MEANWHILE OGDEN WHITNEY RETURN TO Brian Michael Bendis Bendis CLASSIC LOVE COMICS WITH A MODERN TWIST FEBRUARY 2020 - NO. 38 PLUS...KRAZY + IGNATZ 4EVER Steve Ept- ing Bendis Margaux Motin. Motin David Mack Mamet Brain Michael Bendis. Drew Friedman Friedman Franklin Pierce Barack Obama Junji Ito Osamu Dazai’s The Comics & Graphic Novel Bulletin of From their intro- wrote and drew NEW SERIES NOW duction in 1948 to his own material, EC FOR THEE, SEE? The first volumes of several new series are arriving their sad end in including the sto- A longtime leader in independent comics, Dark this month. Sea of Stars Volume 1: Lost in the Wild the ‘70s, every ries compiled in Horse Comics has become one of the prime mov- Heavens (image left) follows the down-n-dirty ad- comics company, Return to Ro- ers of this, the Golden Age of Reprints. One of ventures of a space trucker named Gil. Recently their best series has been the oversize, full-color widowed, Gil takes his son Kadyn on a lucrative from the top mance: The reprints of the esteemed Entertaining Comics. EC long haul across the universe. Things don’t go as flight to the bot- Strange Love Sto- to its fans, Entertaining Comics was a small planned, and father and son are separated in the tom of the barrel, ries of Ogden 1950s outfit that, through artistry and ambition, cold vastness of space. This blue collar space published at least Whitney (New changed the art form. The latest EC offerings opera was written by Jason (Southern Bastards) from Dark Horse Archives include the second and Aaron and Dennis Hopeless with art by Steven one romance York Review). final volume of Frontline Combat, available at Green and Rico Renzi. Another star-crossed collec- comic. Founded in Originally pub- Northside. Edited and written by the great Harvey tion from Image is Space Bandits. Rival crime 1946, the Ameri- lished in the early Kurtzman, these true-to-life tales of “WAR AND queens of the cosmos are forced to team up when can Comics 1960s, these ro- FIGHTING MEN” are among the best combat com- their crews betray them in this slam-bang series Group survived mance comics are ics in the biz. Outstanding issues include the cov- by Mark Millar and Matteo Scalera. Meanwhile, er feature, #7 (July-Aug 1952), which describes The Queen of Bad Dreams has broken loose from the post-Code indeed “strange” the WW2 battle for Iwo Jima; each story contin- Slumberland. Known as “figments”, these psychic crash that wiped in comparison to ues from the last, so the reader sees the action runaways are chased down and either returned to out so many oth- others of the era. from all the angles, including the experiences of the land of Nod or gifted autonomy in the waking er publishers. The complicated the Japanese. FC #9 (Nov-Dec 1952) was the first world. A figment named Ava leads her erstwhile ACG specialized plots flip the of several special issues covering the Civil War, captor into a maze of questions and conspiracies each a perfect example of the EC crew’s dedica- in genre antholo- script on romance The latest from other SERIES tion to their art. That high-mindedness was put to gies; in fact, its comics clichés. A includes the second volumes of Those poor souls as yet unex- Adventures into the dowdy wife trans- fantasy thrillers CODA, THE posed to the glory of EC comics ETHER, MIDDLEWEST (image Unknown was the forms herself into now have a perfect gateway to left), OBLIVION SONG and the first regularly a Bettie Page EC’s exceptional brand of thrills gamer drama DIE; the third of published horror lookalike to save and chills. CHOKE GASP! THE SNOTGIRL, HEAD LOPPER, GID- comic. ACG’s ro- her marriage BEST OF 75 YEARS OF EC COM- EON FALLS and the creepy hor- mance titles (image left); a box- ICS handpicks from EC’s horror, ror series ICE CREAM MAN, with were like their er on the run sci-fi, crime and war comics. Ar- a fourth on the way; plus PAPER other books: com- from his past gets ranged by artist, this big, thick GIRLS v6, LAZARUS v6, RAT petent, if some- a job as whipping tome features full-color reprints QUEENS v7, WICKED & DIVINE what bland, riffs boy for a dress- of such EC classics as Johnny v9 and the eighth collection of on standard plots maker; a distaff Craig’s “And All Through the the TV hit, DEADLY CLASS. From drawn in the daredevil breaks House” (image right), “Mars Is the world of HELLBOY comes cleanly realistic it off with her Heaven”, “Foul Play”, “Carrion WITCHFINDER while ASCENDER style of the era. wimpy boyfriend. Death”, “Air Burst” and so many is the sequel to DESCENDER. more. CHOKE GASP! is available That brings us to A loving look at a Find them all at lexpublib.org! at Central and Eastside. Ogden Whitney. genre teetering in this hard-boiled oneiric thriller by Lore, Perez Whitney was a on the brink of test after the Comics Code outlawed most of EC’s and Kelly. Back on earth, Kyle Strahm, author of veteran of the social change, Re- output. EC’s “New Direction” titles tried to do for gruesome horror series Spread, is one of the cre- doctors and journalists what the ‘New Trend” did ators of Unearth. A disease that turns victims into comics biz known turn to Romance is for vengeful zombies and murderous housewives. vile mutations breaks out in the remote reaches for his sleek line available at Cen- A failure in the marketplace, the New Direction of Mexico. As a team of scientists dig for the work and graceful tral and Tates did produce one of the oddest comics ever pub- source of the infection, they uncover further mys- compositions. He Creek. lished. Psychoanalysis follows three people from teries. Writer of Crowded (see 741.5 #32) Chris- issue to issue as they “search for peace of mind.” topher Sebella, joins artist Jen Hickman for Test, Entirely drawn by Jack (Daddy Lost His Head) Ka- a near-future novel of survival and resistance as WHITNEY men, Psychoanalysis is a strange time capsule of a teched-up child of tomorrow fights for her life. OGDEN mid-20th Century anxiety, available at Central. The set-up was simple: kat loves mouse, mouse from Fantagraphics, starts from the beginning. A hates kat, dog loves kat and hates mouse. But the throwaway gag in a cute but inconsequential daily creator of this eternal triangle, George Her- strip explodes into a full page extravaganza riman, turned that basic set-up into poetry, visu- chockful of characters, jokes, puns and delightfully al and verbal. Long hailed as one of the great weird scenery. Intended as a regular full color achievements in the global history of comics, Her- Sunday page, Krazy Kat was too outre for the riman’s strip Krazy Kat has influenced generations folks. Yet its biggest fan, media magnate William of artists. None have truly duplicated Herriman’s Randolph Hearst himself, kept moving it around cheerful combination of slapstick and surrealism. until it finally found its audience. Join those Reprints have been many. LPL has a few. But Kra- “heppy, heppy pipples” by reserving this impres- zy & Ignatz 1916-1918, the new oversize volume sive tome from Beaumont and Central. MEANWHILE tions. All locations of LPL have a copy of Super- man: Action Comics—Leviathan Rising in their TEEN sections. Now written by superstar scribe Brian Michael Bendis, the Man of Steel finds himself swept up in the kind of double- dealing black ops hi-jinx Bendis has made his specialty. “Leviathan” is the name behind the devastating attacks on the intelligence infra- structure of the DC Universe. Checkmate, ARGUS, Spyral, the Department of Extranormal Operations, the cult of Kobra — all get blown up real good by big blue blobs. Superman goes undercover with Lois Lane to suss out who or what is Leviathan, even as Leviathan stalks them. It’s a deadly game of snakes’n’leaders that may be more than “truth, justice and the American Way” can survive. Artist Steve Ept- ing avoids the worst habits of current DC product, producing detailed yet very readable pages that moves the story along at a quick pace, even with all the palavering for which Bendis is notorious. Readers looking for less “After a divorce, you go through a kind of situation after another, all complicated by breakdown where you become a teenager his constant lying, his feckless self-interest. again,” writes cartoonist Margaux Motin. A classic Beautiful Loser, “an obscene and “And set out looking for all the selves you indecent air...clings to you,” says Oda’s sacrificed at the altar of couple-hood...No roguish pal Horiki. “That...puts dreams in matter how old you really are, after a di- the heads of women.” Oba leaves a trail of vorce, you’re 14.” The rest of Plate Tecton- broken hearts and bodies in this psycholog- ics (Archaia) follows the 35-year-old Parisian ical horror novel in which the monster is the inkslinger and her daughter as they navigate narrator. The narrator of Cover is not a the changes wrought by the simultaneous monster, but a freak of a different kind. loss and freedom afforded by divorce. Drink- Max Field is a comics creator. That job ing too much, finding new love with an old leads to a secondary career as a spy for the friend, moving to Basque country—Margaux CIA.