I'll Buy That For A Dollar?: Jonny Quest #10

Jonny Quest #10 (Comico)
March 1987
Willaim Messner-Loebs (W)/Marc Hempel & Mark Wheatley (A)

My high school Shakespeare class totally ruined this issue of Jonny Quest for me.

It's like this. I've seen a lot of Shakespeare performed, and I've "acted" in a little bit of Shakespeare and most importantly I've read a ton of Shakespeare's plays in an academic setting, but I've never really dug Shakespeare like some folks do. But I took this class in high school in Shakespeare. I don't know why but it had something to do with having a semester spot open after Debate or wanting to get out of Psychology or something. Really it was a good excuse to act like this.

But I did read a lot of the plays in that class and remembered a few things about some. Mostly I remember that in a world of Shakespeare plays I found to be a real drag, the histories were the draggiest. And one of those draggy histories was "Richard III," of which I also remember the fact that the play begins with the titular character – a fugly hunchback of an evil king – explaining how because he is in fact fugly and a hunchback, he's decided to be super evil. And I remember that clearly because we also talked about how even with plays history(ies) gets written by the winners. And Richard lost big time. So Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard isn't accurate at all. He wrote what the powers wanted him to. Sure, there's a lot more to it, and some of you probably know way more about the War of the Roses than me (one half a semester of English 301 at college ain't much), but the end lesson I picked up is the same: Shakespeare Wrote For Money.

So Jonny Quest #10, right? I buy it for a buck because I'd herd the Comico version was a hoot and because Dave Stevens did some covers (not this one...bummer). And right there on page one, boy adventurer Jonny Quest is seeing "Richard III" performed in England. And oooooooooo...Jonny hates that mean old king! What a rotten fink he must have been, etc etc, And then the whole Quest gang goes backstage to talk to the actor portraying Richard, who also just happens to be a hard on his luck scientist who moonlights as a Shakespearean actor and who also really needs Dr. Quest's advice on his new "time viewing machine" which must be a moneymaking hit or he'll lose his massive English estate which he knows he really owns but whose deed bequeathing it to his family went missing hundreds of years ago. Following me still? So back at the estate, the science actor shows Jonny and Hadji how his machine's TV screen can look back in time...even to the era of Richard III. The ZAP! The machine blows up in their faces! Everyone is OK, but the next morning Jonny and Hadji mysteriously wake up in 1485.

I'm sure you see where this is going. While in the past, Jonny befriends Richard and sees he's not a bad dude. Plus, he helps the Kind hide the deed to the manor that our boy the stage scientist lives in. Plus, Hadji hypnotizes a horse. Then they all flash back to the modern day where Jonny both uncovers the deed in the Tower of London and teaches everyone a valuable lesson about that dick of a liar Bill Shakespeare. I know it all sounds a little uselessly complicated, but in the hands of Messner-Loebs the script moves along and gives all the information with some kicking and punching and intrigue too, and Hempel and Wheatley do a really solid job on the art. Their storytelling chops were very strong even this early in their careers, plus their linework held some sharp, distinctive character where most licensed cartoon titles look stiff and on model. From a basic craft standpoint, there are some guys who really know how to put a solid comic book together, and it shows.

In that, judging the comics qualities really comes down to how the story works in a broader sense. Is it fun? Is it exciting? Does it pull together its weird, disparate comic book adventurey elements into something resembling a worthwhile 15 minutes of reading? On all of these, I've got to say, "No" for two reasons. First of all, regardless of my 17-year-old's remembrance of "Richard III's" historical inaccuracies, those opening pages with Jonny's intense dislike of Richard's character just scream "there's a lesson coming" in a heavy-handed and anti-climactic way. I honestly don't know if Comico produced this direct market-only series with kids in mind or if they just kept the book kid friendly to appeal to the growing nostalgists who comprised it's real audience, but the didactic elements of the plot cry "written for little kids" in the way that people say it as an insult. I'd like to think that even as an eleven-year-old I'd have seen the "Richard's really all right" twist coming, but even if that's giving little me too much credit, I know I wouldn't have been shocked or excited by the outcome.

And the second reason the issue fails for me is because it's an ill fit for Jonny Quest. Watching the original episodes of the Hanna Barbera series on reruns as a kid, the killer hook to "Jonny Quest" was its gonzo pulp adventure tone. From the big brass theme song and spider robot footage that drove its addictive opening to the story lines involving escape from mad scientists' laboratories and shotgun shootouts. It was a kid's version of "Dr. No" and a precursor to "Indiana Jones." The time travel and English kings don't seem to match the milieu the character was created for. This is Peabody and Sherman territory, and it feels more like a fantasy bent despite its being written off by pseudo-science. Jonny Quest #10 would never have made it as an episode of the show, and here that is a very, very bad thing.

So Jonny Quest #10? Worth a dollar? Nah, not really. Maybe if I saw an issue with a sweet Stevens cover, I'd pick up another, but otherwise I'm continuing to flip.

Also, the important lesson of this post: if you're reading something to do with Richard the Third, don't read "Richard III" or Jonny Quest #10. Read The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck. That book made me cry, you guys.

I'll Buy That For a Dollar?: Biff Bam Pow! #1

Biff Bam Pow! #1 (Amaze Ink/SLG Publishing)
October, 2007
Evan Dorkin (w/Sarah Dyer) (W/A)

There was a brief period a few years back where I could get almost any comic covered in Wizard if I put enough thought into it. See, with issue #179, the mag upped it's size from the standard comic book dimensions to what they call "B-Size" or in layman's terms "normal magazine size." The switch called for a few cosmetic changes to Wizard – design tweaks, a staple binding as opposed to glue, less pages but more words on them. Some fans were upset that they couldn't store new issues in their comic boxes. Tim Leong made a video about it. It was kind of a thing.

ANYWAY, the big difference for those of us who worked on staff was that the change in size brought with it a semi-perceptible change in editorial focus. At the time, Wizard was also firing full guns on its web coverage, so all kinds of breaking news stories were handed off to the online staff. And in a further move to make the magazine competitive our E-i-C Pat McCallum put out the call that as far as content was concerned, the more we could squeeze in the better. Issues of Wizard in those days were jam-packed with massive list features that culled entries from across the pop culture spectrum rather than just comics, scads of short interviews with everyone from comic creators who didn't rank in the magazine's fabled "Top Ten" lists and to semi-famous Hollywood types and a wild mix of suddenly workable one-page features on somewhat trivial superhero ephemera. And that was in addition to the regular marquee comics new features most people associate the magazine with. It was a really fun time to be working at Wizard as the staff was still large enough (editorial was around 13 people with another 6 or so in-house contributors) to juggle the higher ratio of story ideas, and in general we all went kind of bonkers pushing our own particular comic passions into Wizard's pages wherever we could.

For me, that meant pitching as much indie comics coverage as I could get away with while still typing up my features on Civil War. Indie coverage in the magazine most often was relegated to the "Secret Stash" section slotted back between the review pages and the price guide. And while all the indie/alt comics-minded staffers loved to deliver some cool feature content in the Stash, I always wanted to cover the books I loved frequently and out front. With so many mid-level superhero pitches graduating to the higher word counts of the one-page feature, the formerly spandex heavy news section at the very front of the mag became my best bet for indie real estate. So long as I could come up with a broad enough hook (the idea being that "this comic is awesome" wouldn't always sell an indie article to X-Men fans), News Editor Andy Serwin would give me some column space out front to plug whatever black and white title I saw fit. And really, digging for those hooks taught me a lot and made for some fun stories. I remember running a news piece on Rick Spears and Chuck BB's favorite Norwegian metal records for the release of their Oni Press OGN Black Metal that turned out great as well as a "true life comic tales" item that placed Jason Lutes, Nick Bertozzi and R. Crumb mere pages away from Aquaman fart jokes (or, you know, something like that).

And at one point, I interviewed Evan Dorkin about Biff Bam Pow! #1 for the News section. (Yes, the above really was all preamble to a review) Interviewing the cartoonist is a lot like reading Dorkin's comics – a few minutes in and his obvious love of the comics medium and its greatest artists smashes right up against his deep-seeded disdain for all the crazy, borderline criminal fucking bullshit pulled off by the industry, and somewhere in between the two you laugh your ass off. Seeing as Biff Bam Pow! was billed in Previews as a compilation of fight comics, my Wizard pitch involved Dorkin picking out his all-time favorite comic book fight scenes, almost all of which came straight out of Jack Kirby's Marvel heyday. It was really a fucking blast, let me tell you. There are so many worse things to do at your job than talk to Evan Dorkin on the phone for an hour as he flips through his Marvel Essentials volumes and explains what really turns him on about Kirby's wild, muscle-bound grappling matches while simultaneously lamenting how most of the Marvel talent to follow him totally missed the boat on what made the original comics assault reader's eyes with awesomeness.

Unfortunately, two real bummers came upon me after I hung up the phone that day. First, the story never ran in Wizard. We were on a tight deadline by the time I'd gotten Dorkin on the phone, and as I scrambled to work up a draft the section had already been laid out, and we just never found the time to slot it in somewhere else. It happens. Second, I never found a copy of Biff Bam Pow! #1. Even though I lived in New York City at the time and was surrounded by countless indie-friendly comic shops, i never found a copy when it shipped (a fact that Dorkin predicted during our call). So it came as a surprise to me when I happened upon a copy of the one-shot in the Dollar Bin of Dreamland Comics the local, superhero-heavy shop I frequent since moving to the Chicago suburbs. And after finally sitting down and reading the book, I'm relating this whole ridiculous story to the three of you still reading because I felt a little let down by the comic, but I also think that feeling is far more my own fault than Dorkin's.

After that phone call two years ago, Dorkin's extolling the virtues of classic Kirby had me aching for some real action comics. One of the biggest gaps in modern superhero tales in the wake of the '90s "splash pages are our god now" Image artist boom and the subsequent new millennial "the writer and his noir dialogue ticks reign supreme" wave of decompression is that no one – and I mean, fucking NO ONE – seems to draw big bombastic fight choreography for its own sake any more. And never once in our conversation did Dorkin promise me that his fight comic would shake with a storm of jagged fists and whirlwind motion lines and collapsing buildings brought on by angsty fisticuffs...but I'll be damned if I didn't really want it to.

Still, stepping outside my own completely unfair expectations, it's clear that Biff Bam Pow! is one hell of a fun comic book. Containing four stories (some reprints from older magazine gigs but anchored by two feature strips set in the world of Dorkin and wife Sarah Dyer's Kid Blastoff) centering around physical conflicts of one stripe or another, the comic is ostensibly an all-ages humor book. But considering the fact that most youngsters will never, ever come across its contents, Biff Bam Pow! holds plenty to keep the attention of us comics-obsessed adult misanthropes. For starters, the stories are really funny, but they're not funny in the angry, depraved manner of Milk and Cheese. As a kids comic, the one-shot makes great use of visual gag work with Dorkin packing in layer upon layer of detail into each panel so that on a third reading, I'm still noticing things like the fact that the boxing referee in the opening story isn't just blind – he also has a 5-cent pencil cup. The humor gets a great boost from Dorkin's cartooning as every character not only looks distinctive but even alien weirdos composed of a dozen eyeballs are wildly expressive.

And while Dorkin's adherence to the storytelling style he perfected on his more adult humor books means that the fight scenes here don't exactly grab me by the throat, I did really enjoy the moments when giant space monsters would crash into the proceedings. There's a lot of comedy to be mined from those simple setups, and I doubt anyone can really do it better. Plus, the variety in line work across the stories matches each tale's fight spectacularly well with the a two page Nutsy Monkey riff relying on a looser, animated kind of style where the adventurous Kid Blastoff feature strings in a textured creature that wouldn't look out of place in a classic Basil Wolverton strip. And while after reading this comic (and JK Parkin's recent reminder of the creative death of fun action tale Aqua Leung) I still want to watch the world collapse in a hail of headbutts drawn in thick India ink, I'm more than happy to spend the meantime with some comics displaying such solid craft.

So Biff Bam Pow!...worth a dollar? Damn skippy it was, and I'd pay a lot more if it meant we'd get more regular output from Dorkin. Even though his stuff here wasn't what I was expecting, it was way more than I deserved.

I'll Buy That For A Dollar?: New Warriors #22

Comics are my life blood, and current superhero comics make up a giant part of my daily interaction with the medium, but at the same time, even a guy like me can get pretty burnt out with the current crop of DC and Marvel books. There are plenty of good monthlies you can buy at the store brand new every Wednesday, but when you spend your days calling guys on the phone and asking about upcoming plot points in said books, some of the shine comes off that casual fan excitement you get from flipping through the weekly offerings (a real sympathetic complaint, I know, but stick with me here). With single issues of indie comics coming less and less thanks to shifts in the market like the new Diamond order threshold and prices rising on a lot of the big two titles I might be buying monthly, I've spent the past few months investing my meager pocket change on one of the remaining cheap thrills a grizzled comic shop veteran (har har) can find...dollar bins!

That's right. For anyone who's tight on cash and/or looking for a jump start in their reading habits, your average Direct Market retailer has a musty box in the back of the shop full of affordable potential gold. Now, some of these cheapo comics might cost as low as a quarter or as much as (gasp!) three whole bucks, but whatever the exact price, the point is that no matter how much random continuity you've pressed into your head, how many short-run mini comics you've hunted down or how many trade paperbacks you've lined your shelf with over the years, there are still tons of wild comics you haven't experienced that won't cost you more than a Jr. Bacon Cheesburger...or something else cheap. To help dig into this unique comics experience, I'm starting a new semi-regular review feature here called "I'll Buy That For A Dollar?" where I'll highlight some of the dollar bin picks I've dug up this year and whether or not they were actually worth the 100 pennies I threw down. So let's get the ball rolling with...


The New Warriors #22 (Marvel)
April, 1992
Fabian Nicieza (W)
Mark Bagley (P)

My brother bought the first issue of The New Warriors when Marvel's ubiquitous '90s teen team made their debut, and I remember liking it all right, but beyond randomly buying the issue where Rage's grandma gets horrifically murdered before him (which caused me to go, "That was intense...who is Rage?") I never got too deep into the series and its characters. When I told our fearless leader Ben I'd pick this up, his response was "That issue is the kickoff to the final arc of the Nicieza/Bagley collaboration, that paid off everything Fabian had been building for the first two years of the book, so if you dig that, you'll likely dig all that came before as well (and the villain of said arc still gives me nightmares)." After reading through the issue once or twice, I'm kind of wishing I would've started somewhere else.

Here's my best understanding of what happened: the Warriors' bad ass, street wise leader Night Thrasher has fallen in with an uber-90s team of villains led by the insanely-named, trench coat-wearing Left Hand of Darkness. LHD and the rest of the team (whose names range from the absurd Bloodstrike to the so nonsensical its kinda cool Smiling Tiger) want "Trash" to come to Cambodia to discover some stuff about his past and his parents and junk, but there's little more explanation than vague promises in between getting slapped around. Meanwhile, the rest of team is dealing with dueling crises as one of their own is on trial for murdering someone unspecified while another of their team got beat up in an alternate dimension after learning their benefactor is also her dad. Oh, and said benefactor is also nearly brain dead thanks to the actions of their old Chinese housekeeper lady who is apparently also super evil (or something). For some reason, this all ties in with whatever's happening to Night Thrasher, so the team recruits two new members – Rage (recruited by visiting his grandma's house) and Darkhawk (recruited by juggling cars in queens) – to help the gang steal a jet from the Avengers and fly to Cambodia. Once that's done, we shift back to Night Trasher and Co, who have reached The Temple of the Dragon's Breadth (not "Breath") where the so-called Pact that holds the secrets they want is guarded by dudes in armor really similar to Thrash's, even though his armor looks like a motorcross outfit with a skateboard glued on back.

So yeah...a little ridiculous and totally confusing for the uninitiated. Although, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's really fun to read a comic where a LOT of shit happens in 22 pages. And while most of what was going on was either confusing or unintentionally funny, there were still parts I enjoyed. Left Hand's crew reminded me of the Immortal Weapons from Matt Fraction's Iron Fist run but instead of taking their cues from creepy kung fu lore, they took them from Youngblood, which is more fun than it sounds. Plus, the over-the-top nature of the plot and especially the violence in the issue is entertaining in that "Holy shit...seriously?!?" kind of way. At one point when the team is stealing a jet from the Goddamn Avengers, Namorita takes the time to make a joke regarding Nova and premature ejaculation. THAT was unexpected. But overall, Nicieza's script was trying a little too hard to be cool for my tastes, and one thing that really struck me as off was the idea that these were supposed to be teenage superheroes. The Warriors never felt like they were out of their depth or juggling crazy hormonal situations amongst the action adventure or any of the other situations I dig about comics featuring young heroes. Mostly, the team just made comments like, "The Avengers would never help us because they think we're just a bunch of kids!" or "We can't do anything to help support Marvel Boy's battle for acquittal because the public thinks we're just a bunch of kids!" I don't know. This might be too harsh a criticism to drop after reading one issue, but there's a lot more to being a teenager than thinking all adults are dicks.

But as far as Bagley's art goes? Zero complaints, man. I've always loved his cartooning in general, and here his work fires on all cylinders. The layouts are fun, panel compositions are unique and dynamic, and there's no shortage of off-kilter dramatic close-ups along the way. Even his weirdo villain designs really pop despite their period trappings. Plus, I know that in recent years, Bagley's work has gotten a bit sketchier and more personal on books like Ultimate Spider-Man and now Trinity, and maybe those series have a bit more of his own passion in them, but damn it if I don't love the really slick, bold lines he and finisher Larry Mahlstedt drop here. That really finished look gets highlighted by Joe Rosas colors too, and not in the "thematically serves the story" way but in the "damn, that shit is loud!" way. I remember that issue of Mighty Avengers Bagley did where they colored the flashback with the once cool but now over-used four-color dot printing pastiche, and I thought it just didn't work because that's not what comics from 10 or 20 years ago looked like. Comics from the '80s on used a lot of the same basic separation techniques as they do today but with less computers and attempts at "realism" so the final product rode that fine line between Crayola and neon. I'm sure a lot of people hate the final product, but I like my superhero comics a little more hyper.

So, in the end...was New Warriors #22 worth a dollar? I'm going to go ahead and say "Yeah. Yeah it was." Bagley's art alone won me over, and while the story wasn't super hot, it was a fun dip back into nostalgia territory for me that's almost more entertaining for not having aged well. I'm not sure I'll be going back and picking up a lot more of the series, though.