Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #33 by Drew Barth

No One’s Left

I’ve talked about shonen manga a few times on here—both positively and negatively—but it’s hard to overstate the influence shonen as a genre has had on western comics. Many creators have talked about their love for the genre as younger kids watching Dragonball orNaruto and inevitably being drawn further into manga as a whole. And it’s not hard to see why. With its fast-paced action taking up whole pages combined with impeccable characters, shonen series can feel almost like a precursor to the wide-screen comics of the early 2000s. Recently, though, Dark Horse have released a series that is a pure distillation of the intersection where shonen manga and western superhero comics meet: Aubrey Sitterson and Fico Ossio’s No One Left to Fight.

 From the first cover alone we can already see the explosion of color and influence all over the place. Our red-clad protagonist, Vale, with his large beaded necklace that already draws on many interpretations of Sun Wukong of Journey to the West—one of the main influences on the creation of Dragonball’s Goku—and the goggles on his forehead that hearken to Naruto’s first design in his titular manga. We also have Timor, the blue rival of Vale, and his wife Krysta to complete the spectrum of protagonists. They’re naively optimistic, bitterly hotheaded, and create a trichotomy that calls to mind, again, series like Dragonball and Narutoas well as the iconic trio of DC heroes like Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. And with a tagline like “The comic you always wanted!” Sitterson and Ossio know exactly what kind of series they’ve created and want the readers to know what kind of fun they can have here.

No One Left to Fight is more than just the sum of its influences. As a series, it goes to places many of the more iconic shonen series never go: beyond the earth-saving final fight. Vale is that protagonist who saved the world. Now what else is there to do?

The story starts with Vale, Timor, and Krysta going back to the site of Vale’s grandest moment because Vale doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore. He’s a wanderer. The first two issues show small glimpses of where the story is going to go, but the story has yet to concretize. This uncertainty can open up the story to a great deal of darker side paths to explore the futility of the fight and the place of the hero in the world. And yet the story doesn’t appear to choose those paths. Vale as a character maintains that continual positivity that has become a staple of many shonen protagonists—even in the most perilous of situations does that grin of “everything will be okay” maintain.

As a new comic series, No One Left to Fight is refreshing in its sincerity. Sitterson and Ossio are acutely aware of their influences without ever putting down the campiness of the past. Even when looking at the colorful brightness of the world or the “The comic you always wanted!” tagline, the series never comes off as doing everything as a joke. Even with all of the work of the past behind it, No One Left to Fight is still a series pointed toward the future.

Get excited. Punch more.

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 #32 by Drew Barth

Fantasy House Party

With the recent publication of DIE #6, I was reminded of another series that I had written about previously: Coda. With its examination of fantasy tropes and classic D&D character classes as starting points for exploring what fantasy is and what it can be, Coda, and its creative team of Si Spurrier and Matías Bergara, became established as one of the best fantasy comic series in quite some time. The final issue of Codacoincided the release of the first volume of Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans’s DIE—another series that examines fantasy, RPG classes.

Coda is like a traditional D&D game run amok with much of its magic being limited to a scarce resource, character quests proving futile, and whole warring factions undermined by the machinations of manipulative god. This would be a campaign in which every saving roll failed.

DIE uses the role playing game idea more literally, and then twists it. The characters are role-players who must inhabited the fantasy world they have ruined—almost calling back to the ruined world of Coda—and have to deal with the consequences of their teenage actions from when they were originally trapped in the game. There is also the World War I imagery throughout the series—one of Tolkien’s influences when writing about Middle-earth—even going so far as to have a hobbit-esque soldier dying in a trench as a commanding officer in gray smokes a pipe above his corpse. DIE deconstructs fantasy RPGs and their cultural DNA.

The two central figures of DIE and Coda—Ash and Hum, respectively—belong to highly verbal roles. Ash as The Dictator can speak emotions into existence, and Hum the Bard composes stories and ballads that make magic. Ash and Hum deal almost exclusively in deception through most of their series, relying on their words as a means of defense and eschewing responsibility for their impact. Interestingly, Gillen and Spurrier chose these untrustworthy characters as narrators for both series. How much of either story is actually happening, and how much is the manipulative discourse of our narrators? For Coda, we ultimately know that the majority of Hum’s narration is utter lies, no matter how much Hum wishes they were true. As for Ash of DIE, such dishonesty would clash with the themes of DIE at the moment. Then again, we’ll have to wait to see how the rest of the story goes.

DIE and Coda are both series that are masterful in kicking away our genre expectations. All of those subversions come with having a fine-tuned, fundamental understanding of what makes fantasy and role-playing compelling. Through this knowledge, some truly spectacular comics are able to emerge.

Commitment to creation and character drives these stories forward. When we have creators like Gillen and Hans and Spurrier and Bergara, the medium of comics gets better. When creators recast old forms for something new, we get stories that show us how far fantasy and comics can be pushed when given that right amount of thought and insight. Comics need to be pushed forward. DIE and Coda push hard.

Get excited. Play the game.

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 #30 by Drew Barth

I Was Told By

Imagine, as wild as this sounds, that the United States becomes a theocratic, imperialistic super-state that invades Canada because the Lord said so. That is the story-ground that Darcy Van Poelgeest and Ian Bertram set their series Little Bird upon. Little Bird is the story of family and the threads that tie them all together despite the ends fraying, the knots accumulating, and a pair of scissors coming in for the cut. There hasn’t quite been anything in comics that looks and feels like Little Bird.

From a visual and paneling standpoint, Bertram wants us awake. His use of everything from the positioning of characters within the panel, the empty space around those characters, and the panel and bleed-space as a means of conveying time maintains this feeling of unease and dread. Consider the first page of the series posted above. The woman, Tantoo, begins with a close-up and a large swatch of space before moving downward to see her position above her small band of Canadian resistance fighters and then finally down to her daughter, the titular Little Bird. For the eye to track her is one fluid movement, but her concern as a character is focused solely on her daughter. Little Bird is the only character Tantoo looks at in these moments. All of this happens before an explosion of unseen violence and a charred earth left behind.

Violence becomes common throughout the series as Little Bird cannot die in an ultimate sense. The result of that first death is the above page, with its panel-in-panel structure and winding moments of character narrative that become a mainstay anytime Little Bird is killed. These moments highlight the absurdity of violence, as there are moments of Kurosawa levels of blood sputtering for the smallest of wounds. But then what are wounds and violence to someone like Little Bird and her grandfather, The Axe?

Red tendrils that constantly appear. The characters are pulled by these tendrils, but the tendrils are never acknowledged. When looking at the progression of the series covers from one to five, we see the characters eventually drowning in this sea of red. These red tendrils exist seemingly outside the story and bring to mind the bleed between panels as they, at time, grab onto characters from outside of the panels themselves. The tendrils exist as a stark reminder of the past and how that past is something that can’t be changed. They push Little Bird by showing her the mistakes her family has made and help bring her out of a cycle of death and life. Little Bird takes full vivid advantage of the comic medium to tell a visceral story.

In the series’ final issue, Van Poelgeest mentions that Little Bird is only a part of a larger narrative in this world. This is a new, breathing world from Van Poelgeest and Bertram and I’m glad they’re digging deeper into it to see what kind of stories come out.

Get excited. There is always more.

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 #29 by Drew Barth

Cracking Open the Vault

I talked a few weeks ago about the closure of Vertigo, the first mainstream purveyor of independent-minded comic work. Vertigo’s spirit has lived on in other publishers like Image, Oni Press, Aftershock, Black Mask, and many othesr. Fairly recently, like 2016 recent, Vault Comics emerged with series different than even among the other indie publishers. They were premiering series like Heathen, an LGBT Viking fantasy book; Deep Roots, an ecological horror story; and Failsafe, a sleeper-agent super-soldier hunt.

Despite being a relatively small, mostly family-run operation, Vault is still premiering nearly ten new series this year—which is pushing into Image levels of new titles. Many of those series so far have been some of the strongest first issues I’ve seen so far this year.

The first series I picked up from Vault this year was She Said Destroy, a series about gods, wars, space, and magic. Already, it’s a series that uses a concept I love that is rarely ever anywhere: just talking to the gods. They’re right there. You can ask them a question and they’re going to respond since they’re in the room with you.

But this is also a series with critiques on cultural homogenization as only two gods remain in the universe, and the one with the most followers wants the other one dead. We also have magic as a martial art, the blending of science and magic to the point where they become indistinguishable, and the setting up of a massive quest. She Said Destroy has this incredibly bright color palate that feels as though it’s setting up for massive tragedy later. I’m excited to see where it goes.

Test is already shaping up to be one of those prescient science-fiction series that comes out of nowhere, much like Transmetropolitan twenty years ago. The characters of Testare obsessed with the continual modification of their body as a means of becoming more than just a person. Also, they also don’t actually own a single piece of their body.  Test is a personal journey narrative from the perspective of someone continually grasping for the future. Test is also a horror story. Test is showing off some of the more interesting takes on the movement of time between panels, with a flashback being played in reverse like we’re rewinding a tape. The first issue already ends on a perfect cliff-hanger.

Resonant is the kind of horror series that transofmrs something mundane into an object of supreme dread. Like the Silent Hill games did with alarms, Resonant’s setting does the same with cicada screams. What really shines throughout this first issue is the building up of the threat. We don’t know what these waves the main characters are preparing for, but we see the bunker they’ve prepared and all of the provisions and security to keep themselves safe—we wonder how bad it can really be. The panel structure and layout brings to mind The Authority and the idea of wide-screen comics that’s typically reserved for fast-paced action. But the speed here works beautifully. We have the sudden start of the wave of cicadas and are immediately swarmed by them as the pacing of the story and panels work hand-in-hand to maintain that feeling of being overwhelmed. It is pitch-perfect post-apocalyptic horror with the most interesting twist I’ve seen in years.

And then there’s the play on the chosen one adventure narrative that is Sera and the Royal Stars. Sera shows  the second generation of having been chosen and the family being distraught since they have seen what being chosen has done to their mother. But how the creators show our lead, Sera, being chosen is mostly what’s really interesting because it stays neutral from much of its tone. Members of her family see it as a curse that killed their mother, others see it as a duty, but Sera herself seems ambivalent. Even though her quest is to restore the Seven Stars to the sky, she never treats the quest as a burden or a sacred duty—this is only a task to be completed. This kind of characterization is refreshing.  We’re not sure about Sera as a character yet, but we’re still intrigued.

All four of these series features some of the best first issue world-building I’ve read. Never do I feel lost or disconnected from the world of each series—I can feel that consistent dread in these troubling worlds.

Get excited. We’re breaking open the Vault.

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 #28 by Drew Barth

Pros of Cons

Another year and another round of San Diego Comic-Con has come and gone. I’m not going to lie, it’s hard to keep track of  the avalanche of information continually coming out of the San Diego Convention Center. The problem with a lot of that information is that most of it now isn’t really related to comics as a medium. SDCC has become more of a convention for geek media as a whole with many panels and reveals being for films and shows kind of, sort of, not really related to comics. I’m all excited for that Steven Universe movie, but if this blog is going to be doing a round up of all the most interesting things coming out of Comic-Con, we’re going to focus on the comics. Mostly.

1. Ahoy Comics’s Steel Cage series-winner is revealed!: If you recall our review of Steel Cage some weeks ago, you’ll remember its unique concept: three short stories enter, one leaves with a full series. Readers were encouraged to vote online and the final winner was announced, as promised, at SDCC. And the winner is … everyone? Due to “voting irregularities” all three of the series in Steel Cage will be getting their own series next year. So, good news, your favorite of the three won no matter which one it was.
2. Kofi Kingston demands his own graphic novel from Boom! Studios: If there is any way to absolutely get a graphic novel about your fictional life as a wrestler, it’s to burst into a publisher’s panel and demand it yourself from the editor-in-chief. Which is exactly what current WWE World Champion Kofi Kingston did during Boom! Studios’ Discover Yours panel this past weekend. This is the kind of absurd moment I love hearing about, especially at SDCC where a new series announcement is kind of just a panel in a slideshow. Who doesn’t want a man in head-to-toe pancake apparel carrying a championship belt over his shoulder cutting a promo to demand his own graphic novel? Someday, that will be me!.
3. The Eisner Awards: Probably one of the biggest nights of the year in comics, the Eisners have been compared to the Oscars in terms of their prestige for many creators. This year saw creators like Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen, Jen Bartel, Faith Erin Hicks, Chip Zdarsky, and Tom King all winning for various projects. But the biggest stand out was John Allison, Max Sarin, and Julia Madrigal winning both “Best Humor Publication” and “Best Continuing Series” for their Giant Days series that comes to an end this September after five years. This award actually got me incredibly excited since I’ve been reading Allison’s webcomics for coming on fifteen years now.
4. The return of Strange Adventures: Announced fairly late in the convention, DC announced the return of a staple series from the sixties: Strange Adventures. Once home to anthology pieces about gorillas defending themselves in court, a man made of Radium, and a host of other oddities from the post-Comic Code years, Strange Adventures has been absent (save for a brief stint from Vertigo) for about ten years now. Focusing on Adam Strange, Tom King and Mitch Gerads come back together along Doc Shaner for a story we’re not quite sure of just yet. But with the attached creative team and Strange’s penchant for the…strange, we can only guess at the marvels that await.
5. Snap Snap: The Addams Family lives! Back to the medium that birthed them so many decades ago, the Addams Family have returned to comic pages once again. IDW is bringing the family back for a one-shot special this October (of course) and are bringing their original designs with them. It’s always nice to see the return of something so delightfully devilish.
6. Life on Mars: I, like most everyone else, had completely forgotten HBO was making a Watchmen For good reason. The TV series adaptation felt as though it was only going to be much like Zack Snyder’s forgettable film with a little more budget and foresight and less awkward sex scenes set to “Hallelujah.” But I’m concerned. Because what HBO is doing isn’t adapting the comic. They’re randomly expanding upon its universe and characters. But the trailer looks good. I don’t know how to feel.
7. I hope Blade is rated R: If only so we can get this line spoken by Mahershala Ali in a massive budget, mainstream movie. Please.

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 #26 by Drew Barth

The Wild Storm

Nearly thirty years ago, we saw the birth of Jim Lee’s WildStorm imprint within Image Comics. The name, taken from Lee’s WildC.A.T.S. and Stormwatch, would typify 90s extreme comics: ultra violence, para-military mercenaries, spandex tighter than skin, spikes on everything, and dubious anatomy and musculature. That aesthetic dominated comics. Even Alan Moore contributed to the massive universe of series and characters that Lee spearheaded. By the late 90s, the imprint, along with all series and characters, was purchased by DC Comics and, by 2010, was quietly discontinued.

But WildStorm isn’t dead.

In 2016, DC announced that Warren Ellis and Jon-Davis Hunt would be reviving the imprint and continuity with a 24-issue series simply known as The Wild Storm.

The Wild Storm is as close to a piece of perfect superhero comics as the medium has ever produced. If Watchmen is always considered a pinnacle, then The Wild Storm needs a spot next to it. Just above is the first page of the first issue of The Wild Storm and already we have a nine panel grid and a character wiping away a circular mark on her forehead as an almost inverse-origin of Dr. Manhattan’s iconic atomic symbol. Where Watchmen deconstructed the superhero genre as a means of bringing stories into a modern age and context, The Wild Storm is a reconstruction of the superhero genre that works off every superhero story that has come before.

Ellis and Hunt work throughout the series to build. As a team, they’ve taken characters that had existed in the previous WildStorm imprint and have reinterpreted them for a new universe. There’s the mythology of International Operations, Skywatch, The Authority, the WildC.A.T.S., the aliens and daemons as well as every event in the past that has lead to the creation of the above organizations as well as Angela Spica as the outside observer to every major event. As observers in this world, we’re caught in the middle of a Cold War scenario where both sides really want to blow each other up with as much force and flair as possible.

But Ellis knows that isn’t how a story needs to begin. Not when recreating and building a new universe. If their war is going to have impact—if the casualties are going to have any impact—every moment needs to build toward it. Much like how Angela Spica as a character goes from a rudimentary grasp of the flying exoskeleton hidden in her skin to a complete mastery of her abilities, we see each building block. Warren Ellis is a continual master of this slow building and a series like The Wild Storm only reinforces his mastery.

But more than just the building of the new universe and story, there’s the building of the physical mechanisms of the comic itself. Hunt is brilliant in his use of line and tempo throughout the page as a means of conveying action. In the two previously posted pages, the action on the page takes maybe a minute on the first page and a few moments on the second. Hunt’s nine-panel grids and other grids throughout the series aids the page’s tempo and speed. Using that second page as an example, each of those nineteen panels can constitute a second of time passing, the many panels working like quick cuts in a film or multiple short paragraphs in a written story.

This is comics, though, and that idea can work two ways. All of those panels can be a sign to read quickly, to have the eye move over in a fast way as to get to the explosive panel at the bottom. But at the same time, there is a deliberate slowness to observing each panel as its own moment. A second-to-second beat that can work to slow down time and ratchet up the tension even higher as our eyes unconsciously make their way to the climax of the page. As the series has progressed, Hunt works more to break free from the grid and gives us pages like the following.

This is the nine panel grid going through the second circle of hell. Much like Jack Hawksmoor inside, the page is being ripped apart. And this is one of the first instances of the series breaking from the grid pattern that had been established in previous issues. In these instances, Ellis and Hunt want the reader to notice and feel uncomfortable with what is being shown. These are the visual cues that make our eyes re-focus and re-examine what is on the page. It helps as well that the above page was after a page turn, contributing more sharply to the impact of the sudden skewing of the grid and insertion of multiple mini-panels.

One of the greatest things about The Wild Storm is that this isn’t the end of the story. It’s the end of the character arc for Angelia Spica as she’s gone from barely being involved in the world to being an active partner in saving it. But there are other characters introduced, more concepts like the other leftover experiments into superpowers by both International Operations and Skywatch, story threads hanging in regards to what happens to both of those organizations after massive upheavals in their structure. Ellis and Hunt have built a complete breathing universe for more creators to come through and add their ideas. Through both story and page structure, they have built a tone and a tempo for the rest of the universe to follow as the gaps they have left get filled in. Ellis himself has another series, WildC.A.T.S., slated for release later this year and Bryan Edward Hill and N. Steven Harris have recently completed The Wild Storm: Michael Cray limited series that expands upon that character’s story as well.

If there was ever an example of a well-curated universe spinning out of one of the best superhero series of the century, The Wild Storm is it.

Get excited. The storm isn’t over.

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.