Let's you and him fight

Top 10 Comics of 2011

Jones, one of the Jones boys — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:39:08 +0000

(10) Some boring bullshit

…

(2) Some boring bullshit

And the number one comic of 2011 is….
(1) My awesome comic. It’s reprinted below; I’m really proud of how this one turned out.

It’s titled “Your Mom”

Fuck it, I’ll start my own petition

Jones, one of the Jones boys — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 04:56:26 +0000

Dear world,

We, the undersigned, do believe that Dave Sim is a misogynist.

Yours etc.

1. Jones

PS: Nonetheless, we don’t believe he is the lowest, subhuman form of life in our society. Also, Cerebus is pretty good.

PPS: Rationale here

This post is flawed because it doesn’t contain several paragraphs on Norbert Weiner

Jones, one of the Jones boys — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:49:04 +0000

So the great psychologist, and “Nobel” laureate, Daniel Kahneman has written a pop science book summing up his prodigious life of research — good for him. If he’d started his research career thirty years later, he would have written a dozen such books by now; so much of his research lends itself to the genre of “Title/Subtitle: How One Half-Baked Idea Based on Other People’s Research Can Sell a Million Books”…except that Kahneman himself did all the research (with collaborators, of course), and his ideas are so very, very far from half-baked. We can only be grateful that we have the one pop book that he’s given us now. I hope he sells a zillion books.

Anyway, Freeman Dyson has a review of Kahneman’s book in the New York Review of Books, and his big criticism is…Kahneman never mentions Freud!

Not even in the footnotes!!!!!!

Shit, man, what about Skinner??? Does Kahneman have nothing to say about the humoral theory? Where my Robert Burton at, homeboy? I thought A Brief History of Time should have had at least two chapters on Ptolemy; The Selfish Gene, two on Georges Cuvier.

On the other hand, Dyson’s review doesn’t name-drop Malcolm Gladwell or David fucking Brooks, so there is that. (Speaking of “Title/Subtitle”…)

PS: Bonus points for Dyson for repeating the furphy that William James and Sigmund Freud were not scientists. Just because a lot of their theories were false, doesn’t mean they weren’t scientists — they were just unlucky!

Department of Exceedingly Obvious yet, Embarrassingly, Belated Realisations

Jones, one of the Jones boys — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 09:48:45 +0000

1: Oh, shit, dude — Thor’s helmet has wings, and Loki’s helmet has horns SYMBOLISM!

2: Is it just me, or are large chunks of the “mainstream” comics blogosphere exactly like Patrick Bateman’s critical appraisals of Huey Lewis and the News?

The saddest 11 words in the English language

Jones, one of the Jones boys — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 01:14:47 +0000

“Concluding Dark Horse’s complete reprinting of Stanley and Tripp’s Little Lulu…”

Little Lulu, RIP

The Top 10 Cerebus characters of all time

Jones, one of the Jones boys — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:35:01 +0000

The comics hive mind has decided it’s time to talk about Cerebus again. Here’s my contribution to the ongoing critical discourse, in the form of a list of the ten greatest Cerebus characters of all time. But you already knew that from the post’s title — UHOH SPOILER. Enjoy the list; you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll wonder why I’ve broken into your apartment and started rooting through your linen cupboard while hyperventilating.

***

Top 10 Cerebus characters of all time:

10. Alec

9. The fake Oscar

8. Missy

7. The something that fell

6. Viktor Reid

5. Ham Ernestway

4. Mary Ernestway

3. Flaming Carrot

2. That one incarnation of Astoria that briefly appeared in a flashback during Church and State (tie)

2. Yoohoo (tie)

…

….

and

…

1. Dirty Drew McGrew

***

But not Rick. Man, I fucking hate Rick.

A few words about Tezuka’s Buddha

Jones, one of the Jones boys — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 06:04:46 +0000

After re-reading Phoenix, I recently decided to re-read Buddha. As was probably the case with many English readers, Buddha formed my first exposure to Osamu Tezuka’s more serious works. And it’s a good starting-point for Tezuka, containing as it does many of his stylistic themes, habits and quirks. E.g. formal play (as when characters break through the panel walls); cute animals; a broad humanism; his famous “star system” (although there are fewer cameos and roles for his regular cast than in some of his other works); the juxtaposition of cartoony figures against quasi-realistic backgrounds; patchgourds and the little pleased-to-meet-ya guy; and above all the wild variations in tone from pathos to bathos and back again from page to page — and sometimes even within a single page. It’s also his longest single continuous narrative thus far published in English and, I would guess, probably his longest one in any language. [Phoenix, for mine, being more a series of short stories connected through theme and the occasional cross-over character; while Astro Boy and Black Jack, although longer, are episodic by nature.]

The result is a vast epic, by turns raucous and calm, deeply respectful and irreverent, tragic and comic (see what I mean about the variations in tone?). In terms of the Buddha’s own personal journey, the climax comes at the end of Volume 4, when he achieves enlightenment — uh, SPOILER, I guess, in the way that you’d spoil The Passion by revealing that Jesus gets it in the end. I mean, the whole point of the Buddha is that he achieves enlightenment; that’s why he’s called the Buddha, the name meaning “Enlightened One”. But Tezuka fills his pages with secondary characters, each of whom has a gripping, moving story to tell and so you barely notice that there’s nowhere really for the nominal protagonist to go, or grow, after halfway through the series. Indeed, I had forgotten how much of this series is given over to business with other characters than the Buddha himself.

That said, I felt a slight dip in the series around Volume 6, when Ananda is introduced. I’m not sure that the series needed another bandit to be converted by the Buddha, or another figure who hates the caste system, or another woman whose muteness is cured by the Buddha. Tezuka seems to be repeating himself here, with diminishing returns. But things pick up again in the final volume. Another quibble — I thought the telling of the Four Encounters (where a pre-enlightenment Siddharta first encounters death, disease, old age and asceticism) was somewhat fumbled. This is one of the greatest myths in the world, and Tezuka rather hurries over it in his haste to cram in as much of human interest as possible.

(And I still bloody hate those Chip Kidd dust-sleeves on the hardcovers)

Still, these are minor quibbles with a monumental, deeply moving epic worthy of its subject matter. If anyone was going to draw a three thousand-page manga biography of the Buddha, I’m glad it was Tezuka.

Recommended? Absolutely.

Random review time

Jones, one of the Jones boys — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 02:45:08 +0000

Children of the Sea Vol. 1. Daisuke Igarashi. Viz, 2009. $14.99, 320 pages.

HP Lovecraft hated fish. No, scratch that — he hated all sea creatures; he was nothing if not an equal-opportunity hater. To Lovecraft, our finny friends were monstrous, alien things; or, as he might have put it himself, they represented an unspeakable horror, a nameless revulsion and were all round just plain icky. You can find this in various of Lovecraft’s works, but most notably in The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Dagon.

This sentiment was echoed in manga by Junji Ito’s Gyo (not, incidentally, the only time Ito has echoed Lovecraft — witness the Cyclopean freak-out at the end of Uzumaki). In Gyo, sea creatures are horrors of the id, swelling up from the depths and irrupting into the natural order of things. They’re also, again, just kind of icky.

Children of the Sea represents the complete opposite of this sentiment. This is a manga about the wonders of the sea, and how its mysterious life-forms have their own otherworldly and sublime beauty, a beauty at risk but well worth saving. Igarashi’s art is serviceable at best when it comes to figure work and above the waterline, but below the surface, in the underwater scenes, displays an unpretentious and unobtrusive sense of wonder.

It’s also the most thoroughly YA manga I’ve ever read and, indeed, the most YA comic I’ve read since Chynna Clugston-Major’s Queen Bee. I’m so not the target audience for this; in the end I had a hard time appreciating it because of this. The low-key atmospherics and gentle plot development didn’t grab me enough to make me come back for a second volume, but it’s easy to imagine younger readers glomming onto it.

Recommended? If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably too old to appreciate this manga.

DMZ Vol. 8: Hearts and Minds. Brian Wood, Riccardo Burchielli, Ryan Kelly, Jeremy Cox and Jared K. Fletcher. Vertigo, 2010. $16.99, 192 pages.

There was a bit of debate in the blogosphere, a few months back, about whether the eponymous protagonist of Dan Clowes’ Wilson was unsympathetic; and, as a corollary, whether narrative art requires sympathetic protagonists. I’m in favour of saying no to that latter question — Cerebus, for instance, spent long periods of his comic being pretty unlikeable but the series never suffered for it. (Insert obligatory disclaimer about Dave Sim’s political views).

With DMZ, many readers think we have another example of an unsympathetic protagonist. That is, a lot of people think the series protagonist, Matty Roth, is an unsympathetic, simple-minded douchebag in over his head. They’re wrong: Roth is a sympathetic, simple-minded douchebag well out of his depth.

At least, I thought so until I got to this volume. And now there’s a major plot twist which has me questioning not only whether Roth is still sympathetic but whether I actually want to keep reading a series where the protagonist has done what Roth has done. To keep reading after this, feels like an act of complicity in the darker side of US foreign policy.

Which is an odd sort of conjuring-trick on Wood’s part, since his politics seem to be even further to the left than mine. He’d surely be the first to condemn said darker side. And certainly Wood isn’t condoning Roth’s actions here…even so, I’m not sure I can keep reading a comic book where the lead character has become

[SPOILER]

a war criminal.

[/END SPOILER]

Maybe that’s just my hang-up, man, but if so, then so be it.

Recommended? No.

The Poor Bastard. Joe Matt. Drawn and Quarterly, 2001. $16.95, 176 pages.

Oh hey, speaking of unsympathetic protagonists…well, you can say this much about autobiographer Joe Matt: he’s not afraid to paint himself in the worst possible light. In this collection of stories from Matt’s Peepshow, he depicts himself as a tightwad, a creep, a jerk, a schmuck, a lowlife, a loser, a bum, a deadbeat etc. etc. etc.

And, brother, do I mean “et cetera”.

Seriously, has there been an autobiographical cartoonist since Crumb who has been so devoted to telling us all what a despicable character he really is? This is less “warts and all” than ”all warts”.

Recommended? I enjoyed it, but, boy, your mileage sure may vary.

Phoenix 10-12

Jones, one of the Jones boys — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:41:45 +0000

Phoenix Vols 10 & 11: Sun Parts 1 & 2. Osamu Tezuka. Viz, 2007. $15.99/$16.99, 344/344 pages.

Does doing it twice count as a motif? Because it’s striking that two of Tezuka’s best works, viz. Ode to Kirihito and the two-volume Sun (which is reprinted here as Phoenix Vols 11 & 12) feature protagonists with the heads of dogs. Well, okay, it’s a wolf’s head here in Phoenix, but still.

That’s not even the weirdest part of Sun, however. No, that dubious honour goes to the curious theology on display here. The gods are real, it seems, but not exactly how we imagine them. They’re more like political powers than spiriual ones. One of the chief conflicts in Sun arises from the introduction of foreign-born Buddhism into hitherto animist Japan. The Buddhist gods are thus presented as a sort of expansionist, imperialistic power being foisted on an unwilling populace.

And none of this metaphorically. We actually see the gods themselves in combat with the local forest spirits.

What makes this truly weird is that Tezuka had of course, a decade earlier, created a major, 2500-page biography of the Gautama Buddha. So what had previously been presented as a force for good is now seen as a foreign intrusion. Had Tezuka changed his mind? Or was he simply presenting another side of the story?

As with much in Phoenix, we’ll never know — Tezuka died before creating the final installment, which he had promised would explain how all the previous volumes tied together. In a way, I think it might have been best for Phoenix that Tezuka never finished; without the overarching web of connective tissue that a final volume would have produced, what we have instead is a series of volumes suggestively connected by theme, allusion and the occasional carry-over character. The result, I suspect, is richer than Tezuka’s grand plan could ever have been.

Recommended? Some of Tezuka’s best work, so yes. Don’t worry about starting a series at the end; the stories in Phoenix don’t, for the most part, tell a single continuous narrative from beginning to end, so it’s quite possible to start reading here.

Phoenix Vol. 12: Early Works. Osamu Tezuka. Viz, 2008. $14.99, 188 pages.

So in a way it’s fitting that the end to Phoenix isn’t some puzzle piece that connects all the dots, but rather this volume, which reprints work from decades before Tezuka had started the Phoenix saga proper. The Early Works of the title come from Tezuka’s days working on shojo manga, and it shows — there’s plenty of frilly, pretty stuff on display here.

Not that these works are entirely unconnected to the “real” Phoenix. They revolve around the immortal bird, which looks here much like how Tezuka would later draw it, and indeed it’s noteworthy just how similar these stories feel to the later, “real” Phoenix stories. Characters seek in vain to drink the immortality-giving blood of the magic bird. Futile, tragic wars are waged. Key figures are reincarnated in later eras. These Early Works really do seem like Phoenix 1.0.

So, as I say, it seems only fitting that the mad, sprawling epic of Phoenix should end with shojo romance and funny animals. In a work that spans millennia, and covers slapstick, war, fantasy, science-fiction, comedy, tragedy and everything in between, why not? Phoenix contains multitudes — and then some.

Recommended? Definitely, but only for those who’ve already read the other volumes.

Incognito v. Detroit Metal City

Jones, one of the Jones boys — Mon, 24 May 2010 10:51:32 +0000

Incognito. Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips and Val Staples. Icon, 2009. $18.99, 176 pages.

Shorter review: Oh wait you guys I think I already read this when it was called Sleeper

Longer review: Narrative artists recycle tropes, motifs, characters, settings, moods, plots, even dialogue, and they do it all the time. It’s called schtick or, if you prefer, style. As is well known, Warren Ellis has exactly one protagonist, on which he has written a hundred variations. Garth Ennis basically writes the same story over and over again. And that’s just to pick the two most obvious examples from “mainstream” comics; if we broadened our focus to consider the alt-comix crowd, the list would grow even longer (Ware, Crumb, et al.) Sometimes this repetition bothers the reader; sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve had my lifetime quota for Ellis protagonists, but can still handle Ennis–de gustibus non disputandum est, I guess.

So I can’t really account for why Incognito‘s trip back to the well rubbed me the wrong way, but there you go. Brubaker and Phillips already did this comic a few years ago, this mash-up of noir and off-brand supervillainy, and they did it better the first time. The only addition is a dash of Fight Club-esque satire of white collar disaffection, but even that seemed more half-arsed than anything.

I generally like Ed Brubaker well enough, but I couldn’t tell whether Incognito was the product of mercenary cynicism or just a mediocre vision. I’m not sure which is worse but at any rate it’s not a dilemma that speaks well of the book.

Recommended? No.

Detroit Metal City Vol. 1. Kiminori Wakasugi. Viz Media, 2009. $12.99, 200 pages.

This, on the other hand, was excellent, a mad, silly comedy about the Japanese death metal scene. The basic set-up is farce genius: protagonist Soichi Negishi is a sweet-natured nice guy whose main wish in life is to be loved for his gentle, twee acoustic pop songs. Sample lyric: “When I wake up in the morning/You’re there making cheese tarts.” The text doesn’t use the phrase, but it seems pretty clear to me that Negishi is, or wants to be, a shibuya artist (the shout-out to Pizzicato Five helps cement this impression).

The only problem is that Negishi only finds (unwanted) success as Krauser II, the deranged front man for up-and-coming death metal band Detroit Metal City. And try as he might, Negishi can’t escape the scabrous, profane and occasionally dangerous lifestyle of his alter ego. Comedy ensues.

And does it ensue. The comedy here has basically two sources: (1) the contrast between Negishi’s gentle, “true” self (in a telling detail, his favourite film is Jean-Pierre Jeunet quirk-fest Amélie) and the over-the-top shocks of his alter ego; and (2) the inherent ridiculousness of death metal. Both sources are richly and adeptly mined; honestly, this is the funniest manga — and I’m talking laugh-out-loud-funny — I’ve read since (the lamentably unfinished in English) Octopus Girl. Which means, yes, this is funnier than Sgt. Frog (which, it must be said, I never really warmed to); more notably, it’s even funnier than Jones favourites Cromartie and Yakitate!! Japan. Special mention to the Tetrapot Melon Tea gags; that shit is gold.

It helps that the stories here, at around 15 pages each, are shorter than the manga standard of around 20, so they never outstay their welcome. The one caution I would sound about the series is a doubt whether the premise is fertile enough to justify multiple volumes. To judge from the first volume, it’s not yet clear whether DMC is a one-trick pony. But in any case, this first volume is as close to perfect comedy as anything I’ve read in a long time.

Recommended? The highest possible recommendation, although it should be noted: this manga is most definitely not for the easily offended.