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Vice Blog

NICK GAZIN'S COMIC BOOK LOVE-IN 13

It's that time again. Comics time. Delve with us below into the nether regions of this blog, as we explore what is and isn't going on in comics. Also, what is and isn't going on in Vice's pile of books that get sent in for review purposes.

Love,
Nicholas

#1
Destroy All Movies!!!
Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly
Fantagraphics
I know what you're all thinking. Does this book adequately up the punx? The answer is a resounding, "Yep!." It starts out with an introduction by Richard Hell, follows with 24 pages of posters and movie stills from punky movies, then finally becomes an encyclopedia of pretty much every movie that's ever had any punks in them at all. Amidst the listings and descriptings, it features awesome little interviews with people like Lee Ving, the punk who flips off and then gets murdered by Spock in Star Trek IV, the woman who played the principal in Rock N' Roll Highschool (aka Mary Woronov), and others.

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There's a little more attention paid to Nick Zedd and Lydia Lunch than I think is deserved, but otherwise the book is perfect. That guy's sole talent consisted of him glowering at a camera with his mouth just agape enough such that people look at him and say, "Yes, that's what an artist looks like." After the encyclopedia of amazing toilet reading s finished there's 25 more pages of pretty images and then an appendix. This one will live above your toilet tank for years and make shitting so much fun.
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#2
Make Me a Woman
Vanessa Davis
Drawn & Quarterly
Vanessa Davis's drawings have a softness to them that feels like sympathetic memories. Maybe I'm off here, but it feels like she views the world in a forgiving way, whether she's showing us the time when everyone was having bat mitzvahs or some Israeli dude was treating her poorly. Everyone is a lovable goofball. There's a particularly good comic in here about going to the sex store with Karen of Meh fame and being observed by a Hassidic man. It's odd when you run into Hassidic men in places like that. I remember seeing a few at that goth/fetish party they used to have at Siberia. I also remember seeing a couple at a Death in June show on a Sunday morning at the Pyramid Club a few years back. Maybe they were just Orthodox.

Anywayahs, as you may have cottoned, there's a whole load of stories in this book relating to Jewishness. I especially like one strip where she describes how great Purim is to her boyfriend while he turns up his nose at the concept of "gross Jewish food." Later he is giggling while reading a biography of Hitler before bed.

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--- #3
Bent
Dave Cooper
Fantagraphics
Dave Cooper's produced another book's worth of sketches and oil paintings of weird looking women. Some of Cooper's gals are cute and cartoony, most seem to be a compilation of everything that women fear they look like. His paintings mix cartoonish proportions and ways of thinking with an amazing sense of light and forms. Dave Cooper has big ideas which are mostly scary and gross ideas rendered beautifully. My only wish is that he was still doing comics. But that ain't happening.
--- #4
Titanic Thompson, The Man Who Bet On Everything
Kevin Cook
Norton
Once upon a time Titanic Thompson drove around in a Pierce Arrow with his gun, golf clubs, and a bag of money, and would make all kinds of outlandish bets which he would then win. He played poker, golf and pool but the most interesting bet he made involved betting people he could do seemingly impossible things. He bet Al Capone he could hurl a lemon over the roof of a hotel and bet some other sucker that he could flip 50 playing cards under a closed door and have them all land in a hat. He also got married to a bunch of people and killed a bunch of other people. He met his second wife while she was picking his pocket.

Titanic spent time all over the country and gambled with and grifted all sorts of colorful crooks. He was born in 1892 and died in 1974 and so this one of those books that also documents changing attitudes and the country. It's almost suspicious how ready this book seems to be for film adaptation. Then again,

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The Man Who Bet Everything is so packed full of story that every chapter could easily sustain its own movie. This is a gripping and ripping yarn, each chapter packed with true tales of adventure, crime, sex, love, trickery, death, and gangster-slang.
--- #5
Doctor Solar; Man of the Atom Archives Volume 1
Paul S. Newman, Bob Fujitani & Frank Bolle
Dark Horse
People in their late 20s or older may remember a shitty comic about this character being published by the ultra-shitty Valiant Comics in the early 90s. Doctor Solar was published at the snail's pace of three times a year starting in 1962. It detailed the adventures of a man whose origin is not that different from Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan or Radioactive Man as he appears in the Bongo Comics series.

Doctor Solar is blasted with radiation but instead of dying instantly becomes a man with radioactive powers. Because he fears giving his coworkers cancer he stays locked away from them. He battles some crooked foes and keeps his crazy problem/power a secret from most people. Strangely he doesn't don his hooded red costume until the seventh issue of the series, a year and a half after the first issue was published. Once he gets his costume he suddenly starts fighting androids and aliens instead of normal corrupt humans. It's also notable how similar the big red costume is to Radioactive Man's.

Bob Fujitani's art is some masterful silver age stuff, with a Tothy sense of shadow and line. With the sixth issue Fujitani was succeeded by Frank Bolle whose work is notably less skilled but still OK. The covers are pure 60s sci-fi gold with deckled edges, paint splatters, and intensely hot and cold colors. I am majorly fond of silver age Marvel and DC superhero comics and Doctor Solar has a different vibe from both of those, though radiation-activated powers that handicap the hero are pretty Marvely. Despite toiling under the yolk of great responsibility we never see Doctor Solar emote at all, unlike Spiderman who starts talking about his feelings like his villains were unpaid therapists.

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This is a beautiful comic that doesn't feel too much like any other comics I've seen from this era. There's something slightly off about it but mostly on. Go and check it out.

--- #6
What I Did
Jason
Fantagraphics
Jason is a tall Norwegian man who looks like a human version of his birds, dogs, and cats. He makes comics that are quiet and lonely and often show how quickly life passes. This volume contains the first comics that Jason had published in English including Hey, Wait…, Sshhhh!, and the Iron Wagon. Hey, Wait… is a real bummer of a comic about two childhood friends to whom some bad stuff happens and one of the friends has to deal with it for the remainder of his days. Sshhhh! is a slient bummer about a bird in a hat and coat who experiences ten chapters of stuff. Each one makes it seem like life is just absolutely meaningless. The Iron Wagon is based on a Norwegian mystery called the Iron Chariot. It has a hell of a lot of words being spoken by smart-looking dogs and birds. There's murder and possible ghosts and people being civilized around a parlor table in straw boaters before it climaxes with a big ol' grapplin'.

You like smart animals? With hats? And ennui? And muuuuurderrrrrrr? You do? What else do you like? Because I like you. Do you like me? Check yes or no.

--- #7
Dethklok #1
Brendon Small, Jon Schnepp, Jeremy Barlow, Lucas Marangon
Dark Horse Comics
Metalocalypse is a hilarious and terrifying cartoon with great dialogue. The guys who make the show wrote this comic so it's not some project that was just handed off to an intern. The problem is that the humor on the animated show is fast and often based on funny performances of dialogue that's delivered quickly in all kind of funny accents and then there's music. If there's one Adult Swim cartoon that would work as a comic it would have to be Super Jail since it relies more on visual ideas than narrative stories and dialogue. It's not anyone's fault. I mean Life in Hell was a great comic, but the comics based on the Simpsons fell flat and unless you really, really wanted them not to.

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#8
Conan The Newspaper Strips Volume One
Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Ernie Chan
Dark Horse
I love John Buscema's run on the early issues of Wolverine and get the sense that he can draw really well, really fast. At the same time Conan is a character who can only ever be as interesting as the storytellers make him. The reason being he's a big strong killing guy who barely talks. This collection of daily newspaper strips from the late seventies has some nice drawings here and there but is mostly a chore to get through since it's a serialized adventure strip being told four panels at a time. The pacing is staggered and irritating. Long, drawn out stories in the daily comics can work if there's humor involved and it ends with a gag but this is just frustrating.
--- #9
Issue One.
Lauren Stratton
This is a photo zine of super saturated photos. The photos are nice if not terribly substantial but the layout sucks a big one (dick).
--- #10
Morgan Tepsic
Right Side Up
This zine contains photos of a naked guy jumping in different locales and then some other photos, many of which are equally corny.

Send all material for review to Nick Gazin's Comic Book Love In C/O The Vice Office. There's probably an address somewhere on this website. Click around a little. NICHOLAS GAZIN