Comic Books 101

by Chris Ryall

  Moore courted controversy in 2006 with his massive work Lost Girls, an X-rated fairytale art book from Moore and his partner, Melinda Gebbie. Set in an Austrian hotel in 1914, Lost Girls follows the relationships of three women who begin to share their sexual histories (and later themselves) against the backdrop of a world sliding into global war. The women? Alice (a British high-society type), Wendy (a middle-class Londoner) and Dorothy (a Kansas farmgirl). If the names sound familiar, they should. Moore explores these familiar fairy tales, tapping into our affection and knowledge and casting them in a new and unsettling light, not merely to shock, but to take advantage of the weight the stories carry. At the same time, there's no denying Lost Girls' erotic nature, either. This is straight-out porn, with graphic depictions of sexual intercourse of just about every variation imaginable, straight, gay and otherwise. Yet Alan Moore's breathtaking craft elevates it to something more, a liberating and at the same time oddly poignant exploration of sexuality and how it's both celebrated and suppressed.

  With Lost Girls, artist Melinda Gebbie brings the best work of her career, shifting her style and method to best fit the tone and emotional mood of each chapter, making even the most shocking acts seem quietly lyrical. As for Moore, well, what can you say? It's Alan Moore. He spins touching, poetic dialogue like thread from a wheel, all while suffusing it with meaning and import that doesn't hit you until pages later. Moore cleverly paces the story, slowly ratcheting up the sexual content with each successive volume, until the final chapters, which contain some of the most graphic and controversial material. But by this point, it's easy to look past the “taboo” material to what the story is really about: the fragility of life in an uncertain world, and the all-too-human need to look to another for fleeting moments of pleasure.

  Any one of these books would be enough to cement a writer's reputation. The fact that they're all the work of a single man is staggering.

  RECOMMENDED READING 101

  ALAN MOORE

  From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

  The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill

  Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie

  Promethea, Books 1–5 by Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III

  Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? by Alan Moore, Curt Swan and George Pérez

  Tom Strong by Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse

  Top 10: The Forty-Niners by Alan Moore and Gene Ha

  V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

  Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

  12 Neil Gaiman

  Neil Gaiman has made a name for himself as one of the most critically acclaimed creators of comic books, a writer whose landmark The Sandman series revitalized the notion of comic books as literature, and who has since crossed over into prose novels, television and film with unprecedented success.

  Following the great success of Alan Moore on Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman found his way to DC Comics via the publisher's new talent search program in Great Britain. Gaiman had already published some notable comics work, such as Eclipse's Miracleman, which he took over from Moore, and the graphic novels Violent Cases, Signal to Noise and Mr. Punch with collaborator Dave McKean. DC gave him a list of dormant properties to tackle, with the hopes he could breathe new life into them as Moore had done with Swamp Thing. Gaiman's first project, Black Orchid, again with Dave McKean, was positively received but hardly a sensation. It was Gaiman's next attempt that catapulted him from little-known British newcomer to comics' #1 writer: The Sandman.

  RECOMMENDED READING 101

  NEIL GAIMAN

  The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1–4

  Death: The High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman and artist Chris Bachalo

  Stardust by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert

  There had been previous Sandman characters at DC before: a 1940s cloaked mystery man (later turned standard tights-wearing superguy) and a psychedelic hero created in the 1970s by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. However, Gaiman was given strict marching orders by his new editors: keep the name, but make everything else new. Left to his own devices, Gaiman first came up with his protagonist, Lord Morpheus, a.k.a. the immortal Lord of Dreams (who, by the way, is almost never called “The Sandman” in the work itself). Next he developed his own mythology — the Endless — Morpheus's brothers and sisters. The Endless are anthropomorphic representations of mankind's fears, hopes and driving forces: Destiny, Death, Destruction, Despair, Delight and Delirium.

  Made up of ten graphic-novel collections, Sandman takes the reader though Morpheus's interactions with humanity, some minor and some major. Gaiman varies the tone of his stories widely, from a hunt for rogue nightmares in “The Doll's House” to a bidding war for Hell itself in “Season of Mists.” Along the way, we find out about Morpheus's past over the centuries, his tragic love affairs with mortal women and the vendettas among his own kin that would eventually become his undoing. But in a larger metatextual sense, what Sandman is about is the very nature of storytelling, how we create stories for ourselves in our own lives to inspire or delude ourselves, and how it happens at the most primal level when we dream.

  The popularity of Sandman prompted DC to create a separate imprint for its dark fantasy/horror books called Vertigo, whose launch was inaugurated by another series of Gaiman's, Death: The High Cost of Living, a solo miniseries starring Morpheus's older sister, Death. Probably the most popular character in Gaiman's Sandman, Death takes the form of a plucky, lovable sixteen-year-old girl with Goth-like eye makeup and an ankh around her neck, and goes about her duties of escorting mortals to the afterlife not by the glowering point of the scythe, but with a friendly slip through the arm. In one of the most heartbreaking moments in the series, we see a mortal visited by Death struggling with the unfairness of the situation. “Is that all? Is that all I get?” she asks.

  “You get what everyone gets,” replies Death, evenly but not unsympathetically. “You get a lifetime.”

  The Sandman was an anomaly at DC because it had a heavy female readership, many of whom were not habitual comics readers. The success of Sandman in collected graphic novel format certainly helps continually cultivate new readership, and has also prompted DC to heavily market its other comics in the collected format at mass media outlets and bookstores.

  Gaiman elected to end his series with issue #75, building The Sandman to a grand crescendo with the death and rebirth of its title character. Since its finale, Gaiman has only dabbled in comics sporadically, with the most high-profile work being 1602, a transplantation

  of Marvel's cast of superheroic characters to Elizabethan England. Most of Gaiman's time these days is spent on novels, such as American Gods and Anansi Boys, and film, such as the adaptation of his and Charles Vess's graphic novel Stardust and the Gaiman-scripted CGI-rendered Beowulf. However, from time to time Gaiman decides to grace the comics world with his presence, and it's always a welcome treat.

  Chris and Comic Books 101 cover artist Gabriel Rodriguez got to channel Gaiman in their comic book adaptation of the Gaiman/Avary Beowulf movie.

  BEOWULF © 2007 PARAMOUNT PICTURES AND SHANGRI-LA ENTERTAINMENT, LLC. PUBLISHED BY IDW PUBLISHING. ART BY GABRIEL RODRIGUEZ.

  13 Grant Morrison

  Morrison occasionally goes the writer/artist route, but only in the form of Comic Con sketches.

  ANIMAL MAN™ © DC COMICS. FROM THE COLLECTION OF SCOTT TIPTON. ART BY GRANT MORRISON.

  Like Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison was another young writer offered work by DC after its talent-recruiting tour of the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. He was assigned Animal Man (1988) as a four-issue miniseries with artist Chas Truog, but by issue #2 DC had made the decision to make it an ongoing series. The first four-issue story arc merely set up the status quo for the new series and revived the character, but with the news that the series would continue, Morrison began setting in place his long-range plans for the book: to explore both his own beliefs and doubts about the animal-rig
hts movement, as well as the very nature of fiction and the relationship between author and creation. In the first issue following the initial four-issue storyline, Morrison tells a heartbreaking single-issue allegory, “The Coyote Gospel,” that turns out to be the road map for the next two years' worth of stories. This kind of narrative foresight was unheard of at the time, and even now is rarely done to best effect.

  Over the course of his run, Morrison explores the very nature of fictionality by putting his title character, Buddy Baker, through all sorts of trials, hardships and eventually tragedies. In the final issue of his run (#26, 1990), “Animal Man” Buddy and his creator Grant Morrison have a twenty-two-page heart-to-heart about the nature of Buddy's reality, and the limits and frailties Morrison has felt as his writer. It's at once ludicrous and compelling, yet doesn't at all feel self-indulgent, perhaps because it so perfectly caps off all of Buddy's frustrations at not being in control of his own life, contrasted with Morrison's frustrations with not doing a better job creating Buddy's life. The series continued after Morrison left, but was never as compelling as those first twenty-six issues. By breaking down the wall between creator and creation, and between character and reader, Morrison created one of the most fully realized and identifiable characters in comics. Buddy Baker may have been a puppet, but unlike the rest of us, he was at least given a glance at the fellow pulling the strings.

  Morrison was given a chance to redefine DC's trademark book Justice League of America with the debut of JLA #1 (January 1997). He returned to the book's original concept, uniting the biggest guns in the DC arsenal of characters with a fast-paced, supercharged approach to storytelling. Morrison's approach to the series can best be described as power plotting: he crams many ideas and concepts into a storyline (the amount lesser writers might use for two or three story arcs), then moves the story forward at breakneck speed, carrying the reader along with a whirlwind sense of feet-off-the-floor excitement. Accentuating the process was JLA artist Howard Porter, whose modern, fluid style gave the JLA a vitality they'd lacked for years. Between Morrison's scripts and Porter's images, this JLA seemed all-new to readers, though Morrison managed to keep the book steeped slightly in a Silver Age sensibility with a 21st-century sheen. In addition, Morrison returned the series to its epic Silver Age proportions, pitting the League against world-shattering threats that none of them could handle alone.

  Morrison had a lot of characterization to establish in this first storyline, and he did a marvelous job. Superman and Wonder Woman stand out as the team's pillars of strength, while J'onn J'onzz remains the heart of the team. Aquaman is portrayed as the distracted monarch unhappy to be constantly called away from his people, while the Flash and Green Lantern's love-hate relationship (mostly hate early on) serves as enjoyable comic relief. And the new Green Lantern Kyle Rayner's constant nervousness as he slowly grows out of his role as the team's rookie turns into one of the most satisfying character bits (his portrayal here would be the reason many fans would finally turn the corner on accepting Kyle as the new Green Lantern).

  RECOMMENDED READING 101

  GRANT MORRISON

  Animal Man, Vol. 1–3 by Grant Morrison and Chas Truog

  The Doom Patrol: Crawling Through the Wreckage by Grant Morrison and Richard Case

  52, Vol. 1–4 by Morrison, Johns, Rucka, Waid and Giffen

  The Invisibles, Vol. 1–7

  JLA, Vol. 1 by Grant Morrison and Howard Porter

  JLA: Earth 2 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

  A prolific writer, Morrison has turned out scores of comic-book series for Marvel, DC and DC's boutique imprint Vertigo, everything from the avant-garde epic The Invisibles to his redefining runs on New X-Men to all-new innovative postmodern science fiction Seaguy and WE3. One thing is certain: if it's a Grant Morrison comic, it'll be like nothing else you've read.

  A prolific writer, Morrison has turned out scores of comic-book series for Marvel, DC and DC's boutique imprint Vertigo, everything from avant-garde epics like The Invisibles to his redefining runs on New X-Men to all-new innovative postmodern science fiction such as Seaguy and We3. One thing's for certain, though: if it's a Grant Morrison comic, it'll be like nothing else you've read.

  SCOTT SAYS

  The first summer after Grant Morrison's JLA hit it big, he attended the San Diego Comic-Con, and I remember being in a packed panel where someone asked him what that weird noise was Batman was making now. Morrison demonstrated the noise, a guttural kind of breathy grunt. Why was he doing that, another fan asked. Morrison's response? “It just seemed like an odd, scary thing for Batman to do. Come on, everyone do it with me!” The crowd played along, and the room rang out with a resounding grunt. Morrison: “Someone just walked into the back of the room and said to himself, ‘Aaaah! It's 300 Batmen!'”

  14 Mark Waid

  There are writers who happen to write comic books, and there are comic-book writers. Mark Waid is a comic-book writer. And that is meant in the best sense of the term.

  Born in Hueytown, Alabama, Mark Waid broke into the comics biz as a fanzine editor, writing and editing Fantagraphics Books' Amazing Heroes magazine, a kind of 1980s precursor to Wizard. Within a couple of years, he'd gotten his foot in the door at DC Comics, where he served as an editor on series like Legion of Super-Heroes and Secret Origins. It wasn't until he left the company's full-time employ to go freelance that Waid really made a name for himself, though, beginning in 1992 with his critically acclaimed and commercially successful eight-year run on DC's The Flash.

  RECOMMENDED READING 101

  MARK WAID

  Captain America: Man Without a Country by Mark Waid and Ron Garney

  Empire by Mark Waid and Barry Kitson

  Fantastic Four, Vol. 1: Imaginauts by Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo

  52, Vol. 1–4 by Morrison, Johns, Rucka, Waid and Giffen

  The Flash: Terminal Velocity

  JLA: Year One by Mark Waid and Barry Kitson

  Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross

  Waid's best-known and most successful work is the 1996 DC Comics graphic novel Kingdom Come, which features Waid's script and the gorgeous painted art of Alex Ross. The book, set in the not-too-distant future, pits a middle-aged Superman and Wonder Woman versus their rebellious, destructive super-heroic descendants, while Lex Luthor and a cabal of villains plot to turn the strife to their advantage, with Batman and a cadre of his own vigilantes acting as the wild card. While the book's subtext is clear — it contrasts the traditional heroics of the classic DC superheroes against the more bloodthirsty, younger, Image-style super-types popular throughout the 1990s — the book is more than just an excuse for allegory. Waid provides some of the best characterizations of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman to see print in more than twenty years.

  Also highly recommended are Waid's stellar run on Fantastic Four, and his sci-fi thriller Empire with artist Barry Kitson. Oh, and if you ever run into Waid at a convention, ask him what Clark Kent's Social Security number is. We're not sure what's scarier, the fact that this bit of information actually exists, or the fact that Mark Waid knows it off the top of his head. And the really annoying thing is, he won't tell us.

  PART V11

  HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD

  Wherein paper gives way to celluloid; and the best, and way too much of the worst, examples of comic-book adaptations are explained. Supermen and Batmen are covered in great detail, and the filmed and animated exploits of nearly every comic-book hero, villain and supporting cast are cited.

  1 Superman

  It's a bird, it's a plane…it's box officeAs one might imagine, the superhero with the most expansive show-biz career would have to be the one that started it all, Superman.

  RADIO DAYS

  The first to play the Man of Steel was Bud Collyer, a journeyman radio announcer and actor in radio dramas who took on the dual role of Clark Kent and Superman in The Adventures of Superman for the Mutual radio network in 1940, only two years after Superman's debu
t. Collyer was the originator of the distinctive sound for Clark's and Superman's voices, his Kent a mid-range tenor voice, then shifting to a gravelly baritone for Superman: “This looks like a job for Superman!” Sometimes the shift was too distinct and Superman's voice was so deep that it was flat and inflectionless. Still, Collyer's performance on the radio show was a popular one, and a lucrative one for Collyer, who remained in the role on the radio for more than ten years before turning the role over to another actor, Michael Fitzmaurice, for the series' final year in 1951. Collyer became so identified with the role that for years, any vocal performance of Superman seemed to go to him by default. And this despite the fact that for years, Collyer received no credit for the part. However, they dared not replace him. On those occasions when Collyer would leave for vacation, the radio producers would find ways to explain his absences and focus on the supporting cast. In fact, Kryptonite was created on the radio show for just such a reason, allowing another actor to whimper out Superman's Kryptonite-induced moans of pain while Collyer was off sunning himself on a beach somewhere.

  THE BIG SCREEN

  In 1941, the Fleischer Studios's Superman theatrical animated shorts distributed by Paramount Pictures utilized Collyer's vocal talents for all seventeen cartoons. Lavishly animated with a budget far beyond most animation at the time, these cartoons still hold up as achievements in animation and as one of the best animated versions of the character to date. Cartoons such as The Mechanical Monsters, which featured Superman duking it out with an army of flame-throwing robots, are simply stunning to this day, particularly a sequence in which Superman protects Lois Lane from molten lava by shielding her with his cape. The Fleischer Superman cartoons are now available on DVD, and well worth your cash.