I don’t know what’s come over me, but I’ve been having this urge to read a Legion of Super Heroes comic. Thing is, I can’t stand the Legion (or is that LoS? LoSH?) I’ve always found them to be boring and corny. The part of my brain that allows me to unabashedly enjoy any other [arguably boring and corny] superhero comic fails me when I have a Legion comic in front of me (Well, I do like Ty Templeton’s work on those characters, so I do like some Legion*).

I asked two reliable sources (friends who know their shit) and they instantly said, “FIVE YEARS LATER”. I have to admit, gentlemen, that Legion is a train wreck of words and images.

Well, THIS sequence is nice and quiet and pretty. By “train wreck” I mean… well, keep reading.

I picked up the first seven issues of this late 80s/early 90s re-launch of the LoSH, simply known as LEGION: the Five Years Later era. Plotted and penciled by Keith Giffen and scripted by Tom and Mary Bierbaum with story assist by Al Gordon. The basic premise is that the Legion team had disbanded and are slowly regrouping in order to… be a team again, I think because… they were wronged somehow by… the govern… ment? There’s this kooky cosmic psycho who has different voices, dream sequences and “article” pages aplenty, a few people die, a few get into a fight, a new spunky girl is the resident badass. I don’t know much more than that. At this point, I don’t really care. I thought that by the seventh issue, I’d be invested in something. That didn’t happen. This is the best jumping on point for the Legion mythos?

Growing stubble and a ponytail screams angst, I totally get that. I can read all that “grim and gritty” stuff without bitching about how it was an industry trend. But this revision felt a little forced, a little too pat.

I appreciate the writing style in that it takes its cue from Howard Chaykin’s “dropping you in the middle of a conversation, keep up & learn as you go along” writing. The difference is that this story is really seeped in back story and Legion trivia. One’s enjoyment is reliant on a deep knowledge of Legion history, something I don’t have. It’s for insiders only and re-reading pages in order to clarify plot points took me out of the story. Is this what it’s like to be a non-comics reader? Holy shit, no wonder people give up easily. A story like Alex Ross and Mark Waid’s Kingdom Come is riddled with in-jokes and club house winks and nudges, but I still got a solid story from it. It was clear, it moved along, it did its job… but was it because I knew who Hal Jordan and Billy Batson were?

Speaking of Mark Waid, I had forgotten that he was actually the editor for the first few issues of “Five Years Later” and I’m curious as to how involved he was in the plotting of this series. I know that’s he’s a walking comic book encyclopedia (runners up include Kurt Busiek and the late Mark Gruenwald), but did that inform the way the story was told? It really did read like a comic book “members only” sign and I’m left to wonder if that was on purpose or if it was an experiment gone awry.

The art certainly didn’t help. I like Giffen’s art fine, especially when he does stuff like this:

I dig Ambush Bug. I even like Video Jack and Trencher. His fill in issue of New Universe’s Justice was pretty cool. As was JLI #13. My point is that no matter how faux-artsy Giffen is at times, that shit gets in the way of clarity. It’s not challenging me, though, it’s stumbling me. It’s not that I’m a novice reader, it’s that Giffen’s art is sometimes too obscure for its own sake. There’s no reveal to his storytelling, there’s just loaded mystery. Slapping a nine panel grid over a page doesn’t make it Watchmen, it just jumbles the story up. Randomly shrouding faces in black doesn’t make them look haunting, it makes them impossible to tell apart.

Did I miss out on a potentially good story due to its incomprehensible presentation? Part of this unsolicited breakdown of Five Years Later came from two things: wanting to explore what bothered me about the comic in order to learn from it… AND because I still want to read a good ol’ superhero comic that I haven’t read before, and I still think Legion may be a good source for that. Bring on the Steve Lightle art, man. I wanna see some old school Greg LaRocque. Didn’t Adam Hughes draw an issue or two?

Silver Age Curt Swan is great, but those 60s Legion stories are unreadable unless you have a nostalgic noose around your neck. As much as I like Dave Cockrum’s work, his Legion revision in the 70s doesn’t grab me. Mike Grell drew some issues, too, but that’s not really a selling point for me. I once described Grell as though he’s molesting me with his art. Y’know, with his feathery, color pencil montages of long haired heroes and horses. He is the mutton chops of comics. He is the dank basement in the Midwest. The way Grell draws lips is the equivalent of a gang of construction workers playing Duck Duck Goose with a teenage runaway. I feel wrong looking at it.

A Grell cover sans color pencil feathering. Stippling can’t be far behind.

I flipped through some of the early Giffen/Levitz stuff (the Great Darkness Saga seemed promising), but it didn’t seem like a good jumping on point. Neither did the Baxter paper re-launch from the 80s. I’m assuming that I’m missing a recent storyline that’s great. You know what I mean, right? Daredevil and Batman have whatever Frank Miller has written. The X-men have the Dark Phoenix Saga. Swamp Thing has the Alan Moore run. Jim Aparo’s Aquaman. Ditko’s Spider-Man. What story does the Legion of Super Heroes have that can convert any hater with its sheer power of awesome? Have I just missed a window of opportunity to really embrace such a series?

I like this Giffen cover a lot. I should just take the plunge and read the damn thing.

What am I doing worrying about a comic I know I don’t like? I should probably read Moomin instead, or finally give Scott Pilgrim a try. I can dig into Jim Woodring’s Weathercraft or I can revisit Simonson’s ORION or back issues of ANGEL LOVE or ZERO ZERO.

For some reason, I still want LoSH comics.

* Ty drew bunch of profiles for the “Who’s Who in the Legion of Super Heroes” and wrote a story for the 7th issue of that series (it was drawn by Curt Swan). He also wrote and drew the Legion of Substitute Heroes in Secret Origins #37, the Bouncing Boy origin in SO #49, and inked another LoSH yarn for Curt Swan in SO #46. I say Ty Templeton should write and draw THE end-all, be-all Legion story. Who is with me on this? What petition should I sign? Let’s make this happen!

This month’s installment of TWISTED SAVAGE DRAGON FUNNIES by the amazing KIEL WEST!

The image above is Kiel’s cover, featuring Powerhouse (the chicken-headed strongman). Below is the flip cover for the main title, SAVAGE DRAGON, #162. Whichever cover you see on the stands, lunge yourself at it, grip it, and do not let go.

Follow Kiel’s art and comics through his DeviantArt or his LiveJournal profiles. He’s a great talent working on more funnybook projects as we speak. He also has this cool (but too short) interview over at STYLUS.

I leave you with one of Kiel’s “warm up” pages.

Read More >>

Summer’s here and for the occasion, I made a mixtape for the Inkstuds comics show. Download it now, hop on your bike, and cruise away. There are many other great mixes on the site, so there’s a lot of new music to fill your radio.

That’s not all. If you scroll up, you’ll see Brandon Graham’s amazing collection of comics he likes. It’s more than just comics he likes, it’s an impressive display of great cartooning that spans genre and generation. I can rant and comment on his selections forever, but see for yourself:

Part One and Part Two.

Thanks for having me on the show, guys!

Fiffe

JUST IN! Savage Dragon #161 hit stores today and it features yet another Twisted Savage Dragon Funnies installment. Andrew Dimitt did the honors this month of gracing the TSDF pages. Here’s Andrew’s cover…

…and here’s the cover for the regular feature.

Whichever one you see, snag a copy and clutch it until you get home and read it cover to cover.

Andrew Dimitt is a fellow Act-i-vator and the writer/artist of the serialized webcomic Drockleberry and Flowing Wells. Check out his online portfolio to see some more of his incredible art.

Let us know what you think, folks, either at our TSDF Facebook Group or the Savage Dragon Message Board. And click on the “read more” below to see some really wonderful preliminary art by Andrew.

Read More >>

Long ago, there came the day when I stopped collecting comic books and started getting into music and girls. It’s a typical story that most boys go through, but it wasn’t that clean cut for me. Comic book reading was a difficult habit to break, and I wasn’t really getting into music anyway. A few friends of mine were eager for me to join them in whatever role they were adapting for themselves: “C’mon, are you a rocker or a hip-hopper?” However, When I first heard the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “Mother’s Milk” album through a friend, the decision was made for me: I just liked them and that was it! I was hooked.

[line up for the first album: Sherman, Martinez, Kiedis, Flea]

I recorded my friend’s “Mother’s Milk” CD onto a tape and played it over and over, day after day. The music sounded like nothing I had ever heard before and I immediately fell in love with those weird, infectious sounds. The band members were all these crazy looking, uninhibited beams of energy and sex and fun. I was 13 and these bare chested goofballs were my idols. I never owned any music prior to that ratty cassette, but that musical discovery led to an obsession. I eventually hunted their older albums down and absorbed them the way I did my already worn out tape. I was especially drawn to the the cover art to their self titled debut which was created by Gary Panter. I hadn’t drawn a single comic book image in months, but I suddenly found myself doodling his Chili Peppers characters all over my school books.

[in its full glory, from 1984]

Never hesitant to seek and nerd out over the details of something like this, I asked Gary to shed some light on how he ended up working on that cover. He was kind and generous enough to divulge the details of his involvement:

“Eric Greenspan, who I had met when he bought a painting of mine from a show at Steve Samiof’s (editor of SLASH) SHOFA, on Larchmont Avenue in LA, was really into reggae music and rock. He managed Steel Pulse and later Ice-T and he was always avidly looking for new stuff. He kept telling me about a new band that performed naked and were great. I had heard of them and seen Flea at the premiere of Penelope Spheeris’ Suburbia. He started working with them and finally I went with Eric to see them and they were really great. They lived in my neighborhood and I saw them around at punk shows and stuff and on the street stopping traffic by walking into it. Not a great idea unless you really don’t care. They knew my work from SLASH; I knew the art director, Henry Marquez, socially, as I was schlepping my portfolio around and meeting people, and Eric was another connection. Can’t remember if Henry was art director for both records.”

My teenage brain couldn’t even register how this cover was made, let alone thought up, and even when Gary explains it… it still can’t.

“I made it kind of like the paintings I was doing then, which was a series of thinned acrylic paintings on heavy paper that suggested bad print jobs I saw on the border of Mexico when I was a kid. And bad American print jobs, like the printing on Popcycle wrappers. I went to a rehearsal, which was terrific, and drew them and tried to figure out cartoonish versions of them that alluded to Weirdo plastic kits by Roth and Mouse which to me were powerful styles. Being the only audience for a Chili Pepper rehearsal was swell, especially because they tried stuff in rehearsal that they would never do on stage (which was true of other bands I watched and drew in rehearsal, like the Weirdos and the Screamers), like playing stuff too fast or too slow and doing inside joke chants and stuff.”

[reunited for their 3rd release, original band line up included Hillel Slovak & Jack Irons, 1987]

Gary also did the cover art for their third album “Uplift Mofo Party Plan” (above) which quickly became my favorite Chili Peppers album upon listening to it. The cover art (mostly covered up by a big picture of the band) is totally different from the first one yet still captures the spirit of the band. Was it mere coincidence that their sensibilities meshed so well?

“I knew them a little better then and they told me things that they wanted on the cover, which were images from songs and also the big car that they had pimped out with fake fur, toys, flashing lights, etc. They took me out to the car on the lot of the record company and I made some notes and sketches. They were a big band by then, so I asked to do a gold foil or gold ink overlay of lines, which I drew separately from the painting. Bigger bands got bigger printing budgets.”

I recently came across a photo of the original album art for “Uplift…”, a 50-inch wide psychedelic gouache drawing on paper. Apparently there was a note on the bottom of the art board: Please Return Art to Gary Panter. It was auctioned off at Christie’s (est. $10,000 – $15,000) a couple of years ago.

“Well. I don’t remember if I gave it away, sold it, or left it so long in a friends garage that she finally had a garage sale. I did not get anything from that resale. The money part of art is generally an illusion. The making of the art and the meeting of people and seeing it float around the world are the neat part.”

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have been a huge institution in rock music for many years now, something far removed from their raw and awkward and vibrant identity of the 80s. I’m too emotionally invested in that early material to know or care if it stands up on a cultural level, but those early records still give me a thrill after all this time. I always found it funny that Gary Panter, a comics icon whom I greatly admire, was the artist who visually shaped the Chili Peppers in my mind’s eye during my anti-comics days. These covers are mere pebbles in his expansive body of work, but they’ll always be prime examples of what the world first offered me outside of comics, slap bass and all.

I had a blast drawing Haspiel’s character Billy Dogma in this here image: my birthday card to Brooklyn’s own maker of the donuts, Dean Haspiel, which was yesterday. Happy birthday, Son Head.

Speaking of broad shoulders, here’s a preliminary drawing I did of Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon (as well as the villain, Abner Cadaver; see below). I thought it’d be cool to show them here considering how I was recently interviewed over at the Daily Crosshatch regarding “Twisted Savage Dragon Funnies”.

ITEM! Remember the debut issue of the new literary magazine, Cousin Corinne’s REMINDER? Yeah, well, the comic section titled “Comix Block” has been recently reviewed by Jeffrey C. Burandt for Graphic NYC. It’s a great, insightful review that while praising the works within, also questions whether the comix section should really be clumped into a “block” or not.

Man, this entire post reeks of “me, me , me”, huh? Ooops. Above is a great Alex Toth page that I’ve been looking at for years yet still haven’t come across the entire story. It’s from an issue of “PLOP”, I believe. How great would it be to have a collection of Toth stories from the 70s? He did some random and wild stuff in that era, and although it’s fun to hunt or discover back issues, longbox hopping isn’t conducive to introducing, nay, convincing readers that Toth was the best.

I recently listened to a Mark Chiarello interview over at Sidebar, and Mark recounts his relationship with Alex Toth. Thing is, Mark was trying to put together a Toth book but was always being met with resistance from DC (which led to his unfortunate but expected falling out with Toth). The overall interview is really good, but it kills me that a Toth book is an “almost-was” and not a staple in everybody’s library.

Finally, I recommend listening to Todd Hignite’s interview over at Robin McConnell’s INKSTUDS. Hignite is the writer/curator of the recent “Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life & Death” book. It would be insulting to just briefly explain how much of a considerable impact this book has made on me, so I’ll save it for another time. For now, listen to the interview and read the book.

My first Kamandi drawing for his greatest fan’s birthday, Nikki B a.k.a. NUB a.k.a. Nick Bertozzi (I dated it the day I drew it, a few days ago).

While I’m busy turning 31, here are a couple of awesome birthday cards that my bestest pals made for me.

Read More >>

[Page 5 from my story "The Date".]

Take note, “Twisted Savage Dragon Funnies” is here! Appearing in Savage Dragon #160, it is now available at your finer comic book retail shops all across the country. It begins where it ends: Erik Larsen’s current “Dragon War” storyline comes to a dramatic end as TSDF makes its grand debut. Pick it up, check it out, and fill us in either at our TSDF Facebook Group or the Savage Dragon Message Board.