Two sides to all of us, like crosswise slices of pie
Hey so I remembered libraries exist
I have a wonderful one! Within a few minutes drive! But between the already ever-expanding, rarely-shrinking pile of novels on my bedside table (though sharing my intake on here has prompted me to work a little harder on those, so thanks to all of you by extension; just started Luda before sending this out), and that I have a job so I can buy things to read if I want, my ability to borrow books for free sort of...faded out of awareness? I suddenly remembered though, so I went through and checked out way too many graphic novels and collections at once, most of which tend to be outside the realm of stuff I talk about here or elsewhere, and a few of which I thought were really worth mulling over.
What I got was:
Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtk. A phenomenally-illustrated piece of research and cultural insight, my library doesn't have a copy but I'll very much want to check out her other comic Imagine Wanting Only This.
Grafity's Wall by Ram V, Anand Radhakrishnan, Jason Wordie, Irma Kniivila, and Aditya Bidikar. It's long been one of V's biggest comics I hadn't read (still gotta check out Paradiso, don't know if there's a good way at this point to get my hands on Black Mumba); a comic that breathes and snarls in the best way, nothing I'd have to say on it would be better than my friend Ritesh Babu's piece on it for AIPT a couple years ago.
The Way of the House Husband Vol. 1 by Kousuke Oono. It's rare you read something that's exactly as good as you've always heard. No major unspoken depths to plumb, no letdown as you get past the big memed moments and the gag runs thin. It is exactly everything you hear about it being and it is perfect at it.
Reckless: The Ghost In You + Pulp by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Jacob Phillips. Figured a few Brubaker/Phillips crime comics were a guaranteed solid time, and I was right, and even as I realized Reckless is a series starring a fixed cast rather than roaming around ala Criminal, thankfully everything was still kept accessible.
The Last God by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Riccardo Federici, et al. A solidly constructed adventure with gorgeous visuals, but I can't say it emotionally hit me anywhere near as hard as it strove for; mostly it interested me for how much of it ended up informing the team's current work on Action Comics.
Plastic Man by Gail Simone, Adriana Melo, Kelly Fitzpatrick, and Simon Bowland: The one cape comic that made it into the pile, this is probably a solid investment for Simone devotees, but suffers hard from the mistaken assumption that it would lead into a sequel or ongoing.
Watersnakes by Tony Sandoval. A surreal coming-of-age where the metaphors probably would have coalesced and stuck in my head more enduringly if I'd taken more time sitting down with it, but it was still really pretty so I can't complain.
My last two checkouts however were the major standouts:
Wynd Book One: The Flight of the Prince by James Tynion IV, Michael Dialynas, Scott Newman, and Aditya Bidikar. It was an excellent book, lively and sprawling and achingly sincere, with the art team of Dialynas, Newman, and BIdikar constructing a world it's truly easy to fall into with their cast. It's most interesting to me however as a product of Tynion's, being a vision he had been fiddling with since childhood that was then released while he was in the midst of becoming one of the biggest writers in the industry. It's fascinating seeing a project like this where that childhood love and clearly personal concerns meet the 'math' of how to put serialized comics over he was piecing together while working on Batman and would apply to the likes of The Department of Truth - the one or two really distinct character visuals to hang an aesthetic off of, the splash of horror (can't have a truly great kid's adventure without moments where it gets Extremely Real) that the market has wholeheartedly accepted as of late, the energy of constructing a fantastical landscape and mythology that only the edges are observed of but with the promise of more to come. Tynion's a real-deal artist for sure, but one with a deep understanding and appreciation for the rhythms of popular serialized entertainment, and that's always a satisfying collision to watch happen in an industry ostensibly built on it; I'll definitely check out the rest of this, and I'll also have to finally sit down with Something Is Killing The Children.
The Golden Age Book 1 by Roxanne Moreil and Cyril Pedrosa. The tale of a princess trying to raise a rebellion against her usurper brother against the backdrop of a peasant revolution, this was the big time winner for me of the batch. The narrative is lean but evocative; the art is what makes this a monster unlike anything else I've discussed. I tend to be instinctively concerned when folks outside comics come in to do work, but that's an unfair extension of a phenomenon specific to creators coming in to work with existing characters - big deal writers who do a single great issue, and then, their childhood dreams fulfilled, seem to phone in the remainder of their commitment during their lunch breaks from their real job. Even in that space you'll get the odd N.K. Jemisin, but like I said, it's an instinctive rather than fully rational concern. But what I got here was one of the most strikingly COMICS-comics I've read in years: 'simple' but expressive figures moving through full, well-defined spaces, dominated by simple shapes and bold monochromatic colors subtly rich in detail, 'choreography' and 'cinematography' meeting precisely and perfectly. Until the world is periodically overwhelmed by phantasmagorical, misty, evocative visions, and suddenly the hyper-textured detailing in these seemingly 'simple' spaces suggests a chaos hiding in the world as-is simply waiting for moments to break free, as this world of tradition is subverted in its alliances, power structures, gender roles, and the limits of individuals placed in circumstances beyond all expectation.
All-in-all, a hearty meal. The kind of stuff that I should make a more consistent part of my comics diet, and that I'm endeavoring to in the future putting the likes of Look Back, Where Black Stars Rise, and It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth on my pull list. Why, however, is it something I have to make a conscious choice towards, rather than naturally being driven to quality work as an alleged critic of discernment and taste? Well, part of it is my inclinations are essentially vanilla and populist, but another I think has to do with my 'comics diet' in a very literal sense, and a personal concept I've long referred to as:
(Credit to Paulus Jackmack for this fortuitous pic floating around in the Google wilds)
That's actually what prompted this piece, a quite literal change in diet that put all this at the forefront of my mind. If it wasn't since I was 13 and starting to get weekly comics with Batman R.I.P., it was definitely at 16 with the advent of the New 52 that I started getting a pizza with my new comics every week, since my store at the time was right around the corner from a Little Caesars. With rare exceptions I've held to that tradition, but in the last month it's a habit I've finally decided to change; no health emergencies or big moments of self-reflection, I just decided it's the kind of change that's better to make at 27 than when I've been repeatedly told my metabolism will shut down the second I hit 30. As I scale back to once or occasionally twice a month however that means picking when I do get a pizza, which means really nailing down: what's a pizza comic?
The answer I believe lies in a related childhood love of mine: superhero guidebooks. As a kid I could spend hours pouring and repouring through DK's Ultimate Guides for Superman, Batman, the JLA, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four. I'm such a mark for them that I grabbed the modern Justice League: The Ultimate Guide when I saw it cheap at a used bookstore, and all it took was hearing Grant Morrison did an introduction to the latter for me to pick up The Marvel Book and The DC Book (they also did an intro to the updated version of Superman: The Ultimate Guide, which was part of my second batch of library checkouts along with The Superman Files). I recoil in horror at the modern 'no meaning, only lore' fandom mindset but these have always simply been too direct a strike at my autistic brain, reams and reams of exacting information on my favorite topics arranged and categorized as the building blocks of some forever only glimpsed larger whole. Some fans try and capture the feeling that this is an authentic, breathing universe by sketching out character relationships, and I get that, but that's what the comics are already about; give me a diagram of how Superman metabolizes yellow solar energy to shoot a little guy out of his hand in that one comic (DC Comics: Anatomy of a Metahuman a few years back? A godsend) and a list of any given heroes' trophies in their secret headquarters. Which is to say before anyone asks, yes of course the further Jonathan Hickman has dove into his infographic fetish over the years the happier a camper I've been.
Likely because of that, a certain density of information has always registered to me as a special flavor of superheroic indulgence. The more ideas, the lusher the concept and the world in which it takes place, the better. And given pizza has long been my physical indulgence of choice to go along with it, I think those desires paired in my mind. A quick read for instance isn't gonna do it no matter the quality (manga as such rarely pulls it off, it's a little too slick); I wanna savor. Conversely, pure prose doesn't generally work for the purpose - the likes of Hannu Rajaniemi's writing to pick a name frequently fits the bill, but I'd only read a few pages over the course of a pizza vs. multiple issues of comics, so it'd feel like a waste. Fantasy almost never seems right either: that casts a sensory vision for me of brick roads and clean winds and open skies, which doesn't quite match the grease and powerful flavor in the same way as ray guns and cosmic oddities somehow do. And pizza comics don't have to be good either! I've been getting Jason Aaron's Avengers books for years now on the strength of what excellently-suited pizza comics they are regardless of their other attributes! Hell, most event comics are automatic shoe-ins simply for how much they gotta shove in.
Still, even in this self-defined 'system' there are anomalies. I tend to prefer pop excitement in my pizza comics, and if one's powerful enough in that regard it can qualify even if it's on the relatively slim side content-wise; World's Finest is a solid current example. On the other hand they can be totally morose too, Miracleman #16 and a lot of Warren Ellis's work back when I'd want to get his new stuff were prime examples, but the current 20th Century Men is so heavy I'm not sure yet whether it'd work in that capacity in spite of hitting so many of the desired notes. I think of Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty and Moon Knight as prime pizza comics at the moment in spite of not excelling in any one pizza comic category, their mix of dense character work, action, and dripfed mythology enough to turn the key in the lock. Meanwhile, much as I love him, few modern Superman comics are successes on the pizza suitability front outside of the New 52 Action Comics and a bit of Bendis. It doesn't have to be superhero comics either: Bang!, the first volume of Casanova, Manhattan Projects, and thanks to the process fetishist in me even the seemingly out-of-left-field Velvet all strike me as ideal examples of the 'form'.
Do I think I still would've loved Grant Morrison and Al Ewing without this habit? Absolutely. Would my love have burned as bright for as long for the modern master of the pizza comic in Scott Snyder, whose Zero Year, Dark Nights: Metal, and Sixth Dimension constitute a holy trinity of sorts in the field? Probably not! I hold to this day an ashamed but abiding affection for much of the work of Mark Millar that definitely has a lot to do with his mastery of the pizza comic. If I've done a decent job conveying what I'm trying to get at, I suspect a lot of you are nodding your heads right now and realizing the roots of a lot of my preferences. And while it's a coincidence I've recently tried those comics up above as far away from pizza comics as possible just as I'm about to have a lot less of that, my commitment to them going forward is probably going to shift as a very direct result.
I...don't have much of a thesis to wrap up with this? What I do have however is an invitation. This one innocuous decision regarding how I experienced my entertainment has been shaping my relationship with that entertainment for over a decade. I encourage everyone reading this to reflect back on their own choices over the years with how they relate to their favorite art, especially the ones they barely think about, and consider how deeply the two might be connected. Feel free to sound off however you please!
Oh and final note for a special category, I got a new volume of it with each birthday for a few years so Gødland is a cake comic.
-- David Mann, September 21 2022