How nice for you. I don’t have an iPhone, so I don’t really care. I know lots of people do, though, and that’s why there are now something like 100,000 apps out there for that platform. If you couldn’t compete in the direct market, what makes you think you’re going to stand out in the larger field? Just for the novelty? Are you giving your comic away for free, then? If so, what’s your business model?

There is nothing wrong with a free taste. But you need to have something to convert those tasters to buying, and if you’ve only done the one “graphic novel” several years ago, what are you selling? Conversely, if you’re going to charge for your unknown comic, how are you getting the word out? Oh, through trying to get sites like mine to run your press release. Sorry. I know that it’s the hot new lifeboat everyone’s seizing on, but putting an illustrated work on the iPhone just doesn’t strike me as newsworthy. (Maybe if I had one I’d feel differently. My phone is Android, which has a comparative lack of comics available.)

This is the modern-day version of the press release that used to say “hey! I’m distributed by Diamond (just like thousands of other comics).” It’s a basic business decision, not news. As in so many other things, it only counts if you’re first, and you’ve already missed that window.

V for Vendetta
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by KC Carlson

Seeing myself on the New York Times bestseller list as the editor of V for Vendetta is sort of amusing. And not really entirely unexpected. More than a decade ago, when I first learned the concept of Googling oneself, I gave it a shot. Not much came up back then, except for my “editorial” credits for both the V for Vendetta collection and for the Sandman: The Doll’s House collection — both of which showed Amazon listing me as editor. Actually, the V for Vendetta book did offer me my first thrill of seeing my name in print while standing in a bookstore (the late, lamented Coliseum Books in NYC).

I don’t think my name is in the book at all anymore, since it has gone through a couple of design changes and lord knows how many printings since I first “packaged” the book for DC in 1990. There wasn’t much actual editing by me, but that was the title I was given for my role on the original collected edition.

It was certainly one of the most memorable Collected Books projects I worked on, as there were numerous production headaches for both myself and designer Dale Crain, including missing, mislabeled, and damaged film. Apparently, the U.S, was one of the last countries to produce a V For Vendetta collection, as the film had traveled around the world several times before DC did their version. By the time I got it, it had been reduced from the original 8-up film (8 pages of story per film flat x 4 for 4-color printing — black, red, yellow, and blue) and cut apart into each individual page. Unfortunately, whoever did the cutting had also cut off all of the identifying marks on the film (like issue and page numbers!), and the pieces were randomly stuffed into several unsorted envelopes. If you’ve never looked at 4-color film, only the black plate has any real identifying marks, since it is the only one to include the black outlines of the artwork as well as the word balloons. All of the film for the other colors basically looks like blobs of negative, which represents various percentages of the the base colors, but to the naked eye, pretty much unidentifiable as much of anything.

Since V for Vendetta includes well over 250 pages of artwork, and there were four individual pieces of film for each page, that meant I was dealing with over 1,000 pieces of cut-apart film — three-quarters of which were pretty much completely unidentifiable without first locating the black plate to use for matching reference. So first, I had to find all the black plates and put them in order, no small task without page numbers OR even issue numbers.

But even that was a problem because every page of black plate film had all the word balloons opaqued out — a common thing to happen when a book is printed in a foreign country where the English words are covered up and replaced with the host language. Most people who do this are polite enough to clean the film before returning it. Not this time.

I don’t recall if I did the cleaning or not. Probably not, as they had to be cleaned individually by hand, probably with some horrible turpentine-like solution of which the fumes would have eventually killed everybody in the already overcrowded environs of DC’s beloved 666 Fifth Ave. offices. When I eventually got the cleaned black plates back, I discovered a new problem. The film had been so well-travelled that the lettering was starting to break up. Most of the letter “E”s were breaking apart (so they looked like “F” or “L”), and the “A”s and “B”s and “P”s were beginning to block up solid.

Having no idea what it would cost (this was one of the first trades I worked on), I wondered if it would be easier to get new film struck, so I showed this to Production Manager Bob Rozakis, and I think we both went to see Publisher Paul Levitz. And the answer was — no new film. It was not in the budget, and moreover, there probably wasn’t enough time to get it done. So I asked how I should deal with the problem, and I believe that Paul said something like “use your best judgment and fix everything that looks bad.” Which meant carefully pouring over the book and circling hundreds (maybe thousands!) of broken letters with instructions to “clean out” or “fix”.

More on this later. Back to the film.

Once I had the black plates separated out, labeled (using the original comics as reference), and in order, I moved into the DC conference room and spread out my piles and piles of unlabeled film on the large conference table. Mostly I needed the room for its wall-mounted track lighting. I carefully taped each piece of black plate film to the lights, so I could see through it, like a doctor looking at an x-ray. Then I painstakingly took each piece of color film and held it up to each black plate to see if it matched. So, for about a week, all I did was walk around the room, holding each piece of film, muttering “Nope… Nope… Nope…” to myself, until I could find the match — and then quickly labeled it, by page and issue number!

(I first tried doing this on a light box but quickly abandoned it for two reasons: First, on a light box, I could only do one or two pages at a time. In the conference room, I could do two issues at a time, one on each side of the room. Second, DC had a limited number of light boxes available, and all were in high demand by production artists and visiting freelancers.)

Since the conference room was literarily across the the hall from Paul’s office, he would occasionally look in, shake his head a couple of times, and then move on. Once, early on in the procedure, he asked me, “Isn’t there somebody else who should be doing that?” Sadly, at that point in time, the answer was no, as the DC film library was in a major period of transition and a very long subway ride away from the office — way out in Brooklyn. It would be two office moves and several years later before the film library would be in the same building as the DC offices. (And after the floors were reinforced. Film is heavy!)

Earlier, just after I was made Collected Books Editor, I was struggling with dealing with the normally huge sheets of film on a desk that wasn’t large enough to accommodate them. Salvation came when cubicle dividers were installed in my three-person office. I quickly un-installed mine and propped it up on a short file cabinet to make a larger desk surface. (The dividers were unasked for and unwanted, because we had the happiest office at DC, cramped as it was). Weeks later, Paul finally noticed that I had “defaced” my new office furniture. He wasn’t happy about it and told me so, but the matter was largely forgotten when he realized that I needed a larger flat space for the film and the then very-crowded office could not accommodate me. Shortly afterwards, and after they got better organized, the film library dealt exclusively with film matters. Today, the collected book editors seldom ever touch film. And I have to wonder, in this digital age, if film even exists at all.

Later, while the book was being printed, artist and colorist David Lloyd traveled to Montreal (on his own dime) to join me at the press check for the printing of the book (in the middle of the night, when most comics are printed — or, at least, they were then). The print run on the first edition was relatively small, and therefore, each signature of the book was “on press” for only a short period of time. It was maybe only 10-20 minutes per signature for the high-speed presses, so adjustments for color had to be done quickly, while the presses were running. Unfortunately, bound contributor copies of the book were later sent to David from the front end of the print run (while the color was still being “fine-tuned” by David), and he was understandably quite upset at the time. All seems forgiven now, as David and I met up at the Baltimore Comic-Con a couple of years back, and we had a great chat about those crazy days.

There were other odd things about the book, most of which vexed designer Dale Crain, such as the slightly different sized interior pages (most of the original chapters were originally printed in the UK black and white magazine Warrior). The indicia and copyright page was done before DC had standardized their masthead for collected books, which meant I was inadvertently listed as Editor of the book over Karen Berger, the rightful Editor of the US version of the original series and over whoever actually edited it in Warrior (who wasn’t mentioned at all). These errors, I hope, have been corrected in subsequent editions of the book. Me, I still have my prized (and rare?) hardcover edition of the original printing given to me by my friend Phyllis Hume, longtime coordinator of DC’s international editions. I’m still not sure where this particular version of the book comes from, as the guts were from the original Printed in Canada First Printing, but the dust jacket was printed in the USA. Oddly, it doesn’t have a cover price either, so perhaps it’s a book club version.

One last thing. Remember those lettering corrections? Several months after V For Vendetta: the Collected Edition was printed and distributed and eagerly snapped up by people who love great comics and I had moved on to other projects, one day Bob Rozakis appeared in my office. “Paul would like to see us.” he said in that wonderful half-sighing way that Bob has. Uh-oh, I thought. Rule of thumb in the DC offices: If Paul had good news for you, he delivered it in person. If you were summoned, it probably wasn’t good news.

When we got to Paul’s office, his face was red, and and he had what looked like an invoice held tightly in his hand. He said something like, “This is our printing bill for the V For Vendetta trade. It says here that there were hundreds of corrections made in the lettering for the trade.”

“Yes,” I said, which seemed to make him more upset.

“Why?” he asked, exasperated.

It was here that I first realized that Paul probably had to deal with thousands of things like this every day. And that what was a big deal to me — the conversation about whether or not to have new film struck for the book — was probably the 537th decision that he had to make that day — and had since forgotten since there were several thousand much more important decisions to be be made since that day. I struggled to figure out what to say.

Luckily, BobRo jumped in, a old hand at talking to Paul, and gently reminded him that the film was in very bad shape and that corrections were necessary.

“But this many? Why did you make so many corrections?” he asked me directly.

“Because there were that many things that looked bad. And you told me to correct anything that looked bad,” I said.

Paul looked like he wanted to yell but couldn’t. BobRo helpfully chimed in, “You did tell him that, Paul.” Which was not really all that helpful at all, now that I think about it.

Paul went on to explain to me that the cost for all the corrections was so high that the book was probably not going to be profitable for DC until sometime into its third printing, whenever that was. I’m fairly sure that by now DC has turned a nice profit on the multiple printings of the perennial bestseller, but back then, it really wasn’t all that clear-cut. Collections took awhile to gain their footing, especially in the early days when many Direct Market retailers were skeptical of items with relatively high cover prices, and the general populace audience (through bookstores) wasn’t as developed or even widely accepted like it is today.

These days when I see Paul at a convention or other social gathering and I see that his hair is a little more gray, I always think, “Part of that’s my fault.” But then again, since my hair turned gray virtually overnight while I was editing the Superman books during a particularly contentious period, I think we’re kinda even.

Like The Animatrix and Batman: Gotham Knight, Halo Legends is an anthology, containing cartoons done in both CG and anime styles. Like most Warner original-to-DVD animation releases, there will be a two-disc Special Edition ($29.98), a single-disc version ($19.98), and Blu-Ray ($34.99). Here’s the description from the press release:

Halo Legends is a seven-story anthology –- told across eight spectacular episodes -– that explores the origin and historical events of the Halo universe and its intriguing characters. … each individual episode imagined by a cutting-edge, renowned Japanese anime director/animator, including Shinji Aramaki, Mamoru Oshii, Hideki Futamura, Tomoki Kyoda and Yasushi Muraki…. The individual episodes fall within Halo’s 26th Century mythology as the battle between humanity and aliens rages on in an attempt to protect Earth and mankind’s expansive number of space colonies. The dramatic, action-packed stories feature characters and locales familiar to Halo fans, and episodes range in length between 10 and 17 minutes -–  resulting in nearly two hours of animated adventures.

Bonus Features include:

• The Making of Halo Legends -– An introduction to Halo Legends followed by a making-of segment for each episode.
• Halo: Gaming Evolved –- Explaining the Halo phenomenon from its inception as an Xbox video game to a present day entertainment franchise.
• Audio Commentary with directors Frank O’Connor and Joseph Chou

The Blu-Ray version has, in addition, “Halo: The Story so Far”, a Halo universe overview.

Got the above in an email from the WBShop (Warner Bros. online store), and I thought some of you might be interested. Sale ends November 12. Featured products include Watchmen DVDs (40% off, which makes them under $12), hats and belts, toys, kids’ costumes, and other DVDs. (I gain no benefit from any sales here, just in case anyone wondered.)

Joe McDoakes was the lead character in an almost forgotten series of comedy shorts produced and directed by Richard Bare and distributed by Warner Bros. from 1942 through 1956. Though the series is named after its lead character, it’s also known as the Behind the Eight Ball series, since Joe always appeared behind a giant eight ball in the opening credits of each film. It’s also occasionally known as the So You Want… series, as most of the series titles begin with this phrase (as in So You Want to Be a Cowboy). The series starred George O’Hanlon as McDoakes in all 63 installments.

The Joe McDoakes Collection
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There are a number of odd animation and comic book connections to the McDoakes series. These days, O’Hanlon is much better known as the voice of George Jetson in both the cartoon and Jetsons: The Movie (which was the last time he portrayed Jetson, as O’Hanlon passed away before the film was released). Another famous cartoon voice actor — Arthur Q. Bryan, the voice of Elmer Fudd — appears in So You Want to Build a Model Railroad and guest narrates So You Want to Be a Policeman. The series’ musical composer and arranger, William Lava, later went on to do the same job for most of the final theatrical Warner Bros. cartoons (for which he is usually not held in high regard) and for many of the made-for-television Pink Panther cartoons (based on Henry Mancini’s famous original theme). Lava also composed most of the incidental music (as well as the memorable theme song) for the 1960s TV series F Troop — a show that was about as close to a live-action cartoon as you can get.

Phyllis Coates, who portrayed Lois Lane in the first season of TV’s Adventures of Superman, got her start in film playing Joe McDoakes’ long-suffering wife Alice (one of three in the long-running series). She played the character in many of the episodes from 1948-1956.

Each of the shorts were co-written by Bare and O’Hanlon (although usually just credited to Bare), and all of them followed the same format, with McDoakes humorously attempting to accomplish the goal or role stated in each episode title — and usually failing spectacularly. In So You Want to Be a Baby Sitter, Joe is mercilessly tortured by a neighborhood kid that Alice has volunteered Joe to babysit — on poker night, no less. In So You Want to Be Popular, Joe realized that he has a bad personality and tries to get personality lessons from a professional but instead gets “fixed” by his obnoxious neighbor, ending up as obnoxious as he is.

Richard Bare, creator of the character, here talks about how O’Hanlon was selected and the series started:

Most of the episodes are narrated by Art Gilmore, a famous voice actor that you’ve probably heard hundreds of times but never known his name. Besides being on many radio and television shows, Gilmore’s dramatic voice was heard on film trailers throughout the 1950s and 60s. If you watch a lot of TCM, you’ve heard his voice whenever they show old trailers between movies.

Ultimately, the series proves why O’Hanlon is best known as a a great voice actor. Put through the paces in these shorts, O’Hanlon runs through endless emotional changes from extreme frustration to extreme rage and exasperation, but he spends most of his screen time mugging for the camera. His frustrations were much better used to their fullest extent with an animated character like George Jetson, where O’Hanlon can rage to his heart’s content off camera.

Much of the fun in watching these old shorts is in spotting old character actors popping up from time to time. The series is filled with familiar faces from Laurel and Hardy and Three Stooges shorts, as well as lots of actors you might recognize from early television comedies and dramas. I don’t even know half of their names, but I spent a lot of time going “Hey! I know that guy!” while watching these shorts — and then scrambling to IMDB to find out more info. Much fun! A number of more notable actors appear occasionally, like Ronald Reagan and Janis Paige in So You Want to Be in Pictures or Doris Day and Gordon McRae in So You Want a Television Set.

Here’s a clip from So You Want to Be in Pictures to give the flavor of the shorts:

All 63 11-minute Joe McDoakes shorts are included on this six-disc set. It’s part of the new Warner Archive on-demand program of bare-bones DVD sets (no special features or other bells and whistles) featuring lesser-known works. But it may be your only chance to see this wonderful lost chapter of Hollywood comedy shorts. (The studio provided a review copy.)

Imagine being immersed in a long, meandering conversation with someone that speaks their mind openly on any and everything. Further imagine that you look at your watch and discovered you’ve been captivated by this person for several hours, and it’s only been the two of you the whole time. That’s what it’s like to read Hayao Miyazaki’s Starting Point: 1979-1996. It’s one of most delightful, enlightening, and at times surprisingly confessional books I’ve read in a great while.

Starting Point: 1979-1996
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Starting Point is a collection of Miyazaki’s writings and interviews. There is a nice bonus in the center of the book, an eight-page, full-color manga on the history of in-flight dining done for Winds, Japan Airlines’ magazine. This is followed by nine black-and-white pages from Miyazaki’s notebooks. (The last three are untranslated so you can see the quality of Miyazaki’s penmanship.) The foreword is by John Lasseter, one of the founders of Pixar and friend of Miyazaki. The afterword is by Isao Takahata, long-time collaborator of Miyazaki and co-founder of Studio Ghibli.

Over the course of the book, the reader is able to develop a well-rounded picture of Miyazaki, both the man and the animator. In high school, Miyazaki originally wanted to be a gekiga manga artist (49). (Gekiga is a style of realistically drawn manga. The stories are often gritty, dark portrayals of modern life.) However, the Japanese animated movie Hakujaden (The Tale of the White Serpent) literally changed his life.

It made me realize that, behind a facade of cynical pronouncements, in actuality I really was in love with the pure, earnest world of film, even if it were only another cheap melodrama. I was no longer able to deny the fact that there was another me — a me that yearned desperately to affirm the world rather than negate it. (70)

Miyazaki went off to college where, surprisingly, he majored in political economics. While in college he was also part of the Children Literature Study Group (311).

In 1963, he was hired by Toei Animation as an in-between animator (the entry-level job for animation companies). He found the daily grind of television animation becoming unbearable. He was ready to return to his former dream of becoming a manga artist, when a Russian animated film reignited his passion. “Had I not one day seen Snedronnigen (The Snow Queen) during a film screening hosted by the company labor union, I honestly doubt that I would have continued working as an animator.” (71)

In 1978, Miyazaki would make his directorial debut with the television series Future Boy Conan (yet to be released in the US). In 1979, Miyazaki directed his first feature film, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro. In 1985, Studio Ghibli was founded. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Miyazaki has a great deal of faith in the unlimited potential of animation as a storytelling medium. In this sense he reminds me of Tezuka, who believed that manga had unlimited potential and was an art form on par with novels, short stories, and theater. I find Miyazaki’s passion for cartoons compelling and share his belief that the only limits to cartoons are the imaginations of animators.

In other words, I am talking about doing something with animation that can’t be done with manga magazines, children’s literature, or even live-action films. I’m talking about building a truly unique imaginary world, tossing in characters I like, and then creating a complete drama using them. Simply put, this is what animation is to me. (17)

He has equally high hopes for what his films will accomplish.

To my way of thinking, creating animation means creating a fictional world. That world soothes the spirit of those who are disheartened and exhausted from dealing with the sharp edges of reality, or suffering from a nearsighted distortion of their emotions. When the audience is watching animation, they are apt to feel light and cheerful or purified and refreshed. (25)

But if we can free ourselves from the various complexes we have and the tangled relationships we are in to live a freer, more open world, we might be able to become strong and heroic. I think everyone entertains thoughts of becoming more beautiful, or more gentle, or of having a more meaningful existence. (306)

His high ambitions for animation have made him a harsh critic of much of the animation he sees. “I frankly despise the truncated word ‘anime’ because it only symbolizes the current desolation of our industry.” (72)

But I’d like to see effort put into filmmaking sufficient to withstand the bare-knuckled criticism that I’m providing here. Cartoons have certain weaknesses that we normally don’t notice, and a type of laxity arises precisely because the films are treated as mere cartoons. (118)

His most vehement criticism is leveled at television animation.

“Producing an animation series merely to fill time slots in the broadcast schedule is like generating cultural pollution.” (186)

TV cartoon shows were all just a bunch of slapdash, amateurish, uninspired, derivative creations. We used to say among ourselves that making them was like working with still-open wounds. (279)

Is it any wonder that one he was given the freedom to make animated films, he never returned to television again?

I was also amazed some of the personal confessions that show up in this book. A touching reflection on his relationship with his father and his perceived failings as a parent, “I tried to be a good father, but in the end I wasn’t a very good parent.” (204) His flaws as a first-time director, “The schedule slipped and I caused a lot of trouble for the staff and the production company. This was entirely due to my failing, as I can only work following my intuition and feelings.” (66) Even his personal shortcomings, “I’m a careless sort of person, so I am often quick to say bad things about people.” (211)

My favorite sections of the book are where he discusses Future Boy Conan and each of his films in detail. We learn Miyazaki didn’t intend for the ending of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind to have the religious overtones that it did. But once the film headed in that direction he couldn’t steer it otherwise. (393) Further, we find out Kiki’s Delivery Service was actually made for young women heading to Tokyo to find their first job and make a place for themselves in this world. (262, 378) Porco Rosso was made, “…for tired, middle-aged men whose brain cells have turned to tofu.” (267) There are so many more interesting facts about the production and themes in each of his major works.

So many great quotes can be pulled from this book. There are tons of fascinating ideas that could fuel extended discussions among its readers. Not to mention, lots of behind-the-scenes glimpses of the reality of making animated TV shows and feature films. There is such a wealth of information, no review can truly hope to touch on everything contained within the pages of this book.

I honestly believe that every anime fan needs to read Miyazaki’s Starting Point: 1979-1996. It’s a chance to see deeply inside the anime industry, as well as an opportunity to intimately know one of anime’s greatest directors. I highly recommend Takahata’s afterward as a loving, but brutally honest, portrayal that only a real friend could write. This is also a must-read for American animation fans. It offers a different perspective on cartoons, and how they should be made, than we generally hear in the US. Simply put, this is too significant a book to let simply pass you by. (The publisher provided a review copy.)

Bonus Feature: I showed Johanna what my copy of Starting Point looked like when I was reading it and she thought it would be fun to take a picture of it share with you. So here are my photos. I annotated each photo in an attempt to justify/explain my process.

The Character’s Comic Origin

Plastic Man was one of the greatest conceptual characters ever created in comic books, especially during his Golden Age career where his adventures were chronicled by his creator, the amazing Jack Cole. Primarily a humorist, Cole’s Plastic Man adventures (beginning in the pages of Police Comics in 1941) were wildly funny and amazingly innovative, with Cole’s often surreal artwork and outrageous slapstick humor.

Plastic Man: The Complete Collection
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But Plastic Man wasn’t just a great humor strip — there were darker elements as well, especially in the character’s origins as former criminal Eel O’Brian, abandoned by his gang and left for dead when a heist goes bad. Saved by a monk and taken to recover at his monastery, O’Brian discovers that exposure to a mysterious acid during the failed crime has changed him physically — his body is pliable like rubber! With the revelation of this remarkable power, and with the monk’s belief that he had the capacity for greater good, O’Brian decides to change his life completely. Disguising himself by remolding his face and donning cool goggles and a patently ridiculous stretchable leotard (with a distinctive black and yellow striped belt), he becomes the crime fighter Plastic Man!

Eventually joining the police department and then the FBI, Plastic Man becomes an incredibly successfully hero, mostly because he still maintains his Eel O’Brian identity as a criminal in order to keep tabs on the criminal underworld. Thus, with one foot in each “world”, Plas’ adventures are filled with wild comedy as well as crime elements, as he’s pitted against any number of bizarre crooks and femme fatales. Cole capitalized on the character’s unique costume and abilities by either making Plas a master of disguise or by having him “blend into the background” by taking the shape of normal everyday objects, like mailboxes and lamp poles — all with tell-tale black and yellow stripes or stylized goggles. Thus, he became his generation’s “Where’s Waldo?” long before Waldo was born, and readers delighted in ferreting out where Plas was hiding in Cole’s often bizarre artwork!

Plas in Modern Comics

Plastic Man had a long and successful Golden Age career in both Police Comics and his own title until his publisher, Quality Comics, folded in 1956. DC Comics (then National Periodical Publications) acquired the publishing rights to three Quality properties — Blackhawk, G.I. Combat, and Plastic Man. They almost immediately began publishing the first two but completely forgot about Plastic Man until 1966, where he finally popped up in the Dial H For Hero feature in House of Mystery. That was probably just a way to promote his upcoming (but short-lived) ten-issue series, the first issue memorably illustrated by Gil Kane. But the character wasn’t the same.

Since then, Plastic Man has had a very long, very intermittent, and mostly confusing history/continuity at DC. Every few years the character would be revived, either with a new series or as a member of the All-Star Squadron or eventually, the Justice League. But the exact combination of key elements of each appearance were never quite satisfactory. Almost no one could replicate Cole’s magic touch with the character. (Although Kyle Baker’s series came close. At least it looked great!) A lot of his later writers could just not capture his humor properly, especially in his JLA appearances, where it seemed like he was an obnoxious jerk who wouldn’t shut up. Or they made the character too serious, with family problems or really wrong feelings of insecurity. In the modern DC world, he’s still a good character, but he has lost many of the elements that originally made him great.

Destined for Animation

Unfortunately, such is the same with Plas’ animation career. It’s not that The Plastic Man Comedy/ Adventure Show (running 1979-1981, from which this four-DVD set is compiled) is actually a bad show — it’s not! It’s got a great pedigree, and some great folks working on it. Plus, Plas is a character who is destined to be animated — stretching and morphing into other shapes is only really cool when you can see it in action! It’s just that it is obviously a product of its time, subject to the whims of the great Saturday Morning Television Network gods, their P.C. desires and fears of complaints from parental groups. It probably didn’t help that the show was co-produced by Hanna Barbera (long past their prime, pre-Cartoon Network) and Ruby-Spears (did they have a prime?).

Here’s some of the good stuff: Plas himself, who does some cool stunts throughout the series and throws out some occasionally great one-liners while under pressure. He’s ably voiced by Michael Bell, although his voice tends to occasionally get a bit whiny when agitated (or is that just because he’s fighting to be heard against the relentlessly bad generic non-stop soundtrack music in each episode?). The villains are pretty cool. I especially like The Clam, an actual talking clam wearing a little sailor’s cap. Dr. Dome (not Doom) pops up from the 60s DC comic series, and Carrot Man (from the 70s comics) also makes an odd appearance. Plus, there are some great comic book writers on the writing staff including Mark Evanier, Steve Gerber, Roy Thomas, and Buzz Dixon. Unfortunately, there are no individual episode credits, so you’re on your own trying to identify who wrote what. (Sounds like a great drinking game to me!)

This Might Be Annoying

And here’s some of the bad stuff: Plas’s blonde bombshell partner Penny, who is voiced with the most annoying Southern accent since Veronica on the Archie cartoons from the 60s. (The voice actress, Melendy Britt, did a much better job voicing Princess Adora/She-Ra.) Penny obviously has a huge crush on Plastic Man, which is mostly unrequited as Plas only has eyes for the female Chief (also voiced by Britt). In the DVD documentary for the series, animation producer James Tucker speculates that Penny might only be there to help make it clear that Plas is actually interested in girls, being, you know, so unusually dressed in a leotard all the time. (Oh dear.) Penny finally succeeds in getting her man, as sometime between the first and second seasons, Plas and Penny not only marry — but actually spawn. There’s a little Baby Plas running around in Season Two, not only in his own cartoon series (called Baby Plas, natch), but in the Plastic Family series of cartoons staring Mom, Pop, and Baby Plas. Sadly (or fortunately — your choice), the Baby Plas and Plastic Family cartoons are not included in this set, making it not quite so Complete after all. (But trust me, I’m not complaining!)

By the way, we don’t actually see any of the wedding, except for being told about it in the opening sequence of the second season, in lieu of actually getting a real theme song. But then again, there’s no theme song for the first season either, just a discussion of how Plas’ powers work, set to more relentless generic soundtrack. Was there so much cost-cutting going on that the producers didn’t want to pay for a theme song, or were there just not that many good rhymes for “plastic”?

But I’m forgetting about one of the worst comic relief sidekicks in all of cartoons. Hula Hula was a Polynesian (you can tell by his Hawaiian shirt) man (or boy? who can tell?), who inexplicably talked like Lou Costello (from Abbott &…) and had horrible bad luck that affected everybody around him. And apparently made him stupid as well. Fortunately, the producers came to their senses and didn’t call him by the horribly racist name “Coconut” like they wanted to. The character was already offensive enough without that added burden. He was no Woozy Winks, I’ll tell you that!

Extras! Extras!

But all is not lost. As if to prove that Plas could be a great animated star, the DVD set also includes an unaired Plastic Man pilot episode that was produced for Cartoon Network in 2006, and it is the best thing on this set. It was developed by Andy Suriano (producer on Batman: The Brave and the Bold) and Tom Kenny (voice of Spongebob Squarepants), who also plays Plastic Man. It’s a great cartoon, full of manic energy (maybe a bit too manic, actually), but there are lots of good gags, and Plas seems more like Plas than he has since the 1940s. Perhaps it’s a little bit too Ren & Stimpy/Kricfalusi influenced, for my taste anyway. There’s enough great stuff in the cartoon to not really need the crutch of the borrowed influence, and that may be why it was not picked up to go to series. I’d love to see Suriano and Kenny try it again — and Plas does occasionally pop up on Batman: The Brave and the Bold (voiced by Kenny), and in a much more appealing style, at least in my opinion.

Also included in the set is a 14-minute documentary, PLAS-tastic: A Brief History of Plastic Man. Featuring comic historians Jerry Beck, Mark Evanier (who also wrote for the show), and Alan Kistler, plus animation veterans Dan Riba, Andy Suriano, James Tucker, Tom Kenny, Andrea Romano, and Jeff Hall, the group discuss the series in-depth, as well as the unaired pilot, Kyle Baker’s take on Plastic Man at DC comics, and Plas’ appearances on Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Notably, no DC staffers appear in the documentary.

One last thing, the Bonus Features aren’t on Disc 4 where the packaging says they are. The Documentary is actually on Disc 1 and the unaired pilot “Puddle Trouble” is on Disc 2.

All in all, a very nice DVD set, for a series that may or may not really deserve it — but that’s pretty much left up for you to decide. If you grew up watching this series as a kid, and have fond memories of watching it, you will love it. For the rest of us, there’s a lot to love about Plastic Man, and for something you love, a lot can be forgiven.

Classic comic book adventures of Plastic Man by Jack Cole can be found in Volumes 1-8 of the Plastic Man Archives, published by DC Comics, and highly recommended. (The studio provided a DVD review copy.)

On Tuesday night, I was giving the rare pleasure of seeing two underground comix luminaries sit down and talk for an hour. The University of Richmond’s Modlin Center for the Arts hosted Genesis: A Conversation with R. Crumb and Franciose Mouly at the Richmond CenterStage Carpenter Theater.

The evening opened with a brief introduction to the two guests. Mouly founded Raw Books & Graphics in 1977. She is currently the art director for The New Yorker magazine and the editorial director of Toon Books. Crumb’s first job as an illustrator was for American Greeting cards in 1962. In 1967, Crumb moved to San Francisco and founded the underground comix movement. In 1991, he moved to France, where he still lives today. The Virginia Commonwealth University library has an excellent resource page on Crumb.

The setup and format for the evening was very basic. Two chairs were placed at the center of the stage. Behind them was a large projection screen. The two guests talked for an hour with Mouly acting as interviewer/moderator. At the end of their conversation, they opened it up to audience questions for a half-hour. There was no photography allowed of Mouly or Crumb. Crumb didn’t hold an autograph session, although Velocity Comics and Chop Suey Books had presigned copies of Crumb’s Genesis book for sale in the lobby.

After a brief introduction, both Mouly & Crumb walked on stage. Crumb began the evening with a pratfall. It was clear from the start that Mouly was hoping for an hour of serious discussion exploring some of the themes in Crumb’s work. Crumb, however, was in a more playful mood and wanted to crack jokes and keep it lighthearted. The most animated moments of the evening were when Crumb wasn’t talking about himself but instead talking about his wife, reactions to his work, or criticizing corporate America.

The conversation started with Crumb talking about the 1994 documentary of his life, titled Crumb. It was clear that he was unhappy with the film, but unclear as to why. I wasn’t sure if it was because he thought the film was biased in its presentation or because the film was too revealing. He said that he was glad that his family was living in France when the film was released in the US. He didn’t think that his daughter, Sophie, would have been able to attend public school after the film’s release. The film made him want to change his appearance and who he was.

Crumb’s biggest concern in moving to France was losing touch with American culture, since his work is based on cultural observations. He would never presume to make comments on French culture since he didn’t grow up in it and was still trying to understand it. He expanded on American culture during the audience Q&A section. The one thing that he despises is how corporations are really the driving force and shapers of US culture. There are layers and layers of chicanery and deception. We are so bombarded by PR that Americans don’t even realize how ubiquitous it is.

Mouly mentioned that Crumb’s wife, Aline, is an excellent artist in her own right. Crumb agreed and felt it was unfair that she had to compete against his fame/notoriety. Crumb met Aline in 1971 when she moved out to San Francisco to be part of the underground comix scene. She was the first women to do autobiographical underground comix. Currently, she is working on creating shrines. They showed pictures of her Barbie shrine and Virgin Mother shrine. A couple of times in the conversation Crumb mentioned how much they are still in love.

Next they focused on specific Crumb comix. Mouly commented on them and asked for his thoughts. One was “A Gurl” about a woman masturbating. She thought it showed a sensitivity toward women. Crumb was surprised since he said it all came out of his imagination. Next was a comix titled “Don’t Touch Me”. This was a multipage work that depicted a woman being raped. The first page is from the perspective of the woman. Mouly says that it’s not what it appears at first. Crumb was happy she got it. He’s frustrated that people just have a knee-jerk reaction without trying to understand the joke. Then he said that all women have rape fantasies. This was the only remark Crumb made that drew a negative reaction from Mouly and the audience. They quickly moved on.

Crumb’s love of music and the portraits he’s done of early blues and jazz musicians were briefly discussed. He said that music has a powerful effect on him and the portraits were a way of expressing appreciation to the musicians. Interestingly, he doesn’t listen to music while he draws; he prefers it to be silent. Crumb said he can either draw comix or listen to music but can’t do both. Also, he only listens to CDs if he can’t get the 78. Crumb and his daughter, Sophie, have been members of various bands. Aline can play an instrument but doesn’t share their passion.

The conversation then focused on Crumb’s illustrated version of the book of Genesis. Originally, he had intended to do a satire of Adam and Eve. After studying the text, he decided to do a straightforward visual interpretation. Once he finished with the Adam and Eve story, he realized he felt compelled to do the entire book of Genesis. For visual reference, he visited the British Museum’s collection of Sumer and Assyrian art but found there wasn’t very much there. So he looked for other sources to help fill out the visual details. D.W. Griffith’s 1916 film Intolerance turned out to be the most useful. All the sets and costumes were based on Assyrian bas-reliefs. Crumb used stills from the movie as visual reference. In order to complete the book, Aline rented a secluded cabin in the mountains for him to use as a studio. He was left alone during the week; she visited him, and brought provisions, on the weekends.

Mouly confessed Crumb’s book was the first time she had actually read the book of Genesis. Crumb said he had heard that from many other people. He did a lot of research into the text while working on the illustrations. He was amazed to discover the amount of debate about the Biblical texts. Some word meanings have been lost to the ages, and scholars argue over how to translate them. Some words are ambiguous, and more than one meaning could be appropriate to the text. Sometimes the debate is how to best translate the text to communicate the original meaning to modern readers. He didn’t realize how difficult it would be to illustrate Genesis when he started. Now that he is finished, he won’t do any other Biblical books.

During the Q&A section, Crumb was asked about his first experience with LSD. He tried LSD back in June 1965, when it was still legal. It shattered reality for him. It shattered everything. He was so detached from reality that he threw up and didn’t realize it at the time. The next day when he went to work, the world seemed hollow and like cardboard to him. Later in San Francisco, he smoked pot and did so for eight years. But his advice is to stay sober. Today’s youth doesn’t value their own native intelligence. They don’t value their own natural ability for perception and awareness.

The evening ended with Mouy making the observation that Crumb’s Genesis is a modern Rorschach test. Most discussion is really about the reader’s reaction to his book and less about the book itself. Some find it too salacious, and others say it’s not salacious enough. Then they got up and exited the stage. Crumb ended the evening the way he began it, with a pratfall.

I enjoyed the conversation. I do wish that Crumb had been a bit more serious and willing to engage Mouly in discussions about themes in his works and how he intended readers to react to certain comix. That being said it was a captivating and entertaining hour and a half. Like all truly good programs, it felt like the time flew by. Hopefully, they will tape one of the other evenings to allow more fans to experience this event. I’m sure no one left disappointed. (A free ticket to the event was provided by the Modlin Center.)

Robert Crumb is a well-known aficionado of old-time American blues, jazz, and ragtime music, and this love of music has often found its way into his artwork. Among the many examples of this is the image Françoise showed next: one of Crumb’s portraits of a musician, the blues singer/guitarist Robert Johnson.

I’d seen a pen and ink version of this image before, but not this full-color version, which is apparently from an edition of prints. When the image appeared on-screen, Crumb remarked jokingly to Mouly, “The guy who owns (this photograph) is very litigious. I hope you don’t get sued!” I later found the print for sale on the official R. Crumb website and noted that it was listed with copyright indicia crediting the image to the “Delta Haze Corporation,” which made me wonder if Crumb’s comments stem from first-hand experience. Prompted for why he does so much music-related drawing, he said, “Music has such a profound effect on me, I just want to express my affection.” Crumb did mention, though, that he never listens to music while he works because he finds it too absorbing and that it demands his entire attention.

The Book of Genesis

The final — and most lengthy — topic of the Mouly/Crumb interview portion of the evening was a discussion of Genesis. In one of the more memorable moments of the interview, Françoise had brought along with her a stack of complaints The New Yorker had received after publishing an excerpt of the book, and she began reading them to Crumb. People’s grousing ranged from letters tersely complaining that the work was “salacious and adolescent” to a lengthy multi-page diatribe from a Hebrew scholar who was apparently quite upset about a single word in the text, which he felt had been inaccurately translated. On the general topic of translation minutiae, Crumb said, “The people who are into this stuff don’t even agree on what it all means. And people kill each other over this thing!”

Another letter complained that the Crumb Genesis excerpt “didn’t add anything” to the original text. Responded Crumb: “I didn’t want to add anything. I just wanted to illustrate it.” Responding both to this letter and to an older lewd parody-ish Crumb version of the story of Adam and Eve that’d been shown on-screen earlier, he said further, “I restrained myself from making little jokes — and there was plenty of opportunity to do so.”

Françoise mentioned that Crumb’s Genesis was the first time she’d ever actually read the Bible and recounted how she’d asked around the offices of The New Yorker how many of her co-workers had actually read anything from the Bible. No one had, apparently. In an amusing bit of “Manhattan myopia” reminiscent of Saul Steinberg’s “View of the World From 9th Avenue” which she’d showed only minutes before, Mouly then extrapolated this experience broadly, saying, “Very few people have read the Bible.”

Her general point, though, is astute: for many — if not most — of the people likely to run out and buy an R. Crumb-illustrated book of Genesis, this will probably be their first direct exposure to the text. It’s also an equally astute point that anyone who would complain about the published Genesis excerpts being “salacious” most certainly has not read the original text, which is plenty salacious in its own right.

Pointing out that this was hardly the first time Crumb had taken on illustrating weighty texts, Mouly showed a quick gallery of some of the cartoonist’s other adaptations, including his collaborations with Harvey Pekar, his illustrations of the journals of James Boswell, Sartre’s Nausea, and “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick” story. As pages from these works were shown, there was some oddly inappropriate laughter (I thought). I’m not sure why anyone coming to hear a cartoonist speak about his illustrated version of Genesis would find it particularly odd or funny that that same artist might have also illustrated, say, Satre’s Nausea. As the Philip Dick story appeared on-screen, Robert noted that he’d done that story with a brush rather than pens. He joked, “I probably should have done Genesis with a brush. All that cross-hatching is a pain in the ass.”

Returning to Genesis, Crumb discussed his working methods a bit. He mentioned that he’d visited a museum or two, looking for visual reference material, but that he mainly used screen captures from films to pin down period clothing and architecture. The two movies in particular he drew on most heavily were Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments and D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. Mouly showed a number of the still images from both of these films that Crumb had used for reference. The cartoonist noted with some hilarity that all of the actors in Intolerance wore fake “hook noses” throughout. He said he hadn’t found any of the other comics versions of the Bible to be of much use visually, but praised some of Basil Wolverton’s design elements from his version of the Old Testament, begun in 1953 and completed in 1974.

Even the relative solace of the Crumb’s home in the undisclosed French village where they live was apparently not sufficiently distraction-free for the artist to concentrate on Genesis. Robert mentioned that Aline had found a place for him “up in the hills”, and he spent weeks there by himself just working on the book. Aline would periodically visit, bringing groceries. She was the only person who actually knew where he was and, said Crumb, he would not have finished the book without her. He noted that the book was, in fact, dedicated to her.

Mouly’s final question for Crumb was what his reaction was to being labeled a “genius”. After a bit of circuitous discussion, Crumb declared flatly, “Genius is a myth.” On that note, Françoise concluded the interview portion of the evening, and Robert took a few questions from the crowd.

Questions From the Crowd

By his own admission, Crumb was deliberately calling mainly on the women in the audience, but Mouly would intervene occasionally to give a few of the men opportunities to ask questions of the artist. After the obligatory LSD question, one audience member asked about Crumb’s experience with writer Charles Bukowski, several of whose stories Crumb had illustrated. Crumb sad he’d only met Bukowski once, early on at a party, and when he was introduced to him, Bukowski said only, “Your stuff’s good, kid. Just stay away from the cocktail parties.” Said Crumb: “He was right!”

Asked about the differences he found between life in the U.S. and life in France, the artist said the most striking difference between the two is the near-total integration of corporate interests into everyday life in the U.S., which he said is not nearly as prevalent in France. “You’re really in the belly of the beast here with this corporate stuff.”

Finally, a (male) audience member asked about his controversial attitudes about women. The cartoonist’s reply was vintage Crumb: “Any man, if he’s honest (and you can’t be honest around women), fears and hates women to some degree. I just happen to blurt it out in my work like diarrhea.”

And on that note, I’ll conclude.

If you have the opportunity to attend any of the remaining Crumb/Mouly appearances, I highly recommend doing so. I’ll never quite figure out why, along with New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, Richmond of all places was a part of this tour, but to whomever pulled this off, I say thanks — and recommend that the next time Chicago’s in the running for the Olympics that this person be put in charge of the international lobbying efforts.

Ben Towle is an Eisner-nominated cartoonist known primarily for his work with SLG Publishing, including the recent historical fiction graphic novel Midnight Sun as well as his earlier volume of comics folk tales, Farewell, Georgia. He’s recently illustrated Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean, a graphic novel for young adults forthcoming from Hyperion Books, and he’s currently hard at work on a creator-owned fantasy story about turn of the century Chesapeake Bay oystermen. Visit him online at www.benzilla.com. And many thanks to him for this extensive appearance review.

North by Northwest
50th Anniversary Edition
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Here, Grant is an ad executive who is mistaken for a spy and accidentally dragged into conspiracy and murder. James Mason, smoothly menacing, is the bad guy, and Eva Marie Saint the cool Hitchcock blonde with uncertain loyalties. (Although she acts a little too reserved for my taste.) Martin Landau is Mason’s henchman; watch his performance considering that he played it with an air of homosexual jealousy over Mason’s attention to Grant.

It’s a gripping romantic thriller with excellent performances. Even knowing how the movie plays out, I still enjoyed watching the twists and turns unfold. (It’s one of the best ads for the adventure and glamor of train travel ever.) I’m assuming you’re already familiar with how excellent the film is, so let’s talk about this upgraded DVD edition.

The first disc has the movie, with a choice of commentary by screenwriter Ernest Lehman. His recollections, while interesting and complimentary, didn’t add very much to my appreciation of the film. You can also watch with a music-only audio track, highlighting Bernard Herrmann’s score. I believe the visuals have also been upgraded — at least, they looked crisp to me, as though this were a much more recent film.

The second disc is where all the goodies come in. There are four documentaries, two new to this set:

• Cary Grant: A Class Apart — This wonderful 90-minute overview of his life, touching on his varied career and analyzing his most famous movies, first ran in 2003. Owning this, if you’re a Grant fan, is alone worth the cost of the set.
• The Master’s Touch: Hitchcock’s Signature Style — A new hour-long examination of Alfred Hitchcock’s directing techniques to build suspense and menace gave me a fresh appreciation for his work. Includes commentary from directors including William Friedkin, Guillermo del Toro, and Martin Scorsese, plus clips of Hitchcock’s own comments.
• Destination Hitchcock: The Making of North by Northwest — Narrated by Eva Marie Saint in 2000, this 40-minute making-of also features daughter Pat Hitchcock, screenwriter Lehman, production designer Robert Boyle, and co-star Martin Landau telling how the movie came to be.
• North by Northwest: One for the Ages — The second new piece, this one is a 25-minute appreciation by many of the same people who participated in “The Master’s Touch”. After all the other features, I’m not sure how much this one really adds.

Given how much I enjoy finding out more about the context of enjoyable movies, this package was just what I wanted. Also included are a photo gallery, a TV ad for the movie, the theatrical trailer, and a Hitchcock-hosted promo. Just to remind you how good this film is, here’s a clip from the suspenseful ending, as the couple run from the bad guys chasing them (with her in a smart traveling suit) and wind up on the faces of Mount Rushmore.

(The studio provided a review copy.)

Choco Mimi Book 2

Choco Mimi Book 2
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by Konami Sonoda
Viz, $7.99 US

The fun of the first volume continues with more four-panel comic strips about fashion, friendship, and young love. There are also album and scrapbook pages featuring “pictures” of the characters and their pets that are very realistic in feel, as though a 14-year-old really put them together, plus longer stories with the same characters. An early one is surprisingly thought-provoking, with a flower symbolizing love and the characters discussing their different approaches to the subject.

Others are silly takes on topics like going to the beach or working in a cafe or putting on costumes to scare each other. School activities and holiday celebrations also feature. It’s a light read, but the cute kids and darling art style are appealing, and I enjoy being part of their world for a while, where there aren’t many things to worry about beyond looking good and the attention of the boy you like. It’s also got a surprising amount of content — I spent longer reading this than I do many other shojo volumes, both due to the page structure and wanting to notice the details of the characters’ outfits. (The publisher provided a review copy.)

The Lapis Lazuli Crown Book 2

The Lapis Lazuli Crown Book 2
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by Natsuna Kawase
CMX Manga, $9.99 US

Miel Violette found her impulse to study magic and improve her skills in the first book: befriending an undercover prince. Here, in the second (and final) book of the series, we first see her back at school, working toward that goal. She aims to improve enough to work at the palace and thus get closer to Prince Radian.

Unfortunately, the prince is missing from the opening chapter, which has turned into a school story, following Miel and two of her friends as they study magic. I’m glad to see him back in the following chapter, where she’s met her goal, since his interaction with Miel is the best part of the book for me. I’m just not as interested in her classmates and their struggles with (for example) succeeding on merit instead of due to their family name.

The changes in direction and approach may be related to the short length of the series. It looks like the author was casting around for a successful path to follow and never quite got there. She alludes frequently in the many author’s notes about wanting to do more with various characters but running out of space to do so before the series end. There are also what look like the beginning of subplots that don’t have room to go anywhere. Perhaps the best way to describe this is “valiant but failed experiment”.

If this book sounds interesting to you, the core premise is explained early on, and the new setting is different enough that a reader who couldn’t find book one could start here with little trouble, although I found the first volume much more interesting. (The publisher provided a review copy.)

Yotsuba&! Book 6

Yotsuba&! Book 6
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by Kiyohiko Azuma
Yen Press, $10.99 US

The beloved series returns from a new publisher (who thankfully has also brought the previous volumes back into print) with all its charm intact.

The stories here fall into the category of “what it’s like to live with a young child” — they see the world differently. Everything’s new to them, yet they also start forming their own conclusions about the way things work. The result is creative comedy that rings adorably true. In this volume, Yotsuba discovers recycling, bicycling, office work (which consists of her labeling everything in the house), and playing milkman.

Sound effects (of which there are many) aren’t translated here; instead, the English sound and meaning are both written into the panel next to the Japanese symbol. I found this cluttered the page and distracted my eye from following the characters. Add in the translation notes put in the gutters between panels, and sometimes, there was just too much to look at. Especially when they kept reprinting the same note every time a labeled object appears, which I found unnecessary. I was also distracted by how often Yotsuba’s speech is bolded — I know she’s supposed to be frequently excited, but I soon lost that awareness in annoyance at the technique.

But those are minor points. The artist’s sense of motion and movement is wonderful. Yotsuba feels right, in all her actions and expressions. I appreciate her dad’s patience with her, even though you can tell it can be a struggle (as when, for example, she’s doing gymnastics on top of him). It’s her lack of self-censorship that makes her such a joy to read. The neighbor girl egging her on helps with the comedy, too.

I don’t know that I would have handed her a power tool, as Dad does when they build a bookcase, but that I was concerned for her welfare indicates how much I was lost in her world.

Here’s another review by Brigid at MangaBlog. If you’re interested in differences between the two publisher versions, here’s a visual comparison, criticism of the translation decisions, and an interview with Yen about their choices.

Aria Book 5
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The series had some unexpected delays, but that means it’s timely — Akari, the apprentice gondolier (undine), is beginning her second autumn on the water planet, just as fall has firmly fallen here in the U.S.

The opening story (the book has five) is a wonderful stand-alone that sums up much of the series’ appeal. A mailman’s gondola is gone for repairs, so Akari volunteers to take him on his route through the Venice-like setting. By the end, she (and we) have learned more about her town, the way communication ties together community, and the pleasure of writing letters on paper. A more subtle message involves the skills and contributions of older workers being valuable and how they can teach the younger through example.

The art focuses on Akari’s happy, open face, and those of her friends (who can be a little more negative or concerned, providing spice and contrast). Plenty of beautiful, Italian-influenced architecture is drawn with care. It’s a wonderful world to sink into and relax with.

There’s also humor. At one point, Alice gets a bee in her bonnet about needing to train herself to be more ambidextrous since she thinks her right hand is doing all the work. But while that is somewhat silly, there’s another component of the same story that has a touching undertone, a lesson Alice learns from her singing roommate and a parable about seemingly unnoticed contributions.

A story about watching a meteor shower is one of many in the series that promote natural awareness and wonder. It also brings back Al the Gnome, a thoughtful boy who resembles Harry Potter. Another has Akira, a tough instructor who helps the younger girls improve their craft. The last is a quiet story about waiting, as Akari spends the day at a cafe learning a lesson about relaxing that I will also benefit from.

My quibbles, there are three: I was sad that two different sections introducing characters, obviously created in color, were reproduced in black and white. Also, while there’s a lengthy introduction of the premise, the character page omits the youngest undine, Alice, who features prominently in one story and significantly in two more. I found that an unfortunate omission, given how close her name is to Alicia, Akari’s mentor, and thus confusing. Last, the usage of goofy exclamations like “Holy Guacamole” or “Holy Baloney” really doesn’t suit the timeless feel of the series. The adaptation credit has changed from the previous book, so maybe the new writer needs a little more time to fully grasp the style of the stories. (The publisher provided a review copy.)

James Bond Encyclopedia
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Great care was obviously taken with the design and presentation, resulting in a lush feel that goes well with Bond’s world of brands and beauty. It’s a licensed production, so no information here on the 1967 Casino Royale or Never Say Never Again. (Shame, Kim Basinger is one of my favorite Bond girls.) It also plays more within the world of the films, preferring story/world-building continuity over behind-the-scenes information. Plenty of glossy pictures illustrate, with emphasis on Sean Connery (the first) and Daniel Craig (the latest).

After introductory sections on writer Ian Fleming and “The Bond Style” — work history, skills, wardrobe, and food and drink — each of the six actors to play the role get a two-page spread. You won’t find out exactly how the decisions were made to change among them here. I found myself wondering, for example, how Connery was wooed back for one more (Diamonds Are Forever) after George Lazenby took over in 1969, or why they went looking for a Connery replacement in the first place. This isn’t that kind of book; instead, there’s an air of “aren’t they all great?” (Some of my questions were later answered in the last section of the book; see description below.)

The meat of the volume comes next: alphabetically organized sections on Bond villains (covering the characters, not the actors), supporting characters, vehicles, weapons, and of course, the women. The writeups are primarily plot descriptions, briefly summarizing the item’s appearance and what happens. Since I didn’t remember much of the specifics of the movies, I didn’t find these dry recitations very helpful. Especially when it came to the female co-stars, I would have rather known about the actresses, their careers before and after.

In the last section, about “The Movies”, each film gets two pages, some of which goes to sidebars covering various crew and production staff members. Missing from the book is a plot summary of each movie — I would have thought that would have fit right in as a kind of mission dossier. Instead, we get information on how the producers decided which one to make next and who wrote the screenplays.

Although this book is lovely, I’m not the audience for it. It would be better suited to someone who’s seen the films multiple times. They would enjoy the memories evoked by the pictures and the working together of various story strands, while I’d like more a behind-the-scenes take on the making of the movies, not the world they inhabit. (The publisher provided a review copy.)

In this “New Look” story, which has come to mean “poorly drawn versions of the Archie characters with turgid dragged-out soap opera plots”, Archie’s still planning to leave Riverdale. I know that won’t happen, so instead, I find myself distracted by Norm Breyfogle’s art, or as I call it, Invasion of the Giraffe People. Has Jughead been drinking Ralph’s Gingold stretching soda? On the next page, Archie and random volunteer recreate Mr. Fantastic’s elastic arms.

The only entertainment I’m getting out of this comes from the name of Archie’s new residence. He’s moving to Martinsville, which in Virginia was my dad’s family’s hometown. I also noticed that all of the ads in this issue, with the exception of the inside and back covers, are for Archie comics — collections, sets, online versions. Has their agreement with DC to share advertising ended? Or is no one much interested in buying print ads, as has happened with magazines?

A short reprint story about researchers trying to understand what teens think about when grocery shopping was amusing, as were some unexpected bits with Archie being stupid. It wasn’t his silliness that was surprising, but the ways in which he screwed up: reading biorhythm charts, TV anchor, teaching girls to box. The unusual choices at least provided some freshness to the plots.

Archie’s Pals ‘n’ Gals Digest #135

Given my dislike of the “New Look”, I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this, the latest story to take that approach. It focuses on Reggie falling in love with a new girl, Bernadette, who’s a hard-working good student and has little tolerance for his pranking antics. Instead, she has more in common with Dilton. A psychology class and Reggie trying out for a national contest to find a stand-up comic, promise additional complications to come.

A focus on Reggie, who’s usually just part of the background, could be interesting, if they delve further into what makes him the way he is and why the others put up with him. The art, by Tod Smith, is better, too, although it was odd to see a more “realistic” version of Principal Weatherbee. Mostly, I liked Bernadette’s focus and how unashamed she was of her abilities, intelligence, and drive to succeed.

Also in this issue are some Sabrina reprints with her in Gravestone Heights, a neighborhood full of monsters, including her new friend Cleara, the invisible girl. (For someone who complains about not being seen, I’d think she’d wear clothes more often. Instead, as the stories continue, she adds a hair bow, lipstick, earrings, and a t-shirt. That’s all, which leads the reader in some odd directions if you stop and think about it.) Sabrina’s been glammed up with miniskirts, big earrings, boots, and cleavage, so these stories must date from the 80s.

Even weirder is Eye-da, a normal girl except that she has, instead of a head, a giant eyeball. I’d like to see more of these stories — I’m unfamiliar with them or their history, but I like the idea of gently weird teens hanging out together.

Betty & Veronica Double Digest #174

Wanna see the Archie gang as furries? Check out “Is This Place a Zoo?”, a reprint story included here. Betty and Veronica start discussing what kind of animal they’d be, and as they envision various creatures, the drawings reflect their ideas. So Veronica becomes a gazelle wearing a hat or a leopard lady in a bikini. Strangely, when the girls change, their heads are included, but when Archie talks about being a gorilla, it’s his normal head on an ape body. It ends with Betty and Veronica in a cat fight, sigh. What fetish material this is.

Archie Digest #258

This small collection, full of holiday stories, would make a lovely stocking stuffer. Veronica learns to be considerate and not show off her wealth in a time of economic struggle. Archie finds pleasure as well as frustrations in playing Santa. Then he gives his dad an unexpected gift. My favorite, though, was the one where Betty and Veronica learned not to get into the spirit too early, as everyone went crazy with holiday cheer at school. I’m all for the “meaning of the season”, but it’s also nice to be reminded not to go overboard.

Also in this issue are a couple of Sabrina Christmas stories. That sounds like it would be an odd match, but it works surprisingly well, as she uses her powers to help out Santa and values working for money to shop over zapping things up. There’s a preview online.

(The publisher provided review copies.)

I have fond memories of this 1981 goofy superhero/spy spoof. It starts Michael Crawford, who went on to greater fame as the original musical Phantom of the Opera, and Oliver Reed as the Russian baddy. Crawford is Woody Wilkins, a comic artist and writer who insists on trying out the gadgets of his hero, Condorman, before drawing them, so they’ll be realistic. So the film begins with his jumping off the Eiffel Tower wearing hang glider-like wings, for example.

Who is Condorman?

Well, uh, Condorman is what we call a comic hero, in a comic book.

A comic book?

Yeah, you know like Donald Duck, Popeye, Superman.

Crawford’s character a flake, albeit a talented artist, but thanks to his propensity for dress-up, he still winds up helping a gorgeous Russian spy (Barbara Carrera) defect with the help of his CIA buddy (James Hampton). After they meet, he starts drawing her into his comic book as “Laser Lady”, and the CIA funds building more of his gadgets, including a really cool Condorcar that becomes a hovercraft.

The movie is full of outrageous international events, slapstick, family-friendly romance, and bad special effects, but I liked the concept and still enjoy the film, nostalgically. It’s like James Bond for kids, with comics added. Anyone else remember this?

Archie & Friends #135

It’s a familiar story, best known to me from the Halloween episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but told with good cheer. Archie and his friends visit a new costume shop, where they become whatever they wear.

Now, there are several ways I thought this could have been improved:

• More modern costumes. I have a hard time believing all of these kids would pick the standard monsters — vampire, witch, wolfman, mummy — over something more up-to-date. But this does give the tale a timeless feel.
• More creativity. Both of the girls are witches? They couldn’t think of something different for one of them?
• I’d have liked to have seen the existing Archie witch characters instead of this new, undeveloped, magic-using villain.
• In fact, why isn’t friend Sabrina in this title at all? Goodness knows she’s not being used elsewhere.

But overall, it’s a nice bit of light entertainment for the holiday. Each character gets a gag based on their costume interacting with their personality. (Except for Reggie, whose fish-man appearance seems to have no affect at all on him.) The last-page punchline was the best part of the story — unexpected, suitable for the character, well-chosen for the premise, and funny, especially given the young audience. There’s a preview online.

Archie #602

And here we are at Christmas. It’s the conclusion of the imaginary story where Archie and Veronica marry — next issue, he’ll be marrying Betty. For some reason, they’ve been rushing through events in order to get to this point: Archie and Veronica have kids, which allows the heartwarming cover. It’s as though they think people aren’t really married until they’ve started spawning.

Like everything else in this storyline, the way they get there is predictable and boring. If you have ever seen a sitcom episode with a harried husband falling all over himself as he becomes a dad, you’ve gotten more entertainment than is on display here. There’s disrupting the Lamaze class, Veronica overeating, forgetting the wife in a panic when labor starts… Yawn. Some of the cartooning is bad as well: there’s a one-page sequence that’s meant to be physical comedy, but the artist didn’t bother to establish the physical layout of the room, so the events are hard for the reader to follow. The punchline, a broken cellphone, doesn’t go anywhere, so all in all, it’s just a puzzle.

That wasn’t the only bit that left me very confused as to why it was included. Mr. Lodge gets a Citizen Kane sled reference. We check in with Betty, who’s single, out of a job, can’t find a guy, and has no money, but none of that is followed up. None of her friends offer to help — instead, her sole function in the story is to be happy for Veronica’s pregnancy and miserable on her own.

Plenty of cliches, and nothing particular to these characters. This story could have been told with any set of young marrieds, and it probably would have seemed more original that way. What a waste of all this publicity. There’s a preview online.

Betty #182

Who’s proofreading these things? Page 1, first caption: “Dear Dairy”. She’s talking to cows now? Yet it’s right on her computer screen in the picture.

The story itself is about going back to school — first the worries, then shopping problems, wearing the same outfit as Veronica, tough teachers… It’s all rather generic, and much of it seems written more from a parent’s perspective than Betty’s. Overall, it’s a lot of griping. Perhaps the younger audience will better appreciate this sharing of their concerns than I did.

Jughead #197

The last story in this issue tickled me. Jughead shows up wearing a superhero outfit — baggy tights, goggles, cape. When questioned about it, he tells Archie that it’s laundry day and everything else was in the wash, which leads to this exchange:

Archie: And you just happened to have a superhero costume in your closet?
Jughead: Doesn’t everyone?

It’s a nice indicator of Jughead’s character done right: a true individual who doesn’t mind what others think when he’s confident in what he’s doing. The rest of the story illustrates everyday heroism and responsibility. It’s a cute little tale.

Veronica’s Passport

Veronica’s Passport
Buy this book

This slim collection ($9.95 US, 96 pages) reprints four stories where Veronica travels to exotic locations: New York, Paris, Rome, and India. Bravo to the publisher for including credits! All these tales are illustrated by Dan Parent, but the writers vary: Hal Smith, mainstay George Gladir, Kathleen Webb, and Chris Allan and Mark Waid, of all people. I might have guessed the latter, since in the Rome story, Veronica’s roommate’s name is “Nasthalthia”, a name I’ve only heard before used as the moniker of Lex Luthor’s niece in the Supergirl stories beginning in Adventure #397.

The stories were originally run in Veronica in the late 80s, which is apparent if you pay close attention to the fashions and hairstyles. But the point is to feel like you’re visiting these cities yourself, with lots of time spent on listing tourist landmarks in each location. The plots — Veronica becomes a sculptor or catches a jewel thief or goes to school overseas — are just excuses to keep things moving fast. They’re fun, and it’s a nice way to feel like you’re traveling the world as a princess. It’s a great use of the character who too often writers don’t know what to do with.

(The publisher provided review copies.)

Comics Worth Reading is happy to feature a two-part guest column by the talented Ben Towle, author of Midnight Sun and Farewell, Georgia. Part two will run shortly, as will additional coverage of this event by Ed Sizemore.

If you’re a cartoonist and you hear that Robert Crumb will be making a rare stateside appearance a few short hours drive from your hometown, you don’t ask “How much?” you just get thee to Ticketmaster.com as quickly as possible and buy tickets. And that’s exactly what I did a few weeks back when (after a Bob Clampett-style double take) I saw this very announcement posted online. R. Crumb, godfather of underground comics (and more circuitously, pretty much everything else you’ve read since the late sixties that doesn’t involve guys in tights fighting crime) would be appearing along with Françoise Mouly at Richmond’s Carpenter Center to discuss his most recent book, a fully illustrated version of Genesis, based largely on Robert Alter’s 2004 translation.

If you’re interested in comics, you already know who Robert Crumb is. Françoise Mouly, who would be interviewing him at this event, might not have the same name recognition as her more controversial subject, but her contribution to the world of comics is substantial. Jeet Heer does a far better job singing her praises that I could in this essay, in which he asks (rhetorically), “Is there anyone in the cartooning world who is more underrated than Françoise Mouly?” Mouly’s career, just to touch on a few points, involves publishing the highly influential RAW anthology series; founding the RAW Junior, Little Lit, and TOON Books imprints; and serving as the art editor for The New Yorker for over fifteen years. Together, after a brief introduction, these two giants of comics took the stage at the Carpenter Center on a rainy Tuesday night to discuss Genesis and all things Crumb.

The Venue

The Carpenter Center is a peculiar venue. It’s apparently been recently restored at some expense to the city, and as such is a matter of contention among Richmond folk, according to fellow cartoonist and Richmond local Rob Ullman, with whom I attended the event. Unlike the staid “plaster and gold leaf” of most restored downtown theaters I’ve been in, the Carpenter Center’s interior was a mix of ornate medieval flourishes and an odd super-saturated color scheme. I half-expected to be served a turkey leg whilst observing a reenacted joust. The stage setup itself, once the lights went down, revealed itself to be quite tasteful, though: two wing-back chairs at center stage, with a large screen directly behind for projecting images of Crumb’s work. Photography was strictly forbidden in the theater, so unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the event to share. Here, though, is a picture of my dog dressed as Robert Crumb. Just pretend she’s on a stage next to the art director of The New Yorker:

When I say Crumb “took the stage” I could more accurately say “hit the stage,” as he made his entrance with a perfectly-executed pratfall — a trick he’s apparently been working on of late. Crumb is not someone who’s known to be particularly interested in interviews, book tours, etc. so there was certainly some discussion before-hand as to how engaged he might be in the discussion to come. He addressed this head-on, semi-sarcastically remarking, “It’s an ordeal, but I’m a nice guy! It’ll help sell books….” Françoise began by suggesting that she’d be attempting, through the interview, to disabuse the audience of what she feels are some inaccurate perceptions that people generally have about R. Crumb: “People think they know you.” Largely responsible for most comics-folk’s perception of Crumb is of course, Terry Zwigoff’s 1994 documentary, Crumb.

Life in France

Mouly showed a New Yorker two-pager that Robert and his wife Aline had produced together, commenting on their reactions to the film. In the strip, Robert is seen throwing his signature straw boater away. After the film, he said, “I wanted to change into somebody else.” Boater or no boater, though, “I can’t change who I really am,” he decided. Fortunately, the Crumbs had already moved to the French countryside by the time the film was released, he said, as things would have no doubt been really difficult for daughter Sophie at school if they’d been in the U.S. at the time.

The topic of the Crumbs’ move to France now in the air, he mentioned, at Françoise’s questioning, that the move was initially entirely Aline’s idea and that he’d been afraid of losing touch with his favorite subject matter: skewering modern life in the U.S. “I wouldn’t presume to comment on the French,” he said, “So I do stuff like the Bible. I feel protected (in France). It’s like a fortress. They leave me alone.” His further comment that he, “hate(s) Americans much more than he hates the French” elicited a predictable round of hearty applause from the audience composed in substantial part by university students and faculty. Amidst this discussion of things French, Robert casually mentioned that he was a new grandfather (!) and that Sophie, at age 28, had just given birth to her first child. Congratulations, Sophie! Get that baby a Rapidograph ASAP.

Crumb on Women

Mouly then began showing some Crumb drawings and comics about women, nudging the conversation into a more contentious area. The first illustration was a truly beautiful pen and ink drawing of tennis player Serena Williams. If you know the kind of women Crumb likes to draw and you’re familiar with Williams’s physique, it’s no surprise that she is is one of his chosen subjects. “She’s really it,” he remarked. “She’s really got it!” The next image was an older two-pager showing a woman masturbating in her apartment. In a pattern that would emerge more than once during the evening’s discussion, Françoise attempted to take the high road and engage Crumb in a discussion of how this piece really reveals a “sensitivity” toward women. Crumb: “I had no idea. It’s a fantasy!”

Next on the screen was Crumb’s two-pager, “Don’t Touch Me” (from Snatch #3) which depicts an apparent rape, followed by the “punch line” in the last panel: “I never get to come!” In a rare bit of almost-regret (maybe? almost?), Crumb recalled showing this strip to a woman he knew and being genuinely surprised by her horrified reaction. Mouly wondered though if it wasn’t his intention to shock. “I intend to shock–but I don’t want them to run away in horror!” he replied. The discomfort in the room became almost palpable when he glibly remarked about “all women having rape fantasies, right?” and mentioned that “even Freud said all women were masochistic.” Then, after a moment, “Let’s move on…”

No escape was in sight, though, as the next strip up for discussion was Crumb’s infamous, “The Family that Lays Together Stays Together.” Crumb, though, did a deft job of cutting this one off at the pass: “It’s ironic, kids! I don’t advocate dogs having sex with little girls.”

At this point, Françoise moved on to other topics and tried to draw a connection between Crumb’s “A Short History of America” strip and post-modern architectural interest in “indigenous signage.” Crumb seemed lukewarm at best to this comparison, and her following attempt to draw a direct connection between Crumb’s work and the later work of Saul Steinberg likewise elicited basically an “I don’t really see it” from Crumb.

Up next, in part two: Music and Genesis