Nicholas Cage Made (Sold) A Comic and I Don’t Hate It…

I got Nicholas Cage’s Voodoo Child from Virgin Comics.  He created the character with his son Wes Cage.  Fortunately, they did not write this series.  It was written by the very talented author of Lucifer, Mike Carey.  If you haven’t read that series go get it because it is great.  But this book?  Well, Carey wrote some great dialog but ultimately he had to deal with the character created by the Cages — a New Orleans mulatto with a story tied to mysticism hoodoo voodoo and the underground railroad.  The story is set in the wake of Katrina and sets NOLA as a corrupt and wicked place, which is pretty accurate.  Not a bad comic series, even though the subject seemed a little overdone.  Maybe I have just read too many voodoo stories.

The interesting thing is that I picked the book up for 1 dollar plus shipping.  Nicholas Cage really scared me off.  I was really excited about Ghost Rider, but Cage was terrible in that.  He has also been really disappointing me as an actor.  Don’t get me wrong, he has done some good movies.  They put his name on there to sell the book, but I think it does the reverse for me.  A hollywood writer or actor writing comics, or creating them or putting their name on them like this, usually means I won’t like it.  Carey is the one who really sells it with his dialog, but the character is not anything particularly revolutionary.  This distrust, at least for me, comes from a suspision that the use of a hollywood star’s name is often used to mask an inferior product by giving it a wider market.  That suspision is not always well founded though.  Look at My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way and Umbrella Academy.  That is really good stuff.  Look at Tyrese Gibson’s comic, not so good.  That being said, I do really look forward to Lobo by Scott Ian — mainly because that is a good combination.  I liked Kevin Smith’s Daredevil as well.  But, I would be very suspicious of a Diablo Cody comic, or better yet something by Megan Fox.

As far as Carey’s work goes it is a sold piece.  Not the genius of Lucifer but much better than I was expecting.  Carey is the sellion point and his name should be on the cover in 48 pt font, but alas Nicky Cage is the commodity while Carey is the talent here.

Resident Evil: Fire and Ice

I had a chance to read this over the weekend.  Well, it was unusual.  This collects some Resident Evil stories that were published by Wildstorm.  Most of these stories deal with the mutant monsters and not the zombies.  There is basically a 4 issue mini, plus several backup and one shot stories.  Some of them follow the plot lines of the Outbreak File games.  It even went so far as to have the characters picking up keys and making puzzle points.  This did  not make for a strong story.  Ultimatly the book is disappointing, and even though I was familiar with the Outbreak File #1 and #2 games, I had little idea who the characters were or why I should really care about them.  I also think that the zombie elements are the more interesting parts of the Resident Evil material, not the mutants.  Bonus points for working H. P. Lovecraft’s Night Gaunts into a story though.

Essential Captain America Vol. 3

I have done a previous blog post about the character Captain America and mentioned I was reading the Essential Vol. 3.  Finished it today and man was I impressed.  At over 600 pages this volume collects issues #127 to #156, an interesting point in the title.  You get runs by Gene Colon and Sal Buscema.  That should be a good selling point for many people.  There is also a couple of John Romita issues.  The years covered include 1970-1972, with student protests, the Vietnam war and race riots (are they still calling them that, I think they have a better term now).  Nixon also makes a brief appearance.  This volume also features the Falcon long term partnership.  In many ways the issues of the 2nd half of the collection, where the title had become Captain America and The Falcon, feature a triangle of the characters of CA, The Falcon and SHIELD agent cum CA’s girlfriend Sharon Carter.  Nick Fury makes occasional appearances, with his typical swagger.  These issues also feature the beginning of the storyline of CA’s secret double life as a NYC beat cop, which doesn’t really get too developed here but would later.

The triangle of CA, Falcon and Sharon Carter spend a lot of issues fighting HYDRA and The Red Skull (who was secretly running HYDRA).  Kingpin shows up, filling out a family drama that started in Daredevil.  The attempts at social commentary are clumsy at times, but as I wrote of in my previous post about the CA character, are all well intentioned.

The Essential series provides for a really nice package.  Many do not like the black and white art, but materials published in the 1960s and early 1970s are spared the at times terrible coloring.  Sure, you can get the omnibus or Masterworks with the remastered/recolored colors, but I like getting the black and white art.  It improves the reading experience for me and allows me to appreciate the work without the (at times) muddied colors.  The Essentials are also alot of bang for your buck, and many of the older ones are signifigantly below cover price on used sites like half.com.

Creepy Archive Vol. One

Creepy was one of the Warren horror magazines published in the 1960s that was intended to bring back the EC Comics fun yet disturbing stories (such as found in Tales From The Crypt) that had been made impossible to publish by the comics code.  By publishing this content in black and white magazine format Creepy was not required to comply with the comics code (which comics were not required to comply with since it was an in-house agreement among the comics companies with some concerns from distributors).  Creepy took on the role of short horror stories with a twist ending that were in much the same format, some would even say derivative, of the EC titles.

I had never really heard about this magazine until Vince B. of 11 O’Clock Comics praised it to the Nth degree.  I tend to agree with him.  This is some great material, with excellent art from Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, Joe Orlando and others that would become pretty spectacular contributors in their field.  Archie Goodwin was also the editor, which helped alot.  It did diverge from the EC comics it was based on by being less text heavy and more visual.  The black and white art is very effective in that setting, and all of the artists are rather expressive in this media.  The stories follow the EC short morality tale format.  There is a moral level, despite all complaints about the horror content, that you would see in the EC stories.  Really, if I had to chose between my ten year old reading this in comparison to what was going on in Superman at the same time of publication I would prefer this.  It has a higher moral content despite somewhat shocking images (for the time, it is pretty tame by modern standards).

The first volume is published by Dark Horse and containst the first 5 issues in a nice hardcover.  It is pricy at 50 dollars, but I got a copy for 15 dollars from ebay.  They have published 2 more volumes as of this writing, plus 2 volumes of the companion magazine Eerie.  At 50 dollars a pop they can be rather expensive.  They reprint the letter pages and some of the ads, which may annoy some readers who are parsing page count to cost (they are around 240 pages each volume).  The oversized format is great, but a cheap guy like me would love to see them published in those thick newsprint volumes ala Dark Horse’s Savage Sword of Conan collections.  All in all a great reprint project that, though pricey, is an excellent choice if you are into horror comics.

Cultural Icons: Edited by Keyan Tomaselli and David Scott

Cultural Icons is an edited volume recently released from Left Coast Press.  I had the opportunity to review the book for the ARD website (Anthropology Review Database) and that should be up in a few weeks.

The book is comprised of some papers presented about the semiotic analysis of cultural/national icons.  It does this quite well, giving you the background information about the icons as well as the important information about how the icons have changed as national, international and social needs and experiences alter how the icons are framed in the culture.  Each of the papers cover an icon:  Nelson Mandela, The Eiffel Tower, The Little Mermaid, The Holy Lance, Britannia, etc.  What is nice is that once you finish this book, you have some idea how the theoretical applications of semiotic analysis can be brought to different icons and symbols.  That makes the book a very fine choice for students, who might learn alot of history of anthropological/culture studies/philosophical thinking but not learn how to apply such conceptual tools to the process of thinking about a subject.  That can be a very hard thing to teach.  For that reason I think the editors of Tomaselli and Scott have assembled a very good book.

Why Is One Of The Best New Bands I Have Learned About In The Past Coupla Years Called “Cattle Decapitation”?

Maybe because they are awesome.  They have a violent dystopia theme of overpopulation that makes a conceptual continuity fitting many of their songs.  What Frank Zappa was to sex toys and groupies they are to misanthropy.   I also like the original take on cannibalism.  Those vegetables were once humans…

Anthropological Reference In A Comic: Wow, I Found One?

Anthropology doesn’t come up much in comics, except in bizarre archaeology and biological/evolutionary concerns that are usually pretty bad.  But I found a reference to Mary Douglas in the cover to this Wonder Woman comic and had to imagine that Wonder Woman creator William Marston would have been familiar with many relevent anthropologists.  He would have also not gotten along with her, since she would not support Marston’s kinky ideas.  The other women listed on the front are prominent female academics.  Despite having some pretty mean political views, Douglas was a good anthropologists and her theories can be applied to situations she would have objected to (meaning her own political causes) and work quite well.

Lois Lane Needs More Spankings: Where Bizarre S&M Fans Got Their Kicks During The Silver Age

Found this at superdickery.com.  It is a reprint of a letter that is telling the editor that Lois Lane needs to be spanked more in the pages of Superman.  I like how the letter takes on a rather twisted tone of a mild S&M excitement.  This guy had to be a freak (not judging, just saying I sense a bit of deviance here).  When you think about it, there were probably lots of people in the 1950s who only had comic books to masterbate to.  I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it had to happen.

An Example Of The Wonderful Things at Superdickery.com

An example of the wonderful content over at www.superdickery.com, a site with lots of laughs and juvenile humor involving panels from classic comics that just aren’t right.  In some of them the fact that Superman is a dick is explored.  Elsewhere there are fine examples of things that were published in a comic book that probably shouldn’t have been but made it through somehow.  Anyway, it is good for some chuckles.

A Disturbing Batman Toy…Look At Where The Trigger Is