this week’s comics

Okay, before I get into today’s entry, I want to point back to Monday’s post about the Donald Duck comic from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Because I am an unworldly American who also has eyes that occasionally betray him, I referred to the museum by a different name. I’ve corrected the post (but left my dumb mistake there and crossed out). Thanks to Walter for pointing this out to me.

Now, onto to hopefully less error-ridden looks at some of this week’s comics! SPOILERS AHEAD!

Now, this graphic novel I haven’t had a chance to read page one yet, but it’s Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead and master cartoonist, presenting another of his epic-length biographies, like those of Schlitzie, the famous real life “pinhead” of the 20th century, and Ernie Bushmiller, creator of Nancy.

Griffith is going back to his own family as a subject, having previous written about his mother in 2015’s Invisible Ink. This time he’s examining the life of his great-grandfather William Henry Jackson, the famous photographer. My brief glance through the book reveals another lavishly illustrated, densely-told narrative that promises to be as rewarding as any of Griffith’s works. I can’t wait to dive in.

Sophie Campbell returns to full art chores for this Thanksgiving tale, as Supergirl is delayed for dinner by finding herself attempting to help a previous adversary. …Well, okay, no need to be coy, it’s Princess Shark, she’s right on the cover. It’s a fun read, and it doesn’t shy away from the dichotomy of the holiday being a time for family gatherings and maybe not having the most savory of origins. Supergirl is a solid book built around relationships and learning to understand each other, definitely one of the most worthwhile books on the stands.

Well, bless him for trying.

It’s a little strange that two different American companies are publishing their own Uncle Scrooge McDuck series simultaneously. Both are fine, but this one, the Fantagraphics series, is picking up the “legacy” numbering (the pictured issue is #462).

And this series also feels more like an authentic Disney Uncle Scrooge comic, reprinting as it does from Italian publications, one of the primary sources for modern Duck comics. The Marvel produced Scrooge comics feel more like “what if Scrooge was a Marvel character?” (and I don’t mean Marvel’s series of Disney-themed What If comics.) It’s a perfectly acceptable take, but it’s just off-model enough to be distracting.

The Fantagraphics series is enjoyable, though, and surprised me in #461 with a bit of serious emotional depth in the middle of all the wild goings-on. Old enemy Flintheart Glomgold has reformed (or…did he?) and as he’s about to take the nephews out to his place, Donald has this to say:

That’s not goofball, slapstick Donald being put upon by Scrooge or Gladstone, or furious Donald squawking incoherently…that’s “don’t piss me off, I mean business” Donald, who poses an actual threat to anyone who would harm his family. Good to know some of that steel in Scrooge made it to his nephew.

Look, I’m not a big ol’ Liefeld hater or anything. I appreciate that he has fans and that he can still sell books. Waaay back in 2009, I even put out the question “hey, I know I sold a lot of Youngblood when it first came out, did any of you guys buy it?” and at first I got some responses from folks who were all “yeah, I got caught up in the hype” or “I was totally into Rob then” and that sort of thing.

And then the Rob himself noticed, and linked to me on his message board, and behold, Every Youngblood Fan in America was suddenly in my comments, defending Rob and his comics and occasionally getting mad at me for some reason. You can read the three parts here (1 2 3) but be aware there is some linkrot, including links to the original comments, alas. But I quote enough of them to give you an idea.

And I discussed the comments and responded to them, even the ones that called me a jerk, and I tried to be open-minded about it all. The overall impression I received was that Rob’s fans, at least these responders, were hyperdefensive, and I quickly add, not that I can blame them. Especially at the time, when his work seemed to get pulled out and kicked around a bit, particularly in the comicsweblogosphere.

The ultimate conclusion was that 1) Rob’s work is Not for Me, and 2) More power to his fans for liking his stuff. I mean, that’s all.

Yes, my short review above was a cheap gag, one I got in my head and needed to release. However, like I said somewhere in those posts I linked from 2009, I would love nothing more than Liefeld committing, Erik Larsen on Savage Dragon style, to doing a single issue of Youngblood every single month for the rest of his career, just to see the weird and wild places it would go to. Personally, I think that would be amazing.

This first issue I don’t find particularly amazing…lots of full-page drawings and close-ups and backgrounds that are little more than lightly textured color and the occasional shot of a boat. Everyone’s leaping around and shouting at each other and, I mean, nobody’s buying Youngblood to see a comics version of My Dinner with Andre. This is pretty much the Platonic ideal of a Youngblood comic.

I will give the comic this. The first page, acknowledging the title’s return to Image with panels in the shape of the Image logo, is clever. And the last page reveal does make me want to see what happens next, even though it’ll probably be more leaping around and shouting.

So I don’t know where to even begin with the work of Fletcher Hanks, Golden Age cartoonist. He was only active for a couple of years, from 1939 to 1941, and it would be easy to dismiss his oddball superhero comic book work as naïve art, as Hanks’ stories rarely seem more than unfettered id unleashed upon a page with no mollifying influence between thought and execution

But also keep in mind the superhero genre was still in its infancy, with Superman his own self first appearing in print in 1938. The language and tropes of the superhero comic had yet to establish themselves, leaving Hanks free to interpret the genre in his own unfettered way.

If you’re unfamiliar with the man’s work, a quick Googling will pull up plenty of examples, or you can see an overview of a Stardust story here. And trust me when I say, that’s not even one of the weirder Stardust stories.

A thought that just crossed my mind: Hanks’ comics are like, what if the Herbie the Fat Fury stories were serious? It almost feels that way.

At any rate, Hanks’ work started get a lot of attention a decade or two back, thanks to a couple of nice paperback collections from Fantagraphics. That certainly made new fans of the man’s work. And that brought us to a couple of years back, when a book of new stories about Hanks’ Stardust character showed up on a crowdfunding site. Lots of great creators were involved, lots of perks for the supporters, it all looked great.

Unfortunately, it was a large number of creators, which is, to use the old expression, like herding cats, so the book took a little longer than intended to produce and put out. But supporters were kept in the loop, and worries were kept to a minimum.

At last, this month, they started to ship, and I got mine:

Haven’t had much more than a brief flip-through of the volume, but it’s very nice looking, beautifully colored and printed, and featuring some real top flight talent.

Unfortunately there is a page of A.I. art in the book, apparently being used by the “artist” on purpose to make a point about something, but I’ll never read it and neither will you. Doing A.I. “comics” is an insult to other actually talented creators involved in this book and should never have been allowed.

The other little thing that bugged me about this had nothing really to do with the book itself, but rather how one of the funding campaign perks was handled.

This is what I ordered for the shop:

That would get me three copies of the hardcover, and as it says right there in black and white, “all copies signed by Mike Allred.” Great, all the books will be autographed, I’m getting everything at a reasonable price, should sell great at the shop.

As it turns out, the books weren’t signed, and I instead got these separate bookplates with Allred’s signature:

…which, you know, “signed bookplate” is fine, too, probably easier for the publisher to get those shipped from place to place instead of mailing hundreds of books to Allred, or flying Allred out to where the books are and have him sign them there. But “bookplate” is different from “book signed” and that distinction should have been made more clear.

On top of everything else, said bookplates are wider and a hair taller than the actual book, so if you’re gonna but them in there, you may have to trim them down. And they’re not self-adhesive so you’ll have to glue ’em down yourself.

Sigh. I did drop a line to the publisher suggesting that he be more careful about this sort of thing in the future. Or maybe it was just something that was out of his control…maybe he was just as surprised at the size of the signed bookplates but it was too late to do anything about it. Who knows.

To reiterate: the book itself, with that minor one page caveat, looks wonderful and I can’t wait to dig into it. The other issues may be a little disappointing, but the book itself is the important bit and that looks like they got it about 99% correct. Can’t wait to see who was able to lose their minds enough to match Fletcher Hanks’ illustrated insanity.

Without getting into the entire series of circumstances here (which you can read about in this article), the new fairly-well-anticipated ongoing Red Hood series that came out last Wednesday has already been canceled by DC Comics, who issued a statement regarding “standard of conduct” policies, credited the full cost of the comics back to retailers, and, I don’t know, probably salted the earth besides.

Anyway, I had a few copies still on the shelf come Thursday morning following the news of the series’ ending, for which I had a sudden influx of folks immediately interested in picking it up. Sometimes even multiple copies.

Now, when I posted about this on Bluesky, I had some folks asking maybe if they were being bought to be destroyed in protest of the comic’s writer, and no, I didn’t get that vibe from anyone. Most likely it’s either 1) curiosity about the comic itself, or (especially in the case of the multiple issue pick-ups) 2) immediate flipping on the eBays. Sure enough, we’ve got some wild prices on that #1 over there already, so “an ill wind…” and all that.

It’s a weird situation, brought about by the most unfortunate events. And just so we’re clear…no matter how abhorrent or even dangerous I found the man’s beliefs, shooting him was not the answer. If anything, regardless of the shooter’s reasons for doing so, it’s just made things more difficult in sociopolitical conditions that are already deeply damaged.

And frankly, given some of the man’s past statements, I can understand why the comic’s writer would be extremely unhappy with him. And that’s fine. You don’t have to like anyone. You don’t even have to mourn someone you didn’t like when they’re gone. But let’s draw the line at, like, shooting them. Maybe just yell at them instead.

Sigh. I said I wasn’t going to get into it, but it’s kind of hard not to. I didn’t even want to write about this for today’s post, but I felt like I just couldn’t ignore it. So there you go, a real world ugly political mess that’s pushed its way into comics. Not what anybody wanted.

And please, also, don’t forget the victims of the Evergreen High School shooting that happened the same day. Or the Historically Black Colleges that are under lockdown over what will hopefully be spurious bomb threats.

Just…be careful out there. And be good to each other.

So in the wake of the mid-1980s Crisis on Infinite Earths, the epic mini-series that changed the DC Universe permanently and forever, never to be altered again, the masterminds behind that series, Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, put out a two-part History of the DC Universe. The last two installments of the 12-issue Crisis were intended as an overview of the new, combined, parallel-Earthless DCU, but ended up as its own thing.

The premise of the series was that Harbinger, former associate to the Monitor in Crisis, is documenting the events of this new version of the DC Universe, presenting how everything now fits together when it had all been on multiple Earths before. It was text with beautiful illustrations by Pérez, and was out of date almost as soon as it was published, as DC began its multiple decades of trying to bend everything back into something resembling pre-Crisis shape. However, it still stands as a wonderfully drawn art showcase which still gets rereleased from time to time, including a new reissue of the Crisis on Infinite Earths Omnibus that includes History.

However, after nearly forty years, it’s been decided that it’s probably time to try again and see where the DC Universe stands. This is probably the right time for it, as we seem to have gotten away from DC’s near-yearly attempts at undoing Crisis from the last decade or so and the DCU has settled down into some relative stability.

And that new try? Behold, The History of the New DC Universe written by Mark Waid, issue #1 illustrated by Jerry Ordway and Todd Nauck, main wraparound cover here drawn by Chris Samnee:

I did love Samnee’s cover, and if I gave in to temptation, I would have kept one of every cover for myself. I did manage to restrict myself to just one cover, though, and it’s the wraparound group shot cover by Scott Koblish:

Here’s a detail I pulled off the back cover, specifically because this image includes Sheldon Mayer’s Scribbly:

There’s a specific reason why I like the Koblish covers specifically, in that it includes characters like some of those funny animal characters that don’t get mentions in the comic itself but have their existence acknowledged in this huge group shot. We also get characters that, In Real Life, first appeared during the Golden Age, but in the new DCU are presented as more contemporary characters, like the Marvel/Shazam! Family.

The actual content itself is split into two parts: the main “story,” as such, is Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash, presenting a chronological step-by-step New History of the DC Universe, as it says on the tin, light on the text and transitions, almost by necessity, but heavy on the swell art:

Yes, I picked a Swamp Thing-related image as an example, You know whose blog you’re on.

Another nice touch is that Barry acknowledges at the very beginning the presence of “Crisis-level events” that have mucked about with continuity, which does have me curious as to how the series is going to handle things like Crisis on Infinite Earths, or Dark Crisis, or the various Metal series, or, God help us, Doomsday Clock.

Of course, it’s easy to draw comparisons between this series and the History of the Marvel Universe by Waid and Javier Rodriguez, released about six years ago. Similar in layout, with art heavy pages and small blocks of text in the front of the book, with pages of notes in the back (more on the notes section shortly), it differed in that it the Marvel history seemed to go out of its way to point out and correct continuity issues.

I imagine it’s at least in part because Marvel’s mostly avoided line-wide reboots or endless rejiggerings of its fictional world. But some characters, like the Punisher, had their origins in the Vietnam War, which is maybe a little too far back in real world history for the Punisher to still be an active and effective vigilante in stories set in modern times. As such, the fictional Siancong War was created to replace the Vietnam War, always some vague time in the recent-ish past, being pushed along forward in time much like the Marvel characters themselves, staying current in relation to the real world year.

If I recall correctly, characters like Reed Richards and Ben Grimm from the Fantastic Four, who originally had fought during World War II (and was still a thing, so to speak, as of 1981, kinda sorta), had their wartime experiences shifted to the Siancong War. But some WWII-era characters who had an “out,” like Captain America’s initial 20-years-long suspended animation being extended eventually to now, what, 60 or 70 years, are still WWII-bound. And there’s Namor, who’s long-lived, and there’s the Red Skull, whatever his deal was…all still connected to the 1940s.

It’s mentioned here only because New History of the DC Universe hasn’t yet dropped any huge change along those lines, at least that I’ve noticed. To be honest, I was expecting something drastic being done with the Justice Society of America, a World War II-era superteam, some of whom are still around and kickin’ today. I think the Golden Age Green Lantern is kept vital by his ring, and the Golden Age Flash is…his connection to the Speed Force, maybe? At any rate, they’re all literally 100 years old or more now, or thereabouts.

I think the solution provided, seemingly inspired by Last Days of the Justice Society by Roy and Dann Thomas and David Ross, that they were on an “interdimensional adventure” that extended their lives “by decades.” It’s sort of the DC version of Marvel’s “Captain America was frozen in ice for [x] years,” where they can just keep increasing that value of [x] as needed. Anyway, I think this preferable to changing the DC WWII superheroes to, like, some newer war or an invented war.

As I said, like the Marvel History, there are pages of extra notes in the back, titled “New History of the DC Universe Timeline, written by Dave Wielgosz, based on the research he and Waid underwent for this project.

In case you’re wondering, yes, Scribbly gets a mention in the Timeline.

Almost by necessity, the “comic book” section of the publication had to skip a lot of the finer details while hitting the big moments of the history. There’s really only so much space to work with, and while I’m sure everyone involved would have liked to spend page after page detailing the origins of every Golden Age character, but that just wasn’t going to happen. But here in the notes, or Timeline, section, you can get those details and even specific issue numbers. It’s a nice, informative supplement to the main thrust of the book.

New History of the DC Universe is a wonderful artistic showcase, supported by the very thorough informative writing and research by Waid and his team. Like I said above, I’m looking forward to seeing how the later more volatile eras get hammered into coherent shape.