Army of Crime - Comic & Film Bulletins

038. X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills

 

The X-Men were a sort of Lee/Kirby also-ran for many years, sitting awkwardly between the sci-fi family styling of the Fantastic Four and the superhero dynamics of the Avengers. Now the X-Men are a longstanding staple at Marvel, with innumerable spin-offs and series. What are they all about though?

In God Loves, Man Kills, Chris Claremont attempts to tell the quintessential X-Men story as a stand alone graphic novel. God Loves, Man Kills tells a story of prejudice, extremism, and organized religion that served as the basis for at least one blockbuster movie. Does it hold up? Is it good? Should you go read (or reread) it? 

 

Music is by Free Rap Beats.

Find us on Twitter at @armyofcrime and @dustin44444 or on the web at www.armyofcrime.com

 

Topics for this episode are the X-Men franchise and God Loves, Man Kills.

 

 

 

037. Devil Dinosaur

Epic gods once strode the Earth in times of yore. I am, of course, referring to comics creator Jack Kirby. I could also be referencing the crimson hued tyrannosaur from Devil Dinosaur, a lesser discussed Kirby series from the late Bronze Age of comics. 

After his return to Marvel, with the Fourth World in the rear view mirror, Kirby returned to some of his familiar concepts like human deep history, the interplay between myth and supernatural figures as well as a love of big splash pages, ancient aliens, and lost civilizations. This found it's most well known form in The Eternals, but Devil Dinosaur hit on many of the same themes right as The Eternals was wrapping up. How much juice did Kirby still have left? Does Devil Dinosaur deserve a place alongside Kirby's other creations, or is it just a weird oddity? Or maybe both?

 

Music is by Free Rap Beats.

Find us on Twitter at @armyofcrime and @dustin44444 or on the web at www.armyofcrime.com

 

Topic for this episode is Devil Dinosaur, written and drawn by Jack Kirby.

 

 

036. Usagi Yojimbo: Circles

When you think of samurai drama, what type of talking animal comes to mind? If the question sounds absurd, you may not be familiar with the long running Usagi Yojimbo series written and drawn by Stan Sakai. Combining funny animal characters with deep dives into Tokugawa era Japanese culture and samurai movies, Usagi Yojimbo is a masterfully crafted work of sharp swords and floppy ears, now going into it's third decade.

 

Music is by Free Rap Beats.

Find us on Twitter at @armyofcrime and @dustin44444 or on the web at www.armyofcrime.com

 

Topics for this episode are Usagi Yojimbo and Usagi Yojimbo: Circles.

 

 

035. Perramus

 

As the world slides further into the 21st century the themes of political isolation, revolution and the absurdity of authoritarian violence look to stay as relevant as ever. Perramus is a comic about South America in the Cold War that takes it's reader to movie sets, circuses, quests for missing teeth, and is applicable in it's larger themes to many other times and places, including ours. There is also a tremendous amount of bird crap.

 

Music is by Free Rap Beats.

Find us on Twitter at @armyofcrime and @dustin44444 or on the web at www.armyofcrime.com

 

Topic for this episode is Perramus: The City and Oblivion by Alberto Breccia and Juan Sasturain.

 

 

034. At The Mountains Of Madness

H.P. Lovecraft casts a long shadow over pop culture, in ways the author himself would never have been able to envision. A perfect example of this is At the Mountains of Madness, an adaptation of the titular Lovecraft novella by manga artist Gou Tanabe. Combining a fairly straightforward telling of the story with detailed black and white manga art, At the Mountains of Madness belongs to the unending tradition of re-inventing and refreshing works from the Lovecraft bibliography.

 

Music is by Free Rap Beats.

Find us on Twitter at @armyofcrime and @dustin44444 or on the web at www.armyofcrime.com

 

Topics for this episode are At the Mountains of Madness and HP Lovecraft.

033. The Dark Knight Strikes Again

Frank Miller's story Dark Knight Returns has long been considered a masterwork in contemporary superhero comics, and has put a stamp on the character of Batman that is still felt to this day. Almost twenty years later, Miller returned to the same well with Dark Knight Strikes Again. DKSA is a wildly different take on the character and garnered a wide range of opinions, dividing readers instantly. Is DKSA a late career misfire for Miller, or something wholly dissonant from DKR that must be reckoned with on it's own terms? 

 

Music is by Free Rap Beats.

Find us on Twitter at @armyofcrime and @dustin44444 or on the web at www.armyofcrime.com

Topics for this episode are Dark Knight Strikes Again and Frank Miller.

032. Sunny

The coming of age story is a ubiquitous staple of film and television decade after decade. Sunny, however, is a story about coming of age in a very specific time and place, namely Tokyo in the 1970s at a group home with an old beat up car in the backyard. Despite it's particular location and setting, Sunny hits at something universal to the human condition. It is, at times, funny, heartwarming, and tragic. 

 

Music is by Free Rap Beats.

Find us on Twitter at @armyofcrime and @dustin44444 or on the web at www.armyofcrime.com

Topics for this episode are Sunny by Taiyo Matsumoto, The Methods of Freedom by Errico Malatesta and Charley's War by Pat Mills and Joe Calquhon.

031. Daredevil by Ann Nocenti & John Romita Jr.

The Man Without Fear started out as a second string Marvel hero, but over the years Daredevil has collected an impressive string of credited creators, including Frank Miller, Brian Michael Bendis, David Mack, Mark Waid, Bill Everett, Wally Wood, David Mazzucchelli, and a variety of others. Following after Frank Miller was a run of issues written by Ann Nocenti with primary art duties by John Romita Jr. that was only ever sporadically collected in volumes that quickly fell out of print. Nocenti was a relative newcomer to comics writing and brought a very different sensibility to the character, bringing in new characters as well as various social and political issues. Are these issues by Nocenti and Romita Jr. offbeat oddities or lost diamonds? 

 

Music is by Free Rap Beats.

Find us on Twitter at @armyofcrime and @dustin44444 or on the web at www.armyofcrime.com

Topic for this episode is Daredevil issues 236, 238-245, 247-257 and 259-291.

030. Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away the Rebel Alliance battled the Galactic Empire in Star Wars. The Tales of the Jedi comic series asks the question "What happened a long time before that?" Written by Tom Veitch and Kevin J. Anderson, these comics attempted to depict galaxy-wide battles between the Jedi Knights and the Sith, in a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, set thousands of years before the Star Wars films. Did they succeed? In an age bursting at the seams with Star Wars content, is Tales of the Jedi a lost classic or a rightly forgotten oddity?

 

Music is by Free Rap Beats.

Find us on Twitter at @armyofcrime and @dustin44444 or on the web at www.armyofcrime.com

Topic for this episode is the Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi comic series.

029. Akira

What is Akira? Not only is this a question that characters in the eponymous story must decipher, it is a slippery question for a reader to answer. Is Akira a precursor to the cyberpunk genre, a landmark sci-fi manga, the basis for a much loved anime, or should we think of it more as Mad Max meets 2001: A Space Odyssey? Maybe all of these, and more besides. Our freewheeling tour of the Modern Age of Comics continues with Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira.

 

Music is by Free Rap Beats.

Find us on Twitter at @armyofcrime and @dustin44444 or on the web at www.armyofcrime.com

Topic for this episode is Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo.