Star Wars Omnibus: A Long Time Ago... Vol. 4

Written by David Michelinie, Jo Duffy,  Bob Layton, Archie Goodwin, Linda Grant, and Roy Richardson
Art by Gene Day, Tom Palmer, Kerry Gammill, Ron Frenz, Luke McDonnell, Bob Layton, Klaus Janson, Al Williamson, Carlos Garzon, Tom Mandrake, Bob McLeod, and David Mazzucchelli

The first comic I ever bought was Marvel's Star Wars #30, and with all of the hype surrounding the upcoming new movies, and the shifting of the license away from Dark Horse and towards Marvel, I've found myself occasionally wondering about those old licensed books, which I remember as being not all that good.  I was at a very good used bookstore the other week, which also carries a lot of remaindered graphic novels, and saw Volume 4 of Dark Horse's Star Wars Omnibus: A Long Time Ago..., their nice thick collections of the old Marvel stuff.  The price was great, so I thought I'd pick this up (mostly because I'm a sucker for Bobba Fett, and the cover made it seem like he was going to be prominent in the volume).

This book contains issues 68 through 85 of the regular Marvel series, an Annual (#3), and the four-part adaptation of Return of the Jedi (by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson, no less).

Most of the regular comics were written by Jo Duffy (whatever happened to her) and drawn by Ron Frenz, with very strong inks by the wonderful Tom Palmer.  There are a fair number of fill-in issues, some by writers I've never heard of, and a few real surprises in terms of artist choices, like Klaus Janson, and a very early David Mazzucchelli.

The stories varied a lot in quality.  This series was famously hampered by a lack of foreknowledge of what was going to happen in the next film, leaving the writers to find ways of crafting interesting stories that don't really develop the characters at all, and that don't contain information that's likely to be contradicted in the next movie.  For that reason, there is a lot of Chewbacca and Lando looking for the frozen Han Solo, without ever going directly to Jabba the Hutt.  After the events of Return, with Vader and the Emperor dead, the stories shift to Han's misadventures in reclaiming lost money, and having the characters travel around looking for planets to start working with the Alliance.

The focus is largely on the swashbuckling, as bounty hunters are chased, and lost Rebel pilots are hunted for.  There are some very unfortunate characters, such as Plif of the Hoojibs, a cutesy creature race that predates the Ewoks.  There are also some very good comics in here, such as the annual, which has two young boys decide which side of the galactic conflict they are on.

It was a bit of a trip to read these stories, despite the fact that I only ever owned one of them (having moved on from Star Wars comics to almost everything else Marvel published at this time).  There is a sense of naivety to these comics that matches the first Star Wars film, but considering the time period, I'm willing to forgive it.  Now, if Jason Aaron and John Cassaday's upcoming series reads like this...

Asterios Polyp

by David Mazzucchelli

I started this blog to help promote things that I like, and to hopefully convince other people to try the same things. I have never kidded myself that my thoughts were particularly profound or any more informed than the next blogger, but writing these short reviews have forced me to think more about what I'm reading (or listening to), and to appreciate these things on a new level.

When it comes to this book though, I think I'm out of my league. I enjoyed reading it immensely, although I don't feel very qualified to discuss it in depth. I have only a passing notion of architecture and design theory, and am sure I missed many of the allusions and references in this book. As well, I feel that I should read it through a couple more times before I would attempt any kind of scholarly appraisal.

So, all that said, I'll discuss this comic as a casual reader. It's really frigging good.

The book starts in Asterios's cluttered, well-lived in apartment. The picture here is not that positive - we get the impression of a lonely, disappointed man. Then lightning strikes his building, setting everything on fire, and he flees his old life.

From that point, the book moves through a few different narrative strands. We see, through flashbacks, Asterios meeting, falling for, and marrying his soon to be ex-wife. We get to see how that happens too. These pages tend to be in blues, and reds, (most of the book has purple). As well, the story continues to follow Asterios, as he ends up in a remote small town (Apogee), getting a job at a mechanic's shop, and renting a room with him, his reincarnated wife, and their child (and his imaginary friend). These pages are more yellow in hue, and much looser in look.
The third strand is narrated by Asterios's unborn twin brother, who provides us with an omniscient view into Asterios's mind, and details other interesting things.

As these pieces of the story continue, we begin to piece together the different aspects of Asterios's life and character. It's fitting that Mazzucchelli's last comic work was an adaptation of Paul Auster's City of Glass, because much of the book reads like an Auster novel.

What really sets this book apart though is the brilliance of Mazzucchelli's art. He's always been an accomplished cartoonist, but he really is working at another level here. In some parts of the book, the characters are portrayed as they see themselves, so that Asterios resembles the beginning stages of an artist's layout, while Hana virtually glows with an aura of warmth. Each character has their own typeface, and no small detail is overlooked - even the money talks ("$").

This is a beautiful book, with many stunning sections. There is a montage where Asterios helps Hana remove a defective Q-Tip from her ear, that manages to encompass all the banality and glory of their marriage in a few short pages. The Orpheus-inspired dream sequence is stunning.

I would like to read the book again before I would comment on the theme of duality that runs through the book, or discuss any of the other themes. This is the type of book I can see being pulled off the shelf on a yearly basis, as it deserves a lot more reflection and time than one short read can give it.

City of Glass

Written by Paul Auster
Adapted by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli
It has been a number of years since I read Auster's New York Trilogy, and I had pretty much forgotten those books, except for the feeling that I had enjoyed them. Recently I came across this comics adaptation by one of my favourite artists, and thought that it was high time to reintroduce myself to Auster's seminal work.

This adaptation is fantastic. Karasik and Mazzucchelli have added so much to what was already a wonderful piece of work. Widowed and depressed writer Quinn receives incorrectly-dialled telephone calls to a 'Paul Auster', and eventually decides to impersonate the man. They are coming from Peter Stillman, a man who, as a child, was locked away from the world by his father in an ill-conceived and abusive experiment involving language and religion. Now his father is out of jail, and Stillman needs Auster's help and protection. Quinn, posing as Auster, begins to stake out the elderly Stillman, following him through the city and eventually speaking to the man. The result is a metaphysical shift in Quinn's life, which at one point involves the real Auster as well.

The story is labrynthine and confusing in places, but this is aided by Karasik's break-downs and Mazzucchelli's art. The two gentlemen take a very inventive approach to the art, packing a lot of imagery into their small, dense panels. Particularly interesting to me was when Quinn was speaking to the younger Stillman, his usual comic art word balloon came from deep inside him, like a tendril of smoke. It helped convey the difficulty Stillman has with language, and the complexity of his situation.

This is a very dense piece of work, and I feel like I will need to return to it again to pick up all of the nuances of its story-telling.