The Semimystical Adventures of the Superfisters
Okay, we're sorry, but if you're not totally in love with Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life we're going to have to fight you. Recommended highly by the froods at Isotope Comics as well as by us, It's the first of seven volumes chronicling the life and love of a 23-year old doofy-cute shyguy in Toronto, written and illustrated by Bryan Lee O'Malley. Scott's dating a mature high school girl, but his eye's been caught by a mysterious girl he's seen skating in his dreams; meanwhile his friends attend band practice (their band: "The Sex Bob-ombs") and cook bacon and live casual, friendly, just-like-you-and-me sorts of lives; they work, they drink, they party. The characters have a Joss-Whedony ability to be sensitive and sarcastic at the same time -- such as when Scott wakes up in the morning and says, "I wish I could turn into a morphing ball and roll to the bathroom from here, instead of having to stand up," and his ladyfriend replies, "I used to know a guy who could do that. He said it wasn't that great." But it's not all hipster navel-gazing; everyone in the Scott Pilgrim universe has an uncontrollable spontaneity, so just when you think you know what's coming next, two characters unexpectedly hook up or suddenly weild mystical powers to summon a flock of -- well, we don't want to ruin the f**king awesome ending for you. It's explodey enough for your edgy friends, and emo enough for your weepy ones, and at about $12 it would be a perfect purchase if there happened to be some kind of upcoming gift-giving holiday.
After the jump: astronauts in trouble, girly fairy stuff, Tiki-lounge noir, and Spiderman eats human flesh.
Zombies are like monkeys and pirates: add them to any situation, and it's instantly made 85% more awesome. Following that empirical data, the scientists at Marvel Comics have created the "Marvel Zombies" universe, starring all your favorite heros like Spiderman and The Hulk and Wolverine ... only undead. They've got eerie soulless eyes and creepy teeth and some of them lose limbs and have holes punched through their torsos, but they just keep staggering towards the living to feed. It's not very pretty. Will humanity survive? Um... probably not.
There's a very feminine quality to Vögelein, a Germanish story by Jane Irwin and Jeff Berndt about a tiny robotic fairy, imbued with life by mystical forces, flitting around in a big scary modern world full of dangerous men and real fairies made bitter by the advent of industry. Chief among the tiny Vögelein's concerns are her own miraculousness -- she ponders her impossible, magical existance with some frequency -- and her urgent need to be possessed by a man. As she's just exploring the world for the first time as the book starts, the story feels very much like an old-fashioned tale of adolescence and womanhood; Vögelein's journey consists primarily of displaying her specialness, and pondering her upbringing, and seeking and testing potential male caretakers. The story's art and dialogue are ambitious, and unfortunately neither one quite reaches its aspirations -- quotations from Emily Dickenson and lines like "You tell me I'm running down, but you're withering away like a dying animal, lashing out at everything around but never stopping the pain!" make us wince with melodrama -- didn't we read something similar the other day on a 14-year-old girl's Xanga?
It's not quite noir and it's not quite Tiki -- could we call it Toir? or Niki? Or how about just "Hawaiian Dick," by B. Clay Moore, Steven Griffin, and Nick Derington. Set betwixt resorts on some tropical island, the story follows a hard-boiled private eye named Byrd, hired by competing mafia bosses to spy on each other. Add some stiff drinks, fedoras, mod 50s decor, and a Scooby-Dooish hinting at supernatural forces, and you've got pretty much everything you'd expect this kinda story to feature, and very little that you wouldn't.
"Astronauts in Trouble"?! Oh no! Someone save the astronauts! In Space: 1959 by Larry Young and Charlie Adlard, the latest installment in the AiT series, a crack team of local reporters hit the big time with a scoop about a secret space mission being launched from Peru. The goal: beat the Russians to the moon! Now this is the type of schlocky-fun noir we can really get behind -- mean looking men spitting out "tell it to the Marines," fast-talking lady aviators of the type that Sky Captain only wishes Angelina Jolie could've been, heros draped in the American flag and reporters who mean to get to the bottom of things. You want nuance? Go take a nature hike. Space: 1959's busy throwing punches at Commies and hollering gold like "My rocket; shiny, perfect, reflective. The sum and total of man's technology. It will be exhibited in museums. Children will workship it, while their parents stand in awe." Nothing psychologically revealing about that line, is there? We didn't think so.