Graffic Traffic

by Ryk McIntyre

As this goes to press, or at least to print, it seems sealed that Claudia (Commander Susan Ivanova) Christian will not be in the fifth season of Babylon 5, due to last minute snafu-esque misses that both her and the producers “regret the other side was responsible for.” So the best speculative fiction series on TV loses the best and strongest female character in quite some time, and exactly what does all of this have to do with comics?

Well… DC did have a Babylon 5 comic (lasted all of 11 issues) and besides which, I’m in mourning, so do the math yourself….

And speaking of comics (uh…yeah), it is by the kind indulgence of companies like Image, Antarctica, and Modern Comics that we have so much to wade through this month. Thank you guys.

Now Image Comics seems to be bucking industry and economic trends by putting out more and more stuff, and while their superhero stuff gets awfully samey (without the logos you’d be hard-pressed to differentiate WildC.A.T.s, Savante Garde, DV8, Wetworks or Witchblade, and really, what would be the point? More interesting is the black & white creator-owned books that are gathering under the economic umbrella that Image can provide them, books like James Hudnall’s ESPers, Jim Valentino’s autobiographical A Touch of Silver, or the ever talented Bill Messener-Loeb’s Bliss Alley, a book that combines the look of his opus “Journey – The Adventures of Wolverine McAllister” with a Will Eisner-esque urban feel. Definitely a book to look out for in these slim pickin’ times. Of the two camps, the most fun can be found in the commercially-obvious Marvel/Image cross-over Gen 13-Generation X, yet another romp ‘cross dimensional walls that is saved and graced by artwork by the legendary Art Adams (a great artist but it takes him sooo loong to do anything that it’s fortunate this is a one shot). From the b/w camp there is a must have The Savage Dragon/Marshall Law one-shot where the poxed pencils of Kevin O’Neill show new lows as, oddly enough, the wicked writing of Pat Mills has Marshall Law finally, finally meeting a Superhero he may just like. It’s this sort of thing that almost washes the taste of Kiss- Psycho Circus out of my mouth. Whereas it’s obvious that writer Brian Holguin read the Neil Gaiman/Alice Cooper “The Last Temptation of Alice,” it is also obvious that he is a crude and many thumbed thief. (Although, to be fair, Gene Simmons’ transformation on pgs. 16-17 is kinda cool…)

Grant Morrison seems to be single-handedly saving DC’s most primal heroes, as he brings his Scot’s Wit to The Flash in issue 130 where a little faster-than-light time-twisting physics mixed with a super-speed character getting a broken leg promises a very interesting 12-issue run. (Get it? Run?) And it wouldn’t be a comic column by me if I didn’t mention Garth Ennis. There, I mentioned him. And if you’d like a peek at his earlier works, with all the untrimmed edges and blotches intact, consider please,True Faith which DC/Vertigo has reprinted from the original Fleetway serial. Another of his young lad tales, it shows all the promise that was to come, even in his imperfect works. If you’ve not sussed it yet, I LOVE THIS GUY!!!!

I hadn’t heard of Modern Comics until their promo package came through. First off was the anthology title Keyhole. Usually anthologies are like asking to be bored out of one’s skull, but this one is different. Josh and Shari do a Joe Sacco-esque travelogue through the Balkans and offer some very good gynecological advice for when you go abroad. Waiting by Linda Perkins and Dean Haspiel is a waitress’ story with a moral. However, it’s Billy Dogma, by Dean Haspiel, that is the real gem of the lot. Also offered as a full-length book, its title character is a kind of Punisher, except his gun shoots anything but bullets. With hip lingo a la Very Vicky (except your phone calls get returned… sorry, private joke) mixed with all the wacky dystopian anti-hero hipness of the late ’50s/early ’60s, I cannot recommend this title enough!!!

That is, of course, as opposed to Lovely Prudence (by Maze… although my people used to call him “corn”) a book that is so bad, it’s a textbook example of how not to write; how not to draw; when to leave well enough alone. Ugh… scary!

Adhesive Comics’ sole product, Shannon Wheeler’s Too Much Coffee Man, comes in its second full-color special. Here, the usual coffee and cigarette jokes are stretched to include the work ethic, laughing all the way to the bank, the many shades of coughing, life philosophies of sea monkeys (they’re really brine shrimp, y’know…), and this last sweet bon mont, “If you can’t be happy naturally… be happy unnaturally.”

But really, if all you can do, comically speaking, this month is to buy one comic, I’d be remiss if I didn’t strongly urge you to buy Roberta Gregory’s Naughty Bits #23, the poignant and funny origin of Bitchy Butch, Roberta’s separatist lesbian-of-steel and her all too human life story. Womyn, women and any woman would enjoy this as an accurate account of heart and soul developing, sometimes well, and sometimes, well… Men, on the other hand, if they are going to read only one book this month, only one book…