Comics Squad: Lunch!

This second volume of Comics Squad features some pretty heavy hitters in its line-up. Most of the stories within are humorous, but a few are actually pretty serious. In all, I liked the range of stories and art styles, and I felt this book would be a great introduction to comics for many young readers. Or, because it features so many established creators and characters, it would be a great read for more ardent comics fans as well.

I felt that the standout story was by Cece Bell, about a young girl who is very picky about her meals and particular about her lunch routine. I would like to say that she learns to branch out from her ways, but instead I was treated to one of the weirdest manifestations of nut allergies I have seen.

Other standout stories come from the Holm siblings who gave us another fun and funny Babymouse tale.

I also really enjoyed Jason Shiga's take on a choose-your-own-adventure story that reads like a kid's version of Meanwhile. Though I have to admit in the end I kind of had to cheat on the premise, because I could not get the darn tubes to match up with the stories (I blame operator error). And it is worth noting that this story had some funny bits but not a happy ending.

Humor is also mostly absent from the short Hazardous Tales entry from Nathan Hale, but I still appreciated his version of a peculiar World War II naval battle. He makes great nonfiction, and it is good to see such work rounding out this collection.

Among the other tales here include Jeffrey Brown's "Cave Soup" featuring Lucy & Andy Neanderthal, which acts as an introduction to a forthcoming book (series?) and a look at Lunch Lady when she was just a kid. The only real clunker in the bunch was the Peanuts piece, which made me a bit sad. There are so many good Schulz stories, but this one was a studio-created one that I found insipid. More an 8-page commercial for Snoopy than a story really.

Almost every review I have read about it had great things to say about this book. Andy and Gwen commented that "The eight stories collected in the anthology are relatively short, making them ideal for reluctant readers or for readers who are new to comics." Kirkus Reviews summed it up as "One rotten apple aside, a second helping of tasty treats." The Mayor of Bookopolis called it "the ultimate 'sampler platter' of graphic novels."

Comics Squad: Lunch! was published by Random House, and they have some more information about it here.

Happy Will Eisner Week, Day 5: A Matter of Life

Will Eisner Week Day 5 brings us to a book by an established graphic novelist. In part I chose this book because it shares at least one theme with Eisner's first graphic novel, A Contract with God, in that the main character struggles with his religious faith. Eisner's book was not so much a novel as a collection of stories, but this one here is one continuous narrative.

Even though he is not so old one could call Jeffrey Brown an elder statesman of autobiographical comics. He has written and drawn a slew of them, including Clumsy, AEIOU, Unlikely, and Every Girl is the End of the World for Me. He also has created a number of fiction works, including his Sulk series, the Incredible Change-Bot books, and his forays into the universe of Star Wars. Many of his highly confessional autobiographies deal with his romantic relationships, but this one here, A Matter of Life, is about his family, fatherhood, and his religious faith.

Much of this book revolves around his childhood and teen years, as he grows up a minister's son and has many different takes on the ideas of Christianity and organized religion. Below is a page showing one particular night in his life as a college student:

But this book does not just focus on his growing up, it also bounces around to other points in Brown's life and we see him as an adult and as a father to his own son. It has comic scenes, like the one with a literal tiny Jesus raging in a heart, and sweet scenes, like the one where his young son pays his mom an unexpected compliment at the dinner table. Perhaps the most impressive thing about this book is how well it balances and juxtaposes these various tones and emotions.

Although the book works organically as a whole, I also admired how it is both episodic and non-sequential. There are so many great tidbits and glimpses into Brown's life, but they are not necessarily told in chronological order. I appreciated the way he tells his tales thematically in a relatively novel way.

The narrative is not the only place where this book shines, because I also loved the way it was rendered and colored in a painterly fashion. Brown's linework is cartoony and bold, and it is very much enhanced by an excellent use of colors that make many pages and scenes even more engaging. Just look at these beautiful panels:

All of the reviews I have read about this book have been full of praise. Jody Arlington wrote that "you'll be inspired by the Brown family's goodness and gentle relationship with each other and the world." Publishers Weekly commented that the book was full of "subtle and quiet insights into the realities of family life." Bill Sherman called it "challenging and sweet" and also "a wonderful testament of the ways that comic art can look beyond the trappings of genre storytelling." And for those interested, Brown speaks more extensively and specifically about his work on A Matter of Life in this interview.

A Matter of Life was published by Top Shelf, and they have a preview and much more information available here.

Sulk

As Top Shelf Month begins, we dive into a series from an established talent.

Sulk is a one-man anthology by Jeffrey Brown. Brown is a prolific comics creator known for his intimate autobiographical works, such as Clumsy, as well as far ranging parodies/homages like The Incredible Change-Bots. His art style is distinctive, a mix between cartoon and realism, and here he has grown ever more capable with his writing voice. This series tends to be more toward the parody/homage spectrum of his work, and thus far there are three compact volumes.

 

Bighead and Friends

Volume 1 follows the adventures of Bighead, a superhero in the vein of 1970s Marvel Comics, with dramatic cliffhangers, stories that reference each other, insane villains, and bombastic action. Some of the stories chronicle his early crime-fighting days as Little Bighead. In his mature adventures, he confronts adversaries like the Claw, the Grapplers, the Bowler, the Beefy Hipster, and even himself. Over the course of these stories, of course he dies, meets the Devil, Jesus, and Buddha, and has to fight his way through demons to be reborn. It is apparent that these adventures are outrageous, overblown, and surprisingly silly, but there is also a sincere affection for these superheroic conventions. Brown at once parodies these adventures while also capturing their joyful parts.

Sean T. Collins called it "a funny, intelligently drawn superhero humor comic."

Deadly Awesome

The second volume is more like a manga, with one MMA fight comprising the totality of the book's plot. Brown stages the action with great detail and attention, and his visual storytelling is quite excellent. What puts this story over the top is its crazily intense and intricate dialogue (both external and internal) that lends an inappropriately undue amount of gravity to the proceedings. The fight is a formulaic one, the up-and-coming brawler Eldark Garprub versus the cagey veteran Haruki Rabasaku, but Brown's artfulness keeps things interesting, fresh, and exciting. This parody cleaves closely to its source material, but its love for fight stories shines through even as they are exposed as overinflated bags of wind. The net effect: I really got into this story, snickering at its pomposity but also wondering in suspense who would win.

J. Caleb Mozzocco wrote about it, "The story is more or less all sports story cliché, but Brown livens it up with a lot of extremely weird touches, and a wild use of various layouts that give the book a surprisingly fluid look."

The Kind of Strength that Comes from Madness!

This third volume of Sulk is less of coherent whole than it is a survey of caffeinated science fiction and fantasy stories. Pirates, college students with huge, remote controlled robots, and long-haired martial artists populate these pages. There are vampires fighting unicorns, giant lizards terrorizing cities, and astronauts taking substances to augment their abilities. Things often end poorly for those involved, transforming the clever twist endings of Twilight Zone episodes or formulaic Silver Age monster comics into something like a blunt object. These stories wink at those past tales in part in admiration, letting us know we are in on a joke, but they are also pretty brutal in their execution. Except for its ending with a jokey story about time-traveling babies, I felt this book was very dark in comparison with the others.

This volume is probably the one I have seen least positively reviewed, mostly, I feel, because of what Sean T. Collins observes, that "the anchor point in The Kind of Strength That Comes from Madness is much harder to locate." It is a satire about pretty wide genre conventions.

The series as a whole seems to me very well received. The reviewer at Avoid the Future wrote about these three volumes, "the stories in Sulk are nothing if not concise, and, like most good short fiction, waste nothing in their construction. Every panel and word is valuable, and consequently, it’s difficult not to feel absorbed whilst reading it." It is difficult to read these books and not conclude that Brown is very good at making comics of many varieties.

Top Shelf provides lots of information and previews for each volume in this series (click the links to see more about volumes 1, 2, and 3). 

Incredible Change-Bots

 

The Incredible Change-Bots books are an intriguing mixture of parody, homage, satire, and action-adventure stories. Author Jeffrey Brown obviously has a lot of experience with Transformers in various media, and his love for them shows. What he adds is a sense of the ridiculous that comes with following the adventures of anthropomorphic, shape-changing robots. His stories have parodied, senseless violence tossed in, but what makes them charming are the clever robot names, the wonderful sound effects he includes, and the snappy verbal banter that occurs between characters. Brown's tongue is earnestly in cheek throughout these adventures.

In book 1, we meet the cast and their social system. As the two party government of Awesomebots and Fantasticons devolves into bickering, combat, and the destruction of their home world of Electronocybercircuitron, the robots decide to board a rocket and find a new place to live. Along the way they accidentally land on Earth and decide to try to live under the radar. Of course, their boorish and egotistical interactions do not allow that to happen for long. Soon humans become aware of these robots and the US military becomes interested in the destructive potential of these warriors. A huge battle ends the story, and one robot is left behind for dead as the rest of his compatriots leave Earth to find an uninhabited world they can call their own.

In book 2, we find Shootertron, the megalomaniac leader of the Fantasticons, was not killed after all. Stranded on Earth and unaware of who he is, he is taken in by a kindly couple of farmers who befriend him and try to raise him as a good person. Much of this part of the story is told via an ironic and hilarious set of journal entries handwritten by the robot in a spiral bound notebook. Somehow, he comes to the attention of a scheming general who kidnaps Shootertron to either recruit the robot or dissect him to figure out how he works. Also, somehow all the other change-bots end up back on Earth, and of course another series of battles and bickering ensue.

These books' creator Jeffrey Brown is best known for his autobiographical, independent comics work. His works, such as Funny Misshapen Body, Clumsy, and Every Girl is the End of the World for Me are very open, confessional kinds of tales that focus on his past relationships, his upbringing, and his life. Other of his works, including Bighead and Sulk, are more action-oriented, fictional stories that are not quite superhero stories. I have always found his art style charming, deceivingly simplistic, and emotionally charged. He speaks more about his work on the Change-Bots books in this interview at Topless Robot.

Reviews I have read about these books have been largely positive, appreciating the parody/homage quality, with some preferring these books to Michael Bay's Transformers movies. yo go re wrote about the first one, "The writing is what really makes this book, though, whether it's the subtle G1 nods or the broad comedy." Michael May praised the second book, "not only are the jokes even better, but the story’s more touching too." Aaron Block summed up his review of both books, "Jeffrey Brown proves that you can create something new with those memories, and that sometimes it’s okay to find that box of old toys in the attic and, piece by piece, remember how they work."

Previews, reviews, and more about books 1 and 2 are available from the books' publisher, Top Shelf.
There is also an animated video trailer for book 1 on YouTube. Check it out!