Baltimore Comic-Con 2009 - David's Take

My experience at Comic-Con differed considerably from that of last year. The territory is more familiar, the world of comics no longer has the air of a foreign country as it did just a year ago. Also, although the event was once again held at the Baltimore Convention Center, it was in a different space within that facility, which, as you'll see, had consequences for the experience. But first, here are some of the highlights of my haul:

Pineapple Army #3, #7 and #8 by Kazuya Kudo and Naoki Urasawa


I had picked up the other ten issues of this mini at a 25 cent sale at Cosmic Comix and Toys earlier in the year and was glad to have the opportunity to pick these up, especially considering the fact that I was only able to read the first two issues despite having near the whole series. My interest in the series itself came from the fact that it was illustrated by Naoki Urasawa, a creator for whose work I've become quite fond. The series was initially published in Japan in the mid-eighties, so it definitely represents an early phase in Urasawa's career. It is interesting to see how the illustrations resemble those in such more recent books as Monster and 20th Century Boys and how his style has changed. Of particular note are the figures, as I think that Urasawa's subtle representations of the human face are perhaps the most impressive aspect of his art. Some of the features (noses, in particular) are distinctly Urasawa-n, while others (eyes, mostly) are more conventional, calling to mind other manga from the period, like the works of Shirow Masamune.

Heavy Metal January-June 1983 and November 1983-March 1984


These issues of Heavy Metal were picked up at $2 each and were selected in particular for two Guido Crepax stories that ran during these months: "The Man from Harlem" and "Valentina." Of course, being the early-eighties, each issue has some other great content, from Christin/Bilal collaborations to Moebius stories and even a few episodes from Tamburini and Liberatore's "Ranxerox."

Alien Legion - Grimrod by Chuck Dixon and Mike McMahon


Dixon and McMahon did an excellent three-issue arc in Legends of the Dark Knight called "Watchtower," which was one of the earliest series I ever bought. McMahon's quasi-Cubist designs are sorta perfect for half goofy/ half deadly serious comics and at $1, this prestige issue was irresistible.


A Patch of Dreams by Hideji Oda


I'm not really sure what this vaguely fantastical manga is even about, but the designs are really great and I almost picked it up at a local comics shop for the full $23 asking price. I could thus hardly resist picking it up for a whopping $4 at Comic-Con.


Lost Dogs by Jeff Lemire


This is a really great looking, huge paperback published by Ashtray Press, which I also picked up for $4 from the vendor mentioned above. I've no idea what to expect from the book in terms of narrative, but it's populated by this great hulking farmer in red-striped sweater. And that great, crimson red is the only color in a book slathered together from deep, thickly-brushed blacks. It looks rather impressive, at the very least.


Other Convention Highlights:

Larry Marder

The Beanworld creator had posted on his blog that anyone presenting a sketch of a Beanworld character at his booth could trade it for a sketch of that character drawn by the man himself. I therefore was up into the wee hours of Saturday morning working on a sketch I'd brainstormed during one of my classes earlier in the week and which was loosely based on John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"--complete with a few lines of Keats's ode reimagined to correspond with the scene sketched on my urn. Marder is of course a genius and an early friend of this very blog so it meant a lot to me to get the chance to formally introduce myself and talk about Bean-things past and future.

Brian Wood

The DMZ and Northlanders writer was at Comic-Con to promote his upcoming run on DV8. I happen to think he is one of the most skilled writers in comics right now and I've spilled not a little 'ink' on these pages singing his praises as well as being critical of some aspects of his work. Shortly after the 2008 elections, I wrote a piece on political cynicism in comics and used DMZ in order to illustrate many of my points. Apparently someone showed my post to Wood and he commented on it on his blog and sent me a nice email. In any event, it turns out that not only is Wood a talented writer, he is also a legitimately nice guy. When I introduced myself and reminded him of our brief exchange, he seemed immediately to recall the incident and commented that we had given him a lot to think about. Whatever his thoughts were about what we presented here, DMZ continues its trend of staying a step ahead of events on the world stage and the current series displays a level of political sophistication that worth noting.

30 Rock at Comic-Con?

As my cohorts and I made our way to the events area to attend the panel on seventies comics, I couldn't help but notice a weirdly familiar, impressively tall figure making lonely way through the convention. Upon reflecting for a moment, I realized that it was none other than Scott Adsit, better known as Pete Hornberger from NBC's 30 Rock (although, let's be real, before checking IMDB, all I could say for certain was that it was "the dude from 30 Rock"). Who knows what Adsit was doing at Comic-Con--my guess is that he's a comics fan who makes his home somewhere near Baltimore--but there was no doubting the expression that was on his face; he was just waiting for the penny to drop and someone to yell out, "Hey, it's the dude from the 30 Rock!" Of course, to be fair, this is precisely what I said, although in my defense, I said it only loud enough for Brandon to hear and I knew he would have the politeness not to make it known to a convention hall full of fan-boys.

The Negative Zone: Hey! Heavy Metal Still Rules

There's often a tendency amongst discerning-type fans to draw these reasonable though ultimately, fairly arbitrary lines between what's "cool" and what isn't. Now, that's hardly a shocker of a statement--it's the very definition of "discerning", no?--but it's more often than not, rooted in things like image and reputation than hard, critical thinking.

That's to say, something's usually scoffed-at because it "looks" uncool or has been declared uncool rather than first-hand reading or experience. One such example, and a particularly grating one as far as I'm concerned, is the mention of present day Heavy Metal followed by "Uh, you know, the ones with like Moebius were great, not the ones with Barbarians and Julie Strain...". Moebius is cool, Vikings and boobs are not, since when? Both are cool and there's plenty of good, interesting stuff to be gained from picking-up Heavy Metal at least every once in a while.

This has been an ongoing, quiet thesis by this blog and David hinted at it when he discussed the latest piece of Jodorowsky and Manara's Borgia series. There's barely any discussion by anyone really anywhere about the latest issue of Heavy Metal and it's rarely stocked in actual comics stores, which just seems unfortunate.

Especially unfortunate this month, because there's a particularly excellent issue out and it's one that I think even the people making Julie Strain jokes can get behind. Namely, you get Part Two (of Three) of Nathan Fox and Matt Wilson's Fluorescent Black and a ten-page installment of Jim Mahfood's masterpiece Carl the Cat That Makes Peanut Butter Sandwiches.

Mahfood's work gets enough discussion that I'm surprised this hasn't been talked about more, especially because it's a particularly brilliant installment of the strip but Fox (who is currently drawing the also slept-on Dark Reign: Zodiac) is making the kind of series that'll eventually become a graphic novel in a year or two and everybody'll review all excited-like. This is just a slightly less obnoxious version of the people that hold-off on whatever series for six to nine months until the trade comes out. The rest of the issue's fleshed-out with some winners and some losers and some kinda cool and kinda stupid pin-ups and stuff--just like the old Heavy Metal mind you.

A renewed interest, or at least something resembling acceptance of Heavy Metal, would be, in a sense, the last "wall" for comics readers to breakdown between "smart" and "dumb" comics. Nearly everyone is reading superhero comics along with their Chris Ware and Tomine stuff, and there's a recent wave of writers/artists totally breaking down "indie" and "mainstream" (like Fox or Mahfood, but Ba & Moon, Brandon Graham, Vasilis Lolos, Brian Wood, and many many more) and so, the disinterest in Heavy Metal seems more due to the perpetuation that it sucks, that there's nothing worth reading inside, than actual evidence or experience.

Heavy Metal is still, essentially the weirdest and coolest--though notably less weird and cool than it once was--anthology comic going on today. Cheaper and more frequently published and more easily accessible than say, MOME or Kramer's Ergot or whatever, Heavy Metal continues to drop smart pulp every month.

Jodorowsky and Manara's Borgia: Flames from Hell"

Though an historical narrative, Jodorowsky and Manara's "Borgia: Flames from Hell," which was published in the July 2009 issue of Heavy Metal, has more in common with the writer's science-fiction epics of the Incal universe than his other, non-science-fiction comics. The story opens with a masked orgy on Easter 1494 and concerns events in the lives of Rodrigo de Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, and two of his children, Lucrezia and the legendary schemer Cesare.

Cinematic GrotesquerieThe orgy at the story's opening connects the work visually to the artist whose output "Flames from Hell" outwardly most resembles, Stanley Kubrick. Both artists center their work in the mode of the grotesque in order to highlight the depravity and human folly which forms the basis of their respective subjects.

This similarity is more or less superficial, however, because unlike the late filmmaker, whose more or less deterministic films emphasize the utter powerlessness of humans to effect the doomed circumstances in which they find themselves, Jodorowsky, who at the same time has a sympathy and love for his human subjects that is notably absent from Kubrick's films, clearly believes that insofar as humans find themselves in dire straits, it is result of their own actions. Moreover, Jodorowsky has faith in the ability of humans to better their circumstances--witness John DiFool and his fellows in the Incal stories.

"Flames from Hell," like the stories in the Incal cycle, is concerned with what happens when people are not forced to expend much of their time and energy toward the business of survival. In his science-fiction stories, these circumstances come about as a result of technological advancement and in this latter story, they are a function of one family's accumulation of enormous wealth and power.

Jodorowsky's billionaires are most certainly not renaissance versions of Bill and Melinda Gates. Rather than committing their wealth to legitimate civic or philanthropic ventures, the Borgias concern themselves solely with the consolidation of power. Rodrigo de Borgia expended enormous sums to secure his election to the papacy and his reign is noted for its decadence.

The story of Alexander VI's papacy is summed up brilliantly in the sequence that opens with the masked orgy. The pope is presented masked in a king's costume and is engaged in the business of searching for his ideal queen. When a beautiful woman approaches, masked and in queen's garb, the "king" wastes no time in dragging her across the hall to an altar, which he summarily clears with a sweep of his royal arm, setting her upon it and mounting her as the object of his carnal worship.

This sequence highlights the subtle splendor of Manara's illustrations. The king's mask is represented more or less consistently--open faced, with lips parted. However, as the action changes from panel to panel, subtle shifts in Manara's illustrations reflect Rodrigo's state: determination as he drags his queen across the hall, bemused wonder as he lovingly removes his queen's stockings and finally culminating in the couple's post-coital embrace. Manara's rendering of the king's mask in this panel brilliantly expresses that look of confused disbelief--the "what the fuck have i just done" face--that many have felt in the moments just after sexual release. That Rodrigo discovers in the following panels that the woman he has just bedded is his own daughter Lucretia is almost anticlimactic in the wake of this brilliant rendering.


God Is Sorta Great?From films such as Holy Mountain to his science-fiction epics and this tale of renaissance royalty, Jodorowsky has shown himself to be a major student and critic of the world's many religious and mystical traditions. In his comics, religion is frequently presented as something that is used as a tool of social control. In "Flames from Hell," this is obviously reflected in the banking family's recognition that the ultimate arbiter of power in their age was the Catholic church and the best way to guarantee the family's power is to pepper its upper echelons, from the College of Cardinals to the papacy itself.

Unlike many contemporary skeptics, however, Jodorowsky recognizes the beauty in religion and even the potential good of spiritual traditions. In stories such as Megalex, mankind's way out of the mind-deadening drudgery of a wholly artificial world is depicted in part through pagan spirituality and in "Flames from Hell," the greatest potential challenge to the tyranny of the Borgias is represented by religious reformers such as Savonarola. Jodorowsky never entirely relinquishes his stance as an ironist, however, and even these reformers are shown in all their folly. In one sequence in "Flames from Hell," the monk Savonarola is portrayed leading a purifying demonstration outside the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. One of the gathered penitents is the great renaissance painter Botticelli, who throws his painting "Three Nymphs Trying to Awaken Eros from his Sleep" into the raging fire, vowing never to "let perverted genitals guide my brushes again!"

The Negative Zone: Sanitizing Manara for American ReadersWhen Brandon first noticed the July issue of Heavy Metal on the shelves of a comics shop in Chapel Hill, NC, he pointed out that the usually shrink-wrapped magazine was displayed in flagrante, as it were. As I was reading the story after picking up a copy of the magazine at the book store at which I am employed, I noticed that in a panel ostensibly depicting a woman peeing into a sauce pan, the woman was inexplicably drawn wearing lavender panties. This obvious and admittedly very bad editing job led me to investigate some of the story's panels more closely.


I discovered, unsurprisingly, that any panel which might have depicted penetration or even mere genitalia had been somewhat sloppily edited to censor out this apparently offensive material. Some of the examples are as ridiculous as that mentioned above, including a rotund woman who is wearing what contemporaries might refer to as "granny panties" even while she is obviously being fucked by her oldster husband.

I am going to fess up and say this is the first "new" issue of Heavy Metal I have purchased since becoming a comics reader about 18 months ago. Be that as it may, I do know that the magazine is typically sold with protective shrink-wrap and that in the older issues in my collection, the editors did not seem to have balked at sexually explicit material in the same way. I don't know if this is indicative of a permanent shift in the magazine's presentation, but it seems that for a magazine whose only draw anymore seems to be that the comics published in its pages tend to be sexually explicit, this is a legendarily stupid marketing decision. It also perpetuates a sort of characterization of American comics readers as prudish bumpkins who cannot be trusted with intellectually or sexually sophisticated material.

Whatever the significance of this nanny-ish censorship, it is a genuinely good thing to see that at 80 years old, Alejandro Jodorowsky can still write great comics and that somebody in this country can drum up the enthusiasm to publish them. With the newly minted publishing arrangement between Devil's Due Press and Les Humanoïdes Associés, American readers can hopefully look forward to more of Jodorowsky's books appearing on our shores. The translations may be shoddy and the images censored, but this is an artist whose work deserves to be read in whatever form we can get it.