Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt

by RM Rhodes

2019 saw three sequels to 1986's Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, one of the most seminal works in English language corporate super hero comics. One of those sequels was a live action television show on HBO. One of them was Doomsday Clock, the overt incorporation of the Watchmen characters into the larger DC comics universe. And one of them was Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt by Keiron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard. Full disclosure: of these, I've only read the the latter, mostly because it was the only one of interest to me.

Since it's release, one of the things that made Watchmen stand out from the very crowded field of superhero comics was it's one-and-done status. There were no prequels, sequels, crossovers, or spin-offs (but plenty of parodies and homages). The corporate lore from DC Comics holds that the main reason for this was Paul Levitz, who was the president of DC comics from 2002-2009, although he had worked at DC Comics for 35 years in a variety of roles.

Three years after Levitz left, DC Comics announced that they were going to create a series of prequel comics that nobody was asking for. The prevailing theory was that the corporate overlords couldn't handle the fact that they had a very successful property on their hands that they hadn't fully exploited. The whole thing is a very sad cautionary tale about the work-for-hire nature of creating new characters for corporate super hero comics companies.

Each of the three sequels completely ignores this behind-the-scenes history. But only Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt actually attempts to grapple with the artistic legacy of Watchmen. Watchmen, for those who have never read it, is a formalist masterpiece, built around a nine-panel grid. Many creators have cited (or overtly copied) Watchmen in their own works over the years. Gillen takes aim at this aspect of the work and ruthlessly interrogates it, to astounding effect.

The original plan for Watchmen came from the fact that DC Comics had acquired a set of characters from Charlton (another comics publisher) and wanted Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons to do something interesting with them. Moore and Gibbons eventually created new characters based on the Charlton characters so that DC would have the option of doing something with the characters in the future. This gave Moore and Gibbons room to do something permanent without worrying that future continuity would reverse it - a surprisingly common occurrence in super hero comics.

For Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, Gillen and Wijngaard uses those same Charlton characters (or rough analogs of the same), but based them on the variations that were created by Moore and Gibbons. It's a clever trick, one that skirts the whole "official sequel" issue (Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt was published by Dynamite, a comics company that has no connection to DC Comics) and, like the original decision made by Moore and Gibbons, gave Gillen and Wijngaard more room to maneuver.

Utterly unlike the intricate complexity of Watchmen, the plot of Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt really doesn't matter. The generic super hero tropes provide a series of events for the formalist commentary to sit on. From the very first panel on the very first page, the creators make it obvious that this work relies heavily on the reader's remembrance of Watchmen itself. In fact, there are several pages that are shot-for-shot replications of specific pages in Watchmen.

As the pages turn, this becomes even more explicitly a work aimed at insiders. Entire lines of dialogue are lifted (and mangled) from Watchmen for very specific reasons. And then, in the fourth episode, the title character lands in an a scene that is completely illustrated in black and white, an obvious and overt homage to the "slice of life" comics of Eddie Campbell, with whom Moore worked on From Hell. This gets even more explicit when Campbell himself shows up and tries to start a fight with the main character, who is still wearing his superhero outfit. The best part of this sequence is a cameo appearance from Moore himself.

Gillen proves that he's got a solid understanding of the formalism inherent in the nine-panel grid, as well as the metanarrative tricks that one can play with, if one has the inclination. And Gillen clearly has the inclination. His message is very clear: since it's publication, Watchmen has cast an oversized shadow on corporate super hero comics and, maybe, we might should find something different to fixate on. Any day now.

From a content perspective, I happen to think he's absolutely correct. The term "grim and gritty" came out of work like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, which came out the same year. Grim and gritty superhero comics became a scourge on the marketplace in the 90s and are only now starting to peter out.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I agree with Gillen's thesis that maybe we should let the formalism of Watchmen go as well. The nine panel grid is a natural fit with the size and shape of a modern comic book page. Frank Santoro's Comics Correspondence Course preaches an eight panel grid because it removes the requirement for early creators to have to come up with a layout - effectively, one less decision to make. The argument for the nine panel grid is more or less the same, with the added benefit of giving the page the timing of a waltz - one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. It is increasingly unlikely that such basic grids will ever really go out of style.

All in all, Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt is a very interesting piece of work. Unfortunately, it requires the reader to have a very deep familiarity with Watchmen to really "get" the point. Fortunately for the creative team, Watchmen is so ubiquitous that most readers have probably already done the prerequisite reading. It's ironic that Gillen would rely so heavily on the tropes in Watchmen to make the argument that it should not have the influence it currently has.

Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt was originally serialized in five issues. The collected edition, in hardcover, was released in early January of 2020. It's unclear why the collection was issued in hardback instead of the more common softcover, but this reviewer suspects that it had to do with capitalizing on the higher price point.

If you are a reader with fond memories of Watchmen, but are more interested in the formalist aspects of the work than the ongoing integration of the characters into the ongoing DC Comics universe, this comes highly recommended.

Comic Shopping in Rome

By RM Rhodes

I was recently in Rome on vacation. As I usually do when I'm in a foreign country, I sought out local comic book shops, just because I find it interesting to see how other people sell my favorite medium. This time around, I went to two shops. 

Originally, I was looking for a comic book shop in the neighborhood behind the Vatican. I wasn't able to find it, though. In the course of my quest, I went into a GameStop and asked for a recommendation. The neckbeard customer in the store pointed out that his local comic shop was right around the corner. This led me to StarShopRoma. This was the Scipioni branch of the shop, which makes sense. It absolutely felt like a outpost shop that exists to serve the people in the neighborhood. 

The neighborhood is right next to the Vatican and is full of massive, block-length buildings. Small retail establishments like this are scattered all over the street level of the neighborhood, seemingly at random. In my experience, one of the things that mainstream nerd culture shops like to do is customize their exterior displays. The way that the building was constructed gave them very little room, but they made the most of what they had. Europeans are used to working with limited space.

There was a fantastic assortment of original art in the entryway.

The interior of the space was tightly packed with very little room unused. Every shelf was stacked to the extra-high ceiling with boxes of statues and figures. Manga was, by far, the dominant comics format for sale. 

There was a wall of American superhero comics and a rather limited shelf of translations of American alt-comics alongside BD from French publishers, but even that was sparse. There was a set of deluxe Corto Maltese volumes, but that was the extent of historical Italian comics creators that I am aware of - no Manara, for example. I did find a copy of Box Brown's new book when I did some digging.

It's right next to a major tourist attraction, and the cafes in the area are poised to handle the overflow from people looking for a place to sit down. This shop doesn't care about any of that. It sells what it knows to a dedicated audience. By and large, that audience is men with a certain taste in pop culture. It's exactly the kind of comic store that would be frequented by a guy hanging out in a GameStop in the middle of the day on a Friday. It's a local, male, otaku shop.

I ran into the other shop almost by accident. I was retracing my steps along the Tiber and past the Pantheon when I found myself on a major road bordering a neighborhood with a number of tourist friendly boutiques. I walked by the Fox Gallery and spotted the comics-related material in the windows. Intrigued, I went in and was very surprised by what I found.

The store is laid out like the kind of mainstream boutique that sells blank notebooks and coffee table books full of maps or artist retrospectives. It just so happens that the material on offer what almost all comics-related. There was a very well-curated selection of comics prominently displayed on a table as I walked in, and a much larger library in the adjoining room. Some of them were even in English, which indicated that the target audience might just as well include tourist women who wanted an offbeat souvenir from their trip to Rome.

This store looks like every mainstream boutique aimed at the profitable female tourist demographic I've ever been in, anywhere in Europe or the United States. Bright, airy, well-organized, calm, casually attractive. It's deep in the heart of tourist territory - on the walking path between the Pantheon and the cluster of Roman ruins around the various forums. And there are a ton of people walking along the street that it sits on, many of whom would need very little reason to duck in and see what's for sale. And the subject matter makes it more likely that a tourist husband might be talked into going inside.

The selection of comics is pretty basic. But at the same time, the presentation isn't cluttered or packed or frenetic. There's a lot of room for the titles to breathe and appeal to the casual browser. There was even a place for the little ones to relax while the family browsed. The actual material was all over the place - much more European material, almost no Manga, and some mid-tier American comics. By and large, the choices seemed oriented around whether the books were attractive as art objects.

The compare and contrast between the two stores and their respective target audiences, approach to presentation, and material on offer started almost immediately. One was a cramped little garret designed to meet the specific needs of regular customers. The other was designed to appeal to tourists, treating international comics as coffee table books. To be fair - the Andy Warhol book by Typex feels like it could very easily be a coffee table book.

Before I left for Rome, I did a quick search for local comic book shops and there were no results in the parts of the city that I ended up walking through. Neither of these shops showed up, for example. Mind you, it was a rough search and I did not really put a lot of effort into deep research because I only had two days on the ground and I really wanted to see Trajan's Column.

Of the two, I was almost completely unsurprised by StarShop. It felt like every nerd outpost I've ever wandered into, pretty much everywhere I've been in over half-a-dozen countries. The only real shock was how much manga there was and how few translations of French BD there were. I chalk that up to this being an outpost, but it is a pretty good barometer as to what's selling to this audience. Basically, this is not where you come to buy European comics. The fact that there was such a stark divide in audiences is notable.

Fox Gallery, on the other hand, took me completely by surprise - literally. I just stumbled on it as I was walking down the street. I immediately recognized the boutique commercial format - I've been in a ton of these over the course of the past two decades. However, I have never been in one that leaned so heavily on comic books as the primary thematic merchandise - especially targeted at tourists. That felt revolutionary. 

I can honestly say that I've never been in a comic book store that felt like this - to the point where it was not entirely clear that one could call this a comic book store in the traditional sense. Honestly, it felt more like a store that had been set up along contemporary retail presentation guidelines and it just happens to sell comic books. There's probably something to be said about the fact that the phrase "store that sells comic books" means something completely different from the phrase "comic book store."

__________________________________________________________

Why is this here? It's a long story. Mike Rhode first introduced himself to me when I first started vending at SPX. Over the years, we've talk to each other at Comic conventions around the DC area and never quite get around to sitting down for lunch. 

When I moved to Arlington two years ago, I didn't realize that Mike lived within a mile of my building. Nor did I realize that he lived next door to my ex-girlfriend's friend from college. We also discovered, by accident that we work two buildings away from each other, because we work in adjacent organizations. The world is a very small place, sometimes. 

It really feels that way when I run into Mike at the local farmer's market. Naturally, that's when I pitch him article ideas. I'm reading the entire run of Heavy Metal in public (in blog format) because I happen to own the entire run of Heavy Metal. This means that I'm engaged in an ongoing study of the magazine. In addition, I have a diverse and idiosyncratic reading list that tends towards the weird corners of comics history. Sometimes one circumstance or another results in long articles that I don't really have anyplace to put. Mike has been gracious enough to let me publish them here.

In summary: this is an article about comics from someone in the DC area. 

Hickman's Influences on House of X

By RM Rhodes

I haven’t read X-Men comics in at least a decade, if not longer. I would be hard-pressed to tell you if I’ve even read a single issue from this century, to be honest. But I do keep up with the news of X-Men the same way that I keep up with what my ex-wives are doing these days – I used to care a lot more, but I’m still curious. At the very least, I figure that I’ll hear about current developments on Jay and Miles Explain the X-Men at some point in the future.

I mention all of that to explain why I knew that it was a big deal that Jonathan Hickman was going to be writing the X-Men. And why I knew that in the new Hickman-written book, House of X, Moira MacTaggert was now a mutant who has lived several lives, reincarnating again and again to change things in her next life. That's an interesting plot twist.

And then I saw on Twitter that author Claire North was noting similarities between that plot and the plot of her 2014 book, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. I did not see that coming.

I did find the interview that Jonathan Hickman did with The Beat back in 2016, where he mentions The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August as a book that he’s currently reading and currently enjoying.

No word as of yet whether anyone has pointed this out to Hickman or Marvel, or gotten a response if they did. But it’s certainly something worth noting. Because Claire North has certainly noted it.

So sorta this. I mean, maybe it's just a loving and honourable coincidence of tangled ideas? But it feels like a rip off right now, and I'd be curious to know where the line between "honouring" and "are you kidding" lies. https://t.co/liyvtkq5ir

— Claire North (@ClaireNorth42) August 8, 2019

More to follow, I'm sure.

__________________________________________________________

Why is this here? It's a long story. Mike Rhode first introduced himself to me when I first started vending at SPX. Over the years, we've talk to each other at Comic conventions around the DC area and never quite get around to sitting down for lunch. 

When I moved to Arlington two years ago, I didn't realize that Mike lived within a mile of my building. Nor did I realize that he lived next door to my ex-girlfriend's friend from college. We also discovered, by accident that we work two buildings away from each other, because we work in adjacent organizations. The world is a very small place, sometimes. 

It really feels that way when I run into Mike at the local farmer's market. Naturally, that's when I pitch him article ideas. I'm reading the entire run of Heavy Metal in public (in blog format) because I happen to own the entire run of Heavy Metal. This means that I'm engaged in an ongoing study of the magazine. In addition, I have a diverse and idiosyncratic reading list that tends towards the weird corners of comics history. Sometimes one circumstance or another results in long articles that I don't really have anyplace to put. Mike has been gracious enough to let me publish them here.

In summary: this is an article about comics from someone in the DC area. 

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest

By RM Rhodes

2019 is the year of endings. Lost amongst the hype surrounding the endings of Game of Avengers Wars franchises is the ending of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the heavily metafictional comic series by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. The first issues of the first volume were published in 1999, which means that this series has been running on and off for two decades.

The conceit of LOEG (as it is often shortened) is that every character (and the majority of the settings) are from some piece of fiction or another. Clearly, this involves a great deal of research, and part of the fun of the series is trying to identify who everyone is. Jess Nevins has been making annotations of the whole series, and his page does a great job of helping the reader catch all of the references. The annotations are not strictly necessary, of course. Alan Moore is, in addition to everything else, a commercial writer and he knows how to keep the story going for readers who can't be bothered to look up all of the Easter Eggs that he throws in.

Named after Shakespeare's last play, the final volume of LOEG is entitled The Tempest, and the last episodic installment was published in mid-July. As with everything that Alan Moore produces, the name was not chosen lightly. The original play is about the wizard Prospero giving up his magic and destroying his books. Being a fictional character, Prospero shows up in this volume as well, but his appearance is heavily based on Alan Moore himself, which makes it fitting that this volume is also Alan Moore's final goodbye to comics. This is very much him breaking his toys and going off to do something completely different.

For the majority of the series, the stories were all set in the past. It was not until the final issue of the previous volume, 2011's Century, that the characters were brought to the present day. The Tempest picks up mere days after the end of Century, and the protagonists are still picking up the pieces from the end of the previous story. Because it’s the end of the series, I’m going to shy away from anything more than a high-level plot synopsis.

The main characters are Emma Peel (from the Avengers TV show), Wilhelmina Murray (from Dracula), and Orlando (the transgender character based partially on the book by Virginia Woolf). Their principal protagonist is James Bond (who is never named, but it’s clearly him). There’s also a nice bit of business with the various other people who have played James Bond over the years. The interactions between these two groups are intimately wrapped up in everything that has come before in the series. A series that has been publishing sporadically for two decades and only has a handful of volumes is allowed to have a degree of continuity that recommends readers to start at the beginning.

The Tempest turns fully into the conceit of an entirely fictional universe, ultimately bringing about the end of the world. This makes sense because a lot fiction set in the far future posits some version of the end of the world around the beginning of the 21st century. As such, this story wraps up plot lines from the entire series and contains major revelations that upturn everything that the reader thought they knew about the story to date.

Apocalypses and end-of-the-world situations figure prominently in a lot of Alan Moore’s fiction. Some version of the idea has shown up in almost everything he’s done. This includes Captain Britain, Miracleman, V for Vendetta, Watchmen, Swamp Thing, From Hell, Lost Girls, Promethea, Providence, and Jerusalem. It’s almost easier to find stories by Moore that don’t end with some form of apocalypse – personal, worldwide, or something in between.

In this case, the apocalypse is literal and a good portion of the plot turns on that destruction. The characters (and, thus, the readers) find out more details about the how and why of this ending was always inevitable. Along the way, the various characters settle scores and tie up a variety of loose ends. It’s a rousing romp of a story that travels all over the world, seeing places and doing things.

One of the things that makes this volume interesting is that every one of the six issues is formatted slightly differently. The first one is an homage to Classics Illustrated. The second one is an homage to science fiction comics of the 60s and 70s. The third is an homage to the romance comics of the 50s and 60s. The fourth is an homage to the venerable British children’s comic The Beano. The fifth is an homage to old EC-influenced horror comics from the 50s and 60s. The sixth is an homage to the British anthology comic 2000AD.

In some cases, the homages are only surface and don’t show up in the interior of the issue. The last issue features very strong 2000 AD homages in the interior, including the little credits box that looks identical to the original. Alan Moore cut his teeth writing for 2000 AD, so the homage feels a lot more heartfelt than some of the others.

Thanks to the wonderfully talented Kevin O’Neill, these stories are all over the place in an interesting and refreshing manner. A good portion of the story is told in one or two page stories that tell an entire storybeat. Each of them could stand alone as a solo story, and each of them is visually distinct, but they all tie into the larger plot in a very creative way. There’s an entire issue that contains extended visual homages to Jim Steranko’s run on Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD from the mid 60s, which is appropriate considering the spy motifs wrapped around the principal protagonist.

All in all, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a great series for people who want to get into comics but aren’t entirely certain about the whole superhero thing. The first volume leaned vaguely in that direction because the mainstream English-language comic book market is heavily dominated by that particular genre and any attempt to survive (much less thrive) in that environment had to market to the superhero buying demographic. However, by the time of The Tempest, Alan Moore has long since abandoned any concern or interest in picking up those readers. Part of that has to do with the changes to the comic book marketplace, but another part has to do with the fact that Alan Moore is a self-confessed cranky old man who is no longer interested in writing for that audience. More power to him.

From that perspective, LOEG in general (and The Tempest in particular) is a fascinating work from an elder statesman of comics who defined the shape of a lot of the comics material that is currently being produced – including a corporate-driven sequel to his most famous standalone work, Watchmen. As his final work, The Tempest serves as a very fitting epigraph to his entire comics career, marking a graceful ending to what is clearly one of his most personal visions.

The vast majority of people that have heard of LOEG are only familiar with the title because of the awful movie from 2003. If you are one of those people, but you liked the concept, you probably owe it to yourself to go out and pick up the first volume. If you liked that book, buy the rest because you’ll enjoy the whole series. The Tempest will be waiting patiently at the end, waiting for you to get caught up. The journey is worth the effort.
__________________________________________________________

Why is this here? It's a long story. Mike Rhode first introduced himself to me when I first started vending at SPX. Over the years, we've talk to each other at Comic conventions around the DC area and never quite get around to sitting down for lunch. 

When I moved to Arlington two years ago, I didn't realize that Mike lived within a mile of my building. Nor did I realize that he lived next door to my ex-girlfriend's friend from college. We also discovered, by accident that we work two buildings away from each other, because we work in adjacent organizations. The world is a very small place, sometimes. 

It really feels that way when I run into Mike at the local farmer's market. Naturally, that's when I pitch him article ideas. I'm reading the entire run of Heavy Metal in public (in blog format) because I happen to own the entire run of Heavy Metal. This means that I'm engaged in an ongoing study of the magazine. In addition, I have a diverse and idiosyncratic reading list that tends towards the weird corners of comics history. Sometimes one circumstance or another results in long articles that I don't really have anyplace to put. Mike has been gracious enough to let me publish them here.

In summary: this is an article about comics from someone in the DC area. 

The Complete Trump Magazine

by RM Rhodes

One of the things I like to do at comic book conventions is hit the discount graphic novel bins. One of the treasures that I found at AwesomeCon was a beautiful hardback book about Trump magazine, published by Fantagraphics. You're probably thinking the same thing I thought of when I picked it up, but never fear, it's not that Trump. In this case, Trump magazine was a satirical collaboration between Harvey Kurtzman (of MAD magazine fame) and Hugh Hefner (of Playboy fame), published by Playboy in 1957.

There is an excellent essay by Denis Kitchen explaining the history of the times and Kurtzman's poor business choices that led to him working with Hefner. Kurtzman brought practically the entire MAD magazine bullpen with him, including Will Elder, Al Jaffee, and Jack Davis - a veritable murderer's row of brilliantly satirical artists. Unfortunately, a combination of economic woes for the publisher and Kurtzman's procrastinating perfectionism meant that only two issues of Trump were every published.

Fortunately for contemporary readers, this means that both full issues are published in the single book, along with annotations and accompanying back matter. The annotations are more than occasionally necessary, especially for readers who are not up on current events from six decades ago. Bits and pieces of what might have gone into the third issue also appear at the end of the book, along with a slew of speculation. Probably the most interesting of these is the flexagon template that Kurtzman was planning to publish as the centerfold.

The material in the two issues are immediately familiar to anyone who has ever read an issue of MAD magazine. There were parodies of popular ads, parodies of popular comics, parodies of popular movies, and a slew of satires. One of the movie parodies even ends on a note that the editors don't want to spoil the movie for people who haven't seen it yet. The only jokes that fall flat are the ones that depend on the reader's understanding of current events. The jokes that rely on age-old dilemmas without any explanation are still just as funny today as they were when they were written.

Because MAD was printed in black and white on sub-optimal paper with sub-optimal printers, the art had to be cruder. Leveling up to a better publisher meant that the artists had access to better paper quality and better printing technology and they took advantage of it. One of the parody ads was created with a scratchboard and had much more detail than something created for MAD would have had.

One interesting item in the first issue is a reprint comic from "60 year old cartoon" - a French artist named Caran d'Ache. The joke is solid imperialist humor without being racist, which means that in involves animal humor. It's interesting to run into a 120 year old comic in an archival edition of a 60 year old magazine.

Overall, the book is worth your while if you're like me - an avid fan of old comics-related anthologies, especially those from the middle of the last century with both an interesting backstory and a limited print run. If you don't have my specific interests and you just want to laugh at something named Trump that has nothing to do with the 21st century, you might like this collection as well.

__________________________________________________________

Why is this here? It's a long story. Mike Rhode first introduced himself to me when I first started vending at SPX. Over the years, we've talk to each other at Comic conventions around the DC area and never quite get around to sitting down for lunch. 

When I moved to Arlington two years ago, I didn't realize that Mike lived within a mile of my building. Nor did I realize that he lived next door to my ex-girlfriend's friend from college. We also discovered, by accident that we work two buildings away from each other, because we work in adjacent organizations. The world is a very small place, sometimes. 

It really feels that way when I run into Mike at the local farmer's market. Naturally, that's when I pitch him article ideas. I'm reading the entire run of Heavy Metal in public (in blog format) because I happen to own the entire run of Heavy Metal. This means that I'm engaged in an ongoing study of the magazine. In addition, I have a diverse and idiosyncratic reading list that tends towards the weird corners of comics history. Sometimes one circumstance or another results in long articles that I don't really have anyplace to put. Mike has been gracious enough to let me publish them here.

In summary: this is an article about comics from someone in the DC area. 

Nexus - Comic Shopping in Reykjavik

by RM Rhodes

One of my great pleasures in life is visiting comic book stores in other countries when I am travelling. I recently went to Reykjavik and went out of my way to visit the local comic book store Nexus. Nexus is towards the outskirts of the city, away from the commercial city center. In fact, it's actually surrounded by apartment buildings and it comes across as a place where locals spend time. 

Next door to the store proper are a couple of empty storefronts that are well-lit and filled with tables where people can come and sit and play board games, Magic, or RPGs. A bit of online research tells me that child and adolescent psychologist Soffía Elín Sigurðardóttir opened an outreach center of sorts called Nexus Noobs, where pretty much anyone under 25 can come twice a week to play games and so forth in a deliberately curated safe space.

Not pictured: Darth Vader

The shop itself is more or less like a department store for geek and nerdy material. The article I linked to above describes Nexus as a "premiere hub for all things geek," which is very accurate. Comics take up one section, videos are in another, Funko Pops have an equally large section, and there are a variety of smaller sections packed into the back of the store. The fantasy and science fiction selection is excellent, and their Star Wars section had map books I'd never seen before, and I try to keep track of those when they come out. 

There was a place to purchase paints and miniatures, along with brushes and other painting materials. There was a cosplay section. A section filled with board games. A section of RPG books. And a whole corner dedicated to Taschen books, LBQT materials, healthy sex ed books, and erotic material. And doormats by the front door. If there was some kind of pop culture thing that they did not have, I am fairly sure that they would be willing to order it for you.

Register and main entrance - check out the giant corner of Funko on the right

They had everything in there, and the stuff they had was of higher quality than one would get from a comparable place in any random place in the States. If the price of importing is more or less the same, then it makes sense to bring over better quality material. There was some work in Icelandic, but the vast majority of the material in the store was in English. Not a lot of people speak Icelandic, but the vast majority of the population of Iceland can read English.

All the comics

The comics on offer were very interesting. The usual amount of Marvel and DC was present, but there was strong lean towards the Image/Humanoids/Fantagraphics material as well. There were some shelves of manga, but indie graphic novels in the "we've moved past superheroes" mode are winning out. In contrast, the only European work present was the stuff printed in English for the American market. I vaguely recall a shop in Reykjavik that I visited during a previous visit that was more European-oriented, but that was early November 2016 and a lot of things happened that month.

All the books (with concerned employee)

The store itself was within easy walking distance of the Reykjavik city center (everything is within walking distance of the city center), but it has a very different vibe than the tourist shops that demand the attention of tourists. Earlier I mentioned that Nexus is a place that seemed to be more focused on the locals and I think that really is the target demographic. That's not to say that they are unfriendly to people they don't recognize - they were perfectly happy to take my cousin's money.

Having spent time in the overly touristy commercial city center of Reykjavik, I can absolutely understand why the locals would want a place that caters to their needs and interests. Most Americans don't really have any insight into how accessible their version of pop culture is to people whose first language is not English. Nexus was a good reminder that people in a marginalized language group will do whatever they have to in order to participate in the global pop culture conversation.

If I was living in Reykjavik and I needed a place to go to feel like I was not alone in my nerdcore tendencies, I would be at Nexus once a week, just to walk around and enjoy the feeling of being catered to.

__________________________________________________________

Why is this here? It's a long story. Mike Rhode first introduced himself to me when I first started vending at SPX. Over the years, we've talk to each other at Comic conventions around the DC area and never quite get around to sitting down for lunch. 

When I moved to Arlington two years ago, I didn't realize that Mike lived within a mile of my building. Nor did I realize that he lived next door to my girlfriend's friend from college. We also discovered, by accident that we work two buildings away from each other, because we work in adjacent organizations. The world is a very small place, sometimes. 

It really feels that way when I run into Mike at the local farmer's market. Naturally, that's when I pitch him article ideas. I'm reading the entire run of Heavy Metal in public (in blog format) because I happen to own the entire run of Heavy Metal. This means that I'm engaged in an ongoing study of the magazine. In addition, I have a diverse and idiosyncratic reading list that tends towards the weird corners of comics history. Sometimes one circumstance or another results in long articles that I don't really have anyplace to put. Mike has been gracious enough to let me publish them here.

In summary: this is an article about comics from someone in the DC area. 

Lambiek and Henk - Comic Shopping in Amsterdam

by RM Rhodes

One of my favorite things to do when I travel to other countries is to visit their comic book stores. My French is good enough that I prefer to visit shops that sell French comics, which is the predominant publishing language of most of northern Europe. When I was in Amsterdam, my VRBO was almost directly across the street from Lambiek, which is one of the best and oldest comic shops in the city. This proved to be unfortunate for my wallet.

The famous Lambiek sign. On more than one occasion, 
I saw someone taking a picture of themselves in front of the shop.

They have only recently moved into this new location, but I like the store much better than the old place. The organization is much more logical, and the smaller space focuses the attention better. Upstairs, all of the comics are in Dutch. Downstairs, all of the comics are English. It's more or less understood that an American would not be silly enough to buy English-language comics in mainland Europe - they're always cheaper in America. The only exception is for super-rare things that you did not know existed, like the Robert's Rules of Order illustrated by Will Eisner that I found on my last visit.

The Interior of Lambiek. Dutch upstairs, 
English and French in the basement.

However, there's a hidden shelf of French comics around on one of the plinths in the basement that had a fantastic selection. I ended up putting back more books than I wanted to, but the shopping experience was fun. There was a complete run of the first ten issues of A Suivre (a popular French anthology magazine from the early 80s) and a variety of four or five album runs of characters I did not recognize. I love finding stuff that I did not know existed - it acts as a good reminder that there is always some facet of this medium that I have not yet encountered.

The interior of Lambiek. No, really.

The owner's name is Boris and he has an attitude about him that reminds me of Bill Boichel and James Sime and other comic book shop owners I have known in my life. We got into a long conversation about Enki Bilal and which period of his art we preferred, and why. I showed him some of my comics and he recommended an artist named Wasco, who designed their windows in the back.

Windows at Lambiek by Wasco

Among my purchases was a very early book by Milo Manara, from when he was much more obviously a Moebius clone. There was also a very meta Jacques Tardi book that I bought and a collection of Pilote specials from the 70s that I didn't buy (but know I know they exist!). I wish I could say that the most amazing thing I found on the trip was at Lambiek, but that's not true. The real find of the trip was actually down at the book market on the Spui, but that's a completely different story.

As a compare and contrast, I also sought out the comic shop Henk, which specializes in selling American and English-language comics. Henk is actually two shop fronts, back-to-back, with an entrance on either side of the block it sits on. One entrance looks out over the Gelderskade canal, technically just outside the Red Light District, and the other entrance is in the Chinatown portion of the Red Light District.

Henk knows its customers. One of the two shop fronts caters to manga fans and has an extensive collection of vinyl statues alongside the shelves of English-language manga reprints and other comics-adjacent tchotchkes. There was even a small section of videos. That end of the shop was packed with people. That's also where the cash register was, along with the shelf of indie graphic novels that would appeal to a manga reader who wants to venture into new territory but eschews superhero comics.

The manga end of Henk

The other end of the shop was laid out very much like an American superhero comic book store, complete with basement location, spinner racks, back issue bins, and walls lined with Marvel and DC collected editions and posters. It was also the empty portion of the store. The whole store looked more or less like an American comic book store, but the non-manga part was almost painfully accurate in its cultural reproduction.

The non-manga end of Henk

Even among the indie graphic novels, there were really no European comics available in the store, unless they were English-language translations that had somehow crept back around into indie legitimacy. This was consistent with my Lambiek experience, which had no manga or superhero comics whatsoever. The conclusion I drew from this was that the audiences for the various kinds of comics don't significantly overlap - or, at least, don't overlap enough to make it worth the while of comic shop owners to carry everything in one store.

The indie graphic novel shelf - this is the extent of the overlap between Lambiek and Henk

In a city as physically small as Amsterdam, it is astonishing how close together everything is. The two shops are little more than a seven minute walk apart, but the blocks they sit on are wildly different. Lambiek is in a quiet residential street. The more obvious side of Henk is on a main commercial thoroughfare. Not coincidentally, the Nieumarkt (which has a street market on the weekends) sits between both shops. Arguably, both benefit from the proximity, but Henk is a more prominent spot to catch overflow foot traffic. Weirdly, taking this entrance drops you into the room dominated by back-issue bins and surrounded by superhero comics.

The entrance by the Nieumarkt

From that perspective, the desolate back issue bins which face the canal share a temperament with Lambiek's basement of the best of English language indie comics. (Seriously, Lambiek is probably the primary Dutch customer of Fantagraphics, Koyama Press, and Drawn and Quarterly.) Both are places where someone wandering by can find a quiet place to browse with the understanding that shopping is not buying. They are, in some ways, part of the long-term appeal of the Nieumarkt as a destination.

Chinatown entrance of Henk

On the other hand, the manga end of Henk was bustling. Part of it may have been the almost fanatical devotion to filling every flat surface with something that could be purchased. Having said that, there were more people in that portion of Henk than I ever saw at any one time in Lambiek. Location-wise, the entrance to the more popular end of Henk is in a very busy tourist neighborhood alleyway on the edge of the Red Light District, but still very much part of it.

During the middle of the afternoon, the atmosphere of the alleyway is quiet, but the largely unseen hustle of prepping for the evening rush is everywhere. Almost every Chinese food restaurant in the Red Light District is clustered here. That may or may not have anything to do with the popularity of the manga section. And the tendency of tourists to duck into any random shop may keep the place busy as well.

At night, the alleyway is completely different. Henk's is closed by seven, but the debauchery of the Red Light District never really stops, it just takes naps. By 8, the whole area is filled with people looking for food. The place is a wall-to-wall zoo. Walking through the alley in the morning is like walking down Bourbon Street in New Orleans when the crowds have gone. And that is where you have to go to visit the most prominent manga store in Amsterdam, open by lunchtime.

It is fascinating to me that the various comics markets are so obviously delineated in Amsterdam. That might be because the markets are so clearly segregated by language - which isn't as big a barrier in cosmopolitan, multi-lingual Amsterdam as it is in English-first, English-only America. It also indicates that the the markets serve very different demographic groups, which makes sense.

The Dutch comics section in the main part of Lambiek feels like a small, specialty book store, with a variety of popular works in various genres, and a diverse clientele. Those who really want to go diving through the English and French spillover are encouraged to do so. Amsterdam has visitors from all over Europe and many books are not translated into Scandinavian languages. 

Henk is, for the most part, a clone of an American comic shop, aimed at the same demographics. Interestingly, that demographic (white males between 18-35) is the same target demographic as the Red Light District itself. The superhero comic section of Henk is set up to encourage intoxicated impulse buys.

If you find yourself in Amsterdam and you have had your fill of art museums, go look up the comic book shops. They are worth the visit and very easy to find.
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Why is this here? It's a long story. Mike Rhode first introduced himself to me when I first started vending at SPX. Over the years, we've talk to each other at Comic conventions around the DC area and never quite get around to sitting down for lunch. 

When I moved to Arlington two years ago, I didn't realize that Mike lived within a mile of my building. Nor did I realize that he lived next door to my girlfriend's friend from college. We also discovered, by accident that we work two buildings away from each other, because we work in adjacent organizations. The world is a very small place, sometimes. 

It really feels that way when I run into Mike at the local farmer's market. Naturally, that's when I pitch him article ideas. I'm reading the entire run of Heavy Metal in public (in blog format) because I happen to own the entire run of Heavy Metal. This means that I'm engaged in an ongoing study of the magazine. In addition, I have a diverse and idiosyncratic reading list that tends towards the weird corners of comics history. Sometimes one circumstance or another results in long articles that I don't really have anyplace to put. Mike has been gracious enough to let me publish them here.

In summary: this is an article about comics from someone in the DC area.