Archive for March, 2009
The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu #19
This is a series I missed when it was first published. Having almost entirely given up on new comics, I’m finding there are plenty of gems from yesteryear that I didn’t have the allowance for or that simply didn’t make it to the shelves of the Groveport Pharmacy. Cruising the “bronze age comics” category on eBay, I expect it will be many years before I run out of books to discover for the first time. In the case of Master of Kung Fu, this was a book which was over my head when I first encountered it, being one of a number of non-superhero books with an adult slant which Marvel was launching during their “Phase 2” period in order to expand their readership (the version I briefly saw was the Moench/Zeck model). I’ve recently discovered this little gem thanks to the guest appearance of another old favorite, Man-Thing, in this issue which is Shang-Chi’s fifth appearance in a comic book.
How can issue 19 of the series be the fifth appearance of the title character, you ask? The series was originally called Special Marvel Edition, and featured (if I am not misinformed) old superhero reprint material until Master of Kung Fu debuted in issue 15; the character was a hit, and the title became The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu with issue number 17. Imagine that! No passing up a high-numbered issue because you didn’t “get in on the ground floor”; the biggest draw to an issue on the stands was the cover and the promise of story within! If you did get an issue #1, the story was still likely continued from the anthology title the character had previously appeared in (Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, Werewolf By Night, to name a few). The numbers were totally irrelevant except for organizing a stack of your favorite books. Must have been nice. My 11th issue of the Dave Gibbons Doctor Who reprint series became “Series 2, #1”, Dark Horse’s Conan series has inexplicably reverted to a first issue even though it originally promised a continuous narrative of the character’s life, Captain America has seen at least four 1st issues in the last decade… but good luck finding (silver age) Captain America #’s 1-99, Hulk 7-100, Thor 1-82… or Master of Kung Fu 1-14. The necessity of a completist mentality didn’t come into play at all, not fostered by the demands of the audience or the marketing strategy of the publishers. How strange. How, dare I say, accessible.
Back to MOKF: Allegedly Marvel had gained the rights to Fu Manchu and related characters at the same time as securing rights for a comic series based on David Carradine’s Kung Fu TV show. Someone had the notion to meld the two concepts together, giving us Shang-Chi, who discovers one day that the father he revered is actually the greatest force for evil on Earth, so he splits from the family temple to walk the Earth helping people– like Julius from Pulp Fiction– and battling against his father’s plots. This issue opens with a couple of Fu Manchu’s assassins chasing Shang Chi into the Florida everglades, where waits a shambling, barely sentient pile of mud and moss not quite known for his kung fu skills. Our hero is already tripping before he even sees Man-Thing, thanks to an assassin’s poison his body is fighting, so the encounter goes about as badly a conceivably possible.
Luckily, there happens to be a fellow Asian philosopher traveling through the swamp– one who bears a striking resemblance to David Carradine. This stranger rescues Shang-Chi and even makes sure the Man-Thing is uninjured, before binding our protagonist’s wounds and helping him sort through the conflicting emotions he is dealing with since his peaceful philosophy has been thrown into doubt by the conflict with his father. We even get a TV show-style flashback to young Shang-Chi’s youth in the monastery, wherein we learn that artist Paul Gulacy might have encountered Steranko at some point early in his career.
(Gulacy is inked by Al Milgrom here; I was surprised to see both of these gentlemen’s careers stretch back to 1974.)
Steve Englehart wrote this, as well as just about everything else for Marvel in the 70’s, reinforcing my belief that the guy could spin gold from straw until he went horribly astray a decade later (but for Dara’s sake, we won’t go into that…). He and Shang-Chi leave us with some final philosophizing regarding the use of violence for us to chew on after we have put the book down.
Ok, this weekend I’m going to do something a little different: a crossover that I actually enjoyed:
Wait, say what? Patrulla-X? Oh, right, this book:
This 4-issue limited series, courtesy of Roger Stern, Marc Silvestri, and Joe Rubinstein, had all the action, drama, and 4-color goodness a Young Dara was looking for. Here’s a synopsis: “The Avengers try and avert disaster as a giant meteor crashes to Earth; Another meteor falls and Magneto realizes it is a remnant of Asteroid M so he leaves the X-Men behind to see if he can salvage any of his old stuff; The Avengers and Soviet Super-Soldiers figure it out as well and move to intercept him.”
Although not a strict Silvestri fan, the comic itself left such a strong impression on Young Dara that we picked it as one of two book covers (the other being Art Adam’s cover for X-Men: Heroes for Hope) to recreate as part of his sophomore year high school art class assignment. Behold the magnificence of a young artist at work, capturing every nuance of Silvestri’s work, right down to the flat pancake faces on She-Hulk and Rogue:
Alas, Young Dara’s artistic career was cut short by a tragic racquetball accident. But at least he still has his old sketchbooks…and his memories.
Did someone say something about attracting new readers?
OK, so I saw the Watchmen movie over the weekend and I gotta say: It met my expectations.
I have two advantages going to see the Watchmen movie: 1. Low expectations and 2. I don’t hold Watchmen in the same reverence that some folks do.
Watchmen, for me, has always been “easy to admire, hard to love.” I don’t believe literally everything Alan Moore writes is brilliant — he was going to have Captain Marvel doing it with Mary Marvel, for crying out loud. The moment that really allowed me to unclench was when I realized that half the clunky dialog in the flick is straight out of the book.
So after that sacrilege, a few random thoughts:
1. I didn’t miss the people at the newsstand as much as I thought I would. *
2. Flipping back through the book, I forgot how often Moore really does cut to Nixon. The additional Nixon scenes didn’t bother me.
3. The book Dr. Manhattan is more emotive than the movie version. Advantage: movie.
4. I didn’t miss the pirate bits, either. *
5. Ozymandius disappears for large portions of the movie, and his scenes are pretty truncated. Advantage: book.
6. Carla Gugino seemed to have walked in from another movie. But still — Carla Gugino. Advantage: movie.
7. Movie Dr. Manhattan is a “show-er,” not a “grow-er,” and his digital schlong swung around a lot. Still, if I ever recreate my physical form through sheer force of will, I will make myself hung like a horse.
8. The non-squid ending makes slightly more sense to me. Advantage: movie.
9. A lot of the lines sounded funny when spoken aloud, especially those given to the Comedian. Advantage: book.
10. The book spends a lot more time making Nite Owl II look pathetic. Push.
11. The comedian’s old-man makeup didn’t hold up in those closeups. Advantage: book.
12. The ending of the movie kind of drags on a bit, but it does that in the book, too. Push.
* My personal opinion. I understand this is a dealbreaker for some people, and I respect that.
Craig’s post below on the Top 70 Marvel Comics (and its accompanying discussion) raises some interesting points. What’s a “best” comic?
As Matt points out, there are two ways to measure “best” — what’s most popular, and what most conforms to an abstract concept of quality. I think in comics this is conflated further with a third concept: “what would most appeal to new readers.” These three concepts are related but separate.
Let me illustrate the point with an example from chapter-book publishing. Here is a “good” chapter book:
And here is a chapter book that “attracts new readers:”
I haven’t read Twilight, so I can’t say it’s “bad.” I doubt it’s as “good” as Crime and Punishment, but my main point is that it has some extra quality that attracts new readers.
When we talk about comics, I think we tend to conflate our ideas of “good” with what would “attract new readers.” This is a fallacy. I personally think deconstructive comics are terrible, but I can’t be sure that they also turn off new readers. Kids are pretty into irony these days; so maybe they really want more superhero satire. What’s bad for me may not be bad for the industry as a whole.
Craig’s post shows that new people have entered the hobby in the last 5-10 years, and they’ve liked what they’ve found. Indeed, the hobby would be in bad shape if there were no popular comics from the last 5-10 years.
The X-factor, as Craig points out, is distribution. It could be that today’s comics are designed to attract the kind of people who wouldn’t mind going in to a comic shop, but would be forbidding to an outside audience. It may also be that today’s comics are the best we can get, considering the distribution we have.
So setting aside the concepts of “good” and “bad” comics, how do we define a comic that would “attract new readers?” I think it would require some market research, if only a comparison to current popular cartoons and video games.
I’m not really coming to a conclusion here. I think that’s a subject for another post. I’m still trying to define the questions.
This week’s is also probably easy, but it was a fun find as I was going through my collection:
(click image to enlarge)
(previous weeks: 9/12/2005, 9/19/2005, 9/26/2005, 10/3/2005, 10/10/2005, 10/17/2005, 10/24/2005, 10/31/2005, 11/1/2005, 11/2/2005, 11/3/2005, 11/4/2005, 11/5/2005, 11/6/2005, 11/7/2005, 11/14/2005, 11/21/2005, 11/28/2005, 12/5/2005, 12/12/2005, 12/19/2005, 12/26/2005, 1/2/2006, 1/9/2006, 1/16/2006, 1/23/2006, 1/30/2006, 2/06/2006, 2/13/2006, 2/20/2006, 2/27/2006, 3/6/2006, 3/13/2006, 3/20/2006, 3/27/2006, 4/3/2006, 4/4/2006, 4/5/2006, 4/6/2006, 4/7/2006, 4/8/2006, 4/9/2006, 4/10/2006, 4/17/2006, 4/23/2006, 5/1/2006, 5/8/2006, 5/15/2006, 5/22/2006, 5/29/2006, 6/5/2006, 6/12/2006, 6/19/2006, 6/26/2006, 7/3/2006, 7/10/2006, 7/17/2006, 7/24/2006, 7/31/2006, 8/7/2006, 8/13/2006, 8/21/2006, 8/28/2006, 9/4/2006, 9/11/2006, 9/18/2006, 9/25/2006, 10/2/2006, 10/9/2006, 10/16/2006, 10/23/2006, 10/30/2006, 11/6/2006, 11/13/2006, 11/20/2006, 11/27/2006, 12/4/2006, 12/11/2006, 12/18/2006, 12/25/2006, 1/1/2007, 1/8/2007, 1/15/2007, 1/22/2007, 1/29/2007, 2/5/2007, 2/12/2007, 2/19/2007, 2/26/2007, 3/5/2007, 3/12/2007, 3/19/2007, 3/26/2007, 4/2/2007, 4/5/2007, 4/9/2007, 4/16/2007, 4/23/2007, 4/30/2007, 5/7/2007, 5/14/2007, 5/21/2007, 5/28/2007, 6/4/2007, 6/11/2007, 6/18/2007, 6/25/2007, 7/2/2007, 7/9/2007, 7/16/2007, 7/23/2007, 7/30/2007, 8/6/2007, 8/13/2007, 8/20/2007, 8/27/2007, 9/3/2007, 9/10/2007, 9/17/2007, 9/24/2007, 10/1/2007, 10/8/2007, 10/15/2007, 10/22/2007, 10/29/2007, 11/5/2007, 11/12/2007, 11/19/2007, 11/26/2007, 12/3/2007, 12/10/2007, 12/17/2007, 12/24/2007, 12/31/2007, 1/7/2008, 1/14/2008, 1/21/2008, 1/28/2008, 2/4/2008, 2/11/2008, 2/18/2008, 2/25/2008, 3/3/2008, 3/10/2008, 3/17/2008, 3/24/2008, 3/31/2008, 4/7/2008, 4/14/2008, 4/21/2008, 4/28/2008, 5/8/2008, 5/12/2008, 5/19/2008, 5/27/2008, 6/2/2008, 6/9/2008, 6/16/2008, 6/23/2008, 6/30/2008, 7/7/2008, 7/14/2008, 7/22/2008, 8/4/2008, 8/11/2008, 8/18/2008, 8/25/2008, 9/8/2008, 9/22/2008, 9/29/2008, 10/6/2008, 10/13/2008, 10/20/2008, 10/27/2008, 11/3/2008, 11/10/2008, 11/17/2008, 11/24/2008, 12/1/2008, 12/8/2008, 12/15/2008, 12/22/2008, 12/29/2008, 1/5/2009, 1/12/2009, 1/19/2009, 1/26/2009, 2/2/2009, 2/9/2009, 2/16/2009, 2/23/2009, 3/2/2009, 3/9/2009)
As part of their 70th anniversary celebration, Marvel conducted a poll through their website to have fans vote on the 70 best Marvel comics ever published. The fans have spoken… and 50% of the books revealed thus far have been published within the last five years.
Now that Dara has named his recent MMGTA title (Punisher/Batman), I can post my favorite panels from that book. It wasn’t a terribly great story, but it builds up to what I think is the coolest scene ever involving either character:
Here is a great overview of the whats/hows/whys, etc. of self-publishing by a Xeric-award winner.
I recommend the No Media Kings site as well. Munroe is a good writer with lots of interesting thoughts on comics/writing/art/gaming and other DIY/indie stuff.
New longish Dave McKean interview here. Heavy on the art which is always a good thing. I was happy to find out that Dark Horse is reprinting Pictures that Tick. I missed out on that in hardcover. 2009 is shaping up to be a good year with reprints.
I’m also looking forward to the Torpedo collection (IDW) and the just announced Tardi stuff from Fantagraphics. Now if they would just reprint Corto Maltese and Moebius, I’d be one happy bastard.
Do mine eyes decieve me? Can it be? Yes, it’s…
The return of Character Wednesday-day-day-day!
Tom Williams picked this week’s character: Superman. Molly will pick next week’s character.
Now, on to the entries, from your favorite PANEListas (to visit their individual websites, click on their name in the left column)
Tom Williams:
Molly Durst:
Tony Goins:
Craig Bogart (colors by Steve Black):
Brent Bowman:
So I was looking for reviews of my Terminator Salvation series (remember the book’s title, it comes into play below), and came across what may very well be the most fantastic review of any of my works, ever. I’m not sure if this person’s blog is:
a) filtered through a translation tool
b) written in broken English on purpose
c) truly a best attempt at writing in a foreign language (English)
d) all of the above
Regardless, feast your eyes upon this:
“Exterminator # 2 Redemption ( IDW comics ) author: Dara Naraghi Art: Alan RobinsonThis is simply program bad, rushed narration and hie art. Belike essay to wallop this together prior to the flick release ( Exterminator Redemption ) since the mirthful is a prequel to the flick. Relieve your money.”
I now have two new favorite phrases: “Belike essay” and “Relieve your money”!