The Spacegirl and the Scarlet Sparrow

Decorah, with sudden burst of sun ©Michael Chevy Castranova 2016

 The day after attending a wedding last weekend in Decorah, in northeast Iowa — a town known internationally for the drama of its internet-cam eagles — I happened upon Dragonfly, a small bookstore downtown. On display inside were the three volumes of the “Zita the Spacegirl” graphic novel series.

These adventures, written and drawn by Ben Hatke from 2010 to 2014, mix a little Star Wars, some Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, more than a dash of Alice in Wonderland and sizable doses of charm and whimsy. Lots of running, lucky narrow escapes and myriad weird-looking creatures and robots.

The protagonist is a feisty young girl who looks a lot like a 21st-century version of Ed Vedier’s “Little Annie Rooney” newspaper strip and acts with the verve of plucky young adventuress throughout time.

It’s a fun story of Zita as she grows into her hero status over the course the tale. But the drawing itself is what I really lured me — deceptively simple, the characters move easily, and their emotions quick to decipher.

And there’s a great pun when hearts attack a planet, in book two, “Legends of Zita theSpacegirl.”

You should take a look.

Which brings us to another plucky adventurer, though in her early 20s I’d be reluctant to call her still a girl. Tyler appears to have seen off the Chancellor — again — but now she has to fulfill her part of the bargain she made with Dargelos.

That will entail heading directly into Rongeur-occupied Europe, in 1927. It’s an altered history — again — and one in which her enemy knows her well and likely has the table set — ahem — for her coming.

Check out the adventure of “Slipped” at slippedcomic.blogspot.com.

Come on, it’ll be fun.

© Michael Chevy Castranova 2016

Shadows and inspirations

© Michael Chevy Castranova 2016

-->I’m now at the part in “Everybody Behaves Badly,” Lesley M.M. Blume’s book about the writing of “The Sunday Also Rises,” in which she details how much Hemingway altered his fictional characters from their real counterparts. In some cases, not very much at all, and not very politely.

I’m clearly going to have to read the novel again. (That would make it the seventh or eighth time — I’ve lost count over the years.)

But I’ve long been fascinated about using real people as models for fictional characters. Writers and cartoonists often adapt the looks and sometimes aspects of the personalities of movie and sports celebrities — alive or dead — and of friends and enemies.

And sometimes they borrow both the looks and the personalities. Are these people ever flattered by the attention?

Hemingway revealed very little to his friends about how he’d taken their looks and lives and remarks and reshaped them into his version of events. Probably because they wouldn’t have liked the unkind way he portrayed them.

They had to read the book for themselves.

Have I done that in “Slipped”? Well, in the eight-plus years I’ve definitely modeled some characters real people.

For one, Dargelos is meant to look like — in a very cartoony way, of course — Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni. He died in 1996, and I’m sure he was in no way demonic. But I figured if the devil — or something like the devil — desired to tempt and trick a young woman, he’d want to look like Mastroianni — charming, smooth and handsome in “8 ½” and “La Dolce Vita,” among other movies.

You can pick up the trail of the Scarlet Sparrow — right now joined by her sister, Mendacity, and, as always, Pip — in chapter 383. Take a look.

© Michael Chevy Castranova 2016

The adventures of the Silver Sparrow?

© Michael Chevy Castranova 2016

 A few days ago I read on the internet — so it must be true, right? — that “production” has begun on Netflix’s “The Defenders,” to be followed immediately by season 2 of “Jessica Jones.”

I’m not completely certain what “in production” means, but it sounds positive. Filming already? Writing scripts? Thinking about writing scripts?

I’ve seen no indication as to when either show might be available for viewing, but clearly not soon enough. Which in a perfect, fair and just world would be tomorrow.

“Jessica Jones,” by episode 3 or 4, became one of my top five TV shows of all time.

In the meantime, we have the non-super-powered female hero of “Slipped,” Tyler Wilson, sometimes aka the Scarlet Sparrow. Her not-always-well-meaning sister Mendacity has returned.

I am toying with the notion of following Mendacity — the Silver Sparrow? — in her own adventures when she returns to Paris to fight off the invading legions of giant Rongeurs at least for a little while. (Remember: Rongeur are really big rats to begin with. And now some have been injected with a formula that makes them even bigger.)

But Tyler tends to get upset when she’s left out of the storyline for too long. And she and Pip have their own escapdes.

So we’ll see. As they used to say on Doctor Who, back when it was worth watching: Time will tell. It always does.

Follow this link to catch up on “Slipped.” It’ll be fun.

Who is that other woman?

Image and text © Michael Chevy Castranova

 
-->

So a recap, then, at chapter 379 of “Slipped”:

Tyler Wilson — whose father was the infamous cat burglar, the Scarlet Sparrow, and who has been following in his footsteps (or paw prints, if you prefer) — and her dog, Pip, have been captured by the Rongeur officer, the Chancellor, whom Tyler believed to be dead but, clearly, is not. Instead, the serum that made him grow — and, she thought, to have made him mad — has made him even larger. And madder.

In fact, the Chancellor used that same serum to create an army of giant rats, and they’ve been dispatched to lead an invasion of western Europe.

Meanwhile, during a lightening-quick out-of-body experience, Tyler was contacted by Dargelos, another long-standing enemy, who struck a deal — he will send her help to escape if she, in turn, does something to be named later to aid him in his ongoing mission to bring chaos into the world. (And who better to do that than our hero?)

And now, arriving to their rescue at the brink of time, is Tyler’s younger sister, Mendacity Wilson. They don’t get along.

Moreover, Mendacity’s anger management issues are even less under control than Tyler’s.

Is Mendacity the “rescue” Dargelos promised? Or did she circle back to help Tyler on her own? Is this another trick orchestrated by the devil?

One thing, though — Mendacity has with her the Time Sword.

So the situation, if nothing else, is about to spin wildly out of control. As it generally does with one Wilson sibling. Imagine two, plus a weapon neither understands … and the Chancellor covets above all else.

Follow the action here!

Real-life adventures

 

© Michael Chevy Castranova 2016

I’ve determined Bill Griffith’s graphic memoir that came out late last year, “Invisible Ink,” very well could be the ideal gateway gift book for people who’ve not read graphic novels before.

I picked up a copy at CXC in Columbus last autumn, where Griffith was one of the speakers. As with everything he does, this book is even smarter than it first seems. It’s revealing family history with a lot of talk about the business of cartooning and quite a bit of nostalgia.

Meanwhile, in chapter 366 of “Slipped,” the Scarlet Sparrow knew it was a trap … and walked right in anyway. And more surprises are around the corner.

Take a look.

Polly, Dora, Flash and their pals

© Michael Chevy Castranova

So have you looked IDW’s recently released “King of the Comics: 100 Years of King Features”? At 300+ pages, it’s packed with newspaper comic strips the syndicate started by William Randolph Hearst in 1915 published over years. Older strips you’ve heard of, strips maybe you used to read and plenty I confess to never having seen before.

There’s the graceful “Dumb Dora” (by Chic Young before “Blondie”), silly “Happy Hooligan,” the Yellow Kid — from whence the name yellow journalism was derived — and “Boob McNutt” through “Bringing Up Father,” “Barney Google (before the strip devolved into “Snuffy Smith”), “Polly and Her Pals,” “Flash Gordon” and “Jungle Jim” to “Rip Kirby,” “Steve Canyon” (never as fun, I always thought, as “Terry and the Pirates”) and “Mutts.”

Famous, wonderful strips and many, many imitators of those famous strips.

The book also has plenty of photos of the cartoonists, sidebars on movies, animated cartoons and comic books inspired by these strips, and essays on various genres.

I admit my favorites are the adventure strips. The excellent cartoon style but serious tone of “Red Barry,” “Buz Sawyer” and “Little Annie Rooney” are all delightful — even if each hoped to cash in on more popular strips at the time (“Dick Tracy,” “Terry and the Pirates” and “Little Orphan Annie” respectively).

And speaking of adventure strips, chapter 365 of “Slipped” takes us right back into the thick of the action with our hero, the Scarlet Sparrow, dashing head long into danger — with no weapons, no plan and no backup. You know, her usual method of operation.

Take a look.

PIp makes a comeback

Image © Michael Chevy Castranova

 
-->

With chapter 360 of “Slipped” I intend to bring Pip back into the main story. He’s been somewhat sidelined as new characters have been introduced.

And maybe, too, we can resolve whether he really can talk or if only Tyler imagines he talks. Of course, as he’s the one narrating the story from the future — or maybe the past, I’d have to look that up in earlier chapters — and comes to be known as a semi-famous singer of the American Songbook, I guess he does. Or maybe that comes later. We’ll just have to see.

The notion of dogs as companions in adventure fiction is not new. With little effort, we can name RinTin Tin, Lassie, Sandy in “Little Orphan Annie,” Toto in “The Wizard of Oz,” Asta in “The Thin Man” series, Snowy in all the Tintin stories, Bear in “Person of Interest” and Gromit in “Wallace and Gromit.” Each one helped instigate action — Sandy often saved the day as did Gromit, Toto is the reason Dorothy ran away from home and Asta actually found the missing Thin Man in the first movie, not Nick Charles.

I don’t think we should count Snoopy, though. Not much of an adventurer and, frankly, pretty off in his own head.

Now they’re in trouble!

© Michael Chevy Castranova 2015

In the latest chapter of “Slipped,” Tyler (left) and Mendacity Wilson are at the mercy of the mysterious Cartier Tour (right), who claims to be a chrono bounty hunter — someone who hunts down those who’ve violated history. Which Tyler — aka the Scarlet Sparrow — has done repeatedly.

The notion of “Slipped” is to pick up on the adventure and naive charm of the newspaper comic strips of the 1930s and ’40s, when the heroes saved the day — but not always — and their adventures ran almost forever. Think of “Little Orphan Annie,” possibly the best comic strip of all time, or “Dick Tracy” or even “The Gumps” or “The Bungle Family.”

You never knew what was going to happen next.

The difference is our Scarlet Sparrow is far more reckless and has a lot more enemies. Take a look by starting at this link.

It’s an adventure.

Doonesbury at 40

Like ice cream flavors, superstar newspaper comics strips have their day. Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert, Garfield — they all highlighted refrigerator doors and office cubicles. Doonesbury was like that.

At one Cartoon Festival at Ohio State University in the early 1980s, a professional cartoonist in the audience asked a panelist who represented G.B. Trudeau’s syndicate why the Doonesbury artist was allowed to have a shorter lead time. He must, the questioner insisted despite repeated denials — how else could he be so timely?

And while it might be the political jibes many longtime readers recall, the human touches were what made the strip not only better than most, but a story we looked for each day.

You can’t deny what got you wasn’t as much seeing D.B.’s missing limb, lost in the Iraq war, but the character, for the first time, without a helmet. Or when Lacey died, just fading out of the frame.

Moreover, when he wasn’t telling truth to power, Trudeau was very, very funny. Often, he still is.

Now comes 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective. In the tradition of those enormous Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes anthologies, the very funny Doonesbury has its day again.

Release date will be Oct. 26. The book will weigh in with 1,800 strips and 18 essays by Trudeau.

You can read an excerpt in The Atlantic here.

2010 Eisner Awards

Winners of 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards of note — well, to me, at least, and readers of this blog — presented at this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego include:

• Best Adaptation from Another Work:
Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter, adapted by Darwyn Cooke (IDW)

• Best Comics-Related Book:
The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics, by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle (Abrams ComicArts)

• And Vault of Midnight comic book store — I’ve followed it in its various locations around Ann Arbor, Michigan, over the years, and I stop in every time I’m in town — won the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award.

The Hunter

Darwyn Cooke, who revived Will Eisner’s The Spirit a few years back, perfectly captures the tone of early 1960s Camelot, with its cocktails and cigarettes, hour-glass-shaped willing women and Space Age hotel exteriors — at least, that world of fictional tough-guy detectives — in his adaptation of crime writer Donald E. Westlake’s The Hunter.

In smoky, moody blues and deep blacks, the protagonist Parker, eyebrows perpetually cocked, pounds the urban pavement as well as his urbane enemies, leaving gorgeous “dames” panting after him — assuming they’re still breathing at all when he leaves them. Listen and you can hear the Miles Davis soundtrack.

The story certainly isn’t populated with Salvation Army types. But these characters grab us (hopefully not by the throat) and stick with us.

“I just got rid of the woman with the bag. I haven’t killed any of these jokers yet, but the next one I will. And if the money doesn’t show, you’re next.” Krak! Bam! Hunf!

Clyde Fans Book 1

I’ve just finished Seth’s Clyde Fans Book 1 — collected from issues 10-15 of his comic book, Palookaville — and I suppose, all things considered, it’d be too much to hope for a happy ending at the conclustion of Book 2 ….

As with other stories of his, Seth’s pacing is the genius of his work.

Part 1 of this book consists of Abe Marchcard, in 1997, wandering through the offices, the residence above and the basement below of family-owned Clyde Fans, now out of business. He putters, picks things up, puts them down somewhere else, straightens a picture, takes a bath, lights a cigar, prepares supper, goes outside and comes back in, turns on a radio and moves on, for 68 pages — all the while telling us about the company’s history, salesmanship in general and his brother, Simon, in particular.

Part 2 shows Simon attempting to make cold calls in 1957, in the town of Dominion (a regular stopping-off point for Seth characters in others stories). He’s anxious, lacking in self-confidence and sales skill — he’s clearly is not suited to this affable, self-driven line of work. He’s sweating in winter.

Seth punctuates Simon’s movements around town with panels of Abe, testily puffing his cigar — “Are you listening to me, Simon?” “Selling isn’t a game.” “I don’t think you’re up for this.” — to reinforce Simon’s own awareness of his failing. The memories keep intruding.

At one point during his miserable day, Simon stops in a diner and he’s surrounded — in the eatery and on the page — by other patrons talking, talking, talking about their lives, aspirations, opinions and gossip. Simon is desperately trying — belatedly — to create a life. They are living theirs.

The Ultimates

Giant Man to Son of Satan: “Are you really Satan’s son?”

The reply: “Are you on crack?”

I was delighted to find my stack of The Ultimates, series 1 and 2, just last week. While it’s true that after you move three times in 18 months you’re happy to relocate anything recognizable, I discovered these stories still packed their initial power.

Marvel Comics broke ground in its early days by setting its superheroes in the real world. What if people with super powers didn’t really get along? What if Spider-Man had to earn a living? Who covered the rent at the Baxter Building? What writer Mark Millar and illustrator Bryan Hitch did next, first with The Authority, then with The Ultimates, was take that notion and color it post-9/11.

Before, the Fantastic Four fought giant monsters in deserted districts of Manhattan (if there even ever were such areas). In The Ultimates, whole chunks of that heavily populated city — as well as LA, Chicago, Phoenix and the nation’s capitol — could be decimated.

Along with these grim times, and the pages’ black borders, anyone could be betrayed, maimed, tortured or killed in this Avengers updating. Giant Man a wife-beater? The Black Widow a traitor? Thor a deluded paranoid only imagines he’s the god of thunder? Yet Millar and Hitch (who also did the redesign of the TARDIS for the re-launch of Doctor Who, in 2005) pulled it all off with great panache and wit.

A bound Bruce Banner being thrown out of an airborne SHIELD helicopter so he’ll turn into the Hulk. Super-marksman Hawkeye dispatching armed villains with only his bloody, ripped-off fingernails as deadly projectiles. The Scarlet Witch taunting Loki by “increasing the odds of someone showing up to kick your ass” — then a cascade of lightning heralding the appearance of the god of mischief’s half-brother, Thor: “Looking for trouble, Loki?”

And, in the final panel of issue 13, at the end of series 2, a flashback to 1942: Sunny Steve Rogers, before he ships off for the Super Soldier project that turns him into dreary Captain America, gathers his girlfriend, Gail, into his arms and kisses her. A close-enough re-imagining of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous Life Magazine photo taken on V-E Day in Times Square.

Wonderful stuff.

Quicksilver to his sister, the Scarlet Witch: “Wanda, were you just flirting with that machine?”

Low Moon, Part 2

Jason uses pacing, and very little dialog, to convey his stories’, and his characters’, mood. One example: In the “Low Moon” story from which this collection takes its title, bad guy Bill McGill, newly arrived back in town, goes up the hotel stairs. In the next panel, he knocks on a door. In the third panel we see a woman standing in the open doorway. In the fourth, she says, “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”

Another example: In the upper-left panel, the sheriff leaves his office. In panel two, he’s walking along the street. The third panel has him going through a doorway, his back to us. The fourth panel shows him standing still, arms at his side, silently facing a chess set — his inescapable destiny in his upcoming confrontation with Bill McGill.

For a faster-moving narrative, the artist could have used only panels two and four in both these examples. We’d still understand what’s going on, filling in the blanks with our imaginations. But Jason’s tight control of that speed tells us he’s building to something.

Read my earlier post on this book here.

Low Moon, Part 1

While Norwegian cartoonist Jason’s stories are unremittingly downbeat, he certainly manages to evoke sympathy with his blank-eyed (think Little Orphan Annie), stringbean-like dog and duck characters.

In Low Moon, two of his stories come straight from the movies, tales of men with their backs to the wall. “Low Moon” retells High Noon, except with a chess showdown instead of gunfire, and “Proto Film Noir,” though it starts out with cavemen … or cave-dogs, I guess … becomes The Postman Always Rings Twice — except in this case the postman rings seven times.

(Yes, I know. I’ve intentionally misunderstood the meaning of the title of James M. Cain’s novel. I did it for the joke.)

But he leavens his tales with smart asides. In the title story, a deputy and a bartender — coffee drinks only, no alcohol — pass the time by naming the stars of The Magnificent Seven. (They get stuck and the sheriff has to supply the last name, Horst Buchholz.)

More in next post ….

Shortcomings, Part 2

Adrian Tomine’s black-and-white illustrations in Shortcomings at times seem static … and I think that’s to a purpose.

Look at the protagonist’s girlfriend, Miko Hayaski, on page 19, after she and Ben have had another in what likely has been a series of low-grade disappointments (not quite at the energy level of an argument) throughout their relationship. She leans against the wall, in her underwear, and asks Ben if he wants to go to bed. The space behind her — presumably their bedroom — is in complete darkness.

He replies he’s not tired. She smiles, and says, “Well, we don’t have to go to sleep right away.” She looks soft and vulnerable, but willing. Her meaning is abundantly clear.

Still Ben declines, contending weakly he has some newly arrived DVDs to watch.

The next panel shows Miko, dark hair, white T-shirt, against a blank white wall. She’s frowning, shoulders now slumped, defeated, and we can’t really tell if she’s looking at Ben or at the floor. Not that it matters now.

In the next panel, she’s turned away, walking back into the bedroom, alone. Back into the darkness.

Read my first post on this book here.

Shortcomings, Part 1

I got so caught up in the angst of Ben Tanaka, the cranky protagonist of Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings, a collection of 2004-2007 stories from his comic book, Optic Nerve, I missed the big clue — even though Ben himself didn’t.

He sees a series of artsy photos of his girlfriend, who’s allegedly been on an internship in New York City for the past few months. He doesn’t announce he knows the pictures were taken back in California — that is to say, before Miko arrived in New York, and therefore her relationship with the photographer began then, too — until the book’s climax.

And I thought, wait, how did he figure that …? Then he tells her, and us. So I flipped back a couple chapters. Then another. And I saw it, too.

Then I realized the clue also is all over the book’s cover, front and back.

Very clever.

Neil Gaiman

An amazing confluence: Neil Gaiman announced he’s completed his Doctor Who TV script — an award-winning comic-book, short-story and children’s-book writer (top prizes from both this country and Britain) penning a story for my all-time favorite TV show.

You can see Gaiman talk about The Graveyard Book, his love for the horror in the comic books he read as a child, and how he doesn’t worry about about being taken seriously as a writer here, on the BBC site.

George Sprott 1894-1975

I'll make certain to keep this blog from turning into a Seth fan page. But his evocative stuff continues to amaze me.

For example, toward the end of his 2009 book, George Sprott 1894-1975, the biography of an Ontario television personality, amateur Arctic explorer, lecturer and overall heel, parts of which ran in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, the narrator speculates on Sprott’s afterlife. Is he now a ghost hovering near the woods where he played as a child? Out on the tundra having more adventures? By the bar, in the now-defunct Melody Grill, where he drank his dinner for years?

In the 25 tight panels containing the text for this one-page chapter, the artist shows us angles of downtown buildings at night — office windows, a large clock, awnings, a streetlamp, a full moon. But as we pull back and view the page as a whole, we realize they’re not separate images. The two dozen-plus squares form one scene, one image, of the city bathed in moonlight and adorned with a clear night’s stars.

We need to see the big picture. Just as the artist is telling us we must view George Sprott’s life, not in snippets, but as a complete story.

This also might be Sprott’s view from his own office, the white lines holding the panels representing his window panes, and where he sits alone in the dark, late at night.

Battle Angel Alita: Last Order Vol. 13, Part 3

Though Viz Media has been releasing the Battle Angel Alita and the Battle Angel Alita: Last Order series in a tiny format, Yukito Kishiro has managed to cram true art into those small boxes.

In fact, his art work can be magnificent. I always think of that drawing of Alita on top a Space Needle-like building, overlooking the Scrapyard below — an image writer-director James Cameron copied for his “Dark Angel” TV program.

In the most recent edition of Last Order, Kishiro lays out one of his most shocking scenes. In the first chapter of volume 13, we are shown the bestial Homme du Feu, as he tries to sort out his feelings for the gorgeous Olympe, his combat instructor and the only creature who’s ever shown him kindness. As the panels progress, and he recounts “a desire that was my torment,” the boxes themselves become angular, the type grows larger.

… Then a two-page tableau of surprising horror. I’ve been reading Kishiro for years, and I did not see this coming:

The giant crushing paw anchoring the right foreground, the small piercing white pupil-less eyes in the upper left, the dagger teeth and the destruction brought down on Olympe.

And then things get even worse.

Kishiro can turn scenes of mad violence into beauty. And does, often. It’s a rare and powerful skill.

See my earlier posts on volume 13 here and here.