A Walk Through Previews

Previews is the official catalog for Diamond Comic Distributors, the de facto monopoly distribution company in the comic book industry (by virtue of having exclusive distribution agreements with the key major publishers). While I think this monopoly is a horrible thing for the comic book industry (in much the same way that Microsoft's de facto monopoly is the worst thing that's ever happened to the software industry), they do produce a pretty good ordering catalog, which I receive from my comics shop each month. I thought it might be fun to thumb through the latest issue and make some observations and - better yet - some catty comments.

These comments are for the January 2005 issue, which is soliciting comics to be published in April 2005.

In case you're wondering, yes, I read this every month and order books from it through my local retailer, Comics Conspiracy, which I've been patronizing for nearly 6 years. They are, in my opinion, the best comics shop in the Bay Area.

The Package

This month's cover is for DC Countdown, the next big DC Comics "event" on the heels of the big-nothing-of-a-series Identity Crisis.

One thing I've observed in the past is that Previews delivers more cheesecake in a single volume than in all of the comics I actually buy in a month combined.

Dark Horse Comics

Since that time, Dark Horse has mostly maintained its empire on the basis of its many Star Wars spin-off comics. Here they're soliciting the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith trade paperback (TPB). As you may recall, I disliked each of the first two "prequel" films and do not bother with the comic book adaptations thereof. Indeed, the only Star Wars comics I've bought since I was a kid were the recent Infinities TPBs, which were fairly fun "alternate world" versions of the original three films.

Dark Horse is currently publishing the first Concrete story in quite a few years. Concrete is written and drawn by Paul Chadwick - one of the most gifted artists in comics. It's the story of a man whose brain was transplanted into a powerful, stone alien body - and then abandoned on Earth. So Concrete - as he's dubbed by his media handlers - has to deal with being a man in a body he doesn't understand, unable to relate to the people around him normally, but having fantastic abilities. It's one of the books which Dark Horse built its reputation on. This is soliciting issue #4 (of 6) of The Human Dilemma. I find Chadwick's stories can get rather preachy - he took a lamentable (for the story) turn into environmentalism a decade or so back - but at their best they're wonderful.

Dark Horse is re-issuing Frank Miller's Sin City stories in 6"x9" volumes to coincide with the film adaptation. I have the originals, which are full-sized, so I won't be buying the new ones. I'm not sure why you'd want to bother buying smaller versions of the stories anyway; seeking out the older-but-larger collections is surely easy to do, and that's what I'd recommend if you want to try it. Oh, Sin City is Miller's hard-boiled noir story of a shadowy town and the brutal, larger-than-life characters who inhabit it. It's best enjoyed as an over-the-top action piece. Miller's art is the best it's ever been, though.

DC Comics

The feature, as I mentioned, is DC Countdown, which will be written by several hot writers (Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka and Judd Winick) and drawn by a legion of artists. I'm not going to bother to pre-order it, as it ought to be freely available when it comes out. While there are some good artists here (Rags Morales and Phil Jimenez, in particular), none of the writers have done much to grab my attention. They mostly seem to do undistinguished work on mainstream superhero titles. Rucka did write the two Whiteout volumes a few years ago, about intrigue and danger in the Antarctic (and not a superhero in sight), but that was a while ago.

John Byrne keeps managing to do work I both enjoy and can't get into. His current series is a reboot of Doom Patrol, which definitely falls into the "can't get into" category. Whatever the Doom Patrol has had going for it in the past, this series seems entirely run-of-the-mill. (I will fess up at this point that after reading comics for 30 years a superhero story has to be pretty new and fresh to excite me. The sad thing is there are enough of them out there that I still buy several, so it must not be that hard, and yet there are far more which don't interest me in the least.)

In the "least necessary" category, Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire have re-launched their humorous Justice League version from the 80s. I never thought it was all that funny, and gave up on it pretty quickly. Seemed like a big waste of time then, and now.

The final TPB collection of James Robinson's strong series Starman is solicited here. Despite replacing the excellent Tony Harris as penciller with the uninspiring Peter Snejbjerg halfway through, it's still worth reading as intelligent and unorthodox superhero fare. Rather in the vein of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, I felt.

DC is currently publishing comics based on their three animated series (Batman, Teen Titans and Justice League Unlimited), as well as Cartoon Network-related books, the original Elfquest series collected in hardcover, and all things MAD Magazine. I just skip over this section.

DC is also publishing manga, which I skip over so fast I leave burn marks on the paper. More on The Evil That Is Manga later.

DC's Wildstorm imprint is publishing several interesting books. While I have no interest in Alan Moore's Promethea, I enjoy Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris' Ex Machina, about a superhero - the only one in the world - becoming Mayor of New York City. It would make a good TV series in the vein of 24, actually. And of course they're publishing Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's outstanding Planetary, my pick for the best comic book of the past 5 years, despite its erratic publishing schedule.

The Vertigo imprint has fallen pretty far since the heyday of Swamp Thing and Sandman. In fact, Bill Willingham's Fables is the only one I'm reading. It's great, though, being about many characters from traditional fables and fairy tales being exiled to live in New York City and upstate New York.

Image Comics

To their credit, they are publishing Paul Grist's comics, including Burglar Bill, Jack Staff and TPBs of Kane. Grist's artwork may be simple, but he tells offbeat stories in a non-linear fashion with lots of quirky humor and strong British flavor (or is that flavour?). I keep thinking Grist has a magnum-opus of Alan Moore-like levels in him, but he hasn't gotten there yet, as his climaxes tend to be undercut by droll and out-of-place gags. Still, if this is as good as he gets, it's still pretty good. You're nicked, chummy!

Image also publishes Colleen Doran's A Distant Soil. Doran is nearly as talented as Paul Chadwick, but frankly ADS's story seemed to meander around for so long that I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm to keep up. I think its fans stay with it for the offbeat and emotionally-charged relationships, but to me it felt like it wasn't really going anywhere, and if it was it wasn't happening quickly enough to hold my attention.

One Image superhero comic I do buy is Noble Causes, written by Jay Faerber and drawn by a variety of people over the last few years (issue #9 of the current series is being solicited, drawn by Fran Bueno [who?]). It's the story of a family of superheroes - a very dysfunctional family. Doc Noble is an alcoholic, his wife is a control freak, his son Rusty had his brain transplanted into a robot body, Rusty and his wife have gotten divorced, etc. etc. It's a soap opera. It's probably near the bottom of the list of stuff I buy, but I keep buying it and have from the beginning, so obviously it's keeping my interest. I guess we all need some cheese once in a while.

Image is publishing a comic book with new Battle of the Planets stories, for some reason. The animated series was pretty weak in the 70s, and it seems downright irrelevant now. Someone must be buying it, but don't ask me why.

Marvel Comics

The next series to be published will be Ultimate Iron Man, written by SF/fantasy author Orson Scott Card. Looks like Iron Man's going to be part-robot, from the picture in the ad. Whatever.

The one Ultimate series I did buy was the original run of The Ultimates, the Ultimate universe's version of The Avengers. The follow-up series, Ultimates 2, is also written by Mark Millar and drawn by Bryan Hitch. I love Hitch's artwork, but I wish he'd attach himself to projects less loathsome than those written by Millar. The first Ultimates series managed to regurgitate - in particularly brutal fashion - Goliath beating his wife The Wasp, and Iron Man being a hard-drinking playboy. On top of that Captain America's idea of leadership is to beat the crap out of Goliath, while the military keeps Bruce Banner in a prison to only let him out when they want to deploy the Hulk as a tactical weapon. Plus there's more blood and carnage than you can shake a stick at. Every last character is thoroughly unlikeable, and there are no morals to be learned except that when someone hits you then you should just hit them harder. It's truly one of the worst comics of the decade, and you can probably guess that I'm not going to bother with Ultimates 2. This wasn't as grossly obnoxious as his run on The Authority, but boy, Millar is one author I go out of my way to avoid reading these days.

Marvel decided to end the run of The Avengers (which was, sorta-kinda, the original series) and in its wake we now have New Avengers and Young Avengers. The word "why" comes to mind.

Babylon 5 creator J. Michael "Joe" Straczynski has been writing Supreme Power, a reboot of the Squadron Supreme, who in turn are Marvel's version (a direct rip-off actually) of DC's Justice League. Dealing with fairly serious issues but with far more empathy and entertainment than The Ultimates, its a pretty good series. Still fairly grim, but at least there are characters you can root for, and I think Straczynski is building towards something fairly redeeming. Good art by Gary Frank. The story is moving rather slowly, though.

Big news in the Marvel section is the solicitation of the next Marvel Masterworks volume, reprinting Fantastic Four #72-81 & Annual #6, from the 1960s. It's a great hardcover program allowing you to get early Marvel comics in durable hardcover volumes at low prices (compared to what the originals are going for now). I've been collecting many of them since the original series was issued in the early 1990s. Unfortunately for the new series they've changed the format of the dustjacket covers, and have published only low print runs of the format of covers which I have. And they reprinted some volumes with additional material not in the originals which I have, and which will not be covered in the new volumes being printed. So I need to go re-buy some of the volumes I have to get the complete set. And the covers I want are hard to find. It's a big, fat pain in the ass. Thanks a lot, Marvel.

Independent Publishers

Michael Allred - offbeat creator of Madman and some other titles - is producing a series called The Golden Plates, published by his imprint AAA Pop Comics. It is a graphic adaptation of the Book of Mormon. I find this bizarrely funny. Still, in a world which supports the weirdness of Jack Chick tracts, no doubt Allred can only improve things.

Matt Howarth's amoral non-heroes the Post Bros are back in a new mini-series called Bugtown, from Aeon. Aeon doesn't seem to have a Web site, which is strange. Maybe it is Howarth's own imprint. I don't know for sure.

Avatar Press can always bee counted on for a good dose of T&A. They seem to be the current publisher for Brian Pulido's Lady Death, which combines well-endowed swimsuit-model poses with faux-gothic art, horror, blood, and light bondage overtones. Its previous publishers - Chaos! Comics and Crossgen - have both gone under (well, Crossgen is technically in bankruptcy, I guess), which may be a sign. Pulido's latest comic is War Angel.

Avatar is also the publisher of the Stargate SG-1 spinoff comics. They also publish a bunch of edgy (ready: very violent and mostly pointless) comics written by Alan Moore, Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis. I don't have an opinion on Ennis, but their Avatar work is mostly the bottom-of-the-barrel from Moore and Ellis. It's a strange name for a company, but Burlyman Entertainment is a comics imprint by the Wachowski Brothers, creators of The Matrix. They also are publishing Doc Frankenstein, which posits that the famous monster survived to the present day, amassing great wealth despite being an outcast. The first issue was okay, and issue #3 is solicited here.

Believe it or not, Claypool Comics is soliciting issue #143 (!!) of Elvira, licensed from the 80s B-movie flick hostess. Not my thing, but it is angled as good clean entertainment rather than T&A. Which puts it up a couple of notches on Avatar.

Devil's Due Publishing prints new G.I. Joe comics, while Dreamwave Productions prints new Transformers comics. Both holdovers from the 80s seem entirely redundant at this point.

Ah, then we come to I Box Publishing, Mark Oakley's imprint for his outstanding comic book Thieves & Kings. Despite its vaguely mange-esque style, T&K is unique, combining a childlike sense of wonder with dark mystery, magic and foreboding. Humor, strong and likeable characters, and Oakley's amazing ability to draw complex cityscapes have made it a favorite of mine for years now. There are five (five!) paperback collections out, and issue #46 is solicited here. Oakley has hinted that the series is nearing its endgame, which would make me sad, if so.

The I Box web site also contains some web comics - part of the T&K world without being in the main storyline - if you'd like to check out Oakley's style before buying the series.

IDW Publishing is - I think - a very new publisher which is mainly notable (for me) for bringing back John Ostrander's great series GrimJack from the oblivion to which it was consigned when First Comics went under around 1990. GrimJack: Killer Instinct #3 is solicited here. IDW also published CSI spinoff comics, if you care. I don't.

Pennyfarthing Press is one of those publishers which almost persuades me to buy everything they publish since I find almost all of it enjoyable on some level (okay, I've actually bought about half of their series). They deserve more success than they've seen so far. While the 25-issue epic The Victorian is turning out to be a bit disappointing (more style than substance, with 24 issues in the can), Para was a fun little 6-issue science fiction series. But their keynote series is Captain Gravity, which first appeared in a 4-issue series and a special about 6 years ago. It takes place in the late 1930s and combines pulp heroes with superheroes with Nazis with the golden age of Hollywood, with a big helping of race relations thrown in. Intelligently written and well-drawn, it's solid entertainment which rises well above being mindless action. Captain Gravity and the Power of the Vril is the new mini-series, and issue #4 is solicited here. #1 was promising. Rawdon says: Check it out. And pick up the old series; it looks like Pennyfarthing has it available on-line.

Sirius Comics - which also doesn't seem to have a Web site - used to publish several series I liked, particularly Teri Wood's Wandering Star. Now they seem to mostly be pushing Banzai Girl, the cheesecake adventures of an Asian model and illustrator. At least, that's how it's billed. I have no idea whether Jinky Coronado is really the writer/illustrator, or if there are ghost creators for the series. It so doesn't even close to appeal to me, and it's so self-consciously cute that I chuckle whenever I see solicitations for it. Especially in this Previews, which is soliciting a comic of photos of the supposed creator. Sheesh!

(Note: I mid-April I received an e-mail from Jinky Coronado, who was, um, none too pleased with this paragraph. I wrote an entry about it, following up on some points.)

Then there's Tokyopop.

So here's the thing: I don't like manga, or anime. What it mainly is is the art style. The characters just don't look human to me. Even some of the best-drawn manga looks like it's the story of aliens, with bug eyes and huge mouths which often seem to live on the sides of their heads. I understand that this is partly cultural style and partly artistic license, but it just does not work for me. Scott McCloud, in his otherwise great book Understanding Comics, suggested that manga features cartoony figures so the reader can better identify with them, that ultra-realistic figures would seem too "other", too concrete as being someone else rather than a person whose shoes the reader can imagine stepping into. This is exactly the opposite of how manga works for me. Besides which, it's not like TV or film prevents me from getting into the head of characters on the screen by being portrayed by actual, concrete actors. It seems such a backwards argument.

Manga and anime have become big business in the US (manga is already hugely popular in Japan, moreso there than American comic books are here), and Tokyopop is perhaps the most visible publisher of manga here (Viz is probably their most significant competitor). They have a large (20-page) section in Previews, which I always skip over wholesale.

My suspicion is that manga has become popular because it features a larger diversity of stories than American comics generally do. Non-superhero comics have mostly been relegated to the small indies over the last 30 years, so romance and humorous fantasy and real-life drama doesn't have much play in mainstream American comics. I think manga has gotten a toehold because it doesn't look like American comics, and it's managed to fill a niche in the comics market by seeming not to be comics. I think it's a largely accidental marketing success, but a success nonetheless.

The American comics industry is in a real rut, having driven the direct market (comic book specialty shops) hard enough that they've effectively become ghetto-ized, and have found it difficult to break out and back onto newsstands and into bookstores and supermarkets. The often-dunderheaded management and editorial policies of the past 15 years at the Big Two (DC and Marvel) haven't helped a whole lot, nor has the monopoly in the distribution channel. The product has become homogeneous, with the best innovation occurring in such small arenas that they go barely noticed.

Sigh.

On that note - sorry it's a bit of a downer - that's my walk through an issue of Previews. It also contains solicitations for magazines, games, T-shirts, action figures, and other merchandise, but I rarely buy any of that stuff - at least, not through my comics distributor - so I'm not going to go through it here.

I do enjoy going through Previews each month, and it helps me make sure I actually order those small-press books I like. I think it sometimes helps me retailer know that a book might be worth looking at (like I said, I've been going there for a while and I know the owner and his "field manager" fairly well). Sometimes after I buy a book for a few months I see a couple more copies show up on their shelves, which is encouraging.

Hey, only two more days until comic book night!