Today in Comics History, August 22: Happy birthday, Kevin O'Neill!

A very happy birthday — and we wish he were here to celebrate it with us — to Kevin O'Neill, born on this day in 1953 and passed away late last year. He's written, drawn, and colored stories in 2000 AD, Toxic, Buster, Green Lantern (the infamous back-up story that resulted in him being banned by the Comics Code Authority from ever drawing a Code-approved story every again) and more! And he's the co-creator of Nemesis the Warlock, Ro-Busters, Metalzoic, Marshal Law and,...you know where I'm going with this...one of the early twenty-first century's most important comics, his collabpration with Alan Moore on several series of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In the pentiumtulare series Ctury, he provided portraits of Moore and himself throughgout the titular century:


"Rogues in the Gallery" from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: Century: 1910 (Top Shelf/Knockabout, April 2009), pencils by Kevin O'Neill

Today in Comics History, April 1: Happy birthday, Bill Oakley!

Born on this day in 1964: letterer Bill Oakley!


from Marvel Age #57, 88, and 100 (Marvel, December 1987, May 1990, and May 1991)

Today in Comics History, February 1, 2010: Less Jerry, Moorcock

from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest #4 (Top Shelf/Knockabout, December 2018), script by Alan Moore, pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Ben Dimagmaliw, letters by Todd Klein
Jerry Cornelius is the main character in a Michael Moorcock SF novel series:


Here's some pretty cool paperback covers from a recent reissue:


Putting in his two cents tuppence: Graham Morrison:


from The Invisibles (1997 series) #6 (DC/Vertigo, July 1997), script by Grant Morrison, pencils by Phil Jimenez, inks by Keith Aiken, colors by Rick Taylor, color spearations by Heroic Age, letters by Todd Klein
And, to bring it full circle, here's Alan Moore on Grant Morrison:

And, as far as I know, he's the only bone of contention between me and Michael Moorcock. Michael Moorcock is a sweet sweet man - I believe he has only ever written one letter of complain to a publisher over the appropriation of his work, that was to DC Comics over Grant Morrison, so the only bone of contention between me and Michael Moorcock is which of us Grant Morrison is ripping off the most. I say that it's Michael Moorcock, he says it's me. We've nearly come to blows over it, but I'm reluctant to let it go that far, because, I'm probably more nimble than Moorcock - I've got a few years on him, I'm probably faster, but Moorcock is huge, he's like a bear. He could just like take my arm off with one sweep of his paw, so we'll let that go undecided for the moment.

But, those are pretty much my thoughts on Grant Morrison, and hopefully now I've explained that I won't have to mention his name again.

Today in Comics History, January 17, 2010: Comics Oughta Be Retro!

from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest #2 (Top Shelf/Knockabout, August 2018), script by Alan Moore, pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Benedict Dimagmaliw, letters by Todd Klein
(Click top picture to Hero of the Beach™-size)

Today in Comics History, December 26, 1888: Oh that shark bites with his teeth, dear / And he's got a shark alibi

from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910 (Top Shelf/Knockabout, April 2009), script by Alan Moore, pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Benedict Dimagmaliw, letters by Todd Klein

Today in Comics History, August 12, 1898: New British electric kettle startles nation

back cover of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #6 (WildStorm/America's Best Comics, September 2000), pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Benedict Dimagmaliw

Today in Comics History, July 7, 1910: Alan Moore is either predicting the London bombings, or fanboys misinterpreting the role of Rorschach

from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 1910 (Top Shelf/Knockabout, April 2009), script by Alan Moore, pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Benedict Dimagmaliw, letters by Todd Klein
Seriously, though: we're remembering today the people of London, the victims and those affected by the 7/7 terrorist bombings in 2005. Our thoughts are always with you.

Today in Comics History, July 5, 1898: This is the weirdest production of The Diary of Anne Frank I've ever seen

from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999 series) #2 (America's Best Comics, April 1999), script by Alan Moore, pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Benedict Dimagmaliw, letters by William Oakley

Today in Comics History, July 3, 1898: International House of Pancakes rebrands again

from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999 series) #2 (America's Best Comics, April 1999), script by Alan Moore, pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Benedict Dimagmaliw, letters by William Oakley

Today in Comics History, June 28, 1898: But Alan didn't like him, so he shot him in the face

from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999 series) #2 (America's Best Comics, April 1999), script by Alan Moore, pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Benedict Dimagmaliw, letters by William Oakley

Today in Comics History, June 2, 1898: Britain just basically throws their hands up in the air and says the hell with it

back cover of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #4 (America's Best Comics, November 1999), pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Benedict Dimagmaliw

Today in Comics History, May 12, 1898: Hands Across Europa is a dismal failure

back cover of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #3 (America's Best Comics, May 1999), pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Benedict Dimagmaliw

Today in Comics History, May 4, 1891: The Adventure of the Little Bull's Blog

from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #5 (America's Best Comics, June 2000), script by Alan Moore, pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Benedict Dimagmaliw, letters by Bill Oakley

Today in Comics History, April 27, 1910: Explain this one if you can, Jess Nevins!

(The fact that in 1910, neither April nor August 27 were on a Friday.)



from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1910 (Top Shelf/Knockabout, April 2009), script by Alan Moore, pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Benedict Dimagmaliw, letters by Todd Klein

Comics Do Shakespeare: The Tempest, Act 2: For heaven's sake, 007, stop interrupting my Shakespeare. And put some pants on.

from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest #2 (Top Shelf/Knockabout, August 2018), script by Alan Moore, pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Benedict Dimagmaliw, letters by Todd Klein

Today in Comics History, January 29, 2010: Alan Moore attempts to stump Jess Nevins

from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest #3 (Top Shelf/Knockabout, October 2018), script by Alan Moore, pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Ben Dimagmaliw, letters by Todd Klein

No, of course Alan Moore didn't make it up.

Today in Comics History, January 28: Reading in the nude becomes popular, except upon Naugahyde

from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest #2 (Top Shelf/Knockabout, June 2018), script by Alan Moore, pencils and inks by Kevin O'Neill, colors by Ben Dimagmaliw, letters by Todd Klein

Fun Fifty of 2009: #50-41

Whoo boy, am I exhausted! What's got yours truly, the third-most popular stuffed animal blogger on the internet, so plum tuckered out (or is that tucker plummed out)? Why, I've been spending the day sorting through the Paramount-logo sized mountain of comics and graphics novels and miscellany of the last year to find my favorites of 2009! Yes, the little stuffed bull is last over the finish line once again, but hey, I've gone the long distance for you: no mere Top Ten or Succulent Seventeen or even a Terrific Twenty-Two...but once again I present to you, with minimum commercial interruptions

The Fun Fifty of 2009!

Yes sirree, I've got a lot of books and comics and whatnot to sort through. This whole afternoon was spent wading through my piles of pamphlets, swimming through them like a porpoise, throwing them up in the air and letting them hit him on the head. (Warning: do not do that with this thing.) So, while I'm sure you're all hoping your favorite will pull out ahead in the race and sprint over the winning line, remember this: comics are not horses. And now that we're all clear on that...let's...in the words of the guy my good pal Casey Kasem...



Um, actually, what I wanted him to say was...



Wow! I didn't know that. Is that true?



Huh. You learn somethin' new every day! Okay, let's get this countdown...counted down!


#50: MARVEL ASSISTANT-SIZED SPECTACULAR • If you're as fond of the Shooter-suffused Marvel of the 1980s as I am, you remember the wacky stunt of late 1983 that put the Marvel Assistant Editors in charge of the books while the bigwigs were all away at Comic-Con. Chaos, of course, ensued, giving us Bernie America; Aunt May, Herald of Galactus; and a Spider-Man with swirly knees. That so crazee! Of course, Marvel editors never left the offices again...until 2009! Although a few of the stories in this two-issue anthology of tales commissioned by today's assistant editors feel like inventory or try-out pieces, there's plenty of fun and Marvel taken not-too-seriously in short stories about Galactus's daughter, Nextwave's Elsa Bloodstone, and a regular bully-favorite, Chris Giarrusso's Mini-Marvels. But for me the standout story was very unexpected: a spotlight on D-Man, the Avenger everyone makes fun of. (Well, him and Doctor Druid.) Brian Patchett and Xurxo G. Penalta, in nine pages, bring a gravitas and dignity to the homeless hero as he heads out on patrol with his squadron in Iraq. It's a beautiful little story and I'd love to see a sequel.



#49: BLOOM COUNTY: THE COMPLETE LIBRARY VOL. 1 • Oh frabjous joy! Ever since the recent resurgence of archive-quality comic strip reprints (Fantagraphics started this new golden age with the first volume of The Complete Peanuts in 2007), I've been waiting with my Silly Putty in hand for five more of my favorite strips to be collected. We've had Popeye, we're getting Nancy and Pogo, we can only hope for Barnaby someday...and here comes Bloom County, Berke Breathed's wonderful saga of the kids of a small rural town, their adventures and friends, a neurotic penguin and a disgusting cat. All they needed was a little bull to make the whole thing heaven. I'm pretty pleased with IDW's treatment of this series: large, oversized hardcover volumes, Sundays in color, lots of previously unreprinted strips, and great annotation on the history of the strip and the historical and pop references in it. So why isn't this volume further up on the Fifty? Well, don't toss away your battered copy of Loose Tails target="_blank" just yet, because The Complete Library unfortunately suffers from poorer reproduction, fuzzier lines, and lighter blacks than the original paperbacks. It's a shame. I can forgive that on strips never before reprinted, but if they were in Loose Tails, why not just shoot from that excellent sharp original? Here's hoping this printing problem is fixed in time for the next volume. Oh, and IDW? You better include a floppy—heck, I'll take a MP3—of Billy and the Boingers' "U Stink But I ♥ U."




#48: MARVEL ADVENTURES: FANTASTIC FOUR • 2009 saw the cancellation of Marvel's kid-friendly Marvel Adventures line (it returns later this year with two rebooted books), including one of my favorite recent takes on my top-choice superhero team, the Fantastic Four. Writer Paul Tobin (who you'll see a lot of on this Fun Fifty of 2009!) and an assortment of artists gave us some high-adventure, kid-friendly but never dumbed-down FF adventures spanning from a team-up with Marvel/Timely's Golden Age funny animal comic stars (Zippy Pig! SIlly Seal!); an alternate reality which gives us not only Ben Grimm as the Hulk, but also a confident team leader in Johnny and an all-fired-up Sue; and a lovely coda to the series featuring Galactus's final, most mysterious task. The World's Greatest Comic Magazine goes on as ever, but it's a little less brilliant without this companion title.



#47: GOTHAM CITY SIRENS • Catwoman's been cancelled; Harley Quinn's own book is long gone. Poison Ivy never had a chance of being published (mainly because she'd tear apart the DC offices if a single tree was cut down to print a Pamela Isley, P.I. book). So if one villainess can't do the job, why not, goes the conventional wisdom, team up these three femmes fatale? Written by Harley creator Paul Dini with curvy art by Guillem March, it's definitely cheesecake with with tongue in cheek and a twinkle in the eye as our tempestuous trio try to make names for themselves in the wild frontier that is the post-Bruce Wayne Gotham City? Light on the angst and high on the fun, Gotham City Sirens ain't no high art, but who doesn't love seeing Harleen Quinzel with a big-ass hammer whalloping folks? Well, I know I do. (Even tho' the covers make me feel a little funny. Maybe Miz Ivy kissed them.)


#46: BLAZING COMBAT • I've long heard of, but never got a chance to read, Archie Goodwin's legendary Warren Comics magazine Blazing Combat, featuring some of the most beautiful and beautifully terrifying war comics since the demise of EC. I never expected to, either, short of some ratty reprints I might find in a back issue bin, but (once again!) my pals at Fantagraphics surprised and delighted me with this beautifully-designed collection of the complete run of Blazing Combat, featuring intense war stories that don't end as gloriously or neatly as either Sergeants Rock or Fury. Artists? You got 'em, turning in glorious black-and-white stories: Wally Wood, Alex Toth, Russ Heath, Gene Colan, John Severin, Joe Orlando, Reed Crandall, Grey Morrow, and more. War, huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'...aside from bringing us this gorgeous archive edition of a classic comic every war comics fan oughta have in their library. Truth in disclosure: yours little stuffed truly, and my pal John, work for W. W. Norton, which distributes Fantagraphics titles to the bookstore trade.


#45: THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: CENTURY: 1910 • There just ain't no stoppin' the man with the beard. In a year which brought us a wince-inducing movie version of his arguable finest work, Moore heartily ignored it and instead gave us a new volume of the adventures of history's greatest..um, adventurers. The new volume (the first from new, non-DC publisher top Shelf/Knockabout), brings the League into the Edwardian Era, filling in the gaps between Volume 2 and The Black Dossier at the same time bringing us more great heroes and villains from fiction, including the vengeful daughter of one of the original Leaguers. As always, it's fun to look for historical and literary allusions and cameos throughout the book (and it's worth keeping Jess Nevins's always-excellent annotations close by while you read). It also helps if you know your Brecht and Weill: fire up "Pirate Jenny" as you read and watch the sparks fly.



Says our pals at Wikipedia, the encyclopedia more open to vandalism than the one in Mrs. Carbuncle's third-grade schoolroom:

There is a problem translating this song. In the original German, the ship is described as "mit acht Segeln" (with eight sails). Because a literal translation has fewer syllables, in English the ship is usually described as "the black freighter".

Hmmm. The Black Freighter. That rings a morbid bell!



Huh, there are two more volumes of this story coming. Maybe we'll see a guest appearance and crossover with Nite Owl and Rorschach! Ehhhh, probably not.


#44: ARCHIE: THE WEDDING(S) • I haven't read an Archie story in years, but hey, it's one of the rules of comic book fandom: ya gotta pick up the wedding issues. Even if I knew beforehand this couldn't, wouldn't be a permanent reset to the status quo de Riverdale, writer Michael Uslan gives us a clever and Watcher-less reason for Archie to be a bigamist within the span of six issues (he's wandering down "Memory Lane" and takes one road, then the other to step into his own future). The art by Stan Goldberg, if not up to the his classic Archie-esque Millie the Model and Chili, is bright, vibrant, and energetic, but you can't help but wonder what this story could have been in the hands of someone like the Archie Comics-exiled Dan DeCarlo. It's fluffy and lightweight, sure, but you know, since you've already discovered the great mysteries of comics like the origins of Wolverine and what really happens to Tony Stark's nose when he puts on his helmet, why not treat yourself to the greatest mystery of comic books: who would Archie choose? (Big Ethel, sorry 'bout that.)


#43: THE INCREDIBLES • My favorite Pixar film (your mileage may very) is one I've long suggested would make a jim-dandy Disney comic book: The Incredibles. BOOM!'s been doing a great job of adapting the Pixar worlds to the printed page (but where's my Ratatouille comic?), and the love and affection of writer Mark Waid for superherodom's other fantastic family of four comes through in the miniseries "Family Matters" and the ongoing comic series after it. Too often = movie comic continuations grind to a painful halt when trying to continue the onscreen world (Marvel's Logan's Run, anyone?), but Waid avoids the obvious traps of say, just bringing back Syndrome. Instead, Waid pits the Parrs against new supervillains who would make Grant Morrison jealous: "A guy whose super power is a blurry face...a guy with a penny for a head!" The art (by Landry Walker and Marcio Takara) is cartoony in all the best ways, without slavishly trying to imitate the texture and "feel" of Pixar's computer process. The search for the great gateway comic will probably never end, but you could do worse than to hand a young or new comics readers The Incredibles books. (And, by the way, BOOM!? You wanna do a gateway comic book? You oughta adapt the biggest and most popular Disney franchise characters of recent years.


#42: CAPTAIN AMERICA and CAPTAIN AMERICA: REBORN • Ya know something? I was wrong. I was wrong when I skipped the rebooted Ed Brubaker Cap series because I thought the return of Bucky was silly. I was wrong when I said there'd be no more interesting stories to tell about the character with a replacement for Steve Rogers. And was definitely wrong when I said I was going to find any return of Rogers to the Marvel Universe needless and minimizing. And like our greatest patriots (alhtough not Fonzie), I stand before you and say yea, I was wrong about Captain America and it's a pretty fun book. I still can't figure out why Captain America: Reborn and Who Will Wield the Shield? couldn't have just been Captain America #602-608, but hey, those #1 issues make bank for Marvel. All I know is that the return of Steve to a traumatized Dark Reign-era Marvel U. was as big and bombastic as a 1970s way-out Jack Kirby issue of Cap, which proves the oft-argued, never-disproven point: there's always room for a giant Red Skull in the body of Arnim Zola, battling it out with Captain America in front of the Lincoln Memorial.


#41: X-MEN: MISFITS, VOL. 1 • In the multiverse that makes up the many worlds of Marvel, we've seen the Watcher peer in on Earth-5200 (a world ruled by Dr. Doom), and Earth-1218 (hey! I can see my house on there, coz' it's our world!). We've even seen a Marvel Mangaverse...but have we ever been to the Marvel Shojoverse before X-Men: Misfits? In a world (© 2004 Michael Bay) where Kitty Pryde is the only girl at the Xavier Institute, where the Hellfire Club is the "elite bad boys" who hang out in a Danger Room-situated resort, and where Beast is so freakin' cute, the usual tropes of shojo manga get an all-new mutant spin when everybody's head-over-heels in love with Kitty (hey! it's just like fandom!)— but the one guy she's interested in is giving her the cold shoulder...literally. I wouldn't say this is for all audiences; you've either got to be ultra-X-obsessed (moi!) or a huge fan of shojo manga, or, ideally, both. But the story by Raina Telemeier and Dave Roman is fanciful and flirty and the art by Anzu brings us wide-eyed, elegant, and occasionally superdeformed versions of our favorite genetic hyperactives. My kid sister Marshall loves it and she thinks Magneto is just dreeeeamy. Anybody who can do that for old Maggie is okay in my book!


Whew! I'm barely through my mountain of four-color fun. I'm gonna make base camp here at #41, and continue the climb up the summit tomorrow. Hopefully Shelly won't be along in her rocket boots to startle me so I fall down and then we have to go eat Snuckles's famous pork and beans before we fly off in a starship to meet God and...hey! What does God need with a starship, anyway?!? The answer to this and many more questions won't be answered tomorrow, but you will find out my number 40 through 31 Fun Comics of 2009! It's all tomorrow! Be there or be rectangular, cats!

A Wodehouse a Week Special: "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss" from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

Happy Halloween! On this night that's kooky, spooky, and altogether ooky, let's while away the time after gathering candy and before our visit to the stomach ward of the local hospital by checking in on our old Halloweeny pal, Mister P. G. Wodehouse. It's been one year to the day since old man Jenkins died in that strange house on the hill under mysterious circumstances I reviewed P. H. cannon's pastiche novel Scream for Jeeves, a loving if not always successful mash-up of Wodehouse and H. P. Lovecraft. Coincidentally—or not, you make the call!—virtually one year ago today Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's much-delayed, eagerly-anticipated The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier was finally released, and I ran home excitedly with it, crawled into my big armchair, strapped on my 3D glasses, and eagerly devoured it (note: not literally).

My take on LoEG: BD? (Sorry, not callin' it LXG, no how, no way!) Well, I liked it, liked it a lot, enough to name it #20 on my Fun Fifty of 2007. I liked Moore's take on James Bond (probably a version closer to a real-life 007 than any movie version), its clever reimagining of my favorite map in the world...



...and the thrill-ride that takes Mina Harker and Allan Quatermain from grey and dreary Post-Orwell Britain to a literally eye-popping fantasyland beyond the realm of imagination. Like the earlier LoEG volumes, it rewards re-reading for its variety of prose, denseness of ideas, and the whirlwind parade of guest stars from literature, film, comics and popular culture. As always, you can't tell the players without a scorecard, so Jess Nevins's annotations for Black Dossier are, as always, especially useful—altho' much of the fun is in figuring out references on your own. The thrill and delight in recognizing one of them gives a "Where's Waldo?" feel to the book but doesn't overwhelm the plot. (I myself was delighted to see the comic The Winged Avenger on a newsstand in the book)

The reason I most enjoyed Black Dossier, however, is that Moore and O'Neill weren't content to just produce another comic book sequel—Black Dossier truly goes one step beyond the originals by presenting us with a history of the League's world in titular secret documents: a lost Shakespeare play (on yellowing paper illustrated with period woodcuts), a pastiche of 1950s British picture-comics telling the life history of League member Orlando (from the Virginia Woolf novel), picture postcards between the original cast members, a not-suitable-for-little-stuffed-bulls Tijuana Diary, an excerpt from a Kerouac-styled Beat novel of the League's universe (that one's sadly pretty unreadable). Each of these pieces, and the many more that accompany them, are presented in a specific visual design style that emulates the originals that they're parodying or referencing, giving us the feeling that we're not looking at a hardcover graphic novel, but actually a scrapbook—the true Black Dossier. The original two LoEG books may have celebrated the great characters of literature and pop culture, but Black Dossier goes one step further and celebrates the medium and the art of storytelling, publishing, and visual entertainment as much as it does its protagonists. Moore would have even gone one further and added the element of sound to the mix if the book had contained the original planned flexi-disc.

But what's this got to do with A Wodehouse a Week, you muse? One of Moore's segments is the four-page Wodehouse pastiche "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss," written by "The Rt. Hon. Bertram Wooster." Like Scream for Jeeves, it's a blending of the light-hearted comedy of P. G. Wodehouse and the chilling dread of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu (or, as Bertie mishears them "Cool Lulu") horrors, set at Aunt Dahlia's familiar old manse Brinkley Court.

Moore has the general narration style and character voices of Wodehouse down pretty pat, right to the traditional Bertie story-opening:

Friendship can be a rather sticky wicket now and then, as when one's anxious to assure one's chums that one does not regard them as a hideous embarrassment, when one actually does. Old hands amongst you will have no doubt guessed ahead that the source of my discomfort was that same Augustus, he of the Fink-Nottles, whom I've previously lamented in these pages.

He even throws in running Bertie jokes and references:

'...That man has been a font of knowledge when it comes to folk traditions from rural America, which I believe that I may write a piece on for Milady's Boudoir.'

This was a weekly periodical, intended for the sensitively reared. Of which my Aunt was proprietor. I looked her in the eye and said 'Tish-tosh,' which I am not afraid to state that I had intended as a cut.

Trouble is, Moore has the style down, but not the patterns. Take a quick peek at this first two-page spread—don't pay attention to the words itself, but look at the length of the paragraphs:



...and now grab a gander at a randomly chosen couple pages from a real book by The Master himself:



Moore's prose is dense, with long, deep, descriptive paragraphs and virtually no dialogue; Wodehouse's is short, sharp, and peppy, featuring short paragraphs and fast-alternating lines of dialogue. I've said before that Wodehouse's books sometimes read like plays (he himself commented that he was writing musical theatre without the music) because the back-and-forth conversation frequently monopolizes the page for so many lines that it becomes a dialogue. I'm not familiar with Lovecraft's literary style—is Moore specifically copying the pacing and paragraph construction of Lovecraft here? If so, that's very clever, but as a Wodehouse pastiche, it rings oddly because you never see a true Wodehouse book that's mostly narration and very little dialogue.

The League shows up in the middle of the Jeevesian do to put things right:

They were a dashing crew, I must say, even if they did appear to have a girl in charge of them, a pretty little thing called Min, with steely eels and a thick muffler around her neck despite it being then the stifling height of summer. With her was a wiry gentleman around her age, whom she called Allan, and another person, called Orlando Something, who despite his deep voice and deportment looked to me the very spit of Gussie's fatuous fiancée, the appalling Madeline Bassett o the limpid eyes and weeping-spasms.

Despite departing snappy dialogue for eldritch description, Moore's got a pretty good handle on Bertie's narrative voice, and there's some spot-on bits that not only had me nodding my head in their approximation of authentic Wodehouse, they made me giggle:

My aunt and all her pals were twitching and convulsing on the clipped grass, foaming at their mouths and jabbering in tongues, with not a stitch of clothing on between the lot of them. I'd feared that Morris dancing might result from all this folk tradition lark. But naturism really was the limit.

Of course, poor Gussie Fink-Nottle gets the worst of it, as usual:

'...If what I have heard of this abominable creatures is correct, Mr. Fink-Nottle's most essential self is at this moment being carried to the place called Yuggoth that they mentioned, possibly some other planet or dimension, in the confines of a copper cylinder. Put simply, sir, I fear they have removed his brain and left him here like a boiled egg that's had its top sliced off.'

'Oh bother, have they really? Do you know, I thought that I was feeling muzzy.'

Gussie sat up slowly in the armchair, lifting one hand gingerly to feel around inside his open and demonstratably deserted cranium. His goldfish eyes gazed up imploringly towards my manservant. 'I say, you couldn't fix my lid back so that it wouldn't show, Jeeves, could you? If Miss Basset saw me like this I should never heard an end to it.'

Wearing a look of incredulity that bordered on the insolent, and muttering about a tube of glue he thought he might have, Jeeves led the pair of us back to the house past what survived of Auntie's soiree.

That last bit, by the way, is the only piece of "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss" that rang truly false with me. Sure, one might suppose that faced with the ultimate evil incarnate, even Jeeves might be shaken enough to drop his usual unflappable decorum. But you know, I'd prefer Jeeves to be the unshakeable, the unsinkable, the non-plussed supermind he is in the Wodehouse books. Here's a counterargument to a shaken and stirred Jeeves from a real Wodehouse (Aunts Aren't Gentlemen):

'Jeeves,' I said, when I had returned to the Wooster G.H.Q., 'I'm afraid I have bad news.'

'Indeed, sir? I am sorry to hear that.'

One of his eyebrows had risen about an eighth of an inch, and I know he was deeply stirred, because I had rarely seen him raise an eyebrow more than a sixteenth of an inch.

Now that's the real Jeeves. But Alan Moore's version ain't bad, and the general concept—although done previously by P. H. Cannon—makes a spiffing excursion into Moore and O'Neill's heavily-celebrity-populated world. I've always thought Jeeves was among history's most Extraordinary Gentlemen...now we have proof.



I may have waited a year to review Moore's Wodehouse pastiche, but you reap the spooky benefits of my delay! How's that? Because The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier just came out in paperback this week at your local comic store, and will be in stock early next week at Amazon and other fine bookstores around the country. (Just click on the link to your right to pick up a copy!) It's the perfect adventure into the world of spies, spaceships, and spooks, capped off with a spectacular (if over-the-top nonsensical) 3D end section. Like it or love it, you have to admit Moore's not resting on his laurels he's given us something new and dramatic that expands the scope of the original League novels. May he continue to surprise, outrage, and entertain us.

A Wodehouse a Week Index.

Fun Fifty of 2007: Part 4 of 5

Here I am, wallowing in a big pile of comics, books, DVDs and croissants I've been saving up since last year, sorting them into piles of varying level of that indefinable quality of what we call funness. Over here, in the back, is that big towering pile of issues of Civil War and World War III, all destined for the dustbin. Those are not fun. So from that, we can deduce: "War! Huh! What is it good for?" To which the only possible answer is "Absolutely nothin'!" But here, a little closer to me, is a pile of ten things which are so fun they can only get numbered as some of the Fun Fifty of 2007. More sp'fically, and mainly 'coz we did numbers 30 through 21 yesterday, these are numbers 20 through 11. In that order. Starting with this one...


#20: THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: THE BLACK DOSSIER Probably one of the most eagerly awaited comics of the year (because it was actually due in 2006), the sequel to Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's metafiction high adventure comics brings back Mina Harker and Alan Quatermain into the strange and bizarre world of 1958 Britain (curiously enough, a 1958 that's post-1984). As always, part of the fun is in spotting the literary allusions and characters that sneak in—I howled with delight when I spied a Winged Avenger comic book from the Avengers TV series, and Moore writes one of the funniest, and perhaps most hapless, James Bonds since Ian Fleming. If I gotta make a few quibbles? Well, most of all, it doesn't really seem to tell a story, being more concerned with a series of documents within the book which tell past histories of the League. To my eyes, Moore's pastiche of P. G. Wodehouse crossed with Lovecraft, which I have to review one of these days, isn't especially convincing on a literary level, but it's at least fun. And if the ending is the equivalent of a big splashy Broadway musical number that wraps up the story but doesn't really make any sense, well, then at least it's in 3-D. Any book that comes with 3-D glasses? I'm so there.


#19: GROO 25th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL He's back! The greatest barbarian of the modern comics age returns with a vengeance, aptly drawn by MADman Sergio Aragonés, with Mark Evanier doing whatever it is that he usually does. One of the great joys of a new Groo story is that it's almost exactly like every other Groo story, and there aren't many series in which you can say that as a positive. Plus, plenty of special features, including a funny and clever "Groo Alphabet." And it leads into the first Groo series in years, Groo: Hell on Earth, which ain't half as dismal as it sounds. Groo is always silly, never stupid, and as long as Evanier and Aragonés keep puttin' 'em out, I'm standing in line with my dimes to buy 'em.


#18: SHAZAM: THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL Jeff Smith proves there's life after Bone in this delightful, colorful, and sometimes creepy reinvention of the Captain Marvel legend, which , while making changes to the mythos, preserves more of the joy, charm, and adventure of the original C. C. Beck creation than the current dark-spirited The Trials of Shazam mainstream DC comic does. Smith's tale springs from the classic Monster Society serial of yesteryear but adds his own touches, including the most charming Mary Marvel ever put on paper. Shazam is one of those rare comics that'll appeal to adults as well as children, and I repeat my original request when I first reviewed this: pick up a copy for a kid as well and I bet you'll get him or her hooked.


#17: POPEYE VOL. 2 "WELL BLOW ME DOWN!" For the first time since comic strips were regularly and frequently published in mass market newsstand paperbacks, we're living in a Golden Age of newspaper comic strip reprints, and the range and quality of the projects is enough to please even the fussiest of collectors and fans. Dick Tracy, Peanuts, The Far Side, Gasoline Alley, Dennis the Menace, Pogo, and many more to come are all being reprinted in beautiful archive editions. I'm a big fan of all of 'em (tho' I likely won't be buying The Complete Mary Worth, Volume 1: Mary Meddles in The Affairs of Others). But by far my favorite new reprint project has been Fantagraphics's monolith-sized reprints of Thimble Theater starring that spinach-chawin' sailor man, Popeye. Volume 2, as beautifully designed as the first (with a hard-board cut-out cover and large pages that preserve a full week's worth of continuity). The Popeye stories in this book are some of the best comedy and adventure tales told in the medium: The Rough-House War, King Popeye, and Skullyville (Toughest Town in the World!) Plus, nearly two years of full-page, full-color Sunday strips (including the lower-tier "Sappo" strip by Segar), and an extensive historical essay by Donald Phelps. Pure joy—the only way this could be better were if the book had a scratch-'n'-sniff spinach-scented cover.


#16: THE SIMPSONS MOVIE Eighteen years in the making (sorta) made The Simpsons Movie eagerly awaited, and it didn't disappoint, unless you're one of those cynical, curmudgeonly critics who claim the series hasn't been funny since Mister Plow. Me? I howled with laughter, cheered with excitement and sniffled during the sad bits. It's a bigger and broader story than your average 22-minute TV episode, with more detailed 3D animation and backgrounds but still the same loveable characters (and a few new surprises). You might lament that your favorite didn't get much screen time (me, I was disappointed there wasn't more to do for Mister Burns), but how can you not love a movie that introduced The Sensational Character Find of 2007: The Amazing Spider-Pig:



#15: EMPOWERED Let's get this out of the way right from the start: little stuffed bulls shouldn't be reading Empowered. Uh uh. No way. Not until they're at least late-teenage stuffed bulls. There's enough sex, violence, and near-but-not-complete nudity to rate this a "mature audiences only" and safely shrink-wrap away the naughty bits. But if I were allowed to review this, I'd probably tell you not only how sexy but how relentlessly funny it is: the adventures of a superheroine with serious self-esteem issues (she more often hostage than hero), her burly boyfriend Thugboy, BFF Ninjette, and TV-addicted interdimensional conqueror The Caged Demonwolf. Adam Warren (Dirty Pair, Gen13) is turning out some of the most beautiful work of his career, gorgeously reproduced to look like the original pencils, and the sexy girls and guys stretched out across the pages don't distract from Empowered being one of the most incisive and satirical looks at hero worship and the cult of celebrity in a world with superbeings. It's a pity that superhero fans probably won't pick this up because it looks like manga—and a pity that manga fans won't pick this up because it looks like superheroes. They're missing out on one of the comic delights of 2007 (with more volumes to come in 2008).


#14: TORCHWOOD SERIES 1 Rearrange the letters of "Torchwood" in the correct order and you know what you wind up with? That's right: Hot Rod Cow. For those of you who aren't interested in the weekly series about a little stuffed race car driver, check out Torchwood, the Doctor Who spin-off that's done more for Welsh tourism than any production since How Green Was My Valley. John Barrowman is back as Captain Jack Harkness, surrounding himself with a crack team of experts to investigate the crimes beyond the skills of the Cardiff police—or indeed, the imagination of most mortal men. Darker and grimmer than Doctor Who, but never bleak, Torchwood brings sensibility of The X-Files into the twenty-first century with a compelling cast of characters whose stories grow and intertwine throughout the season. And when it clicks, it strikes dead aim at your heart and brain at the same time: stand-out episodes like "Captain Jack Harkness" and "Random Shoes" had me on the edge of my seat and reaching for my handkerchief to sniffle in at the same time.


#13: COVER GIRL Remember those old To Tell The Truth episodes where a panelist would exempt himself from the final round because he already knew the secret contestant? Well, in the interest of true and honest disclosure, Cover Girl co-creator Kevin Church (mastermind of BeaucoupKevin(dot)com) is a pal o' mine. And yet, I'm including his comic in my Fun Fifty. Or, as an instant message conversation 'tween yours little stuffed truly and that paragon of Pet Shop Boys fandom went:

bully: i have to decide what comics I'm going top put in my year-end Top Fifty.
kevin: Well, that's easy.
kevin: COVER GIRL #1-5
kevin: TEN TIMES EACH.


Well, I did have 49 other choices, Kevin, but you get one slot right here for your, co-creator Andrew Cosby, and artist Mateus Santolouco's fast-paced, funny, and beautifully drawn action adventure of an up-and-coming movie star and the gorgeous and deadly bodyguard assigned to protect him after he saves the wrong girl from a car crash. Cover Girl is both fast-paced and dense—this is not a fast five-minutes-per-issue read, and Church's genuinely funny yet believable dialogue rewards re-reading. For my money, it's the most entertaining Hollywood-based comic book since Crossfire. Someday, this will be a Hollywood film, and you can say you read it in comic book form before you bought the action figures and got the McDonald's Happy Meal.

Now can I have my tricycle back, Mister Church?


#12: THE ART OF BONE Jeff Smith goes for the hat trick and makes his third appearance on the Fun Fifty list with this dazzling oversized gift book covering the design and evolution of his award-winning Bone series. Beautiful full-color reproductions of covers minus logos, penciled roughs, extensive history and commentary, plus a large collection of Smith's college-era "Thorn" comic strips which inspired Bone. If you're a Boneophile, this is the closest thing to pure heaven—at least until Smith starts work on the sequel Bone 2: Electric Boogaloo.


#11: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS In the course of the Fun Fifty, I've mentioned a few eagerly anticipated 2007 projects—but none have been so intensely awaited worldwide than the concluding volume of J. K. Rowling's Happy Potter series. We've followed Harry from age 11 to age 17 and bought billions of his books, and if you're a fan, the final adventure doesn't disappoint—the last standoff against Voldemort and his minions, a search for mystic talismans as well as the mysterious past of Dumbledore, and more deaths than an issue of What If?. I could be Scroogesque and complain about the massive infodump chapters, including one that brings the climatic battle to a complete halt while we rewind to the past of Harry's family, and that Rowling really could have used an editor in some sections, but I can't deny I awaited this book with increasing excitement the nearer its release approached, and that I devoured it in one night of eager reading...and that I read it all over again the next day. No spoilers here from me if you haven't read it, but the final three words of Deathly Hallows are not only a summation of Harry's life but also a reflection of our contentment with the entire saga.


Well, that's all, folks! The most fun comics, movies, books and all kindsa other stuff in 2007. I sure hope you enjoyed it, and you'll join me around this time next year when I look back at 2008 and tell you how much fun we had reading that Secret Invasion and Final Crisis thing, and how much we laughed in relief and joy when Stephanie Brown, Steve Rogers, and Mary Jane Watson-Parker all showed up together in the shower in the morning after a terrible long nightmare...

Oh, wait! Not done yet! There's ten more to come! So, tune in tomorrow and we'll take the final swing through the Ten Most Fun of 2007. There'll be laughter, and tears, and Skrulls. And this time...it's personal!