Quick Rating: Wonderful
Title: Bells

How many great rabbits have their been in popular illustration?

Writer/Artist: Stan Sakai
Editor: Diana Schutz

It’s Wednesday evening. You stand outside the comic shop, like Dante at the gates of Hell—caveat emptor does not even approach the warnings at the gates of Hell (“Please light a cigarette; keep hands and feet inside the stocks at all times; no flash photography or sound recording permitted.”), but you might want to be wary anyway. You enter the dread comic shop. Some guy in a raincoat stands at the counter, purchasing a stack of comics as high as your forearm. He is arguing with the clerk about the discount charged on one of the books. A middle-aged woman stands in the back, looking shell-shocked, as her pre-teen son selects an issue of Transformers. Her arms are wrapped around her young daughter, shielding her eyes from the action figures portraying a variety of eviscerations just at the child’s eye level. Two loud guys are arguing about the latest controversy regarding Dave Sim, Mark Waid, Joe Quesada, a quart of vodka, and an antelope. And this is where you go in the hope of finding some sort of art that will entertain and sustain you for the next week.

And yet, we ignore the good stuff.

William Stout has described Usagi Yojimbo as a cross between Carl Barks and Akira Kurosawa. I totally agree. If you like either one, then you should jump on the Usagi bandwagon. If you don’t like either one, then you need to turn in your member card for the human race. If you don’t know who either one is, then you need to seek out old Disney comics on ebay and go rent some foreign movies. (Or you may be blessed with a great public library that has both available.)

Usagi Yojimbo translates roughly as unemployed samurai rabbit, or perhaps more accurately as master-less ronin hare. Yes, he’s a rabbit. And he’s appeared on Saturday morning cartoons (guest spots on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and he’s been an action figure. So, you probably should be reading Stan Sakai’s wonderful creation.

In this issue, Katsuichi figures as the main character. Katsuichi was Usagi’s teacher/mentor/master when he was a child. Now, we see him in the midst of a fight when his concentration is interrupted by a passing girl. This sparks the memories which drive this issue.

Usagi has been around for twenty years. The next issue should be out in the next couple weeks. What are you waiting for?

January, 2004

Quick Rating: Looking Forward to the Ultimate Lockjaw
Title: The Fantastic, Part 4

See Through Is Not What It’s Cracked Up To Be

Writers: Brian Michael Bendis/Mark Millar
Pencils: Adam Kubert
Inks: John Dell
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letters: Chris Eloipoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio

If you read last issue, then you knew the Moleman would be back, but the person that you are awaiting is Dr. Doom. Well, I won’t tell you, even if this review is not hot on the heels of the issue’s appearance. What does happen is more character interaction and Moley pursues his wacky goals.

I will tell you that the pace remains glacial. I don’t normally believe in conspiracies, but I’m rethinking that. For instance, the residents of a certain Scottish town might just mess with foreign visitors’ sense of reality by telling tales of a large aquatic monstrosity. Also, it might not be a surprise to learn that a certain major comic book publisher decided to pad its hit new comic book series by inserting long, drawn-out sequences with minimal action.

Somewhere over the rainbow, you may have seen an ancient video called How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. It featured Stan Lee, in all his glory, and John Buscema, trying to go with the flow. The one thing you learn is that Marvel comics are about “action.” Oh, you learn this over and over. You learn a few other things, but they’re best experienced first-hand.

So, the folks overseeing the Ultimate line-up definitely got the message about character. They have a load of character. Somehow, the original stories of Reed and Sue and Peter and Matt and the Professor and Ginger and Mary Ann managed to convey character through action. To be honest, I’m not even certain this is a fair complaint. If they’d already fought and defeated Dr. Doom by this point, I’d probably be complaining that we didn’t know who they were. I wouldn’t mind feeling a bit more forward thrust though.

March, 2004

Quick Rating: And things begin to happen…

The Fantastic: Part 3

Writers: Brian Michael Bendis/Mark Millar
Pencils: Adam Kubert
Inks: Danny Miki
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letters: Chris Eloipoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio

Issue 3 and we see some superpowers- isn’t that what we’ve all been waiting for? We see the outcome of the explosion at the end of issue 2. The four youths have been transformed into the super-powered beings that we have been expecting. They are scattered across the globe, with Sue Storm being the only one in imminent danger, although all four are reasonably freaked out. Victor Van Damme is the only victim unaccounted for.

The images in this chapter were much more disturbing than those that had appeared previously. I found them oddly appealing. In fact, I seemed to like the art the best so far- maybe that was because this was the first issue where the pictures often carried the story.

In my review of Issue 2, I wrote:
Only two comic pamphlets outsold it last year (Batman 619 and JLA/Avengers 1). And yet:
-more people can name all six Friends then all four of the FF
-more people watched the cable golf channel last week than read this comic book
-more than a hundred times as many people bought Shazam comic books at their peak as bought Ultimate FF
-Stan Lee, as a character, has appeared in more released movies than Reed Richards
-the person standing on the left in a comic panel still speaks first
Everyone focused on the point about Friends, which seems to me to be the most like comparing apples and oranges. The second point draws on the same television/comics-battle-for-your-diversion-dollar deliberation. Comics will always come up short. Everyone views television as free. Flip it on (and it’s always there in the American household) and you’re magically entertained. Also leaving aside the last point (which fascinates me in the same way that mirror reflections do), the third and fourth points are what should concern anyone interested in the comic book industry as a viable concern. Shazam was a milestone in the comic book industry, along with a few others, because of its popularity (setting aside a discussion of how good it was, though it was often quite good). Yet, it was truly nothing special in the eyes of the general public. It was a comic book and you bought them and you read them and you threw them away. I do not think that people are any less aware of the existence of comic books than they were fifty years ago. Yet, it is very difficult to buy them. I don’t think a single child in my son’s elementary school could be given three bucks to buy a comic book and accomplish the task on their own. At that age, everyone in my neighborhood was bike-riding to the drug store and gleaning the best off the comic racks. Moreover, making a Fantastic Four movie will not change that. It will only change when comic books are printed on cheap paper, cost a dollar, and most people throw them away when they get old enough to fill that same shelf space with equally worthless novels. Maybe it’s nice to be the only one in your neighborhood that can pronounce Sub-Mariner correctly, but this art form is being hoisted on its own petard.

I cannot let the Ultimate Fantastic Four letter column debut pass without comment. For reasons that elude me, Marvel has allowed Brian Michael Bendis to handle the letter column. Anyone who has read Powers has to wonder at the wisdom of the choice, at least with any sense of corporate behavior in the wake of the horrific Super Bowl revelation that Janet Jackson has breasts. I only hope that no photos of Bendis’ booby make an appearance anytime soon (accidentally included with the page layout by Millar).

February, 2004