The opening panels of Image’s Coffin Bound #1, with its dilapidated creepy shack in the middle of nowhere, gives one instant Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibes. Is the woman we see slowly waking up in the middle of bones, doll parts, and detritus a victim of some sort of horrible Ed Gein-type nightmare?
So I’m going to talk about the time (yesterday, to be precise) I realized a good portion of “underground” cartoonist Robert Crumb’s classic comix were **horrible**.
Short answer: no.
Long answer: OK, let’s back up and take a look at the latest scandal on the internets…
Sometime around the start of the 1990s, comic books became Self Aware—due in large part to Grant Morrison’s run on Animal Man and, more particularly, the famous “I CAN SEE YOU!” scene where Buddy Baker turns around and addresses the reader.
As much as mainstream social media platforms would like to wipe conspiracy narratives off the face of the planet, they still remain—for, in fact, as long as I can remember—heady grist for the comic book mill. You will no doubt not be surprised that this is still the case in 2019, if not on steroids.
We see these types of plots not only in numerous comics from the Big Two (Doomsday Clock pretty much has so many it trips over itself), but from the smaller pubs. And perhaps the only difference is that the smaller pubs, basically, name names.
Continue reading “Conspiracy Comix Review: Nobody Is In Control & Descendent”
Like all things on this hurtling sphere, I emerged from the molten center of creation. But mine has been a unique path. Isolated, I developed attributes beyond those of lesser beings. Then the sphere was struck by a vast celestial stone. Black chunks of death filled the skies and the world became a chaotic world of doom. Soon the sphere began to nurture new kinds of life. And there was one that stood above the rest. Its fragile shell belied its vicious nature. And in what seemed like a heartbeat, these things proliferated in both number and destructive needs. Now they have harnessed the most destructive force. And I, The Centre, have concluded that the sphere must be cleansed of them.
—The Centre, “Justice League: The New Frontier”
For a couple of years, I knew a comic creator named Darwyn Cooke. I worked as an assistant at DC Comics, and my office handled most of his books. I had many discussions on the phone with Cooke. He was a brilliant artist and writer, with an intense love for the icons and heroes of his youth. But one of the recurring themes of our talks was his continuing disillusionment at the comic book (and, by extension, the entertainment) industry—his frustration with the caretakers of his icons and heroes.
Continue reading “Journey Against The Centre For The Earth: “Justice League The New Frontier””
March 12, 1951 saw the debut of one of the most beloved young scamps in all of comic strip history: Dennis the Menace.
The only problem was, two completely different Dennis the Menaces debuted on March 12, 1951: one in America and created by Hank Ketcham, and one in England created by David Law.
