CAMELS ARE HORSES

CAMELS ARE HORSES

With an all-new, all-Mark-Millar Spidey comic in the works, this might be a good time to take a look back at one of the worst abuses of the ‘comittee system’ that’s mired US comics in the sludge of mediocrity for years. This is a good, hard behind-the-scenes look at The Hem-Hem Spider-Clone Saga in 35 (count ‘em) parts, that reads like some hideous cross between a bad soap opera and a final confession before death.

It’s certainly worth a look, if only to realise that all the terrible things you thought happened in comics actually do, only worse.

THE PANIC THE VOMIT THE PANIC THE VOMIT

THE PANIC THE VOMIT THE PANIC THE VOMIT

Hey! New VIZ! Oh wow! It’s shit!

It’s been shit for a while, mind… but this… this isn’t funny. Expecting people to pay money for this is a bad joke. I’ve been able to count on the fingers of one industrially-mutilated hand the Viz cartoonists who are actually worth watching - Cat Sullivan, for example - and now the number has dropped to a two-fingered salute.

I’m starting to think it comes out as infrequently as it does because that gives people a chance to forget how absolutely bollocks it is. Zoo for semi-literate ex-students.

Cut Sullivan’s grate. He used to work for ZIT apparently, which increases my respect for that magazine by 100000% especially considering that its ‘parent’ magazine has become an unmitigated load of foetid, half-begotten semen shot from the very lice-infected cock of Satan himself - that septic organ having been sliced off by a foeces-coated scythe (the foeces of Robert Kilroy-Silk, since you ask) wielded by Hades, Greek God of the stygian depths of Hell, before being shoved brutally and with malice aforethought up the pus-seeping arse of Loki, Norse God of Mischief. That ‘parent’ magazine being VIZ. Which is shit.

SEE ME FEEL ME BEACH BLANKET BINGO

SEE ME FEEL ME BEACH BLANKET BINGO

Hey! Comic archives by Howard Cruse and Mark Martin! Ace!

WHAT’S SO ESSENTIAL ABOUT… ESSENTIAL HOWARD THE DUCK?

WHAT’S SO ESSENTIAL ABOUT… ESSENTIAL HOWARD THE DUCK?

Halfway through the book, when he misses an issue and submits a long freeform essay in its place, Gerber freely admits that the next-issue box is as great a mystery for him as it is for the rest of humanity. So far, so every other comic - but there’s something in ESSENTIAL HOWARD that screams it from day one, as the Duck bounces like a pinball from one ‘wacky’ foe to the next, all with something to half-say about the state of the Earth and American Society circa 19seventywhenever. Starting off as just another half-humourous oddity in Man-Thing, a comic crawling with them, something about the personality of the protagonist - i.e, the first recorded Marvel Hero to actually think and talk like a normal human being, if not act like one - obviously captured ‘the fans’ enough to give him a series, and then to prolong it.

Indeed, the best bits of this odd number are the bits where Howard doesn’t have to jump about fighting the villain-of-the-month or guest-starring with the hero-of-the-moment, but is free to wander around being himself. He gets about a page and a half per issue for this and spends it displaying an intelligence that is sorely missing in every other character in the book - and, I suspect, in the entirity of late-70’s comics up to Daredevil or so. He hogs personality like bad webcomic characters hog blankets - his Dr Who-like companions are left with little to go on save an ‘artistic’ temperament, an unfunny speech defect or, in long-running foil Bev’s case, a vaguely confused 1970’s attitude to what makes a ‘healthy’ sexuality. Essentially, her thing is she’s fucking a waterfowl - for the rest, you might as well flip to any page in a Luke Reinhart novel. (On a side note, surely the most overrated and egomaniacal author ever to walk the planet.)

At this time, though, this would have been completely revolutionary - an attempt to bring the vaguely anarchic spirit of the undergrounds, packaged and Marvelised and then made as unsafe again as possible by the buzzing, questing Gerber, to be brought to newsstands frequented by college students struggling to justify their taste for the illiterate. Despite the somewhat dated elements, it’s schizophrenic, electrifying stuff which makes a lot of today’s comics look sick.

Best scene would be when, in the course of some adventure or other, Howard becomes a human being, and, for a blessed half-issue or so, we get a glimpse of something truly magnificent - the saga of a badly-dressed man who looks a lot like Chico Marx slouching about misanthropically, having adventures no more ’super’ or less interesting than a real city could provide.

Too good to last, by the end of the issue he’s randomly become a duck again… and somehow, after that, the pages turn a little faster. The peak has been reached. So much for the seventies.

TOP TEN COMICS OF 2003: NUMBER FIVE

TOP TEN COMICS OF 2003: NUMBER FIVE

Is it really true that British comics are more exciting than American ones? Is it an established fact that being forced by a heartless green being to tell a story in as little as two or three pages can make writers up to four times as interesting as their counterparts across the Atlantic - who have the opposite problem of filling out 24 pages, often with meaningless bumph? Can you really fit four Future Shocks and a Captain Klep into a US comic and still have room to spare?

Thanks to THE LOSERS I can tell you now that the answer is yes. This has not stopped hurtling forward at a momentum the human frame was not meant to bear since it started.

Pick up a copy of Superman or Batman or whatever the fan-favourite-of-the-nanosecond is and watch the story not move, as the writing committee struggles to keep the boring status quo in place month after month, year after year, with even the reorganisation of the universe a temporary, piffling event to be realigned whenever it pleases the most 40-year-olds… then pick up LOSERS and watch as Diggle savagely tears the whole thing apart at the end of issue #3, making the reader gasp and wet himself. It’s hard to believe it’s only issue #3, mind, because reading an issue of THE LOSERS is like reading three comics - you get that much for your money. And it’s like reading those three comics at once. In pill form. It’s that good.

And as for Jock’s art - there is nothing like this available anywhere else. The aforementioned end of issue #3 left the brains of a close friend burst and oozing out over a pub table, eyeballs shattered by the sheer excellence, and he didn’t even like comics. Although he does now, after they repaired what was left of his psyche with ugly clamps.

The only way this comic could be better is if it was collected into an affordable TPB. Oh look!

And we’re only at number 5 in the Top Ten!

(on a side note - I’m very sorry that we’re only up to number 5 in the top ten. However, new comics are available at Beatniks-A-Go-Go if that helps…)

KEEP YOUR HAND ON YOUR GUN

KEEP YOUR HAND ON YOUR GUN

So what’s so all-fired ESSENTIAL about ESSENTIAL PUNISHER?? Hmmmm?

Well, for a start, it proves that comparing Gerry Conway and Garth Ennis is like comparing Willard Price to Ernest Hemingway. Funnybook folklore has it that the redoubtable Conway got mugged on the way home and instantly concieved a brand of JUST DEATH for the evil criminal, clad in groovy disco boots and a skull of fear. I’ve got to put the lie to this myth - judging by the ESSENTIAL ETC. the Punisher was based on Conway suddenly finding himself putting a bullet through the head of a mob boss and deciding to fill the comics world with as much non-lethality as he could muster. Punish-Lad quickly segues into the world of hem-hem ‘mercy bullets’ (”Stun shot!” as Dredd would scream as he blew a hole through a perp’s eggshell skull) while still referring to the amazing Spiderman as ‘my friend’ in between attempting to blast his weasly head off for CRIME. Because Spiderman as all readers know is a BIG CRIMINAL. Well eh wot I mean to say wot? Annoyingly the J Jonah Jameson subplots that we don’t get to see are more interesting than the Murderous Mr P’s continued backstory.

Finally Frank Miller decides to write him with a bit of zap as a proper baddie and has him shoot a CHILD yes a CHILD a CHILD for the enemy use CHILDREN now CHILDREN I DID MY DUTY BY BLOWING THAT FIVE-YEAR-OLD’S HEAD CLEAN OFF howls the Punishment Beast. Hmm, very subtle thinks Mr Miller but it is not enough for the next writer. Bring on Bill Mantlo and suddenly it’s all DIE JAYWALKER DIE, LITTERING IS A CRIME AGAINST SOCIETY etc etc etc. (The entirity of Britain stifles a yawn as 2000AD does all of this subtler, exciting-er and with better artwork… even compared to Bellardinelli… I don’t want to say that whoever Frank Springer is he can’t draw a human face but needs must…)

But wait! The Mad Mad Punisher was merely on mad mad DRUGS he is as sane as a lamb! He is so sane he goes on a boring five-issue spree in which he starts, stops, starts and stops again a MOB WAR and also begins using the short, punchy think-captions we know and love today. And so we come FULL CIRCLE except if you want a decent Punisher story you’ll have to wait god knows how many years… which is why adverts for four - count’em - Punisher trades, all by Garth Ennis, are waiting - complete with Amazon-friendly ISBNs - for you to BUY on the front inside cover!

GO FRANK GO!!!

BEATNIKS A-GO-GO

BEATNIKS A-GO-GO

There are many innovators but we are the true creators. We’re back.

TOP TEN COMMICS OF 2003: NUMBER SIX

TOP TEN COMMICS OF 2003: NUMBER SIX

Jamie Smart is influenced by the Young Ones, apparently. Personally, I don’t see it, but BEAR remains one of the best ‘indie’/'alternative’ comics you can buy.

It’s essentially about a teddy bear living in a house with a psychotic cat and a human. Lots of shouting and running and - heh heh - there’s a bit with a corpse in a closet - heh heh - and with the bucket of blood and giblets - heh heh my sides - actually reading back, it sounds like the sort of twee gubbins that you have to pretend to like to talk to pretty goth girls with died-pink hair (I remember JOHNNY THE HOMICIDAL MANIAC was absolutely appalling, pathetic wank by some ridiculous fuck who obviously spends all day saying ‘rotfl’ in bondage chatrooms, but I had to say it was semi-decent to appease my wretched loins) but BEAR is actually very, very, very, very good… Smart knows exactly when to start, when to stop, where to put a gag, how funny dialogue actually works - it’s like one of those animals where no meat is wasted. I can’t think of a single page in any given issue of BEAR I don’t like, despite all those big heads.

It’s also extremely VIOLENT and SICK and it makes me proud to be BRITISH so buy it now.

SEE ME FEEL ME: TOUCH ME, TOUCH ME NOW

SEE ME FEEL ME: TOUCH ME, TOUCH ME NOW

Go out and buy this week’s 2000AD in order to witness the birth - like an exploding star - of a wild new comics talent in the shape of Arthur Wyatt, who has nowhere to go but up.

TOP TEN COMICS OF 2003: NUMBER SEVEN

TOP TEN COMICS OF 2003: NUMBER SEVEN

Well, the audacity of it. The sheer, unmitigated gall. These are people who stood up - in front of the world - in front of God! And stated clear as day that at Shiny New Marvel dead was definitely, definitely, absolutely and completely as dead as in the real honest world. And so Magneto would never return.

Grant Morrison made Jesus cry.

It’s very rare these days that a comic will actually make me feel anything approaching a rush - usually the best reaction I can get is a sense of vague satisfaction as tho I had supped on a fine wine, but that’s the state of modern comics for you. NEW X-MEN #146 nearly killed me. I started getting these wierd shooting pains all up one arm, my vision blurred, my throat closed, a terrible roaring was in mine ears alike to great wings, beating. I spent the rest of the day wobbling like an ancient, palsied victim of circumstances beyond imagination.

It’s a fine time for comics when, merely by lying their evil, dissembling throats out to an audience of innocent children and backward adults, a mainstream company can provoke that kind of reaction.

Get the t-shirt.