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three comics you should read (if you think you don’t like comics).

By • On • In scott • 3 min read

Health Facts:

  1. Nine out of ten doctors agree that the average American needs more comics and graphic novels in their diet.
  2. Studies show that 74% of Americans are under the misapprehension that they don’t like comics when, in fact, they do.
  3. Research out of the Mayo Clinic points to a dangerous lack of curiosity in adults over the age of 23, making it less likely they try new things, such as reading graphic novels.

I’m glad those numbers are out there, providing verifiable proof that things need to change. Otherwise, you’d have to take my word for it.

An informed populace is our best chance at beating this thing. Too many readers who think they dislike comics just haven’t encountered the right one(s). That’s why I keep using this blog as a way to provide important information by writing about some comics or graphic novels – amazing titles like Saga or Paper Girls – for people who think they don’t like the medium.

Still, this is a national health crisis, and it falls on me to do more.

In that spirit, here are more great comics for the skeptical.

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The Backstagers

James Tyrion IV – Rian Sygh – Walter Baiamonte

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If you like: sweet, laugh-out-loud funny, genuinely heartwarming stories populated by characters you want to spend as much time with as possible.

The Backstagers has it all. Magical hallways of unending, ever changing corridors full of monsters, mysteries, and backstage tech resources? Check. The most endearing, original, and delightfully weird cast of characters you could ask for? Yes. Charm for days and days and days. Got it!

The only downside is that the book’s run was far too short. When I turned the last page, I had no idea it was the last last page. I went on Goodreads to find the next volume’s publication date, only to discover that there would be no next volume. The revelation left me genuinely sad for days. I sure hope we somehow get more graphic novels with these characters someday.

Also, The Backstagers is put out by BOOM! Studios, an seemingly unending resource of amazing comics. They also exclusively put stuff out that would fit into the category of comics for skeptics.

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Gideon Falls

Jeff Lemire – Andrea Torrentino

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If you like: horror (think Stephen King’s more sprawling, epic titles, with some Lovecraftian flavor), or genre-bending fiction that adds up to more than the sum of its parts

Gideon Falls is relentlessly grisly and dark, with an intriguing mystery and – once it gets moving in earnest – a thrilling pace. It’s fuuuucked up in the best possible ways, and as the story progresses, it just keeps getting more and more bonkers. Yet every new twist and revelation totally works within the narrative. Each big, surprising expansion of the world comes off as deft and clever, and not a desperate attempt to keep upping the ante to keep people reading.

With serial storytelling, I get wary when it begins to feel like the writer(s) have no idea what’s next, or worse, keep jumping tracks and retconning entire through lines. With Gideon Falls, it’s clear Lemire is in total control of his narrative. He isn’t throwing out captivating but hollow mysteries with the vague hope that maybe he can figure out what they all mean down the line. [I’m looking at you Lost.]**

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The Weatherman

Jeff LeHeup – Nathan Fox – Moreno Dinisio

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If you like: smart, fun, irreverent, vibrantly colored, hyper-violent sci-fi.

We’re in a bit of a sci-fi golden age in comics, and The Weatherman is a great addition to the trend.

It begins with an immature, wisecracking, food obsessed weatherman in the distant future finding out that nothing in his life is as it seems, as suddenly the entire solar system is trying to kill him.

I’d recommend you learn nothing else about this title before jumping in. I picked it up purely because it was on a staff picks shelf and it looks gorgeous. As soon as I finished reading it, I went online and ordered the next volume.

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** To be fair, my beloved X-Files was also egregiously guilty of this. Fortunately, most of the episodes were Monster of the Week eps, distinct from the series’s ongoing mythology. The good to great MotW eps are some of the greatest hours of television ever created, so, unlike shows like Lost, the X-Files can’t be judged purely on whether or not it had a coherent mythology. Ask huge fans what their favorite episodes are, and you’re usually going to find lists made up entirely of Monsters of the Week.

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i will be right here waiting. [the many lists of 2011]

By • On • In lists of 2011, movies, scott • 3 min read

That’s right, losers. Richard Marx lyrics. Now that song can be stuck in the heads of anyone old enough to remember it.

Anyway, last year’s ‘most excited’ list was remarkably hit or miss. This year’s probably will be as well. To keep that at least a bit more under control, I’m only going to do the first half of the year, with another list to come heading into July.

Also, as always, there will be great movies I just don’t know about yet, so if you see a glaring omission, holla at’cha boy.

First off, the movies I am undoubtedly excited about, to varying extremes.

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1. Chronicle – February 3rd

Seattle. Super powers. Salisbury Steaks. Okay, so that last bit was just for alliteration. However, Seattle and supes is enough to get me excited, even if the found footage thing is a little (or a lot) old by now. Movies like the original [REC] show the medium does have life in the right hands. Let’s hope that’s the case here.

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2. The Secret World of Arrietty – February 17th

Screenplay by Hayao Miyazaki. That’s all that needs to be written. Case closed.

Okay, so he didn’t direct it. Still, I’m in.

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See the rest after the jump.  Continue Reading →

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i kill giants. [graphic content.]

By • On • In books, graphic content, nerd candy, scott • 1 min read

It’s really hard to explain why you need to read this book, but you do.

It is absolutely stunning. I literally knew nothing about it going into it, I saw it on a list of great graphic novels, the art looked intriguing, so I gave it a try. I am so very glad I did.

This story is heartbreakingly beautiful. It’s officially the first comic or graphic novel I cried reading.

Kelly and Niimura’s story is about a 5th grade girl determined to kill giants. I don’t want to give away any more details than that, but trust me when I say this is powerful storytelling about the real world.

It’s not hyperbole to say that stories like this make the world a better place. You should read this as soon as you can.

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the walking dead. [graphic content.]

By • On • In books, graphic content, nerd candy, scott • 3 min read

Have you read The Walking Dead yet? If not, you are in for a big treat my friend. It’s a fantastic comic series written by Robert Kirkman about life after the zombie apocalypse. The main character is a police officer named Rick Grimes who gets shot in the line of duty, goes into a coma, and wakes up after the proverbial shit has hit the fan (a la 28 Days Later). It is the perfect way to introduce the series, because it’s about life after the zombie apocalypse, so using the coma technique is a clean way of allowing us to adjust to the post zombie world along with our hero.

The comic book/graphic novel medium is perfect for exploring this subject matter, because the story goes on and on, and thus it can take us so much deeper into the questions and metaphors inherent in the zombie genre.

There are tons of reasons why zombie stuff is great, but one of the more important reasons is that it is rife with metaphor at the heart of American culture. It wasn’t an accident that Romero set the sequel to Night of the Living Dead at a shopping mall.

At the moment, our culture is in the midst of this bizarre war where a huge portion of the population refuses to let go of American mythology from the 50’s. We have these ideas of what it means to be American, of what “real America” looks like, and while that ideal never existed, it is even more dangerous now because it should have died a long time ago, it’s alive and kicking even though it shouldn’t be, it is undead now. Actually, Bill Willingham used this as a tiny portion of his Fables storyline, and it was utterly brilliant, but Fables must be left for another post.

Zombies represent something terrifying because they are us. They are our fear of death, our fear of our appetites, our fear of the nagging thought in the back of our minds that we are our own worst enemy, that we will bring about our own destruction.

Yet, what are we left with on the other side of that? We play with the zombie genre, and lets say we make it to the other side of the cataclysm, doing our best to survive long term in a world overrun with a horde of the undead. Then what? Well, that’s what The Walking Dead offers a potential answer to. It’s a band of survivors trying to make life work, trying to keep their children safe, trying to fall in love and find a reason to wake up each day. If everything that we think makes up our world is taken from us, where do we go from there?

Kirkman’s writing is fantastic; tense, well paced, and constantly engaging. I almost always buy what characters are doing, how they are treating each other, etc. That’s rare.

Also, it just may be the best panel work I’ve seen. The art is all black and white, and the way Kirkman and Tony Moore, followed by Charlie Adlard, lay out the panels is perfect. It’s sparse, often with very little going on within each page, creating a great relationship between the story and the art. Also, they avoid the common pitfall of accidently giving away a big moment by placing a full panel event on the right page. What I mean is that so often I accidently learn something I don’t want to know when I turn the page, because as your turn a page you see page 35 on your right before you look back to 34 on your left. If there is this huge, full color death scene (or whatever) before my eyes as I turn the page, I can’t help but see it, so even though I haven’t read the stuff on the left, I know what happens on the next page. In The Walking Dead I am consistently impressed that they build up the big moment, and then make you turn the page to see what happened. It seems like it would be a simple, obvious thing to make work, but it is rare in my experience. They take the medium seriously, and realize what the reading experience will be like.

I really love this series. In the coming world, post Z-Day, the undead won’t be our only enemies. Other humans in the world, people in our own group of survivors, even our own sanity and grip on reality becomes tenuous and dangerous. Kirkman engages the potential for story in this realm with great attention to detail, honesty, impressive character psychologies, and gifted artistic help. You should read these! (And watch the show on AMC when it finally arrives in October).

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sdcc.

By • On • In nerd candy, scott, trailer park • 1 min read

As has been the case every year of my life, I did not attend Comic-Con this year. Alas, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it from afar. Here is some of the things I’m excited about, for now… as always, in no particular order.

1. The first image of Daniel Craig in Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens

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2. A new trailer for Tron Legacy

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3. Mark Ruffalo is the new Hulk!

It’s still far away, and we get Captain America and Thor in 2011, but news and rumors have still been trickling out steadily for months for The Avengers. First, in terms of strictly Avengers casting news, it was Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, but then the rumors started to surface of Whedon directing, and now Ruffalo as the Hulk… Mark fucking Ruffalo! Who doesn’t love that guy? (If you say “me,” I will reach through this computer and bitch-slap you.)

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4. More and more people are seeing Scott Pilgrim vs. The World… and more and more people are going ape-shit!

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5. Another new trailer for Let Me In

It doesn’t suck. I still have mixed feelings, but, you know, the trailer really doesn’t suck! Plus, the great cast is going a long way in winning me over.

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6. Trailer for The Goon

I know, lately everything is zombies and vampires. This isn’t anything new, it’s just more mainstream right now… especially concerning zombies. Sometimes, things are just too awesome to be kept for the fanboys and fangirls… especially concerning zombies.

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7. The new poster/first full cast shot for AMC’s The Walking Dead

I’ll be writing about the Robert Kirkman graphic novel at length soon, if you haven’t read it, trust me, it’s awesome.

The cast looks great, and as Frank Darabont guides this baby to (un)life in October, I am as excited for this as I’ve ever been for the premier of any television show.

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runaways, vol. 1-3. [graphic content.]

By • On • In books, graphic content, nerd candy, scott • 2 min read

Six teens find out their parents are super-villains, then go on the run to thwart their ‘rents evil plan to destroy the world. That’s about the gist of what gets things rolling in Runaways.

I just finished the initial story arc, written by Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina) which is covered in the first three volumes of the graphic novel form of the comics.

These books are really fun and original. It all takes place in the main Marvel universe, but does so with entirely new characters. Among other things, this makes it more exciting than normal when characters from the main universe cross over into the Runaways title, because we get to slowly see these kids become part of the fabric of the rest of this world of superheroes and villains.

Having only read the first three volumes, I’m not sure exactly how often this happens, but the first characters to show up in their book are Cloak and Dagger, so I wonder if writers continue to use the title as a place to play with fun B-List characters.

If the initial arc is any indication, they aren’t afraid to kill off major characters, but who knows if it will be the typical comic book/soap opera ‘no one is ever really dead,’ sort of thing.

The initial arc was great, but I’m curious to see what happened when other writers took over. Brian K. Vaughan is kind of a big deal, so he could probably make anything good. Vaughan wrote the first seven volumes, then #8 was written by none other than JOSS WHEDON!!!! After that, I’ll be interested to see how the series holds up when it transitioned from writer to writer. Either way, I am damned sure looking forward to what is in store for me over the next four volumes.

For those interested in a quick intro to the team, you’ve got Alex Rider, a tactical prodigy who leads the group; Nico (a.k.a. Sister Grimm), she has a staff which gives her magical powers; Chase (a.k.a. Talkback), he is a dumb jock, and he has x-ray goggles and gauntlets that manipulate fire; Gert (a.k.a. Arsenic), she has a telepathic velociraptor named Old Lace, Karolina (a.k.a. Lucy in the Sky), she is an alien and she has all sorts of powers; and Molly, (a.k.a Bruiser, a.k.a., Princess Powerful), she is a super-strong mutant who is also, well, an eleven-year-old girl.

If you’re in the market for a graphic novel to read, you could do a hell of a lot worse than this one. Fun times!

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My Journey into Nerdom

By • On • In brian, nerd virgins • 1 min read

So after having read Scott’s post about Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men we had a bit of a conversation about how awesome it was that his post generated so many hits. In the midst of this dialogue, I realized something. I am not a nerd, or at least, I am trying really hard pretending I am not. My only Joss Whedon experience was and still is the brilliant “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”. I haven’t seen any part of any episode of “Buffy”. I was never a “Trekky”. I never went apeshit for Star Wars. I was briefly into comics in middle school, but not much came out of that. I have no credentials.

With that said, I feel the next several weeks and months will be interesting for me. It is probably fair to ask why it has taken me so long to try to get into things like “Lost” (I’ve only seen the pilot), Harry Potter (haven’t read a page, haven’t seen a frame), saw Watchmen but only read about 20 pages of the graphic novel. I’m been partially baptized in nerd culture, but my full indoctrination has still yet to happen, and not because I haven’t been surrounded by it, or people who are passionate about it. I think it is because I am set in my ways on many things. I find things I do like, and watch or experience them over and over again. With this being true, new things that come along by recommendation or, my own discovery take some extra effort that I am reluctant to put forth. With friends like Scott and Wes, who are both part of this “nerd” subculture and partners and founders in this blogging adventure, I am now ensconced in this culture and (not that I had an excuse before) I now have no excuse whatsoever to avoid these things any longer. And anyway, as Scott mentioned, I may not be as far removed from the subculture as I think. There lies in me a love for these things which is dormant. Will jumping in awake the sleeping monster?

What are some things that I should make sure I don’t miss out on as I seek to be ravaged by nerdom. Who should be my first? Who should I let pop my cherry?

I can tell you which way I’m leaning …

LOST

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scott pilgrim. [graphic content.]

By • On • In books, graphic content, nerd candy, scott • 2 min read

If you know me at all, you are probably aware that I love the English language enough that I never, ever use instant message speak. No ‘ty,’ ‘rotf,’ or ‘ttyl.’ You’ll never get even the occasional ‘lol’ or ‘brb.’ That is why what is about to happen is a big deal. And it is all because of Scott Pilgrim.

The in-game nerdspeak, the ‘pwned’ sort, just comes bubbling up at the sheer awesomeness Bryan Lee O’Malley has unleashed on the world.

Let’s pretend you can ask me what I’ve thought of the Scott Pilgrim series so far.

“Hey, Scott. How’s Scott Pilgrim so far?”

[*Head glowing from awesomeness*] OMGWTFBBQLASERS!!!

Scott Pilgrim is amazing! No, seriously. Listen. Well, read. IT. IS. AMAZING.

Epic!

The word ‘original’ has been around for a long time. As have the words ‘awesome, ‘hilarious,’ and ‘magicawonderfulnerdtastic.’ Okay, so I made the last word up, but if it was a word, it would apply to what I am saying. We have been using those words all this time without realizing that they were invented just so that someday there would be the proper adjectives to describe the Scott Pilgrim books.

They are so fucking good. My whole life has simply been biding time, waiting until the day when I finally read about the adventures of Mr. Pilgrim.

I know what you are thinking. “Hey Scott, c’mon. You use hyperbole all the time. They can’t really be that good.”

To that I can only respond with: Shut the hell up, dude. If you ever open your stupid, blasphemous face and talk about Scott Pilgrim that way again, I will come to your house and crack an egg of knowledge all over you.

Seriously. It’s like O’Malley took all the awesome, lame, wonderful parts of the average nerd’s brain, influenced by the fact that we are the first generation to grow up completely immersed in video games, and he created a world out of it. A world where things actually happen the way I pretend they happen in my mind.

If you ever wanted to Level Up for doing the right thing, or have a weapon that offers +2 against Vegans, or get EXP points for going to work, then this is the series of indie comics for you.

These books are absurd in the best way possible, surreal and delightful. There isn’t really a way to describe how different they are from any other graphic novel or comic book I’ve ever read. Sooo good.

I already couldn’t wait for the movie to come out this August. Now I think I might have to get a doctor to place me in a controlled coma to get me from now to Inception, and then from that until Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

I’m already mentally preparing for a trip to Toronto to make a (please forgive the pun) pilgrimage.

That glowing review, and so far I’ve only even read Vol. 1-4. I had no freaking idea that Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour wasn’t out  as a graphic novel yet. It doesn’t come out until JULY?!?!?!?!? Terrible. My heart aches for it. What was that I was saying about a coma? I need to check with my local hospital about that.

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wolverine: old man logan. [graphic content.]

By • On • In books, graphic content, nerd candy, scott • 1 min read

I love it when people take a well-known, fictional universe, and then imagine a dream or nightmare scenario that turns the whole thing on its head. When this sort of thing is done poorly, it rightfully draws the scorn of those who love said fictional universe. However, when it is done well it can be loads of fun.

This sort of thing happens most often in the wonderful world of comic books. The long-term, serial nature of comics makes them the best medium for asking, “Hey, what do you think would happen if [insert insane hypothetical situation]?” I have my own idea for a just such a situation, a whole story arc that imagines what Bruce Wayne would be like if his parents had lived. What would the ‘world’s greatest detective’ look like without all that misplaced rage, guilt and insane drive to repair what can’t be fixed. Yet, that is for another post.

One of the masters of the sort of imaginings mentioned above is Mr. Mark Millar. He brought us Superman: Red Son, wondering what the Man of Steel, and the world, would be like if Kal-El had landed in the U.S.S.R., instead of the United States. He brought us Civil War, in which the US government passes a law forcing all superheroes to present themselves for registration. Heroes take sides on the pro-reg and anti-reg sides, and all hell breaks loose.

Recently, thanks to the Seattle Public Library, I got my hands on a copy of the fairly recent, Wolverine: Old Man Logan. In this, we move two generations into the future. That is, two generations after the bad guys finally realized there are, like, 20 villains to every one superhero, joined together, and took over the world. We find Logan as a simple farmer and family man in California, or, what used to be California. He does nothing at all to set things right. Why? Well, you’ll just have to read the book to find out.

I can’t go into much more detail than that without ruining some enjoyable twists and plot developments. Suffice it to say, it’s a really fun read, albeit, a noticeably darker and more violent one than is often the case, provided by one of the best writers working today, tackling one of the best heroes comics has ever had to offer.

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