Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #187 by Drew Barth

Forgotten Rockets

In the 2010s, there was a resurgence of pulp characters. From Doc Savage teaming up with Batman to The Phantom having his own ongoing series, nostalgia for older heroes came back in force, then kind of disappeared. Some publishers still put out reinventions of the pulps of the past, but the medium’s zeitgeist quickly changed and those stories were quietly forgotten. And yet there’s still one pulp—in a newspaper strip format no less—that predated much of that pulp craze by being completely original: Frank Espinosa and Marie Taylor’s Rocketo.

Rocketo is the story of the titular Rocketo Garrison and his adventures as a Mapper in a shattered world not unlike our own. After an alien attack that nearly wiped out all life on Earth, the remnants created new species of people that could thrive and rebuild: earth men, bird men, fish men, and the Mappers. Those Mappers would help navigate the new oceans that had opened up between devastated continents and help rebuild. Rocketo was one of those Mappers before a great war left his mapping abilities dulled to the point of uselessness. But he can still read a map and that’s all that’s needed to help navigate the Hidden Sea that has swallowed all who had dared venture into its deadly waves. It is, of course, pure pulp via 2006 with Espinosa’s kinetic art that brings to mind the best concept art for an adventure film that would never be produced.

Normally, I put a link to the comic’s publisher in the opening so readers can navigate to it and see if they want to try it for themselves. But we can’t do that with Rocketo. Even though Image published this title, it doesn’t have a page on their website anymore. The best you can find is used bookstores and even then half of them are sold out. And it’s odd. It’s available digitally, but Comixology likely isn’t going to remain a long-term solution for digital work. So what do we do with comics like Rocketo and the dozens, if not hundreds more, that kind of just slipped through the modern cracks? Is there even anything we can do for them? There are incredible series like Rocketo out there, but as this is one that remains unfinished, how long until these few volumes are the only thing that remains?

Maybe this is the fate of pulp comics? Their original newsprint would break down after long enough, or just disintegrate in the rain, and those stories would end up lost for good. But there’s something about pulp that remains in our minds long after we’ve finished reading them. The stories themselves are never the end as their characters can just continue. The strength of pulp is on their titular  characters. Rocketo is in that league already—the name and the action brings to mind hundreds of stories of adventure, peril, and a new world. But all we have is twelve issues. 

Get excited. Get pulpy.

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #185 by Drew Barth

Running the News Room      

Comics have a strange relationship with reality. Some aspects feel grounded while others seem absurd at first, but eventually make perfect sense in the context of their fictional world—like Jimmy Olsen having a stable job for so long. But then that’s connected the grounded aspect in the form of Perry White. While Perry has been around since the 40s, there’s not been much celebration for him. He’s been consistent in the same way the Daily Planet has been in the DC Universe: always there, always chugging away, always acting like an anchor for Metropolis that keeps it from seeming too fictional. But now we have a one-shot in the form of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen’s Boss Perry White to finally acknowledge the editor-in-chief we’ve grown to love.

Perry White is a compilation in the same vein as many of the anniversary issues DC has been putting out over the past few years—the exception being that this is mostly past material collected into a single issue. Some of these stories include shorts from the 70s where Perry receives cigars that grant him superpowers or the origin story of his working for the Daily Planet as told to his grandchildren. There’s him and Wildcat sitting down for a drink as they reminisce on the past and their worries for their children. And for a few silent panels, we get the moment Clark Kent shows Perry the Superman suit for the first time. Coupled with stories from Matt Fraction, Steve Lieber, Nathan Fairbairn, and Clayton Cowles, this one-shot becomes a love letter to this singular figure in the DC Universe and their strange kind of realism.

While not as expansive as some of the 80^th anniversary compilation counterparts, Perry White still showcases what made Perry such an endearing character on the same level as J. Jonah Jameson: old newspaper men that gave our heroes stable jobs outside of their super-selves. But while JJJ is the screaming face with a heart of gold, Perry has always been more subdued. Like the Daily Planet itself, he’s always in the background, just existing, keeping things grounded for the rest of Metropolis while Superman does something super. He smokes, he drinks, he has grandchildren, and he has more ink under his nails than any other character. But then that’s what makes him so much more real. 

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen’s Boss Perry White is an oddity: a couple short stories on a character who’s older than Green Lantern (Alan Scott or the entire Corps), but has always just been in the background. Being in the background might be best for a newspaper man like Perry. His axiom is that it’s a journalist’s job to cover the story, not be the story. But he does deserve to be the story, even if it’s just this one time. 

Get excited. Get print media. 

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #183 by Drew Barth

I Would Like to be Blueberry

At this juncture I think it’s safe to say that Sailor Moon is one of the most influential comics of the past fifty years. From its look to its usage and establishment of shojo tropes to the global fan reaction to its fashion, we can see Sailor Moon in almost every walk of life. Nowhere is this more apparent than in comics like Flavor Girls and creators Loïc Locatelli-Kournwsky and Eros de Santiago’s usage of the transforming all-girl hero team to save the world from devastation.

Not far above the earth there hangs a giant face. No one knows where it came from or what it wants, but after attempting to make first contact it does spit out the occasional small invasion force to ransack areas of the planet at random. The military is, as per usual in these scenarios, useless to stop the slowly encroaching forces. But Naoko, Camille, and V—Dragonfruit, Pomegranate, and Artichoke, respectively—can as the mythic Flavor Girls. Their exploits are known across the globe as they seem to be the only ones capable of defeating these lingering foes. But an attack in Paris reveals the existence of a fourth: Sara, the Pineapple. She’s new at this thing—she can’t even beat a single one of the invaders on her own. But that just means we’re going to get Sara’s training arc soon enough. Most intriguing, though, is the figure Sara happened to see before being called to her Pineapple destiny.

Flavor Girls is another in a line of Western comics, like Zodiac Starforce, to come and wear its Sailor Moon influences on its sleeve. And many of its success lie in how Locatelli-Kournwsky and de Santiago render the story on the page. Flavor Girls has this simple dynamic that flows seamlessly from actions and explosion to characters simply walking with one another and talking. While this first issue of the series is oversized, there is an incredible balance in how much we’re given of the world, its characters, and the action that ties them all together. This is no more apparent than when Sara completes her first Flavor Girl transformation and we’re treated to her amazement of becoming a hero, the panic of her new responsibilities, and the dreadful realization that she is unable to fight the aliens that had been chasing her. What should cause a tonal whiplash is handled deftly as every element of the moment balances out.

As a series that dives into the all-girl transforming hero team trope, Flavor Girls works incredibly well with just one issue. Although this first issue is nearly fifty pages, there’s enough to keep the story engaging without feeling as though it’s taking too long to set itself up. This is the kind of series that thrives on hooking you into its first issue and it succeeds in making me want to have the next issue long before it releases.

Get excited. Get transformative.

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #182 by Drew Barth

Walk in Silence

There are a few inevitabilities in comics: massive cross-over events, another Batman spin-off, and Si Spurrier writing one of the best mini-series of the year. While I had touched on the first issue earlier this year, the conclusion to Step by Bloody Step only cements that above inevitability on Spurrier’s writing, but also showcases the quality of Matías Bergara and Matheus Lopes’ art throughout the largely silent epic. It’s also easily one of the best series to come out this decade and the only one this year to draw a few tears out of me.

The story of Step by Bloody Step is relatively straight-forward: a small, unnamed and unspeaking girl is being carried and protected by a giant through a world unlike our own to some unknown destination. We don’t know where they are leading, but they must go there. From there, we’re treated to an expansive world filled with some of the most exquisite landscapes ever committed to the medium, beasts that loom larger than the giant itself, and people. The people themselves look relatively human, as do the goblins they’re fighting. But these are people we see from the perspective of the small girl—someone who does not know this world or its language. And yet, despite knowing nothing of this world or its inhabitants, the small girl and her accompanying giant end up shaping this world by happenstance and through just a hint of time travel.

But maybe it isn’t all happenstance. What we see in the final issue, as the girl and the giant reach their destination, is that this isn’t the first time this has taken place. The girl becomes the giant and a new child is cradled in her palm to protect and lead somewhere. While there are individuals seeking them as they walk this planet, we don’t know to what end they’re doing so. How many times has this cycle played out? How long had it been since the last one? Is it inevitable for them to complete their journey and to have altered the world in some way? We don’t know the answers to these questions and we don’t need to. This is their journey that we’re simply witness to—this is the only cycle we get to see play out to its conclusion. And yet it feels complete. The steps taken in their journey are uniquely their own as they have left the world in a different state from when they took their first steps.

Spurrier, Bergara, and Lopes have crafted the kind of journey and world that is singular in its ambition. There aren’t many other comics that take the time and space to let a duo simply walk through a new world in this way. The quiet allows our eyes to marvel and take the world in—even the loudest encounters are rendered in such loving detail that we inevitably get lost in them. But then that feeling is what makes Step by Bloody Step such a marvel.

Get excited. Get stepping.

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #180 by Drew Barth

Doing Something to the Trend

A few months ago I looked at the first issue of Shobo, George Kambadais, and Jim Campbell’s Buckhead. It was one of those series that left some hooks in me after I finished the first issue—with its blending of small town mysteries, African mythos, and a blend of science and magic, I couldn’t help but want to know more. With the series concluding a couple months ago, it did take some of those hooks back to wrap its story, but it couldn’t help but drag out a few more to explore later.

Buckhead is the story of Toba, a recent immigrant from Nigeria to the titular town in the Pacific Northwest. While it may look sleepy and idyllic, there is a strangeness that permeates the town. People seem to shut down around that abandoned house on the edge of town, adults leave their homes in the middle of the night to congregate the school, and trench coatted androids roam. It’s from these oddities that Toba and his friends enter a game in the basement of their school, the Elseverse, and unravel more of the town’s mysteries—namely, why Toba’s dad is in the game they’re playing. From finding out more about the forces that seem to control the town to putting down ancient Yoruba spirits, Toba finally  finds his place in Buckhead while building a group of friends to help him throughout his journey.

But that doesn’t quite feel like the end. Buckhead is doing something I’m seeing more comics do recently and that’s to leave their conclusions open. This is a fairly tight five-issue series, but there are lingering questions and plot points—namely whoever the Eight Lords of Chaos are—that could be picked up on later. The way this story is told gives it a natural break point, but also an open door for a sequel series that can pick right back up where this one ended or give it space enough for a time-skip. This kind of story planning treats a series less like a monolithic entity and more like a grouping of seasons. We can get a complete arc with this volume of Buckhead, but there’s an over-arching plot out in the distance that we can pick right back into if the creators want to continue. It gives some more time and space to develop that larger plot without having to rush through every aspect of a longer story.

While Buckhead isn’t the first to use this kind of comic storytelling—there’s still no word on if the story will continue into new volumes—but it’s one of the ones I’m becoming more drawn to the longer I think about it. Shobo, Kambadais, and Campbell have created a world and a mythology to populate it that I want to know more about. Like the game in the story, I want to explore and marvel at the work that has gone into it. Buckhead can stand on its own, but it’s still leaving those plot hooks in me that can be explored so much more in the future.

Get excited. Get sequels.

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #179 by Drew Barth

The Deep

Standing at the edge of a beach, you don’t know how deep the water gets. Even taking a boat out doesn’t give you a sense of just far down the water goes and how little light can peer down there. In this way, the ocean takes on a sense of dread—that feeling that what’s out there is beyond what we can understand, much in the same way space feels unfathomable. It is at this intersection of ocean and space horror that we find Ram V, Christian Ward, and Aditya Bidikar’s first issue of Aquaman: Andromeda.

Something has crashed into the ocean. All we have is a team of scientists that shouldn’t be there in an experimental research vessel that shouldn’t exist and governments that will not take responsibility if they’re found out. We also have a kraken. More than that, we also have Arthur Curry—king of Atlantis and Aquaman to the world. But Aquaman has been around a while. Like, a long while. He’s shown up on the shores of Kamchatka Krai for generations to help build ships but has never once looked any different. This is an Aquaman that is becoming as old as the oceans he guards, but when this object fallen from space disturbs a kraken in the most remote area of the sea and goes after a research vessel that shouldn’t exist, he has to become that young Aquaman we’ve all grown up with.

Andromeda is the most atmospheric Aquaman book I’ve read. Ward’s mastery of color and composition allows this story to feel like something is pushing down on it. Even the splash pages feel as though there’s some hidden pressure keeping them stationary. And this ties into that intersection of the sea and space—the unfathomable distance and the deeptime in which they exist. Aquaman himself exists in a similar intersection here as well, between the sea and the surface, but in his costume adorned with reefs and glowing pupils, he has a more alien look than any previous incarnation. V, Ward, and Bidikar are leaning into this idea of the unknown and unfathomable as Aquaman’s appearance becomes stranger and the artifact that came from space does something to the ocean that he can’t quite figure out yet.

The first issue of Aquaman: Andromeda plants the kind of roots that branch out into murkier depths. As though we were nearing the bottom of the sea ourselves, we can’t quite make out what mysterious shadows we’re seeing maneuver over the sand, but we’re curious. Curious and maybe a little afraid. But that fear draws us back into the story. We want to illuminate the unknown; we want to see where space and sea come together despite its dangers. But the sea beckons us forward, even if we’re not meant to be there. There’s mysteries here that we can’t help but want to uncover.

Get excited. Get deep.

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #178 by Drew Barth

The Rumiko World

I remember watching the first episode of Rumiko Takahashi’s Inuyasha when I was eleven years old and being smitten with the world she had created. The blending of myth and history layered just below the modern world made my imagination spark. But I got older and the reruns of the series got tiresome as I waited for the new ones to finally make it to Adult Swim. Waiting to see where the story progressed was my first exposure to the work of Rumiko Takahashi—a woman who’s manga is so revered that it’s still odd that so many people my age had only discovered her work through those Inuyasha reruns years ago. But just last year, the first volume of her most recent series, Mao, released and it is a showcase of everything great about Takahashi’s work.

Mao is a the story of Nanoka, an orphaned junior high student living with her grandparents who miraculously survived a sinkhole accident that claimed the life of her parents. When a group of her classmates start talking about ghostly voices at a shopping center close to the site of the accident, Nanoka walks through the gate of the shops and finds herself in 1923 where strange demons roam. An exorcist, the titular Mao, defeats one of these demons after it is nearly burned alive by Nanoka’s blood. Mao’s blood does the same to these demons and the two begin investigating their potential link and the curse they carry that may have killed Nanoka’s parents.

From the first page, there is a cleanliness to Takahashi’s lines and action. The panel to panel composition feels almost intuitive to read, but is the kind of thing only the most experienced mangaka can accomplish this consistently. Even the page turn reveals are given the incredible weight throughout this first volume as the story beats have an almost mathematical precision. As exposition is given its space to breathe, we come into action-focused moments that burst with movement even in the splash pages. The incredible precision of the lines and storytelling make some pages almost feel like they’re being animated before the reader’s eyes. But this is one of Takahashi’s strengths—creating motion where there’s only the static image. It’s one of the ways that great mangaka like her can make these comics feel almost like magic when reading them.

I’m never going to be the only one to sing Takahashi’s praises—it’s why she is one of the few women to receive the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême—but Mao is the kind of series that deserves as much praise as you can give it. As comics, it is that perfect synthesis between narrative and visuals with neither aspect detracting from the other. There is a balance in Takahashi’s storytelling that has remained consistent in her work for years and Mao continues that tradition.

Get excited. Get exorcised.

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.