#gilbert smith

[springarchives]

Preliminary sketches for Maggie and Alfie

[zilodak]

Alfie, Maggie and Gil

[comicroulette]

BATMAN: DEATH OF THE FAMILY (2013)

Scott Snyder [w], Greg Capullo [a] DC Comics By Gilbert Smith

After having his face sliced off one year ago, the Joker makes his horrifying return to Gotham City! But even for man who's committed a lifetime of murder, he's more dangerous than ever before. How can Batman protect his city and those he's closest to? It all leads back to Arkham Asylum...

$16.99—comiXology

From the first chapter, of the main five-issue clothesline of this thirty-issue arc, Batman #13, I'm impressed at the extra effort that has been made to sort of “follow the story.” So much comic book writing feels like it sticks so strictly to the outline. The outline for a crime story tells you who steals what, who kills who, and who takes revenge over it. It's the nuts and bolts, the mechanics that move you from one scene to the next, but it's very hard, in an outline, to get to the place where Commissioner Gordon is hiding his stash of cigarettes around town and challenging his squad to find them. It's tough for an outline to get you to the place where the Joker's big scary reveal is that he knows about the cigarettes, and he knows about the pack in Gordon's apartment, under his bed, where the Joker has been hiding while Gordon sleeps.

You probably don't start writing a piece of a sprawling comic book story arc without an incredibly detailed outline, and that's probably why so many comic stories are a template-driven series of action scenes, command-room relays and investigation sequences. It's difficult enough developing character through a list of story beats, and even more difficult to write a decent Joker tale with a blueprint for what's supposed to happen at what point in the story. In Batman #13, there is a feeling that writer Scott Snyder, while getting us from point A to B to C in a way that doesn't contradict the rest of the arc, found many opportunities to let the Joker's behavior surprise him.

Capullo and Glapion do some stunning work throughout, especially that big splash panel of the Joker at the end, revealing his new look. In the art and the writing, there is a clear effort for this to not be a business-as-usual Batstory, but one of the ones worth reading.

The next issue kicks off with Batman trapped in a tank slowly filling up with green glowing goo, and then there's a surprisingly effective moment where Bruce realizes Alfred is missing. Batman goes to visit Gordon at home, who's now paranoid and keeping a gun in bed with him. Like a solid suspense writer, Scott Snyder takes the time to build a tense, unsettling mood. So many superhero stories jump efficiently from point to point, Death of the Familyshows us the rising storm, the overcast skies and the warm breeze blowing through the heroes' hair before the hurricane hits. It's more than I expect of a superhero “event” arc in the 2010's.

We get a lot more shots of the Joker with his severed face strapped to his head this time in a sequence where he has an almost-Deadpooly monologue about how routine his encounters with Batman have become. Then he poisons an aqueduct instead of using it as a threat to dangle over Batman's head.

At this point I'm just listing cool stuff that's in the comic. But how often do I do that? Death of the Family takes the reader on a ride. It's one of those stories that comes along every decade or so in order to darken up the Joker, to make him less predictable, less of a talking-killer cliché, and more of the madman he's supposed to be, a guy who's actually kind of difficult to write for because he shouldn't be doing the things that lazy writers have their villains do in order to generate clear goals for the heroes and enough content to keep the wheels turning.

A lot of the superhero comics I review for this blog, you could replace the heroes with any other heroes and the villains with any other villains. Death of the Family couldn't be told without Batman as the hero and the Joker as the villain. From the opening moments with its superstitious omens to the climactic showdown with a flaming horse and a Joker-toxin-fueled brawl among the Batfamily and flies buzzing around the rotting face Joker has strapped to his noggin, the finale where Joker chooses death over hearing Batman whisper his real name, into the resolution with the Joker's indifference to what's behind the Batmask and the twist with the Joker's little book, this is absolutely a Joker story, and one of the best. When a writer is really having fun with the Joker, the aim is to stay true to the character by taking him to demented new heights. Exploring a new angle on the Joker is not an act of reinvention, it's how you stay faithful to what's come before.

Y'know what this story arc is is it's an act of creativity, an effort at doing something more than push out the monthly content demanded by an increasingly niche market. It's so easy to just churn stuff out and keep the lights on, and so few professionals in any field aim for remarkability. Snyder, Glapion and Capullo try harder and deliver more.

VERDICT: 5/5

[comicroulette]

SHADOWLAND: BLOOD ON THE STREETS #4 (2010)

Antony Johnston [w], Wellinton Alves [a] Marvel Comics By Gilbert Smith

It’s the chilling climax for the odd squad of Misty Knight, Paladin, Silver Sable and The Shroud! The unlikely quartet believes they've uncovered the real villain behind the mob murders. But the truth is even more shocking than they realize! To lay a trap for the death-dealing ninjas, the four fearless fighters must execute a daring plan; coming together to face off against The Hand...and one of them must face an ugly truth! Don't miss this explosive, dark and bloody conclusion from Antony Johnston and Wellinton Alves!

$1.99—comiXology

This is one of those comics I don't look forward to getting from Alex. It's a bunch of people brawling with costumed assassins in an apartment building, and then their sniper joins in from a nearby rooftop and saves their butts. The art is proficient, it has that clean, professional look that every superhero comic has. The writing doesn't make me cringe. There's a tough, sexy chick in a red leather jacket, there's a POV shot through a red-filtered sniper scope, some decent action shots and some nice panels of Hand ninjas hopping around on rooftops. There's a good-enough mid-issue plot twist where it turns out a handful of rogue cops are framing the Hand for some crimes they couldn't solve.

Here's an exchange a friend of mine once had with a friend of his:

“Hey can I download a movie to your computer?” “Yeah sure. If there's not enough space just delete some porn.” “Like, any of it?” “Yeah, it's all the same, right? It's just fuckin'.”

People are too hard on soap operas. If you skip the cutscenes in video games, if you don't watch Marvel movies, if you've never said “I can't wait to see what happens next,” if you've never complained about spoilers, then okay, go ahead and bash soaps all you like, but don't go telling me Dexter is worth a shit and then dump on Days of Our Lives.

A daytime soap opera is defined by its cheap lighting and VHS look, but the engine driving a soap opera is just drama for drama's sake, and that's not exclusive to TV shows about wealthy people plotting and scheming against one another. Paul Schrader says that a screenwriter oughta start with theme. I think a soap writer's job is to generate cliffhangers and melodrama and not to let things like theme get in the way.

Soap writers are working with established characters and settings and their goals aren't exactly lofty, but it's still kind of impressive what they manage to accomplish. While you're sittin' there hemmin' and hawin' about a screenplay you'll never finish, these ugly sonofabitches are out there writing a script a week, and some of it is, for what it is, pretty good.

I don't get excited about this kind of melodrama. My favorite superheroes are Artie, the Strongest Man in the World, from The Adventures of Pete & Pete, and One Punch Man. I'm not above serial melodrama, I just can't be bothered to care about brooding New Yorkers unless the writer is shooting higher than that. If I open up a comic book, it's because I wanna see Superman punch a guy so hard that the guy lands on the moon.

My wife watches True Blood, which is porno movies without the porn. I'll never watch it because I'm not that into vampires or underwear models, but I can see the appeal, and I admire its total lack of pretension. It knows it's a slickly produced soap opera, it's incredibly stupid, but never insults the audience's intelligence by pretending otherwise. How did that become so scarce? Why is every zombie-shooting video game advertised with a trailer set to sad indie rock as if it's going to evoke anything in the player but twitch reflex? Why are we so embarrassed by our dopey indulgences? Biff, pow, bam, why can'tcomic books be for kids anymore? Why does everything need to be steeped in severity?

Lofty aspirations are fine. Modest aspirations are fine. Shadowland: Blood on the Streets #4 is a soap opera. If it's trying to say something about police corruption, I dunno that having a bunch of dirty cops pin their crimes on an ancient sect of ninjas is the clearest way to get that message across. Lucky for me, the comic doesn't pretend that it's making a serious statement on the legal system. It's just something to enjoy if your thing is superhero and ninja stories with a serious tone to them.

My thing is action stories set in the desert. After The Road Warrior came out, a lot of Italy's Spaghetti Western directors switched over to making post-apocalyptic adventure movies, low budget car chase films with bearded, leather-clad anti-heroes and impressive art design given their meager finances. Most of those movies aren't very good, there isn't a single one of them that can stand along side the best Spaghetti Westerns, but they employ the right tropes and generate the right type of melodrama to keep me watching.

Shadowland: Blood on the Streets #4 isn't sophisticated or complex. It's not a comic book for grownups. But what are you, Noam Chomsky or something? Not the last time I checked, you weren't. If your time is too valuable to spend watching soap operas then what are you doing reading reviews of comic books?

VERDICT: 3/5

[comicroulette]

PEP DIGITAL #130: ARCHIE & FRIENDS—LOVE IS BLIND (2015)

Archie Comics By Gilbert Smith

Riverdale High is proof that Cupid's arrow will sometimes strike in the least likely of places! There are some pretty weird pairings that have happened over the years, and we're sharing them with you in this digital exclusive. Jughead's on a date?! Veronica and Cheryl are dating a couple of nerds?! Midge is going out with someone other than Moose (and he's letting it happen)?!?! These pairings are just TOO weird — don't miss this! $4.99—comiXology

Archie's kind of an oddity in the comics world. I don't have the numbers in front of me, and I don't really know how to get them, but I'd be willing to bet that Archie readers do not throw the new issue on a stack with Spiderman and The Avengers and Justice League. Just as Tetris players aren't all gamers, I doubt that the typical Archie reader is someone you'd classify as a comic book reader.

According to Comichron.com, the flagship Archie title averages between ten and twenty thousand sales on a good month, while all of the Archie comics combined (not counting the stuff featuring Sonic the Hedgehog) might sell under ten thousand copies on a weak month. How come I see these comics at every supermarket in the world, beside the candy and beef jerky near the counter, in the impulse buy section? 

I get the appeal of Archie, I'm not asking “Who READS this SHIT?!” I just wonder how the guys at Archie Comics describe their target demographic when they sit down for a marketing meeting.

A quick scan of members at an Archie fan forum isn't revealing any major patterns. Here's a 33 year old dude, a 47 year old woman, teenagers, gen X-ers, baby boomers. Archie is nostalgic, but not for any specific time period. Riverdale seems to be informed by the high school memories of every generation to have come of age since its first issue was published. If it reminds me of anything, it's those 80's and 90's movies and TV shows that took place in their present day, but seemed to be based on the creator's memories of their childhood in the 50's, 60's and 70's.

Maybe there isn't a typical Archie reader. Maybe gearing a product towards a specific demographic is why so many movies and TV shows suck, and why Archie is so unique. If you're on board with Archie, then you're on board with whatever Archie is, whether that's socially progressive storylines about homosexuality, or tales of magical amulets and love potions number nine. If there are no guidelines telling the writers what their demographic isn't into, then there's nothing an Archie story can't be about.

It's a funny thing about comics, right? Archie hasn't been a media behemoth in a long time, and even when these characters were being featured in cartoons and stuff, they were still regarded primarily as comic book characters. But we all know who Archie is. We might not be able to name the whole cast, but Archie, Betty and Veronica is sort of our go-to reference for love triangles in fiction, and who doesn't think Jughead is basically the coolest guy? The Archie franchise isn't raking in billions of dollars with movies like Marvel and DC characters. In recent years, Archie is strictly a comic book series that doesn't even break ten thousand sales each month, and yet these characters aren't going anywhere, they're instantly recognizable to every generation, an unshakable piece of American culture. Archie's hardcore fans may be few, but if you meet someone who actively dislikes these characters, then you've met an asshole.

A chapter of Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix features a sculptor who places stones under dripping water. Over the years, the drops of water carve these stones into the desired shape. Maybe that's Archie's trick. A lot of people didn't know who Black Panther was two months ago, but you get a multi-million dollar ad campaign behind his debut movie and all of a sudden he's bigger than Jesus. That's cracking the public consciousness with a sledgehammer. You might never have written Archie fanfiction or dressed up like him for a comic book convention, but you think about those characters a little bit every time you go to the grocery store. Black Panther is one of my favorite superguys, I really dig that debut issue of his where he lures the Fantastic Four to his homeland just to see if he can beat them up. But in drips and drops I've spent a lot more time thinking about Archie.

Archie is remarkably friendly towards casual reading. DC and Marvel content is often completely incomprehensible if you're not already a long-term reader, and you don't buy a story when you put down your four bucks or whatever for an issue, you buy one tiny section of a story with no beginning and no end. An issue of Archie & Friends features over a half dozen stories, all completely self contained, all just the right length to read one-at-a-time on the john or between bus stops. They don't require any knowledge that the typical American doesn't already possess. You can figure Archie's entire world out by glancing at the cover. That's probably part of the franchise's appeal, too. It takes some research to feel comfortable calling yourself a Marvel fan, becoming an Archie fan only takes five minutes of reading a comic that you're not going to buy instead of playing with your phone in the checkout line.

VERDICT: 5/5

[comicroulette]

X-MEN #30 (1994)

Scott Lobdell [w], Andy Kubert [a] Marvel Comics By Gilbert Smith

The wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey. After years of fighting alongside each other, Cyclops and the former Marvel Girl tie the knot.

$1.99—comiXology

When Kirby and Lee did Reed Richards marrying Sue Storm, it was an opportunity to bring pretty much the entire Marvel Universe in for a brawl, with the baddies trying to break the wedding up while Thor and Spider-Man and The Hulk did what they could to keep things going smoothly. In the 90's, a wedding between Cyclops and Jean Grey basically goes off without a hitch. There's a moment where Sabretooth is contemplating ambushing the wedding, but Wolverine puts a stop to that with a (literal) written warning.

It's easy to be cynical about an issue like this. The industry went through a collector's boom in the 90's. Have I told this story before? When I was a kid I knew a guy who had two copies of the Superman wedding issue, kept them in their original packaging, a sealed white plastic envelope. Never read 'em. Never read any comics as far as I know. It was frustrating being a comic reader and seeing this shit collecting dust on his shelf.

So if I wanna be a jerk I can say that it doesn't matter what happens in this comic, that it's not for a market of readers, it's intended to never be opened, and you'd be wasting good writing by doing anything but a straightforward, uneventful wedding.

The irony is that that kind of flat cynicism is also an act of minimal effort, out-by-five thinking. Masters of the Universe was created to sell toys, but writers like Paul Dini got a few decent episodes out of it. Roger Corman only ever wanted to make money, but he created some startlingly innovative movies, like X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes. X-Men #30 is an example of writers and artists who could have gotten away with the bare minimum, and decided to push a little harder than that, even knowing that the issue would have more buyers than readers.

What we get is a neat little look at the sentimental sides of these characters. There are amusing little moments and threads running through the issue like Beast's inability to operate a bow tie, Gambit catching the garter. The best thing about X-Men #30 is the way it relies on a totally unseen Wolverine as its emotional center, closing on a one-sentence-long letter written by Logan to Professor Xavier, telling him to lighten up.

Writers like the idea of keeping their characters busy solving problems, because that's how you find out who these characters really are. Most screenwriting books will tell you that act 2 is where all the big challenges take place. Act 1 can show us a day in the life, you can have a lull in the action around the start of act 3, but act 2 has to keep moving. Comic book characters spend their entire lives in act 2. You can't have the resolution and closure of act 3 in a story designed to never end, and there's not much point in an act 1 when we already know who Batman is.

So we know who the X-Men are when they have shit to do, when they have to fight Sentinels and whatever, but we don't get enough opportunities to see what they're like when they're not in battle, or gearing up for it. Knowing how Beast holds up under pressure is great, but to give a shit about that, it's nice to know how he holds up to a bow tie, too.

Open world video games have this going for them. You watch the movies to see what Clint Eastwood does when there's a stash of gold hidden in a coffin somewhere. You play Red Dead Redemption to see what a bounty hunter gets up to on his days off, playing poker, going on leisurely train rides. A wedding isn't exactly a “day off,” but reading a wedding issue that doesn't turn into an action story halfway through, it provides some evidence that these characters exist in their world whether or not they're up to something that makes for a good story.

The first Genesis album under Phil Collins' leadership has a song, Home by the Sea, about some burglars who break into a haunted house and are forced to listen to the ghosts tell stories about their lives, forever.

Images of sorrow, pictures of delight Things that go to make up a life Endless days of summer longer nights of gloom Waiting for the morning light Scenes of unimportance like photos in a frame Things that go to make up a life

Too much of that becomes torturous, like a vacation slide show, like so many “interesting because it happened to me” slice-o-life indie comics. A little bit of it goes a long way in creating a comic book universe that you can believe.

VERDICT: 3/5

[comicroulette]

DIGESTED #2 (2014)

Bobby N [w,a] Gestalt Comics By Gilbert Smith

Digested #2 is the second in a series of short form sequential art-

Oh, like a comic book?

A big thing in transcendental style is that it doesn't differentiate between big events and small events. Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped is a prison-break film with no ramped up melodrama, no big action scenes, no score, no nothin'. It's just a guy getting all his shit together and busting out of jail. The effect is a deeper emotional impact than you would get from a more typical approach to the subject. Watching this guy make a grappling hook out of bed springs, lamenting over whether to trust his cellmate or kill him in case he's a Nazi spy, the sound of that guard making his rounds on a creaky bicycle. When the man escapes (not a spoiler, it's in the title, and it's black and white so you weren't going to watch it anyways), it is as elating as the ending of any Rocky film.

I love those movies. I aspire to that style in my own storytelling. That being said, I never want to read another comic that kicks off with a five page spread of the main character getting out of bed and making coffee.

Any comic that Harvey Pekar would have liked, I tend to judge it a little too harshly. You know what I mean, right? Comics with artsy, high-brow presentation, art that looks like either Peter Bagge or Chris Ware, loosely-told stories about schlubby guys not listening to their girlfriends or how depressing urban life is, like anyone is forcing you to live in the city.

Roger Ebert says you should evaluate a movie on what it tries to do, not on what you would have liked it to do, so I'll try to be fair here: Digested #2 is one of the very best comics I've read of its type. The art is clean and precise with excellent use of blacks and expressive faces. Bobby N.'s contemplative writing is never a chore to read, and he doesn't fall into the hack indie comic trap of thinking that a story that is “interesting because it happened to me” is interesting to anyone else. There's some neat little idea at the center of every single short story in this comic, it's not a waste of time to read.

They're mostly ideas I've encountered in a hundred other indie comics. Those rat race sad sacks at the office, those negligent boyfriends, arguing parents, recollections of childhood dreams. This material is as tired in indie comics as superheroes are in the mainstream, but Bobby N. handles it with some degree of style and gratitude for the reader's attention. This puts him in the 95 percentile of a genre I tend to avoid.

And there's no Chris Ware-influenced panel gimmickry, it's solid, point-to-point, panel-to-panel storytelling. Maybe that's why it's listed as “sequential art,” because an indie comic book has license to be all manner of clever bullshit.

Most of the stories in this collection I'd say I don't exactly like them, but you might. If this is your thing. The big exception there is UNBEARABLE. The story features a little girl playing with a teddy bear, announcing "I'm the prettiest girl in the whole wide world, aren't I Ted? And you LOVE me don't you Ted?" The teddy bear springs to life Calvin & Hobbes style during a tea party and rejects the little girl. “Why did you say you loved me?” “I didn't, YOU did!”

The ending panels feature the lifeless teddy bear in a trash can while the little girl repeats the earlier panels with a stuffed giraffe.

Stories with a touch of the fantastical come with a certain degree of abstraction that make them more, I guess, transcendent. You might never have your husband cheat on you, but nobody has ever found out that one of their spaceship crew mates was an android who was sent with them to bring back a sample of an alien life form no matter the cost in human life. The effect that genre stories can create is like going to a comedy club, laughing your ass off, and never having to hear “Am I right, ladies? Who's with me?” It is the polar opposite of “it's interesting because it happened to me.” It never happened to anyone, it's just interesting or it's not.

Not to say that some of the other stories in this collection aren't effective, but in UNBEARABLE, Bobby N. soars effortlessly over the sad sack tropes of slice-o-life indies. He proves that he's doing mundane American Splendor style stories because he wants to, not because he's incapable of anything else.

I once bought a CD of Tom Petty's greatest hits just for Don't Come Around Here No More. I'd buy Digested #2 just for UNBEARABLE.

VERDICT: 4/5 stars

-by acclaimed Melbourne-based cartoonist Bobby N. Issue #2 continues the intriguing 'Oxygen' storyline from the first issue and continues his insightful vignettes with six more 'Shorts'. $1.99 on comiXology

[theanticool]

Fernando Gonzalez takes a SD over Gilbert Smith.

A gritty fight between two welterweight journeymen. Not a whole lot to discuss.