Why a Duck?

Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man: The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Volume 12: written and illustrated by Carl Barks (1952; collected 2012): While it's chronologically the 12th volume in the Fantagraphics Books Carl Barks Library, Only a Poor Old Man is the second of these volumes to be published. That's because the general consensus among critics is that the Golden Age of writer-artist Carl Barks started about ten years into his comic-book career, as he fleshed out the character and motivations of Donald Duck's Uncle Scrooge, a character created by Barks for the Disney comic books in the 1940's.

This collection prints about a dozen one-page 'gags,' but the meat of the book comes with the longer adventures. And they truly are adventures on land, on sea, and in the air. These are some action-packed ducks.

Barks remains a wonder. The cartooning and the writing are both still fresh and funny. There are moral lessons here, but they're not rammed down the readers' throats. And the story of the hidden city of Tralala is about as pessimistic a tale about human nature as I can imagine in a comic book aimed squarely at children. Capitalism turns out to be toxic, but there's no conceivable escape from it. Whee, fun! That story remains funny nonetheless even as it verges on being a Jonathan Swift satire, with ducks.

Once upon a time in the 1950's, these were the best-selling comic books in North America. It's a tribute to the pop-cult sensibilities of Carl Barks that they're also rewarding, breezy entertainments that make the typical superhero comic book of the time look ham-fisted by comparison. Mmm. Ham. Highly recommended.

　

Solomon Kane Volume 3: Red Shadows: adapted from the work of Robert E. Howard; written by Bruce Jones; illustrated by Rahsan Ekedal and Dan Jackson (2013): Solid work from Bruce Johns and Rahsan Ekedal in adapting two stories from Conan creator Robert E. Howard about the heroic 16th-century Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane and his crusades against evil in England, Europe, and Africa. Jones eschews the wordiness of some adapters of Howard in favour of letting the artist draw what Howard has described, and it works for the most part, though some captions explaining Kane's thoughts would make the adaptation more true to Howard. Recommended.


Jonah Hex: No Way Back: written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray; illustrated by Tony DeZuniga with John Stanisci (2010): Ill-served by an egregiously awful Hollywood movie, Jonah Hex nonetheless remains a terrific comic book character who's had extraordinary luck in terms of writers and artists. Set in the post-Civil War American West, the original graphic novel Jonah Hex: No Way Back brings legendary (and, sadly, soon-to-be deceased) Hex artist Tony DeZuniga back for a look at Hex's dark past.

Hex may be a homicidal, bounty-hunting anti-hero, but he still possesses a rudimentary moral code. His origins suggest that code was a reaction to the complete amorality of his father and adandonment by his mother. It's certainly a place to start, anyway. Palmiotti and Gray have been writing Hex's regular comic-book adventures for a decade now, and they're worthy successors to such previous Hex scribes as John Albano, Michael Fleischer, and Joe Lansdale.

Their West is a nightmarish place, part-spaghetti-Western, part-horror-show, just as it as been since Albano first wrote the character in the early 1970's. And while DeZuniga's art is somewhat inconsistent at first, by the time the book gets into ultraviolent second half, DeZuniga is operating with his familiar gritty, weathered artistry intact. Recommended.

Weird Heroes

Harbinger Volume 1: Omega Rising: written by Joshua Dysart; illustrated by Khari Evans and others (2012): Enjoyable reboot of the early 1990's Valiant line's entry in the telepathic superman sweepstakes. Joshua Dysart keeps things moving while also supplying quite a bit of background and characterization, along with a likeable protagonist who does one truly awful (but understandable) thing early and then tries to make up for it ever afterwards.

Thankfully, there's an emphasis on the science-fictional and political aspects of the whole 'secret race of telepaths' concept, with more traditional superhero battles taking a back seat. The art, mostly by Khari Evans, is clean and straightforward, and he seems to have a nice command of panel-to-panel continuity. Recommended.


　

The Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom: written by Mark Waid; illustrated by Chris Samnee (2012): Waid and Samnee try their hands at what I think is the first multi-issue Rocketeer storyline since late creator/writer/artist Dave Stevens' second Rocketeer serial of the late 1980's. Waid captures the breezy, 1930's pulp quality of Stevens while adding a couple of new characters to the cast.

Waid also brings in yet another established pulp character to the Rocketeer's world without ever quite naming said character due to copyright concerns (Doc Savage and his assistants Monk and Ham appeared this way in the first Rocketeer adventure, with the Shadow and his associates following suit in the second; Disney replaced Doc Savage with Howard Hughes for the 1991 Rocketeer movie). Here, it's Doc Savage villain John Sunlight. Also dinosaurs. Samnee's art reminds me more of Steve Rude than Dave Stevens, but that's fine -- it still looks pretty good, and pretty much period-appropriate. Recommended.

Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo: written by Joe R. Lansdale; illustrated by Timothy Truman and Sam Glanzman (1993): Long-time horror and Western writer Joe Lansdale's first outing on DC's Western anti-hero Jonah Hex is a lot of grimy fun, with Tim Truman and Sam Glanzman supplying suitably gritty, violent visuals.

Looking to avenge the murder of a fellow bounty hunter, the disfigured Civil War veteran fights what may or may not be a supernatural threat hiding within a travelling carnival. Can the boss of the carnival actually animate the dead, or are his tricks explainable through rational means? In any event, Hex finds himself stuck between Apache raiding parties, a bounty on his head for a murder he didn't commit, and what appears to be Zombie Wild Bill Hickok.

The Truman/Glanzman art team is squarely in the tradition of Hex's longtime illustrator Tony deZuniga without being imitative, and as this miniseries was aimed at adults, they're allowed a lot more leeway to depict violence and its consequences. Jonah Hex himself is, as always, oddly noble. He may have started life as a knock-off of Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name, but he's his own character now. Recommended.

　

　

Tomorrow Stories Volume 2: written by Alan Moore; illustrated by Melinda Gebbie, Kevin Nowlan, Jim Baikie, Rick Veitch, Hilary Barta, and others (2000-2002): One of two books in Alan Moore's ABC Comics line of the early oughts that resurrected the anthology title, with this one leaning more heavily on comedy and pastiche than the other (Tom Strong's Terrific Tales). Kevin Nowlan's art on the Jack Quick series won him an Eisner Award for art, and it is a heckuva performance from an artist who doesn't do that much pencilling.

The different strips that appeared over the course of 12 issues tended to be parodies and/or homages to either very specific antecedents (Moore and Rick Veitch's Greyshirt is a stylistic homage to Will Eisner's Spirit both in writing and in visuals) or more general comic-book and pop-culture sources (Jack Quick parodies 'smart kid' strips and books, The First American parodies patriotic superhero strips, Splash Brannigan homages both Plastic Man and the Mad comic book of the 1950's). The Cobweb, with its sexually adventurous female crimefighter, spreads a wider net, allowing for everything from 19th century woodcuts to fumetti with talking action figures. Recommended.

　

　

　

Wretched Hexcess

Jonah Hex, written by William Farmer, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, based on the DC Comics character created by John Albano and Tony DeZuniga, directed by Jimmy Hayward, starring Josh Brolin, John Malcovich, Megan Fox and Will Arnett (2010): This movie is staggeringly bad in an almost giddy way. Good actors, a number of whom I didn't know were in the movie until I saw the closing credits (I'm looking at you, Michaels Fassbender and Shannon!), really have nothing to work with but dreadful dialogue and inept staging.

This may be the longest 81-minute movie in history. It bears almost no resemblance to its excellent comic-book source, which was really, when it started in the 1970's, an attempt to translate a spaghetti Western into a mainstream comic book. That effort succeeded, and a pretty good Hex book is on the comic stands even now. But this thing...Holy Fuck! Pardon my French!

But it is fascinating. For one thing, I really came to believe by the end of the movie that we were looking at several different screenplays from which scenes had been pulled at random, filmed, and then assembled hastily. One movie seems to have been based on the Wild Wild West TV show and much-later Will Smith movie, giving us a steampunky Old West in which villainous Confederate General Malcovich plans to destroy Washington, DC on the night of America's centennial with a doomsday machine Super Cannon created for the U.S. government by Eli Whitney, who also created the Cotton Gin; Jonah Hex has his own anomalous high-tech guy make crazy-ass, future-looking weapons for him like a 19th-century Batman.

In another, scarred bounty hunter Hex (Brolin) tracks down killers in the Wild West in the 1870's. In another, Hex has magical powers that allow him to bring the dead back to life so he can get information from them (Pushing Daisies, anyone?). And in yet another movie, Hex has a loveable dog sidekick who vanishes and reappears depending on which script the film-makers are using at that point. Megan Fox's colossal fall from Fanboy starlet to has-been continues apace here -- she neither looks nor sounds like a prostitute from 1876, and her role is kept pretty minimal to hide her ineptitude.

What else? Flashbacks and confusing dream sequences, sometimes cut right into action sequences for added confusion; recurring flashbacks of the same scene; a badly animated opening sequence that condenses Hex's history so that we can get the stuff actually derived from comic books out of the way; Will Arnett as a weinery Union lieutenant; a ridiculously miscast Aidan Quinn as President Ulysses S. Grant; a climactic sequence that occurs entirely at night because the movie doesn't have the budget for a CGI climax one can fully see; a totally out-of-left-field use of Native Americans; almost no attention to Hex's actual backstory from the comic books. Choppy, confusing editing. But it's short! Really not recommended.