By Ayo
Darkness (published as “Noirness”)
By -Boulet-
Published in 2013 by AdHouse
Read the story on -Boulet-‘s website!
The protagonist of -Boulet-‘s comic “Darkness” has roommate trouble. We’ve all been there, protagonist-man. It’s about perception and compatibility.
By Ayo
Last Train To Old Town
Chapter One
By Kenan Rubenstein
lasttraintooldtown.com
underthehaystack.net
Kids can be jerks to nerds but it’s refreshing that Last Train To Old Town‘s nerd is kind of a jerk as well.
Continue reading
By Ayo
“Family, part 2”
Lazarus, number 2
By Greg Rucka & Michael Lark
with Santi Arcas
Image Comics, July 2013
Meeting the Carlyle Family during the Carlyle Family Meeting, this is kind of a stressful issue. Trying to keep all of the siblings straight was an exercise in futility. They’re all bad guys, so frown at all of them. Papa Carlyle is the only character here who appears to be somewhat reasonable. I’m interested more in his perspective, he’s clever enough to know that his kids are wilding out.
Eve, or Forever Carlyle is your basic tough guy, killing machine, Terminator/Robocop, invincible, heartless human murder factory. In this issue, she hints at having something like a conscience but it’s probably just tactical doubt about her siblings’ war schemes. I bet the next batch that this story arc ends with Forever screaming “I’M NOT LIKE YOU” with tears streaming down her face as she sends one of her siblings to the hereafter.
Spoiler: there is no hereafter after here. So don’t fuck around and yet murdered by a vat-grown super soldier.
I’ve never been to Los Angeles so I can’t feel much about how post-earthquake-dystopia L.A. Is depicted. Based on the size of the shacks, the “Hollywood” sign seems smaller than I imagined that it is. In general the destruction is beautifully rendered as old and settled-in. Eve goes into what looks like a shantytown village or an open-air market (or likely, both) and those are the two pages that feel the most alive to me. For one obvious reason, there are people of all ages wandering around, doing whatever it is that the poor do in the world of Lazarus. For another thing, we are shown the figure, the ground, the background and the sky. Those pages feel airy and open because they are depicting airiness and openness.
The next scene is in the Mexican desert but it is too open for me to enjoy. Like…desert. Deserted. When the machine-gun-men show up, it actually feels more comfortable for me as a reader, even though the protagonist is in “danger.” (Not really, she’s the protagonist and invincible)
Everything is really grey and dingy looking which is fine for a post-apocalyptic shantytown but becomes a drawback when looking at the Carlyle Family home which feels like it should be brighter and more opulent. I know that resources are scarce but these people are royalty. It just looks like the lights are physically off in these scenes. This is where Michael Lark’s heavy-black, jagged-ink style works against the scene depicted. This isn’t some back alley at night, this is during the daytime in the living room of one of the most wealthy people in the world. Turn on a lightbulb.
Don’t get me wrong, the harsh figures, the rough-hewn shadows–it’s all beautiful on the page. It just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.
~~~~~~
Two of the siblings are doing incest. Probably “twincest.” I know that I’m meant to be repulsed and disgusted and horrified but I’m just glad that somebody lightened up in this piece.
Smile or somethin!
@darrylayo
By Ayo
Answering questions on Tumblr, an anonymous asked me:
“How do you feel about webcomics”
So I responded:
Glad you asked.
I’m a hip hop guy, for twenty years. I’ve been into hip hop since The Big Kids came to the playground with a boom box and a tape of Onyx and Dr. Dre. It would not be accurate to say that I “live” hip hop but it informed many of my values and a lot of my ideas about how art and commerce work.
The thing about music in general and hip hop in particular is that they give that stuff to people for free. Before anybody asks you for money, they’ve given you their art with no money asked. Buying an album or paying for a live show feels like a transactional formality by the time it occurs. Back when I was in high school, mixtapes used to cost money. In this day and age, mixtapes are free. It’s just an economic thing. We have computers. Mixtapes can afford to be free now. So they are.
Meanwhile. Comics in the 1990s: Bone, Scud the Disposable Assassin, Hepcats, et cetera. The lasting image that holds in my mid is Rob Schrab (Scud) hunched over his kitchen table, both drawing the comic and figuring out how to pay for it. And likely, how to convince people like you and me to part with $2.99 for an issue. Yeah, comics still cost $2.99 back in 1997 but that was worth a lot more back then.
The point that I’m getting at (and this is how I tell stories in real life) is that when webcomics began to rise up and become a part of people’s daily lives, we see people being better able to expose themselves to the artform. The medium of comics became something that wasn’t restricted by parting customers from their money nor was it bound by readers’ access to specialty stores. Webcomics made comics truly free.
The thing that bothers me and I’m including myself heavily in this since I haven’t worked a webcomic since 2010 or so: rappers put stuff out. Rappers put lots of material out and it isn’t even album stuff. Rappers will make multiple mixtapes and follow them with official albums which represent more material. Not all of the material is exclusive, but enough of it is. People remain engaged with the artist on a continual basis. For that reason, I aspire to the model of webcomics which allows one comic to be seen in public and generate interest in an artist while that artist works behind the scenes on other comics. I call the latter “black comics.” Mostly unseen, until they need to be seen.
Personally, if I were to return to webcomics, I would prefer to use them as a more freewheeling, disposable free thing that causes me as little stress as possible, while concentrating my more detailed labor on projects that I would sell.
Mixtapes versus albums.
@darrylayo
[Feel free to ask me anything, via my Tumblr Ask Box!]
By Ayo
Cable and X-Force, no. 11
by: Dennis Hopeless & Salvador Larocca
with: Frank D’Armata & Joe Sabino
$3.99, Marvel Entertainment
July, 2013
I was born in Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital. Thirty years later, I had my eyes checked out there (all good). A year and a half after that, X-Force saved the hospital from blowing up!
1. What it is.
Cable and X-Force is a comic about a new version of the original X-Force. The main X-Force comic is a derivative of the version that Craig Kyle and Chris Yost and Rick Remender spearheaded on recent years. Cable and X-Force is the “heroes branded as outlaws, on the run from the law” kind of comic. I’m into this.
2. Larroca.
As an indie comics guy, I’m supposed to loathe Salvador Larroca. His work on Invincible Iron Man should be an abomination to me, made by computers, aided by photographs, driven by photoshop, et cetera. Well, eat dirt, indie comics. I like Larroca’s work.
Frank D’Armata is no small part of this. His limited palate (grey) and silvery sheen probably turn off a lot of old school art-likers. But he and Larroca have slid into a rhythm where their work seems made to be together. It’s just a grey world and that brings me to…
3. Boom Boom.
The character Boom Boom is all pink and yellow. The proverbial ray of sunshine in this world that is so steely that her opposite character is literally black and white (Domino). Aesthetically, they look good together. They make an idea team-up because even their colors are coding their outlooks on life, particularly when contrasted with one another.
4 Domino effect.
In a Domino/Boom Boom stealth mission, Domino is the one who goes undercover. And nobody blinks at this Obvious Mutant carting a patient out of the hospital!
Points for not being racist, Mount Sinai Hospital!
Demerits for terrible security, Mount Sinai Hospital.
5. Structure: parallel; asymmetrical
In this comic, we actually never see the lead title character, Cable, but we see his daughter, Hope Summers. She is in the future, teaming up with Blaquesmith fighting Warlocks. I ain’t even mad!
When I was a boy, Original X-Force was my favorite comic. While the X-Force gang was running around and rescuing their friends, Domino was hunting down mercenaries and searching for X-Force. That was the era of issues #20-24, especially issue 23 “Domino Triumphant.” Today the tables are flipped and Domino is rescuing mutants (and civilians) while some OTHER estranged member is taking the Long Way Home.
Hope’s mission is long. It began before this issue and it continues past this issue. Domino and Boom Boom’s mission is immediate. It begins and ends in this current episode.
THIS.
IS.
WHAT I KEEP TELLING YOU ABOUT!
A comic book issue should tell its own story while also providing seeds for future (no pun intended) stories to develop. That’s what this comic book issue does and I will support Hopeless and Larroca in their mission if this is what they plan to do.
I call this “polyrhythmic storytelling.” One story arc moves at a certain pace and the other hand (I took piano lessons as a boy) moves at a different pace. Yet both hands compliment the work as a whole.
In comics, what you want to do is have your dominant storyline take up the majority of an issue’s time/space (in comics, time and space are the same thing) and have the subplot move along at sparser, sharper beats to make for an interesting narrative “stab” of interest with each subplot interlude. The idea is that by the time the subplot becomes the dominant plot, the reader will have absorbed enough of that subplot’s world to become fully curious and engaged. And do remember: when the subplot eventually becomes the primary conflict, seeds should still be sewn for subplots even further down the road. That’s how it’s done!
6. Domino effect, part 2
This past weekend, I bought the 1996 Domino miniseries (so, so, so terrible) and the 2002 Brian Stelfreeze Domino miniseries (reading it soon). The day of this Cable and X-Force, I also bought Adam Warren’s A+X comic “Scarlet Witch+Domino.” I really like Domino. The Domino in the comic at hand is not the freewheeling, daredevil Domino but the original Too-Old-For-This-Shit Domino. I can’t complain, it’s just weird to see different comics slide the character back and forth between Stern School Marm and Reckless Trickster. The latter role in this story goes to Boom Boom who was an utterly joyless character until Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen put her in the comic Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E.
So I enjoy this comic for what it is presented as, not what any prior comic suggests that it might be. And shout out to Ellis and Immonen for supplying Boom Boom with an actual characterization.
7. The review of Cable and X-Force # 11.
Wasn’t the best comic book to come out this week (July 17, 2013), but it might have been the closest comic book to my heart. If you were a fan of Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo’s X-Force (twenty years ago), this is the comic for you, without a question. Antics, friendship and want an destruction. The X-Force Way.
@darrylayo
By Ayo
“Break-Fast Meet”
Young Avengers, no. 7
Marvel Comics, July 2013
Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson, Clayton Cowles
When I was a little dude, twenty years ago, there lived a comic book called “X-Force” (by Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo) that I liked a lot. It wasn’t a perfect comic book but it was as close to perfect as I had personally seen at the time and thus, functionally perfect. The point in time when this comic existed as pure joy was in the brief period of its 20th through 24th issues. During this period, the teenaged cast of the comic had their own adventures, made their own decisions with absolutely no adult supervision, broke things, blew things up and ran from the law. They argued with each other and loved each other and beat opponents into submission to protect each other. Persuasion through muscle and victory through hardheadedness. It was 1993 and this was the best comic book in the world. It was everything that eleven-year-old Darryl wanted to see. More than wanted, it was everything that I needed to see.
Twenty years later, we have Young Avengers. It’s the same concept but put together a lot more adeptly.
1. Kirby Engine versus IPAC Unit.
Flying around the world (or galaxy) in a super-jet, beating up bad guys and having a good time with your friends–the only people who you can hold to since you’re on the run from authorities and wanton property damage is the X-Force way. The teen superhero team way. It’s the Darryl Ayo way. If you make a comic like this, you’re talking my language.
2. Through the eyes part 1
Jamie McKelvie is pulling a large portion of this story along on facial expressions, mostly. Body language, next. The conversation between Noh-Varr and Hulkling is conducted over two pages of both characters sitting down. Yet throughout, we see not only the subtle shifts in mood and emotion on both characters’ faces but we also see a consistent difference in personal disposition between the two.
The same thing happens between the unspoken disdain between Prodigy and Loki. Their dialogue says one thing but their eyes and facial moods say all of that and then some.
3. These stories are long.
My initial complaint with this Young Avengers series seems harsh because it isn’t unique to Young Avengers but the first story arc was long. I didn’t have a problem with the pacing of the storytelling itself, I found the storytelling pitch-perfect. My difficulty was in the length of the overt-objective narrative. Five issues of the first story felt overly long to me.
Since then (issue six and the current issue, number seven), I feel that there has been a bit more containment of narrative beats in an issue which limits that sense of sprawl which I felt in the first arc.
I think that we’re seeing a return to polyrhythmic storytelling, where the overt objective brings the structure for an individual issue but the underlying emotional arcs keep readers coming back for more.
4. Miss America & Prodigy.
Two brown folks in the Young Avengers and they are pretty terrific to see on the page. Both are highly competent and casually cool (not “cool” meaning “likable,” but “cool” as in one’s demeanor).
Miss America is kind of a “you never asked” type of character which gets aggravating but it takes all types to run a successful ensemble cast. She’s mysterious and magical and likes to punch things, so therefore perfect for the role. Prodigy, on the other hand, is a new spin on the know-it-all character type. A genius with people-skills. He knows everything but has enough empathy not to lord it over people.
5. Through the eyes, part 2.
Prodigy’s point of view of tracking the Young Avengers is a lot of fun to read. Every issue of this series seems to have some sort of design trickery to it or some panel-border-breaking magic to it. This issue has both design trickery and panel-manipulation to denote magic. This comic is just a lot of fun to look at.
6. The review of “Break-Fast Meet,” Young Avengers # 7.
Good. Better. Best!
Young Avengers has been a high-quality superhero series since the first issue but the quality has just taken a dramatic upturn. Pop culture references in this series are sharp and trading on pop culture familiarity is dangerous ground for any storyteller. Most readers of this series seem devoted to the characters themselves and therefore this issue ratchets up the interpersonal antics.
@darrylayo
By Darryl Ayo
“Backyard”
By Sam Alden
Sonatina Comics, 2013
24 pages, $5.00
I bought this comic book and my buddy asked me “what’s the deal with this ‘Sam Alden’ anyway?”
Well…
~~~~~~
comixcube.com 