Triple A: Ladies' Choice

While Ninth Art's editors are sent to sober up, three outspoken female comic readers take their seats at the bar and crack open a hot copy of Previews to offer their views on the current output of the mainstream publishers.
27 October 2003

In a change to our regular programming, Triple A regulars Andrew, Antony and Alasdair step aside for three all-new, all-different As. Andrea Burgess, Alex de Campi and Anna Jellinek are your hosts for an overview of the comics mainstream, from colouring to wish-fulfilment, from maladjusted heroes to, well, more colouring.

ANDREA BURGESS: So here we are, flicking through a copy of Previews. What catches your eye?

ANNA JELLINEK: Oh, CRUSH from Rocket Comics. Very strangely, I recognized it as being written by Jason Hall just from the style of the illustration, before I saw his credit.

BURGESS: How'd that happen?

JELLINEK: Because, judging by the art on the page previewed here, Sean Murphy's style is very similar to Cliff Chiang, who I really like. And in BEWARE THE CREEPER from Vertigo, a lot of the characters seem to run around screaming with their heads in their hands, which is what this story appears to have, too.

ALEX DE CAMPI: It's very similar sort of orangey Vertigo-style colouring, as well.

JELLINEK: That kind of colouring is everywhere, now.

DE CAMPI: Vertigo seems especially orange, though. Seen HELLBLAZER recently? It's all orange and brown. Don't get me started on HELLBLAZER, though, and its depictions of women.

BURGESS: I just wonder, if people in Jason Hall's comics run around with their heads in their hands all the time, if it's a case of "writing what you know". Might Jason Hall have a problem with chronic headaches? This is my new dazzling theory of comics.

JELLINEK: Also, women who tend to be in a severe state of undress...

DE CAMPI: (Singing) Wish fulfilment, wish fulfilment!

JELLINEK: Wish fulfillment? Y'think? Now, what about this guy? KAMIKAZE! It's the extreme sports superhero!

DE CAMPI: What is up with Cliffhanger? About fifty per cent of the stuff they're publishing is fab, and they're bringing a lot of new stuff out, and the other fifty per cent...

JELLINEK: What's the fifty per cent that's good? I don't read any of it.

DE CAMPI: ARROWSMITH by Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco, and it's beautiful. It has gentle, soft colouring, which made the book lovely, as opposed to destroying it, like Lee Loughridge's colouring would have done. The first issue has a little bit of over-writing in it; the main character going "and by doing this, I can mean something to the world!" And you think, "Yeah?"

BURGESS: Frozen in action for exposition! And... move on...

DE CAMPI: Actually, surprisingly, it's less expositiony than his AVENGERS stuff, which I opened up the other day and thought, "Too many words on the page! It's a graphic format; I should not see so many words. Blah!" And I put it back.

JELLINEK: Yeah, I find Ed Brubaker does that a lot as well; tends to over-write.

DE CAMPI: Less so in SLEEPER. I love noir stuff, though. So, anyway, ARROWSMITH is good, and... Actually, that's the only Cliffhanger title that is good. POSSESSED is a huge disappointment. It's got bad art and bad writing about demons. Now, I normally love things with demons in, but no. Liam Sharp draws all the women looking like Linda Hamilton from T2, and there's really pointless exposition about characters' pasts between the team. They should know each other, because they're a team, but they're asking each other really pointless questions, on the level of, "What's your name?" I'd be surprised if it makes it beyond six issues; it's just appalling. It's just so bad, I couldn't believe it was being done by a major publisher.

JELLINEK: There's a lot of bad stuff being done by major publishers!

BURGESS: It just occurs to me that if his name is Kamikaze, surely his entire mission should be to kill himself? That would be a short series.

JELLINEK: It's only five issues.

BURGESS: So for four issues, he fails?

JELLINEK: They'll probably bring him back. They'll retcon him.

BURGESS: Pthhhhbbbbt!

JELLINEK: Well, anyway, the style of colouring on KAMIKAZE really isn't to my tastes. I prefer a more muted palette, myself. Next.

BURGESS: Huh, BAD GIRLS. Lovely covers by Darwyn Cooke. I picked the first one up and the interior art looks a bit muddy. If only it had that poppy thing going on inside, too. Which makes me feel shallow. The ink work looks a bit as though the paper was too absorbent. It's got soft-looking brushwork and angular figures, and it doesn't quite gel. Some people can pull it off. Bryan O'Malley can pull that style off. The cover holds so much promise and then Jennifer Grey's interiors are a big letdown.

JELLINEK: The colours are really muddy. It would work a lot better as a black and white comic.

DE CAMPI: It's DC orange Vertigo colouring!

JELLINEK: It's brown. Actually, Lee Loughridge used to colour on POWERS, and his colouring was exactly the same. I really liked it on the early issues of POWERS because it fitted the whole noir gritty cop thing.

DE CAMPI: He's colouring HELLBLAZER as well. I really don't like his colours. Ah, FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE! We have love.

BURGESS: That is fun. It's like I've been put into a time warp and gone back 16 years.

DE CAMPI: The world needs more crap, socially maladjusted superheroes.

BURGESS: Aren't there enough for you?

JELLINEK: I think they're all crap and socially maladjusted! That's part of the problem.

DE CAMPI: Yeah, but Giffen and DeMatteis take the piss out of them!

JELLINEK: Yeah, they do need more self-aware writers who can take the mickey.

BURGESS: If you get writers who take their crap, socially maladjusted superheroes seriously, you get DK2. Is that what you want?

DE CAMPI: Everything about FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE actually has a reasonably light touch; they don't try to make it super-angsty about how shallow the genre is; they're just having fun with it, which is nice.

BURGESS: "Genre shallow? We're shallow!" Yay! Just because they're comics, doesn't mean they can't be shallow when you want them to be.

JELLINEK: The colouring works, too! Wow, I love the cover to FABLES #18.

DE CAMPI: It's Vertigo's second greatest-selling book. It's Y: THE LAST MAN, then FABLES, then THE LOSERS, strangely.

JELLINEK: It is weird, because they're all fairly new titles, in Vertigo terms.

BURGESS: Bill Willingham is just doing what Neil Gaiman was doing with The Dreaming and stuff like that, but with fairy tales - and having a whole lot more fun, taking it less seriously. There's no goth moping!

JELLINEK: There's a lot less doom and gloom, but there's also more guns and violence, which appeals to - and I hate to describe it this way, but it appeals to the post-Tarantino environment, where guns and violence, and bad jokes about them are more acceptable.

BURGESS: Angry librarians on the lam!

JELLINEK: And the colouring is nice. It really suits the artwork, which is really pretty, anyway. It's just a good overall package.

DE CAMPI: God, doom and gloom. Look at Batman. We've just had so much dark and gloomy Batman, Arkham Asylum stuff. It's just... Gah.

JELLINEK: (wearily) Yeah, and women getting beaten up.

DE CAMPI: Yawn. Batman is getting a bit like X-Men. There are just too many different titles. Instead of having one really good title, they just have ten of them, and then you don't know which one to buy, and you buy the wrong one and you go, "Agh! It's crap!"

JELLINEK: The only Batman title I'm reading is GOTHAM CENTRAL, and that's Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker pretty much ignoring the superhero histrionics and concentrating on police drama instead. And the only X title I even like the look of, colour-wise is X-STATIX, but that's because it has a fairly limited palette, even with all the poppy colours. NYX looks quite pretty, but it's been talked about so much I don't want to talk about it anymore, because I don't think we can say anything that hasn't already been said.

BURGESS: Yeah, Josh Middleton's art is pretty pretty, but enh.

DE CAMPI: I'm not sure 15-year-old girls will buy it, but we'll see. We need more women writing comics.

BURGESS: Oh, anything X is just... I'm not going to buy a Marvel comic until they issue X-HUSBAND. And X-GIRLFRIEND, and X-WIFE. They could team up and just fight.

With thanks to Orbital Comics & Collectibles in Old Compton Street, London.

Burgess, de Campi & Jellinek are researcher Andrea Burgess, writer Alex de Campi, and Sequential Tart's Anna Jellinek.

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