Consolidation

Short random thought while looking at this week's invoice: three of the best selling 'wait for trade' series (INVINCIBLE, WALKING DEAD, FABLES) all ship in the same week...meaning the dozen people collecting those series via collected form at my store have no reason to come in again for the next nine months to a year.

Oh, and the box with all that stuff that's mine from last post? Yeah, it has disappeared (ie. wound up at some other shop). Of course, it only took until this past Monday (so nearly two weeks after expected delivery) for Bob to finally get credited and have those all put onto another order (maybe next week, likely next week). It wasn't only my stuff in there: there was probably around $1000 retail in that box, a lot of it reorders for the shelf that could have been put up on the shelf and, you know, sold. Oh the hiccups of the Direct Market!

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So not too much posting activity from me again lately: been working midnight shifts at my other job (hotel desk clerk!), so have wound up working on a proposal for a studio class in the fall semester, reading/sketching for entertainment (I've fallen in love with Christophe Blain comics), but not so much thinking about what it is I'm reading. I have been seriously toying with doing some outright research and discussion of Al Columbia's work, which I just really discovered in the last few weeks. I found a copy of BIOLOGIC SHOW #1 in a dollar bin while in Saskatoon visiting Shanell which has gone on to cost me a chunk of change finding BIOLOGIC SHOW #0, ZERO ZERO issues (anyone got a #26 they foolishly don't want anymore?), BLAB #10, even DOG HEAD. Now, after having read Dan Nadel's devastatingly good review of Darwyn Cooke's adaptation of Richard Stark's THE HUNTER...I'm feeling wholly inadequate to do anything of the like. I think Tom Spurgeon made a pretty good comment on the review itself:

"I like the book, and if my site ever comes back and I can figure out how to write again I'll finish my piece on it.

I think the writing on it has been largely idiotic, though, and I can't imagine taking any of it seriously in a way that the book would then disappoint. Ninety percent of the positive reviews read like textbook examples of writing about a book that would then disappoint, if you know what I mean. There's not a lot of direct engagement with the work.

Also, I think Cooke's reputation as a standard-bearer of '50s mainstream art traditions is actually a misapplication of his working on period material combined with his occasional statements that such characters work best as close to the original concept as possible, not because his art really works that way.

Also, beating someone about the head and shoulders with John Stanley is jive."

Nadel doesn't write a volume of reviews*, but when he does they are pretty well thought out, publishable even (I still think a lot about his review of that Dave Stevens artbook). I don't necessarily agree with Nadel in either case, but he makes his case (one not popularily held), and makes it well, and makes you reconsider something you'd just smile and nod about. I like that feeling, and not much online does that. My other favourite online comic reviewer, Tucker Stone, produces a lot of writing obviously more from the hip and immediate than Nadel (or even a Wolk or Jog), but even as belligerently he writes it, it doesn't make it any less true (and HI-larious).

Well, once I stop feeling really out of my league, I'm going to give it a try hopefully.

-Jarrett

*Me being obvious, but I think the lack of thoughtful, engaging commentary regarding most comics is that something like THE HUNTER is often being read in the context of 'the weekly releases', and in that sense, THE HUNTER is probably excellent comparatively. Taken by itself, the successful approach that Nadel has (criticism of the John Stanley comparison aside) defies the lowered expectations of the kind of default format of comics reviewing (lump summary of someone's shopping list). Also a fear of being left behind in the online critical world creates a rush of getting a word in before everyone else might drive, without stopping and realizing maybe in that rush you are neglecting the work intellectually.