2002-09-05 - 12:53 p.m.

Funnybooks!

Ah, funnybooks! What are funnybooks? That's what some old people used to call comics books, and it used to annoy the dickens out of me. Thank heavens all those old duffers are dying off.

Well, it's new comics day and time for a short survey of what interesting books have come in today. Folks might be wondering about why I'm doing this on a Thursday, not a Wednesday, that's because Labor Day pushed the shipments back a day. I remember when our distributor first started using UPS they didn't realize that all the holidays that UPS takes were going to monkey with their shipments! Oops! That first Wednesday after Labor Day everyone was screaming "WHERE ARE MY COMICS???"

First off, I'd like to mention a comic company that probably few of you have heard of - Crossgen Comics. They are a company that started up about two years ago, and now have about a dozen titles. They specialize in science fiction/fantasy/adventure books. That's right folks, no superheroes!

Crossgen seems to be an innovative company that is using some unusual marketing to tout their product - I believe they now have some sort of school/learning promotion to introduce comics and reading to young children. Although I'm sure their sales in the direct comic market are modest, they seem to be branching out into TV and movie deals so their future looks bright.

Ruse #11

This comic takes place in Arcadia, which looks very much like Victorian England. It follows the adventures of Simon Archard the Sherlock Holmes of Arcadia. Archard has his own Moriarity in the form of Malcolm Lightbourne, a criminal mastermind who was once Archard's mentor.

This issue gives the background of the relationship between Archard and Lightborne, which I guess makes it sort of an origin issue. The story is engaging and the art and coloring are above average. My only objection is that many of the pages read all the way across the centerfold, making it a little difficult to follow the narrative.

Sojourn #14

Okay, so I lied. This didn't come in this week, but in fact came in a couple weeks before.

The story of Sojourn (another Crossgen Book) is pretty straight forward: the dread lord Mordath who has been dead over 300 years is somehow back from the grave, and has reconquered the Five Lands. The only thing that can kill him is a mystical arrow that has been broken into five parts. The beautiful archer Arwyn and her roguish companion Gareth are on a journey to unite the five parts of the arrow and kill Mordeth again.

The plot sounds somewhat like The Lord of the Rings but so what? The most important factor here is the absolutely gorgeous art of Greg Land, who first caught my eye when he was doing Birds of Prey for DC. I really can't say enough about how beautiful the art on this book looks.

This particular issue allows Land to go to Good Girl Heaven as Arwyn and Gareth break into a rather Egyptian-looking city full of lovely winged ladies. Ummm, I'd like to tell you what the plot of this issue is, but I just got distracted looking at the visuals. Yummy.

And now a couple of books from other publishers...

Alias #14

This is one of my favorite reads currently.

Jessica Jones is sole proprietor of Alias Investigations, a private investigation firm in the Marvel Universe. She used to be a low-level superhero back in the day, but she proved to be not very good at it. Is she bitter about it? Oh, yeah. She has a drinking problem, and sleeps around a little more than she should.

Currently Jessica is hunting down a sixteen-year-old runaway named Rebecca who may or may not be a mutant. Whatever Rebecca is, her home life was ugly and the small town she lived in was full of narrow-minded bigots.

In this issue Jessica finds Rebecca who turns out not to be a mutant after all. I wouldn't be the first person to make this point, but the reason for the popularity of Marvel's "mutant books" for the last 25 years is that many adolescents feel like they are "mutants:" misunderstood, hated and feared. As far as that goes maybe Rebecca IS a mutant: a sensitive, artistic girl in a town full of racist dullards.

Alias is a Marvel Max series, and as such Jessica Jones is more of an anti-hero than a hero. She definitely has a lot of emotional baggage and doesn't seem to be handling it that well. However, the books is full of nice touches, courtesy of writer Brian Michael Bendis. I know, I know. I've already reviews two of Bendis' other books, Daredevil, and Powers. As hard as it is to fathom Alias is only one of FIVE monthly books Bendis is writing. This guy must be some sort of masochist!

My favorite moment in this particular issue is when Jessica finds Rebecca in a coffeeshop and some big bruiser tries to stop Jessica from leaving with the girl. She asks him: "Have you ever been kicked in the nuts by a superhero?" And then promptly fills in that particular gap in this guy's experience. When I read that, I laughed and laughed.

Yes, Mr. Hamster has a childish sense of humor! So sue me!

Thor #54

This isn�t a books that I've been following much recently, but this issue seemed of particular interest.

Asgard, the home of the Norse Gods, is now hovering in the sky over New York City. The Rainbow Bridge is ferrying the inhabitants of the mystical city back and forth to Manhattan, and having Norse Gods wandering the streets is having a direct effect on the people who live there.

In this storyline, writer Dan Jurgens is tackling something that has bothered me about Thor for a while. In a world where people are constantly looking for proof of the existence of God, how would people handle it if there was a guy standing in front of them who could make it rain by tapping his hammer on the ground? People seem desperate to prove that miracles can really occur, but Thor can pick up a bus with one hand and throw it! That's miracle enough for me!

The main focus of this issue are three ordinary people whose lives are touched by the sudden appearance of Asgardian gods in their midst. The end of the book shows all of them going into a "Church of Asgard." One of these people was a nun, so it looks like Christianity finally has some real competition.

I wonder where Jurgens is going with this storyline, and I wonder what sort of backlash he's going to get from his religious readers. Since there is no letter column in Thor we may never know...

The art in this issue was good, but not great. One of the downsides of being me and having this immense memory from comics is that I can spot art swipes from a mile away. On one page I saw two Neal Adams art swipes from Thor #180, which came out in 1970. Why can't my brain do more useful stuff with itself?