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.

Friday, November 22, 2019

EHR Insights - A Secret History of Comics story

by Mike Rhode

In 2011, 3 issues of EHR Insights were published by the Defense Health Information Management System (DHIMS) which was based in Falls Church, VA at the Skyline complex. The comic book was built on the same lines as Will Eisner's WWII-and-beyond-era PS Magazine. The comic was "the new training booklet for the military's Electronic Health Record" which was designed by the Army to complement its pre-existing AHLTA system.

Unlike PS Magazine, EHR Insights survived for only a year and has mostly vanished without an electronic trace. ComicsDC writer R.M. Rhodes gave me a copy of issue 2 today and I started poking around looking for information on it. The main source of information online is a blog post by Brandon Carr who was the creator of the comic.

The comic itself is a mixture of single page comics and text, and a feature story. In #2 it's an Indiana Jones takeoff, "Montana Jackson on the Quest for the Golden Record."

Carr wrote that 10,000 copies of each comic were printed, but none are currently cataloged in WorldCat and only my copy is now indexed in the Grand Comics Database, although a set should theoretically be in the National Archives. My copy of this issue will be sent to Michigan State's Comic Art Collection soon, but it's also now scanned and available in the Medical Heritage Library.

I've reached out to both DHIMS's successor agency and Carr, and and the successor agency says they have no information on it.

Saturday, November 16, 2019

Tamba, Child Soldier

by RM Rhodes

One of the appeals of the French comics industry is the sheer variety of genres that are available on offer. English-speaking comics publishers like NBM have been translating comics originally printed in French for decades for exactly this reason. For its part, the English-speaking audience has responded well what the French call Reportage - comics based on real events that straddle the line between non and fiction. Books like Tamba, Child Soldier by Marion Achard and Yann Degruel.

The creators deliberately chose to not identify a single nation in this book because the practice of using children as soldiers is so widespread that people could identify it pretty much everywhere. To that end, the story's visuals rely on the cultural similarities across the continent, presenting an anonymized landscape filled with generic people for the main characters to wander through. This is a good thing.

The story that the main characters tell is horrific - the book's title lets you know exactly what you're going to get. The art does a great job servicing a harrowing story, which starts with the main character telling his story to a tribunal of some kind. It's easy to tell the flashbacks from the interrogation because the flashbacks use a full color palate, while the interrogation panels have a muted, monochrome color.

Given the weight of the subject matter, having such clear, non-challenging art that communicates scene transitions so subtlety really allows the experience of the main characters take center stage and just exist. The life of a child soldier is heavy enough that it needs no extraneous embellishment, which might have been a temptation in more commercial-minded hands. Fortunately, the French language comics industry is robust enough that not everything has to meet a hypothetical set of arbitrary requirements merely to be considered by the marketplace.

Both the writer and artist are white, which is interesting because they managed to produce a book with almost no white characters. In fact, the only white people in the entire story are silent, unnamed Non-Government Organization (NGO) workers, who are referenced as the bellwether for how dangerous things really are. They show up on half a page near the end of the book, barely have faces and, if you blink, you might miss them.

Marion Achard was a circus performer and wrote several novels before writing this graphic novel. Yann Degruel, the artist, is well known for his children's books, which makes him an interesting choice to illustrate a book about child soldiers.

If you have a deep and abiding interest in the issue of child soldiers, this is absolutely the book for you. There are a trio of short essays in the back of the book about the topic, with URLs for sites that will give you more information. If you are even marginally interested in the issue, this book will absolutely convince you it should be addressed.

Tamba, Child Soldier by Marion Achard and Yann Degruel will be published by NBM in December 2019. https://nbmpub.com/

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ComicsDC received a free review copy of this book from NBM.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

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."

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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 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.

Monday, September 16, 2019

Bruce Guthrie's SPX photos

2019_09_13_SPX_Reception	66	MD -- Bethesda -- Small Press Expo (2019) -- Opening Reception Among the folks pictured here are Teresa Roberts Logan, John Kenn Mortensen, Rune Ryberg, Typex, R.M. Rhodes, Keith Knight. (Partially reviewed)
2019_09_14A1_SPX_Other	195	MD -- Bethesda -- Small Press Expo (2019) -- Other (Saturday) Folks shown here include Randy Tischler, Sheena Wolf, Sara Duke, R.M. Rhodes, Dustin Harbin, Karen Green, Michael Cavna, Mike Rhode, Eddie Campbell, Jamie Noguchi, David Crispino, Mike Riley, Jordan Clark, Keith Knight, Rick Banning, Rikke Villadsen, Kate Lacour, R. Sikoryak, Lenora Yerkes, Ted Rall,... (Partially reviewed)
2019_09_14A2_SPX_Posters	44	MD -- Bethesda -- Small Press Expo (2019) -- SPX Poster Review (Partially reviewed)
2019_09_14B1_SPX_Libraries	3	MD -- Bethesda -- Small Press Expo (2019) -- Libraries And Comics: Past, Present, And Future Trends Libraries And Comics: Past, Present, And Future Trends Over the past twenty years, libraries and the comics industry at all levels have been working together to forge bonds that have benefited both. Comics and graphic novels have become a huge draw for libraries, who also use their resources for comics... (Partially reviewed)
2019_09_14B2_SPX_Bio	22	MD -- Bethesda -- Small Press Expo (2019) -- Sourcing Biography Sourcing Biography The most difficult task for an artist tasked with drawing a biography of a famous figure is how to reduce an enormous amount of text and information into a relatively small number of images. Making those images interesting beyond simply conveying that information for narrative... (Partially reviewed)
2019_09_15A_SPX_Other	117	MD -- Bethesda -- Small Press Expo (2019) -- Other (Sunday) Folks shown here include: John Kenn Mortensen, Rune Ryberg, ???, Vanesa Del Ray, Robin Ha, Keith Knight, Lonnie Millsap, Mike Rhode, Ezra Clayton Daniels, ???, ???, Christine Skelly, G.E. Gallas (in bird mask), Michael Lee Harris, Teresa Roberts Logan, Paul Kirchner, Lucy Knisley (and son), (The Nib)... (Partially reviewed)
2019_09_15B_SPX_Knight	61	MD -- Bethesda -- Small Press Expo (2019) -- Racial Illiteracy (w/Keith Knight) Racial Illiteracy Harvey, Glyph and Inkpot award-winning indie cartoonist Keith Knight crashes SPX with an all-new slideshow addressing America's Racial Illiteracy. Using comix, story-telling, and humor, ye olde Gentleman Cartoonist gets to the heart of the matter when it comes to America's biggest... (Partially reviewed)