#Sarah horrocks

[fina1gxrl]

the seam of skin and scales (little light) / patchwork girl (shelley jackson) / i saw the tv glow (jane schoenbrun) / we're all going to the world's fair (jane schoenbrun) / madotsuki’s closet (bagenzo) / some thoughts about werewolves and gender identity (sarah horrocks)

[dailycass-cain]

Can you tell us more about Gabrych and the end of the 2000 run? Why was it cancelled?

Near the end of the comic book event "Infinite Crisis", Batgirl Vol. 1 was axed. This was not due to low sales (several DC Comics at the time were selling worse and continued on when the relaunch "One Year Later" program was to hit) but for a rather sexist reason.

Back in 2010, the inker for Batgirl Vol. 1, Jesse Delperdang, posted on Deviantart the real reason the series was canceled, "canceled to make room for the coming Batwoman."

That "coming Batwoman" was an ongoing series by Devin Grayson, and would never see the light of day (DC got cold feet when the character got more publicity than they realized and decided to retool the character (which we got with Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III over in Detective Comics a few years later).

Because more than "one female bat comic" was one too many. Not only that but just last year Dan DiDio posted on Facebook the original outline he had for "OYL" regarding Cass:

Of course, DiDio always changed his mind and instead, we got the racist caricature in OYL. Nor would this be the last time DiDio would change his thoughts on what to do with Cass (2009, 2011, and 2016. Each a can of worms of themselves).

So that's why Batgirl Vol. 1 was canceled, due to sexism.

As for Gabrych, he continued to work with DC until an Omega Men mini in 2006-2007 and began to go back to his life outside DC Comics. He did come back to write a 2010 graphic novel Frogtown for the Vertigo label.

The thing is, DC Editorial under DiDio was a nasty business. Sometimes you followed the edicts or didn't and walked altogether (Kelley Puckett for a brief run with Supergirl Vol. 5 in 2008 and Dylan Horrocks with the "War Games" event when he and Grayson objected to Stephanie Brown being brutally murdered and DC taking away Babs from the comic too). Or you got nasty pricks in editing to deal with like Eddie Berganza (a noted DiDio toadie). It was just a toxic culture altogether, and I'm glad it is over when DiDio got fired in early 2020.

Two have left comics altogether (Puckett & Gabrych) and Horrocks is doing indie comic work in his native New Zealand, but avoiding the Big 2 after the "War Games" experience.

The sad truth is, if you write a Batgirl ongoing there's a 75% chance you're gonna get out of the industry. Literally, there's only a handful of Batgirl writers who've done stories on the ongoings and not left.

We just got Bryan Q. Miller back to DC in a few months (they're also reprinting the Batgirl Vol. 3 run he did), and that's probably cause most of the old regime left (see an SDCC 2020 Batgirls panel he was on with Sarah Kuhn and others where he goes onto a tale regarding his clashes with the heads over Cass).

Puckett did do a new foreword to his Batman Adventures run which got an Omnibus recently. So MAYBE there's hope for him too.

I hope I answered your question to the fullest on why Batgirl Vol. 1 ended and why Gabrych left the industry.

[abfabsweetiedarlings]

Ab Fab ended after five series in 2003 and while fans are still praying for a reboot, they’ll soon be able to enjoy the next best thing: Absolutely Fabulous: Inside Out, a documentary spilling the beans about how the show was made. Featuring Saunders, Lumley, Julia Sawalha (Saffy) and a slew of clips, it’s a glorious reminder of how groundbreaking the show really was.

Eddie, Patsy and Saffy were its stars, but so too were the clothes. Six years before Sex and the City catapulted Fendi Baguette bags and Manolos into the mainstream, Ab Fab made designer labels a talking point in a more irreverent way. Rather than existing to gild their wearers, clothes were often the butt of the joke, with Edina’s “It’s Lacroix, sweetie” sending up her obsession with labels in a way that viewers found relatable.

For the costume designer Rebecca Hale it was a dream job. “Jennifer [as the show’s creator] gave you freedom and creative licence. Nowadays you’re more constrained — there are so many points of view.” Although the job wasn’t without its stressesos famously worked close to the wire, frequently editing lines at the 11th hour. “I would often be on a motorcycle coming back from Selfridges when they changed the script, and I’d be running around Selfridges trying to find more shoes. You’d sometimes get the script on Thursday and be shooting Friday. I’d be sitting outside Harvey Nichols waiting for it to open, laughing and thinking, ‘Wow, I can’t believe she’s written that.’ ”

Not only did the script go close to the wire but also sometimes close to the bone. “But satire is what makes comedy so fantastic,” Hale says. “If you compare Ab Fab to something like Emily in Paris, [Emily] is more like a runway show than an observation on society. It’s very two-dimensional. It doesn’t take the piss out of itself.”

At the time gossip mags were the equivalent of Instagram, and Hale remembers looking through Hello! with Saunders for inspiration. “We’d see Katie Price getting out of a car in a Juicy Couture tracksuit and a G-string. What I loved about Jennifer is that we’d be telling stories and [showing] the complexities and insecurities of being a woman. We’d always make everything tight. Trousers would be extra small so there’d be a camel toe. You’d relate to the vulnerability, and show [the audience] that vulnerability is OK. Everything now is so pure and clean. Nobody wants to offend, but there’s got to be a bit of offence in order to observe.”

By the time Hale joined the show in the early Noughties (the earliest series were wardrobed by Sarah Burns), it was firmly established and most designers were keen to lend. “Gaultier and Dolce & Gabbana were always generous. The rest we’d buy at Harvey Nichols and Alexander McQueen. Betty Jackson made all of Patsy’s things, so we paid for it at cost. She was also generous and had a very big say in the way that Patsy looked. It was such a great contradiction to Eddie — very pure in its line and not so messy visually. Patsy was much more messy physically because Joanna’s such a great comedic actress.”

Decades after the final series of Ab Fab aired, Patsy is still a popular fancy-dress costume. What, for Hale, is her most iconic look? “There’s a white Betty Jackson coat that she wears with a black tight-fitting dress underneath — I think it was vintage Yves Saint Laurent. The tones were important — she’d wear cream, white or black, and occasionally red, whereas Edina would wear anything.” Indeed, the latter would be slavishly latching on to the hottest names and trends of the day. “One of my favourite Edina outfits is the Burberry look she wore in the early 2000s. She’s got the check bucket hat, jacket and three-quarter-length trousers.”

If Edina’s looks were outrageous, so too were those of her secretary, Bubble (Jane Horrocks). One of her more memorable outfits is a padded dress printed with Teletubbies, inspired by the popular children’s TV show of the time. “I was a single parent and had just come out of that period when you’re watching Pingu and Teletubbies. My brain was frazzled but I loved the imagery of it.”

By contrast, Saffy’s wardrobe was deliberately wholesome and drab, as befitted a girl who was chastised by Patsy for “dressing like a Christian”. Hale says: “We’d go to a shop and pick the cosiest jumper or the ugliest item of clothing. Anything that looked like it was a walking contraceptive pill, I’d put on her.”

Such was the show’s popularity that famous faces lined up to have cameos, meaning that Hale also had the fun of dressing its numerous celebrity guest stars. “We had a whole room of supermodels once. Elton John turned up in his own fabulous outfit. I remember dressing Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull. Anita turned up with these amazing lilac silk flowers, one for her and one for Jennifer. I put Marianne in a tailored white trouser suit by Bella Freud.” Hale also worked on Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016), which featured a cameo by Kate Moss. “Kate was delightful. We were going through some ideas and she pulled out this dress that Johnny Depp had given her — black sequins, made by a very famous costume maker in Hollywood. Because the scene required her to come out of the River Thames, I copied that dress, remaking it in green sequins so that she emerged looking like a mermaid.”

Hale says that if Saunders ever did decide to do a reboot, she would look at influencers for inspiration, and dress them in labels such as SS Daley, Balenciaga and JW Anderson, adding in vintage pieces by Vivienne Westwood and Stella McCartney. “Fashion is so eclectic now. I’d have to find something that was extreme. Edina would have to wear a Kim Kardashian bodysuit like she did on Saturday Night Live.”

Hale is interested in the power Kardashian wields. “She’s a fashion icon. Although you haven’t got those fantastic people who really used to cultivate their own looks. Nobody takes risks any more. They’re all too concerned about how they’re perceived. In the Nineties you’d have these very famous fashion people — Anna Wintour, André Leon Talley, Suzy Menkes — each with their own image, and they’d stick to it. Now people just go to a designer and get plonked in it rather than curating their own style. Money kills creativity. You get paid to wear a brand and it takes away your identity. I think that’s sad.”

It’s the antithesis of Hale’s approach to fashion. She got involved with Ab Fab after initially working with Saunders on the comedy series The Comic Strip Presents … in the late 1980s and early 1990s, followed by the sketch show French and Saunders in the early 2000s. “We’d banter with each other about what was going on in our personal lives, and I’d often regale them with stories about my mother,” she says. “She was exuberant, to say the least — a great beauty, a great intellect and something of a fashion icon. On holiday in Greece she’d rise in the morning wearing some kaftan and a turban and ceremoniously walk on to the beach, waving at the Greek fishermen before swimming off in the nude.”

If she sounds uncannily like Edina Monsoon, that’s because she is. “Part of Edina is based on my mother. Her name was Crystal Hale and she was an inspiration to many. She’d take me to school dressed in a cape decorated with great big lions’ heads and a huge fur hat. She was extremely loving but very alternative. Her various stories and antics would be relayed back to Jennifer and Dawn, and they would give each other a sideways glance. So, yes, she was part of the inspiration for Edina.”

Ever since Ab Fab aired, fans have been guessing who Edina was based on, with the most popular theory being Lynne Franks, a well-known fashion PR who shared some of her traits. The name Crystal Hale has never been mentioned. She was the daughter of the novelist and MP AP Herbert, and indeed, some of her parenting sounds like it would put Edina’s to shame. “On one particular day, when I was terrified of [doing] my GCSE, she gave me a type of amphetamine called a purple heart to calm me down. It did the opposite.”

Never mind Edina being based on her mother: was Saffy based on Hale? “She might have been in the way I relayed my stories, but I was equally outrageous in my twenties,” she says, laughing. “My mother encouraged me to be expressive. At school I was into punk fashion and she’d allow me to wear a Vivienne Westwood cobweb-knit angora mohair sweater with no bra underneath, a miniskirt and rubber stockings.”

Hale has just finished working on Kaos, the Netflix black comedy starring Jeff Goldblum and Billie Piper. “I’ve rarely felt as happy reading a script as I did reading [the writer] Charlie Covell’s — it’s the closest to Absolutely Fabulous in terms of being laugh out loud.”

And she’s not surprised by the lasting impact Ab Fab has had. “The relationship between a mother and daughter is a theme that’s never going to die. It’s light-hearted, hilarious and there’s nothing else like it. I think it needs to be reintroduced.” We’d drink (the Bolly) to that.

[movies-to-add-to-your-tbw]

Title: Arthur Christmas

Rating: PG

Director: Sarah Smith

Cast: James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, Ashley Jensen, Marc Wootton, Laura Linney, Eva Longoria, Ramona Marquez, Michael Palin, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Robbie Coltrane, Joan Cusack, Rhys Darby, Jane Horrocks, Iain McKee

Release year: 2011

Genres: drama, family, comedy

Blurb: Each Christmas, Santa and his vast army of highly-trained elves produce gifts and distribute them around the world in one night. However, when one of six hundred million children to receive a gift from Santa on Christmas Eve is missed, it is deemed acceptable to all but one: Arthur. Arthur Claus is Santa's misfit son who executes an unauthorised rookie mission to get the last present halfway around the globe before dawn on Christmas morning.

[dailycass-cain]

There is one area not covered, and I wish it was given Andersen Gabrych teased it at the end that you didn't mention in that Nyssa Al Ghul is the one to suggest to Cass to let go of being a Bat. That she's better than that. Course, it's for her own ends but the seeds for Cass to think beyond just the bat symbol were planted there.

I always wonder and wish Gabrych was at a con to just ask what he had in mind if his run was continued and not axed because of sexist stupid reasons.

Let's just not talk about the aftermath of all this aka EVIL Cass kills Nyssa takes over her sect of the League and becomes a literal dragon lady stereotype because of DC Comics at that time folks.

I'm kind of sad, Puckett, Horrocks, and Gabrych have gone M.I.A. in social media and comic life (I think Horrocks only does con stuff). Cause man, I'd love to pick their brains. We get a somewhat idea of Puckett of the choices he made at least (along with WHY Horrocks left the book).

In that, his editor Joseph Illidge had lunch with Vertigo editor Jenny Lee and writer Cliff Chiang to correct some controversial tropes that the character was crossing.

So in the regard it does feel rushed, but why I truly enjoy Shadow of the Batgirl graphic novel by Sarah Kuhn and Nicole Goux for introducing Jackie because it adds that much-needed minority voice to help Cass along her ride in discovering herself besides giving us Babs.

Why I truly think its the best Cass story as Kuhn took what worked for Cass, took out what didn't, and added the stuff that was needed in that early section. I still wish and hope if we ever get another Cass ongoing that they bring in Jackie as a supporting cast member because she adds something needed with the character.

Thank you again for the insightful look into Cass.

Race and Perception in Batgirl (2000)

This is a companion piece to my two gender posts on Batgirl (2000). There are many interesting takes on race and Cassandra Cain, but most focus on whether she is a 'racist' character or not. This post is not about that, though I think my stance is fairly clear given what my blog is about. Rather than retreading the same ground of whether the conception of Cass is racist (something I might tackle later, because some arguments are flat-out wrong), I want to look at how race actually plays out in Batgirl (2000).

This post focuses on how Cass' Asian identity influences her views on perception, beauty, and agency. As usual, feel free to disagree as I'm not an ethnic or Asian studies expert.

Mask of the Batgirl

We all know and love Cass' iconic Batgirl costume. Besides its distinctive total-blackness, the most interesting aspect is the full-face mask. She is the only Batgirl to cover her face completely - when Stephanie takes over, one of the first things she does is rip the bottom half off.

Skin and external perceptions don't mean the same things to Barbara and Steph as they do to Cass. Cass' entire life is fraught with not just the male gaze, but the White male gaze - her father, David Cain, films her on video tapes, and Bruce later views these tapes (importantly, Cass herself does not get to). These tapes symbolise how her appearance does not belong to herself, but to external White perceptions.

In issue #1, Batman says the following:

"You... are me." Here, Bruce posits that the full-face mask makes Cass more like Bruce. It functions to hide their racial and gendered differences. By covering her face completely, Bruce (and Cass) tacitly suppress her race. Once again, White men are controlling the way she is perceived, something that began with David Cain and continues with Bruce.

Interiority and Exteriority

A common Asian stereotype is that Asians are mechanical - they have no interiority. The common conceptions of Asians as STEM majors and being emotion-deficient all come from this core belief, that Asians are utilities for White people. For Cass, this belief manifests from Babs, Bruce, and David Cain:

Babs says it's hard to care without knowing what's "going on in her head." She cannot connect with Cass' exterior, and finds it hard to imagine what her interior is like. Even worse, Bruce and Cain both argue that Cass belongs to/is like them, almost treating her as property- they reject Cass' own interiority and project theirs onto her, using her as a tool to extend their own identities.

In the early issues, Cass doesn't have an internal monologue. This somewhat reinforces what Babs, Bruce, and Cain all believe about her interiority. However, in issue #5 a White man gifts her the ability to think in language:

This plot point serves to demonstrate Cass' interiority to the reader, but it is another example of a White person choosing for Cass. She didn't get a choice to be raised without language, and she doesn't make the decision to receive it. Both externally and internally, White people control her narrative.

The Shiva Solution

After her newfound language skills impact her ability to fight, Cass encounters Lady Shiva, her future surprise mother. Shiva is the first one to ever acknowledge Cass' race.

Unlike Cain or Bruce, Shiva doesn't say 'you're like me'; she says, "we're a lot alike." She doesn't map herself onto Cass, but finds something they both have in common. By naming Cass' race ("in terms of our coloring") and framing their similarities in this way, Shiva affirms Cass' difference from White people, while providing an alternative solace: Asian solidarity.

Shiva gives Cass her first real choice. It's not exactly a good choice, and it's somewhat coloured by White perceptions (the idea of 'perfection'), but it's still the first major thing Cass gets to decide for herself. She even frames Shiva's path as opposing "Batman's method;" it's the beginning of her path away from White control, towards racialised agency.

It's no surprise, then, that Shiva is the one that helps Cass over her death wish. Not Bruce, not Babs, but Shiva - a literal and metaphorical link to her heritage.

Another Stephanie Brown Segment

As an integral part of Cass' sexual and gendered awakening, Stephanie of course plays a role in Cass' understanding of race. Moving from Puckett's run into issue #38, Stephanie and Cass have this iconic conversation on the rooftop:

I've written before about how this marks the beginning of Cass' foray into gender and sexuality, but this scene has a different meaning when viewed from a race angle. Stephanie is the quintessential American girl, with blonde hair and blue eyes; additionally, she's sexually and romantically experienced. Cass' own Asian appearance, then, may be causally linked to her lack of experience.

When Stephanie comes back as Robin, we have this moment:

Cass is unable to be perceived as non-threatening, helpful, or friendly, while Steph achieves all this with ease. Beyond the differences in temperament (Cass is definitely the spooky scary type), it's also the difference in costuming - Robin's bright colours and majority-unmasked face make for a friendlier appearance than Batgirl. Once again, Cass is unable to control other people's perceptions of her.

It's notable that the majority of Steph's appearances throughout Batgirl end with her leaving Cass on a rooftop. This happens in issues #38, #53, #54, and of course War Games. Their relationship is consistently tenuous, and I think this contributes to Cass feeling like she'll never belong in Steph's world.

Tai'Darshan Turns the Tide

At this point Cass is in pretty bad straits: no one has ever shown romantic attraction to her, Steph is mad at her, and she still doesn't have a full understanding of her race (bar Shiva, she's encountered no other Asians). This feeling of disenfranchisement from both the White and Asian worlds is a very common experience among third culture Asian kids, particularly mixed-race Asians.

Then comes Tai'Darshan, the second major Asian person Cass interacts with.

He is the first person to show romantic interest in her, and asks to "see [her] face." He wants to see her interiority and her skin - Cass' Asian features are now described as something attractive, something worth seeing.

Where Cass is creeped out by Conner's gaze on the boat, she's not similarly affected by Tai'Darshan. She's beginning to understand racialised dynamics, and finding comfort within other Asians rather than her majority-White friends and family.

Both during the fight with Tai'Darshan and the later fight with Bruce, Cass wears these eye-cut-out masks. The eyes are both the site of perception and the site of Asian racialisation, as the most identifiably 'Asian' part of people's faces. By wearing these kind of masks, she's allowing others to perceive her race, reclaiming racialised perception as an act of choice rather than something imposed onto her.

Choosing

In the final arc of Batgirl (2000), Cass sets out to find Shiva. The decision is spurred by this conversation, where Brenda explicitly asks about Cass' race. Everything has been building up to this acknowledgment of Cass' fuzzy origins, a recognition that the uncertainty around her race impacts her ability to achieve full self-actualisation.

Cass rejects Batman's help on the matter, instead going to Onyx:

By going with Onyx, a Black woman, instead of Bruce, Cass is starting on her journey towards racial solidarity beyond Asian communities.

The abrupt ending to Batgirl (2000) kinda cuts off any definitive arc, but I actually think what we have already paints a solid picture. There definitely is a lot more room for explorations into Chinese culture (Spirit World kinda covers this), Cass' relationship to White proximity, interactions with other Asian characters and more. I think her Asian identity deserves more of a spotlight, and I'm hoping more comics in the future delve into it.

[shortmeteor]

Gendocybin #1 by Sarah Horrocks

Haven’t written about comics in a while. It is such a wonderful medium. So different from film or novels. Don’t seem like people really get that (read/watch “Watchmen” for example). The thing about comics (thought of this watching “Celine and Julie Go Boating” the other day) is that the cut is so utterly different from films. The way you cut from one take/scene/angle to another is in no way the same. And in both movies and comics (and poetry, and everything) the cut is fundamental. It is the rhythm of what you are saying.

Sarah Horrocks is really good at rhythm. Rhythm and colors, I feel, are her biggest strengths. 

There is no “correct” rhythm of course (I might be persuaded to have a different idea about colors). Compare (personal favorites) “Lone Wolf and Cub” and Gilbert Hernandez’ stories. Like different galaxies, both great. 

Horrocks does something different though (Hernandez and Kojima/Koike are very measured), both between images and within them. There is a violent chaos here. Something very personal, very intimate, and at the same time very pulp. This combination is important (and very much something I enjoy). I don’t think you can really say something personal and political today outside of pulp. I think pulp is what is left of anything truthful in storytelling. It wasn’t. But it is. Lots of people misunderstand this. Seeing pulp (shorthand here, be it Conan, superheroes, gore, manga, etc.) as lowbrow, low quality, whatever. Going so far as trying to “rescue” artists from pulp (Cronenberg, Lynch, Burroughs, Ballard, Guston, etc). 

The chaos in Gendocybin is part of the violence which is the inspiration (not the right word, see her afterword) for the comic. It is an end-of-the-world thing. It is a violence so enormous that it cannot but invade every fiber of the storytelling. Like when they don’t just kill you (or at least try to), they want you to never have been. It is the nazi ultimate solution, it is a level of evil that we probably cannot understand. And we are living it. Now. Can it be “understood?” Is that the point? 

It isn’t the point of the comic. It is about living it. Surviving it. But what are you surviving? How can you even? And I am totally going to far here, this is #1 of an ongoing series. I have no idea where this will go.

It just isn’t something to politely analyze or whatever. The pulp element, it seems to me, is the way you can even begin to talk about it. Otherwise it would just be a scream. And Horrocks makes it into something beautiful. And touching, and sad, and cute and fun. I really really liked it.

[fictionz]

Help! Looking for horror comics from diverse voices

I read a bunch of new-to-me horror stuff every October, including short comics and single issues, but hoo boy is it real research to find horror comics that aren't by white (and mostly American) men. I also try to pick out a comic or two from each decade for as far back as I can find them. I'm going through the process now of selecting this year's comics, and while I'm confident I can find diverse voices and backgrounds for the comics I'll read, I'm interested to see if any horror comic fans out there have recommendations.

So if you know horror comics and have recommendations from diverse creators, whether it's people of color, or based on gender, ethnicity, nationality, or any other diverse background, lemme know! There must be a ton of comic creators right here on Tumblr that I'm missing out on. It can be a single issue, a story in an anthology, a web comic, it's all good. Maybe there's a horror Discord I outta join?!

As a bonus, here's the list of horror comics I checked out last year:

“The Boar’s Head Beast” by George Wildman, Nicola Cuti, Wayne Howard (1975) “I toyed with forces I couldn’t control.”

This has bits of Lovecraft but it’s mostly an adventure story, and that just reminds me that so much of the adventure stuff I loved as a kid is from the action subgenre of horror.

💀💀💀

“Ill Bred” by Charles Burns (1985) “I realized her muscles were getting larger and more defined.”

The story seems to go full tilt into men’s panic about gender and sexuality norms until it pivots into a Twilight Zoneish wink at the audience as the plot resolves to an acceptable state for the normies. Pretty gnarly body horror stuff.

💀💀💀

“Don’t Go to the Island” by Sfé R. Monster & Kalyna Riis-Phillips (2016) “The skulls at your feet are laughing at you.”

It’s been almost all white American men in my horror comics this month, so I’m pivoting to other creators and eras. Fortunately, the Bones of the Coast anthology has that and also focuses on the Pacific Northwest, undoubtedly my favorite region. It’s a good pairing with the Jackson story. A moody coastal vibe, the gray sky threatening something that doesn’t reveal itself immediately, but instead lingers behind trees and corners, watching and waiting.

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“Some Other Animal’s Meat” by Emily Carroll (2016) “What if inside, it’s somehow the wrong stuff?”

Some inside part is always going to feel like it’s different from yours.

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“Greed” by Becky Cloonan, Jordie Bellaire, Travis Lanham (2013) “Kindly take your place by the dead horse.”

I liked what I read here, but it’s clear it’s not meant to stand alone. It’s too brief and it feels like we’re (rightly) meant to read this entire book and perhaps the series before getting to this point.

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“Goin’ South” by Nancy Collins, David Imhoff, Jeff Butler, Steve Montano, Renée Witterstaetter, Electric Crayon, Simon Bisley (1995) “He has his hate to keep him warm.”

People in the 90s really wanted to see these sorts of bouts between characters from different media properties. There’s an essay in the comic itself that comments on the fascination. Of course, this just presages our modern era of cinematic media universes. As for this first issue in a trilogy, it’s a decent setup, but not much happens since it’s focused on getting the two characters into the same room by the end of a single comic issue. I think a cross-country trip/spree featuring Jason could’ve been cool if it wasn’t so rushed.

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“Winnebago Graveyard #1” by Steve Niles, Stephanie Paitreau, Jordie Bellaire, Jen Bartel, Alison Sampson, Aditya Bidikar, Mingjue Helen Chen, Sarah Horrocks (2017) “Where are the people?”

Ooh good setup here. I’ll return to finish this series for sure. I hope the big bad they introduce here gets a real powerful comeuppance, though it does feel like a setup for torturing some protagonists. Bonus points for a creepy carnival setting.

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“Seed” by Fiona Staples, Jose Villarrubia, Michael Dougherty, Todd Casey, Zach Shields, Marc Andreyko (2015) “For this is not a woman but a demon with no soul to save.”

I remember Trick ‘r Treat being more jokey with its anthology format, but this was just a straightforward historical horror tale. But I liked the sincerity and will certainly return to this book later.

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“Kill Screen” by Lauren Beukes, Dale Halvorsen, Ryan Kelly, Eva de la Cruz, Clem Robins, Bill Sienkiewicz, Rowena Yow, Shelly Bond (2015) “This better not end up in a bathtub full of ice with missing kidneys.”

Some of the writing here is cringey, but the character setup is intriguing. I’ll stick with it and finish the series after October.

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“The Fool of the Web” by Patricia Breen, Roel, Brenda Feikema (1997) “Your belly quakes with laughter even as I tremble in disgust.”

Sometimes you follow the maiden, and sometimes the maiden follows you.

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“Fortune Broken” by Sandy King, Leonardo Manco, Marianna Sanzone (2015) “Death runs from me, you old witch!”

A simple one, and too abrupt in its conclusion. A bit more time at the end and I might’ve been more into it.

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“The Cemetery” by Franco, Abigail Larson, Wes Abbott, Sara Richard (2022) “Don’t you just want to get this over with?”

How do we learn to navigate the scary stuff? And why do some of us make it while others don’t?

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“The Speed of Pain” by Jeff Lemire, Andrea Sorrentino, Dave Stewart, Steve Wands, Will Dennis (2018) “I spent the week cursing God.”

Whoa nelly, this first issue is a great setup. It’s got that urban decay vibe of grungy industrial hellscape movies of the 90s like The Crow, Seven, and Dark City. I’ll definitely be coming back to finish this series.

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“Gestation” by Marguerite Bennett, Jonathan Brandon Sawyer, Doug Garbark, Nic. J. Shaw (2014) “I’ll deal with the corpse, my lady-love.”

It’s very satisfying when men in power are absolutely wrecked by women, so I appreciate the still too-rare opportunity to see it happen. (And you should know that this short comic story was expanded into its own series.)

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“Chemical 13!” by Michael Woods & Saskia Gutekunst (2009) “Everything is fine.”

Comeuppance stories about Nazis getting the wrath they deserve don’t hit the same anymore, not when they are just still around in daily life.

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“Hello, My Name Is…” by Nadia Shammas, Rowan MacColl, Licha Myers, Chris Sanchez (2021) “Workers have names. Management has power.”

What is a name but a tracking system? The means by which to search and destroy.

💀💀💀

“Sea of Souls” by Jenna Lynn Wright, Alvaro Feliu, Juan Francisco Mota, Ricardo Osnaya, Erik Lopera Tamayo, Jorge Cortes, Robby Bevaro, Maxflan Araujo, Walter Pereyra, Taylor Esposito (2022) “This isn’t the face I had when we met.”

The feel of a rushed committee affair, but stitched together adequately enough.

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“Crush” by Janet Hetherington, Ronn Sutton, Becka Kinzie, Zakk Saam (2018) “His eyes are as wild as the sea.”

Aye, that’s a Gothic story alright. The foreword by Jacques Nodell that introduces the anthology was actually a really good breakdown of the Gothic literature genre and its trappings. The ending is pretty gruesome but then I think that’s also a tendency in the scary Gothic romances.

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“The End of All Things” by Natalie Leif & Elaine Well (2014) “I’ll look at the lines myself.”

I wasn’t quite sure of the message here, and it’s probably a sign of a good story that I found it very compelling but wanted more. The ending evokes a sense of inevitable collapse beneath the weight of the world, that we are all inextricably linked to an entity we cannot escape.

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“Swamp Monster” by Basil Wolverton (1953) “You stare in unbelief at what used to be normal hands!”

There’s something appealing about these old, simple morality horror tales. I suppose it’s knowing that someone’s getting a comeuppance, or a rude awakening. So reading these is about knowing they’re gonna get it and enjoying the twisted revelation.

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“The Portrait of Sal Pullman” by Lonnie Nadler & Abby Howard (2019) “You fools, do you not see what this truly is?" 

Abby Howard is the ruler of the kingdom of creepy illustrated faces. Er, maybe the architect. The wizard behind the curtain? Oh, the god, the god.

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“O Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” by M.R. James & Abby Howard (2019) “If you see any more spooks or beasties, please do let me know." 

I often fantasize about illustrating text stories if I had the skill, just to visualize what’s in the brain. It’s cool to see Howard taking that on with one of these old timey and appropriately spooky stories.

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“Rainbow Sprinkles” by W. Maxwell Prince, Chris O’Halloran, Martín Morazzo, Nimit Malavia (2018) “Arizona like in the movies of our dreams”

My first reaction was this isn’t horror (particularly after a more straightforward horror story in the first issue), but I think this is going to happen many times throughout the month. I’ve made the effort to seek out a more expansive range of voices and backgrounds in my horror selections and it’s going to require a broader acceptance of horror as a genre and medium for storytellers. All that said, this second issue of Ice Cream Man is more tragic and real, and horror fiction is, after all, a reflection of the horrors we face as real people.

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“Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall!” by Jack Davis, et al. (1953) “Why do they scream when they see you?”

First-person perspective in a comic must have been a fresh thing in the fifties, and if you’re going to do it, then you may as well pull from a classic like Frankenstein. I also recognize this sort of amnesiac monster thing from many stories since ‘53, in particular the disturbing “His Silicon Soul” from Batman The Animated Series.

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“The Harvest” by Shannon Campbell & Pam Wishbow (2016) “Just think of blackberry jam." 

Oh fuck yeah, that autumnal folk horror. Much of this sort of thing comes out of places with traditional seasons but I love that this anthology is all about horror from the Pacific Northwest, so here you can feel the gray gloom and green hells of those thickly forested areas. This particular story also gets into the insidious and unknowable machinations of plants. Who knows what they’re thinking…

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“In Each and Every Package” by Reed Crandall, et al. (1954) “I kept thinking of you and that gave me the strength.”

This came up in a list of noteworthy horror comics from the mid-century due to this gnarly cover that got held up as an example of the questionable artistic merits of this sort of stuff at the time. I also doubted the horror qualities of this series since the title itself says it’s crime fiction, but I gave it a shot. It’s crime fiction for sure and I don’t think I’ll read other Crime SuspenStories, but it definitely feels like something I’d see on Tales from the Crypt.

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“Roots in Hell” by Richard Corben (2016) “Have some of this mango. It’s delicious!”

Kind of an abrupt ending but I dig the conceit.

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“Mars Is Heaven!” by Ray Bradbury, Wally Wood, et al. (1953) “And Lustig began to cry." 

Looks like this story hit pretty hard in the fifties, but then the Godliness and paranoia of the nation was more potent then. Now it comes across as quaint.

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“Save the Last Dance for Me!” by Dennis O'Neil & Pat Boyette (1969) “Tin Toes makes the decisions around here!”

So many horror comics of this time are just peeks into the Ironic Punishment Division in hell.

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“Infected” by Bruce Jones, Richard Corben, Steve Oliff (1982) “You drag a shaking claw across your mouth and wipe away the sour smelling bile.“

Whoof. The casual racism is real bad in this one, even if it’s portrayed just to show the shitty attitude and personality of the protagonist. It feels more like some white guys riding the wave of edgy work like Heavy Metal to paint a portrait of “those people” and a cautionary story about getting involved with “them.”

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[Image missing because Tumblr has a limit of 30, but here it is.]

“Unpleasant Side Effects” by Kerry Gammill, Sam F. Park, Mar Omega (2010) “After I’ve recorded my findings, I’ll take care of this… thing.”

I liked seeing a modern take on the EC Comics comeuppance formula, and in particular an ending where the victims sorta get their due.

[mercurialblonde]

Black Paper Cat Girls - Acid Plat

My new 112 page bound collection of comics and prose is now available for sale. The first 50 orders get a color postcard of the cover with their order:

http://mercurialblonde.squarespace.com/blackpapercatgirls

[smillingcartoonist]

Twisted Romance 1 #

[magikbeans]

[re-readingcomics]

Comics Read 4/19 - 25/2021

I am absolutely overwhelmed with what I have to read and write these days. One of my disappointments with myself from the past week was how I set a goal to finish a blog post for my other tumblr, and it’s still a work in progress. (Hopefully sometime this week. And then hopefully the following, similar posts for that blog will come along quicker.) So I only read one trade paperback of comics, an equivalent of four floppy issues. However, it’s something I meant to read for a while and I really liked it.

Twisted Romance is an anthology of an of love stories. In general, anthologies are something I like more in theory than practice. They give lots of opportunities to up-and-comers, but I usually like less than half of what is in one. I like buying them more than I like reading them. With a title like Twisted Romance I expected the stories within to be very melodramatic and lean into the more violent aspects romance. To my surprise most of the stories were pretty sweet, and the “twisted” description applied more in their unconventionality. Very few of them are straight, most are not requited, but they are generally very sympathetic to most of the characters. Each issues has three stories, a long comic, a prose section, and a short comic. The whole series was edited by Alex De Campi who also co-wrote the long comic sections. I bought my copy around the time it was published in mid 2018. I later realized that I had sort of met De Campi in a non-comics related part of our lives. I felt more like supporting her after that, so I have bought a couple more of her trade paperbacks, but have yet to read them. Now I feel more assured that I will liked them when I do.

I chose to highlight a page from “Twinkle and the Star” by De Campi and Alejandra Gutiérrez. Not only is it the story from which the collection takes its cover, but I just love the energy displayed on this page. I love how the second row is framed by the word “DUH” and how when the main characters are interrupted it looks like they’ve been turned into dolls and thrown apart. It’s a perfect way to show connection and uncertainty.

[theblackestofsuns]

Aorta #1 (2019)

Sarah Horrocks

[ikewhitehead]

Fanart of @mercurialblonde s book Goro. Total blast of a read. Few comics surprise and startle me in such entertaining ways

[triste-le-roy]

Page from Sarah Horrocks’ The Bacchae Vol. 1 (2018).

(via Twitter/Sarah Horrocks)

[whitelippedviper]

Some Purple Milo Manara Comics I Read This Week

This article originally appeared on my patreon.  Which you can subscribe to here.

I just wanted to ramble about these two Milo Manara comics I read this week.  The Golden Ass, and To See Once More the Stars, respectively.  You can buy The Golden Ass on its own and To See Once More The Stars is in the fifth volume of the Manara library, if you are scoring at home. What drew me to both of these books was the gorgerous purply watercolor washes that I feel perfectly accents his style and gives it this almost chrome edge?  Basically I read The Golden Ass and was so smitten with it that I checked Google for other work he made around the same time and then looked to see if it was colored this way or not.  I think To See Once More with Stars is the most like The Golden Ass in terms of art. Both of these books perfectly exemplify why the outrage over Manara's unimportant work for Marvel doing random ass covers drove me absolutely up the wall.  In general I find the reductive nature of criticism of Manara's work extremely infuriating.  People act as if because these comics are so sexual, they must also be brainless or artless--but Manara comes from a generation when sex wasn't considered so passe as to be in poor taste when mixed with ART.  Guido Crepax is a similar artist. Both are extremely literate comic artists who execute stories at a technical level that few ever can match. The Golden Ass is an adaption of an old Roman novel on par with Satyricon.  Which makes this a great doble feature with Blutch's Satyricon, which is one of my favorite comics ever.  It's a story about a dude who fucks around and gets turned into a donkey, and then has all of these, often sexual, adventures as a donkey.  It largely functions as a kind of donkey's eye view of roman society of the time, looking to expose the absurdity of class cruelties and structures in roman culture of the time.  It's not as black metal as Satyricon as a story, but it is maybe more raucous?  Which makes it a good fit for Manara.  

It's pretty gorgeous.  There's also a lot of references to film hidden all through it.  Especially to Fellini's Satyricon.  But also in this image you can see the titular Iphigenia from the Cacoyannis film, and the boy from Satyricon(and the man too).

The other Manara comic I read was a Guiseppie Bergman joint called To See Once More The Stars.  Which the title is a line from Dante.  The comic is about Bergman meeting this girl who has a book of classical paintings and whenever she looks in it, she assumes the identity of the woman in the painting.  And because of the nature of so many classical paintings, this means she is often nude and objectified.  Which of course horrifies those in the reality in which she lives her fantasy.  It's a fairly complex metatexual comic that mostly is an execuse for Manara to do a bunch of classical paintings.  It does have a fair bit to say about how women have been treated in art for thousands of years, and how if a woman tried to embody all of these fantasies she'd seem completely mad.  Which I think is a point that a lot of the people who slammed Manara after the Spider-woman cover would be shocked to see him make. The comic is stunning and like I said, it's in this purple water color style that really adds to the surreal nature of the comic.

It also drops this cool page:

The woman has become so depressed from society as it is that she has enduced in herself a death fantasy.  While Bergman frantically tries to get her to come back to life, a painter happens by and he frantically tries to paint images on the wall to revive her(mostly great italian comics(see Zanardi here!)).  He fails to bring her back to life, so Bergman asks you the reader to supply the image that will bring her back.  I haven't filled it in obviously.   But what I loved about this is that we've just gone through page after page of Manara laying out how fucked we are as a people in society.  How exploited and brain washed we are into horrors that we will never stop cycling into no matter how bad it gets.  How are you supposed to justify living in this kind of hell?  For Manara in this comic, the answer is one you give yourself, through expression(or non expression).  Whether that is creating art, or simply viewing it.  We can't give up in our thirst for this unique experience that art gives us.  Which isn't to say that art is an escapist thing.  But it helps us fill in ourselves.  When we look at art, we are seeing ourselves communicated back to ourselves through suggestive tricks of light.  We may not be able to escape the horrors of this world, and the pain of living, but we can try to know ourselves and in doing so make the choices that make up our lives as ourselves.   I always think of this thing Passoa wrote about how life is like we are all in this inn.  And some people are fucking upstairs.  Some people are drinking.  some people are serving drinks.  Some people are singing.  Some people are just waiting outside for the next bus to come up.  It doesn't matter what you are doing, so long as it is the thing that you want to do.  None of it is more important than any other choice.  What matters is that you come to know yourself in the limited amount of time we have to live, such that you can do the thing you most want to do with your time in this inn.  I think anyways.   For me this Manara page is like "here.   Here is a space for you.  Who are you?  You matter just as much as me, even if that is not at all".  To me that is a beautiful sentiment because it is a true one.

[comicparanoia]

Twisted Romance #1

released by Image on February 2018.