On Free Comic Book Day, Something For Everyone
I don’t know what kind of comics you like. But I can say this much with certainty: When you visit your favourite comic store on Free Comic Book Day (which lands on May 4) you will find a veritable horn o’plenty to pick from. That’s right. There’s something for everyone. It’s an old-fashioned cornucopia. Or maybe a comicopia? What I mean is, whatever publisher, fandom, character, creator, title you favour, you will find something to scratch that particular itch. I say this after getting a sneak peak of the bulk of the freebies that await you at stores like my preferred comics haunt, L.A. Mood Comics & Games. Fandoms like Star Wars, Stranger Things, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Planet of the Apes are represented by offerings from publishing houses such as Marvel, Dark Horse, Titan, Fantagraphics, and IDW. Here are a few highlights from my reading to help inform your FCBD excursion:*For a sentimental old fool like me, the title that jumps out is Snoopy: Beagle Scout Adventures, a sampler with strips pulled from the collection of the same name landing in bookstores at the end of April. What ‘s better than Snoopy and Woodstock camping in the woods? Snoopy and a whole troop of little Woodstocks camping in the woods! *Marvel is putting on a big push on a couple fronts. One is this year’s companywide crossover, called Blood Hunt. The premise is that perpetual night has fallen on the Marvel Universe, which means it’s feasting time for vampires, including the hungriest bloodsucker of them all, Dracula. The other front is Marvel’s Voices line, which features characters and creators aimed at the queer, Indigenous and Latino communities. *The best cover may be the one on Tons of Strange, a child-friendly homage to the EC horror titles of the 1950s. Inside, you’ll find Jawas playing dice in the sands of Tatooine! *Speaking of the 1950s, Stories from the Atlas Comics Library includes a Stan Lee-penned piece in which the then-unknown creator took aim at Fredric Wertham. He’s the crank psychiatrist who provided the anti-comics crowd with pseudo-scientific cover for their crusade to ban comics, which included comic burnings, back in the day! *Also in the running for best cover is the one for Conan: Battle of the Black Stone, which features everyone’s favourite barbarian hefting a bloody axe. It comes from Heroic Signatures and Titan Comics. Is there a comics company out there that hasn’t published his adventures? The difference this time is the current licence holders are trying to situate Conan within a larger Robert E. Howard universe of characters. *Perhaps the broadest sampler pamphlet is the one featuring Asterix and Obelix, which includes episodes culled from seemingly every one of their books. Oh those wacky Gauls! *The Kill Shakespeare universe makes a return with Romeo Vs. Juliet, which imagines the star-crossed lovers crossing swords! How is this possible? It turns out Juliet faked her own death. No word in this promo pamphlet on how Romeo managed to shuffle back onto this mortal coil. *The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle handout includes a slice-of-life tale in which Master Splinter has a rare evening of quiet away from his adopted mutant sons. All I will say is that the rodent sensei doesn’t spend all his free time meditating!*The Cursed Library Prelude takes place in the Archie Horror world, so for those who prefer the dark side of Riverdale, prepare to meet Jinx, the daughter of Satan himself! It also features a snippet of a ghost story starring Archie’s favourite blond, Betty Cooper! So if you’re a fan of Venom, Flash Gordon, Johnny Quest, ThunderCats, Hellboy, Frankenstein’s wife or Mei-Mei the red panda, there’s something for you this FCBD. And that’s just the free comics . . . I hope you’ve been saving your shekels because the annual event is also a great excuse for London’s comic retailers to offer customers some outrageous deals!I love FCBD, dubbed Geek Christmas by some, for the feeling that’s in the air around town. It’s kind of like a moving fan convention as Forest City comic enthusiasts, cosplayers and pop-culture followers travel around our community, checking in at all the different stores. There’s a rare convergence this time as FCBD and May the Fourth (the day unofficially set aside to celebrate all things Star Wars) coincide, so there’s bound to be the waft of bantha steaks in the air. Don’t miss it! 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.
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.
A Chilling Admission from Your L.A. Mood Comic Correspondent
The views expressed in this column are those of the writer alone and should not be attributed to L. A. Mood or its employees. By Dan Brown I’ve got a horrible confession to make. You’re going to think less of me. But I can’t go on as L.A. Mood’s comic columnist without coming clean. If you’ve read any of my previous columns this year, you’ll know that I’m a fan of Marvel Comics from way back. (I always found D.C. heroes to be emotionally constipated, which made them seem less real and compelling to my younger self, a topic for a future column.) However, here’s the thing: As much as I’ve loved Marvel since the 1970s, I don’t feel much for the brand’s marquee character. That’s right. I don’t like Spider-Man. I can hear you gasping. I have to be honest with you, my fellow comic fans: I feel little for everyone’s favourite web-slinger, even though he’s been Marvel’s mainstay attraction for decades. It’s not that I actively dislike Peter Parker’s alter ego, it’s just that I’ve never gone out of my way to seek out the many books that feature him. How many different Spider-Man titles are there these days? About 5,000? That’s 5,000 I don’t have on my monthly pull list. I realize this is like a DC fan admitting they never liked Superman. Startling, but true. I guess I just never formed a bond with Spidey the way I did with characters like the Thing or Wolverine or the members of Alpha Flight. I started making mine Marvel in the mid-1970s. As the years went on, I fell in love with the Fantastic Four, Iron Fist, the new team of X-Men, Captain America, Iron Man, and others. Sure, I was aware of Spider-Man. Heck, one of his girlfriends had been killed by a baddie. Back then, characters died and stayed dead, so that was remarkable. And I knew a bit about supporting characters like the Punisher, who shot rubber bullets at his foes. That was cool. But in my childhood home in Poplar Hill, I wasn’t the one reading Spider-Man’s adventures. It was my four-years-older brother who brought Marvel Team-Up home off the spinner rack. Every month, the webhead partnered with a different character, usually one Marvel was hoping to promote to head up their own title. And I will admit, in the hands of artist John Byrne, Spidey could do some thrilling stuff. In one of those Team-Ups, Spidey runs upside-down through a hallway on the ceiling – it was such a brilliant use of a comic panel to show what the character is capable of. Yet it still wasn’t enough to fire my imagination. I drew a few pictures of Spider-Man in my school notebooks, but he was not the focus of my attention the way others were. I was a sucker for such anti-heroes as Deathlok, the warrior cyborg from the future. How could the wall-crawler compete? Somewhere along the way I even picked up a mini-digest of the first six or seven appearances of Spider-Man from the 1960s. Even though I loved that otherworldly Steve Ditko art and dug the crazy villains, it didn’t make me a regular reader. Were the modern movies any different? Nope. I went to see the three Tobey Maguire films, out of a sense of duty more than anything else. Maguire’s Spidey seemed just as . . . vanilla . . . as the one I remember from the comic books, so I gave up on him as a motion-picture character. Nor am I going to rain on anybody else’s parade. Don’t worry. If you’re a fan of Spider-Man, good for you. I’m just glad people are still reading comics and geeking out over superheroes in the year 2023. And hey, I’m a weird guy who likes weird things, so likely I’m the odd man out here. The fault is probably mine for not making a bigger spot in my heart for Aunt May’s favourite nephew. Are there any popular characters you never developed an affection for, even though they were bestsellers? I’d love to hear all about it in the comment box below. I promise I won’t think any differently of you! 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.
Pedro Pascal a Meaningful Choice to Play Reed Richards
By Dan BrownDepending on which news source you believe, Pedro Pascal may be the next actor to play superhero scientist Reed Richards, the pliable leader of the Fantastic Four also known as Mister Fantastic.Just the fact the big brains at Marvel Studios are talking to Pascal tells us two things.First, Marvel wants to get the next Fantastic Four movie right.Second, the Marvel brain trust realizes they are in a slump.If Pascal does get the part, it would be a good sign for the many millions of Marvel movie fans on this planet. The Chilean-born performer is known for his acting on shows like The Mandalorian, The Last of Us, and Game of Thrones, as well as for giving Bad Bunny a helping hand during the musician’s Saturday Night Live appearance last month. In addition to being hugely popular, Pascal is immensely talented. It’s no surprise Marvel’s bosses want to tap into his star power. He is one of the few actors who could pull off the role; Richards is not exactly an exciting character, being part genius and part rubber band. Pascal would bring excitement, humour, and gravity to the part.Pascal can take comic-book dialogue – “We’ve got to get to the bottom of his strange powers, learn how to control them. After all, Sue, he’s our only son” – and sell it. The fact he brings Star Wars enthusiasts, gamers and other fandoms to the table is an added bonus, and I’m sure part of the calculus for why Marvel is apparently in discussions with him.Longtime Marvel fans know that the Fantastic Four is, well, a tricky property to get right on the silver screen. If I am counting correctly, there have been four attempts to make movies based on the title Stan Lee dubbed “the world’s greatest comic magazine.”The Roger Corman-directed first shot wasn’t even meh enough to get a video-cassette release. The second and third were B movies constrained by their low budgets, and the most recent attempt is considered an abomination in the sight of the few fans who paid to see it.Is a new Fantastic Four movie a special-effects picture? Is it a family story? Is it a comedy or a drama? It’s all of those. And no filmmaking team has yet been able to get the tone of the Fantastic Four right. Even more significantly, adapting FF for the big screen means bringing one of pop-culture’s great villains, Doctor Doom, into the mix.Nor can anyone ignore the context these reported talks are taking place in. The Marvels, the latest feature film from the studio, had the worst debut in Marvel Cinematic Universe history when it landed in theatres earlier this month, failing to clear $50 million in its opening weekend. It also had the worst second weekend in MCU history, despite strong word of mouth.Not all of this can be blamed on the recently concluded strike by Hollywood actors, which prevented stars like Brie Larson from hitting the talk-show and podcast circuit to drum up interest in the motion picture. Superhero fatigue is a real thing, but don’t take my word for it. I wrote in the spring in this space about how Disney CEO Bob Iger feels the Marvel brand has been “diluted” over the pandemic by the release of too many streaming shows. Think Hawkeye, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Moon Knight, She-Hulk and on and on. Fantastic Four is one of the richest potential mines left for Marvel Studios to plunder. The downside of getting it wrong is huge. The potential upside? If they get it right, a Fantastic Four movie starring Pedro Pascal just might save the company. 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.
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.
A Love Triangle Crumbles in a Single Rainy Night
By Dan BrownA short column this week reviewing a short graphic novel.Ivana Filipovich’s What’s Fear Got to do With It? is from East Coast publishing house Conundrum Press, which has been coming on strong the last few years.If you like graphic novels that feel and land like subtitled foreign movies, you will want to check this slender volume out. It runs 58 pages, but doesn’t suffer for its brevity.The setting – Vancouver’s Richmond Night Market – isn’t foreign, but the “feel” of the book is. This might have something to do with Filipovich being part of the Balkan Renaissance in graphic novels. “My main inspiration is (Anton) Chekhov,” the comic creator says in notes accompanying the book’s release last month.She goes on to say that growing up in the former Yugoslavia she was fed a diet of “the best of BBC, great Russian movies, Quebec TV series and, of course, the best world literature and comics from both sides of the ocean.” She also counts Ingmar Bergman among her influences, as well as Salman Rushdie.What does it all add up to? A moody tale that unfolds in a single night showing how a love triangle falls apart. The characters are the criminal Max, who may or may not be a crime kingpin, and his girlfriends Eva and Mia. “It’s a (triangle) in which all characters are faulty, despite some of them being more likeable than others,” Filipovich explains.Another way to put it would be, if you’re a guy and you ever thought having a harem of beautiful ladies would be fun, this story will make you reconsider. The saddest part is that love in this milieu has been degraded to the point where to show devotion, all one has to do is buy the beloved material objects. “You always got whatever stuff you wanted,” an unbelieving Max tells Eva when the triangle crumbles. The tragedy here is Max can’t understand why the unconventional relationship has failed – he spent a lot of money on his foxes, didn’t he? Isn’t that all there is to it? And don’t get me started on how a single question rules one of the girlfriend’s lives: How will this look to my followers on social media? “I was born online. That’s me,” Mia boasts at the outset of the evening.All of this is presented in a moody wrapper. Filipovich evokes another film, Blade Runner, with her scratchy lines. The cityscape is drenched in ever-falling rain, which means the one moment when the sun comes out lands with force.If you are looking for a departure from the same old, same old, I recommend What’s Fear Got to do With It? Dan Brown has covered pop culture for 30 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
