November 13, 2006 Johanna Other Publishers One comment

Beanworld

There’s never been anything in comics like Larry Marder’s Beanworld, before or since, and although the last collection came out in 1999, it’s still very much missed. Marder combined his original symbology with elements of Native American myth, the influence of Marcel Duchamp, and thoughts on ecology, community, and the nature of art. There wasn’t always a story so much as an exploration of some sort of philosophy, and much of it remains unexplained. That might be why it’s still […]

November 11, 2006 Johanna Television Reviews One comment

Teen Titans Season 2

I liked the first season of Teen Titans well enough that I rushed into the second. That was probably a mistake. The first episode, “How Long Is Forever?”, pits the Titans against a time-traveling thief, resulting in a surprisingly elegiac and overall depressing entry about losing friends and the ravages of time. Cyborg is particularly damaged, tethered to the tower due to his technology becoming obsolete. Beast Boy is fat, bald, and caged in a circus. Raven is utterly alone. […]

November 10, 2006 Johanna Other Leave a comment

Reviewing Serialized Chapters

A comment in response to my review of Mail Order Ninja brought up an interesting point I wanted to draw more attention to. MON Book 1 is only the beginning of a series, as I noted in the review. However, I reviewed it as a single element, because that was the package I was given. A reader responded “you seem to have an inability to recognize the inertia of character arcs”, telling me I should have more faith in the […]

November 9, 2006 Johanna Tokyopop Manga Reviews 4 comments

Mail Order Ninja Volume 1

The writer, Joshua Elder, intends this 96-page story to be all-ages comedy “like the classic Looney Tunes cartoons”. Unfortunately, that’s not the impression the opening scene of Mail Order Ninja gives. It’s closer to a superhero comic structure, with a humorless (and fairly violent) ninja action scene being revealed to be part of a manga Timothy is reading. The action art by Erich Owen is well-done, so much so that I found the first glimpse of Timothy freakish. He’s typically […]

November 5, 2006 Johanna Television Reviews 3 comments

Teen Titans Season 1

I was drawn to Teen Titans because the the characters are so well-done, whether it’s Starfire’s alien optimism, Raven’s quiet darkness, or Cyborg’s stubborn strength. Beast Boy’s the most teen to my eyes, with his goofy screwups serving as metaphor for gawky adolescence. In the first episode, Robin’s voice is not quite right for me, but by episode two, it has either altered or I’ve adjusted to it. The first episode, “Divide and Conquer”, is an interesting choice for an […]

November 5, 2006 Johanna Oni Press / Lion Forge One comment

Love the Way You Love

Nobody does romance as well as Jamie S. Rich, and Love the Way You Love, illustrated by Marc Ellerby, is no exception. Side A Tristan is the lead singer of Like a Dog, an up-and-coming band. He’s returning home when he sees the perfect girl at the airport. When she later appears at that night’s show, it must be fate, only she’s engaged to the record company honcho who’s come to see about signing the band. This establishes the conflict: […]

November 4, 2006 Johanna IDW / Top Shelf 3 comments

Lost Girls

I finally read Lost Girls, but I’m not sure I have a lot to say about it. It was exactly what I expected, from the descriptions: three volumes of pornography featuring Alice (of Wonderland), Dorothy (of Kansas and Oz), and Wendy (of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys). There’s something here for every taste — boy/girl, girl/girl (the majority, by the numbers), boy/boy, rape fantasies — and some that seem to be included just to gather attention, such as incest, […]

November 2, 2006 Johanna Comic News Leave a comment

Scott McCloud: An Outsider’s View

My talented brother Powell is currently studying for his Ph.D. at Princeton. When I found out Scott McCloud would be stopping there as part of his Making Comics tour, I encouraged Powell to go and report back. Here’s his writeup: “Comics: An Art Form in Transition” Thursday, October 5, 2006 Jimmy Stewart Theater, Princeton University The presentation began with an introduction by Tom Levin, professor of German, media theory, and architecture. He discussed works that were heterochronic and mentioned, as […]

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