I've read and heard many stories over the years of people who read comics as kids, but then dropped out them for a while (usually during high school and college) and only to pick them up again years later. I was never like that. I've had comics for as long as I can remember and, while I did waffle a bit on whether I should remain interested beyond my 11th birthday, John Byrne's Fantastic Four hit me like a ton of bricks and I was sucked in for life.

Now, of course, when I was a kid, I didn't know much of the history of comic books. For that matter, I didn't know much of the present of comic books. My knowledge was limited mostly to Marvel books, and it was only as broad as it was because I found myself reading up on the Fantastic Four's history in particular -- and that is effectively the history of Marvel Comics. But my knowledge of DC was largely limited to what I saw Super Friends and everything else was beyond notice for me.

As I grew into a teenager and young adult, I naturally read and learned more. I kept expanding the scope of my interest, and was reading about other publishers and independent artists and the like. I was no expert, by any means, but more knowledgeable than I was before. My point is, though, that I've never taken a break from comics.

And yet, there was this chunk of goings-on that I completely missed in the early-to-mid-1990s while I was in college. I still kept up with my favorite books, but there was stuff going on that I was absolutely clueless about. Case in point, I was talking Jim McClain a couple years ago, and he mentioned that he had liked Mike Parobeck's work. I hadn't ever recalled hearing the name before and asked who he was. Apparently, he was a very talented and well-respected artist who was known primarily for his work on Batman Adventures in the early 1990s, but died from diabetes complications in 1996 at the age of 30.

Parobeck's first professional work was as an inker in Secret Origins #37 circa 1989. His entire comics career lasted a scant seven years, starting just before I left for college and ending tragically within a year of my finishing. I had evidently been so isolated in that bubble of college (where even Jack Kirby's death barely hit my radar) that I missed Parobeck's entire career, only to discover decades later how big an impact he had on people.

What strikes me, then, is what else I might've missed from that same period. I mean, I've known for decades that there was comics history worth exploring from before I was born and I've studied a fair amount of that. And most of the gaps in my knowledge are ones I do know about -- I'm woefully ignorant of the underground comix movement, for example. But this period in the early '90s where I was active in comics, but somehow disengaged from the industry as a whole, seems to be another hole that I didn't even realize was there.

I was aware of Image Comics founding, Jack Kirby's death, Marvel's bankruptcy... I was nominally aware of Bone starting, although I didn't actually read it until about decade later. Gimmick covers were impossible to miss. And because I recall hearing about those things while they were going on, I long assumed I knew what went on in that time. But evidently, not as much as I would have thought.

It would be easy to dismiss the whole decade with "die-cut and foil embossed covers" but that glosses over far too much. And even after reading books like Comic Wars and Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans which cover much of that period, and obtaining a large collection of Wizard Magazines which was perhaps the dominant news outlet for comics during that period, there still would appear to be much to learn.

Don't let your own personal experiences drive your assumptions about the industry. Just because you were still part of the comics scene during any particular period doesn't necessarily mean that you caught everything that was going on. Sometimes you have to study up on the history, even when it overlaps your own!

I came across this sketch yesterday on a John Buscema fan account...

It's clearly one of his preliminaries, but I have always been impressed with his ability to make literal scribbles look gorgeous. However, because of it's roughness, I initially took the sitting character to be Dr. Doom. Kind of a hood thing going on, some built-up lines around the shoulders suggest maybe a cape, the goblet... and the fact that I've seen Buscema draw Doom in that pose before. A little closer inspection, though, and I realized it was probably Conan. And sure enough, I came across the finished piece after a quick search...

But I got to thinking about that pose. Buscema actually used it a fair amount. I quickly recalled similar poses he did using Mephisto. So I did some more image searching...

You want to show the person in a room who has the most power? You put in them in this pose. The pose says they have absolutely nothing to fear from anyone, and they can just casually stretch themselves out over whatever it is they want to use as a thone. They don't have to even pretend to be tense and ready for anything, because there's nothing nearby they couldn't dispatch without even a first thought, much less a second. The instant something starts to go sideways, they'll make sure somebody's head will be rolling around on the floor by the next instant. I'm calling it The Regal John Buscema Slouch™.

Note, too, that it's not always exacty the same pose nor is it ever the same angle. Buscema knew it so well, he could draw it from the front, the side, a three-quarter overhead perspective... any angle, he could drop this in and make it look effortless. Dude was wicked talented.

I've been nominally aware of Patricia Highsmith for several years now, but until recently, I couldn't have told you anything about her. I could maybe have said that she was the writer of The Talented Mr. Ripley and she also wrote some comic books, but that's about it. I don't know that I've ever read any of her work -- certainly not her prose and, if I've read any of her comics, it would've been ones she'd written anonymously and no one's ever identified her as the writer of them. But that's why I was intially interested in reading Flung Out of Space, as it's based on her life.

I would hesitate to call this a biography, though. In the first place, the entire book takes place between 1945 and 1952 (based on some of the context clues) which accounts for a very small snippet of Highsmith's life. Second, author Grace Ellis notes in the foreword that it has been fictionalized; the broad strokes are true but the details are a bit fuzzy (intentionally) in a number of places. Third, it's less about what she did in her day-to-day life anyway and more about the type of life she led and the impact she had on those around her.

That said, the period this book covers was a seminal time in her life. She was trying to work as a writer in 1945 -- which was no small feat to begin with, made that much more challenging by her being a lesbian. She had to fight misogonistic and homophobic attitudes pretty much at every turn; so the book opens with her writing comics for Ned Pines' Better Publications. The medium was considered trash, often even by those who worked in the field, and Highsmith routinely chucks sample copies of her comics in the garbage without the slightest hesistation. The book follows her as she works to break into "real" publishing and grapples with her identity as a lesbian, even going so far as to seeing a therpaist to try to "cure" her. The story ends with the publication of The Price of Salt, her second and argueably her most ground-breaking book.

Ellis and artist Hannah Templer do an excellent job of giving Highsmith a voice, and showcasing who she was as a person and what she found herself fighting against. I like that there's not a particularly singular incident just to show "hey, don't forget lesbianism wasn't really tolerated back then" but it weaves in and out of the story as a pervasive undercurrent. The offhand comments, the strange looks, etc. The stuff of a thousand paper cuts. And yet Highsmith, despite wrestling to "normalize" herself and fit into "regular" society, always immediately recognizes the artifice for what it is and returns to her authentic self.

And kudos to Ellis and Templer, too, for showing that authentic self. She frequently comes across as abrassive and condescending, even when she's trying to flirt with someone. She casually drops anti-Semitic comments. She looks down on whole industries (most notably comics publishing and retail) despite working in them to ensure she has enough money. There's no sugar-coating here. Highsmith did turn out some excellent prose work, work that she was justifiably proud of, and connected with readers on points that had literally never been made before in publishing. But she was hardly a figure above criticism, and Ellis and Templer do not put her on a pedestal.

I think that's what makes this something beyond a biography as well. We don't see Highsmith as the subject of historical importance or worthy of academic study or anything like that. She's just a person, struggling to get through her life, much like everyone else does. She has her virtues, but she also has her problems. As readers, we connect with Highsmith at an emotional level and, while I suspect there are few today who face the same challenges she did, we can still all empathize with the struggle.

The book came out in hardback in April from Abrams' ComicsArts imprint and retails for $24.99 US. Well worth picking up just on its merits as a great story, but if you've got any interest in comic creators and/or the industry in the 1940s, or Highsmith in particular, you'll be excited to read this.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Memorial Day Musings
https://ift.tt/GOeJa6r

Kleefeld on Comics: Organizing Collections
https://ift.tt/q0rZJpN

Kleefeld on Comics: Through the Labyrinths of the Mind Review
https://ift.tt/ySjYka1

Kleefeld on Comics: The Fantastic Four #3 Cover Error
https://ift.tt/pt8rvEB

Kleefeld on Comics: Micro-Face Review
https://ift.tt/BAJxL9i

Last year, I noted NPR's Planet Money team had a series of episodes explaining intellecutal property and they did so by attempting to work on their own superhero franchise. Over the course of a few episodes, they landed on updating a public domain character from the Golden Age called Micro-Face. And after a series of delays that I never bothered to look into hearing an explanation about, they came out with a brand new comic about the character about a month and half ago.

The story follows Sam Salazar, a reporter at NPR who's initially looking into a series of corporate buy-outs prompted by the takeover of the company his grandfather founded. He then learns that, before creating the company, his grandfather was the original superhero Micro-Face and through a few necessities of circumstance, Salazar picks up the mantle with a modified version of his grandfather's costume. In the classic superhero fashion, he saves the day but looks towards a future of stopping other unscrupulous villains. (The character behind the takeovers was, in fact, a costumed villain that his grandfather had fought back in the day.)

The issue was written by Alex Segura, drawn by Jamal Igle (with a character redesign and cover art by Jerry Ordway), colored by Ellie Wright, and lettered by Taylor Esposito. I like that Planet Money took the time and effort to pull together an entire crew of professionals for this work. A lot of these types of projects, I've found, tend to pull in folks who might be talented but aren't necessarily professional comic creators. So they might know in theory how a comic is created, but lack any practical experience to make the entire thing work smoothly. So you wind up with something that might look professional at first glance, but doesn't quite work once you start examining things closely. But because there's an expereinced team here, you don't get any of that.

In fact, the story is pretty solid all over. Not only do we get a solid origin story for the new Micro-Face without belaboring the fact that it's an origin story, but we get a good explanation for why the original Micro-Face disappeared to begin with. (I mean, an in-story explanation. Not the obvious, "sales of the comic were terrible.") Everything is well-researched, with some fun name-drops of other old characters and companies, as well as -- as explained in the back matter -- the most accurate depiction of an NPR interview ever illustrated. There are some smart modifications to Micro-Face's powers and some clever uses for them. A nice touch, too, is that the two protagonists, Salazar and one of his co-workers, are both non-white. All in all, it's a good read and a fun exploration of what can be done to modernize seemingly absurd, out-of-date comics characters.

The only real complaint I might make is that, while the back matter does explain some of background of the original comic and what prompted Planet Money to make an update of the character, we don't get much in the way of seeing what they started with. They do include some of the creation process, including sample script and art pages prior to completion, but there's not much to show what the original Micro-Face stories were actually. I would have liked to have seen an additional ten pages reprinting the original Micro-Face story. Or even just six pages to reprint the shortest of his original stories. Just some point of reference to compare what was done back in the 1940s against today. As the stories are in public domain, it's certainly easy enough to find them online, but I think it would've made a nice overall package to include one of them here.

But in terms of the new material, a solid comic. I've seen a number of updates of public domain superheroes the past decade or two, and this one is definitely up towards the top of that list, second perhaps only to Gene Luen Yang' and Sonny Liew's Green Turtle update from a few years ago. I'm not sure if Planet Money will do anything else with the character, but I'll certainly be on board if they're able to continue the story.

The cover to Fantastic Four #3 is a pretty iconic image for FF fans. It's the first look at the team's costumes and the flying bathtub. Plus, it's a pretty clear depiction of the whole team, with no cover blurbs blocking parts of characters or villains getting in the way, and with all the team members given nearly equal visual weight. There aren't many Jack Kirby covers that do all that. FF #59 kind of works, but the characters are all separate and don't really look like a single group.

Now, you all know me as a Kirby fan, but I have to say that this cover really just bugs the heck out of me. I've never liked it. Why? Because it's wrong.

Not in some weird design sense, or as some sort of artistic judgement I'm making, but it's just plain anatomically wrong. Look at the Human Torch's right hand. His palm is stretched up towards his head (down relative to the cover itself) but his thumb is positioned to the front of his body. Try it with your own hand. Right hand, palm up. Where's your thumb? Pointing back behind you.

Here, let me flip the image so the Torch appears right-side up, and zoom in on things so you get a better perspective...

Looks like about the most unnatural thing in the world, now, doesn't it?

As much as I love Kirby's work, I wouldn't at all mind seeing this image corrected for any promotional purposes. Keep the original for reprints -- make it a true representation of what the original was -- but correct it for the t-shirts and coffee mugs and vinyl wall stickers are such, please. Here, let me give you everyone a head-start...

Through the Labyrinths of the Mind is a comic anthology that came out late last year from Cloudscape Comics. In it, fifteen creators share short stories about a variety of mental health issues, from depression to dementia to OCD. According to the text on the back of the book, "their comics range from starkly honest memoirs to symbolic slice-of-life-fiction and even fairy tales, but whatever the genre, all the stories speak truth to the creator's struggles."

Not surprisingly, I've been thinking a fair amount about mental health lately. I've had struggles of my own since college, but I'm also very aware that their severity pales in comparison to others and, moreover, I have enough priviledge that I have a number of resources available to help me if I need it. The past few years -- between COVID and, well, everything -- have been particularly harsh for a large number of people. I've had difficulties myself that have been more wearying and burdensome than anything I've experienced since college, but I don't doubt for a second that people with fewer resources or safety nets have had it much, much worse. I try to make a point of regularly reaching out to folks who I think might be able to use a little extra support with whatever priviledge I can spare. And that's where Labyrinths comes in.

One of the problems with mental health issues is that we don't have any good language for discussing them. Sure, there are labels like "post-traumatic stress disorder" and we can list some of the symptoms, but that doesn't really get to the issue. If you have a physical ailment, like a broken bone, we can point to a chart and say, "This one bone right here is in two pieces separated right at this point." Huamnity has been dealing with this kind of stuff for millenia -- we know how to diagnose those issues, how to explain them to others quickly and concisely, and how to treat them. Mental health issues? We've been trying to address those for, what? A few hundred years at most? Not only do we not know how to "cure" those types of issues, we often have trouble diagnosing them much less explaining the issues. We often rely on metaphors, and Labyrinths includes many.

Masks, brain gremlins, cursed shadows, fuzzy black masses... they're some of the metaphors the creators here use to explain a variety of mental conditions. Those terms probably don't resonnate with you on their own -- again, we don't have the language to really discuss mental issues -- but in the context of the stories, they make sense. And they help to illustrate some of the issues that people often have trouble communicating. Saying "I'm depressed" for many (probably most) people will be seen as a temporary state; like they feel bad right now because they failed their final exam but they'll get over it by the weekend. But if you describe being depressed in terms of being curled up in an empty room at the bottom dark, nearly endlessly spiraling staircase of a negative dimension guarded by a multi-headed demon in the depths of the earth, that's an entirely different ballgame! It's a metaphor that helps to highlight the perpetual bleakness and darkness of the situation; it helps to give context and gravity to people who have never experienced anything like that before.

I often have trouble reviewing anthology collections. Obviously, with a number of different creators, there are some stories here that strike me more than others. Some have better stories, some have better art, some have better ideas. However you might define "better" in any of those cases. So how can you review the book as a whole with so many different people contributing wildly differing works? In this case, they're all solid. And since they all tackle different mental health issues from different perspectives, it's a very useful book right now. It could help put a name to some as-yet-unmentioned issues you've been dealing with, it could provide metaphors that allow you to communicate or understand some of these issues more, it could simply offer a bit of consolation that you're not the only one dealing with shit right now.

We're in a time now where lots of people need help and don't have access to it. We're in a time where lots of people, even if they're normally very empathetic, have to focus on their own survival to the point of being unable to even offer assistance to others. Empathy and compassion seem to be at record lows. People all over the world are going through a massive crisis right now, and it's laid bare many of the underlying societal problems we're usually able to slide past. So right now, any source that offers any sort of help is worthwhile.

I hope things are going okay for you right now. I really do worry about a lot of my friends and family who I suspect are hiding a lot more issues they're dealing with than what they even tell me in private. Whether you're looking for someone to say "it's not just you" or a metaphor to explain what you're feeling or even just a label to identify what you're going through, Through the Labyrinths of the Mind is worth picking up for only $20 CAN.