Category: Comic books

I mentioned recently that I’ve been reading a comic book called GODLAND, written by Joe Casey and drawn by Tom Scioli. The book is drawn in the classic Jack Kirby style, and written in the cosmic adventure genre done so well by guys like Kirby, Steve Englehart, and Jim Starlin. Some GODLAND fans have even created a site devoted to the comic at godlandonline.com.

One of the hip features of the fan site is a regular column by writer Joe Casey called The Genre, in which he explores the world of classic “cosmic comics.” In the first edition, Casey paid homage to Steve Englehart’s “Celestial Madonna” storyline, which ran in The Avengers from 1974-75.

It’s very, very hard to write a simple synopsis of the storyline, mostly because I’m not in possession of whatever mind-altering substances Mr. Englehart was using back in the day. Suffice it to say that the story begins with the appearance of a mystical star glowing above Avengers Mansion, and ends with the character Mantis marrying a tree. Yup — a tree. (Insert sound of bong hit here.)

On Mr. Casey’s recommendation, I asked Andy at Comics Etc. to order the Celestial Madonna trade paperback collection for me. I finished it this morning. Yoikes! This thing was written back in the day when comic book dialgue made George Lucas sound like David Mamet. As Carrie Fisher said of George’s scripts: “You can write that stuff, but you can’t say it.” The Celestial Madonna collection takes that adage even further — you can barely read some of this stuff, let alone say it out loud. That is not an indictment, particularly if you grew up reading comics in the 70’s, as I did. Sure, things have come a long way, but it’s still cool as heck to sink deep into the pages (and pages and pages and pages and pages…) of ridiculous narration and even more ridiculous dialogue.

I was never a big Avengers fan, although I did collect West Coast Avengers for a while in the 80’s. The version of the Avengers featured in Celestial Madonna includes Thor, Iron Man, The Vision, Scarlet Witch, Mantis, and the Swordsman, along with appearances by Hawkeye, Nomad (the former — and future — Captain America) … and every villain Marvel could dig up and dust off. The main heavy is Kang The Conqueror, and that means that our heroes will be traveling through time. They do, visiting the past and the future, and even making a pit-stop in Limbo (!) to fight the likes of Frankenstein’s Monster and WWII-era villain Baron Zemo.

If your head is already spinning just from reading this, imagine how reading all 224 pages must feel!

It was worth it, though. I’m really getting into the whole cosmic adventure thing, and it’s fun to bone up on my cosmic history while enjoying modern treasures such as GODLAND and the equally brilliant Fear Agent, written by Rick Remender and drawn by Tony Moore.

As a teaser, I’ll tell you that I have my own GODLAND project planned, and that it won’t be in the form of a comic book. Stay tuned, true believer…

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After living in Japan for several years, you’d thing I would have a fair amount of experience reading manga, Japan’s wildly popular comic books. You’d be wrong. For some reason, I never really got into manga when I lived there, even though they’re a fairly useful way to learn Japanese. Part of the problem for me was the content, and in particular the offensive portrayal of women in many manga, but that’s not a reason to have missed out on the whole genre.

As it happens, manga are also becoming wildly popular in the English-speaking world. I recently read a review of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim manga on somebody’s blog. I wish I could remember where, so I could give the blogger credit. In any case, this person gave a huge recommendation to the Pilgrim books, so I had my local comics shop order them for me. They came yesterday, and I read them both last night.

Manga are smaller in height and width than regular comic books, but they’re several times longer. Every manga I’ve ever seen has been in black and white, as are the Scott Pilgrim books. Thus far, Bryan has written two books: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

THIS PARAGRAPH CONTAINS VERY MINOR SPOILERS: The premise is a combination of the mundane and the fantastic. Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old bassist in a crappy Toronto rock band. He’s dating a high school student named Knives Chau. And he’s having strange dreams about a roller-blading woman with exotic hair. Things turn weird when he actually sees this woman in the real world. Turns out she’s Ramona Flowers, the only delivery worker in Toronto for amazon.ca. She’s been traveling through Scott’s dreams as she delivers packages. They end up dating. But before they can live happily ever after, Scott must fight Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends. And Ramona must defend herself from the jilted Knives Chau. Hilarity ensues.

Like any description of a visual work, the preceeding paragraph pales in comparison to the real thing. You really need to see and read Scott Pilgrim for yourself. You can visit the Web site to learn more, or you can cut to the chase and order the books from the Oni Press site. And of course, if you’re in Rochester, you can stop by Comics, Etc. at 274 N. Goodman St. in Village Gate and ask Andy to order them for you.

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