There’s a line from the Atmosphere song “Always Coming Back Home To You” that I like and reference probably too often for my own good. “I swear to God, hip-hop and comic books were my genesis.” It was true when I first heard it and it’s still true. Rap and comics have been two of the handful of constants in my life so far. It isn’t exactly a question of which one I like more. It’s more that both have had different effects on my life.

Comics helped a lot in teaching me to read. Obscure science terms, made-up words, and things that sounded like made-up words but were actually real words after all littered my early comics reading experience. So, comics taught me a love of words.

Rap taught me to love wordplay. It’s about taking a phrase you know and turning it on its head. High School Me would hate me for being about to quote Young Jeezy, but this part from his verse on Put On is great and he’s from the next town over, so suck it, 2001-me.

Passenger’s a red bone, her weave look like some curly fries
Inside’s fish sticks, outside’s tartar sauce
Pocket full of cel-e-ry, imagine what she telling me
Blowing on asparagus, the realest shit I ever smoked
Ridin’ to that trap or die- the realest shit I ever wrote
They know I got that bro-cco-li, so I keep that glock with me

And yeah, it’s typical ignant thug rap– this is still Jeezy, after all. He makes the extended food metaphor work, and for some reason, it ends up being pretty clever. There are other great examples. Big Pun had that killer tongue-twister flow (Dead in the middle of little Italy, little did we know that we riddled some middleman who didn’t do diddly) and Ghostface is still rap’s very own Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Another place where rap and comics intersected for me was in that they both portrayed heroes and role models for a very young David Brothers to take in. The difference between the two is that comics had heroes, black or white, who were generally written for white guys by white guys, while rappers were generally black guys who were usually aimed at a black audience.

The majority of black comics characters were, for years, either black characters filtered through an extremely non-black lens (Storm), unrelateable (Panther), parodies (Cage), or awful (Bishop).

Rap offered a slightly different perspective. I was just old enough to sneak in on the tail end of the pro-black movement of rap. Midnight Marauders hit when I was nine or ten (along with the Malcolm X movie). I had the Wu. I had Nas. I had a ton of people who taught me that being black is awesome, having money is great, and that crime is exciting. When it came down to choosing Iron Man or Tony Starks… I went with Ghostface Killah.

Most comics, with the notable exception of Milestone and occasional “outreach” books, aren’t aimed at me. That’s changed somewhat in recent years, but Marvel and DC are still relying on the same fanbase they’ve had for forty-plus years.

This brings me around to what I think are the two most important books in comics since… I dunno, the Jemas-era began. Nat Turner by Kyle Baker, and Sentences by Percy “MF Grimm” Carey and Ron Wimberly are books that are aimed at me. They’re by black people and aimed, if not at black people directly, at a wider audience than just “fanboys.”

Both aren’t necessarily the most marketable “comic books.” One is a book about a guy whose claim to fame was killing a lot of white men, women, and children after he was given a sign from Heaven. The other is about a rapper, but the greater message isn’t about “bitches and switches and hoes and clothes and weed,” which is what you’d usually see out of basically anything involving rap in the media at large.

Sentences was probably my favorite complete book out of ’07, including single issues, and it totally got robbed for that Eisner. I think it’s an important step in a lot of ways, and the least Vertigo-style title Vertigo has published. It isn’t a long and boring, goth-y, about vampires, religion, or your usual Vertigo cliche of choice. It’s just about a dude, his life, and the choices he made that got him to where he is now. It’s also about growing up black, falling into traps, and digging your way out of a hole you’ve dug for yourself.

There were any number of scenes and references in that book that I immediately got. I thought the bit with the mom in the beginning was hilarious. Why? Probably because I’d seen my mom swing on a grown man for messing with my little brother and any number of verbal sonnings while out shopping. I can relate to Carey’s love for his grandmother because we’re on the same level there.

In a very real way, it’s a book about me and my experiences. It’s about someone who looks like me, has gone through some of the same things I’ve gone through, listens to the same music, and even hung out with some of my own heroes. I don’t have to play down the obvious racial and class differences between me and most comics characters. I don’t have to worry about shocked stares when I say I haven’t heard of some apparently huge band. It’s the power of shared experience working in my favor. I finished the book feeling like I could go “Midnight Marauders or Low End Theory?” and “Ether or Takeover?” and get into an hour-long fight or an hour-long conversation, depending on the answer.

(Midnight Marauders and Ether are the right answers.)

Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner was my Sentences for when it came out. I recently re-read it on a long plane ride few weeks back, and finishing it prompted a few things. First, it made me realize that I had to do this essay. Second, I resolved to give the book (which I had just purchased a few days earlier) away the first chance I got, because people need to read it. And I did.

Nat Turner, the person, has been an interesting figure to me since I first heard of him. It could have been from a rap song, or from one of the footnotes in a school textbook that Baker mentions in his text pieces in the book. I know (off the top of my head) that he was mentioned on Wu-Forever, Sean Price’s Brokest Rapper You Know, and the Talib Kweli + dead prez joint off Lyricist Lounge.

Nat’s claim to fame, and I’m not embellishing anything here, is that he killed fifty-plus white men, women, and children. He led the largest slave rebellion in the States. Obviously, he was a murderer, and that isn’t something to be proud of. At the same time, though, he stood up tall and spat in the face of a system and country that believed him to be less than human. There’s a lot to appreciate in this story, though that probably makes me sound like a sociopath.

Baker’s approach to the book gives it a storybook kind of feel. There are only a few word balloons, leaving the action to stand on its own. The majority of the text is taken directly from The Confessions of Nat Turner. It comes in chunks and often relates to the scenes being depicted on the page, but its tone is jarring. The rebellion happened 160-some years ago, so the language and times are different. It’s like peeking into another world, or reading about a faraway land. The essay is very methodical and sometimes stilted. Premediated is an apt description, as well.

The art sells every emotion and scene perfectly. Sadness, determination, hate, and love all come through clear as a bell. One scene expertly shows a situation in which killing your own child is the greatest act of love you can perform. It’s depressing, it’s tough, and it’s a downer, but it’s a necessary one. It’s like medicine. You have to take it, and after you get past the taste, you’ll feel better.

I feel like it’s a book you should have to read at least once. It tells a story that doesn’t get a lot of attention, but is still well-known and loved by a lot of people. It’s a story that illuminates both universal rights and what happens when someone is pushed too far and too hard.

Nat Turner and Sentences were like comics dipping their toe into the pool. They were warning shots. They are saying “We are here, we have always been here” to the industry and “Don’t go anywhere, there is something here for you, too” to the audience. I really wish that these books had been around for when I was younger. They’re exactly what I was looking for, but didn’t know I was looking for.

It was the equivalent of one of my favorite images from the past.

Now, though, I just want more. My two loves are on speaking terms. Let’s keep at it, yeah?

Before I do anything else–

Have you guys heard the new DJ Jazzy Jeff record? It is sick. Every single track is dope.

Anyway, I am in SF right now. Got a place, did some time at my job, and did a bunch of things San Franciscans do. I drank Chai Tea Latte at a Starbucks (it is good), rode the bus, and played phone tag with Comcast for two hours plus. On Friday, I get the honor of doing it again, this time in person with a four hour window for installation. Hurray.

Anyway, I live roughly a mile from Isotope Comics, so guess what my new comics shop is! Sending in the pull list later tonight, most likely.

Ed Brubaker signing there this Saturday at 8 til midnight. I’ll be there with the copy of Coward I bought last week!

Speaking of buying comics, and because I am a little short on content right now, here’s what I picked up at the Isotope. Haven’t read any of it yet, though.

All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder 5
The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg
Shot Callerz by Gary Phillips and Brett Weldele
Static Shock Trial By Fire by like six dudes with long names
The Annotated Mantooth by Fraction, Kuhn, and Fisher
Kyle Baker: Cartoonist
Nat Turner v2

Reviews coming soon as I work through my 4l backlog.

edit: I am maybe six pages into All-Star Bats and this is easily the best issue yet. I don’t see how people don’t like this comic!

What comics are you reading? Good stuff, I trust. Personally, I have impeccable taste. Okay, maybe not impeccable, or even good, really, but at least I don’t read Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose or Fantagraphics’ porno comics so shut up you pervert. :doom:

Anyway.

I’ve been really enjoying Ed Brubaker lately. Criminal was one of the best comics I’ve seen lately, and is proof positive that the Brubaker/Phillips team is the proverbial bee’s knees. They tell a tragic noir tale full of the usual twists and turns that you’d expect from both Brubaker and films noir, and then hit you with a downer ending that feels oh-so-right. His run on Captain America has revitalized the character and quietly done away with the story-arc focus that Marvel had a while back, when each story was modular. Here, the issues are composed of multi-part arcs, but each arc builds organically into the next. Bru’s first twenty-five issue all tell one story. It’s pretty impressive, and the quality of the work has been ridiculous.

Of course, you can’t talk Brubaker without mentiong Immortal Iron Fist, and therefore Matt Fraction. This book is practically perfect. The story promises us(and delivers) new insights into the Iron Fist lineage and manages to pull off the “long, lost X” angle very well. It nails Danny Rand as a character almost as well as David Aja is nailing the art. There’s a nine-grid in the latest issue, #4 I believe, of Danny flitting around the building that is just a perfect comics page.

Talking about Fraction dovetails into Casanova. I haven’t read the entire series, due to me missing out on two or three issues of the seven issue series, but what I’ve read, I have loved. It’s another nigh-perfect comic, from the words to the art to the back matter. Casanova Quinn is both a sympathetic and alien protagonist, but I love him nonetheless. Casanova, the book, is pure id on the surface, but there’s a scary intelligence working underneath. It’s whip-smart and clever. It wants to fool you even while beckoning to you. It’s passionate, and that may sound a little corny but it’s absolutely true. You can feel the emotion coming off this book. But then, you check out the back matter and you realize that with the things he says and the feel the book gives off that you’re reading an amazing book. It isn’t just id or ego, it is Fraction himself in those pages. There’s an amount of “This is cool, so we’ll do it,” but 90% of that book is about or mirrors Fraction, just like The Invisibles mirrored Morrison.

Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner cannot be praised enough. I’ve got volume one and I’m ordering volume two asap. It’s a tale I remember hearing rarely in school, and then it was always painted as something to skip over in class and unimportant. I’m rather fond of the story myself, and Baker has definitely done it justice.

This is going to sound dumb, but I really like Jimmie Robinson’s Bomb Queen. I picked up the first trade (Woman of Mass Destruction) the other day. On the one hand, its gratuitous nudity, language, and violence are exactly what’s wrong with comics today. On the other, this kind of winking-at-the-reader lowbrow humor just pushes all the right buttons. Jimmie Robinson’s official position is that it is parody, and I can see that at work, too. It’s charming, in a smutty, violent, lewd kind of way. Maybe charming is the wrong word?

Anyway, Bomb Queen tickles that same funny bone that Garth Ennis’s humor work does. Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, for example, is a completely non-serious book with really, really dirty jokes. There’s a bad joke in there about America still being a colony of England is funny just because of the earnest way that Hugo “Khyber” Darcy delivers the line. Plus, it’s a story about the most bungling bunch of soldiers this side of Beetle Bailey going after Hitler’s missing testicle, so how “mature” can it be?

The Authority: Kev cycle of four miniseries is another good example, and it blends a message into all the jokes about poop and people with hideous and/or hilarious facial deformities. How do you find the strength to march to the beat of your own drum? How do you become a better person than what you are? Kev, More Kev, The Magnificent Kevin, and A Man Called Kev almost all explore this while doing Ennis’s usual “Superheroes are jerks” and “guns are awesome” stuff. The first three minis are collected in two trades. Hopefully A Man Called Kev will hit soon, as it’s easily the best of the lot.

Speaking of Ennis, though, I finally own my most favorite of his stories. It even beats out Punisher MAX, which is quite a feat. It’s 303, the book he did out of Avatar with Jacen Burrows. It is about one man, empires, wars, costs of wars, and what it means to be a man. It is, of course, in Ennis’s He-Man, War is Interesting, Guns are Awesome, Mind the Gore, Luv mode. Quite a lot of people die. The story has a point, though, as one man begins a trek for, if not revenge, honor, armed with his 303 Lee-Enfield rifle. 303 says a lot about war and the effect it has on later generations. It talks about how history chews up and spits out people. I should stop now, as I kind of want to do a dedicated post to this book later on this week. Suffice to say that it is one of Ennis’s best works. If you’re an X-Men fan, it’s everything Wolverine ever said about duty and honor but failed to deliver on. It’s played completely straight, too. No jokes, no maimings, just drama. Well done.

I’m slowly making my way through Sequart.com’s Modern Master: Grant Morrison: The Early Years. It covers Zenith through Doom Patrol, I believe, and it is pretty fascinating. I already knew a lot of it, but it’s neat to see someone else’s perspective on the same things. I’m making my way through the Animal Man section at the moment. Lit-crit applied to comics is so cool in such a nerdy way!

100 Bullets, Loveless, and Tales of the Unexpected are all obvious favorites, too. Loveless is building suspense, and genuine suspense at that, something that is rarely seen in comics. Things are heating up to a fever pitch, and Atticus, Ruth, and Wes are going to go from knee-deep in it to neck-deep in blood in only a few short issues. I can feel it. The Dr. 13 special in Tales is in a book that features Dave Lapham and Brian Azzarello both writing, which was sure to get my attention, but it’s so much better than I expected. I’d never heard of any of these characters before, save for Dr. 13, but he’s written a story that is both continuity porn and its polar opposite. I don’t have to know anything about these guys, since everything I need to know is there. Frankly, I thought he was making people up for the first few parts. I, Vampire? Infectious Lass? Seriously?

On a more sour note, Incredible Hulk‘s Planet Hulk is starting to lose me, I fear, which does not bode well for World War Hulk. I just kind of stopped caring about what happens to that planet. I’ll be mighty glad when these events are over and done with, but I do hope that WWH at least delivers on its premise.

What’re you into?

I did a lot of purchasing at the NYCC. Oh man, did I. Curious? Here’s the list of what I came home with that was new, not counting magazines (Wizard with Claire and Nikki from Heroes on the cover, UVC Magazine) and sketches.

40 oz Collection – Jim Mahfood
Ares: God of War – Mike Oeming/Travel Foreman
Batgirl: Destruction’s Daughter
Blokhedz
The Blvd Sketchbook volume 2.0 – John Paul Leon/Trevor Goring/Tommy Lee Edwards/Sean Chen/Bernard Chang
Diesel Sweeties: Pocket Sweeties Volume One – R Stevens
Diesel Sweeties: How I Blew My Thursday Night – R Stevens
DMZ v2: Body of a Journalist – Brian Wood/Riccardo Burchielli
Firestorm: The Nuclear Man: Reborn – Stuart Moore/Jamal Igle
The Five Fists of Science – Matt Fraction/Steven Sanders
Freddie E Williams II Sketchbook
Ghost Rider – Howard Mackie/Javier Saltares/Mark Texeira
Goats – Contains One Space Battle – Jonathan Rosenberg
Goats – A Tale of Two Comics – Jonathan Rosenberg
Grant Morrison: The Early Years – Timothy Callahan
JLA/Avengers – Kurt Busiek/George Perez
Justice League: A New Beginning – Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire
Kabuki Metamorphosis HC – David Mack
Khary Randolph Sketchbook
Modern Masters v3: Bruce Timm
Modern Masters v6: Arthur Adams
Modern Masters v8: Walter Simonson
Modern Masters v9: Mike Wieringo
Modern Masters v10: Kevin Maguire
Naoki Urasawa’s Monster v7
Nat Turner Encore Edition – Kyle Baker
One Page Filler Man – Jim Mahfood
Project Romantic – Various
Puttin’ the Backbone Back – Jim Mahfood
Runaways HC v2 – Brian K Vaughan/Adrian Alphona/Takeshi Miyazawa
Wigu: The Bravest Boy in the World – Jeffrey Rowland

Ouch, my wallet. Cons are bloody expensive.

I’ve already read Blokhedz, and a review on that is forthcoming. That Ghost Rider trade is the first seven or eight issues of the series that introduced Danny Ketch, and I bought it because I either have bad taste in comics or am a complete and utter masochist. Or maybe it’s good, I dunno. Kabuki: Metamorphosis rounds out my Kabuki collection, which is a good thing.

The Grant Morrison volume is a lit-crit look at Zenith, Animal Man, Doom Patrol, and Arkham Asylum. Yes! It also includes an interview with The God of All Comics in the back about the book and his work.

I got a little more superheroic stuff than I really wanted to. I’m not only a superhero reader. At least two fifths, and sometimes even three fifths, of my top five are non-supers. (100 Bullets, Kabuki, Stray Bullets.) (I also like bullets, I guess). Still, seven out of thirty-one ain’t bad, though the Modern Masters volumes technically aren’t comics. I also haven’t read a lot of this stuff, or haven’t read it in years at the very least. It’s probably 85-90% new content to me.

Here’s the kicker: I’m planning on reviewing all these books. Yeah, that’s right. It may be a grouped review, it may be a single review, but I want to put my thoughts out there about all of them, excepting only the Modern Masters because those are awesome by default, and the sketchbooks, because they aren’t exactly reviewable, save for the one by The Blvd.

I’ve also got the PC demo of the Marvel Trading Card game to look at, as well as a free copy of the Marvel Comic Book Creator software. Should be an interesting few weeks!