was one of my favorite things about the book. Its messages, to try new things, to find yourself, to engage with your family without being defined by them, are all encouraging and supportive. This is the kind of story teen girls can learn from while enjoying Tina’s drama and accomplishments.

The line drawings by Mari Araki are both accomplished and welcoming in their simple style. At times, her portraits of Tina reminded me of paper dolls, which suited the story, as Tina tried on different roles. What I liked best about the book was the way its non-white heroine was handled. Her ethnicity is a significant part of her life but not the sole defining factor. This would be a great book for a school setting to encourage understanding of diverse viewpoints and the similarity of experience across cultural barriers. (The publisher provided a review copy.)

Miss Annie: Freedom!

There’s a built-in audience for cat comics, which makes it surprising that there aren’t more of them. If you’ve finished with the latest Chi’s Sweet Home and are looking for more, you’ll want to check out Freedom!. Coming this spring, this is the first in an intended series of Miss Annie books.

Miss Annie belongs to a couple, one a writer, the other an editor, who have a daughter, Sarah. Not much happens in this slim book — the cat walks around her house, telling us what belongs to whom, attacks a flower bouquet, and so on — but it’s refreshing and relaxing to enjoy this kind of virtual pet. In later chapters, she befriends a mouse and ventures outside for the first time. (Judging by Binky the Space Cat, this is a common feline desire.)

The creators are French, so instead of a manga style, Freedom! has a European flavor, with a lovely autumnal palette of browns, greens, and golds. (Colors are by Robin Doo.) The cat’s unique pattern of coloring, with her half-white face, catches the reader’s eye and keeps her at the focus of attention. I was particularly tickled when they’d show her stretching her neck, as seen here:

There’s some subtle humor in how Miss Annie interprets her owners’ lives, similar to the alternate take on the adult world shown in Sugar and Spike, but most of the appeal is simply spending time with this curious cat, seeing what she does and what interests her. (The publisher provided a digital review copy.)

Finder: Voice

In an echo back to the original Finder: Sin-Eater, Finder: Voice revisits one of the cross-breed daughters from that story. Rachel resembles her mother, a Llaverac, one of a clan known for its androgynous beauties. As the story opens, she is competing to validate her full membership in the clan. However, one of the requirements is that she presents her inherited ring, which has been stolen from her in a mugging. As she attempts to find the mysterious Jaeger, her mother’s ex-lover, to get his help finding the lost heirloom, she wanders through various levels of the city and its society.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to have read any of the previous volumes to enjoy this thought-provoking story, although if you have, some mysteries from those earlier books will become clearer here. Carla’s humor is as sharp as ever, with the way the “cat show”, as outsiders refer to the clan parade, satirizes expectations of beauty and conformity. Among other things (many other things), Finder: Voice looks at what appearance means and the effects it has. More, it explores what it means to belong.

Weird as this society could be, with its rules and conventions, I found myself worrying for Rachel, who only wants to gain some acceptance and security for her family the sole way she can. As kids of parents from different tribes, their lives have been hard, although their mother has tried her best to protect them from it. (And heck, having explicit rules might be easier than the unspoken ones we end up living under.)

As always, Carla’s creations make up a complex, fascinating world, between the bits she reveals in throwaway dialogue and her fully realized portraits of the cast members. She provides copious and insightful notes in the back of the book, revealing more of her intent, filling in background, pointing out details the reader likely missed, and acknowledging influences. I’m always left breathless by Finder books because of the immensity of what we aren’t shown and the skill of the story we do get.

Matthew J. Brady analyzes some of the art from this volume, while Greg McElhatton praises the book in more depth. The book’s website is FinderComics.com, or visit Carla Speed McNeil’s site.

Hark! A Vagrant

I am impressed, though, that something so distinctively unique has caught on so widely. If you’d told me that a collection of comic strips based on literature and history, drawn in a pen-and-ink style more reminiscent of mid-last-century editorial cartooning than other popular webcomics, would be one of the hottest books of the year, both popularly and critically, I never would have believed you. But it is, and congratulations to Beaton for so wonderfully doing her own thing. Not only is Hark! A Vagrant an entertaining read, it’s also an excellent example of how much the comic industry has changed and how varied the paths to success are these days.

Perhaps that’s a bit much to put on a volume of hilarious popular culture and history mashups. After all, this is a book where the Bronte sisters scope out brooding jerk dudes and suffragettes are re-envisioned through the lens of Sex and the City and Watson complains about being treated as comic relief to Holmes. Beaton’s modern perspective puts Macbeth and Edgar Allan Poe and Andrew Jackson and Jane Eyre and romance in general in fresh new light that also makes many of these well-known elements more memorable. There’s also an angry Wonder Woman and a crazy Aquaman and a sexy Batman and an insane Nancy Drew, in case you want some more recent allusions and re-interpretations.

Best of all are the author’s comments under many of the comics. When they’re not telling us more about the comic’s inspirations, they’re making more jokes. Beaton’s style is rough and immediate, the kind where you think, “oh, I could do that” until you actually sit down and try, then you recognize how much imagination and practice it takes. The comments and art combined make this book feel like a goofy bull session with a very creative friend. There’s even an index in case you need to find the section on King Lear quickly next time you need to brush up on your Shakespeare.

Page by Paige

Paige has moved with her parents to New York City from Charlottesville, Virginia, and she’s feeling lonely and unsure of herself. She misses her friends and a more natural setting and feels she can’t be truly herself in this new situation. She even sometimes wonders who her true self is. However, inspired by her painter grandmother, she’s determined to figure things out through making art.

She also makes some new friends and sets out on a program of self-improvement, including beginning to share her art and learning to cope with others’ reactions to it. Unlike many other teen stories of this type, her concerns aren’t about finding the latest fashion or getting a makeover — instead, she wants to learn to ask for help and open up to people, admirable qualities that make her a better person, not someone who better fits in.

While still a true comic, this book has some of the most creative artistic layouts I’ve ever seen. But they’re not there just to be attractive, although they are, and they’re not sacrificing readability for design. They’re immediately understandable metaphors and expressions of her feelings and imagination and secret self. For example, Paige draws a two-headed version of herself, with the outer face calm while the inward-facing mouth screams. Everyone’s felt that way sometimes, as though they couldn’t let out their frustration. Or there’s one of my favorite panels, the one where Paige, sitting surrounded by photographs and missing the home she left, says to herself, “I hate how all my friends now live in picture frames.”

Not only is this a story many teens (or others facing life changes) will be able to relate to, it’s also a pretty good guidebook for developing creativity. Each chapter is structured as one of Paige’s rules for her sketchbook, such as “No more excuses! … draw a few pages each week.” or “Live a LOT to get better material. Let yourself feel everything.” or (one I particularly needed) “Let yourself FAIL. Don’t take it all so personally.”

Laura Lee Gulledge is very talented, imaginative in her observations, and skilled at showing them to us. Her work is both very personal and yet universal in appeal. While reading, I found myself seeing the world in a different way. By showing us Paige’s story of the virtues of creation, I learned how to think about my circumstances in new ways — and that’s the best accomplishment possible for an artistic work.

Visit the book’s website for more information.

The Sugar and Spike Archives
Volume 1

Bill Schelly’s introduction nicely sums up high points of Mayer’s career and the genesis of the series. The kids were based on watching real babies, which is why their behavior seems so realistic, even though their world is so fantastic. They don’t understand the phone, calling it a “yak-yak box”, but they can figure out how to get the “angry lady” (operator) inside.

Their observations can be quite advanced, as when they psych out their parents’ motivations and how to avoid getting their attention so they can continue their schemes, like destroying the basement workshop. Or when their parents take them to the department store, they think getting lost will get them the toys they want.

One tale is particularly cute, when the babies discover they can talk to other babies, including animals. In this case, it’s a baby lobster, and the parents wind up puzzled how Sugar and Spike learned lobsters come from the water. Another awww-inducing story is the one where they wake up in the middle of the night and wind up recreating a typical day.

I’d only ever been able to read bits and pieces of this series before, so I had missed meeting Uncle Charley, a grown-up who gets kids much better than others of his age. I also hadn’t seen him standing in the corner along with Sugar and Spike when yet another play session goes wrong. Throughout this book, the kids face off with the vacuum cleaner and beach waves and monster nantys and mirrors and police officers. Some of the elements are reflective of the decade, the 1950s, when the stories were written (most obviously the gender roles), but much of the behavior is universal.

Also included are the many “pint size pin-ups” pages, where readers sent in outfits for the kids that are drawn as paper dolls. The first ten issues of Sugar and Spike are reprinted here, and although I wish they’d been made available more affordably (in a color paperback, not a $60 hardcover), reading them simply makes me happy. There are almost 90 more issues to collect, and I so very much hope this series continues so I may go on reading these happy-making comics. In the meantime, whenever I want to smile, I’ll just think “glx sptzl blx”.

Nelson

It’s a wonderful glimpse of the wide range of talent working in the UK today. I was eager to see work by my known favorites, such as Andi Watson, Ellen Lindner, Roger Langridge, Woodrow Phoenix, and Posy Simmonds, but I didn’t realize how many new (to me) creators I’d discover as well, including editor Rob Davis, Sarah McIntyre, Sean Longcroft, Rian Hughes, Kate Brown, Adam Cadwell, Garen Ewing, and Laura Howell. The biographies section, with more information on the artists and their work, is thus appreciated.

I was amazed to see how much depth was found in what could have been just a star-studded game. The material isn’t superficial. We see Nelson’s parents cope with the death of another child, try to manage the wife’s mother’s racism (complicated by the husband’s friendship with a black co-worker), the move to the suburbs to raise the children, fears of nuclear war, and political changes affecting employment.

More, it’s a touching portrait of a universal life, from how parents hope the world for their baby to the challenge and wonder of raising an imaginative child to having to make choices about the future while not feeling ready. There are overheated vacations and changing fashions and teenage pranks, plus lots of adolescent rebellion and sibling rivalry as Nelson struggles through art school and pursuing creative work.

The book rewards your attention, especially since the characters can be drawn differently in different styles. I was left thinking about both what Nelson and I had in common and how different we are (especially given the cultural and political differences between the US and the UK).

If you buy directly from publisher Blank Slate, they are donating all profits to Shelter, a housing and homelessness charity. If nothing else, that link will give you the full list of contributors. (The publisher provided a digital review copy.)

The first in a new series of books collecting the Donald Duck comic book stories of Carl Barks, “The Good Duck Artist”. Barks is thought by many to be not only one of the greatest writer/artists to work on the Disney Ducks, but also one of the greatest comic book storytellers of all time.

The book series itself, called The Carl Barks Library (although this designation does not prominently appear anywhere in the actual book), requires a bit of explanation. Each volume collects a loosely defined time period (generally a year or two), reprinting all of the Barks material of that era. Lost in the Andes focuses on the Donald Duck stories published from late 1948 through mid-1949. This year was a key period of Barks’ development on the series, featuring some of the earliest appearances of both Uncle Scrooge and Donald’s rival Gladstone Gander, so we can see the development of those two key characters.

Walt Disney’s Donald Duck:
Lost in the Andes

As point of reference, here are some key dates in Barks’ duck timeline:

Barks’ first major artwork on Donald Duck: “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold”, published as Dell Four Color #9, cover date October 1942. Barks illustrated half of this 64-page story (the other half is by Jack Hanna), and the story is written by Bob Karp.

First Barks solo Donald story: “The Victory Garden” (10 pages), published in Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories #15, cover date April 1943. Barks provides full artwork, and this is also credited as his first duck script (although this was a rewrite of another author’s original story).

First Uncle Scrooge story: “Christmas on Bear Mountain”, published in Dell Four Color #178, cover date December 1947. Scrooge appears in a 20-page Donald Duck story, written and drawn by Barks.

First Gladstone Gander story: “Wintertime Wager” (10 pages), published in Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories #88, cover date January 1948. Written and drawn by Barks.

All of the above stories will be reprinted in subsequent volumes of Fantagraphics’ Carl Barks Library. I’m simply mentioning them here so you can put the stories in Lost in the Andes into proper chronological perspective. This isn’t Barks’ first Duck work, but some of his best-known.

So What’s in This Volume?

Lost in the Andes sets an excellent template for future volumes, as it features examples of all three major story types that Barks used over his career:

• long adventure tales — usually near book-length (by 1948, that meant 32 pages)
• 10-page stories for Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories (generally pure comedy)
• and 1-page gag strips, used where needed.

This particular volume features the adventure stories “Lost in the Andes” (Four Color Comics #223, April 1949), “The Golden Christmas Tree” (One-Shots #203, December 1948), “Race to the South Seas!” (Boys’ and Girls’ March of Comics Giveaways #41, 1949), and “Voodoo Hoodoo” (One-Shots #238, August 1949). [Note: Four Color, Four Color Comics, and One-Shots are all part of the same long-running anthology series.]

“Lost” is classic Barks, portraying the crazy search for a mythical city where chickens lay square eggs. “Christmas Tree” finds Donald and his nephews battling an actual super-villain, a shape-changing old witch who is trying to destroy Christmas. “Race”, another classic character-building story, keeps it all in the family, as Donald finds himself in competition with his lazy (and lucky) cousin Gladstone to prove his worth to the manipulative Uncle Scrooge. And “Voodoo Hoodoo” is one of the oddest Duck tales yet, featuring the odd (but friendly) Bombie the Zombie, in a story that I’m betting didn’t get reprinted much.

Short and Sweet

Nine short stories (usually 10 pages each) are also collected, including the notable slapstick-y “The Crazy Quiz Show”, the crazed “Donald Duck’s Worst Nightmare”, and the caper-esque “Pizen Spring Dude Ranch”. Gladstone reappears (with a Scrooge cameo) in “Rival Beachcombers”, and Scrooge manipulates Donald again in “The Sunken Yacht”. “Managing the Eco System” is a classic Donald vs the nephews battle, and Barks gets to draw hundreds of animals (and a proto-Beagle Boy) in “Plenty of Pets.” But I think my favorite of this bunch is the crazy Christmas tale “Toyland”, where we discover that Santa has Don and the boys on the 1948 version of speed-dial (a telegram), so they can travel to the North Pole to product-test new toy ideas.

Finally, there are seven single-page gag strips. Most of the short stories and gag pages were originally untitled in their original publication. The stories were titled after-the-fact by Barks historians, mostly for ease of discussion and comparison. These historians had to fill in a lot of blanks over the years — even Barks’ name and history weren’t widely revealed until the early 1960s. Until then, he could only be identified by his definitive artistic style. He was referred to as “The Good Duck Artist” or “The Duck Man” until his identity was eventually researched and revealed.

Lots o’ Fun (and a little learnin’, too)

The Barks scholars are out in force in Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes. Nine of them are present in the 26 pages of commentary and notes, the best of which is the eight-page introductory essay by Donald Ault. The essayists have a tough time here, straddling the unfortunate situation of this volume not collecting Barks’ first works, yet being the first volume published.

Some introductory material is needed here, such as Barks’ personal history and background, but it is going to look out of place once this volume takes its natural place chronologically after the earlier material is collected. I hope we’re not subjected to the same background material in volume after volume, as already the text material is somewhat overwhelming to read all at once (due to most of the notes being collected at the end of the book). Now that I know the format, I’ll re-read the specific notes pertaining to each individual story as I go along, flipping back-and-forth from the stories to the commentary in the back.

Aesthetically, it makes sense that the notes are all collected after the stories. It’s just that the massive blocks of academia may be daunting to the more casual reader. (Frankly, a little Barks scholarship goes a long way with me. Barks’ history was fantastic, his imagination and craftsmanship even more so. But one occasionally gets the sense from some of the essayists that Barks is the only comics creator that matters, and that is obviously just not so.)

One thing I did dislike was having the table of contents split into three, spread throughout the book. Granted, having separate content listings for each story format (adventures, short stories, and gags) gives the volume a pleasant old-style children’s book quaintness, but I would rather ease of operation had won out here. It’s simply much easier to have a complete listing of the contents (story titles and page numbers) all in one place.

A Beautiful, Substantial Volume

These gripes are minor in relation to the beauty and quality of this book presentation, as well as the stories themselves. I’m so happy that Fantagraphics chose a smaller format for this series, as opposed to the wave of massively sized books that have flooded the market over the past decade. Yes, it’s always wonderful to see comic art published at a huge size (or at least at the size the artist originally rendered), but not when fumbling with massively heavy or outrageously physically oversize books (or both).

This version of The Carl Barks Library is published at the approximate size of the original comic books. (Although with over 200 pages’ worth, it’s a thick comic.) It’s wonderfully hand-held, so it can be read in a easy chair, or lying on the sofa, or easily carried for reading on a trip. You won’t need a specially-sized bookcase to store this and future volumes. The printing quality is sharp and clear, the colors solidly produced and not day-glo garish, and the paper quality is extremely nice — thin enough to be flexible, yet not so thick as to be ostentatious. And solid enough so that there is no color bleed-through. The spine and binding seem tight, despite my copy being banged around by the USPS.

The stories, of course, are outstanding. Most of the long adventure tales are classics in their own right. I wasn’t as familiar with the ten-page WDC&S stories, having only casually read those over the years (and seldom in a chronological, historic context). They largely read like the best Buster Keaton or Laurel & Hardy shorts, filled with smart comedy, slapstick, and crazy stunts. Barks’ artwork is at its most flexible here, frequently showing the manic side of Donald that we don’t generally see in the longer stories. (That makes them more true to the animated Donald Duck shorts.) Plus, Barks comes up with some of the most brilliant schemes and swindles — most perpetrated against Donald for comedic effect. The super-compressed plotting makes everything more frenetic — and more funny!

Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes is an excellent start to Fantagraphics’ Carl Barks Library. And the first Uncle Scrooge collection is being readied for mid-2012 release. What an excellent time for classic comic book and comic strip collections! With all of this wonderful material again easily obtainable, it sets the bar higher for current comics creators to reach their full potential, and for publishers to work harder to produce new and better material to compete in the marketplace. Faced with the choice of a “new” Barks or Pogo collection and a lackluster six-issue superhero snore-fest (that’s probably still not a complete story), I know what I’d choose!

The publisher’s website features preview pages and a book video. Editor Gary Groth has been interviewed about the project. (The publisher provided a review copy.)

Salt Water Taffy 5:
Caldera’s Revenge Part 2

Caldera’s Revenge Part 1 came out this spring, setting up the story of how Jack and Benny face off against a whale. In this volume, the conflict concludes, but not before there’s plenty of suspense and adventure.

We start with Jack, taken aboard a ghost ship, where he’s shanghaied into working as ship boy. Meanwhile, Benny and Captain Angus are stranded at sea. They have to repair their boat and get help before setting out to rescue Jack. There’s derring-do as Jack works to prove himself and stay alive, including taking an on angry bird and coping with a melancholy captain with an extreme sense of destiny.

As always, the series is a quick but entertaining read. Matthew Loux’s strong, solid lines carve out chunks of white space, except when it comes to boat decks, cabins, and masts. There, the fine grain he draws in the planks gives the vessels a sense of age. The ghost sailors have similarly striped pants, which gives them a feeling of belonging with the boat.

Loux’s night scenes, with all temporarily quiet as the dark surrounds a ship, are something to behold. The final confrontation, with the deeply colored whale against the wooden boats, resembles an ancient woodcut, evoking the history that inspired him. (The publisher provided a digital review copy.)

Same Difference

There’s one other significant difference between this new version and the previous. This one omits the “Other Stories”, a dozen short pieces ranging from two to nine pages each. Many were throwaway, but if you’re a Kim completist, you’ll want to track down one of those earlier editions. This book instead has a new Afterword by the author showing character design sketches and location photos. In it, he talks about how meaningful this story is to him, given all that’s happened since its creation. I found that short section revealing enough to justify keeping both editions of the work.

Kim is an immensely talented artist with a beautiful line and great skill with shading for depth. This autobiographically influenced story features Simon and Nancy, two Korean-American friends. Even though they’re relatively young adults, they spend a lot of their time reminiscing, showing us who they were and incidents in their past that they still obsess over. One would think they’d be looking forwards, not back, but they don’t have much idea of a future for themselves, and they’re coasting through the present. The past is safe. It happened, whether they like what they did and who they were or not, and as they find out, it can have continuing ramifications.

Nancy has been playing a mean game. At her apartment, she’s received a lot of letters for a Sarah, no longer there, from a Ben who’s clearly besotted with her. Nancy responded, encouraging Ben to more creative yet disturbing depths, and now she and Simon decide to go find him, since he’s writing from Simon’s home town. Much like in the movie Young Adult, Simon prides himself for getting out of his loser small town, but his life isn’t noticeably more successful or exciting than those left behind. Some would argue, since he’s wasting time traveling to laugh at someone he doesn’t even know, his accomplishments are distinctly less significant, a realization he struggles with during a late-in-the-book speech to Nancy.

It’s Kim’s art that makes this worth reading, his expressive faces and gestures. Even when the characters are being authentically self-indulgent, wallowing in their superficiality, they’re so real they look like they’re going to move any minute. The story itself is the kind you respond to differently depending where in life you are. Younger than the characters, it seems kind of edgy and mature. Their age, you’ll relate to the pain of aimlessness and how easy it is to thoughtlessly hurt other people. Older, there’s a certain precious innocence to their cruelty and self-absorption. They aren’t likable characters, but they’re honest and legitimate personalities.

The introduction is by Gene Yang, who collaborated with Kim on The Eternal Smile: Three Stories. It’s out of tone with the rest of the book, portraying Kim and Yang as superheroes, and I would imagine that the audience for this work wouldn’t get much out of it.

The marketing information makes much of how Same Difference won Kim the Eisner Award for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition, the Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent, and the Harvey Award for Best New Talent. I looked those up because the press materials attribute the awards to the book, but the recognition was actually for the artist himself. Voters clearly wanted to see more from him, although that promise has yet to be fulfilled, with this being the only major work he both wrote and illustrated. He’s since moved into filmmaking, and his current comic work is writing Tune, a webcomic described as “a sci-fi slice-of-life romantic comedy adventure”, illustrated by Les McClaine. A print edition of Tune is planned from First Second in 2012. (The publisher provided a review copy.)

The Sigh

With a beginning that will remind the reader of Beauty and the Beast, The Sigh tells of Rose, the youngest of a merchant’s three daughters. She asks her father to bring her back a blue bean from his trip, but when he can’t find one, the ghostly Ah the Sigh visits the home with the gift in return for Rose’s presence at a faraway palace.

Sample page from The Sigh

You may think you know the story, after hearing that beginning, but it takes a very different turn, with Rose winding up in three other tales during her struggles to find love and happiness. (In this way, it reminds me of The Arabian Nights.) Rose has an odd sense of responsibility, taking too much on herself at times. None of this would have happened had she not been treated as a prize, so sometimes I thought she was taking things a little too personally, but it’s welcome to see that she’s never a victim.

The book isn’t a comic, but illustrated text, with Satrapi’s thick-lined images resembling colorful crayon drawings. They remind me of a child’s work (although it would have to be a precocious child), which dovetails nicely with the fairy tale approach. We often tell youngsters these kinds of stories, scary and dangerous as they might be, although adults will have their own interpretations of cruel kidnappers, odd transformations, and perhaps justified punishments.

There’s a preview featuring the beginning of the book at the publisher’s website. (The publisher provided a digital review copy.)

Charley’s War: Hitler’s Youth

In this volume, it’s December 1917 and we start by meeting Hitler, a corporal picking fights and overreacting with exaggerated patriotism against his own comrades. Although the book is named after him, he fades out of the story after a bit, with no conclusion to the appearances shown here (but we all know he survived).

On the British side, Charley is training as an assistant sniper. A later lengthy section, taking up half the book, also shows us Charley’s brother Wilf, who’s a gunner in the flying forces. His story is disturbing in showing how disloyal the pilots are to their fellow soldiers, even firing on each other during an aerial fight. Wilf is ambitious, wanting to learn more and improve his standing, but his mates tell him not to bother and keep his head down to avoid getting the wrong kind of notice, demonstrating the class-based nature of British society, even during wartime.

The art is detailed and dark, focusing on the muck and daily tedium of ground-level battle. The material was reported extremely well-researched, and it feels authentic, even though the chapters are each only three pages long. There’s lots of death, and not much story, other than seeing who’s going to get shot this week and how Charley manages to survive. There’s no resolution by the end of the volume, just more tedium of the soldier’s life, attempted revenge (by an officer with a grudge), and life-or-death consequences.

History buffs will find this volume an unusual take on familiar material. The book opens with an essay about Adolph Hitler’s early life in Austria and his career in the German army, and writer Pat Mills provides some short, sometimes self-indulgent comments looking back at the comic episodes. (The publisher provided a review copy.)

Picket Line

Picket Line is one of the last Xeric Award grant recipients. It’s about a restless young woman who doesn’t know what she wants in life. Beatrice has moved from the Midwest to northern California, where she finds herself working for Rex’s landscaping company.

I’m a long way past being in that kind of circumstance, but while it’s usually easy to feel maternal towards such characters, or to adopt a sort of “there, there, how young they are, I’m glad I grew out of that” approach, in this case, I found myself worried about and sympathetic towards Beatrice’s uncertainty. I think it’s because Wiederhoeft is so honest about how homesick and out of her depth Beatrice is.

Wiederhoeft’s simply styled art contrasts in intriguing fashion with the depth of her character insight. Rex and Beatrice resemble Fisher-Price Little People, with round heads and minimal features and limbs. Rex’s tiny arms are part of the plot, in fact, since the two meet when Beatrice helps him get something from a high shelf. At times, she sees him as (and he’s drawn as, thanks to the magic of comics) a cute little dinosaur, big head and small arms. That device carries subtly through the book, until it’s reworked near the end in surprising ways.

The uncomplicated art isn’t a shortcut, though, since Wiederhoeft is putting detail into the setting (a key part of the book’s plot) and immense amounts of crosshatch shading. The result is a book that looks unique and pops the cast to the foreground, keeping the reader’s attention on them, their feelings, and their choices. The lettering, which appears to be done with a brush, is similarly organic and personal; it really adds to the appeal.

A local rich family owns a huge amount of natural land. The patriarch passed away, vowing to open the land to the people, but his surviving son intends to develop the land, which requires taking out a lot of old-growth forest. Rex and his company are hired to maintain the land while the project progresses. Rex accepts in the hope he can convince the heir to do the right thing and save the forest in its natural state. However, the community he’s part of only sees him crossing the picket line of the title, populated by those against the development and anyone working for it.

This conflict is one that will resonate with a lot of people, especially those concerned with how to balance concerns about the environment and sensible living with commerce and modern life. Rex’s perspective is a very uncommon one, and it feels authentic while being as complex as the story demands. He’s retired from high-powered corporate life to do something he feels is more meaningful, taking care of land and mowing lawns, and his optimistic wish that working for the devil will allow him to redeem the bad guy seems naive but still believable, due to the good heart Wiederhoeft gives him and shows us.

As time passes and nothing is yet resolved in the bigger picture, the crew settles into a new routine. It’s surprising and yet human nature that even odd circumstances become a habit quickly. Also human is the way people believe in conspiracies and secret motives, beyond what the media and other people tell them. The events throughout the book become more dramatic as the story goes on, but at the end, this is an amazing book for capturing the peace that a natural connection can give you. (I’m particularly impressed at how effective it was in creating that feeling in me, since I’m allergic to most of the outdoors and never have the impulse to go hiking or anything like that.)

Next year, Breena Wiederhoeft plans to return to a natural setting in her graphic novel Oaks. I was so impressed with Picket Line that I’ll be ordering it as well.

The Cartoon Guide to Calculus

In this study of calculus, “the mathematics of change”, we begin with brief history (Newton and Leibniz), but quickly, we’re into formulas and functions. However, even those are accompanied by cartoon kibitzing, which makes the material come alive and be more memorable. It’s also a pleasant change to read a textbook done in what resembles hand lettering.

There’s a big difference between this book and The Manga Guide to Calculus. In that book, the educational material takes second place to the comics. In The Cartoon Guide to Calculus, the math learning is front-and-center. I believe that this could be used as a textbook, while the manga version would work only as a supplement to another text. (You’ll need to know some algebra and trigonometry going in, though.)

The Cartoon Guide to Calculus is pretty dense, with lots of material covered quickly, and the book even includes problem sets. Chapters cover functions (drawn as lumpy monsters that eat x values and expel f(x) — a memorable if tawdry visual approach), limits and proofs, derivatives (the rate of change of a function), related rates and optimization, and integrals. Gonick’s character is often accompanied by a Han Solo-esque experimenter named Delta Wye. I know it’s a minor thing, but I’m reassured to see her included — it’s a necessary reminder that women can do math too.

The book is immediately approachable. That’s not only the benefit of using cartoons, which are friendly, but also due to Gonick’s cutely professorial analogue talking directly to the reader. Gonick’s visual imagination provides fresh and vividly notable ways to remember concepts. I learned new ways to think about math here, often supported by cogent, clever pictures. Do note that this isn’t a book to give a comic fan, unless they really want to learn calculus; it’s an illustrated text, content to teach, not show off the art. (The publisher provided a review copy.)

Americus

Neil and his best friend Danny are mesmerized by the series “Chronicles of Apathea Ravenchilde, the Huntress Witch”, reading every volume as soon as they can borrow them from the library. Danny fits in better with the town than Neil does, since Danny’s got a large family to insulate him. Neil’s single mother is too busy trying to keep them alive to spend much time with him, and he’s your classic loner: shy, resentful, picked-on, ready to escape.

Reading fantasy and science fiction provides that escape, reminders that there’s more to the world than their football- and Jesus-focused school. Apathea, in particular, is the story of someone destined for greatness, a loner who has to endure immense trials for a significant purpose and who will eventually receive great power. No wonder these boys find such comfort in the tales, and many readers will sympathize with Danny and Neil. With Neil, especially, I want to reach into the story and scoop him away to college and adulthood somewhere else, with people who share his interests and values.

The art supports the rich fantasy world. The short Apathea sequences, illustrating what the boys are reading, are the only ones fully toned in grey shades. The “real world” is a densely populated black-and-white one, with panels often crowded by annoying people and other distractions. Looking at Neil, it’s easy to see why he’s the target of abuse; he’s small and grumpy. It’s not that he brings it on himself, but it becomes a vicious cycle. He expects it, so he cringes, so he looks like a target, and Hill captures that body language skillfully. By keeping the world flat and open, although the other kids are given individual appearances by the artist, they fade together into a mass, symbolizing a “silent majority” that winds up oppressive.

The battle is joined when Danny’s religious mother discovers his reading. She knows that anything to do with witches will lead your soul directly to Hell’s lake of fire, where you will burn for all eternity (and the way she rattles this off in everyday conversation is a true picture of a certain type of believer). So Mom rushes down to the library to confront the librarian. Her protests of how the series wins awards don’t matter to the angry parent, who is convinced something she finds unsafe for her child shouldn’t be available to anyone.

Why Danny, knowing his family believes this way, would think that a book with “witch” in the title would be a good thing to read openly at home is obliquely tackled over a dinner-table conversation in which Mom, the most fundamentalist of the family, calls libraries Communist atheists and Danny says, “I don’t see why if I believe in God and everything, I can’t read what I want.” In contrast, Mom clearly believes that her kids growing up and beginning to express their own opinions is a sign of blasphemy. She’s a living picture of why so many creative, intellectual young adults don’t have good relationships with their parents. Her idea of “tough love” welcomes her kids’ hatred of her; her stubbornness is wrapped in the cloak of unquestioning self-righteousness.

The situation in Americus spirals into a town-wide debate, from letters to the newspaper editor to board meetings to remove the disputed series from the library. It’s easy to hate book-burners, but while the portrait of Danny’s mother is extreme — I don’t know many people who would start ripping pages of a library book out in front of the circulation desk — it clearly comes from knowledge of the type and the attitude. Unfortunately, knowing what you’re fighting isn’t a characteristic of the censors.

Throughout, there’s an undercurrent of suspicion of the educated. Those who read books are perceived to be thinking themselves superior to those who don’t. The only book they need is the Bible, they claim (not realizing that being able to read the Bible themselves in a translation for the common people required the kind of fight Neil and his friends are waging). Throughout, they’re arguing against something they aren’t even familiar with, and when their ignorance is pointed out to them, it just makes them meaner. (That refusal to educate themselves is a common attribute of the type. I’ve seen some reviewers say that the characters proposing censorship are unrealistic; they’re lucky that they’ve never met people just like this. I will never forget being struck wordless by a conversation with a woman at church who was keeping her child from reading A Wrinkle in Time (which is full of Christian allegory) because “there was a unicorn on the cover”. It wasn’t even a unicorn, it was a winged horse.)

But at least Neil finds hope in various ways, whether it’s meeting more diverse people as he enters high school or helping the librarian fight the forces of evil. Overall, this is an inspiring read, especially for the put-upon (or the formerly put-upon) who want to believe that things will get better and there’s value to intellectual pursuits. I appreciated the reminder not to take the freedom we have for granted.

School Library Journal has posted some tips on what to do when graphic novels are challenged at libraries. The publisher website has an excerpt available online; they provided a review copy.

Green River Killer

Writer Jeff Jensen is better known as an entertainment reporter, but here, he tells the story of his father Tom, who investigated the Green River Killer in Seattle for twenty years. The GRK, Gary Leon Ridgway, is attributed as “the worst serial killer in U.S. history” for murdering over 48 women. (I hadn’t previously heard of this case, so I’m not sure how much attention it got nationally.) Because of the press around that premise, I was expecting this to be a non-fiction exploration of his crimes, but that’s the wrong attitude to go in with. While there are some details captured here, the book focuses on how he was caught and how he was treated afterwards, not all the murders committed. (There is also an ending disclaimer about how some names and details have been changed and some characters are composites.)

The deaths began in 1982, and there are suggestions that we still don’t know how many are attributable to Ridgway. This isn’t a clean and tidy story, but since it’s inspired by real life, it can’t be. Tom Jensen began working on the case in late 1983 and continued, on and off, until past his retirement in 2002. A deal was cut in 2003 with Ridgway in which he was given life in prison (instead of a death sentence) in return for providing details about the crimes and helping to identify and locate more of his victims. Much of this book covers how difficult that can be when relying on memory and a perhaps non-cooperative participant. It’s only because of Tom’s long history with the case that the investigators are able to make a necessary breakthrough in forcing Ridgway to confront what he’s done.

Jonathan Case (Dear Creature) provides straightforward art in keeping with the journalistic tone. It never gets in the way of the reading, yet it makes numerous scenes of pudgy older men talking non-repetitive. We also see many flashbacks, both to the crimes and to Tom’s family life. The latter is necessary for contrast; although Tom is careful to keep the two pieces of his life very separate, there are moments where they overlap. My favorite aspect was how he managed his feelings by remodeling his house, turning his emotions into hammer hitting nails. In one simple panel, his wife asks, “Bad day?” to which he responds, “I’m going to gut the bathroom,” adding some dark humor to a lengthy struggle.

The underlying elements that trail through the story, especially Tom’s smoking and how various people in his life remark on it, keep the reader involved by making him relatable in spite of his reserved exterior. The smoking comes to indicate Tom’s determination to stick with something in spite of everything else.

Case has done an excellent job with a situation that can be thankless. If we noticed the art more, it wouldn’t be as successful. Often, when reading books of this type, I find myself thinking that it could has been as effective as a prose novel, in cases where the text covered the entire story. That’s not true here, since Case’s art provides necessary context, setting the stage as the author moves the reader back and forwards in time, from the crimes to the latter-day investigation. The visual details — the bare-bones investigative office, the woods where the bodies were found, the men’s facial hair, and so on — tell us important things about what we’re reading.

If you enjoy watching wrap-up-in-an-hour procedurals such as CSI or SVU, you owe it to yourself to read this book, because real police work is a lot more this plodding determination than science magic. The publisher has posted a preview as well as notes by the writer, by the illustrator, from the editor (with a picture of Tom Jensen), and about the evolution of the cover design. (Dark Horse provided a digital review copy.)

Lily Renée, Escape Artist

We read, in clear, straightforward text, about how Lily Renée grew up privileged in Vienna, Austria, until the Nazis invaded. I was impressed by how Trina Robbins explains a horrific situation — planned genocide — in a way that’s understandable and not too scary for kids. She chooses particular small incidents, such as fellow students being mean to Lily over her dress, to bring home what that kind of fear and hatred would feel like without giving younger readers nightmares. Artist Anne Timmons provides creative layouts that keep the story interesting while still being easy-to-read. Her figures, as always, are attractive, expressive, and friendly. I could relate to Lily, wanting to be her friend.

Most of the book follows Lily’s journey to England as part of the Kindertransport refugee program in 1939 and her experiences there. She eventually left her host family, due to (the book says) the family’s mother treating her like a servant, becoming a nanny and then a nurse. It’s lightly told, without significant exploration of how scared she must have been, focusing on the survival part. That’s also part of the expectations of this genre, keeping it positive, with more “and then this happened” structure than deeper emotional impact. That makes it seem objective instead of demonstrating one-sided perspective (although I did wonder, when it came to the one-dimensional villain of the host mother, whether she had her own fears and concerns about dealing with a formerly pampered adolescent girl for an indefinite period of time, shedding different light on her actions).

The second half of the book deals with Lily being classified as an “enemy alien” and being evacuated to America, where she’s reunited with her parents. I was interested in the book because of the latter part of the subtitle, the “Comic Book Pioneer” mention. Unfortunately, there’s not much space to get into that. Out of the 76 pages of illustrated story, her work in comics only gets four, and there’s no in-text justification for the “pioneer” word. That’s a context that I, and writer Robbins (The Great Women Cartoonists), bring to the work. I’m not surprised that, for a general audience, Lily Renee’s survival is considered of more widespread interest than her work on forgotten comic titles of the 40s. I still found it a good, inspirational read, especially for young teens.

In addition to the story comic, there are an additional 18 pages of supporting text material, with a glossary, short articles on such topics as concentration camps and English meals, and most exciting, two pages of Lily Renée’s pictures from the period. For more information about how the book came to be, see this interview with Robbins. (The publisher provided a review copy.)

“As long as the crime comic books industry exists in its present forms, there are no secure homes.”
– Senate testimony by Dr. Frederic Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent (back cover pull-quote)

Published in a deluxe hardcover, beautiful and substantial enough to give Dr. Wertham nightmares, Simon & Kirby: Crime collects over 300 newly restored pages of stories and covers from comics’ most brutal genre — possibly proving crime does pay! The beneficiary is the reader, who doesn’t go to jail, but obtains over 30 classic crime stories from those lawless comic book years of 1947-1955.

The Simon and Kirby Library: Crime

Collecting work by comics’ greatest collaborators — Joe Simon and Jack Kirby — at their prime, the book reprints stories from the classic crime comics Clue Comics/Real Clue Crime Stories, Headline Comics, Justice Traps the Guilty, and Police Trap, along with the covers that S&K provided for those comics. The book takes your breath away the second you open it to the frontispiece close-up of the amazing action shot of a neighborhood cop taking down a gun-wielding wise guy with just a powerful Kirby forearm. The original is from the cover of Headline Comics #34, but this monotone isolation of the action overpowers even the actual — incredible — cover.

Inside, an introduction by crime novelist and comics writer Max Allan Collins sets the stage effectively with both history and insight. Then you get to the good stuff! Crime was one of the few comic genres that Simon & Kirby didn’t invent, but they were definitely trendsetters and innovators. Their work wasn’t stupidly brutal and lurid like much of the genre, focusing more on drama, power, and irony — but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t the occasional panel that both chills and makes you look away.

It’s not just mobsters, dames, and weasels, either. S&K were clever enough to make many of these stories cross-genre yarns. There are a couple of creepy western tales, a couple of bizarre crime/romance genre-benders, and a couple of tales set in Europe in eras past, including the life (and death) of Guy Fawkes — ultimately the inspiration for V for Vendetta.

The bulk of the stories are — as in the style of both era and genre — “True Life” tales of actual criminals and outlaws, with many of the names changed to protect the innocent (as well as many of the facts changed to make the stories more exciting). Still, with appearances by Babyface Nelson, John Dillinger, Alvin Karpis (with an unbilled appearance by J. Edgar Hoover), Eddie Green, and somewhat lesser lights like H. H. Holmes, Charles Birger and the Shelton Brothers mobs, Stella Mae Dickson (the 16-year old “Bobby Sox Bandit”), as well as the oft-told tales of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and “Pretty Boy” Floyd and Vernon Miller’s involvement in the Kansas City Massacre, the book is quite the little four-color primer on Depression-era public enemies.

And there’s more than just bad guys — the gals are also well represented here, either as unwitting dupes, gun molls, or unsuspecting women left behind as their men are ruthlessly gunned down in stories with great titles like “Queen of the Speed-Ball Mob”, “I Worked For the Fence!”, or (my favorite) “I Was a Come-On Girl for Broken Bones, Inc.” Get out your hankies!

I must rave about the production work and presentation. All of the stories were meticulously restored and recolored by Harry Mendryk, who’s been specializing on the Simon and Kirby stuff for a while now. This is his best-looking work yet. I can’t exactly explain why, but this volume looks less muddy than previous volumes (which are also great — I’m talking degrees here), and I’m a big fan of seeing the restored (and crystal clear) grain to the colors — both simulating and improving on the dot screen reproduction of the original comics, without all the staining and bleed-through. The book is printed on a heavy and slightly off-white paper stock, prefect for comics of this vintage. (I hate seeing old comics on glossy stock.) And the design work is quite nice as well.

Simon & Kirby: Crime is part of the Simon & Kirby Library, published by Titan Books and dedicated to collecting and reprinting all of the non-DC and Marvel work by the duo. They’ve previously published a Best Of volume, a Superhero volume, and a complete softcover collection of all the Fighting American stories, as well as the excellent Joe Simon biography, My Life in Comics. It’s one of the very best archival comics lines out there today, and if you haven’t already, please check out their other volumes. You won’t be disappointed.

By the way, this isn’t all of the S&K crime comic stories. I understand that there’s enough for a second volume if there is a demand for it. And while you’re at it, please check out DC Comics’ upcoming Spirit World hardcover, reprinting the hard-to-find first issue and material from the never-published second issue, all by Jack Kirby. Similarly, if Spirit World does well, DC may publish In the Days of the Mob — a similar “lost” Kirby project featuring more crime-oriented stories (and also with an unpublished second issue).

Update: This post at the Kirby Museum site lists other reviews of the book, several of which include a sample story (including “Queen of the Speed-Ball Mob”), if you’d like to see examples of the book’s content.

(The publisher provided a review copy.)