And so, here we are with Conan, The Barbarian, starring in "The Queen of the Black Coast, Part 1."

It starts in the midst of action. I like that. I like that a lot, actually. No heavy handed inner-dialogue while some character sits around "thinking" and thereby catching us up on the story (you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about). Just a little bit of scene setting and then BAM! Conan, on his black horse, riding through a city, down some stairs and leaping onto a ship. That's some fun stuff! The first two-page spread in this comic is pretty gorgeous. The pages of this book even seem thicker than most comics, too. I liked it, it made the book feel heavier, manlier. I never really got used to it, and kept thinking I had accidentally skipped a page due to the feeling of the page between my fingers, but I liked the experience it gave me. Going slowly through a comic that's a story like this--it made it better, somehow.

After the horse-jumping and yelling, there was this great little scene, with that "thing" that you men-folk are often portrayed as doing. You know, you sort of fight with each other first, either with words or fists. Then, through that interchange, something grows your respect or disdain for your "brother". In this case, the bad-assness of Conan earns him some the respect and friendship of his shipmates, it becomes mutual on Conan's side, and a true loyalty is born between him and Tito, Master of the Argus. I liked that part. It was quick, but it felt like it really happened.

After all the fun stuff, we're soon introduced to a woman named "Belit". She's something in the Bitch-Goddess magical creature variety of person, this one a "scourge, a plague among the seas." That's part of her description, and she's drawn with ivory skin, jet black hair, curvier than the Pacific Coast highway, and there's fire coming out of her eyes and blood dripping from her mouth. Yeah....that's where it started to get a little weird. I got a bit distracted, wondering if she was a vampire. And why is her tounge sort of poised at the opening of her mouth like that? And wait, what is going on with those fire eyes? How's she stay so fit? What's going on?

That happens to me with these kinds of stories sometimes, I don't mean to do it on purpose. There will be a thread, and I pull on it a little too hard, and something starts to unravel. I feel like I'm being mean, but I really don't mean to do it, it isn't purposeful. Here, everything was fine, it all made sense and I believed it, and then I saw that blood on Belit's lips and all of a sudden it was like a bunch of cars stopping short in my head, and all those cars are the parts of the story you just have to accept if you're going to participate in the story.

Anyway, the thing with the blood shouldn't have been that big of a deal, but it sort of stands out as where I started to get lost. After Conan hears about Belit, lo' and behold a series of events lead the characters (Conan, Tito and his Argus-ian crew) to sail further out than they expected to and voila, they encounter a ship from a distance that seems to have encountered Belit. 

What does that mean? Well, it's a ship, initially depicted in a silhouette that seems to convey tattered sails and a deserted ship. Conan, in what I assume is some kind of act of loyalty, decides he's going to go take stock of this situation and jumps into the ocean to swim to the ship. 

And this is where this comic takes a sharp turn and the last seven full pages made no sense to me whatsoever.

First we see Conan get on the ghost ship, only to find dead people and blood everywhere. He calls out Belit's name, and we see that simultaneously, on the other ship, Tito is sitting with his head in hand and head shaking (I think?) and then we cut back to the ship, where Conan has just yelled "BELIT!"

And then we cut to Conan, who is in the water alone.

Then Belit is with him. Next frame, they kiss. Next frame, she sort of lies down on him in the water. I think. The next frame looks like a whirlpool is sort of happening and the two of them are lying on top of the water? Unless the perspective is just drawn weird and we're really supposed to be seeing them as underwater - and she's choking him? I don't know. 

On the next page--and I'm sorry, this must be boring to read but I'm still trying to figure it all out--the scene shifts from pinks, purples and flesh tones to icy blues and greys. Conan is returning to the ship, or waking up, or coming to after being attacked, or just sitting up...or anything, I'm not sure. But it's happening on a ship and he's all alone and it's foggy or something. It almost looks like winter. Eleven different frames of him sort of coming to and looking around. Seeing another ship across the way. Is it Tito's ship? Did he never actually leave Tito's ship and this was all a dream? Did he never actually make it onto Tito's ship in the first place, but back in the beginning jumped on some boat and hit his head and knocked himself out?! I sincerely doubt that last one, but I don't have to, do I? There's no real evidence to the contrary. By that logic (or absence of logic), I could, of course, make any claim I want. I don't want to do that. I just wanted to understand the process as I experienced it.

On the next page, there is more of the same, and then Conan spots Belit in her little porn-y belly-dancing outfit on the other ship. She looks at him, with her tongue out (of course she does, I love her, she's such an obvious tramp) and he yells "Alarm!" and is suddenly surrounded by men on a ship that I thought was deserted. 

And that's it.

I have no idea where he is, where she is or what's going on. It's supposed to be a cliffhanger ending, but I'm so confused that I just want to put the book down.

Did anyone else have this experience? It's weird that it went from such a fun and succinct little comic with all this warrior-male-bonding stuff before turning into this trippy, mythological thing that either completely lost it's way, or just completely lost me. I'm no artist, but this just struck me as a clear case of the story not being told well by the pictures. There's virtually no dialogue at the end AT ALL. It's all pictures, and eventually just becomes impossible to follow.

So. I guess that's my take on it? You know, at this point I don't want to know what was really intended to be told in those last seven pages. I would love to hear various hilarious versions. You know, like those contests they have to write a caption for a comic or photo. I'd love to see what the most hilarious storyline could be thought up to go with these frames. I doubt that was the intention.

I want to add something here--I really liked the beginning of this comic. I expected to dislike it, because it was about Conan the Barbarian, a character I only know from that silly movie...which, to be fair, I have never actually watched. Instead, I found myself in love with this story almost immediately. Conan was just so likeably bad, that perfect mix. I liked the way he was drawn, the way he did his hair up the way a woman does whenever we take off our make up (just barely pulled back into the scrunchie), and I liked the way everything else looked to. It was a pleasure to read this comic, until it wasn't, and I admit--I might be a little harsh because of that. But I don't see any reason to pretend I wasn't. I can't remember feeling this way before, and it seems ridiculous to say it, but oh well: if the people who cared about the front of this comic had taken the same kind of care with the back, they could have made something really special.

Instead they just made this.

-Nina Stone, 2012

Winter Soldier #1
Art by Butch Guice & Bettie Breitweiser
Written by Ed Brubaker
Published by Marvel Comics

I'm actually going to talk about the art in this one first. That's weird for me, right? Maybe, but I don't think I have much of a choice: it's quite striking. There's something about this art that has me thinking I'm reading an "old school" comic book that's also totally new at the same time, in the same panels. The people, are drawn "normally", by which I mean realistic. Body parts are generally in proportion, facial features have naturalistic details. But there's an overall manner to the characters, a vibe that has me flashing back to 1960's & 70's era James Bond movies, with a bit of a Rockford Files vibe here and there as well. I love that the general palette is a washed out red, white and blue--it's very subtle, but very clever. You don't necessarily notice it while reading, but upon flipping back through the comic, it's evident throughout.  

It's funny to me that I like the art, because the old 60's & 70's comic book style could probably be blamed in large part for turning me away from comic books. It's not that the style is bad, I hope that's clear. It's just the sort of thing that I saw in comic books when I was younger, and I think I associate that art style and comics with something that I didn't read or like that much. It's a sort of learned rejection, not always tied into actual evidence. But in this case, I was drawn in. Some of the things that drew me were the way the frames were played with - on the first page, our main characters are are in these great catalog poses, with The Black Widow depicted too large for the frame in which she's drawn (love that!), and there's a lot of fun being had with frame size, shape, insert and overlap, teasing out things that draw the eye in. It just made me want to find the flow of the page and see what else was going on. And, of course, I loved the romantic scenes between Bucky and Natasha. They're really intimate and sensual, and yet there's nothing X-rated (not even R-rated) about those drawings. I think that takes real artistic talent to be able to draw intimacy with such restraint.

So, anyhow, that's the art! And now, onto the story. Although it's clearly a storyline that's grown out of another story that must have been going on for a while, it's not at all difficult to catch up with. Everyone thinks Bucky is dead, but he is actually trying to save the world. He's teamed up with Natasha, the Black Widow, and they are trying to find and "catch" (I'm pretty sure they're just going to kill whoever they find) some sleeper agents (who are actually sleeping - Cold War agents of destruction who've been put to sleep in sleeper tube-things and kinda forgotten about after the Cold War ended and it looked like they weren't going to be needed) before the other side finds them and actually uses them in some kind of destructive way. There seems to be a couple of problems when they find the tubes, because they are empty. The big surprise of the issue is who shows up at the end. He's a gorilla warrior.  No, I didn't spell it wrong. He's not a guerrilla warrior, he's an actual gorilla. And he's a gorilla that screams in Russian at that! Neato!

The only funny little problems I had with these parts of the comic were when some of the fight scenes occurred. I couldn't always follow the action. That might be on me, but half the time I saw all the bullets and legs flailing about, I kinda gave up trying to follow it. Instead, I skipped to the end of the scene to figure out what happened by looking at the end results. Then I went back and tried to map out what I was supposed to be seeing. I suppose if it were a little clearer, I'd look at it more. I can't figure out what I really need changed though, because the problems I had with the fight scenes seem to stem from the same experimentation that I liked so much in the more intimate, talky scenes.

The other thing that seemed kinda, um, unrealistic sandwiched within the realistic art is that neither Natasha or Bucky ever seem to get hit. I finally asked my husband if they had some kind of unspoken magical powers or something, because...seriously. Is there something I don't know? Because Natasha seems to just back flip over every bullet that ever comes her way, and Bucky never seems to get hit either. They seem to be completely invincible. Is that the case?

Apparently, its not true. I'm told that she doesn't age normally, and maybe that's what keeps her so agile, and I've read (and extensively analyzed) about Bucky's robotic arm before. But they are not magic.  

All that aside? I found Winter Soldier to be an entertaining and somewhat thrilling read. It's got one heck of a cliffhanger, too! A maniacal machine gun toting Russian Gorilla screaming "DEATH TO AMERICA!!!" It definitely makes one wonder, "What happens next?"

-Nina Stone, 2012

Blazing Combat #3

This is excellent, of course. These issues (as well as others) were collected by Fantagraphics a few years ago, but there's something to be said for cracking open the yellowing pages behind Frank Frazetta's somber illustration of an American soldier standing knee deep in a pile of dead Vietnamese soldiers, the faint sky blue smoke rising from his rifle. Anti-war war comics are tough work--you're basically saying that you're planning to be entertaining, but this is the kind of entertainment that should leave you stroking your chin and looking off into the middle distance--and it would be impossible for all of those attempts to stick the landing. But if you take a second look at the line-up of talent this one bears, it's no surprise that so much of it does work. Severin's story is a nasty piece of EC style "surprise, asshole!", delightfully stocked with the same kinds of expression heavy faces you'd find in a Maguire Justice League. Toth's is pure post-apocalyptic lechery, with a climax that will appear doubly insane to modern readers. For my money though, the best thing in this package is Reed Crandall's "Foragers". A classic slice of that war comics staple--fragging the lunatic in charge--blessed with the sort of caricature style art that nowadays only shows up in movie parodies, if it shows up at all, and its reliance on brevity only ups the savagery with which it delivers that most classic of messages: Don't Be a Fucking Asshole.

Animal Man #6
Art by John Paul Leon, Travel Foreman, Jeff Huet, Lovern Kindzierski
Written by Jeff Lemire
Published by DC Comics

This issue of Animal Man is taken up with a comic length presentation of a super-serious film version of Mark Millar's Kick-Ass by way of Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, (in the comic it is credited to "Ryan Daranovsky" which is just adorgahhh), which, in the DC Universe, features the Buddy Baker character in the starring role. As this is a standard super-hero comic in 2012, there's only enough room to show what would probably be the first 8 minutes of a movie, and the best thing one can say about it is that it's an incredibly accurate depiction of how fucking mealy mouthed and boring a super-serious film version of Kick-Ass would be; that is also, unsurprisingly, the worst thing one could say about it. The comic drones on for a while in this fashion, and whether you think it's being pretentious by choice (as a way to comment on the disgusting immaturity of a man who chooses ego validation over doing things like "pay child support") or not will be determined by whether or not you actually read the comic in question. Theoretically, there's probably an argument to be made here, but when you put the whole thing under the lens of working human eyes, it becomes rapidly apparent that "being a super-hero" is something that non-pieces of shit stop doing the second some girl barfs their kid out of her vagina.

The Punisher #8
Art by Marco Checchetto & Matt Hollingsworth
Written by Greg Rucka
Published by Marvel Comics

Although this leans so heavily on film tricks that half the reading experience consists of pages of Checchetto drawing zoom effects on dead bodies and plugging up the page with "establishing" shots, it's actually a pretty engaging comic, almost like it's being so in spite of the way everyone involved would apparently be happier storyboarding David Fincher movies. Rucka's take on the Punisher is still an unwelcome return to the stories that get told whenever the character is being written by people who can't shut the fuck up about their own personal disagreements with Frank's horrible (and yet still fictional) worldview--and in this case, it's the old "make the surrounding situational ethics unassailably in Frank's favor, and then spend as much of the comic's page count as possible amongst other characters"--but the comic is still so deeply immersed in that professionals-only landscape that Rucka tends to do best in, and it all sort of works. As long as they keep the Spider-Man types and wistful grandmothers at arm's length, this book has actually gotten pretty decent.

Justice League International #6
Art by Marco Castiello, Dan Jurgens, Vincenzo Acunzo, Hi-Fi
Written by Dan Jurgens
Published by DC Comics

This is probably the purest mediocrity that DC has, a comic so boring that its ideal audience would be found in a locked room containing a Rubbermaid tub of semen with a Tupperware container of ova floating in it, as that way you'd be at an absolute Ground Zero, surrounded on all sides by something that has never had the opportunity to know any better. Even trying to find something in the story to point to as evidence deserving of cruelty is a pain in the ass, this comic, such a slippery eel of banality. Near the end, there's an exciting tease of a moment when a woman in the UN's "Security Group" is depicted wearing a dress seemingly cut from the exact same design that one sees on the United Nations flag, but then there's a close-up drawing and you see that it's just a bunch of little white palm trees (?) on a blue background--still without class, but not as hilarious as one could have hoped for. That sequence also features the funniest part of the comic's script, although it isn't legendary or anything--just a bunch of mid-grade super-heroes making excuses and playing victim for multiple pages. It brings up one of those intermittent questions that arise following the reading of too many super-hero comics: don't regular civilians despise these fucking clowns? Wouldn't they despise them further, to see them whining and passing the buck? Comics or real world, it's the same old song, the reason that girls don't like "nice guys": because desperation and pleading are the ugliest things on the planet, and we've been bred, correctly, to treat weakness with the virulent contempt it very much deserves. Failure is nothing more than that, its failure, and you better hurry up and get married if you want anybody to care that you have a cold and cry sometimes, Booster Gold. Because if there's one thing we've got plenty of, it's another clown with a self-esteem problem and a bunch of fucking gadgets.

-Tucker Stone, 2012

Over at Flavorwire, you'll find a list of upcoming comic releases that seemed worthy of spotlight. Most of what's on here won't be a surprise to anyone who ends up on this blog in the first place, so let me just stress two items: Joost Swarte's Is That All There Is and Derf Backderf's My Friend Dahmer are two of the best comics that are going to come out this (or any) year. Don't let them pass you by.

Here at TFO, we've had the regular bubbles of activity--Comics of the Weak continues its sojourn in the deserts of the weird, Nina read the only issue of The Walking Dead she ever will, and then there's some clearing of the throat regarding some books n' such.

In the extended family edition, you can find Joe McCulloch with an excellent essay on Soderbergh's Haywire over at MUBI: don't pass it up, even if (like me), you've yet to see the film. He's that good, that Jog! Meanwhile, fellow trench warfare combatant Matt Seneca took up the Herriman challenge and succeeded brilliantly.

In my other, day job identity, I've been happily piloting this little tumblr for Bergen Street Comics. It's still in the figuring-out-what-we're-doing-with-it stage, but for now, we're pretty happy with it.

In other Bergen Street news, Benjamin Marra has unleashed the details for his upcoming art show, including the poster, which (of course) is totally awesome.

You neglect the badge at your peril, brother.

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My father's uncle lived across the hall from Ben Gazzara for many years, and my dad has a few solid stories about the guy. I wish I could remember a single one of them.

I uploaded some footage of me being a racist and getting slapped by Halle Berry in a television mini-series. It's a torturously shit thing to watch, but hey, I was able to afford a Chevrolet Blazer with the money I got paid, and I remember that being pretty fucking cool.

This flick, on the other hand, looks great. The way its shot brings up memories of White Ribbon, but I imagine using such a hardcore strain of religion will result in a far different film.

Like everybody else, I've been a Longreads addict for a while now, to the point where I've started buying magazines off the newsstand for the first time in years, just to keep up with all the great writers they've introduced me too. "The Story of a Suicide" is only the most recent example of the sort of well researched, well written articles that they're plugging. It's really telling how tempted I am to try to and summarize the article's key points into some catchy couple of sentences, as the problems inherent in that sort of of summary (and the internet's love of trafficking in that sort of writing) are one of the many great takeaways to be found. The subject matter (the suicide of a young gay man, and his roommates ensuing legal battles) isn't the most palatable, but that will only be a barrier to the very few.

"I haven’t been on the Internet since the ’90s. Whatever people think is their business, and they can blog, they can be trolls, they can do whatever. That’s their business. That’s their privilege, as they sit alone at 4 o’clock in the morning. That’s their privilege to do whatever they want. I choose not to engage in it. I find it very unhealthy, that environment."- Lucy Lawless, interestingly enough.

I'm sure I'll come up with some boring, shitty jokes about Watchmen soon enough, but right now I just think the whole thing is obnoxious and sad all around. The only non-Twitter reactions I've honestly read about this whole thing are the ones from Abhay Khosla and this one by David Brothers, and while I'm positive that Chris Mautner and many other people will deliver intelligent and/or funny responses on the subject, I think I'll tap out this time around. I'll be hearing what people think about the subject plenty at the shop, and that'll be where I do my penance.

Comics are clearly heading in a direction away from where I would like them to be headed, and that will have to be okay. If this is what people want--and I have come to believe that the industry as it currently stands is exactly what the people want, and I believe websites like The Beat, Newsarama and Comic Book Resources provide plenty of evidence of that fact--then they should have it. I am happy to leave it to them.

The Third Reich

It's essentially a warm-up book, in that the best bits (like the weird rhythms of male friendships that can ultimately make the "bad times" indistinguishable from the "good times") all eventually made it into Bolano's later, better books. It's totally understandable that the Bolano translation squad want this older, less polished material out there, but good God, it really is unnecessary stuff if you aren't a grad student. Featuring an obnoxious, role-playing-game obsessive as he goes through a coming-of-age experience way too late in life, Third Reich's only local claim to fame is that it provided this reader as a graphic, painful reminder of how incredibly irritating it is when self-righteous prigs yammer incessantly about their geeky hobbies. Udo Berger--the jackass at the heart of this novel--never stops telling people about the dice and paper war game he's so awesome at, and he never stops believing that the only thing preventing people from caring is an all-encompassing "they just don't get it" If you ever wanted to experience the serious literature version of cringe comedy (without any comedy to lessen the sting), then this one's for you. Otherwise, just knuckle down and start 2666 all over again.

Zone One
By Colson Whitehead, 2011

I came to this one with the expectation level set a bit too high, and that's not fair to Whitehead. However, I still found this book was ultimately a failure, as it's attempts to toss some "ideas" at zombie fiction ended up being no different from the type of commercialism critique that George Romero pulled off in Dawn of the Dead, and Whitehead's seemingly bottomless disdain for action sequences became impossible to stomach. It's totally fine, and maybe even laudable to throw a forearm up in the face of genre's continued advance, but doing so within the confines of a zombie novel? It's absurd, and yet that's exactly what Whitehead does, over and over again, with nearly every scene featuring a battle strip mined of anything approaching excitement or human feeling, with the absolute worst portion being the sequence near the end where its happening to one of the only two characters that Whitehead has built up enough for us to care about. As with almost any genre story, one is so starved for endings that it's hard not to finish reading the thing, but that's more the luck of the field than it is any skill on Whitehead's part. At this point, an Intuitionist sequel no longer seems too much to ask. Please?

Cain
By Jose Saramago, 2011

On paper, Cain sounds like it would be a stunt book, an insubstantial trick--the Old Testament, retold from the point of view of what 2012 calls "snark merchant" and what Adam called Son. But with Saramago at the helm, the experiment takes on heft, and all that serial under-casing stands without a whiff of pretension. More than anything else, it's just funny--not on every page, but consistently enough so that the narrative never flags. Short, but excellent.

Do The Work
By Steven Pressfield, 2011

Complete nonsense, but pleasant nonsense. This is not really a book, it's a hardcover collection of a guy poking you to finish projects and follow your bliss, but in a masochistic, manly way that will appeal to people skeeved out by A Course In Miracles and The Artist's Way. The most interesting thing about is pure speculation of the Faked Moon Landing variety, and that's this: the book is published by something called the Domino Project, which is some sort of Amazon funded enterprise, and if there's one place that would love for more people to churn out nonsense that other hopeful nonsense-churners will buy cheap eBook editions of, it's Amazon. I couldn't prove it (and won't be trying, because that would ruin the fun) but I would be that the primary consumer of shitty first-draft e-published novels by wanna-bes is, hands down, other shitty first-draft novel producing wanna-bes. At least, that better be true. My future children's health insurance is depending on it.

Nobody's Perfect
By Anthony Lane, 2002

Second time all the way through this brick, which consists mostly of Anthony Lane's movie reviews. Tom Spurgeon has tried to convince me that Lane isn't all that great due to the man's feelings toward the Speed films: my apologies, but it'll never work. Nobody writes as sublimely as Lane, with the only exception to that "nobody" being the wonderful Joe McCulloch, who could probably teach me to love I Am Curious Yellow, which would be no mean feat. Alongside Ignatiy Vishnevtsky, Lane is the writer who I most fervently wish I could someday become, if only because theirs are the tastes I find myself most closely sharing, to say nothing of how much more passionately I find their writing.

This time around, I was able to look past the stylistic twists and specificity of the various value judgments a bit and see that one of Lane's most laudable habits is his total unwillingness to permit the personal failings of the artist or author to derail his feelings toward the work itself. It's a challenge that seems to have become far, far too prevalent in discussion today, with critics and artists scanning twitter and facebook constantly to confirm that neither side is getting too out there with their political or social commenting. Lane dispenses with it constantly in this collection, essay after essay, displaying patent refusal to allow the likes of Evelyn Waugh's shitty personal behavior to ruin the sentences he created, and Lane''s able to do it (and this is the hard part, I think) without letting each instance turn into a treatise on why you have to do that. (To be specific, he never even tries: he just tells you he doesn't care, and then he continues forward.) It's a tough act to pull off, to tell us you aren't going to care without forcing us to decide whether we care too, and then lead us back to the work that matters in the first place. The best example is his essay on Harold Bloom; coincidentally, there's no better example of a man whose longtime critical work has been stuck on the rocks of responding to his critics (while criticizing other critics at the same time, like a caged animal laying waste to those who are only trying to help free him) instead of focusing on the work that got him there in the first place.

It's a difficult path to follow, what Lane's doing. He's here to talk about the books, and yet he's got to address the problem that the author faces--in Bloom's case, it's how impossible he finds it to ignore the cries of sexism, amongst others, that land upon his back--without the entire essay becoming a study in those conversations. It's a tough trick, as sexism is like super-hero comics or "least favorite tv shows", in that its a subject that tends to dominate the conversation the second it enters the room, with everyone striving to have the last word. Lane manages it with grace, but I'd be goddamned if I could tell you how he does it. The only thing I can confirm is that it's a trick he's mastered, as he pulls it off everytime he needs to.

Honestly, I thought I might grow out of this guy. Ten years later, I'm delighted to find out that will probably never be the case.

-Tucker Stone, 2012