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Birthday Book: Doonesbury

July 21, 2009 by

mayjuneThe Comics Reporter notes that today is the 61st birthday of Garry Trudeau, creator of the essential, still-vibrant Doonesbury. I don’t talk about comic strips as much as I probably should, but I’ve loved them longer than I’ve loved comic books, and Doonesbury is one of my all-time favorites.

It’s hard to point to a specific Doonesbury collection, because all of them have something significant to recommend them. I’m disappointed to see how much of the Doonesbury catalog seems to be out of print. I remember a visit to my older sister’s house during my teen-aged years when I saw a neat row of slim Doonesbury paperbacks like Ask for May, Settle for June, As the Kid Goes for Broke, Do All Birders Have Bedroom Eyes, Dear? and lots of others.

The strip has always struck just the right blend of topical satire and ongoing, multi-generational soap opera for me. Trudeau can deal with challenging subjects – war, AIDS, divorce, unemployment, you name it – with grade, humor, and a wonderfully consistent tone. There’s really no such thing as a “very special Doonesbury.” They’re all pretty much special because of the affection and intelligence Trudeau applies, regardless of specific subject matter.

As I said, it’s said to me that there doesn’t seem to be a big, hulking Doonesbury collection that spans the strip’s history. The closest to that seems to be the Flashbacks: Twenty-Five Years of Doonesbury (Andres and McMeel), but it’s 15 years old and only 331 pages, so I’m not sure how comprehensive it can be. The publisher also lists it as “out of stock.” Why are some these great, ambitious strips so intermittently available in collected form?

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Birthday book: Banana Sunday

July 14, 2009 by

The Comics Reporter notes that today is the birthday of the wonderfully talented cartoonist Colleen Coover. To commemorate the event, I recommend you track down a copy of Coover’s Banana Sunday (Oni), created with “Root Nibot.”

BANSUN TPB COVERTo persuade you, I’ll re-quote this line of dialogue from one of the three talking primates whose misadventures drive the story:

“I like to eat! Naptime smiles on Go-Go chest!”

Oh, Go-Go, I can find no fault with your logic, and I won’t even bother to try.

Anyway, the book is about Kirby Steinberg, a new student at Forest Edge High who arrives with three talking primates in tow. Wackiness — the really good kind — ensues. The book is a total charmer, and Coover is key to that:

“The biggest attraction here is the cartooning of Colleen Coover. The apes are adorable, particularly beetle-browed Go-Go. Coover packs the pages with small, funny touches, like the sequence where Kirby and company get ready for school. She has a way with sight gags, too, making excellent use of all of the discarded banana peels.”

Coover has been earning lots of love for her back-up stories in various Marvel titles, particularly those in X-Men: First Class. And I have to say, I would totally buy a collected edition of those stories.

Filed under: Birthday books, Marvel, Oni 1 Comment

Birthday book: Zatanna's Search

July 9, 2009 by

The Comics Reporter notes that today is the 83rd birthday of Murphy Anderson, one of the great Silver Age illustrators and inkers whose work I associate most closely with DC. My favorite comics drawn by Anderson, or at least the ones that jump immediately to mind, are The Brave and the Bold 61 and 62, which featured a team-up between Earth 2 stalwarts Starman and Black Canary (or “Black Canary I,” I guess). I remember reading them at a friend’s house; he was much more of a DC guy than I was, but I vaguely knew and liked Black Canary and had enjoyed the JLA-JSA team-ups that I’d read.

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find any indication that these comics have ever been collected anywhere. I do remember a reference to them in James Robinson’s Starman comic, where the author revealed that the heroes were teaming up in the chicka-bamp sense as well as in the crime-fighting sense. Anyway, they Brave and Bold issues were wonderfully drawn and featured an unlikely but successful pairing of B-list heroes, so I was naturally inclined to like them.

zatannaqNever fear, though. DC has collected at least one example of Anderson drawing a second-tier, fishnet-wearing heroine in its JLA: Zatanna’s Search trade paperback. (For bonus points, the collection also includes comics drawn by Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino and other luminaries.) The story is fairly simple: Zatanna’s father, Zatara, is missing. In the process of looking for him, she guest-stars in a bunch of other heroes’ comics, and they help her.

I should note that my first encounter with Zatanna was during the ponytail-and-elf-shoes period when she joined the Justice League, and it was many years before I actually encountered the fishnet-wearing version of the character. Maybe it was the elf boots, but I really didn’t care for Zatanna during her early JLA days. Had I been reading DC comics when these stories originally appeared, I might have been more enthusiastic about her admission to the League, if only to hope that she’d return to her original costume.

Anderson’s work has also been collected in a number of those too-rich-for-my-blood DC Archives books and probably in some of the cheaper, black-and-white Showcase Presents… paperbacks.

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Birthday book: Ultra Maniac

June 18, 2009 by

um1The Comics Reporter notes that today is Wataru Yoshizumi’s birthday. Yoshizumi is the creator of one of my sentimental favorite shôjo manga, Ultra Maniac, which I’ve always thought was under-appreciated.

It was one of the earliest releases in Viz’s Shojo Beat line, though it was never serialized in the magazine. It’s only five volumes long and seems too short to me, not because its plot elements weren’t satisfyingly resolved but because I would have enjoyed spending more time with the characters.

The most striking thing about Ultra Maniac is the Yoshizumi maintains focus on the friendship between her female leads, cool and composed Ayu and way-out-there Nina. Ayu’s hopes of coming off as a poised junior-high princess are put in serious jeopardy when she earns the undying friendship and loyalty of Nina, a witch of disastrously limited skill. Nina’s so hopeless that she’s been transferred from her home universe to the regular world. That doesn’t stop her from using her magic to try and help Ayu. Needless to say, the road to teen shame is paved with good intentions.

In a welcome twist, Ayu genuinely appreciates those good intentions and genuinely likes Nina as much as Nina likes her. There are boys in the mix, but romantic entanglements never take priority over the girls’ bond; they never devolve into competitors, no matter how circumstances might tempt them in that direction. Better still, their mutual support never seems saccharine or flat. Magical mishaps aside, Yoshizumi sticks to very grounded storytelling.

Yoshizumi earns bonus points for very polished, pretty illustrations and for some endearing snark in her intermittent author notes. They basically amount to amused confusion as to how her comic ended up being adapted into an anime that bore so little resemblance to her story. I should note that the title has no relevance to the story whatsoever, seeming like it came from some random manga title generator, but that’s not uncommon, and it’s hardly problematic.

Tokyopop published another Yoshizumi series, Marmalade Boy, though it seems to be out of print. I might need to undertake one of those painful and frustrating projects and track down used copies of the series, as I was too stupid to pick it up when it was actually in print.

Filed under: Birthday books, Viz 13 Comments
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