Number 1026


Master of Murder Castle


The Dark Horse book, Blackjacked and Pistol-Whipped: The Best of Crime Does Not Pay, is available as of September 6. You can see a preview at Amazon.com. It looks like a must-have, double-bag item for me, a fan of crime comics, the more lurid the better.

And that's what we have today! "Master of Murder Castle," drawn by Fred Guardineer in his precise style, emphasizing the horrific story of a true serial killer, H. H. Holmes, who lived--and killed--in Chicago in the early 1890s.

As an add-on, I'm including some pages from Rick Geary's terrific book, A Treasury of Victorian Murder: The Beast of Chicago, published in 2003 by NBM. Geary, who has a real feel for the era, has done his usual superb job with his pen-and-ink drawings, evocative of steel engravings of that time. His story of H. H. Holmes is a not as lurid, but no less fascinating. Geary has a series of these books of famous murders and I highly recommend them.

I haven't seen the Crime Does Not Pay book, but I also recommend it based solely on the preview.

From Crime Does Not Pay #53, 1947:









From The Beast of Chicago, Part IV, 2003:

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Review: The Invisibles Vol. 7: Invisible Kingdom trade paperback (Vertigo/DC Comics)

[The seventh in our series of guest reviews on Grant Morrison's The Invisibles by Zach King, who blogs about movies as The Cinema King]

With the final volume The Invisible Kingdom, Grant Morrison's seven-trade opus The Invisibles draws to a close -- only I'm not sure if it's with a whimper or a bang. What's clear is that the story ends, without much ambiguity or hemming and hawing due to editorial control or last-second alterations. What's not clear is whether it all works -- as an ending, the story meanders a bit and loses sight of its larger questions, but the characters are satisfied, and we are satisfied with the characters. But does the ending itself satisfy?

"And so we return and begin again." Rather than rejoin our Invisibles immediately, The Invisible Kingdom begins with a long look at Division X, the mystical street cops who are trying to prevent the devious plan to replace England's monarchy with the monstrous moonchild from behind the mirror. King Mob ends his brief sabbatical to fight Sir Miles Delacourt and the minions of the Outer Church, but not before bidding farewell to the Invisibles' maternal guru Edith Manning in a poignant but slightly overlong narrative thread. And when The Invisibles come face to face with the totality of the Outer Church's dastardly plot, not all of them will be coming home -- and those that do are going to be changed forever. The series concludes with a flash-forward of sorts, in which the survivors regroup in December of 2012 to take on the King-of-All-Tears one last time before budding Buddha Jack Frost ushers in the next stage of human development.

If nothing else, The Invisible Kingdom more than lives up to the following one-word review (which has inadvertently become an odd tradition in these reviews), "payoff." This seventh trade brings together almost every narrative plot point in the entirety of the series, quite literally going back to the very first issue when we learned that young Dane McGowan was the next Buddha. Let's not forget that Dane began as an arrogant snot with an interest in casual arson over ontological terrorism; he's come a long way, and his story arc wraps up not in a neat bow but in a circle not unlike the all-white badge used to recruit new Invisibles to the cause, as Jack Frost does in the penultimate chapter -- the learner becoming the master.

Indeed, The Invisible Kingdom is littered with closure, with every character finding a kind of peace with themselves and with their violent past. King Mob reinvents himself several times before finally finding his calling, losing a mother but regaining a lover in the process, Jack Frost embraces his role as the next Buddha in all its complexity and mystery, Sir Miles finally chooses a side, the identity of the Harlequin is revealed (sort of -- more on that later), and eagle-eyed readers will even find that Boy, who's almost entirely missing from this volume, finds her "happily ever after" by putting her violent past behind her and embracing the closure she finds in her new family.

"Closure" is a major theme in The Invisible Kingdom, and nowhere is that more evident than in the most beautiful moment of the entire series, a moment which both affirms the optimism of a faith in the goodness of man and simultaneously proves that Grant Morrison is a writer who never does anything unintentionally and can find meaning in even the smallest moments -- in short, he's a genius. As King Mob lies bleeding to death in a phone book, telling his on-and-off lover Jacqui how he saved the world, he's rescued from death by the most unlikely and unexpected return of Audrey Murray. Even the most die-hard readers of the series will be forgiven for not remembering Audrey, who only appeared once before in the series in "Best Man Fall," the one-off chapter in Apocalipstick which gave life to faceless soldier Bobby Murray, murdered by King Mob back in the very first issue of Say You Want a Revolution.

The fascinating irony of Audrey saving the man who killed her husband is overshadowed by the poetic beauty of this encounter between two people who never truly know how they're connected. When asked why she saved a total stranger, Audrey replies, "My husband was killed by a gunman. Five years ago. I still miss him. I couldn't just walk past." Very near tears, King Mob confides to recent convert Helga that Audrey is the first woman he hasn't wanted to shag: "That woman saved my life and she didn't even know me or ... I feel like crying." And if the reader has any heart, King Mob won't be alone. (Confession: although this moment got me a bit choked up, only one comic has ever elicited actual tears from me: twice during Morrison's All-Star Superman -- once when the dying Superman saves suicidal teen Regan by telling her, "It's never as bad as it seems. You're much stronger than you think you are. Trust me," and when Superman flies off to save the sun after confessing to Lois, "I love you, Lois Lane. Until the end of time.")

But character development is where this volume excels, a remarkable feat considering that this was a series which began as a "nice and smooth" action story about glamorous people who blew things up while looking cool but lacking personality; the mythology underpinning the whole thing falls just short of genius. I've compared The Invisibles to ABC's long-running Lost before, and the comparison really comes to life here. Lost began as a "What the heck is going on?" show but ended as a story more about the characters than the mysteries around them; while the show's final hours provided answers about the island and its mysteries, what was more important was that the characters found satisfaction. The same applies to The Invisible Kingdom; while we're given suggestions as to what it all means, the focus is much more on the characters who make the world rather than the rules that govern their world.

Case in point -- the identity of the Harlequin is revealed when the Harlequin tell Jack not to think about midwives; Jack's satisfied with this answer and knows what he has to do to save the world, but the reader -- especially a first-time one -- can't help but scratch their heads and wonder why someone doesn't just turn around and say, "Wait, what?!" (I've read the series several times, and I'm still not sure I get it.) Unfortunately, other mysteries get the same short shrift. Remember the question about whether The Invisibles were just characters in a story into which Ragged Robin wrote herself? That's revisited here, but only to remind readers that there's no resolution to be had; instead of resolving itself, the plot point is picked at like a scab that refuses to heal. The best thing we can say about these mysteries is that Morrison doesn't just abandon them; instead he adds a little bit to each one, opening rather than closing and suggesting new possibilities or reinforcing old ones. While this is clever writing, it's a bit difficult for an ending, which should be answering more questions than it asks.

Fortunately, the answers given in The Invisible Kingdom are aided by artwork which for the most part seems to know what it's doing, especially in the pages drawn by Cameron Stewart (which are mercifully redrawn for this collection from the originals by Ashley Wood, which allegedly deviated significantly from Morrison's script). While each of the foregoing six trades was governed by one or two main artists -- especially Phil Jimenez, whose detailed pencils I've praised many times -- here the series turns into an artistic jam session, such that the spine and front cover list six different artists before surrendering to an "et al" at the end of the line.

Two artists -- Philip Bond (Kill Your Boyfriend) and Sean Phillips (Marvel Zombies) -- get the most face time here, their artwork resembling a madcap version of the kid-friendly Marvel Super Hero Squad by way of Jamie Hewlett. This more cartoony and slightly stubby verison of our heroes is a major departure from Jimenez's fine-tuned lines, but in a way it's exactly what the series needs as it rallies itself to challenge the apocalypse head-on. The jam session concept is pushed near to breaking near the end when the artwork seems to change faster than you can turn the page, and the purposelessness of the changes seems self-indulgent, reveling in the jam as an end in itself. When done right, multiple artists can reflect changes in a character's history (as in retrospective issues filled with flashbacks) or can indicate changing perceptions and storylines. But here the jam doesn't serve any real function, instead only adding to the confusion of the mythological wrap-up at work in the final few issues; Morrison's scripts are difficult enough, and Lord knows the last thing we need is more obfuscation.

Fortunately the series ends with a chapter pencilled, as all great Morrison scripts should be, by Frank Quitely (if Jimenez is the definitive Invisibles artist, Quitely is the definitive Morrison artist). Quitely's pencils, now comfortably familiar to current readers, give the audience the feeling of going home -- appropriate, considering this final installment is a reunion of sorts for our heroes at the end of the world. And Quitely's gritty lines help show the age of the characters in the intervening twelve years, especially Lord Fanny, who's put on a bit of weight.

This final chapter of Invisibles: Invisible Kingdom gives one last sense of closure, feeling like both an ending and a new beginning. Jack Frost intones, "Our sentence is up." Like the all-white badge and in full memory of Elfayed's words which began the series, we end only to begin again. In true Morrison fashion, the implication is that the world of The Invisibles is ending, but our world -- the next stage in human development -- goes on, and perhaps even reaches a new beginning now that Jack Frost and his crew have taught us how to live. And so the series concludes -- the story that Morrison wanted to tell is done, and even if there are some questions lingering I feel a little richer for having read it all. Maybe I don't fully understand what an Archon is, but I've figured out a little bit more about what it means to live as a human being at the turn of the twenty-first century. And for that spiritual rebirth I couldn't have asked for a better midwife.

[Contains full covers, character pages, and "Snapshots of the Past," which function as "Previously on..." blurbs for the preceding six volumes.]

That's volume seven, loyal readers. We've reached the end of Grant Morrison's seven-volume opus The Invisibles, but fear not! Coming soon to Collected Editions, a bonus wrap-up review in which I'll take a look at the merits (and demerits) of the series as a whole, consider its place in the Morrison canon, and ponder why it is that The Invisibles hasn't been collected in glorious hardcover like so many of its contemporaries. Do return and begin again with us, won't you?

Thanks, Zach! Read Zach's full Invisibles review series at the link. More reviews next week -- be here!

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DC Relaunch: You Want Paperback!

In my far-from-comprehensive and unscientific poll that ran here over the past week, half of respondents said they'd like to see DC release collections of the New 52 relaunch books solely in paperback.

Gosh, I think you people are going to be disappointed.

Given that all of DC's major releases prior to the post-Flashpoint relaunch have been hardcover -- Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, Justice League, the latest Wonder Woman and Green Arrow books, and so on -- I cannot imagine that DC would release their new big name titles in paperback.

If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if all fifty-two titles emerge first in hardcover -- Action Comics, definitely, but also All-Star Western and Voodoo -- such to show consistency across the whole line and, of course, maximize profits.

Just as DC began collecting nearly every "One Year Later" title after Infinite Crisis (for one volume, at least), I wouldn't be surprised by a similar "step up" for the New 52. That is, DC used "One Year Later" to begin collecting all of their titles in paperback, even ones that weren't being collected before, and now that they're collecting nearly everything, I wouldn't be surprised if the New 52 titles represented another step up -- to DC now collecting all their titles in first run hardcover.

I just can't believe DC is going to release the New 52 collections inconsistently, given the push for new reader accessibility -- that we would see some paperback and some hardcover, or some hardcover and some deluxe hardcover. At the same time, commenter abu george makes a good point that not collecting some of these books deluxe -- David Finch's second take on The Dark Knight to go along with the deluxe first collection, for instance, or Batwoman -- would be a disappointment.

It probably doesn't make sense for DC to collect Voodoo deluxe (though I did like Sami Basri's art on Power Girl, this review of Voodoo notwithstanding), but it wouldn't be a shock if we saw some deluxe volumes either preceeding or following the main release -- and that's if DC doesn't adopt some sort of routine of collecting six issue blocks separately, and then combining two six-issue trades into twelve-issue omnibuses, for instance.

Twenty-three percent of poll respondents, by the way, wanted DC to release a mix of hardcovers and paperbacks as a title warranted (by whether it's a better-known title like Superman or a lesser-known title like Resurrection Man, I meant); 13% wanted deluxe hardcovers entirely; and just 5% wanted all hardcovers. I'm in those latter two categories.

Right now we're expecting the first DC New 52 collections in May 2012, but otherwise there's not much more information at the moment. Let's open this to the floor -- how do you hope DC collects the New 52?

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Number 1025


Land of the Lost...found


I'm very taken by this clever children's comic from the late '40s. Isabel Manning Hewson created and wrote the radio series on which the comic is based, and she also wrote the comic, illustrated by Olive Bailey.

Bhob Stewart explained it in his editorial, "Perigee to Perilune," in Heavy Metal magazine, Fall, 1987:

[Speaking of characters in comics who came from radio]: "Such linkages may have been strongest in the case of Isabel Manning Hewson. As the writer/producer/narrator of Land of the Lost (aired by ABC beginning in 1944) and the scripter of EC's Land of the Lost comic book (illustrated by Olive Bailey), she maintained a consistency of characters and stories in both, duplicating the storylines. She also received credit for the story in the 1948 Land of the Lost animated short. The control Hewson exercised over Land of the Lost enabled her to actually become a fantasy fiction character: she wrote herself (as a little girl) into both the comic book and radio storylines. Each week Isabel and her friend Billy traveled underwater with a glowing red fish named Red Lantern, tour guide to all "of-fish-ally-lost" objects beneath the waves. Today, Red Lantern has himself become "of-fish-ally-lost" and forgotten, even though the radio actor who brought him to life was Art Carney."

You can visit Bhob's fantastic blog, Potrzebie.

You can see the Famous Studios cartoon, "The Land of the Lost" on YouTube here.

I've shown the stories from Land of the Lost #1 in Pappy's #706, Pappy's #859, and Pappy's #944.

This is the first story from EC Comics' Land of the Lost Comics #2, 1946:












**********

I got an e-mail the other day:

Hello,

I've just finished a music video for the Berlin-based band "Rats live on no evil star"

This is an animated video made out of image from old comics collected on internet.

Because some of these images come from your blog i thought i would share the result with you.

You can see the vidéo here :

http://vimeo.com/18264751

don't hesitate to let me know what you think of it, or even post it or share it.

Have a really pleasant day :)

Keep up the good work with the blog

Corentin Kopp

WEB: www.lallali.com

Thanks, Corentin; great work and I'm fascinated by how this looks.

Here's the video:

Rats live on no evil star - Tree in the Green from lallali on Vimeo.

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Review: Secret Six: Cats in the Cradle trade paperback (DC Comics)

The Secret Six is back to wonderful mayhem with writer Gail Simone's Secret Six: Cats in the Cradle. I continue to believe, unfortunately, that the title is not as strong as at the beginning of the series, but Cats in the Cradle is a marked improvement over the last volume, Danse Macabre. Still, Cats has some moments that are as taut as anything we've seen so far in Secret Six, both shockingly violent and startlingly non-violent, and fans will be riveted nonetheless.

[Contains spoilers]

When the Secret Six is routinely hip-deep in blood, it's hard to keep track of whose killing the most. While it would be hard to characterize Catman Thomas Blake as the team's conscience, however, we can recognize that Blake's misgivings -- if not about killing, than at least about what killing does to him as a person -- have been present from the beginning. In Secret Six: Unhinged, Blake worries to Sixer Deadshot that he's "lost the horizon" -- that Blake no longer knows if the bad things he does are evil, or if his sensibilities have just changed so far that he simply has a different perspective than regular people on his actions that might be perceived as evil.

Simone doesn't give Blake resolution on this question so swiftly. Indeed as recently as Danse Macabre Blake is schooling a bereaved father on the finer points of torturing a criminal, though Blake does pause later to wonder what effect the situation had on young Black Alice, bearing witness. But at the beginning of the second chapter of Cats, Blake tenuous hold on morality seems to disappear in an instant, over a few brief pages that draw the reader closer and closer into Blake's feral green eyes. I worried in Danse that the Six had lost their backstabbing aesthetic, but it's back in force as Blake seriously contemplates killing his teammates in exchange for the life of his kidnapped son. The moment is electrifying -- classic Secret Six.

We learn later that Blake's new madness is not so sudden or unprecedented as it might previously have seemed. In flashback, Simone shows that Blake is the child of an abusive father, who goaded Blake into killing his mother before Blake also later killed his father. (The similarities to Green Arrow's revised origins in Green Arrow: Into the Woods, especially as relates to lions and safaris, are interesting.) Despite that Blake's child came from his being manipulated by the villain Cheshire, who's later betrayed Blake and the Six more than once, Blake's anguish over his own parents is enough to set him on a vengeful path when his son is endangered. Blake does not ultimately attack the Six, but he leaves a trail of carnage as he attacks his son's kidnappers; even Deadshot notes that Blake's torture of one criminal is "&^%$ed up" even by Deadshot's standards.

The kidnapper turns out to be a Mr. MacQuarrie, a self-styled "hero" with no superheroic powers other than to be very, very rich -- kidnapping Blake's son turns out not to be for vengeance on Blake, but on Cheshire for murdering his family when she blew up Qurac. "I am a new kind of hero," MacQuarrie tells Blake. "I right wrongs. My family is dead, yet yours lives. Is that fair? Forget good and evil, I ask you, is it right?" MacQuarrie suggests that Blake tell Cheshire their son died even though he lived, and with some hesitation Blake complies.

Through MacQuarrie, Simone presents the epitome of what Blake has feared to become -- someone without morals, only their instinctual sense of right and wrong; strangely, it seems what Catman fears to become is entirely animalistic. In carrying out MacQuarrie's vengeance against Cheshire -- irrespective of, or perhaps especially because Blake kills MacQuarrie right after -- Blake's transformation in this way is complete. The "rest in peace" that Blake speaks at the end of the "Cats in the Cradle" storyline, seemingly directed at his son, could as much be his own soul or conscience. It will be interesting to see, in the next book, how losing Blake's more level perspective may then affect the Six as a whole.

All of this contains the elements I've grown to love in Secret Six stories -- moral ambiguity, mystery villains, and the team divided against itself. Cats is mostly Thomas Blake's story, but Simone provides a wonderful moment where Scandal Savage leaves the team to find Blake and her self-appointed guardian Bane forbids it -- we have wondered all along when Scandal and Bane's relationship would reach a crisis point, believing it would happen with much bloodshed, and instead they part ways with silence and a kiss on the cheek. Here, Simone reminds us that the Six don't fight for what we think they should, they fight for what they think they should, and could as often as not solve their difficulties without bloodshed when necessary. This works all the more to make the Six characters seem, like Paul Cornell wrote in his introduction to Unhinged, like real people, bound to act in unexpected ways.

I am not entirely sold on Cats, I would mention. The characters are as lively and humorous as ever, but while the story focuses mostly on Blake, the B-plot has Black Alice picking a childish fight with Scandal over petty perceived slights. "This ain't," as Deadshot delicately puts it, "showers after gym class," and Alice's tantrum indeed comes off as a tantrum, something I don't think the Six would tolerate letting alone that I as the reader don't care much about it. Every character here has a personal tragedy, but that Black Alice tried to cure her father's asthma and gave him cancer (something one imagines Zatanna could fix pretty quick) pales in comparison to Jeanette's epic description of her own decapitation in Secret Six: Depths. Simone and Secret Six are funny, but bits like "the Demon Estrogen" were groaners; there just wasn't a lot to Cats outside Catman.

Following "Cats in the Cradle" are two single issues, the first written by John Ostrander of Suicide Squad fame. Ostrander has certainly earned his reputation time and again on Squad, Spectre, and more, but "Predators" here has similar problems to Ostrander's guest-written stories on Danse Macabre. It's nice to read a Secret Six story away from "Cats"'s drama, where the team battles a common enemy, but the plot is far too generic. The characters involved could have been the Secret Six, or the Suicide Squad, or the Titans for Hire or the Teen Titans. Jeannette is super-strong, Scandal flips around, and so on -- the story really fails to illuminate the Six in any sort of specific way. Glad to see Ostrander's name here, but "Predators" seems a slow point after the events of "Cats."

Cats in the Cradle ends with a great, bizarre single issue by Simone that posits the Six as characters in the Old West; the drifter Deadshot comes to town and helps Scandal and her deputy Bane fight a villain resembling Junior and her henchman Slade "Deathstroke" Wilson. Aside from a frame that suggests the story is a mere Punch and Judy puppet show fantasy, and words of ally Thomas Blake in the end, there's overt explanation given for why we're visiting the Six in the past. It doesn't matter -- the Six as gunslingers is a load of fun, and I'd just as soon see them as World War II spies and 1920s mobsters next.

Blake utters, as Junior kills him in the end, "Thought we might be heroes," and Junior replies, "Not in this lifetime." The implications are fascinating -- are there numerous time-separated instances of the Six, like there are the Suicide Squad and Shadowpact? Does Simone mean to suggest iterations of the Six have tried to be heroes time and again, and that maybe our group will finally succeed -- or that every Six is doomed to fail? I am just as eager to see this book's next volume take up the plight of the Old West Six as I am to see it never mentioned again -- a strange aberration interpreted for better or worse depending on how the Six is doing that day.

And one other thought: I have not liked Secret Six as much, these past few volumes, as I did when the book started. The Old West tale, "Unforgivable," is essentially a re-telling of my favorite Secret Six trade, Unhinged. Does the use of Junior, Aaron and Tig, and others suggest a return to that best era of Secret Six post-Cats in the Cradle? I don't know, but this book has done it again -- I'm done with one volume and immediately eager for the next.

[Contains full covers]

More reviews on the way. Thanks for reading!

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Number 1024


Cowgirls, lasso me for romance!


I've told you before about my love for cowgirls...buckskin, short skirts, tall boots and a Stetson. I like to see cowgirls riding frontwards, side-saddle, and even reverse. I told you of the origin of my particular cowgirl thing in Pappy's #667 in 2010, and you can read about it.

Today we fulfill some personal wish-dreams with a Western love story from Cowgirl Romances #4, a Fiction House comic from 1951. As a bonus I'm including a story about a rootin', tootin', straight-shootin' buckaroo-gal (or would that be a buckarette?), Two-Gun Lil, from Crack Western #72, also from 1951.

Saddle up, cowgal, and meet me by the big rock on the mesa. We'll sit by the campfire under the moon and stars, listen to the coyotes wail. I'll pull out my fiddle and we can fiddle around 'til we drop from exhaustion. Now that's a cowgirl romance!

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