A visual walk through some of my all-time favorite trades/graphic novels.

HICKSVILLE by Dylan Horrocks

IT’S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON’T WEAKEN by Seth

THE COMPLETE CONCRETE by Paul Chadwick

WATCHMEN by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

CASANOVA by Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba

X-MEN: THE DARK PHOENIX SAGA by John Byrne, Terry Austin and Chris Claremont

SCALPED VOL. 4: THE GRAVEL IN YOUR GUTS by Jason Aaron, R.M. Guera and pals

SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING, BOOK ONE by Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette and John Totleben

HATE, VOL. 3: FUN WITH BUDDY AND LISA by Peter Bagge

ANIMAL MAN by Grant Morrison, Chas Truog and Dog Hazlewood

MAUS by Art Spiegelman

STUCK RUBBER BABY by Howard Cruse

PUSSEY! by Daniel Clowes

NEXTWAVE: THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen

ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, VOL. 1 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

CAPOTE IN KANSAS by Ande Parks and Chris Samnee

BATMAN YEAR ONE by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli

JIMMY CORRIGAN: THE SMARTEST KID ON EARTH by Chris Ware

HOWARD CHAYKIN’S AMERICAN FLAGG! by Howard Chaykin

STORMWATCH: CHANGE OR DIE by Warren Ellis, Tom Raney and Oscar Jimenez

THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY: APOCALYPSE SUITE by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

FELL, VOLUME ONE by Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith

B.P.R.D.: THE BLACK FLAME by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi and Guy Davis

SCOTT PILGRIM: PRECIOUS LITTLE LIES by Bryan Lee O’Malley

THE DAMNED, VOLUME ONE by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt

SUPER SPY by Matt Kindt

STARMAN OMNIBUS, VOLUME ONE by James Robinson, Tony Harris and Wade Von Grawbadger

THE GOLDEN AGE by James Robinson, Paul Smith and Richard Ory

WHO’S LAUGHING NOW? (DORK, VOLUME ONE) by Evan Dorkin

JACK STAFF: EVERYTHING USED TO BE BLACK AND WHITE by Paul Grist

So, I was Googling words in an effort to name a new book I’m developing, and the tenth hit on Google was a link to Matt Fraction’s blog, which led me (circuitously) to his old Poplife column, from Comic Book Resources. Being easily distracted, I got caught up in Fraction’s circa 2002/2003 musings on comic book activism, and felt a weird little flood of nostalgia. There was this really brief time, when I was first working my way into comics, where I seemed to know a lot of people who were awfully concerned with the future of comics. It’s only been a little over six years since then, but in a lot of ways it feels like an eternity. If I only knew then…

Anyway, one of Fraction’s columns (from 12/02) referenced the first time I remember meeting him, in Hector Casanova’s then current studio/gallery/living space (The Green Door). Matt writes:

Peter, Kel, Xtop and myself managed to get together in a room with about 19 other young comics hopefuls in Kansas City this past weekend. It was really kind of fascinating. Steven Sanders brought his vintage Geiger counter. Hector let me look on his drawing table and I felt butterflies in my bones. B. Clay Moore showed up with a first look at his new book HAWAIIAN DICK, and it looks fantastic even if it printed too dark and too green (according to him). Hector and a guy named John Parker made it happen. There were two factions in the same place at the same time, the Art Institute kids like myself that were more into the gonzo, gung ho creation angle of things, the Art For Art’s Sake kinds, and the other half of the room were all, at first blush anyway, steel-eyed young professionals constructing elaborate cross-network opportunities and so forth. They were, on top of being creators, the organizers of expos and the senders-out of press releases. I had the feeling that if both halves of the room came together, everyone would walk out a whole lot smarter.

The meeting, as I recall, was partly in the service of bringing together factions of the then emerging Kansas City comic scene to help put together a comic art show (which we actually did). I also recall Fraction wore a Santa Claus hat the whole time. In retrospect, I never considered myself a “steel-eyed young professional,” and at the time saw HAWAIIAN DICK as a small blow for art as commerce (at the time, okay? At the time).  Of course, more and more I find I’m starving myself in an insane effort to straddle the fence between commerce and creation, and Matt has obviously moved (for now) squarely into the crosshairs of commercial creation, albeit only after crafting CASANOVA, which is perhaps the ultimate example of genre-as-art.

The late, lamented Green Door

Fraction’s left Kansas City (on the heels of Tony Moore and Harold Sipe), and I’ve lost touch with a lot of the gang I used to raise a fist for comics with, but it’s probably a good idea to jog the memory of those days when the simple idea of Making Comics was new and exciting.

Now I need to get back to — you know – actually making comics.

Fall has dropped on Kansas City on schedule. Cool weather, windy nights. I love me some October.

Have a whole big mess of fifties horror courtesy the twisted minds Professor Wertham tried to warn us about so long ago.

I haven’t done much music reviewing or commenting for a while, but I wanted to give a nod to the latest disc by one of my all-time favorite bands, Madness.

Madness, you say? The eighties pop/ska outfit with one American hit (the rather massive “Our House”) to their name?

Yes, that’s what I say.

When I was a kid Madness videos on MTV were a treasure that popped up rarely between Madonna hits. Hell, until “Our House,” you couldn’t even buy Madness discs in the U.S. But I was immediately taken with the group’s mugging lead singer, Suggs, whom I was pretty sure was the coolest motherfucker on the planet, followed by the group’s jack-of-all trades stage dancer/songwriter/trumpet player/occasional lead vocalist, Chas Smash (Carl Smyth). A glimpse of the seven man band doing their Madness walk in unison, or of Chas skanking in his shades and rudeboy hat, or of Lee Thompson hunched over his sax blasting away, was enough to transport me to grimy Olde England.

The first great blast of Madness, from 1979.

Relatively huge in Britain during the early 80s, Madness were the off the wall, poppier counterpoint to the Specials, and released a handful of terrific albums and a long run of great singles during their heyday, before they gradually faded away following the departure of a key member (keyboardist Mike Barson). While the Specials said what they had to say without changing their sound (much), and then disappeared, Madness took their initial burst of “nutty” ska (demonstrated best on the absolutely classic “One Step Beyond…” disc) and retooled it in a more pop-friendly direction. They never stopped paying tribute to their roots, and the horns were always near the surface, but more and more Barson’s piano-driven melodies danced to the forefront.

After said string of great albums (One Step Beyond…, Absolutely, 7, and The Rise and Fall), Madness started to slip into the trap just about everyone in the eighties fell victim to, with the slightly overproduced, rather compressed sounding Keep Moving LP, and despite a couple of tasty numbers contained therein (notably “Wings of a Dove” and the evocative “Michael Caine,” sung by Chas), the album didn’t really work. At that point Barson split, leaving the band to struggle on without him for a couple of albums, which, again, produced a few high points, but not much matching their classic period, and the group split up.

The House of Fun video, the band at their nuttiest.

1999’s “Drip Fed Fred,” featuring the great Ian Dury, one of Madness’s latter day highlights for me. 

Eventually, the lads got together again, starting with a series of annual “Madstock” concerts in 1992, culminating with the decent enough reunion LP, Wonderful in 1999. A few years later a covers disc (The Dangerman Sessions, Part One) showed up, and a couple of years after that a new single debuted. To my ears, virtually everything recorded after The Rise and Fall sounded attached to the era in which it was recorded, and as a result even the best stuff sounded a bit compromised.

So out of nowhere, the boys have come together with their original production team, some thirty years after their first release, for a new album. And it’s fantastic. The Liberty of Norton Folgate is something of a concept album, but it’s also the first thing they’ve done in decades that doesn’t sound like a slave to the times. It’s an update of their early eighties sound, but it doesn’t sound like a bunch of guys in their late forties and early fifties trying to cling to their youth. Instead it’s a mature pop record that reflects a sense of looking back while moving forward.  If anything, there’s a bit more brassy bounce than they’ve displayed since the early days. The horns are still there, as are Barson’s keyboards, and Suggs is still out front, lending a touch of melancholy to the songs that suits his age but fits the feel of the music as the band bounces through their London songscapes, ending with the extended title track.

Along the way there are several songs that prove almost as catchy as Madness in their prime, beginning with the addictive tribute to fellowship in London, ”We Are London” (which features a great uplifting chorus), and continuing through “Sugar and Spice” (the tale of married life together), “Forever Young” (in which Suggs urges the listener to not do what he has done, and to stay, well, forever young), and on down the line. Frankly, it’s hard to believe it’s been so long since Madness got together and recorded original material, because this is the sound of a veteran band, confident in their identity, not attempting to pander to the market.

To be honest, a Madness revival was the last thing I expected to see headed our way, but it’s welcome. I just wish the group was hitting the States in support of the disc. Judging from the evidence I’ve seen from recent shows, Madness still has energy to burn live, where they’re not afraid to dig into their old school bag of nutty tricks, led by Chas Smash’s booming call to arms from 1979: “HEY YOU! DON’T WATCH THAT! WATCH THIS!…” before covering the new stuff, which stands up proudly next to the old stuff.

Anyway, check it out if you’re so inclined. And here’s a video for one of the new tracks:

Image has announced that ‘76 #5 is out this Wednesday. For those who’ve either forgotten what went on in the first four issues, or who have yet to read them, here’s a link to the first four issues of each book’s co-feature. Free!:

JACKIE KARMA (by myself and Ed Tadem):

http://www.jackiekarma.blogspot.com/

COOL (by Seth Peck and Tigh Walker):

http://76cool.blogspot.com/

Hope you dig!

And I’ll be there! Windy City details can be found here:

http://www.windycitycomicon.com/

We’ll start out on Friday night with the preview party/informal signing at Challengers Comics in Chicago:

Make with the clicks for Pre-Party info!

I’ll also be participating in a panel called “Getting it Write” (get it?), along with Sean McKeever and Will Pfeiffer at 2:00 on Saturday.

Here’s what I’ll have copies of for sale (autographed! at a discount!), for those of you who can make it:

I’ll also try to have single issues of the third HAWAIIAN DICK series and ‘76. Should also have a few copies of the Boom! PULP TALES anthology that introduced BLUEJACKET (by myself, Seth Peck and Chris Samnee), and perhaps some of my DC odds and ends.

I’ll be heading up with Alex Grecian (PROOF), Kevin Mellon (GEARHEAD, THIRTEEN STEPS, HACK/SLASH, THE ATHEIST, COMIC BOOK TATTOO, THIS IS A SOUVENIR, and the upcoming CUPID and SUICIDE SISTERS) and Dennis Hopeless (GEARHEAD and the upcoming CUPID and STORM DAMAGE).

If you’re near Chicago on Saturday, please drop on by!

One of the things I’ve always gotten comments about with HAWAIIAN DICK are the little pieces of backmatter we’d occasionally use to help shine some light on Byrd’s world. For whatever reason, we left these out of the first trade (HAWAIIAN DICK: BYRD OF PARADISE), and then decided to skip them in the second collection, as well. So I thought I’d share them here, including a couple of pages we might well include in the next trade, from the third series.

Click on each image for a full-size view. All design work done by Steven Griffin. (Scans courtesy of guys illegally scanning the comics and distributing them via torrent sites)

From HAWAIIAN DICK #1:

From HAWAIIAN DICK #2:

From HAWAIIAN DICK #3:

From HAWAIIAN DICK: THE LAST RESORT #4:

From HAWAIIAN DICK (Vol. 2) #2:

The upcoming GREAT BIG HAWAIIAN DICK #1 will no doubt feature even more droppings from our dripping brains.

So, I’ve been reading through THE ESSENTIAL CAPTAIN AMERICA VOLUME 4, most of which is drawn by Sal Buscema, Marvel’s primary workhorse in the seventies. Sal looks pretty good in here when inked by Frank McLaughlin, and looks predictably terrible when inked by Vinnie Colletta. But there’s a fill-in issue drawn by Alan Weiss, and it seems pretty obvious that Weiss was drawing issue 164 at the same time Sal was working on issue 165. I thought I’d share this, just because it points to how dedicated Marvel was to getting books out on a monthly basis back in the day, even if it made for some rather strange continuity from issue-to-issue.

Because I love the sheer insanity of the plot, I’m gonna recap it here: In CAPTAIN AMERICA (AND THE FALCON) #164, Falc is turned into a werewolf by teenage street hustler/scientific genius Nightshade, who’s actually working for the Yellow Claw in a castle turned prison that sits on a hill somewhere in New York (got that?).

After Nightshade jumps off a cliff with her prisoners-turned-werewolves, WereFalcon tries to follow.

Cap battles Falcon, who returns to his human form, albeit virtually naked.

Somewhere along the way, Nick Fury shows up wearing a barbarian vest borrowed from Sonny Bono, and leads some SHIELD agents out of a helicopter in search of the Yellow Claw.

 So we end the issue with a naked Falcon, a fur-lined Nick Fury, and Nick Fury eager to tell Cap what the Yellow Claw’s up to.

The next issue seems designed to erase the previous issue’s weirdness out of readers’ brains, as CAPTAIN AMERICA (AND THE FALCON) #165 begins with Fury in his traditional blue SHIELD battlesuit, screaming at Cap to butt out of the situation, and the Falcon lying on the ground wearing his mask and much of his costume. There’s not even a search for the half-naked black chick or her legion of dead werewolves lying somewhere below the castle/prison. Just lots of angst and anger and exclamation points(!!), as we expect from seventies Marvel books. 

I’m left to assume that CAP 164 was built around a script Steve Englehart had lying around, with some loosely in continuity stuff tossed in to keep it relevant. Nightshade debuts and dies here (although she would be back), and the Yellow Claw makes a cursory appearance (although Alan Weiss drew a pretty cool Claw). I just have to wonder how under the gun they were not to nudge Weiss into knocking Nick Fury out of his fuzzy vest. I’m glad they didn’t.

Leaving in the morning for Rosemont for one more year. I don’t have a table this year, but I will be on a panel, and will be sitting at the CRIMESPREE table for a bit, with books to sell and sign, and conversation to be had.

I’m scheduled to sit at the Crimespree booth (Booth # 1433) on Friday before the Crimespree crime comics panel (see below), from two to three, and on Saturday from eleven until noon (along with Jason Aaron). Look for me there. Otherwise I’ll be hanging around here and there. No doubt sleeping under Tony Moore or Jason Latour’s table at some point or another.

Panel details:

Friday
3-4 p.m.

Crime Spree Magazine: Crime Comics Q&A
Bob Kane Room: D

Crime Spree Magazine and Wizard present an exclusive Q&A with several of comics most innovative and interesting crime writers Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets), Tim Broderick (Cash & Carry), B Clay Moore (Hawaiian Dick) and Jason Aaron (Scalped), and crime novelist Marcus Sakey (At the City’s Edge).

And the guest list is full of good friends and collaborators: J. Torres (with whom I first “broke in” to comics), Brian Hurtt (with whom I did one of my first ever signings), Mike Norton (whom I’ve known for about a decade now), Chris Samnee (Bluejacket collaborator), Tony Moore (whose kitchen was a favorite hangout in his KC days), Shane White (who handled a HAWAIIAN DICK backup and with whom I’m developing a dark new superhero one-shot), Steve Bryant (who’s working on a DICK backup as I type), Robbi Rodriguez (whom I discovered swaddled in rags in a cardboard KFC bucket on the Tex-Mex border when he was just a baby), Tim Seeley, Cullen Bunn, Chris Burnham, Chris Mitten, Andy Kuhn, Matt Kindt,  Hilary Barta, the legendary Pat Loika…the list goes on.

J. Torres

Tony Moore

Cullen Bunn

Brian Hurtt

Thanks to Chris Neseman and the Around Comics crew for working hard to get us to the show. As of now, it looks like we’ll be making a stop in St. Louis on the way, and then arrive in Chicago for a Friday signing. But more on that later…

Tim Seeley

Mike Norton