Digitally Speaking...#22 "Greg Rucka, Loeb & Sale, Beast of Wolfe's Bay, Bikini Cowboy, Binary, The Black Well, Blastosaurus, Bob and His Beer, Boobage, Brandi Bare, The Bunker"

Batman: The Ten Cent Adventure (DC)
From 2002.

via comiXology

Yeah, a comic that cost ten cents!  This was also the start of the "Bruce Wayne: Murderer?" arc.  This lead-off was written by Greg Rucka; the art from Rick Burchett (best known for his Batman: The Animated Series comics) and lettering by Willie Schubert (I know, I never mention the people who work on these things other than the writers and artists, but it's a whole team effort) combined with Rucka's scripting end up with the closest I've ever seen any team match the classic duo of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale (The Long Halloween).  It's Rucka who I've got to spend this time talking about, though.  He's one of the four writers responsible for one of my all-time favorite comics, 52, along with Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns and Mark Waid.  Of the four I'm least familiar with Rucka's work.  At DC he was best known for his Wonder Woman and Gotham Central, which among other things was best known for fleshing out the character of Renee Montoya, who in the pages of 52 would go on to become the new Question while at the same time Batwoman emerged.  Suffice to say Rucka's had a vested interest in strong female characters.  Ten Cent Adventure features another of those, Sasha Bordeaux, who eventually went on to have a career in Checkmate and an interesting relationship with OMAC.  It's Rucka's depiction of Batman as a tragic story that may have deserved a different payoff than the "Murderer?" arc, something other than the Dark Knight Returns future, something bleaker.  It'd be nice to see if Rucka could nail such a story if he ever returned to the DC fold.  Rucka is also known for creator-owned titles like Queen & Country, Whiteout, Lazarus, and Stumptown.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Special Edition (DC)
From 2014/1993.

via View Comic

Speaking of Loeb and Sale, here's their first Batman collaboration, the first of three Halloween one-shots later collected in Batman: Haunted Knight.  It reads a lot more like their brilliantly underrated first collaboration, collected as The Challengers of the Unknown Must Die! but long out of print, than their later work, and a freebie this year hopefully helped remind readers, or make new ones aware, of their considerable legacy.

The Beast of Wolfe's Bay (Evensen Creative)

From 2013.

via Wolfe's Bay

Well, this was pretty darn brilliant.  Well before I reached the background material that acknowledged the graphic novel's origins, including the Kickstarter campaign that helped make it a reality, I'd been thinking this was like the Scream version of monster movies, what I wished the dreadfully overrated Blair Witch Project had actually been like.  But as it turns out, Erik Evensen actually started out with the concept of modernizing Beowulf.  And in that context, the whole thing may be more fascinating than it first seems.  Other than that, this is a Bigfoot story, and in the past I've been a very amateur Bigfoot buff, so I always like to revisit that territory.  Evensen pulls double duty as writer and artist, and the remarkable thing is that he not only knows how to tell a story but visualize it as well.  The art gets better as the story continues, to the point where it started looking a lot like the excellent Fiona Staples' (Saga).  This guy has a bright future, but as far as I'm concerned, he's already given himself a head-start in building a legacy.

***** (out of five)

Bikini Cowboy Vol. 1 (Fresherluke)
From 2013.

via comiXology

Once in a while you come across something that transcends your normal evaluation of "great."  I've read a number of comics from the handy pack comiXology put together that I've really liked, including the above Beast of Wolfe's Bay and the Archeologists of Shadows series.  But Bikini Cowboy is better than all of them.  If this were a movie, I'd be ranking it alongside similar discoveries like The Fall and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.  In my Goodreads review I referenced Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained as a similarly Weest-shattering experience, and called Bikini Cowboy a modern Peter Pan.  It's phenomenal.  It's astonishing.  And it sneaks up on you.  At first it seems as close to absurd as you can get.  Girls did not wear bikinis back then.  They just didn't.  But the longer L. Frank Weber spins his tale, the more it works.  The artwork is similar to Sean Murphy, and the story itself is comparable to Murphy's own breakthrough work Punk Rock Jesus.  And this is only the first volume?  I want to read more.  Holy a-cow, Batman!  

*****

Binary (ilfeld comix)

From 2013.

via Amazon

Based on Chris Hinz's own book Liege Killer, this graphic novel reads like the Philip K. Dick genre but needed a lot more streamlining to have a real impact.  The art of Jon Proctor is similar to Tony Harris (Ex Machina), so that kept it visually appealing.  Interesting concepts, anyway.

***

The Black Well 

From 2012.

via Lulu

A graphic novel that features the style of underground comix but is generally easier to read, even if Jamie Tanner leaves his story somewhat open-ended.  The Black Well might be described as a cross between The Island of Dr. Moreau and Kafka's Metamorphosis.  It's pretty interesting.

****

Blastosaurus #1 (Square Planet)
From 2014.

via All Comic

I...guess this is kind of the dinosaur version of Terminator.  Not terrible.  It is terribly imaginative, but all I can really say beyond that is that it's not really for me.

***

Bob and His Beer 

From 2012.

via Comic Vine

A little too convenient in how it all plays out, and it reads like a student's effort for a classroom writing assignment, but it works, generally, and at least for me, it's a unique comics experience.  There's one point where it even takes advantage of the digital format, which is all too rare even today, more than a decade after Scott McCloud gave a lecture in my own school days about the possibilities of the form.  I'd encourage a little more of that the next time the Stringfields collaborate.

****

Boobage (Lipstick Kiss Press)
From 2013.

via Comic Vine

Literary-style, you know, the kind of comic book and/or graphic novel that usually gets all the mainstream love and/or awards; more graphic novella than novel, basically a one-shot, because it's about as long as a standard issue; all that being said it's a pretty good, enlightening read on the insecurities of a small-chested woman, her perspective growing up.  The only problem is that it doesn't really nail the landing.  Is this an excerpt, then, for something Gallagher will later release?  She's talented either way.

****









Brandi Bare
From 2014.

via comiXology

It's not really bad, per say, but the book remains open, as it were, if Joe Pekar is doing this comic for reasons other than the cheesecake factor.  There are plenty of cheesecake comics out there, and most of them disguise their intentions by doing genre work of some extraction.

***

 The Bunker #1 (Oni)

From 2014.

via Rhymes with Geek

Not surprisingly, the best "regular" comic experience of the bunch belongs to a seasoned pro, Joshua Hale Fialkov.  For a few years now he's been plying his trade in superhero books, but Hale made his reputation on Elk's Run, and it looks like he's interested in getting back into that vibe.  The Bunker is like Lost by way of Robert Sawyer's FlashForward, which not so coincidentally was adapted into one of the many TV series that tried to be Lost.  It also reads a lot like Stephen King, actually.  A group of friends discover a hatch that leads them to a set of letters addressed individually to each of them.  The letters come from the future and don't speak especially well of what's to come.  Do they believe the letters?  It's fascinating stuff, and instantly becomes some of the best 2014 material I've read.  I'll be coming back to this series for sure.  It's just a matter of when.

*****