Hell's Squeaky Spinner Rack: 11-1-09

There's a new Fantastic Four comic book in town, drawn in a very cool, very evocative style by Dale Eaglesham. The writer is Jonathan Hickman, who's had success in smaller "independent" comics, I guess. I've never read anything by him. In the first three issues of his FF run, he pretty much asserts the cosmic granduer of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby years fused with the core values of family, loyalty, love and poignancy found in that same 100-plus issue run.

Hard to say how this will all shake out. Dwayne McDuffie and Paul Pellitier's FF run from a little while back was probably the best FF I'd read since John Byrne's seminal work in the 1980s, but McDuff's run didn't last nearly as long. A true shame. So it's hard to get excited about any comic book run in this day and age. Even with Hickman, in a text piece at the end of his third issue, assuring us there are "years" worth of adventures ready to be told.

I haven't bought an ish of FF since the late 1980s. I've read some since, I've bought some back issues and marveled over the mediocrity of what came after I jumped ship. But just Friday I bought FF 572 and was, well, happy about it.

I mean, Hickman and Eaglesham have even brought back the cool retro logo that I grew up with in the late 1970s, complete with new icon heads.



And in purchasing FF once more, I felt good about it, like something was right. Who knows how long that will last?

On another Marvel Comics related note, Agents of Atlas is having a two-issue crossover with the Evil Empire of the Uncanny X-Men comics, to soon become a back-up in the same X-comic.

The horrible fate I feel may befall me is being forced to buy X-MEN if I want to continue to read Jeff Parker's great pulp-adventure series. But it's impossible to avoid at this point, since I love AoA, and nobody has a better grasp on this iteration of these Pulp archetypes than Parker right now. So I'm stuck. About the only good thing I can say is that Parker is also writing the X-focus book. So at least I can stand to read that as well.

Hell's Squeaky Spinner Rack

Read the Chris Claremont X-MEN FOREVER, first five issues or however long it is so far...I haven't read any kind of X-Men comic since John Romita Jr. drew the thing in the twilight of the 1980s. Because in general the X-Men represented the worst developments in superhero comics and comics in general. Because the art was godawful. Because I can't take pretentious Grant Morrison. And whatever else. You'd sooner have found me rolling in broken beer bottles before I'd read an X-Men book of any kind.

That is, at least for now, until X-MEN FOREVER.

The experiment is that Claremont, the writer so associated with the success of the X-Men today, picks up his long run on the title exactly where it left off (sometime in the 1990s?) As if no time had passed, and no changes had been made over all this time. Interesting, I thought, if you really want to go back to the 1990s. Which I don't.

But throw Tom Grummett into this mix?


Grummett is an artist who has been around for some time. His style reflects his views, a straight-forward, dynamic and most importantly clean art. And Grummett flat-out knows how to draw everything from an incredulous look to a towering superpowered uppercut.

The other aspect of Tom Grummett is that he's worked on two of the most entertaining recent runs of books I've had the pleasure to read, one being the criminally-short POWER COMPANY (2002) with Astro City's own Kurt Busiek (a series created by Grummett), and the other NEW THUNDERBOLTS (2005) with Fabian Nicieza and the beginning of 2006's plain THUNDERBOLTS before giving way to Marvel's plan to have all of their titles become one overarchingly tepid melodrama via "Civil War." But that wasn't Grummett's fault, thankfully.

Throw in Grummett's SECTION ZERO (2000), with Karl Kesel (another Grummett-created series painfully short), and I can say I actually had to swallow my pride and read X-MEN FOREVER. Unnerving prospect, obviously.


In comparison to other superhero comics released today, and maybe as a response to "decompressed" story-telling (stretching out a plot and ladling exposition while de-emphasizing physical action and development...soap opera plotting in other words), writer Chris Claremont kicks off with the death of the biggest X-Men star in the world and doesn't stop to breathe as he unleashes one crazy event after another. It looks like Claremont said "F*ck it, you want change? You want character development? You want your socks knocked off?"

I can't say I'm an X-Men fan, but Claremont and Grummett are doing some cool new stuff, and it's worth seeking out. Hard to believe, but there you go.

Hell's Squeaky Spinner Rack

(This entry coupled with some fave comic book covers of the distant, and I mean distant, past...)

I read the conclusion of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' INCOGNITO. Despite liking it overall, I still wonder about the pacing of many projects in today's comic book community. Brubaker as the writer seems content to milk the cow with two fingers, until the five issues started to come to a conclusion, and then it's a rush to complete the work. Not that it comes off bad or anything, but you can tell Brubaker's been saturated in the "taffy plot" mentality, as I'll coin it right now. The idea that you can stretch the plot seemingly forever as long as you're a good enough cocktease. This is evident in Brubaker's CAPTAIN AMERICA as well, which is floundering a bit ever since the ascension of former sidekick Bucky Barnes to the Cap role. Which coincides with the eventual resurrection of Cap himself from his grave (expected, of course) but just terrible planning. Bucky is worse than a lame duck, unless Marvel Comics wants two Captain Americas running around, like there's multiple earthen Green Lanterns and multiple Flashes and multiple Supermen over at DC. It's called de-uniquing, and it waters down the impact these characters are supposed to have.


That said, Brubaker and Phillips' CRIMINAL is often the best thing on the stands, so any time you see a new arc, pick it up. Bru's tendancies to give a good lapdance is lessened by his innate ability to get inside noir-trodden characters, and Phillips is much more effective as a mood artist than an action one (though he's pretty good at that as well.)

AGENTS OF ATLAS has been cancelled, one of the best comics to come out of Marvel in a long time, which I have to thank all you fine Spider-Man/Batman/"Dark" Avengers buyers for. Thanks for f*cking that up. Jeff Parker and the blossoming talent of artist Gabriel Hardman was producing a comic of full-bodied depth and gratifyingly action-packed dimensions. Parker knows he's writing pure heroin in the form of Pulp, so he throws everything great into a mix of talking gorillas, 1950s robots, secret agents and Uranian saucer men. It's impossible to even describe AGENTS OF ATLAS without nearly weeping from happiness, so I appreciate everyone buying it and keeping it on the shelves. Nice pull, folks.

AGENTS will be extant at Marvel, albeit in crossovers with X-titties and backing up in someone else's comic. Which then forces me to buy a comic I don't want to get the back-up I do. Oh, you Marvel-ous ways.



SECRET SIX by writer Gail Simone and artist Nicola Scott is still pulsating with life, thankfully, at DC, and it's head and shoulders better than anything else the company is producing. Visceral and ethically-challenged, you're in for a treat designed for you, the adult comic book reader. Which means, when you read SECRET SIX, you aren't forcing DC Comics to adultify Superman and Batman (kids' characters) to meet your expectations. The criminal protagonists of SECRET SIX exist in a moral void, yet continue to amuse with their inability to ever truly be evil. No matter how repellant their actions, they still somehow conflict with greater evils than themselves. And I'll say now: Nicola Scott is the best comics artist working right now. That's a fact. She has the exquisite style straight from the pre-1990s, coupled with the ability to draw stunningly sexy women without having to resort to porn poses in order to convince the reader they are, in fact, supposed to be attracted to the female form. Amazingly, Scott's women are beautiful and sensuous the more ragged and sweaty they are, because by god they look like real women would look, instead of some horny teenager's wet dream of the way they look.

Also, I bought THE SATAN FACTORY, a prose novel starring Mike Mignola's pulp hero Lobster Johnson, written by novelist Thomas E. Sniegoski. I hope it's amazing, and of course I'll be letting you Squeaky Spinner Rack readers know, fer sure.