Beyond The Panels #9: And Now For Something Completely Different
So, I think it's safe to say I'm not a fan of indie books. Like, I get that there are lots of people out there who like twee millennial relationship books, erotica of every stripe, anthropomorphic animal comedy books, trippy meditations on life, and the use of the comic medium as an experimental storytelling tool, but I'm not that person. I like fantasy and sci-fi and motherfuckers in garishly colored suits hitting other motherfuckers in garishly colored suits. I understand the desire to tell personal stories and I get that not everyone wants to use the superhero/fantasy/sci-fi genres for doing so, but I'm not really interested if you aren't going to use those genres or, at the very least, I'm waaaay less likely to be interested in that kind of story.
That said, I do read indie books, but only ones from Image.
If I'm being real, being a someone who came up in the 90s comic community, it's hard for me to see Image as an indie company, because I still remember it was founded by the biggest names in the comic industry and it always seemed like it was a major company. However, if you just go by a company without corporate backing, that's Image in a nutshell- an indie publishing house. Image publishes pretty much every kind of book you can think of- superhero, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, crime, twee bullshit, and way more. I would go so far as to say that Image probably puts out a comparable number of books to DC every month. A lot of the industry's best and biggest writers work for the company- Rick Remender, Brian K. Vaughn, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Kelly Sue DeConnick Jason Aaron, Scott Snyder, Jeff Lemire, Jonathan Hickman, Kieron Gillen, and Mark Millar all have books published by Image.
Image was founded as a place for comic creators to go and own their own characters and concepts and right now, they're exemplifying that ethos more than ever- creators from all over the industry go to Image, get their ideas published and have complete ownership of them. Hell, a few years ago, a whole bunch of high profile Marvel writers defected to Image, leaving the House of Ideas in the lurch ever since. Image's books are a more mainstream flavor of indie, but that's okay. I like mainstream stuff, so it's nice to be able to go somewhere and support creators first and foremost and still get stories I like.
So, now that the preamble's out of the way, I'm going to talk about three of my favorite Image books. They're all (as of right now) complete stories- you can go to you local comic store and pick them up if you so choose and maybe you will so choose. I hope so.
The first is Tokyo Ghost by Rick Remender and Sean Murphy. It's set in 2089, in a world ravaged by humanity and addicted to technology. Los Angeles Constables Debbie Decay and Led Dent are sent to Japan, the last natural place on Earth, to lower the EMP field that keeps the country pure, and allow corporate raiders to come and rape it for its natural resources. The two are lovers and have known each other since childhood. Debbie is tech free; Led is completely and totally addicted to tech and goes through withdrawal upon their arrival to Japan. The two decide to forget the mission and live there forever, until the past comes back to haunt Dent and.... well, that would be telling. Suffice it to say, awesome shit happens.
I like Tokyo Ghost for a lot reasons. It's not a heavily nuanced book, but it deals with addiction, the cause of addiction, and relapse in a realistic way. It's full of black humor and beautifully drawn action. It also contains a lot of cool ideas- class warfare, the increased corporate control of our entertainment mediums, Philip K Dick-esque cyber punk infused with a manga sensibility, and more. There's a twist in the second volume that I didn't see coming, slightly changing the story we've been getting. It works, but it sort of lessens the impact of a lot of the social commentary, taking it to a different place. Maybe I was a reading a bit much into the comic, but I felt there was a lot of commentary on how our world is right now- a place where the rich keep getting rich on the backs of the poor, exercising way more control over everything than they let on. Of course, that's just my reading, if you aren't a super liberal like me, I think you'll a find a good trip into dystopian future filled with lots of action, humor, and emotion. In a lot of ways, besides being a manga cyberpunk dystopian tale, it's also a tale of addiction, co-dependence, and love. For that stuff alone, it gets a high recommendation from me. Check it out.
The next books I'm going to recommend is Prophet by Brandon Graham, Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, and Giannis Milonogiannis. Prophet has a history at Image- the character was created in Rob Liefeld's Youngblood and was endemic of Liefeld's big guns, big muscles hyper violent scowlers, a man from the future come back to the past to stop an apocalyptic future from happening. So, you know, just super fucking cliche. I'll admit to having some affection for the character, but I was a 12 year old who was obsessed with Terminator 2, so I feel like it's okay that I liked him. Well, to put it mildly and in the most cliche way possible, this Prophet isn't your father's Prophet (or, if you're my age, this Prophet isn't the one you grew up with, but it ruins my cliche little joke to say it that way, as does this long winded explanation, I should probably stop it, but when should I stop, oh my God this is becoming the Peter hurting his knee joke on Family Guy, shit, I have to...).
Prophet is set in the far flung future. Earth is ruins, inhabited by a variety of aliens, when a capsules drills to the surface and out steps John Prophet. From the word go, we're thrown into a future we know nothing about, assaulted by a species names and new social structures and all kinds of other minutiae. It's a lot like Dune in that way- we're dropped in the deep end and gradually learn to swim. We find out that this John Prophet is one of many clones, soldiers of the resurging Earth Empire, awakening across the galaxy, ready to take back what was stolen from them. Humanity as we know it today is gone- all that's left is the variety of vat grown clones of the Empire- Iron Johns and Empire Birthers and Star Johns and psychic Earth Mothers. We're also introduced to the man who brought down the Earth Empire, a John Prophet clone who rebelled and put himself into suspended animation in case the Empire ever came back. As the Earth Empire rebuilds and retakes the galaxy, he begin gathering a new army as well, ready to do what he did a millennia before again- end the enslaving Earth Empire.
Prophet is the kind of sci-fi that doesn't come along very often. It's not afraid to be weird and impenetrable; in fact, it sort of luxuriates in it. As a fan of Dune, I enjoy being thrown into a completely new world, gradually learning the rules and the structures of it. That said, Prophet isn't Dune. Dune is big idea sci-fi, a story about humanity and ecology and politics and religion. Prophet is cliche interstellar war sci-fi made interesting by all the weird little touches and the way the creators approach the whole thing. The book shifts between multiple characters and when it does, the artist changes. It's very different than most Image books in that way, which have one artist working on the book, but also like them, since it's the same corps of artists, who also all help write the book. It's very much a perfect collaboration.
I like that it brings back a character I had a youthful love of and makes him into something worthy of that love. Not just Prophet, either. The books also brings back, mostly in flashback, the rest of Youngblood and other Liefeld Extreme Studios characters and actually makes them, well, if not sort of cool, at least interesting enough where I wouldn't mind reading about these versions of them. That's actually a really big deal and is just another feather in the book's cap. It redeems some of the worst stuff of the 90s and does it while using a cliche story to drop some great sci-fi into our lives. I wish it was a deeper story (and there are definitely flashes of that), but I still love it for what it is and maybe you will, too.
Finally, my favorite book of the three, Phonogram by Kieron Gillen and Jaime McKelvie.
Phonogram is about a a type of magician called a phonomancer, who uses music as the source of their magic. The first volume, Rue Britannia, stars David Kohl. The second volume, The Singles Club, introduces a bunch of different phonomancers and features Kohl, his partner Kid-With-Knife, and Emily Aster. The last volume, Immaterial Girl, focuses on Emily Aster. It's honestly nothing short of brilliant.
I'm going to be honest- as good as the storytelling, characters, plots, and art of these three books is (and they are all pretty fucking stellar), what really makes me love this book is just the way I can relate to the characters. Sure, they're all British magic users who mostly like music I don't, but that doesn't matter, because there's a passion for music and clubbing and nights out and hedonism that I can completely understand because I have lived that life, too. So, sure, I may not have grown up in the Britpop scene like David Kohl, but I understand what it's like to devote one's self to a musical scene wholeheartedly. The volume he stars in in all about someone starting to erase his past and he has to find out how and why. The story deals a lot with identity and how much of our identity is bound up in our musical choices. In fact, when it comes right down to it, every volume of Phonogram is about that- identity and how we see ourselves and what makes us see ourselves that way. It's all deeply personal- you can tell that Kieron Gillen loves the music he's talking about and the characters represent him and people he knew, but it's also deeply universal as well. If you've ever loved music, you'll love Phonogram.
My favorite of the three is The Singles Club. It's seven different viewpoints of the same night and does some amazing character work. It's probably the best drawn one and every time I read it, it makes me miss my own crazy nights in Ybor City, drinking and dancing. There's no overarching story to it, because a night at a club has no overarching story to it- it's a shared event and each person's viewpoint of it is different. Gillen and McKelvie are able to capture a night out rather perfectly in a medium without light or sound and it's a great achievement. To go into it too much would be telling- it sort needs to be experienced. Each story is about a person and how they see their self and the world they live in. In order fro any explanation of each issue to make sense, I'd have to explain every character to you and that's more time than I want to take with it.
The third volume, Immaterial Girl, highlights Emily Aster and the deal she made with a entity called the King Behind The Screen to become who she is and how she almost loses everything. For me, it's the weakest volume, but that's not because it's bad or I don't like the characters or anything like that- it's just the third best of them. It's fun and clever and Emily Aster is a fascinating character. I understand who she is, who she was, and the lengths she went through to go from who she was to who she is. There's a lot of clever imagery in the book from a variety of music videos. There's a cool callback to some of the characters of The Singles Club in it.
Phonogram does something that the best indie stories should do- it takes something so specialized and personal (a love of Britpop and indie rock) and makes it so universal, the characters and themes so identifiable, and tells the story in such a way that anyone could read it and get into it. It brings an indie sensibility while also using story tropes that appeal to a mainstream audience. This is the type of comic I would give to people who never liked comics to read, something I used do with The Sandman, because all of us can relate to it. That and it's a kick ass contemporary fantasy story with great art and writing. If you can only read one of the three comics I've recommended, I would say this one should be the one you try. You won't regret it and if you do, well, I'm sorry. You're probably a lame person.
In fact, just read more Image books in general. Except The Walking Dead. Fuck that comic.
Next Issue: Are superhero movies good for the comic industry? Well, I have an opinion on that. So, if you wan to know one asshole's opinion on that, come back here next time for more....
Beyond The Panels!!!!
That said, I do read indie books, but only ones from Image.
If I'm being real, being a someone who came up in the 90s comic community, it's hard for me to see Image as an indie company, because I still remember it was founded by the biggest names in the comic industry and it always seemed like it was a major company. However, if you just go by a company without corporate backing, that's Image in a nutshell- an indie publishing house. Image publishes pretty much every kind of book you can think of- superhero, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, crime, twee bullshit, and way more. I would go so far as to say that Image probably puts out a comparable number of books to DC every month. A lot of the industry's best and biggest writers work for the company- Rick Remender, Brian K. Vaughn, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Kelly Sue DeConnick Jason Aaron, Scott Snyder, Jeff Lemire, Jonathan Hickman, Kieron Gillen, and Mark Millar all have books published by Image.
Image was founded as a place for comic creators to go and own their own characters and concepts and right now, they're exemplifying that ethos more than ever- creators from all over the industry go to Image, get their ideas published and have complete ownership of them. Hell, a few years ago, a whole bunch of high profile Marvel writers defected to Image, leaving the House of Ideas in the lurch ever since. Image's books are a more mainstream flavor of indie, but that's okay. I like mainstream stuff, so it's nice to be able to go somewhere and support creators first and foremost and still get stories I like.
So, now that the preamble's out of the way, I'm going to talk about three of my favorite Image books. They're all (as of right now) complete stories- you can go to you local comic store and pick them up if you so choose and maybe you will so choose. I hope so.
The first is Tokyo Ghost by Rick Remender and Sean Murphy. It's set in 2089, in a world ravaged by humanity and addicted to technology. Los Angeles Constables Debbie Decay and Led Dent are sent to Japan, the last natural place on Earth, to lower the EMP field that keeps the country pure, and allow corporate raiders to come and rape it for its natural resources. The two are lovers and have known each other since childhood. Debbie is tech free; Led is completely and totally addicted to tech and goes through withdrawal upon their arrival to Japan. The two decide to forget the mission and live there forever, until the past comes back to haunt Dent and.... well, that would be telling. Suffice it to say, awesome shit happens.
I like Tokyo Ghost for a lot reasons. It's not a heavily nuanced book, but it deals with addiction, the cause of addiction, and relapse in a realistic way. It's full of black humor and beautifully drawn action. It also contains a lot of cool ideas- class warfare, the increased corporate control of our entertainment mediums, Philip K Dick-esque cyber punk infused with a manga sensibility, and more. There's a twist in the second volume that I didn't see coming, slightly changing the story we've been getting. It works, but it sort of lessens the impact of a lot of the social commentary, taking it to a different place. Maybe I was a reading a bit much into the comic, but I felt there was a lot of commentary on how our world is right now- a place where the rich keep getting rich on the backs of the poor, exercising way more control over everything than they let on. Of course, that's just my reading, if you aren't a super liberal like me, I think you'll a find a good trip into dystopian future filled with lots of action, humor, and emotion. In a lot of ways, besides being a manga cyberpunk dystopian tale, it's also a tale of addiction, co-dependence, and love. For that stuff alone, it gets a high recommendation from me. Check it out.
The next books I'm going to recommend is Prophet by Brandon Graham, Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, and Giannis Milonogiannis. Prophet has a history at Image- the character was created in Rob Liefeld's Youngblood and was endemic of Liefeld's big guns, big muscles hyper violent scowlers, a man from the future come back to the past to stop an apocalyptic future from happening. So, you know, just super fucking cliche. I'll admit to having some affection for the character, but I was a 12 year old who was obsessed with Terminator 2, so I feel like it's okay that I liked him. Well, to put it mildly and in the most cliche way possible, this Prophet isn't your father's Prophet (or, if you're my age, this Prophet isn't the one you grew up with, but it ruins my cliche little joke to say it that way, as does this long winded explanation, I should probably stop it, but when should I stop, oh my God this is becoming the Peter hurting his knee joke on Family Guy, shit, I have to...).
Prophet is set in the far flung future. Earth is ruins, inhabited by a variety of aliens, when a capsules drills to the surface and out steps John Prophet. From the word go, we're thrown into a future we know nothing about, assaulted by a species names and new social structures and all kinds of other minutiae. It's a lot like Dune in that way- we're dropped in the deep end and gradually learn to swim. We find out that this John Prophet is one of many clones, soldiers of the resurging Earth Empire, awakening across the galaxy, ready to take back what was stolen from them. Humanity as we know it today is gone- all that's left is the variety of vat grown clones of the Empire- Iron Johns and Empire Birthers and Star Johns and psychic Earth Mothers. We're also introduced to the man who brought down the Earth Empire, a John Prophet clone who rebelled and put himself into suspended animation in case the Empire ever came back. As the Earth Empire rebuilds and retakes the galaxy, he begin gathering a new army as well, ready to do what he did a millennia before again- end the enslaving Earth Empire.
Prophet is the kind of sci-fi that doesn't come along very often. It's not afraid to be weird and impenetrable; in fact, it sort of luxuriates in it. As a fan of Dune, I enjoy being thrown into a completely new world, gradually learning the rules and the structures of it. That said, Prophet isn't Dune. Dune is big idea sci-fi, a story about humanity and ecology and politics and religion. Prophet is cliche interstellar war sci-fi made interesting by all the weird little touches and the way the creators approach the whole thing. The book shifts between multiple characters and when it does, the artist changes. It's very different than most Image books in that way, which have one artist working on the book, but also like them, since it's the same corps of artists, who also all help write the book. It's very much a perfect collaboration.
I like that it brings back a character I had a youthful love of and makes him into something worthy of that love. Not just Prophet, either. The books also brings back, mostly in flashback, the rest of Youngblood and other Liefeld Extreme Studios characters and actually makes them, well, if not sort of cool, at least interesting enough where I wouldn't mind reading about these versions of them. That's actually a really big deal and is just another feather in the book's cap. It redeems some of the worst stuff of the 90s and does it while using a cliche story to drop some great sci-fi into our lives. I wish it was a deeper story (and there are definitely flashes of that), but I still love it for what it is and maybe you will, too.
Finally, my favorite book of the three, Phonogram by Kieron Gillen and Jaime McKelvie.
Phonogram is about a a type of magician called a phonomancer, who uses music as the source of their magic. The first volume, Rue Britannia, stars David Kohl. The second volume, The Singles Club, introduces a bunch of different phonomancers and features Kohl, his partner Kid-With-Knife, and Emily Aster. The last volume, Immaterial Girl, focuses on Emily Aster. It's honestly nothing short of brilliant.
I'm going to be honest- as good as the storytelling, characters, plots, and art of these three books is (and they are all pretty fucking stellar), what really makes me love this book is just the way I can relate to the characters. Sure, they're all British magic users who mostly like music I don't, but that doesn't matter, because there's a passion for music and clubbing and nights out and hedonism that I can completely understand because I have lived that life, too. So, sure, I may not have grown up in the Britpop scene like David Kohl, but I understand what it's like to devote one's self to a musical scene wholeheartedly. The volume he stars in in all about someone starting to erase his past and he has to find out how and why. The story deals a lot with identity and how much of our identity is bound up in our musical choices. In fact, when it comes right down to it, every volume of Phonogram is about that- identity and how we see ourselves and what makes us see ourselves that way. It's all deeply personal- you can tell that Kieron Gillen loves the music he's talking about and the characters represent him and people he knew, but it's also deeply universal as well. If you've ever loved music, you'll love Phonogram.
My favorite of the three is The Singles Club. It's seven different viewpoints of the same night and does some amazing character work. It's probably the best drawn one and every time I read it, it makes me miss my own crazy nights in Ybor City, drinking and dancing. There's no overarching story to it, because a night at a club has no overarching story to it- it's a shared event and each person's viewpoint of it is different. Gillen and McKelvie are able to capture a night out rather perfectly in a medium without light or sound and it's a great achievement. To go into it too much would be telling- it sort needs to be experienced. Each story is about a person and how they see their self and the world they live in. In order fro any explanation of each issue to make sense, I'd have to explain every character to you and that's more time than I want to take with it.
The third volume, Immaterial Girl, highlights Emily Aster and the deal she made with a entity called the King Behind The Screen to become who she is and how she almost loses everything. For me, it's the weakest volume, but that's not because it's bad or I don't like the characters or anything like that- it's just the third best of them. It's fun and clever and Emily Aster is a fascinating character. I understand who she is, who she was, and the lengths she went through to go from who she was to who she is. There's a lot of clever imagery in the book from a variety of music videos. There's a cool callback to some of the characters of The Singles Club in it.
Phonogram does something that the best indie stories should do- it takes something so specialized and personal (a love of Britpop and indie rock) and makes it so universal, the characters and themes so identifiable, and tells the story in such a way that anyone could read it and get into it. It brings an indie sensibility while also using story tropes that appeal to a mainstream audience. This is the type of comic I would give to people who never liked comics to read, something I used do with The Sandman, because all of us can relate to it. That and it's a kick ass contemporary fantasy story with great art and writing. If you can only read one of the three comics I've recommended, I would say this one should be the one you try. You won't regret it and if you do, well, I'm sorry. You're probably a lame person.
In fact, just read more Image books in general. Except The Walking Dead. Fuck that comic.
Next Issue: Are superhero movies good for the comic industry? Well, I have an opinion on that. So, if you wan to know one asshole's opinion on that, come back here next time for more....
Beyond The Panels!!!!
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