Category Archives: Comics

I spent some of my birthday gift certificates on MOVING TARGET: The History and Evolution of Green Arrow by self-confessed fanboy Richard Gray. The book argues that Oliver Queen has never really been just one thing: in the 1940s he was a Batman knockoff but also inspired by Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood and by Westerns (when he finally got an origin it explains his fascination with Native American culture naturally included mastering archery). Gray follows Ollie through the gimmick-arrow days of the 1950s and 1960s (“Like Batman if Batman were all about the utility belt contents.”), the legendary radical period at the end of the decade, then on through Mike Grell’s urban vigilante, GA’s son Connor taking over the mantle, Oliver’s resurrection and of course TV’s Arrow.

The book includes several interesting interviews such as Neal Adams explaining his redesign of Ollie’s costume on the cover shown here was based on his own knowledge of archery (hence an arm-guard and a quiver large enough to hold all the arrows. Gray struggles too hard to tie all the eras together (it’s like he’s trying to make sense of a real person’s life choices) but this was overall satisfactory.

ONCE AND FUTURE: Monarchies in the UK opens with England in chaos after events in the previous volume, Parliament of Magpies, then the chaos gets worse. Along with Arthur, Celtic myth, we have the later French version of the legend plus Mallory’s Arthur showing up to contest rulership. Meanwhile Bridget, Duncan and Rose are desperately searching for a solution that can restore the British Isles to normalcy. Wild and entertaining, as always.

THE SECRET OF THE LOST PEARLS: A Useful Woman Mystery by Darcie Wilde is part of a series about Rosalind Thorne, a well-bred Regency woman who serves as a private investigator for upper-crust women who trust her to resolve their dilemmas without scandal. In this variation on Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennett Darcy hires Rosalind to find out who stole the eponymous jewelry. This proves more complicated than expected as everyone in the family is hiding something and the counterpart to Mr. Wyckham has returned, nastier than ever. This was really good.

The final volume of LEAVE IT TO CHANCE: Monster Madness (following Trick or Treat), by James Robinson and Paul Smith,  has Universal’s classic horror icons walking off the screen at a revival theater to wreak havoc, which is unusual even for Devil’s Echo. Chance, of course, insists on ignoring her father and getting in on the action, just as she does in the third story, a delightful zombie romp involving a crooked gambler and a hockey player who comes back from the dead in hopes of winning the Stanley Cup.

That’s only three issues which is annoying, but as the last two comics are at DC, then Image, I presume rights were an issue with reprinting them (when I have cash to spare, I may hunt them on eBay). From what I’ve learned online, Lucas Falconer dies (apparently) and Chance has to hunt for the lurking villain in the back of many of the stories without her dad. The series ends up on a cliffhanger; one online review says the fatal weakness was a girl-centric series at a time comic-book stores were overwhelmingly male-centric; online discussion indicates while Robinson wouldn’t mind giving it another try, Smith’s not enthused. Still, the series is a lot of fun and I’m glad to have it almost complete.

#SFWApro. Covers top to bottom by Adams, Mora and Smith; all rights to the images remain with the current holders.

Just look at this DC cover by Russ Heath.We have an eye-catching battle scene shown from an unusual perspective and like most of DC’s war covers it looks great. Back in the days of spinner racks, a good cover was a tool screaming that readers should put their money on this comic, not the one in the next slot. They had to be good (though they weren’t always, of course). Today, with dedicated comics fans shopping in specialty stores, there just isn’t the same need for an eye-grabbing cover.

For more examples that I’ve posted before, here’s one by Carmine Infantino—And a favorite by Murphy Anderson.#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

BLOODMARKED: The Legendborn Cycle Book Two is Tracy Deonn’s sequel to Legendborn (as noted at the link, I’m a friend of Tracy but this review is sincere) in which protagonist Bree became part of the demon-slaying Legendborn Order consisting of the descendants of Arthur’s knights and the organization that supports them. At the climax Bree discovered that she, rather than love interest Nick, is the rightful descendant of King Arthur (an earlier Scion of Arthur owned Bree’s ancestor and raped her), destined to lead the Order in the looming apocalypse.

As Bloodmarked opens, Bree’s going nuts that her friends in the Order are more or less keeping her on house arrest: if she buys it, the entire Order loses its mojo. Then comes her ascent, marked by taking up Excalibur, but the Order’s administrative arm kidnaps her instead. If they don’t acknowledge the apocalypse is coming, they don’t have to cede power to Bree, plus they can’t accept a former Scion of Arthur was a slave-owning rapist (the one woman on their team quips that’s the one thing in Bree’s story she believes completely). Can Bree escape? Who can she trust? What about Nick, kidnapped by his father in another, unrelated scheme? Can Bree’s ancestors and their rootcraft help her?

Like the first book this is a good ethnogothic novel dealing with racial issues in both text and subtext (Tracy unpacks some of the latter in the afterword). It’s also just plain good, not going where I expected and expanding the world beyond the magic we’ve already seen.

LONDON IN OLD PHOTOGRAPHS: 1987-1914 by Felix Barker is exactly what it sounds like, a visual recollection of the Edwardian age in business, entertainment, slums, mansions, royalty, striking dock workers and more, with text to give it all some perspective. The introduction notes that being able to take such a record was a relatively novel thing, and that Queen Victoria herself was an enthusiastic shutterbug after Kodak made it easy. Nothing deep, but certainly interesting to look at.Len Wein, Carmine Infantino and Dick Giordano introduced the Human Target in Action Comics #419 back in 1972. I became a fan from that cool first page above (couldn’t find a color rendition) but I’m still astonished to think how successful that minor back-up feature turned out: two TV series, appearances on Arrow, and four comic-book series. The most recent, THE HUMAN TARGET by Tom King and Greg Smallwood, opens with Chris counting down the 12 days until a deadly poison kills him. During a recent gig impersonating Luthor (that’s Chance’s specialty, impersonating men marked for murder, then doing his best to stay alive and catch the killer), he survived a bullet but downed a poisonous cup of coffee. Can he find the killer and maybe an antidote? Particularly when it appears the murderer might be a member of the Justice League (1980s goofball version)?

I don’t like Tom King’s writing and I’m not betting he’ll stick the landing but this was much more entertaining than most of his work. He also pulls off the difficulty of having a non-super adventurer who operates mostly in his own world interacting with the superheroes. So far, thumbs up.

#SFWApro. Art by Giordano, all rights to image remain with current holder.

THE HIDDEN PALACE is Helen Wecker’s sequel to The Golem and the Jinni and like many sequels has the romantic ending of the first book falls apart, leaving both Chava (the Golem) and Ahmad decide they are never getting back together. Meanwhile the appearance of a visiting female djinn and newly created male golem further complicate things …

I’m never enthused by sequels where the HEA turns out to have been unhappy and even setting that aside, this isn’t as strong as the first book. There’s just too many characters, plot threads and stuff going on in the real world (Triangle Shirtwaist Fire! WW I!) but even so I did enjoy this one. However the ending implication that V3 will have Chava founding the equivalent of Xavier’s Academy for magical creatures doesn’t excite me.

SOUTHERN BEAUTY: Race, Ritual and Memory in the Modern South by Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd argues that the stereotypical images of Southern beauty and grace are a subtle version of Confederate nostalgia, from Southern sororities that favor an old-school, white ideal of beauty to historical pageants, clubs and tours of Stately Antebellum Homes which present a continuity between Modern Southern Women and the Mistresses Of The Old Plantations. While it’s no surprise the beauty ideal is an artificial and deliberate one, Boyd shows just how much effort goes into it in beauty pageants (“Southern contestants are cosmetically advanced.”) and how the standard imposes a conformity that by Total Coincidence excludes women of color. I’d have liked some analysis of movies beyond Gone With the Wind but that’s not the book she was writing, and the one Boyd did write is an interesting read.

I picked up Val Diarmid’s 1979 to see how a successful author (she’s a big-name thriller writer in the UK) handles the historical details. No question she does well, from cigarettes (I will assume the way the protagonist smokes Silk Cut cigs is accurate) to pop culture and politics to (again, assuming) the way British journalism worked; however the book is less the historical thriller I expected than a straight-up historical novel about two journalists exposing a corrupt tax-evasion scheme. As such I couldn’t get into the story.LOVE ON THE RACKS: A History of American Romance Comics by Michelle Nolan suffers a little in targeting both the general interest and the collector’s market (I skimmed over a lot of detail about how many issues of various titles came out) but nevertheless does a good job looking at this slice of the market. Nolan looks at the various companies and their approaches — DC carefully wholesome, Quality and the obscure St. John turning out above-average work, Fawcett showing how girls Bring Disaster on themselves — and describes some of the stories in the different categories. N0lan also shows the impact of the Comics cCde — no cleavage, no lurid-but-inaccurate titles, not too much parent/child conflict — and the slow decline of the genre, which at its peak made up 20 percent of all the comics issues sold annually. Part of the problem was, of course, the change in women’s roles; another was the development of the direct market, as specialty comics stores initially catered to men (so no point in stocking a woman-centric product). I’m not as sure as Nolan that romance comics couldn’t stage a comeback — as she points out, romance manga sell very well — but I doubt they have the will to try. Overall very good though I’d have liked more interviews with artists and writers (there’s a quote from a John Romita interview but that’s about it).

#SFWApro. Covers by Romita, rights to images remain with current holders.

MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THOR Volumes 3 (which I don’t think I’ve reviewed and four) show Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at their storytelling best (way better than the previous volume). We have the first one-on-one battle between Thor and the Hulk, then things slide into what’s almost one continuous story for several years. The Trial of the Gods leads into Thor’s first encounter with the Absorbing Man, then the Destroyer, which leads into a battle with Hercules, all spectacularly rendered by Kirby. It’s not all perfect — there’s a totally ridiculous plotline involving a reporter kidnapping Jane Foster. Overall, though, this is great stuff, assuming Silver Age Marvel falls into your wheelhouse.

AVENGERS: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (The Ultimate Collection) by Joe Casey and Scott Kolins takes a very different look behind the scenes of the Avengers’ Silver Age adventures. In the first of the two series we see Tony Stark struggling to get government support for the team while Captain America deals with the 21st century and then to his PTSD reaction to Zemo, the man who killed Cap’s partner Bucky (or so it seemed at the time). This runs from the team’s beginning to the replacement by Cap’s “Kookie Quartet” of Cap, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. The second series covers only a few issues, from the debut of the Vision to right after the wedding of Hank and Jan, but it’s a surprisingly fertile field (I’ve written about the wedding myself). However the subplot exploring Black Panther’s decision to work as an inner-city teacher is much weaker and why would a Wakandan assassin call himself Death Tiger (there are no African tigers)? Overall, well worth the reading and better than Casey’s retelling of the team’s origin.

HELLBOY: Return of Effie Kolb by Mike Mignola and various collaborators is a collection of standalone Hellboy stories. The title one is a sequel to the classic The Crooked Man but my favorite is the weird, eerie Long Night at Goloska Station which includes the phrase “The devil came to my village disguised as a goat.”

E.C. COMICS ARCHIVES: Modern Love by various creators is a poor shadow of their classic horror stuff (though most of that doesn’t work for me either). There’s some interesting stuff like a woman working as a dime-a-dance hostess to support her mother (it segues into a crime story, something else E.C. was big on) but others are stock and a few are cringeworthy. In one, a guy tricks a girl into staying overnight with him at a hotel (separate rooms, no attempt at anything), knowing it will destroy her reputation and her engagement, leaving him free to swoop in. Yes, he gets the girl. I didn’t finish this one.

#SFWApro. Covers by Jack Kirby (top) and John Buscema (bottom).