Comics have been on our mind a lot here at Casa Innocent Bystander in recent weeks, for obvious reasons. Truth be told, they always are. Here's what's on the top of the bookshelf by the window.
DC has come out with a welcome addition to their Showcase Presents line: the complete run of Bat Lash comics from the late '60s. Lash was a Maverick-like Western addition to the line when cowboy books were fading out a bit, but what separated it from the Kid Colts and Rawhide Kids was it's wonderful art by Nick Cardy. You can savor this art even more in this edition, in sparkling black and white with relatively good reproduction. Best of all, even for a Showcase Presents book, it's dirt-cheap: Only $9.99! It includes the original Showcase #76 premiere of Lash, plus the seven issues of his own series and some later stories, including a trio of short stories by the great Dan Spiegle, one of comics most-underappreciated artists. I tend to buy only the most oddball collections in the Showcase series (the only two I own are this one and the one devoted to Kanigher and Kubert's superb Enemy Ace). I hope they'll do more quirky stuff like this one.
Speaking of DC, they recently did for Batman what they did for Superman 23 years ago: Offer a two-part "career-ending" story written and drawn by major players. With Superman it was Alan Moore (when he was still speaking to DC) and Super-artist supreme Curt Swan; with Batman it was Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert. Both sets of stories have been collected into "deluxe editions" which also contain the other Batman and Superman stories written by Gaiman and Moore, respectively. Here's the big difference though: Moore's "Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?" is one of the best Superman tales EVER, while Gaiman's "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" was as confusing as the Grant Morrison-written "Batman RIP" storyline that preceded it (and tied into the even crappier and more convulted Final Crisis series). The Moore collection is the one to buy, partly because he won't pass this way ever again through the DC Universe, but mainly because it's such a wonderful story.
I had been hoping for a book like volume 26 of The Spirit Archives through the entire run of the pricey hardcovers. I gave up on buying them all a while back. At $49.99 they were too rich for my poor wallet, but this final volume includes an extended cover gallery of Will Eisner's post-newspaper work, spanning from the Harvey issues in the '60s through his long run with Kitchen Sink Press. Some of those Kitchen covers are among my favorite Eisner Spirit work. So when I got the book and opened it, I was in comics heaven, at least for a moment or two. In theory, it was everything I wanted it to be. And then I paid closer attention. First off, almost all the covers are subpar scans of printed covers. I thought DC was working with the Eisner estate and would have access to the original films of all these covers? Beyond that, the 16 Warren covers are missing, and the rest of the art (with the exception of the stories reprinted from the Harvey issues) also seem to be less than adequate scans. Having all this stuff in one place is great; having it be the best quality reproduction would have been greater.
DC, through its WildStorm division, is also reprinting Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' excellent Sleeper series, this time in two volumes, instead of four. I think Brubaker is just about the best writer in mainstream comics these days, and this series--which has been optioned as a movie by no less than Tom Cruise and Sam Raimi--is one of his better early works. Season One is available now...Season Two is coming in late September.
Finally, our one non-DC book is Brian Cronin's Was Superman A Spy?, a collection of his "fascinating and often bizarre true stories behind more than 130 urban legends about comic book culture," or so the jacket says. If you're a hardcore comics fan like myself, there's very little new stuff here. It's mainly a book for a mainstream neophyte who has picked up on this comics craze, but it does have a spiffy cover. The book is a reprint of columns from Cronin's ComicBookResources.com column, and it's a fun read, especially perfect for the bathroom, due to it's "short take" format.
Not just the Warren covers are missing from Spirit Vol 26: The 3rd version [2nd rvsd vers, the first redrawn/rewritten version was done for Harvey] of the classic 'Gerhard Shnobble’ story only appeared in Warren's Spirit #13, and a newly redrawn splash [1st] page for 'The Inheritance' story only appeared in #16.
Turns out Warren is [occasionally rightly] a very litigious bastard, bringing meritless [slap] suits against anyone doing anything with old materials or title/logo trademarks that, though he was the publisher of said materials, he might actually have no rights to currently - or in the case of Eisner's material, never having had any rights of ownership at all! But he'd likely try, given his recent history.
I guess DC didn't need the headache of defending against a meritless suit they would have won anyway -though at great expense.
Posted by: MannyLunch | September 25, 2009 at 06:53 AM
Dan Spiegle created CROSSFIRE, too. One of my faves !
Posted by: Shell | July 28, 2009 at 11:22 PM