Give me a couple of days and I’ll come up with a few of my own.

Greg McElhatton has been reviewing comics for a long time; he currently has his own review blog, Read About Comics. He’s a gay white man, not that that shows through in his reviews. What I like about him is his diversity of selection. Many online comics reviewers tend to stick primarily, if not exclusively, with the corporate superhero books, and many of those that review independent and small press comics tend to stick to only those. Greg reviews them all, big and small alike. His reviews are clear and concise and tell you what you need to know. Not much more one can ask for in a comics reviewer.

Elayne Riggs is one of my all-time favorite people. She is an older Jewish woman, and her blog is called Pen-Elayne on the Web. She’s old-school – she was reviewing comics back in the online Stone Age era of the early 90s, and I believe her print history goes back even further. She’s a huge advocate of women’s comics – she’s the former head of Friends of Lulu, a comics organization dedicated to that cause. She’s also a former editor at Comic Mix, and her husband is inker Robin Riggs. She doesn’t review as many comics as she used to; these days her blog is devoted to all manner of esoterica, from politics to cats to writing to the Beatles and more… though she may open up about what comics she’s reading these days if you ask her real nice. Witty, sharp, opinionated yet rational – there’s always something worth reading at her blog.

This last one I just picked at random while trying to find a Latino comics blog. Anthony Oropeza does a comic called Amigoman, and at his blog Amigoman Art and More, he has pictures of the art classes he teaches for young kids. Hard to tell what kind of lessons he’s teaching – whether it’s how to draw superheroes or how to draw superhero comics or maybe both – but the kids do look like they’re having a good time. According to his website, not only are there are bi-lingual Amigoman comics, but he tailors his books for specific age groups. He’s committed to getting children to read and create, and it looks like he lectures to schools on a regular basis.

From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain is a superhero novel by a guy who calls himself “Minister Faust.” He’s a Canadian radio talk show host and political activist, in addition to being a teacher and author. His debut novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, was up for several major sci-fi lit awards.

Brain is in the grand tradition of Watchmen and Kingdom Come, as it tells the story of superheroism in a world where it has become an outdated concept. It’s written in the style of a self-help book by the title character, an ordinary human who has been assigned to diagnose a team of prominent heroes, the Fantastic Order of Justice (FOOJ), by their corporate masters to determine their ability to do their jobs. The heroes are surface analogues of familiar characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man) mixed with more original ones. In this world, all the big super-villains have been defeated years ago, and Dr. Brain’s book-within-a-book is written for post-modern superheroes looking for renewed purpose and direction. Using the FOOJ members under her care as examples, she pontificates in overwrought psychobabble and hilariously contrived metaphors to make her diagnoses. During her therapy sessions, a prominent hero dies suddenly and unexpectedly, and one of her charges suspects foul play. The deeper Dr. Brain is drawn into the investigation, the more she learns more about her patients, and as you might expect, there’s a big confrontation at the end – though it doesn’t unravel nor resolve the way you may think.

Faust has created a rich and multi-layered world in Brain. Unlike Watchmen, it feels more like a parody – for example, the heroes have ridiculous powers and names, like the Flying Squirrel and Omnipotent Man – but like Watchmen, the devil is in the details, and underneath the surface analogues, these bickering heroes have long histories, complex motivations, and individually-tailored personalities. As for Dr. Brain herself, like Norman McKay in Kingdom Come, she provides a human perspective on the world of superheroes, but unlike Kingdom Come, hers is not an “everyman” role; she has a very unique worldview, and sometimes her outlook on events diverges sharply from the way you or I may perceive them.

And her psychobabble has to be read to be believed. Here’s a sample:

Nothing is more terrifying than facing the ultimate archenemy, Death, and its horrifying henchman, Grief. Maturity means recognizing the inevitability not only of combating these foes, but of our inevitable defeat at their hands… Because you are a hero, your identity is based on exceeding limitations; therefore, the awareness of such inescapable defeat is a mental kidney stone that not even you can pass during the urination of your psychemotional processing. Death is a barrier even you can’t smash down, fly over, phase through, or disintegrate with your maservision.

THE ENTIRE BOOK is written like this.

The “Rorschach” character in Brain, to go back to the Watchmen analogy, is a militant black hero named X-Man (get it?). Before he joined the FOOJ he was part of a small group of black heroes, and his serious, Afrocentric attitude is in contrast to another black hero in the FOOJ, Brotherfly, a jive-talking hip hopper with a more devil-may-care approach. The two don’t get along – think Huey and Riley from The Boondocks – but X-Man’s black-power stance is slowly revealed to be a facade hiding deep-seated issues, and Brotherfly turns out to have more to him than meets the eye. Indeed, all the heroes in Brain are like this; multilayered, with secrets that belie the images they present to the world. Dr. Brain herself, though, is different. With her, what you see is what you get – and never is that point driven home more than in the ending.

There’s a lot for the average superhero fan to enjoy in Brain. It takes the basic elements of Watchmen and Kingdom Come, combines them, and then recontextualizes them through the Dr. Brain character, and as a result it feels both familiar and fresh. Because Dr. Brain is an unreliable narrator (a fact even X-Man points out in the story!), you’re forced to look past her dogma and pay closer attention to what’s going on. While I found this level of storytelling fascinating, I thought things unraveled a bit towards the final third. Everything was one big revelation after another, all given equal weight, and the big confrontation was a bit difficult to follow in places. Plus, it wasn’t as satisfying as I had hoped it would be. Still, it’s the final chapter that saves the book, giving you that “Ooooooooh, so THAT’S what it’s all about” moment. Brain is absolutely worth reading if you’re any kind of superhero fan. (Thanks to Jane for recommending it to me!)

I don’t remember where I first read about Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse. It must have been sometime during the early period during the 90s when I was just getting back into comics. Anyway, whenever people ask me which graphic novel is my all-time favorite, this is the one I hold up. Set during the civil rights movement of the 60s in a fictitous Southern town, it’s a coming-of-age tale about a young white teen beginning to come to terms with his sexuality, in a town racked with racial strife. When the Proposition 8 decision came down in California last fall, and it was revealed that a large number of blacks voted in its favor, many opponents of the bill were shocked that these blacks couldn’t see the parallels between their struggle for equality and that of homosexuals. Baby holds blacks and gays up to the same light and does an excellent job of depicting the perspectives of both groups (though obviously the gay angle is the stronger of the two). There’s a wide and diverse variety of characters on display here, and they’re all believable and three-dimensional. Cruse has a pleasant cartoonish art style which makes use of a meticulous stippling technique which, I admit, he sometimes goes overboard on, but I’ve learned to appreciate it. Baby is filled with warmth, humor, genuine tension and rich drama. You’ll think it’s based on a true story – but it’s not!

Tim Fish does some great gay romance comics. Arguably his best known is Cavalcade of Boys. It’s very much in the spirit of old-fashioned (heterosexual) romance comics from the 50s and 60s, with a large cast of (mostly) young gay men hopping in and out of each other’s beds, drawn in a broad, exaggerated style suggestive of legendary Golden and Silver Age artist Jack Kirby in places. Among his other works include Young Bottoms in Love and Meet Me in St. Louis… Many literature aficionados have heard of Alison Bechdel by now, thanks to her graphic novel memoir Fun Home hitting it big a couple of years ago. If you liked that, I suggest also seeking out the collection of her long-running strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. Similar kind of droll humor, with a bigger cast… Abby Denson‘s work leans more towards the realm of Japanese manga, with androgynous boys and hyper-emotional situations. Her breakout book Tough Love is very much in that vein. (I remember when this was a mini-comic! I should have a copy or two back home in New York.)

All these comics are great places to start for gay comics. For more, check out the website Prism Comics.

This was a tough one. I originally thought about using a much older book – one from the 70s or 80s, when white superhero comics writers were just beginning to address race and other social issues – but I couldn’t decide on one. I decided to go with something more recent.

The two-part Jack-in-the-Box story from Astro City V2 #11-12 can be found in the Astro City trade paperback Family Album. Astro City, by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson & Alex Ross, is about a city of superheroes and other fantastic characters, told from multiple perspectives. Stories have focused around heroes, sidekicks, villains, and civilians, among others, and range from done-in-one tales to multiple-issue arcs. Though the book is a superhero comic, with all the common surface qualities of your average Marvel or DC title, the emphasis is always on the subjective thoughts, emotions and experiences of the central characters, in a much more immersive manner than in a typical superhero comic.

Jack-in-the-Box is a “street level” hero in the tradition of Spider-Man, Daredevil or Batman, and fights crime with a variety of gadgets befitting his children’s toy motif (his outfit resembles a circus clown in a Harlequin bodysuit). Underneath the mask, he’s the president of a toy manufacturer, and his wife Tamra is a local news anchor. Jack inherited the superhero mantle from his late father.

In part one, “Serpent’s Teeth,” Jack is attacked by twisted versions of himself from the future who claim to be his sons, bitter and resentful of him for not being tough enough in fighting criminals, and ultimately, for not being part of their lives. The situation is exacerbated when Jack learns his wife is pregnant. In part two, “Father’s Day,” an encounter with a troubled street teen who idolizes Jack leads to an unlikely solution.

I wouldn’t say the black characters here are too good to be true. Tamra, Jack-in-the-Box’s wife, puts up with a lot being the spouse of a superhero, and she recognizes the stress it can and has put on their marriage. They argue about it at one point, in fact. She’s clearly written as someone with her own needs and desires that sometimes conflict with her husband’s. As for Jack, he’s unequivocally the Good Guy, and one never really doubts that he’ll find a solution to this problem, but he still comes across as relatable and sympathetic. As for Roscoe and his gang, they’re more analogous to the Baker Street Irregulars of the Sherlock Holmes books than to any gang you’re likely to see in real life, so they’re not as dangerous as we’re led to believe they are. Still, they do have their share of problems, as evidenced in part two.

For the most part, race isn’t directly key to this story, but it does infect the characters’ worldview to a certain degree. In the most overt example, Jack, in talking about his father, mentions how unusual a black toy designer was back in his day, and that he was paid less than less talented white toy designers. On a subtextual level, however, the whole theme of fathers and sons has great resonance for black readers, since so many young black men grow up these days without a father figure. Jack’s future sons did not have him or his guidance in their lives, and as a result they became horrific mockeries of Jack, taking his legacy as Jack-in-the-Box and turning it into something awful. Thus it becomes vitally important to Jack that he be there for his unborn child. Some black kids without fathers are fortunate in that they turn out okay. (A few even become president.) Many more, however, do not. So while Busiek doesn’t specifically address this issue from a racial standpoint, one cannot help but read it into a story like this. And in the end, it is Jack, the central character, who comes up with a solution.

Beauty isn’t much of an issue in this story. Jack and Tamra are depicted as still being heavily attracted to each other after however many years of marriage; the fire in their romance has not gone out. Tamra has a very stylish Afrocentric hairdo, with short braids coming halfway down her head to the base of her neck. Being a television personality, it’s only natural that she has a certain glamor to her looks. As for the covers, as you can see, they’re pretty direct; the second one having a much more subdued and poignant tone. Even though Tamra is not as far along as she’s depicted here, it’s necessary to show her like that in order to convey without any doubt that she is pregnant.

Astro City is a wonderful series that comes highly recommended. The first issue of the newest series, Astro City: The Dark Age, comes out this week at comics shops everywhere.

Susan says next month is Asian Heritage Month, so the theme this week is Asian and Asian-American creators. And since manga is not exactly something I’m knowledgeable about, I’ll stick to discussing comics by Asian-Americans.

Two of the most prominent AA creators right now are Derek Kirk Kim and Gene Luen Yang. The former is Korean, the latter Chinese, and both creators weave elements of their respective cultures in their work while keeping them accessible to all audiences.

Kim’s books, like Same Difference and Other Stories, are marked by a love of geek culture and the awkwardness of young adult relationships. His autobiographical stories have a self-depreciating humor that also pokes fun at certain unusual aspects of Korean life. He can take on a variety of art styles, and the anthology Same Difference alternates from the semi-realistic style of the title story to a broad, almost diagrammatic technique for some of his single-page gag strips.

Yang’s books, like the critically-acclaimed American Born Chinese, have a more spiritual bent to them, though they stop short of proselytizing. CO and Worducopia readers may recall that ABC made history in 2006 by becoming the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award.

The two recently teamed up to create a new graphic novel anthology, The Eternal Smile. I just finished reading it. While I think the three stories in this book rely a little too much on the M. Night Shyamalan-like twist (which Yang did use to magnificent effect in ABC), it’s still enjoyable enough to serve as an introduction to the two creators’ work if you’ve never read them before.

In addition: Adrian Tomine has done a variety of quiet, introspective relationship comics, including his long-running series Optic Nerve… My friend Stan Yan makes humor comics, my favorite being The Wang. He really has gotten better and better as an artist over the years, so if you like raunchy-yet-geeky humor, give his comics a try… This spring has seen the release of an anthology of AA talent called Secret Identities. (Here’s an interview with one of the editors.) Haven’t read it yet, but the buzz is positive… The first time I saw Jen Wang‘s work, it was as part of the phenomenal anthology Flight, and I thought she was one of the brightest spots of what is by all accounts a superlative collection of young comics talent.

And while I’m not that much into manga, there is one manga that I’ve read that left a huge impression on me: Eagle: The Making of an Asian-American President by Kaiji Kawaguchi. Long before America even heard of Barack Obama, here was a story of a minority running for – and winning – the White House. Written during the Clinton administration, some of it may seem dated, especially in this post 9-11 world, but it does a superb job of chronicling the suspense of a political campaign, with all the double dealing, intrigue, highs and lows that come with it.

1)Post a poem by a woman of color. Your choice must be a poet who has written in the last forty years. Do your best to avoid the most anthologized, popular poets unless poetry is new territory for you. In that case, check out why the popular poets are well loved.

Finding a poem by a female comics creator of color turned out to be easier than I thought – and I didn’t have to search far! Nominated for two Glyph Comics Awards, Shatia Hamilton’s webcomic Fungus Grotto is something I’d never heard of before (though I do recall seeing her name over at the Ormes Society page). It’s a fantasy series done in the manga style that all the cool kids love these days, and it begins with this poem, which I’m only gonna link to because it’s pretty long and I don’t wanna have to type it all out.

2)Tell us why you like the poem you chose. Don’t worry about the technical aspects of writing poetry, devices or forms. Give us your reader’s response. How does it make you feel or what does it make you think about? What questions does it raise for you?

The poem sets the proper tone for the story to follow, which is about a human teenage girl who stumbles into an enchanted world that lies literally beneath her feet, populated with unusual characters. A familiar storytelling trope, perhaps, but FG doesn’t come across as a children’s story. (A proper comparison might be to Neil Gaiman’s Stardust.) The poem is cleverly composed in the sense that it starts off sounding sweet and innocent, before taking a sinister turn. The enchanted world lulls the reader into a false sense of security before revealing its hidden agenda, and indeed, many parallels to this can be found in nature. Perhaps it’s no surprise then, that FG is set in a forest.

The poem, even if it comes across as a bit cliched, definitely makes one wonder how its tone will be reflected in the story, what challenges the heroine will face, and how they’ll be overcome, if at all. People tend to forget that the fairy tales we all have grown up with over the generations have become sanitized and have had its rougher edges smoothed off. Much of modern children’s entertainment in America sticks to the middle of the road and makes a conscious and concerted effort to be as inoffensive and tame as possible. Though FG is not meant for young children, I would argue that it has more in common with those long-ago original incarnations of fairy tales, when parents were much less uptight about content.

3)If you are a poetry reader and you can recommend a contemporary woman poet of color, who do you recommend and why? I would really love to hear about emerging or lesser known poets. Introduce us to poets from around the world.

I am not a poetry reader of any kind (though I do own a book of Langston Hughes poetry) and I certainly don’t know of any black women poets outside of Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni, who everyone knows. As for FG, to be honest, it’s not the kind of comic that I could seriously get into, but I can attest to its superb art and excellent storytelling skill. Hamilton is immensely talented and deserves both her GCA nominations, and if you dig girls’ manga, then you should definitely give this a look.

The questions for this week in italics:

Which is the character who’s the most different from you? (And how? Use this as an excuse to tell us your own background and anything else about yourself that’s important to your self-identity).

The obvious answer would seem to be any superhero or supervillain or any fantasy character in general, but more than enough has been and is being written about superheroes, both in print and on the Net, and I’d rather talk about comics that are off the beaten path. Keep in mind that despite the way the questions are phrased, I don’t consider these the “absolute” answers, just one among a number that I could just as easily write about also.

If the author of an autobiographical comic can be considered a character in their own book – and why not? – one name that instantly springs to mind is Ellen Forney in Monkey Food. I remember first hearing about her at SPX, where her collection of “I Was Seven in ’75″ strips debuted, and despite the buzz on it I missed out. When I finally did get my hands on the book, well, I just fell in love with it instantly. I am a straight black male who came of age in the 80s. Forney is a homosexual white woman who came of age in the 70s. I’d say that’s pretty different.

Monkey Food chronicles Forney’s wonder years in a very bright-eyed, fanciful and just plain fun manner. While it’s definitely written for adults, there are so many moments that make you feel like a kid again, and while Forney presents her childhood self as girly-girl as you can get, something about her character really spoke to me. We see little Ellen and her girlfriends play hand-clap games, make up their own fashion styles, reading (and secretly enjoying) the books of Judy Blume, babysitting, and other girly-girl stuff, which I never did (well, okay, I did read some Judy Blume books), but something about the way Forney presents all of this – complete with obligatory 70s pop culture references – made me feel like I was living this life as well.

Certainly the art style helps. Forney uses a uniform line, probably with a brush, to create a cartoon style that’s suggestive of childhood. It’s never too detailed or over-rendered, but it’s self-assured even if it seems awkward in places.

It’s not all kid stuff, though. We also see Ellen interacting with her brother and especially her ultra-liberal parents, doing things like going to a nude beach, throwing a joint party, going to see Saturday Night Fever (and wondering about some of the more adult elements of the movie) and going to a Unitarian church, things that my ultra-conservative upbringing had absolutely no part of. Ellen gets exposed to ideas that she may have been way too young for, but they don’t keep her from being a kid. While I wouldn’t say I had a sheltered childhood, my parents would’ve definitely frowned on this method of child-rearing. Maybe that’s part of why seeing it in this book appealed to me.

Monkey Food is the kind of book I love coming back to again and again because of its sincerity and openness in the face of a coming-of-age story that may seem unusual and unconventional to some – like me.

Which is the author (this could be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc.) who is (or was) the most different from you?

Certainly someone like Will Eisner was a creator very different from me in many ways. The son of European immigrants, whose Jewish identity was a large part of who he was, growing up during the (first) Great Depression and having to make a living at an early age, perceiving comics completely differently from the overwhelming majority of his peers and spending his life trying to elevate the artform long before the rest of the industry caught up to him, making comics that have stood the test of time in a style second to none and continuing to do so into his 80s. He was an American original, and we’ll not see his like again.