Looking Back at 2023: The Year in Comics
By Dan BrownThe categories are arbitrary. My picks are open to debate. You likely have come to totally different conclusions.That said, here are the highlights – according to no one but me – from the last year in the comics biz.Villain of the year: The hip dragon from Scott Chantler’s Squire & Knight graphic novel, who sounds to my ear like a beach bum. When attacked by a self-promoting paladin, he responds in a laconic way: “Pretty rude, man.”Hero of the year: Common sense, as portrayed in the same book, which comes from the Stratford-based comic creator. It outlines the adventures of a medieval do-gooder and his young apprentice, who refuses to jump to conclusions based solely on circumstantial evidence. Turns out common sense is actually not that common. Writer of the year: BealART grad Lynette Richards, for Call Me Bill, an evocative tale delving into a long-standing East Coast maritime mystery. Richards gives the title character, an actual mariner, a plausible back story, in the process paying tribute to someone who was ahead of the times. Artist of the year: London’s D.S. Barrick for his work on Murgatroyd & Nepenthe, which he describes as a tale of two travelers trekking through the hinterlands of the imagination. It’s a visual feast not to be missed.Comic of the year: Crimson Fall: Lambs of God. This Derek Laufman mini-comic about two mismatched characters, a cleric and a knight, can be read as a straightforward story about demons in a dungeon, but underneath that is a much broader debate about the limits of reason to explain the world around us.Graphic novel of the year: Palookaville No. 24, particularly the latest instalment of Nothing Lasts, Seth’s autobiography-in-the-making. He calls attention to the constructed nature of his life story, encouraging the reader to think about the way memory becomes fiction. Or was it always fiction? (I suppose Seth’s latest is technically a comic, but it has a hard cover so it qualifies as a graphic novel in my mind. It’s not like Seth is publishing it monthly.)Panel of the year: The final panel of Are You Willing to Die For The Cause?, the Chris Oliveros book about the FLQ’s early days. On page 134, he shows the police celebrating the demise of the FLQ – just as the separatist terrorists were about to embark on their bloodiest exploits. “Hurrah!” the officers cheer. Bitterly ironic. The same book features a panel on page 123 of an FLQ hideout littered with empty Labatt 50 bottles. It doesn’t get more Canadian than that!Cartoon of the year: A New Yorker cartoon by Ellis Rosen depicts God, wine glass in hand, explaining to an angel helper why heaven looks different: “I had the vastness of creation replaced with hardwood floors.” Originally published two years ago, it came up in my New Yorker desk calendar on Dec. 1.Understatement of the year: Bob Iger, Disney CEO, said the glut of Marvel content online and in movie theatres has “diluted focus and attention” among fans of the company’s superheroes. (The Marvels, which I’m told is a strong movie, debuted with less than $50 million at the box office on its opening weekend, a first for a Marvel release.)Comeback of the year: Michael Keaton reprised his role as the Dark Knight in The Flash. By many accounts, the funnyman was the best thing about the motion picture, which served as the swan song for the current phase of DC’s big-screen superhero adaptations.Disappointment of the year: Marvel introduced Doctor Aphra in its Darth Vader title way back in 2015, yet still no movie or show built around the amoral archeologist. At this rate, the gonk droid will have its own Disney+ series before Aphra.Dearly departed: Among the comic creators who died this year are Al Jaffee, Joe Matt, Keith Giffen and Chris Browne. I once had a lovely conversation with Browne about how he continued the Hagar the Horrible newspaper strip after his father retired. Just a really nice dude to interview. The world is poorer without these guys.Comic blog/website/web presence of the year: I continue to enjoy a Facebook group seemingly titled with me in mind, Old Guys Who Like Old Comics. Jeremy Kirby is also doing yeoman’s service preserving his grandfather Jack Kirby’s legacy with his group the King of Comics.Comic journalism of the year: The book Dirty Pictures by Brian Doherty is a history of the underground comics scene in the U.S, the surprising part being how much of an impact these often-crude publications made on mainstream comics culture. It shows what can be done in the medium without an industry censor.Now, over to you . . . what were the comic highlights for you in 2023? I want to hear all of your picks in the comment box below. Feel free to invent some categories!Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 31 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
The Next Big Marvel Fad Is Here
By Dan BrownI’m not one to say comics were better when I was a boy – they weren’t better, they were just different.That said, I do miss the desperate attempts by the editors at Marvel Comics to cash in on the latest trend, whether it be kung fu or black power or disco music.I miss the slapdash efforts to tap into the collective consciousness from the folks at the House of Ideas whenever the Next Big Thing came along in the 1970s and early 1980s.You don’t see that much in today’s comics.What I’m talking about are the weird, wonderful books like Marvel Premiere No. 50, which came out in 1979 and featured shock rocker Alice Cooper.That’s right: Along with Captain America, Spider-Man and the rest, the then-edgy Alice Cooper was once a Marvel protagonist.You can imagine the wishful thinking: Cooper was selling a pile of albums and had generated a lot of buzz with his at-the-time outrageous stage shows, so the brain trust running the firm likely figured gangbuster sales would follow if they slapped Alice’s name on a comic. That may also be why comics and characters prompted by popular trends were mostly half-ass affairs.The creative team had to get them onto stands quickly, since by the time retailers reported sales figures back, the newest mania could be over.Nor was Cooper the first musician to appear in the pages of a Marvel adventure: Gene Simmons and the guys from KISS likewise showed up in the magazine-size publication Marvel Super Special No. 1, which landed in 1977.But the ultimate example of cashing in on a musical craze had to be Dazzler, the mutant who had the powers of . . . a disco ball. She first appeared in 1980’s Uncanny X-Men No. 130. You won’t be surprised to learn the mutant superhero team discovered her in a chic New York nightclub a la Studio 54. Having her debut in the pages of one of the brand’s most popular titles didn’t hurt, and the character went on to have a comic of her own for five years, thus outliving the music genre that spawned her.If it was hot, Marvel tried to jump on it. When martial-arts films featuring Bruce Lee drew audiences to movie theatres, the company responded with heroes Shang-Chi and Iron Fist, who chopped with their hands and kicked with their feet. Giving a new character the unsubtle name Power Man, as well as promoting Black Panther to headline his own series, were part of Marvel’s play for black readers. With real-life daredevil Evel Knevel generating headlines in the 1970s, the storied company answered with a stuntman of their own, the Human Fly. Shogun Warriors was aimed at fans of giant Japanese robots.When the Marvel team couldn’t secure the rights to The Lord of the Rings, they created their own fantasy world in Warriors of the Shadow Realm. Heck, Spider-Man even joined forces with the original cast of Saturday Night Live in Marvel Team-Up No. 74 in 1978. And it got sillier. In 1982, the latest to become a Marvel superhero was . . . the Pope. John Paul II made his comic debut in a biographical issue called The life of Pope John Paul II. “The entire story!” the cover blared. “From his childhood in Poland to the assassination attempt!” I’m sure kids everywhere were thrilled.Of course, if you do enough of these fad-based comics, eventually one will catch fire. And that’s just what happened in the mid-1970s when Marvel got the rights to a virtually unknown sci-fi property called Star Wars.It was arguably the smartest move in Marvel history, because the title became a massive seller. There were millions upon millions of us hungering for Star Wars content, of which there was little apart from Alan Dean Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye novel and Brian Daley’s Han Solo trilogy. Smarter people than me have argued how, without the Star Wars licence, the company might not have survived into the 1980s.I guess you could say there is one fad that Marvel editors have been trying to milk for the last 20 years, which is the popularity of the movies and TV shows based on Marvel characters. They’ve taken a hero like Samuel L. Jackon’s Nick Fury from the movies and projected him into their comics, erasing the original cigar-chomping Second World War stalwart.But apart from driving up the price of back issues, I’m not sure big-screen adaptations have done much for the sales of the comics themselves, which is both odd and sad.Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 30 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Unproductive Cartoonist Joe Matt Preferred not to be Prolific
By Dan BrownCartoonist Joe Matt died last month at age 60. He was at his drawing table when the (unconfirmed) heart attack took him, but Matt’s friend Seth pointed out in an online tribute he likely wasn’t creating comics.Which is Matt’s tragedy. He will go down in comics history as someone who could have done more, but chose not to. The truth is, after his 14-issue run on Peepshow ended in 2006, Matt found other things to do apart from publishing his highly personal comics.That’s why, in my mind, I classify Matt alongside Bob Burden, Paul Chadwick, Michael Golden and David Mazzuchelli. They are all comic creators who, for whatever reason, aren’t consistently productive. As much as I enjoy their work, which is a lot, none of them are cursed with the gift of being prolific.It doesn’t mean the comics Matt made in his brief life are of poor quality. It just means, like many other comic fans, I have an itch that will never be scratched because with his sudden passing, the hope that Matt would ever draw and write another story disappears(None of this applies and all bets are off if some publisher finds a treasure trove of material he worked on, but never got published during his lifetime. I can only hope.)Matt came to prominence alongside his cartoonist friends Seth and Chester Brown, who all hung out in Toronto in the 1990s. Matt, an American, was in Canada illegally and eventually ended up settling in Los Angeles. A rumoured HBO series based on his comics never materialized.Matt was known for autobiographical stories that were embarrassing in the extreme. He specialized in detailing his own quirks and obsessions, such as spending a good chunk of every day masturbating to pornographic videos. He was kind of like comedian Larry David in that the essence of his work was describing the price he paid for being himself.In the coverage of his death, there have been hints Matt had been dealing with some kind of creative block. (I don’t believe in writer’s block, but that’s a subject for another column.) There were also indications his perfectionism got in the way.One way to measure his output would be to compare him to Seth and Brown, also autobiographical creators. What jumps out when you look at their bibliographies is how Seth, for instance, balances the need to be creative with the need to be perfect, and has produced a long list of books and other projects. Or you could compare him to a comics legend like Jack Kirby, who enrolled in New York’s prestigious Pratt Institute for illustrators when he was 14 years old. He ended up dropping out.“I wasn’t the kind of student that Pratt was looking for. They wanted patient people who would work on something forever. I didn’t want to work on any project forever. I intended to get things done,” Kirby would say later in his life.The consequence is that Kirby’s comics, all these decades later, are still being reprinted and sold to new generations of comic lovers. Meanwhile, Matt’s anthologies have already gone out of print.A modern example would be Southwestern Ontario’s own Jeff Lemire, who is always working on multiple books, never seeming to be at a loss for inspiration or motivation. He once credited his prolific nature to the work ethic he developed being raised on a farm.For whatever reason, Joe Matt wasn’t interested in living like that. The sad fact is, he will go down in comics history as a footnote. He will forever be “the other guy” of the Toronto Three.Dan Brown has covered pop culture for 30 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Expansive, Vivid Account of Comix History Worth the Read
By Dan BrownBrian Doherty’s superlative new book Dirty Pictures is not a history of comics, it’s a history of comix. There’s a difference.Comics are the mainstream titles you know, like those produced by DC and Marvel. Think Wonder Woman, Batman, The Amazing Spider-Man, Captain America, all those costumed do-gooders. Comix, on the other hand, is the name given to the underground picture-and-word books made, starting in the late 1960s, in San Francisco and other American cities by rebel publishers who skirted the law, and certainly violated the limits of good taste.Comics publishing was an industry with its own system of censorship, the Comics Code Authority, which was in place until relatively recently. Comix were famously published exactly how their creators drew them, legal consequences be damned.It’s hard to imagine anyone getting hauled into court for selling an issue of, say, The Fantastic Four, but a few individuals did get busted for selling comix. An example of an underground issue that stirred up legal trouble is the one that parodied Walt Disney character Mickey Mouse in lewd detail.I expected to learn a lot about comix before I cracked Dirty Pictures. What I didn’t foresee is how much I would learn about the comics industry as a whole from the 439-page volume, which I recommend to anyone with more than a passing interest in the history of comic-book publishing in North America. Not only is Dirty Pictures informative, but Doherty – by day an editor for Reason, the libertarian magazine – also does a great job of transporting the reader back to a time when “an underground network of nerds, feminists, misfits, geniuses, bikers, potheads, printers, intellectuals and art-school rebels revolutionized art and invented comix,” according to the book’s subtitle. Doherty introduces the reader to Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Robert Williams, and other key figures. Crumb, the leader of the comix movement, is the guy who popularized the phrase “Keep on truckin,'” which appeared on seemingly every car bumper in the 1970s.You may know Spiegelman as the creator of the 1987 graphic novel Maus, an account of his Holocaust-survivor father’s life told using cartoon animals that earned a Pulitzer Prize. Less well-known is how the genesis of Maus began in underground comix years prior to that.Williams is now known as the artist whose racy 1978 painting of a robot and a partially clad woman served as the original cover for the Guns N’ Roses album Appetite for Destruction (it would be swapped out for a safer image after an outcry from retailers and the public).Famous comix titles include Snarf, Zap, and Young Lust. They were published by companies with such dodgy monikers as Rip Off Press, Last Gasp Press and Head Imports. They were typically one-offs, with notable exceptions, since they didn’t follow a regular monthly publishing schedule. The cartoonist Bill Griffith, who went on to syndicate his Zippy the Pinhead strip in conventional newspapers, is quoted in Doherty’s book saying, “ For me, when I use the word (comix), I mean work that will wake you up, work that allows you to be able to see more, to become more receptive, more alive” Doherty wisely conducted fresh interviews with many of the artists from the San Francisco scene to bolster his research. Those interviews are just one element that makes this book required reading. And while you might think his account of those heady days would suffer because of the fading memories in the minds of those who were there at the creation, the author peppers each chapter with contemporary records, like the letters they wrote to each other back in the day.Comix publishing was, according to Doherty, a “loose, friendly, strange business.”This exhaustive history draws a direct line from Mad magazine founder Harvey Kurtzman to the underground creators of the 1960s to the autobiographical graphic novelists of today. If you want to understand how we ended up with the comics industry we have in 2023, Dirty Pictures is one of the best places to start.Dan Brown has covered pop culture for 30 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
