"Power Lunch" coming from J.Torres and Dean Trippe!

I don't know if you went to Free Comic Book Day this year, or if you picked up the All-Ages offering from Oni Press, but you should have done both.

Oni Press has been killing it recently with books I've loved like Stumptown (modern detective noir) and Sixth Gun (western/ horror/ fantasy).  And, of course, they're the publishers of Scott Pilgrim.  They've also put out Frenemy of the State, which is co-created by Rashida Jones, who I will now pause to consider while Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" plays in my head.

Watching every motion in my foolish lover's game...

And we're back.

Right. POWER LUNCH.

So, the Oni Press FCBD offering gave a preview of what's to come in an upcoming 40 page book about a young boy who gains amazing super powers based upon whatever he last had to eat (except for white foods. Which is pretty clever.)

Written by J.Torres, who has done lots of stuff I've liked (but especially Days Like This),and drawn by the indomitable Dean Trippe, Power Lunch looks to be a promising book that those of us in the room who dig all-ages stuff, and for the parents out there, I think this one is going to be a lot of fun.

Now, I happen to know Dean Trippe and I share a love of old school Superman shenanigans, and just today I tweeted J. Torres to find out when the book is actually hitting the shelves.  He said:

Volume 1: First Course, full color, 40-page hardcover hits comic shops on October 12! Everywhere else October 25.

 And then followed later with:

By the way, the first volume of #PowerLunch has a Superman theme to it.

I think Mr. Torres may have seen my site.  Or my Krypto-themed Twitter icon.  But I thought I'd also share a preview image by Dean Trippe to give you a feel for how this thing is going to look, and my early clue that Trippe and Torres might be working in some Superman theming.

So, yes.

Anyway, look for it this October!

Comics Legend and Great Gene Colan Merges with the Infinite

Artist Gene Colan did so much exceptional work over so many years, its hard to believe it was one guy.  He was also always much beloved within the industry.

I won't spend too much time eulogizing, but I will point you to this post pulling together thoughts from those working in comics, and this one from the AV Club which discusses Gene's career.

When I think of Gene, I think Marvel, which is funny because I know he did stuff all over the place.  But he's in there with Buscema, Romita, etc..  one of the people who created modern comics. 

We'll miss you, Mr. Colan. 

Here's a link to Mr. Colan's official site.

Kickstart a Horror Movie - become a producer, just like that!

Philly based comic guy Johnny Zito is trying to get his indie horror film Alpha Girls up and running. And I think you people can help.  But, no, you won't get a producer credit, so forget that dream right now.

Learn about the movie here or watch this video:



If you've never heard of Kickstarter, its a web-based service that helps artists crowd-fund their projects. Probably the most famous of these projects was the Robocop Statue that we all decided was a great idea for the city of Detroit.

If you'd like to Kickstart a movie and try your hand at being listed as a supporter/ producer/ whatever... sign up here.

Berkeley Breathed art on "Mars Needs Moms"

I am a fan of cartoonist Berkeley Breathed. His strip, Bloom County, was a favorite when I was hitting an age when I was scanning the page for more than just Slylock Fox, and I still enjoy the occasional Bloom County collection.

A while back, I picked up Breathed's children's book Mars Needs Moms, and it was a fun read, if a bit off-beat for a story aimed at kids. And then I heard it was being adapted to a feature film by Robert "I Sucked the Soul Out of The Polar Express" Zemeckis.

The thing is - Breathed's character style and sentiment is distinctly Breathed's. And, somewhat shockingly, unlike Polar Express, Zemeckis didn't seem to feel any attachment to Breathed's artistic style.

Its hard to really explain that Breathed's character design is part of the story, and so abandoning that design for the movie's humanoid, motion-capture friendly designs....  missing the point.

Look, Breathed's story may be a little scary for kids: its about a kid who sees his mom getting kidnapped by aliens after he's decided his mom is mean during a typical kid/ parent spat.  But the point of the story is to teach kids about sacrifice and explain to them exactly how much their parents love them.  Frankly, its not a bad thing to share with kids, and nobody is going to walk away scarred from either a picture book or movie about the depths of a parent's love.  Its called putting a conflict into a story.

Breathed's Mars Needs Moms is a slim picturebook, light on text and full of imaginative imagery.  Simply covering that scaffolding in typical "family movie" hoo-hah is going to do little but distract from and muddle a pretty straightforward story, and the only time I've seen it truly work was with Where the Wild Things Are.    Unfortunately we all know studios have a certainly saccharine version of reality they deal with when putting together family films, and it may be that adding spunky teenage Martians or whatever the hell the movie chose to do from the Hollywood Plot-o-Tron merely diluted the film to a nonsensical mess.

I'd guess Zemeckis and Co.'s insistence on the motion-capture technology took precedence over the exaggerated and intentionally absurd visual style that's been Breathed's trademark since his days on The Academia Waltz.  Trying to make the characters move and look "lifelike" was never the intention of Breathed's style, and its hard to imagine exactly why a decision was made to stray from what would have been a pretty unique and fun adaptation of Breathed's work.

I'm hoping to read Breathed's reaction in The Hollywood Reporter, even if I have my doubts that we'd get the full story or what it feels like to watch your much-loved book turned into something completely different on the screen and then watch that movie flop.  Or... we might.

I guess if there's any point to this post, its that a massive flop of a movie shouldn't reflect poorly on the source material, especially if the source is more or less ignored in favor of whatever the heck the producers feel is more fun to play around with.

Chris Onstad offers the reason for the multi-month hiatus on "Achewood"

This should probably get posted at our links sister site, but I'm posting it here.  Chris Onstad, sole creator and creative force behind the popular online strip, Achewood, has offered up a bit of an explanation as to why the series slowed to a drip and then went on hiatus, which seemed to start in earnest last October.

You can read his explanation here.

Some will say Onstad owed no explanation, but I'm not sure that's accurate. We can make a guess as to what happened and theorize, but part of having an audience does, in fact, mean that one has a responsibility to at least let people know what's happening.   Not knowing is a bit like if your waiter goes back in the kitchen and never returns (I actually did have that happen once, and its totally freaky.  I waited half an hour before flagging down another waiter and figuring out what happened.  Apparently my waiter's shift was over and he forgot he'd never closed out the tab at table 5.)

Achewood's tone and poise is not set to the same audience as that of "Marmaduke"

Onstad's response is more than adequate, but will confuse the howling masses who have been trained to expect their every whim to be catered to if they believe a penny can be made from such a whim.

His explanation is, by the way, basically:  I got burnt out.  It's been ten years, and with all the stuff associated with that sort of production, maintaining quality and challenging myself became a bit of a drag.  And the constant two-way feed of communication with the public seemed to be getting him down.

In some small way, I can relate on an infinitely smaller scale.  When I shut down League of Melbotis for several months and brought it back up under The Signal Watch, it was the best thing I could have done for myself and for my willingness to continue blogging.  Those months away retrained me that I was more than the work I did to get paid and a race each evening to post lest my readership numbers dwindle (for which I did not get paid).

Back in the blogging day, we attempted a sort of collaborative pop-culture blogging experiment called "Nanostalgia" that didn't really get off the tarmac before we settled gently back into the sea and I found myself on a metaphorical yellow rubber raft paddling back to shore and unnecessarily eating the ration packs.  But at that site I did a column about how hard it was going to be for webcomics because they aren't set up with all the niceties of the corporate structure, and its all on the shoulders of the single creator.  And that meant, man, you'd best be ready to give over your life to nigh-daily content production.

That all got a tough response from a webcomic guru, but six years later, I can see I was mostly right.  Making money and getting support is hard to begin with.  And once you do self-build that empire, its not unlike being successful at, say, owning a hardware store that becomes the size of a box store.  Suddenly you have all these new duties that aren't just "man, I have to get the new hammers out for the spring hammering season".  You got staff, deals to close, etc...  and its a much bigger thing than selling bolts or whatever reason you got into the hardware business to begin with.

And, I think, people do not get into the business of comics to feel like they're on an assembly line, cranking out comics that meet exactly the same criteria every panel, every episode lest the readership get nervous when the artist tries something new.

And, in my own small way, I wrestled a bit with the expectations of the readership, as it were.  I have enjoyed the freedom of the sandbox that I've staked out as The Signal Watch, and in many ways, its easier having a much smaller readership of friends, family, strange Canadians, etc...  who aren't much more invested than sort of checking in and do not think of the content as a product to be delivered to their RSS feed daily.  And while it had little to do with why I quit (however briefly), man...  its much easier to get the "hey, is everything okay?  You haven't posted in a while" emails than the "where are you?  what's your problem?" comments showing up because you decided to do something else for three or four days.  And I never had to deal with the entitlement of a readership that one could see in the sprawling comment sections beneath each and every strip.

I hope Onstad finds his way out of whatever creative qicksand he's been caught in.  I salute the guy.  He created a fantastic strip for about a decade, producing hundreds of times better content in that time than some strips that run 365 days a year, have hit every day for decades and have become the ugly, comfy slippers of the newspaper strip world.  I'll be sure to try to follow him wherever he goes, and I am certain that whatever he does next will be better than even Achewood die-hards would expect.

"The Rack" is Back?

Looks like our friends at webcomic The Rack might not have shut down after all, and that they may have just been on break.  Good news!

You may recall we eulogized the abrupt end to the series here a few weeks back.

Looks like the characters are set up in a new shop with a new focus.  Now may be a great time to jump on board.

Welcome back, Church and Birdie!

Dwayne McDuffie RIP

I am completely shocked and cannot believe the reports, but it seems that television and comics writer Dwayne McDuffie has passed.

Details are sketchy, but reports are appearing in comics media that McDuffie has died the same week that his animated adaptation of All Star Superman was hitting wide release on home video. 

Since I learned of his past and current work in the mid00's, I've felt that McDuffie was an extraordinary talent.  He was only middle-aged, at best, and I was unaware of any health issues McDuffie may have suffered. 

he was the creator of the Milestone imprint and a key contributor to that universe, his most famous creation likely was Static (aka:  Static Shock).  I absolutely loved his work on the superlative Justice League Unlimited, his run on JLA when editorial wasn't mucking about, and other bits of his work.

I am very deeply saddened to hear this news. 

Animated Superman Fan Film is Huge Retro Fun

You'll note I broke the borders of the blog to show this video.  I thought it was totally worth it.

CanadianSimon sent along the link to this video, and I highly recommend you give it a whirl.  It includes the cartoon, plus a quick behind the scenes. 

I don't know director Robb Pratt from the online Superman world, but it seems that he completely "gets" the Golden Age of Superman and what made the character fun, and he's obviously a fan.  If you have a couple of minutes, give the video a whirl (and then hope WB notices the cartoon, because it would be great to see WB consider this style for a show).



Also, bonus points to Pratt for landing John Newton from the Superboy TV show. His voice totally works (which shouldn't be a surprise)b.

If you've never seen "The Mechanical Monsters", the inspiration for this cartoon, I recommend you check it out.

Article on Austinite Chris Roberson - the guy taking over writing duties on Superman!

Chris Roberson is taking over writing duties on Superman comics with issue 707.  The issue comes out next week on Wednesday.

Roberson is a local Austinite, and, I have from very reliable sources in the Austin comic community, a HUGE Superman fan.  There's an article on Roberson in our local paper, The Statesman.

Roberson will be signing his issue at Austin Books on 1/12/2011 from 4-7.  Yes, I am definitely going.

Why I think Roberson is the right guy for the job?

From the article:

"The standard knock on Superman is that he is so powerful, what can you give him to do that is interesting?" Roberson said. "Well, that's the writer's job — give him something to do. If he's having to stop muggers, it's going to get old fast. If he's having to travel outside of space and time and sing a certain note to restart the universe, that is really cool to me."

me, too, man.

The Power of Muscle Mystery!

DC will finally reprint Flex Mentallo, a mid-90's Morrison/ Quitely collaboration.  

I haven't read this series since 1996.  Color me excited.

Read about Flex here.

Vertigo, DC's comic line aimed at not-kids, kept me in comics during the crucial period of high school and college when I might have walked away from the medium.  Shade, Sandman, Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Kid Eternity, Sandman Mystery Theatre (an undervalued and terrific book)...  I didn't get into Animal Man or Morrison's Doom Patrol until far, far later.  But I got to know Grant Morrison via The Invisibles,but his JLA and my growing interest in Superman brought me back to the DCU (with no small help from Waid and Ross's Kingdom Come).  Flex was a part of that, but its been forever since I read this series.

Mentallo first appeared in Doom Patrol before the mini-series hit.  Mentallo is loosely based upon the old ads for Charles Atlas, with a huge helping of Morrison.  The series is most famous now for the law-suit tossed at DC by the Charles Atlas Corporation.

Anyway, good news!

RIP: Irvin Kershner Merges with the Infinite

iO9 reports that Irvin Kershner, Lucas mentor and director of The Empire Strikes Back (the best of all Star Wars-related media) has passed in LA. He was 87.

here.

Grant Morrison talks Superman, etc...

Not a ton of new info here, but a good interview.



Thanks to Ransom for the link!

JH Williams Continuing Batwoman

I loved Greg Rucka and JH Williams' Batwoman run in Detective Comics. And so did, it seem, everybody. But Rucka really wanted to get back to his own books, and so we've had some downtime here, but it looks like JH Williams is picking up where he and Rucka left off with Batwoman in her own title.

Click for the full sized image.


You know, this guy is trying really hard to be my first response when people ask me about my favorite artist.

If you're one of the folks enjoying Batwoman, I highly recommend picking up Promethea, which was written by Alan Moore and ran from about 1998 to the mid 00's. It was widely underappreciated and, I'd argue, misunderstood at the time of its release, but was always worth it just for the visuals.

Harvey Pekar Merges with the Infinite

I was telling some folks earlier today that I was surprised that I had a moment when I read the headline.

Comics great Harvey Pekar has passed.

But, then, it kind of makes sense that, even as casual a reader as myself, might feel they knew Pekar little. To read Harvey's comics (most of which existed under the title American Splendor) was to get to know at least some version of the man. The comics were vastly autobiographical, honest, and unflinching. Sometimes funny, sometimes not, sometimes tough to read when Pekar shared his day-to-day, especially in Our Cancer Year.

If you haven't read American Splendor comics, pick up a collection or two, and if you aren't going to do that, then, for the love of God, rent the movie. The movie is actually just really, really good and stars Paul Giammti in most scenes, but it includes interview footage with Pekar, his family and the folks around him.

For a guy who outwardly seemed gruff and likely a little tough to deal with, its a bit surprising that the man more or less pioneered autobiographical comics, something that's become a huge staple of the indie comics and web comics scene. And, not to bag on anyone's efforts, Pekar is still largely unmatched. He wasn't enamored with making himself seem clever, or his life seem hip (good Lord, no), but he did like to catch the details of the everyday in a way authors, documentarians and Pekar's fellow cartoonists could only dream about.

That's a tough thing to do, and to keep it as honest as Harvey did, even through chemo and all the rest... kind of amazing.



Oddly, Harvey was never the artist of his own comics, but to work with Harvey who had started his work with R. Crumb, became a sort of thing. And to capture what Harvey was trying to put into his comics seemed to be a challenge artists wanted to rise to.

In his last few years I think Harvey enjoyed a little boost in personal fame and popularity. I'm not sure how much it helped with what seemed to be his anxiety over finances, etc... but I hope he came to see that there was a large audience out there that loved his work.

So long, Harvey. Thanks for changing comics.

I can only hope that you've got access to your record collection wherever you are.

Tpull Moves On from Comic Fodder

I want to take a minute to note the conclusion of Tpull's run as Head of Writing About Comics over at Film/Comic Fodder.

You can read his farewell column here.

He cites the best reasons I think one can hang it up: he is recently married. His wife is someone he wants to spend time with. I tip my hat.

Travis is a professional writer, so it was a pleasure when he joined up at Comic Fodder back when I was cranking out columns at that site circa 2007. When work and life got to be a bit much and I had to bid Comic Fodder farewell, he not only took the job of primary blogger, he greatly improved the content of the site, producing up to four comic review columns per week, covering a dozen or more comics.

On top of that, Travis wrote great columns and think-pieces on a weekly basis.

People, I don't know if you've ever tried to run a comic blog, but that is no mean feat.

One of the greatest things about Travis's columns stemmed from his absolute love of comics. That enthusiasm buoyed his approach, keeping him from taking the easiest of all routes for reviewers: the negative spiral.

The easiest thing in the world to do is to criticize. If you don't believe me, its because you're likely slow, and lack the critical thinking skills necessary to ponder such an idea, you nitwit.

Travis' reviews looked for the good and bad, managed to skirt much company or even genre bias, and were always a much better yard marker for the actual quality of a comic than 99% of the rest of the reviews out there on any given day. Add in Travis' greater understanding of the content of a comic than darn near any reviews at the more trafficked sites, his ability to analyze stories, writers, artists, etc... I don't know if it was his natural talent or a concerted effort that kept his reviews from playing the "it all stinks" card that so many other reviewers don't just give in to, but some have made a name for themselves by gnashing their teeth, but he was consistently fair and always provided insight.

I'm going to miss those columns.

On the other side of it: in his farewell column, Travis mentioned the joy of returning to reading comics without having to wear his critic's hat. I can empathize. Reading comics, in particular superhero adventures, shouldn't be a task to check off, and I've been down that particular path myself. I think Travis did better than myself at managing to avoid ever getting too bogged down with the responsibility of the schedule, but I am glad that he can close the comic and not have to worry about turning on his laptop.

Vaya con dios, TPull columns. You'll be missed. But I wish the best for you and Mrs. TPull.

Up, up and away.

Reading Comics: The Damned

The Damned, Volume 1: Three Days Dead
Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artists: Brian Hurtt



On Free Comic Book Day this year, I was fortunate enough to interview and then meet the creators of The Sixth Gun from Oni Press. At that time I picked up their previous effort from Oni, The Damned Vol. 1. I do want to acknowledge the generosity of writer Cullen Bunn and artist Brian Hurtt in previously submitting to an interview.

The Damned takes place is a world where the demons of the underworld (horned, bestial, but mostly roughly humanoid) are alive and well and have integrated seamlessly into the criminal underworld of a Prohibition-era America. Crime bosses tend to have ram-like horns and sign deals in blood. The narrative leaves it unclear in this volume exactly how long demons have been up to no good in the mortal world, or exactly how much John Q. Public knows about who, exactly, is running rackets in their city as "mortals" are seamlessly integrated into the mob. It's an open question, but the treatment of the topic is so matter-of-fact, exploring those issues was obviously planned to be left to later stories.

Our protagonist, a more-or-less-mortal named "Eddie" employs a unique talent, acquired when Eddie sold his soul for some favor and became cursed. He can be killed, and die, but the instant someone touches him, they take on his latest wound. Death has become an inconvenience for Eddie, and occasionally a useful tool in his profession. Hired by a mob boss to track down a missing demon in town to negotiate a deal between two gangs, Eddie stumbles onto a bit of a mystery that could result in the eruption of gang war.

Fans of The Coen Brothers film, Miller's Crossing, or readers of the works of Dashiell Hammett, will very quickly begin to recognize the style employed by Bunn, in structure, dialog and the types of characters that dominate the story. It's a risky choice to reflect works as beloved as Continental Op stories, or a film as well known as Miller's Crossing. Fortunately, Bunn's narrative doesn't simply follow the beats of better-known works, especially as the mix of plots includes a supernatural bent, and a distinctly supernatural B-plot you aren't going to find in a Hammett novel.

The tale isn't quite as overly complicated as, say, Red Harvest or The Dain Curse. It would be interesting to see Bunn flex his muscles and see how close he could get, but in comics there's always a page-count per-issue to worry about, as well as how many issues the publisher is willing to support. In the pages he's got, and with all of the balls that Bunn is juggling in the story, with multiple plots, characters and their relationships to detail, I think he does pretty darn well.

The dialog follows the snappy patter of the genre, including homage to the tough guy slang in other works, and I do like most of the characters, given the amount of time most have to establish themselves. Eddie is a bit of an open book, and its clear Bunn intended for his story to unravel in subsequent volumes. Like many crime-novel protagonists, he's an insider, and its hard not to like Eddie's cynical, world-weary (even in a world with horned mob bosses) acceptance of his lot, but, of course, Eddie's got a past and something of a heart, and those things don't usually help characters in stories like these.

As a guy who likes to doodle, I can't really say how much I envy Brain Hurtt's style. While I have no doubt his work is slightly more detailed in The Sixth Gun, I continue to be wowed by his ability to stay on model with characters that skew cartoony (in comparison to, say, an Ivan Reis) while using the looseness of the style to articulate more with his characters than 90% of the heroic posing of DC's B-list hero books. I'm just a big fan of this guy, and need to re-crack my Queen & Country collections as he was responsible for art chores on some rotations through the series.

As a fan of the crime/ gangster genre, and someone known to read a fair amount of fantasy work, I found the book a fun read. While enough of a puzzle to keep it interesting, the story never feels bogged down by what could have been lots of exposition or set-up. The world Bunn and Hurtt create is an enticing one, and one that seems could carry on for a few more tales. The story seems to be arching its way toward a series by the conclusion of the first collection, and with or without Eddie along, its not too hard to imagine how Bunn and Hurtt could expand on the premise.

While they're currently set to work on The Sixth Gun, one must assume that a trade of the second run of The Damned comics is coming, which I look forward to picking up.

In the meantime, I recommend hitting your local comics shop to check out Bunn and Hurtt's comic for yourself.

Superman, Jimmy Olsen and Lady Gaga = Signal Watch

This cartoon was not inspired by this blog, but it was inspired by Jimmy Olsen, his signal watch, Superman and the Great Lady Gaga.

In the end, aren't we all a little inspired by Superman, Jimmy Olsen and Lady Gaga?

Click here.

Special thanks to Alan N. (who I believe is a Houston kid), for sending me this link!

RIP, Frank

So long to Frank Frazetta, one of the most well known and possibly one of the most influential artists and illustrators of the 20th and 21st Centuries (depending on who you're talking to).


John Carter rocks Mars.

I kid a lot about Frazetta, partially because growing up in Austin, I came to associate his work with the wall art at Conan's Pizza and eating a metric ton of cheese and meat. Also, seriously, those women were incredible, and you're not supposed to say that out loud. And, of course, the material was fantastical and just plain over the top.

You don't crack the art world by painting non-ironic images of sorceresses, giant panthers and barbarians. But in the end, mass production meant we'd all see his stuff eventually.

In his world, Frazetta was a master of his craft. He carried forward the art of the painted pulp cover and movie poster and turned those covers into iconic images that anyone living in the past 30 years has seen somewhere, and likely knows the art is by one guy, even if they can't remember his name.

Too many comic and illustrative artists can't tell a story with a single image, but that was never Frazetta's problem. Looking at any single Frazetta picture, you really do wonder what, exactly, is going on there, while having a sense that there's worlds within worlds behind that image. It was the perfect compliment to everything from a Molly Hatchet album to catching the eye for John Carter of Mars novels.

He did comics, by the way. Lil' Abner, The Shining Knight, Buck Rogers... the man was incredibly prolific.


Conan. @#$%, yeah. If you want to get this painted on the hood of your car, you are not alone.

As a guy who likes to draw (but drew teh short straw when it came to talent), Frazetta is the kind of artist who would make me just weep onto my drawing table. His anatomy, while superhuman, was always spot on, even with imaginary beasts and creatures. He had terrific control of light and shadow, and while the images were almost always overtly provocative, you couldn't help but respect the guy's handiwork.

I won't give a biography. You can find great run downs elsewhere.

It probably wasn't until I was in my mid-20's, though, before I really grew to appreciate his work. Til then, it had been so omnipresent and imitated, and I took pulp art for granted, that I didn't really take time to appreciate the guy.

Well, so long, Frank. You left behind one hell of an awesome legacy.


Without Frazetta, metal (or at least Molly Hatchet) never would have happened.

Read The Sixth Gun at CBR!

I am actually planning to discuss Cullen Bunn and Briant Hurtt's "The Sixth Gun" later on this week. For now, check out this free read of issue #1 at CBR's Robot 6 blog!

Rick Geary and Murder Most Foul Makes for Good Comics!

So let’s discuss some comics, shall we?

In addition to super-heroics, last year I picked up Rick Geary’s “The Lindbergh Child” from NBM’s ComicsLit imprint. Outside of a few pop-culture references and a barely remembered Wikipedia reference I’d one done, I knew very little about the actual Lindbergh case.

For the past few years, cartoonist Rick Geary has devoted a bulk of his work to the creation of non-fiction accounts of very real life murder. Wacky fun, I know, but Geary's skillful storytelling makes for some great comics.



The murders, while infamous, are not romanticized, and the details around the case are relayed in much the same manner as classic Dragnet “just the facts”, rather than any sort of case-building-by-way-of-historical-fiction, that it’s not hard to imagine most other creators might pursue in order to convey the story. Geary knows that the facts stand on their own; and while it’s almost unavoidable that he might focus on certain specifics he finds engaging, he lets the reader’s inference draw the horror of the murder scenes between text and his well chosen images. That said, Geary's dry delivery isn't without snarky observation or a bit of well-phrased sarcasm.

Because Geary relies upon well documented, true-life crimes, which occurred during the 19th and early 20th Century (many fall under the banner of "A Treasury of Victorian Murder"), the stories often come to confounding and messy conclusions which are hard to imagine in the age where a simple telephone call and running a driver’s license could be enough to corner a suspect. The stories are filled in as much as possible in these regards, including theories, false leads, and fates of major players.

The cartooning style (and it is cartooning, mixed with fantastic bits of illustration when it comes to important details, such as the blueprint of, say, Lizzy Borden’s house), may take some getting used to for the uninitiated. However, the exagerated cartooning enables Geary to draw distinct and representative characters for each person involved, with tremendous expressive quality.



Of the books I've read so far, the tales where I knew little to nothing have been most rewarding. "The Beast of Chicago" and the aforementioned "The Lindbergh Child" kept me up for hours after reading them, following up with additional web research, as the stories were so incredible, but completely true. ("The Beast of Chicago" was particularly fascinating as I knew literally nothing of the case until page 1.)

NBM Publishing has placed several pages of "The Beast of Chicago" on Google Books for review. Take a look!


From "The Lindbergh Child"

Geary has done several of these books, and I'm still picking them up here and there. Many will be available at your local comic shop. You can also find them online, including at the NBM site.

Sometime this year I'll also be looking for Geary's Trotsky biography.

These comics are definitely the sort of thing I'd put in the hands of someone looking for a good read, comics or otherwise. With summer coming, feel free to swing on by and borrow one from The Signal Watch Library.