Judge Dredd Mega City Two: the los angeles tale!

Griffin Mauser

Citizen Jury

Memorandum: Judge Dredd: Mega City Two #1

000001

To Citizens Wolk, Farinas, Hill, Long, Tipton, Wood

Gentle Citizens:

Regarding Judge Dredd: Mega City Two #1

I could not be more delighted! I like this Dredd: no sarcasm, all the tough and a Mega City straight out of Luc Besson! I think you have hit the judge in the lawgiver!

 Judge Dredd in a second Mega City, similarly gigantic and overwhelming but with a vastly different philosophy toward the law.  This is gonna be great! What seems crazy is that Dredd will perform exactly as expected within the law and this new city will turn out to be much like home, at least as it applies to Joe and his job.  And, even better, he’s going undercover (I don’t remember him ever doing so before)!  I can hear the gravel in his voice; Joe talks as he should, his tone, his patterns, the essence of Eastwood and Keitel. And he’s serious. He is the straightman.  Back in DC’s Legends of the Law, Joe Dredd actually made the only sarcastic remark I have read.  I had to quit reading it.  Dredd is never sarcastic; this is why when he tells a perp, “report to the iso-cubes”, perps do.  It’s Dredd’s world that obfuscates, exaggerated and threatens.  Dredd is the axis of the law and never moves.  I like what you’re doing!

Farinas is in his element it seems; if he has half as much fun drawing this stuff as I have reading it, I’m sure he feels a little guilty.  From his Darrowesque splash page (Mr. F, I have seen every line and read every sign) to closeups, Farinas controls the detail to match the shot.  Not afraid to draw a characters, hm thirty-two characters in that frame, but not married to crowds or detail. Sequences of plot are simple and straightforwardly presented without seeming empty and just around the corner will be another slice of frenetic Mega-City pie! And it’s just gonna get better! Already Farina’s figures are more individual than his beautiful work on Catalyst. And so much more to see!

Hill’s color work manages to create the garish decadence of Mega City Two without losing the signal in the noise.  Deft manipulation of a screaming loud palette, use of tonal gradations, and special effects like the flashback and television “filters” evoke the garish color of the old Eagle books, shows off Farina’s linework and makes perfect visual sense.

Citizen Tipton, please maintain the Dredd characterization, continue the historical and literary information about the Dredd books.  I now have an idea how much Dredd I want to find. IDW has impressed me with its respect for and dedication to existing properties.  You guys really take the high road with your works and it shows.  Thanks for bringing such a good Dredd back to the table.

So there you are guys, All you have to do now is get even better.  Don’t screw it up!

Citizen Juror Griffin Mauser

Mega City Weird

Austin Texas

By Art We Live: Scott McCloud's The Sculptor

Copyright 2015

First Second Books

NY NY

490 pages

By art we live.  These four words appear at the bottom of the copyright page and drive David Smith’s story in Scott McCloud’s  new work, The Sculptor.

David Smith has seen success and lost favor due to his inherent inability to behave sociably and now he struggles daily to keep body and soul together in New York, until the afternoon of a “very bad day” when he meets his Uncle Harry in a local diner. 

Dead Uncle Harry.

 “What would you give for your art, David?” Harry asks.

“I’d give my life.”

Now David has the ability to mold any material with just his hands and only two hundred days to live. He spends his two hundred days searching for meaning: who is David Smith, what is art, what is most important?  And he meets Meg, the angel who tells him “everything will be alright.”

With help from Meg, his friends, and dead Uncle Harry, David begins to rebuild himself, painfully constructing a meaningful life as he navigates the maze of relationships with his new love, Meg, his friends, the art community and the rest of the world, fighting to create a true art, a true identity, and a true life.

Scott McCloud, creator of Zot! and Understanding Comics and its companions, has crafted a virtuoso combination of art and story with only the most traditional graphic tools. If you want to make comics, you can learn it all from just this one work.  He creates tone with a simple pallet of blue, white and black that can alternately alienate or sanctify characters and scenes; express awe, loneliness or distance in time or space. Panels that bleed off the edge of the page make dramatic transitions, create a sense of scale, or establish simultaneity or internalized focus. Narrow panel borders with white gutters control conventional passage of time, helping to create rhythm with their size, shape, and position, but McCloud manipulates even these, creating intimacy with panels placed without gutters, separated only by black lines, varying the thickness to stretch quiet moments into tears. 

His content, too, counterbalances the palette and layout; establishing panels of cityscapes, interiors, parkland and suburbia filled with the rejectamenta of daily life are interspersed with panels empty of backgrounds altogether focusing attention on moments of characterization, facial expression, or dialogue.  McCloud’s panels are simple and unpretentious, yet sufficiently grounded in real detail to root a story filled with moments of poignancy, humor, tragedy and intelligence. These patterns pace his story, creating a full world without cluttering every page in detail. And Scott McCloud is apparently a sculptor as well, creating a world of work ranging from pedestrian to in David’s hands.

But if you have ever seen any of McCloud’s works, you already know he can draw.  Apparently he can write, too.  David Smith leaps and stumbles to his destiny through a world filled with ephemeral moments, running subplots, and a humor and love obviously Scott McCloud’s own. When Harry tells David he could’ve drawn funny books for a living, “those guys make tons of money,” David muses, “I’m …not sure that’s right.” Later, Uncle Harry admonishes, “and no crime fighting either!”  McCloud characterizes David through these moments.  David’s deep love of his family and his close friend, Ollie, are revealed in Ollie’s recognition of moments from their lives in David’s sculpture. Ollie’s abusive relationship with the upstart trust-fund-baby-cum-artist Finn develops David’s artistic aesthetic, the heart of his need to create. David’s promises (the “thirty six” of them are almost a character) both characterize him and drive the story. And David’s life is full, there are few cracks left unexplored.  Seemingly unrelated events reinforce the verisimilitude that grounds the whole work: when one David Smith is shot, another David Smith calls to reassure his family that he is alright; friends worry that their recipes are not well received at a parties; life surrounds David.  These details, dovetailed into his two hundred days fill every nook and cranny with experience, and David learns what Meg knew, and he didn’t: Every minute is an ocean…let them in…let them all in. David does, defining himself, his art and his legacy in a startling climax.

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

New Character Parade

As is my wont, I came across Johnny Ryan's NEW CHARACTER PARADE from Pigeon Press collecting strips originally published for VICE?  I was wandering through Oat Willies, here in Austin, and looking for new comics.  I like independent and guerrilla sorts of projects and picked this one up.  Twelve frame pages with a strict grid chronicle the mostly gross, often clever, sometimes bright adventures of random imaginary characters.  Sometimes it's parody of popular works, referential, and almost always filled with shit, piss, rape or gore.

I may not need to buy anymore; I gave him my twelve bux already, but I will mention one supreme self referential strip: The Best of VICE Magazine Online Comments by Anonymous.  Know thyself; funny animals comment on their hatred of Ryan's shitty-worst sense of humor-can't draw-you're an asshole-fucking asshole-shit/sex/gratuitous violence-pathetic and degrading-Mike Diana ripoff-idiot-use of stereotypes-unfunny strips in Ryan's recognition of, and apparent apathy toward, the audience.

I'll grant his exercise of First Amendment freedom and applaud anyone who has published more than me.  If you like shocking material--it makes me snigger at its best--ask God (google it) and take a look.  If nothing else, it'll keep your mother out of your "sock drawer".

I am a Geek! Not the biting-off-the-heads-of-pigeons-circus geek, but a lover of cult phenomena geek. Comics are my deep and abiding love. Since before I could read, the adventures and bright colors of superheroes, gunfighters, soldiers and monsters have produced a moral code and an engaging artistic domain that fascinate and delight me.

Four colors for a dime! Heroes do not kill! No injury to the eye! I love it for its simplicity, in its righteousness and its evil.

Herein lies the tales that follow.