Finally, Comic Book Land, Part 1: Comics and Gwyd

I've taken a couple of days break, and I'm not sure what direction we were headed in my last post, but I know I wanted to talk about comic-books and had done some material in-between doing a comic-books post. So, let us visit comic-book world. I'm going to give boldface headings and go through a few points, and then I want to talk about not only my growing interest in comic-books, but where I've at least considered heading with my comic-book concepts. (Author correction: I decided that the article had gone on long enough, and the other bold points will appear in later posts.)

My own relationship to comics' world

I had a group of friends I played D&D with, and they were big-time comic-book collectors, and my brother collected comics to some degree as well. My friend C. was an "Amazing Spidey," fanatic, who liked the old school, frank, open, and earnest Spiderman comic. He didn't have any of the really outrageously expensive Spidey-comics, but he had some back-issues that were worth well over a hundred dollars. For him, collecting the books was as important as reading them, which is something I still really don't have an interest in doing.

My other friend D. was a big Batman fan. My friend D. and I had some intense discussions about anti-heroes, and my friend did not like anti-heroes. Batman is one of the oldest comic-book anti-heroes, a guy with a very dark psychology and a vigilante figure, and that goes back to his origin in the late 1950's, if I'm remembering the dates right. However, even though Batman was an anti-hero, he was recognizably a good guy, rather than a villain as a main character. My friend D. also enjoyed the collection part of comic-books, and again, he didn't have Batman books worth thousands of dollars as individual books, but he had a backlog worth a thousand dollars or more taken all together, and that was part of the fun of comic-books for him.

I took an interest in some of the early X-Men comics story arcs just as "Uncanny X-Men," was retitled and split off into several other books, including "X-Factor," and "X-Force," but I just read the arcs and that was that. One of my favorite character's was a character named "Cable," from Rob Leifeild's, "X-Factor." Cable was a character with very minor superhero powers, and he was a cyborg with a mild telekinetic ability, and a very mysterious character. The "X-Factor," arcs as stories weren't fabulous, but they were good enough, and I loved that Cable character.

Another comic I took an interest in was an early Image comic called, "The Maxx." The Maxx would have been an anomaly for any comic-book company, but was a huge anomaly for Image. Image relied on next-to no-story comics with fabulous design art and high-quality printing processes. There have been almost no Image comics that have had any content up to today. The two principal figures in "The Maxx," were a young woman who had been raped and who was working in social work, and her schizophrenic client, "The Maxx."

The Maxx lived in a surrealist fantasy world where he was a superhero, and when he wasn't the client in this woman's office, the social worker was this tormented spear-wielding figure in the Maxx's world of madness called "The Jungle Queen." The Maxx dealt with radical feminist issues, gender, rape, madness, mental health culture, and poverty, and ran about 30 or 40 issues before it was canned. It was one hell of an amazing book that took a lot of guts to write and publish.

My brother also had the graphic novels of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, and that was a real wonderful series. The great thing about the series was that it was intensely gothic, but also managed to be intensely "campy," at the same time, and that is not a very easy effect to pull off. The basic concept for the back-story was hilarious when considered alone: Some small box turtles and a rat fall into some toxic sewage, and they become humanoid and intelligent, and the rat becomes the turtles ninja mentor, and the turtles head out to save the Turtle-verse from the forces of ee-ville!

TMNT started out as an ashcan, but was eventually syndicated widely in its original form, and then in the early nineties it was a huge fad for a brief shining moment. Also, in the second TMNT graphic novel, there was a crossover with an aschan figure named Cerebus. There is a long article on Cerebus at wikipedia, but it is almost all garbage. No one really knows what was originally in the Cerebus books, because ashcans are printed on cheap paper that quickly breaks down. If you owned a single Cerebus book that was merely in readable condition, it would be priceless, and people who know comics say that Cerebus is one of the best comic series' ever written - without reservation. As far as I am aware, all that remains today is the tiny cross-over in the TMNT graphic novel.

The basic back story to Cerebus is pretty funny as well. There is this man who is a priest who commits a crime, and is turned into this sort of dwarfish, gray-colored hedgehog-like character as a punishment. He wields this little broad short-sword, and he loses every fight he enters in the entire 200 book comic book series. Also, when his emotions change, his body changes shape mildly. For example, if he is angry he might grow spikes out of his head. However, he has no powers that allow him to have any power in the comic, other than the fact that he is very cunning, and that he is a great sneak-thief.

The artist who created Cerebus also wrote the story. He had terminal cancer, and he wrote the story and then story-boarded 200 issues for the series. Further, he did in fact finish all of the comics from 1 to 200 and published them as ashcans before he died just two or three years later.

So, as I said, those were my past interests in comic-books. I've talked about my "mecha' fetish," and I've read a few things over the past 10 years since I've been in recovery as well, which are worth mentioning. One was called "Blade of the Immortal." Blade of the Immortal is a "Japanese art book," meaning that it isn't done in the traditional manga style and treats heavier themes. It wasn't banned in Japan, but the comic-book just barely escaped being banned.

The back story is incredible. The main character, Rei, had a corrupt Daimyo and consequently betrayed his Daimyo. However, in the traditional Japanese ideal, even a corrupt Daimyo had to be utterly obeyed, so Rei is cursed for his actions. He will live as an immortal until he slays 1 thousand and 1 men. The idea behind the book was that every time Rei produced a dead body, which was pretty durned often in every book, the count would go up, and when 1,001 dead bodies as a body count was reached, Rei would die and the series would end.

Unfortunately, the writer of the comic died before the series was completed, and as controversial as the series was, no other writer was willing to pick it up. It is intensely violent, but is also a story of love, fate and passion. I wound up digging through some of the back issues and paid 20 dollars a piece just to read fragments of the series, which is something I would not normally do.

There was also the Akira manga. Now, Akira was banned in Japan, and look - you get older, and you realize - explicit violence isn't "cool." The Akira book went way over the broadband. Way over. However, the premise is pretty amazing. The basic point is this: Akira is a nine-year old with a telepsychic ability powerful enough to eventually nuke-bomb the entirety of this futuristic Tokyo. Two points. Point One: Humanity right now is a nine-year old with a nuclear arsenal. Point two: What if you not only had a nine-year old with a nuclear arsenal, but a nine-year old with a nuclear arsenal for a mind?

I think a re-write of Akira without the explicit material would be a grand idea. It would be necessary to show how much anarchy and havoc that kind of telepsychism would cause, but if the explicitness of the violence was toned as far back as possible, Akira would be literature. These two points are well worth stating, and I would cite Akira as an influence on my own speculations, even though the manga book is some of the most hideously violent pornography I have ever seen in my life. "Take what is worthwhile and leave the rest."

Further, telepsychism as a cliche in any kind of fantasy or science fiction literature is usually used to depict some kind of bigoted ideal of superiority. It is one of the worst possible topics to treat in fantasy or science literature of any kind. However, I'll be honest with you, at some point I am going to treat the topic, when I've collected my thoughts about the psionics/telepsychism concept a bit more.

There was also an Image comic that treated a post-apocalyptic world where telepsychism was beginning to emerge as an ability, and also included mecha' designs. I decided to commit to buying the book, even though there was 8 pages of unbelievable art and nothing else but advertisements in every one of the books. However, after 10 issues, every issue at least two months late, I gave up on the whole thing, and the series was canned after 14 or 15 issues. I have since sold all of my back-issues back to the comic-book trader in the nearby suburb of Kettering.

So, to sum up a little, that was my, "backstory interest," in comics up until very recently. I was never a big collector, and mainly read the books I've mentioned for the art and the story. I do love that you can tell a story with a comic-book and include a visualization along with the text. In film, we have two basic elements, which are sound and visualization, but in the comic-book our elements are a visualization and a text, and I like the form a whole lot better.

One of the limitations of the comics is that most of your text will be dialogue. Actually, usually all of your text will be dialogue. Further, in comic-books, the text has to be very, very simple. If there is too much complexity in the dialogue or the flavor-text, you are left with a garbage comic book. The limitations are actually pretty extreme. For example, in a comic-book, even your main character is going to have a "hook." You will have maybe one sentence to sum the character up, and you stick to that "hook," for however long the series runs, or your character is no longer the same character.

Your other characters will inevitably be handled in the same way, or you will have garbage and not a comic-book. The intimate details of a character that can be portrayed in novel form are simply not going to work in the comic-book form. On the plus side, the design and printing capabilites we have today allow for visualizations that are incredibly sophisticated, and instead of dampening what we might imagine the story to be, the art can augment our experience of the story when the design is done well.

We're just about to finish up this part of the comics segment, and then I will be back with something I've already said, but not so clearly. We're going to do a "new age inspirational piece," and then probably, if I'm not tired, go into some comics history I've dug up. It's only 8:30, and I'm not even close to tired.

One of the things about me, in recent years, is that if a topic interests me, I begin to do some heavy research work on the topic. As I've said, I have early-morning waking insomnia, so when I simply can't sleep I trawl around on the Internet sort of lazily to kill time and just pick up trivia, or sometimes save bits of text and that sort of thing. It passes the time, it is somewhat soothing, and it has helped my art a great deal, as I have picked up quite a bit of trivia that has been useful to my writing and music.

So, I discovered the "history of comic books," and we'll go into that in just a moment. Another thing is that I used to go and watch the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," miniseries with C. and D. and some of their other friends. It was a great television-series, and after getting over the initial contempt that the series was probably incredibly superficial, the truth was that the series was far from superficial. Also, the series had great camp and pop-culture references, and was just loads of fun.

One night after Buffy, my friends C. and D. put on a television series that had recorded a full-season, had been released on DVD, but had never been picked up by a television syndicate, called "Witchblade," starring Yancey as female beat-cop Pezzini, who is unfortunately chosen to wield an ancient artifact of doom (RAHR!) called the Witchblade. The Witchblade normally appears to be some form of steampunk-style gauntlet, but can change into almost any form necessary to allow Pezzini to kick butt and fight the forces of ee-ville in the Witchblade-verse.

The actual comic is published by Top Cow productions. Top Cow is better than Image but similar, high on art and low on content, and further, as you might guess from their corporation name, they specialize in female characters with "abundant tracts of land." Most female characters in comic books are very voluptuous, to make them appear less like young girls, and then of course they hook people with lots of cleavage and hiney action. However, Top Cow makes sure to go way over the normal broadband with "abundant tracts of land."

Other than the fact that the concept of a weapon that can change into any form, from a suit of armor to a shield to a short sword, to whatever, is an unbelievable design idea, I also like the Pezzini character, who is what we might call, "a witch with a b," character. She is the kind of heroine guys would normally love to hate: strong, sassy, not legally blonde, and sometimes downright mean, but she is also, clearly a "good guy (girl)." The comic book storyline is only mediocre, but it has some content, and I was reminded of the television series, and started trolling comics sites and things. I've also bought a Witchblade graphic novel collection just to leaf through and kind of - "see."

We're going to our inspirational piece, and then we're going to do a brief summary of comic history from what I've gathered thus far, and then who knows? - Hey world, it's me!