July comics roundup

There is a disturbingly large and teetering pile of books on a chair in my kitchen. They are books that I have read in the last couple of months, that I hope to one day get around to writing up for this blog. Many of them deserve lots of thought, ideally before I forget the reading experience. Also, maybe 50% of the pile is comics -- because I read them faster than straight prose, or because my reading is getting decadently image-dependent, or because it's summer and comics are my beach reading, I don't know. Anyway, despite the fact that several of these are serious books that could totally justify their own post, I'm throwing them together in a roundup, in the interest of getting them off the stack and saving the legs of my kitchen chair.

Superman: For Tomorrow
Volume 1 and Volume 2
By Brian Azzarello (writer), Jim Lee, and Scott Williams (artists)



The ALP, a much more serious comics reader than I, is of the opinion that this one-shot Superman story is about how scary Superman could get if Lois Lane wasn't around for him to care about -- which would explain why some villain hasn't actually offed her, since no one could deal with the destructive power of a Superman unhinged by grief. I'll take his word for it. While this one had some good moments (especially one mind-bending moment of moral complication when Superman admits he could cure someone's cancer, but won't) I found it whizzed by pleasantly and at the end I wasn't sure how the problem (lots of people have disappeared with no physical trace) actually got solved -- it just always does get solved when it's Superman, dunnit? It's fun to read a superhero comic with a beginning and an end, but this one was a bit forgettable for my snobby literary tastes.


A God Somewhere
by John Arcudi (writer), Peter Snejbjerg, and Bjarne Hansen (artists)


While this book is about the closest thing to a true masterpiece I have read in comics in ages, I will hesitate carefully before recommending it to readers. That's because it's also the most disturbing comic I have read in a long time -- the violence is bloody and has consequences, and the sheer existential chaos is unsettling, like reading about Columbine or Rwandan child soldiers. I actually thought about Columbine a couple of times while reading it, because the "why" of the horrors that happen is so unanswerable, in such a terribly familiar way. The premise: a happy-go-lucky, kind of slackerish dude finds that a catastrophic accident has left him with Superman-like (or God-like) powers; at first he performs some dramatic rescues, but the religious language he uses to describe his mission of good starts to sound a little crazy and he's acting kinda weird... and then he really snaps, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The narrator is the super-person's lifelong friend, an African-American journalist who covers the whole weird story; his character arc is rich and interesting too, a welcome human-scale drama running parallel to the sickening cosmic tragedy of the main story. Not for the squeamish, but I'd guess this book is going to become part of the conversation about "realistic" superheros, about the iconography of power and desire, and about the potential for what comics can do.


Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars in Brooklyn
by Meredith Gran


Hooray, comics about Brooklyn! I admit I was a leetle nervous that Octopus Pie would be too scene-y for my tastes (I think I remember picking up an earlier edition in an unbearably hip Williamsburg shop and putting it down again)... but this time around, it was funny and authentic and I was hooked. It's got that classic odd-couple charm: uptight, slightly surly Eve finds herself the housemate of superchill stoner entrepreneur Hanna (they were friends in kindergarten and their moms set them up), and wacky hijinks ensue. But, as ("Mr. Scott Pilgrim") Bryan Lee O'Malley observes about author Meredith Gran, "her jokes are actually funny," both verbally and visually. Cranky organic food buyers, the trauma of a stolen bike, a Renaissance fair (really), and a long, unpredictable storyline about ice skating are just some of the gems packed into this baby, which collects the first two years of the ongoing indie comic. It's a little "Dykes to Watch Out For," a little "Real World: Brooklyn" (okay, maybe not, I never watched it)... anyway, I kept laughing out loud and quoting parts to the ALP, which I feel is a strong indication that there's some good stuff going on here. Also, we went to the release party at Bergen Street Comics and bought the character pint glasses. So there. Even if you are not a Brooklyn booster (Meredith, sadly, has now moved to Portland), it's good cartooning and good storytelling with a compelling cast of side characters, a little foul-mouthed, a little tender, and very funny. (Look for the mantra about ducks and bread - priceless.)


Batwoman: Elegy
by Greg Rucka (writer) J. H. Williams, and Dave Stewart (artists)


So... in case you're not a hardcore DC Comics reader: the new Batwoman is a lesbian. A very lipstick lesbian, as you'll notice if you can make out this cover, and there are all kinds of debates, especially among female comics fans, about whether this is liberating or exploitative or what. I saw what I felt were examples of both in this particular comic, though what's almost more ridiculous is that crazy flowing red hair -- is that practical, when you're fighting crime with a secret identity, seriously? (To be fair, this comes up in an exchange with Batman, and it kinda makes sense.) All that aside though, I found this an actually pretty impressive comic. The villainess is apparently under the impression that she is Alice in Wonderland, which makes for some delightfully insane dialogue amidst the kicking and punching, and the relationship between Batwoman and her dad and stepmom is interesting and touching. What's really impressive though, is how much work the art is doing in telling this story -- the visuals of the chapter headings, especially, offer huge foreshadowing clues about the story's Big Reveal, which isn't hinted at in the dialogue. It was fun to go back and see the significant details after I knew the ending; if I were a more observant... observer of comics art I might have noticed them sooner, but I thought it was an awesome way to tell the story. Slight fare, perhaps, but a very satisfactory and well-executed cape-and-cowl comic.


Market Day
by James Sturm

This book has, deservedly, already been highly praised in high-falutin' literary publications. James Sturm is one of the most serious literary writers of comics out there, and his previous stories about baseball, the frontier, and Jewish and African-American experiences constitute a body of rich, intelligent historical fictionI don't think any contemporary cartoonist has even attempted to match. And I like his visual style a lot: a thick, clean line almost reminiscent of the Tintin comics I grew up on, an old-fashioned, muted color palette, an interest in all kinds of faces and bodies. That said, I respected this book more than I actually liked it. The story is that of one day in the life of Mendleman, a rug maker -- young, married with a baby on the way -- taking his wares to sell at market, where he discovers his usual buyer is out of business and has to scramble to find some other way to unload his painstaking, artistic creations; on his way home an odd encounter with some vagabonds leaves him hungover and questioning his entire life. Now that I think about it, it works as a pretty good metaphor for an artist hewing to an old-fashioned standard in a changing world (Sturm wrote a column for Slate about giving up the internet.) But I'm not sure I understood quite what happened in our young rug maker's head at the end, and the 19th century Eastern European color palette is exhaustingly dreary, even when Mendleman is imagining his innovative designs. Maybe I'm just not a rug fancier, or I need to read more Russian novels. This may be a book I come back to later with greater appreciation, but I prefer Sturm's odd and tragic American stories to this one.


Ghostopolis
by Doug TenNapel

Doug TenNapel is not nearly as well known as his Bill Watterson-influenced art and insanely creative fantasy epic stories deserve. This may be partly because he is a Christian and somewhat right-wing, and very explicit Christian metaphors find their way into nearly all of his work; on the other hand, his humor is often scatalogical and his characters foul-mouthed, which means the Christians don't necessarily embrace him either. So I am one of a small contingent who will read anything Doug TenNapel writes, though some are more successful than others. Ghostopolis is one of the more successful, I think: the story of a sort of ghost truant officer who accidentally sends a live boy to the underworld and then tries to rescue him, while the boy meets up with his long-dead grandfather and a host of other denizens of Ghostopolis. The Christ figure in this one is a mysterious Tuskegee airman, who built Ghostopolis eons ago but is now in hiding from its tyrannical ruler. It's a world of good and evil, though not always simply divided; characters learn and grow and make mistakes, while dodging giant insects and zombies and bone animals and animate buildings. It's a romp with moments of seriousness, and even a love story, and it's the kind of thing I love Doug TenNapel for.


Werewolves of Montpelier
by Jason

Jason is like the Buster Keaton of comics. His animal/people characters have that deadpan expression most of the time, with only an occasional eyebrow wrinkle to express emotion, and yet their stories are often hilariously funny and/or heartbreaking. This one has a built-in gag that's never discussed: when dog-people turn into werewolves it's very hard to tell the difference. But everyone in the story knows one when they see one, and when our protagonist impersonates one he falls afoul of the real werewolves and adventures ensue. The power of the story, though, is in his relationship with Audrey, the girl in the apartment next door, who is doing her best Holly Golightly impression at all times; their thwarted desires and real friendship are affecting in that same deadpan way. It's not my favorite Jason comic ever (though the ALP thinks its his best in ages), but it's a great one to add to the library.


And a drumroll please...

Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

You do remember how I feel about Scott Pilgrim, right? The last few weeks have been a pleasant agony of anticipation of both the release of the final volume and the movie (which I was prepared to dislike because I wasn't sure neurotic loveable loser Michael Cera could play happy-go-lucky loveable loser Scott Pilgrim; but all signs indicate that the director of Sean of the Dead isn't going to let us down. The ALP and I have plans on the evening of August 13, thank you.) So I picked up my copy at Bergen Street Comics*, and the book is... entirely, eminently satisfying. I mean, how you gonna pull all this stuff together, unless you are an O'Malley level pop art genius? The unresolved feelings for Kim, the fact that Ramona literally disappeared at the end of issue 5, and the band broke up, and Scott has no motivation, much less the skills, to face down Gideon, the Final Boss Man (in video game parlance, which is what the structure of this fight-the-seven-evil-exes story is obviously modeled upon). I, for one, am not going to spoil it for you. I'll just say that everything gets resolved by fighting -- because the whole book almost is one big fight scene, and every issue that's ever come up gets dealt with decisively. Probably I will now go back and read all six volumes just to get the whole picture, because they are that fun and it takes about a day to get through them. So just get all of them already, and enjoy!

* Note: because of the peculiar nature of comics publishing, comic shops had their Scott Pilgrims on July 20; regular ol' bookstores will get theirs on August 3.

June YA Roundup

If I wrote these things more often I wouldn't have to cram multiples into one post, but my blogging is falling so far behind my reading I need to diminish the stack a bit. And I realize I've had a number of great YA reading experiences lately -- it's a category I don't read super-often, but that I tend to enjoy (if perhaps with an occasional smirk of superiority/relief that I am no longer a teen.)

Folly
by Marthe Jocelyn
(Wendy Lamb Books, May 2010)

This book and the following one I read "on assignment" -- I was asked to take part in a YA brainstorming conference call by our inimitable Random House children's book rep Lillian Penchansky, and these two books were our homework for the call. It was kind of a delight to plunge into something that I could read in a day, and the two works, while both historical fiction, were very different. Marthe Jocelyn's Folly was the better of the two -- the story of a 19th century British servant girl who gets knocked up by a dashing soldier (when that was both common and enough to ruin your life), it's told in first person by various characters whose dialects are both defamiliarizing and believable. The backstory of the book is fascinating too: Jocelyn found out that one of her ancestors grew up in a "foundling hospital" like the one in the story, and imagined his life and his mother's from there. Reading this led to a bunch of conversations about how of course, in whatever era you're born, you're a teenager and you're filled with desire, but in this era there's no sex ed and no birth control and no safety net -- in the case of a servant far from home, not even family or friends to take you in. I loved Mary Finn, smart and kind and resourceful but still screwed over; and I loved James, the boy in the foundling hospital whose story intertwines with hers -- his internal monologue contained some meditations on the lived experience of history that I wish I could quote (I gave my galley to a certain bookseller who is said to resemble the girl on the cover -- have to remember to ask her whether she liked it too.) And even the "cad" soldier, Caden, is sympathetic -- he's just a teen as well, and totally clueless about what to do. Though it's got no creatures of the night (as way too many YA novels seems to these days), this book is dark in the way real human life is dark -- recommended for the brave reader of any age, Folly is moving and eye-opening.

The Madman of Venice
by Sophie Masson
(Delacorte Books for Young Readers, August 2010)

This book, while a charming adventure story with some resonant historical detail, reinforces my theory that YA is just where romance novels have migrated. Reading it had the slightly guilty pleasures of a historical romance: the dialogue is dramatic but not especially believable, the heroine is plucky, the hero is brave but tongue-tied about his passion for her, and it takes some life-threatening adventures to bring them together. Nevertheless, the context gives it some added weight: the British boy, girl, and chaperone are on a mission in Venice to thwart some pirates and find a missing girl, who happens to be a Jew from Venice's infamous Ghetto. There are echoes of Shakespeare's Shylock here, of course, and some not-too-heavyhanded analysis of what it meant to be a Jew in pre-Modern Europe. And yes, there are escapes by Gondola, fights in Venetian castellos, and enough twisted plots that the entire last chapter is devoted to explaining them. Great for a kid interested in this particular place and time, who doesn't mind some mushy stuff in between adventures.


The Museum of Thieves
by Lian Tanner
(Delacorte Books for Young Readers, September 2010)

This one is my favorite of the lot -- the kind of fantastic adventure I loved as a kid, that can still keep me glued to the couch on a beautiful weekend day, dead to the real world and immersed in the much more convincing world of the novel. I was invited to an author dinner for Lian Tanner -- which turned out to be a lovely affair, and Tanner the most charming New Zealander, just the kind of person you hope should make their fortune from writing a great yarn. I thought I should glance at the book before the dinner out of politeness, and ended up reading the whole thing in a day, and raving about it like a geek that evening. Set in a town where children under a certain age are kept chained, to their parents or glorified babysitters, the Blessed Guardians, "for their own good," the story's hero is the impatient and irritable Goldie Roth. When the ceremonial Separation Day -- a coming of age that involves literally cutting the cord -- is canceled because of what is essentially a terrorist attack, Goldie in despair breaks her bonds herself and becomes a fugitive. And it really is a dangerous world she lives in, though the danger is not where she has been told. Finding her way to the city's Museum, she comes under the protections of its keepers and discovers that her less-than-legal predilictions make her a perfect candidate to join the ranks of those caring for the weird contents of the building, which is bigger on the inside than on the outside (one of my favorite fantasy tropes, as it rings true metaphorically about so many things). I won't say more about the plot because I don't want to spoil too much of this splendid reading experience -- but the themes of the novel are obviously the tradeoffs of freedom and security, the claims of the official and the illicit, which resonate both politically and for every teen or pre-teen testing the boundaries of the allowable. This is the first of a trilogy (another of my favorite things about fantasy), and I can't wait to pick up the story again -- I definitely recommend this journey when the book comes out in September, whether you are under 18 or not.

The Princess and the Goblin
by George MacDonald
(Random House Books for Young Readers, January 2010)

This inexpensive little hardcover is part of the Looking Glass Library series, which reissues classic children's books with introductions by contemporary writers. I'd always meant to read George MacDonald, who I knew was a huge influence on C. S. Lewis -- and his story inspires the same kind of slightly mixed affection for me as an adult reader that The Chronicles of Narnia or even Tolkien's Middle Earth does now. The story of the child princess who is targeted by the kingdom's enemy goblins, and the miner's son who helps to save her, is a masterfully written fable, and also a theological metaphor, masquerading as a children's story. It's all about doing what you know is right, believing in what you know is true even if you can't see it or others don't believe you. The Princess' mysterious grandmother is a God-like figure, and MacDonald's theology of selflessness and a calm faith in the good is one that resonates for me. But his depictions of the goblins can seem kind of... racist. Yes, they are mythical creatures, and so you can make them as nasty and stupid as you want -- but sometimes it seems their very ugliness is held against them, as if having a weird face means that you're a bad thing. In a book clearly intended as allegory and instruction as well as delightful adventure, the lesson of disdain for the ugly and odd is absorbed right along with the lesson of devotion to duty and truth. It's a complicated little morality tale, much like the Victorian era from whence it comes -- in craft and sweetness definitely worth reading, but perhaps with a grain of salt for a modern ethical sensibility.

Whew -- now to get my nose out of the books and go play outside...

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

A Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
(Knopf, June 9, 2010)

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Reading this book was a little like starting a conversation out of general politeness, and discovering that you're talking to someone you passionately want for a best friend.

Jennifer Egan -- full disclosure -- is a friend and customer of Greenlight Bookstore. I'd hosted her before for events at other stores, and chatted with her and her kids at Greenlight, but to my own detriment I had never actually read any of her fiction. (Even though, as often seems to happen, it seems in retrospect like obviously the sort of thing I would like: the smart but not overtly political feminism of Look At Me, the Gothic nested stories of The Keep, etc. -- good storytelling in the service of big ideas, or vice versa, without sacrificing the one for the other.) It seemed like now would be the time to pick her up, though, since we're hosting her launch party for the book on Wednesday. So I opened the intriguingly titled A Visit From the Goon Squad earlier this spring.

And found a new addition to my personal author pantheon.

As I wrote for our recent staff picks email, A Visit From the Goon Squad is ostensibly (and quite effectively) about the world of rock music, and the intersections of the realms of commerce and creativity (and the dysfunctional folks who inhabit both). But it's really about life on Earth, in all its heartbreaking and maddening and rich and loveable complexity. It's about the mistakes of each generation, about being young and growing up, about adventure and domesticity, about interconnectivity and isolation, and (especially) about the brutality and kindnesses of time.

And it doesn't hurt that it is structured in my favorite form: the novel as interlinked stories (cf. my pantheon authors David Mitchell, Charles Baxter, Joan Silber, and others). Some of those were published in the New Yorker -- trust me that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, though each story has its own poignant and complete miniature arc. One of them perfectly evokes being a young and foolish professional woman in New York City (ahem). One is written flawlessly from the perspective of a very young gay man, one about a record exec, several about the intersections of children who have grown up too fast and adults who are not very grown-up at all. One is composed of a series of PowerPoint slides and is alarmingly literate and moving. San Francisco, Italy, and Arizona make appearances, as do the 1970s, the 1990s, and a near-future that is the most believable I think I've ever read (wait till you learn what a "pointer" is). The meaning of the title is illusive, but when it hit me it hit hard, and shaped my understanding of the project of the novel in the way the best titles can do.

And did I mention the damn thing is funny, too? Apparently Jennifer Egan is one of those rare authors who can quite literally do anything.

I have already seen Jennifer post-Goon Squad reading, and gotten out of the way my mumbled fangirl admiration. Luckily she seems as delighted at how it came out as her readers will, and is in fact the sort of kind and smart and idealistic and charming author that you hope to find at the other end of your favorite novels.

So, obviously, go out first thing tomorrow morning when it goes on sale and get yourself a copy of A Visit From the Goon Squad. Then, come out on Wednesday night and drink wine with the author. If these heights of happiness are not feasible for you, just get your hands on the book as soon as you can, and then find me so we can talk about it. In the meantime, I'm going to need to go back and read everything Jennifer Egan has ever written.

The Singer's Gun by Emily St. John Mandel

The Singer's Gun
by Emily St. John Mandel
(Unbridled Books, May 2010)

Full disclosure: Emily St. John Mandel lives in Brooklyn and I often run into her at literary events; she is an extremely likeable person and has been wonderfully supportive of Greenlight. And Unbridled Books is, in my opinion, one of the best of the crop of new independent publishers who are figuring out the best way to make this old-fashioned book thing work in a new economy, on a sustainable scale, building on the relationships between customers, booksellers, and publishers. So I was predisposed to like Emily's second novel, especially given the embarrassment of riches of bookseller quotes included in my galley.

And perhaps unsurprisingly, like it I did -- but that doesn't mean the book itself is not an astonishing surprise. I read it one day when I was so sick I actually did have to spend most of the day in bed, so my memory of the reading experience is a little like a fever dream -- though that may not be entirely due to my state of health. Mandel has managed a heady, indeed dreamlike mixing of a sort of literary soul-searching amidst the ennui of modern Everyman life, and a rich and strange, violent and dangerous and globe-spanning storyline. If the tone is reminiscent of the post-Franzen and McSweeney's school of alienation and drift, the story is almost a boy's adventure novel, or one of the darker practitioners of thriller writing (Vachs or Connelly). It's disorienting and haunting, addictive and thought-provoking, and it doesn't go away when you're done reading.

I like the way I summarized the plot on the Greenlight website, so I'll repeat it here: "From the sinister warehouses of Williamsburg to the soulless shining office towers of Manhattan to the sun-kissed ennui of the island of Ischia, Emily St. John Mandel traces the fortunes of would-be ex-criminal Anton and his associates through moving and astonishing interludes." Anton is one of those anti-heroes you find yourself almost unwillingly drawn to, in spite of his seeming inability to actually do what he wants or care for those he cares about. The fact that he finds something resembling a happy ending is perhaps the novel's biggest surprise, and it's not without its own attendant complications.

But for me the most powerful thing about Mandel's second novel are the odd, very dreamlike images that have stayed with me. A shipping container full of scared Russian girls sitting in a circle, waiting for someone to let them out. A basketball on a dirty, glass-strewn Manhattan roof, surrounded by those shining office buildings. A white hotel looking out on the beach at Ischia. A warehouse in Williamsburg full of salvaged treasures. And of course, the image in the title, which is such a huge and weird and unexpected plot point that I didn't realize its significance until I finished the book and turned it over to look at the front again. I'm not going to steal from you the shock of that discovery -- you'll just have to get deep into Mandel's strange and haunting and very real world and find out for yourself.

Note: Emily St. John Mandel reads at Greenlight Bookstore tonight, May 16, at 7:30 PM. You can RSVP on Facebook, or just show up.

April Comics Post

Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day, when fine comic shops nationwide will be giving out samples of the good stuff to all comers. In its honor, today's post is a flying tour of the comics/graphic novels I've been reading in the last few weeks and months.


Y: The Last Man, Volume 7: Paper Dolls
by Brian K. Vaughan (writer) and Pia Guerra (artist)
I've been working my way through Vaughan's magnum opus slowly for a while now. By Volume 7 the plague that killed (almost) every male mammal on earth is old news, and the implications of a women-only society are playing out in unpredictable ways, while Our Hero Yorick Brown tries to find his girlfriend and help find out how to bring back the other half of the species. Despite the occasionally annoying fact that in an all-women world the hero of the comic is still a dude, Vaughan's writing and Guerra's art always make for good adventure storytelling, and a bit of food for thought afterward. Imagine the implications for Israel, for example (women soldiers) or the Republican party (few women leaders but lots of political wives) or the Catholic church (no women in power but lots and lots of nuns). I'll add my voice to the chorus that says this is one of the seminal graphic novel series of our time. And it's often funny, too.


Air, Volume 2: Flying Machine
by G. Willow Wilson (writer) and M.K. Parker (artist)
This series was hand-sold to me by Amy at my great local, Bergen Street Comics, and it's a winner. With a unique premise (the technology for flight powered by thought, developed by the ancient Mayans and sought after by all kinds of powers) and a cool heroine (Blythe, perky enough to be a believable stewardess despite her fear of heights, and brave and bewildered enough to be a believable heroine), not to mention an affecting romance/mystery and a resonance for anyone who's ever been nervous on an airplane, it's got a lot of cool, original stuff going for it. I liked the first volume a bit better than the second (as the concept of "hyperpraxis" flight gets explained it becomes a bit less believable), but I'm on board (get it?!) for this series, and delighted to find a new creative team with such great storytelling mojo.


Freakangels, Volume 1
by Warren Ellis (writer) and Paul Duffield (artist)
Another Bergen Street Comics purchase, this one was actually a result of reading Ellis' comic serialized for free online. There are superpowers, yes, but the kids holding them are unlikeable and screwed up to varying degrees, and they seem to have brought about the end of the world and also be preventing it somehow. The British dialogue is cheeky and evocative, and while the Freakangels are sometimes kind of scary like a group of teenagers on the sidewalk, I'm intrigued by the post-apocalyptic Steampunk vibe and the potential for this story. (And yeah, I prefer reading it in book form.)


Hellboy: The Wild Hunt
by Mike Mignola (writer) and Duncan Fegred0 (artist)
I love Hellboy. (So much so that I always stock Mignola's comics in the bookstore, even though almost no one seems to buy them.) He's a working man's hero, doing his job well with a foul mouth and shoulders sagging with fatigue, and always trying to transcend his origins (i.e. as the son of Satan). And Mignola's depth of allusion to world mythology makes for both great, accessible storytelling and something you could spend years mining. This stand-alone volume tells a couple of stories related to the recurring legend of the hunt in the sky (for a stag, giants, a herd of cattle, whatever) and how Hellboy gets mixed up in them, and what they may imply for the future of his world. It's dark and moody and heartpounding, and I read it twice.

Jack of Fables #44
by Matthew Sturges & Bill Willingham (writers) and various artists
My love of the original Fables series by Sturges and Willingham has extended to this spin-off, where the ne'er-do-well but lucky hero of many fables, Jack, sets off on his own and has very weird and funny adventures. The series has now left the original Jack behind for a while and is following his son, Jack Frost, a more heroic (i.e. less selfish and amoral) character, which is kind of a relief -- but it's also still silly, which is nice. I wouldn't recommend starting here -- the Jack series has started to comic out in trade paperback form -- but this is one of the few series I buy in the $2.99 single issues whenever it comes out.


Cowboy Ninja Viking #1
by AJ Lieberman (writer) and Riley Rossmo (artist)
Come on, tell me you could resist buying a comic with a title like that?! It's a ridiculous but inspired premise: a shady organization has recruited dudes with multiple personalities, and taught each of them a different martial art. The dialogue is cleverly rendered with icons for each of our hero CNV's three distinct personalities, as he wreaks havoc and tries to figure out who is on his side. I'm not sure whether it will end up paying off as a story, but I'm in at least for issue two, when CNV takes on PGO -- Pirate Gladiator Oceanographer.

That's my comics reading lately. What comics have you been reading that you'd recommend?