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Reviews and commentary by Tony Isabella
"America's Most Beloved Comic-Book Writer & Columnist"
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TONY'S ONLINE TIPS
for Tuesday, January 8, 2008
From Comics Buyer's Guide #1637:
"Christmas gift suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect."
- Oren Arnold (1900-1980), novelist, journalist, humorist
CBG editor Brent Frankenhoff, he of the rosy cheeks and cherry nose, requested that my fellow columnists and I list five gifts we would suggest giving to others and one gift we ourselves would like to receive. In my case, this is manifestly redundant, what with me pretty much doing that every month. But how could deny anything to the right jolly old elf who signs my pay vouchers?
This holiday season I'm recommending books by friends of mine, starting with Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe [Kent State University Press; $27.95, hardcover, $18.95, paperback] by Tom Batiuk. Though a book collecting the final months of a woman's life - as shown in Batiuk's Funky Winkerbean strip - may seem a strange choice for a holiday gift, what comes through strongest in this story is Lisa's courage and dignity, and the love of her family and friends. I've been a Batiuk fan for decades and I believe this is his strongest work in a career filled with memorable work.
As a result of Batiuk's commitment to helping people facing their real life battles with cancer, University Hospitals Ireland Cancer Center in Cleveland has unveiled the Lisa's Legacy Fund for Cancer Research and Education. Batiuk and King Features Syndicate will donate all royalties from the book to the fund.
Harlan Ellison was one of my favorite writers before he and I became friends. I don't know if I'm most grateful for his writings or his friendship. Currently, I'm reading Dreams With Sharp Teeth, a 1991 Quality Paperback Book Club omnibus of I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream, Deathbird Stories, and Shatterday. I've read these 42 stories before, I'm reading them now, and I'll surely read them again. As with most of Ellison's work, these stories reward the reader on each return visit.
Harlan has written at least 75 books and over 1700 stories and other works. I say "at least" because I haven't talked to him in a couple weeks and it may be more by now. It's even money it will be more before this column appears in CBG. Any of Ellison's books, be they short story collections, novels, books of essays, graphic albums/novels, any one of them, would make a wonderful gift for any family member or friend who appreciates great writing.
Kirby: King of Comics by Mark Evanier [Abrams; $40] should be on this list, but, since the publication date of the sure-to-be-splendid biography of one of comicdom's greatest creators has been moved to February, it's not. I guess you could print off a picture of the book's cover and give that to your friends. Or order it now and give it as a birthday present. Either way, you should plan on buying a great many copies of this book.
With Evanier out of the running, my third gift suggestion is The Sky's the Limit [Star Trek; $16]. Edited by Marco Palmieri, this Star Trek: The Next Generation anthology celebrates the 20th anniversary of the series with 14 all-new tales, including an excerpt from ToykoPop's Star Trek manga. My buddies Bob Ingersoll and Thom Zahler wrote one of the stories. There are also stories by Greg Cox and Keith R.A. DeCandido, whose super-hero novels have been reviewed favorably in past editions of this column.
Every month, Nostalgia Ventures and Anthony Tollin, a friend of nearly four decades, publish the pulp magazine adventures of the Shadow and Doc Savage in handsome trade paperbacks at the amazingly low price of only $12.95 each. Every book reprints two full-length novels and then sweetens the deal with informative articles on the characters, their writers, and more. Occasionally, editor Tollin even throws in a third story. What a deal!
The Shadow and Doc Savage were inspirations - and sometimes a lot more - to the earliest comic-book writers. Most of the novels stand the test of time quite well, delivering action and suspense to their new readers. I've reviewed these books in the past and I will surely review them in the future. They make outstanding gifts for adventure fans of all ages.
I have a close personal relationship with Godzilla. I think everyone should. My fifth and final gift suggestion of the issue, if you don't, y'know, count all the reviews that will follow these opening comments, are Classic Media's Godzilla DVDs, all priced in the $20 range. Currently available are Gojira/Godzilla King of the Monsters; Godzilla Raids Again; Mothra Vs. Godzilla; Ghidorah, the Three-headed Monster; and Invasion of the Astro-Monster (Monster Zero)...with at least two more movies on the way.
What makes these DVDs so spiffy are that you get the original Japanese version of the movies, their American versions, and great commentaries and special features. Production values are high and the fun is enormous. If there's a better way to get your Godzilla on, I haven't found it.
Now comes the hardest part of this exercise in holiday gift-giving. I have to decide which of these gifts to give to which of my friends. Or I could consign my friends to my "naughty" list and keep all these goodies for myself.
Actually, the hardest part of this editor-requested exercise is figuring out the one gift I'd like. I have a good life with a great family, great friends, work I love, and more comics, books, and DVDs than I know what to do with. When thinking about how to answer this question, many of my possible answers were more in the arena of career/personal goals or impossibly large "wishes." In no particular order, they included things like:
Publishing a collection of my Black Lightning stories;
Having some big, mean, powerful law firm offer to do pro bono work for me;
Finding the time to organize my vast accumulation of stuff so I can sell about 80% of it on eBay;
An all-expenses paid trip to Comic-Con International in sunny San Diego;
An all-expenses paid trip to Great Britain;
An all-expenses paid trip to Japan;
Renovating my home office;
Being a guest on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, or even The Colbert Report; and,
Putting an end to the online piracy of comic books.
I also thought about "asking" for Timely/Atlas comics of the 1940s through early 1960s; Gorgo and Konga comics; Alan Class comic books from England; Candy, a teen humor comic created by the great Harry Serle for Quality Comics in the 1940s; and a complete set of Blonde Phantom stories from the same era. But, when I thought it out a little more, I realized that, as much fun as those books are, they're just more stuff and I really need to curb my acquisition of new stuff until I clear out a lot of old stuff.
I hit 56 and I get practical. Go figure.
I finally did hit on the one gift I'd like to "receive" and, as befitting my style, it's an odd choice:
I would like readers to buy more Marvel Comics hardcovers and trade paperbacks.
It's personal. Marvel has been really good about sending me copies of books in which they reprint stories I wrote for them back in the day. Marvel has been really good about paying me royalties on those reprints. I can't speak for other creators, but Marvel's done right by me and, for that reason, I would like readers to buy more of their books: Marvel Masterworks, Essentials, manga-format books, and trade paperbacks.
I do realize that, instead of listing a gift I'd like to get, I'm, instead, requesting a "gift" for Marvel. But, yea, verily, my friends, it is more blessed to give than to receive and, especially at this time of year, I feel very blessed, indeed.
I wish you stress-free holiday shopping and, of course, the happiest of holiday seasons.
******
Alan Moore remains one of the most "bankable" names in comic books, so among the surprising things about Alan Moore's Complete WildC.A.T.S. [$29.99] and Alan Moore: Wild Worlds [$24.99] is that it took this long for WildStorm to collect these mid-to-late 1990s super-hero tales into trade paperbacks. While their "Image-style" art might not be to every reader's taste, the stories were several notches above most super-hero comics of their era and, with a few notable exceptions, remain as entertaining and even thought-provoking as they were on their original publications.
WildC.A.T.S. is a nearly 400-page, double-tiered epic wherein most of the founders of the team have returned to their homeworld and those who remained have rebuilt the team with some questionable new members and a far more pro-active philosophy of crime-fighting. Nothing works out quite the way either grouping of heroes thought it would, but Moore enlivens the action with shocking revelations and seemingly throw-away concepts that are delightful on their own but also key to the story. In typical Moore fashion, some of these concepts could carry their own series. Though it's difficult to keep track of all the characters who move through WildC.A.T.S., there are a dozen or more heroes and villains we get to know well. I wouldn't mind seeing some of them again.
WildC.A.T.S. isn't prime Moore, but it's a solid thriller that earns an impressive four out of five Tonys.
Wild Worlds isn't quite as impressive a collection. The book leads off with an absolutely horrid Spawn/WildC.A.T.S. team-up set mostly in the future. It's slightly over a hundred pages of "this couldn't possibly have been written by Alan Moore" mediocrity and part of me refuses to accept that it was written by Moore. Putting it at the front of the book was a huge mistake.
The rest of the book is much better. A poignant Majestic tale takes the immortal hero to the end of our universe.
A Voodoo mini-series followed one of the WildC.A.T.S. to a new life and a growing awareness of her potential. Set in New Orleans, it's a solid story worthy of a sequel.
Drawn by Jim Baikie, "Deathblow: Byblows" has a classic 2000 AD feel to it. Another solid effort.
Filling out this volume - and quite out of place in it - is a WildC.A.T.S. story that also appears in the Complete WildC.A.T.S. It'll be all but meaningless to anyone who hasn't read the stories in the other collection.
Wild Worlds is too uneven to rate top marks. It earns three out of five Tonys.
Devilish Greetings: Vintage Devil Postcards [Fantagraphics; $18.95] could be a cool stocking stuffing for those weird enough to enjoy it. Written, edited, and designed by Monte Beauchamp, this book collects 140 full-color postcards that made their way across Europe and the United States at the turn of the previous century through the star of the first world war. Made possible by newly-developed printing processes, these scandalous cards flourished in their time and are still fun today. Best enjoyed in small doses, due to its repetitious subject matter, the book earns a perfectly respectable three Tonys.
I take slight exception to the use of the word "best" in the title The Mammoth Book of Best War Comics [Carroll & Graf; $17.99]. Formidable though this 500-page anthology is, it does not include stories from the best American publishers of war comics: EC, DC, Marvel/Atlas, and Charlton, not to mention the publishers whose 1950s war comics are unfamiliar to me. That said, there's still a great deal of remarkable material in this book.
The stories range from Keiji Nakawasa's I Saw It! - more an aftermath-of-war tale than an actual war story - to Eric Drookner's "Casting Stones," a concise parable about the corruptive nature of power. Archie Goodwin is represented by a handful of his Blazing Combat scripts, notable among them the brilliant Joe Orlando-drawn "Landscape."
From England we get Raymond Briggs' wonderfully mean-spirited The Tin-Pot Foreign General & The Old Iron Woman, the first chapter of the long-running "Charley's War" serial, and a couple of done-in-one digest-size war comics.
Sam Glanzman gets major props via full-color reprints of war stories he drew for Dell. There are tales from Will Eisner's Last Day in Vietnam and several from Negative Burn. Perhaps the most unusual choice made by editor David Kendall was to include The Legion of Charlies underground comic by Tom Veitch and Greg Irons. I didn't care for it, but, in a book this thick, there was bound to be some material I didn't like.
My pick for the best story in the volume would be "Landscape," followed by I Saw It! and "School Essays of Berlin Kids About the Year 1945." Created by Ulli Lust and translated by Kai Pfeiffer, these are actual essays adapted into comics form.
With so much flat-out excellent material and so much variety in that material, I needn't dwell overmuch on what isn't in The Mammoth Book of Best War Comics. It earns the full five Tonys.
At the dawn of comicdom's Golden Age, Timely Comics launched the careers of such classic heroes as Captain America, the Human Torch, and Sub-Mariner. But not all the publisher's costumed cut-ups were the stuff of Legend and, to get evidence of that, you need look no further than Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age U.S.A. Comics Vol. 1 [Marvel; $59.99].
With only a few exceptions, the characters in the first four issues of U.S.A. Comics weren't even second-bananas heroes. More like third-kumquats. The Whizzer gets points for sticking around through most of the 1940s, but the rest of the title's heroes were gone before D-Day.
Jack Frost was a sub-zero knock-off of Bill Everett's Namor, but a young Stan Lee did some good writing on the feature. Major Liberty commanded the "spirits of freedom" in some, but not all, of his adventures, and that was moderately interesting.
The Vagabond? He was a cop who disguised himself as a hobo to fight crime. The concept was weird, his look was even weirder, but his stories were strictly from hunger.
The rest of the bunch were just plain mediocre. The stories have some historical importance - they featured the early work of stars-to-be like Syd Shores and Mike Sekowsky - but, o my stars and garters, do they stink up the place.
My negativity aside, I still recommend this hardcover volume to any reader interested in the Golden Age of Comics. You simply can't get the full picture of that era if you only read the best it had to offer. Besides, buying these issues in just good condition would still set you back a touch over two grand. You can get them here for sixty bucks and far less with a little judicious shopping. That's decent bang for your bucks.
Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age U.S.A. Comics Vol. 1 picks up three out of five Tonys.
******
ADDENDUM
That's the cover of Batman #27 [February-March, 1945] leading off today's TOT. It was pencilled and inked by the great Jack Burnley.
After this column ran in CBG, Harlan Ellison called to tell me Dreams With Sharp Teeth is out of print. However, you might still be able to purchase the book from HERC, also known as The Harlan Ellison Recording Collection. For more info, head over to:
harlanellison.com/herc.htm
Since writing this column, I've read Bob Ingersoll's and Thom Zahler's story in The Sky's The Limit and it's real spiffy. It features a terrific dilemma for its heroes, a fair resolution to said dilemma, and a real nice "B" plot. If I ever read the rest of the anthology, I'll likely review it here.
******
TONY POLLS
It's Tuesday...and that means I have some brand-new Tony Polls questions for you. However, since I'm writing this column before I write those questions I don't know exactly what they are. Except I'm pretty sure one of them will be on World War Hulk and another will be on Spider-Man: One More Day.
To find out what else I come up with, and to cast your votes on whatever I come up with, go here:
www.worldfamouscomics.com/tony/poll
Thanks for spending a part of your day with me. I'll be back tomorrow with more stuff.
Tony Isabella
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THE "TONY" SCALE
ZERO: Burn your money before buying any comic receiving this rating. It doesn't *necessarily* mean there's absolutely nothing of value here - though it *could* - but whatever value it might possess shrinks into insignificance before its overall awfulness.
ONE: Buy something else. Maybe I found something which wasn't completely dreadful in the item, but not enough for me to recommend it when there are better comics available. I only want what's best for you, my children.
TWO: Basic judgment call. I found some value, but not enough to recommend it. My review should give you enough info to decide if you want to take a chance on it. Are you feeling lucky today, punk? Well, are you?
THREE: This denotes something I find perfectly respectable. There are better books out there, but I wouldn't regret buying this item. Based on my review, you should be able to determine if it's of interest to you. Let the Force guide you.
FOUR: I recommend anything earning this rating. Unless you don't like the genre, subject matter, or past work of the creators, I believe you'll enjoy this item. Isn't it uncanny how I can look right into your soul that way?
FIVE: Anything getting this rating is among the best comicdom has to offer. You should buy/read this, even if the genre/subject matter doesn't appeal to you. It's for your own good. Me, I live for comics and books this good...but not in a pathetic "Comic-Book Guy" sort of way.
Please send material you would like me to review to:
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