Conan the Barbarian #10:The Death

Navigating love from infatuation to a mature devotion reveals itself trickier than plundering the port-side docks of Argos.

Conan the Barbarian issue 10 begins a new story arc beneath the pen (or keyboard, depending on how the author composes) and kinder arms than Crom’s welcome the artwork of Declan Shalvey. This story, entitled "The Death," takes place after Bêlit and Conan’s return from Cimmeria. A terse overview is provided of life aboard ship, a deck party is thrown, an oracle consulted, fornication transpires, a ship with a lone sailor spotted, and the issue ends with the aforementioned lone sailor dead and bloody upon the deck of his ship. Despite slaughter, pirating, and sailing, all tehse factors seem McGuffins to stronger pulse of the story, an exploration of the evolving love between Conan and Bêlit. Issue #5 exposed readers to the concerns and worry of Conan with his regards to Bêlit. Now, issue #10 lets readers peek upon Bêlit’s concerns regarding Conan.

“Devotion” is the first word the narrator casts to the reader. A concept explored, at least in some part…or actively ignored, by those even brushing love marginally. At the outskirts of ennui Bêlit gives a partial response upon her devotion to the sea and Conan: “N’Yaga, I am bored. And, I fear Conan grows restless.” This prompt, this unappreciated contentment, leads Bêlit to consult the counsel of whatever forces N’Yaga congresses, and churns up The Death.

Bêlit’s boredom involves a reputation so fierce that most ships, spying the Tigress, surrender without a fight. She has a fit sailing vessel, a loyal crew, a strong and sympathetic lover, and she’s not in Cimmeria (always a cause for joy), but atop the waves of tropical climates. In a certain aspect she has a piratical life of piratical heaven, perfection. But anyone who has ever read Book 3 of Paradise Lost, knows that perfection, heaven, is rather dull, and starts longing for a return to the flames that cast darkness and the fiery revolutionary defiant liberty-laden speeches of Satan in Book 2. Bêlit, like Milton (if Blake is to be believed) is also of the Devil’s party. Boredom burgeons her longing for strife, conflict, for something interesting to happen.

“And, I fear Conan grows restless.”

While longing for action, Bêlit also still longs for Conan and tries, inaccurately, to read the mind of her lover (how many of us, oh dear readers, have acted in a similar manner?). It’s not only her boredom she fears, but Conan’s boredom as well. Why would Bêlit, who has been so strong and confident and fatalistic ever since she first appeared, suddenly begin to concern herself with such the restlessness of Conan? And if so, why wouldn’t she just ask Conan if he is restless? Such straightforward questions doesn’t always provide truthful answers, whether from deceit or a fear of harming feelings. The narrator notes “Bêlit’s fears were largely unfounded. Conan the Cimmerian was a happy man. The novelty of a seafarer’s life had not left him, and neither had the repetition—both of action and of diet—worn him down.”

Bêlit, as she has been for most of the story arc, is a ship’s length ahead of Conan. Novelty turns to familiarity, and a diet, no matter how tasty, eventually becomes ashen. Bêlit knows what is coming Conan, for she herself has reached it, and she seeks to push beyond that place where all of one’s dreams have come true. For while seductive, Bêlit knows that such stasis slays one’s soul.

Thus The Death is stirred.

The Death.

Perhaps Wood’s story isn’t just applicable to human love, but the love readers possess for Conan tales. How many times can one read an adaptation of a REH story before becoming bored? How many extrapolations can one read about a reaver, a slayer full of gigantic mirth and gigantic melancholy before becoming restless? Why does almost every interpretation of Conan seem the same as each previous interpretation?

The Death?

In his series, Wood seems to be attempting to give readers some different focus on Conan (certainly Wood isn’t unique in this attempt). Conan, like his franchise, is strong, and primal and can carry multiple interpretation and variations and contradiction is his legends. And what if the Conan continuity should contradict itself? Very well then, it contradicts itself. And still, the character survives.

Bêlit and Conan face a new challenge, one unwelcome, even though sought. It is a challenge of plague and trust and command and survival. It will grow and strengthen their relation, give them another plateau from which to launch their love to a different place in order to preserve it. As for the ultimate success of this series...well, readers are encouraged to consult the seer N'Yaga....

Double Creature Feature

Prophet #30 and the 2012 Swamp Thing Annual conclude October's single comic-book page examination. From a month of focusing on a page per review, the largest realization turned out to be how color functioned to move the eye through the left-to-right reading pattern. In the two books under examination this week, red continues this tradition and ushers the eye from panel to panel.

Prophet #30, has a dark palette splashed with an arresting swatch of red. While unsure of the actual division of labor, story credits go to Brandon Graham with Iannis Milonogiannis and Simon Roy; art credits go to Giannis Milonogiannis and Brandon Graham; and color credits go to Joseph Bergin III, Giannis Milonogiannis and Brandon Graham.

The page is divided into three rectangular panels, the first two of equal size and the third of equal height, but the right wall of the rectangle stretches to the edge of the page. Each of the three larger panels contains smaller rectangular insets. The insets of the first two panels hover near the right margin of the page (with the first inset having a barb that snags the reader’s eye from the swimming Kakcrik and yanks it to the right of the panel). The next two insets (in the second panel) are stacked on top of one another, with the lower one skewed to the right, like a stair for the eye to descend to the third rectangle of panel three. The third panel’s inset is perched on the top left and breaks into the left margin, balancing out the break of its parent panel breaking the right margin. The inset in the third panel is the first of three steps; two text boxes complete the leading of the eye to the bottom of the page. The inset panels, although small and shifty, help guide the eye from the top to the bottom and contain enough variation in placement and shape to contribute to the narrative’s advancement. 

The crimson head of Rein-East commands primary attention for this page. The red is softly muted by the illuminated tan background, (ironic that the interior of the Kakcrik serves as the brightest environment on the page) and the slices of red on the back of Rein-East’s hands along with a maroon eye stone move the eye from left to right and down. This bright panel snuggles between the two darker panels, which maintains the page’s balance, as well as giving a dramatic introduction of the orphan assassin Rein-East.

The second, but by no means lesser creature, of our double feature is page 15 of the 2012 Swamp Thing Annual written by Scott Snyder and Scott Tuft, art by Becky Cloonan, framing sequences by Andy Belanger (pencils) and Karl Kerschl (inks) while Tony Avina colored the pages. 

Page 15 holds three rectangular panels set atop the background showing Alec Holland introducing himself to Abigail Arcane, with each of their respective avatars (the green and the rot) showing in the background…a vine meets bone motif that is woven into the panel. Red, as in Prophet #30, guides the eye in a right-to-left crescent by the red of Abigail’s shirt that appears in the first and second panel and the bottom half of the page. 

In this coming together of opposites, Cloonan always keeps Alec Holland on the left and Abigail Arcane on the right (I don’t believe this placement involves any kind of political commentary) for the whole page. And while the page is balanced, nothing is perfectly centered, which causes the eye to never stall or become lodged in a rut or dead zone. 

In the first panel Alec stands to the far left, and Abigail stands just to the right of center. Panel two has Alec in the foreground and Abigail in the background. Panel three has Alec’s hand lower with Abigail’s hand raised. Not only does Cloonan keep the contents of panels from perfectly centered, but she keeps shifting the focus as well, zooming in and out.

The bottom section of the page synthesizes the top three panels. Here, Alec and Abigail are shaking hands (with nothing resting firmly on the pages central vertical axis). Alec’s hand remains closer to his waist, while Abigail’s arm is stretched out further. The demarcation line in the skull's nose cavity where vine meets bone is to the right of Alec and Abigail’s entwined hands. In the lowest section of the page, the hands of vines and bones grasp one another, but they’re to the right of Abigail and Alec’s hands in the panel above. The page balances well as the panels have been woven together resulting in finely designed and active comic book page. 

Batwoman #13

Labyrinthine Page

JH Williams III grants readers the perspective of gods, or at least a Dungeon Master peering at a fine pre-made dungeon map.The October comic book page focus turns its gaze on Batwoman 13

Pages four and five of Batwoman 13 contain a two-page spread depicting Batwoman and Wonder Woman traversing a labyrinth prison (Batwoman calls it “An Amazonian Arkham Asylum) for monsters and murderers guarded by the Amazons. The two DC heroes walk through the tunnels splashed with blood, corpses, and some fine decorative art. These two pages calmly escalate the tension before a minotaur and Nyx (goddess of night in the personification of a giant millipede) attack and the heroines.

The perspective of the labyrinth walls surely would make Raphael, Leonardo, Donatello, or even Michelangelo (the Renaissance artists, not the Turtles) stare with wonder. The maze radiates from a central cone (the inside filled with chests of gold, armor, and I’m sure what looks like a +3 vorpal blade) and contains twists, sharp angles, and each block of stone. Not only are the perspective walls included, but also Wonder Woman and Batwoman are drawn from various angles (yet always viewed from above) of their progress through the labyrinth. The corpses of monsters and Amazonian guards slump in the various postures of their death and add to the visual perspective variety.

The extended two-page labyrinth with its turns molds tension for the reader because of its complexity. At first glance, the pages' composition resists precise determining (although this confusion swiftly resolves itself) and all the sharp turns and isolated features evoke a horror-movie dread.

For still images on a two-dimensional page, these pictures move. Williams III divides the two pages into five panels with four bold white lines spanning from top to bottom. The three central panels occupy equal width, while the two end panels have dieted. The pages have no borders. The five panels bring to mind ecclesiastical triptychs (pentychs in this instance?) depicting various Biblical narrative scenes. Reading left to right, top to bottom, the narrative moves forward with Wonder Woman and Batwoman as well as the reader’s eye. Not only does the eye move from left to right (in that ingrained English language reading pattern) it also bounces up and down. In the first panel (on the far left) the word balloons hover at about mid-height, the second panel has the stark white of the word balloons ascend to the top of the panel. The red of Batwoman’s costume, Wonder Woman’s costume, and the splashes of blood hoist the eye upward. The second panel has the red at the panel's top balanced with the red thought boxes from Batwoman near the bottom. The second thought box (also red) slides the reader into the third panel. And the pattern continues, up and down. This movement between the highs and lows of the panels adds to the tension and anxiety of layered by the labyrinth. The shifting up and down to such extremes (high and low on the page) disorients, like when someone turns the radio’s volume knob from silent to very loud in rapid succession. To add to the anxiety, the red, pools of spilled blood pull the reader’s eyes through the page as well, and the red matches the same shades of Batwoman’s hair and costume. That Batoman (and Wonder Woman too on her Amazonian chemise) wear the same color as blood is creepy and unnerving…a perfect set of feelings for walking through an Amazonian prison labyrinth filled with the dead bodies of Amazon guards and monster inmates.

In addition to Wonder Woman and Batwoman, and the corridors of the labyrinth, JH Willimas III further generates a feeling of movement with the dead. The slain monsters are known figures from mythology, and seeing them dead reminds one (well, me at any  rate) of watching the first 10 minutes of Transformers the Movie as a kid, where all the Transformers I’d come to know through daily cartoon devotionals died in the opening battle sequence.

The first monster looks to be some kind of armored boar (?) with spears protruding from its back and skull. Two Amazons (one hacked in half and having its arm severed) fill the hallway and one slumps in a corner. The third panel (subtly, I missed it the first two reads through the comic) shows a dead millipede, a servant of Nyx that come to overpower the two heroines later in this issue, along with a dead female corpse that looks like it could be Eddie’s sister. The bottom of the third panel has a dead harpy (or some femme fatale version of Icarus) while the top portion has a giant-faced crab monster and more dead Amazons (there are a lot of dead Amazons). Panel four gives the reader at least five demon corpses, a large crab, some skeleton warriors, and more dead Amazons (one with a severed head. The top of the fifth panel shows a dead giant cyclops and the center of the fifth panel has the shadow of a minotaur that falls upon the heroines on the next page. The dead are visible, but due to their subdued coloring and slouched and prone postures, they are easy to overlook when initially viewing the page, yet their presence unnerves and adds to the tension while simultaneously unifying the page and advancing the reader’s gaze.

JH Williams III leaves the reader with a final grisly image (which also happens to distract from the shadow of the minotaur {all these distractions and from the subtleties in the art add to the anxiety too…a reader could start to feel like she is missing something, overlooking some mosaic on the wall, or colored tile work on the stairs…and then suddenly have to start studying the pages in detail…} by drawing the eye to a dead and decaying body of an Amazon wither intestines hanging from her side and hanging inverted, head down, on some stone terrace of the labyrinthine prison.

Williams III builds the tension in these two pages where nothing physical happens (beyond Wonder Woman and Batwoman walking down a twisty hallway), yet still the pages suggest action past and future while being visually dynamic and moving the reader’s eye, stoking anticipation for the future encounters. A deft weaving of tension, curiosity and wonder snares the reader by knitting the need to know with the terror of discovering what awaits beyond a bend of the labyrinth.

Conan the Barbarian #9: Border Fury Part 3

Doppelganger

While this issue doesn’t have ghosts, vampires, werewolves or (thank Crom) zombies, a doppelganger does lurk in the theoretical frames. D&Ders know, few creatures can wreak havoc in the lower levels of a dungeon crawl worse than a doppelganger. No need to worry though (unless you are reading this review in a dungeon’s sub levels…in which case you’re probably on the wrong blog…), this beast confines itself to the metaphorical (mostly).

Continuing October’s focus of a single comic-book page for each review, this week (from last week’s release) highlights page 19 of Conan the Barbarian, written by Brian Wood, drawn by Vasilis Lolos, and colored by Dave Stewart. This issue concludes Conan and Bêlit’s tracking of a mad reaver (a childhood friend of Conan named Maeldun) who razes villages throughout Cimmeria while using Conan’s name. The young couple catches up with him, kills him, and (happily) leaves Cimmeria.

Page 19 has the conclusion of the final confrontation with Conan and Maeldun in a six-panel page. The page has a balanced division and an apt composition emphasizes the doppelganger aspect of the two boyhood friends’ final fight.

Dividing the page in two vertically, the top half occupies the majority of the page by slightly more than half. In this top section, three panels demarcate the space. On the left, two equal size rectangles are stacked and the right side of the panel (its width less than the two squatter rectangles) a taller rectangle fills the space and spills beyond the border right to the very edge of the page.

The swords guide the eye through this paneled trinity. The top left panel has Maeldun and Conan crossing swords and facing off (also serving a reminder to the reader of the link between the two in that they are the same height and share similar looks). The pale tan of the background color makes the white (with very very light grey shadows) of the sword blades all the more prominent that takes the reader’s eye to the panel below, where a darker yellow, almost burnished golden, background resides. The color helps unite the panels, yet still keeps each one distinct…just like Conan and Maeldun.

The two combatants maintain their left/right orientation of the previous panel, but Lolos rotates them at an angle, placing Conan’s backside closer to the reader and Maeldun further away. This angling of the characters adds to the dynamism of the speed lines and also starts the reader’s eye moving to the right to take in the tall rectangular final panel on this top part of the page…the panel where Conan guts Maeldun.

In this panel, Conan’s sword acts the magnet to the reader’s eye. The gaze travels along the edge of blade, pulled faster by the light off-white chiton worn by Conan and the black armor protecting (albeit not very well on this page) Maeldun. Arterial red fills the background, serving both to highlight the killing blow, but also to highlight the off-white blade of Conan’s sword that balances the panel and unifies it to the two rectangular panels to the left through the similar color of the sword blades and Conan’s sword maintaining the same angle in both panel one and panel three.

Red draws the eye and connects panel three to four. The loud crimson background in three echoes the thin lines of blood that seep beneath Maeldun’s armored forearms in a stark white background. The balance on the lower half of the page reverses the top part. The tall rectangle is on the left, and the two wider rectangles are stacked on the right. The white central border orients to the left of the page’s vertical axis, where as the center border on the top of the page is to the right of center (this is starting to sound like a political analysis). Yet the two asymptotic lines balance out the page.

The fifth panel has the dark gray of Maeldun’s helmet at the top left of the rectangle, which pulls the reader’s eye up from the white negative space of panel four, showing the reader the dying anguished face of Maeldun. His face tilts to the right giving a ¾ view. The head angle slants at a similar angle to the horizon line of the hill in the sixth panel. The eye falls from panel five, slides along the slope of the hill, hits the word balloon. A triangle forms of two heads (still attached to the bodies) of Maeldun’s cronies and lines can be traced to the apex of a triangle, the curled corpse of Maeldun. Conan stands with his arms extended, showing triumph, but also balancing out the panel as the counterweight to the tan of the narrator’s box.

The snowy white background lifts the reader’s eyes to the top half of the page with white on the swords blades in panels one and three; this coloring keeps the page unified and the eye moving and active during this final fight scene. This page design with its two balanced, yet distinct, sections mirrors the one-on-one fight between two similar characters and emphasizes the dual theme (Conan & Maeldun, Conan & Bêlit, civilization & wilderness, land & sea, etc.) that seems prevalent in this series. Don’t worry though, the doppelganger was the one on the left…who is dead physically if not metaphorically.

G.I. Combat #5: The Haunted Tank

Four Panel Page

Greetings readers! For the month of October The Low-Frequency Listener will badly bandy about excessive alliteration to be buoyed by a focus on a full page compositional unit from a book that migrates into my comic library.

The ability of taking in a full page (or a two-page spread) at one glance is an effect digital comics have yet to fully replicate. A good comic book page is able to advance the story as well as function as a complete composition. I never before considered (sad really, given the length of time I’ve been reading comics) how the panels on a page work together to create a unique effect. Like a troglodyte wolfing down a Big Mac value meal in a mere 13 bites, I blindly bolted from panel to panel.

So, this month it’s just a focus on a page of a comic each week with hopes of refining perceptions and awareness of the mysteries and allure of the page.

G.I. Combat #5 brings in the Haunted Tank (my favorite character in the very limited pantheon of possessed mechanized war machinery). The story consists of the Haunted Tank escaping from The Red Room to find Jeb Stuart, the still surviving World War Two veteran of 98 years who commanded the Haunted Tank in the European and Pacific theatre. Stuart’s grandson, Scotty Stuart faces execution in Afghanistan, but the Haunted Tank travels by some mystical means known only to ghost tanks to rescue Stuart and preserve the family blood line. Overall, a good read from Peter Tomasi (on story) and Howard Chaykin (yes, THE Howard Chaykin…though no tank penises (at least that I saw) migrated from Black Kiss 2) on art, and Jesus Aburton managing the color palette.

Page 15 contains 4 panels (lots of Chaykin’s pages work with four panels, but the variations with the panel placement and design  kept this layout from becoming dull) Page 15 has a weight to it that seizes the eye with the top panel and then slides it down to the bottom of the page to visually advance the story. The top panel (of two soldiers from Argus getting shocked or blasted by the Haunted Tank with some spectral powers draws the eye with the panel size stretching fully across to the margins of the page. The close focus with the two helmeted combatants getting shocked shows the largest figures on the page. The sound effect, “ZZZRAKK” of the electricity has the “A” breaking the border and poking its pointed cap into the white margins that aid in the attraction of the eye. In addition to these factors, the coloring in the panel really snags the reader’s perception. The Argus figures are black, and the light-blue-almost-white electricity chiaroscuros against the figures (they are the darkest and largest images on the page) and attracts the eye. As if these factors weren’t enough (and I know this sounds overly obvious), the first panel of page 15 is right where readers expect the first panel of a page to be placed—at the top. This fulfillment of expectations further adds to this panel’s ability to serve as the primary focal point of the page.

Next down we have veteran Stuart standing with his tank, reaching up to touch the main gun barrel. The white blue sky in the background of panel two has a similar color of the electricity in panel one and causes the eye to leap to the panel border. The electric bolts in the top panel also go down to the bottom of panel one and lead the eye right into the second panel of blue white sky. The top half of panel two is lighter in color, while the bottom half is dark. The almost solid black oval of the tank’s track connects this second panel to the first, but still distinguishes it from the first panel. The second panel is the same height and width as the first, but the third panel is placed atop the right side of the second panel. The third panel, a slim rectangle filled with a helicopter pilot’s head (you can see his helicopter in the sky of panel two, the machine tilted to the third panel…another small trick to keep the reader’s eye moving in the proper sequence). The pilot’s helmet, white, binds with the white of the sky in the second panel and the lightening of the first and the rising smoke and dialogue balloons of the fourth panel. The white spaces seem to be the axis of this page, moving the eye in a rough backward “s” motion over the page. The head in the third panel is slanted down toward the right, directing the reader’s eye to the white right hand border. So how to get the reader’s eye to the fourth panel (which is the same size as the first)? For starters, the third panel also slightly overlaps the fourth. But the fourth panel jerks the reader’s eyes from the far right of the page back to the far left with the white of the word balloon set off against the sepia interior of Stuart’s house. The sepia is enough to emphasize the word balloon and draw the eye, but not overpower the focus the eye (like the dark black of the soldier’s uniforms at the top of the page) to be the first thing a reader sees. The guards, now unconscious and smoking and prone on the floor anchor the panel (and the page) with their dark uniforms, but don’t interfere with the immediate notice of the word balloons. The word balloons too move from left to right and at a downward slant, which moves the reader’s eye back to the lower right of page 15, having the reader all set to turn the page and continue the narrative.

Along with the balance of black and white moving the eye like the silver ball in a Labyrinth game, the flag cape of Stuart unites panels three and four. In panel three, the white stripes are the most prominent on the flag. These pale stripes aid in the eye’s rightward movement to panel three as well as work the eye downward to panel four (much like the electric bolts functioned in panel one, and the overlapping panel three also moves the eye down the page). The flag  in  panel four has Stuart facing right instead of left (in panel four, Stuart is facing to the right margin, the same direction in which the dialogue balloons are traveling) and there are many more red stripes of the flag visible (which link it back to the flag in panel three, yet make the flag in the fourth panel distinct from the one in the third) and only shows a small sliver of the stars atop the blue filed, whereas the flag in the third panel has a large section of the stars and blue prominently upon Stuart’s shoulder.

Finally in the fourth panel, the rising smoke off the soldiers provides a thin connection that allows the reader’s eye to slide down from the dialogue balloons to the page bottom. The two columns balance out the panel (each placed about an equal distance from the left and right margins) and don’t impede the eye’s rightward travel.

Thus is page 15. I confess I was shocked at the role the colors played in directing the gaze and how the traveling eye can add motion and excitement to a flat static page of paper.

While I can’t say I’d be happy to see a Haunted Tank (or anything haunted for that matter) appear at the door of my house, I would be impressed if it moved with the grace and speed of this page…unless it was chasing me….

Debris Issue 3

Trash Talking

Titling your comic Debris stands as a confident choice for the creative team. Such an appellation exudes their faith in the book with the way they’ve exposed their work to a potential collection  of disposable derogatory comments.

While filled with trash, Debris isn’t trash. Debris is a four issue story from Image comics set in the future. Readers begin the tale in a small settlement scratching out a minimalist existence from the land. A guardian and her apprentice defend the settlement from mechanical monsters. The elder guardian is killed; the water supply to the settlement is destroyed, and the youthful guardian ventures into hostile lands to find a way to save the settlement. 

Riley Rossmo’s renderings of rubbish intrigue, dancing back and forth between detailed and complex to minimalist panels reminiscent of Chinese ink paintings or woodblock prints. Initially this shift could grate and raise questions of why every panel doesn’t contain fine rendering of page one of issue three with the Godzilla looking robot trash monster. Yet these shifts in rendering remain essential to the plot and tone of this four issue limited series by slapping the reader to attention and startling them with the pages’ contents and mimicking the pacing of the action occurring on the page.

This variation in Rossmo’s style keeps the reader’s awareness nimble in that each page offers a shift in his visual voice. No page ever comes across as sloppy, or carelessly rendered. Each collection of scenes contains harmonizing balance with panels containing a minimum and maximum of line in various panels. Page four exemplifies this balance of styles. The small panel in the upper left hand corner has the detail of each plate on the trash beast’s armor, rivets are drawn, and hoses and wires appear between the plates. Yet the trash knight has a cape and legs of minimum lines. This same design is echoed in the largest panel. This uneven detail speeds up the reading (a fight scene) to a violent pace. The reader’s attention, much like the character’s, is drawn to and keeps returning to the trash beast. While having one’s eye continually returning to the monster never could substitute for fighting a live version of the beast, this artistic trick captures at least some aspect of fighting debris creatures, keep your eye on the beast.

The book also utilizes this technique throughout the entire issue. If pages 4 and 5 have limited detail, pages 6 and 7 are lush and captivating enough to stare at for some extended time. Pages 8 and 9, with the print version of the book spread before you, almost completely abandon background details in favor of colored blocks (again, another fight transpires), yet pages 10 and 11 return to varied colors and indulge with details within the panel. This pattern loosely continues throughout the rest of the book; a shift occurs about every two pages, if not in the level of details in the panels, then in the panel sizes. This variation causes each set of pages to jump out to the reader. The images act sharp and alert, and slightly unsettle with bold shifts and colors, yet ultimately they unify the book as all the drawings generated from Rossmo’s fingers. 

Having never viewed shifting elements and principles employed in exactly this way in a comic before (and maybe they have been and I just missed…if so dear readers, please enlighten my ignorance), this technique fascinates and keeps one returning each month to sift through the debris, pleasantly surprised by the findings.

Conan the Barbarian #8: Border Fury Part 2

Border Fury: Travels in Cimmeria

by Bêlit Queen of the Black Coast

Hardship reveals the accuracy of one’s own self assessment. Nothing brought the truth of my strengths and limitations to my awareness more than my travels in Cimmeria. Never have I learned so much in such a short span of time. Even the lowliest scribe of Aquilonia could tell you that learning, truly acquiring knowledge, possesses a difficulty more brutal and painful than any lash.

Cimmeria is a great teacher.

I never want to return.

**

Cimmeria is bordered to the north by a mountain range that separates the land from Asgard and Vanaheim. To the east lies a broad set of harsh hills that also border Hyperborea and the Border Kingdom sandwiched between Nemdia and Brythunia and the hills of Cimmeria. The Bosnian Marshes and Pictish wilderness complete the surroundings of my lover’s homeland.

The voyage began when my then boyfriend Conan set off to defend his family name. Initially, being totally smitten with this barbarian from the north, I accompanied him on his obligated return home. Our travels changed the way he looked to me.

Before Cimmeria, Conan appeared to me as a svelte and smooth muscular champion, existing in a relaxed state yet always poised for action.  On the day we set out from his home village to pursue the marauders defaming Conan’s name, he seemed stiffer, more frigid, and his every motion seemed a series of poses rather than smooth continuous motions.  When I looked at him sometimes his eyes seemed too close together, other times they appeared too far apart. I worried yet kept my concern hidden within my hooded cloak. At the time I attributed Conan’s shifting features to the cold of the north which decelerated his nimble and supple flow through the panels of landscape. Now, I wonder if perhaps it was the spell of travel affecting my view of him and the immenseness of his pupils and the effeminate features that the wilderness intensified in the features of my lover. Yet we persevered and dared the Cimmerian wilderness.

For readers contemplating a sojourn into this dark land, know that the even though the land is harsh, it remains constant in its cycles of abuse and punishment. In the morning it rains for about an hour. Every morning. Large rocks and larger rocks obstruct every path and snag the flimsy of foot. It is as if the land itself is growing teeth to devour those foolish enough to dare its maw.

The skies of Cimmeria provide scant comfort or opportunities for alleviating gloom. While never blue, the most cheerful sky one can hope to see above in Cimmeria is a dull grumpy gray. Often sinister shades of yellow and tan wash the sky. The colors hint that the heavens are waiting to distribute harsh rains, snow, high winds, a tornado, or a thick fog to cover a tracking pack of wolves. The soul of Cimmeria resides with its acrid landscape and sky, yet I realized that the somber gloom-enhancing colors contain the best aspects about my sojourn in this northern land. 

Lands and locations change people, and homelands even more so. Upon returning to his home, my lover changed. The savage nobility I first sensed about him changed to savage fatalism. This land and its people and their attitude towards misfortune and hardship showed me that what I thought was nobility was a giving up, a sad placid acceptance of pain, despair, cruelty, and death. This acceptance of the Cimmerians didn’t fortify or ennoble their souls, it eroded and destroyed them. And this attitude was working upon my lover too. He says Cimmerians recognize their place in the world, but one’s place in this land is under the twisting boot of their cruel god Crom. We must leave these lands if I ever hope to hope again.

“…Just remember this is not a world you know” were the last words my lover said to me before he set off to move faster to slay those who slandered his name and brought more misery on an already miserable populace. His departure was a relief, a welcomed freedom of solitude that gave me time to think, to brood. Cimmeria has that affect on a traveler. Like riding through a desert and finally topping a dune and spying an ocean with two birds soaring uninhibited in a warm and welcoming soft yellow sky is the relief I felt at not having to look at the changed face and demeanor of my lover. I know he cares and wants to help, but the help he offered isn’t the kind I need. His absence finally let the battle begin between me and Cimmeria. If this land wins, it will devour me, whether physically or spiritually and it will forever cage the strong spirit of Conan within its borders. If I can survive and escape this land with Conan, then we can go to better more hospitable and profitable realms. Then I win. If we escape, I triumph over this grating, miserable, and unwelcoming land. And I take with me not only my lover, but the added realization of the lessons the lands have to teach. When once again upon the decks of the Tigress, this knowledge will guide our destinations and selections of those lands upon which we choose to land. For now though, fellow travelers, know that while Cimmeria offers no joys, it does give those who dare its borders a hard and dark Truth.

Prophet Trade 1: Remission

What benefits sprout from a trade collection of monthly comic books? Comics best thrive in a serialized format, a publication sequence that allows time to digest and ponder the story and its possibilities between issues…a  publication regime that doesn’t overwhelm or burn out the reader…20 pages of Justice League Dark parceled out once a month are fine…200 pages of Justice League Dark all at once would be too much. Hence, the allure of a trade collection of monthly comic issues never converted me.

All has since changed.

Prophet showed trade collections exist as a second coming, a reissue of good news, for those of us who missed the first opportunity at experiencing a rapture (plus there excerpts from Brandon Grahams sketchbook with his initial Prophet designs are included).

I’m converted.

Initially the cover of Prophet 21 intrigued, but I neglected to follow the series because a cursory glance illicited a negative reaction to the art (the same disdain occurred when looking at the first issue of MIND MGMT…surely some lesson should have been learned by now) and boredom arose at another tale of a lone man wandering an apocalyptic landscape. Reading the tale in trade revealed that there was much more lurking in the story than a man and his apocalypse. The trade transformed that reaction. The Prophet story reads well collected, and the experience of reading the issues back to back allow for an immersion into this strange world that won’t allow readers to reach escape velocity.

And what a world! I realize I’m boarding the Prophet bus (or rocket) late, yet still Prophet shatters any jaded desensitization to tumbled earth empires with its redefinition of strange.

Aside from torquing one’s mind and weaving a captivating story (as if these two points aren’t reason enough), what other machinations could the oddness of Prophet exert on the human mind? In an excerpt from John Dewey’s Art as Experience, the Vermont philosopher/educator writes “The moral function of art itself is to do away with prejudice, do away with the scales that keep the eye from seeing, tear away the veils due to wont and custom, perfect the power to perceive.”  Dewey here leans on “adherence to a preliminary opinion or feeling without thought or experience” for an understanding of “prejudice.” While someone may obtain some odd looks (and provocative solicitations) if others hear them espousing appreciation for the moral function of Prophet that banishes stale depictions of a ravaged future earth. Part of the allure of the story that simultaneously orients and disorients is Simon Prophet’s knowledge of this future earth. Prophet holds more knowledge than readers, and we’re able, slightly, oh so very slightly fellow and future-fellow Prophet followers, to glean some knowledge of location and the new species that have evolved and some causes, or hints of causes, at the state of this future-present earth. Yet, there is much that Simon Prophet doesn’t know, or doesn’t reveal in his refreshing and much welcomed and appreciated lack of laments or brooding on solitude or the harsh changes that beset his home planet. The details occupying the background banish the prejudice of an overexposed future earth’s devastation and offer readers a fresh visceral experience of running free like a virgin in an alien-highjacked world.[1] The organic mixtures of the non-human with the human and biological bondings give a strange air to the book. The definition of humanity has slackened from the physical and individual, and grasps at something else for the future of the species. Simon Prophet’s bonding with the Dolmantle and an alien sex fiend, consumption of human flesh, and utilizing a regrown-alien arm disrupts the notions of humanity. Be warned however, if a Prophet Cookbook should ever be released, one would be wise to pass on the gastronomical grimoire.

Oracles often precede prophets, so please treat the gathered “Sayings for the Prophet” on each issue of Graham and crew’s collected six issues as a call from the converted to follow this Prophet.

A

A lyrical ballad altering the familiar to the strange for a copied laconic questing knight birthed from a mechanized buried womb that emerged from Mother Earth  and unleashed its spawn in a Darwin-ransacked land. Simon Prophet returns like a genetic remembrance manifests in a world of crashed space ships and four-jawed Talnakas before brown, red and blue color schemes.

B

Grey, tan, and brown color the Taza Caravan’s trek beneath the power shell repelling flesh-hungry desert insects. Bug-evolved Oiiz and time-altered caravaning elephants perform sacrificial kingly rituals while a trophy-hunting sportsman bugs yields to a killing whim.

C

Tower reached.  Quest complete. Clones awake. Veil lifts. Story arc ends. The given conclusion generates greater queries. The new earth empire rouse from its slumber.

D

Same name, different clone.  New place, and a new plot within the plot accompany the new artist. Radiation-rich atmosphere slowly balds and poisons the hero as it corrupts his flesh, and the close simultaneously triumphs and fails in a fight with himself after traversing the corrupting innards of an orbiting robot city. Neonaught skin protects the lapsarian slip to an earth-empire mother.

E

A Jaxson robot (?) wanders for its Jung brother in a minimalist-hard-line background while the empire ceaselessly beckons. Worm-hole rings usher the wanderer to the light for transmission of the message: “John…It’s starting again.”

F

An armed clone trinity defend an Arch Mother amidst chromatic wizardry of browns, blues, and oranges. All die from the swift fingers of a John Prophet who ascends to the Womb Ship and usurps the Arch Mother’s crown. It has started again.

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[1] Possibly the first Iron Maiden/Madonna allusion back to back in the history of comic book reviews!

Doom Patrol Collections 3 & 4

The Doom Patrol Wants You!

(to read some collections of their past adventures)

Weird strange bizarre encounters confront the reader of Doom Patrol.   These chronicled enigmas warp into even more outlandish escapades when Grant Morrison’s brain divulges the tales of whimsy.

Doom Patrol trade collections 3: Down Paradise Way and 4:Muscle Bound transport the reader to the fringes of a dream-logic world. Comic books possess a strong ability to capture the outré, and bring forth stories resplendent with strange encounters. Morrison presents a “psychedelic hyperreality”[1] of odd originalities that grab, shake, and awaken an imagination and sense of wonder that may have dozed, or become sedate through consumption of material already seen before. Despite the original 1990-1991 publication dates of these stories, they eschew datedness and still feel unique and timely. In these volumes Morrison spins yarns of clock-faced time mercenaries, emissaries of orthodoxy, a psychic muscleman, a wandering transdimensional cross-dressing street (where the Doom Patrol finally establishes their head quarters), and a villainous group called the Brotherhood of Da Da. Tone varies throughout the book, but it always maintains playful germs of chipper frivolity. 

Doom Patrol first graced comic racks in the same year as Marvel’s X-Men. Morrison wrote:  

“Originally billed as ‘The World’s Strangest Heroes,’ the Doom Patrol had always been played as misunderstood outsiders, so I have them a new purpose as the only superheroes disturbed enough to deal with the kind of menaces to sanity and reality that not even Superman could hope to confront. With artist Richard Case and some design assistance from Brendan McCarthy, the spiritual father of my take on the book, Doom Patrol cornered the market in ‘strange’ and picked up the baton Steve Gerber had passed in the from of The Defenders.”[2] The 15 issues in these two collections launch a vicious, yet entertaining, attack on sanity that would leave Gerber’s Defenders questioning reality.  

Reading these issues produced a feeling of displacement and a captivating sense of having lost one’s way in an infinite labyrinth. Doom Patrol harbors a raw and primal element to the stories. The tales are good although a certain slick polish has been left out; a reader can still see the dents and scratches that have yet to be refined. This glimpse of the tales’ birth structure enhances the impact of the story by showing readers some elements from the artists’ initial thrill and creative energy. Saga stands as a creative book of the weird with the polished edges this version of Doom Patrol has left sharp and jagged; this comparison isn’t to say one book reads superior to another, merely a way of bringing forth a difference in style. Consider that if Saga is Powerslave, then Doom Patrol is Live After Death.

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[1] On page 220 of Grant Morrison’s book Supergods. This is the book that caused me to pick up collections of Doom Patrol.

[2] On page 221 of Supergods