A comiXologist Recommends (their favorites from 2015)

by Harris Smith

There were too many comics this year to pick one favorite, so here’s just a bunch of my favorite things that happened in 2015:

1. Stories from a comic I published, Felony Comics #1, were featured in Best American Comics 2015, so that was pretty cool.

2. Ben Marra, cover artist for Felony Comics #1, published his first graphic novel, Terror Assaulter: One Man War on Terror, from Fantagraphics.  That was also cool.

3. Chuck Forsman’s self-published Revenger continued to channel the spirit of 80′s action movies like Death Wish 3, combined with the stark, deadpan sensibility that made his previous comics, like TEOTFW and Luv Sucker so powerful.

4. Future Shock Zero- If you want to get an overview of the best of today’s indie/art comics scene, Josh Burggraf’s sci-fi anthology is the perfect place to start, with comics by some of my favorite artists, including Lala Albert, Alex Degen, Sophia Foster-Dimino, Victor Kerlow, Jasoph Murphy, Aleks Sendwald, Pete Toms and Ben Urkowitz.

5. Every moment of Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe

6. Antisocial gorilla bikers in The Humans

7. Upping the indie quotient on comiXology like wow with the digital debut of MOME from Fanagraphics

8. We got  my favorite book by my favorite cartoonist, The Freddie Stories by Lynda Barry,  on comiXology, thanks to the digital launch of Drawn & Quarterly

9. Another one of my favorite indie cartoonists, Michel Fiffe, took on Ann Nocenti-era Daredevil (possibly the best creative run on a superhero comic of all time) in Marvel’s Secret Wars: Secret Love #1

10. Good superhero shows on TV- Jessica Jones, for its emotional complexity; Gotham, for being a noir-ish soap opera with Batman characters; and Supergirl, for being smart and fun.

11. DC Comics in general, for giving us a Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League book, teaming up Gilbert Hernandez and Darwyn Cook on the Twilight Children, the new PREZ book, launching the old Joe Simon PREZ on comiXology, launching Jack Kirby’s OMAC on comiXology, and I know it isn’t out yet, but a new Swamp Thing book by Len Wein and Kelly Jones?  Too good to be true.

Harris Smith is a senior production coordinator and the editor of comiXology’s Tumblr, as well as the publisher of Felony Comics and a film programmer at the Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn.  His New Year’s Resolution is to read and make more comics in 2016.

A comiXologist Recommends

Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe #10

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Tom Scioli’s Transformers vs. G.I. Joe is the best thing happening in mainstream comics today, and maybe the best thing happening in comics period.  In doing what he’s done with the series, Scioli has achieved at least two remarkable feats.  First, he has made an art comic under the guise of a mainstream comic- in theory, what could be more mainstream than Transformers vs. G.I. Joe?  Superman Vs. Batman, maybe?  Mickey Mouse vs. Donald Duck?  Coke vs. Pepsi?  And it’s been successful, too, both critically and commercially,

More than that, though, Scioli has a made an art comic out of a licensed mainstream comic, with ties not only to other comics, but to two lines of popular toys, cartoons, multi million dollar movie franchises, diehard fans and some 30 plus years of history.  This isn’t to say that there aren’t good comics made from licensed properties, or even these two particular properties- just check out Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye, but even some of the best must adhere to certain constraints.  They must play the right amount of fan service and provide what is primarily a recognizable version of these characters and the created universe in which they exist.

Not so for Scioli and collaborator John Barber.  Sure, the G.I. Joes are recognizable as G.I. Joes, and the Transformers as Transformers, but the world around them, by today’s t issue #10, has gone entirely off the rails in many wonderful and frightening ways. 

Scioli reveals some of his artistic intentions in the fragmentation of the narrative, skipping what would, in other books, be key expository moments in favor something, at times, more mysterious and inscrutable.  The ever expanding conflict between G.I. Joe/Autobots and Cobra/Decepticons takes on the fevered tenor of an epidemic, not a war so much as a slowly creeping infection, changing the landscape of two worlds, the fate of two races.

At times, this might seem confusing, but ultimately, it is not, and it’s also not Scioli’s domain to give us a standard, by the numbers A to B to C narrative, with easy answers to all our questions, spelled out for us in big block letters.  It could be said that the exact story here is, while not irrelevant, certainly not the star of the show. 

That star would be Scioli’s visuals.  Once a disciple of Jack Kirby, Scioli has emerged through this series as an artist with his own distinctive visual style and aesthetic.  It certain draws on the influence of Kirby- both love a good splash page, and draw one like no other, but Scioli’s busy frames, frantic multi-character action sequences and hazy, textured colors are all his own.  Coupled with the abstracted narrative, Trasnformers vs. G.I. Joe sometimes has a dreamlike quality, an idea and style not entirely divorced from Howard the Duck creator Steve Gerber’s tenure as story editor on the G.I. Joe animated cartoon in the 1980s, but with even less concern for editorial constraint.

This, too, is an achievement, because Scioli has not only taken this licensed, mainstream comic and made an art comic out of it, he’s made it his own, and he’s managed to do so while staying remarkably close to the spirit of the original properties (let’s not forget, the 1980′s Transformers and G.I. Joe animated movies got pretty loopy at times, thought still remained firmly rooted in the arena of kids entertainment and toy marketing).

In its filled-to-the-brim, hyperkinetic nature, Trasnformers vs. G.I. Joe feels like a collision, a cathexis of commerce and art, corporate visions and individual creativity, targeted marketing and narrative abstraction, commercial cynicism and the pure joy of imagination, the past and the future.  Read it.  Embrace it on its own terms.  Love it.  Accept everything about it.  This is everything comics can be in the hands of the right creator.  This can be the future of the comics.  Just let it happen.

Harris Smith is a senior production coordinator and the editor of comiXology’s Tumblr.  He’s also the publisher of Felony Comics, featured in Best American Comics 2015, and the co-host of the weekly radio show Negative Pleasure on Newtown Radio.

A comiXologist recommends (a Dark Horse comic)
Shaolin Cowboy

Over the course of four issues, Geof Darrow’s Shaolin Cowboy plays out not so much of a story as he does one extended scene, a battle portrayed moment by moment, each panel crafted with detail and wit.  As anyone who has seen Darrow’s work in Hardboiled, Big Guy & Rusty the Robot or the other volumes on Shaolin Cowboy knows, he is a masterful artist, but more than just being able to create compelling images, he also a master storyteller.  Each panel in Shaolin Cowboy is a story unto itself, and though the images are static, they are so teeming with detail that they seem to come alive, to teem and writhe with activity, with action, portraying a larger moment within the series itself but also dozens of smaller, self-contained moments.

Despite its vibrancy and its extremes (the extreme detail of the images and, on occasion, extreme gore), Shaolin Cowboy never feels excessive.  Issue two, for example, is 30 panels of the titular character swinging a chainsaw through an army of zombies, and though the blood and viscera flows freely, the feeling of the issue is almost meditative.  It’s a moment that might take up a few seconds of screen time in a film, but her it’s given room to breathe.  By issue four, Darrow moves from larger panoramas of carnage to smaller, more contained panels (as many as 30 on some pages) of one-on-one battle, ratcheting up the tension of each moment.

Shaolin Cowboy is a pop art masterpiece, an enigmatic comic that satisfies on an action/genre level while exploring the full possibilities of the medium by using visual storytelling in imaginative and innovative ways.  It is not so much read as it is experienced, and what an experience it is!

-Harris Smith

Read Shaolin Cowboy on comiXology

A comiXologist recommends:
The Freddie Stories

by: Harris Smith

I’ve been reading Lynda Barry comics for almost as long as I’ve been reading.  Throughout my childhood, her strip “Ernie Pook’s Comeek” ran in the DC City Paper, as it did in man alternative weekly newspapers, alongside Charles Burns’ “Big Baby” and Matt Groening’s “Life in Hell.”  All three comics had a profound effect on me.  Burns’ strip was beautiful and inscrutable, but it was also, to my young mind, scary and confusing.  Groening’s was funny and cynical, but it never had a narrative to latch onto.  Barry split the difference perfectly.  "Ernie Pook’s Comeek" was everything.  One week’s strip might be hilarious, the next heartbreaking, and in between, she would often be elliptical and mysterious, in the way that childhood often is.  Barry’s art, though not as refined as Burns’, felt urgent and contemporary, frenetic in its busy energy, she never wasted an inch of comic that could be embellished with some funky detail or adornment.  It was the work, clearly, of a talented professional, but it also evoked the unpretentious enthusiasm of folk art.  "Ernie Pook’s Comeek" was perfect.  Lynda Barry was perfect.  I was lucky to discover her work in my formative years, both as a comics reader, and as a human being, in its evocation of the ephemeral, the imperceptible, the unspoken.  She taught me about nuance, about the humor that can be found in tragedy, and the sadness that is often at the root of humor.  

Some of the best of “Ernie Pook’s Comeek” can be found in the “The Freddie Stories,” a series of strips focused on the brother of the series’ main character, Marlys.  Freddie is a perennial outsider; a sensitive and somewhat troubled kid from a dysfunctional family, living in a milieu of lower class desperation and resentment.  "He is a gentle person in this juvenile delinquency world,“ says his sister in the books introduction, and this kindness earns him the label of "fag” from the tougher kids around him.  Freddie’s story takes a sad turn when his association with some of these kids earns him a stint in juvie, which pushes him towards something of a psychotic break, with bouts of depression and nightmarish hallucinations.   Though Freddie’s condition improves somewhat, this dissonance reverberates throughout the book.

Barry’s portrayal of childhood in “The Freddie Stories” is generally unsentimental, but it is entirely heartfelt.  She writes with an unflinching emotional honesty, humor and insight.  Freddie and the characters around him ring true, and though their exact experiences are not universal, the truths and emotions Barry draws from them are.  “The Freddie Stories” is, simply, cartooning at its best, from one of the masters of the craft.  Psychological!

[Read The Freddie Stories on comiXology]

Harris Smith is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Neagtive Pleasure on Newtown Radio.

A comiXologist recommends:
Peanuts

by: Harris Smith

A man, walking down the road, finds himself chased by tigers.  Running to escape them, he comes to the edge of a cliff and jumps off, grabbing a vine on his way down.  Looking below, he realizes there are more tigers waiting beneath him.  With nowhere left to go, the man sees a strawberry bush growing from the rock beside him.  He plucks a berry off the bush, eats it, and exclaims, “That’s a delicious berry.”

This story is not from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, but rather an oft-quoted Buddhist koan.  In many ways, though, it captures the essence of what makes Peanuts so appealing- a delicate balance of simplicity and deep complexity, a tempering of the negative with the positive, topped off with a genuinely funny punch line.  Though predicated largely around the comic strip format of setup and gag, Peanuts (which ran daily for nearly 50 years, and still appears in reprints in many newspapers) evokes, along with laughter, both emotion and thought, commenting on the absurdity, often cruel, and joy, often in the small things, of life.  

If Seinfeld was a show about nothing, then Peanuts is a comic about everything, even if its narrative only focuses on a small group of small children, its perspective extends well beyond the scope of its characters, and beyond the scope of childhood.  Kids can read and enjoy Peanuts, of course, but it has much to offer adult readers as well.  

Given the series’ longevity, its adaptions into other media (including more than 40 animated TV specials) and the general pervasiveness of its imagery, you’ve probably already encountered Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Peppermint Patty and the rest of the gang, but it’s never a bad time to revisit them.  Fortunately, Titan Comics is rereleasing classic collections of the strip, presented as exact recreations of their paperback editions from the 1950s.  Their latest releases are Good Grief, More Peanuts! and Good Ol’ Charlie Brown, both of which collect comics from Peanuts’ early years.  The art looks like a little different than in later, more familiar iterations (Snoopy’s still a puppy!), but the wit and wisdom are very much the same.  

Life may often feel like hanging off a cliff with tigers everywhere you look, but Peanuts, fortunately, remains a very delicious berry.  

[Read classic Peanuts on comiXology]

Harris Smith is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Neagtive Pleasure on Newtown Radio.

A comiXologist recommends:
Hip Hop Family Tree Monthly #1

by: Harris Smith

The moment is now for Ed Piskor’s Hip Hop Family Tree.  Last month, the second volume of the graphic novel series earned Piskor an Eisner Award for “Best Reality-Based Work,” and earlier this week, the artist announced that the comic is being adapted into an animated series.  This Wednesday, the release of Hip Hop Family Tree #1 marks the beginning of Fantagraphics’ first-ever monthly series.  All of acclaim and awards are well-deserved- Hip Hop Family Tree is a painstakingly researched and lovingly rendered history of hip-hop music and culture.  

Issue one begins in the Bronx in the mid-70s, when the experimental record mixing of DJ Kool Herc and a borough-spanning gang truce inspired (covered in detail in the graphic novel Ghetto Brother: Warrior to Peacemaker) Afrika Bambaataa to reform his gang the Black Spades as the hip hop crew the Zulu Nation.  As the movement grows, we meet a variety of contributors to its development, from innovators like Grandmaster Flash and Grand Wizard Theodore (originator of record scratching) to future superstars (including Kurtis Blow, producer Russell Simmons and his younger brother Joseph, who would go on to form Run DMC with Darryl McDaniels, here identified by his early moniker, Grandmaster Get High) as well as lesser known, but still significant figures like Casanova Fly, DJ Breakout, early female MC Sha-Rock and Coke La Rock (considered by many to be the first hip hop MC).

Hip Hop Family Tree not only has a terrific story to tell, but it tells it with great style.  The pages of the book are textured to look like an old, three color print comic, which has the visual effect of the pops and crackles on a vinyl record.  Piskor draws in a classically cartoony style, somewhat reminiscent of early Bill Wray, which adds a sense of fun playfulness to his serious historical research.  Best of all is the overall tone of Hip Hop Family Tree.  This is not a book that feels the need to convince you of the importance of hip-hop, nor is exclusively geared towards those who are already in the know about the movement’s origins.  It’s accessible and enthusiastic without ever being pedantic or condescending, to the reader or to the book’s subjects, coming off ultimately as exactly what it should be- a labor of love documenting an important and underrepresented portion of history in a way that almost any reader can get something out of.

[Read Hip Hop Family Tree Monthly #1 on comiXology]

Harris Smith is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Neagtive Pleasure on Newtown Radio.

A comiXologist recommends:
Death Sentence: London #1

by: Harris Smith

In the near future, a sexually transmitted disease known as the G-Virus gives the infected superhuman powers…for six months, then they die.  One victim of the disease, David “Monty” Montgomery, has gone mad in the face of his empowerment and mortality, slaughtering the heads of the British government and inciting chaos and destruction that have left London in a state of ruin unseen since World War 2, with thousands dead and many more infected with what appears to be a mutation of the G-Virus.  

Picking up right where the first Death Sentence* series left off, Death Sentence: London #1 is a smart, action-packed comic that will appeal to fans of the genre-bending work of Warren Ellis and Grant Morrison.  Writer Monty Nero, like Ellis and Morrison, has been a contributor to the popular, long-running British comic 2000AD, and the tale he crafts here is very much in keeping with the aesthetic of that mag and it’s brazen, satirical brand of dystopian sci-fi stories (most famously Judge Dredd).  Nero and artist Martin Simmonds keep things meaty throughout, maintaining a taut balance between action (there’s a lot of it!), political intrigue and character development.

In many ways, Death Sentence: London reminds me of one of my favorite recent TV shows, Black Mirror (also a UK import).  It takes a truly original idea, one that’s fantastical but also fairly plausible when you stop and think about it, and splits its energies between crafting a compelling story around that idea while simultaneously exploring it a conceptual level.  Here, we’re confronted with questions of power and mortality.  If you suddenly have an unbelievable amount of power, but only a limited time to use it before you die, do you try to make an impact of lasting good, or do you use your powers selfishly, and get what you can while you’re around to enjoy it?   Both of these ideologies collide throughout Death Sentence: London, and it’s a hell of a sight to see what happens when they do.

[Check out Death Sentence: London #1 on comiXology]

Harris Smith is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Neagtive Pleasure on Newtown Radio.

*Ed Note: There is a sale on the first arc of Death Sentence running through 6/14.

A comiXologist recommends:
Bizarro #1

by: Harris Smith

There are a number of things that can make a comic book character great.  Some great characters get their power from the steady weight of their iconography.  Superman, for instance, has developed over the years, but the core essence of what he represents remains the same.  He’s the ultimate good guy, an enduring symbol of hope and righteousness.  Some great characters are adaptable, their fundamental characteristics change to reflect the times, or to serve as a conduit for an artist’s intentions.  Batman, for example, has gone through a number of transformations over the years, channeling the sensibilities not just of the times, but that of his various creators.  In the pop art 1960’s, we saw a more lighthearted, humorous Batman.  In the 70’s and 80’s, his books took on a darker tone, and we’ve seen various reflections of this through the lens of some of the best writers and artists in comics.

It makes sense that Bizarro would belong to the latter category and not the former.  He is, after all, the opposite of Superman, and if Superman has followed a staid path, it’s only natural Bizarro would be adaptable.  Over the years, he’s been a powerful villain- all of Superman’s powers without his intelligence or moral compass; a tragic, haunted outsider; a misunderstood misfit and now, in his latest incarnation, a loveable goofball.  Heath Corson and Gustavo Duarte’s new Bizarro series, debuting this week, strips the evil intentions from Bizarro and mines the character for its inherent humor, teaming him up with another ever-evolving character, Superman’s perennial sidekick, Jimmy Olsen.

The lighthearted spirit on the new series, which reminds me a lot of Kyle Baker’s take on Plastic Man (Baker even provided a variant cover for this issue), is charming and infectious.  Just as Jimmy Olsen does during the course of the comic, I found myself lapsing mentally into Bizarro-speak (“Good am bad,” “Right am wrong”) as I was reading.  It’s a testament to the quality of Corson’s writing, and it’s a testament the greatness of the character that Bizarro plays just as well in this cuddly incarnation as he does as a villain.  Bizarro promises to be a lot of fun and a welcomed bit of levity in the sometimes very grim world of superhero comics, or, in Bizarro speak, this am the worst comic I read all week.

[Check out Bizarro #1 on comiXology]

Harris Smith is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Neagtive Pleasure on Newtown Radio.

A comiXologist recommends:
Convergence: Booster Gold #2

by: Harris Smith

Some superheroes are inspirational.  Superman, Wonder Woman, Thor- these are all characters who are larger than life, whom we could never be, but whom we can hold up as examples of the apex of heroism.  Other superheroes, meanwhile, are cathartic.  We can a part of ourselves in them, no matter how out of bounds their reactions to a dangerous world might be.  The hyper-vigilance of Batman or the unbridled rage of the Punisher- these are characters who may not enact our exact fantasies of finding empowerment in an overwhelming world, but who, as mortals who tussle with gods, give us as readers a vicarious experience, an implicit promise of, “You could do this, too.”

These two groups represent the bulk of superhero characters, but often even more interesting than either are the fringe cases, and few fringe cases have stood the test of time and developed more naturally than Booster Gold.  Created by Dan Jurgens and introduced in the mid-80’s, canonized in Keith Giffen and J.M DeMatteis’ Justice League, Booster was, for much of his career, a character who was neither inspiration nor cathartic, but rather something of a fraud, a disgraced athlete from the future who brought advanced technology back to the present to cash-in on the superhero game for profit.

In some respects, this makes Booster one of the most easily identifiable superheroes.  If Superman and Wonder Woman are the heroes we dream we could be, Booster Gold is the hero we probably would be, perhaps already even are: flawed, fallible, misunderstood.  He’s tormented less by dark inner demons than by shame and ego, wanting to be more but often falling short of expectations.

In recent years, Gold has been given the opportunity to become a real hero by traveling through time to right the wrongs of the past, the one caveat being that no one can know what kind of hero he’s become.  Convergence: Booster Gold continues this thread.  Issue 2 reunited him with the back-from-the-dead (sort of) Blue Beetle, Booster’s best friend from their Justice League days, in moments that are both joyous and bittersweet and that reveal the real humanity that can be captured by these larger-than-life characters when they are given the chance to do more than just punch a giant monster (not that there’s anything wrong with that), dealing instead with meaty, universal experiences.  Dan Jurgens, who also wrote this series, deserves a great deal of credit for shaping Booster through decades of growth and change, making him a better hero, but not so much better that we don’t still see a little bit of ourselves in him.

[Check out Convergence: Booster Gold #2 on comiXology]

Harris Smith is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Neagtive Pleasure on Newtown Radio.

A comiXologist recommends:
Convergence: The Question #2

by: Harris Smith

Who, or what, is the Question?  This faceless, enigmatic detective has been poking around the edges of the comics world since the mid-60’s.  Created by Steve Ditko for Charlton Comics, the Question was originally Vic Sage, an investigative reporter and proponent of Ditko’s own objectivist philosophies.  In the 80’s, DC acquired Charlton’s superhero line.  Originally, the characters were intended to be the protagonists of Watchmen, but ultimately, they were absorbed into the mainstream DC Universe, with Watchmen’s Rorschach serving as a Question analogue.  Of the Charlton Sentinels, Blue Beetle became a member of the JLI.  Nightshade traveled with the Suicide Squad.  Captain Atom, another Ditko creation, joined Justice League Europe.  The Question, meanwhile, got a character-redefining run at the hands of Denny O’Neil and Denys Cowan.  The objectivism was jettisoned in favor of Eastern mysticism, martial arts and a more Zen-like philosophy.  

O’Neil’s take became the character’s defining thrust up until DC’s 52 miniseries, in which Vic Sage passed the Question mantle onto GCPD detective Renee Montoya, one of the main characters in Gotham Central.  In a handful of miniseries and Detective Comics backup stories, writer Greg Rucka fashioned this new iteration of the Question in a noir-inflected milieu while still retaining some of the mystical elements of O’Neil’s vision.  

The Montoya Question disappeared with the advent of DC’s New 52, leaving, perhaps appropriately, a lot of questions unanswered.  Fortunately, with the dawn of DC’s Convergence and the return of many of their classics, pre-New 52 characters, she’s back and, better yet, once again being written by Rucka.  Back is the hardboiled crime aesthetic, back is the conflicted relationship with Montoya’s former lover Batwoman, back is the even more conflicted relationship between Montoya and her family, back is everything that made this character great.  

Though Convergence: The Question is only a two issue miniseries, concluding this week, it holds a lot of promise for what DC has in store post-Convergence.  Though there’s no ongoing Question series in the first round of new DC books, debuting in June, her return to existence is a promising suggestion that we will soon be seeing many favorite characters make their return.  The only question now is when are we going to see more of the Question?

[Check out Convergence: The Question #2 on comiXology]

Harris Smith is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Neagtive Pleasure on Newtown Radio.

A comiXologist Recommends:
Harris Smith recommends Revenger #1

Over the past few years, Charles Forsman (charlesforsman)  has established a well-deserved reputation as one of the most insightful, challenging creative talents in the comics world.  In books like TEOTFW, Luv Sucker, Teen Creeps and Celebrated Summer, he’s conceived stark, sometimes disturbing but always relatable depictions of disaffected youth, rendered with a kind of minimal beauty that hauntingly echoes Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, though filtered through the preapocalpytic teens-in-trouble drama of films like Over the Edge and River’s Edge.  Forsman’s latest work, Revenger, is both a divergence from this and a natural extension of it. 

Like recent comics such as Benjamin Marra’s (traditionalcomics) Terror Assaulter and Michel Fiffe’s (zegas) Copra, Revenger draws upon the aesthetics of 1980’s action, but while Marra’s comics have a streak of sardonic humor, and Fiffe’s work recalls the colorful insanity of the John Ostrander-Luke McDonnell Suicide Squad, Forsman maintains the bleak atmosphere of the his earlier work.  Though it feels like something that could have come out of the Cannon Group in the 80’s (think Stallone in Cobra, as portrayed by a battle-scarred Grace Jones), and you can practically hear the John Carpenter-esque synth stabs punctuating the most dramatic moments while reading it, Revenger is decidedly without camp.   It is powerful, violent and provocative, deadly serious and consistently thrilling.  Forsman builds an atmosphere of nerve-wracking dread and maintains it relentlessly. 

Revenger shows that Charles Forsman can create within the framework of genre without betraying his vision as an artist.  It is a bold and striking step forward for him as an artist and I am greatly looking forward to both future issues of Revenger and to see how this expanded field of vision enhances his body of work as a whole. 

[Read Revenger #1 on comiXology]

HARRIS SMITH is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Negative Pleasure on Newtown Radio.

A comiXologist Recommends A Comic That Brings Them Joy:
Harris Smith recommends Wally Gropius

People tend to associate joy with comfort, especially around the holidays.  This is a time of tradition, when we enjoy the familiar, both in company and ritual.  Spending time with family and friends, trimming the tree, lighting the menorah, the midnight countdown on New Year’s Eve, all these are great sources of joy to a great many people throughout the world every December, and rightfully so.  Tradition, togetherness, the spirit of giving, these are all things of deep value.

Still, comfort isn’t the only source of joy.  In some cases, joy can come from a challenge.  The joy found in Tim Hensley’s Wally Gropius, from fantagraphics, is not one of familiarity, though the comic draws influence from a variety of familiar and beloved sources, including Archie Comics, MAD Magazine and Harvey Comics’ “poor little rich boy” Richie Rich.  Rather, Wally Gropius is a joy because it’s a complex, multilayered, often demanding, occasionally abstract reinterpretation of these venerable classics in the name of both entertainment and a larger criticism of the inequity of wealth in 21^st century America, the callousness and detachment of the extremely wealthy and the shallowness of a culture that venerates material comfort and fame over depth and character.

Yes, Wally Gropius is something of an indictment, and that’s not something we usually associate with joy, but there is much pleasure to be found in Hensley’s masterful handling of such difficult subject matter.  He perfectly captures the look and tone of 1950’s and 60’s teen comics, replicating their off-kilter internal logic both lovingly and critically, subverting punchlines into both abstraction and social commentary, building one-page gag strips into an overall narrative arc.  Hensley’s work requires an active engagement with the reader, but fortunately it’s also an engaging work, one that justifies a commitment to its complexity and depth.

Hensley uses familiar tropes with overly relying on cliché or stereotype.  The titular Gropius, who could easily be portrayed as an out-of-touch idiot, is something of a cypher, clearly insulated from reality by his wealth, but also somewhat vulnerable, a figure to be not entirely mocked, admired or pitied, less an icon than a specimen.  Hensley isn’t interested in directing our emotions or thoughts in any such obvious direction, and that is where the challenge, and joy, of Wally Gropius lies.  It is a comic that will definitely make you laugh, but it’s also a comic that will make you stop and think and actively engage you as a reader, and what better joy is there for a comics fan?

[Read Wally Gropius on comiXology]

HARRIS SMITH is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Negative Pleasure on Newtown Radio.

A comiXologist Recommends:
Harris Smith recommends Rumble #1

Genre is a valuable thing.  Genres give artists a framework on which to graft their ideas, and readers the framework through which to receive them.  Genre can be used to make difficult ideas palatable, as seen in the post-WW2 existential malaise expressed through the crime stories of the 1940s and 50s that have come to known as film noir, or the anxieties about feminism and the sexual revolution bubbling under the surface of the horror films of the late 1970s and early 80s.  Genre provides familiarity and comfortable conventions which make audiences more receptive to the more challenging aspirations of artists and, on a far more basic level, genre provides a shorthand for audiences to be able to identify the things they like. 

The power of genre is such that we, as audiences (in this case, readers), are forced to take pause when we encounter something that isn’t immediately classifiable in a familiar genre, or that draws on elements from multiple genres in a way that we don’t necessarily recognize right away.  This is valuable, too.  If layering difficult ideas within the familiar conventions of a genre is a way to make hard concepts more palatable, defying the conventions of genre has the opposite effect, jarring the reader into consciousness and acute awareness, forcing them to engage the material on its own terms.

John Arcudi, James Harren (the-bog) and Dave Stewart’s new comic Rumble, from Image, is a work that combines and defies genres.  In the first issue, we’re witness to elements of horror, comedy, action, supernatural fantasy and the basic drama of everyday life, all in collision with one another.  Comedy and horror are two genres that don’t always mesh together.  Though the primal roots don’t come from entirely different places, their end results are typically in conflict.  Arcudi and Harren have found an appropriate blending point, playing their humor very low-key and relatable, in contrast with horror elements that are larger-than-life and shocking.  The result is both funny and scary and winningly unpredictable. Set in world that’s like our but just a bit off center, and replete with murderous demons, loveable losers, corpse-toting crocodiles and potentially possessed pet cats,  Rumble is a comic that demands, and deserves, your attention.

[Read Rumble #1 on comiXology]

HARRIS SMITH is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Negative Pleasure on Newtown Radio.