Review - Little Nemo in Slumberland: Many More Splended Sundays

Little Nemo in Slumberland: Many More Splended Sundays
by Winsor McCay; edited by Peter Maresca
2009 Eisner Winner for Best Archival Collection/Project: Comic Strips

My immediate reaction on seeing Little Nemo in Slumberland: Many More Splendid Sundays was awe. I was unaware of the exact format of the original collection Many Splendid Sundays and while Amazon's listing for this book mentioned it was oversized I couldn't wrap my head around how big it was. Here's a photograph of the book with a slightly irritated cat to give you a sense of scale.

I would say this book is huge but that's an understatement. I own huge books and Many More Splendid Sundays dwarfs them. It is by dimension the largest book I own by a wide margin. It's far larger than any of my shelves so I have to store it between bookshelves. I've only seen a handful of books on this scale ever.

The point of this monstrously huge book is to present the Little Nemo in Slumberland strips in their original format. When they were first published the newspapers the strips took up a full page of the Sunday comics. All reprints since then have had to scale the images down to fit a more manageable size. Many More Splendid Sundays measures twenty-one inches by sixteen inches in order to present the artwork in a lavish style.

The reason I'm going on at length about this is that the size is the entire reason that Many More Splendid Sundays is notable. There are other collections of Little Nemo that are much more affordable for those interested in the strip but this and its predecessor are the only ones that capture the full artwork.

Little Nemo in Slumberland was a very early newspaper strip. How early? Here's the strip that was published one hundred years ago:


I'd use the strip that was one hundred years old this week but it contains a racial caricature that I wouldn't want to inflict on anyone who was unprepared for it (there is a reoccurring "jungle man" character who turns up).

The strips follow a simple format; Nemo wanders his dreams having adventures which conclude when something causes Nemo to wake up in the last panel. McCay's writing is clumsy at best and his dialog is so highly stylized that it is awkward. The real reason to check out Little Nemo is the stunning artwork. McCay was putting surrealism into the Sunday newspaper before surrealism was an artistic movement. He developed a touch for beautiful flowing panels where you can feel the motion captured between them. And his sense of design is terrific; I could examine these panels looking at the details all day. McCay was the first artistic genius in the medium of linear art.

The biggest problem with Many More Splendid Sundays is that the comic strips have already been mined for Many Splendid Sundays making this volume a kind of runner up to the original. Maresca does take advantage of a blank slate by running long sequences of strips where a storyline continued from week to week for several months. Still I found myself hoping for certain strips that I was familiar with to be included only to find out that they were in the first book.

This is a book to buy specifically for the packaging. Before Many More Splendid Sundays the only Little Nemo strips I had read were shrunk down so far you had to squint to make out the words. The selection of strips may not be the greatest but that has simply made me want to get the first volume. I'll cheerfully recommend it to anyone interested in Winsor McCay's art with the caveat that if you are not familiar with Little Nemo you'll want to examine the strips in a less expensive format first.

Review - The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
by Bill Waterson
2006 Eisner Winner for Best Archival Collection/Project: Comic Strips
Also contains all material from Calvin and Hobbes: The Revenge of the Baby-Sat, 1992 Eisner winner for best comic strip collection, and Calvin and Hobbes: Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons, 1993 Eisner winner for best comic strip collection

The past few years have been good to comic strip fans. While the newspaper strips have been dying off new efforts to compile the high points of the medium have been occurring. Fans used to have to get their collection of strips in what were essentially "Best of" sets where an editor picked out a handful. Now there's a movement toward being complete and there are more of these projects than I can count. One of the major triggers for this movement was the publication and success of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.

For those who have never seen Calvin and Hobbes (and I suppose that's possible since the strip ended fifteen years ago) it is about a young boy and his best friend who happens to be a tiger... or a stuffed animal if anyone else is looking. Calvin is prone to flights of fantasy and has an off-kilter world-view that's grounded by the tiger Hobbes. Together they get into every kind of mischief that a hyperactive six year old can get into and enjoy the suburban adventures of childhood.

This might be the easiest review I've ever written: I highly recommend this collection. Extremely highly. Doubly extremely highly. Adverbly doubly extremely highly. Calvin and Hobbes easily ranks among the greatest comic strips ever published. And unlike some strips Waterson ended it before it sank into a daily grind. That means that the more than three thousand strips are of a consistently terrific quality. Having the entire set in one beautiful package is well worth it.

The strips themselves possess a kind of timeless sense of humor. Anyone who spent their childhood wandering through imaginary vistas will be able to instantly connect with the strip. And anyone who knows the sheer volume of mayhem a six-year-old can cause will see that reflected in the stories.

The typical artwork in Calvin and Hobbes is great as Waterson is a master of character acting. As wonderful as it is to see how a tiger and boy can play off each other visually it goes from great to absolutely gorgeous when Waterson illustrates the lunatic imagination of Calvin. A dinosaur at the kitchen table looks just as natural as the mundane schoolrooms.

Okay, enough selling the content to those six people on Earth who are unfamiliar with Calvin and Hobbes; the main event is The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. It's a three volume set with either one sunday strip or three daily strips presented on each glossy page. Each volume is about five hundred pages and is just large enough that it isn't unweildy to read though I wouldn't want to hold it up for too long. The slipcase is heavy duty even has the cloth binding of the books. As a unit it is the heaviest publication I own. The production values could not be higher for this set.

The set is gorgeous and durable enough that I think that replacing any paperback collections that you have is worth it. This is the definitive format for owning one of the greatest works of comic art ever created. If you have any affection for Calvin and Hobbes then you will want to get The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. And if you don't then I pity the shriveled, black stone that passes for your heart.

Review - The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of

The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of
by Thomas M. Disch
1999 Hugo Winner for Best Related Book

Here's a sign of a bad book: I honestly cannot tell you what The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of is about. It reads like the old-kilter rants of drunk man that progress down strange, incomprehensible paths and leap from subject to subject with little concern for bridging topics. It's a mashed together mess of the history of science fiction, the affect science fiction has had on culture, an overview of the genre, and critique of all of that. Disch's lack of focus means that his critiques are poorly supported and it contributes to making this book feel pointless.

Let's start with his opening chapter since it establishes a concept that Disch returns to throughout the book while establishing how shaky his reasoning is. It argues that American culture is somehow attuned more than other cultures to revere the liar; that deception is an American virtue. Now as much as that may make some people say, "Of course!" his support for this assertions is the same appreciation of tricksters, conmen, and audacity that has been evident in humanity for as long as there has been a written record. It's not an American thing to enjoy the tweaking of authority's nose by a clever person, it's a human thing.

Similarly he declares that Edgar Allen Poe was the first science fiction writer. Most of you are going to be scratching your head and saying, "Yeah, he grew out of the same gothic traditions that science fiction grew out of but he never wrote anything that could be remotely mistaken for science fiction." Disch's argument is based on Poe's place in pop culture of the time and literary style rather than the context of his stories. It's an argument that makes me wince because it could be used to justify the absorption of nearly any popular author since the nineteenth century into science fiction.

And so it goes through this book. His arguments are so ridiculous that I half suspect that Disch was making them spuriously so that people would react to them. Whether it's "The Cold Equations" as an example of how misogynistic science fiction authors were or using a self-help book based on Star Trek as the strawman for Star Trek's ideals so much of the book comes across as just wackiness. And with that first chapter dedicated to lying I have to ask if the book is a bit of a prank. Of course in the end I don't believe that; I've read enough off-the-wall literary criticism presented as reality that I can accept Disch's as genuine.

Things aren't all bad in The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of. When Disch gets personal the book is much more interesting. His take on the political extremes in science fiction authors is tightly focused on a few individuals that he could be addressing directly. There are times when he's discussing the context of an author or movement without getting into theorizing that kept me going. Unfortunately these only lasted a few pages before things switched up again and I never knew what I was going to get next.

I can't recommend The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of for many reasons. Top of the list is the rambling of the Disch who comes across as the Andy Rooney of science fiction. There's better histories and examinations of science fiction out there; the only reason to read this one is if you're interested in Disch's personal take on authors.

Review - Akira

Akira
by Katsuhiro Otomo
2002 Eisner Winner for Best Archival Project
2002 Eisner Winner for Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material

A short while into creating his epic Katsuhiro Otomo had to put it on hold. He was approached about making it into a movie. Instead of being something like the US where an author sells the rights to his book to a movie studio and then has nothing more to do with it Otomo adapted his work and directed the film which is justifiably considered one of the landmarks of Japanese animation. Unfortunately he also was only a third of the way through his story when he did this and consequently had to create an ending for the entire thing based on what he had made that far. The result of that is the movie diverges widely with the comic in the last reel and a lot of poorly informed American nerds blamed evil filmmakers for screwing up the adaptation. It also means that if you have seen the movie Akira that the book will be a fresh experience.

Twenty years after the destruction of Tokyo triggered a third world war a new city called Neo Tokyo has risen around the devastation. A motorcycle gang from the new city has a run in with a strange child with powers in the ruins which triggers a series of events that changes the world. For one member it leads one to becoming entangled with a terrorist organization trying to expose the secrets of a government program for harnessing psychics. Another member begins developing psychic abilities of his own and gets first hand experience in what absolute power does. And drawing both of them together is Akira, the government's greatest secret.

Akira is a wonderful example of what I don't like in science fiction. The ideas presented are huge, terrific things; the actual execution of those concepts on the other hand falls flat. Otomo isn't nearly as bad as many I've read since his writing is simply flawed instead of outright awful. It isn't as simple as a bad translation either. There's fundamental information missing, muddled storytelling in the art, and an awkward pacing that comes from stretching out sections for the serial.

There's also the problem that most of the characters in Akira just aren't interesting. The lead is a doofus who's just along with events for the ride. The terrorists who get the majority of the early focus are given no motivation beyond being dupes in a political struggle; it's never clear why they're doing the things they do or why they choose their extreme methods. They're the designated good guys despite the fact that the reader is never given a reason to root for them. On the other hand the character who is gaining vast power and losing control in every sense of the word is fascinating because while his only goal may be anarchy the reader can understand his purpose. Every time the story went to people discussing vague goals with characters whose motivations weren't explained I wanted to back to the guy who was destroying everything.

There is one thing that Akira has going for it: Otomo's art. He has a sense of environment design that is stunning. There are a lot of images of destruction in Akira and he makes each bit of it look unique. Similarly the machines he populates the book with are in some ways more interesting that the humans. I could examine his incredibly detailed backgrounds all day.

Similarly the way that Otomo draws action is impressive. Each explosion is a ultradetailed work of art. Every panel of an complex action scene examined individually tells it's own story. I can't say that I'm fond of how he lays out pages since it's pretty standard it is on a higher plain than most Japanese comic artists who hold to certain artistic conventions that typically muddy up the panel flow. When he brings his focus in on those kinds of scenes Otomo's artistic storytelling is terrific.

So Akira is an visually interesting but inherently flawed work. On one hand I'm not very fond of the story being told, but on the other it's the only Japanese comic that I own a supplemental art book for. Perhaps it's best to think of it like a movie, one of those summer blockbuster action movies like they used to make where they might not have been terrific films the images presented were exciting and fun. I'd recommend Akira on that level: come for the pictures and fun action. Just don't expect any more than that.

Review - 300

300
by Frank Miller; Colored by Lynn Varley
Hardcover edition designed by Mark Cox
1999 Eisner Winner for Best Limited Series
1999 Eisner Winner for Best Writer/Artist
1999 Eisner Winner for Best Coloring
2000 Eisner Winner for Best Production Design

I will promise you this right now: I will not type that over used meme in any way, shape, or form in this review.

Thanks to the movie from a few years ago even those people who couldn't name three other city states of ancient Greece are able to give a basic outline of the Battle of Thermopylae. On one side you have a gigantic army of one million Persians who are marching down the Grecian coast and conquering everything. On the other three hundred Spartans who chose to block the Persian army in order to cover the retreat of the rest of the Greek army. The only advantage the Spartans had was that they held a tiny pass and so they fought a battle that would be used until the end of time as a demonstration why massed frontal charges against an entrenched position is a bad idea.

(Okay, the history there is a bit off but everyone going back to the ancient historians felt the need to exaggerate the story and I don't want to be left out.)

Frank Miller takes that bit of history and turns the story of these three hundred Spartans into a glorious ode to machismo. 300 is the story of macho men from the world's most macho society doing macho things and saying the right macho words. There is no room for weak girly-men with the Spartans. Anyone who doesn't live up to their standards of perfect manhood should just go home since real men don't care about being outnumbered three thousand to one.

And Miller does this completely unironically. There is no nudge and wink to indicate that the harsh standards of the Spartans might not be the best thing in the world. While I doubt that Miller would actually advocate throwing imperfect infants off cliffs 300 works because in the context of the story it is the ideal way of making the perfect man. This is a version of story of Thermopylae that the Spartans would have approved of.

The only Spartan who is allowed to show less than absolute confidence that their band of three hundred men can defeat the Persian army is their leader Leonidas. And the reader only knows it because they get his internal monologues.

Miller's artwork is astonishing in 300. He uses silhouettes with an impressive effect throughout the book. It helps that he was clearly inspired by Greek art of that period and some of the posed and figures could have stepped right off an urn. He also designed the page layout to take advantage of a wider profile that gives 300 and huge, open view.

Where Lynn Varley found bronze watercolors I won't be able to figure out. The book is painted in red and bronze (when you're talking about Greeks bronze is only color that matters) with only occasional splashes of other color. It might make things a bit dull but the dappled colors give the artwork an additional texture that looks great.

I enjoyed 300 quite a bit as an over-the-top version of history. Miller's take on the Spartans is an extreme one but it is right for the story he created. The artwork never goes below impressive. That makes the package as a whole a stand out book for me. I can understand the tone of the 300 and the excessive violence putting off some readers but at the same time it's the entire point.

Thing I'm Enjoying About Champions Online and a Few Problems With Them

I like the fact that the team took the design philosophy from City of Heroes that worked (quick to play, easy to pick up, lots of customization for the player, and minimal grinding with the exception of special player rewards for those who do them) and expanded it further. It was the idea that playing the game is the reward rather than reaching the top level or finding the special items and it makes the game very friendly to people who don't necessarily have a lot of time. It's a concept that makes the game poison to those who obsess over their MMO's but there is a market of people out there who want that kind of thing that is barely being serviced.

I'm enjoying the huge creative zone design. It feels like a comic from the 1980's to me; still holding onto the cheesy lunacy dreamed up in the 1960's for kids but trying to dress it up in something for a slightly older audience. So you've got Monster Island with giant monsters, Dr. Moreau, and a fallen ancient empire in a volcano. Or in the desert a Hulk-knock off leaps around and fights whatever (player or enemy) happens to be underneath him when he lands whether it's the secret base where there's a UFO, Westworld style amusement park, or the ghost town. The maps and enemies are wonderfully, cheerfully, crazy as you'd want in a superhero game.

The problem is that there's just too few. There are a couple of gaps in content with the game at the moment and only five zones. Champions needs at least twice as much content as it currently has mainly because it's so much fun playing with different kinds of characters; when every character has to do nearly everything then it isn't as fun to change from your flying fire guy to your robotic battle suit guy.

On the other hand there's giant piles of supervillains to fight. If there was one thing City of Heroes lacked it was villains. Now there's a supervillain around every corner and quite a few just wandering the map. In one mission I even came across an entire team of Soviet supervillains that I wasn't expecting. There's a lot of them even without making your own and many of them come back.

I like the variety of powers and how you can mix and match pretty much anything. On the other hand I'm not happy with how the buff and debuff abilities are generally weaker. There aren't a lot of them at the moment (at least ones not tied to attacks) and the game really needs a bit more of those for flexibility in character design.

Speaking of character design, the fact that the customization has gone even further is great. They took a terrific system and made it better by allowing asymmetrical options.

So in short, I'm having fun playing but there's too little there for the time being. Maybe six months from now once the new MMO problems have died down it'll be really spectacular.

Review - Queen & Country Definitive Edition Volume 1

Queen & Country Definitive Edition Volume 1
Written by Greg Rucka; Art by Steve Rolston, Brian Hurtt, and Leandro Fernandez
2002 Eisner Winner for Best New Series

I need to clear this up before I do anything else: the Eisner award was just for Rucka and Rolston. Hurt and Fernandez each provided art for later story arcs that are included in the book.

Spy stories tend to either be whirlwind adventure stories where the secret agent fights criminal organizations in a two-fisted style or paranoid cold war thrillers where no one can be trusted to be exactly what they seem. There are a few stories that take another direction and look at the everyday world of operatives. The working man's espionage agent who clocks in at nine, leaves at five, deals with the usual office politics, and occasionally has to go to some unpleasant corner of the world on a boring business trip.

And that's Queen & Country in a nutshell. There are occasional bits of action but it tends to be the exception instead of the rule. The second operation in the book, for example, is run with out a shot being fired. It's a book about MI6 as a workplace rather than globe-trotting adventures.

Within MI6 is the special services division, a group of three operatives and their support staff who are brought in to deal with especially sensitive situations. The book opens with an off the book favor to the CIA where one of the operatives assassinates an arms dealer. This leads to the Russian mafia performing a rocket attack on SIS headquarters in downtown London. The section chief decides that an attack on the home office cannot be tolerated so despite the fact that operating on British soil is illegal they take steps to bring the organization down.

The next time out a pair of the operatives go to Afghanistan to recover some missing intelligence before the Taliban can locate it. The last storyline included is the most traditional of the stories in the book and features the group trying to unravel and stop a terrorist plot.

The key difference with Queen & Country and most other books about spies is that Queen & Country often places the emphasis on the details outside the operation. It's about the politicking to get permission for a controversial decision, the jurisdictional conflicts between branches of the government, how the British class division can interfere in the workplace. The waiting for that three a.m. phone call to say that everything is okay is just as important as slipping through the border undetected.

Rucka outdoes himself with his cast in Queen & Country. Most of the stories focus on the lone female operative in the special services division. On the surface she appears to be the standard tough woman who is emotionally dead and capable of taking down any man. It quickly becomes clear that this is a facade; it's the role she's expected to play and so she does it while being pushed to her mental limits.

The biggest downside in Queen & Country is the artwork. I was never really satisfied with any of the artists in this book. None of them are really bad but they all pulled me out of the story at different points.

Rolston, to start at the beginning, has a very clean style that could be thought of as "cartoony". He does a great job with facial expressions but sometimes the figures he drew were distorted in just the right way to make the character look like they suddenly turned into a child. Fernandez, whose work comprises the conclusion of the book, does terrific stuff with heavy shadows combined with tiny ink lines around the white areas. Individually it looks phenominal but he also uses some wildly exaggerated figures that tends to make all the characters look grotesque. It also has the effect of muddying some of the actions. As for Hurtt, his big crime is simply being unmemorable; he gets the job done and does a decent job but not so well that it stands out.

Queen & Country is a terrific series thanks to Rucka approaching the usual spy material from a slightly different angle. The Definitive Edition gives you a lot of bang for your buck with three story arcs, a full twelve issues, worth of material. I enjoyed it enough from the first volume to order the other three.