Simpsons Comics Colossal Compendium: Volume Three

Not a bad collection. Some interesting longer stories, especially a huge three-parter about Krusty’s attempt to revive the flagging fortunes of the Radioactive Man comic. Radioactive Man seems to be a popular figure in these comics, perhaps for all the self-referential humour. They certainly do a number on the overuse of crossover plots here.

There’s also a lot of the usual surrealism, as when Professor Frink’s “Cool Juice” turns all the male inhabitants of Springfield into hipster Rat Packers, or when Milhouse’s dream life interacts with reality in chaotic ways. But there are also the jokes that land closer to home, like Homer telling Bart not to get angry at the news (“The TV can’t hear you, no matter how loud you yell, boy. Believe me, I’ve tried!”) and the way the Springfield Library is saved by becoming a homeless shelter. Also worth noting is the inking by Andrew Pepoy, which goes deep into heavy shadow effects. I liked the way it looked.

I thought the shorter stories were all duds, and to be honest I couldn’t see the point in several of them.

The papercraft Springfield building is the Kwik-E-Mart. It looks like it’s just a box with no add-ons, so not very interesting.

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Alien: Black, White & Blood

This oversized volume is part of Marvel’s Black, White & Blood series, which is distinguished by its use of a mostly black-and-white format with coloured accents in red to show blood (with a bit of green mixed in for Xenomorph blood here). You may think of the sort of thing that was done with colour (and its absence) in Frank Miller’s Sin City comics, and I think that’s a good analogy for both the level of violence on display as well as the noir sensibility. Noir referring both to the heavy and dramatic shadow as well as a lack of traditional good guys in an amoral universe.

The Alien run consisted of four issues, each with a part of a long story, “Utopia,” as well as two short pieces. They all have different writers and artists, but the same letterer (Clayton Cowles), which actually provides a lot more of a sense of continuity than you’d expect. I would have even appreciated cover pages for each of the individual stories because it’s easy to miss where one ends and another is getting started.

The large format makes covers and full-page spreads into poster-size art that you just want to enjoy. I’ve commented before on the cheaper reprints in the Marvel Masterworks and DC compact comics lines and how hard they can be to read, and it’s a real treat to read a big book like this that looks so good throughout. I especially liked the chonky stylized turn that Claire Roe gives her story, with illustrations that look almost like woodcuts.

If you want one word to describe the general sensibility I’d say it’s bleak. And that’s saying something considering these are Alien comics. There are no happy endings, and most of the stories are very unhappy in brutal and ironic ways. Even “Utopia,” about a ship full of socialists looking to colonize a new planet as a worker’s paradise, took a dark turn I found surprising. Mankind is clearly something to be surpassed. The final line in the book is “Any chance to eradicate humanity’s ugliness is beautiful.” That gives you some idea of where you’re going.

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Druuna: Carnivora

Another part of the Druuna saga, a story cycle that runs in place, never really going anywhere because time and place have no meaning in the Druunaverse. We’re told that Druuna’s boyfriend Shastar has become pure energy and his mind integrated with the ship’s computer, within which he is joined with the ship’s captain, Lewis. But they can both still make themselves manifest either through dreams or virtual reality. Meanwhile the monsters are proliferating and creating “replicants” of the crew members: exact doubles who don’t even seem to know that they are replicants. Well, some of the time they do, but most of the time they don’t. So Druuna doesn’t even know if she’s a replicant. In her human form she’s something special, not quite a sub- or ur-human “prolet,” but also something different from the more civilized crew members. More civilized, I think, mainly because they wear more clothes. Druuna doesn’t like wearing clothes. Or maybe she does but just often finds herself without any.

There’s sex. And violence. And sexual violence. And various attempts, all futile, to explain what’s going on. I love how Shastar actually tries to draw a diagram to show Druuna what’s happening . . . and it’s of no use at all. As near as I can figure it, there are two dimensions, one good the other evil, and the ship has come up to the boundary between them and the monsters are spilling over from the evil dimension and contaminating our own. At the end the character of Doc figures out some way to go back in time and avoid all this. Or maybe he doesn’t and it’s a dream and they’re all replicants now. I couldn’t tell you.

You just have to learn to let go with Druuna. It’s not meant to make sense. Judged against the other books in the series I’d probably rate Carnivora near the bottom because there’s more talk and less coherence than usual. Even the minimal structure of the hero’s journey is dropped, as it’s not clear if Druuna is actually on her way anywhere or has any particular mission. I barked out a laugh when, after talking to Shastar (or his avatar) she says she has to return to the ship’s crew to pass on the message that they’re in danger. As if they hadn’t figured that out! Most of them have already been killed and eaten! But if you’re a fan then none of this really matters. Nor, I would argue, is the sex all that important. You’re just here for the crazy.

Postscript: My hardcover edition of this book is basically in mint condition. When I last checked there was only one for sale, used, on Amazon for $545. If I just hold on to mine for another thirty years I’ll be rich.

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Big Trouble in Little China (Legacy Edition Book Two)

I enjoyed the first volume of this series so much that two years later I had no trouble remembering where it left off: with Jack Burton being transported into the twenty-first century as a roadside attraction. Usually two years is more than long enough for me to forget plot lines entirely.

This collection contains three main storylines. In the first, after being brought out of suspended animation in the year 2015, Jack meets up with some of his old pals (and their children), and gets involved in a plot to take down a billionaire who collects pop culture artefacts from the 1980s. One such artefact being Jack’s rig the Pork Chop Express.

We’re introduced here to the girl who will become Jack’s new sidekick, his buddy Wang’s daughter Winona. Though of course Winona thinks of herself as more than a sidekick, and it’s her skill in martial arts that saves Jack’s bacon more often than he saves her. She’s also helpful in explaining the changes that have taken place in America since the Reagan years, which is the source of lots of the usual kinds of jokes stemming from Jack and Winona speaking what amount to different languages.

The second story has Jack and Winona and the rest of the gang heading off to Macao to take part in a poker tournament and rescue Margo Litzenberger from Koschei the Deathless. Here they are reunited with Egg Shen, who inadvertently sends Jack and Winona back to 1906 San Francisco, just before the earthquake is about to hit. This marks the beginning of the third story. In San Francisco Jack and Winona meet a younger Egg Shen and also get the origin story for the evil wizard Lo Pan before sorting out their respective timelines.

I liked this just as much as the first volume. The period gags are all on point, from the A-Team spin-off in the first story, to the Harry Potter kid in Macao, to Jack’s ongoing hunt for a payphone. And plot-wise it keeps spinning off in all kinds of crazy directions, including a crossover event revisiting scenes from the movie. The only place it dragged for me was in the primer on the rules of Texas hold’em, as presented by the Three Storms. And I guess the land developer/casino operator who becomes a nativist politician in San Francisco was a bit unnecessary. It’s interesting to note how often this character kept popping up in comics around this time.

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