Old Mutants, New Ideas: the Omnibus

The Whole Megillah (and I'm not even Jewish)

When a fellow writer notices you haven't updated your blog in a while … it's probably time to, you know, update your blog. Never let it be said I don't listen to advice or fold like an origami swan when it comes to peer pressure.

 

I promised I would use Interested in Sophisticated Fun? as a catchall -- I remember saying something as pretentious as the library of Alexandria (shiver) -- for my writing, it was a 'blog promise,' but still … I wrapped 'Old Mutants, New Ideas: Bill Sienkiewicz's New Mutants' about a month ago. I surprised myself when I found I still had something to say about Sienkiewicz, mutants, Claremont and all the rest when I hit 'send' on the last post. The best kind of writing is when you surprise yourself. I never try to dwell on anything the 'guy's in the basement,' as Stephen King says, send something up, don't marvel meat, just write.

One of the surprises in my final post, New Mutants #31, was how I was somehow able to work in the ad for Robert Bell. I sent away for the 'Marvel Comics Price List' and pored over the pages when it arrived in the mail. It was a catalog, nothing more, nothing less. It was talismanic somehow, containing secrets, comics I couldn't find in my friendly neighborhood comic shop. I probably only ordered from the catalog once, maybe twice -- I think I bought an oversized collection, a Marvel Treasurey Edition (?), of the first five or six issues of Thor, after it switched over from Journey into Mystery. Those Kirby pages are magic. Magic that came from Coral Springs, FLA. Who knew.

So, here is the whole megillah, the kit and the caboodle, all in one place. Thanks to everyone who commented, sent tweets and retweets, etc. Special thanks to Jason Sacks at Comics Bulletin and the always reliable Danny Djeljosevic who kept me on schedule. And a tip of the cap to Bill Sienkiewicz -- if we ever meet the first, sir, the first round is on me. Here, as they say, is the 'Full Run':  

New Mutants 18, New Mutants 19, New Mutants 20, New Mutants 21, New Mutants 22, New Mutants 23, New Mutants 24,

 

New Mutants 25, New Mutants 26, New Mutants 27 New Mutants 28, New Mutants 29, New Mutants 30, New Mutants 31

 

Mo' Mutants, Mo' Problems

The New Mutants Marathon … continues

I ran the 400m in High School, the quarter mile. If I had any sort of strategy it was to work the corners like a 'crafty' veteran pitcher or a hooker.  The third corner is a bear and the last corner breaks most runners and then it's an all out sprint. I'm about to turn the fourth corner on my New Mutants writing project and I can feel my body dig for the extra gear I'll need on that last straightaway.

This week my essay on The New Mutants #25 was posted to Comics Bulletin. It wraps up a tasty narrative pretzel about Rahne and Bobby inheriting the powers of Cloak & Dagger. Tandy and Tyrone, unburdened and ready to leave the life behind, decide to do the 'noble' thing again take up the … err … cloak and dagger.

There are two B-stories in this arc that involve Selene and the Hellfire Club and Magneto and Aleytys "Lee" Forrester that are plain kooky. To be honest, the one about Selene, The New Mutants #23, is kinky and as I write in the piece an eye-opener for me at the time. The other plot thread with Magneto and 'Lee' takes place on an island somewhere in the Bermuda triangle. As Magneto and Forrester approach this Cthulhu-inspired getaway, Sienkiewicz scrawls 'Cockrum' into the cracks along the sea wall. The man is not without a sense of humor or history.

 

I don't know if anyone has coined the term 'the Sienkiewicz face,' if not, you may want to register that domain name or tumbler tout de suite. The New Mutants #24 makes a case for the face. This being the New Mutants the faces are often in anguish or some kind of distress. My favorite is one of Magik (natch) as she and her teammates figure out what to do with Rahne and Bobby. She's got this enigmatic smile that says discomfort and hints at barely contained roiling rage.

Next up, is the arrival of David Charles Haller a/k/a Legion, perhaps the most powerful mutant ever imagined and therefore problematic in every way.

The other piece that came out this week at Comics Bulletin is the January edition of 2 for #1. Jamil Scalese and I along with this month's mystery date, editor extraordinaire, Danny Djeljosevic take on The Black Beetle #1, Adventure Time with Fiona and Cake #1 and Young Avengers #1.

Ensconced as I am in Marvel's merry mutants, I find myself more and more drawn to the Marvel universe. Marvel NOW! is marketing bullshit and yet I keep thinking if I was thirty years younger, Young Avengers would have been my jam like The New Mutants was back in the day except Sam and Bobby never shared an open-mouth kiss like Wiccan and Hulkling.

According to Blogger, this marks my forty-ninth post to Interested in Sophisticated Fun?. It's only fitting as I near the tape on my one year anniversary that I try to make it an even fifty, which (almost) averages to one post per week, my goal when I began this new universe.

Time is irrelevant when it comes to writing. What we write lives after us (we hope) and when it comes to the act itself, writing ain't no sprint, it's a damn marathon.

New Mutants, Old Aardvarks

You Didn't Hit Your Demon Hard Enough!

If I've learned anything from this New Mutants project going on at Comics Bulletin it's that Bill Sienkiewicz and Chris Claremont were as potent an '80's duo as Murtaugh and Riggs, Walsh and Mardukas or, dare I say it, Neal Page and Del Griffith.

I pick these fictional duos because they were the epitome of mismatched 1980's buddy teams, lab-grown to achieve maximum effect. I don't know what Sienkiewicz and Claremont had in common other than chemistry. There isn't anything Claremont can imagine that Sienkiewicz can't draw. And for all the darkness and brooding, these two are a couple of comedians. Sometimes its indirect -- Magik telling Sunspot he didn't hit his demon hard enough -- and sometimes it's as plain as the dragon on your head. Sly humor has always been a part of theX-Men. That's got to be all Claremont, right?  Chris Claremont, ladies and gentleman, try the prime rib.

The other thing that I'm noodling through is how continuity mattered 'back in the day' and yet how it never distracted from the story at hand. It was O.K. if you didn't have The New Mutants # whatever because you got the gist of what happened through context; or you didn't and you moved on. We don't do that anymore, why? Continuity has readers in a stranglehold. A comic book series is looked at in the same way as a TV series like 'Lost' or 'Breaking Bad' or every HBO series ever. Why? What's the obsession with knowing what happened in every infinitesimal detail? Sometimes not knowing is O.K., isn't it?

A new installment goes up each Tuesday (or Wednesday).Here's what's been published so far:

NewMutants #18, NewMutants #19, NewMutants #20, NewMutants #21, NewMutants #22

The other piece that I'm proud of is an interview I did with Comics Bulletin publisher Jason Sacks about his love of Cerebus. The New Mutants and Cerebus, what am I twelve-years-old. Maybe It's not such a bad place to be, I guess.

How and why I came to talk to Jason for almost two hours over Skype about a comic book I haven't cared about for over twenty-five years gets covered in the piece. I think time will (eventually) be kind to Cerebus and Dave Sim, time is eternal,after all.

Fandom can easily/quickly become a solipsistic pursuit. WhatI learned about myself (yes, I'm being ironic) from talking with Jason was what it means when fandom bites back. What happens when your hobby, that the thing you do to relax, that thing that enriches your life to some extent doesn't  pass you by so much as confuse the hell out of you? What do you do when it ain't 'so it ain't so,' but 'what the hell am I supposed to do with this? Oh, and it all begins with a stuffed aardvark. Isn't it always the way?

 

Obsessions,Hard Truths and a Plush Aardvark:

Mass Communicatin'

To my own perception and regret, the Internet has been lousy with my work this week, what we cliche-hounds call 'a perfect storm.' I don't post 'em I only write 'em, so there. I deem this 'internet-famous' like barrage, 'Sacks-ing' after the benevolent overlord of Comics Bulletin, Jason Sacks, as in "I had four posts go live on Comics Bulletin this week! I am so Sacksing right now!" Trust me, it's a thing.

 

Sacksing can't happen without the great editors I work with at Comics Bulletin, Danny Dejeljosevic and David Fairbanks. Without them I'm one hand-clapping. Thanks men!

 

Here's a quick rundown of the week and remember if you haven't seen it or read it (Reddit?) it's new to you:

 

Jamil Scalese and I form a new team on Comics Bulletin with a look at FF #1. NOW! Jamil and I agree on most of what Mike Allred and Matt Fraction have to offer here. What struck me most (and I think Jamil agrees) is this -- for Jamil it's better, for me, worse -- is another #1 that over-promises and under-delivers. It might be a great series once it gets going, but this issue, for me at least, never gets out of first gear.

 

Daniel Elkin also helped me keep pace with a visit to the Supermarket, Brian Wood and Kristian Donaldson's 2006 mini-series. It's good clean fun with an 'eep' or two and some cartoon violence thrown in to keep it spicey. Elkin took me to task (rightfully so) for not taking Supermarket at face value. It's dismissive to call anything 'minor' in an artist's oeuvre, so let's call this a welcome departure from Wood's heavier work and, oh yeah, I want more of this Donaldson.

 

Next, I weighed in over at the Two-Headed Nerd with an essay on why I write about comics. A lot of it is all 'sweetness and light;' however, more than a love letter to my own ego, I tried to make it a call to arms to get more people writing and talking about the comics they love and why they love them (and if those comics happen to be creator-owned, all the better). I also added my voice (and my arms) to new column that THN calls Slave Revolt. Tony Doug Wright of Champion City Comics led the charge while Aaron Meyers and I took to the battlements beside him.

 

The biggest bombshell to drop was a piece I wrote with David Fairbanks: 'Why I Want to Pour Gasoline on Corporate Comics.' This is really a companion piece to the one that ran on THN except it's more acidic. It's a conversation-starter that I hope gets more people 'thinking' about 'why' they buy the comics they buy and not only 'what' they buy.

 

The piece I'm most proud of is something I hinted at a month or so ago: Old Mutants, New Ideas: Bill Sienkiewicz's New Mutants. I'm writing about Sienkiewicz's complete thirteen issue run and trying to capture what Sienkiewicz means to me and what it was like to be twelve-years-old and in love with comic books, words and most of all, art. For me, Bill Sienkiewicz represents the art of the possible. ¶ There is more that I've written that's yet to post (thank Crom!) and (better yet) more to write. I'm going to work to make IiSF? my library at Alexandria -- oh, yes, I know hype and how to be pretentious -- and keep it updated with the 'new' and the 'new to you.' As I said at the end of my essay for THN: go and do likewise, go and do likewise.

Roll-Call

This is a hint of what I'm working on as a part of Comics Bulletin's 'Full Run' column. It kicks off in mid-November. 

Whilst on the hunt for some inspiration, I came across a great tumbler that's got the market cornered on Magik. This (see above) is from a recent issue of Wolverine and the X-Men. Truth be told, I didn't know Magik was part of the Phoenix Force until I saw this panel.

In case you missed it, I had a couple of pieces post this week. Over at The Two-Headed Nerd Comicast I've got an essay on why YOU should be reading The Massive by Brian Wood, Garry Brown and Dave Stewart.

Also, I interviewed author Alex De Campi about her graphic novel Ashes, the Eisner-nominated mini-series Smoke and a digital comic she's got, Valentine, about French solidiers during Napoleon's failed campaign to invade Russia. De Campi is a real spitfire and someone whom I hope the comics gods smile down upon in the very near future.

I've got another (assumed) masterpiece on the boil with Elkin that we hope we'll get out by next week (you hear that, Elkin?). The above image of Magik is by Chris Bachalo. It's pretty good and you can't beat Jason Aaron's lines about 'bear vs. baby goat' and 'exceedingly demonic.' These, however, are 'my' New Mutants below. Like the man says, 'Nuff said.