Forty Years Ago Today

I remember when Armstrong landed on the moon. I was six and my family gathered around our little black and white TV and watched the historic event live. I watched as much of the landings as I could after that, but I was only nine when the Apollo program finished. It didn't seem possible that this many years would pass and nothing more would happen.

RIP Addison Sengco

This morning I found out that one of my cyber friends, Addison Sengco, has died. He was well known in comic forums as Genetic Freak. He earned his living as a graphic designer and was a talented artist. My wife and I met him on own trip to the Philippines and we enjoyed a lunch together in Manila.

He died on June 27th of Pancreatic Necrosis.



(Above: My favourite drawing of his, from his blog.)

There is a good-bye thread at the Outhouse and another at Newsarama.

Captain America Returns! Sort of.

I have been following Brubaker's Cap in the Premium hardcover editions, after picking up the huge omnibus edition, but with the return of Rogers coming soon, and since the HC covers up to issue 48 anyway, I thought I'd get completely caught up. Very briefly, the HC features Bucky enlisting the aid of Namor to fight a Chinese mad scientist who is weaponizing the remains of the WW2 era Human Torch. Issue 49 centers on Sharon and the return of her memories, and the return of the 50s era Cap . In issue 50 its Bucky's birthday, rarely a good day for him. The issue has a couple of extras. Marcos Martin writes a good synopsis of Cap's life to date, both Steve and Bucky, and Fred Hembeck contributes a short.

Issue 600 sees Sharon's memory blocks fall into place, or, I guess, out of place, and introduces an element of the assassination that raises the possibility of Steve Rogers' return from the dead. That much of the story, called 'One Year Later', is contained in about the standard number of pages, but we also get a lot of padding, some of which is good. Most isn't. The good stuff: Mark Waid's 'The Persistence of Memorabilia' tells us Cap's fate as a comic book star within the MU and Joe Simon contributes a couple of pages about Cap and Kirby. The just okay stuff: We get a standard recap of the life of our hero, by Dini and Ross, originally published in 2002. It is okay, but we just had a better version in the previous issue. And 'In Memoriam' has a couple of second tier characters mourn the death of their friend and hero. Added nothing. The bad: A 1942 Captain America story by Stan Lee and Al Avison. Or, rather, a truly awful 1942 Captain America story by Stan Lee and Al Avison. Why not something by Simon and Kirby? Lastly, we get a cover gallery of all 600 covers. A great idea, but they are reproduced in so small a format you really can't appreciate them at all. There is also the renumbering itself. Someone has joked, 'What, I missed 550 issues?!', but this is a pretty standard sales gimmick. I wouldn't give it any thought, but the return of Rogers is going to be in a separately numbered five issue mini. What's the point of that? Will the next issue of Captain America be 51, 601, or 606?

There really isn't much to say about Brubaker's run that hasn't been said a million times before. He is giving us one of the best, most readable stories in a long time. He has done so well that I am just going to assume he will do an equally great job of bringing Rogers back, but I would be lying if I didn't say its still much too soon. I've made these points before, but Steve Rogers, like Superman in the DCU, is far too often too much of an iconic figure to be interesting. Half the time it seems that all the other characters do is say, 'Wow! Its really him!' He commands respect just by virtue of who is, quite a part from what he does. Not that he doesn't always do exactly the right thing. And, unlike Superman, Cap's admirers often add stories about when their grandpa told them about how he met Captain America. Gee whiz. Bucky is different. Taking on the mantle of Steve Rogers is a burden to him. Not a negative one, but not one he can easily bear either. He has never been his own man and now he has to be a great one. This is great for Captain America. Now, without corrupting the character's legacy, he suddenly has something to prove. Something to live up to. He has been doing a great job of it and, I think, has the potential to do a great job for sometime to come. Perhaps the newly resurrected Rogers will stand trial as originally planned, bringing down Registration through the system, and Bucky can continue to wield the shield. Here's hoping.

Bleeding Cool

The longest running online comics column, Lying in the Gutter, has come to an end, but come Monday Rich Johnston will be back with a new blog, Bleeding Cool.

Ellis will be a contributor.

Happy Birthday Talia!

It was four years ago today that I became a grandfather.

Are We On The Eve Of A New Moon Race?

Two New Titles From Vertigo's New Line: Vertigo Crime

With the Minx imprint just a footnote in its long history, DC is once again trying to develop a new line of books. This time they are taking a more conservative approach, creating a line of original graphic novels through their most successful existing imprint, Vertigo, and they have enlisted two very popular authors for their inaugural releases. The very popular mystery writer, Ian Rankin, writes his first comic, Dark Entries, and Brain Azzarello follows the success of 100 Bullets with Filthy Rich.

Now before I go any further I am going to tell you how I came to have copies of both books three months ahead of their release. Sometimes, as a critic, I would be sent review copies, but that wasn't the case here. I work for a bookstore and one of my responsibilities is ordering the graphic novels. Publishers and venders ship advance copies, 'reader's copies', of books to retailers in the hopes that one of us will read something, become excited about it, and tell you customers that you absolutely have to read this book! And that's how I got these. It didn't influence whether I would order them for stock - I already had - but like many reader's copies these are much more cheaply produced than the final product will be. These are soft cover. Their cover art is in black and white. Those are the most obvious. I've introduced this long aside because production quality can have a tremendous impact on the art and I suspect the final product will be better. Of the two, I liked Werther Dell'edera's work on Dark Entries more than Victor Santos' work on Filthy Rich, where I found the anatomy too cartoonish for the subject matter, but I am giving both a honorary pass and concentrating on the stories instead.

I may be wrong, but I have the impression that Ian Rankin isn't quite as popular in the US as he is in the rest of the English speaking world, where he is unquestionably the number one mystery writer. Getting him on board for this project is a great coup for Karen Berger, Vertigo's capo dei capi (capa dei capi?). Still, comics fans were worried when Rankin confessed his love for the movie version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and his preference for the film version of From Hell over the source material. Well, his taste in movies may be questionable, but he has managed to transfer his skills from novels to comics without any problems. Dark Entries is a John Constantine story. The occult detective is called on to solve the problems of a reality TV show. The show's premise is that a group of young people are locked together in a haunted house, but the producer starts to worry when things happen that aren't meant to happen. Is the place really haunted? Given that its actually a set, that seems unlikely, but how else can you explain it? He contacts Constantine and actually succeeds in getting him to join the cast (the idea being that he can move about the closed set without raising suspicions). Simple? Hardly. There are wheels within wheels here and after one important misstep Constantine has to work hard to save himself and the rest of the cast. Its smart, well paced story and Rankin manages to avoid taking some obvious put shots about the nature of reality TV. Almost.

If Azzarello hasn't the mainstream stature of Rankin, he is one of Vertigo's most successful writers and vies with Brubaker for the position of comics top crime writer. While 100 Bullets monthly format meant telling his story in one hundred bite sized episodes, Filthy Rich gives him an opportunity to tell the story in a more natural manner. Richard Junkin - aka Junk - is a loser. A college football star, he was being investigated for gambling when a knee injury forced him out of the game altogether. Now he trades on his former fame while doing a poor job cars and spends his days pitying himself for having hit bottom. When his boss offers him the job of keeping his misbehaving daughter out of the papers, he learns that bottom is still a long way below. Not that he will have any problem finding his way there. I think Berger deserves credit for not calling these noir comics, a much overused term for a specific kind of crime story, but Filthy Rich is definitely a noir story. Circumstances reveal character and characters' lives unravel as though they were acting out some predetermined writ.

Of the two, Hellblazer's fans give Dark Entries a built in audience. A factor, I suspect, even more likely to move sales than its famous author. Azzarello does a good job telling his story, but I didn't know Junk when I started it and I didn't really care about him when I was finished. Vertigo Crime has several more title upcoming, written by both mystery and comics authors, but I wonder if the future isn't in these stand alones, but in original graphic novels of existing characters - like Azzarello's own The Joker - or perhaps an ongoing series, in continuity with the rest of the DCU, told only in graphic novels format.

Both books are scheduled to be released August 19th.