Comics You Should Be Reading Number 7 Of Probably Not Many; Comics Are For Children And Retards

Apathy Jack writes:

Philosophers
Originally uploaded by Brain Stab

Action Philosophers, by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey

Actually, while I’m thinking of philosophy, I just finished the latest collection of Action Philosophers, a rollicking ride through the history of philosophy with wrestling and guns.

You know wrestling and guns make philosophy better.

Three volumes have been released, which I think is the whole lot finished now. In the next week, I’m going to do some judicious photocopying of this to use as a supplementary resource for the (it’s now up to) five students who are/will be reading Sophie’s World.

Apathy Jack: Making philosophy better. For the sake of the children.

(Oh, and if you wanted to check it out, the above link lets you read the sections on Jung, Descartes, the pre-Socratics and John Stewart Mill...)

Comics You Should Be Reading Number 6 Of Probably Not Many; Comics Are For Children And Retards

Apathy Jack writes:

gothsaresick
Originally uploaded by Brain Stab

Nemesis the Warlock by Pat Mills and Various, but notably Kevin O’Neil

Remember the optimistic picture that Gene Roddenberry put forth in the Star Trek mythos: the moment humanity had a close encounter of the third kind, all racism, sexism, homophobia, would end. All of the internecine squabbles that have held mankind back would simply fall away with the humbling knowledge that we were not alone.

Nemesis the Warlock has that as its core message as well: when humanity encounters alien life, it sheds its petty differences and unifies as never before.

To purge the galaxy of weirdoes and deviants in a terrifying new dark age where the word “human” is synonymous with “bloodthirsty religious fascist”.

I remember the first Nemesis story I read – part of a serialised story read out of order in purloined issue I got from somewhere: The story of two humans trapped on a terrifying planet of giant spiders. They were engaged in a desperate struggle to stay alive (a struggle which one of them failed in a spectacularly gruesome way) and to end the nightmarish rule of the arachnid overlords.

I had to read the story several times; I knew all of those tropes, but they were upside down. That story (a pretty bog-standard sci-fi idea by even my ten-year-old standards) just didn’t make any sense if the spiders were the good guys. The more stories I read – where the hero was a demonic figure who breathed fire, and his main lieutenants as the story wore on were a gang of kill-happy robots with an undisguised loathing of humans – the less sense it made to me.

It was great stuff. Still is. The second volume of The Complete Nemesis the Warlock has just been released.

Comics You Should Be Reading Number 5 Of Probably Not Many; Comics Are For Children And Retards

Apathy Jack writes:

exterminators
Originally uploaded by Brain Stab

The Exterminators by Simon Oliver and Tony Moore


The tagline on the first Exterminators collection likens it to the HBO of the comics world, and, unoriginal though it may be, I can’t think of a better comparison (especially as it was originally thought up as a tv series). The Exterminators is like one of those quirky normal-people-but-hey-look-at-this-spin-which-
makes-it-interesting shows. (So, yeah, if you think those’re played out, this might not be your thing...)

The three collections so far released; Bug Brothers, Insurgency and Lies Of Our Fathers, follow Henry James immediately upon his release from prison, as he gets a job at his mother’s boyfriend’s pest-control firm, Bug-Bee-Gone. However, as James acclimates to his co-workers (driven peculiar by their work with bugs, or did they choose to work with bugs because they were a wee bit funny in the first place...?) he starts to notice things, and it begins to look like the bugs have a plan of their own...

The above link also has directions to a pdf of the first issue, in case you’re interested.

Comics You Should Be Reading Number 4 Of Probably Not Many; Comics Are For Children And Retards

Apathy Jack writes:

from hell
Originally uploaded by Brain Stab

From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell


You may remember the movie version of this Jack the Ripper tale, where Johnny Depp played psychic detective Abberline in a racing whodunit, leading to the big revelation at the end.

Well, the prologue for the graphic novel establishes firmly that all psychics are hoaxers, and by chapter three (of sixteen) we are told who the Ripper is, and we spend much of the rest of the story following him as he dispenses his murderous task.

Paraphrasing a comment Moore once made concerning this movie, he said he was pleased: thousands of movies are made every year that aren’t based on his work, and he never sees a cent, however; the producers of the Depp film made a movie that wasn’t based on his work, but wrote him a huge check...

Warren Ellis once said this of From Hell (wherein; for all you fans of modern sci-fi, he references the old Battlestar Galactica):

When you talk about movies, there’s always that which bookstores live by; the book is almost always better than the movie. You could have no better case in point than FROM HELL, Alan Moore’s best graphic novel to date, brilliantly illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It’s hard to describe just how much better the book is. It’s like, “If the movie was an episode of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ with a guest appearance by the Smurfs and everyone spoke Dutch, the graphic novel is ‘Citizen Kane’ with added sex scenes and music by your favourite ten bands and everyone in the world you ever hated dies at the end.” That’s how much better it is.

This six-hundred-odd page beast of a thing is exhaustively researched – there is a forty-two page appendix explaining story and art references - and it weaves together Masonic conspiracy theories, British history, and compelling pieces of Ripper-lore to build a complex and remarkably compelling read.

Comics You Should Be Reading Number 3 Of Probably Not Many; Comics Are For Children And Retards

Apathy Jack writes:

the stamp collector
Originally uploaded by Brain Stab

Death By Chocolate/Less Than Heroes by David Yurkovich

Yurkovich’s oeuvre is of weirdness in just the right amount, and his two major works have been collected. Death By Chocolate tells tales about, and related to, Agent Sweete, a man made of living chocolate who works for the FBI Food Crimes Division. At turns weird and funny, it also has the truly disturbing story “The Metabolators”, proving that weird and funny can also creep you the hell out.

Related is Less Than Heroes, the story of Threshold, the most boring super-heroes in the world; who live in Philadelphia – not the super villain capital of the world, so spend a lot of their days eating snacks and indulging in their various hobbies. Yurkovich followed this up with The S.H.o.P – Super Heroes of Philadelphia, a surprisingly dark tale about It All Going Wrong.

Comics You Should Be Reading Number 2 Of Probably Not Many; Comics Are For Children And Retards

Apathy Jack writes:

soup
Originally uploaded by Brain Stab

Love and Rockets by Jamie and Gilbert Hernandez

This series is somewhat famous for being a bastion of alternative culture in the eighties and early nineties – especially after a band named themselves after it. Definitive collections have just been released.

The most popular are the works of Jamie Hernandez, chronicling the life of Maggie Chascarillo, a Mexican-American hoodrat living on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. The early stories are Jamie throwing all of his influences at the page to see what sticks, so, in addition to Maggie walking the streets with her punker friends, she also works for a world-famous mechanic and has adventures with dinosaurs and professional wrestlers. After a while, it (mostly) settles down to Maggie dealing with everyday life. Which (oddly, given my proclivity for wrestlers and dinosaurs) makes it even more compelling. The two “Maggie” collections out so far are Maggie the Mechanic and The girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S.

Despite Maggie’s popularity, I’ve always preferred Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar tales. Set in the fictional Mexican village of that name, Gilbert’s stories travel back and forth across decades telling the stories of the inhabitants. It is simply a soap opera, but it is moving and affecting, and you come to really care for the characters. I still remember being unemployed, sitting in the public library reading Love and Rockets and my clearest memory is of reaching the end of Human Diastrophism – the final major Palomar story – and sitting there stunned. Magical realism isn’t generally my thing, but I still care for all of the characters from Palomar – they’re realer than many of the real people I know. (Disclaimer: I do hang out with some awful caricatures of humanity...) The complete tales of Palomar are currently available in two volumes: Heartbreak Soup and Human Diastrophism, with a volume of Gilbert’s post-Palomar stories to be released at the end of this year. Go read them.

Comics You Should Be Reading Number 1 Of Probably Not Many; Comics Are For Children And Retards

Apathy Jack writes:

pinapples
Originally uploaded by Brain Stab

ABC Warriors: The Black Hole, by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley

Remember 2000AD? I read those as a kid, and they were nuts. Total craziness. I couldn’t get over not only the weirdness, but just the sheer volume of the ideas.

Just finished rereading a childhood favourite; The ABC Warriors story The Black Hole, where, basically, a group of robot soldiers have to travel through an unstable time-tunnel to shut down a black hole.

Total craziness. Nasty, nihilistic, and the most fun I’ve had reading on the bus in ages.

Here, the thoughts of the commander, Hammerstein, as he’s undergoing his military programming:

Signals go back and forth between my master and secondary programs.

Contradictory signals.

It’s alright to kill humans in battle. But not in camps.

When they murder civilians, it’s an atrocity. When we murder civilians, it’s tough retaliatory action.

Rebels on our side are freedom fighters. Rebels on their side are terrorists.

It’s good to love animals. Then kill and eat them.

But not children.