Cheap Thrills - JUGHEAD #206

This column originally ran on Comics Bulletin

Random Pulls from the Bargain Bin

In these economic times, finding inexpensive entertainment is difficult. Thank goodness for the local comic shop and a slew of comics nobody cares about anymore! Each week Daniel Elkin randomly grabs a comic from the bargain bin (for 50 cents) to see what kind of bang he can get for his two-bits. These are those tales.

March 7, 2012 – paid 50 cents for:
JUGHEAD #206
Published by: Archie Comics
Written by: Frank Doyle
Art by: Dan Decarlo and Samm Schwartz

IS THERE ANYTHING MORE DUMB-THICK-STUBBORN THAN A GUY WHO WON'T TAKE HIS BEST FRIEND'S ADVICE!

So, as I mentioned in last week's column, I bought some old comics off ebay from Too Much Coffee Man's Shannon Wheeler. Though they are not technically randomly pulled from the bargain bin, they are awesome, truly Cheap Thrills, and they will be the subject of the next couple of weeks of columns. I am still singing the song: It's my column. I can do what I want to.

This week's choice from Wheeler's Wonders comes from July, 1972.

The summer of '72 was a time full of tension. Hanoi Jane Fonda was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. George McGovern was nominated for President at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. A ceasefire between the British and the IRA collapsed after British troops killed five people (three of whom were teenagers) in Belfast. The Nixon Administration started paying off the Watergate Burglars to keep them quiet (ultimately paying them almost half a million dollars).

George Carlin was arrested in Milwaukee, WI for doing his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” bit.

Like I said – there was tension in the air in July, 1972. Brilliant photographer Diane Arbus killed herself. Bobby Ramirez (drummer for Edgar Winter's band) was stomped to death in a Chicago bar because his hair was too long.

Jimmy Cliff released the soundtrack to The Harder They Come, while Curtis Mayfield released the soundtrack to Super Fly.

Actress Elizabeth Berkley was born.

Also in July of 1972, seemingly as a response to all this tension, David Wong of Eli Lilly found that fluoxetine seemed to inhibit uptake of serotonin without uptake of norepinephrine. Thus was born Prozac.

The country seemed like it was coming apart at the seams there in July of 1972. Thankfully, Archie Comics had the proper panacea. This was when they chose to publish Jughead #206. After this choice was made, America went back to feeling groovy and One Million Moms let out a collective sigh.

Review of KOLOR KLIMAX

This Review Originally Appeared 

on Comics Bulletin.

There are strange things going on in Nordic comics. And when I say “strange”, what I really mean is bug-eyed gibbering crazy. And when I say “bug-eyed gibbering crazy”, I mean shit verging either on lurid incomprehensibility or sweet unfathomable genius.

How do I know this? I know this because I just finished reading Fantagraphics new anthology, Kolor Klimax. This 250 page full color soft covered book, edited by an equally odd Matthias Wivel, features the works of twenty-two comic artists from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway, none of whom seem to have anything in common except for a penchant to present their own personal idiosyncrasies.

And there is some wild stuff in this anthology. From Bendik Kaltenborn's “The Great Underneath,” a surrealistic story featuring a biography of Meatloaf, a man in an orange suit, and a talking dog, to Peter Kielland's wordless black and white comic called “Mr. Pig in 'I Own the Night'” which deconstructs the endless drudgery of a nine-to-five existence in a manner that filled my head with liquid thoughts, this anthology is all over the place in terms of themes, styles, and sanity.

There are some particularly stellar pieces in this anthology, though. Of particular note are Johan F. Krarup's “Nostalgia,” which is a wrenching tale about a man in crisis told in an almost emotionless manner; Mikkel Damsbo and Gitte Broeng's “Relocating Mother,” a rumination on the power of place and identity; Christopher Nielsen's “Escalator,” a visceral metaphor for the role fear plays in maintaining the status quo; and Joanna Rubin Dranger's “Always Prepared to Die for My Child,” to which any new parent can easily relate.

Your Duck(?) Enemy

Comic Book Storytellers

Your Chicken Enemy

Why Nico is Cooler Than All of Us.

ADVANCE TAG-TEAM REVIEW: Supurbia #1 (of 4)

This Review Originally Ran on Comics Bulletin.

It was an advanced Tag-Team Review I did with Jamil Scalese

Jamil: I cut bullshit. That's just who I am. I don't think I could do this comic reviewing thing without having that quality. So, I want to be completely frank with the audience and I say that when Daniel and I read the solicit for Supurbia we weren't exactly excited at the prospects of reviewing this new book from BOOM! Studios. Here is that solicit for curious parties:

What goes down when the capes come off? Meet the "Real Housewives" of Earth's greatest super-team, the Meta Legion! It's the egos, the tantrums, and the betrayals of the super set. Find out what happens behind the masks as superhero families are faced with the sordid problems of everyday life - and then some! From rising star writer Grace Randolph (Marvel’s NATION X, HER-OES) and hot new artist Russell Dauterman, this series takes the familiar super-team and turns it on its head with a scandalous, TMZ-fueled look at what it's like to live with a superhero!

Not badly written, but words phrases like "Real Housewives", "TMZ-fueled" and "the sordid problems of everyday life" don't exactly whet my palate. I read comics to escape that shit. The title seemed like another attempt to garner female readers by pandering to things executives think they like. I wasn't expecting much.

The Idea and the Form: An Interview with Okla Elliott

This interview originally ran in the Spring 2012 issue 

of The Adirondack Review.

Okla Elliott has recently published his debut short story collection, From the Crooked Timber, through Press 53. Currently, Elliott is the Illinois Distinguished Fellow at the University of Illinois in the fields of comparative literature and trauma studies. He also holds an MFA from Ohio State University. In 2008-09, he was a visiting assistant professor at Ohio Wesleyan University. His drama, non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and translations have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Indiana Review, The Literary Review, Natural Bridge, New Letters, A Public Space, and The Southeast Review, among others. He is the author of three poetry chapbooks—The Mutable Wheel; Lucid Bodies and Other Poems; and A Vulgar Geography—and he co-edited (with Kyle Minor) The Other Chekhov.

The seven stories and one novella that comprise From the Crooked Timber are, in their way, representational of Immanuel Kant's dictum, “From the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made,” from which the collection takes it title. It is a collection of stories about, as Elliott says, “human crookedness and all the noble and desperate and pathetic and cruel and generous things we do to come to terms with that crookedness.” These character driven pieces follow the down-and-out and the damaged as they try to make sense of their past, their present, and how they fit into the world in which they find themselves. Through this, the stories provide a peek into what it means to be human.

I recently had the opportunity to talk to Okla Elliott about his background, his development as a writer, and his process.

Daniel Elkin: Let’s begin by talking about your background a little, as that seems like a logical place to start. In my research about you, I found that you are from Argyle, Kentucky, and that your generation of siblings was the first in your family to graduate high school and enter college. Can you elaborate a little on your formative years, especially in terms of how you think they have influenced you in your writing, your politics, and your world view?

Okla Elliott: Well, it’s easy to over-emphasize this kind of stuff—embarking on a trite faux-psychoanalysis session and explaining everything from my creative life to my choice of breakfast cereal via some childhood event—so I’ll try to avoid that. At the same time, it’s easy to shrink these sorts of things, to ignore them as inconsequential details from the past that one has “overcome” or whatever, even though they are completely present with us all the time—so I’ll try to avoid that as well.

The first effect of having parents who never graduated high school was that my father instilled in me an intense seriousness about learning. There’s a way in which kids whose parents are doctors and professors and the like can sort of downplay the gravity of education. It’s taken for granted maybe. Or maybe it’s a sort of rebellion in some instances. But for me, education has always been an unalloyed good. Education can make a poor boy from rural Kentucky into a successful lawyer, or it can make that same poor boy from Kentucky into a writer who gets the opportunity to travel the world and study fascinating cultures, languages, literatures, etc. So I guess I have always taken my studies seriously because I saw them as my way out of a life of poverty and ignorance.

Cheap Thrills - THE HANDS OF SHANG-CHI, MASTER OF KUNG FU #17

THIS COLUMN ORIGINALLY APPEARED ON COMICS BULLETIN

Random Pulls from the Bargain Bin

In these economic times, finding inexpensive entertainment is difficult. Thank goodness for the local comic shop and a slew of comics nobody cares about anymore! Each week Daniel Elkin randomly grabs a comic from the bargain bin (for 50 cents) to see what kind of bang he can get for his two-bits. These are those tales.

February 29, 2011 – paid 50 cents for:
THE HANDS OF SHANG-CHI, MASTER OF KUNG FU #17
Published by: Marvel Comics

Breath by: Steve Engelehart
Movement by: Jim Starlin
Form by: Al Milgrom

BUT I'M CARRYIN' A MONKEY, JIM

So I bought some old comics off ebay from Too Much Coffee Man's Shannon Wheeler. Though they are not technically randomly pulled from the bargain bin, they are awesome, truly Cheap Thrills, and they will be the subject of the next couple of weeks of columns. As the song goes: It's my column. I can do what I want to.

The first of the Wheeler Wonders comes to us all the way from the swinging 70's – April, 1974 to be exact.

April of 1974 was when Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run in Atlanta, Stephen King published his first novel (Carrie) under his own name, the Ray Harryhausen film The Golden Voyage of Sindbad was released, and the greatest straight man of all time, Bud Abbott, passed away.

Did you know that Penelope Cruz, Victoria Beckham, and Da Brat were all born in April of 1974? There is probably some joke I could make about this fact, but I'm feeling too old right now to be particularly funny.

Anyway, April of 1974 was when the band ABBA won the 1974 Eruovision Song Contest with their song Waterloo. Van Halen played their first show on the Sunset Strip, and Queen played their first concert in North America (in Denver, CO – opening for Mott the Hoople – heh). A frighteningly coke-ganked David Bowie released the epic album, Diamond Dogs, in April of 1974, reminding us that “This ain't Rock and Roll, this is Genocide!”

And lastly, not content to be merely flotsam following the tidal wave of Bruce Leesploitation crashing onto the shores of America, finally, in April of 1974, Steve Englehart, Jim Starlin, and Al Milgrom's dreams came true when The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu got his own title (shucking off the shackles of its previous Special Marvel Edition Featuring chains), starting at issue number 17.

And what better way to inaugurate the new title then with Blackjack! The man not even KUNG FU can SMASH!

Why Lou Reed is Cooler Than All of Us.

STYLE

Review of Pornhounds #2

This review originally ran on Comics Bulletin

Pornhounds 2 is about identity, connecting, overcoming, and transformation. Sharon Lintz's 54 page, black and white, self-published comic is about her work as a writer and editor at a porn magazine. It is also about her personal journey through breast cancer. Throughout the comic, Lintz treats each subject with both dignity and humor, infusing each page with her strength of character. What starts off as an exploration of loneliness, personality, sexuality, and creativity is transformed by the end of the book as a statement of survival and hope.

Pornhounds 2 takes up where 2006's equally engaging Pornhounds 1 left off, following Lintz as she gives a “behind the scenes” look into the porn publishing industry. The first three stories in the book are pretty straight forward, but within these shorter vignettes Lintz takes her rather desensitized view of the barrage of pornography and, through her own transformative creative process, is able to turn flesh into spirit, desperation into a need to connect, and exploitation into rumination. Of particular note in this regard is the section titled “Letters” which features the art of Emanuele Simonelli. Here, Lintz presents actual letters written to the magazine from various men (many of them desperate, alone, disfigured, or in prison). This section could easily be exploited or presented in a manner that would fuel a particular agenda, but Lintz ends it tenderly, once again focusing on her themes of identity and connecting.

How To Pick Up Your Chicken (Enemy).

Ultradimensional Anomalies No.42

Love Is Making Its Way Back Home