Comic Review: Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft

    I’ve been hearing about this book for years, and it’s circled around my head as one of those, ‘yeah, I’ll get to it’ titles.  Well, thanks to the graphic novel discussion group I belong to, my hand was forced and I’m glad of it.  This is the first volume of at least five, and though I have every intention of doing so, I have yet to read further.  Welcome to Lovecraft sets up a lot, hints at a lot, and reveals some interesting, but mysterious ‘facts.’  By the end of the volume, I was darned curious about a lot.  One question that plagues my mind is whether or not I read too much into the dark haired woman in the well.  With the Lovecraft reference, I ascribed a Nyarlathotep-type background to her, a bringer of chaos, and one of the only Old Ones to purposefully turn its gaze upon humans, to our lasting horror.  She (it?) fits that mold in this first volume, but again, I think I may be reading too much, or too much of the wrong thing, into it.  Time will tell.  Whatever the case, Hill has set up a great many dominos and shaken the table.  I need to read on, to find out how everything falls.

    One thing is a touch off-putting for this reader; the art.  Now, obviously, art is very subjective.  What I like, and what the next Dork likes will never be exactly the same (talk to my co-Dork Brad about the art in Hawkeye and then talk to me…Or don’t).  And it’s not that Gabriel Rodriguez’s work isn’t technically well done.  (Though it’s not my cup of tea, with the big eyes and kind of cartoony look).  It’s more that the art doesn’t feel quite right with the writing.  Maybe it’s intentional, but things look too nice or happy or…well, cartoon-like.  The subject feels more like something that should be in black & white, or in some old Eerie or Tales from the Crypt style of art.  That said, there are some panels I absolutely love.  The look on young Bode’s face when he’s ‘dead.’  Priceless.  And that shot where the woman in the well climbs out…I actually had a cinematic ‘jump’ when I looked at that panel, something that’s never happened to me in a comic before.  It was startling, and shows that I was engaged with the book.

    Personal artistic taste aside, the book is excellent.  I add my voice to all those others that have probably already told you to read Locke & Key.  And someday in the near future I’ll be listening to my own inner voice and I’ll read the next few volumes.  If you like Neil Gaiman or Clive Barker, especially their more ‘urban fantasy’ work, you should get right on Locke & Key.

Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft
Author: Joe Hill
Artist: Gabriel Rodriguez
Publisher: IDW
ISBN: 978-160010237-0

-Matt

Baltimore Comic-Con part 2C – Still more preparation or Will this never end?

Comic convention preparation.  In the first part I discussed prepping your display and table.  In the second part I went into some detail about prepping your own mini-comics (or chapbooks, as my pretentious self likes to call them).  This time out, we’re talking about selling.  I’m sure you all have seen a salesperson at work, whether you were the target or just an innocent bystander.  You all know about the hard sell.  Many of you have probably worked retail at one point in your life – and for that, I take pity on you. 

This isn’t that.  Though I do expect there will be some “obvious” stuff scattered in this segment (which, I’m certain, we all hope will be a bit shorter than the last two).  [I don't! -Matt]

So.  Here’s something that should be self-evident.  Have a package (in this case, your comic book) that is appealing visually.  There’s the subjectivity of taste to overcome with this one, obviously, but you can alleviate some of the issues with a little thought and preparation beforehand.  As stated in my previous segment, having a single, bold image as your cover is one thing that can help you stand out against the rest.  Whether you approach “bold” through the use of color, texture (as with some heavy cardstock, screen printed covers), or the imagery itself doesn’t matter.  Just keep this in mind when creating your cover.  The interiors should be equally compelling, because if you can hook passersby with your cover, the next step, for them, is to page through the book. 

If you want some great advice on comic art and how pages play off one another within a comic, go to the archive at Comics Comics and The Comics Journal and do a search on Frank Santoro, who was a regular contributor and editor at Comics Comics and is a current contributor to the Comics Journal site.  The man knows art, knows comics, and understands how the grid and the page work within the distinct visual lexicon of comics.  My only advice in this area, and this only applies to anyone including text with their comics, is to make sure that there are comic stories at the staple in your book, because your book will naturally fall open at that middle point, and when prospective customers seeking comics find a bunch of words filling up those pages, it doesn’t take long for them to move to the next table. 

This might be another obvious one, but don’t be pushy when you’re standing behind the table selling your book.  Acknowledge people as they pass by, ask them how their show’s going, offer them the chance to page through the book if they come over – in short, give them a chance to decide, for themselves, they want to read what you’ve helped create.  But don’t be the guy yelling across the aisles for people to check out his book, or take his card, or “come on over,” because you’ll be driving more people away than you’ll be dragging in.  And, you’ll be driving these people away from your neighbors’ tables as well.  Not cool.  I’m certain some people will tell you differently, but despite how much this goes against Selling 101, I just haven’t seen it work.

Now, perhaps the most important thing to consider, but something many people may not even give a second’s thought – myself and Dan having once fallen into that group.  Go where your audience is.  You may be thinking – duh, I’m setting up at a comic convention.  And that is true.  But which convention are you exhibiting at, and what kind of comic are you bringing to the show?  Dan and I first set up at Wizard World Chicago in 2005.  The shows we’d attended prior to that one, we both haunted artists alley in search of books that were quirky, distinct visions of their creators, not cookie cutter superheroes that couldn’t make the grade at Marvel or DC.  We expected we weren’t the only ones.  So we brought our black-and-white, comics/prose anthology – lacking any superhero stories – to a big convention highlighted by the presence of the large publishers that do color comics about superheroes, for the most part, and we tanked.  The following year, we went to the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, a show highlighted by self-publishers and smaller publishing houses that specialize in black-and-white comics almost completely devoid of superheroes.  We had found our audience.  And we did very well. 

Finally:  what is your comic about?  That first show in Chicago, Dan and I were never able to answer that question the entire four days there.  We hadn’t considered this basic point of our book and weren’t helped by the fact that it was an anthology.  With the next few issues we thought about what we were trying to say with the stories in each issue – and you can affix an overall theme after the fact as easily as crafting stories around a set theme.  Our second book was the “difficult relationships” issue, while the third was our “reflections on faith” issue, which had the first photo-cover by Shane Leonard, who has since created variant covers for Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key series.  And when we put together the collection, our pitch became a bit longer:  “an anthology with stories in multiple genres, from zombie westerns to UFO stories, by artists in multiple countries, from the Philippines to Tanzania, along with short prose and interviews with comic luminaries such as Chris Staros, Gary Groth, Bryan Talbot, and Joe Quesada.”  It’s not easy to condense the scores of hours, hundreds of words, and thousands of lines of ink into a ten-second pitch, but it might be the most important skill for you to master.  Because not only will it help you in selling your books, but it will also be a necessary skill for when you start pitching longer series and have to provide a synopsis to an editor.  Starting now can only help.

You can read much more from Chris at Warrior 27! (or click on On the Fly Publications over on My Blog List to the right of this page).

Matt’s Week in Dork! (7/21/13-7/27/13)

    A slow start, but a nice finish.  Good week.

Red 2:  Not quite as cute or charming as the first film, this sequel still dishes out morbid humor and silly action aplenty.  Everyone seems to be having a good time, and they sure go to a lot of nice places.  But the tension never quite ratchets up, and the plot feels a bit too meandering.  Still, not a bad sequel and worth watching if you enjoyed the first film.

MST3K: The Incredible Melting Man:  “Don’t shoot!  I’m Ted Nelson!”  One of my favorite episodes, Mike and the Bots rip into a truly dreadful movie.  Another ‘guy goes into space and comes back a monster’ movie.  It’s great.  They’re all on fire as they unload with both barrels.

Your Highness:  “Just punch the top and twist it.”  A very, very crass fantasy film about a crappy prince and his dashing brother on a quest to rescue a pretty girl from a devil wizard, it‘s often uncomfortably funny.  Pot smoking, butt sexing, and all kinds of goofing.  Great actors team up with not so great actors to abuse decency.  And I love it.

Night Passage:  Jimmy used to be bad, but now he just wants to play the accordion and maybe work for the railroad.  But he’s got a history and history has a way of creeping up on you.  There’s nothing especially amazing about this Western, but it’s solid and well made.  Nice character actors and a good action resolution.  Worth checking out.

River of No Return:  I just don’t go for Marilyn Monroe, and that’s a large part of what this movie is pushing.  She’s charming enough, I guess.  And Robert Mitchum is nicely terse.  Their adventure together doesn’t break a lot of new ground, but it’s good clean fun.  That is, until the attempted rape (“I didn‘t mean it.”  What?!).  The blue-screen work, though.  She ain’t so good.  Overall, a good but not great Western.

    I read the current issue of the magazine Classic Images, because it had an extensive article on one of my new favorite classic actresses, Ruth Chatterton.  Annoyingly, many of the movies the article picked out as being especially good are not on NetFlix and are going to require deeper searching and perhaps pocket digging.  There was also a good write-up on the recently deceased character actor R.G. Armstrong.  It prompted me to queue up a few more of his films, and kept my Western thing alive (I’ve been on a bit of a Western kick lately…though I’m not gonna try to do an official month or anything).

Queen Christina:  “Must we live for the dead.”  A bawdy tale of a tomboy queen who loves her country, desires peace, and wants to love on her own terms.  But duty drives.  Garbo exudes life, lusty and joyous.  The sequence at the inn, with the shared room, the discovery, and the aftermath are totally worth the price of admission.  And my goodness, somehow she makes eating grapes look like the most intensely sexually charged act.  It felt like something too intimate to be watching.  Crazy.  Though the overall movie isn’t amazing, it’s a very fun film.  I wish there was more to the third act, I guess.  I don’t know.  Events just sort of happen and then it’s over, without much heart.  But the first two thirds of the film are great.

    Friday night we ended up using a kind of fill-in book for our graphic novel club, Locke & Key, which was pretty last minute and surprisingly seemed to win everyone over.  This marks only the second time (I think), where everyone was in agreement and happy with the book (the first was Blacksad).

Bridget Jones’s Diary:  “Oh f*%$ I love Keats.”  A cute romantic comedy about several broken people struggling through love.  There’s nothing especially new or interesting, but the cast is charming and there are some good bits.  I appreciate the liberal F-bomb dropping.  One thing that is perhaps a bit disturbing is that Jones is supposed to be/feel fat.  I remember a lot was made of Renee Zellweger putting on weight for the role.  But she looks perfectly normal.  Not plump.  Just normal.  If she were any thinner, she’d look weird.

Disgusting. She must be an almost healthy weight. For shame.

Nick Carter: Master Detective:  A short, fairly uneventful mystery about saboteurs at an aviation plant, this is more fun as a time capsule of a paranoid era when all foreign people were trying to destroy America.  Vague, unnamed organizations with evil on the mind and limitless resources and personnel have infiltrated…well everything.  Nobody can be trusted…except maybe old, creepy beekeepers.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone:  “Nope…You’re a dude.”  There are some very funny bits in this mostly by the numbers comedy.  Nothing especially shocking or new, but an OK outing for all the cast, who seem to be having a fun time.  Jim Carry hams it up, as usual, and I could have dealt with about 60% less of his character.  Otherwise it was fine.

    On Saturday night, Lisa, Brad, and I headed to the AFI Silver to see Phantasm and Phantasm II (yeah, I’ve seen Phantasm II on the big screen…I can honestly say I never expected that to be a thing I could say).  The first film was presented by local celebrity movie presenter and commentator Count Gore De Vol.  Much fun was had.

Phantasm:  It doesn’t get a heck of a lot weirder than Phantasm.  Not just because it’s a horror movie that’s really a science fiction movie…maybe.  Not just because it features rabid jawas, flying spheres with drills and blades, a stripper-hooker who might also be a cold hating Tall Man, a giggling old seer, a kick-ass ice cream man, and a tuning fork dimensional gateway.  No, not just for those things.  It’s also so jarringly edited and aggressively scored that it never lets you rest, never lets you get your bearing, and never lets you in on quite what the hell is going on.  And it’s great.  The music is completely over the top, the acting ranging from stiff to wooden, and the story…well, it’s complicated.  But somehow, it all works when it really has no right to.  I’ve mentioned this before, but if the stars are right, Cthulhu walks the Earth, and we have become as the Old Ones (read: a shift in reality big enough to put me in control of a Hollywood motion picture), Phantasm is one of the properties I would absolutely love to get my grubby little hands on (along with Hellraiser and The Creature from the Black Lagoon).  Reggie, man.  Reggie.

Phantasm II:  The sequel has some issues, but is still quite cool.  Part of the charm of this series is its rampant continuity confusion, and this film has it aplenty.  But the wacky editing is gone, making the film less uncomfortable and challenging.  The idea of the Tall Man and his dwarfs is expanded a bit, and the hints of a greater, growing disaster facing the world begin to drop (laying the groundwork for III and IV).  Reggie takes up the mantle of badassery.  And the music continues to be a major part of the experience.  Overall, not as good as the first film, though it is more professionally made and of more consistent quality.

Reggie's makin' friends.

    That’s about it.  Still listening to a bunch of Prog Rock.  Still poking at the Bible and trying to get more reading in.

-Matt