Let's Go To The Mall...

When I think about malls, three things come immediately to mind and the first of them is shitty retail and restaurant jobs that neither pay nor tip enough from the zombie movie extras that come wandering through like ambulatory bits of over and under dressed furniture. Did that sound bitter? Maybe a little. But if you’ve ever worked at or in or around a mall you know what I’m talking about. The people who stand in the same half hour line with you at Starbucks only to get to the barista and have no idea what to order let alone why they came and stood in the line in the first place? The obstinate lady hassling the cashier at Old Navy over why her purchases aren’t free because her husband is in the Navy? Okay, yeah. I’m bitter. Let’s get to the second thing, and then we’ll spend the rest of our time talking about the third, shall we? Yes. Let’s shall. The second is Robin Scherbatsky (How I Met Your Mother) in her teenage pop star alter ego, Robin Sparkles, and now, goddammit, I have that freaking hook stuck in my head and oh my, my, suffice it to say: I. Hate. Malls. I do. Or at least, I did until quite recently when I was blessed with the opportunity to read Mall, written by Michael Moreci (Wasted Space/The Plot) and Gary Dauberman (Annabelle), drawn and colored by Zak Hartong (Albatross) and Addison Duke (Charlie’s Angels vs. Bionic Woman) respectively, and lavishly lettered by Jim Campbell (Hoax Hunters), which, while it didn’t change my mind about malls in general, did give me the best time I’ve had at a mall since before I hit legal employment age.

Perhaps I’ve said this before, it feels like something I say a lot, but I am a sucker for post apocalyptic fiction. Hell, I’m a fan of post apocalyptic facts, though categorically, those don’t yet exist. Ever since I read Stephen King’s The Stand in my early twenties, I have developed a deep sense of longing for the echoic silence of a world unplugged at last. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was my feel good book of 2007. Other favorites include Swan Song by Robert McCammon (a worthy inclusion, though nowhere near as good as The Stand, if perhaps a few pages longer) and, from Comicdom, Robert Kirkman’s excellent, and now extinct The Walking Dead (Image). Most recently, Vault Comics, the party responsible for Mall, had scratched my apocalypse itch with another great series, Resonant (DB Andry, Ale Aragon & Jason Wordie), and they’ve continued to scratch, finding places I didn’t even know were itching. Then along came The Mall to hit that almost unreachable place between my literary shoulder blades. It was like I was reaching and reaching and someone just put a chopstick in my hand and then…Well, bliss, obviously. Let’s talk about it:

Mall takes place in…Umm, a mall? Duh? That part kind of goes without saying. Instead of getting smacked in the eyes and ears with an endless barrage of storewide sales signs and massage kiosks, we get a modern quasi-retelling of Hamlet. We open like a new season of Game Of Thrones (HBO) with a sort of recap, a just-the-highlights version of how and why the world we’re about to see went from new car to fubar in six panels. However, it’s not until we turn over Zak Hartong’s beautifully desolate splash of an urban shopping mall, cowering beneath a churning sky of apocalyptic dust clouds that we start to home in on the individuals who will thread our emotions through one end of this story and out the other. (And brace yourself: If you have children, some of these vignettes will really pull at your emotional short and curlies)

The opening pursuit works beautifully as a storytelling device to give us a rapid, breathless look at the world we’re about to cohabit with these characters. A young woman with an as yet indeterminate bundle in her arms runs from a nightmarish combo of a Lost Boys version of Star Fox and Bob’s Big Boy. It’s something to pay attention to as these colorful gunmen relieve the woman of her bundle, in this case, a squalling infant, as it portends to the political undercurrents of what we come upon next.

Andre emerges right away as the quintessence of antihero. Born into wealth and the relative power it provides, our first glimpse of him waking up sprawled against the bed in what appears to be a cheap motel room—it isn’t, can’t be, but it looks like one—with the bloodied, terror faced corpse of the Mall’s titular leader, Delmon Gold. Without doing a play by play of the entire book, suffice it to say that while as readers we are pretty much instantly satisfied of Andre’s innocence, if not entirely convinced of who the real killer is, this issue becomes something of a master class in breakneck, breathless pacing and action pursuit sequences. I found myself really enjoying Andre as a character with the three dimensionality given him by Moreci and Dauberman, who clearly know what the hell they are doing. Andre is Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, tossed in the cocktail shaker with a couple extra fingers of privilege and bravado, then shaken (not stirred) to be-caped perfection. His contrast and purpose in this case is a wonderfully made combination of Nellie Oleson and Sarah Connor, Delmon Gold’s daughter, Tess. Exposition is handled well and delicately (wellicately?) through Tarantino-esque bursts of tense dialogue. Moreci and Dauberman appear to be working over time to make sure that readers get a clear sense of their world while not mansplaining everything into the dust with blind condescension. 

Now, this is something else I know I say a lot, but as a comic book creator myself, I like to make sure that everything that appears on the page does so to reinforce the story being told. That goes for the art without saying, but colors and balloon shapes can also be used to tell the story if their relationship to the line art is handled correctly. Throughout the book, a theme emerges, that of bright, dominant oranges and reds contrasted against a sickly, poisonous (but ultimately, alluring) mint green. The colors in this case uphold the notion that this is a volatile, even explosive society that is in a constant state of denial of its underlying disease, that which affects all major civilizations that do not practice concerted introspection to ensure that policy never becomes more important than populace. In that, Addison Duke has invoked many a colored wonder upon these pages, and his tones harmonize wonderfully with Hartong’s energetic and textured line art. All of the shots are handled marvelously; nothing jars, or otherwise ejects the reader out of the world of the story at any point. The action scenes in particular should be a major draw to this book. All of that narrative grittiness slides as smooth as whipped butter on a teflon pancake. 

I’ll end this with something else I’ve been saying a lot lately, and that is that Vault Comics is really delivering the goods these days. In an industry that seems confused over what its next big move should be, whether so and so should go with so and Sony, or dizzy itself out in the Disneyness, it is refreshing if not entirely inspiring to see a company that still puts story forth as its opening move in every game. Mall joins Resonant and the forthcoming The Plot as a title I will be monitoring with intense interest, and of course, making a regular part of my pull down at the LCS. Tending to let my words imply a numeric score, I don’t always end with such, but in this case, as I’ve run my mouth a little more than I had initially planned, I’ll drop a Cliffs Notes version here and say that Mall gets a solid 10/10 as a delicious first course in what promises to be an epic meal. Now if only I could get that goddamn Robin Sparkles song out of my head…


Let’s go to the MAAAAALLLLL!!!

Uncle J

Comics as High Art & Fine Literature: A Look At Geist's "The Tourist"

To those in the know, this isn’t news, but I recently completed (horribly, and by the skin of my teeth) my masters thesis document. Tentatively titled Halftones, Stripes & Guttersnipes: The Coincidence of Comics As High Art & Fine Literature, the 35 page document asserts that sometimes, not always, but sometimes comics can fit simultaneously in both categories. While I may one day publish that document here, or in another more appropriate location, today is not that day.

However, I would like to call your attention to the work of a gentleman who goes by the moniker of Geist in his social media escapades. Recently, Geist (real name Mark Ryan of the United Kingdom) launched a crowdfunding campaign for the first two issues of his series, The Tourist. Intrigued by the description and a predisposition to Mark’s unique and amazing art, I got in on it. Time passed, rather quickly as time does, and at last, my prize arrived. I don’t know precisely what I was expecting as I peeled open the protective plastic bag, but what I got blew those expectations out of the water and into deepest hyperspace.

What I think I like best about The Tourist is that it makes the reader a character in the story, and that story is unique to each reader. Peppered with coded text, the book reads like a vacationer’s scrapbook. However, this vacationer, or tourist, has just returned from visiting strange and foreign worlds. Geist’s line work and design aesthetics pop off the page like a language all their own. I found myself ignoring the coded text bits and just absorbing myself in the often mystifying imagery. And the narrative is what you bring to it. Your feelings on travel, vacations and recording memories are put to the test against this high contrast black and white smorgasbord of swirling ephemera.

A sampling from issue 1 of Geist’s The Tourist

A sampling from issue 1 of Geist’s The Tourist

Further enhancing the illusion of travel, or having traveled, my backing of this project also rewarded me with some colorful little extras. Included with issues 1 and 2 (which were both beautifully printed on excellent stock) were four bookmarks, or postcards, themselves replicas of the publisher mastheads from the first four issues of this groundbreaking series. As well, Geist was kind enough to include travel stickers. One looked rather like a passport stamp. (Full disclosure: I very nearly applied one of these stamps to my newly minted passport, but, given that I will be traveling internationally in the near future, I would prefer not to give the Swiss and Italian governments the idea that I might have contracted some extraterrestrial bug, or virus.)

In all, I was inordinately pleased with what I got, and considering the cost of printing and international shipping rates, it was quite a value (cost me around $11 US). One can read through these books very quickly, or one can take their time and get absorbed in the images, sort of like a hot tub for the eyes. I would highly recommend them to anyone who is interested in seeing what the comics medium can accomplish. In this amazingly powerful series, Geist has recognized where his strengths lie as an artist and has pushed those strengths, and the comics medium to their very limits. Think of it as a 30 page Rorschach test, but infinitely more exciting and interesting.

To bring us up to this current date though, I would be remiss not to mention that Geist has very recently begun his campaign to release issues 3 and 4. As continuation of the brilliant books I just received, I would be equally remiss not to invest in these myself, and offer up the opportunity for you, Dear Reader, to do the same. If I have enticed you to do so, you can find and invest in Geist’s holy task here.

Geist describes his work as “a different kind of comic,” which indeed it is. In my personal and intermittently but not presently humble opinion, he is doing much more than that. In much the same way that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons deconstructed the notion of the modern superhero in their now legendary Watchmen, Geist’s deconstruction of the medium is precisely what each reader makes of it. Purchasing this book you are not buying a comic book. No. Rather, you are purchasing a pry bar that will rip open the seams of your perception and interweave your own story into the crafted imagery. As the late great Hunter S. Thompson once said: "“Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

Further information on the above mentioned thesis as well as issues 3 & 4 of The Tourist will be available here at a later date. In the meantime, please visit Geist’s Kickstarter page and get a better sense of what this extraordinary series is really about. I was not paid a cent to say any of this. Truly, this is groundbreaking stuff.

Support

I just finished listening to an interview with Glynnes Pruett, owner and proprietor of Comicbook Hideout, in Fullerton, CA, really just a five or so minute drive from where I now sit in the lab at Cal State Fullerton, typing up this post on one of the thirty or so Mac Pro towers inhabiting this space. It’s been a good day. Nice, windy Autumn weather, I don’t have to make an appearance of any kind at my “day job,” and on my way in, I even stopped by another local comic shop I admire, Ryan’s Comics, in Murrieta, CA (really, less than a mile from my house) and snagged the last copy of Murder Falcon.

It all sort of got me thinking about the nature of how we acquire comics these days, and the support necessary from us to keep printed comics as the available resource they currently are. Now, I don’t and won’t pretend to know a lot. I don’t have facts, figures, or numbers at my fingertips, but turning off the sophisticated navigational equipment for a second, I would like to venture out into that territory where thought and feeling collide to form something most of us would probably describe as instinct.

I love comic books. To a fault, even. You wouldn’t have to talk to my wife very long to determine that my proclivity for purchasing 5-8 titles a week is, or has been a major bone of contention in our relationship. It isn’t as physically harmful as say, smoking or alcoholism, but it is close to as expensive, and the stacks of comics building up in our bedroom, in our guest bedroom is not doing much to help my case. And I buy comics to read them, but at the same time, I do it as a way of supporting artists and creators I admire, albeit in this very small way. What it comes down to is support, and what that looks like. For those who have enough spare cash to keep lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills (I recently had to switch to using twenties, like a peasant) perhaps this won’t make as much sense. For the rest of us, especially those who have dabbled in comic creation enough to have rubbed elbows with some of our heroes on social media, it may mean looking at the artist and writer credits in the corners of the cover rather than the title space. If I see a book with the name “Sebela” on it, I f*cking buy that comic book. Ditto David Aja, Joshua Hixson, Cullen Bunn and a number of others. Murder Falcon was what I would describe as premeditated impulse. Someone I respect gave it a solid review on Twitter, and so a part of my brain decided I needed it. I missed it this past Wednesday, but fortunately, there was still a copy left for me at Ryan’s.

But here’s the problem:

As many books as there are out there, there are also a number of different comic shops, each with their own regulars and social dynamics. I would argue that even so, there is a sort of common denominator at play that is similar to visiting a Walmart or an In & Out Burger out of town, where both places tend to look and feel the same everywhere you go; comic book stores, by and large, all have a similar feel by dint of carrying a unified product base. Ryan’s Comics has been receiving my unreserved support since around 2009, when I first started shopping there and was blown away by Ryan’s forward thinking programs and position within the community, not to mention an ethic of customer service I associate more closely with bigger corporations like Apple or Nordstroms. More recently, however, I’ve hit a measure of conflict in that I have received similar service and camaraderie from SoCal Games & Comics, a fairly recent addition to the smallish lineup of comic shops in the Inland Empire. SCGC is remarkably close to my “day job,” so much so that I’ve been known to pop in there on my fifteen minute break, particularly on New Comic Book Day, and still make it back with a minute or two to spare. Rachel, the manager there, takes an active interest in every customer who comes through that door, something that Glynnes Pruett mentions doing in her interview on Gutter Talk. That goes a long way with a guy like me. Having a comic shop take note of and act proactively on my interests isn’t something I’m entirely used to in my LCS experience, but all the same, I’m learning fast. The problem lies in where to spend my money, whether to distribute equally amongst the two (right now, my budget leans more heavily toward SCGC, as their selection of variant covers at cover price is quite extensive), plus I have a regular pull that did not require my leaving a credit card number of roughly six books a month, and I don’t believe in not buying from the pull. It is tough though, and adding even further to that was this uncontrollable urge to take a slight detour on my drive to school this afternoon to go give Glynnes and Comicbook Hideout some of my hard earned money purely because I liked and appreciated what she had to say and want to support it in any way I can, even if it only means dropping $4 on a comic I haven’t purchased yet.

I didn’t end up visiting today as I did have things to do, not the least of which was dropping off a gallery wrapped canvas print of a piece I did for a combined Frankenstein/Authors of Cal State Fullerton art show coming up on Halloween. The piece looks great, and I’ll likely be adding it to the Covers session on this site, likely right after I finish writing this entry. I also need to get a start on my Inktober piece for today. For anyone who hasn’t been following along on Twitter or Instagram, I have embarked upon a series of spot illustrations of major figures and events from Norse Mythology. The whole thing actually culminated in a “Like” from none other than Neil Gaiman himself the other night. That little blip nearly caused me to purge all the data entries in my brain related to potty training and bodily waste retention. They’ve been a lot of fun to make, and small as it was, that little bit of effort from one I have admired for so long was validation at a very intense level for me.

Okay. If I had a point, I think it was this: Comic book stores need your support. Supporting one, exclusively, means perhaps robbing others of support, and so I encourage, tentatively, that those of us who care to see printed words and pictures make it into the next decade for our own children to pick up and read, exercise a level of impulsive loyalty. I wouldn’t suggest this in one’s romantic relationships, but every comic purchased from one shop means it’s not being purchased from another. Okay, that’s about enough out of me.

J. Paul Schiek

PS: I am going to endeavor to make this blog at least—at LEAST—a weekly affair from now on. There are things I want to say that don’t fit on Twitter or Instagram, and these days, I wouldn’t touch Facebook with a ten foot wiener.

Shanghai Red (Review)

I was only too thrilled to get my hands on a copy of this this past Wednesday when New Comic Book Day rolled around. My neighborhood comic shop, Ryan's Comics  was down to a mere handful of copies, if that was not indeed how many they had received in the first place. I had already spent a little more than my usual allowance this month picking up the first four issues of The Man of Steel (DC), Magic OrderThe Last Siege, and The Weatherman (all Image), but this was a special circumstance.

Anyone who has anything to do with comic books on Twitter, either as a reader or a creator, has seen at least one post alluding to this new book over the past month, and most of the talk (all of it, really) has been high anticipation. Even before the book had been officially released, gushing reviews had begun to seep through the cracks, leaving those of us who were not in the know already in an even more intense state of optimistic trepidation. It was worth the wait.

Few authors are capable of the sort of slow burn exposition that Christopher Sebela pulls off here with aplomb. I found myself rereading certain panels, spending whole minutes on four and five panel pages to make sure I understood everything aright, that I was grasping the setting and the time period accurately. Was that a revolver that character just pulled? That was a British euphemism, was it not? Are they in the far east? Where in the hell are they?

The answers, I found, were surprising. I had little idea of what the story was about short of that it took place in the indeterminate past on an old boat. And that much was accurate. But what I had not counted on were the myriad twists and turns presented by both the story and accompanying art. Sebela's writing is very crisp, making this sort of a steam noir tale, if I may coin a new term. The writing is perfectly complemented by Joshua Hixson's drawings, which are simultaneously intricately nuanced and raw as a split lip. There is something to be said for using the environment as a character, which this story does constantly and consistently, but even more, the colors themselves become a character as well. The limited red/green palette Hixson uses is both economic and evocative. Combined with that raw, edgy style of his, it comes off as reminiscent of some of the best panels from the EC titles of the 1950s, like Tales From The Crypt and Vault of Horror. No two buts about it, this book is the very thing the Comics Code Authority was designed to fight against: It is pithy, violent, and absolutely wonderful.

I'm not much in the way of spoilers which is why I have not spoken much of the plot, or story that holds this book together like a weathered guy rope. Suffice to say that this issue kicks off the best (and most brutal) revenge tale I've seen since Tarantino's Kill Bill films. The only thing that kept me from scratching holes in my arms, Jonesing for issue #2 was a prompt re-reading of issue #1. If you haven't picked this one up yet, might I go so far as to highly suggest that you do so. This one's a keeper for sure.

Thanks for stopping by!

J. Schiek

PS: Thanks to my friends and business partners, Bo & Harrison  Stewart, who were kind enough to get me a copy of #1 signed by both Christopher Sebela and Joshua Hixson at Heroes Con this past weekend. Mssr Hixson had just posted a picture of his table to Twitter and I managed to text these two fine gentlemen literally just as they had walked away from said table. Truly fate was at play that day. So, I guess what I'm saying is that I have two copies, so if you're having trouble tracking one down, hit me up and I'll see if we can't work something out.