I started off with The Amazing Adventures of The Escapist, which is a thrilling post-modern fabrication of comics history. Taking its lead from the main comics character in Michael Chabon’s awesome Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay novel, this slim paperback collects a series of Escapist stories spanning the characters’ alleged forty year lifetime. It’s a perfect vehicle for getting in a range of great contemporary comics writers and artists for a bit of fun. The whole notion of playing with history and time must have lent the artists and writers a great deal of amusement, given them the chance to make some kind of alignment between their work and the historical context of the golden and silver ages of comics from which many of these Escapist stories are meant to stem. So that, among many others, you have Eric Wright and Michelle Madsen drawing and colouring Chabon’s own ‘The Passing Of The Key’ story, purportedly from the 1940’s, and you have Kevin McCarthy and Kyle Baker teaming up for the supposedly ‘50s ‘Sequestered’. Not that the individual comics try and mirror the art of the era they are intended to come from it’s almost as though the artists have drawn the comics and then the wonderful mock-history essays that punctuate the book have been written to tie with them. And whichever way around it worked, it make no odds, because it’s simply a great collection. McCarthy (Spider Man Team-Up, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) does a lot of the writing in the collection, and he strings together some fine short narratives that work well individually and within the overall context of the collection. Of course as is the nature of such things, there will be as many opinions on favourites are there are strips, but me I’m going with the great Luna Moth story by McCarthy and Dan Brereton. The Luna Moth character could have been made for Brereton’s Pulp influenced painting style; all impossible breasts and luxurious thighs in fishnets. It’s captivating!
Oh, and the cover for the book is by the inestimable (some might say, almost ubiquitous) Chris Ware, which of course is yet another reason for picking up a copy post haste.
Now I first came across Dan Brereton in a Batman book, and it’s probably no surprise that I’ve been using the summer as a means of catching up with some collections of the caped crusader’s adventures. I should point out at this point that I’m no Batman aficionado. In fact I don’t consider myself an aficionado of anything at all, more a dabbling dilettante in many things, but whatever. What I mean is that I have no real interest in all of the ins and outs, the whys and wherefores of the entire Batman canon. I just like to read a good story, see some good art, whatever. And this is partly why I love Batman, and comics like this in general: there is no traditional structure to time and narrative. Of course there is linear narrative within the individual stories, and often across connected tales, but as often as not the individual comics collections will choose to move back and forth across a notional timeline, creating new ‘realities’ as they go. It means that you can pick up a Batman book and enjoy it regardless of knowing what went ‘before’ or what might come ‘after’. So for example, I started off reading Bruce Wayne: Fugitive Vols 1 and 2, but because I had to order Vol 3 from the USA (and its still not here) I ended up finishing those and then moving onto the preceding Bruce Wayne: Murderer? collection. Did it make a difference doing it all kind of in reverse? Not at all. I mean it’s not like you ever think Wayne / Batman really WAS a murderer, is it? Of course it isn’t. And you KNOW that in the end he’s going to be cleared and that there is going to be, if not a happy ending (this IS Batman, after all), at least a conclusion that leaves the Bat open for further continuation of his destiny. Because that’s what it’s all about in the end, isn’t it? The continuation of the destiny, the perpetuation of the legend… Of course Batman is also all about notions of isolation, loneliness and of making connections with people who love you and whom you love in turn, and the difficulties inherent in that. So in the end it’s kind of all about relationships, only with a lot of shooting and kicking and punching to make it all a bit more interesting. Relationships with the various Robin’s, Jim Gordon, the various Batgirls, Selina Kyle… the list goes on.
Finally on the Batman tip there’s the Officer Down collection, which does a good job of expanding the cast of characters to include more in depth use of officers from the GCPD. It’s a good tangent in this collection, but it’s even better in the Gotham Central In The Line Of Fire book, which focuses almost wholesale on the police dept and their cases, with Batman scarcely making an appearance (although his presence is felt throughout). Lawrence Block writes the introduction to the book, drawing out the obvious connection between Gotham City and the NYC about which he himself has written so magnificently over the years. And really In The Line Of Fire is a grand slice of detective Noir that you’d be mad to miss.
Now, although I loved the Gotham Central sideline to Batman, I’ve never really been all that interested in exploring any of the other character’s own storylines much. I mean, I have next to no interest in reading about Nightwing’s exploits with the JLA for example, and until now my interest in the likes of Catwoman has been slight at best, and picking up the Crooked Little Town title didn’t encourage me to explore any further. Of more interest though is Batgirl. I picked up a Year One collection that dwelt on Barbara Gordon’s incarnation as the Batgirl, and whilst it was fun, she lacked the broody mystery of the current Batgirl with her sinister full face mask (that rough stitching is a terrific touch) and lack of vocabulary. I read the Death Wish collection recently and must admit to being more or less hooked. And of course this Batgirl features heavily in the Wayne: Murderer and Fugitive series, so maybe that’s another reason those stories are so good.
Elsewhere from Top Shelf, I’ve been enjoying the excellent Hey Mister! collections by Pete Sickman-Garner, and the Happy series by Josh Simmons. For ten dollars you can pick up a four comic ‘Happy pack’, and it’s well worth the cash. Perhaps not particularly recommended if you are too hung up on being PC, but what the hell… who really is these days anyway? Both Simmons and Sickman-Garner are clearly having a lot of fun writing these comics, and if sometimes you just think ‘ewwwww, that’s gross’, well, that’s all part of their delight too. Kind of.
And finally, what kind of comics review would this be without some city crushing monsters, right? Right. Cue the awesome All Flee! by Gavin Burrows and Simon Gane. This short comic has two great stories: ‘A Finishing School for Monsters’ and ‘Cruisin’ with The Dorks’. The former is about exactly what the title suggests: a hilarious tale of Monsters learning how to do things properly… like how to crush buildings and how to eat busses full of terrified humans. In fact though the story is really about generation gaps and the difficulties inherent in passing on ‘wisdom’ and knowledge from the older to the younger. It just goes about it in a really fresh and engaging way. As for The Dorks, well, this is a strip that originally appeared in Arnie Comix and is a gentle poke at some British cultural movements of the ‘80s and ‘90s like Riot Grrl and perhaps even the cuties and shamblers of the whole C86 scene. It’s all rather quaint and very British, and very funny.
So there, that’s the first part of the stockpile cleared. In the second pile there are more Top Shelf titles and of course some more Batman’s. Maybe I’ll let you know about those in a few weeks time…
© 2004 Alistair Fitchett