Department H

This summer’s been kind of a wild ride for us, with ups and downs. We certainly haven’t stopped reading and keeping up with things. Two things this week that I can’t let pass without commenting on.

The first bit is just a light bit of squee. The fine people behind the Department-loved Atomic Robo have announced a follow up to the fantastic Robo limited statue they made last year- the one I own I love dearly- featuring the epically insane character Dr. Dinosaur. Here’s the unpainted prototype:

I cannot begin to express the joy I feel that he’s wearing the cooler. If you missed out on the Robo statue, you’re also in luck; they’ll be doing another run of that as well. Available first quarter, 2011.

Second, a moment to issue a congratulations to Matt Fraction for winning the 2010 PEN USA Literary Award for Graphic Literature for ‘his outstanding body of work.’ This is the first year they’re offering an award in this category, so it’s an extra special honor for him. It’s always nice to see the form recognized like this in new corners, and I can’t help but think it marks a similar point in his career as it did when Neil Gaiman won the World Fantasy Award in 1991. Cheers, Matt. Even Rex Mantooth elevates us all.

Howdy all. Apologies for the long silence, but there’s been some medical mayhem around the Department. We hope to have things running again here shortly, but until then I’ll make a bunch of noise from behind the curtain and trigger the smoke machine…

Artist and friend of Department H Steven Sanders let us know this morning that he’s working on a new book, Deadpool Team-Up #889, due out in September. Jeff Parker will be writing and Humberto Ramos has done the cover that I’ve helpfully included below. We’re not regular fans of Deadpool here, but the stars always seem to align to present a Deadpool book we don’t mind reading when people we dig are working on it. In this specific case, Gorilla Man. I mean, really who doesn’t need that. Sold!

It’s Free Comic Book Day, and that means plenty of books to pick up at your local store– a new Atomic Robo and Friends from Red 5, Top Shelf’s latest FCBD Owly, Fraction and JRJR’s Iron Man and Thor, and the Archaia Fraggle Rock/ Mouse Guard double issue, among others. (If you’re in LA, Red Fraggle will be helping the Meltdown Comics staff with their FCBD celebration at 11am, 7522 Sunset Boulevard.)

If you’re going, though, remember– your local has to pay shipping to get those comics they’re giving away. Why not buy a little something while you’re there to help them make rent? I recommend Justin Theroux and Joe Casey’s Iron Man 2: Public Identity #1, the first half of a prequel to next week’s Iron Man 2; that way, you’ll be gearing up for your Friday midnight nerdgasm and helping support local business.

Image Comics and kid-friendly Image label Silverline have prepared a small FCBD sampler of their July 14th hardcover GN release, Fractured Fables… and, well, on release day, we’ll have a special surprise here at the Department for any fans of the fractured fairy-tale genre. For now, though, we’ll just hint that it involves Peter David of X-Factor and Hulk fame, and his involvement in the project.

Speaking of PAD, we got to sit and talk with him over at Golden Apple Comics last month (thanks, Ryan!), and I’ve just now gotten the time to condense the over 70 minutes of transcribed audio (!) into a few tidbits for you guys. With no further ado, here’s an assemblage of the wit and wisdom of Peter David:

On working with Claudio Sanchez of prog-rock band Coheed and Cambria on the new Coheed and Cambria novel, Year Of the Black Rainbow:

“The band’s worldbuilding is unbelievably complicated. Fallen Angel is a cakewalk to follow compared to the plethora of ideas that Claudio has for his masterpiece. It’s an amazing concept that he’s come up with…

“The novel was written over a period of six months, if I’m recalling correctly. Claudio and I worked together on it, developing the entire structure of the book, and what I was really pleased to see was that Claudio had absolutely no ego when it came to this stuff. All he was concerned about were the ideas. If there where things where I said this doesn’t work, then he accepted it. If it was something that had to work because it was already in the song, then it was my job to make it work. But anything that could be changed that I felt needed to be changed, Claudio was completely on board with it. All he cared about was making the work itself as good as it possibly could be.”

On Jim Cameron’s Avatar:

“Well, I thought the story for Avatar was good… when it was called Dances With Wolves. And I thought it was kind of okay, but not great, when I saw it as Pocahontas. I thought it was wonderful when I read it as a kid and it was called John Carter of Mars. In fact, if he’d been doing a John Carter of Mars film, I wouldn’t have taken issue with it.

“The problem with Avatar is not only that the story is overly familiar, but Cameron’s presentation of it was fatally flawed. You’ve got your protagonist essentially in someone else’s body, which means there’s no jeopardy to your actual protagonist. If his avatar winds up being killed, nothing happens to him. It means his mission is a failure, granted, but he’s going to be OK. He himself doesn’t face any real jeopardy until the very end of the film.

“For me, that’s problematic, and I don’t understand why he did it that way and why it couldn’t have been something as simple as, ‘What happens if my avatar dies?” “Yeah, well there’s a problem with that. If your avatar dies there will be a psychic feedback that will essentially turn you into a vegetable.’ So now he’s got an interesting conundrum, because you’ve got a guy who can’t walk and he has the opportunity to be in a being who can walk, but he’s taking a risk because he could wind up being even worse off than he is because he could wind up a vegetable. Then you’ve got an interesting decision and you’ve got sufficient jeopardy to make the character’s fate of interest to me.

“But what you had essentially was spending two and three quarter hours watching a guy playing a video game. I’m not that interested. It’s like watching TRON, except he doesn’t get pulled into the computer. Who wants to watch that? Who gives a crap?”

On the iPad:

“I think it does present incredible potential for comic books. The colors, from what I understand, are unbelievably vibrant. The disadvantage to it is, if I take this and [violently slams a TPB down on the counter several times] …looks OK to me! Do that with an iPad, and you’ve got a bit of a problem. I think that it would be really nifty if they came up with a way to be unbreakable.”

On digital comics and electronic publishing:

“I haven’t tried any of the digital comics platforms. I like physical comic books; I’m old fashioned. I mean, go sign your frickin’ iPad, why don’t you. I was actually at a convention and somebody was in the audience and we were doing a panel and they were talking about, ‘Ohh, books are dead, books are dead, the Kindle is everything. I have a Kindle, it’s terrific.’ And I said, ‘Are you planning to get autographs later?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’

“And I said, ‘What are you getting them signed on?’ And he went, ‘Books.’ And I said ‘Uh-huh…’ And he went ‘…ohhhh.’ He hadn’t thought about it.

“But with that said, from an ecological point of view, trees are… the concept of being able to get material out there that doesn’t require us to knock down trees for paper or drill oil in order to print… There’s something to be said for the eco-friendly aspects of electronic books and electronic comics. To say nothing of the fact that most of the cost of comic books comes from the physical production, which means that digital comics can be acquired for a fraction of the money.

“On the other hand, it could be the death knell for places like [Golden Apple]. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. People always tend to look at the most extreme aspects of things and say it’s the death knell for something else. When movies first started up, people said that’s the end of theater. When recorded music first became available, people said that’s the end of concerts. So now we have electronic books, and people say that’s the end of paper books. I don’t agree.”

On letting Aquaman win in the infamous Namor vs. Aquaman battle in Marvel vs. DC #2, March 1996:

“If I’m writing Aquaman vs. Sub-Mariner, I’m having Aquaman win, because I’m writing Aquaman! A lot of fans bitched about it, but you know what? Suck it. I was writing Aquaman, he wins.”

A few years ago, while killing time waiting for our laundry to finish at our favorite local laundrocoffeeshop, Janice was idly perusing the LA Weekly and, for reasons lost to time, wound up sifting through the dense section of ads for live music coming up. Los Angeles is a hotbed of new and aspiring bands of all shapes and sizes, but what stuck out the most was some of the names people had chosen for their bands.

Now, I’m almost positive that just about anyone our age has played the ‘that’s totally a band name, dude’ game with friends. Certain combinations of words just reach out and grab that part of the brain that desires jingles for fast food and catchy slogans. It was amusing to discover that not only do a lot of people play this game, some people actually make good on the idle threat of, “I’m totally naming my electronica ska-thrash band Doggie Butt Covers.”

Her favorite name in the first round was a band called I’ve Been Shot, and thus that became the name of the random feature where we’d post especially worthy real band names for our friends. Now that we have an actual, branded space of our own, I thought it deserved a resurrection. To kick things off, lets have a list of classics, the best of the best from a few years back when we did this the first time. So without further ado, I’ve Been Shot!

• Into the Moat
• Nodes of Ranvier (huh?)
• Oblidge (mis-spelling is a common theme)
• Pit Bull Daycare
• Mohrlock
• Nightmare of the Elf
• Tuna Helpers
• Vaginal Davis (performing with Tuna Helpers, appropriately enough)
• We Are the Double Crossed
• Pillow of Wrongness
• Captain Smackdown
• Johnny Satanseed (“They fight crime!”)
• Zeitgeist Auto Parts
• Lord Have Mercy on Us
• The Bruce Lee Band
• The Skashank Redemption (bad ska puns! catch them all!)
• Chewy Puma
• Bang Bang Bunny
• Where’s Moo
• Les Georges Leningrad
• Beer Thieves of America
• Slight Tear in the Fabric of Spacetime
• The Nip Drivers
• Very Be Careful (yeah, exactly like that)
• Magnolia Thunderpussy
• Felonious Punk
• The Shitizens
• Mercilles Death (that’s nearly a baby name)
• Hot Sauce Johnson
• Pol Pot & the Khmer Rouge Revue
• The Barnyard Ballers
• My Barbarian
• Jesus Makes the Shotgun Sound
• Explogasm
• Jedi Mind Tricks (all too easy)
• The Speechwriters LLC (bonus points for the limited-liability bit)
• Books on Tape
• Telephone Jim Jesus
• Big Organ Trio
• The Phenomenauts
• Facehumper (oh, wow)
• The Formaldebrides (performing with…)
• The Deadutantes (and the Zombillys! what a deal!)
• The Aggro Puppet Show
• Goast (not death metal, oddly)
• Mötochrist (now mit umlaut!)
• No Sex Just Dancing
• The Salty Scrogs
• B.B. Chung King and the Buddaheads
• These Arms Are Snakes
• This Song Is a Mess But So Am I
• Dudes de los Muertos
• A Billion Ernies
• Have Another Monkey
• Fez Armada
• The Bolides (bonus points: geekery)
• Chupacobra

And I can’t think a of a better way to end this list than with this gem:

• The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza

That’s the past, next week: The now!

“No Time to Breathe, Part 5″

Writer: Kieron Gillen
Penciller: Steven Sanders
Inker: Craig Yeung
Colorist: Matt Wilson
Letterer: Dave Lanphear

Alas, it’s true– S.W.O.R.D. has come to its end. Fortunately for us, it’s the end Kieron Gillen intended for this arc all along, with nothing altered from the original plot. The Drenx invasion comes to a head, the internal politics of S.W.O.R.D. boil over, and there’s muffins– which, really, is all stuff you should expect if you’ve been keeping up with the series.

It’s hard not to think of what could have been, going through the wrap-up of the individual plots in this issue. Sure, Matt Fraction’s busy bringing back Kitty Pryde in Uncanny X-Men, but I’ll forever savor the notion that she could and would have had harsh words for UNIT’s fascist Utopianism during her reunion with Lockheed. Hepzibah is shown escaping the Peak’s brig… would that have brought Rachel Grey and the Starjammers to town for an uneasy meetup with Hank? Magneto’s recent machinations on the former Asteroid M might have returned him to near-Earth orbit, which would’ve put him in direct opposition to Agent Brand, someone every bit as obstreperous as Erik himself. The image of Brand and Magneto sitting in their respective offices, scowling at each other from antipodal Lagrange points, would’ve been worth the time it took to get there all by itself.

All of these things might have happened if the series had been given a chance to play out its overarching plot. In five issues, though, S.W.OR.D. delivers a complete and satisfying package. Not a plot point is left hanging as the remaining free members of the team set forth to stop the Drenx, contain Henry Peter Gyrich, and overturn the last vestiges of the orbital Dark Reign. Gillen knows how to deliver action at this pace, and Sanders’ artwork is easily the most assured he’s ever been on this series– check out Death’s Head on page 2, neatly framed by the geometry of the scene itself, all angular, implacable menace.

Unlike Gillen and co-conspirator Jamie McKelvie’s Phonogram, which wrapped up its own run last month with an issue about the universal accessibility of the series’ magical paradigm, S.W.O.R.D. ends squarely where it began, with the focus on Beast and Brand. It’s right for this book; the emphasis on an adult adventuring couple remains the series’ biggest draw. It’s a shame more wasn’t done to play up the quirky romantic charm of the series when Marvel did the marketing, as I think it would have attracted more lifelong comics fans in long-term partnerships themselves.

As it stands, though, the chronicles of the crew at the Peak are over, and if you want to get in on the action, I recommend you grab the TPB, No Time to Breathe,and check it out. If you were among the S.W.O.R.D. faithful all along, I can also recommend Gillen’s Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter,a more-cosmic Marvel story that still bears his signature dry wit and high-stakes action.

It’s a sad day for comics, though. Now all I’ve got to sustain me is the faint hope that either the undisclosed Brian Clevinger project, or the new undisclosed Brian Clevinger project hinted at a few days ago, turns out to be a Starjammers book. After all, Hepzibah is on the loose again…

Whew! Last week was a complete attack of post-production hell here at the Department, with unexpected day job work completely swamping Janice and I. The emergencies have passed- these things are always and emergency, you see- and we’re gearing up to pick up the slack here.

Last weekend we checked out the Long Beach Comic Expo, which was a nifty (if small) dealer-centric show. We caught up with our friends from Golden Apple Comics, scored a pile of cheap trades, and I nabbed a sweet Hellblazer cover print from Tim Bradstreet. Then we caught the second night of Paul & Storm and Jonathan Coulton at Largo at the Coronet Theater, which had bonus appearances by Chris Hardwick and Wil Wheaton. More on that in another post.

This weekend was mostly the work avalanche, but I did have a chance to get out Friday night and have a food adventure with my friend Dave, a food blogger both in his own right and also for the OC Weekly. I’ve been meaning to pimp his work here, even though it’s unrelated to what we do, because he’s a cool guy and has really changed the way I think about food in the last 6 years.

Anyway! That’s where we’ve been. Coming this week, the post I mentioned above plus clearing out some comics reviews before Wednesday. And then more comics! And more reviews!

“Bernard’s First Day”

Writer: Brian Clevinger
Penciler: Scott Wegener
Colorist: Ronda Pattison
Letterer: Jeff Powell

Atomic Robo’s back, regular as the sunrise. Revenge of the Vampire Dimension was originally titled Atomic Robo and Other Strangeness, and that title sums up the storytelling approach this time around. Instead of one interconnected plot arc, Team Robo’s opted to tell a four one-shot adventures featuring various plot points from Robo’s past.

Of course, the series’ big draw for the hardcore Robo fanbase isn’t necessarily issue 1, with the denizens of the Vampire Dimension returning to wreak havoc. Like Jeph Jacques’ Questionable Content and its fans’ adoration for foul-mouthed AnthroPC Pintsize, Atomic Robo has its own fan-favorite crazy bastard, Dr. Dinosaur. I’m guessing there are a lot of people who would love to see an entire Dr. D series, after his Free Comic Book Day appearance last year, but they’ll have to wait for issue 3 to temporarily sate their mammal hungers– this issue is squarely aimed at fans of Jenkins, Tesladyne’s resident badass, and his fellow Action Scientists.

Jenkins was the sole survivor of an ill-fated expedition to the Vampire Dimension, holding his own until Robo came to his rescue. That story, a backup in Atomic Robo & the Fightin’ Scientists of Tesladyne,was an incredibly tight, tensely imagined short that told readers everything they needed to know about Jenkins’ ability to kick ass and take names. It also hinted that the Vampire Dimension was a victim of its own success; Jenkins was arguably one of the last living beings in that world, if not the only one. Out of everything in Robo canon so far, it’s my favorite story– the economy of narrative Clevinger sets up makes me completely envious.

Revenge of the Vampire Dimension has that same sparing narrative approach– a lot of the groundwork has already been laid in the Jenkins origin, which frees Clevinger and Wegener up to commence Die Hard-esque mayhem all over the Tesladyne building. Jenkins spends a great deal of the B-plot posing before his terrified coworkers like a bloodsoaked Charles Atlas, which is consistent with previous portrayals; it’s never about Jenkins in the act of mayhem, it’s about his utter unflappability in any tense situation.

Early issues of Atomic Robo garnered a bunch of comparisons to Hellboy, both fair and unfair. Robo’s A-plot in Revenge of the Vampire Dimension is one of the strongest refutations of this theory yet. Where Hellboy, especially in recent plot arcs and BPRD issues, is defined by his absence from his friends and coworkers’ lives, Robo spends all of his time as CEO with his hands firmly on the Tesladyne operation. As Tesla’s greatest creation, tasked with upholding the great work of Action Science, he can’t do anything less.

Within the space of a hectic half-hour, Robo sizes up Bernard, motivates him to embrace his inner action hero, and successfully shepherds the FNG through a class-one corporate emergency. This is the kind of interpersonal and tactical awareness and sensitivity to others Hellboy’s never going to develop– especially after the events of The Wild Hunt– and this is where Atomic Robo firmly diverges from Mignola’s work. It’s the sort of dichotomy you see all the time on Lost. Robo is a man of science, while Hellboy is a man of (uncertain) faith, and the difference between them is substantial enough to make me content that Team Robo’s not just reinventing the Ogdru-Jahad wheel.

Highly recommended.

Brian Clevinger, the writer behind the outstanding Red 5 comic series Atomic Robo, let slip on twitter this afternoon that he was wrapping up work on his first script for a Marvel mini-series. No details yet on what it might be; Janice is, as I type this, probably looking for something to sacrifice to the Marvel gods that it’s more Nextwave, which I have to agree would be pretty awesome. Anyway, much congratulations to Brian, and a tip of the hat to Marvel’s recruiting team, who are, once again, right on the ball.

Have to take a second here to tell everybody about another new blog that a classmate from FSU Film just started; Donald A. Guarisco Presents Schlockmania!

I can’t think of anyone better qualified than Don to unify exploitation and cult cinema, Kiss and other examples of glam, prog, and any other related musical achievements, and the printed schlock word. If it wasn’t for him I probably wouldn’t have ever seen such classics as Dolomite, Petey Wheatstraw, and… some really awesomely awful zombie movie that I thought starred Michael Ironside but IMDb won’t confirm for me right now. Mr. Ironside might be ashamed, if it was him, but Mr. Guarisco sure isn’t. Go take an unflinching look behind the green door, and get me the head of Alfredo Garcia while you’re there.