San Diego Comic Com: a bit more...

Enjoyed the 1000 pages panel, even if it didn't tell you much that you already didn't know really. Ended up with this Becky Cloonan sketch in my sketchbook that I liked. It was great to see Gene Colan there as well, up and around and holding down the fort of how to improve and be consistant.

Interesting to hear different artists takes on the work ethic. Certain people were complaining that it was drudgery to have to ink that book once its already been written and pencilled, and then Bryan Talbot leaned into the mike and talked about getting up, going downstairs to his studio on the lower level of his house with a cup of coffee and working til 9pm every day because that's what you do. I think that that comment rather shut up everyone else for a while about whining about constantly checking their email and getting distracted.

The internet was completely abuzz about the Twilight fans taking over San Diego and being out of control and ruining the show for everyone. You know what? Tempest in a teapot really. No, seriously, they didn't ruin the comic convention, it is the mainstream media, picking comics over like the rotting carcass that the industry is and nibbling out the best parts. Understand, they need us, and they get us because we're desperate for the legitimacy as well as the money that they can provide. They may need to move the damn media convention to LA and let the comic fans have San Diego again. Because its not doing that elusive thing that its supposed to be doing.

Here is an interesting question: what is the most interesting thing about walking the aisles of the convention floor (in the comics section)? Answer: seeing all the interesting books that you'll never get to see anywhere else. Yes, all these artists and writers and talented folks have come all that way with boxes and boxes of books they'd like you to buy because there is never any hope in hell that their LCS will carry them, whether by dislike of alternative work, Diamond ordering and soliciting practices or orientation of the retailer. Most ocnventions are there to introduce you new products, products that they really hope you'll continue buying... except that they never will be any follow up no matter how much you like these guys. I was stunned by how good thet product was walking the Oni, First Second, and Top Shelf tables.

In Review Of: Lost At Sea by Bryan O'Malley

I wanted to like Lost At Sea, but I don't think that I can say that. There were elements of it, very truthful elements, hidden among a number of pages of fairly uneventful stuff. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty decent description of teenage years right there in itself.

Partly my problem is with O'Malley's art, which has the four main teenagers drawn like little kids, which is more than a little off-putting when they start to smoke and drink. I have no problem with a cartoony style for this sort of work, in fact, sometimes it makes the work richer to use characters that embody a broader facial style than a more realistic depiction, but works less well here. How much are we to care about Raleigh, who is 18 years old, has run away to spend a weekend with a boy and is now randomly hitching a ride with some people from her school, trying to make sense of everything on her way home.

Sadly, just about everyone that I know has had aimless periods of their life, when things seem to have been moving in quicksand, and while realistic, it certainly doesn't make for mesmerizing fiction. If there is any trick here, it might have been introducing the idea that Raleigh thinks that a cat has stolen her soul earlier is the book.

What is interesting, reviewing this book from lofty position of being an adult, is that I remember those times when you're 19, or 20 or 21 and you feel completely adrift, as if your entire world could spin on its axis on any one given event, and it really did feel like that to some of us. Putting this down in words and pictures is a difficult task, because the very instability of that moment is like a soap bubble: so very beautiful in its fragility. It is a time in many people's lives where things go right or go terribly wrong. There are moments that O'Malley captures that, and they're the best moments in the book.

Unfortunately, the book feels overlong, and really doesn't get to its point soon enough. The supporting characters are less well defined than Raleigh herself, and so the emotional climax is weaker than it should be. Bryan is trying, and craft is there, but it simply doesn't sell the point as well as it should.

Ultimately, Lost At Sea is a failed experiment in that it doesn't hold together. Bryan is clearly talented, and one miss here doesn't undermine his trying again, this just isn't the book that he was trying for.

In Review Of: Local #2 by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly

Have been catching up on some reading recently, and realized that I've been spending a lot of time absorbing work and looking over the racks, trying to get a handle on the current zeitgeist in comics. Local #2 came my way via Sam at Blue Moon Comics after a spirited discussion about Paul Pope that ended in a sematic draw.

Local works in stand alone stories, so they're easy to review, easy to read and that makes them damn hard to draw and write. After all, lets face it, while there may be a bias against craft among certain elements in the comic book world, it takes real craft to make things look easy. (You want an example? try to write a good Beatles song. Maybe been done 10 times since 1970 total.) Kelly's art, echoing Pope, certainly works on its own merits without him being a total stylemonger, and has a nice feel for the negative and positive elements of the art. In a black and white book, that is absolutely key.

Local #2 is located in Minneapolis, Kelly's hometown, and he draws with a great feel for the locale obviously. Megan, obstensibly the book's protagonist (or at least re-occuring character), has an interesting flirtation with a guy who sneaks into her apartment and leaves her notes and polariods. And, no, she does not know him. From one odd little set up we get a tasty little slice of life story, one that rings true in the final panel when it ends. I won't spoil it for you if you decide to pick it up, but its a fun little read that, really, seems inevitable that it can only end the way that it does. That is, I tell you, a nice bit of writing, and, given the amount of silent sequences that need to convey the story, some nice drawing by Kelly.

While there have been more than a few discussions about what makes comics 'tick', one of them being the telling of stories that contain a mix of pictures and words unique to the graphic medium. This is one of those that verges on fitting that definition. The is a great degree of information and mood given in single horizontal panels that allow our eyes to linger across the cinemascope presentation before moving on. There are, really, three characters in the entire story, and as such, we're given a minimum of talking heads to present who these people are.
You could make a nice little art house vingette out of this issue.

Coming up, more issues of Local soon.