This is practice: Comics

Enter the Detective

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:17:43 GMT

If there’s anything I like more than buying comics, its buying them on the cheap. I've bought a giant edition of “Howard the Duck” for fifty bucks in New Delhi, a “House of Mystery Digest” and “DC Best of 1981” for twenty bucks each in a basement in Ahmedabad, “The Amazing Spider-man” trade for twenty five bucks at Girgaum, the first 6 issues of TMNT (collected edition in color) for forty bucks at Fountain and a bunch of comics (including Batman: Dark Victory) bought brand new at nearly half price from Anurag (call me if you want his cellphone number) also at Fountain. I know you already knew that.

I found a series of EDGE trade paperbacks on the shelves of Crossword a few months back. They were cheap – marked down to about a hundred bucks each. I figured that with six stories apiece, buying six issues would be buying six TPBs for the price of one… a good deal in any parallel universe. Placed right next to EDGE were the FORGE trade paperbacks - similarly priced. Thirteen issues each (or so it seemed then) of FORGE & EDGE lying right next to each other. Twenty six books for the price of four. – a real no-brainer that.

I came home with Batman: Haunted Knight (damn good), Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters (excellent), American Virgin: Head (interesting/witty), 100 bullets: First shot Final call (haven’t read it yet) & Sandman Mystery Theater vol. 1 (haven’t read that yet either.) They cost a lot of money.

Two reasons I didn’t buy either EDGE or FORGE. First, I hadn’t heard of them and neither of them registered anything on Wikipedia (Opera Mini™ on your cellphone – don’t leave home without it) and second – there were a few issues missing - EDGE issues 7, 10 & 13 FORGE issues 3 to 8. Didn’t see the point of buying all those comics and end up with missing plot developments in all of them. I didn’t sleep well that night. The next day, I ‘just happened to accompany a friend ’ to Crossword. I checked again… the missing issues were still uhm… missing but I learnt that they were published by Crossgen Entertainment, and Wikipedia mentioned FORGE & EDGE as trade paperbacks that collected issues spread across different titles… and the fact that Crossgen was now bankrupt (So much for that format then). I came back with a special edition of Catch 22 (yep… a book without pictures) & Neil Gaiman’s Stardust.

Two days later I bought EDGE #1 to 6 just to dispel the sense of dread that was creeping in. I had no intentions of reading them immediately (Ok… there were three reasons for not picking these up earlier) and that’s because the contents page of EDGE #1 read something like this

Ruse: Chapter 1

Mystic: Synopsis and Chapters 15-16

Sigil: Synopsis and Chapter 15

Scion: Synopsis and Chapter 15

The First: Synopsis and Chapters 8-10

With four out of five series beginning mid-way (FORGE wasn’t any different) you could see why the prices were marked down. This format was probably Crossgen’s last ditch attempt to avoid bankruptcy. I wasn’t too put off by this – I’ve spent years reading part two of three and getting over it - just too busy with work, DVDs and the other comics I’d been buying. So EDGE issues 1-6 hung around my bookshelf with the sole purpose of being read when I ran out of comics to read.

That was two months ago.

Yesterday, I picked up EDGE # 1 on my way to the bathroom (no, I haven’t run out of comics to read). I started with Ruse: Chapter 1 – A Victorian Era detective series documenting the exploits of Simon Archard & Emma Bishop. That’s when I noted it was written by Mark Waid (Kingdom Come, 52, Batman, Superman: Birthright, JLA & a bunch of Marvel stuff that I can’t remember just yet.) At the end of the first issue, Ruse turned out to be a story of the detective (Simon Archard) with the razor sharp mind and distaste for the illogical, his partner (Emma Bishop - a sorceress who strangely enough is not allowed to use or disclose her powers and keeps her abilities hidden), Miranda Cross - the mysterious baroness with diabolical plans who discovers Emma’s abilities and shows how she can steal them if she tries to use them, the fishes used to smuggle opium into the city of Partington (where the stories are based) on the planet Arcadia. Arcadia’s a lot like Earth - only the city has gargoyles that fly around like pigeons and have apparently eaten all the bats. The second & third issues introduce Simon’s ‘network of agents’, touch upon the subject of Simon’s dead and not to be talked about former partner (Lightbourne) and sets the stage for some of the best dialogue between the protagonists of any series of comic books that I have ever read (and that includes Buffy season 8).

On my way home from work tonight I took a detour and bought EDGE issues 8,9, 11 & 12.

Read companion post containing my review of Ruse here or visit http://seethroughtheshitvision.wordpress.com/ for more details on Ruse.

The Irrelevant Ghost?

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 14:02:14 GMT

Like most people who saw Blood Diamond, I came out of the movie theatre asking myself why Billy Zane didn’t get to use an accent like Leornado Dicaprio in the movie version of the Phantom. The most obvious answer to that would be that unlike Daniel Archer (Dicaprio), the Phantom isn’t from Rhodesia. His area of operations includes the fictional country of Bangalla, the jungles of Bengali (names changed to Dangalla and Denkali respectively for Indian readers) and the city of Morristown. Not that anyone has any idea which part of Africa they represent. Titles like “The Guardian of the Eastern Dark”, frequent adventures along the Barbary coast, Arabic looking pirates and slave traders would place his domicile somewhere close to Sudan, Somalia, Eritria, Dijibouti and maybe Kenya. Budding novelists are seldom world travelers and I’m not sure if Lee Falk really cared which part of Africa was under the protection of the Phantom or if his second language was of Afro-Asiatic/ Nilo-Saharan/ Niger-Congo/ Khoi-San variety. That makes it pretty hard to figure out which accent the Phantom used when he spoke English. Worse, an exotic accent would hardly get a badly scripted movie to cult status. Full marks to Billy for his performance though. He did his best.

***

The only redeeming feature about the Mumbai Mirror (RSS feed on your left) is their selection of comic strips. It gets even better on Sunday, when the colour edition of the Phantom (by Graham Nolan, renowned for his work on Batman) joins the gang. The latest storyline, however, could best be described as ‘outdated.’ Phantom and Diana enjoying a vacation at Phantom Head peak (Going by the tons of newsprint chronicling the Phantom’s numerous honeymoons with Diana, its surprising that the two of them have only Kit and Heloise to fall back on in their old age) wherein Diana is abducted by long hidden tribe that lives under the snowcap and the Phantom manages to rescue her without bloodshed. Unfortunately, the monotony doesn't end there. The previous storyline had the Phantom travel to New York on President Luaga’s orders to foil an assassination plot on a mystery target in the U.N that turned out to be (no surprises here) Ms. Diana Palmer Walker. The King Features web site has a strip where the Phantom’s managed to bust a mind control/ slavery racket. Things never looked worse for the Phantom. Indrajal Comics died out eons ago and are substituted by overpriced Indian Express/ Egmont editions (which I suspect are translated from the Norwegian 'Fantomen' series) and the stories there have the Phantom looking a lot less invincible than Lee Falk’s character and depend more on exotic fare from the chronicles.

So is it safe to write an obituary for the man who cannot die and rely on TCP scans and my collection of old Indrajal comics? Tough call. Most other heroes got a shot in the arm from a firebrand writer/ illustrator and the character who set the ball rolling had to make do with crappy Norwegian pirate stuff. Hard to believe that no one thought of bringing the Phantom, the jungle and Morristown up to speed with genocide, HIV, prostitution, conflict diamonds, starvation, debt and corruption. Sure, there were the occasional stories that dealt with poaching, drugs and corruption in the UN aid supplies but they were too few and far between. Bangalla continued to remain cut off from real world Africa. The Phantom’s world remained idyllic and irrelevant. Wikipedia tells me that there was a DC series in the late 80s where the Phantom fought ‘real world’ problems in Africa. It met with critical acclaim and commercial failure. Marvel did a 22^nd Phantom mini-series in the mid 90's and called it a day. If the Phantom still lived, it was largely on account of Sunday editions and guys like me who read them… and a bunch of Norwegian pirate stuff.

***

Speaking of wikipedia, the source of a lot of information mentioned above, this entry makes good reading:

“Moonstone Books is a comic book publisher based in Chicago. The company began publishing creator-owned comics in 1995, and since 2001 has also published comic books based on a number of licensed properties, including Buckaroo Banzai, Bulldog Drummond, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Mr. Moto, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, The Phantom, and several titles based in White Wolf's World of Darkness.

Moonstone's most successful title is The Phantom, which is based on Lee Falk's superhero comic strip. Moonstone is the first US publisher to produce new Phantom stories for the comic book format since Marvel Comics cancelled their Phantom 2040 comic in 1995. Moonstone started publishing Phantom graphic novels in 2002. Only five books, written by Tom DeFalco, Ben Raab and Ron Goulart, were published, but in 2003, Moonstone started a regular comic book series with the character, written by Ben Raab, Rafael Nieves, and Chuck Dixon, and drawn by the likes of Pat Quinn, Jerry DeCaire, Nick Derington, Rich Burchett and EricJ. After 11 issues, Mike Bullock, of Lions, Tigers and Bears fame, took over the book, with Carlos Magno as the regular artist in 2006, leaving the series to finally come out on a more regular schedule.

Moonstone have also made and is in the process of making several special projects with the character. In 2006, a retcon of the Phantom's origin called "Legacy" was published, written by Ben Raab and drawn by Pat Quinn, which aimed to look like one of the Phantom's chronicle books. 2006 also marked the year when Moonstone invented the wide-vision format, introducing it to the world with the Phantom story "Law of the Jungle".Moonstone have also announced a Phantom Annual, and two prose collections featuring Phantom short stories.

The Phantom is Moonstone's best selling title.”

Greetings O Ghost Who Walks. I’m not writing you off yet.