In my Preview Reviews column a couple of months ago I brought up cartoonist Dash Shaw as one of the most exciting new creators working in comics today, and his upcoming book, The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century AD (Fantagraphics, $19.99), as one of those I was looking forward to the most this year. A collection of new stuff and previously released short stories and rarities, it’s currently set for a December 30th release, and for it Dash has teamed up with IFC in order to create a series of animated shorts to be shown on their website.

From the press release:

“Each episode of this four-part Web series chronicles Rebel X-6, a man who works for an anti-droid organization in a futuristic world where student artists can no longer draw the living human form. Challenging the convention of hiding the use of line in animation and using an intricate, organic drawing style, Shaw attracts attention to each frame as a complete illustration. With an uplifting, constantly evolving soundtrack that mirrors Shaw’s work, he uses surreal dreams and an achingly human touch to bring his characters to life.

The series’ animated human hero, Rebel X-6, sets out on a quest to initiate change in the 35th Century A.D. An artist guild that believes living people should model for live drawings instead of droids in art class hires Rebel X-6. Rebel X-6’s assignment is to enter Art School 46 posing as “Model-Droid #343.” He must appear life-like but take on the characteristics of standard model droids, which do not laugh, cry, swear or exhibit other human shortcomings. His mission is to subvert the school’s ban on drawings of real humans by tricking the students into drawing him. His journey ends with a new compatriot and understanding of the humanity that surrounds him.

THE UNCLOTHED MAN IN THE 35TH CENTURY A.D. is Shaw’s first book since his breakthrough graphic novel of 2008, Bottomless Belly Button, which was named Publishers Weekly’s best graphic novel of 2008 and one of Entertainment Weekly’s top ten books of 2008, among numerous other accolades. The book also collects Shaw’s acclaimed, genre-bending short stories from MOME, including Look Forward, First Son of Terra Two, Galactic Funnels, Outstanding Story, Satellite CMYK and Making the Abyss, a fictionalized story of a surreal film set filled with nuclear tanks, hot tubs, and blind ambition.”

I recently had the chance to briefly discuss the project with Dash:

BIG SHINY ROBOT: I plugged the Unclothed Man in one of my columns a couple of months ago, based on the strength of your previous work, specifically the MOME short stories. Are all of them included in the book? And what else is in it?

DASH SHAW: All of them are in the book except for “Train” because I looked at it again and it sucked too hard. Some of them have been slightly changed for this collection. An older comic from 2005 called “Cartooning Symbolia” is in it. I still liked it for some reason. A new story called “The Uncanny Reproduction” is in it. And the first 24 pages of the book have the Unclothed Man short stories plus backgrounds and storyboards and a flip book from the animated series. The first 24 pages are like an “animation art book” and the next 80 pages have the short stories.

BSR: So, other than “The Cartographer,” of which I only know from the back pages of The Mother’s Mouth, I am not aware of any other forays of yours into animation or film. Is this something you have been doing or interested in doing for a while now? And how did the IFC thing come about?

SHAW: I did animations for Bottomless Belly Button and BodyWorld, just one minute animation tests. Those are online if you look for them. I’ve always liked animation and watched a lot of cartoons and collected animation art books. The IFC thing came about because I showed them the animations for Bottomless and BodyWorld and the Unclothed Man comic. Based on that, they said “okay” for the animated series.

BSR: Speaking of BodyWorld, this acclaimed webcomic of yours is about to be published as a book by Pantheon. Having read it, I can imagine some instances where the translation from web to print would be rather difficult. What are some of the differences between the two?

SHAW: The differences are many, and most of them are probably obvious. Webcomics aren’t printed.  There aren’t any “pages.” It was serialized online, rather than one long reading experience. The print version has new material and I made a lot of changes to the comic. I’d change the colors or add different elements in a way that I think favors the print format. I just got a dummy of the book to see how the covers and everything will look and I’m very happy with it. Pantheon is smart. They believe in the beauty of print and they believe people will shell out for a nice book, even though a different version of the same story is online. They have a lot of faith in the new material and the book as an object.

BSR: A lot of your previous work, like Love Eats Brains and Mother’s Mouth, was done at least partially in color, but eventually published in black and white only. Why is that?

SHAW: You’ve done your research! It’s because I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing at the time. I did those while a student at the School of Visual Arts, where I’d show the originals. Sometimes I’d do the originals in color and sometimes in black and white. When they were printed, it made more sense to just do a gray book then figure out how to make the color pages printed in color and the black and white pages in black and white. Really, the honest answer is that I wasn’t thinking about it as much as I guess I should have.

BSR: I’ve followed your work for some time now, and you have rather quickly established yourself as a creator to watch out for. Your climb up the publishing ladder, from Oddgod Press (note: a publishing operation run by a Richmond, VA comics retailer) to Pantheon, certainly seems to reflect that. Is the pressure greater now, or do you not concern yourself with the commercial aspects of your work until after it’s completed, if at all?

SHAW: This is a long answer. Oddgod Press published Love Eats Brains because they asked me about it. I know those guys because I’d shop there when I lived in Richmond. And then I did a collection called Goddess Head because I used to contribute to an anthology called Garish Zow and one of the editors called me and asked about doing a collection of my shorts. So things would happen pretty organically for a while, but those felt like weird arrangements, like Tim Goodyear, who published Goddess Head, took a loan out from a bank to do it!  Ha ha. It was awesome that he did it (I mean, I love Tim), but I think he lost a lot of money on it.

I kept applying for Xeric Foundation grants to self-publish and I kept losing. And then Fantagraphics did Bottomless Belly Button and they’d publish me in MOME, so then all of the comics I’d been drawing for a few years would now have a regular publisher. I’d also done half of BodyWorld by the time Bottomless came out. BodyWorld started online in 2007. But after Bottomless came out, I was going to have to get a day job. I’d run out of the money I’d saved while living so cheaply in Richmond. So I called Fantagraphics and told them I was going to try to sell BodyWorld. They understood. I mean, I guess what I’m saying is that all of these projects I was doing anyway. I’ve never sold a treatment and then executed something with the expectations of the publisher looming over my shoulder. By the time I got the advance for BodyWorld I was drawing the last chapter of it. These comics were going to exist in some form anyway. It’s all been a combination of drawing a ridiculous amount and total luck.

If there’s a way to do what I’m already doing and luck into a situation where I don’t have to think about money, because I have enough to live off of for a while, I’m going to try to get in that situation. I think a lot of it stems from my general hatred of illustration work. I hate illustration gigs. I tried to get them (for money) for a while, and I’d always half-ass it because I hated doing it. I hated feeling like I had to draw consistently, in some consistent “style.” I hated everything about illustration. So after having that experience for a couple years, I just decided I’m not an illustrator and I’m not going to do work-for-hire and I don’t want any commercial expectations and that I’d just do whatever I wanted to do for as long as I possibly could. If I run out of money, I’ll move back to Richmond, where I paid 200 dollars a month for a shitty room, and work as a figure-drawing model again for 12 bucks an hour. I drew all of Bottomless that way, but right now I have even more time to do whatever I want. I don’t know how long it’ll last.

BSR: So, do you read a lot of other people’s comics? Are there any of your peers whose work you would say you admired?

SHAW: I basically only read comics that I get at conventions now, because when I’m at home I’m just drawing, and when I’m on the subway I’m reading a magazine or an all-word book. But I got a lot of comics at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival this past weekend. It was run by my friends Dan Nadel, the Picturebox publisher, and Gabe Fowler, the Desert Island comic store owner. There was a lot of good stuff there. I got new minis from Matthew Thurber and C.F. and Anya Davidson and they’re all really great. Those are available on the Picturebox website. I recently got to collaborate with two peers I admire: Tom K (who does amazing short stories for MOME), we did a comic for the next volume of MOME about computer rendered society; and Jesse Moynihan (who does a webcomic called “Forming” on his website) who wrote a story about his father and the TV show Lost that I drew that’ll be a mini comic insert in a forthcoming issue of The Believer magazine.

I’d name more people but I’d feel like a dick if I left someone out. I probably already forgot someone.

BSR: Gary Panter strikes me as an obvious influence, but who are some other creators you would say have shaped your artistic sensibilities and style?

SHAW: I haven’t gotten Gary for a while, nowadays people always say Mazzucchelli. But I’ve ripped off of both of those guys. When someone tells me who they think my influences are, it usually says more about the comics they read. When Mazzucchelli flipped through “Bottomless” years ago, he said: “looks like manga.” Because he looks at the same manga I look at. But for a lot of people it’ll look like something else.

Anyway, instead of listing a bunch of people I’ll just name three people who I’ve learned a lot from in college and I think deserve more attention:

1. Keith Mayerson’s comic Horror Hospital Unplugged,

2. Thomas Herpich’s comics Cusp and Gongwanadon,

3. Hal Hartley’s movies.

BSR: Finally, what’s next for you, Dash?

SHAW: I’m working on an animated feature called “Slobs and Nags” and a comic called “Torture Hospital.”  I don’t want to say more about them because I don’t want to jinx it.

BSR: Thanks again, and best of luck!

You can view the animated shorts for The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century here. To pre-order the book, talk to your local retailer, or click on the image below:

I know, I know, I’m late this month, and I missed last month, for which I sincerely apologize. It was kind of a shitty month anyway, and its sole highlight will get a mention here, so it’s all good, right?

I’ll spare you the Tim Tebow speech, and dive right in:

BLACKSAD VOLUME 1 HC (Dark Horse, $29.99)

As announced at the San Diego Comic Con earlier this year, Dark Horse is reprinting all three volumes of the hardboiled anthropomorphic detective series in a deluxe oversized hardcover. These have been unavailable to English-speaking audiences since original US publisher iBooks went out of business a couple of years ago. Beautifully illustrated, and a winner of several European awards, Blacksad is a highly accomplished genre work that should not have been languishing in reprint limbo for this long. Check out this preview and you’ll see why.

MESMO DELIVERY (Dark Horse, $9.99)

Another reprint, this time of the American debut by the Brazilian artist Rafael Grampá, which was originally published by AdHouse just last year. The story, which centers on two truckers who make special kinds of deliveries, is a bit slight, but heavy on style and gore, and Grampá’s art, an unholy fusion of Geoff Darrow and Frank Quitely, is simply stunning. The new edition comes with a new cover, a new introduction by Brian Azzarello, a sketchbook section, and pin-up art from Eduardo Risso and Craig Thompson, among others.

THE BRONX KILL HC (DC Comics/Vertigo, $19.99)

See, I’m what you would call a hardcover fetishist and even I think they are marketing the Vertigo Crime line the wrong way. A line of books that is designed to recall old pulp paperbacks should mirror their format and price range as well. Otherwise, the currently $20 hardcover-only line will have a hard time finding and maintaining an audience, regardless of the quality of material. Which, so far, hasn’t exactly been blowing my skirt up.

Ian Rankin’s Dark Entries and the upcoming The Chill by Jason Starr were both supernatural thrillers, rather than crime stories, and the blatant mislabeling aside, it kind of irks me that they would get two of today’s most popular crime novelists and have them write John Constantine-type stories (literally, in Rankin’s case) instead of what they do best. I hope this is more along the lines of what we were initially promised.

JOE THE BARBARIAN #1 (DC Comics/Vertigo, $2.99)

Grant Morrison being back at Vertigo makes people happy. His fans rejoice because that is where he has arguably done his best work, while his detractors breathe a sigh of relief because he is temporarily not involved in messing with their beloved superheroes. He is joined by Sean Murphy, a promising young artist, whose debut graphic novel Off-Road I rather liked, for a project Morrison describes as Home Alone meets Lord of the Rings, and which strikes me as the perfect premise for Morrison’s unbridled imagination. And the fact that this was recently expanded from 3 issues to 8 only seems to confirm that.

DAYTRIPPER #2 (DC Comics/Vertigo, $2.99)

The Brazillian twins Gabriel Bá and Fabio Moon established themselves as two creators to watch out for with De:Tales, a collection of short stories which recalled Paul Pope’s tales of urban romance with touches of South American magical realism. A few years later (and with a couple of high-profile projects under their belt), Daytripper sees them returning to Brazil, as they attempt to chronicle a man’s life over the span of 10 issues, in what appears to be yet another leap in their maturation as storytellers.

AVENGERS: WORLD TRUST HC (Marvel, $24.99)

If there ever was a Marvel story that deserved the hardcover treatment, it’s the newly minted Scientist Supreme’s (…who writes this shit?) excellent adventure through his wife’s vagina. I mean, clearly…

HICKSVILLE: NEW DEFINITIVE EDITION (Drawn & Quarterly, $19.99)

Dylan Horrocks’ near-forgotten semi-classic about a small town where everyone reads and treasures comics is back in print, and rightfully so. Horrocks may not be the cartoonist that most of his D&Q peers are, but his understatedness and warmth make this celebration of the art form a lot less elitist than it could have been in someone else’s hands, and therefore required reading for everyone claiming to be a comic book lover.

KING OF THE FLIES VOLUME 1 (Fantagraphics, $18.99)

The first volume of Mezzo and Pirus’ suburban horror trilogy finally gets a US release, after only a couple of chapters saw the light of day in Heavy Metal magazine half a decade ago. If you’ve missed your regular dose of Charles Burns after Black Hole, these preview pages suggest that this is bound to scratch that particular itch.

NEXT MONTH: On time!

Check out also:

Previews Reviews for August 2009

Previews Reviews for September 2009

NEXT MONTH: More of the same!

Three years after acquiring the rights to fifty old-school Shaw Brothers releases, Dragon Dynasty finally rolls out the big one, director Chang Cheh’s kung-fu classic, Five Deadly Venoms. Originally released in 1978, it is arguably the best-known Shaw Brothers movie in the world, having influenced everyone from the Wu-Tang Clan to the World of Warcraft, and even making Entertainment Weekly’s Top 50 Cult Films list.

As great as this move is, it’s hard not to see it as a sign of desperation on the part of Dragon Dynasty, who had been sitting on their rights to all these films since their initial wave of Shaw Brothers releases a year ago failed to meet the company’s financial expectations. Which was a terrible shame, in my opinion, because it consisted of six excellently put-together editions of equally choice films (The 36^th Chamber of Shaolin, Come Drink With Me, Heroes of the East, My Young Auntie, The One-Armed Swordsman, and my personal favorite, Five Fingers of Death, aka King Boxer), and because it was the only thing that the company had managed to do right.

Founded by the Weinstein brothers, and featuring active involvement by Hong Kong cinema expert Bey Logan, as well as fans like RZA and Quentin Tarantino, Dragon Dynasty was initially hailed as the savior of martial arts cinema in the United States, where it has historically been subject to unnecessary cuts and dubs, often in a misguided effort to make the films more accessible to American audiences (and often at the hands of Weinsteins’ own Dimension Films label).

And for a while, it seemed like the company was really trying to treat the material with respect, and provide the consumer with the highest quality product, even though they kept the annoying habit of re-titling films in order to make them sound more appealing to the masses (the Shakespearean martial arts drama The Banquet, for example, became The Legend of the Black Scorpion under DD, despite having fuck-all to do with scorpions, of any color).

However, due to reasons about which I can only speculate (bad economy? Poor sales? Shameless opportunism?), Harvey and co. soon went back to business as usual, dumping the same incomplete Dimension cuts of classic Jet Li and Jackie Chan films onto their DVDs, sometimes even without an original language audio option, and expecting consumers to not purchase better editions available overseas.

Fortunately, this did not seem to affect their first wave of Shaw Brothers releases, all of which came from recently remastered prints from Celestial Pictures, and offered a plethora of special features, which matched or even upstaged the DVDs from the extensive Shaw Brothers catalog offered by the Hong Kong-based distribution company IVL (which used the same Celestial transfer, and which had been available for purchase at many specialized online retailers for a few years now, for the impatient among us with all-region DVD players).

Anyway, the Region 1 faithful can rejoice now, because the wait for this one is finally over, and it was more than worth it: the picture quality is even better than on the IVL release, with more vibrant colors and a generally crisper image, and features none of the distortion and ghosting that plagued the interlaced and PAL-sourced IVL edition.

The 5.1 stereo surround remaster of the IVL release is gone, making way for the old-school English dub (which those with fond memories of the film’s initial run in the US will undoubtedly appreciate), in addition to the original Mandarin mono and a Bey Logan audio commentary track, which, as usual, is a real revelation. The man really knows his shit, and his enthusiasm and insider knowledge of martial arts and martial arts cinema always make for an exceptionally entertaining commentary.

For those of you wondering about the plot, it’s simple: the master of the Five Venoms House is dying, and his final wish is for his final student (Chiang Sheng) to seek out five mysterious former pupils, each trained in a different style modeled after a venomous animal whose name he has adopted (the Centipede, the Gecko, the Scorpion, the Snake, and the Toad), in order to team-up with the righteous ones and kill the ones who have been operating against the clan’s best interests. The problem is, since they all wore masks during their training, he has no idea what they look like, and having only been trained in a little of each style, he is no match for any of them by himself.

Needless to say, a lot of kicking and punching ensues.

The kung-fu is a bit slow, even by Shaw Brothers standards, but the movie makes up for it in camp value (those Mexican wrestling-style masks are hilarious) and a surprisingly suspenseful plot. This is the movie that established actors Chiang Sheng, Lo Meng, Philip Kwok, Lu Feng, Sun Chien, and Wai Pak, as the so-called Venom Mob, who, together with director Chang Cheh, went on to make many more movies featuring better-choreographed fighting, but rarely one this entertaining. If anything, in addition to becoming increasingly more gory, subsequent Venom films only underlined Chang’s obsessions with bare-chested heroics and male bonding, which I personally find rather tiresome.

His work is therefore a bit of a mixed bag for me: while his focus on camaraderie and heroic bloodshed, not to mention his latent misogyny (women are often virtually non-existent in his films, and when they are featured, they are usually either harbingers of doom or total bitches), can be a detriment to my enjoyment of his movies, the absurdity and glee of some of his more outrageous concepts often manage to make up for it. As a rule, when Chang is playing it straight (as in, say, The Boxer from Shantung), chances are I won’t like it. But the campy, gloriously outlandish stuff (dig Crippled Avengers!) totally flips my shit, and I would love to see more of it.

Which is exactly why you guys need to buy this.

For $15 you won’t just be getting a fine piece of entertainment, but also encouraging the folks at Dragon Dynasty to keep up the good work they have done with their Shaw Brothers releases, and, most importantly, to keep releasing what they have. American fans of Asian cinema in general, and kung-fu films in particular, have learned the hard way that once Harvey Weinstein gets comfortable sitting on something, it’s pretty fucking hard to get him to move.

Hello, sweethearts.

Welcome to my new monthly column, in which I plumb the depths of the Previews catalog and separate the nuggets from the turds. The ultimate goal is to point out good books that may be flying under your radar, while occasionally taking advantage of the platform to mock and sneer at stuff I don’t like (you know, just for the fun of it).

Remember, no retailer can afford to order everything that is solicited every month, so letting your favored store know that you’re interested in a certain title will go a long way toward ensuring that it recieves the appropriate attention. Otherwise, it might not get ordered, and, thanks to Diamond’s new cut-off policies, it might never come out at all.

I’ll start with the covers:

The cover to the August 2009 Previews catalog announces the final issue of Planetary by writer Warren Ellis and artist John Cassaday, which is probably a wise move by DC since most of the world has by now forgotten that this was still coming out. Call me fickle, but after three years I find it hard to muster up a lot of excitement for this, apart from the pretty Cassaday cover, especially considering how retarded the previous issue was.

Speaking of retarded, the flip side (or: the cover for people who like to read Previews upside down) features something called Cowboy Ninja Viking by Image Comics (apparently Monkey Pirate Zombie is taken). Seriously? From the writer whose only memorable accomplishment was having the most forgettable run on a Batman title in recent history (yeah, try to wrap your mind around that one) and the artist of that one book my overzealously Jewish friend liked because it had a Golem in it or something. Seriously?! THIS is your cover feature? Oy vey.

Moving on:

SUGARSHOCK by Joss Whedon and Fabio Moon (Dark Horse, pg. 22, $3.50)

The Eisner Award winner for Best Web Comic, originally appearing in MySpace Dark Horse Presents, and published here with never-before-seen material. The story is fun and kinetic, if a bit slight, but it’s Moon’s art that sells it for me.

BATMAN #692 by Tony Daniel (DC Comics, pg.73, $2.99)

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse for the Caped Crusader, Tony Daniel returns to the title as artist AND writer. Hopefully he is able to interpret his own scripts better than he did Morrison’s. ZING!

WARLORD #7 by Mike Grell (DC Comics, pg. 94, $2.99)

Mike Grell takes over pencilling duties from local boy Chad Hardin, likely to appease nostalgia-driven fanbase who has been pretty vocal in in their distaste for Hardin, presumably for not being Grell-like enough. Which is exactly the kind of reactionary knee-jerk behavior aging comics nerds seem to do best, as if that 70s shit was really all that good to begin with.

Then again, we might actually find out just how good it was, because between Grell writing and illustrating Warlord, and Gerry Conway, Doug Moench, Walter Simonson, Jim Starlin, and Marv Wolfman all doing something for DC this month, these solicitations read like they’re about thirty years late.

HELLBLAZER: SCAB TP by Peter Milligan and Giuseppe Camuncoli (DC Comics/Vertigo, pg. 115, $14.99)

I haven’t read this, but according to some, this is a return to greatness for both Milligan and Constantine, from which they’ve both been absent for far too long (I dropped Hellblazer sometime during the dismal Denise Mina run, and Milligan has been on auto-pilot since the cancellation of Human Target, if not before). So, I will probably give it a shot. As usual, a new writer on the title signals a good jumping-on point for this Vertigo mainstay.

SHADE THE CHANGING MAN VOL.1: THE AMERICAN SCREAM TP by Peter  Milligan and Chris Bachalo (DC Comics/Vertigo, pg. 119, $17.99)

A new printing of the first half of the first storyline of what is one of my favorite series of all time, with a new cover by original cover artist Brendan McCarthy (yay). It’s a bit rough in places, and Bachalo’s art certainly isn’t as refined as it would become later on in the series, but it sets the stage for some of the most innovative and mind-bending comics Vertigo has ever produced, and that includes the majority of Grant Morrison’s output.

SHADE THE CHANGING MAN VOL.2: THE EDGE OF VISION TP by Peter Milligan and Chris Bachalo (DC Comics/Vertigo, pg. 119, $19.99)

The concluding half of The American Scream, reprinted here for the first time ever. Further collected editions probably hinge on the sales of these two trade paperbacks, so please, do us both a favor and pick this up, dear reader!

X-MEN: ASGARDIAN WARS HC by Chris Claremont, Arthur Adams, and Paul Smith (Marvel, pg. Marvel 90, $34.99)

Chris Claremont’s words usually make my eyes bleed, but the pretty artwork from Art Adams and Paul Smith in oversized format might be worth a look. Hopefully, the recoloring only goes as far as that unfortunately defaced cover.

If Hickman follows the established Bendis pattern, he has less than two years before all of his talent is destroyed by Marvel. So, enjoy his work while you still can, friends. And prepare for the inevitable tragic downfall of Matt Fraction.

GHOST COMICS by various (Bare Bones Studios, pg. 208, $10.00)

Themed anthology featuring a solid line-up of indie cartoonists, including Jeffrey Brown, John Porcellino, and that guy from Low. A Xeric Grant recipient AND a benefit book, you practically HAVE TO buy it.

THE BOX MAN HC by Imiri Sakabashira (Drawn & Quarterly, pg. 261, $19.95)

Described as a surrealist scooter trip featuring animal people and weird sex stuff (which, along with the preview panels posted here, suggests all kinds of awesome). I have never read any Sakabashira, but if Red Colored Elegy and the Tatsumi books are any indication, Drawn & Quarterly knows exactly what kind of manga appeals to the discerning art comics reader (right, the filthy kind).

PRISON PIT by Johnny Ryan (Fantagraphics, pg. 267, $12.99)

Johnny Ryan does Kentaro Miura’s Berserk. Jog, comics blogger extraordinaire, seems to like it.

THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2009 HC edited by Charles Burns (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, pg. 269, $22.00)

I usually have a hard time recommending these, for the work they reprint is often not in its proper length or context, but anyone looking for a very broad sampler of some of the best work currently being done in comics could probably do no better than picking up one of them. The line-up for this year, featuring work by Kevin Huizenga, Adrian Tomine, and Chris Ware, strikes me as particularly strong.

ACT-I-VATE PRIMER HC by various (IDW, pg. 282, $24.99)

New stories by the web comics collective, featuring Nick Bertozzi, Dean Haspiel, and Roger Langridge. If you’ve spent any time on the Act-i-vate website, you know this is not to be missed.

BINKY BROWN MEETS THE HOLY VIRGIN MARY HC by Justin Green (McSweeney’s, pg. 287, $29.00)

A classic of sorts, and the first long autobiographical work to appear in underground comics, this is a gloriously fucked-up study of OCD and Catholic guilt. And the incredibly corruptive power of penis rays.

STUMPTOWN #1 by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth (Oni Press, pg. 294, $3.99)

With Queen & Country indefinitely on hold, Rucka trades in international intrigue for neighborhood crime watch, with a new creator-owned crime series set in his current city of residence. If by now you aren’t aware that Rucka does crime as well as anyone else in comics, a mere $3.99 are likely going to correct that.

GOGO MONSTER by Taiyo Matsumoto (Viz Media, pg. 310, $27.99)

Another brick of a book by one of my favorite comics auteurs, creator of the boldly original No. 5 and Tekkon Kinkreet, who draws equally from American, European, and Japanese influences to create a uniquely gorgeous style of his own, and whose work has been criminally underrepresented here in the States. Billed as a tale of a young boy with an overly active imagination, this is bound to be as wonderfully imaginative and surreal as anything he’s done, but hopefully not as overlooked. Seriously, if there is a book in this catalog that I wish everyone reading this column would give a chance, it’s this one. Check out the pictures of the Japanese edition!

NEXT MONTH: Bigger, Better, Faster, More!

“But… it seems so pointless. The rules so arbitrary.”

This grievance is uttered at the begining of Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart’s “Seaguy” (DC/Vertigo, $9.95 US), but it’s not until the very end that these words of defeat and resignation begin to ring true. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves… So, the grim reaper is pissed off because he has just lost a routine game of chess to Seaguy, our would-be hero in scuba gear, and his cigar-smoking fish sidekick, Chubby Da Choona, who used the colour-blindness of their opponent to their advantage and moved one of Death’s own pieces against him (death is colour-blind, get it?). Of course, conventional logic dictates that if one were really colour-blind, black and white would be the only things they could tell apart, but if a chess game with death and a fucking cigar-smoking fish sidekick weren’t indication enough, this book runs almost entirely on metaphors and non-sequiturs. So, adjust your brains accordingly.

The bright and sunny dystopia of New Venice is a funhouse mirror reflection of our own society, in which corporations rule the world, and choice is merely an illusion. An apparent anomaly in this world, our melancholy protagonist strolls through his daily routine longing for a life of adventure and uncertainty, but since the ultimate battle with the evil incarnate anti-Dad, there simply is no evil left to be fought – or so everyone is led to believe. The defeat of anti-Dad, for which many super-heroes gave up their lives, and which ushered in a new era of peace and prosperity, where the remaining heroes firmly believe they are no longer necessary, despite mounting indications to the contrary, mocks the idea of successfully defeating concepts like evil and terrorism, and echoes our former president’s “Mission accomplished!” speech rather loudly.

It also makes Seaguy’s attempts to prove himself worthy of the bearded warrior princess She-Beard that much more difficult. Trapped in an endless cycle of apathy and corporate manipulation (and without the burden of a significantly long attention span), no one seems to care about children being abducted, or deadly meteorites falling from the sky. But when Xoo, a brand new form of nourishment that suddenly EVERYTHING seems to be made out of, becomes sentient and is promptly regurgitated by Seaguy, our hero and his piscine friend find themselves surrounded by soldiers of the omnipresent Mickey Eye corporation who are demanding its handover. This triggers a chain of events that finally thrusts Seaguy out of his ennui and into a picaresque adventure that takes him octopus-herding on the Easter Islands, fighting mechanical bees on the lost continent of Atlantis, and getting kidnapped by Egyptian jackal-men guarding the mysteries of the Moon.

And then things get REALLY weird.

Grant Morrison’s show-don’t-tell approach may not work for everyone, but keeping in line with his previous work, the more you are willing to invest in piecing together the bits of seemingly throw-away dialogue, and interpreting the countless visual clues, the greater your appreciation and understanding of the material is probably going to be. For example, the constant images of children being abducted, coupled with one of Xoo Industries employees bearing a very notable resemblance to the Child Catcher (the creepy kid kidnapper from the 1968 Dick Van Dyke vehicle “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”), lead me to believe that processed children are probably one of the key ingredients of this popular “foodstuff.” And while the idea of children, or something obtained from children, being fed to the masses to keep them in a suitably child-like, ignorant state may recall the 1973 film “Soylent Green” somewhat, as commentary on our own dependence on fast-food and the role it plays in keeping the population fat and stupid, it is still as relevant as ever.

Then there is Mickey Eye, standing in for the similarly named mascot of a similarly ubiquitous global corporation, and representing the, well, Disneyfication of media and the corporate takeover of our collective consciousness and imagination. This is probably the most resounding theme of the book, and is most obviously stated at the very end, which reads as an indictment of mainstream superhero comics for their circular nature and inflexibility of their status quo. Written shortly after Morrison’s revolutionary run on “X-Men” was practicaly undone by Marvel in order to restore the product’s recognizability, the ending cannot help but feel like an extended middle finger to their corporate politics. Things are back to the way they were before, the great adventure has never happened – except, as the hero’s wink to the audience seems to indicate, WE KNOW it has, and that’s all that matters.

Unless, of course, the wink merely signifies that Seaguy is about to resume playing his usual tricks on the hapless reaper, and he really is clueless about his fate, and is doomed to a lifetime of resets, in which case everything really is pointless, and we are all fucked. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, when the first issue of the long-awaited sequel (in what is supposed to be a trilogy) finally hits the stands. I can’t fugging wait.