Word: graphics
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Superman over and over until they find a way to fit him into a contemporary context. The top-selling comic book in March was Superman/Batman, a series that plays the dialectical duo of the DC universe off each other like Vladimir and Estragon. It's a Bird ... is a graphic novel about a comic-book writer who can't write a Superman story: he's blocked. "There's no access point to the character for me," he complains. "Too much about him makes no sense." A limited-run comic called Secret Identity tells the story of a Superman who lives...
...does Superman really have a dark side? An identity even more secret than Clark Kent? A graphic novel called Red Son, written by Mark Millar, answers the question with another question: What if Superman had landed not in the wholesome bosom of Kansas but in the cold heart of Stalin's Soviet Union? Wearing a hammer and sickle on his chest instead of an S, Superman befriends Stalin and succeeds him when the Soviet leader dies. (Stalin, Millar notes astutely, is Russian for "man of steel.") With his rigid notions of right and wrong, telescopic sight and super-hearing that...
Allison Cole's "Never Ending Summer" (Alternative Comics; 48 pp.; $11.95), just released, marks her graphic novel debut. As is the DIY style, the author focuses on her own life and relationships, putting it onto paper with a beguiling simplicity. Set during a summer between semesters in Providence, Rhode Island, Allison works at a comic store and collects LPs. Asher, her boyfriend, has left for a two-week trip. Suddenly she gets a phone call. He wants to go back to Australia for the rest of the summer - where his old girlfriend lives. Uh oh. The rest of the book...
...couldn't all do this, but such DIY-born books mean to make you believe you can. In their way they are much more inspiring than the high craft of Chris Ware's "Jimmy Corrigan" graphic novel. Books like Kochalka's, Brown's and Cole's find drama in the lives we all lead and present them as art with a minimum of fuss. "Why not at least try your own," they seem to say. Given the increased acceptance of such a style, you may even get published...
...Iraqis who have been stripped naked and forced into a sexually suggestive dogpile. Another shows a prisoner forced to stand on a box, connected to electric wires and told, according to CBS, that he would be electrocuted if he fell off his perch. In Britain, a separate set of graphic pictures was published in London's Daily Mirror, which appeared to show, among other things, an Iraqi prisoner being beaten and urinated upon by his British army captors. The scenes drew horror and condemnation in a country in which the military usually prides itself on its crisp professionalism. "We went...