I dig Jorge Vega and Jeff McComsey’s 9 Months, but I think my favorite part might be the cover. It’s a simple picture, just Thomasina, knee-deep in pregnancy and holding a gun while looking surprised. Something about it manages to sum the series up pretty well. This isn’t one of those books where it’s about backflips and double dragon flip kicks. It’s about desperation, and hard choices, and responsibility.

9 Months is, more or less, about the funny turns life takes. Thomasina went from a promising track star to being stuck in a rut. She got the coolguy boyfriend who turns out to be more of a jerk than a coolguy, she alienated her family, and now she’s pregnant. Her past as a track star and present as something else are constantly put into direct conflict over the course of the first issue. Running is even used as a metaphor for why she distanced herself from her family. It was teenage rebellion, basically, but she was sure she was running toward something sustainable.

Later, covered in blood (her own and her late boyfriend’s), I think she starts to realize that she hadn’t. Instead, she’d forsaken what was good in her life in favor of what was flashy. When she’s forced to choose between her current life and the life of her unborn child, she picks the youth and fights back, killing her boyfriend.

The problem is that her boyfriend was far from a nobody. He was the younger brother of a local big shot, and that big shot has a list of demands for Thomasina. She’s going to abstain from alcohol and drugs, take her vitamins, and have the baby. After that, the bigshot gets to keep it.

The last page of the book asks “how far [Thomasina will] go to protect her child?” and answers “too far.” I’m interested, because Jorge and Jeff have built a small, but realistic, cast of characters and created a way to throw them into conflict with each other over the nine months of Thomasina’s pregnancy. They don’t shy away from violence, but they don’t dwell on it, either. It happens, it’s horrible, and then you have to pick up the pieces.

I’ve only read the first issue of 9 Months, but I get the feeling that it’s about picking up the pieces. You can check out a preview of the book here, and read the first eight pages of Bloody Pulp, Jeff & Jorge’s new work over at Zuda. If you like it, vote for it. Let’s see more from these guys.

San Diego Comic-con launches this week, and Esther and I are going to be there. So, it’s only fitting that our show is a con-preview. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to mix this, so please bear with any technical issues.

-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental starts off the show, and then
-we get right into You Made Me Read This! This time around, Esther read Darwyn Cooke’s Selina’s Big Score.
-We both like it. Surprise!
-Darkwing Duck joke.
-We talk a bit about SDCC and what we’re looking forward to.
-Twilight fanfiction joke.
-Firefly Browncoats joke (Poor Taste Variant #2.)
-I talk about the time I embarrassed myself in front of Dwayne McDuffie.
-Esther talks about meeting Gail Simone, Devin Grayson, and Judd Winick.
-We talk a bit about the smokescreen of Marvel vs DC, I relate it to Yankees vs Red Sox, and Esther tunes out.
-We turn off.

We’ll be at the con from Wednesday to Sunday. If you’re gonna be there and want to say hello (without being creepy or awkward) you can either find us on the floor or throw us an email and we’ll see if we can work something out. No promises, though, as the life of a comics blogging superstar is a tough one, requiring a lot of scheduling and running around.

Or, you know, sitting on your couch with a laptop. Either/or. Maybe both.

Boilerplate podcast pimpery:
If you’re new to the Fourcast!, subscribe to the podcast-specific RSS feed or subscribe on iTunes. Our full-blown RSS, with space-age things like “text” and “images” is here. I hear that the kids like Facebook, too, so if you’re so inclined…

Last time on We Care a Lot, I discussed Eddie Brock’s cancer retcon. Before that, I was talking about Daniel Way’s Venom on-going series. To refresh your memory, the Venom symbiote is on the loose up in Canada. It killed off all of army girl Patricia Robertson’s friends and is on its way to a more populated area. Robertson is allied with an alien life form named the Suit, who fights with a cell phone gun. They are being antagonized by a pair of spy chicks who want Venom for themselves. Although they have already been killed, another couple of them have popped up. Venom has finally settled on a host that he can live off of forever.

And that’s where we left off. Venom #10 begins with the Venom-controlled Wolverine attacking Vic and Frankie’s ship and forcing it to crash. The two suit up in their armor and reveal to the reader that they’re probably into each other sexually. Of course they are.

They don’t last a minute. Frankie is stabbed to death by Venom-Wolverine and Vic stumbles upon her doppelganger’s corpse from earlier. She realizes that she’s nothing more than a clone, puts her gun to her head and pulls the trigger.

The torso remains of the Suit give Patricia a new cell phone he has created. He says that he placed the original in a special place and that the new phone acts as a detonator. Venom-Wolverine busts in after her and she presses the button to activate the first phone. As we see, after Wolverine was knocked out by that nuke, the Suit tore open his chest and shoved his phone in there. Now the cell phone goes off, electrocuting Wolverine from the inside and forcing off the symbiote.

BOOOO!

Read the rest of this entry »

As many of you are aware, the latest Entertainment Weekly features shots and info of Iron Man 2. A lot of the stuff is already known, though it did give us some very nice Black Widow pics. The one thing I find interesting about this whole deal is Mickey Rourke’s role.

Rourke is set to play Whiplash. In actuality, the information we know about him shifts him closer to being the Crimson Dynamo. They even use the name of Ivan Vanko – the first Crimson Dynamo – rather than Mark Scarlotti. So why name him “Whiplash”? For one, there’s the whip-based gimmick in his arsenal they’ve been hyping. Second, I think it’s more of a realism thing.

I’m telling you right now that “Crimson Dynamo” is one of the finest names to ever come out of comics. It’s such a cool collaboration between two cool words. Thing is, someone who looks like Mickey Rourke would never call themselves that on purpose. It doesn’t fit him. It’s too… theatrical, I guess is the word I’m thinking of. It brings too much color and hype for a Russian criminal who fashions his own costume to escape prison and then acts like a terrorist. “Crimson Dynamo” goes well with the propaganda aspect of the character, which is likely missing in this incarnation.

It’s the very idea that they’re going with the identity of Ivan Vanko that adds to my optimism. Ivan Vanko is one of the most overlooked comic characters, especially from the early days of Marvel. I would barely even remember him if it wasn’t for the recent Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin miniseries reminding me that he was around for just a little while.

Vanko created the Crimson Dynamo armor to make himself the Russian answer to Iron Man. He had pride and a sense of style based on his robotic identity, which annoyed his Soviet superiors, but they sent him against Iron Man nonetheless. Iron Man dealt with Vanko in one of the first major “Tony Stark is a total dick moments”.

During a fight, Iron Man played a fake recording he made of Vanko’s superiors planning to have him killed the moment he would return to Russia, whether or not he had succeeded in defeating Iron Man. This fake recording horrified Vanko and he defected to America. He started working as a major scientist at Stark Industries.

Even though we discovered that Vanko’s boss really was going to kill him off after all, that was an extremely fucked up thing for Stark to do.

Vanko remained loyal to Stark, but only lasted until the next year. A Russian spy Boris, alongside the comic book newcomer Black Widow, broke into Stark Industries and stole the Crimson Dynamo armor. Vanko sacrificed himself for Stark and destroyed this second Crimson Dynamo at the cost of his own life.

Since then, the Crimson Dynamo has become almost a running gag, as there are a near dozen men to have taken the mantle. But while I don’t know them all too well, I’m sure few show the potential of Ivan Vanko, a man who was certainly cut down before he could make a bigger impact in Marvel history.

Not saying I want the guy brought back from the dead, but a flashback miniseries or even a What If issue in light of the movie would be ideal. If you think about it, if Ivan had survived, he probably would have taken the second-stringer role that made Jim Rhodes into War Machine.

If they adapt anything from Vanko’s short history for the movie, it can only be positive. Just replace his Russian benefactors with Justin Hammer and we’ve got something.

I find that when I have a difficult challenge to face, it can be overcome more easily if I think of the theme music from Terminator 2.  That lets me pretend I am a steely-eyed, nineties Linda Hamilton who is working to prepare for a post-apocalyptic society and who can do pull-ups and stab someone in the knee with a pen if they cross me.

Sometimes the theme music from the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series works better if I’m feeling a little more jiffy.  Something about the exclamation of ‘Turtle Power!’ at the end just works for me.

Anyone draw inspiration from a similar source?

I wrote, a few posts ago, about selective continuity, the practice of admitting some parts of continuity into your vision of a character and setting other parts aside, and the way that that leads to wildly different visions of the same character.

At the end, though, I mentioned that often I will dismiss a writer’s version of a character, particularly if it is a character I like and want to keep seeing in a certain light, while being fine with that writer mucking up another character’s reputation.

I’ve seen this happen a lot in comics, and there seems to be a consistent excuse for it; that the writer him or herself is biased toward one character, or one type of character.

“Don’t read him, he always writes women as bimbos.”

“She hates that character and is using the comic to make them look bad.”

“He’s given an interview where he talks about how that’s his favorite character from when he was a kid.”

What better way to drown out continuity than with a resounding cry of “NO FAIR!”  There are, however, a few problems with it. 

The first is the way it tends to exaggerate creator’s preferences.  A casual mention of a character that a writer or editor liked or disliked as a child can lead to endlessly recurring denunciation by fans, who assume that any plot point is either meant to artificially build up or knock down that character.  I’m not a huge fan of Wonder Girl, but if I ever write Wonder Girl in comics, I don’t think I’d take a hit out on her just because of my lack of appreciation.  (And I’ve mentioned several times on this site that I think Batman is a jerk, a prick, and arrogant idiot, and a torturer.  I hate to see what kind of backlash that will bring about when I write Batman comics.  ((And I will.  I swear it.)))

The second problem with taking a writer out by questioning their intentions is that it often turns into a self-selecting point of view.  The few times when they did not adhere to their supposed pattern?  Flukes.  Fear of being mocked.  Or something prevented by the constraints of the story.  It’s never that their styles are more varied than critics will admit.

Finally, this view prevents readers from even considering a new take on their character.  You cannot imagine how much it pains me to write that last sentence, but it is true.  Characters often need to change or they stagnate, and seeing your character built up over time is a fun thing.

That being said, I do enjoy torpedo-ing a piece of bad, or obviously biased, writing from time to time.  Writers as well as characters can stagnate, and writers as well as characters can have bad habits.  (Of course I wouldn’t know about either.)  And fans are free, and often eager, to point it out.  Plus there is a air of good, old-fashioned village gossip to that kind of talk.  As long as it doesn’t escalate to torches and pitchforks, it can be a lot of fun.

Like most people, I’m pretty interested in side-effects. The US spends millions in Afghanistan fighting the Russians, and ends up giving a lot of people the skills needed to strike back. The CIA spends time and money aggressively pursuing American interests through less than honest means, and inadvertently help fund the destruction of the inner city and the black family. Millions of kids go to college for IT at the height of the dot-com boom, and then find themselves out of luck and with nowhere to go.

Jeff McComsey ‘s American Terror: Confession of a Human Smart Bomb is one of those books that deal with side-effects. Victor was trained to kill by the military, imprisoned for not following orders, and then bounced to civilian life. He was left aimless, basically drifting through life, and in the process of being headhunted by various “corporate security” firms. They want him to use his skills to wage war on their dime.

Instead, he ends up enlisting with a man who has no interest in self-serving violence or money-grubbing firms. Homer wants to start a school to work against these soldiers for hire. He’s interested in counterprogramming. Homer, Victor, and the varied crew that signs up for the gig all work for the greater good, but still manage to kick off the War of the Third World. Millions end up dying, but at the end of it all the world is a better place. Was it worth it?

Victor is stuck in a story that’s interested me for a while. We hear plenty about dictators and people who grasped power just so they can line their own pockets and tell other people what to do. If you vote, you’ve probably voted for one at least once. What about those who take by force, but for a good reason? “I’m going to make this a better world, whether you like it or not.”

I think that’s a fascinating line of thought, particularly in light of today. We live in a world where war is not about death or peace. It is about business. We have fighter jets cost 40-some thousand dollars to run for an hour, are produced with a glaring weakness to rain (of all things), and has an average failure rate of once every 1.7 hours. We push for the lowest bidder to maximize profits. You can be a professional soldier and make a ton of money. When’s someone going to say, “Hold, enough” and turn that around?

American Terror is a little rough around the edges, but a good read. I’m not entirely sold on the pacing, for example, but the art is top notch. McComsey sells the violence and talking heads bits with equal amounts of skill. The story of Victor, the people he comes across, and the people he kills while finding a direction for his life make for a pretty interesting tale, I think. Volume 1 and Volume 2 are available on Amazon for cheap.

Jeff McComsey, of course, is the artist of Bloody Pulp. You should go to the Zuda page for it, give it a read, and give it a vote and favorite it if you dig it. Judging by American Terror and the 8 pages of Bloody Pulp that are currently online, I like what I see.

I’m a huge Darwyn Cooke fan, and a big Richard Stark fan, and I was going to read and review The Hunter today. Except Amazon is sold out and I can’t get a copy until apparently August 10th.

So, yeah, don’t hold your breath on that one. I’d still kill a man for this dang book, but I guess I’ll have to wait.

If you see it, buy it. I’m positive it’s gonna be good.

Asterios Polyp
David Mazzucchelli
Pantheon
344 pages
ISBN: 0307377326

David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp is looking like the latest capital A Art book, the kind of thing that people smarter than I (such as Jog or Douglas Wolk) are doubtless going to pore over, deconstruct, reconstruct, and analyze over the next few weeks. And, well, with good reason– Mazzucchelli does a lot of interesting things with the format and formula of comic books, and ends up creating amazing. More than anything, all ideas of what constitutes an “art” comic aside, Asterios Polyp is fascinating.

I read through this 344-page book pretty quickly, and barely noticed the time passing. Each chapter alternates time periods, telling us about Asterios’s history and his present, and are visually distinct. Every fistful of pages, the style switches from a standard comic format to something more influenced by graphic design and experimental. Mazzucchelli shows off a variety of styles in the book, even going so far as to have individual characters exist in their own styles.

There’s a visual metaphor introduced fairly early on, where Asterios and his wife are a combination of two different styles, with Asterios taking the form of the building blocks of a drawing of a human and Hana being the details and shading. When they meet, they merge to form a complete drawing. When strife hits their relationship, Hana violently pulls out of Asterios’s reality. It’s an amazingly effective move, and one which works on a gut level. You don’t need captions to tell you that they’re troubled, or growing apart, or anything– you simply have to look.

Asterios Polyp is so fascinating because it approaches storytelling in a way that only comics can. It takes advantage of the format to do something new and interesting, while coming at it from a new angle. Everything in life is about delivering information of one sort of another, be it via text, pictures, texture, or taste. Mazzucchelli doesn’t use the images in Asterios Polyp to show cool images or poses. Instead, each image has a point. We never (well, maybe twice, but he’s obscured) see Asterios’s face from the front. He’s always looking to the left or the right. It struck me in a few different ways while I was reading. It makes Asterios seem like he’s always doing something. There’s something just off-panel that we can’t see that’s he’s really interested in. However, it also makes him somewhat untrustworthy or uncomfortable. He’s never looking you in the eye. He never seems to be paying attention. There’s a level of distance there.

Most of all, though, it plays into the dualism that forms the foundation of his personal philosophy. Asterios Polyp can be accurately described as the story of a man learning to count to three. He embraces the idea of there being 1 and 2, yes and no, linear and plastic, and form and function. When his life falls apart, he learns to count in threes. (It’s interesting that twos vs threes is portrayed as a yin/yang of its own, inflexibility vs flexibility, but I’m not sure what that means just yet.)

Asterios is a book that’s fun to look at. The color palette is very focused. There are a lot of purples, yellows, pinks, blues, and blacks. Toward the end of the book, though, for a few pages, the palette opens up in an amazing scene. It’s a burst of color, and life, and a symbol of things to come. It’s a counterpoint to the beginning of the book, which was somber and fairly depressing.

Basically, Asterios Polyp is a must-read. It’s straightforward enough that anyone can enjoy it, but has layers that you can peel back and examine. I’m probably going to read it agin in a couple weeks, with the goal of just poring over the art. Mazzucchelli uses a lot of techniques in Asterios Polyp that all comics could benefit from. He got there first, though, and set the bar pretty high. The writing and art are excellent, and full of insights on how both comics and life work.

Asterios Polyp is objectively better than anything you’ve read this year thus far. There’s absolutely no question in my mind about that.

Bloody Pulp is the latest offering from Jeff McComsey and Jorge Vega. McComsey is one of the brains behind American Terrorist, which is available now on G1 and soon on iPhone. Its subtitle says it all: “Confession of a Human Smart Bomb.” Jorge Vega is the guy behind Gunplay, a book on vengeance in the Old West that I thoroughly enjoyed last year. Together, they have created Bloody Pulp.

Bloody Pulp has a few of my favorite things. It’s got crime and fisticuffs, for one. The lead is John “Pulp” Polopowski, who is brilliantly described in the synopsis on the Zuda site as “a nightmare for hire.” That’s an inspired description, and from what I’ve seen of Bloody Pulp, it’s true. When you need someone to be thoroughly beaten and disposed of, Pulp is your man.

The twist, of course, is that he isn’t entirely on the level. He’s been secreting people away to a safe house, rather than killing them. It’s kind of like witness protection through a funhouse mirror, only someone might beat you to death for disobeying the rules.

The hook is the arrival of Eustace, “a Negro bandleader”. The synopsis promises that sparks are going to fly due to his presence, and I’ve got the good word from Jorge that says he’s going to dig into the race and class issues of the ’30s. I’m definitely interested.

We’ve got eight pages to look at on ZudaComics.com. Check it out and, if you like it, vote for it on the site. As things currently stand, Jeff and Jorge are ranked #1. If they maintain that position, they get a slot on the Zuda site. The eight pages were just enough to get me interested, and Jorge and Jeff’s prior work were pretty solid. I’m going to be taking a look at a couple of their books, specifically American Terrorist and 9 Months, very soon.

In the meantime, though, you need to vote for Bloody Pulp and tell your friends.