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June 9, 2009

Top Story

MoCCA Festival's Heated Success
Overcoming some administrative snafus and a lack of air conditioning, this year's MoCCA festival was another successful show for indie comics, with long-awaited major works—David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp, Seth's George Sprott—vying with unexpected treats—Kazimir Strzepek's The Mourning Star #2—and a wealth of foreign cartoonists showing off their chops.
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News

• The Wages of Sinfest
  After nearly 10 years of writing and drawing Sinfest, a popular satirical webcomic about angels, devils, sex and politics, Tatsuya Ishida is publishing a book collection of the strip due from Dark Horse this month.
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Q&A

• Terry Moore Talks Echo; SiP Omnibus and More
  Terry Moore prepares to release a three-volume hardcover Strangers in Paradise omnibus at San Diego Comic Con, while he also publishes the sci-fi romance/thriller, Echo.
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Reviews

• You'll Never Know: A Graphic Memoir, Book I: "A Good and Decent Man"
  CAROL TYLER. Fantagraphics, $24.99 (104p) ISBN 978-1-60699-144-2
  In what is obviously a labor of love, Tyler tells the story of her father's time during WWII and her parents' early relationship, skillfully interweaving it with Tyler's own story. We see her as an adult artist and mother, creating the book even as she deals with tumult in her own life and marriage. This first volume in what will be a trilogy about her father's life, and her own, provides a moving, personal portrait of one member of what's become known as "the greatest generation." Tyler's use of colored inks gives the line drawings an inviting depth of emotion, creating lush worlds of WWII, the house where Tyler raises her daughter and 1950s suburbs. The drawings speak with an even greater richness thanks to the evocative words that appear within and around them, commenting upon and adding to the action portrayed in the panels. An important contributor to independent comics since the 1980s, Tyler has made a name for herself with the quirky warmth of her autobiographical stories, and this wonderful book is a thoughtful work that greatly adds to the language of the graphic memoir. (June)
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• Cla$$war: The Collected Edition
  ROB WILLIAMS, TREVOR HAIRSINE AND TRAVEL FOREMAN. Com.x, $25 paper (210p) ISBN 978-160743-816-8
  Cla$$war is precisely what you're expecting from a post-9/11 superhero comic called Cla$$war, even though it has very little to do with class. A group of US government super-soldiers happily commits war crimes in Iraq with the enthusiastic support of their government masters until one of them-named American-has an attack of remorse and decides to go to the media and tell all. The reasoned response of his comrades and superiors is to kill American's best friend Charlie and Charlie's girlfriend because apparently this sounds like a good strategy to them. Your tax dollars at work. Mutilation, clever dialogue, casual murder, and pages-long speeches about the nature of America ensue. Subtle it isn't, but it certainly takes Williams vision to its logical conclusion without pulling any punches. Both artists do very strong work, full of personality and angry vitality, and while each has his style, when Foreman takes over from Harsine halfway through the book, the transition is seamless. If you're looking for the sort of book where the idealistic hero mutilates a sitting American president, you could not possibly do better than Cla$$war. (Apr.)
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• Razorjack
  JOHN HIGGINS. COM-X, $12.99 paper (96p) ISBN 978-1-60743-817-5
  The colorist of Watchmen and a fine penciler in his own right, with turns on Batman and Spiderman under his belt, Higgins seems to be using Razorjack as his way to break out and start his own series. Using interconnected storylines, the book tells of a seemingly unstoppable hyperdimensional goddess of destruction who, naturally, needs to enter our world and depopulate it. Back on Earth, a loose cannon cop and his feisty female partner investigate a series of brutal satanic murders. In his introduction, Higgins admits he's creating a "twisted and diseased world," so it would be hypocritical to accuse Razorjack of being precisely that-but buyer beware. Razorjack seems designed to offend more delicate sensibilities. It's kind of a "feel-bad" comic, reveling in its nastiness. Curiously, the cover is a generic pose reminiscent of nearly every print ad for a cop show or movie, giving no indication of what awaits underneath. The interior art, by contrast, is a clean, well-delineated style reminiscent of Russ Heath and Rand Holmes. But the story is a nasty pulp yarn that approaches being overly convoluted; as if S. Clay Wilson were smoking crystal meth and rewriting Jack Kirby's The Demon. Razorjack is a book that deserves a cult following, but may have trouble finding one. (May)
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PanelMania

• Copies of David Mazzuchelli’s much-anticipated new graphic novel Asterios Polyp were in place at the Pantheon table for a signing at the MoCCA Art Festival. The book was one of the big hits of the show and sold out quickly.
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Worth Repeating

"If you have one person you're influenced by, everyone will say you're the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say you're so original!"

—Gary Panter at a MOCCA panel, on the usefulness of eclecticism and art history.

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PW Comics Week
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Contributing Editors: Douglas Wolk, Kai-Ming Cha and Laura Hudson
Panel Mania editor: Ada Price

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