Koko be Nimble, Koko be Good

After the recent discussion of the lack of success of homegrown Manga, it would be remiss of me to not support such works when they're worthy of spreading the word and letting the outside world know they exist.

One such work I recently read that impressed me was Koko be Good. When I first read the first chapter, I was rather bored, since it started out very wordy, and focused on a lonely guy pining for his girlfriend who was currently in another country. It seemed like another one of those books that would be the archtype for those stereotypical "oh-woe-is-me" autobiographical comics. Things only perk up when the titular character pops up. From that moment on, Koko litererally steals the show with every appearance she makes. From her free-spirted personality to her expressive appearance, everything she does make her a joy to look at.


































After her gatecrashing entrance, before she can be arrested for trespassing, she makes off with Jon's taperecording from his overseas girlfriend in the confusion. So it's up to him to track down this elusive maniac girl. While it seems like an obvious setup for a romantic comedy between two opposing people, I'm glad to say that the story doesn't follow those conventions. Jon manages to find Koko and get his tape recording back (slightly overtaped though), but the two of them still go off their paths in their separate ways. They converse with each other, but there's never any sexual tension or chemistry between them. I'm always impressed when there's stories done without having to rely on gender roles.


































Koko's character design and personality reminds me a lot of the snake-girl-like appearance from Solanin. This isn't a knock against snake girls - I find that the wide mouth gives them an incredible air of expressiveness. Just look at the popularity of Gin from Bleach as an example. My first experience with a Snake Girl was one of the cast members in the out-of-print Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show who didn't appear in the book. I wondered why she didn't appear, despite looking much better drawn than the other characters. It wasn't until years later that I found out it was an in-joke reference to Kazuo Umezu's Reptilia. That's the kind of thing that'll fly over your head unless you're paying attention.
































































Where was I? Oh yes, Koko. She's impressed with Jon's devotion to his girlfriend overseas (even as she ridicules him) and decides she wants to contribute something to society. She thinks that the best way to do so is to donate money for a underpriviliged child. Trouble is, she's something of a dilettante and can't settle down on any one job to acquire the funds she needs.


































One thing that I really liked was Jon's pose here:

















While most Manga characters usually put their hands behind their necks when they're slightly uncomfortable, it's also become something of a shortcut for too many artists. Check out the positioning of multiple Mangas, and you'll notice that there are a lot of similarities between character's stiff poses. When someone's making a speech, they'll spread their arms across to take up room on the panel. But not everybody worldwide uses the same positions like everybody else. It's important to have as much variety as possible to gain that sense of authenticy. The fluidity of the charater's body language also helps here.

This review covers a lot of the subtlety that I missed when reading it the first time around. I'm much more interested in the mechanics behind a comic and whether they work or not. Trouble is, with works like these and Solanin, when it comes to recalling a specific piece of dialogue that stands out, nothing comes to mind. It leans too much into real-world conversations, which is generally unmemorable, such as it is. That's fine when you're conveying a realistic world view - neither overly optimistic or pessimistic, but somewhere in between. But it makes it incredibly difficult to pinpoint a point you're trying to make.

This is the kind of story that I'd be incapable of writing. When I tell a story, I always do so with the intent of choosing the most interesting path possible.

Red Ketchup

There’s been some recent tributes to Canadian cartoonists who are well-regarded, but are virtually unknown in their home country. This is hardly a secret shame, since there’s plenty of unsung cartoonists worldwide, and due to the competition, some have better PR than others. Still, its surprising when some works aren’t better known considering their imaginative quality.

I’ve just recently reintroduced myself to a French Canadian comic titled Red Ketchup. He originally ran in CROC, the Quebec equivalent of MAD Magazine, only raunchier. Red Ketchup is an albino FBI Agent who could be described as a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hunter S. Thompson. He’s very effective at interrogation, killing, and regularly takes various drugs to starve off the “shakes & headaches”, and is absolutely insane.

It’s not that he’s a rogue agent, but rather that he’s too dedicated to his country. He usually goes off on whatever madcap caper he’s on until he’s ordered to otherwise. By the time the higher authorities are informed on what he’s up to, its too late to find and recall him.

Steve “Red” Ketchup originally started out as a side character in Michel Risque in a series of Black & White comics similar to European comic designs. Given the amount of imported French comics Quebec gets, this isn’t an unusual disposition.
























Once he grew popular enough to have his own spin-off, he got what could be described as his origin:

Born an albino, Steve Ketchup was the son of Polish immigrant, a violent alcoholic who beat his son regularly to "educate" him. He used to force Red to play chicken with oncoming trains to help him "become more of a man." and would beat Red if he dodged the train too quickly. His father suffered a massive stroke after beating Red's older sister for her hippy lifestyle. Months later, Red was asked by his sister to take their wheelchair-bound father for a walk around the neighborhood. Red took his dad for a nostalgic trip to the trainyard and left Dad's chair (complete with Dad) on the tracks (you can imagine the result).
As soon as Red was sixteen he enlisted to get away from his father, and was sent to Vietnam, where he became heavily decorated. After the war he joined first the Detroit police force, and then the F.B.I.
In the Bureau he swiftly established a reputation for being extremely violent, but terrifyingly effective. "Red" Ketchup, as he had become known, was investigating the drugs trafficker Raul Escobar, when he was exposed to a mixture of drugs including cocaine, and somehow became nearly invulnerable. Since then his boss in the F.B.I., Edgar G. Sullivan, has employed him on the most dangerous missions that the agency encounters, including (from what I can devine with my non-existent French) tracking down Elvis, taking on a cloning racket, and going to Hell.

Shortly after his appearance in Michel Risque, he was gravely wounded by a shotgun blast to the face while tussling with a drug lord. The colour comics pick up from where the Michel Risque scenes left off.






















The chief is justifiably surprised, since Ketchup was in a condition that would put a lesser man in a coma for months. He tells Ketchup that despite his enthusiasm to go back to work, he doesn’t have anything for him right now, and should go on vacation. Ketchup takes this a code that he’s being ordered to go undercover. Shortly after Red Ketchup leaves, the chief wonders where the Denver file is.












Sure enough, Red Ketchup stole the file lying on the Chief’s desk. The file shows the profile of a football player who’s suspected of having drug connections, and if proved, should be approached discreetly. Upon finding a packet of cocaine in his locker, what does Red Ketchup do?





















He tackles the football player from making the winning touchdown in front of millions of viewers in the audience and on TV. Red Ketchup then breaks the Football player’s arm and congragulates himself on a job well done, using the packet of drugs he found earlier.























Here's Ketchups' room before...

And here's his room after. You can see the parallels with H.S.T. right there.














Later, using information from his last connection, he finds a plane shipping cargo to an undisclosed country. Hiding onboard, he finds the crates are packed with guns. He decides to hide inside one of them with the intent of surprising the gun-runners...




















...just not in the way he originally intended.












This brings a diplomatic note of complaint back to Washington about interfering with domestic affairs.











After Red Ketchup regains his senses, he gets a migraine that demands immediate treatment. His first instinct is to knock out the guard and go to the infirmary. Upon arrival, he shoots everyone there. In the immortal words of Fletcher Hanks, “even the nurse is destroyed”. The gunfire noise attracts the attention of soldiers surveying the camp from the sidelines, causing them to enter the fray.


































To recap, after waking up from a comatose state, he tackles a drug-using quarterback, stows away in a illegal weapons crate, sparks an international incident, and all he cares about is curing his headache. Sounds like a typical day at work to me.

After being taken in by the army, he's led to an interrogation room where a soldier had been torturing a terrorist to reveal his plans without much success. Red Ketchup offers to lend his expertise.
















Jack Bauer’s got nothing on this guy. If Red Ketchup was the protagonist of 24, it would have to be retitled 12, considering how quickly he mows through his enemies to get to his target. In this case, a nuclear bomb in a suitcase was going to detonate at the Washington Monument at 8:00. Upon calculating that he’s not going to be able to make it to the detonation site on time, what does he do?

He hijacks the plane he’s riding and pilots it towards the terrorism spot just so he can shoot the dirty bomber at point-blank range.
















Unfortunately, he’s too late. With her dying words, the suicide bomber tells Ketchup that it’s already armed and unstoppable. Faced with the impending explosion, he throws himself on the briefcase to absorb the blast, much like a grenade... even though a nuclear explosion doesn’t work like a normal bomb. The radiation would rip through his body like paper and spread out into a radius despite his best intentions.





















However, it all turns out to be moot, since the dirty bomb turns out to be a dud. Congratulations are offered to Red Ketchup for his duties, even though all he wants an aspirin and the chief wants to get rid of him. The chief will routinely send Red Ketchup on suicide missions in the hopes that he'll get rid of him, usually without much success.











Keep in mind that all of the above took place in the span of less than twenty pages, and that’s including the origin. There’s two more stories in the book after this, but I figured I’ll save that later if anybody’s interested.

He’s what the Implacable Man would be like if he was a main character. However, because of it’s casual nudity of both male and female anatomy, it’ll probably never be translated in English. Maybe a scanlation will be available on a 4chan board, but I’m not holding my breath.

Flip Open the Random Book

Was clicking around various people’s comments’ names that led to links, and found this book meme that seemed interesting, and decided to give it a try. The rules are simple:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4-7 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

So, I opened the closest book around me, which has the most incomprehensible plot ever written and got this result. I’ve simplified it somewhat, since it was previously unreadable:

"A firm chewy candy. Carapace: a protective case or shell on the back of some animals (as turtles or crabs). Carat: a unit of weight for precious stones equal to 200 milligrams. Caravan: a group of travelers journeying together through desert or hostile regions."

I’m probably doing something wrong, since the closest book on my desk was a dictionary.

A Regular Bill Tozer

Wanted to do a small follow-up to my Veteran's Day tribute. Pat Mills often lamented that there weren’t any Historical War Stories that covered any of the grounds that he was unable to write, such as the Iraq presence in the first World War. (That later theme was covered in Rebellion.)

So far, only Garth Ennis’ War Stories seems to be among the relative few that manage to do the research and be lucky enough to have artists willing to do their illustrations for him. I’m not usually a fan of War Stories, since there’s a sense of futility to most of them, but there were two stories Ennis did that I particularly enjoyed, both of which dealt with a small group of men. One was Screaming Eagles, the remainder of Easy Company being ordered to safeguard a house at the end of the second war, and most likely influenced the HBO series Band of Brothers.

The other was Condors, about four soldiers from opposing sides bunkering under a bombing bombardment during the almost unknown Spanish War. Each of them took turns talking about their reasons for fighting. In particular, I wanted to point out a certain Socialist Sergeant:


























































Quite an enthusiastic cheerleader in the vein of Full Metal Jacket, ain't he? Of course, it doesn't last for long...


































































So, faced against increasingly diminishing long odds, what does he do?




































Sergeant Lilley may have been based on a chapter in Alvah Bessie’s Spanish Civil War Notebooks, but its just as likely he was influenced by Bill Tozer, since Garth Ennis was living in Britain at the time Charlie’s War was serialized. He even does the afterword for the second volume talking about how his favorite artist was no longer working on an airplane story, and was now working on a WWI comic.

Bill Tozer might be a watered down version of Sergeant Lilley, but don’t let that discourage you. He’s watered down only in the same sense that Duke from Doonesbury was a watered down version of Hunter S. Thompson. Even in milder form, Duke was crazy enough to do things that defied common sense, such as putting land mines on the couch to keep the dogs off them. This brought the uncomfortable question of, “What dogs?” Even though all this was done off panel, it should give you some idea of what Bill Tozer is like.

All in all, he's a much more three-dimensional Sergeant than another I could name.

Charley’s War

Charley’s War is the best War comic you’re not reading right now. Not to be confused with Charlie’s War (different spelling), Charlie Wilson's War (different war) or Foyle’s War (different medium). This Charley is Charley Bourne who’s an idealistic (if dim) kid who wants to enlist in the army to help support the war effort. The army, wanting new volunteers accept Bourne’s admission, even though he lists his age as 16, but writes his date of birth as 1900. (The war started in 1914)

From the moment he steps out of training, he’s thrust into a hellish experience that’s nothing like he ever expected.

The early issues started out with dual narratives, with Charley experiencing the war, and toning it down in his letters to his parents in cursive. Eventually, the things happening began to outpace his ability to write home, which was a good thing, since the letters slowed down the rapid-fire pace.





























There were several things that postponed my knowledge about this comic. 1. It ran in a British magazine. 2. It was published in a war comic magazine. 3. The artwork was mainly in black and white. 4. When serialized, it only posted a few pages from last week’s release. Comic creators may talk about how difficult it is to do 16 pages for a Manga chapter on a weekly basis, but I’ll posit that it’s far harder to do a continuing storyline 3-4 pages at a time.

One thing that I liked was that they sung old war songs that were immortalized by Peanuts characters. Thanks to this, I was finally able to find out what the missing lyrics were.
























































In grade school, I was very annoyed with having to memorize the lyrics to Flander’s Fields. Even now, the first five stanzas are still stuck in my head. It wasn’t until I read this War comic that I began to understand what the lyrics meant. This is required reading for anyone who doesn’t know the significance of the poppies that’re sold around this time every year. There’s plenty of comics detailing the horrors of World War II, but there’s almost nothing known about The Great War (also known as The War to end All Wars)














The ironic thing is that it was published in Battle Magazine, which was well known for its patriotic war stories. Charley’s War was different in that it wasn’t done in the style of boy’s stories, which was the norm, but was done in an anti-war vent. In that sense, it was completely different from the other comics in the magazine. (I’ve never actually seen a pro-war comic or movie, so I have no idea what they’re like)

The amount of research and detail that Pat Mills and John Colquhoun were able to accomplish on a deadline schedule is astounding. Not to mention the amount of trivia that would be considered unbelievable:

Germans using their men as wheelbarrows to shoot machine guns.















Using champagne to cool down a machine gun.


































Shooting through your own plane to hit an enemy flying in your blind spot.

















British Officers treating war like some kind of game.















Singing the enemy’s anti-British war songs.




















All these and more were events that actually happened during wartime. When Charley’s War was serialized, there were letters of complaint that such things were inconceivable. In fact, the only unbelievable element is that for all the brutality that goes on during the war, there’s practically no swearing. It never gets much raunchier than a “blimey!” around there, despite the brutality of the battlefield. Considering that this was serialized for young boys, this kind of censorship was understandable.
















As Pat mentioned in his notes, WWI was the major inspiration for SteamPunk stories. Many of the early inventions such as tanks, gas masks and flamethrowers were due to creative innovations during wartime. Fans of the 15th volume of Full Metal Alchemist would surely identify with this comic.












If Legend of Galactic Heroes displayed the idealistic view of WWI, Charley’s War showed the humane (and inhumane) brutality that war movies generally avoid.


































Charlie’s War was also notable for having plenty of side characters that were rotated out once they’d gotten killed or wounded in action. Some of the more memorable characters who managed to survive long enough include:

Weeper, a grinning fellow who was constantly crying from the aftereffects of a gas attack.
Smith 70, one of the numbered Smiths who was a technician who had the phrasing tic of, “it’s a bit technical, know what I mean?”
Officer Snell, a snobbish man who was more concerned with appearances and authority than actually winning the war.
Blue, a veteran war deserter who looked and acted like Jack Nicholson.


































Of all the interesting characters that’re peppered throughout the various war stories, general notice should be paid for the most intriguing side character, Sergeant Bill Tozer. He displayed a certain sadistic glee over torturing his men...
















...while also knowing when to look the other way. He’s the kind of man who you wouldn’t want as a friend, but when the chips were down, he’d look out for you better than anybody higher up the ladder of authority.




Another thing that makes this so memorable is how Charley’s family was involved. They weren’t just chuffed off to the side - they had their own roles. His father was a policeman, his mother worked in a munition factory, his wheeling-dealing cousin Oiley dealt with the black market, and his brother Wilf wanted to join the war despite Charley’s warnings not to make the same mistake he did. There was also cousin Jack’s naval battle in what Pat said was his least successful storyline. It might not have been a big hit back home, but I was riveted to my seat while reading the duel between two ships doing everything they could to sink the other.


































Sadly, lack of funding for Pat Mill’s research led him to abort his planned storylines and was continued past The Great War to WWII where Charley’s son wanted to enlist himself. The writing was done by Scott Goodall in a tone similar to boy’s adventure stories. Despite still being drawn by Colquhoun, it was cancelled after just a year. It’s still unknown whether the WWII stories will be reprinted, since Pat Mills said his ending point would be this panel after the first war was over.





















Charley’s War is currently being reprinted by Titan Books. Only six volumes have been released so far. When I found out that they were going to be released at the pace of one book a year, I couldn’t wait and downloaded a torrent of the entire series. If you’re planning to do so, I should warn you that scans for the Battle of the Somme are rather small and inferior compared to the higher quality version of the reprints. While reading those, you might wonder what the fuss is all about. If you want to enjoy the full experience, request an interlibrary loan or purchase the books yourself. You won’t regret it.


































If there is one fault I have with the Titan Books reprint (other than the slow release dates) it would be that the volume endings for the first three books end in awful cliffhangers that don’t stop until the 4th volume. For those only interested in the Battle of the Somme (the first and longest story), go with the first three books.

Jump Spinoffs

When I saw today's announcement of a Shonen Jump magazine that would have stories of Chopperman, Rock Lee, and whoever's going to show up in the Hitman Reborn! and Toriko spinoffs, I felt very apprehensive. It got worse when I saw that these side stories were going to be done by artists other than the original creators. The reason I was feeling uneasy was because it reminded me of this:
















Even Chibi Spies couldn't save the languishing comic magazine from floundering and reducing it's distribution from monthly to a bi-monthly schedule. (It needed a well-deserved break after too many issues of unfunny articles) This doesn't exactly bode well for a Manga magazine that once boasted sales of 3 million and now seems to be relying on gimmicks such as these. It makes them seem desperate in finding readership.

The fact that it's going to have three new Mangas doesn't exactly ease my suspicions any. (It also has three Mangas that're running in a video game magazine) I've heard rumours that the monthly magazine, Jump Square, is more successful in terms of creative stories that the regular weekly magazine isn't.

Reluctance to read American Manga

Lately, there was an essay by former Tokyopop editor Tim Beedle making the argument that American-made Manga weren’t popular enough compared to the Japanese product. As lamentable as it sounds, fans don't graviate towards Original Manga for several reasons, not because they're Japanophiles, but because they've been burned on seeing highly advertised comics being less than stellar than they were led to believe.

I’m going to echo what I already wrote on the MangaBlog and AllAboutComics’ comments section with a few new additions.

Of all the OEL Mangas that I’ve seen, only Nightschool and Hollow Fields stand out as above-par work. Maybe its because the creators are from Russia and Australia that explain the exoticism in their work. Maybe its the similarity in tone to Harry Potter and Gunnerkrigg Court. Or maybe they just put more effort in their creation than the competition. Too many of the attempts to emulate Manga that I’ve seen try too hard to copy the styles and don’t lend themselves to freely experiment the layout of the page. Telophase covered this kind of thing more eloquently than I can, so I'll let the links speak for themselves.




















To the untrained eye, some pages can feel almost indistinguishable from authentic Manga pages, but others who’ve grown used to the flow of characters and camera angles in a cinematic sense, the rhythm between panels feels “off” somehow. I recall a particularly good analogy that fits. If you want good Mexican food, do you go to a Mexican restaurant, or get a meal produced by an actual Mexican? The difference lies in how immersed in the culture someone was when growing up. Oftentimes, a lot of the concepts used by OEL creators seem to be ripped-off versions of already existing Mangas. If given the choice between a cheesy replica or the authentic version, which one do you think the customer would want to choose? Hopefully, the more today’s children are exposed to a wide variety of various comics around the world, the more interesting their influences in storytelling will be.

So far, the most successful of the American Manga companies has been Seven Seas Entertainment (better known as GoManga, and the publisher of the aforementioned Hollow Fields). Of course, “successful” is a relative term, since I haven’t noticed any of their titles listed on an Amazon bestseller list. They produce Manga that’s designed to read from right to left, which feels more like a quirk than anything. Their homepage even has multiple pages of previews of their available Mangas to an interested public. However, anybody interested in browsing their titles will be likely turned off by the covers, since the character designs seem “off” somehow. I haven’t had much of a chance to read much of their titles, so my opinion may be biased, even if it’s common.

One good way to tell if someone is taking the right influences from Manga is how cinematic the comic looks. Usually when people talk in Manga, there’s a cutaway view to an outside landscape, a view of the back of someone’s head, or a close-up of someone’s face. This isn’t an ironclad rule, but it shows how they make the act of conversation interesting. You’ll notice that when people are walking, there are oftentimes shots of their shoes to give a feeling of motion.


































While American comic companies may feel reluctant to adopt the Manga style, that didn’t stop European and French Comic companies from jumping on the bandwagon. Many of their early attempts were embarrassingly amateurish, but they were able to learn from their mistakes and eventually evolve their style in a manner that embraced both types of storytelling without having to sacrifice one over the other. One example I can think of that’s been translated over here is the Elsewhere Chronicles.







Rather than try to compete with Manga on its own grounds, we should be taking what works in combination with ours to create a new entity worthy of reading. The goal shouldn’t be to produce Pseudo-Manga, but Quasi-Manga that’ll work on its own terms. If you’re going to try to beat the competition on their home ground, you’re going to lose unless you’re immensely talented.

Trying to intentionally create the next DragonBall / Naruto is a losing proposition. As much fun as it is to see long drawn-out fights, if they’re not supported by strong characters or addictive storytelling, such “homages” are can grow tiresome. Especially if you start intentionally stealing from the source of inspiration you’re paying tribute to. Those Mangas already have a devoted fan following, and would only take a brief look at the imitation to see just how badly they were emulated. What we should be focusing on are stories that we don’t even know that we want.

Part of the reason for the success of Scott Pilgrim might have been that each one of its volumes concluded with the defeat of one of Ramona’s Evil Ex-boyfriends. It set a comforting rhythm that while the fights with her Ex’s was inevitable, Brian O Malley could fill the rest of the volumes with whatever free-association crap he could think up and make it work. The absurd video-game references probably didn’t hurt either, nor did Scott’s unexplained fighting powers when he showed no inclination of possessing any such skills before. (Of course, nobody tried to attack him when he was slacking around)

Another factor is that when the Japanese Mangas are being created, they’re usually in the form of one-shot pilot episodes to see if their concept is interesting enough for readers. They usually start out doing short stories that eventually graduate towards longer-story terms. These little exercises not only help the creators from honing their storytelling, but also lets them experiment with narratives that might or might not work. A lot of some popular stories was usually the result of a happy accident that wouldn’t have happened. Viewer reaction and opinion also helps, since it gives the creator some idea on what their audience like to see, and may make story changes accordingly. It’s the brave artist who doesn’t bow to public opinion and blazes their own path, even if it makes them unpopular.

There’s also the problem of how to bring attention to your works when distributors are extremely reluctant to try anything that looks interesting, but don’t want to risk supporting it, because it might not sell. To compound the problem, there’s no one distribution factor that can help spread the word of a particularly well-done work. It may take years for a webcomic to garner a cult readership and who has the time? Not to mention that spending a year on a book that may produce very little return can be physically and emotionally draining for someone hoping for higher aspirations. Europeans have it slightly easier, since they can spend a year working on their books (48-62 pages in length) and have it shown in snippets in various comic magazines. I suspect that Yoshihiro Togashi (of Hunter X Hunter fame) was influenced by this model to go on multiple hiatuses to work on his Manga and spend more time with his family.

Another fault I have with American Manga is that, while they may look like Manga, they’re written like an American comic. I have trouble getting into Ben Dunn, Fred Perry and Adam Warren’s works because their cartoony characters usually wind up talking too much. Overzealous boisterous dialogue can be funny when done right, but it often feels counterproductive when I’m reading their stories with tons of redundant words. They’re of the school of thought that any page they’ve worked hours on should be looked at with as many words as possible so their audience will appreciate just how hard they worked on the pictures. Manga in comparison has multiple pages that breeze by quickly. As Brian Michael Bendis wrote in his autobiographical comic Fortune & Glory (about pitching one of his comics to Hollywood), “notice how little dialogue there is in movies.” The fact that Fred Perry’s balloons are written in tiny font doesn’t help either.







































I’ll close out with a partial of Lee Barnett’s essay from the now-defunct Savant-Mag site on why children don’t read comics, postdated June 14, 2002.

I asked him why he liked reading some books and not others. To my surprise, the answers were ones that I’d not considered previously. For a start, as far as Philip was concerned, there’s a big difference between ‘reading’ a comic book, i.e. understanding what’s going on in the story, and ‘reading’ the comic book, meaning actually reading one word at a time, and linking it to the artwork. In a tribute to the artists, and their interpretation of the script (for which the writer also deserves credit), Philip didn’t have a lot of problems in understanding some comic book stories, even just by looking at the pictures. I should say that at this stage, I’m limiting these comments to the US ‘animation’ style comic books like Superman Adventures, Gotham Adventures and X-men: Evolution.
So why did he have problems actually reading the books? The answer, when it came, was simple in one respect but no less far-reaching. And it astonished me. It was something that never occurred to me, and when I asked around, with friends, and other comics fans, not one of them had considered it either. To quote Philip: “The words are too small.”
Now this confused the hell out of me when he first said it. Did he mean that the words are too simple? No, he meant exactly what he said. The words are too small. The typeface is literally too small for him to comfortably read. And though both his parents wear glasses, according to his latest eye check his sight is fine. And then, to test the hypothesis, I grabbed something I bought a while back, Jill Thompson’s The Little Endless. Yes, it’s a prose book with painted art, rather than a comic book, but Philip read it happily to me, giggling away, asking me questions throughout. When I asked him why this was so much easier to read, his response, as expected, was: “The words are bigger...”
Could it really be that simple? Could we get more children reading comic books if it was just easier to read them?
It’s something to think about.

More Scary than Hen’s Teeth

After posting my Halloween entry, I was reminded of other things that scared or disturbed me as a child. (This blog’s title is from Kazuo Umezu’s Fourteen, staring Chicken George, who isn’t talked about here, sorry. Maybe when I read more past the first volume.)

































As I said before, children can be scared of things that aren’t intended to scare us, such as clowns or Santa Claus. For example, in The Wizard of Oz, I was absolutely terrified when Dorthy was trapped in the Witch’s castle with the running hourglass. I felt that something horrible would happen once the sand ran out. Exactly what would happen was something that was never elaborated, so I had to resort to my imagination. By contrast, the sequel Return to Oz didn’t scare me that much despite its darker storytelling and faithful adaption. It felt more honest than the earlier movie. The fact that the iconic characters the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion were replaced by similar avatars Jack Pumpkinhead, Tik-Tok and the Gump probably made things easier.

Another children’s movie that scared me was The Peanut Butter Solution. The general plot was a boy who was a boy who was so scared that his post-traumatic stress had all his hair fall out overnight. The cure for this was a chemical made of peanut butter (naturally) that overdid the results, causing hair to grow all over his body. As freaky as his scared reaction was, I was more concerned about his initial symptoms first. The kid looked like a cancer patient, and it was made even worse that he had no idea why his family was looking at him so strangely. I couldn’t handle seeing his reaction to his condition. The concept of losing ALL my hair at a young age was too frightening to even contemplate that I couldn’t even watch the rest of the movie afterwards. I still haven’t seen the movie in years, but that could be that it simply isn’t that much of a classic.

There were also some cartoon episodes that had potential nightmare fuel. One was in a Garfield episode where Garfield made a bet with Jon that if he could stop watching TV all day, Jon would stop using his vacuum cleaner, interrupting his TV time. Garfield went through some withdrawal symptoms at first, but managed to make it to the night... which was where things started to get weird.

The TV came to life, calling for his name, and pestering him, wondering why he was ignoring watching him when there were so many good shows to watch. The fact that it went back to normal when Jon wasn’t looking and the warped backgrounds when Garfield was running away from the living appliance didn’t help either. Nor when Garfield pulled the plug, and the TV still managed to remain spooky down to its dying regretful voice. It’s no wonder why, even after Garfield won the bet, he was reluctant to turn it back on.

Another more subtle form of scariness was on an early season of The Simpsons. It wasn’t a Halloween episode - that would be too obvious. It was when Bart sold his soul to Milhouse on a joke, and had all kinds of weird things happening to him. Animals were hostile towards him, the motion-detector doors wouldn’t open, and he lost his sense of humour. When Lisa experimented with slapstick violence without result and said, “That’s creepy Bart. I think you really did lose your soul.”, I felt extremely uneasy for the rest of the episode.

If there’s one problem I have, it’s that I’m too empathetic about the cartoony characters I read. The Smurf short story, The Smurfnapper was left out of the first English version of the Smurfs, with a promise to be released in a future volume. Chances are it’ll be in the next volume, King Smurf, since the 4th volume, The Smurfette would make more sense if we knew about Gargamel about an antagonist. He may be a wizard, but he’s also the cheapest wizard I’ve ever seen. He lives in a run-down shack, wears patched rags and has a mangy cat for company. No wonder he wants to turn the Smurfs into gold.

However, if The Smurfnapper story is in the Smurfette volume, that means it’ll most likely replace the Smurf famine story. That story had the Smurfs foraging all their foods for the long winter, until their warehouse caught fire and burned everything they had. (The water kept freezing so they couldn’t put it out) Seeing these little elfin creatures going crazy from lack of food was (and still is) disturbing, especially since I was much more used to cartoon characters eating too much food. Jughead, Garfield, Dagwood... try imagining these beloved cartoon characters with hunger pains, and you’ll get the general sense of what reading this was like. There was maybe one funny joke in that story, which may be why Papercutz feels reluctant in releasing it. It's not quite a far cry from the blue critters who were used to dramatize a Unicef bombing commercial.

One of the most ironic things that I was most scared of was Anime/Manga characters. I regularly saw Anime VHS videos with the labels Not intended for children on them. I was morbidly fascinated in seeing these things, but was terrified of watching them, because their large eyes freaked me out. I felt that their eyes were TOO emotional, and made me uncomfortable to look at because of what they were conveying. It wasn't until I read the first five volumes of Ranma 1/2 in a bookstore that I was able to alleviate my curiosity. Now, I simply can’t get enough of them.


































My library had plenty of adult French comics with disturbing themes. Although I couldn’t read a word that was said, the imagery was clear enough in the end. There was a house that faithfully followed everything the designer’s model did to it, including blemishes on the walls and people, and even people’s deaths. There was a racing car that burned up fuel so quickly it had to suck its driver’s blood to finish the race. There was a pool that held the ghosts of all the people who committed suicide in it. Save for the last one, Calypso, I don’t remember the names of the other books, but I’d recognize their art styles if I saw them.


















All those European books paled in comparision to the 3rd part of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Domu. It was my first foray into an adult Manga, and I had no idea what was going on. The level of destruction was so one-sided that I thought Cho was the good guy. Then after pages of talk, we got to the denouement where Cho met his climatic anti-climatic end. Kodansha should really re-release this oneshot now that Dark Horse’s no longer bothering to reprint it.

As long as we’re talking about scary stuff, I might as well share some idle speculation on the 100th issue of Fables, which will no doubt feature the big showdown between Frau Totenkinder and Mr. Dark.

SPOILERS APLENTY! Don’t read any further if you haven’t read the comic up to now.

I was probably one of a handful of people who remembered the story of Rose Red, from a children’s book titled Snow White & Rose Red. So when I saw Willingham’s reinterpretation of the dwarf with the long beard, it called back long-forgotten memories of that story.

The penultimate issue had a parlay with Mr. Dark with the North Wind giving proper notice of the duel that Mr. Dark would be facing, as well as a warning to cease what he was doing, since his presence would be attracting forces beyond him imagining. I don’t know about you, but I’m more interested in the aftereffects of his lingering action than the outcome of the duel, due to a subtle hint slipped in the conversation:























I was reminded of another children’s book, about an old fearless woman who lived with her cat, Cornel. Not to be confused with The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. This woman was only afraid of one thing - mice, which was why she had a cat around her.

In this children’s book (whose title I can’t find) - [found - Do Not Open, by Brinton Turkle], the woman was taking a walk on the beach when she came upon a bottle that sounded like it was crying. Upon closer examination, it was a simple bottle, and a child’s voice was saying that it had been trapped for years, waiting for somebody to release him from his prison.

The woman uncorked the bottle, and hear a roar of FREE! in what was obviously not a child’s voice. A plume of black smoke rose from the bottle, forming a 100 feet tall humanoid black creature who thanked the woman for releasing him. He then listed all the atrocities that he would do, causing fear in the people of the world, enjoying their cries of terror, and infesting their dreams.

The woman casually glanced at the black creature in front of her and said that she didn’t find him that scary. The creature then transformed, turning into a horned 4-legged animalistic version with spikier teeth and asked, “Then do you find this form frightening?” “No, not at all.” Then the creature turned into a grotesque green monster so big that only the head was visible on the page. The woman turned away from him, her arms crossed, saying that the only thing she was afraid of was mice. Without further ado, the creature turned into a mouse.

And like any arrogant overpowered demon who cares what the little people think, he was instantly eaten and devoured by the woman’s cat.

“Cornel! Are you alright?”, she asked. The cat just licked its lips and smiled.

As much as Mr. Dark feeds on fear, if his opponent turns out to be more sophisicated than he thought, he would eventually tire out and resort to old tricks, such as finding the one thing the witch is repulsed by, which would’ve been supplanted before the fight started. A simple glance or phrase by Totenkinder’s dislike of mice would make him easy pickings for Ozma’s cat who’s gone unnoticed this whole time.

It would be anticlimactic if after all this buildup, Mr. Dark was beaten by such an obvious tactic. There are several ways that this could be avoided:

1. He turns into hundreds of mice, not just one.
2. He summons mice from whatever surroundings they’re hiding from. No need to transform himself.
3. He sees through the tactic and creates a double that looks like him turning into a mouse, then lets the double get eaten by Ozma’s cat. THEN pull the double whammy on both opponents, thinking the threat was over. THAT would unnerve them.
4. What would be really ironic would be if, upon hearing that Totenkinder was afraid of a mouse, Mr. Dark summoned up Mouse of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser fame.

That could be why Willingham turned Frau Totenkinder back to a younger girl. It would look bad if he plagiarized from an identifiable souce. Of course, this is all idle speculation, and may be pointless if the results are something else entirely.

Just remember, if the 100th issue of Fables has what I just predicted, you heard it here first!