I Elect To Save My Money.

In a week that saw Canadian voters return to the polls for the second time in two years (twice this week even, for Halifax--the municipal election is this Saturday), comics readers were faced with an equally difficult choice: which is a bigger waste of time and paper...a comic that deals with how fictional characters would vote in a fictional election (DCU: DECISIONS), or a comic about Superman and Batman fighting vampires and werewolves (the elegantly titled SUPERMAN & BATMAN VS. VAMPIRES & WEREWOLVES)? I wouldn't really know, since I elected not to read either. Democracy in action!

Okay, so I was a bit hard on ol' DC there, but I kid because I love. Despite their boring political comics and silly monster mashes, DC gave me my favourite read of the week, the SUPERMAN'S PAL, JIMMY OLSEN special. James Robinson continues to hit his stride in the Superman mythos, as Jimmy investigates the mysterious floating guy who was watching the Superman/Atlas throwdown in his inaugural SUPERMAN arc. Robinson does his best to reconcile various iterations of Jimmy here--the dork who brings Perry White his coffee, the supercool adventure hero who hung out with the Newsboy Legion, the weirdo who was turned into Turtle Boys and Elastic Lads, etc., while throwing the character into a serious and deadly mystery. Fans of Kirby's run on the title will find a lot to like here, as Project Cadmus plays a big part in the mystery, and readers of Robinson's SUPERMAN run won't want to miss this as it continues directly out of the four-part "Atlas" story. Carlos Pacheco's inker, Jesus Merino, handles most of the art here and continues to show that he's doing Pacheco better than Pacheco these days; unfortunately, he only does about 75% of the issue. Also, the story is far from complete, since it continues in next week's NEW KRYPTON special, but it's a pretty great read nonetheless. Also, for diehard DC continuity nerds, Robinson continues his tradition of resurrecting characters from the pages of FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL: first, it was Mikaal Tomas in STARMAN, then Kirby's Atlas character in SUPERMAN, and here, it's CODENAME: ASSASSIN. I can't wait to see what he does with THE DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET!

The new issue of the excellent magazine COMICS FOUNDRY is also out this week, and continues to make WIZARD look even more trivial, dated, and misogynistic. There's an article about politics in comics (which doesn't have to be dull, DCU: DECISIONS), the wobbly manga market (featuring quotes from The Beguiling's Christopher Butcher!), and a hilarious Matt Fraction-penned last page column that does little more than showcase select panels from DOOM PATROL ARCHIVES VOL. 5 (a little of that stuff goes a long way, believe me). One article also credits Stan Lee as "Movie Cameo Actor", which struck me pretty funny.

So we were bagging and boarding a bunch of back issues at the store the other day, and I came across an issue of ALPHA FLIGHT that featured Aurora and Sasquatch fighting FANTASTIC FOUR heavy Diablo, and I was telling my co-worker Mike how nothing like that scene appeared in the book--Diablo only even appeared in a flashback, and he wasn't even fighting anybody! Well, this week's issue of Marvel's revamped (and quite good!) GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY has Vance Astro fighting Starhawk on the cover, while a Skrull lords over the whole affair. I'm pretty sure this never happened, since Vance doesn't even appear in the issue. Who says this isn't still the Mighty Marvel Age of False Advertising? However, the Guardians find out this issue that the Skrulls have invaded Earth, which, at this point, would be like me only just now finding out that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbour. "Guardians", indeed! Still, a good old fashioned cosmic slugfest nonetheless.

And finally, Jeff Smith's newest series, RASL, continues to be a beautifully drawn, quietly creepy excursion into sci-fi, and this third issue starts to unravel the mystery of the dimension-hopping protagonist's past a bit. Still, though, what's up with the schedule? "To Be Continued In RASL #4 Shipping March 2009"? Seriously? That means it won't even be solicited for several months yet! The DCU's half vampire/half werewolf President will already be in office, for Chrissakes!

Stand In The Place Where You Live.

After a somewhat shaky first installment, Marvel's adaptation of Stephen King's shelfcracker THE STAND is finding its feet in a really entertaining way. It's not that the first issue was bad, by any stretch--I'm already a big fan of artist Mike Perkins (CAPTAIN AMERICA) and colourist Laura Martin (PLANETARY, ASTONISHING X-MEN), and seeing them work together is a treat--but I felt like Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa was having a hard time getting a handle on the story. Not much of a surprise, when you're adapting an 1100-page novel with hundreds of speaking parts into thirty comic books. It felt like, in the first issue anyway, he was struggling a lot with what to keep in and what to toss out. Case in point--one of the best things about King's novels is his narrative voice (in this instance, your standard omniscient narrator who happens to have lots of gallows humour and pop reference at his disposal), but in a comic you obviously don't want to read page after page of captions describing what the artist is supposed to be drawing. Well, I guess you do if you're a shitty writer, but that's a whole other post. Back to the point, though, by this second issue--where things really start to go pear-shaped for America after the accidental release of a manmade, lethal superflu--Aguirre-Sacasa begins to deftly expand the cast of characters and the scope of the story much like the way the "Captain Trips" virus spreads across the land. Perkins has a gift for character acting and distinctive faces, which is most likely what got him this gig, but he also brings the scares with the atmospheric first appearance of Randall Flagg, AKA The Dark Man, AKA The Walkin' Dude, in a cool nightmare sequence. Weird numbering scheme aside (I have to try to explain the whole "No, it's a series of six miniseries that are all the same story--oh, forget it, it's a thirty-issue miniseries that restarts with number one every six issues!" to customers an awful lot), this is turning out to be a very cool series, and not just for King devotees. I suspect Vertigo fans will like what they find here, as well as lovers of post-apocalyptic adventure fiction. Also, unlike Marvel's baffling DARK TOWER prequel/adaptation/continuation/whatever the hell fiasco, new readers need have no previous knowledge of King's work. This one goes on the short list of Marvel's best current titles for me.

Make Mine Favreau!

So I revisited IRON MAN on DVD the other day, and while watching director Jon Favreau's appearance as Tony Stark's driver, Happy Hogan, I remembered that he had also appeared as another well-known Marvel supporting character in DAREDEVIL (the less said about this one, the better, but for his part, Favreau is one of the better things about this movie).







So this got me thinking...what other characters might the versatile actor/director appear as in future Marvel movies? To the Photoshop!!!

Let's see, there's Captain America's ill-fated first sidekick, Bucky Barnes...



...Nick Fury's fellow Howling Commando and Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan...


...and Dr. Strange's faithful manservant, Wong...



I kid the Favreau, of course. IRON MAN is awesome, and I can't wait to see what he does with a sequel. Bring on Fin Fang Foom!

Almost a year? Really?

Jeepers, there's just no excuse for that. Anyway, I'm hoping to change this up into more of a showcase for my cartooning and drawing and the like, most of which is likely to still be comics-related. Sometimes it might fall under the bigger umbrella of pop-culture stuff, but it still seems to come back to comics somehow. I had another blog on the go for awhile that sort of eclipsed this one, but then they both fell on the back burner. If you're a fan of old-timey horror movies, the likes of which you'd usually find in sun-faded VHS cases at your local corner store, this one's for you. I called it Dell Grodak's House of Haunts, and it was a place for me to make and display some old horror movie poster art of my own design. Check it out at houseofhaunts.blogspot.com. Hopefully, one day soon, I'll collapse that blog and this one into some kind of catch-all affair where I basically just do whatever the hell I want. It'll be anarchy! Watch this space for details, it's already in the works.

Back to the drawing stuff...my co-worker and comic buddy Rachelle Goguen (check her blog at livingbetweenwednesdays.blogspot.com) and I cooked up an idea awhile back, as a direct response to the absolutely ridiculous proliferation of Marvel variant covers featuring recreations of classic covers but with zombies, skrulls, apes, and the like. We wondered how stupid this whole phenomenon was likely to get before fanboys stopped buying, and came up with the following. I should mention that we got beaten to the punch with one of these ideas by mere days on Chris Sims' Invincible Super-Blog, but that his trumps mine also by inclusion of a bindle. Anyway, here's what we came up with...







More drawings to come soon, I promise!

Zombies, Bizarros, and Sinestros: Oh, my!

My head is still hurting from last night's Halloween festivities, so I'll probably keep this brief. Let me start by saying, however, that despite what DC and Jim Starlin might think, Jack Kirby's New Gods are alive and well, thank you very much.

That's my pal and co-worker Rachelle Goguen as Big Barda, and me as Orion. In your face, DC!

On to the comics. The three part ACTION COMICS storyline, "Escape From Bizarro World", wrapped up this week--it was written by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner, and drawn by THE GOON creator Eric Powell. First off, I'd like to reiterate how much I am loving this writing team's run on the book, however intermittent it might be, and I'm super happy to see it back on track. Next week, Donner takes a break (I'm honestly not sure how much he actually contributes to the process, anyway) and Gary Frank joins as new regular penciller, which is very exciting. In the meantime, though, this was a fun little storyline that restores the idea of a Bizarro World to the DCU. In the olden days, it probably would have been a single issue, or maybe a double-sized annual, but in these days of "decompressed storytellng" or "writing for the trade" or whatever you want to call it, it somehow translates to three issues. As a result, it felt a bit padded--lots of pages are spent introducing characters like Bizarro Luthor, Bizarro Doomsday (who is really just Doomsday--shouldn't he be weak and puny or something?), and the Bizarro JLA, but when the artwork is this nice, it's hard to complain about it. Superman comes to a nice, Silver-Agey solution in the end by making Bizarro the hero of his people rather than just fighting him, and there are lots of fun details in the issue, like Bizarro Aquaman with a fishbowl on his head. I also loved how the Bizarro Green Lantern is actually that sector's representative of the Sinestro Corps, who is too stupid to get with the program and join the GL/Sinestro war that's currently raging across the galaxy.

Speaking of the Sinestro Corps...the "Sinestro Corps War" storyline is nearing its conclusion in the GREEN LANTERN titles, and as much as I've enjoyed this crossover, I think I'll be glad to see it end. This week, three tie-in books--GREEN LANTERN CORPS, BLUE BEETLE, and TALES OF THE SINESTRO CORPS: SUPERMAN-PRIME were released, and not much actually happened between them. They all kinda reiterated the same basic info--the war has come to Earth, Superboy-Prime hates everybody, and Sodam Yat is the new Ion--yet none of them managed to advance the story very much. It's kind of like what went quickly wrong with the WORLD WAR HULK tie-ins, where multiple issues cover the same couple of events from a few different angles, but the story doesn't go forward quickly enough. The multitude of unappealing fill-in art on GLC doesn't help either. Still, this has been one of the more exciting crossover events of recent memory, and there's still time for Geoff Johns and Dave Gibbons to bring a big finish to the whole shebang.

So, the last time I posted, I complained yet again about the proliferation of zombie comics, but now I have to go and recommend one. FEAR AGENT co-creators Rick Remender and Tony Moore team up with artist Kieron Dwyer to unleash XXXOMBIES (a title that kind of only works in print) on the world, and the result is good, gross fun. Really gross. Like, not for 99% of the population gross. The premise of this series (which is the first of a projected series of horror titles under the banner CRAWLSPACE) is that a bunch of 70s porn stars are holed up in a mansion to film three days of hardcore sex, unaware that Los Angeles has just been invaded by walking corpses. Eventually the two worlds collide, and the result is disgusting and awesome. One gag involves an actor who leaves the mansion, is bitten by a zombie, and stumbles back to the shoot where he is thought to be high on crystal meth or something and, before he has a chance to infect anyone, he is rushed off to do a scene...I'll let you imagine where this one goes. Good stuff, but most definitely not for everyone.

My head still hurts, I have to go back and lie down for a while. Happy Halloween, everybody!

Make Peace With Your New Gods!

Hmmm...maybe it's only because I expected to utterly despise it, but THE DEATH OF THE NEW GODS #1 by Jim Starlin was actually not too bad. Kinda pricey ($3.50 US), and kinda dependent on the last few NG series (which I skipped) for its continuity--i.e. Highfather is dead and some non-Kirby dude named Takion is in charge of New Genesis, and both Darkseid and Mr. Miracle have mastered the Anti-Life Equation--but I found it to be a lot better than I was expecting. It's not all that consistent with events in the DCU in places like COUNTDOWN, seeing as how the method of the New Gods being dispatched is not the same as it has been in other places (did Lightray really have his heart ripped out? 'Cause I think I'd remember that), and events transpire to ensure that there will soon not be a single happy married couple left in DC Comics before long (I may have said too much). However, some decent Starlin art and vibrant colours by Jeromy Cox, plus a feeling in my gut that Grant Morrison will fix any damage to these characters by the end of FINAL CRISIS, saw me through this all right. Even if Granny Goodness did refer to Darkseid's Elite as a "ROUGE'S gallery". Seriously, this mistake bothers me almost as much as when people write "VIOLA!" instead of "VOILA!", which means I seriously need to chill the fuck out when it comes to grammar and spelling.

I have never in my life listened to a song by My Chemical Romance and I don't really envision a scenario where that is going to change anytime soon, but the band's frontman (I guess? I could be wrong, but I'm too lazy to do a Google search) Gerard Way writes a pretty fun comic book in the form of THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY: APOCALYPSE SUITE. Drawn by Gabriel Ba (CASANOVA) and released by Dark Horse (you may have caught your first glimpse of this series in this year's DH Free Comic Book Day offering), it's the story of a group of dysfunctional super-powered orphans brought together by a mysterious millionaire, who reunite in the present day to stop an impending armageddon kicked off by their benefactor's demise. The quirky take on this superteam/messed-up family unit has lots of sly humour and cool ideas, superbly rendered in Ba's Mignolaesque style. Those slick James Jean cover paintings don't hurt, either. Fans of Grant Morrison's DOOM PATROL should get a kick out of this.

Man, did JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA go downhill in a hurry, or what? I mean, some (okay, many) would argue that it was downhill to begin with--to say that Brad Meltzer's run on the book met with mixed reviews is to be awfully charitable--but Dwayne McDuffie has quickly turned this book from a series that was kind of boring but filled with nerdy easter eggs and in-jokey character moments into the other kind of bad superhero book--the one where the good guys fight the bad guys, and that's really about it. I know, that's a weird complaint for a capes-and-tights book, but seriously...that's really all that has happened so far. Luthor's Injustice League kidnapped most of the JLA last month, and in this issue, they fight Superman and Black Lightning before kidnapping them, too. Yep. Nothing else to see here, folks, just lots of cheesecakey Ed Benes art (although, to be fair, Joe Benitez's fill-in issue last month was much, much worse). It's the kind of superhero comic that makes me think "Oh yeah, this is why most people are bored stupid by superhero comics!". I mean, come on, we're talking about Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman here...there's not much chance that Luthor and the gang are gonna kill them all. McDuffie somehow made it work on the excellent, much-missed JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED cartoon, but it's just not coming together here, no matter how much he tries to turn the comic into the show (i.e., John Stewart as the team's resident Green Lantern, the team suddenly having shuttlecrafts named Javelins with no explanation). Where did it all go wrong? Fortunately, Mark Waid and George Perez are back with the superfun BRAVE AND THE BOLD #7, which has a great Wonder Woman/Power Girl teamup that somehow sidesteps all the T and A you would expect from that matchup and instead starts off with a bang and continues with its one-off story that is somehow still part of a bigger yarn that you can ignore if you choose to (but when it's this good, why would you want to?).

Cowboys From Hell

Sorry for the absence, folks—some offers I couldn’t say no to, as well as some long-percolating personal projects I wanted to get back to, got in my way of reviewing for a much-longer-than-anticipated period. Anyhow, I’m gonna try to keep this regular again starting now-ish.

The zombie thing has officially gotten waaaay out of hand (I know, I think I might have said this a year or two back, but who knew it would have the legs it did?). I’m saying this as someone who owns all the Romero zombie movies on DVD too, even the extra-fancy four-disc DAWN OF THE DEAD. Not only did Marvel release four, count ‘em FOUR zombie variant covers last week (on WOLVERINE, PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL, SPIDER-GIRL, and RUNAWAYS), but three separate undead western comics shipped last week as well. Interestingly, not a single one was written by Joe R. Lansdale…but I digress. One of ‘em was called OMEGA CHASE, and sadly, I didn’t have time to read that one. Another was called GRAVESLINGER, and it came from creators Shannon Eric Denton, Jeff Mariotte, and John Cboins (no way am I ever gonna try and pronounce that one) by way of Image Comics. The third one was called DEADLANDER, and it was written and illustrated by Kevin Ferrarra. GRAVESLINGER had nice art but didn’t make much sense, and DEADLANDER had REALLY nice art but possibly made even less sense. The art really did carry me through on that one, though—gorgeous stuff, a mix of guys like Frazetta, Mark Schultz, and Berni Wrightson with occasional touches of E.C. Comics atmosphere (one character, a dead ringer for the Old Witch, even talks in an E.C.-style font). I think I might have preferred the art in black and white, but even so, it still looked amazing. Oh yeah, there was also a zombie-themed graphic novel from Slave Labor called EATING STEVE, but I didn’t get to that either. Cal liked it, though, so maybe I’ll read it next week.

OPTIC NERVE’s first extended, multiple-issue story arc (three issues over almost as many years!) arrived last week in a nifty hardcover, under the title SHORTCOMINGS. Adrian Tomine’s squirmy tale of neurosis, infidelity, and racial self-loathing makes a sweet hardcover, and it holds together way better as a single-sitting read rather than a couple of floppies spread out over many, many months. The story covers territory that will be pretty familiar to OPTIC NERVE fans—you know, twentysomething angst, stormy relationships, bitterly dry humour, desperate alienation—but it still remains a fascinating read, mostly due to Tomine’s crisp, sharp artwork which perfectly captures so many nuances of human conversations, gestures, and reactions, and his utterly believable sounding dialogue. If you’re new to OPTIC NERVE, you couldn’t ask for a better introduction.

Chris Staros, publisher of the always-stunning line of Top Shelf graphic novels, released new work of his own last week in the form of YEARBOOK STORIES:1976-1978, published by Top Shelf, natch. The smaller-size black-and-white comic features a couple of autobiographical stories written by Staros, dealing with his high school years. The first, illustrated by Bo Hampton, tells of the author’s foray into school politics, while the second, drawn by Rick Tomasso, details a wild gig Staros’s band agreed to play. This is a fun, heartwarming little book, and it also features a couple of great pics of the genial publisher rocking a terrific ‘stache.

In closing, director George Miller (THE ROAD WARRIOR) was apparently testing actors this weekend for possible roles in his upcoming JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA movie, which is being rushed through production in anticipation of the upcoming Hollywood writers’ strike. Fanboys everywhere, however, are up in arms over the average age of the performers under consideration…most of them in their early twenties (lots of names from THE O.C., were on the list, as well as Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who played John McClane’s daughter in this summer’s surprisingly awesome LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD). It occurred to me, though, that this is likely a film geared towards kids and teenagers, and anyone over twenty seems like a grownup to them anyway…so, is it the fact that these actors are all fairly dewy that has fanboys everywhere gnashing their teeth, or is it that, given the fact that most comic book fans are of at least college age these days, geeks the world over just can’t deal with the fact that they may soon see a live action rendition of a Batman or Superman who is-gulp-younger than they are? I know I’m still having a hard time with the knowledge that I’m nearly twice the age Ferris Bueller was when he took the day off.