Liz Baillie’s ongoing webcomic Freewheel can best be described as a slice-of-life fantasy.  Volume 1 of the series (collecting the first five chapters) introduces us to Jamie, the young girl who runs away from a foster home in order to find her brother.  Baillie slowly reveals a world of hobo encampments, secret cants and signs and an invisible culture.  As the reader adjusts to this new information, Baillie eases the reader into the real fantasy elements of the series.  This culture is intimately wrapped up with the magical, the mysterious the unexplained and the quite hazardous.  Ballie uses the classic fantasy story tradition of leaving the protagonist completely in the dark as both reader and heroine try to decipher this world.

Baillie is a cartoonist whose previous book, My Brain Hurts, was a slice-of-life/coming-of-age queer youth story set in 1990s New York.  There weren’t plot threads so much as there were occasionally overlapping character threads.  In the first volume of Freewheel, the plot was mostly an excuse to find ways to introduce and explore a variety of interesting characters.  Baillie was in no hurry to get the reader from point A to point B and instead invited readers to get lost in moments of chitchat and story-spinning with her characters.

That said, there was still an easily-discernible plot thread to pick up in the first book, and that continues here.  The second volume very much feels like the second act of a three-act work.  With characters established, Baillie deepens mysteries, introduces new threats, derails Jamie’s plans and finally points her back in the right direction to set up the climax of the story.  As such, there’s a little less of the ambling charm of the first book to be found here, given that Baillie is spending a lot of time hinting to the reader that the mysteries of the book go far deeper than one would initially suspect.

Some of the fantasy elements of the story remind me of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere.  That’s the story of a man accidentally exposed to the secret culture that lives underneath London, a scavenger society with the same sort of rules & regulations regarding contact & business that Baillie slowly unravels in Freewheel.  Both books are quite clever in how they take urban or national legends and weave them together in unexpected ways.  In both stories, knowledge is one’s most valuable weapon, because its lack is quite hazardous.  A significant difference is that Gaiman’s characters feel more clever than truly heartfelt; one always understands that they are characters, not people.  In Baillie’s story, she has a way of endowing even the most trivial of characters with a sense of humanity, even warmth.  Even the most eccentric characters get just enough backstory for the reader to understand why they’re lunatics.  That said, the “darkness” introduced as the primary antagonist feels awfully generic and cliched at the moment.  We’ll see what Baillie ultimately does in setting the series’ ultimate conflict on its ear so as to avoid easy “light vs dark” cliches.

Throughout the course of illustrating the frequently challenging layouts, Baillie has become quite an assured storyteller.  The complexity of her pages, the intuitive and almost poetic full-page word/image mash-ups, and the way she depicts gesture & interpersonal contact make this a beautiful strip to simply look at.  About the only aspect of her art that I find lacking is the way she depicts motion.  It’s herky-jerky and static at times, lacking a sense of panel-to-panel flow.  Baillie mostly avoids having to do straight chase or fight scenes, so the impact of this is minimal if still noticeable at times.  Honestly, Baillie could turn this weakness into a strength if she played up the static nature of her drawings in an exaggerated fashion during action sequences.

What is most interesting about this chapter of Freewheel is the way in which it becomes quite clear that this is a girl’s story in a society were women have every bit as much clout as a men.  Jamie’s “minder” is a girl, the minder’s mentor is a woman, Jamie’s spiritual advisor is a female cat-creature called the Contessa, etc.  It’s all very matter-of-fact and subtle but still serves as an interesting corrective for the thousands of entries in the “boys’ adventures” genre.  Baillie plans to wrap up the story in the third book and then start a sequel using the same set of characters.  It’s a world that clearly appeals to Baillie’s punk rock sensibilities, a gritty world that nonetheless has a lot of room for warm-heartedness and friendship.

Ross Mackintosh’s Seeds is a first-time effort with an artistic style indicative of Alison Bechdel or Marjane Satrapi.  Deeply thoughtful and profoundly heartfelt, Seeds explores a universal experience made all the more personal and tangible as Mackintosh reaffirms the intimate connections between the reader and the text itself.

Although it may be off-putting, the topic of cancer and the death of a loved one is something that has, unfortunately, touched and affected most people.  What is more surprising, however, is that Seeds really is not about death, but rather about character, soul and relationships.  Many times, readers look to graphic novels for escapism as the majority of what fills the store shelves in either comic shops or chain retailers caters to the adventure-driven, superhero market.  With a book like Seeds, though, it is hard not to escape the realities of life as Mackintosh does a superb job of creating viable, everyman characters and authentic dialogue and experiences for them.

While the crucial dynamic of the narrative is the important bond between father and son, the story itself is anything but overtly masculine or patriarchal.  In fact, it can be argued that the truly significant relationship is between generations and family as the main character finds comfort and solace engaging with his daughter as he had once done with his father.  This primarily autobiographical exploration also finds levity in humorous moments shared during the exasperatingly difficult times in the hospital as Mackintosh witnessed his father deteriorate.  The “spinnos” game between Mackintosh and his dad immediately comes to mind.

Seeds reflects the rougher edges of storytelling and pacing to be expected from a beginning writer.  At times, the transitions can feel rushed, as if Mackintosh could have included more story or detail, developing the narrative further with additional sequences.  Although Mackintosh’s experiences come through clearly and the panels and their structure emphasize the authenticity of Mackintosh’s voice, some readers may be left wanting more.

Seeds is difficult to read without experiencing that lump-in-your-throat reaction as the realization of death and the loss of a beloved family member hits home.  Even a second or third reading does not dilute Mackintosh’s abilities to connect with audiences on some meaningful level.  In fact, sons and daughters, as well as those with children of their own will find something special in Mackintosh’s book.   A strong statement of sequential art’s potentials beyond the spandex-clad mainstream, Seeds, like others before it, illustrates how serious, mature themes in graphic format can achieve just as powerful an impact often reserved for traditional literature.  As with Forty-Five, Com.X deserves praise for giving a platform to another important, new voice in the comics medium.

images ©Ross Mackintosh

Nick Bertozzi is an alt-cartoonist who’s never been easy to categorize. He comes from a mainstream tradition in some ways but has always had an interest in formalism, like with his map comic Boswash. His comics often touch on the grotesque while still fiddling with formal challenges, such as his comic The Masochists or his series Rubber Necker. At times, he even drifts into the surreal, as in his contribution for the anthology New Thing: Identity. Of late, he’s turning to historical fiction in places like Syncopated, using a simple and scratchy line that wouldn’t look out of place in mainstream B.D. His The Salon turns this historical fiction on its head by introducing a fantastical plotline to a story that is really more concerned with the birth of cubism. Bertozzi has never been published by one of the significant alt-publishers (although arguably Alternative Comics was close to holding that status) until he landed with First Second. Lewis and Clark is very much the model of what Kim Thompson refers to as “good crap”: a clever, well-crafted and exciting mainstream story with a number of deeper flourishes. This is very much by design, as Bertozzi aims this book at a somewhat Young Adult audience; what he comes up with is the model of what this sort of book should be.

It’s an interesting fit, since in many respects, First Second is best at producing and/or translating “new mainstream” books. That is, books that are either young adult-fiction or straightforward fiction. The art tends to have a very European sensibility to it, including the American artists who produce original work. Lewis and Clark is very much a mainstream comic designed for a wide audience, yet it capitalizes on the idiosyncrasies of Bertozzi’s style in the form of clever layouts, an attention to unusual detail and a certain focus on visceral and even scatological detail. Bertozzi goes out of his way to ground the legend of Lewis and Clark into a narrative that is as much about muck, hard-drinking and madness as it is about science and pioneering. Along the way, Bertozzi manages to avoid a number of storytelling traps that could
have made the story cliched, jingoistic or preachy. Indeed, the deftness with which he avoids these pitfalls rivals the skill of the intrepid explorers themselves.

Bertozzi makes the shrewd move of focusing on the expedition’s leader, Meriwether Lewis. He’s depicted as a combination of visionary explorer, upright patriot and total lunatic. Commissioned by president Thomas Jefferson to find a water passage to the Pacific Ocean, Lewis is shown as someone who gets things done in part because he’s so unforgiving and demanding. He’s a smart figure to hang the narrative around because of the way his life unfolds:
carrying out the mission despite great adversity on route to becoming an American hero, only to slowly go insane, become an alcoholic and eventually commit suicide. The way Bertozzi starts to poke hints of Lewis’ madness into the story (in the form of a dark, blurry homunculus of a figure) is a smart juxtaposition to both Lewis’ frequently cruel drive and gleeful, childlike
enthusiasm in pursuit of his goal. His madness, it is revealed, has much to do with a family history of insanity, but one can see the edge between that insanity and genius throughout the story. Bertozzi hints that Lewis being removed from the structure of his society during the course of the journey may well have begun the process that eventually unhinges his mind.

Bertozzi makes another smart move in the way he depicts the Indians that Lewis’ crew encounters. When the two groups speak, the reader “hears” the dialogue from the point of view of the Indians, as the white men were shown speaking haltingly. That move strips the narrative away from Lewis, putting the reader into a parallel narrative whose complexity is entirely lost on the white explorers. Lewis, accustomed to being the master of all he surveys, is very much a lost stranger in these sequences, often flying off the handle when he’s frustrated. At the same time, Bertozzi is quick not to depict the various Indian tribes as noble savages. Each tribe and each tribesman is different, with different means and goals. In dealing with the French, British and Americans, each tribe was quite adept at manipulating political ends and parlayed with that in mind. There are a few heartbreaking moments where Lewis promises some of the friendlier tribes that they would keep their land (Andrew Jackson was just a few years away). Other chiefs know better, understanding that Americans were settlers, not mere tradesmen.

Both groups are “savages” in their own way, as Bertozzi isn’t shy about injecting scatological humor into the proceedings. This is a shorthand method Bertozzi employs to forward the idea that both groups are more alike than different in a number of ways, including their senses of humor. It’s an entryway to demonstrate that both groups are flawed, ambitious, clever, funny,
playful and loyal to their own kind. Neither group can see this in the other, viewing each other as savages. Bertozzi doesn’t linger on this point for very long, instead letting this emerge as a series of humorous jabs that give way to the main narrative itself. Lewis himself emerges as a bundle of contradictions: he’s a Virginian and a gentleman, having little tolerance for the niceties of negotiation with the tribes (despite orders from the President), yet he develops great admiration for Indian maps, methods and even dress.

The other major character in the story, the young Indian guide Sacagawea, is depicted as being conflicted. She’s shrewd enough to be a great negotiator and guide but is uneasy both with the white men and her own tribe. Her relationship with French trapper and translator Charbonne is more akin to master-slave than husband-wife, a power relationship that’s compared to Clark’s own slave.  Slavery is discussed in a matter-of-fact way not to dismiss it, but to immediately alert the reader that the heroes of the story (even President Jefferson) were mostly slave-owners, with all that power that that relationship entailed. The reaction of Clark’s slave, York, not wishing to run off said a great deal about their relationship, but it also reflects a bit of what could be considered the 19th century version of Stockholm Syndrome. York considers himself to be a Virginian and wants to “earn” his freedom, even when offered a way out. Bertozzi prefers to let the reader sort out their own feelings about the matter, refusing to absolve or absolutely condemn any of these figures.

The big format of the book is instrumental in its success. Using an 8.5 x 11 page, Bertozzi employs a dizzying number of panel and page formats. He uses two page spreads, standard grids, pages with no panel borders, pages with decorative panel borders (the latter two seen for intra-tribe interaction), huge splash images with smaller panels dropped on top, zig-zagged light and dark panels that depict movement over time, insects buzzing outside of panels to indicate their omnipresence and many other tricks. What’s impressive is that these tricks help drive the narrative and never feel superfluous. The thickness and scratchiness of his line gives the reader something to hold onto even as the narrative itself flew by. These details add to the humor and irreverence of this comic while still allowing it to stand as a reasonably complete and accurate portrayal of the real historical events. Nick Bertozzi does a lot of work to keep things simple.

With Rebellion/2000 AD making a strong push into the United States collected trade market through publisher Simon & Schuster, American audiences have, for the first time, ready access to comparatively priced graphic novels anthologizing material from the British weeklies 2000 AD and its sister, monthly title Judge Dredd Megazine.  While the material has been available in the individual weekly progs and magazine issues, finding them in local shops and even through online distributors is often difficult.  Furthermore, although Americans immediately recognize names such as Diggle and Jock, Wagner and Dillon, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons and Neil Gaiman, to name but a few, for their work with either DC or Marvel Comics, access to this classic material is also troublesome as 2000AD had only digitized a fraction of its immense catalog.

As such, the publication of Lenny Zero, along with Judge Dredd MegaCity Masters, Judge Dredd the Complete Case Files, Bad Company, Nikolai Dante, Judge Death(a personal favorite), and a host of other science-fiction, futurist, crime-noir, post-apocalyptic fiction is a welcome diversity on the local and chain-bookstore shelves.

This latest collection includes not only the three original Lenny Zero stories from Judge Dredd Megazine published from 2000-2002 and created by Diggle and Jock, but also a series of other criminal tales from the Dredd universe, including Slick Dickens, Carlito (Bato Loco), and a final story about life in Mega City One.  Diggle and Jock are natural collaborators and the only thing better than reading Diggle’s prose and viewing Jock’s stark and crisp black and white line art is comparing the first “Lenny Zero” to the script posted on Diggle’s site.  As if Jock’s art required any additional appreciation. But after enjoying the first read-through and then seeing how the artist not only interpreted the script, but also shaped Diggle’s revisions to suit the art (see picture four in the book versus the script), makes the entire experience much stronger.

For the uninitiated, Mega City One is quite an easy world to jump directly into.  Mentioning Dredd among American readers usually elicits a sighed groan or look of horror as one might recall the 1995 film starring Sylvester Stallone.  Unlike the often perplexing and convoluted nature of American superhero comic universes, Mega City One is simplistic — but in no way does that detract from the stories being told here and in other collections.  If anything, it makes for an even stronger playground for writers and artists alike to hone their creations.

A common theme in many of the Lenny Zero tales, and for that matter, in other Dredd-related stories (Jack Pointe, the Simping Detective comes to mind), is the undercover Judge working among the filth and degradation of Mega City One’s most vile criminals.  This atmosphere is shaped and molded by the sometimes heavy, jagged lines Jock produces that hold the readers’ eyes whether it is an up-close profile image of a weathered and shadowy-faced villain, or the weighted feeling of being pulled directly into the barrel of the gun Judge Dredd is aiming at you.  “Sci-Fi Noir” or Future Noir is the best description of Mega City One whether it’s Jack Pointe or Lenny Zero and the artists of 2000AD take the chiaroscuro world of American detective fiction and make it something decidedly original and innovative.  The “Lenny Zero” sequences are rough and brutal at times, but with a finesse and tact not often found in comics or graphic novels.  Diggle does not take short cuts and as a result does not fall prey to the crutch of gratuitous violence to shape narrative development or mode or tone.

After the black-and-white world of Lenny Zero, the appearance of full color Steve Dillon art in Slick Dickens is a shock, but a temporary one.  John Wagner can rarely do wrong; yet here, the literary device behind the Slick Dickens stories may cause some audiences to wonder how often 2000 AD can play out this experiment.  Personally, the humorous nature of the Dickens stories, the bizarre adventures and triumphs over Mega City’s finest, and the art, particularly Greg Staples’ pages, make it an enjoyable diversion from the often stoic, authoritative Dredd tales.

The last three installments round out the Lenny Zero collection with shorter, vignette-style explorations of Mega-City One.  Gordon Rennie is another favorite from the 2000 AD fold and may be best known here in the states for Necronauts, Caballistics or Storming Heaven.  Similarly, Robbie Morrison’s co-created Nikolai Dante is also one of the most popular 2000 AD series.  In terms of a character-driven story, however, Rennie’s Carlito entries and Morrison’s are not as strong as Diggle’s Lenny Zero.  Like Wagner’s contributions, the two are avenues more for encounters with Judge Dredd rather than a platform where Dredd occasionally interacts and appears.

For fans of Diggle and Jock’s collaborations on Green Arrow or The Losers, the publication of Lenny Zero should find an already well-established audience and, potentially, the collected softcover could increase interest here in the U.S. for the world of Mega-City One.

Among the many alternate-world scenarios to consider if Al Gore had won the 2000 Presidential election (or rather, had won the Supreme Court decision) is the one where Tim Kreider had never become a political cartoonist.  Indeed, prior to the Bush reign, he was an observational cartoonist in the vein of B.Kliban by way of Jules Feiffer.  In a sense, he was also an autobiographical cartoonist, using his own problems and his friends as fodder for comedy.  His work was scathing, nasty, occasionally disgusting and invariably hilarious.  This cartoon, for example, came from prior to the election in 2000:

As he noted in one of his no-holds-barred “artist’s statements” (more like rants), he never set out to be a political cartoonist.  However, he became what he described as a “conscript” in the uphill battle against the excesses, stupidities, lies, manipulations and outright crimes of the Bush administration.  Kreider turned his impressive talent to spin vitriol on the party in power not so much as a partisan move (he saves plenty of invective for the ineffectualness of the Democrats), but rather as one man literally attempting to speak truth to power.

Battling an administration that smugly created their own reality, even if (and sometimes, especially if) it flew in the face of reason, morality and/or common sense, Kreider employed a vicious, scorched-earth set of tactics that matched the passionate intensity of the right, only embued with a wicked and outrageous sense of humor to go with a keen sense of observation.  Whether or not one agreed with all of Kreider’s observations about American culture (and I certainly don’t, especially his conflation of non-urban areas with where he lives in Maryland), the sheer relentlessness of Kreider’s attacks combined with the elegance and intensity of his line carried a certain punishing quality.

The book’s title refers to the time period of the cartoons and essays collected: 2005-2008, or the lame duck, twilight years of the Bush administration.  I read these one-page, usually four-panel cartoons online every Wednesday; a new The Pain strip was always a cause for celebration.  For me, the strip served precisely as Kreider hoped: a beacon of sanity for those who wondered why everyone around them had gone crazy, as well as someone who could be truly, incredibly, unfairly mean to Bush and his cronies.  Kreider’s depiction of Bush as an almost lovable simpleton, Dick Cheney as a sort of hand-wringing villain and (most hilariously) Vladimir Putin as Doctor Doom gave his strips a sort of through-line narrative that typical political cartoons lack.

The other through-line in these strips is that of Kreider continuing to do an autobiographical gag strip.  He frequently depicts himself and his friends as a sort of Greek chorus, the butt of jokes or as a shorthand way of depicting a particular political or cultural point.  Reading this collection buttressed a feeling I had when I read these strips online: as the years went by, the strips lost some of their power and humor.

Kreider was obviously starting to burn out, and it affected not only the inspiration for his ideas, but his cartooning as well.  Kreider got better as a draftsman over the course of the 00s but his strips started to get fussier and less elegant in terms of their design.  There were notable exceptions. “Show Yer Tits”, from September 2005, is a powerful, awful and hilarious indictment of Bush’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina. “We Even Yet?” combines the sort of quick-punch image of traditional political cartooning with a bit of his own irreverence.  “Our Secret Weapon” is a hilarious image of Bill Clinton seducing Sarah Palin so as to knock her up.  Kreider’s gift for caricature is especially on display here, expressing a sort of emotional verisimilitude for these figures he draws.

By 2008, Kreider started to run out of steam, and he mostly quit cartooning altogether in early 2009.  As he notes in the book, he was burned out from having to mine the same material week after week.  Swimming in bile for that long has to have a corrosive effect on one’s own system.  Perhaps Kreider would have wound up quitting anyway; a weekly deadline can be tough for any cartoonist, especially one like Kreider whose line is clearly work-intensive.  I look forward to his forthcoming collection of essays, which will no doubt be funny, revealing and mean.  That said, my last resentment of the Bush years is that they eventually took him away from comics, even if it made him a better cartoonist for a long time.   Kreider simply fired every bullet he had in his rhetorical armory and threw the gun at his target for good measure.

Gabriella Giandelli’s Interiorae wound up as one of the most conventional of the Ignatz line of comics.  Of course, given how unusual most of the line has been, that’s not much of a knock.  Giandelli wove genre and slice-of-life concerns into a single story that wouldn’t have merited much notice on their own, but this extended exploration of the dreams of the bored and disaffected in an apartment building is notable for a certain flat beauty.  Each issue had a single-color wash: pinkish-red in the first issue, olive green in the second and kelly green in the third.  The fourth issue, however, is entirely in black and white.  Dreams and dream-time are over, the issue suggests.

Last issue brought the interpersonal conflicts and dramas of the building’s inhabitants to a climax, or rather, an anti-climax.  There was a great deal of the proverbial sound and fury, but the lives of the combatants changed as little as the ghosts of a family shown inhabiting their old apartment.  The genre conceit of the series is that an invisible white rabbit watches the lives of those who live in the building, reporting back to his dark, ovular master, a creature that feeds on the dreams (and nightmares) of the building’s people. This series is less concerned about the petty secrets and lies of people and more interested in the idea of inbetween spaces.  There’s the space between sleep and consciousness, the line between life and death, the space between commitment and detachment, the line between love and hate.

Giandelli revealed in the third issue that the rabbit in fact was the personification of the go-between between life and death, between flesh and God.  When a frail elderly woman began to sense the end was near, she tried to find ways to cross that divide.  When the rabbit guided her across a mystical forest to meet her maker, that was literally the end of everything.  The rabbit and the dream-eater left the building.  The family of ghosts departed.  The building itself shuddered and collapsed, its protectors now gone.  One gets the sense that the most truly worthy people left, or at least the most interesting; there was nothing left for the dream-eater to nourish himself on.

That final forest sequence was spectacular, as Giandelli drew a forest of delights filled with Jim Woodring-style creatures and numerous purely decorative touches.  This sequence was certainly in sharp relief compared to the rest of the series, which bore a flatness of style and affect along with a certain relentless grayness.  All of the various interpersonal conflicts never went anywhere, an indication that the “interior” life of the building’s characters was drab and dull–no matter their ideals or lack of same.  That essential dullness and tedium, while necessary to portray, wasn’t necessarily all that interesting to read.  Happily, the final issue addressed that issue by simply having the characters stop in their tracks with regard to the conflicts, with many realizing that something awful was about to happen.  While the series wound up cohering nicely, the end result was simply less engaging than the rest of the books in the Ignatz line.

The part of the Boom Kids! solicitation for Mickey Mouse #304 that really stood out was the statement that the comic’s lead story, “The Pirate Ghost Ship” by Bill Walsh and Floyd Gottfredson, had not been reprinted in its entirety since 1944. To longtime fans that meant that the tale had not been re-presented in the fine albums and comics released by the Gladstone imprint in the latter half of the 1980s. Reading the story today, a couple of reasons for that oversight suggest themselves, although it endures as an interesting product of the confluence of creativity and commerce.

“The Pirate Ghost Ship” is a lengthy segment of the Mouse’s daily newspaper strips done for the King Features Syndicate. The strip began in January 1930 as a sequence of loosely linked gags written by Walt Disney himself. In short order, the strip was modified to reflect King’s desire to capture its share of the growing public enthusiasm for continuity strips, particularly ones involving exotic derring-do. In May of 1930, Gottfredson was brought aboard (some say shanghaied) and proved himself to be the Good Mouse Man.

Mickey, of course, had begun life as a plucky, resourceful, enterprising underdog so the call for sustained adventures seemed pitch-perfect for him. As it turns out, it also proved tailor-made for Gottfredson. That being said, nothing I’ve seen before from either of them quite prepared me for the absolutely furious action and breakneck pacing seen here.

“The Pirate Ghost Ship” starts fast and runs hard throughout. Mickey signs up for a hitch aboard a tuna trawler. (“Shucks! The country needs more food … and a couple of days hard work won’t hurt me!”) By the third installment, Pluto has plummeted from the crows nest and, during the five days following, the strip sees a storm at sea, Pluto overboard, monstrous fish, the sighting of a pirate’s frigate, the sinking of the fishing boat and a shark attack — over a single working week! Nor is there any let-up in the action toward the wrap-up, with its battle between monstrous water serpents, sunken treasure retrieved, a busted dam, a river of fire and an exploding island, and that’s skipping over walking the plank, a whale attack, a mutiny, wrestling an ape, a warning, “ghostlie haff-human forms,” sea cannibals, Dead Man’s Isle and its “walking death,” natives who speak in musical sounds, shrunken seadogs, a fight with a crocodile and a green princess who’s otherwise a Minnie Mouse look-a-like in a Dorothy Lamour sarong.

This is lickety-split storytelling anticipating an A.D.D. pandemic among newspaper readers. Emphasis remains squarely on the gag-a-day format while overarching continuity makes seat-of-the-pants plotting seem languorous. Any given installment seems comfortable commencing with a non sequitur or incongruence. There are also a couple of notable fatalities along the way, which may account for the story’s absence within the Gladstone canon.

Mickey Mouse #304 is rounded out with a two-page joke by Gottfredson and co-writer Webb Smith “in its first re-printing ever!” as well as a 10-page Goofy misadventure — “making its American printing debut!” — in which he takes up the occupation of tree trimmer with predictable if spectacular results.

I quote Book Kids! solicitation information with an ulterior purpose. Sharp-eyed readers might already have noticed that “The Ghost Ship” is not definitively dated within Gottfredson’s career, all years and spans being extrapolated and couched. Specific chronological information isn’t to be found in the solicitation or in the comic itself. Clearly, this isn’t a priority of the Boom or its presumed audience of Kids! but it does, in retrospect, emphasize defunct Gladstone’s comparative thoroughness in presentation. And, not to be too much the company shill here, it also whets the appetite for the more definitive and exacting reprinting of the Mouse adventures forthcoming from Fantagraphics.

I am sure that eventually, somebody within DC Marketing will envision a Grant Morrison Batman omnibus that collects his now historic runs of “Batman and Son” and “R.I.P.” (and its various preludes) along with his 16-issue Batman and Robin, the Arkham Asylum graphic novel, and even the tales collected as Batman Gothic. Until then, however, these deluxe hardcover editions are a welcome and beautiful format, the pages only slightly larger than those of the comics themselves, and the additional features (artistic sketches and Morrison script notes) give audiences even greater insight into the creative process.  The often-cited dilemma of following a monthly series versus waiting to read the collection, though, still persists.  Morrison, unlike many of today’s other mainstream writers, exists quite well within both camps; his Batman and Robin story-arcs or All-Star Superman maxi-series succeed as stand-alone, monthlies working towards a singular, end goal, while his Final Crisis, Joe the Barbarian and now, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne (BROBW) are better served story-wise by the compilations.

The changing nature of the comic market into the hardcover and trade formats has required writers to shift and alter their own writing styles to produce more collected-friendly stories that will sell in the non-comic shop environments such as chain, brick and mortar retailers, or online vendors.  Even Morrison is not immune to this commercial transformation.  While the days of the stand-alone, single contained adventure may be waning, this is not to say that BROBW is not a masterfully rendered exploration of Bruce Wayne’s plight to return after his “death” in Final Crisis.

BROBW is also an experiment in genres and time periods as Morrison tackles prehistory, colonial America, eighteenth-century piracy, the Wild West, detective noir, and contemporary Gotham City.  Unfortunately, if there is one slight deficit in this approach, it is that Morrison is only provided a short window or stage by which to explore and develop these sequences beyond visual tropes or dialogue cues signifying each era or literary convention.  As such, some are definitely stronger than others.  While they are obviously interconnected, they can, in essence, stand by themselves.

Collaborating with Morrison are six artists, including Chris Sprouse, Frazer Irving, Yanick Paquette, George Jeanty, Ryan Sook and Lee Garbet, with original character designs and regular cover illustrations by Andy Kubert.  In this way, BROBW resembles Morrison’s artistic approach in Seven Soldiers, although here, each artist is providing his own interpretation of Bruce Wayne battling through time.  Sprouse provides a fine homage to the Kirby-esque caveman era while still making it distinctively his own.  Irving’s work, however, is the most visually stunning not only in its use of colors (which Irving also does), lighting, and cool and warm tones to reinforce emotion and create atmosphere, but also in the panel layouts and story pacing.  Paquette’s contributions are perhaps the most sincere to any genre in the book, in that his illustrations correspond so perfectly to Morrison’s pirate voices.

It is only in the last three stories and art where the pieces and transitions are not so smooth or complete.  For the narrative structure, the final three installments are too closely tied to events unfolding in Morrison’s sister series, Batman and Robin.  While the majority of BROBW readers will have likely also followed that title, newcomers unfamiliar with it may experience some dislocation in the absence of the crossover material.  Artistically, the genres and time frames in these later issues also seem awkward and forced in parts.  Apart from covered wagons and cowboy hats, there is nothing decidedly Western about “Dark Night, Dark Rider” save the few appearances by Jonah Hex.  Secondly, as every story ends with a transition into the next setting, there appears to be a temporal disconnect between the ending previewed in “Dark Night, Dark Rider” and the implicitly 1940s or 1950s design that opens “Masquerade” in the next chapter.  While “Masquerade” is the most detective-oriented story in scope and content, it is definitely not noir in look or feel save a few panels in the opening pages.

As with most of Morrison’s work, a second or even fourth read-through is essential not only to catch various clues and hints about the story and Batman’s larger, historical continuity, but also to unravel and appreciate the gems that Morrison often includes in each of his writings.

Briefer became the official funnybook master of the menace of Frankenstein’s monster by doing two versions of the character — a serious evocation of Boris Karloff’s 1931 movie interpretation of Mary Shelley’s creation and a highly comical big-foot re-interpretation. Yoe reprints the inaugural appearance of the first version from Prize Comics #7 (December 1940), “which began the very first continuing series of horror comics,” followed by the next two (#8 and #9) and then three stories from Frankenstein #1 (Summer 1945), wherein the character is “the merry monster” that Briefer had introduced in Prize Comics #53 (May 1953).

Funny Frank flourished in his own title for 17 issues, and then he reverted to horrifying with #18 in March 1952 in order to join the trend of horror comics then slithering across the land. But for Briefer, whom Yoe quotes, “the attitude was different, the fun was gone.” He did 16 terrifying issues for the paycheck, and when “the anti-horror groups” arrived, Briefer left comics for advertising after #33 (October 1954) of Frankenstein, and the comics medium lost one of its most distinctive practitioners.

Yoe’s Funny Frank revival includes two more stories, one from Frankenstein #8 (July-August 1947) by which time, Briefer’s drawings have shed fineline shading in favor of a bold, fluid brush stroke, and another from #15 (September-October 1948). In the latter, “The Girl with the Bewitching Eyes” invokes Will Eisner’s take on Jane Russell and her famous bosom, from the Sept. 1, 1946 Spirit story, “Olga Bustle: The Girl with the Big, Big Eyes” — clearly an in-group joke: Briefer’s comic book career had started in 1936 in the comic art shop run by Eisner and Jerry Iger.

Click to view larger image.

In the last four stories in the Yoe Book, Frank reverts to his original terrifying self as revealed in #20 (August-September 1952), #24 (April-May 1953), #28 (January 1954), and #31 (June-July 1954). The last two showcase Briefer’s mature style, now deftly blending the bold outline of the comical version with fineline modeling and shading.

Briefer is remembered more for his comical Frankenstein than for any of the other excellent work he did in comics. I was always a little put off by his Funny Frank because Briefer located the monster’s nose above his eyebrows, too weird for me in my misguided youth. Now I see that facial tic is Briefer’s caricature of his version of the Frightening Frank, whose nose was missing except for two nostril holes between his eyes. Briefer, Yoe tells us in his introduction, wrote all his own stories, and the comical ones in particular are a treat to behold. Briefer liked his funny stuff best, but it’s fascinating to watch him shift, seemingly without effort, from serious, realistic visuals to bigfoot cartooning, and back again.

In Funny Frank, Briefer’s treatment is lighthearted, his visuals energetically antic in their comedic exaggeration; in Frightening Frank, the stories are flamboyantly horrifying (in what might be described as the best EC manner), narrative captions pulsating purple, and the pictures grittily grim and menacing.

Click to view larger images.

In one of his most light-hearted tales (from Frankenstein #8), Briefer commits a cheery send-up of Superman when Funny Frank becomes Blooperman, embodying the hopes of two comic-book creators, Jerry Shoestring and Joe Seagull.

Yoe’s Introduction, as is common with Yoe Books, is a mine of visual extras — a couple of Briefer’s paintings of Frankenstein (in both guises), a page of his first comic-book story (“The Hunchback of Notre Dame”), samples of the Funny Frank comic strip that no syndicate had the wisdom to buy, a few of Alex Toth’s shorthand version of Briefer’s Funny Frank, some original art, and more — as well as an informative albeit brief biography. (Briefer was blacklisted during the McCarthy Red Scare Years of the 1950s because he drew a comic strip for the Communist Party’s Daily Worker during World War II; Russia, at the time, was an ally of the U.S. and Britain. Guilt by association is retroactive.)

The cover of the book is an inventive design that, unlike Chip Kidd’s Shazam cover, serves a purpose other than simply showing off the designer’s crazed inventiveness: It draws attention to the Briefer variants of Frankenstein. The face of Frightening Frank appears on the cover with holes where his eyes should be, but through the holes, we see the eyeballs of the picture behind the cover, Briefer’s Funny Frank. Their eyes link the two interpretations of the character. On the back cover, another full-face portrait, this time of Briefer.

Altogether, a nifty package and a delightful read.

While the premise of The Best American Comics series is clear, its realization has always faced formidable practical obstacles. The annual hardcover from the high-profile publisher was designed from its inception to entice a wider, booky audience. An immediate complication was that newcomers might need some remedial help with the medium, an introduction to its conventions or generally be brought up to speed rapidly on the state of its art (nowhere is this made more explicit than in this year’s introduction by series editors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden where, in the first sentence of their foreword, they describe “pamphlet comics” as “what we in the biz call what you probably think of as ‘comic books’”).

That wider audience might also be largely unfamiliar with the annually chosen guest editors, comics creators who would need no introduction to medium habitués (prior to this volume, they were Harvey Pekar, Chris Ware, Lynda Barry and Charles Burns). Editors were encouraged to make their selections according to quality and what tickled their fancy, with less attention to concrete attributes as format, scope or size of the original comics and presumably even less concern with how varied material would be subsequently assembled into a single volume.

Note that so far this has nothing to do with taste, sensitivity or preferences of editors (nor with the unfortunate necessities of lag time inherent in print publishing: The Best … 2010 culls work from September `08 through August `09). Actually, personalized assessment made for one of the livelier features of the series and up until this year, particularized sensibilities had never proven to be a drawback. Idiosyncratic choices were often annual highlights. Still, accomplished creators aren’t necessarily skilled editors, which helps to account for why the annual whole was never greater than the sum of its parts and why no Best American was the standout anthology of its calendar year.

This current edition, which unquestionably includes some absolutely superlative comics, is the least adventurous, most ungainly, most circumscribed and least surprising assortment ever, so much so that it’s worth considering whether anybody reading here at the Journal site would find it, on balance, of value.

Well, if you keep up with such publications as Bookforum, Taddle Creek and Reason and the on-line site Metropolis, if you’re familiar with Michael Cho, David Lapp, Fred Chao and Theo Ellsworth, if you keep abreast of more cutting-edge compilations such as Kramer’s Ergot, Mome and World War III and if you aren’t an obsessive Chris Ware completist, well no, it’s probably not for you.

Alternatively, if you’ve read Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp, Crumb’s The Book of Genesis, Ware’s Acme Novelty Library #19 and Tyler’s masterpiece You’ll Never Know, Book One, it’s probably not for you either, as portions of these books have been included to the tune of either 12 or 19 pages each. Add segments from Josh Neufeld’s A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge (at 27 pages), the whole of Chao’s “Lobster Run” from Johnny Hiro (30 pp.) and what looks like an entire issue of Marvel’s Omega the Unknown by Jonathan Lethem, Farel Dalrymple and Gary Panter (24 pp.) and you have eaten up almost half the book, with large chunks of the Gilbert and Mario Hernandez’s Citizen Rex, Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel’s The Alcoholic and Lilli Carre’s The Lagoon yet to go.

©Lilli Carre

Given that roster this obviously is less a question of quality than of allocation of resources. (But OK, as for quality, at this point is anything gained by a 10-page segment involving Bryan Lee O’Malley’s character Scott Pilgrim that, out of context, is hopelessly confusing and that, enlarged to this extent, is more grandly insubstantial?)

The book feels bloated. By inevitable comparison, the two-page pieces from Peter Kuper and Laura Weinstein feel pared and lean, compressed, urgent and vital; as artistic expressions complete in themselves, they are proportioned and buff relative to the far longer, carved-out and ponderously dangling bits. Prior volumes had the occasional blank and spacing page to make sure certain stories began on the proper side of the book; here there are multiple sheets to decorate and set stage and signify gravitas, mostly to diminishing effect. In years past, the concluding lists of other Notable Comics, as compiled by Abel and Madden, have seemed supplemental and superfluous. In this year’s sampler of superstars, Hall of Famers, big books and best sellers (all relatively speaking, of course), their addendum feels like an exotic tease, a menu of extras and exciting come-ons addressing the more catholic tastes and wider interests of more intrepid readers.

Which brings us to worse: As a package, this edition comes across as far too satisfied with itself, its lack of vision and lack of ambition. A handsome portrait of this year’s editor, Neil Gaiman, appears on the back cover. (Where was Harvey Pekar’s mug on the inaugural release?) Flattering as it is, it’s hard not to think of it as an idealization, a completely realized do-over of the face of the comic geek.  As such, it appears as a one-shot rehabbing of the image of comic fans so grievously wounded by Drew Friedman on the front of The Best American Comics Criticism of the 21^st Century. Gaiman’s pleasing visage contrasts to his description of himself in his Introduction, as having “bags under his eyes … the little potbelly … the haunted expression” of a man who — we are free to infer — has physically sacrificed himself for the good of funnies.

Abel and Madden allow “it’s clear where Neil is coming from: the stories and excerpts are longer than in the preceding volumes, and that they are focused on the narrative,” which is fine as far as it goes but the trouble is it isn’t very. His 25 selections are the fewest ever. As for the excerpting, Gaiman was hoping to feature portions that “would interest, intrigue, or irritate you enough that they would perhaps send you out to buy the whole [original version].” Inciting emotion and moving folks to action is a tricky business; more likely you will — if you follow the biz at all — glance at your bookshelf and, seeing the originals there, wonder who might benefit from a regifting of this potpourri.

Toward the end of that facile Introduction, one that dabbles in a faux-pamphlet comic-scripting format for the rubes, Gaiman suggests a “real title” for the volume as “A Sampler: Some Really Good Comics, Including Extracts from Longer Stories We Thought Could Stand on Their Own” and, as such, finds “It’s not half bad.” The Best American Comics this year, every year, any year, needs to be better than that.