Flashback Sequence: 2006 Montage

What is it about the year-end holidays that makes us so reflective? Part of me thinks it's some evolutionary hard-wiring, some sense of self-preservation that we have constructed not one, but a multitude of year-end hoidays, events and traditions. As we humans head into the darkest parts of winter, we all gather round the hearth to celebrate, exchange gifts, drink and crab about the previous year. These things will keep us warm in the coming months til Spring arrives.

So, everybody's doing it...

Rather than gloss over the famous and infamous of the previous year, I'm going to try to keep this in the spirit of Thought Balloon: a rediscovery of the joy of comics and other related things. This will be more of a personal list.

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Back-Issue-Bin-Diving
In 2006, I discovered a few comics shops that had actual back-issues. I had a lot of fun catching up on old series that I had missed the first time around. In particular, I was able to find runs of the late 90's series Chase and the more recent Truth: Red, White & Black and Manhunter.

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Trades, Trades, Trades...
In lieu of back-issues, it seems a lot more trades are rolling out collecting past series and story arcs. I was able to catch up on a lot of more recent storylines and series in 2006. Ex Machina, Ultimate Galactus, JSA, & Captain America: Winter Soldier to name a few.

There may be a day when the trade replaces the monthly, and that will be a sad day for me. Still, the trades look awfully handsome on my shelf...

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The Big Event
I know I was complaining about event-fatigue when Infinite Crisis ended, shifting it's gears to 52 while Marvel was getting the Civil War underway. Still, I think 52 is a triumph of what comics have missed in quite a while, namely excitement, or at least interest, for the next installment. Whether or not this will backfire remains to be seen. Creatively, everything on DC's side seems to be firing on all cylinders. Even when the results fall short, I find myslef applauding the attempt.

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Alternative Funny Books
This year, I finally got to enjoy Charles Burns' Black Hole in its entirety. There were also offerings from Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library, a Rocketo trade and various items from James Kolchalka, mostly Super F*ckers. Reminders that if you love the medium, you've got to look for things beyond the mainstream superhero fare. It's worth it.

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Podcasters
Since receiving an iPod for Christmas in 2005, I have been doing nothing but hunting for podcasts to fill it with. My favorite, by far, is the wonderful Comic Geek Speak. In conjunction with a forum that has proven to be the most level-headed place on the interweb for comics fandom, CGS is largely responsible for reactivating my nerd gene this year.

Also, I'd like to mention John Siuntres' Word Balloon, Fanboy Radio (who have been getting ridiculously great interviews lately), Raging Bullets, and Indie Spinner Rack. The future is indeed a marvelous place.

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Comics Blogosphere
The friends I never had as a youngster. Look no farther than the sidebar here to find some of my favorites. A special thanks to blogging heavy-weight Mike Sterling for giving me a few link-bumps this year. Visits went from 2 to 3 a day to hundreds, and provided a bit of an ego boost here as well as a feeling of belonging to a community.

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Finally, I'd like to thank my long-suffering girlfriend, who keeps the flame of my youth alive by indulging my nerdly flights of fancy. I'd like to think that I return the favor by attending the odd chick-flick/ballet/abtract theatre prodcution, but who am I kidding? How can love like this be measured? Sitting through another pre/post-Crisis compare/contrast, and the metatextual meaning of the creative process through the lens of corporate-owned characters may well prove that love is indeed infinite.

Tags: comics year in review favorite

Flashback Sequence: UFO Encounters

As you may be able to tell, I haven't been to the local comic shop in a few weeks, which is tolerable since I've discovered a lot of old comics I had stashed away over the years and had forgotten about. Today, I bring you UFO Encounters

This is my first graphic novel, I guess you could say. Published by The Western Publishing Company through their Golden Press line in 1978, UFO Encounters is 224 pages of reprinted material from god-knows-where. There are no writer or artist credits throughout, and the 68 stories run about 2 to 5 pages in length. Near as I can tell, these are a collection of back-up stories from some other Western book. The copyright dates stretch back to 1968.

You may be able to tell from the scan, I carried this comic everywhere. To my younger self, it was an endless source of entertainment and vital information. The cover says it all; these are illustrated stories of UFO encounters, man. I couldn't let this tome get too far out of my sight, you know, just in case.

Mostly, the stories are brief, near-nonsensical brushes with "extraterrestrial" life, told in a confessional "I was walking through the woods when...". A few stories pre-date X-Files by a few decades in their speculation that aliens live among us, or aliens has some sinister influence on real-life events. There a even a string of shorts that are hosted by the "Hoaxmaster", who resembles a dark version of Willy Wonka, that threatens to dubunk UFO stories, but always leaves the door open for the unknown.

The stories, while similar, range greatly in their depiction of the aliens and their modus operandi. My young brain struggled to make sense of everything, looking for the thread that tied it all together. As I write this, I realize this may have been the birth of my awareness of continuity in comics. Ironic that it was a fruitless search for meaning between stories that weren't meant for that (insert crossover event of your choice here for joke).

Here are some scans from a 2-page spread titled Who Flies the Saucers?

This one kind of goes against the modern conventional "hairless" E.T. so popularized by, um, E.T....


This would be around the time David Bowie fell to Earth...


Okay...


Alright, now you're just ripping off old 50's sci-fi movies...


Ah, that's just Montgomery Burns, all hopped up on ether...


I'd like to scan more, but this thing looks like I might have dropped it in the tub at some point. The newsprint is downright brittle. This is important information I need to share, yet it looks like the aliens have won.


Tags: ufo western publishing old comics the truth is out there

Flashback Sequence: 1980

Through our recent move, I discovered some comics that I thought I might have gotten rid of a while ago. They're a short stack, well-loved (read: not mint) and bought for me at a time before I started consciously seeking out particular comics. This stack represents some of my earliest exposures to the medium of comics.

JLA #185 (1980) Written by Gerry Conway and drawn by George Perez and Frank McLaughlin. "Crisis on Apokolips"

That's a well-loved cover right there. This comic is probably my first exposure to Jack Kirby's New Gods. As far as I can tell, this comic is part two of a yearly JLA/JSA crossover. The twist is that the New Gods are also added for a three-way crossover.

The plot involves Darkseid coming back fom the dead, teaming up with some JSA villains, and attempting to teleport Apokolips into the Earth-2 universe (destroying E-2 in the process). The heroes have made their way to Apokolips, and have split into three teams to defeat Darkseid.

Now, my favorite sequence from this issue: At one point, Superman (JLA) and Wonder Woman (JSA) bust in on Granny Goodness to break up her gig. Granny narrowly escapes through a secret passage:



I like that Granny, an alien for all intents and purposes, uses the phrase "bold hussy". It goes to show that some things are universal, I guess.

Granny's escape is short-lived, however:



Even 26 years later, that last panel is awesome. It's the kind of thing you didn't see much of back then... a totally caption-free panel. It's hightened even more by the talkiness of the rest of the issue. It says: "I'm Big Barda, and I've come to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum."

This sequence is followed by a cut to somewhere else, and the reader never really finds out what happens between these two... which is kind of scary, and nicely handled in a comic for kids. The fate of Granny is left to the reader.

Darkseid is defeated (and killed again?) four pages later. Conway gives his own creation, Firestorm, the honor of getting lucky and turning Darseid's own Omega Beam against him.

Tags: Big Barda, Crisis, Old Comics, Gerry Conway, George Perez,