in this segment, i’ll detail my amore for the art and medium of comics. the title comes from a comic shop i frequented as a kid and a nod to my boy q and his blog.
my love for comics/graphic novels started in chinese school when a dean confiscated some poor kid’s collection(not allowed in chinese school) and gave them to me….while i was still in class! my mom was a teacher at the school and good friends with the dean. i learned something about how power works that day(but that’s another entry).
next my uncle robert fed my habit by telling me stories of his collecting days and even buying a few issues for me. had a hard time finding money to fund my next fix but one time, my great-grandfather once gave me 50 cents to buy 2 comics. however, i hit a road block when my aunt and uncle came from hong kong and i asked them to pick a comic for me at the newsstand and they came back with some barbie dress me up book with cardboard cutouts you put different paper dresses on. something was lost in translation.
in my early junior high days, my dad would take us to barnes and nobles(when the only one in the world was in nyc)and forbidden planet(a branch of a famous london comic shop)in union square. it had two full floors of nerd and geek goodness and i was on my way to full addiction. later on, during the bust years of comics, the store relocated to the much smaller location it still inhabits. i don’t pick up comics there regularly because its too far south from where i live.
i’ll chronicle this journey in further editions but this is what i’ve been reading and re-reading lately:
box office poison is the story of (mostly)singles living in the city during the 90’s which sounds like a long time ago but not to old farts like me. its moving, sarcastic, with an ensemble of flawed but beautiful characters. there are so many character moments lovingly crafted by the author who clearly adores his creation. i followed this when it was a comic and even more so when i met the creator, alex robinson, at the small press expo. when it was finished and compiled, i got this edition. like any great fiction, there are new things to be discovered with each read.
green lantern has been getting great reviews mostly because of master super hero writer geoff johns. almost everything he writes is worth reading in the dc universe. this is a sprawling popcorn summer blockbuster sci fi epic. i waited until the hardcovers…..vol 2 comes out later in the spring. a rival/evil group of (yellow)ring wielding characters wage war against the good guys who use the green rings. rumor has it that there will be multiple colored ring corps by the end of the year. this was the sleeper hit in the dc universe this year!
here’s something marvel, something odd. james sturm, who i also met at the small press expo, imagines the folks that that the fantastic four is really based on and tells their story. he treats them as if they are real people….and this is their biography. when i met james and asked him what kind of comics he did….without hesitation, he asserted: historical fiction. wow! this guy has guts! and imagination! this is a surreal classic illustrated by the great guy davis.
i’m also slowly re-reading the cerebus epic….16 or so phonebook sized volumes about……we don’t know. when we were in college, q, phil and i devoured these books and still had no idea what they are about. all we can say is that its about the life of a talking aardvark…and about life. reading these volumes is making me nostalgic of the days when we had so much leisure time to just read in the spring air and the endless summers. a simpler era when good friends bonded deeply….before real life, distance and misunderstandings separated us.
i’m still reading the kind of comics that come out every week….in fact, this is a weekly comic. 52 issues that come out in 52 weeks. this is the 2nd weekly experiment by dc and sadly, it has been disappointing. not enough plot, payoffs or good creativity. but i’m a sucker for this stuff….i believe in the idea of a weekly comic and hope that the new one, trinity, about the big three, superman, batman and wonder woman will be better. i love the dc universe and i’m an easy sell for gimmicks and events!
finally for this edition, i’ve also been reading clandestine, which i thought was from my childhood but i discovered was from my college days(i guess a second childhood). it’s a marvel book but really an independent minded superhero story by the great alan davis. its about family with the powers and personalities reflecting the weirdness found in any family. more clandestine stories on the way! yay!
all these comics are available at your local store, amazon and of course at the tsang household! come visit us and ask for these recs!
Posted under
comics,
forbidden planet chronicles
