You are here: Home / Archives for From the stack

From the stack: Empowered

April 15, 2007 by

Like its titular heroine, Adam Warren’s Empowered (Dark Horse) is much more than the sum of its often lurid parts. It’s consistently funny, and the comedy comes in a variety of flavors, from raucously crude to sly and sweet. It’s oddly moving, building genuine warmth and sympathy for its hapless heroine as the short chapters progress. And it’s unquestionably subversive, parading the worst kinds of super-heroine tropes for ridicule, but doing so without any of the lazy viciousness that sometimes characterizes those entertainments.

That the stories were born of spandex bondage pin-ups drawn on commission only serves to make me like it more, which must qualify as some kind of miracle. But I’m getting accustomed to Warren’s ability to take material I might otherwise find tiresome or distasteful and turning it into something endearing and compelling.

Take Livewires: Clockwork Thugs, Yo (Marvel). Under normal circumstances, a tale of ultra-violent, hipster teen mechas would leave me as cold as river rock. But Warren (ably assisted by artist Rick Mays) managed to execute those unpromising, overused elements and infuse them with an irresistible amount of personality. He does the same thing here, overcoming even more substantial hurdles.

For Empowered, humiliation is part and parcel of the super-heroic experience. Her costume is a lethal mix of titillation and unreliability, hugging every curve when it isn’t being shredded by the slightest outside influence. Even in those rare moments when it’s intact, it doesn’t work very well, and her adventures often end with her bound and gagged with a suggestiveness that no degree of satirical intent can mitigate.

She’d be a moron or a masochist if she didn’t let it get her down, and she’s neither. If Warren isn’t above sprinkling the pages with lovingly rendered sketches of a nearly naked, trussed-up woman, he isn’t given to letting them pass without comment either. Empowered’s harried frustration and resolute good intentions manage to balance her haplessness, softening the prurient material just enough to make me willing to overlook it. I have no idea if that will be the effect for every reader, and I have to admit that it required an active decision on my part. Mileage will obviously vary.

The deciding factor for me is that, while Empowered’s costumed life is a nightmare of marginalization, her real life is pretty fabulous. She’s got a terrific boyfriend, a reformed super-villain minion, to provide limitless moral support and tons of great sex. She’s got a best friend who can really commiserate on the pitfalls of the super-heroic lifestyle. And while her costumed successes are few, it’s got to be a pick-me-up to have an imprisoned destroyer of worlds sitting on the coffee table, even if he is given to grandiose pronouncements and has terrible taste in television.

If most super-heroes are hopeless neurotics who are only truly alive when in power drag, Empowered is a happy counter-example. Everyday life gives her the strength to put up with the indignities endemic to her calling. Maybe it should be depressing that the idea seems so fresh and novel, but Warren makes it too much fun to dwell on the dark side.

Filed under: Dark Horse, From the stack 4 Comments

From the stack: Elk's Run

April 8, 2007 by

Before I get too far into the collected Elk’s Run (Villard), I have to take a moment to address novelist Charlie Huston’s introduction, because it’s awful. It’s filled with the kind of testosterone-fueled posturing that the story itself wisely avoids and even subverts. Here’s a sample:

“Read the fucking book.
“Burn, baby, burn.
“And learn something about yourself.”

If I knew nothing about Elk’s Run and was browsing it in a bookstore or comic shop, that invocation would compel me to set it on the nearest flat surface and move on, baby, move on. And that would be too bad, because the book is a fine and balanced piece of suspenseful drama, no matter what the introductory chest-thumping might suggest.

Fortunately, I’d read some of the early chapters in pamphlet form and knew what to expect. But if you did scan Huston’s remarks and your fight-or-flight instincts kicked in (and no one could blame you), I hope I can convince you to reconsider.

Elk’s Ridge, West Virginia, has isolated itself from the rest of the United States. Founded by veterans of the Vietnam War and funded by the eccentric heir to a coal fortune, they view the government as corrupt and the culture as fractured. They want no part of it and enter into their own social contract, raising their families and living their lives in relative peace and security.

As the younger generation comes of age, the flaws in the arrangement become increasingly apparent. Choices the original settlers made don’t work for their children. Natural curiosity breeds boredom, and boredom creates tension and rebellion. The environment that seemed ideal to the adults proves stifling to the kids it was created to protect.

And it isn’t just the kids. A defection leads to tragedy, which only escalates as the town’s power figures take increasingly draconian measures to keep their bubble culture sealed. Intergenerational tension blows up into the equivalent of civil war, and it can’t help but end badly.

Joshua Hale Fialkov structures the escalating crisis with care and intelligence. The events he portrays are extreme yet chillingly plausible. Characters are given depth and detail. Artist Noel Tuazon has an impressive cartooning vocabulary. He adopts drastically different styles to ground the story in place and time, but it holds together. And I love the rich, saturated coloring by Scott A. Keating.

The dialogue is a bit thick in expletives for a sheltered mountain town, though it’s reasonably easy to conclude that the kids are just repeating what they’ve heard from their parents. And in a story where the greatest danger is becoming what you despise, whether it’s an oppressive, deceitful government or a hypocritical, violent adult, it’s a fair way of illustrating that point.

Filed under: From the stack, Villard 2 Comments

From the stack: First in Space

April 4, 2007 by

Sad animal stories are my undoing. I can’t be in the room when a certain tenor of music or tone of narration kicks in on Animal Planet. I can watch dozens of expendable humans fall in the face of fictional mayhem, but damn it, if that loyal dog or cat doesn’t make it to the end of the movie or the last chapter of the novel, the book or movie is a wash.

So I viewed the imminent arrival of James Vining’s First in Space (Oni) with some trepidation. It has a fascinating premise – all about the chimpanzees sent into space to pave the way for NASA astronauts. But the prospect of a tale of animals being shot into space to further the curiosity and ambition of humans made me anxious.

I’m glad Oni sent me a preview copy, because Vining’s restrained, intelligent approach to the material gives it balance and sensitivity. The portrayal of chimpanzee Ham and the people who train him poses difficult questions, but Vining generally refrains from answering them.

The approach is similar to that used by George O’Connor in Journey into Mohawk Country (First Second), meticulously researching and documenting historical events. Like O’Connor, Vining barely imposes on the historical narrative, but Vining really doesn’t need to. It’s pretty much a “duh” statement to suggest that space chimps are naturally more dramatic than Dutch fur traders, and Vining’s editing of Ham’s story is funny, sad, suspenseful, and thought-provoking.

I think both Journey and First in Space could function similarly as teaching tools as well. Both provide snapshots of history and employ imaginative means of retelling it. First in Space has the added advantage of being a fine, mostly even-handed starting point for discussion and debate about the use of animals as research subjects.

And like O’Connor, Vining (who was awarded a grant from the Xeric Foundation) is a real find. His cartooning style is clean, lively and precise in its emotional effect. The material could lend itself to shameless heartstring tugging and Disney-esque anthropomorphism, but Vining plays it straight for the most part. He doesn’t push because, again, he doesn’t need to.

I’ll never be first in line for entertainments about animals in peril. It’s just not what I look for when I open a comic or novel or turn on a television. But First in Space avoids the cheap manipulations endemic to that category, simply telling a fascinating story and with sincerity and intelligence.

(This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher. First in Space ships on April 25.)

Filed under: From the stack, Oni 4 Comments

From the stack: Heartbreak Soup

March 18, 2007 by

I think people sometimes avoid comics widely acknowledged as classics because the designation doesn’t promise a whole lot of fun. Somewhere along the way, the perception of a given body of work shifts from “something that people really enjoy” to “something that people deeply admire.” Personally, I’ll pick the likelihood of enjoyment over admiration every time, though there’s plenty of evidence that the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Take Gilbert Hernandez’s Heartbreak Soup (Fantagraphics). It’s easy to see why the stories here have stood the test of time. With apparent effortlessness, Hernandez built the Central American town of Palomar into one of the richest, most absorbing fictional communities I’ve ever encountered. The pages burst with imaginative storytelling and sharply defined characters, and it’s the kind of book you want to savor.

I found that I wasn’t ultimately able to dose out the pleasure of the reading experience, because there was just too much of it. The collection was just too much fun to read, and restraint went out the window.

There was always someone new to meet, or more to learn about characters I already knew. The thrill of watching a bit of gossip – a local marital squabble or sexual indiscretion, or a childhood misadventure – polished into something like legend was too compulsively readable. The generous blend of humor, pathos, sex, friendship and family was just irresistible.

With a sprawling cast of characters young and old, good and bad, you’d think one or two would have emerged as clear favorites. Again, Hernandez’s creative generosity made this virtually impossible. There seemed to be no such thing as a throw-away character, no matter how brief their tenure on the pages. It could be argued that the women of Palomar have the edge; they run the place by virtue of a combination of hard-won wisdom, resourcefulness and independence. But while the men seem to have abdicated power in terms of the town’s social structure, they hold their own as layered, richly drawn contributors to Palomar’s fictional world.

As if all of this creative flourish and lovingly detailed emotional landscape wasn’t good enough, the collection is a steal. For just under $15, you get close to 300 black-and-white pages of comics that are as freshly engaging as they are undeniably groundbreaking.

Admiration, enjoyment and economy, all in one package. What more do you need?

Filed under: Fantagraphics, From the stack 4 Comments

From the stack: Innocent Bird Vol. 1

March 13, 2007 by

It’s delightful how easily the premise of Hirotaka Kisaragi’s Innocent Bird (Blu) translates into buddy-comedy bluster:

A devil trying to do the right thing… An angel upholding God’s law the only way he knows how… Genesis… was just… the beginning!

Inventing variations on bombastic movie trailers throughout my reading of this book probably led me to like it more than I should. It’s not especially gripping, and readers hoping for sexy blasphemy will be sorely disappointed, but Kisaragi does chart some interesting, even moving territory along the way.

Shirasagi is a very bad devil. He’s gone so far as to abandon his demonic duties to become a priest in a low-rent neighborhood, ministering to the downtrodden and teaching children mathematics and Japanese out of a shuttered nightclub. Karasu, the angel, cares more about the spirit of God’s law than the letter. When sent to convince Shirasagi to resume his duties as Beelzebub’s favorite sex toy, Karasu lacks the bureaucrat’s enthusiasm for order and regulation.

The two are essentially soldiers in a war that has become so codified as to be void of passion or meaning. Angels and devils do what they do because that’s what they’ve always done, and individual moral choice has been divorced from the equation. Shirasagi and Karasu are outsiders simply because they take a nuanced, personal view of their by-the-numbers circumstances. Even putting aside their mutual attraction, they’re dangerous because they think for themselves.

That conceit interests me, and it helps overcome a lot of the mundane mechanics of the story. Nothing particularly startling or even unexpected happens in terms of plot, and Kisaragi is much better at illustrating emotion than event. In spite of those shortcomings, Kisaragi has convinced me to want a happy outcome for her protagonists and to be curious about what happens to them next. (A sharply observed back-up story about building a family of choice goes a long way to sell me on Kisaragi’s abilities.)

Filed under: Blu, From the stack 1 Comment

From the stack: Aya

February 24, 2007 by

My best memories of high school are populated by people like the title character of Aya (Drawn & Quarterly): smart, strong-willed young women with a healthy skepticism of the more conventional obsessions of the people around them. Consequently, I find Aya enormously likable, even if the book that bears her name is kind of a trifle.

In spite of her many charms, Aya is just too sensible to get into the kind of mischief that can really drive a narrative. That’s good and bad – good because her character is admirable and endearing from beginning to end, and bad because she ends up being incidental to the action.

Fortunately, she’s surrounded by people who don’t share her grounded quality. Her best friends Adjoua and Bintou are as boy-crazy and fashion-forward as Aya is level-headed, and they’re surrounded by suitors who are just as dedicated to living in the moment. Their flirtations are marked by a recognizable mixture of playfulness and cynicism that can be very funny, though it’s hard to get too invested in any of the potential outcomes.

Aya is a conscientious objector in the battle of the sexes. She’ll reluctantly help her friends out of a jam, but she’s too ambitious to waste much time or consideration on the slackers in her circle. Her indifference marks her as an oddity in the 1970s Ivory Coast society portrayed here; almost everyone just expects her to marry, and she’s routinely criticized for being too studious when there are boys to date and style to maintain.

She generally resists the urge to return the criticism in kind, though illustrator Clément Oubrerie gives her ample hooded glances and rolling of the eyes. And writer Marguerite Abouet smartly resists the urge to make her a paragon. When Aya’s patience runs too thin, she delivers common sense with blistering directness, as in a scene where she subjects herself to a decoy date on a friend’s behalf.

But for my taste, there’s not enough of her. There are charms in watching the foibles of decent but flawed people look for love (or just fun) in all the wrong places, but Aya is so captivating that she makes the rest of the crowd seem trivial by comparison. It’s not the worst flaw a story can suffer, but it makes me want to read a story that’s actually about Aya to a greater degree than the one I’ve actually got in my hands.

It’s very likable, though. Abouet’s writing combines sharp observation and generous spirit, and I’d love to see more of her stories. Oubrerie is a talented illustrator, matching Abouet’s script note for note and mining plenty of comedy and warmth out of familiar scenarios.

So, how about a sequel? Aya did say she wants to be a doctor.

Filed under: Drawn & Quarterly, From the stack 2 Comments

From the stack: Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. Vol. 1

February 17, 2007 by

I’m not quite sure how to go about reviewing Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. Vol. 1 – This Is What They Want. I liked it a lot, but I’m not sure if I liked it for reasons that are entirely useful.

It could be viewed as a super-hero satire. A motley group of C-and-lower-list Marvel characters have been duped into the service of a terrorist organization named H.A.T.E., and now they’re using the group’s marketing plan to foil H.A.T.E.’s charmingly absurd attempts at wholesale destruction. Nextwave’s fight-fire-with-fire approach is endearingly blithe, though it is informed by personal grudges and insecurities.

The book could also be viewed as straightforward spandex comedy. I don’t think you need to known anything about the protagonists that isn’t provided on these pages to enjoy their exploits and find them grudgingly sympathetic, but I can’t be sure. The American Library Association placed it in the top ten on its Great Graphic Novels for Teens list, so that’s a reassuring indication of its accessibility to people who aren’t steeped in Marvel lore.

And yet, a lot of what I really like about the book is based on what I know about the characters. Having always thought Monica Rambeau was an intolerable Mary Sue in her Avengers appearances, I’m delighted to see writer Warren Ellis re-imagine her as surly and resentful under the goody-goody exterior. Never fully understanding why so many writers tried to take Machine Man seriously, his portrayal here as a quirky misanthrope plays right into my perceptions of the character. So I’m unable to entirely divorce my gratitude for little gifts of revisionist snark like those from my opinion of the work as something a reader can pick up and enjoy without any background.

I’m pretty sure casual readers can, though. It’s funny in ways that require only the most basic familiarity with super-hero tropes, like an episode of The Powerpuff Girls. (They fought broccoli monsters too, though those were from outer space.) You don’t need to have read any of the Essential Fantastic Four volumes to wonder why a giant dragon would bother to wear purple underwear.

While I generally prefer Stuart Immonen’s softer, rounder work, seen in books like Shockrockets or Superman: Secret Identity, Nextwave looks great. There isn’t a whole lot of demand for visual nuance, what with all the explosions and murderous koalas. Immonen and inker Wade Von Grawbadger keep the emphasis on action tinged with comedy, and the mix is very successful.

It’s surprisingly cheerful reading. Corporate terrorists are unquestionably bad, and their manufactured minions are basically cannon fodder, so any crises of conscience are neatly removed from the playing field. Nextwave can blow things up with abandon, and they can grind personal axes at the same time. They get to be proactive and cathartically violent; there’s no down side.

As Ellis describes it in his original pitch, Netxtwave is “Healing America by beating people up.” And you know… I do feel better.

Filed under: From the stack, Marvel 2 Comments

From the stack: The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Vol. 2

February 12, 2007 by

I capped off the weekend’s manga read-a-thon with the second volume of Eiji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki’s The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service and liked it even better than the first. Otsuka and Yamazaki set aside the episodic structure for a single story that consumes the entire volume, and while I really enjoyed the short-story structure of the debut, the change is tremendously successful.

The story starts with the execution of a convicted murderer and spirals out into a number of unexpected, entirely satisfying directions. Without giving anything away, things become extremely personal for some of the Kurosagi sleuths. That’s not a direction I generally enjoy in mysteries and thrillers, but Otsuka uses it exceptionally well here.

Beyond the added layers of personal resonance for the characters, it’s also an extremely well-constructed mystery. Otsuka plays fair with the mechanics of the story while carefully emphasizing the moral ambiguities of the scenario. The long-form story coalesces gradually, asking as many questions as it answers along the way while providing some appropriately gruesome moments of suspense.

The peril and complexity of the scenario doesn’t lead Otsuka to neglect the quirky charms of his core cast. They’ve got more on their minds, but it doesn’t fundamentally change who they are. It just deepens readers’ understanding of them.

It’s great stuff. Mystery fans looking for a polished, substantial graphic novel would really be doing themselves a favor by picking it up.

Filed under: Dark Horse, From the stack 3 Comments

From the stack: Kitchen Princess

February 7, 2007 by

Kitchen Princess (Del Rey) is shôjo romantic comedy so formulaic you can practically read it with your eyes closed. A spirited country girl enrolls in a big-city private school, finding snooty rivals and romantic possibilities among the student body. Potential suitors include feuding relatives who are united only in their fondness for our heroine.

In other words, it’s Imadoki! without the smartly overturned expectations, or Fruits Basket without the supernatural pathos. The art is cute, the protagonist is spunky, the boys are dreamy, and the plot moves from point to point with lockstep familiarity.

Now would be the point to make a “cookie-cutter” joke, because the single distinguishing factor of Kitchen Princess is that it’s culinary manga. I’m a sucker for culinary manga. And while Kitchen Princess isn’t great culinary manga, recipes go a long way with me.

I like the book’s underlying food philosophy – that cooking is a way to express affection and to share something that matters with someone you care about. It’s corny, but it’s sweet. But I really do hope that the story and characters deepen along the way and that something even remotely unexpected happens.

Oh, and while I’m not entirely convinced that works of fiction lead to dangerous, imitative behavior, I’ve got to speak out on one subject. It would be great if reading manga motivated kids in the audience to learn to cook, but making caramel at home results in a substance roughly the temperature of molten lava and about as friendly to one’s epidermis. The story is perfectly safe for all ages, but the recipes require parental supervision.

Filed under: Del Rey, From the stack 3 Comments

From the stack: The Embalmer

February 3, 2007 by

I’m starting to think that someone could devote an entire blog to manga that involves characters dealing with the recently deceased. I’m also starting to worry that my blanket fondness for this kind of manga indicates a lurking morbidity in my otherwise sunny disposition.

Maybe it’s simply a matter of taste. I like episodic manga, and I like stories about people who help dead people. So is it any surprise that I like Mitsukazu Mihara’s The Embalmer (Tokyopop)?

The Embalmer takes a slightly different track than some of the other dead-people manga I’ve been enjoying lately. The restless spirits of the deceased are out of the equation, and protagonist Shinjyurou is more concerned with the peace of mind of the people they leave behind. While the Japanese (at least the ones portrayed here) generally view embalming as a ghoulish practice, Shinjyurou believes that the practice can bring closure to the grief-stricken, allowing them to see their loved ones in an idealized state as they bid them goodbye.

Shinjyurou isn’t especially heroic. He doesn’t have the young-man-with-a-dream fervor of other manga protagonists trying to bring western practices to Japanese consumers. (That would actually make for a hilariously tacky shônen comedy, come to think of it — Yakitate!! Japan with cavity fillers.) Instead, he kind of wanders through life looking sexily tousled and occasionally coming across a scenario that might benefit from his expertise.

His lazy glamour isn’t a façade. When he isn’t at work, he’s kind of a pig. He treats his numerous sexual conquests with indifference (though without cruelty or dishonesty) in the time-honored tradition of sex as antidote for death. Shinjyurou reserves his version of affection and tenderness for the dead, the grieving, and Azuki, his landlord’s daughter. He likes her too much to use her, but he’ll happily tease her.

I’m not especially wowed by the ongoing narrative elements, but the individual episodes are moving and observant. Mihara seems especially cognizant of the inherent vanity involved in leaving a good-looking corpse, and she uses that awareness to balance the sentimentality. But she doesn’t resist sentimentality entirely, which is all to the good. As with her protagonist, Mihara gives the book a credibly beating (though not bleeding) heart underneath the sexy stylishness.

Do I think The Embalmer is great manga? Not really. It’s attractive and often intriguing, but it doesn’t strike me as a series I’ll want to read again and again. It is a solid, distinct addition to the growing list of death-helper manga, though. If you like that sort of thing (as I obviously do), give it a try.

Filed under: From the stack, Tokyopop 4 Comments
« Previous Page
Next Page »