ankewehner.de

First, have a comic page:

I wonder if I can make that (“anything sequential art”) a regular thing, like with the microfiction. I really wish I could loosen up and not get lost in details too much.

Then, have some other stuff:

Manifest Destiny – Nightcrawler is a one-shot comic from a few months back.
For those not following Marvel Comics: “Manifest Destiny” refers to the X-Men moving from New York State to San Francisco.

I really do wonder what the hell Marvel writers/editors were thinking when they took the label for an idea that boils down to “We must take away land from inferior humans, because God made us superior” and apply it to the X-Men.

Anyway, spoilers will follow.

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I take an interest in American comics taking place in Germany, or featuring German characters, mostly because I want to know if really all American comic creators are so stupid they believe we’re stuck about a hundred years in the past, as “all houses are timber frame constructions and people wear lederhosen every day” suggests.

The Eternals series published by Marvel in 2008-2009 did better than most.

Pertinent plot points: There’s a group of superhumans (the Eternals) who have been turned into humans. Most of them don’t even remember their true nature. Those that do are trying to find the others.

One of those they find is a German engineer, living under the name Phillip Stoss. “Stoss” is an existing, as far as I can tell not very common name. The etymology of the name might be more complicated, but obviously it is the correct alternative spelling of “Stoß”, which is a noun translating to “push”, or a number of similar things, depending on context.

He works for “Ziffengel Motorwerks” in Zuffenhausen. If “Ziffengel” is supposed to be a reference to anything, I couldn’t figure out to what – “Engel” means “angel”, though. “Motorwerks” I’d buy as a name for a metal band, because the butchered grammar is on par with stuff like using umlauts ignoring that they are pronounced differently from their corresponding regular letters, but not a serious company. The correct plural would be “Motorenwerke”, or, if you like, “Motoren Werke”. That’s what the MW of BMW stands for, by the way.

A very minor quibble: Zuffenhausen would properly be Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. But anyway, using Zuffenhausen as base for a car company was a very nice touch. In the real world, it’s the seat of the Porsche headquarters.

He says his parents were killed when he was two, and, “I was sent to live with my Grandmother in Dresden. She looked after me until I was sixteen.” The next thing he said about that was, “We lived above a little toy shop in a small village in the Schwarzwald.” Now, the entire page was written to show up inconsistencies in his memory, what with mixing up pet names and car makes, but that is by far the biggest mistake. Since there is no reaction from his wife, or the people (probably) pretending to be German attorneys, I get the feeling it’s something the writer missed. Let me illustrate:

Dresden is way out East, the Schwarzwald as far in the Southwest as you can go. Furthermore, while it’s not easy to guess the age of comic characters from their faces, I don’t think he’s older than 50. In that case, those two places are in two different countries, and the Inner German Border was not that easy to cross.

One of the nicer points is Stoss correcting the “where did you attend college” to say he went to a university of applied sciences. The one in Cologne actually exists, and was founded in 1971. I can’t figure out what “Rhineland University” is. The closest possible match seems to be the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelm Universität Bonn, calling itself “University of Bonn” on the English version of its own website. It doesn’t seem to deal with engineering, though.

It may be not really obvious, but to me someone having a BMW or Audi as a first car sounds a bit weird, since they’re both relatively expensive brands, even moreso around the supposed time of Stoss’ youth (70s). According to my mother a VW Käfer, R4 or “Ente” was typical, with the very occasional old Ford thrown in.

Lastly, I’l like to point out that the inconsistent lettering was a bit confusing. The “interview” didn’t have brackets, so were they speaking English? But the property Stoss was alledgedly inheriting was in Germany, so why would attorneys from an English-speaking country be involved? Probably just a slip.

Oh, well, all in all, even with the problems, it’s better than most, and there obviously was some effort to get things right involved.

Marvel Comics, Eternals, written by Charles & Daniel Knauf, Illustrated by Daniel Acuña, letters by Todd Klein

On Monday Don Rosa, creator of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck and other stuff, visited the local comic shop for a long singing/sketching session, and I was there, too.

The photo on the left shows him working on a sketch of young Scrooge McDuck, based on the “The Cowboy Captain of the Cutty Sark” story.

Below is the more finished version.

This is the sketch I got for myself. Not one of the more famous characters, I guess.

Hortense McDuck is Donald’s mother. He apparently got the temper from both sides.

Any character who cusses out the president of the USA and tells him “Don’t even speak to me until you grant women the right to vote” and punches him in the gut when he refuses her help with something because it’s “men’s work” is OK by me.

Uku is a wordless, painted fantasy comic, telling, as far as I can tell, the story of a cave painter looking for paints, and finding instead something entirely different. Visually, it’s on the bright and cute side, story wise, well, it has only 10 pages so far and being just a reader I don’t know where it’s going.

The main reasons why I’m drawn to it are the style of art, and, I guess, that wordless comics are rather unusual.

I came across a blog entry, How Often Should You Publish? by a published author, I’d like to comment on. Of course I’m speaking from a reader’s perspective.

The idea that the publishing speed should be right for the fanbase I can see – say, I stopped reading Sluggy Freelance because there was too much too fast being added to for me, but obviously it’s great for enough other people to make it a really popular webcomic.

But as he says in his key assertion, “you don’t publish unless it’s good”, there is objectively publishing too much. My “favourite” example is Wolfgang Hohlbein, a German fantasy author who seems to publish 7 or more books a year. The problem is that the quality suffers. To avoid anything that may have to do with taste, here are some examples.
In one book hailed as “his most ambitious novel”, one of the secondary characters for a few chapters is incorrectly referred to by the name of an entirely different character that died in the prequel. Offhand I remember one other scene which didn’t make sense until I figured out in one sentence he’d used the wrong name of the two characters involved.
Another was a six-part series, and at the end of one book one of the characters was catatonic, and the rhetoric of the other sounded like getting him out of it was the big quest-thing for the next volume, but at the start of that next book the poor sod was just a bit under the weather.
His last book that I gave a chance on one page said “she ran towards the forest, where she could get away since she knew every single tree”, and five pages later “she had never entered the forest, only walked along its edge”.

Re-reading and editing a manuscript before sending it to a publisher certainly is a good idea, even if it takes time.

Turning back to webcomics, the fun part is that there (among amateurs, of course), one piece of advice is to start your first project even if your art and all sucks, because the practise will help you get better, and not doing it means you probably won’t get better.

I should take that to heart.

Honestly at first I didn’t catch that #3 was drawn by a different artist, but now I saw the name on the cover, it does explain things. The most obvious difference are the outlines; guest(?)artist Christopher Jones uses more varied and bolder outlines, and also more spotted black. I guess I blamed that on the scenes.

Many of said scenes were flashbacks to Hunter’s past, or otherwise connected with it, stuff like that is pretty interesting, in my mind. It’s pretty serious, though, so the issue is less funny than the others.

My favourite moment is definitely Dingo showing that he’s not always as silly as he appears usually.

#4, Karine Charlebois back on the art. The faraway crowds were a bit meh with the random dots, but in turn the closeup was lovely, and over all the art’s again solid work with great expressions.

Time-wise this was pretty linear, only the first four pages taking place five days after the rest. I think having the cliffhanger on page 4 rather than the last page might be slightly unusual, but I don’t read that many comics.

The bad guys were nuts, but after the opening scene of the entire series – starring a criminal costumed as a thylacine – that shouldn’t be a surprise. A bit toeing the line for me, but still more hilarious than ridiculous. I’m very curious how Fang will develop.

Dead, She Said #1 (of 3, if I remember correctly), written by Steve Niles and illustrated by Bernie Wrightson, with colours by Grant Goleash can be pretty funny if you read Raymond Chandler for the laughs. I do.

It starts with your standard private detective, Coogan, waking up in a puddle of gore and blood. He is dead. After stuffing his entrails back inside and taping gaping holes in his belly and back shut, he sets out to find out who killed him. There’s another plot thread possibly involving monsters, but there’s no telling yet if it’s connected more than very indirectly to Coogan’s not-death. In addition to the usual problems, there’s also stuff like, “There was a big stink and it was wafting from yours truly.” And as I like it, by the end of the issue he’s in even bigger trouble.

The art is on the realistic side for a comic, with detailed inks, and just one spot where something that looked off pulled me out. The colouring is in a sort of brushstroke-look, by which I just mean it’s not airbrush-smooth, which is definitely a good thing in my opinion. All in all the art doesn’t make me go “Oh, wow, that looks great!”, but it does its job very well.

The printing seems a bit off, with what I think should be black looking dark grey instead, but paper and cover quality are very nice. IDW Publishing also gets major props from me for collecting all adverts at the end, rather than ripping apart the story with them.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.

No time travel this weekend, I wasn’t feeling so well, and was busy with other stuff. Now I wonder what that was, but, oh, well. A bunch of comics I had on my pull list arrived last week, though.

Gargoyles: Bad Guys #2

Greg Weisman seems to be awfully fond of those random jumps in time to tell a story. Oh, well. In this title isn’t as bad as in the main one, and apart from that I quite like the writing. The last pages definitely make me hope the next issue won’t be late. Or maybe this one wasn’t, and my sense of time is shot.
I think I’m detecting a pattern when it comes to Karine Charlesbois’ problems with backgrounds. The ones constructed with a ruler – modern city views and whatnot – are pretty darn good, but more organic stuff – a heap of trash, a tree that’s not far off – turns into a bunch of scribbles. Or maybe she’s just running out of time sometimes.
Anyway, over all the art is really pretty good. And I love, love, love that the women shown in the scenes towards the end actually have different faces and body shapes.

Gargoyles #8

Still with the way, way, way confusing timejumps. I’m looking forward to the arc being finished so I can re-read it in one go and maybe make sense of it.

The short-term writing I love, for example the juxtaposiotion of page 5 and 6, or the chat in the coffee shop. Getting a bit more insight into Gargoyle’s more or less normal clan life is a very nice touch, too.

I guess I don’t have to mention that I love Constance. XD

Nothing really to complain about art-wise, which means I get to say “YEAH, GREAT!
Looking forward to #9

Return of the Gremlins

A 3 issue miniseries published by Dark Horse Comics.

The somewhat more cartoony art is a nice change of pace. Random observation: Seems like #1 and #2 were only pencilled before colouring, and #3 also inked.

A rather light-hearted story, also a nice change.

The treatment of female characters is somewhat aggravating, though. There’s one who is named, Molly, who is the love interest and trophy for the male main character. Like the three other human women seen in passing, she’s super-thin. The dozen or so men of course have different body shapes.

In the Gremlins the male-to-female ratio seems to be something like 6:1, judging from a splash page showing a lot of them in one go, and while the guys are all equally pudgy, the gals have carricatured hourglass-figures, and one of them was even “look how sexy I am”-posing at the viewer/human main character.

What the fuck, really.