Comic Book Covers

I've read in a few places that people are frustrated or annoyed with Marvel's policy of their comic covers being "generic" representations of the heroes rather than specific images relating to the story inside. If the concern is that Marvel is abusing the creators by using an artist's work over and over, well, that's what they pay for. If the concern is that a reader is not able to figure out what may be inside a given issue based on it's cover, it seems to me that if you are going to buy a Spider-Man comic book (and I certainly have), I would reason that you have some idea of what the story will be like. If the concern is that the artist on the inside is not the same as the cover artist, I think you might be jumping on that bandwagon a bit late. The earliest comic I can think of (I'll go with Action Comics #1 for familiarity sake) had artists inside that weren't represented on the cover, and there are many very popular artists who only create covers these days (Adam Hughes, Brian Bolland, and James Jean pop into mind).

In my estimation, Marvel's policy of not marrying cover to interior story content hasn't particularly produced some shoddy cover work. In fact, I think they have managed to update their style to finally move it away from the stereotypical, copy-laden, story-focused, generic covers that have plagued the industry for decades. I did a quick grab of a 1970's cover by one of the most popular comic artists from the era from my favorite online auction house. I took the first super hero cover I found, and it happened to be a Neal Adams cover from a very popular title. It happened to be at least minimally story-focused.
I don't think this cover has a huge advantage over any of the covers I grabbed from Comic Book Resources latest posting of Marvel solicitation copy and covers.

If anything, I think that the two new covers are at least as eye-catching, at that seems to be the most important feature of any cover.

This all may be purely editorial or management directed, but when they choose to, editors and artists can also come up with some great modern covers that function as storytelling.

Much maligned Mike Mayhew, for example, produced this cover for an upcoming issue of The Pulse, and I think it does a great job as a story tease, and as an eye-catching cover for a super hero title. It tells you enough about the interior story, and has a strong enough design sense to direct your attention to it on the stands. I only hate to imagine what adding all the required cover copy will do to these images.



And lest I forget, Marvel can also provide some awful cover fodder. This new title was the focus of their latest in-house preview magazine and it is outright ugly. I only hope, for the title's sake, that this cover is not the final one used.

Searching For A Future Clarity

I like music. I like it very much. I listen to music of my choosing every day. This is not a passive, I like what I hear when I hear it type of music listening. This is a decision to choose music that appeals to me every day.

Several years ago, I had a conversation with an acquaintance about the music I listened to. He could tell, from hearing what I listened to that I was passionate about my choices, and that I listened to music that was important to me. He said that he used to feel the way that he imagined that I felt, and that I would see, one day I would grow out of it. One day it just wouldn't be so important. I couldn't see that day, but I didn't discount the idea that when he felt passionate about music, he wouldn't have been able to see the day that the passion would fade.

The point of this anecdote is that my passion for many things has faded. I don't experiment with music as much as I used to. My money and time has been diverted towards other concerns. I don't read about unfamiliar musicians or groups as much as I used to, I have limited this significantly. I care much, much less about live performance then I used to. I do feel, however, that listening to music is a constant in my life, and that I care for the music in a significant way.

All of this brings me to my point. That I am still able to find bands that I connect with. Not through nostalgia, or desire to fit an image, but through a desire to connect with the art of making music that I can relate to. The band I wanted to share today is Against Me! Their newest CD is pictured here. It is energetic, intelligent, literate, aurally appealing, and passionate. It is not their best, but I do think it is the best to recommend to a new listener, mainly because I think it is the most accessible choice (out of three and a half albums). It is well-produced and I think that anyone that enjoys music created with guitar, bass, drums, and voice should hear it. I think it's important that many, many people hear it. Some other time, I will write about why it's not as good as the others, and why it is a perfect example of the difference between "art" and "Art." But not today.

An Excerpt From Sleeping by Thomas Morica

As she slept he thought that if he were to learn something from her, that this could be it: She gave as though she would always have something more for herself. He reached over and just barely touched her hair. She didn’t stir, and he held his hand to her. Her head was cool under his hand as he looked away and listened to her inhale and exhale.

Kinetic by Kelley Puckett and Warren Pleece (and Allen Heinberg)

This is a new collection from DC Comics, reprinting an eight issue series that was placed in the DC Focus line. This line is now defunct, and any titles that are still arriving from it have been folded into the main DC line.

When this line started I remember it being promoted as a genre-less line of slightly fantastic, but non-superhero stories. Then I looked at the comics as they came out and thought, "that sorta looks like superheroes, and definitely looks genre." I didn't bother adding any of the titles to my stacks of comics I bought. Several months later I came across inexpensive copies of the first two issues of Kinetic and read them. They were interesting, but I didn't think to search out the rest. A week ago or so, I saw the collection come out and noticed it had a $9.99 cover price, which struck me as a fair price for the series, and since it collected every issue, complete, I grabbed it.

As indicated above, this is a genre title, and basically a superhero book. It features a story "created by Allen Heinberg and Kelley Puckett," written by Puckett, and illustrated by Warren Pleece, with later issues having inkwork by Garry Leach. Heinberg is much more well known for his TV writing than for comics, though all accounts indicate he is a longtime comic fan. The story is well thought out, and I enjoyed the satisfying conclusion. I don't know whether or not it was always planned to end at issue eight, I assume not, but the wrap up was appropriate, if a little hurried. The book feels as though the entire story and character arc was delineated in the story pitch that the two writers came up with, which gives it the opportunity to come to an appropriate conclusion, even if it was sooner than hoped. In fact the middle few chapters (I treat each 22 pages as a chapter when reading a trade collection of a serial title) seemed to indicate that the series was leaving itself open to an easy pace, almost manga-like in that reading the story went quickly, but that its openness was intended to follow the flow of the story.

The artwork is workmanlike, which I intend as both praise and indictment. I am actually a fan of Pleece, enjoying his work on Deadenders and True Faith. He has an idiosyncratic style suited to stories of regular people in fantastic situations. My impression here is that he uses a slightly simplified style when faced with a monthly deadline, which while certainly understandable, leaves us with the flavor of many other DC titles. DC has always offered steady performance and dependability over Marvel, Image and their ilk, but at the cost of showmanship when it comes to artwork.

The other interesting thing about the images is the color palette. A very specific and possibly too rigid blue-grey-red color scheme is used. The characters are always colored with shades of blue or grey and the rest of the panel is always a shade of red. There is plenty of skill in the coloring, but this choice never clicked with me. It's possible I missed a key storytelling point with the duochromatic coloring, but it was lost on me nonetheless. I don't understand why, if this color scheme was important, it wasn't followed to include the covers.

Overall, this is book was quite enjoyable, and I recommend it to curious readers. It was a very interesting story, especially given that it came whole cloth from the creators, not as a piece of patchwork from the larger DC Universe.

Something I’ve Been Listening To

I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning by Bright Eyes.

There are few albums that have had more critic ejaculate spewed on them than this album. You can add my name to list, because now I’m going to shoot my wad on it.

I listen to the music that I listen to most frequently for the lyrics. I’m not musically literate enough to comprehend a well-played jazz song or to appreciate the challenges of writing an unforgettable guitar melody with only three chords. (I only know the number of chords because I read way too many record reviews. In fact, I couldn’t accurately define what a chord is anyway.) I do know, however, when I find a songwriter who can use language that gives me a genuine emotional impact. Which brings us to Conor Oberst.

This pipsqueak motherfucker can write songs that appear effortless, which I can only assume, with endless jealousy, means that they are just that easy for him. Even when he brings a lyric that sounds like it was written by a 22ish kid (“Landlocked Blues”), this kid just makes you realize that he’s failing in front of you only because he’s trying so fucking hard. Then you catch the little shit with a brilliant line like “So I will find my fears and face them./ Or I will cower like a dog./ I will kick and scream or kneel and plead./ I’ll fight like hell to hide that I’ve given up.” (“Another Travelin’ Song”) and you just want to kick him in his supermodel-kissing lips.

If all this sounds like sour grapes you’re goddamn right. I wish I had an armpit hair’s worth of his talent. I may be an easy target, as I’ve always been a sentimental fool, but he can make me swoon with a line like “Yours is the first face that I saw./ Think I was blind before I met you.” (“First Day of My Life”)

Sour grapes all right, I can’t even manage 300 eloquent words about why the kid is so good without cursing like a seventh-grader, and at 23 this is already his fifth or sixth full length album (two this year so far). Oh well, at least there’s some justice and the youngster has struck it rich while I sit here and type to no one on a blog.

The Aristocrats by Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza

I just got back from a late evening showing of this newly-released film and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I must say, however, that if you don’t know Pat Cooper from Jackie Martling, or Bruce Villanch from Dana Gould, or Tom from Dick, you might not enjoy this movie as much as it’s reviewers.

One list of raves from the website includes the quotes: “You’ll laugh till it hurts!”; “Uproarious!”; and “…the funniest movie you’ll ever see!” Now, I understand movie poster hyperbole, but the movie just isn’t THAT funny. It was funny, and at moments very funny, but more interestingly, it’s a meditation on comedians and joke-telling. What makes the movie great is the personalitites and history of comedy spread across the screen, not the jokes (mostly just the one joke), and not the hilarity that you might assume follows. It’s at its best when it illuminates the personalities behind the jokes and when it’s about the comedians themselves just having fun. I thought the final credits were the most telling part of the film and a very enjoyable finish. For the most part it’s just the comedians laughing. Laughing at themselves, laughing at the filmmakers, laughing at each other. It’s always very satisfying to hear a simple, honest laugh.

Excerpt from Mr. Quid by Joles Hatcomb

She understood that some songs would be forever owned by those people that first shared them with her. These songs were tied so tightly to those people that anytime she heard them they brought back thoughts of forgotten history. Some songs brought memories that she’d rather forget. Memories of people who had crushed her heart, taking with them pieces of her she couldn’t recover. They would leave memories, pictures, even aromas. And songs; lyrics, words, melodies.

Some days she just wanted the songs, some days she wanted to forget the rest.

Ocean by Warren Ellis and Chris Sprouse

Warren Ellis writes fast comics. When I read a Warren Ellis comic, I always feel as though I'm trying to keep up with him. This occasionally means that I fall behind and have a hard time keeping up with the ideas, they fly by so quickly (certain issues of Planetary come to mind). This also sometimes means that he doesn't give them the opportunity to build a solid base (Tokyo Storm Warning, for instance). Then there are books that attack quickly and with such precision, that they seem unstoppable, not even their slight flaws holding them back. The book I'm writing about today is Ocean.

This six issue series (which makes it easy to think of as a 132 page complete story), finds Ellis joined by one of the best storytellers working in comics today, Chris Sprouse. His most recent regular series being Tom Strong for Alan Moore's America's Best Comics Line, Sprouse certainly has a pedigree list of writers vying for his skills. His clean line, his comfortable character design, and his ability to bring out the natural in a supernatural situation. I tend to pass on most science fiction titles, and while Ellis was enough to get me to check this out, Sprouse was the one that led me to add it, sight unseen, to my subscription list. I had skimmed through issue one when it came out, and it looked worth continuing, so I kept holding them until I had the first five issues. For some reason, I thought there were only going to be five, so I started reading them last week.

I never understood why people will give a synopsis in a review. Why would anyone need any of that to determine whether or not they were going to read or watch something. I figure that any accurate synopsis would include some kind of spoiler, so all you will get on this site is a pitch line. Ocean's pitch idea is: U.N. Inspector In Space. What Warren Ellis does with it from that point is what's important.

Ellis lets his ideas have a little space in this series, as opposed to many issues of Transmetropolitan, which he would attack the reader with a barrage of throwaway sci-fi riffs that would either enthrall or annoy, the strength being quantity rather than quality. That series was at it's best when it dealt with the characters, and Ocean is a fine character study.

Chris Sprouse is able to subtly delineate emotions without relying too much on exposition to drive the reader's understanding of personality and motive. The subtlety was occasionally too much for me though, and I found myself inferring what a particular panel was supposed to tell me. This subtlety shouldn't stop you, however, as I tend to be a little thick to many authors hints (as evidenced by the fact that I still love reading comics at age 31). The artist's skill allows Ellis to let the story flow as a balance between words and pictures, reducing the need for constant exposition of attitude, making room for the sometimes detailed exposition of the science fiction plot points. This means that for a sci-fi interloper like myself, I don't feel bogged down by a ton of mumbo-jumbo and can get back to the point. Namely, what these characters are going to do with their current situation, motivations, and emotions.

It is possible that Ellis will throw the whole thing out the window by cocking up the finale to this series, but I expect to enjoy the final act as much as the preceding. If any of this sounds remotely interesting, track down this Wildstorm series, or at least keep an eye out for the trade paperback which is sure to follow shortly thanks to DC's aggressive collections program.

Introduction to another blog

Hi, I'm Josh. This is my blog. It will be occasional. I relish input.