great comics – Coke & Comics

The Tick #3

Night of a Million-Zillion Ninja
by Ben Edlund and Maxfield Banks

He stands… Like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he’s sworn to… to stare out over… And it’s evident… Just by looking at him… That he’s got some pretty heavy things on his mind.

After dedicating this “great comics” series to such artistic masterpieces as Sandman, Astro City, Swamp Thing, Usagi Yojimbo, and Zot!… how can I make the next entry The Tick?

And what is there to possibly say? How many words can I squeeze out of, “It’s funny.” (Over a thousand, it turns out.)

I guess I could point at different gags and say, “Look isn’t this one funny?” That’s kind of like commentary.

And if we’re going to talk about an issue of The Tick, why this one?

The answer to that is easy: I like this joke about a hedge.

I could have covered the first issue insead. That tells his origin, and I do like his origin, enough to quote it here.

Destiny is a funny thing. Once I thought I was destined to become Emperor of Greenland, sole monarch over its 52,000 inhabitants. Then I thought I was destined to build a Polynesian longship in my garage. I was wrong then, but I’ve got it now. I’m the destined protector of this place. I’m this City’s superhero.

Zot! #30

Autumn
by Scott McCloud

We used to burn leaves by the side of the road.

Jenny and her brother Butch get trapped in another dimension where they meet a teenage superhero named Zot. They go on an adventure and face all these villains and Butch gets turned into a monkey. Fun all around. The series lasted 10 issues, published by Eclipse comics, 1984-85.

A couple years passed. Finally, Zot! #11 hit the stands. Now black and white. Jenny had been a point-of-view character, a way for the audience to see themselves in Zot’s story. But by now McCloud had decided she was really the star, and that this was the story of a girl who occasionally visited a fantasy world she was starting to find more real than her own world.

But as to the real protagonist of Zot!… the true character arc on display belongs to Scott McCloud himself. He was 23 when he started Zot! and 30 when he finished. He changed a lot in that time, in terms of figuring out what he wanted from life and from the comics medium. What stories he wanted to tell. How he wanted to tell them.

Usagi Yojimbo #93

Chanoyu
by Stan Sakai

“Even between good friends, there are things that are hidden.”
“That is the nature of friendship, but more is revealed over time.”

Stan Sakai has been writing, drawing, and lettering the adventures of Usagi Yojimbo for 38 years and counting. A ridiculous number of comics made almost entirely by a single individual.

Usagi stories first appeared in various anthology comics such as Albedo and Critters before he finally got his own ongoing series published by Fantagraphics. Sakai has found new publishers every so often, moving from Fantagraphics to Mirage, then to almost 30 years with Dark Horse before recently starting the fourth Usagi series with IDW.

I was going to attempt to begin with a summary of Usagi’s story, but I realize I can’t do any better than the summary that opens the first Dark Horse issue, meant to serve as a starting point for new readers.

So let’s just quote it.

The close of 16th century Japan is regarded as the age of civil wars, as feudal lords fought amongst themselves for land and power. It was during the Battle of Adachigahara that samurai Miyamoto Usagi lost his Lord Mifuné to the armies of Lord Hikiji.

Finally one leader rose above the others and was proclaimed Shogun <military ruler>. The Shogun’s peace came upon the land, and samurai warriors found themselves suddenly unemployed. Many of these ronin turned to banditry to survive; others found work with minor lords or the emerging merchant class. A small number, Usagi among them, traveled the Musha Shugyo <warrior pilgrimage> to hone their spiritual and martial skills.

Usagi has made many allies on his road–including Tomoe of the Geishu Clan, Gen the bounty hunter, and Zato-Ino the blind swordspig. There have also been many enemies. Chief among them is Lord Hikiji, who, with his secret army of ninja, plots to overthrow the new government and set himself as Shogun!

Usagi continues to wander alone across the nation– over mountains, deep into valleys, through towns and farmlands, and along rugged coasts–searching for harmony.

The Saga of the Swamp Thing #21

The Anatomy Lesson
by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben

This is the place. At night you can almost see it… At night, you can almost imagine… You shouldn’t have come here.

Welcome back. As explained recently, I’ve been on a short hiatus from my reading of the Marvel Universe. Still not quite ready to return to it.

However, I find myself with a bit of time thanks to having contracted a bug that’s going around, and thought I could return to my series on reading great comics. I call it a series, though this is only the third entry. But hopefully we’ll be getting more.

The format is similar to my posts about the Marvel Universe, where I pick up a single comic and read it and write down my thoughts as I do. Except where my Marvel reading is guided by the internal chronology of those stories, I will here be picking up my very favorite comics, specifically those not focused on the early Marvel Universe. We’ve talked about a favorite issue of Sandman and Astro City… it’s time for Swamp Thing.