Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #11 by Drew Barth

Two Times

First issues are notoriously difficult to get just right. Those first moments of a comic’s life need to set up characters, setting, story, and a whole hook to keep readers interested for the next month’s issue. Writing these first issues is laborious because there are so many things a creator wants to get out into the world as quickly as possible to show readers what the series is going to be about but they just don’t have the time and space.

Luckily, second issues exist. But second issues are just as difficult as firsts, for different reasons. Creators have introduced small pieces of what will comprise the larger story, but the job of the second issue is to start the heavy lifting process for a series. Characters and story aren’t being introduced anymore—these aspects are being given more purpose to the larger narrative the creators are attempting to make. A good second issue is going to show a reader what direction the story is going and what the larger ideas are for the series.

The best way to really look at the strengths of second issues is to look at two masters of the craft who have written dozens of second issues between them: Kelly Sue DeConnick and Warren Ellis. DeConnick’s name may sound familiar as she and a host of artists are responsible for the rebooting and subsequent explosion in popularity of the character Carol Danvers—Captain Marvel. This rebooting has subsequently led to the Captain Marvel film released last week. But what was it about their series in particular that resonated so much with readers? Let’s look at the opening page from Captain Marvel #2:

From this first page we’re being introduced to a different kind of Carol Danvers. We had seen a bit of this new characterization from the first issue—introducing her new costume and powers as well as setting up her identity conflict—but already in the second issue we’re getting her out of costume and on the ground. And it’s in this second issue that we’re getting more into the heart of what makes DeConnick’s run on Captain Marvel so iconic and special to readers: its focus on the connection between women. For the longest time, Danvers was defined by her association with the previous Captain Marvel—the alien Mar-Vell. And while DeConnick still utilizes that aspect of Danvers’ past, she works on forging a new future for Captain Marvel.

What helps to make this second issue so important to the rest of DeConnick’s run is the setting up of a nebulous timeline. After flying the plane pictured above, Danvers is transported to the past, an island in the middle of World War II specifically. The initial set-up for time travel is utilized as a way for Danvers to relive portions of the past, specifically in connection to Mar-Vell and Helen Cobb, the owner of the above plane. But why relive the past? Because of Danvers’ questions of identity and who she is now as a hero. DeConnick lays down the groundwork for what her initial character arc for Captain Marvel will be and that’s what makes this second issue so strong.

Now we move to NextWave, one of the only series I can think of with a dedicated theme song. Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen bring us a series that is a pure distillation of superhero fiction: punches, explosions, conspiracy, and a team made of various Marvel misfits. It’s also one of the funniest series of comics to be released by a major publisher. NextWave is one of those series that was iconic from its first issue, but only cemented that status further with the second. Kieron Gillen says “We all live in the shadow of NextWave” and it’s hard not to agree with him.

And how can you not love a series that starts its second issue with Fin Fang Foom in little purple shorts? How can you also not love a series with two-issue arcs that keep its pace and story quick and fresh? The first issue of NextWave sets everything up for the reader: the Beyond Corporation creates the Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort (H.A.T.E.) and recruits a group of C-tier Marvel heroes to fight evil around the world. But the Beyond Corporation is actually just a terrorist organization in disguise that uses its corporate facade as a means of finding and testing biological weapons of mass destruction. One of those weapons is Fin Fang Foom. No spoilers here: everything mentioned above is in the first issue.

The second issue is where we get to the heart of what Ellis and Immonen’s plans for NextWave: punches and explosions. Issue two is a perfect distillation of what Ellis refers to as “widescreen comics” in both its pace and its sense of action. The major element of issue two, the fight with Fin Fang Foom, is massive, loud, gregarious, and over at the end of the issue. And that pace is perfect for widescreen comics. NextWave wasn’t a major event book even though it was happening at the same time as Marvel’s massive cross-over event, Civil War. And as a result of that, NextWave could do whatever it wanted with its own space in the Marvel universe. We’re given a hint of that in the first issue, but the second cements the series completely as this weird off-shoot that takes superhero fiction in its silliest direction. That’s why the second issue of NextWave is so iconic and indicative of the series as a whole: this issue cuts out everything but the action while remaining tongue-in-cheek about that action. It is a series that knows it’s ridiculous and embraces that ridiculousness at every moment.

Second issues are easily one of the hardest things about writing comics due to what they have to accomplish for a reader: maintain interest, reveal just a bit more about the story, and give the reader some satisfaction for staying beyond the first issue. Whether it’s setting up the groundwork for more of the story, giving us important character moments, or just showing us the pace the series is going to take, the above mentioned second issues helped to cement their series as great pieces of comic fiction.

Get excited. It’s time for seconds.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing 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 #10 by Drew Barth

Series Update–East of West

In writing all of these articles so far, I mostly discuss the cool new thing. Yet on more than none occasion I have heard “But what about series that aren’t new? What about a series that’s been going on for a while now that isn’t Saga?” For those imaginary readers, I wanted to step back from what is just emering and take a look at a series that has been ongoing for close to six years now: Johnathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta’s East of West.

Anyone familiar with Johnathan Hickman’s work over the past decade will note that East of West carries so many hallmarks of his work: the white space, the consistent design element, the large, expanding cast of characters, and a nebulous story with a driving force at its center. These strains appeared in Pax Romana, The Nightly News, and Transhuman. But those series were fairly short, four to six issues a piece, while East of West has been running for over forty issue. While its publication schedule can get a bit spotty, the quality of the comic has never taken any kind of a dip.

East of West is about the oncoming end of the world, a grand vision of the apocalypse as perpetrated by the political insiders who would benefit most from the world plummeting into chaos. It’s hard not to see a contemporary analogy when the story’s less ambiguous villains are obsessed with a religious doctrine that foretells the coming doom. A summary of the story itself would seem like a fifteen year-old’s post-1984fever dream, but Hickman and Dragotta have been able to craft this finely-tuned pre-apocalypse story that can mirror, sometimes uncomfortably, what we see on the news.

Mostly.

East of West is also a story about a man looking for his son. That man is Death of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse and his son may or may not be the Anti-Christ. Hickman is one of those writers that have this uncanny ability to make readers empathize with characters that may not deserve our empathy. Death’s journey has been long and arduous. We see it every issue where he claws his way through the American desert on scant trails for where his son may be held. It is through those failures and, at times, his reluctance to embrace his role as Death that Hickman builds that empathy. Death may be the ultimate doom for this world, but we want him to be happy.

We also can’t talk about East of West without also mentioning Nick Dragotta’s artwork and the marvel of silence he’s able to bring to the story. Many issues that deal with Death in some way almost always have this wonderful sequential narrative trick of silent scenery panels. These panels are establishing shots, mood makers for the rest of the story to come, and give the reader time to breathe or fully immerse themselves into the story. And moments like the one featured below are absolutely necessary. East of West is a loud book when the moment calls for it. Things explode. Many things explode when we’re hitting the climax of an arc, but Dragotta makes sure we’re given these crucial moments to give readers a bit of distance and calm. He’s well versed on hitting the peaks and valleys of a story, and every panel he creates only bolsters those points of tension.

After six years, East of West is hitting its final arc and it’s going to be weird no longer seeing it on new comic shelves every week, but its ending is absolutely well-deserved. Also well-deserved is the fact that East of West has been picked up by Amazon Studios to be developed into a TV series.

Get excited. The end is coming.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing 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 #9 by Drew Barth

Turn It Off and Turn It On Again

Most monthly comics are built upon legacies and reboots of older characters. Essentially, most superhero comic fiction is officially-sanctioned fanfiction as the original authors are either no longer writing, no longer living, or both. As a result, many writers have sandboxes with certain rules, mythologies, and canons to play with. The amount of reboots and legacies is massive. Just look at the current reboots happening with DC’s general timeline, as well as the sheer volume of Robins who exist in Batman canons.

Look at how DC is reworking older characters, staying true to their original form while not allowing nostalgia to cloud a strong story.

The publisher has been taking characters from the Hanna-Barbera vault and working them either into one-shots. The most notable of all of these is Mark Russel and Mike Feehan’s take on our favorite pink cougar, Snagglepuss. And this is Snagglepuss as a closeted playwright during the Red Scare.

So it’s Tennessee Williams.

This comic can’t be considered a cheap novelty, however. There is this constant underpinning of basic humanity throughout the issues that makes it feel so refreshing when compared to some of the other stories that have come from this experiment. Snagglepuss is one of those moments where you can see that edifice of large-scale comic publishers start to pull away and just let some fantastic stories get told.

DC have also been working on a completely separate universe that recaptures the feeling of the old Super Friends cartoon from the seventies. The Wonder Twins is everything a reader can expect from a rebooted Super Friends-esque universe. The Hall of Justice stands, although its super computer is rendered useless by cellphones, and the trinity of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman walk the halls waiting to hear that world-ending alert that brings them into action. But Jayna and Zan are the focus here: two transplanted aliens outcast from their home planet who can turn into, well, not much when they tap their fists together. They’re also transplanted into a high school on a new planet. As it stands right now, it’s a fun twist on characters who have been a cultural punchline for forty years. They’re not these stiff weirdos that talk as if they don’t have the animation budget for them to say anything interesting—as a duo they’re well-developed characters that seem like they’ll have more to do as the story progresses. As of now only the first issue is out, but it looks like it’s going to be a fun six-issue mini-series.

From there, we also have another first issue in the form of Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt. This is one of those odd characters who DC picked up in the 80s when they brought Charlatan Comics characters into their main universe. But Peter Cannon as a character is known more for who he was the basis for: Ozymandias in Watchmen.

However, since the death of his creator, Pete Morisi, in 2013, Peter Cannon has been owned by the late creator’s estate. As such, we now have a rebooted series from Dynamite Comics, Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard that looks to establish the character as something more than just a blueprint for others. They even address the issue of the “white savior” that Cannon was portrayed as for years due to being the last recipient of ancient scrolls from a Himalayan monastery after his parents died. It smacks of Iron Fist, but Gillen and Wijngaard create a character who feels generally remorseful at having to play this part.

It’s as close to a perfect first issue since Gillen’s last first issue in DIE #1. It’s for completely different reasons, though. This is Gillen bringing in his Watchmen love with utilizing the idea of thirty five minutes as a signal for what’s coming as well as Ozymandias’ plan for uniting the world through a fake alien invasion. Couple that with the two nine-panel grids that show up and you can see the influences right on the sleeve. That and the dash of Warren Ellis with a line like “HELLO ALIEN FRIENDS! DO YOU LIKE BULLET VIOLENCE?” to just tie the bow on top.

Of course, as always, there’s more characters and reboots out there. Kamala Khan, Jamie Reyes, Kyle Rayner, Robbie Reyes, et cetera, but they always have the one thing in common that matters to comic fiction, and that is they’re creating something new with their stories. When they’re done well, they’re iconic—they are the status quo for a series and the public face for decades. When not, we try to forget about them and move on to other things. Reboots and legacies fail, but with the series coming out just in the past year, there will never be a shortage of new takes on old ideas that feel refreshing.

Get excited. Comics are happening.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing 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 #8 by Drew Barth

The Royal Road of Comics

Last week was looking at the numbers and making some guesses about why some comics sell and potentially why others aren’t doing as well, but what makes those comics good? What makes them resonate with readers in such a way that they keep coming back, month after month, trade after trade, to see what’s going to happen?

There are reasons outside of the comic being good that keeps readers. Looking at what sold well last year shows characters like Batman, The Flash, Thanos, and Spider-Man selling well even if the stories aren’t the best. But what’s familiar still sells. Despite everything.

The nineties were a dark time for us all. But all of that isn’t to discount any of those characters, they still have wonderful stories connected to them that survive any and all retcons and reboots. What we want to look at more in-depth, though, is just what makes these stories good.

I’m borrowing from manga creator Hirohiko Araki when it comes to breaking down the main fundamentals of what makes a strong comic. In his book, Manga in Theory and Practice, Araki outlines what he refers to as “the royal road of manga” that consists of: characters, story, setting, and themes. The four principles are fairly straight-forward to the point where they can work in nearly any narrative medium. But what I wanted to do with those principles is to hold them up as a lens through which to look at some more of the items on that top-selling graphic novel list. We could see potentially why things sell so well due to market circumstances around them, but how do the principles of the “royal road” come more into play?

If we’re going to start anywhere, we’re starting at characters. And no other story works as well with characters as Paper Girls. The first and fourth volumes of this series ended up besting Batman and Watchmenlast year and it’s easy to see why. Brian K. Vaughn and Cliff Chiang created a group of four teenagers in the eighties delivering newspapers before the world basically ends around them. There’s time travel and tech wars. It’s fun. But at its heart are the four protagonists: Erin, Mac, KJ, and Tiffany. The four of them together end up creating what’s akin to a perfect D&D party with lawful, law breaking, puzzling, and inquisitive characters that are dropped around the time stream and made to fend for themselves. Their four voices are distinct in a way that is both true to their time period and their ages and not a one sounds alike at any moment. You are reading about four people awash in dizzying adventure and it feels like wonderful genre-realism in each of their characters.

Story is the driving force of any comic. While a good character can help prop up a bad story, they can only go so far before it all collapses. When we go further down the list, we see a series that is defined both by its strong characters as well as an equally intriguing story into which those characters are dropped: Lumberjanes. Lumberjanes is a series about five friends in a summer camp for girls and summer doesn’t ever seem to end. The forest around them holds any number of magical and maniacal creatures and the counselors are tight-lipped on what happened in the camp’s past. It’s full-blown X-Files summer camp here and it’s some of the best comic storytelling I’ve seen since the series debuted in 2014. The fact that the first volume, from BOOM! Studios, is still selling this well is only a testament to the strength of its story.

Continuing down the royal road, we stop at setting and setting is something that, in comics, really is vital to how a story gets told. In Batman, we have Gotham City. In Star Wars, we have a galaxy. But in a series like The Wicked + The Divine, we have London. Just London. Although it’s London shaped by the existence of reincarnated gods that are, more or less, pop stars for two years until they die, but it’s still London. There’s only so much a city can change as a result of these reincarnated gods walking around, though. The real setting lies in the broader cultural contexts in which the world has changed. As these gods only reincarnate once a generation, a setting detail that’s brought up within the series is which generations deserve to have those gods? The last time the gods returned was in the 1920s, do they need to come back now? When so much of the story has to do with fandom and waiting, then it becomes vital that the gods exist in this specific moment. The world has created a culture around the gods returning and we see it constructed through the eyes of a fan. This isn’t a weird version of the world, it’s the one created for this specific purpose and it so perfectly balances the realism with the differences the story demands that it doesn’t even feel like an alternate world.

And the final stop on this royal road is theme and of course I’m going to talk about Saga here because I can’t stop talking about Saga. It’s because Saga has everything mentioned above and so much more. There is a reason it sells consistently well every year since its debut, that it out-sells most everything from DC and Marvel, that all nine volumes of the series are in the top thirty-five of this year’s best sellers list. Do you want to talk about loss? Got that. Grief and tragedy? In spades. How about redemption and unwavering morals in the face of horrendous death? Of course. But what Saga does so well compared to its fellows is how much these themes change and grow as the series progresses. Characters age and change as time goes on, but there’s always that thematic core of family and being together despite the universe ripping it all apart that it’s impossible not to be engrossed. It is Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughn’s masterpiece because it follows the ideas of the royal road so well. This is a series that bursts with imagination and humor and humanity at every opportunity. Saga begs to be read and its readers will beg non-readers to read it as well.

But there’s always more comics. There are graphic novels that don’t appear on the best selling list that likely do all of the above even better than anything I’ve talked about here. But that’s the fun with comics, like with all narrative mediums. The deep-dive to discover the new things that smack your brain around like a lemon-wrapped gold bar. There’s so much story out there to find and read still.

Get excited.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing 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 #7 by Drew Barth

Looking at Numbers

Not too long ago I received an email from Diamond Book Distributors about the top selling graphic novels of 2018. These are the kinds of lists I love to see because there’s always a direct comparison between what’s considered to be a critical favorite and a commercial favorite. In comics, those sorts of things typically end up lining up, namely in the case of series like Saga or Monstress. While I was going through the list, though, I noticed something kind of odd. No Batman, Thor, or anything from DC or Marvel.

Diamond Books is actually a subsidiary of Diamond Comic Distributors that works with independent publishers to distribute graphic novels to non-direct market venues. More or less, they work with Image, Dynamite, Aftershock, etc. to get their work into chain bookstores. But it’s only the graphic novels and collected editions; all monthly issues regardless of publisher still go through Diamond Comics. And in comics, they all only go through Diamond.

(But Diamond as a distributor for comics has a monopoly over the industry due to them being the only distributor that works in a way that’s conducive to the comic market. More or less, their business practices work on a much quicker timetable compared to many larger distribution platforms like Random House or Simon & Schuster. Where traditional distributors have payment deals for publishers that may delay payouts for six months or more, Diamond works in one to two months—something beneficial to an industry that needs to know how well a series that is printing month-to-month is doing. So while I don’t like the idea of a monopoly in the industry, they have remained the most viable option in town. Plus, with their persistent and transparent sales numbers, we can get good ideas about what is and isn’t selling. Hence, the lists they’ve put out recently.)

Anyway. Because there are two distinct distribution branches to comics, we can actually see how certain series are doing both inside and outside your local comic shops. And these are two completely different kinds of places in which comics are being sold. A reader who trade waits (someone who reads a series through the trade paperback collections and not the monthly issues) may be more inclined to get their comics from a bookstore due to things like memberships, discounts, coupons, or location. It may be incredibly difficult to get to a comic shop on a weekly basis in most parts of the country, so when we look at a list that works exclusively on the bookstore level, we’re better able to see what access does to the comics involved.

When looking at just the top ten from each list, we’re seeing a snapshot of what was big at the time. Of course the top selling book in comic stores is going to be The Infinity Gauntlet by Jim Starlin, George Pérez, and Ron Lim due to the release of Avengers: Infinity War. Although that graphic novel has been selling consistently well for years now, it’s the film that would help push it to the top spot. And there’s always mainstays like Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’sWatchmen that have stayed in the top selling category for actual decades now.

In terms of more recent material, Saga continues its reign as one of the best selling comics of this decade due both to its popularity and readers’ propensity for trade waiting on the series. With the announcement of Saga going on hiatus earlier last year, the sales of its ninth volume were absolutely going to increase to the point where it was just behind The Infinity Gauntlet. But that’s just in comic shops. While volume nine sold well there, volume eight ended up reigning in bookstores. Why? It could be any number of reasons. It could be that the release of volume eight coincided with one of Barnes & Noble’s buy-two-get-the-third-free sales or simply because it had more time on the shelves than volume nine did. Many of the factors aren’t really shown in-depth in any of these lists, but it’s still interesting to see how different sides of the retail world differ in a series like Saga.

Then we have a series like Deadly Class that just had the first few episodes of its TV series on Syfy premiere not too long ago. While the first volume of the series sold well—coming in at #35, enough to beat the likes of Darth Vader and a Spider-Man/Deadpool crossover—it only did so in comic shops. It doesn’t even crack the top fifty in among independent titles in bookstores. And we can tell the increase in Deadly Class sales is due to its new TV series as it jumped up nearly a hundred spots from the previous year’s list. This kind of information goes a long way to show the industry what sells best where. In the months leading up to the Deadly Class series premiere, I couldn’t get through many monthly issues without seeing an ad for the show somewhere. But then I wouldn’t see Deadly Class trade paperbacks that often when going down the graphic novel aisle at Barnes & Noble. The difference could be from bookstore retailers knowing that this particular series doesn’t sell as well as others and instead give their limited shelf space to what they know will sell better—all the while comic shops still sell it well due to the series being perhaps more familiar to the comics crowd.

All of this to say that comics is a strange business. It’s difficult to tell which series is going to sell well outside of those that provide the basis for films and TV series. Well, I mean good writing is always going to help a series, hence the reign of Saga throughout both lists. But when doing the number crunching we can still see how Marvel and DC still control the vast majority of comics out there. Smaller presses are finally making more of an impact—Image on its own has roughly 10% of the market now—and yet it still feels like such a small portion of the overall whole of comics. Although these lists don’t take into account other publishers like Drawn + Quarterly or Top Shelf and BOOM! Studios only works with Diamond to get their books into comics shops, there’s still things to be learned from watching these lists to see what people are reading. But then why are these specific graphic novels popular? What makes these stories resonate with readers that they would make it onto these lists?

Is that a part two I hear on the wind? I think believe that’s a part two I hear on the winds from the future. Get excited.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing 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 #3 by Drew Barth

JUMP for Me

My first major foray into print comics was with Shonen Jumpwhen I was about twelve years old. It wasn’t hard to tempt me with the first issue of it I saw at a CVS—the Yu-Gi-Ohcover and free card on the inside was enough. But, mainly just wanting to get that free Yu-Gi-Oh card because I wasn’t a great child, I flipped through multiple chapters of manga I’d never seen before out of curiosity. Shonen Jumpis where most teens and twenty-somethings were first exposed to manga due to its ubiquity in our lives. This is Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, etc. Nearly everything we’d watch on Toonami after school came from this magazine.

But times change. Shonen Jump in America stop publishing physical volumes, moved to all digital, came back to physical for a brief period, and is now utilizing a new kind of distribution platform. It’s all digital again, but works on subscriptions along with buying individual volumes. Everything that Shonen Jump ever put out in English is now available on their online portaland app to read for a fee of $2 a month. Not only that, but new chapters are being released every week, day and date of the Japanese release, for free without paying the monthly fee. And that’s massive for two important reasons.

1. There’s an old quote that essentially says that to end piracy of media, it must be easier for the consumer to get things legally than illegally. It’s the main reason why Game of Thrones is consistently one of the most pirated TV show every year. And this goes double for print material like comics and manga. Most western publishers have found ways to make things easier through the use of Comixology as a digital service for comics, but manga never really had this same kind of platform. A volume or chapter of a series would come out and it could take actual decades for it to get translated into English and put on sale. That barrier essentially disappears now.
2. This is a new avenue for receiving comic content that directly competes with DC Universe, Marvel Unlimited, and ComiXology Unlimited. But what makes this one different from most of the others is that this is just the comics. No live-action shows, no movies, no merchandise discounts. The new Shonen Jump is simple, cheap, and precisely what it advertises: everything they’ve ever put out in America for reading right now.

When looking at DC and Marvel’s own digital platforms, it’s odd to me that they don’t do something similar. Marvel and ComiXology are the closest with curated lists of popular characters and story lines with all of the current issues available and older ones being added, but then they don’t have everything. DC Universe has a glut of content, from old Batman TV shows to Batman animated movies to the new Teen Titans show that has Robin. They’re banking on Bats. But still, in terms of raw comic content, there’s still a lot (of Batman) missing.

If I had these services and wanted to read every issue of Spiderman or Batman or Captain America or Wonder Woman, I wouldn’t be able to. And the different services try to work around that by showing curated content or specific runs they feel are the most relevant. Or, in DC’s case, shows and movies to supplement what’s missing. But if I wanted to read the entirety of Dragonball right now, I could. Admittedly, these manga aren’t as old as Batman or Spiderman, but still, if I went crazy and wanted to read all seven hundred chapter of Naruto, there’s nothing stopping me now.

Shonen Jump does have a smaller base of printed material to put out there compared to DC and Marvel, I know this, but them putting everything out for incredibly cheap is astounding. No publisher of comics has made their material available in this way before and I can only hope that this helps to set more of a precedent for others to at least attempt getting more of the comic material out that their readers want.

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Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.