Sixteen Volts

I have been reading some new-to-me graphic novels recently. First, there was "Creature Tech" by Douglas TenNapel. During the first few pages, it looked like some amateur's self-published rag, but suddenly the thing took me in and I scarfed it through until the end. When I checked the author information on Wikipedia, the page said that he works as an animator, which is actually totally evident in his drawing style and how the characters gesture and move (especially the main character and his face) and the way that the events and the story proceed. Somewhat surprisingly, TenNapel also seems to be a Christian and a right-wing blogger, which is rare in the comic book circles where trendy leftism seems to be compulsory for every independent trailblazer.

The basic plot of Creature Tech is that a young hotshot scientist Dr. Michael Ong is hired to run a research institute located in his hicksville hometown. However, the institute turns out to be a place where the U.S. Government stores all its strange artifacts in style of X-Files and (or the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark), and the task of going through the boxes awaits. So even if this is a one-shot graphic novel, it would work extremely well as a series opener, or even a movie or TV show franchise. The storyline of the book is better summarized in the book's Wikipedia page, so I don't have to go to it here.

Next, we have "100%" by Paul Pope. The very first impression that I got here was again the usual sin of independent comics, drawing so messily that the reader can't just "flow" through the story (or whatever the correct term is) but has to stop and carefully look at every panel and caption to see who is doing and saying what. Fortunately, I got into this after a few pages and the style, very much unlike anything that I have seen before, conveyed a nice feeling of a big city a few decades into the cyberpunk future. The main character, a busboy in a nightclub, meets and falls in love with the new dancer with a mysterious past, while in a parallel storyline, the female manager of the club encounters her boxer ex-husband. In this cyberpunk future, strippers peel off more than just their clothes by having 3D scanners project their innards in great detail for the audience to watch.

Also the well-known Marvel and DC superhero comics of this new century that I have read are in every possible respect superior to what they were in the 80's, let alone the supposed "golden age". What an age of miracles we live in, and everything just keeps getting better. Speaking of DC, I have previously read a few collections of "Starman" before, and recently found two others that were new to me. In the basic DC lineup (that is, non-Vertigo), Starman is perhaps the best that I have seen, although I would have to revisit The Question to see if my fond memories of it are accurate. Starman has a good solid feel to it, similar to Astro City, since the stories are properly set in time and place and the continuity works well.

Next in line, we have "The Authority", a group of cosmic-level violent super-heroes who watch over the Earth against threats from both parallel dimensions and evil corporations and governments. Actually, this book (along with "The Invisibles", which must be ideologically the most disgusting thing I have ever read) serves as a perfect illustration of the aforementioned reflexive leftism of comic books. For example, the Superman and Batman pastiches of this series are openly gay and live in a gay marriage (which naturally makes them great dads for their adopted daughter, as the gay marriages famously are), and I wouldn't be too sure about the heterosexuality of the other characters either. And of course, nothing is as evil by nature as a corporation. But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this comic isn't great, especially the book "Transfer of Power".

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Sunday, July 09, 2006 at 3:08 PM