Welcome to another Weekly Emanata, the MEGATONik review of comics. As these are a combination of readerly reaction and critical examination, expect spoilers. I’m going to write as if you, the reader, has some passing knowledge of comics, but feel free to post questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

This week’s Emanata is a graphic novelstravaganza and, due to that excessive amount of reading combined with a semi-vacation, is running a few days late. Apologies.

The Surrogates
written by Robert Venditti
art by Brett Weldele

Top Shelf Productions was kind enough to send me a copy of their soon-to-be-filmed sci-fi comic, and it’s a pretty cool package. The story is strong; the blurbs on the back cover compare it to Philip K. Dick, and from my limited experience (I had to restrain myself from typing, “from my limited Dick experience”), I think it’s an apt comparison. The Surrogates is set in the near future where people can connect to robotic doubles, downloading all the necessary sensory information straight to their brains in real time. They never have to leave the house.

I have a built-in suspicion of science fiction these days; I think I overdosed on it when I was younger and still associate it with my “kid stuff” times. Sci-fi comics, especially, have the likes of Warren Ellis to measure up to, so when I started reading The Surrogates, I was getting ready to find its flaws. And there are, in my eyes, a few flaws. While the digital coloring is great at evoking various moods, there are times when the brushstrokes are chunky and obvious enough to take me out of the story. “He’s using the ‘left slash’ Painter brush here.” Maybe that wouldn’t phase a more casual reader, though.

The good news is that the few flaws I zeroed in on are pretty arbitrary and completely outweighed by the strong story and emotive inkwork. I don’t want to summarize the plot, pointing out the parts I liked, but encased in the sci-fi trappings are: an engaging mystery, a dysfunctional relationship, clashing morals, and some really entertaining paratext the likes of which I haven’t seen since the text supplements in Watchmen. Venditti, Weldele, and associates do a great job at creating a believable world without excess exposition and ending the story without smashing readers over the head with a simple moral dichotomy.

The Soddyssey and Other Tales of Supernatural Law
by Batton Lash

I recently ordered a sweet Mavis, World’s Greatest Secretary t-shirt from Exhibit A Press, Lash’s distributor, and as I was checking out, I figured, “What the hell?” and added this book to my cart. I’d enjoyed the other volume I’d happened upon; could the lightning strike twice?

It could. I don’t have anything really new to say about this volume that I didn’t say about Mr. Negativity; Lash continues to tell stories that are, foremost, about his protagonists, two lawyers that happen to work in supernatural cases, and even though I continue to be pretty tired of stories that can be summarized as, “This person’s a regular [whatever]… only it’s supernatural,” I don’t feel that with Tales of Supernatural Law. Lash hangs the stories on the previously mentioned character work backed by clear cartooning, not on the fact that he has a goofy concept. I’m also a sucker for a good pun, and Lash doesn’t let me down, sprinkling them in without letting them overpower the story. He also exhibits his knowledge of comic genre conventions, using them as framing devices without requiring the reader to be well-read in comic history. (His story framed as a ’50s romance comic manages to draw the requisite melodrama from the storytelling tropes whether you’ve read the source material or not, and if you happen to have some copies of Young Love in your longboxes, well, then it’s a skillful homage as well as a humorous melodrama.)

Jack Kirby’s The Losers
by Jack Kirby

I made the mistake of reading Neil Gaiman’s introduction to this book before reading the book and writing my review and I’ve been worrying about ripping it off, so forgive me if I stray into weird territory; it’s because I’m trying to stray from what’s been established.

The best stories about war use the danger and drama of battle to heighten or pinpoint things that are present in everyday life, maybe hiding under our facades or lurking in our pasts. I’m specifically thinking of books like Catch-22, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Things They Carried. A lot of war comics angle for similar things, from Harvey Kurtzman’s old Two-Fisted Tales up through Garth Ennis’s current War Stories. The thing is, Jack Kirby, before he worked on the Losers, had already used crazy science fiction heroes to do similar things for decades, taking human feelings and processes and jacking them up to block letters in all caps sprawled across the stars. To have done the same things with war stories, especially after serving in World War II, probably would’ve felt disrespectful and a little false.

Kirby, always trying to keep things fresh, took a surprisingly opposite direction. His war stories, focusing on a band of four soldiers called, for whatever reason, the Losers, are usually tales of phyrric victory; they contain a surprising amount of discomfort and ambiguity for the normally bombastic Kirby. Sure, there’s the triumph of imagination over fear that’s present in all Kirby work, and the good guys wind up winning in the end, but they get berated by the president and feel sympathy for the enemy.

I want to make a small comment on the production values of this book, too. It’s part of a sort of Jack Kirby library that DC has put out, and these are beautiful books. Kirby’s name sits prominently on them and they all share a similar dust jacket design. The hardcovers are blowups of the recolored art on the dust jacket, only in their original colors, evoking a sort of Pop Art sentiment. The paper inside is a white matte, replicating the feel and look of the newsprint that these books were originally printed on and, most importantly, taking color like newsprint. Flat comic coloring does not look good on glossy paper; it looks garish and, well, like a mistake. The matte paper in these books soaks it up and doesn’t reflect light, keeping the colors the way they’re supposed to be.

Munden’s Bar
written by John Ostrander, Del Close, & more
art by Brian Bolland, Steve Rude, & more

I ordered this book for one reason, and that reason’s name is Del Close. This psychedelic comedian worked with people like Ken Kesey and trained at least 50% of the first three generations of the Saturday Night Live cast at Second City Improv in Chicago, a school that he helped get off the ground. He was a twisted and funny man, traits which are on display best in DC’s short-lived Wasteland, a horror anthology coupled with semi-biographical stories of Close’s past as an actor, an addict, and a circus performer.

So this collection of short stories set in a bar in an interdimensional city (co-written, as Wasteland was, with fellow actor and writer John Ostrander)… is it as good as Del’s own weird life stories? I’m going with “no,” but it’s a no with qualifiers.

Munden’s Bar is a fun book with an all-star art team. Since it’s a collection of back-ups, there are a lot of complete stories in this book, a lot of “meat.” Each one offers something; I didn’t feel like there were any clunkers. I guess what keeps me from fully embracing this book is my Del Close expectation; having repeatedly read the shit out of Wasteland, lent them out to friends, and gotten John Ostrander himself to draw a sketch on the infamous blank cover of Wasteland #6, I’ve become a Close/Ostrander zombie, and the fact that these tales are not about Close and, sometimes, not even plotted by him, I sink a little in my chair.

But these are some funny, gross, and inventive tales. I’m glad I bought the book.

Unshelved Volume 4: Book Club
written by Gene Ambaum & Bill Barnes
art by Bill Barnes

I have, for years now, completely ignored newspaper comics. Since Calvin & Hobbes ended its run, I haven’t been able to muster much interest in anything that gets printed on a daily basis. When you compare the pap that gets pushed on us to classics like McKay’s Little Nemo, Segar’s Popeye, or Herriman’s Krazy Kat (my personal favorite), well, there’s a pretty obvious winner in my mind, and it’s not the modern day.

Naturally, this is all because my old man sentiments keep me from looking on the internet for regular comic strips. Luckily, some of these get put down in musty old printed books. I have a couple of Unshelved collections, and they manage to do one of the things I respect most in a serial medium: each installment has a story or joke that stands up to a quick read, but, strung together, the strips develop longer plotlines.

Ambaum and Barnes are also accomplished at the other things I require from comic strips: they provide dialogue that illustrates their characters without heavy exposition (yet maintain pretty rounded characters for such short work), the storytelling and art is clear, and the jokes, while stemming from the niche of being in a public library, are, for the most part, pretty universal. Throw in some great extras in the printed book, including librarian conference pointers and some additional strips by other artists, and you have a pretty solid obsolete hardcopy print of a very funny webcomic.