Recommended Remembrance Day Reading
By Dan BrownIf you ask me, Remembrance Day should be a statutory holiday – I believe this country ought to grind to a halt out of respect for those who gave their lives so the rest of us could live in peace.And in no way do I think reading a comic or graphic novel can come anywhere close to recreating the brutality of combat. So I mean no disrespect by offering these ideas for Remembrance Day reading. Please consider these suggestions a starting point, and nothing more.Two Generals: Created by Southwestern Ontario’s own Scott Chantler, this moving book gives a grunt’s-eye-view of the D-Day landings. It’s based on Chantler’s own family history and his crisp lines don’t diminish the horrors of war. Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics: Not only did Jack Kirby draw many war comics, but he was also an actual U.S. soldier who landed at Normandy (in a subsequent wave). I recommend Tom Scioli’s biography because it helped me visualize Kirby’s contribution to the war effort. All Quiet on the Western Front: Wayne Vansant’s graphic adaptation of the classic Erich Maria Remarque novel pulls no punches with its detailed account of trench warfare and forays into No Man’s Land as told from the German side. Vansant is himself a veteran of the Vietnam War.The Canadian Whites: These were the wartime comics that flourished in Canada during the Second World War due to restrictions the government put on imports. Hard to believe, but our dominion had a thriving homegrown comic industry in those years. I would suggest you start with Nelvana of the Northern Lights, a collection about a female goddess who fought Nazis and also beat Wonder Woman to market.Berlin: This expansive volume by Jason Lutes depicts what was going on in the German city between the wars. The cast combines historical figures like Hitler with fictional characters and was years in the making. It opened my eyes.They Called Us Enemy: Inspired by the true story of Star Trek actor George Takei’s family, this tale of the homefront describes how Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps during the Second World War. This, after their possessions were confiscated and their businesses liquidated. There are echoes of this experience in the short comic Junban by Toronto creator Jillian Tamaki. It first appeared in the New Yorker and describes her grandfather’s parallel experience in British Columbia.Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos: Long before he was an agent of SHIELD, Fury – the comic one, not the one played by Samuel L. Jackson – was fighting Nazis in the pages of Marvel Comics. Any introductory collection will do, and yes, I know these comics were meant more as entertainment for boys than a serious record of how World War Two unfolded. Captain America’s earliest adventures are likewise worth a read – Cap was punching Hitler in the face before the U.S. had even been drawn into the war.Sgt. Rock: A DC anthology like Archives Volume One will give you the idea. The highlight here is Joe Kubert’s gorgeous art, which was also featured in another World War Two title from DC, the Unknown Soldier.Please consider these recommendations in the spirit they're offered. Every one of us has to begin learning about war somewhere, and for me it was in the pages of comics like these.Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Now This is a Fun Godzilla
By Dan BrownAs you may have heard, this Saturday (November 2) is Godzilla Day at L.A. Mood Comics & Games. It’s the store’s way of celebrating the giant lizard’s 70th anniversary on the silver screen.So here’s my two cents.Godzilla has appeared in a lot of comics over the decades, but few are as fun as the Essential Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which collects all 24 issues of Marvel’s 1970s series featuring He-Who-Stomps-Tokyo.Marvel jumped on just about every bandwagon in those days. Does anyone remember Dazzler, the mutant who had all the powers of . . . a glitter ball? The thinking was, if disco music or Alice Cooper or kung-fu movies or the Human Fly are a sensation in pop culture, then surely a comic featuring the same trend du jour will be a hit.Those comics – generally done on the cheap – are the ones that defined my childhood. And the fact this Godzilla series lasted two years is a testament to how popular it must have been.The first issue appeared in 1977 (the same year Star Wars, and the ensuing Marvel adaptation, took off) and within the first few pages the book’s creative team (artist Herb Trimpe and writer Doug Moench) effectively meld Toho Productions continuity with that of the Marvel Universe. Surprise! It turns out Godzilla was always in the same world as Spider-Man, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four! That opens up a lot of possibilities.The challenge for the creators was in having a central character who is kind of like another big G, Galactus, except not as talkative. Godzilla is a force of nature, so he doesn’t really speak a lot, unless utterances like these count as dialogue:– Shreeaww– Hrahhh– Graww– Mraww– Reeaww– MeeawrrMan, I love old-timey sound effects! I’m sure Trimpe and Moench had a ball coming up with them.And as with Galactus, there is a running debate in this series about Godzilla’s essential nature. Is he like a snowstorm, and therefore beyond morality? Or is his trampling of landmarks like the Hoover Dam proof of malevolence? Is he driven solely by animal instincts, is Godzilla – as one character exclaims – an “overgrown gila monster”? Could there even be a noble heart under that scaly hide?So, back to those Marvel guest stars.Nah, they didn’t use them to full advantage.I’m guessing the editors who were in charge of other Marvel heroes at the time didn’t want to loan out their A-list characters. The ostensible human star of the Godzilla comic is Dum-Dum Dugan, who is in charge of SHIELD’s Godzilla capture team. Yeah, they couldn’t even get Nick Fury.You know Dugan as the Second World War veteran with a bowler hat and walrus moustache who was somehow still wah-hoooing 30 years later. At least with Fury Marvel's writers made up some story about a de-aging formula making him immortal (or something). And where Dugan was on the winning side in the battle against the Nazis, he is forever being bested by Godzilla. You will also recognize Dugan because he says things like “Looks like it’s time for old Dum-Dum to bail outta the jaws o’ death. Never could stand bad breath,” the latter being a reference to Godzilla’s ability to spew nuclear fire.Later, some bigger stars do appear, but funny thing: I never remember Spidey or Mister Fantastic or the Vision referring to Godzilla in their own titles. You’d think, because he was a menace to all of North America in this series, word would have gotten out to the larger Marvel Universe. But does Godzilla fight other monsters, you ask. You bet. Among his foes are Batragon, Centipor, Ghilaron, and Lepiraz, any of which could easily pass as the brand name for a depression or weight-loss medications. Next up: Godzilla takes on Ozempic!While Godzilla’s Marvel days may have lasted a rollicking two years, the comic version of that other movie from 1977, Star Wars, helped Marvel stay afloat back in the day. In fact, the company continues to produce Star Wars content to this day, proving that if even just one trend-inspired comic series pans out, it can be a boost to a publisher’s bottom line for a long time.And if comic books aren’t your thing, just take a look around L.A. Mood on Saturday as Godzilla Day unfolds. The friendly staff will have whatever merch you crave! 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.
Celebrate 70 Years of Godzilla with Us (Godzilla Day London Ontario) Nov 2
Join the fun at this monstrous 70th anniversary event!We are excited to have a human size Godzilla cosplay guest on site. Tristan Domay is one of Canada's premiere Godzilla cosplayers. He has been building and performing as monstrous characters for over 15 years. An award winning artist and filmmaker, he is a longtime contributor to the kaiju and tokusatsu fandoms. Working annually with Dojo Studios since 2010, he has helped to bring Western Godzilla fans unique experiences usually unseen outside of Japan, including live stage shows, special effects demonstrations, as well as academic panels on costuming and the history of the kaiju genre. In his spare time he moonlights as a late night horror host and lover of all things macabre.Don’t miss out! We will be open Saturday November 2 from 10 am till 7 pm.Come on by L.A. Mood at 100 Kellogg Lane, suite 5, London.
Scary Halloween Graphic Novels
By Dan BrownIn time for Halloween, here’s a rundown of graphic novels that range from unsettling to creepy to scary to horrifying. Read them at your peril, boys and girls!Vision: The Complete Collection: Imagine you live in suburbia and your new neighbours turn out to be emotionless androids. Literally. This Tom King-written story ends with the Vision taking on pretty much the entire Marvel universe.Monsters Volume 1 and 2: These omnibuses, dubbed “monsterbuses,” collect classic tales by Jack Kirby from the 1950s and 1960s, when evil creatures came with names like Fin Fang Foom. Find out what the world was like before superheroes! Before Marvel was even Marvel!The Simon and Kirby Library: Horror!: See some utterly creep characters the King came up with before he switched to inventing the Marvel universe pretty much on his own. In addition to EC’s many gruesome titles, this is the kind of comic that got denounced by U.S. politicians for causing juvenile delinquency!Any EC collection: From the publisher that brought you the Crypt Keeper! It doesn’t matter which EC horror anthology you read (they have titles like Tales From the Crypt and Crypt of Terror), they are all great examples of EC’s thoughtful suspense and horror!Monsters: Originally envisioned as a story about the Hulk, this thick tome from Conan the Barbarian artist Barry Windsor Smith is as gorgeous as it is horrifying! A military experiment goes wrong and unsuspecting civilians pay the price! Nicely marries horror with a touch of magic realism.Something is Killing the Children Book One: You can file this series under the heading of “the title is the premise.” Something evil has been leaving a trail of lifeless tots in its wake in the sleepy small town of Archer’s Peak. Will a heroine rise to stop the slaughter of innocents? Written by James Tynion IV.Wild’s End: Your basic alien invasion story set between the wars. The twist: The characters who populate the British countryside are anthropomorphized animals. The alien invaders look kind of like Victorian-era street lamps and remind me a bit of Triffids. This ain’t no Watership Down!H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness Volumes 1 and 2: This manga adaptation of Lovecraft’s story about a doomed Antarctic expedition is made even more unworldly by the fact it’s a manga. Japanese creator Gou Tanabe takes his time to recount this encounter between humankind and the previous alien inhabitants of this planet.The Nobody: This Jeff Lemire joint, which made nary a splash when it came out in 2009, asks the question, What if the Invisible Man came to Essex County? Yes, I know Lemire never specifically says the story takes place in Southwestern Ontario, but it’s easy to imagine it does.Snotgirl Volume One: Green Hair Don’t Care: Written by Londoner Bryan Lee O’Malley (yes, he does stuff other than Scott Pilgrim!) this is a psychological drama featuring an influencer named Lottie Person. The fun comes from trying to guess how much of her adventures are really happening and how much of the action is in Lottie’s head. Vampirella Archives Volume One: My favourite version of Vampirella is the one featured in these stories from 1970s Warren Publishing magazines that were drawn by Jose Gonzalez. Giving the character a science-fiction twist – in this continuity, vampires are from the planet Drakulon – infused her stories with that X factor I was looking for as a kid.Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands: What does Kate Beaton’s account of her time in the oil patch have to do with Halloween? If you’ve ever wondered how an entirely male society would work, Ducks explores that theme in horrifying detail. Ducks is all the scarier for the fact it really happened. The old standbys: There’s also the Walking Dead for zombie fans, 30 Days of Night for vampire enthusiasts, and Hellboy books like Conqueror Worm for fans of the paranormal.Your suggestions: What are YOU reading this spooky season? I want to hear it in the comment box below!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.
Sentinels is Dark and Looks to Get Darker
By Dan BrownSentinels No. 1 has an intriguing premise, but man is it dark. With such a grim start, I’m not sure where the new series will go from here. Can it get any more dystopian?Billed as Marvel’s token “bad-guy book” among the company’s 18 (by my count) X-titles, it features a cast of military types who have been implanted with sentinel technology. They are machine/human hybrids whose goal is to forcefully corral mutants, then bring them to prison.In keeping with the dystopian theme, the prison is housed in the basement of Professor Charles Xavier’s former school for gifted children i.e. mutants. But where Xavier’s dream was to find a way for mutants and humans to co-exist, the sentinels are programmed – and kept in line with mood-regulating drugs – to use violence to bring them in. It’s a world turned upside-down.This all takes place in Marvel’s post-Krakoa universe. Last time I checked in with the X-Men, they were living pretty much as immortal gods on the sentient sanctuary island. I wondered what Marvel was going to do with its mutant characters once that storyline ran its course, and now readers are beginning to find out. (Marvel has said it will be concentrating more on solo titles featuring the likes of Wolverine and Storm as the mutants reintegrate into society.)Not to be trusted with their genocidal instincts, the giant sentinel robots themselves have been powered down in favour of these cyborgs. The danger for the bad guys, who have code names like Lockstep, Drumfire and Sawtooth, is that the cybernetic implants have a tendency to take over their minds and bodies completely, a process called “full grafting” which destroys their remaining humanity.The issue is a finely crafted comic, with art by Justin Mason and writing by Alex Parknadel, creators whose work is new to me. Let’s just say the result is not something Jack Kirby and Stan Lee would ever have dreamed up.There’s also friction between the civilian who pulls the team’s strings, the mutant Lawrence Trask, and the military commander on the ground. It’s reminiscent of what happens in pro sports when a coach can’t get along with his or her general manager.The issue starts with the team dropping into an isolated Russian village to take the homicidal mutant “Omega Red” into custody. Naturally, things don’t go according to plan.There are dark hints as the issue unfolds about how the incarcerated mutants are being treated, which seems to be even worse than the sentinels themselves. They operate in a world in which there are no clear moral lines between human and mutant or organic and mechanical.Some of the team members rationalize their missions by stressing that all they are is hunters – what is done to the captive mutants once they have been put into a cell is none of their business.We also get a glimpse of Trask’s motivation when he recalls the story of two neighbouring villages in thirteenth-century England during a wolf cull. Once the animals victimizing the two communities have been dispatched, he explains, the residents turned on each other.Trask reasons that his role in backing the sentinels is to keep humanity and mutantkind in a kind of equilibrium or stasis so they don’t massacre the other. The sentinels are the “necessary monsters” who keep a “fragile peace” between humans and homo superior. Speaking of Magneto, he doesn’t appear in this issue, but his former ally the Blob does. There’s a different archvillain from the X-Men’s past who graces the story’s final page. You’ll never guess who it is, but I didn’t see his appearance coming. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Colin Kaepernick Not Making Friends with AI Comics Venture
By Dan BrownYou may know Colin Kaepernick as the NFL quarterback who struck a blow for civil rights.But now the former football player wants to revolutionize the comic industry. And that’s not a good thing.Sports fans are familiar with Kaepernick because eight years ago he took a knee during the American national anthem at a San Francisco 49ers game to protest police brutality and racial injustice. More kneeling ensued, as well as much controversy.He came to the attention of comics fans this summer when he announced the founding of his artificial-intelligence company, Lumi, which aims to “free creators and democratize storytelling.”Sounds great, right? The unsaid part is that he wants to replace work done by comic artists and writers with images and words generated by an AI. This has not endeared him to the comics community.It probably didn’t help his cause when he made his intentions known in a press release that sounds like it was generated by a robot.With $4 million in funding behind it, Lumi is a “groundbreaking platform that empowers creators by providing them with the tools needed to independently create, publish and merchandise their stories both digitally and physically.”How will this be done? By putting the human creators who would have otherwise created these stories out of work.I haven’t done a survey of people in the field, but I’m not currently aware of any comic creators who were looking for this kind of shortcut. “By leveraging advanced AI tools, Lumi enhances the creative process, allowing creators to focus on bringing their stories to life, while the platform handles all of the logistics,” the statement adds. The company boasts this will make every creator into a Walt Disney. But whatever you think of Disney’s labour practices, he at least employed actual human animators.It seems Kaepernick has himself run up against “gatekeeping” in the comic industry.“Currently, a few large corporations dominate the narrative landscape, limiting the diversity of stories told. Lumi aims to open the funnel, enabling anyone to access storytelling superpowers, ultimately fostering a more inclusive and equitable world.”The reality, of course, is that the internet has made the barrier to entry ridiculously low. For better or worse, all you need to be a comic creator in 2024 is a computer and an idea. And anyone who has been paying attention to the graphic-novel market over the last dozen years also knows there are now graphic novels and comics for almost every taste. Besides, AI art and writing is just . . . weird.Granted, I haven’t seen the finished product of a comic produced with the help of Lumi. Who knows, it might be better at drawing than all the other AIs out there.But even if it’s the best AI art ever invented, it still can’t match the creativity of the human mind. You could argue that it’s the flaws, the human element, that make comics attractive to human readers in the first place. Someone like John Porcellino is not a master illustrator, but his simple images are the perfect vehicle for making the emotional points he wants to make. The results are comics that verge on the poetic.Nor am I against the use of technology in the making of comics. If it makes drawing or writing easier for a human, go for it, but the comic creators I love don’t give up those functions entirely to a machine.“Creators today face significant challenges, including exploitation and lack of independence,” the statement claims. “Lumi addresses these issues by providing an end-to-end solution for storytelling leading to more financial stability, creative control, and ownership of their work.”Yup, sounds like the comic biz to me!Oh, and at the risk of belabouring the point – there was and will only ever be one Walt Disney!Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
