NICK GAZIN'S COMIC BOOK LOVE-IN #21

Hi Comic Booksters!

There has been lots of comic book news lately. Here's a short list of the stuff you need to know.

1. The Thor and Green Lantern movies both look like they'll be sucky.

2. Nicholas Cage's stolen copy of Superman #1 was recovered.

3. There are Brave and the Bold toys in Happy Meals right now and they made figurines of Bat Mite and the Spectre that are pretty boss.

4. I'm working on a comic with Nathan from Wavves and people have been chatting about that.

5. Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, made a painting for a charity relating to the newspaper strip and it's the first new art of his that the general public has seen in 16 years.

6. Some dumbasses have been trying to make an American live action version of Akira and everyone is already deeply pissed off and offended. Supposedly Tetsuo is now named "Travis." 

7. There's a new comic based on Suicidegirls.com. They spend the whole comic chatting about their tattoos and piercings with other body mod enthusiasts.

8. An animated direct to video movie based on Batman: Year One is happening. Very psyched about this. 

9. There's a new Peanuts comic that was created after Sparky's death. That's not OK. Peanuts isn't Garfield. Schulz never used assistants, ghosts, or anything. Doing this just fucking sucks. 

10. Dark Horse Comics recently laid off a lot of people. They've been producing a lot of very pricy reprint books recently which were probably not selling so well. Fantagraphics is doing pretty well with Peanuts, Popeye, and Prince Valiant, but Dark Horse has been reprinting comics that, although good, just don't have the same demand. Why buy a 50 dollar collection of Doctor Spektor when you can get the original comics for about two dollars apiece on Ebay?  What's a real shame is that Dark Horse was supposedly about to start putting out Ninja Turtles comics drawn by Ross Campbell, and the images that have been floating around look stellar. 

Anywho, enjoy the reviews. Here are ten comics listed from best to worst. Some incorporate short interviews with the cartoonists. 

Sincerely,

Nicholas Gazin

(Send all review submissions to Nick Gazin C/o Vice's New York office.)
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#1
Love From the Shadows
Gilbert Hernandez
Fantagraphics

Love From the Shadows is a pleasantly confusing new graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez, celebrated talent monger and one of the celebrated Hernandez Brothers. Yes, those Hernandez Brothers. Love From the Shadows is the third comic he's made which is supposed to be one of the B movies that another of his characters, Fritzi, starred in.  So it's a little odd from the get go. The world that Fritz lives in can be a little strange to begin with but we know going into this book that it's a fictional story set in a fictional story. To add to the weirdness of that is the idea that Fritz, the attention seeking perpetual victim, is supposed to be playing three of the roles. She plays a woman named Dolores, Dolores's Sonny Bono looking brother, and the father of the two siblings. 

We see a dark haired woman wander around her own house looking unhappy and then having some sex with a silent and disinterested man. Some cultish observational goons ask her questions about her appearance and won't leave her alone. While hiding in her basement to avoid the cult members she finds a door to a tunnel and goes through it. When she comes out her hair is a different color and she is possibly in the past or she might be someone else. We see her interact with her brother, whom she is close with and her father who they both loathe. We see that their father entered a cave that he had once warned them about and came out cackling and insane. They discuss killing their father and Dolores goes for a swim during which she meets a silent child who gives her passage to another place in his boat. She becomes involved with phony psychics and defrauds some wealthy people. The story is spooky and confusing in ways that aren't boring or stupid. 

Gilbert is one of the best people out there at telling stories with dream logic and this one bonks you over the head with it, so if you are a nut for dream logic then this book is right up your dream alley. This book reminds me very much of David Lynch's movies Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. It also reminds me of Carnival of Souls. It might even remind me of those things too much. I'm not sure yet but I have yet to read a comic by either Jaime or Gilbert Hernandez that made me feel bored, cheated, or like I wasn't given something to think about at the end. Gilbert's art is simple but never generic. 

It may be a supreme act of missing the point to want to ask Gilbert questions about his new book, but I asked Gilbert some questions about his new book. I did my best not to get him to explain the symbolism.

Nick Gazin: In Love From The Shadows you have characters transforming into each other and issues of confused identity. I saw an interview on The Comics Journal site calling it "Lynchian." What do you think about this?
Gilbert Hernandez: I've used "Lynchian" myself to describe a story I'm doing because it's an easy handle. If I said "it's like, you know, weird like a dream but it's not, or is it…?" it's not so easy to grasp. Love from the Shadows is Lynchian partly because that type of story isn't done too often these days, and I've always been drawn toward them. It's almost a child's view of adulthood except with hot chicks you get to touch.

What about the similarities between Love From The Shadows and Mulhooland Drive or Lost Highway's particular storylines? The idea of one character changing their hair and possibly being two people or one person actually turning into someone else were both in Lost Highway. 
I've done the identity/gender switch before in Birdland and Hernandez Satyricon, but maybe the Lynch way is an unconscious influence. I never realized Lynch often uses a blonde and a brunette to tell his stories until I read it somewhere recently.

This book is supposed to be a movie starring your character Fritz and co-starring her one-time husband. Are these stories intended to provide greater depth and insight into Fritz's character, or do you see these more as a way for you to tell different kinds of stories and still link them back to the L & R Lubaverse?
Fritz is a character that rarely shows who she really is inside, and the characters she plays reveal bits of her we can't normally see. She's not necessarily passive aggressive, but there's a lot of anger and viciousness that comes out in her roles. Fritz has become my favorite character to write and draw because she has no restrictions to where I can take her. And she's willing to go the distance. One theory on this is that she is secretly supremely jealous of the attention her better looking, one time much bustier sister Petra got when they were teens, and then when her prettier, bustier half-sister Luba showed up later, Fritz was determined to get that attention at any cost. Fritz never knows when to quit and will embarrass herself if necessary. She gets away with the over the top va va voom because otherwise she radiates so much class and intelligence. Of course, we won't see a lot of that in her films, but it's in her "real" life.

How conscious do you want the reader to be that this story is intended to be a B-movie? You don't show boom mikes dropping into frame or any continuity errors, but you do have Fritz remain in a bikini for much of the movie. Was this intended to be a conscious choice by the filmmakers in order to exploit Fritz? Would you have made the same choice?
I've done stories where a female character wears the same sexy clothes throughout changes of local in the story, but I tried to do it relatively realistically; the bikini in Love from the Shadows was because Fritz lost weight for the part and wanted everybody to appreciate her 40-ish, still sexy figure. Dude, she's nuts, I'm not shittin' you.

Fritz has the last word on the exploitation of her body; the more men see her as a sexual goddess, the more she likes it. And you'll see as she gets older, she'll be upping the ante beyond any restraining. The trick is maintaining her gifted poise.  Totally nuts, I'm tellin' you.

How many more of these comics based on the non-existant film career of Fritz do you plan on making? I heard that you were planning on completing all of the films that have been mentioned. 
Yes, actually the books I will eventually do are only a portion of her film/tv career—the subjects worthy of a graphic novel. I plan to do a book on her entire career as an actress, which will be an illustrated index.

Is the order of the release of these books important?
Yeah, I'd prefer to do them in order, but Love from the Shadows is actually the 10th book in the series, not #3. I did it before the actual books 3 and 4 which are the MARIAM. books 1 and 2, but I wanted more time to work on them.

Do you have a name for this series?
My pet name for them is The Fritz Film Series.

Do you see each book in this series as building on the themes of the previous ones?
Maybe a little bit, but they mostly reflect on the passage of time for Fritz and where importance lies in subjects according to her career's rise and fall; she started late for a sexy star—in her early 30's.

The cover shows Fritz on the beach looking away in a way that allows male viewers to get a real eyeful, and then we see this invasive male shadow coming out of the corner. Is the idea to make the viewer feel like a creep? Was the intention to create a literal visual that related to the title?
The design was simply a classic image for a sleaze book. I try not to use such an obvious sleazy image on an L&R cover or on my other books because that's not the message I'm trying to send for my readers. The Fritz books are unapologetic sex/crime stories . They just tend to be the focus of my comics output these days. Guess I have to put out something non-sleazy soon before it's too late!

And that's my mini-interview with Gilbert! Go check out his new book or his whole career. 
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#2
Take A Joke
Johnny Ryan
Fantagraphics

Johnny Ryan's one of the best and only people making funny comics these days. Chris Onstad seems to have fled the comics world and I sincerely hope he's OK. Charles Addams died a few decades ago. It seems like most of the funny comics that are made these days are either intended for children or made by people who are only as smart as children. Unfortunately Johnny's funny days are mostly in the past now. With FUCUSSLE he wrapped up his run on Blecky Yuckerella and with this book he puts to bed any future releases containing his series Angry Youth Comics. Johnny is now thoroughly entrenched in continuing his series of Prison Pit graphic novels. Prison Pit is an amazing comic but I miss Johnny's old funny jazz with the same anticipation that I look forward to his grim prison jazz.

Johnny Ryan's comics career has three notable stages. His early comics, which he made for zines and were later collected in Port-A-Johnny, were rough in execution. The characters still had somewhat realistic proportions and it made them a lot more shocking. In Johnny's second major phase he figured out how to draw slick, funny cartoony drawings and tell weird awesome jokes. Johnny plateaued with that stuff and I think people were starting to get weary of his shtick. I don't know if he cares what people thought, but I do know that once you master something it gets boring. Johnny's modern comics are dark and based more in a mixture of Lovecraftian horror and certain manga sensibilities. 

What's in this book is the bend before the break. There's one light story in which Loady and Sinus go to dig up Santa Clause's grave, Loady has an orgy with condiment prostitutes, and Sinus ends up in hell, which turns out to be a graphic novel library. It seems like Johnny has turned to the dark side and is trying to make comics that are more upsetting. In AYC #12 Boobs Pooter murders everyone in the world and sells it to a giant space roach to use as a cum rag. In AYC #13 Loady and Sinus are back and it starts out funny but ends with Loady torturing children with American Psycho-style creativity. AYC #14, the final issue of the great series, is another long Boobs Pooter story, which I will not ruin for you. I'll just say that when I read the final panel I unintentionally let out a stunned, "Whoa..." 

I feel like Johnny Ryan probably relates to the Eminem song "Rock Bottom," especially the line, "There's people that love me and people that hate me. But it's the evil that made me this backstabbing, deceitful, and shady." I asked him a few questions.

Nick Gazin: What's up with all the From Beyond style monsters in your comics now? Were you raped with a VHS copy of the movie or something?
Johnny Ryan: Yeah.

Why'd your comics get so dark? Are you mad at people for thinking you're a one note joke?
Just mad.

Are you ever going to do comics about Loady McGee again?
I dunno. Probably not.

Why not? Are you sick of him?
No. Things just change, bro. 

And that's my mini-interview with Johnny Ryan!