I’m so happy to hear that Walter Simonson’s The Judas Coin graphic novel is done and has finally been scheduled for September release from DC Comics. As somebody who’s known about the project for years, it’s been hard not being able to talk about it. Especially since circumstances had me in the the right place at the wrong time, so that I’ve already had the opportunity to read over half of the 96-page graphic novel. Don’t worry — I’m not going to give anything important away…

A couple of years back, I was visiting the New York area, mostly to see old friends; to visit the “Art of Archie Comics” show at MOCCA; and to see my siblings-in-law’s new house in the area. As always, Walt & Weezie offered me a bed for a day or two at the Hotel Simonson, and I gratefully accepted. I set off to Mt. Simonson. (Yes, they live on a mountain. A small mountain, but a mountain, nonetheless. Occasionally, Walter goes out and throws thunderbolts at his unsuspecting neighbors. And on any given morning, there are probably deer foraging in the Simonson back yard. Now, that’s a place to create comic books!)

Unfortunately, I was trapped by icy conditions. (I got up the winding, tree-lined driveway but couldn’t get back down, since I didn’t have a 4-wheel drive vehicle.) Since I was going to be stuck there for a couple of days, Walter said, “So… do you want to read it?” I knew exactly what he was talking about. I think my answer was “Duh!” Next thing I knew, three chapters of The Judas Coin were sitting on the sofa next to me.

I never read anything so slowly in my life. It was so gorgeous. I think I read each page three or four times before proceeding to the next. I even found a couple of lettering typos (sorry, John Workman!), so I got to feel like I was editing again for a second or two. Mostly, I was just overwhelmed by what Walter was accomplishing.

I won’t go into details here, because I think the book will be more powerful as a surprise. What’s already known is that The Judas Coin consists of six chapters, each set in a different place in the DC timeline, starring a diverse selection of DC historical characters, some of whom haven’t been seen in decades. One chapter even provides some closure to an unfinished DC series from the 1970s. I won’t mention who all the characters are, but you can obviously figure out some of them from the recently released cover, shown here.

What hasn’t been announced (and maybe DC’s marketing folks aren’t even aware of this — or don’t think it’s important) is that Walter is using a different style of artwork for each different chapter/character. In some instances, he’s drawing in the style of the artist who originally drew the character, while for others, he applied a style of drawing that he admired and wanted to attempt. If nothing else, this makes The Judas Coin a fascinating artistic tour de force for Simonson and his legion of fans. The story is great, also. I still don’t know all the details, but I have been present a couple of times when Walter was discussing plot points with friends and other creators — all of whom reacted with some version of “That’s brilliant!” — including me.

I can’t wait for the post-mortem interviews with Walter, where all of the secrets of The Judas Coin can be revealed. September is a long way away.

By the way, I was stuck on Mt. Simonson for two days (a very pleasant place to get “stuck”), and when I wasn’t drooling on the original art for The Judas Coin, I was watching the weather reports showing that a blizzard was working its way up from the south — exactly the direction I had to drive to get home. Finally, the ice melted enough to give me a chance to get down the Simonsons’ driveway (provided I only went about 2 mph), giving me just a six-hour window to get home (so I missed seeing the new house and the MOCCA show). Of course, I got stuck in traffic in Washington D.C., so I had to drive the last hour or so in the blizzard. But the Simonsons (and NYC) had it worse. This was the storm that dumped about 20 inches of snow on the NYC area, effectively shutting it down for days. The Simonsons lost power several hours after I left and didn’t get it back for several days — making it very difficult to work at a drawing board without light.

Trust me, The Judas Coin will be worth the wait.

what does being sick have to do with comic books?

Only everything.

Chances are you might have been sick in bed when you read your first comic book. Or it might have been the first time you had the opportunity to re-read your stash of comics, all at once. (If you had measles or chicken pox, you weren’t going anywhere for a while. So, hope you had plenty of reading material!) Plus, inevitably, you got exposed to “new” comic reading experiences. Since you were too sick to go out and buy your own, you had to rely on mom or pop to get your comics — and sometimes they didn’t exactly follow instructions.

My favorite line talks about how Iron Man was “not as cool as Superman’s robots.”

Plus, you can learn all about the secret ashcan for Watchmen #12, in another untold tale of comic history.

KC’s latest Westfield column introduces his current reading project: catching up on the X-Men. He provides a brief history of the franchise, including key creators, recalls why he stopped reading the various series almost 20 years ago, and talks about finding a good restart point. I found it a wonderful capsule history of a significant comic brand that got me excited about reading the X-Men again myself.

(Although I do disagree with KC calling Wolverine and the X-Men his “current favorite superhero comic.” I mean, I can’t tell him what his favorite is, and I do think it’s excellent, but for me, it’s second to Daredevil.)

KC ends up by pointing out that reading history has also made him more excited about current comic reading, and for some kinds of fans, this kind of backwards look will rejuvenate the appeal of the medium. Also, I wanted an excuse to run this cute, iconic “org chart” for the current teams, from Uncanny X-Men #1.

Just when you least expect it, a new season of Futurama pops up, like a bad uncle or a smelly penny. It’s the little show that refuses to die, while getting better and better as it scrapes its way back to television year after year. It’s great watching new episodes (and classic episodes) on Comedy Central, but it’s even better getting a new collection (available in both DVD and Blu-ray) of the most recent batch of shows, packed with Special Features for the uber-fan.

This new 13-episode, two-disc set is called Futurama: Volume 6, although what’s exactly on it is a little confusing, reflecting the history of the oft-neglected little show. But I’ll get to that in a bit.

Ok, we’ll go deliver this crate like professionals, and then we’ll go ride the bumper cars.

Futurama Volume 6

So, is all this confusion worth it? Absolutely. Futurama is one of the most intelligent, outrageously funny, and most honored shows on TV. Each episode of the show rewards the viewer on several different levels. On the surface, it’s just a funny cartoon, with wacky characters doing slap-sticky things, but the dirty little secret is that Futurama is actually an extremely clever (as in you usually don’t ever realize this) satire of everyday life, as filtered though a science-fiction-ish society a thousand years from today. It’s also a workplace comedy (one of the most popular characters is Scruffy, the janitor), albeit one filled with surreal humor. (The Hypnotoad made me say that.) Since it’s no longer on stodgy Fox, with the more liberal standards of Comedy Central, the humor in these new episodes is even more outrageous. Although, not everything the Futurama crew dreams of makes it to air — so don’t miss the generous portions of depravity in the Deleted Scenes on the disc extras.

Speaking of extras, Futurama Volume 6 has plenty! The best for long-time fans is the 11-minute Futurama F.A.Q. (Frequently Axed Questions), an irreverent Q&A with actual fan questions (as read by Bender) and answered (usually) in the most confounding way possible. The 17-minute Professor Farnsworth’s “Science of a Scene” takes a behind-the-scenes look at the episode “Overclockwise” and goes through the many steps involved in producing an episode from start to finish. “Reincarnation Explained” is a seven-minute look at the Season Finale “Reincarnation”. That’s easily one of the series’ best episodes, featuring three different vignettes using three different animation styles: old-school B&W animation (in the Fleischer Studios “bouncy” style), early low-res video game style (think Atari 2600), and anime. Brilliantly produced and funny, too!

I usually groan when I see TV box sets with commentary tracks for every episode (overkill!), but Futurama is the rare exception, because every Futurama commentary (like the show itself) functions on several different levels. If you’re a mega-nerd, you’re in good company, since the show is created by them, and they love to geek out over every minute detail. For those of us not paying complete attention to the episodes, the friendly geeks also love to point out where all the “hidden gags and secret messages” are. There’s usually a lot, and they’re incredibly happy to geek out over those, as well. But in case the commentary gets too nerd-centric, there’s usually a voice actor or two participating (occasionally having their characters comment) to provide a completely different level of anarchy in the recording booth. John DiMaggio (voice of Bender) is particularly good at this.

Interesting. No, wait, the other thing: tedious.

Besides those episodes previously mentioned, Futurama Season 6 offers up a good percentage of great episodes. “Yo Leela Leela” is an often biting parody of modern-day children’s programming (specifically some of Nickelodeon’s offerings), with a special voice cameo from Tom Kenny, the voice of some of Nick’s popular characters. “Möbius Dick” not only is based on the similarly titled literary masterpiece, it features a cameo from Doctor Who, incorporates concepts from Uncanny X-Men, confuses the Biblical story of Jonah with Pinocchio, and its “spaceship graveyard” sequence is the funniest thing I saw all year (especially since I’m such a big music fan). “Benderama” features not only guest voice Patton Oswalt, but also references grey goo, The Twilight Zone, and Newhart. “All the Presidents’ Heads” is a fun time-travel episode involving the preserved heads of the Presidents of the United States (including a few we don’t know about yet), as well as characters from Firefly, Amy Pond (from Doctor Who), and Owen Harper (from Torchwood). The Doctor himself shows up again, and there are references to Andy Warhol, Monty Python, Manchester United, and the XXII Winter Olympics. And in “The Tip of the Zoidberg”, we learn the secret relationship between Dr. Farnsworth and Zoidberg (and specifically why the latter still has a job).

AND NOW… MORE PROMISED INFORMATION

Curious about the strange broadcast history of Futurama? These next couple of paragraphs are for you! However, for those of you who are bored by numbers or explanations (and if you are, why are you watching Futurama?), please skip this section and move to the next heading.

And remember, don’t do anything that affects anything, unless it turns out you were supposed to, in which case, for the love of God, don’t not do it!

Futurama originally ran for several seasons on the Fox Network, beginning in 1999, although no one seems to know exactly how many because the show was frequently preempted by NFL Football. This kept happening because Fox deliberately scheduled it in a timeslot that was always preempted by football (at least in some time zones) — which shows you the high regard that the network had for the show. Eventually, Fox canceled Futurama. (Although some sources indicate that the series was never canceled at all — Fox just stopped ordering new episodes. (How rude.)) All the episodes that Fox showed (or didn’t show, depending on time zone you lived in) were collected into DVD collections called Volumes 1-4. Because of football, it took Fox five years to show four seasons of shows.

For a while, everybody thought that the show was gone forever. But something interesting happened. When Cartoon Network started running Futurama reruns in their Adult Swim block of programming, the ratings (relatively speaking) went through the roof. The show continued to do well on Cartoon Network, and again on Comedy Central when the CN agreement ran out. In 2007, production of four Futurama direct-to-DVD movies led to those being broken into 16 “new” episodes of the series, which are usually referred to (production-wise anyway) as Futurama Season 5. Then in June 2009, it was announced that Comedy Central had picked up the series for an additional series of 26 episodes (in production terms: Futurama Season 6). However, Comedy Central opted to show them in two separate batches of 13 episodes each in 2010 and 2011. And that’s how they’re being released on disc — as two different two-disc, 13-episode sets, confusingly called Volume 5 and Volume 6.

To make matters even more confusing, if you purchase and watch Futurama digitally, the group of shows on DVD/Blu-ray Volume 6 is called “Season 8” on iTunes and Amazon — and the episodes are listed in air date order there. As always, for the physical disc collections, the episodes are arranged in production order. If this is too confusing, we could probably call in Stephen Hawking (a frequent Futurama “guest”) to explain it better. But he’s probably too busy being on Futurama.

All in all, I had a pretty sweet life. How about we grab a six pack and watch the universe end.

Futurama Volume 6 features 13 complete episodes as a two-disc set. (As far as I can tell, the DVD and Blu-ray have identical contents.) It’s in eco-friendly packaging (at least the DVD is), although the box is highly crushable (the set’s only real drawback) — so you might want to purchase this one in a store, rather than having it crushed during shipping (if you care about such things). I really like the new, modern design of the set’s cover — very colorful and eye-catching.

And “good news, everyone!” Futurama will return to Comedy Central for 26 more episodes, with the first 13 to air in the summer of 2012, and the others in 2013. These will include a political episode — Nixon’s head is running for re-election in 3012. (I kinda hope he wins.) Also, Bender impregnates a soda machine, and, oh yeah, the end of the world is predicted for 3012.

Unless it actually ends in 2012… “Sweet zombie Jesus!” (The studio provided a review copy.)

Out this week from TwoMorrows is The Quality Companion, an extremely detailed retrospective covering the long-defunct Golden Age publisher whose characters live on today via DC Comics. It’s a long-overdue look at a publishing house that at the time didn’t seem much different from most of their peers, but with today’s advantages of hindsight, we now know was the “real deal”, both with the quality of the creators that they employed (Jack Cole, Will Eisner, Lou Fine, Reed Crandall, Matt Baker, and many others) as well as the timeless characters they produced (Uncle Sam, Plastic Man, Blackhawk, Phantom Lady, and more). Even Will Eisner’s The Spirit has connections to Quality Comics, as you’ll learn in this fantastic history of Quality’s publications, characters, and creators by authors Mike Kooiman and Jim Amash.

The Quality Companion

Normally, I dislike reviewing things before reading the entire book, but after spending a couple of hours spot-reading and flipping though its 288 pages (224 pages of detailed history, with 64 pages of full-color reproductions of vintage Quality stories), I decided that I wanted to take my time and savor every page. I haven’t seen an in-depth history of a deserving company like this in quite a while. I’ll be reading this well into January — and probably re-read it later in the year.

Not counting the story reproductions, The Quality Companion is split into four major sections, beginning with an amazingly detailed history of the company itself. There I learned that Quality Comics wasn’t the company’s real name, and that no one ever called Quality publisher Everett M. “Busy” Arnold by his real name, Everett. Plus, I found out why he was “Busy”. I’m very much looking forward to digging-in on the sections detailing Quality’s relationship with the famous Eisner-Iger Studio.

Next up is the history of how some of the Quality characters and concepts ended up at DC Comics after Quality folded. Bonus material here includes a handy sidebar on copyrights and public domain (as other Quality characters sometimes appeared at different publishers, usually unauthorized) and short, but informative, interviews with four DC writers who worked with the Quality heroes — Len Wein (creator of the Freedom Fighters), Roy Thomas (All-Star Squadron), James Robinson (Starman), and John Arcudi (JLA: Destiny). Early on, the Quality/DC agreement was so little known that even DC Editor Julie Schwartz wasn’t aware of it when he was assisting John Broome and Carmine Infantino on the creation of Elongated Man in 1960. The original elastic character Plastic Man didn’t show up as a DC character until 1966.

Following the chronological history are galleries (Who’s Who-style) on all of Quality’s major creators and all of Quality’s greatest characters, A to Z. All are fully annotated with selected comicographies for the creators and complete checklists of appearances (both Quality and DC) for the characters. Finally, there is an extensive Endnotes section for all you documentation geeks (like me) out there. I especially appreciated the in-depth breakdowns of Quality’s anthology titles, which were some of the best — and best titled — in comics! They include Smash Comics, Crack Comics, Hit Comics, National Comics, Military Comics, and Police Comics.

Part of why I’m gushing about this book is the incredible detective work put into it by Kooiman and Amash, who gratefully acknowledge earlier works by Jerry Bails and Hames Ware (The Who’s Who of American Comics) and Jim Steranko (The Steranko History of Comics). Very few original Quality staffers and creators are still living, so the authors have put together perhaps the definitive history of a “lost” comics publisher from very little to work from, besides the comics themselves.

Speaking of the comics, the book reprints nine classic stories, in full color, featuring The Ray (art by Lou Fine), Phantom Lady (Frank Borth), The Black Condor (Fine), The Human Bomb (Paul Gustavson), Uncle Sam (Reed Crandall), Midnight (Jack Cole), Firebrand (Lee J. Ames), Wildfire (Jim Mooney), and Madam Fatal (Art Pinajian), all scanned from the original comics. Dick Giordano provides the cover, one of his last published pieces. In fact, the publishers wanted an art correction that went undone due to the artist’s passing. (Full story on the copyright page of the book.) It’s still a great cover, and it looks fine uncorrected!

TwoMorrows has built a business upon uncovering and telling the history of the comic book medium. The Quality Companion looks to be one of their best, and most eagerly awaited, projects. It is available in print at your local comic store (ask if you don’t see it!), or digital copies are available at www.twomorrows.com. (The publisher provided a 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.)

KC also goes through upcoming Marvel comics, especially as they relate to the Avengers, and plugs a particularly unusual one-shot, as well as proposing “Domo and the Doc”, the world’s weirdest team-up.

Out this week from TwoMorrows is The Stan Lee Universe, a new 176-page book about the most identifiable legend in comics — Stan “The Man” Lee. Accept no substitutes. Seriously, if you don’t know who Stan Lee is, then why are you reading a blog about comic books?

Part scrapbook, part memoir, part how-to book, part testimonial, The Stan Lee Universe is probably one of the most unique books that TwoMorrows has ever published. Edited and compiled by former Marvel editors Danny Fingeroth and Roy Thomas, the book sheds new light on just how widespread and beloved Stan is by family, friends, co-workers, and the occasional guy-on-the-street. Stan’s friends include giants in film (James Cameron! Oliver Stone!), comics (Will Eisner, Al Jaffee), rock (Country Joe and the Fish!), and more.

The Stan Lee Universe

Long-time fans will appreciate the emphasis on Stan’s prime years at Marvel in the 1960s and early 70s, when he and his artistic collaborators (Jack Kirby! Steve Ditko! More!) created possibly the most popular characters in the world. (Spider-Man, the X-Men, Avengers, Iron Man, Thor, the Fantastic Four, and dozens more!) Much of the book has that same feeling that you got from reading Stan’s classic Bullpen Bulletin pages — and even follows up on some of the people, places, and things that were discussed there.

A lot of the features in this book come from Stan’s personal archives, including such amazing items as long-lost (and recently transcribed) radio interviews, as well as timely interviews from many different points in Stan’s career. There’s an in-depth look at Stan’s first major Marvel work (Fantastic Four #1) as well as one of his last (the 1978 Silver Surfer Graphic Novel), both done with Jack “King” Kirby. There’s even more Kirby, as Jack joins Stan in a rare radio interview from the Marvel era.

Plus, there’s a history of the Bullpen Bulletins and Stan’s Soapbox, testimonials from dozens of Marvel staffers and creators, looks at Stan’s post-Marvel work, and my favorite piece — a 1968 “debate” with Hilde Mosse, a colleague of Dr. Frederic Wertham, that took place 14 years after the publication of Seduction of the Innocent.

The Stan Lee Universe is available in both softcover and hardcover. The softcover includes 16 full color pages, and the hardcover doubles that with 16 additional exclusive color pages. Digital copies are also available at www.twomorrows.com.

Stan Lee changed comics and pop culture. What the editors say in their forward is true — “It’s Stan Lee’s Universe. We just dream in it.” If, somehow, you’ve managed to avoid knowing Stan Lee all these years, you’ll know pretty much everything you need after reading this book. (The publisher provided a review copy.)

In his latest Westfield column, KC looks back at a classic Defenders storyline, “Defenders for a Day”, which appeared in 1978 in issues #62-64. A whole bunch of characters guest-star, including (my new favorite shorthand description) “pre-cancer Captain Marvel”.

If you aren’t familiar with the Defenders misfit superteam, KC provides a short history as well. This, in case you’re ever asked for meaningless trivia, is the only Marvel series I have read all the way through (although I don’t remember all of it at this point). Like KC, I really miss the bean-eating Hulk and his crazy-named friends Fish-Man and Bird-Nose.

Comix

Les Daniels, author of a number of notable books on comic history, passed away earlier this month. KC’s latest Westfield column remembers Daniels’ Comix: A History of Comic Books in America as the “first book about comic book history that [KC] ever bought”. KC also looks at some of Daniels’ other works and what other sources were available for reading about comics during the 70s.

Picking up on the longstanding fandom debate, exacerbated in recent years around the internet (never a good thing), of the relative merits and professionalism of artist Vince Colletta in regards to his inking skills — most notably on his work with Jack Kirby — Robert L. Bryant’s The Thin Black Line asks more questions than it definitively answers. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

The Thin Black Line:
Perspectives on Vince Colletta,
Comics’ Most Controversial Inker

It’s a slim volume (128 pages) and a quick read, although there is an incredible amount of artwork, the key selling point of the book. Some of it is presented as compare-and-contrast between pencilled art (much of it Kirby’s) and Colletta’s finished inks, to help you decide for yourself how horrible Colletta’s “sins” were.

Several people tell entertaining tales about Colletta and his larger-than-life reputation, including the rumors of his mob connections and his model photography. Bryant’s not attempting a full-blown biography of Colletta’s life and career here, although there is a fairly good overview. To be blunt about it, Colletta’s career probably doesn’t merit the full-blown bio treatment (although the case could be made for an in-depth look at his 1950s and 60s romance work, where he excelled and is rightly considered amongst the top in that genre).

Later in Colletta’s career (after the romance work dried up when the genre died in the early 1970s), he primarily became an inker, eventually gaining a reputation as the most prolific inker in the field. He seldom ever turned down an assignment, becoming known as a guy who could turn around a late job and “save” it so it would not ship late. To this end, he would pull all-nighters, catnap overnight in publisher’s offices, and allegedly employ many assistants (“ghosts”) to help him get jobs done fast. He also cut corners — simplifying artwork, using artistic shortcuts, or simply not inking everything on the board, ultimately erasing figures or complicated backgrounds.

All of which put Colletta in the odd position of being every editor’s dream — “saving” every nightmarishly late book he was handed — while at the same time becoming the guy many artists hoped wouldn’t get his hands on their pages, lest he “ruin” them with his haste and shortcutting. He made a career out of speed, pleasing the guys who cut his paychecks instead of his fellow artists.

Bryant does a fair job presenting high points of Colletta’s work mixed with quotes from other professionals, including Erik Larsen, Tony Isabella, Mark Evanier, Joe Kubert, Roy Thomas, Stan Lee, and many others. (The back of the book lists the many conversations and interviews he conducted, including talking with Vinnie’s son Franklin.) Overall, there’s an essential conflict driving the comics industry: Is it art or is it a business? Make it good or make the release date? Those are questions we still argue over today, and Vince Colletta’s story sums it all up.

The publisher has posted a chapter preview and provided this review copy.

The Batcave Companion is neatly divided into sections roughly covering the “New Look” era of the 1960s (about 1964-1970) and pretty much the entire Bronze Age decade of the 1970s. To be more specific, it’s a collection of articles and essays chronicling Julius Schwartz’s 16-year run as the editor of Batman and Detective Comics. (Archie Goodwin edited a year’s worth of Detective, but that’s covered here also.)

The “New Look” 1960s

The Batcave Companion

Writer/Editor Michael Eury tackles the 1960s section, with a lively group of pieces that really capture the era, after an introductory essay that reveals the details of why Batman needed a makeover. (And boy, did he!)

Also featured is an interview with Carmine Infantino, the artist that redesigned Batman, as well as the first artist publicly recognized as working on Batman other than creator Bob Kane. Over the years, Kane employed dozens of “ghost” artists to draw the strip, and during the 1960s, as comic fandom increased in intensity and scholarship, the identities of these “ghosts” were uncovered — something that Kane was not happy about. This is covered, including interviews with the few surviving creators of this era, in a chapter worth almost the cost of the book itself. Inker Joe Giella is also spotlighted in a new, solo interview.

Next up is a look at the 1966 Batman TV show, with a timeline of how the show came together in both Hollywood and in the DC offices. Remarkably detailed, the article also offers up an index of the comic book that some of the show’s episodes were based on. Follow-up articles reveal the film and print origins of Batgirl, as well as the major effect that the show’s popularity had on other DC comic books of the era. Another article provides details and history of the Batmobile, both from the show and the various models from the comics.

The Bronze Age 1970s

The 70s (Bronze Age) section of The Batcave Companion is mostly written by Michael Kronenberg and takes a slightly different tone than the 60s chapters. Here the focus is on the major storylines of the decade and the superstar creators that worked on them, including Neal Adams, Denny O’Neil, Steve Englehart, and Marshal Rogers. A new interview with O’Neil, as well as a look at the Englehart/Rogers/Terry Austin run on Detective Comics, are highlights of this section. The Adams interview, reprinted from Comic Book Marketplace, is close to the definitive word on Batman from Adams.

There are also spotlight articles on the ever-popular werewolf and vampire stories of the 70s, Batman’s team-ups with the pulp and radio character The Shadow, a look at the evolution of the Joker, a rundown of Robin’s solo career, and an overview of the “creature of the night” Batman style, returning from the Golden Age. Specific storylines are looked at in detail, including the first Ra’s al Ghul storyline, the classic “Bat-Murderer” sequence, and an overview of writer/editor Archie Goodwin’s year on Detective Comics (which besides a spectacular run of Batman stories, also gave comics the award-winning Manhunter series, drawn by Walter Simonson).

Due to space limitations, the lesser-known creators who provided the bulk of the Batman stories during this time period are slighted, including Ernie Chan (Chua), Bob Brown, Irv Novick, Frank Robbins, David Vern Reed, Jim Aparo and others, although sidebars about Novick, Robbins, and Aparo are included.

The 70s were a schizophrenic time for Batman. While creators like O’Neil, Adams, Goodwin, Egleheart, Rogers, and others were attempting to return the Dark Knight to his original gothic incarnation, for other creators — like David V. Reed and Bob Haney (over in Brave & Bold) — it was pretty much business as usual, with stories not that far removed from those of the 1960s. But the work of this era was incredibly important to the development of the character that appears today, with elements from some of these stories creeping into the modern Batman films, as well as inspiring the present-day Batman creators.

TwoMorrows Companions

I’ve found the quality of the TwoMorrows Companion line and concept to vary wildly depending on who was editing/compiling. But Michael Eury’s Companion volumes are top-of-the-line. Both this and his Krypton Companion (covering everything Superman-related) are must-have volumes, filled with little-known or long-forgotten information and trivia. His Justice League Companion, while not quite as fact-packed as the Superman and Batman volumes, is also a very good read (and purchase). (Eury’s “day job” is editing the almost always excellent Back Issue magazine for TwoMorrows.)

Eury, a former editor for DC Comics (among other comics companies) knows his stuff. He’s one of those rare writers who can successfully filter total geek-like fanboy excitement into actual, readable English, without losing the inherent fun of writing about comics in the first place — an amazing juggling act of his well-organized brain. He’s also authored a biography of Dick Giordano, an acclaimed history of Captain Action, and an overview of monkeys in comic books (Comics Gone Ape!), all for TwoMorrows. (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.)