Iron Man 3's Comic Book Origins

This weekend in America, one of the most highly anticipated film sequels in comicdom history will open. IRON MAN 3 has already taken the rest of the world by storm, earning 195.3 million US dollars in 42 countries, crossing the $185.1 million opening threshold set by AVENGERS ASSEMBLE (the worldwide title) and breaking a number of records for the biggest opening weekend ever in countries throughout Asia and South America as well as the UK. The film opens state-side this coming weekend and looks to replicate the ambition of the last Marvel film–if on a far less cosmic scale.

You'll notice in the UK trailer above the appearance of longtime Iron Man antagonist, The Mandarin, whose existence was hinted in the first IRON MAN film via the terrorist group "The Ten Rings," referencing the source of the super villain's power. It's great to see Sir Ben Kingsley entering the Marvel Universe after a false start in the aborted original SPIDER-MAN 3, which would have seen him in the role of The Vulture. Producer Avi Arad in a textbook example of poor judgment chose to swap The Vulture for Venom and then mysteriously added Gwen Stacy as well, which helped make a mess of things even if the massive box-office didn't reflect it. Future disagreements between production and original series director Sam Raimi led to a parting of company and the unfortunate reboot of the series by director Marc Webb. The moral of the story: don't swap an Oscar winner for a sitcom star. Ever.

THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN (2008)
by Matt Fraction & Salvador Larroca
Issue #18, Page 22: Splash
Graphite and ink on board
11" x 17"
$1,200.00

You may also notice another mobile, armored, and militarized suit from the comics, The Iron Patriot. In this incarnation, which is reportedly adapted from the Warren Ellis "Extremis" story arc, The Iron Patriot is an upgrade to the War Machine armor, rather than an enemy (as originally depicted in the Matt Fraction / Salvador Larroca series Invincible Iron Man), which may arise from Sony holding the rights to the Norman Osbourne character as part of their Spider-Man deal, and this franchise is part of Walt Disney Studios' Marvel Cinematic Universe. So in IRON MAN 3, Iron Patriot will be the new armor of Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes, used to put a patriotic face on America's super soldiers following the events of THE AVENGERS. Regardless, it's nice to see a great costume gracing the big screen, and personally gratifying because the first appearance of the Iron Patriot (from Invincible Iron Man #18) was featured in the first Pop-Sequentialism exhibition and show catalog. It's still available, too. Contact me for purchase details.


I've begun negotiations to curate a museum exhibition in Southern California of the next incarnation of Pop-Sequentialism, so look for details here soon.

Another trailer to hit the world of fandom with a great, big bang is THOR: DARK WORLD, which will be the eighth film in the Disney/Marvel Universe. Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor helms a script from Saving Private Ryan writer Robert Rodat. And it looks appropriately badass:

THOR (2009)
by J. Michael Straczynski & Olivier Coipel
Issue #10, Page 9: Splash Page
Graphite and ink on board
17" x 11"
$1,500.00

There doesn't seem to be a direct connection to a specific run of the comics–but the movie rights to the Fantastic Four have reverted to Marvel Studios, so a post-credit Doctor Doom sequence can't be ruled out just yet. With CAPTAIN AMERICA: WINTER SOLDIER, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and AVENGERS 2 all forthcoming and leading up to a Thanos Infinity Gauntlet War, it wouldn't be quite right in my book if everybody's favorite Latverian dictator wasn't involved. If so, it's possible that this new Thor film may take some more incidental points from J. Michael Straczynski's great run in the comics. Among my favorites is this splash page of Balder confronting his brother Thor over his rightful claim to the throne of Asgard. Since Marvel hasn't divulged plans for a third Thor film, and industry insiders speculate that team films will be the preferred format following AVENGERS 2, Ragnarok could be a big plot point in THOR: DARK WORLD, and if so, this event which helps to kick-off those events may be featured prominently. With Brian Michael Bendis calling most of the shots at Marvel these days, and with so many opportunities to work some of his own plots into the cinematic timeline, it would seem like a grave mistake to not try to weave the likely looming FF reboot into the box office megablockbusters already on schedule.

Since Siege is unlikely to come to fruition as long as Sony holds the rights to all X-MEN properties, the Loki and Doctor Doom team-up in the MJS run on THOR seems like the most transitionable storyline.

And owning an Olivier Coipel page from one of the all time great collaborations is its own reward.

The Great Influence of the Late Margaret Thatcher on Modern Comics

Maggie bought the farm yesterday, and I doubt that Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano, Brendan McCarthy, or any of the UK comic writers who emerged in the mainstream in the 1980s are doing much grieving. In fact, a great deal of those writer's early work is a direct result of living under Margaret Thatcher's rule, a contentious era of upheaval which helped earn her nickname of "The Iron Lady." When sifting through the sanctimonious epitaphs that are sure to appear in newspapers and news programs between now and her funeral remember that Prime Minister Thatcher called Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela "a terrorist."

Here in the USA, Thatcher's allegiance to Ronald Reagan earned her much higher praise than she received in her own country. Of course the nightly American newscast didn't feature the constant hunger strikes, worker strikes, public rioting and general dissent that festered in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and throughout the British Isles in response to her poll tax, union busting, state-supported terror tactics and racially and economically divisive politics. While American punks blasted anti-Thatcher anthems from their Japanese boom boxes, comprehension of the British condition remained nearly non-existent. While the Clash, Elvis Costello, and U2 penned song after song attacking The Baroness to the wider pop audience, the severity of British austerity was largely lost on Americans. Her deregulation of the markets, privatization of the dockyards, and general lack of sympathy for the working class left a legacy of unemployment and heroin addiction.

But comic book fans got the straight dope from the source.

Readers of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta got a stark dose of anti-thatcherism. Moore exposed the homophobic Section 28 Law that vaguely forbade the publication or presentation of any materials that promote homosexuality. V's Larkhill Resettlement Camp is a fascistic, nightmare scenario of what many feared would be the next step. The totalitarian government presented in his groundbreaking anarchists tale is very much modeled on Thatcher's Tory party. The extent of terror-state interrogation techniques allowed by British Police remains mostly unknown to the majority of Americans–even those who read about them in V, who perhaps thought it part of the fictional aspects of the story. The anti-establishment aspects of V for Vendetta would become more prominent and more polarized in Moore's Watchmen, which featured graffiti silhouettes like Banksy's long before most people were aware of him. Banksy's most popular image of a scarfed man throwing a tear gas cannister is, itself,  straight out of the era of the Brixton Riots.  

Moore also wrote Maggie into his Miracleman/Marvelman series in issue 16, where she scoffs at the idea of market interference. It's hard to believe after the economic collapse of 2008 that the dangers of deregulation had been outlined in a superhero comic book released back in December 1989. The hero's sympathy for the aged leader in spite of her obtuse uncompromising nature is prophetic of what many Brits and most Americans saw on their televisions last night. Moore foresaw the pending candy-coating over two decades ago, not that it was so difficult to predict. The visibly shaken Thatcher depicted by American artist John Totleben in the sixth panel on the page appears moved to tears, which is consistent with reports of her state upon exiting Downing Street almost a year later following her resignation from office on November, 22 1990. Moore completists will note that Thatcher's resignation took place a mere seventeen days after Guy Fawkes Night.



Grant Morrison's visionary and rarely seen St. Swithin's Day features an assassination publicity stunt with Thatcher as the intended target. In the UK, it is illegal to depict the assassination of any actual politician in any form–satire included, so Morrison had to be very clever about the motive of his young protagonist, who in the final frame threatens her with... his finger. Morrison's Scotland was the most heavily hit by Thatch, who swept like a wrecking ball through the mines, the steel industry, the car factories, shipbuilding and engineering and oversaw the demise of the communities which had built their livelihoods around them. The poverty there was rivaled only by Northern Ireland, which held a particular Ire for the PM. Morrison would also present an unfavorable vision of Margaret in his Dare, in which Gloria Monday colludes with the Mekon for a karmic demise.

Jamie Delano criticized Thatcher's "Help yourself society" amidst satanic stockbrokers in the third issue of Hellblazer. I remember reading that series as a teen, thinking, "Wow, this is really British!" Years later while reading Canadian author Dave Sim's Cerebus: Jaka's Story I realized just how disliked Margaret Thatcher was everywhere but in the USA. By the time the Spitting Image puppeteers lampooned her, her poll numbers were so low that they might have actually helped her image. When rock band Genesis utilized the puppets in their Land of Confusion video, it succeeded in creating a buffoonery that undercut the reality of nuclear catastrophe that warhawks Reagan and Thatcher almost led us into.





So when I say "influence," I mean it in the same way that Adolph Hitler influenced Art Spiegelman's Maus. Go on, Maggie–and good riddance!

Special acknowledgment to Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool for some of the images featured on this page.

Collectors

Catalog available for purchase at
www.popsequentialism.com

I set up this blog as an extension of the Pop Sequentialism exhibition I first curated back in May, 2011. That show was the culmination of a lifetime of collecting comic books and original comic book art. It was made possible through my position as gallery director at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, the influential birthplace of lowbrow art in the 1980s, pop surrealism in the 1990s, and an early promoter of street art in the 2000s. Since the target demographic of my Pop Sequentialism show was collectors of fine art, I had to write detailed descriptions of each page outlining what made each of them important. Unlike, say, oil paintings, comic book art is made valuable not only through the quality of the technique or a particular artist's fame, but also by the popularity and fame of the writer, the characters illustrated on each page, and the chronology and importance within the canon of each of them (artist, writer and characters). The regard and acclaim for the story and the era from whence it comes can add to or detract from the value derived from key composition, as can the word balloons (or lack thereof) that punctuate the action.

In that regard, comic book art is burdened with the most complex criteria for evaluation of any artistic media. Perhaps because of that, it has been difficult to attract fine art patrons into collecting it. And that (to me) is madness.

The great benefit to figurative, narrative work is that its aesthetic value need not hinge on bullshit. Any reasonable person can look at a well rendered drawing or painting and conclude that a high degree of ability went into creating it. Whether or not they've been educated on the importance of composition or have any knowledge or inclination toward understanding allegory or symbolism, as human beings they will pick-up on the fact that these other things make the work in question great. They may not be able to tell you why it's a masterpiece, but their appreciation of what elevates it beyond average is intrinsically embedded in their DNA. We, as people, are born with an understanding of such things. We recognize faces in inanimate objects, because our eyes are trained by our brains to do so. Certain colors elicit certain responses, and shapes behind or incorporating the figure in the foreground are collected and appreciated based on our need to find them–sometimes consciously, and sometimes subconsciously. The truly great works of antiquity are hailed as such because they tap into all of these stimuli. So tell me, how is an abstract conceptual piece more legit than a published illustration of the modern mythology?

Because a few people with a lot of money had a dog in that fight and decided it should be so.

The most important work of the 1990s. Really?

Let me go on record by saying I'm not a hater. There is plenty of worthwhile and important contemporary art. I respect Jeff Koons for his tireless dedication to high craft and perfection. Last year alone I got to see an installation (Ed Keinholtz), video art (Christian Marclay), and a performance piece (Marina Abramovic) that moved me as much as a Beethoven Symphony or a Caravaggio oil. That said, what was true in Hans Christian Andersen's day is still true now–there are just a lot more naked emperors. Damien Hirst's prices are slipping not only because of the dozen or so charges of plagiarism, but because there's not a lot of craft to what he's created. I've seen the taxidermy pieces up close and they are very poorly made. Hirst also got caught manipulating his own market, and at the end of the day, nobody likes a cheater. But for the past twenty years, paying millions of dollars for dead sharks has been big business. There has been a cabal of artists, critics, auctioneers, and billionaire collectors who have conspired to attribute astronomical value upon art that the overwhelming majority of people–that includes artists, gallerists and the general public– think is total shite.

Because sometimes ownership just isn't enough...

Whether good or bad, a lot of very recently produced art has been appraised in the tens of millions of dollars for the solitary purpose of spending and hiding money. The more it costs, the better, because it's a tax shelter for the impossibly rich. Some collectors have donated millions of dollars toward museum expansion budgets, bid and won on the building contracts, and then filled the new spaces with their own art collections. They received a tax break and a key to the city for their donations, they then got that money back as the contractor, and ultimately they get to house their collections for free while getting another tax break on lending the art. The experts hired to appraise the value of the pieces in these collections are often the auction houses that sold them. If that's not insider trading, I don't know what is. When that newly expanded museum loans the collection to another museum, the insurance required to move that collection is raised 10 to 20 percent above the most recently appraised value, raising the actual value to the most recently insured amount. When those museums fall into financial trouble, key donors are able to purchase pieces from the institution's permanent collections at tasty discounts and open their own museums–where you can be sure the directors will be more aware of budget than they were in the public sector.

So, as you can see, discussing the art is as relevant as discussing the weather, because the former has the staying power of the latter in most cases.

A Fine Art Hedge Fund Group

The truth is that many of the top end buyers of contemporary, conceptual art are merely investors with little or no opinion about what they're buying. They buy it because it's been occasionally profitable in resale, but majorly profitable as a tax shelter. Since art is only taxed on resale, owning expensive, blue-chip art is like having a tax-free savings account. It's better than hedge fund investing because art is not subject to capital gains tax. At that level, the art stops the clock on the IRS until it is sold, and if it is sold at a loss (like real-estate) the seller can claim that loss as a deduction without having paid a property tax.

There are teams of accountants who ensure that this system stays in place.

The people who actually do enjoy abstract expressionism tend to be academics or big thinkers who may find comfort in the presence of a big idea piece that delivers on a single promise (the concept). Maybe they use their brains all day long, focusing on minutiae and such and don't want to be overwhelmed by complicated brush strokes or even the easily recognizable. Like most other art, it boils down to personal taste. Sometimes it's a design motif, sometimes it's bragging rights. I'm not judging them for what they collect, but I'd be lying if I said I don't judge them for what they pay for it. There are brilliant, high-concept pieces out there; I'm not denying that. It's the assumption of brilliance in the lack of either concept or craft with which I take umbrage. Add cost to that concern and you've got the makings of class war.

Warhol's "Burning Green Car 1" sold for $71.7 million in 2007

Cost is relevant. The amount paid for a thing is justification of its perceived value, and there's not much difference between perceived value and actual value in the art world. So when an Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein piece sells for thirty to fifty million dollars more than the comic art it homages, it send the message that the parody or the tribute is more valuable than that which inspired it. I love Mural with Blue Brushstroke, but I'd much rather have the cover illustration of Fantastic Four #51 hanging on my wall. That's true Pop Art.

Jack "King" Kirby. 'Nuff Said!

I've often posited that comic art is more than just an illustration or painting on a board. It's nostalgia as well, and not just of the page that was printed from it. A single comic book page activates a time machine that transports an entire span of time all at once. The adventure captured on that page is symbolic of every adventure depicted in comic books. It's a functionary of fandom that the individual items within a collection represent the collection as a whole. This may be why I've always held onto a handful of comics each time I've sold or donated my collections: by keeping two or three books, I'm retaining the right to remember everything I once, owned along with all the memories that those items which were dear to me embodied. So it's rewarding that such blatant sentimentality should also be enormously profitable.

What's that he said about enormous profit?

Take note, would be investors: it turns out that comic book art is a far better investment than just about any other kind of art.

It's true. Before sitting down to write this column a few weeks ago I decided to do some research. I looked at thousands of realized auction prices for contemporary and post-war paintings and sculptures, called and wrote a few dozen galleries, and poured through twenty years of purchase receipts. After addressing anomalies, such as the sudden spike in sales an artist's death will cause, and comparing market inflation with economic bubbles I discovered that in the world of fine art there are frequent cycles of appreciation and decline. They are invariably connected to wall street, and art market bubbles tend to mirror the late 1980s hedge fund explosion, the 1990s stock market rise, the dot com bubble and the recent real-estate collapse.

This is what $140 million looks like

Art Net and Daily Beast both predict an imminent Art Bubble Bursting as fears of the fiscal cliff became fears over sequester. Auction houses are still reporting record sales, but the staying power of the current all stars is being called into question. Since the 1980s, blue chip artworks by John Baldessari, Jeff Koons, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picaso, Andy Warhol and Richard Prince have been ascending dramatically. But resale of several pieces purchased during the bubbles at absolute peak pricing have been resold at dramatic losses, showing that (like the real estate market), when you buy is just as important as what you buy. In between these New York Times headlines of record, realized prices are a lot of unpublicized flops.

Raymond Parker, Mary Frank, Ernie Trova and Damien Hirst, who were each the most important artists of their day, are all seeing their prices fall far below peak sales figures. Some have fallen back into obscurity. 

Now let's take a look at comic book art.

Available now from Albert Moy

I'm not even going to address the heightened price tags that currently accompany the Silver Age works of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko or Jim Steranko. I'm also going to leave out the recent sky high auction sales of Frank Miller or Todd McFarlane (for now). Let's look at lesser known Bronze Age comic art, like that of Don Heck, Sal Buscema, Jim Aparo, and Dave Cockrum. Journeyman comic artists all, but I think it's safe to say that none of these names was ever considered the best in industry (at least not in the way that their contemporaries Carmine Infantino, John Buscema, Neal Adams, or John Byrne might have been). In 1995, there were literal stacks of Jim Aparo and Sal Buscema pages on multiple tables at Comicon for $5-10 each. Phantom Stranger pages, Spectre pages from the Michael Fleischer run in Adventure Comics, and Brave and the Bold pages, next to Marvel Team-Up, Two-in-One, and even Defenders pages which were also a sawbuck each. At minimum, they have increased fifteen times in value over twenty years. Not key pages, not splash pages, just run of the mill pages have increased in value by 1500%. And there were semi-splash pages in those stacks. In researching this article, the cheapest Jim Aparo Bronze Age art I could find was $1,100.00 (above, left).

Pretty much every single title from the Bronze Age has followed this pattern, so a George Perez Teen Titans cover, which might have been $400 in 1993 is now $7,000 or more. A John Byrne interior Iron Fist page which might have been $200 could now be $3,000. Cockrum's Uncanny X-Men pages were never as high demand as Byrne's, so back in the 90s a really great non-splash page with Wolverine and Nightcrawler could've been obtained for a few hundred dollars. Now it's an auction piece.

And what about comic art that was new back then?

Now in the Felix Lu collection

In 1996 I bought five key pages from Preacher #1, including the first appearance of main supporting character Cassidy (right), a page of the titular hero using his powers, and several pages featuring all three main characters for $60 each. Steve Dillon signed them all, right there at the table, as did writer Garth Ennis. I sold two of those pages four years ago for a thousand dollars, and the guy who bought them flipped them an hour later for two thousand dollars.

I'm not claiming that this is a standard scenario, but none of the comic book art I've bought has ever gone down in value. In my own personal experience, in a decade case study, not only has nothing ever decreased, but the minimum return on investment has been 150%, with the maximum being over 2000%. In other words, if you hold onto comic book art for ten years, it is virtually guaranteed to increase in value–even if you buy unwisely. Often times, comic book shops will have original comic art for sale that was priced when it originally came into the shop, but has not been adjusted since. So while prices and demand may have increased elsewhere, a savvy buyer can score a bargain and obtain art priced years behind the current market. Even in this age of heavy online sales and ebay, shops aren't keeping up on these things.

What's the buyer premium on $657,000?

Unlike most other artforms, comics are basically a never-ending enterprise. Characters have outlived their creators and even their fans, but with reprints and blogs and professional reassessments, the interest is constantly renewed, creating newer generations interested in yesterday's comic books. Every new artist and writer brings something new to the mix and the inevitable reference to what has come before revitalizes the entire brand. An educated buyer can still get blue chip comic art for mere fractions (if not percentages) of what they might pay for other types of contemporary art. A Frank Miller & Klaus Jansen  page from The Dark Knight Returns (#3) sold for $448,125 two years ago. Last year a Todd McFarlane Amazing Spiderman (#328) cover sold for $657,250–and it wasn't even Todd's best. Those two pieces, as awesome as they are, would still only be Damien Hirst's "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" and Takashi Murakami's "My Lonesome Cowboy" each valued above $18 million. So what about the comic book Mona Lisa? The guy that owns the Joe Shuster cover to Action Comics #1 probably got it for under $50,000.00. The global record holder of highest price paid for original comic art is the cover to Herge's 1932 Tintin in America which fetched $1.6 million in June, 2012, which serves as a case point how much more elevated the esteem given comic books in Europe is.

My retirement fund?

I recently acquired a double-sided, unpublished page from the original 1940 Batman series penciled by Jerry Robinson and possibly inked by George Roussos that tells an alternate origin for Robin, implicating the Joker in his parent's murder. This Joker is much more like the original playing-card character than the Conrad Veidt "Man Who Laughs" likeness often credited to Bill Finger. In a way, this page may help prove Bob Kane's disputed recollection of how both characters (Joker & Robin) were developed. I'm currently working on the provenance and can only speculate what it might actually be worth. An alternate origin of the original teen sidekick featuring the greatest comic book villain of all-time drawn by the artists who created them at the time they were new. That's got to be worth more than a Todd McFarlane Spiderman cover.

I won't tell you what I paid for it until it sells, but it's looking to be a very, very good return on investment.

Resurrecting Immortality

Inevitably, even the most die-hard comic fans stop buying them. They get married, have kids, move far away or into smaller, shared spaces, or get downsized, sick or otherwise preoccupied and let go of their collections. I have done this, myself, on several occasions. But after each move, separation, career change and spiritual cleansing there is always a handful of comics I just can't let go and Brendan McCarthy’s art has been in most of them. An original, four-way-folded Revolver promo poster has survived a dozen relocations for twenty years, and at some point I made the conscious decision to trash almost every photograph from my childhood, but kept several beat-up issues of the British punk newspaper SOUNDS because of the Electrick Hoax comics in them. I lost my social security card ages ago, but I know that my Skin graphic novel, the disturbing tale of a thalidomide baby cum angry adolescent skinhead, is between my high school yearbook and the manuscript of my first novel. 

Why? Well, for one, Brendan McCarthy is a genius.

Most of the innovations in comicdom’s past twenty-five years can be directly traced to his and writer Peter Milligan’s experimental forays into sequential storytelling, which stretch back to the late 1970s. The first person to suggest that superhero costumes were silly and toss a jacket on them, McCarthy has also been far ahead of the curve on superhero sexuality and post-modern narrative devices. McCarthy not only incorporated dadaic psychedelia and surrealism before it was cool, he helped design (and redesign) many of the characters that ushered those concepts into the mainstream. Brendan’s groundbreaking work at 2000 AD, Crisis, and Revolver paved the way for DC’s Vertigo imprint by either influencing, introducing or collaborating with the writers who helped launch it. His penchant for over-the-top (albeit, tongue-in-cheek) excess was also humorlessly co-opted by Image Comics, but we won’t blame him for that.

As important and as often overlooked as Steve Ditko was before him, Brendan McCarthy is a revolutionary. He’s an innovator’s innovator. He’s a modern day Jim Steranko with a better sense of story. He’s a visionary stylist who hasn’t sacrificed awareness for aesthetics. He’s exceptional but unassuming.

A collected volume of Brendan’s long out-of-print comics is not just way overdue; it’s essential.

I’m proud to confess that Brendan McCarthy’s work has highlighted some of the most pivotal events of my own, actual life. When I kissed my very first girlfriend at the age of thirteen, I had a copy of Strange Days #1 in my left hand. For the life of me as I write this I can’t remember that girl’s name, but I remember the comic and how awkward it was holding onto it and her, too; trying not to roll it up or drop it, but ultimately losing on both counts–losing on three, technically, if we include the girl.

When I was nineteen and jobless, fresh to Los Angeles from the northern Boston suburbs, I sold my first comic book collection to a shop sporting a sun-faded Rogan Gosh poster (“He’s Hot, He’s Hindu… In Revolver!”). I told the owner I’d price all ten boxes and run his sports card operation if he gave me a job, which he did. That shop’s manager was a sharp Chilean named Gaston Dominguez who shared my interest in dystopian British comic strips and grindcore. We became best pals, roommates, and I even helped physically build his fledgling shop. Meltdown Comics and Collectibles was at least partially financed by our joint, original comic book art sales–including most of the 25 pages of Shade the Changing Man #22. I say “most,” because I kept page 24, the full, psychedelic splash, which was also the first interior page featured in my Pop Sequentialism exhibit and book. To me it's the epitome of the British New Wave influence on modern comics: great style and great substance.

Peter Milligan’s text, “What’s left when you’ve left too soon,” resonates with greater poignancy as I grow older. McCarthy integrated the text as pop art, perhaps as a gentle reminder that we are only immortal for a limited time, but our work lives on.

When I curated my first massive, multi-artist exhibition as director of La Luz de Jesus Gallery I had the pleasure of including not one, but two Brendan McCarthy pastel drawings. It was at a later incarnation of that same show that I met my wife. I don’t think these events are unrelated. There is a string that runs through the entire body of Brendan’s work that draws people to it. Those people respond and bring something additional to the narrative, which manifests in creative ways. For evidence, one need look no further than the work of Grant Morrison, whose vast canon of meta-fiction is in many ways an extension of Milligan & McCarthy’s work on Paradax. It’s serious fun, and I mean that nonironically: it’s both intelligent and satirical, but above all, the work is significant. Dark Horse recently announced that they plan to release an omnibus including all of Brendan McCarthy’s work with writer Peter Milligan. This will preserve for future generations, one of comics’ all-time, greatest collaborations.


Hopefully that's what's left when we've all left too soon.

Help Lift the USA Ban on Moebius

In just under a month (on March 10th), it will mark one year that we've all lived in a world without Moebius. And with his passing, American comic book fans have been virtually assured that none of his works yet published in English will ever be.

It's even possible that currently available titles from Humanoids (the US branch of the company founded by Moebius himself, and the original publishers of Metal Hurlant) will disappear once their current contract expires. Why? The rights reside with artist's estate, who seem unwilling to negotiate the licensing. That means no Blueberry, no Arzach, and possibly no more Incal (so snatch these up while you can!)

Moebius was born Jean Henri Gaston Giraud in the suburbs of Paris on May 8, 1938. By the time he was three, his parents would divorce amidst the Nazi occupation of France and an indelible rift of country and family would contribute to his penchant for pseudonyms later in life. Giraud studied art at age 15, and within a year he was drawing his own cowboy strips. After completing military service in Algeria 1961, Giraud apprenticed with famed French comics pioneer, Joseph "Jijé" Gillain. By 1962, he partnered with writer Jean-Michel Charlier to create Blueberry.

Superheroes didn't catch on in France like they did in America. In French comics (or, la bande desinée) it was Western adventure stories that were king, and Blueberry had the impact of Spiderman and Batman combined. It's since been translated into 16 languages, and helped launch a cottage industry of genre adventures.  His famous nom de plum was borne in 1963, as a means to produce darker, sci-fi works without carrying his more experimental style over into the Blueberry strip. By 1964, Giraud had abandoned the Moebius identity as censorship loosened in France, allowing him to  bring explicit and esoteric themes into Blueberry as well–mirroring the freedom of the new French cinema. It would be ten years until he revived it, forming the "Les Humanoides Associes" collective and launching Metal Hurlant magazine. When the magazine launched in the US as Heavy Metal, it introduced an entire generation (myself included) to French creators of la bande desinée and Italian masters of fumetti. Moebius' partnership with cult film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky would yield the internationally acclaimed L'Incal series which became a huge influence on filmmakers and helped Jean embark on a lucrative career as a storyboard artist and visual futurist, and later a concept designer and animation director. The films include Alien, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, The Fifth Element, and Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland.

Effective as he was in these other capacities, none could hold a candle to his comics. If you've been lucky enough to see his work in Heavy Metal or the Dark Horse and Humanoids reprints, you know what a loss it this ban is to English speaking audiences. So how can we change this?

There's a facebook petition. 

There you will find an archive of facts and testimony by publishers, creators and influential fans, all of which plead for Moebius' widow (his second wife, Isabelle Giraud) to allow Humanoids to negotiate the English language rights (primarily in the US) for all of his unlicensed titles to a competitive marketplace, insuring that his heirs receive free market compensation, and preserving the artist's legacy among the largest consumer base of sequential art. The world's second largest market, Japan, is also annexed currently, so I hope someone will take charge there also.

But as it stands, even Casterman, the original French publisher of most of Giraud's pre-Humanoids output is at the mercy of his heirs, who seem indifferent to his published legacy. 

https://www.facebook.com/MoebiusUsaPetition

My Comic Book Dream Come True!

Sixteen months ago, my friend David Mack (on one of his frequent trips to Los Angeles) almost spent his birthday alone. He was a guest in a house without a host in a week when almost everyone else he knew was out of town. Luckily, his temporary residence was square between the gallery where I work and the apartment I used to rent. So my roommate and I (who both share birthdays within a month of David's) demanded that he let us take him out for a celebratory meal. That evening proved quite pivotal, not only in a friendship that has since included an art exhibition and a future publishing project, but in realizing that regardless of where you are from, as you progress through life you'll find other people from completely different backgrounds who are just like you.

In the course of a conversation that eclipsed the operating hours of a pretty great little gastropub in Silverlake, Mack mentioned that he was working on a script with Brian Michael Bendis for the final Daredevil story–a sort-of The Dark Knight Returns for old horn head. It's no secret that I share the opinion of most comic book academics that Daredevil is perhaps the best written character in superhero fiction. From Frank Miller's two incredible and groundbreaking stints on the title, through many high-calibre stories (including a run by David Mack) to Bendis' who-thought-it-would-be-possible-to-unseat-Frank-Miller-as-the-best-writer-of-Daredevil run, to the holy-shit-I-can't-believe-Ed-Brubaker-improved-upon-the-Bendis run, to the current series which won yet another Eisner Award for Mark Waid & Paolo Rivera, Daredevil has been in some very capable hands.

As a strawberry-blonde teenager named Matt with aspirations to attend law school, and whose dad had been an amateur boxer (long before retiring from a lifetime of government service), I had more than a little in common with blind attorney, Matt Murdoch. I, too, got very into martial arts at a young age, and even did a little pee-wee boxing; I dabbled in non-competitive kick-boxing in my twenties, but I never became a ninja. I got to keep my eyesight, though, so I guess it's a fair trade. Almost as a joke, I told David to feel free to write me in as a shit-bag mob lawyer in whatever story he was writing.

Deadly serious, he looked at me and said, "Are you sure? I'm working on a character right now who doesn't have a name yet."
I was floored. "Hell yeah! That would be awesome!" It was like it was my birthday, not David's.

A few months later I got this text: Just got done proofing your page at Bill Sienkiewicz's place!
I replied: Sin-KEV-itch! Drawing me?
Mack texted back: Bill's inking. Klaus Jansen drew you :)

The man who collaborated with Miller on the original Daredevil run and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns was in turn collaborating with the artist on Miller's way-outside-the-box Elektra: Assassin, only this time their roles are reversed, with Klaus penciling and Bill inking. And they were illustrating the words of talented Kabuki scribe and Echo creator David Mack in conjunction with Brian Michael Bendis, whose achievements are too lengthy to list, so I'll just call him the King of Marvel Comics. Somewhere (probably on facebook), there are a few pictures from that night, and hilariously, my silver suit jacket and striped tie have made it onto the page.

I'm not sure if colorist Matt Hollingsworth (Death: The High Cost of Living) is aware, but he nailed it.

In a gracious turn, the lads made me much taller and instead of making me a mob lawyer, I'm the guy that replaces Matt Murdoch as Foggy's business partner.

The law firm of Nelson & Kennedy is referenced no less than three times in the first panel at left. In a bit of unforeseen coincidence, my next door neighbors growing up on Western Ave. in Lynn, MA were The Nelsons. No lawyers there, though.

I wrote about this series last October, when the first issue hit the shops, and I'm happy to say it remains as strong as that initial promise portended. I'd say it's the most engaging masked series out there, probably because of the freedom that tackling a story outside the regular continuity affords. The work is worth the collective talents of the names attached, which is above and beyond any number of manufactured marketing ploys or subpar vanity projects. When the omnibus is finally released it will be great to have all the alternate covers collected in a single volume with the individual issues–especially since both David Mack and Alex Maleev have produced their own versions. Since Michael Lark wasn't a collaborator on either Mack or Bendis' stints at the helm (Lark penciled the Ed Brubaker series apex), I doubt they'll call him in for a cover, but it would be the cherry on top of a pretty sweet series. 

Of course I got my dessert early. Thanks David!

Bashar al-Ghul? The Real Scarecrow?

Is Bashar al-Assad really The Scarecrow?

A Levantine villain hell-bent on chaos releases a potent, airborne fear gas upon a metropolitan population with the intent of reducing citizens to deluded, hallucinating lunatics. Sounds like the fiendish plot of Ra's al-Ghul and his cohort Scarecrow from the movie Batman Begins, right?

But it also describes the very real activities of Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, who allegedly used a weaponized gas known as Agent 15 against his own people in that country’s ongoing civil war just before the December holidays.

In fact, it was reports of a Syrian chemical weapons program that vaulted the United States and European allies into intervention in this conflict, which had been underway for nearly two years. According to the United Nations (and an article by presidential advisor Richard Price in the magazine Foreign Affairs), this conflict had already claimed over 60,000 lives. So why is it that those deaths were not a factor, but the use of chemical weapons were?

Well, for one thing, the Chemical Weapons Convention is one of the most widely adhered-to international treaties. Even countries that routinely engage in torture adhere to the CWC. It represents the idea that war can be civilized, and 188 states around the globe support it. That’s 97.4% of The United Nations current 193 member states. Israel and Myanmar have signed, but not yet ratified it, and Angola, Egypt, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria are not party to it.

Another reason? Chemical weapons are cheap.

Dirty bombs are significantly less expensive to engineer than tactical nuclear weapons and the systems necessary to detonate them, and chemical and biological weapons are even cheaper than that. Just as box-cutters and commercial passenger planes became the dime-store face of modern terrorism, neuromuscular and neuroglandular aerosols like Agent 15 and the family of benzilate incapacitating agents have become modern examples of uncivilized warfare. Compared to the mustard gas used in World War I, or the Sarin used against the Kurds and American troops in Iraq, Agent 15 (classified as BZ, or Buzz, by NATO) is like a trip to Disneyland. Well, more like a trip to Knotts Berry Farm on a mixture of DMT and Ketamine. But compared with the ever-escalating military budgets of prosperous nations, what alternative does the third world have? And it’s not like countries like Syria invented this stuff. So who did, you ask? It was those pesky peaceniks, the Swiss.

Back in 1951, Swiss Pharmaceutical company Hoffman-La Roche was investigating anti-spasmodic drugs for gastro-intestinal discomfort when it accidentally developed 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate. By 1959, the United States military was testing it as a chemical weapon. It was weaponized for delivery in cluster bombs until stocks were destroyed in 1989. However, BZ and other acetylcholine blockers are easily synthesized in clandestine labs. It is odorless, slightly soluble in water, has a half-life of up to 4 weeks in moist air, and symptoms are often delayed for several hours after contact–making it an effective stealth weapon. As an aerosol it can be dispersed with 90% effectiveness and ingestion of a singe micrometer particle approximates 80% dosage, while inhalation of that same unit yields 50%. Under heat, it can be delivered percutaneously, or through the skin. After 24 hours, serum levels can still achieve up to 10% of intravenous administration. At least two compound chemicals in the BZ family tree, Atropine and Hyoscyamine, can cross the placenta and persist in small amounts in breast milk. Central Nervous System effects include stupor, confusion, and confabulation with concrete and panoramic illusions and hallucinations, and with regression to automatic "phantom" behaviors such as plucking and disrobing. As long as you don’t swallow your tongue, you’ll be fine.

3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate
aka BZ or Agent 15

It sounds horrifying, but it’s technically not toxic. It’s classified as an incapacitating agent rather than a toxic chemical warfare agent. But, like its torture equivalent, waterboarding, it’s no picnic. If you’ve ever seen the movie Jacob’s Ladder, you’ve heard reference to BZ. In actuality, there is no known side effect that turns normal people into homicidal maniacs, but tweaking the formula could very well produce slightly different results. Just because the US stopped experimenting with it doesn’t mean anyone else has. Up that dosage from 1 microgram to 6.2 micrograms per kilogram of body mass and you will incapacitate 50% of the target population. Raise that concentration to 100mg, and you’ve got a 50% instance of death.

It’s not compassion that informs this western need to rid the world of chemical weapons so much as shame, however. It was the west –primarily the US and Germany, that engineered most of the biological and chemical weapons still in use. It must have been obvious to American military minds that inexpensive weapons would be the wave of the future, and therefore a great equalizer for the third world work force. Especially in the 1950s when the CIA was involved in clandestine activities in Central and South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East on behalf of American business interests there. Insurgencies were business as usual even as they were kept out of the headlines, but the success of the suicide bombing campaigns in French Algeria were not lost on France’s Vietnam-allies, America.

The need to change the script became the primary goal of the propaganda machine: Bullets are ok and long-range missiles are fine, but cheap terror tactics are inhuman. “They’re blowing themselves up! They must be psychos!”

The hardline against chemical weapons only became a central goal at the UN after the American military had doused Vietnam in literally tons of Agent Orange and Napalm. That such tactics did little to discourage insurgents there helped cease their usage. And the push toward nuclear disarmament became possible only after it was clear that the US had achieved marked nuclear superiority over the Soviets.

So what became of all the chemical and biological weapons developed in the pre-CWC era? Destruction activities are monitored and verified by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is an independent organization based in The Hague, Netherlands. Unfortunately, records connected with the amounts and variety of these weaponized materials are incredibly difficult to come by. Most states don’t want to admit the extent of their experimentation for fear of appearing barbaric to the rest of the world.

AIDS is widely believed to have been the product of genetic weapons experimentation. Today the epidemic has claimed over 34 million victims. Small Pox, widely believed to have been wiped out in the late 1970s, was discovered in Chechen bio-terrorism lab records in the 1990s. The core of Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program is believed to have come from those same Soviet labs. Red Mercury is also rumored to have disseminated into the hands of fundamentalist terror cells and other anonymous high-bidders after the division of the Russian Federation collapsed. The US even initiated a multi-billion dollar buy back program for Soviet nuclear materials to keep them out of the hands of terrorists. A similar program was considered for North Korea back in 2007.



In the weeks that followed the initial reports of Agent 15 usage in the Syrian civil war, the White House has backed off its allegation that chemical weapons were used. The pre-Christmas, pre-assistance line has changed post-inauguration, post involvement. "The reporting we have seen from media sources regarding alleged chemical weapons incidents in Syria has not been consistent with what we believe to be true about the Syrian chemical weapons program," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Yahoo News. This mere weeks after (now former) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement that Assad regime's "behavior is reprehensible; their actions against their own people have been tragic," she continued, "But there is no doubt that there's a line between even the horrors that they've already inflicted on the Syrian people and moving to what would be an internationally condemned step of utilizing their chemical weapons."

What is a good enough reason to deploy, when proven false, is seemingly never a good enough reason for recall. 400 US troops and missile batteries are still deployed at the Syria-Turkey border, and Bashar al-Assad remains in power in Syria.

Both Ra’s al-Ghul and Scarecrow remain at large in the pages of Batman.