The Story So Far
That right there, to your left, was pretty much every day living with a MacBookPro, out of warrantee, with only one working fan. Even surfing on the damn thing caused it to crash every few minutes, so just try and imagine what it was like to letter, spot blacks, hell just scan in three strips a week. Reviews were written in Google Docs with fingers crossed, music was played via the trusty offboard iPod and headphones. A SoleusAir fan ran full blast next to thing 24/7, cooling the laptop that itself sat on two Stephen King paperbacks on each side to keep the bottom somewhat ventilated. And then add in summer on a third floor apartment.
Boy, it was the god damned worst.
But now I’m sitting in front of a fantastic 20″ iMac (and yes, you damn well know I’ll be getting AppleCare this time), and I’m typing this and my iTunes is playing and Mail is open and last.fm is running (oh hai!) and everything is as smooth as goddamned silk.
So, hopefully, with such little constant pressure, I’ll actually be able to get back to the little things, since it won’t take every ounce of energy I have to keep from shooting a laptop in the throat. Today I brought back Your Panel Of The Week, and in the coming days I’ll be posting my CBR reviews again, revisiting some of the Great Pages In Comics History, and taking regular peeks behind the scenes of everyone’s favorite comic strip, The Rack. And hopefully a lot more besides. (After all, I am supposed to be reading plenty of Infinite Jest and watching plenty of LOST this summer, right?)
Here’s hoping.
(Editors Note: I desperately wanted to feature the New X-Men panel of Xorn healing Cyclops, where he says, famously (to me anyway): “Sometimes you just don’t know how bad you feel until the feeling’s gone… I figured I was just run down.” Sadly, it’s tucked in the hardcover on the most unscannable fold of all time. Turpin up there was a backup, but does a fine job.)
Your Panel Of The Week: 07.01.09
From Batman & Robin #2 by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Alex Sinclair, and Patrick Brosseau
OUCH.
I could not think of a better panel with which to signal the return of this long missed feature on this long last updated site. Frank Quitely’s work on this issue was without a doubt among his (if not just flat out his) best work, and it was tough to pick just one, but no panel kept coming back to my mind after reading it as much as this one. It’s just so elaborate, so well thought out, so detailed.
I didn’t even realize he was holding the pinky and thumb until the second time around.
I’m Going To Be At MOCCA This Year
Not even just at MOCCA, but like totally taking this thing over. Kevin Church, Mike Rosenzweig, and I will be at TABLE #205 at the MOCCA Art Festival in New York City this weekend, June 6 & 7, from 11 AM to 6 PM both days at the 69th Regiment Armory at Lexington Avenue and 25th Street. (Directions and everything else can be found right here.)
So if you’re anywhere New York City this weekend, seriously do not miss this. Not only will we have all sorts of cool swag, fashionable buttons, sketches from me, and pop culture referencing lobby cards. We’ll also be debuting the very first collection of my stunning webcomic The Rack:
Tons of details about the book can be found here.
We’ll also be selling a beautiful and limited edition print commemorating the show:
And last but certainly not least, LOST and Our Little Losties fans rejoice, because I’ve finally printed out some gorgeous looking prints of this:
![\](http://benjaminbirdie.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/lostprint.jpg "\")
So, in all seriousness, be there this weekend. I look forward to seeing all of you!
The Great American LOST Re-Watch: 01. Pilot
“What are you spellin’ man, ‘bodies’?”
As much as there is so much to kind of marvel at in the pilot episode of Lost, and so much to think about with hindsight (what was going on with the tail section that day, in New Otherton that day, at the Hatch that day, even in Jacob’s little Statue House and Un-Locke in his cabin that day) that thing that stuck with me the most rewatching was stuff like Michael’s brilliant reading of the aforementioned line, and so many other great little character moments.
It’s easy to forget, for example, what a great presence Boone and Shannon were in the early days. Two hapless privilegites caught up in all these acts of heroism, their struggles in the early days make their eventual Total Murders quite tragic. Neither of them are really able to perform truly transcendent acts of heroism, but even in those early days, it never stopped them from trying. Sad, really.
Out of all the characters introduced, along with the pathos they’ll be wearing around their necks for the next five seasons (addiction, guilt, etc), I found Kate’s to be the most convincing. I’ve always been a sucker for her story. The idea of someone who’s spent their entire life running from something being trapped on an island where there’s nowhere to run to has always resonated with me for some reason. It’s never been as baldfaced a character arc as Sawyer’s obsession with the man who killed his parents, or Jack’s attempts to make his dad proud, or Charlie kicking Lik-M-Aid Heroin (seriously, you couldn’t just cut to outside the bathroom and edit in a snorting aound?). It’s the perfect thread to have going through a show where most of the characters spend all their time running through the jungle in circles (which, wow, now that I think about it, is pretty much what they’ve now been doing all along, time-wise. Even better!). It’s also great to watch, even if it wasn’t intentional (I’m not sure Evangeline Lilly knew when filming the Pilot that months later she’d be shooting the bank robbery episode where she deftly shoots her partner in crime), Kate’s spectacular stumbly fake-out when dismantling the gun. It shows how deeply concerned she was about giving off even a whiff of Fugitive and goes a long way for explaining a long line of character action, all the way from her Sun manipulation later this season to her deal with Miles three seasons after that.
Her exchange with Jack at the beach, about to stich him up, is still one of my favorites. (Even after that clunky-ass story from Jack about his surgery. Seriously. ’Angel hair pasta’? Ugh.)
Kate: If that’d been me, I would have run for the door.
Jack: No, I don’t think that’s true. You’re not running now.
But of course, the main reason to undertake this massive re-watch is to consider all the other crazy shit that’s happening on the island at the same time. One of the best things about Lost is that it’s production values (even with probably the most expensive Pilot of all time) have remained consistent through all of its seasons. This makes it easy to imagine Desmond flipping his shit in the Hatch at the same time Hurley is handing out Airplane food, or Juliet working on another batch of muffins as Sawyer and Sayid kick the shit out of each other.
What’s also really impressive, in hindsight, is how well they introduced the perfect amounts of strangeness and danger in this first episode. The polar bear, the monster, the distress call. It’s all completely bizarre and scary but never overwhelmingly so. It’s a challenge set out to the 48 survivors, not a death sentence. It’s also compulsively intriguing. Even knowing so many answers, watching it again you’re still deeply concerned for these plucky Lostaways, and free from so much wondering, you can appreciate so many more little moments (like Michael’s great line) that make up all the bigger ones.
(Oh and one last thing, forget the eventual monster-sized DVD collection, I want a 70 disc set of every piece of Michael Giacchino’s incredible score to the show. The fact that the theme from when the rain starts to when Jack, Kate, and Charlie arrive at the cockpit isn’t on disc somewhere is complete lunacy.)
The Great American LOST Re-Watch Calendars!
Industrious NeoGaffer SpeedingUpToStop has created these truly incredible Calendars to guide you through this exciting and incredible journey. The most recent versions are always at these links:
Thanks, Joe!
The Great American LOST Re-Watch Starts NOW
Now that the Season Finale has pretty much tied the entire series before together in a nice bow, I decided to fill the enormous gap of time between now and the (approximate) Season Six premier by watching every single episode of the show. Like thusly:
May 15: “Pilot”
May 19: “Tabula Rasa”
May 21: “Walkabout”
May 24: “White Rabbit”
May 26: “House Of The Rising Sun”
May 29:. “The Moth”
May 31: “Confidence Man”
June 3: “Solitary”
June 5: “Raised By Another”
June 8: “All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues”
June 10: “Whatever The Case May Be”
June 13: “Hearts And Minds”
June 15: “Special”
June 18: “Homecoming”
June 20: “Outlaws”
June 23: “…In Translation”
June 25: “Numbers”
June 28: “Deus Ex Machina”
June 30: “Do No Harm”
July 3: “The Greater Good”
July 5: “Born To Run”
July 8: “Exodus”
July 11: “Man Of Science, Man Of Faith”
July 14: “Adrift”
July 16: “Orientation”
July 19: “Everybody Hates Hugo”
July 21: “…And Found”
July 24: “Abandoned”
July 26: “The Other 48 Days”
July 29: “Collision”
July 31: “What Kate Did”
August 3: “The 23rd Psalm”
August 5: “The Hunting Party”
August 8: “Fire + Water”
August 10: “The Long Con”
August 13: “One Of Them”
August 15: “Maternity Leave”
August 18: “The Whole Truth”
August 20: “Lockdown”
August 23: “Dave”
August 25: “S.O.S.”
August 28: “Two For The Road”
August 30: “?”
September 2: “Three Minutes”
September 4: “Live Together, Die Alone”
September 8: “A Tale Of Two Cities”
September 10: “The Glass Ballerina”
September 13: “Further Instructions”
September 15: “Every Man For Himself”
September 18: “The Cost Of Living”
September 20: “I Do”
September 23: “Not In Portland”
September 25: “Flashes Before Your Eyes”
September 28: “Stranger In A Strange Land”
September 30: “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead”
October 3: “Enter 77″
October 5: “Par Avion”
October 8: “The Man From Tallahassee”
October 10: “Expose”
October 13: “Left Behind”
October 15: “One Of Us”
October 18: “Catch-22″
October 20: “D.O.C.”
October 23: “The Brig”
October 25: “The Man Behind The Curtain”
October 27: “Greatest Hits”
October 29: “Through The Looking Glass”
November 2: Missing Pieces
November 4: “The Beginning Of The End”
November 7: “Confirmed Dead”
November 9: “The Economist”
November 12: “Eggtown”
November 14: “The Constant”
November 17: “The Other Woman”
November 19: “Ji Yeon”
November 22: “Meet Kevin Johnson”
November 24: “The Shape Of Things To Come”
November 27: “Something Nice Back Home”
November 29: “Cabin Fever”
December 2: “There’s No Place Like Home”
December 5: “Because You Left”
December 8: “The Lie”
December 10: “Jughead”
December 13: “The Little Prince”
December 15: “This Place Is Death”
December 18: “316″
December 20: “The Life And Death of Jeremy Bentham”
December 24: “LaFleur”
December 26: “Namaste”
December 29: “He’s Our You”
December 31: “Whatever Happened, Happened”
January 3: “Dead Is Dead”
January 5: “Some Like It Hoth”
January 7: “The Variable”
January 9: “Follow The Leader”
January 12: “The Incident”
Hopefully I’ll do at least a small write up on each episode as I go. Either way, though, I hope you’ll join me.
Ben & Dan Geek The @#$% Out #1: Frank Quitely
So this year at NYCC, I happened to cross paths with the inimitable Dan McDaid, artist of the fantastic Jersey Gods and, I just found out, a Comic Book Idol finalist! Anyway, we proceeded to follow one another on Twitter and at some point one of us brought up inking with a brush, which led to an extended back and forth on the marvelous Social Networking app which in turn spilled over to a pretty ridiculously in depth series of emails about all sorts of things. Fast forward to last week, when DC released the promo art for Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s new Batman & Robin series. I set off immediately for Twitter to talk, shop-style, with my new pal Dan about how awesome it looked. I suddenly realized that if such an expansive exchange were to happen again, it ought to be documented. And it ought to happen every week.
So, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ridiculously long, and the ridiculously enthused debut of BEN & DAN GEEK THE @#$% OUT!
DAN: So, this Frank Quitely guy… a genius, yes? The teaser page and cover we saw for his and Grant Morrison’s Batman and Robin got me more excited about a DC project than I’ve been in months and months and MONTHS. The preview page is perfect in lots of ways - it doesn’t give away too much but it does give us a really good idea of the tone of what’s coming. There’s Batman and a (rather aloof-looking) Robin shooting the breeze in a new-look, super-slick Batmobile, so we know that things have lightened up a tad. Then there’s the wicked-cool sound/smoke effect which makes me seethe with jealousy cos I didn’t think of it first, which shows us we can expect a degree of wit, invention and energy that’s been lacking from DC stuff of late. Yes, I’m excited.
BEN: Could not agree with you more. Something about that cover image just knocked me over in a way nothing has since the cover of New X-Men #114. I’ve been pretty psyched about previous Morrison projects and Morrison/Quitely projects, but something about this one just hit me that same way the shot of the X-Men did back in, jeepers, what year was that? 2001 or something? Back then it was my two favorite creators working on the comic that got me into comics back when Claremont was telling Marc Silvestri to draw Dallas office plazas.
This time around, it’s different I think. I’ve always loved Batman, sure, but here I think it’s just the way Batman is standing there, sort of giving Robin this look. Halfway exasperated. That, I think, is one of Quitely’s greatest strengths. A lot of people talk about the detail and all that, but there’s no other artist that can capture humanity in posture and expression. It’s just alive. Not in a necessarily cheesy “WHOA DYNAMIC” kind of way, but in an actually breathing kind of way. While I liked Morrison’s run on Batman, some parts a whole lot more than others, it never really got me the way his best work did. You could see a lot of great stuff, conceptually, running through it, but I never felt like the art was ever really the right fit. Having Quitely now to continue that thread is just, yeah. That’s probably what’s got me the most excited.
DAN: That’s it exactly. I hate to bitch about other artists - cos honestly it’s a c**t’s game, and Tony Daniel definitely raised his game for Batman: RIP - but I sometimes imagine what the end of Morrison’s run would have looked like had it been drawn by someone, um… better. That said, I was never as enamoured of JH Williams’ run as others are. It’s technically beautiful stuff, but I had a hard time following what was going on a lot of the time. When you’ve got a writer as clever and opaque as Morrison, I think the artist needs to do everything possible to clarify, not obscure, what’s going on. Daniel did very nicely in that regard, I thought (although I miss the 70s flavour Kubert brought to the earlier stuff).
Which brings us back to Quitely, who’s pretty much sympatico with Morrison as far as I’m concerned. And I suspect he adds these cute character moments you’re talking about himself. From the preview, I think he’s bringing something a bit different here as well - a slightly coarser, almost manga flavour. You seeing that?
BEN: That’s how I read Millar’s Ultimate X-Men back in the day. There was that bit where Magneto whipped a train at someone? His Authority was coming out at the same time and I just imagined every page drawn by Quitely. It just seemed like he was writing both with the same scope and style, but Kubert was such a different kind of artist.
As far as where Quitely might be headed stylistically, it’s a bit hard to tell just from the one page. Obviously the thing that stands out most, as you mentioned, is that ridiculous and awesome in art sound effect. As a Lettering Snob, I usually hate it when artists draw their own SFX, even Marcos Martin (who I’m sure we’ll get into in a future installment of this column), but, well, I just want to know what that is! It looks so cool. Maybe the Batmobile is jumping over a missile or some shit? Who knows.
Speaking of the Batmobile, it seems already from some reactions I’ve seen, that seems to be the big sticking point amongst the WolfShirteratti. I guess it’ll be the new “Jean looks like a dude” or “What’s with Superman’s chin anyways?” I kind of pity people who don’t recognize Quitely’s genius. I suppose that’s sort of snobbish but, hey, there’s one more thing on Earth that I love and they don’t. Which means I win.
Do you have a favorite page of his? I know I do, but I figured I’d ask you first.
DAN: We all win! But I’m gonna have to part ways with you about the hand-lettering - I *have* to hand-letter my own stuff. It’s such a crucial part of page design and it just makes a page look fun and cool. Any time I see computer-done lettering, I hear Alex Toth screaming in my head “NOT LIKE THAT!” So what I’m saying is, I want to see more of this sort of thing. MORE! And the wilder the better!
The manga thing is something I’m seeing in the speedlines used to move the action along in that fourth panel, and in the coarse texturing he’s bringing to the forms in that cover. Speaking of, I think the main complaints we’re going to hear from, ha, the WolfShirteratti will be about the Batmobile - which is so obviously awesome it makes me want to cry - and the Robin. The Robin flak will come in the shape of people who don’t like the costume (and although I don’t normally like the “pipes and widgets” way of doing costumes, I think this ‘un looks grand) and other people who don’t like how Quitely draws faces. Sorry guys- you’re wrong. Science is on my side with this one.
The big question is - who’s under the hood here? Robin - looks like he probably will be Damian. I’m reasonably pleased with that - the 21st Century needs its own Robin. Is Batman Dick? Could I have phrased that better?
BEN: You probably could have.
(And as far as lettering, oh yeah. I mean, my appreciation of the form is born out of total adoration of the lettering of Tom Orzechowski and Dave Sim. So I love hand lettering. I’m just rarely keen on it these days when it’s used at the same time as computer lettering by two clearly different entities.)
And yeah, I’ve seen the speculation, and I don’t know, man. I’d kind of assume it’s Bruce under there. But I remember adamantly shouting people down during those first issues of New X-Men, that there was NO WAY Cassandra Nova had taken over Chuck’s brain. So show’s how much I know. But yeah, absolutely Damian is Robin. I’m really looking forward, assuming Bruce comes back (fingers crossed!), to Batman running around with a ward that is actually his son. Should make for a very interesting dynamic. As far as the costumes go, I love them. They’re no Leather X-Men coats (which I still want), but they’re really slick looking.
And yeah, now that you point it out, there is a looser Otomality, we’ll call it, to the art here, but I really haven’t seen too much of a shift in his style ever since he switched to being digitally inked. We’ll see.
And since you so deftly dodged my question, I’ll just spill mine, and we can start to talk about the second pillar of Frank’s great strength: his storytelling.
There’s that bit in New X-Men when Xorn takes the special class (man I loved that whole conceit) on a picnic. And at one point Beak and Angel abscond into the woods, to mess around at Angel’s behest. There’s one page where they’re sitting on a hill, Angel is trying to coax him into some romance and Beak is like this barely held together awkward mess, and then suddenly the U-Men show up, and Beak is saved by disaster. There is so much beautiful character work going on on that page. It’s heartbreaking, it’s sweet. It’s like immaculately composed. And if I recall correctly, it was the first issue where Quitely was digitally inked, so already that issue had me reeling. I remember when the preview pages first showed up on Newsarama, and there was that opening sequence where Quentin’s New X-Men drive a van into the U-Men’s headquarters? That Batman and Robin page reminds me a lot of that actually. And they also had that Beak & Angel page previewed, with no dialogue, and it was like, I don’t know. The only way I can describe it is that it felt like the prettiest Built To Spill song ever.
DAN: Ha! Yeah, I see that. Really sweet stuff. I wish I remembered his X-Men run a little better (weirdly, I remember Igor Kordey’s bits with uncanny accuracy. He’s an underrated talent, by the way) - have to pick up the trades. I loved his Emma Frost and his Hank McCoy, and I (like a lot of new x-men fans, no doubt) really thought/hoped the new costumes would stick.
Favourite page is a toughy. There’s some blistering stuff in WE3 - I haven’t read it in a while, but I remember being struck by a dynamic and inventive opening page (with a cutaway of a van?), then a double-page hail of bullets all caught in super slo-mo. I remember looking at that and thinking I had never seen *anything* like it before. With a minimal line and no speedlines, he somehow made this scene look completely three-dimensional. I really envy that. And there’s so much glorious stuff in All-Star Superman - the shuddering seascape behind Superman and Samson, the glorious transcendental plains of Kansas on the day Pa Kent died, pretty much all of the “Luthor in jail” issue. Quitely’s real skill lies in how he can pack a panel with witty detail while retaining that essential streamlined quality, and the Luthor stuff is full of that dynamic.
BEN: Oh, man! That one spread where the jail rooms are the panels and the stairway is in the middle and Luthor is walking through them. Holy cow. I also just remembered another favorite moment of mine from New X-Men, when that one guy whose name I can’t remember lands in the cowfield. The entire universe is in abject peril and Morrison writes a two page spread of cows, one of which says “Moo.” God damn, I love that book. I remember when it was coming out, I had somehow wrangled my way into this bizarre situation where I was hanging out at the Marvel offices every now and then, and I remember reading that issue in color print outs on the train ride back to Long Island and I hit those last two pages and was like, “Oh, man. What amazingness am I reading here?”
And yeah, Kordey was SO maligned on that book and, yeah, he might not be a Frank Quitely but he was a really solid-to-great artist on that book. There’s that one opening page of a possessed Lilandra just staring out at you that was, for my money, the creepiest and most jarring thing I’ve probably ever seen in a comic. Also, a great panel-to-panel storyteller.
I do think, in a lot of ways, though, a lot of what was added to the X-Men really has stuck. Emma’s costume, the yellow X. And of course Beast, which I still can’t believe Marvel hasn’t erased by now. I think Quitely just has a great, naturalistic design sense. I remember, and this should tell you how geekily obsessive I am about the guy’s work, in Endless Nights, there’s a picture of him in the creator’s section, and kind of blurred in the background you can see what I think is just an open notebook page with rows of full color drawings of people just like, modeling clothes it looks like. I would give anything for him to have the kind of behind the scenes output that Chris Ware or James Jean has. Just putting out extensive sketchbooks and process stuff. I mean, I might never leave the house.
DAN: That is *exactly* the sequence that comes to mind about that issue of AS:S. It’s just lovely, funny, comic booky stuff.
Increasingly, I’m less about the actual comics and more about the process. I’m an avid reader of yer Kirby Collectors and yer Comic Book Artists and all that good stuff (though I think it behoves someone who creates comics to read actual comics that are coming out now… I don’t want to *just* be the “retro” guy). Anyway, I would *love* to see a book like that on Quitely - though in the meantime I’m happy to believe that he just uses magic. Hey, did you ever see any of his British stuff? He started out doing fully painted work for a strip called Missionary Man for the Judge Dredd Megazine. Mind-melting stuff, so controlled and finessed, yet so full of life.
(By the way, I really need to know how you found yourself at the Marvel offices. Best guess - you were hiding in the ventilation ducts - or you had flattened yourself against the ceiling, Spidey-style!)
And you’re right about Quitely/Morrison and the X-Men of course. It looked for a little while like the higher-ups at Marvel were determined to wipe that slate clean - so we get back the bronze age costumes (or something like them), Claremont and Davis on Uncanny, and the usual tired “capture-chase-explosion” nonsense. Luckily, guys like Cassady and Whedon and, latterly, Fraction and Brubaker picked up the baton.
Kordey… Kordey fascinates me. I never really felt like he had a fair crack of the whip at Marvel. Fanboys were pretty much booing him right out of the gate, and didn’t they give him an issue of NXM to draw over a weekend or something crazy like that? And *then* messed up his opening double-page splash to get an advert in? Woo…
BEN: That’s why I absolutely loved Kordey’s work on Cable. Much better suited to him, and they were really doing some crazy stuff on that book in terms of the artwork. And he was so thrown to the wolves on that book. I remember those days. The book was crazy late already and the only thing the fanboys hated more than Quitely was this guy who replaced him with his own completely differently unique style and STILL couldn’t get the book out on time. Oh man. Poor Igor. I haven’t seen his work in years. I wonder if they ran him out of the business, those jerks. And I did see a few Quitely pages in a random 2000AD collection somewhere. Really lovely stuff, no surprise.
Now here’s where I get really shameful. I have like next to no experience reading classic comics. I’ve seen Kirby stuff and Ditko stuff and all that, of course, but my Fantastic Four Essentials are pretty much unread. I’m kind of the same way with fiction. I know I ought to read Dickens and Tolstoy and all that but I keep gravitating towards George Saunders and David Foster Wallace. Same, again, with film. I have a pretty robust Criterion Collection, but so much of my Ozu or Kurosawa has yet to ever be watched, meanwhile I’ve watched Magnolia like thirty times. I’m so bad like that and I know I will surely leave this Earth with the shallowest of cultural experiences. I am no better than your petty street texter.
As far as your art getting caught up in a classic style, I have to say, I think there’s a pretty wide difference between your work on Jersey Gods and, say, the art on Godland. (Not that there’s anything wrong with the art on Godland.) If you’re just aping retro then so are Bruce Timm and Mike Manley (remember that guy?). It definitely has it’s own skeleton to it. As far as my influences, man, I am just trying to put one foot in front of the other. I do ravenously inhale the procedural detail of artists I admire, even if my art might not reflect it. I love finding out like what size paper Bryan Lee O’Malley uses, or looking at all the background stuff James Jean does or, holy cow, that Watching The Watchmen book about Gibbons’ process. That stuff is fascinating to me. But since I have basically one way and one way only that I can draw, I’m usually more focused on page layout and storytelling. I can never draw like a Quitely, but I study his transitions pretty intensely. Same with an Otomo. Cameron Stewart, I’ll say, especially if you can see his work in person, is a master class in inking. He’s so versatile, he captures so much detail. Whenever I see his table at a show, I’ll just sit there for an hour looking at pages and then spend the next month drawing the crap out of everything I do.
(And that Marvel story is too sad and weird to be told. Maybe someday. It involves me and my friend and a guy who worked there all thinking we were a shoe in to write the next Cage miniseries.)
And man, I remember when Claremont and Davis came back. It was to be my greatest dream come true. I mean, these were the guys in books like Uncanny and Excalibur that basically dictated everything I loved and still love about comics. That ended up being more than a little disappointing. I remember desperately clinging onto X-treme X-Men (can you believe they actually published a book called this?!?), believing that somehow it would get better. I mean, it had to, right?
DAN: Man, X-Treme X-Men. This is something that Calamity Jon Morris talks about from time to time, how people in comics are always like twenty years out of of synch with whatever actual, flesh and blood young people are into. “X-Treme” *might* have flown in the early nineties, but even then I’m sure it seemed tired. In the noughties (and can we please come up with a better name for this decade than that? I mean, I know we’re running out of time an’ all… And let’s not call the next decade the teens - not least cos it’ll muck up my usual Google porn search term).
Where was I? Fanboys, right. Yeah, I think Igor Kordey was sent packing back East. Terrible pity, as he really introduced something else that was new to the X-Men at the time: a European sensibility. We’d already had the Brits of course, but here was someone who was bringing a certain supple, sensual line to his work, as well as a degree of copper-bottom draughtsmanship. He did this one beautiful Cable cover (I think it was Cable), with ol’ One-Eye drawing an X on a misty window. Beautiful, inventive technique. And he did this Tarzan/Batman crossover a few years ago - what a strange, glorious thing that was. All lost cities and epic vistas - really nice.
Mike Manley! Wow, I used to love his stuff. Wait, hold that thought… I *sometimes* loved his stuff. I certainly preferred it to Graham Nolan (another forgotten star of yesteryear - remember when he and Dixon were steering one of DC’s flagship books? Isn’t he doing some damned syndicated strip now?). I really dig where MM has gone over the last few years with his style - even further away from “realism” and towards that blocky, solid, Kirby-by-way-of-Timm style. His blog, however, terrifies me.
I see what you’re saying about the “classics” - although I’m on a whole other level of shallow. I mean, c’mon - Magnolia? That’s a pretty smart film all in all. Bear in mind, you’re talking to someone who saw Hard Target four times in as many months - and enjoyed it just as much on each occasion. And the last book I read was a work of children’s fiction (one of the Young Bond books, since you asked. It was very good). Disgraceful, innit? That said, you’re missing a trick not reading those FF Essentials - they’re works of genuinely wonky brilliance (though it doesn’t get *really* good till Sinnott starts inking Kirby’s lines).
I think the key to breaking away from your artistic influences and to shaping your own style is to do a lot of work in a short amount of time. The early JG stuff is pretty Kirby and Cooke heavy - and that’s fine. But I’ve been racing through the pages of late, and I’ve noticed that where I use shortcuts and tricks to get the job done, that’s where my style or technique or whatever starts to come through. In those gaps. Does that make sense? I’m probably stressing over nothing here, but it’d be nice to reach a point where people could point to my work, sight unseen and go “oh yeah, Dan McDaid drew that. I can tell, cos all his people look like they have some kind of genetic disorder, and he can’t draw cars”. Ha.
The one thing I missed with all of the NYCC hullabaloo was Artists’ Alley. I love to see art happen in the raw like that - even to someone who draws all the time, it still seems like magic.
BEN: Heh, you know, you mention Hard Target. I only picked Magnolia because it would sound better than admitting I’ve watched Step Brothers about ten times in the last month. (I do love Magnolia, though.)
And this decade should totally be the Zeros, man. Like, totally nihilist!
I spent a good deal of this morning’s commute looking at that B&R page again and drew some more conclusions. Firstly, I think it’s an onboard rocket getting launched from the Batmobile. So that’s awesome. Secondly, I realized why this has leapfrogged over All Star Superman from New X-Men to be such an appealing Quitely project. It’s the swagger. Superman has no swagger. He walks around, spine straight, the avatar of rightousness and all that is good. It’s what makes that cover to #1 so great. He’s watching over us.
What I loved about that first New X-Men cover was that even in silhouette, you could see how badass these guys were, just in the posture. That’s the sense I’m getting from this Batman art. I realized it’s kind of like a director doing a different kind of film with different kinds of roles for their actors. The difference between Turtorro in O Brother Where Art Thou and Barton Fink. Does that make any sense? I like Quitely even more when he’s drawing characters with some attitude, because he’s so good at capturing it.
DAN: The Zeros! I think we have a winner! But what about the next decade? The Tens?
Step Brothers was a little disappointing, though it might appreciate with time in precisely the way that Talledega Nights hasn’t. Anything with the two of them sleepwalking was hilarious though (loved Reilly screaming into a pot!), and they somehow pulled out a surprisingly sweet ending. How do they do that?!
I think you’re absolutely right about the attitude thing, and why this excites me more than AS:S did. While I greatly admired that series, I can’t honestly say that I loved it as much as a lot of other people did, and I think you’ve kind of hit on why. It was artfully done, expertly crafted and ultimately rather grand, but also oddly inert. New X-Men really *moved* - and Batman and Robin (and what about that logo?!) has some of that same energy.
And don’t talk to me about Turturro! There are two Turtorros as far as I’m concerned - the one I can stand, and the one I can’t. In the former camp we’ve got JT in The Big Lebowski. In the latter camp we’ve got him in everything else. Remember his horrible, wide-eyed, gurning mug in Transformers? His hammy, shambling turn in Monk? And even O Brother Where Art Thou - which is otherwise brilliant - comes to a grinding halt when he’s on screen. Grr!
BEN: But…Barton Fink! Miller’s Crossing! Also, I have a very soft spot for O Brother, mostly because I read the script before I saw it and if you read that script, it is the best movie ever made when it’s just running in your head. The final execution wasn’t as solid, but I still love it probably more than I ought to.
I’d recommend going back to Step Brothers, and checking out the 2 disc DVD. (Do they have DVDs on the island from Lost, or wherever it is you live?) There’s this extended version of the Night Goggles scene where they literally just stand there for like six minutes talking about how hard it was growing up with widowed parents. Totally straight, totally heartfelt, totally in full night goggle vision. Amazingly hilarious. One thing I really liked about Reilly and Ferrell in that movie is that they really did build characters out of those two. They weren’t just dropping gags right and left. Quite the underrated gem, that one.
But now we’re eating into future installments of GTFO aren’t we? (Ha! I just got that acronym. I’m cleverer than I thought!) Shall we call it a week?
DAN: Till next time…
The Greatest Thing I Ever Drew
Is The New The Rack. I don’t know exactly what happened. But somehow my artwork seems to have finally reached the level of my ambitions for it. (Although, man Lydia’s eyes in panel one bug me with their incosnsistency.) But yeah. I kind of can’t believe I drew that.
Rebel Crisis
(After Dr. K and Kevin. So far.)
I Interviewed Pete Pantazis
Not content to merely review comics for Comic Book Resources, today I took a giant leap forward in content providing and sat down with colorist Pete Pantazis (Powers, Trinity, JLA, etc) talking about all sorts of things that potentially only he and I could possibly be interested in.
Perhaps you may be too. One never knows.
Anyway, in all seriousness, I’m really pleased with how the interview turned out. Pete’s a great and talented guy and has a whole lot to say about the business behind the business of comics.
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Benjamin Birdie
Suddenly kind of aged, Benjamin lives in Queens with a wife and cat. His Master's Degree in Creative Writing has helped him immensely with his primary responsibilities of drawing things.
He can be reached at benjaminbirdie (at) gmail (dot) com.
And do feel free to follow him on Twitter.
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His Comics
Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, this charming comic strip by myself and Kevin Church receives a sparkling new installment. A Comic Strip About A Comic Shop.